A little update

I'm cursed with a complex, I think. Im absolutely convinced that my life is too boring to blg about. But I also feel like I should keep this just in case something interesting happens. Nigel had his second birthday last week. Nora is now too tall for last year's jeans. DH's new job is going well. And he even packs his own lunches. (woo hoo!)

Me? I'm just sitting here with Nigel and his cold, sleeping on my lap. That's right, I'm blogging one-handed! How's that for a party trick?? I made my wallpaper-hanging debut yesterday. That's featured in our house blog. It's important to note that I will never be a professional wallpaper hanger. Not only does it take a level of attention to detail and precision that I do not possess, but it also has my neck very angry with me. I have a yoga class tonight, so I hope to be feeling better after some stretching and meditation.

I can think of nothing else for the moment, so I'll sign off for now. I promise to check in if anything earth-shattering comes up.

Fall is coming!

I'm not a huge fan of winter, but fall sure is nice. We've had the windows open and the air conditioning off for a week now, and today my husband and daughter picked the first pumpkin. She helped start the seed in April, and then helped put them in the ground in May. After checking on it several times a week for a few months, she got to pick a pumpkin. She is so proud of it. Of course I jumped at the chance to take a picture of my girlie with the fruit of her labor. There are about 6 or 8 more out there that will become jack-o-lanterns in October, provided no critters or hooligans wreak havoc upon them.


In no time at all it will be time to break out the flannel jammies and woolen socks. And then I'll start posting about how I wish it were summer. It's a neverending cycle of complaints, I tell ya!

Leftovers

One thing I did not forsee when my husband left the restaurant industry was that he would need to begin taking a lunch to work with him. That means that we need to have food for him to take. Now this represents a problem in two ways. One, we need to remember to get the lunch prepared the night before. Second, I now need to make enough food for dinner that there are leftovers for him to take. The alternative is for him to eat sandwiches at lunch every day. How boring is that? Now I dislike leftovers, as a rule, so in the 10 years of our marriage, I've learned to make just enough for the family to eat at the one sitting. My husband, who is happy to eat reheated, day-old food, has been eating at the restaurant: I never really had to think too much about his nutritional needs. So far, he's taken a salad each day.

This whole lunch-packing thing is going to be a learning experience, for sure.

New job starting today

My husband, after many months of searching, finally found a new job that is not in restaurant management. He started today, managing a warehouse crew. I'm sure he'll be super at it, although he's a bit worried. He's "not already an expert" at this, and that is new territory for him. He'll be done in about 3 hours. I cannot wait to find out how it went.

Lemme tell you about my friend

I have been a part of a couple of internet comunities since late 2002, when my daugher was a wee babe. I've gotten to "know" several women very well in that time. Some of them, just for fun, and some of them because of hard times. In particular, last year, one acquaintance was reeling from some pretty horrible medical news. She had recently found out that she had a genetic predisposition to cancer, and had unfortunately passed the gene on to two of her children.

One day, she had an acute need to talk to someone, so I gave her my yahoo IM name. We chatted a little. We didn't know each other very well at tthat point, but I knew she had a real need to vent about her situation. I don't know if it helped her, but after that, I felt like we were linked. There was now a bond with this woman. In the last year + since, she's had several surgeries, countless different drugs to try to help her cope with the side effects of said surgeries and cancer, as well as a move across the country. As if she doesn't have enough to do, she decided that homeshcooling was the best thing for her kids. I don't know where she gets the energy for all that.

We don't talk much anymore-- she's too busy with life to 'hang out' on inane internet message boards, but I read her blog when I have a chance. And I wish that she lived close enough that I could hug her and make it all easier for her. But I'll have to settle for knowing her online, and drawing strength from her humor and fortitude in the face of a all sorts of crap.

And she's a better writer than I. ;)

How does my garden grow...

While I've been indoors during the heat wave, my veggie garden has been busy. Unfortunately so have the weeds. BUT, I have some tomatoes, and yummy peppers to show for it all. There are teeny jalapenos out there too, not yet ready for picking. And with a little luck, Nora and Nigel will have home-grown jack-o-lanterns this year.

Next year, I hope to have a much larger garden. If I get really ambitious, I might grow all sorts of things, and learn how to put them up in the fall. Grandma Bug will be so proud of me.

It's not 99 degrees today!!!

After we got back from vacation, the nasty stomach flu made ts way through our humble home. Once we all felt better, it was hot that no sane human would go outside. Unless there was free food involved, of course. So finally, FINALLY, everyone is healthy and it is only 76 degrees out. It's supposed to rain again this afternoon, though, so I better get some clothes on the kids and go for that walk before we lose our window of opportunity.

