Way-Overdue Post

Lots to catch up on. Feel free to skip sections of this as needed because I'm going to be rambling for a while. As far as I can tell, I have 9 different things to tell you about. So I'll begin with last Thursday.

1 - My Sequoia. I have a big honkin' SUV. It's a Toyota Sequoia and we've had it since December, 2001. I love this vehicle. It has almost 108K miles on it. It's the Mom-mobile. Anyway, last Wednesday, I loaded up a ton of stuff from our garage into the Sequoia to schlep up to Gwen's house for the garage sale Saturday. Stuff schlepped and unloaded, Sequoia is fine. Except the back window isn't rolling down. Not such a big deal. I've had trouble with it before - but it always resolved itself and the window always ended up working. But not last week.

So Thursday morning before I take Caleb to school and go uptown to Community Bible Study, I took all of our bags and a big box of stuff for CBS out to the Sequoia and loaded it into the back. No problem. Then I loaded the kids and noticed that Julie's face was messy. I went to the back to open the back door and get her diaper bag and...nothing. The door handle broke as I was trying to get in. Great. The window doesn't work either, so I have stuff back there I'm going to have to climb over seats to get out. Not so much of a big deal except for the big box of stuff. Lovely.

Our local handy-dandy shop (owned by church friends) can't fix it, so I made an appointment to take it to the dealership next Friday. Hopefully they will fix both handle and window and it won't cost me our entire tax rebate check.

2 - Garage Sale. I am disillusioned by garage sales. Let me just say that donating items and taking a tax write off is more profitable. Also, there's a certain segment of the population that thinks that they have the right to be able to buy my stuff for way cheaper than I'm willing to sell it and they get pushy and even angry when trying to negotiate. Makes me mad. But Steve had a very nice response for me when I called him after the garage sale to vent. He said, "But you got all this stuff out of our house. That's great!" Good man.

3 - A few nights ago I awoke at about 1 a.m. to crunching and other weird eating-type sounds. Turned on the light and discovered the cat having a midnight snack on the floor at the end of the bed. A mouse. Nearly decapitated because she decided to start with the neck. Nasty cat. But I'd rather have a half-eaten dead mouse in my house than a live mouse. Still, it was disgusting. My #1 preference is NO mouse, but I don't know that this is an option with Gray Cat in residence.

4 - I was sick on Monday. I got up at 5:30 a.m. to go running, as usual, and decided to go ahead and run. It was one of those mornings where I wasn't sure if I was really sick or not. I knew that if I went for a run, I'd find out soon enough how I felt. Sure enough, about 15 minutes into my 45 minute run, I felt yucky and walked along a shortcut to get home. Good thing, too, since I started feeling really sick about 4 houses away. I stayed home all day.

5 - After I got home Monday morning from my abbreviated run, I showered. Steve told me after I got out that Gray Cat brought in a live bird while I was cleaning up. He got it from her, it escaped, she caught it and killed it, then Steve took it away and put it in the trash. He was even nice enough to vacuum up the feathers before I got out. Stupid cat.

6 - Steve was at a meeting Monday night, and I was home with the kids. I put them all to bed, then heard a disturbing noise. The aforementioned Stupid Cat was throwing up on my living room carpet. She did this 4 times. So I'm not feeling well and I'm cleaning up cat vomit. Lovely. Stupid Cat. I told her, "That's why you're not allowed to eat these things you kill," but I don't think she was listening to me. I think she was watching some birds outside on the porch.

7 - I took a story I wrote for my writing course to the Los Alamos Writers' Group on Thursday night and read it for them. They liked it and gave me some suggestions for submission ideas. I'll keep you posted.

8 - Yesterday, I decided to walk the girls to the grocery store before picking up Caleb from his after school activities. Audrey wanted to ride her bike. She's rather good on it, but we got her some new training wheels since the ones she had were basically garbage. I'm pushing Julie in the stroller and keeping an eye on Audrey. All of a sudden I see that one training wheel is doing something weird because it's loose. I end up stopping every minute for the next 30 minutes and hand-tightening the loose training wheel. What a hassle! I finally got home and Steve fixed it in 30 seconds. But that was the most frustrating walk I've taken in quite a while.

9 - I learned today that I am 2 pounds from my weight before I got pregnant with Caleb. This is funny since I'm 2 pounds away from losing 50 pounds. Cool, huh?

I'm A Snob

Yes, I am a snob.

I discovered this at the grocery store today. I have 6 reusable grocery bags that I use on a weekly basis. The bags are nice and big and can hold a lot of stuff, unless they're packed incorrectly, which they were today. The bags are shorter than paper bags but are wider and longer. So basically a cube with handles.

