Mia's Mittens...and Other random Things

This was yesterday at work. They actually pay me to get up in front of 100 preschoolers and their teachers and sing and be silly.

It is cold here and I am trying to enjoy since I will soon be dwelling in the desert. The only problem is that last week it snowed there too.

It so rarely snows in the desert that there was an 11 year old quoted in local newspaper that has made me laugh all week. He had never seen snow and his quote was: "It's real cold, and it tastes like water!" Now, you might think he's not the sharpest tack on the board. But the reality is that snow rarely ever happens in the land of cactus.

As a matter of fact I was laughing at my brother who had slipped my sweet nieces hands into tube socks and then put plastic over them, and it was all held up with elastic hair ties. He was quite proud of the mock-mittens when he sent me the picture below.

My first thought was, where are that girls mittens! My second thought was, you learned that from Dad. My third was, Hey! where were our mittens as kids? But then I remembered, We lived in the desert!! No one has mittens in the desert!

The day after it snowed in AZ it snowed here. That's when I had also figured out that mittens are highly overrated. It only took a few minutes before the mittens were wet, their hands were cold, and the kids were complaining. What did I do? I found some socks!

But I didn't feel like walking upstairs to get some hair elastics, so I just fastened them the old fashioned way...

I duct taped them...just like Dad.



Snow in the desert. (and on the golf course!)



Mia's Mittens


La Vida Dulce!

I Am Not a Writer, But I Play One on the Blog

This afternoon I felt a rare bloggers spark that generated from the depths of the small place inside my brain that's called "creative", and I made a bee-line to the computer.

I am not a writer, but I do enjoy writing. I have a large box of journals that I have kept since I was probably about 10 years old. What i have noticed about writing is that it tends to come in waves of creativity that I cannot predict. One minute I might be folding socks and suddenly something will inspire me and, if i can get to pen or paper (or in this case keyboard), than all is happy and I can ride a wave that is fulfilling and fun.

Sometimes, if I know something is due, like the Christmas card letter or a piece I am working on for other projects like speaking to groups or whatever, then I might think about them and have spurts of creativity that allow for the piecing together of thoughts over time. But this is a rare thing.

Usually, when I have a stroke of writers luck I am running on the treadmill, or standing at the kitchen sink with my hands full of soapy water, or sitting at the intersection on the north side of town that has the longest red light in the United States (and I am not exaggerating!) And usually the "good-writing" thoughts don't come in the first 4 minutes before the light turns green but about 30 seconds before....long enough only to grab the pencil that fell in between the seats to the floor, along with three petrified french fries and that tube of lipstick I lost last year. But then you have to have paper.

I tried having pads of paper everywhere so I could jot down ideas or thoughts but that can be scary in many, many ways...have you ever tried to write and run?

The hardest part is that often the creative spark fizzles out almost as quickly as it starts. Sometimes you can work through distractions. Meaning that people could be talking to you, or waiting for you, or jumping on your toes and you would still manage to get your thoughts out. But more often you can be filled with inspiration and blink the wrong way and it gets jostled around somewhere in the brain, never to be found again.

But I digress.

Today I was ready to blog. I wasn't exactly sure what I would write about but I was going to look at the handful of posts that I had started and saved as drafts and attempt to finish one of those. I was ready to take care of those silly photos that refused to be seen in the last entry.I was going to get things on the old blog cleaned up a bit.

Then I was going to write about my last full week of work before this chapter of life closes. I was ready to tell you about my last Chapel Day at the preschool, and how I had held it together through all my favorite songs, until one the teachers came up and hugged me and I dissolved into tears. Right there on the stage. In front of all those sweet children. I don't much like crying in front of poeple and I am almost always surprised when it happens.

I was ready to write.

But Blogger was shut down for maintenance and my creative balloon deflated.

Snow Angels

Yesterday we finally got snow. After waiting and waiting we can say we have seen every season in this beautiful state in full!How fun it was to wake up yesterday a bit before 6 in the morning and see that it was steadily snowing! It was all I good do to wait until 7 to wake up the kids.

Random Poll - January

I'm procrastinating.

I have done some major overhauling on our house in the last 10 days and I think I may have hit my peak. The motivation by excitement and pressure is slowly starting to fade and now it comes down to pure "gotta do it" attitude and the pleasure of crossing things of my ever growing list.

Moving. It's a lot of work.

You know what is really funny? We have a formal living room that we call the Yellow room because we don't formal-ly live in there. It is home to my treadmill and piano and currently is the room that is used for weight lifting, martial arts practice, and light saber fighting.

