Female in Motion

Okay, so last week I told you about the bald spot on the roof...well, the insurance adjuster said the whole thing is a mess, with wind and hail damage. The upshot is we're getting a new roof. Great, now my new hobby is finding reputable roofers and getting estimates. But wait, there's more! That's right. My washer was acting up last week. The Sears guy came today and thought it was just a clogged drain line. Nope, a bearing has gone out and it'll be 750 smackeroonies to fix. Yeah...so we're buying a new one. Dang! I loved that washer! If you haven't heard before, I have a bit of a laundry fixation. I love that clean smell, getting stains out, even the folding. I have been denied that pleasure for an entire week, and now I have to go out and look for a new one. I hate to say the "L" word, but The Hubster needs clean drawers! *** Arkiepoopoo was last weekend. Or, for the uninitiated, Arkalalah. The Hubster dubbed this nickname for the annual Ark City fes...

Typical Sunday morning. Coffee, shower, and a mad dash to the car. Yesterday was a little bit different, though. As the car exited the garage, we saw a few shingles laying on the ground. Our roof has a bald spot! All the high winds we've had lately have done a number on our roof. Long story short, the insurance man is coming over this week to take a look. As long as it is fixed by Christmas, I'm good. I don't want those eight tiny reindeer coming through the ceiling on Christmas Eve! *** I have Christmas on the brain, already. I am researching short skits for our Sunday School kids to do this year. We have a small congregation, only 40 on Sundays. (Quality, not quantity!) Our kids do like to have a small Christmas program, though, so I'm in charge of the "skit quest." Small, but meaningful. *** Okay, that's it! When it rains, it pours. I just went downstairs to check on the laundry, and my washer has bit the dust. Ugh! The floor is covered in a thin layer ...

It was bound to happen. After two years of faithful service, it was just too much stress. What was I thinking shoving in four or five sheets at a time, not to mention plastic cards and DVDs? The poor old thing finally gave out. My paper shredder died last week. I could hear it laboring...coughing even, grinding slower and slower. I guess I just asked too much. When you run a business, you have to do a lot of shredding. Especially in our business, dealing with Medicaid numbers, everything is confidential. Most of our paperwork must be destroyed, thus the need for a hard-working shredder. The old one was the "executive" model from Staples, guaranteed to shred 20 sheets at a time. (I never got it to shred more than five sheets!) It had a lousy trash bin, too. Side-loaded and always dropped paper shreds all over the office floor when I emptied it. Ugh! I think the new shredder is going to be much more of a workhorse. It shreds 12 sheets at a time and has bin full and overheat lig...

My dad liked sunsets...a lot. He tried to photograph one everywhere he traveled. I am blessed to have a few of his pictures in my home. Because of his interest in sunsets, I have grown to love them, too. I am a collector of sunsets, like my father. *** Tonight, I attended the Ark City Middle School fall vocal music concert. Two of my Sunday School students are in the choirs, Brittany Guevera and Alexis Coldwell. One of my friends from A Capella Choir at Southwestern College is their conductor, Nancy Eis. The groups sang some show tunes, patriotic tunes, and a little Aretha thrown in for flavor! It was great! *** Speaking of music, have you noticed that cleaning your house to music makes it go much faster? My sisters and I used to listen to KEYN radio when we cleaned the house on Saturday mornings. I guess it just stuck with me, because now I do the same thing. I listen to Motown, or something jazzy, put my hair in a ponytail, and go to town with the vacuum and the scrub brush. It is po...

It had to be done. I put it off as long as I could. Actually, I put it off a lot longer than I should. This morning, I cleaned out my desk drawer. Before I go off to join the Ernest Hemingway fan club, let me elaborate. Sorry, the Ernest Hemingway crack is a bit of a stretch. Hemingway is an author I can't stand. He writes in painfully bare bits of sentences. It drives me crazy! Give me some color, for Pete's sake! As you may know, I'm a bit of a neat freak, except for my desk. That drawer was appalling! In addition to 18 errant rubber bands, four M & M's, a petrified Reese's peanut butter cup and receipts for the last four years, I also found weekly data entry totals dating back to 2000. Yup, it was about time I had a good clearing out. *** I found a really cool website last week, it's www.postit.com. The delightful world of Post-It notes. My daughters call me the Post-It Queen, so I was positively pleased as punch with this primo site. There are lots of ne...

Every once in a while, something comes along and...blammo! You get it right between the eyes. The Hubster and I watched a PBS show 21 years ago, and haven't been able to get it out of our minds ever since. "True West" is a Sam Shepard play that was shown on PBS ONCE in 1983. I don't remember if it was Masterpiece Theater or Great Performances. It starred a much younger John Malkovich and Gary Sinise, as adult brothers who spend the weekend at their mother's home. The play is categorized as a dramatic comedy. In other words, it's a real slice of life! The play is full of sibling rivalry, laughs, arguments and lots of toast. (Inside joke!) Set in their mother's kitchen, the boys spend a weekend trying to work through all their childhood baggage. It might work, if they don't kill each other first. Although it rarely happens, The Hubster laughed himself silly throughout this play. He hardly ever finds anything that funny. Since we talked so much about it ...

Last Friday, The Hubster and I went to Wichita to celebrate the September birthdays in our family. There are three...well, actually, there are two "human" birthdays and one "feline" birthday. Ivan is my daughter, Rachel's cat, and my "grandcat." He will be two years old tomorrow. Yeah, I know, I'm a crazy old cat lady! We had dinner at Sumo, a teppanyaki restaurant on the east side. Noisy, but great food. The Hubster and I were joined by our daughters, Sarah and Rachel, and their fellas, Derek and Drew. It takes a lot of engineering to get us all together, so I loved every minute of it. After the meal, we saw a so-so movie at the 13th Street Warren, and then went back to Rachel's hotel to open gifts. Drew's birthday was on Saturday, so he got to open his presents first. He got a new laser printer and a snazzy watch. I got Ivan his-and-hers Halloween costumes. His "sister" Cookie is going to love hers! (Bride and groom.) The Hubste...