Doggie Workout

I mentioned some time ago in this post that I had to put my beagle on a diet. Well, it seems as though a good exercise program ALWAYS needs to accompany a well-balanced diet for maximum weight loss.

And Hamish has not achieved maximum weight loss. Or any weight loss, actually.

So my daughter decided he needed a workout routine. She volunteered to be his trainer and came up with a plan right away. You are about to see them during his very first workout in this short video. Please take note of how exhausted Hamish is at the end.




Good Lord. I hope she works that cramp out of her leg soon My daughter really has her work cut out for her.

Stayed tuned for more on Hamish's workout routine.....

More Home Decor Confessions....

I really needed to feel out the crowd after posting the picture frame confession. A couple of you admitted to the picture frame debacle as well.

Soooo.....



I don't know any of the people in these frames, either....and each frame holds two pictures. Dude. That's a lot of strangers sitting on my scrapbook shelf.

Home Decor - Family Photos

I have a deep love for family pictures. They adorn my house in mass quantities. I don't have fancy art on my walls, nor do I have big fancy mirrors or other decorative elements. I have pictures of family. Children, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Generations of them. I love them all.

This is the bookshelf in my little scrapbook area. It houses all my paper, scrapbooking tools and other fun stuff dedicated to my hobby. So OF COURSE it should have family pictures on it. Right?



Isn't it pretty? I just love the homeyness of the whole thing. And there are my family pictures, proudly on display in frames given to me as gifts. Because people know I love my pictures. And they go in frames. It's a no-brainer kind of gift for me.

And see this one? This frame is one of my particular favorites. I got it for Christmas a few years ago. A few years ago. Years ago. YEARS. AGO.



Notice anything...umm...strange about this? In the lower left corner? Yeah. I have no idea who in the heck these people are. They came with the frame.

I'm sure my scrapbooking/photography friends will publicly flog me, then disown me.

Tag! I'm it!!

You know, I enjoyed a good game of tag when I was younger. I never would have imagined tag would turn in to a non-exercise form of play.

I got tagged twice for this: Patti and Leslie. Leslie seems to think I have to list 14 things. I think not....but you never know if I get on a roll!

I worked night shift tonight and just got home. I've decided I better get my butt in gear and do a little of my own tagging before I run out of friends who aren't already playing.

Here are the rules:
If you are tagged, you must first post the rules: (I already broke the rules by not posting the rules first. Sue me.)
Write 7 strange characteristics about yourself.
They interest us all!
Tag 5 other people at the end of your Post.
Visit everyone that you have tagged and leave a comment on their blog to let them know that they have been tagged.

1. I wear contacts/glasses....always. Trust me when I say this is a win-win for everyone.
2. I am scared of the dark. Is that all that strange, really? Probably not. But the LEVEL of how scared I am of the dark is strange.
3. I love lightening...but HATE the thunder. It scares me. Which is strange since the lightening is what can actually hurt you, not the noise it makes. Duh.
4. For the past 2 months, I have this goiter of a zit that seems to be traveling different areas of my body. It is seriously big, people! First, my nose. Then, my forearm. Then, my upper lip. Then, my chest. I'm waiting to see where it will pop up next.
5. I wet the bed until I was in the 6th grade. Go ahead. Laugh. Mock me. It ain't nothin' I haven't heard before. So there. Hmph.
6. My current weigth exceeds what I weighed when I delivered my last child (whom I gained the most weight with). I'm still clinging to that baby weight and added some extra to go with it. Okay, my baby is 16. Whatever.
7. I have inherited this strange sensation from my mother in recent months that I cannot stand to have my rings on when I sleep. I MUST REMOVE THEM....including my wedding ring. It makes me sad. But I grasp at any level of sanity I can, always aiming for a perfect 0 or above. Removing them puts me at about a -10. If I kept them on? -2,462.
8. This would be where I would start Leslie's tag...and I'm going to do it. So that's strange fact #8.
9. I have an unnatural fear of the dentist. About as equally unnatural as my fear of the dark.
10. My favorite food in the whole wide world is spaghetti.
11. Tom Cruise kind of creeps me out, especially when I watch old movies that I used to LOVE with him in it because he turned out to be such a wackadoodle. Wackadoodle. It's the new catch phrase.
12. I meet people in real life that I first met on the internet. I fly to different states to meet them. I room in hotels with them.
13. I played little league/high school/rec league softball for over 20 years. I never played any other position besides 2nd base. Well, except for this unfortunate little league game that required me to be a 7th string pitcher because the game went so long the other girls got too tired.
14. My hair has the EXACT SAME distinctive odor (code for yucky smell) as my father's had when it gets dirty. And my son has it too. Genes are a wonderful thing, don't you think?

