QUESTION #1: Seven things I hope to do before I die
- Finish my quilt.
- Graduate all my kids from homeschool (3 down, 2 to go)
- Lose 15 pounds
- Write a book worth reading
- Landscape my backyard
- Have some grandkids (my married daughter is not co-operating on this one!)
- See my son get married (He's going on 26 with no hopes in sight)
QUESTION#2 Seven things I cannot do well:
1. Resist freshly baked brownies, or any brownies, for that matter.
2. Keep my computer time to 30 minutes a day.
3. Read a book while my husband talks to me.
4. Keep my mouth shut when I should.
5. Live without a water heater/ running water/ or electricity.
6. Sleep in another bed other than my waterbed.
7. Go without chocolate for more than a few days--or maybe that should be a few hours.
QUESTION#3:Seven things that would attract me to my spouse.
That would?? attract me? Like, maybe I'm not? Hmm. I'm not sure I get this question.
Seven things that Attracted me to my spouse.
1. His spiritual leadership
2. His sense of humor
3. His respectful treatment of me--opens doors for me--still--after 30 years.!
4. His love of the Lord
5. His brain--love it!!
6. His love of books
7. His great personality.
QUESTION#4:Seven things I say often:
1. Get off the computer--it's MY turn!
2. What time is it?
3. Are you watching the time?
4. Put your dishes in the dishwasher!
5. Who didn't put their dishes in the dishwasher?
6. What should I fix for dinner?
7. Have you finished your school work?
QUESTION#5:Seven authors, books or series I love
1. Little House books
2. Edith Schaeffer books
3. C.S. Lewis books
4. Jane Austen books (just got into these--they're fun)\
5. Jane Eyre (my all time favorite)
6. Charlotte Mason series
7. Too many favorites to list
QUESTION#6:Seven movies I watch over and over again:
1. Jane Eyre with Timothy Dalton
2. Pride & Prejudice and other Jane Austen movies
3. Alfred Hitchcock movies
4. Charade
5. Magnificient Seven
6. You've Got Mail
7. Across the Great Divide
QUESTION#7:Seven people I want to do this:
I'm skipping this one.
11:16 AM - Feb. 17, 2006 - {3} -
I'm baking some brownies for the nice plumber who's coming "before 12:00" to fix my broken water heater. I've been dieting for two days now, and I haven't done well, either. Now I'm baking brownies. That makes a lot of sense for someone who is brownie deprived and on a diet.
But the brownies are for the plumber, you see. Except that one 9 x 13 inch pan of brownies won't fit on a paper plate no matter how high I stack them. So I'm going to have to eat the rest.
I was wondering why I needed a 9 x 13 inch pan to bake these brownies in. You see, normally I'm really lazy and buy a box mix. It never makes more than a 9x9 inch pan of really thin brownies. But I didn't have any box mixes, so I made them from scratch. I didn't know that brownies from scratch would fill a 9 x 13 inch pan. I mean, it makes sense, but I didn't realize til now how much I'd been getting ripped off at the store paying $3. 95 cents for a box that only make a half batch of brownies!!! They should at least say that on the box. "This box only makes a half batch of brownies--so buy two of them (or 4!!) so you can really pig out!
I'm sure the cocoa company has the opposite view--the more brownies you make from scratch, the more they make selling the cocoa. So for them, a 9 x 13 inch pan is a "regular" batch of brownies. If I were them, I'd have two recipes. One for "regular" brownies, and one for "extra-super-duper-thich brownies" that takes the whole box of cocoa to make. Wouldn't that be a really good way to sell their cocoa?? I think so, cause I would bake 'em!!! And.....eat them!!!
10:24 AM - Feb. 17, 2006 - {1} -
The government and eco-freaks always try to get people to recycle their trash. Well, if you want people to recycle--you got to hit them (or reward them) where it hurts (or helps)--their pocketbooks.
