I always see the strangest things when I don't have a camera.
Like this morning on the way to school I saw a tire standing in the middle of the road.
Just standing there, if tires stood that is.

And this afternoon, I got behind the biggest, greenest, slowest combine I've ever seen traveling at a speedy speed of approximately 20 mph.
20 MPH!
But I put on my hazards and plowed along behind him because (1) I was in no hurry, (2), I know what it's like to be a farmer and have to move a slow piece of equipment down a public road, and (3) I figured surely he wouldn't be going the same way I was going for the next 80 miles.
I followed that combine for four miles and got a little worried when he made that first turn with me.
By the second turn our following-relationship ended and I was on my merry way.

I raised my windows when I got home because its been such a warm day today.
A man across the street plays the trumpet.
I heard him practicing scales with his balcony door open so I blasted him with my trombone and we exchanged waves.

House Hunt

I've been really busy lately.

I'm talking really busy.

So busy that I've neglected all my reading.

I haven't been reading my blog subscriptions, half my emails, or even my school books.

Well, I have been reading my school books but not as much as I'd like to read them.

This is crunch-time after all.

One thing I have been doing though is house hunting.

Boots has been heading up this expedition but I have been doing my part too.

We've been driving around when he comes to town to see me and searching the Internet and making phone calls when we're not together.

I've been doing some house dreaming about all the things I want to do when I have my own house and not living in an apartment.

Boots and I found a house back off the main road.

The house was at the end of a dead end street and I called it The House on the Left for obvious reasons.

The house has a big yard and lots of bedrooms.

It has a hole in the roof that needs to be fixed and a stone wall where a carport used to be.

The sign stuck to the door said call the tax accessors office.

Boots did some digging and that led us nowhere.

Can't find out anything else.

(Sorry, no photo)

We found another house but haven't seen inside it yet.

I call this one The House in the Curve for obvious reasons.

Its got a fair-sized yard with a little shed.

The front yard is kinda weird though because a culvert cuts it nearly in half.

The House in the Curve

(I didn't take this picture)

Boots went house hunting on his own and called me up, "I want this one!"

I don't think I've ever heard him so excited.

We go look at the house that afternoon with our realtor.

Our realtor lady introduced Boots Mom and Pop and helped Brother #1 get his house.

The house has two sheds, a falling down fence, and some overgrown bushes.

We tromped all through the house, stomped up and down the stairs, open and shut every door over and over again and flicked every light switch.

We decided that we liked The Little Box House and got the lady to fill us out a contract.

I had her read the contract to us because I wanted to know what I was signing.

I think Boots was surprised that I asked her to go through all that trouble.

She was super nice and explained everything even though I didn't fully understand it all.

The Little Box House

(I didn't take this picture either)

The realtor lady hooked us up with a mortgage man and the mortgage man checked out credit and approved us for a mortgage.

We can buy a house.

Whether we do or not is up to the powers that be.

We're just kinda waiting and negotiating.

We're going to keep looking but one day we're going to have a house.

Dog Sight

I'm convinced that dogs don't see in black and white, they see in thermal imaging.
I have a few theories.
Humor me.

Theory #1
Last night, I got up out of bed to go brush my teeth.
I come back two minutes later and my dog is laying in the EXACT same spot I just got up from!
It's not because she loves me so much, its because of the heat.

Theory #2
If I take a load of clothes out of the dryer right away and I put said load of clothes in a basket and put said basket down on the floor, said dog climbs right on top of said warm clothes like she belongs there.
It's because of the heat.

I'm no scientist, but I truly believe that dogs have some sort of heat sensing eyesight.
More theories to come.

Part Two

I was at a wedding.
Where, I don't know.
For whom? 
I don't know that either.
I was standing in line for punch.
Some girl asked me had I been out of the country and taken a picture with her in front of that ship.
She recognized me she said.
I told her I had never been out of the country and that wasn't me.
Talk about a knock-down drag-out.
I punched her in the punch line.
Were we at Princess Diana's wedding?

I had this crazy dream the other night that I started my first job back.
I dreamed that the first day I had to leave work an hour after I got there because Princess Diana called.
Princess Diana wanted me to be a bridesmaid and I had to go get fitted for my pink creampuff dress!

Today Was a Good Day, I Didn't Have to Use My AK

(Yeah, who sings that song?)

The past two days at school have been probably the best all year.
I feel like I've just about reached the epiphany Ms. D's been talking about.
The stress level was at a minimum despite the fact our main man in the instruction department is having some major health problems.

I scheduled my boards today.
Both parts.
A lee-tle scary.
I chewed all my fingernails off within five minutes.
Good thing they grow back.
But Ms. D swears that I'm going to pass and her enthusiam has bolstered my confidence.
I am going to pass.
It finally dawned on me last night that I am going to pass.
:D

The weather was gorgeous today, in between rain showers, at least.

I scored 2 out of 3 on Turtle Kickin'.
Turtle Kickin' is something I've been doing for a few years because I have this thing about people running over turtles.
Turtles are slow cuz those shells are heavy (I think its because they have big brains).
Squirrels and birds and stuff like that are fast and crazy, if they get run over that's their business, but turtles I feel for.
Don't run over a turtle.
I might have to kick you in the shins.
It will hurt.

Tomorrow is opening day of the 45 day window for me to take my boards.
I'm pretty nervous.

Rachel

'you are always in my heart and your always on my mind and when it all becomes to much your never far behind and there is no one that comes close to you that can take your place, because only you can love me this way'....
Author Unknown

"You can say you're a Christian and go to church.  I hang out in my garage, does that make me a car?"

-Jason Ileam

(Elliott?)

(Ilead?)

(I couldn't quite understand what his last name was.)

******UPDATE!!!******

This post was not meant to point fingers at anyone in a condescending manner.

It was merely a quote I heard on a Homeword podcast and thought was kind of funny.

Please don't be offended.

And if you are, my apologies.

This is Hard Work and There Are Too Many Choices

I'm trying to decide on a quote for mine and Boots wedding invitations.

"We found the days were much too short
for all the dreams we wanted to share
and all the love we wanted to give"

It sounds nice but kinda mushy.
I'm not exactly mushy.

"As our love unites us,
may my family become your family,
my friends your friends"

I kinda like this.

"You are my beloved, you are my friend"

This one is nice and simple.

But I really like...

"To infinity, and beyond"
-Buzz Lightyear

Boots says no.
:(

Flip Flops or Veils?

I acidentally found my wedding dress this afternoon.
I went out with The Roommate in search of beach footwear.
Flip flop hunting led to an implusive idea from yours truly.
"Hey, let's go look at wedding dresses."
So we did.
And I fell in love with the fourth one, not the first one.
I would post a picture, but I can't.
I'm not suspicious, but this is supposed to be special, so no peeking.
Oh, and my wedding director hired herself. 
I've always said that a funeral director is just a wedding planner on short notice, so I figured how hard could it be?
She said I couldn't do it myself and that she would pay me to let her do it.
I must really need help!

"You'll excel at whatever your focus is."

-Zig Ziglar

Origami Swans

I didn't take this picture, I Binged it.

When I was in the third grade there was a meeting just for the girls of the class which resulted in me bringing home a note on pink paper and telling my mama that I had to be in Girl Scouts.
My mama paid the required $7 to join (was it really just seven dollars?) and schlepped me to all the meetings.

We got the big fat handbook (maybe that's what the 7 bucks was for) and started trying to earn badges right away.
There were so many things that just weren't feasible to do in my mind.
Like spend a day in a soup kitchen.
I'm pretty sure there was no soup kitchen in my hometown.
Or learn to make a campfire.
Why did I need to know how to do that when my daddy made all the fires when we went camping?

We sold cookies, of course, and I'm pretty sure that this was the beginning of my disdain for all things fund-raiserish.
I really dislike fund-raisers.
So I did a few things, I don't remember what, out of the book and got a few badges for my mom to sew on my bright green vest.

The best thing about Girl Scouts was the trip we took to the Children's Hands On Museum.
It is what the name says it is, a museum for kids to touch everything.
I don't think places like this are very conducive to teaching kids the right way to attend a real museum, but whatever, it was fun.
The exhibit was on China and everything was decorated all China-ish right down to the paper doors and the sandboxes filled with rice.
We arranged flowers on green metal frogs and I thought that was pretty lame.
Maybe that's where my flower complex stemmed (haha!) from.

I quit Girl Scouts a few months later (I forget why) and have since then resolved myself to learning things that help you out in life that don't earn you badges.
I still can't sew on a button properly though.

Some time after the Girl Scout era, a year or so maybe, I was looking through my old handbook and I came across a page with instructions and pictures on how to make an origami swan.
There was a small origami swan with orange tips stuck in the crease of the page.
My mama made the swan just for the fun of it when I was in Girl Scouts and left it in the book.
The orange tips were dots she had drawn on the paper as linear guides.

I forgot about the origami swan and Girl Scouts for a long time.
I don't even know where that book is now but I think my vest is still in a closet at my dad's house.

In my second semester of mortuary college I had to take Restorative Art.
"Had to take" and not "took" because it was not a fun class or an elective.

