Exceedingly Mundane

I finished a wonderful set of 5 books by Katherine Valentine, called the Dorsetville series. My blogger buddy Lynne had read them and recommended them, and subsequently offered to loan her set to me and my sister Gail. Thanks Lynne! You were right – I thoroughly enjoyed these books! If you’ve read any of the Mitford books and liked them, I think you would like these books. Same type of characters and feel to the books. They are light and easy to read, but full of quirky parishioners, townspeople, quaint descriptions of life in Dorsetville, and all 5 books are just very charming, sweet and inspiring. They focus on a Catholic priest at St. Cecilia’s in Dorsetville, Connecticut. The lessons on faith and grace are wonderfully written, and always great for me to read – I never tire of reading of God’s love for us and how we can try to walk with Him every day on faith.

The books are entitled “A Miracle for St. Cecilia’s”, “A Gathering of Angels”, “Grace Will Lead Me Home”, “On a Wing and a Prayer” and “The County Fair”. I actually read them out of order, and felt like a total dummy, but it didn’t affect me following the storyline or the characters. I would recommend reading them in order though! 🙄

For the record, that makes 25 books for me so far this year, with a total of 8,004 pages read. I think I’m going to swing to the other extreme, after reading a slew of Christian fiction books. I recently finished one of the Amish series by Beverly Lewis, and now this series by Katherine Valentine, so I am going to read some mainstream fiction next. I am trying to be good and read books I own (gasp, I don’t know how long that will last before I have to head to the library!!) Up next is “Everyone Worth Knowing” by Lauren Weisberger. I actually own the paperback of “The Devil Wears Prada” but I have not read it yet. I saw the movie and it’s still fairly fresh in my memory, so I thought I would start with this book. Have you read any of Weisberger’s books? What are you reading now?

Have a wonderful day, everyone! 😀

Where Does the Time Go?

Have you ever missed an important appointment because you have become so engrossed in a book you forgot the time or were up so late reading that you didn’t wake up in time? Been late to work because you couldn’t resist the temptation and left the house too late?

Well, this sort of ties in to the Randomness meme I did the other day. It was all about being late. Which I try never to be. Not even for reading or for one of my beloved books. I don’t like to be late. I don’t think I’ve ever lost track of time when I was engrossed in a book. I have no problem glancing at a clock or my watch and stopping when I need to stop to go do something, get ready or go leave to be somewhere. I actually don’t sit up late reading and waking up in time is not a problem for me. We have this cool new built-in alarm clock. His name is Beau and he doesn’t let us oversleep in the mornings. Even on Saturday 🙁

WARNING: Long, sappy, rambling, personal post ahead.

Today is my father-in-law’s birthday. I had originally thought I would post about this topic on a day associated with my husband, Tim. His birthday, Valentines Day, our anniversary, or some other day where I could blog about Tim, and about how wonderful it is that we found each other, that he shared not only his last name with me, but made me a part of his family. But, it seems I blogged about something else on all of those days. So, since this has as much to do with my FIL as my husband, I’m going to blab on about it today.

This post stems from the song “My Last Name” by Dierks Bentley.

[audio:http://www.hambones.org/blogs/stacy/mp3/My Last Name.mp3] Click (on the left, twice) to play the song and hear it in its entirety.

The lyrics that really get me all choked up are:

Daddy always told me, far back as I recall, Son, you’re part of something. You represent us all. So, keep it how you got it. As solid as it came. It’s my last name.

Darling if you’re wondering, why I’ve got you here tonight. I want to be your husband; I want you to be my wife. I ain’t got much to give you, but what I’ve got means everything – it’s my last name”

This song gets me every time, because it reminds me so much of my husband and his father. When Tim proposed to me (he got down on both knees, by the way), he said he didn’t have the world to give me, but he would if he could. He said he could just promise to love and cherish me all of the days of our lives. And he does. And I’ve come to realize what other wonderful gift he gave me – his last name and being accepted into his family as a daughter and sister.

You see, I had my own wonderful family before I ever met Tim and his family. I had a mom I loved (who is no longer with us), a Daddy I adore and two pretty awesome sisters. But when I married Tim, I got a whole extra family as part of the package deal. 🙂 And the head of that family is my father-in-law, Mitchell. Mitchell is one of my favorite men on the planet. He is right up there with my dad and my husband. I love and respect them all, immensely. Mitchell taught his three sons by example as much as the words, how to be a good man, how to be honorable, how to be respectful of yourself and others, how to love your family, love and honor God and be the man that God expects you to be. Mitchell has walked this walk all of his life, and his sons are the same way. They are honorable, hard-working, kind, very decent kind of men. Tim had the added benefit, as Mitchell did, of serving in the military, where he learned even more about honor, discipline and respect. I love the man my husband is, and I have his parents to thank for that. And I do, as often as I can. They did a tremendous job raising their sons, and I think my in-laws are so proud of all of their sons. I know I love them both to pieces (Tim’s mom and dad) and I am proud to call Tim’s brothers my very own brothers. It’s really great to have such wonderful family on both sides! 😀

So, today, Happy Birthday to my father-in-law Mitchell. Thank you for being the man and father you are.

