A Good Day

It's funny having a blog. I find myself experiencing each day and then thinking "Oh, I think I'll put that in my blog".

I've been reading this book titled "Letters". It's a compilation of letters that Marjorie Pay Hinckley wrote to her children and family. I absolutely love it for so many reasons. For one, she was just a funny quick witted woman, mother, and wife, who handled life's challenges with a great funny attitude. The biggest reason I am such a nut for genealogy is I love the stories. It's like a human link between me and them. I love to read how people throughout all time had similar feelings and experiences. This book is all that and more as I can relate to many of her "mothering" experiences. In a way it does make me miss written letters. The genealogist in me does save e-mails since hand written letters are almost a thing of the past so this is how I save history.

So today was one of those really cool days when things just work out. The sun was out. That's a plus. Dustin's buddy down the street invited him over. That was a plus. I sold several other items. Another plus. Made dinner, an important plus.

Yes, I'm STILL de-junking. Or actually I'm now re-homing the junk. You've all heard this already I'm sure as I just can't stop talking about it. Hey, this is a great experience for me. I'm one of those rigid routine oriented persons, you know the people at work who make their desk look so neat and tidy before leaving for the evening. Well the problem with neat and tidy people is it's VERY hard to live with disorganization, or with items that are no longer wanted. I like to throw a wrench in my routine every once in awhile, just to stretch myself a bit. Like instead of brushing my teeth first in the morning, I do it last. That always gets me! Seriously you laugh, but it's hard for me to go away from my routine.

It makes me think of one of my closest friends Becca. She did wonders for my routine personality and actually taught me something or two about being spontaneous. Becca was the one who would show up at our doorstep at 10-o-clock at night when Daria was just an infant. It would go something like this, "Ok, Keith thinks Daria now weighs this much, I think she weighs .. what do you and Ken think?". Then we promptly bundle Daria up, run down to the local Albertsons and every so slyly place Daria in one of those vegetable scales. Whoever won got a free meal. Or the day she called and said "let's go visit the domino factory". Yes, there is a domino factory in this great big state. So we piled in the car with one of those "why we say that" books and visited a domino factory. In scrapbooking when we make a scrapbook page based off of something someone else has already made it's called "page lifting". I admit, in order to get out of my rigid routines I've "lifted" a few of Becca's ideas just to keep things less monotonous.

So back to re-homing my junk. I've found several ways to be resourceful. Besides items that went to Goodwill and a few neighbor friends. I jumped back on eBay. This is always dangerous for me. Every time I sell something on eBay I think of things to buy. But not this time. So far I've earned about $300.00. Definitely not garage sale winnings. It's so easy to use eBay now because you can pack, print postage, and mail your items from home. The Post Office will even supply you with boxes and pick the packages up for free. How can you go wrong!

Then for the hard to ship items I tried Craigslist. If you haven't heard of this and you've got something you want to sell or buy you've got to check it out. It's kind of like a free on-line Thrifty Nickel for your area. I put 3 items up (it was easier than eBay) and they sold the next day. The only catch is then you have to meet up with the buyer to exchange. There are ways to do this safely of course. I haven't used Freecycle yet but if there is anything that I can't sell I most likely will just take it to Goodwill.

As I thought about what to make for dinner tonight I really wanted this yummy chicken curry soup that I make and put in bread bowls. I had it all planned out and made it. It was great. But it's not a real good idea to make a hot soup on a hot day. I'll remember that for next time.

