Mom is a pro!

Mom is turning into a scrapbooking pro! We went shopping today for some extra paper and things and she went crazy in the scrapbook store. We came back and she knocked off several pages without me having to do anything -- she doesn't need me anymore!

In other news, I picked up prescription goggles today. My eye doctor was thoroughly appalled that I was swimming nightly in contacts, even with goggles over them. Apparently the pool is disgusting and she was afraid that my eyes would carry away some terrible bacteria that would then live in my contact case waiting for a day to strike me and poke out my eyes just like Oedipus' mom. She decided to try to prescribe me DAILY contacts JUST FOR SWIMMING. Which, of course, if I was Michael (or Michelle) Phelps, that might be a good idea. However, I am not close to being Michael (Michelle) Phelps and therefore the added expense of daily wear contacts just for swimming is silly.

So I picked up the prescription goggles. The term "prescription" is kind of a misnomer. They have a circle of goggle eyes with different strengths and you look through them until you find what you are. Of course, I am the worst prescription that they have (a -7.0 in both goggle eyes, I think I'm actually -7.5 in a regular eye, but they didn't have -7.5s), but I now have goggles that I can wear to class if I break my regular glasses (How funny would that be?!).

Mom and scrapbooking

My sister says that my last couple of posts have been too intense.

I have come home this weekend to help mom with a very important task. That's right, I'm teaching her to scrapbook.

Mom is doing a very good job. She is making a scrapbook of her Mediterranean cruise she and Dad took in September. We have been organizing pictures and getting things ready. We also were able to complete three pages today!

This is a huge accomplishment, as Mom is scared of crafts. She doesn't like crafts all that much; she was the mom who "sewed" on our Brownie patches using hot glue guns. So I'm very proud of her for working on the scrapbooking, even though the supplies are taking up the entire dining room table.

I hope that she'll have some good progress this weekend!

Black Friday

Four years ago, my brother Stephen decided that he desperately needed a TV on special from Best Buy on Black Friday.

He declared his intent to my parents -- he was going to gather some friends and spend the night outside of Best Buy to get that TV.

My parents thought this was hilarious. Stephen exuberantly told them to go through the ads and pick out what they wanted him to pick up for them. They thought the whole thing was so funny that they went through and circled a bunch of stuff, knowing that he wouldn't get any of it. Best Buy is, after all, one of the crazy and crowded places on Black Friday

Stephen left before midnight, braved the cold and the dark. During the night, the rest of the family exchanged sly smiles. Stephen was so excited and he was going to get there, spend all that time, and not get anything. He had no idea how crowded it was going to be.

He got back around 6:45 and burst into the house.

He woke Mom and Dad up by opening the garage door. I woke up too, and walked out into the hallway that overlooks my parents' living room. He stood there, smiling ear to ear, thrilled.

"I GOT EVERYTHING!!!!!!" he yelled up at us.

And he did. A TV. Several digital cameras. Movies. Photoshop Elements. And several other things.

My parents learned a lesson tonight. They knew not to load up a list of things for Stephen to get the next year, on the very real possibility that he would get it all.

Stephen has gone every year since that first year. Last year, he and his friends (and Hal) added a fire pit and corn hole (a bean bag toss game) to their arsenal for passing the hours. The police thought this was a good idea. This year, although it was much warmer, several other people had followed their lead.

I suppose my little brother is the most hard-core shopper in the family.

At least when it comes to electronics.

Treasure Hunt

The last year, I sat at the kitchen table, brow furrowed, laughing hysterically. I stared at the slip of paper in front of me, the letters not moving, no matter how I manipulated them, into a word that even existed. I was always the worst at word scrambles. My siblings and parents crowded around me in the kitchen, clutching their new prizes, making fun of me.

We had a Thanksgiving tradition.

Started by my grandfather, my father carried this tradition along.

Every Thanksgiving, after getting home from eating our weight at my grandmother's house, my family would assemble for the Thanksgiving day treasure hunt. Dad and Mom would work up about four or five clues for each of us and leave them throughout the house. The answer to the first clue would have the second clue and so on. At the end of the treasure hunt, we each had a prize. Books, movies, stuff like that. Just a fun activity to make Thanksgiving more special and to create memories for my family.

When we were little, we started out with clues drawn on little pieces of paper. It might be a picture of the TV or the microwave, for example. Sometimes these were difficult, as my parents were not always the best artists in the world.

As we got older, these drawn clues turned into little written riddles or poems. Sometimes Dad would throw an indecipherable riddle in where the clue was really an acrostic -- the first letter of every line spelled the answer. The clues were difficult.

As we grew even older, we helped out by writing three or four clues, which would be used for our siblings' treasure hunt. As you can imagine, we would try to make these as hard as possible so our sibling would take longer to find their prize than we would to find ours. This also took the burden of creating 16-20 clues off my parents.

My brother Donnie hated writing the clues and we spent many Thanksgivings cajoling him to write. Oftentimes my parents would send us back to the drawing board when a clue was totally ridiculous or impossible to decipher. When time to hide the clues would come the four of us would retire to one of our bedrooms and sit, fidgeting with excitement, as we heard doors open and close downstairs as Mom and Dad would hide the clues.

