Egg On My Face

Okay, so I had some really - really - really weird comments come up on my blog so I turned comment moderation on. Since I was used to receiving emails when someone commented on my blog, I ASSUMED I would receive an email when a comment had been received and needed to be published. Not. Nor can I find a setting for that either.

I've been rather sad that I haven't been getting comments, feeling left out - no one cares, no one loves me (not really - but it makes for a good story!). But seriously, I DOOOO love comments and do not like blogging in a void.

Imagine my surprise when a dear friend sends me a note telling me she has indeed commented and will I now blog. Oh dear ... found all kinds of comments that needed to be approved!

So sorry!!! I promise to be back to blogging!

Blog

Will Blog For Comments
:-)

The "Wrist" of the Story

Okay, so here's the story on the broken wrist.

It was a Sunday, I have nursery duty at church once a month & that was my day. My friend who I normally am with was gone that day. For some weird reason there weren't any babies ... so, I was playing with my phone and had the bright idea to 'clean it up'. During the process of 'cleaning' I deleted my mobile me account that I never used. Little did I know that ALL of my contacts were associated with that and bam! They were gone. I was highly distressed. I have LOTS of people I keep up with and lots of contacts that I've had for years that were in one place and one place only - my phone. Except now they were gone. I was upset.

I thought surely though that there would be a way to get them back, even if I did have to pay a blackmail fee (the mobile me YEARLY fee - that I didn't know was YEARLY when I bought the stupid stuff). Or, I would be able to restore them. So after lunch I went about the task of getting them back except nothing worked. Very long story, but nothing worked. I was testy, I was mad and probably not a pleasant momma to be around. Brian & Ryan left for baseball practice and while I was sitting here all ticked off and sad, it dawned on me how stupid the whole thing really was and that if they were gone, they were gone - no crying over spilled milk.

So, in all my wisdom I asked the girls if they would like for me to borrow the neighbor's dog to play with. See, we do not have any animals because Ryan is allergic to cats and Emma is allergic to dogs and cats and poor little Rebecca loves all little animals. The neighbor happily obliged our request and the dog was more than happy to be playing ... but the dog was HYPER and we do not have a fenced yard and the dog, well - he isn't exactly broken to a leash. We decided the dog might calm down a bit if we were to take him for a walk so we headed out and ended up stirring up every yappy dog in the neighborhood. But the girls were happy, the dog was happy and I was happy that they were happy. And the dog, he was fun - even if he didn't walk on a leash well.

He eventually settled down some and we headed home but were walking on the side we would have been driving on. We live in a hilly/curvy neighborhood and were almost back to the house and I was close to the edge of the road but the girls were out in the street & I could hear a car coming.

I asked the girls a couple of times to move over but they were busy watching the dog and I hear that the car is getting closer and we're almost at the bottom of a hill and again I tell them to move over and while I'm telling them this I am turned around talking to them and giving them the whole mommy voice / mommy eye thing to show them I meant business and to MOVE OVER. Well, I guess I stepped out into plain stinkin' air. There's probably a 10 - 12" drop off on the side of the road and then an incline from that into a ditch.

When the step didn't connect, I fell - I even did a complete roll down the incline. It happened so fast! I'm sure with my big beee-hind that the whole thing was really pretty. I was muddy. My knee was bloody. The girls were upset. The car that was coming stopped. I waved it on - after all, I'm tough country girl stock. Did I mention the girls were upset? Emma ran across the street to get our neighbor to help me. I tried to get up but my knee hurt and when I tried to brace myself with my right hand, I couldn't put any pressure on it.

Not sure how I did it, but I did get up. I wasn't about to have someone help me get out of that ditch! Not sure if it was pride or embarrassment or what - but as I watched Emma cross the street and go up the hill, I knew I had to be UP before she got to that door.

Oh, and I never let go of the dog. Nor did I cry. I wasn't about to cry in front of the girls because they were freaked out by my bloody knee and I didn't want to freak them about by crying or bringing attention to my hand that was pointed in one direction while a bone by my wrist was pointed another!

