QUICK NOTE:

In lieu of hosting this blog on the borg collective in our basement, James has purchased a hosting plan, and it’s moving over to a server which promises connectivity EVEN WHEN OUR OWN INTERNET IS OUT. How cool is that? So, it’s actually moved, but the DNS takes a day or so to update. Hopefully you won’t even notice anything. Just know that now, Crazy Mokes is even cooler. Just FYI.

THE KINGDOM OF MALL

I’ve discovered the way to withstand the holiday scroogocity that comes from entering into any retail location which bombards you with Christmas music.

(Even when it’s the same Christmas music that I, myself, play at home (harry connick jr, ella fitzgerald, bing crosby) it still sucks the life out of me when I’m in a store. Plus, it ruins the music so I don’t want to listen to it at home, even though it’s my favorite.)

Don headphones.

Blast ipod.

Ignore salespeople (and other customers) until you want questions answered or aid getting things down from top shelves or your credit card swiped.

Yes, this means that I ventured out into the Kingdom of Mall, where fake Santas reign and holiday cheer is strictly enforced on all unfortunate mall citizens (employees). Not only did I enter the Kingdom of Mall, I went to Tyson’s Corner, which is like going to the very Kingdomest of Kingdoms, not just any old Kingdom. The crowds weren’t too bad at all, and I reaquainted myself with the Elizabeth Arden counter at Macy’s, where I spewed lots of nonsense and the lady didn’t judge me too harshly.

Lest you think, “Oh she just stopped in at Macy’s and then left again. That’s not really a visit to the Kingdom of Mall,” I also went to: Pottery Barn Kids & Payless Shoes, all of which were at opposite ends of the Kingdom, and therefore maximized time spent amongst it’s citizens and visitors. Total time spent: 2 hours. I don’t think I’ve spent that much time in a mall since high school.

ENOUGH ABOUT THE MALL ALREADY

The James’ work holiday party was good. The entire time, I kept reminding him that already, with the presence of fake gambling tables, it was better than my work holiday party will be. This thursday we shall see if it is so. Another reason it was/will be better: The dancing boob girl. It was an incredible sight to behold, and no one at our table could look away, hoping against hope that those magnificent orbs would somehow escape their bonds and start dancing of their own accord. Oh, dancing boob girl, how we were sorry to leave the party, and thus, have to stop watching you. Later discussion among friends involved opinions on whether they were original or enhanced, and let me state for the record, the amount of jiggle to those boobs makes me state firmly: REAL.

When we picked the kids up at the school at 11, I had guessed that Ethan would be asleep and Jocelyn wouldn’t be. I was wrong. When I walked in, they said Jocelyn was asleep, but in truth she had just been lying there wide awake. Ethan however, hopped up after watching his favorite movie of all time, Cars, was racing around the room in his jammies like a bullet with 2 other little boys, holding a toy car and making brrrum! brrrum! noises. Saturday morning was the first time we have ever slept in since Ethan was born. I’m defining “slept in” as, in our own house with no extraordinary circumstances, like grandparents who get up and take the kids downstairs so we can sleep in. We all slept soundly until about 9am. It was WONDERFUL. Now we know that all we have to do to sleep in is keep our kids up until 11pm at night. Wheeeeee.

HOUSE STUFF

So, bouyed up by my parents imminent arrival (shoosh, i know it’s still like weeks away) the boy and I went downstairs to work on the laminate flooring project that has been lying dormant since it was started a month or so ago. We got a few rows done, when I then ran into a snag. I’ll probably go into it in more detail in another post, but let it suffice to say that we’re going to have to cut some boards down lengthwise, which will be a pain, especially since we don’t own a table saw, only a circular saw. I was bummed, because it would have been nice to knock a good chunk of that out.

So just to take the sting out of that, let me say that I cleaned the pantry out. Trust me. It was bad. And now, it’s all sparkly clean! So at least something was done this weekend. It wasn’t ALL just sleeping in and watching boob girls and giving up in frustration at laminate floor laying and letting Jocelyn pee everywhere. Oh. Right. You don’t know about that yet.

PEE, PEE, PEE PEE PEE!

