Nutrition

I am toying with the idea of getting a minor in Nutrition. I love food. We all know this. Love to cook, love to eat, love to talk to other people about cooking and eating...(Aside, my mother just sent me a chocolate bar from this company called Bloomsbury. It is the best chocolate I have ever eaten.) So I am thinking, nutrition is something that will easily fit into my health care major, many of my nutrition classes will also be accepted as electives for my BS and I will get to study food and the body and stay engrossed in one of the things I really care about.
I am taking a nutrition class this semester (btw, my teacher is a customer at my store, I hope I was nice to her) so we will see how we like it.

I wish I was a neat freak.

I really really do. But i am not. Neither is my husband. In fact, we are both pretty messy. As I sit here typing, on my desk is a bag of starbursts he is currently eating, a chocolate bar that I am grazing. Now these items are in use, so thats not so bad, but when we add them to the sleeve of ritz crackers that I didnt put away three nights ago, the bottle of hot sauce that seems to keep aparating no matter how often I put it away and the three water bottles that are at various stages of being consumed, you begin to see that we have a problem.
There is christmas ribbon that didnt make it in the box with the paper, my camera, change from someone's emptied pockets, a school schedule, a camera, a pen cup, a bottle of lotion and a remote control. And the desk is no isolated incident.

So this is bad right?

The saving grace of my marriage (well one, there are probably several) is that neither Ryan nor I have a chore distribution paradigm. The house looks like what it looks like. Inevitably, I will get tired of the mess before he does and begin to pick things up. So eventually, the laundry will get done, the dishes washed, and the kitchen and the bathroom cleaned.
He doesnt expect that any of these things ever be done so if I do them fine, if not, they can keep until it gets gross enough that he decides to do it. Circle back to the inevitable I will get disgusted long before he will...

I am fine with this. As long as he poses no expectation that I pick up after him on his schdule, I am content to do it whenever I am in the "picking up mood".

The problem is... The mood is not something I am in on a day to day basis.
I like cleaning days. I like to start when I wake up, open the windows, turn on the radio and spend 4 to 5 hours at a pace working from one end to the other. I never get to do this on a 9-to -5 so I just can never get motivated to do much of anything.

After all... its not like i have friends over. For that matter its not like I have friends here.

Is cleanliness still next to godliness if there is no one to hear the cleanliness fall in the forrest?

When I grow up...

Do we ever become? Even now as I have finally committed to an academic program and am on a path, I find myself suddenly unsatisfied with it.
I was talking to my mother the other day about my OTA program and what the timeline will be like. I will find out in February if I am selected to start in the fall.
"What happens if you dont get in?" she says to me.

A perfectly legitimate question I suppose. But I didnt have an answer. Not get in? Who are you talking about here because I know you dont mean me.
But then I had to think about it. What am I going to do if I dont get accepted to this program? A program that will graduate me with an associates degree no less. Ha.
I suppose I just keep plugging along with the classes I need for my Bachelors. Pick up a minor perhaps? But what in? Dietetics so I have an excuse to study food? I would rather be in culinary school I think we all can admit that, but who wants to work in a restaurant for 80 hours a week?

I mean, I would like to have a little breakfast and lunch diner that served pies. Not just sweet pies of course but quiches and ham and cheese pies and spaghetti pies and everything you can imagine in a pie shell. It would only be open for breakfast and lunch. The kinda place where all the old men come in the morning to sit and drink coffee you know? Not that you need a college degree for that... but you do need a benefactor right? And since I am minus a sugar daddy and refuse to scrub out my husband for the life insurance money ( not that he hasnt offered ) ....

I miss blogging. Heather Lee said today that she wouldnt read my journal because it would be boring. Then after discussion, not because the material would be boring but more because the pages would be blank. I began to ask myself, do I not blog anymore because I have nothing to say?? Rarely do I have nothing to say so that cannot be it. Do I suffer the same ill feelings towards my cyber journal as she... that I have allowed it to become a medium for my own bellyaching and less as a creative, thoughtful exercise?

Coco-Nuts

This is apparently the funniest thing about The Search for the Holy Grail. Men banging coconuts.
Every scene that involved the substitution of coconuts for horses, Noah giggled.

Now there were jokes that I expected him not to get. Sir Gallahad the Chaste having to be rescued from spanking the virgins at Anthrax.

The dragging discussion of the carrying power and wind/speed velocity of a European swallow versus an African swallow.

"You cant expect to wield supreme power because some watery tart threw a sword at you"

But the simplicity of "Patsy" the man servant loyally following his king, banging his coconuts as Arthur "galloped" erectly. Apparently, this is humor.
Sometimes I love children.

The Monty Python Experiment

"I didn't even finish 15 minutes of it, that was terrible! How on earth is that your favorite movie?" said I to Steve some 10 or so years ago. I, being terribly smitten, was trying every new movie and album he loved so we would have more to talk about, and had just tried to watch The Life of Brian.

