Month: September 2006 (Page 1 of 3)

A song came on the radio today that I’ve heard hundreds of times. It talks about if he had one wish, he would wish for one more day with “you”–his wife, girlfriend, true love–we don’t really know. So, it got me to thinking..what if I really had a wish. One wish. What would I wish for. The first thing that popped into my head was to lose 20, 30, maybe 40 pounds. I’ve struggled with my weight forever, and I’m constantly trying this or that and joining and rejoining Weight Watchers and not having the best success with it right now (it doesn’t help that we had pizza last night and Ryan decided to stop at Arctic Circle for ice cream on the way home last night). Wouldn’t it be great if I could wish for it and be thin?

What would you wish for?
That your annoying ex-husband would be hit by a car or die in an airplane crash?
Would you wish for a million dollars? Or to have your house paid off?
Would you wish to fall in love? Or to rekindle the love you have?
Would you wish for a new job? A new car? A new computer?
Would you wish for a talent that you currently do not possess? A personality trait? Patience, maybe?

As I thought about it, the thing that I would wish for is continued health for me and my family. Right now we’re all relatively healthy, and I just want to keep it that way. I’ve seen a friend deal with countless surguries and hospitalizations for one of her children, and I don’t know how she has the strength to do that over and over. I have friends who have lost children, and I honesltly don’t know how they got through that. I know people who have gone through breast cancer, and although they didn’t enjoy it, they’ve made the best of it, and are going on.

But my wish would be to not have to go through it. That’s my wish. Good Health for me and my family. So, wish fairy, if you are out there and if you read blogs, make a note of my wish.

What would you wish for?

Ok, I just finished watching last night’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Are you watching that show? So good. I love Matthew Perry!

I just tell my good friend mythtv (tivo’s younger cousin–the box that Ryan spent way too much time and way too much money building himself, and now I’m really glad that he did) to record all these new shows, because I want to watch them just in case they turn out to be the next great show. So far Studio 60 is my favorite.

That’s all I have to say about that.

(What? You were expecting something deep? It’s only Tuesday, for heaven’s sake!)

In my dream I was riding in my brand new forest green Ford F-150 truck.

Yes, it looked like that. I was a cute 20 something with a good job (obviously, if I had bought that truck), had bought the truck myself, and I had lots of attention from cute guys. Although that may have just been because of the vehicle I was driving.

In reality, I’m an aging 30-something mother of 5 who drives an aging 1998 Dodge Caravan with built in carseats.

It’s full of coats, blankets and chairs, water bottles and even soccer balls from the constant soccer games and other activities we go to. It’s also got about 5 pounds of crumbs, cereal and fruit snacks embedded into the carpet and seats. There are papers and books on the floor, probably even a library book. There are CD’s in there like Kid’s Rock and Baby Mozart, along with the Wicked soundtrack and some Mormon Tabernacle Choir. When I drive it I do not get a lot of attention from cute guys, unless of course you count my husband and my sons.

I have no idea why I dreamed about the nice new Truck (and how I even knew that F-150 was a kind of truck–where did that come from?), except that maybe I’m longing for my youth.

As it turns out, I’m exactly where I want to be right now. If I didn’t have the kids to crumb up and clutter my vehicle, I’m sure I would be lonely and sad. If we weren’t busy with soccer and other activities, sure we’d have more time at home, but if that’s what my kids are good at and really want to do, I’m happy that we can give them those opportunities. Although it’s starting to fall apart and has over 126,000 miles on it, I really do love my van. I would, of course, love it to be cleaner, however. Maybe the dream is telling me that today is the day we need to go to Supersonic.

Ok, I’ll admit it, I’ve got nothin to write about. Empty brain. Nothing’s going on. Except that there was a HUGE lightning storm that hit our neighborhood last night. I’m sleepin along, minding my own business, when FLASH! It was like someone turned the light on in my room, and then BOOM, the loudest scariest thunder. And then the rain pounded down like rocks. It was a seriously wicked storm. I lay there trying to go back to sleep hoping that our house doesn’t get hit by lightning or flood or something.

Anyway, moving on…

I mentioned about this gift certificate to Merrell shoes, right? Well, in checking the website, I really couldn’t see spending that much money on shoes (even hypothetical free gift certificate money), and they are all really athletic hiking, outdoors-y shoes, not the kind I usually pick up on clearance at Target or Kohls, you know? So, I thought about being really nice and giving the gift certificate to Megan’s soccer coach, since she IS the outdoors-y, go for a 4 hour bike ride, coach 10 year old girls in the rain kind of gal. But then I found these shoes and decided I needed them. In the black. You always need black shoes, right? And I can use them for Bells, since I need comfortable black flats for standing there for hours. Yes, I’ll admit it. I was sucked into the shoe store, and it spit me out a chewed up shallow person who won’t share her gift certificate.

Since those shoes were not quite the limit of my free shoe-dom, I asked Megan to come and look at the website with me, and see if she saw any shoes she thought were cool. Some of them have big Ms for Merrell or Megan on them–that would be cool, right? She looks at them and says, “I don’t really need any shoes. I’ve got those two pairs that don’t fit me yet in my closet, anyway.”
What?
Someone’s offering you FREE shoes, and you say you don’t need any? I am beginning to wonder if this child was switched at birth. I mean, she’s got this athletic streak going on that I know she didn’t get from me or her dad, she’s skinny as a stick and she doesn’t want shoes? So, I call in the next one, who I know will not fail me in her shoe shopping. Natalie. The child who’s so much like me it’s almost painful to watch. “Natalie,” I say, “can you come in here for a minute?” So, she comes in and I ask her to look at these shoes and see if there’s any that look like fun to her. It doesn’t take us long before we’ve picked out these, and our gift certificate is pretty much spent.

So, now I get to wait in breathless anticipation (well, maybe not breathless, as that could be dangerous, if not fatal) for our cute shoes to arrive. I just hope I can wear them without a slight tinge of guilt that I could have given the gift certificate to a very deserving soccer coach. Maybe I’ll go and get her something from Bath and Body works. Even sporty people like lotions, right?

Ok, I know I already posted something today–something boring about the wind (although I did include that lovely picture of me in 3rd grade–wearing the same shirt as a boy I can’t remember his name)

. But here’s something I was just sent that made me laugh. Hopefully you’ll get a kick out of it, too.

Peace, out.

It was a windy night last night. I hate the wind. I hear it howling outside and the windows shake and sometimes they make a strange moaning noise and the wind tries to push it’s way inside. It keeps me awake. I heard it last night and thought about getting some earplugs, but I didn’t know exactly where they were and didn’t feel like getting up to search for them. That would wake me up too much and then I really couldn’t get back to sleep (not that I could sleep with that wind).

I hear a scraaaaaaaping sound, and know that something of ours is being blown down the driveway. I remembered my cute green watering can that used to be sitting on my porch. Where did that go, for heaven’s sake? Blown away, probably.

This morning, as I opened the door for Megan to go and get on the early bus, I see our little tykes basketball hoop out in the middle of the circle, and a neighbor driving around it. Oh, the embarrassment. When you can’t even contain your kids’ toys in the bounderies of your yard. What a shame.

Oh, and Tina, this picture is for you.

I think if I thought about it long enough I could name at least 10 people in there. Krista, Carolyn A , Ken C., Roy G., Amy G., Matt ?, cindy, Kristine, is that Drew?, and you and me, of course.

Happy 3rd grade reunion.

Ryan’s back. And really there’s no trouble, I just thought I’d throw in a song lyric there for the title of this post.

Ryan went to Denver for 5 days for a big geek fest, complete with cheerleader babes and lots of blinky lights. He came back Saturday night. Just having him gone for a few days reminds me how much I rely on him. For heaven’s sake, I had to do ALL the driving! He doesn’t do all the running kids around that I do, but it’s nice to be able to have him pick up a child from soccer or choir or a friend’s house on his way home. And when he’s here, he usually gets to go to at least one of the weekly soccer games so I don’t have to attend them all. And he helps a lot with getting the kids to bed!

So, I missed him, and I’m glad he’s back.

It never fails. As soon as I go in the bathroom and start….well, using the bathroom, one or more of my children immediately decides that they need me. John could be playing happily by himself for hours, but once I go upstairs to use the bathroom or do my hair or makeup, he pops in. “Hi, Mom! I was yooking for you!” he says happily.

Today while I did my hair and makeup, he amused himself by taking out all the tampons from the drawer. He lined them up on the edge of the tub, and said, “I’m making a treasure map!” Well, when some of his treasure map fell into the tup (empty, thank goodness), I tried to persuade him to go and play with something else. But he was not interested in playing with something else and said, “I need to get the candy!” So, he climbed into the tub to get the “candy” tampons. Then he put them all back in the box, but then took the box with him. I was trying not to make a big deal over it, so I didn’t say, “No, those are Mommy’s special tampons, put them back in the box and don’t ever touch them again!” I did say that those things belonged in the bathroom, and went to go find them. I found them all lined up nicely in the box in his room.

Someday maybe I’ll tell him this story, when he’s about 17 and really embarrass him. He wouldn’t believe me, though.

Mel over at the Amazing Shrinking Mom found this weight loss simulator at Prevention.com. You can put in your current weight and your goal weight, or if you’ve already lost weight, you can enter your starting weight and your current weight.

So, here’s me at my current weight, *gasp*, and then how good I’ll look when I reach my goal weight.

And just for fun, I put in 125 pounds to see what I’d look like in Heaven, when we all have perfect bodies. Go check it out! It’s fun!