The weekend we tried to take some potty training steps with Jocelyn. Which basically means we put big girl underwear on her, and she made small puddles in various locations around the house throughout the weekend, including on the couch. We went through every pair of panties she owns. At one point, James said something like, “Wasn’t it a lot easier with Ethan?” I just laughed. Ethan took months, and would only sit on the potty after I invented an intricate reward system involving stickers and M&Ms. You laugh now, but just wait until YOU try to convince a 2-3 year old to sit on the potty for more than 5 seconds. She knows how to go, and if she has to go and you sit her on the potty, generally speaking, she’ll go. It’s the getting her to STOP whatever she’s doing when she realizes she needs to go, and go sit on the potty that we’re having trouble with.

The tough part is while yes, we tried over the weekend, now it’s monday and she goes off to school and .. well, now what? Do we send her with underwear on and lots and lots of changes of clothing? Because they would need them. I’d like to have her a little closer to trained before sending her to school in underwear, but I don’t think that is going to happen in just the 2 days we have over the weekend. I guess we need to talk to her teachers and see. Maybe we can make some progress over the Christmas week off from school they’ll be taking.

My baby. She’s getting so big! Sniff.

– amy wishes you a very happy monday

James’ work holiday party is tomorrow. Yay. The kids’ school has a “parent’s night out” that night, so babysitting is taken care of. Wahoo!

My parents are coming for christmas, and now I’m totally obsessing about the house. Our basement is in disarray, with the beginning of the laminate floor going down, and now I’m all, “Can we finish it by Christmas? Let’s finish it. and we need a couch. and an area rug. Could we get a new TV by christmas? What about paint? I hate the carpeting on our main floor. Let’s replace it. Tile? maybe. FLOR? A definite I-must-have-it-now maybe. There’s a shop in charlottesville you know. Let’s go there this weekend. But only after we finish the basement floor.”

So, um, wish me luck. Hopefully we can at least finish that damn laminate floor. We may not have anywhere to sit down there, but dammit THERE WILL BE A FLOOR.

More accurately, wish James luck, becuase he is goign to be dealing with a CRAZY person for the next 4 weeks. At least our christmas shopping is pretty much done. OH CRAP MY PARENTS ARE COMIGN AND NOW I HAVE TO BUY THEM PRESENTS TOO.

Shut up. I would have bought them presents anyway. But it was more of a, “oh yeah I shoudl do that”, order something, done. Now they will BE HERE. Now I will SEE THEIR FACES. So now, I have to actually use my brain and get them something GOOD. Bugger!

You may be thinking that I don’t WANT my parents to come. Au contraire mon frere! (did i just call you my brother? wow, french class was SO LONG AGO.) I’m tickled pink that they decided to come. Me and my lil family is the only ones in my family on this coast. Everyone else is on the OTHER side of this huge country. You know, it would make things a lot easier on me if we could just knock out some of those middle states to make the trip more convenient.
Or I guess we could move to a smaller country. Something to bring up in the next meeting, I guess.

Anyway, we’re in VA and my folks, 2 sisters & families and 1 brother are in Utah, 1 brother & family in Colorado, 1 brother & daughter in Oregon… i think i’m missing someone, is that it? Nope, that’s it. Yes, six kids in my family. We had a blast growing up. I’m the 2nd youngest. My mother, boy, I don’t know how she did it. Honestly. It takes me having kids now to REALLY appreciate the feat of strength and determination it must of taken to raise six children. And she’s mormon, so there wasn’t even any alcohol involved! The mind boggles. Also, it takes having kids to suddenly realize that that little dash of crazy she serves up now and then is a direct result of having raised me and my 5 siblings..

So yes, being so far away from the rest of my family really does suck. We talk sometimes of moving, but we are pretty happy here. I know it really kills my mom to only see our kids once or twice a year though. All in all, everyone is pleased as punch that they’ll be here Christmas morning. Because Christmas is fun and all… but it’s even FUNNER watching KIDS Christmas morning, and that is probably the best gift I could give my folks.

Think that would fly? “Oh, I didn’t get you anything. Here watch the kids open their presents. That should be plenty.”

OK. Must fly off and work now.

-amy has “NO NEW! TALE TO TELL! NO NEW! TALE TO TELL! NO NEW! TALE TO TELL! AAAAHHHHHHHHH!*”

*it would make me so happy if someone actually knew what that was from. go ahead. comment what it’s from and MAKE MY DAY!

PS: OMG HOW AWESOME IS THIS:

Can we say mom-present? YES I THINK WE CAN!

And thank you to misty for pointing it out!

my brain has been swirling with thoughts that i keep thinking, “I should put that on my blog!”

So this might be a little scattered.

LET’S JUST GET THE POOP OUT OF THE WAY RIGHT OFF THE BAT

We have had many a day when we are lying in bed all groggy and half a wake Saturday morning and we hear Jocelyn’s little holler, “Moooooommmmy!!! I’m pooooooooopy! I took off my diiiiiiaaaaaaaaper!”

Nothing will get you out of bed like that sort of wake up call. We are still haunted, HAUNTED I SAY, by Ethan’s Excrement Extravaganza (we just refer to it as E cubed) when we walked into Ethan’s room and were accosted by the sight and smell of a poop-smeared room. Walls, carpet, bedding, even INSIDE THE DRESSER DRAWERS, people. It was awful beyond the imagination.

So while in the back of our mind, we know that REALLY, the worst is behind us, still those poopy words shore will spring you into action!

It wasn’t that bad. (I score “stripping the bed and tossing everything in the wash” as “not that bad.” you have to look at things comparatively, people.)

TUUUUUURKEY

We have had a succession of kind of laid back thanksgivings. Just us. Just our little family. Usually, I make way too much food and no one under age 30 eats anything except pie and bread, which can be exceedingly frustrating for the chef.

James handled the turkey this year, and while we had a little moment of fearing it was overdone, it was perfect, as usual. (Brining is the way to go, people. Let’s BRINE THE CHILDREN.)? I only made some dressing, and the thanksgiving must, Company Carrots.* Last year, I don’t remember what I made, but it was a hairy sort of day and I remember being sort of cross and tired all day. This year = much more laid back. Also, I’m over the dressing I usually make. It was just OK, and I didn’t even save any for leftovers. Next year it’ll be something new. Dessert didn’t consist of pie. It consisted of chocolate mousse torte cake. And it was gooooooood.

I had to work Friday, which wasn’t so bad. It was nice to sail down the highway to work with no traffic whatsoever. It was shocking to look at the mall and see the parking lot FULL at 8am. I stopped at McDonalds that was near the Microcenter, and it was stuffed full of people. I went to work and it was blissfully quiet and I got a ton of work done. I took a break and did some crappy blurry camera phone pictures of myself with my new haircut/dye job, so I’ll have to post those sometime.

HAIRCUT? DYE JOB? WHAT’S THIS?

So I decided to go blonde for the winter. I walked into the salon Wednesday night, sat down, and said, “I’d like to go blonde. I realize this is hard with red hair, but I really don’t want to walk out of here as a strawberry blonde.”

I walked out with strawberry blonde hair, and a haircut that I have to describe as Melissa would say, made me look like a mushroom.

I was quite happy with the color, actually, but the haircut I got fixed on Friday. It’s all a bit shorter than I would like, but really, I’m easy. It’s hair. It grows back. You don’t like it? Give it time, and try again. It may be a bit more strawberry than I’d like, but I can fix that in January.

I had a bit of a dilemma in the spring when I dyed it red. See, I have been dying my hair red since high school. Then through sheer force of will, I managed to NOT dye it for a while. Long enough that it grew out my natural color and there was no more red. So going back to red was a bit of a struggle in the amy brain, but as soon as I got back to the, “what the hell are you freaking out about, IT’S HAIR IT GROWS BACK JUST DO IT ALREADY” then i was fine. and i gotta say, i love the red hair, i just thought blonde would be fun for a while.

OH MY GOD LIKE WE REALLY DIDN’T WANT TO KNOW THAT MUCH ABOUT YOUR HAIR

Ok, then I’ll talk about Jocelyn’s! I sat down with her today and french braided her hair. Of course, I had to put Dora on in order for her to hold still long enough, but it was so much fun. Like having my own little barbie doll to play hair with. It was really too short to stay in, and so we took it out after 5 minutes before it just fell out, but it was such fun. She is such a sweetheart. She is doing and saying so many intolerably cute things every day. She just kills me with all the cute.

LET’S GET TO THE CHRISTMAS STUFF ALREADY

So Ethan has been anxiously counting down to the christmas holiday since before halloween. It seems like as SOON as Thanksgiving was over, he was like, “Next is Christmas, RIGHT???” We told him yes, and Saturday found us digging out our Christmas decorations, and going tree shopping. Yes, the tree has been purchased and it is up and decorated. Christmas stockings are hung. And taken down, and carried around and rehung, and pointed out, and described, and taken down and put on little feet, and then rehung again.

