What I Wore Sunday - Back in the Action!

It's been a long time (Months!  MONTHS!) since I wrote a What I Wore Sunday post and linked up with the FLAP ladies.

Since my last WIWS post I've moved to a new town, in a new province, in a new climate with my husband in a brand new job in a new field of work.  So, it's been a little hectic!  I knew I wanted to link up again, though, and today seemed like as good a day as any, although my outfit was/is pretty mediocre all around.

So here I am in the leather skirt I wore to church.  Ahem.  You've all seen this top before, nothing new there. Tights are from Walmart, shoes are dark grey kitten heels from somewhere lost in the mists of time, and the cardi is the last maternity item I own; kept solely because I don't have another one to replace it with.  The skirt is part of a massive (for me, at least) shopping trip that included the purchase of, I believe FOUR items of clothing.  It's from Reitmans.  There you have it!

31 Days of House To Home

Let me tell you about our day.

It's Sunday.  I woke up at around 6:30 when the sky hadn't even started to lighten and David was bringing me a happy baby to nurse in what seemed to be the middle of the night.  Afterwards, working on the borrowed time of having children placed back in their beds when dawn is right around the corner, I had a quick shower and got through about a paragraph of Bible study before everyone was up.  We had oatmeal for breakfast and let Daddy sleep in for a little while longer.

The craziness of the morning 'everyone needs to wear clothing' rush wasn't too bad today.  And then Clara went back to bed fully dressed and Samuel watched cartoons and David went off to prepare in the church.  I puttered around putting supper in the crockpot and checking Facebook.

Church started at 10:30, and we were all there early to greet people and finish last minute tasks.  After the service we visited and had sandwiches and then we all trickled back to the house eventually.  Clara went to sleep, Samuel went to play quietly in his room, David closed his eyes in our bedroom and I passed out on the sofa.  We slept for almost two hours as a family.  When we woke up it was to the smell of a hot crock pot supper.  We sat down and ate together, and then I called various family members to wish them a happy Thanksgiving weekend.  Samuel and I headed out for a long hike in the late afternoon.  We gathered plants and apples for a pie and seeds for our garden and came home tired and cold.

The children had a hot bubble bath and then took their fuzzy pajama clad little selves to bed with hot water bottles and many quilts.  David and I sat up for a while longer eating banana bread and watching tv before we headed to bed to read and sleep.

I'm telling you about such a simple, boring sort of day because it's indicative of Sabbath; a rest in the midst of life.  It's not an ordinary day, filled with grocery shopping and elaborate cooking and cleaning tasks.  I didn't do laundry, I didn't (other than a pot of oatmeal in the morning and putting food in the slow cooker) do any cooking.  I didn't clean a thing.  No, that's not true, I washed a few pots and wiped the table and counters.  But you get the idea.  It was a rest from the week.  The whole family slept, we ate simple food, we went for a walk and talked to each other.  We went to bed earlier and read.

We're hoping to start the Sabbath as a tradition more and more in our house - rest from the every day.  It's an excellent tradition to have.

31 Days of House To Home

It's Day 11 already!  And Day 11 is a great day to get up on my soapbox and preach a little about something I get Very Frustrated about on a regular basis.  It's soap.  I get really, really frustrated about soap.  Here's the deal, friends:

This is soap.  This is what soap does.  In case you don't want to go click on those links I'll give you a brief outline.  Soap, when used for cleaning something, be it a body or a plate or a floor or your socks, works by suspending bacteria, germs, oils, dirt particles etc. and allowing them to be washed away.  Antibacterial soaps kill bacteria (which actually isn't always a good thing) and non-antibacterial soaps simply liberate the bacteria from the surface of the item so that you can rinse it off.

Basically - soap cleans stuff.  This isn't rocket science.  Some soap is rough, some soap is gentle, some soap has a nice smell, etc. but it all boils down to a substance that cleans.

This begs the question, and please pardon me if it seems overly simplistic, but if soap cleans things - why do we have to use, say, toxic scouring powder on our bathrooms?  Or fume-laden chemicals that actually require you to wear gloves when you use them, on our kitchens?  In a room where you prepare food that you're going to eat?

If you're planning on performing surgery on your table, fine and dandy, use a chemical or something to clean it.  Or, I don't know, I can't really think of a situation where it would be applicable to use something else...maybe if everyone had an antibiotic resistant virus and you needed to disinfect the house?  Good, excellent, go buy something revolting and spray it everywhere.  But to wipe down the bathroom every week?

