CAUTION: Woman In Progress

Somebody wrote a book about my life!     Except they got the subtitle wrong. :-/

So. Um. Yeah. It's almost Friday and I'm JUST NOW getting a weekend review post up. Ya'll know my life. I don't have to explain. Right? Anyways... So, we had our annual "girls day out" this Saturday and it was a lot of fun. Both kids had spent the night with Nana and Bobo Friday night so we had to drop the boy off with his daddy and pick Sis2 up and then we headed to the next town over where the Mall lives and wore ourselves slap out. She's eight, but she still loves the "rides" in the mall.  I think we spent a buck fifty between the two of us. And yes, she used her own quarters for the first ride. I wish my knees were still in good enough shape to get all up in some books like that. :-D I told her I'd buy her one book. She had the hardest time choosing which book to get. She narrowed it down to two and then did eenie meenie, miennie, moe and STILL couldn't decide which one. She wanted them both. My first instinct was...

So, I guess I disappeared for a while and then came back with no explanations. I'm cool like that. I'm all, "Y'all, I'm mysterious and I have mysterious stuff going on that I'm too cool and mysterious to tell y'all about."   ROFLOL   Right.   No, what I am is busy. And sometimes loading photos from my phone to Blogger is an ordeal I don't have the patience for. But...lucky ducks, I had some patience AND time today. So here it goes.   Other than work stuff, which is totes boring, I went on a little mini vacay Labor Day weekend to visit Sis1 and Emmy in Tuscaloosa. I hadn't been in I can't even tell you when. I can say with certainty that Emmy was a foot shorter the last time I was in T-town, though! I left Thursday night and came back Monday and we had all sorts of fun in between. Like, going to see War Room .   And taking selfies at the theater. I'm so glad I have a teenage niece and a sister who don't mi...

    I went to Target for the very first time a couple of weeks ago. We don't have one in my tiny town and the nearest one in my state is three hours away. When I went to visit my sister in Tuscaloosa I made her take me to the Target there. I had really high expectations, having seen meme's like this and reading blogs by upper middle class women who talk about their Target addiction and how they never get what they actually went in there for because everything is so beautiful.   Imma be honest and say, "I am too poor to shop at Target." The sticker shock for me was terrible. There are plenty of beautiful things there, to be sure, but for me, it was no different than walking into an upscale department store in terms of how far out of my reach it is. And I'm not even just talking about the home goods or clothing items. I'm talking the basics.   For instance, I hadn't brought my own bodywash to T-town because I figured I'd just use whatever ...

See that little "seed cross" in the upper left corner?  I totally did not do that. I looked up from chopping mushrooms and there it was. Just a little hello from my redeemer. :-) 

Sooooo... Okay, y'all know I read food blogs, right? Well, actually I read a lot of different blogs. The kinds that are wildly popular. I generally tend to avoid reading the comments, though for two reasons. A) They're totally fangirling over nothing really special or B) they're criticisms. Drives me bananas. I mean, I have left a comment or two on a couple of well established blogs that complimented them when I really enjoyed a particular post and just recently I begged Katie Bower to switch her font back because the tiny fancy script she'd changed it to hurt my eyes. (Which she kindly did because she is super sweet.)  But believe me, I generally tend to agonize over whether or not to comment.  I typed and deleted that font begging comment multiple times before hitting publish. Keep in mind, these are the blogs of strangers, not friends like Trixie who I try to comment to as often as I can and usually with something silly ...

I had the perfect title in my  head this morning. I had the perfect opening lines. But did I write them down? No. I was swiping on mascara and talking to Libby in baby talk. ("You da cootest widdle be-beh in da whole wide world. Es you are.") Ahem. Anyway, so yesterday was a bit of a stinker. Definitely one for the books and not in a "Best day of my life" kind of way. As you may know, I've been working on a super stressful, heavily labored project for the past few weeks. A sweaty, on my feet for three and four hours at a time laborious project. I've been trying to avoid working on it during my reference desk duties because of the stinky sweat but I was entering in the biggest badest beast part of the project and I wanted to just dive right in and get it over with as soon as possible. Okay, so the project is sorting, shifting and labeling microfilm cabinets. No big mystery, I just, you know, try not to talk too much about the day job. But, well. It...