Sweet little Emma called her papa and he was already on his way home. I took a quick shower because I didn't want to go to ER all muddy. But getting ready for my shower and taking a shower with a broken throbbing wrist is none too easy.

The wrist was indeed broken, "shattered" is what we later found out. I had some kind of thing on it, don't think it was a cast but it was all wrapped up past my elbow. Surgery. A cast past my elbow. Followed by a smaller cast. May was a rough month for me to say the least.

Oh, and once the girls were taken care of and I was in the ER alone with my sweet hubby - I finally did cry.

So there you go, the "wrist" of the story!

Faux-Tee Fiiiive & Facebook

Okay, I’ll go ahead and admit it … I turned 45 earlier this week.

Yeah, I know – that’s old.

I think I thought I would forever be in my 20’s.

In my 20’s I still felt like I was in my 20’s.

In my 30’s I had my first child and still felt like I was in my 20’s.

Now here I am in my mid 40’s and I feel like I’m 70.

Something is off with the math. Is that what they call ‘new math’?

Now on to the second part of the subject - FACEBOOK.



I love FB, I really do but my dear sweet husband doesn’t understand why. He thinks it’s silly. Lame. A waste of time. And probably a few other things that he hasn’t shared with me because he loves me. Even if I do love facebook. And him of course.

But the tie in to FB & my birthday is this – I really, really, really enjoyed all the facebook notes I received that day. So many times I have posted a ‘Happy Birthday’ note on someone’s wall and really didn’t think of it as being that big of a deal. But being on the receiving end of all those notes I know it is a big deal & I appreciated each and every one because it gave me reason to take a little trip down memory lane. For each little note that popped up there was a corresponding memory that came to mind. You know the whole “equal and opposite reaction” thing. And to be honest, I did a lot of laughing that day.

Here’s a few little snippets that come to mind.

From a dear friend in middle school – Us skipping one of our 7th grade classes. Our teacher, who just so happened to be the principal, never ever took roll. Which translated to a hand full of pre-teen girls that said teacher didn’t know who was and who wasn’t in class. So we skipped. And yes, he did know. Smart eh’?

From another middle school friend who also happened to be my boyfriend in 6th grade –I remember bopping him over the head with his cap which also happened to contain the lock from his locker. Let’s just say that the interaction of the cap/lock/skull wasn’t pretty. I remember blood. Being horrified. His mom coming to get him to take him to the doctor. We had a basket ball game that day which of course he didn’t make. So I did what every decent skull bashing girlfriend should do – I broke up with him.

A friend who sent me roses when Ryan was born. Except I never expected a friend to send roses and thanked my dear husband profusely when they were delivered. Awkward at best.

My 5th grade boyfriend who asked my best friend out after I broke up with him. I returned a necklace he gave me, he gave it to her. Later when they broke up she kept it. Obviously she was smarter than me  Oh yeah, and I had a b-day note from her too. She’s still smarter than me.

The daughter of my best friend (who is now deceased) - we used to go to South Padre Island together every year. On one trip - or maybe two :-)we went south of the border and danced all night. Fun! Now I hope my son isn’t reading this as I’d have his hind end if he did anything so foolish.

You get the point, it was like that all day long. Old friends, new friends. Friends I’ve laughed with and cried with and a few I’ve even exchanged hurtful words or feelings with at one time or another. But friends nonetheless and friends I am very thankful to have. And so this is my little plug for Facebook – I love ya’ man. A place where all those friendships collide and a place I can always go to get a good laugh.

Sabbatical

In case anyone is wondering, my laptop is on the brink o' death and Brian hasn't had time to fix it. I'll be back once it's back in working condition!

Recovering

Hi, my name is Carolin and I am a recovering pack-rat. Never ever meant to be one, swore I wasn't one - but somehow, someway over the past 10 years or so it's crept up on me.

If you've been following along for a while you will know that I was on a 'go organize' streak for a while and we did get lots of things cleaned up, thrown out, given away or hauled off to goodwill. It's looking so much better around here but there's still a lot to do.

