Migration’s not just for geese

I’m consolidating blogs.  Last year I had done a little blogging on MySpace before I discovered that all my friends lived at Facebook.  In the interest of simplifying my life, I’m closing down the MySpace account, but I don’t want to lose my blog entries, so I’ll be migrating some of my posts over here (I may like backup as a pantry option, but not in cyberworld.)

Since we’ve been talking about hair this week, here’s a little something from July of last year that will show you that the hair thing is a constant obsession.  And try to ignore the odd spacing and line breaks.  Apparently “copy and paste” brought over some funky code that I can’t seem to undo.  Sigh.

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The Discount Hair Place/ Finding a New Hairdresser

I’m in between hairdressers.  Translated, that means that my old hairdresser, whom I adored, got so popular that it was impossible to book him in the same week that my hair decided to go out of style, and he jacked his prices up beyond my personal comfort level.  And really, if I’m perfectly honest, it’s also because I cheated on him while I was in Oklahoma and had someone else cut and color my hair, and I have this weird thing about cheating on your hairdresser, so I refused to do the walk of shame back into his salon with my grown out highlighted Oklahoma head.  As much as I loved him, it was time to move on.

The beauty of moving on in these kind of relationships is that it allows you to reset the bar in terms of what you spend on personal grooming.  I live in a metropolitan area where even the Mitchell’s charges $115 for a cut and color. As my friends will tell you, I’ve had varying degrees of success on the color front.  For the record, I’m blaming the lighting at my local Rite Aide for some of the more interesting colors my head has recently sported. The hairdresser side of the equation has been a complete and total bust.

In my search, I had to immediately strike out my first NC hairdresser – I cheated on him three years ago with my most recent ex-hairdresser.  I thought I could get away with it, but now he’s opened a new shop right by my grocery store and I occasionally see him and it’s getting to be a covert operation just to get out of produce without being spotted.  I’m seriously considering switching grocery stores.  I went to another one whose name is Britain, but apparently that’s not her original name, but she told me if I come back she’d tell me why.  I sense drama, and I get enough of that on Days of Our Lives.  So she’s out.

Yesterday I stopped in a new salon that just opened up next to my dry cleaners.  I had three bad hair days in a row, so it was time to get something done about it.  The sign said “walk-ins welcome”, so I went in.  And they had people available to help me.  Except for one thing.  I apparently was not the target audience for this particular salon. Which was not evident until I went in through the door. All the signs on the outside make it look like a typical place.  All the signs on the inside are geared toward a different clientele with different hair issues than mine.  And now they’re looking at me with a slightly wide-eyed look and asking if they can help, (do they think I’m lost?) and what can I do?  I can’t walk out.  That might be considered rude.   And then I sit down and look on the wall, only to discover that she’s just received her cosmetology license.  This has disaster written all over it.

Fortunately, there were no major issues.  I decided to go with a bob, which was not my first choice of hairstyle, but I’ve heard it’s the easiest to do, so we went with it.  I paid my $20 (I paid the extra $6 for the blow dry – I was feeling rich) and was out the door.  I didn’t get asked when I wanted to schedule my next appointment, so apparently they don’t want me back.

The search continues.

At least I won’t have to change drycleaners.

Fill you in Friday

In which I catch you up on those little things that amused me this week but somehow I couldn’t manage to make them coherently fit into any of my blog posts.

1.  This light has been on for about six weeks now.  And I keep checking it like I’m supposed to.  It’s flat.  Now what?  Note to GM:  If you want me to do something about it, you might want to update the software so it’ll spell it out for me.

2.  The light may have been on for longer than six weeks, but most days I don’t notice the light because I can’t get past THIS sight that greets me every morning as I climb into the driver’s seat.

Traveler coffee cup – empty.

Granola bar wrapper – empty

Advil bottle – empty

Calendar – expired three months ago

Gym card – motivation expired at about the same time as the calendar

3.  Remember this?

It now looks like THIS!

4.  And just in time for our weekly installment of “What the boys destroyed today”, I think they may have gotten into my lipstick.

On the left is what my 947 tubes of lipstick always look like.  On the right is the 948th one. 

And not that it matters to anyone, but I have lipstick issues.  Every single tube I have is named something different, yet I always manage to buy the exact same shade.

What does your lipstick say about you?  Click here and let me know.

