Ya think?

Just in case that’s true…I thought about it in relation to my pantry, because food clutter is one of the areas with which I struggle (read: argue about with my husband). I look in my overflowing pantry and see safety, security, love. My husband looks in and sees clutter, chaos, disarray.

It’s a problem.

He is to the point now where he won’t even look in there to see if we have the can of tomato sauce, box of spaghetti, or whatever he needs to make supper that night. He would rather go to the store and buy what he needs, thereby completely avoiding the pantry and hopefully (but not usually) a fight.

Well, Oprah, let’s see if you and Peter Walsh can help us out. I’ll read the article and see if I can be helped. Peter’s idea in a nutshell is to pare down your belongings to basically nothing so they don’t have to be stored, dusted, arranged, etc.

Don’t think so.

My idea is this: get a bigger pantry. Just sayin’.

I decided to take a moment to think about the things I was grateful for at that moment.

1. Ball and socket and hinge joints that still (for the most part) work fairly well
2. A sunny, 30 degree day in February in Maine
3. The Public Way #1 that allowed me to get to the water even though the tide was up to the wall and occluding the stairs
4. The oldest child that was watching the youngest child so that I could leave with some peace of mind
5. The ocean, that connects me so immediately with my grandmother, who took me there so often when I was little

Life is good.

This is a special that their rival (McD’s) runs often as well. Here’s the difference: When I went to McD’s with my husband and tried to get one of the breakfast sandwiches without cheese, they said (wait for it….), “No.”. They explained to me how they would have to charge me full price for both sandwiches if I asked them to leave the cheese off one of them.

Really? Really?

Fast forward to today at Burger King. I ordered my 2 sandwiches, asking for the cheese to be left off one of them, and guess what? That’s what they did! And they didn’t charge me extra! And they never batted an eye!

BK: 1, McD’s: 0

*NOTE: I complained on the McD’s website after that and I got a very nice free meal (and a grudging apology, but I let that slide) of 2 breakfast sandwiches for $3.00, one of which was without cheese, to make up for it.

The time constraints imposed by the library (read: due dates) helped keep the pile(s)  manageable.  No matter how busy I am, I always seem to find time to read.

Writing? That’s trickier. If you write on a laptop, as I (now) do, it can be very difficult. Laptops are supposed to be portable, but if you have one with a crappy battery life (like, an hour?) and if you have trouble seeing the screen outside in the daylight like I do, you end up having packed up your laptop for nothing, because you can’t write a damn word under those conditions.

Here’s the funny thing though: Now that I have no library books staring me down, I suddenly do have time to write. Sure, I still have piles of my own as yet unread books, but they don’t have to be finished by any particular date.

They can wait.

Note to self: having a deadline, it turns out, can be very helpful.

Go figure.

“Why don’t you take the day off?”  I asked her earlier that week, and she said…ready for this?
“Because I love my job so much!”

How many times do you hear that?

So for her birthday, and for the month of February that contains her favorite holiday (Valentine’s, not President’s, Day ) she treated us to free Reiki treatments. Free 15 minutes chair massages were given by another student, a massage therapist, Kelly.

Well, may I just say:  Thank you, Kristen and Kelly!

Kelly practices at Natural Care Wellness Center in Elliot (207-437-0242 or email at kasteere@comcast.net).

Kristen teaches (small, women only classes) at Wild Lotus Yoga Studio in South Berwick (email at wildlotusstudio@yahoo.com).

What to see? That was tricky. There is a dearth of family movies to choose from at the moment.

Do you like movies about nature? Do you like movies about animals? Do you like National Geographic-type programs?  

I don’t, actually. Not much. I usually avoid them at all costs.

Big Miracle is a such a movie, but because it was the only option (and because we missed Glow Bowling) I decided to take my daughter to see it anyway. I brought my knitting, so the afternoon wouldn’t be a total loss. Well, the surprise is this: the movie was great. I loved it, and so did she. It’s a love story, but on many different levels. There was, of course, the usual man-woman relationship love, but also:

1. The whale parents’ love for their child
2. A grandfather’s love for his grandson
3. Everyone’s (eventual) love for the whales

I liked it so much that I was motivated to write this, to persuade you to go see it.

After that, I was in such a good mood that we went to get a cupcake from Somethin’ Sweet. Jen mentioned that she was working on a new cupcake: Peach Cobbler. Hello? It was totally a day for breaking out of my rut, because I almost always will choose a cupcake that has chocolate of some sort  in it, but this time I went with the Peach.

It was a good decision.

So, see a movie that you wouldn’t normally see. Eat a cupcake that isn’t chocolate. Better yet, share both with your tween!

I started thinking about what I would do during my scrapbooking time. I had an idea to set up a scrapbook entitled:  My Fiftieth Year. Kick it off with birthday month and then make a 2 page spread for each month (if there are that many in the book?) and record how I spend the year (so I start off ahead instead of behind!).

I was inspired by two things:

1. My local library’s recent workshop that I attended to create a vision board.
2. Meg’s scrapbook pages she calls  Project Life  on her “Our Misadventures” blog. Hmmm…maybe I should call mine Project MidLife?

I’m on the fence now about whether I should do “2012″ and have it span January through December, or start in in May and have it span May 2012 to April 2013. I am also wondering about whether I should have themes that correspond with the month (for example, Christmas for December) or themes corresponding to my interests (food! writing! books!)…maybe, somehow, both?

What do you think?

1. Went to my hair appointment, got out of the car, looked for my pocketbook, realized I’d left it at home. I could clearly see it in my mind’s eye hanging over the back of the kitchen chair. I was sure I’d taken it off the chair and brought it with me to the car. I had not.
2. Got up early, got dressed in my gym clothes, got to Planet Fitness, got out of the car…and realized that I was wearing my winter boots and had not brought my sneakers. Fail.
3. Ran the dryer for 45 minutes, went to remove the clothes, and discovered that they weren’t in there. I’d never taken them out of the washer and put them in the dryer in the first place. Even though (once again) I clearly remember doing so.
4. Told my daughter, “Go get the rest of the bags out of the trash,” after I returned from food shopping. Oh, didn’t I say “trunk”? I was sure I’d said “trunk”…

And these are just the things that I remember. Needless to say, I’m not making great progress with “my one word” for 2012.

Scary.

In the previous post, I described how I found out that I needed  glasses when I was twelve-year-old. Fast forward to 2012, when my daughter is twelve, and just got her first pair of glasses.

We found out she needed glasses because she had routine eye screenings at school, as well as periodic full eye exams from an eye doctor. We knew a year ago that she would probably need them within a year or so…so we kept a close eye (ahem!) on her vision in the interim.

We took her to the eye doctor, Dr. Poulin in Sanford, who did an eye exam and rendered the glasses verdict almost matter of factly. My daughter’s response? “Yay!”. Thank you, Dr. Poulin.

She had many frames from which to choose, many of which looked so cute on her that it was hard to choose just one!

I’m thankful that my daughter didn’ t have to lose half of one of her front teeth to find out that her vision wasn’t optimal.

My first pair of glasses

I got my first pair of (many, many) glasses when I was twelve years old.  I was playing tag in my grandmother’s yard (with a friend-who-was-a-boy) and so of course not only was I running around like a nut, I was also distracted.  So first I was chasing Scotty, trying to tag him, and the next thing I knew I was on my butt in the grass, holding my mouth, bleeding.

I said, “Oh, crap!”

Scotty said, “Oh, bye!”

He left quickly.

What the hell happened? I had somehow managed to smash my mouth into the front of my father’s car, which was parked on the grass where we were playing. To my horror, as I went into the house to tell my mother what happened, I realized that I had shards of…what, tooth? Tooth! Shards of tooth were in my mouth! Not only had I gotten a fat lip from my “car crash”, but I’d also broken my front tooth.

My parents were more annoyed than sympathetic (this was gonna cost them). We didn’t have dental insurance so the fix was minimal (“I’ll just file it down so the sharp point from the tooth doesn’t puncture her tongue,” the dentist offered cheerfully). Worse than this was that the cause of the crash. I hadn’t crashed into the car because I was clumsy (well, not just because of that), as was first thought, but because I couldn’t see how close I was to it. 

I was nearsighted.

The state provided my glasses. I had no choice about which frame I got since there was only one option: the lovely cat’s eyes that you see pictured above. Although my dad tried to be upbeat about it, there was really not one bit of excitement involved.

So,  I’d lost half a tooth, but hey, I gained a pair of glasses soon thereafter.

Yay.