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Unspeakable
by Sandra Brown

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Earthly Joys: A Novel
by Philippa Gregory

The Queen’s Fool: A Novel
by Philippa Gregory

The Virgin’s Lover
by Philippa Gregory

boats and fireworks and kitties

August 19th, 2008 @ 1:38 pm | Comments (4)

Well hello there! Thought I fell off the face of the earth, didn’t you? Nope. Just a weekend filled with Lots of Fun and also giving away kitties. Basically from Thursday night until Sunday night, we didn’t stop. So yesterday? We were EXHAUSTED. And not just because Maggie woke up at 5:15, only to ‘take a nap’ at 7am. ahem.

I worked on Friday (Bad, Crappy, Terrible Day filled with Much Stress from A Client Who Shall Remain Nameless.) Then I picked Maggie up from daycare, and we went straight to get Dan from work so we could go to his Grandma’s house. We were taking her to dinner, partly because hey! Grandma points! and partly (mostly) because her sister passed away a few weeks ago and we thought some Maggie-time would do her good. And Dan’s grandma is tons of fun, not your typical Grandma at all, so it was a great night. We got home a little past Maggie’s normal bedtime, but she was a good girl and went right to sleep and slept all night. yay!

Saturday was A Big Day. We had plans to go to Skyblast with Dan’s parents and my mom (my dad decided to sit this one out, party pooper!) It’s basically a Pirate game and a concert, followed by awesome fireworks. We skipped the game and concert and spent the afternoon on Dan’s parents’ boat instead. We headed to Station Square, where we hung out for a while and then had dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack. It was also Dan’s dad’s 55th birthday (though he kept telling people it was his 35th birthday, because that’s just how he rolls) so there was a big to-do at dinner about that. Maggie ate about 2 pounds of mac-and-cheese, and ended up with a pound of cheese on her face, and my mom and I split a delicious dessert and it was tons of fun.

After dinner we headed back on the boat for the fireworks. I had NO IDEA what to expect from Maggie- she’s seen fireworks before, on the 4th of July, but we were pretty far from them so the noise wasn’t too overwhelming. This time, we were practically underneath them in the boat on the river, and we knew the booming would be so loud. And it was- you could FEEL the fireworks, it was so awesome. And you know what? The little stinker SLEPT ALMOST THE WHOLE TIME. She was awake for the first segment (they split the fireworks up into about 5 or 6 parts, in between songs at the concert, so we just hung out on the boat in between) and even when she was awake, she didn’t even flinch from the noise. Then she passed out on me and that was it- no screaming, no crying, no needing to gun the engine to take the boat up-river away from the booming. Amazing.

(Of course, after the fireworks were all over, the guy in the boat next to us started the engine, and THEN she jumped and woke up. Goofy kid.)

We had so much fun, Maggie got lots of Grandma and Grandma (two Grandmas in one day!) and Pap Pap time, the weather was perfect, it was just a great day. We didn’t get home until 1am, but Maggie handled it like a champ and we all slept until 9:30 the next morning.

On Sunday we took Gracie over to Dan’s uncle’s house- a 45 minute drive and Gracie HATES the car so it was interesting. But thankfully when we got there, she seemed to do okay. She didn’t freak out and hiss and run and hide anywhere, so that was great. She even let Ed pet her a bit, which was shocking to me (she’s always been very afraid of strangers, especially male strangers) I was a little upset at our house before we left when I was packing up some toys and things for her, but once we got there, I felt better, seeing how she did with him. And yesterday they sent an email ‘from’ Gracie (too cute!) telling us that she was doing pretty well, she ate and did some ‘litter stuff’ and was staying in Ed’s bedroom. She’s still not sure about the other kitty (some hissing about that) but she ventured out from under the bed and let Ed pet her last night, so that’s great progress.

The sad thing on Sunday was when we ran into my sister’s mother-in-law at the grocery store on the way home. (She’s the one who offered to take Scotty for us.) She told us he wasn’t doing very well. He seemed really depressed, wasn’t eating or drinking much, and kept hiding with his face in the corners. It just broke my heart to hear that- I thought that out of both cats, he would be the quickest to adjust! So Sunday night was rough for me. I felt so guilty and couldn’t stop thinking about him all night, even after I went to bed. I kept thinking Did we do the right thing? Even though I KNOW we had to do it. So I cried a little bit- nothing like crying yourself to sleep over cats.

