This blog has been so neglected. But I just haven’t had anything to write about. I’ve been trying to keep my health stuff on the “other blog” and since it has been taking up so much of my time, and I haven’t had a lot going on, I just haven’t had the motivation I need to write posts here. That needs to change. I need to find more balance in my life and obviously if my focus has been completely on the “other blog” then I’m not balancing very well.
I’ve decided to take on a couple of projects for this blog to chronicle. Hopefully to get me back into the right frame of mind for writing.
Spring Cleaning/Decluttering
It’s still Spring. The first day of Summer isn’t until June 21. So, I figure if I get started on Spring Cleaning before that date, it is still technically Spring Cleaning. I’m going to be using a combination of the Spring Cleaning Party plan on Simple Mom and the “party” variations and tips on Organizing Your Way.
Starting tomorrow, I’ll try to post some before and after photos as I work through each area. We’ll see how it goes.
“Soon-To-Be Niece/Nephew” Baby Blanket
I’m working my way through a blanket for my sister’s baby. She is due at the end of October or beginning of November. She is 40 and this will be her first child. She’s been wanting this for so long and it’s incredibly exciting for her (and really for our whole family). So, I started a blanket for her. It’s a pretty simple pattern but with a rather pretty yarn, and it doesn’t require that I do a whole lot of thinking while I knit. I’m going to try to get some early stage pictures here in the next few days. I’m only about 2/9 the way through it (heh. 9 squares, obviously). We’ll see how the finishing goes, since I’m going to have to sew up all those seems. Should be an interesting learning process.
I’m watching the final episode of ER. I know I’m a night late, but I hadn’t had a chance to watch last weeks episode first and it was just sitting on the Tivo starring at me, promising that there would be something in the episode that would make the final episode make no sense at all if I didn’t watch it first. So, I waited until W went to bed tonight and started my three hour ER marathon. I’m not goign to make any personal reviews of the show or the finale, other than to say that Ernest Bornine story was absolutely beautiful and it is a shame that the media industry doesn’t realize what an amazing group of actors they are overlooking when they don’t find more work for actors of his age. My life will not be the same. And not in a spiritual or fancy pants way. Just in a real life, this is what I do kind of way. I watch ER. I always have. For fifteen years now, that has been my Thursday nights. So this is definitely going to be a change for me. I’m now three minutes in and I’m already finding myself tearing up a bit.
This weekend we take care of our spring cleaning. The apartment is in dire need of a good deep cleaning now that we have really settled in. I didn’t do much cleaning during the move, since I knew that this would happen now. So I want to clean windows and sills, get the baseboards really cleaned up… The porch deseparately needs to be cleaned out. I think we’re finally going to have to run this last load of empty cardboard moving boxes to the recylcing facility, since it seems like no one really wants them. But oh yes! Spring cleaning *will* happen!
Well, hello, Internet. How’ve ya been? Me? Oh well….crazy busy!
This move is trucking along slowly. We picked up the keys to a new place on Saturday and since then I’ve been over at the place once a day at minimum with a new load of boxes. I’m trying to unpack what I can when I get there so taht we’re not surrounded by boxes when we do the furniture move this weekend.
I’m utterly in love with the new place. I’ve grown really tired of white walled buildings built in the 1970s. Though I gotta admit, some of the quirks of the duplex are going to take some getting used to.
1. The bathtub. We don’t have a shower, which for me, is easy enough to adjust to. The house that I own with The Professor doesn’t have a shower either. The only problem that I’ll end up having is that the new tub is built under an eve. Whenever I get out of the tub, I have to bend at a rather awkward angle to avoid hitting my head on the ceiling. We’ll see how W does when she’s half asleep in the morning and rushing to get to work. I suspect she’ll get concussed a few times before she figures it out.
