7 Reasons I'm Excited for Fall

Fall is upon us! Today marks the first day of fall.

Here are my top reasons I'm excited for fall. Alas, I realize some of these are still dreams at the moment because it's still a tad too warm, but it almost makes me smile day-dreaming about it:

1. Making Soup — I'm not much of a chili person (yet, maybe someday I will be) so for me, vegetable soup is the way to go. When we were newly married, having never had to buy stew meat before, I accidentally bought veal stew meat. I came home, Jarrod pointed it out, to which I said "So THAT'S why it cost so much! I was wondering..." I completely missed the little veal label on the front, haha. We had one crock pot of very lean, very pricey soup!

2. Doing More Things Outside — Whether it's exercising, or just sitting still with a book, these things are always best enjoyed outdoors if you ask me. Near some trees, preferably.

3. Blankets — I don't think this one needs explanation.

4. A Nice Stout — After finally growing up and realizing not all dark beers suck and taste like tar, I had my first stout. And I really liked it. I won't be having as many this year, with the cancer and the chemo, but I've been told I can enjoy a drink from time to time. Stouts have slowly become my favorite beers, and this time of year they are in abundance.

5. Candle Scents — Fall is my favorite time for home scents; smells of cakes, cookies, pies, and pumpkin all make me feel very homey in my home. And I love my electric candle warmer since it doesn't require a flame. 

6. Wearing Scarves Again — A scarf is the perfect way to control my personal thermostat. If it's cold, wear the scarf. If it's too warm, ditch the scarf. Easy-peasy. And plus, I just love scarves.

7. The Beautiful Leaves — Duh!

Anyone else excited about fall now? Anything I missed in my list that might be on your own?

I Don't Have Time

I can't take credit for this idea, but I had to pass it on.

Instead of saying "I don't have time" try saying "It's not a priority" in its place.

• It's not a priority to clean my house.
• It's not a priority to check up on my family.
• It's not a priority to read a book.
• It's not a priority to just sit and talk with my spouse.
• It's not a priority to exercise.
• It's not a priority to keep myself healthy, or get healthy if I've been lagging.
• It's not a priority to do something I truly enjoy.
• It's not a priority to call you back.
• It's not a priority for me to pray.

Kind of changes the way it sounds, doesn't it?

Obviously, there are times where we simply "don't have time." But if I'm honest with myself, it seems the reason I continue to neglect certain things is because I'm just not making it a priority.

Pick something you've been neglecting and work on it. I already have something in mind for myself.

My 5 Alternative Resolution Suggestions

To resolve or not to resolve? We always start the new year off with good intentions, and then end up falling back into our old ways within two weeks. Everyone wants to work out more, weigh less, etc. However, I'd like to lay out a list of alternatives that could be more achievable.

1. Silence Your Phone During Dinner—Whether you're dining out or eating at home, just put the thing on silent or set it in another room. Be present and enjoy your meal with the people in the room. It saddens me when I see parents and the kids are left to fend for themselves while mom and dad waste time on their phones. Don't be like those people, at home or out in public.
2. Limit Your Online Time—Again, we all know how the internet can take over so much of our time. Make a point to stop that right now and limit your time if you spend too much of it online.
3. Try New Food—Once a month, pick a new specific food or specific restaurant you've never been to.
4. Donate—Make a donation somewhere, and don't tell anyone about it. Nothing is less charitable than when you make a point of telling your friends that you gave $$ to some cause.
5. Go to Church—If you don't go at all, try for once a month. If you go once a month, try going weekly. I used to think that going to church would get you into heaven. Then I thought it was silly that people go to church, thinking it will get them into heaven, while living awful, hurtful lives outside of church. Now I understand that church does not get you into heaven, but it enhances your life and, whether you realize it or not, makes you a more holy person.

Christmas Movie Quest

I have decided to attempt to watch 1 Christmas movie, short, or special each day leading up until Christmas. I'm pretty excited about it, because there are so many good Christmas movies (when you really think about it.) Here is my list in chronological order, though I won't be watching them in any certain order. What is your favorite? I think I have all the classics pretty much covered. I have all of these either on DVD, VHS (oh god!), or on the DVR except for Scrooged and White Christmas. So I'm hoping those will come on TV sometime so I can record them.

I'm kind of excited about this small project!

Meet Me In St. Louis (1944)
Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)
It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
The Bishop's Wife (1947)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Little Women (1949)
White Christmas (1954)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
Frosty the Snowman (1969)
Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (1979)
A Christmas Story (1983)
Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983)
A Muppet Family Christmas (1987)
Scrooged (1988)
Christmas Vacation (1989)
Home Alone (1990)
Winnie the Pooh & Christmas Too (1991) 
Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
The Santa Clause (1994)
Animaniacs: Wakko's Wish (1999)
Elf (2003)

Laughs

Father's Day post number 5.

I would like to take this moment to thank my dad for my sense of humor.

At a young age, my dad introduced me to the Three Stooges. I still watch them from time to time and enjoy a laugh. But a couple months ago, as I was watching them by myself one morning (Jarrod was gone on a business trip) I texted my dad and told him it just wasn't quite the same... 'cause it wasn't.

Both of these things came up the other day, actually, in conversation with someone else. But another thing I was introduced to at a young age was the wonderful comedy of Bill Cosby. My dad is a big fan and has almost, if not all, of his records (yes, LPs.) The record player is packed up at their house these days, but we've talked of taking it back out so we can convert and record them onto CDs one of these days. I have told him I want to KNOW when he does this so I can come over! Bill Cosby's humor isn't talked about much these days, I guess, which seems weird to me since I grew up knowing about him. It astounds me when I talk to people my age and older who have never heard The Dentist, but I guess maybe liking Bill Cosby at my age is a little atypical. Oh well, I think it's great.

As I got older, we branched onto British humor, when I was introduced to some Monty Python. My poor mom had to come with us when we went to see "Spamalot", the musical version of Holy Grail, at the Fox Theater. She just doesn't enjoy British humor. But dad and I thought it was great.


I don't know about most people, but I think it's safe to give credit for my sense of humor to my dad. From slapstick, to British, to quirky, to sarcastic, to dry, I usually "get it" and he's the one to blame. Sorry to all the people who have to deal with all my goofy jokes, impressions, and associations these days :).

Cycling

This Father's Day blog post actually goes out to both my mom and dad, but I doubt anyone will have a problem with that.

Something I am eternally grateful for, though we don't talk about it much, is how involved my parents have been in my health. I doubt my mom or dad will EVER stop asking me "Do you have your pills?" when we go out to dinner. That's okay. I didn't realize it until long ago, but a big reason I am doing okay and the reason I can keep up with my treatments is because they cared so much and were so much a part of it.

My dad has also been very big on keeping up with research. There is an annual conference, a "State of the Union" about CF research if you will, here in St. Louis, and he almost always attends and comes back with news of a new drug, how a drug trial is going, or research for better treatments. In addition to that, he/they is/are a big supporter of the CF Foundation, which brings me to my next paragraph...

This weekend, he will be riding in the second annual Cycle for Life fundraiser for the CFF. I don't usually do this, but if you'd like to donate, you can do so on his personal donation page here. (All names on the donations are hidden, so no worries.) I thank you if you do choose to donate, and I'd like to thank dad for riding in this. :-)

Antique Shopping

Leading up to Father's Day, I'll be writing about different memories I have with my dad. Today is the third.

Sometime back in college, I decided I wanted a cigarette case. Weird for me, right? Well, I wanted one to use as a tiny wallet in cases that didn't warrant bringing a huge purse. After keeping my eyes peeled at a few stores, I saw that a few of them had something like what I wanted, but I decided I wanted an old one. So one Saturday, dad and I went antique shopping together, just us two.

We stopped by the old Union Post Office building, and found one that was okay. Then we drove out to the big antique mall in Eureka where I found what I wanted to get. It was a little silver cigarette case with a spring loaded piece inside to keep things in place. Most likely, we figured it was used to hold cigarette papers back when everyone rolled their own cigarettes. The one I had previously spotted in Union was wider, and would have actually held them after you opened a pack, long ago.

So I bought that and then we had lunch at Arby's. It was during the car ride and at Arby's that we had some really great conversations and I realized something: my dad knows a lot. I mean, we had some wide-ranging conversation, from why the auto industry couldn't fail at the time (ok... so that dates it back to 2009ish), to other economic issues, to other worldly issues, to how the world's changed, to parenting these days... on and on. There was hardly a topic that I brought up that he did not at least have an educated comment on; I really couldn't stump the guy!

But it was great, and I'll always remember that day. We need to go antiquing sometime again.

Bath Time

Leading up to Father's Day, I'll be writing about different memories I have with my dad. Today is the second.

Another great, but small, memory I have with my dad is during bath time. After play time in the tub was over and it was time to actually wash up, if my dad was the one to wash my hair, many times we would sing "On Top of Spaghetti." There were other songs too, but this one sticks out to me.

Not sure what noodles and boats have to do with each other, but hey, why not!?

Racing Noises

Leading up to Father's Day, I'll be writing about different memories I have with my dad. Today is the first.

A long, long time ago (I can still remember, how that music made me smile... ok end song tangent.) But a long, long time ago my dad owned a Ford Blazer with a manual that my mom couldn't drive. She never learned on a manual car.

I have two things I remember about riding in that tan Blazer. One is that when it was just dad and me, I would get to go through his tape case (ah, remember those big suitcase things?) and pick out a tape. I always liked how the different tapes looked side by side (designer/creative-type coming out in me already, I suppose) though most of them were just black with white letters.

