Why I'm not returning your calls

I know I have not been the best blogger lately, but I mostly only like to blog the funny stuff and I get tired hearing myself bitch in real life, so I don't need to write it in my blog too. Frankly this last week has not been fun or funny. It has swung from obsessively creating a budget and floor plan for our kitchen (this is where the Celexa is supposed to help out apparently) that came to a head with me threatening to lay down in the parking lot of the IKEA and let one of the horrible Chicago-area Lexus drivers run me over (seriously, what is it with Lexus owners?). To new babies (I have pictures of Rachel's new baby Camden and will post them soon) and the death of my grandfather's long-time companion that I worry will send him into a depression that he may not come back from at his age, I consider he and I to be very close and this is worrisome. Olivia has been going through a very difficult phase, not eating, not sleeping, a lot of weeping and melodrama and Chad is out of town this week and since he and I tend to overcompensate when he is out of town I have been running all over town with Olivia who started two new classes this week. Oh, and indeed, that cat is still not using that litter box properly. She also now likes to sleep on my face, so on top of Olivia not sleeping, neither am I.

So you lucky, lucky people get to read my bitching because my husband is in North Carolina and my two girlfriends who I regularly bitch to are either knocked up and have no tolerance for any kind of whining or too busy having a baby and are definitely not interested in any of my petty bitching. So if I have not returned your call it is because I am hiding in the shower, the only place where I can get away from that f!@$ing cat.

What do you mean, I'm Crazy?

The following post contains no references to pap smears, but contains frequent references to anti-depressants.

SO the second half of my doctor's appointment goes like this: Olivia calmly but deliberately coloring my feet with marker while I desperately try to convince my doctor that I am not losing my mind. It all started with the to-do list. You know I likes my to-do list. So the doctor is asking me all the usual questions, how am I sleeping the cat crapped four inches from head last night at three AM and Olivia is on a sleep strike so not great, am I getting enough exercise does nine thousand trips up and down the stairs to do all the extra laundry count, how is my diet (I think I ate a Peeps marshmallow today, ooh and a glass of juice-definitely the juice and she asks me to schedule a cholesterol test, blah, blah, blah so I pull out my to-do list and write it down.

That is where it all goes wrong. What is that, she calmly inquires, too calmly. My to-do list. That is a rather long list. Well, you know how it is when you have kids. Let's review your family history she says non-chalantly. Then I notice all the questions about substance abuse, then it is questions about my alcohol intake at which point I make the tactical decision to exclude last weekend's bender from my statements. She asks me how many times a day I feel anxious. Are you kidding me? I am the mother of the brainiac who just answered your developmental questionnaire in three different languages and tried to fly this morning. It is anxiety inducing, okay. That's when I realize she thinks that I'm crazy. She tells me that I am, indeed, crazy.

I know that I should be a little more calm about such things, no biggie, clinical depression is an easily managed medical condition that requires little more than daily medication and bi-monthly check-ins with my physician. However, I am really just kind of pissed about the whole thing. First of all, compared to most people I am related to that make up my, oh so important family medical history, I am doing pretty damn good. I have a happy marriage, a house, I have not yet completely fucked up my kid and I am a relatively together person. Second, my being a little type-a is hardly news and I have been scoring off the charts on those stupid depression questionnaires for decades so what if like to-do lists and think about killing myself on a daily basis? So do, well, other people, I'm sure they are out there. And I bet they don't have to take something as lame as a medication called Celexa. Who makes these names anyway, what does that even mean? Celexa?

I say thanks, but no thanks, even if I am crazy I have gotten this far without Celexa. Then she does what a dozen doctors before her never got the chance to do, play the mommy guilt card. She beats me down with the long-term health effects of depression, how I am depriving my child of a complete person. That's when I hated her, more than a little. Now it sounds like I am crazy, vindictive person if I say no, a terrible mother. So I take the fricking prescription, I pull out my day planner to make a two week follow up, she looks at my calendar, can I make it three weeks I say, I am all booked up. You are going to feel so much better she says, that is a really full schedule, what keeps you so busy? I have a life, I say. Being crazy takes a lot of hard work.

The prescription is sitting in my purse, unfilled. My husband was totally ambiguous towards the diagnosis. Whatever, he says, do it if you want to. Aren't we all a little crazy, he says? You definitely are, I say, then we fight over whose family medical history is spottier. Olivia is really screwed, I hope when her turn to do family medical histories comes that the drugs have cooler names.

