Technical Difficulties

Ughhhh! Don't you just hate computers sometimes? I have been trying to post a new blog and pictures about our weekend, and my camera card will not cooperate with our dinosaur computer! Here I am last week saying how much more I am going to blog, and I am not delivering. Hopefully I will get these technical difficulties worked out soon because we had a great weekend. I want to share our exciting news: our little spaniel actually likes to swim!

Details soon...

And So My Widowdom Begins...

The school year has started again, which means it's work, work, work for Michael. When football games start in a couple of weeks, it's only going to get more lonely around our house! This weekend I got a little taste of what I call sports widowdom, which happens every fall when Michael's job gets busier. I am so happy for him because he has a career that he enjoys because sports is his life (well except for me and Scarlett), but I hate being by myself so much! This weekend, Michael had to work Friday and Saturday night! So what did I do while he was away...I spent a lot of time on the couch, and after I got caught up on my Project Runway Season 8 episodes, I watched 5 movies this weekend.

Three movies I absolutely loved, but two were cheesy and ridiculous! Ladies, if you are ever at home without your husband or significant other, here are a few movies to choose from to make being a weekend widow a little less awful. Unless you like it when hubby is away! I recommend the first three movies, but the last two you can rent at your own risk!

My favorite movie this weekend was Remember Me. My girlfriend Jennifer has been begging me to see this movie, and I am so glad I did. It is a great love story, and I love Robert Pattinson in this movie so much more than I like him in the Twilight Series (I know I'm going to get a lot of complaints about that comment)! The ending is the best part...it is very surprising!

Julie and Julia is such a feel good movie. I laughed so much, and when the movie was over, I was in such a good mood! Meryl Streep is my favorite actress, so I am partial to any movie she is in, but I loved the story of food and blogging and doing what you love in life!

Some of my favorite movies of all time are historically based movies set in England. It must be the beautiful love stories and the fairy tales of kings and queens and life at court. Plus, the scenes in English movies are so beautiful! I want to visit every place in The Young Victoria, and I want Victoria's dog named Dash. He is a tri-colored Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who follows Queen Victoria during the entire movie!

I expected When in Rome to be a cheesy love story...but that's putting it lightly. I didn't stop playing the movie, but it hurt a little to watch it until the end. I can't decide if I am a Kristen Bell fan, and the movie was more than predictable with a terrible story line. It was worse than your typical romantic comedy, but if you want a simple movie with pretty people, then it's worth a $1 at the Redbox.

Hot Tub Time Machine is vulgar, ridiculous, and stupid. Not much more to say than I got up and did laundry during the movie because I couldn't bare another second! I would actually save your $1 and skip this movie! Even Michael thought the movie was bad!

Are there any good movies any of you can recommend for my next Widow Weekend?

Scarlett's First Swim, Michael's First Pier

This weekend, we went to our friend John's lakehouse on Lay Lake. They are expanding the pier on his parent's property, so John asked us to come to the lake this weekend and have Michael help finish the project. We've only been in Birmingham 6 weeks, and Michael has already helped tear down and build a fence and now he has helped put some fininshing touches on what will be an awesome pier and boat house. I'm pretty proud of him, he's not what you would call a Mr. Fix It, but he is a hard worker and has learned a lot! When we made plans to go to the lake, the thing we were most excited about was taking Scarlett to the lake for the first time. Michael took her to get her very own lifejacket and a floating shark for her to play with in the water. It never occurred to him that she wouldn't like swimming, much less leaping off a boat to fetch a shark. Needless to say, she enjoyed cooling off in the water, but swimming was another story. I don't know what it is, but she sort of panics when she can't find a way to make it to shore. She swims in circles and grunts and she has the most terrified look on her face! She's definitely not your typical spaniel. But she was so cute in her yellow lifejacket. Here are some pictures from our trip.

Michael finishing up the pier before we get ready to play!

The fruits of labor! Scarlett checking out her surroundings.

She was excited...but then she got in!

Not so excited anymore! She calmed down once she got in the raft! Tubing Time!

Doubles!

John's getting ready to do something crazy....

There he goes!

I love this picture!

Family Photo of course!

The baby was exhausted from the sun and swimming!

It's Never Too Late...

To Listen to the Birds

Birds are such sought after creatures that they have a whole society of human beings who devote their lives to watching them. There are stores for bird lovers, books for bird lovers, trips for bird lovers, clothes for bird lovers, and special bird watching binoculars for bird lovers.

I'm not a bird lover. I'm not even a bird admirer. I think birds are kind of gross, especially crows, pigeons, and vultures. And don't forget seagulls! YUK! Birds are friggin scary too, just thank of Mr. Hitchcock's famous movie!

I haven't had too many positive experiences with birds.

I had a bird poop on me once. I was a little girl playing on the playground at school, and a bird shit on my shoulder. I wore dried up bird feces on my shoulder until my dad came to pick me up that day. The bird poop incident obviously scarred me because that memory crossed my mind several times years later when we were planning our outdoor wedding. Wouldn't it be horrible if a bird flew over me the instant I said "I Do," and it pooped all over my wedding dress?

When I was a teenager, we had two parrots. Not at the same time, thankfully! This was a seriously bad idea that spawned from one of those stuffed parrots you could buy at toy stores. Do you remember those? When you turned it on, you could say something to the bird and it would repeat it and blink its eyes. My dad got one for some reason, and it made him think he wanted a live bird that he could train to talk. It didn't take our family very long to realize that training a bird to talk isn't all that cool when bird speak comes with squawking, squealing, and skank. Our second skanky parrot named Smoky had an anxiety disorder, which caused him to pull out his feathers. For some reason, we kept him in the dining room! Mom, if you are reading this, maybe you can explain why! So here we were, the proud owners of an axious feather-pulling bird who spit out his food all over our linoleum floor and pooped from his perch every night as we sat down for family meals.

When Michael and I moved to Australia, I was shocked at all the wild cockatoos and cockatiels in Melbourne. They outnumbered the students at the university I attended. Back home, we would pay hundreds for these squawking monsters, and they were everywhere for the taking. I'm glad I didn't get pooped on because these are some big birds! We had a few cockatoos that perched themselves outside our window, and as pretty as they are, you would think God would have given them a beautiful voice to go with their looks. Think of the worst hacking, screaching noise you have ever heard and times it by 100 decibels!

Though I'm not a fan of birds, I can see where Mr. Lindsay is going when he says It's Not Too Late to Listen to the Birds. There is a beauty to many of them, and I do find myself appreciating the sound of birds in the early days of spring because I know it means that the world is finally coming alive again. But my bird love quickly ends there. Let's just say, I don't think I'll become a bird watcher any time soon.

It's Never Too Late...

To Run a Marathon

"We're all athletes. Some are just better and faster than others." Anonymous

Ummm...no we're not! Who wrote this crap anyway? That's right, someone Anonymous.

I will forever be envious of you perfectly sculpted athletes with your armored tummies and cantaloupe calves who go for a simple 7 mile run every morning to get your day started. To that I say, "Coffee please!" And don't get me started on you freaks of nature who can run the 26.2 miles of hell. I am jealous of you all! Why?

a. because I will never have your discipline and endurance

b. because I will never have your ass and legs

c. because I will never be able to eat whatever I want and go run it off later

Back in the day, I was a cheerleader and dancer, which does require some athleticism. (I know what you haters are thinking...cheerleading ain't no sport!) But running, pleeeaaaase! I hate it, just hate it!

Sometimes when we walk, Michael challenges me to run to the next light pole. I can't make it without thinking of reasons to stop. Oh wait...my shoe is untied, I've got a wedgie, the asphalt hurts my feet. And how far are those poles apart, like 1/50th of a mile!

So what will I take from this lesson because I don't see any marathons in my future? I promise I will do my best to harness the athlete within me though I may die before it happens. But for now I can simply be happy that I won't have to undergo double knee replacement from all that running!

A Sucky Moment

It sucks when you find out your dad has a facebook page and forgot to make his wall posts private, especially when he calls his 59 friends his "family" and tells them how much he loves them all.

P.S. I'm not one of his facebook friends.

I guess it's my bad for reading his profile.

WINTER...I'm over it!

Okay...last weekend spoiled me! The weather was absolutely perfect, but now I'm back to freezing my behind off! Every day I wake up thinking, "Is winter ever going to pass?" There seems to be no end in sight, and like many of you, I am so over the cold these days!

Here are the Top 10 Reasons why I HATE WINTER
1. Dealing with dry, pale skin
2. The hot water in the shower barely lasts ten minutes
3. Heating up my car before leaving for work is a pain
4. Squeezing myself into a million layers just to take Scarlett outside
5. My favorite vegetables and fruits are out of season
6. People are generally less friendly and very moody
7. The days are shorter
8. There are no flowers
7. Fresh air is an afterthought because it's COLD
8. I get fatter
9. Snow is nice...but once or twice is good enough
10. My social life gets traded in for hibernating on the couch in warm, comfy clothes

I'm so ready for spring, are you?