2010 January « A See of Green

Archive for January, 2010

Random thoughts on a Friday.

January 29, 2010 · Filed under Daily Updates · Tagged Friday, Parenting, random thoughts, reading, Science fiction, Weather

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The words ‘I follow your blog’ give me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

Everyone knows parenting is hard, but no one ever mentions the horrible fear of failure. How these kids turn out depends on YOU.

I know I live in the Midwest, I’ve lived here all my life. Doesn’t mean I’m used to, or like, the cold weather at all.

If I had had my camera with me this morning, I’d have stopped on the side of the road to take pictures of the sunrise through the cloud formations. Simply gorgeous.

The main female character in the book I’m reading now drives me crazy. She’s a spineless jellyfish of a woman who is supposed to run a high powered business. Not believable.

I am already planning my nap for tomorrow.

Have a great weekend!

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Thousand Word Thursday

January 28, 2010 · Filed under Daily Updates, Thousand Word Thursday · Tagged legos, Thousand Word Thursday

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Reading lists.

January 27, 2010 · Filed under books, Daily Updates · Tagged Amazon Kindle, books, reading, reading lists, Stephen King

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As 2009 wound down and the New Year ramped up, many of the blogs I read were discussing their reading accomplishments for the year.

(I am not going to tell you which blogs those were because it seems like every time I mention a blog on here the owner of said blog announces their blogging retirement, posts about how they are not going to be posting regularly to their blog any more or just plain disappears off the face of the earth. Each time this happens I find myself having to go out and hunt up new web reading material. And I have to tell you the whole process is getting old. So, you’re going to have to take my word on the fact they were discussing their reading statistics.)

Anyway, several bloggers I read were discussing their stats. You know things like how many books in total they read and how many pages were in those books. How many women authors and how many men. How many were actually read and how many were audio. You get the picture.

(Although I am still not convinced listening to a book counts as READING the book. I am preparing to venture into this realm for the first time. I had asked for some Stephen King audio books for Christmas. So we’ll see how I feel after I’ve actually listened to a book. I may change my mind. Stranger things have happened.)

All these stats made me realize I have never even kept track of my current reading lists. To the point where sometimes I would spend an hour at the library trying to figure out if I was on book three or four of a series. And then I’d go home with a book, I realized much later, that I had already read. This idea of a book log was genius. I can’t believe I never thought of it. I was wishing I had a list of all the books I had read in 2009.

And then the light bulb turned on. I may not have the list for the entire year, BUT I have everything I had read since I received my Kindle! Yet another plus for that awesome little device. So I fired that puppy up and started compiling the books on it. That gave me 50 books from May 15 forward. Not too shabby. I figure that gives me between 75 and 100 total for the year.

I’ve already started logging this year’s book list. I’m on my 6^th book this month. My goal is to read over 100 books this year. I am sure I can do it.

Through all of this thinking about reading, I cannot get the thought out of my head that most people these days don’t even read one book a year. I can’t even imagine how bored I would be.

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What a busy weekend!

January 25, 2010 · Filed under Daily Updates · Tagged Cheerleading, family, friends, Princess Girl

On Friday afternoon we came home to a notice in the mail that Princess Girl’s submission to the Illinois PTA’s Reflections has been selected to represent our district at the state competition! Way to go Princess Girl. There is a Ribbon Ceremony we will be attending next week.

Of course Friday night meant a basketball game. A home game thankfully. Princess Girl cheered well. It was also the culmination of the ‘Lil Kickers’ cheer clinic for the elementary girls. They performed their dance/cheers with the big girls at half time of the varsity game. Everyone did a great job.

We won’t discuss Princess Girl’s epic failure at being home on time from hanging with friends after the game. I wonder how many times in her lifetime I will have to say ‘you have to be responsible for yourself because if you don’t someone else will and the results are never good when someone else assumes responsibility for you’ before it really and truly sinks in?

Saturday morning Princess Girl had Speech Team practice for the play she is involved in for Regionals. After I dropped her off at the school I got my oil changed, when to the bank, balanced my checkbook and filed my taxes! Shew! A busy morning, but VERY productive.

After practice we worked on chores and homework, and then it was time to go to tumbling/pre-competition cheer practice. It was here we picked up my cousin’s daughter. Princess Girl was babysitting and they decided to spend the night at our house for a change of pace.

Saturday night I forced myself out of the house and went down to the local bar where an old friend’s new band was playing. I am glad I did! The band sounded great. Being a local event, it gave me the opportunity to catch up with all my local friends and acquaintances that I’ve missed with our recent busy schedule. Even better, I ran into a high school friend I hadn’t seen in 20 years (and his girlfriend). What fun! It was great to catch up with him, and I got to make a new friend of her, too!

