Have you ever felt like you were stuck in the spin cycle – just turning round and round and never really accomplishing very much but getting the ever-living daylights drained out of you? That pretty much sums up my week. Except I actually enjoyed it…so does that make me insane?
AJ had a Dr’s appt this past week and we learned he is mildly asthmatic, in addition to having ezcema (which we discovered at last week’s appt). So we left the Dr’s office armed with 3 new prescriptions. He received an inhaler, which has been an interesting experience. Have you ever tried getting a 5 year old to do anything slowly? Especially inhale? It is about as easy as trying to herd a bunch of cats into a bathtub full of water.
K is playing basketball in the Upward program this year and may I just say her participation in the program should be called “OhMyWord.” Now, don’t misunderstand me – she has athletic ability. She is, after all, my child. But she has never, ever played organized basketball and it’s painful, albeit humorous to watch her learn. Never one to quit, she has determination and the desire to win inside of her. Still. Sometimes that is just not enough, folks. Her team played their first game this weekend and my girl didn’t know the difference between offense and defense, bless her heart. She was playing defense at both baskets and there was one moment in the game where she actually got the ball and forgot if she was offense or defense and ended up throwing it in a teammate’s face just to rid herself of the pressure and possibly the impending embarrassment of making a basket at the wrong post. Sigh. Much of the rest of the weekend was spent going over the rules of the game with her. Something her coaches apparently overlooked, since all the other girls on her team are returning players.
And our new computer is wonderful. I have never had anything as nice as this – I can run more than one program at a time and it doesn’t freeze up. Miracle of miracles, I tell you. God is so good. He has even answered my prayers for patience. He has given me many opportunities this week to exercise my willingness to trust Him and remain calm while transferring files and programs from the old computer to the new one. Like when the old computer’s screen kept shutting off mid-transfer and wouldn’t come back on, no matter what I did and I had to power the tower down to reboot the screen — I remained calm and said to myself, “Self…remain calm.” See how easy that was? I just love it when God answers prayers. And I didn’t even pull out one hair, although I’m pretty sure a few gave up and turned loose and a few others turned grey in the process. (And do you spell grey “grey” or “gray”? It was always my understand both were acceptable, but everytime I spell it “grey”, spellcheck says it’s spelled incorrectly…go figure)
I did think about shedding a few tears when I realized I had inadvertently deleted a 30 page mini-book I had written in college for creative writing. It was some of my best work ever about growing up on a farm and country life. I was reformatting a disk and thought I had saved it to the desktop on the old computer (I even checked the folder where it was supposed to be stored) and just as I hit the “delete” key to remove it from the disk, I noticed the folder was gone. After a mild panic attack and trying to cancel the delete (which didn’t work), I gave up and just decided that I would rewrite it in the days to come. It was peppered with country witticisms my Aunt Sister (her real name was Leola Daniels, but she was called “Sister” because, well, she was the oldest sister of 4 boys and 5 girls on my dad’s side) and Uncle Steve used to say – things like “He’s so poor he’d have to borrow money to buy water to cry with” or “She’s so dull she couldn’t cut hot butter with a knife.” Thing is, the mini-book was written 15 years ago, before I had three children and when my brain still remembered things that happened longer than 5 minutes ago. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to write that well again. I had honestly forgotten about it until I saw it and my mind exploded with the bloggy possibilities. “Oooh…I could pull a Pioneer Woman and post it in chapters” was but one of many that came to mind. Oh..okay, it was the only one that came to mind because really? my mind can only process one thought at a time, people. Especially when I’m working on the whole patience thing.
I still have not completed my new banner for 2008. A little behind the ’08 ball, yes I am. (get it? I crack myself up) I do have some ideas, one of which I borrowed from some scrapbooking paper I have – I freehanded a little birdy from it and I will probably use it somehow in the design. I am finding that if I come up with a graphic first, it’s easier for me to do the rest of the design. Here’s the sample I drew:
What are your thoughts on using this bird? Is it too cartoonish?
And might I just add that I EL-OH-VE-EEE (as Rachel would say)having my Adobe on the same computer I use for the internet? No longer do I have to use one computer for the graphics and one for blogging because neither one would do both. Now I have one computer that I can do everything on. It’s tempting to stay here all day, but that would be insanity, right? (I might enjoy that, too!)
Technorati Tags: blog design, witticisms, Texas
