When I was about 13 my grandmother created a room for me in her house.  Before then, my sister and I shared a room.  I guess we stayed with her once and fought like cats and dogs so she separated us.  She lives in a different house than she did back then, but all the furniture is the same.

This is my bed, nightstand, chest of drawers and this…

is my vanity.

Actually it was my grandmother’s grandmother’s vanity. My great, great grandmother. A woman I never met, but always felt a connection too, because we shared a vanity.

She also had this awesome vanity set, made out of celluloid-well over 100 years old. Beautiful.
And today, I discovered it has been damaged (as well as the top of the marble section of the vanity)

This is the mirror…

And this is the cuticle pusher…

Every piece that had metal, rusted.
The pieces that sat in water or a cleaning solution, cracked and crumbled.

This vanity set lived through children, grandchildren, great grand children, great great grand children and MY kid (great, great, great, great) and one careless act (a spilled drink or a person cleaning not paying attention) ruined a family heirloom.

I cried.
Like a baby.
It was like a member of my family died.
Part of history gone.

This past weekend my whole fam-damily headed off to Pigeon Forge, TN for a little fun before school starts.

We headed out early Thursday morning and before we even got to Frankfort we were surrounded by fog. The 14 yr old woke up from a small nap and said “WOW are we there already?” Heh. Good thing he is cute, we had only been on the road for 25 minutes.

When we really got to the hills of Tennessee the fog was completely gone, for which I am very grateful, I wouldn’t want to miss this view.

or this one

That afternoon we took my niece and nephew to a go-cart place to kill time until their parents arrived.
The track was called “The Wild Woody” it made the 14 yr old giggle like a girl while he took pictures on his cell to send all of his friends.

Friday night it was off to The Dixie Stampede. And when your dad is one of the guys out in the center of the whole thing tossing toilet seats…there isn’t anything else that needs to be said.

Saturday night we played putt-putt. I even got a hole in one! Good thing I am the designated photo taker in my clan, or someone might have a shot of me doing a happy dance!

I wasn’t so upset about the vacation being over when this was the view I got 15 miles from home.

(we won’t talk about the hour we sat in traffic on I-75. Have you ever walked on the interstate and chatted with people during a parking lot incident? I met a really cool family from Cincinnati.)

I did the tape page project, but didn’t really like the result much and because of that, I am not posting it.
My blog.
My choice.

The prompt for days 10-15 were to create “your house” and “your family”
It was SO much fun!

My house on the two page spread.

The left side of the two page spread, and I have to admit-my house is nothing like this, but there was no easy way to create a tri-level home with a pocket (for the dolls).

And this is my neighborhood, if I didn’t live in suburbia…but, I like it. Who wouldn’t want to live in a ‘hood with newsprint buildings?

My family.
Aren’t we cute.
Confession time, I have an issue with legs..the 14 yr old and spouselet have really short legs.
Oh and I forgot my hands-Art therapists can have a field day with this project!

I am the smallest one in the family, which actually IS now the case.  The 14 yr old is taller than me by almost 2 inches, so there isn’t an issue there

The family all tucked into the house for storage.

This was my favorite page to do so far, but NOW for day 16!

Sarah Whitmire has created this incredible site with tons of prompts for creating a Soul Journal.

When my sister and I were around 6 & 9 we went through a singing phase. Not just “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in a sweet innocent tone, nope, we would sing it with great opera vabrato! We thought we were fantastic. I am certian we drove our mother insane.

One day we were at the Dairy Queen- no it was Druther’s-crap EON’s ago when it was still Burger Queen and they had the bee mascot with her crown on crooked. We all wanted to have THAT job when we grew up-the perks were awesome, you got to eat burgers and ice cream for FREE AND you were married to Burger King and Burger Chef cooked all day long-the Burger Royal family, which also meant you were rich!

(crap, I digress again)

So, my mom, sister and I are at the local Burger Queen. Mom is placing the order and my sister has to go to the bathroom, since she is ONLY 6, I have to go with her…so in we go! Now, for some reason fast food restaurants have the BEST acoustics for our particular type of operatic singin’ the sweet melodies just bounced off the walls and we were very impressed with our grove!

We probably kept it up for a good 5 minutes when we heard banging on the door. LOUD banging.

It was my mama and she was NOT happy. Apparently, the accoustics in THAT particular Burger Queen also had this awesome ability to magnify and seep through the walls. We were entertaining the entire lunch crowd at the Burger Queen. I am not exactly sure what we were singing, but from the look on my mothers face it very well may have been “beans, beans good for your heart….”

We were shamed that day to never sing in a public restroom again-even though I still think we probably could have made some good money at it.

Last night, I had dinner at Moe’s before going to Liz Curtis Higgs study on Ruth and the above image was there-just for me and my sister.

Isn’t that hysterical!

I have been thinking about writing something about the state of our economy for a couple of weeks-back when people first started talking about a bailout, excuse me, rescue package.
(the exchange of those words alone could give me a weeks worth of material). And then QueenB posted about Want and Need this morning and that was about all it took (the email from her didn’t hurt either).

We (yup self included here) have gotten to be the most spoiled, lazy, fat slobs this side of the Atlantic. Most of that comes down to not knowing the difference between WANT and NEED.

We are tech geeks and we tend to get really caught up in gadgets.

Asking my son to save his money for an iTouch (because HE NEEEEEDED it-his Nano broke) I am not going to buy it for him took him awhoppin’ 3 weeks and he is 13. He only had to work at a few soccer games for a few weekends and HE (a THIRTEEN year old) had saved enough cash to buy a $300 media player. I swear when I made that “buy it yourself” declaration, I thought it would have taken all summer or longer to raise the cash.

As a parent, I haven’t been the best example setter. I NEEDED a Blackberry, because my ENVY just wasn’t hip enough (and if I didn’t have a household ban on AT&T that need would have been for an iPhone). We think we NEED new computers because the ones we have have this big ole towers and the monitor is BLACK..come on…a BLACK PLASITC monitor is so 2006! I will freely admit that I can hang with the best of them when it comes to what I need (darn it) want.

::::reelin’ myself in here:::::
Back to how I think we got in this mess. Now, I am not an economist and most of the time my spouselet doesn’t let me touch the checkbook, he will just wave it under my nose and let me sniff. I am a woman in need of an allowance for our own good. (Addiction to all things carried at bookstores, shoes and purses). I would honestly eat ramen for a week IF it meant I could have the perfect purse.

Seriously how many purses does a women NEED? See this is when it gets all subjective. Because you could say 0 or 1, but then you might start thinkin-well can’t carry a black one with brown shoes, and in the summer you MUST have a white or canvas bag, then you need a small dressy one and before you know it YOU MUST HAVE about 30 of them. Pretty sure women in South Africa or India don’t have this argument.

CRUD!
::::reelin’ myself in here again:::::

Ok, how we got in this mess-by being humans who if left to run wild. RUN WILD. If someone tells us we can have a Cheese Cake Factory size of desert and it will only “cost us” 8 bucks. OOO Doggie, Gimme’dat. We don’t stop to consider the 3 bajillion calories and 4 sticks of butter fat-until the doctor tells you that your triglicerides are off the chart (wondering how in the name of heckfire THAT happened?!?)

So, I think that is basically it. Someone told us we could buy all that stuff we wanted NOW and worry about paying for it (or working it off in the case of the cheesecake) later. But, being human and prone to working out ways to NOT “pay for it later” we got bigger credit cards and bigger houses, becuase they SAID we qualified for it, even when we knew that we might have to eat ramen for a month (or 15 years)-we never thought that Johnny would need braces or he would break his arm playing soccer in the front yard and HOW are we gonna pay for that? We never planned for our spouse to get sick or lose their job-NOW what?

When there is LESS of a consequence for someone to WALK AWAY from a house than pay for it, something in the system seriously broke down. It isn’t just in the housing market. Our kids are not expected to excel, sometimes they are even punished for it. In our county, kids don’t get grades until they are in middle school. Everyone makes the team. Trophies are given to kids for showing up, not excellent performance. And we wonder why other countries are passing us up in EVERYTHING.

I think ALL of this stuff has played into the situation we are in now.

Because of that, spouselet and I have talked greatly about what we can do to stop this vicious cycle that has obviously caused SERIOUS long term effects to our (all of us) current way of life.

Here is what is on the table:

dealing with the black monitors

I was NOT going to get “political” on this blog-it is not my area of expertise, even though I do have a TON of opinions, there are many others MUCH better suited to dish that garbage discuss those topics.

However, the three girls in my head are having QUITE the fit this afternoon (as well as a small victory*).  Twitter has been all a buzz with it.  The blogosphere is eaten up with sex education 101-ness. Perez Hilton even did a thing on it.  I am not going to link to any of the sillyness because if you all want to find it, google it!

The girl on the left (my free spirit) is jumpin’ for pure joy that in 2008 there is a strong woman on the ticket as a back up.  That she IS living that “Feminist Dream” of having it all.  Heck, she even convinced her husband to stay home and raise the kids.  She has power.  She has support.  She is in a position to do things that REALLY impact women, children and families in a positive way.

Girl on the right (-the non emotional “facts only” side) is extremely disappointed in America-or the people who even think this IS a story.  It is 2008.  A 17 yr old IS pregnant and on any other day of the year, that wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar-but because her mother may be the next VP of the USA people are scrambling.    Honestly, if THIS is all you have (oh and the other small thing about her husbands DUI 20 years ago) then you ARE in serious (political) trouble.  And to those people who think that she is a terrible mother because of the situation her daughter finds herself in…where they perfectly obedient teens?  I know I wasn’t (and we blame it on the girl on the left!) 

Pick I side already-either women CAN work outside of the home and raise families or they can’t.  DO NOT cheer for a woman being in a powerful position and then say “well what kind of mother is she-look at her daughter”.  Pure insanity.

The girl in the middle agrees with both of her other voices and also feels that Sara Palin IS consistant.  She is a pro-life advocate.  She gave birth to a child with down’s syndrome AND has a 17 yr old daughter who is preparing to have a child of her own.  She did not waver in her beliefs because it could have certianly been easier. 

There really isn’t much of a reason to rehash “abstinance only” education and how it IS effect IF it is practiced-because we all know that IF that choice is made there is no better more effective option.  How much respect would any of us have for our parents had they said “no sex until marriage, but IF you want-here’s a condom.” 

My Twitterbud Rockson had my favorite quote on the topic:

abstinence always works when tried, only documented failure is the birth of Christ

*My X husband was here earlier to pick up the 13 yr old and he is very opininated and we have learned to abstain from political discussion, but the kid wasn’t off the bus and what else are you going to talk about?  He always has the last word-until today.  On this topic.  I know it is silly for me to have a snoopy dance over-but, I did.

Today is my mom’s birthday-and we are all out of town, celebrating her day-my popaw’s day (except he died earlier this year). I think we are all really getting out of town to not think about him not being around…but, honestly it isn’t going to help.

Oh yeah…My mom’s birthday.
In honor of her big day…I thought I would post some stuff that has happened on her birhday!
(I hope she doesn’t mind I am giving away her age here)

I will have an 8th grader. 
In one year- HIGH SCHOOLER. 

Some how my baby has gone from wearing size 12 to 26/28 pants…and size 8 shoes.  He looks like he is wearing Skis on his feet.

::sob::