Thursday, December 18, 2014

Friday Fragments

Time for Friday fragments, where we take the trivial things that happened during the week and we throw them all in a blog post, like a big 'ole pot of fragment soup.

But first...a happy dance from my two favorite comic characters:

Frag #1
Do you use Redbox to rent movies? We do because it's super cheap - like $1.30 a night or something like that. Here's what usually happens:
It's Friday night and we decide we want to watch a movie. 
Hubby says lets just order a movie from On Demand through the cable company. 
I say no, it's $6, let's go get a movie from Redbox.
We drive to the Redbox, get the movie, drive home, watch the movie, go to bed.
Next day I remind hubby to bring the movie back on his way out to pick up milk. 
Hubby says, sure no problem.
8 days later, I notice the movie is still sitting on top of the T.V.
Hubby kicks himself for forgetting. I kick myself for forgetting to remind hubby. Then I kick hubby.
We return the movie and get charged $12.97. 
I realize we could have saved the trip to Redbox, stayed home, and watched 2 movies for the same price.
Repeat the above the following weekend.

The movie was Maleficent, which was very good, by the way. Angelina Jolie was fantastic in it. At least we didn't pay $12.97 for a bad movie. So there's that.

Frag#2
Speaking of movies, do you have a favorite Christmas movie or two that you watch every year? I was on a Christmas movie kick last night so we watched It's a Wonderful Life, Love Actually, and about 1/3 of Christmas Vacation. 

I was supposed to write a blog post for Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop, but my daughter Sissa came home from a two week trip to California and we got all comfy on the couch and started the movies, then it was just too hard to get up.

Mama Kat has a lovely writing prompt this week called "Where I'm From". You follow a poem template and fill in the blanks with descriptions and experiences from your childhood that shaped who you are.

I've started mine, but it's taking longer than I thought, or maybe I'm overthinking it. That's easy to do when you start examining your past. Anyway, her link up is open until next Thursday I think, so I hope to link up maybe by the weekend. Here's where you can link up if you want to.

If you write one, whether you link up to Mama Kat's or not, leave me the link in the comments - I'd love to read it.

Frag #3
So remember last week I shared the White Elephant gift I bought for our office Christmas party - the fart bank? Do you know who ended up going home with it? 

Yours truly. Well, my hubby, actually. Which was pretty funny because he was a little embarrassed that I would buy such a gift to represent our family in the office gift exchange. He could have left with a remote controlled helicopter, but the gal he stole it from looked so disheartened when he traded the fart bank for the helicopter that as we were leaving, he turned around and gave it back to her.

So I have the fart bank on my desk at work. I've decided that when the guys don't answer my instant messages or emails, the penalty is that I march into their office with the fart bank and they have to deposit money into the butt crack and listen to the ensuing sound.

Hey, if you ignore emails, you have to pay the piper...or farter, as the case may be.

Frag #4
This weekend is Christmas cookie weekend. Making, not eating. Well, probably both. I make my mom's sugar cookie recipe and frost and decorate them and bring them to work as gifts (fart-free gifts - yay). My girls help me and we listen to Christmas music and laugh and talk and bicker and it's one of the best parts of Christmas for me.

That's if for my frags this week. Off to bed now because I stayed up too late last night. Have a great weekend!

Dragging and fragging,
Lori

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Back to Those Fraggin' Friday Fragments

It's been a few weeks since I wrote a Friday Frag post, but I'm hoping to get back in the fraggin' saddle.

But first...a friday happy dance!


Those Peanuts dudes sure knew how to party!

Frag #1
I'm doing quite a bit of online Christmas shopping this year because well...it's kind of a no-brainer. No crowds to deal with, huge selection, and I can shop in my pajamas. Of course, to some that last one is not an obstacle.
Woman in public shopping in pajamas and curlers
Source
Anyhoo, my only problem with online shopping is I think I spend more. For instance, I get a coupon for $10 off if I spend $30, but maybe the item I want is $24.99 and even with tax, it's under $30. So I buy something else.

Then after I hit the big fat "Check-out" button, up pops a message that if I spend $10 more I'll get free shipping. Since shipping is about $10, I figure it's like getting something for free anyway, so I buy something else.

So for the $24.99 item, I've now spent $80 because I can never just buy something that's $10. It's always $15 or $20. Do that on 5 or 6 sites in a day and well...you see my problem.

Is it just me or is anyone else suckered in with this gimmick?

Frag #2
I added a new comment system to my blog. I went with Intense Debate with the Comment Luv plug in. I wanted something where I could respond to a comment by email and the response will post on my blog and get sent to the commenter by email. It was a little nervous putting in a new system because I've tried others that just didn't work. Hope this one does. If anything goes awry while you're commenting, please let me know.

Frag #3
Every year at our work Christmas party we do a white elephant gift exchange. This is the present I'm bringing this year:
Funny Fanny Farting Bank from Amazon - the perfect white elephant Christmas gift! Your welcome from Tiny Little Reveries.
It makes...err...a distinctive explosive sound when you put a coin in. It farts, ok?

Yup, one of my co-workers will be the lucky recipient of a Funny Fanny Farting Bank and a roll of quarters. 

In case you're interested, according to Amazon it was frequently purchased with the Generic Weener Kleener soap and the Obama toilet paper.

Frag #4
Want to see something that has made me very happy this week?

Hang a jewelry organizer on the wall of your closet to keep your jewelry organized.
It's so organized and pretty!
I now have a little spot in my closet just for my jewelry. My long necklaces were all shoved together in my jewelry box and it was hard to find what I wanted in the morning when I'm hurriedly getting ready for work. Plus they were always getting stuck in the jewelry box door because they were too long.

I know. First world problems.

So I bought these hanging jewelry organizers and hung everything on them I have to tell you - they just make me smile. If I've had a bad day, I only have to go in my closet and gaze at my pretty little jewelry spot to get an immediate pick-me-up. 

I bought a little key holder to hang more bracelets on too. I should have had my hubby hang it though because I used nails that were too long without realizing it came with two nice little nails in a package on the back of it.

Oh well. I can hang rings from the nails, right?


Frag#5
Here's a little tip for you - watch out for Christmas tree lights with bulbs that broke off and left exposed wires.

Those suckers will shock the knickers off you! I was decorating my little Victorian tree (picture coming in another post) and my hand just brushed the broken bulb slightly and YOWZA!

I felt like the electrocuted cat in Christmas Vacation.

Christmas Vacation movie electrocuted cat scene. You get almost the same result if you touch a broken Christmas light with the wires exposed. Just FYI.
Source
That's it for my silly frags this week. After reading this over I feel extremely shallow. With all the important things going on in the world, I couldn't come up with more important issues to write about than a fart bank, my too much jewelry problem and that I shocked my finger?

Oh well. I'll think about that later. Hope you have a fantastic weekend! And thanks to Mrs.4444 over at Half-Past Kissin' Time for hosting Friday Fragments every fraggin' week! Pay her a visit and link up your own frags some time.

Shallowly,
Lori

The Power of My Curse

I first wrote this post back in January, 2010. I'm updating it a bit and reposting it for Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop topic, "Share a quote you love."

I know that's lazy, but I've established before that I can be a bit lazy when it comes to my blog. And that ties right into the meaning of one of my favorite quotes.

My daughter and I watched Penelope the other night.  If you haven't seen it, it's a quirky little movie made in 2006 about a girl (Christina Ricci) who is cursed with a pig nose.  She is told that the curse can only be broken if she finds true love with "one of her own kind."

She sets out to do just that, and at the end, tells the story of her curse to a group of children. She asks the kids what they thought the moral of the story is and a little boy with a charming English accent says,
"It's not the power of the curse, it's the power you give the curse."
Inspirational quote from the movie Penelope. It's not the power of the curse, it's the power you give the curse.
When I heard that line in the movie, I immediately thought of my stepdad.  I intensely disliked him. I only had to live under his roof for a few months because I turned 18 not long after he and my mom married, and moved out. But that was long enough for him to curse me.

He was a selfish, mean-spirited, obnoxious man, but he fancied himself a smart one. One day he picked up something I had written - a grocery list, or a note, or something - and starts to "analyze" my handwriting.

After a minute, he announces, with his too loud voice and his Brooklyn accent, "Well, it looks like you're all right kid, but you got high ideals and sloppy habits." 

I've never forgotten those words.  The man meant less to me than a mascara clump, but those words hung over my head for years.  "High ideals and sloppy habits." They were my curse.

Any endeavor I started, I would question if I could finish it successfully because of my "high ideals but sloppy habits."  Some aspirations I haven't started yet because I'm afraid I won't finish them - like writing a book.  How can I write a book with "high ideals and sloppy habits?"

Admittedly, there were a few things I started that didn't pan out - selling Tupperware (that was a brief one when I was a teen-ager), learning medical transcribing, selling insurance - but it wasn't "sloppy habits" that did me in. I just wasn't good at those things. Or maybe I could have been good if  I had better habits.

There I go again, giving the curse power.

Then there's my blog. I had high hopes that it would be wildly successful.


The fact that it's not is entirely my own fault. I'm inconsistent. I get tired after work and don't feel like blogging. I get busy on the weekends and don't make time to write and promote and socialize in blog world.

High ideals, sloppy habits.

On the other  hand, there are some things at which I've been very successful. I flourished in the mortgage business for 9 years.

I'm an excellent administrative assistant.

I was a good mom. Not perfect...but good.

What else...

I'm proficient at wine drinking. Although I do get sloppy when I've had too much.

Anyway, the point is that most of us are cursed with our baggage.  Past mistakes, labels our parents or teachers gave us when we were kids, beliefs we formed about ourselves (based on others judgements about us) - these are all curses.

They don't have any power if we don't give it to them.

Curses we give power to are like big fat pig noses strapped on our face. They get in the way. They're hard to see past. And they make us feel ugly.

This quote helped me understand that.

Ever since I saw the movie, whenever I hear that little whisper in my head when I've failed at something (**Pssst - high ideals, sloppy habits**), I think of Penelope and I refuse to give my curse power.

What about you? Do you have a curse?