I am fickle. My husband and his, “YOU SUCK!” doesn’t help either.

Oh, ok, he didn’t say that, but the banner was a little weird. Would have been a good halloween banner probably. So! New banner! Again! You get me looking at you all month!

Pulled from this photo.

I have a feeling that this new banner isn’t going to last long, as I will probably not like it in the morning. But anyway, new banner.

Just in case anyone else listens to the Dawn and Drew show, I have been keeping this page updated. An audio comment I called in was on the show I listened to this morning, wheeee! And of course, I called in again this morning. I sometimes wonder if I am the most frequent caller-in-er. Probably not. I go for stretches when I don’t call, and then I call call call call. (Ahem. This morning. Yesterday afternoon.)
If you are wondering who Dawn and Drew are, check them out. Very entertaining podcast!

CINDERELLY

Cinderella has become the latest favorite movie in our house. Yes, even Ethan. He LOVES the mice. He watches Gus trying to pick up ALL those pieces of corn while the cat is stalking him and he laughs his ASS off. We need to record some good old Tom & Jerry for that boy because he will eat it up.

HALLOWEEN

More on the making of Jocelyn’s costume (can you tell I’m very proud of my accomplishments?). We had bought her a costume which had a white hat and a cow-spotted vest and little fringey wrist thingees. “Eh,” I thought at the time, but there you go. Later we found her a pink cowboy hat, which she’s been wearing everywhere, and so when I was in the fabric store and saw a little pamphlet on making a fringed bag with fleece, the lightbulb went on.

I bought some pink fleece, and then I got a little jean jacket for her on sale at Target and took an old pair of her pants (sized 24 months, it’s amazing they even fit her, seeing as how everything she wears is 3T at this point), and sewed on some hot pink fringe. Ethan kept trying to convince me to cut the fringe off. He was sure I just didn’t know what he was talking about, because obviously, once I understood, I would jump at the chance, so he got paper and scissors, cut some paper fringe, and then made me watch as he snipped off all the fringe to make confetti. “See mommy?! Come on! Let’s do it!”

Even though Ethan’s design point of view was thwarted, I am pretty proud of her outfit. I had to hand sew most of the fringe onto the bottom of her jeans, as the pantleg was too narrow to fit around the bottom of the machine, and my machine was on the fritz to begin with (couldn’t get the tension correct) and by the time I had to resort to hand sewing, it was waiting by the door to go get repaired. She was definitely the belle of the ball last night:

Fashion fashion fashion! (IE: new cheap shoes)

I have a new pair of shoes that I got for 20 bucks at target. I call them my tarty school marm shoes.

Because they have that klunky blocky (that is so popular this decade*) librarian school marm look paired with a 3 inch heel. This is very high for me. VERY HIGH. In fact, I wore them around my office for a day (w/out wearing them outside) because I was positive I would have to take them back because my feet would die from them being too high. I can manage a 2″ or even a 2 1/2″ heel, but these suckers are HIGH (again, high for ME). I am amazed that I can totally wear them. Even in Costco (lots of walking around). Wow! ME! Tarty! Who knew??
*and yet you’d never see one on Sex and the City and Stacey London always wants to set them on fire. Perhaps I should rethink my choices….. NAH.

So I quite like my new shoes. Which is nice, because remember when I lost my wallet at TJ Maxx? Looking at shoes? Dreaming of shoes? Spent the next month WANTING CUTE SHOES? Well, I went back (a month and a half later) because those nice shoes kept swimming around in my head and I WANTED THEM DAMMIT and they had NO cute shoes. I was heart broken. So when I found cute 20 dollar shoes, I found some solace. However, they ARE cheap.. which means…. Stinky feet. Cheap shoes means manmade plasticy materials that make my feet sweat instead of breathing, and sweat = STINK. My tarty school marm shoes are very stinky. That’s the only downside to cheap shoes. That, and they fall apart in a year. I have a pair of heeled sandals that my mother bought me at Nordstrom that I’ve had for .. oh gosh, I’m old, probably 13 years that only JUST gave up the ghost this past summer (and I’m not yet giving up that they’re not really ok, just a flesh wound, they’re going for a walk, in just a moment.. they feel HAPPEEEEEE….. ahem).

So. Stinky, tarty, school marm shoes. I like em:

Let me say for the record, that only his daughter could get him to do this. It was nothing *I* said, trust me. That girl has got her daddy wrapped around her finger. JUST AS SHE SHOULD. So of course, I dived for the camera.
SADNESS

I wasn’t going to post anything about this, but most of our friends read this (or have spouses that do), and I think people would like to hear.. James had to say goodbye to his dog last Saturday. He and his sister Sandi adopted Cydney, a sweet black lab, when they were in college at VA Tech. She was probably about 11-12 years old. I call her our time share dog, because sometimes we have her, and sometimes Sandi has her. It’s a very convenient arrangement when vacations roll around. Erm. It was. 🙁 She broke her UC ligament a few months ago and has gone downhill snce then. We hadn’t seen her since before the accident, but James went and picked her up last Wednesday. We were a little shocked to see the condition she was in. Unable to walk easily, shivering, sores all over her body from her licking and worrying away at herself. She was not a happy dog. Friday when James came home, she had thrown up a few times. He called Sandi, and Saturday morning, they all met at the vet’s office and said goodbye. It was for the best. But it was a sad day.

We miss you, Cydney.

– amy

First off, I had a whole thing going where I was taking photos all through the creating part of jocelyn’s costume. then my sewing machine broke and that went to hell. But here’s a few:

But enough of that. Let’s get to the actual Halloween photos themselves:

And now. I’m going to bed. the sugar high has crashed and I am falling over asleep. G’nite.

