I wanted to sit down tonight and write and write and post lots and lots of pictures, but it has been an evening of frustration at the lack of space on my hard drive.

My folks have been in town, and my dad is an excellent photographer. I know next to nothing, and I learned quite a bit from him while he was here, including the importance of taking pictures in raw mode.

Raw mode = lots of hard drive space.

Raw mode also = need for Photoshop CS2 for photo fiddling.

I’m out of space on my hard drive. Grrrrrrr. So I need to organize what I have, copy them down to our file server, maybe back them up on CD as well, and then delete.

I’m especially frustrated because with all the events that have gone on in the last week, I feel all non-functioning until I can write it all down. It’s almost like I can’t do or experience anything else because I haven’t written the past stuff down yet. Stop, life! Don’t throw anything at amy, she’s not ready! She hasn’t blogged about what’s already happened yet!

So I’ll post soon, and there will be many many photos. I’ll probably post a few here and there over the next few days.

-amy can’t wait for the weekend, except it’s going to be crazy busy also with a yard sale.

thus, the no posts. will talk more after they’re gone.

I HAVE BEEN TAGGED!!!

You think I’m being sarcastic, but I would never be sarcastic about Caitlin tagging me, she’s too nice! And I’m not sarcastic, because I like this little games, and when someone wants me to participate, it’s like I’m Sally Field getting an award. YOU LIKE ME! YOU REALLY LIKE ME!

So, six things about Amy.. this is actually a toughie. I spout on a lot of drivel about me on this website, and you expect me to find something I haven’t already revealed??? Here goes:

1. I find bare feet incredibly sexy. (Clean, of course.) Bare feet and jeans, oh baby!
2. I prefer going bare foot than wearing shoes. This tendency has somewhat changed since I’ve had kids that I have to set an example for, since I don’t let them go out without shoes, but mostly, shoes are a bother that I wish our society didn’t bother with. When I was growing up our house was in the middle of an alfalfa field, and it grew a lot of those little prickly weeds (we always called them sticker bushes, though I don’t know why, they’re definitely not bushes). We would have races across the field in bare feet, and I would always win because my feet were hard enough to withstand the prickles with minimal damage.Enough about feet.
3. I prefer having red hair. I dyed my hair red from when I was in high school. I wish I had natural red hair. I stopped because it always fades to a nasty orange color that I didn’t care for, and it always seemed to fade quicker each time.
4. I still take prenatal vitamins. They have a lot of iron, which women still need, though not as much as pregnant women, but the real reason is because they are left over and they were still good, so why not? Perfectly good vitamins.
5. I chew a lot of gum. Juicy Fruit and tropical twist Trident. The Juicy Fruit is better for blowing bubbles, or I’d chew Trident only. Every now and then I’ll get some bubble yum or something like that, but it is too big, and after a half hour, my jaw hurts.
6. Shhhh. This one is super secret. When I get something to eat, I love it when I can get my own drink, because that means I can fill it mostly with Diet Coke, and top it off with Root Beer for the last inch. It’s my favorite drink. I don’t know why, but I’m a little embarrassed about it. Weird.

Ooohhh what fun what fun! I don’t know who to tag now. I will go with…

HOSE, MINIANN, MISTY, ANNA and LINDA. With five folks, I’m hedging my bets that maybe ONE of them will do it 🙂

Fine Print and all that good stuff:
1. Reveal six weird facts/things/habits about yourself and then tag six people if you can.
2. Leave a “You’re Tagged!” comment to let the people you have tagged know they have to reveal six things (or the entire blogosphere will explode and it will be their fault).
3. Leave me a comment letting me know that you have completed your mission (if you have chosen to accept it!)

The PKR (psycho killer rapist) hasn’t killed me yet, so I’m still here. He seems to be a good guy, and he doesn’t flail wildly or hang on to the “oh shit” handle when I make dangerous lane switching decisions.