Maybe you're not familiar with Restorative Art.
To put it simply, RA, as we liked to call it, is the way of taking something ugly and messed up and making it pretty and whole again, usually the face.

We had to learn all the bones of the skull and face, all the muscles of the face, as well as all the facial wrinkles, make a head with wax to match a picture of someone (living, not dead!), and learn lots of crap about color and what matches with what and what doesn't match with what.

Our first test covered the bones, muscles, and wrinkles.
We were all pretty stressed and trying really hard to make a good grade because there were only two tests in RA besides the final.

I'm usually a pretty fast test taker so most of the time I finish second.
(I have a thing about finishing first.  But that's another story.)
I finished my test and asked to go to the bathroom.

On my way back to the classroom, the sunlight was shining through the glass doors so bright, it made the waxed linoleum look like a mirror.
I saw a tiny shadow in the sun-mirror, the shadow of an origami swan!
I bent down to pick the origami swan up, but it wasn't a swan, just a crumpled up ball of paper with words scrawled all over it.
I unfolded a paper and my eyes read the answers to questions that were on the test I had just finished.

Right when I stood back up, a classmate of mine walked out of the room and was standing in front of me.
I didn't want her to think that it was my cheatsheet and get me in trouble when it was my wild imagination that found it in the first place!

"Look what I found," and I shoved it at her.

"What are you going to do with it?" she asked me after she read it.

I decided that the only thing I could do was give it to our teacher, what she chose to do after that was up to her, not me.

I did not know how much grief an innocent origami swan could get me.
My classmates were furious that I had ruined the afternoon by getting us all an hour long lecture about cheating and put the teacher in a bad mood by turning in some dummy's cheatsheet.
I told myself that a smart cheat wouldn't have dropped it and if they were smart they wouldn't have had to cheat in the first place.
Or if they had any scruples.
I had scruples.
That's why I turned it in.

Turning in the origami swan/cheatsheet and sitting through the Cheating Gripe Fest of '08 did not even the playing field between us at all.
After that episode, the cheaters had to figure out new ways to get the right answers.
Our teacher was wizened to their game although she never did figure out who the cheat sheet belonged to.

I have my theories but, theories are just that--theories.

I haven't seen an origami swan since then.

Here's what we started with.

Here's what I made.

I waited on my first family yesterday.
(Waited on= made funeral arrangements with/for said family.  That's the unofficial funeral home speak definition that I just made up.)
They were two hours late and I lost my game.
My boss said they were "freezing the kicker," whatever that means.

"There's never been a man or woman as smart as two together."

           -Zig Ziglar

Rachel's Words of Wisdom

"There's always a light at the end of the tunnel, unless you're following a mole."

I explained my idea about the reel lawnmower and how eco-friendly it is to Boots the other night.
He didn't buy it.
He said he was not, I repeat, not going to use one, that its too much work.
"But, Boots!", I said, "Why not?  I will cut the grass!"
Apparently, Boots likes to cut grass just as much as I do (Could this be a chore that we fight over?  How ironic.) and he is very adament about how a reel lawnmower is too much work and that he's all for poluting the ozone.
I'm not giving up though.

I paid for my Boards yesterday.
The Boards.
It's T minus two weeks before I take the first part.
I am so scared.
That is the hardest $400 I have ever spent.
Any other time I've ever spent $400 it's been on my car.
But this time, the pressure is on me.
I have to pass.
I can't afford to fail.

Enough with the panic.

In other world news,
Today is my two year anniversary with my job.
Yay.

I've been building castles about all the things I can't wait to do once Boots and I get married.
Cooking for him and trying out new recipes, having a garden (if I can grow anything and not kill it!), picking up his socks, and going grocery shopping together.
What I really can't wait for is cutting our grass.
I love love LOVE to cut grass.
Its probably my most favorite outdoor activity.
I've always used a gasoline powered riding lawn mower but in the past few years I've become more environmentally conscious.
I want to have a compost pile and do lots of recycling.
Become less store-dependent and more self-sustaining.
Boots, I want one of these.

Photo from here

I've been reading articles about these reel lawnmowers and haven't found anything that would effect me negatively yet.

I know Boots wanted to get me a pink lawn tractor (he has a picture he can post) but I wonder if these come in pink?

Wait, What's My Name Again?

Lately I've developed sort of a semi-problem involving computer keyboards.
I've started writing my very own last name (that I've been writing since kindergarten) wrong.
Why is this happening?
Its not like I've been practicing my new last name and suddenly forgot that I haven't completed (or even began!) paperwork to make this a reality or something.
And it's only two letters, the "l" and the "t".
I've been transposing them.
So instead of XXXXltX its been XXXXtlX.
How weird.

Oh, Dear