I got to the Sequoia and repacked all the bags. This is not the first time I've done this, but it is the first time I equated my actions to snobbery. I just want all of the bags as full as possible and as neat as possible. How hard is it to put boxes in a square bag? Not very. Put the boxes in first - it's not that hard. But it drives me crazy when my bags aren't packed nicely. And now I know there are 2 baggers that are horrible about this. The teenagers are pretty good about it, so it's not them.

You'd think I could leave the stupid bags alone for the very long 3-minute drive home, but I have to know that everything is orderly back there. Too bad I don't feel that way about the messes around my house.

Speaking of messes, I'm getting ready for a garage sale. It's not going to be here, so that means I get to sort my stuff, then haul my stuff somewhere else and then if it doesn't sell, I get to haul it back here or to a place to donate it. I'm looking forward to having a nice clean spot in my garage where this stuff has been accumulating for over a year. Then I can deal with the kids' out-of-season clothes that need to go into storage in the shed in the backyard. Then our garage will be lovely and empty.

I ran this morning. 44 minutes. But since I ran yesterday, I could definitely feel it today. I think I'm going to start running 4 times a week, then I'll move up to 5, then 6. I don't know how long it will take me to get to 6 times a week, but that's my ultimate goal. I'm going to have to adjust my daily Weight Watchers point allocation to compensate. I don't want to shift into "too much work, too little food" mode - that would really derail my weight loss progress.

I had an interesting moment last week - I was looking online at Lands' End for a swimsuit. When I checked out their size chart, I discovered that my measurements fall within the size 14 range. Yay! Size 14 - haven't seen that number in 7 or 8 years. To celebrate, yesterday I wore my size 14 jeans that I haven't been able to wear yet. They were a bit snug around the tummy, but I made it through the whole day. I finally changed late afternoon because I was getting hot.

So that's it for today.

Homebound

Julie was still sick today and now Audrey has jumped on the "nasty tummy bug" wagon. So I got to stay home for the 4th day in a row. It didn't get to me until this evening, then I realized I was weary. I took some stuff over to the Adams' house for a garbage sale next weekend and that was my time away.

I ran this morning - it was a tough one. 56 minutes. Towards the end I thought I was going to throw up, but wasn't sure if it was the tummy buy, lack of food, or difficulty of workout that was making me feel so bad. But I was determined to push through it, and if necessary, brag to you all that I worked out so hard that I threw up (isn't that a lovely thought?). Anyway, the feeling passed, thank goodness. But it was DANG COLD this morning. There was frost everywhere and I didn't see any bunnies out eating people's yards. I saw 7 bunnies doing just that on Wednesday morning at the same time. So does that make me dumber than the average bunny? I dunno.

I finished the assignment for my writing class. It's about Audrey and her bag. I had to cut 500 words out of it - I pared it down from 1500 to 1000. That was tough. It was brutal. But I did it. Now I'm going to let it sit until Monday and I'm going to look at it once more before I mail it off.

I'm going now. I'm sleepy. I've been sorting garbage sale stuff all afternoon - mostly my "fat" clothes - but I want to take my shoes off now.

Not a TV Star

Yeah - so based on my brother's mad Googling skillz, I have determined that the guy I was stalking in the grocery store was not Michael Rosenbaum. Too short. Grocery Store Man was just a bit taller than I am, but TV Star Man is around 6 feet.

I stayed at home with the girls today. Good thing, too, because Julie's tummy hurt most of the day. She is more verbal about tummy aches than the other kids were. But I got my room cleaned. That's a good thing. The bad thing is that I had to wash the handmade quilt on my bed because Julie's diaper runneth over. Eww.

I really need to sit down and proofread the article I wrote for my writing class. It's about Audrey and the bags. I also need to finish an article I'm working on, but it scares me. I don't know how to end it. I guess I should just bang something out, send it in, and call it good. I don't really want to do the article, but the magazine wants to see it. I feel bad ignoring a request for the article, so I feel like I need to send something in.

Stuff to do, need to go...

The Last 24 Hours

Side note: I just cleaned the laptop screen. Wow - what a difference.

Anyway the last 24 hours have been abnormal. First when I went to get Julie up yesterday, I was greeted not only with my little cherub, but with sick in her bed, too. Yuck. I yelled for Steve to strip the sheets and I started the washer.

Got the kid cleaned up, got the other kids breakfast and took Caleb to school. On our way back in the front door (LITERALLY) Julie threw up again. On the front porch. Yuck. But at least I could just hose it down and call it good. So I did.

Then I started feeling wonky. We missed Bible study yesterday morning. My ears were ringing - I'm wondering if my blood pressure was up.

