Happy Halloween!!!

I should be putting away laundry, but I finished everything on my Thanksgiving to do list early so I couldn't resist a little post on how much I love Halloween. Olivia was up at 6:15 today jamming to spooky music, it was like Christmas, but the exact opposite. We got on our outfits and our spooky rings, I haven't seen her this excited to go to school in forever. The weather is cooperating, warm and very windy, so we have plenty of leaf rustling action. Jim arrived safe and sound so we are ready for the big day.

Don't worry, the camera is charging so the entire event will be completely over-documented.

It's my week

I have too much going on to post, but I am anyway, what a surprise. I do want to give a recap of Nickel Creek later because it was so fun, but right now I need to address the Fancy Simple challenge for this week. It is connections (presumably between people) and since this is the week that we cook dinner for pretty much everyone we know i am going to kick that challenge's ass this week! They are going to give me two prizes because in the course of the next week I have a meaningful connection with pretty much everyone.

Here's your quote Fancy Simple "This week I am going to be so connected you are going to name that F&#$ing prize after me. Connect that!"

Chad Guest Post - The Stuffing Fumes are Getting to Me

After a long night of cooking, Liz and I were surfing the web together (as all married couples do!), and we came upon my brother's wish list for Christmas. We decided to help him out, and posted a comment on his blog that went roughly as follows:

"After reviewing your wish list, we have decided to fulfill one of the items on your wish list. After much thought and debate, we have decided to buy you...


a wife.

She should clear Customs by Christmas, but with the Russian mob, you never know.

По-русски!"

and yes, we were on the Internet at 10:30 at night looking up the Russian translation for "Congratulations!"

Liz has been laughing non-stop for the last thirty minutes about the Russian bride waiting to meet Sean and get her green card. She's a little tired.

We love you, Sean!

EDITED TO ADD: It's amazing what thirty seconds of Googling will get you. Here she is, Sean! We have sent her flowers or gifts on your behalf, per the suggestion at the bottom of her stunning profile.

Seven Habits for Moderately Effective People

Fancy Simple today wants me to list the habits that make me "effective." So here it goes.

1) Hard work-I may spend a lot of time doing not much, but when it comes to things that are important to me or others it can never be said that I half-ass it. I believe that if it comes down to natural talent or hard work, hard work will win out every time.

2) Believe you can accomplish it-If I don't have confidence that I can complete the task, I won't.

3) Plan, plan and then plan some more-There are never too many lists and no one has ever been too organized. I plan for every possible contingency, because it is always what you think will never happen that does.

4) Catching flies with honey-My mother and husband, the attorney, dispute this principal, but it has never let me down. Be honest, but kill them with kindness and you will get further in my book.

5) Dress for success-Back when I did work, and even now, I believe dressing for an event needs to have professionalism, but more importantly, comfort and pockets. I used to work long performance days with children who always needed pencils, kleenex, paper clips and tape. Now I need to not look like a crazy bum, but i need to be able to be colored on, spilled on and yes, wiped on-nose and otherwise.

6) Firm handshake-This goes hand in hand with eye contact. Whether you are speaking to a three year-old or someone twice your age, give a firm handshake and look in their eyes when you introduce yourself. It shows you are interested in them and confident in yourself.

7) Be willing to make a fool of yourself-My work now requires a hell of a lot of creativity. Lots of times I need to act like an idiot, occasionally in public, to get what I need done. I also need to do a lot of things that I don't feel entirely comfortable with to experience a little give and take with Olivia and I am rewarded.

Of course, by following my path to success I can only gurantee that you will get your child to actually wash her hands before she touches everything in the bathroom, but it is the small things, right?

ta da!

Thanksgiving is exactly one week from today. i know i have some new people cheking my blog so this post will bring you up to speed. Because i posted on the blog about how much i hate Thankgiving Chad and I had a great talk and so far things have been going remarkably smoothly. He even bought me truffles to say thanks. So I have to decided to air all of our dirty marital laundry on the blog because, apparently, it works. But that is another post for another day. So below is the menu, try not to drool on the keyboard.

