Unclaimed Property

NAUPA:  National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators

Click here for their website

These folks keep track of unclaimed property throughout the United States, and try to reunite it with its rightful owner.  I check there every once in a while to see if I've accidentally abandoned a bank account with a million dollars in it or something.  So far, nothing!  But hope burns eternal!

Check and see if you've abandon anything of value along the way…

I leave for the summer in 17 days, and I am posting a blog on how to find your lost property.  I think I need to go do something productive!

 

Speaking of My Daddy…

The reference to which you won't understand unless you've read my post from yesterday, complete with its addendum from today. But anyway, whether you get the reference or not…

My Daddy…

is a really nice daddy.  Not just because of what he does for us, for me, even though that is what I am going to write about in this post.

I am going away for over two months this summer.  I leave in two weeks.  I have been "stressing" about what I am going to do with my precious baby, my kitty, Mew Ling.  Her full name?  Princess Mew Ling Calico Star.  In my next life I want to come back as one of my cats, because, boy, do they live the life!  Anyhow, I examined the options available to me, and none of them made me smile very much.

Until my dad rode in on a white horse to save me and the Mew.  My dad is coming in from California two spend 5 or 6 weeks of the time I am gone at my house, taking care of my cat.  Sure.  He's got other things to do while he's here; day trips, visiting friends, visiting other family who live here (my sister, my cousin and her kids, to name a few), but he's REALLY coming to be Grandpa to the Mew.  He'll live in my place so that Mew can stay in her own home.

How SWEET is that?

She's just a cat, but he knows how special she is to me. 

AND he bought me an awesome digital camera to take with me on my trip.  So generous!

THANKS DADDY!  For everything…

The Prayers of a Child

As part of my involvement with Teen Missions this summer, we are provided with "prayer cards".  These are heavy paper stock "cards" that have our picture and some very basic information (name, team, etc.) and a reminder to pray for us.  Most people stick them on their fridge, or in their Bible.  I recently mailed out newsletters to my family and friends, begging them to write to me while I am gone, reminding them to pray for me. 

I sent my sister Whitney a letter with two prayer cards in it; one for her, one for her son (my nephew), Mitchell.  He's four.  You've read about him recently.  My sister gave him one of the cards and explained what it was for.

"Mamma, Ina keep it near me."  That is what he told her and he placed my card in the window sill above the head of his bed.  And he prays for me every night.

Covered in the innocent, sweet, and genuine prayers of a child.  What a great place to be…

***Addendum added 5/30/06:  Photographs courtesy of my Pops, Mitchell's Grampa…Richard Norris.  Thanks Daddy!***

Proud of Julie

My cousin Julie is staring down her dream.  Her dream of becoming a photographer.  The kind of photographer who sells photographs, but doesn't do sittings, weddings, portraiture, that sort of thing.  She didn't study photography, isn't schooled in the various forms or types, or anything fussy at all.  She just likes to take beautiful pictures.  (AND SELL THEM!)

She's quite talented.  She has a natural eye for composition and lighting.  She picks interesting subject matter.  She is able to take the usual and make it look fresh and unusual.  She hasn't really believed in her abilities, but she's really very good.  She has sold a number of large pieces and many of her greeting cards.  Her work is in a number of different types of stores and galleries in Colorado and in California.  She has operated on a very small scale up til now and she wants more out of it.

She is actively working on expanding her fledgling photography business.  One of the things she is going to be doing this summer, is to show her wares at a big local farmer's market.  She is working hard to get her inventory built up in the middle of running her house cleaning business and taking care of three kids, two cats, and a rat.

Julie, I must say, is a natural pessimist.  She tends to look for the reason that something can't work instead of for the solutions to potential problems.  She's working on changing that tendency. 

