Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Thanks to Denis, I have these cute pics of my kids from Mother’s Day weekend.

I’m a little sad that Molly no longer needs the barrette. I cut her hair this weekend. She had started to pull out the barrette on her own and promptly put it into her mouth. Given that it’s small enough to swallow, we decided that cutting her hair was more important for her well-being. No need to let her choke on a hair accessory, right?

This is my desktop at work. I heart it. (And them, natch.)

Monday, May 17, 2010

Tonight will be Molly’s last night sleeping in the tent before our trip. She’s done well. Beau has napped her in the tent every day with no problems. She did some crying last night at bed time, but eventually soothed herself to sleep and played happily this morning while she waited to be retrieved after waking up.

She will sleep in the tent tonight and then we pack it up. I think she’ll do fine once we get to California.

Yay.

Friday, May 14, 2010

I love this insight into The Hobbit.

We’ve been part of this adventure with Bilbo from the beginning. We’ve found ourselves comfortable in the Shire and suddenly thrown, partially against our will, into an adventure with a band of dwarves and a quirky wizard. We escaped trolls, goblins, Gollum, spiders, and wood-elves; we’ve discovered a magic ring and a sword. At this point, about 2/3 of the way into the book, Tolkien makes a very deliberate story transition: “…we are now drawing near the end of the eastward journey and coming to the last and greatest adventure, so we must hurry on” (end of chapter 9, “Barrels out of Bond”).

From here, we step into Lake-town, a small wooden village of people (not elves or dwarves) a few days from Dale and the Lonely Mountain. Dale is the town and the Lonely Mountain the dwarf dwelling places that were destroyed by the dragon Smaug, and the reason for the whole adventure: The dwarves are returning to reclaim their treasure and defeat Smaug. In Lake-town, a fascinating little legend (or fairy tale) had been told for many years that the Dwarf kings Thror and Thrain would return “and gold would flow in rivers through the mountain-gates, and all that land would be filled with new song and new laughter.”

In other words, a land plunged into darkness by an evil dragon would be returned to a state of glory by the return of a king. Sound familiar?

Go read the whole thing. Makes me love The Hobbit even more.

[via Brandywine Books]

Thursday, May 13, 2010

I haven’t posted much about TV. That’s because I’m not watching much TV.

Imagine that.

Turns out I only miss it a little bit. That said, my DVR is at 90% capacity, although I’m guessing half of the stuff on there is actually for the Jesse. My plan is to try to watch the shows that I recorded during the summer. They include: The Good Wife, House, and Manhunters.

I only have about 5 episodes of The Good Wife left - that one I have managed to watch here and there as the season has progressed. I really like it and I think Beau does, too. He will watch it with me on occasion, so at the very least he tolerates it.

We watched the first couple episodes of this season of House and then life got in the way and I just let each new episode keep accumulating on the DVR. I think we have 11 and isn’t the season finale next week? So that will make it an even dozen to either watch or delete.

We love Manhunters, but it comes on after our usual bedtime so we let the DVR catch it. We have 18 episodes. If you haven’t seen this show, you should check it out. It is The Fugitive only it’s real.

What I have managed to watch live or nearly live include: LOST, V, American Idol, and Survivor. V is an interesting show that I like a lot. I think it’s a very good remake, well cast, very well acted, action packed, mysterious. We had a slight snafu with the DVR in the past month or so, where it only recorded the last 5 minutes of several episodes of V. I came to find that the settings for Caillou, which gets recorded for Jesse (and who knew a show like that aired at 10pm?) superceded V. And since The Good Wife and V are on at the same time that meant 3 shows were booked for the DVR at the same time. I have since fixed the settings and TGW and V supercede Caillou. Anyway, I managed to get caught up on V just this morning by watching online.

I spent this season mostly fast forwarding through AI in order to see only the performances and some of the judges comments. I didn’t watch a single results episode. I’m not sorry about that because this season has been terrible. That said, of the contestants who are left, I really like Lee and Crystal.

Because of Movies with Mom on Thursdays - I watch Survivor on Friday mornings before I get ready for work. It’s been a fun season. Loathe Russell. Loathe Parvati. Meh about the rest, although I like Sandra more and more - she’s funny.