Proceed with caution

The following post contains a tasteful reference to my annual exam with includes a pap smear. It is a hilarious story, but if the thought of me getting a pap smear is just too much to handle, then page away.

So one of the realities of having no childcare during the day is that you take your child with you to the doctor. She and I booked our annual exams together, which I was a little uncomfortable with, but I thought, well she knows what I look like naked, what's the difference? The difference is a forty pound pre schooler sitting on your stomach, looking over our knees saying, "That's interesting, what does that do?" Totally detached, deadpan. Then having your physician laughing so hard that she falls off her stool.

They get you every time those interwebs

So I blame Brad for this because he made me his friend on Digg last week and ever since i have been doing nothing but cruising Digg-like sites. My newest one is skirt. This was started by the woman who does Design Mom and she has been foisting it on her readers for months. At first, it was too much info and too much celebrity gossip for me, but once i got the hang of sifting through Digg, skirt actually had some gems, here are three:

George Clooney interview-God how I love his interviews.
Onion AV Tolerability index-I'm sure my more pop-culture savvy readers have already found this hilarious little gem, but here it is for the rest of us.
Some new travel sites-For those of us who feel like they do nothing but troll for better prices on airline flights.

So, yeah, all that work I am supposed to be getting done, not so much.

Baby boomlet

So today I got pictures from Angie who looks really great and is due around the 4th of July, and e-mail from my friend Rachel who was due yesterday and last week was shopping with Ann who is due in September, I am bursting with excitement at my imminent baby boomlet. All of which will need lots of love and kisses from auntie Liz. i was worried that I might be sad about not having another baby when i saw all of these sure to be gorgeous babies, but i'm not. just really excited for all my friends who I know are going to be great parents. Maybe a little nostalgic for my own pregnancy. That's when you know that you are destined to not have another one, when seeing adorable infants only makes you want to be pregnant with the one you already had.

Workaholic

One of the down sides of working at home is that when work piles up on your night stand, your desk, your kitchen table, you never get away from it. This week I am drowning in it. The holiday weekend and a cat that will not stop crapping on everything has put me seriously behind. When you have an office, it doesn't stare at you every waking minute, but here just keep moving it from room to room. Plus, all the time it is going to take to deprogram Olivia from a weekend at my mother's.

I need a nap just thinking about it.

Her name would be Miu Matsuoka

Yesterday Olivia dressed herself in something striaght out of manga. I was disappointed that I never really got a complete shot, but trust me, I spent two whole summers with a desk right near those anime freaks at the student activities, I can spot a Japanese animation heroine from a mile away. She declared herself a supermodel in this outfit and spent the rest of the day randomly posing while walking down the sidewalk. So Ifelt it only fitting that I take her photograph in front of some very Asian-inspired art.

For Tina

So this is a craft that Olivia and I did a few weeks ago during feelings week. It is called a pocket story because the bottom of the page is actually a pocket and all of the words are taped on indvidually and can be removed and put into the pocket. The premise is that Olivia chooses a feeling, draws a picture of her feeling, and then writes a story about it. We won't go into the psychiatry of why she chose lonely, but i thought it was really cute that Olivia thought that to be lonely not only would Chad and I have to be gone, but our sitter, Tina, as well.

So here is a tribute to the best "kid-sitter" around.

Beta Blocking

Thanks to everyone for their follow ups with Mama in Beta. The work continues on it. I have broken down and downloaded a nice template, as opposed to making one from scratch, but learning the HTML is coming in handy in getting it to do what I like. I hope to have some sample posts of later this week, but I won't be ready for a full launch for probably two weeks because of Easter.

Thanks for your interest and start thinking of parents of small children who you might want to forward the link to.

Catching Air

Since Chad upgraded to the iPhone recently we have been in the Apple store quite a bit so Chad can "shop for accessories" otherwise known as chat with the employees about what cool stuff his phone can do. Well, that backfired on him when I caught a glimpse of the MacBook Air. It is so light I could throw it in my enormous Mom bag and have it everywhere with me. However, articles like this and this keep popping up that are dooming my quest to failure.

The quest for remodeling my kitchen continues and now that the interest rates have dropped so low, talking Chad into a home equity loan is as good as done.

