Christmas, New Years, and Goals

Hello everybody,

Here's what's up:

-I am 8 1/2 months pregnant (and really starting to feel it). 1.5 months left. (Because you deliver full-term when you are ten months pregnant. Ten months of gestation.)

-We aren't in Albuquerque anymore, we've been in Jeff City, MO, since June. Unpacking was a beast. Adam went to work immediately so the task of unpacking was left entirely to me. And I had just discovered I was pregnant the week or two before the move, so I was very pregnancy-exhausted (as well as exhausted from packing and moving) and barely staying on top of simple things. I really burned out. There are still boxes in the house today. Our basement is kind of moldy smelling and yucky, and we have some garage space, but it smells like stale cigarettes. (Not as bad since my mom and dad lent me their ozonator, but I need to do another treatment. It still stinks.) And I'm scared that things could flood down there and I don't want my photo albums or clothes in storage ruined. So a lot of boxes have been hanging out in corners in our bedrooms. I am finally overcoming my fears of flood (so far so good, and we had A LOT of rain recently, and no problems) and have really made some big unpacking progress in the last week.

-I have been having fun with my little girl and just in the past week I have been getting her room looking great. (I didn't want her to be jealous of the baby nursery, and her room needed less work, it was a good place to start.) And the nursery is well on its way to looking great for the new baby. Adeline never had a very good looking nursery. I do know that kids aren't picky, but since I'll be in that nursery an awful lot, it will be a nice place for me to feel recharged if it's looking good, with good stuff on the wall for me to look at while I breastfeed for multiple hours a day. I want it to almost have a spa-like feel so it can be a retreat for Mommy and her mental health, rather than an afterthought and a place where I dread to go for endless feedings. Hopefully I can work on my room, too. (I am envisioning a seaside, beachy feel and I want to make some shell artwork in watercolor and ink to hang on my walls. Maybe make some drapes like I did in Adeline's room with graphic star fish and nautilus shells. Really live it up finally and have a cute room for once, for minimal cost.)

-I am having fun with my husband. We have been able to do more regular dates since I am swapping voice lessons for baby sitting with a lovely young woman in my church ward (I'm LDS). We love hitting up Saturday matinees. Gotta see the movies now before the baby comes. We've seen Hunger Games, we took Adeline to see Frozen, and we were hoping to see The Hobbit sequel today, but maybe we'll get to do that next Saturday. There is only one movie theater in Jeff City, so that is funny. I guess there were more, but they closed down before we moved here.

-I have a new calling, and it's stressing me out a little. It's called Home Arts and I only have to do four activities a year, but they are three hours long on Saturday and require a lot of planning and a lot of delegating. I don't want to flake and I don't want anyone else involved to flake, but it's hard and stressful to me and I will have to be calling a lot to make sure people are on top of things, are planning their part of the activity, and don't forget. The calling is interesting. It is to help people who don't really know how to make a shopping list, how to price compare, how to cook quick, healthy, good meals, how to budget at all, how to sew, the very basics of things that can save A LOT of money per year in the home. And it's a little ironic that I am teaching it, because I'm sure I have HUGE gaps in my knowledge in addressing these things. The first activity is scheduled the same week as a ward party and a Relief Society activity, so I don't know how all that will work. If we delay too long, the baby will be here. I haven't called anyone yet to get them signed up to teach the shopping section, or the cooking section, so I really need to do that today or tomorrow. Maybe I can do it tomorrow in person. That would be good. Blah, so much work. It will be rewarding, but gah, hard to stay on top of and it will be stressing me out.

The first activity will be about how to shop and cook good cheap meals, and we will even take a little field trip to the nearby grocery store. We'll look for sale deals and hopefully everyone will learn how to compare pricing by ounce to make sure they are getting the best deal. Then we'll head back to the church and we'll cook a meal from start to finish, and talk about how to stock up a good pantry so you don't always have to be going to the store to cook up a good meal (I learned that trick from Rachael Ray). We'll try to cover it all in three hours. I will present one of those things, maybe the stocking the pantry and making shopping lists, while I need to delegate the field trip shopping to someone, and the cooking the meal from start to finish to someone else.

I also hope to do a thing where there are "doorprizes." There could be a bucket full of 25 lbs of flour that could last someone for cooking for awhile, or a nice pan that they might be needing, or things along that line. Stuff that people might need but can't afford. We have a few single moms in the ward and they need assistance.

