Not to iPhone

Despite the fact that I think my laptop screen being the size of an iPhone screen is a sign, I've decided not to iPhone.  (Bugel call)

I've been on craigslist and I think I might be better off to get a phone from a private party and see if Travis will get me a laptop for my birthday.  ;-)

No, I just can't justify the cost per Rachael factor and I find it too hard to give up my cheap plan.  I know one of these days AT&T will say, "Look. lady, you live in the dark ages and we no longer wish to support your neanderthal way.  Either get yourself a smart phone with a data plan or start paying the going rate for your skin and bones plan.  $30/month just isn't gonna cut it anymore."

If any of you reading are from craigslist, have mercy on me and let me have the lowball price and I'll give you a shout out on my blog, which is worth...oh, nothing!  LOL

Pretty please with a charger on top?

To iPhone or Not to iPhone

I stand at the crossroads.

My poor husband is not such a poor husband anymore.  He's got a fancy, new iPhone.  The man who kept his free phone for 4 years regardless of the fact that he was eligible for a free upgrade now has an iPhone.  And he looks so darn cool with it.  I look over and I think, "Forget the cars, that phone is a total chick magnet!"

Now, here I stand with no cell phone because...well...I think we know that story.  I feel stuck because I have this really old wireless plan at $30/month and now when I get those mailers that try to entice me with a "free" upgrade, it says that I have to upgrade my plan, as well.  Same plan, new price.  That' $10 more per month.  Even I can do the Math and see that the little free phone they offer me will actually cost me $120 a year.  That's $240 over the life of the 2-year contract I have to sign.

And now if I want a smart phone, I MUST also get the $30/month data plan.   And I can't get the data plan without upgrading my plan to the new price.  So, that leaves me with a stupid phone (wouldn't that be what you call one that's not smart?) but I have to pay full price for it.  Uhhh..no.  That's a lot of money!  Or I can buy a prepaid phone, but that will be $100 bucks because I want bluetooth.

There's craigslist of course.  I looked, but there's the whole it-has-to-be-an AT&T phone and all that jazz.

Oh, and I can't get insurance...which we have figured out is actually worth the monthly price in my case...without (I'll bet you can guess) upgrading my plan.

You know, I say upgrading the plan, but really it's just upgrading the price.

Now, interestingly enough, my laptop is going out.  Over half of my monitor is now covered in a pretty plaid design and I have minimized this window to, oddly enought, about the size of an iPhone screen just so I can type this post.  The whole scrolling back and forth thing is really getting old.

So I have to wonder...

If I keep this laptop and don't buy another, would it pay to buy an iPhone? I want the iPhone.  Travis says that if I can keep a junky (his word, ,not mine) cell phone for 2 years without losing it then he'll feel justified in buying me a fancy phone.

Can I make it work?  A few salespeople out there are tying to make it so.  What should I buy?

Yes, boring post tonight.  I'm a little OCD about this cell phone business right now!

I Have a Confession to Make...about zits!

Zits don't bother me.

No, in fact, they rather fascinate me.  If it wasn't for the way they look, I might just pray for more zits.

I mean, the way they swell up, just like a cat about to pounce.  Like a fountain right before it sprays up like an explosion.  Or like (for my music friends) a C Major scale that starts at C, moves all the way up the keyboard, but stops at B with a fermata over it.  The C is begging, pleading to be played, just like a big, fat zit is sitting there, waiting to emerge like a baby from its mother's womb.

It's almost as painful, anyway.

I like to see them pop.  I do.  Even when it hurts.

And I don't mind popping other people's zits...if they would only let me.  (Family only!!!  Don't call me.)

But THIS ONE...

Ok, no.  This is just wrong.  I watched this video that a friend on Facebook posted and I almost had to run to the bathroom.  I can't post it because it was full of bad language and, well, call me what you'd like but I can't post something that uses God's name as a swear word.  No, I stand in awe of Him and His name is so powerful that I refuse to use it so carelessly.  That and it had the F bomb and potty language.  Kid-friendly site here.

