That’s what I am, yes I am. I’m at conference and it’s nearing the end of the first day and I. am. wiped. out. I’m getting sleepy and a bit headachey and my rump (eep!) is sore. LOL I’m no good, I tell ya, I’m just no good. I think the last event of this nature I attended was the Texas PTA Summer Conference. And boy, I tell ya - that one really wore me out! I got a GIANT migraine that first day. So in the headache department - I’m actually doing pretty well! Yea!

It’s a bit sad to even mention the conference name in this whiny and wimpy post, but, I guess I have to tell ya. I’m at WordCamp Dallas. I’ve wanted to go to a WordCamp for a long time and the times and locations just haven’t worked out for me until now. This year, the conference came right at the end of my summer, month-long trip home to Dallas. I was so excited when I saw the dates for this year’s conference. And the super cool thing is that I’m not only getting to fly home, instead of drive - I’m also getting an extra week here in town all by myself. I’ll miss Mark and the kids and Puppy, but, it will be a nice week - I’ll get the family by myself - won’t have to share them with the kids or Mark. And I’m sure my mom and my sister-in-law and I will have some good girl time together. And I’m hoping I can get some work done around the house for my mom and if I have time, I’d even like to get over to my brother’s house and do some cleaning for them. My kids have been staying there the whole time while Mark and I stay at my mom’s - so I’m sure the kids have done some damage to the state of cleanliness my brother normally enjoys. LOL

I’m such a wimp, I swear. It’s silly, really - I’m just not used to activities all day long. How pathetic. Yeah well, that’s just the way it is. I work at home and I have a inky winky bit of laziness in my chemical makeup. But just a tiny bit. Just telling ya’ll how freakin’ tired I am is actually helping, to tell you the truth! Ha! I’m listening to a guy named Chris Silver Smith right now - what a cool name, eh? And he’s telling all about using images online - cool stuff, really. And you guys have helped me return to a state of listenableness. Thank you.

The image included with this post via Zemanta (thank you Zemanta!) reminds me of the Welcome Sign on I-20 - in front of which I desperately wanted to take a pic of the kids when we drove in, but, was not able to do so. I was so bummed. I really would love a pic of the kids in front of that sign to frame and hang up in my office. I told them maybe we can get someone to do some photoshopping for us.

And you know what else is funny? When we drove across the state line, I realized that I wanted to grab up all of the TEXAS tourist crap that I could and take it home with me! Haha! Like - take Texas home in a box with me - to make me feel better! LOL Good GAWD, I’m gonna be homesick when we get home!!!

And let me tell you - there is an AWESOME degree program that I learned about at UTD yesterday that I’d LOVE to move home and enroll in! It’s such a brainiac school, though - I seriously doubt I’d ever get in. But you never know…..

Ok, I’m gonna just go listen to this groovy guy now. Thanks for listening and making me feel better. You guys are the bomb diggity!!!

Date: Sunday, June 14, 2009, 5:59 PM

LOST TODAY, 6/14/09, from North Dallas

MOZART: small sable and white male Sheltie, recently here from OK with other Shelties after owner/breeder killed in crash. Got away from foster home this afternoon at Coit/Arapaho/Meandering Way area in North Dallas . He is very sweet. He has no idea what traffic is, we don’t know if he will go to someone, more shy and underexperienced than anything. Has on collar and Sheltie Rescue tags, as well at vet rabies tag from Pet Medical Center in Frisco.

Any information or sightings: call our 24 hour line — 972-994-7848.

VERY WORRIED! Thanks for any help!

Becky Ramsey

DFW Sheltie Rescue

STOP IT!! …AND FOCUS!!

So I thought I’d just share this cool news with you that I just heard about this morning from Shawn Collins over at Affiliate (Tip). Facebook is finally going to give us custom URL’s for our profiles! I think this is super cool and I can’t wait! Read this post on his blog all about it: Vanity URLs on Facebook Starting This Saturday Then subscribe to his blog, because, I learn all kinds of good stuff from him!

Dear readers, I give you, “His Cheeseburger”

I’ll have to post my favorite song of theirs one day, too! I love, love, love, love that song! Completely totally love it. I love it so much, that it didn’t even have to have come from the Veggies! Anyone could have put it out - like maybe Sesame Street, or Dragontales, or heck, even Paul Simon (one of my all time faves, so that’s probably not fair). But I just love this song so uber doober much. (And my kids think I need to stop saying uber doober. They think it’s really dumb. I like it. Hrmph.)

