Why do I always get the deformed M&Ms?

But I don’t. So you’re stuck with this blurry camera phone photo (clickity click to see the big version):

My latest batch of marble push-pins. We have a ton of marble magnets on our fridge, but I really needed more pins for my board at work. Push pins seem to be a hot commodity around here, because I couldn’t find any in the supply closet. What a great reason to make my own!
THE GLORIOUSNESS OF ASPHALT

A new road, which they have been working on FOR EV ER finally opened yesterday. James and I were buzzing like little bees over the flashing sign they put up to alert everyone that a new traffic pattern would be in effect Tuesday. Tuesday morning came – the road was STILL CLOSED. I was torqued. James was torqued. All of our (meager) conversation that day was how mad we were that they LIED and it WAS NOT OPEN.

But then! Lo! The heavens opened! And the new road was open upon our arrival home!

It usually takes James 30-40 minutes to take the detour to the kids’ school in the mornings to drop off. This morning, 15-20 minutes. It usually takes me 20-30 minutes to get to I-66 through the stop and go traffic. This morning, 10 minutes.

Now if they would only finish 66. It’s insane. They are so close to being done. JUST FINISH IT ALREADY!

DVD MUST HAVE

I think it’s about time we cough up the $17 bucks and purchase one of these:

That’s right folks, a DVD rewinder.

Just THINK of all the time you will have when you don’t have to rewind those damn DVDs yourself anymore.

That is all. I bid you adieu.

– amy says, “A-doo.”

The boy loves to build. Wooden train track layouts, GeoTrax train track layouts, or just blocks, the boy just looooves to build. Here is the latest engineering feats from the offices of Ethan P., Architect. I’m saving the lego creations for another day.

For the record, we have 3 GeoTrax sets – the Workin Town Railway, the Mt. Blast Construction Co, and the Cross Valley Junction. The wooden tracks…. Hmm. A whole crapload of the very simple Ikea tracks, which comes with 1 engine and 3 cars.. I think we have 3 of those sets total, and then a miscelaneous assortment of tracks that came with his train table from Costco, made by KidCraft.

Also for the record, I don’t recommend the KidCraft train sets from Costco. The official layout was too tricky to be put together by Ethan, at about 2 1/2. The risers for the higher level tracks had to be positioned JUST SO, right where two tracks connected, and then if it was shifted at all, one of the tracks would fall, causing chaos, and sometimes *gasp*, trains falling to their doom and little disappointed sighs and frustrated exclamations of, “IT FELL MOMMY! I NEED HELP!!” It really forces the user to be “careful” while playing lest the layout fall apart, which is asking way too much of a toddler.
A few of the key pieces (the 2nd story bus station) broke only a month into our ownership which made building the layout that it was intended for very difficult (couldn’t really build the layout without the 2nd level bus track. The track went up a hill to… nothing.) It also had a “control tower” that broke after 5-6 months. Some of the smaller pieces were falling apart all the time as well. Our set came with two wooden airplanes, and the wings and tail pieces were always falling off and had to be glued back on. It seemed there was always one small piece or two on the counter waiting to be fixed, or waiting for the glue to dry so they could go back into circulation. This was 2 years ago though, so maybe the sets are sturdier now. The tracks themselves however are doing fine and are still in heavy rotation, especially the track switcher pieces, and the crossing gate pieces (although the plastic gate pieces are barely hanging on). The set also has a huge amount of little pieces that Ethan uses sometimes, the people, the trees, the signs, the plane, the landing strip for the plane..

The table has served us very well, but the bottoms were constantly falling out of the trundle drawers, and sliding them back under the table was always problematic. They were large and heavy, with heavy caster wheels, and when you slid them under the table, they had to be perfectly straight or they’d hit the back table legs, and then you had to work it forward and try to angle it back correctly and blah. Way too hard for toddlers. I replaced them with big plastic bins that were much easier for little hands and muscles to manuver.

All that being said, I just looked at the KidKraft set Costco has for this year, and damn, it looks cool. Ethan would LOVE it 🙂 A STEAMROLLER! A CRANE! I can see I am NOT going to be able to take Ethan with me to Costco after Halloween. Still, I see that the track risers have to be EXACTLY in the right place on those high tracks. If they would just toss in a bunch of extra risers that you could use as additional support, it would do a lot for useability. The track “hills” are not the right height for a typical block, so they can’t even be reinforced that way. I could have dealt with the broken pieces and the heavy trundles if the set was actually easy to USE. It’s too bad really, the new set looks super cool. KidCraft can definitely get the imagination working though, and I did always love that they were all made of wood. Nice to get a break from the plastic stuff. (Now if only the pieces wouldn’t FALL APART…)
Wow, I got off on a tangent there. But Christmas is coming, so this little review might come in handy for parents of toddlers!