Sunday Princess Girl had a cheer competition in Peoria. We were competition ready and out of the house by 8:30 AM. The team’s performance was awesome! They raised their score from the competition two weeks ago by 9 points. We are all very proud.

We got home around 6PM Sunday night and I was exhausted. I think the late nights and early mornings catch up with you quicker as you age.

The only thing I did not manage to fit into my weekend the invitation to Cande’s house to Stitch and Bitch. It has been far too long since we have spent the afternoon together with our yarn. I have to make time for that soon.

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Glorious!

January 22, 2010 · Filed under Daily Updates · Tagged Hospital, hot tub, Parenting, Princess Girl, Wal-Mart

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Princess Girl had medical appointments* so I had to take a vacation day Thursday. I read for nearly three hours at the hospital, waiting while she was poked and prodded. She said both tests were painless and no big deal.

School was cancelled do to an ice storm that passed through on Wednesday, so on the way home we stopped at Wal-Mart to get groceries. This was fortuitous as she has a cheer competition on Sunday, our normal grocery day. At home she studied biology while I made lunch. After lunch we went our separate ways, her to her bedroom and me to the couch in the living room. Our plans were to read for a bit then nap.

Our beautifully laid plans were executed with success!

We napped for about an hour each and then read for another hour. Later that evening, we did some stretching and then got into the hot tub. She showered and then we had leftovers for dinner.

Even with the tests and spending the morning at the hospital it was a much needed relaxing day for both of us. Both my mind and body feel rejuvenated.

I wonder how I could work a day off in the middle of the week into every week.

* There will be more about Princess Girl’s health issues in the weeks to come.

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Thousand Word Thursday.

January 21, 2010 · Filed under Daily Updates, Thousand Word Thursday · Tagged guillotine, louis XVI, Thousand Word Thursday

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Stop the world…

January 20, 2010 · Filed under Daily Updates · Tagged head ache, life, Soap opera, stress

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I want to get off.

If life does not slow down soon I am going to go on strike.

If I ever get more than a minute to write it all down it will sound like a soap opera that no one will believe.

To top it all off I hit my head so hard getting into my car this morning (an act I have successfully performed at least 10,000 times in the past) that I almost lost consciousness.

What are the signs of concussion?

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Surprise ending.

January 18, 2010 · Filed under Daily Updates · Tagged Coyote, insanity, sleeping on the couch

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They say the definition of insanity is performing the same act in the same way over and over and expecting different results.

Friday night Princess Girl headed off to bed at 10PM as usual. For the 942nd time, I snuggled back down on the couch with the local news channel on. I was going to stay up only long enough to catch the weather before heading to bed myself. For the 942nd time, I watched the first approximately three minutes of the local news and then woke up an hour later.

I sighed with frustration. It would be yet another morning of checking the weather on the computer. You would think failing to stay awake until the weather aired for previous 941 nights would convince me to just go to bed when Princess Girl does. You would think, as long as the weather is available on the computer anyway, I would settle for the full night’s sleep.

You might think that, but apprarently you would be wrong.

So just before 11:30 Friday night I woke on the couch, turned off the television and carried my water glass to the kitchen. I poured the remainder of my water into the sink and movement out the window above the sink caught my eye. I looked. I looked again. There were no lights on inside the house. It was dark. I had just woken up. I rubbed my eyes. And I looked again. My eyes were not deceiving me.

There was a freaking coyote sauntering through my yard.

Man they are sneaking slinking nasty looking animals. He acted like he owned my yard. He was less than 20 feet from my house. It really kind of creeped me out.

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Devastation

January 15, 2010 · Filed under Daily Updates · Tagged Add new tag, Earthquake, Haiti, Pat Robertson, Televangelism

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My heart goes out to all of the people in Haiti.

On a related note, one of the local radio morning shows has two skits they do every morning. One is ‘Five things to make you the smartest person at work today’ and the other is the ‘Daily Dumbass Awards’. The first is just a quick list of five items of note in the news or trivia. The second is usually some criminal, or other overly under-intelligent person, doing or saying something really really dumb.

Today, during the ‘Five things’ segment they mentioned the fact that Christian televangelist Pat Robertson made a statement that the earthquake in Haiti was God’s wrath as a direct result of a pact made with Satan.

They did not put him in the ‘Daily Dumbass’ segment. I am sure it was just an oversight on their part.