So it's another Friday Night in Winslow and what do we find ourselves doing?
De-hoarding!
We both came from small apartments in Tulsa, but somehow we have found ourselves, over the years, collecting things that we "might" use one day. Considering that I'm on vacation, I promised myself that I was going to devote some of my vacation time getting rid of some of the stuff that we aren't going to use or don't need.
To paint a clearer picture for you, we live in a 2,000 square foot house, just the two of us... Damon came from an apartment that was about 400 square feet in size,and I came from an 800 square foot apartment. How in the good lord's name did we end up with all the stuff we have? I have no clue!
Our house is kinda big for two people, but somehow we have no space at all, anywhere! What is supposed to be our master bedroom is lined with bin's full of stuff we hope to use one day, along with the master bathroom, and the master closet. But, to be fair, we are in the middle of a complete renovation, so we're not even living in the whole house just yet, but come on! We have come to the realization that there is no way in hell we are going to be able to display every trinket, or use everything we have.
That being said, after I watched a Christmas movie in bed (I still have quite a few Hallmark movies saved on DVR and a few days left of my vacation! lol!), I spent the entire rest of the day opening bin after bin, trying to reduce the amount of stuff we have. Somehow, we've become hoarders! Don't get me wrong, we're not like the people you see on the TLC shows. We can still walk in and out of every one of our rooms, but we still have way too much stuff!! Late into the evening, I found myself with an entire 55 gallon trash bag of trash, 2 bags of donation items that I'll be taking down to the Salvation Army, and a bag of things that we don't have a use or space for, but we're hoping that our families do. By the way, don't give trash to charities, that drives me crazy! Just because you need help, doesn't mean you need trash! People who can't afford to shop at the stores you do still want nice things, but if it's broken, or doesn't work, throw it away! Don't donate it, because it wont help anyone! Nonetheless, my goal was to de-hoard and, while I feel like I'm nowhere near done, we have made some progress!
After all our hard work of de-hoarding, we ended our night by making up some burritos and rice and I made Damon watch yet another Christmas movie.
It's a Friday Night in Winslow, what else can I say??
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
The Day After Christmas, 2012
Thanks to all my wonderful family and friends for a great Christmas!!
To me, it's not about money, the number of gifts you received or how much they cost, and not about the food or the fancy decorations. It's about who you were with, coming together with the people you love, everyone chipping in together to help and participating so that no one person has to carry the weight of preparing for the holiday season. It's about being thankful for what you have and what you got, knowing that no one had to do anything for you or give you anything at all. It's about knowing that the people you're with love you for you, would do for you or give you your hearts desire, if only they could.
It's about family and loved ones, being together and finding joy in the moment, whether it's a game of Uno at your mom's kitchen table, watching It's a Wonderful Life late at night when the house has gone quiet, putting together a surprise present on Christmas Eve after everyone else is asleep, staying up late and enjoying the company whether they are family or friends, and reminiscing about the good old days. It's about making gifts rather than buying them, it's about doing for others what is right and not about what you can get away with.
We should be focusing on our family and friends that could be here today and gone tomorrow rather than the commercialized version of Christmas that so many have let it become. So many of us have lost the joy of Christmas, let alone the original purpose of celebrating it. It's the celebration of a miracle that occurred over 2000 years ago but who remembers that miracle? Who believes that miracles still happen?
Christmas is my favorite holiday and some of my reasons may be commercial, I enjoy the twinkling lights, the beautifully lit trees, the wrapping of presents, and of course the great food and getting together with family and friends. BUT, the manger didn't have a beautifully lit Christmas tree, they didn't have electricity, they didn't have a feast. So what in the world does anything that we are doing today have to do with why we should be celebrating Christmas?
While I enjoy Christmas, I am glad it's over because I intend to spend the next twelve months deciding what Christmas really means to me and celebrating it accordingly.
