Nothing Much

It's just hard to believe I haven't written anything for two weeks. I guess life has been busy. Still waiting for the part to fix the stove top. In the meantime I've learned a lot about microwave cooking.

Seattle area has been very foggy for awhile and I'm getting kind of tired of it. Looking forward to the sunshine, even if it'll still only be in the 30's.

I've been having internet connection problems at home which have been interesting since I work from home. It drops sometimes in the late afternoon. They are promising me a new line but it hasn't happened yet.

Work is going good for me. I love being able to work from home. In the morning I use that extra time from not having to commute to sleep a little longer.

Wally spends his days in his shop where he is currently building a set of drawers for the bedroom. Some days it's too cold to be out there, but most days work out okay.

Wayne had a great trip to San Juan de Cabo on the Baja in Mexico where he got to go surfing. Still waiting to see the pictures.

The Biggest Loser

This season has me hooked in already. To use the nice words the TV show uses, this is the heaviest group of people they've ever had on a show together, including the largest woman and man and the oldest and youngest contestants. I'm already anticipating the finale to see all of them come back and how they look.

Unbelievable to see someone lose 30 pounds in one week! Just goes to show you how your body adjusts to physical activity and healthy eating. It's common knowledge that men generally lose weight quicker than women. And also that when you change your diet and lifestyle the weight drops off quicker the first few weeks because it includes excess water weight.

Can you imagine the emotions they go through when they see a loss on the scale after only one week, when for years they haven't been able to lose weight?

The concept of walking away from your normal life for a period of time and focusing on nothing but getting healthy is like receiving a huge gift. Even those that only stay on the ranch for a couple of weeks learn so much and usually go home and keep working hard at it.

Stay tuned, it's just the beginning. Should be interesting to see how many get to return after the 30 days are up.
Tuesday nights, NBC.
http://www.nbc.com/The_Biggest_Loser/

January 2009

2009 sounds so odd. What happened to the 90's? Yesterday I went with my friend Glenda to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It was a very good movie. It was a sweet love story as well as the story of his life. From the beginning, you kind of knew how it would end and the end was sad.

It is loosely based on a short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1921. Reading about the original short story, I would have to say the artistic liberties they took in the movie greatly enhanced the story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curious_Case_of_Benjamin_Button

Saying Good Bye to 2008!

Today we attended our fifth and final funeral for 2008. Wally lost three family members this year and we also lost two friends. Today's funeral was very sweet. The Bishop summed it up in his concluding talk when he said something about "attending a funeral and walking away from it wanting to be a better person." And it was so true of this one.

Eunice was a special lady and to hear her family talk about the wonderful person she was and to have known her smile and her humor, it really does make you want to be more like her; more optimistic, more joyful, more compassionate, and more thankful.

I think we are truly blessed in our lives by the many people who cross our paths through out the years. People that leave an impression on our very souls.

As we sat in the chapel today I was reminded that we do not always get a chance to say good bye to these people. Sometimes the situation is simply unavoidable. Knowing this we need to always make the most of the moments we have together.

At the end of another year, (where does the time go?), I want to wish all of you the very best for the new year ahead of us.

In 2009

May your hearts be happy and your burdens light.

May you always know that you are never alone.

May you find joy each day.

May you understand that it's about people not things.

May you really look and see the sun rise,

the flowers bloom,

the snow fall, the rain drop,

and the smiles that are all around you.

Christmas Eve

Twas the night before Christmas and here I am on the computer. I was getting sleepy watching a rerun of Bones and then I remembered I needed to get the stockings stuffers ready. That's how I end up on the computer.

I checked on my husband's gift that I ordered on December 15th. It was shipped Fed Ex (ground I think) from NY. It's been in Portland, Oregon since December 20th. Oh well, I'm printing him a photo of his gift and the gift will be here anyday now. Of course that's what we say everyday about the garbage trucks also. And we haven't seen them yet either.

The snow has been challenging. The way it just lingers and doesn't go away. It's so pretty when I wake in the mornings and look out the window and see the white blanket of snow. We'll enjoy our white Christmas and it'll be one we remember for a long time.

Merry Christmas to all!

