Notes from ShellyCentral

Can Not Wait

This is how happy I am right now.

Not only am I going on a road trip to see my hero, Todd Rundgren, in person next month, we've got our reservations booked to go back to Disney in December. 196 days.

Lucky girl.

 

that's not good for anybody

you know last month was great. we did so much work on our house. a lot of stuff that needed to be done. the kind of things that would sometimes appear on that list of things to worry about you're haunted by when you need to be sleeping. we did all that and we bought a car. all that was good, really really good.

but you know, you can only do so many things at a time, and doing all that of course meant i didn't have time for other things i like to do. i've barely touched the art journal. the pages in my writing journal are blank white. you may have noticed i haven't been taking any photos at all. even the trip to see the baby nieces didn't yield too many photos.  that's not good for anybody.

there are still a lot of things to be done to this house, and i kind of have a goat to get a certain set of them done before my birthday in july. i don't know if that's an impossible deadline or a generous one. that's why i only kind of have it. 

but right now i'm going to start slowing down a bit so i can make time for more of a creative life. because it's important, too.

tuesday morning

today is tuesday.
it is also the last day hannah has to go to school this semester. as the lady who drives her to the bus stop and brings her home, it means it's the last day i have to do that. we're both really happy.

i think winter is finally over. it's supposed to be 92 today. too bad we skipped having that spring thing.

yesterday was monday, and like most mondays, i spent the day making lists and crossing things off. it wasn't so bad. i tried something new for dinner (inspired by my sister Megan). i didn't come out as i hoped, but it was good. and the guacamole i made to go with it was good enough to make up for it. plus there was enough for danny's lunches this week, so i'd say it was a success.

after dinner i settled in to watch the last two episodes of season 2 of game of thrones. 

i was interrupted for a while when h came down with a tummy ache. i had to stop watching for that time because she is only at the beginning of season 2. and it was with only about 15 minutes left. but she got better and it was still there where i left it.

i have some thoughts on it, but not a lot. i know not to get too attached, and i know it's a really, really long story. so i don't get too attached (for the most part), and i try not to invest in outcomes. it's a long, crazy story. anything could happen. but i'm liking it. enough that i bought the first 4 books (in a set) from amazon (for really cheap). most days i can only find enough time to read about 25 pages so it's going to take me a while unless i get some good reading time in. the best time is waiting for hannah to see the doctor, but i don't really want any more of those, thanks. of course i like all the people you're supposed to like and hate all the people you're supposed to hate. there's not a lot of layers when it comes to the characters, but that's ok because the story is epic. i don't know if you can have both. maybe rarely.

right now i am going to enjoy a little free time before h is home every day all day for a couple weeks until summer school starts. but i thought i'd say hey first.

One thing I did over my very laid back weekend was read some of my earliest online journal entries. You may or may not know I started keeping an online journal in the latter part of 1995. Really. That's like 10,000 in internet years. 

It made me think about many things. It definitely made me think about this blog and what my point is and why I'm doing it. Or I guess why I'm not doing it.

I used to tell about my daily life. And one of the reasons I did my online journal was so I could look back at my life and be able to see it, you know. Remember what my world was full of at a particular point in time. This weekend I did just that. It was fantastic. I'm sad I haven't been doing it for a long while.

(The question then becomes why do it online in front of god and everybody? I have several answers to that but none of them are as easy to put into words. Perhaps I'll write about that some day.)

Somewhere between keeping my own journal on my own server, and then having a live journal and then this blog, I got kind of lost with my purpose. Lately I have become all distracted by the bright shiny blogs of the professionals. I wanted to be good and I forgot to be myself. Since I don't like not being myself, I just kind of started trickling out.

But I want to change that. I kind of want to try it again with more of what it was like in the beginning. More show and tell. 

We'll see.

I have got to change the header to my blog! That snow is insane! No one wants to see that.

Happy Mother's Day to Me :)

What a great day!

