a memorable thanksgiving...

today's blog is dedicated to larry and tracie swanson. they were our first "couple" friends and have the dubious distinction of being the guests at our first thanksgiving meal. just so you know, they are still alive...

so today . . . is thanksgiving eve. and i think the time has come to tell you about the first time i cooked thanksgiving dinner. all. by. myself...

when rollie and i got married, we were really young--probably too young to be making such huge life decisions. i had very little real life experience. i went from living with my mom and dad, to living in a dorm room, to living with rollie. and while i knew how to dust and vacuum and clean the bathroom (thank you for making me do chores, mom!) i didn't really know how to cook. when i lived at home, my dad always made oatmeal for our breakfast (sometimes chocolate oatmeal! thank you dad!) we all ate hot lunch at our respective schools, and my mom cooked dinner. and then i went away to college and discovered the joys of saga food services! choices, choices, choices, and none of them required me to get near a stove!! so basically, rollie married someone who could bake chocolate chip cookies and zucchini bread...

but when our first thanksgiving rolled around, i decided i wanted to cook a big thanksgiving dinner. mostly i decided this because our thanksgiving vacation was only four days long which really didn't leave us enough time to go home for thanksgiving. so even though my foray into providing meals for our new family had pretty much consisted of kraft macaroni and cheese and hamburger helpers, i was prepared to do whatever i had to do to make our first thanksgiving memorable...

... and it was. but not for the reasons you might think...

it started right after halloween. i got out the cookbooks people had thoughtfully given us for wedding gifts and started planning. i made a menu. i made a grocery list. i made a timeline. because as anyone who has ever cooked a thanksgiving dinner knows, you need a timeline. thanksgiving dinner does not just happen, people--it takes planning! i'm not so sure i realized this before... it seemed like all my previous thanksgiving dinners had just sort of appeared. i guess that's what happens when you aren't the grownup responsible for feeding the hungry hoard of family members. but this year, it was all up to me.

we were on an extremely tight budget when we were first married. extremely tight. i'm pretty sure that is why we ate so much kraft macaroni and cheese, because i could buy four boxes for a dollar. so going to the grocery store and buying whatever i needed all in one week was not an option. i had to divide the list so i could buy the non-perishable items early and watch for the best deal on a frozen turkey. it became clear to me, as i pushed my shopping cart up and down the grocery store aisles, that i was not going to be able to afford everything on my list. i was going to have to make choices...

but this was our first thanksgiving! i wanted it to be memorable! so i started looking for cheaper alternatives. as i was comparing prices, the first thing i noticed was that those bags of dried bread cubes that the stuffing recipe called for were kind of expensive. but i needed dried bread cubes if i was going to make stuffing. but i couldn't afford the dried bread cubes. so i decided to make my own. bread was cheap. i figured i could buy a couple of loaves of bread, cut the slices up into cubes, dry them, and ta-da! i would have bread cubes for my stuffing.

and that is exactly what i did. it took me one whole afternoon, but i cut up three loaves of bread (because i wanted to make sure i had enough) into tiny, half inch cubes. then i spread them out on every cookie sheet i had. i discovered that i didn't have enough cookie sheets, so i put aluminum foil on every horizontal surface i could find and covered it with soft bread cubes. and then i waited for them to dry...

i did all of this several days before thanksgiving, because i had no idea how long it was going to take bread cubes to dry. and i figured that once they were dry i could bag them up and save them until the big day. plus, i knew it was going to be a lot of work to cook thanksgiving dinner, and this was one thing i could do early...

and then there was the turkey. i was used to buying meat one pound of hamburger at a time--which i would then divide into thirds and use when making hamburger helper (i told you, our budget was TIGHT!) but i had decided we needed at least a 20 pound turkey! (yes, i know there were only two of us, but the bigger the bird, the more meat. right?) thankfully(?) our freezer was nearly empty. so once i found a grocery store where i could buy a turkey for about 10 cents a pound (if i bought $25 worth of other groceries, which is about all i had,) i rooted around in the frozen turkey bin until i found the biggest turkey they had--a 23 pound bird! i put that thing in my cart, feeling like i had hit the jackpot, and headed home to try to cram it into my freezer.

a 23 pound turkey is pretty big. especially when you live in a basement apartment and your refrigerator has a small freezer...

i finally got the bird tucked away, lined up the rest of my cans and boxes of food, smiled at my drying bread cubes, and waited for thanksgiving...

i say waited, but i was busy! i was still going to classes, doing homework, trying to figure out what i could make for dinner each night with a can of tuna fish, and turning my bread cubes over so that they would dry evenly and quickly.

the weekend before thanksgiving i was talking to my mom on the phone, and i was telling her about my plans for our thanksgiving meal. my biggest worry was how i was going to get everything ready to eat at the same time! i had quite a menu planned and only one oven, which i was pretty sure was going to be filled up with turkey. "well," my mom said, "whatever you do, don't make your own stuffing! just use the stove top stuffing."

just use the stove top stuffing? what was stove top stuffing, and why didn't i know about it?!?! i didn't know about it, because i was never in the kitchen when the actual cooking was happening. "you know, stove top stuffing," my mom continued. "you buy it in a box at the grocery store. then you just boil water, empty the package into the boiling water, cover it and wait a few minutes, and you have stuffing!"

this would have been good to know. it would have been especially good to know before i had spent the last several days cubing bread slices and babysitting them so that they would dry evenly. i looked around my kitchen at my 5, 386 nearly dry bread cubes and said, "i think it might be too late for stove top stuffing..." i quickly recovered. "besides," i continued, "i want to make real stuffing, the kind that goes inside the turkey. this is our first thanksgiving, and i want it to be memorable."

there was that word again...

when i finished up my classes on the day before thanksgiving, i decided i should get out my menu for the next day and get organized. and, i thought, it was probably time to take the turkey out of the freezer so it could thaw...

yep, my 23 pound turkey was still in the freezer, frozen as solid as a rock! blissfully ignorant, i took it out of the freezer and plopped in into the kitchen sink to thaw. hmmm, i thought, i should probably get out the cookbook and find out how long it was going to take to cook the turkey. we had invited company over for thanksgiving dinner, and i wanted to make sure everything was done at the same time. i flipped through the cookbook, and that's when i saw it. that's when i saw how long it takes to thaw a 23 pound frozen turkey!

we were in biiiig trouble!

i spent the rest of the afternoon and evening thawing that big hunk of meat! that turkey had more warm baths than a messy toddler! i dunked it in warm water. i ran water inside it. and that's when i found the bag of giblets. "what's this?" i said to rollie. (it should be noted here that rollie knew exactly what it was, while i didn't have a clue. in hindsight, perhaps he should have been the one cooking thanksgiving dinner...) he removed the bag of giblets, (because there was no way i was touching that!) and i continued pouring water inside the thawing turkey. finally, around midnight, i decided the bird was thawed enough, because i needed to go to bed! i had a lot of cooking to do the next day, and according the the cookbook, a 23 pound stuffed turkey was going to take several hours to cook, which meant i was going to have to get up about 4 a.m.

i felt like overall, things were progressing nicely. my jello salad was made. the bread cubes were hard as rocks (which i hoped was a good thing!) i had a bag of frozen corn and a bag of frozen peas ready to be microwaved. my pumpkin and peach pies were done (i told you i could bake--it's cooking that gives me grief!) and delicious squishy dinner rolls were ready to be warmed and served. i was pretty sure the only thing that had the potential to ruin my memorable first thanksgiving was that turkey...

i got up at 4 a.m. so did rollie. actually, rollie is probably the one who woke up first and had to drag me into the kitchen. i pulled out the biggest bowl i had and mixed up the stuffing. (it may surprise you to learn that i had waaaay more dried bread cubes than i needed. clearly i did not have an accurate picture of the size of the inside of a turkey... even a 23 pound turkey.) when i got out the roasting pan and the brown-in bag, i saw that there were instructions with the brown-in bag... and those instructions said that if i cooked my stuffed turkey in the brown-in bag, it would only take 4-5 hours...

did i mention it was 4 a.m.?

our company wasn't coming until early afternoon, so i put the stupid turkey in the stupid brown-in bag, put the whole stupid thing back in the stupid refrigerator and went back to bed...

around noon, it looked like things were finally coming together. the turkey was smelling really good. i had disposed of the extra bread cubes. the table was set. it was time to make the sweet potato balls.

sweet potato balls are a family tradition. we had had sweet potato balls at every thanksgiving i could remember, although again, i had never actually been involved in making them. but how hard could it be? take a big marshmallow, cover it with mashed up canned sweet potatoes, roll the ball in crushed corn flakes, and bake! time was getting short, so rollie was helping me. "what are these?" he asked. "sweet potato balls! we have them every year at thanksgiving!" "are they good?" he asked. "i guess so," i answered. "i don't like sweet potatoes, so i never eat them." "then why are we having them if you don't like them?" he asked.

he sure was asking a lot of questions!