Yesterday Maggie and I stopped by to visit Scotty, and he seemed to be doing better. He came right out when I called him, and even ventured out into the yard all on his own. We pet him, and Maggie gave him kisses. I think the hardest thing for him is the lack of people during the day- for 2 years, I’ve been home just about every day with him, and he is an Attention Whore so now that it’s just him and 2 other cats, I think it’s a shock to him. It seems like the cats are getting along at least, so hopefully once he gets used to everything else, he’ll be okay.

So that was our weekend. INSANELY BUSY, but insanely fun too (except for the kitty part, that was mostly sad.) It took me all of yesterday to get my bearings, with energy and cleaning up the house a bit and work stuff. This weekend? We’re sticking around the house! I think we need it!

Filed under emotional, family, kitties, life, photos

Good-bye, Señor F-Nuts.

August 14th, 2008 @ 9:42 pm | Comments (13)

Tonight, we took Scotty to his new home. (You can read the back-story here and here.)

(Just a quick note on the title of this entry: Dan has had a ’special’ name for Scotty for the last few years. I’ll let you figure out what the ‘F’ stands for. It’s not exactly appropriate for the mixed audience of my blog. I try to keep it clean- you know, for the kids! :P)

To be completely honest, I’m not even sure how I feel right now. We just got home a little while ago, so it doesn’t feel like he’s not here anymore… he could just be hiding somewhere downstairs, really. But he’s not. He’s at my sister’s in-laws house. Which is actually kind of great, because they live 3 miles away and we see them all the time, and we even visit their house a few times a year. So we’ll definitely see him again, and that makes it a little bit easier. It’s not like we just dropped him at a stranger’s house and said ‘C-YA!’ Plus, they have 2 other cats who live in the garage and outside in their awesome yard, so he’ll have lots of things to play with and entertain himself.

When we got there and let him out of the carrier, he immediately ran and hid under the car for about 30 minutes. Eventually we coaxed him out, and he wandered around, sniffing flowers and dirt and rocks. He hasn’t been outside much at all- he’s a very indoor, pampered kitty- so that’s the only thing I worried about. But he seemed okay after a while and snuggled up in the flower bed. One of their other cats, Taffy- an orange female who looks a lot like him!- was curious about him and they watched each other for a while. But they didn’t get angry or freaked out at each other, which was good. The other cat, Bandit, who is a little more skittish with new people, walked by him unknowingly and there was some hissing involved, but nothing too dramatic. I really think he’ll enjoy it there, I’ve always thought he’d be happier outside where he could cause trouble and chase things- something other than poor Gracie.

I did get a little teary-eyed as we were pulling out of the driveway and my sister’s MIL picked up Scotty and waved his paw ‘Good-bye’ at us. It was just strange to see and made me a little bit sad. Not sad that we’re giving him to someone else, but sad because we have to. Regardless what anyone else thinks, this is not a decision we’ve come to in the heat of cleaning up cat puke or being busy or annoyed at the cats. It’s #1 because of the way they have destroyed our basement with pee. And it makes me so sad that our only solution at this point is to find somewhere else for them to live.

On Sunday, we’ll be taking Gracie to Dan’s uncle’s house. That will be hard for me, I know. Gracie is a sweetheart and very shy, so it’s going to be a lot harder on her to settle into a new home. And we will probably never be visiting his uncle’s house like we do my sister’s MIL’s, so there’s a very good chance that we’ll never see her again, unless we make a special trip.

So, we are soon to be cat-less, after 4 years. I’ve considered whether or not I feel regret over getting them in the first place, since now I’m willing to give them away. Honestly, I don’t regret ever getting them. I enjoyed having them in our house until they started destroying it. And for a long time, I was okay with their craziness. But, as everyone says, having kids totally changes your priorities and our family dynamics have changed and this just needs to be done. I’m just thankful that we found 2 good homes for them, and it’s people we know too which makes the whole process a little less painful.

Dan is of course beyond thrilled. He never wanted cats in the first place. (Also: he maybe was singing a song about it on the way home tonight. Maybe.) While I’m confident that our decision is the right one, I’m still really upset about it and wish things could be different. It will seem really quiet around here for a while. Good thing I have a 16-month old Maggie to keep me distracted.

Filed under emotional, family, kitties, life

8 things

August 11th, 2008 @ 5:21 pm | Comments (14)

I’ve been tagged! by Mel! This one kind of reminds me of 43 Things… which I haven’t updated in a looong time.

