I love Roma Tomatoes! Actually, I really love Grape and Cherry tomatoes, but they are expensive, whereas Roma’s are often quite a bargain. I am having salad for lunch today (yulch) and I am so glad that we have some Romas that I can add to it. They are nice and firm, and I like that they are not as goopey as regular slicing tomatoes. They are also quite good on toast. (As long as you put a little mayo on it first. 
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Archive for April, 2008
I have really been trying to get in good health this year. I’m eating better, exercising more, going outside, going to the doctor without needing to be threatened by loved ones, and regularly taking my meds. I am trying not to be obsessive about losing the weight and I’ve tried to cut back on how much I post about it here, but the thing that’s getting to me today is–how many pills are worth taking for good health? I’m sure there are people who have to take a lot more than I do, but usually those people have illnesses! I am up to 12 pills/day, and most of them are giant horse pills! And that’s on a day when I don’t have a headache, ’cause one bad headache can add another 2-4 horse-sized pills to my day. And, I will add that none of these are vitamin pills. I’ve tried taking vitamins, but they always make me vomit (or feel like I am about to for hours). And I’ve felt guilty in the past about not taking vitamins, but now my diet is full of natural stuff, and I’ve heard news lately about vitamins possibly doing more harm than good, so no more guilt there. Still, I am gagging down these huge pills twice daily and wondering–is it worth it? Now, I will grant that several of these pills are not intended for long-term, so in about a month I should be done taking them, but still!
We have survived our first big busy Spring weekend. The kids had early dismissal Thursday and no school Friday so I took them to Coralville and we had a fun visit with the Wheelers and Josh’s sister Jenny was nice enough to bring him over after work. Saturday, we celebrated my cousin Rachel’s wedding with my family in Mt. Pleasant–welcome Dan to the family. And we got to see Rusty and Erin Bromwell’s little guy Carson for the first time and we had the thrill of buying a Nintendo Wii (of course it wasn’t for us so we still don’t have one). Sunday, we met Josh’s sister Laura’s intended at the Cedar Rapids airport on our way to her family bridal shower at Aunt Kathy’s. We look forward to welcoming Robert to the family on May 9th. Elise managed to come home with Pink Eye, so I had to keep her home from school yesterday and take her in to the doctor to get eye drops–which was not part of my original plan for the day, but we still managed to get a lot accomplished. We turned in her glasses frames to be fitted for a new lens (because she lost one last week!) and we went to the post office, and got her hair cut, and I organized my scrapbooking stickers, and when the boys got home from school all the kids cleaned their rooms so that we were all ready when Josh got home to leave for Charley’s 3rd birthday party! Now I have a couple of days to try to catch up with things like laundry and exercise before our next busy weekend.
Just in case you haven’t visited the blog recently, or have never really taken the time to explore our blog, I would like to point out a few things that we have updated. First of all, there is the custom header. I’ve added some pictures and new quotes or fun sayings and just in case you didn’t know, they are on a random shuffle so they may be different every time you visit, or you can hit your refresh button and the images will change. This also affects the movie and tv quotes that appear on the left-hand side of the blog, which I have also recently added material to. I am always on the lookout for new material to add to the blog for your time-wasting entertainment. If you have a favorite memory or quote from Josh or I or possibly one of the kids that you think would be fun to add to the blog, let me know, maybe your favorites will make it up! (And since I never really know who all is reading this, please keep any posted suggestions relatively clean, ok? Thanks!)
I noticed a few moments ago that some of the email addresses that are on our subscribers list (that I assume Josh blindly pasted there from my email contacts list) are for my friends abroad, and so I was just wondering if any of my international friends actually receive the subscriber emails and read my blog? If you happen to be one of my international friends who does read this, would you please leave a comment? Thanks.
(And while I have your attention, if you happen to know the email addresses of any of my other international friends who might like to hear from me, would you email me their email addresses, because I have very few. 
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First of all, I’d like to thank you all for your kind words and thoughtfull advice–you are blessings in my life. Next, I figured since I do plenty of complaining on here, I’d better quick take a moment to write about some good stuff too. We have had a really wonderful weekend. Friday night we had dinner with some friends and played games and laughed and just had an uproariously good time. Saturday morning I went scrapbooking with a friend in honor of National Scrapbooking Day. We had interesting conversation and I completed 4 pages! The snow was a surprise to me, but it didn’t slow down any of the fun. When I got back home we had more friends and some family over for more dinner and games and rocking good laughs. (Nelson poster!) I don’t even remember going to bed last night. But this morning I got to sleep in a bit and then Josh and I had a lazy morning in bed going over and synching up our schedules through July. We had yummy grilled cheese for lunch and this evening we are expecting more friends and family over for more dinner and games–should be another riotously good time!