Anyway, this video was 4 1/2 minutes of popping a zit.  Yes, it took that long!!!  And the zit doesn't open up at 2 minutes into the video or anything. No, it's like...at 15 seconds into the video.  The blood involved was about as much as a bad bloody nose.  The zit had quite a squirt to it.  I kid you not, sometimes it looked like brains coming out!!!

I think some alien squirrels that eat brains attacked this guy in his sleep, ate a portion of his brain and saved the rest for later by storing the rest of his brain under the skin of his back.  It is THAT bad!!!

A girl in the background said that it was the worst smell ever.  SMELL?!?  I didn't know that zits smell!

My fascination with zits might actually be over.

On second thought, maybe I'm only getting started...

You Mean, She Wasn't an Ornament?!?

Travis and I started dating when I was 17.  He thought I was 18, but what he didn't realize was that just because I had graduated high school, that didn't mean I was 18.  He was 23.  I have that whole story written already, but Travis said I have to wait until February to post it.  That will be fun.  Our first date, his proposal...good stuff!  I hope you feel sufficiently teased.

As I was saying, I was very young when we started dating.  His friends had already married by now and had a baby and one on the way.  We met up with them one night at her parents' house.  If I remember right, I had never been there before.  What I DO remember correctly is that I was nervous.

I was and am a city girl.  Born and raised.  Not that I've never dreamed of living in the country, but I don't really know much about it.  And I knew far less about being a rancher or a cowboy or any of that kind of cool stuff.

What I also knew was that cowboys and ranchers pretty much think that all city folk are stupid, wrong, and have no common sense.  Not that city slickers don't have their own set of stereotypes for country folk.  However, there were a few members of this family who really did think that city folk were stupid, wrong, and had no common sense.

Can we say REALLY nervous?!?  I was entering the home of people who were probably just waiting for me to say something stupid.  I felt it best to keep my mouth shut most of the time.  I didn't ask what a cattle guard was.  I didn't ask what part of the horse the bridle went on and I surely didn't ask what a bridle was in the first place!

Hey-at least I didn't ask who their cattle guard was!

So, there we are with our friends, sitting beside a comfy wood stove and a beautiful Christmas tree.  The sound of crickets chirping in the dark and the view of thousands of more stars than you'll ever see under city lights was mesmerizing.  If you're not careful, you'll start to dream of quilting and canning stuff.

I have always loved babies and our friends' baby was one of the most adorable babies I knew.  She had this happy head of curls that bounced when she walked and a smile that lit up the entire-and I do mean ENTIRE-room.  And boy could she talk and she didn't know a single stranger.  She was just so cute that I just had to play with her.

So, I talked to her, tickled her, then decided to pick her up.

I laid on the floor, reached out, picked her up, and began to swing her over my head.

It was all fun and games until I realized that she was beginning to go past my head and there was no way I could stop her.  Next thing I knew, she was all the way over, head first into the Christmas tree.

If only she hadn't cried, things might not have been so embarrassing.

If only she weren't the firstborn for our friends, it might have been funnier.

If only I wasn't a city girl, the whole thing might have been forgotten.

But no, she cried, my friend jumped up with all the urgency of a first-time mom, and there I sat, a city girl with nothing to say for myself.

I am happy to report that the baby wasn't hurt...too bad.

She is now a beautiful young lady who babysits our children.  She does a great job and it's only at Christmas time that I worry about my kids and whether or not it would be funny for her to exact revenge.  Her parents have threatened a few times.  I'm pretty sure they were joking.

So far, so good.

What Will They Say About Me at my Funeral?

There are three things people talk about after a funeral.

1.  How memorable the service was.  (Nice neutral term there for those of you who don't quite know what to say when you feel the service didn't accurately capture the person you loved.)
2.  How sad it is that the only family reunion your family has is at a funeral.
3.  What one would like to have at his/her own funeral.

Now that I've entertained the idea that serial killers could be reading my blog (this is where you laugh), I thought this would be a good time to pull this blog post up from the "drafts" section and put it in the "published" one.