Seriously. I don’t think I could carpool in someone else’s car. I like being in charge of the driving. I like to pick which lane and when, how fast, what radio station to listen to, etc. When James is driving, at least I still get a say in all that (even though he repeatedly tells me I DON’T get a say in which lane is fastest and which route home will be quickest. Something about “back seat driving.” HOG WASH! I let him know I love him by informing him that Balls Ford Rd is much quicker than 28 at this time of day. He reciprocates by threatening divorce papers. It’s just the little dance that we call love.)

But when you sit in a relative stranger’s car, you have to stay mum on these important driver decisions lest they cast you out. Change the station, or adjust the climate control, and you risk being cast out while the vehicle is still moving, and possibly still on the freeway.

So I have to applaud my PKR in that he can do the idle chit chat or tolerate long periods of silence as well without getting all edgy and nervous and trying to talk anyway. No moves toward the radio or the AC/heat, and even no yelling profanities when I almost took out that little Toyota Corolla on my way to the HOV lane.

Yup, I think this carpooling/slugging thing might work out!

Well I’ve started doing my part.

That’s right.

I invited a psycho killer rapist into my car to commute to work with me every morning.

It’s the least I could do seeing as how my monstrous, behemoth SUV sucks gas, hogs the roadways, blocks people’s view, cuts people off, kills small children, and chews up hybrids for breakfast and spits them out before lunch. (Owning an SUV – it’s just my own small way of making sure that Al Queda wins.)

Hmmm. Except that…

The psycho killer rapist doesn’t own a car and would otherwise be riding the bus, if he didn’t find someone to hitch a ride with. So I’m not helping to keep another car off the highway, because he doesn’t have one, and the bus would still run whether he was on it or not.

So I’m not helping to de-congest I-66.

And I’m not cutting down gas usage which will therefore lower our dependence on oil which will therefore leave us more free to run naked in the face of the middle east’s oil reserves (which some friends (who are smarter and more informed than me) tell me will never happen anyway because of china’s increasing industrialization).

So I’m not lowering gas usage.
And I’m not helping to decrease our foreign oil dependence and therefore helping fight terrorism.

I mean, I can’t even listen to my podcasts without feeling embarrassed! No Dawn and Drew! Whatever am I to do! (That was an unfortunate rhyme. )

Someone tell me why I’m risking my life driving to work with a possible psycho killer rapist in my car?

He is giving me some gas money.

And now I CAN drive in the HOV lanes. (Now I know how the HOV people feel about all those damn hybrids clogging up the lane.)

And he does seem to be a very nice person, probably not a psycho killer rapist at all.

BUT YOU NEVER CAN TELL.

– amy tells you she loves you.. just in case she ends her days dead in a ditch somewhere.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I LOVE YOU!

First, I stayed up way too late resizing gory paper bunny easter box pictures. I think it was around midnight when I finally laid down. And my brain took a while to settle down, it was going like a mile a minute.

Then, 1:45am, I wake to hear Ethan scream-crying. I hop out of bed and run to his room. The minute I touch him, I know it’s not just a bad dream, he’s feverish. I took him to our bed, got him a drink of water, and some motrin, and stripped off his (long sleeved, thermalish) jammies. I tried to put a loose t-shirt on him, but he refused, so I left him in his dinosaur underwear and covered him with just a sheet.

He stayed quiet, but didn’t go back to sleep until the fever broke, about 40 minute later. I tried to sleep, but I kept having to get up (potty, potty again, Jocelyn screaming in HER sleep only to be totally fine and dead to the world when I got to her room) and other circumstances kept me awake as well (squirmy boy, snoring husband). Finally after Ethan was cool to the touch and had gone to sleep, I abandoned my bed and went into the guest room / office. Only thing is, I have been trying to clean out my office for my parents imminent arrival next week, and the bed was littered with stuff. I moved it/shoved it over the best I could and after tossing and turning for a while, drifted off. It was about 4am when I went in there.

