The other leader in charge at Mike’s camp out the other night brought along the ingredients to make doughnuts. Mike was impressed with how easy and delicious they were, so he decided to make them for us last night. I, too, was amazed at how easy these were to make.

All you need is a tube of biscuit dough. Flatten out the biscuits to almost paper width and tear a hole in the middle. Heat up some veggie oil in a skillet. Once the oil is hot enough, then you drop a biscuit in. You’ll be surprised at how fast the dough poofs up. It only takes a few seconds on each side to fully cook. Then in a dish mix together some sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg to your liking to dip the freshly fried doughnut into. And, there you have it, homemade doughnuts. The process wasn’t messy either unless you count the sugar crumbs while eating the doughnuts. It was so worth it though.

Mike informed me the other night that I had another one of my dreamy outbursts. This is all hearsay because I don’t ever remember any of what Mike claims that I do or say. Apparently, I sat up and was laughing hysterically and declaring that “the letter R is so funny”. Supposedly, I even went on to say, “It even has on a tutu!” I asked Mike if he’s sure it was me and not Annie because that is totally something she would say. Annie’s teacher has started sending home nightly homework assignments for Annie to do such as counting to 20 or going through a list of letters on a list. I think that these constant practice sessions are causing my brain to get a little out of whack.

For those of you who don’t know the history behind my animated dreams and nightmares, I’ll give a little background information. Maybe I should’ve listed this as one of my quirks. I don’t recall having this little problem until I married Mike, but then again I didn’t have witnesses before Mike. It all started on our first night in our apartment after getting married. I woke up screaming and saying that there were ants all over the bed. As you can imagine, this freaked Mike out. He promptly flipped on the light and searched for the pests in our sheets. Mike soon realized that there were no ants, and I was already back to sleep. Similar events involving spiders, worms, and other disgusting insects happened for several nights after that, but Mike was on to me by the 3rd or 4th time. Eventually he just started telling me, “I got them all, honey. Go back to sleep.” The nightmares stopped after a few more nights, and Mike could soon sleep soundly. However, they started up again when I began teaching. The bad dreams were usually the worst on Sunday night. Hmmm, I wonder why? Sometimes I would just wake up screaming at the top of my lungs and then go right back to sleep. Of course, Mike was always stirred from his slumber, the poor guy.

My theory behind the nightmares is that they come when I’m under a lot of stress. So I believe the reason I had them right after Mike and I got married was because I wasn’t used to the whole marriage experience. Teaching always stressed the heck out of me, so I can understand the nightmares during that time. Sometimes when we’re traveling I will have outbursts which must mean sleeping in a bed other than my own makes me a bit nervous.

The most embarrassing experience was when we were staying at the Arnolds’ cabin out in the Black Hills. On our first or second night there I woke up screaming hysterically but went back to sleep almost immediately. The next morning during fishing Ryan asked Mike if everything was alright. Not knowing what Ryan was alluding to Mike just shrugged and said all was fine. So finally Ryan asked what the heck had happened the night before to cause me to scream so harshly and to freak Ryan and Shannon out. Mike just laughed and said that that happens sometimes. Of course, Ryan felt compelled to mention it front of the whole group making me painfully aware that I had caused quite a raucous the previous night.

Another event has become an inside joke among Mike’s family members. Mike had just left for Iraq, and Mimi was a fresh newborn. Mike’s ma was staying with us, too. That night I went picked up Mimi and walked into Kathy’s room. Here’s the conversation that followed:
Me: Kathy, I think we have a problem.
Kathy: What’s the matter? Is everything o.k.?
Me: Mimi has lost her snake.
Kathy: ?
Me: (kind of waking up and realizing what must be going on) Nevermind. Go back to sleep.

Thankfully, I had warned Kathy about my possible outbursts, so she wasn’t too freaked out. In fact, she found a lot of humor in the situation and promptly told all of her children who now remind me about it every so often.

My mom also claims to have witnessed some strange things from me while sleeping. While house-hunting with me in Beafort, SC she says that one night she woke up with me standing over her bed. She asked me what was going on and I said, “There’s someone at the door.” Mind you, this was about 3:00 a.m. My mom says she told me to just ignore it and go back to sleep. Supposedly, I then grabbed her arm with brute force and demanded that she answer the door. She said she was more afraid of me than whoever could be at the door, so she just opened it to discover nobody there. By the time she walked back to the bed I was already tucked in and back to sleep.

Sometimes I will wake up Mike (or my mom if the case is that she’s with me) and make bizarre statements such as there being a white animal on the overhead light, or that there’s dog food on the ceiling, or that someone is staring at us through the window. Mike says that I will usually make sure he’s fully awake and swear that I’m also awake and that whatever I’ve said is actually happening.

Wow, sorry to go on and on about this, but I just felt I had to explain.

Sara tagged me to for an exercise of finding the 4th picture in the 4th folder on my computer. However, my orderly way of organizing pictures doesn’t make finding pictures in this manner possible. I have my pictures set up in folders by the year, then by month, then by the day of the month. Sometimes within in that day of the month I will also have categories if more than one thing happened in that day. Yes, I have OCD. It’s already been stated before. I suppose I may need to seek professional help.

Anyway, I did the best I could for this homework assignment and just stuck with the “4th” theme and found the forth folder at the beginning of my pictures folder, then found the 4th folder within in that folder, then the 4th folder within that folder, then the 4th folder within that folder, and then the 4th picture in the folder. And can you believe the excitement in this picture? Apparently, I was going through an eBay phase of wanting to sell more of my stamp sets. This is a picture of “A Tree for All Seasons”. Enjoy!

Now I tag anyone who wants to participate in this fun exercise. Let me know if you do.

I’ve refused to do this in the past, but since family is involved I figured I better do it this time. My lovely sister-in-law Sara was tagged to list her quirks and, in turn, tagged me to list my quirks. Honestly, it took me a while to think of some things because I thought I was fairly easy-going and “normal”. Mike helped me with the first couple; you can probably figure that out.

1. According to Mike, I ask a lot of questions. For instance, if he’s calling someone, I will then ask who’s he’s calling and why. If he’s doing something that has not been given prior approval, then I will ask what he’s doing, why, how, when, where, what, who, etc. I don’t think I’m a controlling person or being jealous or anything like that. I just can’t stand not knowing what’s going on around me. This may be where Annie gets the same awful habit. I believe it’s called curiosity to the nth degree.

2. I tend to overly fuss and obsess over details. Whenever I take on any project it will usually take me forever to complete because I will notice minute elements that aren’t perfect and will work on them until I fix the problem(s). Although Mike says that I tend to fix what’s not broken. A lot.

3. Extending the quirk in #2 about obsessing, I will be consumed by a project or problem and cannot do much of anything else (eat, sleep, take care of my house or children, etc.) until it’s complete or solved. Is this a quirk, or should I just commit myself for having OCD? When I was in college in many of math courses I could rarely skip a problem to work on another. It would drive me insane to not solve a problem. I even started keeping a piece of paper and pen next to my bed in case I would dream about or wake up with the answer to that unanswered question. Nowadays I do this with my web design and craft projects sometimes staying up until all hours of the night until it’s at least nearly complete (shhh, don’t tell Mike about this…thank goodness he can sleep through anything).

4. Anytime I’m sitting/lying on the couch I must have a light blanket, an afghan, if you will, on me. It could be 95 degrees outside, and I will usually at least have my lower body covered. As you can imagine, this absolutely drives Mike insane.

5. This kind of contradicts #4 because I can’t stand to wear socks. I will go as long as I can into the cold season wearing shoes without socks or flip-flops/sandals. When I was younger it was actually a more serious problem. I would have to take my shoes and socks off (even at school). I honestly felt like I was being “suffocated” because I couldn’t move my toes around in my shoes. I am getting better about wearing socks especially around the house when my feet are turning blue from being too cold. I also have 2 pairs of lovely, knitted socks that my mother-in-law and sister-in-law made for me. {Thank you for those, and I swear that I have worn them on numerous occasions.}

6. All of a sudden I realized that a lot of things bother me or things I do, but I’m only allowed to pick 6 things. So I’ll list just one here. My eyes are sensitive to light which means I will usually be wearing sunglasses when outside (even on cloudy and sometimes rainy days), and I don’t like the lighting indoors to be too bright. I will get a headache if the brightness is too much for too long. Unfortunately, I foresee myself in the future as one of those elderly persons who have sunglasses on that cover the top half of their face.

Now it’s my turn to tag 6 (I think) people. Sneaky Sara already got most of my audience. So I choose Denise, Stacy, Maggie, Courtney, Sherdon/Lani, and Janet.

For a limited time you can pre-purchase our Halloween Soundtrack just in time for the spooky holiday at just $4.73. Below is just a preview of what’s in store.

Ok, I’m just kidding, there is no soundtrack for sale. However, I do think we have enough material around our home to make a c.d. full of scary sounds. The coyotes serenade us each evening with their howls. Sometimes they seem to be only a few yards away from the house, and they get so rowdy. That’s not all though. The wonderful carpenters who installed our bedroom/bathroom doors managed to improperly fit most of them into the doorways. When the door is about 6 inches from closing they make this sticky, creaking sound that can really spook someone in the middle of the night when the windows are opened and it’s breezy outside. The back of our house can also summon up quite a high-pitched whistle on windy days. Of course, we’ve got plenty of murderous screaming going on around here daily, too.

Before I leave you, did anyone notice Annie’s little comment at the end of the video? Something about spiders. Typical girl, huh?