Those are some of the things I am thinking about. I am also thinking about how I hope to deliver a healthy child, but you never know if the baby will survive the full pregnancy, or delivery, or have health issues. Luckily the baby is kicking strongly right now so my mind is at ease that it is still alive at least, but I feel too hot at night and I wonder if that's cooking my baby's brain and making its IQ drop, or that I'm not peeing very much at night and how that could be adversely affecting the baby. I drink lots of water, but it's a cold winter here and the heater running is really drying out the air and drying me out. I'm A negative in my blood, will my body attack my next baby during pregnancy and kill it? Will this be my last child? Lovely things to think about. I would rather be prepared than blind-sided, so I think about a lot of the possibilities so I may be a little more prepared if I have to deal with them.

Well I need to hang some drapes in my room. And maybe get to work on that artwork. And get to work on finishing Adam's Fathers Day present, a fun Monty Python clock. Yes, Father's Day was back in June. It was close to the week we moved. And I never got the present done. It's bumming me out, and it's the one thing he asked for and he would love to hang it in his office and enjoy it, and it would bring me such joy to finish it. I just want to make sure I do it right and I have made some recent progress on it. I also have some Christmas gifts to finish, our car had major issues from November on through December and it sucked a lot of my present-making time away, as well as tons of doctor's appointments, some lasting about 4 hours because of inefficiency. Things have stolen a lot of my time, and I'm not about to stop having a life just so I can finish some gifts. I am going to enjoy some time with my family doing fun things or else I will burn out. But I really hope to get those niece and nephew gifts made and when the baby comes, send out some nice baby announcements. And write Thank You cards to the people who I need to thank for things, and make phone calls, and all that stuff that I think about but never seem to find the time to actually do. I need to finish a cute baby blanket (three, actually) and maybe even make one for my baby that is coming soon!

My goal is to try to stay on top of things as much as possible, but also prioritize and get the most important stuff done. I think this past year actually helped me to do that a little. I stayed on top of dishes and keeping my little girl happy and healthy at the expense of getting all the way unpacked and making the house look good. The living room looks fine and that's where we do all our entertaining anyway. I don't spend too much, I especially hardly ever go clothes shopping, or if I do it's at the Goodwill, so budgeting is not too bad. I know I spend too much on food, but I get tired during the week and pregnancy just sucks the life out of me, so we go out to eat occasionally, but usually with a BOGO coupon so that it ends up being a lot cheaper than it should have been.

Okay, I gotta go. I gotta take out the garbage, it is stinking up my nostrils. The kitchen isn't far from the living room where I am sitting typing on a laptop, and that garbage is getting ripe. (Is it sad I'm a little mad that I blogged all this, and just didn't go hang those drapes and get my room looking good? I am really headed towards hermitsville, I hate having to blog because it always gets long and it always takes too long. I hate calling people. Timesuck. But I gotta stop thinking like that. I actually called five people yesterday. Yay, me! And I enjoyed it!)

Have a great day! My husband and girl are back from their shopping trip and so it's time for me to play with them.

FUN FAMILY PHOTOS DURING THE YEAR!
That's why you're really here, let's be honest.

Easter in Albuquerque at our church. Adeline was being a little stinker and really didn't want to be photographed.



Kentucky Derby Day! With homemade non-alcoholic mint julips. She didn't mind the photos today.



Aaaaand I hope to get more family photos up. Just a few all the way to Christmas.

It's a post about a book

This post is going to be really stupid, especially if you are unfamiliar with the books. Sorry. I've been reading these books, The Green Rider series. They are good, but they are unsettling. Let me tell you why. I have been thinking about this since last summer, and it just bugs me more and more day by day, and I have no one to bounce it off, so off into the interwebs it goes. Spoilers, for sure.

The book is a fantasy, with magic and what not, and kings and fair maidens and horses and important messages. And fighting. And near-rapes. (I don't think I'll let my kids read the books 'til they're married.) What is unsettling is how much the author, Kristen Britain, pulls from New Age stuff like the nine dimensions, entities, astral projections, magic circles, clairvoyance, telepathy, Reiki, avatars, near-death experiences and basically a lot of that crystal mumbo jumbo, and infuses it into her medieval world. The whole D'yer wall was a big giveaway to some of the lower dimensions. I'm not too surprised that she pulled a (successful) stunt like that. Maybe I'm even jealous I didn't think of it first.

I think the thing that is bugging me the most is the love story and where it is heading. Curse my puritanical upbringing! (And the love story is always what sucks you in!!) There is, of course, an impasse with the two characters, during the which her father's love-life is examined and found less-than-par. It doesn't sit well with the protagonist that her dad is visiting houses of ill-repute, and she doesn't seem to have made peace with it yet, but you know she will, and it is opening the doors to a less-than-savory relationship with the man she loves in future books. So I don't appreciate that the author is already setting up a way that the main character is going to justify her indiscretion already. It is ever-so-subtle, but I think that undoubtedly it will happen. Pooh pooh pooh. Just move on and find someone new, girl.

