1. Which side is your armrest in the cinema? Whichever side is not being occupied.  If I’m with the hubby, it’s the side we share because I am usually cold.
2. What is Beauty? Beauty is anything that brings you joy and makes you smile, yet does not take away from someone else’s happiness. (Keeping in mind that we choose to be happy, then finding beauty should be easy!)
3.  If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a song about him? Because some kid had a poor sense of sarcasm, and poor Jimmy was probably being bullied by that kid on the bus.
4. Which is a stronger emotion: anger or love? Anger is usually more forceful, but not stronger. Anger does not keep marriages together. Love is shown in actions that range from grandiose to those little things like saving the last piece of pie for a loved one, holding the door open, and a quiet peck on the cheek. All the combined force of love makes it stronger in its culmination.
5. Would you give your life to save someone else’s? Yes, especially if that person was in my family. 
6. Why does mineral water that has “trickled through mountains for centuries” go out of date next year? It’s all from the tap!  Don’t believe the hype. Get a water filter and save your money!

Thanks to Blazing Minds for these questions!
 

I realized earlier as I picked up the last roll of toilet paper in the house that I forgot to buy more at the store the other day.  In this house, with 3 females (who are home all day), just how valuable this commodity is.  How ironic that “commodity” and “commode” are formed from the same French word meaning “suitable” (sorry, that’s the English teacher trying to jump out).

In our town, I think that stores could raise the price of toilet paper and see lavish profits. Here, throughout the year, and especially during homecoming week, teens in the area participate in tee-peeing houses. I don’t know enough teens here to know what they call the activity down here. Where I’m from, we said you “got rolled” if you woke up to find your yard and trees plastered a billowy white blanket when there was no snow in the forecast. 

Here in Louisiana, rolling is done to popular kids.  If you are tee-pee’d down here, it’s a badge of honor, like you’ve been accepted into the “in” crowd.  Back in Tennessee, if you were rolled, it either meant that you didn’t have a vicious dog to guard your house, and/or you had a location that was an ideal canvas for some Charmin (but don’t expect a thank-you from Mr. Whipple).  Yikes, remembering him makes me OLD.

 

I lived in the same house until I was 18, and we were only rolled once.  I think it was because we had a huge, wide spruce tree in the front yard that some kids saw as the “Mt. Everest of trees” in the neighborhood.  The poor kids never got even half-way up.  Clearly, they were amateurs.

I can’t say I was an expert either.  As a teen, I’d only gone rolling once. A friend and I rolled one house, not very well, but we were inexperienced. It wasn’t bad for a first try.  We didn’t know the people that lived there. We were just finding an easy target. We tried to hit a second house that night, but you don’t take your chances when the “Duke” of the neighborhood is barking like he’s going to rip your head of if he finds you. We ran home (we walked to the next subdivision over to find our targets).  We were 13, out of breath, and a full of adrenaline. 

Back then, with less-stringent animal control laws, dogs roaming in the neighborhood were always a risk. I’d tried to take another friend who spent the night with me to roll someone in my neighborhood, but I quickly changed my mind when I remembered that two Rottweilers lived close to us. They were sweet dogs, but I didn’t want to startle one of them in the middle of the night.

Most of my adult years in Tennessee, I didn’t live in areas where a lot of rolling occurred. About 10 years ago, a group of adults (myself included) did go and roll our preacher’s house one year.  It was all in fun, and we spelled out his name in his front yard.  He was a good sport about it, and we all had a good laugh.  I think some of us were trying to relive our youth.

Apparently, rolling is popular again.  With the rise of the internet, there are guides like this Wiki How To Toilet Paper a House article, and even a Ning network for people who love to teepee.

Now, in spite of a curfew on kids in our town, you find plenty of houses in toilet paper wrap every week here. With the large live oak trees, the results can be very impressive. It reminds me sometimes of how the Spanish moss drapes from the branches.

But then I feel for the people who have to take the stuff down.  Especially if it rains… what a mess!  Anyway, I wonder if the victims ever try to think on the practical side and consider using all that paper for anything, as long as it stays dry?  Maybe shipping material? Or insulation?  All I know is that a lot of toilet paper is being bought in southeast Louisiana, and a great deal is not being used on bottoms.  And now I am anxious as I think of the last roll in my bathroom.  I hope the teens don’t buy it all before I get to the store tomorrow.