The alarm went off at 6:15, and my eyes popped open. That bed is SO COMFORTABLE. The mattress in our room is much harder, so whenever I sleep in the guest room, I feel like I’m sleeping on a cloud! It’s like sleeping in a nice squishy hug! It’s just heaven! When I am sick and have been sleeping on that bed for a while, I always tell James that I’m not ever coming back to our bed, because the guest bed is so so so so comfy.

But even the comfiness didn’t keep my sleepy, I hit snooze and drifted a little bit until it went off again, but then I got right out of bed and went to check on the boy and the man. They had switched sides sometime in the night. Have to ask James if something happened. He was sleeping soundly, no heat to him, but didn’t want a blanket other than the nice cool sheet.* James and I discussed who would stay home with him, and I hopped into the shower. I was brushing my teeth when Ethan crept in (he loves to sneak in and surprise folks) with a big grin on his face, and shorts on his lower half, and soon started talking a mile a minute about a shirt I had deemed too small this year, but that he wanted to wear anyway. (I relented, I’m a softy, and it turns out it’s not really too small after all.) He was running around at top speed and I began to wonder if he needed to stay home after all. The real kicker was that his Easter party is today, so James and I decided to let him go to school. I hope he does ok.

I forgot my cell phone at home today. It’s in the pocket of my jeans that I wore to the park last evening.

We got home yesterday, I made some sandwiches, piled the kids into the bike trailer, and we rode down to the park. I had been promising Ethan we’d go soon all week, but we had to make Easter cookies for the party Monday/Tuesday (Monday for dough, Tuesday for baking and frosting and bunny box filling). James got home, hopped on his bike and joined us. It’s downhill all the way to the park, which means that it’s uphill all the way home. (not relaly all the way, but there are 2 hills/slopes.) I really wanted to switch the bike trailer to James’ bike and let HIM haul them home, but I didn’t wimp out, and I did it myself. I love my bike so much. Even though it was REALLY HARD, I can just set it on a low gear and peddle all the way up the hills. I’m going at about a snail’s pace at that rate, but it was so cool to be able to ride uphill pulling all that weight and not have to stop and walk the bike up. I remember in college with my … I think it was a 10 speed, I had to walk my bike up hills when it was too hard. Obviously, I just needed more gears!

I thought I’d be sore today, but I’m not. I’m tougher than I thought. Project Skinny seems to be staying on course. My downfall is when I go to the Cafe that is in my building, I start with a piece of mango and pineapple, and then I get the yummy green beans that I’ve no idea how they made (lots of oil? Probably!) and then I get suckered into the chinese section and do I pick white rice? Nooooooo it’s the fried stuff all the way, and then I go to weight my styrofoam container and it’s always over 7 bucks. SEVEN BUCKS! That means I got too much. Bother. It always starts with the mango and pineapple, which I love more than life itself. So yummilicious. I’ve been doing well with ordering a sandwich and getting some fruit all by itself on the side. It also comes to 7 bucks, but I know my turkey no mayo is very points friendly, so it’s all good.

We ordered the Canon EOS 30D and it arrives today. I got the body only, because our friend is selling his lens that comes with it, so we save like 40-50 bucks that way. It will kind of suck when it arrives (it’s coming to my work) and it won’t have a lens so I can’t use it right away, but I guess I have to work anyway. I want James to stop by and get that lens tonight though on his way home, so I can use it tomorrow. He, of course, wants to take the camera to work with him, and get the lens tomorrow, and check it out first. HAHA FAT CHANCE! Besides, he should be working. I’m staying at home with the kids, whose school is closed for Good Friday.

OK. typed too much now. Just goes to show how I ramble a lot when I’m tired. Let’s see.. slept from roughly.. 12am-2am, then from 4am-6:30am. So! I’m working on 4 1/2 hours of sleep today! Should be interesting!

