It's a photo version of how things go in my head

Believe it or don't there are photos today!!!  There will be cute pics and there will be admissions of guilt and stupidity.  There will be trips down Memory Lane. And!  If that weren't worth the price of admission, you will get to be the first people to see the new table.  Yay!!!

So, let's get started, shall we?

Look at my new friend, Scruffy!  Isn't he the cutest?  Scruffy was on Death Row until my brother-in-law saved his life.  Scruffy had just had a bath and I was trying to photograph how his hair just naturally wants to be spikey and mohawk-y.

Next we come to some pictures of the very first house Mr. Big Ed and I bought.  Way back in 1983 we bought this little garden home and signed our lives away.  I remember clearly hearing the title guy say "Now, you are agreeing to make payments till 2013" and we looked at each other and thought "Whoa!  2013!  Damn, that sounds all Space Odyssey in the future!"  And all these years later we have moved more times than I care to think about and guess what?

It STILL ISN'T 2013!!!  That damn house STILL  wouldn't be all ours yet.  Good Lord.

But what I want you to notice is the 2 Wild Olive Trees in the front yard.  We planted them way back in the day and they were tiny little trees then.  They are big, gnarled and gorgeous now.  I just adore those olive trees and I would like to have some again.  Maybe we should find a place to put them in this yard?

While we were driving around looking at my old house we went by our old church and school.  This is where we chose to worship after we were married.  This is where my babies were baptized.  And also where we chose to start the kids in school.  It has also grown and changed over the years.

The first view is from the parking lot looking at the front of the school.  It didn't used to be green.  To the left of where I was standing is the Parish Hall.  And in front and to the right a bit is the actual church.

This one is the church.

And what do we have here?  This is the view from my front door waaaaaaay up at the top of the hill looking waaaaaay back down to the street at the delivery truck that brought my new coffee table for the living room.

And here it is!!!  Gasp!  It took me six years of searching and searching to find this table.  Notice anything?

Like maybe it is too f*cking TALL?  Like maybe this really isn't a COFFEE TABLE at all????


Like maybe I might have bought the wrong flipping thing?  I swear I read that this was a coffee table that the legs could be twisted up to be like a game table and then it opens up to be a spare dining table.

Let me back up to say that I bought this sight unseen.  Sort of.  I bought it on OneKingsLane where there were pictures and a description page.  And that is what I recall about it.  That and the fact that I saved $700 for buying it.  Whatever.

So I am going to have to go turn this thing over and find out if the legs actually do get shorter and longer or if I am going to have to chalk this up to experience and put it in another place.

I really, really, really don't want to have to tell Mr. Big Ed I could have screwed this up.  Cross your fingers for me.

I don't even know what to say about this table business.  I mean look at those legs do you see any possible way those things can telescope in on themselves?  It's too heavy for me to flip it over all by myself so it will have to wait till Sparky gets home this afternoon before we can start investigating.

You may want to cross more than your fingers on this deal.

Year in Review or the Rear-view mirror

It has been many days since I last posted, and while thinking about what scintillating topic to ramble on about, I thought to myself "Self, remember last year when you made all those resolutions for this year? How did that go?"

So, I went back to the beginning of this year and scoped out the post on what all I was going to accomplish.  (See, the reason I started blogging was to hold myself accountable.  If it is all typed out in black and pink then I need to follow through)

What follows is my list of six items that I thought I could accomplish in 2010 and then I will update with what really happened.

1. My savings account will increase by $20,000. I don't know how do-able this really is, but I am using Sluggy as my motivator. She shot for 60K last year and landed in the 20's, which I think is great work. Now last year I moaned and ranted and bitched about how every time I save $250 for example, I then get a bill for $250, so I am REALLY hoping this is not going to be the case with my $20,000 goal. Please wish me luck and cross something for me.

