I Believe...

Holy Mama just wrote a great post on what she believes. Because I believe in swiping other people’s genius when stumped for something to blog…here’s my own list. (Feel free to imagine Larry the Cable guy narrating if you will – heaven knows I did)

I believe that if you have a job, you are expected to come to work every day unless you’re hurling, bleeding or unconscious. Do not call in with a headache, or “female issues.” We all know you just don’t want to work today. And that irks the rest of us.

I believe that there is nothing as satisfying as a freshly weeded section of your garden.

I believe that front porches should be mandatory – as well as porch time. I think that if more people took the time to sit on their porch of an evening and just let themselves be – we’d all be happier.

I believe in telling the people you love “I love you” every time you talk to them on the phone – even if rotten teenagers won’t say it back.

I believe that while parents shouldn’t *flaunt* their active ‘marital life’ in front of their kids – they shouldn’t pretend it doesn’t exist. We should never give our kids the impression that once they are married the fun stuff stops. Pfft on that buster. An active marital life is healthy – and we should make sure our kids know that. (In a non-icky way of course.)

I believe in the right to bear arms. I don’t believe in the right to own a machine gun.

I believe in capital punishment.

I believe in a woman’s right to choose. Not my body, not my choice.

I believe we cannot throw away those who are on hard times.

I believe there should be time limits on welfare. It’s supposed to help them out, not be a way of life.

I believe there is not a political party in this country that encompasses my beliefs, which is why I rarely engage in political discussions. Because I think they’re all wrong.

I believe political discussions are a big ole waste of time anyway. No one wants to hear your point of view unless you agree with them so why engage?

I believe you can’t spoil a baby before six months. If they’re crying, pick ‘em up and love on ‘em. Babies need to be nurtured, and trust me – it won’t be just the baby that benefits.

I believe in hugs.

I believe that friends make life richer in so many ways. I cannot imagine life without my girlfriends.

I believe EVERYONE should laugh hard every day.

I believe Satan came up with gray hair. Bastard.

I believe I should have a pool. Unfortunately, my husband believes pools are a PITA, and he won that battle.

I believe having a dog makes everyone’s life better.

I also believe that having a kitty would make life better as well, but my husband won that battle too. Hmph.

I believe that reading is as necessary as food to some people – including myself. Therefore I insist on having time to just sit and read every day, even if it’s just 30 minutes.

I believe I could sit here and type up tons of other stuff, but let’s face it – I’m about to get all self-indulgent with this post, so I think I’ll just stop here and ask – what do you believe?

Vacation Gone Wild

So I took a vacation from work.

It was meant to be a “work around the home place” vacation – one where I caught up on my weeding, put down newspaper and cardboard mulch in the garden to keep from having to weed more, cleaned my house from top to bottom, and re-do the brick walkway in the backyard with landscape fabric to get rid of the grass going crazy and trying to invade my herb garden and strawberry bed. It was going to be a great plan.

Didn’t work out that way.

Friday, July 1^st, I developed a tooth abscess. To the point we had to call and bother my dentist at 9 pm so he could call in a prescription for pain killers and antibiotics. At 10 am on Saturday, we met my most kind dentist at his office and he ground that particular tooth down and suggested we might have to pull it since it’s already had two root canals – the most recent one just a few months ago. Woohoo! By 2 pm that afternoon, we discovered I cannot take hydrocodone with acetaminophen without getting nauseous and all those fun things that go along with nausea. By 4 pm, I looked like a chipmunk storing nuts for the winter in my cheek.

Not the best look for me. Just sayin'.

Needless to say, I didn’t get much yard work done last week. And we won’t even go into the whole unsuccessful IUD retrieval procedure on Tuesday. It was not my week.

But – I did finally get my house cleaned. Well, parts of it anyway. And the strawberry bed got weeded. We also harvested our first yellow squash from the one volunteer squash plant that came up in the corn. None of our melon/squash/cucumber section came up. Only volunteers in other parts of the garden. We’re grateful for whatever did come up since it’s been so darn dry this year. We’ve had maybe an inch and a half of rain since January. We see clouds and get our hopes up, then it rains somewhere else. *sigh*

My Rhode Island red hen is sitting on banty eggs at the moment. She tries sitting on the leghorn’s eggs, but since we don’t have a full size rooster, we sneak those out when she’s eating, since nothing is going to hatch out of those eggs anyway. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that maybe we’ll get a few new babies!

I’ve lost 5 of my tater plants – I’m not sure what is killing them underground, but it’s annoying me to no end. And I’ve yet to see a single new potato on the others. Methinks this tater experiment might be a failure. Luckily the onions are doing pretty well, so I don’t feel like a total root crop failure.

My eldest son turned 18 yesterday. I’m having a bit of a crisis about it – but quietly, because how silly is it to have a crisis about the fact you managed to raise a handsome, intelligent, witty, kindhearted child to the age of 18? But really – 18? How did that happen? It’s just surreal. Does this make me officially old?