A place where I will put stuff that doesn't neatly fit into any other catagories and where I will do my best to keep bad spelling and typos down to a bare minimum. :)
Monday, February 16, 2004
posted by Carol at
12:04 PM (Pacific)
"To live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich, to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with an open heart, to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never, in a word to let the Spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common, this is to be my symphony"
William Ellery Channing
Sunday, February 15, 2004
posted by Carol at
10:17 AM (Pacific)
I had a wonderful Valentines day.
I am married to the sweetest man in the whole wide world.
Friday night, he took the 5 of us out for dinner at a chinese buffet restaurant. Afterwards, we went to the mall and he bought me 3 new sets of hair sticks from Claire's (buy 2 get 1 free!). I got a pair of round, brown wooden ones. These have flowers carved into the ends and little jewels at the tips and ends. A pair of square light pink with dark pink polkadots plastic ones. And my favorite, a frosted white plastic pair that are twisted into spirals and set with sparkly little jewels at tips and ends, they look like icicles in my hair! I loooove them. They are so much fun to wear on these cold, white, February days!
He had to work overtime Saturday morning, but came home Saturday afternoon with a card and a rose. After I read the card and thanked him for the rose, he says "oh, yea, almost forgot these...." He pulled a little black box out of his coat pocket and in it was a pair of diamond earrings!
I cried!
They are so beautiful, princess cut, 1/4 karat total weight.
I feel like a snow princess with icicle sticks in my hair and diamonds sparkling my ears!
Thursday, February 12, 2004
posted by Carol at
7:42 PM (Pacific)
YOU WILL NEED A CALCULATOR FOR THIS ONE:
1) Key in the first three digits of your phone number into a calculator. (DO NOT use your area code number)
2) Multiply by 80
3) Add one
4) Multiply by 250
5) Plus last four digits of your phone number
6) Plus last four digits of your phone number again
7) Minus 250
8) Divide by 2
Is this your telephone number?
Weird.......
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
posted by Carol at
3:26 PM (Pacific)
Headache
Snowy, blowy, cold
Jon gone
Kids fussing
February.
I'll go in an hour and bring home fried chicken for the boys for supper.
What will i eat?
Soup.
That sounds good. Something steamy hot and beefy.
I write better on paper than online. Online I'm always in a rush, aware of the phoneline being tied up, aware of the time I am spending with my back towards my children.
As I opened the van door and walked towards the entrance of the store, the grey, bitter February wind let loose a spit of snow and whipped my hair into a froth that fell across my eyes and tangled into my mouth. Brushing the hair from my face, the doorbell jingled, announcing our entrance. The grey haired lady at the counter looked up from her paperback and asked us-
"May I help you?"
"Primroses." I asked
"Where would we find them?"
"through the giftshop, to your right in the greenhouse." she grunted, obviously far more entranced with her novel than her customers.
We navigated our way through the "gift shop", a small room crammed to the rafters with knick-knacks, and trinkets, all expensive, all breakable. We turned to our right and entered the greenhouse.
The warmth and humidity hit our faces almost like a slap. You could feel our dry, winter-parched skin and lungs breathe in the moist, earthy-scented air and sigh with relief. Our eyes, having become accustomed to the colorless grey and white winter landscape that is Indiana in February, blinked in surprise at the shocking array of colors that spread out on the table before us.
Primroses.
Fuchsia, orange, yellow, purple, red, white, pink juxtaposed together, smiling up at us, waving dark green leaves and bobbing their heads coyly. They seemed to whisper and giggle amongst themselves; who was going to accompany us home?
$3.99 each or $3.75 for 3 or more, the sign above them blared.
I let the boys each choose one.
From my quiet, thoughtful, bookish son came dark, velvety purple with a tiny center of sunny yellow.
My youngest son- always cheerful and clowning- selected flowers of the hottest, brightest pink nature has in her palette surrounding star-like centers of yellow-gold feathered with white.
Oldest son, ever the artistic soul (who taught himself to paint flowers one Saturday morning while watching a show on PBS) picked a soft and gentle buttercup yellow, fairy-brushed in the centers with orange and peach.
Purchases gently wrapped in tissue by the woman at the counter who had become much more animated by either the sight of the flowers or the fact of a sale (she chirped at us cheerfully and in GREAT detail about the care and feeding of Primroses as she wrapped and rang us up), we made our way to the van.
"Mom, you're smiling." a boys voice piped up as I turned the key and started home.
Monday, February 09, 2004
posted by Carol at
2:14 PM (Pacific)
bah!
I'd had a blog written in my head. I write posts in my head all the time. I sit down to vomit them up online and *poof* they're gone.
It was about cookies and hot chocolate and low ride jeans.