Keep your soap.

31 Days of House To Home

Celebrate the seasons!

I realized tonight as I was sitting in our neighbour's backyard in the dark, alternately watching the children run wild with sparklers and glow sticks and at the hypnotic glow and crackle of the bonfire in front of me, that celebrating and rejoicing in the change of seasons can come around in just such simple ways.  A few I thought of were:

Stepping outside to breathe the Spring air.
Taking pictures of shoots coming out of the ground.
A first rhubarb recipe of the season.
Buying tulips in season and pressing the petals.
Cleaning the chimneys and windows and whatever else gets especially dirty over the winter.
Circling the 'first days' on the calendar.  First day of farmer's market!
The start of new things.  Why have resolutions in January?  Have them start on the first day of Spring!
Wearing light colours, buying white shoes, doing something light with your hair.
Spending an entire hour thinking about sunscreen and making it a fun outing to buy what you've selected.
A visit to the tree nursery.
The local chip stop is open!  Eat them with tiny red forks while standing outside.
Carefully packing away sweaters.
The trimming of hedges, the sharpening of push mower blades.
The starting days of sports team
Going to a farm, going anywhere, really
The last day of school!
Making an event of the day the local pool opens.
A tinkle of the ice cream cart
Hot days spent in the shade.
Teaching the children to make paper fans
Sitting in the evening outside in the yard with your feet in the kiddie pool
Sprinklers
Sidewalk chalk
Summer dresses made from old flowered sheets
Big floppy hats
The beach in all it's glory
having neighbours over for a barbecue
Fireworks
Camping in the back yard
Bathing the dog outside with the hose
Cleaning the eaves troughs
Fireflies
Listening to the lightening storms
Back to school sales
Exclamations over how much everyone has grown
Visits to family
Buying lots of cards for birthdays to come
Family photos
The first day of school
New shoes
All new supplies.
The first day of a new planner or journal
Crafts with leaves
Carving pumpkins
The delicious anticipation of 'what to be for Hallowe'en'!
Bonfires
Being out after dark
Shorter days.
The night you turn on the furnace
Cold weather foods, crock pots and slow meals
Buying candles and lanterns for blackouts
Counting the stars, watching for meteors
The fall storms
Planning Christmas cards
Present buying trips
Making wrapping paper
The big mailing out!
Guests
Velvet tree skirts, hot chocolate and decorations
Buying a poinsettia
Reading stories
The fireplace
Stockings
Christmas morning
Packing gifts for the less fortunate
The long trip of the wise kings to see the Christ Child
Epiphany cake
Winter birthdays
I Love Yous and candy and special Valentine's dates
Games around the kitchen table
Snowmen!
Feeding the birds
Toboggan rides
Grey and cloudy skies
Seed catalogues
The careful planning of gardens
Watching the produce slowly change in the grocery store
Using up the last of the fall harvest
Lenten reflection
Holy week
Easter morning
New clothes
Chocolate, egg hunts
The first day of Spring
Lengthening days
Setting the clocks forward
Spring babies
Green shoots
Life

Another Day

7:30am - Both of the children slept in and David and I are incredibly grateful for the extra rest.  Samuel comes into our room to wake us up and snuggle for a little bit.  As soon as I send him back to his own bedroom I hear Clara waking up...I guess that's the end of sleep for us.

8:15am - David has gotten up, dressed, and made a pot of porridge for breakfast after settling Samuel in front of cartoons for a bit.  I nurse Clara, change her diaper, and then we all meet around the table to eat.

9:30am - David is off to work.  I tell him lunch will be at 11:30. Samuel is allowed to finish watching Rescue Heroes and then turns off the television for the morning.

9:45am - Change another diaper, get Clara and myself dressed.  Begin the first 15 minute argument with Samuel over putting on his own socks, which he's learning how to do.  Drag him away from destroying my bed, drag him away from annoying his sister.  Send him to his room for time out.  After hearing screaming from the bedroom march in there to drag Clara away from him and, in a stroke of mean Mama genius, simply pop the flippin' red balloon everyone is fighting over.  Lots and lots of tears.  Head back into the room for round two of arguing over whether Samuel can put on his own socks.  A full 30 minutes after he started, the child is finally dressed.

Earlier this week we were given a garbage bag full of clothing for the children - I toss all of the barrettes and hair things in a tub of soapy water to wash.  Wash out the diaper pail.

10:00am - Keeping facebook on all day and am checking it obsessively as I wait for news of my dear friend's baby's birth.

Take out a chicken pot pie I made earlier this week from the freezer to thaw for lunch and a turkey breast to thaw for supper.  Make my bed and start shoveling the endless piles of crap toys and books that the children drag into our room day after day.  Samuel is my 'runner' and brings everything back to it's home base.  Sometimes I sound like a Russian naval officer.  Make my bed and tidy the master bedroom.

10:15am - The children occupy themselves by slowly destroying everything I clean up.  Toss Samuel outside to play in the backyard and change another diaper.  Set Clara at the table with some cashews in little cups to pour and play.  Put the dishes in to soak and start a load of laundry.  Right - I've run out of detergent; add a squirt of dish soap to the wash instead. Clean the cat box, change the kitchen garbage, hang out the wet bedding from the washer on the line.  Samuel is sulking outside because he wants to come in. Tidy up the deck and tell him he's out of luck.

10:30am - The cashews and cups have lost their appeal - I got a full 15 minutes out of them.  Let Clara loose again.  Sigh in disgust over the children's bedrooms as I make their beds.

10:45am - Nurse Clara.  Yell at Samuel to get off the deck and stop looking in the windows to get inside and go play in the sandbox Right. Now.  Jot off a quick email while nursing to David's alma mater who want to put us in the newsletter.

There's a moment of silence.  I refuse to go see what my children are doing.  Finish a cup of tea I started a few hours ago.  Wash the breakfast dishes and wipe down the table; preheat the oven and put the pot pie in to warm up.  Clara is taking apart a rubber repair kit and Samuel finally gets to come inside and wash his hands.  Check facebook and see that my friend has made it to the hospital and is 3cm already!

11:00am - Set the table for lunch, remind Samuel to go and Wash. His. Hands.  Seriously, what is wrong with this child's listening skills today?  Put on a double batch of bread dough to rise and dig through the fridge for some sort of salad-type food to serve with our pot pie.  All I can come up with is a very sad looking cucumber, which I slice up and put on the table with some dressing.  Drag Clara away from the hot oven, away from the table, away from the water...againagainagain.

Leave the kitchen for 8.2 seconds and when I come back Clara is in the process of emptying the salt and pepper shakers.

11:30am - Turn the pot pie up.  Hang the next load of wet laundry out and change another bum.  My house is a wreck.  David comes home and we sit down for lunch and over the din of insane offspring we attempt to recount our mornings and plan our afternoons.

Noon - David takes charge of cleaning up Clara and getting her down for her nap while I clear the table and send Samuel to the bathroom and then to bed.  Everyone gets quiet quickly.  David heads out to the garage to see if the car is ready to be picked up yet and I obsessively check facebook again for baby updates.

He gets back to tell me that although the garage has had our car for FOUR days, they apparently haven't even looked at it yet.  Ridiculous.

12:15pm - David goes to lie down for 45 minutes and I get dressed for nursing home visitation and pack my cross stitch bag to take with me.

5:15pm - Finally home from five hours of visitation and errands.  Dropped off the library books, went to the grocery store in the next town over, sat with the elderly at the home and sang hymns, and then kept another parishioner company.

5:00pm - Make up the gravy for the turkey, boil some yellow beans and get everyone to the table.

6:00pm -   The children refuse to eat anything but cheese and pickles and eventually consent to a little bit of actual supper.  Clara is in bed.  I read Samuel a few stories, nurse him and get him in the bath to splash about for a bit while I check facebook.  My friend is at 6cm!

And now I'm tired of recording a long and stressful day...I can't even make it until bedtime.

31 Days of House To Home

I really pulled out all the stops at the kitchen table this past week.  We made our favourite spicy Italian sausage stew; I tried a new recipe for chicken pot pie; I gathered together the disparate ingredients necessary to pull off the cranberry apple sausage stuffing that we could eat by the pound; I broke the rules of not trying a new dish when you have company and gave Laura Calder's Spinach Gratin a try...it was a glorious, very not-low-fat, completely fantastic week of too much food.

