Bless Your Heart

sad, sad day

i don’t know how to write this. my good friend melissa died yesterday. she’s 30 years old. she leaves a 1 year old son, a wonderful husband, great parents, 2 sweet sisters, neices & nephews, grandparents even and countless friends. she’s been battling cancer of the spine (and more recently the brain) for the last year. i’ve written about her in my blog before. most recently about a week ago detailing her most recent trip to wake forest for an experimental chemo. she was suffering pretty terribly through this chemo and it just proved too much for her. i’m just glad she’s not in so much pain anymore. i’m going to her house this afternoon to visit with her family. this was just so sudden. i mean, of course i’ve known she was sick, but she was in treatment. she was supposed to come home and if it didn’t work, die comfortably in her bed. i just sent her another card the day before yesterday. i just left a message on her machine yesterday morning. i hadn’t gotten my messages yet. i don’t know what to do or how to act. i’ve never had a friend my age die. not a good friend. i mean, there were a couple of people in school, but i barely knew them. i wish i could have seen her again. but she’d spent the last week & 1/2 of her life in wake forest. i know she knew i loved her though. she was good like that. but we didn’t get to finish her scrapbook for her baby together. i’ll finish it for her. i hope she knows that. this is too hard. i don’t know when i’ll update again. there will be the visitation and funeral so it will probably be after that. say a prayer. love, shanny

black eyed susan

my order came yesterday from rachel’s new company black eyed susan. so excited! i got some lip balm, coconut & sugar cookie soap, 3 jars of sugar scrubs & some bath bombs. i tried out my soap & sugar scrub this morning and i’m so smooth & slickery. everything smells so good you just want to eat it. i can’t wait to take a fizzy bath later!

sidewalks

last night i did a little shopping for something cute to wear tomorrow night to my sister’s bachelorette party. then my sister sara came over and we watched sidewalks of new york. it was a good flick. i loved the cast- they were perfect for their roles. it was really realistic. david krumholz and brittany murphy were in it, and i just think they’re great. david was in the mexican most recently- he was the guy brad pitt gets the gun from that ends up getting killed outside the bar. he was in slums of beverly hills too as one of the brothers.

Stalk bunnywunny_~!

aren’t i adorable!? and so very girlie- just how i would have pictured myself as a pixie. which pixie are you?

thanks to kate for the quiz link.

give a little…or a lot

i just read on usatoday.com about the coolest site. there’s a man named keith who lives in tennessee who gives roughly 12% ($400) of his gross monthly income to people who need it. he does it through a website he just launched a couple of months ago. it’s called modest needs. it’s not a site for corporate philanthropy or for paying huge bills. they won’t pay your credit card debt. what keith will do though is send you $90 often from his own checkbook to buy groceries, or $75 to fix your car, etc. it’s for modest needs. i think it’s such a cool idea. he started it because he likes the idea of christian tithing- where you give 10% of your income to help people in your church. although these days the $$ tends to go toward church bills and not very often to the congregation. which is ok, the church has bills to pay. he explains his philosophy much better than i can in the “news” section. i get my bonus next week. i’m totally sending a check. you should go read about the site and send him $5. i know you can. you never know when you’ll need $60 to pay that dental bill.

scenes

seen: on the street that intersects with mine. there’s currently a glass top coffee table in the front yard of a house with a sign taped to it that says: FOR SALE $30. (the $30 is scratched through but i don’t know how to do the strike through thing.) it’s now been marked down to $20. ok- here’s the thing. where are you putting the $20 if in fact you haven’t just run off with the coffee table instead of paying it. do you just leave the $$ on the ground? it’s not like someone’s home 24/7. here’s the other thing- who wants a coffee table that’s a) ugly and 2) been sitting out in the elements now for over 2 weeks?

also seen:

taped to the window at the gas station near my work: a now hiring sign that reads…. now hiring: people who will work. thanks for clearing that up.

update: nelson is completely healed and out of the cone collar and life can go back to normal! now he just needs to grow the hair back on his little possum tail.

carnival

i have to talk about shoe carnival. i’d never been to one, so the other night i popped in to see if they had any wedding appropriate silver shoes. this place is nuts. if you don’t have one in your area it’s set up like a rack room shoes. where everything’s out on the floor, there’s no backstock usually, and everything’s sort of self serve. so i’m browsing the shoes when this lady gets on the intercom and starts yelling about how if you come up to the “mic stand” in the next 5 minutes with a pair of shoes with a pink or green sticker you can get them for $5! so this mother and her kids near me start tearing through the store looking for the pink and green stickers. this “5 minutes” lasted about half an hour. the whole time the announcer was yelling into the mic. they have one of those cash boxes where you step in and ‘shoe carnival money’ swirls around you while you try to catch it. the announcer also alerted everyone that if you buy 3 or more pairs you can “spin the fun wheel and get up to $3 off your purchase!”. too much going on in that place. it’s like a crack carnival. i’m not running around trying to find pink & green stickers in a timed trial. i need to try stuff on first! too much pressure! when i left i felt like i needed a nap just to get over that experience!

mixing it up



my sister gave me this cool mixer last weekend. it’s all retrofly. i love that it’s stainless steel. it’s actually a hand me down from her m-i-l to be who gave her a cool mixer for a shower gift. it works great though and still has all the parts and accessories. i only had a hand mixer til now so i’m all set to make all sorts of treats. there’s a dial on it that you turn to set the speed. it has printed on there things like “cake mixes, quick breads, muffins” etc. you can tell it was made back in the day when people actually made baked goods from scratch and cake mixes were a newfangled invention.

shoe be doo be doo

last night after work i had to do some emergency shoe shopping. i’m seeing the alterations lady tonight to do my bridesmaid’s dress so i needed my shoes quick, fast, and in a hurry. i found a pair by chinese laundry at dsw thank goodness. it is not easy finding silver shoes that don’t make me look like either a hoochie or a granma on a cruise. i don’t know what those shoe designers are thinking sometimes. then i found a sweet little silver purse at kohls on sale for $12. woohoo!

afterward, i went home and caught up on real world drama then watched the kelly osbourne edition of making the video for papa don’t preach. i just adore her and all those osbournes. i thought she did a great job and looked great. it’s nice to see a young girl like her that’s not a britney clone. loved the rubiks cube earring!

my spot

according to this quiz the perfect place for me to live would be baltimore, md. that’s ironic since we’ll be visiting baltimore in august and we’ll be meeting up with rachel who lives there now. who knows, maybe we’ll love it so much we won’t leave!

thanks to jish for the link.