True confession: When we moved here 22 months ago I was uncertain where I should hang all of our portraits. There are about seven or eight large portraits of the kids at various ages. Since we weren't going to be in that room much I wasn't sure where to hang them after I unpacked them from the move so I stacked them neatly on the piano in hopes to get to them soon. I never got back over to that stack to organize and hang them up.

This weekend, I picked them up, dusted them off, wrapped them back up in movers paper and put them back into a moving box.

Our house should be on the market by the end of the week and when that is done I will feel better...mostly because by then I should be done organizing and deep cleaning.

But on to other things...

Did you make a New Years Resolution?

I resolved to eat more chocolate and to have the pictures I just re-packed hanging on a wall in my house-in-the-desert sometime before December 31, 2007.

We'll see what happens.

My New Years resolution track record is not really very good.

Airplane blog

Several weeks ago I made a weekend trip to Texas. On 12/14, while in flight I suddenly had a need to write. These are some of my observations while in flight. I kept forgetting to post so here it is. Happy reading!

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I'm ready. I've got my big hair and blue jeans and the captain has just come over the intercom announcing that our flight will arrive in just over an hour.

Texas! Don't Mess with It!

I'm flying solo for a much anticipated wedding and to visit my girlfriends. But the next time I go I won't be alone. This is my second visit since we moved and next time, if I don't take my kids to see their state of birth, they may sue me for independence.

Right now I am sitting in seat 11A. A window seat. There is a college aged girl sitting next to me who is studying from a text that must weigh as much as her and I combined. She looks young to me, probably in her early twenty's. I probably look incredibly old. Why do I say that? Because when I was twenty-two I thought thirty-four was older than dirt.

She is reading Homer's The Illiad. IN an attempt to make conversation I asked her if she was reading it for school. She said, no. I was actually very surprised. I had asked the question expecting an obvious response. Who, I ask you, reads The Illiad when it isn't expected of you? She told me that she had never read it and thought that perhaps it was one that she should read. This is when, practicing my best Texan drawl, I told her that there are these beautiful little inventions called Cliff Notes for such things.

She laughed in a charitable kind of way and hasn't spoken to me since.

I offered her some gum and she declined. She probably thinks that a middle aged woman with a Texas cheerleader drawl and big hair who reads Cliff Notes in lieu of real literature might not be the greatest conversationalist. Or she may just not like peppermint gum. But then again trying to balance that towering textbook might have her mind a bit occupied.

I, on the other hand, gave up reading on this flight because I kept reading the same paragraph over and over again. I wonder if my seat mate had noticed that I hadn't actually turned a page. I am currently reading a book called A Girls Best Friend by K. Billerbeck. It's an excellent read, but I am far too excited about seeing my best friends, and sitting so close to this gal is distracting.

Wait! She just got up to use the powder room and the text she is reading is sitting in the chair next to me. It is a very large Accounting Book....Huh. Maybe she will balance my checkbook for me while we are sitting here... But anyway, as I was saying, she is reading fine literature and learning to push numbers, and I am just trying to get through my latest chik lit book. It's a shame really. Here I have three full hours (four since my flight was delayed) of uninterrupted reading time but I just can't do it peacefully and contentedly sitting next to strangers.

Speaking of time, isn't time weird when you are traveling? It's like the minute you step into an airport "time" as we know it ceases to exist. Traveling long distances seems to make time feel weird...i don't know, maybe I'm just dehydrated and feeling "heady" from all the hair product I'm wearing.

When I started to write this there was a baby of about eighteen months sitting in 10E with her mom. The baby was crying for quite some time while her parents desperately tried to comfort her and make her quiet. I found myself caught between two feelings.

1. Compassion.

2. Annoyance.

On one hand, I want to reach over and tell her that I can't blame her sweet bundle of joy because I, a thirty-four year old woman, would also like to scream because I am tired of sitting in this cramped space near Smarty-Girl.

But on the other merciless hand, I want to give her that "I've-been-a-mother-for-more-years-than-you" speech that goes something like this: I know you are young. And your daughter is quite precious. But are you aware that there is a marvelous invention (and beautiful gift to Motherhood really) called Children's Benadryl? It's a miracle worker!

But it's not my style to give unsolicited advice to strangers. So I will do the same thing today that I do every time I am on a flight with a crying baby. I'll wink at the mom and tell her she did a good job, and that I have been there before. Only because that is what some kind lady said to me once a long time ago. And I have never forgotten it.

Well I should wrap up and try to read.

La Vida Dulce - from somewhere over Texas!