Random

• Having a usable kitchen -- meaning one with enough room to turn around and with a working oven -- makes a lot of difference in enjoyment of cooking.
• Waking up with the coffeemaker having just finished brewing a pot is also pretty cool.
• I'm not Linkin Park's biggest fan, but I really like "Burn It Down."
• When Chester and I walk around the neighborhood, we set off frantic barking at about every other house.  Chester never says a word though.  He's so well behaved!
• Except for when he took a dump on the patio.
• Faith is playing intramural badminton.  She loves it!
• We still go swimming almost every day.  But the water is getting darn chilly in that pool, despite the fact that the days are still very warm.
• I met my goal of reading 20 books this year.  (the list)  Now I'm working on number 21!

Sunset

While I was in Florida in June I marveled at the beautiful sunsets.  But apparently I had just not paid enough attention here at home.  Yes, even in Baltimore...  In the evenings when I take the dog out for his walk, I look down my street, towards the place where train cargo is unloaded all day and all night and trucked away by huge rigs, and above that place is a colorful display in the sky that surprises me every time.

Today after I admired the western sky, I turned to the east and there was the almost full moon, a beautiful peachy-pink.

Which means I spent the rest of the dog's walk humming "Pink Moon."  :)

I think I will miss the city a little bit after all.  I'm excited to be starting a new chapter in my life down in Florida, for many reasons, but Maryland is home, and I took some pride in being a Baltimorean.

"Pink Moon" by Nick Drake

Redhead at the water park.
I'm also wearing a t-shirt on my head.  It is not attractive!

Edited to rotate the picture. :P

Testing...

I am testing out this mobile blogging app.  Here is a picture of a young praying mantis on the largest tomato in my garden!

Catching Up

I have a lot I could be talking about here, but my desire to do things "in order" always makes me fall behind, whether that be in watching TV shows (which I've pretty much stopped altogether), in my gardening, and in my picture posting and journal writing.

Speaking of my gardening, it's moving along.  I put five broccoli plants into the ground, although one appears to be dead.  None of my peppers sprouted, and none of my cauliflowers did either.  I will have to buy seedlings at the nursery if I want those.  But I do have lettuce growing, and potatoes, and about 12 tomato plants that will be transplanted into the garden later this month.  I also have four or five more crops that are scheduled to be planted over the coming weeks.

The blackberry "bush" (it's really not bushy at all) looks good.  The strawberry patch has been pretty much wiped out, though, by weeds, digging, mowing, and nobody caring for it.  My rosebushes look better than ever, after I pruned them for the first time this winter.  The azaleas are right in the middle of blooming and are beautiful.  I got a bunch of pink tulips come up unexpectedly.  And the hydrangeas are looking great -- I hope to actually have all three bloom this year.

So there, I caught up on journaling about my garden, but I still have not talked about the kids in school, the funny things Holly has been saying, what books I'm reading, the music I'm listening to, or the pets.  And there's also the little matter of this:

Yeah... I'll tell you all about that.  :)  Soon!

Thursday thinking

I still miss Augie a lot.  I thought I heard him meow the other day, and I keep expecting to see him laying on the dog's bed or to come climb in my lap while I'm sitting on the floor.  Our other elderly cat, Spot, is turning 18 in April.  For now he is in decent health.  He notices Augie's absence, though.  The first night Augie was gone, Spot wandered through the house all night meowing.  They used to sleep together on the dog's bed.

Aside from Spotty we have two other cats, Emily and Benny, who are about 2.5 and 3 years old, respectively. Then there's good old Chester, the dog, who we guess to be about 9.  I do love a house full of pets, despite the cost, the mess, the work, and the inevitable heartache that comes along with it.

Augie and Spotty enjoying a sunny spot at the back door.  Nov 2011

Thea and Faith are going skiing for the first time this weekend.  I've never really had an interest in skiing, but I'm happy they're going to have the opportunity to try it.  They are excited.  Holly and I are staying home by ourselves.  I told her it was going to be a special Holly-and-Mommy night.  Her eyes got wide and she said, "Let's have a movie night!  With EATING!"  So, movies and eating it will be.