For the farmer's market, she needs to be able to erect a tent by herself.  She has the tent, but was clueless on what to do to get it up, especially since she will be doing this alone and may not have a sociable and/or helpful "neighbor" at the "market".  She's not much over five feet tall, and the tent is about 2 1/2 times her height.  This tent issue has been preying on her mind and defeating her before she's even started.  Yesterday, I went to her house so that we could work out a plan.  We first figured out together how the parts fit and the order in which to put them together so that the tent came out looking like a tent.  After we got it up and staked down, I sat down, put my feet up, grabbed a Diet Coke, and told her "I'm sorry to do this to you, but you need to take it down and put it up again all by yourself this time."

And she did.  And it really wasn't that difficult afterall.  I hope that Julie, of whom I am very proud, remembers that she was able to erect a tent that the instructions said took 2 to 3 people to erect, and she did it all by HERSELF!

Way to go, Jules.  However much you sell at the market this summer, I applaud your perseverence and vision!  I believe this is the start of a really good thing!

…BTW, there's a permanent link to her blog in my blogroll – Julie's Journey.  She only has a couple of her works shown there right now, but she will be showcasing many more in the weeks/months to come.  Visit her site occasionally, check out the gorgeous things she has captured.

John on Jelly

I recently read a blog posting that is just about the funniest thing ever.  Certainly it is the funniest thing I have read in recent weeks, months even.  I don’t know if it’s funny because John wrote it, or simply because it has stand-alone funny qualities.  I’d like to think that it would be just as funny if I didn’t know the author and have a deep pre-existing appreciation for his humor.  At any rate, I read it last night, and my eyes were squinched up so hard from laughing, I had to pry them open to be able to read on.  This morning, I thought I’d go and read it again, so as to see if it was still that funny in the warm light of day.

It was still that funny.

The post is by John’s mom in one of her blogs and is an excerpt from a letter John wrote 20 years ago.

Click here to go there.  Read.  Laugh.  And feel good for the rest of the day.  Because jelly is stupid…

“Visit Each Continent” – List of 50

This one is one of my more ambitious goals!  The goal was going to have been visit every country, but in the 1980's countries started to come and go at a rapid pace, and I thought it would simply be too confusing and frustrating to attain the goal.  How do you handle a country you've visited disappearing?  And how frustrating to have more and more countries added to the rolls on an annual basis!  So I went with continents.  If those change, we have bigger problems than changing national borders and names!

1. North America – first visited in 1964 (continent of birth!)
2. South America – first visited in 1991
3. Asia – first visited in 1982
4. Europe – first visited in 1995
5. Australia – first visited in 1985
6. Africa – should be there this summer
7. Antarctica – your guess is as good as mine!!! 

John

John.  That’s the name of the ‘boy’.  The boy of whom I am reminded, “because of the color of the wheatfields“.

I met John when I was a little girl, and he was almost a man.  Our families attended the same church.  I have distinct memories of love for him, as much as a 10 year old can love a 14 year old anyway…

He was a tall, blonde, lanky thing, and I watched him from afar, trying to steal glimpses of him when I didn’t think anyone would notice.  I was not yet in junior high school when his family moved hundreds of miles away to Northern California.  I remember being very sad about that.  And the years passed.

Occasionally over those years his family’s name, his name, would come up in various discussions at my family’s dinner table.  Mostly in the vein of us wondering how “they” were, John in particular.  I never heard anything about him, until about five years ago. While at work in the emergency department in the LA area, the paramedics brought in a woman whose name was a familiar one.  It was John’s sister’s married name.  An unusual name.  I wondered if the woman was a relative of Joanne’s husband.  She was.  It turned out this patient of mine was John’s sister’s mother-in-law.  Though I was busy, I tried to get caught up on what was going on with the family.  My “secret” agenda was to find out what was happening with John.  I found he was still single, but that’s about all I got out of Joanne.  I figured there must be a good reason she didn’t divulge any further information.  I gave his sister my phone number, hoping that she and I could possibly get together in the future.  And hoping that she might pass it along to John and that he might be just curious enough, about the ER nurse in Los Angeles that was asking after him, to investigate who I was. 

