Picture-wise at least! For today. I know you came here thinking I’d be talking about force factor, but you are wrong. I am going to talk about pictures, instead.

May 1 My other new hat I am totally buying this one, too. On Saturday, it shall be mine. And I will be wearing a hat and ridiculous shoes to church on Sunday. Period. Because I can rock a hat and the pictures prove it.

May 2 Do they make this in Hot Wheels? Cause, this truck, it is totally suh-weet, and I want one.

May 3 Oops Sometimes it happens.

May 4 Grandmother’s rose is blooming This is the rose bush in my yard. I planted it in honor of Grandmother the summer after she died. Interestingly enough, I woke up Christmas morning to find one perfect bloom at the very top of it. But this picture is actually from like, 3 weeks ago, just like the date says. I didn’t snap the other one. When I took this, there were actually 5 roses on the bush, all fully opened and stunning. Which I know doesn’t sound like a lot, but there are still only 2 real stems on my “bush”.

May 5 Butterfly Again, I shoot what I see, and on this day, I saw an orange butterfly on a very red car and it amused me.

You are the winner of the Yoplait gift set. Please send your mailing info to cass @ cassknits.com so I can send it on to BlogSpark. They will be mailing your prize.

As for the rest of you, hi. (insert wave) It has been a month to you, but it has been a journey for me. Details may or may not be forthcoming, as I attempt to catch up a little bit. Or not catch up so much, but just jump back in. Haven’t quite decided yet. I do know I have a bunch of pictures to post, and I don’t plan on 30 entries today to take care of them. That would be more like “curl up in front of the Amish fireplace with a big fat book” type of blogging, and I am thinking to do more like….. ummm….soundbite blogging. I’ll probably post a few pics each in several posts and call it good. When I get to a good story, I’ll tell it, but even the most intensely emotional times are full of mundane moments, and since that’s mostly what I took pictures of, that’ll be mostly what you get. In the words of the little dinosaur, “I’m the blogger, gotta love me!”

Wow, almost caught up. How scary is that? I borrowed these pipe wrenches from my dad, in hopes that That One would be able to replace the heating element on my water heater while he was here this weekend. That leads, of course, to a story. You need to know, if you haven’t realized it by now, that he never rushes. He’s not slow and he’s not lazy, but he is methodical and purpose oriented, and a *very quick thinker*. Now, by the time he got here, we had hot water. After he’d been here several hours, I finally had a chance to tell him about the way we ended up getting hot water again. I had pressed up against some insulation on the side of the tank, and the heater had made a noise that I recreated with my mouth and viola! hot water. Yay!

So, I suggested maybe we would be able to just pull off that duct tape and insulation and look at the thermostat and that would solve the problem. And so he said come on, and grabbed my huge new flashlight, and into the master closet we went. And he carefully pulled back that tape and some of the insulation and we both saw pretty colors coming through what was left next to the heater and I said “oh shit” and asked if he wanted me to flip the breaker. He said no, the wall switch would do, and so I hit that and he continued to pull off the burned *fireproof* insulation and reveal a melted thermostat. And then I flipped the breaker, went back to the closet and pretty much sagged to the floor as he explained that we had come very close to dying a fiery death. The thing had been sparking and shorting for quite a while. Like, not a day or so, but a while.

That little noise that I described as shhhhhhh, like water was actually a lot of little pops in rapid succession. So, now I have to have a new hot water heater. Yay me. Did I mention I also need to pay for a car repair, a second car repair, spay a dog, pay for boy scout camp and cover the baseball registrations that Pat said he would handle? Not to mention all the normal stuff? Yeah, fun times. And that would be why my stress level is mounting as I mentioned in this morning’s Self Portrait Sunday. I am so over dealing with all this crap.

I went and got my hair trimmed on Saturday, in preparation for the ball next weekend. I am getting pretty excited about that, I tell ya! I still have to do a trial run on my makeup and try on the dress with my new umm…yeah. And in a couple days, I will wash my hair and see about how I want to fix it for the shin-dig. I made a deal to wear it down, so that’s a given, but how curly or straight it will be is still up in the air.

Let us know what you were up to this week!

No, I’m not having a crisis, just relax. My friend Ang. and I call it “crisis living” when we have so much to accomplish that we have to break our time into chunks so that we can at least hit everything. I haven’t had a day at home since December the 1st, and I won’t get another one until at least next Sunday. Today’s crises include beginning to de-junk the the kitchen (yay, the living room is done, or will be as soon as some friends come get the stuff they’ve laid claim to), laundry (I had to wear pants with paint stains on them to work yesterday), knitting (I’ve received 4 hat requests in the past 36 hours) and blogging (so behind it’s scary, ya’ll). If I work real smart, I ought to be able to hit everything at least twice, since the laundry is done in fits and starts around everything else. And oh yeah, phone time with That One. I can do that while I am knitting And at this point I am wondering if it’s possible to get free online backup for my life, which is moving way too fast to keep up with my own internal auto-save.

The good news is that I at least have a plan. And right now that plan calls for me to head over to my knitting blog and talk about some hats.

I found the perfect little dress to go with those strappy little shoes. And it’s only $700! Seriously, I do like the flowing femininity of this Paul & Joe dress, but I need more, umm, fabric. I am way too old and way too flabby to rock the flesh belt look. And umm, my thighs? They, uh, they, uh, they sorta extend past the tops of my kneecaps, iykwim. And if you are over 38, I know you do.

