Monday Morning Musings - Exhaustion among other things

I have been so dang tired lately!  I know it's normal and will only get worse after the baby is born with the complete lack of sleep.  It seems like every time I sit down, I end up snoozing within five minutes!  I've even been assigning errands I usually love to do to Derek so I don't have to get up and get "real" clothes on.  Oh well, I guess it could be worse.

Can you believe that August is pretty much gone?!  Seems like I felt this way about July just a couple days ago!  The thing that's freaking me out the most is my due date range is in September (4th-24th).  That's, like... now!  Not in the distant future anymore!!  Aaahh!

And that's all I really think about anymore these days.  Sleeping, napping, and having a baby soon.  Oh, and the occasional digi-scrapping/bookmaking projects.

Friday Finds: A Link Round-up

ColorInc Gallery Wrap Contest, Texas Chicks Blogs and Pics. Awesome giveaway!  When I was in 7th grade, my parents ordered a family picture on a canvas-like something.  It looked so cool, but they still needed a frame.  With a gallery wrap, the picture is printed on canvas and then wrapped around a wooden frame.  Picture frame needed!  I want this so bad!!!



PS: I've got a couple fun baby polls on the sidebar. Check 'em out! :)

Thankful Thursday - Plant Pullin' Husband

I walked by my front room this morning, and what did I see right outside the window?  My husband pulling out the nasty prickly plants we have/had growing in the planter box.  Hooray!  I tried pulling out all the plants we had out there a week or so ago.  They were so ugly!  But the combination of being 8.5 months pregnant and weird, invisible-until-they-stick-in-your-hands-and-arms stickers made me quit halfway through.  Those stickers are the most irritating things I've ever experienced!  Not only do they sting when they're stuck in you, they leave minuscule cuts in their wake that burn for hours after!

I really wished I had my camera out and ready because Derek was so cute.  At the time I happened to walk by, he was taking a break to pull the mini-stickers out of his hands.  He is a pretty tough guy with nice callouses all over his hands so he doesn't usually use gloves for working, but I guess the mini-stickers were too much for him, too! :)  I got him the same dish-gloves I used before I pooped out before.  They worked surprisingly well. 

Thanks Derek for braving the nasty plants for me!  I love you!

Way Back When Wednesday - Being Musical in Korea

While we lived in Korea, the members of our church tried some clever ways of keeping us involved in what was going on without using language.  Most of the members didn't speak enough English to be able to translate for us, and we didn't speak enough Korean to participate on our own.  The missionaries were excellent at translating, but in a small branch, they were really busy.  Since music doesn't really depend on a common language--just it's own--that's how they got my participation.

When we first got there, I thought that since they were a small branch that maybe they would need a pianist.  But they didn't.  One of the teenage girls played beautifully.  But that didn't stop them from asking me to play for baptisms and relief society.  The only problem was I wasn't able to read the Korean at the speed they were singing while I was playing, and I have this bad habit of not paying attention to how many verses there are in a song.  I usually wait until the last measure or two and figure out what verse they are on by what they are singing.  Couldn't do that in Korean.  And they didn't have a chorister so I usually had to have someone give me a signal to stop. 

Then they gave me a calling (or assignment), branch chorister.  No problem, that was easy... or so I thought.  First of all, I wasn't super familiar with how to lead.  Plus, I had to sing in Korean while leading.  Hard!  I had to concentrate on two very different and equally brain power consuming things at once! 

Good thing nobody ever looked at me during the song.  Except one really cute little girl.  She was probably 3 or 4 years old.  She'd sit there and try to copy me, giggling and waving her arms all around.  I had a hard time keeping a straight face!

Top Ten Tuesday - Ten Slighly Odd Things I Do

The mail came this morning and I have to admit, I got really excited.  Not because I was expecting anything to come, but just because the mail came!  And that made me think.  What other weird things do I do...

Top 10 Slightly Odd Things I Do

1. Go check the mail.  Everyday.  I love it, and I get a little miffed if someone else gets to it before I do.  I'm like a little kid running out there!
   
   
2. Choose which book to read based on how it feels in my hands.  By this I mean if there is more than one edition of a book I'm interested in reading, I'll pick the best sized one.  They're usually the older, hard backed ones.
   
   
3. Read Wikipedia articles.  I don't do this as much as I used to, but I love it!  I love it because the more I read, the more I know.  And the more I know, the more I'll be able to participate intelligently in conversations.  And that's a good feeling.
   
   
4. Check on my flowers everyday.  Sometimes I make a special trip of it, sometimes it's in conjunction with checking the mail.  I only go out to look at how pretty they are.  I don't do any weeding or watering (the sprinklers take care of that).  Well, I guess I do some weeding... once the weeds are way taller than the flowers.
   
   
5. Share odd stuff about myself online.  I taught a mini class on blogging a week ago and realized just how odd that really is!  I got a lot of weird looks from people when I told them what kinds of things were on my blog.  Oh well, I'm comfortable with it!
   
   
6. Download a bunch of digi-scrapping supplies... and then never use them.  A couple months ago I knew I wanted to get into digital scrapbooking, so I found a couple freebie sites and started downloading papers, fonts, word art, templates, embellishments, etc.  The only problem?  I had NO idea how to use them.  But I kept collecting knowing I'd figure it out later.  Then I discovered another problem, hard drive space.  I had unknowingly filled the rest of my computer's hard drive with all my stuff.  I had 25GB of supplies!  Yikes!  Well, I've figured out how to digi-scrap on PSE and I've slowed down the downloading.  But it's still a temptation.
   
   
7. Sniff my cat.  I have never had such a good smelling cat before.  She has beautiful, soft, fluffy fur that always smells so nice and clean.  I am selective about where I sniff her though.
   
   
8. Peel a grapefruit and eat like an orange.  I'm not sure if this one is odd or not.  I haven't seen anyone else do it and my husband gives me really weird looks every time I come over to the couch with a plastic bag and a whole grapefruit.
   
   
9. I organize my clothes according to color...  but only in the closet.  It's too much work with the folded clothes. 
   
   
10. I talk to my cat.  Sometimes we meow back and forth; sometimes I talk, she meows.  This one might not be just me either, but it sure feels weird when I do it. 
    

Monday Morning Musings - Thoughts

I woke up this morning with a couple of things on my mind.  One quite a bit odder than the other.  The first thought was as my radio alarm was going off at 8:07am and 8:14am and 8:21am.  I thought to myself, "Wow!  Everyone of these songs tells a great story!"  Yesterday was a little weirder.  My first thought as I woke up to my alarm was, "I can digi scrap this song!"  Hmm...  wonder what I've been obsessed with lately.

The second thought I had this morning, when I was a little more awake, was how grateful I am that time never goes backwards.  I've had this feeling before in Korea near the end of our time there.  It was fun.  I enjoyed teaching English in a foreign country, but there were just some really difficult things that I'm glad didn't get stretched out any longer than they already were.

I'm kind of in that stage again now.  I've officially got another month until my due date; although I'm hoping to go earlier.  It's been fun.  Being pregnant is, um, interesting and... full of surprises?  But I'm sure as heck glad that time never ever, ever goes backwards!  The unknown events of the future are a little scary sometimes, but I've been able to handle all my life events so far--some more gracefully than others--so why not life events yet to happen?

Thankful Thursday - Enrichment Meeting

I had a great time at Enrichment Meeting this week.  Teaching a class was a bit stressful, but it was about a topic that I really enjoy, blogging!  I'm afraid that I was a bit disorganized in my teaching style, and I probably confused a lot of the ladies there, but I hope that I at least helped them see that blogging can be fun, useful and educational!

And since blogging is such an online thing, I brought my brother's Clearwire modem to the church building so we could have internet.  It made the class a bit more interesting to be able to actually see the blogs and see how to use them.

As fun as it was to teach my class, I was sad that I wasn't able to attend the other classes being taught at the same time!  We've got to find some way of being able to do that! :)  I think everybody wanted to attend all four classes.

I am really thankful that the Relief Society program includes an Enrichment night.  It's really fun to get together with friends from the ward and learn new things!!  I'm so excited for next month's Enrichment.  Basic Couponing Yeast 101 here I come!  Unless I'm having a baby right then...