Joanne (his sister) never called, and neither did John.  And the incident left my consciousness. Until June 9 of last year. 

My father forwarded an e-mail to me that he had received from John.  The e-mail was sent to his parents’ e-mail address list, which my father just happened to be on.  He was asking for help in wishing his mother a happy birthday.  My father forwarded it on to all of us kids.  I sent his mom an e-mail wishing her a happy birthday.  And I thought about e-mailing John.  It took me a week of actively resisting the finger of God tapping me on the shoulder and whispering for me to ”do it, do it”.  Eventually I relented, said “why not” and sent him a short, generic note of greeting…

“You probably don’t remember me, but…”  That’s how it started. I heard back from him, and it sounded like he wanted to hear back from me!  When I got his second e-mail, I knew that something wonderful was in store for me.  I go back and read that e-mail now, and it seems somewhat innocuous and without an agenda, but I saw what I saw in it then!  And I acted on it. We e-mailed back and forth for a number of weeks.  His father had been ill for some time, and it seemed that his struggle would be over soon.  I didn’t hear from John in that last week.  When I heard that his father had passed away (on June 27th), I lamely extended my condolences, and my ear, to him.  And after a few days, he took me up on the offer.  A couple of weeks later, our communication again stopped.  Then the most unthinkable thing happened.  Just a month and two days after his father died, my sister-in-law and best friend, my healthy as a horse sister-in-law, took a nap from which she never awoke.  In my stricken state, I felt a drive to connect again with John. And from there, our friendship blossomed into the greatest romance either of us had ever experienced.  Until the bomb went off.  What happened needn’t be laid out here.  It’s mine and John’s to handle.  But the shrapnel blew deep into our hearts.  We not only couldn’t get the shrapnel back out of each other’s hearts, we couldn’t even tell each other where it was or how to find it.  We struggled for months, trying to find our way back to some semblance of the beauty we had shared, and the beauty that neither of us wanted to admit had become something very different.  Finally, in March, it ended.  I limped along, missing him horribly, but knowing that things needed changing in us so that we could love each other better than we had been.  And knowing that only God could address these things and bring about the change that was needed.  So the silence remained between us.  Two weeks ago, God took our very broken roads which had briefly crossed and then diverged, and impossibly, unbelievably, had them cross again. 

Which brings us to today.  God in his graciousness and in what can only be his amazing love for us, seems to have granted us access to each other’s hearts once again.  And at a time when John had effectively put me out of his mind, and I had begun to think that maybe my hope for a future for us was misguided, and naive.  Though our problems are not resolved, we have decided that we love each other enough to work this thing out.  For now, we are letting things just breathe and giving ourselves some slack.  The only decision we have made about our future is to acknowledge that we probably have one.  We are basking in the refreshing loveliness of, and are delighting in, each other’s company.  The rest; the answers, the solutions, the bridges, the plans, will come.  In time they will come. 

Breathe.  Just breathe.

Thanks for being my friend and for loving me.  I am so glad I am on this journey with you, John.

5/1/2007 – - – Sadly, our paths parted again some months ago.  Only God knows if they will ever cross again.  Only God knows if my heart will ever heal.  I wanted to delete this post altogether because it’s actually quite painful to go back and read.  And embarassing, too, to tell the truth.  But it’s part of my history.  It’s part of my collective life experiences and sharing my experience is what my blog is about.  Nobody ever goes back this far into a blog to read, do they?  It used to be posted under the categories of ”John” and “Love”.  It is now to be posted under “Sad Day”.

 

Vote For Me!

I recently received an e-mail asking if I’d want a female president.  I’d vote for Condy Rice!  So sure!  I’d be okay with the right female president.  I wasn’t sure what to expect when I opened the e-mail, but I did not expect this! 

