Ten Things Tuesday

Because a list-making girl like me just couldn't resist.

1. Thank you so much to iamwoman at the Rowdy Stroudy's for the lavender parcel! My car never smelled better!

2. I don't miss Arizona. Not one little bit. I especially didn't miss it as I saw the big fluffy flakes of snow descending yesterday. But I forget Arizona was "home" to my children for two plus years. And when you're only four, that's half your life! They are rather confused about this cold weather business when to me it feels so familiar and soothing to the soul. Dee keeps asking me what the "dust" (frost) on our car is each morning as we go to school. Jeigh dashed out the front door yesterday to catch a snowflake. She made sure to grab her coat, but stopped short when her bare feet made contact with the icy cold. Poor little Arizona-born-and-raised Elle sees this new weather as uninvited and hostile. She shuffles around wrapped up tight in her thick winter coat like a little old lady. Her facial expression is a hilarious mixture of disgust and disbelief. I imagine her blood will thicken up soon enough.

3. Joe has four whole days in a row off this week! I can't wait to have a husband again! This one day off here, one day off there business is for the birds. And what perfect timing for a four day off stretch: Halloween! Now to wrangle him into helping me organize our storage unit...

4. Parent Teacher Conferences are this week. Jeigh's was on Monday and Dee's was today. I wonder...Do the teachers just tell all the parents the same thing?

5. Potty training is going great. If by "great" you mean Elle won't ever tell you when she has to go potty and still has a daily number two accident in her underwear and had one serious number two accident in the middle of Walmart yesterday resulting in her underwear, pants, and socks all being discarded in the public restroom followed by a hasty and red-faced bare-bottom-wrapped-in-sister's-jacket exit out of the store....then yep, it's going great.

6. I have wracked my brain all month trying to figure out what the heck I can do to blow the competition out of the apple-bobbin'-filled water for Sami's Symfully Sweet Saturday candy corn competition. The best I have done is kept my candy jar consistently stocked with a never ending supply of candy corn. I had my gestational diabetes blood test yesterday. Think I'll pass? I have my doubts. But, you should head over to Sami's blog and enter your coolest candy corn creations in her contest! Tell her Evelyn the Candy Corn Comatose Victim sent you.

7. We discovered this last week that Jeigh is terrified of vomit. Dee had a nasty allergy and asthma cough that caused him to almost throw up several times. Anytime he coughed she would absolutely fall apart with hysteria, shaking and crying.

8. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is only about 200 pages, but it is taking me FOR-EV-ER to get through it. I have already re-checked it out from the library once and it is currently late, but I WILL FINISH IT!

So far my favorite line is: (in regards to the death of a close loved one) "These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time prove the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished."

And: (speaking of becoming obsessed with a pursuit or activity) "A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken you affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind."

9. I am craving caramel apples, but am too lazy to make a big mess of my kitchen to make one or two...dozen.

10. Is it too early to listen to Christmas music? What am I saying?! It's never too early for Christmas music!