I stopped watching 24 after about 5 hours. I stopped watching CSI after the few couple of weeks - it’s not the same without Grissom. I stopped watching The Office because I still need to see last season. And that’s about all I can say about TV these days.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

We’re a week away from our California trip and I decided it was time to start sleep training Molly for the tent. I didn’t want to make the mistakes we did when we used it for Jesse 2 years ago. His first night in California was rough, with lots of crying and probably fear on his part. I wish I had handled it differently. Anyway, the lesson was learned.

Once Molly was in her jammies, I put her in the crib to play while I set up the tent in her room. It took about 15 minutes for me to get the air mattress inflated. But then I put in the sleeping bag that comes with the tent, with her Baa-Baa  and her favorite toys. I had her blankie next to me on the floor.

I held her for a while outside of the tent. And then I lay her on Baa-Baa. Almost immediately the hysterical crying started. I laid a hand on her chest and shhed and sang to her until she calmed down. 40 minutes later she was calm - awake, but calm, so I covered her with her blanket, zipped up the side, and left her room. There was some wimpering, but then I could hear her breathing deepen in the monitor and I knew she was asleep.

Success!

And then I screwed things up by trying to unzip the side to recover her with the blanket when I went to check on her before I went to bed. I woke her up and there was crying. But it only took a couple of minutes to get her back to sleep. I zipped her back in and all was well.

Except that her crying woke up Jesse, so I spent the next hour dealing with him before I was able to get to sleep myself.

Beau found her awake and playing happily in the tent this morning. He might try to nap her in the tent today, but she will definitely spend the night in there every night until we leave. I want her fully acclimated to the tent so that when we get to the strange house after a long day of travel, she’ll be happy to be in her cozy tent. Because I know that Beau and I will be completely exhausted by the time we get to our rented house that first night and the last thing we will want to do is deal with a crying baby.

I can’t believe we’re only a week away already. I’m getting more excited for our trip each day we get closer.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Thursday nights are special to me. It’s the night that Beau goes to his men’s small group and I get to hang with the kids by myself. Now it’s not the only time I have the kids to myself - very often I have them on Sunday mornings while Beau is directing traffic at church. But there’s something about Thursday nights. Mostly it’s because I get to put Molly to bed (I do that most nights anyway, but still…) and then Jesse and I have one-on-one time.

It started in the winter. It was cold and I was probably tired so I suggested that we get into our jammies and go watch a movie in our bed. We started with Little Einsteins Firebird movie that was recorded on the DVR from the Disney Channel. We watched that every week for several weeks (partly because he asked for it, partly because it was only 45 minutes long, partly because it was quiet and soothing enough that I often napped until it was over). And then disaster happened - I went to start it up only to discover that it had been deleted. Quel horreur!

We had moved the combo DVD/VHS from the bedroom to the kitchen and now only had a VHS in the bedroom, so I quickly went to the basement to scrounge through my movies to find something appropriate. I found Disney’s Tarzan, Pinocchio, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and Beast as well as some others that I wasn’t sure were age appropriate or that he would be interested in yet. We have watched all four of those several times and I’m ready for something new. Oh, we also watched Aladdin, but I don’t think he liked that one as much, so we haven’t repeated it yet.

I went to the library today in the hopes of finding something good. I was sorely disappointed. There was a lot of the TV show videos and very few movies. The movies they did have were not preschooler appropriate (or too girly). I did find two Beatrix Potter videos and The Wind in the Willows, which Beau has been reading to him this week. But that’s in DVD form and might get reserved for our trip to California. Anyway, I figure to watch one of the Beatrix Potter videos with Jesse on Thursday. I’m hoping it’s good.

I’m thinking it may be time to move the TV into the living room so that we can watch movies with the kids somewhere other than the kitchen or our bedroom. But I’m only thinking about it at this point.

But I digress.

The point of the post is that I have come to really enjoy my movie dates with Jesse. We snuggle and Jesse recaps the story while we watch and I sometimes sing along with the songs. It’s a sweet little bit of time with my firstborn. And I hope to do similar with my baby, too, when she’s older.

Monday, May 10, 2010

The LOST Finale, and by finale I mean SERIES Finale, is on Sunday, May 23.

I’ll be visiting my in-laws on that date.

How rude would it be for me to tell them that I can’t hang with them that night because I have to watch the 2.5 hours finale of a TV show that I’ve watched faithfully for 6+ years?

The problem is that if I don’t watch it live, then I’ll have to wait to watch it after we get home, which is the Thursday after. That means I somehow have to avoid hearing spoilers from Sunday to Thursday. Pretty much impossible, right?