– amy

About 12:30, last night. Me – already in bed. James – coming to bed after his spree of massive destruction in World of Warcraft:

amy: “James, we can’t do this anymore”

james: “do what?”

amy: “The Chickens keep crowing”

james: “are you awake?”

amy: zzzzZZZZzzzZZZZ

james: “Amy?”

amy: “The Chickens keep crowing…”

(This one (above) we have dubbed, “the one where James looks like a psychopath.” His eyes are just a leeeetle too wide open.)

i feel like there’s so much to catch up on when I don’t post for a while. and i have to have scads and scads of time in order to post “properly”. and then i get into a huge downward cycle because I don’t really have scads of time, and if i don’t detail how i spent each of my days in blissful ignorance of the internet and this website and blah blah blah then i’m a bad blogger person and who needs that kind of pressure?

So i’m taking this few seconds of time, and posting anyway! (the moral of this story is i need to post regularly!)

1. Ethan said on the way home today, “Do you realize that I can …” I don’t remember the rest of the sentence. I was boggling that he used “realize” correctly. The boy is four. Do you realize the boy is four? The mind boggles.

2. Jocelyn says “poop” for both peeing and pooping. She was sitting at the table eating dinner last night and announced that she was going poop. I doubted it, but thought the poop must be on it’s way. I finally convinced her to try sitting on the potty when I realized that she had probably peed while sitting at the table. We obviously need to work on differentiating between #1 and #2. It’s kind of funny because we’ve had no success in peeing on the potty whatsoever, but she’s managed to poop a couple of times. This is the exact opposite of how it worked for Ethan, who was in underwear and peeing in the potty with ease, but would not poop anywhere except in his diaper, at naptime or in the morning before the nighttime diaper came off.

3. Because Jocelyn was sitting on the potty, all of a sudden Ethan realized that HE needed to go, and I told him he’d have to go upstairs. So off he went, and after I gave up on Jocelyn, I went up to check on him (I was feeling pretty frazzled and spoke curtly to him, so I wanted to make sure he was doing all right). He was sitting on the toilet and he asked me to stay with him so I sat on the edge of the tub while he pooped.

“Sometimes the poop comes right out Mommy. Sometimes it doesn’t though. If it doesn’t come out, even after you wait a bit, then you have to poop hard. I can poop REALLY hard, mommy. I’m a great hard pooper.”

Sometimes you just hear yourself say things like, “You sure are, you are a fantastic pooper.” before you even realize it. And then you sort of float up above yourself and look down and laugh.

4. After the non-pooping on the potty last night, when we got Jocelyn up this morning, she was poopy. She had pooped in her diaper sometime during the night. ARGH.

5. I was sick over the weekend. I’m doing much better now, but Friday night I went to bed with that feeling that I was not going to be healthy the next day. And sure enough, I was not. It was just a cold, but it was a cold from hell. I spent the morning on the couch, but then moved back upstairs to bed and dozed off and on the rest of the day with about 50 lbs of blankies on me. Poor James had to entertain the kids, direct the carpet cleaners, entertain the kids some more, and get them all into bed, because I was pretty much out of it. Sunday there was much less fever, but a pounding headache still most of the day along with the sore throat and weird high stuffed up sinuses (the nose was clear, it was higher up. I know that sounds weird. I can’t explain it any better except think behind the eyeballs/cheekbones.)

5.5 Getting our carpets cleaned was the best $100 bucks we’ve ever spent. We are so doing this every 6 months. I am kicking myself for not doing it sooner. James wanted to. I held back. I have no idea why. Because I am INSANE. James, you were right. So, so right. I was so very very wrong. Hold this over me at your leisure, for years and years to come. OH JOYOUS CLEAN CARPETS!

6. The only good thing about being sick is not worrying about WW points. in fact, on saturday i was afraid from time to time i was going to lose the small bits of food i did eat. Monday’s weigh in showed a loss of 3.5 lbs, for a TOTAL loss of 10.5 lbs. While it is cool to have hit that 10 lb milestone, I know it’s because of the near fast for Saturday and Sunday.. and that means that I probably just lost muscle, which is never good. I’m not sure what this will mean for this week. Does the body try to compensate? Will it go into starvation mode and save every little thing I eat? I guess we’ll see. I will be happy if I merely maintain this week, though of course, having a loss will be nice too. So… I guess I am cautiously enthusiastic. I am out of the 260s! That is cause for celebration! I want to STAY out!

7. work is very busy. I am so behind on blog reading lately. I *think* i’m caught up on people I actually know (have actually met in real life) but the rest of my blogroll is woefully neglected. maybe tomorrow night I can read through it. I love reading blogs, so it will be nice to settle in for some reading.