A year or so ago Brian & I bought a brand new bedroom set and I'm a little embarrassed to admit that it's the first brand new bedroom set I've had as an adult. We didn't have enough money at time though to buy the matching bedside tables so we were still using some that were way older than me and were technically sofa end tables. I swear the drawer (at least on my side) had not been opened since we moved here 9 years ago because it was packed and I just never got around to cleaning it out. We recently bought the matching end tables for our bedroom set! Woohoo! They were delivered yesterday which necessitated the old ones being cleaned off and out. So that's what us old peeps did tonight, we cleaned out the drawers and goodness - what a trip down memory lane it was!

Here's a list in no certain order:

• An address list from the church we attended when we first started dating.


• An address list from the church we attended after we were married.


• An address list from my first corporate job.

Of course each list brought about a conversation about old friends and acquaintences which was fun!

• A notebook from when Ryan was a baby - or at least started right before he was born. It has lists of the shower presents received from all the showers that were given for us and checkmarks showing where I'd marked them off as I dutifully wrote the thank you notes. The notebook included a page that had a list for Brian of who to call when I had Ryan - now why I thought he wouldn't know who to call is really puzzling me and may just keep me awake tonight. To top it all off, the notebook also includes every feeding Ryan had from the time I had him and then going on out until I realized that yes, he would eat - that's all he did! And that there really was no reason to worry about him gaining weight. He still eats a lot, not sure how he stays so skinny! Sheesh, that child was eating every 1 to 2 hours.


• A pencil that had erasers on each end, and no lead. Now where did I get that and why in the world would I keep it?


• The realtor flyer for our house in Frisco, TX from when we bought it which also has the floor plan on the reverse side. That made me sad, I loved that house & the Texas sized kitchen.

A weird assortment of books:

• "Prayers of a Loving Mother"
• "A Heart Like Jesus"
• "You Can Negotiate Anything" - which I'm pretty sure belongs to a friend of mine in Texas. I need to email, apologize profusely & get that book returned to it's rightful owner. I'm fairly certain I never read it.
• "How I got Millionaire Mentality" - This one is REALLY throwing me. I'm not a saver, not good w/ finances and why or how this ended up on my side of the bed is just something I'll never ever figure out.
• "40 Days of Purpose" - now this one needs to be read again because something must not have stuck.
• "The Dream and the Nightmare - The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass" ... again, some book worm must have been sneaking books in my nightstand for the last 10 years because that is not even close to being a Carolin kinda book. I think Brian ran out of room on his side and snuck it in mine!
• "Now, Discover Your Strengths" with a side note of "The revolutionary program that shows you how to develop your unique talents and strengths ...". I'm thinking I never read this one either. Obviously. But must have been in 'corporate mode' when it was purchased.

I won't even go into the various books that were stacked on top of our respective nightstands, but I'm fairly certain that the software that lists books you might be interested in on Amazon probably goes haywire when Brian and I log in. That topic deserves its own blog post.

And then, to really make me smile ... I found Ryan's mouthpiece from when he was a little tyke and played flag football. The one from this picture.

For now at least, the new side tables do not have anything in them and the trash can is full. The mouthpiece may or may not be in the trash - it may cause a tear or two when I do. And the books, any takers on any of them? I'm more than happy to share :-)

G'night - I'm tired!

Not Your Typical Yard Decor

This is what we found out by our driveway this morning when we got up. Not your typical yard decor! Poor kid, a wrecker came later this a.m. and pulled it out. Thankfully no one was hurt and his pickup was at least driveable once it had been extracted. He's coming back tomorrow to cut down the tree but Brian had to cut a few limbs off so we could get out of the driveway.

The odd thing is, we've lived here for almost 9 years now and this is the second car this week that has ended up in that same spot. And this little winter storm was nothing compared to some others we have endured here.

Facebook, Friends and Funny Memories

Okay, I'll have to admit that I held out on the whole Facebook thing for the longest and finally acquiesced when some of my friends pushed me a tad. Now I just love it, not that I update every little thing but I get great enjoyment reading other peoples notes.

The thing that tickles me the most though is how long forgotten friends find you and how you subsequently just pick right up where you left off. It also strikes me as funny how the long forgotten memories just pop into your head when a friend request shows up in your inbox.

