failure to fail

so i missed the celebrating of National Fail Miserably Day. wow, i must be real good at failing. oh well, i suppose i could celebrate today, if that is okay. i really need to celebrate something. and failing sounds pretty good to me. anyone want to come over for yummy chocolate cake i will probably fail to make? anytime is fine with me. just please, don't fail to let me know.

my time of year

i really love autumn. i love the colors--reds, oranges, yellows, chartruse, browns. i love the smell of fall. it's the leaves or something else naturish. i love when you wake up in the morning and jack frost has left a sprinkle of powdered sugar on your grass and car. i love going for walks and crunching throught the fallen leaves. i love raking leaves and jumping into the piles. i love when the days are cooler and you go outside and stand in the sun to warm up or you take a nap in your cool house and lay on the bed and let the sun warm you as it shines through your window. i love pumpkins and gourds. i love to make (well, sometimes, it is still cooking and we all know how i feel about cooking) soups and casseroles because it doesn't make my house unbearable. plus, the warm foods warm my body. i love the days getting shorter. i love the good new tv shows. i love the smell of the woodburning stove being used somewhere in the neighborhood--maybe even at my house. i love halloween. but not the creepy scary stuff. the fun stuff of halloween. kids, costumes, cookies, candy--especially halloween candy, popcorn balls, caramel apples, trick-or-treating, making jack-o-lanterns, costume parades at school. i love making costumes (but i don't do it every year). i love football games--mainly college, and mainly the university of utah. i even enjoy going to the games--taking along a sweater and a thermos of hot chocolate. i feel alive and happy. i really love autumn.

a random bit of info i bet you didn't know about me

i don't like the chicken in campbell's chicken noodle soup. i pick it out. the rest of it is great.

theme songs and funeral songs

do you have a theme song? asks the el presidento of the would-be writers guild. i wish i did. i am sure i could. but it would take some time and research. which i will do. some day. and although i do not have a "theme song", i have been keeping a tentative list of songs i would like sung at my funeral. here are a few (i have not decided the order yet--and the list is not complete):

• "Perhaps Love" a John Denver song. Before he died, i wanted him to come sing it along with Placido Domingo. I bet it would be great live.
• "Livin' on a Prayer" but only if Bon Jovi will come and sing it personally--i think he would. he seems like a really great guy (i saw him on oprah once)
• Handel's "Water Music" played by some philharmonic orchestra
• "It's a Wonderful World" could you please find someone to sing it who has a "louis" voice?
• "I Could Have Danced All Night" from "My Fair Lady"
• "Lonely Goatheard" from "The Sound of Music". I would prefer this to be a sing-along--i LOVE yodeling!

wouldn't that be a great funeral? i hope you all will come...one day far far into the future.

just call me pollyanna...

have you seen pollyanna? great show. anyway, she plays the "glad game". this is where you always try to think of some things to be glad about, especially when it is a difficult something going on.
i have decided to play the glad game today. i had to pay bills today--i hate it. but the glad game will save the day, or so i hope. so here goes:

• i am glad shawn has a good job.
• i am glad i get to be a stay-home mom.
• i am glad i can pay bills on-line.
• i am glad to know where my money is (even if i don't like where it is going).
• i am glad we have the money to pay our bills.
• i am glad to pay tithing.
• i am glad i am a bit organized these days with my bills.

wow. that was a bit difficult at the end. but i think i am definitely gladder. i could make a bigger, longer list of things i am not glad about. but that is not the point.

i am glad. huh.

what about me--the mother?

anna won't give me a kiss goodbye in the mornings anymore when i drop her off at school. she will blow me a kiss but won't even use her hands to send it my way. just a little pucker and blow of her lips and off she goes. she is only in first grade! i am her mother! she can't be too cool for her mom in first grade, can she?
really, my heart is broken.

time keeps on ticking

mikey decided to go underwater the other night while he was taking a tubby. anna decided to time him. she couldn't even get to one. he wasn't even under for a mili-second. but she told him, "wow, mikey, that was almost ten seconds...if i counted really fast."

what if we could speed up time or slow down time according to the pace at which we counted?
now, i am not saying that i would totally manipulate time to try and make things absolutely perfect, i do understand there must needs be opposition in all things, but perhaps i might change the time on a few things to make some days a little more pleasant. for example:

• i would speed up the time i am in my car with the kids screaming at me and at each other. that would be nice.
• my summers would be really fast and my autumns really long.
• nights would definitely be slower as would weekends...sometimes (shawn gets what we like to call the "saturdays" and that is when he has NO projects to do or rather NO money to make it possible for a project...i don't particularly care for those saturdays).
• maybe i might have another baby...count away the weeks of pregnancy.
• maybe make a summer storm linger a little longer.
• shorten travel time (NOT vacation time, just travel time).
• speed up headaches and cramps and periods and such.
• january and february inversion would last about a half hour.
• spring would pop up earlier and last long into july.
• i would count as fast as i could during an especially boring and dull meeting.
• hugs would always be counted slower.

just a few ideas. perhaps, just maybe, if i take more time and really enjoy the moments i want, then maybe i could, sort of, maybe, manipulate time in my little world. i don't know.