Domestic Eva

Week 1: 365

2012-01-14T16:39:00.000-08:00

Didn't quite start on the 1st of the year, but what the hell. Not sure if I'll take only pictures of Neal or other parts of my day but here is the first week.

Falling Off the Wagon

2012-01-07T23:34:00.000-08:00

So I didn't just "fall off the wagon", I flew off and then rolled down the cliff and was whisked away in the rapid river below and deposited in a pile of cookie crumbs and gym clothes with the tags still on wondering what the hell just happened. Oh yeah, the holidays happened and I accepted a new position with a different company so I made up a hundred excuses to bake cookies then eat them all in 24-hours or skip the gym because I didn't want to show up to my new job late and with damp hair.

The gym thing is easier to get back into because its part of my morning routine and I have discovered that I do really well with routines. Food on the other hand, sugar is seriously crack to me. I have a little bit and then BAM, I find myself taking spoon fulls of the cream cheese frosting I threw in the freezer and sandwiching them between ginger snap cookies to make my version of a laced joint. Seriously, I may as well have taken a jar of hot fudge sauce, nuked in for 30 seconds, and then chugged it like a beer. It seems like the only thing that worked for me was cutting out sugar cold turkey with no excuses so in the spirit of every day being a new day... I'm gonna carpe the diem out of that fucker.

In other really good news, turns out that even though the EKG/ECG says I've had a heart attack, I just have a slightly crooked heart! This not only explains why the machine registers my waves as just off enough to suspect something is wrong, it also explains my love with the macabre. The cardiologist said that my heart is working like a well oiled machine and to keep living a heart healthy lifestyle. SWEET!

We all had a really nice holiday, lots of time spent together as a family and lots of time to have personal time as well. Brad and I dropped off the wee man at daycare one day like normal but I took the day off and we spent the entire day having a date-- it was amazing! We went out for lunch, saw Sherlock Holmes in the theater, and finished it off by browsing through a book store without an excitable toddler running circles around your feet.

Speaking of the wee man, we think he is cutting his two year molars so I'm not sure what his sleep schedule is going to be like tonight so I better get off here. Just wanted to post since it had been almost a month.

Heart Attack Under 30

2011-12-14T22:09:00.000-08:00

This picture is pure motivation.

When I'm at kickboxing and I look at the clock to see it's only 6:15 and I'd rather be in bed and I'm sore and its too damn early to be doing this... I imagine this picture on top of the bag and I find it easier to do those push ups and run the bag lines and keep up the speed on my punches and kicks. This picture is from when Neal was two weeks old and we had to fly from Wenatchee to Nashville because we thought my dad was not going to make it through his quintuple bypass surgery. Yeah, Google it. That means they bypassed five arteries. We snuck Neal in under my mom's jacket so my Dad and Neal could meet.
Six weeks later his older sister underwent the same surgery and they found out she had Congestive Heart Failure and had a very hard time with recovery.

On my mom's side of the family there is rampant heart disease and my great uncle (my mom's dad's brother) died of a heart attack when I believe he was in his 40's and on her mother's side of the family there is heart disease as well.

When you have kids crazy thing's happen to you. You reflect on your core values, you learn patience and humility, and you reflect on your own mortality. My mom raised all three of her children with a firm foundation of "you are what you are and what you are is beautiful". All three of her children are on the pleasantly plump side and to hear this from a 6' tall red head who could fit in her normal street clothes at 9 months pregnant (which was a size 8) and know that from the soles of her feet she meant it, was a blessing that not enough children have. I am totally fine with being a size 14/16, I love having curves and I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have boobs and a butt. What I'm not okay with is not being healthy.

The thought of Neal sneaking his first born child under a sweater into the ICU to see me doped out of my mind on pain killers rips my heart out (no pun intended). The thought of not being able to keep up with Neal as he turns into a young man because of heart disease lays so heavily on my mind sometimes that I will bring myself to tears drowning in the possibility. A year ago I had an abnormal ECG (EKG) that said I had a minor heart attack but it was a new machine that we were playing with at work so I didn't pay it much attention. Earlier this week I had a physical with two EKG's and both said the same thing. Now I've had three cardiograms on two different pieces of equipment tell me I've had a heart attack, I had an EKG three years ago saying everything was fine, oh yeah- I'm 26 years old.

To say this is laying heavily on me is an understatement. I do kickboxing 3 times a week, I'm starting yoga this month, I've significantly cut down my sugar consumption, I'm counting calories, I have a low blood pressure and resting pulse rate, and my cholesterol levels are great... but the marvel of modern technology is telling me "DANGER WILL ROBINSON". Of course, I am following up with a cardiologist and its most likely the dimensions of my chest wall/density of breast tissue/bone tonality that its just a fluke thing that the machine is/is not picking up so I should just let my primary care physician know about this and keep a close watch on my heart health. That and the only event I can think of that happened where I could have stressed my heart would be during labor and delivery. But how often do women have heart attacks while pushing out their kid? Neither Google or Bing are giving me many answers.

Hopefully friends who aren't super close to me anymore (I am a pro at unintentionally distancing myself from people) see me posting on facebook or pinterest things about diet and exercise don't think I'm going through a body crisis and am unhappy with my body. Don't get me wrong, shedding excess weight is a happy side effect but I'm thinking of meeting grandchildren and pooping my pants and blaming it on Brad when we are in a nursing home together.

Please, women especially, and even more so if you have family history of heart disease. Take time to talk to your doctor about your cardiovascular health. Know the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and go to the hospital if you suspect something is off. It doesn't matter that you aren't an overweight middle aged man. No one in the ER is going to make fun of you for getting it checked out. We had a family friend who thought she was having a heart attack so she rushed to the ER to find out she had a painful gas bubble in her upper stomach and paired with heart burn it gave her severe chest pain. No more bratwurst at her cook outs!

I'll keep everyone posted with updates and I'll try my hardest to keep the stress low with holiday stress, avoid the sugary and fatty festive foods, and keep my strict 3x per week work outs. I'm sure it's all fine but its a good opportunity to campaign for the American Heart Association :)

Decking the Condo with Jolly

2011-12-12T17:40:00.000-08:00

One of the perks of living in an 864 sq/ft condo is you can completely deck out the place with 4 strands of lights and a few 2' trees. I finally got a tree on clearance last year that doesn't look like it has the mange and it's actually the perfect size for our 10'x10' living room. The wrapping paper is this great neon green background with dogs and cats in scarves and hats with presents, figure that's perfect for a toddler holiday right? We decided to go with the colorful lights, family ornaments, and a bunch of candy canes to decorate the tree. Maybe one year I'll have a tree with white lights and gold balls and all sorts of pretty stuff but for right now, I like my colorful cacophony of good family memories. I love pulling out ornaments from vacations or childhood and talking about their stories.

We have just enough of a mantle to throw on some garland and the stockings. I had some red and white berry picks that I crammed in and it makes it look downright fancy.

And what kind of holiday would it be if I didn't sneak some Tim Burton into it all? Oh yeah, I've got my Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride ornaments on a wee little black tree with white lights in my bedroom. Aren't tolerant husbands the best?

Thats all for now. I have a very sleepy and cranky wee man in my lap and it's too early for him to go down for the night.

Amazon Fresh Review

2011-12-04T21:52:00.001-08:00

About a year ago I heard about Amazon Fresh from someone in my mom's group and decided I needed to try it. Don't get me wrong, I'm a die hard Trader Joes fan but really how can you pass up these perks:

1. LOTS of coupon codes. I found a coupon code for $50 worth of free groceries when you sign up with a new account. Even if you only use it once, $50 of free food goes down extra smooth.

2. It arrives at your door step so you don't have to haul a cranky toddler to the store, plead with them to be quiet, let them hold the bag of crackers just to keep them quiet, count to ten so you don't yell at said toddler with witnesses when they bust open the bag creating a big mess, wrangle toddler while attempting to bag groceries/pay for groceries, fight wiggly toddler into car seat while they scream-cry "PUPPIES" because they want to visit the petsmart next door, then shed a few tears when you get home because toddler has fallen asleep and you will have to wake them to get the groceries in before your milk turns into yogurt. Not that that has ever happened to me *eye twitch*

3. Sometimes you get into a food rut or need to find something your normal store doesn't carry and chances are Amazon Fresh does. I can easily search for "gluten free" and a plethora of options pop up.

4. You can throw in things like DVD's or a rice cooker and it gets delivered to your door. Or a stroller in time for a parade. Again, something I've never done.

5. Not only does it get delivered to your door, the delivery folks are stinking NINJAS and you don't even hear them set down the crates. You don't have to be at the door unless you order alcohol (booze delivery- best invention ever) and if you specify an attended delivery they will even unload the groceries for you and take the totes away with them. We placed an order last night and they had it to us by 8am, and it was the "carbon footprint friendly" option because they said they were already in the neighborhood- yay for green washing!

Here is what we got for $103 delivered:

We got all our basics like eggs, bread, tortillas, coffee creamer, lots of fresh fruits and veggies, cheese, and even lunch meat. Everything edible on the counter (save for my ever present cuppa joe) was from the order. In the brown bag was the "produce sampler" which was $12, but FREE with the code "WCFRFR2" and had the following:

The pear and apple are HUGE, easily considered two servings. There was also a kiwi, about five satsuma oranges, a tomato, sugar snap peas, red pepper, and cucumbers. None of these were organic but I think if you have a diet that is lacking in produce this bag would give you variety both for cooking and for eating raw. Worth $12? Maybe if it were all organic, but with the code you can't thumb your nose at it.

Two other things I think are great about Amazon Fresh is that you have less people "fingering" your food and I get a bit germ-o, especially this time of year when viruses run rampant. You also can keep to your shopping list and have less impulse buys. If money is tight and you can't spend more than $X, you can edit your shopping cart without having to put back at the cashier counter. Oh, and a third thing. First time customers get a bouquet of flowers as a sign of appreciation. Awwwwww.

In a nutshell, I love the option of buying online and having the food be there when I wake up the next morning. Especially now that the majority of our family time is on the weekend and this saves us an entire morning where we can hit the road and spend time together.

Birthday's at the Cube Farm

2011-11-30T21:19:00.001-08:00

I'm not a fan of birthdays, I'm always the youngest person in my group of friends and cohorts and I really dislike being in the spot light. But as much as I hate birthdays my friend and co-worker loves them. As soon as the first of November rolled around she began her birthday count down. We both love "The Big Bang Theory" and I was going to get her a life sized cardboard cutout of Dr. Sheldon Cooper but no dice and without any more ideas on what to get her, I decided to "birthday bomb" her desk:

On the outside of the cube in the hallway I hung up a massive "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banner with holographic letters and made sure to throw copious amounts of glitter confetti on her desk as well. When people saw the balloons and came in to say hello and happy birthday they were offered a piece of her favorite cake, spice cake with cream cheese frosting:

I sprinkled a little bit of cinnamon sugar on the top to be super fancy. It's not the best looking thing in the world, but I've always been of the opinion that ugly cakes and pies usually taste the best.

Happy Birthday Ms. C!

Neal's First Hair Cut

2011-11-25T21:40:00.001-08:00

I've gotten a few questions on when I was going to get Neal's hair cut lately and I've responded with a polite version of "shove off". Wee man has taken 2 very long years to grow every little hair on his head. Both the hubby and I have thick, coarse, dark, curly hair which makes it a little odd to kiss the fine, straight, strawberry blond head goodnight in the evenings. He has been rocking some rock-a-billy hair lately with an emphasis on the rat tail mullet in the back so I decided that he could get a hair cut. We went to a local place that specializes in kids cuts that had the airplane and train chairs you could sit in. We really didn't like the place at all and Neal threw a fit so we left without the scissors even being drug out of the barbercide (side note: every time I see that I think of a hairdresser serial killer, what an unfortunate name for a product). The woman wasn't very friendly, the chairs we tried to get Neal to sit in still had hair in them from the last kid, and they tried to distract him from squirming with an episode of Scooby Doo. Really? We told them it was his first hair cut and they treated him like a 5 year old cattle. Whatever.
After spending the day in the blessed sunshine we came home and I drug out the home hair cut kit from the bathroom and got to work.

Don't all Mom's let their toddlers play with sharp scissors?

I didn't want to take too much off because bless it, he just doesn't have that much hair and its winter so his head would be extra cold. I decided to just get the tips out of his eyes, cut off the kentucky waterfall in the back, and even it up around the ears.

Not too shabby for a squirming toddler.

I put all the hair clippings in a little ziploc bag because I am so one of those creepy moms who will keep all this baby teeth and hair clippings because I have issues letting go of my baby and let him go pester the dog and play with his trains. I came back into the living room and my heart lept into my throat. My baby was gone, and there in the floor wearing not much more than a smile was a little boy. Everyone warned me that when they get their first hair cut it really makes them look older but I just was not expecting it. I'm sure only a parent who sees them day in and day out would notice such a small change as a missing mullet but to me it was simply overwhelming. It takes a lot for me to cry and suddenly I found myself shielding my face from Neal because I was blubbering like a fool. Of course he ran to me imploring "Mama? Happened Mama? Daddy? Mama happened?" (him saying "happened" means "what happened/whats wrong"). I tried explaining that he looked so much older and that I didn't want him to grow up but of course it came out sounding like Lucy trying to explain to Ricky why she ate the chocolate factory so instead I just busied myself with tidying up the place.

Would you believe with all the posting I did about Thanksgiving that I didn't take any pictures of the feast? Nope, not one. I will say that it was quite possibly the best Thanksgiving ever. The turkey was amazing, we got the fresh turkey from the butcher instead of a frozen one, and we used the Williams-Sonoma herbed turkey rub (which I can't find on their website or I'd link it) but it was fantastic. Our friend from Nashville who recently moved to the Seattle area joined us and we feasted until we could not feast any more. That morning I also did the Issaquah Turkey Trot 5k and I jogged with one of the ladies in my Mom's Group and we finished in a hair over 47 minutes. Not bad for the first 5k in about 5 years! I'm gonna say having an awesome friend to run with and kickboxing helped out with that. There were two other moms who joined us and it was so much fun to do something physical before a huge meal and hang out with friends completely kid free.

Well, its after 10pm and I have an 8am kickboxing class that is going to send me through the wringer. I need some new shoes though and if I can loose 8 more pounds those suckers are MINE! Now the hard part is deciding between some light weight athletic shoes or the five-toe shoes...

Movie Feast...er...Fest...

2011-11-20T15:36:00.001-08:00

Ah yes, its that time of year when we hole up inside to steer clear of the shopping madness and make food that goes on for roughly 45 days. Since you can't leave the stove/oven/toaster/microwave unattended, here are some movies that make me think of Thanksgiving to watch if you can convince everyone else in the house to turn off the football.

I remember watching Molly's Pilgrim on TV when I was in elementary school and it made a lasting impact. I can't find a copy of this anywhere, but check out your local library and rent it if they have a copy. It makes you look at modern pilgrims and immigrants in a new light for Thanksgiving and wondering what my ancestors ate on their first American Thanksgiving. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089612/

Let me begin by saying I am not a fan of Katie Holmes, wasn't into Dawson's Creek when I was a teenager and she almost ruined The Dark Knight for me, but this very well may be my favorite Thanksgiving movie. Being a black sheep, introducing family to your new beau, and hosting in your tiny low income apartment (and never cooking more than mac and cheese before)? Really good movie and like all movies should, has a great happy ending. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311648/

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. I really don't have to say anything more. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068359/

I love just about anything Robert Downy Jr is in, and this is no exception. Now that I'm older and have moved away from where I grew up I can appreciate this so much more, and with the economy the way it is I'm sure tons of people can relate to this movie. In a good way. And Robert Downy Jr! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113321/

Every year my facebook page gets blown up with youtube videos of "Alice's Restaurant" but if the 5 minute sing-talking gets on your nerves as much as it does mine, watch Alice's Restaurant. Its streaming on Netflix too! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064002/

You may think this is a Christmas movie but does it not center around the Macy's parade? And doesn't that happen on Thanksgiving? If its too blasphemous for you to watch this before dinner, you can start watching it while using every last piece of Tupperware you own to store all of the leftovers in. Because the Christmas season truly starts as soon as you unbutton your jeans and proclaim its time for a nap. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039628/

Thanksgiving Side Dishes

2011-11-16T21:09:00.001-08:00

Turkey may be the largest dish on the table but in my opinion, side dishes are the true main event of the Thanksgiving feast. With the whole eating healthy and lifestyle changes I'm working on, I've been trying to find some side dishes that are a little bit on the crunchy side and that don't require a cream of ____ soup in the mix.

