Morning

My husband would love it if I was more of a morning person.

And so would my Kindergarten teacher. My parents had to take me out of morning Kindergarten and put me in the afternoon class because mornings and I were already at odds when I was 5 years old.

And so would my 7th grade general music teacher. It was the first class of the day, and I arrived just a minute or two late at least 90 percent of the time. As the rest of the class sat silently in their riser seats, I would walk in, unpack my notebook and walk to my seat with a captive audience. I'm more embarrased about that now than I was back then.

And so would my early morning seminary teacher. Let's just say we didn't get to know each other very well.

And so would my high school zero-hour goverment teacher. I racked up enough tardies in his 7 a.m. class to spend several days in the "pass room" (in-school suspension). He had no mercy.

And so would my college French professor. My mom and I thought it would be a good idea for me to sign up for this 8:00 class my freshman year, to help me "get going" every morning. Not a good idea. He seemed to enjoy saying mean things about me in French, which he assumed I didn't understand. I wouldn't understand now, but I did then! I passed, but probably just so he wouldn't have to deal with me again.

And so would my first full-time boss. He threatened to cut my pay by 50 cents an hour if I was late even one more time. Which I wasn't. Thanks for the life lesson, Mr. Porter.

I could go on, but I think you get it. Becoming a morning person (if I choose to accept the mission), could prove to be an exceptional challenge.

P.S. This is way off topic, but I just bought my son a bunch of really cute clearance items from The Children's Place. I also used a promotional code from this website. But the reason I'm telling you this is because I need to have a baby girl. Someday, please! Boy clothes can be fun and cute, but I would really love to dress up a girl someday. 

Stuck in high school

I have to meet with my high school guidance counselor at noon today, to discuss if and how I am going to graduate with my class. 

Apparently I've only been attending choir, orchestra and English, and I'm failing the rest of my classes. And graduation is next week. 

I'm totally stressed out about it, even though it was just a dream. 

I have heard that high school dreams are fairly common. I have them all the time and they are definitely my most stressful dreams. About 80 times more stressful than high school actually was. 

I have always had them, but more often now that I have been helping to track down classmates for our reunion this summer. Some of these people haven't crossed my path or my mind for 10 years, so being reminded of all my classmates seems to have freshened this recurrent dream. 

This was the first time I actually made an appointment with a guidance counselor to try to get it worked out (in my dream), so I'm making progress. Maybe in another 10 years I will have it all sorted out so I can stop stressing myself out in my real life. 

Do you have dreams like this?

Coupons!

In my last post I mentioned subscribing to the newspaper, even though I didn't want to. I'm a people-pleaser, and I couldn't say no to that nice old man at Smith's. Especially after he was so impressed that I used to write for newspapers. It seemed relevant to the conversation. I don't think I was bragging. But I could have been. It's one of only a few things about me that makes me seem smart, so it comes up... you know?

Anyway, I had to give my husband a good reason for subscribing, so I told him I would use the coupons from the Sunday paper.

I have never been coupon shopping before, but I have several friends who get really excited about it, and even post pictures of their super deals online. So I thought I would give it a try and see if I could have a similar experience.

So here's what I learned from my first coupon shopping experience:

• Don't go coupon shopping on Monday afternoon. By that time most of the good stuff is cleared out and not re-stocked. And it might make you want to swear.
• Don't try to converse with the checker. She can think of about a billion better places to be than behind the checkout on coupon day. Like prison.
• If your toddler falls asleep in the shopping cart because your shopping trip takes most of the day, it doesn't make you a bad mom. It's even kind of cute. And it doesn't make you a bad mom. It doesn't make you a bad mom.
• When you have just spent most of your day grocery shopping and cashing in on all the great deals, and you don't know what you're going to fix your family for dinner, you're doing something wrong.

So I'd like to ask all you coupon shoppers out there, is it worth it? Is all the time it takes to go through the ads and then search the shelves for the exact right item really worth it?