Tomorrow is James’ birthday. Shhhhhh! Don’t tell him, but I got him a cool present, and it’s supposed to arrive today! I hope he likes it. It’s one of those things where he might not (might not like, and also might not have any use for) but I took a shot anyway.

I was talking to my mom the other day about the upcoming trip, and somehow, I asked her to go get one of the books I loved as a child and read me the publisher/copyright info so I could see if I could find it somewhere. She did, and I looked, and I found 2 of my favorites and ordered them. They were published in 1969 and are very large hardcover books with 2 fairy tales in each book. When they arrive, I’ll take pictures, because the illustrations are amazing.

I forgot my footnote, here we go:

* Cool sheets. Don’t you just love cool sheets on hot spring/summer nights? It is hot in our house in the evening, but then it’s always pretty chilly in the morning. I think we should invent a Sheets Cooler. It would be like a electric blanket, only it would be cool, instead of warm. Think about how nice it would be to have nice cool sheets all night long. I always get all tossy and turny after I’ve been sleeping for a while and the bed is all hot from the body heat and the hot night. I like it when you first climb in and the bed is nice and cool, and even though it’s warm out, I still like the weight of a blanket. An hour later though, and you’ve got a hot bed. Yuck. Cool Sheets (TM) from raine designs! (when I start my inventing empire, that’s what I’ll be.)

– amy just waves goodbye limply.

It all started when someone left out a few baby carrots. I’m not going to point any finger (ETHAN!!!), but what’s done is done.

It started out benignly enough.

Do you see that? DO YOU SEE IT? A rapid, blood sucking bunny rabbit. SURE, it looks all cute now, but have you seen Monty Python’s the Holy Grail? I don’t want to RISK seeing how fast that bunny can move.

It only got worse. BEHOLD!

THEY WERE MULTIPLYING! I tried to ignore them, but that proved to be the wrong choice.

Oh. My. God. Well, there was only one thing I could do. You may want to skip the rest of this. It gets a little gory.

First…. I killed them. These rapid, carnivorous bunnies had to go. I had children in the house to think of!

Notice how Friday, our cat, on the couch doesn’t even pay attention to what I’m doing. she’s too busy checking out the book she ordered from Amazon. I knew I should have torn up that credit card offer that came for her.
I FEEL NO GUILT SO DON’T EVEN TRY IT!

But what to do next? I was a little desperate. What to do?! What to do!! I grabbed the handiest thing to staunch all the bunny blood.. plastic grass. that’s right… I stuffed them.

It’s surprisingly effective. Of course, even though the blood was stanched, I still had all these bunny corpses to dispose of. Trash? No, first place anyone would look. Paper shredder? My god, man, even I’m not that cruel! I will stuff them with plastic grass, but I won’t shred their empty husks of bodies! The humanity! THE BUNNIMITY!

I did the only thing I could do. How to get rid of eight bunny corpses??

Luckily, I had just the thing.

Put cookies in them and send them to school for my son’s class. Toddlers can handle anything. They won’t even blink. Plus, due to their inherent destructive nature, those feeble bunny corpses probably won’t last the day through. I was as good as HOME FREE.

What was that? Did you hear that?

I gotta go. I think the bunny police are after me.

– amy points out that when everyone’s after you, paranoia is just good thinking.

Make your own paper bunny baskets, and many other paper toys, courtesy of The Toymaker.

So I have been having problems in the project skinny area.

As in, I haven’t been doing a damn thing about it.

There are some things that have been going on in my head, however.

I don’t feel very good, mentally. (Physically, I feel fine, pretty good, even.) I don’t feel attractive. I don’t feel good about myself. I sometimes feel motivated, but then can’t get the oomph to actually DO it. I have NO WILL POWER WHATSOEVER. I think about food a lot of the time. I crave Taco Bell gorditas! Hello, they’re like 7 points each, which isn’t bad, except that a combo meal has TWO OF THEM PLUS A TACO. And remember the no will power thing? When I’m ordering, do you think I order just one? Right.

Anyway, I have been thinking it’s time to get my butt into gear for the last week or two. I don’t like feeling like shit. And honestly, a lot of the time, I don’t, it’s just kind of those fleeting moments, and then I REALLY feel like shit. I haven’t stepped on a scale, and 2 weeks ago, when I did, it hadn’t even moved up that much, just a pound or two, however, my body feels different, and it makes me want to saw off a limb or something.

There was a very interesting discussion in the blogosphere about gaining weight after marriage. Have you heard about it or read any of it? I am a blog WHORE and so have a ton of blogs that I’m subscribed to and read regularly, and in this case, I got sidetracked to another blog, and then to ANOTHER blog and then to about a zillion other blogs, and read all about it.

This is the post that started it all: “False Advertising”
Is gaining weight after marriage false advertising, or unfair to your spouse?
This is the post that I read next. – Melissa at Surburban Bliss gives her reaction

And this is another post that really hit home to me – if you read, be sure to read her followups as well, when she clarifies a few things

Read them, or not, it’s up to you. I took a lot out of the discussion, but one of the things that I realized with stark obvious realization, is that my husband rocks. I mean, seriously. Many of the entries commented on their husbands’ view on their weight and management thereof, and I have to say, James has never, ever said one word about me, or my weight, not ONE, not in the TEN YEARS that we have been together. I was not a skinny girl when we met, but I wasn’t as “sturdy”* as I am now, either. When we were married, I was at my heaviest ever (excluding pregnancies). I cringe when I look at my wedding pictures and I think, at least I’m not that big now. He has never done anything but supported me in whatever I choose, even when I choose to eat Taco Bell gorditas. And that is awesome, because you know how many gorditas I would eat if the man I love choose to make snarky comments on how I didn’t really need ANOTHER couple chocolate covered raisins? When I talk about it with him, he helps me and supports me, and hides his snacky foods that make me wonder why he is as skinny as he is when he can all that doritos and little debbies and oreos crap (and then I watch him push an unfinished plate of DELICIOUS food away BECAUSE HE’S FULL and realize why)… he’s wonderful. He really is. Thank you honey, for not saying it, for letting me find my own way, and letting me do it FOR ME, because honestly, that’s the only reason to do it.

And so… it’s time to do it. Hide the oreos, honey, because I need to believe they no longer exist in this earthly realm! I may be talking about this more and more, because every time I try to “start”, I lose focus and stop keeping good track, and then toss in the towel with those famous, “Oh I’ll start tomorrow” words, and we all know that that ain’t good. So I may be experimenting with ways to stay focused, using this site as a means to that end.

Wish me luck 🙂 or better, wish me focus, and will power.

– amy takes 2 steps forward, and one step back… and prepares to start the next 2 steps forward.. maybe she can keep it going this time.
*I almost forgot this footnote. Hee hee heee! — STURDY. for some reason that just cracked me up that I refered to myself as sturdy. Yup, she’s sturdy! No little wind is gonna blow HER over! Good foundations, that one! Ok, I’ll stop now.

– amy is flabbergasted that she had to add “shit” to her editor’s dictionary. She also added, snarky, gorditas, oreos, and blogosphere. How did “shit” survive so long w/out being added??? GOOD LORD.

I was sitting around Friday evening thinking, “Gatehouse Networks, you will RUE THE DAY you decided to stop delivering Fresh, Crispy (New and Improved!) Internet to my house. Usually, when our internet goes out, I just connect to the neighbors and use THEIR internet (oh how I love wireless stuff). However, the internet was out forever.

But that’s when my neighbor who’s internet I was going to steal without even asking first knocked on my door and saved me from an evening of boredom and subconscious rankledness at World of Warcraft for grabbing my husband, dragging him down the stairs bodily and keeping him from me.

