The Queen's Rambles

I’ve been avoiding all thoughts of my birthday. As they say, having a birthday is better than the alternative. Doesn’t mean I really want to face another year when I am starting to fall apart. I am having an extra special acne break out as well, possibly brought on by the anti-aging make-up I tried a few days ago. It was something called “smart shade.” I thought it sounded weird, but basically it started out as kind of a whitish-greyish-blueish goop and when I spread it around it matched my skin tone. It matched my red blotches as well, so that was not desirable.

Mike is always trying to get me a surprise gift and I am always guessing, but he won the battle this year. I had been so busy not thinking about my birthday that I didn’t have time to sleuth around. I ended up with a Kindle, a Kindle case and a big gift card to Amazon. I am looking forward to using it! I used to be a die-hard anti-e-reader kind of gal, but that was back in the days before they really had decent e-readers. I’m not sure what all the Kindle can do, but I’ve already ordered one book and am looking forward to figuring out if our library system does any sort of Kindle-friendly loans.

Our friends just moved into their brand new house out in the country. I am utterly green with jealously. Utterly. It is HUGE. I thought I was going to start crying when we pulled in. I want space! I want rooms! I want I want I want!

But I don’t want that house. It has some pretty serious problems so they are going to be dropping a lot of money into it. Plus, it has a lot of cosmetic issues that would drive me insane. All that space is amazing, but I am telling myself that the flaws of the house makes my little tiny townhouse look just fine. Plus, we love our neighborhood. They are out in the country with very few neighbors, but their closest neighbor has teenagers. They were out all day riding four-wheelers directly across the street. The sounds was starting to drive me a little batty.

Gotta get this green-eyed monster in check.

Completely unrelated, my mom wants me to help her buy a digital camera.

I think she would do just fine taking pictures with a digital camera. Who doesn’t do just fine?

But then what? How the heck am I going to get her to understand how to download them on to the computer, then upload them onto a website, then order them? And maybe even crop them a little? Just the thought of trying to explain any of that to her makes me want to hide in a deep, dark hole.

I know you can just take your card to Wal-Mart and use the Fuji machine to print off pics of everything on your card. I guess she could do that. It’s just not very smart or desirable. I bought her a digital frame a couple of years ago. I guess if I get her a giant memory card maybe she could just use the digital frame and forget about printing off pictures. I don’t know. They need an easy button. Actually, one of my cameras had an easy button but it still wasn’t as easy as dropping off your film and coming back in a few days to collect your pictures.

Speaking of pictures, Elsa is having her one year portraits done on Monday! I went on a shopping spree, looking specifically for a purple dress. You’d think that’d be easy to find, but not so much. I am not one of those anti-pink people. I quite enjoy a pink dressed baby girl. However, I do try to work with my children’s natural coloring and pink is not Elsa’s friend. I guess it’s the reddish hair? I don’t know, but she looks a lot better in lavender.

I haven’t done a whole lot of baby clothes shopping because I know I could blow my budget very easily and I’ve had a ton of hand me downs, but I went a little crazy this week. It was too much fun! I never had this much fun when shopping for Erik.

To try to keep myself in check, I made a rule that I couldn’t buy anything pink, orange, red or yellow. I ended up with several cute teal, apple green and purple outfits. I’ve been trying them on her one by one to see which really pops with her looks, but it has been difficult since she hates having her clothes changed. I can’t really dress her in the springy clothes when we are going somewhere because winter has risen from the grave and we’re supposed to get snow tonight. It’s down right nippy when we leave the house.

I suppose I need to plan some sort of a birthday party for her. I am so not a party planner, but Erik is dying to have a party for her. Do Catholics have a big to-do on Palm Sunday? I wanted to have it that Saturday, but now I have a baby shower to attend that I don’t want to miss. I have a very short guest list (mainly because I feel dumb and don’t want people to think I’m just asking for presents), but half of them are practicing Catholics. Will they be able to attend an afternoon (say 3 pm) birthday party on Palm Sunday? In my church Palm Sunday was special, but time wise it wasn’t anything beyond regular church hours.

Erik’s first birthday was celebrated in Oklahoma. We threw a paper tablecloth on the floor, gave him a mini-cake and a balloon and called it good.