Good Day

I'm really happy to be alive today. I'm not sure why - it was mostly an ordinary day. I'm just sitting here feeling really grateful.

Zion got his first official haircut today, and I'm still married, thankfully. Mike was really unhappy about it, but he looks so darned cute, I think it made up for it.

I went to work out at the YMCA today - I hurt everywhere - and I mean everywhere. I hurt in places I didn't know I had.

I had a spinach salad for dinner before I went, and today was my equipment orientation. So of course, I have this really hot guy escorting me around and showing me how to work on the equipment. He's demonstrating, and then making me do a few reps to make sure that my form is ok and everything.

Then we get to the benches where you do sit-ups and crunches. Apparently, spinach salad makes me gassy, cause as soon as I did the first sit-up, a little toot squeezed out.

HOW THE HECK DO YA HANDLE SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!?

I pretended like it didn't happen.

Then we get to the stability balls - you know, like they use for Pilates - and he's making me squeeze it between my legs and do leg lifts - TOOT, TOOT, TOOTTOOTTOOT.

Ok, no way you can pretend like THAT one didn't happen.

I did.

Next thing I know, the poor guy's fanning his face with my stat paper. Think he was just hot? Maybe?

Well, either way, I'm really grateful to be alive today.

Blog Challenge #2 - Best Present Ever

This week's challenge is to write about the best gift you've ever received. As usual, I gotta give a little background before I can tell you what the actual gift was.

When I was 3, my mother sent me from Dallas to Kansas City to live with my grandparents. She was an extremely young mother, and while working three jobs to support us, she was unable to devote any time to actually raising me.

My grandparents were career people, so I ended up spending most of my young life with my great-grandmother, whom I lovingly referred to as "Mommom." We spent every afternoon together - she would greet me as I got off the bus, take care of my afternoon snack, help me with my homework.. our worlds revolved around each other.

In the evenings, she would sit in her white rocking chair and knit or watch television or read, and she had this stash of blankets - you know, like the kind they give you in the hospital, the white ones - that she kept under the cushion. She'd pull them out while she sat and rocked and she'd lay them over her lap to keep the chill away.

My Mommom was married in 1929, so shortly after she was married the Great Depression hit. This influenced how she lived the rest of her life - she was incapable of throwing away food. She used things until they were completely worn out. The same was true with these blankets.

She died when I was 11, and her belongings got scattered from relative to relative. I ended up with quite a few of her trinkets and treasures, and have carried them with me since.

When I was 19 and getting ready to get married (or so I thought), my mother gave me a quilt for Christmas. I was SO excited to get something as special as a handmade quilt from my mother - what a precious, precious gift. As I unfolded it, she explained that she had taken the blankets from under the cushion of my Mommom's chair and used them for stuffing in the quilt. She said that they were completely threadbare - there was absolutely nothing she could do to save them, but she couldn't bear to throw them away, so she put them inside the quilt that she made me.

I used that quilt so much that the seams started tearing within a couple of years. Actual use is really hard on a hand-sewn quilt, I found. Finally, I washed it, folded it, and put it away in my hope chest. I didn't want to destroy it, and hoped that I would be able to pass it down to my grandchildren one day.

When I went into the hospital to have Zion, I took the quilt with me. It had been in my hope chest for two or three years at that point, but I knew I wanted it there with me. I was induced in the morning, and my mom arrived shortly after that. She saw the quilt laying at my feet, and picked it up and examined the torn seams. Excusing herself, she asked if anyone needed anything from the store, and promised to return soon.

When she came back, she had a sewing kit she had purchased. My mom sat in the rocking chair next to my bed and repaired all of the torn seams on my favorite quilt, so it would be in perfect condition with Zion arrived.

After Zion was born, my mom gave me my baby blanket. It was made of t-shirt Jersey material, because when I was born, she worked in a t-shirt factory. My blanket was a quilt of all different Snoopy t-shirts she had sewn together - my Mommom had put the binding around the outside of the blanket and "embellished" it a little.

Those are my two best presents - I lumped them together into one entry, so I cheated. They're of equal importance to me, though, and I hope you enjoyed hearing about them.

My 2nd Post in 2 Hours - I'm So Bored

Several things of note:

I finished 3 pages of Aaron's journal - cardstock be damned.

I love NPR. Really. I hear stuff on there that you NEVER hear anywhere else.

I wish Lillith Fair would start touring again, cause MAN that was some good stuff.

I'm really starting to think that I have a sickness. I mean for really real - I'm extremely addicted to scrapbooking. It's getting worse, and it's affecting my life (yeah.. like there *is* life outside of scrapbooking - I'm sure).

I miss my husband. A lot. I wish he worked normal hours and we could actually spend quality time together.

I guess I should go ahead and shave my legs in case that ever happens.

Sometimes I feel so old and frumpy, and a lot of it has to do with the amount of weight I've gained. I can't even blame it on Zion anymore, cause it should have been gone when he turned one. It's all on me, now. Do you know that a guy at my work that was my age once told me that his sister was about the same age as me - 34? The good news is that I have an appointment at the YMCA this week so I can start working out regularly and see if I can rectify this situation.

I really need to find a job where I don't just sit and think all night. This is what gets me in trouble. This is the reason we ended up without a wall at my house in Raytown. I kept sitting thinking, "The kitchen would be so much cooler if that wall wasn't there." I thought about it so much that I stopped to buy a sledgehammer on the way home from work and took out the wall.

The contractors showed up the next day to fix what I had destroyed, and it ended up better, but it was kind of expensive.

It's also how I ended up with a nose ring. I kept sitting thinking about it, and when my boyfriend told me I couldn't, I did. I was, at the time, suffering from extreme lack of sleep because I had been working all night, so I believe that my judgment was impaired.

That's all. Now I get to go home and go to bed. =)

How is It?

How is it that I can go to the scrapbooking store and spend almost $100 on scrapbooking supplies and STILL NOT HAVE WHAT I NEED?!?

(By the way, Mike, if you're reading this, I am not your wife.. this is definintely someone else's blog - someone who can AFFORD to go to the scrapbooking store and spend $100)

Ok, seriously. I have two star scrapbooker layouts that are due in 3 weeks. I just decided which pictures I want to use, so now I have to go home and upload the pictures for processing. I also need an extra coupla products for them from Scrapbookers Dream. I finished another page in Aaron's travel journal, and would like to do page #3, but I'm lacking in cardstock. I have the same problem with my art journal challenges. Our recipe pages are due in 3 days, and I still haven't bought paper for them (cause I'm a DOLT).

I have Frippery jewelry to put together, but forgot to bring the pictures.

I got some candy for my secret pink person and I was going to make labels for it out of my cool pink paper I bought the other day, but I FORGOT TO BRING THE CANDY WITH ME.

I have a Bazzill coin holder to decorate for Mike's grandmother for Mother's Day - yep, forgot the coin holder. (I have the pictures - go figure)

People. Could I be *more* of a mess? I mean really. I'm sitting here going out of my mind with boredom, and I can't even cross anything off my list. I'm such a nerd.