It's Turkey Time!!

Wow... I created my title with such enthusiasm that it really doesn't matter that I don't like turkey. At least not the Thanksgiving kind. I can tolerate it pretty well on a sandwich at Panera. I'm more of a ham or chicken sort of girl.

Anyway... despite our founding fathers' poor choice of Thanksgiving poultry, Thanksgiving means that it's officially the start of the holiday season!! YAY!! Thanksgiving makes it OK to listen to Magic 96.5's "All Christmas Music, All the Time." (Please ignore the fact that I've been listening to Christmas music since Halloween.) Thanksgiving makes it OK to over-decorate the house, the tree, the front porch... (Please also ignore the fact that I've been buying ornaments for my tree since January.) Christmas usually puts people in a great mood... well, except for the people at the Galleria, but they don't count as real people. Those frantic-Christmas-shopper types could generally pass easier as Pod People. But besides the retail workers and the over-zealous shoppers, people are generally in a good, cheery sort of mood. Happy almost. :) I like it.

I am reeling from my very fantastic weekend in Gainesville... you folks should be so lucky. I'm convinced that everyone wishes they had my friends. And if you happen to be one of those negative, cranky people who don't actually wish you had my friends, humor me. It's Christmas, after all. Here are some of the highlights...

My new favorite chair... I LOVE IT!! Just in case you can't actually see the price tag, it definitely says $349. It did not make it home with me. Instead, I bought the same fabric in the floor sample/scratch & dent section and am going to make a headboard!! I know you're jealous. Try to restrain yourselves.

Notice the matching fabric on the bench cushions. And the bench for the table is built directly onto the kitchen bar... clever, huh? I really, REALLY like this whole room concept. Here are a couple more pics:

Please ignore the poorly dressed people in this photo. They apparently were unconcerned that I was trying to document my future home decor for the masses. In any event, the room was awesome. I heart IKEA.

I haven't learned much to speak of lately, though it's not from a lack of trying. But here are a few things to note:

1) I am unfathomably addicted to the Twilight series. Who knew that a teenage vampire love story could be so intriguing?!? I am almost finished with the second book, New Moon. It's a great read.

2) I frequently find myself trying to image what life must be like for people very different from myself. For instance, I can't image what it must be like to NOT like to read. My sisters think reading is work. That's a strange concept to me.

3) Bad grammar and poor spelling irritate me. Especially in e-mails and even in text messages. I was reading the back of a Post cereal box this past weekend. The text was like 5 "sentences." 4 out of 5 were incomplete sentences. How disappointing, Post. I cannot support poor grammar from a major corporation. Surely someone there can proofread your boxes before they're printed. Until then, goodbye Pecan Maple Crunch cereal.

4) Bottled water at Disney World costs more than soda. This is because water quenches your thirst and soda does not. Bad for me... but good for Disney. Congrats on that outstanding business move.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all! Hope it's blessed!

Because I Felt Like It

Hold yourselves back, folks... I'm posting two days in a row. I don't know why... I just felt like posting a new list. A "Happy Things" list. A girl I went to high school with started a "Happy Things" list back in the day, so I'm going with that idea. Here's a list of random things that make me happy...

1) iTunes
2) The Color Yellow
3) Holding Hands at the Movies
4) Finding Money in the Pocket of My Coat
5) Leaving Work Early for No Reason at All
6) Brightly Colored Knee-High Socks
7) The Drama of "The Hills"
8) Weather Cold Enough to Wear a Scarf
9) Random E-Mails from Long-Lost Friends
10) The Song "Curbside Prophet" by Jason Mraz
11) Making My Nieces Laugh
12) Choir Music
13) Conversations at the Work Lunch Table
14) New Haircuts
15) Useless Trivia
16) Corny Jokes
17) Decorating for Christmas
18) Snow (In Case We Ever Get Any...)
19) San Francisco, CA
20) The Feeling of Anticipation
21) Historic Buildings
22) Pretty Pictures
23) Giving Somebody a Really Great Gift
24) Chick-fil-A Milkshakes
25) The First Warm Day of Spring
26) Dancing in the Dark When There's No One Else Around
27) Southern Gospel Music
28) Wrapping Presents
29) Buying a New Pair of Shoes
30) Finding the Perfect Shade of Red Nail Polish
31) Target
32) American Idol
33) The Polk County Picnic & What's the Matter, Nannybird
34) The New Sharpie Pens
35) Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks
36) Playing Cards
37) Auburn University
38) A Great View
39) O'Henry's Frisco Chicken Pocket Sandwich
40) Being Crafty
41) Dave Barnes
42) Playing Text Twist on MSN Games
43) Sylvester the Snake
44) Wireless Internet
45) Crystal Light Raspberry Lemonade
46) Hobby Lobby
47) MySpace Bulletins
48) Starz Karaoke Lounge
49) Halloween Costumes
50) Nickel Creek
51) Josh's Cop Stories
52) Sk-Sk-Skipper
53) Sunshine
54) Romantic Walks
55) Trashy Tabloid Magazines
56) Mexican Food & Margaritas
57) My Birthday
58) Rick & Bubba's Turkey Toss
59) Compliments
60) Hugs from My Granddaddy

