My, my...what long nails you have

I've discovered that a decent amount of will power and specific goal will help me keep my finger nails away from my chompers.

I am happy to report my nails have gone nearly untouched for about two weeks now, and we're making good progress! The only time I've caught myself (so really, who's to say how many times I've slipped up and it's gone unnoticed) was last Wednesday when the newsletter I put together for work was due to go out and the program which we use to send it was experiencing technical difficulties. There are few things more irritating and nerve-racking than that.

It was Misters Pointer and Thumb, on both hands, that were the unfortunate victims of my anxiety about the newsletter being delayed.

Here are a few pictures, for good measure.
It may not look like much, but to see any white part of a nail on my hand is a rarity. As I said before, the only other time they've had much length was on my wedding day.

Mom, I'll look for your check in the mail ;)

We're Golden

Thank you all so much for the birthday wishes, calls, cards, gifts and love. This year marked my golden birthday, meaning I turned 28 on the 28th -- an event I've been looking forward to for some 20 odd years now. Fun fact: Justin and I both celebrated our golden birthdays this year...his was in May!

Justin made birthday breakfast, decorating in all things gold to start the day. I bumped up some of my meetings so I could leave work a bit early as Justin had plans to get us to an undisclosed location for birthday dinner, which meant leaving in plenty of time so we'd miss traffic.

A Golden Birthday Breakfast

We headed west and ended up in Half Moon Bay for dinner at the Moss Beach Distillery. I've heard about this place from a few co-workers who've enjoyed the restaurant's great menu and outdoor seating around the fire pits where you can watch the sunset. I love sunsets and I love great food, so Justin's pick was perfect! If you ever go, you must try the fried artichoke hearts!

Team Thompson at the Moss Beach Distillery in Half Moon Bay

Justin was so excited about dinner he couldn't keep his eyes open!Thanks to Maggie, my outfit was complete with darling danglely gold earrings!

We came back home for presents and phone calls. We also caught the end of the Giants vs. Rangers game, where the Giants cinched their second win of the series!

Some of the loot!

Thanks again to everyone who joined in celebrating with us -- you sure know how to make a girl feel loved!

Happy Birthday Lee!

Happy birthday to a wonderful father and father-in-law!
May this day of celebration be filled with much love, cake and mountain biking.

We love you!

I have 7 days

No, no. I didn’t watch a video and then receive a phone call from a creepy-voiced character telling me I have 7 days.

I have 7 days to kick a habit.

A habit I’ve had all my life.

I bite my nails.

The only time I managed to stop was right before my wedding. I wore a rubber band on my wrist and snapped myself anytime I realized I was biting my nails. I guess the wedding was motivation, but as soon as it was over, so was the rubber band snapping and soon my nails were gone again.

The reason I have given myself 7 days is because today is 7 days away from my 28^th birthday. My mom has always said she had a habit of biting her nails when she was young, but stopped when she was 28. Her reason: she got engaged at 28 and didn’t want people looking at her ring and then turning up their nose at her short fingernails that had obviously been destroyed by her own teeth.

Whenever mom would tell me the story about how it took a ring at age 28 for her to stop, I would simply reply, “well I have ___ years left then!”

Well, D Day has arrived. It’s time. I can no longer cling to my last “reasonable” justification for a bad habit I believe developed in the womb.

We’ve tried the liquid you paint on your nails that burns and leaves a horrible taste in your mouth if you bite. We’ve tried scraping a bar of soap (a Grandma Chris recommendation), but my nails were barely long enough to do much scraping. We’ve even tried bribes…my mom offered me $10 a fingernail if I could grown them out and keep them that way for a certain amount of time. We’ve tried all sorts of tricks, tips, punishments and bets.

So, with the 28^th in sight, I have painted my nails to help me out in this all-or-nothing attempt to stop. I’ve already repainted my two pointer fingers and as you’ll note from the pictures below, I’ll need to repaint them again tonight.

These were taken at 11:44 a.m. this morning. I’m going to post pictures from time to time to help hold myself to my challenge.