These books, however, have still weaseled their way into my brain, and the author is so slow in getting the next ones out. That is also infuriating. I remember searching for any updates on book 5, and there was nothing. But tonight, there were updates. And I read them. And now I want to read the rest of the series that has yet to be written. So now I'm thinking about it AAALLLL over again and how it is about to be ruined. And it's sad that I'm getting all these New Age references, I barely know about it and don't actively seek the knowledge out, just picked up tidbits here and there, I can tell that the author obviously dabbles in the New Age field. Not my cup of tea, but it makes for some very interesting reading. The way she finished the fourth book was so darn interesting to me, the threads of fate in a masquerade mask, and I will say no more. That actually made me think more of string theory. More physics references, please! I have too many mixed emotions about this. I want to read it but I don't want to read it. Can you feel me?

That's all I got.

Except for ... Include More Masquerade Scenes, please!, Ms. Britain, if you are listening out there.

Christmas 2012 Highlights, 2013 Goals

Hi everyone,

I feel like this is redundant from Facebook, and I prefer Facebook, I'm more visual, but I know some of you love the Blogger. And I was thinking about why. It definitely is more like reading a story, a short story. And I know a lot of you out there are readers and love reading all your cutting-edge books. So I guess you just like to know a bit more of the back story of all the photos or what's going on. I don't know, it's an idea. So here's some blogging for ya! And I realized I didn't have any pics of Adeline up since September or earlier, so that made me kind of sad. I've got tons of pictures of her on Facebook, but not enough on my blog!

Here's Adeline! She makes me smile. She was actually sassing me and backtalking me - in her sweet way - when this photo was being taken, but HEY! Sure looks like a smile to me. Before she was frowning and being grumpy, and I was saying, Come on, smile! And she said, No, YOU smile. That silly girl.

Adam and I got some lovely presents, two of them being a personalized pi pie plate and a wheat grinder. We've already used it twice to bake fresh bread from red wheat. Here we are looking good on Christmas day and holding the plate.

Close-up of pi plate, from Etsy!

Did I tell you that we did the two days of Christmas thing? We actually opened presents on Christmas eve day in the morning, just like it was Christmas. Adeline had fun, she opened about half of her presents. Then she did a TON of finger painting. She was loving it so much. I am going to let her paint lots and lots! Even though it makes a big mess! Adam liked this two-day-Christmas idea because he wanted to maximize his time playing with Adeline, and he got Christmas Eve day off and Christmas Day off, but then he went back to work after that, until we flew out to visit the Rowley inlaws.

There's that happy girl finger painting. We also got the Pinkalicious Purplelicious Silverlicious Goldelicious books from Grandma Margie for Adeline, and the Purple one is all about painting, so it meant a lot to Adeline and she especially liked using a paint brush to paint, like the girl in the book.

I can't believe it, Adeline is about 2 and 3/4 years old. I'm going to have to start getting birthday ideas ready and figure all that out. We might have to move soon. We are renting through a company, but the homeowner let the company rent the house, and now the homeowner is in foreclosure. I don't know what that means for us exactly, except that when our contract is up we will probably have to move so that foreclosure proceedings can occur. Who knows? And depending if/where Adam gets a job, we might be moving cross-country right around the time of Adeline's bday. Oh well, there's always Chuck E Cheese, right? ;-)

More cute pictures of cuteness. Some tea party fun times!

I love this goofy scrunchy Renee Zellweger type smile, haha!

Adeline's being a daredevil right now. She's jumping from the couch arm rest onto the couch, or onto the lazyboy. I hope we won't have to go to the hospital soon. We did a big shopping day at Target, got some freezer pizzas on sale and then with a coupon, thanks Swagbucks and Target.com. Sometimes I end up with double coupons, one of them manufacturer, and the other through Target, so I can end up with some pretty good savings!

That's about it. My church calling keeps me busy, I am the choir director, and there is always music to plan and what not. And I also like arranging some pieces, which is fun and increases my abilities but ends up turning into a huge time suck. Oh well. I hurt my back again today. It hurts to breathe. We're just watching Scooby Doo. I am finally getting over this cold that I picked up right when we were done visiting the Rowleys. That kind of stunk. I've been pretty sick for awhile. Adam stayed home last Wednesday and made me yummy soup and things were good. He got sick too and Adeline's been sick. I hate it when those coughs hang on and you're technically "well" but still coughing. Nights are still rough, but just for Adam and I, Adeline has been sleeping like a champ. We are both very grateful. It was pretty bad before, for over a year. Boo.

