My Strange Addiction...

Oh my beloved Hobby Lobby, you are my drug of choice.  I adore you and all of the wonderful goodness that lives within your four walls.  You are almost as great of a time sucker as Pinterest!  The only thing that saves me from setting up a tent and living in your store is the fact that the closest one is 45 miles away(ah yes--the joys of living in a small town in Wyoming!)

I own a lot of yarn and there is really no reason for me to go out and buy more.  But, yarn is addictive--like crack cocaine.  And Hobby Lobby has such a truly wonderful yarn section.  I thought that I was safe from the allure of buying more super soft yarn because Hobby Lobby is 45 miles away.  I thought that Wal Mart was the only place in Laramie to buy reasonably priced yarn and, until they redo their yarn section, I have bought all of the good stuff they have to offer.  Well, I was wrong.  One day, I was visiting  Bart's Flea Market, minding my own business and not even thinking about yarn at all.  Then, I walked around a corner and discovered the discounted yarn shop.  It was so wonderful that I thought I was hallucinating.  I had to touch the yarn to make sure it was real.  I ended up staying there for 25 minutes, feeling different yarns and thinking of how wonderful it would be to make something out of them.  I might have stayed there forever if my mother had not come along and found me, and brought me out of my yarn stupor so that we could go home.

You see, I have this yarn touching problem.  I love, love, love soft yarn and I yearn to touch it so that I can enjoy its amazing texture.  I know this sounds creepy, but I promise you that I do not break into stores just to caress the yarns in the yarn aisle!  You really don't need to sign me up for that My Strange Addiction show on TLC.

What I do, instead of breaking into yarn shops, is to hoard yarn.  I have a walk in closet in my room, and the top shelves are filled with bags and plastic totes overflowing with yarns of many colors.  I make lots of hats and ear warmers, but I never make a dent in my yarn collection because I keep buying more yarn!

How will I be saved from this awful addiction?  How many hats will I have to make without buying new yarn before I run out?  What if there is a world-wide yarn shortage and I run out because I have made myself stop buying yarn?  What if my brain explodes because I think way too much about things that don't even matter?

No I Wasn't Kidnapped by Aliens!

My apologies for the fact that I have been such a slacker at blogging.  Time just flies by, and before I know it, four months have passed since my last entry.  Since I last wrote, lots of exciting things have happened.  First of all, my little dog is STILL alive!  She just keeps trucking along through thick and thin.

Next, on January 8th, Randy and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary.  What an amazing man to put up with my shenanigans for so long!  To celebrate this wonderful event, we are going on a cruise on March 17th!  We have never been on a cruise before, so if anyone has tips to share, feel free.  We will be leaving out of New Orleans, and going to Cozumel and the Yucatan.  Just Randy and I are going on the cruise--no kids or miniature pinschers allowed!

In May, Amanda will graduate from Creighton University, with her doctorate of Physical Therapy.  I don't think I could be much more proud of her!  My boys are doing great at School of Mines, too.  Brady was a 4.0 student his first semester, majoring in Chemical and Mining Engineering.  Kelby is busy interviewing for internships this summer with various companies.  He will graduate next year in Civil Engineering.

That's about all I can think of to report for now.  I will write again soon!

The Little Min Pin that Could

What a crazy week we have had around the Wilkison house!  Last Thursday, I took our dog to the kennel so that we could go to Missouri.  On Friday, she had a seizure while she was there.  I was supposed to pick her up on Monday and the vet was going to talk to me about the seizure then because he knew it would ruin my weekend if he called me in Missouri.  Well, Brady came home for the weekend and he went to pick Baby up a day earlier than planned.  Upon bringing her home, he discovered that something was terribly wrong with her.  She couldn't walk, and she wasn't interested in eating.  She was disoriented and confused.  He called me to let me know about it right before we boarded the plane to come home.

