I registered today for the Toad Suck Daze 5K! No turning back now!

I’ve been jogging off and on for a while, and this is a goal I’ve been toying with, and I think I’m up to it. I’m not a serious runner—I only jog twice a week to give my joints and shins a chance to recover, then do aerobics on some of the in-between days. A 5K is 3.1 miles, which is about 31 minutes for me. I think jogging for 31 minutes is a good workout and indicates a good fitness level, so I’m happy with that. I mapped out a 3.1 mile route around my neighborhood and jogged it today, walking for about 2 minutes sometime in the middle but jogging the rest of the way. So I can do this!

I’ll let y’all know how it turns out. It’s on May 2 at 8AM… anyone want to come cheer me on? :)

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My mom called me this afternoon and told me to find page 11A of the Democrat-Gazette. I figured she wanted to point out an article about the Mena tornado damage, since both my parents are from Mena and we have some family there (all of whom are ok and without property damage). I pulled it out of the recycle bin, and glanced at the top picture:

It’s a house torn apart by the tornado. But upon closer inspection, I gasped and said, “Is that what I think it is? … Are you sure?” Yep—that house is, or rather was, my grandparents’ house, the house my mom grew up in almost all of her childhood, the house I grew up in for countless weekends, Christmases, Easters, Mother’s Days, summer days, whatever days. (more…)

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It’s time for me to take a few baby steps of my own. A while back I posted about becoming “greener” one step at a time so it’s not overwhelming, and how I was going to start using reusable shopping bags. I’ve been doing that for a while and I love it! The bags are SO much easier to handle than those plastic things. (And if you’re interested, read here about how to get a free reusable tote. They’re gone for this week, but you can try next Monday.) I almost always remember them at Wal-Mart and Kroger, occasionally remember them at Target and other stores, and have decided not to use them for now at Walgreens because I need every ounce of my concentration at the checkout in order get my free stuff or I’ll botch it up (but that’s another story.)

So what’s next? Two things. First, I need to reduce our paper towel usage. I’m used to using them to clean the bathroom mirrors and counters, but instead I need to build up a supply of rags and use those. (I cut up some of David’s old t-shirts for rags, but they do leave some lint on the mirror. Anyone know what works best?) I’ll still keep paper towels in the kitchen—sometimes you just need them, as when you need to soak up excess grease from meat or water from produce. But I think I can pretty much get rid of them in the bathrooms.

Second, I think we’ll try to go paperless with financial bills and statements. We already pay all our bills and make donations online or use automatic draft, so we’re not writing and mailing checks. But we still request paper statements, and when I do Quicken, I sit down with our stack of paper receipts and statements to enter and reconcile. It’s convenient. I’ve got my little method that works for me that I’ve been doing for 12 years. But I can sacrifice a little convenience and tweak my method a bit in order to save some trees (not to mention postage and gas).

So there you have it. What about you? What baby step are you going to take next to be a responsible steward of God’s earth?

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We’ve probably all done it. You’re doing some household chore involving bleach, and you don’t want to change clothes just to do something that takes 30 seconds, and you’ll be oh-so-careful… but, nevertheless, you get bleach on your clothes and your dark purple sweater is ruined. Ok, maybe not a dark purple sweater for you, but you can extrapolate.

It was just a small area on the sleeve, but it still made the sweater unwearable. But then I started wondering if I could just dye the whole thing dark purple and even it out. So I did a little research, went to Hobby Lobby and bought some Rit dye (one purple and one black, to make dark purple), and went for it.

Here’s the “before” shot:

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Did you know that today is National Grammar Day? I didn’t, but thank you, Charlie, for bringing it to my attention in your Facebook status. In observance of this little-publicized but much-needed calendar day, I thought I’d let my readers know three things that really bug me.

1. Putting an apostrophe in every word that ends with s. You did not have dinner with the Felio’s last night. You did not buy lot’s of egg’s on your trip’s to the grocery store last week. Come on, people!

2. Using your in place of you’re. You’re going to get in big trouble because you didn’t put your dishes in the dishwasher this morning. Get it straight.

