Fireworks and Earthquakes

I've been so busy planning for my grandpa's 80th birthday party (and being obsessed with the soul-sucking internet) that I haven't had time to write a decent post. I had a fun, memorable 4th of July, in which my sister describes in more detail than I have the patience to give at the moment. The highlights for me were the beautiful fireworks at Lake Arrowhead, great conversations with blogging friend Damien, the terrible "B"-type volcano disaster flick we watched that night, the delicious breakfast that greeted us the next morning, and the end-of-the-world plan my sister and I sat and concocted on her patio while our hubbies exchanged meaningful glances conveying messages such as "How'd we wind up marrying these lunatics?"

One other memorable incident from the 4th ocurred as a result of bringing Moses with us to Shannon's house. He was *supposed* to be in the yard with Shan's dog and pig (yes, my sister has a pig. In the mountains. Her name is Charlotte. As in "Charlotte's Web," even though Charlotte was actually the spider. They keep calling their pig a dog though. Not sure what else to say about that...). Anyhow, I woke up quite suddenly that morning to Moses sniffing all around me. I couldn't wrap my mind around this fact so early in the morning, but Moses was mysteriously in the house. We learned later that he had pushed his way through two unsecured doors, busted into the house, woke me...who in turn prodded Clint awake with an exclamation of "What the hell is Moses doing in my sister's house?!" That was right before Shannon's two year-old came and collapsed on me with her cup of crackers because she thought I was her mom. So between a 140 lb dog and a toddler suffering from mommy-twin-confusion, I had my hands full that morning. I think Independence Day is slowly evolving into one of my favorite holidays.

The only other thing worth mentioning (and if you live in California, I apologize, because this is getting really old) is we had an earthquake today. It was a very pleasant 5.4. Just big enough to get the chandeliers swinging, but not big enough to cause alarm. I had called my grandma to ask her a few questions concerning my grandpa's upcoming birthday, and I was just leaving her a message when the quake rolled in. I interrupted my message to her with "Uh...Grandma, we're having an earthquake right now..." and, without realizing it, sort of "narrated" the quake for her over her machine as it was happening. She called me back later this evening, laughing at the fact that, even though they couldn't feel the earthquake in Camarillo, she was still able to experience it through my message. Hey, I'm here to serve...and apparently to leave weird messages on people's machines when nature strikes.

Why Can't I Get Into this Damn Book?

Bookworm Challenge Update: I finished The Last Olympian eons ago but never wrote a review.  So I'm going to make this quick: 

Great conclusion to a light, enjoyable series.  Rick Riordan tidies up all loose ends with a very satisfying resolution, leaving just enough mystery to leave the readers intrigued at the possibilty of a whole new series in the distant future.

I am currently reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and I am struggling with it.  I'm on page 184, and I still have not become absorbed by the book.  I was expecting a captivating love story, but what I'm getting is a long-winded comedy of manners amongst all of these snobby self-absorbed class-consciousness characters.  It's like an 1800's rural England version of Gossip Girl.  Of course I've never watched Gossip Girl before, so I can't really vouch for the validity of that statement.  I'm going to give the book until page 201 to start captivating me (I know, sort of a random number there), or else I'm tossing it in lieu of something much less timeless.  I know, I am the WORST English teacher EVER.  How can I teach seventh graders about literature, and not be able to get through a classic work of art by Jane Austen?  Lord help my poor students.       

Summer Funk

I didn't do anything productive today.  Well, I take that back; I did four discussion posts for my online class, I wrote two sentences for a paper I have due on Sunday, and I ate three bowls of rocky road ice-cream.  Other than that, I've been a lazy sack.  I told myself I was going to take Moses for a walk today, but I didn't.  I told myself I was going to ride the exercise bike today, but I didn't.  I was supposed to go to kickboxing tonight, but I skipped it in lieu of working on my paper...the same paper that now has two whole sentences to date.  Ughhh.  Bummer of a day. 