MENU

Slow-Roasted Tomato Tart

*

Baked Brie with Toasted Pecans

*

Roasted Turkey with
Maple Vanilla Gastrique

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Apple Cinnamon Stuffing

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Sweet Potato Puree With Hazelnut Oil

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Peas and Carrot Ribbons

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Potato Gratin with Gruyere
and Crème Fraiche

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Asiago-Black Pepper Biscuits

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Apple Napoleon &
Pumpkin Cake With Dark Chocolate Ganache

Happy Birthday Annie!

Yesterday was my Annie's 60th birthday (I know she doesn't look a day over forty). She was having a little trepidation about sixty which I don't understand at all, my God it's not like she was turning thirty. Thirty is brutal, sixty is graceful, right? So I thought I would do a post about why sixty years have been very kind to my fabulous aunt.

The first photo is of Annie, Olivia and my grandfather playing Chutes and Ladders. i am pretty sure that you need sixty years to gain enough patience to play the most annoying board game of all time with your impatient, cheating three-year-old niece and your deaf-as-a-doornail 86 year-old father. Seriously, the woman is a saint.

Picture two is of Annie's gorgeous home. Apparently, sixty years allows you to develop great taste. I'm sure the editors of Elle Decor check the blog daily and will be calling her soon. She is always impeccable and never makes fun of the fact that I never am. I am sure that she has high hopes now that I am a lawyer's wife I will clean up my act.

Picture three is Annie with Olivia the weekend of her baptism. This is actually a photo I have framed and hung in my home. If every mother has a soft spot in her heart for someone who loves her child then I would have to say that Annie makes my heart melt. Both Annie and her charming husband, Cary, treat Olivia like a princess. Literally. The child can do no wrong, and in their presence, generally doesn't because she enjoys being with them so much. Their home is a place where she feels genuinely comfortable and truly loved, which is a feat considering the collision between Hurricane Olivia and Elle Decor.

I am really proud of my aunt. Growing up, because she and my mom were both single mothers my cousin Alison and I probably both had an innate sense that women can accomplish anything on their own and when they work together. Even though my cousin and I ended up pursuing very traditionally female careers (my cousin finishes nursing school soon) I don't think that detracts from what my aunt and mother worked hard for at all. On the contrary, Alison and I always felt confident enough to pursue our own interests, whatever they were. We did not have to over-compensate to prove a point. Even though I would have to say that my mom and my aunt are polar opposites, they always found a middle ground and a way to get Alison and I what we needed (I don't think it is a real coincidence that my mom is a nurse too).


So, in short, what sixty gets you is building a beautiful life for yourself and the people you love. An ability to look back and realize your challenges made not just yourself stronger, but the all the next generations as well. Oh, and a pretty classy pad. Nice job Annie, but if anyone starts asking if we are sisters all this nice stuff is out the window.

I was Right

See Chad, I told you she didn't give me decaf.

Photos Today

I chose to do the photo scavenger hunt at Fancy Simple today because I am always meaning to take more pictures. I love my brother-in-law's photo blog because even though he is usually taking pictures of mundane things in his apartment it is great for his family who lives far away because you are then privvy to little details about his life that just make you feel like you together, even when you are not. So I dedicate my photo hunt to Sean today.

Habits in action: When Sean made his first visit to the house he helped me purchase the materials to make my compost bin. I have since moved on to actual bins, but the idea in still their. I love my compost, I obsess about my compost and I credit my great garden turn out to it.

Good habits: Sean also tilled my garden which produced this gorgeous melon. It was delicious, along with three different types of tomatoes and herbs. Eating from my pesticide, fertilizer free garden-good.

My bad habit has nothing to do with Sean. Plastic bags, everyone knows how I feel about them, but I am working on it.

Habits to aspire to-Laughing more. Sean and I both need to do this so I included a picture of his favorite person to help him out.

Habit forming-Olivia's playroom. We are working hard to develop good clean-up habits so i am not forever the martyr picking up after everyone else. So here is the quick glimpse into my house and habits.

Master of the (chocolate) universe

I can now say that I have sufficiently mastered ganache. i have been working on it for about two weeks in various forms, glaze, frosting, and last night truffles. So unless something goes horribly wrong I am ready to announce that my Thanksgiving dessert will be spiced pumpkin cake with chocolate ganache filling and glaze.

