Entropy

I am a grey person.

I have always been this way.

My heartfelt desire to be angel,

to be good, to be white,

is always balanced by the dark;

by my desires to destroy,

only for the sake of destruction.

I would watch the world burn,

only to try to put out the fire.

I steadily progress to chaos.

Part of me likes it better that way.

I strive to order my life, but that

is only a cover for my natural state.

Nothing is permanent, 

everything changes.

I am only hastening what life already brings.

Black and white make grey,

but I am always one or the other.

The one I choose may be random,

but I am only the way I was made.

I am black. I am white.

I am strong. I am weak. 

I am good. I am evil.

I am caring. I am cold.

I am ambitious. I am humble.

I am dark. I am light.

I am a walking contradiction.

I am entropy.

Always Check the Receipt

I've been getting into couponing, like so many other people, since I started watching Extreme Couponing on TLC. I went to Safeway for their 1 day sale on Pineapple, but they were out, so I had to settle for the rest of my list. They had a lot of stuff BOGO, strawberries, bacon, and salad, and I had coupons for DiGiorno and Glad trash bags, and celery was on sale. I would up at almost 50% savings, it was about 46%. However, when I scanned my receipt after I checked out I saw that they had charged me for both bags of salad, when one should have been free. They fixed it really easily, but it emphasizes the importance of keeping tabs on your checkout, because these things happen. Safeway automatically doubles and rounds up coupons though, that's certainly nice. My best item of the day was probably the trash bags. They are usually $9.59, but with my two coupons they came down to $3.60, which is a savings of 66% (if I did my math right). Obviously I'm not anywhere close to be an extreme couponer, but that's okay. I don't have the space to be stocking up on stuff and buying 50+ of things at a time. I have more stores to hit up tomorrow, we will see how I do!

Bridge Party

So last night, before I drifted off to sleep, I imagined having people over to play bridge, because that's something that some people do. And I imagined what I would serve at this bridge party. I came up with bridge mix, because it's obvious, and then I thought about cheese cubes. And then I thought about how one would go about building a bridge out of cheese cubes and toothpicks. I had just figured out how the whole thing would be stable enough to stand when I realized what I was thinking about and started valiantly trying to clear my mind and go to sleep.

But now I want to build a bridge out a cheese cubes. I was even going to use string cheese for the cables, and that spray cheese for interesting details!

Splah!

My OCD tendencies are working hard not to kick in. We already have two bookshelves and we needed a third. And Target doesn't carry my color anymore. WHAT?! I looked at the box David brought home and said, "My shelves aren't espresso." "Well this was all they had." "But...but...but..." "Let's go look it up online." And sure enough, there is no longer my color available. My head almost spun around a flew off. Finally, I decided it would be ok because I would just plan on putting them in separate rooms. Fiction can have the two shelves in the living room, non-fiction can be on the new espresso shelf that will ultimately wind up in the spare room. Deep breath. It will be okay.

King Utopus

"In matters of religion, he was not at all quick to dogmatize, because he suspected that God perhaps likes various forms of worship and has therefore deliberately inspired different people with different views. On the other hand, he was quite sure that it was arrogant folly for anyone to enforce conformity with his beliefs by means of threats or violence. He supposed that if one religion is really true and the rest false, that the true one will prevail by its own natural strength, provided only that men consider the matter reasonably and moderately. But if they try to decide these matters by fighting and rioting, since the worst men are always the most headstrong, the best and holiest religion in the world will be crowded out by blind superstitions, like grain choked out of a field by thorns and briars. So he left the matter open, allowing each individual to choose what he would believe."

Written by Sir Thomas More in "Utopia," 1516.

Accomplishments

Today has been a good day. David has been coming home after almost no time at work, which is good but a bit annoying, because I think that some reintegration training would be good for both of us. It might start next week, according to David. We are expecting a truckload of furniture on Thursday. We went to American Furniture Sunday for the last day of their big tax refund sale and bought a house full. This means that we need to make space for the new stuff. The tricky part is that we need the furniture to put away the stuff that is in the way of where the furniture needs to go. David was very helpful with Hunter today though, and I was able to get all the clothing piled in our bedroom sorted. Granted, a lot of it is in the laundry right now, but David and Hunter both have laundry baskets and David also has two hanging clothes boxes for temporary storage. It is such a relief to have those clothes away! They've been taking up so much space, I cannot wait to have Hunter's dresser and David's wardrobe arrive.

Also today I finished painting the trim on the window in our bedroom, took Hunter for two walks, and worked out on the Wii. And for the last hour David and Hunter have been asleep and I have been using the opportunity to finish cleaning our white plastic drawers, run some laundry, clean out the front hall closet, empty the dishwasher and the sink, finish hanging my scarves, clean the bathroom, clear and clean the kitchen counters, and enjoy a nice cuppa tea.

Tomorrow I plan on going to Babies R Us and maybe Lowes, depending on how much I get done in the yard. The weather is supposed to be cool and windy, but I hope to rake the backyard, pick up the dog poo, and remove the rocks and other things that would prevent us from mowing. If I can get all of that done I will feel very happy with myself. If that is done with enough time to spare that it makes sense to go to Lowes and pick up yard waste bags, the necessaries to start reseeding our lawn, and perhaps a grill, then that is fantastic, but could probably just as easily be put off until Wednesday, when I have two appointments to go to anyway.

Alright, well I need to finish above mentioned chores and get to bed. I have 17 minutes before I was hoping to be in bed (it is now 2313) and I spent the last ten writing this blog. Shannon, I know this isn't a baby blog, but it will have to suffice for now. I just don't have enough time to upload any photos or videos right now. À bientöt!

Utopia

Yesterday I decided that I needed a book to read during my bath. For unknown reasons I selected Thomas More's Utopia, and since then it has been difficult to put it down. Admittedly, I am only on page 20, but that stems from the demanding tasks of being a mother and the less demanding but no less time consuming task of having guests in town. I am absolutely enamored with this book. What baffles me about this is that I "read" this book for a class in 2006 and I have no recollection of it whatsoever. Did I read it at all? I believe I was particularly bad about reading my assignments for that class, and somehow managed to muddle through. Did I try to read it? Did I get stuck? Did I give it a chance? I don't remember.

The question in my mind is whether I would have enjoyed it just as much back then or am I a different person with different literary tastes than I had back then? This was a great class that I squandered, in retrospect. It was an Honors class, which meant that our curriculum was entirely what our creative teachers wanted it to be. Our whole class was focused on the concept of Utopian societies. We read (and in my case I use the term liberally) Plato's "Republic," More's "Utopia," Atwood's "A Handmaid's Tale," and Orwell's "1984." I remember the last two! That is disgusting! Where was I for those first two books? If I didn't know better I'd think I was stoned through the first half of the semester! But no, I just didn't do the work. Slap a llama! Our semester project was to write a paper describing our own Utopia. At the time I had just joined the LDS church and did my project based on the existing structure of the church. Not that there is anything wrong with their religion, but it's not mine anymore, and it was a great assignment with a lot of potential that I just did not fully apply myself to. I really missed the point of engaging my brain creatively. I look back on the class and think about all the different ways I could have designed my Utopian society. Probably would have gotten a better grade too.

My academic successes and failures are by both counts monumental. When I've applied myself I've done excellently, receiving As from professors that didn't even average one A per class. When I haven't I've gotten Bs and Cs. And when I was sick I couldn't finish a class. I believe I've attempted three semesters that have resulted in dropping because I couldn't make it through the class, I was just too sick. Now that I'm trying to get back to school I have been mentally reviewing my academic history and find myself desperately hoping that I can regain the glory years, so to speak, when I wanted to be in school and applied myself. Here's to a summer semester. I hope I don't wuss out.