I'm outta here

The house is too stressful. So we're heading off to the lake to boat and swim. I hope to get some good pictures!

PSA: Don't forget to put away the glue when you go to the basement.

I went down to do some laundry after dinner, and came back up a few minutes later to see Nigel smearing Nora's glue on construction paper. His hands are a mess. But I remember deliberately smearing Elmers glue on my hands when in elementary school, just so I could dry it and peel it off. So no harm done, right?

Wrong.

It is in his hair. He's got a very punk rock 'do now. But it was nearly bedtime, and he'd had a bath today already, so I need to put off trying to clean him up until the morning. Unfortunately, he really dislikes having his hair washed. Really, really dislikes it. And I think there will be some serious scrubbing involved. That is going to be one sad bathtime. yikes.



For those of you who know me, I took pictures. Let me know if you'd like me to email them to you.)

I should have named my son Harry

Because he's quite the escape artist.

I was out of the house for a couple of hours this morning, and my husband was at home with the kids. Now, our boy Nigel (22 months old) is quite a handful. He's a really fun kid, but he can also scale any wall ond open any door. So we've got baby gates and door locks all over the place. (It's like running the 25-meter hurdles to answer the phone, not to mention the locks on the medicine cabinets, drawers, oven, refrigerator, the list goes on and on.)

So, back to today's story. Daddy's playing with Nora, and all-of-a-sudden he realized that Nigel was absent. So he starts calling for him. No answer. So he looks upstairs. Looking all around, in our closet, the bathroom, etc. Still no Nigel. He eventually goes outside to find our "little" boy, bare feet, and still in jammies walking down the alley towards State Route 24, Half a block from the highway!

!!!

Daddy ran full tilt, and caught the little Houdini and brought him back in.

Turns out, he walked from the living room, climbed over the gate into my office, then through that door to our back door, unlocked that door, and then pushed open the screen door. He figured it was a nice day for a walk. Apparently also a good day to give his father a heart attack.

I hate keeping ourselves locked inside so securely that family and friends cannot just stop by, but we obviously have no choice. So if you want to come over, give me a call first, so I can be ready let you in.

Follow-through is not my strong point.

After all the dirt and grime from yesterday's carpet adventures, I'm not in the mood to work on that room any more today. Unfortunately, I really don't have a choice. I cannot let that grimy floor exist in this house any more. First, there's the odious task of trying various cleaners to figure out which one will do the most cleaning with the least amount of effort. Then, the actual cleaning of 189 square feet of 20-year-old dirt.

I guess I'd better get started...

Wall-to-wall carpet is yucky

I just spent the last couple of hours pulling up old carpet. It was gross under there. I will never *ever* put carpet in my house again. Area rugs? Sure. But if I cannot lift it up every month or two to sweep under there, it won't be in my house. no way.

Now for a late lnch, then on to pulling the hundreds of staples out of the pine floor.

We live in an old house. Thanks to some record-keeping snafus down at the county courthouse, we are not exactly sure how old. The best we can tell, it was built around 1900, then there was a pretty substantial remodel done in the 1930's (or early 40's).

When we moved in to this house last November, we thought the "family room" was a later addition, and didn't have the same wood floors as in the rest of the main floor. So we kept the dark green carpet from the previous owners. I didn't like it, but there really wasn't much money left in the budget to add new flooring in that room. And with such pretty heart pine floors in the other rooms, there 's no way I wanted to lay laminate flooring in the family room.

But then, we had a cat who decided that it was too difficult to go under the baby gate to the basement for her bathroom needs. So she peed in front of my daughter's play kitchen. ew. And then off to the side, by the toy box. double ew. So we shampooed the carpet. I swear it smells worse. I think that the previous owners had had an animal or two, and the carpet cleaning jut reacitvated old smell. {insert gagging sensation here}

So I said to myself "That's it!" and pulled up a larger section of the carpet last night, trying to figure out how much money I was looking at to replace the carpet with hardwood. My husband just got a bit of a quarterly bonus this week, and I could use that for the flooring instead of sticking it in the kitchen renovation budget. But, alas, I found that the spot I originally looked at (near the basement stairs) was not indicative of the whole room. Read: we have hardwood under there! I am ecstatic. I cannot wait until Monday to call some local refinishers and get quotes. There's some sort of adhesive on the boards, but I am sure that it's nothing a professional floor guy couldn't handle.

So today's mission is to avoid the temptation to attempt ripping the old carpet out of that room by myself, with my two kids underfoot. I don't know if I am strong enough to resist that temptation. I really really really want that stinky, ugly carpet gone.

I'll let you know tomorrow if I managed to hold off on the room destruction...

