Yesterday was just one of those days. I woke up late (ok, because David is out of town and so I STAYED UP LATE) and groggy, and just never quite got to the point where I was fit to accomplish the many things I was supposed to accomplish (i.e. finishing Christmas shopping [which would involve actually deciding what to GET people], cleaning house, wrapping presents, coming up with a unique and clever Christmas letter [or even a mediocre and dull Christmas letter], putting out the rest of the Christmas decorations [I seem to be oddly content despite knowing full well that there's still a whole box of decor downstairs unopened - as though having finally gotten the tree up and decorated adequately is the apex of my decorating accomplishments this year- and I may be okay with that], wrapped up with making Christmas goodies, another task which seems to leave me strangely unmoved this year), a daunting and unreasonable (as well as unrealistic) task list.
And how much progress did I make? you ask. Perhaps you didn't ask OUT LOUD, but for the purpose of this intellectual argument I'm trying to make, let's say you did.
And the answer would be: NONE (quelle surprise!)
And it's the dog's fault. Because he chose yesterday to RUN AWAY FROM HOME.
Apparently spending the weekend at the "Spa" (i.e. boarding at the vet's while we kicked up our heels at the company party downtown) was just a wee bit too confining for his taste, because he took advantage of my distraction at having the UPS man deliver 2 packages at my door and then decide that one of them wasn't mine but that there should indeed BE 2 packages and therefore the second package must still be in his truck. When I followed the Man in Brown, eager to claim the fruit of what little shopping I HAVE done, Gus must have taken the opportunity to slip through the slow-to-close screen door and do a little exploring and shopping of his own. Unbeknownst to me. Which is a bit hard to believe, I mean, Chubby black dog, white snow... you don't need a degree in rocket science, if you know what I'm saying. But then, I AM the person who put the pot lid in the flour cannister (about 3 posts back if you're new to this), so perhaps it isn't so very unlikely after all...
So after about 20 minutes of gloating over my boxes and various other little time-wasters, I decided some lunch would be in order, and grabbed my leftovers from the fridge and threw them in the microwave (ok, so I didn't ACTUALLY throw them. Work with me, here). And no hopeful black face appeared at my side, prepared to help me dispose of said leftovers in an efficient and dedicated manner. Odd. I checked his bed. His other bed. The couch. I opened the back door and called.
Nothing.
I have an inkling by this time that my day has taken a disturbing turn. I make the rounds again, this time adding the garage to my route, in case he followed me in when I put the garbage cans away (the garbage cans I felt so virtuous wheeling to the curb BEFORE the garbage truck got to my side of the street, and so amused by the guy across the street having to move his to MY side of the street because he was five minutes too late...and yes, this is much more enjoyable when it's your neighbor that it happens to and not yourself, thankyouverymuch).
No Gus.
At this point you may use your imagination to imagine me driving up and down every doggone (yes, I used that on purpose) street in our subdivision. Be sure to imagine my makeup being on and my hair being curled... they weren't, but I'd rather you pictured it anyway :) Imagine this process for about 40 minutes, and then me driving into my driveway, going inside to check the house phone to see if there are any messages (because the only info on the dog tag is our house phone and "Angus.") Of course, no one has found him, or if they have they aren't fessing up, so I quickly email my husband's blackberry with a pathetic, sympathy inducing email (which pretty much fails) and I'm off to hunt again, a slightly wider arc, and with significantly more mumbling under my breath. And because I'm going 10 miles an hour and craning my neck to see more completely, about every two minutes my car reminds me with a shrill and incessantly persistent beep that I have failed to fasten my safety restraining device. More mumbling under my breath (had it been more distinct I'm pretty sure it would have been at least PG-13 with vague occasional lurching near the "R" territory.)
Following another fruitless search, I return home to check for messages, and curl my hair and put on a scrap of make up, because all that mumbling and craning and getting beeped at has not improved my appearance (thank you for your valiant but doomed imagining effort on my behalf). On my way to the computer to check email, I decide to just check out the front door one more time JUST in case he's just been sitting on the porch waiting patiently for me to notice him for the last 3 hours...
And lo and behold. Straight across the street from my door, there he sits. Kind of looking around, like, Hmmmmm, I thought it was ONE of these houses...
Of course I call, and he comes cheerfully racing and I forget all my mumbling and craning and beeping and I slobber all over him and get him drinks and treats and a kingly perch on the couch for the next hour or so. But by this time all momentum is gone. There will be no accomplishment. No wrapping, no shopping, no risking more beeping and mumbling and most definitely no craning...
After all, tomorrow IS another day, and if I buy stuff online in the meantime, the UPS man will bring it to me....
But not until I lock Gus in his room.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
New Goodies!
Admittedly, it has taken me a while to get into the spirit of things, but I think I'm finally there :) As you can see, I dug in the attic for the Christmas decorations and spiffed things up a little bit around here! (Okay, I will admit that I don't have an attic, and even if I had, this wouldn't have been up there, but didn't it sound poetic and Christmassy and in the mood???)
Moving on (not quite rapidly enough, perhaps.)
I scrapped with Industrial Elf - here's my daughter Kate at the tender age of 3 :)
Cute, huh? :)
Here are some of my new goodies in the store:
Fireside is a warm, versatile kit with lots of rich textures and beautiful elements It can be Neutral:
(Layout by Annette)
(Layout by littlebehr)
Or, it can be Seasonal:
My babies (when they were, well, babies!)
Also new in the store, and on sale for 30% off is my latest kit, Eggnog & Gingerbread :)
Warm hearted and festive, it's perfect for scrapping your favorite elf, or visits to Santa :)
Or maybe even celebrating getting the tree up!
And here's a little "taste" of Eggnog & Gingerbread for you - every time I write that it makes me hungry! This download will be available until Saturday!
(sorry, link has expired)
Moving on (not quite rapidly enough, perhaps.)
I scrapped with Industrial Elf - here's my daughter Kate at the tender age of 3 :)
Cute, huh? :)
Here are some of my new goodies in the store:
Fireside is a warm, versatile kit with lots of rich textures and beautiful elements It can be Neutral:
(Layout by Annette)
(Layout by littlebehr)
Or, it can be Seasonal:
My babies (when they were, well, babies!)Also new in the store, and on sale for 30% off is my latest kit, Eggnog & Gingerbread :)
Warm hearted and festive, it's perfect for scrapping your favorite elf, or visits to Santa :)
Or maybe even celebrating getting the tree up!
And here's a little "taste" of Eggnog & Gingerbread for you - every time I write that it makes me hungry! This download will be available until Saturday!
(sorry, link has expired)
Friday, November 28, 2008
Christmas Scrapping, a sale, and a Freebie
I've got two new kits in the store for Christmas layouts:
First, a favorite of mine - Industrial Elf. I love the way the colors work with the silvery aluminum elements. It works well for masculine layouts, but can be elegant, as well.
(Layout by Miss Chris)
The second kit, Mulberry Candle, is elegant and subtle. With the exception of a few elements, it is not holiday specific, making it extremely versatile.
(Layout by atpce (Denise)
And don't forget, everything in my store is on sale through Sunday :)
Here is a bonus that matches Mulberry Candle - the link will be active until Monday.
(sorry, download has expired)
First, a favorite of mine - Industrial Elf. I love the way the colors work with the silvery aluminum elements. It works well for masculine layouts, but can be elegant, as well.
(Layout by Miss Chris)
The second kit, Mulberry Candle, is elegant and subtle. With the exception of a few elements, it is not holiday specific, making it extremely versatile.
(Layout by atpce (Denise)
And don't forget, everything in my store is on sale through Sunday :)
Here is a bonus that matches Mulberry Candle - the link will be active until Monday.
(sorry, download has expired)
Black Friday!!!
Mind you, I write this cowering in my own living room, hiding from the crowds of crazy people out there elbowing each other out of the way while they grab for the very last ______ on the shelf... Call me a chicken, it's okay. I'd rather shop from the safety of my couch!
And that's exactly what you can do today! Plain Digital Wrapper is having a huge Black Friday Blitz! All the designers have amazing sales going on and there's lots of new product in the store at the sale prices. And if that isn't enough...
This Calendar Kit is amazing, and HUGE!! This is one goodie you won't want to miss, and it's just in time to make those family calendars you were planning to give Grandma for Christmas!
And if you need some ideas on what to buy to get to the $15 purchase, stop by my store:
And that's exactly what you can do today! Plain Digital Wrapper is having a huge Black Friday Blitz! All the designers have amazing sales going on and there's lots of new product in the store at the sale prices. And if that isn't enough...
This Calendar Kit is amazing, and HUGE!! This is one goodie you won't want to miss, and it's just in time to make those family calendars you were planning to give Grandma for Christmas!
And if you need some ideas on what to buy to get to the $15 purchase, stop by my store:
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Being Thankful, mostly centered around finding out that I'm nuts, but not crazy (a distinction so fine as to be indecipherable to the naked eye)
I could list the incredibly long litany of things I have for which to be grateful. Family, friends, health, wealth, satisfying and gratifying occupations... the list points to an embarrassment of riches. And while worthy, and admirable, and even desirable, my list is not very original or unusual or particularly interesting to anyone but myself. So instead, we'll just consider the above as a given, and move on to more potentially interesting and probably more embarrassing events to illustrate my participation in the season.