And there you have it. Now that you know all about me we can all be bff. And if you don't know what that means, read here.

Now who to tag. Hmmm...well, I've had some "strangers" find me here. So I'll tag a few people I don't know and a couple that I do know.

Mona (she has no blog...but she's always here so she can just post in my comments)
Bragger (I don't know this person. I don't think. But she left a comment this week...and I had fun reading her blog, too. Welcome to the Looney Bin!)
Kelli (I "know" her. Love her. She has cute kids!!)
Jessica (I don't know her. She is linked at Kelli's blog....but I do stalk her. She just doesn't know it!)
Cathy (I know her. She is a friend, co-worker and scrapbooking pal)
Kari (I know her, too. She is a friend, partner to Cathy and scrapbooking pal)

I totally believed the Big Foot story

Or not. But I wanted to. I really, really did. It's that nostalgia thing again, people.

I have lived in Northern CA for the majority of my life. Okay, all of it except for one tragic year when I found myself far, far away from family and friends right after I got married in some other country called Texas. But we won't talk about that.

When I was growing up my family used to camp. We camped a lot. But never in a nice campground area with something resembling a toilet or a faucet emerging from the middle of the ground so as to have water to cook/clean with. Oh, no. Not us. My father would always choose the MOST remote location, put our truck in to 4-wheel drive (this was back in the day when you had to get out of the truck...it was not just a simple push of a button or mechanism located inside the vehicle) and climb in to wherever he wanted to seclude us for a week.

And there we would be. Away from everything and everyone that resembled civilization.

And I loved every minute of it! My dad had purpose when he did that. We didn't have camping "neighbors" and we got to be as loud as we wanted. And I was loud as a kid. Trust me.

One of my dad's favorite areas to camp was near Weaverville, California in the Trinity mountains. It was the very area where the infamous film footage of Bigfoot was taken...and from it this frozen image that forever became ingrained in my young brain:



I remember specifically one camping trip where we were all sitting by the campfire. It was dark. Dude, SO DARK. When you camp in the middle of nowhere it is DARK. And let me say this: I'm petrified of the dark.

So there we are, in the dark (have I mentioned I'm scared of the dark?) with just a small campfire lighting our faces. My dad proceeds to scare the crap out of me telling me we are in the very area that they spotted big foot.

I was about 7. And I was never the same. Whenever we camped from that day forward I would never venture far away from camp and would always be very nervous when I had to go "find" a toilet. Or an appropriate location that a toilet might exist had we not been in the middle of nowhere. I was scared of the forest. I'm sure it had NOTHING to do with my Wizard of Oz fascination. Just get that out of your head. I'm sure it was all my dad's doing with his Bigfoot story.

And I always wondered about that hairy creature.

Then 35 years later this:



Let me tell you that I really, really looked at this picture when it was released. I analyzed every bit of it. I thought, "No! It can't be!"

And it wasn't. Stupid Bigfoot hoaxers. Supposedly a "joke that got out of hand." You think? The dude lost his job over it, for crying out loud! And what did those guys think would happen when the world discovered it was a costume filled with animal guts? (Which, by the way, is just gross in itself, don't you think? Ew.)

I went searching around the internet for Bigfoot stuff after the hoax was revealed for what it was: a hoax. I found numerous websites dedicated to Bigfoot and his existence. (Or her existence. It could be female. Right?)

There are some die hard Bigfoot believers out there. Whole websites dedicated to sightings and facts and planned expeditions and stuff. Research, reports, maps.

It's amazing.

Not amazing that the info is all out there.

Not amazing at the amount of work that goes in to the whole Bigfoot phenomenon.

It's amazing that there are people who actually believe it. And you know what? They aren't 7. But I'm no killjoy. To each their own. Everyone needs a passion, right?

Mine just happens to be the Wizard of Oz.

I neeeeeed one of these!

I'm pretty sure that Hannah-Barbara envisioned this to be a reality by the year 2008. Don't you? So where is she and why has she not shown up for work at my house yet?

About this Wizard Of Oz Thing....