Happy Anniversary, My Blog

Well, if you haven't guessed by now, I have fallen a bit shy of 365 blog posts. I bottomed out at 352 and was a little disappointed until I looked back and realized that I have been been a bit busy this year. I thought to commemorate the date I would link to some of my greatest hits. How did I determine which were the best? Not by the number of comments, that's for sure. The posts with the most comments were often obscure, or posts that begged for comments, like my anniversary.



No, I chose the ones that inspired all of you to skip the comments and e-mail me or call me, or create your own posts. So here it is people, a year of yucks courtesy of yours truly:

Woman on the Verge
Hierarchy of Needs
The End of A Very Long Journey For Chad-Epilogue to this post, Chad has already replaced the iTouch, with the iPhone he sold on eBay.
Al and Elizabeth Have A Sit Down
Newsing With The Oldies
Frickin Delicious

Imaginary deviant

So at the magic show Olivia got herself a balloon cat. One of the other parents remarked, "Oh, just like your new kitty at home!" To which Olivia cleverly replied, "Yeah, she doesn't poop in the litter box either."

Spring Breakdown

Today starts Spring Break for the Madison school system, which starts every stay-at-home parents nightmare. Spring Break reminds me of summers when we used to live in DC, the tourists would crowd the Metro, downtown restaurants and be randomly wandering into the streets completely oblivious to residents who lived there and were attempting to drive home since they couldn't get the Metro.

So today, forgetting that it was Spring Break, I attempted to go to library where there were hoards of kids waiting for a magic show. These children were accompanied by the unfortunate people enlisted to be the primary caretaker on the week where day care cannot be found for any child in Madison. Dads, grandparents, single friends looking for an excuse for a day off all towing children that looked like the were dressed in a hurricane. Backwards clothing, uncombed hair and a lost and dazed expression identified these children as they crowded all the walkways and reading rooms of the library to the point where I was tripping more than I was walking.

So Olivia and I will hunker down this week and ride out the storm, and next week resume enjoying the benefits of being a year-round resident.

Thrilled

I was listening to an interview with Quincy Jones this morning and they played Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and I had to wonder, does everyone love that album as much as I do? I won't get into the fact that Thriller is 25 years old and how old that makes me feel, but I was wondering, is Michael Jackson only good to people who were young at that time? I like to think that I love The Doors and The Beatles, but can I ever really love them as much as my dad does?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Olivia and I have celebrated our Irish heritage a lot over the past few weeks, so I think we are going to take today a little lighter than we have in the past. I will not be letting her drink green beer, for instance. Grey skies are reminding us of the motherland, though. I do want to urge everyone who is Irish today to call their grandparents or great-grandparents and ask them to tell you a story. I got some great stories about our family and their farm last summer from mine and we used that info a lot over the past few weeks.

So put on your green today (Olivia has just protested that she only wants PIIIIIINK) and keep your Irish eyes smilin'!

The next thing you don't do

Is to take your kid to a mini-golf, arcade party. Whac-a-mole takes on a whole new meaning, let me tell you.

The first thing you don't want to do with a hang over

Is wake up at the crack of dawn and take your child in thirty degree weather to the farm to listen to hundreds of baying ewes. Those things are really f-ing loud. If ever there was evidence that I hate myself, this was it. Lots of people, lots of noise and smell that would make a stomach that wasn't retching all night turn. Yet, there I was, snapping photos. Small child, newborn animals, it has puking with sweetness written all over it.

Holy vodka tonics, Batman!

I guess by now you have noticed a significant fall off in postings and I have only vodka tonics to blame. Last night was Chad's annual "holiday" party that had been rescheduled due to bad weather around the holidays. Chad's firm actually has two of these a year and they basically open bar booze fests. You think that I am exaggerating? let's put it this way, the thing runs from 5:30 to 11, plus a pre-cocktail hour and an after bar when the party is over. Just in case five and half hours wasn't enough open bar time. In years past I have escaped relatively unscathed, and or, used my small child as an excuse to duck out early. This year my wingman deserted me in a desert of mostly people I didn't know for two and half hours. Oh, you read right, hours. Well ,people I didn't know and his assistant, who likes to have a good time. It was a lot of being handed drinks, some boredom and the insecurity of being left with strangers that landed me on my bathroom floor booting it six, maybe seven drinks later. I haven't booted it since college, and even then only once. I didn't have to wake up for a four year-old then, yeah that hurt.