5.  Remember I was going to give up cokes?  Just because it seemed like the thing to do?  Apparently I am back into drinking cokes now.  Amy and I went to TARGET yesterday (still working on that blog sponsorship thang) and I bought this.

It looked like juice and Amy said it was delicious.  I never thought about the whole SODA thing.

Anyway, it’s good, and it’s at T-A-R-G-E-T.

Have a nice day.

Thank you for being a friend

My friend just pulled out of the driveway, all packed into a car with her husband and her little ones, headed north to life in Massachussetts.  I think she may have packed a little piece of my heart.  Or maybe that little gate that keeps the tears from spilling out.

For 20 years I have been blessed by her friendship.  This picture tells you all you need to know about two young women who met on a college campus in a sleepy little town.  She was the bright and shiny one with the sparkly earrings and the effervescent personality that had the legions of admirers.  I was the more reserved one that gave out her phone number and who grew to confidence because of her encouragement.

It’s a friendship born out of late night trips to Subway to eat Otis Spunkmeyer chocolate chip cookies and talk about the things that young girls talk about.  It is an easy friendship that has lately seen a lot of hard things that coeds in a sub shop couldn’t have imagined would come.

To be invited to participate in the sacred moments of life with someone is such a privilege, isn’t it?

Ride ‘em Cowboy!

It’s a pony kind of day.  No crud around. Here’s my squash blossom hanging out with me in the car on our way to Duke.  He’s VERY happy to be ditching school, can’t you tell? I swear most days my kids are in school.  Just not this week.

The pic above is the Children’s Hospital where two of my kids have had three surgeries.  I’m just going to say now that Duke better give us a full ride when it comes to college, because I feel like I’ve been on the pre-pay plan for several years now….

And here we are going into our favorite place…Miss Katie’s Bakery (otherwise known as Lenox Baker where our favorite therapist, Katie, works).

And then I took my precious charge back to school and then….wait for it…are you ready for this…GOT MY HAIR CUT because it looked so awful in the pics I posted when I was knitting that it has bugged the ever lovin’ life out of me since then. And now you know that the Carpool Queen is really Dorothy Hammill.

And YES my house is a disaster.  But apparently I’m vain enough to care more about what you think about my hair than my house.

And I stretched my arm farther this time so my face wouldn’t be so round.

Try a little tenderness…

“When I grow up, I’m going to be  a billionaire and invent a robot that does my homework for me and cleans my room.  I’ll call it a Botler.”

You have a Botler.  It’s called “Mom”.

And honey, you realize that you have to do your homework now while you’re a poor 3rd grader so you’ll know HOW to build a Botler and make your billions.  And are you going to take care of me in my old age and make sure my suite in the very nice assisted living facility is situated right next to George Clooney’s?

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I had fun this morning taking one of the boys out of school and over to the doctor’s office for a checkup.  I had planned on taking pictures of us playing hooky and drinking milkshakes from McDonald’s, but I realized that he might not want his medical privacy violated.  Especially if he really invents the Botler and makes billions of dollars later on down the road…can’t hurt to be nice to the ones that pick out your nursing home.  And I definitely don’t want to mess up my chance with Clooney.

While we’re at the doctor’s office, he picks up a brochure that deals with his particular affliction and begins reading.

“Hey, Mom!  Did you know that positive reinforcement helps kids with *XYZ*?

Hey, Son!  Did you know that a glass of wine never hurts their mom, either? And have you seen the sticker chart on the refrigerator?  The one that has, umm, NO STICKERS on it?

“Mom, it says that sarcasm doesn’t help.”

I could not make this up if I tried.

kfb OR How not to swear while knitting…

I have good leftovers today.  That has absolutely nothing to do with anything else you will read.

So I’m a knitter, you know.  Ha ha – ‘fess up, sister! Let me rephrase.  I learned how to knit a scarf about six months ago.  And I’m oh-so-proud of myself and have spent the intervening six months making 8 bajillion scarves that look the same except the colors have been changed to protect the innocent.  I’m officially tired of making them now and have moved on to this instead.

Enter long-suffering Job, um, Amy.  She’s in the Sunday School class that we recently joined, and she overheard my lament about not knowing how to do anything other than knit a square.  She graciously offered to take some time this morning to meet with me and help me learn how to knit in the round.  So off I went to one of my favorite places to get my supplies.  And forgot my coupon.  Arrgh!!