What happened here is lots and lots of car maintenance.  Sparky's car, Rachel Pie's car and my own car all needed new brakes, tires, I think there were batteries and rotors and heaven only knows what other parts involved.  Also, I took July and August off of birthing since we had the big family cruise and the wedding, so that was loss of income.  Then my Grandma (r.i.p.) got so sick and I had to give away clients for Sept. and Oct. when I went to be with her, so that was more loss of income.  I will end the year with $5,000 in my savings account.  That is a far cry from $20,000.  But at least it is still something to the positive, right?

2. Continue on my Compact goals of lightening my footprint on the Mother Earth. I am going to step up all of my activities to another level and see how that goes. You know the drill, less packaging in the house, less things in the garbage, more in the compost, more things gone to Goodwill, less things brought in to the house in the first place.

This went well.  I really did buy way less.  I did choose things with less packaging.  Our compost heaps over-runneth!  And our garbage cans are hardly ever full.  There is still way too much going into the recycling though.  I would love to find a way to get even that reduced by more than half.  

3. Get started WAAAAAAYY earlier on Christmas and birthday gifts. I did not allow near enough time this year and Harry and David came to the rescue for several gifts. Not good planning on my part. I think lots of gifts this year will be through Heifer and Kiva. But the homemade gifts will be started on in April, I think.

Yeah, not so much.  Again, with the poor planning.  Thank the stars above for Harry and for David.  April would have been a good place to start on gifts, but that didn't happen.  Big fat failure on item number 3.

4. Start walking and find a way to get in much better health and better shape this year. 2 of my high school friends dropped dead this year unexpectedly and I am not only deeply saddened by this, but shocked that 50 year old people who should be in their prime are not. I would really like to be around for a little longer. I have more to accomplish, more to see, and I am not even remotely ready to kick said bucket.

You would think that I would remember this particular item.  But no, I had no recollection of this.  As a matter of fact, a little germ of an idea has been sprouting in my brain that says 2011 will be the year of me. The year that I will take care of me.  The year that I will make myself a priority.  Nay, not A priority, but rather THE priority!  Not even a glimmer that I had thought this very thing a year ago. 

5. Toward the end of better health, I will be doing more of my meal planning and shopping through Greenling our local online green grocer and at the farmers markets. Keeping it local and organic can only be good for all of us.

I did do this.  Not as consistently as I would have liked.  But it was an a-typical year with me being gone for extended lengths of time.  I will plan on doing even better on this in the coming year.  And this goes back to item number 2, all the local green grocer shopping and farmers market shopping have NO plastic involved.

6. Remove 1 full shelf of cookbooks from my collection. There are plenty of them that I have never used. There are plenty more that I only have made 1 single item from. These books need to be set free.

This was a complete success.  I got rid of about 75 books and my shelves have breathing room in them now.  I have not purchased (or been gifted) a single cookbook this year.  I did buy the November Bon Apetit with the new Thanksgiving day recipes to add to my collection.  But that is as close as I came to buying a new cookbook.

If I were grading myself I would give myself:

1. C

2. A

3. F

4. F

5. B

6. A

Horrible.  Now I have to decide what I am going to do for this coming year and how to hold myself accountable in a manner that will really work!  Any ideas?  Do I need to do a monthly or quarterly check-in?

This time of year between Christmas and New Year's is typically a time that I get really introspective and even a little sad, melancholy or sometimes depressed.  And it seemed like the right time to look back and see how I was doing with my goals.  Not very well, it would appear.

Oh, remember the Tea Hoarding Challenge of 2009?  I didn't buy a single tea for the whole calendar year in order to force myself to use up the stockpile of teas already ensconced in my pantry.  Lots of people in my family knew of this and throughout the year of 2010 gifted me teas, like I needed them or something!  And those no good sorry asses at Whole Paycheck Foods stopped having my very favorite morning tea in stock. I bet I went in there 5 or 6 times and spoke to the tea ordering person and gave her my card and asked her to please call me whenever they got re-stocked.  I get really irritated at this store because they carry items and you try them and like them and get used to them and the next thing you know, BAM!  they don't have it anymore.  It's rather like shopping at Costco in that regard!

So I started worrying that maybe Taylor's of Harrogate had quit making the awesome Scottish Breakfast Tea and it wasn't Whole Paycheck Foods' fault that they no longer carried the best tea ever.  And I went online and scoped it out.  

