1. Conference starts in 12 hours.
2. That’s all I’ve done every minute of this week.
3. Except for those forty I spent in the doctor’s office talking three boys off the ledge when they found out they were getting three shots.
4. My husband is counting down the hours until he gets his wife back.
5. AAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!
Have a nice day.
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1. I had a delightful rice krispie treat for breakfast. Nutritionally speaking, I think it’s safe to say that this day can only go up from here.
2. I went house-hunting yesterday and didn’t see anything that worked for us, though it was fun to traipse through homes and see all kinds of neat features that I’d love to have in mine.
My kingdom for a large butler’s pantry.
3. The boys are out of school today and having a good time chasing each other around the house.
I’d tell them to run outside but what fun is playing zombie if you can’t do it in your underwear?
4. I had to go to court this week to testify in a felony assault with a deadly weapon case.
That was, um, interesting.
I got to court early and somehow felt compelled to tell everyone that came into the room that I was not a defendant and only there as a witness but Mr. CPQ pointed out that the fact I was NOT exposing my underwear or sporting a tattoo was probably a dead giveaway.
I counted fifteen tattoos within the first five minutes I was there.
And that was just on the woman sitting next to me.
5. Easter weekend is upon us and I still don’t have a plan for Sunday lunch. I was talking to Amy yesterday and we were discussing that if family were in town to visit, we’d have a big ole’ huge menu planned complete with yeast rolls and marshmallow fluff, but if it’s just the five of us and 3/5′s don’t like ham or deviled eggs, then it’s kinda’ hard to get ginned up about cooking.
I guess I could make another batch of rice krispie treats and call it a day.
It seems the last batch has gone missing.
Have a nice day.
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Because I don’t ever want to forget this sweet little email, misspellings and all, that my son wrote last night to his grandmother…..
Dear Grammy,
Right now i am in complete bored mode. I tried to help MOM with the cooking but i still feel bored. i have NO screens b/c i lied to my dad about homework. NO screens until next Monday. Mom made me an acceptation by letting me type you an E-mail. I sent you this E-mail to take off the boredom and to tell you that i love you so much. 
have a nice day =D!
_________________________________________________
I thought that “acceptation” was a nice touch.
A touch illiterate, perhaps, but I think it gets the message across.
Have a nice day.
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So, we had 62 tornadoes touch down in North Carolina on Saturday.
That was, um, interesting.
I knew that we’d probably have some bad weather but wasn’t too concerned because our typical pattern sends storms to the north of us.
I was wrong.
The wind started picking up in the middle of the afternoon and the tornado watch alert popped up on the television, but I kinda’ ignored it because we never get that kind of bad weather in our neck of the woods, but it wasn’t too long before I noticed that the weatherman was using words like “dire emergency” and “life-threatening” and started to realize that the storm track looked to be headed right towards our part of town.
I didn’t want to alarm the kids but gave them a heads up that when I said it was time to go to the closet, I really meant it. I’m from Oklahoma – we don’t mess around with tornadoes – and, of course, that’s all it took for one to begin wailing that he was too young to die.
Which really added to the zen calm that already permeated the atmosphere.
Those of you who know us personally will have no problem guessing which one of the kids that was.
And yes, the lament was delivered with every bit of drama as you can imagine.
Within a few minutes they were telling the ENTIRE city to take shelter, so I herded the boys into their bedroom closet and immediately regretted that I hadn’t made them take a shower the night before.
I could tell when the tornado got close because the windows started rattling and the rain and wind were so fierce that I couldn’t see past the first tree in the front yard. I was watching the radar on my iPhone (hooray for the Weather Channel app) and started to relax a little because I could see that it was going to skirt to the south of us. I wasn’t too concerned at that point about the house blowing away but I was steeling myself to see a tree come through the roof. Fortunately that didn’t happen and after a few minutes of very close togetherness and some forced cheerfulness on my part to keep the troops together, I saw the sky brighten and knew we were in the clear.
We went out to survey the damage, but other than some tree limbs down and debris in the yard from other people’s homes that were demolished, we were unscathed.
The boys were relieved to live to see another day and we spent the rest of the afternoon watching the news of the destruction that occurred just miles from our home.
God is so good.
And of course, Mr. CPQ was out of town.
