Artsy Fartsy

For the last two years we've gotten away with ignoring Halloween. Jay and I have never been "into" Halloween and Joshua's been utterly clueless. So October 31st comes and goes and no one in this house is the wiser. Until now. I noticed on the Playschool calendar that one of the agenda items for last Tuesday was "talk about Halloween costumes." Great, I thought. Here we go.

When I picked up Joshua on Tuesday I asked him about his day. It was a busy one. He brought the snacks, and it was also school picture day. I finally got around to asking him about whether he had talked about dressing up for Halloween.

"Yes!" he said.

"What will you wear?" I asked.

"A costume!" he said. (This was the first time he'd ever heard of a costume, so I was pretty impressed the climbed that curve).

"What kind of costume?" I asked, fully expecting him to respond with "Can you say it?" which is his way of saying that he doesn't know the answer to whatever question you've just asked.

"A PUMPKIN!" he shouted!

And when Vati asked him later that day what he wanted to be for Halloween, he answered again, "A PUMPKIN!"

If you know me at all then you know I haven't a creative bone in my body, which is probably why I've never really been excited about Halloween. So here I am, trying to find a DIY pumpkin costume for my son (and daughter. Why not make them match?) If I were Jenny, or Rhonda, or Sarah, this wouldn't be a problem. But alas I am not, and it will probably take me from now until midnight on Wednesday to figure this out.

Wish me luck.

Organization

Up until last night I had about 10 randomly assorted boxes of pictures, old photo albums, and other picture-containing envelopes sitting on the shelf of my closet. The pictures are of both Jay and me, and range from before we were born until roughly 1999 when I started putting all of my pictures in identically-shaped albums. My original plan was to take all of the random pictures from the random albums and put them in identically-shaped albums, too, so that they would all fit neatly on my shelf. The bonus is that they would be in chronological order...all of them.

Would you like some of my crack?

To being with, my head hurts from trying to remember when these were taken. Then consider that some are 4x6, some are 3x5, and some are 3x3! Oh, and don't forget the senior pictures collected over the years. I've dated about a third of them so far, but I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do with them when they're finally sorted chronologically. I bought some photo storage boxes at Hobby Lobby today, but that seems a bit silly since the idea is to make them more accessible, not less. But at least my storage system will be more uniform if all of the random pictures go into boxes.

Has anyone else done something this ridiculous? Any ideas?

Narcissus

I made another appearance on Good Morning West Tennessee last Monday. This time I was promoting the YMCA's "FatBuster" contest coming up this week. I was a little tired, which is understandable given that I had to be there at 6:30, and I was a little unsure of myself since I had a lot to cover in a short amount of time, including showing off our handy-dandy little body fat monitor that will take the place of caliper testing.

But I'm still not sure what I was thinking when I decided that I should look directly into the camera and talk for about 15 seconds. Fortunately, I eventually realized that the news anchors were sitting next to me and looking directly at me while I was staring straight ahead. Jay didn't watch since he was fixing breakfast and wrangling two little people, but I think the camera operator was smart enough to close in on my face rather than pulling back and showing that I was completely ignoring the anchors in favor of staring at my (very exhausted-looking) self.

Duh.

I Read Banned Books

Here we are again in the middle of Banned Books week! If you're interested, the American Library Association has a list of The Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2007. Have you read any of them?

As promised during Banned Books Week two years ago, I finally got around to reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which, as you might remember, was taken off of the reading list during my junior year of high school by my best friend's mother. While it was admittedly disturbing at times, I really enjoyed it and am pretty sure I wouldn't have been scarred for life had I read it 17 years ago.

I also managed to read Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut in honor of his completed life. It didn't make this list, but several other Vonnegut novels did, so I'll give myself a pat on the back for that as well.

Any plans for Banned Books Week?