I would also like to assert that eating truffles at 9:30 AM is the act of a gourmand, not a woman eating candy for breakfast.

Little pick Me Up

So I needed a little lift after that post so I hit Design Mom and found this site which I love for the following reasons.

A) Olivia will crap her pants when I give her hairclips with dinosaurs, trains and pirates on them.

B) They come in Momma sizes too.

C) They are not even the most i have ever paid for a hairclip.

Like a bad habit

So, as I mentioned earlier in the week Fancy Simple's theme this week is about bad habits. I was reading through one of the other poster's blogs and it hit me all at once what my true worst habit is. I used to think that it was Mommy guilt. The whole, I fed her a waffle and put her in front of the tv thing (the waffle was whole wheat and the tv was PBS!!!). I used to think that this was every woman, every mother I knew. We all wanted to keep up with Martha Stewart, that neighbor whose kid never has a tantrum, your playgroup friends who are skinnier now then they ever were. While I think all of this is a problem, most of the time I am able to check myself and say, "She's fine and there isn't much that I can do to work harder at this." I think the real problem is that this is all we are worried about.

My bad habit is that i have forgotten that I exist. It kind of goes hand in hand with my inability to say no or ever tell another person (other than my husband and child) that I am angry at the way that they behave. I am a doormat. Not with my kid, but with every other living person on this planet. My mother, my friends, pre-school teachers, my neighbors, at first I thought I was just helping out. That's what a good friend does, what any person should do. I stay at home, I have time, a good mother is involved at school. Blah, blah, blah. All the sudden you have stopped thinking about going back to work (when would squeeze in work, I am already overcommitted?), you haven't had a manicure in six months (why would I spend the money, Olivia is out paint, I'll go pick that up instead) and you are trying to fix a hole in your husband's pants because you don't want to go back to the tailor and fight with her AGAIN. Oh, did I mention that I don't sew?

So there it is, this confession much more depressing than disclosing my weight, I can't drag my ass out of bed four days a week and run off being a great big sap. If I could I would probably stop the binge eating that relates to said running though and that would be nice. I know that Fancy Simple is supposed to be about bad habits like, I bite my nails, I give unsolicited advice to new moms in grocery stores, and I always park too far over in the garage. But, I am way better at being really hard on myself so I prefer to list my bad habits as doormat, binge eater, passive- agressive snarker, gossipy, oh and judgemental. VERY judgemental.

So there you have it. It is a little freeing in the sense that I hope people read this and say, "Well at least I don't binge eat." See, bad habit.

Happenstance

I was cruising random posters on Angie and Barb's site tonight and someone had a poem up by William Carlos Williams. it sent me back down memory lane. Most kids like me had a Beat poetry phase, I had two. There was the wearing black/On The Road/Ferlinghetti phase in high school. I had a second in college inspired by this painting, which was inspired by William Carlos Williams. So full circle will be tomorrow when i show it to Liv and tell her it is all about a fire truck.

Thanks poster, life just got a little better.

Habit forming

So, I have been a little slow with the new Fancy Simple challenge this week because it is all about habits. Frankly, I am in a little bit of denial about all of my bad habits, of which there are many. The first question was about our daily routines and thinking about that has been enough to send me into a downward spiral for two days. I love routine, it makes me feel secure and happy. Predictable is good for a Type A. Since Olivia has started school three days a week I have not been able to get a routine. We did a lot of travelling in the Fall, illnesses, Chad's work and now the early holidays have been preventing me from getting my world under control.

And when Mama aint happy aint nobody happy. Olivia has been a mess, and Chad has just been, well, worried. So, stop mocking my inner neuroses Fancy Simple!!! The least they could do is give me a prize!

Leftovers

When I was in Picasa I saw that I had forgotten to post these pictures a few weeks ago. This is Olivia at an art exhibit at one of our local galleries, that was a kid's wonderland. It was all mobiles and masks. The idea was to play on the scale of nature versus man-made objects. So think giant squid, miniature submarine. A little pedestrian for adults, great for a three year old. The artist's name was Jeremy Wolf, you can see it here.

Weekend wrap up

We had some of the most terrific days that we have had in awhile this past weekend. The weather was just gorgeous, it was the perfect mix of work and play and I think that I only caught Chad trying to respond to work e-mail once or twice. These shots were from a morning hike out in the marsh where we saw all kinds of birds, bugs and Olivia's favorite, seeds. We baked, cooked, played hopscotch, painted pumpkins and even had to finally come up with that infamous story, "Mommies and Daddies hug like this sometimes!" Definitely the recharge we needed to get us through the next few weeks.

Holiday collision course

So we are celebrating Thanksgiving exactly three days after my favorite holiday this year and this is where the well oiled machine that is Thanksgiving may start to go off track. Do I re-bake the pumpkin cake with the new recipe, or put the finishing touches on Olivia's witch hat? I feel a detailed timeline coming on . . .

In defense of ANTM

I read this story last week and thought about blogging about it, but I got caught up in other things,etc. I was thinking about it all week and when i went back and read it again today and saw the attached correction, I was even more appalled. In my humble opinion, not hiring minorities is less about race than it is about body type. If you are not a 90 pound soaking wet a-cup, hip-less child you aren't getting hired.

I was reminded when I re-read that J. Alexander, one of the judges on ANTM commented in the article. Then I thought, wait, ANTM has more black contestants than white. So you can say a lot about ANTM, but you can't say that it is not diverse. It probably has more minorities than all other reality shows combined, and not just black girls. A Hispanic girl won last season. They may mostly be 90 pounds soaking wet, but they at least have different body types.,

Ode To Sarah

My friend Sarah loves the fact that I keep an extensive filing system of things I clip from magazines with the hope of someday acquiring or doing said clipping. I think it might be a little sad considering I rarely, if ever purchase or do anything in the files, but I occasionally take them out and look at them. I had some stuff to file yesterday so I pulled some stuff to highlight in my continuing series of "What I Am Loving Now".

I have to start this by saying that I am sorry that this is mostly going to be a series of links, not pictures. It is getting harder and harder to find pictures of items that people will let you post on your site, or I don't understand how to steal the images properly, take your pick. Here it is:

What I Am Loving Now
Games: Games are on my mind now with our bash approaching where we ususally play them. Also, it is never too early to think about New Year's Eve game playing. Kill Doctor Lucky is looking very promising. An adult version of Clue, instead of finding the killer you (and all the other players) are attempting to be the killer. I did a version of this last Thanksgiving, but I had no idea that there was a whole web site devoted to it. Table Topics just throws questions out there for the table. Hint to all guests: What is the most memorable meal you have ever eaten better include me in the answer.

Videos: Film Movement would be one of those things that I love if ever could committ the time to watching them. Netflix was a diaster of movies just sitting and sitting. We have great indie theatres in Madison, but even we are not getting the Jury Winner from the Moscow Film Festival. The next one I even went so far as to actually get from the library, and it kicked my ass. You want a workout? Try the New York City Ballet workout DVD. It has a really flexible format, which is good for beginners.

Housewares: With Thanksgiving coming up I think a lot about my kitchen and since I pull recipes from everywhere with all permutations of serving sizes a kitchen calculator would be really handy. I have had my eye on this one for awhile. Setting the table has also become an elaborate undertaking, but these placemats match my kitchen and are very helpful at making table setting easy.

Girl stuff: Boys can fast forward through this section because unless you are kissing your picture of the new Calvin Klein Flight Bag like I am every night you are just not going to be interested. I am not a huge girlie girl, but I do love bags. Bags and dark nail polish (I did the fabulous blacks last year), this year OPI has heard my call and made the Russian collection. I will be showing in Florida this year with either Russian Navy or Suzi Says Da!. This dress would look great with those colors and I would look totally hot in it for the nine million holiday parties this year. Unfortunately, I cannot find it anywhere!!!

Smart tips: Do you know what you are doing when it comes to your 401k? Shut up, no you don't. So go here or here to figure it out. Also, did you know that all of your cooking oils should be in your fridge? I didn't. They will go rancid if left in the warm too long.