"because," i explained, "it's thanksgiving, and we always have them at thanksgiving. don't you like them?" "well," he said, "i don't know. i don't really like sweet potatoes either..." so there we were, our hands covered in sweet potato goo and crushed cornflakes, making something that neither one of us liked. "maybe larry or tracie will like them," i said. "let's hope so," rollie replied...

we took the turkey out of the oven and reset it for the sweet potato balls. we carefully cut the brown-in bag off, and i started to scoop out the stuffing. it was looking pretty good! and it smelled delicious!! maybe i was going to be able to pull off this thanksgiving dinner thing after all. rollie started slicing up the turkey while i finished up the other food.'

"uh, julie?" he said. "yes?" i answered. and then he said, "i think there is something wrong with the turkey."

these are not the words you want to hear on thanksgiving, especially when you have company arriving at any minute. these are not the words you want to hear on thanksgiving when you have pretty much spent your whole grocery budget on this one meal, hoping to live on the leftovers for a while. these are not the words you want to hear on your first thanksgiving, when all you wanted was for it to be memorable.

i was afraid to look. rollie kept poking around, and then he reached down into the bird and held something up. "what is that?!?!?!" i asked, horrified, looking at the brown, drippy mass in his hand. he said, "i think it is more of the giblet stuff..."

who knew that a turkey had TWO secret compartments where giblet stuff could be hidden...

i learned a lot our first thanksgiving. i learned that thanksgiving dinner isn't just a meal, it is a week long ordeal. i learned that if you have to get up at 4 a.m. it is easier if someone else gets up with you. i learned that you don't have to cook the same amount of food to feed four people that your mother cooked to fed thirty or forty!

and i learned that the most memorable things are sometimes the ones that don't go exactly according to plan...

oh, and when cooking a turkey, look out! there are giblets in both ends!!

jury box or jump house?

so today . . . i was surrounded by super heroes and princesses. tiny ones... yes, it's halloween again.

halloween is not my favorite holiday for many, many reasons, but one of the main ones is tiny children coming to school in costume. i know, i know, i sound like the halloween scrooge, but tiny children in costumes result in cranky teacher miss julie. partly because tiny children in costumes tend to be very rambunctious (not necessarily a good thing when there are a gazillion of them in a classroom--at least it sure seems like a gazillion,) and partly because it means it is harvest festival day...

harvest festival day is second only to sports day on my list of most miserable school days, with picture day running a close third... but those are blogs for another day. today was harvest festival day...

here's how it works. first, most of the children come to school in costumes--costumes with numerous parts to them. there are tiaras and swords and helmets and magic wands and pompoms and cowboy hats. none of these things are easy or comfortable for the children to wear, but they are part of the costume. and so, while they want to wear them, all that stuff just gets in their way. but they want to wear it! so they wear it for a while. and then about the time we get outside and get involved in the activities, they decide they don't want to wear it anymore. and guess what happens then???

and then there are the activities. usually there are five or six different stations, and we have a schedule. each class spends about 20 minutes at each station. which would be fine, except the picture taking station only takes about five minutes, and the kids would stay at the jumper station all morning! and while the face painting station only takes a few minutes for each child, it can easily take 20 minutes to paint the faces of a whole class. which means getting your face painted for 3 minutes and sitting and waiting for everyone else for the next 17 minutes. if we are lucky. because it is halloween! and they are in costume!! no one is going to sit for 17 minutes, waiting patiently for their friends to get their faces painted. and so it is a constant juggling act between hurrying to get done at some stations before our time is up, and keeping a class full of four and five year olds occupied at other stations with nothing to do... let's just say, we sang every song i could think of... some of them twice...

and this year we had the added bonus of fishing--for real, live goldfish. the kids loved it! i am not so sure their parents are going to love it. because assuming that the fish lives until the end of the school day, those parents are going to have to make a stop on the way home to get a fish bowl, fish food, and colored rocks (because you cannot have a fish bowl without colored rocks! and who knows how long it will take them to choose the perfect color!!) on a day when they need to get right home and get ready for trick or treating. and then, before they get home, that fish will have a name. and then, tomorrow morning, the fish will be dead...

call me a pessimist, but it's the truth.

sleeping beauty's plastic jewels kept coming apart. the sequins on the cheerleader's dress were blinding everyone in the sunshine. spiderman didn't want to go to the bathroom, because he would have to take his costume off for a few minutes. spider girl (who even knew there was such a thing! but there she was in all her pink, tulle glory,) informed me she was not spider girl! she was afraid of spiders, so she was the black widow--even though there wasn't a spot of black on her costume, and she had no idea what a widow was. and when i tried to tell her that a black widow was a kind of spider (because i'd left my brain in bed this morning,) she started to cry. normally i am immune to crying, but she was working her way up to a full blown melt down, and it was harvest festival day, so i did the only thing i could do--i agreed with her erroneous 4 1/2 year old thinking. fine. you want to be the black widow, which is not a spider? fine. just stop crying...

i'm so ashamed...

and then there was the child who didn't wear a costume, telling the cheerleader in the sparkly dress "your costume is ugly!" as the cheerleader's dad came into the classroom to tell his darling daughter "have a nice day..." and the cute little girl who i thought was dressed as a cowgirl, only to find out (after i had complimented her on her costume,) that she wasn't wearing a costume. and the boy in my class who is consumed by angry birds mania, but wouldn't wear the bird costume for the picture, because it was blue. because, as everyone knows, the cool bird is the red one!

and then, again, there was spiderman... spiderman is my wild child this year. we try to keep one of our eyes on him all the time, because he is fast, he is impulsive, and we never know what he is going to do next. but today, in his spiderman suit, he was much calmer. i don't know if it is because the suit was somewhat restrictive when he tried to move (meaning almost too small,) or if it came with special spidey powers, but i am thinking of asking his mom if he can wear the suit every day...

i thought i might miss the harvest festival this year. i am scheduled for jury duty this week, so you know, there was a possibility... i don't think i have ever wished that my number would get called for jury duty before, but this year, a nice quiet day in the waiting room at the courthouse, reading my book sounded like a lovely alternative to the somewhat chaotic (and this year, HOT) harvest festival. i even did my jury orientation online over the weekend so that if i was called, i could sleep in just a bit on the first day. but today was not my first day. and tomorrow won't be either. so now i am back to hoping that they don't call my number for jury duty...

...unless they could do it on picture day ;-)

a christmas blog... sort of...

so today . . . i discovered the elusive christmas peacock...

what? you didn't know there was such a thing as a christmas peacock? where have you been, mars?????

i love christmas. it is my favorite holiday! and one of the things i love about it is the decorations. does the world ever look prettier than in the month of december? lights, sparkles, snow, poinsettias, holly, and of course baby Jesus--i love it!

but not in october. october is supposed to be about pumpkins and pretty colored leaves and cornstalks. october is supposed to be when you break out your sweaters and scarves and maybe buy a new pair of fuzzy boots from costco--which you have to do in october or the ones in your size will be gone! and then you will have to wait a whole year to get a gray pair! (oops. digressing again...) october is all about crisp, cool days, and nights scented with pumpkin spice candles...

