In case you haven’t heard, we’re moving to Colorado this summer.

Which means we need to sell this house. Which means we need to get it ready, just like the little piggy, for market.

So the last two weekends have been avoiding the house like crazy while workman paint it from head to toe, and then install carpet from head to toe.

Have I ever told you how awesome new carpet is? Ours was AWFUL. And so the new carpet is doubly sweet! It’s sooo beautiful!

Also? Big empty rooms with newly laid carpet is perfect for fiddling around on the floor.

Ethan likes to just settle into a certain position that makes me cock my head to the side and say, “Whaaa?? HOW?!”
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In list form!

• I took a jewelry beading class a few weekends ago, a class I thought would mostly be stringing, but ended up being wire working, and I have to say, I loved it. However, it has brought a few things to light, namely:
  • Cheap pliers are just that. Cheap. The teacher had tools for us to use, which I did, and then when I got home and tried to use the cheapo pliers I had initially purchased, my hands were killing me. Ouch.
  • Silver wire is expensive! She gave us all copper wire to work with, because it’s relatively cheap. Silver is pretty expensive. However, I am not particularly drawn to copper. I don’t hate it, I just don’t usually go for it. And now, after the class, when I look at the copper wire, I have no idea what sort of beads to pair it with. I am paralyzed with inactivity. I have no wish to make copper jewelry. I ache to make something, but I don’t know what. I just am more partial to silver, really.

  So, I’m kind of antsy and anxious to get started with some more jewelry, but a) i need some good pliers and b) I want silver wire. Both of which cost a decent amount of money. But after wobbling about for a week on what to do, I bit the bullet. I bought some very good pliers online, along with a small amount of sterling silver wire, and a bigger amount of (silver-looking-in-appearance)(cheap) nickel wire. I figure I will use the nickel and if I make a piece I really like, I can redo it in the silver. Now I can’t wait for my order to arrive!

• My upper back is having some sort of reaction to something. At first I thought our cat had scratched me or something, because I just had this very mild irritation on the back of my shoulder, and indeed, could feel a miniscule scratch, but it has progressed to a much larger area than just the invisible scratch area and wtf? No rash or other visual indicator is present, but I’m telling you, not a minute goes by where I don’t feel pain somewhere in this general area. Not a big pain, but a pain-in-the-ass pain, because I keep being made aware of it, over and OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Time for some hydrocortisone cream I guess.
• Today at the office there is a potluck, and OFFICE MASSAGES. When I wondered over to the front desk to sign up yesterday, I was aghast that there were hardly any people signed up. I was tempted to put myself down twice. Don’t these people like to relax and be massaged? After the last week, I CANNOT WAIT.
• With the potluck today and a class party in Jocelyn’s classroom on Friday, I made a whole crapload of pumpkin cupcakes. I just LOVE these things. I wish I had the time to decorate them like Melissa from Suburban Bliss did her BOO cupcakes – LOVE THESE – I’m telling you follow the link and just scroll down for the pictures. Creepily DELIGHTFUL. But I did not have the time, so I just dipped them all in halloweeny sprinkles and called it good. And spent the entire trip into the office this morning thinking of some ghoulish names to accompany them. I’ve settled on “Putrid Pumpkin Pustules Slimed With Creepy Creamed Cheese of the Occult” I’ll take any suggestions!
• This year when I bought out the hat and gloves department at Target for the family, I hit on something. I usually buy several pairs so that when the first glove goes missing (as they all inevitably do) there would be back-up gloves. This year – I bought TWO PAIRS OF THE SAME GLOVES for everyone. Why did I not think of this?? Then when the end of winter comes and tons of gloves are missing, we are much more likely to have MATCHING GLOVES. I can’t tell you how many times Jocelyn has gone to school with one supergirl glove and one transformer glove. Hopefully this year it will be Supergirl FTW! Also, I bought some fingerless gloves to try out in the office and I HAVE NOT NOT USED THEM SINCE. I LOVE them. My hands are warm, but my fingers are not constricted by any bulky material. In fact, these aren’t fingerless gloves, they’re more like fingerless mittens, because there’s no individual fingers to them. Yet another idea I should have adopted YEARS AGO.
• And just not to leave anyone hanging, Ethan has been doing well this week. No major incidents. He appeared to have totally brushed off the girl in his class telling him he was kicked out of daycare. His teacher said that he replied, “No I didn’t.” and he hasn’t brought it up to us at all. The counseling center got back to me and we decided to do some initial psychological testing just to see what’s what. Now that everything seems to be going OK, I feel like maybe I’m overreacting with the whole professional help thing, but I know that it is still the best thing for him. Even if the worst is over, this still can only help him, not hurt.
• The kids expressed astonishment that there was CHRISTMAS stuff up at Target already. And when we were there yesterday they had already taken down the major Halloween setup. Ethan: “Don’t they know that Halloween isn’t even over yet???” I know, Ethan. I KNOW.

That’s it. I just leave you know with the conversation James and I had last night. I had just been blathering on and on about who knows what and after a short silence, this came out.

Oh, what sweet marital bliss:

me: God. I hate the sound of my voice. I don’t know how you can stand it. Blech. I wish I could just STOP TALKING.
..
james: (SILENCE.)
..
I look at him.
..
He looks at me.
..
I give him THE LOOK.
He grins.
james: I am racking up the points right now!
me: OH NO YOU ARE NOT!
james: What? I am too! I am totally keeping my mouth shut! You know what I COULD BE SAYING RIGHT NOW??
..
I fix him with a stony glare.
me: You are losing more points with every passing second, mister.
james: What??!!!
me, taking on a fake voice: “Oh, honey! Why would you say that? Don’t be so hard on yourself. You have a lovely voice! That’s why I married you! I love you! You’re perfect in every way!”
james laughs, and takes on his own fake voice: “I wish you would stop talking! You’ve been driving me nuts for the past 20 minutes! That voice is the voice that is going to drive me to my grave! That voice—”
I cut him off, and retort: LOSING POINTS. EVERY SECOND.
james just grins.
me: I’M TELLING THE INTERNET.

Internet, you have been duly informed.

-amy howls at the moon.

Hi honey,

I know we haven’t seen each other a whole lot in the last week. Sure I guess we did see each other on the weekend, but what with the tball games and the settling arguments of who gets the pink bowl and She Touched My Toy! No YOU Touched MY Toy! and prying the DS out of our son’s sticky vise-like grip, it doesn’t feel like I’ve seen you that much. I know I’ve been sleeping in the guest room, because of the sinus infection that causes me to spend a non-merry half hour coughing and hacking at 4am (I love you, I see no need to put you through that), so you haven’t gotten to listen to me blather endlessly about all the random shit in my head, the way I always do when I am tired but can’t just lay down and go to sleep already. I haven’t really heard about the random stuff you’ve been thinking over either (aside from the fact that Governor Palin is in way over her head and what was McCain thinking?) I really HAVEN’T seen you much, you’re away Tuesday and Thursday nights at class, and then there’s often homework for said math class on other nights, and damn, life is busy isn’t it?

So yeah. It’s been too long since we actually spent time together, talking about something other than the kids, Jocelyn’s burgeoning boredom in tball and Ethan’s misadventures in school, and I know you’re on board when I say we need to get out together, just us (now if only Jocelyn would go to sleep at night instead of calling for one of us 14 times before passing out way past her bedtime, so I would be comfortable even engaging the sitter for the night). We could go see a movie, or maybe a play, have dinner, but mostly it would be nice to remember you’re my husband and not just a housemate whom I tag team with to care for the children, and rotate the laundry. We could just go and have dinner somewhere and annoy the servers by staying and talking for three hours and I’d be happy.

I know I told you yesterday that I REALLY appreciated how you cleaned the kitchen, but I want to put it down right here – You absolutely, totally and completely made my day. That kitchen has kicking my ass for a week and a half and every time I could almost quite get it to nearly clean but not all the way, but you did it, it was beautiful, and I can’t tell you how much I love you for that. You do so much for me and the kids and the house, and I appreciate it.

Now that the azithromiaxoxicillin is kicking this sinus infection to the curb (I actually slept all night last night!) it won’t be long before I’ll be climbing into our own bed for the night, oohing about how much I love clean sheets, and blathering to you endlessly in the moments before sleep, (shoosh, you know you miss it) and wake up to see your face for a brief instant before the kids climb into bed virtually demanding to be tickled and kissed and then up and showers and teeth-brush-overseeing must begin.

I miss you, I love you, and I can’t wait to spend some time with you,

Love,
Amy

One of the things we did for James for father’s day was make superman t-shirts. One for daddy (SuperDaddy!), one for Ethan (SuperBoy!) and one for Jocelyn (SuperGirl!).

Ethan didn’t want to wear his on Father’s day, but Jocelyn was more than game. A shot of SuperDAddy and SuperGirl at SuperSweetWaterTavern where the supers get their Father’s day sustenance (not to mention beer).

I also made a print of this image and framed it for James:

It was a nice father’s day, even though near the end I did have to say to James, “I realize it’s father’s day and I should be watching the kids so you can relax and all, but you may have to step in in order to keep me from strangling them.”

In other news, summer camp is in it’s first week, which means lots of fun activities for the kids at school. Ethan usually goes somewhere for a specific activity (bowling, pool, mini golf) in a school van in the morning, and then comes back in the afternoon more open playtime. He is also allowed to take his Nintendo DS to school (which wasn’t allowed during the school year by us or the school) and he usually is playing it when I pick him up.

Wednesday as I was tucking him in to bed, he said, “My neck hurts.” Now, James has been sick for the last three days so I immediately checked his forehead for any signs of fever and felt his glands. All fine.

“Is it inside your neck, like your throat? Or more on the outside, like your muscles?”

“It’s on the outside.”

Hmm. I told him he’d feel better in the morning and left it at that.

Yesterday when I picked him up at school, again, he was playing his DS. I tore him away so he could you know, say Hi or give me a hug or something, and noticed his eyes were red-rimmed and somewhat bloodshot. Suddenly I realized what his “sore neck” was from.

“How long did you play your DS today?” I asked him on the way home.
“A LONG time,” he answered.

We have a gamer-boy on our hands, who has strained neck muscles from hunching over and bloodshot eyes from peering at the screen for who knows how many hours a day.

I told him when we got home, the DS was done for the day. I also stressed the importance of taking BREAKS and that there were LOTS of OTHER things he could do at summer camp, he didn’t have to JUST play his DS all afternoon. I also talked to one of the counselors and asked her to maybe encourage him to do some other things this afternoon. We’ll see.

Gamer-boy.

So now that I have ostracized all ELEVEN of my readers (i know, a gross exageration) by NOT POSTING A THING FOR WEEKS, let me just slay you know with the WORDS WORDS WORDS!

….. WORDS!

No pictures, either, not even if you beg!

Some assorted thoughts and happenings from my mother’s visit (my dad did not come at the last minute, doh!).
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Err, mah BABIES’-Daddy!

Seriously, what is the proper grammer for the daddy to TWO babies? The world needs to know.

This weekend, I kept pestering James to tell me whether he wanted me to make him a cake, or if I should just buy the ultra decadent so-much-chocolate-it-may-kill-you cake from Costco (the tall layer one, with shaved chocolate on top of the frosting. OK, I’m salivating now. Good lord.)

He said, “Oh, you can just get the costco one, that’s fine.”
me: “Or I could make you one.”
him: “That’s fine too.”
me: “I’m gonna make you one.”
him: “ok already!”

I wanted to make him a cake because I haven’t baked anything in a while, and I love to bake. And also because it’s much funner with the kids to make one than to just go buy one. We had the important “what kind of cake should we make for daddy?” discussion.

“Carrot cake!” was Ethan’s vote. I quickly corrected him. (He’s really come about-face on this carrot cake business.)
“Well, carrot cake is good, but I think maybe chocolate. Because your daddy LOVES the chocolate. He is a chocolate lover.”

Jocelyn loved this description of James and has used it multiple times over the past few days. “Daddy is a CHOCOLATE LOVER!”

So in the end, I decided to make him a marble cake, because that’s what his mom used to make him when he was a kid. Only I wanted to fancify it, so instead of just using a 13×9 cake pan like the recipe said to, I decided to put it in 2 round pans.

Marble cake is a vanilla cake where you take part of the batter and add chocolate to it, and then pour the vanilla batter in first, and the chocolate on top and swirl it around a bit so when it’s baked and you cut into it, it’s all marbley with vanilla and chocolate cake.

So, since James IS a chocolate lover, I debated aloud on whether I should make the primary cake chocolate, instead of vanilla, so that would make the majority of the batter chocolate, which he likes better. Then I decided not to, and said aloud, “I should probably just stick to the recipe.”

james: “So NOW you’re going to stick to the recipe, but when I cook, you always want me to do things your way even when I’m trying to stick to the recipe!”

Pish. That’s all I have to say about that. (“Pish” is good for when you have no leg to stand on, see.)

So last night, I prepared my batter and sprayed my 2 round pans, and had the batter all ready to pour, but it did NOT LOOK like nearly enough batter to fill 2 round pans. So I poured the whole thing into ONE round pan and right then, I could tell I was really screwed. It was way too full. But it’s a MARBLE cake, so I couldn’t transfer some of it to the other cake pan or it would stop being marble-y and just be … all mixed together brown cake? Not marble cake? Not sure what you would call it! So, knowing I had screwed the pooch, I just put the over-full round pan on a cookie sheet and slid it into the oven.

(Another reason one should probably not make marble cake in 2 round pans – the “marble” effect is probably better acheived in a single big pan. Then there is plenty of each batter (plain and chocolate) to make it the nice marbly effect when one batter is put on top of the other batter. If you split all that in half, as you would have to with 2 pans, there’s not as much of each type of batter to blend with each other it probably wouldn’t make as nice of an effect.)

Sure enough, 30 minutes later it had overflowed and half the cake had bubbled out onto the sheet pan.

So for James’ birthday, he gets the costco it-will-send-your-blood-sugar-to-new-heights chocolate cake AND he gets to taunt me about tweaking the recipe with disastrous results, which I usually bristle at with unbridled fervor. Now he can tease me all he likes and I will just have to TAKE it because of my cake disaster. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HONEY! MAKE MY LIFE HELL! 🙂

This morning James made the “i’m getting out of bed” movements, so I quick told him to stay put for a few minutes and scurried into the kids room.

me: “Guess what today is?”
Now usually, Ethan answers these sort of questions first. But today, Jocelyn totally put the smack down and answered instantly.
j: “DADDY’S BIRTHDAY!!!!!”
m: “You guys want to climb into our bed and sing him happy birthday?”
j&e: “YEAAAAAAHHHH!!”

And so they did. And it was so super cute. Cuter than bunnies on top of puppies, they were so cute.

Then I told the kids, “Guess what, guys. Mommy ruined the birthday cake! So I’m going to pick you up early from school, and we’re going to go to costco to get one from there.”

Ethan: “Yay! Carrot cake!”
Jocelyn: “No! Not carrot cake. CHOCOLATE. Because Daddy is a CHOCOLATE LOVER.”

That girl. She kills me with the CUTE.

So this morning, we had a gouge or two out of the ruined birthday cake for a post breakfast snack, and tonight we’ll be lighting candles on top of the costco death-by-chocolate cake.

Because James is a CHOCOLATE LOVER.

Happy birthday to the best baby-daddy a girl could have!

love you sweetie.