What do you think my favorite Veggie Tales song is?

What is your favorite Veggie Tales song?

And a couple of links I want to remember:
http://www.onlive.com/
http://www.mova.com/
http://onlivefans.com/onlive/
http://onlivefans.com/index.php
http://twitter.com/OnliveFans_com

I met this super cool dude on Twitter named John Raser - or @johnraser. John is a professional competitive golfer. (Not sure I said that right, but, I know he’s pro and I know he still competes) Anyway - his blog is awesome - it’s called Go Speed Raser! Man, that brings back memories - my brother, David, absofreakinlutely loved that darned show!

John also represents a cool new energy drink company, BluFrog. And he decided to have a Friday the 13th Twitter BluFrog contest - and I won!

Thank you so much, John!! We are loving our BluFrog - we are definitely ‘Feeling the Frog’!!!

See, Ted wanted to have a photo gallery on his blog of all of his readers that he’s met. Only, that would not really represent all of the readers of his blog - so he decided to just send himself to us - and that way he could have pictures with all of us! Ted’s been excited seeing all of the places that he’s ‘been’. It’s been pretty darn funny!

And when Ted came here, to Northeast Alabama, he decided he’d like to go to band class with some local sixth graders, my Sammie-girl included!

The first picture is Sammie in the car - practicing “The Ted”. Oh no, you can’t just do “The Ted”! It’s a very specialized technique that takes some practice! Ha!

The other two pictures are of Sammie and one of her best buds, Lacy - and you can see that Ted just decided to come flying right out of their instruments! He was a high C out of the Sammie’s trumpet and a low B out of Lacy’s trombone! Yessir, yessir, let it be known - Ted Murphy makes his own music! Ha!

Juke Box Hero

So where I’m going with all of this hullaballoo - and how we get to my ‘Ultimate Wimpiness’ - is that for some time now I knew I would have a ‘Turning 40′ goal. In fact, I knew the year I turned 30. One of my best friends at the time, a super duper cool chick named Debbie, just happened to be ten years older than I. And she had a ‘Turning 40′ goal. And I just thought that was a really cool thing to do. Her goal was to run a mile, as she had been very busy with child-rearing and homeschooling and had not been running in quite some time. She made it - ahead of time, and ran longer than a mile. I was so proud of her and so uber impressed.

And at that time, I decided that my goal would be….

What the hell is that, you say? Well, let me see if YouTube can just help us out with that one a little bit…

Ok, I found one, here we go:

That is a round-off flip-flop - or a round-off back handspring. It won’t take me long at all to work up to a front handspring, but, the back handspring will be another story. I’m not exactly sure when the last time I actually did one was. I know I took an adult gymnastics class after Shawn was born, but, I’m thinking I’ve done one more recently than that, as well. That could just be my ‘painting the picture’ prettier for myself, though, if you know what I mean. So yeah - I definitely did one in November 1994. LOL Maybe since then, too - but, who knows….

My intentions (darn those things!) were to begin ‘training’ on the day I turned 39. I think that slipped my mind. I didn’t start until two days later. And I was going to start back up with Sparkpeople.com and take baby steps back toward my good weight loss habits of last year. And I thought - ha! I thought I could at least do a few push-ups every day. See, I want to start working my way up in push-ups and then move on to handstand push-ups - because, those are what really give you power and insure you don’t break your freaking neck when flip-flopping over!

I’ve disappointedly discovered, however, that I’m a horrible, horrible wimp. Haha! I did pushups, situps, and what I call ’supermans’ (and Sparkpeople calls back extensions) on Sunday. I knew my stomach muscles were hurting after that first day and I figured that was from the situps. Well, guess what? I set out to exercise on Monday and started with the pushups - and OH. MY. GAWD. My stomach muscles HURT. SO. BADLY. that I could barely do them. I didn’t even think about the fact that you use your stomach muscles in keeping your back straight during the pushups! And people, I’m only doing FIVE!!!! I did them anyway, and did the other things, as well as some stretching and do you know what????

I actually had trouble sleeping last night, my stomach was so sore! It kept waking me up! What the heck????