2. My lovely new Roper Bake Master stove. I’m estimating the stove is from about 1938. That’s just from the research I’ve been doing. All of the internal labeling has been baked off over the years. It’s a lovely vintage stove. The procelain is still in great condition. The internal marbeling is still fairly well intact. Three of the four burners still work with their auto ignition and the fourth lights just fine with a kitchen match. My problem? The oven. I have absolutely no idea how to light the oven. I’m pretty sure it’s a match lit oven, because even though there is a pilot light that is lit under the broiler when you turn the oven on, you get nothing but gas. There is a small hole in the front of the oven, that looks like it’s sole purpose is to insert a kitchen match. So, I’m assuming…..BOOM! Okay, so assuming anything when dealing with natural gas and a match is probably not a good idea. The Professor is coming over tonight to try to help me figure out how to light it.
I’ve left my camera over there the past few days, so all of the pictures I’ve been snapping are stuck there until I head back over today. Pretty sure I snapped some of the oven, so I’ll put some up later.
Wow, I’ve been out of touch. There is so much to update on.
Our trip to Saint Louis was fantastic. I was going to write out the entire trip, but really I think I can sum it up with the following photos.
I tend to hate posts that are all photos, but really I just don’t have it in me to write much more. Maybe some bullet points:
- I’ve been planning on buying a laptop for over a month now. We stopped in Peoria and I found the best deal I could imagine. Dell Inspiron, 250 gig hard drive, 3 gigs of RAM for $435. WOW. That’s twice as big as what I was looking at for the same price. Nice.
- W’s little cousin, Clara Jane, is a delight! She’s smart and precocious, creative and sweet. The girl can talk your ear off, however. She decided over the week that she is going to be a photographer and W’s going to be her model.
- I adore W’s cousin, PoppyMom. She and I get along like gangbusters and I’m looking forward to the next time we can hang out.
- My first holiday without The Boy™ was among the hardest things I have ever done. After dinner on Thansgiving day, I spent some time hermitted in the basement bedroom trying to get it together. Eventually I jsut fell asleep, which helped some. Made the time go faster.
- The Gateway Arch is *amazing*. I knew it would be big, but I had no idea how big until I was getting dizzy standing under the massive structure.
- W’s little home town is adorable. It’s slightly smaller than the town that I grew up in, but much cuter. Her family was better than I expected. I was more than a little nervous, for alot of reasons I won’t talk about here, but it went alright.
- I will never again take on a massive freelance project that is due at the end of a vacation. Working through four days of my six day trip was just no fun.
So, if you follow this blog at all, you know that on Monday night I was pretty disappointed with Microcenter. To make a sort of long story sort of shorter; I wanted a laptop. Found one on their website that was a refurb but fit all my criteria and was cheap. The website showed one in stock. I went to the store to be told that they did not have any in stock. I was sad. Disappointed. Almost cried. Drowned my sorrows in Ben and Jerry’s Everything But The icecream and wrote a ranty blog post about it.
This morning, I found a comment on my blog from Microcenter Customer Relations! Really? Yep! You can see it here. I’m pretty flabbergasted! That’s some awesome customer service right there! I replied to the comment and to “Albert” the customer service rep that left the comment. We’ll see what happens next! I’ll keep you posted.
I woke up this morning in a bit of a blur. All I really remember is that Riley dog jumped up next to me and i asked him if he would like to play a game of Scrabble with me. Now, I know that dog is smart as hell, but um..Scrabble? Not *that* smart.
I was incredibly excited because I found a laptop on Microcenter’s website for well within my price range. It was a refurbished Presario, but it met the specs that I had decided were the minimum I would consider and it was over a hundred dollars less than I had initially planned on spending. I was PSYCHED. I immediately emailed W and asked if she would mind going with me after I picked her up from work. I double checked the website about eighty times to make sure they had them in stock. Still at this very moment the website claims there is one in stock. ONE IN STOCK. But when we got there, the high-pressure salesman informed us that they were considered “M Shelf Stock” and that they did not have any in the store room. Whatever the heck M Shelf Stock means in Microcenter speak, I’m assuming translates to “lying to get you into the store so we can try to sell you something more expensive” in English. I was near tears when we left the store. I was so so so excited and then nothing. I pouted for about an hour and then ate a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. I’m better now.
