You really wouldn’t think it, at least not judging by where I live (in a trailer park), but I’m a fairly well-traveled person, at least by a lot of standards. I’ve been to more US states than I haven’t been to, most before I was 5. I’ve been on a Caribbean cruise & visited Port Charles, Nassau & Grand Bahamas. I’ve stayed in some of the best hotels Las Vegas has to offer. I’ve visited & camped in almost every National & State park in this part of the country, not just in Utah, either.

I took a trip from Pueblo, Colorado to Kansas City, Missouri, without my parents, when I was 11 or 12 & stayed a week while I was at a convention. The n ext year, I went to Denver & stayed several days without them. When I was 15 or so, I went to Wyoming on a mission trip and stayed there for over a week with my youth group. Yeah, I know that these aren’t huge trips to anywhere really that amazing, but I have friends that have never really left this part of the country, or the part that they live in for that matter. How about you? Where have you been? What was the best trip you ever took? What was the most memorable?

45 words

Speedtest

The other day, my daughter decided that it was time to clean her closet out. I was shocked, since she hadn’t done that in the 4 1/2 years we’ve been in this house. She found everything from out-of-date platform shoes, old toys she’d forgotten about to a missing hoodie that she loves. She had so many things to throw away that she had to borrow the car to take it all down to the dumpster (and as a funny aside, the property manager thought we were moving because she threw so much out) and even at that, she made more than one trip. In the process of doing that, she let go of a lot of things she had been holding on too, both material & emotional.

She did a lot of growing up in those few days and realized that she had come out as a different, happier person. One of the first things we did was to get rid of her dyed black hair, because, she said, she didn’t feel dark & angry anymore. It’s a beautiful deep blond with am auburn shadowbox now & she looks so pretty. She’s working on getting rid of a few more bad habits, things we never thought she’d even consider giving up & it’s really starting to hit us that she’s almost grown. I’m so very, very proud of her & so excited to see what the rest of her life will bring for her.

I have probably never mentioned this here before, but Troy & I actually went on a Caribbean cruise back in 1997. A former friend of ours was living with our friend Dave & she wanted all of us to go, so she paid for everything. Being on the ship kind of freaked me out. It was like a floating city & I don’t think I had really been prepared for that, I thought it’d be more like a floating hotel & I could’ve handled that better, I think. One of the things that really bothered me was there were all of these cool stores and bars, but none of them accepted any form of payment other than your ship’s ID & we had no money credited to our account, because we didn’t have a credit card at the time. There were places that sold really inexpensive luxury watches, clothing, and shoes, but I couldn’t get anything. It was very frustrating. We couldn’t even buy a soda, and had to settle for the nasty iced tea & punch that was available at the 24 hour buffet.

I enjoyed the experience, but I think I liked our day on Grand Bahamas much better, and would prefer to just fly there, have a hotel & stay on the islands than to go on another cruise.

It seems like the new year is already slipping through my fingers before I even notice. How is it already almost the end of February? When did that happen? I had intended to go over our life insurance policies last month & see if we needed to change the coverage or adjust anything & here it is a month later & I haven’t done it yet. I swear, I must be the queen of procrastination. It’s possible that there has just been way too much other stuff going on, between worrying about Erin, trying to get my daughter through some personal things and getting ready for her graduation that I lost track of time. That’s also quite likely.

Anyway, I figured out that I wasn’t actually sick all this time, but that my allergies were kicking my butt, so once I started treating those, I started feeling a lot better. So, yay!

I was just remembering the movie, Clueless, and some of the terms that Cher used to describe people, like a good looking guy was a “Baldwin” and a good looking girl was a “Betty.” Therewere quite a few different sayings in that movie that I know a lot of people used after they saw it. I never did, but I know that 10 years earlier (and before that) a lot of movies affected the way I talked, like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Sixteen Candles,” “Pretty in Pink” and “The Breakfast Club.” What about you? What movies changed the way you dressed, acted or talked when you were a teenager or younger. I know when I was a kid, I wanted to be just like Pippi Longstocking, I wanted her hair, her clothes & her life. I thought that would be the coolest way to live. I watched the movie, read the books and daydreamed about it. That was about the closest I even came to being obsessed with a fictional character, and thankfully, I grew out it.

