Sunday, September 28, 2008

Love me, or hate me!

Let's call this the LOVE/HATE game. Play along with me at home...

RULES: You either have to LOVE IT or HATE IT. No in between.

Let's start with an easy one:
  • SQUEEZE CHEESE - Love it - Well, I used to when I was younger, on Ritz. I haven't bought it since I have been married though...
  • THE PHRASE "ALL BECAUSE TWO PEOPLE FELL IN LOVE" - Hate it- it's stupid, sometimes babies come even when you don't fall in love.
  • VINYL PEOPLE STICKERS ON REAR WINDOWS OF SUV'S CHRONICALLY THE FAMILY TREE INCLUDING THE PETS - Hate them. We saw someone with a lady, 2 dogs and a cat on the back of their car yesterday. I giggled. I like the man visibly scraped off idea!
  • THE PHRASE "IT IS WHAT IT IS" - Hate it. I like you get what you get, and you don't throw a fit. :)
  • SISTERS-IN-LAWS- I only have one. Nothing to compare it to, so Love it?
  • SISTERS- Love them, they're both crazies.
  • TEENAGERS IN "LOVE" - Love it, except when I have my own children, definitely will be a hate it.
  • Shake it by Metro Station- Love it, best running song starter, ever!
  • THE TWILIGHT SERIES - Even with Breaking Dawn, still love it
  • SATURDAY FOOTBALL - Hate it, it's as stupid as the people that watch it.-sorry!
  • Blogs that have music players-Hate it. It's stupid. Except on MySpace, I like that. I turn off my volume when I hear it playing.
  • The political views of Hollywood Celebrities- Hate it- it's stupid and if a celebrity can sway a vote, then I feel bad for that person for not thinking for themselves. Except Tina Fay is pretty dang cool.
  • Bajio's Pineapple Shrimp Salad- Hate it- never had it? But I'm off shrimp for quite a while after that episode in Acapulco!
Feel free to tag yourself and copy this blog.

Road's End






The coast called. I listened.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Facebook

My Facebook isn't working right now. It says I have 17 new notifications, but I can't click on them. Hope it wasn't important!

So, I'm going to post random pics I just took, cause I'm not going to exercise til I see what the doctor has to say about my knee tomorrow afternoon. So I think I'll take a bath, read, and go to bed. My life is a raging ball of excitement!



These are my awesome NEON YELLOW Kangaroos. I forgot I had them, and need to break them in, so my feet hurt today. WELL worth the pain though.



This is Drew in a hypnotic trance as he watches Heroes. He didn't know I took his picture. :D



This is me, at 7:26pm, all cool and shizz



These are the Animal Cookies we polished off in 24 hours. Dang they were good!

Saturday, September 20, 2008

A little embarassed, a little lazy


I wanted to change my background today, and realized that I don't know enough about the xml/cgi to change it properly without losing all of my info on the sidebar widgets. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I'm sure I could figure it out, but I just don't have the patience. SOO if anyone has the naswer to me, that's obviously simpler than me having to figure out the code and making sure I do a cut and paste correctly. :) Goodbye my days of being able to trash any HTML code and putting whatever I want, where I want. So sad...

I'll leave you with a picture :)



That's Lexy with her beautiful necklace!

Thursday, September 18, 2008

FOoOoOood Storage

So being a faithful member of my religion, it is drilled into our heads to have a stable amount of food storage that is accessible at all times. There are even some people that register for these kinds of things on their wedding gift registry. So keeping this in mind, my food storage consists of the stuff I have in cupboards. Lots of oatmeal packets, and half a gallon of vegetable oil.

I had a mini panic from looking at pictures of the hurricane stuff down in Texas and realized that I'm aware money is tight, but we need a find a way to build up this food storage, even if it's a tiny bit by tiny bit. So I'm here for suggestions. I'm not ready to go all 50lb bag of beans per person, per year type. I just don't think I can commit to that much food, but you know, the little things.

What do you have in your food storage that you think would be good to start with? What things have you noticed are unnecessary. And where in the world in Oregon do you go about buying the church distributed canned goods, like the really cheap dried milk (sick!-but unfortunately is pretty necessary)?