So I’ve done the NaBloPoMo thing for a week now and I’ve reached the point where I always end up giving up. it’s the day that I have nothing good to talk about. The Boy and I just spent the day homeschoolin’ and knitting. We went out for Chinese at the classy joint by the U of M campus that keeps a wedding party table up at all times, just to show you how beautiful it would be to have your reception there, right next to the gigantic backlit photograph of the Great Wall. Now we’re watching Survivor.
Oh! Beast #1! So, I tried the prong collar. When I intially put it on him, I felt like the worst dad mom in the universe. It looks downright evil. It’s big and bulky and pinchy looking. But I wrapped it around my own thigh last night and gave it a pretty hefty tug, and though it was uncomfortable, it was not painful. This morning, I slid it on over his neck and decided that I was just going to be confident about it. I knew that he trusts me above everything else and that if there was any chance that he panicked or was in pain, I would be able to keep him calm long enough to get the collar off him quickly. And I can say without a single pause or any hesitation at all….
IT WAS AMAZING!
He walked so gently the entire time. He was not scared or nervous with it on. He would pull just slight, just enough to make the collar tighten half an inch or so and then he let off. He did that about three time and from that moment on, he walked in a perfect heal. He walked so well that we took a walk around the entire block this afternoon! I haven’t been able to walk him more than to the end of the block and back for over a month now. This evening, he got a bit startled by a bike that rode past, but within a few minutes, he got back on track and did really well.
I love how well it is working, but I’m so scared that he’s going to lose this personality:
I almost forgot to write today! And with it only being the third day of the NaBloPoMo thing that we’re trying to do, it would have been a crying shame if I screwed up this early.
As everyone knows by now, we’re going to be looking for a new place when our lease here is up. We have to give a sixty day notice, so technically, at the end of November, the search has to begin in earnest. I hate leaving that stuff to the last minute, but it seems that’s the way things work. Landlords don’t post things as vacant until a month prior to wanting to lease it, but tenants have to give notice two months in advance. Seems a bit silly, does it? To have to give notice prior to when you know if you will have a new place? Leaves me feeling a bit out in the cold, so to speak.
I’ve been emailing with a woman who has a duplex in the Standish neighborhood. It has a great fenced back yard and is a block from a library. It’s also a block from a high school that has a reputation as not being the greatest, but all in all it’s a decent neighborhood. The duplex is “ok” on the outside. I’m really hoping the inside blows W away, because that will make up for the outside being just “ok”. I’m pretty lax when it comes to housing really. Actually, I think I’m too lax. I don’t pay attention to much. If it has four walls, a roof, and a stove, it’s pretty easy for me to ignore everything else. Until I realize that there is only one electrical outlet in the whole house or the floor tilts so horribly that everything rolls around. Or that the neighbor has a confederate flag hanging from the back of his pickup. (All things that have actually happened) So, luckily W is on the exact opposite side of the spectrum. She has a much more stringent set of requirements for our future home. Hopefully we’ll be able to balance each other out.
EDITED: Thank you to Jumi for pointing out that my half-asleep ass originally referred to the confederate “rebel” flag as the Union Jack. Much appologies to those from the UK or the Commonwealth realms.
Since it is November 1, and the lovely PoppyMom has requested that W and I complete:
And so, here I am at 6:30 on November 1, typing away on the blog.