8. Craftiness has turned to crocheting. I bought the sweetest little crochet dress pattern, and am crocheting it for the little lady expected in this household sometime in February. I thought when I bought it, that it would take a while, but it is going surprisingly fast. I think I’ll be done this next weekend. I would like to learn how to knit. I went to a knitting group tonight, taking my crochet project with me, and I must say, the knitting talk was fairly intimidating. I can’t wrap my head around how knitting actually WORKS. Crocheting is very easy to understand (at least in my mind) but knitting is a complete mystery. Guess we’ll see, after this crochet project. The ladies at the group were great. It’s too bad they meet on days when James is usually in class. Today he had off, I think because of Columbus day. maybe next semester he’ll have Tuesdays off and I can go regularly. I need one closer to home though. Time to look around. Maybe start my own?

9. Monday I had off, and I met James and Kurt for lunch. where I realized, that the dull throbbing headache I had ( and had the day before, and the day before ) was probably NOT a result of the illness invading my body. It was actually caffeine withdrawal. Last week I realized the diet coke situation was getting out of hand (i’m ashamed to say how much I was consuming) and cut down drastically. Monday, I sat in the restaurant looking at James and Kurt’s caffeinated beverages and it struck me like a 24 case of Diet Coke, that gee, maybe this headache was from the no caffeine! When my body is used to getting it! Daily! I mused on whether Day 3 of no caffeine would be near the end of the withdrawal symptoms, or maybe only halfway through, and maybe I should push through the withdrawal symptoms, but after deliberating on it through the rest of the meal, I decided I didn’t care because I don’t actually want to give it up, just cut it down to a normal amount. So, I got a diet coke right as we were finishing up. It had a lot of ice, and it was a normal sized glass, so probably about 8 oz of DC in there.

And by the time I got home, my headache was gone.

10. I’m totally swimming around in the gloriousness of NewsRadio on DVD from Netflix. The cast was so good. the writers were so good. the show was SO FUNNY! I love every character on that show. It’s so rare to find an actual FUNNY ensemble cast. usually it’s got a few stars, and then supporting cast members. I keep thinking of WKRP, which my mother loved when I was little, and as a result, I’ve seen every episode (multiple times!) – that was another great ensemble cast. Another one – Coupling on the BBC. Definitely check that one out. I still hold that it is the funniest thing that is/has been on TV. EVER!! but yeah, love me some NewsRadio. And the commentaries are pretty insightful as well.

OK. I’m done. That was much longer than a few seconds. And I think I even got out all that has been on my mind. It feels so good to just have a good mind vomit!

-amy just lets the wookie win.

I was born in Mountain View, CA, but my family moved when I was about 6 weeks old to Loveland, Colorado where we lived until I was eight years old. My dad was then transfered to Washington state, so we moved to the nice town of Marysville, Washington. We moved to a 5 bedroom house with a basement I can’t clearly remember (was it finished? did i rollerskate on the concrete down there? Or was that in Colorado?), a “pickleball” court (how this is at all different from a tennis court I can’t tell you), a pool, and a beautiful woods with a stream beyond our back fence. With 6 children, it was a small house, but offered so much (hello! did you hear me say pool?!) that my parents took it. My younger sister Susan and I doubled up, and my brothers James and Joe did also. The two eldest siblings got their own room, Larry and Ellen. When Ellen went off to college, Susan and I moved up to her room, and our old room became my Dad’s office.

I remember when we first arrived at the house. Hewlett Packard was moving us, so we stayed in the Everett Pacific Hotel until the moving van arrived, which I remember as taking forever, for some reason. We kids had not seen the house, so my folks took us to at least go see the house (we didn’t have the key yet). We were wandering all over the yard, and I was fascinated by the pool. It was uncovered, and I remember dipping my toes to feel the temperature, and then without warning, I was in the pool, water up to my chest. Fully clothed. I have no idea what happened, but my mother is still convinced that I did it on purpose. Because everyone I know LOVES TO PAD AROUND IN SOGGY CLOTHES AND SHOES. FOR AN HOUR. I think the story that I did it on purpose was solidified because in the summertime, I lived in the pool and became quite the brown little fish-girl.

I was super lucky that next door housed a girl my age, and Heidi and I became best friends. We were inseparable, and played together all the time. I wish I could remember the elaborate stories our active imaginations conjured up, because they were something. Strawberry shortcake, Barbie, playing in the woods, playing in the pool, climbing into and eating ourselves sick in Heidi’s cherry tree were all pleasant ways we passed the time.

When I was twelve, we moved again, though this time I’m not exactly sure of the reason. The new house was much bigger, and had a good bit of land. My mom would have room for a proper music studio, and my dad had not only an office, but a dark room for his photography. My younger sister and I would FINALLY get our own rooms, so we were excited for the move, plus it wasn’t far. We moved to Snohomish (sno-HOME-ish) Washington, about 25 minutes away, where I remember being very distraught over having to go “BACK” to elementary school, whereas in Marysville, 6th graders were in middle school. I was ever so slighted to not have a locker and only having 1 teacher, 1 classroom, etc.