Ahh, cookbooks. I love cookbooks! Cookbooks are another serious obsession for me. I love to look at them, read them like books, look at the pretty pictures, dream about all of the recipes I want to try, etc. I use those little post-it flags sometimes to mark the pages of the recipes I want to make. I always have the best of intentions. And yet, I rarely cook out of them. I do try a few things, but for the most part, I just like to have them to look at and maybe use “one day”.

I also daydream about the day when I get a bigger kitchen and I can put my cookbooks on some shelves in the kitchen, or nearby. Right now, the majority of my cookbooks are in an old bookcase in the hall, nowhere near my kitchen. One day, I hope to have a built-in set of shelves on the side of an island or cabinet, or maybe a built-in desk area with shelves above it, so I can display my favorite cookbooks. I do have a few in the kitchen, in a wooden cookbook stand on top of my refrigerator. But, I have so many that storing them is an issue. Some of them are here:

That’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you like cookbooks? Do you buy many cookbooks? Do you cook out of them much, if you do? And equally important, where do you store yours? If you really want to get all involved with your answer, give me a ballpark estimate on how many cookbooks you have. You can also tell me which one is your favorite, if you can pick just one. I can’t! 🙂

P.S. I’m cheating again, and using this for today’s photo over at my Project 365 blog. Blogger privilege

randomness…feed your mind and your blog
Week of April 8: Better Late than Never

This week I posted the meme late Sunday evening.
So that inspired this weeks topic, ‘Better Late Than Never’.
Are you usually late arriving? Late for work, school, parties…etc..?
Or are you usually on time or even prefer to be a few minutes early?
Are you late returning things as well? Library books, movie rentals…etc…?

till next time…

I’ve seen this meme posted at a couple of the blogs I like to read. So, I thought I’d play along this week. Click on the link above and play along at your blog too, if you’d like 🙂

My Answer: Better Late Than Never is great, but I prefer not to be late. Tim and I are both actually really punctual people. We think it’s important to be on time when we say we are going to be somewhere. Especially if other people are involved. We are never late for work, or a party or any thing else really. In fact, most of the time we try to be early. Not TOO early, but a few minutes early. We never return things late. That’s the stingy side of me, I refuse to pay late fees on library books, movie rentals or anything else. So, no, we are not late people. 😀 How about you?

I posted last week that I was feeling rather uninspired, and this week is much the same. I really *want* to be trying some new recipes. But, for whatever reason, I don’t seem to work them into my menu. I keep going back to those recipes that are “tried and true” for me. As always, thanks to Laura over at OrgJunkie for hosting this every week. Be sure to stop on over and check everyone’s menu – there are so many people participating, you are sure to find so many wonderful recipes and menu ideas.

Monday – Crockpot Four Beans and Sausage, cornbread muffins NOTE: This was on last week’s menu, but we had ginger ale waffles and turkey bacon (breakfast for supper), instead.

Tuesday – Crockpot Chicken and Veggies over biscuits

Wednesday – Egg McMuffins, oatmeal (Light Night before Tim weighs in with his weight-loss group at work)

Thursday – Shanna’s Cheesy Chicken & Tortellini, salad, maybe bread

Friday – Taco Salad

Saturday – Date Night or Pizza

I hope everyone is having a very joyful, very blessed Easter today. We’ve been busy all weekend, and I just haven’t stopped to look at the computer, much less blog. I just now got my photos for yesterday and today loaded on my Project365 blog. In fact, I even “cheated” on my photo for today

We had a surprise birthday party for my father-in-law yesterday. We think it all went well and we sure had a great time, seeing everyone and celebrating his birthday. He’s such a wonderful man, and he raised 3 fine sons, one of which I am very blessed to call my husband. I think I might have to get all sappy later in the week and blog about him again, on his actual birthday. 🙂

The weather certainly doesn’t feel like Easter or spring. Hard to believe it’s so chilly here for this time of year. I’m really glad I had not planted any flowers or shrubs yet, back when we were in the upper 80’s.

Hope you are all having a lovely Easter. Rejoice, He is Risen!

Feast One Hundred & Thirty Eight
April 6, 2007

Appetizer
When you travel, which mode of transportation do you prefer? Although I love the convenience of flying and getting somewhere quick, I hate the hassle of airports, rental cars, etc. I really would rather drive. Tim and I mostly drive on our vacations, and we love getting to spend the time together. However, we’ve about exhausted all of the places we want to go within a day’s driving distance from our home. Time to start hitting other parts of the country 🙂

Soup
Have you ever met a blogging friend in person? No, but I certainly have several that I do want to meet!

Salad
When was the last time you were really, really tired? Hmmm, I can’t really remember. I know when we went to Washington DC a couple of summers ago, and we walked one entire day, from the Capital to all of the monuments and memorials on the Mall, to the White House and other places, we were completely exhausted. More tired from the exertion than from lack of sleep. Our legs hurt so much, we both came back to the hotel and just crashed for hours.

Main Course
If you could have dinner with any one fictional character from a book or movie, who would it be?Oh wow, a real “thinker” question! I don’t know if I’ve had enough coffee yet to come up with a good answer. The first one that comes to mind is Father Tim in the Mitford books.

Dessert
Fill in the blank: One day, I hope to see _______________. London, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Paris, Vienna and Rome would be on there too.

I have a feeling that I’m going to be popping several Tylenol today. It’s going to be a long day…

I blogged yesterday that I was fretting about our neighbor’s fence. The fence contractor he hired showed up bright and early this morning (and it’s in the 40’s here, hard to believe, since it was 86 on Monday!), and started tearing down his fence. We share one side of our yard with him and so now, I have a gaping hole where there used to be a fence. Which means Beau can’t go out on his own to take care of business, hang out or whatever. He is NOT a happy dog. We’re only a couple of hours into the project and already he’s really upset. He hears them banging and drilling and making noise and he is about to tear down the back door to go out and investigate. He’s a territorial kind of dog and rather protective of me, and our house and yard. So, needless to say, I already have a headache and I will probably have to go get some Tylenol soon.

So, I thought I would do a quick Question of the Day: Can you swallow pills without any kind of liquid? I absolutely cannot, but Tim can. He always amazes me. He doesn’t take Tylenol or Advil very often, but when he does, he takes two in his hand, pops them in his mouth and just swallows them. I absolutely cannot do this. I have to have liquid of some kind and then sometimes I have trouble getting the larger pills down. When I was younger, I couldn’t swallow pills at all, but I did finally learn. How about you – do you have any trouble swallowing pills? Have you always been able to, or did you struggle to learn? Can you swallow them dry, without liquid?

Not that it’s anything important, but here’s a few things that are bouncing around in my head. Mostly, just a good excuse to use bullets. I luvs me some bullets in my blog posts, LOL!

Swiped from… hmm, someone else’s blog (can’t remember who). I had it filed away for quite a while now. You know, “saved for a rainy day”. Well, that would be today! 😀

When was the last time you….

1. kissed someone? This morning (Tim the World’s Best Husband)
2. drank coffee? about 10 seconds ago 😀

3. read a book? Last night before going to sleep
4. cursed? Does “danggit” count? If so, last night
5. had a nightmare? Hmm. Not sure, I don’t remember my dreams or nightmares that often

6. checked your email? Sheesh, about 2 minutes ago! Mine is always up, so I check constantly
7. had a crush? I STILL have a crush on Tim 😆

8. drove a car? Yesterday. Haircut, lunch out, errands, grocery shopping
9. rode a rollercoaster? Wow. Long time. Probably the late 90’s when we went to Disneyworld. I do NOT like rollercoasters, but Tim made me ride Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror (although that’s not really a rollercoaster, but still, it was scary!)

10. took a nap? I luvs me a good nap. Probably in the last week or two.
11. went to the movies? This past Saturday, went with Tim, Don and Gail to see “Amazing Grace”
12. drank alcohol? A very long time. College.
13. went to a party? I went to my niece’s 2 year old birthday party in January, does that count? 🙂
14. said “I love you’? This morning, to Tim and Beau

15. cooked a meal? Last night. I cook a lot, I like to cook!
16. exercised? Yesterday morning, we walked 2 miles in our subdivision

I won’t tag anyone, but it you play along, be sure to leave me a comment so I can come check out your answers!!!

I am going this morning to the salon to get my hair cut. And colored, but shhhh, we’re not going to talk about that very much. Suffice it to say that I had grey hair in high school. They had to airbrush it out of my senior portrait. By the time I got married, I had huge streaks of grey all through my hair. Not long after we were married, Tim told me that he thought I should color it, since he thought I looked a lot older than I really was. Needless to say, I’ve been coloring my hair ever since. I am calmly and patiently waiting for the day when Tim has a head full of grey hair. Then, I’ll stop coloring mine and we’ll be grey together. 🙄

Anyway, I go regularly to get my hair cut. Every 5-6 weeks. I have horrible hair and I have trouble styling it. I wish I had great hair. I wish I had “wash and go” kind of hair, but I don’t. It won’t do what I want it to. It’s incredibly frizzy. It flips one way and then another, never the same thing twice or the same way on that part of my head. It’s a struggle every day between me and my hair. A common phrase in my house is that I’m having a “bad hair day”. 😀

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day – Do you go to the salon to get your hair cut? How often? Do you get your hair highlighted or colored? Would you say you have more “good hair days” or “bad hair days”. 😀 Inquiring minds want to know!

Well, mercy me. Will wonders never cease! Two different bloggers, Karen (from over at Write from Karen), and Christine (from over at Are We There Yet?), have both nominated me for a “Thinking Blogger Award”. I am totally speechless, very surprised and rather humbled by this gesture.

After I picked myself up off the floor, I stopped and thought… do these incredibly smart and sweet ladies really think that this is a “thinking” blog? It’s a very boring, very mundane kind of blog. I blather on about very little. This is by design. I’m a very non-confrontational kind of person in real life — I don’t debate politics, religion, my beliefs, world affairs, the economy, the tax system or even global warming (although I do talk some about global warming!) with friends and family, much less on my blog. I named my blog “Exceedingly Mundane” because it’s just that – extremely low-level and boring. I talk about food. I do memes. I talk about books I’ve read. I talk about my dog and how he likes to chase bugs, birds, lizards and squirrels. I talk about Tim and tell everyone what a wonderful guy I found who somehow, miraculously, puts up with me every day. I know I’m boring. I know I’m not a thinker. I prefer light and fluffy. I like escapism.

And yet, they nominated me for this. Thank you ladies. Thank you for thinking so highly of me and for nominating me. I am truly honored. As per the rules of the Thinking Blog Awards, I am to do the following:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

On to my nominations:

1. Southern Girl at Southern Girl’s Guide to Almost Anything – Southern Girl is a hoot and she constantly reminds me of what it is to be Southern, to be a female sports fan, to be a tv/music fan. We share a lot of the same interests, including our photos for Project365. Some of her posts make me laugh and some of them make me think – like one she posted last week about the book/tv show on “1000 Places to see before you die“. It really made me think – I tried but couldn’t come up with 100. Her list made me look up a lot of places I had never heard of and learn about some new places on our planet.

2. Susie at Susiepie.com – Susie is constantly writing engaging, intellectual, moral and incredibly well written posts. She does a great job of showing me things on the Internet that always interest me, but that I would never, ever have found on my own. She and I share a very similar interest in books and authors, and she is always giving me wonderful book recommendations 🙂

3. Dianne at Unfinished Work – Dianne writes the most incredible posts. About her life, things that happened in her childhood, her recent break from blogging and her spiritual retreat. She’s always making me think, think about my life, about my faith, about my family, past and present. Just in the last week or so, she’s written three incredible posts that really made me stop and really think about my life (read them here, here and here). I love seeing that she has a new blog post up, I can’t wait to go read it and see what she is going to say next!

4. Deb at Sugarfused.net – Deb constantly amazes me with her photographs. I want to be like Deb when I grow up. I want to have her eye for taking photographs, her knowledge on camera modes and perspective and photo editing software. I want to shoot one picture in my life with my digital camera that would stand up to the photos she posts on a daily basis. I stand in awe of her talent. She constantly challenges me and makes me think about the photographs I take, how I take them, and how to set them up. And, she makes me think, gee, will I ever be as good as Deb?!

5. my sister Gail at More Than a Song – last, but not least, my sister Gail. Gail and I think alike. We know the same people. We like a lot of the same things. It’s a no brainer that I love her blog and that it makes me think – although, a lot of the time, I think “why didn’t I think of that first?! LOL 😀

For whatever reason, I’m feeling really uninspired the last day or so about cooking and planning menus. Blah. This might evolve over the course of the week, if I can find my cooking mojo! 🙂

As always, thanks to Laura over at OrgJunkie for hosting this every week. Be sure to stop on over and check everyone’s menu – there are lots of great ones posted over there.

Sunday – rumien (ramen noodles on steroids, we add rice, eggs, tons of seasonings and cheese)

Monday – Quesadillas, black beans and corn

Tuesday – Grilled Chicken (Tim)/ Grilled Salmon (me), sesame green beans, couscous

Wednesday – Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese

Thursday – Crockpot Four Beans and Sausage, cornbread muffins

Friday – Date Night or Pizza

Saturday/Sunday – family and holiday stuff going on

Have a wonderful week and a blessed Easter everyone 😀

I admit it – I’m a sucker for most every thing that Sonic makes. We love Sonic. They have good food, great drinks and even better desserts. We love all of their Blasts (like a Blizzard at Dairy Queen, which we don’t have here any more). And we love their shakes. This month, they have this:

Seriously – what’s not to love? Ice cream blended with hot fudge sauce and Oreo cookies. We had one this weekend… and I intend to have more before April is over! 😀