3. Using I when me is correct. I hear it everywhere: “John shared his candy with Mary and I.” Would you say, “John shared his candy with I”? Of course not! Despite those early-childhood grammar corrections that were drilled into our brains, sometimes me really is correct. And whatever you do, please do not select your pronoun case just to make the lines of your song rhyme! I’m specifically referring to the Newsboys song “Something Beautiful,” in which they sing, “… When we laugh so hard we cry / It’s the love between you and I…” Ugh! I have to change the station every time I hear that song come on. If the correct pronoun doesn’t rhyme, then re-write your song!

So what really bugs you? Let’s have it!

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I realized that I’ve never written about my encounter with the Arbonne girl a few months ago. So here goes.

My next-door neighbor was hosting an Arbonne party to help out a friend who was training for the business. I told her I’d be glad to come, but I probably wouldn’t buy anything; she said that’s fine, most of her friends aren’t the kind of people who spend a lot of money on beauty products, and she was just doing this to help out this friend, etc. So Anna and I went over there.

The presentation got started with the Arbonne-girl-in-training introducing herself and then handing things over to the more experienced Arbonne representative. She was this blonde, fashionable, perky thing, kind of bubbly but very driven about her line of work. Kind of like a career-woman Barbie, if you will.

And I’ve gotta say, I just wasn’t clicking all that well with the Arbonne girl.

She started off talking about the business itself. It is such a wonderful career opportunity, you can make this much money once you reach such-and-such a level, etc. She recounted her own story as a struggling business woman in management working for a large company, how even with her and her husband both working they could barely make ends meet each month, and she said, “I realized that in my current job, the most I would ever be able to make was $100,000 a year!”

Wait a minute, what? Since when is 100K a lousy annual salary? I glanced around the room, feeling fairly certain that most of the occupants of it were well under that threshold. Did I hear her wrong? No, I’m quite sure that’s what she said. What kind of person can’t make it in central Arkansas on 100K a year?

Then she started talking about the products. They’re all-natural, botanical, certified vegan (do people eat this stuff or something?), certified organic, etc. And they’re about 300 dollars. Well, that’s for the whole facial regimen—cleanser, toner, serum, and so forth. (What’s “serum” anyway? Sounds like a fancy word for “face goup” so they can charge more.)

“I realize this is a lot to spend on beauty products,” she said. “I understand… I used to be the kind of girl that wouldn’t even buy my Clinique unless it was bonus days at Dillard’s!”

Clinique? CLINIQUE? Good grief. I’m more of a Maybelline/Cover Girl from Wal-Mart kind of girl myself.

The presentation came to a close, and I hung around for a few moments flipping through the catalog like everyone else. Then, as people were getting ready to place their orders, she called out, “Oh, and I have a chart that calculates the discounts for you… don’t ask me to figure 30% off of something… I CANNOT do math!

And there it is, I thought, averting my eyes and trying not to chuckle audibly. That clears a few things up. It’s all coming together now.

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… or are we running the dishwasher nearly every day now? Is this a by-product of having children?

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Seriously, I did. If she’s going to be scooting/rolling/crawling around all over the floor, I have got to be better about vacuuming!

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Anna was given a Fisher Price “Little People” nativity set to play with. It’s cute. It has baby Jesus, Joseph, Mary, an angel, a couple of shepherds, and then some animals: two sheep, a donkey, a cow, and… a border collie?

Hmm, that’s a new one. Never mind that the border collie didn’t come along until the late 19th century; I’m sure if they had been around back then, the shepherds would have had one. They’re excellent sheep dogs, after all.

So when I acted out the Christmas story for Anna with the figures, and I got to the part where the shepherds left their sheep on the hillside and ran to Bethlehem, I paused and glanced down at the sheep-herding canine lying on the floor. “But the sheep were probably ok because of this very fine border collie here,” I said, placing it with the sheep.

I can just imagine the angel saying, “Leave thy sheep with thy border collie and go at once to Bethlehem…”

Ok, I’m taking this a bit too far. Time to get back to decorating.

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It really is convenient that my polling place is at the Sports Center. I walked in, cast my vote, and went upstairs for a little jog. Doing what’s good for my country and my body at the same time—now that’s efficiency.

And I’d like to say to all those political people who kept calling me and trying to get me to vote early (like I’m sure they read my blog): I had absolutely no wait today. Literally. I walked up to an empty sign-in table, then walked over to an empty voting machine. I commented to the lady that I must have picked a good time to come, but she said it had been like that all day.

I did get a nice little “I voted” sticker, but I really thought I deserved an “I jogged” sticker. 

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