Clint strapped 5 lbs ankle weights to my ankles earlier to see if I might want to try them out, and Trinity just came out of her room and asked me what they were.  I explained to her that by carrying around those extra pounds, it was helping to build my leg muscles. 

"Yeah, but don't you have to be walking around for that to work?" She asked.

"Shut it, child" was my eloquent reply.

So here I sit, with my stagnant ankle weights, hoping tomorrow will be more productive.  I get it that part of summer break for teachers should involve some R&R, but all of this relaxation is just depressing.

You know what, this is ridiculous.  Here I am, whining on my blog that I didn't accomplish anything, when this day isn't even over yet.  Screw it, I'm jumping on that exercise bike.  Who cares if it's already 10:45...at least I still have the chance to do something...plus having music blasting through my eardrums always lifts up my spirits.

*Update:  I dragged out the exercise bike, got my iPod ready, and wound up sitting on the couch watching TV until bedtime.  Yay for moments of motivation.

Cheater Cheater, People Eaters

Clint and I are playing Quiddler right now and he is totally cheating.  He went to some sort of Scrabble website to look up words that begin with "qu," and came up with "query."  Cheater!  Oh, it's my turn now...be right back... 

Haha!  I love karma!  On the last round, I won the game by nine points because I pulled out a word that normally would have never occurred to me.  Which word, you ask?  Query!  Yeah baby, that's what I'm talking about!  Cheaters never prosper.  Well, unless they're poiliticians.  Or just regular Joe-Schmoes that get away with it.  Now that I think about it, that's a stupid expression. 

This week has been a great week, although for the life of me I can't think of what I did.  I know we went to Dan's and Felisa's for small group on Monday, which was fun, as always.  The discussions in our group are getting deeper and deeper every time we meet, and I love that.  I love it that I have a group of grown-ups who I can delve into difficult topics with and bounce ideas from.  But it's not all just "heavy" stuff; we laugh a lot too.  Especially when the women start throwing their men under the bus about their bad driving and such...poor guys.  You know if they tried to turn around and do the same thing to us, we'd have them by their cajones by the time they got home.  Ahhh, love...such a double standard.

Today we went with Mike and Amanda to see Eclipse.  Since social networking sites are bombarded with excited quibbling about the latest Twilight installment, I won't torture anyone with a long-winded review of the movie.  But I will say that it followed the book closely, and I really enjoyed it. 

We have set a camping date with Matt and Alana!  We're going to Lake Gregory the 20th-22nd.  My sister is going to crack up when she reads this, since she lives there.  We were originally planning to camp somewhere further away, but every place we could think of was already booked. Since it is so beautiful up in the mountains, we decided that camping there for a couple of days would still be a great break from the desert.  I am really going to have to resist the temptation of sneaking in my sis's house though to steal a quick shower or an extra pillow.  Who exactly said that roughin' it has to be rough?  ;-) 

One final thing: I did NOT make up today's blog title.  I asked Clint what I should title this entry, and that's what he came up with.  I didn't get the whole "people eaters" part of it, but he said it's because we watched a movie about vampires today.  I think that's a HUGE stretch, but we're in a hurry to start "movie night," so I'll change it later.

Ta-Da!

Finally finished with Trin's room and I am bone-weary!  I feel like my entire life for the past two weeks has been comprised of nothing but taping and edging and painting....Unfortunately I still have two more bathrooms to paint, because Trin's bathroom is currently brown, and ours is an awful shade of grimy lavendar.  I think I am going to take a week off from any activities requiring blue tape or paintbrushes, and then maybe (hopefully) sometime next week I'll feel refreshed and ready to tackle those bathrooms.  Of course during my week "off," Clint needs my help shoveling rocks, so I'm not sure exactly how refreshing this so-called break is going to be.