I remember most of it, and I can confidently say that I did nothing truly embarrassing at the party and saved my barbed booze humor (oh yeah, it gets even more dark and sarcastic the more I drink) for people I was friendly with, so overall the only person who suffered was my husband. And me, very much me.

So a little slow on the uptake today.

Staking claim

I was able to reclaim my living room for leisure today. During the winter this tends to be one of the coldest rooms in the house because it has so many windows, which is a real bummer because it has the best napping couch in the house. So in winter it is relegated to extra space for frisbee, jump rope and the like. Today we opened the blinds and reclaimed the living room for lounging. I christened it with Chad's Entertainment Weekly and now I am ready to move all blogging to my favorite spot on the couch. Yeah, laptops!

Second Coming

I am deeply ambiguous about the holiday that celebrates the most important component of my religion. I love Easter and how it is what I associate with the beginning of Spring, but I no longer want to celebrate it. I have been trying to flex some religious muscle in my household and mandate that if we are going to celebrate the holiday that we need to celebrate the reason behind the holiday. So far it is not going too well. Chad is okay with celebrating Christmas at church because he likes the music, Easter doesn't have too many catchy ditties. Also, i have become a little disgusted at how Easter has turned into a second Christmas with toys, videos, candy all in the stores weeks ahead of time.

I guess what makes sense is Chad's argument to just secularize it or return it to it's pagan roots as a rite of Spring, but frankly that whole Easter Bunny thing has never made sense to me. Christmas is easy, olivia and I followed the Advent, but Easter is kind of brutal and difficult for a four year old. Plus, there is no cool and user-friendly kids Easter Mass. So I compromised by going to my mother's where I can forcibly drag one of my siblings to mass with olivia and I and i bought candy only for Chad.

I just hope olivia doesn't want specifics on this whole Easter Bunny thing.

Six Degress of Separation

I heard a story today about Smith Magazine. The nuts and bolts of it is try and tell and tell your life story in exactly six words. It really appeals to the minimalist in me, if you can't tell your story in six words, is it worth telling? I have decided mine is-Still working toward having it all.

Pillow Talk Act Four

While watching Joel McHale from The Soup thank his wife for giving birth to their second son.

L-You know, you never thanked me for giving birth to that behemoth of a baby.

C-You never thanked me for knocking you up.

L-Yeah, really there is a big difference in workload there. For instance, I had to be sober.

C-I was sober!!

L-Are you sure? I'm not.

C-Well, who can be sure about anything in life?

L-So, am I getting my thank you or not?

C-Yeah, no.

OMG

Janice Dickinson has a new show, how did I not know? Damn reading books!!

Welcome back real food

As I made lunch today, I looked down, saw this, and thought of only one thing. Two more weekends and then it will be time for Farmer's Market!!!! Real food that came from a real farm, sold to me by the person who grew it. Ah, sweet relief from food grown in Columbia or God knows where. Unfortunately, this year it coincides with the Wisconsin Film Festival, which if you remember from last year is my favorite time of year. I think I should just convince Chad to get a hotel room downtown so I don't even have to waste time commuting from home to film sites.

Mixed reviews

Is it rude to discuss your children in mixed company? One of the girls in my bookclub-turned just sitting around and drinking booze because apparently tackling one novel every two months is just too much-club raised this question tonight. Is it rude to spend a substatial time talking about your children when there are people in the group who do not have children? I asserted that talking about our kids is just what so happned to replace everyone talking about their jobs, it just so happens that the conversation never really changed for me.

Oh, and apparently all my friends except one voted for Hilary. Interesting.

Budding photographer

At the exhibit, Olivia asked to be able to take photos with the new camera, an I thought, why not? With the old camera, I balked, always thinking about how much it cost. New camera, not really a concern. So she took pictures to her heart's content and then after wards we used the books in the lobby to match the photos of every plant to her photos. Though the pigeons were way more fun than the plants in her mind. Here are her favorite shots.

Hello Spring

Today Olivia and I finally made it outside to embrace Spring a little and our first stop was our botanical gardens where they have made the inside gardens look like an urban rooftop garden complete with a ledge to look over and see some small cars. This was Olivia favorite part. Lots of tulips and lettuces are just what you need to believe that Spring really is coming.

