It’s no secret that I like birds. I’ve had parakeets, finches, and now we have three cockatiels who are sweet and fun but poop all over everything, which drives me crazy. So, today, when I saw that someone was giving away two parakeets on Freecycle, I should have just deleted that email. But Megan’s birthday is coming up, and she would LOVE her own parakeets, and so I had to respond. So, I went and got them, and we’ll give them to her tonight for a surprise early birthday present.
Month: March 2007 (Page 2 of 4)
In preparing my lesson for Relief Society, I thought about how much I wish we could do fun things for lessons, like I used to do in my Primary calling. Why must Relief Society lessons always be so boring serious? Well, since my lesson was on searching the scriptures for ourselves, I thought, “wouldn’t it be fun if we did a sort of talk show?” I could interview King Josiah (his story is told in the lesson), and maybe some of the other scriptural heroes. But how do I do the rest of the lesson? The part with all the important quotes from the teachings of Spencer W. Kimball? Well, I thought about it all week, and though up and rejected several options, then finally went with having “guests” from the class come up and “read and discuss” important quotes. I would also get a volunteer to dress up and do the whole King Josiah thing, which I wrote up like a skit. I also had a “commercial” of our family acting out a story from the scriptures that we taped in FHE a few years ago. I usually give out treats, but didn’t want to do the usual treats of candy, so we popped a whole bunch of popcorn, and handed out 45 lunch sacks, each with 3-4 cups of popped popcorn for snacks.
I was very nervous about the lesson. It could either go over really well, or people could give me that look. You know, the who is she and why isn’t she teaching a lesson look.
So, before everyone came in, I taped 6 envelopes under random chairs, moved the traditional table and set up two chairs and a small table, brought in the TV, and brought in my huge box of popcorn. When it was lesson time, I put up my poster that said “The Relief Society Lady” and started into my “monologue”. I had to welcome everyone to my first show of the Relief Society Lady, and make a joke about how the producers wanted to hire Marin, (a major scripture scholar in our ward), but rumor had it she was too busy and too expensive, so they got me. I told everyone to look under their chairs because there were prizes. Oh, and I also thanked the house band–them.
I introduced the lesson with the story from President Kimball’s life, and then asked the person with envelope #1 to come on up, they were the first guest. So, that person came up, introduced themselves and told a little bit about herself (which was a good thing, since we have a ward that is growing so much and we have new people constantly), then she read the quote and we talked about it a little bit. Then she stuck the wordstrip up on the board. To thank her for being such a great guest, I gave her a pair of tickets to an upcoming concert in the Tabernacle. Once people learned there were tickets involved, they were a little bit more willing to come up and help.
The lesson went VERY well. I forgot to pass out the popcorn until about 1/2way through the lesson, and the TV wasn’t working for our commercial break, but some nice lady fiddled with it and made it work, so everything went as well as I could have expected it. One lady said, “We should have lessons like this every week,” but I think she was referring to the snacks. My friend, DeEtte told me, “You are hilarious! You SHOULD have your own talk show. I would watch it every day.” I think she might be exaggerating that a bit, but I’ll accept the complement. Marin, the scholarly lady I joked about, came up and said, “That was delightful! You did such a fun job with what could have been a boring subject.” I hope that’s true. I know it wasn’t boring at all, but I hope that people still got the point of the lesson and maybe just maybe felt the spirit a teeny tiny bit.
At the end I quickly bore my testimony on the truthfulness of the scriptures, and encouraged everyone to watch our next show, the subject will be “Gardens, why you should stop mooching off your neighbor and plant your own.”
Looking out the window into the backyard, I just saw a cat out there. We don’t have a cat (or a dog, for that matter), and never will, due to someone’s allergies, but there are a couple of cats who I sometimes see in our backyard. They slink along the back fence line (which should probably be called the weed line, as after the curbing it just turns into about 4 feet of big tall weeds before the barbed wire fence) waiting and watching. Then, if they are lucky, they pounce. I’ve seen a few happy ones carrying what looks like a limp mouse, and I rejoice. Come again, little happy cat! Remember the yummy mice, and feel free to come any time you’d like. Tell your friends!