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Dear Lexy (as taken from LiveJournal)

I discussed this with quite a few people today, and decided that I needed to publicize it so that I wouldn't have to keep repeating the story. So this is how it goes down:

Dear Lexy, I love you. You make me a little bit angry though. Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was this girl, lets call her Maddy for kicks. Well, Maddy has this GREAT idea that she's like the little old lady that made Stinky Cheese Man. She was lonely, and thought she would make something to help her not be so lonely. So, Maddy and Drew go to Furburbia, pick out the cutiest little cat they can find. Maddy, with her big blue puppy dog eyes begs Drew for this little kitty deemed 'Lexy'. Drew concedes, they pay the adoption fee, and take the little cat home.

Not 72 hours into this adventure, Maddy confesses to Drew that she has made a terrible mistake. She can't seem to be responsible for a plant, let alone a cat! Drew says to her, 'Don't you worry, it won't be that hard. Cats are good at taking care of themselves.' So time goes on. Maddy takes the cat to the vet once in a great while, but frequently visits the cat groomers because Lexy's hair is just too much to manage.

Four years into owning this precious little Lexy, Maddy is laying with her and realizes that Lexy can't breathe so great. Maddy calls up the vet, panicked, wondering what could be wrong. Thankfully, someone is still there, since by now it's almost closing time. The doctor runs some diagnostics, realizes that Lexy is going to die, and suggests they take her to the overnight, emergency care clinic in North Salem. Drew and Maddy say their goodbyes, and leave her there. Torn to pieces, Maddy finally gets to sleep that night, anxious to pick up her cat in the morning. Maddy then rushes Lexy back up the the vet clinic to run further diagnostics on why her cat is having problems.

After two weeks of tests, possible surgery options that were thankfully never needed, Lexy remained stable and started to gain weight. The real problem was then determined to be a hyperthyroid that had gotten out of control.

Every six months, Maddy would take her cute little cat into the vet clinic for her check-up to make sure her thyroid was accepting the correct amount of medication. Maddy was getting a bit frustrated with the amount of medicine she was having to give her cat. Medicating oneself, let alone an animal twice a day was hard work, and a lot of stress for Maddy if she ever wanted to leave for more than a day.

Then today, Maddy knew that Lexy needed to go to the vet. Maddy was prepared for the visit. She knew it was going to be expensive, but had forgotten how expensive it would be. She forgot that Lexy's Annual physical exam would be $46.00. Maddy forgot that her complete blood count would be $52.75. Maddy forgot that Lexy's Chemistry Profile with T4 (for the thyroid) would cost $125.70. Maddy also forgot that Lexy got to pee in a cup for $47.15. She ALSO forgot that her rabies vaccine was due for $15.65. Finally, Maddy realized that since she was at the vet, it would probably be a good time to also pick up Lexy's medication, so it saved a trip in the future. This also amounted to $32.55. The kind vet's office took off $28.73 or 10% as a courtesy, and a "wellness" thank you.

This threw Maddy into a bit of a tizzy. Maddy joked with the vet clinic about how she might have to give up her first born to pay for Lexy. Maddy also discussed the possibility of writing Lexy off on her taxes in some way.

But Maddy kept thinking, 'I'm damned if I do, I'm damned if I don't.' If Maddy doesn't take Lexy to the vet, she can't get her medicine, if she can't get her medicine, she will die a long and painful death. If Maddy takes her into the vet and tell them to kill her cat, she becomes a murderer of a perfectly healthy cat (as long as she's on medication). She can't win.

So I tell you this. Maddy will never have a pet again unless she is financially stable. Maddy will not kill her cat, but will sit and think about the beautiful kitchen table she forgoes to take care of her cat and keep her healthy. Maddy will be hoping that some day, in heaven, Lexy will find her and thank her for caring so much about her, and for wanting to have as long and happy of a life as cattily possible.

I sure love you LexyLoo, but man, you are expensive.


P.S. Wednesday update. Maddy gets a call from the vet to change her thyroid medication. Fine, she thought. Then the vet proceeded to tell Maddy that LexyLoo had a UTI. FREAK! How do cat's get Urinary Tract Infections? So Maddy politely asks the vet, "What could I have done to prevent this?" - thinking in her head, more frequent litter box cleaning?, regular bath intervals?...The vet then tells Maddy, "Nothing. It comes with old age. So we would like to put her on antibiotics, and then get her retested once the medicine is finished to make sure it has gone away. She is also a bit anemic, and we would like to test these levels to see if it was just related to the UTI symptoms." Maddy politely asks, "So, this is going to cost me another $47.15 for another test?" The vet then harshly comments, "It's only the test, we won't be charging you for the office visit." ....as if this was a HUGE discounted price. Maddy then succinctly says thank you, says she will be in to get the medicine later in the day, and hangs up.

Maddy goes into Salem to pick up the medication, and proceeds to tell Drew that he must go get it, since Maddy is upset. Drew gets back in the car, and Maddy asks him how much it cost...thinking it wouldn't be more than $20, since antibiotics for humans really aren't more than that. Drew grins and says, "Forty dollars."

Forty DOLLARS!?! FOR ANTIBIOTICS>?! Maddy then says, why couldn't I have just given her cranberry juice? Drew ponders...would she drink it? Maddy rudely states, "no....that's why."

Gah. So in the end, I think we're done. I think we're going to change vets to one near our house, and tell them we have a spending limit=$0.00. That we are no longer going to do testing, that we're happy to give her, her thyroid medication, but that we will no longer be doing the full panel testing.

Such is life. It's a good think Lexy is stinkin cute!

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Why can't people inform me I'm being tagged? I can't keep up!

Unspectacular Me - More like Weird Me - Michele did you make that title?


1. Post these rules.
2. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
3. Tag 6 fellow bloggers

I think I did something like this a few months back. I can't think of anything though....I'll keep this window open til I come up with something....

1. I'm unable to organize, and when I do, it takes every single bit of my attention, and it takes FOREVER. I can clean like nobodies business, but to actually PUT something away is extremely difficult for me mentally. I work in piles. I also hate, hate, hate piles and clutter, so needless to say, this often presents a problem, and I end up throwing away important documents cause I'm too lazy to go through the stacks I've made.

2. I like mini marshmallows and mini Swedish fish cause I like the corn starch coating- the large sized ones don't have enough "powder" on them.

3. I asked Drew, and he said that I like to eat Reese's Peanut Butter cups, even though I'm totally allergic to them. True, true!

4. Since I'm on a food tangent, I like peas. Like a lot. I'll eat peas with everything. I even like eating them frozen.

5. I can't get to sleep unless I've showered within the last 4 hours. *UNLESS I'm extremely tired- THIS RARELY happens.

6. Sometimes I get unhealthy obsessions over random things, and it takes a while to get over it. i.e. baking, knitting, other stuff...

I have others here

I tag:

Whoever, I really don't care...that way, I don't have to let anyone know.

Go forth and make me smile.

Love me some Saturday, 7:00AM surveys!

1. What time did you get up this morning? 6:45am baby- the cat sat on me.

2. Diamonds or pearls? Who would really say pearls, I'd like to know

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? uhhh, I think it was Voyage to the Center of the Earth down in Mexico. We saw a LOT of movies there...

4. What is your favorite TV show? I love Gray's Anatomy and The Office the same. I can't wait!!!

5. What do you usually have for breakfast? It depends on the time. Cereal, protein drink, or eggs.

6. What is your middle name? Elisabeth

7. What food do you dislike? Chicharrón- oh man that shizz is nasty!

8. What is your favorite CD at the moment? I'm kind of enjoying the new Estelle cd with Kanye. I love Kanye....

9. What kind of car do you drive? some ugly red car. I don't even want to talk about it.

10. Favorite sandwich? Well, to be honest, I lost my love of sandwiches when I couldn't have peanut butter anymore. Stupid, stupid allergies

11. What characteristic do you despise? shallow mindedness- drives me batty!

12. Favorite item of clothing? Hoodies. LOVE them, and can't wear them very often

13. If you could go anywhere in t he world on vacation, where would you go? I want to go sight seeing over in Europe.

14. Where would you retire to? I would like to retire to the Oregon coast. I would wear fishermen sweaters and sip tea by a fire while winter storms rage. It would be glorious!- DOOD RACHAEL, I AM SO DOING THIS WITH YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

15. What was your most recent memorable birthday? My most MEMORABLE and bestest birthday are 2 VERY different things. Memorable- when Rissy got to buy Lion King on MY birthday, when I didn't get anything. BESTEST birthday was going up to Seaside and hanging out on the beach, collecting zillions of starfish for as LONG as I wanted. It was divine!

16. Furthest place you are sending this questionnaire? EVERYWHERE, it's going on the interwebs

17. Person you expect to send it back first? I don't care!

18. When is your birthday? March 4th, I'd like a Wii I can play for a day, some candy, and some pretty sparkle things. :) - oh, and a doughnut.

19. Morning person or a night person? I used to be a night person before this responsibility randomness came in to my life. Jerk....

20. Pets: Lexy and Drew. I love them!

21. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share? My body seems to finally have started working. hah! TMI!

22. What did you want to be when you were little? 1. an Astronaut. - I still do, SO cool! 2. Computer Programmer- I seem to have lost most of my programming skillz-dangit! 3. A teacher. 1 out of 3 aint bad, right?

23. How are you today? I'm dandy. I got up real early and now I'm hungry for breakfast!

24. What is your favorite flower? meh, I love them all- you give me flowers, I'll LOVE them.

25. What are you listening to right now? listening to Drew giggle at Flight of the Concord

26. What was the last thing you ate? Papa Murphy's pizza- I'm kind of liking those, last night for dinner

27. Do you wish on stars? Nah, that's a minor catastrophe, and I don't have a trampoline to lay on and think about them anymore.

28. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Cornflower blue- I like that color, definitely underappreciated

29. How is the weather right now? 64 degrees- it's going to get hot today, so we froze the house.

30. Last person you spoke to on the phone? I think it was Robert, telling me what gas prices were in Tennnnneeeessssseeeeee

31. Favorite soft drink? I don't care much for the bubbly...BUT I like coke zero a LOT.

32. Favorite restaurant? Rachael- burgerville isn't a REAL restaurant! -I like Indian Food resaurants bests

33. Hair color ? Dang, I saw these pics, and it looked ORANGE! I have no idea...I'm having like a crisis, and contemplated bleaching it the other day- but that would compromise my feminism!

34. Summer or winter? I love them both- I'm ready to wear some warm clothes though since my summer work clothes are scarce.

35. Chocolate or Vanilla? Depends on what. Ice cream? Vanilla. Cake? Vanilla. Everything else: chocolate

36. Coffee or tea? tea is just fun to say!

37. Do you want your friends to email you back: Well, I'm posting instead, but sure!

38. When was the last time you cried? Good question. Back in Mexico maybe? Oh wait, no.....I had a mini breakdown in the attic a couple weeks ago. I'm OK now though!

39. What is under your bed? A box of sheets- we have a LOT of sheets. There's probably dusty fluffs too.

40. What did you do last night? We watched Kite Runner, well, I watched for like Half and hour, had to pay too much attention to subtitles, so I fell asleep. I am a PARTY animal

41. What are you afraid of? Not being the best at everything. I know, I know, something I don't have to really be AFRAID of. HAH!

42. Salty or sweet? eeewww, I don't like salt! Sweeties, all the way!

43. How many keys on your key ring? I have 2 sets since I hate keys. I have 5 on my "car" set- 2 car keys -1 unlocks the car, one starts the car...TOTALLY lame, house key, gate key, mail box key. Then I have work keys, it has 2 keys. 1 to get into work, 1 to get into my classroom.

44. How many years at your current job? Two now

45. Favorite day of the week? I love the Friday night to saturday night stretch

46. Do you make friends easily? Only if you're cool!

49. Do you like finding out all this stuff about your friends? I do, I'm SO nosey!

LOTS OF FUN I look forward to hearing back from you!

Go to 'Forward' then change my answers to your answers and send to all your friends – including me.

Friday, September 12, 2008

SLACKER!!

I haven't done a good job of taking pictures lately. So I'll post other people's pictures that I lurv.



This is pretty much my favorite picture right now. I look HAWT! Thanks Shelbells!


My sweet little neice Katie being entertained by the most handsomest(is that a real phrase?) nephew Jimmy in the world! - Thanks Carrie!


My auntie, Joanne, Michele, and me last weekend up in Seattle

Yeah, that's about it. Work went rather well, busy, but well. I have a WU student teacher in my room doing randoms for 30 hours. I'm not sure what to have her do this next week. She got all these book things put together so fast- I had honestly expected it to take 30 hours. It was ridiculous! And I sure am thankful for her help! Now what?!

I've been *highly* contemplating working on fixing up the bathroom. I think maybe I'll make Drew go to Lowe's with me tomorrow and at least buy moulding for the window in the kitchen and the rest for the bedroom closet, and maybe for the laundry closet. I just keep forgetting about that stuff. I think I'm also just excited to paint the bathroom purple. teeheehee

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

I got out before it was dark!

I DID IT! I had been complaining to Drew this morning that I didn't think I was going to be able to get out of that building until 7pm for at least a few weeks. Such a sad thought. I have been LIVING there it feels like. Well NOT TODAY MISTER!

I left at 3:45, got home, exercised, and have successfully dinked around on the computer for a solid hour! I feel so accomplished! Yeah, I have things that I *could* have done at school, but tomorrow is all planned for, the next day is all planned (just have to get the right things out for the day), and next weeks reading groups are planned, for the most part. Maybe this whole new grade level thing isn't so hard once I finally get into the swing of things.

It always happens though- I get going on a smooth course, and then WHAM!!! PARENT TEACHER CONFERENCES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They ALWAYS take me by surprise. I do have quite a bit of filing to do for that already! GAH!

I don't have any pretty pictures to post, I feel bad. That's really the only reason I read other people's blogs. Otherwise they're just too dang boring. blah. Maybe tomorrow. I have a couple from Seattle, but they're kind of dumb. We did find a Mexican market up there, did I say that before?

Yeah, so I'm going to go shower and watch a movie- maybe from start to finish even!

Friday, September 5, 2008

So tired

We made it up to Seattle safely. We sped so we wouldn't get rear ended. No one likes cars going the speed limit, so we went super fast, but it still took us 5 hours to get here- bah!

I am absolutely exhausted. I have no idea what's going on tomorrow, but I can sure tell you I'm sleeping in!

I think I might have figured out some of my reading group problems I'm running into- it's not hard to do, it's just deciding on a plan and going through with the prep to do it.- And I hate that stuff! (I'm having a hard time deciding on furniture placement for the least amount of problems as possible.)- it's harder than I thought. I need someone to come in and make my room for me.

So that's about it, I'm about ready to pass out.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

2nd day of school

Sorry I don't have any pics. I should take some, but these kids are keeping me on my toes!

So here's the run down thus far:
-I think it's going to be a decent year *fingers are crossed*
-Teaching 2nd graders is MUCH easier than 1st graders, hands down!
-I miss doing 1st grade, but explaining things to kids just 1 year older is so much different!
-I still have squirrels.
-I'm losing all of my hair!

Seriously though- where is all this hair loss coming from? a change in estrogen levels, or what? It's insane!

We're heading up to Seattle on Friday afternoon. I like Seattle. I wish it wasn't so expensive to live there. That, and if we moved up there, Drew would have to take the Bar up there, and that would suck. So yeah. It's a good place to visit. Too bad we have to drive back on Saturday.

Drew and I bought strawberry whoppers at WallyWorld today cause they were on sale, and I'll tells you WHAT! THey are GOOD! I was amazed

Yeah, so that's about it. We're going to eat a watermelon tomorrow at school and count the seeds

Monday, September 1, 2008

SO FULL!

We went to Indian food for dinner tonight- I have been pining to go for a couple months now. Since we were downtown at the mall, it was the perfect time to go! YAY for Indian FOOOD! It was actually kind of busy there tonight too! I was amazed. I'm also amazed at how full I am!

I made cookies today. Well, I cooked them yesterday and iced them today. Last time I did these cookies, I made a mental note that I wanted to do the acorn shaped cookies with color flow. I remembered why I don't do that often. It took for freakin ever! First I had to do the outlining, let it dry for an hour, and then fill that. I then decided that since regular frosting will break down the color flow, that I'd just do the rest of the cookie with color flow instead of frosting, sooo I had to outline the rest of the cookie rather than just the top, let that dry, and then I just finished up filling the insides. I also ran out of red food coloring, so my maple leaves aren't the exact color red I wanted, more like a neon red-orange. hahaha How funny.

I want to arrange them all pretty, but I need to do a better job of posting pics on here, so I just took pics of them sitting out to harden a bit so I can pile them on plates for my work and Drew's. :)

OH! we also cruised Lancaster today in search of a Mexican Market. I think we found a good one up by Silverton Road. They have pan dulce's, and cajeta, and refrescos, so yay! (i.e. Drew likes these cracker type things that are sweet, those are the pan dulce's, cajeta is the creamy chocolatey stuff that we like lots, and refrescos, if you couldn't figure it out, are just mexican sodas)- we bought apple, my fav!



The lovely yellow leafs of autumn


My lovely color flow acorns that are a little messy, but will look great on the plates!

Yeah, well, Lexy REALLY needed to sit on Drew's lap while he was doing other things. She insisted. So I had to take a picture!


And last, but not least, the neon maple leaves!