My new favorite team!

I was doing a little Labor Day shopping today and decided to stop in Chick-Fil-A for lunch. I waited until almost 2:00 and it was so crowded. I walk up to order the 3 strip meal and the server tells me they are giving away strips today. No wonder it was crowded. The deal was you were to wear a jersey from your favorite team and you could get free a three piece chicken strip.

I did not have a team jersey on. I don't have any jersey's or t-shirts either. I don't usually wear a t-shirt. It is not my best look. I just had a plain orange shirt on. But I still got the free strips.

My baby boy, Jamey, has decided after bouncing from college to college that he will try out for the football team at his current school - Louisiana College. It is a small Baptist college located in Pineville, Louisiana. Jamey is not a big fellow but he works hard on his muscles, he runs fast and he has a lot of heart. In high school he always extended his hand to help the opposing player he just ran over up off the ground. I just loved to see him do that. When Jamey was 7 or 8 he played football in the little league. The coach had them line up for drills before the game. I confess I was a hoovering mother and was standing right there while they did the drills. Jamey lined up across from the biggest boy on the team. This boy was so big they almost made him play with the next age group. I was a little concerned about this big boy and I told Jamey to keep his head down. The coach told them to go and Jamey shot off the line and buried his helmet in the big boy's numbers and lifted him off his feet and up in the air. I was simply amazed and the coach patted Jamey on the back and yelled "Atta baby". We were in Belle Chase, Louisiana and that is common thing for men there to say to their team members when they are proud of their performance. Jamey is currently in the bottom of the football heap at Louisiana College and is working hard on moving up in the ranks. He has gotten the coaches attention and I feel confident he will get to play.

The Louisiana College colors are orange and blue. One of my favorite color combinations. So, my orange shirts will be my team shirts. I will have to find out what the mascot is. I think it is a cougar or some cat type animal. My new favorite team is the Louisiana College cougars and as soon as Jamey gets assigned a number that will be my favorite number!

Atta baby Jamey!

Bedroom under construction

Joe and I have been redecorating our bedroom. I painted one wall when we moved in six years ago. It coordinated with our comforter. I have not had that comforter out in over a year. I wanted to get a new one and that is what started it all. I bought a new comforter. Joe and I have exact opposite taste. He thought we should paint the room first and then buy the comforter. I thought the other way around. We did it my way, sort of. I asked Joe, in exasperation, what color did he want to paint our room. He told me purple. I wanted to take back my question. I could not imagine painting my room purple. It was not a color that I would have ever picked. Well, since he does live here too, I decided I should share the color selection, and let him have a say in the color choice. Then I started looking around at the comforters and found one that was gray, purple and blue. All in gray tones. We agreed we both liked it. Then we headed out to buy paint. I picked a gray-purple color for three walls and wanted to a treatment on the fourth wall. We also rearranged our mismatched furniture.

When we first painted the three walls they looked lilac, and not like the stingray color on the color chip card. I was a little worried. Then I was put a glaze treatment on the fourth wall and it looked terrible. I then painted big areas on the wall and did little experiments to see what would look good and even bought more paint and nothing looked right. Joe kept on wanting to paint stripes and I said no. Well, I got so tired of messing with it, I told him to paint it however he wanted. I had lost my objectivity. I went to met my family for lunch and returned and he had painted the wall in 3 horizontal stripes in different colors. It looked great! It also made the lilac in the walls mellow out and look more gray. Joe is an excellent painter. He never gets paint on him. I have paint everywhere just by picking up the roller.

Now I have to get curtains and we have a lot of wall space to fill in. I am going to make it my Labor Day weekend project to finish it up. I bought a great hammered texture spray paint and sprayed the light switch and plug covers and the mirror and trashcan. I got a little carried away with the trashcan. I also think I lost some brain cells standing over the little trash can and spraying the inside.

I will post pictures when I am done. I goal is to keep all the clothes picked up, hung up and put away. Also, George will not be able to get on my new comforter. He is a little sad about that!

12 days post bar exam

The Colcord Hotel
Reflecting pool at the Oklahoma City Memorial
Jesus wept.

It has been 12 days since I completed my attempt at the bar exam. I am beginning to feel my brain cells recovering from the extended stress and strain. I went to work on Thursday and Friday after the exam and then went to a conference in Orlando for four days. The conference was a wonderful time for me to unwind and I really did enjoy it. I was at work on Friday and today. I feel like I have lost control of what goes on in our office. I am very behind in managing our calendar. I have vowed to catch up this week.

I have little blurbs in my mind that I want to share and a few photos to go along. First some things about my stay in Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City is a nice town. They have a very successful revitalized warehouse district called Brick Town that has restaurants and shops. Kudos to the city planner or developer who thought of that. My hotel where I stayed was built in 1909 and it was OKC's first skyscrapper. It was 12 stories tall. I visited the Oklahoma City Memorial. I can say that I had the same feeling I got when I visited the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. It is a very solemn, holy place. The memorial design is beautiful. Across the street is a statue of Jesus with his face in his hands - weaping. It is is just breath-taking.

