Soccer weekends

I love the weekend because....

Well, why does anyone love the weekend? Don't we all love it for the same reasons? You can sleep in, you have no work obligations, you can relax at home. My kids always ask what's my favorite day of the week, and I always answer "Friday" because that's the point where you've got the whole weekend in front of you.

As much as I covet my weekends, they are slowly being stolen from me. For example, we were up at 6:00 am this morning - just like a weekday. I had to get the kids up and ready for Logan's 8:00 am soccer game. I personally think that 9:00 am should be the earliest that they schedule any games, but alas I am not part of soccer scheduling for RRSA.

As soon as Logan finished her game, we had to immediately load up and drive straight to Georgetown for Cameron's soccer game. She's in the league where they first start playing away games, and I'm not thrilled about it. Luckily, they're all really nearby, less than a 10 minute drive for any of them. But I'm still a little put out about having to go to Georgetown or Hutto - Pflugerville isn't a true away game, because we are blocks from their city limits, and that's where Luke goes to preschool.

Even though we finished Cameron's game by 11:00 am, we were still on the hook for Luke's game at 3:00 pm. Talk about a whole day built around soccer. Blech. It's still fun, even though I complain. BTW, we lost 2 games and had 1 tie today. Not exactly a stellar day on the pitch.

Did I mention that I did all of this running around by myself ? Cass is on a plane back from Tokyo right now. I would give him soccer duty all next week and weekend, but we are flying to Mississippi on Thursday. I won't really have any of next weekend to myself either.

The man knows fashion

Describe your favorite clothes.

I just ran through about a million writing prompts until I found one that really spoke to me. I'm not feeling very deep today, I'm rather superficial right now, so naturally talking about clothes jumped right out at me.

Today, with Cass out of the country and the kids at school AND a few of my projects behind me, I decided to make a trip to ye olde Outlet Mall. It's not that I need any more clothes, even though I just threw out about 75% of the stuff hanging in my closet. I just needed to walk and look and try on - my idea of a fun day.

Have you seen Tim Gunn's Guide to Style? He's got me hooked, and I've got it in my head that I've got to get the 10 essential items for a fashionable wardrobe. Here they are:

Tim Gunn's 10 Essential Items Every Woman Needs
• Basic black dress
• Trench coat
• Classic dress pants
• Classic white shirt
• Skirt
• Blazer
• Day dress
• Cashmere sweater
• Jeans
• A comfortable alternative to a sweatsuit

I'm guilty of rocking the mommy wardrobe. There are far too many days that I pull on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. I have at least gotten out of the habit of wearing capris or anything that resembles a sweat suit. But the jeans and t-shirt (whether it's casual or fancy) are my uniform.

I spent a good 2 hours in Banana Republic (outlet) today trying on some of their new fall stuff. I found the perfect day dress and/or sweatsuit alternative. I also got some classic dress pants (NOT black!), although they're the new wide-leg style, and I'm not sure I'm going to like it. I had loads of fun trying on stuff and really looking at it to see how it works on me.

As far as the list goes, I've got the classic black dress, classic dress pants, skirt, day dress, cashmere sweater, jeans, and sweatsuit alternative. I get a 70% on this test - not bad for Ms. Mommy Homemaker.

I've got a definite shoe problem now, though. If it isn't one thing, it's another.

Here lies the iMac Mini

Your computer has met an untimely death and you've been asked to say a few words in its honor. Write a eulogy for your computer, remembering the good times and the bad. You can post your response (500 words or fewer) here:

Cindy's iMac Mini crashed today. There were no tears, only a string of profanity. You see, Mr. iMac Mini wasn't exactly a beloved member of the family. He was but an experiment in the world of Apple computers - by a PC family.

He was mostly slow and frustrating, and Cindy didn't like any of the software he offered. He never even got a cute name like his predecessors - Bulldog, Indianola, et. al. He was just "that slow damn computer." If she had taken the time to name him, it would have been "Rainbow Wheel" for the lovely spinny rainbow wheel that popped up all. the. time. when he'd get stuck.

He will be replaced ASAP by a new PC - when Windows Vista is suitable for computer function.

People really eat this stuff?

Cass sent some pictures from Tokyo this morning. He and Stewart went to the Tsukiji fish market yesterday (or was it 2 days ago for them?), and they took lots of pictures of disgusting fish stuff. For anybody who wants to know why I have no desire to go to Japan - THIS is why. I'd starve to death before I ate anything out of the ocean.