Of course they still make it!  Of course they were perfectly willing to sell it to me and ship it over here from Merry Ole England!  Even with the shipping it would still be comparable to WF price.  So I quit panicking and decided that I would order some as soon as my current tea stash went down. 

Meanwhile, my sister went on the hunt and sent me a box for Christmas.  (She had previously sent me a different tea, 2 gorgeous tea cups and a tea towel for my birthday) And my husband, Mr. Big Ed, got me a package of SIX BOXES of the famous Scottish Breakfast Tea for Christmas!!!  So I currently have 7 boxes of my favorite morning tea.  

Have I mentioned that each of these boxes contains 50 bags?  By anyone's estimations this is a year's supply of tea.  So!  No more tea buying for me.  I have yet to make my list of resolutions, but suffice it to say there will be no tea shopping for me in 2011.  : )

Next week I will post my list of 2011 resolutions and maybe motivation and memory-boosting need to be at the top of that list?

Memory!

Yes, I am singing that damn song from Cats. I love that song, but it is one of those that gets stuck in your head and there you are walking down the aisle of the grocery store humming and annoying all the other shoppers. Seems as though I hum louder outside my head than inside my head. I bet I hum better and more on-key in my head, too!

This is the story of my life. I sit down at the computer to post something new, exciting and relevant and what happens? It all goes out the window, I get distracted by some new shiny object and nothing gets done. So I get up and go about my business and then the thought pops back in my head and we start this all over again.

And here is the fun part! When I try to remember what I was going to post about, the song Memory starts going. Then I say to myself "If I only could remember . . . . " and then my theme song soundtrack switches to "If I Only Had a Brain!!!" Lovely.

So basically this is post about me and my menopausal brain forgetting important things and remembering lame-ass songs from eons ago. Nice.

I know what you're thinking, you wish you were me, right? Yeah, not so much.

Ok, well here is what I am sure I meant to post at the beginning of all this fal-de-ral. I have just finished reading a fabulous book. It is called "A Midwife's Tale, the diary of Martha Ballard, 1782 - 1810" I am just guessing on the dates because the book is in the other room and if I wander over there to get it, chances are I may not remember to come back! Anyhoo, this is a well-researched and documented little chunk of history told through the diary of a midwife back in the 18th century in Maine. Mrs. Martha Ballard and her husband Ephraim settle in Maine in the area that became Augusta right on the Kennebuc river. Through her diary she lists all the babies she birthed, whether she was paid, what the weather was like, who died, what things she did such as planting, weaving, washing, etc., rather like an almanac. It is a really interesting read.

The author did tons and tons of research and verification of who was who in the township, what were the customs, etc. through other surviving documents, diaries, maps, etc. Speaking of maps, Martha's husband Ephraim was a surveyor and many of his maps still survive. Can you guess how much I want to go to Maine and go through the museum that houses all this stuff and look at where she lived and walked? Very exciting stuff!

Martha's sister had a daughter who became famous in her own right, Miss Clara Barton the founder of the American Red Cross. She was a feisty feminist for her time! And the great, great granddaughter who inherited the diaries became one of the very first women to become a doctor in the U.S. She is the one who donated them to the Maine state museum for their archives.

My favorite phrase I picked up from reading this is "leaving them Cleverly". This was an old British way of saying in good shape, or good health. So when Martha journaled that she left mom and babe Cleverly, she was saying all was well. I love it!

Last night I picked up "Son of a Witch", the sequel to "Wicked". I read "Wicked" a few years ago and followed it up with the "Ugly Stepsister's Tale". Now I am re-acquainting myself with the Land of Oz. Makes me wish I had the gift of imagination that the author does.

And with that, I hope this finds all of you Cleverly. I am going to find my marbles.

Bette Davis was right!!!

That Bette Davis, now she was a woman you didn't mess with! Talk about feisty and gutsy. I bet her middle name was Feisty. Bette Feiste Davis. That looks about right.

