I’m over on The Eye Roll Diaries today talking about taking an unplanned trip!
It’s been a week filled with love, so I hope you’ll stop by and visit my friend Heidi as she climbs aboard the love train on Falling Down the Rabbit Hole and my friend Debbie as she tells us what love means to her on Hippie Chick Chronicles.
For the past week, I’ve had an upper respiratory infection (self-diagnosed), which has caused a great deal of coughing and overall feeling of yuck. I have coughed so violently it feels like I might have pulled a muscle, broken a rib or worse! My friend Beth Ann swears she found my lung outside her home in Iowa (I’m in Georgia). The way I’ve been coughing I figured this could be a reality so I asked her to pack it in snow and mail it back to me. At first Beth Ann said she would absolutely send it back but then later informed me her husband had backed his car over my lung before she could retrieve it. I have such nice friends, but I digress…back to the story.
I decided since I was feeling puny it might be beneficial to eat a nice warm bowl of oatmeal. Since we were out of the handy individual microwave serving packs of creamy blueberry and strawberry, I used a box of Quaker Oats I found in my pantry. After preparing the oatmeal and adding a banana and sugar to make it more appealing, I sat down and began to eat. I noticed it tasted a bit off (kind of stale), but since I don’t eat plain oatmeal I figured that’s what it was supposed to taste like and though it was awful I finished the entire bowl.
As I was putting my bowl in the sink, I noticed I left the Quaker Oats box on my kitchen counter, so I decided to see if it had an expiration date. To my shock right there on the bottom was printed “BEST IF USED BY APRIL 08!” April 2008? It’s February 2012!! Worried I might have given myself food poisoning, I posted this oatmeal expiration gem to facebook as a possible final status update.
Again, enter my friend Beth Ann, who told me to “rotate my stock.” Since I trust Beth Ann (except for the lung incident), I decided to go through my pantry, refrigerator and spice rack to toss out every expired item. Thankfully, my pantry was clean of expired items as was my refrigerator, most likely because I tossed a lot of things during a recent move (yet somehow that oatmeal slipped through), but when I got to my spices…OMG! When all was said and done, my spice rack was practically empty except for salt, pepper, Season All and chili powder!
As I sat the expired spices on my kitchen table I began to add up the cost in my mind. In case you haven’t purchased any recently, those things are freaking expensive! There must have been at least a hundred dollars worth of outdated spices ready to be tossed. It was a disturbing sight. My hubby tried to convince me spices, “don’t really expire,” but I ignored him and threw them away just to be on the safe side plus, I recall seeing him web surfing for life insurance policies recently…hum.
There’s no moral to this story other than to say A) listen to Beth Ann and rotate your stock (just don’t ask her to return a lung), B) don’t listen to your husband who has been life insurance shopping when he says things don’t really expire, C) don’t eat oatmeal that expired four years ago – although, for the record it didn’t make me sick or kill me (obviously) since I’m writing this post – and D) go through your spice rack and let me know how many expired spices you need to throw away.
Here’s what I tossed out:
What the heck is a caraway seed? Poultry seasoning? Ridiculous!!
Image via Wikipedia
My oldest daughter bought herself a new Apple Mac Pro a few weeks ago to replace her five year old HP laptop…a laptop I loved.
When she lived at home, we shared her laptop, so when she moved out last August I was left laptop-less. It’s been a very sad time for me in that regard. I loved that laptop and treated it like a baby (just like I do my iPhone). She, on the other hand, would toss it on her bed, leave it lying around where it could be stepped on and just didn’t seem to love it like I did. Still, it was hers and she had every right to take it with her when she left.
Well, I’m happy and sad to report that the HP laptop is back in my possession where, if it worked, it could be used and loved as it should be. Unfortunately, she brought it back and gave it to me because A) the operating system blew up and B) she got mad when the operating system blew up and dropped it on the floor in her words “to see if I could fix it”, which, in turn, damaged the monitor. I’m very sad the laptop no longer works. My hubby says it would cost more to repair it than it would to just by a new one.
I really need a laptop! It may sound materialistic, but it’s not…really! I’m a virtual assistant, a writer, a pinner, a facebooker, and a tweeter among other things. A laptop would make my busy life so much more convenient and organized. Honestly, it would. It would be beneficial on so many levels. Problem is, I can’t afford to buy a laptop unless my children are willing to live on PB&J sandwiches for a month and go without cable and internet; neither of which I think they’d be willing to do.
