WAR!! HUH! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR.. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING…
Except when it means you have clean clothes.

James declared war on the laundry this weekend and I gladly enlisted. Battle 1 (consisting of about 5-6 loads) has been WON, at the cost however of staying up until 11:30pm. Battle 2 (about 2-3 loads left) will likely be waged tomorrow and my hopes are high for VICTORY!

I wish that it really was a war, and once won, it would stay won. Unfortunately laundry haunts us and will return to battle again in the not so distant future.

GEEKY THINGS

I started out the weekend feeling pretty cocky and straightening my imaginary “geek grrl power!” hat, because I installed a new hard drive in my desktop and copied over my original drive and it all booted up beautifully and there are no issues whatsoever.

Then the fates frowned on me when I started with my laptop. I have an IBM T42 and IBM puts a super secret itty bitty partition on their drives that has a copy of the original setup / OS from when it was straight from the factory. So, I thought it might be useful to keep all that and wouldn’t it be handy if I could make 2 partitions on my new drive and copy both the boot partition and the super secret partition and everything would be hunky dorey? In a nutshell, it’s not as easy as all that. After trying a few things myself, and finding some pretty spiffy software, I called IBM and got instructions to burn 6 CDs and let them do all the work. It did work, made the partitions, copied stuff to the super secret partition, rebooted and was about to start on the main partition when it just popped up with a failure message. Called IBM back and they said, “what sort of drive is this? third party? Oh, yeah, we forgot to tell you, only works with IBM drives.” Grrrr.

So I guess it’s no biggie, who needs the super secret backup partition? I guess I don’t. Fished out my Win XP cd and deleted all partitions in favor of one big partition and installed a fresh OS on that. Thought I would run into trouble when driver time rolled around, but IBM does have a handy utility that checks the drivers of all the hardware, downloads and installs them all. I’m at this stage now, it installed them all and I understand that the computer is going to be pretty busy configuring everything, but when I booted it up, everything was running very very slow.

I do have some misgivings about the drive in general, first, I thought that I would need 5400 RPM, but it turns out the original drive was 7200 RPM. 7200!!! I could have bought something way faster! DAMMIT! A part of me is a bit wary of not having all the IBM crap that IBM puts on there for you, and I think I would have liked to have had the backup super secret partition, but I guess it’s not the end of the world. Dang, 7200. I should return it and get the 7200, shouldn’t I? (Ha. Now that I’ve finally got everything working. Grrrr.)

Anyway. The “Super Geek Grrrrl Power!” hat fell off, and got trampled into the mud by a herd of feral dogs while I scurried up a tree panting and my heart beating a hundred miles per hour and geeky grrl? Me? Shhaaaw! As if! And monkeys might fly out of my butt!

AND THEN THERE WAS IDEAS AND PLANNING AND CRAFTINESS!

Ethan’s birthday party plans are underway, and I have latched on to a theme that I must say, I’m pretty excited about. Cars is the theme, and yesterday Ethan and I were busy with scissors, glue and poster board / construction paper making big road signs that we will put up all over the house on party day. Last night I made up little reversible “stop” “go” signs on popsicle sticks that can either be handed out when kids arrive, or put into their goody bags.

For an activity, I’m going to get paintbrushes, little wooden cars, and paints and let the kids paint their own race car. They had kits at Target but I shunned them for several reasons and will see if I can collect all the stuff myself at Michael’s or AC Moore.

I wonder if the theme is too “boy” as there are some girls invited to the party. I’m not dwelling on it too much however, and I don’t see why roads and cars have to be “boy” things. Still, hoping that aspect won’t be an issue.

James took Jocelyn to go scope out bikes. The original idea was to get one for Tuesday, the boy’s actual birthday, but we’ve put it off too long, so whatever one we buy, probably won’t be ready until later, so we’ll probably just get it for Saturday.

MARITAL BLISS

The weekend started in a pretty pissy mental state, due to the game which is World of Warcraft and my insane irrational jealousy of said game. James and I talked it over by Sunday, along with a lot of other things and we’re both doing better.

AND A PROMISE OF MORE TO COME

I have a project skinny post that hopefully I will get out tonight. I have lots of thoughts twirling around in my head and it’s time to get them out, hopefully get some clarity, and definitely get going on the road to skinny.

-amy is scattered.