Now we just need to get all these boxes outta here. and the gourds. Sorry gourds, you are no longer seasonably appropriate. You must go. Plus, you were starting to get a little wrinkly, so into the compost bin you go. If you’ll fit.

I HAVE TO WORK TOMORROW

I actually had to work a bit this weekend too, but working from the comfort of your couch while watching Gilmore Girls off your Tivo and Season 1 Battlestar Galactica (we’re done now, and WOW, what a finale. Gotta get Season 2 SOON!) and getting up early and actually putting on CLOTHES and driving into the office… that will suck.

BUT AT LEAST THINGS WILL BE CLEAN WHEN I COME HOME

because we managed to get a lot of stuff cleaned up around here this weekend. half of our garage had been littered with bikes, wagons, … and other junk that i can’t picture now that it’s all cleaned up, which means MY CAR IS ACTUALLY HOUSED IN THE GARAGE! YAY ME! this is especially good because Friday has raine with a chance of SNOW SNOW SNOW! so it’ll be nice to park in the garage and not have to worry about frost/snow on the car.

We also cycled through quite a bit of laundry. I knew you wanted to know ALL about it.

I NEED TO BRAIN-VOMIT MORE OFTEN

Because if i get it all out more regularly, then I don’t make these ridiculously long posts with lots of nonsense in them. I’ll try to do better.

ONE LAST THING

Last week, I tried to get the sitter for the weekend (not this last weekend, but the week before) and the sitter left a message at the speed of light and I just took it to mean that she could not make it. So I called and told her I didn’t quite understand her message, but I was going to assume she was busy.

BUT SHE WASN’T! SHE WASN’T! SHE WAS AVAILABLE! And let me tell you, when you THINK you can’t go out, and then you CAN, it’s almost better than chocolate and peanut butter after lots of sex (almost).

We decided to hurry and try to finish up the christmas shopping before a movie. Then we were starving so we stopped at California Tortilla, got stuff to go, and snuck it into the new Bond movie (it was good, despite the blonde Bond. You wouldn’t think I would be prejudiced, having decided to go blonde myself, but sadly, I am, and it’s a hard one to get over, but it was still good). I still want to go see Stranger than Fiction. Afterward we went to Sweetwater Tavern and shared a flourless chocolate waffle while just wallowing in our kidlessness for just a FEW MINUTES LONGER.. Ahh. heaven.

OK THIS IS THE LAST THING

This friday: James’ company holiday party.

Next THURSDAY (can we say “cheap?”): my company holiday party.

All I can say is, better have open bar.

A new suit was purchased for James today, and I purchased some new duds last Friday (yes, I braved the crowds on my way home, and it wasn’t too bad). Note for next year: take some dance classes before the holiday parties, so we have something to do and won’t get bored and just wnat to go home and watch tv.

I hope they’ll be fun.

THE END.

– amy knows december isn’t til next week, but she put up the new banner anyway.

* When me and my siblings were little, company carrots was our very favorite dish at thanksgiving. My mom would tell us she would make however many carrots we would peel, and we would peel 2-3 5lb bags at least. I’m 32 now, and it’s still my favorite. Very simple, too. Yum.

Lately I have been getting a lot of hits from folks searching for “laying laminate floor.”

They especially want to know how to lay it in CLOSETS.

I posted a lot of pictures last time, including the mitre saw blade of DHOOM.. but not a whole lot of ‘how-to’ and GUESS WHAT!

I’m going to be starting in on the REST of the basement this weekend. So this time, maybe I’ll try to do a bit of a how-to while I’m at it. Of course, it will be how to do it with costco’s ‘new harmonics’ brand of flooring, so everyone else out there, you’re on your own.

I decided I wanted to make a quiche today.

I have a lot of herbs growing, and the only ones we actually use is the rosemary, on chicken and on roast potatoes. I should make some pesto, but I’ve actually never had pesto, so it never occurs to me.

Anyway, so I decided I wanted to make a quiche. I did a search on foodtv and came up with one from Paula Deen, the woman who uses a stick of butter in EVERYTHING. It HAD to be good. It was for bacon and spinach quiche, with swiss cheese.

