Just to Clarify

A couple of people have mentioned things from my last post-things they read differently than I meant them to be. So I wanted to clear them up. Hopefully I can do that, we'll see.

1. TV on DVD is the best NOT the show Lost (which I am currently watching on DVD). I really just enjoy having 24 plus hours of something enjoyable to watch at my convenience. The show Lost is really good, but it stresses me out. I don't want to ruin anything if you haven't seen it. Just let me say that ANYTHING bizarre can happen at ANY moment and that constant anticipation stresses me out.

2. For the last year I have been "nothing but sad" about the fact that the Boyd's moved out and have just been sad about the fact that our original plan did not work out. I wasn't looking for the "bright side" at all. The bright side is that we have lived here for two years with our friends the Parkers and we have had the opportunity to live for a year with our friends The Boyds. On top of that we had the opportunity to live with the Linfords who didn't really know at all before they moved in. Jack still calls for Ben every day and they moved out a week ago. I learned a lot about the Mormon faith by living with them and (Kelly doesn't know this) I learned a lot about Kelly by living with her sister Marie. Now, the Petersons are moving in for about nine months. I am sure I will have the oppotunity to learn more about them and myself through that experience. SO, I haven't been sad about living at the Big House for a year. But I have been sad about the death of a dream I had-living with the same two families for five years. Now, I'm finding that maybe there's a bright side to living with another family consistently for five years and then living with a second family for a year at a time, during that five years.

Okay, hopefully I haven't dug any new holes. If everyone could just read my mind it would make blog publishing easier!

It's Fall and I'm Happy

* I've had the windows open.
* I have candles warming on the Candle Warmers-apple and pumpkin (yummy)!
* My job is SO perfect I can't even believe it's a real job-I mean perfect. By Monday, I've forgotten I even have a job!
* I've been watching "Lost" season one on DVD- TV on DVD, it's the best!
* I bought a pumpkin. Just a baby one. I decided to keep it on the counter and look at it, just to make myself happy. It's working.
* Doug's birthday is Monday-always a fun thing.
* Our good friends, Tommy, Meghann, and Avery are moving in next month. The kids are excited about the swingset. I'm excited about the possibility of uninterrupted conversations AFTER kid bedtime. The Big House has turned out to be different than the original plan which has been nothing but sad for me for about a year. But now I am realizing that it is certainly an adventure this way and I'm learning LOTS about myself and some of it is good.
* Lots of exciting things are coming up, and I LOVE to have things to look forward to. In the next month I have:
a retreat in Zion
two baby showers (I'm sort of hosting both of them.)
girls' night out
MAYBE a party
Definitely a "girl only" party
Holiday Recipe Exchange-FUN
Halloween

I better get some sleep!

They're Heeeere!

It's really amazing the actual physical reaction I have to seeing them. I can't even begin to explain it. Yesterday was the first day I have seen the real ones. I mean it's really ridiculous that I get SO excited about a vegetable, but they get me every year. They're pumpkins! The plastic ones have been around for a few weeks now, but last night I ran to the store to get some eggs-we were out even though I had just been to the store the day before, and there they were in their cardboard boxes waiting to sit on a porch, offer their seeds to be toasted and eaten and the flesh to cut into absurd faces just for fun. I LOVE IT!!! I actually tried to grow some this year in my garden and I got some decent vines, even quite a few blossoms, but NO pumpkins. I went online to try and figure out my error. The paragraph about problems began with, "If you experience a heatwave over 80 degrees your vines will be in distress and my not produce fruit" Okay that explains it because until this week we hadn't really had a day UNDER 95 since May. The article went on to explain that if you lack bees then your pumpkins will not get properly pollunated and then they can't produce pumpkins. So I think it may have been a combination, but it would ahve been SO fun to watch our pumpkins grow, pick them, carve them, eat them. We will do all of those things with pumpkins from the store, or the orchard if they have a patch, last time i was there I didn't see one.

This ended up being quite long about silly pumpkins, but next time you see them, take note of your physical reaction. The site of them calms me and makes my heart skip a beat-I get instant happy. So, happy pumpkin viewing to you!

Call Me STUPID.....

I keep hearing on the radio and on TV about hurricane Katrina. It is sad and scary how quickly lives can be turned upside down. Suddenly 120 degrees sounds wonderful.
The thing that is really bugging me is that I keep hearing reporters saying that the poor residents were the ones with most death, most chaos, most loss. These people couldn't afford a bus ticket out of town, or afford to fill their tanks. Then these same people are being judged for "stealing" food from stores to feed their families in this time of crisis. I get SO angry.
Call me stupid, but if someone's life is in danger shouldn't the buses being offering free fares out of town to safety? Call me stupid, but if there is complete devastation on the horizon shouldn't people be given gas, or a ride, or something? Call me stupid, but if a store isn't open but there is perfectly good food rotting inside and some children on the outside are starving to death because there is no other food around, is it really stealing and should they be judged? Call me stupid, but if lives are completely destroyed by no fault of their own and they can't work to earn money because their place of business is completely destroyed, can't the grocery store corporations of America afford to let their food inventory (of destroyed stores that will be paid for by insurance companies) be eaten by starving people-is that REALLY stealing?
Call me stupid, but are we as a country SO controlled by money and our bottom line that we cannot see how inhumane and idiotic it is to be CHARGING people for bus tickets when it will save their lives?
Call me stupid, but it might not be me. It might just be "the love of money". How pitiful. God have mercy on our collective American souls who love ourselves more than our neighbors. Have mercy.