There were a number of politicians featured in it.  All of them recreated as women!  Pretty scary, isn’t it?  Bill actually looks kinda good, don’t you think?  I’ll bet Hillary is miffed because he looks better than she does.  There goes Bill, stealing her limelight again!

Chewing Gum. Milk Duds.

These are two things I have missed horribly in my hiatus from chewy, sticky, stringy (etc.) foodstuffs during my dental incarceration by way of braces.

I have been chewing gum like it's going out of style since my braces came off a week and half ago.  My sister Diane bought stock in Wrigley and is making a fortune.

I bought Milk Duds this afternoon, but am so stuffed after dinner at my sister's tonight that I just can't think of putting another thing in my mouth.

Except gum!

Milk Duds will have to wait until tomorrow.  Maybe after I eat something with spinach in it!

Posey Mosey

Unbelievable as it may seem, today was yet another road trip.  A mini one. 

Cousin Julie and I were joined on this one by my sister, Diane.  We got up too early (I am in a sleep deficit of astounding proportions right now) and drove up to the Boulder area where we went on a nature hike of sorts to see wildflowers.  In my mind I imagined a sea of oranges, purples, and yellows.  While we did see flowers in all those colors, they were very small, delicate, and sparsely scattered along the trail.  White yarrow, yellow yarrow, fantastically tiny blue bells and morning glories, and other flowers so small as to be nearly invisible if they weren't pointed out to you.  The trail was called the "Towhee", which is apparently some kind of bird we did not see.  To get there we had to cross a beautiful little river, the Boulder Creek.  (I spit in it as I do in rivers/creeks/streams.  But again, that is for another posting.) 

The trail meandered up towards the Flatiron range.  A range of mountains, huge rocks really, jutting out of the ground at a wild angle.  The views were spectacular.  The air was filled with the sounds of grasshoppers, and of bees, and of wind rustling through tall grasses.  So high as to be nearly not visible were various raptors riding the thermals.

Blues.  These are lovely creatures.  Butterflies about the size of a dime.  There was a whole flock (???) of them dancing in flight over, and landing upon, a gooey patch of mud in a small stream.  They fluttered about and landed, showing off their periwinkle wings sprinkled with bright orange.  I'm certain the mud wondered why it deserved such attention from these charming fairy creatures.

The snake was coiled up about twelve inches from my right hand as I marched down the trail.  I saw it before I heard it.  When I made eye contact with it, it opened it's mouth and it hissed at me and it scared the living daylights out of me!  I yelled "SNAAAAAKE" and took off running.  I am not afraid of snakes, but the hiss sounded alot like a rattle to me and I wasn't taking any chances.  After it calmed down, it crossed the path.  It was a good five feet long, and as big around as my wrist, but there was no rattle on the end.  "Probably a bull snake" our botanist guide told us.  Anyhow, it got my adrenalin going.  If it had been a rattler, it could have gotten me easy!

We were there for only a couple of hours, but it was long enough to know that I could live in a place that looked just like that and never tire of the sky, the rocks, or that river. 

Most certainly a place for a dream home to be built.

Sad…Funny…

Humor can be found in death in some of the oddest places and at the oddest times.  As you know, this past Sunday was Mother's Day.

Early in the morning, my nephew Jon was in the kitchen with my sister, and they were looking for a date on the calendar to mark for a birthday party he wished to attend.  My nephew pointed to May 14th and said "Hey, it's Mother's Day".  And he came out to the living room and stood in front of the built in cabinets (it's called "the shrine" and I'll tell you about that later….) and wished his mother's ashes a "Happy Mother's Day".

His first Mother's Day without his Mom.

It was a sweet and touching moment.  But strangely funny, too. 

Crickets

I wanted to post an entry before heading out of town.  But, despite the fact that I have something like 70 entries in various stages of creation, I really don't have anything to say.

I KNOW!! It's hard to believe it.  I almost can't believe it myself.  But it's true.