On Monday night, my precious friends, the Arnolds, picked me up at the hotel and took me to dinner. They brought along their beautiful granddaughter Emma. She is an angel. I was able to see Katie and her boyfriend. The Arnolds have a place in my heart forever. I love TGASK & E. Thanks, for a wonderful meal and delightful evening. I had my camera phone out getting Katie to show me how to email the pictures and I did not take any pictures of them. The Arnolds are the kind of friends that you may not see but once a year, but it as if you were together the day before.

For my conference I traveled to the land of the mouse! Orlando. It was so muggy and humid. Texas had been having 100 + weather and Orlando was mid 90's, but the humidity was terrible. My face would turn red and my neck would sweat. It was like a bad Richard Simmons video. The water in Orlando has a sulphur taste and smell. I don't know if I could do the bad water and the humidity. The little girl who is missing, Kaylee somebody, is from Orlando and the local news stations were obsessed with every breathe the family took. I pray that little girl is safe with someone who will take care of her, but I don't think it looks good for that outcome. I learned a lot of good information at the conference. Orlando was a great place to visit but I would not want to live there.

Now, all my adventures are behind me. It is back to work and get everything back under control in the office. I am going on a scrapbooking retreat in September. I will look forward to that and hopefully it will distract me from thinking about the bar results. I have to move around all the study books and make room to get my scrapbooking things out again.

I attached a few pictures that I took with my camera phone from Oklahoma City. I will post a couple from Orlando later.

Linda

The bar exam, hostas, robins, rats and God

I returned home from Oklahoma City tonight at about 8:15. It was a long, tough two days of bar exam taking. Yesterday was 8 full hours of essay writing and today was 6 hours of multiple choice questions. In the past I have always done OK on the essay questions, and I feel like I did reasonably well this time. I write well and essays have never been terrifying to me. However, multiple choice is a different story and I never know how I did. I discovered that the multiple choice questions seemed to have changed in some way. I think that might be a good thing for me.

Thanks to everyone who has prayed for me over the last several days. I could certainly sense your offered prayers. I have to tell you about my lunch today, then I have to go to bed.

The area around the convention center, where the bar was held, did not have very many restaurants. Bricktown is a revitalized area of OK City and all the restaurants are there and it was about a mile away. Too far to go when you have to be back in exactly one hour.

I decided for lunch today, since I had checked out of the hotel, to visit a little garden park across the street from convention center. It looked like it would have benches. So, in a zip lock bag, (it is requirement that anything you bring into the exam room has to be in a zip lock bag), I packed Starkist Tuna in one of those vacuum sealed packages, Triscuit crackers and 2 snack size Kit Kat bars and water. It was my own little picnic lunch!

On the lunch break I grabbed my bag and headed for the park. It was a perfect place. I found a bench that had red bud trees on either side that branched out and completely shaded the bench. There were Hostas everywhere. Hostas are my favorite plant and will only grow in the shade. There was an arbor covered in wisteria vines and a gurgling fountain. I opened my tuna and mixed in a little mayo and was enjoying my lunch. I looked across the path and a robin red breast was very close to me searching for insects. Then I noticed a squirrel sort of hiding in the tall grass. Then it moved a little and I noticed that the squirrel had lost all the hair off its tail. I was thinking "poor thing" then it moved out on the path and the squirrel was really a rat! A good size rat too. He moved back under the grass and watched me. I looked over my shoulder and on my side of the path and there was another rat. I called out to him to give him notice that I was aware that he was there. Notice is a good thing to give to all creatures! He and I checked each other out for a few seconds and then I continued to eat my lunch. I think rats are nocturnal animals and the smell of my delicious tuna fish was luring them out to see if a mid-day snack would be coming their way. I told them they could eat all I threw in the trash and there was plenty leftover for both of them.

It was the most peaceful, perfect lunch. I felt God's presence there. Serenity and peace are strangers to bar exam takers. I have never been this relaxed for an exam. I did not take a camera with me, but I have captured every detail of the beautiful park in my memory.

If you are ever in Oklahoma City, check out the Myriad Gardens on the corner of N. Robinson and Sheridan Avenue. If you sit on the bench in the shade of the red bud trees, God will speak to you in the beauty of garden and the wonder of the creatures.

Thanks again for your prayers. Good night!

Georgie recovering from surgery

Gerge has surgery last week on his left back foot. He had a tumor that we had removed a couple of years ago. It is not a cancer of any sort. It is a tumor filled with dead skin and hair. I have never heard of anything so strange, but it is good not to be worried about it being cancerous.

Well, the vet told us last time that it would grow back and it did. George is a really bad patient. We put off having it removed for a second time because he will eat any bandgage off. So, since I am home studying and can watch him, we had it removed again last week. The price had gone up about $200. How is that for inflation. Sure enough, the second night he ate the bandage off. He did a downward recycle and deposited in the backyard the next day. He left it on the next night and then ate it off the next two. He then proceeded to do an upward recycle right on the carpet. Yes, it was nasty. Joe literally did his own upward recycle after cleaning it up. I had to get the carpet cleaner out and clean the carpet after that.

I am worried because this is a very large open wound across his entire back ankle. It was too big to stitch up. It would not have worked anyway, because he would have licked the stictches out. Joe and the vet decided to put some sulfur type of oninment on it. Joe has actually used this same medicine on a wound he had a couple of years ago and told me to ask the vet if it would work on George. The vet said yes she was thinking of that as well. I think it does look a little better. I think the oinment makes the bandages not hurt as much on the wound. So, I have taking him to the vet and changing the dressing, and doctoring him. He is quite a distraction.

Since we lost our Rudy in April, we are very afraid of anything happening to George. So, he is being pampered and given way too many treats. We tried the party hat or "E collar" for one night. He completely freaks out. He will just wildly run. Once right into my legs. I have a giant bruise where he ran into me. I put him on his bed and told him to lay down and stay, and he just sat there drooling. It was too pitiful. I just could not do it and took the collar off. However, I did snap a few pictures. You are looking a wild dog wearing the hat. He does not know why anyone would call it a party hat because he was not feeling festive wearing it at all.

This is what happens to you when you have an empty nest and a dog. You just get ridiculously silly over your pets!

Our own rockets red glare

This one was called "One Bad Mother"



Checkers and Sassy: Checkers tried to bite me as I was trying to get my camera inside the fence bars. Who knew that a donkey would bite? I never saw that in Shrek. Joe told me that they would bite, but I was not believing it until I went out to the pasture to take pictures.

Uncle Walter shares his Nascar cap with Jordan.

The girls watching the neighbors fireworks show.

Jordan loved the fireworks. He would giggle when they went off. The noise did not scare him at all. He was dressed in a star shirt and flag shorts. What a cutie pie!

We spent the 4th of July at Beverly and Walter's house. They live out in the county and you can pop all the fireworks you like out there. The neighbors all did their own fireworks show. I think we had the best one. The fireworks vendors must love the 4th out in the county.

I read some information about how to photograph fireworks. I set my camera on the fireworks setting and set up my tripod. I had difficulty knowing when to press the shutter because they dide not all go up at the same speed. For the grand finale, the One Bad Mother and some other funny name that I can't remember, it was so spectacular, that I could not focus on the camera.

It was a wonderful 4th of July. The burgers and hotdogs were great. Thanks Walter and Beverly for having us all over.

No scrapping for July

I have made an agreement with myself. I promise not to scrap in July at all! I think the best creative ideas that I have pop into my head when I know that I can't scrap.

I am taking off of work most of July to study for the bar exam. I cannot properly express how much I hate the bar exam. I have become very well acquaited with all aspects of this exam. I am an experienced taker! I was encourgaged by my supervisor to go for a different perspective and try the exam in a different state. So that is what I am doing. I work for the federal government and they do not care what state you are licensed in just so long as you are licensed. The down side of getting a new perspective is that I need to learn the state law. There are two parts to the exam: one is a 200 question Multi State Exam which is federal law, and day two is essay questions, most of which will be state law. So, I have been studying after work and listening to lectures on my MP3 player in the car on my way to and from work. I am very thankful to have a understanding supervisor who is allowing me to take all this time off. We are pretty busy at work right now, so it is a big sacrifice for them.

So, starting today, my little scrapping place is covered with bar review books. I went to a crop on Saturday and that is the last time I will pick up my ATG gun until after July 31.

I read a blog of person named Monique McLean. She is former owner of Scrap Etc, a LSS in Birmingham and she is the coordinator of the Scrap Etc events. She has completed nursing school and has to take her nursing exam. Now that she no longer owns the LSS, she will work as a nurse. She has two of the cutest little girls and she is studying. I don't know how she does it and I am motivated by her commitment. I have no children at home. Only my husband and four legged baby, George. It sometimes feels like I have children at home, but I can tell them to go away and they will.

I would appreciate all your prayers as I study. I really need to pass because, I turn 51 in two days and it is a fact that the older you get, the fewer functioning brain cells you have. I will forget all that learned in law school if I don't do this soon. I wish I had become a nurse! The exam is July 29 and 30. Pray for Monique too.

I will not give up blogging because I feel that it is theraputic for me. So, I will stay in touch this way.

I posted pictures of my work space completely covered in these perfectly awful books.

I am claiming this Bible verse as my strength for this long month ahead:

"Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new morning;

great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, "The Lord is my portion;

therefore I will wait for him."

Lamentations 3:22-24