Ok, so I had this realization last night when I was trying to fall asleep so it is foggy at best and may be hard to communicate, but I’m gonna try. If it doesn’t make sense to you, just ignore me. But I got a lot of positive feedback after my project post, so I’m going to kinda continue with that. In a nutshell…I don’t FEEL like an adult.
Excited for the new season of Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel! Last night Josh and I watched the one hour special behind the scenes that took a look at what the cameramen go through on the boats and how they get some of their amazing shots. It was a really interesting show.
I recently tried to watch some old home videos and had some serious trouble with the quality of one of them. Now, I’m not talking about the camerawork, because that is fairly horrific in all of them. It is difficult to watch any of them for any extended length of time because that sort-of carsick headache feeling is inevitable. Especially my videos from Russia, partly because we’re running around so much in them there is almost constant movemenet, and partly I think because everyone is speaking Russian which is difficult even for me to understand now, and every now and again the Russian is interrupted by my awful voice either obnoxiously loud in English or horribly jarbled in Russian. Honestly, after listening to a little bit, I think the people who used to tell me I spoke so well, even without an accent were full of garbage and really just trying to be nice. Anyway, so one of the tapes I tried to watch seemed almost like the film had just deteriorated, so my next big project (on top of trying to lose weight and declutter the house etc) is to record all of my home videos onto dvd. I plan to start with the ones from my travels abroad and then hope to eventually get around to all of them. But for now I’m only thinking of the travel ones because I don’t want to get overwhelmed! I think I have something like 45 tapes, but only 7 or 8 are from my trips. Josh and I are really trying to plan some travels, but it is incredibly difficult now. It’s strange to me how hard it can be to connect with something that was once such a huge part of my life. It sometimes feels like everything that I did before having children wasn’t really me. Like it was a dream or happened to a different person. Which can be sad because there are some beautiful memories. I definately think I am one of the sufferers of momnesia and lost a lot of parts of “myself” over that last decade. I lost demension. But now that the kids are getting older and more self-sufficient and I almost have an empty home several hours a day, I think it is time to excavate my personality. Dig up the things that were once important to me and find new things to excite me as well. The difficulty is in fitting it into my life now which always seems crazy busy without trying to do more or be more. And to muster up the motivation to put in the effort. Because after so many years of living more or less without passion for anything but my family and closest friends, its not easy to change, partly because I think it means acknowledging that I gave up on myself in the first place. I let life dictate how I was going to live and just blamed life’s circumstances when I wasn’t happy. So it’s difficult to think that it is something I could have any control over, and if I could control it now, why not sooner? And what does all of this really mean? This post is completely deterring from what I originally meant to write about so I apologize for dragging you all down this path with me. But as I was writing this I received an email from my Russian sister so I replied and she was still at her computer and she replied almost immediately! So for the last half hour we have been “talking” via emails! It felt good to be able to connect like that. In real time. I can do more. I can be more. I just need to remember that.
Ok, so I don’t exactly. I DO know a small boy who swallowed a spider! Just moments ago I found a small “Charlotte”-like spider dangling from the light fixture above the kitchen table. Chris called the boys over to show them the spider. Someone dared the boys to eat the spider and Jacob said he’d do it for $50 bucks! Chris counter-offered with $20 and Jacob said OK! We all laughed as Jacob pinched off the web and dangled the spider from his fingers. He asked if it was poisonous and Josh said “no.” To which I replied “you don’t know that!” He lifted it up nervously once or twice and almost dropped it down his sleeve hole into his armpit! So he wound the web up a little tighter and made a little snap toward the spider and just as quickly reeled back away from it. Then just as I was saying “Ok, Jacob, enough playing with the spider. Why don’t you take it outside now…” he popped that sucker in his mouth and smacked his jaws feverishly!!!!! Then took a big gulp of water. I could NOT believe it!!! The guys all hooted with shock and awe. I shivered. Josh called Jacob the next Anthony Bourdain. Chris glumly offered up a crisp $20 which Jacob snatched with a celebratory holler. Just then Kate walked in and Jacob burst forth with the story. Kate looked disapprovingly at Chris and scolded “why would you offer a child money to eat a spider? And why would ANY adult in the room encourage such a thing to happen?! And did no one have the sense to tell Chris not to waste his money like that?” To which we all replied that we didn’t think Jacob would really do it! I guess he showed us! Lesson learned.