OK, that's enough for now... feel free to let me know what makes you happy and I'll post it! :)

Sing Over Me

These past couple of weeks have been very tired ones. Maybe that doesn't make sense, but it's true... I've had a couple very tired weeks. Where work is concerned, I'm pumped up. I'm motivated. I'm ready to get some exciting things in the works. And there's obviously a lot going on personally with my sister's new baby and all... so my weeks have been tired and I haven't been posting like the dedicated blogger that I promised myself I would be.

My friend and I have decided that we're going to start a little business on the side... on the side of what? Well, in between babies that are growing too fast, making meals for familes, piles of dirty laundry, full-time jobs, making time for church, and "finding ourselves" (where have we gone??)... we have decided to put our craftiness to work. We're calling it "Dots & Doodles." We make personalized gifts for women and children (because let's face it... when was the last time your husband/boyfriend/father/brother came home and said, "Honey, I'd really like to have one of those really cute framed scrapbook pages made"? Get real.). It's becoming a lot of work to get stuff ready, but it's been fun so far. I promise to post some pictures very soon...

It's great for you guys that I'm terrible at writing essay and am better at lists. Let's not delay, shall we? Here's the things I've learned recently:

1) "Obama kills the babies just like Pharoh." As funny as I find this little quip, it makes me wonder what we're teaching children when we think no one is listening. I learned many moons ago (with literally dozens of children growing up around me), you shouldn't say anything you don't want repeated. If you don't believe me, say a swear word in front of your child. He/she will repeat it when you're least expecting it... probably during church sometime.

2) I am beginning to believe that people can fall in love via the internet. This is a big step for me. I'm a late bloomer.

3) You can buy "Christmas Tree Scent" in a spray bottle at Wal-Mart. Apparently this little invention has been around for ages... and apparently it never occurred to me that I could just buy some Pine Sol or something to put on my artificial tree... but anyway, I'm obsessed with getting some for my artificial tree now. I love artificial trees because I'm a perfectionist and there are just too many unknowns with the real trees... you might have wayward branches to cut off or you might not have even branch distribution. I know this may seem a little OCD to you, but trust me, I'm a Christmas-tree-decorating-expert. These things matter. But now, I get the best of both worlds. I won't miss the real thing at all!

4) Miley Cyrus has a YouTube page called "The Mandy & Me Show." (I don't know why I'm always the last person to learn of these things.) Enough Miley is already too much. Stop the madness.

5) I love to make my 3-year-old niece say "Hello Kitty." She has a hard time with hard K- and C- sounds... and replaces them with a T- sound. So she says "Hello Titty." Yes, I actually am 5.

More to post soon....!! Enjoy the day!

Holy Cow!! So Much Has Happened!!

So I'm sure there's no way on God's green earth that I could ever explain all the things that have happened over the last couple of weeks since I've written, so I'll make one of my famous lists!! Things I've learned from life...

1) I am an aunt again! Lakyn Catherine was born at 11:11am on Tuesday, October 21, 2008. She weighed 7lbs. and 12 ozs. and was 20 3/4 inches long. She's absolutely beautiful!! How can you love someone so much that you just met??

2) Auburn football is still in a recession. It needs a government stimulus package.

3) I have grown very tired of the election nonsense. People are too emotional about it - probably that includes me too, but I haven't figured out why people can't talk rationally about the issues of policy AND of character without there being bloodshed. 8 days and counting...

4) I am unnaturally obsessed with cutting my split ends off. And I realize that I just ended that sentence with a preposition... and I realize even more that knowing it's not gramatically correct to end a sentence with a preposition offically qualifies me for geek status.

5) I am no longer perfectly content on my own. This used to be the case, but I'm old now and ready to move on to bigger and better things. I feel very behind in life.

6) Weather forecasting is NOT an exact science. And people get VERY ticked if the forecast around here isn't spot-on. It all seems very silly to me, but you wouldn't believe the number of people who are still wearing inappropriate clothing for the end of October and then blaming the weather people for their poor fashion choices.

7) Boys are extremely confusing, which makes #5 a bit of a quandry.

8) I make LOTS of lists... I think I could write a book full of lists and it would provide a very accurate picture of my life. Which is a bit frightening in some ways... knowing your entire life can be listed on a piece of scrap paper.

Keep your heads up, kiddies! I feel a change in the air...

Whew! What a weekend!

I'm getting great at this every-other-week thing. I wish I could be like one of those serious bloggers who do this like every day, but I don't have that kind of work ethic. At least not for blogging. Plus, I just don't think I have that much to say.

