I'll take a cheeseburger to go

In September of last year, Phoenix, Arizona became the first US city to ban texting while driving.

Apparently, after strenous testing, they have decided that texting while driving is dangerous. If I remember correctly, some of the tests have shown that texting while driving can impair you as much as drinking while driving. It is that dangerous.

I have no problem with laws that protect the innocent. Laws that prevent accidents and incidents. What I do have a problem with is the slippery slope that banning texting may have.

After all, if texting while driving is dangerous, what else could be? Is eating a hamburger dangerous while driving? What if it is a cheeseburger - does that up the danger quotient? Is a hamburger ok to eat while driving, but a taco is too distracting?

What about putting on makeup while driving? We all know that it is dangerous, but to what effect? Can I put on my lipstick, but not my mascara? Am I allowed to put on makeup if I am stuck in rush hour and not traveling more than 15 mph, but over that I must put up the mascara wand?

For that matter, can I text while sitting at a stop light? Or is that 'while driving' and thus too dangerous? Would they rather have me holding my phone with one hand to my ear, only one hand on the steering wheel and still trying to navigate a stick shift?

I completely respect lawmakers trying to save lives and prevent accidents, but where does it end? At what point do we have to stop letting laws dictate what we do and instead, grow up and choose for ourselves? At what point do we become functioning, intelligent beings and stop being automatons who only do/not do something because the law has forbidden it? When do we take responsibility for ourselves?

"You like me! You really like me!"

I would like to thank my mother and father for their continued support and acknowledgment that, as a starving writer, I still need them to pay for dinner each and every time they visit.

I would like to thank my Hubby, for without him I am sure I would not have nearly as much to complain about, or to love. Or, at least, another Hubby would probably expect me to get a 'real job' and not let me do what it is that I really love to do.

And, last, but definetely not least, I would like to thank the world. Yes, that's right, the world. For letting me know that you like me. You really, really like me!

Oh, wait. You have no idea what all this fuss is about, do you?

See, I just won an award. And I really don't know what to do with an award besides give my Emmy acceptance speech. But I'll try to follow the rules of this award. . . here goes.




This is The Superior Scribbler Award. It began over at The Scholastic-Scribe, skipped through a few more blogs and made it over to my friend Ritch in Love. (Who really is rich in love, and rich in spirit and rich in intelligence. She's worth a visit.) Who, in turn, gave it to me! How sweet is that!

Let me say a few words about Ritch in Love. Oddly as it may seem to me, we have only met in person a handful of times. But (and you all know what I am talking about here) each time, our friendship is picked up as if the last visit never ended. Never a pause, never an awkward situation - possibly because of (and not in spite of) these blogs, I feel that we know each other better than if we met every Tuesday for coffee and scones. (Although, doesn't that sound like fun, too??) She's a handful, and from someone who is often called a 'spunky sparkplug', that is a big compliment. Love her. Go see for yourself.

Now, on to this award.

As with any award and achievement, certain rules must be followed. Thankfully this is not one of those awards where I must do community service or pledge myself to stopping illiteracy in underpriveleged areas. Instead I just have to do this:

~Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
~Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
~Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.
~Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
~Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

See, that wasn't so hard.

Except. . . .

As much as I write in Blogging world myself, I don't really browse the area for blogs of note. Not that I wouldn't love to - I have tried. But apparently I am too computer illiterate, and cannot figure out how to browse the pages of the world wide web. For being a college graduate with not one (but two!) degrees, I can be pretty stupid.

So, I am going to put off choosing 5 blogging friends to award until I have learned how to browse and find just who I am looking for. After all, this deserves the upmost consideration; I wouldn't want to rush a decision like this!

Once again, thanks for the award. And if this is your first time here, Enjoy! Check out old posts. I'm pretty random, so if you keep searching, I'm sure you'll find something that interests you! Welcome!

Can you handle the truth?!?

Alright, folks. Its time for me to do this. To come clean about myself and my life. I've held onto this secret as long as I could - which is about three weeks!!!

So, here goes. . . .

We're having a baby!!!

Check out my what-do-I-know-about-babies pregnancy blog.

Enjoy - I know I am!!

It's beginning to look alot like autumn. . .

It's fall. You know how I know? No. . . not because I am finally pulling my sweaters out of the closet and cozying up with some hot chocolate. It is over 90 degrees here today, so there is no chance that it feels like fall. No apple cider (yum!) is on the stove and no delicious and deliciously easy veggie stews are warming in the crock pot.

No, the only way I know it's fall is that I am decorating as such. I have chosen to not decorate for Halloween this year and jump straight into autumn and Thanksgiving. Although I love Halloween, I will be working this October 31 (as I did the last) and last year Hubby turned off the porch light and ate all the candy I had bought for trick-or-treaters. Better to just not buy it and skip Halloween this year without me home to supervise.

Here is my first attempt at decorating for fall.

Starting with an empty tub, which, when it was given to Hubby as a present, was filled with liquor (yay!):


And, ending with:


Now, you might be wondering - where on earth did I get so many fake flowers? No, I did not rob a Hobby Lobby store. I am a pack rat. Although my Hubby would say that I throw too much out (as he is from a family of ultimate pack rats), not many others would agree. And those flowers are from my wedding two years ago this month. I wanted real flowers adorning all 18 of my tables, only to come crashing back to reality when I realized the absurd cost that would be. As I am not a debutante, a celebutante or and other -tante, I decided that fake flowers were good enough for me.

But not just fake flowers.