...not christmas peacocks.

i get the whole "christmas in july" thing. if you are someone who plans ahead, then july is probably about the right time for you to start your shopping. (who am i kidding. if you are someone who plans ahead, you started your christmas shopping the day after christmas!) and i understand how, when the thermometer says 95 degrees and you have been wearing your shorts and flipflops for two months, the promise of snow-covered evergreens and twinkly lights could be inviting. but the truth is, i have never, ever seen anyone buy a christmas tree in october. ever. and yet, that's when the majority of the stores have decided it is time to break out the christmas gear...

i am all for long christmas celebrations. our tradition has always been to put the christmas tree up the day after thanksgiving and leave it up until martin luther king, jr day in january. why, you may ask, is that our tradition? well, i have a lot of christmas decorations. it takes me a couple of days to get everything out, put the decorations up, and put all the boxes back where they belong. so the long weekend after thanksgiving works for me. especially since it seems like it is impossible to find a free weekend in december. in fact, i have discovered that if i don't get the tree up before i go back to school after thanksgiving, it probably isn't going to happen.

yes, we have had more than one christmas without a tree.

and i like to leave it up for a while after christmas, because it seems like we are always so busy in december that we don't really get to just sit and enjoy the beauty of the decorations--that's what january is for! and taking it all down and cleaning and dusting everything takes waaaay longer than getting it out. in fact, a three day weekend really isn't enough. and since, in my current job, i have to work on martin luther king, jr day, sometimes i have to wait until president's day to clean the christmas from my house!

and yes, i know president's day is in february...

i'm sure the stores think that if they put the christmas stuff out early, we will all start thinking christmasy thoughts and start spending money. and they probably think that if we start spending it early enough, we will spend more.

and they are probably right.

because apparently anything can be a christmas decoration if you put a santa hat on it. this seems to be especially true when it comes to yard decorations. unless you have a nativity set in your yard, odds are most of your yard decorations are wearing santa hats. put a santa hat on a teddy bear and it becomes a christmas decoration. put a santa hat on a tall, green, skinny, furry guy and suddenly he is a christmas decoration. put a santa hat on a penguin or a dog or a singing fish, and it becomes a christmas decoration. i can sort of understand the thinking behind a flamingo wearing a santa hat--if you live in florida. but today i saw a christmas peacock. yes, i said peacock. a PEACOCK!!!!

i found myself at home depot this afternoon. we are having more work done on the house this weekend, so i needed to get supplies. and as i was wandering about, looking for a microfiber dust mop (no, that isn't for the work this weekend. that is to help me corral all the dog hair that i can now see on my wood floors!) i saw this...(no, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. there is the elusive christmas peacock, nestled between the elusive christmas flamingo and the more traditional lighted deer.) home depot had devoted a large area to christmas decorations. which i guess is ok. maybe people do like getting into the christmas spirit two months early--while shopping for paint and light fixtures and crown molding... maybe people really will think, "i need some christmas decorations--let's go to home depot!" but i have to admit, it isn't the first place i would think of to bulk up my christmas decoration inventory...

home depot has given quite a bit of retail space to stuff that is probably going to just sit there for another month and a half before anyone starts buying it. because really, where are you going to put an 8 foot lighted artificial tree for the next two months? or those large lighted snowmen? or the lighted grazing deer? and even if you have a place to put them, who is going to buy a GIANT ILLUMINATED CHRISTMAS PEACOCK?!?!? and what does a peacock have to do with christmas anyway?? and why am i even thinking about christmas in october?!?!?

curses, home depot, i feel you trying to suck me into your early christmas vortex. i wonder if i can find my santa hat...

a shift...

so today . . . is diandra's birthday. and father's day. and sunday. i am experiencing a blogging dilemma.

first of all, usually i don't even blog on sundays. my sundays tend to be very predictable. they go something like this: church, lunch, nap, dinner, a little tv, bedtime. my sundays are not fertile ground for blogging material. even for my overactive brain.

but at lunch today, diandra informed me that she would be looking forward to her birthday blog, since today was her birthday. she said this in the presence of her father, who reminded her that it was also father's day. but since diandra has had the dubious distinction of being an only child, she is of the opinion that her birthday trumps everything else. and although she graciously took her dad to a movie today to celebrate father's day, she is right. her birthday usually wins.

(and i love you dad, but you are fishing today. which is one of the things you love to do most, so i am glad that is how you are spending your special day. but you aren't home to read a blog about yourself anyway, so i guess i will wait until YOUR birthday to write a blog for you. happy father's day!)

since birthdays come around only once a year, it has been twelve months since diandra's last birthday blog. i couldn't remember what i had written--probably you can't remember either! but in my continuing quest to keep from repeating myself, i went back and read her birthday blogs from 2009 and 2010. they were pretty good. if you missed them, you should go read them now.

as i read, i realized how much i admire my daughter. she is an amazing woman! and i use the word "woman" here for the first time when referring to her (i think,) because this last year is the year diandra turned into an adult...

some people think that when their children turn 18, they become adults. i have heard more than one parent say, "well, what can i do? they are 18, you know. legally they are an adult..." (this usually comes at the end of a sad story about their child making some poor decisions, as 18 year olds sometimes do.) this always perplexes me. just because a child can legally vote, they do not magically turn into an adult on the eve of their 18th birthday. being an adult is not about one's age--it is about one's maturity. it is about losing that self-serving, self-centered focus and starting to realize the world does not revolve around them. it is about being responsible, making good decisions, owning up to bad ones, and having a broader perspective than "it's all about me, me, me!!!"

some people never turn into adults...

but this year, diandra did. i have blogged about her enough that you all know i think she is the most perfect daughter on planet earth. is she always perfect? no. do i agree with every decision she makes? no, (just ask her belly button.) does she still roll her eyes at me? maybe occasionally... but her perspective is different. she isn't looking at things like a kid anymore. she is thinking more like an adult.

today diandra turns 26 years old. she has faced some very difficult things since her 18th birthday. she has not always been in control of her life, but she has taken responsibility for it. she has made hard choices, unpopular choices, maybe even a bad choice or two, but she has learned from all of those choices. she is able to deal with her emotional ups and downs, rather than being ruled by them. she is being who she is, not who she thinks everyone else wants her to be. she knows she is just a part of the world, not the center of the universe...

...unless it is june 19th. because june 19th is her birthday. and so on june 19th it IS all about her--even if june 19th falls on a sunday... which is also father's day...

i love you, diandra! you are an amazing woman! i think your 27th year is going to be awesome!!!

you are still my favorite daughter :-)

mother's day meals

***disclaimer***

although there is some humor in today's blog, it is NOT going to measure up to the cock roach story. i'm sorry, but that kind of hilarity doesn't happen every day. however, that doesn't mean you won't smile once or twice...

so today . . . was mother's day. normally mother's day for me is all about a day spent shopping with my daughter. but not this year. this year all the drama revolved around food...

it started at lunch. diandra was busy until later in the day, so rollie and i had lunch at tgifriday's. although we eat out a lot, we rarely go to tgifriday's. i don't know why--i love the food there, and we go right past it on our way to rubios... but since today was mother's day, i got to choose the restaurant. this meant we were NOT eating at rubios--we were going to eat someplace where you got to actually hold a menu, and you didn't have to order standing up.

i am not averse to eating holiday meals at fast food places, but i just wanted to go someplace different today. when i got to the restaurant, rollie was already sitting at a table. yes, i said table. i looked around. there were empty booths, but for some reason they made him sit at a table... and it was noisy in that part of the restaurant--no cushy booths to soak up the sound, i guess. i sat with him for a couple of minutes and realized that if we stayed there, i was not going to hear a word he said. and more importantly, he was not going to hear a word i said!! so we asked if we could move to a booth, and were quickly moved... into the bar.