So there it is. Tell me what you are loving now, keep the economy afloat.

Give me a prize!!!

I normally avoid the canned questionaires like this one on Fancy Simple today, but I want a prize. The last time I told the girls over at Fancy Simple that i wanted something (guest blogger status) they gave it to me so I am hoping if I mention the prize thing enough I will win. Ladies, girl power should be about asking for what you want and getting it.


1. Name- Elizabeth
2. Pink - Love it or Hate it? I have exactly one shade of pale pink that I like. Though I am not anti-pink in principle.
3. Signature shade of lipstick, lipgloss, etc. Does chapstick count?
4. Do you have a best girl friend? I have my lesbian posse, and Angie.
5. Do you have a woman mentor? Not formally, but most of the women in my life are older than me including my friends. So I would say that I learn a lot from them.
6. Are you a woman mentor to someone else? Most of my friends haven't had kids yet, so I am excited to do some parent-to-be mentoring.
7. Tomboy or Princess? i would have to say princess in theory, tomboy in practice.
8. Favorite Girl Band?-Tough one. I am not a fan of too many all girl bands and a quick page through my iTunes library shows that nearly all of the female-lead bands, are Chad's albums. So I would have to say PJ Harvey, Dixie Chicks, KD Lang.
9. Are you a mom? Yes, to Hurricane Olivia.
10. Do you and your mom have any rituals? If by ritual you mean she calls me nearly everyday and spends most of the phone conversation yelling at my brother and sister. It's like I never left home.
11. Fashion magazines - yea or nay. Hell, yea. I used to be a Vogue addict, when olivia was born I downgraded to Lucky, now it's whatever my aunt has at spa week.
12. Do you have a feel good outfit? Of course, my Tim Gunn trench. I am looking to expand with some post-holiday sales.
13. Have you called your grandma or special aunt, or special older lady lately? I have many aunts and I try to call them often.
14. Signature Scent? Elmer's Glue?
15. Favorite female tv character? Brenda Lee Johnson on The Closer. Sassy and a binge eater. Girl after my own heart.
16. Favorite place to hang out with gal pals? Coffee houses and restaurants, the food addiction should be apparent here.
17. Did you ever ditch your girl friends to be with a guy? My guy is a girlfriend so he usually wants to come with. He out-shopped me this weekend.
18. Friend you call when you need a laugh? Angie-O, or I read Brad's blog.
19. Friend you call when you need a shoulder to cry on? The hubby, everytime. Though Angie gets it too.
20. Have you reminded your friends of how much they mean to you lately? I try! But I think Daimon's going to divorce me if I don't call back soon!

Field Trip

So i am blogging from one of the hundreds of coffee shops in Madison today. I have never taken the computer on field trip before, but today I have to be at pre-school on and off today so I decided to get some work done here. I rarely get to hang in coffee shops, believe it or not, I do not have a kid who likes to hang anywhere except bookstores. So these forced volunteer days really aren't so bad for me.

Things kind of went out the window yesterday because Olivia woke up with a massive ear infection so we spent most of the morning at the doctor's. Ear infections still make me cringe because i had them all the time as a little kid. I thought we had dodged the bullet with it being hereditary, but maybe now not so much. So I will get back on track with Thanksgiving and Halloween posts soon.

What I added

So now that Olivia is officially two years out from kindergarten I have decided it is time to expand on the basic fundamentals. Olivia is a curious child and instead of dealing with all her questions on the fly I spent the summer building a basic curriculum and I have been waiting until we were home for a few weeks in a row to implement it. I actually did tentative start last week, but it has actually made it onto the family board this week. So far it is going really well and we are having a lot of fun together.

Before you get all, "I'm ruining her childhood" on me, it is very low key, mostly games and I generally have a theme like "Farm Day" or "Water Play", there is even a series of super-fun mess days (slime IS fun). So, because I know that some of my readers are also fellow parents of young children so I added a side bar "What We're Learning" so that they could see what we are up to and if it sounds like something their kid might like I can let them know how it went and what I would do differently. Why shouldn't someone learn from my mistakes?

