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.
Today’s Holidailies’ prompt was something about sharing a favorite holiday tradition from your country or part of the world. I think American holiday traditions are all pretty well known, and my family…well my family is pretty generically American except for the food side of things.
A few years ago though my brother got tired of our holidays being completely aobut the presents. There were parts of the family that would show up right before dinner, eat, bitch that the dishes were taking too long becuase they wanted to get to the gift opening, open presents, and then leave. Literally as soon as the final piece of paper was unwrapped, they were putting on their jackets to get the heck outta Dodge. So, we started playing board games. But it was really difficult to find a board game that worked across all age groups. So, we decided to try a few good old fashioned party games. Initially the idea was to play Dirty Bingo. Basically, our Dirty Bingo is played like this:
- Each person brings a number of wrapped presents, generally no more than $20 for the whole lot.
- The presents are not labeled in any way.
- Place the presents in the center of the table.
- Two sets of dice are then sent around the room in bowls
- Each person rolls the dice when they come to them.
- When you get doubles, you choose one present.
- After all of the presents have been chosen, everyone unwraps them.
- Set a timer for 20 minutes (this time can be altered depending on the amount of people playing.
- The dice continue to go around, but this time when you get a double, you steal a present from someone else.
- Everyone keeps what they have when the timer goes off.
Now at first this was very fun. But after a couple of years, my relatives started getting cutthroat. Literally hoarding all of good gifts, hiding stuff under the table, taking Disney movies from kids to give to other child-relatives at other parties…..it was terrible.
Honestly, I think that was the downfall of our extended family holiday gatherings. Things had been getting tense and that was our last ditch effort to try to be a “family”. Dysfunction at its finest.
I actually had to sit and think for awhile to come up with something to write about that related to the prompt for today’s Holididailies’ post. My memory has never been that great. I very rarely can remember conversations that are more than a few months old, let alone specific instances from over a year ago. That’s not to say that I don’t remember doing things. I remember that we got up on Christmas morning and opened presents on the living room floor. I remember watching A Christmas Story with The Professor’s mom over and over and over. I know these things happened. The memories just are not vivid or crisp in my mind. So finding one, during a particularly mundane and normal holiday season, that jumps out enough for me to write about? Probably not gonna happen.
And that’s all I got today. Exhausted.
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.
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
I’m defeated! I totally lose at the Nablopomo this month! I’m not going to make any excuses at all. I just fail.
I was on a pretty good roll there, almost making it to the halfway point. But then crap came up, as it often does when I have a blog, and it made me withdraw a little bit into my shell. I hate when things from nearly ten years ago rear their ugly heads to make me feel a bit insecure. Truly I have not been as happy as I am right now in a very long time. Everything is going well and right. I have a great girlfriend. My family is ok. We’ll never be great, but we’re all ok and they are all supportive of my life. I have a great job. My son is happy and healthy. My relationship with The Professor is fantastic and he is the best friend I could ask for. Things are good, hell things are great. I have nothing to feel insecure about. But old wounds run deep I suppose.
Today is my day off, so I’ll be continuing on the quest of organizing the apartment. It is getting a little sticky in here, so the a/c is on and the blinds are closed. As soon as the apartment cools off, I’m going to get going on some sort of project.
OH! And today is our three month anniversary! Three months. Yikes. It feels like three years, truly. And yes, we are *that* couple. We were pretty much moved in at six weeks, due to unforeseen circumstances. The original plan was that it would be temporary until I found an apartment, but it worked and we decided to keep living together. But yep! Anniversary. Well Monthiversary. We’re off for Chinese food this evening. If I can find a decent place to go online.
I love my trips to Detroit. Every time I go out there I find something more to love about the city. I find delicious places to eat, interesting places to visit, great things to see…. It really is a forgotten city and it’s kind of sad.
And once again, I have found a fantastic place that I want to visit…
Park West Art Gallery
There is some fabulous work there, and I definitely want to visit the next time I head out that way. Though honestly, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to wait and I might be placing an order with them before that. They have a great selection of animation art, and I’m always keeping an eye on that stuff as gifts for my mom for the holidays. She loves the old Disney animation and there are a number of stills that I’m sure she would really love to add to her collection.
Posted by Amelia on Jul 31, 2008 in
They're Crazy but They're Family I haven’t talked much here about my grandmother and the incredible fight she has been having with Alzheimer’s for the last fifteen years. It started out pretty normally. She’d forget things, repeat stories…then it was getting confused about who people were, and now it has progressed to hallucinations, sun downers, violent behavior, disorientation. It’s horrific. There is nothing left of the grandmother that I grew up with and the person who cared for me for so many years.
Alzheimer’s is hereditary and I am TERRIFIED. My family and I are constantly talking about the things that are rumored to “cause” the disease and different ways to keep an eye on yourself for early onset. It’s a scary thing to know that I may live the last twenty years of my life in a body with a mind that doesn’t do what I want it to do. I can’t imagine the frustration and fear that my grandmother feels on a daily basis.
No one really knows how we can avoid developing the disease. There are tons of theories and a few controllable risk factors, like avoiding head injury, not smoking, and maintaining a generally heart healthy lifestyle. There are some more far fetched ideas like not using aluminum cookware . And ya know? I’m doing all of that. I’m protecting my brain. But even with all that protection it might now be possible for me to avoid the inevitable genetic time bomb in my head.
So what then? What happens if my time bomb goes off? We have all heard about the controversy surrounding stem cell research and all of the possibilities that stem cells provide to the medical community for treatment and cure of SO many diseases. But I was not aware of a completely non-controversial way of harvesting stem cells in order to store them for future use should there become a reason for it. My period! Really!
C’elle Client Testimonial
A kit that you can order to gather the “Celle” stem cells your body is already sloughing off during your monthly period and storage for them in case you should ever need them. They send you a convenient little kit to collect the cells and ship them to their storage facility. Never thought I would consider something like this, but the older I get, the more and more I’d like to continue this life for as long as possible!