Lamenting this out loud to my brother and sister (who are deeply engaged in the subject of grammer and stuff….no….really….that's what they are talking about….) about not knowing what to write, my sister told me to write about how she hasn't posted in hers in forever.

I go to her site, and I hear crickets.  At least I did, until they died from neglect.

I need to learn how to do RSS feeds so that I'll simply be notified when she posts instead of having to go there and just being disappointed.

So, I guess that's it for today.

Please come back later, I'll do better next time!!

“If you stop right now…”

Liz and Toby (my sister and brother-in-law) have two children, Jesse and Louis. 

When Jesse was, what, about four, she was being reprimanded by her mother. 

She put up her hand, and she looked at her mom, and in all seriousness she said…

"Mommy, if you stop RIGHT now, I will still still be your friend."

(This is how I remember it.  Liz, if I got it wrong, tell us how it actually went!)

Not a great love story for an anniversary, but a cute one. 

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY LIZ and TOBY!!!!

I love you guys!

 

Sunnyvale

I am on yet another road trip.  A road trip within a roadtrip!  This one has taken me from Southern California to Northern California, to Santa Clara county, to Sunnyvale. 

To see the "boy".  The "boy" whom I am reminded of because of the color of the wheatfields.  The last time I saw him I was afraid it was the last time I'd see him. 

He found my trail of breadcrumbs, and I found his, and the trails led to each other, and we ended up holding hands again.

As "we" know, if "we've" read The Little Prince, words are often a source of misunderstanding.  We have spent much of our time together just being quiet, together.  It has been a time of restoration of relationship, and affection.  I am amazed. 

It is a truly a bright, a sunny, valley in which I find myself today. I do not know what the future holds for "us", for me and the boy, but today, so much more than ever before, I know that whatever that is, it will be right.

My New “Grill”

Do a google image search on "grill" and the first result is a picture of a guy with all kinds of metallic work done on his teeth.  Some rappers these days even clad their teeth in gold with cut out designs or they afix gemstones to their teeth.  it's pretty awful really, like the villain from, I think, "Moonraker".  I guess the slang for this being "grill" is in reference to automobiles and their metallic work on the front.  Here's an example of some this dental jewelry "courtesy" of the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing, and Registration.  NASTY stuff, if you ask me.

Until 5:45 yesterday afternoon, I had my own grillwork…braces. 

My braces saga has been way too long and complicated.  I had some crowding problems and a few teeth that over the years had started to rotate around.  And my top two incisors were grinding together.  I thought I'd better do something about my teeth before something permanent happened to damage them. 

After my consultation with an orthodontist I decided to do it.  And the orthodontist decided that Invisaligns would be just the ticket.  Invisaligns are removeable sets of clear "trays" that you wear for a number of weeks and then move to a new pair.  Each subsequent pair realigns your teeth a little bit more.  They fit in well with my lifestyle as I did a lot of public speaking at that time.  I could pop them out if I really needed to, and when they were in, they were practically undetectable.  I had to get all my wisdom teeth pulled (two of them severely impacted) prior to getting those braces, but really, that wasn't as bad as I had heard it could be.  Initially my ortho thought 16 to 18 months in them.  When I started all this, I hadn't yet turned 38.  My goal?  Be done with the entire process by my 40th birthday.

 

I wasn't.  By the time I celebrated my 40th birthday, I was in traditional braces, having failed Invisaligns.  Not the Invisaligns fault, mind you.  The doctor admits that he thought that they might not be able to correct the rotational problems I had.  It was a bad call on his part.  Had they worked, it would have been great.  But instead, I had to be in braces for a short time…  "You'll have to wear these braces for 6-8 months" I was told.  A year came and went.  And 'now' I am moving.  He tells me he'll probably have them off before I move.  He didn't.  He then told me I'd have to come back once and then a second time, around the holidays, to get them off.  The holidays came and went.  Mind you, I am travelling back to California from Colorado for these appointments!  And there seems to be no end in sight. 

