Snow Day, Scrapped

I know you didn't think I'd let a snow day go by without taking pictures and scrapping at least two pages about it! (You did know that, right?) So what if I'm four months late? :)

The Pastor's Ass

I lifted this from a friend:

The Pastor entered his donkey in a race and it won. The Pastor was so pleased with the donkey that he entered it in the race again and it won again.

The local paper read: PASTOR'S ASS OUT FRONT.

The Bishop was so upset with this kind of publicity that he ordered the Pastor not to enter the donkey in another race.

The next day the local paper headline read: BISHOP SCRATCHES PASTOR'S ASS.

This was too much for the Bishop so he ordered the Pastor to get rid of the donkey. The Pastor decided to give it to a Nun in a nearby convent.

The local paper, hearing of the news, posted the following headline the next day: NUN HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN.

The Bishop fainted. He informed the Nun that she would have to get rid of the donkey so she sold it to a farmer for $10.

The next day the paper read: NUN SELLS ASS FOR $10.

This was too much for the Bishop so he ordered the Nun to buy back the donkey and lead it to the plains where it could run wild.

The next day the headlines read: NUN ANNOUNCES HER ASS IS WILD AND FREE.

The Bishop was buried the next day.

The moral of the story is this: Being concerned about public opinion can bring you much grief and misery -- even shorten your life. So be yourself and enjoy life. Stop worrying about everyone else's ass and you'll be a lot happier and live longer!

Nostalgia

A long time ago I observed that people who did not go to college had a tendency to drag out the styles of their high school years a little too long. In the  late nineties, I saw it in the form of bangs teased six inches above the head and jeans that were pegged tight enough at the ankles to cut off circulation. Yes, I am willing to admit that I once did the same thing, but I also had enough sense to quit. (Though some part of me still wishes for big hair to come back in vogue - it looked good on me. I don't miss the amount of time it took to accomplish the look, though.)

I will also admit that I don't have much of a sense of style today, either. I mostly wear solid-colored short-sleeve shirts and jeans or capris. Boring, I know - but I digress. I'm not sure why college seemed to be the defining factor, but it seems that inevitably those who are holding on to long-buried fashion trends didn't make the journey into the hallowed halls of higher education.

Why do we tend to live in the past? It seems that lately I've been stuck in the nineties; reminiscing about high school and college days, thinking of old friends, big mistakes, and fun times. I've spent a few hours lately updating my playlist with songs that flood my head with random memories, and I'm not ashamed to admit I have thoroughly enjoyed it.

It seems that every song has its own memory attached; One Headlight reminds me of a particularly bad date during my college years. Shine brings back Friday and Saturday nights cruising the strip with the radio cranked up as loud as it would go. When I hear Whomp, There It Is, I inevitably remember a rainy day riding back from a band trip to Indianapolis (was it the state football championships?) with the entire band hollering along. Informer takes me back to the physics class spent outside shooting off model rockets; the teacher used mine for a demo, shot it straight into a power line, and I wound up losing points because it didn't go far enough. Some kid in a blue Iroc-Z drove by about that time, thumping out Informer from speakers that he obviously felt the need to show off.

I loved Color Me Badd, but didn't dare buy a CD because I knew my parents would throw it out since every other song title had the word "sex" in it. My college roommie and I would clean our dorm to Alanis Morisette's Jagged Little Pill, cranked up loud enough to motivate us to actually do the work. I used to laugh hysterically to the line "pissing the night away" in Tubthumping, because at first I didn't know that "pissing" could mean also mean drinking. More Than Words was the anthem of my first summer at Bible camp. I think they must have played Brown-Eyed Girl at least a dozen times at our senior banquet.

Funny how music can take you back. Over the last few years, I've quit listening to the new stuff. It doesn't hold the same appeal that it used to. I'm just not a fan of the hip-hop, synthesized, unoriginal stuff. Granted, not all of my nineties stuff was much better, but today's music just doesn't do it for me anymore. I am much more likely to listen to talk radio, or the nineties station that I can only pick up for about ten minutes when I cross the Georgia state line on I-24.

Maybe it's because life was simpler then... or was it? I suppose I've really just traded one set of complications for another, and even though retrospect tells me that the problems of yesterday are far less serious than the ones I have today, it never seemed so at the time, not in my limited experience. Even so, when I find myself buried in bills and work and death and sorrow, I wish, just for a moment, I could backtrack to the days when homework and boyfriends were the biggest concern, and Def Leppard and Sheryl Crow strained from the radio.

Last Day of the First Grade

I blinked and it had passed. One day he was trotting proudly into school, showing off his cool new "pack-pack" and clutching a box of Kleenex, the next he was loading up in my car, a sticky, sweaty mess from playing all, sans one front tooth.

He made such incredible strides this year - from not reading much of anything to starting his first chapter book tonight, from counting to adding two-digit numbers, and from not spelling anything to not missing a single word - ever. I somewhat wish his confidence level had gone up a bit more than it did, but I'm still quite proud of how much he's been able to do.

It's been a tough year. The first semester all three of us were in school and money was really tight. Between lack of time and lack of funds, I felt like a rotten mama. Then when Jeff graduated and I shifted into second semester with its tougher classes and my workload at my job suddenly pushed me into fifty-hour workweeks, I thought I'd lose my mind. At one point Braeden asked why I didn't have time to play with him anymore. It broke my heart.

I got out of school two weeks ago, only to get very, very sick - sick enough to finally spend most of Thursday night in the emergency room with a ridiculously fast heartbeat, high blood pressure, and complete inability to catch my breath. Two breathing treatments, a shot of an antibiotic, a couple of pills, and goodness knows how many dollar later, I went home. Oh, and my car's been broken down since I got out of school - just got it back Friday. So between being sick enough to be unable to walk across the house without gasping for air and not having a car to go anywhere, it's been a miserable two weeks. Not how I wanted to spend my first two weeks out of school.

Thankfully, today I felt a little better. And since Jeff was working, I decided (rather spontaneously) when I picked up Braeden that we would have a night out together. We went home for a quick potty break, then headed out to Chattanooga to see Shrek Ever After and get dinner. I figured I could handle walking through the parking lot if I got to sit down for an hour and a half to rest. :) The movie was pretty good, and I tolerated the 3D glasses without a monstrous headache. Then I took Braeden to Kanpai, where he oohed and aahed and clapped with delight at the show our very good chef put on for us. I figured since I was two-for-oh, we might as well go to the bookstore. I picked up 1984, Atlas Shrugged, Wicked, and a couple of books for Braeden, then plopped myself in one of the leather chairs to rest (again) while Bebo played at the train table.

It was a good day. I'm feeling better, even though it'll be a few more days before I'm totally back to normal. School is out for all of us, at least for a couple of months. And I thoroughly enjoyed getting to spend time with my little man, watching him giggle at the movie, cheer on our waiter, and read the first two chapters out of his new book on the way home.

Yup. Life is pretty good.

R.I.P.

A couple of months ago I posted about the sweet Husky mix who adopted us. Sadly, we came home from a trip to Mom's to find that she had died. I miss her terribly. She wrapped us around her little paw so quickly. Thankfully, Jeff found her around the back of the house, so Braeden didn't have to see her swollen body. I can't get the image out of my head, and I'm so grateful that he doesn't have to worry about it.

It was all confusing to Bebo. He'd been exposed to death, but not the death of someone close. Every day he used to tell me "I love you and Daddy and Spazz and Fritz and Sizz and Buddy and Lucy more than anything else in this world." Now my sweet girl - the only other female DNA in our household - has left us.

I still halfway expect her to run up to me when I come home. Maybe, as Bebo asked, our pets really will go to heaven with us. I think I'd like that.

Q&A

Yay! I scrapped! I've been trying for several days, but I guess it's been so long that I nearly forgot how. Hopefully this is a good start...

And for the story behind the pictureless page - ever answer those silly surveys that meander through Facebook, Myspace, or email? I thought it would make for a fun random snapshot of me today, and since I rather enjoy doing pages without pictures, it seemed like a good idea. :)

Bucket List

After seeing two posts on Facebook regarding wish lists/bucket lists, it occurred to me that I don't really have one. I need to fix that, but I also need to give it some thought. Stay tuned...

Summer... finally. :)

Nope. It's not the heat I'm excited about - not even remotely. What's got me all excited is simply this:

School is out. I am done with mandatory studying for a while. Yes, I have some review to do, but no more assignments to turn in, no more projects to, er, create, no more late night classes, and no more nights with barely four hours of sleep.

I can scrapbook, I can clean my house, I can do whatever I want. Mostly.

Yeah... I haven't looked forward to summertime this much since I was a senior in high school!

One more thing - admittedly, it was by the skin of my teeth, but I managed to hold that 4.0 again. :)