Spider Blogging

It's that time of year again, folks. Well, actually, it's not that time of year yet but the spiders don't know that. Due to the unbelievably warm weather we've been having the spiders think it's May. I walked into my office this morning to find an adult brown recluse sitting in the middle of the floor. It was dead, thank heavens. For some reason they come out of seclusion to die. I think they do this to creep me out.
All day I have been checking under my desk, shaking out my office sweaters, and checking the glue traps. The maintenance guys tell me that the building is infested and that they can't eliminate all of them because they hide in areas where sprays can't reach. Um....
I'm not sure why, but these spiders are not so "reclusive". From May to July each year I see an average of 3 dead ones per day and one live one per week. And no, I don't go out looking for them. They are just there. In the ladies room, in the supply closet, conference room, and stairwells.
The day I see one in my home is the day we put our house up for sale. Putting up with them at work is bad enough. I pay a pest control company to regularly treat the house. If a brown recluse ever tries to enter through any window, door, or crevice it will have to crawl right through deadly poison first.

Unless of course...one just hitches a ride home from the library in my book bag.

Idol Blogging

WHAT???????????

Brandon gone?

America has got to be kidding me. How can this happen?
I was so wanting Sanjaya or Cheeseball Phil to be gone. Don't get me wrong, I do understand the underdog appeal of Sanjaya, but America can't vote for him just because they feel sorry for him like a sick puppy brought home from the shelter? He's got a good ear and a decent voice, but if he can't belt it out enough to be heard over that large band then he doesn't deserve to still be in the competition.
And, Phil...nothing personal, dude, but you are a cheesy performer.
Haley fans are obviously people who would pay top dollar to see a Celine Dion concert so that leaves me out of her fan base. Chris Sligh is my fave of the guys and there are 4 girls I like this year.
There's so much talent going on...it's been a fun season so far.
I'm just depressed we are down to two nights a week instead of three.
Sigh....

I know, I know....

I know I haven't been posting here very much. My daily life is just really not that worthy of publication. Who wants to come here and read about me cleaning up cat vomit, poopy diapers, and runny noses? You want to read about my Girl Scout Cookie addiction?
I'm too tired to be entertaining!!!

But thanks for reading anyway (all two of you regular readers!).
:-)

Finally!

I'd like to welcome Wimbledon into the modern world...only 30 years late!

What does a duck say?

Baby Sarah has a favorite book about animal sounds. You know, like..."What does the cat say? Meow, Meow" etc, etc.
Well, she apparently is absorbing a lot more than I thought from her love of books. Last night during her bath she grabbed her rubber duckie and said, "Duck! Gah Gak Gah."
I was astounded.
I praised her and said, "That's right, Sarah! A duck says "Quack, quack, quack."

She's the smartest baby in the world (and the sweetest).
Now, if she would only let me get some sleep at night!

February Blues

The flu has hit our household for the past few weeks. I always hate on February every single year: the cold, the sicknesses, and being stuck in the house all the time. I don't want to dwell on negatives, though. Instead, I'd like to just focus on the fact that spring is just around the corner and brighter days (literally) are sure to come soon.
Oh, and Girl Scout Cookies. I put in my order. Now, where are they?????????

Winter in Rural Southern America

So, the good news is that we have a beautiful 4 to 6 inches of snow blanketing our area this morning and all schools, daycares, and doctors are closed due to the thick ice covering all major roads. We have plenty of groceries and no power outages.
The bad news is that my two babies have the flu, husband has bronchitis, grandma (here visiting) has a cold, and I'm coming down with something myself. The babies saw their doctor yesterday and the co-pays for the visits and prescriptions ate up over half of my birthday money (goodbye new running shoes).
Now for the "rural southern" part of my story: our neighbors across the street are parents of four boys between the ages of 11 and 21. All three of the older boys have their own pickup trucks AND ATVs. That's "four wheeler all terrain vehicles" for you northerners. So guess what they did all afternoon and evening yesterday as the snow accumulated? They not only road their ATVs all over the neighborhood like maniacs, but they for some reason thought it was proper to ride them ON our front lawn. You see, one of the reasons why we chose this neighborhood is because the people here are mostly doctors, lawyers, and professionals...most of them transplants to this area from other parts of the country. We wanted to get away from our old neighborhood full of redneck boys with their ATVs, confederate flags, and 9 year olds toting their BB guns over their shoulders looking for what they could injure for fun. But alas, we cannot escape it. Sometimes I wonder if we can't beat them, should we join them? Instead of spinelessly complaining to cyberspace here should I have gone out on our front steps with a BB gun and threatened them with a "git on outta heeere yew wild boys 'for I shoot yer tires out"?

Old

I had a good birthday yesterday. I got some lovely flowers from the kids (aka my husband), a Pottery Barn gift card, quite a few very touching cards, some cold hard cash, and a phone call from a dear friend.
I have mixed feelings about this whole aging thing. It's a surreal experience for me. I don't know if I'm ready to accept it yet.
Accept it or not, age happens. It beats the alternative!

Taco Town

I know this is over a year old but I saw it again the other night on a SNL repeat (gotta have my Dane Cook).

AND IT GETS EVEN AWESOMER!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEF-3PiQdq0

I Feel The Earth Shift

I haven't posted lately about how stressed out and depressed I've been. I really wanted this to be the "new blog" where I did not whine. But this is not a whine post. This is a "things are looking up" post. My husband finally took pity on me and agreed to make some changes to help alleviate some of my daily stress. All it took was him getting up a little earlier and taking on a little more in the mornings. For the first time in two months I made it to work on time. Despite the train blocking traffic, despite the ice I had to scrape off of every window of my car, despite myself...I made it on time. I did not cry in the car all the way to work out of frustration. I have a flicker of hope that maybe things can turn around and be better.
It's 9:30am and I have not yelled at anyone today, cried, gotten mad, or stressed out. I think I'm dreaming. If so, don't wake me up.

Don't Tell Me We're Not Related

I love this story about the chimp and her new baby. You can't look at that picture of her holding and nursing her newborn and not humanize them. I had to say a big misty-eyed "Awwwww" when I saw the pics (but I am quite hormonal due to just having weaned my own infant in the past week).
Warning: if you or your partner have had a vasectomy you may want to take a sedative before reading the story on CNN about how this little baby came to be.

Me and my Buster Browns

I don't have a real shoe fetish per se. I mean, it's not a "fetish". It's more of a...well...a deep emotional attachment and a romantic/nostalgic ache over certain kinds of shoes.
There, I've said it. It started in toddlerhood. I had a pair of shoes almost exactly like these

Well, except they weren't *$(@)% $75 friggin' bucks. I am pretty sure they were purchased at my favorite childhood store: Buster Brown Shoes. [que violins]

The play area, the aged store owners and workers who had been fitting children's growing feet for 30 years, and who can forget the golden goose egg toy (plastic one...it was the '70s not the '50s people) you got after purchasing a pair of shoes.

I love shoes and you would never know it by the way I wear them. I wear one or two pairs all winter and a different one or two pairs all summer. It's not quantity, it's quality. It's really a metaphor for my personal life when you think about it. I have a small group of friends with which I develop deep and long lasting friendships which span decades. I am a woman who commits to my shoes and my friends. So when I say I like you, I mean I really like you. Now and thirty years from now.

When I found out that this shoe company (Aster) with the outrageously overpriced children's shoes were now making this style in women's sizes I felt this tug on my heart that I cannot put into words. I honestly don't care if they look like little girl shoes. I so totally want them to the point that I can't stand it. I found a site that has them for ~$55. That's still a lot on my shoe budget but if you consider how often and how long I'd wear them and the fact that I rarely, rarely find shoes I like enough to actually buy and commit to longterm...it starts to seem totally practical.
Ahem.

Here are the styles of shoes that I feel emotional about (in order of my deepest love coming first):

t-strap mary janes
sophisticated mary janes
t-strap sandals (can't find any I like right now)
saddle oxford/oxford shoes
tap shoes(adult)

I don't know, maybe when it comes to footwear I'm just stuck in childhood and afraid to grow up. Is there something wrong with me? But honestly, when today's women's footwear looks a whole lot more like an object of torture than something you could chase down a cab in then who is the one with something wrong?

7 Years

My first born turned 7 on Saturday.
Yes, seven short years ago I was thrown into a whirlwind of motherhood where I would remain a dumbfounded and terrified bundle of nerves for nearly 3 years.
We celebrated all weekend because the party place was all booked up for her actual birthday so we extended the fun to Sunday and she had a total blast. I am totally exhausted. I was up until midnight for the past three nights baking and decorating a cake, making what seemed like a gazillion goody bags, wrapping gifts, and answering the RSVP phone calls.
In addition to my exhaustion, the muscles in every part of my body are sore and achy. Apparently, when they say that the inflatable bouncy play equipment is strong enough for adults they did not mean you could play as hard as all the first graders and not suffer the next day. Ouch. It was fun, though. Now I want a trampoline.

Operation Trans Fat Removal

So in my attempt to get started with my New Year's diet resolution, I watched a show on Discovery Health called "You: On a Diet". The two doctors featured in the show have written a book of the same title. The approach is a focus on waist size (studies have shown that fat stores around our waists are more important indicators of good health/bad health than numbers on the scale) and eliminating unhealthy trans-fats and processed foods from the diet. I like being able to focus on something other than the scale for once! The healthy waist size for men is 35" and for women it's 32". Umm.....
So I better get to work. LOL. I started in my pantry. Folks, I was in for a shock. I started label reading and for the first time I was not paying attention to only the calories or fat per serving. I was reading the entire ingredients lists and looking for trans fats (partially hydrogenated anything) and over processed grains, unnatural sugars...you get the point. If I were really following the advice from the show/book I would have had to throw away about 1/3 of my pantry contents. Ok, maybe not that much. But there were things in there that I *thought* were at least semi-healthy like my beloved pumpkin bread mix. Pumpkin is very good for you. If I were to make pumpkin bread entirely from scratch and used unbleached flour and lowered the sugar a bit it would actually be pretty healthy stuff. But the mix I usually buy...OMG!!! I had no idea the bad stuff that's in it. Trans fat and corn syrup city. Sigh....
I guess it's a good wake up call. I wish I were a pear shape sometimes and could store fat in other parts but I am all waist and belly. Even at a supposed healthy weight if I go buy charts or BMI my waist size is just large. It takes a lot of exercise, weight training, and calorie deficit to get my waist to shrink.
Here I go....

A New Beginning

It's a new year.
And a new blog site.
As I posted in my "other" blog, I think the nature of my posting lately is more suited to something like blogger. I don't post often enough, or interestingly enough to keep up a paid site of my own. This little blog here will be my space on the web for networking with other frazzled academic moms.