I mentioned before in this series that food is an area that I'm trying to be relaxed about spending money in.  And it naturally progresses, when you serve food to people, that they're going to have opinions about the food you've given them.  My children could eat a large block of cheese but won't touch beans.  Clara would devour as many beets, broccoli florets and pieces of pepperoni I was willing to feed her; Samuel asks for pizza constantly, and likes pasta with tomato sauce, but only touches eggs very gingerly.  David wants hearty food, even in the heat of summer; he's happiest when I set down a steak and kidney pie, homemade biscuits, a roasted chicken with yorkshire pudding and gravy.

I have almost entirely given up on trying to 'stretch' anyone's palate.  I see the value in doing it if the group you were serving consisted of people who would only eat cold cereal and cheetos, but my family (oh happy day!) has enough meals that they can all agree on that I think "Oh, who cares that they won't eat my homemade macaroni and cheese?  Who cares that they don't want peanut butter sandwiches?  What does it really matter that salmon is a battle?"  I've made peace (mostly) with the fact that my family has ideas about what they want to eat.  And preferences can be wonderful, as well; in fact I'm embracing their preferences because I hope that serving favourite foods results in them having happy table memories where they can say in the future "My mother used to make the best bread..."

I want to build their palates, but not at the expense of happiness.

31 Days of House To Home

My inlaws left today and I'm a little sad about it all - they were incredibly helpful and loving and my children are crazy about them...but they live eight hours away from us, and we live a pastor's schedule (which, by the way, only appears to be flexible on the outside and is really very very weird and confined) and so our chances to be with each other are limited.  Still, I'm happy it's only eight hours now instead of the twelve that used to separate us.

Having them leave, and with them my only chance for frequent help with the dishes and extra story-telling for the children, was a downer, I'm not gonna lie.  But there's a lot of stuff in every family's life that's hard - the arrivals and departures, the daily stresses and the chores and whatever.  It's hard, this life thing.  And yet, there's a lesson to learn in all of that; there's something to take away from it that helps you in the making of a home:

Taking Joy In The Journey

I'm really not the best person to give any sort of insight into this, since I'm so new at it myself, but ultimately I think that gratitude, faith, loving gestures; these all equal a better life, a happier life.  I think that finding joy somehow in the ordinary, in the long days, that's the answer to a lot of our questions.  I hope I get better at it.

31 Days of House To Home

So in my last post I told you one of the two most revolutionary ideas I ever had about keeping house; I need to spend money on filling my kitchen with lots of delicious, quality food because it makes my family healthier, my days easier and my house significantly less stressful.

Now the second idea is this

Daily needs should not be treated as a crisis.

I found this idea in one of my favourite books (remember when I mentioned gathering resources around you to help you in creating a home?) and it's resonated with me for a while now.  Every morning your family will wake up and they will put on clothes.  This isn't a surprise; we do it every day, and so having clothes to put on that are clean and functional and appropriate and easily located should not be a crisis for us.  Likewise, however you need to accomplish having food available for everyone to eat needs to be a priority.

It's wonderful to organize our sock drawers, to sweep our front steps and wash all the curtains but if the babies are in diapers because there are no clean clothes to put them in, if teeth need to be brushed and there is no toothpaste, well, then we need to look again at how we're managing.

31 Days of House To Home

The next two days I'm going to focus on probably two of the BIGGEST ideas that have changed the way I think about my personal response to making a home - and tonight it's all about food.

Well, truly, it's half about food and half about priorities.  You see, once upon a time I would have done just about anything to save money.  And don't get me wrong, I still love to save money, but I've realized that there are some things in every household that are the 'breaking points'.  For us, that's food.  If I spend the money to stock our house with lots of well-loved foods, ensuring that we never have a frantic 'everyone is hungry and what am I feeding them?' moment then the rest of life just seems to be that much less worrisome.

For me, this pretty much translates into lots of meat in the freezer, cheese, milk, all the spices I need to make our favourite meals, fruit for quick and healthy snacks and a few convenience foods in the cupboards.  I can pop out to pick up shampoo; I can wait a few days (or weeks) without q-tips if I have to, but when 5 o'clock rolls around and I have two shrieking children clinging to my legs I better have a meal at my fingertips and not, for example, just be starting on a lengthy process of making my own tortillas.

31 Days Of House To Home

After style preferences, the thing I've noticed that differentiates one person's home from another's is their approach to needs and wants.  They needed that big leather sofa.  They wanted that second hand shelf in the kitchen.  They wanted the thrift store curtains.  They wanted the pricey cookware.  They needed the candles for when the electricity goes out.  They needed the computer.

