Ah, Pinterest

So my blog hits have been up a little bit.  Which is strange, since I’ve been so busy spending our last weekend with Cindy Lynn & Mahon and then recovering from the holidays that I haven’t really blogged.  I figured that people were just so entertained by my bad parking story that they just kept coming back to read and laugh.  (Yes, I’m talking about you, Lindsay!) 

But then when I looked at my stats I noticed something odd.  I have a few hits from Pinterest.  How unexpected is that!  

A couple of years ago I blogged about an earring holder that I had made.  My friend Diana and her cute daughters have a craft blog, and a while ago she made an earring holder and linked to the post I’d done.  I guess someone pinned that post and now it’s gotten a few hits.

Here’s the funny thing.  That first earring holder was much more a thing of functionality rather than beauty.  I was in a hurry, I wanted a place for my earrings, the end.

(That earring holder is now living in a box somewhere in the depths of our garage, along with 40% of the stuff we own.  Yes, we do have fantasies that one day we will get more boxes unpacked.  I fear that we will have to stop living our normal lives in order to accomplish that.)

When I decided last summer that I was going to make a new jewelry holder rather than wait until we unpacked the old one (good decision, yes?) I did a much better job and made something that looked a lot better.

So now every time I see that someone has gone to that page from Pinterest, I want to shout “It can look a lot better than that!  I did a better job the next time!”

I know, ridiculous.  Sometimes I’m entertained by the crazy stuff going on inside my head.

While I’m talking about the new earring holder, did I already mention that it’s not on the wall right now?  That would be because in the middle of the night recently one of the pins holding it worked free, allowing it to swing down and somehow hit the light switch in just the right way that it turned on the light, causing us both to wake up in quite a fright.  It’s amusing now, wasn’t quite so much then…

Just in case you were wondering…

I managed to park just fine at Curves this morning…

My new most embarrassing moment

 

I drove to Curves this morning, determined to get back in the exercise routine now that Cindy Lynn & Mahon have (sadly) gone back home.  I was kind of upset as I drove because I was thinking about how badly I’d played the piano for the opening hymn last night at Relief Society.  I’m a believer in singing most hymns briskly, but I realized about halfway through that I was going so fast in my nervousness that most of the people probably couldn’t sing.  I was pretty embarrassed.

When I got there a huge semi was blocking the area where I normally park, so I decided to park in another part of the parking lot.  I also decided that I would back in, which is easier in this other part because it’s facing a bunch of storefronts so I could see the van in the glass.  I pulled back carefully, stopping abruptly when my wheels hit the curb at the back of the parking spot.  (A little sooner than I expected them too.) I put on my parking brake, turned off my lights, and went into curves without a backwards glance.

And that was very obvious when I came out of curves a little while later and this is what I saw.

 

Yep, you are seeing what you think you are seeing.  That is my van, parked right out in the middle of the parking lot, NOT IN A PARKING SPACE!

At first I thought I hadn’t put it in park and hadn’t set the parking break and it had rolled forward out of the space, but as I walked closer I realized what had actually happened.  Remember when I said that I stopped because my wheels hit the curb at the back of the parking space?

Obviously I misinterpreted my location when that happened, and what I’d just hit was the median on the side of the parking spaces, and not the back of the space.

As soon as I figured out what had happened I pulled out the purse cam.  (Thank goodness for the purse cam—how else would I document the insane moments of my life??) 

And just to make my day extra special, no sooner had I buckled myself into the van than a nice young police officer came up to the window to tell me that someone had called 911 because there was a car sitting in the middle of the parking lot.  I was still laughing pretty hard and explained what had happened, and he decided much to my relief that I didn’t need a breathalyzer test and sent me on my way, admonishing me to park correctly next time.

 

Not feeling nearly so bad about that piano thing anymore…

 

PS—My day just keeps being awesome, so I thought I’d add a little more.  I went over to the elementary school at lunch to play for the 4th grade choir.  Now that we’ve finished Christmas it was all new music and I was excited to find that I could almost sight-read the two pieces the 4th graders will be singing.  I was feeling pretty good about myself as I walked into the office to return my visitor’s badge.  The receptionist looked at me and said, “Oh good, there you are, I was just leaving a message on your phone.”  Really?  Why would the school need to talk to me?  She continued, “When you registered your kids we forgot to get their immunization records.  So we need those, and they need to be current with the required immunizations in Oregon, and there’s a February 16th time limit on getting that information.”

Cool.  So I have a month to get this taken care of, or then they’re going to kick my homeschooled kids out of public school. 

Living on the Edge

Russ came in the other day and mentioned in a slightly disgruntled fashion that the half-cube of cream cheese left in the fridge (in a ziploc bag) was covered in mold.  A little while after he told me this a memory bubbled to the top of my brain…how odd that just a couple of weeks ago I had taken out a half-cube of cream cheese to use and it, too, was covered in mold.  Annoying.

A few days later I opened an almost unused container of sour cream and noticed that it already had a spot of mold on it.  Once again I made my way over to the trash can with a feeling of irritation. 

Only later did the lightbulb slowly start to come on…that was a relatively large amount of molding going on in my refrigerator, wasn’t it?  I thought perhaps I should go hit the little button to make it colder.  But when I went and looked at the fridge there was no button, and none in the freezer either.  I looked at the labels on the front by the water/ice dispenser and pressed a few of the buttons there.  When I pressed the button labeled (appropriately) refrigerator, instantly two temperatures showed on the little screen:

refrigerator: 44 degrees
freezer:  -2 degrees

Hmmmmm….I wondered…..what should the temperature of a refrigerator be?  (I’ve never known this before, just pressed that little button that made the refrigerator colder or less cold.)  Thirty seconds with google brought me to the new awareness that 44 degrees was not, indeed, the appropriate temperature for a refrigerator.  Instead, it was supposed to be between 33 and 38 degrees.

