They have no idea

1.) What do your kids have that you always wanted when you were a kid?

Where to start?  I grew up in a very poor home.  I didn’t have much of anything materialistic, honestly.  My kids have no idea how good they have it.  Actually, yes they do, I remind them often.  It is good to be grounded.

1.  Cars that drive us where we need to go generally without breaking down or running out of gas and floors that aren’t rusted through.

2.  Air conditioning and heat.  Seriously, our home growing up was freezing in the winter – and hot in the summer.  Mostly I remember the freezing part.  I don’t like being cold.

3.  Clothes that are pretty cool.  Bill knows that I will go overboard in this area just to overcompensate for my lack of acceptable clothing as a child.  All your shirts need to be Hollister, well, other than going in that deep dungeon, I have no problem with that.

4.  Cinnamon Toast Crunch.   Golden Grahams.  

5.  Corn-free pancakes.  Yup, don’t ask.  My kids get to eat strawberries, chocolate chips, and cool whip on their pancakes. Not rice.  And they can slather on butter as much as they want, and drench them with syrup.

6.  Unlimited toilet paper.

7.  Unlimited use of electrical services and hot water.  Bonus: add together to get dishwasher that isn’t me. 

8.  Adult teeth.  My top row of 8 pearly whites are fakers – yup, this picture perfect smile is full of porcelain and backed with gold. 

9.  Trampoline

10.  A mom like me.  Seriously.  That is a given.  This whole blog could have been about #10. 

But I love my family and I love who we are, and with a different childhood, we would have different stories.  We overcame.

‘And now, let the weak say, “I am strong.” Let the poor say, “I am rich because of what the Lord has done for us.”’ – A song sung or played at all of our weddings.  We were rich.

22 things I have done

1.  Parasailed

2.  Drove a Chevette packed with drunk teenagers (and open bottle) from point A to point B while I was only 15 because I didn’t have any other way to get where we needed to be and no one had cell phones yet, and my parents didn’t have call waiting.

3.  Swam with Dolphins

4.  Peed the bed when I was dreaming I was using a bathroom in cabin deep in the woods.

5.  Backed my van out of the garage, leaving a nice scratch all the way down Bill’s truck via my side mirror.

6.  Baked not one, but two, apple pies from scratch.

7.  Carried over 51 inches of baby for 32 weeks.

8.  Met Toby Mac

9.  Sent a snarky e-mail to the wrong person – oops.

10.  Read the entire New Testament, a little at a time, while in bus line waiting for my kids to get out of school.

11.  Eaten rabbit, turtle, bear, and eel pout  (taste like chicken!)

12.  Driven a combine 

13.  Snuck out on my first date…when I was in 7th grade.

14.  Taken anti-depressants – not for long, but wow, while I did, I got a lot done due to lack of sleep needed.

15.  Had reconstructive surgery due to #7

16.  Caused a flood in our basement (old house) because I put towels over the drain while we left for a long weekend.

17.  Booked our vacation for this winter!!!!  WHOOOHOOOOO!!!

18.  Crocheted many afghans.

19.  Beaten every level of Angry Birds

20.  Been married over 16 years – silencing the naysayers. 

21.  Pooped my pants at a parade.  (Curly’s favorite memory of all times.)

Oh, that Oprah did it again!

In the flurry of all that makes my life, well, my life, I did not only NOT watch Oprah’s favorite things episode, I also did NOT record it.  I wondered why I had forgotten to capture that moment forever in my mind, and how did I forget it was going to be on, and then I had myself a major-a-doodle A-HA moment!!  And here it is: I don’t care – not one bit. 

I decided to make my own Commoner Favorite Things Episode for my blog readers.

1.  Aim and Flames – whoever invented them was genius.  I am afraid of matches.  Without my aim and flame, I would never have lit candles.  And I do love my candles.

2.  Garage door openers.   Whoever invented them musta lived up here in da nort country.  This time of year, I hate to go outside to do anything, so opening the garage by hand would really stink.

3.  Apple slicers.  Great idea!  (sidenote:  the pampered chef pineapple cutter is NOT a great product.  Same idea as the apple version, but bigger, and then completely useless as it just doesn’t cut it!  hahaha  Anyone want mine?  It is in the give-away pile.)

                    

4.  Big huge numbers on my bedside clock.  Without them, I cant see what time it is, yes, even from a couple feet away. 

5.  Keyless entry – just think that we used to have to walk up to our vehicles and unlock the door, wasting precious seconds.  WHOOHOOO, inventor of keyless entry!

6.  The remote control ceiling fan with light.  I don’t have to stub my toes trying to get from the light switch to my bed – I can shut it off while laying there. 

7.  Front loader washing machine and dryer.  Can now do in five loads what used to take me ten.  Yesiree, bob, I am a happy laundry girl – well sorta, I still despise laundry. .

Things I might do today

  Today, I might:

• run a couple miles – it is nice out and I am not getting skinnier – stupid exercise.  Bill is eating ice cream and losing weight, why can’t I?? 
• take a nap – I am really really tired, read crabby.
• go insane
• start a new exercise video – Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism is the name, survival is the game.
• eat a successful dinner – it is iffy, it seems as if I overcooked it by oops, crocking at high instead of low all day.  My bad.  Mama said there’d be days like this…ok, my mama woulda said, “buck up and get over it.”
• try to pay for a purchase somewhere with a “dickle” – yes, we are working with money at school, and I guess a “dickle” is somewhere between a nickle and a dime – maybe about 7 cent value??  Ya gotta love the things kids say. 
• spare Crazy Man – he is on the poop list today.  Love mercy.  Love mercy – repeat – Love mercy.
• Clean out all my flower pots   everything in them is dead, but I just don’t want to let go yet…
• shave my legs for the last time until February.  It isn’t supposed to be this nice much longer –
• write a real blog entry later

Bucket Lists vs. To-do list

I have a few running lists.  One is my “places to go, things to see before the kids leave our home” list, the other fun one is my personal bucket list, and the last is today’s to-do list, which is extensive and I am beyond tired.

PTG TTS BTKLOH List

1. Grand Canyon
2. Upper Michigan
3. Wisconsin Dells
4. Beaches Resort somewhere warm during winter
5. A longer trip to Yellowstone (we have done 2 day-long visits as we drove through)

My Bucket List

1. See fireworks display somewhere awesome (Mt Rushmore, NY, Washington DC, something like that
2. See the Albuquerque hot air balloon festival
3. Go to Australia
4. Skydive
5. BIG Zipline somewhere
6. Learn a new instrument (not sure which one yet)

My to-do list today:

1. Make Lasagna
2. Take kids to church
3. Walk 3 miles
4. Do 40 Sit-ups
5. Pick up dress
6. mop floors
7. Grocery shop
8. Wash bedding
9. Vacuum
10. Dust

Which list do you think is getting my attention today?? 

This is a shout out to all my friends I am testing – you know who you are.  If you read this, I will be so proud to call you friend, if not, you just go back to co-worker status. 

Ok, onto all the big and exciting new around these parts:

1.  TWINS baseball!  ‘Nuff said. 

2.  Randy Moss returns to Vikings – hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, my opinion of this trade depends on which Randy Moss is coming.  The great one or the immature one.  I don’t want a combo of the two – shut up and catch the ball – 100% or go home.  It will make watching a little more interesting, but I like my Rice. 

3.  Extreme Home Makeover – I have avoided mentioning this event thus far because honestly, I think the bandwagon is full.  I could not be any more happy for the Grommish family – great people.  The process seems to make a lot of people a little airtime happy – not me.  Not planning on going over there and gawking, not planning on yelling “Move that Bus!”  Nothin’. 

