I get knocked down, but I get up again...

Do any of you remember those blow up punching toys from the 1970's...they were huge, as tall as a kid (or taller if you were a short kid, which I was not)...they were rounded and weighted on the bottom with sand so that when you punched them, they fell over, but then popped back and wobbled around a bit, kind of like a giant blow up Weeble, then finally would stand still...until you punched them again. I had one that was a penguin. It took a great deal of punching until one day my brother decided to see what happened if he hit it with a baseball bat. It wasn't pretty...the penguin didn't get back up because after a few hits, the side seam split open and the air squeaked out and Mr. Penguin gradually melted to the floor.

I'm starting to feel like one of those punching toys. I get knocked down, wobble around a bit before I gain some balance, and then bam! Knocked down again.

I know the purpose of writing this blog is to entice me to stay positive. And I will be oh so positive in just a minute. But I want to say first that I had a royally crappy day. I guess having more than a few days of feeling pretty good about things...and feeling calm and at peace...is a little too much to ask for.

Okay. Done. That is all.




Here's something that made me very happy today and pulled me out of my "I want to stomp my feet and cry" mood...the best $3 I've spent in a while! Get a load of this baby:









This afternoon, I left to go get Rachel from school after tryouts for a play. I was listening to a CD that a friend sent me last year that has inspirational songs on it. I was trying to put myself in a better mood, when all I really wanted to do was have a good cry or like I already said, stomp my feet while crying. I was driving by Dierbergs, a grocery store that I rarely shop at because it's so much more expensive than the other grocery stores around here. I feel like a kid in a candy store when I go there because they have lots of things you can't get at other stores. I decided to stop in to see if they had sugar pumpkins in stock yet. I've been stalking the stores looking for them, and no one has had them. For those of you who don't know what sugar pumpkins are, they aren't your average jack-0-lantern. Oh no. You cut the stem off, cut in half, scoop out the gooey stuff, turn it upside down on a baking sheet, and bake it until it's soft and squishy, and makes your house smell delicious, and then you scoop the pumpkin out of the skin and use it instead of canned pumpkin in bread or pies. I crave pumpkin muffins this time of year, and last year, I decided to buy a sugar pumpkin instead of canned, and I was hooked.

So I walked to the produce department, thinking that if I could just find a pumpkin, it would make my day. I didn't see any, and I asked the produce manager, who just happened to be stocking lettuce, when they would be getting them in. His answer was music to my ears: "Oh, we got some in today, I just haven't put them out yet!" So he went to the back and wheeled out a cart with a box full of sugar pumpkins, and I almost kissed him. I kid. I really didn't almost kiss him, but I did tell him he made my day. I'm sure he thought I must have been some crazy nut to be so excited over a pumpkin. When I got home, I drew a happy face on this little guy with a Sharpie, and it is sitting on my kitchen island waiting to be cooked later so I can make muffins tomorrow.

Finally one other thing that totally made me smile today. I had these beautiful hanging baskets of flowers on my front porch this summer. Six weeks ago, they looked like this:




They don't look like that any longer. The heat we had this summer was not kind to them, and even though I watered them every day faithfully, sometimes more than once a day, they slowly died. I took them down and they have been sitting in a corner of my front porch. I've totally ignored them. They haven't had water in 2 weeks. And this afternoon, I glanced over and saw this:




And now, I've sunk to a new low...photographing dead flowers. Hopefully, I will soon have more exciting things to write and post pictures about than trash dumpsters, feet, and pumpkins.