Oh yeah, GOALS!:

1) Develop the talent of organization. This one has been a long time coming. I kind of neglected the house to get the music ready for the ward Christmas program. I arranged a few pieces and basically it took a ton of time, and there was a lot of rehearsals involved and I only really stayed on top of the dishes and the laundry. Now I'm trying to beat down the clutter and really think of it as developing another talent and not the true drudgery it is. So far so good! I've organized a ton of the closets, rearranged Adeline's room in a very visually pleasing way, and beat down a lot of the clutter. I am hosting a baby shower soon so hopefully it will look marvelous in here!

2) Lose a little more weight. I have already been doing well in this department from the previous year. I actually didn't think I could lose 20 pounds or so, but I did. I hope to lose another ten, maybe 15. I would be close back to college weight. That would be awesome. I hope that when my husband has an income, that maybe I could afford a gym membership with daycare, that's what a lot of the good looking, in shape ladies in my ward do. I could totally get into better shape if I had 45 min each day to go pump some iron and run on the treadmill and Adeline could be happily playing with the toys in the kids area. It would be great! With winter here, I can't get outside much. It's actually snowing a lot right now, a lot for Albuquerque, it's actually sticking on the ground and the nearby Petroglyphs hills are blanketed in snow. Exciting!

I don't know if I have more goals than that. Just a few here and there, some of them I just like to keep to myself.

That's all. If I think of anymore, I'll probably post it to Facebook. Haha!
-Danelle

P.S. It's me, looking hot at B.J.'s although we didn't end up eating there and went to Scarpas and it was SO GOOD!

Tasted even better with a BOGO coupon! Yeah!

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.

Well, I've been losing weight anyway. I'm trying to stay away from the refined foods, sugar in general, and keeping milk products to a minimum. No more milk on cereal for breakfast for me. I am doing the Green For Life smoothies and they sure do bring some vitality to my life. The book is awesome, I am following it to some extent. The whole eating-heathily thing I knew would get all wack when I got married so I was trying to make peace with it, and with the extra 20 or 30 pounds I was carrying around. Because there was no way in heck I was making two meals for the both of us come dinner time. I can barely motivate myself to do the one.

So I compromise. I do the more healthy eating while Adam is gone to work for the day, and then I eat along with him for dinner. And try to eat more salad at dinner. So far, working great! Reminds me a little of the slim-fast diet, shake for breakfast, shake for lunch, and a sensible dinner. Not that I've ever done Slim-Fast. I think it's ridiculous. Unless you plan on buying and eating them for the rest of your life. It has to be a life-style change (and not a "diet") if you want it to last. (Something I've got going for me is that I don't mind eating just plain old baby spinach leaves or kale in a bowl, no salad dressing, no garnish, no nothing. Tastes great! So easy to make.)

Breakfast looks like this:

-Brown rice in a bowl, warmed, with some cinnamon on top (good for blood circulation and expelling toxins, good for diabetics. I'm not diabetic, but I'm sure my blood likes a good cleaning). I usually make a big pot of brown rice and eat it for the rest of the week. It's a good investment of 1 hour a week without me going too nuts. I get the brown rice in bulk from Whole Foods, it's the short grain brown rice, and it just tastes amazing. Way better than the yucky stuff you buy in a little bag at Wal-mart. I finally have been splurging and buying the Whole Foods brown rice (which is still a reasonable price) and Adam had some and really liked it. I think he thinks I've been holding out on him, since I usually buy and make the cheapo Wal-mart brown rice, which really isn't that good, and I don't blame him for not liking it so much. It's really not so great. Go get the Whole Foods kind! Or Sprouts or wherever you like to shop that might carry it in bulk foods.

** Muchos plugs for the book Green For Life

** My dad sent me the book. I should give him muchos props. He is nutrition-conscientious and in the past has sent me good, useful books like:
-Pottinger's Cats
-The China Study

The book looks like this:

And can be purchased through this link ~*~ here. ~*~

-Green smoothie, this takes a little bit of time: Any variety of frozen or fresh fruit (that is compatible with other fruits you might be adding, don't want to go too off the deep end; also, sometimes less is more, you don't want to mix more than three fruits usually), maybe 3 tablespoons of yogurt, maybe Greek yogurt when we have it!, yum!; some watered down Simply Orange orange juice (trying to lessen the sugar here), sometimes just water, no juice; maybe a banana, and of course, I'm forgetting the most important part! Either a large handful of kale or baby spinach. It's good to blend the stuff because then you can really get all the nutrients out of the kale and spinach. The insoluble fiber and the tough cell walls of the dark leafy greens don't break down in your stomach, which means you better be chewing that stuff really well before you swallow it or you won't get to absorb a lot of the nutrients. Blending makes it easier and faster to chew, and to absorb! Yay!

