Exceedingly Mundane

Tim came in from work Friday afternoon with a happy for me, although I think it is really for both of us! Some guy at work was selling food stuff for his child as a fund raiser, so Tim ordered us a tub of cookie dough! Chunky Chocolate. We tried them tonight (just 4 in my toaster oven I got for Christmas, which I love), and they were pretty good. Nothing like warm chocolate cookies and milk!

Tim and I were walking tonight, and chatting about our day. Tim asked “what are we having for dinner?” and I said “thai”. And Tim said….. (drumroll)… “it’ll be hard for him to do any home improvement after that”. Be-dum-bum

My legs are so sore. We got out in the yard Saturday afternoon and apparently I spent 2 or 3 hours in “catcher position”, like baseball, squatting down. Pulling weeds, putting out pine straw, bending down to move things, and my muscles are now not at all happy about the position. My hamstrings started hurting Saturday night late, got worse yesterday and are about the same today. Ick. I feel very out of shape!

On the bright side, they ought to start feeling better tomorrow! 😉

Well, I knew I was missing out on something, so that is why I started this blog! I just read online at the Merriam-Webster site that the word of the year for 2004 is “blog”. Seems it was the most searched for word on the Internet last year. I feel so behind, not getting my blog going until Feb 2005. My goodness, I hate to be behind a computer/techie/geekie trend.

You can go check it out by clicking Here

Well, I worked on the taxes most all afternoon, and I’m happy to say that I *think* they are about done. I have gone through them once good, skimmed a second time, and I’ll go through them at least one more time. I want Tim to go through them, and I also have a few questions. Some of these capital gains/losses things really confuse me. 🙂 I like Tim to look through them, I think you need a separate eye and mind to go through things like this. I translate everything the same way, every pass through.

Hopefully, we can do this soon, and get them e-filed and then I can breathe a total sigh of relief. It’s like that other thing I hate so much, going to the doctor every year — just as soon as it’s over, I think….Whew, I don’t have to do that again for another WHOLE year!

Gotta go watch Lost and Alias, then try to watch American Idol that we taped last night, and are going to tape tonight while Alias is on. Gee, do you think we like TV, or what? 😀

I wonder why some people are born procrastinators, and others are not. I was definitely born that way. Some kind of defective gene.

The latest form is to be expected – I dread doing the taxes every year. Hate it, despise it, it hangs over me like the blackest of clouds, following my every movement, day and night. Logically, I know if I just sat down, did the Nike thing (Just Do It), and got it over with, it wouldn’t bother me as much. And yet, somehow that defective gene always wins out.

I was supposed to work on the taxes yesterday. Somehow I managed to convince myself that I had a hundred other things to do so that I didn’t have to work on the taxes. Today, I woke up and told myself, “work on them today, try to get them knocked out”. Argh. Here it is after lunch and I have been doing the procrastinating thing again. OK, I am going to work on the taxes. I promise. Maybe. 😡

Well, it’s a Tuesday night and Tim got a phone call from his boss at about 8:40. A computer at their office in Jackson needed some attention and so Tim just left to go into the office. He’s not on call this week, but he lives near the office and his boss does not. He left saying that he might be a half hour or he could be all night. You never know with his job!

So, I’ve settled in with my book (The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks) and a cup of herbal tea. I will read a while and hopefully he will be home soon.

I just read the following in my book – “But love, I’ve come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.”

No truer words ever written.

What is it about certain smells that evoke such strong and immediate memories or sensations? Case in point, I just opened up a bottle of white vinegar and got one whiff. Immediately, my brain translates into Easter Egg dyeing. Something about that smell just makes me think of dying Easter Eggs.

BTW, the vinegar was for steaming the iron. My iron decided to spew icky stuff out of it yesterday, which it does from time to time. I think it’s all the stuff in our water. I always fill the iron with water and use steam to iron Tim’s clothes for work. After a while, I think deposits and stuff in our water build up in the iron, for it “throws up” from time to time. I use an old trick of Dodie’s – steaming the iron with a strong concentrate of vinegar and water. I hope it works. If not, I’ll be out the door later to get a new iron.

Back to the smells. Coffee is one of the other two that springs to mind. Most of my life, I never liked the smell of coffee. Growing up, I was around it. Worked around it and even made huge pots of it when I worked in a restaurant. Been many times to Cups or some such coffee spot with Tim and friends and couldn’t stand the smell. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, last summer, it actually started smelling good to me. Smelling coffee brewing in our kitchen is now incredibly comforting to me. It reminds me of Tim, it reminds me of home, and it’s an incredibly warm fuzzy for me. Smelling it in a store or coffee house is a very heady experience for me now, too.

The other smell I can think of is a bad one. And, like the coffee, it’s one that I used to have a completely different reaction to, when I smelled it. Growing up, I have always loved red meat. Still do, love to eat it once its cooked. But, in the last few years, I have had a growing dislike for seeing and smelling red meat when it’s raw. I think it’s something about the blood. It just totally disgusts and nauseates me now. Has really made me feel sick to my stomach to open up a ziplock of red meat and smell that smell. Ick. Makes me sick just thinking about it.

OK, time to end on a good note. I have a chicken stew in the crockpot. It’s already starting to smell good, and I know that by late this afternoon, it’s going to smell divine. It’s one of those comfort foods that I love to make in the winter. And, it makes me so happy when Tim walks in the door and smells it (he has an incredible nose, and a very intuitive palate too, he can pick out seasonings, foods, etc in all kinds of food) – Tim will walk in after work, and say “wow, that smells good. Is that x or y” — and most of the time, he’s right! 🙂 He loves to come in and smell fresh bread baking too. Another favorite scent.