What did I do wrong? I haven't caught the bug just yet. I know there are websites out there that help, but is there anything that is easy to use if your life and your brain are not very organized?

If I was going to finally post something new, I would tell you:

• About how I invited my mother to come help me with my flowerbeds last weekend, and how I then felt bad for making a nearly 60-year-old woman work so hard.
• About how my mom is really the best mom in the universe. If I would have known how much work it was going to be, I wouldn't have had the guts to invite her to help with my flowerbeds. But she did know how much work it was going to be. And she still came!
• About how I'm a sucker. In the last few weeks I've: 1. Signed up for newspaper delivery (even though I knew they would just pile up, but I've got a soft spot for the plight of newspapers and for nice old men in sales). 2. Bought a $35 bottle of cleaner from a door-to-door salesman to help keep him off the streets. 3. Purchased a book to have it signed, just because the man there for the book signing looked lonely because no one would buy his book at Costco. (And don't get me started on the Fraternal Order of Police. If they can trick me into answering the phone {which they did this year}, they are going to get my money.)
• About how I've lost at least 2 pounds. I know that's not a huge accomplishment, but the number is going the right way!

I now bequeath

Valentine is my lovely new blogging friend. Her blog, "Letters from Valentine" is new and fun, and I've enjoyed it very much so far.

This award was given with no rules, so I decided to pass it along to three of my favorite blogging friends.

My mom always tried to teach me that there were more important things about people than a sense of humor, but it didn't stick. All three of the following ladies make me laugh and, just as importantly, they seem to get me when I'm trying to be funny, too.

First, I will introduce you to my friend Diana. She is a blogging friend and a real-life friend. I forget which came first. I met her when she and her family delivered a delicious plate of fudge to my house when I first moved to the neighborhood, but I feel like I really got to know her when I started stalking her blog. It was then that I realized that she was my kind of girl, for sure. Before I was brave enough to leave a comment, I read this post, in which Diana inflicts serious psychological harm on an Iceberg drive-thru employee. I also enjoyed her account of a friendly (or not-so-friendly) race with a fellow neighborhood runner. I was sure the dog in the story (which she pepper-sprayed) was mine, but it wasn't. Which actually wouldn't make sense anyway, since Diana has requested to borrow my dog. Anyway, she's a funny lady and I'm super lucky to live right across the street from her.

Next, I would like you to meet Julie. Julie was in my brother's high school class, so I knew her a little, but I feel like I know her better now thanks to the wonders of technology.

(I think this calls for a soundtrack. And in fact, this song applies to both of the recipients so far. I know Julie better now through blogging than I did when I used to see her at school all the time, and Diana met her one true love, the one who makes her salvivate, online.)

Now, back to Julie. She's always looking out for the rest of us. Like when she told us to say nothing about other people's baby names. Ever. This post also contains valuable advice about staying virtuous as a teenager and other "Jules" of wisdom. Ha ha ha.... I made that up myself. Oh, and here she saves you a whole $5 (or however much a magazine costs) by reviewing an issue of Cosmo and offering her own helpful tips. You know what kind of tips I'm talking about.

And last but never least, my former nemesis, Jen. Jen was my roommate at Ricks College who went from being my buddy to my enemy who kept too much water in the fridge and cut me off from her wardrobe after an especially heated argument in which I accused her of keeping too much water in the fridge. Years later we reconnected on MySpace and buried the hatchet. Now I consider her one of my favorite people and dearest friends. As long as we don't have to share a refrigerator, Jen and I should be just fine. Especially because I wouldn't even fit in her clothes anymore. And she lives about 2,000 miles away.

ANYway...

Jen has aspirations to become Dooce II, and how could I blame her? Who wouldn't love to make $40k a month from their blog? So I'm doing my part to bring Jen fame and fortune by introducing my tens of readers to her.

Jen always has great ideas for home decorating and she might be a little bit addicted to spray paint. And she likes the same TV shows that I like, which is really important.