Kale is amazing! I don't know why people think it's bitter. I found that if I do a straight kale smoothie with some water, it's still pretty sweet, whereas if I add some fruit like frozen strawberries, I have to add a smidgen of honey or sugar or juice because it's kind of tart and bitter. This holds true for other fruits. The kale really doesn't do much to the smoothie, it's kind of mild and barely noticable.

The baby spinach makes the smoothie seem even more creamy. It gives a nice creaminess that I enjoy. I did kale for awhile, I buy it in the big bags at Wal-mart, lasts awhile, but one day Wal-mart didn't have any kale stocked. I was kind of bummed! I shook my fist, but then I remembered that they have baby spinach so I bought a big bag of that that also lasted a week or so and I was back to making great, healthy, weight-loss inducing juice.

I'm spoiled, I got a hand-me-down Vita-mix from my dad when he wanted to upgrade his, back in 2007, methinks? He couldn't have found a happier recipient with which to bestow it upon. And I think the thing is going on ten years old and is still working great! Blends like a dream!

Another hilarious thing is that Adeline has started to have smoothies with me. She really likes them! That's what I mean about kale not being as bitter or sour as fruit, spinach too! The proof is my little girl likes them (and she doesn't like sour or bitter things) and she always wants what I'm blending. It's not super sweet like Jamba Juice (much too sweet!) but it's just a nice healthy little party in your mouth.

Lunch is variable. Sometimes it's a sammich with whole wheat bread and a little mustard and mayo, kale or baby spinach with a tomato slice on sliced deli turkey, maybe with a slice of cheese, a side of baby carrots or cucumbers. I love cucumbers so much.

Or lunch might be more fruit and leafy greens. That's what inspired the book Green for Life and the diet. Half your diet should come from antioxidant-filled super-food cancer-fighting leafy greens. Not vegetables, not starchy veggies especially, but dark leafy-green fighting-machines like kale and baby spinach. I probably need to get some more variety in the leafy green arena and branch out to a third, but I'll stick with these for now. I get variety with the fruit and I do still eat veggies. And I eat some protein too, but I am really trying to do more half-and-half the afore-mentioned things.

For me, the cultured milk products are not so taboo. I can have a little cheese and yogurt. Milk in a glass or on cereal is a no-no, no to butter, and ice cream is a definite no. Sometimes I splurge though. If I'm at a birthday party I'll have some cake and ice cream and be sociable. Or if I'm just needing a few scoops after a long couple of weeks, I might indulge. But I am really trying to have it very sparingly. Luckily I don't miss it too much.

Then dinner is whatever, something fun. Tonight was fajitas! Ay yi yi! Other days it's been Pork Wellington or Beef Stroganoff or Sweet and Sour Meatballs. And maybe I'll still have a handful of plain kale or baby spinach. Good fiber, yum yum!

What I like so much about Green For Life is that you don't have to buy a special supplement (like Body For Life) or do anything too hard or too involved, or follow a recipe exactly. You just blend green smoothies. As cooking goes, it's pretty fast. Not as fast as a bowl of cereal with milk, but in the extra ten minutes a day, I get to shed some pounds. It's a good trade-off.

The whole impetus of this post was to talk about Christmas present ideas for the nieces and nephews. (Oops, big diet tangent.) It's REALLY been on my mind, especially since other family members have been talking about it. Darn Christmas. And darn not having money. Our savings/borrowings are still going out the door, but at least the rate has slowed down since I've picked up students to tutor in math and teach piano and voice to.

Okay, basically out of time for the part I meant to talk about first. Shirts for the nephews, and maybe for nieces, too! And possibly Sports Shirts! With team logos on them, made and ironed on or appliqued by yours truly. That was my big epiphanic breakthrough. So I've been getting sisters and brothers and sister-in-laws on the phone to figure out shirt sizes and kids' sports team preferences. I shouldn't tell you TOO much of my plan, because I don't want you buying all the shirts!, but here it is.

-Goodwill has a big deal on Mondays, 25% off. Goodwill is ALREADY getting picked over by Christmas shoppers and it's barely November, so hopefully I can buy the boys and girls plain shirts ready for embellishing, and for ridiculously cheap prices, 75 cents! Seriously, we have barely any money, but I'm trying to be a better aunt. Trying to send AT LEAST a birthday card and a Christmas present. Christmas is fun and I want them to have something fun to remember me and our family by, since we don't get to see them that often, and my side of the family hardly EVER! *sniff sniff sniff* I did get to fly out this past summer so that was good. And I'll be seeing them for Thanksgiving, but after seeing a lot of Adam's family lots and lots (even living with them for a time) I'm getting jealous and I want equal time with my family! Or just a little more than status quo, let's not kid ourselves here, sometimes it's good not to see your family that often. Then you're happier to see them. I can get burned out with people.