Wish me and my 10 buddies luck.

Why Scrambled Eggs Remind Me of My Cat

I had a friend named Kristine when I was little. We met in Sunday School and quickly became friends because we shared a name and because were wearing the same sweater the day we met. It was red and black with several black bows attached to the front. It was pretty stylin’.

Kristine and I would go to one another’s houses almost every Sunday after church. At her house we’d play outside in the tree fort or their motor home, inside throwing things down the laundry shoot and we’d even go down the street at her neighbor’s house so we could jump on their trampoline.

Kristine’s family had a few farm cats around, and one Sunday, one of the momma kitties introduced us to her new litter. I fell deeply in love with the runt. I felt bad that he was small and I felt even worse when Kristine’s dad explained the likely fate of a runt. I scooped him up, called my parents and begged them to let me bring the little guy home.

I had to do a lot of begging, but I got to bring Runt home. We’d only ever had a pet dog that we called our own. Her name was Jessica. We had all sorts of stray cats and dogs wondering around, but Jessica was ours. She got run over by a cement truck right in front of my brothers and me one day while we were out with our mom who was turning on the irrigation pump. But that’s another story for another time.

Runt was a playful kitty and grew to be one of the larger cats I’ve ever seen. He enjoyed attacking his rainbow colored bear and joining me in a game of “chase your brothers around the house.” He was so playful that my second-grade self decided that his name should be Playful.

Yes. I named a cat a verb. I was in second grade, ok!

Playful, in true farm cat form, would sometimes take his playfulness a little too far. Without notice, he would attack, claws bared and sharp teeth glinting. We quickly learned that he didn’t enjoy being petted anywhere but his head. Once in a while, he’d let us stroke his back, but if you liked your hands, legs and even face scar free, it behooved you to stick to his head only.

Playful, being the lucky animal we called our real pet, was allowed to come in the house from time to time. Other animals had to tough it outside 24/7.

Now, the moment you’ve been waiting for…

Sometimes he even got bowls of leftover salmon. What a lucky kitty!

If we ran out of cat food, I’d scramble an egg in the micro for Playful. Good golly did he love scrambled eggs. I think he liked how it kept his coat shiny. He’d scarf them right up and then go back outside to hunt gophers, birds and the occasional, unfortunate, bunny.

Playful was in our lives until the fall I went to college. My mom called me at school to let me know that shortly after I left for WSU, Playful disappeared. They hadn’t found him anywhere, but she just wanted me to know. I was ok with that, he was old. However, I did like to pretend he was roaming the Palouse in search of me because he missed curling up, one foot over the other, next to me on my bed. And no one else at home was going to make him a scrambled egg.

I went home for Thanksgiving break my freshmen year. At some point during the week, my brothers were outside raking leaves, and I was inside helping mom in the kitchen. There was a tap on the window by the kitchen sink so I stood on my tiptoes to find the source. It was my bro Matt. He had a sly grin on his face and then he said, “Hey Chris, I found your cat!” As he said “I found your cat” he lifted up the pitchfork. Lying (not speared) across it, legs crossed, was the barely-there (and still furry, sorry) carcass of my cat.

Playful had passed in his sleep, right in the bushes lining our back yard. I can’t really remember my reaction to the cat on the pitchfork…I probably yelped, chuckled and felt a twinge of sadness, especially because my theory of Playful on the Palouse was busted...but I do remember grabbing a shovel and going out in the orchard with Matt to bury the ol’ Playful.

Playful on the Palouse…now there is an interesting movie name.

Talk about Gourmet!

I microwaved myself a scrambled egg last night for a quick dinner between getting home from work, washing the dishes and heading out to OAG, a weekly church small group gathering.

Whenever I make scrambled eggs in the micro, I think of my friend Sarah. And here’s my roundabout way of telling you why:

Sarah and I met our freshmen year at WSU. We were/are such good buddies that we rented an apartment together our senior year. During our senior year, she would kindly wake up early to drive me to a work (at one of the various campus espresso carts) and I would stay up late to pick her up from work (at one of the various campus convenient markets). That’s what friends are for, right?

