here's to staying up until after 1:00am with kleenex and the perfect things to say

I pray that I can be half the mom that mine is.

One locomotive, two locomotive, three locomotive, four...

One of my favorite memories form my childhood is, and I'm not kidding, folks, watching Lamb Chop's Don't Wake Your Mom when I was sick. After Mom would set me up on the living room couch with a sippy cup of sprite, toast, all of the blankets and pillows from my bed, and Puffalump, she'd walk over to the television and insert the beloved VHS tape into the VCR. I was happy as a clam for a beautiful 45 minutes, singing along with Shari Lewis and the whole crew. Thanks to that video, I know how to roll my fingers, eat crackers like a slob, and count seconds in what is perhaps the most accurate manner without the use of a watch.

Happy moment of my week: Don't Wake Your Mom is available in parts on youtube [here]. I do expect you to take 45 minutes out of your day and enjoy yourself. So get to it, kids.

Shari: "Hush Puppy, in the time it takes to say 'One Locomotive,' a second ticks by!"
HP: "Shari, if I say 'One Locomotive,' a second has gone by?"
Shari: "Yes."
HP"So if I say 'One Second,' will a locomotive have gone by?"

miscellaneous thoughts from the night of june 1st

• Had the opportunity this afternoon to satisfy my urge to be crafty, and I must say, I am rather pleased with the results. Hoorah for finding use for my extra fabric scraps!

• Preparing to start book #2 of my summer’s To-Read list**. 15 books in 13 weeks (not including the PA summer book…and ignoring the fact that Chronicles of Narnia is actually seven books and not just one…and not accounting for the fact that I’ll probably want to read the other two books in Ted Dekker’s series…) So, that’s almost two books per week…I need to get crackin’.

• Counting my blessings (instead of sheep) and am very grateful that I have a job this summer as I watch so many friends struggling with their limited options. I am blessed to be employed at a place where work requires minimal thought and allows me to take as much time off as I want. So blessed.

• Finding myself to be a little--scratch that--unbelievably peeved that my lappy is already malfunctioning. Note to self: send Fitzgerald into Office Depot’s tech department ASAP.

• Missing all of my SAU friends. A lot. I’m so grateful that everyone lives within a 1-hr radius.

**Carrie’s To-Read List: Summer 2009

1. Castle in the Sky, Diana Wynne Jones
2. PS. I Love You, Cecelia Ahern
3. Black, Ted Dekker
4. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhyss
5. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith
6. Planet Narnia, Michael Ward
7. The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
8. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
9. The Awakening, Kate Chopin
10. Last of the Mohicans, James Fennimore Cooper
11. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
12. Babylon Revisited, F. Scott. Fitzgerald
13. The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
14. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
15. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James