Random Giggles | Page 94

Memorial

30 May 2011, 8:04 am by Giggles

Categories: Family

My grandpa served in WWII. And made it home. There were only a few stories I heard him tell from that time in his life because he knew a lot of boys who didn’t.

I’ve been to Arlington and seen the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The precision and care with which that is done touched me. I’ve seen my dad recognize names of people he knew on the Vietnam Memorial. I’ve had students not know if their dad or mom would ever come home from war and I’ve cheered for them when they did. I have friends who have sent spouses off and I pray they come home to them.

Grandpa died last October. He was the last of my grandparents. The Veterans of Foreign Wars provided a 21 gun salute at the grave. All of my grandparents are wonderful people whose strength and faith inspire me. I hope their graves are decorated today.

2 Shared thoughts

Thursday morning inspiration

26 May 2011, 11:19 am by Giggles

Categories: Gospel

Because it’s football. Because it’s Arizona. And because it’s inspirational.

And a mostly unrelated question: why am I the one in our marriage that likes sports movies?

2 Shared thoughts

Don’t Panic

25 May 2011, 9:20 am by Giggles

Categories: Musings

Since the end of 2007 I have had “Don’t Panic” on the screen of my phone so that I remember every time I look at it. I put it there when I was getting ready to completely change my life and move to Arizona. It’s a pretty good life philosophy. Right up there with my motto for years, “Don’t get hit by cars.” It kind of matches the wisdom we saw on a sign at California Adventure, “Smile when you scream!”

Don’t panic. Don’t panic when your deadline is approaching. Instead get to work getting it done (even if that means threatening to sit in the lobby and wait for seven hours).

Don’t panic when you don’t have the answers. Instead figure out if you are asking the right questions and then go do what you need to do to find the answers.

Don’t panic when there’s a blizzard the day you are getting married. Because, well, the photos are gorgeous.

Don’t panic when something goes wrong. Instead decide if it was really that important to begin with and then see what you can do about it now. (This is the number 1 advice I remember from my mom when I started babysitting, and it was the best advice I could’ve gotten.)

Don’t panic when the technology you based your lecture on completely fails. That’s why you keep a set of dry erase markers in your bag.

However, if you don’t know where your towel is, it might be time to panic.

Do you know where your towel is? 😉

5 Shared thoughts

Here Comes Summer

24 May 2011, 10:20 am by Giggles

Categories: Family, Food, Happy Things, Questions

Who are we kidding? Summer is already here. We haven’t stayed consistently in the 90s, but we’ve been up there since the end of March. The forecast right now is for 99s this weekend. Technically the first day of Summer is not until the Summer Solstice in June, and by then we’ll definitely be in the 100s. However Memorial Day weekend is also a good unofficial start to summer.

This coming weekend we’ll be making hamburgers and hopefully grilling them at our new fire pit. We make our own patties and really like the southwest hamburger recipe in my BH&G cook book. They use salsa instead of milk. I’m wondering how they’d taste with a peach & pineapple salsa. Although the chipotle salsa we get is real good too.

We’re also going to practice our Cornhole skills. Gotta practice for the next Giles get together. We figured we have room along the side of the house to set up our boards. Or we can put them out in front of the house. In front of the house would probably annoy the chihuahua next door less.

Homemade ice cream also seems like a real good idea for the coming weekend. But we need some recipes. So what are your favorite recipes for homemade ice cream?

And one of these days I am going to figure out how to put up my hammock in our backyard.

5 Shared thoughts

Things I learned this week

22 May 2011, 6:41 pm by Giggles

Categories: Education, Learn Something, Questions, Work

I learned several things this past week.

:pencil: The people who work at Kinkos at 7am on Monday are a lot friendlier, more helpful, and less creepy than the people who work at Kinkos at 7pm on Thursday.

:pencil: Parents are more likely to sign a form if it looks like a letter from a teacher rather than a letter from a lawyer.

:pencil: I can donate blood from my left arm (99% of the time they use my right), but it’s probably best if an experienced phlebotomist sticks me on that arm rather than a newbie rooting around in my vein for a minute. Did not instill me with confidence. Ouch.

:pencil: You can get bubonic plague in Northeast Arizona currently.

