A New Blog

Tim finally switched me over to a wordpress blog. The features seem easier to manage and I can choose from hundreds of blog themes. I’ve searched through nearly every one of the designs. For now, I have chosen the Bluebird theme…enjoy the new look.

Two ticks, a foreign substance, sunshine, and a walk near the ocean

  

Nicole and Panther

 

A Ferocious Panther

Meet Panther. She loves to sleep, hop, and pee on our carpet (she seems not to like the hardwood floors for any purpose).

She also has a love for Starbucks. What a great dog.

What Do You Like to Do?

Some people craft, some people knit. Some people are avid hikers or bikers.

While I like all of those things, the main thing I seem to do on Saturdays or during any free time is wander. I like to walk the streets of quaint towns on a sunshiny days, wandering in and out of stores, or just sit on a bench and watch people.

So the next time my hairdresser asks, “What are your hobbies?” can I say, “Wandering”?

Ill

I went to a minute clinic today after being wiped out with a bad sinus thing this weekend. I talked to my school nurse today and she convinced me to get to the doctor to get some meds…and she also thinks I should stay home tomorrow to rest. She is a good lady.

While the minute clinic lady was investigating me with the microscope, she noted that my nose is really swollen (I know, that’s part of the problem, lady) and then said, “beware of seasonal allergies.” Beware? Are they going to attack me? She then went on to talk about how we all have allergies just waiting to blossom, and my could blossom right around the corner.

She gave me drugs, but she made me worried about the allergies lurking. I don’t have allergies. I refuse to have allergies. I won’t live off a nasal spray as she suggest, although I am glad she prescribed a nasal spray for my current symptoms.

Let’s hope I can breathe enough to sleep tonight.

Post Office Woes

A while back, my sister-in-law posted about a post office conspiracy theory that includes raising the postage and paying for things like the envelope inside a package. I thought she must have gotten a postal worker that was just way too into following the rules or was confused about the regulations and wanted to charge for everything. Nothing like that really happens in the world, right?

Well, being a good citizen, the other day I had to buy an overseas stamp so I had stopped in the post office and while I was there I had them weigh a rebate envelope I was sending to make sure I wasn’t over the weight limit ( I had two small pieces of cardboard in the envelope from the proof of purchase labels). He weighed the envelope and said that the weight was fine, but since it was hard (from the small pieces of cardboard) I had to pay more because it would have trouble going through their machines. $.039 more to be exact. Almost double postage because I decided to have them check - when I had mostly assumed it would be fine.

I felt like I really gotten taken for a postage ride because I was sure that they would have delivered the envelope if I would have just put it in the box. Sure, they might have had machine problems, but they would have dealt with it. I think this all goes back to my post about nice people suffering at restaurants - being nice and following rules gets you in trouble when everything would be cheaper and easier if you were just a jerk or didn’t double check things to make sure you were within the limits.

Or maybe I just caught a postal worker on a day when they wanted to make citizens suffer.

On another note, I think I am going to go buy a big bundle of forever stamps.

On Belay

Today we went indoor rock climbing. After five years of bugging Tim that we should do this, it’s official. We’re rock climbers. We now know words like “belay,” “lock-on position,” and “figure-8 knots.”

I was nervous that our teacher would be one of those too-cool people who are difficult to learn from because they think they are so cool that they don’t actually tell you anything helpful, just make you feel stupid for not already knowing everything about the outdoors. Fortunately, he wasn’t one of those people. He made us feel like we could fit into the crowd.

We got a free two-week membership with our class, so we’ll be going back over the next couple weeks. As it is right now, my forearms are so tired that I can’t hold on to anything. So hopefully that will improve over the next two weeks. Our teacher says that we are going to be really good by the end of this timeframe. I’ll let you know.

They Gave Away our Children

Another wallet woe - this summer my stolen wallet required canceling all of our accounts, credit cards, and changing all our automatic payments. I thought I had changed everything, but found out last week that I missed changing our information with World Vision. I had called to see why we weren’t receiving our tax information and found out that our accounts had been canceled. (I have sponsored Franz Junior for 10 years and Tim has sponsored a child from Ethiopia for almost that long.) The woman was very helpful and tried to locate our children to see if we could restart our sponsorship with them, but said that both children were released from the program. I was shocked - I didn’t get any notice or warning that my children were in danger of being let go. I had just gotten a christmas card from my child and was thinking it was time for me to write him a letter. I felt pretty bad. I am hoping that since the boys were getting older, they were about to be released from the program anyway…but I would have liked to say good-bye or something instead of just stopping payment without really knowing it.

On a positive note, we were able to start the sponsorship of an entire family (3 children and 2 adults). We just got our packet of information and it seems like it will be a great partnership. World Vision is always looking for new sponsors, and I would highly recommend it. Take a look and see what you think.

Seen Today

On a window of an old Subaru sedan, a typed piece of paper was taped to the back window saying,
” PLEASE DO NOT BREAK INTO MY CAR AGAIN. By now you should know that there is no CD player or good sound system of any kind, money, or anything valuable here. Also, there is NO sleeping in my car.”

Valentine’s Day Dance

Early in the year, our teachers voted to not allow the 5th and 6th graders to attend any school sponsored dances because of the age differences in our kids and fear of angry calls from parents who didn’t want their children attending dances at such a young, immature age. To our surprise, MPAC (the middle school parent’s association who periodically puts on after school events for the kids like movies or ice cream socials) decided to have a 5th and 6th grade Valentines dance.

Now not only have we crossed the lines of having a dance for our youngest middle school kids, we are having a Valentines dance. Immediately I was getting crying girls in my office. One girl was upset because she had said yes to being a a boy’s girlfriend, but her friend decided she didn’t like the boy and pressured this girl into breaking up with him. The girl in my office was upset because she had tried to get back together with the ex-boyfriend when she finally decided that she didn’t want her friend making her decisions for her..but the boyfriend had already selected another girl - who he was supposedly going to DANCE with at the big dance. She was pretty inconsolable. Especially since everything was done. No decisions could be undone or redone.

The teachers had complained to me all week saying that the 5th grade was in chaos. Numerous feelings had been hurt and all the classes were a-buzz with what they were going to wear to the dance, etc. Again, since it was parent sponsored, there was nothing we could do except watch it happen…and unravel.

The dance was on Valentines’ Day - right after school (which the 8th graders thought was so stupid). As I was leaving, the secretary stopped me in the hall, she was laughing as she was saying that she didn’t think MPAC would be sponsoring any dances soon. I asked what was going on and she said to take a walk by the cafeteria on my way out.

Things heard as I walked by:

“We want you to have fun and be able to dance engergetically but there is absolutely NO RUNNING. Again, we can get back to the fun soon, but there is NO RUNNING.”

Music starts - then stops a few seconds later with another frazzled voice making an announcement, “One more thing, there is no water throwing. NO water throwing.”

As I closed the door on my way out, I heard groans of complaint from the kids…and I laughed all the way to my car.