Roasted Green Beans with Sundried Tomatoes. While this is a bit on the summery side with the tomatoes, its a great alternative to green bean casserole. http://www.southernliving.com/food/holidays-occasions/thanksgiving-dinner-side-dishes-00400000055576/page43.html

Toasted Walnut and Pear Salad. I'd throw in some dried cranberries and do chevre instead of the blue cheese (gotta make it gluten free) and we would be in business! http://www.sheknows.com/holidays-and-seasons/articles/806414/low-carb-thanksgiving-side-dishes

Roasted Green Beans with Vinaigrette. I like that you can make this ahead of time, but maybe serve it warm instead of cold? Or am I reading it wrong? Simple ingredients and I already have them in my pantry so high on the list of possibilities: http://www.marthastewart.com/336788/green-beans-with-vinaigrette

Roasted Curried Cauliflower. I'm a huge fan of roasted veggies but instead of throwing another squash on the table this veggie will keep its crunch, a nice change of texture on a table of mashed potatoes and casseroles: http://www.marthastewart.com/262898/roasted-curried-cauliflower

Haricots Verts with Hazelnuts. While hazelnuts make me think of Christmas more than Thanksgiving, I still think this would be delicious. We make something similar to this on the grill with green beans, mushrooms, and almonds and its amazing so I think this would be a hit: http://www.marthastewart.com/336657/haricots-verts-with-hazelnuts

Brussels Sprouts with Bacon. I've seen lots of variations of this recipe but all have bacon or panchetta, an onion, and sprouts. Some have garlic, some have red pepper, some have shallots or a specific onion but the vibe is the same. I saw this on TV a few years ago and have wanted to try it ever since: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/brussels-sprouts-with-bacon-recipe/index.html

Non-Food Rewards

2011-11-14T21:08:00.001-08:00

Rewards that don't consist of food are hard to figure out. Again, doing the whole quarter life crisis thing and trying to get healthy. Note- I don't want to be "skinny" but I do want my heart and lungs healthy for my family and I want to kick diabetes to the curb (not diabetic yet but dancing that line). We live in such a food centered culture that its difficult to even think of a way to celebrate without food. Baseball team wins? Pizza! Promotion at work? Beer and Margaritas! Good grade on a final? Ice cream extravaganza! So here are some ideas I have for my rewards for loosing weight. I want to give myself something for every 10 pounds that I loose and to get to my goal weight I need to loose 60lbs. Do what? Yeah, and just so you know that is the weight I was when I met the hubby and I was only in a size 12 so don't get crazy thinking I'm going to waste away to nothing. I like my curves and I want to keep them!

T-10: Boxing Gloves and a new gym outfit

T-20: New athletic shoes since currently mine are white and pink and over 3 years old. I only wear athletic shoes to work out and if you know me, white and pink are colors that never grace my body even on socks and underwear.

T-30: Sheets and a duvet for our bedroom since right now its death by beige and I want something purple.

T-40: Indoor rock climbing or trapeze class. While heights make me nervous, I'm working hard at overcoming this and I've always wanted to climb a rock wall or do a trapeze class but have never wanted to tell them my weight for the fall protection.

T-50: Spa day! I don't like spending too much time away from the wee man on the weekends but I could handle a nice massage and a facial/body scrub. Not a fan of manicures since I work with my hands so much they only last 2-3 days and with burn scars on my legs from a fire pedicurists conveniently forget my left leg.

T-60: ???

Thanksgiving Appetizers

2011-11-12T11:49:00.001-08:00

I am hot and heavy into planning the food for Thanksgiving. One of our friends from TN moved to the Seattle area with her job so we are hosting this year- very excited! I ordered our hippy dippy turkey from the butcher last week (grain fed, cage free, secular, lesbian turkeys that chose to die to feed my family or something equally friendly sounding) and I decided to make desserts easy and just ordered the gluten free pecan and pumpkin pies from a gluten free bakery I pass on the way home. Every year I make a corn bread dressing and green bean casserole and our friend is bringing mashed potatoes and a sweet potato casserole, and here are a few things I'm thinking about doing as well... just have to remember we are only feeding 3 adults and a toddler so we shouldn't go overboard:

Holiday cucumber cups- hollow out a slice of cucumber and pipe in some hummus, doesn't get much easier than that folks. (http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/holiday-cucumber-cups-684974/)

Fruit Gobbler- its like a DIY edible arrangement! Just jab fruit and veggies on bamboo skewers into your melon (and cheese, mmmmm cheese) and think turkey thoughts. I was thinking this is something my son could help me make and if you cut the melon in half so it looks like a sitting turkey, you can use the melon fruit on for feathers as well. (http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/fruit-gobbler-688370/)

Marshmallow Pilgrim Hats- I know, you need more sugar on Thanksgiving like you need another hole in your head but these are too cute! This recipe has shortbread cookies but at Target in the kosher section they have chocolate dipped mini rice cakes (Shibolim Whole Grain Chocolate Rice Cakes) that would work awesome for the bottom and that my friends saves you calories. (http://familyfun.go.com/thanksgiving/thanksgiving-kids-table-fun/thanksgiving-kids-table-recipes/marshmallow-pilgrim-hats-682463/)

Spicy Cranberry Cream Cheese Dip- this looks amazing and most likely will be made. Cranberries, jalapeno, cilantro, green onion goodness on a cream cheese pillow of heaven and piled high on a cracker. Maybe I should make a batch to test first just in case... you know... to make sure I don't need to make a double batch. (http://jamiecooksitup.blogspot.com/2010/11/cranberry-cream-cheese-diphold-wood.html)

No Bake Smoked Salmon Pinwheels- Caught your attention with the no bake bit didn't I? While the ingredients listed are a bit decadent, you can't get much more pacific north west than smoked salmon. I would have to use corn or brown rice tortillas to make it gluten free but the idea? Love it. (http://kitchensimplicity.com/three-no-bake-thanksgiving-appetizers/)

Remember, choose your food wisely in the weeks around the holidays and increase your activity and enjoy your holiday fest with loved ones guilt free. :)

Life in Excess

2011-11-09T21:44:00.000-08:00

I have too much. While this isn't a complaint you normally hear (out side of whitewhine.com) its true for me and for a lot of other Americans. I eat way too much food, of that food half of it is poor choices, I have too much stuff cluttering my condo, my spending habits are out of control with $5 here or $20 there, and I spend too much time in front of a screen. I need to simplify my life, reduce my impact on things, and increase my patience. I also need to work on not letting the fact that the pay off on a long term goal is some time in the future as opposed to the immediate satisfaction of the momentary pleasure. Perfect example: gorging out on a lunch at work instead of brown bagging it hurts my finances and weight/health. Saying no saves me money (long term added together makes for financial security) and calories (no diabetes/obesity/heart disease) but it doesn't take much to talk me into Chipotle instead of leftover roasted veggies.

So we made a budget, I'm counting calories, and I got some Groupon's stashed away for exercise classes that I am using before they expire. Kickboxing starts Saturday and Bikram yoga starts around the New Year. When I go into a store I have a list and I'm sticking to it- its pathetic how many times I find myself talking myself out of an impulse buy. Today I talked myself out of bacon popcorn. Really? I needed microwavable bacon popcorn? *face palm*

I'm also working on mostly unplugged nights. When I get home I have Neal and my evening chores: dinner, cleaning dinner, packing lunches, cleaning that up, bathing the wee man, tidying up the house, tending to the most awesome beagle ever, story time, then putting us all down to bed. This all gets done in a 3 hour time span. Why does the TV need to be on for this? When its on and I take a 15 minute breather I just sit down and zone instead of playing with my son. Tonight it was radio only and we were able to play and I even convinced Neal to help me out with some of the chores/projects I was doing as well!

On the days when I find myself binging on poor food choices thats okay. Just like other bad habits I won't let one bad day be the beginning of a pattern. Note the problem then promptly correct it. Same with buying crap that I don't need. Will someone stop being my friend because I didn't buy them that clearance candle as a just-because gift? No. Well, hopefully not and if they do they weren't really good people anyway.

So here is to defining my zen thing.

Whats For Lunch #1

2011-09-14T19:30:00.000-07:00

Nutshell Update: We moved from a small apartment to a tiny condo, still in Issaquah. Brad got a job at Boeing working 2nd shift and I'm still working days so Neal is now in part time preschool and seems to like it well. Hopefully now that we have two incomes we can move to a house after the first of the year and Neal and Texas can have a yard to play in. Now comes the lunch issue.

I hate packing lunches. Everywhere is peanut free so no PBJ sandwiches, we are gluten free so that limits grains because they are expensive/break down in the lunch box/taste like moon rocks, and my creativity is lacking. Add to that I'm trying to clean up dinner mess and close down the house for the night all the while spending time with the wee man... yeah. Every mothers cross to bear. So here is his lunch I packed for tomorrow, and yes that's his old easter basket because that's how we roll here:

Cinnamon puffin cereal, cherry tomatoes, turkey/montery jack cheese/cranberry mustard pinwheels in a corn tortilla, and cut up plums and cantelope.

Hopefully I don't end up bringing most of it home tomorrow!

Month of Thanks (the first)

2010-11-21T19:31:00.000-08:00

Its easy to get sucked into the overworked/underappreciated schmuck that is your average day so I decided to do a month of thanks on my facebook status updates. Here are the first 15 days and I'll post the last 15 days at the end of the month:

Doing a month of thanks 4 days late: I am thankful for 1) pumpkin spice lattes with soy milk, 2) living in the amazing city of Seattle, 3) having freshly shaped eyebrows, and 4) finally having internet at our house.

Month of Thanks day 5: I am so thankful for liking my family. Tonight we are going to a play area for Neal to climb and knock down other little kiddos and Brad and I get to just sit back and observe a little man forming, or we get to crawl around and experience the world as a kid again. Not everyone "likes" their famil...y and I am so thankful that I do. I love being a mom and a wife and an Eva.

Month of Thanks Day 6: I am thankful for being under financial duress. It has made me re-evaluate what is important in my life and has reminded me how important it is to have that financial cushion to fall back on when needed. I've also learned how to cook satisfying meals at home and where all the good second hand stores are in town!

Month of Thanks Day 7: This morning I am thankful for that extra hour of sleep, skype, clean apartments, good breakfast, and trader joes. Oh! And for fancy creamer that makes drinking coffee at home far more enjoyable!

Month of Thanks Day 8: Today I am thankful to FedEx for bringing me my money!

Month of Thanks Day 9: I am SO VERY THANKFUL for the Klahanie Moms group and for Michelle Anderson for hosting such wonderful "play dates" for babies and moms!

Month of Thanks Day 10: I am thankful for awesome co-workers who talk me off the cliff when the client gets up in arms and soothes wounds by taking me to a gluten free bakery for cupcakes. So not only am I thankful that I even have a job that can sustain my family, but Im deeply grateful that I enjoy it and my co-workers so much.

Month of Thanks Day 11: Not very origional but still very genuine, I am thankful for veterans who have served in times of war and in times of peace. The sacrifices they have made and the things they have experienced make themselves and this country a richer place for everyone. Big props to my hubby, who served in the USAF National Guard for 7 years.

Month of Thanks Day 12: I am thankful that its Friday, that my husband is a stay at home dad, that I found someone to carpool with, that we are selling the truck for a more family friendly vehicle, for hot chai, for trying to make my apartment feel more like a home, and for pulling together dinner last night when we thought there wasn't anything to eat!

Month of Thanks Day 13: Today I am thankful that when I dropped Neal at Small Threads he was only scared and shaken up and didn't sustain any sort of injury (maybe a headache?), and I'm thankful that the Moms who saw what happened didn't chew me out. I'm also thankful that Brad puts up with me when I am in a bad mood for no reason.

Month of Thanks Day 14: Today I am thankful for literacy. Reading brings so much richness, knowledge, and insight into my life and opens up worlds that I would never be able to experience otherwise.

Month of Thanks Day 15: Today I am thankful that this too shall pass. No matter how much a certain situation or hour may royally suck, I know that it will always end. That and I'm thankful that the barista at work pulled out the gingerbread syrup early and I got to have the first gingerbread latte of the year. And thanks to Caitlyn for buying it for me.

Room to Exhale

2010-11-07T09:23:00.001-08:00

Isn't that a movie? Or thats waiting to exhale. Oh well. Whats new in the past 2 months? Well, I have a one year old.

And we are settled in for the most part. Halloween was funeven though we only had like 3 trick or treaters, which is majorly depressing considering we had over 500 last year (literally) but we live in an apartment and we know with the next house we live in, the trick or treater factor will be high on our list. Here is a picture of Neal, Texas, and I being impatient waiting for Brad to get his camera settings just right. Brad is a perfectionist when it comes to pictures, I just want it documented. Grrrrrrr...

Speaking of houses, we walked away from our house in Cashmere. Its still for sale but we can't afford rent and a morgtage since Brad is a stay at home dad and Im the only income... gotta look out for us now and we are hoping for a short sale. If we have to foreclose than we have to foreclose but I am manifesting luctrative thoughts that it doesn't come to that. Our apartment here is so tiny compared to our beautiful home and I'd like to be able to rent a house without a lot of lip when this lease is up.

I've also been looking hard into getting my postpartum doula certification. Neal is at the age where I can get back into hobbies. The fabric totes in the garage have been singing their siren song as I think about cozy lounge pants and maybe a robe for Neal for the holidays. I feel really drawn to doula services so hopefully once we stop burning the candle at both ends I can look further into that schooling.

Well, Neal is snoozing on me and now I want to watch him sleep because he looks so sweet.

All the good things about Seattle

2010-08-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

Things are just a wee bit on the stressed side so I want to list a few of the things that make me happy about uprooting our family and moving to Seattle.

1. IKEA
So this really needs no more elaboration, does it? IKEA is the wonder of all wonders and there will be one half an hour away from my front door step. Danger Chase Bank, Danger!

2. Rat City Roller Girls
I have a wee confession. When I was about 12 I was obsessed with theatrical wrestling. I'm talking Diamond Dallas Page, Sting, Macho Man Randy Savage, the works! So what happens when that little girl who would scream ring side for the Undertaker to whip Rick Flair's butt grows up? She turns that passion towards Roller Derby. And to make my little heart quiver with a primal violent delight, they have a boot camp in the summer. Guess what I'm saving up for next year?

3. Downsizing to an apartment
Did I seriously just say that? But yes. Brad and I have flip out moments about once a week at the massive amount of STUFF we have accumulated. And it isn't really a lot of stuff hoarded away, its just spread across the entire house in a thin engulfing layer. Every time we move, we thin out our loot drastically and we are moving from over 1500 sq/ft of living space with about 1000 sq/ft of storage to about 1000 sq/ft of living and storage... all the no nonsense gets sold/donated/pitched. The apartment that we chose comes with a garage and all the nice amenities like a pool, fitness center, club house, and we are at the end of the complex next to the hiking trails. Plus, the rent is cheaper than our mortgage so once we DO sell the house, we will have that cost savings.

4. GREEN
I cannot stress enough my need for green. Wenatchee has plenty of sunshine and I've learned to even like that, but everything is brown and dead and scrubby. Again, it has its own beauty but Brad and I make small orgasmic noises every time we head thru the mountain passes and see all the green spring to life and the moss growing and the ferns sprouting from the ditches and just smelling that wonderful heady aroma of chlorophyll and mud and wet rocks.

5. Rain
One of the things I have ached for since moving to Wenatchee is a rainy weekend where you spend the entire time in yoga pants, drinking coffee, watching movies, catching up on your reading, and listening to NPR. Don't even get me started about an actual for real thunderstorm that consists of more than 2 bolts of lightening and 5 claps of thunder!

6. Gluten-Free goodness
After we decided on the apartment, we tried to find the Trader Joes down the street but instead found another random organic store called PCC which is similar to a Whole Foods. Brad had to give me a stern look because I was gasping and pointing at all the gluten free things there. Seriously, there was a pack of GF Cinnamon Rolls the size of your face. Cinnamon rolls!!!!!1!one1!

7. Museums
The S.A.M, Experience Music Project, Sci-Fi, Museum of Flight, Gold Rush, and all the other random ones for vikings and china town and Sasquatch and other wonderful ways to do stuff on the weekend besides walk around a shopping center or complain about how there is nothing to do.

