Tales from a Phobic

Do you want to hear the scariest stories ever? Well, do you? It seems fitting with the chilling holiday this weekend. By the way, I don't like Halloween. It's dark and scary and kids ask for candy from strangers. Just look at the kind of movies that come out this time of year. Frightening.

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I had a frightening experience once. The most terrifying of my LIFE! No, it wasn't when I married KT. I know what you're thinking. No it was when I awoke in the middle of the night to have a spider crawling on my face. No joke! I am truly afraid of creepy, crawly spiders. I don't know what it is, maybe it is my mom's influence. Thanks mom! But I woke to a tickling on my face. When I reached up to scratch it, it was a spider that I quickly pinched between my fingers, shot out of bed and ran screaming to the bathroom where I promptly flushed it down the toilet. Let's just say I lost it. I couldn't sleep in my bed for several nights after that. Talk about paranoid!

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I am also afraid of slithery, slimy snakes. I can handle a toad or frog. For crying out loud, I married one. But, snakes...oh dear God...My chest is getting tight just thinking of it. I can hardly walk through the snake house at the zoo. When I was in Oregon recently, Ladybug had a run in with a snake. Gratefully, I had run back to the RV for my sunglasses. I missed the whole episode. I might have made the situation worse with my screaming and hyperventilating. Ladybug and my mom were taking the nature trail to the beach. A little snake wrapped itself around her sneaker while she looked at my mom for help in what to do. Lifting her foot the thing slithered away. It was really just an instant, but if I had been there I probably would have caused her to be bitten or something horrendous.  We don't even know if it was poisonous.  Needless to say, if I had seen it I would have been finding an alternate route to the beach even if it meant climbing down a cliff or something. 

I'm just saying there are somethings more terrifying than others.

Light bulb Moments

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Amidst a brain fog of literary blocks, I make my way to the gym. Something happens while I am on the treadmill. All the oxygen and blood flowing through my brain seems to sweep out the cobwebs to make room for an influx of ideas. It is then that I get in my best thinking. A continuous flow of ideas leaves me overwhelmed and perplexed with what to do with them. It's not like I can whip out my handy dandy notebook and take notes and jot ideas...Not while running, I can't even sip water and run, I don't want to get thrown off of that machine. (I've seen that happen to someone once, it wasn't pretty.) My quandary is then trying to make a mental note of said ideas so that I won't forget later.

When you're 41, it's easy to forget...But at least I'm running again.... 

Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner

I'm a winner! Don't you just love words of affirmation? Well, I am a winner in the literal sense. Being the contest junkie that I am, I was bound to win something sooner or later. I actually have won a bunch in the past, just not the lotto. Bummer!

I wanted to give some props to a couple of websites that drew my name for prizes over the past year...Thanks!

 Better Homes & Gardens Pots & Pans

From Our Best Bites

a custom basket weave pillow made by Marie's Cozy Corner

From Everyday Mom Ideas

Pocket Full of Posies Meal Planning from

Fabulessly Frugal

Soap made by Messes and Mud Pies 

Kristina at Pulsipher Predilections

Laziness and Fall

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I know how I have mentioned before my love of running and yoga. It's what sustains me and makes me feel alive. Come fall, though, my body wants to hibernate and nest inside my comfy, cozy home while the sun sets earlier and earlier. I have become complacent with my exercise and thus a pesky 7 pounds have added back on to my mere 5'3" frame. 7 pounds people! I guess I need to start wearing this little guy again.  I love him!

It is ironic...I become stressed in the early fall when school starts, and I let things go. The VERY things that help keep me sane and clear and stress free. KT drug me back to the gym last week. Almost kicking and screaming, I might add. I didn't want to go...But, I am glad I did.

Once I get back into the habit, I crave it. My body and brain need it, and my blogging gets better and more frequent, too. 

Ta ta my peeps...I'm off to the gym °Ü°

A Kept Woman

1995

Several years ago, like too many to count, I was watching a talk show...I used to watch them while folding laundry or making cookies or any number of mundane home jobs that sometimes seem boring in and of themselves. The talk shows helped keep me entertained. But, this one day, I saw the mother of all talk shows, and I have never watched one again. The people on the show were totally dogging on the stay at home mom. Saying how they didn't carry their weight in a marriage, we were lazy and someone even had the audacity to compare a stay at home mom to a "kept woman". Are you kidding me? Isn't a kept woman someone who doesn't do a dang thing? Someone who lays around eating bonbons and is there for her husbands every sexual whim? Like I need to be paid for sex! Not me! Nope...This show was totally demeaning, and I actually let it get to me for a while. But, then I remembered my job as a stay at home mom was akin to a sacred calling.

I LOVED being a stay at home mom. I worked hard, too! My home was always clean, the kids were happy and KT always had a dinner to come home to even if at times it was mac n cheese from a box. I felt good about my accomplishments throughout the day. KT used to have people ask him what his wife did, after he told them I was a stay at home mom, it was like I was suddenly not interesting anymore. "Oh," they would say. Bless his heart, I love him for this, he would tell them "Well, she probably works harder than me most days." Fo sho!

Five years ago I went back to work. The kids were all going to be in school, and I was just darn afraid of being home by myself after all those years. I think I was afraid I would become that bonbon eating kept woman. But you know what? I now long for the days of staying home. Even if I only work part time, they were days of far less stress and a far less stressed wife makes for a happier husband. I'm just sayin'. But it's not so easy to just stay home anymore. We've become accustomed to the extra money. I have a son in college right now and another who is a senior in high school. So, really, staying home again is not in the near future. I guess I just long for the days of being a "kept woman" again...Those days of more simplicity...