:pencil: The state song of Maryland is sung to the tune of “O Christmas Tree” and is really quite weird. They tried to propose a “State Song for Children” in 2009 but it doesn’t look like it went through.

:pencil: Organizing our garage made a HUGE difference. I really only threw out one thing, the cover for the soft top on Brett’s convertible that he traded in in 2008 (probably should’ve included it with the trade in, oops). Yet we have a TON more space in the garage now. It’s all swept real pretty like too now. And it didn’t take that long.

:pencil: And just today I learned how to put a favicon (the little picture up in the address bar, for this site it looks like my black-eyed susan flower) in a subfolder. So now my book blog has its very own favicon (an apple!). And nobody would notice if I didn’t tell you, so I’m telling you.

What did you learn? :apple:

6 Shared thoughts

Joy is a reason

20 May 2011, 8:54 am by Giggles

Categories: Family, Folks, Happy Things, Musings, Old Jeans, Quilting/Sewing/Knitting/Crafting

I love days when I get to craft. I find all sorts of reasons to craft. For example: Lessons that I teach, holidays, Birthdays, Ground Hog Day, etc. I bought a lot of Christmas cards on sale that nobody wanted. So now I get to decide what fun things can I do with them. (I found a lot of fun things to do with them. If I know your mailing address you might be getting some.) Any day that I can use a glue gun, pom poms, and wiggly eyes for a project is a good day. For Christmas this year I had 3 dozen nice pillar candles that I bought in January 3 years ago when no one wanted them, and combined them with some fuzzy yarn and bells that I bought 5 years ago in March and turned them into wonderful Christmas gifts. I have fun crafting from things in my stash.
– Mom

Tuesday night I sat down on the rug in front of the couch (because I’ve never been one to sit in chairs) and pulled out my box of yarn and my knitting needles. And I started knitting a pencil. Brett asked me why I was knitting it. I paused. Thought about it. And the only reasons I could think of was because I could and because it is cute. And it is cute. :pencil:

Am I supposed to have a reason to make things? I know at times I do. I made myself a sling bag out of a pair of Brett’s pants (they had a hole in them so he was done with them) last week. But if I had just been making it to be functional it wouldn’t have been so cute. Instead I fussied it up (in true folk art fashion – adding beauty to your everyday life) by using two of the belt loops from the pants to hold a turtle “belt” around the top and I embroidered a turtle and two flowers on the bottom (first time doing a daisy stitch and first time getting a french knot to actually knot!). It was the perfect bag for the weekend, held my wallet, camera, sunglasses and phone perfectly. And it is cute. :turtle:

So I guess I do make a lot of things for specific reasons. The pencil was the first time I’d knitted with more than one color, so I learned that skill while I was doing it. But I didn’t knit it to learn the skill. I learned the skill because I needed the skill to make what I wanted to (which is how that usually works for me). However we also have a lot of things, particularly blankets, like the one on the back of the couch right now, that I made just because I could and because I wanted to. It made me happy.

Can I make something just because? Yes. Yes, I can.

Creating. Crafting. Making things. They bring joy to my life. Whether there is a functional reason or not there is something deeply fulfilling about taking some raw materials, be they yarn or fabric or ingredients or anything else, and making something useful or beautiful out of them.

It is participating in the divine.

The Creator of the plan of happiness is also the Creator of all the beauty we see around us. I’ve had several occasions to wonder if something was created simply for the joy and beauty of it.

11 Shared thoughts

Gardener Appreciation Day

17 May 2011, 3:38 pm by Giggles

Categories: Happy Things

Every year I put together a family calendar with birthdays and such on it. And that “such” would be holidays, many of them random and not on normal calendars. I get most of them from Holiday Insights. For example, yesterday was “Love a Tree Day” and tomorrow is “International Museum Day.” Definitely days worth celebrating.

Because I do celebrate some rather odd holidays, Brett once asked me if the dinner we were having was in honor of some kind of berry holiday. Can’t a girl cook a steak dinner with a raspberry sauce and a spinach and strawberry salad and a cheese cake with berry topping for dessert just because it sounds good? Although that would be the perfect dinner for some kind of berry holiday. :lightbulb:

But all of that is probably why I laughed at today’s Rose is Rose comic.