From there I went to the mall and met Amy. Isn’t she a doll?  All blonde and pretty haired and knitty? And I’m having a bad hair day and my face looks VERY round, but I’m going to blame it on having to hold the camera six inches from my face to take the picture.  And ignore my wrinkles. And the extra twenty pounds.

It didn’t take me long to realize that knitting in the round was going to be the least of my worries.  Three little letters threatened to undo my Christian witness today: KFB, or “knit front to back” for all you non-knitters.  By the time I spent way too much time trying to get it right, KFB stood for Knit this, you Flippin‘ Bunch of  Weasels. No lie, it took me ONE HOUR to get to this.

“Susan” you might say, “Didn’t you buy green yarn for your soctopus?  And circular needles?  Isn’t that blue yarn on a double-point needle in the picture?” My, how astute you are, dear reader.  Yes, I did buy green yarn, but apparently I don’t know how to read directions about such things as gauge and yarn content and I bought “splitty yarn”, and I didn’t know that I couldn’t knit this puppy/octopus on circulars, so Amy let me use hers.  Live and learn. And keep the receipt.

Again, wrinkles.  Did I mention I’m turning 40 in 10 months?  Hopefully I can also find a good hairdresser before then.  Let’s pretend I’m letting my bangs grow out.

So, there you have my morning.  Hanging out at the mall with Amy, drinking Caribou chai latte that wasn’t as good as Starbucks’, and trying not to swear.

In case you’re going to the Target…

I used to be a Walmart girl.  I went to college in southern Arkansas and then to graduate school at THE University of Arkansas (woo Pig!), so you’d think it would be safe to assume that I support the home team and shop at Walmart.  Uh-uh.  Not if I can avoid it.  I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve been there and not been able to push a cart down the aisle for all the mess that’s been in the middle of it.  The last time I darkened their doors was the day I had to go SEVEN aisles out of my way before I could get a wheelchair around the restocking stuff.  Tell us, Susan, how you really feel?  This was not intended to be a ranty post, but apparently I have deep-seeded issues about Walmart. Let’s continue onto other more pleasant things, like the purpose of this essay, which would be about the lovely and clean and open-aisled place called Target.

So I’m at the Target (yes, I occasionally lapse into poor grammar.  That’s how I roll when I don’t feel like using my post-graduate degree) the other day and I found a little jar of randomness that I stuck in my cart.  Do you do this?  I’m usually one of those people that sticks to the list, but sometimes I purposefully go without a list to try and get inspired.  I was inspired to the tune of about $400 once with a Kate Spade purse.  Oh, how it called my name.

You gotta’ love Indian food.  I just discovered it in the last couple of years.  There are waaay too many ingredients for me to try cooking it at home, but when I saw this little jar of Archer Farms Vindaloo Simmer Sauce, I just had to try it.  Did you notice that little shout-out, Target people?  Let me tell you, 4-6 people read my  blog.  I can move MAJOR merchandise for you.  Have your people call my people.  Oh, and dear reader, did you notice the jar was empty (and out of focus)?  It was so good that I dug through the trash to haul it out so that I can share it with you.  This is how desperate I am for a blog post today delicious it is.

To prepare, take chicken parts, brown them in a tiny bit of oil/butter, then pour the jar on top.  Put the lid on, and let it simmer for half an hour.  Seriously, that’s all there is to it.  It’s even easier and quicker if you have chopped, cooked chicken in your freezer.  No browning necessary – just dump, heat and serve over rice.

Hope you have a great day shopping at TARGET.  And happy eating.

Namaste.

Happy Birthday, Mom

Today’s my sweet mother’s birthday. It’s a biggie.  I’m not going to put which one it is because she might get mad, and even though I’m 39, she can still put a smackdown on me.  She’s a great mom who has taught (and continues to teach) me all I know.

The lessons?

1.  Always have a lasagna in the freezer.  You never know when you’ll need it to feed an unexpected crowd. Usually brought on by daughter inviting friends home.

2.  Always wear lipstick before you go out the door. And perfume if you have a little “body odor”.  Yes, she uses the b.o. word.  Isn’t that a hoot?

3.  Hide God’s word in your heart. She’s an amazing memorizer.  And now she’s going back and re-memorizing in other translations.

4.  Take a casserole to the sick person. It’s so hard walking through the valley of the shadow of death with someone, but she does it fearlessly.