although we don't drink, i don't usually mind sitting in the bar. usually it is dark and quiet there, and you get pretty good service. i thought it might be an especially good idea today, since it was mother's day and the restaurant was probably soon going to be swarming with children and dads taking mom out to lunch. but not in the bar. in the bar, it was going to be nice and quiet and child-free...

we perused our menus and made our lunch selections. the waitress brought us our cokes with lemon wedges. and then a funny thing happened... suddenly i was surrounded by basketball players wearing purple and gold! yes, the evil lakers had invaded my mother's day lunch!!

i don't know why i hadn't noticed the giant tv screens when we sat down. (this is rollie, making an "L" with his fingers. i always thought this was the universal symbol for "loser," but he tells me it is for "lakers." today, as it turns out, it meant both...) i guess, since they were mounted high on the walls and were each showing something different, they just didn't register with my brain. but when they were all suddenly tuned to the same station, and the volume was cranked up, my brain sat up and took notice.

somebody, somewhere, who probably lives thousands of miles away from their mother, had scheduled game 4 of the second round of playoff games for mother's day, and the evil lakers were down 0-3.

just my luck! mother's day, and everyone in that restaurant was trying to get a look at that game! because this was not just another game. this was big. this was "win it now or go home" time. and we had the best seat in the house--well, the best seat if you are a laker fan. which i am not. we were surrounded by eight big screen tvs, all playing the game simultaneously. on mother's day!!!

i weighed my options. oh, i had options, all right... i could pick up my diet coke and move as far away from those tvs as i could get, but then i would be back to the noisy, child-filled part of the restaurant. i could demand that rollie totally ignore the game and focus on ME--after all, it was mother's day! but realistically there was no way he could avoid those eight giant tv screens. i could politely ask if they could turn just ONE giant screen to shopping tv :-) yeah, i'm sure they would do that...

i opted to stay where i was, eat my delicious food, and ignore the evil lakers. which i did.

shortly after we got home i got a text from diandra. she was going to be gone longer than she had thought, which was ok with me--i found i was pretty sleepy (probably from staying up too late the night before,) and a nap sounded like a great idea! which it was.

by the time diandra got home, we had decided to hang out in the family room with our computers and the tv and the big bag of snacks that she had brought home! yes, it was going to be a goooood mother's day! but after decimating the contents of the bag from 7-11 (which had a few surprises in it,) we thought maybe we should eat some real food. you know, to kind of dilute the amount of sugar we had just eaten... this meant a trip somewhere...

i wanted jack in the box. diandra didn't know what she wanted--all she knew was that she didn't want jack in the box. she finally settled on el pollo loco, and off we went. and everything was fine, until we were sitting in the drive-thru lane at el pollo loco. because the car ahead of us had a wienerschnitzel hotdog on it's antenna, and that's when diandra said, "we never think of wienerschnitzel when we are deciding where to eat!" "do you want wienerschnitzel?" i asked her. "yes, i think i do!" she said.

well, this was just great! there we were, boxed in at the drive through at el pollo loco, and neither of us wanted to eat there! i thought we might just refuse to order and then drive right on out the other side, but that seemed sort of rude. and yet, neither of us wanted their food!! so when it was my turn to order, i found myself ordering a diet coke. and that is all.

we drove back past our house to wienerschnitzel. i thought. until diandra said, "where are you going?!?!?" "to wienerschitzel! isn't that where you wanted to go?" "yes," she said, "but you are going the wrong way!!" "no i'm not! it is just up here a little further, by the gas station." "NO," she said, "it is over by target!"

ok, there is a wienerschnitzel over by target, but i had forgotten about that one. and now we were almost to the other one. but the one by target is closer to jack in the box, so we ended up turning around and going back, again, the way we had just come...

you would think gas didn't cost almost $4.50...

there was some discussion as to how we were going to get to that wienerschnitzel, but after a couple of nearly wrong turns we found ourselves in the drive-thru lane.

i've only eaten at wienerschnitzel a couple of times. i mean, i can make a chili dog at home! i don't need to go out for that. but by now we had been gone for over half an hour, and i was getting hungry! so i just decided to get my food from wienerschnitzel and save jack in the box for another day.

as diandra pulled out her debit card, she said, "you are a cheap date." i took this to mean that it wasn't expensive to feed me. "well," i said, "cheap dates get asked out again." this is my way of thinking--i would rather eat at jack in the box (or wienerschnitzel or el pollo loco or even mcdonald's) several times than at a really swanky restaurant once. so i guess i am a cheap date.

not that i don't like to eat at nice restaurants, but it is a lot of money to spend if it turns out you don't like it...

or if a whole basketball team shows up to try to ruin your mother's day lunch!!

the importance of a valentine...or, is this why there aren't any unicorns?

so today . . . i was late to church. again.

technically i was not late--i actually arrived 45 minutes early, but i had a meeting. and it went long, so church had already started when i was ready to go in. diandra was not late. she SAID she was saving me a seat, but by the time i got in there, she was surrounded by teens. so i sat behind her. pretty soon she turned around and handed me the bulletin. this is what i saw.

i read it and sort of chuckled. i got the humor. but my darling daughter did not. as i looked up to hand it back to her, i saw a very sad face. the lower lip was sticking out juuuust a bit. "isn't that sad?" she said.

sheesh! it's just a cartoon. unicorns aren't real!! (although, maybe they WERE real until they couldn't find anyone to be their valentine...)

but this is how diandra is. she feels things. she connects. even to things that aren't alive. if it has a face, she empathizes with it.

so when she was making the sad face about the cartoon, i wasn't all that surprised. a few minutes later she turned around with a big smile on her face, as she handed me her edited version.

it made me smile. this is my daughter's heart. she cares. she is empathetic. she is compassionate. it isn't always easy being that way, but it is who she is. she understands what it feels like to be alone, and she doesn't want anyone to feel that way--not even mythical cartoon characters.

sometimes, i look at her and think, "how did you turn out this way? i am your mom! my example to you was pretty much 'stop whining and deal with it!'" she is a perfect example that sometimes who we are isn't the result of nature OR nurture. sometimes it is the result of God in us.

thanks diandra, for reminding me of that :)

a collision of holidays

so today . . . i realized that this is the holiday week from... well, someplace i would rather not name.

you wouldn't think of february, with it's mere 28 days, as being capable of creating such chaos. but the planets and calendar have aligned in such a way as to make my week a nightmare of projects.

let me just say, i am not a fan of projects. in fact, i hate them. projects, by their very nature, require waaaay more teacher involvement than i think is appropriate. but valentine's day is coming, which means my students have to make cards for their parents. and since i teach in a school where most of the students are chinese, we cannot really ignore chinese new year, which is also this week. AND tomorrow is groundhog day...

ok, well maybe i could ignore groundhog day, but i love groundhog day! i know that it is a totally meaningless holiday. in fact, since no one gets the day off work, we don't give or receive presents, and there are no special foods or songs or decorations, i'm not even sure we can legitimately call it a holiday. and yet, it is one of my favorite days of the year. i mean, how can you not love a day that is all about a guy in a top hat pulling a big, fat furry animal out of a cage, watching him squint into the light, and waiting for the official pronouncement of when spring will arrive?!?!

my kindergarten kids don't quite get this. i explain the whole thing to them, but they just don't get it. they won't accept what i tell them--they keep asking questions. why is the groundhog afraid of his shadow? how can the groundhog tell when the weather will get better? what is a groundhog? how do they pick the official groundhog? who picks the official groundhog? how do they know when he will come out? what if he doesn't come out? what is spring? (well, to be fair, our spring weather isn't all that much different from our winter weather.) there seems to be no end to their questions...