Oh Christmas Tree!

We got our tree on a Saturday morning. By Saturday evening it was in the living room, in front of the window. I managed to get the lights on it that night. It took me three more days to get the rest of the decorations on it.

 

During those few days where it only had lights on it, I thought it was just beautiful. There is something so magical about the lights at Christmas time.

 

I think a lot of the emotions and the "spirit" of Christmas have to do with how we celebrated Christmas as children and how we celebrated Christmas with our own children when they were small.

 

Days later as I was putting the ornaments on the tree, I had a lot of memories of Christmases past. In the early 1980's I had two small children and worked at Ernst in the Brickyard Plaza in Salt Lake City. I worked for awhile in the garden shop and it's there that we sold all the Christmas decorations. I bought a lot of discounted decorations that year and when I get them out each year, I remember that time in my life.

 

As I hang the stockings I remember as a child in Rigby and later in Boise hanging our real stockings above the fireplace. Thank goodness for long knee high socks in those days. We used to get an orange and candy in our stockings, I don't remember what else. But I remember the year Santa put an orange in my children's Christmas stockings and they thought that was so odd.

Even though I don't have small children at home and I don't get a lot of company at my house, I still enjoy putting up my Christmas decorations. I love to sit in the evenings and look at the tree (and try not to think about the presents that still need to be wrapped).

 

Christmas is indeed a magical time of the year.

Breakfast

As I was laying in bed last night thinking in those last few moments of the day, I thought of all I had done that day. This might be strange to some, but it's perfectly normal to me, to do a mental list of everything I ate that day. I realized I had eaten breakfast for all three meals.

I ate a late breakfast of scrambled eggs, cheese and salsa in a flour tortilla. Work was super busy so by mid afternoon I just needed to quickly grab some food. I had a bowl of cereal.

At the end of they day I had no plans what to make for dinner. After coming home from working out at 6 pm, I had figured out that I could make pancakes with bacon and eggs. We don't normally have bacon but I had half a package left from a salad I made for Thanksgiving dinner.

I thoroughly enjoyed dinner and it was an easy clean up.

Two Days After Thanksgiving

Today I:

• Went on a two mile walk
• Ate breakfast at McDs with Wally (they have the best ever chocolate milk)
• Watched the end of "Becoming Jane Austen"
• Helped hang Christmas lights on the front of the house
• Went grocery shopping
• Read a lot of blogs, it was fun, you start with just one and then you keep linking through their friends and find people you know and just keep reading, Natalie calls it "blog stalking"
• Did not eat cheesecake
• Ate a lot of fruit (apple, orange and now a pomegranate)
• Did laundry
• Made beef stew for dinner (no turkey tonight, but the leftover fresh cut up veggies came in handy)
• Tonight we plan on watching "Get Smart"

The Band Aid Box Story

When I was a young girl living in Boise, Idaho in the late 1960's, my family lived in the country. We had a two story five bedroom house and we had a pasture with a small barn. Sometimes we had animals in the pasture, my sister had a horse and later my other sister had a calf, but that's another story.

The cool thing about the pasture was the ditch along the back that bordered the fence and a little gate back in the corner that connected us to our neighbors. Without the gate we would have to go to the end of our street, out to the main road and down a few houses.

We would have to walk past the scary house on the corner with the German shepherds that followed you from their side of the fence barking and growling at you all the way.

I was the youngest of five and my friend that lived through the gate was one year older than me and she was the oldest of five children. We spent many hours playing together with her younger brothers and her sister.

I'm guessing the band aid box came into use in the summertime. I don't know if we thought it up or our Moms did. For those of you much younger than me, you may not know that band aids actually used to come in a metal box with a hinged lid. When it was emptied of band aids it was useful for many things.

Well my friend and I took small pieces of paper and wrote various things to do on them. These pieces of paper were then folded up and placed in the band aid box. Whenever we couldn't decide what to do or we were bored (I would love to know what that feels like now), we would pull out a piece of paper and do whatever it said.

Some of the things on the papers were: ride bikes, play barbies, swim in the ditch, play board games, play outside, stuff like that. I don't know how often we used the box, but to this day I remember having it.

