http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvJVQYLlj2A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOSZwEwl_1Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTatk7uCbDg

So when we moved in, we had this second bedroom. We had just found out I was pregnant and I was in nesting mode BIG TIME. This room was pretty gross when we moved in, and when we pulled up the carpet, the floor was completely horrible. Like planks sticking up at different levels & barely physically sound. So we ripped that up, made a nice new floor (it reeeeally helps when one of your dad’s is an engineer, just sayin’) & made it all baby cute.

(These were taken before I got my fancy pants camera, so bear with me, I’m trying to like, illustrate a point here.)

Then the baby came and we realized a few things:

1. We are more of a cosleeping family then not a co-sleeping family

2. That room has no insulation and is right cold in the winter & too hot in the summer.

So we changed it to a play room, rather than an actual sleeping room:

Variation 1 – for the toddler

Variation 2 – For the preschooler

After Olive arrived, we knew that we needed to move the girls into a shared space, and this room was just way too small for that purpose. So we pulled the big presto change-o and moved some of the rooms completely around. Leading us to the current variation of the room, which I don’t have great pics of (REMEMBER? I haven’t been taking pictures as of late! It all ties in! See how I did that?)

Here’s a dark picture, where you can get the idea of what our dining room looks like now. It’s the same room! Can you believe it?

Going forward, I hope to share some current pictures of my home with you, taken on my NICE camera!

He would be working side by side with George for four whole hours on Thursday night. If it had been a Saturday, it would have been no big deal. The crowds were thick then, a never ending rush of customers from the time you clocked in until the store closed. Thursday nights were different. Sure there was a large group here and there, but in between! In between the staccato bursts of slack jawed customers staring up at the menu, then down at the fixin’s bar, grunting their orders in near unintelligible mumbles, in between that there was down time. Once you had sliced the fruit and checked on the machines, there was nothing to do but to strike up a conversation with your shift mate, and this time it would be George. George with the handsome sideburns and perfectly coiffed bang side swoosh. Jerry had tried to imitate the hairstyle himself, but he couldn’t keep from constantly touching the hair lingering just above his eyes, and it always just looked greasy and gross. He now wore his mousy brown hair cropped short and free of product. He tried to swallow as his tongue felt two sizes to big for his mouth. How would he make it to Thursday?

Originally Published: November 14th, 2003

My week was filled with some pretty odd happenings:
1. I made twenty toilet seats in four days. It was exhausting! I was stoked to have a reason to come up with new designs, but of course it was down to the wire and all kinds of shit was messed up. I had to ship them out on Thursday in order to get them to the American Music Awards gift basket lady by Monday.

2. Thursday was the day my Grandma was having plastic surgery. Brett helped me to get the toilet seats off five minutes before I had to pick up Bubbe to take her to the hospital.

3. I have spent the rest of the week caring for my grandma and her lifted lids. Can I just say that eye surgery is seriously nasty? I put this ointment on her stitches and I had to get it in her eye. It wasn’t very pleasant. Plus even though it was I who was smearing this shit in her nasty bloody eye, any little thing Brett did made him a God! Granted the lady is of another generation, but please!

4. I was still trying to fill orders all this week.

So I finally decided I just need a place to rant because if I can’t complain somewhere, I think my head my explode. I don’t mean to say that I will only be bitching here, I hope I will share good stuff too, but it’ll be sweet to have somewhere to vent.

I also came up with some plans for this here blog, as it has just been languishing away in its little corner of the internet. It’s a great little place & tool, so I have come up with some actual plans for it! Hooray! I don’t know if it’s the fish oil or the creative block has passed, but I am feeling much better! I think Ms. Ross can explain it better than I:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-mjl63e0ms

May 7th:

Played out in the yard with the girls. Olive either caught a cold or has allergies, because that evening her nose would not stop running.

May 8th:

Left work & went to see The Avengers in the afternoon with my sweetheart.

May 9th:

Went out to celebrate my dad, Poppy Pants, birthday. The girls wore appropriately festive footwear.

May 11th:

Sadie had her dance recital dress rehearsal. She was soooo pleased because she got her hairstyled and she got to wear lipstick. I told her that before I had kids I was so nervous about what would happen if I had daughters in dance who needed fancy hairstyles. (Really, Brett and I had more than one conversation about it.) I am a miserable hairstylist. We have been watching youtube videos on how to style hair, so as she said, “We are learning together!”

May 12th:


After Sadie’s recital. I absolutely love these people!

May 13th:


Happy Mother’s Day to me! Olive had a very hard morning where she was wanting to cuddle and love, but the 4-year-old in her also wanted to test all those boundaries. The day was a lovely one as we did almost absolutely nothing!! It makes me think of that Talking Heads song about Heaven. It really is a place where nothing ever happens! Just sitting around and taking it easy was the best.

I am desperately trying to stave off a wave a depression I can feel about to encompass me. I’m not sure what is bringing it on, but I can smell it’s approach and it’s like the body odor of a distant relative, there is something oddly familiar and comforting yet off putting and awkward about the impending collision. Except that I don’t want to slip under. I don’t want to feel the ennui start to encompass me. I am chugging fish oil by the glass and walking and doing all that all I can.

I had a break in my space time continuum last night. It was not pretty. After just a hideous and hellish and annoying day, I was on edge. We were sitting at the dinner table and I was trying to keep my sanity, I really was. I was so tired and grumpy and my eyes were starting to roll back in my head and just then Brett said to Sadie “Sadie, please stop rubbing your carrots on your face.” I looked over and she had a carrot stick in her hand and for some reason she was rubbing it up and down her cheeks. Something inside me snapped and I sincerely started laughing and crying at the same time at the dinner table. I scared everyone, but I couldn’t stop. That’s when I realized, perhaps the toe hold I have in the healthy mental health category is more precarious then I might have imagined.

I went straight to bed and watched a documentary about Raymond Carver, and that helped a little. I mean, I’m not an alcoholic, I’m just tired! There is always a bright side right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSisCkkPSL4

We are painting another room in our house, again. This week it’s the kitchen. We are going from a deep blue to a bright pink.

I feel like painting a room is my version of putting on a little more mascara. I’m not a huge makeup wearer, but nothing can brighten my mood like a quick rearranging of the furniture or a presto change-o color swap. It gives me a whole new perspective and outlook, on the room, my house, and the life I live in it.

So out with the humdrums, everything is primer white, pepto pink, elegant, glamourous, the world that I’m looking at is beautiful toooooooooo! Pictures to follow.

All of my parents & parents-in-law have the love of the gardening and are totally awesome at it and I am not pointing a giant red blinking arrow to that fact as to maybe why I am a bit intimidated by it, but seriously, I always think I am going to mess something up out there. I moved something in the yard today and honestly had the fleeting thought that someone was going to come out and yell at me (If this doesn’t explain my maturity level to you, let me show you my awesome video game calluses and doll collection).

We have lived at our house for oh, about seven and a half years, and we have killed a lot of nice plants and trees that lived here before we did. Every year we say to ourselves, THIS IS THE YEAR! Meaning this is the year we suddenly plug our brains into the matrix and totally have a knowledge of the real birds and the bees and we figure out how to grow stuff and stuff. That just never seems to happen though. Brett at least mows the lawn, he is our head gardener and green technician because of that. I really do want to learn though, so I’m going to put a toe in and try to grow some stuff this year. I think I probably have to as both the girls are begging to plant things. We are trying to start small and simple, but more than a few years of serious neglect means that our yard needs some special TLC. Wish me luck!

Also, I think I would totally get along with said manual writer. I mean, this is a very diplomatic person here. Do they come right out and tell you things you might not want to know? Sure they do. They tell you that it really is not a great idea to blow dry your hair while in the bath. They do it in such a way though, that they don’t make you feel stupid. That is the mark of a good friend right there. Matter of fact and to the point, but lacking in judgemental tones and derision, an all around winning combo.

I do feel badly that most of their work goes unnoticed. I know more than a few people who PRIDE themselves on not reading the manual. “I just figured it out,” they’ll say, “Didn’t even read the manual.” Maybe this scores points with some folks, but not me. Maybe you think you know how to work your toaster correctly, maybe just inserting the bread and depressing the lever will work, but can you really be sure? Are you positive that there isn’t some extremely very important middle step that you have missed due to your own negligence that may in fact end up at worst ending your life, if not possibly at least ruining your lovely breakfast? Read that manual and you will know. Not the kind of “knowing” that stems from merely observing a sequence of events like mommy and daddy drink wine & then a baby is born 9 months later, but the reeeeeeal kind of knowing that comes from someone writing every teeny tiny detail, no matter how minute. “Hold hand at 45 degree angle to lever and depress with light force” kinda info. I mean, it’s your life you are playing with people.

I love a good manual, but I imagine that writing them would become tedious. As with any profession, are manual writers critical of other writers? Do they criticize the choice of capitalization of warning statements to their spouses? Imagine being the sweetheart of a manual writer. That’s a real thankless job. There you are, opening your wedding gifts, a new blender, a fancy kitchen-aid blender, but all Patty can do is criticize the way the manual describes risk of fatalities. You are holding up a shiny new toy, but all she can say is, “Look! They didn’t even mention risk of amputation.”

I’m sitting here looking at all these things my house is just filled with, and I know almost all of them came with some sort of manual. I would like to take this moment to salute the manual writers, those who do it in English, Spanish, German, & Japanese, and say mad props to you manual writers of the world! Thank you for at least trying to keep us safe, that’s a lot morethanmost people do.