Ok, off to tackle my list…

Sunday Randomness

1.  We are trying to get organized a little around here.  Bill is busy hanging shelving in my laundry room so I can organize all the crap you saw in the photo in a previous blog entry.  Once the little project is done, I will start figuring out how to best group this stuff and get it up off my floor where it has lived for 8 years, yeah, I am a slob by nature.

Before…Waiting for the after, I need a bunch more money for Rubbermaid’s – thinking of selling some scrapbooking supplies, oh but then I wont need as many Rubbermaid’s – win win – It’s like a chicken and egg thing – which came first the crap or the shelves to hold the crap?

Getting organized for winter? (or for any reason) Check out ididit.blogspot.com   If you read that too fast like I do, it looks like idiot.blogspot.com.  That is why I like it so much.  It has organization tips, recipes (not all of them being too healthy but DELISH!!) and so much more.

2.  Peeling eggs – it is so fun when the shell just slides right off, but then when they WONT peel, it is one of the more frustrating things in the world.  I know all about older eggs being easier to peel, but the 16 I did today all came from the same carton.  Stupid egg shells.  A tip on thriftyfun.com suggests adding salt to the water – I will try that next time.

3.  Today at church, an adult male friend of ours  (don’t want to name names here but his name  rhymes with cryin’ and his wife is expecting a baby girl) accidentally popped Princess in the nose causing a minor bloody nose.  He still denies it.  While discussing it on the way home, Curly piped in with a “I burped in his face.” 

“Well, Curly, that is not ok.  That is something you can be punished for.” 

“It was his punishment.”

I do love this girl.

4.  I am spending a lot of time these days helping my little sis drum up all kinds of wedding ideas – you know, general wedding theme, colors, looks, that sort of thing.  You will start to see a lot of wedding things posted here and there.  Some of my favorite sites to look at are Elizabeth Anne Design and Style me Pretty  (thanks, Anne!)   I actually enjoy all things wedding even when not helping with any specific wedding…I would love to be a wedding coordinator if I didn’t have to work weekends.  I think I will go into business with my sister-in-law Shannah, one of the best floral designers I know.  My other dream job would be photographer but ya know, that involves weekends too and I want to wakeboard in September and camp in June.

5.  Chi straighteners – if I paid $100 for a hair appliance, why didn’t it come with an automatic off option?  Good news learned the hard way is that when I leave it on all day, it doesn’t burn down the house nor does it melt my bathroom counter top.

6.  I forgot an important part of the wakeboarding trip.  After Bill got out of the water the second time, he was speaking strange.  Like real English sentences with a subject and predicate but no words that made sense when put together.  He also joined in when Princess danced to a favorite song blasting on the radio.  I have video of this, because somehow he didn’t know I was videoing him even though I told him I was, but I cant post it or else I would feel the wrath of one VERY ANGRY husband.  It had to be hypothermia. Needless to say, as soon as the sentences made sense, he asked me to quick run ahead to the van and crank the heat so it was warmed up when he got in.  I drove home – afterall, we didn’t want Bill to get a ticket for DWFYNO.

7.  Bridezillas – holy crap.  Why would anyone marry a girl who tells her mom that she is going to stick her eyes with her earring backs and she would have to be at the wedding wearing a pirate patch.  YIKES – that will last as long as…well…everyone knows those people.   Yet, I cant stop watching.  It is kinda like Secret Life of an American Teenager.  Train wreck you just cant turn off.

8.  Bill taught Curly how to use our scanner, so if you get something not worth getting, I am sorry in advance – sometimes, she doesn’t make the greatest decisions.  I have been the recipient of some of her e-mails.  YIKES.  If you don’t send this onto 7 people in 5 minutes, you will have bad luck for the rest of your life.  How stupid do I look?  Don’t answer that.