it would be much simpler to just ignore groundhog day. no one would probably even notice--especially since the groundhog and his shadow are pretty much irrelevant if you live in southern california--but it is a part of our culture. so whether it makes any sense or not, i feel compelled to talk about it every year. and do a project, because i have this cute little pop-up groundhog they can make...

which would be fine, if chinese new year didn't happen to fall during the same week as groundhog day. because i also have a couple of cool projects for chinese new year that i want to do. and then valentine's day is just around the corner. AND we still have our normal school work to complete, which is just a lot to get done.

so the result of this is, today we talked about groundhog day and did a quick activity, and also did the first part of our chinese new year project. tomorrow we will make the groundhog project, finish up the chinese new year one, and start on the parent valentines. by the end of the week, i figure they will be totally confused--is it going to be spring because the chinese dragon saw his shadow? is the groundhog the one who gives them the red envelope with money in it? do the hearts mean the new year is here or that it is spring? and why do we call that shape a heart when our heart isn't shaped like that at all?

life is so much simpler when chinese new year comes in january...

why can't it be christmas every day???

so today . . . starbucks has played another evil holiday trick on me.

i have this love/hate relationship with starbucks--i love their peppermint white chocolate mocha drink. i hate that it is loaded with sugar and fat (because, of course, i also have to have whipped cream on top!) i hate that they call a small drink "tall" and charge more than a mcdonald's happy meal for it. but most of all, i hate that they only serve it at christmas time.

starbucks is not the only one who is guilty of this seasonal torment. just ask my mom. she has become somewhat addicted to dark chocolate peppermint jojo's--trader joe's entry into the "let's torture america with delicious goodies they can only have for one month out of the year" club. last year before we made the trip north, she called me to see if our trader joe's had any more in stock--because her trader joe's was completely out, and christmas was only two weeks away! (i kind of think her trader joe's was out, because she had already bought so many!) being the good daughter that i am, i sent rollie to trader joe's for dark chocolate peppermint jojo's, and enabled her addiction :)

and we can't have a discussion about limited holiday treats without including walmart and their peppermint sticks...

but today, i was inadvertently suckered into another seasonal food, thanks to one of my students.

it is not uncommon for at least one of my students to bring me a starbucks gift--either a gift card or a cup or a specially packaged treat--and this year was no exception. i opened a gift bag to find six biscotti sticks and a bag of christmas blend coffee from starbucks. "hmmm," i thought, "here is a gift that i will be sharing with someone, since i don't drink coffee and i don't eat biscotti." but as the days wore on, there came a day when i needed a snack. and all i could find was that gift box. i realized i was just desperate enough to give the biscotti a try...

... yes, a try! because i have never eaten biscotti before. it was not a food that even remotely appealed to me. it looks hard and dry and tasteless, like if i tried to eat it i would find myself covered in biscotti crumbs and craving a sip of coffee. which i don't drink. but apparently when i have the munchies, i will try anything.

each biscotti was individually wrapped. i took one out, opened it up, and took a bite, expecting the flavor of sawdust. instead, my tastebuds said, "what is this and why haven't we tasted it before?!?!?" it was delicious! it was crunchy, but also light and airy. did i mention how delicious it was?!? i looked at the packaging and saw that i was eating gingerbread macadamia nut biscotti. i wanted to eat another one, but i only had six and i was sure they were at least 500 calories each--yes, they were that good--so i was going to wait...

...and then i made a big mistake. i actually looked at the calorie count and found that one biscotti was only 100 calories! so i ate two more. i figured those were sort of "free," since i thought the first one was 500 calories.

and now, i have no more.
i know it is january and the red cups are gone, but i may have to cross over into enemy starbucks territory soon just to see if there are any gingerbread macadamia nut biscotti left in their big glass jar. because i didn't know how much i liked them until now, which means i didn't get a chance to stockpile any. you know, for a rainy day... and so now it is all i can think about... gingerbread macadamia nut biscotti... manna from heaven... how long until christmas????

curses, evil marketing people! you win again!!

ah, flying...

so today . . . we are headed home from our christmas trip to oregon. usually this means packing all our stuff the day before we leave, getting up before dark (but not really waking up,) dragging our sleeping bodies into the car, and then sleeping for several hours while rollie drives.

but this year we flew :) and we didn't have to leave for the airport until the middle of the afternoon. so we slept in, leisurely packed our stuff, and then ate lunch. rollie watched football, and i watched some HGTV (i don't have HGTV at home, so i'm sort of obsessed when i am anywhere that has it. i mean really, have you watched "house hunters?!?!")

packing to go back home on an airplane, after christmas presents and post-christmas shopping proved to be a little challenging. especially since diandra was also wedding shopping... she bought mosaic glass candles and purple christmas beads and heart-shaped ornaments and big round sparkly placemats for centerpieces. she kept coming into my room and saying, "mom, do you think you have room for this?" and mostly i did. but then a couple of times i had to say, "rollie, do you think you have room for this?" and thankfully, he did.

and then there was my wedding dress...

i think my wedding dress is one of the most beautiful dresses i have ever seen. timeless. classic. and a little bit sparkly (of course!) several years ago, my mom took it and had it all cleaned and preserved and packed in a pretty box. but the box is pretty big, and we have never had enough extra room to bring it home with us.

until we flew.

which is odd, i know, because you would think it would be easier to find room to take it home when we drive the suv. but when we drive the suv, we pack like we have unlimited room--even though we don't. when we fly, we know all our stuff has to fit into our suitcase (no extra bags of stuff can be stashed around our feet) so we pack lighter. and we flew on southwest, which let each one of us check two bags. for free! and since we only each brought ONE bag, we could check the dress.

this seemed like a great idea! until we got to the airport and tried to get our 3 suitcases, 2 carry-on bags and 1 dress box inside... (thankfully we didn't have a partridge in a pear tree.)

we schlumped all our stuff to the ticket counter. i admit that there was some rearranging, some tripping, and a close call with a revolving door, but we got there. we started checking our bags in. rollie's suitcase. my suitcase. diandra's suitcase. and then the box.

"what's in this box," the check-in person asked. we told her it was a wedding dress. "oh," she said, " it would be better if you could carry it on." that might be true, but the box was too big to carry on--why would she even suggest it?!? was she trying to get me into more trouble with the tsa?!?!

and then she said, "has this dress already been worn in the wedding?" it sounded innocent enough on the surface, but what it said to me was, "how terrible will it be if somehow the box gets crushed and pops open, and the dress gets caught on something and comes down the luggage shute in shreds?" now i was worried. she slapped a couple of orange "fragile" stickers on it, made me sign a waiver that said they were liable for loss, but not for damage, and sent it out to the plane...

i almost started hoping they would lose it...

on the way to the gate, i kept seeing oregon duck stuff. (in case you somehow didn't know, the ducks are playing for the national championship on january 10th. you should watch. they will win.) diandra had already acquired a duck sweatshirt, but i still didn't have one. we saw them all over the mall when we were shopping, but i had my eye on other things... now, though, we were in the airport headed home. and i was pretty sure if i didn't get a duck shirt before i got on the plane, i was going to be watching the championship game in the one green sweater i own. and it doesn't have a big yellow "O" on it! i was suddenly worried the ducks might lose if i didn't get a shirt. they might think i had no faith in them, or worse yet, didn't even care. so i walked back down the concourse, compared the different designs, and finally chose this one.now i was ready to go home. (and if by some fluke, the ducks lose, it is on them--i've done my part...)

as we were sitting on the plane, waiting for our flight (which had already been delayed for an hour,) diandra saw them loading the luggage. they were not all that careful with our suitcases. our suitcases were flipping and flopping and smacking onto the luggage conveyor belt. but they respected the fragile stickers on the dress box, carefully laid it on the conveyor belt, and it arrived at lax in good shape. which is good, because we have plans for that dress!