My mood today is listed as “lucky”. Gail asked why, so I thought I would include it here. I feel very lucky today. I feel very lucky every day, but today especially so. I can remember many Valentines that I spent without Tim, and now that I have him to share my life with, I realize how lucky I am. How lucky I am to have him on this day, and every day. I remember how lonely I was, and how unhappy, and I know that those days are behind me now, since I have Tim. I feel very lucky, and very fortunate. 🙂

Well, today is a picture perfect day. The sun is out, the birds are chirping (and will soon be singing a lot more, I bought more bird seed at the store today), my windchimes are singing in the breeze, and it just couldn’t be prettier outside. I have a couple of the windows open in the house, and the temp indicator in my computer system tray reads a balmy 71º. How’s that for winter in the Deep South?

I made my weekly grocery run today, and realized that this is the first time in three weeks that I haven’t gone when it was raining. I posted some “Rainy Day Gratitudes” on those days, so I thought it only fitting to post some “Sunny Day Gratitudes” today.

– I am thankful for the sun shining down, it makes me so much more cheerful than the dreary gloomy gray days.
– I am thankful for money in the bank with which to buy food and necessities, as well as enough left over to buy happies.
– I am thankful for Tim.
– I am thankful for my family and friends.
– I am thankful for my health.
– I am thankful for the wonderful roof over my head I am proud and happy to call home.
– I am thankful for our new niece, Abby, and that she was born happy and healthy.
– I am thankful for the time that I have to stop and do little things, like look at the clouds in the sky, watch the birds eating bird seed at my feeder, listen to my wind chimes play, and smell the fresh air.
– I am thankful for my computer!
– I am thankful for Hambones, and all of the time and effort that Tim has, and continues, to put into this website, for me, for us, and for everyone here.
– I am thankful I have my eyesight, so I that I can see the computer screen, watch TV, read a book, read the paper.
– I am thankful for these things and so many more. More another day 🙂

Well, our Roadrunner (high speed Internet access) was out again last night. Just a note to self, since it was also out earlier in the week for a couple of hours. It was out last night for about 5-6 hours. Hambones was off-line as a result, in case anyone was trying to get on and couldn’t reach the website.

I hope this doesn’t start happening on a more regular basis. I am going to start making a note of it here, in case it starts getting to be a problem again. Tim and I are really leaning towards switching our house phone service from BellSouth to Vonage, which uses the high speed Internet connection from our cable company. Every time Roadrunner goes off line, I think, gee, I wouldn’t have the Internet or phone service. Of course, Tim always reminds me that we would both still have our cell phones, but still. I don’t like to be without a phone in the house.

On the bright side, while the Internet connection was down, I got a lot of other stuff done. Yesterday was a restful, but productive, day for me. I got some laundry done, read some in my book, got the tax software installed on the PC, and got the rebate information filled out on said tax software. Tim and I also watched a movie out of our DVD collection last night. We watched Pirates of the Caribbean, and he even agreed to watch some of the extras with me, which was great. We watched the deleted scenes, a blooper reel, and some cute little interactive stuff on the life and history of pirates. 🙂

Just a random thought, as I was doing a load of laundry. I was washing my winter pajamas (pink) and my new pajama set that Tim got me for Valentines Day (also pink) along with some other clothes. It made me stop and think – boy, Presh would be proud! She loved pink, anything and everything pink. She would love it that I have two sets of pj’s that are pink!

Dodie, on the other hand, is probably turning over in her grave that I have them. 🙂

Well, I’m still thinking about Ava Clair. Shanna IM’d with me a couple of hours ago to tell us what had happened to Ava Clair. They were at a Mexican place last night and AC pulled some hot salsa off the table and it gave her second degree burns on her leg, through her pants. I just don’t get it – I don’t think we’ve ever had salsa that was warm, it’s usually room temperature or cold. And why on earth would any place bring it out hot to a table with two small children at the table. It was so hot, it burned her through pants, that had to be hot. Poor thing. Shanna says she is being a trooper though! 🙂 Shanna said the ER doctor told them it would probably scar and they might have to have plastic surgery on it. I hope it doesn’t come to that. And I hope she doesn’t have a mark or scar left on her. I’ll be glad when they talk to their pediatrician tomorrow and find out more. I hope, in time, it will all heal and go away. She’s much too beautiful of a little girl to have a scar on her leg from salsa, of all things.

Oooohhh! Tim and I got home a couple of hours ago from eating with Gail and Don, and he decided to flip channels in the den and see what was on TV. I came back to the office to check my email, and turned on the TV back here to flip around. I scrolled up to Soapnet and found they are running an “I Love Lucci” marathon of classic AMC episodes! How cool is that! And how terrible that I think I have seen both of the old ones that have been on since I got back here 🙂 The first one was when Erica broke Jeremy Hunter out of prison to escape to Canada with him, and the second one is when Erica and Travis are in the delivery room, they think they are having a boy, but Bianca is about to be born. Adam and Brooke are married and Adam doesn’t want Brooke to work for Travis, so he is offering to bribe her by giving her Tempo if she agrees to not work for Travis. Gotta love all these old shows!!!

I have an RSS aggregator now, and I have subscribed to several feeds. One of which is a Quote of the Day feed. Here’s one of today’s quotes – I rather liked it:

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. — Oscar Wilde

If you have paid attention, you’ve noticed that on the front page of Hambones there is a Random Quote. It doesn’t change daily like the verse of the day or proverb of the day (those feed from a different website). It changes every time you hit the site’s opening page, or every time you click the refresh button. These are quotes stored in a text file on Hambones. Quotes that I slowly and methodically typed in by hand, word by word. All of them mean something to me. Especially my favorite “Tim thinks he is always right. – Stacy”. Gotta love that one! I think Tim’s favorite quote is “Everywhere I go, there I am. — Mike Ditka” 😀