I saw this tutorial on how to make a cute bracelet on Instructables.com one day, and started saving tabs of our soda cans so we could make our own.  We included them in the party favor bags of my daughter’s friends after her birthday party because they had loved the ones we’d been wearing so much. One bracelet requires about 20-25 tabs, some elastic cord, and 10-15 minutes. These are adaptable; you can use ribbons in different colors or different colored tabs.  This site shows an example of pink ribbon used instead of elastic cord.

A Google Images search also shows other things you can make with pop tabs, including belts, purses, and more!  Happy recycling!

I consider myself a low-maintenance gal.  I would say I am easy to please when it comes to demands that I make.  But there are a few things that make my day a lot better.  750words.com is one of those things.

A friend recommended Julia Cameron’s The Artist's Way a few years ago to me.  Cameron suggests using morning pages, which involves writing 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness prose, so that your day can be more productive.  There are no rules to the type of writing it must include.  It can be as mundane as the details of everyday life, or it can be the most beautiful poem you’ve ever created.  You can use it for prayer.  There are really no rules for the morning pages.  You can read more about them here. 

I began writing my morning pages in a notebook, pouring out my thoughts onto 3 single-spaced college-ruled pages a day as quickly as possible. I thought my hand would fall off after those 3 pages.  Apparently, I should have bought a smaller notebook.  It took me nearly an hour the first day. I got a little faster through the first week, but my penmanship was sloppy, my hand wasn’t feeling any better, and the kids were impatient.  I jumped ship a little after 2 weeks, and my morning rendezvous with my morning pages came to an end.

Surfing around on Twitter several weeks ago, I read a tweet that mentioned morning pages and 750words.com.  I checked it out, and renewed my dedication to the ritual that same day. I’ve been hooked ever since.

The creator of the site, Buster Benson, created a tool to allow people to write their morning pages online in a secure manner, without too many bells and whistles to distract them from the task.  Three pages of typed prose is approximately 750 words, hence the name.

The best part about it is that I can type so much faster than I can write. I can reach my 3 pages usually in 15 minutes, depending on my thoughts and interruptions. 

The site features some customization, exporting and searching days, and motivational online “badges” to help keep you on the wagon.  The only missing piece right now is universal mobile access, but I believe that will come in the future.  (I wrecked all my streaks last month because I went on vacation and couldn’t save the pages I’d written on my pda to the site.)

The site is free, but accepts donations from “patrons” (those who want to help Buster cover the cost of maintaining the site fees he must pay monthly by donating $4 a month).

If I can accomplish writing my 750 words while drinking my vanilla coffee in the mornings, the rest of my day feels much better.  Apparently, countless other people feel the same way, as Benson had to switch servers today because of the increased traffic the site was receiving. 

Thanks, Buster Benson, for making my morning pages an enjoyable daily ritual.

Not to be confused with “Pinky and the Brain.”  I would prefer that silly cartoon over what is plaguing the 2-year-old right now. 

I had planned on coming up with a better post today, but I have spent most of the day dealing with a non-working air-conditioner (which we do still need in mid-October in southern Louisiana) and a baby with a nasty sinus infection which has permeated into his swollen lymph nodes and now also his eyes.

I thought the junk coming out of his nose was nasty, but the eyes, they are just GROSS.  Every time he wakes up it is a challenge to clean them and put eye drops in.  Not that getting to sleep is an easy thing lately, with our air conditioner on the fritz.

I used to think that parents who had kids with pinkeye just had some red around the eyeball thing that was not a big deal.  I admit, humbly, I was WRONG. 

I feel for any kid who has recurring pinkeye.  Who wants to have boogers coming out of their eyes all day?  It’s not like the poor kid can hide it.  At least the nose conceals most of its prisoners. 

I know how aggravating it is when you want to wake up in the morning and can’t open your eyes.  Now, if there is something yellow and crusty holding your eyelashes like super glue, that is much worse than just being overly tired or sensitive to light. And with the cold, the eyes are tearing up more than usual.  The body is probably toting around a good extra pint of fluid in a toddler with a cold.  A good portion of that seems to be coming out of the eyes.  Then, the crying ensues when we have to clean the eyes and put drops in again, so the cycle repeats.

I’ll be glad when this bout with pink eye is over.