Each family is going to make completely different judgement calls on these things - even we take different stances from one house to another, or from one child to the next.  The point is that when you look through your house (or consider bringing something else into it) asking yourself "Want?  Or Need?" can be invaluable.

Do I want the sofa?  No, I probably need the sofa.  But do I need the BEST sofa?  Well, you know what?  Maybe you do need the best sofa.  Maybe you have a bunch of children and they're very tough on furniture and you have three huge dogs and you've been saving for a good sofa and by george you are going to buy a good sofa.  And maybe you don't.

Keeping the house from turning into a resting place for all sorts of random flotsam and jetsam is a lot of trial and error, but it's worth it.

31 Days Of House To Home

David tells a story that goes something like this...

There was once an elderly Jewish couple with many children and they all lived in a one room house.  The man and his wife were so crowded and unhappy in their little house that they went to their rabbi to ask him what to do.  The rabbi said "Go and get a horse and move it into the house with you."  So the couple went and they bought a horse.  After a week the house was even worse than it was before so they went back to the rabbi. "Bring a cow into the house, too." he said.  The couple took his advice, moved in a cow, and after a week the house was awful and they couldn't stand it.  They went back to the rabbi again and he said "Go get a pig and move that in."  Back the couple went and moved a pig into the house.  After a week they went back to the rabbi and said "This is awful.  The house is terrible.  What do we do?"  The rabbi said "Now you're ready for the solution.  Move all the animals out."

Do you see where I'm going with this?

My house is small.  I mean quite small.  Small enough that I can hear Samuel turn over in his bed at the other end of the house.  Small enough that we need one smoke detector.  We have no basement, no attic; my bathroom linens are stored in the kitchen cabinets; my washer and dryer are in the entry way.  When I say small, I mean small.  But do you know what makes it seem big and spacious?  When something leaves.

I figure I rarely really need more space, what I really need is less stuff.  And so every once in a while I get rid of something big, or even something little.  I wander around the house with a garbage bag and suddenly there's room!  Light!  Air!

Space!

31 Days of House To Home

So there I was yesterday telling you to reach out, reach out, reach OUT people!  Reach for ideas that you don't have, be willing to ask for what you need from people who have done it all before you; don't be shy about it!

But that's only Part A, really, the more I think about it.

Because you don't just want to randomly grab ideas all the time; you'll get overwhelmed.  You'll be thinking "I need to do stuff with my insane children.  I need to.  I'll go look at Pinterest.  Ohmyword Pinterest has, like, ten gazillion ideas of things to do with string.  There's a pin that describes 82 ways to scent your homemade playdough.  There are apparently 5 substances I can make with flour and oil that my children can mold into shapes.  I'm overwhelmed."

And who wouldn't be, honey; who wouldn't be?

So Part B is going to have to be collecting a group of resources around you that you can rely on to take you from clueless to, I don't know, less clueless.  I have mine, and I'm pretty sure you've got yours already if you think about it.  The magazines you turn to when you need a recipe.  The websites you think about when everything in your house is boring and you want to throw it all away and buy new stuff.  Put those resources aside because they're the ones that are going to be your safe place to gather good, solid, YOU oriented ideas when you need them.

Seven Quick Takes

1.  One of the benefits of having a blog where you open up your head on a regular basis and let complete strangers poke around inside looking for something interesting is that everything in life tends to present itself as a possible Thing To Write About.  Or at least that's the explanation I'm giving for why, when cleaning out my picture files this week, I discovered folders devoted to pictures I'd taken of cacti that dated to 2008, of assorted meals spanning the last four years, and of a step by step photo montage entitled How To Descale Your Kettle.

2.  I was stuck for bath reading the other day and pulled out some books I had ordered on a whim a few years back, Mary Ostyn's A Sane Woman's Guide To Raising A Large Family and Meagan Francis' Table For Eight: Raising A Large Family In A Small Family World.  And then I went on with my life and the children destroyed the bathroom and in the process moved my books all around the house.  It just didn't occur to me to put them away on the shelf again until I realized that my inlaws had been visiting for almost a week and what must they think??  Books about giant families scattered everywhere!