Pretty in Pink

Yeah the digital camera is back! Here is Olivia playing with the best $10 i ever spent a boatload of helium balloons. Two weeks after the party they are still going strong.

There's a monster in my closet

He is currently being distracted by a tea party hosted by a teddy bear. It is disconcerting to see a child who is typically fearless become terrified of something that absolutely does not exist. Olivia started with the monster business on Tuesday. I chalked it up to her typical bedtime procrastination antics and didn't think much of it. Last night it was ramped way up, I chalked it up to overtired, Daddy being gone 5 of the last nine nights, too much talk about feelings. Tonight there is no denying it, olivia is afraid that there is a monster in her closet and it wants to eat her. Since Chad is gone again tonight I was sorely tempted to let her sleep with me as requested, but I panicked that it was a slippery slope and instead pulled a trick out of every cartoon ever created. I told her that her doll was terrified too and she better stay and take care of her.

I am waiting for her to wander in here in two minutes and figure out that she AND the doll could sleep with me. Damn clever children with nothing but time on their hands to think.

When is the government going to raise my baby?

While reading the crazies vs crazies article that my father in law sent I linked to this article about expanding universal pre school. I love these articles that bring out the no duh moment. Oh, you mean the studies say it has to be a GOOD pre school. Damn, I thought I could just send her somewhere that puts her in front of the tv all day and she would still come out really smart. You mean this coffee is hot??? The best of the recent was that you had to eat dinner with your kids every night AND actually speak to them at the table. Another dream of living in stone cold silence crushed.

It does mention Reggio-Emilia, my personal homeschooling religion so I'll link to it anyway.

I'll run you over with my mini-van, who would ever convict a SAHM?

My father-in-law send me this link about this new show today because I think he thinks it is amusing and a little mind-boggling that mothers who stay at home catch so much flack from their friends who work. He lives in, and raised children in, Mormon world. For those of you not familiar with Mormon world, there are a lot of stay at home moms there, I would say from my limited experience, far more than the national average of thirty percent. So I think he finds my world where I am the only stay at home mom that I know, very strange. I know that there are more out there, but most of the moms I see in the library and stuff are very anxious to tell me that they work part-time, they freelance, they consult, or they are watching someone else's kids. Most of my friends, think I'm crazy, and want to know what I am doing when Olivia goes to school.

This is why I think shows like Confessions of A Soccer Mom are really nefarious. They imply that even if you have chosen to stay at home and the PC world is required to not openly condemn your choice, that it is a choice that should have a very limited shelf life. You should automatically want to go back to work the minute your child turns five so that you can return to more "complete" self. When I first saw interviews with the host Tracey Gold a few weeks ago I thought that the show was a great concept. Help moms who want to return to the workforce with job training, housework and some other things to ease the transition. It is hard for a lot of moms to admit that they want to go back to work, and this show does validate that choice. What they don't do is give the poor woman an accurate picture of what it is like to balance work and family. They sequester her for a week and send in maids to her home so she can find out a week from now that a really long day at work isn't over the minute she comes home like it used to be.

The most interesting part of the Newsweek article was where it talks about how most women surveyed just wanted to work part-time. I have also seen more than one survey of men who say that they would give up a significant fraction of their salary to have more time off. Where is the disconnect? No universal health care? Americans truly can't live without their possessions?

Mind Over, Well, Not Much

So I wake up this morning and think about the fact that I had sworn that as soon as all the ice had melted that I would start running again. I said to myself that I should just go put on my shoes and go. I am energized, I am motivated, I am awake. I roll over and realize that there is no way that I could go run and be back in time for Chad to make his first meeting today.

So I got up and stuck my hand outside to see what it would have felt like to go running this morning. It was very, very cold. But I guess it is a start, right? That's a lazy person's running plan when step one is just thinking about going. Step two might actually be locating my headphones. . .they are around her somewhere. I don't know that seems like a lot of commitment, maybe just two days of thinking about it.

Pillow Talk Act Three

This conversation took place watching Stephen Colbert skewer Elliot Spitzer last night:

Liz-"So what's your number?"

Chad-"What? The number that would allow me to agree to let you become a prostitute?"

Liz-"Yeah, come on, everyone has a number. Paying off the mortgage, what?"