I would really like to visit Greece. I don't know why that's on my mind today, but it is. It seems like my days of fun and adventure are over... at least they've slowed a considerable bit since college. Ah, to have loads of time and disposable income again... It's tragic, really, the way we're always pining for some part of life that we feel like we're missing out on. Maybe it's just me (although I'd wager money that it's not just me), but it seems a rare occasion to find someone who can't think of one thing they'd rather have or want to do that they can't or don't already. So does this mean we're all just wandering around in malcontent, waiting for magical moments in a vast sea of ordinary-ness?

I for one love magic. Not magic in the "wanna see a card trick" sort of way, but the magic that seems to happen when you least expect it. I can remember this one time when I was in Seattle, I wandered off to the Puget Sound just to gather my thoughts and have a little quiet time with God. It was a wonderful event in and of itself, me and God walking together in the Pacific Northwest. But I didn't see the magic. Not yet, anyway. I had made myself a comfy little home on a rock overlooking a particularly beautiful spot and was practically beside myself with loneliness, pouring my heart out like water before the Lord. And then the magic happened. I dried my eyes long enough to see a whale surface and blow his watery mist into the air. It truly was magic. Beautiful, wonderful, marvelous magic. Of course, there are those other kinds of magic that happen to us... those magical things that we could never plan or calculate on our own. They just sort of seem to happen.

In any event, it seems that I have learned LOTS of new things since the last time I posted a list, so I'll get right to it.

1) The race of a child is always the same as the race of the mother. So if a white woman and a black man have a child, the race of the child will be white. Check Barack Obama's birth certificate. It's true.

2) Auburn football is in a recession. Maybe it's linked to the economy.

3) When John F. Kennedy was elected President, one of his big electing points was that we would go to the moon. He had no idea how to accomplish that task but was determined to do so anyway. I don't happen to be one of those conspiracy theorists, but I'm not entirely convinced that we went to the moon. It seems a bit more likely that we created a great looking, extremely convincing moon in the backlot of Universal Studios. Congrats, though, JFK. Most everyone is proud of your foresight.

4) Joe Biden saw FDR on TV in the 1920's. Now, I know some of you might be thinking, Miss Informed, there was no TV in the 1920's. Still more of you may be thinking, Miss Informed, Joe Biden couldn't have been alive in the 1920's and still be "young" enough to run for VP. Listen folks, it's apparently the American way to believe what politicians tell you. Don't ask me; ask Joe Biden how it's possible. If Obama can visit 57 states, surely Joe Biden can watch a little TV.

5) Spaniards are, I think, the nicest and most hygiene-conscious of all the Europeans.

6) There really is nothing that can replace having great friends. :)

Have a great weekend... and WAR EAGLE (despite the recession)!!

It's Sunday!

Have you heard that song... That's what I love about Sundays? I hate it. No, I mean seriously... I hate it. It gets on my nerves. It's cute-sy and all, but writing a song about cutting coupons and singing off-key and then singing it in a twangy voice DOES NOT remind me of my favorite day of the week. I'm pretty sure I'm quite alone in feeling this way, but it doesn't really matter to me what you think. I still don't like the song. Sundays, however, equal LOVE!

It's getting to be that time of year that makes me happy to live in Alabama. It's really cool in the mornings and it just smells like cool weather. I'm not really sure how to describe that smell... just like the smell of aniticipating the holidays mixed with College GameDay and a little lunchtime breeze thrown in. It just makes me happy. The clothes around here definitely get prettier. I don't know if you've noticed, but living in the South during the summertime apparently means you can shed every semblance of modest clothing without repercussion. Worse actually, I think the boys around here actually count down the days until the sweaters and jeans come off and are replaced by midriff-baring tops (no matter what your midriff looks like and with no thought as to whether or not the rest of the world wants to see your midriff) and shorts and skirts so short my mom would spank me if I ever thought about leaving the house in something similar. And I'm 27. Scandalous.

I haven't watched any of the debates. I know that sort of sounds like a confession... and maybe it is... but nonetheless, I haven't watched the debates. I feel a little guilty because I was all gung-ho when Sarah Palin was chosen as the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate. If it were possible, I would like to be her. She's amazing to me. She's polished. She's down-to-earth. She's facing problems that my family can relate to. She cares about something other than politics. And she does it all never once getting a hair out of place. Honestly, I don't know a woman - Republican or Democrat - that isn't jealous of her. Just a little bit.

But the fact still remains that I haven't watched any of the debates. I think it's my way of being passive-aggressive about the state of this country. It's in a mess. I used to think that the government actually created some sort of crisis during an election year to challenge people to do something. But I've abandoned that theory now, seeing as how I don't think even the most progressive politician would have let things get this out of control. So seeing as how I can't wholeheartedly agree with either party, this is what I have decided... (Write this down. If everyone subscribes to my way of thinking someday, entire elections will be decided on this one thing.) I will vote for whichever candidate lets me decide how my own hard-earned money is best spent.