He always misses the fun.
Have a nice day.
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1. Wednesday night I was walking through the garage and noticed that the veneer on the interior closet door was starting to pull up. And because I have this compulsive need to pick at things that are sticking up, I pulled at the veneer.
And a three-inch wide strip the length of the door came off.
I panicked because my door now had a ginormous stripe on it and thought that maybe it wouldn’t be so noticeable if it had a corresponding stripe on the other side. So I pulled that off except that it didn’t come off as cleanly as the other strip and now I had jagged pieces of broken veneer with which to contend.
And did I mention I had a potential showing the next day?
Nice.
So as soon as I dropped off the boys at school on Thursday I headed to Home Depot and wandered the door aisle with a dazed and confused look until someone stopped to help me and let me tell you what, nothing gets you service faster than saying, “I need to fix this before my husband comes home.”
I had high hopes of just buying veneer and gluing it to the door but apparently you can’t do that and the guy told me that I would need to paint the door. So I went over to the Paint Department with my pitiful piece of broken veneer and asked him if he could match it with his handy-dandy paint matchy thingy but he said no because the veneer was mahogany striped and the computer couldn’t read the striped pattern.
By this point I was had been twice stymied and I must have looked like I was about to melt in a heaping puddle of goo and he took pity on me and walked over to the wall of a hundred bajillion shades of brown and we tried to pick out something that would approximate 30-year-old faded mahogany and then I went back home to start my project.
I scraped.
I spackled.
Gah! Red John!!
I sustained an injury.
And then I painted.
And the sad thing is, at the end of this project? I still had a very tired 30-year-old-looking door.
Paint was still wet in this pic – it really isn’t stripey, I promise!
2. Speaking of tired, I am on an insomnia jag and have been watching a lot of late night television. Last night I watched six episodes of House Hunters and was disappointed with the choices that everyone made.
I also made plans to move to Australia and live in a million dollar house in the rainforest.
Just because I can’t sleep doesn’t mean I can’t dream.
3. Speaking of moving, no action on our house yet but we’ve had five showings and positive feedback. I made a list of 15 houses that I’d like to check out and spent some time yesterday driving around to see what the neighborhoods looked like. I have a few more in another part of town that I’ll drive by today – They’re a little closer to church and Mr. CPQ’s work but would require a school change and I’m not too sure how I feel about that.
4. I am wearing grey/gray nail polish which is very unusual for me but I think I like it.
5. Speaking of like, we went to a school event last night at Chick-Fil-A and as we pulled in, Tommy asked if Logan was going to be there. I pointed to his friend Logan who was in the parking lot with his mom and Tommy said, “No, the OTHER Logan.” I shrugged my shoulders and didn’t think anything else about it until this morning when we got to school and Tommy rolled down the window and practically threw his body out to wave and shout “Hi, Logan!”.
To a very cute 5th grade GIRL.
And so it begins….
Have a nice day.
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Mr. CPQ was away on business last night and I was sitting in the recliner with my feet propped up (I always have my feet propped or tucked under me) and decided that it was time to tackle some of the forty-odd shows that are on the DVR that he doesn’t care to watch.
You know, like General Hospital Meet the Press.
I hit the power button on the screen and noticed that the DVR had cycled off so I rebooted it and in the meantime got busy looking at listings for new houses. Thirty minutes later, I noticed that it was really quiet in the room and glanced up only to see a big “CLIENT INITIALIZATION ERROR” on the screen and decided that I better reboot again.
And, of course, got the same message.
So I unplugged it.
Because hope springs eternal.
And nothing happened.
By this time it was close to 11:00 and I decided that I’d try to get in touch with AT&T U-Verse technical support because apparently I had nothing better to do that close to midnight and I also knew that someone was going to be pretty unhappy about not having Blue’s Clues available come 6:00 a.m.
So I logged into the chat window, put a jillion question marks in the field where I was supposed to log in my account number, hit enter, and received the notice that I was 66th in line for assistance. At that point I decided that I was going to commit to the process and half an hour later, my chat window popped up and poor Ajit sitting in a windowless room somewhere across the world had the misfortune to get the least technical person in America to deal with.
