Poor Porky Pig

I'm worried about Kristen. 

This is a conversation we had last week:

Kristen: Mom, I just had the most exciting day!

Me: What was so exciting about it? Did it involve free food?

Kristen: My awesome teacher brought visual aids to class.

Me: What kind of visual aids?

Kristen: A pig's heart and lungs!

Me: (silence)

Kristen: It was so cool!!!! I got to hold the heart and the lungs. 

Me: This was exciting?

Kristen: yes yes yes! It was so cool; the dead pig parts looked more "real" because they were from the butcher and they hadn't been in formaldehyde like a cadaver would be.

Me: (gagging) Why would your teacher bring pig parts?

Kristen:  So we could see how things actually work!!! We intubated the lungs and cut the heart in half!!! You could feel the arteries and vessels!!!

Me: How would you rate this with all of your other nursing school experiences in the past two years on a scale of 1-10?

Kristen: an eight or nine!!!!

This is a girl who needs to graduate and rejoin the real world. Yeah, I'm concerned...

Am I over-reacting?

hugs

Give someone or everyone you love a big hug today. It matters. It really does.

Is it time for Cubic Zirconium?

Multiple choice question:

What is missing in the above picture? 

a. a cubic zirconium

b. a lump of coal

c.  a wad of bubblegum

d. a diamond

If you answered quickly and correctly (d.) then you are a regular reader of this blog. Or you are just unusually intelligent. I know this because this is the best picture I could get of my ring with out the diamond. If you squinch your eyes up real tight and stare like crazy, you can see where the rock used to be.

You say chip; I say rock. It hadn't sunk in that it is truly gone until today, when I went shopping and I started clicking my left hand ring finger on the handle of the shopping cart and the click was gone. I never realized how much I like clicking my finger. Sometimes it's the little things we take for granted and miss the most. Like my little diamond. 

I'M IT!!

Tracy tagged me!!!! I am so excited!!!! I have never been tagged before!!!!! Can you tell?

Okay, apparently you go to something called a "folder" and once you find the "folders" you go to the sixth folder. Then you proceed to the 6th photo in the folder and tell all about it. It being the sixth picture in the sixth folder. (Sounds sort of like a religious rite or something.)

The picture above is actually the fourth photo in the second folder but it is a cool picture that Jake actually took in actual Nepal and those are real cobras and we used this picture in Wes' s Nepal report and it was the most exciting thing in his report (basically because of the REAL cobras) so I was going to pretend that this was the sixth of sixth. But then I thought that might bring a hex down upon us and who wants a hex? So here it is, the sixth photo from the sixth folder:

This is a picture of Jessie and her friend Erin, last spring, after their dance performance. 

Nowhere near as cool as a snake charmer with real cobras in actual Nepal; but they (Jessie and Erin) are way more pretty. Now I am not worried about a hex; just about what Jessie is going to say about me using this photo. 

Oh yeah, I get to TAG people now!!!! 

but, cept, um, uh, I don't know who to tag. Let me know if you want to be tagged, cause I will for sure TAG YOU!!!!!

**Rules***1. Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures.2. Go to the 6th Folder and then pick the 6th Picture. 3. Post it on your bloggy and tell the story that goes with the picture. 4. Tag 5 other glorious peoples to do the same thing and leave a comment on their bloggy tellin’ them ’bout it.
I TAG...

**put your name here.**

Why Not to Clean

This post could be about Kristen and the fact that she goes to this church for the free food. 

But it's not. At least for now. 

So I am just chillaxin after a long day. Today I cleaned areas that haven't been looked at, let alone cleaned, since we moved into this house almost 4 years ago. Yikes. I dusted (if you can call it that) the top of the armoire. 4 years of dust. Yuck. I took apart the fan and gave it a good detail. I threw away a bunch of random things like baskets and candles and little stuffed bunnies (why do I have little stuffed bunnies in MY room?) and the like. I'm so over baskets, candles, fake flowers, ceramic figurines; basically anything whose main function is to attract dust. I put Laura, from Little House on the Prairie, in a box. I'm not going to throw her out...she is "Laura"  after all. Oh, I loved those books. When we go camping there is a tiny part of me who still pretends she is Laura. You don't have to tell me that's weird. I know. 

I cleaned out the humidifier. If I could invent the self-cleaning humidifier I would and I would be a rich woman. What is all that un-identifiable crusty gunk? But the good part is making my house smell like a swimming pool with all the bleach in the bathtub. Yum. I cleaned out the dirt cup thing in the vacuum cleaner twice. I love cleaning out that dirt cup. It's the best part of vacuuming. Not that there really is a "best" part of vacuuming, but if there were... Something about unlocking the little dirt holder and dumping it out and pulling out the filter and scraping and shaking the accumulation of dust off is oddly satisfying. I always want to vacuum it clean, but then I realize that what I want to vacuum IS the vacuum. What I really need is 2 vacuums in tandem. (That would be my 2nd idea for an invention in one day; how DO I come up with this stuff?)  (And how can I take these ideas and turn them into cash?)

I had 28 to be read books next to my bed; piled on, around, under, and next to my bedside table. Those are just the books: there were also a bunch of magazines and yet another cute, albeit dusty, bunny.  I shelved a few books, threw out the magazines (that was the hardest thing to do), and tossed the bunny. Then I stacked the 25 remaining books very symmetrically. They will stay that way for approximately 24 hours. 

All this before 2 p.m. I forgot to mention that Wes played fake sick today so he was kind of hanging around with me doing the fake sick thing. I have to pretend like I think he is sick, but he knows that I know that he isn't, and I know that he knows that I know he's not sick, but sometimes a kid just needs a day off. I think. 

But now, instead of reveling in my accomplishments I am not. Why? Two reasons: one, I am suffering either from food poisoning or something else that is causing my stomach to feel like it is doing jumping jacks inside my gut. Reason number two would be the fact that today I lost THE DIAMOND FROM MY WEDDING RING! And when I say THE, I mean the BIG one in the middle. (BIG in relation to the other teeny diamonds around it). And that is one want there is no turning into a need, no matter how I try. 

So, today, instead of a post where I explain all about the epiphany I've recently experienced, I wrote about the day where I cleaned where no man has cleaned before, recognized someone needed a day off, ate Rice Krispies for dinner, and lost a treasure. I gave up the baskets, the bunnies, the magazines, and some ceramic figurines; did I have to lose my diamond too?

Did I?