More Than A Song

Just some random things for now!

1. I’ve made pretty good progress on cleaning up my email. I think I had gotten my inbox down to about 50 something yesterday! I’ll probably accumulate a few more than that until I have time to purge again but hopefully this has gotten me over the hump. Some of the ones left will be easy to delete.
2. Arghhh! They brought more dirt for the front yard late yesterday and I didn’t want any there! I thought it was just fine and dandy the way it was! Now Don has told me that we need to start watering it so the grass will fill in but I really think that means ME since I’m the one at home. I really don’t like dragging hoses/sprinklers all over, my backyard is pretty big.
3. I’m behind on doing graduation gifts this year. I usually like to monogram fleece throws or make towel wraps for girls. There’s a few local kids I need to do that for but have not started! I’m going to a niece’s graduation tonight but think we’ll do money for that one.
4. Looking forward to some summer movies! Pirates of the Caribbean and I think maybe Ocean’s 13…….seems like there might be something else coming out also that I thought looked good.

AND…………..what the heck was that on Lost last night! I’m beginning to think the show is so appropriately named because I’m getting more and more confused/lost. So please clue me in family and friends! I thought we were watching a back story on Jack up until the end of the show, what was all that?
This might be a show I should have waited until it was over and then just watched the whole thing on dvd!
Tell me what you thought and what all that was about!

This might be a case of that old thing, “be careful what you wish for.”
So what do you get when you have this:

and then you mix it with more:

You might get something……..
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Last week at the end of our weekend with the family, we celebrated Mother’s day a bit! We went to church in Jackson with Don’s sister, all her family, his mom and a couple of our kids. The church they go to now has 3 services, we picked the 9:30 one so we could all eat dinner together afterwards. It’s a big contemporary, newer church and we enjoyed being there. Ate at an Italian place for lunch and they brought the moms a dessert and out of the ones we sampled, I’d have to say I liked the tiramisu the best! But I would have picked that to eat anyway!
We gave gifts to my MIL at dinner…..she got clothes from some, a blouse I think was another and some books. My kids gave me a couple of things too. The youngest 2 got me Bath and Body products, always fun to have. Another gave me something I wasn’t familiar with, an Er’Go soy candle………and oh my, it smells SO good! I’ll enjoy burning it this summer. And the other thing I got from my daughter, a new purse. I decided to show a picture so Stacy could see it! She hates changing purses out, with the seasons even! Me, I change purses almost as often as I change clothes! Maybe not quite that often but I kinda want it to go with what I have on you know……..we might have to find you a new purse next time we shop Stacy.

The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg was on my spring reading thing list and I finished it up over the weekend. I read it a bit slowly I think because parts of it seemed so sad to me and made me teary. Betta Nolan and her husband John live in Boston where both have successful careers, love each other deeply but live a life unto themselves. They have no children, relatives or friends. (I wonder if there are people that actually have no family) When John dies of cancer, she honors her promise to him and does exactly what he urged her to do. She sells their big Boston home, drives to the middle of the country and finds a small town in Illinois to restart her life. There she buys an old Victorian home, connects with a few people in town and tracks down her old college girlfriends that she never stayed in touch with after marriage. It’s her story of grief and trying to find pleasure and joy in simple everyday things.
There were sentences I wrote down that I wanted to think about for a while afterward……”don’t let your habits become handcuffs“. Something I need to remember; we don’t always have to do something just because that’s the way it was done before, we can try new things or have new adventures!
“You think you get used to the death in the dying. But after the dying is done, you see how the end is the beginning“. I had to think about that line for a bit but it reminded me of something my MIL told Don after we lost his dad at a relatively young age…..she said, “now I have to learn to live by myself”. When one stage of life is over, whether it’s graduation, marriage, children, or death etc. and it seems to be the end of something but it can really be a beginning to something new. Sometimes I think each day is like this, we have a chance to start over again every morning.
Something else I thought the character found was that friends are important to us, necessary in our lives. She had not maintained friendships with anyone for all the time she was married but tried to rectify that when she moved. I think it’s good that we have friends that are like minded and that we cultivate those relationships. Not only do friends bring pleasure to our lives, we can learn from each other and be of help in times of need.
There were just a few things that I thought were never fully explained in the end or maybe it was to be left up to your imagination on how they worked out. The ending seemed to be just a bit rushed , maybe I wasn’t quite ready for it. But all in all it was a book I really enjoyed reading!