So, dearly beloved, let me entertain the thought...what will they say about me at my funeral?

Family:
(crying...at least I hope there's crying.)  "Remember those nights at the dinner table?  She always served dinner with a generous portion of love.  No  matter what it was, she had us on her mind the whole time.  


"Wait-was that a good thing?  Remember the time she forgot the rice?  Or the time she served us salad with pancakes?  And what of the smoke alarm calling us to dinner?  Maybe she LIKED to see us running with hands over our ears and towels under our armpits, running to fan the smoke detectors."


"Yeah.  And remember when she was fasting?  Maybe she didn't eat because she knew what it was going to taste like!"


"No, that was just Mom."  


"Yeah, you're right.  Well, remember how much fun it was sometimes?  (One of my rule-bound children might say weird, but I think the other two would call it fun.)  Like when Dad went out of town we'd have pizza and she'd actually let us have ROOT BEER and then we'd have a burping contest, RIGHT THERE AT THE TABLE!!!??"  


Then another child would say, "Yeah, until Grandpa did it with us and then she quit.  She said it made her feel sick."


"Remember when she had us SING the prayer instead of SAY it?  That was...ummm...that was Mom, alright!"  


"Yeah!  And remember the time that we played that game where we had to decide which description fit Mom?  I still don't know why she didn't think, "grumpy as a bear," was a good one!"

Hopefully now they would be laughing.

Friends:
(crying...again, I hope someone is crying!)  "Wow.  I can't believe she's gone.  I don't know if we can talk about the "Rachael joke" the same ever again.  I mean, it seems distasteful to call every bad joke a "Rachael joke," now.  Man, she could say the non-funniest things!"


"Yes, but at least she was funny, even if she wasn't trying to be.  Remember the time she threw my baby into the Christmas tree?"  (Yes, it's true.)  


"Oh, yes!  That poor child has never looked at a Christmas tree the same.  What about the time she set off the fire alarm at school?  Remember when she fell off the stage at church...and fell on the drums at the school assembly...and fell, well, she fell a lot!"


"And who could forget when she...oh.  Uh, nevermind."

Blog Readers Who Don't Know Me in Real Life:
"Oh, my GOSH!  Who WAS this lady, anyway?  Reading it was fun, but she must have been dangerous to be around!  Scary.  By the way, are they going to place a gas pump in her casket?  And did they do her makeup with Sharpies?"

Ok.  This might have been a bit morbid, but I thought it would be fun to write and maybe a little fun to read.  I expect a few people might mention some of these stories one day, but the one thing I want said (take notes) is that I lived by the motto I saw on a page in high school about leadership...

"Brighten your own corner of the world."

I have never forgotten that and it is something I try to live each day.  I don't dream of changing the world.  I dream of having a greater influence than that by the mark I leave on people in my own little corner of the world.  Jesus put it well when He said, "Walk in the light as I am in the light."

And you...what will they say about you?  What do you want to be remembered for and what are you doing to live up to that?

Must...Get...New...Post...

It's Monday.  According to Google Mondays and Thursdays have the most traffic.

Like I said, it's Monday.  And do I have a post?  Does this count?

I'd love to sit here and finish one that I have in the making, but unfortunately I have been sick and have a pile...make that 2 piles...ok, 3 piles of dishes in my sink, on the counter, on my stove, and they are threatening to take over the kitchen table.  (Not that that's ever happened before...)

There's also this thing called reality and that is that I have one day off a week where my children are at school and I am not and this is when I need get the majority of my housework done.  Today happens to be the day.

So, let's hope I can (sniffle, sniffle) get into overdrive mode (*sound of blowing one's nose*) and (grabs another tissue) get my work done quickly.  I have a new post I'm dying to write.

If you subscribe to any feed or sign up as a follower, Google will let you know when it's done.  If you join the My Poor Husband Facebook page, I will let you know personally.

Teaser:  "What Will They Say About Me at My Funeral?"

Until then...