Archive for June, 2006

Jun 30 2006

couple quick things

Published by under amy's head,daily,overheard

I stumbled onto a local blog which I’ve quite been enjoying lately – Cartwheels at Midnight. The community of friends over there have burst into an idea of a traveling journal – The journal will travel from blogger to blogger, where the recipient will take a page and add her contribution, and then mail it on to the next in line. I fell in love with the idea and emailed begging to be allowed to join in, and yay! I am now in the Ultimate Mailing Matrix. I’ve already started wondering what the hell I’m going to put on my page of the journal.

The project is still forming, but even after it has LAUNCHED, you can still jump in and join. I beleive the journal will just continue to get mailed, and new people will be added into the Ultimate Mailing Matrix until the journal is filled up. So head on over and join up now – it will be a ton of fun.

I did have a few suggestions to the project, and a LOT of the ideas for it are (were) discussed in the comments, so be sure to read those too:

Traveling Blogger Journal:
The Genesis (read COMMENTS)
The Escalation
The Plan
The Rules

If you want to sign up, email your snail mail address to cartwheels at mac dot com.

-amy shimmy shimmy shimmies.

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Jun 28 2006

illness. head injuries. nausea. wooziness. massive amounts of alcohol.

Published by under daily,kids,photos

James went in to get Ethan this morning after we both slept in to 7am (we usually get up about 6.20). I was a little surprised that he wasn’t up already. He was still in bed, huddled in sweaty sheets with a fever of 102.5.

ARRRRGH!

Just to recap: Last Thursday his school called and reported he had a high fever. I hurried and got him and stayed home with him Friday. Took him to the doctor, who about wrecked her pants at how swollen his tonsils were. Took a rapid strep test, which turned out negative. Took a normal strep test. Results will take 3 days, so she put him on antibiotics. Monday came, test was NEGATIVE! So she said to stop the antibiotics.

And now, 1.5 days later, he’s down with a high fever again.

He was so miserable, was on the verge of tears. It was so sad.

So after the obligatory “Who stays home with him?” discussion, I stayed home with him, James took Jocelyn into school.

I called the doctor when it got to be a more reasonable hour (I decided 8:16 was reasonable. It was agony waiting til after 8:15) and she was stumped. She asked if there were any new symptoms, and honestly, it seemed like it was exactly what was going on last week. So I brought him in, and she took a look, and pretty much said, “Sure enough! He’s sick!” Well, she did say that the tonsilitis could be viral, but with his glands as swollen as they were, they needed antibiotics and broke out a prescription for the stronger stuff.

He was feeling much better once his fever was down. Better enough to point out ALL the RED trucks, construction trucks, and cars on the way to and from the doctor’s office. Better enough to insist on taking the stairs when departing the doctor’s office. Better enough to get all sassy with me 20 minutes into me trying to kill time in Target waiting for the prescription to be filled.

So back at home, things were going fine and he was actually sleeping and I was about to get some actual work done, when the kids’ school called.

Jocelyn was running full out in her classroom when she slipped or tripped or something shiny distracted her and she cracked her head against the “cubbies” (think very small cupboards with no doors, so the kid’s individual bins can go in and out).

The skin wasn’t broken, and she seemed to be doing fine, they reported, but I had better come get her.

“Do I need to take her to the emergency room?” I asked, trying to figure out just how bad it was.

“Her eyes are good, and she isn’t acting strangely, but really I wouldn’t want to make that decision for you.”

So I flew upstairs, put shoes on a barely conscious Ethan, grabbed keys and off we went. I shooshed Ethan a number of times while I tried to get a hold of our pediatrician (she had just seen us this morning. Patience of Job, that woman has. Yoda, I am not trying to be.) Left a message with her service, hung up and tried to listen to Ethan since he was doing so well with me snapping at him to “SSHHHH! I’M ON THE PHONE!”

“I saw a digger Mommy.”

“Oh yeah? A digger?”

“It’s a police digger.”

“I don’t think police have diggers, Ethan.”

“They do. Just one.”