First off, I’m pleased to announce that when I rolled over in bed this morning and took a quiet little peep at the new banner lying there, it’s pixels all akimbo, I was relieved and pleased to find that I still liked it. We won’t have a May Banner #3. I know you’re all relieved too, and find my wild fickle fluctuations terribly upsetting.

Secondly, what is going on? Hello? Did everyone take the day off or something? My commute to work with the PKR at my side was DISTURBINGLY QUICK AND EASY. First there was the usually stop-up at Linton Hall and 28, and there was no backup at all. After I picked up the PKR and hopped on 66, the usual parking lot until we get into the full 4 lanes was not too eye-gougingly painful at all. Before we hit 28, I pointed out that there were actually more cars in the HOV lane that in the other lanes! Then we hit the place right before 50 that is usually where everyone puts it into park, cranks up their radios, and hops out onto their hood for a quick smoke before it’s time to get back in, move up 5 feet, and then repeat. We managed to keep going about 45 MPH throughout that spot. Then when we took our exit (Nutley) and beheld the 2 lights we needed to go through to turn left onto 29.. There was nothing. Maybe a dozen cars, if that. It was just clear sailing and smooth untrodden on asphault as far as the eye could see.

WHAT IS GOING ON, PEOPLE? YOU ARE ALL STARTING TO WIG ME OUT JUST A WEE BIT!

Seriously did everyone take Cinco de Mayo off? Has everyone just left town for a long weekend and nobody told me they were going? What the fuck?

Someone let me know, or I’m going to assume that aliens have abducted two-thirds of the commuting population.

I’ve kind of not written in this here space (is it just me that noticed I’ve not really been writing and everyone reading is like, “huh? what? you’ve been half-assing it? Didn’t even notice. Later.”) because I wanted to write about all the stuff that has happened already before I write about current things, or even things that are rolling around in my head, and part of why I haven’t written about past things is because I wanted to post pictures along with it, and that requires me getting the photos into some semblence of post-a-bility, and so instead of sitting down and writing, I’ve been sitting down and photo wrangling. Then I’m like, “well, damn where has the time gone? Well I’ll just put up some pictures since I didn’t have time to write” which is why there have been a lot of posts with just photos instead of words. Which I’m kind of liking anyway, now I just need to post some words too, and I’ll be happy. So, in a nutshell, I may never talk about the things I was going to, in the past, because a) it’s been like 2 weeks now and I’ve forgotten a lot of it, and b) i haven’t had time to write much anyway and now it’ll take forever to catch up to the “present.”

WE HAVE CATS. OH DO WE HAVE CATS.

Trinity our cat has always peed everywhere, and last year she finally starting peeing everywhere with a little reddish hue and we woke up and thought, Hmmm! Gee! maybe she’s doing this because something is wrong! We took her in, and yes, there was something wrong, and it was bladder stones, and she had surgery, and we paid astronomical fees and took her home with the instructions that we had to change her food.

The thought of “but how will we change just her food and not the others and oh this will be so difficult to orchestrate” as well as some vague directive that the other cats might be ok with eating the food too but have them tested anyway, kind of made it all sink into the background and we never got around to it.. and so now, she’s REALLY been peeing everywhere lately and so I took her into the vet and sure enough, she has red blood cells in her urine and the vet recommends an ultrasound to check for more stones. We suck as kitty-parents.

But she is back home now, and on antibiotics, and we seem to have gotten the feeding cats separately part down, and have EVEN managed to give her her pill without forgetting even once (SO FAR!) (OH MY GOD WHY DID NO ONE EVER GIVE US A “PILLER” BEFORE THEY ARE SO EASY!) and now we just have to schedule a sonogram and get the other cats in for their yearly shots and we MIGHT be able to remove the “sucky kitty-parents” sign from off of our backs. I will always kind of have that sign, because… now don’t hate me… I would be much happier if we just didn’t have any cats at all. I’ve said it before, and now I’m saying it again. I’d love to not feel the grit of litter on my laundry room floor, and not have to scoop out poop and pour out food into bowls and the level of effort has now just gone way up what with the separate foods and all, so you may now all hate me as I hate myself for wanting to shirk my responsibilities as a cat owner. Anyone want a cat? Or three?
Ethan’s birthday is next week, which means we have to go find him a bike this weekend, which is what we decided we’d be giving him for his birthday. Then he is having a birthday party next Saturday with the 8 kids from his class all invited. Eight. 4-year-olds. In my house. I haven’t even figured out what to do for it yet. I have gotten a few suggestions – a camping theme, with flashlights for the kids and toasting marshmellows and hotdogs over a fire and tents and camping games and camoflaugeyness. I read about a dinosaur theme where the kids can find “bones” (dog bones) in the sand like in an archeological dig. Honestly, that sounds neat and all, but I think ethan would rather just play in the sand with his tiny loader and bulldozer like a normal kid. Plus, we have a pretty small sand table and I don’t think that would work. One game I heard is to tie a prize/treat on one end of a string/ribbon and give each kid an end and work their way to the prize, which could be fun. I will probably end up doing the tried and true, “procrastinate until the last minute and just let them play with the toys we already have for a while, then have pizza and cake and ice cream and call it good.”

