It's time for a SALE!!!

Learn to Deal.

I guess there are things in life that we might as well just learn to get along with and make the best of them. You do what you can, but you can't really change anything, so you do what you have to do.

Of course, any time there's a life lesson, I can usually find something ridiculous to illustrate (even feebly - hey, it's a blog entry even if it's a stretch)...today it's PassionFruit Hot Chocolate.

Bizarre sounding, isn't it? Not a flavor combination I would choose. But I love PassionFruit tea (with honey) and so I make it often in my Senseo. And because I am chronically challenged when it comes to doing dishes and kitchen maintenance, I usually wander off with my tea and forget that the bright pink passionfruit teabag is still in the machine. No biggie, because when I come back for tea the next time (or the rare occasion when I use it to make a cafe latte) I have to open it up to put the new tea bag or coffee pod in preparatory to brewing.

Not so with hot chocolate. I just need hot water, so no remembering to open the hatch and take out the dead teabag. And invariably it isn't until the pink water streams through that I even remember yesterday's cup o' tea, and it is rarely with pleasure, lol. Because there is no stopping the machine once it has begun to dispense. You just have to go with it.

So rather than mend my ways, (!) or learning clean my kitchen better, or even scribbling a reminder note to tack onto the Senseo, I've just learned to enjoy the taste of passionfruit hot chocolate. There are more important things in life to expend my reformation energy upon, and so I'll pick another battle, another day :)

Speaking of battles, my latest kit goes in the store bright and early tomorrow. It's a fun one, called Steggo's Valentine.

I can just hear the eyebrows raising in digiland. Steggo? What on earth is a Steggo, and why does it have a valentine, fergoodnesssakes?

Well, Steggo is derived from Stegosaurus, and it's my younger daughter's dino nickname. Don't ask me to explain this part, because I don't fully understand why college aged girls have dino nicknames - again, this is one of those things you cannot change and so you may as well just go with it (passionfruit hot chocolate, anyone?). And as Daughter number one got a Valentine kit (Lovebug Serenade for the Katibug), Daughter the second believes she should have one as well.

So here it is. And if you scroll past all the pretty pictures, there's a matching alpha that you may download for the next couple of days. Enjoy!



(Layout by Snappy2003)

(Layout by Annette)

(Layout by Pookie)

And lastly, this one by me :)
(sorry, download expired)

Change

Ha. My husband cleaned the windows in the great room. It vastly changes our outlook. We can see clearly now...

Other than that it's wait and see.

Control your impulses, lest they hunt you down and torture you...

Today I spent a great deal of time on the phone (the LANDLINE PHONE) with my cell phone company. Which you can probably guess did not fill my day with puppies and kittens and rainbows. Combine this with the fact that I decided to join my husband in drinking tea this morning rather than coffee, and you will comprehend how woefully inadequate my psyche's fortification was for this ordeal. An ordeal which involved being passed off to at least 3 different individuals, reading long numbers off of boxes (and being told that I'm "breaking up" at least twice - did I MENTION that I was using a LANDLINE PHONE???)

And the upshot of this investment of my time and sanity allowance for the week was that it was neither MY fault nor my phone's fault. Hmmm. I guess that's true, if you overlook that whole Impulse thing, which was definitely my fault. So I was informed that the engineering types would jump right on it and I should have connectivity within oh, say, up to ten business days.

Because that is so reasonable. I just spent nearly two hundred smackaroos on a clever piece of technology that would allow me to speak to my family and text message them in style and comfort (because this is essentially what I do with a cell phone. The dream of surfing the internet was luring and enticing, but not as important as the excellence with which I would be able to carry out my speaking and texting (full keyboard - no more hitting a button 47 times and hoping for the right punctuation, KWIM?) So the idea of not even being able to SET UP THE PHONE for use because the Google servers only connect with the G1 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and never when it's rainy in Seattle and gloomy in Minnesota and rarely when the sun shines in Denver.... the odds, oh the odds.

So about 2 hours after the exhausting landline experience, I tried connecting just for the fun (!) of it. And lo and behold, the sun was in the seventh moon and Jupiter beat up the Google honor student and I got connected. I don't know why, or how, and to be quite honest, it hasn't happened since, but the important thing is I got connected long enough to actually activate the phone. So now I can call, and I can text. Is it enough? Hmmm. Maybe for tonight.

Oh yeah...

All of that blathering and I forgot the instant gratification part of the post. I got a new phone. I got a new phone on impulse (well, I had planned to get a new phone, and I had researched phones, but I ended up with a different one than I intended, thus the impulsive part). I saw, I touched, I wanted. I asked if they had it in stock. They did. I bought.

And then y'know what happened? Nothing. The data plan that I ordered (and that is necessary to operate said phone) failed to kick in. I have had the coolest phone IN THE WORLD for 2 days and it doesn't even work.

My theory?

(wait for it...)

It's procrastinating.

Wherein Instant Gratification meets Procrastination As They Pass Each Other In The Swirling Vortex of Entropy

Ha. That's a Dickensian title with Big Bang Theory overtones. Or undertones. Or possibly, just possibly, I am crazy.

But you knew that already, so I'll move along.

It seems that life is all about procrastination these days. I'm avoiding so many things that I'm starting to procrastinate even listing them in my head (heaven forbid that such things be listed on paper!!!) Which would explain why the last blog entry was on December 28. LAST YEAR. Tsk tsk tsk. The truth is, blogging is HARD. (Whining is not, and thereby rarely put off until a more "convenient time.")

That being said, I have accomplished a few things. (And I completely had to walk away from the computer at this point and ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING so as to not be a liar.)
If I weren't particularly lazy after the token achieving so recently completed I would insert a drumroll here, but hey, I can only do so many things and if I'm to scratch "update blog" off of the infernal internal procrastination list, I can't waste energy on pretend drumrolls, KWIM? (another sign of both laziness and procrastination - acronyms/keyboard shortcuts. Yes, I am too lazy to type out Know What I Mean? this time, but maybe I will next time...)

Anyway, the big item I can finally check off of my list is taking the tree down. The Christmas tree that almost became the Valentine tree :) I must say, it would have looked lovely with some deep red bows and little cupids.... but I digress (in SPITE of the extra work typing - see, I'm not always lazy!) All the decor is tucked away in the big plastic boxes and even the boxes are put away ::gasp!:: And the floor has been vacuumed and the furniture pushed back into the normal configuration.

The best part about having completed this most distasteful chore is that a) I've done "enough" for the day, LOL, and b) all the other stuff that I have pushed off because I had to take the tree down can now bubble up in the chore chart.

The mental unwritten sometimes procrastinated chore chart :)