Stuck in Frump, Striving for Fab

I *heart* Jane Austen.

I've read all her books (and even some of the more tastefully done spinoffs), and thought I'd seen all the movies that have been done that are remotely related to her writing, including the Bollywood version, Bride & Prejudice.

But I was wrong.

Last night (in the grocery store of all places) I happened upon a movie that had somehow escaped my attention.

I'm pretty sure it was density destiny, because as I looked up from checking my receipt, there across the aisle was the discount movie display.

And right there front and center of the display was a cover of a movie that appeared to be set in Regency England, which bore a familiar title.

It was the perfect 'marriage', really...BBC's version of Persuasion.

And it was really, really good.

With all the essential elements...great acting, perfect characterizations from the book, Regency England settings, and the same, wonderful, Austenesque endings you'd expect from, well, Jane Austen.

Made me want to brew a fresh pot of tea and whip up a batch of scones and everything.

Almost made me want to go ahead and stay up all night watching Pride & Prejudice with my boyfriendColin Firth as Mr. Darcy.

Almost.

He and I are kind of on the outs right now, his recent role in the big screen version of Mamma Mia having come between us.

How could you, Colin? After finally winning the heart of untold millions of female fans worldwidedearest, loveliest Elizabeth...how could you cross over and come out of the closet?

All I can say is that you'd better redeem yourself in The Accidental Husband or our relationship is over.

Ahem.

So, in light of that, and totally leap-blogging off of my friend Elizabeth's blog posting, I couldn't resist the following quiz:

So all you Jane Austen fans out there... which Austen heroine do you most resemble?

My bloggy friend Debbie has a cooking show in Texas. Her blog, "I Overcooked My Family" is part of her greater website "Dishing With Debbie" which is chock-full of recipes, clips of her show, a contest and other fun stuff just waiting to be explored.

Recently, I submitted a story about my oldest son for her contest...and it won! Woo Hoo!

You might just want to go check her out, because you can also enter her contests with the possibility of winning some fabbo prizes and getting mentioned on her show! Just go here and follow the links! (And yes, that's me...the winner there on the link, lol!)

And because this blog posting doesn't already have enough of my mug splashed across it, I've decided to go ahead and post yet another picture of me wearing my FAB new reversible apron which she just sent me for winning!



Thanks, Debbie...I totally love it!

I'm loving my new much shorter haircut, as it's so much cooler for summer weather.

The only regret I have is that when my hair was long, I didn't have to wash it everyday. This kept it from drying out in the summer, and was generally presentable after a good brushing if someone happened to drop by while I was cleaning house.

Not so with my new do.

If I don't actually wash and style it every morning, I end up looking like this:



Except with a few cowlicks and things in back and sides that make the entire 'do' look hideous.


As though someone used the weed whacker to hack it off instead of getting my coiffure cut and razored at an expensive salon.

Also, there is the little problem of regular upkeep. I'm going to have to dye again soon, because my grays are coming back in at an alarming speed.

But then, that's probably just from finding Judah doing this and other dangerous stunts umpteen times a day.



He loves doing those stunts best that stun me to silence.

What he doesnt' realize is that my silence isn't one of awe, but comes from the fact that if I were to scream across the room at him, he'd startle and would fall off and get really hurt.

I wonder sometimes how we are ever going to get this kid to adulthood in one piece.

:: :: :: ::

This past week has been super busy, what with our househunting and putting in of offers, and I neglected to mark my hubby's birthday in a special way.

So this is a shoutout to my man on this auspicious occasion...

AUUUUUGH! We're old!

Ahem.

I mean, Happy Birthday!

:: :: :: ::

Judah was sent inside for throwing rocks while 'helping' daddy wash the cars.

He came in crying, and went straight for his bedroom, returning with one of his blankies.

He comes up to me, and looks up at me with those pleading little eyes and trying to elicit pity said, "Mama, I cwy cwocodiow teows."

:: :: :: ::

When little Judah is feeling particularly tender or or in need of security, he looks up at us with those same pleading little eyes and asks, "We do famwee hug?"

By this, he means that he wants us all to huddle up together and say, "Family Hug" and rock back and forth together for a few moments.

Judah will yell across the house or out the door at whomever was not in the general vicinity at that moment, "Jehwico! Come and do famwee hug!"

Naturally everyone obliges. How could we not, with such a cute request?

:: :: :: ::

Recently, I finished reading a really interesting book of memoirs by a woman who had been a farm girl during the depression era on through World War II.

In the book she mentioned several old-school cures for or ways of handling common problems. Things that most folks don't do anymore in this age of modern medicine, but which worked well for them.

The book, in case you were wondering, was called Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish.