They took movies, too, but I can't bring myself to watch them yet. It's usually a movie of a vat of squirming slimy stuff that just makes me want to hurl. :)

Here are some of the fish pictures....

Where am I?

Mmmm - just leave the sand right on there

Words escape me

WHAT is this?

Seriously?

Mwa!!!

Clutter

Last time Cass was out of town (a couple of weeks ago), I started a big project. I decided to make a list of the areas of our house that need to be decluttered and start tackling the list little by little. We've moved around a good bit and that's kept the clutter down, but since we've been in this particular house for 4+ years it's gotten pretty junky. For a while, I kept it pretty neat around here, but in the last year to 18 months, I haven't been so careful.

The first place I tackled was a linen closet located upstairs. This house, while beautiful, is woefully lacking in storage space. There are a few places that get piled with stuff because they're usually not visible - the upstairs linen closet, the laundry room, the closet in our bedroom. It's really easy to stick stuff in these places and close the door so nobody can see it. Sooo, I pulled everything out of the linen closet, sorted through it, and put back about 1/4 of it. The rest went into 4 garbage bags and out on the street. Ahhhhhh. There must have been 100 framed photographs in there. I took all the photos out of the frames, and tossed the frames. Curtains from 2 and 3 houses ago. Where does all this stuff come from?

Also on my list - the laundry room, the master bedroom closet, the garage (whose garage DOESN'T need to be cleaned??), the girls rooms (need a purging of the toys), the pantry, the coat closet, and the bathroom cabinets. I've also got to have the carpets upstairs cleaned and the tile floors in the kitchen cleaned and sealed.

This week, with Cass out of town again, I'm back at it. On Sunday, I threw out 10 (yes 10!!) bags of clothing and shoes from my side of the master bedroom closet. I swear, there was stuff in there that I wore back in high school. WHY was I hanging on to stuff like that? And the shoes, my God, the shoes! Lingerie that my MIL had given me on my wedding day (don't ask). I finished in there and turned my attention to the laundry room. I got 6 garbage bags of stuff out of there, and started installing a sink - the plumbing has been there, sticking out of the wall since we moved in, but we never got around to purchasing a sink to go there. My laundry room is tiny, but now you can get in there and breathe a little bit while doing laundry or whatever else you need to do in there.

That's where I am right now. I'm only about halfway through my List, and I feel a pretty big sense of accomplishment. Cass needs to book a trip every week!

Lost in Translation

Um, what do you suppose this means?

Location, location

If you could choose to live anywhere in the country, where would you live? Anywhere in the world, where would you live?

Interesting questions, those are, and they're coming up a lot in our household, because we will probably be moving sometime in the next 3-9 months. We've got a short list of places that are possibilities, but if we had complete freedom to choose, where would we go?

Within the United States, I'm not sure. I think we could be happy pretty much anywhere we lived - as long as it was a fair-sized city, in the neighborhood of 1 million people or more. Anything less, and it feels too small for me. A few years ago, we were in Jackson for a friend's wedding. We wanted to buy the bride and groom a Tivo as a wedding gift, so we went to the Best Buy to pick one up. When we got to the section with the Tivos, we discovered that the only Tivo they had on the shelf did not have a remote with it for some reason. The Tivo remote is very, VERY important, so we said we'd pass on that one - and asked where was another Best Buy for us to go check. The Best Buy employee gave us a funny look and replied, "Birmingham." Yikes. In Round Rock alone, we have at least 2 Best Buys that I know of, and probably 10 or more in Austin. Lots of choices are important to me. Medical services, financial services, school options, shopping, entertainment - I like to have a lot of stuff to choose from.

If I could live anywhere in the world, I'd start in London. No surprise there for anyone who knows me. I've spent a total of about 10 weeks there so far, and I've only scratched the surface for what London has to offer. I like the feel of the city, the culture there, the European political environment. I still don't get the monarchy part of the constitutional monarchy they have, but I guess you need someone for all those red tops to write about. I also think I'd make an exception to my fair-sized city rule to live elsewhere in England. Just about every place in that country is so old and historical for one reason or another - it's just completely interesting to me.

So, we'll see where this new journey takes us. As much as I've loved living in Austin, it's exciting to consider new places to live. But ask me how excited I am when the moving trucks arrive. LOL!