My friend Ang. mentioned the other day that she was itching to sew. I didn’t tell her at the time, but I am feeling the same urge. Maybe it is the fact that it’s spring, a time for new things. She didn’t know what she wanted to make, but I do. I want to make something for me, something soft and feminine. Something chiffon and flowing, perhaps with a self-sheath. Something light and gossamer that makes me feel like a butterfly. Something so lovely that where my thighs actually end doesn’t even cross my mind. Something so beautiful that it makes me feel beautiful to wear it. Only it has to cost a lot less than seven hundred bucks!

In other thoughts, a woman came through my line today at work, and she was buying shorts for her son. They happened to be plaid, and I love me some plaid pants, so I mentioned I might have to look at some for myself. And we got off discussing the current state of women’s fashions, and how most of the shorts are indecent, so that men’s shorts are a good alternative for gals who desire to maintain some level of modesty. She said that she had tried to explain to her daughter that the clothing designers were just not interested in helping her daughter “maintain her integrity”. That phrase really struck me. Maintain my integrity. That leads to a few other thoughts that I lack the mental capacity to fully iterate at this time, but I do want you to remind me that I was going to talk a little bit about sinning because we are sinners sometime in the next few days. When I can think a little better.

:booking:

So, as I was going through my feedreader this morning, I saw this from Booking Through Thursday:

Happy New Year, everyone!

So … any Reading Resolutions? Say, specific books you plan to read? A plan to read more ____? Anything at all?

Name me at least ONE thing you’re looking forward to reading this year!

and I decided to use it as a springboard for my yearly goal post, because, yes I do have reading goals, and lots of other goals, too.

This year, I want to read the rest of the Harry Potter books. And my TBR pile. In fact, I am going to set a lofty goal of a book per week. Crazy, right? If I aim for the moon, perhaps I will reach the stars.

This year, I want to use up the craft stuff I already have, and not buy more.

This year, I want to exercise. In fact, I want to be able to play the card squat game up to 10 cards by the end of the year. I’ll have to post a video of the card squat game so you will know that this is a serious event.

This year, I want to learn to play guitar. I have the instrument, I have the learning dvd. All that remains is to make and take the time to learn.

This year, I want to clean the house. I’ve kept hoping for something bigger, but it hasn’t happened, so this year, I am purposing to make our stuff smaller.

This year, I think I want to do project 365. I guess I need to make up my mind, huh? I used to do a photo a day, and it was a love/hate relationship for me.

This year, I want to send my kids to booty camp. They need to learn to do what they are told, come when they are called and speak when they are spoken to.

And on that note, I guess I just committed to Project 365. I may or not actually scrap the pictures in a book, but here’s the first one.

Notice the five booty camp recruits. (The other two are not yet home from a retreat.) Notice that one girl is holding a HP book, and one is holding 10 cards. Notice that my oldest son is holding my guitar for me. Notice that the girls are sitting on the clean counter I cleared last night. Maybe I should try again. I forgot to have some one hold craft stuff.

There, that’s a bit better. This time I included the craft stuff, and there are two children holding five cards each, (DaBaby lowered hers as I snapped) since I could play card squat through five cards when my nephew and sister taught it to me.

Please note that there are no goals here about money and there are no goals here about people who are beyond my control. I have no idea about my finances at this point, and I have learned that making goals that involve other autonomous people is setting yourself up for big fat failure.

IF I was to set one goal that involved others, it would be going to see Ang. this year. But that means I have to have a sitter, and a sitter falls in to the category of “other autonomous people”.

The other day, my magical friend Trevor tweeted about an article he was reading. I clicked over and found this: Best Buy smashes the clock. I glanced over it, more because he was interested in it than anything else, until I got to this part:

People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste of their time, the customer’s time, or the company’s money.

Now, I reread that a couple of times, and then I remembered what I had posted about never being still, and I then I reread that sentence again, and I realized that if I better corralled my “work” I would have more time to just be.

For instance: sitting here, waiting and hoping for work to show up is not work. Looking two or three times a day is sufficient.

Same with email: I doubt the president is going to email me for my opinion before he launches the nukes, so I don’t need to be available by email at all times either. I can open it up and delete that spam three times a day, reply to my two real emails and close it again.

And tabs: I had been leaving tabs open until I “got a chance to read them”. Done with that, too.

So here is my new plan: In the morning, I open the email, and go through it deleting, deleting, deleting, and dealing with anything that needs a reply NOW, and then closing Thunderbird. I check my message boards, and then I start working my Google calendar. The calendar holds internet and non internet stuff, but I want to knock out as much internet stuff as I can before lunch.

After lunch: school, then finish up internet. Finished means that the only tab I have open is my Google calendar and that my inbox has nothing from today in it. Eventually, it will mean that my inbox is empty, but I still have some stuff in there from before; 28 actionable items, in fact. This entails opening Thunderbird again, of course, and deleting a ton more junk to get to the few real emails.

When I am done I move away from the computer. This is the most important part! (If I am here, I will be “busy”, which we both know usually isn’t true, but it sounds good, right?) And I don’t come back until the first bedtime at 8pm or later, depending on what is going on here at home. At that time, I can read feeds, make sure there’s nothing left on the calendar, and check email and message boards again, too.

I still need to figure out when I want to clean and read the Bible, but I am betting those things will fall into place pretty quickly.

Oh, I forgot the goal report: We’re not going to talk about my weight this week, since i forgot to weigh this morning when I got up (oops) but I can happily report that I moved 10 books this week, in the form of reviews on my knitting blog.