3.  I've bitten the bullet this year and started making Christmas lists for the grandparents.  It started with the realization that we now live in the world's least storage friendly house and I couldn't handle one more big, noisy toy that needed it's own special bed/shelf/accessories, but I'll admit, it quickly has turned into an avenue in which I can be controlling and obsessive and make lots of lists.  I'm trying to figure out how much information is too much information.  For example, can I say "Clara needs mittens and socks but other than that is set for clothing"?  Can I then add "Please no television cartoon characters on anything"?  Is that taking it too far?

4.  Duck Dynasty - Love?  Indifferent?  I'm astounded by the beards, myself.

5.  I'm in the market for a daytimer/organizer/planner type thing.  I'm not sure why I don't have one now, except to say that if I had one I likely would have written 'Get New Planner' in there somewhere and would now currently have one.  So there you have it.  Instead here I am in September October trying daily to remember my own phone number, when the children last ate, and if I've showered.

6.  If I had a planner I could also write a list in it of all the stuff that sorta-but-not-really works around the house.  For example, my washing machine, which has been hooked up (praise the Lord!) but with the valve thingies the wrong way.  Or maybe it's the hoses that are the wrong way.  Regardless, hot water comes out of the cold water tap.  Or at least hot water comes out of the washer when the machine is set to cold.  Is this making sense?  Anyway, from my limited understanding of such matter it seems that what needs to happen is the hoses need to be switched, except that to do this seems to involve super human strength and a wrench that I do not currently own.  So I just keep washing my clothes on the Hot/Cold cycle, which is actually Cold/Hot.  Oh my word.

7.  Do you know what my inlaws did?  They went off for a night by themselves and when they came back they brought me a tonne of food for the freezer.  Chicken breasts, a Butterball turkey breast, a lot of cheese.  It was so exciting!  Especially since my plan for the evening meal last night was 'pray'; I'd spent the entire afternoon doing visitation at the nursing home and frankly people were going to eat rice and sausages from the day before.  Everyone should be thankful that someone saved the day.

Linking up with Jentastic - go check her out!

31 Days of House To Home

If there is one piece of advice that 30-something Amy could give to 20-something Amy it would be this:

"Baby, stop trying to reinvent the wheel.  You think no one's ever served supper before?  Made a bed?  Entertained a house bound hysterical toddler for eight hours?"

I just get into these moods where all of a sudden the way I used to do dishes is clearly the worst way in the universe and I need to make a new way, a better way, a faster, more efficient, prettier way.  And if there's anything I've learned in the years since setting up my own household it's that there's nothing new under the sun; if I've thought of it, then someone else has as well.  And they've probably got a blog on it, too, and a Pinterest page with nice pictures.

This minor revelation has maybe led to a bit too much time looking online at other people's living rooms, but it's also brought me to a place where I am completely okay with going online or delving into my library or calling on a group of friends to come up with an answer to whatever question I have.

To help work together on a project too big for one person.

For craft ideas.

For meals, for anything really that I just don't have the answer to myself.

I really think that being willing to reach out and say "I don't know, but do you?" is pretty much the most important thing we can learn in making a home.  After all, we aren't all experts at everything.

31 Days of...

Over at The Complete Guide To Imperfect Housekeeping, Kelly has just started a series on 31 Days of Simple Hospitality, and I'm so excited about it that honestly my first thought was:

OOOOOOOOO!

Followed closely by: I want to do something too!

And so I give you 31 Days of House To Home!  We moved into our new house about four weeks ago now and there is still a laundry basket of slippers, air conditioner parts and Ziploc bags beside my desk, so obvi we're not going to be talking Martha Stewart type anything, don't worry your head over that.  But I am such a huge fan of making a home, just Making. A. Home.  However that works for you.  And I get upset from the top of my unruly hair to the tips of my unpolished toes whenever someone thinks that has to be perfect.  It doesn't.  Oh dear ones, it truly doesn't.

I hope you'll be inspired, of course; that's one of the reasons I drag myself away from the never ending excitement of washing diapers and baking bread and trying really hard not to yell when I step on Legos to hobble to this ancient computer and type something for you all to read.  Because I hope there's something worth reading in it.  Also it took me over half an hour to figure out how to type that caption in Paint, so have mercy on me.

There are some topics I'm just itching to tackle, and then there are some spots where I'm a little...vacant.  And so you just feel free to comment or what have you with what YOU want to think about along with me, and I will squeeze those in, too.

Aren't you as excited as I am!?