I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man!

(to be sung to the tune of I'm a map by Map on Dora the Explorer)

All my married life, I have wanted an orange tree. Since moving into our house, I have been planning and trying to decide the perfect location for it. For Christmas, my parents gave me a gift certificate to a nursery to buy one. After much mental deliberation, I decided to go ahead and put it in the front yard.

I also decided that if I were going to put it in, I needed to take out a palm tree, lantana and oleander, and put in a drip system.

BEFORE:

So I did. Seriously, I thought my back was broken after shoveling rock, digging, and leaning over all day to put in the drip. I complained about it a bit and waited a week to put in the plants.

KIND OF AFTER:

I still have more plants to plant, but I haven't mustered the mental energy to do them yet, but they'll be the pretties: verbena(s) in front of the foxtail ferns and orange tree, tall grass thing between them, a sweet potato vine in front of the pillar and lots and lots of zinnia all in the front as a border against the cement divider.

Now, because I'm in LOVE with my plants:

Yes, I know my tree is tiny. The guy at the nursery said, "I guess you don't want fruit very soon." Are you kidding me? Of course I want fruit, like yesterday, I just don't want to pay $500+ for a tree that's big enough to give me fruit soon. Also, remember I'm the one doing the manual labor? Yeah, I don't want to dig a bigger hole, or lift a heavier tree, or have to pay even more than the tree costs to get it installed.... What a dumb statement.

Anyhow, the fruits of my labor.... showing it off at the Huber Family Fair. I won a double chin and a medal.(FYI: Huber Family Fair is an annual event in connection with my Grandpa, Lee Huber's, birthday. It is a talent show. You may choose to display or perform. I always display. My favorite part of it is the metals, every year, made out of orange juice concentrate lids. Jealous?)

I've fallen and I can't get up....

Throw away my life alert necklace, I'm moving into the computer age..... slowly.....

So, I don't scrapbook. I have been wanting to do slideshow type video things to make for my child to save to cd's (or dvd's but that would require buying some sort of equiptment or something) for his future. I downloaded Smilebox and figured it had a two week free trial period so I'd give it a whirl. It was easy enough, the only problem is this: it doesn't give me the option to save it to a disk, so I don't think this is what I'm looking for. Does anyone have any suggestions on what program works the best for this? Remember I'm a grandma on the computer and don't know what technical terms mean. Technical terms for me start at the level of "zip file." It may well start below that, so maybe we should stick with things like "cut and paste."

Make a slideshow - it's easy!

P.S. It's INCREDIBLY long! You don't have to watch it, and if you do, turn off the volume or you will end up hating the song because it only let me put one on there and it plays it over and over and over and over. I just didn't know what else to do with it. Help me porfavor.

S.O.S. for crying out loud!

I hate making dinner. Well, maybe not so much the cooking part as the thinking part.

Today Jason woke me up from my nap and asked what we were having for dinner. I said probably meatloaf (I know, gag a little bit, but meh, it fills you up.)
He asked if we could have something else and then left to take someone to the airport.

So, being the nice wife I am, I started to make something else. Spaghetti - woohoo, right? Well, it's Jason's favorite. So, I'm getting it going and realize we're out of spaghetti noodles. Hmmm... I pull a "mom" trick and decide to use the pene pasta that we have, it'll work. Well, when the water was boiling, I lift the bag off the stove to pour it into the water. Too bad the burner it was sitting on was a little warm, and I got this:(I know, gag at the raw ground beef! Does anyone else agree that we should get a bridal shower every ten years so we can get new cookware?!)

Because I didn't want to burn myself I let them go and turned dinner into hamburger gravy over mashed potatoes. (Again gag some more, but it's food and I really didn't care.)

So, Jason calls and asks what we're having because he's starving and he'll eat anything. I let him know that that would have been nice to know an hour ago when I was going to make meatloaf. He asked me if I wanted him to pick something up. I hung up.

The water/milk/butter for the potato flakes boiled over and I almost swore. Thank heavens for a flat top stove.

So, long story short:
*I need ideas for dinner so I'm not scrambling at the last minute. Let me have your ideas!
*The cannery potato flakes get a "C," they work, but aren't as good as the pearls. I think I'll go ahead and get the pearls in bulk. Anyone want to share?
*We accept invites for Sunday dinner.

Fierce.

Congrats Christian Siriano! You were my favorite from the beginning; from the long sessions of flat-ironing your hair to trying on all the items you made, love it, love it. And your humility in the end? Bless your little heart - yes, I mean little, I didn't think you had one in there.

Maybe because secretly, or not so secretly, I wish I went into fashion design, not teeth de-grime.

I can't find the milk.

Found it.

Wanted:
A decent brain.
Not needing one with a genius IQ, just one that will hold a thought for maybe 3 seconds (does it take even that long to put milk back in the fridge?) and help me recall where I took off Oakley's shoes a little faster than 15 minutes and 3 sweeps through the house 2 outside and 2 in the car, and help me focus what I was going into the kitchen for, and what I was talking about before I saw the dog with sun-glasses on walk by, or, or ......
I guess I'm asking for a pre-kids Mom brain.

Maybe I need to carry around a dictaphone and just verbalize every single thought running through my hole-y little brain.

This feels like an opportune time for a, "In heaven, when they were handing out brains, you thought they said ______..." but I can't come up with anything other than trains, and I can't think of how to finish that off.