I think I could seriously reform this country, so in lieu of my regular list of things I've learned, I'm giving you my list of fixes for this country. It has taken a lot of thought, plus a few borrowed ideas from some people with far better ideas than my own. Here goes...

1) TAXES: Taxes will be cut to 10% across the board. If you're an individual, you'll pay 10% of your income in taxes to the government. If you're a corporation, you'll pay 10% of your income in taxes to the government. No more exemptions. No more calculations. No more spending half your paycheck at H&R Block trying to find extra money to take home. 10% for everyone. I figure if it's good enough for God, it's good enough for me.

2) GAS PRICES: I will offer Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and whoever else we still buy oil from $20 a barrel for oil. Take it or leave it. Non-negotiable. $20 a barrel. No sense in our enemies getting rich while our everyday citizens are having to take second jobs to have gas money to get to their first job. If they decide they will not accept $20 a barrel, fine. We'll dig up our reserves. We'll create new jobs in refineries to get anything we drill up at home ready for consumption. And we'll find an alternative source for gasoline. And if we don't succeed in finding an alternative fuel, it's our own stinkin' fault for letting it get this bad in the first place.

3) IMMIGRATION: If you come here legally, welcome. Take an English class. Get a job. Learn the rules of the road. Just like everyone else before you. However, if you attempt to cross our border illegally, we will greet you with a backpack, a rifle, and a one-way ticket to Iraq. If you can survive 15 months over there fighting for the country you're so desperate to become a part of, we'll let you in for free. Good luck.

4) THE ECONOMY: If I seriously knew how to fix this, believe me I already would have. But as the situation stands now, our all-knowing government has agreed to write checks to banks and other financial institutions who made risky loans to underqualified lenders. As a taxpayer, it doesn't really seem like this is my problem; however, the government has now made it my problem. So since we've already offered these businesses the money, I say we clean some house while we're at it. If you, as a private financial institution, are now asking the federal government and, by extension, the taxpayers of the USA for financial help, we will give you the money to keep your business afloat. But the management will be replaced. All of it. I would not, under any circumstances, allow the management of an institution that has gotten themselves this far in trouble to continue running that business with my taxpayers' hard-earned money. Sorry. You blew it. I'm sure there are plenty of jobs elsewhere.

Off the soapbox. Enjoy your Sunday!

Do You Get Anxious Only at Night?

It's pretty much my very favorite time of year, and we're right in the thick of it. In spite of all the other things going on in my life at the moment, I really don't think I could be much more excited than I am right now. Auburn football just puts this giant smile on my face...

Even though we lost last week. Ick.

Sometimes I wish that everyone was an Auburn fan. Weird, huh? Auburn fans are generally nice to others... and welcoming and accomodating. It's just the Auburn way and I think everyone should be the same. However, today I decided that there are WAY too many people that I DON'T want to be Auburn fans because they act like crazy people and they are vulgar and just plain mean. One year when I was in college, some jerks from LSU burned a building down. To the ground. I certainly don't want them on my team. Or anywhere near me for that matter. Hopefully we have very little in common. I am not a jerk. Or at least I'm not a jerky fan. Unlike SOME people.

I love cool weather. And I mean seriously love. I could sit outside all day and just chill out and drink tea and smell the leaves and the chill in the air and the food on the grill. And I know that grilling is supposedly one of those "summertime" sort of activities, but why? It's too hot. And anyone who knows me knows that I don't like to sweat. Unless it's on purpose, of course. And there's just something comforting about the cool air and grilling out and getting to sit on the deck or the patio and just take some time to be outdoors. It's lovely.

Anyway, enough of the chit-chat. The things I've learned...

1) I hate parking decks. I understand that they are very, very convenient and allow lots and lots of people to park in a minimal amount of space. But I really hate them. I feel like you're always playing chicken with oncoming traffic. And if you happen to be lucky enough to be in parking deck that has one-way ups and downs (i.e., no two-way traffic), you can't ever really relax because there's always the distinct possibility that some elderly person will turn the wrong way. This is especially true of hospital parking.

2) The scariest movies generally don't have music continually playing in the background. This is so that when something scary happens, the movie-makers can actually make you pee 3 drops in your pants by playing some random sound really loud at the same time someone jumps out of bed or scares you by looking at you through a window. It's disturbing how well this works. Every time.

3) You really can glue your fingers together with Super Glue. It works, trust me. I do not recommend trying this one your own just to see if I'm telling the truth.

4) "Uncopyrightable" is the longest word in the English language that uses every vowel exactly once and never repeats a vowel. If you can spell that in Scrabble, you win forever.

Later dudes...