I made pretty much everything except my dress for my wedding. Invitations, gifts, decorations. I wasn't paying anyone to do what I could do much better and much cheaper. I can be pretty crafty sometimes, I think. Being that my wedding was in October and my colors were green and orange (Which, no matter what you are thinking were the most beautiful colors. Really. I can prove it with pictures.), I wanted my centerpiece decorations to be carved pumpkins with autumn flowers. And I would carve them myself (with the help of family, of course).



So, when the wedding was over, I couldn't throw out all those flowers, could I? NO!! They were perfectly good flowers, and one of the things I like best about fake flowers is that I don't have to remind Hubby to water them when I am out of town. So, being the good recycler that I am, I put them away and finally took them out today to see what I could do with them. And I still have half a box left. I had alot of flowers that day!

***On a side note. . . . . Hubby liked my idea for pumpkin centerpieces, but thought that we needed something more, too. (He was a very involved groom.) He thought that we could split the centerpieces - do 9 tables of the pumpkins and 9 tables of his idea. What was his idea?



Three picture frames glued together to form a trifold frame. Each frame had three pictures printed on vellum paper: one of me as a child, one of him as a child and one of us together. A candle was placed in the middle of the frames, and as the light waned through the beautiful picture windows of our reception hall/outdoor lodge, the candle and pictures glowed even more beautifully. I was hesitant at first, but the final result was gorgeous!!

Food, love and the way to a man's heart

This morning Hubby spoke the words that strikes fear deep into my heart.

"Will you cook dinner tonight?"

Oh. Shit.

See, I rely on him to do the cooking. Whenever I do suggest something for dinner, he shrugs it off as not what he 'feels like' tonight or suggests something a million times better. It just works out better if he cooks dinner, and I sit and watch.

But Hubby is having a very rough month at work. I think he has had one day off this month so far, and on that day I made him drive an hour to see my cousins and aunt and uncle. And most of his days are more than 14 hours long; four of his work days have started at 6 am and ended at 2 am. I guess the least I could do is cook him dinner one night.

What makes this even harder is that he is on Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet. So, all the stuff I like (bread, pasta, tomatoes, sweets) he can't have. He can have meats and zucchini and spinach and. . . . well, that's pretty much all I can think of.

You might be thinking right now 'Well, why don't you just look in a cookbook? It can't be that hard to find a recipe.' But it is. See, I don't like chicken. Or beef. Or fish. Which is pretty much all he can eat. So, not only do I have to cook one meal, but really, I have to cook two. One for him and one for me. But I can't cook pasta and bread and fun stuff like pizza for me, because then I would have to eat it in front of him, and, really, that is just a cruel thing to do to a man on a diet. You don't eat french fries in front of a woman eating a salad, and you don't eat pasta in front of a man on South Beach.

And I find that cookbooks always have way too many ingredients in their recipes. Seriously, do I really need 1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest? Or a splash of cumin? I don't know if I do or not, and since I'm not sure and I don't want to go to the grocery store, I delete that recipe from my list of hopefuls. If I don't have the spices or ingredients, I'm not a good enough cook to know what can be substituted.

Sigh. . . dinner is in two hours.

A million and a half ways Phoenix is different than Texas

1. In Texas, I didn't actually stop at the stoplight until my car was almost all the way through the crosswalks. Outside of extenuating circumstances (a Tech football game, Six Flags Fear Fest, etc.), no one walks anywhere. Crosswalks are never used. And everyone knows that you can't activate that little button under the road that triggers your green light until you roll all the way into the intersection itself. In Arizona, crosswalks are always used. People actually walk places. In the desert.

2. Take all the fat people in Texas. Divide them in half. And divide them in half again. That's how many fat people are in Arizona. Probably because they (see above) walk everywhere and probably because avocadoes and salad are staples for lunch - even for men. I haven't even seen an All-you-can-eat Steak Bar in Arizona. Sad, but true.

3. No one is from here. No one. In Texas, we are proud of our heritage, and proud of the fact that our Daddy's Daddy worked in Austin with the state government and Great Auntie Thelma lived through the hurricane in Galveston. When you're from Texas, you usually do your best not to leave. You go to elementary school, have your first drink, lose your virginity and get married all within thirty miles of where you were born. In Arizona, we have all the vagrants who wanted to leave whereever they are from. And, of course, there are those few Texans like us who either thought you had to 'see the world' (as if you couldn't see that from going to East and then West Texas!) or were forced to leave through unfortunate circumstances. Either way, I'm a proud Texan. When people ask where I'm from, I never say Phoenix. I'm from Texas, dammit.

4. Apparently, highways don't require their intros here in Fohenix. There is not a 'Loop 101' or an 'I-10'. Instead it is 'The Loop' and 'The 10'. First time I heard that, I thought they were talking about The Pac 10. That's the only The 10 I know. In Texas, you take I-35 to the North Tollway to I-45. They are interstates and highways - and you treat them as such. Calling I-45 'The 45' would be like calling Dr. Seuss merely Mister. It's just not respectful.

5. In Arizona, it is accepted to comment on the weather - even when it hasn't changed in two months. During the 115 degree summers, the first thing you say to someone you see is 'Whooo - it sure is hot outside!'. In Texas, we know its hot outside. We're not stupid. It was hot yesterday, and its been hot since Mid-May. In Houston, we knew it was humid. There was no need to say it. Especially since yesterday and the three weeks before that were all humid, too. You only need to comment on weather that has changed. And it just doesn't change that often in Phoenix.

Can I just say?

I LOVE Sarah Palin!

Who cares what she's saying - she says it so cute and funny!