Wish me luck in this big undertaking! On top of everything else! I'm nuts!

Romping to bed,
Danelle

P.S. I'm so proud of myself, I am trying to branch out from kale and baby spinach and today I had a green smoothie with a base of beet greens! Not bad. Reminded me of the spinach. It was a little more bitter but not bad at all.

Good News - Tutoring and Lessons

More Good News,

I just got more students to teach! They are very nice, they are in my ward, and they have tripled my productivity. And their mom is really fun! We had the most excellent chat about how she moved/grew up in London around the 1980s and got to see all the break-out British 80's bands in concert: U2, Duran Duran, UB40, Depeche Mode? I can't remember if that was one of them. She rattled off a bunch. She is also originally from Barbados so she just has a pretty cool accent in general. It was so fun to chat after the lessons, Adeline was conked out in my arms and I wanted her to still get a good nap and I knew loading her into the car would wake her up. So Margaret and I might go to lunch soon. Maybe I'll just have her over for lunch. Her kids are between 15-11 yrs so they are all at school anyway. Maybe she works. I don't know, we'll figure it out.

Her kids are so nice and Adeline really warmed up to everyone today. On Tuesday I do two piano lessons for the two boys, and on Thursday I help all three of them with their math hw. Their daughter is going to start taking voice from me too! I also have two other piano students from another sweet family on Wed. And then I do a voice lesson downtown on Fri. It would be nice to have them all happen on one day, but spacing them out throughout the week is kind of nice too! Adeline seems to be okay with it. And I really enjoy doing it, it doesn't feel like work at all! And the students already seem to be progressing and are learning more and more. Huzzah!

It's ridiculously late, I promised myself I would be in bed by midnight (look how well that went?) and I need rest really bad. (That recipe took WAY longer to upload than I anticipated.) I need to be a good sleeping girl while Adam's away. I'm going to the temple tomorrow and hopefully I can keep my eyes open! Every day he's been away I've gotten more and more lazy and I have got to get back on a good schedule. I keep procrastinating doing my sit-ups. (I'm in a 10,000 crunches in 100 days group, I'm 1/4 of the way!) And I need to get them out of the way so I don't just keep putting them off and staying up later and later.

'Nighty night, don't let the bed bugs bite.
-Danelle
P.S. It's hard to be a perfectionist AND a procrastinator. ~Does not compute.~

I'm proud.

I'm proud of myself. I cut my electric bill in half, and we're talking during the summertime. Hot New Mexico summers! Okay, it's not so bad. Usually just in the nineties.

How have I done it, you ask? Are you ready? Do you really want to know? Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

I did it by not using the A/C (not fun) and not using the dryer. When you think about it, if you are not doing A), the A/C, then B), the dryer, will heat up your house anyway. Instead of A/C, we would get a nice airflow going from the front door to the back porch, right through the kitchen. Cooking is kind of unbearable, I try not to use the oven, and the stove heats up the place anyway. It would let in tons of flies, so I had to go buy a fly swatter at the Dollar Store. Good thing I didn't go too late in the season, because they were almost all out of fly swatters! And let me tell you, I am getting to be a dead-eye at swatting those flies and maybe it's helping with my fencing skills too? I can hope.

I figure if my pioneer ancestors could live in those conditions, then I could too. Maybe it will humble me after I've been so proud about bragging about cutting down my electric bill.

The dryer is tricky. This definitely adds more work and wasted time into my day, but so be it for being poor. I am getting more creative and resilient. I have to hang the clothes all around the house on the furniture, on the chairs, on the elliptical (let's face it, that's all they are good for), the dresser drawers in the bedroom pulled out to double as a hanging rack for all those clothes. And then I have to pick up ALL the clothes after they have dried and put them away. We'll not sugar-coat things and say that sometimes it gets pretty messy in here. Especially when I am too tired to put away the clothes that day. As long as the ceiling fan is on and I did the laundry early enough, it is usually dry and sucked of moisture by 5pm. Thank goodness for living in the desert, because our clothes would probably just stink and mildew back in Missouri.

I recently thought of C), turning down the water heater, and D), not using the laptop as much, as a way to save even more money. C) I should have checked LONG AGO because it was at its highest setting! And a lot of the time if we used the bathroom right by the garage (where the water heater is located), then we'd practically get scalded by the heat if we only used the hot tap. D) is more because the laptop gets HOT as it's running and makes it more unbearable in here. Did I mention that the normal day temperature in my house is a balmy 85 degF? And it will still get to 90 degF in the kitchen most days around 5pm, when I have to start cooking dinner. In the past, I would have freaked out and turned the A/C on before we climbed above 78 degF. I sure am excited for some nice cool fall weather, and heck, even winter!