(note: I don’t think I was clear in the post about the book, but the book isn’t a christian fiction book….just a regular ‘ole book! I didn’t word something quite right I think and I’m sorry about that. I’m emailing a few in case they don’t see this.)

Last week I got a bit off with meals because hubby was out of town, no point making a big casserole just for me! I sorta like it when it’s less cooking though, maybe that’s not a bad thing. 😉
Hopefully I’ll stay on track this week, unless he has to make a last minute out of town work trip .
Thanks Laura for getting us all organized with meals each week!

Sunday…..Shrimp & wild rice casserole, peas (because hubby was gone & we didn’t get to it last week)
Monday….Crockpot Chicken Santa Fe, salad, chips…..our night to eat with friends & watch the 24 finale!
Tuesday….Quesadillas (didn’t get to this either)
Wednesday..baked fish, green beans
Thursday….pasta salad with ham, corn on the cob
Friday…….grilled deer burgers and maybe roasted sweet potatoes

Update: You guys did good! Some knew it, like Kim who’s been a nurse and Claire, who’s in med school! And I think the rest of you knew it had something to do with the eyes.
exophthalmic: abnormal protrusion of the eyeballs, protrusion of the eyeball caused by disease or injury. Claire emailed me all the technical stuff! In a disease like hyperthyroidism there is always a hormone being made that leads to deposits behind the eyeballs and pushes them out to give the person a “bug eyed” appearance.
The book I’m reading is The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg. The character was looking at houses & about to ring a doorbell & hoped she didn’t look overeager. The sentence: “I thought surely I would look at least somewhat exopthalmic.”
I probably should have figured it out but it wasn’t happening when I read it at midnight!

I saw where sis Stacy and blog friend Debi both did posts yesterday about words they had run across reading. I think I did one quite a while back about it also. I usually keep a list of words while reading to look up when I get the chance, sometimes I have to do it right away if I can’t quite make out the meaning from the sentence. Last night I started a new book and almost immediately ran across a word I don’t think I’ve seen before but it was too late and I was too tired to look it up then! After looking it up today I might should have been able to figure it out but I don’t think I ever would have. So I’m feeling especially dumb today! Used to think I had a fair vocabulary; I’m a college graduate you know and did teach school for a year or 2 before kids! (Ok, so it was only kindergarten and that doesn’t make me a rocket scientist). Since my kids have been away at school the last couple of years I’ve been reading a lot more than I used to, because I can and because I have the time. I thought reading was good for you but it’s making me feel so, I don’t know, inadequate somehow! Who knew there were this many words out there!
Now that you know I’m not very good about keeping my emails cleaned up, I guess now you’ll see that I may not be very smart either! Because you may all know this word already and then I’ll feel even dumber!
Here’s what I ran across last night:
exophthalmic

Tell me what you think it is! I’ll post the definition later on tonight or early in the morning; that way you’ll have time to show your knowledge and expertise. 😀 I’m sorta hoping though that there’s one person somewhere that will be like me and not be familiar with it!

My inbox does NOT look like the little image you see here. My outlook express has many, too many, emails still in it! I think I have about 150 unread ones, there’s no telling how many I have that have been read but I’ve just left them there! I’m not very good about keeping it all cleaned out…..the kids will send emails with pictures, I’ll leave them in the inbox instead of going ahead and saving them to a folder on my computer! Stacy might send me recipes and yep, I just leave ’em where they are. Someone might send Don email regarding work and I HAVE to leave those until I can show it to him because he doesn’t know how to “turn the email on”!! Silly boy. Or I’ve gotten something I need to respond to so I keep it as a reminder to reply, and some have info like addresses/phone numbers that I need to file away but haven’t done yet. I know it would be so much easier to deal with if I get it all cleaned out and organized, then maybe I wouldn’t be so overwhelmed with how many are there. So, I’m going to spend a couple of days working on it hoping that I can get it all down to a manageable level. Some may only get moved to a new folder but I’m betting a big majority of what I have could be deleted! I’ve tried doing this before and after several hours I get tired and frustrated and give up. So my mission for the next few days, or over into the weekend, is to keep at it and clean up all the folders in my outlook express!

Quick questions: Do you keep yours all cleaned out? Do you keep a copy of all your sent emails? (My sent folder probably has the most in it right now) Care to tell me how many you have in your inbox!
Sis Stacy just might have me beat in how many she has!

Several people asked about one of the things on my menu this week and when I fixed this once before I got some comments about it too. It’s the Shrimp and Wild Rice Casserole that I made about a month or so ago, then used the leftovers for quesadillas………they were probably the BEST quesadillas I’ve had in quite some time! Not sure if it’s because they were different than what I usually fix or if they were really that good; I’m voting for really good. 😆 It’s an easy recipe and for us there was plenty leftover to make the quesadillas with.
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I’m soooo tired from a really long weekend with family and extended family; can’t get motivated to do anything today. Just got home last night and the house looks like stuff was just dropped wherever, which basically is what happened! I didn’t get a lot of sleep and am really dragging today. But……..we had fun! Don and I left early early Friday morning heading down to the Jackson area for the weekend where we all gathered for the big occasion, David’s graduation! Yay!
There was golf for the boys Friday morning while Stacy and I shopped, one of my favorite activities! The kids started getting in that afternoon and we ordered pizza and 10 of us hung out at Stacy & Tim’s house. They are still trying to figure out what hit ’em! Saturday morning was the graduation, lunch was in a private room of a local restaurant with 16 of our family along with the families of about 12 or so of David’s friends. Don and some of the kids went to see Spiderman that afternoon. Kathryn stayed at the hotel with Katelyn and I kept Ava Clair there as well so they could nap. Don’s sister and her kids joined us for supper that night and we all went to another restaurant to eat and visit. Church with them on Sunday morning, then out to eat again! I don’t need to eat out again for a while! We visited with David briefly afterwards, then stopped at his sister’s house before heading home in time for me to watch Survivor. Don hit golf balls until it was too dark to see.
I’m glad I didn’t have to go anywhere this morning! I’ll post a few pictures and then maybe I can get to some cleaning, unless I opt for a nap instead!
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It’s Monday and I’ve had such a long weekend……seeing lots of family, friends, Mother’s day and a graduation all rolled into one! Had a great time but I’m so tired I can’t see straight, much less even try to plan meals for the week! But I’m kinda, sorta trying and it all might change as the week progresses depending on schedules and such. Hope Mother’s day was fun for you all!
I’ll try to post pictures later from our weekend.

Monday……baked salmon, green beans
Tuesday …..Shrimp and wild rice casserole, salad
Wednesday..church supper
Thursday…..chicken (maybe in the crockpot), veggies
Friday………quesadillas with the leftover shrimp stuff; I did that the other time I made this and they were the best quesadillas!
weekend…..too far away now for me to think about!

Thanks again Laura for hosting us each week. Be sure to visit her to see the other participants because I’m sure they are much more together this week than me!

For years my husband has used these black ink pens, we call them Uni-Ball pens because that’s what is written on the cap but not sure you can see that in this pic. For some reason I have never liked them. Don loves them though and he keeps them with him at all times. But he has a bad habit of keeping them in his shirt pocket; not such a bad thing if you remember to put the cap back on BEFORE putting it in your pocket! He’ll get involved doing something at work, invariably forget and into his pocket it goes….he never notices until he comes home and I point it out. It leaves a big black ink spot on the pocket that I’ve never EVER been able to get out! About a month or so ago we bought him several new pairs of khaki pants. While paying we noticed that one pair was considerably higher priced than the others even though they were all the same brand. I wanted to put those back and keep looking but the chances of going to another store after we had been in that one so long were just about nil! Plus he wanted them because they were such a nice pair. Recently he came home from work after wearing the expensive ones and showed them to me with a spot on them……he said it was one of those ink stains from his pen! I’m ashamed to say I was not very nice about it. 😥
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Annie tagged me for this meme/survey that’s making the rounds in the blogsphere. It’s rather long so I randomly left some off, oops! If you want to see the longer version, check Annie’s post here…….other people have done this one as well so you might see it floating around. I won’t tag anyone but would love to see what you write if you decide to do it!

FOODOLOGY
Q. What is your salad dressing of choice?
A. Honey mustard

Q. What is your favorite fast food restaurant?
A. Sonic

Q. What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of?
A. chocolate! (but I’m trying not to eat it now!)

Q. What is your favorite type of gum?
A. don’t chew gum!

TECHNOLOGY
Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
A. family photo

Q. How many televisions are in your house?
A. 3

BIOLOGY
Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
A. No, unless tonsils or babies count.

