Pollyanna Day 9

I like this little experiment.  I like how it forces me to think about the little everyday things that make life a tiny bit better.  So in that spirit...

My flat iron.  I have just plain awful hair.  Sometimes, if I don't do anything with it, it takes on that "I was just burned in a fire" look.   Sure, it's got natural wave, but in all the wrong places and in all the wrong directions.  I remember (back in the day) when I heard how my cousin's new wife liked to put her hair on an ironing board and straighten it with an iron.  Yeah, the kind you use to de-wrinkle your clothes.  I was tempted to try this.  The problem with that, though, is that I REALLY hate ironing...of all kinds.  I don't bust out an ironing board for my skirts, why would I do it for my hair?  If only I could use the clothes dryer to iron my hair like I do my clothes.  Now  THERE's a briliant idea. So...you can imagine my sheer delight when some genius of a human being invented a tiny little hair-ironing device you could hold in one hand--no ironing board required.  As we say in Facebook land, "LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE!"  I am SO very thankful for my flat iron.


My car heater.  I guess this really should have gone on yesterday's list, but...well...my experiment, my rules.  Once again, after a lovely and warm weekend in St. George, I spent a hellish evening at my kids' soccer games.  We have yet to have a game...or a practice, for that matter...where it's not windy and ridiculously cold.  I'm hopeful for today's game.  So far, sunny and 61 is the forecast.  Glorious!  Annnnyway...all I could think about yesterday as I was freezing my...er...earlobes off on the sidelines, and fighting with a three year old who has no ability whatsoever to restrain his irritability, was how I could not wait to get in my car and turn on the heater. It's a small modern-day convenience, but it means an awful lot when you're fighting with four very cold, wet kids who do NOT care how miserable they're making you by being miserable.  It's just me, me, me all the time. 

Pollyanna Day 8

I must say I never thought I'd be consistent enough to make it to day THREE, let alone day 8.  I'm patting myself on the back as we speak.

A couple of things I'm feeling warm and fuzzy about right now:

Garage door openers. Think about it for a minute.  If you have a garage, how much simpler is your life because of that little remote with the magic button on it?  I'm a soccer mom now...for a few more weeks anyway.  I'm in the car, out of the car, backing out, pulling in, coming, going, constantly.  I love that I can just push a button and the door opens and I'm in...or out.  I think having to get out of my car thirty times a day to open and shut the garage door would probably alter my mood, and not in a good way.  I wonder how they managed back in the Little House on the Prairie days, you know, when they had to get out of their wagons to open the barn door in between soccer games.  What a jip.

Snow.  It makes me appreciate the warm, sunny days.  That's all I'm going to say about that, because certain people who live around here tend to get hostile with me when I start speaking positively about snow.  So I won't. Starting now.

Pollyanna Days 6 and 7

As I said on day 5, I'm doubling up Sunday and Monday, since we were out of town and I was purposely ignoring the internet.

The Sun. Warm, sunny, balmy, 80 degree weather.  And a hotel swimming pool.  I took the kids out of town to someplace much warmer.  It was simply divine.  I swam with the kids, then I watched them swim while I worked on minimizing my pastiness.  (It's just too soon to call it a tan.  I am WHITE, people.  Freakishly WHITE!).  I loved being able to just sit outside in the sun for a while, with nothing to worry about except for the possibility of three of my four kids drowning.  Hallie's my only swimmer.  Livvi's improving.  The other two need work.

Hotel Housekeeping.  The kids thought I was a little weird when we came back to our room on Saturday and I became positively giddy when I saw the crisply-made beds and fluffy clean towels which had magically appeared in our room during our absence.   Kids.  They don't know anything.  Moms,  I know you get it.  Just the idea that I get to climb into a fresh bed that *I* did not have to make, and I get to dry off with towels washed and dryed and folded by SOMEONE else...Oh, I'm getting dizzy thinking about it even now.   Did I mention they emptied the trash, too?  It almost makes up for the Hefty bag full of laundry I brought home from the trip--which, incidentally, will NOT be done by someone else.  Ok, dizzy spell officially killed.

Pollyanna Day 5

I'm in the midst of frantically trying to get four kids plus me out the door for a mini vacation to someplace warmer.  Along those lines, I'm thankful for a couple of things:

Flip flops.  The longer winter goes on, the more I forget how simple it is to dress kids in the spring/summer months.  Going outside in winter is a major event.  Pants, long sleeve shirt, socks, hat, gloves, jacket, even snow boots at times.  I love it when the temps warm up and it takes 30 seconds to throw on the shorts and FLIP FLOPS! No putting on socks and tying sneakers!  I'm all about simplifying.   Not to mention the perpetual pile of the aforementioned winter gear that is a permanent part of my entry way decor for a good five months or more.  They come in, take it off, and leave it. And I get to the point where I just don't care.  I love it when the pile goes bye-bye.

Diapers.  I'm not in love with the idea that I have a near-four-year-old who knows how to use the toilet but refuses to do it.  It's part of his wonderfully stubborn personality.  He is on a mission to remain the baby and no amount of bribing or threatening has helped us on this issue.  BUT...or in this case, maybe BUTT...as much as I am sick to death of changing and BUYING his diapers, I shudder to think what my life would be like without them.  You know those crazy old ladies whose homes get raided by the health department and animal control because she's got 67 cats in her house, and all the feces and urine that come with them?  That's pretty much the kind of scenario I imagine when I think of the damage my little man could do without the diaper barrier.  So, while I know there will eventually come a glorious day when he gives in to being civilized like the rest of us potty poopers, for now, the diapers are better than the alternative.

Pollyanna Day 4

I'm tired.  More like exhausted.  So, as for what I'm thankful for today:

It's over.  This week, the insanely busy winter semester, the annual department awards luncheon of which I am in charge (aka, the bane of my existence over the last 3 months).  All of it's over and I'm headed out of town with my kids to end their spring break on a happy note and  hopefully recharge my battery a bit.  My children have spent the last couple of hours beating each other up and playing "Who can make a sibling cry first by annoying the crap out of them?"  Gosh oh gee how I love that game.  Time to get out of town.  Poolside and 80 degrees:  Here. I. Come.

p.s.  On that note, I'll have to write down my Pollyanna items on actual paper with an actual pen over the next couple of days and catch up when I return on Monday night.  I won't have a computer with me and I don't plan to do much blogging (translation:  ANY blogging) while I'm doing my battery recharging business.

Pollyanna Day 3

This weather makes me happy.  After a seemingly endless string of snowy, cold, wet, cold, gray, COLD days over the last few weeks, we're finally on our second day in a row of sunny and over 60.  It is absolutely gorgeous outside today.  I want to hurry with this post so I can get outside and enjoy it.  Today I'm feeling more thankful than usual for:

Mount Timpanogos.  I love this mountain in all its snow covered glory.  I especially love it on days like today when the sun makes the snow so bright that it almost hurts my eyes to look at it.  Add to that the incredibly bright blue, CLOUDLESS sky that serves as the backdrop and it's all I can do to avoid crashing my car just so I can stare at it while driving.  The sky is so clear and blue, and the mountain is so very white, the contrast almost makes it appear fake.  Like someone drew the mountain on bright sky-blue paper.  I love it.

Communication.  It's not that I'm thankful that it exists so much as I'm thankful I know how to do it.  I'm grateful for the power of words.  When used properly, they can move, teach, inspire, soothe, and change.  As I've focused more lately on writing, I'm feeling the significance of my "gift."  (Sorry to toot my own horn, but I can own this one).  Recently I've had some problems I needed to address, and I've been able to use the power of my words to help create the outcomes I wanted and needed.  I'm grateful that I can sit down and collect my thoughts and translate them into effective communication.  Besides, most of you already know about my love affair with the English language.

Sentences good.  Paragraphs good.  Alphabet goooooood.

And Thursday makes three.

Pollyanna Day 2

I'm doing it.  I'm actually doing it.  Two days in a row posting on my blog.  I know there are 28 more to go, but I'm feeling a little proud of myself at the moment.  I'm going to pause briefly to revel.

Done.

In no particular order, the things I'm feeling thankful for today:

Security cameras.  So I left my office for a few minutes today, as I often do throughout the day to make copies or answer mother nature's call, or take a cigarette break (just making sure you're paying attention).  When I came back, after being gone for about 15 minutes, my office door was locked.  I thought to myself, "Strange, I know I didn't lock my door, but hmmm, maybe I did."  My next thought was that my little brother was in there hanging out.  He's a student and he often comes to my office to hang out in between classes.  He's been known to go in and lock the door if I'm not around when he gets there.  He thinks it's funny to lock me out of my own office.  Ha. Ha. Ha.   So after jiggling the handle a few times, my door opens from inside, and I see a man I don't recognize.  Never seen him before in my life, as a matter of fact.  He starts hemming and hawing and apologizing, saying over and over that he was looking for so n so's office.  I point him in the right direction, at which point he proceeds to walk away---in the OTHER direction.  I thought it was all very weird (and the guy was way creepy), but wasn't terribly alarmed.  Nevertheless, I told somebody about it.  That somebody watched the security tapes, and from those tapes, it appeared that the man had cased the office first (checked to see if anyone was in there), gone and put his things down in another room, then come back into my office, locking himself in and me out.   Next thing I knew, the police were there taking a report from me.  Nothing seemed to be missing.  The guy was apparently only in there for less than a minute before I came back.  Nice.  Thank you, security cameras.  We got a perfect shot of his face as he walked down the hall a few minutes later.

My kids' sense of humor.  My kids are awesome.  I'm sure yours are, too, but mine really are.  I know kids say the darndest things, but my kids have a seriously wicked wit about them.  They can hang with all the best movies and keep right up...Young Frankenstein, Nacho Libre (I know, Erin, you hate that movie), Princess Bride, you name it.  I can say something completely tongue in cheek and my kids will read the sarcasm in an instant.  I love that they inherited their humor from me.   Whether you think I'm funny or not (if not, I don't really want to hear about it), it's great to me that my kids think so and they can laugh at...uh...with me without missing a beat.  Who cares if the rest of the world thinks I'm an idiot?

Drive thru convenience stores.  I need a diet pepsi and I need it now.  What's that you say?  I can drive up to a window and ask for 32 ounces of fizzy splendor and they'll hand it to me without my so much ever having to turn off my car and get out?  SHUT! UP!  For you native Utahns who don't get out much, note that this is not the norm out there in...well...the REST OF the world!  I come from a place other than here, and I'm telling you now, they don't have such a marvelous set-up in that place.  You have to park in front of the store, get out of your car, walk inside, and fill your own stinking cup with ice and beverage.  I don't know who initially came up with this concept of convenience stores for the lazier-than-lazy, but that person needs to run for president.  Of the United States.  There, I said it.

And there you have it.  Day two.  This is fun.