Check it out

If you are feeling a little introspective go check out my friend Angie's blog, Fancy Simple. She and her friend, Barb, just re-designed the web site with a very chic color scheme and they are currently running a series of contests with prizes. So if you are looking to improve your writing, think about things a little differently (Angie and her posters tend to skew a little conservative, in a refreshingly different, not obnoxious, way), or just check out the place where I will hopefully get to guest post more often, hop on over. Prizes people!

What we do Saturdays

Saturday mornings for us are typically pretty formulaic, but are my favorite part of the weekend. We take Olivia to ballet, see a free show at our arts center and walk over to Farmer's Market, go home and make a yummy lunch from whatever was at Farmer's Market. This week the free show was from a klezmer band, which we all loved. The first picture is of Olivia checking out the accordion pre-show and the second is her taking a turn on the theramin post-show. Olivia freaking loved that thing. She rarely passes up any opportunity to get on stage, but the attention span is pretty short. We had to haul her away from this thing, because it sounded spooky, of course.The last shot is of the oculus above the kids stage in the basement of the arts center. I have to brag a little about Madison here, because we do have a beautiful new arts center that does free kid shows three times a day on Saturday. They are really great shows too. Chad's dad will be taking Olivia to a rock show, Ryan and DJ will be taking her to the ballet, Classical Indian Dance, Brazilian drumming, you name it, we have probably seen it. We may not be the most diverse little town, but we have probably seen more free, quality cultural programs than all our friends in the big cities.

Everything That Is Fall

It is officially Fall here today because we went to the farm, picked pumpkins and apples, cooked Chad's Fall favorite of chicken and dumplings from scratch and started the Halloween decorating. We also have a trial menu in place for Thanksgiving.

For anyone who doesn't live here in Madison, Chad and I started cooking a pre-Thanksgiving dinner for all our friends in our last year of college and have done it ever since. We have cooked for as many as thirty and as few as six the year we were in DC. It started as a lark and has evolved to the biggest pain in my neck of all time. Don't get me wrong, I love to cook for my friends, but I hate to cook with my husband. Our style and manner of cooking and planning for a big event like this are completely polar opposite and can't believe that we make it through every year without divorce. It is a high speed collision of Type A and Type B. I like to plan everything, and do, from the grocery list by aisle to a detailed time table and task list starting three days out. I am also incredibly frugal so groceries come from three different stores depending on sales, etc. I am a nervous cook and like to do a trial run of everything before I serve it to guests.

Chad could care less about all of the above. Seriously, he plans nothing. This year there are a few dishes that exist sans recipe. He also cannot be the sous chef EVER. If you ask him to help you with a dish, he will have taken it over in exactly 4.7 seconds.

I can't kill him with a kitchen knife and make it look like an accident this year, his father is coming. I like to think that when it all comes together it is worth it and we have a great time, but considering I just turned a perfectly nice post about fabulous Fall into a crazy rant about cooking with my husband, I think that MAY not be true.

Quirky

So when I was posting on Brad's blog today I realized that it might be odd that I workout to public radio podcasts. I also only like to read under piles of blankets. I want to hear everyone else's quirks, I think this is kind of fun. Chad is a compulsive radio channel changer, Angie won't eat cold chicken. It could go on and on. . .

The Downside of Blogging

So here is the downside of blogging, and well, the internet in general. I now use it to procrastinate everything, sadly even things I want to do, and I'll tell you why. I no longer work in the traditional sense of the word. My aunt and I were talking while I was in Florida about how we, as formerly competent and intellegent women with busy jobs and lives are now suddenly overwhelmed by the very small commitments of housework and social functions. We laughed at how our former ability to juggle a much more demanding lifestyle had somehow been obliterated.

Sitting on this couch right now I know how it happened. The smaller my world got, the more perfect it had to be. Type A me who used to settle for a lot of things just being really good, now feels like I have to make things that can never be perfect like my child, my housekeeping, my sparkling conversation, absolutely 100% perfection. It has gotten to the point of being overwhelming, there is no point in getting off the couch if I cannot come up with a way to get everything done today. I have been waiting for that stroke of genius about how to make it all happen, waiting on the couch in front of my computer.