So I knew I had a bag of spinach in the fridge, but it was bolting rapidly.. I sifted through it, picked out some good leaves and carefully washed and spun them dry in my spinner and chopped them up. then I decided they were too far gone, and I knew if I put spinach in it, there’s no way James would like it. So I ditched the spinach and picked some of my basil. Because hey! that was the whole point anyway!
It called for a pound of bacon. I never use bacon in cooking really. I keep a package in the freezer that I use whenever I make potato soup, but it just never comes out often. I was fortunate that the bacon in the freezer wasn’t freezer burned. So I pulled it out, cut some off the slab, and cooked it up.

I realized it wasn’t nearly enough.

So I pulled out the bacon again and cut up the remaining slab. that’s right. ALL OF IT.

Look at all that precious artery clogging GREASE! Gee, I wonder why I don’t eat this stuff very often?

I didn’t have any swiss cheese, so I just used cheddar.

It called for cream, but nope, haven’t got any of that, so I just used 2% milk. I figured there was enough extra fat from the bacon anyway.
I also didn’t have any pie crusts on hand, and sure as hell wasn’t going to make any.
So…. I’m making a Spinach, Bacon and Swiss Quiche.

Except there’s no crust, basil instead of spinach, and cheddar instead of swiss. Also, I like corn, so I put some corn in it too.

So really, it’s a Crustless No-Spinach, No-Swiss, Plenty-o-Bacon, Corn & BASIL Cheddar Quiche. YUM!

I also forgot to put the basil INTO the quiche. I slid it into the oven when my eyes lit on the chopped basil that WASN’T IN THE ACTUAL QUICHE ARGH, so I kind of stuck my hand full of basil into the hot oven and tried to fling it in there on top (where it will now probably burn, oh goody!) without losing a limb.

You know how those chefs on the food network are always sliding stuff into the trash as they prep and cook and saute and they finish with something and have a cloth to handily wipe it off their cutting boards and countertops, and by the time they’re done everything in the kitchen is sparkly-er and shinier than it was when they started?

Yeah, I’m not like that.

Recipe:
6 eggs
1 1/2 c. 2% milk
lots of pepper
1 lb of bacon
a handful of grated cheddar cheese (I didn’t measure, I just used the bit of cheese that was left.)
couple of handfuls of corn
chopped basil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

I sprayed my tart dish with a Pam-like spray, and then put the bacon in the bottom.

(Holy shit that’s a lot of bacon.)

Then came the corn and the cheddar cheese.

then I poured the egg-milk mixture carefully over the top.

Put in the oven, but remembered the basil and tossed that in there on top.

10 min. update: Quiche is in the oven cooking now. It smells delicious. Anything with that much bacon should be good.

20 min. update: Basil isn’t burning. Yet. Smells yummilicious. I’m getting hungry.

Baked for about 45 minutes – until there was no jiggling. My oven tends to take 5 minutes longer than most recipes call for.

post-cooking: this quiche is so yummy. I was correct, in that lots of bacon = GOOOOOOD. Now I will probably go bacon-free for another 5 years. Basil didn’t burn, everything was soooo delicious. If I had one complaint, it would be that it was a touch on the salty side. I salted the eggs, which was probably unnecessary, since bacon has plenty of it. Still. Yum.

UPDATE: James even liked it. Or he knew what was good for him and made himself eat it. And lie to me with a straight face. He’s a smart man.

I’m kind of jonesin’ for a big house project to do.

I haven’t done any major sort of projects since we finished James’ office in the basement. We had a contractor finish the room for us, and then we painted it green (this was mostly James with help around the edges from me) and laid down laminate flooring (this was mostly me & James, with help from Chris, Ann, and Kurt).

We also bought a huge stack of laminate flooring (it was on sale at Costco) to do more in the future. We first planned on putting it upstairs, but I am a very fickle person, and have since decided (and convinced James) that downstairs would be better. I love the wood, but it is on the orangey side, and I’d rather get a different shade for upstairs, plus, this is the same stuff in the office, so the whole downstairs will be done in the same shade.

Other projects: Last year I painted the 3 secondary bedrooms, Ethan’s room is a dark royal blue, the guest room is a melted chocolate ice cream brown, and Jocelyn’s is a lovely lavender purple. The master bedroom, hallway, bathrooms, laundry room is still left unpainted.

There is still so much we want to do to the house, there is a MYRIAD of things I could pick from to do. It’s just a question of WHAT to do, and when, and how much it’d cost.