The reason I thought of this lately is that many times when I'm driving in the car, taking a shower, doing dishes, my mind wanders to all the things that I need to get done at home. But when I'm home and I have some time (not cause I'm bored) I never seem to have the motivation to accomplish those tasks.

So here is what I'm going to do. I'm going to get a small tin (since band aid boxes don't exist anymore) and I'm going to list small chores that can be done in 30 minutes or less in my box. I'm going to turn my laziness into achievements, one small scrap of paper at a time.

Here's just a start of what my papers will say: clean shelves in bedroom closet, clean printer desk drawers, clean kitchen pantry shelves, clean and organize hall closet - one shelf at a time, clean under the bathroom sink (where does all that hair product, shower gel and lotion come from anyway?). I might find something fun in the closet to sell on eBay, who knows.

And then when that list is finished there's the laundry room with full cupboards and shelves of who knows what, not to mention the sewing room.

Three Cups of Tea - Book Review

Three Cups of Tea, One Man's Mission to Promote Peace. . . One School at a Time.

I just finished reading this book written by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. It was one of the most fascinating non fiction books I have ever read. I didn't want to put it down and I did not want it to end.

The book was written in 2006 and tells the story of Greg Mortenson who as a mountaineer in 1993 found himself in a small village in the Karakoram mountains in Pakistan after a failed attempt to climb K2.

He tells of his experience over the next 10 years of frequent travels back to Pakistan to build schools. His knowledge of the area and his acceptance by the many people in these small villages is heartwarming. I never would have thought that one person could make such a huge impact in the life of others.

He worked endlessly (still does) and did all he could to raise money for the schools. While living in California he meets a woman who he marries after just knowing her for three weeks. What an amazing person she must be to love a man so unconditionally that she is willing to share him with these people in a foreign country who have taken him in as if one of their own.

Currently Greg Mortenson is the Executive Director of the Central Asia Institute, a non-profit organization with the mission to promote and support community-based education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

https://www.ikat.org/

I would strongly recommend reading this well written, entertaining and educational book. In addition to the wonderful story of Greg Mortenson, it provides great historical, political and geographical information.

"Here (in Pakistan and Afghanistan), we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything--even die."

--Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, Karakoram Mountains, Pakistan

If you live in my area, I would be happy to loan you my book.

November is Here!

2009, does that thought scare you? Well it's just right around the corner. As I put away my Halloween decorations yesterday, I put out a few things for Thanksgiving. I also cleaned house and moved the furniture around so we could get to the fireplace which we enjoy this time of year. It's actually a wood burning store so you need space to open the door out and I keep furniture in front of it most of the time.

When I went grocery shopping on Saturday the Halloween candy had quickly been replaced with yes, Christmas candy. I stayed 6 feet away from it and kept on walking. Funny how it's actually the same candy just in new Christmas colored wrappings.

As we go into the month of November it gives us time to reflect on the many things we are thankful for. I don't ignore the fact that there are a lot of bad things happening in the world today. It's so hard to believe that in 2008 there are still people in parts of the world without adequate drinking water, very little food and many without a roof over their heads.

We live in a country of excess and we shouldn't take that for granted nor abuse it. Just look at the volume of stores in your very own neighborhood. Anything you want right at your fingertips if you have the money.

I like to get down to the basics and be grateful for the ordinary things in my life. My family - every single one of them, my friends, my health, our home, the beauty in nature which surrounds us, my job, our dog, my religious beliefs (and the freedom to have them) and my memories. You can take away my car, my nice couch and even my indoor plumbing as long as I can keep the things listed above.

For all the luxuries and other things I live with that I think of as "necessities", those things I am also grateful for and I try not to take them for granted.
To name a few: chocolate, ice cream, movies, warm socks, a good book, a hot shower, electricity, my computer, the ocean, french fries, photographs, old books, toilet paper, fabric, shopping, even the public library.

Enjoy this season of Thanksgiving and take time to think about the many, many things in your life you have to be grateful for. Sure we may still be overweight, have to wear reading glasses, creak in the joints, never catch up on the laundry, have to cook yet another meal, run another million errands, have health problems or family challenges, but this is our life - enjoy it!