So I want to hear everyone's motivation techniques, how do you get off the couch? I expect some rowdy and fun comments from this crowd. Seriously, if you have been reading Brad's blog make sure you are reading the comments, funnier still. "I don't think I just do." Priceless.

When I grow up

Some day I will not have a three year old and I can have a couch like this.

Revised

And by lift weights everyday I mean get a head cold and lay in bed all night. Oh, and i am not TOO sore. I just can't put my arms behind me in any way.

Climbing the Walls

So, rock climbing-hard. Like, I am not sure i will be able to move tomorrow hard. Thankfully, I am that girl who will lift weights every day this week because i won't have my ass kicked twice.

The Secret Magic Forest

So i go out for my run today and I am feeling a little bummed about my to-do list and distracted my my total lack of desire to run and I start my iPod in the middle of my playlist instead of the beginning. Somehow, this changed my whole morning. I am running my usual, slightly stale, suburban route when I notice the entrance to Cherokee Marsh. The marsh surrounds my entire neighborhood yet I have never stepped foot in it. To be fair i have never done so because I have never seen anyone else do so and my entrance to the marsh doubles as a motor oil depository for the city. Not exactly appealing.

Today, though, I had on new songs and I saw someone coming out with their totally not allowed dog, so I went in. It was beautiful; I wandered trail after trail until I was there for an hour. I was so disappointed that I did not have my camera with me, because there is one point where the marsh drops off and you are looking down into one of those forests that looks like a human being has never entered it. Since i was the only one in the marsh for hours it is possible that no one ever has. It was like a dream sequence in a movie where hundreds of leaves were just falling from the trees in slow motion and landing soundlessly and no one was there to witness it but me.

So it was pretty cool today when Olivia asked me what I did while she was at school today and I got to tell her that I had discovered a secret, magical forest. She thought that was pretty cool too. I love my kid.

What Happens When It's All Play And No Work?

So this weekend was yet another jam-packed extravaganza of fundraisers, theatre tickets, babysitters (excuse me, big kid-sitters) and actually trying to get, you know, things done. Last night Chad and I took our annual trip up to Spring Green with Rachel and Chip to see the American Players Theatre perform "Much Ado About Nothing". Chad found it shocking when I said this, but it is the truth, I am not a huge fan of live theatre. I usually find it forced and over the top. I know this is the point, but still. However, I love to go to APT because when the weather is good it is gorgeous. I suppose that now is when I should point out that APT performs outdoors. Anyway, if you want to see some gorgeous and clever photos of the company, click here. I tried to load the images on my site, but they have them locked down tight with some very nasty notes about copyright infringement.

Tonight, rock climbing, of course. I guess what happens when it is all play and no work is a deserved standing ovation? Right Rachel?

A Note

CNN has been designated as officially "Dead To Me". I have tried to get news from them in vain one too many times. I am currently interviewing suitable replacements.

Nerd Alert

Okay, I saw this on one of Design Sponge's links and I had to highlight it. Not only because it is totally cool and made out of recycled wood, but because it totally reminded me of the Ewoks' house. I still remember the Hanukkah where one of my classmates got the Ewok village and it had a pulley system just like this tree house. I was so jealous.

Halloween, Halloween!

I love this, mad scientist is an often neglected aspect of Halloween.

Hey, Yeah!

Why don't guest chefs do a little lesson in Top Chef? Teach the audience something at least. Maybe add a new sement after the quickfire? NY Times tells you why they don't.

Experiment in video

I have been so busy over at Fancy Simple that I haven't had time to put up all my Florida pics and the stories that go with them. So, hopefully, here is a video that will tide everyone over. I still can't believe I have friends out there who have never heard Olivia's voice, so here she is in all her glory. I am not 100% sure if I am using the video function correctly so be patient while I figure it out.

Stumbling Through The Dark

Today was my first run where it was more dark than light. I came home and told Chad he had about a month before he had to buy me a treadmill.

Breaking the mold

So Chad found this in his office when he arrived last Thursday. He thought it was hilarious until he realized that one of the "molded" implements was his notary stamp. Which he needed.