I’m sure that you’re not, why would you be, honestly? I was just remembering an episode of “That 70s Show,” where Donna buys Eric some jewelry & everyone is appalled about it, and they’re all going on & on about how terrible it is to wear jewelry if you’re a guy and all of that. Why? Is it just that men’s jewelry was tacky in the 70s or is there a stigma I’m not aware of? Almost every man I know wears jewelry of some sort. It’s tasteful and understated, and I think it looks quite nice.

I’m sure that what my friends wear is nothing compared to what they were talking about in that show, but still, I lived in the 70s, I don’t remember it really being that big of a deal. Maybe I didn’t see people wearing bad jewelry back then or something. Anyway, do you know men who wear it, if so, what type do they wear? Most of the guys I know wear, at the very least, a necklace of some sort (are they called that when men wear them?), and many of them have rings, too. The rings are generally Celtic knotwork of some sort & the rest are usually Pagan in nature.

I just found out about a great giveaway over at Nanashi-Inc. Joana is giving away a really nice Bath & Body Works gift set. It happens to be in one my absolute, favorite fragrances, Sweet Pea. The giveaway includes 10 ounce bottles of shower gel & bubble bath, 8 ounce bottles of body lotion & body splasj and a really cute, pink purse to keep them all in (or use every day, if you like!). The purse has an inner zipper pocket, leather handles & adjustable buckles on either end so you can change the size of the bag somewhat.

She’s made it really easy to enter to win, too, so you ought to pop over there and check it out, the contest runs from February 14 – March 14, 2008. It’s open to folks from the USA, Canada & Mexico, so, run, don’t walk & get signed up!!

I sat down yesterday & figured out how much we owed in taxes, subtracted the refund we’ll get from the state & then divided the remainder by the paydays we have left before April 15th & we’ll be fine. There won’t be a lot of money play around with or anything, but we won’t starve or do without the necessities. My stomach pain has settled down since then, which is a huge relief to me.

The weather mellowed out nicely for the weekend, but there’s another storm on it’s way Tuesday or Wednesday. I’d get my car washed, since it looks terrible again, but I don’t have a garage or even a car cover, so it’d be pointless. The last time I had it washed it snowed two days later, so I think I’ll just wait until we have a little more time between storms. I’m not complaining, we need the water to survive out here in the desert, but I am getting  very tired of winter & am excited for spring to come. We have so many plans for our yard this year & can’t wait to start planting things.

I never believed my mom when she told me that time flies when you’re raising kids, but it really has. Just last year, wasn’t I watching Erin help Rhi learn how to walk better? Wasn’t Garrett coming to visit us on the weekends, and being fiercely protective of his younger siblings while we looked on with grins on our faces? Weren’t we just moving to Utah 6 months ago, nervously excited about the new life we might find here? It feels like a few months since Erin & Rhi were in the back of Troy’s cable truck, having lunch on the Cat 5 cable spools while pretending to be at work.

It seems impossible that it was 10 years ago when we decided to home school our kids, and just as impossible that it was 5 in August since they went back to public school. So much water has passed under the bridge in that time, and they’ve all grown so much, but still it seems like it was just yesterday. In less than 3 months, my baby will turn 18, and 2 weeks after that, she’ll be a high school graduate with her future in the palm of her own hand instead of mine.

Seeing what Erin has done with his makes me nervous about what she’ll do with hers, but I know that she has learned a great deal from watching him throw everything away & that she wants so much more out of her own life. I trust her and know that she’ll make good choices, but I’m going to be nervous for awhile, you know? I just can’t believe that in a short time all of my kids will be adults.

Where did the years go?