Technically Sad

I thought a few might could use a laugh today.
The down side of having a jumbo tron is that from time to time the bulb blows and it becomes more of a modern art exhibit than a television. Fixing it isn't a big deal. It just takes a hundred dollars and time for the bulb to ship. In the mean time, Rocky needs to be able to keep up his P90X, so we moved our tiny portable tv/dvd player into the den. Instead of watching one of the other tv's in the house JD has taken to watching movies on the tiny tv. I could not resist taking a picture of him with the tiny tv in front of the jumbo tron.

Excuses, Excuses

Thanks to that blogging modern pioneer woman I have this great recipe for rolls. It involves buying those little frozen yeast rolls that you have to let rise. It is so good that I typically buy a giant bag of Kroger brand so I can make a batch of them (or monkey bread) whenever the mood strikes. I was going to have them for dinner tonight so I set the 4 that were left in the bag out to rise. Rocky was out of town tonight (he gets home in a couple of hours) and somehow I let the kids con me into fast food. As I was cleaning up tonight I saw those 4 beautiful rolls just sitting there waiting to be cooked. I couldn't let them go to waste. That would be wrong. There are starving children somewhere in the world. So I tucked the kids in and cooked the rolls. I couldn't just wrap them up for later. I'd forget about them. They are warm and buttery and smell so very good. When you think about it I really had no choice but to eat them. I still have one left, but I seriously doubt it will still be here when Rocky gets home.
If you go to try this recipe keep in mind that I have a very large amount of will power when it comes to food so the fact that I have just gone to the trouble to bake them for myself and eat all 4 of them should tell you how hard it is to resist them. Bake at the risk of your waist. Also, I don't own a cast iron skillet so I bake them in a cake pan. At Thanksgiving I bake them in a 9 x 13 with no problem. Just make sure you spray the pan.

The Results

I gave the pastor a kidney stone! Okay, not really, but last week the pastor had a near death experience with a kidney stone that he just happened to bring to church this week for show and tell. Also in the past couple of weeks, he had an encounter with a man who didn't like to go to churches that talked about the blood of Christ. This became the topic of the sermon. Lots of blood talk. He broke into song a couple of times and asked for audience participation. And, last but not least, he actually used the phrase "once saved always saved" (my parents are Methodist).
Now for the good parts. It was a great sermon! The pastor sang "Nothing but the Blood" and he has a fantastic voice. It was an uplifting reminder of why the blood of the lamb is so miraculous. Even the kidney stone story was more funny than gross. I can't remember the last time I heard so many deserved amening in a service. My parents enjoyed it! They liked the church. The eternal security pitch didn't phase them. My father even said he looked forward to their next visit. This church has passed the kid test and the parent test now. If we can find a Sunday School class for us, we might just be sold.

The Ulitimate Test

I can not recommend things to my parents. The minute I do there is some sort of curse that kicks in. Take for example television shows, if I suggest my parents might enjoy a show then the very next episode will feature something gross, sexually explicit, and/or large amounts of profanity. Just this week we were talking about how funny and cute "Good Luck Charlie" is. It is wholesome and innocent with surprisingly smart humor. The very next episode featured repeated jokes about the baby breaking wind, which is the exact opposite of smart humor.
If I suggest a restaurant, it is suddenly under new management, the food is terrible, and overpriced. After a string of things like this we no longer suggest movies, tv shows, restaurants, or churches to my parents. It is now officially a family running joke and I have found out that it works if my mother suggests something to her mother as well.
Now that we are looking for a church we are putting this odd streak to work for us. If we can visit a church with my parents and there is no "yelling in the spirit", interpretive dancing, or real wine passed around, to name a few possibilities, then we are probably safe. More than once Rocky and I have attended a church for a couple of months, loved it, joined, and then the spiritual other shoe will drop. My parents are our new weapon against that happening.
With this being a holiday weekend we are taking a double risk taking my parents with us today. You never know what a lesser holiday church service will involve. At least one way or the other, after church today we should have a better idea of what to expect from this group.

You Don't Belong Here

My first question is, why does our Kroger sell perfume next to the canned meat? Are there people whose shopping list says, "bread, tuna, something to make me smell like Brittney Spears, pop tarts, eggs..."?
Next question. Has the man who laid out the redesign of the Cumming Walmart been grocery shopping? Ever? Even the clerks are grumbling about it. They went to all the trouble of designing a snack section next to the dog food, but the cookies and crackers are not there. Cookies are across the row from cokes, which are not in the beverage section. Also not in the special new area labeled "beverages" by a rather large sign, is the coffee. It is with the tea and chocolate milk mix next to the wine and across from the beer. Really? Are they saying that if you buy coffee and nestles quick then you must also need to get liquored up? I'm not saying they are wrong, just questioning when we started saying it out loud. (Only kidding- My house is still as dry as ever). The really funny part to me is that under the huge sign hanging from the ceiling that marks the area as "groceries" is the detergent, an item that most doctors agree should not be eaten. Most of the new layout is just funny to me, but the egg placement is down right stupid. They put them in the milk case. Now when you are looking for uncracked eggs you have to hold a door open and can only reach about 3 different cartons of the kind you need. My dad suggested just taking out the ones with cracked eggs and setting them on the ground by the case until they get the point. This certainly explains why the Midway store seems to have gotten a lot more popular. The best thing I can say about the new design is that I like the yellow they picked for the wall color. It is much less depressing than the old gray.

Dishwasher Law

I am starting to realize that in most homes there is one person who is in charge of loading the dishwasher. In our house it is Rocky. We have an I cook, you clean thing going on which was handed down from Rocky's parents and I am eternally grateful. He doesn't freak out if I put dishes in, but I'm pretty sure he goes behind me and rearranges it before it gets run. It could be worse. I heard a rumor that my Uncle Bill has a diagram to follow, but that may have been friendly exaggeration.
For us, the emptying process is a little more complicated. There is an unspoken rule that if you have to unlock the clean dishwasher to get out something then you do not stop with just a spoon. You unload the whole thing. The main reasoning behind this is the second a dishwasher is unlocked the clean or dirty question gets called into play. The problem is that sometimes we are in a hurry and don't have time to empty the whole thing. We try to compromise by emptying just the top, or only the silverware, and someone will take what they need are re lock the dishwasher like they were never there. (Okay fine, it was me, but I went back later and emptied it)

My parents made me this cute little magnet to help. However, Rocky forgets to put it on and take it off, and JD thinks it is fun to randomly put it on. So, at least once a week we stand over the dishes looking for signs of dirt or water spots. We have gotten very good at it, and I'm pretty sure that is not a good thing.
Do you have dishwasher rules?

50/50

How many times have we been told that half of all marriages end in divorce? It is usually thrown at us as an excuse for a commitment phobic not to marry. Sometimes it is used as consolation when a marriage is ending. The other day it struck me that if half end in divorce then the other half end in happily ever after, or at least ever after. It is the glass being half empty all over again. The first time Nikki was asked if a glass was half full or half empty she asked if the glass was being poured or drunk from. To her it was a matter of perspective, and I think the marriage thing is the same way. For years people have used it as an excuse not to marry, but I think it is high time we claim a 50% success rate. It is certainly better odds than you get in the lottery. When you think about it, we accept these odds in other areas all the time. Half of all children are below average, but we don't consider that as a reason not to have children. On a similar note, half of all pregnancies are unplanned. That is creating a whole new life, but I don't see people not having sex over it.
Speaking of statistics, the counties around here have those seat belt signs that let you know what % of people wore their seat belts last month. Rocky pointed out to me that the police don't usually check for that unless they are pulling you over for drunk driving. So really aren't we just saying that 96% of our drunks remember to buckle up before they cause half of all fatal wrecks? Is this really something to brag about?

The Church

Lately I have been reading the blog Stuff Christians Like. Let me warn you, if you don't have a sense of humor about some of the silly, odd, and cliched things we do as Christians then you won't like the blog. However, if you have ever been subjected to the wild drivings of a youth bus, tried to teach three year olds to sing, sign, and not dance to "Jesus Loves Me", or debated KJV vs. NIV then you might find it as interesting as I do.

Today's topic was about reacting to what Anne Rice said. I didn't know she had said anything news worthy let alone anything for Christians to react to. Apparently, she went on a rant about leaving Christianity because we all hate women and life and birth control (it was here that I realized she was Catholic) and a whole list of other things that I don't remember being on the church sign up sheet. She is still good with the belief in Christ just not Christianity. My very first thought was, "What kind of church has she been going to and what did they do to her?" Maybe there was an ugly scene of trying to get the vampire demons out of her mind or something. I'd like to give her a hug and suggest she try a Protestant church next time. Not that the Protestants are perfect, you are just more likely to find a branch of that tree that bends the same way you do.

This summer we have seen several churches with several different approaches to the way they conduct themselves. This week I noticed that a familiar name was on the prayer request list. It wasn't someone I knew personally, but a name I have heard repeated all summer at almost every church we have been to. It struck me just how connected we all are as a community and as a church. The name is J D Sexton and he is a four year old boy who was hurt in a boating accident at the start of summer. He went from almost dying, to wondering if he'd lose a leg, to walking into his home. He still has a long road in front of him, but can look forward to a full and normal life. People loving and caring and praying for a little boy they had previously not known is the kind of love I have come to expect from Christians and it pains me to know that other people haven't experienced that kind of oneness.