8 things I must accomplish before I die:

1. Travel, travel, travel. Doesn’t matter where, really. I would love to just take a couple of months and GO. But that will have to wait till kids are grown and moved away, I guess.

2. Learn to play the piano.

3. Actually get all the laundry washed, folded and put away in the same day. Hasn’t happened yet.

4. Hire a personal chef. I do enjoy cooking, but I enjoy eating more… so I’m thinking this would be just fine. And maybe they’d let me help now and then, if I got the urge?

5. Get caught up on my scrapbooking. Hey, I have until I die! Hopefully that’s a lot of years… because dude, I’m so behind.

6. Skydive. Susan has inspired me. Someday, I will do it!

7. Run a mile without DYING.

8. See NKOTB in concert, since I never got to go as a kid. OH WAIT- I AM!!!! October 3 with Melissa! WOOHOO!

hm… now who should I annoy with the tagging? How about the last 8 people to leave a comment on my blog? Kirida, Melissa, Georgie, Rachie, Corrie, Claudia, Backpacking Dad, and Lela. There. Now nobody will ever comment on my blog again, for fear that they’ll be tagged in a meme ;)

Filed under found on the web, life

I tried to find an NKOTB lunchbox, but they didn’t have any.

August 10th, 2008 @ 8:16 pm | Comments (15)

Last night, Dan and I went out to dinner for his birthday. It was quite the occasion- not the having dinner out, because we do that fairly often as a family- but going out without Maggie being with us. We haven’t done that since… January? Yeah that’s a long time! We went to Walnut Grove, which was very nice and grown-up and they didn’t give out balloons to kids and I had something called ‘Chocolate Cobbler’ for dessert which is every bit as a delicious and evil as it sounds.

After dinner, we headed out for some birthday shopping for Dan, since I’m a horrible wife and didn’t actually go out and buy him a present. In my defense, the only ideas he provided for birthday gifts were ‘golf stuff‘ and ‘Best Buy gift cards‘. And since I have no idea what ‘golf stuff‘ means, I thought he could just go pick it out himself. Thankfully, he didn’t mind.

In our outing, we ended up at Kohl’s and Target, where apparently it became Maggie’s birthday too because we left there with a pair pajamas, 2 pairs of shorts, and some Steeler onesies. Talk about spoiled! We also got Maggie her very first lunchbox for daycare (MY KID NEEDS A LUNCHBOX NOW, SHE’S GROWING UP SO FAST *WAIL*):

It came with sparkle puffy-paints and these self-adhesive patches so that kids can ‘create their own’ lunchbox. Naturally I jumped all over it and spent 20 minutes decorating it this afternoon. But I’ll tell everyone at daycare that Maggie helped… even though she was napping at the time. heh.

Last night’s dinner wasn’t just a birthday celebration though. We also celebrated the fact that this week, we are now completely, 100% student-loan debt free. If you’ll recall, last November, we paid mine off and made it our goal to get rid of Dan’s loan by the end of the year. I had my doubts a few times (like when my car air conditioner bit the dust last month, argh) but things suddenly fell into place in the last few weeks and WOOHOO! No more payments! So now, the only debt we have is our house. No student loans, no credit cards, nothing. That is… until we buy a new car in the next month or so… but that payment will be MUCH less than the ones we’ve been making to the loan, so we won’t even notice!

All in all it was a good weekend. We spent today in our pajamas and it was fantastic. I did get a haircut yesterday and I’m still figuring out if I like it or not. No pictures yet… but I’ll keep you posted on that.

Filed under family, kids, life, Maggie, motherhood, photos

Tikki Tikki Tembo

August 7th, 2008 @ 9:19 am | Comments (14)

Yesterday I was sorting through the mail piled up on our dining room table. (Question: Am I the only one who fights a ridiculous losing battle with The Pile Of Crap On The Table? I swear, every 2 hours I’m cleaning stuff off of it.) In the pile, there was a catalog for children’s books, and on the cover was a little girl holding a few books. The titles were only just barely visible, but one of them caught my eye. It said ‘Tikki Tikki Tembo‘.

Suddenly something in my brain *dinged* (What? Your brain doesn’t do that?) and *whooshed* back 20+ years and recalled the rest of that phrase: Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo. WOW. The fact that I could remember that after seriously 20 years of it hiding deep in the recesses of my mind was a little weird. And Dan thought so too because when I said it out loud, he looked at me like I had three heads.