Q. When was the last time you had a cavity?
A. don’t remember but it’s been a few years.

Q. What is the heaviest item you lifted last?
A. 50 pound bag of mulch

Q. Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
A. no.

DAREOLOGY
Q. Would you walk naked for a half mile down a public street for $100,000?
A. NEVER!

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
A. NO

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000?
A. probably not

Q. Would you pose nude in a magazine for $250,000?
A. NO!

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
A. no.

Q. Would you give up watching television for a year for $25,000?
A. maybe!

Q. Give up MySpace forever for $30,000?
A. Yes, easy because I don’t use myspace!

DUMBOLOGY
Q: What is in your left pocket?
A. nothing

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
A. it’s pretty funny!

Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
A. both

Q: How many pairs of flip-flops do you own?
A. several

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A. Stacy says I want to be just like her when I grow up!

RANDOMOLOGY
Q: First place you went this morning?
A. bathroom

Q: What can you not wait to do?
A. see my kids this weekend!

Q: What’s the last movie you saw?
A. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Q: Are you a friendly person?
A. I think so

Years ago one Christmas, our youngest 2 children got a puppy and a kitty from Santa! That story is another one all on it’s own but for another day maybe. Elizabeth’s little kitty had kittens about 6-8 months after she got her! She would have loved to keep them all but I already thought the mama was enough; we did let her keep one male kitten and she was happy to have 2. They have stayed here for a while now even though Elizabeth has been gone away to school. I knew she couldn’t have them in the dorm but I really wanted her to take them to her apartment……that didn’t happen! Then I hoped she would take them to Tuscaloosa but she said her roommate was allergic! I was becoming resigned to the fact that she would probably never take them with her and they’d live with me forever. She asked about them frequently and would make sure I was feeding them…..for the record, I did feed them! They were outdoor cats who would disappear at different times and come home again a few days later or maybe a week. But recently the mama cat went off and now it’s been 2 weeks since we’ve seen her. I know Elizabeth will be sad that her cat’s gone; we’ve told her about it but she’s been so busy with exams and the end of school that I don’t think it will hit her until she comes home to visit. Then it might make it more real. I really didn’t want anything to happen to them on my “watch” but I guess if they were going to be here permanently, it would be inevitable at some point. For the first week, Arthur, the remaining cat, would meow and whine almost every time he saw us. I think he didn’t quite know what to do without Scraps, the missing cat, but he seems a little more like himself now.
Realized as I was looking for pictures that I don’t have as many as I first thought, hope Liz has some she took with her camera! These 2 cats looked almost alike but the one on the right in this shot is the one that’s gone now, she was a bit smaller than Arthur and lighter color around her face. They have a little perch to jump up on where their dishes are.

This might be the last pictures I took of her, during the winter when some of the kids were home……Don brought the cat in and baby Katelyn wanted desperately to hold her/touch her!

The hardest is probably not knowing what happened…….at times I think I’ll miss her being gone.

That doesn’t mean I have to like them though, does it? Because I’m really not a “critter” person, don’t like lots of them & wish they would leave my house alone! We worked in the yard a while late Saturday afternoon and again Sunday afternoon before night church. Both days we had an unwelcome guest come up on our back porch, right in broad daylight and with us standing there! The very idea, this thing has some nerve. 😆 Don has told me before that we’ve had raccoons come around at night to the porch, eating out of our cat dishes but this is the first time we’ve seen them in the daytime. The neighbor thinks it might be a mama with babies up under their house, icky! At least it’s not under my house. We think it might be desperate for food for some reason, babies or not, is why it’s coming around during the day.
Snapped a few pictures one of the days…ugh, not sure why though because they just aren’t cute!
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Another Monday and time to plan for the week. Thanks Laura for hosting us…..I think we all enjoy seeing what others are cooking and getting new recipes to try!

Sunday………Deer tenderloin, couscous, baby peas
Monday……..leftovers for hubby, I’m going to a mother-daughter banquet with SIL and MIL at her church
Tuesday……..Hamburgers, we bought tickets for a kids fund raiser at church
Wednesday…church supper
Thursday……Fish (baked or grilled), broccoli
Friday………..eating with family!

Now that I’ve got it all written down it seems I’m having a short week! I might not should have done a menu this time, but this helps me so much during the week to already have a game plan. So I’m putting it down anyway to help me stay on track!
Have a great Monday!