Tomorrow my husband starts getting paychecks again. (Cue the Hallelujah Chorus now!) We’ve managed to scrape by, pay all of our bills and put very little on the credit card. And amazingly enough, we still have money in the bank. An itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow-polka-dotted amount of money, but still, it’s there, and it is actual money….
I have a somewhat reliable system for rating books over on Goodreads. If I really hated it, I give it one star. If it was okay, I give it two stars. If I really liked the book, it probably got three stars. If I loved it, stayed up all night reading it and couldn’t put…
The other day, just after learning that we would not be receiving any paychecks for the entire summer, my husband and I ran a couple errands before the girls came home from school. One of those errands was to go to Sears and check out lawn mowers. I know that might sound a little hypocritical,…
I love how ever since Elder Bednar gave that talk in General Conference, it’s just part of the vernacular. I’m trying to do too many things at once. I tend to do this in my life. And then I become overwhelmed and go to bed. Anyway, today I’m trying to finish painting my bathroom. I…
We went to Stake Conference in Green Bay this weekend. And, because Green Bay is a 4 hour drive from my house, making our jaunt to Stake Conference a mere eight hours of total driving time, that makes me just exactly like the pioneers. To be honest, I had a pretty bad attitude about the…
A few months ago I was listening to NPR while driving, as I often do, and I heard something that I have been mulling over ever since. It was on All Things Considered, and they were talking about an artist whose name I have now forgotten. The artist had said that something that truly annoyed…
I thought long and hard about what my theme for 2009 should be. I mentioned before that the thought had crossed my mind to choose a scripture, so most of my thinking was turned toward my favorite verses and the things I hope to accomplish this year. I have ADHD and I struggle with organization….
On Tuesday, we received some bad news. It seems the state legislature has given some pretty big budget cuts to all state universities. In this economy, such things are to be expected. We’ve known about the cuts for quite a while, and hoped that the music department would somehow escape the consequences because they didn’t…
I received my class load for the university today. 4 students, 2 of which are taking hour long lessons, so it’s really like having 6 students. And it was like I could breathe a great big sigh of relief. Last semester, the university lowered my husband’s pay and almost cut me because they had hired…
Eternity has always been a concept that is a bit difficult for me to comprehend. I pretty much am okay with the part about there being no ending. Seems everything has to go on forever in one way or another. But I do find the “no beginning” part a little disconcerting. When I was a…
Every year at Christmas time, as I am trying to “balance the budget,” I begin to reflect on the many blessings we have received in the past year. It never fails that I can see that the windows of heaven have truly been pouring down upon us due to our commitment to paying tithing. In…
My oldest daughter had an eye appointment last week and it turns out she really needed glasses. Her eyes are almost as bad as her dad’s already, and well…she has blind me for a mother. She wasn’t so excited about the prospect of getting glasses until she saw the box of children’s frames that she…