I'm getting a haircut tomorrow.  This is only news because I don't get my hair cut often, and when I do, it's usually just a trim.  This time I really am looking for a new style (if you can call the shapeless mess I have now a "style").  It remains to be seen whether I can communicate my wishes to the stylist, whether she can cut it that way, whether my hair will actually do what the girl's hair in the picture is doing, and then whether I can actually pull it off myself at home.

The Lady

Holly found a picture similar to this in a book about cats -- Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman

She brought it to me and said, "Look Mom, is this Lady Gaga?"

Close of the Year

Some randomnity...

A few days before her birthday, I told Holly about the night she was born.  When I got to the part about giving her her name, she frowned and said, "But I didn't want my name to be Holly!  I wanted it to be Rapunzel."

I gave Thea the Hunger Games trilogy for Christmas.  She read the first book in 24 hours.  Then she read the second book in the next 24 hours.  I'm so happy to have her reading and being excited about a book, but it seems like kind of a waste if she's going to "use up" this Christmas present in three days.

Tonight I had to deal with a puking incident and a disgustingly clogged sink (not related) at the same time.  Kind of an overload of Ick.

My great-grandmother taught me to crochet when I was a kid.  I haven't done it in years, but in just the past couple of weeks I've picked it back up again.  It is so satisfying to sit with the needle and yarn and a mug of coffee and some music playing.  It feels very grounding and at the same time brings back fond memories.  So far I've made a bunch of coasters/potholders, and one head wrap with a flower on it that is not very attractive.  The coasters are kind of rough but I'm still enjoying using things I made.  And I think with the right yarn, the head wrap could be really pretty.

Today there was only one radio station left, that I could find, still playing all Christmas music.  (101.9 FM)  As much as I wanted to avoid that grating music all of December... today I found myself listening to that station, and actually singing along.

I'm glad that Christmas is over, and look forward to a brand new year, but boy do I dislike the winter.  I don't like January or February and thinking of all those gray days stretching ahead of me makes me want to hunker down in bed (in my new flannel sheets -- Christmas presents!)

Pez candy:  Nasty.  Did I actually like that stuff, as a kid, or was it just fun playing with the dispensers?

Mind? Blown!

Holly:  Mommy, are skunks real?
Me:  Yes.
Holly:  Oh. My. GOSH!

Spam and Fall

Have you ever noticed that when you visit your Gmail spam folder, the Google-generated ads that appear at the top of the screen usually involve recipes using Spam?  Is Google just trying to be funny?  Because they're supposed to know all about me, and that makes me think their algorithms are crap.  I already know that Facebook doesn't really know me.

Faith's and Holly's Halloween costumes will be done soon and I'll post pictures.

Check out this flashback.  Seven years ago this weekend, a friend and I took our girls camping.  Thea was 5, Faith was 3, and Paige, my friend's daughter, was 4.  It was a very cold and rainy weekend, and would have been miserable except for the fact that we allowed ourselves to gripe and laugh about the situation and in turn be more patient with the unhappy kids.  In particular I remember that we said "oh well" and let the girls play on a drenched playground in the rain, not worrying about the fact that they were getting soaked.

Anyway, we visited that same park this past weekend, and took a picture of the same three girls along a trail.  Now ages 12, 10 and 11, my how they have changed!

In October 2004

In October 2011

Random pictures

Trying to organize and archive some old pictures I took with my phone, two or three phones ago.

(Did I mention I got a new phone? I moved into the Technology Age in July with a bona fide smart phone, the Samsung Gravity. As hard as I resisted, I have to say, I really love this phone.)

So as I was saying, here are a few pictures I took with previous phones for various reasons:

May 2010 -- label-making fail, at the library of all places


April 2010 -- Holly having some private time


April 2010 -- My Explorer hit a milestone. It lasted almost another year before the transmission went kaput and I had to say goodbye.


More pictures later...

Ouch

Seriously, really??

Summer

Faith comes home tomorrow from spending five weeks with her dad. I can't wait to see my sweet girl get off the plane. Just under two weeks to go and I will get my other girls back as well!

If you didn't even realize they were gone, it's because I meant to post here about a hundred times and never did. I had lots of other stuff to talk about... my gardening, our new cat, redoing Holly's room, the U2 concert I went to, etc etc. But even though the day-to-day responsibility of three kids was removed, somehow I filled up the time with other stuff and squeezed out time for just goofing off, reading or updating this journal. Not sure how I managed that exactly.

Spacey

I don't have a "bucket list" or anything, but one of the things I always wanted to do was see a space shuttle launch in person. From the first launch I watched on TV as a child to the one I just watched a few minutes ago (Endeavour), I have been excited and moved by the power and the spectacle of lift-off every time.

I guess I never considered that one day the shuttles would be retired, or maybe I didn't realize that so much time had actually passed. With the last shuttle launch taking place next month, turns out I'll never get to cross that item off my mental to-do list.

I'm not crying about it or anything, but just now I found myself thinking about what this means. There are plenty of other things that I intend to get around to doing someday -- some long-term goals, but also things that I could easily do today that I just put off -- and for each of these things there will come a day when it's too late. It will sneak up on me, just like the final space shuttle launch did, whether it takes a day or two weeks or (unbelievable!) 30 years.

Turns out I need to get busy living!

Decaffeinated

Ah Diet Pepsi, how I miss you. I've been on a crusade to reduce my intake of diet sodas (sodas in general) and increase my intake of water. In the past week, I have had two cans of Diet Pepsi and one fountain drink of Diet Mountain Dew -- this is quite a feat!

I haven't noticed any physical effects except that I seem to be thirstier now that I'm drinking water, thus having to pee more. It's more the psychological. I like to sit at my desk with a fizzing can of Diet Pepsi in front of me. It just FEELS right.

I'm not saying I'm giving up sodas all together, but if drinking more water becomes a new norm, that can only be good.

Slow

It does not inspire confidence in Verizon, my internet service provider, that the Verizon website is the slowest website I ever have to access.

Inquiring Minds

Faith would like to know: Why is there a light in the refrigerator, but no light in the freezer?

I assumed it has to do with the frequency with which you would open the refrigerator in the dark as opposed to the freezer. But really... does anyone know?

Bullets

• I'm ashamed to admit I've been wearing the same socks for the past three days because I hadn't done any laundry. And yeah... here at the end of the third day, it's obvious.
• I've got laundry running RIGHT NOW.
• In line to vote, there were two women wearing the same boots. They were separated by a couple of people in line, but they ended up right next to each other at the voting booths and so it was very obvious. Awk-ward!
• I pulled off a beautiful parallel parking job there in front of the elementary school.
• On the drive home we passed an overturned vehicle in the median, which completely amazed Holly.
• My parent-teacher conference was very short since the teacher had no problems to report about my girls and their grades are good.
• I wrote all of 550 words yesterday for the first day of Nanowrimo. All 550 were crap. But as my friend Tracie says, that is the true spirit of Nano.
  

New Pictures

For dinner last night I ate over half of a pineapple and then washed it down with a cup of coffee. Unsurprisingly I have a belly-ache this morning.

I put up new pictures from the summer in our photo section: start with July and August here, including our trip to Rehoboth, and be sure to click through to see our summer boating trip to Lake Moomaw in Virginia. Here's a little preview:

Why So Serious?

Rain and traffic that make for over a two hour commute on a Monday morning... not a good way to start the week off.

Waking up to find your three-year-old looking like the Joker is not a good way to start Sunday morning off either. She got into her sister's purse.

It may have been mixed messages for me to take her picture and then scold her and send her to her room...

And here is a random picture of the dog wearing Minnie Mouse ears. Enjoy!