I managed to spend the whole day doing almost nothing at all. I loved it! I read a bunch of stuff, I pasted some stuff in my journal, I listened to hours of Todd and bought tickets to his show in Tulsa. I got some presents. I had Arby's for dinner. I talked to Greg and my mom on the phone.

I don't want to be braggy, but I have a lot to be happy about.

I have a new, old car. I am in love with it. Who knew moving up from a 24 year old Honda to a 16 year old car of hte same make and model would make such a difference?

My house is freshly painted. The colors are beautiful and my house looks amazing. It's the closest thing to getting a new house without all the fuss of moving. My painters were awesome, the experience was fun and exciting and the house looks great. It also has given me a sense of ownership I hadn't felt in the 16 years we've lived here.

I am going to take a road trip to see my hero, Todd Rundgren, in concert. My my best friend of 34 years is going with me, even though she does not love Todd. I can't even start with how excited I am about this.

I have an awesome boyfriend who is ready and willing to help me with any problem I need help with. 

Technology. I have some, and not only is it fun and entertaining, it is often a tool to help me do many of the things I dream of doing.

I cut the cord and cancelled cable. I've been dreaming about it for a long time, and it feels really great having done it.

We are planning another trip to Disney World this winter. This time we're staying for 10 nights, and I am extending that by 4 more by staying with my generous brother.

I am truly in love with my family and friends, who are all interesting and awesome in their own special ways.

I have 2 incredible kids. Both compeltely different and yet surprisingly alike.

Wild birds come to eat outside my window every day.

 

I am a lucky Mother.

recent life according to my phone pix; part 2

 We're continuing on from the last post. Now we start photos from the last week.

On Monday, H and I were in KC. Before we met up with friends for a late lunch at the BBQ that used to be my dad's, we spent some time at this lovely park. It was such a fantastic day we had to spend some part of it sitting out doors. We mostly talked about Doctor Who; what's up with the 11th Doctor, what's up with Clara, how can people hate River - stuff like that.

We wandered towards the ducks and instead found these two turtles, enjoying the sun even more than we were.

People did not make them nervous.

Tuesday we found ourselves at the doctor's office (but not THE Doctor).

When we got home and pulled in the driveway, this is what we saw! The painters had been at our house and had gotten really busy with the scraping. Exciting.

My first two paint choices were these two. After seeing them in the sun, they were both out. Too crazy of a yellow, I think.

I really wanted to like the one on the left. It's called "Friendly Yellow". What a great color for a house. Friendly Yellow. I would have called my home the Friendly Yellow House, or FYH for short. It's a shame.

I found a TV on rollback I almost bought. Until I read the reviews online. Thank technology for online reviews, right? I should have known there was a reason a 32" flat screen was 178$.

My new car. I love it so much (even though I don't think I've talked about it here or shown pictures?). I've almost driven it a thousand miles.

My favorite pizza lately = tomato pesto for the sauce, an egg and some cheese. Best served on an old Hercules plate from McDonalds.

This is how my house looked on Wednesday before the rains came. Those lights are really bad and are going to have to be replaced once the house is all bright and happy.

Spike is guarding his territory.

Alan brought this old cedar chest over for our garage sale. I think my mom is going to take it. 

And then yesterday. Such a perfectly beautiful spring day. I hope this snow and freeze doesn't kill off all those buds and ruin everything. Jack Frost is a Jerk.

recent life according to my phone pix

Trying to sum up the crazy that = my life right now is way too big of a task. So I decided to let my phone tell the story, with pictures from the past couple weeks.

The 15th was Hannah's birthday. We did several things to celebrate. One was buying her this totally cool Doctor Who belt that is made with an old car safety belt buckle.

We also stopped in the Disney store. When the worker lady heard me mention her birthday, she made H this button. (It says Elizabeth because that's what the girl goes by now with everyone but her family)

One day I was feeling a bit overwhemled with home repairs, they money they involve, my crazy dogs and many other things. I remembered this quote I love and decided to write it up in my journal. I love it because it can be so true - but at the same time, compared to the problems of Camille Claudel and so many other people, it helps me not take it all to seriously.

In the middle of that week, my best cousin Angie and her son Tyler came to Lawrence to visit me. I had a super good time all day long. When baby niece #1 saw this picture, she said "That's Shelly with her friends."

Angie and Spike made a sort of uneasy alliance. Angie got brave and decided to hold him to get their picture together.

Friday of that week was Alan's birthday, and he wanted to go to this old car place and look at a lot of shiny old cars.

After that we had dinner. Since people are complaining lately about how they don't want to see pictures of people's dinner all over the internet, I thought I'd share a picture of what used to be my dinner. Actually I just didn't think to take a picture until it was all gone. It was delish.

To cap off the exciting birthday adventures, we checked out used books. I was surprised to find a second edition copy of the Rick Steve's travel book that has since helped me and countless others tackle a trek through Europe. It's changed a lot over the years. I didn't want to have it, so I just took a picture of it.

And then it snowed. At the time it seemed crazy that it was snowing on April 23rd, but now that's it's snowing right now on May 2nd it doesn't seem quite as remarkable.

 The next day it was warm and sunny again. Both my dogs were on watch.

A couple days later Hannah had that bad seizure. The dogs watched over her the next day while she rested.

That weekend we were watching the latest episode of Doctor Who. Watching the credits, I thought "Oh, huh. That Mat spells his name like my friend Mat King.... Wait a minute!" Weird. I'm pretty sure it wasn't my Mat King because he gives me a hard time about loving the Doctor. But you never really know, do you?

 

There's going to have to be a Part 2.

I have been looking at a lot of pictures.

The other day my sister forwarded me an email about a big sale at MyPublisher. 100 page book for the price of a 20 page book. I figured I didn't have quite enough stuff going on, so over the last two days I've been putting together a book from my trip to Europe with Hannah, and one from our family trip to Disney last year. I had to make a swear to myeslf not to try to just last minute pull one together from my first Europe trip*.

I'm kind of tired of looking at my own pictures, but there's this picture of my ancient OTP**, Gauis Julius Caesar. I love it so much I just had to show you.

 

* i really hope to have some sets of photos more together waiting so it's easy next time a big sale happens.
** otp = one true pairing. it's fangirl slang.

I need a break.

All day yesterday, the tree guys were here.
They were great, but the dogs hated them. And the noise of the chainsaws, the chipper and the constant barking really jangled my nerves.

In the late afternoon, Alan came over to help me do soemthing with the giant mess the plumbers left before the giant rain storm hits. I worked hard. I have seldom worked that hard physcially. I couldn't stay up past 9pm last night. I fell asleep with the lights on.

The weather people have been saying the rain was about to start for days now, and it's not really done much. But they promised it would happen last night and I didn't want to have to dig the rocks around my tree out from the foot or two of dirt after the rain got to it. I don't know what it did last night - it doesn't seem like too much. But they're still saying lots of rain is coming. I still think they don't really know anything more than an educated guess.

The day before yesterday the plumbers were here all morning. They weren't so bad, but of course the dogs hated them as well. When they were finished up we drove to Topeka for our new, very used car.The one we tried to get Saturday before Hannah had a seizure. That process was really long and drawn out and frustrating. Although driving the new car home (and around town since) has been fun and pleasant.

This morning both dogs were weird, and then I had to take poor Spike for a stressful morning at the groomers. I came home to Hannah needing help because she was having seizure activity. She is practically living on the downers that stop her from having seizures right now. Something is really jacked up and I can't wait till our appointment with the neurologist on Friday.

She decided she was ok to go to school and I just got back from dropping her off at the bus station. In an hour I can go get Spike. I did have plans to go to the grocery store, and to go to the cable company with our digital boxes to turn in and turn off the cable, but man, I think I am just going to stay at home until I go get that girl from the bus later this afternoon. 

I keep smelling some bad smell. Sometimes I think something died somewhere. Sometimes I think it's just the yucky damp from the leak that was going on for who knows how long. I am buring lots of incense and hoping it goes away.