We'll have to see what the electric bill looks like now that I've enacted C) and D), on top of A) and B). Although I am not going to lie to you. Sometimes I get weak (and practical) and turn on the A/C once it gets to 90 degF, or when we are trying to put Adeline down for the night and it's hot as blazes and I know she will sleep better if I turn the A/C on for the hour we are putting her down. I know, I SPLURGE!

That's me in a nutshell. I'm as nutty as ever, going on a Taos trip tomorrow, 600 miles, baby! And then will be doing my first ward choir practice on Sunday as the new ward choir director. Fun! No pianist yet, so I'll be doing that too, I suppose. I LOVE MY ADAM! Adam and I celebrated a wonderful 6th anniversary and we went to see The Amazing Spiderman in 3D! And then we ate a delightful dinner from Pei Wei, I love that place. I love to get brown rice with my Chinese/Pan Asian food, and not have to wait long or pay and arm and a leg for it!

Have a great day!
Sincerely,
Danelle

P.S. Photos of said anniversary. Ooh, I was looking foxy that day!

P.P.S. I got Adam that shirt at the Goodwill and it looks AWESOME!!!

Bloggity blog. Things are looking up.

Hi and welcome, won't you?

I am trying to think straight now that Adeline's got her toy guitar at full-blast. What was I doing? Where am I? What's my name? What's the square root of 2, to 5 decimal places? I had a good train of thought, but it's gone out the window. What a good girl though, I am always explaining to her when it's too loud to turn it down. And she just did! And said, "Make it...quiet." Apparently the lessons have sunk in. Hooray!

In a twist of pleasant events, I realized yesterday that I have not had an anxiety dream in a long time since coming to Albuquerque. That is very nice. Apparently my subconscious feels like it can deal with life again and I don't have to be beaten by repeated tidal and tsunami waves (one of my most common reoccurring anxiety dreams), or being chased and stung by bees, or being chased and bitten by snakes, or having my teeth fall out, or having to try to remember junior high locker combinations that have long since evaporated out of my memory, making me late for class. Funny that it's not the naked final in college. But I actually liked high school and college, whereas junior high would often bring me to tears and I'm sure gave me plenty of complexes where some of the P.E. girls would talk about wanting to beat me up for accidently hitting one of their friends during gym in the chest with a soccer ball (this went on for at least a month, and I was prepared to fight them like a cornered animal), or when rumors about me being a lesbian started going around. Yeah, thanks a lot, junior high. You suck. On another note, I'm not really scared of bees and snakes, not like spiders, so after having a few of these dreams, they are just a dull ache and annoying bother, and not really too traumatic. Just exhausting. I wake up tired after those dreams. I like the ocean and waves too, except when I'm being mercilessly beaten and waterlogged in my dreams by big waves that I can't handle.

Wow, Danelle the Downer has reared her ugly head. This was supposed to be a happy post. Well I still haven't been sleeping well, but that is due more to me not wanting to go to bed and puttering around at night. Discipline discipline. Haha! Maybe I'm too tired to have anxiety dreams. Whatever happened to Disciplined Danelle? Was I ever disciplined?

My window to take Adeline to the park, or at least outside, is closing, so I had better bring you up to speed on life since moving to Albuquerque. It's lovely here, we enjoy it. I enjoy it. The ward is awesome. I love so many of the ladies, many I am still getting to know. I still feel like I could do better at calling people and getting more involved in activities going on. I've been placed in Nursery, which has put me in a social black hole, and I had to make peace with it (and I am loving it now!), since it has felt like an official or unofficial calling for the last THREE YEARS! Seriously, can I try something new? But now my husband hints to me (he's the Ward Clerk and hangs with the Bishopric and is privy to some details) that a new calling might be blowing my way. And that I might have to do double-duty too. Oops, I think I said Mum's the Word when he was telling me all this. Well sorry, it's been on my mind. He hinted that it was a musical calling. That's fine, although I've been getting a little tired of those too. I've been playing the organ for the last little while too, and doing ward choir stuff and accompaniment, it seems almost since I met Adam in the Newport Beach singles ward. (Splitting hairs, he was in the Irvine ranch branch, but we had mutual friends.) Tangent: I think it's kind of funny that Adam is the Ward Clerk. I guess it was a natural progression. His last calling was Executive Secretary so he is used to hanging with the Bishopric. About ward clerks, the last ward clerk I dated was at BYU and his name was Adam too! We used to flirt and make eyes at church and we dated for awhile and I would bring him chocolate-covered strawberries when he had to stay a few hours after church doing the tithing stuff. I did find out that he has hypoglycemia so the chocolate-covered strawberries after having not eaten for awhile was probably not the best thing for him to be eating. Oh well. He was a good kid. And I should bring MY ADAM some chocolate-covered strawberries when he has to stay after late. Seriously, the strawberries are in the fridge ready to go for this week.

