| trying to talk myself out of being grumpy. |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|12:57 pm] |
ten things that make me happy:
the flowers from my mom's garden which are on my kitchen table
the weather forecast for this weekend
the orange and yellow heirloom tomatoes in my fruit basket
farmers' markets
letters from my sister
watching 30 Rock
hugs and kisses from Ella
going to Powells
getting to see Kelly, Brian, Leigh, Steven, Tim and Evie soon (soon, soon!)
the Decemberists concert- 9 days! |
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| thunder, schmunder. |
[Jun. 4th, 2009|06:18 pm] |
Janne is watching the news right now (and always).
first of all: they just showed a clip of a squirrel running around in the rain. A SQUIRREL. if that's not news-worthy, well.
second of all: they just played/displayed (ON TV, remember) the number you should call if you have lost power. they showed it ON TV. for the people who are watching tv sans power.
SERIOUSLY. |
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| I have eleven different kinds of cheese on my shelf of the refrigerator. |
[May. 25th, 2009|03:03 pm] |
today has been the only weekendish type day I've had in several weeks. it's tricked me into feeling like it's a Saturday, and I'm going to be VERY disappointed at about 5:45 tomorrow when my alarm goes off.
also. it has come to my attention that my balcony/patio is, um. well. it looks the way I'd imagine someone of a certain socio-economic status's balcony would look. we have furniture, dead plants, a guitar stand, a kiddie pool, PILES of cigarette butts... it's the dead plants that do it for me. the overall effect is Not Good.
today at the dog park (I was dog-watching this weekend) a rottweiler ran over my foot. it is throbbing. it's going to be bruised for sure and there's a special blood blister where his nail dug in and, well, it hurts. a lot.
the end. and now I'm going to lay in the sun and read some Anne Lamott and drink iced coffee. |
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| I have the 'I'm a mac. I'm a pc.' song in my head. |
[May. 19th, 2009|11:39 pm] |
I'm really tired right now. I did not sleep well at the women's retreat. I had a chiro appt early Monday morning. I babysat at 6 this morning. and repeat.
I am thankful for the babysitting that has appeared out of nowhere this week. I'm going to make enough money to save, cover my chiro appt, and allow a caramel macchiato. but: I am tired.
I have a lot to do for Ginny's underwears shower...
I am in the middle of six books right now.
I love Jon Stewart.
these are the things on my mind. (I kind of feel like I'm embodying the 'this is your brain. this is your brain on drugs' commercials right now. 'this is my brain. this is my brain without sleep.') |
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| THIS IS NOT HELPFUL. |
[May. 11th, 2009|10:02 pm] |
I am trying to be a responsible person.
first of all, today I tried to return a movie to the 'movie cube' (dollar box) at Fred Meyer's, and the box was...not on. so I asked an employee and she said to call them and I called the 1 800 number and after being on hold for like 7 minutes I gave up and then I forgot to call them back and now I'm going to get charged a LOT for a stupid movie and I was trying really hard to be frugal.
second of all. I paid my credit card bill online last week (Friday?) and I just noticed today that it hasn't come out of my checking account yet so I checked to make sure I had actually paid it (sometimes I wonder if I just thought I paid it?) and went to the credit card website and... 'an external error is preventing you from whatever something'. I am going to be really frustrated if I'm charged and my credit is dinged and there's nothing I can do about it now but it'd be nice to be able to check online and know for sure either way.
sigh. hmph. |
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| I'm out! |
[Mar. 31st, 2009|10:17 am] |
here I am:
ashbyinkenya.blogspot.com |
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| I am positively freezing. |
[Mar. 30th, 2009|02:34 am] |
the bad news is I have one of those exploded taste buds on my tongue and I just scraped it accidentally against my teeth and it hurts so bad I can scarcely breathe.
the good news is I leave for Kenya in 36 hours. actually. 36 hours from now I'll be on a plane.
which means I should probably start packing sometime in the next thirty...three hours. |
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| define 'money'. |
[Mar. 18th, 2009|11:15 pm] |
Coffee Time, 11pm:
girl across from me: I don't know, I just really want to go to, I don't know, Zimbabwe, somewhere like that, just to get a feel for, you know...
guy next to me: yeah, Zim is alright, it's a lot like Kenya, it's very African.
girl: then there's...there's a country that has, like, 110% prevalence of malaria...
guy: yeah, but you don't have to worry about that. there's pills [sic]. white people don't get malaria. people with money don't get malaria.
me: I have malaria. |
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| kids these days. |
[Mar. 2nd, 2009|03:55 pm] |
the highlight of my day so far...was NOT when Blake, myself AND the dog all threw up this morning.
no no, the highlight of my day was when Blake was complaining that they were out of pre-grated cheese and he had to grate it himself:
me: when I was your age, we didn't even HAVE cheese graters!
B: what'd you use then?
me: we had to take bites of cheese straight off the block, chew it up, and then spit it back into a bowl.
B: you weren't a kid that long ago...
yes, Blake, THAT was the point of what I was trying to say! |
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| I always forget how much I love this discussion. |
[Feb. 23rd, 2009|01:14 am] |
I inherently know not to shop at Walmart, and I avoid Fred Meyer as well. in fact: I almost exclusively shop at Trader Joe's and New Seasons. but it's been a while since I've read up on it and I can't even remember the specific reasons why I don't shop at Fred Meyer, so I decided to do a bit of homework.
coopamerica.org is an amazing resource. 'Responsible Shopper' is a link that provides information about almost any company. their goal is to find and promote businesses who lend toward a sustainable lifestyle. nerdy stuff like this makes me happy. some people are computer nerds; I am an ethical trade nerd.
so I was reading about Fred Meyer etc and decided to click on the 'compare your grocery stores' link. it charts and grades grocery stores and...
Trader Joe's got the best score!
woohoo! I'm so proud of them. (note: the chart itself states that most companies do not get a 'green' score and at best get yellow {red being the worst}. most of the other charts- food, clothing, etc- only have yellow and red results...and Trader Joe's got a green. so it's not just the best OF the choices- it's actually a good choice. A GOOD LIFE CHOICE.)
furthermore: the most solid argument I've EVER heard for why you SHOULDN'T shop at Walmart 'because it's cheap':
Due to low wages and negligible benefits, thousands of Wal-Mart employees are dependent on public assistance to meet their basic needs, and American taxpayers eventually subsidize Wal-Mart's low prices.
See?
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| the awesomeness inside a 4 year old's brain. |
[Jan. 26th, 2009|08:48 pm] |
I taught the 3-5 year olds at Ethnos this past month. it was awesome. I feel like I could have done a better job planning lessons (we don't have a curriculum and I wasn't fully prepared for that), but I sure had fun.
anyway last night I had the kids help me write a story. the theme was 'being nice to your friends to show you that you love them' because we'd just finished talking about ways to show our friends that we love them. we got a little off track. here is the story in its entirety:
once upon a time there was a boy named Matthew. Matthew wanted to go on a trip. he goed to Mexico. he wanted to go swimming. but before he left he planted some carrots. Matthew was worried because he didn't know who would water his carrots while he was in Mexico. so he brought the carrots with him.
then Jesus ate the carrots. but the carrots were rotten so he put ketchup on them. Matthew wanted to play in the snow so he went to a mountain. Jesus didn't like the carrots. Jesus healed the carrots so they weren't rotten and gave them back to Matthew. Matthew ate ice cream. Matthew and Jesus found each other. Matthew threw up on his shirt so he went to put a new shirt on.
Jesus got hurt by a cloud.
Matthew found his friends and shared his carrots with them.* then he shared his toys with his friends. he really did. they all played in the house. Jesus puked from eating too many carrots. Matthew saw a big dinosaur and got scratched by a big dinosaur. he got a special power so that he could make a giraffe and then he put balloons on his neck.
one of Matthew's friends asked Jesus to turn the carrots into cupcakes, so he did, and they all ate cupcakes. the end.
*this is where we remembered the 'theme' and got back on track. sort of. |
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