Let me preface this by saying that the older we get, the more we tend to do things on auto pilot. Let's face it, by the time you're ::ahem:: forty-something... you've brushed your teeth HOW many times? so you may find yourself drifting off into Other Thoughts That Might Be Slightly More Interesting a time or two. Same goes for vacuuming, starting coffee, routine cooking chores, unloading the dishwasher. This is my justification, or explanation, or at the very least an attempt to justify the fact that I lost the lid to my 2.5 quart saucepan.
Yeah, that's right, you heard me. I lost the glass lid to a cooking pot. An item that never leaves the kitchen, that is used on a near-daily basis, that even a 3 year old can keep track of, and all of the sudden one day mine is POOF! completely obliterated from existence.
It actually took me an indeterminate period of time before I even really noticed that the lid was gone - more like a gradually dawning awareness that it wasn't in the sink, or in the dishwasher. Finally, though, all dishes were clean and the dishwasher was empty, and there was no lid.
I have to confess that this is the point where I became suspicious of my husband :) He suffers from what I consider an almost manic tidiness, which often requires him to put things away even if he has no idea where they belong. Because I do NOT suffer from tidiness of the manic sort (or any other, really), I tend to view the trait with a barely-restrained disapproval tucked under a veneer of impatience (kindly note how there are NO redeeming virtues in that list of my own attributes - I want credit for full disclosure, seeing as how I will likely deserve no credit for anything else). So this bad attitude of mine drove me to look in the most unlikely corners of kitchen cabinets - even behind and under stuff (funny how motivated we can be when it means catching a loved one in a perceived wrong-doing. However, for all the effort I put into my search, there was no sign of the pot lid.
Gradually, hope of pinning the problem on my husband began to fade, ironically at about the same rate as a growing conviction that I had done something stupid began to flourish. I turned over some scenarios in my mind which would explain this ridiculous little mystery, which was both so unimportant and yet so unlikely as to be oddly consuming. After mulling the possibility of the dog hiding it in his bed (having mistaken it for a curiously shaped bone), checking the back of the dishwasher to see if it got jostled out of the rack, pondering on the possibility of aliens with a warped but impish sense of humor spiriting it away for their cosmic kitchen.... perhaps the most feasible suggestion was that the lid had been mistakenly set on a disposable cardboard item, such as a box or a pizza tray, and simply swooped into the garbage unseen. I confess to a preference for this one, because as the not-so-tidy inhabitant of a two-person household, the onus of the guilty behavior (intended or not) probably wasn't on me. And having reached this conclusion, I gave up the search, resigned to having the next largest lid serve double duty in the future. Tacky, sloppy, but no more than I deserved for my carelessness.
Last night, I trudged into the kitchen to make pies for today. I was feeling kind of sorry for myself, muttering under my breath about the unfairness of a holiday that sends one member of a family into the kitchen for the better part of its duration; cooking, doing dishes, cooking some more, and in general making nearly every kitchen mess known to mankind which then had to be set to rights, entailing even MORE time in the scullery (yeah, I was waxing melodramatic by this point). As I clattered bowls and measuring cups and measuring spoons with a little extra fervor, I grabbed the lid from the flour canister and stuck my hand in to grab the measuring cup I keep there on a permanent basis, I heard (and felt) the distinctive clink of fingernails tapping.... glass.
Grabbing the canister and peering inside, sure enough, there was my pot lid. I cannot even conceive of the mental process I must have undergone to put it there. And sadly there is no way I can blame this on my beloved husband, because he does not cook or bake, and therefore he does not use flour. So that leaves me with me, because the dog is no way TALL enough to get to the counter, even if he were SMART enough to plot a Lid-hiding Confidence-busting coup.
So yeah. I'm grateful for family, and friends, and plenty, and blessings of every sort. And I'm especially grateful to know that I may be nuts enough to accidentally stash a pot lid in the flour canister, but not crazy enough to actually throw one out (or worse). And I may just be coming around and faintly reconciled to baking pies. I'll get back to you on that after another slice with extra whipped cream, and a quick inventory of the baking utensils...
Let me preface this by saying that the older we get, the more we tend to do things on auto pilot. Let's face it, by the time you're ::ahem:: forty-something... you've brushed your teeth HOW many times? so you may find yourself drifting off into Other Thoughts That Might Be Slightly More Interesting a time or two. Same goes for vacuuming, starting coffee, routine cooking chores, unloading the dishwasher. This is my justification, or explanation, or at the very least an attempt to justify the fact that I lost the lid to my 2.5 quart saucepan.
Yeah, that's right, you heard me. I lost the glass lid to a cooking pot. An item that never leaves the kitchen, that is used on a near-daily basis, that even a 3 year old can keep track of, and all of the sudden one day mine is POOF! completely obliterated from existence.
It actually took me an indeterminate period of time before I even really noticed that the lid was gone - more like a gradually dawning awareness that it wasn't in the sink, or in the dishwasher. Finally, though, all dishes were clean and the dishwasher was empty, and there was no lid.
I have to confess that this is the point where I became suspicious of my husband :) He suffers from what I consider an almost manic tidiness, which often requires him to put things away even if he has no idea where they belong. Because I do NOT suffer from tidiness of the manic sort (or any other, really), I tend to view the trait with a barely-restrained disapproval tucked under a veneer of impatience (kindly note how there are NO redeeming virtues in that list of my own attributes - I want credit for full disclosure, seeing as how I will likely deserve no credit for anything else). So this bad attitude of mine drove me to look in the most unlikely corners of kitchen cabinets - even behind and under stuff (funny how motivated we can be when it means catching a loved one in a perceived wrong-doing. However, for all the effort I put into my search, there was no sign of the pot lid.
Gradually, hope of pinning the problem on my husband began to fade, ironically at about the same rate as a growing conviction that I had done something stupid began to flourish. I turned over some scenarios in my mind which would explain this ridiculous little mystery, which was both so unimportant and yet so unlikely as to be oddly consuming. After mulling the possibility of the dog hiding it in his bed (having mistaken it for a curiously shaped bone), checking the back of the dishwasher to see if it got jostled out of the rack, pondering on the possibility of aliens with a warped but impish sense of humor spiriting it away for their cosmic kitchen.... perhaps the most feasible suggestion was that the lid had been mistakenly set on a disposable cardboard item, such as a box or a pizza tray, and simply swooped into the garbage unseen. I confess to a preference for this one, because as the not-so-tidy inhabitant of a two-person household, the onus of the guilty behavior (intended or not) probably wasn't on me. And having reached this conclusion, I gave up the search, resigned to having the next largest lid serve double duty in the future. Tacky, sloppy, but no more than I deserved for my carelessness.
Last night, I trudged into the kitchen to make pies for today. I was feeling kind of sorry for myself, muttering under my breath about the unfairness of a holiday that sends one member of a family into the kitchen for the better part of its duration; cooking, doing dishes, cooking some more, and in general making nearly every kitchen mess known to mankind which then had to be set to rights, entailing even MORE time in the scullery (yeah, I was waxing melodramatic by this point). As I clattered bowls and measuring cups and measuring spoons with a little extra fervor, I grabbed the lid from the flour canister and stuck my hand in to grab the measuring cup I keep there on a permanent basis, I heard (and felt) the distinctive clink of fingernails tapping.... glass.
Grabbing the canister and peering inside, sure enough, there was my pot lid. I cannot even conceive of the mental process I must have undergone to put it there. And sadly there is no way I can blame this on my beloved husband, because he does not cook or bake, and therefore he does not use flour. So that leaves me with me, because the dog is no way TALL enough to get to the counter, even if he were SMART enough to plot a Lid-hiding Confidence-busting coup.
So yeah. I'm grateful for family, and friends, and plenty, and blessings of every sort. And I'm especially grateful to know that I may be nuts enough to accidentally stash a pot lid in the flour canister, but not crazy enough to actually throw one out (or worse). And I may just be coming around and faintly reconciled to baking pies. I'll get back to you on that after another slice with extra whipped cream, and a quick inventory of the baking utensils...
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Placation.
more animals
I'll admit it. I have been in deep Blog Rebellion. Not only did I not have anything to say, but I really didn't think very much of life was very amusing, LOL. I think I'm starting to come out of it, though - there are certainly many good things going on in my life, so I had just better darned well get my act together, right? Right!
One thing that's really exciting to me is the expansion of my Creative Team. I've really been blessed with a handful of good friends who have been willing to scrap layouts for me and check over my things. Now I've added a couple more wonderful ladies that I've met through the forum at Plain Digital Wrapper. I'm gathering information and I will introduce them to you soon, I promise!
My children have had their challenges the last month or so. Kate broke her leg (see her blog at Korean Saga) and Molly has had frustrations with her campus job, love life, roommate... you name it, LOL Those things have been consuming, but things seem to be settling down so Momma can get her own act straightened out, now :)
So. Browse LOLcats, laugh out loud, and I'll be back soon with fresh vim and vigor. Pinky swear :)
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