So, yeah, I wish I was all Martha Stewart with the ideas and the time for super cool execution, and honestly, I would make a pretty good effort if I hit on the right idea, but the procrastination thing is starting to creep up and be the party theme by default. So if you have any wonderful fantazmagoric ideas for me, I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR THEM. Even something for the goody bags, for Jocelyn’s I bought the random plastic crap that is in all the goody bags you see, but I also made marble magnets with simple shapes and colors that can go on the fridge. This time, I’d like to do more handmade and less plastic that will be trashed, or at LEAST get some plastic that will be used. I’m thinking something to drive all the parents crazy – like kazoos. The kids would LOVE them. Parents, not so much.

I am totally going to steal this idea for Ethan’s fifth birthday party.

Anyway, enough with the typing for today. Some things I want to spill (this list is more for my own reference than yours: yard photos and plans, how i killed all (almost all) my little baby seedlings, other things I did NOT kill (but almost did), project skinny starting over AGAIN (really, i mean it this time, no REALLY), environmental anxiety and guilt and How This Might Be The Straw That Brings Divorce Papers, and remind me to tell you about the Dawn and Drew Show and how I was ON IT.
The End.

-amy hopes the traffic is also non existant this afternoon.

Here it is, Monday morning, and I didn’t sit down and write like I meant to last week. So, there’s no time like the present, right?

I think I”m going to take that as my new mantra. NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT, FOOL! JUST DO IT!

First, our trip and the grandparents visit, just so I can mentally check that off in my head.

The trip was faaaaaabulous, dahling, absolutely faaaaaabulous. We went up to see two fellow HSBR-ers get married, and a lot of our HSBR internet friends were there, some of whom I hadn’t met before, so it was really cool, both to meet new faces, and to see the old ones again. Saturday while James and Bill went off galivanting on a beer run, Ronna and I went to the mall and I probably agonized her by asking a zillion times, “What do you think of these?” and then changing my mind – outcome: I got some new sandals which I adore, but sometimes make my toes numb. Probably not a good sign.

The wedding was beautiful. I beleive they originally wanted an outdoor ceremony, but it was COLD and drizzly all day, so it wasn’t to be. However, the room was beautiful, with a glimpse of the drizzly hazy outside that was really very stunning, but of course, not as stunning as the bride herself.

It was the first real chance I got to use our new camera, and even though the light was low at the wedding, I think I got some very nice shots. It really made me want a big long lens (don’t be a perv) and a flash that I can bounce off walls. I love to people-shoot, and weddings are perfect for that, but with the basic lens that we have, I pretty much had to get right in people’s faces to shoot, and then they’re not being normal and natural anymore, they’re very aware of the camera and that’s not as fun.

After the wedding there was much hanging out in the hotel bar, but I was pretty tired and a little hung over (yes, already) and plus the guy playing his guitar and singing was a little too much like tom petty vs. bob dylan. I wish now I had stayed up, because everyone left the bar and went to Poster’s room to try some scotch. James tells me that he’s going to get some scotch sometime. I guess he enjoyed it.

Sunday we got up, packed up a bit, went down to breakfast with everyone, including the bride and groom, talked and hugged lots and then we checked out and came home.

There was some stress the night we left. Ethan is no dummy. Last time Grandma was in town, I was in the hospital for pancreatitis for a week. The time before that was when Jocelyn was born and she came to watch Ethan while James and I were breathing and pushing and getting epidurals (ok more me than him but you get my point). So, again, the boy’s no idiot. When he heard Grandma and Grandpa were coming, he asked me, “Are you leaving?” to which I could only answer, “Not today!” So he knew something was up. He seemed to take it pretty well when I explained what was going to happen before bedtime, and bedtime went smoothly. About 35 minutes after everyone was in bed however, he started wailing/crying. I went in and he immediately informed me tearfully that he wanted DADDY, not me. So I called James in and we both stayed and heard about how he doesn’t want us to go. It was sad. We got him settled down and he was asleep not long after, but leaving after THAT was really tough.

Of course, I managed through it all somehow. AWAY FOR THE WEEKEND, WAHOOOO!!

Monday morning we went to the zoo, for all too short of a time period. My brother Larry had to go to the airport at 2pm and that was all the way out in dulles and so we left after only 2 hours, much to Ethan’s dismay. We did see the baby panda, however, who was out with his mommy lazing around and being shy with all the folks watching him. He had his back to his audience for the most part, but did lay on his back and looked at us a few times. We also saw the giraffe, and the daddy elephant, some cheetahs, and a very large frog (which was just in a little pond in the cheetah exhibit). The kids had a blast. My folks were around for a few days after that, and sucked up as much grandkid cuteness as they possibly could before they headed out. It was a very nice visit.

I will have to continue about this last weekend at another time, so I will post a few photos in the next post, and continue on about last weekend another time, hopefully tonight.
-amy wants her bed.

We arrived at our hotel pretty late, around 1 or 2am last Friday night.

I don’t think the BOTH of us have been away from the kids, together, since … oh.. I don’t know, they were born? The big huge event we were looking forward to (besides, you know, the blessed event of two people joining together in matrimony, you know, BESIDES ALL THAT) ….

was the sleeping in. OH CRIMINITLY, how I was looking forward to just sleep sleep sleeping in.

So there I was, Saturday morning with noone hammering on the side of the bed with a toy hammer, or rattling the slats of their crib because they’ve been awake for an hour and are finally getting bored — yes, there I was, SLEEPING IN (oh sweet rapture how I miss thee!!), and I was starting to wake up, but kept willing myself to go back to sleep, just because I COULD, DAMMIT, when I had this dream.

I was invited to join this club or organization of some sort, and was somewhat astounded to be in it, because there were quite a few high profile bloggers in it, and in my dream, we were all living in the same neighborhood.

It snowed, and there was snow that had to be shoveled, so we all pitched in and started shoveling, and James was there, and shoveling and working hard right alongside Jason Kottke when all of a sudden he stopped, put down his shovel and said to me, “Well, I just laid some tile in World of Warcraft and the grout has to set for 10 minutes before you can use it, and it’s been 10 minutes, so I have to go.” I’ve mentioned before how I have this jealous hatred of WoW, and in my dream, I could not BELEIVE that James was leaving the important work of shoveling snow to GO LAY TILE IN WORLD OF WARCRAFT. I told him off, threw down my shovel, and ran away like a hurt pre-teen who asked her first crush to the school dance and got laughed at. I knew he would come after me, so I ran into someone’s open garage, and then was aghast to hear the owners start to pull in, and I was so embarassed that I was hiding in my neighbor’s (and yet I didn’t know who’s it was) garage that I hid deeper, if you will, until I saw that it was Heather Armstrong (aka Dooce) getting out of the car, and then I really was mortified because how do you explain that you just had to hide from your husband who was busy laying tile in World of Warcraft and one of the most popular blogger ever just happened to be the garage that was handiest and no, I’m not a stalker, but Leta sure is cute and good luck on that sewage problem and I hope her college savings is still intact and I’ll be sure to click on the ads for that purpose and gee, we have that same lawn mower and I’ll be getting out of your hair now and again, no restraining order necessary, really …? (I had to look back and see that yes, that sentence really was supposed to have a question mark at the end. I need help.) (I also didn’t know about the sewage problem when this dream took place, but you get my point. Many things going through the head, in dreamland, that’s my point.)

By now I was really drifting up out of the dream, into that place where you are still dreaming, but it’s like you’re floating above everything, WATCHING the dream as it unrolls, and sometimes if you’re lucky, you can take control of the dream and go on really cool adventures, or even better, SEX DREAMS. Anyway, I wasn’t lucky enough to dream a sex dream (with Heather! Ooh La la!) but I pretty much ruined the dream and woke up by just being so damned AMUSED at DREAMING about james LAYING TILE IN AN ONLINE GAME. I have played RPG games called muds where you have to actually role play stuff out, but you know, you gloss over that kind of crap – he was ACTUALLY LAYING TILE, and HAD TO WAIT FOR THE GROUT TO SET UP PROPERLY. I woke up and instantly poked james and said, “You were laying tile in World of Warcraft, you ninny!” cackling with laughter. It’s a good thing it was so damned funny or I still would have been PISSED OFF.

THE END.

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.

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.

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!

I think I’d like to start a meme. Just ’cause. SO NERRR.

I was thinking about weird things I did (and sometimes still do) as a child. These are kind of typical things, not necessarily “original” things that ONLY I did, but my weird brain did some of them in a different way, but enough with the explaining and on to the listing.

Childhood, Remembered:

1. Everyone knows the whole step on a crack and break your mother’s back, thing. I never really heard that saying as a child, but I think everyone sort of instinctually goes through a thing with this, I’ve seen it with Ethan, and it’s amazing to see him only walk on certain colored tiles when we’re in a mall, or some such place. Walking in a certain/on certain things, I guess is something everyone has done in their lives.Here’s the kooky way I did it when I was a kid. I was very much into the “cracks” and not stepping on them. Maybe my brain decided that it was too easy, because I then started inventing new invisible lines that I couldn’t step on. For example, if I was walking down a hall, and there was a corner, I would envision the line of the wall continuing on the floor, even though the wall stopped at the corner, and I would not step on that “invisible” line. This is what I saw in my head:
   If there were no corners, I would draw a 45 degree line coming from the corner of a tile and not step on that.
   I would sometimes get very elaborate, because if you look around, there are angles and corners that can create lines everywhere if you continue them past their natural stopping place, the lines multiply and multiply and you couldn’t walk anywhere. I didn’t get obsessive or anything about this (I didn’t go hopscotching everywhere because of all the imaginary lines I couldn’t step on, for example), it was just a fun game that I grew from the original “don’t step on a crack” habit. (I just said crack habit. hee hee!) I still do this today, sometimes, and even if I don’t always avoid stepping on the lines, my mind seems to automatically draw them on the floor as I walk, if I’m not busy looking elsewhere. The lines are always 2 dimensional though, on the floor, even though there’d be plenty of fodder for 3-d lines going every which way.
    
2. Everyone has scary dreams, and I remember talking about the dreams we had as children with someone recently. They stay vivid in my mind, even 25ish years later. I had the typical scary dream that something or someone was going to “get” me and I would round a corner and see it, and could not move my legs. Pretty typical. I also had a couple of dreams where I was the one that would have to “save the day” .. these dreams always featured me and my family in trouble by bad things or bad people, and somehow at the end, someone would declare dramatically that “Amy can save us!” and then, somehow I would, or would at least try. I can think of at least 2 or 3 dreams where in a rush to escape the evil gonna-getchas, everyone would pile into our van, and somehow in the rush, I would end up in the driver’s seat, and *I* would have to drive. I couldn’t have been more than 7 years old, because of the location of these dreams, so it’s amusing to think back about these dreams when I had to do this complicated driving thing or me and my family would all be “gotcha-ed.” I remember being a pretty decent driver, with this very stern, “I can do it, I HAVE to do it!” mentality the entire time.
    
3. One thing that I did that I’m sure everyone has done, and I had no special Amy slant, was jump around the room on random things, following the self imposed rule that I couldn’t touch the floor. Ethan does this now, it’s pretty funny. I don’t know how it is that everyone makes up the same game when they’re little, but we all totally do. Ethan will lay down the couch pillows and jump from pillow, to rug, to his coat on the floor, back to pillow, and proclaim, “I didn’t touch the BUBBLES!”
    
4. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I had this huge thing against medicine of any sort. Someone sometime must have tried to explained how it helps your body feel better, but I just imagined little “things” (organisms? nano-bots? the “things” in my mind were totally scary and alien) entering my body and doing things that my body didn’t necessarily want done and it weirded me out to the point where I would hold a pill in my mouth until my mom left the room and then spit it out. I think it was also because I hated swallowing pills. (becoming a woman and the onset of cramps put a stop to this fear pretty quickly.)
    
5. I always felt like clothes fit me better the second day I wore them. If I had my way in the first grade, I would have worn the same clothes for the entire year. I definitely had favorites, and would try to wear them as often as I could. This stemmed an actual feeling of pity for my other, less favorite clothes that I didn’t want to wear, and sometimes I would wear them just so they wouldn’t feel bad, but then I’d go back to my favoritism elitist ways. I don’t remember all the clothes that were my favorite, except for one nightgown that I wore until it either was too small, or fell to pieces. It was a satiny material in soft pastel colors that was very smooth and soft, and it was very full, so that when I spun around it billowed out around me and made me feel like I was wearing a ball gown. Ahhh.. I still miss that twirly nightgown. A girl needs twirly clothes. Always remember that, people! Twirly clothes!

   Ethan definitely has favorite clothes, and the primary was a pair of red pants made in a sweatpants material, but weren’t quite like sweatpants (no elastic at the bottoms, for example). He had a red shirt with blue sleeves that he had to wear with it, and he called the ensemble his “red clothes” and delighted in saying, “Look mommy, I’M ALL RED!” I had to prepare him gradually when they were too small, that soon, we would have to put his red clothes away, and finally I said one morning when he was putting them on that that was the last time he’d be able to wear them. He took it surprisingly well, and the next time they came up and James tried to give them to him to wear, he informed daddy that they were too small, and he couldn’t wear them. He has other favorite clothes, and they seem to be his favorite because they are all one color, all gray, all blue, etc. I’m definitely saving those red clothes, though, it’s like an end of an era.
   Jocelyn doesn’t have any favorites really yet, except a purple poncho which, let’s face it, is just fun, no matter your age. She also is enamored with underwear and we got her some with Dora the Explorer. She gets mad when we put a diaper on her, and sometimes starts exclaiming, “umberwear, mommy! umberwear!”

So there are a couple of “typical” things that everyone has from their childhood (with some cute kid stories tossed in). I don’t think it will be a very hard meme, and it’s interesting to think about the things from childhood that define who you were/are and how you thought/think.

I am going to tag CHRIS, ANNA, & LINDA – these are all folks I know, so if you don’t participate I will beat you soundly 🙂 I will also tag two folks I don’t know in real life, but read them religiously, and so let’s see if they will also participate, though if not, who can blame them for ignoring some random chick and her silly meme: Rockstar Mommy and leahpeah, I TAG THEE!

And if you want to do it too, that’d rock! Let me know, and I will link to you!

– amy

Anyone else notice how I had a whole daily post thing going for about 2 weeks there?

And then this weekend I BLEW IT!

Oh well 🙂

I have been meaning to write about the birth of my kids for some time now, maybe because someone out there might enjoy hearing about it, but mostly because it is already faded in my memory and I want to have it down so I will remember it when the memory is totally gone.

It actually took us a while to get pregnant with Ethan. I think it took about 7 months. We weren’t too worried, but I must have been a wee bit worried because I remember I had bought an ovulation test and had started using it the month I turned up pregnant. It was pretty exciting, being pregnant for the first time. People would always ask me 2 things (and, it’s always what I ask others who are pregnant, so I’m to blame too) 1) Do you have morning sickness? and 2) Have you had any weird cravings?

I DID have morning sickness, but it was only super bad in relation to my prenatal vitamin. The one that is chocked so full of iron it makes your poop black and not want to come out AT ALL. The iron also made me want to puke until my stomach went on strike. One morning I popped my vitamin and then headed to work only to have to open the door and puke out my breakfast onto the road at a stop light. Once I clued in that my stomach couldn’t handle the vitamin, I started taking it at night RIGHT before bed and I did much better. I still had that general nauseous feeling, but it was never bad enough to actually make me vomit. I would also start to feel all queasy if I needed to a) pee, or b) eat something.

I never thought I had cravings. UNTIL!

I was really hankering from some Taco Bell. Well, there is a place in Bethesda MD that I used to go to every day, when I worked there, called California Tortilla. MMmmmm. Love me the california tortilla (they have since franchised and I get me some CT lovin’ on a much more regular basis, oh yum). Well, I had been wanting taco bell lately, and one weekend we were going to go the the rennaisance festival in Maryland. James had mentioned how CT IS on the way (sort of) and maybe we could make a pit stop for some California Tortilla burrito love. I waited for the excitement to grow, and it was at that moment, I realized that I did have cravings.. Even though I loved California Tortilla burritos more than life itself, I did NOT want one. I did not want the crunchy bbq ranchy CT goodness! I did NOT want the best chips int eh world dipped into the perfect queso one has ever tasted! NO! I DID NOT! I wanted to go to Taco Bell, and no CT alternative would suffice, IT HAD TO BE TACO BELL!

That is when I realized that YES, I HAD WEIRD CRAVINGS!!? 🙂

I would have to say that the best part of pregnancy is the 2nd trimester. The trimester when you’re showing, but not huge. The trimester when you’ve lost that queasy butterfly in your stomach so you may vomit, feeling. The trimester when you are randy and horny as hell and sex is still fun and not a complicated exercise in strange positions, and it is also the trimester when you actually feel that little life inside of you moving about and you’re certain that’s what it is and it’s not just gas (the 1st trimester, I could never be SURE).

The third trimester, just plain sucks. You stomach becomes huge, and absolutely rigid and hard and not at all amenable to being bumped. That is the worst part of being pregnant, I think. The no bumping. After I had both my kids, I used to just walk around the house bumping into things with my stomach, JUST BECAUSE I COULD. The waddling, the back aches, the unable to pick up anything off the ground without huge effort.. it just sucks. And it lasts FOREVER.

Overall, I would have to give pregnancy a thumbs down. Sure, I can get kind of nostalgic about it now that it’s over and I have 2 darling kids to show for it, but in general, I don’t fancy pregnant. When some women go on about how they loved being pregnant and blah blah blah, I just cannot relate. It’s long, and you can’t drink a lot of things you like, and what with needing a crane to turn over in bed the last month and a half.. I definitely am glad there won’t be any more pregnancies in my future (so we THINK).

I remember going to the doctor when I was pregnant with Ethan. Fairly early on, they detected a growth of some sort near my uterus that they couldn’t really figure out what it was. They kept sending me in for ultrasounds often to track the unknown thingee, and they pretty much decided it was fluid filled, and wasn’t going to hurt anything, but they’d still monitor it. They decided it was probably a symptom of endometriosis (i bet I’m so getting that wrong, it’s been a while) and may dissipate on it’s own in time. They knew he was a big baby from the get go, and when the ultrasounds at the end of the pregnancy pointed out he was breech, along with this mystery thingee to monitor, they scheduled me for a c-section. We had taken childbirth classes, and learned all about the different stages of birth and what happens and why and blah blah blah.. I was so devastated to learn I would not get to experience ANY part of that. The c-section was scheduled Thursday, the week before his due date. It was downright eerie going to bed the night before, knowing that the next day we would meet our baby.

James didn’t want to know the sex of the baby, and I was ok with going along with that, thought it was FREAKING HARD PEOPLE. It was a bit exciting, not knowing what we would have until the big day arrived, but when pregnancy #2 rolled around, I told James we weren’t doing that again. I needed the info! Gotta have the 411! Purple or blue, I gotta know! We decorated the baby room with a beautiful green paint on the walls and a John Lennon “Musical Parade” crib theme that wasn’t really gender specific. I think I felt like I knew it would be a boy, but who knows, hindsight is 20/20, right? I KNOW that I would have been surprised if it turned out to be a girl.

So the morning came, and we arose early and got ourselves to the hospital. I don’t remember much of the waiting, but somehow, I got myself in the gorgeous open green hospital gown, and had to go into the operating room by myself, while James waited outside in the hall, while I got my epidermal.

Oh. My. God, was it awful.

First of all, when an epidermal is normally administered, the ladies are already experiencing pain and are probably just relieved to have some relief from that pain. It is quite another thing to go walking in totally normal and pain free and have them shove a 3 inch needle into your spinal column. When you are totally fine. Without pain. It was so awful, I can’t tell you how awful it was (and yet, in spite of not being able to tell you, I will attempt to anyway).

I remember the nurse standing right in front of me and her hands on my shoulders, pressing down. They told me to look down and keep my back rounded (yeah, YOU try to keep YOUR back rounded when you have something bigger than a bowling bowl in your uterus) and my shoulders down. The anesthesiologist (heretofore known as the Evil Needle Man, or ENM) was supposed to administer a local anesthetic which was supposed to numb the area, so that when the Big One went in, I didn’t feel it much. Well, I felt it much.

It hurt. SO. BAD. I have never had to urge to SPOUT PROFANITY so vehemently before (or since!) in my life. I could not KEEP myself from cussing out that guy and everything in the room, because of the pain. The nurse had to keep pressing on my shoulders and saying over and over, “shoulders down, back rounded” because a split second would go by and I would forget and tense my shoulders up to my ears and straighten my back.

It hurt so so so so so so so badly. It was AWFUL.

I am happy to report that when the time came for epidural #2 (with jocelyn) it wasn’t nearly so bad. In comparison, it was a sweet summer breezy breeze.

Anyway. After the epidural was in and working, my whole body was altered. I was no longer in a “normal” state. I could not stop shivering. It wasn’t the “i’m cold” shivering, but the, “every muscle in my body is totally tensed to the point that they are shaking and I can’t stop them” shivering. My doctor had talked to me before about the possibility of watching the operation in a mirror. She said that a c-section can seem so weird to some women because they don’t even feel like it is happening to themselves. At the time, I thought, hell yeah! I want to watch! How cool would that be! Like my very own personal version of “Birth Story”, except with my own abdomen, and my own baby.

However, in the moment, I had to devote every moment of my attention to breathing, and trying to relax and not shiver. I felt like someone was sitting on my chest and every breath was a huge effort. When I told the ENM that I was having a hard time breathing, he assumed it was because of the angle of my head/neck, and fetched me a pillow. I then had a neck-based headache for the next week because my muscles had tensed themselves in this odd position and there they stayed for the next week.

The birth/operation itself was surreal and strange. I felt a lot of pressure and tugging, and I remember asking, “Have you started yet?” and the doctor laughing and assuring me yes, they’d started, a few minutes ago. I remember she announced, “It’s a boy!” and they showed him to us both over the curtain, but it was too high and I didn’t see him. They went and cleaned him up and performed all the APGAR tests, and then brought him back to my side. I wish I could say that when they showed me my son, I was overcome with joy and elation and everything else fled, but honestly, I still was just trying to get through it all. James sat with him in his arms next to me for a while, and I turned and looked at him as long as I could before my neck rebelled and I had to turn my head upward again and close my eyes and think, “breath, breathe, breathe, keep breathing..” It is blurry now, but they wanted to take Ethan into the nursery for some reason, heat lamps or something, and since I had another 30-40 minutes to go, James left my side to go be next to Ethan (at my bidding, lest anyone think he was a callous idiot husband).

So they finished up the c-section, my doctor reported to me on the state of my uterus (pretty bad scarring from endometriosis) stitched me up. The first part of a c-section is quick. They slice through the abdomen wall, and then through the uterine wall, get the baby out, all in the first 5-8 minutes. Then, they have to make sure everything is out of the uterus (placenta, etc.) sew up the uterus, sew up the abdomen, etc. and that takes another 30-40 minutes. It pretty much sucks, having your baby outside of you, while you are stuck on the operating table waiting for them to finish sewing you up. It doubly sucked for me, because my baby and my husband weren’t in the same room as me, and I had to lay there and concentrate on the ability to breath in and out, and listen to ENM plan his weekend on his cell phone (which consisted of a fishing trip, and don’t bring your skanky girlfriend, because she’s a ho and will ruin the entire trip. This is what I heard, after having my son removed from my uterus. Oh joy.)

They finished, and the massive drugs part of the epidural was tapered off and morphine was kicked in so that the whole shaking shivering breathing problems abated. They took me into the recovery room where I laid there, waiting, in a very surreal, weird state of mind. I remember being very calm and watching the clock, wondering where my baby and my husband were. I laid there for an hour and a half before James came back in. I had asked where they were, and they told me that they were giving Ethan a bath. When James came back in, he told me that they wanted to keep Ethan under the heat lamps for a little while because he was a little cold from his first bath. So it wasn’t until about 2 hours later, when they finally brought my baby in for me to hold.

He was, the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. He had the most precious little head, and if there is ANY pros for c-sections, it’s that the baby’s head is perfectly shaped, no weird cone-head that often comes with a normal birth (this is so not a pro. i’m just saying. you take what you can get.) He had the fuzzy dark brown down all over his head and I immediately noticed he had the same “tornado” that his daddy has. James’ hair grows in a swirly swirl near the front right over his left eye. I have buzzed his head often, and I always have to be careful getting all the hairs over that spot that grow all which ways, so I noticed it on Ethan’s head right away. It just melted my heart 🙂 He had gray eyes that didn’t seem to look right to me, and a few months later when they started to turn brown, it seemed to give his face a better coloring. The gray made him washed out, and when they finally went brown, he stopped looking sickly to me.

After that, it stopped being surreal, and started being the wonderful, exhausting experience it’s supposed to be. I hardly let him leave the room after that, and a few days later, we all went home to figure out our new identity as a family 🙂