I couldn’t remember much about the story until I read the Wiki (does EVERYTHING have a Wiki these days? Geez.) but then slowly it came back to me. A little boy had a really long name, his little brother had a short, insignificant name, and Tikki Tikki (oh please don’t make me type all the rest of that name!) falls down a well. Because his name is so long, when his little brother tries to tell the grown ups in the story about his brother’s fall, it takes them a while to rescue him. Finally they do, and he’s okay (after 12 full moons!) but from then on, all the parents decide to keep their kids’ names short and simple. Ya know, just in case.

Not a super-fantastic, epic story (and a little scary for a little kid if you think about it. I mean, my parents could have accidentally given me a crazy-long name and I could have almost died because of it? YIKES.) but because of the silly, rhythmic name, I remembered it for over twenty years. Makes me think about what Maggie might remember in a big *WHOOSH* all of a sudden 20 years from now. We’d better watch what we say and do!

The other side of this story is the sadness when I realized that inside the catalog under the information for the book Tikki Tikki Tembo, they called it a ‘Classic from 30 years ago!’ Which translates to: JEN, YOU ARE OLD. THIS BOOK HAS BEEN AROUND ABOUT AS LONG AS YOU HAVE, AND NOW IT’S CONSIDERED A CLASSIC!

Filed under emotional, life, she's a weird one

babies, birthdays, and also: my kid has a sense of humor

August 4th, 2008 @ 9:32 pm | Comments (6)

This past weekend we went to visit some friends in Ohio. First up was my college roommate, her husband, and most importantly their new baby boy, who is just 6 weeks old. Later that day when we visited more friends and their 19-day-old baby girl. Lots of squishy baby-ness to enjoy! Maggie had fun saying ‘Bay-beeee!’ and then playing with various baby toys and jumping on the trampoline.

All in all, it was a great weekend. There was one small hiccup on Saturday when I checked my email in the car on Dan’s BlackBerry, only to find an interesting email from a client and my head almost exploded and made quite a mess in the Honda. I’ll just leave it at that. I’m always afraid to talk about work too much on here, because in the age of blogs and Facebook and MySpace, I’m way too easy to find on the internet and I’m pretty sure most of my customers probably Google my name and end up here (Oh! *waves* Hai!) I took care of the ‘issue’ this morning by phone and I think everything is going to be okay, but it also means that I am going to be insanely, insanely busy for the next 8 weeks or so to meet some suddenly-urgent deadlines (through no fault of my own. I made sure to clear that up in a hurry. ahem.)

Aaaaanyway. So how about: IT’S AUGUST ALREADY. Dan’s birthday is a week from today, he’s going to be 12 29. I asked him if he wanted to do anything fun or specific this weekend, and even offered to take Maggie to my parents so he could have some time at home alone with his XBox360 or whatever, and he said, no, he’d rather spend the day with ‘his Girls’. Points for Dan. Now I just have to come up with a birthday gift idea for him. (No, not THAT kind of gift. Get your mind out of the gutter, please.)

I’m not really sure how to wrap up this post, so I’ll just tell you a funny thing Maggie did today: She woke up at 6am! And then took a nap at 8am! Isn’t that HIL-AR-IOUS?? Yeah, so funny that I almost didn’t realize I felt like I was going to fall over by dinnertime. My kid, such a jokester!

Filed under business owner, Dan, family, kids, life, Maggie, marriage, motherhood

16 months

July 31st, 2008 @ 10:51 am | Comments (9)

Dear Maggie,

I know, I know: I have been absolutely horrible at keeping up with these monthly letters. I had grand plans to write you a note every month, talking about your milestones and all the wonderful things that come with you growing up. In reality, I’ve kind of sucked at doing that. Best laid plans. I wrote one at 1 week (Lordy, look at that FACE.), another at 2 months, and then again at three months… then I took a loooong hiatus and didn’t write another one until you were a year old, plus I made you a cool video montage (Bonus Points for Mom!) The last official letter I wrote was at 13 months. Though truthfully, I like to think that this blog is kind of one big letter to you, since you are the subject of nearly all of my posts. Someday I hope you’ll be able to read the things I’ve written and not hate me too much for all the things I’ve shared with The Internets.