We re-booted, we unplugged, we checked the router, we discussed HPNA status (which I have no idea what that is and said “All I can see is a green blinky light” which I know was extremely helpful and informative) and ONE HOUR LATER, I still wasn’t any further along with my problem. And Ajit said “I have exhausted my resources. I think we need to schedule a technician to come by your house.” And by this time is was well past midnight and I was exhausted as well as sad that I was missing my nightly reruns of The Nanny and so I typed “Sounds like a plan!”
And Ajit typed, “I am so sorry you feel that way.”
OH NO! I just inadvertently offended him!!
And then I panicked that there was some form of cross-cultural miscommunication going on and the last thing I wanted to be perceived as was a non-technical mean and ungrateful American and you should have seen my fingers fly across the keyboard reassuring Ajit that I was in no way, shape, or form upset at him, but everything that I seemed to be saying was not jiving with his standard templates that he was supposed to be using, and he kept repeating how sorry he was and in the end, I realized there was not going to be any nice way out this and so after I got my appointment time, I ended up putting a bunch of smiley faces in the chat window and thanking him with an overly abundant amount of exclamation points.
And then I was so worried that he might think I was upset at him that I stayed awake until 2 a.m.
The end.
Have a nice day.
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While I’d love to be cheerful and bright, the truth is that this morning I’m trying to shake off discouragement and its accompanying cloud of funk because over the weekend the house we wanted to make an offer on once our house sold has gone under contract.
Mr. CPQ and I talked extensively last month about just going ahead and purchasing it but in the end agreed that we didn’t want the stress of making two mortgage payments if ours didn’t sell quickly.
And I know that was a sound decision.
And I feel peace that it was what we were supposed to do.
And I knew there was a chance that we could lose that house but I glibly said, “God’s going to hold it for us and if He wants us elsewhere, He won’t.”
And even though I said that, I’m kinda’ sorta’ really disappointed this morning because I’m an optimist and always count my chickens before they hatch and was already placing furniture and picking paint color and I’m trying to practice not very well what I preach knowing that there’s something else better for us.
So it’s back to the drawing board, the real estate listings, the “should we build or should we buy” discussions, and the apartment scouting just in case our house sells before we find what we want (which has happened before and wasn’t altogether that awful). And I’m trying to rest on the fact that something better will come along but my “resting” sure does look an awful lot like “stewing”.
Crud.
Crud.
Crud.
Have a nice day.
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The house was listed last Friday approximately six seconds after we came back from Home Depot with the correct length of baseboard.
And Mr. CPQ would want me to say that he’s all that and a bag of chips for cutting the mitered corners exactly as they should be.
And because he pays for my hair coloring, I’m happy to share that critical piece of information with you today.
We had three showings over the weekend, which meant basically that I didn’t let the children do a single thing in the house for 72 hours and, man, is it ever going to be expensive getting this house sold because I refuse to dirty up such a clean kitchen.
The last couple that saw the house is/are interested in it and has/have submitted a bunch of questions, so I’m hopeful they’ll make an offer. The kids are really hoping for an offer, too, because they’ve never made their beds this many mornings in a row and as Tommy said, “This is really getting old.”
The boys started back to school this week and I went back to the office for the first time in a month. I felt like I needed to re-introduce myself to my co-workers but once I saw my in-box, I realized they hadn’t forgotten I was gone.
I’ve also started working in earnest on the conference that’s happening at the end of the month. It’s consuming quite a bit of my time, so I’ve had to put some fun stuff on hold for a while until I can get past it. I can’t believe that something we started planning over a year ago is finally coming to fruition.
Speaking of absolutely nothing related to fruition, the boys announced the other day that they’re planning on entering the talent show at school and I immediately broke out in hives mainly because talent shows have been my nemesis from an early age because I have never figured out how to turn a knack for carbo-loading into a stage-worthy production.
And with that, I’m wrapping up this blog post but I would ask you to insert something appropriate and witty in this here paragraph because I’ve sat looking at the screen for fifteen minutes and nothing seems to fit.
Have a nice day.
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We had to make a late night run to Home Depot to get a short section of base molding and quarter round for a repair to the wall where we pulled out a built in bench.
And, as with any home project, we’ll be making a repeat trip to the store.
Because there’s a big difference between 3’9″ and 39″.
Have a nice day.
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