What's in a Name

A week from now my oldest will be starting middles school. With the way zoning lines are drawn, she is headed for a school with a reputation for being very snobbish. The word on the street is that, for the girls especially, clothing labels are a big deal. If you have known me more than a week then you know that labels are not my thing. My parents didn't buy me name brand clothing with their money and I certainly wasn't going to be using MY money just to "fit in". I remember my dad bringing up the point that it was like paying for the privilege of advertising for a company. He didn't wear clothes with a logo unless it was free. Come to think of it, if you had looked in my father's closet 25 years ago you might have thought that P&G made shirts, hats, and luggage.
As I have been clothes shopping with Nix lately I have realized that without effort I have passed this on to Nix. We were talking about likes and dislikes and one of her big dislikes is clothing with company names written across them. I hope that she holds on to her personal taste and style over the next three years. It might not make her popular, but it will make her a stronger woman.
Although I am not even a little tempted to go buy her designer jeans, I am really tempted to buy her a few shares of Aeropostale so that every time a girl disses her for not wearing that brand she can laugh and thank them for funding her college education.

Sunday Go To Meetin'

Each year Rocky is asked to play for a Friday night camp night meeting. This is a southern tradition that I managed to miss as a child. It is really fun. There is old gospel music sung, a short sermon preached, and people enjoying themselves thoroughly. It is a special time. Until this Sunday I did not realize that there are churches that operate every Sunday as if it were a camp meeting. It is funny how one experience can be fun in one setting and down right exhausting in another. A person in the crowd speaking up can be uplifting and energizing during camp and quickly distracting and bothersome on Sunday morning. A preacher full of emotion on occasion is refreshing. One that goes from crying to a full out giggle fit is kind of concerning.
Don't get me wrong. I don't for one minute question the sincerity of the people in the church we visited this week. They were friendly and I could tell they really cared for one another. Once the pastor calmed down he had a good message with a good point. Almost ironically, part of the sermon was about stepping out of your comfort zone to serve God. By the time service was over I knew two things, 1 there were a couple of things that would keep this from being our home and 2 I was still glad we went.

Vacation Books

I use to wonder about people who took books on vacation. It seemed odd to me, probably because in the past, reading has been a chore to me. It'd be like packing up dirty laundry to wash while you were at the beach. Or bringing a vacuum with you to the mountains. Crazy. This week I accidentally read a book on vacation and really enjoyed it. How does one accidentally read a book? Well, while we are in Jackson there is only so much we can find fun to do, and so fun quickly becomes relative (no pun intended). We spend some time going to restaurants and store we don't have at home. Since I live pretty close to Atlanta, the southern mecca of shopping, this is not easy. Oddly enough, one thing I do not have near me is a Kmart. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I kind of like walking around through Kmart one or twice a year. Plus, if I buy something there I can be assured that no one back home has one or has any idea where I bought it. (I know I'm weird, just accept it and move on) While there, I walked passed a display for the Percy Jackson movie and they had a paperback copy of the book really cheap. I'd been thinking about reading it anyway, so I went ahead and got it. Fast forward a couple of days and I'm done with it and still managed to fit in regular vacation stuff.
The book itself was pretty good, and I can hand it off to Nix after she finishes the book she is reading. She got into her Uncle Matt's Hardy Boy stash, and she is reading Christy with my mom. If one vacation book is crazy, then what do I make of my child who has 3? I'm just happy she loves to read, and that unlimited reading time is vacation to her.

A Visiting We Will Go

There are a few benefits to visiting a different church each week. There is meeting new people, hearing different styles of preaching, and seeing how God is working in that place. There are also a couple of less righteous high points such as being able to wear the same thing every week with no one but your own family to notice. JD also pointed out this morning that we can park in the visitor parking spaces.
We started our tour of churches this morning and have already learned a very important lesson. Preachers take vacations in the summer. Oddly enough we actually changed the church we planned on going to today because we knew the regular pastor wasn't speaking and yet we ended up with a fill in guy anyway. The people were welcoming, the music was toe taping southern gospel, and the substitute speaker was...well meaning. More than one person apologetically told us the pastor would be back next week. At one point I was sure the man was about to pass out, but he pulled through. He was brief and I am pretty sure he set a record for the number of if times a person can say "God bless your soul" in a 20 minute period. There was actually something oddly fun about it. The overall experience was pleasant and encouraging to us.
Don't ask me where we went because I won't tell you. I will tell you that we might go back to hear the pastor speak, but not next week because we already have another one picked out.

JD's Animal Kingdom

For some reason I have yet to figure out JD has been insisting that one of his favorite stuffed puppies, Brownie, wants to sleep in my room. It was kind of cute at first, but after a few nights I decided it was time to kick the tiny dog out. I told him that Brownie missed his friends and needed to go back to his room. He got that certain JD smile and I knew my bed was about to be filled with puppies. I told him in no uncertain terms that Brownie's friends could not come downstairs. I went to the bathroom and came back to find that JD had enlisted his sister to bring a mass of dogs into the room. In Nix's defense she had not heard my decree, but I knew JD had. When I confronted him he calmly explained that these were not Brownie's friends they were his family.
It would seem that some stuffed animal puppy love has been going on right under my nose. JD's dog Max and Nix's pink poodle Sophia have been married and given birth to Brownie and Floppy. This is not the only happy family we have in the toy box. Many of JD's boy animals have gone courting in Nix's room. I am not sure which of the kids started the matchmaking service for stuffies, but it is pretty funny. I am very flattered to report that all the mommy and daddy animals seem to get along very well and it is only the siblings of opposite genders that ever seem to fight. Apparently the girls are too bossy and the boys are annoying. No psychology degree needed to figure that one out.

We're All Going to Die!

Since I have had a little more time at home during the day lately, I have had a chance to scroll through the channel guide to see some of what daytime television has to offer. Mainly what I have learned is that the are at least 12 different things that are probably in my house or part of my lifestyle that are killing me. I have never taken the time to watch Dr. Oz or The Doctors, because the plot summaries alone are depressing. The last promo I saw for Dr. Oz said that everyone in his audience had cancer and everyone watching would have it too (or something to that effect). I took that to mean that watching his show gives you cancer, so I didn't watch. Truthfully I didn't watch because, for reasons I can not explain, he gives me the creeps, but I digress. My point is that there is a lot of health talk going on out there and I wonder if it is making us more health conscious or creating a society of hypochondriacs.
Just this week I have been having an very annoying twitch in the muscle below my eye. It is from eye strain and stress. I probably need to go back to using eye drops. Just for fun I looked it up online and found out that I may have tourettes, epilepsy, or fibromyalgia. It reminded me of that scene in Kindergarten Cop when he says he has a headache and the little kids says, "Maybe its a tumor". Did this kid grow up and start WebMD? It is sadly another illustration of how the internet should be making us all better informed and educated, but instead it is turning us all into crazy people. If you are having a health problem, go to your doctor and not the internet. They can actually treat you. If you have questions, ask them. It is one of the things you pay them for.
Okay, rant over.

And the Winner is...

We have a new trumpet player in the family! Believe it or not Rocky did not try to influence her in this direction. I talked her into trying a sax just to get a feel for a reed instrument and she really didn't like it even though she did really well right from the start. I think the band director was leaning towards french horn for her, but was perfectly fine with her selection of trumpet. The only thing we tweaked a bit was to go with a cornet instead of a full sized trumpet. Rocky and the director both felt that it would fit Nix better at this stage and would be easier to learn in the beginning. Although I do suspect that Rocky's want of a cornet for himself had a little to do with it. It does make it easier that we have a built in private tutor, extra horns, and all the extras just laying around the house. I guess as of today I am a band mom. Wow!

Hey! Wait a Minute

I'm not much of a true conspiracy theorist. Oh sure, I like to come up with outlandish reasons why some things happen now and then, but it is really just to exercise my creative juices. It's not like I sit around debating who shot JFK or if Elvis is dead (totally not by the way;). Today I heard more than one person mention that to spite filling out a census form and mailing it in on time they received a visit from a census taker. My mind digressed from there to wondering if it is a crime to mess with a census worker, then to how many different letters they sent me, to the Post Office, and then on the price of stamps (not my most random train, but still a fun ride). I realized that ever since the big announcement that the USPO was totally broke, I have received three times as many letters from the government as usual, if not more. Take for example my tax return. I got one letter saying I had filed, one saying I was due a refund, one saying they were going to send me a check because they decided not to automatic deposit it, the actual check, and then finally a letter telling me they had mailed the check. I think they spent more in postage than my refund was actually for. This Spring I got a letter saying the census was coming, the form, and 2 letters telling me I already had it and reminding me to send it in. What is bugging me here is that if they can manage to get me a letter saying something is coming then why can't they have also just sent the actual item?
I can think of no area in life where this is normal behavior, nor can I remember it happening before. My only conclusion is that the government is spending a googol worth of money (that is 10 to the 100th power, and JD's new favorite number) to keep the post office running and to create pointless jobs for people with no skills. This also means that my tax refund could have been a lot bigger if it weren't for all of this wasted time, paper, and postage. Wouldn't be a better use of our time to try and figure out why the post office isn't making money even though the price of stamps keeps going up?
I would also like to suggest that if they had put an optional essay question on the census form asking people how they felt about the way the federal government was spending their hard earned money, then they wouldn't have had nearly the problems getting people to mail them back . I might just have to add that to my form on my own next decade.

Long Time No See

I feel like it has been forever since I have sat down to write anything. I can not believe I have abandoned my blog for so long. I guess the lack of dramatic before and afters and my laptop taking a dirt nap stifled my creative juices. I am in the middle of redoing Nix's room and have been in the middle of it for about a month. We got everything out and rearranged, but trying to get everything back in has been a lot like repacking a suitcase after a weeks vacation at the beach. You know it all went in there before, but there is no way to get it all back in. Add to that the age factor. I once heard a person say that a one's attention span is the same in minutes as they are years old. This explains why I can not get Nix to work on her room for more than 11 minutes and also maybe why my father has been able to take up wood carving.
On the topic of cleaning, we are still doing pretty good. It isn't the spotless glory it first was, but it is still a lot better than before. As an added bonus I have learned that I can get it from not bad to spotless in a lot less time. After I had been sick and the house had been allowed to slide for a good week, I timed my clean up. It only took 9 minutes to do the den and that includes vacuuming! In one hour I can have the house completely guest ready. That fact alone makes all of this work worth it.

JD's Room

After what seems like a very long break, I finally have a new room to show you. JD's room is done. It was interesting. He is a fairly neat kid so there wasn't a lot of mess, but there was a lot of outgrown toys, books, and clothes. Let me start with a shot I took of all the books leaving the room, and his book case now.

Then the closet. My mom was a huge help with this one. I took out clothes while she folded them and put them in a box. Once upon a time I had a pipe dream of the kids taking their dirty clothes to the laundry room every night. I gave that up. And now that I have removed the clubhouse the children had been setting up in there, he has plenty of room.

Here is the big before and after.

Several of his pieces of furniture are anchored to the walk. A product of his climbing days. Because of this I couldn't really rearrange the room. JD agreed to remove a lot of toys because he doesn't really play in his room, and that seems to have opened up the space.

I have one more picture to share. To help freshen up the puppy collection (all stuffed, I promise), I put them in a space bag and sucked all the air out of them. At first JD was worried, but once he saw them all smushed and vacuumed he started laughing and wanted me to do it again. They do smell a lot fresher. I just had to take a picture of them.

Motivation

I am trying to get motivated to clean a room upstairs, but it is just not happening. I think one of the reasons is that the children's rooms are up there and I'm not real excited about the potential for protests when I start pitching stuff. The other room I have to do is our everything room. It is an office/music/craft/storage/sewing room that sometimes doubles as a extra guestroom when we get the air mattress out. It is also the smallest bedroom in the house so you can imagine the cramped mess that awaits me. Maybe I'll start on JD's room. He actually keeps his room neat most of the time. Except for the rare occasion when he, as he puts it, swings around doing his monkey business.

In the mean time, for those family members who have not joined the Facebook cult, here is a picture of Rocky's very first (and hopefully last) wreck.

Today I am thankful that he is not hurt and for the flexibility of Georgia pine trees when they are still small. We are still waiting on the official damage report.

Easy Peezy

For my first room upstairs I picked something really easy, the guest room. Right now Rocky has it transformed into the sick cave because he has had a nasty cold. Normally it would look much better than the before shot seen here.

(note: the red and gold faux finish and fancy window valance came with the house)

There isn't a lot to this room. There is the bed, a couple of side tables, a rather ugly blue folding table, and an equally ugly but very comfortable blue chair in the corner that is unseen in this picture. Not a lot of thought went into this room when we moved in and not a lot has changed over the years. I got to thinking that the only way to really feel like this room had been redone was to move everything around.

Tada!

The whole room is now reversed. I am loving the way it looks, but I guess I need to have some house guests to know if it is really working the way I want it to. See the pretty covered table? That is the ugly blue table covered with a quilt that was placed backside up. I added a couple of framed pictures to it to make it look like a real piece of furniture. I'd like to get another small lamp to match the one I already have to go on the other table. In the meantime I used 3 pretty candle holders I had laying around. Ideally, I would have also get a new comfy chair with a floor lamp for reading next to it, a new comforter set, and a small decorative trash can. Dave Ramsey says I can only have the trash can and not so much decorative as cheap.