Catch Up Day – Still Not a Food Thing

18 Sep 2015 2 Comments

by alightningbug in Games, Laundry, Mom Stuff, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Time-saving, WordPress, Wordpress Writing 101 Tags: , , , , , ,

Urgh! I’m supposed to be writing stuff and somehow hardly anything has gotten done this week. I managed some reading because, with apps on my phone, I can do that just about anywhere in tiny bursts. To some extent I can do that with writing too, but it is slower. Much slower. I only got a bit of writing done. Somehow time in this past week has evaporated like the last wisps of summer sun.

For the past month I’ve been meaning to do my nails and shave my legs.  I don’t get the bug to do my nails very often, but it does show up once in a while. So nearly every day I’ve been thinking, “oh, maybe I can do them today.” Then there’s laundry. Or a cat barfs. Or something else comes up. So that didn’t happen yet. The summer color I’d planned on doing just ain’t gonna happen at this point. I’m looking at you, Autumn.

Last week I had a follow up appointment with my Physical Therapist. I reeeaally should have shaved my legs if I was going to wear shorts there. Did it happen? Nope. If I’d have remembered this little tid-bit of info then I might have worn longer pants instead.

After that I should have, at least, shaved ’em over the weekend to avoid any more mishaps. Still no. Two days ago, I managed to haul my cookies up on an exercise bike again, guess what? I could feel my leg hairs swaying in the wind as I peddled. It’s not even like I can claim “winter legs.” At least I showered. 

Earlier I managed to paint a card for my daughter for her birthday. I’m proud of the card (proud that I finished it befor her birthday was over), and I’m even more proud of her.  I think she is a very cool young teen.



We had my daughter’s birthday party last weekend so it was a busy one. Plus we got her a nice but inexpensive cell phone, and activating it took a lot longer than I was expecting. 

First I’d tried to set her up on Cricket which didn’t work at all. It should have been the correct type of GSM unlocked phone to work there, but I think something is whacky. I’ll probably need go into a Cricket store to get the SIM to work. Like I have time. I can’t even manage to shave my legs.

Walmart Family Mobile plan to the rescue! I didn’t even know this existed until a few weeks ago. I’ll even save $5 a month over Cricket (but with slightly less high-speed data). I hope the coverage works OK, but the website for the service actually makes me feel like somebody put some thought into making it family friendly. More important, it actually worked. Excellent.

I meant to bake maple or caramel apple cupcakes for her birthday party, but that didn’t get  done either. Instead I purchased not-bad-for-store-bought cupcakes in vanilla and chocolate and decorated them with pumpkin spice marshmallows. They were a hit. Especially the marshmallows. I think they’ll be good in coffee or hot chocolate this fall.

We had a lot of fun at my daughter’s Laser Tag Adventure party. She has some great friends! The laser tag games are fun and the location was nice. But they had lots of video game redemption machines there, and some of the kids went a little wild with playing those. Seriously, why does it seem like so much fun for a machine to spit out paper tickets?

You can never get much with the tickets you trade in for “prizes” there or anywhere. Put in 25 cents and if you’re lucky you’ll be able to trade your tickets for a nickle worth of goods. 

My daughter got some Now & Laters — little hard taffy bricks that I’m pretty sure are nothing but an evil ploy of evil dentists. My daughter chose banana flavor. Against my good judgement she convinced my to try one. I promptly pulled a crown off my molar. I should have known better. Taffy is pure sweet evil incarnate, and this is not the first time that that crown has come unglued. It’s a fairly shallow, flat tooth.  At least I didn’t swallow it this time. That happened. And that’s another story for another time.

My mom and stepdad are moving in these next few days. I’m excited for them but also nervous as they’ll live farther away. This will be a big change. I helped with a few things yesterday, and I’m determined to help more this weekend.

I’m also determined to get some writing done, so here’s something. It looks like I’ve actually managed a blog post. I also have a couple of Cherokee Purple tomatoes finally ripening in our balcony garden. What’s not to like? It could be a good weekend.

I’m resetting my goals for the next couple of days. I am setting aside time. Still haven’t done my nails or shaved my legs though.





Daily Prompt: No, Thank You. Dangerous Ice Cream.

25 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in The Daily Prompt, WordPress Tags: , , , ,

The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt is No, Thank You.

It asks: If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?

There are lots of words I wouldn’t mind hearing, or seeing, less often.

Some people use the same expression over and over. At one point, when I was a kid I said “super” to everything I liked. Now I tend to say “cool” or “awesome” — twice the variety!

Books sometimes repeat the same phrase or words over and over.  

Spoken or in print, I cringe at too much swearing. Though it works well for some characters and stories. But in many cases if every other word is a swear then the words lose some of their power for when you might really need a good swear word. Like if you’e having an unusually sucky day or slam your finger in your car door.

If I’m super mad, I feel better with a good swear word or two. Sometimes three. It doesn’t happen often. I think it would lose some of it’s therapeutic benefit if I swore all the time.

Let’s say I had a friend named Polly and every day she says, “Where’s the fu***** ice cream?” If she says it again today then I would assume things are good with her. 

But if Polly almost never swears until just now when she comes in where I’m about to dig-in to two scoops of rocky road and says, “Where’s the fu***** ice cream?” Then I’m going to have a pretty good idea that either Polly had one spectacularly sucky day or that there’s something very wrong with the ice cream and we must dispose of it immediately before it injures someone.

I don’t like too much repetition of any word or words — particularly swear or cuss words. But I wouldn’t ban any of them. It would sensor expression. It’s akin to book burning.  

Even the worst of swears might save someone from a batch of dangerous ice cream.

I Need a Hair Cut and a New Header

23 Aug 2015 9 Comments

by alightningbug in WordPress Tags: , ,

I really need a hair cut. The prolonged lack thereof means that my hair, down and unbraided, skims the waistband on my pants. This is longer than it’s been in a long time.

If I go someplace for a hair cut, even the Hair Cuttery, it takes time and money. Just think of all the time & money I’ve saved.

We went to Hair Cuttery last weekend and had my daughter’s hair cut. It looks totally adorable on her. It also makes her look like a teenager. She’ll actually be a teen soon and that is scary.

Long hair can be a signature look, but it gets in the way and gets tangled.

I’m not the dreadlocks type, so my hair stays braided most of the time. Part of me wants to keep it long so I can pull off a couple of Princess Leia cinna-buns for the opening of the new Star Wars movie in December. But will I wait that long?

I could really use a new look.

So could my blog. I want a new Header and overall feel. I like the current one with nice colors and art [update with name], but I’m ready for something fresh and clean.

EnchantedSpark just redid their look. Plus WordPress, Hot Off the Press published “What a difference a header makes!” just a couple of days ago. The comments for that linked to an older DailyPost on creating a custom header.

I have no excuse! I’m a graphic designer for cryin’ out loud. I do art stuff. I grow pretty tomatoes. I should be able to nail this.

The race is on! Which will happen first — haircut or new look for my blog?

Daily Prompt: Green-Eyed Monster Time

22 Aug 2015 2 Comments

by alightningbug in The Daily Prompt, Writing Tags: , , , ,

The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt for August 22 is, Green-Eyed Monster

It asks: Tell us about the last time you were really, truly jealous of someone. Did you act on it? Did it hurt your relationship? 

I’m sure I’ve been plenty jealous of a person recently enough, but I can’t think of anybody very specific. At this point of my life, I find that I’m more jealous of situations and circumstances than of specific people.

For example, I’m pretty jealous of people who have lots of free time. I’m jealous of people who travel cool places. I’m jealous of people with larger homes and places to grown things. I’m jealous of people who are good at keeping their homes clean and organized. Sometimes my daughter has a hard time focusing, and takes forever to get homework done. I mean a long time. So I’m pretty jealous of people who don’t have to deal with this very often. I’m jealous of people who are more organized than I am.

In a way it all comes down to time. I’m jealous of people with more time and who use their time better than I do. I wish I used my time more effectively.  I can often look back and think, “Wow, I could have done that so much better if only I did xyz back then.” It’s like I can see it clearly when I look back, but when I look forward my organizational skills can get kind of mushy. So do I act on my jealousy? Maybe. I am acting by striving to use my time better. I’m striving for efficiency. I’m striving for a better here and now. That’s good for all of us.

Daily Prompt: Red Pill, Blue Pill

22 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Food, The Daily Prompt, WordPress, Writing Tags: , , , ,

The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt for August 21 is: Red Pill, Blue Pill

It asks: If you could get all the nutrition you needed in a day with a pill — no worrying about what to eat, no food preparation — would you do it?

If I had to make this choice permanently, I would never give up food. But if I could choose this as an option for certain times of the year or even just certain times of the day then I totally would.

I’ve come close enough to giving up food on the days that I drink meal replacement shakes. Some days are so busy. I still want good nutrition. I feel a lot better when I get something healthy in me. I drink meal replacement shakes and sometimes eat protein bars for breakfast or lunch. That happened a lot this summer and last. So a pill would be helpful when I’m short on time.

But drinking meal replacement shakes has made me realize that there comes a time when I just miss chewing. It doesn’t even have to be a steak or a gourmet meal — just chewing something. It could be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Chewing is part of the satisfaction of eating. And when I do eat a really good meal, oh my god, that can be heavenly! It feels like holding my breath, and finally getting to breathe again. The flavors are elevated over and above what I’d experience if I’d been eating regular food all the time.

I can only imagine meal replacement pills would be similar. I definitely don’t drink meal replacement shakes to relish their flavor or texture. Some of them are just not pleasant. A simple pill and a glass of water would bypass that and be quicker too. But I’d never want to do it all the time.

Summer’s Tail – Kicking and Screaming

16 Aug 2015 2 Comments

by alightningbug in Games, Mom Stuff, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Vacation, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s still hot like summer, but in many places kids have already gone back to school. Some as early as August 1. Summer is over for them. It’s the tail end for us, and I want to grab on to these last few weeks kicking and screaming as I lick the last bit of salt off my fingers before summer goes away again. My daughter can’t wait for school to start back up. She’s excited to experience her new classes and see more of her friends. I still have unfinished plans and goals and more tomatoes to grow!

We did some fun things this summer. We took a trip to Pittsburgh where I participated in Pinburgh, a pinball tournament. Pinburgh has been around a few years, but this year it was held at a huge new classic video game festival called Replay FX. I brought my daughter because, hello, video games and pinball! And they had other kids’ activities like a velcro wall, giant inflatable obstacle course, and slides. For a video game festival my daughter actually got a lot of exercise!

While Pittsburgh may not bring to mind the typical image of summer vacation paradise, there was much fun and our hotel room had extra niceties that kept us saying, “wow, cool!” This made for a fairly complete vacationy experience.

Our room had a motion sensor foot light (like a night light at the floor that turned on when we stepped out of bed), pull-down individual book lights on each headboard, and in the evening, when we returned exhausted from a full day of game play and activities, the hotel supplied milk and cookies (free of charge for kids 12 and under). It was great!

We had another very mini vacation this past Friday night when we slept over at the National Museum of American History as a Smithsonian Sleepover. Last summer we did this at the Natural History Museum and loved it. There are scads of activities and crafts centered around various exhibitions in the museum. Then folks get to roll out their sleeping bags and camp out under a whale or antique machinery as museum lights are dimmed. Continental breakfast is served in the morning. And it is all so way cool!

Next year my daughter will be too old to do either of these sleepovers (there’s an age limit), and we’re super glad to have done them. I’ve always loved the Natural History Museum with animals and minerals, but I forgot how much fun the American History Museum can be. I feel like we made the kind of memories that can last a lifetime, and I think (I hope) my daughter feels that way too.

Earlier this summer my daughter had camp, so most weeks I had to drop her off in the morning and then run out on my lunch hour to pick her up and drop her off either at home or somewhere else like another camp (from which I’d have to pick her up again later). Most of the camps have been wonderful! She’s learned more music and dance and even cooking.

For me, one or two days of driving at lunchtime isn’t a problem, but week after week gets tiring. Exhausting even. I need some down time, or I start to shut down. On top of it, I fell and injured my knee last March (for crying out loud) and it has been slowly healing. At the beginning of summer it was much better but still painful on a regular basis. Pain is exhausting. (I have much more empathy for folks who live with chronic pain.) I’ve been trying to fit physical therapy exercises into my daily schedule to help my knee heal. Here at the end of summer I finally feel like I can squat to take care of our balcony plants without groaning in pain at the same time.  Long and short of it, instead of writing and blogging more this summer I remained rather unproductive.

These last few morsels of summer I have no plans of driving anywhere at lunchtime — at least nothing major. I may still run occasional shopping errands or drop my daughter off at a friends house and such. But mainly I plan to eat lunch.  I plan to write.

I’ve set goals for myself.  I want more summer fun. Maybe a quick trip to the beach! Maybe tubing. Definitely more swimming. I want more tomatoes to grow! More peppers! I want to write regularly and am setting daily and weekly goals. Really, I want more summer!

Now That I Started

14 Jul 2015 2 Comments

by alightningbug in Getting Organized, Laundry, Mom Stuff, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, WordPress Tags: , ,

I’ve started half a dozen blog posts since the end of the school year — even more of you count the ones I started in my head. There’s a lot going on — gay marriage is legal, the flag has come down, photos of former planet, former non-planet, now dwarf planet Pluto are streaming in — and I’ve managed to publish exactly zero of the blog posts I started. I can make a lot of excuses as to why. Many of them are legitimate excuses… But I still think I should have been able to manage to publish some with just a wee bit better time management or focus or something. 

It’s not for lack if topics!  Along with all that stuff in the news, we have a small balcony garden again. Yay! And my daughter has been having fun in Strings camp (kind of like band camp only it’s a day camp for orchestra). Zomagad, I even found Zote laundry soap in flake form instead of bars. 

That whole 10-minutes-of-writing-per-day thing worked well for a while. But I seem to have misplaced my 10 minutes (maybe under a tomato plant).

The one blog entry that I might actually manage to publish is about how I’m not blogging. This one. Which makes exactly zeros cents. I seem to best be able to blog about how I’m not blogging. I need to work on my priorities!

High Noon, Bye Noon

07 Apr 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Food, The Daily Prompt, WordPress Tags: , ,

The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt for April 5 is: High Noon. It suggests, “at noon today, take a pause in what you’re doing or thinking about. Make a note of it, and write a post about it later.”      

Noon of any weekday I’m usually at work. While this prompt came out on a Sunday, Easter Sunday, I didn’t see it until Monday morning when I decided to check out the Daily Prompt with the hope of re-starting a regular habit of blogging. 

So at noon, I thought, “here it is – noon.” This is the time of day when thoughts of lunch pop into my head. I don’t actually eat lunch yet though. In Westerns it would be time for a showdown, a suspenseful gunfight. Skill and speed. One man left standing. Thinking of lunch seems pretty darn pedestrian in comparison. Will I need to watch out for that sandwich! How fast can I down that salad? Those potato chips can be sharp! And then the clock moves on to 12:01.

Plus One: 201st Post [insert confetti in my previous post]

25 Feb 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Wordpress Writing 101, Writing Tags: , , ,

As it turns out, the post marking my fifth anniversary on WordPress, Five Years, was also my 200th post on WordPress. If you’re playing along at home, that makes this is my 201st post. [Cue confetti.]

I should have noticed the number when I wrote the 200th post and celebrated then. Acknowledging it here feels a little like missing the train by 1 second – celebrating a milestone plus 1. Happy 51st Anniversary! Happy 200+1! (Boom-chicka par-TAY.)

But plus 1 is good, right? It’s good luck to put an extra candle on a birthday cake. I like having a little more. And I didn’t even manage my Five Year post on the actual fifth anniversary. So it’s kind of like I got a theme goin’ here.

Again this leaves me room for improvement for the 300th post. Or maybe even something else.

I could just celebrate random numbers. I kind of like 222. And 250 is pretty good. Hopefully I won’t miss the 3.1415 Pi Day that’s coming up.

I should get some confetti.

Five Years

23 Feb 2015 1 Comment

by alightningbug in Writing Tags: , ,

WordPress just gave me an achievement shield! Well, not just, technically it gave it to me a few days ago. It’s an anniversary shield. I registered here on WordPress five years ago. Technically, five years and two days ago. (No special shield for the extra two days.)

I’m not sure if I should be proud or sad or what. I think I ‘m proud! I started making posts on my old AOL website. It was kind of a pain to upload to that. I didn’t know what a blog was back then. Later I blogged a bit on Blogspot before moving to WordPress. Blogspot was not as flexible for a lot of things. It was hard to focus as much on writing, somehow, when I spent so much of my time pulling my hair out in frustration. But lots of people still use Blogspot. It works for them. Maybe it’s better now than it was then.

In the meantime my hair is much longer. I probably need a haircut. And I do manage to blog stuff here on WordPress. Though my total number of posts over the course of five years is not a spectacular average pet year. This, however, does give me a relatively easy goal to try to beat. So that’s what I’m gonna do. That, and a haircut. Soon.

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