That being said, lately I’ve been feeling like I’m unable to keep up with chronicling everything you do. You turned 16 months old this week and all I have to say is: WOW. I know everyone talks about that month where babies turn into kids, and Baby Girl, this was it for us. You have absolutely exploded into A Kid. (But I’m still calling you my Baby until you’re at least 25. Just so you know.) Here’s just a quick list of things from the past month or so:

You know sign language. Another one of my big plans was to start signing with you as soon as you were able (which was probably around 10 months or so) but I soon realized that hey, I can’t remember what any of the signs are! Mommy’s an idiot and can barely remember her own name sometimes! So I kind of gave up on it. But a month or so ago, I was watching you watch your Baby Einstein ‘My First Signs’ video and DUDE. You were signing ‘Eat’ and ‘Drink’ and ‘Baby’ right along with them. Since then, we’ve been signing with you more, and now you know ‘Help’ (which you kind of think is ‘Up’ but that’s usually all you ask for help with, to get up on things, so we’ll count that one.) and ‘Poop’ (HA!) and ‘Cereal’ and ‘Milk’ and probably a bunch more I’m forgetting.

You are talking. Not sentences of course, but lots and lots of words. All the basics: cat, Daddy, Mommy, eat, car, etc. On the way home from vacation last month, we made a list and I think there were about a dozen or so. Now it seems every day you are learning more. Just this week, you’ve added ‘Flower’ and ‘Stinky’, to which you put your fingers to your nose and say ‘Tee-Tee!!!’ which is probably the only way to make a poopy diaper The Cutest Thing Ever. (You even seem to get the connection between me asking ‘Did you poop?’ and you going ‘Tee-Tee!!!’ which means POTTY TRAINING IS GETTING CLOSER. woohoo!)

Another big thing this week is that you decided you are totally cool with drinking your milk from a cup. Remember my big Dilemma a few weeks ago? Apparently I was having one of those Totally Unnecessary Mom Freak-Outs and you sure showed me. The other day you took a later nap than usual, so it was too close to dinner to give you your afternoon bottle, so I waited until dinner and snuck it into your cup. And wouldn’t you know, you drank the whole darn thing? You did it the following day too. Way to show Mommy she’s being a Big Stupidhead.

Other things: You giggle at EVERYTHING, even your own jokes. You climb on Mommy’s belly when I’m laying on the floor and say ‘Sheee beee!’ because you want me to bounce up and down and sing ‘She’ll be coming ’round the mountain’. You give everything and everyone kisses, and you want me to do the same: your puppy, your Elmo, your shoes. Oh and you loooove shoes. You know where your shoe drawer is and you like to take them all out and carry them around the house. You also like to empty out my kitchen towel drawer and drag the towels everywhere. Basically, my house is always a disaster area, but that’s okay. You’re having fun and I love seeing that.

It hasn’t been all Roses and Sunshine lately, thanks to our friends The Molars. Numbers three and four are FINALLY making their last voyage through your gums and that made for a few rough nights for all of us. Last night was much better, we snuggled on the couch with a bottle for about 20 minutes around 2am and watch Sesame Street before you were drifting off, and then we both slept until 8:30 this morning. We both needed it desperately. Life is much more fun when we’re both well-rested!

Last week Mommy thought for sure you had a brother or sister on the way. My feelings on that subject were a little mixed, but mostly it was PANIC-FREAKOUT-MELTDOWN. Not that I wouldn’t be happy to have another one of you running around, but honestly? My most intrusive thought in those few days was ‘I’m going to really be sad missing out on it just being me and Maggie for longer.’ You are so much fun (except for those nights mentioned in the above paragraph, but we’ll just pretend those don’t exist right now) and I want to enjoy you- just you- for a little longer. I like our routine and our system we’ve worked out of you playing in the mornings while I check up on email and eat my breakfast (while you beg for bits of cereal from my bowl), and then we’ll play for a bit before your nap, and then in the afternoons we’ll run errands, or play some more, just hanging out. It’s just me and you a lot of the time, and I love it. And I’m glad it gets to stay that way for a little bit longer.

That being said, this weekend we’ll be visiting two of Mommy’s friends who just had babies- LITTLE TEENY BABIES. One will only be 19 days old! It will be surreal to hold a baby that tiny again, I haven’t done that since you were that size. And as cliche and cheesy as it sounds because EVERYONE says it, it is really hard to remember you being that little. How was this walking, talking, playful little girl ever that tiny baby? The only proof I have are my memories and lots of pictures.

Honestly though? I like the way you are now. Can you stay this way forever?

Filed under emotional, kids, life, Maggie, motherhood, photos

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