Who knows, maybe by some miracle the broken laptop will come back to life or perhaps someone from Apple, HP, any other laptop maker or even Ellen might stumble upon this blog and offer to send me one for FREE! Hey, I would even blog about it and tell everyone how great it is (providing that’s the truth) and encourage everyone who reads this blog to rush out and buy one. I’m just putting my wish out into the universe, people.
Since I’m pretty sure no one will send me a free laptop, I’ll just keep saving my pennies in a jar until one day…one day…I’m sure I’ll have saved enough to purchase my very own laptop. Until then, I’ll just remain stuck here in my office tethered to my desktop. Oh, woe, is me.
I’m over on The Eye Roll Diaries today sharing a proud, yet terrifying, momma moment.
Be sure you visit my friend Heidi on Falling Down The Rabbit Hole to see why she’s singing and my friend Debbie on Hippie Chick Chronicles to find out if you’re weird like her!
Wishing you all a blessed weekend. I’ll see you here next week!
I’m going to complain today about rude shoppers. Now, while there are various types of rude shoppers, the ones currently causing me distress are those who run into long-lost friends, relatives, lovers, etcetera, in retail establishments and insist on catching up on each other’s life while blocking the aisle with their shopping carts. These AB’s (aisle blockers) are just plain annoying and I’ve had just about enough of their blatant disregard for other shoppers (specifically, ME).
When I go shopping – especially grocery shopping – I want to get in and out as soon as possible since it is not on my list of the “top ten fun things to do with my time.” If my need for speed is brought to a screeching halt by these AB’s it just pushes my internal bitch button. Instead of doing what I usually do, which is clear my throat and politely say “Excuse me,” what I really want to do is ram my cart into theirs while shouting “Get the frak out of my way!”
Unfortunately, my Southern upbringing will not allow for this type of impolite behavior; still it’s fun to think about. Since I am from the South and consider myself a very polite person, I’m thinking I should try to use the expression “Bless your heart” along with “Excuse me” when asking these people to move. Maybe something, like “Bless your heart, please excuse me” (okay, it needs a little work).
The expression “Bless your heart” is an option here, because if you don’t know, in the South it has various meanings. It can be used to convey sincerity and compassion or it can be used to convey your disdain for someone while still maintaining your Southern charm and politeness. I’ll give you examples:
Sincere: If someone you really care about tells you their pet iguana died you would say “Bless your heart. I’m so very sorry to hear the news” and you would mean it sincerely.
Insincere: If someone you loathe tells you her husband ran off with the nanny on the same day one of her butt implants burst you would say “Bless your heart. I’m so very sorry to hear the news,” when what you really mean is “You are such an idiot and got exactly what you deserved.”
In the aisle-blocker’s case I would use it in its insincere form. Yes, it is a little passive-aggressive, but to borrow a line from the song “Only Prettier” by country star Miranda Lambert…“I don’t have to be hateful; I can just say bless your heart.”
So the next time someone says to you “Bless your heart”, you may want to think about what you said first and your relationship with that person. Just a little something to ponder today.
The media has reported on a lot of celebrity breakups over the past few months; Demi and Ashton, Heidi Klum and Seal; Katy Perry and Russell Brand, and Kim Kardashian and some guy nobody’s ever heard of, to name a few.
One may think these breakups were caused by celebrities rushing into relationships, age differences or the white hot spotlight being on them at all times. My husband, however, thinks they have all been caused by facebook.
While watching the news together, hubby and I heard about Heidi Klum and Seal’s recent split. I commented how it was a little sad because they appeared to have something special. After a few minutes my spouse spoke up and said “Have you noticed how many beautiful celebrity women have gone through breakups since I joined facebook?”
Once I finished laughing (really loudly), I turned to him and said “Yes, sweetie, I’ve noticed.” He sighed and shook his head asking “What can you do?” Nothing, I laughed…absolutely nothing.
It’s Friday, which means I’m blogging over on The Eye Roll Diaries today about the perks of parenting teenagers. I hope you’ll stop by and visit me there.
Also, check out my friend Heidi’s post on Falling Down the Rabbit Hole about Unexpected Seasons and my friend Debbie’s post on The Hippie Chick Chronicles about her new obsession (mine too!).
Y’all have a great weekend. I’ll see you back here next week.