9.  This one goes out to a special someone.  Why do vitamins turn your pee such wonderful colors?  Green?  BRIGHT yellow?  What is in them? Check this site out for a wonderful description of pee colors.  I learned from this site that 45% of people admit to peeing in the shower and 45% of people also admit to peeing in the ocean  (I am an Ocean pee-er myself.)  Cat pee glows under black light.  Cow pee is going on sale as a beverage in India…I will tell Bill not to drink anything called Gua Jal.   Only about 40% of people have the genes to smell the odor of asparagus pee!

10.  Halloween month starts this week…I hate Halloween.  Sorry to all you costumed trick-or-treating celebrators out there.  I hate witches, ghosts, and all that kind of crap shoved down my throat.  I like things not from the dark side like puppies and kitties.  Actually, I don’t like cats at all either.  We will not be home on Halloween.  Sunday night, we just may be at the dentist or something.  Can you tell I have been watching Bridezillas all afternoon?

11.  The girls and I went to Ramona and Beezus yesterday…GREAT movie.  We saw it at the cheap theater – $2 per person, beat that.  That is about the only thing good about the cheap theater.  I can just feel the germs, lice, and cooties in there…yes, I can be a germaphobe.  If you have little girls, you must see this movie.

Life would be a dream…if I could…

1.  …Get my headache to go away.  I am sitting here with a bad headache and as soon as my headache dissipates, I might get up and do something.  One of the kiddos at school used dissipates when talking about his headache today, and I loved it.  Perfect usage.  You know what would work for the dissipation?  A Mountain Dew.  Or a nap.  Or a pepsi.  Or a massage.  Or a good neck crackin’ or maybe a coke.  I guess I pick nap.

2.  …Get someone to come clean my laundry room.  After the compliment about my smokin’ awesome laundry room sink, I decided you all should see what my laundry room really looks like on the other side.  Enjoy!  Everyone has a catch-all room, right?  I especially like the used carpet padding –  we hang on to that in case of an emergency;   magic carpet pad ride. 

3.  …Get my hands on one of the most checked-out books in the local elementary school.  Rumor has it the call numbers are 547.82 SEX  and the book is about sponges.  It is a very popular read for some reason, for sure it must be because kids in the upper Midwest are infatuated with sponges.  I mean, not a day goes by when we don’t have a good sponge chat.  I guess they need to get two copies.  And we sure hope they write a sequel.  I have title suggestions…

4.  …Watch Big Bang theory every night…the first clip is a favorite just around seconds 18 – 20.  His facials just kill me . 

ne-ner-ne ner

ba-da-cha!!!

5.  …keep my kids impressed with my skills.   I just blew Crazy Man’s mind by my ability to swallow 4 Advil at once.  “WHOA!!” Yeah, impressive.  Still have that headache.  Just yesterday, I proved to everyone that I could still pick JP up.  Then he returned the favor with a grip Curly accurately called the Heimlich maneuver hug.  He could totally break my ribs.

6.   …the someone who was getting the big extreme home make-over in the area was ME!!  I don’t want the huge house I cant afford, I just want the free vacation.  I am just trying to get onto the set somehow.  But I don’t see washed up moms with no labor skills on the list??  WHAT?  I am a woman, I have that going for me since the builder is the area’s only Woman-Centric™ home designer.  BARF.  Now that I posted that, I will never get picked.  Rats.  Kinda like how no one from our senator’s office helped us get any tickets to any venue in DC.  Guess Bill shouldn’t let them know his opinions, whoa – I digress big time.  Anyway, I am excited to find out who the blessed family is and to watch my home town pull together for a good cause again.

7.  …make my stretch marks go away.  “Oh, they will fade.”  Sure, to a nice glimmering catch-the-sun and blind someone with the reflection silver.  Or, burn faster than real skin pink.  The zebra look is never in.

8.  …my pants were baggy.  Since I cant step on the scale, I now have to go by my jeans.  If I don’t ever wash them, they feel great!  Cuts back on laundry too!

Bazinga!! My show premiers tomorrow!! 

Best scene of all!!

Nuts, and things that drive me nuts

Sorry, J & T, this isn’t about what you were hoping it would be about.  I am just not that kind of girl.  At this moment, anyway.

I have always hated nuts.  At Christmas, one of my jobs (when I am not stuck in the sink washing dishes!! Can I get a woot from the Rauenhorst ladies?) is mixing M&M’s and peanuts in a bowl for everyone to munch on while waiting for dinner.  “Why?” I ask.  What a waste of time, since when I eat them (and I think most everyone else also based off the times I have to add M&M’s to make the mix just right) I pick the M&M’s out and leave the peanuts.  The best way to keep me from eating any given bar (Midwestern for brownie)  is to put nuts in them.  Especially walnuts…bleck.  However, all of a sudden, I like cashews and pistachios.  I have been roasting pecans to put in my salads and adding slivered almonds to my granola.  What does this mean about me?  I am afraid.  So I wont type “sudden love of nuts” into a search engine.  Oh yes I will…wait for me…Ok, just back from that search and it really was disappointing.  I found one great blog entry about nuts here.  (Way off topic, but good if you are bored:  Click the tabs on the top for a bunch more interesting reads.) I thought for sure I would get something edgy.  I am in an edgy mood thanks to the things that drive me nuts, so whatever. 

10 Things that DrIVe mE nUTs:

1.  Having a headache that nothing helps, chalk it up to hormones.  This explains why everything is driving me nuts today.  Watch out, world. 

2  The feeling that someone is following me around, watching every move I make, hoping I mess up/fail some stupid “test”.  Here is a memo for ya:  I am going to mess up, I am going to fail every “test” you can come up with.  Following me may get boring, but you are sure to find something if you look long and hard.  Oh shoot, maybe you wont even have to look too long and too hard…maybe?!?!?  Who am I kidding,  the failure you are looking for will happen in the first few minutes.    Quit sneaking around, just ask me if I sucked it up, I will tell ya.  I tell my kids this all the time, “not everyone is going to be good at everything, except me.”    I have a good handle on my imperfections, but I have pretty good motives.  People need to look for the good in others – there is a lot more good in most people than we give them credit for.   Spend more time looking for the good – it is a lot more fun.

3.  Whiny people – there is a difference between complaining and whining, I hate whining.  If you don’t like something, change something.  Body parts are allowed to whine, as in Wednesday’s blog.

4.  Hair – when people shed where I can visibly see it

5.  People who pick their toenails.  Maybe not the people, maybe I should reword that.  When a person (often named Bill) picks his toes in front of me, it drives me nuts.

6.  Really loud commercials on Disney, actually everything Disney these days.  Disneyworld is exempt from this.

7.  Guilt drives me nuts.  I tend to be a people pleaser.  Sometimes I just cant follow through with plans I made a couple weeks ago, because a couple weeks ago, I didn’t know I would barely be awake at this given moment and that I need to do nothing more than get my feet back under me.  That is what this weekend is going to be all about: trying to not feel guilty about washing laundry, grocery shopping, scrubbing toilets, etc. when I feel like I’m letting other people down.  I am learning to say no, but it is a hard lesson to get into my mind.

8.  People who repeat the same stupidity over and over and post about it on Facebook, looking for me to reply what? That I am so sorry they did the same stupid thing over and over and are getting the same result?  And this is all they can post about?  Block.  (I have actually never blocked someone for this…I only block people who drop the F-bomb all the time – what is the need for that???  Remember, we have 8-year-old “13-year-olds” on FB, be smarter than that.)

9.  Dog pee spots in my lawn.  Yes, they are from our own dog, but really, we had no idea her pee would do this to our super green lawn that ranked really high in the neighborhood green grass contest when we got her, so now we just let our lawn go to the crapper.  Literally.  We have a one-acre toilet out there!

10.  When someone uses the last piece of bread and then doesn’t get a new loaf out of the freezer, and then I hear a “whaaaaaaaaaaa, we are out of bread, why did you let that happen….whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”  Really, I don’t eat white bread, so I don’t keep track of that.  You have legs, go get your own bread.

Anyway, it is snowing a couple hours west of here but not here so I will end my list of things that DrIVe mE nUTs with this:  Dear God, please at least send a hard freeze so the mosquitoes that plaque us will all die.  Mass mosquito death = happy happy joy joy. 

  This is for all the other crabby people out there…it is Friday.  Let us rejoice and be glad!

Versions of Deb from the past

The hobby thread and resulting chat of FB got me thinking of all the things I have done in the past that are no longer part of who I am now.  I am not only thinking of all the stupid things you can chalk up to being young and immature, which I wont list, but also of all the different phases of creativity I have gone through.  This is the time to let you know my mother-in-law, who might be the bestest awesomest gift to my life ever, was part of the macramé owl craze back in the day.  That needed to be shared.

My first hobby in adulthood was crafting.  Back when wooden plaques with wire hangers that read all sorts of kitschy things were placed all over my walls, adorned with wonderful eucalyptus sprays hopefully crafted into some sort of wonderful heart shape, I had the world’s greatest collection of craft supplies.  Bill called it my crap collection.  Many bins held the wood, paint, brushes, sandpaper, sharpies, etc. needed to make these crafts. A couple of my friends and I would pump them out in bulk.  If any of you still own these things, feel free to burn them at a craft-free celebratory bonfire ASAP.   Say no to little wooden craft signs.

After the craft phase, I entered the world of crocheting.  I wish I could still crochet just because I like how it is spelled.  I made somewhere around 10 afghans.    My first was a very shoddy pieced together quilt-looking thing for my mother-in-law.  She treated it like it was made with yarn spun of gold.  Did I mention how much I love that lady? I remember being glued to the TV following the tragedy of 9-11 making an afghan while watching the horrid scenes unfold, knowing that my afghan would never do anything so violent.   I crocheted afghans for my grandpa and Bill’s 2 grandmas, so when they were alone, they could wrap up in a long distance hug from me.  I enjoyed crocheting so much, but somewhere around afghan #8, my wrist decided to click with every twist, numbing my hand, and I decided I liked being able to walk around without carpal tunnel braces.  If you have a Deb Pieper Afghan, hang on to it.  With very few made, they will be worth quite a bit on Pawn Stars someday.

If your name is Angela W,  you are the only recipient of the product from my quilting phase.  Although I have finished many a quilt along side of my buddy Janelle, Angie’s is the only one I did the sewing on.  Her son is one lucky boy.  Short phase as I am not one to enjoy something I am not all that good at.

Then came the much longer and much more expensive scrapbooking phase.  No one makes a baby book that tells the story of being a preemie triplet, so that really kicked off this stage; while high on mag sulfate and turbutaline, I made books for each kiddo.  My shaky handwriting is just a bonus, adding authenticity to the look.  I continued on, scrapping until each kid was about 3 years old and making JP a book as well.  I hosted week long scrap fests in my dining room, studied the art, and was pretty good at it.  Problem is, our life happens WAY faster than I can scrap it, so I decided to hang up my slicers and eyelet punch, and spend more time living life.  Now, I just dump pictures onto my computer.  This way, my future kids-in-law will thank me for not passing down stacks and stacks of huge books they have to store somewhere.

Somewhere in here, I also decided to make jewelry.  Actually, a more accurate account would be that I started buying jewelry making supplies.  Bead shopping is great fun.  But buying jewelry already made is cheaper and quicker, I just don’t like detailed puny work.  One of my best memories with my sisters-in-law is beading in a hotel room.  Missi just couldn’t get enough of it.

These days, to appease my creative needs, I have found a couple new activities.  I like to see how much laundry I can shove in my front loader at once,  look for shapes in the dirty dog-prints on my dining room floor, and attempt to arrange the rocks on our landscaping in a natural yet specific placement.   It is an exciting life I live.