Yeah. It's bad with me. My love for that movie, I mean. I'm not sure what it is....the cheesy dream sequence in the window, the even cheesier monkey flying through the sky with Dorothy kicking her legs, the funny munchkin voices or that hilarious scene when they finally reach the Emerald City and the doorbell is broken. Oh, that door guard is a hoot, isn't he?!!

Okay. It's probably not those things.

It's the nostalgia.

My first memory of this movie was when I was around 4. I watched it every spring (remember that? It came on TV once a year in the spring.) in the living room. I always started out 5 feet in front of the TV, laying on my stomach with my chin propped up in my hands. Then the dream sequence in the window would send me to the couch. You know the one....when Ms. Gulch riding on her bike suddenly turned in to the wicked witch on her broom.



Yeah. That one. I mean look at that body language from Dorothy! Why would I NOT be scared? Holy smokes! Da dada da da daaa....da dada da daaaaa! That witch scared me, people!

And then the color sequence in Munchkinland would slowly draw me back to my position in front of the TV. I just loved those tiny people with their strange little voices. I wanted to be one. I really did. I'm not lying.

But then it happened. The most beautiful person in the world came floating down in her bubble. I am sure my jaw dropped every time. I wanted to be her even more!

She was everything pure and good and kind and graceful and beautiful. Today's little girls of the world have the Disney Princesses. I had Glenda. *sigh*

And the movie would continue with singing and dancing and I would sit mesmerized every second with every inch of the TV screen....every sparkle from those ruby slippers, every stumble by the scarecrow and every drop of oil out of the can held my undivided attention. And the new friends would slowly make their way to the creepy forest....and I would slowly make my way back to the couch, even though I knew my absolute favorite character was about to make his grand entrance.



"Baa-ha-haa-haaaa! Whadya do that for? Baa-ha-haa-haaa!" And I would slowly assume my position in front of the TV again. Seriously. Who could not love the lion?

And with all that singing and happiness and friendship, the part I remember most about this movie from those early days was not ANY of that. And why this movie continued to draw me in to it's clutches year after year after year escapes logic since this is the one scene that would not only send me running back to the couch, I would launch over the back and hide behind it. Because as scared as I was of that nasty old wicked witch, those freakishly disturbing monkeys were my demise.



The moment the beginning of this scene hit the TV screen I launched myself over that couch just like the lion does out the window of the Wizard's Emerald Castle....and stayed there until I knew they were flying away with Dorothy back to the castle. I never looked. I just listened and waited for all the screaming and shouting and monkey-screeching to end. I'm pretty sure my mom would announce an "all clear" so I could come out from my safety zone...shaking...scared....with bad dreams to follow for days afterwards.

Sounds like fun!

What? This was a children's book? How lovely. I'm sure that there are hundreds of grownups like myself forever haunted by this peculiar face:



But still....it sucked me in.

I will forever be disappointed this movie was ever released on VHS/DVD, even though I've watched my copy at least a hundred times. Yes. Really. Much to the chagrin of my husband. And now my kids as they are almost grown and are completely annoyed with its cheesiness amidst all the spectacular special effect movies of today. Why my disappointment? Because there was something special....magical....exciting...yet equally frightening....about this movie coming on once a year. It was a pretty special family thing for us. Okay, it was a pretty special thing for ME because I'm not sure my family watched it with me YEAR AFTER YEAR AFTER YEAR....I think my mom even secretly hoped I would not see the commercials come on announcing it's return each spring. That excitement got lost with VHS/DVD.

But the excitement of the movie remains in my heart. Or the special memories of hiding behind the couch near tears with fear of those creepy winged monkeys. I know the songs. I know the lines. I know a lot of Oz trivia. Dude. A LOT.

I love anything and everything Oz. So much so that I got it tattooed on my butt.

That's love, baby.

So....what's your favorite movie?

Are you kidding?

You can't honestly tell me that there wouldn't be 27 male coworkers standing around to help this thirsty gal. PUUH-leeeze.



Or that she is *really* thinking about playing golf in those heels:



And this gal? She seriously needs to get some better fitting panties:



That last one reminds me of a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the office. Okay, I wasn't exactly going to the office. I was leaving a restaurant with my husband.

I had worked a night shift, peeled off my clothes, threw some jammies on and crawled in to bed. I woke up to go to the bathroom around noon and couldn't go back to sleep, so he asked me if I wanted to go have Chinese food. YUM! Count me in! So I grabbed my jeans from the night before, threw on a t-shirt and was out the door.