By now, I am 41 and a half.  I am still in braces.  I can no longer afford the time nor the expense of traveling out for regular orthodontic visits, and I am leaving on a 2+ month mission to trip to a place where there is not only no access to orthodontia, I'm not even sure how far away the nearest doctor is.  Those babies needed to come off.  And yesterday, sitting in that chair, when the orthodontist peered into my mouth, I thought I heard the angels sing when he said, "So, do you want these off today?"…

Paying for braces?  Expensive.

Getting braces off? Painful.

Taking a good look at teeth I hadn't seen in a long time, now all straight and beautiful?  Priceless!!

I was unable to get a good picture to show you my new smile, my new grill, but that's okay…I bet most of you never saw my old one!

And They’re Off!!!!

My braces!

More later!!

“I like, playin’ games, on the ‘peter!”

That’s what my nephew Mitchell was singing a few moments ago.

This morning he was watching my niece Avalon playing games on my laptop.  He came back to my Mom’s house where I am staying and asked if I’d play the games with him.  Sure, why not.  He wanted me to play while he watched.  I wondered if someone of his age (just barely four) could use a glide pad and get the right “tap tap” hold and drag cadence necessary.  I explained to him what he needed to do, and held his hand and tap tapped with him ONCE and he had it.  He needed some verbal cueing on occasion.  But only at first. 

 

He’s a natural. 

Just this morning my sister Whitney was marveling at the ironic differences between she and Connie, and between her son, and Phil and Connie’s kids.  Connie loved being out doors and doing pretty much anything that could possibly hold a shred of adventure.  She dragged Phil and the kids out on a regular basis to investigate waterfalls, wildflowers, rock formations, any manner of natural or unnatural oddities.  Once out they all enjoyed themselves, but the place where you are likely to find THEM if they are simply allowed to do what they wish, is in front of a computer.

Mitchell, on the other hand, is an outdoor kid.  His mother?  A self-proclaimed “sedentarian”  Now that he’s older, Connie would have totally loved how he would rather be outside playing and running around than doing pretty much anything else. 

I think I wrecked that.

Today he spent at least two hours in complete silence and in repose, tap tapping and dragging around the glide pad like a pro.  I had to kick him off the “peter” to check my e-mail and he has been pestering me non-stop since to let him back on!  I’ve created a monster…

 

Happy Mother’s Day

In my family's inner circle, there are four mothers.  The matriarch of my family is my mother, Cheryl.  Both of my grandmothers passed away some years ago, so it is my mother's generation who "rule" the family.  Then there is my sister Liz who has two children of her own, and one step daughter.  My sister Whitney has one son.  The fourth mother in my little family is my sister-in-law, Connie, who passed away last July, on the birthday of her eldest son. 

I have probably mentioned some, or even most, of what I am to write today in previous postings.  So, if I am boringly repetitive, please forgive.

Mother's Day is a classic greeting card company holiday.  The talking heads of one of the greeting card greats sat down and decided that there isn't enough inherent guilt in life, that the general public had a huge reservoir of guilt and for feeling badly that had yet to be tapped.  And they created Mother's Day, and Father's Day, and Valentine's Day, and Secretary's Day (and Professional Executive Administrative Assistant's day), and Bosses' Day, etc.  These are days where people are made to feel guilty if they don't celebrate them, and where those who fall into the category of the thing being celebrated can feel badly if no one goes out of their way to make the day special.

As a nurse there's practically no end of the "days" set forth by WHOMEVER that require celebration.  I qualify to be celebrated on Emergency Nurses Day, (plain old) Nurses WEEK, Orthopaedic Nurses Day, Radiology Nurses Day, and a couple of others that are so esoteric as to be ridiculous.  It's a shame.  If you must, have a Nurses Day, and be done with it.  All I mean to do, is to point out that if you have to break people down into such small categories in order to celebrate them, then we probably aren't doing a good enough job celebrating them every other day of the year.