So here it is...our old master bedroom.  The paint color was supposed to be lavendar, but it sort of came out as a pale pink.  Ironically, Trinity hates pink, but I spent a good deal of time brainwashing her that the color IS actually lavendar, so at this point she loves her room.  She picked out the kelly green color on the top, which is actually brighter in person.  I love it.  Part of the fun was I refused to let her see the room the entire time I worked on it, because I wanted to do a surprise "reveal" like you see on HGTV.  So she was locked out of her room all day yesterday.  Today, while she was at a birthday party down the street, Clint and I moved in all of her furniture and hung up all of her pictures.  When she came home, I made her close her eyes while walking in.  The whole thing was so entertaining!

Summer...Break?

I've been useless as far as writing in my blog! I'm not explicitly trying to avoid it, but summer has a natural tendency to take over my social networking. Yesterday I went to Lake Gregory with Shannon and Sarah, and it was so gorgeous up there. We had a great time, and now it's hard to want to sit down indoors and type...anything.

This week I've been busy painting our master bedroom and getting it put together. We decided to trade rooms with Trinity over summer break, which I know sounds a little strange. Our house technically has two master bedrooms, but one of them is significantly smaller than the other. When we first moved in, we decided to take the smaller of the two master bedrooms because it had a huge walk-in closet, plus it was the only room located on the opposite side of the house apart from the other bedrooms, and I thought it would be nice to have that kind of privacy. Well, time has shown that we are way too cramped in that room, so we decided to trade rooms with Trinity. We are losing the walk-in closet, but we are gaining more space, a large garden tub, and more counterspace in the bathroom.

Trading bedrooms has been a HUGE ordeal. It's not just a matter of swapping all of our stuff, but I also have to repaint both rooms, because neither one is the appropriate colors for the new occupants. Luckily I just finished up with our bedroom, and I love how it came out. We decided to go with purple and ivory, and Clint found this great bedspread on the internet. I had to scrounge around the house to come up with accessories to decorate the bedroom because it was so empty, and today we went to Kirklands and picked up the clock that is hanging over the bed, along with the two sconces. The clock was on clearance for $13...I couldn't believe it. It also says Oxford St. on it, which I just about died, because let's just say that street has significant meaning for me.

In addition to repainting the rooms, Clint and I are also landscaping our front yard. We just had a delivery of rocks...mountains upon mountains of rocks, and we're using them to do a desert-type-scape around an island of grass.

I have a four-page paper due tonight (that I haven't even started), so I better quit blabbin' about home improvement and get cracking on some school work.

I Offended a Woodchuck

TMI Alert: If stories concerning bladder maladies offend you, then I'd advise you to read no further. That being said...

We were on our way back to our cabin from the Winchester Mystery House, and I had the most terrible urge to pee. I mean, it was really REALLY bad. I asked Clint how much longer until we reach the next rest stop, and he estimated that we had about ten minutes more. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wouldn't be able to make it another ten minutes (darn kids tore up my bladder), so for the sake of maintaining the sanctity of our somewhat grungy but otherwise tinkle-free seats, I told him he needed to pull over NOW.

Clint quickly brought the car to a stop on the side of the highway, and I jumped out of the car and headed quickly down the hill into some wild brush, looking for some privacy. In my panic, I ran right through a huge patch of stinging nettles; a price I would pay for many hours to come. At this point, I could no longer hold it, so I double-checked to make sure the highway traffic couldn't see me, and there I went, on a big pile of sticks that led directly into an even bigger mountain of sticks. But right as I was going, a brown furry critter suddenly startled me, and scurried into a large habitat...the habitat that I was currently--eh-hem--doing my business on. He looked at me from inside his hole in this accusational way, and I told him "I'm so sorry! But I can't stop now!"

I didn't know what the creature was until I did some research later on that day. I really do feel terrible and am sorry I offended the poor critter and defiled his habitat.

So I guess this begs the question of "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" Unfortunately I was too busy peeing on his front porch to find out.