Such was the case today when I saw a friend request from a friend back in middle school who also happened to be my 6th grade boyfriend. He was my boyfriend for at least a week or two. The break up happened over a weird incident in math class where he was teasing me about something, I turned around and picked up his cap to bonk him on the head and as I was picking it up he slipped his lock into the cap. Momentum was already happening and the cap landed on his head, lock and all. Some blood was spilled. I was mortified. His mother had to come get him from school and take him to the doctor. He missed our 6th grade basketball game that afternoon. I broke up with him from embarrassment. Now, when in your life do you get your head bloodied just from flirting with your girlfriend and then have said girlfriend break up with you on top of that.

Which then begs the question, how the heck do you forget that memory for so many years only to have it pop up from a facebook friend request.

Memories ...

Pedro

Head of Ranch Security ... my brother's doofus dog. Well, I think the dog is actually more my sister-in-law's than my brother's. Still though.

This goofy little dog used to be a house dog but somehow he is now living out where dogs should live. Back when he wasn't though, he used to get up early in the morning when my brother would get up to go to work. He would go into the kitchen where my brother would share his breakfast with the mutt. The mutt would then return to the bedroom and get back in bed w/ my sister-in-law. When Landon would go to kiss his sweet wife goodbye, the goofy dog would then growl at him. Some way to say thanks for breakfast!

Tuesday Ramblings

Since being downsized/outsized/reorg'd or whatever the correct terminology is, the kiddos are no longer going to daycare. Ryan rides the bus home and then I take Emma to preschool and pick her up at noon each day. Along with this it seems like we are home a lot more than we used to be. While not uncommon to have somewhat of a messy house, it seems like it's REALLY messy now.

A few things I've learned ... or most likely just now noticing ...

• One would assume that not being in the office 8+ hours every day that your house would stay spotless once you spend that time at home. Not so in our house.
• Ryan has turned our once always clean living room into his own personal office and playroom. Needless to say, it's never clean now. If I ask him to clean it up, it will appear to be clean at first glance ... but don't step in. There you will find items lined up against the wall that you do not see until you are actually in the room. Makes you wonder if he's thinking "if mama can't see it then it must not be a problem".
• I spent all kinds of time turning our basement into a play area for the kids replete with shelving, cloth storage bins with handles to make it easy for little hands to pull out and toys ORGANIZED. The 'organized' part lasted approximately 3.2 hours.
• Emma has decided to use one corner of the dining room for her personal storage. I have found all kinds of treasures there. Flip flops, lip stick, books ... all kinds of things. She uses a corner that you would not see from the kitchen nor from the hallway. Maybe she's always done this and I'm just now realizing it's a habit? Maybe she learned this pesky little habit from her brother Ryan?
• Rebecca likes to play in the toy kitchen that has been in the den since Santa brought it for Christmas. The problem is, she likes the pots, pans and even the toy coffee pot to make noise .... so anything she can find to stick in said toys to make them make noise is open game. Light Brite thingy's ... perfect for stirring in the pan or putting into the coffee carafe. Little wooden pieces that go w/ a toy cake decorating thing ... those are even better . If I had a penny for every light bright thingy I've picked up I'd be a very wealthy woman.

These nuisances are minor compared to this though. You can't imagine how many times I've been asked if Emma and Rebecca are sisters. I thought I was well read and well prepared for this question but obviously not because the hair raises on the back of my neck and some not so nice/kind words come to mind (just thankfully not out of my mouth) when asked this question. What is odd to me is that I have never ever been asked this question about Ryan and Emma, nor Ryan and Rebecca but yet they ask it about Emma and Rebecca with both of them right there with me. Yesterday at the park the question was asked "are they sisters or what"? What the heck does "or what" mean?

Please, please, please - if you are reading this and you're not an adoptive parent - please do not ask a parent this question. Just because our family is built a non traditional way doesn't make us any less a family. Nor the girls any less siblings.

If you are an adoptive parent and have been asked this asinine question - how do you handle it? With a simple graceful "yes" (which is what I have been doing even though that's NOT what I want to say) or do you get miffy, irate or maybe even try to use some humor? My mom suggested I simply say "no, they are brothers" and walk away.

Brian does not at all understand my frustration with this question but so far I do not think it has been posed to him. He tells me to judge not least I be judged and while I value his judgment and wisdom, the question still gets under my skin.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To China

I had asked Amanda if there was anything I could bring her from the states. I knew she was from South Africa but what I didn't know until the other night is that she lived in the states for 9 years. It really warmed my heart that she asked for such simple things like lipton cup of soup, some gel pens, shoe-goo to fix the children's shoes and some things like this. What touched my heart the very most though was that she asked for the lime flavored tortilla chips and some salsa! I had no idea that a British sounding woman from South Africa would crave chips and salsa. When I replied and told her we would bring her what we could, I shared with her how the chips and salsa thing tickled the daylights out of me because when we moved to Kentucky from Texas, we have yet to be able to find a brand of salsa that we like. Every time my mom comes out to visit she brings us our favorite "hell on the red". YUMMMY!

Anyway, Brian & I went shopping and we filled up one suitcase of things for Amanda. He carefully packed two bags of chips in a plastic storage container all bubble wrapped and everything. He bought one of the big plastic things of pace salsa and he wrapped it in plastic and bubble wrap and placed it inside of a shoebox size plastic box and taped it up. Everything was snug as could be and had little chance of being broken or spilled.

We were so happy to hand over the things to Amanda and you could tell the chips and salsa absolutely made her day! When we were packing up to leave Xian, I was pulling the rest of the tape off of the plastic container that had held the salsa and I noticed that it wasn't our tape ... in fact, it had "department of homeland security"! We laughed and laughed and laughed. Can you just imagine something looking suspicious to security and them opening the lock on our suitcase and digging down to the questionable container ... only to unwrap it to find Pace's Picante Sauce!

40 ...

Today marks 40 days of waiting for information on Miss Rebecca. I know the number 40 is significant in some religious traditions so for fun, I looked up some facts on wikipedia.

• "Forty days and forty nights" describes the period for which rain fell during Noah's flood
• "Forty days"was the length of the period that the twelve spies explored the Promised Land (Numbers 13)
• "Forty years" was the length of Israel's wandering in the wilderness. This period of years represents a generation, that is, the time it takes for a new generation to arise.
• Moses' life is divided into three 40-year segments, separated by his fleeing from Egypt, and his return to lead the people out.

But did you know, forty is an octagonal number, and as the sum of the first four pentagonal numbers, it is a pentagonal pyramidal number. Adding up some subsets of its divisors (e.g., 1, 4, 5, 10 and 20) gives 40, hence 40 is a semiperfect number.
Given 40, the Mertens function returns 0. 40 is the smallest number n with exactly 9 solutions to the equation φ(x) = n.
Forty is the number of n-queens problem solutions for n = 7.
Since the greatest prime factor of 402 + 1 = 1601 is prime and obviously more than 40 twice, 40 is a Størmer number.
40 is a repdigit in base 3 (1111) and a Harshad number in base 10.

And even better: "To understand a people, you must live among them for 40 days. ~Arabic proverb"

40 more days like this & I'm not so sure any of my friends are going to remain understanding :-)

Anyone ready to go back to Emma pix?

I've been shopping ...

Referral in hand, Rebecca's pretty little face in my mind ... what else can a mother do if she can't yet go to China to get her daughter ... Oh I know, SHOP!

Our breakfast table has 4 chairs that are somewhat large and both of the girls are too big for normal high chairs. Emma has been using a booster type seat thing in one of the chairs but it gets so messy. So, when we stopped by the Ikea store in Columbus a couple of months ago I found these and bought one for both girls. Emma is already using hers and it works so well!



I also found the cutest houndstooth dresses the other night, so I bought one for both.


And then of course Rebecca needs a backpack that matches Emma's. To differentiate between the two, I found the cutest little monogrammed buttons. One with an E and one with an R. Except theirs are black with dark pink monogramming.



We better get to China soon!

Pumpkins

Not much to share today, other than a picture of a pumpkin that I took out at Gallrein Farm. I just love my new camera :-) Fall is in the air around here and it feels so good!

I Have A New Toy!!!

And boy is this baby fast!

We went to Nashville this past weekend so that Ryan could visit yet another State Capitol (that makes 8 now ... not that I'm worried about how far we are to 50) and I was able to play with it and try out some of the settings. Now I can't figure out why it took me so long to upgrade!!!

More on Nashville later - it's been crazy around here.

15,300 days old today

http://thepioneerwoman.com

In honor of turning 15,300 days old today, I wanted to share my favorite blog these days. It's written by a lady who grew up in the city (she refers to it as 'growing up on the golf course'), moved off to California for college and then found herself back in Oklahoma and married to a genuine rancher. A friend of mine from Oklahoma shared the link with me a few weeks ago and said that the "pioneer woman" reminded him somewhat of me. I'm not so sure I see the connection but oh my, she is so funny and is certainly a gifted story teller.

After my buddy sent me the link, I spent my off time reading through her old blog posts and was quickly hooked. One of the main reasons it cracks me up is that I grew up in the country (no where near the type of ranch they live on), but we did have horses, some cattle and a few rather odd type animals - a few goats here and there and a couple of pet raccoons. I've ridden more than my share of horses and have dents in my legs to prove that I once ran barrels (a rodeo term). At one time I could rope a calf with the best of 'em and have hauled more hay than I care to remember.

It's just funny the contrast of hearing a "city girl" talk about country life vs a "country girl" now living in the city. This "was country - now city girl" now refuses to have an animal that she's going to have to take care of. I have jokingly told my better half that I never want to own anything that we have to make arrangements for when we want to go on vacation. Unless you've fed horses and cows in the middle of the winter and broken the ice in the water buckets so they can drink, you'll never appreciate being able to go on vacation & not having to worry about someone feeding everything correctly! We can lay our bee-hinds on the beach and not have a worry in the world for any ol' horse.

The downside though, is that I can read through her blog and for a moment or two I swear I can smell the aroma (now, my children would call that an odor), of sweaty horses and hay, and I can just imagine the fresh air and sunshine and it makes me terribly, terribly homesick.

Several years ago I took Ryan to Nashville for a horse show type thing - it was more of a play/opera/cirqe de solei type thing set to horseback. I was all excited and couldn't wait for Ryan to enjoy watching the horses. The entry way took you through the stable area and then to your seats. When we walked in, the smell of horses, hay and leather was impenetrable and I was in heaven! We hadn't taken more than two steps in when Ryan said "oh man, it STINKS in here" and I was quickly brought back to reality. Maybe we should move back to Oklahoma so our children will know what a sweaty horse smells like!

All time favorite fortune cookie

"Willingness opens the door to knowledge, direction, and achievement"

Optimism vs Pessimism

This story/joke was on the RQ site a while back and for some reason really cracked me up. Something made me think about it today ..

>>>

Two boys who were twins, one an incurable optimist, one a pessimist. The parents were worried about the extremes of behavior and attitude and finally took the boys in to see a psychologist. The psychologist observed them a while and then said that they could be easily helped. He said that they had a room filled with all the toys a boy could want. They would put the pessimist in that room and allow him to enjoy life.

They also had another room that they filled with horse manure. They put the optimist in that room. They observed both boys through one way mirrors. The pessimist continued to be a pessimist, stating that he had no one to play with. They went to look in on the optimist, and were astounded to find him digging through the manure. The psychologist ran into the room and asked what on earth the boy was doing. He replied that with all that manure, he was sure there had to be a pony in the room somewhere."

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Visions of Texas dancing in my head

When we lived in Texas, BlueBell icecream was by far our favorite brand. Since I had never lived anywhere besides Oklahoma & Texas, I was a little surprised when we moved here and we couldn't find BlueBell. Well, recently a wonderful thing happened ... BlueBell is now distributed in Kentucky. WOOOHOOOO!

Since I always want vanilla ... and Brian always wants chocolate, what's a wife to do but buy a combination :-)