– amy dreams of Almond Joy. And of having a pair of those cowgirl pants for herself.

so this past weekend has been a busy busy one. I actually dreamed Saturday morning that it was halloween night and I hadn’t made Jocelyn’s costume, and couldn’t find her boots and the people that opened the door to her were like, “Uhhh… what is she supposed to be?” James said it sounded like those dreams he has of not finishing his homework in time. Ergh. – Random tangent. Whenever I was sick and had those messed up feverish dreams in high school, I was always doing math problems. Trying to solve for X, what was X? Lines and lines of working out the 2 sides of an algebraic problem trying to find x in that weird dreaming state where everything is surreal and yet you can feel the pencil gripped tightly in your hand as you cancel out the +2 on both sides, etc. You would think this means that algebra was my worst nightmare, but the opposite was true. I love math. Tangent over.

So this weekend I made Jocelyn’s costume, broke my sewing machine (it is now “out of timing” according to the repairman) had to hand sew the last bits, made gingerbread cookies for Ethan’s class, along with other non-time-pertinent things. We all went to Costco (where miraculously, Ethan NOR Jocelyn saw the rows and rows of toys and demanded to be driven down them) to get more floor padding stuff to go under the laminate flooring in the basement, which I am finally trying to get going on again. There is a sad corner of about 6′ by 3′ that is started on. It is going to be a pain in the ass just because of how much shit we have in that room. Not really anywhere to move it to, so it’s tricky. The nice thing about laminate is as soon as part of it is laid, you can put stuff on it right away. I just need to get some done so some stuff can be moved over onto it to make room for the rest of the floor to be laid. It’s a catch 22.

Anyway, I was all nervous about remembering the items that needed to get done for Halloween and the kids’ school “Masquerade” party. This is because I guess Halloween is evil and they don’t want to celebrate it. So instead, they make masks and have a party the DAY BEFORE HALLOWEEN. That’s right. THe party was Monday. When did I think it was? Today, of course. HALLOWEEN. Ergh. So even though we HAD the cookies all made for Ethan’s party (gingerbread cookie cutouts no less, not just drop cookies) and HAD the bag of candy for Jocelyn’s party (someone else had already signed up for cupcakes, so I grabbed candy), I thought the party was on Tuesday. And so nothing went in to school. Ethan was sad that there weren’t any cookies at his class party. Jocelyn was kind of oblivious, and kept calling the bag of candy, “MY BIRTHDAY PARTY! I WANT MY BIRTHDAY PARTY!” (“You mean your MASQUERADE PARTY CANDY, honey.” “YEAH! MY PARTY CANDY! MY BIRTHDAY PARTY CANDY!” Bah.)

Anyway. Kind of bummed. After the kids were in bed, and we had watched 2 fraking episodes of Battlestar Galactica (we’re still on season 1), I sighed.

me: “I can’t beleive the parties were today. I mean, I made cookies! I bought candy! You would think the damn party would be tomorrow, ON HALLOWEEN.”

james: “Yeah. That sucks.”

me: *sigh* “I’m a bad mother.”

james: *flips a page in his magazine.*

me: *glares at him*

james: *totally oblivious. FINALLY looks up. sees me looking at him.*

me: *gives him a more obvious glare, that says, “welllllll?”*

james: *the cogs finally start to turn in his head* finally he blurts out, “You’re not a bad mother.”

me: *glancing down at my pretend watch on my wrist*

james: *blush*

me: “You are fired.”

The boy plays hard:

the girl is dainty

they’re very cute

Well it has been a rough few weeks, and I haven’t really written about it here. Actually, mostly because I just have not had a lot of time to write. But especially because I am have had a very good week, I wanted to check in on the project skinny stuff.

When we last left our heroine (that’s me!), she was sick for the weekend and thus, had a big loss. She was nervous that the whole starvation diet that sickness threw her into would not make that loss a maintainable one for the next week. HOWEVER! She managed to maintain! No loss, just maintain. The NEXT week, however, had a friday lunch at a chinese buffet place, bunko hosted at her house, and a grilling event also hosted at her house. There was gaining. So what did our heroine do?!? First off, she’s going to stop refering to herself in the third person, because while it was fun at first, it’s becoming a pain in her ass.

I buckled down and WORKED, baby. The weigh-in after being a social butterfly was not a good one, at +5 lbs. I am happy to say that this morning, I weighed in at -4.5 lbs. YAY ME! Now, that is a little much to lose in one week, but honestly, I don’t care. I will take it, and I’m going to keep working my butt off. Seriously, I have like a 10 pound threshold that I need to cross. When I was doing this last year this time, I would get up to that 10 lb mark and then it was gain lose gain lose gain lose never getting anywhere until I tossed in the towel. Same thing in the spring. Getting past the 10 lb point is a major milestone for me, and I’m feeling good baby. Next week, I want to see the total loss to be TWELVE! That’s right, I thumb my nose at you, Halloween! I can do it anyway!

– amy misses project runway already.

You know, it just figures. I hauled my camera around with me all last week, and didn’t really use it. And then I REALLY WISH I had it last night on my way home. The moon was a beautiful sliver hanging in the velvety violet sky, which grew purple and then dark orange closer to the horizon. Fluffy clouds spotted the night, the sort that you wish you could just fly up and ride around on. Jocelyn kept saying, “THE MOOOOOOON! THE MOOOOOOON!” (which I first thought was, “I’M HOME!” but quickly caught on to) I tried to take a picture with my camera phone, but it really sucked big time. I wish I had not only my camera, but a tripod.

And then I wish I had it with me again, because last night, I finished my crochet hat, and I’m wearing it today. I took a crappy camera phone picture, but it really is crappy.

So what do you do with crappy photos? Why, photoshop and filter the hell out of them of course! Now instead of just crappy, it will look crappy, AND ARTY!

So here you go: