2:00 pm in Prescott, Arizona

It is 2:00pm and an absolutely lovely day today in Prescott. My husband and I enjoyed a morning of drinking coffee on our little deck out back and then we took a nice walk in our neighborhood. This was the first time, I really got around the neighborhood, and it was quite fun. There were lots of homes for sale, and we peaked in a few windows. I don't know why that felt a bit naughty, but it did. They are empty, so it really wasn't a bad thing. I think I am perpetually feeling naughty, because as a child growing up in California, we spent a lot of times playing in abandoned houses or the new models that would be open. There weren't a lot of lox boxes back in the day, and we were really young and naive (like ages 7 to 11). We had no idea if it was a bad thing to do. We just went inside and hung out.

Now I am waiting for my husband to finish getting ready so we can go to a thrift store. I am addicted to those, and I was thinking of doing a thrift store mission. I used to do them a lot. I would go to find something in particular. I thought today might be a good time to find the worst t-shirt ever. I'll let you know if I do it. One year I found an awesome "Got Bail" shirt that was an advertisement shirt for a bail bondsman in California. I still have it. :)

Off to enjoy the day!

Kelly

The worst thing about being bored...

I really hate being bored. Really hate it. Boredom leads to bad things for me. Nothing bad enough to make it so I can never run for public office, although let's face it...I never will, but bad for me mentally or physically. Check it out...

When I am bored I eat. Eating isn't a bad thing in and of itself. It is the boredom eating that sucks for me. I don't know about you, but I have never eaten a "Boredom" salad or a "Boredom" carrot. I HAVE eaten "Boredom" crackers with cheese, cookies, potato chips, and even Oodles of Noodles while bored, but the salad thing just doesn't happen. I am also not one of those people who says "I'm bored, I think I'll exercise!" I am not saying I will never say that, but I would probably be just as likely to don a superhero costume and leap tall buildings. Right. There was a time when I was totally concerned about weight and muscle mass, and even then I never ate a salad or exercised because I was bored.

I have been fairly non bored this week thanks to the blog party going on. There have been some great blogs to read, and I really enjoy these glimpses into every one's daily life. Now if I could just do some blog browsing while at work...that would be SWEET.

What do you do when your bored?

Do you ever feel weird?

My son thinks I am weird. He thinks my husband is weird too. I don't know if I am weird so much as a free spirit. Here are some of the things that I think make me a little odd.

This is kind of weird to me, and I actually asked a co-worker about this. I have weird hand writing. I can start a letter writing one way, and totally end it writing another way. I have weird handwriting. It is almost like two different people wrote my letter. Yes, the writing is that different! I wish I could get a sample put on here and show how odd it is. I had never really thought of it until I started my new job. My co-worker thinks that I just have different personalities and it is reflected in my writing. Not different like "Sybil" different, but I do have really different writing.

I talk with different accents. I do this on purpose. I do not think I am suddenly British or Irish, but sometimes I just gab that way. It is usually used to emphasize a joke I am making. I don't just say, "Hey I am going to speak with a Southern accent today." It isn't on purpose like that, but I do put on accents like a hat for a moment or two and just run with it. I also speak with cartoonish voices. This is really a play thing that I do with my husband so that doesn't count really. :) It is like a courtship ritual. Besides, my husband loves my accents.

I use props in pictures all the time. I love taking pictures or being in pictures and putting myself in a prop position. If I am on a roller coaster or a ride where they take pictures, I can always be seen making a terrified face. It isn't that I am terrified. I just like to make the face. If a camera is nearby and I am in a convenience store, I will pick up an item like a bag of chips and make a really silly "Yummy" face like I am advertising something. Really, I am a great big spectacle.

I have weird friends. One of my best friends is truly as odd as I am. We used to write stories to each other at work. She would write a line, and leave it for me to write a line. We'd crack ourselves up. We have literally spent a good hour or more trying on every ugly pair of sunglasses we can find at a department store. Indeed though, if we did this with some people, they would probably walk away. Actually one of our friends was with us and did leave us.

Was I always weird? I think so. When I was a kid, I used to spend hours telling myself stories, before I actually would fall asleep. I never saw this as talking to myself. My mom used to read me bedtime stories, but when she worked more she couldn't. I just kind of filled in the blank and made up my own.

Does any of this seem odd to you?

Expelled -- The Movie Trailer.

What do you think?

Myself, when I was in school (a Catholic school -- nothing against Catholic School, but I also learned about astral projection there too), my Science teacher taught us a creation evolution perspective. He believed that beings did evolve, but he believed it was a process guided by God. For a long time I believed just that. He was an excellent teacher, and of course I believed everything my teachers told me...period.

I look forward to seeing this film, because after time my beliefs did change, and I am highly tired of the fact that people are puffed up and lifted up for anything that is against God and put down for anything that is remotely for God. Even intellectuals go through this.Kelly

Sick Husband

I have a sick hubby at home, and I am totally bummed. Every day I am reminded of just how fiercely I love this man. In fact, that is on my ring…well kind of it actually says “I love you fiercely.” My husband, Scott and I have that on our wedding bands. I haven’t read it since the day he put it on my finger. It totally describes how we feel about each other. I guess I have a love that had to have an adverb. J I’m pretty lucky to have a love like that.

Totally off subject there…I'm sorry about that.

Well, anyway, today my husband is sick. Actually he was sick yesterday too. He came home from work feeling all “woozy” (probably an incorrect spelling of woozy if there is a correct spelling…I don’t know it). He was so weak and cute. He also felt horrible, because I was running around cooking a roast, washing dishes, putting away dishes, getting garbage set up for my son to take out, and he couldn’t really help me. I really didn’t care about not getting help…I mean, the dude is sick. I just felt bad that he was sick, and really there was nothing I could do about it other than pray and rub his shoulders.

I worry a bit too….

When he is sick I think about how devastated I would be if something happened to him. I know he is just suffering from some sort of bug or whatnot, but I HATE IT! I also hate that he snores. Now this may be a TMI thing, but I worry when he snores, because I have heard it really isn’t good for the heart. For the most part it doesn’t keep me up at night…much. Well, it does, but I am not up because I am annoyed…I just probably didn’t beat him to the land of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Where am I going with this?

Hey, if you read this could you just pray for my husband, Scott to feel better? I am so scattered about this. Sneak a little prayer for me too, okay?

HUGS

Kelly

No patience for cooking.

I'll never be a chef. Really this is no major surprise. If you look at my background of life experiences...this is kind of a given. The first thing I ever learned to cook was scrambled eggs. I was seven years old and pretty jazzed to have picked up this life skill. I felt EXTREMELY grown up knowing that in a pinch, I could provide myself with a hot breakfast and not burn the house down in the process. It was the beginning of my training as a self-sufficient latch-key kid. For those who do not know what that is, it was a title given to quite a few of us kids in the 70s when it was not quite the norm to have a mom who worked outside the home.

Anyway, I learned to make scrambled eggs. From there the repertoire mainly consisted of heat-up meals like TV dinners (back when they still came in an aluminum tray), frozen burritos, Minute Rice, and Ramen noodles. I was ready for feeding myself in college by the age of 9. :)

Real meals came to me after I became a mom. Before then, even though I had aged, I really didn't make anything much more difficult than hamburgers and chili. I remember my horror the first time I made an actual meal for a boyfriend. I was 24 by then! I remember wigging out because I didn't know what a scallion was. I learned a little more as the years went by, and I became comfortable with cooking just about anything as long as I had a recipe to follow.

Recently I started paying more attention to the recipes in magazines that I get. I subscribe to stuff like Woman's Day, Family Circle, and things like that which have fairly easy to follow recipes. This is a huge leap from my magazine reading of the past, but that is not what I am writing about anyway. My husband gets Sunset among several other magazines. Sunset has recipes too. One magazine caught my eye recently that had a FABULOUS looking stew on it. I mean the picture really made me want to just dig right in! I decided that I would make this for my husband. MISTAKE. First...the spices were all really weird sounding like smoked cayenne pepper (I have used cayenne pepper ---but SMOKED? More strangeness from there. The stew meat had to be cooked "just right" if it didn't take you an hour to prepare the meat according to the specifications (one such specification -- do not let the meat touch the other meat) you were doing it wrong. Seriously the magazine told you that if you were doing it right it would take an hour. That was an hour just to brown stew meat! There were four steps to follow in cooking this stew. You could go all the way through three and then do the fourth on another day if you wished for time's sake.

Guess how long it took me to get through to the end of three...FOUR HOURS! Four hours for STEW! And it wasn't even ready yet! I don't want to spend four hours cooking. EVER! At least not four hours of active cooking. After the meat was browned correctly (slightly crisp on the outside), I still had to cook two chunky chopped onions, bacon (in a pot not a pan), and cook everything up in wine. It took me 2 1/2 hours to get it ready for the final step of step 3...the oven. The oven was another 1 1/2 hours which I could just check on. So to be fair...I probably actively cooked for three hours. That is still a lot of active cooking for a meal that isn't done. The next day I did the last two steps which were to peel about four pounds of potatoes and chunk up and add to the pot to boil in the stew and once those boiled add clean chopped carrots (long chops not round chunks) and boil again. That part of the cooking took another two hours before the veggies were soft enough yet not too soft. OY!

On the bright side...the meal was really quite good. All the time it took to cook that meat showed. It was really great. But after cooking and cleaning, I probably put in a full day's work into that one stew. I don't think you should put in a day's work on stew. A fancy Thanksgiving feast, a rack of lamb...maybe. From now on, I am making my stew in crock pots like I used to.

Unless my hubby really wants this one...I could never refuse him. ;)

Kelly

Superbowl EXTRA

Yes...Superbowl is over and for some of us it was a disappointment. I am cool with it really. I wasn't very cool initially. I have been a Pats fan since I was about 18. That is really when I got into football beyond the high school. I liked the Pats when they stunk and when they didn't. I have prayed for them with all the controversy about the video taping and whatnot. They lost this Sunday, and I cried. I kind of got angry after that, but I also got a nice foot rub from my husband afterward...and all was right with the world (insert the sound of birds chirping here). The Giants won, and honestly I kind of thought they would. They were hungry, and they had nothing too lose really. They did some awesome defense work out there as well.
And now my husband and I will have our Sundays back. :) See...it really is all good.

Kelly

So I am back and actually adding to the same post I did on my other blog thingamajigger. I love words like thingamajigger. You don't have to worry about spelling. Very nice.

Anyway, I was thinking about superstitions and the Superbowl or sports in general. I have a friend who wore the same Red Sox jersey for the entire playoffs one year. She was afraid to take it off because they were winning...and you know what? They won. I don't believe that her shirt wearing made THAT happen, but when they won, she was sure happy. Is there harm in that? I know that some Christians really frown on these kinds of rituals, and I can see where there is a case for both sides. As long as you are having fun, not taking it too seriously, and NEVER putting the rituals before God...I think it is not detrimental. I do think I need to study up on this a little more before I make a solid decision either way. I don't really have a superstition.

I do have a tradition though: I make shirts...spray painted shirts. I will have to include my Superbowl one in this post once I take a picture of it. Anyway, I spray paint a new shirt for each Superbowl game for my favorite team. This year my favorite team didn't win, BUT every one liked the shirt. No one saw it as a superstition. That may be because I never said I wore it so my team would win.

Do you have any superstitions?

Kelly

Saturday Afternoon!

I cannot believe how far the day has already come. :) It has been a day of errands, snuggle time (a marriage must I think) and soon I will be making my first batch of white chilli. For now I am just waiting for a friend to come over with a Patriots stencil that I can use to update my Superbowl shirt. I have a thing about making t-shirts with plain old spray paint and stencils. It is a great hobby for a person who is in no ways crafty. I wish I had the talent to do more, but honestly, I like my silly shirts, and I do get a lot of compliments on them and people often ask where I bought them. That is kind of cool. :) Well, hubby is almost out of the shower, and I am desperately hungry for some potstickers. I hope and pray that everyone has a wonderful Saturday as well as Sunday really. :) I will probably be rambling again soon.

Do you hide who you are? Part 2

I am going to be off to run errands shortly, but I was thinking about a post I wrote the other day, and I thought I'd add a little more today. I am adding it here though. Maybe I will add it there too. I am adding this one here, because I thought I would do a little survey at the bottom. I don't know if it will ever be seen by anyone, but that is okay by me really. Getting it out of my head is the big step.

I was thinking about how people can often hide who they are in certain situations or around certain people. I know we have to in some instances. In general I am pretty much a snarky but loveable kind of chick. I am a one-liner queen, but I have to keep that at bay in the office, because I do not want to risk insulting anyone. Even when I am being insulted. There is something about the anonymity of being on the phone that makes some people bloody rude. I take it in stride and smile pleasantly as I respond to the most rude comments and irate calls. I think to myself often how I would like to just once set that person in their place. I would like to just once not even yell back, but ask them if they really feel that they would ever talk to me in that tone or say the things they are saying if I could actually look them in the eye? I imagine they would not.

It isn't that I feel people are hypocrites. I think that some are for sure, but I also believe that people just don't think when they talk to someone on the phone, or at least they do not think when they talk to a faceless someone. It is incredible to me. I am glad that I experience it. I really am, because it has taught me to be even more kind and polite to those I interact with on the phone. Because I know that they are probably dealing with the kinds of things I deal with every day, and honestly, people's anger and irritability is wasted on us. If we were the decision makers, do you really think we would be the ones answering the phone.

Back to behaviors, because the phone is just an example. What about church? Are you a different person when you are at church and all dressed up in your church clothes? Are you the same person when you are driving home from church as you are when you are standing in the line at the grocery store? This is not directed at just Christians either. Because I think that in many ways we all have several faces. I have friends who aren't Christians, and I know they have a work persona and play persona. We get in mom mode, wife mode, friend mode, and the best DEFENSIVE DRIVER mode. OY! That one probably brings out the worst in all of us. I, myself, used to drive with an imaginary paint gun. I would imagine paint balling the bumper of the car that just flew in front of me. Kind of a tag for their naughty deeds.

Well...I am off for now. I was just thinking. If you read this, maybe you will think too. Either way, can you be kinder to that woman or man on the other end of the phone?

Me oh myo me...