Anyhoo, so Bette Davis is famously quoted as saying "Getting old is not for the faint of heart, or wimps, or wussies, or something". It has become crystal clear to me what she meant by this. I turned the big 5 - 0 in December, so that makes me 50 years and 5 months give or take a day or two. And since that time menopause has kicked my memory's ass. Kicked it down the street, around the block, up in the air and slam-dunked it into the trash. That is how bad things are getting. If I was faint of heart, or a wimp, or a big fat wussie I might be considering getting in bed, pulling the covers up over my wimpy head and staying there.

You might be asking yourself, "Self, what the hell is Lisa Pie going on about". The answer to that is this: Wednesday I loaded all sorts of crap in my car to take to Goodwill. I got in the car and drove off realizing I had my cel phone in my pocket and reached in to put it in the cup holder that doubles as my cel phone holder. This is when I found NOT my cel phone, but my house phone! Which was by the by, searching desperately for the base. I did say to myself at that time, Lisa Pie you Gomer, what the hell are you doing? After successfully giving the items to the Goodwill guy and not giving him all the rest of the stuff in my car, I went around front of the store and thought I might just go in and see if they have anything that is on my "wish list". I reached for my purse and it dawned on me that I had grabbed the wrong purse. This purse was a cute, small purse that I had used on my last roadtrip but had nothing in it but some change. No license. No credit cards. No $$$$$. Nothing. Zip.

I was driving around without a license! I have not done that before. Ever. So I very, very carefully went back home to leave the house phone and pick up the right purse before I headed over to Super Target to do my regular shopping and not bothering with Goodwill Wish List shopping.

Yesterday, I kept running around like a hummingbird flitting from one thing to another, never staying on task or finishing a damn thing. At some point I got something on my pants and decided to just take them off and find a few like-colored things and wash them. So I dropped my pants and tossed them in the sink and then hit them with the Stain Stick and ran a load of light colors. Later on I was at the computer, like I am now while typing this, and looked down to my right where I always have my cel phone, house phone and a cup of tea and there was the tea and the house phone. No cel phone. Where the hell did I leave my cel phone? Immediately I remembered going to my closet to change and thought "Oh, I bet I left in the closet for the 1,423,456th time". It wasn't there! So I got the house phone and started calling it so I could hear it ring. Straight to voice mail, but the caller tune wasn't playing. That's very odd. Why would that not be working? Shit, on top of everything else I am going to have to call T-mobile and ask what is up with the damn caller tunes. Then a horrible thought occurred to me, and it wasn't a bolt of lightening thought, it was more like a slow oozing molasses in winter thought that washed down from the top recesses of my brain. Holy Moley, I bet the cel phone was in my pants pocket when I doused it in the sink and threw it in the washer!! O. M. G.

This was not a happy thought for me. This is something I would make fun of other (cough, Rachel Pie, cough) people for doing. I opened the washer and there it was on the bottom underneath all the damp clothes. Washed, rinsed and spun-dried. Can you believe that? I couldn't.

I do know that I have read that if your phone ever gets wet, damp, excess moisture you are supposed to take the back off, remove SIM card, battery and let everything dry out really well. So that is what I did. Except every hour or 2 I would put it all back together to check it and see if it was working. It wasn't. Are you surprised? I wasn't.

Today, I put it back together and guess what? It is working again! The screen is not as clear as it was, but if you didn't know this story and looked at it I am willing to wager you might not know the difference either. This phone is 4 years old and I have been thinking seriously about upgrading for a long time now. But now, I am not so sure. If a phone can go through what this one did, and still have the ummpphh to keep working, this might be a phone to stick with!

So, I am thinking I may have to go see some sort of doctor, accupuncturist, herbalist, something to help manage my hormones so I don't keep losing my marbles. Or purse. Or house phone. Or cel phone. Or whatever else I have misplaced and just can't remember yet!!

I think this is why older women act like they don't give a shit about what other people think. They have already got too much on their minds as it is without having to be concerned with whether their shoes match, or the young cute girls in the store think they are laughable, or whether they picked up the right purse.

Raise a glass and toast Bette Davis. Now, she is a woman worth emulating!