So Diana, Julie and Jen, I hope you feel honored! :) I'm not giving you any rules. Post the award on your blog or don't. Pass it along or don't. But know that I think you're all awesome.

P.S. You might notice that today is Thursday and I'm not supposed to be online Tuesday and Thursday. But Dave didn't unplug the internet. I could pretend not to be online to save face, or I could just carry on. But my house is clean-ish and I made cookies like a good frau... so that's what matters, right? And my son is learning a lot about teamwork as he watches "Wonderpets" on my lap.

Left to my own

On Tuesday night as my smart, adorable husband was on the brink of sleep, I remembered something.

"Hey hon..." I whispered. "This is a really bad time for me to mention this, but have you heard about that bad computer virus that's supposed to activate tomorrow?"

"Huh? Where did you hear about it?" he asked, sure that I had fallen for an April Fool's joke.

I told him I had heard about it on the radio and read more about it online.

"What's it supposed to do?" he asked, expecting me to have something smart to say, which I didn't. He's a database administrator, so any explanation I would have tried to give would have just sounded stupid.

So with 15 minutes remaining before the clock would turn over to April 1, I ran downstairs to find something smart to say.

Back upstairs: "It could turn our computer into a robot."

Smart, right?

Dave hadn't heard anything about it, and since I'm obviously not to be trusted handling it on my own, we decided we would unplug the internet until he could get some sleep and learn more about it, and make sure our computer was safe.

(Reading more about it today I see that there wasn't a significant risk to us, but ANYway...)

So yesterday I had a whole day with no internet. Dave was thrilled with the idea. Maybe he expected to come home to a spotless house and a wife in a red and white polka-dotted dress holding a casserole.

Disconnected from the outside world, I took the opportunity to finally take care of something that's been on my to-do list for a good 15 years. I finally learned how to play FreeCell.

(This was after a few games of Minesweeper because, as you know, "Those mines aren't going to sweep themselves.")

When I won my first FreeCell game and it asked if I wanted to play again, with big eyes I said to my computer, "Um... yeah." Because my brain really liked it.

I knew I needed to catch up on housework, but I feared the precedent it would set. I knew Dave would think all he needed to do to have a good housefrau was unplug the internet every day before work.

But I decided to be a good frau and work on the house the rest of the day. And I really did get a lot done! And I learned that maybe I really do spend too much time on the computer, because I had so much free time when it was disconnected. Imagine all the things I could do! I could bake cookies and cakes for friends like my friend Jennika! I could go jogging like my friend Diana! (Baby steps. We'll start with walking.) I could teach scrapbooking classes like my friend Crystal! (After I learn to scrapbook, which I'm not really in the mood for.)

We decided that because I am not good at moderating myself and I actually enjoy doing those domestic things that good fräuleins do, that we would disconnect the internet every Tuesday and Thursday. Except for today, of course, because we just did it yesterday and two days in a row would probably send me into shock.

And, if you were wondering, I do not know where to plug in the internet cord (am I being too technical with terms like "internet cord"?), and I don't want to learn.

You're gettin' old, Frau! Ha HA!

That's what Dave said to me this morning as I medicated a lingering headache, brought on by a loud concert last night.

But am I even allowed to grow out of my teeny bopper stage before I'm fitted for support hoes and a cane?

You see, I spent Friday night in the midst of fellow David Archuleta fans at his concert in Salt Lake City. The crowd was probably 90 percent female, and 85 percent shrieking female. My ears are still ringing exactly 24 hours since the close of the show. And Dave thought I was mad at him last night because I kept yelling.

Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows that I'm a big fan, and president of the David Archuleta Fan Club for Married Girls Who are Too Old to Have a Crush but Still Might Be a Little Obsessed.

Make that "Former President." I think I've been demoted because my concert buddy sister-in-law might be a bigger fan. I know. You didn't know that was possible because you know that I chased him down last year during his hometown visit, packing my 1-year-old. But so did she. And her husband (my brother) is an honorary member of the club, since he gets juicy text messages from Brother Archuleta frequently.

Back to the concert. It was a lot of fun. David Archuleta is a great performer and seems so confident on stage now. He was full of energy and I couldn't believe he could keep singing song after song with all that bouncin' around like a Tigger (Sorry... We've been watching a lot of Tigger lately). If it were me (and it wasn't, because American Idol rejected me) I would have needed a minute to catch my breath in between songs, but we already established that I'm getting old.

It was a fun girls night! Thanks to our men for going out of their way to get us to the concert and keep the munchkins for the night.

Here we are. I'm the one with the Lisa Loeb glasses and she's the one with the Taylor Swift hair.

Maybe this is the Excedrin talking

My mom was here for an overnight visit Sunday and Monday. I mentioned to her that I had found an old pin of hers that had her highest bowling score from back in the day engraved on it. For some reason it was in one of my jewelry boxes.

Her score was 187. She told me she got that score when she was on diet pills (this would have been in the 70s or 80s, I believe).

"Boy, did those things work," she said.

She told me the pills made her stronger and more focused. Basically a super-version of her regular self.

But after a while she wasn't feeling so well and she decided to stop taking the diet pills, at which point her bowling team wondered what happened to their star player.

I've already told you about my desire to lose weight, so I won't bore you with that again, except to say that the thought briefly crossed my mind that maybe I ought to give diet pills a try.

And then I remembered that I can't even take Excedrin without getting giddy and jumpy and wanting to start a ballroom dancing club. Seriously. This has happened twice.

I used to be a newspaper reporter. On two separate occasions at two different newspapers I was dealing with a migraine that I had to get rid of to keep working into the late-night hours. So both times I went to a nearby drugstore and bought Excedrin. And both times I found myself in an exceptionally good mood and hardly able to sit still. And both times I couldn't wait to get my work done so I could get started on forming my own ballroom dance club. And the second time this happened was when I made the connection:

Maybe this is the Excedrin talking.

I was a ballroom dancer before ballroom dancing was cool. (It's cool now, right?) I started when I was 11 and I was pretty serious about it throughout my teenage years. Along with my brother and my other dance partner, Martin, I would compete several times a year and perform anywhere we were invited. We competed at the national championships at BYU every year, and Martin and I even placed 4th in the waltz and quickstep at the nationals in 1995. That was my biggest dancing accomplishment, I think.

Now a decade later, some of the dancers we competed against are gracing the "Dancing with the Stars" stage. It's fun to see them doing so well and having that opportunity. They wouldn't remember us, but they were the standouts back then, so we remember them.

Our dance teacher was an awesome teacher and a shady businesswoman. My parents had finally had enough of her financial dishonesty and decided to take their business elsewhere. Which meant that if we wanted to keep taking lessons, we had to make a big drive every time.

First we went to Nancy. She was about a three-hour drive away and we saw her every couple weeks. She liked to pick on me. She once pointed out to me and the rest of the class that my legs were not very pretty. Thanks a ton, Nancy!

That didn't last long. After that my mom set up lessons with a few different teachers in the Provo area (about a 4-hour drive from home every other week). The most exciting part of that was taking private lessons from Rick Robinson, who was a legend to us. He was one of those dancers who was so captivating that even if there were 99 other dancers on the floor, you couldn't take your eyes off him. And now we were under his tutelage. He taught us the best routines we had ever danced, and they are still the routines we feel like dancing when we hear a good cha-cha beat.

I say "we" because often when my little brother, Joel, hears a good cha-cha beat he'll reach out his hand to me and indicate it's time to dance. Even if we're at the grocery store or somewhere equally as inappropriate for putting on a dance recital. And I have a feeling if I weren't so shy about it, he'd actually dance the whole routine with me, right there.

