Jessica Moe

I sit and stare at an empty screen and a flashing cursor.  I cannot conjure the words to express my sympathy and grief after learning of the events on the campus of VA Tech today.

I find myself understanding that sometimes in life there are such profound human emotions that the everyday nomenclature of emotion seems to not apply.  This is just such an occasion.

It doesn’t make sense.

To say I am sorry for your pain is not enough.

I am certain that what I feel is only a fraction of your shock, only a fraction of your horror….

This is the cruelest kind of blow that life can bring.

I will pray for you all: family, friends and students.

My own grief has taught me that moving forward, allowing time to pass…days, hours, even minutes…can be the most frightening part.  Time marches on and you feel stuck.  You are afraid that the event will fade in the minds of people you meet and they won’t understand the wound in your heart, the scar on your soul.
All I can say, my bit of hope…is that I want you to know, no matter where you go in life after today…we won’t forget what happened today.  I will never forget…..and I will always pray for you.

Ok, so it’s not like I am Paris Hilton or anything.  I am just a chick that loves anything that makes my life easier…and involves less clutter in the bathroom.  So, I am going to share the two products I have come to adore…

1.  This is the Revlon Ionizer…it is a fantastic combination of hairbrush and dryer…I have been using various models of the same product since high school.  Yes, I will admit I have been lured by other products from time to time…but I have come home to this product to stay. In fact, I still have the one I used in high school!

I love this thing because you don’t need piles of hairbrushes.  Maybe one for convenience sake…but the built-in brush allows you to do whatever you need to do.  You can flip up, flip under, and straighten just as you would with a regular dryer and brush. 

Now, a possible downside is that this might take a little longer to dry your hair.  It’s not as powerful–necessarily–and it covers a smaller area of hair.  The thing is that, in my experience, when I use a hairdryer the dryer often hits whatever you have wrapped around the brush in addition to the surrounding areas.  Often, with the odd angles involved in blow drying the back of my hair this means one “section” of lovely dry hair and the rest is all puffy and wrinkled.  So, in short…it may take longer…but it takes longer to get the job done right. 

One of the problems with this dryer is that it has a safety mechanism built-in to prevent overheating.  The instructions say that if it gets too hot, it will shutdown.  That has never happened to me while I was drying my hair, but it has happened after I turned it off and could not turn it back on again for about 5 minutes.  Additionally, the brush is metal and if you hit your ear by accident it will burn like a curling iron.  In anycase, far be it from me to call a safety mechanism a true “problem”. 

2.  Aveda Brilliant.  I have gone through 8 MILLION of these products.  They are greasy, sticky, oily, gooey, goopy, gunky…you name it.  As a result I have ended up drying my hair without any product.  As a result of that my hair has been dry and brittle and really in bad shape.  Not so pretty…I was visiting family and in a rush to run out of the house…but my hair was wet.  I knew that I could put the dryer on ultra high but that would kill my hair and so I decided that some sticky and oily goop was better than killing my entire head of hair.  I sprayed this on, grabbed a flat brush and went to town.  My hair had never looked or felt so fantastic.  It was shining and it smelled soo good!  You can count on Aveda to make a product that smells amazing.  In any case, when you spray this on and dry your hair it doesn’t leave any residue, I think it basically “steams away”  when drying…but trust me when I say, this product will improve the quality of your hair. 

Ok, well…that’s all for now!  I have a few other “favorites” but those will come later….

Thanks!

I know everyone says it…and I suppose that everyone means it….but I think I could do it.  I would need a new computer, of course.  This one allows too many typos to allow me to be truly productive. 

That’s really not the point though.  I really want to write a book.  I have thought about it a great deal over the past eight months or so.  What kind of book you ask??  Well, I know for sure I don’t want to write a book about something real.  I don’t want to write a book that is like the “comprehensive guide of doggie squeek toys”.  I loved a certain kind of books when I was about 12 or 13..things like The Babysitter’s Club, Nancy Drew  and others….I think I have enough material in my imagination to create one of my own…but I am not so sure that a series is right for me…and I fear that books have changed a great deal since I was 12 or 13…I couldn’t get into Harry Potter…

 …and it seems that, even 12 years after my own childhood…children have lost so much of the innocence that allowed me to be enthralled in a book where two orphan children are sent to live with their eccentric aunt on some barrier island and find that the old house she lives in is filled with more than just secrets…but ghosts of the past…and who is the mysterious boy she sees with the lantern every night at midnight in the old garden??

Well, there’s more to this “write a book desire”…but I feel it’s important to pay tribute to the books that made my childhood….I have to start with the obvious ones…there are ones I don’t know…and couldn’t begin to remember (which makes me sad).  It is my hope that this list will allow me to remember some of the other important books I have since forgotten….

Harriet the Spy

James and the Giant Peach

Indian in the Cupboard

Encyclopedia Brown

Nancy Drew (series)

Babysitter’s Club (series)

Anne of Green Gables & Anne of Avonly

The Secret Garden

Freckle Juice

Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great

Ramona

Mandie (series)

Books I Am Not Sure I Read But I Remember Anyway

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

A Wrinkle in Time

The Phantom Tollbooth

The Borrowers

Bridge to Terabithia

Ok, so I am by no means an expert in this area. 

Alright, here goes….

So, I have a problem cleaning.  The problem is that I can’t really just tidy.  I have to bust out with the toothpicks and clean the gap between the sink and the fixtures…I have to get out the floor polish and do the floor….Instead of making the bed, I have to wash the sheets and everything else…

It goes something like this…

The dining room table is becoming a catch-all for our junk…so, I will sort it and put it away.  Ok, mission accomplished. But wait…the table looks a little dull…I should polish it….ok done. (Heavy Sigh)  This room isn’t really clean until i straighten that bookshelf in the corner….(bend down to straighten the last shelf) MY GOODNESS!  Look at these dust-bunnies. I should sweep up.  I should swiffer.  I should swiffer wet-jet…I can’t just do it in this room, though…but the living room is messy too and I can’t swiffer wet-jet in there until that is clean.  Pick things up, put things away–oh my gosh…when was the last time I dusted these shelves??? The lightbulb is burnt out here AGAIN!??! What is this chair still doing here anyways?? I was going to put this on craigslist months ago…speaking of craigslist…I should look for a house…I’ll just take a quick break and look online…

Ok…you get the point…Anyways….

I have come up with a solution…I now look at a room and say to myself “Self, how long will this room take to clean??” I have some favorite time increments….I have three personal favorites for time…so it is either 5, 8, or 10 minutes.

So, let’s say I look at the livingroom and I think that I can clean it in 8 minutes. It’s a challenge…it’s on.  So, I set the timer on the micro for 8 minutes…and I say that whatever I don’t finish in 8 minutes, I don’t do. So that gives me incentive to finish. 

Alright, so I just go at it full force and prioritize cleaning-needs in my head…it doesn’t allow me to get distracted…then the alarm goes off. 

Now, I know I said whatever doesn’t get done doesn’t get done….but I am lying.  Actually, I give myself an “overtime”.  For 8 minutes, I give myself 2 extra minutes to do whatever it was that I didn’t finish and still needs to be done. (For 10 minutes it is an extra 5 minutes, for 5 minutes it is an extra 3…don’t ask me why…it’s just what works)…

Ok, so it’s kind of fun and keeps me focused…gets things done quickly…in theory I can whip the house into shape with only 15 minutes per room….MAX…

Alright but there is another rule to this game…Let’s say I think…”I will do this in 10 minutes” and I finish in 8..well, well….I have earned bonus minutes….and this means that I can tack this onto another room if I like…so instead of adding 2 minutes to an 8 minute round, I can add 4 minutes….OR…I can SAVE my bonus minutes to do something like cleaning the floor or bleaching the tub….

Good times. Thanks for indulging me and making me feel like Heloise…

and there is nobody around to see it…and it later becomes a laundry haven….is it still progress??

Ok, so I gleefully blogged about all of my progress last night and I am not saying that I didn’t make a lot of progress because I did, I really did….

I would say half of the office is very clean and organized…and the other half is left with things that have to be done…the stuff that needs to be filed…the random pen and page of stamps…the stack of CDs and random wireless mouse…the mousepad and ink cartridge…you know…

So, now I have decided to finally get to the bottom of my laundry basket.  In doing so, I am finally washing those random and odd pieces of clothing that can’t be washed with anything else…so, that’s a long process.  Things need to be washed separately and…well, you know. 

In a completely unrelated observation, have you ever watched those shows like “Judge Alex” and and “Judge Joe Brown”…?  Have you ever noticed how often the people on these shows misuse sayings and words?

“Judge Joe, it all bears down on the fact that she doesn’t like me cause I slept with her man….”

“Judge Alex, my perogative doesn’t say that…”