Oh.

I’m guessing that 6 degrees is the moldy cream cheese difference.  And appreciative that in the 3 months we’ve been living with an overly warm refrigerator, no one has gotten food poisoning.

I’ll let you know how the cream cheese does in the next little while.

 

And, while we’re talking about my appliances, I’d like to suggest that my oven LOVES to make german pancakes.  Seriously. 

I have made german pancakes a number of times, and I have never quite seen anything like this.

Even Jared decided he like them after this.  Too bad I can’t remember what settings I used…

Girl Time

Last week Rachel, Jenna, and I were invited to go with some friends in the ward to a karaoke place in Portland.  I thought the idea of individual karaoke “rooms” sounded intriguing and so we went and had a great time.  There was just one problem—there were so many people there that we didn’t get to sing as many songs as we would have liked.

Our solution?  We went back this afternoon, this time with Cindy Lynn.  I figured it was a great way to spend time with my girls since we all enjoy singing, and I was right. 

We had a great time singing favorite songs, both old and new.  Anything by Taylor Swift was a hit with the girls (truth be told, both Cindy Lynn & I were singing “I Knew You Were Trouble” by the end), we sang several songs from Wicked, and Cindy Lynn and I enjoyed singing “Cool Change” (cause we were both born in the sign of water) and “Only Hope.”  We even sang “Copacabana”—a song I’ve sung bits & pieces of to my kids their whole life.  Or at least we sang until the really long instrumental interlude, and then we fast-forwarded to the next song because we were running out of time and still had singing left that we wanted to do.  Singing karaoke is much harder than I expected it to be.  We found out that some songs that we thought we knew we didn’t know nearly well enough to sing—“Just Haven’t Met You Yet” had to be the worst, and yet I would have said that I knew that pretty well.

It was such fun to watch and listen to each of my girls.  To hear how lovely Cindy Lynn’s voice is now, even though she complains about how hard some of her medications are on her voice.  To watch Rachel’s confidence as she dances and sings.  And to listen to Jenna’s sure pitch and harmonies.  I loved watching Rachel and Jenna sing together—I’m so glad that we finally managed to get Cindy Lynn some sisters.

By the time our 90 minutes were up our throats were all tight & sore and we were full of smiles. 

I love my girls!

 

New Year’s Day fun

We all slept in nice and late today and then woke up to play games with our friends---via skype!   And yes, we were all still in our pajamas.   It was certainly more of an effort that playing games when we lived in the same city, but we enjoyed it so much.

When we were done playing (and had learned that the International Chain Saw Sculpture Association really does exist) it was time to start on part 2 of our Lord of the Rings Marathon.  We spent the rest of the day watching and eating, with a little napping thrown into the middle.

Today’s culinary treats included beef fajitas and more southwest eggrolls.  See how nice they look on Russ’s new mexican platter.

We also made spudnuts again this year—something that Russ’s family used to do at Christmas and we’re trying to make a part of our Christmas season.  Last year they were too thick and some didn’t quite cook in the middle, but this year (despite being worried that I had rolled them out too thin) they were just perfect.  (Except that I think the recipe needs a little more salt.)

The Lord of the Rings, as always, was wonderful.  I have plenty of things this year to say about The Lord of the Rings, but for now I will just say that I think I am in love with Howard Shore.  And after watching the Hobbit last week, even more.  If I was ever going to have a score for my life, I’d want him to compose it…

[Which brings up the thought—I’ll bet my life would look/feel a lot different if it had a score.  What if I slaved in the kitchen cooked dinner for my family every night with the heroic theme playing in the background?  Folded the laundry to the lilting hobbit theme?  Perhaps this is something that I need to consider!]

PS—for the last week we’ve done a lot of sitting around.  Sort of like this.

Russ has to go back to work tomorrow, darn it.  I’m totally going to miss him…

Ringing in the New Year Gangnam Style

We started our New Year’s Eve celebration with an afternoon viewing of the first Lord of the Rings movie, followed by a delicious dinner of pasta with asparagus, mushrooms, & cream sauce.  (Lick the plate delicious.) 

After dinner the girls went to spend a couple of hours with some friends and Josh left for the stake New Year’s dance.  That left Russ & I with Cindy Lynn, Mahon, and Jared—the perfect amount of people for a killer game of German Ticket to Ride.  It was fiercely competitive and Russ was the surprise winner.

The girls came home about 10:30 and entertained us by turning on the Dick Clark New Year’s countdown in the other room.  They even did a little Gangnam Style dance for us that they learned in PE.

When we were done with our game we decided that we wanted to watch a movie together, so we picked a funny British movie that Mahon & Cindy Lynn recommended called “Wild Target,” though we paused it halfway through so that we could watch Taylor Swift singing “live” (it was so three hours ago!) at Times Square.

At midnight we toasted the new year with sparkling cider and I took a blurry picture.  (Note to self: switch the lens back to autofocus before taking it off of the camera because next time you put it on you will NOT remember what the problem is!)

For all of my emotional angst about going through the holidays alone, it was a lovely evening.  I was surprised to realize that my “little” kids were fun to hang out with and they made it until midnight (and beyond) with no problem.  And the fact that they’re old enough now to sleep really late in the morning….pure parental bliss…

Hope your Happy New Year was great!