Monday, February 21, 2011

Oh Bother!

 

Do you ever just have one million things bouncing around in your head? I look at my to do list from last month & even last year (?!) & it seems that the more things change the more things stay the same. I think it’s helpful to make a list of (all) some of the things. There is nothing on my list that is particularly important but all of these ticky-tacky little things keep me occupied.

In no special order:

  • Where are my keys?? I vaguely remember realizing that I was doing something that was going to make me misplace my keys. Luckily, we have a spare set that is usually in the right place when we need them. However, every single day when I go to the gym the snooty front desk clerk sneers at me & asks if I have found my keys yet because she doesn’t want to type my 10-letter name into the computer.
  • What color should we paint the family room? And should we paint it or should we pay someone to come & risk life & limb to reach to 20-foot ceilings?
  • Where are we going to buy crickets for the frog? Cold weather has made the little creatures scarce. He will eat worms too but it feels like spoon-feeding. I have to hold the worm gently in front of the frog’s face until he decides to eat. When he lunges at the chopsticks, I jump & the worm flies around in the aquarium & burrows into a hole. Nice!

image imageimage image image

  • Which color of granite should we have installed in the kitchen? I had picked out Giallo Napoli (very similar to Santa Cecilia) but when I went to pick out the slabs, the color was different – darker & more golden. Now I am wondering if we should glaze the cabinets so it will be easier to match the granite. (We currently have natural maple-colored cabinets.)
  • What is the best way to back up my photos & genealogy & other important documents? I have external hard drives but no regular time for doing it. It would be great if I could just have it automatically compare between two files & update everything.
  • How should I rearrange my office so that it can include scrapbooking & our everyday life? What is the best desk? Why does that beautiful window take up 1/3 of the available wall space? Ryan is getting old enough that he wants his own room.
  • What do you do with old textbooks? Goodwill will not take them. And they’re getting old.
  • Where am I going to find the motivation to lose the remaining 25 pounds? I am pretty habituated to eating clean foods (& I feel pretty rotten when I go astray!) but have gotten lazy on my food journal. I love LoseIt! & when I journal what I eat, the scale moves.
  • Will my hamstring ever stop bothering me??? The logical answer is rest – but I rested for 1-1/2 weeks following the half marathon & as soon as I ran today, the pain returned.
  • And why can’t I make my desktop computer do what I would like it to? Since the dawn of time (or close to whenever I bought this particular computer) there has been an issue with the graphics card. If I update the computer, everything crashes frequently. I am now 42 updates behind though & iTunes will no longer update our toys. It takes A LONG LONG TIME to download the software to perform the updates & then I get wonky error messages time & time again.  I have typed this entire blog entry, uploaded pictures from the state cross-country meet, & skipped around Facebook a few times trying to wait for  the download to complete. Ugh! I am about ready to pull out the tape measure to see if the progress line is moving or halted.
  • Time passes … still waiting on the computer!

Update: I wrote this original post in November. And it is true. The problems are pretty much the same, except I found my keys. I took Ryan to the injury-fracture-after-hours clinic because he hurt his hand or his foot or something. (With six injury-related visits in a year, it’s hard to remember.) As I exited the car, I prepared for a long visit by leaving my purse in the car & taking the laptop case with me. I left the keys (Scott’s copy of my van key) & my cell phone in the car & locked the car. I didn’t realize what had happened until we started walking out of the clinic & I realized I had no keys. The spare set was missing at home & Scott was in a church meeting without his phone turned on. (Lovely…) My visiting teacher’s husband & three children came to the clinic to pick us up & take us home to wait for Scott. When Scott arrived home, he looked in his suit coat pocket (?!) and there were my missing keys & cards for every possible business & the gym.

Just so you know…

imageThe other night I went to the movie I Am Number Four with a few friends. I hadn’t really checked out kids-in-mind but I had sort of surmised from her description that it might be a little scary. And generally, I don’t watch scary movies (because they make me SCARED). As the previews started, I started getting a little nervous. You know… plugging my ears & covering my eyes… not one preview was for a movie that I would have any desire to see! If I didn’t shield my eyes or plug my ears, I could have nightmares for WEEKS (and possibly even years). They tried to find another movie for me to see but it IS February after all. (I guess the flops come out in February excepting the Bieber movie…) I endured the movie well – the lead actor helped. I was even entertained.  I took one break when things got intense. And I giggled when things got really stupid, predictable, & intense. I missed Twilight (on purpose) but I think that this movie probably had a similar target audience. When I arrived home, I was able to relax & enjoy the evening with the family (probably watching basketball). Only once, during a commercial, did I have to do a double-take when I saw someone wearing a hoodie. (The bad guys wore them too.)  So… now you know that I am afraid of any kind of suspense, drama, action, etc. I will not go see the horrorific horror flicks, but sometimes James Bond or Inception or Inkheart are so good that I’ll endure the uneasiness. But I usually wait until I am at home with my laptop on my lap to keep me warm & distract me from anything remotely intense.