8. Music
Not only can I see larger name bands like Tool and Muse, but also mid level artists like Ray Lamontagne and even "local" bands like Abney Park and a wonderful open mic nights and singer songwriter stuff. In Nashville music surrounds you and its absence sits heavy on my ears.

9. Population
Its difficult for me to make friends. I work in a science field, don't go to church, don't party, have a wonderful husband who I'm very happy with, and a 10 month old son. Statistically, I am more likely to find people to hang out with in a bigger city than I have in Wenatchee. Have I made good friends here? Of course! And I hope to continue to have them in my life. Would I like more? You betcha!

10. Crunch and Munch
I'm a co-sleeping, baby wearing, public nursing, make my own organic baby food kind of mom and Seattle is full of other crunchy moms too. I love not feeling awkward nursing Neal at a restaurant!

11. Proximity to other major sites of interest
I have friends that live in Portland, we still want to go to Vancouver BC, the Puget Sound is right in our back yard, and we haven't gone to the Olympic Peninsula yet. All these things are so much more accessible!

12. Man stuff
Brad can go see the Mariners or the Sounders play baseball/soccer and get way too tipsy and local breweries and compare tactical pants that cost way too much money (but they are pants AND shorts!) with other manly men. That makes him happy which makes me happy.

13. Ethnic Food
We tend to eat in ethnicities. I will eat ANYTHING as long as its gluten free, I'd even eat a bug if it was prepared correctly and not breaded! Wenatchee has its fair share of Mexican resturants and East Wenatchee has a really great Thai place, but there is more to the world than Mexican, Thai, Chinese, and the Olive Garden folks! I'm looking forward to Indian, Ethopian, Iranian, Russian, Israeli, Costa Rician, Japanese, and any other country you can think off that has a signature dish. *sigh* The salad I had for dinner just did not hit the spot!

And with that I'm going to snuggle with the men folk and drift off to sleep thinking of all the wonderful things my family will do.

Moving on up to the east side

2010-08-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

Well, to the east side of Seattle. We are moving.

This is where you lift your jaw back to its hinges and wonder aloud, "wha?".

See, when we moved to Wenatchee from Nashville two years ago, Brad was supposed to get job placement as part of the relocation package. He never got it because there were no jobs to be had, so he took some temporary assignments in some slightly related fields and eventually went back to school. Me being the only income with him commuting 250 miles each day and Neal being in daycare darn near broke us. One day at work Brad and I were sending each other texts discussing our woes when one of us stated that life would be a lot easier in Seattle. And the other agreed, and next thing you know I'm at an interview nailing a job for a contractor at a very well known software company and we're moving. Brad has a few very exciting leads and we are both excited. Its that excitement you get when you bungee jump though.... its a rush but in the back of your head you pray that the rope doesn't break!

We're putting the house up for rent which hurts my heart greatly because I love this little house. Its the first home we bought, its where I brought home Neal, its where Brad and I attempted the American dream. So yes, the move is quite bittersweet. We were going to put it up for sale but we would need to sell it FAST and the market has houses sitting for around 3-6 months before it sells and we just couldn't fly that plane. We found a little house on the east side of the city that we are trying to rent so as soon as I get that application thru we should be okay. Fingers triple crossed!

Leaving my current position has been a hard decision to make. I tried to work out a few options for them to make it feasible for me to stay and it just didn't happen. I'm trying to play Thumper here (if you cant say anything nice don't say anything at all), but suffice to say this is not how I envisioned us at this point in our lives!

Well, its been a long weekend of house hunting and at some point I threw my back out. Just in time to pack up and move because my timing is impeccable...

cha cha changes

2010-07-29T21:10:00.000-07:00

Lately Neal has been a holy terror getting to sleep so I talked to Nancy (the nurse at work who spent 20 years doing labor and delivery and well child checks for low income mothers) about it and she told me to do these "simple" steps:

1. Establish a routine and stick with it. We chose eat dinner then play a bit and give him a bath and brush his teeth around 7pm. After that let him play in his room for about half an hour with only the lamp on and read him books/sing songs.

2. Between 730 and 8 depending on his mood, nurse him in the recliner and rock for a bit until he gets snoozy and fluttery eyed.

3. Kiss him g'night, let him know I'm in the next room, lay him in the crib, but a blanket over him, and leave the room.

4. Let him fuss for 3 minutes and then come in to pat his tushie but never pick him up. Leave the room.

5. Go in every 4, then 5, then 6, up to 10 minutes spans of crying to reassure him I'm here and teach him to self soothe. This isn't really crying it out, but establishing a pattern.

He got to step 3 and has been asleep for over an hour with no problem. Problem is its been ME thats getting teary eyed! I love the evenings when he is laying in bed next to me and nursing and I can just reach down and stroke his head or hold his hand and have his fingers wrap around my pinky. Roughly doing the math, on an average weekday I will now be spending a whopping 4-hours a day with my son.

That kind of breaks my heart.

I mean, he is doing fine in there... well, his leg is sticking through the crib slats but other than that he seems fine... but I didn't exactly have a baby to spend very little time with him. The reason we are even trying this is because he wont go down in bed with me or in his side car anymore. Gotta listen to what he is telling me blah blah blah. I still want my little guy :(

We haven't been having the best of times financially in the Glosson-Wright household so we've been exploring our options. Looked at some places in Seattle, talked to a few people at corporate about an expat to Australia, and rearranged our roles at home. Unfortunately Brad has had to drop out of school because the commute was costing us too much money and he just doesn't have the time to go to school full time and work. Right now he has a lead on a job doing soil samples which would be fantastic seeing as his degree is in plant and soil science, and even though it is only a seasonal thing with the apple harvest, its still money in the bank and thats what we need!

Its getting late and I need to think sleepy thoughts. The bed is going to feel awfully empty tonight...

How can I fill up a house in a year?

2010-07-12T19:32:00.000-07:00

We bought this house in Feb 09 and it is Jul 2010. My house is full of crap! The garage hasn't even been completely unpacked (honestly its barely been touched) and we have to empty it and hang shelves so we can have a place to store the pop up camper that we are saving up for. My garage is full of the normal garage stuff like tools, wreaths, camping cramp, and Halloween decorations. But it also has tons of clothes, shoes, my vinyl collection, half our books, board games... its kind of ridiculous the amount of stuff thats in there. And of course we've gone without it for a year so do we really need it because obviously we haven't missed it or we bought a new one/dragged it out already. But no, our logic isn't so logical. We will put a pound of what is already in our house in a yard sale so we can bring in two pounds!

Aaaaaaagghhh! (channeling Charlie Brown over here)

In my defense, most of the crap in our house is baby stuff and Brad is half way trying to turn a room in the basement into an office/den where he can junk away but I mean really. I have 1,500 square feet of home full. This is completely unnecessary.

My mom (I want Neal to call her 'Gran') came up last week because daycare is on their two week vacation and we can't take that much time off of work to watch him. Side rant for a second- if I was able to take a week off for spring break, two weeks off for summer break, practically one Monday/Friday a month for bank holidays, and an undetermined amount of time off in November and December for the holidays don't you think I wouldn't really NEED daycare? Because I don't have a months worth of vacation days to burn from work to cover days that they take off and leave us stranded. I digress.

Mom came up and we had a really great time. We spent some time in Seattle and went to Pike Place Market, did an underground tour, and ate dinner on top of the space needle (note to all: do not eat at the space needle unless you want a bill easily over $100...). We also stayed at the homewood suites which was awesome, I highly recommend the chain for over-nighters or an extended stay. We also did some yard work and I feel like the house is finally coming around!

This weekend we went back to Seattle and visited Woodlawn Park Zoo. Lots of child psychologists and other knowledgable persons say its important to be mindful of your moods around your young children because they pick up on them and it molds them into who they become. We try to not fight around Neal and when we play with him we try to give him our full attention and when we get frustrated with him we try to talk it out with him instead of taking it out on him. Anyway I hope he picks up on our genuine interest and excitement and curiosity of science.

Thoughts and Revelations

2010-07-01T20:19:00.000-07:00

Neal is going to be 9 months old tomorrow. He is laying in bed snoozing next to me and softly rubbing my arm with his wittle hand. I look over and see his face all smooshed with his lips gone pouty and I can't help but think about the women (hell, maybe men) in his future who will look over at his face and get that same ethereal feeling that I do. Which makes me dislike my mother in law a little less because I'm sure she looked at Brad as a baby and felt that white glow as well.

Ive been too busy to blog because at night after Neal zonks out I try to work on a chapter in this story Ive been writing for forever. Which is what Im going to do now.

Camping?

2010-06-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up we used to do family camping a fair bit, and I really enjoyed it. My idea of camping is getting a tent with a blow up mattress, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, good conversation, and a hike or maybe a stomp in the creek.

Brad wants to go camping.

His idea of camping is hacking thru with a machette with a carefully weighed backpack and some waterproof matches.

We are working on a test run of compromised camping this weekend. With a 9 month old and a beagle this should be interesting. I hope I can get in some reading or some writing (I've got 4 chapters/35 pages written in my story) on the trip however I fear it may be mostly chasing a very curious baby around with sunscreen and insect repellant.

God save us all.

Death of Myself

2010-06-19T20:55:00.000-07:00

I used to be hip. I know that sounds ludicrous and juvenile and most of the time when people say they used to be something its a lie but seriously, I used to be hip. I went to the grimy dive bars and watched the local bands until I killed off that frequency in my hearing, I wore clothes almost exclusively from either the thrift store or my sewing machine, none of the bands I listened to or films I watched were from major studios. I even did the whole singer songwriter thing, was a vegetarian, smoked clove cigarettes and all that lame stuff.

Now my big fuck the world is nursing in public, buying organic lettuce, and shopping for antiques to decorate my house. I was looking at the pictures on a friends facebook page (I know, bad move...) and she is still a hipster. And she dates a swanky kind of guy and she had an old friend visit her and she is straight out of NYC hip and I feel like such a soccer mom. My clothes are from Target and Old Navy, and not the juniors section. And I understand that I am a wife and a mother and I have a career that doesn't exactly lend itself to dressing up but I feel like I've stopped caring about my appearance.

Why can't I be a chic mom? When did that edgy part of me hide contently in the shadows? Why do I care so much?

Vow Renewal in Vegas!

2010-05-31T14:28:00.001-07:00

Brad and I are planning a vow renewal. Well, scratch that, I am doing most of the planning and Brad is just going to show up! Initally we were planning on doing it on our 5-year anniversary this August but Brad has school stuff he can't miss so we decided to snow bird it in Vegas and just tell all our family that if they want to see us over the holidays they can fly into Vegas and while they are there, they can come see us get married again! I've been scouring etsy for some neat invitation ideas and I must say I'm in love with this simple design and for the cost of ordering it, it would be just as cheap as me making them myself!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/46591609/las-vegas-custom-wedding-invitation-and?ref=sr_gallery_3&ga_search_query=vegas+wedding+invitations&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_page=1&includes[]=tags&includes[]=title

I also really like these but they are a little too formal for a vow renewal and I don't have the equipment necessairy to make them and they are a wee bit too expensive to buy. If this were our wedding and not a renewal though I'd LOVE it!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/44198994/stella-save-the-date-sample?ref=sr_gallery_25&ga_search_query=vegas+wedding+invitations&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_page=1&includes[]=tags&includes[]=title

A giveaway?

2010-05-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

I've been in a crafty mood lately and I was pondering about making something for a free giveaway. Leave a comment if you are interested- I see a few reoccurring IP addresses so I think someone may read this besides me.

Hey good lookin' what you got cookin'

2010-05-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

I started this post earlier this week but with work craziness and sinus infections from hell... not to mention Neal busted out his first tooth AND learned how to crawl this week. Can you blame me for just now getting around to it?

Yard sales are my friend. This weekend we decided to drag this walker out of the basement and Neal cruises around the kitchen like a champ in it! These pictures make me realize how much I hate my kitchen floor...

We're trying to incorporate more vegetables into our diets and here is the dinner from a few nights ago. Spinach, blanched almonds, roasted sunflower seeds, raisins, cranberries, and mandarin oranges in a raspberry lime vinaigrette. All it was missing was some Gorgonzola cheese! We also put some sliced chicken on it but it just didn't hit the spot for me so I pushed the meat to the side and inhaled the rest of the bounty.

Double chocolate chip muffins. When these came out of the oven Brad said these were cupcakes to which I responded all muffins are cupcakes without icing. I then went even further to say that blueberry muffins with cream cheese frosting would be cupcakes. He asked if we had any blueberries. Badda bing!

I've also been making a lot of baby food. It is insanely easy and incredibly cheap! When we were in Chelan I found "Baby and Toddler Cookbook" by Rachelle Anne Hill and Tara Fischer (http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Toddler-Cookbook-Rachel-Anne/dp/184597588X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275191416&sr=1-3)
which is hands down the best $25 I've spent on a book! It outlines all sorts of time lines for things like what foods to introduce when, which ones to avoid, which ones need to be cooked, which ones are okay raw, when to expect them to handle finger foods... and they are all crazy easy and once he gets older there are recipes for the whole family that sound yummy! So far I've made mangos, broccoli, butternut squash, and blueberry oatmeal. We are still not feeding him gluten because I have celiac and we are trying super hard to keep it all organic. Last night at the Mexican restaurant he downed a whole side of guacamole so I think I should get some avocado tomorrow at the grocery store...

Well, its getting relatively late and I'm in the middle of a "Bones" marathon so I think I'll veg out in front of the boob tube until I'm ready to call it a night.

Master Bedroom

2010-05-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

Our house, in the middle of our street

2010-05-22T19:30:00.001-07:00

So I like it. Now I have to landscape/garden and yeah...

Vintage Carrot

2010-05-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

I decided to change the design of my blog so instead of brown and light blue, it is now more reminiscent of a an old gardening catalog. We'll call this look "vintage carrot".

In other news I see that I never posted pictures of my house and master bedroom so I will do that tomorrow evening. Neal took forever to get to sleep so I'm going to run to the kitchen and scarf down a bowl of cereal and then go to sleep myself.

Gurellia Breastfeeding

2010-05-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

To touch very briefly on a very touchy work subject, the union's master contract with the company is running out at the end of this month. So in order to keep the company running in case there is a strike, the salaried employees are learning how to make aluminum. Most employees will go to a different plant and a very select few will stay in the valley. I am one of those very select few- not because I'm such a fantastic person that they can't bear to let me leave the plant. But because I put my foot down and told them that I was a breastfeeding mother and I was not going to compromise that by being in a different state than my son. So one of the employees at work who is helping herd cats said that I was "nontransferable" and I joked that what he really meant by that was "she cant leave because the woman won't stop nursing". I was not expecting the look on his face, it was like.... well yeah, you should just stop nursing.

The World Health Organization (WHO) strongly recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months and suggests stopping breastfeeding around 2 years of age (http://www.who.int/topics/breastfeeding/en/) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says that breastfeeding should be continued as long as it is mutually desired by mother and baby (http://www.aap.org/breastfeeding/faqsBreastfeeding.html#right).

When I first had Neal I had a wretched time breastfeeding. My nipples were so sore and Neal had a hard time getting a good latch on that the first night home he and I sat in the recliner and just bawled until Dylan, our doula, came and helped us out. Lanolin was my best friend along with the constant encouragement from Brad and Dylan that this was normal, breastfeeding is hard at first, Neal was premature so he may have a harder time getting the hang of things. I also remember those first few weeks of cluster feedings because he was just one big growth spurt and again, I would lay in bed delirious with a baby hanging off of me. Brad was my hero in the mornings when he would take Neal for an hour or two and just let me get a few minutes of sleep and bond with just the two of them.

I am a very modest person. I always wear one piece bathing suits and I normally wear boarder shorts on top of that, my idea of "shorts" are capris, I try my hardest not to show cleavage with deep cut shirts (though when you are a DD on your "skinny" days that is easier said than done), and I like a bit of wiggle room in my clothes. When Neal was itty bitty and I would nurse him while we were out, I would try to find the darkest most isolated corner and throw a blanket over the two of us and wish with my eyes closed that no one noticed us. Once we got the hang of nursing in public and Neal became more interactive during his feedings I would just throw the blanket over the top of my chest for modesty sake or nurse him in his sling. Now my son looks like he could try out for the infant NBA so there is no way I can cover his length with a little receiving blanket and he is quite the exhibitionist and it is his goal in life to completely expose my breast. I'm not talking about nip slippage, I'm talking tear my top off so everyone can see that weird freckle thing on the mound of my breast. Even with my discrete nursing tops (so I don't have to pull up the hem of my shirt exposing my tummy) he will open up the slit to the max so my entire breast pops out and perches on my arm. Thankfully I haven't been given a hard time about nursing in public. The worst was today when I fed Neal in the food court at Target and the poor kid behind the counter, who couldn't be older than 19, just didn't know quite where to look. This weekend while grocery shopping I walked over to the furniture section and made myself comfortable on a couch and let Neal rest and snack. People walked by and didn't even look at me crosswise.

I don't even think twice about it anymore. I judge my audience accordingly, for instance after work this evening I went to Lowe's and Neal was getting a little fussy and 'motor boating' me in his ergo but seeing as I was around a bunch of men I went ahead and nursed him in the car. At the grocery store or a restaurant or shopping I just try not to have it all hanging out before he is in the go-position but if he pulls away and I expose myself for a second I don't instantly turn seven shades of red. I cover up in a hurry or shove him back on but I don't run out of the store in tears. I also pump at work, remember that my office is in the maintenance department at an aluminum smelter. After a few mishaps the guys know when my door is closed don't come in unless you want to see me hooked up to some crazy portable dairy farm. (Go here for a neat article on how women entering the workforce during WWII had a detrimental effects on the societal acceptance of breastfeeding: http://www.ifbreastfeedingoffendsyou.org/2010/05/world-war-ii-is-responsible-for-decline.html)

I don't drink cow milk, we are a soy milk family. Dairy makes me phlegmy and I don't like the flavor or texture. I had to cut out most dairy products with Neal because he does awful projectile vomiting when I eat yogurt or drink a latte with cow milk. We had to buy formula once when I just started back to work because I hadn't stocked the freezer yet and in a pinch if I start to see the freezer emptying out when he increases his demand I will take some reglan to get the old supplies up (though doubling your water intake, pumping every 2 hours, and eating oatmeal is does just as good of a job as the prescription does). No other mammal but humans drink the milk of another mammal except in orphan situations and it just doesn't make sense to me to stop Neal cold turkey at some randomly ordained age and substitute mothers milk with cows milk. Because he still needs those nutrients. My goal is to let Neal breastfeed until he is around 18 months, but if he weans himself off before then that is okay.

My sister thinks breastfeeding a baby is the equivalent of pooping in your baby's mouth. I just don't understand how breastfeeding is seen as gross or unnatural. I really hope that more mothers not only choose to breastfeed, but do so in public, and for as long as both mom and baby want/need to breastfeed. Hopefully this stupid "stigma" of feeding your child will go away by the time I have grand kids.

Strawberry Ruhbarb Crisp

2010-05-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

I work with a wonderful woman named Theresa who also got her BS in Geology so she and I make a point to sit next to each other in big meetings or whenever we can run an errand to each other's buildings so we can gab. She called us up late last week and asked if we wanted some ruhbarb. I have never in all my years even tasted rhubarb let alone cooked with it but I heard it was very tart and I adore all things tart so I said I'd take some.

She gave me a nice little packet of recipes and I had all the ingredients for the Rhubarb Crisp from The Grand Central Baking Book and let me tell you, I was highly impressed! I completely forgot to add the sugar but I kind of liked it oooey gooey and we had a quart of strawberries on their last leg in the fridge so I went ahead and made it a strawberry rhubarb crisp.

1. Pre-heat your oven to 350. Clean your ruhbarb and strawberries well.

2. In an 8X8 greased/buttered pan (my 8x8 was dirty so I used my 7x11) add your diced rhubarb and strawberries. I used 2 stalks of rhubarb and about 8 strawberries.

3. In a small bowl combine the following ingredients with your fingers until the mixture is mealy with a few bigger chunks of butter:

-1c. packed brown sugar

-3/4 c. white sugar

-3/4 c. oats

-1/2 c. flour (again, I forgot this step even though I had Pam's Baking Mix in the cabinet...)

-3/4 tsp. salt

-1/2 cup cold butter cubed

4. Spread evenly over the bottom layer of ruhbarb and strawberries.

5. Bake for an hour and try not to annoy your husband while constantly singing the jingle from A Prarie Home Companion, "momma's little baby loves ruhbarb, ruhbarb. Bebopareebop ruhbarb pie". Serve warm with a cup of joe!

This was much better the second day around, I suppose the sugar and butter had more time to break down the cell wall in the ruhbarb. I was amazed at the beautiful deep red of the ruhbarb stalks and the strawberries. We just cleared a raised bed for planting vegetables and I think this winter I will plant a few stalks of ruhbarb for a welcome late spring harvest.

Roman

2010-05-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

This is my inspiration for my character Roman. I even love his cute little lazy eye. *le sigh*

Why I don't believe in "crying it out"

2010-05-07T18:05:00.000-07:00

This lovely and breif segment by the wonderfully brilliant Penelope Leach explains why letting a baby "cry it out" is not a good thing to do to a developing child.

Elizabeth Pantley offers tons of assistance with her "No-Cry Solution" series dealing with sleep, seperation anxiety, discipline, and even potty training. Here is her website:

http://www.nocrysolution.com

"Remember you are not managing an inconvenience; You are raising a human being." -Kittie Franz

If its yellow let it mellow...

2010-05-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

My week in a nutshell:

Spend all day on Friday flying from Washington to Tennessee, land in Nashville at 10pm with an exhausted baby. Saturday its raining and we drive to Missouri to get a five generation picture with all the matriarchs and Neal, Dad leaves that night and says the roads are awful. Sunday we drive down and see torrential flooding that washes out sections of interstates, leaves hundreds if not thousands homeless, and is now being called "Nashville's Katrina".

Monday we assess the damage and head to Murfreesboro to visit with Casey and Megan and my beautiful friend Heather. The water had already gone down significantly. Davidson county is told to conserve water at all costs hence the title of this blog... I am also told that the ergonomics seminar I flew down for was canceled so free vacation for Eva.

Tuesday we went to my parent's work to show off Neal and I did some serious shopping. Take that punch to the economy! Neal is gonna be looking mighty fine this summer. Today we met with Brad's mom and brother at Cracker Barrel and got even more clothes. We may head on over to my Aunt Peggy's after dinner to visit with her for a little while.

Nashville is hot and muggy and wet and religious and has lots of smokers and really big hair. I miss Washington state.

Motherhood and Apple Pie

2010-04-25T20:30:00.000-07:00

Well, my pictures loaded in reverse order so what I had written in my head is gonna have to be written in reverse so if I come off a bit more disjointed than usual, that's why.

I'm pretty sure I posted about the ergo carrier I spent mucho dinero on but lemme tell you it was worth every penny. The guide said that babies 6 months and older can ride comfortably in the back and today was a success! I was doing my weekend kinda-deep clean and Neal was having nothing of playing nicely by himself in the floor on a blanket and I knew if I carried him in the front his head would be bonking tub and counter so I acrobatically slung him on the back and after about 15 minutes of scouring the bathroom he was happily in snoozeville.

So when do I get to try some of that coffee your making ma?

We bought a king sized bed *insert angelic music here* from IKEA a few weeks ago and it is set to ship on Monday and will take 3-7 business days to arrive at the house so we took this opportunity to do another interior rearrangement. Unfortunately Brad and I have not slept in the same bed since Neal has been born due to cramped space so the king sized bed has us both foaming at the mouth with excitement. Last week we re-arranged furniture, the queen went downstairs into the guest room (which I won't touch with a ten foot pole because it is our junk room and I don't know how to organize it...) and the futon moved upstairs into the nursery. I'm really pleased with the new furniture arrangement and even with the futon folded out there is still plenty of room to frolic about. Right now he is resting in his crib, some nights he goes in his crib easier than others but he still has not made it a full night. Hell, he still won't sleep thru the night in bed next to me! Oh well, the kid gets poor sleep habits from both parents so I really can't say anything.

Getting fancy with the panorama option on the cell phone.

Since the master bedroom was devoid of furniture I figured now was the perfect time to paint the room since it too was attacked with the covergirl beige foundation paint like the rest of the house. Whoever converted the attic (I still can't spell attic without going back to my mental fourth grader and saying in my head "a tittie I see") did a crap DIY job on hanging the drywall. The seams are disgustingly obvious and they didn't even bother spackeling the nail holes or making the divide from ceiling to wall crisp. Its like they did the job in a weekend with a case of Budweiser. I spackled an insane amount of holes but the botched tape job can't be hidden. The ceiling is white and the walls are Limestone by Eddie Bauer. It came out a bit darker and a bit more green than I had anticipated (like every color I end up choosing...) so I really hope it doesn't clash with the duvet I ordered for the bed.

A pox upon your walls!

A nice masculine color.

The painters have had a hell of a time this week. On Monday I came home to paint chips all over my porch and lawn which made me irrationally mad because my house is almost 100 years old so its COVERED in lead based paint. Seeing as I would like Neal to use all of his brain cells to their full capacity I kinda threw a shit fit. The next morning they got the shop vac out and cleaned up the porch but my lawn still has chips in it and they need to do something about it before they consider the job complete. On Tuesday we got some wicked wind so they took the day off, Wednesday it was still windy so they chose the sheltered side of the house and just rolled the paint on. Thursday and Friday they sprayed the main color on 3 sides of the house and then they took the weekend off. I for one am super ready for them to be done so I can plant my veggie garden.

Paint sample next to the original "rainy day grey" color.

A bigger section painted, its "Barrel" from the Eddie Bauer collection... go figure...

I have come to embrace the passage from maiden to mother by investing in gowns. I now own 4 sleeping gowns and I need at least 7 so I can have one for every night until I do laundry. I keep my eye out for a sleeveless cotton gown that goes down to my knees or so and that either buttons down to mid sternum or opens up in some way shape or form so I can nurse at night. Today I got a very snazzy pink art deco looking one from Target's Liberty of London collection and I am loving it! I wear a lot of muted colors during the day but I love a fancy colorful whimsical gown- its one of my secret guilty pleasures. That and cross dressing men. I don't know why but hot damn if Eddie Izzard and Rocky Horror don't do it for me!

And on that note its a hair after 9pm and I will turn into a pumpkin shortly so I bid you all adieu.

6 months already?

2010-04-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

To infinity and beyond! Playing astrophysist like his name sakes.

Well the little man is pushing 7 months if you can even believe such a thing. Right now we are in the throws of a whole lotta everything: painting the outside of the house, re-decorating the master with paint and a king sized bed, planning our garden/landscaping, introducing solid foods, and kinda transitioning Neal out of our bed. I say kinda because I love sleeping with him but Brad loves sleeping with me and three in a bed gets kinda crowded. Not only that but he is getting a wee bit thrashy when he just slips into sleep and he has begun to self soothe pretty well. As much as I don't want to listen to his signs I have to respect them. I am sleeping in the nursery tonight on the futon since the master bedroom is a disaster zone and he has happily lulled himself to sleep while making out with the glow seahorse and is now zonked out and snoring like a purring cat.

Yeah, you just keep on thinking your a "big boy" but I'll carry you in this ergo until the damn straps break son!

The first weekend in April we all road tripped down to Portland to see a MUSE concert *Im not worthy* and visit with Pam, Mark, Angie, and Warren. We splurged on a hotel room and had a very nice little get away. Brad got a maple bacon bar at VooDoo Donuts and then we wandered around Saturday Market where I got a monster for my office which looks straight up like a gremlin from "Labryinth" with Bowie, and Brad got a desktop trebucht (?) to play with when he teaches science next year. I got a few nursing tops and bras at Motherhood Maternity (side note: why the hell doesn't the valley have one of these stores?) and then we went to the Franklin School and noshed on good food and beer. Warren was super sweet and shared his tater tots with Neal, I sincerly hope that the two little terrors will play together as they get older.

Gentle touches from a new friend.

Well, little buddy is tossing and turning in his big boy bed so I better wrap things up in case I need to whisk him away into the comfort of my arms though to be honest its me finding comfort in the small of his wittle bitty arms. Must.... resist.... urge to..... snatch....out of..... BAAAAAAAAHHHHH

call me a big fat liar

2010-02-14T19:40:00.000-08:00

I just can't do it. Earlier today I was watching Neal roll around in his side-car crib and noticed he is getting pretty good about flopping limbs out of the sides when he was rolling around. I hesitated before telling Brad that this weekend we needed to move him to his "big boy bed" in the nursery. Out of the blue my eyes welled up with tears and I wanted to eat my words. I'm not ready for him to leave my side at night. He still is up every 3 hours mininum so I don't really think he is ready to leave either. He is very mobile when he is awake but when he sleeps next to me at night, he nestles into my breast and grabs onto my shirt or finger and stays perfectly still until he gets hungry. I feel it deep in the marrow of my bones that it is perfectly safe to co-sleep with him for a while longer but I think Brad's patience is wearing thin. Which breaks my heart because I am so torn. On one hand it is nice when Neal is in his side-car crib and Brad and I can intertwine our limbs like we did in the days before we were parents. But there is nothing better in the whole wide world then nursing Neal in the middle of the night and having Brad flop over and create an Eva quesidilla.

Neal is a drug. It really does take a lot for me to cry and I've broken down twice since telling Brad that Neal needs to transition. I would gladly sleep on a rug in the floor of the nursery if that meant being able to continue to sleep with Neal. We picked out a king sized bed from IKEA this weekend and when we get it to the house I still think there will be plenty of room for the three of us to safely co-sleep. Something I've learned from talking to a lot of the hourly workers at Alcoa (imagine your average "Bounty Man" but make him a welder instead of a lumberjack) and a whole slew of them with young children happily admit to co-sleeping. Why does it have such a stigma? Sometimes I get the same reaction to people when I tell them I co-sleep that I would if I said I partake in the occasional doobie (which I don't). It sounds so cliche but how can something be wrong when it feels so comforting and nurtring and right. I completely understand that there is a safety issue involved because he has started to roll, but not in his sleep. I don't know. I'm torn. All I know is I am soooooo not ready for him to leave my side at night. Its hard enough being away from him every day while I'm at work, I just don't think my soul could survive if I couldn't reach out and touch the downy hair on his head at night or listen to his soft snores as they lull me to sleep.

Strangers in the night

2010-01-08T21:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, first off I suck at blogging because, well- life happens.

Second... MUSE! Zomg, I am totally having a fan girl moment. Muse is tied for all time greatest band with Tool and they are coming to my neck of the woods in April. They come to Seattle on the 2nd but we decided to road trip it to Portland to see their show on the 3rd and to visit with Angie, Pam, Mary Ann and all their families. I know I can't get on craftster.org as much as I had but I still love all my ladies. Alright, I sound like a pimp now but I do miss my mods a lot.

Neal is doing amazing. He is a hair over 3 months old and last night he giggled AND rolled over for the first time. We were doing the happy dance and he looked at us like we were idiots. Silly boy, he just doesn't know. Day care is going well enough for a day care. I am not blown away by it in the least but I don't worry about his safety and I know all his needs are being tended too. Sometimes I just worry he isn't getting enough undivided attention to do things like "tummy time" and motor skill development. But I'm a new mom so what do I know. He is also sleeping most of the night in his sidecar crib instead of in bed with us but at 4am when he wakes up for his last feeding I put him between Brad and I and we all get in a big puppy pile cuddle puddle of wonderful-ness. I know it won't last for long so I'm eating it up with a spoon while I can.

We got new phones today from Verizon. Our contract ran out about a year ago and we never re-signed and got the new-every-two phones but after looking at the cheapest plan with the best coverage, we found out that what we have was about the best option for us so we made our deal with the devil and signed another contract. Because we are dinkledorffs we got matching phones but mine is burgundy while his is slate blue. They didn't have black- boo.

We are also doing a Mediterranean diet. Basically my dad had his heart attack and bypass surgery and 2 months later my aunt goes into the hospital with a cold and finds out its cardio pulmonairy failure (I think... heart lung not good syndrome...) and when they did her echocardiogram SHE had blocked arteries and just did open heart today. For serious? Geezie talk about bad genes! So I got my blood run and my levels are great. But the doctor said with genetics like that I need to eat heart healthy and work on cardio exercise. Eating healthy isn't hard, but avoiding sweets is harder than I realized because I am literally addicted to sugar. I had to fill my candy dish at work with gluten candy so I wouldn't eat it! Lots of veggies, fruits, whole grains, and only lean meat. Tonight while we were out we ate at Red Robin and while I can kill a bacon cheeseburger I got a cobb salad instead- muy deliciouso!