I used to come here excitedly every day and empty my head of ALL THE THOUGHTS. Or drop some silly nonsense. Or just leave a meme or something. I loved coming here and having my own space to leave things that mattered to me. And I used to have a small (tiny) audience. Friends I'd made on a couple of community boards. The odd passer-by might leave a comment on a rare occasion. I went through a brief period in the "blog boom" where I thought I would try to build this little space into a money-maker. I was inspired by the big money making blogs I'd been reading and thinking I could maybe follow their tips to build this little space into a full time job. Nope. Didn't happen. Just as in life, my little piece of the blog-o-sphere is still largely unnoticed and I'm not unhappy about that. When I think of some of the things I've written here? Yeah. It's such a blessing to not have to really worry about my mother or whoever finding it and being mortified...

So, Lyssabear turned eight Friday. Hard to believe my sweet baby girl is eight!!       I can still remember when she was born! So tiny and sweet. She's still super sweet but girl is getting tall! Her birthday party was Saturday and since I don't have any kids, of course I helped Sis2 out as much as I could.      The kids all got together and loaded the goodie bags. P.S. Emmy looks like a college girl!   The party theme was from one of Lyssa's favorite Barbie books/movies, The Secret Door which is basically (from what I gather) a story about how Barbie stumbles into this garden paradise where unicorns and mermaids and fairs dwell. We used her corresponding Barbie as the centerpiece decoration and I made two DumDum topiaries to decorate the buffet. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good photo of the topiaries, but you can see the top of one growing out of Lyssa's head in the photo above. haha (Also, it took about 600 DumDums to make...

I've had a very kid-centric life these last few days. That's usually the way it goes, though. I'll go weeks without seeing them and then BAM! All kids, all the time for days! Not that I'm complaining. I love spending time with the little ones. I love taking note of all the little ways I can tell that they're growing up and becoming regular people.   So Lyssa went home with Nana Friday night and begged her parents to let her stay at my house Saturday night. So that's what we did. We spent some time with Nana and everyone Saturday and then ran away to my house for a night of kid-style partying.   We ate supper first, because that's how I roll. I think she'd have been fine without supper...she's not much of an eater when it comes to meals. Snacks, though? She could eat snacks all day every day. Meal type things? Not so much.   After supper, though, we got down to business. She wrote me a four page cookbook with things like "sandwhich c...

I've had a few rough days this week. Days when I felt overwhelmed and even a little hopeless. There's so much going on at work...so much I'm responsible for getting done, largely on my own and it's so daunting. I went home Monday night and just had a long and tear stained talk with Jesus about it and he reassured me with some scriptures while I was reading my nightly devotion. Funny how frequently He seems to work it out that way for me. Now, I can't say that I'm not still a little overwhelmed but I am at least comforted. I try to keep  these verses in mind whenever I feel hopelessly overwhelmed and it does help to alleviate a lot of that stress. Along with all the work stress comes home stress. I knew when I bought my house that eventually there would be some maintenance things that I'd have to take care of on my own dime. Well, my friends, that time is quickly approaching. Thankfully it took six years for it to get serious so can't really com...

Way back in 1990, I was the guest book attendant at my aunt, Mary's wedding. I think I needed a bigger hair bow. lol

It's real and it's juicy.

Okay, so maybe not skinny, but since I've started working so hard in the stacks and on this current microfilm project we've got going, I've lost seven pounds. I feel like death and am exhausted but...yay me! lol I don't have much else to report. My weekend review goes a little something like,  "Saturday: Grocery shopping, ate a peach for breakfast, nap, half the dishes washed, nap, laundry, nap, laundry, nap, nap, nap, movie, nap, bedtime. Sunday: bacon and scones for breakfast, nap, nap, finished washing dishes, laundry, nap, television, laundry, nap, tidying up the dining room table, nap, nap, movie, nap, nap, television, bedtime. I was a SLUG all weekend but it did make my foot feel better to rest it so much. And I watched a really good scary movie, which, let's face it--they don't really make a whole lot of actually good actually scary movies anymore. But this one was. And it was on Syfy of all things. Anyway, this week is hopping already. Hot, ti...

My thoughts on the work dinner I survived tonight as expressed on Twitter. 

Trying out the whole "shades over my glasses" thing.  And yes, duck face is necessary when modeling shades.  $10 (regular $36) Oscar Delarenta shades from Tuesday Morning.  I'm so fancy. Ha They look kinda silly on top of my head with my glasses on my face but I think they might work out. It's brutal outside without shades and I refuse to get transitions lenses or contacts. I know a few people who wear shades over their glasses so when these fit perfectly, thought I'd give it a try.  Goofy? Maybe. But I never claimed to be anything else.  ;-)

Not much else makes me happy these days. But this girl does.