WISHES

From Kate's Blog:

So if you had three wishes. They have to be selfish wishes not altruistic in any way. What would your wishes be?

1-Every month, I would get one single do-over. One. That's all I'm asking for. Just a single do-over for a stupid thing I said, a dumb decision, a moment of insensitivity, or some other little thing that would be nice to clean up. Just one free pass. *POOF*

2-Over-sexualized commercials would disappear from billboards, radio and television. It's a full-time job to protect the eyes and ears of a certain 11 year old, and some days I'm just tired of having to be the mom.

3-If I could, I would re-arrange the states. Oklahoma would be next door to Tennessee (so I could be closer to my sister) and both would have a significant amount of ocean-front.

So now you know. :)

LIFE MOVES ON

It's been a very long and short week. The death of my beloved Jeep was finalized. Now we have to find a new one but in the interrim, we are Jeep-free. Something we haven't been in many years. My sister moved back to Oklahoma City. My brother came and went. We went to the Zoo this morning with some friends and everyone is exhausted from that. My *space* has been repainted--from blue to white. My kitchen has a new window seat.




Lots of things. Just going on. Kinda moving about with or without me.





This is my oldest younger brother, with the boys. They were tailgating--something my sons think is a sport! Why else would anyone want to drive a big honkin' truck, right?

Daniel is #2 of the 4 of us. He has my father's gifts for making things with his hands. Ever since I can remember he's always been making something--wooden swords, building furniture with my Dad, fixing things for people, carving, building porch swings that are beautiful works of art, and of course, looking out for my other brother. Daniel's mission on this trip was two-fold: he came to pick up Deborah and he brought the stuff (supplies and tools) to build/install a window seat in my kitchen. He did the hard part...now Joal and I have to finish it with painting and a cushion. It looks so wonderful and the boys had a blast helping Uncle Daniel. He's the cool uncle. Truck. Tools. Knows where Home Depot is and is willing to take passengers along. Very laid back. Yep. He's definately the cool uncle.

Joal re-painted my space this week, from blue to white. When we remodelled the spacethree years ago, I didn't realize that if you paint the walls over your workspace a deep color, that color gets cast on anything you try to do. Like scrapbook. I should have known that...but I didn't. Finally, now I can work in a space without so much blue cast. It's beautiful and clean.

Joal and I had our last date before Deborah left on Wednesday night. We went to Panera for dinner and then to see Live Free or Die Hard (aka Die Hard movie number 1679) :). We had the best time. I love that man so much. We are so good together. Between dinner and the movie we walked thru Green Hills Mall and thru Restoration Hardware. A girl could drop some cash in that place! They have the most amazing (overpriced) furniture. I practically drooled on at least one chest for 3 grand. It was fun tho. We even walked by the Luis Vuitton store. I'm such a non-bag person...I didn't even know LV had stores. And in Nashville, no less.

The movie was good--Bruce still has it for being old.

So now you know.

PS

Have you seen this month's gallery by the Cocoa Daisy girls? Yummy stuff. Little bit of Scenic Route, little bit of those bold letter stickers from Reminisce. Can't really go wrong with that, right. Here's one of my favorites--by Kim Musgrove: (Original here.)

I think I may need to scraplift this immediately.

A CHA SURPRISE

Anita called today from the floor of CHA Chicago. (For anyone who doesn't know, CHA is a huge-mongus craft industry trade show held twice a year.) She sounded extremely excited...more than the normal excitement level of Anita. :)

"Guess who I am standing here with?" she said.

"I have no idea."

"The Scenic Route people--Sarah Milne!"

"Oh my goodness."

"Wanna talk to her?"

"Of course."

From there I have no memory of what I said. My phone was cutting in and out (of all times) and there was lots of show noise in the background. I'm sure that Sarah Milne now thinks I'm a total ditz...but who cares! I got to talk to the woman from whose creative genius flows my very favorite papers and goodies. And then Layle (the bestower of the very best paper surprise) was there and I got say hello to her too. Totally cool!

Thanks Anita for making this happen. You totally made my week!!:)

LIFE IS MESSY. CLEAN IT UP.

I love the slogan from one of the vacuum companies...can't remember which one bit boy, I remember the slogan.

It's been a busy messy few days. Dealing with the car issues. Having company and family visit. Working in the yard. Trying to scrapbook. Etc.

There was an article in Sunday's Tennessean that didn't sit very well with me. It's here. It just seems so basic to me that a house needs running water from a non-contaminated source, in order to be livable. How can it be that something "less than 500" homes in Davidson county are without running water? How's that for vague? Could be three homes, could be 499. Who knows? But whatever the number, this is a metropolitan area. There's really no such thing as a "remote" area of Davidson county. Water is not that expensive--it's the least expensive utility in most cases. How can this be?

This article made me want to strangle some politicians and some city and state officials for their lack of foresight and for what reeks of a bottom-line mentality. I wonder how long the governor would stay in the governor's mansion if his clean running water suddenly went away. Or the patrons at Lowes Vandy Plaza? Can you imagine the hissy fits taking place? And yet...

Back in the dark ages, when I was in the 11th grade, in podunk Mississippi, we got a free day from school because there was a water line break and to repair it, the water to the school had to be turned off. So even school kids in nowhere Mississippi must be entitled to functional water (toilets, fountains, etc). Are families in Tennessee not? Is it even legal to have children living in homes without a safe water source?

I am certainly not an advocate of continually expanding the roles of government and I almost always fall on the side of those who say: You want something done, do it yourself. BUT. As someone in the discussion of this article on the Tennessean forums said, we aren't talking about people living in the middle of the desert not having running water. This is about people in a county that has roughly 578,000 people in 502 square miles.

A home without clean water--is it really something we want to know even exists in this day and age? Before new baseball stadiums, before hockey teams, before road paving, before excessive fourth of July fireworks shows, before tax-breaks for incoming businesses...safe water. It's a basic necessity and our entire community benefits from having clean, safe running water in every single home.

So did you hear about the three-car pile up on Old Hickory today?

A not-so-dang-funny thing happened on the way to the scrapbook store today...can you say Jeep sandwich? Yeah. My white Jeep is not so pretty anymore. Her doors on the passenger side are crunched in pretty good. Jeep Grand Cherokee vs Ford Crown Victoria vs another sedan... not a good thing--but we are all safe and no one was injured, and for that I am grateful. I don't feel comfortable telling the whole story in cyberspace right now. Probably not a good idea for me to comment on this until the insurance proceedings are done.

Yeah, that'll be fun.

But the one lesson that was reconfirmed today...it's good to drive a tank! (Insert those famous Tim Allen man-growls from the days of Home Improvement right here.) I love my Jeep Grand Cherokee even tho it's advancing in years and mileage (1997/257,700) precisely because it's sturdy. It guzzles gas but I don't drive that much so it's not a huge deal. Yes, it's a little old and bulky and I get plenty of stares when I drive it to the recycling center...but I digress. :) The thing is today, as I sat sandwiched between two other less-tank-like cars, I realized that it's good to drive a tank. Grey, who was present in the backseat, was more impressed with the police officer than with anything else I did today and he was safe and unhurt. Barely even rattled (unlike his mother). I'm re-thinking Joal driving the Crayola (pun intended). He moved down in car last year to combat the excessive price of gas (he drives hundreds of miles a day), but now I'm thinking had I been in the little car this day would have ended much differently.

And just the other day I was railing against reactionary decisions. That'll teach me.

Hugs to you all.
Tomorrow is my sister's birthday and we are having a house-full of company. She has a friend in from Virginia and Joal's parents will be visiting. Please pray I'm not as much of a mess tomorrow as I am right now.

Be safe.

One last thing: you know that saying "When you get bumped, what's inside you comes out."? Well, today, I proved that saying true. Some people got bumped and some came thru with flying colors and some must have really ugly insides. I'm just sayin'.

TUESDAY

It's a good thing you can't see my bleary eyes right now, you might think I am hooked on something. I am, but not like that. It's two new blogs:

This one called A DRESS A DAY is just so vintage-y and classic.
And
This one called LIVING OFF KEY IN KEY WEST written by Landon, an innkeeper in (yep) Key West. Do you know how much I love this place?


See my little birdie cards? These are my contribution to the card swap at my LSS. Good stuff.
Happy Tuesday!

HAPPY FOURTH!

Hope everyone has a happy and safe 4th of July!

