If I Pour Color Safe Bleach on My Hair...

just wondering if it would leave my haircolor unscathed.

See what had happened was...

It was the end of my time in the 2 year old room this morning. Things had gone just fine. Then my potty trained kiddo (God bless her parents!) decided she needed to go potty. No big deal.

As I started helping her with her pants, she started rubbing her hands all over the toilet seat.

Me: That's really yucky. Let's not rub our hands on the toilet.

Her: Yucky?

Me: Yep. It's got germs all over it.

At this point, she stopped. I thought we were cool, so I went back to the task at hand and had my head bent down so I could see what I was doing. The next thing I knew, she was rubbing her hands all over my head, roughing up my hair.

Next week's Sunday School lesson: E. Coli - One Thing We Don't Share With Friends

Invention Submission

You know that commercial that comes on TV with the caveman inventing the wheel? They're trying to get people to submit their inventions...probably so they can totally screw you over and take your idea without giving you credit for it, but I don't know. Anyway, I need to invent a vacuum attachment that works on lungs. I think it would have to be for a wet/dry vac though and I've never seen any specialty attachments for those. I obviously don't have all of the details worked out yet.

Anyway, pardon me if I hack up a lung. I'm not contagious.

Yesterday was just chock full of excitement. There was a gas leak near my workplace, so in their infinite wisdom, they instructed all of us to evacuate...which meant a thousand cars starting up and idling for 30 minutes trying to get out of the parking lot. And several people who didn't feel like jumping in their cars and sitting in traffic, so they just stood outside and smoked. During a gas leak evacuation.

Needless to say, we all survived unscathed. Sadly, the campus was opened back up for business today, so we had to go back. I actually had to evacuate just minutes before a conference call, so I called my boss and asked him to call in to the conference and let the customer know what was going on and see if we could reschedule. He said OK.

Did he do that? Judging from the e-mail I got from my customer, um...no. But the customer rescheduled for an hour later and I had JUST walked in my door and logged in when it was time to call in. It's so convenient to be able to work from home.

(See what I did there? I'm counting my blessings.)

In other news, the free library audio book download thing is working out splendidly. As a surprising twist, I actually remembered where I had stowed my MP3 player for safe keeping, and after that, it was all gravy. It makes my workday so much better when I listen to books as I work. I have briefly considered trying to listen to a book while reading a different book, but then I realized that was a crazy thought and ditched it. I think there's something wrong with me. If I'm listening to something, my eyes need to be busy too. As Frankie said, maybe I should just RELAX.

Abandoned Puppies

Jen 1, Firewall 0.

Don't mind this post. These are just some abandoned dogs that were posted on my workplace's classifed ads. We can't e-mail out (stupid firewall) and the firewall wouldn't let me upload the pic to Facebook, so I had to find another option. Where there's a will, there's a way! Anyway, I'm posting this for my dog rescuing hero, Donna.

Here's the info that was on the ad:

Someone dumped two adorable puppies on property owned by my family, and we urgently need to find new homes for them. We can't keep them much longer, as our yellow lab isn't very tolerant of them.

They would make excellent indoor dogs - they have short hair, and I believe that they may be close to their full growth. Both puppies are female, have good temperment, and are very playful and people friendly. They seem to be very intelligent. Unfortunately, I don't know what breed they might be, or how old they are.

We need to find them a new home soon. If we can't, we are going to have to take them to an animal shelter, where they will most likely be euthanized. We are willing to give the new owner a 20 lb. sack of dog food with each puppy, or if you take them both, we will give a 50 lb. sack.

Please email me, or call XXXXXXXXXX (or XXXXXXXXXX) if you are interested in one or both of them - we need to find them new homes as soon as possible.

Additionally, the lady has told me that one is 10 lbs, the other is 15 lbs. They have been wormed, and they don't have fleas/ticks.

She thinks they are as big as they're going to get and she said they aren't chewing on stuff, so they're probably not baby puppies.

They have not been around any kids as far as she knows.

2009 Book Wrap-up

I'm finally getting around to this! Go me!

I decided to make a list of the books from 2009 that left a lasting impression. They either made me evaluate how I live my life, made me anxious to read more of a given author's work, or haunted me long after I finished reading them. I love books like this. When possible, I've linked to the Bookcrossing journal entry that cooresponds to the book.

In no particular order:

The Dive from Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer

Never Let me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
(Do not be fooled...the book is so different from the movie)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon


I only read 40 books last year, which is kind of a dismal statistic (compared to 84 in 2008 and 93 in 2007), but I will learn to forgive myself. :)

Seventeen of the authors were new to me and in some cases, I can see some of the authors becoming favorites of mine.

Goals for 2010? I'd probably feel moderately OK about reading 50 books. I may read more if I start fully utilizing the Central Arkansas Library System's free audio book download feature. It's wonderful. I just need to locate my MP3 player. I can't keep up with anything lately. Such a disaster!

No, A Tornado Hasn't Just Been Through Here

It just occurred to me that this is my first post of the new year, so happy new year!

I plan to do a little 2009 reading wrap up post at some point, but that point is obviously not right now. Keep your eyes peeled.

Ready for some randomness? Here goes.

I tried my hand at the ruffly wreath (mentioned here), HOWEVER! my Dollar Tree didn't have the same kind of foam wreath base that the person who wrote the tutorial had, so I had to settle for one of those green foamy things. You know those foamy things that florists stick in the bottom of flower arrangements to stab the flowers into? One of those things, but it's in a sorta wreath shape. It's disgusting. It leaves my hands feeling all gritty and nasty. I am not a fan. Also, it is thicker and smaller in circumference than the one in the tutorial. I did not think that would be a problem, but as of right now it just looks like a big fluffy ball of ruffliness. I'm not quite finished with it yet, but I'll post pictures of it when I'm done. Over all, it's not a hard project and I can definitely see the cuteness potential. I'm just not sure it's going to work out with the materials I have to work with.

Last night when Butter was keeping me up by barking incessantly ALL NIGHT LONG, my sleep deprived mind got the idea that I need to make a rag quilt big enough for my Queen bed. Visions of easy quilty, warm, cozy goodness danced in my head. I have a rag quilt that my sister made, but it's just a throw size. She made one for pretty much everyone in the fam and we all carry them with us like Linus. When we're all together, there may be 2-3 in the room at any given time. They're wonderful and they don't seem all that difficult to make. I went online to try to get an idea of how much fabric I would need to buy (I <3 Google!) and it says that if I want to make it with 4" squares, I'll need 2736 squares. Good grief, that's a lot of squares! I can also make it with 6" squares and "only" use 540 squares. Tedium, thy name is quilting. Anyway, we'll see where I decide to go with that. I want to make a black and white one (because my walls are red and not everything goes with red), so let me know if you know of a place that has good deals on black and white (prints are ok, not just solids) flannel.

Speaking of getting in over my head, I'm sick to death of my house being a mess, so I'm trying to incorporate some of Flylady's ideas about home management into my daily routine. I hope I don't ever have a medical emergency because there's no way I'd let strangers (or anyone else for that matter)into my house with it looking like this. I'd have to meet the paramedics on the porch.

Let's see what else? I got a new job role at work. It has the word "manager" in it, but I don't have to manage any people, I just have to keep the customers happy and make sure everything in our process moves along according to plan. It's going to be an interesting adventure. I've been doing pretty much the same job for nearly 10 years, so I'm excited about changing things up a little. It's going to be challenging (in a huge way), but I don't think I'll be nearly so bored anymore.

And with that, I need to go declutter. {singing}One room at a tiiiiiiiime, sweet Jesus...{/singing}