“Aha. …. What does this police digger do?”

“Mommy, it’s digs. VERY FAST. With a SIREN.”

He didn’t limit his conversation to police diggers. I had told him Jocelyn got a bonk on the head. He did his best to reassure me:

“Did Jocelyn bonk her head?”

“Yes, she did, honey.”

“Very hard?”

“It was a pretty hard bonk, yes, but she’s ok.”

“I think she bonked her head so hard that it opened up and all the blood came out all over.”

He’s not the best comforter.

The doctor told me that it’s ok to let her drink and eat, and give her some tylenol for the headache she’s bound to have. I’m to watch for any abnormal behavior, wooziness, vomiting, extreme sleepiness.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the woozy nausea I felt all the way to school meant I had a good bonk on the head.

She was doing fine when we got there. The teachers said that it was definitely a hard bump though, it was LOUD, and it was VERY swollen pretty quickly. In the time it took for me to get there however, it had improved quite a bit. She wasn’t crying or fussing, she was happy as a clam, holding up her ice pack to her head, sitting in the chair swinging her legs back and forth.

It’s now been almost 4 hours from the head bonking and she is still fine, though her head looks nasty. she’s spent this time refusing to eat the dinner I made (very normal), taking her diaper off and insisting that I put it back on fourteen zillion times, annoying her brother by LOOKING AT HIS GEOTRAX TRAIN and tryig to send her mother to an early grave via cardiac arrest by spinning around and around and falling down narrowly missing even more furniture.
I still feel woozy and nauseas. Fifteen more minutes.. and there’s a stiff martini with my name on it. I’m sure alcohol will help the parent trauma.
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Jun 27 2006

weekend – LINDA

Published by under daily,likes & irks,photos

No big house projects were done or started on this weekend, as I had bigger fish to fry, visiting with long lost LINDA!

(Look at me, playing in photoshop, wheeee!)

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I met Linda at BYU’s Theatre Workshop when we were both.. oh I don’t know.. 14? 13? Workshop was the point in my young life where I truly moved from “child” to “young adult.” Have 30-50 people work together, play together, eat together, sleep together, build, dance, act, sing together for 5 weeks, and you get very close. It was an amazing experience and when it was over, it was heartbreaking to say goodbye. I didn’t know her well the first year, but I went back the next year and we immediately bonded as several in the small group that had gone to workshop the year before. Linda is quite the writer, and it meant that she corresponded diligently throughout all our time apart. I couldn’t tell you where the other friends I made at workshop ended up (except when I ask linda, and she sometimes knows), but Linda and I wrote diligently.

We both ended up at BYU freshman year, which made “keeping in touch” much easier 🙂 The summer after freshman year, we decided that we simply MUST room together at least one term, short as it might be, and so spent summer term in Campus Plaza, a hole of an apartment complex whose biggest asset is the proximity to campus (I could get out of bed at 7:50 and still make it to my 8am class with a few minutes to spare). We had many adventures, hiking to the Y, driving up to Park City where my folks lived for the weekend, and a road trip to Grand Junction, CO for the 4th of July (we were determined to go to a state that would celebrate the FOURTH OF JULY HOLIDAY ON THE ACTUAL FOURTH OF JULY – and it was on a Sunday, and therefore celebrated Saturday instead of Sunday in most of Utah. GOOD LORD PEOPLE.)

She also roomed with me a year later after one of my roomates moved to the dorms and we had a spot open in my apartment. She later transfered to Arizona State University, and I later transferred Away From Utah. I visited her in Arizona, she visited me in Atlanta, we met in New Orleans once. She was (one of) my maid of honor when I was married, and through the glory of email we’ve kept in touch. I haven’t seen her in quite a while though, and so I was very excited to see her this weekend and hear about her adventures in Korea and in life.

Much was discussed over chips and queso (the girl’s been in Korea, of course she must be taken to California Tortilla for chips and queso), aimless driving in the car, and in a quaint little park in Manassas were we just chilled out for a few hours. More was discussed at home, over many many many MANY alcoholic beverages. I made waffles in the morning that lacked the proper amount of eggs, and the proper amount of baking powder, and subsequently were like eating cardboard. They made me feel as if I’d eaten a brick (not a good feeling when the hangover is just barely staved off). I was sad to see her go after I drove her to the bus station in DC (and again, sorry about making you late, darest dearling!)

Anyway, lovely weekend, mostly spent visiting with Linda Lou Lou.

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Jun 23 2006

sickity sick sick!

Published by under daily,kids

Yesterday at about 4:15, Ethan’s school called me up and told me that he had a fever of 104.

I prompted dropped everything and ran out the door, calling James on the way to do the same in case he could get there sooner.

Crappy thing is we both work a ways away and it takes us both way too long to get back to the homeish area. So, I pulled up at the school an hour later and tried not to RUN into the school’s office to see my boy. he was burning hot to the touch, and I gave him some tylenol (stopped and got it on the way, thus the hour instead of 40 min.) and then got Jocelyn and started home.

He seemed to perk up a bit on the way home. He was were bleary-eyed, but feel rotten didn’t stop him from pointing out the fire engine that screamed by, or the backhoe we passed. Some things transcend 104 degree fevers, it seems.

I felt kind of bad, because yesterday morning, when I went into his room to get him he pointed hear the back of his neck, and stated, “My neck hurts.” I thought it was odd, and even asked specifically, “How about your throat, does your throat hurt?” but he said no, and pointed again to his neck, not at the nape, but more on the side.

He acted fine all morning, but later when he was brushing his teeth and I had picked him up to stand on the edge of the tub, I thought he might be feeling a little too hot, and even took his temperature just to see. It was fine at 98 degrees, so I shrugged it off and the morning continued as usual and off he and Jocelyn went to school.

Obviously, he stayed home today, and me along with him, and we went to the doctor’s office this morning.

I was a bit nervous, because the last time we were there was for his 4 year checkup, and when he got his 4 yr old shots, well… let’s just say all hell broke loose, and we were picking up the pieces for quite some time. He did very well, although he did ask me nervously SEVERAL times, “No shots, right mommy?” and was visibly relieved when I assured him that no, there wouldn’t be any shots.

The doctor looked in his ears, up his nose, and at his eyes, commenting all the while how there was nothing, nothing at all going on.. until she looked in his throat. She showed me too, and damn, those tonsil were swollen. It’s any wonder the boy can eat anything at all (which, he hasn’t been much). She did a rapid strep culture which turned out negative, and so did the 3 day wait culture next, but said that it looked like strep and she’d be getting a lot of strep cases, and recommended we start antibiotics anyway, and if the culture came back negative, we would just stop the antibiotics. I’m not one to give antibiotics willy nilly (I don’t even buy antibacterial soap), but I went with her recommendation especially since his fever has risen every time the tylenol has worn off. If it comes back negative I am going to kick myself for helping grow a new generation of extra resistant bacteria. yeah, totally having second thoughts now. Argh.

By the time we got home from target (got prescription, and popsicles, oogled over patio furniture) his fever had spiked back up again, right on schedule. He’s been dosed and is in bed napping now.

Jocelyn also stayed home sick on tuesday, after waking up with a fever the night before. She also visited the doctor, but throat was fine, ears were fine, nose and sinuses – not fine. She was diagnosed with sinusitis and is currently on day 4ish of her antibiotics.

It’s just anti-biotic city around here. James pointed out to me that we did have a pretty good streak, which is true, the kids have been pretty healthy since, oh probably January or February. And in Jocelyn’s case, I have a sneaking suspicion that the mac n’ cheese we have thought was “fine” in terms of milk (she is intolerant of dairy, gets all snotty when she has milk protein) in fact, isn’t fine, which would explain all the snottiness on her end for the last 2-3 weeks. Note to self: no more box mac n’ cheese for the young’uns.

Anyway, so I’ve stayed home tuesday and friday this week. Next time – it’s JAMES’ TURN!

What really sucks is that I’ve missed casual friday. I don’t mind (HA! MIND! as if I’d MIND) staying home, but I at least want to make it count, and stay home on a day where I’d OTHERWISE have to PICK AN OUTFIT that has some modicum of fashion sense, instead of throwing on jeans and a t-shirt. Humph.

My friend Linda is home (as in, back in the country) from teaching in Korea, and is here in DC for the weekend, and we’re making tentative plans to get together tonight, and I’m just so tickled. I haven’t seen her in a zillion years.

CAN NOT WAIT.

-amy better not get sick now.

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Jun 22 2006

what to do, what to do – HOUSE PROJECTS!

Published by under daily,house

I’m kind of jonesin’ for a big house project to do.

I haven’t done any major sort of projects since we finished James’ office in the basement. We had a contractor finish the room for us, and then we painted it green (this was mostly James with help around the edges from me) and laid down laminate flooring (this was mostly me & James, with help from Chris, Ann, and Kurt).

We also bought a huge stack of laminate flooring (it was on sale at Costco) to do more in the future. We first planned on putting it upstairs, but I am a very fickle person, and have since decided (and convinced James) that downstairs would be better. I love the wood, but it is on the orangey side, and I’d rather get a different shade for upstairs, plus, this is the same stuff in the office, so the whole downstairs will be done in the same shade.

Other projects: Last year I painted the 3 secondary bedrooms, Ethan’s room is a dark royal blue, the guest room is a melted chocolate ice cream brown, and Jocelyn’s is a lovely lavender purple. The master bedroom, hallway, bathrooms, laundry room is still left unpainted.

There is still so much we want to do to the house, there is a MYRIAD of things I could pick from to do. It’s just a question of WHAT to do, and when, and how much it’d cost.

I’ll be so happy when the entire place is painted, it makes such a big difference. I have an idea of how to paint our two front rooms, especially after seeing Misty’s dining room, I just need to experiment with colors to get the right combination.

I am loathing our wall to wall carpeting more and more every day, and that is all going to go someday. I’d like to do the entire upstairs in laminate flooring, a nice dark brown, maybe walnut or redwood colored. The main level, I’d like to tile the kitchen, bathroom and our two front rooms, and then extend the oak hardwood flooring that is currently in the entryway/hallway through the family room, or at least replace the shit carpet that is in there with something nice. Most of the flooring projects are in the “let’s do it someday” folder, as they’re pretty time and money consuming. However, I feel like the tiling in the front two rooms is something we could do ourselves, with the right tools. No counters/fridges/dishwashers to worry about moving/shimming up. Just rip up carpet and get to work. Also, laying the laminate flooring in the basement is something we can totally do, and soon, just as soon as the main room gets cleaned out, which James has started to do. There’s a lot of stuff down there, however, so it will take some time.

We also desperately need to seal/stain our deck. I’ve ordered some special environment-friendly deck stain called Bio-Wash Natural Deck Oil, so there’s that project that needs doing, and SOON. We were planning on having our handy man do that, but I’m not exactly thrilled with the job he did power washing the deck, plus, the astronomical amount of money we’ve alreaedy shelled out to him for odd jobs around the house is just too staggering to me. And it all started because we didn’t have a tall enough ladder to install the cage to keep the birds out of our dryer tube ourselves. He did install our new kitchen sink though, and our bedroom ceiling fan with remote, which .. let’s be honest, we’d never get around to doing, so I can’t be too bitter. (YES I CAN!) Ahem. So anyway, I’m thinking about maybe doing the deck sealing myself, but we’ll see. It’s hot out. I hate heat.

Oooh. OUTSIDE! There is another project that has been on my mind a lot, and that is TRELLISES. My sweet little vines that I’ve planted around our deck have really taken off, and they need something more to climb on than the dinky wooden dowels I stuck in the ground for them for now. I have priced trellises, and they are expensive, and since I want 4 or 5, I really have no hankering for spending a zillion dollars. Plus, wouldn’t they be easy to make myself? I may try my hand at that. I wish I remembered all my mad skillz from 7th grade wood shop. I made a mean pen-holder, I tell you whut. With James’ help, I bet we could fashion something simple and yet groovy.

So… here I am, wanting to do housey stuff. With a WHOLE MESS of projects I could choose from. I think I may be picking one (or more) and getting on it for the upcoming 4th of July weekend. Yes, some people choose to relax and enjoy time off on the holiday, but me? Well, I look on it as a whole extra day to get something DONE!

So here are the projects that I could *possibly* do:

  1. build some trellises (trellisi? Trelli? bah!)
  2. lay laminate flooring in the basement
  3. tile one or both of the front rooms on the main floor
  4. Pick a room, and PAINT IT.

I may be painted out, because I don’t really want to paint. Trellises, I may be kidding myself, but I think I could turn those out in a weekend, once I get a good plan for construction, and with James’ help. Laminate flooring would be fun, but it may not be ready to do. I’m thinking that TILING is the way to go!

I have had great help in the past, in the form of Tamara, who came over after I called her pleading for help and perspective, (“TAMARA! I THINK I PICKED THE WRONG COLOR! IT’S TOO DARK COME TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK PLEEEEEEEAAAAASE!”) and Chris, Ann, and Kurt who endured the smoke that comes from using too wimpy of a saw blade for laminate boards on the miter saw, and even stayed to help LONGER THAN MY OWN HUSBAND. Well, Chris didn’t, but I forgive him. BUT JAMES LEFT, AND NO, I DON’T CARE THAT YOU HAD “CLASS” TO GO TO. HIGHER LEARNING MY ASS. (I kid, because I love.)

So does anyone want to learn how to tile with me? You know you want to. You know you’ve been eyeing YOUR bathroom and thinking, “Hmmm. I wonder how hard it would be to pull up this vinyl and throw down some backerboard and TILE!”

Well, now’s your chance. You can practice ON SOMEONE ELSE’S HOUSE! Plus, I’ll come help you when you need help! Ahhhh, I wish I was Amish, because you know, many hands make work light! Especially with a miter saw! Which the Amish would probably frown on, so screw that.

– amy goes to add as many tiling shows as possible to her tivo

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Jun 22 2006

photo bliss

Published by under daily,kids,photos

Ever since I posted a sort of photo journey of Ethan through the years on his birthday, it has been bugging me that some of our old photos were AWOL. I looked and LOOKED through flickr and our photos locally and could not find the pictures I KNEW we had somewhere of the day that Ethan was born. The early ones I posted were from when he was a few weeks old.

So finally, I hounded James to dig up HIS old archives and put them on our file server, and I’ve been going through them fairly meticulously and checking them against flickr and uploading the ones that were missing.

The photos taken on day that Ethan was born are now there, however, NOW I can’t find the photos of the trip we took to NY the fall of 2003.

Argh. I think this may be a long process.

and once again, I’m reminded of the couple of factors with flickr that make me not love it with the fierce blazing heat of a thousand suns, like everyone else seems to. I’ve just uploaded some photos ranging from 1999 to 2004 and it seems like everything is always organized by date UPLOADED rather than date TAKEN and that bugs me to no end. I always have to go in to ‘archives’ and specify ‘date taken’ to find anything at all. Oh well.

Didn’t I promise photo bliss? I’ll shoosh now and get to it. some cute baby pictures of my babies. Sometimes it’s hard to realize how much and how many changes we as parents have gone through as well as the kids themselves.. until we look at the photos and say, “Awwww, remember when?”

(OMG look at the red hair! it’s red! oh how i miss thy redness! except that it’s gone from that nice red to a nasty orange color i hate and that’s the entire reason i stopped dying my hair red but STILL! I LOVE YOU RED!)

Oh, right, this was about Ethan. Not my nasty orangey red hair. Carry on.

I wish I had a photo like this one without my hands on his head, but the truth is, I just couldn’t keep my hands off him. Not even for a picture of just him. He was just too beautiful.

And just so you realize just what exactly the sort of man I’m married to …. here is the photo he took of his son’s first shit:

this same man also turned to me a few hours after holding our son and being together as a family for the first time, and said with a little tear in his eye,

“Our son will never know a world without Tivo.”

I only smiled and nodded, too emotional to speak.

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Jun 21 2006

you should see the size of the hook I used

Published by under crafty,kids,likes & irks,photos

My favorite sheets, the first ones I bought for our real live adult bed, the beautiful soft cotton 500 thread count sheets… have finally given up the ghost.

In fact, they probably gave up the ghost about a month before I stopped using them, but I was in denial. The threadbare spots gave way to actual holiness, and not the kind of holiness that brings you closer to God. The kind that brings you closer to MATTRESS.

Still even they they had holes and I’d mended some rips in them, they still had to have some practical use, right? YES DAMMIT I LOVE THEM I’M KEEPING THEM IN SOME FORM OR ANOTHER!

Well, I am always intrigued when I read my Lucy Maud Montgomery books and they talk about braided or rag rugs.

So, fIrst, I tore my beloved top sheet into 1″ strips. Then I crotched myself a nifty bag. I don’t think I have any pictures of my bag.

Both the kids were quite taken with my bag. So next I made one for Jocelyn.

I didn’t think Ethan would like a bag, so I started to make a rug for him to go next to his bed. But when I told him that, he informed me that he wanted a bag too. So I made him one too.

What these bags really need are linings.

I was pretty enamored with my bag for a while. I even stopped using my purse completely. However, the novelty has worn off and the drudgery of digging through the bag for all my crap — well, I’ve lost my love of the bag. I need a bag with pockets – and different sections.

Maybe I could sew up a lining with sections / dividers, but honestly, I am really not that great a sewer. I took the mandatory sewing in home ec. in jr. high, but all my efforts since then, including the stab at quilting I’ve done a few times, have been of my own engineering and thoughts with no real knowledge of the “correct” way to do anything to back me up.

So if anyone wants to throw some sewin’ learnin’ at me, I would be so appreciative.

Still. Cute bag. Love the super-whiteness of it.

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Jun 17 2006

orange

Published by under gardening,photos

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Jun 16 2006

garden planning — in early summer?

Published by under daily,gardening,photos

Yes, it’s only mid june, and I’m already thinking about what I want to do next year.

Mostly, I wish I had planted more vegetables. Flowers are always nice, but there’s just nothing like getting to EAT the fruit of your labors. Plus, I have been loving Christa’s blog, Calendula and Concrete – she and her husband have a plot in a community garden in DC and she posts such beautiful photos of what they’re growing, and how they cook it up to eat. Makes me hungry every time. Today’s post was about chard and anticipating the garlic that will soon be harvested. I don’t have chard, but I think I will make some pasta sometime this weekend.

I WORK HARD FOR THE GREEN BEANS:

So, here are some much awaited VEGGIE PHOTOS!

itty bitty ones.

and as Jocelyn would say, “That’s a BIG ONE!”

It’s no longer there, because as SOON as I took this picture, I picked it. And ate it. It was good. I have to keep myself from eating them on the spot.

THE FRUIT OF MY LABORS:

STRAWBERRIES! Can’t wait.

The raspberries however, are still having issues.

Here’s what they looked like when I first planted them (April 15):

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And now:

Not a whole lot of growth going on. I think it’s safe to say we won’t be getting any raspberries this year. At least there have been a few new leaves springing up.

OTHER VEGGIES AND HERBS:

My rosemary died. James needed fresh rosemary for a marinade for the chicken he grilled last week, so we bought some at the store. It was the “Living Herbs” type, with the roots and dirt still attached… so, I planted it. Don’t know if it will survive, but I guess we’ll see!

I also bought another tomato plant. The two I grew from seeds are cherry tomotoes, and I got to thinking that I would like to have some nice big round tomatoes too, so into the ground that went:

I still need to get a cage for it.

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Jun 15 2006

before and after

Published by under daily,kids,photos

Pigtails:

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POST-pigtails :

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