Could east Memphis be the new Holland?

I sponsor a child in India and we're pen pals. One day, she wrote to me and asked what my favorite flower was and I told her the tulip. She wrote back and said she didn't know what a tulip was (no duh, not much of those in the jungles of India if I had given it any serious thought...) and to send her a picture as she wanted to draw one for me. So I clipped some pictures from a magazine and sent-on.



No more!




Behold the beauty that is our Memphis Botanic Garden--a mere two minutes from the workplace. This orange one, oh my, and I usually dislike orange, but it may have to go up on a wall in my house.

I think for the next two weeks, I have identified my lunch spot.

Home Improvement # 900

The husband is a corner cleaner, he can mop a floor to make Grandma proud...but piles of clutter don't bother him. Me, I hit the high spots when I clean, but I can't stand clutter. If I were single, I swear I'd have one fork, one knife, one fork, one spoon, one plate. So as a couple we balance each other.

Take for instance this horrible garage closet our ours. How could anyone find anything in here? And I'm sure we ended up buying duplicates of stuff--I found about 8 spools of painter's tape--which happens when you have a clutter. So now for the big reveal after I got the organizing bug...

The before and the after... Nice! Let's hope it lasts...

Home Improvement #899

Take a $7 bench you bought at a garage sale, some old broken glass you found while cleaning out the garage...buy some tile glue and black grout from Home Depot and marbles from Dollar Tree...call your friend Judy who is the Toolbelt Diva to help and voila, create a very cool bench with a friend! Priceless. I'll call it the Judy Bench.

Total cost: $25.

Slumdog Millionaire

Before the child, the husband and I saw a movie without fail once a week. I was the co-worker everyone came to for "what movie to see that weekend" or what was good, bad, etc.

Fast forward to motherhood. I now see about one movie a quarter, in the theater, if I'm lucky. So I thought Netflix would be the answer. Surely I could commit to one movie a month? Surely? As much as I travel that'd be EASY. Not so fast. I'm right now on the Netflix six month plan. That means that the movies I get, sit around at home for months before I get around to finding time to watch them. Slumdog Millionaire cost me about $30. Yes, I could have bought the DVD for that.


I was very nervous about this one. I don't do violence as "entertainment" well and enough of my peers said that the movie kept them up at night. So I had the "new" office movie buff who replaced me-whatever-tell me every scene, play by play, so I'd have the courage to watch it. Because of that, it wasn't as bad as I thought. Sure, the eyeball scene was one I skipped...but in general I was genuinely moved by it. The kids in particular have stayed with me in memory. I know, I'm about two years late on this review, but I'm doing what I can people. And no, I haven't seen Avatar.

When I just don't care anymore...

My friend J said the following recently. She said, "...some days, when I know I just don't care any more, I'll have about six donuts for dinner." I died laughing because on many levels if I was single like her and with no one watching, would I ever do the same? As to me, this was relateable in so many ways. Some things I find myself eating, I continue to eat, even though they must signal the following:





a) I couldn't care less about my health or appearance.


b) I couldn't care less about what others may think of me.


c) I couldn't care less about what my child will think of me.


And what is it about some of us that biologically, we continue to eat something...that is not even that good?



Take for example the Green Snowballs I got the other day out of the machine. I kept thinking of J and recited her, "when I just don't care any more..."



Now, I rarely go the machine, thank God for small favors. But on this day, I was in the mood for a Zinger or something. No Zingers. But they had these Green Snowballs. It was green. Did I say that?


To say that it was mediocre was a compliment. It was just about as bland as a piece of cake could possibly be. But I downed the first one. As I'm onto the second one, I see on the package that the Snowballs I purchased had expired. Yet, I continued to FINISH the second snowball. Now, if that's not some sort of biological problem that a) I got them to begin with (see previous list) or b) the fact that the contents had expired didn't spur me to throw the rest in the garbage, then I'm not sure what is. Seriously? Something is not right. I've often said, the magic diet pill is one that kills all taste buds, but clearly given my sample of one with the Green Snowballs, even that must not be true. Sigh.

Book Review #6 - Freakonomics

Rating: Four Butts on the Couch
So it took me two days to polish the Freakonomics book; found it an entertaining and enlightening read. This book is in the genre of socio-economics but is written in a way you can breeze through it and have several a-ha moments and a couple of the chapters I actually read twice for total comprehension of the cases brought forth. It covers an array of topics such as "what's in the baby name?" Their research on California birth rates indicate that a name uber-popular today in the upper classes, will eventually migrate to the lower classes in 10-15 years time and that the name in and of itself may not necessarily hurt your destiny but is more of a reflection of your parents and their education level (doubt too many people who read this book go on to name their baby girl Brittany). Also enjoyed the parenting chapter and what type of parenting attributes make for kids who do better in school and the results are not as obvious as you would think. In the end of the book, they have a Q&A section with the authors and for every 10 topics brought forth, about 3 turn into papers, and if they are lucky one will be published. So I have some suggestions for future consideration:
1) Why is it that when I go to get my driver's licence or tags, the dregs of humanity are sitting right there with me. Do people in my zip code not drive?
2) If you live in Arkansas, are devoutly religious and have 19 children, what is the propensity that one of more of those children will hate your guts one day?
3) Would people do better on their New Years Resolution diet if Girl Scout cookies didn't come out in February? Would a November launch of said cookies make someone more likely to stay on their New Year's Diet longer and/or would the Girl Scout cookies even sell better if they came out during a feeding frenzy time of year?
Okay, so that's only three and statistically will likely not be covered in any of their future books, but inquiring minds want to know! I'm on next to Super Freakonomics.