i've decided i love to fly! i don't love wrestling my bags through the airport. i don't love going through security. i don't love delayed flights. i don't love peanuts (oh, for the days when you got a real snack!) but i do love to fly. i love being in the airport. i love checking out the food options. i love getting on the plane and having someone bring me a drink. i love getting to my destination in just a few hours. i love not having to worry about car trouble, roads closed due to snow, and sleeping in the pretzel position.

in fact, i think we may have started a new tradition this year :)

i think we may have walked a marathon...

so today . . . we walked.

we walked and we walked and we walked. we ate our thanksgiving meal. and then we walked and walked and walked some more.

the reason we are in las vegas is to scope out wedding venues for diandra's wedding this spring. this seemed like a good time to come, since we would have three days free, and none of us would have to take any time off from work.

apparently half a million other people thought it would also be a good time to visit las vagas...

there are a lot of people here. a lot! but i digress...

my plan was to do the wedding stuff today, while rollie camped out in our room and watched football. then i thought we could do fun stuff tomorrow before leaving to go home on saturday. but my plan was thwarted when the venues we wanted to check out were mostly closed today. this is vegas baby! i thought everything was open all the time! i was wrong again.

so instead we walked up and down the strip--twice--and around and around and around in the hotel shops. we stopped to sit--twice just to rest and twice to eat. and that is all. you cannot even imagine how our feet and legs feel now that we are back "home" on our cushy beds. i fully expect to wake up screaming in the night from muscle cramps. doesn't that sound like fun???

i should clarify that diandra and i did most of the walking. oddly, rollie was not interested in walking and walking and walking. which is probably just as well. because when he walks with us in crowds of people, he can't help but do his secret service routine--stand tall, eyes moving above everyone else, slowly, side to side, anticipating trouble. (i personally think he is secretly hoping for trouble so he can go into his black belt ninja stuff. he says that is not true--he just wants to be prepared, you know, just in case. but i still think he is always hoping his black belt ninja stuff will one day come in handy...)

we started out this morning (and i use that term loosely,) headed for the bellagio. it is thanksgiving, and my friend wendy said we HAD to eat at the bellagio buffet. so that was our plan. diandra and i took the circuitous route through the caesar's palace shops while rollie took the direct route. he arrived first even though he left a couple of hours after we did. he texted us (thank goodness for cell phones!) and said there was a line. he was not exaggerating. there was a LINE! a line that zigzagged like toy story 3 at disneyland, and then went around a corner. i think it would have taken us the rest of the day to get in there. i like to eat, but standing in line for hours and hours was just not my idea of fun for today. so we got out of line and went on a search for food that could be immediately ours! we tried outback steak house, but we were too early. i was ready to settle for mcdonald's. really! i mean, it wouldn't be the first time we had eaten fast food on thanksgiving day... but we settled on panda express and pizza. i knew it was meant to be, when a table opened up right in front of us!

after lunch we decided it was time for coats. did i mention that it is coooold here? it wasn't too bad earlier in the day when the sun was shining on us. but by the middle of the afternoon, we either had to get our coats or turn into human popsicles. and that is when i made a terrible error in judgement--i decided i wanted to walk all the way to the end of the strip to the excaliber hotel. diandra reluctantly went with me. it got colder. it got dark. we went up long flights of stairs to cross walkways across the busy streets. we took a few more pictures. and finally we arrived!the colored turrets were beautiful. the hotel? not so much. it wasn't exactly what i expected. at all. and now, we had to walk all the way back. and it was colder. and darker. but we huddled together and just kept walking. and walking. and walking.

we were going to go shopping in the morning before doing the wedding stuff (which is why we came here in the first place--but it is easy to forget that when we are busy having so much fun!) it is black friday, and we ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS go shopping early in the morning on black friday.

but not this year. this year we are sort of exhausted. and sore! we are thinking of spending black friday on the internet. and we still have to get the wedding stuff done...

...because i am not sure i have the energy for another weekend in vegas!

at least, not until after christmas ;)

misc. midnight thoughts...

so today . . . it is almost midnight, and i haven't blogged.

i planned to blog today. one has been rolling around in my head about packing for our trip tomorrow. i've probably blogged about packing before, though, and as i said, it is almost midnight. so i am going to sleep. i will blog about packing tomorrow... maybe while we are sitting in traffic on our way to las vegas. i am pretty sure it will be a parking lot, so i will need something to distract me.

besides, i need my sleep tonight. tomorrow is our thanksgiving feast. there will be 44 people in my classroom for lunch. yes, 44. tomorrow we are not only feeding our students, but also their parents, grandparents, tiny siblings, and apparently whoever else wants to come along. i anticipate chaos. i don't do well in chaos. this is one of the few times i wish i had mood altering drugs--the kind that make you relaxed and happy--like nitrous oxide... i love nitrous oxide...

i am kind of wishing for a snow day. my mom had a snow day today. in fact, according to what i read on facebook, all of oregon had a snow day today! i think i should have a snow day tomorrow. then i wouldn't have to "feast" with 44 people in my classroom. i wouldn't even have to pack! i could just sit in front of the fire with a festive beverage and my book...

snow. in southern california. for thanksgiving.

it could happen...

i'm sure it must be fall somewhere...

so today . . . it is HOT! the santa ana winds are blowing, and it was over 95 degrees today. and in case you aren't paying attention, it is NOVEMBER!!!

i love southern california. love. it. and a big part of the reason is our moderate weather. we have about ten really hot days and five rainy days a year--the rest of the days are between 65 and 85 degrees. how can a person complain about that?!?!

oh just watch me... i have a whole list of complaints! ten, as a matter of fact :)

TOP TEN REASONS WHY IT SHOULDN'T BE 95 DEGREES IN NOVEMBER!

#10. the halloween chocolate will melt. it was just three days ago that tiny children (and some not so tiny children,) walked around after dark threatening their neighbors if they didn't get candy. i was at target last week, so i know that almost all halloween candy either has a chocolate coating or a chocolate center or is totally 100% chocolate with no distracting substances added. but chocolate doesn't respond well to heat. and since i can't believe that all that candy has already been eaten--although i am sure a lot of it has been--it is sitting on kitchen counters all over southern california, melting...

#9. it doesn't feel like fall. you know what i mean--that crispness in the air, a little bit of frost now and then, red and yellow leaves... ok, i can't blame the lack of colored leaves on the heat. probably. but it doesn't feel like pumpkin patch weather--it feels like water slide weather! and so...

#8. i can't use the fireplace. i love having a fire in the fireplace, but wood is precious here, so our fire is made from burning gas rather than burning wood. we do have trees, but you have to drive a bit of a distance to see wild ones. and since californians seem to prefer to let their trees burn naturally, you don't see too many wood burning fireplaces here. and that's ok with me. i would much rather turn a switch and light a match, than haul and stack wood. besides, can you imagine the spiders that would live in a wood pile?!?!?!? which brings me to...

#7. the spiders are confused. (this point is diandra's. she is somewhat spider-phobic. and when i say somewhat, i mean completely and totally, to hysterical proportions...) diandra says the spiders don't know what to do with this unseasonably warm weather. she says when it is warm they stay outside, but when it turns cold they migrate inside, looking for more moderate temperatures. and we did have a few cool days, so according to diandra, all the spiders have moved inside. but now that it has warmed up, they are coming out where we can see them--still inside, but out in plain sight. needless to say, she is somewhat skittish right now. she thinks the spiders are everywhere. and i have heard the screams to prove it!

#6. our tans have faded. and yet when it is this hot, you can't run around in long sleeves and tights and boots! there is a reason that arms and legs are bare in the summer time and not in the dead of winter. have you heard the term "winter white?" yeah, well it isn't just a sweater color--it is also the color of my legs by mid-october. these are the times i wish that the ethnic skeletons in my closet would make themselves known. i was sitting across the room from a filipino guy wearing shorts tonight at bible study, and i couldn't help but think, "i wish my legs were that nice caramel color in november..."

#5. my allergies are activated. the reason it is so hot is because of those blasted santa ana winds! and when the winds blow, it stirs up all sorts of stuff into the air--stuff that makes my nose run and my eyes itch. i don't like it when my nose runs and my eyes itch. when my nose runs and my eyes itch, all i want to do is curl up in bed and sleep--preferably in front of the fireplace. which i can't use, because it is too hot! (see #8)

#4. diandra is dying in her jeep. diandra has a very cool jeep wrangler. it has monster tires. the top and windows zip off so she can enjoy the socal sunshine. the boys are all jealous (which, as everyone knows, is the important thing about a vehicle!) it is the car of her dreams! unless we have unseasonably hot weather. because one thing the jeep does not have is air-conditioning. we warned her. she said it would be fine--after all, the whole top comes off! we tried to tell her that there would be times when she wanted a/c, but all she wanted was that jeep! so now she has it. and she still loves it. but when fall "arrives" and she zips the top back on, and then the santa anas blow, it gets kind of toasty inside.

#3. i can't decide what to wear. this might not sound like such a big deal, but there are issues here! (see #6) even though technically it is fall, if i try to wear fall clothing, i am going to die of heat! but summer clothing just seems wrong (although i saw several people in shorts and tank tops today.) and when you are a person that gets out of bed 15 minutes before you have to leave for work on some mornings, not knowing what clothes to throw on your body wastes precious time, making you late. my compromise (to deal with #6) is bare arms, covered legs. but it isn't as easy as it sounds.

#2. i feel the need for iced drinks, but the red cups have reportedly arrived at starbucks. that means it is time for seasonal drinks! i am not really a starbucks person, but a couple of years ago i discovered the joys of a peppermint white chocolate mocha. i even went out in a snowstorm to get one! (and not a california snowstorm either--it was an oregon "don't go out unless there is an emergency" snowstorm.) and don't tell me just to get my seasonal drink in iced form, because you cannot drink a pumpkin spice latte if there isn't some steam rising from it. really. (although an iced peppermint white chocolate mocha might not be bad... )

and the number 1 reason that it shouldn't be 95 degrees in november is...

#1. it's too hot to get into the garage and get out the christmas decorations. "what?!?!" you may be thinking, "wait, isn't this blog about ridiculously hot weather in november?? why is she talking about christmas decorations??" because, at our house we prefer to put the christmas tree up before thanksgiving, and this year diandra has requested that it we put it up extra early--like in a week or two. we do this for a couple of reasons, but mostly because we love our christmas decorations. and since december has been getting busier and busier for us, the only way we really get to sit and enjoy the beauty is to put it up early. but don't worry--it isn't like the tree is in the front window.

as you can see, this unseasonably hot weather is annoying me. thankfully we are supposed to be back to our regular fall temperatures (65-70) by the weekend--back to our sweaters, boots, hot drinks, and a fire in the fireplace.

maybe we will even brave the garage and get out those christmas decorations...

happy anniversary . . .

so today . . . is my wedding anniversary.

i was going to post some wedding pictures in honor of the event, but when i checked last year's anniversary blog, guess what i found? yep, wedding pictures...

then i thought i would write about how wonderful my husband is. but i frequently mention his wonderfulness and even wrote a whole blog about it on valentines day a year ago...

and yet, it is our anniversary, and i hate to let it go by without writing something. but we had a very low-key type of day...

we started talking about what to do to celebrate our anniversary a couple of weeks ago. we talked about going out of town for a few days. we talked about going to catalina just for the day. but neither idea worked out for us... i thought about going to the beach, or maybe to downtown disney. but then today turned out to be HOT! really, really HOT!!!! so doing anything outside was not going to be an option for me...

instead, we went to wood ranch bar-be-que for lunch. the food was delicious, and it was air-conditioned. that made it an excellent choice for today. then we went to see a movie.

(this sounds simple doesn't it? but you know, if it was that easy, i wouldn't be blogging about it...)

before we left for lunch, we looked at the movie listings to decide what to see and where to see it. we were each looking at different programs on our phones. my phone said our chosen movie was not playing at the theater by our restaurant, but rollie said his program said it did. and he is so rarely wrong, that i just figured i had misread my movie listings. so when we were full of steak and salmon, we headed off to the theater. on foot. in the heat. all the way across the burning asphalt. but it was ok, because i knew the cool of the movie theater was at the end of our trek...

while rollie went to buy our tickets (at the outside window,) i found a tiny bit of shade to stand in. i could almost taste the cold soda i knew was waiting for my just inside those glass doors... and then rollie came toward me. ticketless.

my movie listings were right. our movie was not playing at this theater.

i wanted to gloat, really i did, but it was so HOT! and now, since we had foolishly decided to walk to the theater instead of drive, we had to walk back to the car. on foot. in the heat. across the burning asphalt. without setting foot in the cool of the theater lobby. only now we had to hurry if we were going to make it to the mall in time to see the movie...

i was driving. i cranked up the a/c and took off. we made it just in time, and spent the next hour and a half laughing in the coolness of the dark theater. when the movie was over, we were glad we were at the mall, because rollie wanted frozen yogurt. i pointed him toward yogurtland...

rollie had never eaten at yogurtland, so i explained to him that he needed to get a bowl, fill it with whatever flavors of yogurt he wanted, and then top it with whatever he wanted on top. when he was finished, they would weigh it to determine it's cost. then i went to find a table.

when i get frozen yogurt at yogurtland, i always get cheesecake yogurt with strawberries on top. always. and i only fill the giant bowl half full. rollie had blueberry yogurt and peach yogurt and a tiny bit of mango yogurt and green apple yogurt. AND it was topped with mango and kiwi chunks. AND his bowl was overflowing!

he likes fruit.

he took about three bites and got brain freeze! not good, considering he had quite a lot of frozen yogurt left in his bowl. and none of it was cheesecake, so i wasn't going to be helping him eat it. he worked his way down through the layers of fruit flavors until he finally reached the bottom of the bowl.

"now what?" he said.

i wasn't really in the mood for shopping. my intestines are still not happy from the ordeal i put them through last week. but we were at the mall. so i said, "how about the apple store? would you like to go visit the apple store?"

the apple store is new at our mall, so he had never seen it. and it is huge and full of apple toys to play with. i said, "i will sit on those couches over there outside the apple store, and you go in and play. i'll be perfectly comfortable until you come out." this seemed like the best plan to me. and it would have been, if rollie had seen the apple store instead of walking right past it...

have you ever seen an apple store?!?!?! they are big and bright and shiny! they scream, "COME IN AND LET US MAKE YOU DISSATISFIED WITH YOUR CURRENT ELECTRONICS!!!" it is like a vortex that sucks you in when you walk by... how can you miss that?!?!?

i don't know, but when i looked in through the big glass doors, i couldn't find rollie. i looked all around the store, but did not see his head towering above the rest. "oh well," i thought, "he must be behind one of those big signs." and then i went back to playing games on my phone.

ten minutes later, there he was in front of me. "wow, that was fast," i thought. only he informed me that hadn't been in the store yet. "i saw you sitting on the couches, but i walked right by the store," he said. "i walked clear down to the intersection where there was a directory, and then i saw i had to come all the way back!"

uh huh. ok.

he finally made his way into the bright and shiny apple store and came out half an hour later wishing for an ipad. (you see? that is what the apple store does! all you have to do is walk in there, and suddenly you think you can't live without something that has a glowing apple on it...)

and that was the end of our celebration. i know it probably doesn't sound very exciting, but it was. it was exciting, because we enjoy just hanging out together. it was exciting, because after all this time, we still choose each other. it was exciting, because i know rollie will always be there for me.

so, our anniversary...it isn't about what we are doing--it is about being together. hopefully for a long, long time!

happy birthday to yooouuuuuu!

so today . . . is my mom's birthday.