Heidi and I still stayed in contact, but we didn’t see each other often. I remember one time that first year, she invited me to sleep over, and I was so excited. Oh the games we would play! Oh the fun we would have! I arrived, all set to play, but all Heidi wanted to do was put on makeup, paint finger- and toenails, and gab about boys. I was so disappointed- no, not even disappointed, more like SHOCKED, and for the first time, I realized that I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I hadn’t really understood any of the girls in my new school, and it was because even though they were “still” in elementary school, they had crossed that bridge from girlhood to teenager-hood, whereas I still did not care about boys, still played with my Barbie dolls, and loved a good romp through the woods in search of unicorns. Hell, I still want to go romping through the woods looking for unicorns.

I think it wasn’t for a year or two that I actually felt like I wasn’t a little girl anymore, and I always felt like I had to “act” around other girls. I remember just sort of wandering through the motions at this point in my young life. I don’t know if that is normal for that age, or if it was just me, but I readily adopted gestures, speech patterns, sayings, etc. of my friends around me, because I really wasn’t sure who I was, or how to behave, what to do, what I liked, what I was ALLOWED to like, or would be deemed too babyish. This teenager gig was tough. It was a complete mystery to me that one day, these girls just decided they weren’t going to “play” anymore, when the truth was, it was probably a gradual process for them. It just wasn’t for me. It wasn’t until I went to a summer campish event, BYU’s Theatre Workshop (where I met the lovely Linda for the first time) that I actually felt like I came alive, and started LIVING, started BEING myself, instead of just wandering around, just being.

But that is a post for another day.

-amy peeks in the closet for any hiding pegasus-unicorns

THE WEEKEND

was wonderful. The lovely Linda came down for the weekend and much was discussed. I held her hostage, forced her to cut halloween decorations and trace dollie patterns, working her like a slave with only gruel & water butternut squash risotto and beer in exchange. And then I FORCED her to sit out in the sun on our deck and read the paper. The news of our executive branch of government alone could have killed her. I AM BRUTAL!

THE KIDS

are cute as punch. I can’t think of any stories now, except perhaps when Ethan asked Daddy to color something in on the kid’s menu at Bertucci’s. When Daddy declined, Ethan heaved a sigh as if to say, “Oh bother, why can’t ANYONE DO WHAT I ASK THEM?!!! OH THE HORROR!” ok so i did think of a cute story.

THE WEIGH IN

was a success with another 1.5 lbs gone. I am scared. I know I thought that it was hard getting back into this, but if you’ve been reading this blog, or the archives at all, you will have seen a trend. A trend of me being ALL GUNG HO! I CAN DO IT! YAY ME! and then petering out around, hmm… when was it?? OH RIGHT, RIGHT ABOUT THIS POINT IN THE JOURNEY. I don’t wnat that to happen. I AM NOT GOING TO LET THAT HAPPEN. I *think* that I’ve had a couple hard weeks in the last month, but I know I’m heading striaght into the place in my head where I am really going to want to just toss in the towel. I need to keep my game face on. I HAVE to keep my head in the game. NO COMPLACENCY. Just because I made it this far (gee, a whole 7 lbs) doesn’t mean that I can relax, because apparently, whenever I relax, I lose my willpower.

I have not yet begun to fight!! BRING IT ON!

Um….

But not too much. K?

THE WORK STUFF

I am coming up on my 1 year anniversary at work, and was idly wondering about the usual evaluation/review stuff that goes on. So I looked it up on the HR site and found out I was supposed to have one halfway into my 6 month probation period (never happened). And that they don’t do them on the employee’s anniversary date, but in jan or july, depending on that anniversary date. Soooooo… to make a long story short, I was supposed to be reviewed in July, and so I’ll probably be reviewed sometime this month to make up for it, and if I get a raise it will be retroactive to July.

I’ve already spent it in my head on booze and hos.

THE TV STUFF (no spoilers, just for you Hilly! Even though you’re probably caught up by now)

I JUST NOW watched last week’s project runway. I was DYING with anticipation. OMG I love that show. I can’t wait to see the reunion show this week. We also watched the 2 new episodes of The Office. Excellent. Love love love that show. Still need to watch Gilmore Girls, which I just can’t bring myself to watch because I know it will make me so sad – I may build up a few shows so that I can watch them all in a row and hopefully end on a happy note. Also need to watch Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Love Aaron Sorkin. Own the Sports Night (GO PUT IT ON YOUR NETFLIX LIST!) DVDs. West Wing was awesome until Sorkin left. this is probably our most anticipated show this season.

And that’s really it as far as our/my tv watching goes.

Um. this was supposed to be quick and short. I’m off to bed.

-amy tosses salt over her shoulder.