The Queen's Rambles

1) Erik wants a bowling birthday party! Whoo-hoo! I am going to book that sucker on Monday and call it good. For the longest time he wanted an Angry Birds party with real angry birds. I am not a party planner extraordinaire. I had no idea how to pull that off. I can’t have a party at my house due to space limitations and because I just plain ol’ don’t want to deal with that many people at my house or deal with hosting duties. It is well worth the money to pay someone else to set-up, clean up and entertain a bunch of children for a couple hours.

2) Mike hung up my new jewelry display thing and I LOVE it.

Unfortunately the colors are completely wrong in this picture. The flash is evil, I guess. If you’ve known me long, you know I am obsessed with the turquoise colored things. When I custom ordered it from Etsy I wasn’t thinking and said “ohhhhh! Turquoise! Gimme!” While I was waiting for it to arrive I suddenly realized that hanging a turquoise colored jewelry display on a turquoise wall (dark turquoise, even! Unlike the picture!) might be an awful idea. Happily, it looks just fine. It might have really popped in black or white, but I am quite pleased with how it turned out.

3) I can wear titanium earrings! I ordered some from Etsy and they don’t kill my ears. Only problem: my darling daughter wants to rip them straight from my lobes. Incredibly painful. You know what they should do to torture prisoners? Tie up the bad guys, then let a bunch of toddlers in the room. Give them books, drums, dolls. . . soon enough the bad guys will be so bruised and battered they’ll tell you anything. Toddlers know no limits.

Anyway! I can wear titanium earrings and my best friend just happens to be a jewelry maker who specializes in metal work. She says she will convert all my earrings to titanium for me! I went through everything and I only have a couple of pair that I really want converted. I am going to do a little earring shopping to bulk up my collection. I love earrings and have really missed wearing them these past 20 years.

4) I finally know what a budgie is! Not that this was a problem I knew I had, and obviously it could have been solved by a google search at any time in my long, illustrious internet career. I bet a dictionary would have helped pre-1997.

I’ve heard about these creatures for years in British and Australian literature. I thought maybe they were hedgehogs or a type of small dog. I had no idea they were parakeets. I posted a picture of my kids in a bird display with a caption that said they were feeding canaries. One of my Australian friends pointed out that they were budgies. My grandma had a couple of them when I was a kid and I enjoyed them, but I hated cleaning their cage. They hated my mother and raised a huge fuss whenever she would enter the room.

5) I put Mike in charge of buying Erik a robot building kit. Now the boy will not try to get me to help him build a robot out of an old fan, an old computer, my mismatched earrings and a couple of batteries. I think he needs to learn the basics before he goes McGyver on us. I even told Erik that we would contribute half if he had enough allowance to buy one. He had $20 so I think that should be plenty to get a starter kit, at least from looking at online stores. They are going to Radio Shack, so I hope they can find something in person and we don’t have to wait for shipping.

6) This past week I’ve stopped doing balls-to-the-walls cardio and started maintaining a heart rate of 120. Very difficult to do! Buuuuuut. . . this actually does make a difference as far as weight loss goes. The times I’ve lost weight have been the times that I’ve been walking a lot. I need to walk again, but it’s too damn hot and humid, so I’m going to try this method. One of my long time blog friends, Buzz a Roni was told to keep her heart rate at 120 for weight loss. Ding ding ding! I am going to do the same and hopefully that will help.

I just found some pics from the end of my college career. I’d been living in an apartment with a friend and we went out walking for an hour or two every night (sometimes in middle of the city at midnight, which was soooooooo stupid). We were also really poor and couldn’t afford many snacks or eating out, so I’m sure that helped. We basically ate a lot of chicken and ramen. The funny thing is, I thought I was the fattest person in the universe and hated myself. If I would have had hair the proper color (not brassy bottle blonde, ugh) and worn proper undergarments I wouldn’t have been half bad!

7) This isn’t a solved problem. This is a problem I need to solve. I desperately need new pajama pants and I can’t find any that suit me, not even online. Bah! I have very few requirements: a) not too ugly b) not fleece or flannel c) plus sized

You’d think I was asking for the moon. Maybe I’ll check Old Navy. The last pair of jammies that I really loved came from there, even though I generally hate ON. Too bad the whole butt ripped out of them in less than a year.

Found them at Old Navy! I’m on a roll today.