Hmmm

I really want to keep this thing going, but my brain has turned to mush. I'll meditate on possible blog topics whilst washing dishes and folding laundry. I am sure that my housekeeping tasks will feed my creative side, and a new thought-provoking post will emerge. Check back tomorrow, kids!

My Personal Dna Report

Benevolent Leader

Confidence 92
Openness 72
Extroversion 72
Empathy 48
Trust in others 76
Agency 56
Masculinity 22
Femininity 64
Spontaneity 62
Attention to style 52
Authoritarianism 52
Earthy/Imaginative 84
Aesthetic/Functional 32

Spring is here.

I am so discouraged. It feels like we are never going to get past this cold late-winter weather. I made the mistake of looking at the forecast for the next two weeks, and it doesn't look like it is going to get warmer any time soon. This has me in such a funk.

Coupled with the fact that all four in ourfamily have colds, to varying degrees, I am really struggling to maintain my composure. Nigel and Nora were both up at 3:30, after waking each other. It took over an hour to get Nigel back to sleep. I haven't slept more than 2 hours straight in 3 days. I snapped at Nora first thing this morning. Great way to start the day, huh?

I soooo need to turn my kids loose outside and just sit and dig my fingers into the grass. And I need sun on my face. And I need to look at flowers blooming. And to open the windows in the house and let the fresh air in. To hang the laundry on a line to dry.

To wear only one layer of clothing.

I know that the air will eventually warm, but I am impatient. I want to act like a 3-year-old and stomp my foot and demand that it be sunny. Ya think that would work?

Celebrity "What were they thinking"??

I don't normally blog about fashion. BUT, Charlize Theron's hairdo (I am not even giong to critique the dress) at the Oscars last night looked like she might have stolen it from Marion Mercer in 1981's TV hit It's a Living. D'ya think her stylist went to the hair people and said, "Hey, here's a thought -- Let's make one of the prettiest women in Hollywood look like a 55-year-old lady."



But then again, wasn't Charlize the one who showed up looking as orange as an Oompa-Loompa at the 2004 Academy Awards, after a horrible spray-on tan incident? Maybe she's just got a whimsical streak.

I don't wanna play today

It's 8:15, I've eaten, had a cup of coffee (another will be had when I am finished with this post), and I don't want to be me today. I want to take a really long shower. I want to "do" my hair. I want to paint my fingernails. And then go buy a pair of shoes. Or a new top. But that isn't me.

That, however, was me 4 years ago. But then I gave birth to my precious daughter. Nora is absolutely the light of my life. She's funny and smart and has a stunning ability to recall past events. She's pretty, too. But there's no fingernail painting when you've got a little one around.

And then came Nigel. Equally the light of my life, he's even more of a handful. If it can be climbed, he'll scale it. If it can overturned or poured on the floor, he'll do that too. And there's that smile. It stops perfect strangers in the grocery store to say 'hi' and smile back.

I've got two fabulous kids, alright. I am thankful every day that they are part of our family. But that doesn't keep me from yearning for the days of makeup and matching clothes and clean cars and candlelight dinners. And try as I might, I have yet to enjoy playing Candyland with a 3-year-old. Or reading The Runaway Orange for the 100th time. So for now, I just have to grin and bear it, and know that someday I'll get to clean myself without hurrying through the steps, for fear of what I'll find when I step out. Or that I'll be able to wear makeup even just to the grocery store.

And I am sure that my husband wouldn't mind it either.

Enh. Not much to write.

I have no divine inspiration, but I really want to start being more consistent with this blogging deal. So I am posting in spite of my lack of inspiration.

The boy is napping, and the girl is running around in shorts and a t-shirt. My teeth chatter just looking at her, but she insists that she isn't cold. She's nearly 4 -- I should trust that she'll add clothes when she feels a chill.

And now the boy is awake again, so I draw this entry to a close. Maybe I'll be back tomorrow.

I don't plan on homeschooling. So there.

I just want to put that out there, and start owning it. So many of my friends Home School, and as wonderful as it is, I am just not equipped for it. We moved to a small town with good public schools, and my kids are going there when it comes time. I know they'd probably get a better edumikation from me. I know that they won't be exposed to untoward influences if they are at home with me. I know all the reasons why I oughta homeschool.

But I don't want to. I want to grocery shop in peace. I want to be able to have coffee with a friend. I want to have a hobby (or 6). Or maybe I'll get a job that pays real money. I want to be able to clean my house with no one bugging me. I want to shower every day.

Of course if one or both of my children do no excell in the public school system for whatever reason, I woudn't hesitate to pull them out. But I hope it doesn't come to that. I really want a life after all these years of Mommydom.