When we lived in the city, our garbage was collected once weekly. We were furnished by the city with a huge trash bin that only needed to be pushed out to the curb once weekly for pickup. My son thought that was a real chore.The trash and water bill were combined and only amounted to around $20 a month.
When we moved to the country, we found out that things are different in the trash business. First of all, we had to furnish our own trash cans. Trash was picked up at the road. That meant that we had to carry/drag/push the trash cans down our (now much longer) driveway to the road each week. Our son sooned learned the real meaning of "work". I felt sorry for him and exchanged our non-rolling cans for ones with wheels. But get this, trash pickup cost a whoppin' 35 bucks a month!
But sometimes we (he) forgot. In the country you can't look out and see all your neighbors trash cans lined up on the street to remind you that it is trash day. So we forgot. And sometimes we forgot twice in a row! That was bad.
In trying to find ways to cut corners, (since we missed about every other week of trash pickup) I decided to see what it would cost to take the trash to the dump by ourselves.
First of all, we had this old horse trailer that we didn't use much. (Apparently a lot of people in the country have the same idea. The gal at the dump the other day said she'd seen a LOT of old horse trailers that day .) Well, we put all our trash on one side, and all our recycle-ables in the other side. We hooked up the old horse trailer to our old beat-up Suburban and hauled it to the dump.
The man at the dump, upon seeing all our trash, was about to charge us big bucks for the whole trailer full. But when he found out that HALF of it was recycle-able stuff, he smiled and only charged us $6.50. (For a whole month's worth!). Then we pulled up to the recycling spot and deposited all our trash bags of sorted stuff into the proper bins. We came away with a receipt for $4. Voila! We've only spent a couple of bucks on the trash! What a deal!!!
After recyling, we dumped our trash and scooted outta there. I mean, the smell is bad sometimes. We washed our hands at the Happy Burger restroom and treated ourselves to a soda or ice cream. You wondered what people in the country do for dates, did you? Well now you know!
8:36 AM - Feb. 1, 2006 - {2} -
One thing the car wash people DON'T clean in your car, is the back-of-the-seat pockets. I thought I would finish the job by just collecting the "few bits" of trash that had accumulated there while my car was still clean.
What I found:
5 half-used bottles of drinking water
4 empty trash bags
3 granola bar wrappers
an unknown quantity of used kleenex
a pair of broken sunglasses
and various sorts of other undefinable bits and pieces of paper trash
The item that floored me was the 4 empty trash bags. I asked my daughters (who sit in the back seat the most) about this.
Me: ( to daughters) Did you know I found 4 empty trash bags in the back seat?
Dds: Really?
Me: Yes....Why didn't you put all the trash in a trash bag instead of in the pocket of the seat?
Dds: Oh... Is that what they were for? I saw them there, but didn't know that's what they were there for.
Me: No..... Really they're body bags for when I kill you next time for not using them. Got it?
Dds: Hmm. Ok.
9:13 AM - Jan. 27, 2006 - {0} -
I noticed the other day that my car needed a bath. Now, living in the country, that means that one can no longer see out the front OR the back window, and the mud is not only on all the fenders and clogged underneath the wheelwells, but also inside on the floormats.
When I got my new Suburban, I ordered some special floor mats. They're called mud mats. In other words, you can get a whole army of kids in it that just took a tromp through the back forty in mucking boots, and all the mud stays contained in these awesome mats. In fact, I found out that you can spill a 32 oz. MegaSoda and it won't even touch the carpet. (I found that out by experience.) Yes, these mud mats are just what we country people need. However, the other day, I saw that the mud had indeed started getting into more places than the mud mats covered.
In the summertime, I would have commanded/bribed one of my kids to clean the car. I quit doing that when they learned they could extort a whopping 15 bucks out of me to clean the inside and out of my "oversized" car. I had to make it "worth their time and efforts", they complained. And getting out the vacuum cleaner and sudsing up my car with the super duper Mr. Clean Car Wash Gun wasn't worth the effort when they could get paid 6 bucks an hour to sit on their buns and watch TV babysitting the neighbor kids. And, windows were extra. I mean, they were risking their health breathing those fumes from the window cleaner. So I took my car to the car wash.
