Sunday night thoughts

I'm reading back over old posts and feeling so grateful.  I've always been a journal writer, but once I got married and had kids, my time for writing in my journal diminished drastically. There are many more days between my journal entries now. And, with the handicap of extremely bad horrible handwriting (all those who have ever been on the receiving end of a Christmas card or a SDBBE book can attest to this), I don't know what good all those journal entries will ever be.

But blogging means I get to type. I can type almost as fast as I can think (well, at least faster than I can write illegibly).  I can ensure that everyone can read it if I write it on the computer.  I think I'm feeling this way tonight because I got in touch with my old friend Cindy last week through email.  She emailed me back tonight.  I went back and read some posts that mentioned her, and I was grateful I had written them.  I read posts about my dad, like when he went in the nursing home, and his last Christmas at home.

I think that the world wants us to think that blogging is for bored people with too much time and too many pictures of their kids.  But I think it is valuable.  I think that every word and picture we post today will ensure that we have another memory to savor tomorrow.  Even my boring lists give help me remember those little details of every month that one day I will be grateful to have.  We aren't just wasting our time here.  Our words and our pictures and our rants and raves are important and are giving structure to our own personal histories.  Blogging has brought me close to so many loved one in my life. It has introduced me to strangers who are now important friends.  Sure, it's a form of voyeurism, but it's valuable voyeurism.  You don't really get to know someone through a catch-up email or even phone call.  You get to know someone through the little details of their lives, like knowing that they forgot to mail something or recieved a primary calling or hated a book or made a quilt.  Those little details that we read about on blogs help us stay active in our friends lives whether we live an house away, an hour away, or an ocean away.

Despite the lack of posts lately, I still love this blog.  I am grateful for the way that I can express myself through it.  And I'm grateful to those of you who read my unnecessary details and lists.  We are doing something good here, something worthwhile and valuable for now and for the future.

Randomalities

1. Ben cut his own hair a few weeks ago.  I resisted the urge to shave off all his hair, so he has some new shelf bangs halfway down his forehead.  Awesome.
2. In other Ben-related news, he dropped his 2.5 month old Nintendo DS in the toilet yesterday (he was cleaning the toilet with his DS in his pocket. At least it wasn't dirty toilet water, right?).  I freaked out.  Thank heaven for Google, which in my moment of crisis, sent me to the Nintendo website and instructed me to remove the battery pack and let it dry out for a while. Whew! I was ready to call it a lost cause. This morning, we put the battery back in and it powered up.  Who knew? 
3. I put in more than 40 extra hours last month at work.  Am relieved to say that Christmas is now officially paid off. Yay!
4. Thomas and Shane went to a Jazz game together last week.  Thomas was beside himself with excitement and spent all week wearing his Williams jersey and playing basketball.  Fun times.  They sat on the 10th row from the floor; awesome!
5. Thanks to trips to Ikea and Tai Pan, my house is ready for spring.  Now I just need to paint over the awful pink in my kitchen.  I told Shane one day last month that I'd have it done before May; he was really impressed with my timeframe (saracasm, people!)
6. With the closure of Kiddie Kandids, I attempted to take Ben's birthday pictures myself.  I don't think I did too badly.  I ended up taking some of Thomas since I never did school or birthday pictures last year.  I'm picking up the pictures in an hour; so excited!
7. I am glad to be back to blogging again.  And reading.  And watching tv without simultaneously formatting spreadsheets.  Yay for March!!

Our inability to keep pizza cutters.

Wednesday is pizza night.  I don't know quite how it happened, but nearly every Wednesday night finds me traveling to the Papa Johns for pizza and breadsticks.  This is an acceptable form of sustenance except for one thing:

We keep throwing away our pizza cutter with the pizza.

The first time it happened was last summer. One random Monday, we got pizza. I couldn't find the pizza cutter, and so on a hope and a prayer, I searched through the recycle bin for last week's pizza box. There it was. We laughed at our stupidity and were relieved that we had discovered our blunder on a Monday and not a Wednesday (which is garbage day.)

Well, our relief was short lived, because 2 weeks later, we threw away the pizza cutter again and didn't figure it out until Wednesday. You know, the night AFTER our recycle bin had been emptied.

A few months later, I noticed one of our knives was missing. Yep, we threw it away.  I held on until Christmas when I gave Shane another pizza cutter as one of his presents (he liked it, btw.)  I thought we had learned our lesson.

Except, guess what I couldn't find on Wednesday?  You guessed it.  We did it again.  How many times do we have to learn this lesson, I ask you?