birthdays seem to be about how old you are, but i'm not going to tell you how old my mom is. because if you have ever met her, you wouldn't believe me anyway! no one does. sometimes people look at diandra and me and my mom, and shake their heads--because the math just doesn't work. diandra seems older than she is, my mom seems younger, and there i am in the middle . . . which is not a bad place to be :)

my mom is way younger than her birth certificate would show. i think that is because she has so many interests. and she is always learning new things--mostly electronic things. she is on facebook. she is on twitter. she sends text messages. she even uses the internet on her new phone to read my blog sometimes. and now she is learning to read from a kindle.

according to my friend wendy's facebook page, mark twain said, "age is an issue of mind over matter. if you don't mind, it doesn't matter." i think that is true. age is somewhat relative. it doesn't really matter how old a person is. what matters is who a person is.

my mom is smart and funny and well-read and organized. she loves her family and her dog and her friends and her church--even though none of them are perfect. well, except for the dog. she likes movies and puzzles and books and electronics. she hates to have her picture taken. (i know this about her, but i really wanted a picture for this blog. i searched my photo files, but mom sightings are few and far between! i was lucky to find this one.) she is strong and healthy and takes good care of herself, so that she will continue to be strong and healthy for a very long time.

my mom is awesome. i hope i am just like her when i grow up :)

happy birthday mom! i love you!!

vacation: day 8

so today . . . is not my dad's birthday. his birthday was yesterday.

i was going to write a birthday blog for him, but diandra beat me to it! and she wrote a great tribute to my dad, her gramps, so i am not even going to try to improve on it. i'm just glad we got to celebrate with him...

when diandra was five years old, my dad had open heart surgery. he had been in the mojave desert playing in his silver mine for a couple of weeks, and had driven all the way back to southern oregon in time for my birthday. my mom and grandma drove down from portland, and we had a nice weekend together celebrating our birthdays. then my dad drove five more hours to get home. he hadn't been feeling good since he left california, so when he got back to portland, he went to the doctor. his doctor did some tests and immediately sent him to the hospital for emergency heart surgery. IN AN AMBULANCE! because the doctor was afraid that he might have a heart attack before he could drive himself to the hospital--the test results were that bad.

yes, after driving 1000 miles by himself, he had to go the last few miles to the hospital in an ambulance.

my mom called to tell me, and diandra and i got in the car and zoomed up the freeway. i admit i was scared. i felt fortunate that my dad had made it safely to the hospital, but the surgery he was going to have was not a slam-dunk! i did not even want to think about what might happen--but i did, and it scared me. i didn't want to lose him. i wanted diandra to have experiences with my dad. i wanted my dad to have time to teach her about all the cool things he taught me. i wanted him to watch her grow up and have a part in affecting who she would be. and i was afraid that might not happen.

we waited, and we worried. he survived the surgery, but the recovery was difficult. thankfully my dad is strong, and he made it.

that was twenty years ago. if you met my dad today, you would never guess that he had undergone open heart surgery. because he has spent the last twenty years looking for rocks, golfing, hunting, painting our houses, fixing things, fishing (in rivers, lakes, and the ocean--if it is wet, and there are fish in it, he is there!) dredging for gold, skiing, and tromping around the mojave desert. sometimes he takes a break from all those high energy activities by reading or farming on facebook.

yes, my dad has a facebook page.

his newest endeavor is helping my brother with his business by attending sports shows.

when i mention that my dad is turning 80 this year, people always ask how he is. it is a reasonable question--many people his age are feeling the effects of being alive for just over three quarters of a century and are slowing down. but not my dad. he still gets up early, works all day, and goes to bed early. some days he is happy to sit in a chair and read, but most days you will find him fixing something for someone (because my dad can fix anything! really!) or fishing. or planning to go fishing. or calling my brother to see if he wants to go fishing.

there are days when i feel my age--days when my body won't do things the way it used to, or days when it takes me a little longer to get up from sitting on the floor, or days when i have an ache or a pain. i'm sure this is probably true for my dad too. he has some health issues, just as most of us over the age of 30 do. but on those days when his body is giving him grief, i hope he will either take some sort of pill, or sit down and rest for a while, and just remember how much we love him.

because we expect him to be around for a lot more years . . .. . . to continue teaching diandra all the cool stuff he taught us, and have a part in affecting who we are!

i love you, dad! and don't worry--i have plenty of material to write birthday blogs for a long, long time. just keep those birthdays coming . . . :)

independence day? or thanksgiving...

so today . . . i answered my phone and heard these words--"mom, i had an accident and i'm on the freeway..."

i immediately envsioned mangled metal, broken glass, and ambulances with stretchers.

"are you ok?" i tried very calmly to ask, thinking well at least she is able to dial her phone and speak.

"i think so, but i'm on the freeway and i spun around and i need you to call james and tell him i'll be late."

what?!?!?!?

ok, first of all "i had an accident, and i am on the freeway" are not words any mother wants to hear. ever. but when you live in a metropolitan area as we do, freeways are part of our everyday life. thousands of people drive on them every day, probably too fast, probably too close, and still make it safely to and from their destinations. but sometimes they don't. sometimes somebody cuts you off, forcing you into the lane next to you, where you apparently hit another car which results in your car spinning across four lanes of traffic, and then getting hit by another car before you slam nose first into the center divider. that's what happened to my precious daughter today. and yes, she was calling me from the car, sitting across the freeway, waiting for the police to arrive.

she was not calm. she was not driving her car. she was sitting in a puddle of spilled soda pop, surrounded by dust from the airbags, and unable to hear. she was scared. she started to get out of the car, only to have the driver from the car who hit her angrily come after her. she got back in her car and called me. because they were expecting her at the fireworks stand, and she didn't want everyone to worry when she didn't show up. that's why she called--so i could call james and tell him she might be a little late getting back . . .

thankfully she seems to be ok. and amazingly the car she was driving was not totaled. it should have been. she said, "i could just imagine angels all around the car, with their feet sticking out to take the impact of the car slamming into that divider." it's probably true. i was sitting at home, not driving, so my angels were probably hanging out with her angels today. thank goodness.

i was talking to a friend this morning about a situation with her daughter. and i said to her, "there comes a point where you can't protect her anymore. she has to make her own decisions and live with those consequences. it may be hard for you, but that's part of growing up. don't you trust that God with her?" i'm sure they were hard words to hear--they weren't particularly easy words to say, but they are true and i meant them.

as i was in my car on my way to the fireworks stand to deliver diandra's message, those words came back to me. i'll admit i was worried about my daughter. i was worried if she was going to be ok physically. i was worried if she was going to be ok emotionally. i was worried about the reaction of the car's owner. i was worried about the whole insurance issue. i was worried about how everything was going to get taken care of, when we are on our way out of town in two days. i was worried about how i was going to get everything done i needed to get done now that i was going to be spending the rest of the day at the fireworks stand. i was worried about if she would get a citation (she didn't.) and then i heard these words--"ok, so all that stuff you said this morning doesn't apply to you? you don't trust that God is in control here? you don't think He is looking out for diandra?"

shoot! i hate it when that happens . . .

because i do believe God is in control. i know that he can protect diandra when i cannot. so without any real information about the accident or how diandra was, i had to just let go and realize again that i can't always be with her. i can't always protect her. we live in a world where stuff happens, and it isn't always good. but it is ok, because God is watching out for us. He didn't protect diandra from the accident, but He did protect her. she walked away instead of having to be carried out on a stretcher.

i'm thankful every day for my daughter. i'm thankful there will be many more days ahead for us. i'm thankful for kind police officers who helped her at the accident site, and i am thankful for caring friends who stayed at the fireworks stand way past when they had planned. i'm thankful she was not driving her jeep. i'm thankful she has good insurance. and i'm thankful that we don't have to deal with emergencies alone, because God is always there.

this year july 4th is also thanksgiving :)