Well, I want to do a wee bit more surfing before zonking out. With my first full time week back in the plant from maternity leave I can say with unbounded enthusiasm- TGIF!

yuletide reflections

2009-12-20T20:08:00.000-08:00

While we intend to raise Neal secular I do want to expose him to different traditions and customs that may be around due to religions, case and point Yule. This time of year has so many holidays that seem to focus on light. What I like about the pagan celebration of Yule is that it is a time to reflect on finding the peace and calm of the night and to think of how you can welcome the new light into your life.

I try to nurse Neal to sleep around 8pm. Right now we are still bed sharing but due to a sagging bed and my forever morphed from child-bearing hips, I am working on getting him back into his co-sleeper. I actually enjoy having a family bed because during the day when I'm at work I crave my son's touch. As soon as I go home I am hyperventilating to get him in my arms and onto my breast. But at night when its just the two of us taking our half of the bed out of the middle while Brad winds down for the night, it is so peaceful. The only sounds I hear are the kicking of our heat pump, the soft whisper of the ceiling fan, and the steady suckling of my son. I simply forget about the gossip of lay offs at work, or the health problems my family seems to be cashing in here at the end of the year, or borrowing other troubles. I simply breathe in his scent and bask in the zen-like serenity of the silent night.

Bringing in the light is a bit harder. The Kaballah teaches us that the woman is a vessel that holds the light, and when I think of the light I can't help but think of the literal spectrum of light as opposed to a god-like (or in this case perhaps goddess-like) light. So thinking about sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns that barf glitter and fart kittens, how can I bring that light into my life in 2010? I like to think of myself as an optimistic cynic- I hope for the best but I am not surprised when the worst happens. So this year I will try to open up the literal and figurative windows in my life to let the positive things shine in. I need to really coax a more organic and holistic lifestyle into my home. We need to eat better, be more active, and as much as I hate to say it... be outside more. We should go camping, make a garden, take a hike, tube down the beautiful rivers, take a road trip to Vancouver, go spend time with my friends in Portland, I want to run another 5k with Neal in a little stroller. I need to be the best wife/mom/daughter/sister/EHS specialist that I can be.

May your holiday season find you well, and I hope that you too can find the peace in the night and the new hope of the new light.

Holly Jolly Holiday

2009-12-18T17:56:00.000-08:00

Brad has been on a rampage lately about people wishing him "Merry Christmas" as opposed to "Happy Holidays". Granted, if you look at our pictures above you will see that our house looks quite Christmas-y but we do it more out of a family tradition thing then out of a christian celebration of Jesus's birth. You know, I was thinking about that the other day. Christmas is Christ's-Mass, or a celebration of his existance. On St. Francis's mass people don't celebrate his birth by geting pets blessed at church, they celebrate his life and what he stood for. So I really don't understand why people have get these crazy looking birthday party kits for baby Jesus. Oh well, just another convoluted thought crossing my head.

We are also getting a head start on the New Years Resolutions of loosing weight. Brad got a Wii Fit console and we've been playing on it, it's really not that bad. Though it does say I am obese and made my avatar look like a rollie pollie with horn rimmed glasses. I was going to eat left over stir fry for dinner tonight but apparantely that got eaten for lunch by SOMEONE who's name starts with BR and ends with AD. Not naming any names though... I think I need to focus on high protein and veggie intake with medium fruit and complex carb intake and definately increase the activity level. Always helped in the past!

Well, I could eat the wallpaper off the walls at the moment so I'm gonna get off.

Keepin' Busy

2009-12-06T20:19:00.000-08:00

Its the most wonderful time of the year...

I will get around to posting the christmas crafts I've made plus the house decorations but for now I'm just going to write enough to have a post.

The end.

Thanksgiving Menu?

2009-11-08T20:10:00.000-08:00

My outlaws are coming up next week to visit and see the babyso since they are coming up so close to Thanksgiving I decided to go ahead and do Thanksgiving dinner with them. Its the first family holiday meal on my turf so I know that everything I eat is going to be gluten free thusly safe. This is the same family who I ate Thanksgiving dinner with one year and honest to god the only thing I could eat was creamed corn. Disgusting, eh?

Enough yapping, heres what I'm thinking:
Turkey
Cranberry Sauce with cloves and allspice
Green Bean Casserole
Cornbread Dressing
Mashed Potatoes
Sweet Potato and Apple Casserole
Pecan Pie

There will be 6 of us and a baby. Looking at everything it seems a bit starchy, I think maybe I should add a salad? I can do a lot of prep work before hand to make things easier...

Stocking Swap Progress

2009-11-06T13:04:00.000-08:00

Okay, I may still have a happy stalker for the stocking swap on craftster.org but I REALLY need to get my list going so here is a progress report with hints that will keep me in the loop but hopefully keep her out:

Stocking- 95% done

Project #1- 100% done

Project #2- 80% done

Project #3- 40% done

Project #4- 99% done

Project #5- 15% done

Project #6- 75% done

Project #7- 0% done

Ahhhhh, that feels better! Off to craft, Neal is in his swing- best.thing.ever.

Beef Stew

2009-11-04T18:08:00.000-08:00

Is it bad that my child doesn't even let me have enough time to throw stuff together for a crockpot dinner? I think it is. Now he has gotten big enough that he doesn't flop around in my hip sling so I'm able to get more done, but I try not to do stove/oven things with him because I have an irrational fear of him falling out of my arms or the slings and rolling into a 350 degree pre-heated oven. Crazy? Me? Just a little bit.

THE STEW!
Ingredients:
-cubed stew meat
-1 small white or yellow onion
-a few diced yukon or red potatoes (or whatever you have on hand as long as its a potato)
-handfull of carrots (baby or sliced normal carrots)
-a healthy dashing of worcestershire sauce
-salt, pepper, and italian seasoning to taste
-1 packet of onion soup
-2 cups boiling water
-3 Tbsp corn starch

DO IT!
1. Add boiling water, carrots, potatos, salt, pepper, italian seasoning, and onion soup in crockpot
2. Brown the stew meat in a little olive oil and enough worcestershire sauce that the whole pan has a little hue of brown in it (maybe 6 dashes or so?) then add meat to crockpot.
3. In the same pan cook the diced onion in the meat juices then add to crockpot.
4. Cook on high for an hour then on low for 4-6 hours.
5. Uncover and add corn starch in last 15 minutes of cooking to thicken the stew.

This is the recipe I meant to follow but just didn't have the time to due to a screaming infant. Whom I love, but man this boy has some lungs!
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Kyles-Favorite-Beef-Stew/Detail.aspx

Mine turned out super yummy so I don't see the point in following the other recipe.

Halloween Re-Cap

2009-11-01T17:33:00.000-08:00

The festive family portrait. I have fangs, Brad has tattoo sleeves, Texas is a hot dog, and Neal is wearing a trick or treat onesie.

Our house all decorated. By Halloween we had added a tiny bit more.

Well Halloween came and went and honest to goodness we had about 1,000 trick or treaters. They pretty much closed down the street and when we ran out of candy (even after the neighbors gave us two mega bags of candy from Costco...) people were knocking on our door and ringing the doorbell for another hour.

Our neighbor across the street who is ANAL about his lawn put up a huge graveyard scene with lighting and professional looking zombies and ghouls on Friday which left me with major penis envy. To help compensate my intense jealousy I added a strobe light, fog machine, some pumpkin lights to line the walkway, and we had the laptop out blasting a Halloween inspired playlist. It still didn't look as good as his yard but parents were still taking pictures of their kids getting candy from us and the littlest ones were horrified of the skeleton in the flowerbed with the strobe on it.

Transformers, spider man, batman, and a peppering of star wars and star trek were predominant but we also got our fair share of zombies, ghosts, hobos, hippies, dragons, and I even got a drag queen, a box of cereal, Amy Winehouse, Napolean Dynamite, and a peacock. All in all a great night.

Tomorrow Neal is one month old which is pretty much craziness. I have lots of stuff I need to post in this blog like my Thanksgiving meal attack plan and I made some beef stew in the crock pot the other day which was not only super easy with minimal ingredients, but it rocked our taste buds pretty massively.

Brad is singing to Neal which means howling will shortly ensue which can only be satiated by my breasts. Being a mom is fun!

effing snot bubbles

2009-10-29T16:46:00.000-07:00

A little funny from paraabnormalthecomic.com

Guess who has the flu? Obviously not the woman who got a flu shot a month ago or the woman who has gone through a whole bottle of instant hand sanatizer in less than a month- especially since those two examples are from the same person with a month old infant.

Fudgesicles.

Thankfully I'm not crazy achy but my fever was 100.2 so I guess that pulls me from head cold to flu, right? Brad gets to play single dad tonight and I'm pumping my milk like a dairy cow so Neal can get all my antibodies without being in my exhale zone.

Saturday is Halloween and I am ashamed to say... IM SO PSYCHED FOR CHRISTMAS! Don't tell anyone but Monday I was totally listening to the "Elf" soundtrack in my car. I freaking love that movie. Elf, Love Actually, and The Nightmare Before Christmas play almost non stop after I polish off my second piece of pie on Thanksgiving. Speaking of which, my in-laws are coming up in late November so we are doing Thanksgiving then, so on Sunday I plan on brainstorming out menu ideas. Until then I am biding my time working on stuff for craftster.org's Stocking Stuffer Swap.

My Dad is doing leaps and bounds better. My mom is unfortunately burning the candle at both ends working two jobs and playing Nancy Nurse when she gets home so I called my bestest friend in the whole wide world Heather, who is an amazing massage thearapist in Murfreesboro, and got a massage gift certificate sent to her. Hopefully next time she goes to the boro to visit my brother and his wife she can take an hour to herself and work out some stress knots.

Well, I took some benedryl and tylenol about an hour ago and my medication wimpy arse is getting mighty drowsy so I'm gonna sign off. I'll post pictures of our Halloween set up and costumes after all the trick-or-treaters raid our candy (I hope there is some left, we have been sneaking handfulls for over a week... whoops...).

holding your head on straight

2009-10-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

Last Friday Brad answered the phone at 10pm to hear my mother attempt not to sound frantic but failing that my dad was on the way to the hospital for chest pains. Turns out he had a heart attack and on Monday morning this week they did bypass surgery. How blocked was he? They did 5 bypasses. Thats a quintuple bypass. Thats craziness. Whats even crazier is that while they had him cracked open they found evidence of a previous attack. How can you not know you had a heart attack?!?! My dad has diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, has passed two blood clots, and now this. I don't know wether I'm happy or depressed to have his genes in me because even though he is in piss poor health nothing has done him in. Apparently it is going to take one of the four horsemen of the apocopolayse to personally take him out in the end. Ugh.

After getting it cleared with the peditrician we all flew to Nashville to visit my dad and make sure he is really okay. Living so far away sometimes I'm skeptical that I don't get the whole truth because no one wants to worry me or make me feel guilty for moving away. I enjoy travel and if I'm not on a plane at least once a year I get itchy, but traveling on an airbus with an infant sucks. Trying to nurse modestly when some creepy old man wont stop staring at you is just wrong. And having to hold the baby in your arms the entire time is quite tiring especially when you doze off and he slyly slips out of your lap... I think I'm officially disqualified for the mother of the year award after that little whoopsie...

Very long whirl wind story short my dad is doing a lot better and improving leaps and bounds every day and if I weren't there to witness it first hand I would not have believed it. Everyone also really enjoyed the happy distraction of seeing Neal and I was glad to provide it. The hospital wouldn't let anyone under the age of 15 into the patient areas so my mom would sneak him into my dads room under her jacket when the night shift nurse was in.

Neal has to work on his camera face...

Other than that, not too much has been happening. Neal is sweetness personified and we are getting decent sleep by co-sleeping. He just doesn't sleep well or for long in his crib which means I don't either so during the day I "train" him to nap in his crib or bassinet but at night he just sleeps with us in bed or in a recliner. Again, I know I'm out of the running for mother of the year so may as well do what works best for us.

I also finished decorating the yard for Halloween! Not my best year but still one of the more festive houses on the block. We are stocked up with 15 bags of candy and everyone has their outfits and costumes ready to go. I'm going to be a vampire since I have some custom fangs from last year and Brad is going to wear those tattoo sleeves.

Well, Neal is eyeing my chest suggestively so I think its time for a bedtime snack.

Week 2 of life with Neal

2009-10-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

If I could know 100% that Id have another baby like Neal I would consider having another one in 3-5 years. He is absolutely a dream baby. He wakes up about every 3 hours in the night to eat and he is the biggest snuggle bug in the whole wide world! We are trying to get him to sleep in his bassinet some at night but he will only take a half hour nap in the morning in it. We are actually co-sleeping in a family bed right now even though we had no intention to at all because everyone (yeah, those people) says its an instant death wish with SIDS and rolling over to squish him. Basically I sleep proped up on a ton of pillows so I'm in the same position that Id be in a recliner and he sleeps on my chest. The whole family sleeps very well at night like this and while I'm in charge of input, Brad has totally taken the torch with output. Thats right folks. You read it right. My husband changes the diapers.

God I love that man.

Breastfeeding is going well, his bellybutton nub fell off, I've clipped his claws, and he is growing out of his preemie/newborn clothes and into the 0-3 month clothes. He is so long (sometimes when no one is looking I call him "Stretch") but the sleeves cover his hands and they slide off his shoulders. He also adores being sang to and is quite fond of James Taylor songs, so far "Sweet Baby James" is his favorite. He is very chill and quiet and I truly cannot gush enough about him. Oh yeah! Anyone looking for cheap photo birth announcements MUST go through Costco. 50 cards for $15 bucks. Hells yes.

I was able to get the lights up for Halloween and the tombstones and skeletons are out, but when I got a chance to put the next wave of decorations out it started to rain. Okay, thats a lie- it started to "wintery mix". Old man winter is being a bully to my autumn and I will so kick snowflakes in the front yard like a toddler if it messes with my Halloween.

Beautiful Baby Boy

2009-10-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

I haven't had a chance to update the blog because we had our absolutely beautiful little boy last week. Here is a blurb I posted to the mods on craftster from the hospital so I will just post it here and call it done:

Ok! Brad is holding Neal but at some point in the delivery I pinched a nerve in my left hand and the ulnar side is completely numb so Im typing this one handed.

Birth was freaking intense!!! Labor pains DO NOT feel like bad menstral pains, describing labor pain is like describing a new color to someone- they just have to experience it. We went into the hospital around noon and we waited until 4 to break my water when Dylan could get there. As soon as that happened they started to hurt. Around 730 they really started to hurt and by 9 I was dying. I wanted to quit and if an epidural was waved in front of me I would have ran into it. At 1015 I started screaming bloody murder at our nurse to get the doctor because it was time to PUSH! I felt like I was tripping acid, it was such a rush of endorphins I was seeing spots and the ghosts of christmas past. They gave me some oxygen and Brad grabbed one leg, Dylan had the other, and I did situps while channeling some african animal grunt until little Neal was born at 1056 on Friday the 2nd. Once he started to crown I refused to stop pushing and apparently I yelled "get the fucker out!" or something along those lines resulting in a 2nd degree tear but whatever. I got him out :)

Brad has been an absolute dream. Neal had to go to the nursery because he wasn't breathing well enough and Brad was by his side the entire time. It was 2 hours before I got to see Neal and I just about lost it. Once he got back into the room we nursed for a while (he takes the left breast like a champ, he does not like the right breast at all though...) and we were up every hour or so because he would wake up scared and alone. Bless his little heart.

Right now at a hair over half a day old he is unexpectedly chill. He has a super expressive face and he wags his eye brows at you when you talk close to his face and his hair is wispy soft and wonderful. Brad has some better pictures he will upload later when we get home- all were waiting on is for Neal to poop! I'm feeling good considering I pushed out a freaking baby last night (7lbs 11oz, 19.5in, 13 3/4in chest and head diameter at 37 weeks) and can't wait to get my snuggles in at home.

Get Yer Craft On!

2009-09-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, before I start to blog I want to say that I'm tired of being a grumpy gus all the time. This morning was particulary grump-tastic and I realized that it doesn't take much to put me in a foul mood but at the same time it doesn't take much to cheer me up too!

I've been a crafting fool lately. I've finished one thing for the stocking swap... but of course I can't post that here because she may be stalking me *shifty eyes* but I can post some of the stuff I made Pam for the Halloween swap!

These were the two big things I made for her. I also made an ear warmer head band thing with some super soft orange fuzzy yarn that I only bust out for special occasions and some halloween neck scarfs for her pups. She had a paw reading sign on her wists that I thought was a hoot so I made her one, sent a picture text of it to my mom who went on about how neat it was, so I made my mom and aunt one in orange. I've also been meaning to paint these bird houses for a long time so I decided to do a kitchy creepy raven house and I really like it!

I finally made some caramel apples the other night. I have had to really hold back and only eat one a day- today I polished off the last peanut apple and the ones covered in mini chocolate chips are pretty rocking too. Last year I made some with crushed heath bars and they were divine. Mmmmm, between that and the apple cider I've been in apple heaven!

So its prime Halloween season and I have FULL intentions of decorating the yard this weekend. I got the skeletons out of the closet last week and Brad brought home some styrofoam so I can make some more tombstones. Here is a link to last years loot that I posted on craftster but they got eated in a wind storm that blew through before I could take them down so I am going to re-create them:
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=270884.0

Brad really wants a celtic cross so I have to figure out how to do that with enough structure that it can not only stay up this year, but in future years. I'm geeking out that I get to use my dremel!

Well, I have some laundry I need to fold and its time to put down another good shaking of borax for flea maintenance and THEN I have a doctors appointment to see if I'm dialating any. The anticipation is killing me!

I take it back

2009-09-27T17:14:00.000-07:00

Pregnancy can kiss my ass. This is my 3rd day in a row of painful contractions. I'm calling the OB first thing Monday morning for an exam and if I've progressed any I'm asking for something to help sustain these contractions.

Very. Pissy. Woman.

Turning 24 on the 24th

2009-09-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

Yes, I made my own birthday cake and it came from a box- but the sprinkles make it magnificent! Yellow cake with chocolate icing is the only birthday cake to have.

Today is my magical birthday so since today is all about moi, here is a survey:

FAVORITE BOARD GAME? I like trivia games and loathe Monopoly and Life. I will not play that game with you. Ever. I don't care how much you sweet talk me.

FAVORITE MAGAZINE? Sunset is really nice and so is Smithsonian. Craft magazines in general rock pretty hard too.

WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD? Physically? 3rd degree burns. Non-Physically? Disapointing someone.

FIRST THING YOU THINK OF IN THE MORNING? Well I'm out on short term disability for my pregnancy so right now its "Sucker!" as my husband leaves for work at 6:45 and then I just roll over.

HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE PHONE? I screen my calls so if I want to answer usually 2, but if not it goes to voicemail after 6 rings.

WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT IN YOUR LIFE? Keeping my family unit together (as in husband and future kid) and independant. This is very very very important to me.

FAVORITE FOOD! Right now its apple cider, but that can change at a moments notice- lol!

IF YOU COULD PLAY AN INSTRUMENT, WHAT WOULD IT BE? I do play guitar but I'd love to learn how to play the piano well.

SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL? I used to sleep with a teddy bear named Elvis and when Brad was sent to Germany a few years ago with the Air National Guard I totally dragged him out of the closet and slept with him again.

WHAT TYPE WAS YOUR FIRST CAR? 1984 Toyota Corolla. That thing was a hunk of junk! The raido would randomly turn on and freak me out and none of the dash lights worked so I had to duct tape a flash light to the dash to see how fast I was driving at night.

IF YOU COULD HAVE A DINNER PARTY WITH ANY 3 PEOPLE, PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE WHO WOULD THEY BE AND WHY? Neil deGrasse Tyson because I think he is an amazing scientist with a personality (a rarity!), Julia Child because she was a fire cracker and would bring an awesome side dish, and Benjamin Franklin because he seemed to be a very logical and diplomatic thinker with unique perspectives in a high charged political climate.

FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK? This is hard! I love a good German Resling or Columbia Valley Cab. If Im out at a bar and want a mixed drink its a toasted almond but if I just want to knock one back its a hard cider.

WHAT'S IN THE TRUNK OF YOUR CAR? An overnight bag and some empty tupperwear that really needs to be thrown away...

IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB YOU WANTED WHAT WOULD IT BE? My dream job is a author but I'd have to finish those stories first! My long term career goal is do an expat assignment in Germany in 3-5 years for 5-10 years, then retire into teaching EHS at a university.

GLASS HALF EMPTY OR HALF FULL? If I poured it from empty then its half full. If I drank it down from full then its half empty. Depends on the origional state of the glass.

FAVORITE MOVIE? Anything touched by Tim Burton!

WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED? Massive ammounts of ghost turds, the random left sock, a head band I can't get out, and most likely fleas.

WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST AMBITION? To be happy and fufilled at all points of my life.

WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST WEAKNESS? Good food and travel!

IF YOU COULD BUILD A HOUSE ANYWHERE WHERE WOULD IT BE? Forget building- let me restore a historical home in Savannah GA!

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE ARTICLE OF CLOTHING? Not trying to suck up or anything, but a Leaky Cauldron hoodie that Sevs made me in a Harry Potter swap a few years back!

BEACH, MOUNTAINS OR CITY? Mountains close to a major city.

FAVOURITE TIME OF DAY? The evening.

THE LAST CD/MUSIC YOU BOUGHT? I bought "The Swell Seasons" by Glen Hansard and "Orgins of Symmetry" by Muse at the same time on iTunes last week.

WHAT TIME DO YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING? Eh, 9ish? Because I don't have to be anywhere!

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE KITCHEN ITEM? The oven because I love baking!

WHAT MAKES YOU REALLY ANGRY? I think I must have been deaf in a past life because when I'm trying to tell you something and you don't understand or you yell something to me from a different room and I can't understand you it drives me up the wall!

DO YOU BELIEVE IN AFTERLIFE? Nope.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON? Autumn hands down.

IF YOU COULD HAVE ONE SUPER POWER, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Teleportation.

DO YOU HAVE A TATTOO, WHAT IS IT? I have a tree on my back and a tomato pin cushion on my right ankle.

CAN YOU JUGGLE? 3 balls max and only for 5 seconds.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DAY? Saturday

WHICH DO YOU PREFER SUSHI OR HAMBURGER? Bacon Cheeseburger *drool*

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MEAL? Breakfast

IF YOU COULD TAKE A VACATION ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WHERE WOULD IT BE? I've been itching to do Spain, Italy, Greece, or the UK lately.

IF YOU COULD BE THE GRAND MASTER OF ONE CRAFT WHAT WOULD IT BE? Cooking!

TELL A BIT ABOUT YOUR FAMILY! I'm 24, my husband Brad is 26 and we have been married for 4 years. We are expecting our first child any day now (don't know the gender!) and we have a beagle named Texas who is awesome. We moved from right outside of Nashville TN to North Central WA a little over a year ago for my job as an Industrial Hygienist with Alcoa and Brad is a lab tech at the USDA Tree Fruit Research Lab but is going back to school in January for his teaching certification and he will be a stay at home dad.

A Case of the Mondays

2009-09-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

I spent all weekend in false labor. How is that different than what I've been home for the past 6 weeks with? Well now that I'm considered full term I don't have any medication to stop the contractions so I get to sit on the couch and huff and puff and whine my way through the pain and general uncomfortableness. This weekend I spent 23 hours straight with really bad cramping, but no spotting and they didn't increase in frequency or intensity so there was nothing I can really do about it. Grrrrr.

With that being said I need to get off of the bad mood train and write a few things that make me happy. Without further ado, humor me and smile damnit!

1. Apple Cider

The crisp tangy tartness that just dances over your tongue and can only be imbibed in during the fall season. I miss wine desparetely with this pregnancy and our neighbor gave us a bottle of this Lady Blush Cider from the local Cider Mill and it is so intense one cup will do you. I like it hot, cold, or room temperature. Mmmmmm.

2. Autumal Equinox

Tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox. Even though Brad and I hold fast to having a secular home, I still like to celebrate the changing of the seasons. I've changed out the innards of my apothecary jars, my house is now scented with an apple cider aroma wick thingy, my fall wreath is hanging by the door, and a nice crisp chill is in the air. I am going to make some caramel apples and maybe work on some sort of warm dish for dinner tomorrow night.

3. A Year of Slow Cooking Blog

Y'all. For real. This woman resolved to use her slow cooker everyday for a year and since her son as Celiac (boo!) everything is GLUTEN FREE (wooty woot!). She published a book that is being released any day now and because of her, tonight I'm making crock pot bean soup and some of my favorite cast iron skillet corn bread.
http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/

4. The Craftster.org

I'm doing a Halloween swap with another moderator (which is being mailed out today) and then I'm starting on a Christmas Stocking Swap with another member. I'm really excited about it!

5. Dr. Who

I'm working my way through Season 2 of the 2005 re-make and I'm getting used to David Tennant as the Doctor even though I really liked Chris Eccleston in the first season.

Well, 5 is all you get because even that was a struggle! Tomorrow I will post a blog on what I decided to cook for the harvest and some pictures of my dangerously sinful caramel apples... rolled in nuts and chocolate chips. *homer simpson drool*

Epiphanies on my Pregnancy

2009-09-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

Pregnancy is hard. It really is. For (give or take) 40 weeks- which is 10 months folks, not 9- you are no longer a solitary person. Your body is host to another body and it takes prescience. Practically the first three bites of every meal goes straight to the baby and if it doesn't get what it needs, it leaches it from your bones/organs/blood or wherever it can take the nutrients from not to mention the hold-onto-something-sturdy morning sickness. Later on in the pregnancy this baby steals your figure, scars your skin, makes your joints ache, halts your breath, and turns your sleeping routine on its ass.

That doesn't even touch on the emotional aspects of pregnancy. The first trimester you are terrified with every speed bump and late pre-natal vitamin that you will cause your beautiful embryo to spontaneously combust. In the second trimester you coast along and have fun with all the play pretties while you begin to realize that in a few months you will be completely responsible for a human life which is a responsibility that will smack you on the head at the grocery store while reading the label on a container of yogurt. The third trimester, well its hell. You are miserable at this alien creature that has turned your torso into a human lava lamp and while the novelty of the kicks, punches, and turns have worn off and you just want this baby out you start to consider life with a premature baby. For me the third trimester has been especially hard because I have had to deal with gestational diabetes and pre term labor on top of hormonal influxes that cause my Celaic to flare up without gluten contamination.

But you know what I realized last night while laying in bed listening to the house fall asleep? This is such a beautiful journey. It really is. Its a hard and trying road and there are so many times that you just want to throw in the towel and go cry in the corner and you know what? That's okay! If you are not at your wits end at least once a week, especially towards the end, you aren't paying attention. But I'm growing a human being! This little person growing inside of me is half of me and half of my husband who I truly love with all the good and the bad. And in a few weeks a literal part of my heart will be expelled out of my body and live in the world thinking its own thoughts, needing extra love and cuddles, and forming into its own person completely unique from Brad and I even though we are exclusively who it came from. And this is simply awe inspiring.

I am not scared of labor or being a parent. I feel anxious, don't get me wrong, but its more of an excitement than a fear. Its like the anxiety you get checking in at the airport when you are about to hop on a plane for a trip. You don't worry about the plane crashing, you pat all your pockets to make sure you have your ID and hotel reservations and then you make a special trip to the sundries kiosk to buy a trashy magazine and junk food. Labor is going to hurt, and its going to be long, and it isn't going to be easy. It will test my physical, spiritual, and emotional limits to the maximum threshold. Things will not go according to plan because they never do- and that's okay! The problem isn't in when it goes wrong, the problem is when you can't adapt and in the 13th hour of labor is not the time to put your heels in the mud and refuse to adapt (remind me I wrote this in my 13th hour, ok?). Women all over the world give birth every second of every minute of every day. All babies come into the world in the same way with a few variants. Women don't stay pregnant forever. Its a natural event that shouldn't be feared!

Something else I have learned thanks to our doula Dylan, is that babies are little people. Yes, its okay to coo and coddle but you also have to explain things to them. Their little brains are developed and are cognisant of our emotions and energy even if they may not understand what the words mean coming out of our mouth. When a baby is born, it goes from a nice calm, dark, warm, wet world into a chaotic, bright, cold, dry world and its freaking scary. The baby doesn't know whats up. It doesn't hear the familiar sounds of mom's body wooshing around it or her soothing voice. No, it sees weird ass faces rubbing its freezing body down with rough towels, shoving instruments into its orifices, and pinching its limbs to test for its APGAR response. Harsh air is being rushed into its lungs for the first time ever and I can only imagine it feels similar to huffing freezing air on a winter morning run (which hurts like a mo-fo). It doesn't know that this isn't what the outside world is forever and the medical staff is task oriented. You have to tell the baby that this is temporary and in a few short seconds s/he will be back with mom and dad and it will be quiet and warm and loving in just a few seconds and it won't hurt for much longer. Just the act of approaching the baby in a calm, collected, and knowledgeable way will help ease this harsh transition for the baby.

Speaking of which, my heart swells to the limits of my ribcage when I think of holding my baby for the first time. This is a new life, a new person. No matter how far science has evolved it cannot create this miracle- and I abhor using the word miracle. But really, what else can it be called? This is a brand spanking new human being. People die every day, and I'm not talking about the "final" physical death that results in organs stopping and people mourning. Little bits of us die every day as our skin grows thicker and we realize that humans can be cruel and not everyone wants the best for you and no matter how closely you follow the recipe you can't make the cookies taste like grandmas because she bakes them with her kind of love and sometimes your best just isn't good enough. But this person doesn't know this. This person sees wonder in the browns of your eyes and gets immense comfort in resting its head in the crook of your neck and gets drunk on the love it drinks in from your breast milk. How beautiful and amazing is this?

So I bitch about being pregnant, but I know that in the blink of an eye I will have a beautiful child in my arms. And then the child will be running to the swings in the park. Then it will demand to pick out its own clothes, read its own books, pack its own lunch, be dropped off a block away from school so it doesn't look dorky being dropped off by mom or dad, then pushing all my buttons by hanging out with shitty friends, and getting its heart broken by its first puppy love, then leaving my home to be an adult in the world all on its own to contribute to society in ways that my wildest day dreams cant even begin to imagine.

I will treasure these last few days of being pregnant and holding my child exclusively to myself. Never again will I ever be this close to my baby and I cherish the aches and pains and electrifying anxiety of the home stretch.

Planning for 2010: Year of the Outside

2009-09-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

We bought our house in Feb of this year so 2009 has been year of the inside and year of the oh-shit-if-we-don't-get-that-repaired-now-the-house-will-be-condemned. We have replaced the rotting shake roof with nice 30-year composite shingles, we are replacing the main sewer line as soon as we get an estimate in, we are taking down the guillotine fence:

Off with their vehicle bumpers! *thwack*

And we pulled up about 10 years worth of over grown "landscaping" leaving behind a Japanese maple, some rose bushes, a seedless green grapevine, and a bush or two that can only be murdered with a chainsaw.

Inside we have re-finished the living room, dining room, the upstairs bathroom, the kitchen, and the nursery. The hallway and downstairs bath are next on my mad list of mayhem and then its the bedroom and guest room. After that the inside is d-u-n done! Well, it will be pretty enough to invite friends from out of town to stay for a long weekend.

Since we bought the house this year and have invested so much money into major repairs, not only will we get to write off those repairs on our taxes, but we can also claim the new baby, AND we qualify for the $8,000 first time buyer refund incentive thingy. That my friends is awesome. So what are we going to do with a hair under $10k worth of Uncle Sam Bucks?

Throw it back into the house, duh. *shakes head in disappointment* I mostly write about home and family and this blog IS titled "Domestic Eva", thus the money goes back into the house. We bought the house for right at $225,000 and I would love to be able to sell it for $250,000 in 3-5 years when we move overseas for an expat assignment. So this is what we want to do in 2010 for the year of the outside:

Paint the house- Right now the house is a dove grey and it looks like a little storm cloud. There isn't a ton of architecture to the front of the house so I'd like it to pop a tiny bit with color. The neighbor to the left has a light green house with a forest green metal roof and the neighbor to the right has a orangey brown house with a dark brown metal roof. Our shingles are dark grey from a distance but they also have light blue and chocolate brown flecks in it (its called North West Driftwood... whatever...) so I'm thinking a dove blue would be nice. The soffits would remain white for contrast and I'd love to paint the front door and trim navy blue. Here is what we have and what I want:

Top color is called "Blue Finch" and the bottom is "Appleton"

Yeah, major dramatic change, right? But the thing is we live in a historically registered neighborhood and I don't want to blend in with the house on either side by picking brown or green. The grey isn't awful but a bit of blue would really look nice against the greens and browns of the valley.

Fence in Back Yard- White picket fence to enclose back yard. Great for letting out the dog without standing on the deck in your underwear threatening to beat it if it takes one step closer to the neighbors yard. You can take the girl out of TN but you cant take the TN out of the girl...

Massive Landscaping Overhaul- What didn't get murdered this season will be murdered in the spring. The grapevine (while offering privacy and delicious grapes) is severely overgrown and while we thought we whacked it back enough it just laughed at us and thanked us for the dead heading by completely eating the pergola and deck. Right now it has 3 main vines and we need to take it down to 1... maximum. We also have the grill sitting in the middle of the "driveway" that only one car can fit in due to the guillotine fence so since that is coming down this month (good lord willing and the creek don't rise) it won't fit with both vehicles parking on our lot. There is a patch of used-to-be-garden that is sectioned off with rail road timbers in front of the workshop that we want to brick off to make a grilling patio. We already have a red brick walkway and a brick retaining wall by the side of the house so we will most likely use red brick for the patio too, which will look great against the dove blue of the house. Everything else on this side of the yard will be mulched with a good layer of landscaping fabric underneath. There are a few rose bushes which can stay because they are quite simply gorgeous.

On the other side of the back yard it will be hydro-seeded or we will lie down sod because it really is just a patch (I'm talking 10'x25' here) for the dog to do his business in. The deck juts out on this side of the yard as well and there is a nice little Japanese Maple that needs some major TLC and I think I will keep that and the grapevine, but I won't plant anything else. Maybe throw a bird bath or a statue back there. Maybe a meditating Buddah?

The side yards will be minimal with lots of mulch (again, keep the roses and kill everything else) but the front yard will be a BEAR. There is a 30'+ cedar tree on our property line that has killed the left side of the yard and it belongs to the neighbor so we can't touch the sucker. The soil is very acidic along with massive amounts of shade so our options are limited. The front yard is comparable in size to the back yard (read: postage stamp) so a little bit of loving should go a long way. We will mulch up about a 2' strip in front of the house, a 1' strip on either side of the walkway, and a 3' strip bordering the public sidewalk. We will also build a dinky crescent shaped retaining wall on our side of the ceder tree and mulch that sucker up and plant a few short native ground covers (maybe wild ginger or kinnikinick). The walkway will be just mulch with some solar lights and the plants by the sidewalk and the house will be low-maintenance drought tolerant plants. Rosemary, lavender, prairie smoke grass... maybe even some primrose, columbine, balsam root, coyote mint, and tickseed if we get some irrigation hoses hooked up.

Basically I don't want to spend my weekend watering and weeding flowers. If it dies I won't re-plant it. I'd much rather get a statue, bird bath, or fountain if it means no pitiful looking plants.

If we catch a wicked sale- I'd love a new storm door, a new front door knob, a new front porch light, sexy house numbers, and patio furniture for the back yard. Right now the back driveway/parking patch is a sandy pit that alley cats like to use as their litter box so getting that graveled/paved/bricked would be lovely.

As it is I think the $10k budget is already shot though.

Pumpkin Bread with Cream Cheese Filling

2009-09-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

I made this the other day and lord have mercy if this stuff isn't amazing. I would have taken a picture but last night we made an pit stop at labor and delivery to get some contractions stopped (turns out I have a bladder infection which will cause pre term labor. Who knew?) and apparently I didn't wrap the foil over the pan well enough and the gnats who have taken over my kitchen declared war on my very yummy harvest treat. Grrrr. So here is the picture from the website that has the recipe. As always, I used gluten free flour and splenda and it turned out divine. I also cheated and used a can of pumpkin pie filling with the spices already in it because you just can't have too much cinnamon and nutmeg:

http://www.joyofbaking.com/breakfast/PumpkinBread.html

Cream Cheese Filling:
8 ounce package (227 grams) cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tablespoons all purpose flour

Pumpkin Bread:
1 cup (110 grams) pecans or walnuts
3 1/2 cups (490 grams) all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
4 large eggs
2 cups (400 grams) granulated white sugar
1 cup (226 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 - 15 ounce (425 grams) can pure pumpkin
1/2 cup (120 ml) water or milk
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in the center of the oven. Butter and lightly flour two - 9 by 5 x 3 inch (23 x 13 x 8 cm) loaf pans. Set aside.

To toast nuts: Place the nuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 - 10 minutes or until brown and fragrant. Cool completely and then chop coarsely. Set aside.

Cream Cheese Filling: In your food processor, process the cream cheese until smooth. Add the sugar and process just until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, processing just until incorporated. Do not over process. Stir in the flour. Set aside.

Pumpkin Bread: In a large bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Set aside.

In another large bowl, whisk the eggs until lightly beaten. Add the sugar and melted butter and whisk until blended. Whisk or stir in the pumpkin, water, vanilla extract, and nuts.

Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture and stir just until the ingredients are combined. (A few streaks of flour is fine.) Do not over mix as it will make the bread tough.

Divide the batter in half. Take one half and divide it evenly between the two prepared pans. Divide the cream cheese filling in half and place each half of filling on top the two pans of batter, smoothing the tops. Top with the remaining half of batter. Bake the breads for about 50 - 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Place pans on a wire rack and let cool for about 10 minutes before removing breads from pans. Can serve warm, cold, or at room temperature. Store leftovers in the refrigerator or else freeze for later use.

Makes 2 loaves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here are some things I would change:

-The bread is incredibly buttery because it calls for a whole cup of butter. I'd make it 3/4c if not simply 1/2 cup but on the other hand you will never need to butter the bread!
-I used 1c. splenda instead of 2c. sugar and it is PLENTY rich enough. 2 cups may be way too much.
-The cream cheese layer while delicious was a bit too eggy. I'd use either 2 medium eggs or 1 large egg. This would make it more creamy and less... spongy?

Be prepared to wear an apron and sling hash all over the kitchen (although I'm not known for my neatness) because when you mix the wet ingredients all over the place it gets messy. And canned pumpkin lodges under contacts very easily. Yeah...

Mama's Vegetable Soup and Cheddar Dill Bread

2009-09-06T13:05:00.000-07:00

I love her to death, but my mama can't cook worth a lick. We were raised on "heat and eat" meals and if we didn't like what she fixed or gave her any lip- we went to bed early and hungry! One meal she made that always pleased the entire family was her vegetable soup and cheddar dill bread. The first weekend of September has been blissfully crisp and rainy and I was so thrilled that I had to bust out my first cold weather meal of the season. With out further ado, I give you the ultimate easy comfort food.

Soup Ingredients

1 bag of vegetables for soup

1 14-16 oz can of tomatoes (diced, crushed, it doesn't really matter)

2+ cubes bullion to taste

1-2 hand fulls of barley

Dump all ingredients in your soup pot and simmer until warm. Add water until its the consistency you desire, the barley will thicken up the soup so keep an eye on it.

My mom makes it with ground beef but since I was a vegetarian for over a decade, I just don't like in certain foods and vegetable soup is one of them! I also tend to add at least 4 cubes of bullion but I figure I have to add more because I don't have the ground beef in there. Also with the celiac I can't do barley but a hand full or so of brown rice is wonderful!

If you are in desperate need to get rid of some fresh vegetables in your fridge that are wheezing on their last breath, chop them up and throw them in! The bagged soup mix I grew up with in TN is non existent in WA. It had okra, lima beans, green beans, corn, carrots, and potatoes in it so instead of getting that nasty bagged mix of cubed peas, carrots, and green beans I just started cleaning out the cabinets and crisper drawer. It's really hard to screw up this soup!

Cheddar Dill Bread

3 c. bisquick (not flour, not pancake mix, but bisquick)

1.5 c shredded cheddar cheese

1 Tbsp+ dill

1 egg

1 c. milk

1 tsp sugar

1 Tbsp oil

Hand mix dry ingredients together then add wet. I used Bob's Red Mill biscuit and baking mix (the gluten free equivalent to bisquick) and needed to add a bit more milk. You want the dough to be the consistency of a quick bread mix, not pizza dough or cake batter.

Plop in a greased bread loaf for 45 minutes at 350F. It may start to look a wee bit burnt on the top but it needs to stay in for 45 minutes or it won't be done in the middle. This needs no butter and is divine served piping hot and dipped in the vegetable soup.

The best part about this meal? I think it tastes better the second day so don't be afraid about making a big ole batch. It also freezes incredibly well.

Globetrotter Bathroom

2009-09-02T15:38:00.000-07:00

2009 is the year of interior home improvements, and 2010 is the year to hit the exterior hot and heavy. With the baby's arrival any day now *looks skeptically around the corner preparing for sneak attack* I'm looking forward to getting off of bed rest and getting some final projects DONE before my parents come up in December. I had just picked out the colors for the hallway when I started pre-term labor so that project got the big stink eye so once again, as soon as I am able to that will be painted. After that I want to hit the downstairs bathroom which is simply atrocious and it will require a bit of work. This is the only shower in the house so its used frequently, not to mention its downstairs so all of our guests (yeah both of them that one time...) use this one as opposed to treking upstairs to my beautifuly re-done bathroom upstairs where the bedrooms are. *le sigh*

Brad and I are big on the traveling thing so we want this bathroom to have a globetrotter feel to it. The bottom has beadboarding and a chair rail so all of that is going to be a nice clean white, not blue white, just clean linnens white. The top half will be a nice cornflower blue. I tend to go with bold colors so I don't want to go too overboard with this one, I need it to stay neutral. This is hard for me to do, but I'm gonna try.

There is zero storage for any linens so I am thinking about asking for this armoire to put in the corner behind the door to store things like toilet paper, towels, and washcloths since under the cabinet is full of cleaning supplies and hair dryers. The medicine cabinet (read ugly mirror over a rusty hole) is full to the brim so it would be nice to keep daily used things like Brads shaving supplies in there and store the pepto bismal and excedrine in a basket in the armoire. While I'm at it, lets window shop for a new medicine cabinet too!

http://www.target.com/Fieldcrest-Armoire-White/dp/B001CCW5JY/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1?ie=UTF8&pf_rd_r=0BRJCS811VFYN74HR3J0&pf_rd_p=481695111&pf_rd_i=B0002AJ8CO&class=productTitle&pf_rd_s=left-5&pf_rd_m=A1VC38T7YXB528&pf_rd_t=201

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=108727-444-33116&lpage=none

Ah yes, thats much better! I also would like to change the overhead light because scairly enough, the glass looks warped. I also have two wall sconces straddling the medicine cabinet over the sink but they aren't god awful though I would love to change the glass cups to something more modern. Maybe something transparent or frosted with bubbles or streaks of blue in it? Maybe? The sink is fine and so are the faucets (though they do leak) and I'm not going to have a heart attack if that doesn't change. The wallpaper has to go. It... it just must. Its eating my soul.

I have 4 prints from our trip to Europe that I'd like to hang on the wall and maybe a few snap shots of us from other trips around the country. I'd also LOVE to hang up a map with little dots of where we have traveled and I have a print from the Beat Museum in San Francisco that quite boldly states "FUCK HATE" that is going to be framed and have a place of honor somewhere, possibly over the toilet? I think that sounds delightful.

More Planning for Halloween

2009-09-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

This morning I went to the OB for my weekly check up and in two short weeks I not only get to stop taking my medicine to stop pre-term labor... BUT I GET OFF OF BED REST! I'm geeking out. So now in my infinate time (well, time spent between the Sookie Stackhouse books my rockin aunt sent me) I am now going to make a list of stuff to do off of bed rest. While this list does include things like laundry and scouring a bathroom like only I can do (lord love Brad, but cleaning a tub is not his strength when it comes to domestic duties) but most of it has to do with Halloween.

My main goal is to make 4 tombstones and 2 zombies as those will be the most craft intensive. I made 3 tombstones last year out of 2 sheets of foam board from the hardware store but they died a violent death in a wind storm. I'm going to use the same designs of the 3 last year and now I need to think of a 4th design. I have a name (an evil ex-boss) but not really a design...
For the zombies I will have the basic construction as the top half of a scarecrow and I'm thinking I will just bite the bullet and but two plastic skulls and 4 skeleton hands to pimp out with wood stain, glue, and wig hair. Sounds gross, but it's a zombie.

Brad got me a Halloween magazine at hastings (the sucker cost $10- sheesh!!!) and it had an idea for a pumpkin carving party. I thought this would be a super neat idea because it would be the week of Halloween, during the day so it wouldn't be too long which will be great with an infant, and it can be done OUTSIDE! I think this is a great idea and I'm going to talk to Brad about it this evening. Everyone would bring their own pumpkins, I could pick up a cheap carving kit from Walmart and a few sharpies, there are tons of templates to download for free on the internet, and everyone could bring the whole family. Hmmmmmm, my cogs are turning...

closing the week on an optomistic note

2009-08-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

My friend Pam has a blog with daily themes and every friday is "Feel Good Friday" so in the spirit of her eternal optimism and general wonderfulness here is my version of the same. Things that have made me smile this week:

1. Faster Kitty Kill blog: http://fasterkittykill.blogspot.com/

Some of the highlights I love about this constantly updated blog are Tie One On Tuesday where her kick ass hubby Mark (aka OMP) mixes up some fab cocktails, Feel Good Friday where she fills your cold cold heart with warm fuzzies, and Scrappy Dog Sunday where she features a lovable puppy and Texas was so featured last week. She also throws in reviews of random movies that range from Pulp Sci-Fi to 80's teen classics. I dare you to go to her blog and not crack a smile. I double dog dare ya to.

2. Facebook music videos of the day. So this is something I've been doing because one of the things I've been doing to fill up my time is play guitar again. This week I featured Patty Griffin, Gllian Welch, Glen Hansard, and today its Muse.

3. Banana Pudding.

Brad's co-workers Dave and Erin are coming over tonight to grill out burgers with their sons Ethan (4) and Owen (2 weeks). I decided that I HAD to make a dessert that honored both bed rest and diabetic guidelines. I desparetely wanted to make a lemon icebox pie but that wasn't happening so the light bulb went off to do banana pudding. Super easy to do too. This is the classic version with real vanilla wafers but I made mine with vanilla k-toos which are gluten-free vanilla oreos. Just lay down your cookies (I opened mine in half), make your banana pudding, mix in sliced bananas into said pudding, pour mix over cookies, set over night, top with cool whip, and eat with a really big spoon. It also tastes a lot better if you serve it in a pretty dish like the parfait one above, or at least thats what my Aunt Peggy always said and I think its true.

4. Embroidery! I'm working on a super top secret project as a gift for someone so I can't say what it is or show progress pictures but man on man its a great craft that I should do more of. So far the most fun has been picking put colors for her because she is such a vibrant and colorful person, all the floss I had in my stash was just too dull for her.

5. This guy:

Texas is my sweet little man-dog. He has been super itchy and shedding all over the place but he really is the best little cuddler and is always very well behaved. Speaking of shedding, the new Pledge pet hair remover is the bomb diggity for real.

Well, five seems like a good note to end on. These are all in addition to the given things like my wonderful husband, the fact that I am still a pregnant woman and not in the throws of labor, my beautiful house, food in my stomach, money in my bank account, and the amazing fact that fall is right around the corner which makes me grin from ear to ear every time I think about it! I'll close with a picture of the new and improved non-sasquatch Eva since this week I splurged and got my hair done and a pedicure since prolonged bending to touch the feet is humorous at best.

Attention passengers, this is your airship captain speaking

2009-08-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

23-25 October is the Seattle SteamCon and we really want to go barring the whole infant thing. If the baby is old enough to go then we will, but if thats not feisable then I will still be an airship captain for Halloween. I was going to be the token vampire but thats what I was last year.

I've got some black pirate boots which will work great, then its a matter of picking out some tights, I have a black skirt but I'm not sure if I'll fit into it or not, no clue what to do for the top, and for the hat... thats where it gets tricky. I could do an avaitor cap and goggles, or a top hat, or a feathered fascinator. Too much stuff to do!

A trip to the hospital and day one of bedrest

2009-08-18T13:31:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not here is the "nutshell" version...

Monday I woke up around 4am with some pressure in my bottom and was having a hard time breathing through the BH contractions, I got 5 in 15 minutes but since they didn't really hurt per say and my back didn't ache, I didn't think anything of it. Got up at 7:30 for a work conference call and throughout the call I noticed my abdomen getting super tight with even more contractions! Since I lost my plug on Friday evening and the nurse told me to watch out for contractions and to call the doctor I did... turns out she is on vacation until Thursday morning- d'oh! They transfered me to another family practitioner and she told me to get my booty to labor and delivery.
I decided I had time for a quick shower since I knew there would be a pelvic and headed out the door. Apparently I was supposed to go to the hospital clinic and not the labor and delivery ward so while I was sitting in the room that reeked of piss and peanut butter (very bizzare...) the head nurse told me I was in the wrong place! Headed back to the clinic and on the way there I had another woozy spell. By the time I got to the clinic I was just a bit pitiful!
They did a pelvic and lord have mercy, it hurt so bad I had tears running down my face! The poor on call OB was trying to explain what was going on until she heard me hiding sobs then she shut up and just did the exam. Apparently I am already 50% effaced and my cervix is tilted which makes things that much harder. The center of my cervix is closed but she said something about it opening up on the top. I have no clue what that means or if I even remember it but yeah. She did a swab to see if I was leaking amniotic fluid and to see how high of a risk I am for pre-term labor.
She left to go to the hospital for surgery and I got hooked up to fetal monitoring. Apparently I was having frequent strong contractions that I was hardly even feeling! They were really suprised how "strong" they were and how frequent. It the picture Jean posted the bottom line is me and the top is the baby. The baby was taking it like a champ but my line should have been flat... thats not flat! They weren't sure if the contractions were pre-term labor or simply BH so they gave me a medicine that worked like a muscle relaxant (fun fact: the uterus is a muscle, not an organ) and like magic they went away almost instantly. I now have a perscription for the stuff and am supposed to take it whenever I feel contractions again since even though they were able to stop the contractions, they were still productive on my lady bits!!!

I saw a total of 3 OB's and all were wonderful so I'm thrilled that even if god forbid I go into true labor, if any of them are the on-call OB I will be in very good and kind hands if my OB can't make it for some weird reason. The final OB who looked at my monitoring told me I had permission to go out to lunch then straight home to bedrest. She said to think of it more as "couch potato" rest and not "stuck on your right side" rest but if I abuse her directives, my life will be miserable stuck on my right side for the next 6 weeks! Needless to say I'm going to figure out some nice needle work projects. I still haven't finished Brad's embroidered christmas stocking after 5 years together and now the baby needs one too, so that will get done this year- LMAO!

To add insult to injury, Brad got a physical through work and they called him that his chest x-ray had a spot on his lung and his blood work showed some level being off that looked like he was fighting off an infection. He has to go in for a CT scan on Wednesday and follow up with a normal doctor for the blood work. Poor guy was working while I was worried about labor and premie babies and he was trying to hold it all together finding out that his health may not be stellar either. I told him tonight is all about cuddles and crappy TV, he was a-ok with that.

Started having contractions again this morning (I'm not telling Brad because I don't want to worry him needlessly, especially because he is at work) so I made my big excursion to to pharmacy up the road and got the perscription they called in at the clinic yesterday. One thing I will say is that this stuff makes me super loopy because its a muscle relaxant. Not really tired enough to sleep, but I don't think I could do much more than sit here on the couch surfing the interweb, and watching the Fairly Odd Parents on Nick.

Nice.

learning to be hesitant

2009-08-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the 2nd out of 3 childbirth prep classes and we watched a video of natural childbirth. Tonight I learned to be a bit hesitant about childbirth. To call a spade a spade, I know that labor and delivery is going to hurt and its going to hurt like hell. But I also know I have a higher threshold for pain then most people do. But the women in these videos were hurting pretty badly. Like, wow someone needs to give her something because she is looking pretty rough. I don't want to say I could take a cannon ball to the gut without flinching but I know I've been through some pretty intense pain and come out just fine. I've also had a very physically trying pregnancy. Not only have I had amazing perenial pain due to braxton hicks contractions and round ligament pains that have woken me up from a deep sleep, but I've also had incredible naseua and vomiting (like 6+ times a day) for the first trimester plus on and off gastric discomfort for the duration. Add to this complications from Celiac and Gestational Diabetes and the insult of an abdomen that looks like a freaking bruise it has so many stretch marks... pregnancy has not been kind to me.
These lamaze classes have also made me remember how un-lady like I am. The instructor has all of these relaxation techniques where your partner is supposed to give you a little massage while you do a series of breaths in a yogic position. Brad and I end up laughing or I snap at him because I'm not a touchy feely person. I can do a hand or foot rub or a constant firm pressure on a major muscle but this light touch and gentle pressure crap just feels skeezy. We discussed it after class that I know how I deal with pain. I like to be pretty solitary and I don't like people telling me how to cope with it. If I need your help, I promise I will let you know. I may just need to be left alone in a cold room that is pitch black. I may need you to tell me that this is how babys are born, and only I can do this so if I can just get through these next contractions it will all be behind us and we will have a beautiful baby in our arms. And after this labor all the pregnancy crap is over and I can eat all the sugary sweets I want and I won't wake up in the middle of the night because of pain and I will be able to breathe again because the baby won't be in my lungs and I won't keep forming these damnable stretchmarks that make Brad go "ack" everytime he watches me take off my shirt. I have 6-8 weeks left. I can do this. I just need a pep talk every now and again.

Brad and our neighbor Steve dug a trench in the front yard today to work on the sewer pipe. Our fingers are crossed that we can cut open the pipe with the city's help from this angle because if not its $10k for a new line. Ugh! On one hand I don't want to shell out that kind of money but on the other hand, a new line would mean we wouldn't have to do this crap every few weeks when the basement floods after we do more than one load of laundry a day! As soon as we can make sure the basement stays down we can finish the basement and make it less dingy and more habitable and ad some serious equity to the house. We could claim it as a whole 3rd level which meand a lot more money when we go to sell it!

Crafty Intentions on craftster (she also has a blog I stalk) has made holiday banners and I REALLY want to make some too. I've had my eye on some Halloween fabric at Craft Warehouse but I need to check out JoAnns too before I buy. I should be able to get away with a yard of felt, half a yard of novelty fabric, some blanket binding, and some pinking shears. Last week was super busy but maybe next weekend I can do some crafting.

Today we also got cable installed and we are already sucked into it something major. We've scanned through a Johnny Cash documentary, the pet whisperer, a mariners baseball game, little house on the prarie, and just scanned to a poker tournament. Brad is AWFUL about channel surfing which drives me crazy but eh, you have to choose your battles.

Well, its 10:30 and tomorrow is the last day (and the longest) for the lamaze classes so I need to sign off and think sleepy time thoughts.

ur alwayz 2 old 2 type lik this

2009-08-10T20:55:00.000-07:00

Let me precursor this by stating that I have a very good relationship with my parents and I feel that I can have the same conversations with them that I would with my peers. But sometimes they do stuff that just boggles my mind and gives me flashbacks to middle school embarssment when they would sing at the top of their lungs to a song on the radio while I was wedged in the back seat of the neighborhood car pool.
My mom and dad apparently have facebook accounts and are a little lost on how to utilize the social networking site. I told them it's pretty much like twitter but you can customize it better with more photos, background information, and its easy to find co-workers and old classmates. So after explaining to my dad how to upload a profile picture and showing him how to tag himself in other people's albums he wrote this:

Howard to Eva: Will do. Going to bed now. Letterman is on. Ur Mother told me about ur crash today hope ur feel'n better now

Mmkay. Just to explain our roles in my family growing up. My mom was very much the dictator matriarch, my dad is simply the suppourt staff who has no problem taking a back seat to mom. My older sister is very needy and demanding and must keep up with the proverbial Jones's. My little brother is quiet and a self proclaimed geek whose life philosophy is "ride waves don't make them". I on the other hand make all the waves, I am the family instigator. If we were having a family conversation instead of beating around the bush when someone said something stupid, I would bluntly say "Thats Stupid." So here is my response to my dad:

Eva to Howard: Nothing a little netflix and a good nap couldn't fix. Oh yeah, mom does it too and it drives me insane. WRITE OUT THE FREAKING WORDS! You aren't 13 so you can't get away with using text-hand. Its "your/your'e" not Ur. I take it back, if you change your profile picture to you wearing a Jonas Brother's shirt you are allowed to type like that.

I love them. I really truly do. But good lord, they vividly remember the moon landing and MLK's assination. They are not allowed to write like that!

The crash he is refering to is a fun hypoglycemic episode I had today in the middle of a flipping head count reduction meeting. It was about 20 minutes into the meeting when I felt hot. Then I was sweating up a storm and light headed. Then what the plant manager was saying went from words to Charlie Brown trombone sounds and suddenly the lights were off and next thing I know I'm in the medical department. Apparently my blood sugar dropped around 65 points in less than 15 minutes immeaditely after finishing my decaf latte after spiking so I went on a bit of an acid trip. Great way to start the week! The baby is still squirming around like there is a conga line going on so my doctor said there wasn't a need to go in that afternoon, espically since I have an appointment first thing tomorrow morning. I did get to work from home around lunch time which was cool, and I'm going to tell Dr. K tomorrow that I want to go ahead and go out on maternity leave, even though I'm just now coasting through the last trimester.

Women who claim pregnancy is the most wonderful thing in the entire world are full of the stinky brown stuff. Its not fun, its a mean to the ends. I'm looking forward to being a mom and having a baby to love and nurture and watch grow and experience the world. But next time around Brad is going to have to seriously bribe me with champagne and roses! I'm sure there are great surrogate mothers out there...

The Nursery and Baby Stuff

2009-08-07T21:28:00.001-07:00

It seems like I've been working on the nursery for eternity but as of 7:30PST this evening it is DONE (well, its still missing the baby, but other than that minor detail...). Back in Feburary when we first found out we were expecting, I found this set of drawings called "The Red Coat Series" on industrialfairytale.etsy.com and after lusting over them for 7 months and choosing which prints we wanted in the series, I bit the bullet and ordered them. We literally tried to decorate the entire nursery around these illustrations of that says how much we loved them. They are colorful, whimsical, and convey a sense of adventure and independance which are qualities we hope our kiddo has! Enough with the jabbering, onto the pics:

The pictures that started it all, now matted and framed!

The view from the front door as soon as you walk in.

Better view of the crib and the diaper genie, apparently a must have.

This mobile started out blue and brown but those colors didn't fit so I busted out the fabric paint and made it red, chocolate brown, and butterscotch.

My nursing nook with the recliner that used to live downstairs.

Close up of the vinyl decals I cut out to give the baby something to look at while eating.

Standing behind the crib (thats the changing table in the SE corner) facing the book shelf and closed closet door and open bedroom door.

Sock monkey paraphenelia.

Overall we are thrilled with how it turned out. The colors are very relaxing and even though the main colors are shades of red and brown, lots of different colors like green/orange/blue compliment the room well. We thought about making it a green or yellow nursery to be gender neutral but we just aren't into pastels in the least, so why should this room stick out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the house? So after seeing the prints we loved so much, we drew from the artists pallate and plopped it in the room. Brad and I both find ourselves migrating into the recliner just to enjoy the chill vibe the room gives off. Hopefully the baby will enjoy the room as much as we are!

For the past week Brad has attemped to take maternity portraits. When I say attempt I don't mean to imply that he is not capable of taking good pictures at all. I mean to say I loathe being infront of the camera- always have, always will. I usually have a 3 limit rule where you can get 3 good pictures out of me with genuine smiles before I have an autistic moment and flip out in some completely out of the blue mood swing. For further proof of this, consult my wedding album focusing on the legendary cake cutting set. I honestly think you could flip book the pictures taken and read a very un-lady like phrase on my lips. Poor Brad looks defeated standing behind me with a death grip on the back of my dress in an attempt to make me not run away screaming explecitives. Needless to say it has taken all week because he can get me to cooperate for 15 minutes then I go grumpy gus. Here are two of my favorites at 30 weeks pregnant:

Not too shabby, eh? Walmart actually will not sell us the pictures because they say it is copyright infrigement that we are getting copies of professional photographs and as such, have taken our prints hostage until we can prove Brad took the pictures by showing them on his SD card. All this was done in the guest room with a black sheet push pinned to the wall and flood lights from Lowes. Pretty cool, huh?

Other than that, not much going on in our house hold. The insufferable heat wave broke and it has stayed below 90 for the past 3 days in a row. We actually woke up a bit chilled this morning because the A/C was still cranked up to artic mode. The city cleared the sewer pipes under the streets through the manholes so we are once again able to take "american showers" and run loads of laundry in the washer without fear of sewage flooding the basement. Well, thats a lie. We are snake bit when it comes to flooded basements because it has happend so often, but I took a luxuriously long 10 minute shower this evening while Brad was at the brewery and damn it felt good. Even was able to shave a bit of my legs for the first time in 2 weeks.

Crafts on the Brain

2009-08-02T16:32:00.001-07:00

Things that demanded a nap this weekend:
1. Going to the store for two hours
2. Giving the dog a bath
3. Watching "Paul Blart- Mall Cop" and cutting out nursery ceiling art

I really hope the reason I feel tipsy with tiredness is the fact that for the past week it has been over 100F and that I'm 29+ weeks pregnant. Well, I'm not reall over 29 weeks but I'm measuring large. Who knows if that has to do with the fact that Brad and I have tall genes in us or my supposed gestational diabetes. In a nut shell, I know I'm already insulin resistant (thank you again Celiac...) so I flunked the glucose tolerance test just like I would have if I weren't pregnant. So I don't think I have gestational diabetes, I think I'm insulin resistant and pregnant. This is going off of the philosophy that diabetics don't have gestational diabetes, they are just diabetic and pregnant. Does that make sense? It does to me.

Its two months until October and I've got the Halloween bug. On one hand there are plenty of house projects that I could work on (in addition to the daily grind of keeping the place clean) but instead I've got tombstones and zombies on the brain. Last year I made some tombstones out of some foam board that looked really good but they didn't survive the move this winter. I do still have the strobes, big orange light wrapped spider web, fog machiene, gouhl in a cage, and some black/purple fairy lights. I'd love to make 4 tombstones and 2 zombies this year but thats going to be a lot of work, and thats assuming the baby shows up mid-october as opposed to early-october like its starting to look. With my luck I'll squeeze a 10 pounder on halloween night which would but a big crimp in my plan seeing as this town goes all out for trick-or-treating. Apparently they shut down the street!

Fluffing Our Nest

2009-07-31T21:41:00.000-07:00

I'm still nesting, or at least that's what I'm told. The first room we worked on when we moved in this past Feburary was the living/dining room and barring the fact that it is "well lived in", it looks awesome. In May, Brad's youngest brother Daniel came up for a week as a graduation present and I wasn't feeling well so while they trampled through Seattle I re-decorated the upstairs bathroom seeing as I was alone and didn't have to compromise on paint colors. Last month I was ready for another room and since the nursery was turning out to be quite expensive to furnish I made the decision to hit the kitchen and it is now stunning in crimson, white, and turquose.

Tying all of these rooms together is the hallway of flesh:

Fear the hall of flesh and its night time cell phone documentation!

Since the hall ties in the crimson kitchen, the sage green living/dining room, the carpet area downstairs/stairwell, and the fir floors upstairs... it needs to remain "neutral". But I abhore the way the current paint color looks in the downstairs light. Upstairs it looks sandy and we've kept the nursery and our bedroom this exact same color... but downstairs it is what I like to call "covergirl foundation flesh tone". It really does make my skin crawl. So now we face the battle of picking out a neutral color that not only compliments all the rooms around it and helps unify the whole house, but that also is different enough from the current color that we think its worth the battle of painting the 20' tall walls and ceiling in the center of the stair well. One day when the kids don't have such vunerable lungs we'd like to pull up the carpet and refinish the floors and banisters but for now we just don't have the time, money, and most of all the energy. Here are the colors that survived the great whittling that will now hang on all the walls until we decided which shade to pick.

Behold! Molasses, Bread Basket, Cat Tail, and two shades of "Gold"!

Yeah, so they are still in that same color family but at least they don't have that vomit inducing peach undertone.

The nursery is so close to being done I can hardly stand it! I ordered prints from IndustrialFairyTale.etsy.com's "Red Coat Series" and they should be here by the end of next week- Im geeking out about them. We basically themed the entire nursery around these 4 prints! I also have one more zepplin to cut out for the ceiling art (curious?) and then those can go up and viola! C'est fin!

Well, I'm an old fart and being 7.5 months pregnant is difficult enough let alone in the middle of a heat wave (today it got up to 107... lord have mercy) and I'm just a bit past sleepy.