Congrats to my friend Connie! for winning the layout contest at the Scrapbook Warehouse website! See her beautiful creation right here.

For anyone interested, Metropolis by Scenic Route arrived at Scrap'n Memories yesterday! Whoo Hoo! Now I can roll around in the blue and orange star paper until my heart is content!

Wanna see what I did this week? The top picture is *before*. Note the partially dead overgrown ugly bushes.

The lower picture is the *after*. Note how you can actually see the door and the walkway. I chopped all the limbs and removed them so now Joal just has to dig out the main stalks and the roots. Good luck on that, honey. :) Heather recommends using the Jeep.

I'm not much of a outdoor-do-it-yourself-landscape type. Not because I don't like to see a beautifully landscaped and manicured lawn, but mainly because I don't like to be dirty, grimey, and sweaty. At all. It was definately a yucky job but it's feels good to get it accomplished. Yes, that sound you hear is me patting myself on the back. :)

Happy Wednesday!

REACTIONARY PARENTHOOD

So, I've been a parent for eleven years now and some days I feel so unprepared--like I haven't learned a thing in eleven years, but then there are days I feel like I have it figured out a little. Whenever I feel like I understand something as a parent, I get all giddy. And then I generally assume that everyone else knew it years ago. :)

The other day I reading a thread at twopeas about parenting and I was struck by the large number of peas who said they based some of their major parenting decisions on how they felt about their parents decisions as a child. Doesn't this seem like flawed logic? The discussion at peas was regarding spanking, however I do not wanto discuss spanking here, so let's just say the major decision was about serving Kool-Aid. Someone said "My mom would not allow me to drink Kool-Aid and I felt deprived and mad at her so I am going to give my child unlimited access to any drink he wants."

So now you are basing your parenting decision to serve unlimited Kool-Aid to your child on the fact that *as a child* you thought you were deprived because your mother did not serve Kool-Aid. You felt deprived of something you wanted and you can not part with your own childish selfishness in that? You can't forgive your mother as an adult? You can't come to terms with the fact that Kool-Aid isn't great for your teeth and maybe your mom was protecting you, but you (being a child) mistook her protection for some kind of mean-spirited deprivation?

Sounds like a great parenting strategy to me. (Not.)

Parenting based on the outakes of one's own childhood experiences scares me to death. We might as well put the child in charge and completely abdicate parenthood. (I like the word abdicate.) Let's put the monkeys in charge of the zoo, shall we?

There's more to being a good parent than making the babies feel loved and accepted and keeping them comfortable. Lots more. Part of maturing is accepting that and understanding that as an adult, and as a parent, it's your calling to put your child's well-being and long-term health ahead of junior's wants and whims. Even if it pisses him off.

Reactionary parenting--not the way to go.

In other news, the pruning sheers and I had a date today in my front yard today and I can already tell I'm going to be feeling it for days in my shoulder. I really have to do that more. Two of the mostly-dead bushes by my door are mostly removed. They were huge, even though they were zapped in that late-April freeze we had. I did discover that there's very healthy scads of beautiful English Ivy growing under all of the bushes. I adore Ivy and am trying to preserve it while I get the bushes out. Cross your fingers for the Ivy. It really is a beautiful ground-cover and I would love to see it continue to flourish there.

Roger Cook, eat your heart out. :)

Summer Slush Cupcakes

I made these yesterday for today and they are delightful. I think I'm going to make them again for our 4th gathering.

Summer Slush Cupcakes
a light and fruity creamy filling on top of a graham cracker crust, in a handy cupcake size
-makes 12 standard cupcakes or 24 minis-

Place paper liners in cupcake pan.

For Crust:
1.5 cups of graham cracker crumbs
1 stick of butter (melted)
2 tablespoons sugar

Combine all three ingredients. Spoon by teaspoonfuls into each cupcake liner and use fingers to press, forming the crust. Be generous with the crust.

Filling:
1 box of cream cheese (soft)
1 tub of Cool Whip (8 oz)
3 tablespoons sugar
1 pint of strawberries

Puree strawberries in blender. Save a few out for garnish, if desired. Add sugar and cream cheese. Blend until smooth. Spoon into large bowl and combine gently with Cool Whip. Spoon into cupcake liners, filling them to the top. Top with a cut strawberry, if desired.

Place in freezer overnight. Serve cold.