Anyway, Danielle asked me to come over to her place tomorrow afternoon and help her to fill out, address, and stamp the bridal shower invitations for her daughter’s bridal shower. She is getting married in July and they want to have the shower two weeks before the wedding.

The phone call got me to thinking about how long it has been since I’ve been involved in any way in the planning and/or preparation for a wedding. Or for that matter, even attended a wedding! To be perfectly honest, I think that the last time I was at a wedding was my very own wedding back eleven years ago! And prior to that it was probably back in 1992. Wow – that is a very long time between wedding ceremonies! For a moment I was starting to wonder why it was that it has been so long since I had gone to any weddings – should I start to do some serious soul searching about my worthiness as a friend, or what exactly is going on here.

Looking around at my friends and family, though, I realize that most of the people of my generation either have been married a long time, or have no intention of ever getting married. And our kids, well, they are just too busy having fun being single and pursuing their education and careers to even be considering getting married. Which I think is interesting, and wondering if this is a new trend nationwide, since most of these kids are already in their late twenties and up to their mid thirties. I think weddings just aren’t as important to people as they used to be. What do YOU think?

What’s even more disappointing is the fact that some of the people that go to the meetings seem to claim that they will give you a free offer of some kind, in order to drum up business for themselves, but when you contact them and ask them to do it, they don’t even call you back! For example, there is a guy there that is a home insulation contractor that goes every week and will stand up and tell people that his company will perform a free energy audit and he hands out business cards with the web page address of his company, saying that they have a list of energy saving solutions on their web site, but when I tell him that I want to schedule an audit for my house he never gets back to me! I have even gone to his web page and filled out the request form and they don’t get back to me! Is that any way to run a business?

Also on the property was a small recreational vehicle we called “the trailer.” It was pink, and it had a “real” living room, and two small bedrooms. Sometimes our parents would let us kids sleep in the trailer, sometimes we slept in the log cabin. I think that I preferred sleeping in the cabin because at least then I had my own bed. When we slept in the trailer I had to share a full size bed with my sister, and she was a restless sleeper that tossed and turned and kicked – a lot! Besides, when we slept in the trailer we could hear the parents talking and laughing and the noise made it impossible to fall asleep.

About twenty years ago my parents sold both the cabin, and the trailer. I really wished that they had let me buy the cabin from them. I liked the rustic feel and the relaxing frame of mind that I always felt when we were spending our summer days there. I don’t know if I will every get that same feeling anywhere else.

My favorite way to do that is to take an empty windowbox and put some peastone or gravel in the bottom of it, then take the purchased annuals (still in their flower pots) and set them inside the window box. Pack them as tightly as possible, and then fill in around the pots with cedar mulch. My grandmother taught me this method when I went up to the farm to visit her in the summertime, and every time I prepare the window boxes I am reminded of the good times I had with my grandparents on the farm. This method is quick and easy to do, and by swapping out the annuals as they fade I can keep the porch looking pretty for a very long time.

For example, this morning I saw a “fantastic deal” on this jumpsuit. Hopefully the photograph that I’m including will show up. I just can’t imagine how anyone in their right mind would find this jumpsuit appealing, and yet according to the website, the jumpsuit is sold out. I’m wondering if it was sold out because a lot of men that have no taste whatsoever thought that they would buy this as a Mother’s Day gift for their wife, hoping that the wife would be thrilled to pieces. I pray that my hubby has enough sense to never buy anything like this for me! The horizontal stripes on this would make my legs look so fat, and the entire rest of my body too! What do you think about this? Would YOU like to wear something like this?

You may think that I’m being a little bit crazy here, and to be honest I would normally have to agree with you. But when I saw these mailboxes all gussied up like that my mind wandered to memories of wonderful vacations that I had spent in luxurious surroundings. Thoughts of Norman Rockwell settings of a time and a place when life was less frenzied, and more serene. Odd, I know, but there it is!

Well, I came across this silly little toy and for some crazy reason I pulled it aside and put it beside my computer keyboard. Every now and then it catches my attention (it is bright yellow) and I stop and play with it for a couple of minutes. Then I think to myself “what a complete waste of time this is” and put it back down. I can’t decide whether to give it to a thrift store like Goodwill, put it in “the basement” or throw it away. Somehow the pack rat in me keeps whispering in my ear that I should create a toy chest of odds and ends like this so that if and when company comes over with some kids that get bored I can pull it out and let them play with it. I wonder if they would think it was totally lame or if they would like it. What do you think?

Back when I was a newlywed, my husband was taking classes to become a paramedic he brought home some special vials that had hearts on them, and a big heart shaped sticker to put on the refrigerator door. He told me that the idea was people that have medical conditions that emergency response personnel should know about where supposed to put information about that condition in the vials and put the vials in their freezer. The emergency response personnel were trained to look at the refrigerator door for that heart sticker and if they saw it that they would look in the freezer for that medical information. Part of the reasoning for this was that freezers are insulated and would resist burning in a house fire, so that would be a great place to keep something important.

From my point of view that’s a good idea, except that my refrigerator doors are always filled with magnets and shopping lists – I’m not sure that anyone would see a heart sticker on it! But that was back in the 1980′s and I don’t have any idea if the rescue people still hand those out or not. And my hubby at that time is now my ex-hubby and I’m not very inclined to call him up just to ask him about it, so I may never know.

The house that I had lived in before I was lucky enough to have been able to design my own kitchen and have all of the cabinets custom built by a master cabinet maker so I had everything exactly the way I wanted and designed it to be. So I have to admit that I was spoiled in that regard, having everything exactly the way I wanted. That’s really hard to compete with, but since we were planning to move about seven hundred miles away we really needed to get a different house.

From time to time I think about how I would redesign this kitchen if I had the chance, and I have to admit that I really don’t know any way to make it better, given the shape and size of the kitchen. Except for that dropped counter.

Not long ago a friend of mine was going to McDonald’s for lunch and asked me if I wanted anything. She told me that they sell large “sweet tea” for one dollar. So I said, sure, I’d like that, and I gave her a dollar ten (the extra ten for tax) and when she came back with my large cup of sweetened ice tea I was quite surprised exactly how yummy that was! Whenever I order sweet ice tea anywhere else it just is not as yummy. Even if I add tons of sugar, it just is not as yummy. I wish I knew exactly how they made it; I’d try to duplicate it at home! And I wish that they had it available in a sugar-substitute form so that it was zero calorie. I’m sure I could drink a lot of this stuff, but I hate to think of the weight I’ll gain if I do!

To make matters more complicated, I can’t seem to find a spice rack that actually holds most of the spices that I use. Spices come in such a variety of boxes and cans and bottles, and different sizes. I’m the kind of person that would like to have all of the spices lined up in alphabetical order so that I could find the spice that I need quickly and easily. But since they are all different sizes and shapes I can’t get them organized very well at all. I’ve heard that the world will beat a path to your door if you invent a better mouse-trap. Well, I would beat a path to the door of the person who created the perfect spice rack!