As we were sitting eating, this party of four at the next table kept looking our direction and snickering. Whatever. People are weird. I am, too. So we finish eating, get up, walk through the restaurant, pay and leave via the front door. As we are standing on the sidewalk, Troy looks down and bursts in to laughter.

"What is THAT?" he asks as he looks down at my feet.

And there, much to my embarrassment and amusement (because I am frequently amused by things that are embarrassing) are a pair of my red thong panties sneaking out of the bottom of my pant leg.

In my haste to get out the door for lunch, I had neglected to shake them out of my jeans before I put the jeans on.

Nice.

I didn't look nearly as classy as the woman in the poster. You know, because losing your panties on a public bus while toting your groceries home is *so* classy.

(images found on this way too cool and fun site: http://www.allposters.com/-st/Pin-Ups-Vintage-Art-Posters_c57131_p2_.htm)

Protecting our children

"From what?" you ask? Well....anything and everything. We always want to protect them from physical and mental harm. Duh. Sometimes things are obvious, like teaching them about stranger-danger and making sure they are never out of your sight while you are shopping lest some wacko is lurking nearby. But other things are less obvious when we are actually doing them, but they are still some form of protection.

When they are babies we protect them from diaper rash by changing dirty diapers, and from yucky spitups by donning them with bibs. Teething becomes bearable for everyone if we can protect them from the pain of it all with some sort of gel housed in a nice, neat little tube. (My mom admits she swabbed some toxic alcoholic beverage on my gums when I was teething. I thing she was protecting her sanity more than my own pain.) Protection from scratches on their little faces by clipping the smallest fingernails in the world with the smallest fingernail clippers ever designed by man. Protection from the bars on the crib with a bumper pad, from the dangers of the kitchen with cupboard locks, and from trying to electrocute Barbie by covering the electrical outlet with a plastic thingy-ma-bob. We also try to protect them from injury by limiting the exposure to climbing apparatuses, although more harm was done in my house from stacking chairs on toy boxes than any tree in the front yard.

But there are some things you can't protect them from. They are just going to happen.

As they enter grade school we try to protect their fragile feelings from classroom bullies and mean girls who whisper and giggle at their new glasses. We pull them under our protective wing and kiss their foreheads when they cry about how horrible their day was when Bobby chased Suzy instead of her. Or how they lost the 4-square game. Or how they got picked last for kick ball.

Or when they are 18 and they fall HARD in love. And say those special 3 words for the very first time ever.





And you just pray that they aren't too old to pull them under your protective wing and kiss their forehead if that heart does indeed experience that first painful disappointment.

But even more, you hope you don't have to.

In honor of the Olympics

The summer Olympics always makes me smile a little when I start watching some of the events. Events that, somewhere someone some time ago, deemed it a sport. At first thought my initial reaction was, "Badminton? A sport? Really?" (By the way, as a side note I want everyone to know that for the longest time...okay, until just now....I thought it was "bad-mitton". Spell check got me. What is "bad-mitton"? Who can knit the worst pair of mittens? What was I thinking?) But then I watched it for the first time tonight. The running around the court, the lunging, the stretching, the coordination and people actually SWEATING and it made me sweat a little.

But just a little.

Not really. It's hard to over exert yourself watching TV.

So I'm watching this tonight, thinking how weird that what I always thought was a fun little backyard game with my brother is an Olympic sport. I assume they do not play with those little plastic birdies, nor do they get their rackets sold in a set of 4 in the sports section of Wal Mart. The distinction between back yard fun and Olympic seriousness is also tell-tale in the net itself....it did not appear as though Beijing's badminton nets droop in the middle, nor do they have large holes where the birdie has gotten stuck and been forced free.

And how do you decide to get serious about badminton? What is that moment when you say, "Mom. Dad. I need to train."

And then there's ping pong.

Well, you get what I'm saying. But don't get me wrong. I certainly have a healthy respect for anybody who has the drive and talent to make it to the Olympics, regardless of the event. I'm impressed with the mental dedication it takes, too. It is something to be proud of and rejoice in.

And since I'm all about looking for ways to rejoice, I've come up with a few of my own Olympic events that I'm considering submitting to the Olympic committee for consideration.

• Texting: I'm pretty sure my daughter already has the gold medal wrapped up for this one. Just sayin'. I think this would be strictly an individual event only because I can't think of a way to make it doubles or team-based. There is already some national tournament thing for this (I saw it on Yahoo News). They could just use those same rules, whatever they are.
  