So I have this tiny alarm clock that was given to me when I was working, yes like 7-8 years ago! This thing has been so loyal. I've never had any problems with it and I use it every day. It's one of those small fold up alarm clocks that could fit in your purse. It's gone everywhere with me. It's missing the fold up stand and is a bit scratched but this thing is old faithful. Now here's my point. I really don't think I've ever changed the battery. If I have it was so long ago I can't remember. Each night when I set it I've been thinking to myself "will tomorrow be the day it stops working?" But even I know that when something is not broke "don't fix it". My unrealistic mind thinks that if I actually try to take out this never ending battery the clock/alarm won't work any more. Then my mind thinks "well, it's gonna be a bummer when the battery dies." So far I can't bring myself to take that darn battery out. One would think I would just buy a real alarm clock, something that matches the bedroom, not some little brown and gold Air Products alarm clock. We'll see which one of my thoughts wins out.

A Busy Day

Some Saturdays are relaxing and some are busy. Here was our list of things to do today:
1. Go to Hannah's baptism
2. Go to Dustin's soccer game
3. Go to Logan's birthday party
4. Put stuff together for the Blue and Gold Scout banquet
5. Take a few loads up to Goodwill

It really wasn't that busy of a day because the first 3 items on our list were all being held about the same time. Being the creative people that we are we were able to go to a portion of the baptism, all of Dustin's game and the last portion of the birthday party. That left the rest of the day for the last two on the list.

The funniest thing we experienced today was listening to our friends cd version of "Once There Was a Snowman". For those of you who aren't LDS or who never attended Primary this will hold no value for you. For those who are, you know the song I'm sure, just imagine it put to words of popular songs all the way from the 50's to 2000's. We cracked up and had to listen to it several times.

Ken came home this morning after two shifts of Ambulance training. He's lovin' it!

Dustin's soccer game. It is really a blast watching these little 5 year olds play soccer. They really don't understand the rules. The only thing they understand is 1. run hard 2. kick the ball. But lines, boundaries and goals, that is not even in their realm of thinking. That's what makes it so fun to watch. Today at least 4 times the ball seem to be played across the width of the field, not the length of the field where the goals were. The teams would run and kick and run and kick and it would play right through the field next to them. It would make a great home video. None the less, the kids are having a blast.

The picture above is of the Valentines gift that Daria made Ken in school. Pretty cute I must say.

Dustin's 1st Soccer Game

Up until now Dustin has not participated in any organized sports. I'm not sure how he would have been if I started him earlier, but starting him at 5 has been great! He's never really been interested in playing anything. This year he said he wanted to play soccer. So we signed him up at the YMCA. There are 12 kids on his team, 4 of which he knows. The first game was this last Saturday, with a chilly 42 degree temperature. I was really excited to watch him play, which surprised me since I'm not a big sports fan (unless it's like .... ice skating... or ESPN's freestyle on bikes or skateboards, snowboarding sports). I realized that when it's your own child they could be doing anything and you're excited to watch.

He had a blast, in fact he had a perpetual smile on his face. He reminded me of one of those Golden Retriever dogs, running and smiling at us as he chased the ball. He first played goalie, and blocked 3 balls! I think he had the most energy of all the kids out there, because even when they were standing around Dustin was running in circles (this is what we live with on a daily basis, the kid has more energy than should be aloud for one human being).

Daria's Piano Recital

http://s139.photobucket.com/albums/q284/kariejbh/?action=view&current=2006Recitalwindows.flv

Try this and see if it works. Feedback on if it works, if it is slow, choppy etc, would be great. Thanks

Dustin's thoughts of the day..

I finally figured out how to upload a video to the internet, so if I can figure out how to post the link to my blog you will actually be able to watch one of Daria's piano recitals.

Thought of the day from Dustin....

Dustin: "Mom, you know that big drum with the big hole in the back that Miles has?" (Miles is our next door neighbor who is actually in Canada on a mission as we speak, he used to play drums and has one of those nice drum sets)

Mom: "Yes"

Dustin: "Did you know it's for putting all of your dirty clothes in and you can keep them there until it's time to do the wash?"

Mom: speechless of course......I almost couldn't reply I just sat there and laughed. I'll have to tell my neighbors that story.

Second thought of the day from Dustin...
preface: do you ever notice all those white crosses on the sides of roads, intersections, and highways? you know the one's that mark the spot where someone died. Well, Dustin notices these all the time.

Dustin: "MOM! those crosses are just like the one Jesus had!"

Mom: "yes, you're right"

Dustin: "Accept he was ON the cross not under it" (I suppose Dustin thinks the people are buried there. Again, another laugh and then some explaining to him on my part)

Funny treasures

So my quest for sifting through my accumulated junk has been interesting. For the most part it's given me some time to remember some fun memories. Memories seem to be attached to "stuff". Still, I have to laugh at myself, as I sometimes pride myself on being a very organized, not collecting, non-cluttery person. Reality proves me wrong! Well, half way. Yes, I'm quite organized, enough so that even my closet is organized by color. Want to wear a green shirt? No need to filter through all your clothes because all of the green shirts are together. Feeling like a yellow shirt day, look no further.

So with that type of organization, one would ask why do I have a nicely packed file folder full of every paycheck stub I ever earned? Yes, you read it right. I have every stub since I began working 1987. I worked straight for 14 years until I was able to quit and raise Daria. Fortunately I'm in the "if it's not needed, let it go attitude" right now. So I decided to shred them. But before I did, the genealogist in me decided to write my work history. It was easy, because I had all the stubs. It was fun actually. It was fun to see what I first earned in 1987. A whopping $3.35 per hour. Can you imagine! It was fun to reminisce. I never had a job I didn't like. I've always had good work experiences and chalk that up partially to my positive happy go lucky attitude. The greatest job I had was the last one I had which I worked for approximately 10 years at. Loved it but not enough to trade it for raising my children. I remember that every paycheck I felt like a millionaire. For some reason working hard and earning money really helped my self esteem, even at $3.35 an hour. I reminisced through my last job where I started at $7.85 per hour in 1992 (before that I worked there through a temp service) and within 5 years was making $14.60 per hour. I had almost forgot about the double bonus in 1997 because my counterpart and I saved the company money by bringing our container graphics in house. I remember the surprise when I was made manager in 1998, and all those work politics that came with that. But it was fun. I still to this day keep in touch with several of my previous co-workers.

On to other funny things I've held on to all these years. 14 floppie disks. Why? I'm not sure. I wanted to see what was on them before I destroyed them, but it's been so long, I don't even have a floppy drive in the house!!! 2 computers and 1 laptop, and some old junk laptops and not one floppy drive. I call my neighbor friend. They have about 5+ computers (her husband is a computer geek too) and no floppy drives.... oh wait, she ends up finding one on her sons game computer. Thrilled I frolic on over. Floppy drive works of course, but the computer has no USB port, so instead of being able to drop the files onto my external hard drive I have to e-mail them one at a time to myself. Crazy! Funny thing is a lot of the disks were old work disks. You may ask why they were at home, that was because in 2001 I then worked for the same company for a year from home. Files are transferred, disks are destroyed. One less thing taking up space.

Now I feel like I'm making progress. I've made a usable path in the spare bedroom with all this stuff. Now sorting it into piles, e-Bay, Goodwill, Craig's list and maybe some Freecycle. On Thursday I put my first item from my de-junking on e-BAy at 4pm. The item sold by 8pm. Wow! I've sold other things on e-Bay but none went that fast. One item down, who knows how many more to go.

Math, Rude People, and talented young folks.....

Math...

See that neat picture? That's Dustin's math problems he did today. He loves doing math. Because Dustin stays at home with me, I feel I need to provide some schooling for him. So on most days we work on school work, abc's, reading lessons, science, math, stuff like that. He digs it. Today we finished our 15th reading lesson. Today Dustin read "See me eat" and "mad at me". After that we worked on math. I would say he is just where he needs to be for his age, but at the same time he's pretty nifty at math. We like to do drills, like "if you have 3 horses how many legs are there", or "if you have 1 horse and 2 ducks how many do you have? take away the ducks how many do you have?" Sometimes he can do problems in his head and sometimes on his fingers. So that's what we worked on today, only this time he wrote the problems down. I was ready to quit but he wanted to fill the whole page so we continued working with ducks in the pond types of stories using little duck's and pond pictures.

Rude people...

Don't you hate it when you're having a good day and you have a run in with a rude person. I often wonder about people like that. Do they not realize how they behave or what they look like when they behave that way? How can people live such grumpy lives. No don't get me wrong, I know we all have grumpy days. Today at Dustin's gymnastics class I was waiting for the previous class to leave so I could get a good seat. I stood there for a good 10 minutes. Then out of no where this woman just walks right in front of me, at the same time the other seats were coming available, she moves me over and starts situating the chairs. I said "oh, are you sitting here or there?" pointing at the seats, she glared back at me and said in a very snappy voice "I need 4 seats!". Well, what do you say to that? Being the non-confrontational person I am, I just found a different seat in a different row. But that bugged me so much!!!!! It leaves a bad taste in your mouth when people are abrasive. ON Saturday I was at the post office, it was 8:58am, they don't open until 9am. There were about 6 people in front of me. The doors opened and we all filed in. One lady who was at the beginning of the line got out of line to get some forms. No biggy. She then asked the next person in line if she could go up just to get a form because the bins were out of them. This didn't bother me either. So she steps up, the clerk helps her and tells her she can just step aside and fill the form out and that when she is done to just come back up so she doesn't have to go to the back of the line. This didn't bother me either, but it must have bothered the lady next to me. She turned around like a whip and looked me in the eye and said "If she comes back to this spot DON'T let her in". She repeated this twice because I was most likely looking at her with the "I can't believe you are saying this to me" look. I said "Uh, wasn't she in the front of the line anyway?" "NO!" she yelled back. Well I knew she was in the front because I remember looking at her sweat pants. Anyway, the controlling lady moved on to the counter. I looked at the other lady to my right and we both just started laughing. She said "I don't want to be mean today" and I was saying "I don't really care if the lady gets to go before us, she was in line first anyway and we'll all get through". It was crazy, but I left feeling so violated. What made that lady think that I'm that type of person, mean and vindictive? It's just yucky and made me feel a little off that morning. I guess I'll take it as a reminder of how I treat other people.

Talented Young Folks....

So tonight I headed up to the high school for the talent show. My primary reason for going was because one of the girls from church was in it as well as several other youth from our church. I had no idea what to expect. Talent shows when I was in high school were more like what you might see on Napoleon Dynamite. Seriously! life was so simple back then and kind of cheesy. Well, all I can say is WOW!!! I felt like I was in a concert, like a very good concert. These kids are amazing. They could have blown American Idol off the TV, and most of the kids and groups sounded better than some things I've heard on the radio. This is a big talent show. Not everybody can participate. They go through tons of pre-screening and selecting. So the best of the best have been selected to compete. I went with my friend Mary, who works at the high school. We were amazed. There were bands, solos, dancing, guitars, drums. Here are these kids, 16-18 years old doing stuff I've seen professional musicians do on TV or in real life.

So it just struck me.

1.What was I doing at this age? Well I was probably dreaming about being one of those famous music stars.

2. Music really is a universal language and moves so many people to creativity. Tonight was proof of that.

3. Kids seem to be more mature (not logical), but physically and more advanced technologically these days, doing things that we as adults didn't do until we were in our 20's. Well at least that's from my perspective and I'm talking specifically about the talent show.

4. I kept wondering if some music scouts were out in the audience.

5. While I know there are so many negative things about the younger generation these days, it was so neat to see that these kids really are creative and must be spending a lot of time practicing.

6. What is it that separates those of us who wish we could be like that and those that do. I looked at these kids and realized that they just love what they are doing so much they just want everyone to see it.

Anyway, it was a treat. I'm glad I went.