Halloween went fantastically. I really started panicking on Wednesday night when I realized just how little I had completed on The Boy’s costume. Truthfully, I am usually on my final fitting and have done at least one full dress rehearsal by a week prior to the big event, and here it was two days before and I had yet to finish cutting out pattern pieces. I spent most of the day Thursday sweating and near tears thinking about it, but not being able to do much as I had picked up a few freelance projects and had a deadline to meet. Friday morning I woke up and immediately began working. I didn’t move from the kitchen table all day. What came out of it was not nearly as technically marvelous as some of my previous creations, and I ended up giving up on the arms and legs portions, but I realized about 3/4 the way through it that *any* homemade costume now-days makes me an incredibly awesome mom. And the fact that while we were trick-or-treating, I saw a number of children with no costume at all? Yep. I feel ok about my half-assed costume design this year. Besides, I’m a makeup supergenius, so as long as I had a clean pallet to be able to coat The Boy’s face with gorgeousness, all was well. Of course, I realized now this morning as I’m uploading photos that I didn’t seem to get a single decent shot of the entire body of the costume and that the lighting outside was not particularly flattering, but you’ll get the general idea.
He really isn’t as miserable as he looks. The makeup makes him look particularly pouty.
We spent about an hour wandering in our neighborhood, which has changed significantly in the last six years! We lived here with The Boy was five and moved away until this last summer. Back then, one of the first Halloween nights he can remember, there were virtually no children in the area. It’s an artsy, trendy area that has been gentrified to hell and back, but then it was all young hipsters. Based on last night though? Hipsters are growing up and having babies! There were quite a few ghosts and ghouls, and a number of pirates and butterflies, wandering the neighborhood with bags of treats. The Boy was obviously among the older kiddos, but it was nice to see families in this area.
The Professor stopped by on his way home from work to check out the costume and walk a block or two with us, and then we headed down to W’s best friend’s new house. They were pretty excited about getting trick-or-treaters for the first time and we loved the fact that they had candy for kiddos and cocktails for the grown-ups! Pumpkin coffee syrup and tequila make a delicious little beverage. While W sat and chatted with friends, The Boy and I finished off two more blocks (both sides, as he insisted). The amount of candy that kid accumulated is truly amazing. And not a single sticker, pencil, or toothbrush in the lot! He did get a bag of Doritos, but we all thought that was kind of cool, considering the amount of sugar you injest on Halloween. Who doesn’t need a salty little snack at the end of it all?
Ok, even though I’m titling this post with Ministry lyrics, it is such a mommy blog post that I may need to shoot myself when I finish.
This week has been the total panic of “Oh, Gods! Friday is Halloween and I have done little to nothing to prepare my child!” Generally I am a Halloween fanatic. I have costumes planned months in advance and by the week before I only have a final fitting and makeup trial to complete before everything is perfect. My house is decorated. I have plotted and planned the best candy acquiring route for The Boy. This year, for some reason, things just fell to the wayside. And here it is Wednesday, with the big day falling on Friday of this week, and I am just now getting things figured out.
I’m not going to wreck the surprise of the costume until the day of, but let’s just say that this is our most challenging costume to date.
The first few years of The Boy’s Halloween adventures were pretty standard toddler costumes, but starting at age 6, he began dressing as the Universal Studios monsters.
Age 6: Wolfman
Age 7: Invisible Man
Age 8: Mummy
Age 9: Dracula
Age 10: Frankenstein’s Monster
Age 11: Can you guess it? It’s hard. It’s fancy. It involves extensive make up. And the following supplies:
Camo footie pajamas, two yards each of two different green faux-leathers, and a yard and a half of green lycra. (Ignore the nosy dog. He’s not part of the costume!)
A white swim cap that was hand painted forest green (the picture makes it look much brighter than it is). This was originally supposed to be a bald cap that I would either paint or use sponged makeup to change to a lovely shade of green, but three stores later, I gave up and purchased a white swim cap instead.
A the final photo of my hand with various makeup mixing techniques being tested out on the back of it. The top one obviously won.
And no, The Boy’s costume has absolutely nothing to do with the military or really being camouflaged at all. It was just a great base for the costume and was an easy way to keep him warm.
Stay tuned for Friday when I’ll post photos of the actual costume and all our secrets will be revealed.
Tags: Ha