I’ll be so happy when the entire place is painted, it makes such a big difference. I have an idea of how to paint our two front rooms, especially after seeing Misty’s dining room, I just need to experiment with colors to get the right combination.

I am loathing our wall to wall carpeting more and more every day, and that is all going to go someday. I’d like to do the entire upstairs in laminate flooring, a nice dark brown, maybe walnut or redwood colored. The main level, I’d like to tile the kitchen, bathroom and our two front rooms, and then extend the oak hardwood flooring that is currently in the entryway/hallway through the family room, or at least replace the shit carpet that is in there with something nice. Most of the flooring projects are in the “let’s do it someday” folder, as they’re pretty time and money consuming. However, I feel like the tiling in the front two rooms is something we could do ourselves, with the right tools. No counters/fridges/dishwashers to worry about moving/shimming up. Just rip up carpet and get to work. Also, laying the laminate flooring in the basement is something we can totally do, and soon, just as soon as the main room gets cleaned out, which James has started to do. There’s a lot of stuff down there, however, so it will take some time.

We also desperately need to seal/stain our deck. I’ve ordered some special environment-friendly deck stain called Bio-Wash Natural Deck Oil, so there’s that project that needs doing, and SOON. We were planning on having our handy man do that, but I’m not exactly thrilled with the job he did power washing the deck, plus, the astronomical amount of money we’ve alreaedy shelled out to him for odd jobs around the house is just too staggering to me. And it all started because we didn’t have a tall enough ladder to install the cage to keep the birds out of our dryer tube ourselves. He did install our new kitchen sink though, and our bedroom ceiling fan with remote, which .. let’s be honest, we’d never get around to doing, so I can’t be too bitter. (YES I CAN!) Ahem. So anyway, I’m thinking about maybe doing the deck sealing myself, but we’ll see. It’s hot out. I hate heat.

Oooh. OUTSIDE! There is another project that has been on my mind a lot, and that is TRELLISES. My sweet little vines that I’ve planted around our deck have really taken off, and they need something more to climb on than the dinky wooden dowels I stuck in the ground for them for now. I have priced trellises, and they are expensive, and since I want 4 or 5, I really have no hankering for spending a zillion dollars. Plus, wouldn’t they be easy to make myself? I may try my hand at that. I wish I remembered all my mad skillz from 7th grade wood shop. I made a mean pen-holder, I tell you whut. With James’ help, I bet we could fashion something simple and yet groovy.

So… here I am, wanting to do housey stuff. With a WHOLE MESS of projects I could choose from. I think I may be picking one (or more) and getting on it for the upcoming 4th of July weekend. Yes, some people choose to relax and enjoy time off on the holiday, but me? Well, I look on it as a whole extra day to get something DONE!

So here are the projects that I could *possibly* do:

1. build some trellises (trellisi? Trelli? bah!)
2. lay laminate flooring in the basement
3. tile one or both of the front rooms on the main floor
4. Pick a room, and PAINT IT.

I may be painted out, because I don’t really want to paint. Trellises, I may be kidding myself, but I think I could turn those out in a weekend, once I get a good plan for construction, and with James’ help. Laminate flooring would be fun, but it may not be ready to do. I’m thinking that TILING is the way to go!

I have had great help in the past, in the form of Tamara, who came over after I called her pleading for help and perspective, (“TAMARA! I THINK I PICKED THE WRONG COLOR! IT’S TOO DARK COME TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK PLEEEEEEEAAAAASE!”) and Chris, Ann, and Kurt who endured the smoke that comes from using too wimpy of a saw blade for laminate boards on the miter saw, and even stayed to help LONGER THAN MY OWN HUSBAND. Well, Chris didn’t, but I forgive him. BUT JAMES LEFT, AND NO, I DON’T CARE THAT YOU HAD “CLASS” TO GO TO. HIGHER LEARNING MY ASS. (I kid, because I love.)

So does anyone want to learn how to tile with me? You know you want to. You know you’ve been eyeing YOUR bathroom and thinking, “Hmmm. I wonder how hard it would be to pull up this vinyl and throw down some backerboard and TILE!”

Well, now’s your chance. You can practice ON SOMEONE ELSE’S HOUSE! Plus, I’ll come help you when you need help! Ahhhh, I wish I was Amish, because you know, many hands make work light! Especially with a miter saw! Which the Amish would probably frown on, so screw that.

– amy goes to add as many tiling shows as possible to her tivo

WAR!! HUH! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR.. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING…
Except when it means you have clean clothes.

James declared war on the laundry this weekend and I gladly enlisted. Battle 1 (consisting of about 5-6 loads) has been WON, at the cost however of staying up until 11:30pm. Battle 2 (about 2-3 loads left) will likely be waged tomorrow and my hopes are high for VICTORY!

I wish that it really was a war, and once won, it would stay won. Unfortunately laundry haunts us and will return to battle again in the not so distant future.

GEEKY THINGS

I started out the weekend feeling pretty cocky and straightening my imaginary “geek grrl power!” hat, because I installed a new hard drive in my desktop and copied over my original drive and it all booted up beautifully and there are no issues whatsoever.

Then the fates frowned on me when I started with my laptop. I have an IBM T42 and IBM puts a super secret itty bitty partition on their drives that has a copy of the original setup / OS from when it was straight from the factory. So, I thought it might be useful to keep all that and wouldn’t it be handy if I could make 2 partitions on my new drive and copy both the boot partition and the super secret partition and everything would be hunky dorey? In a nutshell, it’s not as easy as all that. After trying a few things myself, and finding some pretty spiffy software, I called IBM and got instructions to burn 6 CDs and let them do all the work. It did work, made the partitions, copied stuff to the super secret partition, rebooted and was about to start on the main partition when it just popped up with a failure message. Called IBM back and they said, “what sort of drive is this? third party? Oh, yeah, we forgot to tell you, only works with IBM drives.” Grrrr.

So I guess it’s no biggie, who needs the super secret backup partition? I guess I don’t. Fished out my Win XP cd and deleted all partitions in favor of one big partition and installed a fresh OS on that. Thought I would run into trouble when driver time rolled around, but IBM does have a handy utility that checks the drivers of all the hardware, downloads and installs them all. I’m at this stage now, it installed them all and I understand that the computer is going to be pretty busy configuring everything, but when I booted it up, everything was running very very slow.

I do have some misgivings about the drive in general, first, I thought that I would need 5400 RPM, but it turns out the original drive was 7200 RPM. 7200!!! I could have bought something way faster! DAMMIT! A part of me is a bit wary of not having all the IBM crap that IBM puts on there for you, and I think I would have liked to have had the backup super secret partition, but I guess it’s not the end of the world. Dang, 7200. I should return it and get the 7200, shouldn’t I? (Ha. Now that I’ve finally got everything working. Grrrr.)

Anyway. The “Super Geek Grrrrl Power!” hat fell off, and got trampled into the mud by a herd of feral dogs while I scurried up a tree panting and my heart beating a hundred miles per hour and geeky grrl? Me? Shhaaaw! As if! And monkeys might fly out of my butt!

AND THEN THERE WAS IDEAS AND PLANNING AND CRAFTINESS!

Ethan’s birthday party plans are underway, and I have latched on to a theme that I must say, I’m pretty excited about. Cars is the theme, and yesterday Ethan and I were busy with scissors, glue and poster board / construction paper making big road signs that we will put up all over the house on party day. Last night I made up little reversible “stop” “go” signs on popsicle sticks that can either be handed out when kids arrive, or put into their goody bags.

For an activity, I’m going to get paintbrushes, little wooden cars, and paints and let the kids paint their own race car. They had kits at Target but I shunned them for several reasons and will see if I can collect all the stuff myself at Michael’s or AC Moore.

I wonder if the theme is too “boy” as there are some girls invited to the party. I’m not dwelling on it too much however, and I don’t see why roads and cars have to be “boy” things. Still, hoping that aspect won’t be an issue.

James took Jocelyn to go scope out bikes. The original idea was to get one for Tuesday, the boy’s actual birthday, but we’ve put it off too long, so whatever one we buy, probably won’t be ready until later, so we’ll probably just get it for Saturday.

MARITAL BLISS

The weekend started in a pretty pissy mental state, due to the game which is World of Warcraft and my insane irrational jealousy of said game. James and I talked it over by Sunday, along with a lot of other things and we’re both doing better.

AND A PROMISE OF MORE TO COME

I have a project skinny post that hopefully I will get out tonight. I have lots of thoughts twirling around in my head and it’s time to get them out, hopefully get some clarity, and definitely get going on the road to skinny.

