You lose item will be found.

You will gain admiration from your pears ~ Chinese fortune cookie

"You lose item will be found."

That was my actual fortune the last time I went to the Chinese buffet. Classic. It makes me wonder if I could actually write a sentence that grammatically incorrect. Then they could hire me to write fortunes.

Here's a start:

"You child he 14 years leave many dirty sock gift"

"You admirer think you today will sing song you sung"

"Bad day you lose head will be eat zombie"

Maybe there’s a correlation. The less correct the grammar, the more accurate the fortune.

So…the weird thing is, I really DID find something I lost… My GPS had been lost for at least a month and I found it. Of course, they always make fortunes that are something likely to happen. Like:

"Today much air you will breathe"

"Many nose hair grow you"

"A friend call you it will"

OK now I’m sounding like Yoda. Quit I shall.

This last weekend, Jim and the kids spent a day and a half at my sister Becky’s house several hours away. Becky was visiting her hubby for the weekend, who is stationed away at present. Someone had to drive the 14 passenger van to church and make sure that Leslie wasn’t overwhelmed with looking after her siblings. I didn’t know he’d agreed to go and I had already agreed to sing in a trio at church that Sunday, so since Sarah and Stephen were going to a dance with Leslie, and Danny didn’t want to be left behind, I had the house to myself for the weekend.

I locked the doors each night, turned off the lights, and set my own alarm, and it was a bit eerie how quiet the house was at night. It reminded me of when I was a girl in Utah, and my bedroom was in the basement at the end of a hall at the foot of the stairs. The light for the stairs was at the top. So each night when I went to bed, I would turn off the light, and it would be pitch black down there. I had to get to my room and into my bed, and even though realistically I knew that it was very unlikely for anything to be lurking down there in the dark, I would always run as fast as I could down the stairs, jump over the whole bottom set of stairs, touching the floor as little as possible, and leap into my bed, which was one of those tall ones with a drawers underneath. Then I would get under the covers and freeze and listen until my heart stopped beating so fast and I was absolutely sure there was nothing there. I particularly remember this one time. It was winter and there was soft snow in the yard outside. Above my head as I lay in bed, there was a window... (one of those window wells that would be entirely impractical in Houston because they would be full of water all the time. For that matter, that’s why we have no basements too, but I digress. On with the story.) So I’m doing the usual thing, just laying there in bed listening, still too jumpy to feel sleepy yet, and I heard a swishing sound.. A very soft sound, but it scared the heck out of me. It sounded like someone was sneaking around outside in the snow outside my window. Swish, swish… I wanted to run upstairs and tell my dad there was someone out there, but I was terrified and I just froze and all I could do was listen…swish, swish, swish… I'd get a little panicky. Then there would be a pause.  And then it would start up again. I didn’t know what to do. And then… I realized. All along the sound was my eyelashes brushing against the pillowcase.

Pat and I went to a subdivision garage sale on Saturday. There are multiple sales in the local neighborhoods every weekend, so we have to choose which ones to go to based on previous successes in an area. As Forrest Gump would say, garage sales are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.

I never find what I set out looking for, which this time was clothes for Stephen, as he’s now a size 11.5 shoe and wearing men’s clothing. But I always find really fun things I can use, that if I’d gone out looking for at the store I would have bought, but not necessarily at full price. This time, along with other miscellaneous things, I found:

•  A small size saw and mitre box to add to Danny’s tool kit ~ $3
•  Pink and white silk roses in a basket that match my kitchen and look perfect on top of the refrigerator ~ $2
• New in the shrink wrap/box: Avon lipstick and eye shadow that are totally my color (but not the color of the lady who bought the wrong color by mistake) ~ $1 each
• Brand new Land’s End polo shirt still in the plastic ~ $1
• A wooden cd cabinet that holds ALL the cds I own (so I can get rid of the two unsightly and unsteady cd towers that tip annoyingly when I bump them and shower down cascades of cd cases) ~ $5
• By far the best deal of the day: 9 pair of cute jeans that fit Sarah perfectly, plus a bunch of mall store brand tops and hoodies all from the same sale ~ 50 cents each

Oh, and I got a set of gorilla hands for a dollar. Really big furry ones that when you squeeze them, make a sound like King Kong attacking a Jazzercise class. Many other goodies also, too many fun things to list.  A successful day overall.

Sarah is now thoroughly convinced of the merits of bargain shopping. She used to look down on it and only want to shop at the mall, until she saw that what I brought home and what we found when we went together was those same mall brands, already slightly worn in, many times very cute and not exactly the identical thing her friends are wearing, and what was even more awesome, oodles cheaper, so that she can have 10 times as many choices and still have money left for underwear, socks, cute tennies, Sonic and Subway. She’s not embarrassed in the least about where her clothes come from. Her friends ask where she got the cute top and she says, “Garage sale, fool!” Then they get annoyed because they can’t run out and get the same one for the same price. One of her friends was complaining about the price of clothes and so she volunteered to take her this week to the local thrift store to hunt for jeans.  She'll be hooked.  Nothing wrong with used.  Even the stars shop vintage, you know. 

We are seeing signs of autumn here. Even though it’s still way too hot for my taste so far this season, the leaves are starting to fall, and all the squirrels we see have their cheeks full of acorns. Danny loves to scare the squirrels that aren’t paying attention by suddenly running in place quickly and loudly. He loves to watch the squirrels freak out and dart up the nearest tree as fast as they can go. No matter how many acorns the squirrels hide, there are plenty of them still left for Danny and me to crunch into the sidewalk as we walk to school each day. We are still seeing the hummingbirds, and I’m trying to keep the feeders full for them so we can enjoy them before they move on. We wish the grackles would move on. They are great black birds like ravens and they flock together in huge numbers. They darken trees all at once, shadow the sky, and make a menacing line on the telephone wires. It’s a bit creepy. I suppose they probably keep the insect population at bay. When I see them it always reminds me of the short story “The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier, and the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name. Just for the sake of reminiscing… here’s the movie in 1 minute and 40 seconds…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjj32CavzU0

 The recipe of the week is oatmeal raisin cookies, a favorite of Pat’s. She doesn’t like them with butterscotch chips like my kiddos do. So every now and then, I make them, and Jim and I and Pat eat them. The kids may complain, but I made gorilla poop for them two days ago. They’ll live.

Mom's Oatmeal Cookies

(recipe from the local elementary school cookbook, which came out when Brit and Mary were still attending...)

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 cups flour

2 cups oatmeal

1/4 cup milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup chopped raisins

1 cup chopped nuts

Cream butter and sugar.  Beat in eggs thoroughly.  Mix dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.  Stir raisins and nuts into dry ingredients.  Combine mixture, and add enough milk to make a stiff dough.  Drop by spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets, 1 inch apart.  Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes