Sunday...

...stealing again.

1. Make a list of five things you can see without getting up...television, a plant that desperately needs re-potting, an antique movie poster display case that I'm trying to decide whether to paint or hang raw, a vase full of vintage croquet balls, and a very dear painting that a very dear friend entrusted to me.

2. How do you style your hair? How often do you cut it? It is so short right now, that I hardly have to do anything...maybe a little styling gel. I try to go about every six weeks for a cut.

3. What are you wearing now? Honestly, is this question on every list? Jeans/t-shirt...again.

4. What's your occupation? Do you like it? I work for an investment firm. I love it about 98.4% of the time.

5. When was the last time you took a nap? Was there a special reason? Last weekend...I lay down with the girls so they would take a nap, and I clocked out too.

6. Who was the last person you hugged romantically? My sweet husband.

7. What was the last full meal that you ate? Baked fish and spinach salad.

8. What was the last e-mail that you received? A funny one from my cousin.

9. What one website do you always visit when you go online? Google.

10. What was the last significant thing that you bought? Are books significant enough?

11. What musical artist did you not get at first, but then became a fan? Lyle Lovett.

12. What did you think about before you went to bed last night? Locking the doors, and turning off unnecessary electricity drains.

13. What was the last CD that you bought? Garth Brooks in the bargain bin...last MP3 album was Mr. Completely--Twice on Sundays.

14. What is your favorite weather, and why? What's the weather like today? I love a cold day that's crisp and clear. It energizes me. Today was HOT...that does NOT energize me!

15. If you could have a special artistic talent, what would it be? I wish I could paint like Polly Jones.

16. Did you watch the Idol 9 finale? If yes, what are your thoughts? Didn't watch. I am SO tired of reality/contest television!

17. What's something you'd like to say to someone right now? G'night.

There were a couple more questions, but I didn't have good answers, and I think the previous is a good last question/answer anyway. :)

Hmmm...a drawer surprise for Grandma...

Notice anything odd here?



Yes, it is a messy drawer. But that's nothing new around here.

Come on...right there in the center. Here...I'll zoom in for you.



Aaaaccckkkk!!!

Here's the creepy part...this is the THIRD scorpion I have killed in the house today! (And for any newcomers who haven't read my rants about these pests in the past...by killed, I mean captured and cryogenically stored until the next time we burn trash. Yes, I do have a jar of frozen scorpions in my freezer. Hey, it's a humane way to rid myself of them...they just fall asleep...and I don't have to clean up the squooshed bodies.) This makes about the sixth one I've found in the house in the past week. But this is the first time I have ever found one in a drawer! Thank goodness it wasn't in Chloe's or Caitlyn's drawer when they were here last weekend.

Scorpions don't come in because your house is messy or dirty. (I know this because my daughter has had them in her house too...bless my little clean freak and her whole OCD family.) It's like spiders...they come in to hunt either food or water.

I've gotten a lot calmer about such things since becoming a country girl. I still don't like them. But I don't usually lose my cool...or my target. Bwaahaahaa...

(Oh, and I apologize for the poor photo quality...I didn't dare slow down to adjust camera settings.)

Little surprises...

In yesterday's post I referred to Chloe finding gloves in her drawer. I thought I'd explain.

My sisters' children are all older than my children, so by the time mine came along, my mother had a lot of grandmother experience. One of the really sweet ideas she had when my kids were little was to keep little surprises in two small dresser drawers...they each knew which drawer belonged to them. These would be little freebie things...stickers she got in the mail...small old toys of mine that she would find around the house...a key chain from a car dealership. The kids absolutely loved knowing that there would be a surprise waiting for them at Grandma's, and would always head immediately to their drawers when we arrived.

It was a tradition I wanted to continue. From the time I became a grandmother, I've been looking for a piece of furniture that had the right drawers for this purpose. Everything we owned at the time had big drawers, or single drawers, or high drawers. Then one day when I was browsing Craigslist two or three years ago, I found this...



Four drawers on each side! The three boys have drawers on one side, and the two girls have drawers on the other (Carey and I get to use the ones that don't belong to a child). It sits low to the floor for even the littlest searchers. And it's in the main room of the house, so I see it every day and remember to have something in everybody's drawers before each visit. They all know which drawer belongs to whom and not to check out anyone else's drawers but their own.