Chad-"What is your obsession with the mortgage? No, there is no number! You would get arrested and go to jail!"

Liz-"That's how you know you are married to a lawyer, jail time is the big hindrance to your wife Belle Du Jouring it. See, sex with other men would have been my go-to objection"

Chad-"Well, yeah, that too."

Pizzeria Uno, Seriously?

Okay, first of all you are filming in Chicago-you can't find a better pizza place to showcase than Pizzeria Uno? Then, when there are 16 contestants, two of them should not be romantically involved. That's just not right. And where was Tom Colicchio? The best part of Top Chef is Tom Colicchio telling the viewing audience where a dish is going to go wrong before it does. Seriously, if this disappoints like Project Runway choosing a twelve year-old who apparently feels like the best way to showcase a woman's beauty is by completely obscuring her face with silk chiffon I declaring Bravo dead to me. You just ask the Oshkosh B'Gosh people what that feels like.

Ham sandwich

Well, my efforts at getting Olivia into ice skating lessons this Spring were thwarted by our local ice rink closing early due to the fact that there is so much freaking snow and ice here nobody was skating indoors. So, to compensate I enrolled her in cooking classes at a local restaurant. This class is adorable and the woman who runs the restaurant is my new role model, but the real appeal to Olivia is the fact that the cooking class is being filmed for the local PBS station to run a kids cooking show.

Now, I must admit here that we do not own a video camera. Our digital camera takes, like, 30 seconds of video, but Olivia has had absolutely no experience being filmed for any length of time. I actually kind of hate those parents that follow their kids with a video camera, but that's another post (hey I've got 35 more to go). Let's just say that Olivia has taken to being filmed like a fish to water. Are you surprised? I didn't think so. It is totally hilarious to watch. She pauses her comments to make sure the camera is on her, and when it isn't she speaks REALLY loudly to make sure her comments are heard by all. I can't wait to get my DVD at the end of the session, I will totally post clips of the video for a good laugh.

328 and counting

My one year anniversary of the blog will be on 3/17 and I quick check of my posts reveals that this will be my 328th post. I would like to have the nice round number of 365 posts by the anniversary so I need to come up with 37 posts in five days, it is going to get crazy up in here, or incredible f-ing lame. Either way, I would encourage you to be constantly refreshing the blog to see what I come up with.

Note

The fonts, colors and indentation in this blog may be screwy for a little while as I am trying to decipher what every part of the HTML programming in this template does. I was lamenting to my husband last night that I don't understand why in a world where there are millions of people working two jobs, putting themselves through school at night and otherwise spread very thin, why I am two seconds away from a breakdown doing all my normal stuff and trying to design a web page?

I think the answer has to be that I just don't like to work hard anymore. I used to like and take pride in being a workaholic, now I would much rather do absolutely nothing. I heard a book review on NPR yesterday and thought, "Oh, it must be nice to read books." Then I couldn't figure out what exactly I was doing that I wasn't reading a book. I know that I am not alone, pretty much everyone I know feels the same way.

What are we doing exactly?

Blank Slate

I miss my digital camera. Olivia did a great table-sized farm drawing today and I have only my mind to document it with. Let's face it, these days that is just not going too far. Also, the blog seems a little sad with no photos. . .

Springing forward

Why am I up at 2 AM? Too much Spring in my step I guess. The time change really threw me off today. We have been so used to the snow and the grey and the cold that it was really disconcerting to have sunshine in the evening today and I think it must have thrown off my circadian rhythms. Also, I have undertaken a new project that is pretty all-consuming, I have started another blog. This one will be of interest only to my friends with kids because it is all of my books, music, activities, curriculum, etc for preschoolers.

It is called Mama in Beta and it is still in beta as it were. I am teaching myself HTML because I swore that this time around I would not be a slave to the Blogger template and I would have everything exactly the way I like it. However, I hate computer stuff. I can do it, I am a child of the digital age and am reasonably adept with software, but I just don't enjoy it. SO what is really happening is that I tinker and tinker and tinker, what I want doesn't happen, I yell and swear at the computer, my husband comes over and figures it out in half the time, get results and I move on to the next the whole time secretly resenting him and his completely wasted abilities. Why does a lawyer need to be able to write HTML? SO he can help his wife create a blog, apparently.