5.  Have a salad at every dinner.  And “jello salad” counts!  Yay!

6.  Clean as you go.  Ah, the lesson that hasn’t taken yet.

7.  Never stop learning. You’ll get that Sudoku thing down, Mom, just give it a while.

8.  Support your husband.  I know better than to complain about him to her. I’ll just save that for my blog.

9.  Get plenty of sleep. Do naps count?  I’m really good at those.

10.  Call your mama. Which I’m about to do. Because I don’t want a beating.

It’s raining men…

Alternative title – “A week in the life of a mom of boys”

This week they dug up the backyard in an attempt to create a tunnel to the neighbor kid’s house three doors down.  And when one hole didn’t work, they’d try another…

They practiced their spelling and punctuation….

They used Dad’s tools….this time it was the hacksaw on the dogwood that is mere weeks from blooming…

They exercised their minds with creative problem solving.  A Lego warrior had fallen into the great abyss (otherwise known as the hole in the middle of the concrete picnic table) and they theorized that dumping a case full of cokes that Mom doesn’t drink anymore might FLOAT the warrior back up to the top so that they could rescue him.  When that didn’t work, they just piled the bottlecaps on top of him and buried him in a dignified manner.

Only the Lord has saved them from a similar fate…..

Looking for the pony in the pile of…

C-R-U-D

So, when I said that I learned the lesson from my Sunday School class this week about adjusting my attitude, I thought that writing those words meant that I had grasped the concept.  Apparently, God thought that I needed to work on my little attitude today.

On the schedule?  One 30 minute appointment at Duke to get Travis’ new foot braces fit to his feet.  The old ones rubbed a hole through his skin.  Yes, you read that correctly.  A hole, through his skin, clear to his ankle bone.  Thanks.  So we arrive to find that while the appointment was on our schedule, and on the main computer’s schedule, some hiccup had not placed it on our therapist’s (LOVE her) schedule.  No problem, though.  Therapist #2 has a couple of minutes (LOVE her – our kids went to preschool together).

Pile of Crud 1:  New shoes don’t fit. (This is the 3rd pair we’ve tried in the last six months) Pony – Thank you God that our therapist is working with us to make sure it’s right.

Pile of Crud 2:  Therapist #2 has now spent so much time with us that she has to get back to her regularly scheduled lineup. Pony – Thank you, God, that she was willing to step in and help us out.

Pile of Crud 3:  Therapist #3 shows up (LOVE her – her husband did T’s surgery) and says everything is so hosed up that we’re going to have to take the scissors to these AFO’s and try to fashion something that will work.  Pony – Thank you, God, that someone senior is aware of the issue we’ve been having and that she’s going to call the manufacturer because something’s clearly not right.  And thank you, God, that she’s suggesting something new that may work for T so that his gait normalizes.

Pile of Crud 4:  Taking care of Pile#3 takes one hour per foot and she has someone else coming in. Pony – Thank you, God, that the lady heard about the schedule mix-up and offered to come in later since she was going to have to hang around all day anyway for another appointment.

Pile of Crud 5:  Didn’t realize we’d be there that long and haven’t brought lunch. Pony – Thank you, God, that Travis ate a huge breakfast and there’s a vending machine.

Pile of Crud 6:  While going to vending machine to get lunch with the quarters I’ve dug from the bottom of my purse, T takes a dive in his walker and both go crashing to the ground.  In front of witnesses.  While I am not paying attention.  Pony – Thank you, God, that he didn’t hit his head on the corner of the table as he went down.

Pile of Crud 7:  Woman makes snide remark that it would not have happened if I had tied his shoes. Pony – Nope.  No pony here.

Pile of Crud 8: I take issue with woman from #7. Not even a whinny.

Pile of Crud 9:  Takes 3 hours to get out the door. Pony – Thank you, God, that I didn’t have anything else on the schedule today.

Pile of Crud 10:  I show up to the house at the same time as the therapist (who’s bringing students with her today) and the house hasn’t been picked up (because I was going to pick up after we got back from the 30 minute appointment). Pony – Thank you, God, that another child kicked it into gear and I got the worst stashed before they walked in.

Pile of Crud 11:  My other two boys dying for extra attention today and I’m frustrated from 1-10, so I snap.  Oooohhh, can we say “ugly”? Pony – His mercies are new every morning.

Great is Thy faithfulness.