Five drawers are a lot to keep filled, so the surprises aren't always freebies, but they are very inexpensive. Sometimes I grab a child's meal instead of an adult's for my lunch, and I put the toy in one of the drawers. I always make a stroll through Target's bargain area or Dollar Tree for little things they might like. I've put in pencils, word-search puzzles made especially for them on a free website, gum, foreign currency left from a vacation, plastic bracelet giveaway items, miniature coloring books, a small toy that I knit, chalk, empty makeup containers, and the like...oh, and gloves.

The kiddoes love their drawers as much as my kids did. They can't get out of the car and into the house fast enough. I'm lucky to get a hug before they hurry past. :)

Been gone so long...

At first because nothing much was happening, and I couldn't think of anything to write about. Then because there was too much to write about, and no time to do it anyway. So today I'm going to jump back in with a couple of memes.

First something Straight Out Of The Camera.

This is Miss Chloe yesterday while she and Caitlyn were here. She found gloves in her drawer.


And now a little fun from Sunday Stealing.

1. What is your middle name? Louise, after a great aunt on my father's side.

2. How old are you? 52 (Recently, I've actually been thinking I was 54, until my husband set me straight the other day...sweet man!)

3. Where are you from? Are you living there right now? Texas...I live about 3 hours from my hometown.

4. Is it cold where you are? HA! It's already in the nineties regularly! Summer, please be mild!

5. What's the time? 3:31 p.m.

6. What are you wearing? Cheeky question! Jeans/T-shirt...my uniform.

7. What was the last thing you listened to? Radio in the car. Switching between NPR and a mix station.

8. What was the last thing you ate? A Ding-Dong...(my boss saw the box in my office last week, and told me that I shouldn't eat them out of professional courtesy. Arr-arr.)

9. What was the last thing you watched on TV? At this moment, I'm watching The Man From Snowy River.

10. What's your favorite TV show and why? Medium...well written, and the characters look like an ordinary family, not a movie-star-pretty family.

11. Quick! Find a book or something with text on it! Flip to a random page, and post the second paragraph's first sentence. Ted's vanity, which was extended to his fleetness of foot, compelled him to believe that, even from a standing start, he could have outrun Mrs. Vaughn in her Lincoln....from A Widow For One Year by John Irving. (Finally finished! See opinion on my Reading List.)

12. What was the last movie you saw? How was it? Like at the theater? I can't even recall what/when it was much less how it was!

13. Do YOU think you have an accent? Where in your country do people speak with strong accents? Many areas of the US have distinctive accents...Texas taking its place in that group. I do have a southern accent, but it is strongest when I'm angry. Usually strangers think I sound like I'm from the Midwest...which I attribute to both of my parents being from the Midwest and to my being part of the television generation where the only people with strong accents seem to be the subject of ridicule.

Okay, that's it. I'll try to be a better blogger.

Thursday...

Coumadin check...check!

Annual branch audit...check!

Favorite client alert...check!

Prescription refilled...check!

Home again...check!

Feet up...check!

Plan for tomorrow...clean out car...frame art...laundry...pack beach bag and camera bag for Saturday...various and sundry other chores...go to bed early!

Plan for Saturday...SUNSCREEN and BEACH PLAY!

Plan for Sunday...girlies!

Seven random thoughts on the 7th...

1. I wish I had put the lens through the fence before I took this photo.

2. My bookcases need to be thoroughly gone through and the contents whittled down. I can hardly stand to think of getting rid of books. I did see a fun idea for a book exchange somewhere that I want to try though. It's along the lines of a cookie exchange, only you invite friends to bring their already-read books to a get together. Put all the books out on tables, and let everybody browse. They get to take home as many books as they bring if they choose. Hostess provides snacks and drinks...and maybe decorated sacks to take their books home in...and bookmarks? Doesn't that sound like fun? Hmmm...I think it IS time to go through the bookcases.

3. Seven things I want to accomplish this month...frame the pastel drawing Bobby gave me yesterday...get some great beach photos taken...refresh the house by trading out some tired decorations with some that have been packed away for awhile...change all the linens from cool to warm weather ones...finish the book I'm been slowly working through...blog more frequently...and do some form of exercise four times a week.

4. The DVR has spoiled me. I love how easy it is to record a program and even a whole series! And I love being able to rewind a live broadcast to catch a missed word. Now I find myself in the car listening to a program on NPR and reaching up to push a button to rewind and re-listen...only to realize that I don't have DVR on the car radio. But within the last week or so I've been seeing commercials for a car that DOES have the same kind of thing for its radio. Of course I'm not going to buy a car for a gadget, I'm not even going to buy a gadget to add to the car I have, but it's cool to know it's out there.

5. We're practically halfway to Christmas again! Time to get an early start on handmade gifts.

6. I sent a note to a stranger this week. They have a pretty garden that I enjoy driving by every day, and I wanted them to know that their work is appreciated. So I wrote down their address, and mailed a card to them. I hope they accept it in the spirit it was sent, and don't fear that they are being stalked or something. :)

7. I'm in the mood to bake a peach cobbler...and have it with vanilla ice cream on the side. Yum! Does anyone have a good peach cobbler recipe?

On a lighter note...

There's nothing like a three year old for keeping it real. This one seems to prefer that I not keep it quite so real.

We went over to see the kiddoes tonight. We had been there a few minutes when Chloe stops mid sentence, and looks at me like she's never seen me before and says, "Can you buy some new hair like Mama?"

Okay then.

I've spent the last four or five months growing and cutting all the artificial color out of my hair, and trying to decide if I want to keep it natural or put color back in. I'm thinking it's time I bought some new hair...or at least enhance the old. :)

Color it is!

Reckless...

I did something very reckless today. File it under the road-rage category.

This afternoon I saw a large pickup truck approaching a yield sign at the bottom of a cloverleaf exit where the interstate highway intersects the rural highway I travel home. I say to myself, it doesn't look like they plan to yield, so I move from the right lane to the left lane. Good thing. They did pull right on out into the right lane...and then continued over into the left lane. I jumped on the horn, and steered my car over a curb and into the median, narrowly missing a reflector post and the concrete underpilings of the interstate overpass. I'm still honking, and slowing my car.

I think the other driver was afraid I might be armed, as she slowed down even more than I did.

I was LIVID! I put on my right blinker and pulled to the side of the roadway. The other driver pulled up behind me, but at a distance. I got out of my car and turned to face the other driver. She exited her truck apologizing. Okay. All I wanted was an apology, I say, shaking.

Then she started making excuses. Her truck has poor visibility, she says, a large blind spot. She didn't see me.

I'd heard enough. Then you need to take EXTRA care, I tell her.

I get back in my car and drive away.

I didn't swear (then). I didn't scream (then). But I was PISSED.

As I drove away, and watched her in my rearview mirror, I thought of all the things I wished I had said to her.

...How going over that curb felt just like going off the shoulder of the road two years ago in the split second before my car began tumbling side over side.

...How the fear I felt today went so deep that it found the secret place that my two-year-old fear has been hiding, and it was fueled and consumed all reason.

...That if she couldn't see to drive her vehicle safely, then she should damn well be driving a different vehicle.

...How one of the first lessons in Drivers' Ed 101 is, whether there are other cars on the road or not, you turn into the lane nearest you, not cross over the entire roadway without looking and without signaling.

...How having lived through a near-fatal accident...trapped in a burning vehicle...saved only by the grace of God and the bravery of strangers...I have not one ounce of patience for people's stupidity and carelessness in a hurtling piece of heavy machinery.

So there is my confession for today. I exhibited extremely poor judgment in confronting a stranger in anger.

Reckless? Absolutely.

'Wreck'less? Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord!

Vices...

Hello. My name is Kathleen, and I have an addictive personality.

Right now my vice of choice is Farmville. Stupid, stupid Facebook game! But the fun part is interacting with friends. Not just through the game, or instant messages, but the many phone calls that it has spurred. Connecting and reconnecting with friends.

Unfortunately, my blogging has suffered.

Tomorrow I have so much to do: change the bed, paperwork, laundry, cleaning out the fridge, grocery shopping. Now why can't I ever seem to get addicted to house cleaning?