But my glasses did finally come yesterday. They are, indeed, very red. I've had to work the earpieces a bit over steam to get them right, but I think I have them adjusted properly now.

I stayed home last night while Steve went to our search committee meeting at church. It was supposed to be here, but I don't think sharing germs is very nice.

While he was gone, I watched the series finale of "Biggest Loser: Couples." For the first time in 5 years, a woman won. She began at 234 and ended at 122 - 112 lost. That's a little over 48% of her starting weight. Holy cow. So my favorite formerly-fat person walked away with $250K last night. And it was really inspirational to see all of the formerly-fat people and how much they each had lost. Very cool.

Cool enough, in fact, to make me roll out of bed this morning at 5:45 a.m. and go for a run, even though I really wasn't in the mood for it. The alarm woke me in the middle of a dream about running a half marathon. Weird. I've never had a dream about running before. What do you suppose that means.

Then since Julie didn't have any symptoms of a tummy bug all day yesterday, I took her to school this morning. I ran over to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things and I ended up stalking some poor man while I was there.



But he looked just like Michael Rosenbaum from "Smallville." Picture this guy in a blue t-shirt, tan shorts, flip flops, and glasses. Buying beer at 9 a.m. Could be him, right? So anyway, I'm trying to be non-obvious while I scope him out to figure out if it's him or not. But then a question comes into my head: how will I know? I realize that stars look different in real life than their on-screen personas, so how will I know if this is really him? I think I would recognize his voice. But how do I get him to talk? By now I'm having visions of taking pictures with my camera phone and wondering what I might have him sign. I haven't even figured out if it's him or not.

Finally I give it up (he's taking way too long in the liquor corner) and go try to get what I'm there for - trail mix and juice for the girls' snack on Friday. But I'm so flustered at the thought of having just seen a TV personality that I can hardly think. It ends up taking me about 5 times longer in the store than it should have because of this.

The cashier said that he said he was British and that he's in town visiting his brother. Hmmm. Good cover for an actor who doesn't want attention. Then there's the fact that he was driving a silver Chevy sedan. Not very actor-ish.

So I get home and begin working on my next writing assignment (due in a week) and I get a phone call...Julie has had a major diaper blow out and I need to come get her.

She's not over her tummy bug yet, so there will be no Bible study for us tomorrow either.

The Haircut

The hair did better today. I think I found a happy medium between yesterday's semi-flat and Friday's over-poufy. I liked the hair clay. Doesn't that seem weird - we tell our kids not to put dirt in their (or others') hair, and then here I am paying $3.79 for hair clay. Nice.

We spent the evening outside. We started with dinner al fresco then graduated to sweeping the porch (me), skating (Caleb, Audrey, and Steve) and aimless happy wanderings around the yard (Julie).

I'm going to try something new tomorrow morning - getting up early to go on my run. I want to try it this way because I feel like I have *so* much to get done this week and taking a couple hours out of my child-free time to run then shower seems wasteful. I don't know why this week's events seem more urgent than normal. My last workout was 59 minutes, we'll see how long tomorrow's workout needs to be, then I'll set my alarm accordingly.

Ok - just looked at podfitness.com and my workout is only 44 minutes. So I ran my idea by Steve and he's on board...as long as I'm home and ready to take over kid duty by 7 a.m. I think this is very do-able. Woo hoo for new things.

I think it will be relatively easy to get up in the morning - I took a 3 hour nap this afternoon and feel good. Plus I'll only be getting up 15 minutes earlier than the alarm goes off.

I need to go now, get a snack, and work on my Bible study.

My Fabulous New Glasses

ARE STILL IN COLLEGE STATION.

Grrrrrr.

I just called, since the mail has arrived sans specs. The manager apologized profusely after putting me on hold 3 times and "looking" for the tracking number. He finally told me that there was a mix up (no duh) and that even though I'd been called and told the glasses had shipped, they were, in fact, still in Post Oak Mall in Texas.

Then he promised to send them next day delivery. We'll see how that goes.

The Hair

I'm still not sure about my hairdo. I was envisioning longer layers than I ended up with. Hmmm. I bought 2 new styling products today - clay and spikey gel. This is added to the clear pomade, and assorted stuff for longer straight hair. I will have to experiment to see what works the best. I put some pomade in Julie's hair and gave her a freaky looking mohawk. She's pleased as punch.

The bangs are jaggedy on purpose, the hair above the ear actually reaches down to the bottom of the ear, but doesn't look quite right that way. I re-styled it about 30 minutes ago into this look, with most of the hair on top pushed forward. I'm hoping it will grow into what I want. At least it's shorter (what I wanted) and different (also what I wanted). It will be great for summer. Plus all those split ends I created from all the blow-drying and flat-ironing are gone. That's good news.

Shifting gears now...
On our way back from Spring Break, we stopped in Brownwood for lunch and refueling. Across the street from the gas station was this establishment:

I love Starbucks. But this insults my sensibilities. In case you don't recognize the architecture, this is an old Taco Villa building. In my opinion, Taco Villa is the Cadillac of Mexican fast food restaurants. We had one in Canyon and I have fond memories of riding there in the backseat of my friend Melissa's 1969 Camaro, my other friend Mikey riding shotgun. Sometimes I would drive the land yacht, otherwise known as a 1988 Oldsmobile Delta 88. But the point is I love Taco Villa. I took it personally when Taco Villa went out and Taco Smell came in. To this day I have antagonistic feelings towards Taco Hell. So when I saw this, a strange marriage of my current and past epicurean pleasures, I was insulted. Don't know why.

Can't spell check at the moment, so ignore any blatant (or subtle) errors.

A Run

Another run today. The total workout was 59 minutes, but the running parts added up to 37 minutes. THIRTY-SEVEN minutes. That's longer than my first few workouts were, running and walking together. The first part of the run was really tough - I was going uphill into a COLD wind. When I turned a corner and started going downhill, life got much easier. I felt as if I ran all over White Rock. I'm going to drive to pick up Caleb here in a few minutes. While I'm out, I'm going to drive the route I ran to see how far it was. That should be interesting.

I got my hair cut this morning. The jury is still out because Rose styled it too poufy for my liking. After I go get Caleb I'll take a shower and see what I think about it. I might even post a picture.

Oh yeah - my new running shoes showed up. They are going to need breaking in. But my new glasses still aren't here yet. Grrr.

Correction...

What she actually said about the twins was, "They're little ginormous cute-heads."

(See the comments on today's previous post...)

How hilarious is my child?

I was just reading the blog back from 2006. I was specifically looking for bag stories for my next writing assignment. What a little gem Audrey is! I love those bag stories. I had forgotten that she put grass in her bag. And I had forgotten how many times I had to sneak the bag away to clean it out and how I had to use diversionary tactics on Audrey when the contents of the bag were somewhere they weren't supposed to be - like on my bed.

Remember when she put the balloon animal in her bag and it lived there happily for 3 days? She's too funny.

Good News

I pretty much maintained my weight over Spring Break. I was only up 1.3 pounds from where I was before we left. Not bad for someone who enjoyed pound cake, peanut butter and chocolate cookies, pizza, cotton candy, and other assorted yummy things.

So now I need to focus on getting rid of 14 pounds by May 11. Caleb has "encouraged" me to get to 170 lbs. by his birthday so I can put on my wedding dress. The 11th is also Mother's Day. If I keep getting workouts like I had Saturday I think I'm well on my way. Plus I'll buckle down and keep my nose to the grindstone, food-wise.

My house is a wreck. I remember whining about this when we came home from our trip to Scotland/Ireland 2 years ago. Mountains of stuff. Then it was all dirty laundry, but now it's everything. We got 3 boxes of hand-me-downs in Texas and another small box in NM. Audrey has tons of fun new clothes, but I have to deal with all of them now. Oh joy. And I have piles of clothes (all mine) that are too large and awaiting a garage sale in 2 weeks. This will be my first garage sale. It's not going to be here at the house - I'm going in with a friend up in Los Alamos. Between the 2 of us (and a few other people bringing odds and ends) I think we'll have an interesting spread.

Man, it was great to be back in my own bed last night. I slept so soundly and deeply that I actually drooled. I never drool. I awoke this morning with the hair on the right side of my face wet. Yuck. Good thing it's such a dry climate - it didn't last long.

Speaking of hair, I'm going back to my new salon this Friday. I think I'm going to get a new style. I've enjoyed this "posh" do for over a year but I want something easy for the summer. Plus I miss my curls/waves a bit. I hope to be able to convey to Rose, my stylist, that I want a double-duty 'do. I want to be able to be curly or straight, depending on how I feel (or more appropriately, how little time I have to style my hair on any given morning). And as much as I love this hairstyle, everybody and their dog has this style. I'm tired of looking like everybody's dog. I want to be me again. Now that I've lost FORTY-SIX pounds, I think I can branch out and try to be stylistically unique.

And I think this summer I will probably put some more color in my hair. I really liked the pink. It was fun. But I might try blue. Caleb wants his hair to be green, and Audrey wants pink (big surprise). We might even let Jules get some hue in her 'do. That would be fun(ny).