For a long time, I have been worried because Baby is quite elderly.  I thought we had a few more years with her, though, because she is so spunky.  When we got home at almost midnight on Sunday evening, Brady came out to meet us in the garage.  He wanted to warn me about what I was going to see, and to let me know that Baby was probably going to die.  He was right about her condition.  As soon as I saw her, I could tell she was not her normal, feisty self.  She wouldn't move from her bed at all and didn't seem to care when I came home.  Brady told me that she wouldn't even leave the bed to go to the bathroom and he had given her a bath to clean up the mess. When she did walk, she did it in a Popeye manner, with her legs twisted inward.  I went to bed, and I thought that she probably wouldn't be there when I woke up in the morning.  She was still alive in the morning, but just barely hanging on. 

I hugged her before I left and told her how much I loved her.  Randy was home, and he agreed that he would call the vet.  The vet told Randy that it was only a matter of time until Baby passed away.  As hard as it was to say, I told Randy at lunch that I thought he should have her put to sleep that afternoon.  She was so ill and weak, that it wasn't fair to make her live.  He reluctantly agreed that he would take her if that was what I really thought was best.

After I left, Brady dug her a grave in the backyard by the aspen trees.  Then, he and Randy took her to the vet's office.  No one was up at the front desk, so they had to sit and wait.  All of a sudden, Baby perked up and wanted to get down and walk around and smell people.  The guys decided that this, along with the fact that no one was at the front desk, was a sign from God to leave!  When I got home, Randy and I decided to wait it out another day and see if she continued to refuse to eat and drink.  We hugged her and gave her lots of love that night, as we thought she would probably die the next day.

The next morning, after Randy left for work at 5:30, I came back into the house.  Baby was standing up by her food dish, looking at me as if to say, "Well, where's my breakfast?"  So, I put a scoop into her dish.  To my complete shock, she ate some of it and drank water!  Since then, she has improved every day and now you would never know that she faced the executioner on Monday. 

I know that Baby's time will come--and probably sooner rather than later.  But, I am so glad that the Great Governor in the sky gave her a stay of execution.  Until she dies, I will appreciate every extra day that I have been given with her and I will look out the window at the little grave under the tree and thank God that it is empty for now.

Zig Ziglar--Save Me Please!

I think all of this change in my life is getting to me.  I have been feeling pretty overwhelmed lately, and wish that I could just live out the rest of my life on an island, sipping iced tea and reading novels.  But, things are never simple.  I am not trying to be a Negative Nelly, but I feel so  out of control.  I want immediate solutions to all of my issues, and I want everyone to be happy all of the time and never have any troubles.  Especially my three babies.  When they were little, I was in control of everything they experienced.  I realize that part of letting them go is to allow them to make their own decisions in life, and ultimately, recover from their own mistakes.  But, I hate to see them hurting when they do, and I want to fix it.   Everyone around me just needs to realize that life would work out so much better if they would do it my way! ( Ha-we all know that's not true). I so desperately want to be in control of life--theirs and mine--and I am really not in control of anything--except, perhaps, my attitude!

Admittedly, my attitude has been awful lately.  Part of it is because I am in a new place in my life, and I feel like I am finding myself all over again.  Some of this experience has been wonderful.  Randy and I are having a great time together, and we still have a lot in common.  My house is rarely messy any more--gotta love that!  The grocery bill has been drastically reduced due to a lack of teenage boys in my house.  These things are all great.

I need to get back to being Pollyanna   I miss that part of myself.  But, I feel that life is trying so very hard to drag me down mentally.  I have to fight with everything I have to get rid of this horrible disease that is pervading my brain!  So, in an effort to improve my attitude, I rediscovered a favorite speaker/author of mine--Zig Ziglar!  Now, you may ask yourself, just who is this strangely named man?  He is a Christian motivational speaker who talks a great deal about how important it is to have a positive attitude.  People often notice my extreme optimism(usually--not right now), and I attribute this optimism to Mr. Ziglar and trying to do as he has instructed me.

