he thought i was hot

I went to the store today and passed a young guy who caught my eye and looked me over, up and down. I thought at first my shirt was undone or maybe I had stuff in my teeth, but no...

In reality he was probably checking out my whole-wheat pitas, but I'm pretending he thought I was hot. ;)

happy birthday mom

Today is my mom's birthday. Since I am not the type to say these things out loud (we are not a touchy-feely family) I will write a few things here that I have always loved about my mom:

* She allows me to be who I am.
* She supports me in everything I want to do.
* She taught me choice and consequence but never says, "I told you so."
* She loves me when I don't deserve it.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

i think of my dad

Now that the weather is warmer, I have a list of big projects staring me in the face, daring me to put them off another year. And when I think of big projects, I think of my dad. And I really, really wish he was here...

So in honor of his would-be birthday this week, here is a short list of the projects Dave and I remember most, in no particular order...

• Cooking a turkey in the old wood-burning stove at the cabin one year.
• Taping the Endeavor's numbers on with duct tape the first year at the Bonneville Speed Show.
• Water-witching in the back-yard on Barker. Presumably there was a reason for this...
  
• Tractor-pulling.
  
• Putting a stem on Dave's orange Bug to dress it up for Halloween.
  
• Paul's Dodge Do-More.
  
• Packing all our belongings on a flatbed truck and hauling them 800 miles home, in an early October snow storm, just to avoid renting a truck.
• Installing a push-button starter in Dave's bug to by-pass the actual starter (it was quicker than fixing it.)
• Taking the whole family to the bowling alley on a school bus.
• Countless last-minute musical numbers at McCombs Family Reunions.

And the list goes on and on...

expecting nothing, hoping for the best

If I could just be perfect in every way, I would be really, truly happy. But in the meantime, I would settle for having a green thumb. My husband has a green thumb (and he doesn't even care), my mom has a green thumb, my grandpa had a green thumb - he even grew his own grapes to make his own wine and had a whole plant room right in the house. I always liked going in there. It was like entering a foreign land, with vines and cacti and the smell of hot peppers...

So for the last 4 or 5 years I have been trying desperately to learn how to garden. It may be the constant reminders from our church about the importance of provident living, or the 9 million ads and articles about sustainable living, or maybe it is just who I am, but I really want to grow my own food. Flowers too, of course.

Over the years I have gathered enough advice (good and bad) to put together my own gardening book, but I am still not a success. I have had a few good crops here and there, but it's been hit and miss at best. At times I have sat in my garden and cried with frustration over plants that just wouldn't grow, soaker hoses that had burst into geysers, mildew on squash leaves, holes in tomato leaves, dry ground, flooded ground, too much or too little sun...

But this year, I think I have finally learned. I am expecting nothing, hoping for the best and experimenting however I want... expandable peat pots here I come!

fat jeans

The moral of the story is, never buy a pair of fat jeans. (Story itself has been omitted because it is too painful to tell.)