I think that means every day, at least starting out here, is not going to be a reality in the ol’ pushups department. What a freaking wimp!! I did two today! *shakes head*

I am definitely going to do something at least - every day. Even if it’s the tiniest little thing - just to keep my mind in the mode of exercising/getting healthy. I’ve actually put back on twelve pounds recently - after my forty pound weight loss last year. Wah! I need to change my ‘weight loss ticker’ on Sparkpeople.com and I haven’t done it yet. I just can’t bring myself to change it.

In conclusion - I turned 39. 39 sounds pretty cool. I’m gonna be 40 next year. (No shit?) And by that time I want to do a round-off flip-flop. I’m doing pushups. They hurt like hell. I got waaaaay off track on my weight loss journey. I’m getting back on track. And that’s that.

They know me, they listen to me, they understand me. They may turn their hormonal noses up at me, they may laugh at my ‘different’ ways, they may sometimes mock me. But under all that teenage angsty goofiness - they are hearing my messages loud and clear. What I’m about, what I believe, what I want for them - and the world. *cue high, prissy voice*

“I wish for world peace.”

Yes, that’s me - Miss America. Bwahahahahahahaha! Not. even. close. But I am out there, eccentric, and foofy. No, not foofy. Who knows - I am what I am - whatever that is. And it seems that my kids ‘get it’. Cool.

So check it out, lemme tell ya all the cool stuff they got for me.


~*~Sammie~*~ got me a gorgeous dragonfly necklace that she and I had seen at the store a few weeks ago. She remembered how much I liked it. I’ve been obsessed with dragonflies since the movie, Dragonfly, which I am also obsessed with - I don’t think I will ever get sick of watching that movie! Sammie likes to watch it with me some, but, she really likes to watch the end of it with me, because, she knows that no matter what - I’m going to bawl like a baby! As hard as I try not to - I just can’t help it. She thinks it’s hysterical. Rotten kid. Heh.

She also got me a dry erase calendar with extra dry erase markers. She knows I’m always looking for a better calendar to keep track of all of the millions of things the three of them have going on. And she said, “Mom, so you can save the trees.” Love that girl!

(Aside: You know, I never blogged about the awesome coffee table book about trees Mark bought me several years ago - I will definitely have to do that!)

~*~Shawn~*~ got me a really cool plant to have on my desk. We both had trouble pronouncing the name of it - it was funny. But I’m so happy to have one right on my desk - that is awesome! I have one other one in here - but, it’s huge, so it’s on the floor in front of the window. It’s my “Rosco/Tracy plant” - it’s very special to me, too. What a thoughtful gift from Shawn, though - love it!

The other thing Shawn got me is totally awesome and I have to say I’m rather surprised that one could be found for purchase in a small town in Alabama! It is a new squirrel feeder! Yea!!! I’m so excited! I love squirrels and I love having feeders for them! This will be my third one. I still have the other two, but, the first one is actually pretty eaten up by the squirrels themselves! LOL And the other one is a handmade one that is cool because a neighbor made it for me (he was a squirrel-lover, too) and that was sweet, but, it’s pretty ….uh….bland, you could say. This one Shawn bought is made from cedar and it is so nice. I’m hoping Mark will build a doohickey-post-thing on which I could put it right outside my office window. That would be very cool.

(And I just know the first time the family comes over, I’m gonna catch crap for it. I don’t care - let them spout off all they want. I like squirrels and they are very cool creatures.)

~*~Patrick~*~ made me a homemade card with a big butterfly inside it - I love butterflies! He also got me a keychain, not just any keychain - nope. It is a heart with a peace sign in the middle of it! Awesome! And I swear to you, just yesterday I was thinking that I would like a new keychain to add to my mess of keys and stuff! How cool is that?!

He also got me the most incredibly awesome antique hummingbird feeder that was ever made!!!! It is so cool! It’s made out of this green glass - like a soda bottle hanging upside down and it is so pretty!! I told him it’s so pretty that I almost don’t want to put it outside, because, I wanna just look at it! LOL!

He also got me a gigantonormous bag of squirrel seeds! Super cool!

Now do these kids ROCK or what!!!!!

Mark - KING of them all, my super sweet old man! ….is going to get me a new recliner!!!! Wooohoooo! Thank goodness - I haven’t had a recliner since I had to give up my last one in 2004. I cannnnnot wait! And for today - he got me some Turtle candies - YUMMMMMMMM…… and a musical card that has a Celine Dion song in it. (Celine Dion is uber important to me!)

What a SWEET family! Treating me all uber doober special on my birthday! They must be practicing up right for next year, when they may have to call the men in white coats to take me away! Ha!