So I went to my neighbor Selena’s and hung out with her and Angie and Selena’s friend Jerry, drinking our body weight in margarita’s. Oh my god. I love margaritas. Selena and Angie had run out, so I popped back to my place to grab MY bottle, and Angie, I love you because without you, I would never have realized the goodness, that is the margarita. I think the salt on the glass always put me off them whenever I tried them before. Just ditch the salt people, they’re good w/ no salt.

So there was drunken poker at Selena’s house yesterday. And rototiller renting as well. As soon as I rented that rototiller, the gods looked down from the heavens, saw me witha rototiller and the intent in my heart to till something, smirked, and started raining. Those rototillering gods, they suck. James ended up doing all the tilling, because I’m just a tiny little woman who can’t manage those sorts of machines, you know, the sort that take off with you in tow, bouncing over the compacted sod without making a dent while you cling desparately because a lone rototiller bouncing over a neighborhood in the suburbs would surely make the homeowner’s association frown. So James, my hero, tilled. there are many many rocks in our clay earth. And the earth is pretty much all clay. Lots of water retention. I had read up on what sort of additives to … well, add to the soil, and so there were many bags of perlite and humus waiting to be added, you know, in that additive way, to the soil. So after James had cussed out the grass and the rocks and the clay, I trudged out there and froze my ass off picking up rocks and pieces of sod and tossing them under our deck. then I spread down some perlite, humus, and the miracle grow garden soil I had intended to put in the front, but changed my mind, and James tilled that all in as well.

It’s still not a pretty site. I think we’re just basically going to have to build a bed UP, because it’s only like the top 3-4 inches that are improved.

Oh, and did I tell you I made a compost bin?

I made a compost bin. It was very easy. I did it last weekend, after I found a multitude of gardening blogs that are guarenteed to suck my time away from me and found an article on urban composting. I’m not that urban, but it’s not like I have room for a compost heap, so a bin it is! I’m having a hard time finding the “greens” that are supposed to go in on top of the browns. I keep forgetting to take stuff out there that can go, like egg shells. James however, cut his hair and dutifully swept up all the clippings and carried out to the bin and dumped it in. My contributions have been the rough inedible parts of the 3 pineapples I’ve carved up in the last 2 weeks. I love me some pineapple. Oh, and 2.. count em, TWO tea bags. I’m sure that will make the difference between compost and just a bin full of kitchen and garden junk.

Oh, in all the excursions to the bin and to the tilled sites, I have to tread carefully, because our dog is put on a chain out there and so the area is literally, scattered with shit. So you have to carefully step your way around, and you have to keep your eyes on the ground…. which was how I managed to catch site of some MULTICOLORED DOG SHIT.

That’s right. it was blue, and vibrant pink, and neon green… because our dog eats EVERYTHING it can, including PLAYDOH. Obviously, it’s non-toxic, and it came through just fine, because there it lal was, in a big turd of many colors. Joseph would have been proud. (You know, the one with the coat. the coat of many colors? Didn’t you go to sunday school, sheesh! Ok, I’ll put it in terms you can better understand, Joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat! THAT GUY! HE would have been proud of the technicolor poop… “Oh, it’s red and yellow and ..” ok i’ll stop now. too much drama club for me in highschool, evidently.)

I’m a little happy on margarita goodness right now, because I went out and purchased some fun STRAWBERRY flavored kind and have been administering it to myself liberally all evening. I should get going to bed though, but tomorrow, I promise, PICTURES. Pictures of the multicolored poop, because YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO SEE IT, even though if someone asked, you will wrinkle your nose in disdain, pictures of the rototilling, pictures of the compost bin, AND pictures of the 2 new flats of flowers I planted, which are putting in an appearance. Also, pictures of my NEW herbs, because, that’s right, I killed the last ones because I forgot about them and they died of boredom. I mean thirst. The new set is coming along nicely, probably someone warned them that rationing of the water is a must in this household.

– amy put the bop in the bippity boopety bop!