Back to mothers.  For our mother this year, my sister Diane flew her out to Colorado to spend five days with her, and with her sister (my aunt) who was out to see her daughter (my cousin, Julie).  And, since my mother has many responsibilities in California, I came here to "fill in" for her so that she could be gone and not feel like she was leaving my brother and my sister in the lurch when it came to helping to care for their children. 

I just got off the phone with her.  She is having a relaxing day with my sister(her daughter), her sister, and her niece.  They are drinking mimosas.  My sister Liz is BBQing with her family.  My sister Whitney is playing "Life" with her son.  My brother Phil, still bereft from the loss of his children's mother, has taken his four children out hiking for the day. 

In my life, I have not only been blessed by my own mother, but by the mothers of friends of mine.  Some of whom I even call "mom".  To all of you women, and you know who you are….

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

Even if it IS a greeting card holiday…

Love/Hate Relationship

Love/hate relationships show up often in life.  We love our cars, but hate the cost of having them.  We love ice cream, but hate what it does to our thighs.  We love TV but hate how it makes us feel like we are wasting so much time…right? 

My BIGGEST love/hate relationship BY FAR is with technology.  Some day (I keep promising in my posts to discuss things at length in the future, but never seem to get around to it, but I'm going to do it again here anyway), some day I will tell you more about how this love/hate relationship looks in my life, but today, TODAY, I am going to cyber-scream on internet connections.  I am currently in LA visiting my family, seeing friends, and hopefully beyond hope, getting my braces off.

My brother, who doesn't know what ISP stands for, recently went wireless.  His two oldest children have laptops and there are times when three or more people in the house need to be on line at one time.  So, despite his technological naivete, he has gone extremely high tech.

I brought my laptop with me and last night spent a grueling two hours trying to help my sister learn how to upload pictures and personalize her blog in between getting kicked off the wireless connection at extremely regular intervals.  I figured maybe I was out of signal range although I was less than fifty feet from the router.  (I am staying in my mother's "Little House By The Pond" which is the little back house at my brother's.  I'll be in the cute little cottage until my mother returns from Colorado on Tuesday evening.)

So, this morning, I am INSIDE, on a desktop, and still, I am having problems.  I was able to get here to post, but for whatever reason, I cannot get into AOL.  Not directly nor by going through Internet Explorer.  So I cannot check my mail.  I can SEE what is in my mailbox, but can't access it.  Frustrating.  Frustrating.  Frustrating.

But, my four year old nephew went to bed with wet hair, and this morning, when he woke up, every hair on his head is a riot of curls sticking straight up all over.  It is just about the cutest thing.  I would show you a picture, but since my laptop isn't cooperating with this wireless system, and since the computer I am using doesn't have an SD card reader, you are, sadly, out of luck!

More later!

Two Wholly Unrelated Things

Wow.  I should have called this BanalBlahBlog.  My recent postings have really poured on the boring.  And I continue without digressing…

First thing.  I have a rule I follow when I fly.  Wear comfortable, closed toed shoes that you can run through a burning plane in.  (Cheery thought, but I am a worst-case-scenario girl, and I always have an exit plan in case of emergency!)  I am breaking that rule today in order to wear an absolutely adorable new pair of black high heeled sandals.  But I am taking tennis shoes in my carry-on, just in case…

Second thing.  I had my sister over for breakfast today.  I made bran muffins.  The batter didn't look right to me, but I've never made them before, so I wasn't sure.  I showed it to my sister who confirmed that it didn't look right.  And she expressed shock that I'd never made them before.  Anyhow, it took her about 10 seconds to figure out where I went wrong…

Don't ever try to make bran muffins out of the extra fiber All-Bran if you expect them to be what you expect.  Just get the regular fiber stuff.  Now, the end result was a pretty tasty muffin afterall.  Just not very pretty ones.