Right?

Ride sharing actually started in the spring of our freshmen year. I landed myself a gig with the campus espresso carts, but twice during the first week of work, I had stayed up most of the night with a friend in need. I panicked when I awoke from dozing off and realized I only had 10 minutes to get back to my hall (up the hill), get out of my PJs and get to work across campus (up and down another hill). I ran back to good ol’ Community Hall, rapped on Sarah’s door and begged her to drive me to work. She had been lucky enough to have a (crimson?) parking pass which got her a sweet parking spot right behind our hall. My car was parked in the blue lot by the coliseum, about a mile away and a hill away.

Sarah graciously drove me to work that first day, in her forest-ranger green colored jeep, and she did so later that week when I had been up all night again. I’m still grateful for her doing that -- it was my first week after all, and I was mortified that I was late. Twice. I was lucky to keep my job.

Back to the egg. I still worked at campus carts my senior year (no doubt because of Sarah driving my late bootie to work my freshmen year!). During our first week as seniors at WSU I had a 6 a.m. start time at the CUB campus cart (RIP old CUB. RIP). Sarah got up to drive and while I finished getting ready, eyes half open, I asked if she could pop an egg in the micro so I could eat on the way to work.

“An egg? Um, ok,” she said, eyes half open.

About 25 seconds later I heart a POP! and a YELP! from the kitchen.

I thought everyone scrambled eggs in the micro from time to time…apparently it was just an Emerson thing. Sarah had never heard of this before so she popped an egg -- in the shell -- in the microwave, just as I had asked.

That egg exploded.

Stinky, exploded egg easily frustrated us at 5:45 a.m. – especially because I’m sure we were nursing a welcome-back-week party hangover. We laugh about it now though, and thanks to that explosion, I’m known in Sarah’s family as the one who introduced them to the microwaved scrambled egg.

Imagine going through life not leaning on the microwaved scrambled egg for a quick snack, breakfast or dinner before bible study! Where would these families be with me? I imagine they’d be hungry during bible study and/or stuck washing icky cooked-on egg from sauté pans for the rest of their lives.

There you have it. The reason scrambled eggs ala microwave remind me of my friend Sarah.

They also remind me of my old cat, but that’s another story for another time.

In the meantime...

We've been waiting for both cars to return to us so we could post a post about how the prodigal cars have returned.

However, it appears that the Mazda Tribute is more of a problem child/car than its sibling, my first born/bought car, the Mazda 3.

This seems to go along with the idea of sibling birth order in families, doesn't it? The first born tries to stay out of trouble while the second one likes to see just how far the rubber band of patience stretches before it snaps.

Snaps!

We love both cars just the same, and upon the Tribute's return home to our apartment parking lot, I plan on yelling out to Justin, "Quick! Bring the best car cover and put it on him. Put an air freshener on his rear-view mirror and new tires on his rims. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this car of mine was damaged and is back to normal again; he was hurt and is repaired."

Ben, the repairman, said the car part they're waiting on should arrive tomorrow and that we should expect to get it back early this week (although that's what they said last week...). We'll keep ya posted.

We know you've been wondering...

PS -- I'm not going to spend too much time thinking about the fact that I wrote "first born car." I know it's weird I did so in the first place, but I typed it out without first pulling up the mental image.

PPS -- To Joe/Curtis and all other middle/second born children of the world. You know your oldest siblings love you immensely. And not just because you were able to create enough drama so that the attention was off of we older children long enough so we could act out and no one would notice. Promise :)

PPSS -- Special thanks goes out to Jesus' "The Parable of the Lost Son" for inspiring that last bit. You can read the original parable in the bible in Luke, chapter 15.

PPPSSS -- We have reason to believe a slug is living in my rental car. Reason: there is a slug trail running the length of the backseat and it then the trail trails to the front seat. It could have been moving the opposite direction, but either way, I find it quite disturbing. A slug!??