I don't remember how long the Provo lessons lasted, but it became too expensive and time-consuming to keep making the big trip. We were still performing locally, but we weren't learning anything new and we weren't competing so much anymore. I did try to start a ballroom club at my high school, but ballroom wasn't cool yet so it fizzled.

Then I went to Ricks College. I had been out of the dancing scene for a year or two, but I was excited to get back into it there. I danced on the summer team and then the fall semester started and it was time for auditions. For some reason I wasn't sure if I was actually going to try out or not, but at the last minute I threw on a skirt and headed up to the MC.

Auditions were a disaster. The whole thing lasted for about an hour, and they picked all the new members from what they saw in that short time period. I had three chances to dance, and each time they had the men choose their partners, so I had no control over who I danced with for my audition. They had about 10 couples dance at a time, for about 90 seconds at a time.

My first partner had just learned the basic cha-cha step that night, so we danced the basic cha-cha over and over and over and over. The next guy had been in a social dance class during the summer term, so he knew a little, but not a lot. And the last guy was on the team, but hadn't taken lessons. So he knew all their group routines, but none of the basics and he was trying to lead me in all kinds of crazy things I had never learned. So I never really got to show anything that I knew, and subsequently I did not make the team. As a further blow to my ego, my best friend, who had danced other types of dance all her life but who only knew the few ballroom steps that I had taught her, made the team. I was happy for her, but so sad for me. This was also the week that I didn't make it into the choir I had hoped to be in. Just an all-around bummer.

Joel and I did participate in one more competition, at Ricks, where we placed 6th or something in the novice category (is that right, Joel?). Eventually I was encouraged to try out for the "Winter" team, and so I did. This time I made it, but it was around the same time that I really got into journalism and was working for KRIC-FM. I had to leave dance practice early every time to make it to my on-air shift, so after a few weeks I decided to leave the team and focus on my radio job, which I really loved. I was top dog there, or at least I felt like it... and it was a good feeling.

After a couple more hometown performances my career in ballroom came to an end. I didn't know it then, though. I'm glad that our last performance was one of our best. Joel and I choreographed a really fun swing number for a benefit show my mom put on in our hometown. I didn't know then that it would be the last time I would perform in front of an audience, and I wish so much that I had a recording of it.

It's something I really miss. I also really miss singing with a group (and I don't mean church choir... I love participating in the church choir, but that's not what I'm talking about). I've tried off and on to rally others to participate in both ballroom clubs and singing groups, but no one is ever as excited about it as I am. Maybe someday I'll take enough Excedrin or diet pills to get something going for real.

Me = big baby

I recently discovered The Creative Junkie. She makes me laugh. But today she made me cry by posting the following videos. They're not sad at all, and they're not even trying to pull at my heartstrings... are they? But seeing all these strangers sharing such a joyful moment makes me feel all kinds of tear-inducing emotions.






And the making of:

I just thought to myself, "Oh fun! I could do my taxes today!"

Is it weird that I love filling out forms? I used to even think that I might enjoy a career in data entry.

But so far, this tax return is not looking so refund-y. Good thing this year is the year I'm going to get rich off of one of my good ideas. I just know it! And with all that money coming in, we won't even need a tax return.

And you know how I know this is the year? I was at Hobby Lobby yesterday (which is my favorite store in the whole wide world) picking up things for my latest awesome idea. When the guy at the checkout asked me what I was doing, I told him my plans and he said, "You have a creative mind. You should start a business."

I would have given him a $20 tip if I could have.

At the risk of you stealing my idea, and then my $$billions$$, I will share my project with you. But believe me, if I see these on Etsy I'm hunting you down!

They are mirrors for hanging on the wall, with pretty fabric around the edges. These ones are going in my living room, but I could make them in any kind of fabric for any kind of room and any kind of taste.

Seriously. Don't steal my idea. I'm not even going to tell you how to make them unless you'll hook me up with a patent attorney for my other awesome idea that I will never leak on the internet.

I'm going to post a poll on the side. Go vote.