QVC Virgin

I made my first ever QVC purchase. Was flipping through another worthless TV night and there was a top on there that wasn't all Mamaw that I liked called "Effortless Style." Some marketer no doubt got a hold of that name. And the color? "Orchid." Apparently, that's a name a marketer thought sounded more glamorous than say purple. However, I tend to be the type of marketer who says, call it like you see it. Purple. You'd sell more. Anyway, I bought it, it came quickly and I'm wearing it today. Nice actually.

When I called they asked if I wanted to be on TV as a "new customer" and all. I was like...No! I can't be on QVC. I know people.

Wendy's - Almost an online testimonial

A friend and I have a saying. Chic Fil A should hire for every person for every job in the land. I'm not sure what they do, but their people are consistently good and get things right. They've set the bar so high at fast food restaurants that anywhere else is most of the time a let down. I could write a book on laughable fast food experiences. It will be entitled "Whatch you want me tyo do?"

So today, I was almost delighted with Wendy's. I sometimes get kids meals because it helps with portion control and I can get a chocolate milk AND a toy which thoroughly delights the child when I get home. With that in mind today, I go and get:

1) A chicken sandwich

2) Mandarin oranges (that's sort of a fruit isn't it?)

3) chocolate milk

4) Side baked potato. Asked for extra sour cream, didn't get it.

Total cost: $3.69. What? How is that possible? In looking at the receipt, I see they only charged me a 1.99 for the kid's meal. WOW! Of course, being raised with Baptist guilt I questioned the drive-thru cashier if the price was right. She ignored me. Upon reflection, did she think I was complaining? On the contrary! I was shocked at such value. Thinking I'm going to come here every day for the rest of my life.

However, upon getting to work to actually eat my lunch, guess what was missing. The toy. Sigh. Now I'm sort of disappointed. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away I guess.

Dance Accessible to Everyone - Alvin Ailey

If I had it to do all over again...I would have taken dance at a much younger age. As a child, my mom thought dance classes were frivolous and "a waste of money. what can you really do with that?" she would say. So instead, I was enrolled in piano. And I was terrible at it. I went for the cookies the teacher set out before each lesson (no lie.) Later, I was enrolled in figure skating lessons...but when you are twelve and everyone else in the beginner class is three years old, well, that doesn't work out too well. I was bad at that too.

So here I am at almost 39 years of age and just starting to dance and feel like I have a real passion & knack for it. Better late than never...but now see, my dancing is for exercise and that's okay but I feel like I've missed out on something special for the last 30+ years. Now, I don't blame my mother at all. It's hard as a parent to know what "after school activities" to force (e.g., piano) and which ones are fly by nights (e.g., Brownies--that lasted a year). I'm sure if truth were told I probably insisted on the ice skating...as I don't recall.

Andre Agassi now says he hated tennis and was forced to do it by his parents. My gut tells me that someday Tiger Woods will say something similar. And the husband and I often wonder what the child "will be into" we say. As a parent, how do we know when to force a child to do something and how much force, so that they cultivate some real talent or do we let them choose when they may not have the maturity to choose correctly? Was I bad at piano because my mother didn't force me to practice? She didn't. If I had practiced more, would I have grown to like it and be good at it?

After all, you could have a child with a new passion every single week and that could very well be wasted money. I just hope I recognize my son's true talents...and hope it coincides with his wants & desires...so that I can really support and encourage vs. force.

P.S. Was at Alvin Ailey last week in NYC. You can do walk-in classes there for $17 and it's an awesome way to get a workout in while doing the city thing. I loved the place and felt such energy and grace all at the same time, merely being in the presence of such talent that had walked through those doors.

Book Review #5 - The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society

My Highest rating: Four butts on the couch.

I haven't reviewed a book in a long time because I've read a bunch of crap not even worthy of the blogosphere...until now. The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society is fabulous. I first heard about it in an airport when a fellow passenger had it on her kindle and I was asking a bunch of questions about the kindle and she was trying to tell me how good the book was, and I was yeah, yeah, yeah, about the kindle. I should have read it six months ago. My enlightenment could have been so much sooner!

In a nutshell, it's a series of letters between an author, her publisher, and a book club that formed during the German occupation on the channel islands of Guernsey. It's funny, it's romantic, it's historical, it's an easy read, etc. You know a book is good when your torn between wanting to hurry up and finish because you want to see how things turned out AND wanting to slow down so it won't end. Just waiting for the movie now, dare I say. This one would make a good one and I've already pegged Hugh Grant and Colin Firth for their respective parts.