• Knuckle Popping: My mother would not be able to watch this event. I'm sure she would head for the kitchen to get the wooden spoon to whack it across everyone's hands. Probably another individual event, but with different categories: hands, necks, feet and a tri"pop"alon which includes all 3.
• Flossing: judging based on speed and how much crap you get out of your teeth. Points deducted for missing in between any teeth or drawing blood by being too aggressive.
  
• Whistling: I cannot enter this competition. Ever. It could be a team event....think dueling banjos. Judging based on volume and difficulty of song.
• Hog Calling: It could happen.
  

So what's your Olympic event?

To all my loyal fan

(Yes, that's singular. Fan.)

I really do read every single comment here. They are sent to me via email. I want to respond to every one of them, too. But are there any Blogger experts that know how I can just respond to the email instead of posting a bunch of comments on my own blog? Because that seems a little weird. Like trying to make myself more popular by upping the number of comments.

And come on. We know I'm not that popular.

Pioneer Woman. She's popular.

Thanks for any help. Mostly because I've worked 3 nights shifts, am tired, and cannot search the Blogger help any longer. My eyes burn. And I've noticed a slight twitch. That can't be good.

How do you recover from this?

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I decided to stop at a yard sale on the way out to his parent's house. We get side-tracked pretty easy from the allure of yard sales anyway, but this particular one was screaming for us to stop. I'm pretty sure it was from the 243 signs posted in the 2 mile radius we had traveled going from our house to the coffee place and then on our way to the original destination.

This puppy was well signed. I'll just say that.

Bright yellow signs with huge black arrows were strategically placed on every block at every corner. No. I'm not kidding. We didn't even have to read the address. We just followed the yellow paper signs. Followed the yellow paper signs? Follow the yellow paper signs! Follow the yellow paper signs! Follow follow follow follow follow the yellow paper signs! (insert happy violin music here)

*cough-cough*

Sorry. It's that Wizard of Oz thing with me. But, again, that's a post for another time.

ANYWAY....Troy and I turn in to the cul-de-sac that's hosting this wonderful garage sale. We are pumped. We are excited. Any garage sale with THAT much publicity has got to be a good one. We ante up our dollar bills to see how much we have together. We are good.

As we enter through the side gate (because that's where the yellow signs told us to go) we could see table after table piled with treasures awaiting our arrival! I immediately walked over to the craft department (yes, she had "departments") and was slightly disappointed to see lots of excellent crafting items from the 80's. But since it is 2008, not so excellent. I left the piles of baskets, cross stitch, embroidery hoop purse instructions and macramé cord to look at some books. While I'm searching through them, Troy is chatting it up with the garage sale hostess and tells her that she absolutely wins the award for the best directions/signs to any yard sale that weekend. They shared a laugh, chatted some more about a silly ice chest and then Troy walked away. I turned to walk with him and I heard a voice say, "Is that Cheri Pryor?"

I held my breath. This can be a win or lose situation, know what I'm sayin'? In my mind I quickly deducted that it can't be someone from high school I don't particularly want to see since they used my married name. And since I've been gone from my home town for almost 11 years now, there's a good chance it's someone I haven't seen at all since I've been gone.

I turn. I recognize the person right away. I respond with, "Aren't you so-and-so's sister?" I smile, pleased that I have recognized the person AND remember a name. Only she informs me she is NOT the sister. It is HER, with additional weight since I last saw her, which is why I didn't recognize her CORRECTLY. I have not seen her in over 12 years. Now, I've got my own "issues" with additional weight, but I basically look the same. Well, from the front. Nobody would recognize this butt from behind.

What makes this situation so underly, horribly uncomfortable for me (besides the obvious) is that I worked with HER for 6 years!! In a small, family owned newspaper/print shop. We sat 8 feet away from each other FOR 6 YEARS, PEOPLE! She gave me a baby shower for my daughter and I gave her one for hers 2 years later.

"God. It's me, Cheri. Please send your son back to save your earthly children right now. Or at least just this one child. This would be a great time. Thank you."

That didn't happen, by the way.

All in all I think I recovered from it quite nicely. I chatted it up about our kids and got caught up on jobs and life stuff. She shared pictures of her beautiful daughters, one that had just graduated from High School and the other that had just graduated from 8th grade. It was idle chit-chat, but actually nice to see her again.

And she's moving to Kentucky.

So chances are I'll never have to relive this horrible, rotten, embarrassing moment by running in to her ever again.

Which is good. Because Troy and I left without buying a single thing.

I'm alive....

New posts coming soon. I promise. =)