*stomps off*
Friday, February 06, 2004
posted by Carol at
10:40 AM (Pacific)
At home:
load dishwasher, wipe counters
sweep upstairs and down
dry sheets, make up guest bed
bah. I've got alot to do. Hubbys got a wrestling buddy coming in from out of town to spend the night here tonight. These wrestling ref's get sent all over the state this time of year to work. This fella lives a good 3-4 hours away and has to be at the school here early tomorrow in the morning. So, we're puttin' him up tonight so he doesn't have to get up at 3am tomorrow to get here in time.
okay, enough internet to-do lists. up off my rump to dry my wet hair and get out of here.
We took a trip to the library yesterday. I brought home an armload full of cookbooks. These are not the kinda of cookbooks I usually checkout. These are FANCY cookbooks with words like "gourmet", "entertaining" on the covers. "Cheap", "easy" and "fast" are what normally appear on the titles of my favorite kinds of cookbooks.
Why my sudden interest in haute cuisine?
Its February. I'm in a funk. I'm hoping maybe cooking up something spectacular and unusual will help shake things up abit.
One of the cookbooks is titled "Chocolate". Its an entire cookbook filled with recipes for the most divine sounding chocolate concoctions I have ever seen. Cakes, cookies, pies, mouuses, candies, etc., etc., etc. Way back in the back of this 4 inch tall tome, I found the recipes I'd been searching for- "French Hot Chocolate". I've been reading the novel "Chocolat" (which I highly, highly, recommend) and in this novel the heroine runs a chocolate shop and serves alot of hot chocolate. MMMMMMMM. This is not Swiss MIss in a package with dried marshmallows nor is it Hersheys syrup stirred into a cup of hot milk.
those are pallid imitations, to say the least.
the recipe basically is this:
bittersweet chocolate
milk chocolate
melted, stirred into hot milk along with a little vanilla extract and some cocoa, stirred until foamy.
Just reading that perks up my spirit. With a little luck, I'll be brewing up a pot of this for my family tonight.
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
posted by Carol at
4:48 PM (Pacific)
Its suppertime here in Indiana. Normally at this time I'd be upstairs in the kitchen cooking dinner for my family. Not tonight.
I'm not cooking tonight. I told the boys its their turn to cook supper for me and their father. I planned 3 dishes: Sloppy Joes, french fries and a frozen broccoli/cauliflower/carrot combo out of a bag. 3 dishes, 3 boys, they chose which they wished to fix, they decided when to start cooking. Its HILARIOUS to sit down here and listen to the commotion upstairs in the kitchen. :D
I love them dearly, thats for sure. But there are 5 people in this house and only one of them (me) cooks 99.9% of the time.
I know I've spoiled them horribly. I know it. Its kinda late in the ballgame, but they are certainly old enough unlearn some of it.
My being a SAHM has allowed me to spoil them. I don't mean spoiled as in always having to have their own way, not at all. They are spoiled in the amount of work they've been required or not required to do. I dunno. I'm the lone female in the house full of males. I do the work or it doesn't get done.
They were all little together. 3 boys in less than 4 years. Things were intense, I had no help, they were little and I just got used to doing it all myself.
Maybe by delegating some of the chores, I can blog more and by blogging more help get myself out of this lovely funk de February I've seem to have fallen in.
I hate February, I really, really, really hate this month of the year.
The weather is so cold, too much snow, not enough sunlight.
I feel trapped in the house. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, just trapped inside to our daily round of duties. At least its a short month.
I henna-ed my hair this weekend. That can't be a word hennaed?, hennad? I applied henna to my hair this weekend. Thats not any better either. My girlfriend, Anna, and I had a henna/hair event Sunday at my house. Considering we had NO clue as to what we were doing and ended up doing everything Bass Akward, we ended up with relatively good results. I did some reading online afterwards and now know how to do it right so next time I'm hoping for even better results.
We both have dark brown hair and used a mix of dark brown henna and red henna. The red didn't show up much at all on our hair. However, my hair has not been this soft, smooth and silky in a very long time. It is an incredibly messy, relatively time consuming process. But its good for ones hair, better than dye, it improves the condition of ones hair rather than harm it. And it smells weird. Much better than hair dye for sure, but still weird, like hay with a hint of wet dog. The smell lingered for a day or two. Still, I'm happy with the results and hope to try it again in a month or two.
My kids are finishing up their school year. The curriculum is supposed to be for one entire school year, what it that? 9 months worth? Yeah, thats about right. We started in May going 9 weeks on 3 weeks off. Now we just need to come up with something for this year. No clue at all what we're going to do. 2 of the 3 of them will be doing high school work. I'm going to let middle son skip a grade and start high school with his older brother. God, son#1 is going to be 15 in 2 months. Son #2 will be 13 2 months after that. I am not ready to be the mother to TWO teenage sons.
I'm a few days late voicing my opinion with this but here goes:
The only thing that really seriously offended me about the superbowl/boob incident was the fact that they thought us so stupid that we were to believe that it was not totally planned.
pu-lease.
It was crass and tacky, but whatelse should one expect from performers these days?
class and talent?