"I just dont want to see (The search for the Holy Grail)" says a friend who will remain anonymous. "Everyone is always quoting the stupid lines to each other and laughing hysterically at things that dont seem to make any sense. At this point in time I cant imagine that there are any funny parts I dont already know by heart nor that they are anywhere near as funny as they have been built up to be. It doesnt interest me." at which point I scream "Help, Help Im being repressed!"

As I have grown and become more cynical, I have loved Monty more and more. Now I watch the Life of Brian and giggle myself silly. I wonder if its an age thing? Or perhaps at time, I thought it was not funny because I didnt understand why anyone would mock my religion and could not laugh at it.

This weekend Ryan and I are watching The Search for the Holy Grail with Noah. It will be his first time with Monty Python. I am eager to see how the next generation feels about it. Will he think its funny? He has a strange dry wit. (Wonder where he got that) Which jokes will he understand? (He is unusually sharp for a child of 10, further proof he is his fathers child) When will he be lost but will laugh because we are and will I be able to tell?

Either way, I am excited to see the cult classic the first time with fresh eyes.

Back to Blogging...I hope.

We should all have friends that challenge us. Someone who, while they love us for who we are today, know that we can in fact rule the world and push us to be thinking about our plans for world domination. Okay, maybe not world domination, but personal improvement... is that a little less dramatic?
Laura is that friend of mine. The girl just oozes ambition. And it drives me nuts. I wish that I had a tenth of her drive. At times I mock that she has a fear of boredom. But she also has an amazingly full and accomplished life.
She works full time at a job she enjoys.
She pursues her passion for music by teaching voice and engaging in musical theater.
She is in leadership in the church.
She camps, she coupons, she saves, she has two blogs, she writes and she runs marathons.
And she does all these things while going to grad school.

I am lucky if i make it to work on time and if I had clean clothes to wear there.
Sure I have dreams. I am falling in love with Occupational Therapy this semester.
I am excited to learn what avenues are available in that field. Ryan and I want to go to Europe.
I want to successfully grow a plant for 12 months.

Right now I am exhausted between school kicking my butt all week and apartment hunting most of the afternoon...But, Laura is launching a new blog and I was feeling a little small in comparison. Its sad and pathetic I know. But still...
Can you be proud of your friends and jealous of their success at the same time? I dont envy Laura anything. She earns all she gets and she gives as much as she can sometimes more. Perhaps jealousy is not the right emotion. Perhaps its shame. Perhaps its that Im 29 and still living at home for all intents and purposes. Perhaps I should not be ashamed of this, many of my generation are in the same boat. Just not so many of my peers.
Then again. Perhaps im just tired.

Sunday Night
A pharmacy

A telephone rings...

Technician: Hello and thank you for calling CVS how can I help you?

Caller: Yes, my Medicaid hasn't been working or whatever but now there going to turn it on and give me the money back that I paid you, cause there was a couple times I had to pay for my medicine. Can you tell me how much that was?

Technician: You're asking what your recent out of pocket expenses were because you Medicaid was in-active?

Caller: Yeah, cause they said you'd give me my money back or they would or something.

Technician: It looks like it was around $29.00.

Caller: Really? Thats all?

Technician: Well ma'am if you got prescriptions at other stores, you would need to resubmit the insurance claim at each store.

Caller: Oh. Well can you get that ready for me?

Technician: Did they reactivate your old Medicaid ID account or did they assign you a new one?

Caller: I dont know.

Technician: Well then we would not be able to resubmit the claims with out the paperwork. Once you bring us the paper work we would be happy to resubmit them here in the store. If they will go electronically then we will refund your money immediately. Most of them are a month or more old and we do not guarantee electronic refunds over two weeks so we might end up mailing them. That could take a month or so. Do you have your receipts?

Caller: No, they didn't tell me I needed them.

Technician close to losing her patience: And how do you expect that you might get a refund from a store from several months ago without a receipt?

Caller: I dont know.

Technician knowing shes if fighting a losing battle because we can procure the receipts and the customer is infact not responsible for keeping her own crap together, we will just hand her money like everyone else is doing...: Why dont you just bring in your paperwork and we'll see what we can do.

Why do we live in a world now where people (my generation) dont seem to know how things work? I really want to go on a tirade about personal responsibility yada yada but even now my day is slipping away and I have to go. But I am thinking about these things...

The trash can in my kitchen is flowing over onto the floor because I am the only one who seems to be capable of taking it out. The ratio right now of me empting it versus anyone else in this house is 62:4. And I dont even live here.

The woman across the street called the cops on us because my huband parked in front of her house. She called the cops an hour and a half after leaving the first note she ever left on his windshield. And the cops threatened us with a misdemeanor for lack of cooperation if we continued to park there.