Laundry Day

I usually start laundry Mondays when I get home from work. Today when I walked into the laundry room, I found this cute little paper on the washing machine. "How cute," I thought, "Jamison drew me a picture."

If you look close enough, you can see the words "look on back" with an arrow.

"Even better," I thought again, "he wrote me a little note." My heart melted a little.

Allow me to immortalize his words here:

Dear McKardy, You are a good freind. I realy like you, not as in love you or that would be realy werd. I did my best work on this pictur. It steel probaly is not as good as yours!

Sincearly,
Jamison


The plot thickens.
It's a good thing he's cute, 'cause he sure as heck can't spell.

Music To My Ears

When I was a teenager, my dad and I installed a pretty nice stereo into my piece-of-junk car. I listened to it with the volume cranked to the max. It distracted me from the fact that I was driving a plank on wheels. I'm sure everyone could hear me coming a mile away.

When my daughter came along, I turned the volume down, wanting to protect her tiny ears. As the kids got older, they dictated what we listened to and at what volume (not loud). Last summer, the CD player in my car gave up the ghost. Living way up here in the mountains has its advantages, but good radio reception isn't one of them; so I became an A.M. talk-radio kind of person. Fortunately, I have a short commute.

All of this became a habit and I got to the point where I was driving in silence because well, A.M. radio sucks. Finally, I dug out the old iPod, added the F.M. tuner, and voila: I am back in business. The last few times I've been in my car, the volume is up and the music is good.

Sometimes, all it takes is a little Erasure* to liven up the icy drive to work.



*Erasure: you love 'em and you know it.

Happy Ground Hog Day

As I sit here in my wool socks and MULTIPLE layers of clothing, I am well aware of the fact that Punxatawney Phil did NOT see his shadow this morning. I just hope that Mother Nature understands the implications of this event and sends the mercury rising very, very soon.

Would You Trust This Face?

Yesterday, while walking through TJ Maxx, this little boy, in his finest cub scout uniform, looked up at me and said, "I think I need a nice outfit for Valentine's Day."

"A nice outfit?" I said while stifling a smile.

"Well, maybe not a whole outfit, but at least a good-looking shirt or something."

"Why?" (as if I didn't know).

"Because it's Valentine's Day, and I think people should look nice. We ARE having a party at school, remember?"

Uh huh. So when we struck out at TJ Maxx, we wandered across the street to Walmart. We did indeed find a red-striped polo shirt. The thought put into this little item of clothing was something equal to what went into launching the Apollo space mission.

We then found ourselves on the aisle with all the red and pink stuff. The kids each picked out a box of Valentine cards to exchange, and then Jamison wandered a little farther down the aisle to the heart-shaped boxes. The ones with chocolates inside of them. He had it narrowed down to three. The first one was red, with the word "love" spread across its lid. "Hmm. That would be to awkward," he said.

The next box was brown, covered in red and pink hearts. "No, that's still too weird."

He finally decided on the pink one, with little spirals embossed on the lid. Even more surprising, he insisted on paying for it with his own money.

Only eight more years until he's allowed to date. It's going be a long wait.

A Memory

Let's get something out in the open. The minute my body gets pregnant, my body wants to go into labor. Call me impatient. When I was about six months pregnant with my daughter, I went into full-blown, pre-term labor. It was scary, to say the least. I spent a couple of days in the hospital and then the next three months at home, in bed. I was only allowed out of bed to go to the bathroom. Needless to say, it was sheer torture. I was given a medicine to control the contractions, but it made me all antsy and jittery. So imagine being told to stay in bed but feeling like you need to run a marathon. Or ram your head through a wall.

Let's get something else out in the open. I'm all for eating a healthy, well-balanced diet. But I love food and pregnant or not, I get cravings for sinfully delicious things like raspberry-filled powdered donuts.

While trapped like a caged bird in my own home, I had a craving for the aforementioned donuts. Being the sweet guy my husband is, he ran to the store before work to get me my snack. He came back with glazed, lemon-filled donuts. That would have been great had I not been half out of mind, coo-coo for coco puffs-type delirious with bed-ridden insanity. So he went to work and I cried, helpless to get my own stinking donut. When my mom called to check on me, I told her my little sob story. She went on a mission to search out the correct pastry I so desperately needed. She found glazed, raspberry filled, and even went so far as to explain to the baker the situation, who happily sprinkled some powdered sugar on the glazed donuts. Close, but no cigar. I did, however, happily eat what I could get. Bed-ridden beggars can't be choosers.

Fast-forward nearly twelve years later. I was at The Store a few days ago, when what should catch my eye, but a huge display of Hostess raspberry-filled powdered donuts with a huge two-for-five-dollars sign. I probably hadn't thought about those donuts since that early spring day back in 1999. Naturally, I snatched up a box. They were so good that I went back the next day and got some more.

It only took twelve years and three moves, but my craving was finally satisfied. Life is good.

It Must Be Saturday

The sick little boy who spent all week going between the couch and my bed is back. He's got his ball cap on and runs everywhere he goes.
The house is clean, the blinds are open, and the sun is shining.
It's freezing outside, but my living room is toasty-warm.
Dad just took the kids for haircuts and shakes;
and I've got a few, peaceful afternoon moments all to myself.

I love Saturdays.

Better Than McCartney

Last summer, the big news around these parts was when Sir Paul came to town. The fabbest of the four, in my book.

Last week, a new hire at my husband's company came to town to shadow him around for a few days. We took her to dinner and drove her around Park City on the eve of Sundance. I asked her if she'd ever been to Utah before, and she said (in her very cool-sounding South African accent) "Once; I came last summer to see McCartney, but then I flew back home the next morning." She then went on for several long minutes, gushing over his performance. At the age of sixty, she has been a life-long fan.

Through the course of the week, she admitted that she had always loved listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as a young girl in South Africa. She said it had always been a dream of hers to see them perform live. Being the great guy my hubby is, he found a way to make it happen. Though she wouldn't be here for their weekly Sunday performance, she would be here for their weekly Thursday night open rehearsal. So between work and family duties, not to mention looking in on his 93-year-old grandmother who recently took a spill, he managed to get Lynn to the tabernacle on Thursday night. He said her face lit up the second they walked in; and when they walked out, she said (in her very cool-sounding South African accent) "That was better than McCartney!"

Maybe it's because I'm a Mormon and the choir is practically in my back yard, but it makes me wonder, is there anything on my bucket list that would make someone else say, "Oh that's easy. What are you doing on Thursday?" Because if you've got any connections to anyone working on the next Star Trek movie, it just so happens that I'm free on Thursday.