*piglet*

Oh, what am I going to do? (repeat that X2)

*/piglet*

This is not good, people.

We watched Jane Eyre (A&E version) this weekend. I had been told that this version was the best of the bunch, starring Ciaran Hinds and Samantha Morton as Rochester and Jane.

I have never read the book. I didn’t know the surprise element that kept Rochester brooding. Even though I suspected part of that surprise element, I didn’t expect the fullness of it. (Those who know the story will probably know what I’m talking about. The rest of you will have to read the book or watch one of the movies to know.)

Anyway, I liked it well enough, but I think that Hinds overacted in his role a wee bit. Morton was fantastic, playing Jane with a dignity that was impressive and enviable.

I rated it 3 stars out of 5 at Netflix. Beau then told me he would give it 4 stars, which kind of surprised me. He said he liked it, but I didn’t get that sense while we watched. I guess the lateness of the hour and tiredness superceded his outward enjoyment of the movie.

I submitted Molly’s picture last week to the same Parents Magazine Cover Photo Contest. Click here to vote.

Here’s the picture.

Voting is daily through Sunday, May 16th. Thanks for voting!!!

Vote ranking will be updated daily.

[UPDATE 5/11/10] - rank is #856
[UPDATE 5/12/10] - rank is #791 - moving up slowly
[UPDATE 5/13/10] - rank is #658 - slow progress
[UPDATE 5/14/10] - rank is #619 - come on, bring the voting!
[UPDATE 5/15/10] - rank is #555
[UPDATE 5/16/10] - rank is #519 - there was a socket error on her page most of Sunday so there wasn’t much voting
[UPDATE 5/17/10] - final rank #533

I’m kind of bummed that she didn’t crack 500. I think she might have if not for the error message everyone got on Sunday. Thanks for voting!

Friday, May 07, 2010

Another busy weekend in tap for the Speaks family.

Tonight the Cooties drive up to my parents’ new house in Winchester. They come bearing a kitchen table and 6 chairs for us. I’m very excited. Also tonight, we will be cooking Drip Beef in the crock pot overnight for the big Mother’s Day gathering to be held tomorrow at The New Homestead. Beau made the buns yesterday and they currently reside in the freezer until tomorrow. I think I’ll have to prep up a batch of Crash Hot Potatoes to go with the Drip Beef. In my mind they go together. But I’ll do that first step with them tomorrow and finish them at The New Homestead so that they’re perfect when we actually eat. And I have a couple other of little things to do, including laundry - because if I don’t do laundry I won’t have anything suitable to wear. It could be a long night.

Tomorrow I have to color my hair. It. Is. A. Must. I can’t get in for a haircut anytime soon, so the color has to happen to fix the lack of body issues going on right now. Note to self: get yer butt out of bed early in order to color your locks. And now I’ve just added the Crash Hot Potatoes to the list of Things To Do for Saturday, but it’s OK. I think. I still need to wrap Mother’s Day gifts. There’s that laundry thing to finish. And then the most important thing is the delivery of the kitchen table/chairs by my sister. She’ll be taking away our current kitchen table because Mom wants it for her basement as a game table for the grandchildren. And then, of course, the gathering of the clan at The New Homestead for our Mother’s Day celebration.

Sunday will be church in the AM. Beau has parking lot duty so I’ll then head home with the kiddos for lunch and naps and then hopefully we’ll have a slow, lazy afternoon recovering from the busy-ness. And then I get to start stressing about our vacation to California, because the following weekend will be spent preparing and packing for that week away. I’m actually very excited about and looking forward to seeing Beau’s parents and extended family. It’s the preparing for it that’s daunting.

Anyway, your day is complete now that you know my schedule, right?

Thursday, May 06, 2010

It’s astounding how little news coverage there is about the devastation of the flooding in Nashville. And it’s bad, bad, bad.

I have friends, a young couple with 2 year old triplets, a 5 month old, and a new puppy, who barely escaped their quickly flooding home last weekend. While mom and baby waited in their car down the street, dad managed to haul the triplets and puppy out of the house, where 2 feet of standing water already filled their main floor. The first night they stayed with friends in an unaffected neighborhood. The next few nights they spent at a hotel. For the past couple of days they have stayed with other friends while they attempted to salvage some of their stuff and look for a rental home. They are fortunate to have folks available to help and other resources as well. But so many do not. And they need our help.

Michelle Malkin has a long list of charities who are on the move in Nashville.

In my own small way I would like to help as well. For the month of May I will donate 25% of all sales revenue from my Etsy shop toward Nashville Flood Relief. I’m not sure which charity I’ll donate to, but when I do I will update this post. In order to lend the most direct help, I have chosen to give to The Salvation Army - Nashville.

I will post updates to this post as donations are made. Thanks for your help.

DONATIONS TO DATE

[UPDATE 5/14] -  $33.75
[UPDATE 5/17] -  $  7.50
[UPDATE 5/28] -  $12.50

For the past 3 years I have pretty much driven the same route to work. Even in my new job I still drive the same route, except that I get to my new office about halfway from the courthouse. Along the way I pass by this tree that has become a shrine to a teenage girl who must have died in a car accident at that spot. The tree is in the front yard of a house on that road. The house is set back from the street with the tree only about 10 feet from the curb.

I can’t remember exactly I noticed the shrine, but I think it was at least 9 months ago. There was a picture of the girl, balloons, and flowers. I think initially there were candles in the mulch at the base of the tree as well. As the seasons changed the flowers changed as well. An American flag was posted around holidays, seasonal flowers were laid and the occasional ribbon was tied around the trunk or a branch. The tree itself was old, with a large trunk, but it was low hanging and had thick branches. In the winter is was bare, in the spring it had blossoms, and in summer it was lushly green.

In March I noticed that the tree was uprooted. I think the heavy snows followed by lots of rain and wind from a couple of early spring storms caused the roots to weaken and the tree toppled. It lay like that for about a week and then one day there was a new tree. This new tree is a sapling - so new that it is bolstered by sticks on two sides. But it’s still The Shrine - there’s a new framed picture that looks to be a collage and there are pretty spring flowers planted in the mulch at the base. And there are other things that I can’t see well enough in my drive past every morning - probably memorials of other kinds.

Every time I pass the tree I have the same questions: Is that the spot where the girl died or is that the girl’s house?  If it’s the spot where the girl died, what do the homeowners think about having a shrine in their front yard? I think it’s clear that they’re OK with The Shrine since there is a new tree with a new memorial in place. I sort of wish I could have seen the planting - who was there? Was there a ceremony? Are the homeowners and parents of the girl now friends? So many questions.

And at the end of it all is the unknown (to me) lost girl, the heartbreak of her parents and family, and the constant reminder for the homeowners of a terrible event in their front yard.

This is who The Pioneer Woman missed out on the other night.

Shame to miss that cuteness, no?

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

The Pioneer Woman was in town yesterday as part of her cookbook tour. The shindig was scheduled to start at 6pm. I had a plan - I was going to leave work early in order to have time to get home to freshen up a bit and pick up Molly and get to the bookstore by 5pm. I figured I’d be home by 7:30 or maybe 8pm.

I got home in record time. Molly was just waking up from her nap, which was perfect. I got my stuff together, which included a fully loaded bag for Molly with diapers, milk, snacks, and even jarred food for just in case; and my tote bag with my cookbook for signing, MP3 player for the car, Blackberry, wallet, and the box containing the earrings that I made for her, see my crappy camera phone picture below. I did take better shots with my real camera, but I haven’t downloaded them yet.

OK, so we’re at the bookstore and I am waylaid by an employee asking if I’m there for the book signing. I confirmed that I was and after also confirming that I had my book already I was given a neon green slip of paper with a sticker that was now my ticket for the signing. I headed to the coffee shop to get a snack for myself and a cold beverage and then headed in the direction of the chattering magpies who had already assembled in the back corner. Here’s where I got my first sign of foreboding - they had only set up about 30 chairs and all were already occupied. And there were about 50 other people gathered around those chairs. I maneuvered around to a place at the left side, in a row of stacks to stay out of the way of the employees who were marching up and down this narrow path. Since I had the stroller I was super conscious of space and the potential for annoying people.

And then The Waiting began. Not too long into the wait I saw my friend Kris and waved her over. Having her with me helped keep time moving - we had a nice conversation. Molly was well-behaved and charming to the ladies around us. You can sort of see the growing crowd in this shot, also taken with my phone because I figured with Molly there was no way I could actually use a real camera so I didn’t bring it.

This is just about 1/3 of the crowd at that point, maybe 5:45pm or so. To the left of that shot is the rest of the crowd, the seating, and the podium. And more were pouring in. I speculate that there were about 300 people there. I was told that each color group of tickets was 50 people. They easily had about 7 color groups of tickets and maybe more that I didn’t see.

Promptly at 6pm, Ree arrived. Everyone started taking pictures and she grabbed her camera and started taking pictures of us. Here’s the one shot I got of her doing just that.

She spoke for about 2 minutes then took questions for about 5 minutes and then they took her to the opposite end of the store to set her up for the signing while they then started organizing the masses by the colors of their tickets. Yellow was lucky - they went first. Then I think it was orange, purple, biege, magenta (Kris was that color), and then my color was called.

The employees were smart and used the stacks to weave us through the store to get to Ree. I got in line at about 6:30pm about 2 sets of stacks away (closer to the signing end) than where I had been standing for the first part. It took an hour to get a little less than halfway. It was at this point that I started to consider bailing because of Molly.

She was a trooper. Despite not being able to feed her any kind of dinner she held up really well. Add to it the stifling heat - it had to be 90 degrees in our corner of the store because of all the bodies and talking. And Molly wanted to be held, which made it even hotter for both of us. Fortunately, the gals in line with me were very sweet and tried to help keep her happy. A friend from my church was two people behind me with another friend of hers. And it turned out that one of the two directly behind me also went to my church so the 5 of us enjoyed our time in line together, talking about church stuff, TV, books, shoes, etc.

At about 7:30pm I noticed that Beau had called me so I called him back. He asked how it was going and I explained that I was only about halfway through the line and that Molly was done. He asked if I wanted him to come get her. I was reluctant (she was my conversation prop for when I got to the signing table, but I’ll explain more about that in a minute), but she was so miserable that I said yes. About 20 minutes later I saw Beau and Jesse headed my way. The ladies around me all kind of swooned at my rescuing hero. It was hilarious. They all said he gets major brownie points for coming to get Molly. I agreed. And they cooed over Jesse’s cuteness, too. At that point I considered asking them to stay, but I knew that Jesse would get too antsy, so they left. And I felt naked without Molly.

What was I going to do when I finally got to the table? I was counting on having her there to help with the small talk. I stink at small talk. I’m too shy and I stumble and I have a hard time making eye contact and I’m a complete dork in these kinds of situations. I was doomed.

By 8:45 I was next in line. I had my book out and ready and my little jewelry box, too. So I get up to the table and ham-handedly place the box on the table. “This is for you,” I said to the table. Ree thanked me sweetly and started to sign my book while I stumbled around for something to say. “So you flew in yesterday?” I asked, already knowing the answer because she said that at the beginning! D’oh! “Yes, and I fly out tomorrow,” she replied. “But I’m coming back in September with the family to do some home school touristy stuff!” I told her that’s a good time to come because it isn’t as hot. Really? That’s the best I could do? Where’s Molly? Then my friend Kris came to the rescue with her camera - she took a picture of me with Ree and then I think (hope!) I thanked Ree and I walked off.

I am a total dork. But my cookbook is signed and Ree couldn’t be more lovely and gracious. The line behind me went back to where I had started so I think she had about 90 minutes to 2 more hours of signing to get through. She took time with each person who wanted pictures, took several of her own, and smiled through the whole thing. Her face must hurt after all of the smiling she does at one of these things.

Later, in the car, I thought of the perfect thing I could have said to her, “Ree, thank you for helping my family to eat really well during our 3 blizzards this winter.”

[UPDATED]: Here are better pictures of Ree from my friend Kris.

Friday, April 30, 2010

I’ve been spending my afternoons at my old office, training my replacement. She’s a nice lady and seems pretty sharp and seems to be picking up stuff pretty quickly. Of course, until she has access to all of the systems we’re limited in what I can show her. And then there’s the potential of overwhelming her with too much at once. I’ll be over there next week, too.

My parents finally closed on their new house, so we will help them to haul boxes and stuff over there tomorrow. I’m excited to see their new home as much as I’m sad to see their new home. As such it will be a busy weekend.

On Sunday we’re heading over to the Sleepy house to share dinner we manage to do bi-annually. We are looking forward to it, as always. It’s fun to see how the kids interact with each other. A mobile Molly will make things even more chaotic, I’m sure.

Yesterday someone handed me a card for their side business. Their title is “passion consultant” and they sell “toys.” She invited me to show/sell my jewelry at one of her next parties. It could be a very lucrative thing for my business, but there’s a part of me that’s very uncomfortable about it. Beau thinks I shouldn’t do it. Another thinks I should. I’m torn.