How boring am I that I have to live blog the delivery of my couches?
Pretty dang boring. Gotta go see!
So, here’s how it was on Wednesday. 
Then on Thursday, things looked like this…
 Then the delivery guys came and it looked something like this 
and they brought these:
(Click to Enlarge)
Now the room looks kind of like this (although it’s hard to get a shot of the whole room at once):
While waiting around and not wanting to get involved in any big project (like cleaning) while waiting for my couches, I decided to cancel a stray credit card that has been sitting on my desk here for about a year and never been used except the first time to get the $30 credit or whatever it was. So, after putting in all the requisite numbers and sitting on hold for about 10 minutes, the lady came on the line (very nice, with no Indian accent, by the way) and when I told her I wanted to cancel, told me that card was in Mr. Erickson’s name, and was he available to come to the phone right now? So, no, I couldn’t cancel that card, and will now have to make Mr. Erickson do it.
And still no couch.
Got a phone call from a guy at the furniture store, asking if I would be home (duh!) and saying that they would now load up my furniture and bring it.
They told me the couch would be delivered between 9 and 11. Well, now it’s 11:00 and I see no delivery truck. Hmmmm. So, here I am with poor little John who has a fever and doesn’t feel good, feeding him juice and watching Cars. With no couch, yet.
I knew that Ryan was a pretty laid back guy, but when I called him from the furniture store and asked if he cared if I bought a new couch on Wednesday, his answer to me was, “As long as I don’t have to haul it.” He didn’t really care what color, what fabric, etc. I asked if he wanted to go and see them, and he said he could if I wanted him to, but that he trusts me. So, basically, as long as I don’t ask him to move it for me, I guess he’s ok with whatever I buy! (I must say that the couch purchase was not totally out of the blue, I had been talking about it and planning it for weeks, and we already knew it was in the budget, so it wasn’t a huge surprise.)
And what to do with the old couch? I thought my sister could use it, as her couch has recently bitten the dust, but it turns out it wouldn’t work for her. So, I posted it on freecycle, and had 4 people within the hour who wanted and would be willing to pick up the old couch. I went with the lady who said she could pick it up that very afternoon. Then when a friend was over to drop off her kids, I asked if she could help me move the two sectional pieces to the front porch. Man, that was hard! I don’t know how they got them in here. No wonder Ryan didn’t want to move them. Anyway, we only scratched the floor in one place, and we did manage to get them out onto the porch, so when the lady and her son came to pick them up, we just had to carry them out to the trailer, and she was loaded up in 15 minutes!
So, I was able to vacuum the carpet, and clean the walls and even moved the piano from one wall to the other—-now that thing is heavy! So, today the couches should arrive, and I just hope I love them as much in my home as I did in the showroom.
I want a cookie. I don’t know where this craving is coming from, but when I came home from rehearsal last night I was tired and hungry and wanted a cookie. I didn’t have one. I don’t think we even have any cookies in the house, even. It’s been 3 weeks since I gave up sugar, and the cravings have really gone away. Until this cookie thing. I don’t want to eat a cookie. I want to keep on keeping off sugar. I’m actually quite proud of myself and I’ve even lost almost 5 pounds. I don’t want to eat a cookie. I don’t want to WANT to eat a cookie. I know I can make myself not EAT a cookie, but How do I make myself not WANT a cookie?
Deep breathing, I guess. I’ve made pizza for the kids for lunch, so I’ll go eat that (healthy alternative–not so much) and hope it kills my cookie craving. If that doesn’t work, I’ll sip my diet coke, then maybe have some popcorn. If I’m still having a craving I could always break out asugar free pudding snack. Wish me luck.
My little boy can sit for what seems like hours just making car sounds. Whether he has an actual car or not. Wow!
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