It's not the sort of book I would normally recommend, because the author peppered the book liberally with some very colorful language and other things my grandma would have gasped about if ever spoken aloud. However, most of that was written from her kid perspective, trying to make sense of the things they heard spoken about in hushed tones when the adults didn't think they were listening, and was at times highly amusing.

I did enjoy reading about all the old-standby natural remedies that were used in those days when folks did most of their own doctoring, though, and even highlighted many of them for future reference.

For instance, when the kids back then got a scrape that was bleeding, they didn't come running to mama to clean it up with antiseptic and antibiotic ointments and band-aids.


Instead, rough-and-tumble bunch that they were, they headed for the barn and found a spider web which they sort of wadded up and spread over the bleeding area, because it helped the bleeding to stop immediately and they could go on with their play.

Well, the other day after running barefoot over some beauty bark that had escaped it's confines and ended up on our driveway, Judah came limping inside with a painful splinter on the bottom of his foot.

I could see that it went deep, straight into the pad on the bottom of his foot, and was red and painfully swollen around it.

Usually, I would sterilize some tweezers, clean the area with antiseptic and perform a painful surgery long and tedious procedure guaranteed to get the splinter out.

This time, however, armed with the knowledge I'd gleaned from that book, I decided to experiment put this newfound knowledge to use.

So I set him up on the kitchen counter, washed his foot off well and then retrieved an egg from the refrigerator.

That little gooey white membrane thing that surrounds the egg yolk? Well, it turns out that if you put that on the site of a splinter and let it dry, it seeps into the channel where the splinter went in, keeping it open, and by the time the membrane was dry a few minutes later, all I did was to give it a squeeze and the whole splinter popped out easily.

Judah objected heartily to said squeeze, and after I scrubbed all the eggy stuff off his foot, and then wiped it with alcohol as an added precaution, he said in his most pitiful little patient voice, "Mama? Put some wuv on it."

So yes, I did have to kiss his foot. 'Putting love on' his owies is a big part of my job description, after all.

And the moment I set him back on the floor, he was off and running to his next adventure.

:: :: :: ::

Yesterday, we thoroughly cleaned our house.

After painstakingly cleaning up all the matchbox cars and other toys from Judah's bedroom floor in anticipation of a thorough vacuuming of his bedroom, I went to get the vacuum and wheeled it in there only to find that in my absence, Judah had scattered an entire Barrel of Monkeys around the room.

The little culprit came to the door just then and asked, "What you doin' mama?"

"Cleaning up after YOU you little piggy," I replied with a playful tap to the tip of his nose.

He creased his brow. "I not a witto piggy, mama...I a witto Judah!"

:: :: :: ::

Some evenings when we've had a long and full day and the kids seem to need to wind down a little before bed, we will all get books, and go pile onto our big bed and kick back to read for a while.

At such times, it usually doesn't take long before Judah gets drowsy, and his book will slide off his chest.

When I notice this, I'll look over at him, and find he's at that stage where his eyes are about to shut, but he's fighting sleep.

When he sees me move, he'll open his sleep-starved eyes, look up at me and ask, "Sing Jesus to me, mama?"

And so I do.

Then he closes his eyes and falls off to sleep with a smile on his sweet little face.

Those are precious moments I will forever ponder in my heart.

First of all, a shout out to my brother Tim.

So because my birthday was coming up soon and because the scorching hot summer temperatures have been above 100 here for a few weeks running, I knew something had to be done about my hair.

It was time to finally bite the bullet and dye, too, as being Judah's mommy was bringing grays in at too fast a rate to ignore the problem any longer.

I knew I wanted something short and chic. A definite "celebrity" mom style...with layers and everything.

What I got ended up being something of a deja vu experience, harking back to the time my mom's coworker's daughter Jenny had to get in some hours of haircutting experience for cosmetology school, and came out to the house to practice on our heads.

That was the time my formerly long hair was carelessly hacked off snipped away, and shaped into what was affectionately known as a shapeless blob bob.

On a side note, that lovely jumbo turquoise and black striped blouse I was wearing came to my knees and was worn over black stirrup pants. It was my favorite outfit from my freshman year of high school. I wore it for school pictures, to school football games, and to a *cough, cough* Stryper concert.

Yes, I was the epitome of cool then, my friends. Totally rad. I can still remember getting ready for school that morning thinking I looked fabulous, lol. *rolls eyes*



The style was not all that different from what I ended up with this time around except perhaps a tad longer.

Once again, the stylist gathered my hair into a ponytail and gleefully hacked it off quickly yet carefully cut it.

Call it a lack of experience (having had long hair for most of my life) but I should have known better than to be the last person on the stylist's schedule before the salon closed for the night.

Being under a time constraint, I felt this insane pressure to 'not be any trouble', so when she was obviously done, I caved and pretended to like it.

Even though it was not what I really wanted or liked.

Actually, I loved with she did with the dye. Not a drop of it touched my scalp, so I didn't suffer any adverse reactions. She did something (known in the biz as lowlights), which was where she painted each section of hair with the solution and wrapped it in foil. And she matched it exactly to my normal hair color.

She was a wonderfully capable hairstylist, but I believe she was a little hesitant to go too short having cut 6 inches from my hair already. I'm certain she thought it would be too drastic and I would hate it and never come back again.

I commented that I wanted to go short short while she was shaping it up, but all I got in reply was, "I can always go shorter, but I can't go longer. Let's just go with this for now, I'll style it, and then you can decide if you'd like me to cut a little more off.

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking and the salon was getting closer to closing time, and it became apparent she wasn't going to go any shorter.

I made an honest effort at loving it. It was much shorter than before. Definitely cooler for the summer heatwave.

And getting it dyed back to my original color did wonders for my outlook. Shaved a few years off, even.

Jeff liked it well enough, and Judah said I looked "purdy", and that carried me through the next couple of hours contentedly.

However, after getting home and playing with it a bit, I found the style did nothing for me. There was no volume. No lift. No layers to speak of. It just hung there limp and dull and boring.

So NOT what I'd been going for.

The worst part was that I couldn't do a thing about it for a full week. VBS began Monday evening, and with all that was going on, there simply wasn't time.

Thankfully, we had a "Western" theme going, and I was able to keep my "do" covered with a cowgirl hat all week long.

But the moment the Round-Up Picnic & Country Carnival was over on Saturday, we piled into the car and headed back to the city where I'd originally got my hair cut.

For a do-over at a fine salon.

It went against my penny-pinching grain to have to pay for it twice, but not even frugal, flip-flop wearin' frumpmamas can stand to live with a bad haircut for long.

This time, I went in armed with the knowledge of exactly what kind of style I wanted.

Something layered, definitely. A little sassy.

A "celebrity" mom kind of style.

I was looking for something a little bit Victoria Beckham, short in back, longer in the front



And a little bit Katie Holmes.



Something right in between.

A style that could be worn smooth and sleek or could be curled for lift and fullness.

I asked my new stylist Chrissy if she understand what I meant.

She smiled confidently. "Yes, I know exactly the cut you're looking for, and I think it will look great with your face shape."

Chrissy clipped and shaped it into exactly what I'd envisioned it should be.

I walked out of that salon a happy camper.

I got my "celebrity" mom cut.

But as it turns out, mixing Victoria Beckham and Katie Holme's hairstyles ends up looking like a completely different and yet still well-known celebrity mom...



And surprisingly, I'm totally cool with that!

Last week was Vacation Bible School at our church.

To say we were busy would be a huge understatement.

We built an entire VBS program from the ground up (with advertising flyers, curriculum, handouts, craft and snack ideas, etc.), with the intent of doing a 'trial run' of it in our church to work out any kinks before marketing the entire thing as an inexpensive, self-explanatory package deal for small church use.

The whole process made demands of me that left me utterly spent at the end of each day, ready to fall into bed but needing to stay up late and rise early to get everything accomplished so that each evening's events could go off without a hitch.

I'm pleased to say that the Lord blessed, everything went smoothly and beautifully, and our efforts were greatly rewarded.

In the midst of all this, we somehow managed to wedge in viewings of some homes our realtor found for us to take a look at. We found a beautiful home and got all excited about it...only to learn it was already in escrow. Looking for houses is exhausting.

With all that was going on, our house fell into utter chaos.

I managed to keep up on the dishes, but the laundry fell woefully behind.

Our washing machine is on the blink again, in need of a repairman (which we couldn't be here to let in, seeing as they can never give you a definite 'window' of time they will be there).

My living room floor is currently covered with the tubs of stuff that we hauled back and forth each day, some of which can be packed up and reused another year, and then some of which I still need to work until the package deal is complete.

So, when I catch my breath again, make some headway on my house, get pictures from some of the others who took them for me, and catch up on my Google Reader, I'll be back. Probably for my birthday, and just in time for my one-year bloggoversary.

On the Fourth of July, I woke up luxuriously late, to find Jericho in the midst of a Video gamefest, and Judah tooling around the living room on his trike.

Mind you, this is a garage-only toy ever since the time I didn't see it while coming into the living room with a load of laundry and nearly broke my neck tripped over it.

Obviously daddy was scoring some huge points with the boys, allowing them to go hog-wild celebrate Independence Day indoors.

But seeing as daddy was already hard at work getting all the preparations made for the BBQ we would have later, I could hardly complain. Not when Chef Jeff is putting on the spread.

Anyway, I always enjoy peeking inside the little storage compartment of Judah's trike to see what he has packed for his journey.

So what does an almost 3 year old toddler boy deem a necessity on a long trike bike trip?



Why, his blankie and a softball, of course!

No doubt for all those napping emergencies he might have after chasing throwing the softball around at the park with his daddy.

Later, during our awesome BBQ lunch, we experienced a little "Christmas in July" when Judah announced proudly, "Wook! I maked a Chwithmuth twee!"



Allllrighty, then!

While cleaning up the carnage dishes in the kitchen, I turned the boys loose out back with a brand new box of sidewalk chalk.

Here we have one of the arteests hard at work.



Here some pitiful, pantless little waif wandered into our yard and began drawing, too.



The poor kid must not have parents that allow him do fun things like graffiti draw to their hearts content all over their backyard sidewalks.

Oh, wait...he looks kind of familiar.

I think it was the whole sans pants thing that clued me in.

Yep, that's our little Judah. Shucks his 'thorth' or 'panth' off every chance he gets.

His pull-ups, too, which is really fun, especially when we find, ahem, dirty ones and then find him sitting on the carpet somewhere.

Such events usually involve much shrieking and scolding and dragging in of the Bissell from the garage for an impromptu carpet cleaning session. (Not that I'm complaining. It's nice to have a machine that will do the dirty work for you.)

Anyway, back to our story.

Raisin wanders over to inspect the work of our resident artists.





She actually seemed interested in what they were doing.

No, I mean seriously interested.

As though she wished she could have a go at it!



If there had been some way for her to hold the chalk in her paw, I'd have let her go to town.

Having almost become an art teacher, I'm all about artistic expression...even if my students are, um, of the canine variety.

Call me crazy, but I think it would be interesting to see what sorts of things my dog might draw.

Some animals are purported to be quite artistic when set up with easels and some sort of medium, usually paints.

You know, like the painting elephants of Thailand

and the painting cats from all over the globe.

Who knows but that we don't have a wonder dog right here under our noses?

But, wait! What is that?!

Yeah, right there inside the play-by-play circle.



Why...it is!

It's bona fide dog art!

My friends, you saw it here first. My brilliant, loveable Shar-Pei Raisin Mulan has created a masterpiece!

Clever dog that she is, she used the only medium available to her...barbeque sauce (ahem, make that K.C. Masterpiece) which spilled earlier while Chef Jeff was working his magic at the grill.

Pure genius! I didn't even have to provide her with paints!

I do believe she could be the next big thing!














Oh, sorry for the long pause there (or should that be paws?)...I was daydreaming about how we would spend all the money we'd make exploiting our famous dog would make so that she could retire in cushy glory. Cared for by none other than her devoted dog-parents...yours truly.

Anyway, here is another masterpiece.



And here she is beside the masterpiece, saying "It's a pretty doggone good likeness, don't you think?"



At least that's what I believe she said. Admittedly, my dog-speak is a tad rusty since our toddler came along. Well, that and the fact that her blue tongue can be a bit distracting when she's trying to talk.

But alas, it was not her masterpiece she was trying to take all the credit for.

Jericho was none to happy to find her trying to steal his thunder.

In a rare act of brotherly solidarity, the boys turned on her. Worked her over. Did a little thing known around here as "Chalkin' the dog". Gave her white spots all over her back.



I'm pretty sure that put her in her place, because later, when we began the fireworks out there? She went and hid out in her doghouse like a little scaredy-cat.

Which was probably a good thing.

After all, she'd heard the stories about how my dad burned down his grandparents living room at the age of three.

It didn't take a rocket scientist an artistic canine prodigy to know the warning signs when she saw them.

Things like handing a flaming sparkler to an almost three year old with a family history of pyromania.





And seeing all manner of spinning, spitting, smoking flames of every color and variety scattered all over her yard, shrieking, popping and booming into her previously peaceful domain.



No. It was all over for her when things turned from good, wholesome 4th of July fireworks fun, into a challenge to see whether or not father and sons could keep the torch lit, so-to-speak...by continuously setting off the remaining fireworks without needing to light another match, using only the sputtering embers from those fireworks that had gone on before.



The frenzy got a little too close to the propane tank in her estimation, and so she scratched at the door wanting into the house, no doubt wanting to put a little more protection space between herself and all the merrymaking.

And I can't say as though I blame her.

There is a crazed look, an almost sinister glee on the face of a pyromaniac at work.



It's truly a frightening spectacle to behold.