Of course, the one who would be looking the longest always got teased.

That last year, it was me. Dad, in order to not have to write clever riddles, threw down some word scrambles. I don't think he knew how terrible I was at word scrambles. We laughed and laughed.

Although we're too old (ha! I think we did it up until the year I was married) for the treasure hunt now, it's always mentioned on Thanksgiving. It's one of those things that we'll remember forever. And probably pass along to our children.

Just another thing to be thankful for.

I'm lucky. I have a lot of things like that.

Fortune cookies

Hal and I are at my parents' house. I'm snug as a bug and we're all watching West Side Story on TCM. Layla is wandering around licking peoples' hands as well as the kitchen floor.

Tonight we ate at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants. The people there know us as someone in my family is usually at one of their two locations once a week. They are always kind to us.

One of our games we play there is a guessing game. On their fortunes from the fortune cookies, they list a Chinese word and the English translation. We pronounce the Chinese word and then we all have to guess what the English translation is.

I think there was one time where we got this right, and my sister and I both screamed with excitement and then dissolved into laughter.

But most of the time, we never get it right. Tonight was no exception, as Jennie's Chinese word for "sun" inspired such guesses as kite string and shoe lace. (My guess was kite string and I was considered the winner because it was the closest to sun -- I guess because a kite string gets the closest to the sun out of the guesses we had.)

We're ridiculous, but it's fun.

Space

We used to own this house.

The house had 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a big kitchen with a breakfast nook, a dining room, living room, and an open room in the upstairs.



The kitchen had a pot rack.



The breakfast nook had a cool light fixture (which matched the one in the kitchen).



Hal and I could both fit into the kitchen at one time.



And we could fit many more people into our dining room.

But we don't live there anymore.

I decided to go back to school in an area that constituted a 150 mile move. We were lucky to sell the house in this market. Because of the double mortgage/rent payments, we set our sights small, hoping to get a place that we could handle for a year or two.

We now live in a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath townhouse. We have no garage. We have a kitchen too small for Hal and I to fit in at the same time. Our china cabinet is in our living room. There is kitchen gadgets galore in our living room closet. We have china place settings in our upstairs hallway closet (we do have several displayed in the china cabinet).

We are stuffed in this townhouse.

Hopefully tomorrow we will know if we will be looking for a new place to live in Bloomington or elsewhere in the world. Tomorrow I am supposed to find out if I get into the PhD program or not. If I do, we start to look for a new place to move into this summer, after the lease is up here. If I don't get in, reevaluation begins. The nearest programs I'm interested in are several hours away. We're talking Colorado, Florida, and North Carolina, to name a few. Hopefully it won't come to that. Perhaps the answer will be to move back home and resume life as it was.

We have spent a year and a half in this townhouse. I will be happy to move some place bigger.

Keep your fingers crossed for me! Two times, first, that I find out tomorrow, and second, that what I find out is GOOD news.

Joanna's wedding

This weekend, my first friend, Joanna, was married to Heath. Joanna and I met when we were three years old and my family moved two doors up from them. Joanna offered me some potato chips through the fence and I was ready to be her bff.

She and I were basically inseparable from the time we met til the time I moved away after second grade. People thought we were twins (we are almost exactly the same age, our birthdays -- hers Aug. 17 and mine Sept. 9 -- are very close. We were huge tomboys and played lots of hide and seek and war. We had many clubs and often were beat up by the boys in the neighborhood. We didn't care. Although she and I ended up taking wildly divergent paths through high school and college, we were the type of friends that didn't need to hang out all the time to be close. We talk every couple of months and it works. We also have the benefit of sharing our childhoods and our families.

She was a bridesmaid in my wedding and I was very honored and pleased to be a bridesmaid in her wedding.

Her wedding was very beautiful. She had a service at Blessed Sacrament at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 8. They didn't have a full mass because Heath isn't Catholic.

Heath blubbered when Joanna walked down the aisle (they did not see each other before the service, and we spent lots of time before the ceremony making sure that Joanna was hidden from his view up in the choir loft. They had thoughtfull readings, including one read by Joanna's friend and boss, Dr. K. Joanna has been working for Dr. K for many years (he's in the first picture up at the top with Jo and Heath). He is a doctor who was rendered a quadrelplegic in a body surfing accident. Joanna, along with many other (coincidentally beautiful) girls, provide company and in home care for him. It was very moving watching him read.

It was great to see Joanna find a wonderful guy. Heath is incredibly nice and he is also the biggest man I have ever met. He played football at Ohio State. For comparison, Joanna is about 5'9" and she's wearing big shoes. :) He seemed so happy as she walked down the aisle; it was very touching to watch.

Gina and Billy (Jo's parents) put on a beautiful wedding and lovely reception, which was held at the Millenium Hotel in downtown Cincinnati.

I can post more pictures later, but I wanted to give some people who have been asking a little eye candy. Hal took all of these and did a very good job.

Next: OMG, I'm 25!