The other part was sometimes when we would go to church, it would be just us. Either my mom would already be at church because she was singing in the choir, or mom had to sing at 9 o'clock mass, and we would sleep and go to 10:30. Either way, when it was just us two, we would make racing noises as we rounded the right turn from Highway 100 onto 47, right before turning onto Madison to go to church. That intersection has been redone a few times since then to add more lanes, but it was once a longer curve, had more of an incline to it. In going through the curve, when we didn't have to stop for oncoming traffic, we'd go "Nnnnnnnnyyyoooowwwwwwww"!

Let's Play: What's In Jamie's Purse?

Preparing to move makes you do some things you've neglected for a long time. We boxed up my purses a couple weeks ago, and when we did that, I took everything out of them. I mean everything. I don't know about other women, but when I switch up the purse I'm using at the time, I don't necessarily take out everything that was in it. So over time, I've accumulated a lot of receipts, junk, and other random stuff. Really random stuff. This is a photo documenting some of the more amusing items I found.

To list it all out: 9 Taco Bell packets, Modern Auto oil change punch card, 2 Dixie cups, purple cell phone calculator, compact mirror, 5 gift cards, Lime Lip Smackers, necklace chain, parking pass to Barnes, 2 fortune cookie fortunes, Lip Smackers with no label, USB drive, Blueberry Lip Smackers (this one is, like, 15 years old), a button, broken dinosaur key chain, 2 pennies, safety pin holding yet more safety pins, eye doctor's Rx, some guide about taking care of my Pyrex stuff, blue Crayola marker, 2 pens, 2 button pins, Hooters crayons, Borders rewards card (hello, they're out of business now), reward card to Hot Topic, hand lotion, film canister, Buffalo Wild Wings towlette, 2 Bank of Franklin County pens, 2 packs of partially eaten gum (the Key Lime Pie one is gross, don't buy it), a Christmas card from Marie, 1 Fun Dip tri-packet, the receipt to Jarrod's wedding band (purchased over a year ago), a straw, emissourian business cards, lip gloss, a notepad briefly documenting my Make-A-Wish trip from 2005 (yes, that's 7 years ago), 1 turtle sock (so THAT's where it was!), and a lighter.

I hope you found as much humor in this as I did. I will end with: I really have no idea why I bought a lighter. I feel like it was for something with theater back in high school...

Tonight's venture: Sardonic children's books for adults

While browsing Amazon the other night, in the top sellers list was this book you could pre-order called "Go the F**k to Sleep." Intrigued, I clicked on it. It's a book for adults (obviously) and goes into the troubles of parenting in, I imagine, a hilarious tongue-in-cheek sort of way.

So this set me into looking at some of the related books, and they all make me laugh in some way. I love book covers, and some of these are just great. Also, side note, a lot of these happen to be born from a blog of the same name. A few that I didn't add on here are the book versions of Texts from Last Night, S**t My Dad Says, F My Life, and Cake Wrecks.

Book 2: All My Friends Are Dead. This tale is told from many angles and objects, all of whose friends are dead. See second image. Hilarious.

Book 3: I Hate Everything. I just love the cover for this one.

Book 4: I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar. I think I was part of this original Facebook group, actually. This statement definitely sums up a small part of me. Let me edit this and add "and Incorrect Spelling."

Book 5: Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves. Based on my new favorite blog of the same title.

Book 6: Breaking Bad News with Baby Animals. If the cover wasn't hilarious enough, I actually laughed at one of the page spreads for about 30 seconds... click here to see what I was laughing at.

And to compliment that, here's Book 7: Asking Awkward Questions with Baby Animals.

The Ay's have it

Our local paper releases a "Parade of Babies" sort of insert yearly as a way for proud parents to announce the birth of their baby in the past year. I noticed a trend in baby names this year, which I must say I'm starting to find annoying. Pretty much if you name your kid something with a long A sound (as in "ay" in May) you've got a trendy name. Trend numero dos is adding unnecessary y's in place of i's and e's, and more specifically in combination with an "n". And some people even combine these two to form a name that, quite honestly, half the time I can't tell if it's for a boy or a girl. Oh, the quest to be original when naming your kids (yet not so original when it sounds like everyone else's name)...

Here are a sample of names from this year's insert:

• Braelyn
• Haidyn (girl)
• Westyn
• Ayden
• Josslyn
• Haley
• Gillyann
• Brayden
• Daylyn 
• Taevyn (...what?)
• Peyton
• Avery
• Ava
• Mason
• Layla
• Jayson (again, unnecessary y)
• Hayden (boy)
• Ayden
• Aiden
• Leighton
• Caylynn
• Bailey
• Lane
• Kaitlyn
• Jayden
• Aydan
• Hayden (girl)
• Mason
• Callie (not sure if this is a like "cat" or a like "lake")
• Blaine
• Trevyn (...what?)
• Paityn (girl)
• Gwendylan (sorry, but this looks like it's almost the name of a theme park: Gwendy Land)

Over and over I kept coming across the name Hayden, which apparently can be spelled a couple ways AND it's used for both girls and boys. So that's nice and confusing. But the oddest name I came across was Zander. And there were two kids named this... Am I missing something, is there a celebrity with this name?