-amy is scattered.

My mother loves to do laundry. So she REALLY loves to come to my house, because there’s always a ton of laundry stacked up, both to do, and to put away. She mentioned to me how she thought there was a mouse in our laundry room when she was here, but I didn’t really think about it, because the cat litter box is in there, and sometimes the scratchign around they do could be taken for a mouse.

Then she said that our dryer isn’t working.

There’s been an awful lot of bird poop on our driveway. And even a broken, very soft blue eggshell.

Some birds have been trying to make a home in our dryer vent.

James unhooked the vent and it was STUFFED full of twigs, straw, what-have-you nest makings. He dumped it out in the trash (no eggs, thank goodness) and hooked it back up, but Saturday morning, I awoke to the twittering and scratching around to definite bird-in-the-dryer-tube noises.

Ethan was awake so we opened the window shade that looks right out to the vent from our laundry room, and saw the bird fly in and out a few times. Then he spotted us watching him and stayed away for a while.

We also have birds nesting in .. I guess the gutters right above Jocelyn’s window. It is pretty frustrating because when we bought the house, our inspector pointed this particular spot out, and said, “You need to get that closed off or you’ll have bird problems.” Our builder refused to do anything about it, and we neglected to do anything, and now, sure enough, we have bird tenants. I don’t mind that, of course, and I think we’ll leave it until fall, and then go up and screen it off somehow.

But birds in my dryer venting tube, this, I can’t really accept. I need my dryer. I dry things in my dryer. We dumped the tube out again (again, no eggs, please birds, don’t lay eggs!) but this morning, once again, I heard them busily filling my dryer tube with nest stuff. Yesterday I went to Lowes and got a nifty vent thing with a plastic cage that would block them from entering. The problem is it has to be installed on the outside of the house, and our ladder isn’t tall enough. So, buy another ladder (NO ROOM!!!) or hire someone. Or see if friends have a crazy tall ladder we could borrow (anyone have a crazy tall ladder we could borrow?)

I REALLY hope they don’t/haven’t laid eggs in there. We can watch for them as we’re emptying our dryer tube, but what would we do with them if we find them? I don’t want to hurt or abscond with some poor birds’ eggs!

Anyway. Those are our unwanted tenants… And it’s about eviction time. I have a pile of laundry to do.

-amy

It all started when someone left out a few baby carrots. I’m not going to point any finger (ETHAN!!!), but what’s done is done.

It started out benignly enough.

Do you see that? DO YOU SEE IT? A rapid, blood sucking bunny rabbit. SURE, it looks all cute now, but have you seen Monty Python’s the Holy Grail? I don’t want to RISK seeing how fast that bunny can move.

It only got worse. BEHOLD!

THEY WERE MULTIPLYING! I tried to ignore them, but that proved to be the wrong choice.

Oh. My. God. Well, there was only one thing I could do. You may want to skip the rest of this. It gets a little gory.

First…. I killed them. These rapid, carnivorous bunnies had to go. I had children in the house to think of!

Notice how Friday, our cat, on the couch doesn’t even pay attention to what I’m doing. she’s too busy checking out the book she ordered from Amazon. I knew I should have torn up that credit card offer that came for her.
I FEEL NO GUILT SO DON’T EVEN TRY IT!

But what to do next? I was a little desperate. What to do?! What to do!! I grabbed the handiest thing to staunch all the bunny blood.. plastic grass. that’s right… I stuffed them.

It’s surprisingly effective. Of course, even though the blood was stanched, I still had all these bunny corpses to dispose of. Trash? No, first place anyone would look. Paper shredder? My god, man, even I’m not that cruel! I will stuff them with plastic grass, but I won’t shred their empty husks of bodies! The humanity! THE BUNNIMITY!

I did the only thing I could do. How to get rid of eight bunny corpses??

Luckily, I had just the thing.

Put cookies in them and send them to school for my son’s class. Toddlers can handle anything. They won’t even blink. Plus, due to their inherent destructive nature, those feeble bunny corpses probably won’t last the day through. I was as good as HOME FREE.

What was that? Did you hear that?

I gotta go. I think the bunny police are after me.

– amy points out that when everyone’s after you, paranoia is just good thinking.

Make your own paper bunny baskets, and many other paper toys, courtesy of The Toymaker.

hung in foyer, and closeup: