what i did today

My family and friends that know me IRL will probably appreciate this post and add it to "the list".  Sometimes I try to make things a little harder than they are intended.  My mom and I were talking about this just the other night.  As she says, when someone says open a chip bag, just pull it apart, don’t invent some new tool that opens chip bags.  If someone says one thing, I take it ten levels past that on what they might mean.  Case in point, my mom asked me the other night to go for coffee which she has NEVER done and I thought someone was dying.  I still think I’m justified there, but anyway. 

This morning I was sitting in the kids’ bathroom and reading the back label of the kids’ detangler bottle as I’m wont to do while I *ahem* sit in the bathroom.  As I was reading along, it seemed to me that they had put both English and Spanish words on the label. 

So as I got here

I read the first line as "L’Oreal Kids Tangle (Tah-mar) is so gentle, it’s tear free."

as the word Tamer might have been Spanish.  Except I don’t even think that’s how you’d pronounce it Spanish.  Besides the point.

The second phrase wasn’t any better.

"L’Oreal Kids Tangle (Tah-mar) smells so good"

In my very small Spanish dictionary in my head I was cycling through what the word Tamer might be.  Because sometimes I do that.  I know.  No need to laugh.  I started to get suspicious of my thought process and why there might only be ONE Spanish word in the whole sentence and turned the bottle around.

Oh.  Tangle Tamer.  Got it.

I’ve mentioned our elderly neighbor before.  Well…I think he’s getting worse.  The other week he called over to our house and was concerned because he’d been seeing a man hanging out in his shed at night.  He talked about not wanting to shoot him because he knew he’d get in trouble but we’d better be careful.  It kind of scared me a little and I started locking my doors after dark.  Normally, I wait until when I go to sleep to do that.  He complained a few times again about it but every time he said he saw someone, no one could see anybody. We started to get a bit suspicious on what he was seeing.

The other day he had two county officers over at the house and I could see him pointing to his backyard.  I’m sure he had seen someone again and had called the police.

Yesterday I got a phone call from his daughter about lunchtime who we know as well and she asked if I could see someone in his backyard. He said someone was sitting in his garden.  I peek out my window and see nothing. I go outside to get a better look and nothing.  His daughter says ok.  They’ll probably ride by just to make sure everything is ok.

Last night Scott goes to talk to him and he has put an envelope on a chair held down by rocks for the guy to read.  He also has his son in law install motion lights in his backyard.  He tells Scott the guy doesn’t take anything and he just needs somewhere to stay.  Apparently he used to stay in the neighbor’s shed but it started to leak water so now he uses his.  He says he waves to him at night from his bedroom window and he waves back.

I feel bad for the guy.  His family agrees he’s losing it a bit.  We have yet to see anyone and there are no footprints or anything disturbed that would show he has had any visitors.  It would be a little funny except that this guy is probably worrying himself to death over this and probably driving his wife crazy.  But I have to admit it was a little shocking to receive this text from Scott today:

“He just told me he saw a guy giving another guy a BJ last night in his shed.”

Apparently he stopped Scott today and had forgotten he ever told Scott about any of this.  He told him he had a guy that was hanging out in his shed lately and last night 5 guys show up with him and that had happened.  He wants Scott to come by tonight when he’s working.

Honestly I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at all that.

I know I said I probably wouldn’t do another one, but look!  I got another question!

Do you feel unfulfilled in life: are there goals, visions, dreams, etc….that are still out there…somewhere…

This answer I didn’t have to think about.  I do not feel unfulfilled AT ALL.  If I could have written down exactly what I’d be doing at age 30, I’m doing exactly that.  In fact, I may have done a post at one time about a paper I wrote in school about where I might be.  I matched it almost exactly.  I went to college for Computer Science, got married at young age, have two children, have a job as a programmer, have a nice house and vehicles, etc.  Maybe my dreams, goals and visions were ordinary and very American dream-ish but I feel like I’ve met them.  And I think I’ve mentioned before that’s why I had a hard time turning 30.  Everything I had on paper to do in life was done.  I have yet to dream about what we might do with our teenage children or how it might feel to be a grandmother or what we might do during retirement.  It’s not to say my life is over it’s just I feel very fulfilled.  I think the only dream I have right now that has just surfaced in the past few years is I’d like to write a book.  I’m not sure yet what about or when but it’s one of those goals I wrote on paper a few years back.  I guess we’ll see about that one.

This morning the doorbell rang.  I was sitting at my desk in my robe, right after my shower without my hair or makeup done.  I ran to the bedroom and let Scott get the door.  It was a delivery of a box!  My favorite!  I couldn’t remember ordering anything but Scott said it had Emma and Lexi’s name on it.  Books!  A reader here and at my OTH blog, Carolyn was supposed to send books!

The girls were so excited!  They LOVE books.

They kept saying, “Oh, look at this one.”

They even had fun with the box of peanuts!

Thank you so much, Carolyn!  The girls have been looking through them and carrying them around all morning.

You guys have heard me talk about all my CVS savings and Triple Coupon sales I go to.  I looked at my CVS receipt the other day and I have saved over $2,000 just this year.  I learned all of that from Crystal at moneysavingmom.com.  She is running a sale TODAY ONLY where you can get an incredible ebook package–over $100 worth of money-saving ebooks, homemaking helps, and encouragement for only $5.97!

The ebook package includes the ecourse Supermarket Savings 101 which I’ve bought in the past and it is excellent for beginners on how to reduce your grocery bill in half.  It includes a ton of other books from starting a business to how to make bread.

Go here to read more about the sale!

First and probably last Q&A.  Thanks to the three souls that had mercy on me and asked me a question.  I really didn’t want to write about Krispy Kreme donuts.  Especially since I had a egg and cheese biscuit this morning.

First, Jen asked me:

What is your favorite book of the bible, and why?

If I only had one book to read from here on out, I think it would be Proverbs.  Obviously, filled with so much wisdom, it would take a lifetime to learn to put it into practice.

Carolyn asks:

How did you decide to start blogging?   It seems like you have been at it for at least a few years and I wonder with two pre-schoolers how you find the time!

I actually have been blogging since before kids!  It was six years this year.  (A lot of my archives were removed from the site during a server move.) Blogs at that time were very, very basic and few and far between.  I’ve always journaled and wanted to start doing it on the computer.  I think I even started typing it up in Word but I think I eventually googled online journals and then welcomed myself into the world of blogging.  I didn’t tell anyone for YEARS that I was blogging.  For a long time, it was something personal and a way to vent.  Finally last year, I started telling more people about it.  As for time now, I usually blog late at night.

Dwight didn’t go easy on me:

Are you happy?

What scares me is this wasn’t an easy question to answer.  I really had to think about this.  I think “happy” implies so many things.  Am I happy as in not mad or not sad or not depressed?  In that case, I am.  Do I dance around in joy all the time because my life is so perfect?  Hardly.  I find myself in a state of discontent often.  Sometimes I feel like there’s something more or different I should be doing.  Although I love my job at times, sometimes I’m very unhappy with that.  Sometimes I’m unhappy about our marriage.  Anyone around us knows we know how to “discuss” things.  I wonder what our problem is.  Sometimes I’m unhappy about the kind of mother I am.  I don’t feel like I give them enough time or attention or I’m not doing it quite right.  A lot of times I’m not happy with my spiritual life.  I’m not reading or praying enough or doing enough.  And yet, at times, I sit back and am astonished at all I have.  I feel so lucky and definitely happy with what I have.  My family, my house, our vehicles, our jobs, our children, our church.  So many things to be grateful for.  And with a quick look at Webster’s happy is “enjoying or characterized by well-being and contentment”, I think I said all of that to say yes, I’m happy.

I have practically nothing interesting to talk about from the weekend.  Our church’s potluck dinner this afternoon and birthday dinner for my dad tonight was about the highlight and while it was certainly a good time, not necessarily blogworthy.  And I have to go into the office tomorrow so unless I plan to blog about meetings and Krispy Kreme donuts tomorrow, it could be boring once again so I’m going to do something I haven’t done before…ask you to ask me questions.  Anything you want.  Leave a comment here (can be anonymous, I don’t care) or email me at amyjbennett@gmail.com and I’ll try to answer them tomorrow night.

And just because I feel I should, this one stuck out to me as well…

If you want to be a spiritual warrior, forgive your enemies.

Mark 11:25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.