... and frogs, oh, my!

Every time I come to post something on my little blog -- and I do like blogging, you know. It's so much more solid than Facebook updating -- I have to try to weed through the overwhelming thoughts in my head. I could talk about anything. I mean, I really should have narrowed the scope of my blog when I started it so many years ago.

I should have made it be about clever, cutting comments that slayed lesser-than people.

Or I should have made it about quitting smoking. Oh, wait! I did that on a different blog, didn't I?

(And yes, thank you, I am celebrating two entire years without nicotine. Thank you so much for noticing! I could never have done it without Chantix.)

But seriously, I have so many things to say, I hardly know where to start and where to stop.

1. Frogs -- I have made some cards using some favorite Club Scrap frog images. They were part of the incomparable February 2009 collection entitled "Artifacts." I can't do enough with these Aztec-inspired thingamabobs!

And in other frog news, I hear a frog at the creek down the road from my house. Just one. I hope that he/she finds another frog soon, and that they make tons of tadpoles before it gets cold in a couple of months. I do like frogs.

(Bunny trail: Did you know you can buy frogs from PetSmart? I'm not sure how I feel about that, really. On the one hand, I want a frog of my own badly. On the other hand, I'm not sure they should be held captive. Unless, of course, being held captive is all that keeps them on the Earth.)

2. Trips! I'm planning a cruise with my darlin' stister Yamy! February of next year, we're taking off for the Western Caribbean. I'm so psyched! On the other hand, I feel I must quote my husband's uncle, who said upon returning from his first-ever cruise, "It was like being stuck in a bus station for a week."

EEK!

On the *other* other hand, that uncle and I have absolutely nothing in common. In fact, I think he's kind of a doofus. He loves golf. Loves, loves, loves it. There you go.

But -- totally beside the point -- isn't that an amazingly descriptive phrase? "Stuck in a bus station" would be bad for an hour. A week? Oh, my. Painful.

Still, Wesley's uncle didn't have my brilliant sister with whom to cruise, and I'm pretty sure they didn't have martini clinics when he went for a spin around the Caribbean. So my cruise will be much, much more sparkling and fabulous!

Another trip? Around noon on Monday, I'm taking off from tiny little Philadelphia and running away to the North Georgia mountain town named Helen.

I love Helen.

Well, OK, I don't really love Helen, not per se, but I love North Georgia mountains. I spent my childhood summers in that part of the world. (I've already ranted recently about my fond memories of Camp Cherokee for Girls on lovely Lake Burton.) I love those mountains, I love that dirt, I love those creeks, I love that part of the world, and I miss it pretty darned badly right now.

So we're going to Helen. While we're there, I'm going to take Wesley and the kids to slide down Sliding Rock in the Wildcat Creek camping area. It's late August, so the water will be extra-special frigid, but I'm really hoping we'll be the only people there on a Monday after school has started.

I want to find a trail to hike. Which one? No idea. I just need to get some dirt and elevation in my system.

I would like to drive past camp to see if it looks OK. I don't need it to look the same, the exact same. I just need it to look OK. Someone sold off the boys' camp, and it has been parceled off into lakefront homes. That breaks my heart more than I can convey. The boys' camp had been there for well over 60 years. Now it's some rich person's trophy wife's weekend getaway.

3. Gosh, I'd like to be a rich person's trophy wife with a mansion on the lake.

4. Oh, yeah, except, I have a soul. Darn it! Darn thing keeps getting in the way of my hopes and dreams.

That's all for tonight. Isn't it enough? I hope I have photos of the trip when we get back. Bye for now!