None the less, I hope that everyone enjoyed the little things that come along with Christmas rather than coming away with the attitude of "I didn't get this" or "I wanted that". Count your blessings and forget about the nonsense, do right by others, especially your family and loved ones, and thank God or whomever you pray to that you have what you have and never stop dreaming of what you want.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
To me, it's not about money, the number of gifts you received or how much they cost, and not about the food or the fancy decorations. It's about who you were with, coming together with the people you love, everyone chipping in together to help and participating so that no one person has to carry the weight of preparing for the holiday season. It's about being thankful for what you have and what you got, knowing that no one had to do anything for you or give you anything at all. It's about knowing that the people you're with love you for you, would do for you or give you your hearts desire, if only they could.
It's about family and loved ones, being together and finding joy in the moment, whether it's a game of Uno at your mom's kitchen table, watching It's a Wonderful Life late at night when the house has gone quiet, putting together a surprise present on Christmas Eve after everyone else is asleep, staying up late and enjoying the company whether they are family or friends, and reminiscing about the good old days. It's about making gifts rather than buying them, it's about doing for others what is right and not about what you can get away with.
We should be focusing on our family and friends that could be here today and gone tomorrow rather than the commercialized version of Christmas that so many have let it become. So many of us have lost the joy of Christmas, let alone the original purpose of celebrating it. It's the celebration of a miracle that occurred over 2000 years ago but who remembers that miracle? Who believes that miracles still happen?
Christmas is my favorite holiday and some of my reasons may be commercial, I enjoy the twinkling lights, the beautifully lit trees, the wrapping of presents, and of course the great food and getting together with family and friends. BUT, the manger didn't have a beautifully lit Christmas tree, they didn't have electricity, they didn't have a feast. So what in the world does anything that we are doing today have to do with why we should be celebrating Christmas?
While I enjoy Christmas, I am glad it's over because I intend to spend the next twelve months deciding what Christmas really means to me and celebrating it accordingly.
None the less, I hope that everyone enjoyed the little things that come along with Christmas rather than coming away with the attitude of "I didn't get this" or "I wanted that". Count your blessings and forget about the nonsense, do right by others, especially your family and loved ones, and thank God or whomever you pray to that you have what you have and never stop dreaming of what you want.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
Friday, December 21, 2012
Friday, December 21st, 2012
So, it's another Friday night in Winslow......
It also happens to be 12/21/12! According to the Mayan calendar, today marks the day of a "world change"! If you think I'm a lune and that I'm the only person in the world who's even heard of this, you should have been watching the History channel this week! For the past 3 days at least, the History channel has been all about the return of Christ, Nostradamus, Edgar Casey, the Mayan calendar, Armageddon, conspiracy theories about the end of the world, etc.
Well, I woke up this morning and we still had power, which was my number one concern. We checked CNN and saw that nothing of much interest was going on in the world, at least nothing catastrophic. To be fair, the Mayan calendar indicated a "world change", not so specific, so who's to say that what they predicted hasn't happened? Maybe an asteroid is on a collision course with earth, maybe an earthquake in the mid-pacific could have occurred and will result in a tsunami warning for the entire west coast, or maybe, the calendar interpretation is off by a couple of days? Understand how long ago the calendar was created. If our interpretation is off by a day or two, how can you blame them? Some even think that the day is 12/23 and not 12/21, so stay tuned!
Considering that yesterday was the start of my week and a half vacation from work, I turned off the news and turned on one of the 25+ Christmas movies I have saved on DVR. After a couple of Christmas movies, I got around and started working on the house. We got super close to finishing the dining room today. I even hung some art on the wall! My favorite part of home renovations, next to the demolition phase, is the decorating!! Anyway, we finished that up, made ourselves a cocktail, discussed the remaining house projects, made plans for our Christmas travels, and then broke out the Monopoly! I currently own 75% of the board, poor Damon needed a little break, so I thought I would write this up during my down time. When I finish kicking his ass, we'll start our Christmas movie tradition where we watch the "classics" on the days before Christmas. We start off with the best Christmas movie ever, It's a Wonderful Life! Then it's Scrooged, then it's A Christmas Carol (Damon insists on the version with George C. Scott), and then we finish it off on Christmas Eve with National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation!!
That's it ladies and gentlemen, this is how we roll on a Friday Night in Winslow! Catch ya next week!
It also happens to be 12/21/12! According to the Mayan calendar, today marks the day of a "world change"! If you think I'm a lune and that I'm the only person in the world who's even heard of this, you should have been watching the History channel this week! For the past 3 days at least, the History channel has been all about the return of Christ, Nostradamus, Edgar Casey, the Mayan calendar, Armageddon, conspiracy theories about the end of the world, etc.
Well, I woke up this morning and we still had power, which was my number one concern. We checked CNN and saw that nothing of much interest was going on in the world, at least nothing catastrophic. To be fair, the Mayan calendar indicated a "world change", not so specific, so who's to say that what they predicted hasn't happened? Maybe an asteroid is on a collision course with earth, maybe an earthquake in the mid-pacific could have occurred and will result in a tsunami warning for the entire west coast, or maybe, the calendar interpretation is off by a couple of days? Understand how long ago the calendar was created. If our interpretation is off by a day or two, how can you blame them? Some even think that the day is 12/23 and not 12/21, so stay tuned!
Considering that yesterday was the start of my week and a half vacation from work, I turned off the news and turned on one of the 25+ Christmas movies I have saved on DVR. After a couple of Christmas movies, I got around and started working on the house. We got super close to finishing the dining room today. I even hung some art on the wall! My favorite part of home renovations, next to the demolition phase, is the decorating!! Anyway, we finished that up, made ourselves a cocktail, discussed the remaining house projects, made plans for our Christmas travels, and then broke out the Monopoly! I currently own 75% of the board, poor Damon needed a little break, so I thought I would write this up during my down time. When I finish kicking his ass, we'll start our Christmas movie tradition where we watch the "classics" on the days before Christmas. We start off with the best Christmas movie ever, It's a Wonderful Life! Then it's Scrooged, then it's A Christmas Carol (Damon insists on the version with George C. Scott), and then we finish it off on Christmas Eve with National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation!!
That's it ladies and gentlemen, this is how we roll on a Friday Night in Winslow! Catch ya next week!
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Friday, December 14th, 2012
So on Friday a terrible tragedy occured in Newtown, CT. 20 children and 6 adults lost their lives at the hands of a, lets say "disturbed" person. My heart goes out to the families of each and every person who was slain that day. BUT, I am a little disgusted by the fact that people are turning towards outlawing guns due to this tragedy. Let us not forget the Century Movie Theater (12 dead, 58 injured), Columbine High School (13 dead, 15 including the assailaints and 21 injured), the Oregon shopping mall (2 dead, 3 including the assailant, 1 injured) that happened only a few days before Sandy Hook.
I'm not in any way making light of the situation, what happened was a tragedy and it turns my stomach to think of all those young children slain for no reason. However, talking about stricter gun control isn't going to solve the United States' problems or reduce the number of deaths we see in a year. According to the CDC, in 2009, there were 36,216 motor vehicle deaths, 24,792 falls resulting in death, 39,147 drug induced deaths, 24,518 alcohol induced deaths, and 11,493 assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms. So if we're going to take away guns, lets do away with cars, all types of drugs and alcohol, and what the hell, lets make all surfaces padded so no one will ever fall and die again.
My point is this, lets not assume that just guns kill people, when in actuality, stupid or rather disturbed people with guns kill people. My heart goes out to the families of the victims, as did my heart with any of the above mentioned events. However, don't take away my 2nd amendment rights, it's my right to keep and bear arms and it's your right not to, if you so choose! My right to protect myself, my family. You can't take that away because of a few people with "problems" who decide to shoot at people for no reason. Rest assured, if I'm aiming my glock or 12 gauge shotgun at you, it's with damn good reason!
And another thing, lets stop trying to find reason when there is none. Blaiming Autism is not the answer, any more than blaiming gun owners. He didn't walk into that school to shoot a bunch of little kids, after murdering his own mother because he may have had a form of Autism. He was flippin' crazy, just like all the other assholes who shoot at random strangers. Quit trying to create a reason for it and just accept that some people are crazy and they do crazy things.
I'm not in any way making light of the situation, what happened was a tragedy and it turns my stomach to think of all those young children slain for no reason. However, talking about stricter gun control isn't going to solve the United States' problems or reduce the number of deaths we see in a year. According to the CDC, in 2009, there were 36,216 motor vehicle deaths, 24,792 falls resulting in death, 39,147 drug induced deaths, 24,518 alcohol induced deaths, and 11,493 assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms. So if we're going to take away guns, lets do away with cars, all types of drugs and alcohol, and what the hell, lets make all surfaces padded so no one will ever fall and die again.
My point is this, lets not assume that just guns kill people, when in actuality, stupid or rather disturbed people with guns kill people. My heart goes out to the families of the victims, as did my heart with any of the above mentioned events. However, don't take away my 2nd amendment rights, it's my right to keep and bear arms and it's your right not to, if you so choose! My right to protect myself, my family. You can't take that away because of a few people with "problems" who decide to shoot at people for no reason. Rest assured, if I'm aiming my glock or 12 gauge shotgun at you, it's with damn good reason!
And another thing, lets stop trying to find reason when there is none. Blaiming Autism is not the answer, any more than blaiming gun owners. He didn't walk into that school to shoot a bunch of little kids, after murdering his own mother because he may have had a form of Autism. He was flippin' crazy, just like all the other assholes who shoot at random strangers. Quit trying to create a reason for it and just accept that some people are crazy and they do crazy things.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Saturday, December 8th, 2012
As promised, here is my Saturday Night in Winslow!
So, typically we spend our Saturdays working on our house. We are in the middle of practically remodeling the entire place. I promise to share some of those abosolutely hillarious stories in future posts, but that's what we started our Saturday doing. Damon was painting some trim and I spent most of my day finishing our Christmas cards and trying to organize our pantry.
Around 4:30, we suddenly realized that the big town of Winslow was having it's annual Christmas Parade downtown at 5:00, so we rushed to finish up our projects and jumped in the car. We made it downtown with just a few minutes to spare. It was great to see how many people actually showed up for the parade. Our Winslow road sign says "Pop. 399". While I argue that when we moved here, with our three dogs, the sign should have been changed to 404... but I digress. There had to have been a couple hundred people that came to the parade, that's about 50%, pretty impressive for little ole Winslow.
Anyway, the whole thing only lasted about 10 minutes, but unlike other parades I've been to, we actually had elves with lit hats running and throwing candy, people on horseback, restored classic cars, and maybe some other cars that seemed to have just found their way into the procession on accident, and a couple lit-up floats. We even had a truck bed (yes, just half a truck) being pulled by a tractor. Oh, and how could I forget our volunteer fire department, with Santa in tow. Actually, I think we had two Santa's, one probably half way through the parade, and the second riding the last fire truck, who graciously dismounted his fire engine sleigh to greet the kids in the crowd at the end.
On another note, as we were walking up to the parade route, we heard sirens and people yelling out to stand clear! We thought this was the start of the parade, but in fact it was an ambulance rushing off to an emergency call. Pretty sure everyone felt a little silly cheering them as they sped through downtown. God be with them on their way to whomever they were trying to help.
So, 20 minutes later, we're home. We play with the dogs for a few minutes and come on inside for more entertainment. What did we do with the rest of our Saturday night? Wait for it...... We made a quick dinner of hamburgers and homemade pasta salad and we sat down to watch old episodes of a great 80's/90's TV show, Quantum Leap. If you haven't seen it, don't knock it, most of what is on TV now is pure crap so we look elsewhere for our entertainment!
Yeah, that's it...... Hope you come back next week!
So, typically we spend our Saturdays working on our house. We are in the middle of practically remodeling the entire place. I promise to share some of those abosolutely hillarious stories in future posts, but that's what we started our Saturday doing. Damon was painting some trim and I spent most of my day finishing our Christmas cards and trying to organize our pantry.
Around 4:30, we suddenly realized that the big town of Winslow was having it's annual Christmas Parade downtown at 5:00, so we rushed to finish up our projects and jumped in the car. We made it downtown with just a few minutes to spare. It was great to see how many people actually showed up for the parade. Our Winslow road sign says "Pop. 399". While I argue that when we moved here, with our three dogs, the sign should have been changed to 404... but I digress. There had to have been a couple hundred people that came to the parade, that's about 50%, pretty impressive for little ole Winslow.
Anyway, the whole thing only lasted about 10 minutes, but unlike other parades I've been to, we actually had elves with lit hats running and throwing candy, people on horseback, restored classic cars, and maybe some other cars that seemed to have just found their way into the procession on accident, and a couple lit-up floats. We even had a truck bed (yes, just half a truck) being pulled by a tractor. Oh, and how could I forget our volunteer fire department, with Santa in tow. Actually, I think we had two Santa's, one probably half way through the parade, and the second riding the last fire truck, who graciously dismounted his fire engine sleigh to greet the kids in the crowd at the end.
On another note, as we were walking up to the parade route, we heard sirens and people yelling out to stand clear! We thought this was the start of the parade, but in fact it was an ambulance rushing off to an emergency call. Pretty sure everyone felt a little silly cheering them as they sped through downtown. God be with them on their way to whomever they were trying to help.
So, 20 minutes later, we're home. We play with the dogs for a few minutes and come on inside for more entertainment. What did we do with the rest of our Saturday night? Wait for it...... We made a quick dinner of hamburgers and homemade pasta salad and we sat down to watch old episodes of a great 80's/90's TV show, Quantum Leap. If you haven't seen it, don't knock it, most of what is on TV now is pure crap so we look elsewhere for our entertainment!
Yeah, that's it...... Hope you come back next week!
Friday, December 7th, 2012
So, on Friday I came home after a super long week at work and hustled around the house to get ready for a Christmas Crafting Party in Fayetteville. My girlfriends and I enjoyed some wine and nibbled on some pizza while crafting; we decorated little wooden bird houses and even made a nice wreath to pin Christmas cards to. I had a great time hanging out with the girls and I thank my friend, Erin, for hosting the party!
I know, I know.... My blog is called Friday Night in Winslow, and I didn't spend the night in Winslow, but Damon did. Apparently a little too excited to have me out of the house, Damon spent his evening eating 6 pounds of frozen lasagna and watching History channel shows on the fast approaching apocalypse. Again, don't stop reading my blog, we're not crazy, we just live in Winslow! And on top of that, on the off-chance that something happens on the 21st, there's no harm in being prepared.
No matter if you believe in the Zombie Apocalypse, an alien invasion, or something possibly more realistic like a financial collapse, truckers going on strike, another ice storm or the death of all things electronic, it doesn't hurt to be prepared. Living in Winslow, there isn't a whole lot to do for entertainment so we're often left to our own imaginations. Since I wasn't actually in Winslow on Friday night, I'll be sharing what a Saturday Night in Winslow is like in my next post!
Keep reading!
I know, I know.... My blog is called Friday Night in Winslow, and I didn't spend the night in Winslow, but Damon did. Apparently a little too excited to have me out of the house, Damon spent his evening eating 6 pounds of frozen lasagna and watching History channel shows on the fast approaching apocalypse. Again, don't stop reading my blog, we're not crazy, we just live in Winslow! And on top of that, on the off-chance that something happens on the 21st, there's no harm in being prepared.
No matter if you believe in the Zombie Apocalypse, an alien invasion, or something possibly more realistic like a financial collapse, truckers going on strike, another ice storm or the death of all things electronic, it doesn't hurt to be prepared. Living in Winslow, there isn't a whole lot to do for entertainment so we're often left to our own imaginations. Since I wasn't actually in Winslow on Friday night, I'll be sharing what a Saturday Night in Winslow is like in my next post!
Keep reading!
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