Anyway, it is a huge project that requires me to cull through my thousands of little clipped items, my excel sheets, book lists, old blog posts, and binders of xeroxed activities. Plus, I have been trying to stay on top of planning stuff for the kid. So it is probably good that I am doing this, it is forcing me to get more organized and it is a great excuse to fire up my new scanner that my father-in-law scavenged for me.

The best part is that once the blog is up and running I can clear out this blog of all kid related items and bring back funny stories and extensive critiques of reality tv (Top Chef is back next week!). My one year anniversary of this blog is nearly upon me and I would like to get back to my roots in time.

Patent pending

I am a stay at home mother who cannot effectively wrap a present or frost or a cake. Those little gift bags have resolved the first problem. When are they going to create a self frosting cake? Don't say that grocery store cakes are it. No grocery store cake can hold a candle to my sour cream fudge cake, I just need a pinch hitter to frost.

So, Rachel just look the other way when you get to the backside of the cake.

Did I mention I can't sew? What is it that I do exactly?

PS

I look up from doing laundry and I see a raccoon staring at me from about a foot away. SO that is unnerving. It was outside, but still. I live in an older home and really I don't trust that my ancient basement window would withstand those creepy little raccoon fingers and he would just be able to open that window and chew my face in a rabid frenzy. Though Chad pointed out that if he got inside the first thing he would probably do is eat the cat. . .

Get out while you still can

Seriously, winter is killing me. Remember like a month ago when everything in the house fell apart? Well, yesterday was like that day part two. I turned on my digital camera to find something but snow and nasty lines, at first I thought it was just the LCD screen, but when I uploaded pictures, no luck all snow. Then my washing machine went on the fritz. Who needs that last spin cycle anyway? Then the cat had some sort of meltdown that forced her to crap on, well, everything. Which is totally awesome when your washing machine isn't working.

Another day like this and I am just leaving all the possesions for dead and becoming a hobo.

Quick pink pics

I was so busy enjoying the pink party that I took no pictures!! So unfortunately these do not convey the level of pinkness that was involved, but pajamas at least were photographed.

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie

Anyone who knows what a clean freak I am will not be surprised to find out that I am also a consummate purger. I hang onto only the most important mementos, the bare minimum number of books, enough clothes to get me through two weeks. I hate having stuff hanging around, it is just more stuff to clean and eventually move. So this week I was shocked when my pack rat husband had to talk me down from the hoarding ledge.

After all was said and done with the birthday it is my ritual to clear out old stuff to make room for the new, but when it came to all of Olivia's new books, there was nothing to clear out so I told my husband that we needed more book shelves. He rebutted that Olivia needed fewer books. "No!" I cried, "She reads all of them!" Then he gave me that look, the look that those hosts on all the HGTV shows give the crazy people who are trying to hang on to a macrame plant holder that their third cousin gave them as a wedding gift. I was that sad person. So we went through every single book, and I cried just a little. "You hate reading this one!" he finally yelled in frustration. In my head though all I could think about was yes, I hate reading it, it is a horribly written story, but when she was first learning to talk she would repeat it over and over.

That's when I knew, the one thing I can't get rid of is every single story that at some point in my only baby's life I have read hundreds of time with her on my lap looking into my eyes, baby fine hair tickling my cheek. Every single book has a specific memory, the first time she waved bye-bye was to Max in Where the Wild Things Are, the first time she gave her dramatic reenactment of Olivia and The Missing Toy, even the French textbooks I read her in utero, having no idea of who Dora the Explorer was and how she would change all my aspirations for Olivia's grasp of the romance languages.

So I cried and, for once, Chad caved to me and now Olivia has a few boxes of books in the basement. I hope twenty years from now when she moves away and takes them with her (because I will store nothing) that we can pull them out again and I can tell her the story that goes with each and every one.

Brave New World

So today is our first day home post pre school and so far nothing has gone wrong. I am on schedule, there have been no meltdowns from mother or daughter and I felt absolutely no guilt about blowing two hours outside digging a giant snow tunnel, because I have her all day, every day this week. She even has the week off from dance class. I never realized how much time I had been losing to pre school and how it always made me feel pressed for time. Also, how having two different schedules one for pre school and non-preschool days was screwing us up. I was worried that i was going to be desperately filling the hours with tv, so far it has not even been turned on.

I love feeling estatic about spending one morning with my child like it is a major accomplishment.