Now the car wash does a great job, if you don't mind them keeping the change for parking meters from the ash tray. I don't really need parking meter change anyway. I only go to the "city" once in a long while, and I don't usually go "downtown" where they extort a whole buck just to park 12 minutes. But I know the next time I do, there won't be any change in my purse OR in the ash tray. Oh well. I got my car cleaned. I even got the windows cleaned at no extra charge! And I got to watch a whole 15 minutes of cable TV soap operas with closed captions--free! It only cost me 11 bucks! That's it. I'm never hiring my kids to wash my car again!
10:05 AM - Jan. 26, 2006 - {1} -
For those of you who read my "Nature Stories from Our Home" blog, I've decided to try to keep to nature stories on that blog and write about the "other stuff" in this one. I realized that most of my entries in that blog were something other than nature stories. So....not wanting to mislead anyone, I started this blog.
I washed the dog yesterday. I wouldn't bother to except that she's an indoor dog and after awhile, indoor dogs start to smell. Not that she's a gross or dirty dog per se. She keeps herself really clean. She always licks her little white paws clean after I let her out in the morning. She always has the whitest paws. She may be part cat--I don't know. She IS very fastidious about keeping herself clean. Of course, it may go back to puppyhood when she had a freaky experience in the bathtub. She is terrified of baths. She won't even go near the bathroom or kitchen. So maybe she thinks if she keeps herself clean, she won't have to get a bath. Hmm.
I call her and she runs to the door. I think she has a sneaky suspicion that something like a bath is about to happen. Or maybe she is in denial and really thinks I am going to take her on a walk. Anyway, I drag her (claws digging into the carpet) into the bathroom (good thing she's smaller than I am) and lift/shove/push her into the tub. Meanwhile she's rolling her eyeballs at me in terror and quivering all over. I mean, come on! It's only a bath!
I tell her what a good dog she is. She's looking at me like, "Right! You always say that when you torture me like this." I suds her up really good. So good that I'm wondering if I can get all this shampoo out of her before bedtime. Then I rinse her off. Her tail is drooping. I can't even get it from between her legs to get the soap out. She's proud of her tail, I think.
"Come on!" I say, "It's almost over!"
"Yeah, right!" she's thinking. "That's what you always say, and then you go and put that smelly conditioner on me and start all over again."
The bottle of conditioner is just a little out of my reach. I'm wondering if I should let go of her for just a few seconds. I look her in the eye. I change my mind. I shove her closer to the bottle and grab it, still holding on to her.
Squirt! The conditioner is all over her now.
"Just a little bit longer", I say.
She looks at me with mournful eyes. "Why? Why do you do this to me?" she questions.
I rinse the conditioner off and squeeze the excess water out. The drain is now clogged with dog hair and the water no longer runs down the drain.
She's not even looking at me anymore. "Is it over yet?" she wonders.
Holding one hand on her, I get the towel ready before she shakes dog hair, water, leftover conditioner and suds all over me and the bathroom.On cue, she jumps out of the bathtub (all on her own) and lands on the towel. I rub and she starts shaking all the water out of her ears.
"You're such a good dog," I say.
She's suddenly agreeing with me as she runs out of the bathroom and rubs herself all over the living room floor. She's like a puppy now, full of energy and ready to play.
Now when she comes to me and puts her nose into my hand, I pet her because she feels so wonderfully soft and clean. I let her outside. She comes back in and licks her paws clean.
"See?" she says. "I can keep myself clean. There's no need for baths. I'm a good dog." She puts her head into my lap.
"I know." I say and pat her wonderfully soft, velvety head.
8:38 AM - Jan. 20, 2006 - {1} -
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