Running on Hope

You know, I think I'd rather watch these guys deliver the news each morning. Then, maybe it wouldn't sound so depressing.

Running on Hope from Douglas Sarine on Vimeo.

Poor Obama.

Fun Monday Economic Adjustments!

Wow...how many Fun Mondays have I missed? A lot...I'm sure! Sayre is this week's hostess, and she wanted to know what kind of personal changes we are making to deal with today's economic challenges! Well, believe it or not, most of the changes our family is making is due to Roger's influence. He is definitely the most frugal of us all.

I noticed the first "change" the other day...in dishwasher detergent. For some reason, I've always been a fan of name brands. Even when I learned in business school that many "off brands" are made by the same company and are the same product without the fancy packaging, I still gravitate toward the colorful boxes with the names I know. When I saw the $1.00 box of no-name detergent under the sink, I was skeptical. But guess what? That detergent works JUST AS GOOD as the name brand stuff.

I'm not sure this qualifies, but we are slowly changing out the bulbs in our house to these twirly things. It's conserving energy, which is important to our future economic survival, right? These bulbs are uber-expensive, so they had better pay off.

We have also eliminated some of our eating out, which we needed to do anyway. It's so much cheaper to prepare food at home, and we used to do it a lot more in the past. We are trying to revive that habit, now that cheer season has ended and our nights should be returning to normal.

Personally, I haven't gotten a massage since before Christmas. That's a big sacrifice, since I'm usually as tight as a drum. I still am, but the guilt about money spent on my tooth extraction has kept me from indulging.

I feel even more guilty that I haven't been able to come up with more "cost-cutting" ideas. Maybe it hasn't fully hit me that we are really in a recession. Or a depression. Or a free fall. I'm hoping the other participants have great ideas that I can borrow.

Speaking of cheer season, this weekend was a 'milestone' of sorts. The Offspring has been cheering for the past seven years. She tried out for the high school cheer squad (she will be a sophomore next year), and MADE IT.

She Lives! And Still Breathes...

What a crazy week and a half it has been since I last blogged to you, my good friends! Yet the absolute best part of it, hands down, had to be spending three days with The Offspring during her All State Music Conference and Choir Concert. She was so thrilled to make All State her freshman year, and as you can imagine, I was one proud mom. I got to sit in on her rehearsals, as well as Ben's (pictured here with her). After rehearsals, we all went shopping and to the movies and had a heck of a time. (Note: Go see Coraline 3D. It was pretty cool.) Now, the title "Shorty" definitely fits Tiggerlane's Offspring. Standing at a mere 4'11" (she insists it is 5'0" - whatever.) Amber could hardly been seen on the back row. The choir is arranged based on voice part and chair placement from auditions, but the director decided that our little one should be right on the FRONT ROW! She even called her "Shorty," which made me giggle. But I was thrilled because it made it easier to see the squirt. But you know what made the day even better? Our friends! They made the drive to hang out with us and see our daughter perform! Here are Jeri Dee and Greg (she is our lead singer in the band, and he is our main bass player):Also, Brent and Dave are among The Offspring's biggest fans, so they drove in from Little Rock to see the performance and to give our baby props:
Of course, here are the proud parents, doing their best to embarrass the child:
So, the following Monday, I went to the oral surgeon to get the wisdom tooth yanked. First, I tried talking him out of putting me under. After all, I've had minor surgery TWICE with just local anesthetic with no problem. Plus, at the age of 14, I had four adult teeth pulled for my orthodontics. I also had the other three wisdom teeth pulled while I was wide awake. This guy was having NONE of that...and insisted that my tooth needed drilling. He assured me I wanted to be asleep for that.

I am such a control freak...and I HATE being incapacitated. So, non-compliant patient that I am, I took a very few of the percocet I was prescribed for pain. They just made me too loopy to work, you know? Besides, I had NO INTENTION of not working the following day. Unfortunately, the pain was so horrible the next morning, I ended up taking a half a pill, and then passed out until noon. Still, I went to work the next day - didn't ice my cheek (who has time for that?), and spent the rest of the week looking like this:I know, I should have heeded doctor's orders, gotten some rest, etc. But I had important meetings Wednesday, paperwork to do at work, a presentation on Thursday, and a conference to attend Friday/Saturday. See why I haven't had time to have this tooth pulled before?

Even though I had a swollen cheek and some pain, I did well. I'm almost able to yawn normally now, and the socket seems nice and clotted.

I'm just bummed that of all the teeth that have come out of my head (including baby teeth), this is one I didn't get to keep.