I need to sign off now. It's 5:39 p.m. and apparently my family needs dinner. Pesky meals. If I have time (and inclination) I might post some pictures of potential hairdos and see what you think.

I still need your favorite "Audrey in England" stories. Please!

THIRTEEN

This morning, here in Clovis, I went on my longest run yet. It consisted of 13 2-minute segments. And it did NOT kick my rear end. I think it was easier than runs I've done at home because of the lower elevation...hence, more oxygen. I still used my inhaler, but I didn't feel as winded when I finished as I do at home.

I'm sitting here now watching an "enhanced" episode of "Lost" - it's the one that started with Hurley crashing his 1974 Camaro through a pile of melons.

My tummy hurts. Caleb got sick at Mom's house last week, but nobody else seemed to have anything wrong until last night. Steve had chills and didn't feel well, and I think the kids are having issues. Hopefully we can get home before anything worse happens.

Have I mentioned that I got new glasses? Well, not really "got." I got an eye exam in Texas, then went to LensCrafters and found some great frames. They're red, but that's beside the point. I wanted pink ones, but they didn't have them. So anyway, I got the frames and fully expected them to tell me that my new glasses would be ready the next day. My eyesight is so bad that my glasses are never ready in the oft-promised hour time slot. But I wasn't prepared for them to tell me that they would have to mail my new specs to me 5-10 business days later. Great. So I might get them next week. I had them adjust the frames before they sent them off so the my eyebrows won't look wonky when I get them.

Anyway...

I'm ready to be home. Almost 8 days gone. I miss my own bed. I miss my Weight Watchers food. I think I've been a conscientious eater, but I'm not sure. I haven't bothered entering any food I've eaten. I'm sure I've gone over my points limit, but I'm not going to worry about it.

I've done a bit more research on self-publishing my book about Stephen F. Austin. It's probably going to cost in the neighborhood of $12-16K for 3,000 to 5,000 copies. But if I go this route, I'll market and sell them directly to elementary schools in Texas and all the profits will be mine. No middleman like Amazon.com to take some of the money. So I guess I'll start saving my nickels and dimes so I can pay for my book.

Query for You...

So I've finally convinced myself that a book about the marvelous adventures of the fabulous Nolens in England is not a stupidly optimistic idea.

But I need your help.

I want to focus on about a dozen of the very best stories, preferably centering around our favorite drama queen-in-training, Audrey. I want to know which stories stick in your head about her in England. Which ones made you laugh? Which ones made you think, "I'm glad she's not MY child!" as you were reading? Note: you don't have to let me know if you actually had that last thought...

You can either post a comment here, or call me, or e-mail me at aprilnolen@mindspring.com or sky write over our house, or send a carrier pigeon...whatever. Or you can actually have a face-to-face conversation with me. What a novel concept!

Here are pics of what we did today:

There was a nice patch of bluebonnets on the outskirts of town. It was starting to show some wear from other people probably doing exactly what we were doing, but I think we managed to avoid photographing the mangy parts.

Audrey was in fine form. She had a total meltdown due to tiredness. The ironic thing was that not more than 5 minutes before and after these pictures were taken, she was wearing her new hat that says "Little Miss Sunshine" on it. We let her go back and sit in the car while we snapped pics of the other, happier children.




As you can see, I'm wearing shorts in this picture. I managed to find ONE pair of shorts in the entire Bryan/College Station area that fit like I want. It probably didn't help that I was being extra picky about style and that I never had more than an hour to shop. I probably tried on about 50 different pairs of pants and shorts during my 2 shopping excursions. And all I ended up with were these shorts and one pair of those roll-up capri pants like I lived in last summer. I did buy one packet of new undergarments (which I hate, but they were on sale, so I'm not going to complain too much) and spent the rest of my clothing budget on some new running shoes off eBay. Exact same shoes I use now, just newer. So now I'll have my "not running" running shoes and my "only running" running shoes.

Speaking of running, I've stuck to my running schedule since I've been here. Monday I ran on the treadmill and yesterday I ran outside. For those of you who know (or care) I ran from Mom & Dad's house near Texas Ave. down to Wellborn Rd. and back. I will do it again tomorrow morning before we pack up and leave. It's easier to run here - they have something I'm not used to: oxygen. I still needed my inhaler, but I noticed that the run was just less hard overall, despite the 300% humidity. That's pretty nasty.

I probably need to sign off now. I should get stuff gathered up so that I have less work to do in the morning after my run so we can head out.

By the way - here are some cousin pix from our time in Weatherford. The situation remained calm but deteriorated rapidly into pandemonium.