Adam and I are having our SIXTH ANNIVERSARY on Septempber 2nd, and we are celebrating it this Saturday. I'm excited for that. I LOVE YOU, ADAM! (He's probably not going to read this, but I'm still going to say it.) I actually had to "do the math" to remember how many years we had been married. I was sure that this was our seventh anniversary, but nope, I snuck an extra year in there. What's funny is that the day after I had confirmed the actual number in my brain bucket, we were driving in the car and Adam said, "It will almost be our tenth anniversary soon!" And I had to laugh and ask him how long he though we had been married, and I think he said 7 or 8 years. I had to set him straight and jab him a little, joking that maybe things are so tedious in our marriage that it just FEELS that long. But hopefully I am not too much of a harpy. I hardly nag. Maybe I nag once a month. I do stupid things though. Like take long road trips to get photos. Not everyone is happy that I do this, but I really enjoy it and the contest will be over soon. And then I will find the next stupid thing with which to devote my time. (Did you see what I did there? I avoided a dangling modifier. I was going to say "stupid thing to devote my time *to*." Never end with "to." I'm trying to be better about my English and grammar. I really do know that I am the queen of fragmented sentences. I guess that is the way I speak. I am also the queen of contractions. Maybe I should cut those out too!) http://www.rinkworks.com/words/grammar.shtml

I hope we can find some fun cheap ways to celebrate our anniversary. It seems like every year we are poorer and poorer, and the past few years I have only gotten him cheap little gifts like chocolates, nothing that follows the traditional anniversary gifts. This year I was thinking about hitting up the Goodwill and getting him the wood, metal, paper, etc, gifts for each year to make up for my lame presents, something that we'll be able to enjoy for the next ten years. I would up-cycle them and make them look good, or personalize them in some way. This week is busy though, and it probably won't happen. I at least wanted to do a caricature of us in our wedding attire or rollerskating or something and frame it for the wall! Cheesy, I know. But a good kind of cheesy. "It's a good silly." I don't really do caricatures but I wanted to teach myself how to do them. It would be fun. I think I have always been an artist first. Then I would be a singer/pianist/performer. And then a scientist/astronomer. I do love science immensely but it's not my first love.

Back to the ceasing of my anxiety dreams, I still have my bizarre ways of coping with the whole Adam-not-getting-a-salary thing. I have my food storage, and I have bought TONS of fabric. Yes, I am sharing something I should probably not share. Our third bedroom is a giant unorganized mess of fabric, a lot of it cute patterned bedsheets I got cheaply at the Goodwill. I figure if everything goes to pot we will at least be clothed. In a funny way it brings me comfort. How sad, I probably just confessed to you that I am a budding hoarder. I've probably always been one. It's how I'm coping. It is probably completely bonkers to be doing that, and I need to get myself organized. That third bedroom should be my piano lesson teaching room and art and craft studio, or something. The messes are depressing. I do need to tackle them. I was visualizing myself fighting, literally fighting, like with a sword, the clutter that has taken over some of the house. And it was actually motivating me to do it! I didn't have time yesterday to actually do it, but here's to hoping that today I can motivate myself to do it and make this place a peaceful, clean place. Things are looking up!

Approximaverit sidera! I need to bust out the tel E scope and go look at the stars, "they're beautiful, aren't they?"

Lovies, Danelle

Stars. I never really look at them anymore, but they actually are quite... beautiful.

Uh, Kay, you're frightening your partner.

I guess now I'm just exaggerating since I had that Star Party at Jarilynne's during the summer and Adam and I used the tele when we first got here. But I caught myself staring at the stars driving home on the road trip a few days ago, looking at the lovely Milky Way and being excited that I could see it in rural New Mexico. And then since I lingered and laughed at book club, I got to stare at them for a little while when walking out to my car. It was nice. And peaceful. And majestic. The moon is looking quite lovely, too. When you study them, you stop seeing the beauty, too.

Addendum - Seriously, Blogger, must you always be messing up my posting? Where did all my nicely spaced paragraphs go? Not cool. This is why I will never truly jump on the bandwagon. I guess I should give credit where it's due, I have never been able to even post a complete post from Google Chrome, I always had to open IE to do it, which is beyond weird because isn't Blogger connected with Google? But it worked today, so someone programmed and slapped a patch on that mess. Google, I expected more from you, and you usually delivered more too! Google, I still like you though. How could I not? Your email service is great and you've given me plenty of free space, for which I am not ungrateful. Still, I had to bust out the basic html programming today to get the spaces in, and Adeline's and my park time suffered. I want that time back! End rant.