Yesterday, I downloaded a book of his onto my Kindle.  I am reading it, and making note cards to look at several times a day.  I want my good attitude back, and I will fight for it!  Life is too short to be a Debbie Downer.  All of this time that I spend worrying and being upset about my lack of control is wasted time that can never  be regained.

Here are my lovely children, just a few years ago... Aren't they gorgeous?!?

Update on the Fridge

Well, as you know, it has been several weeks, and my refrigerator still smells like I have hidden a dead squirrel in it somewhere!  I searched on the Internet for solutions to my problem, and am going to try keeping coffee grounds in the fridge to fix it.  The stench is so strong that neither baking soda nor vinegar could get rid of it.  I hope I will not have to finish out the rest of my teaching career with a stinky fridge.

Another series of events has also recently caused me to feel dire discomfort.  I have always been accident prone.  I constantly discover bruises on my body for reasons I don't remember, run into desks, hit my funny bone and stub my toes.  However, things appear to have gotten worse lately.  The craziest things happen to me.  Perhaps it is because I am oftentimes in a dream world and do not pay attention to what is going on around me...

Last weekend's unfortunate events started as we were having a drink with the other football parents on Friday night after we arrived in Rapid City.  One of the fathers from Oregon brought some special wine made at his friend's vineyard for us to sample.  I really enjoyed it until I knocked my cup over and drenched my clothing with the special drink.  Luckily, it was white wine, so my clothes weren't permanently stained burgundy.  Everyone saw it and  teased me about wasting good alcohol.   The adventure continued with breakfast the next morning.  I carefully made my waffle, following the posted directions with a deliberateness formerly unbeknownst to me.  However, when the time came to put my perfectly cooked waffle onto my plate so that I might enjoy it, I struggled with the difficult task of removing the waffle from the maker.  As I flipped the waffle out of the machine and onto my plate, it slipped, and fell towards the ground.  I tried to catch it, but ended up with one piece of waffle in my hand and the rest of it stuck to the side of the garbage can.  Of course, several people witnessed this event, much to my embarrassment.  The next day, I went to Menard's with Randy and Brady.  As I entered the store, I pushed on the turnstile with my hip to make it move out of my way.  It didn't budge however, and I yelped in pain.  Randy worriedly asked me if I was okay, and I said yes.  After several minutes, the pain went away and I forgot about the incident until I noticed that my hip was really hurting this morning.  I looked at it to see if something was wrong, and discovered a large and dark bruise.  The last straw was when we went to Wendy's on Sunday night.  I went to pick up my drink and take a sip of it.  My hand bumped the cup, knocked it over, and proceeded to fill my lap up with Diet Coke.  Once again, several folks witnessed my accident and I had to walk to the front of the store with drenched pants to request a rag to clean up my mess.  The next evening, I barely escaped dumping the amazing homemade pizza I had just created onto the ground.  I caught it, but burned my hand in the process.

Since then, I have kept a low profile.  I figure that I need to lay low until I have recovered my coordination and ability to pay attention to what I am doing.  Sadly, this may mean that I have to sit on the couch for the rest of my life or cover my body with bubble wrap before I can leave the house again.

Not a Nice Surprise

I have to go back to work tomorrow.  Surprisingly, I am looking forward to it!  So, yesterday, I decided to go and work on my classroom for awhile.  We teachers have to pack everything up for the summer so that the custodians can uberclean our classrooms.  It takes me hours to putter around, getting everything "just so" in my room after unpacking all of my teacher treasures.

Just as I was getting ready to leave, I decided to plug in my refrigerator so that it would be ready to keep my drinks and snacks nice and cool for me to enjoy.  I opened up the door to the fridge to see if there was anything that needed wiped out after sitting unplugged all summer.  Of course, OCD person that I am, I had wiped it out before I left for the summer, but things do have a way of growing anyhow!  Well, something had gone awry inside of my fridge since the end of May when I had last perused its inner contents.  It was filled with mold--disgusting, stinky, possibly toxic mold!  How could this have happened?  I was so careful to take everything out of the refrigerator and wipe it down with Lysol disinfecting wipes.  What had I missed?  A quick examination of the mold trail led to the culprit.  Ice cream.  Left in the freezer all summer long.  This was not my ice cream, mind you.  It belonged to two of the girls in Advanced American Studies who had asked me to keep it safe for them until the end of the school day and then had forgotten to retrieve it.  It had been there, in the freezer, waiting for them to remember it, since April.  Obviously, I too had forgotten its existence or I most certainly would have eaten it.  It was Ben and Jerry's, after all! 

Now, no one in their right mind would eat that ice cream.  Unlike the Burger King sandwich from my college days which had sat on a shelf in a boy's dorm room for a year unscathed by mold, Ben and Jerry's had created a lot of mold.

After I left my classroom in dismay, I felt my throat getting sore and a headache coming on.  What if I had breathed in some awful toxins that would soon have me starring on an episode of Mystery Diagnosis?  I envisioned myself lying in the hospital, in an isolation room, with loved ones only able to visit me after they had donned a mask and gloves.  If I do become incredibly ill at some time in the future, will you all please remember this incident and tell the doctors that I am most certainly dying due to breathing in toxic ice cream spores?

So, today, I return to my classroom, armed with all sorts of germ, mold and bacteria murdering substances.  I am not going to wear a mask.  Instead, I will quickly open the door to the fridge and start spraying the unwelcome inhabitants of my refrigerator with the lemon scented Lysol cleaner that I purchased last night.  After it has committed germ genocide, I will use paper towels to wipe them away and I will throw them away in a hallway trashcan so that I don't ever have to look at their disgustingness again.  They weren't even a pretty color.

On the Amazing Qualities of Vinegar

In my college days, I worked at Dial-A-Maid.  I learned to scrub toilets with tooth brushes and to vacuum my way out of a room so as not to leave footprints.  I could get the toughest cigarette smoke and mildew off of any surface out there.   I thought that I had learned all of the sneaky little tips to save time on cleaning that I would ever need to know.  Boy was I mistaken!  Now, don't get me wrong: I still believe that Murphy's Oil Soap is one of the best products that a clean freak can own.  But, the recent discovery of a common household staple turned into cleaning dynamo has changed my life!

Did you know that vinegar is one of the most useful items in your house?  Not only is it tasty drizzled  on salads and added to recipes, it is an amazing cleaning product! 

Laramie is notorious for its hard water.  I spend a great deal of my cleaning efforts trying to get hard water deposits off of glass shower doors and the lovely fixtures that adorn our bathrooms.  Last year, I read about how I could put a baggy full of vinegar over the shower head and attach it with a rubber band.  Leave it on for several hours, and VOILA, no more clogged holes!  Along the same lines, I have always cleaned my windows, my Bunn coffee maker and the tray underneath the automatic water dispenser on my fridge with vinegar.

But the past few weeks has brought my love of vinegar to new heights.  First, I discovered vinegar's wonderful ability to make my bath towels softer and fresher smelling by just adding one cup of it to my wash load.  This is especially helpful if you have children who forget to hang up their towels, thereby making them "smelly".  I also used vinegar to deodorize my carpet.  But, the ultimate use that I have found for vinegar is to make the most amazing shower cleaner ever!  Take one cup of vinegar and heat it in the microwave until it is hot but not boiling.  In a spray bottle, put one cup of Dawn detergent(just the plain jane kind--nothing fancy).  Add your cup of hot vinegar to the bottle and, after you have put the lid on the bottle, shake it to mix the two ingredients.  Now you have the best shower cleaner I have ever used!  Spray it on the shower and, depending upon your amount of grime, leave it for awhile(one lady said that she left it over night because the shower was so gucky).  I only left it for a couple of hours.  Then, take your wet sponge and wipe down the shower.  Rinse, and prepare to be amazed at the beauty of your incredibly cleanly and sparkling shower! 

I hope that my tip will help you to not waste valuable time and money on cleaning products that just don't work worth a damn.  Believe me, if it exists I have tried it!