The nuclear life, literally and figuratively

My Space

2012-01-28T07:41:00.000-08:00

I often wonder when I enter someone's house and everything is just perfect and exactly fits the person, how they got there?

Not in terms of money or anything - I fully admit that we tend to put our discretionary income in other places than furnishings.

I have been trying to figure out for years how to get to the point where I walk in my house and I don't look at the laundry list of things that I want to do in order to turn that room into My Space. Something that when someone walks in they look at it and say "this fits NM".

I tried for a few years the monthly goals. And I really like that. But typically speaking it only ever afforded me the opportunity to do small things in each area each month. And for some time that worked for me. But I guess I got impatient... or it is my realization a few months ago that in order to finally get this going we needed bigger goals.

I finally have an end in sight for three areas in my house! My dining room IS finished. 100% complete. There isn't a single thing I want to do more to the area.

Room number two is well under way. The other day AB and I pulled everything out of our office, he pulled the trim off and I painted and painted. I have one wall left to do (in a different color). Then he is going to rip the nasty carpet up and start laying the new floor.

My big task is going to think seriously about what goes back into the room. Because I can cram a lot of stuff on shelves.

I would love to have a chaisse lounge for the office - I have visions of a quiet place to read by my front window - but that may have to wait unless I find a spectacular deal.

But aside from my dreams of a lounge chair... the space will be done!

To round out the front of my house, the foyer is next. I have really been pushing AB to let me paint over the green wall. It just doesn't speak to me anymore and I think I very nearly have him convinced - or at least accepting of the need to get rid of the green. But after that I need a storage bench and a skinny little entry table. I should be able to find these at a reasonable price.

I am really looking forward to being able to walk in my house (though I almost never use my front entrance), and just be satisfied and happy with what is there without looking around and thinking "I don't like this and that and I want to change X,Y and Z."

Next? Our backyard transformation into a real utilizable space. Stay tuned, plans in the works.

Best purchase ever...

2012-01-12T15:54:00.000-08:00

AB and I have a kind of routine where we declare an item one of our "best purchases ever". I think it is a way to consciously or subconsciously help us throughout the years to make better choices in how we spend our money. I have noticed lately that among the usual suspects on our list of really good choices, there are some that I really debated on whether or not to buy or that one of us really had to make a strong case for.

Compare this to other purchases that we have to a certain degree made mental notes on "never again". Like the computer I am typing on now... never go out and buy a computer because you need one with no checking around... Or maybe the dressers we bought when we moved here and knew we needed dressers, but not where to buy them? Oh the list goes on.

But in an effort to keep 95% of my blogs on the upbeat note, I thought I would share our list of "really great buys".

My car. Love my car. I have a 2003 Toyota 4Runner that I bought halfway on a whim 9 years ago. I wanted a Highlander, but they were hard to come by and pricier than I had expected. I drove my 4Runner and decided this would do and I love the car still. I have no intention of replacing it anytime soon.

AB's car. He loves his car something fierce. A Toyota Sequoia. I don't particularly care for it because it is huge. I feel like I am driving a bus. But that's the only reason why. I love being a passenger in it.

A pink rolling pin. I found this itty bitty siliconeized rolling pin when Skadi was about 2. It wasn't inexpensive. And I debated this purchase pretty hard, does a 2 year old really need a silicone rolling pin? Umm yes, she did and she loves it and uses it.

My black purse. It just gets better with age. One thing I love about it is that when I travel I can fit a lab notebook into it as well as my Kindle and no briefcase necessary.

Our dining room table. I had to wrangle with my husband to finally get a second dining room table for our formal dining room. We always maintained that we didn't need a second dining room, but now that I have one. Love it. I use the in kitchen dining room for breakfast and lunch and kid's crafts. The dining room for actual dinner. But the table in particular? It was an inexpensive table that I FINALLY convinced AB we needed from Ikea. But it is fabulous. Solid wood and expands to seat... well we haven't filled it up yet. I am guessing 16 people?

Our Canon EOS Digital Rebel. Love my camera. I use that thing all the time. And you know what? It is 7 years old and still going strong and taking fabulous pictures.

A vase. Yes, a simple vase from Crate and Barrel. When I was in grad school I went to a conference and actually won one of 5 awards for the best student poster. It was $100, but to a grad student it was a small fortune. I wanted to buy something that would remind me of that time. I think it cost $29 (and I put the remainder towards dinner at Moose's with my husband). But I use that vase all the time.

Ok, so not the most fascinating post, but one of those that has been rattling around in my head for awhile.

Remembering back to rabbit's feet

2012-01-02T12:17:00.000-08:00

Do you remember when they were somewhat popular? Rabbit's feet? Colored in wacky colors?

When I was in elementary school they held a Christmas shop in the library where kids could go and buy their little goodies on their own. Rabbit's feet were all the rage.

And that year my parents each were lucky enough to get one each from me.

I think back to the rabbit's feet when I look at the presents my kids got me and I am very thankful that they aren't all the rage anymore.

Actually, they are pretty gross... and I remember that my dog ate more than one...

AB and I have a routine whereby we take the kids shopping and let them pick out whatever they want (within reason) to each of us. And the kids love having picked out and wrapped their own gifts.

Skadi is a good little shopper. But she goes into a store with no preconceived notion about what she is buying for anyone. She likes to browse. She found a nice big brown fuzzy blanket for AB and also a Muppet's t-shirt. Slippers and socks for Aunt Tara.

Leif on the other hand, knows exactly what he wants to get someone and goes in headstrong and unwilling to waver! He insisted on an Angry Birds shirt for AB and also a scarf.

We went to about four different stores in search of the right scarf. So many were "too girly for daddy". But he finally found a green and grey thick wool scarf that by the time we found it I was willing to pay a little more lest we have to go to anymore stores.

For me?

I was the lucky recipient of two tubes of sparkley red and pink lip gloss AND a bottle of green sparkle body mist in case I decide to try out for Elphaba I suppose. I am sure you can guess who gave those to me.

From Leif, I got a crystal duck and a crystal pillar that says "Mom, I love you" and has its own rotating and colored lights base reminiscent of a small disco ball.

AB had a bit of a hard time keeping a straight face as I opened it and Leif looked on beaming with a huge smile.

I asked Leif how he came up with those ideas and he told me that he remembered back to when he got me a bead for my bracelet and how much I liked it and he KNEW that I would love to have a glass duck because of that. Okaaayyyy...

Later on AB told me that he was perplexed when Leif announced that he had to get me a glass duck for Christmas. Maybe I had it easy searching the stores for the "right" scarf? Then he asked me what I thought of the crystal pillar?

"I love it because Leif loves it and it is important to him," I told him.

And secretly I was thinking "AND because it isn't a rabbit's foot!"

Goals?

2011-12-31T15:44:00.000-08:00

Phew! Goodbye 2011. It wasn't a bad year here. As all years tend to go, it just went fast. Wasn't 2011 just starting?

One nice thing about working where I do is that learning to write 2012 isn't hard. I have been writing it for three whole months now.

Every year I sent out to do monthly goals. And in the first few months of the year, usually January through May, I really kick butt. Then I either take the summer off, or we tackle a larger project. Then a few more monthly goals in the fall before the Holidays take over. It works for me.

But honestly, I haven't given my monthly goals much thought.

I had a huge list of goals for my just over two weeks off in December and managed to hit all of them (make chicken pot pies, make lefse, make chili, make latkes, make bolognese sauce, clean and organize Leif's closet and room, clean and organize Skadi's room, help AB install the dining room floor) except three. And the three I didn't hit aren't major - I didn't get the trailer cleaned like I had planned. And I didn't get the two planned playdates done with other kids we don't normally have playdates with. Maybe if I got return e-mails from the two other parents, the playdates would have worked out...

So with any luck we will have our dining room completely done on January 1.

My list of things to do during 2012 is long, but not really organized in a monthly fashion...

Empty the office.
Finish painting the office.
Rip up the carpet in the office.
Enable AB to do the floors by fielding the kids for 2-3 days.
Come up with plans for the outdoor kitchen.
Start execution of outdoor kitchen/patio area.
Start purging the baby stuff out of the house (sigh)

Part of my problem is that I am just so blinded by my long list of other stuff...

January:
My birthday weekend
AB's birthday weekend, skiing?
Ski weekend?

February:
Potential travel to Florida and Connecticut
Ski weekend for President's Day

March:
Anniversary weekend
Travel to DC

April:
Leif's Spring Break - Yellowstone in the trailer?
Travel to Tennessee (oh yeah)

May:
Travel to Pittsburgh.

And now it's summer.

Where do I fit in all my to do stuff?

It's good we can cook...

2011-12-30T10:19:00.000-08:00

Because dining out in this city just sucks!

We hadn't eaten out in quite awhile and I convinced AB to go out to dinner last night. He was tired from putting the floor in and I was tired of fielding the kids all day and dealing with Miss Sassy. We needed to get out of the house.

My one request was that we couldn't go to the usual haunt (Sakura) because I wasn't in the mood for sushi (amazingly enough) and I wanted something different. We stepped only slightly out of the box and headed to a Korean restaurant not far from us. One where if we were "regulars" anywhere other than Sakura, this would be #3 on the list. (#2 being a Mexican place a few blocks from the house.)

Having kids has really impacted our dining out style.

Ok, so we go to the sparsely decorated Korean restaurant that still (after 8 or so years) lacks a liquor license. That's ok.

New and very young waitstaff as usual.

Waitress: "Can I take your order?"

AB: "Yes, we will start with the combination tempura..."

Waitress: "Ok, is that all for you tonight?"

AB: "No, the kids will split a Sweet and Sour Chicken with the Sweet and Sour Sauce on the Side."

Waitress: "Ok, is that all for you tonight?"

Me: "No, I would like dinner too. I will do #54."

Waitress: "I am sorry, I don't know the menu yet, what is that?"

Me: "It's the Spicy Pork Bulgogi right here," I said pointing to the menu. AB noted he would take one as well.

A bit of time passes and she returns with the tempura that the entire family chows. Then the Sweet and Sour Chicken arrives, covered in sauce. Skadi is happy, Leif is in tears.

AB tells the waitress that he requested the sauce on the side. Yes, she remembers that but thought he meant something else. I mean really lame long rambley response about why the sauce was on the top and not on the side.

AB: "Can you just bring out a saucer of the chicken without the sauce on it."

She heads in to check. Skadi is chowing away at the sweet and sour chicken.

Waitress: "No, I am sorry we can't. I can return this plate and the chef can remake it, but we can't just bring out extra chicken without the plate being returned."

AB: "But she is eating it and I would rather not take it away, you are just going to throw it away."

Waitress: "No, I am sorry we can't do that, we are just too busy to do that."

?!?!?!

AB: "Fine, I will order another order of Sweet and Sour Chicken with the SAUCE ON THE SIDE."

Then our meals come out. It looks a bit different, but we start eating. Our Korean side dishes don't arrive, so I flag down the waitress.

Me: "Will our Korean side dishes be coming? The Kim-Chi and such."

Waitress: "Let me go see."

She returns.

Waitress: "I am sorry, you ordered the spicy pork teriyaki, it doesn't come with Korean side dishes."

Me: "Umm no. I ordered the bulgogi and we had a conversation about you not knowing the menu and I pointed it to you."

Waitress: "Let me go see."

She returns.

Waitress: "Ok, she will remake your meals for you."

AB: "Nevermind. Can you just bring us the Korean side dishes to go with the pork teriyaki?"

And she does.

Then she brings out a grilled chicken breast sliced up on a plate and puts it in front of Leif.

And if I didn't have a plate of hot food in front of me my head would have just dropped onto the table and maybe pounded a bit.

We all ate. The waitress avoided us.

Then she brought us our ticket charging us for EVERYTHING including $4 for the grilled chicken breast.

Sigh.

Quiche, Latkes and Meatball Sandwiches

2011-12-27T21:53:00.000-08:00

I may be onto something!

A few weeks ago my son's pickiness came to a head with me. It was driving me insane.

And as a formerly very somewhat still picky person, I get picky. I get the extreme picky. I know that there are times you just look at a food and know that it cannot go into your mouth. I know that it is inexplainable. I know that it sends shivers up and down your spine. I get it.

But my son has recently taken picky to a new extreme and it was driving.me.insane.

"Fine then," I told him one evening. "Once a week it is up to you to plan a dinner with me and help prepare it."

I knew then that my biggest challenge with this would be ME sticking to it and not falling to the "I don't have time for this tonight".

The first week Leif declared he wanted to make "egg pie". Just like that.

"Sounds like a quiche," I declared and found a simple recipe.

I made the crust... because you just don't mess with crusts. Someday I will teach him the art, but he needs a few primers in other food prep first.

He mixed the eggs, the cream, cooked the bacon and by himself chopped the broccoli. AB shredded the cheese. We mixed it all together and tossed it into the crust. Wa la. One amazing quiche. And Leif was proud of himself. He grinned from ear to ear as I took his picture and posted it on Facebook.
"Mom," he said, "I don't want you to fix any other food because I want Skadi to have to TRY this, it is so good."

Oh the irony. Words that I have recorded well... because he IS going to hear them again.

Then was meatball sandwich night. They were good, but not quite up to whatever it is that he gets on meatball sandwich day at the school cafeteria...

Then last week Leif came home from school and declared that he wanted to make latkes.

Latkes, as in potato pancakes? I asked. My mom used to make latkes, but I don't remember them well.

You see Leif has a weird and unexplainable potato aversion. He doesn't eat French Fries, Tater Tots, Potato Chips, Mashed Potatoes make him gag, backed potatoes give him the willies.

I am not sure he is mine because *I* am the opposite. I love potatoes in all forms.

Actually I should correct that Leif DOES like lefse. But who doesn't like lefse?

I agreed and AB started cautioning me, "make them as Leif friendly as humanly possible, the potential for disaster on this one is HUGE. And you don't want this to be a disaster".

I treaded carefully. No onions. No toppings. Just plain latkes.

We peeled the potatoes. Ok, Leif peeled a half a potato and in the interest of having them ready in under 8 hours, I did the rest. He shredded them in the food processor, mixed the eggs in and the flour, put them in the colander to drain. We did a whole safety talk on hot oil. Then he stood there handing me quarter cups full while I dropped them in hot oil and pressed them flat.

OMG they are good. So freaking good.

Skadi, who doesn't care for potatoes much more than Leif except that she will eat potato chips and fries (sometimes), ate two. AB and I nommed on them.

And Leif ate one and said it was "ok".

Success!

Elf Calamities

2011-12-26T22:56:00.000-08:00

Invariably, if you are going to do the Elf on the Shelf thing, you are going to have mishaps.

Like forgetting to move the Elf and the kids discovering her first. "That silly Elf tried to trick you guys (again?) and came back to the same spot!"

Or the day the housecleaner knocked her off her perch and left her sprawled on the floor. Horror! "Well I hope she forgives the housecleaner for touching her and doesn't give a bad report to Santa."

Or the day that daddy stepped on her.

Our elf was sound asleep on the dolly bed in Skadi's room on the floor next to Skadi's bed. She had survived the whole day there, I THOUGHT we were out of the woods.

AB was putting Skadi to sleep that night and at some point, got up, and stepped right on Mina!!

The world screeched to a halt as Skadi's eyes welled with tears, "DADDY! You hurt Mina. You touched her and will get a bad report and now she can't fly back to the North Pole and so Santa won't get our good reports. WAH!"

It didn't stop there. I heard about it for the next two days. Not only from the kids but AB as well.

"I don't care that it is cute she was in a little bed, she should NOT be on the floor or SOMETHING is bound to happen," and he was probably right.

But as it turned out Mina was none worse for the wear and flew to Santa that night and issued her good reports.

(Thank goodness AB didn't step on her face and smush it in or something catastrophic like that...)

The Bomb Story

2011-12-26T22:45:00.000-08:00

Skadi: "Mommy, will you tell me the bomb story again?"

Me: (Sigh) "Are you sure you want to hear that story again?"

Skadi: "Yes."

Me: "What part of it do you want to hear?" (Hoping she doesn't say the Japanese part.)

Skadi: "All of it."

Me: "Wouldn't you rather have a princess story?"

Skadi: "No."

Me: "Ok."

Blame Leif. He is the one who introduced Skadi to the concept of the "biggest bomb ever". Actually, I blame his teacher. Because do we really need to talk about nuclear weapons in the 1st grade? Yes, I know it was December 6th, the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. But I was a bit surprised the depth of questions.

December 6th:

Leif: "Mom, Mrs. H told us about today a long time ago we were attacked."

Me: "Yes, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on this day 70 years ago."

I could go on and line out all the conversation surrounding this, but I won't. And in fact, I don't remember it well. I just know that he was very concerned that Hans and I had been there (we reassured him we weren't), that it would happen again (we hope it won't), that children were killed (I don't know if children were killed) and then he wanted to know about the "biggest bomb ever" that ended the war.

The conversation ended with me stating historical fact that we actually live near where part of the bomb was made (so nontechnical speak) here and that Daddy's job is in cleaning up the work from making that bomb and that Mommy works in ensuring that nothing like that (we haven't talked about 9-11 yet) doesn't happen to the people of the US again .

And life went on.

Until Skadi, about a week later, asked to hear the "story of the bomb" again. I confirmed, before delving in, that it was the story from the prior week. She nodded her head.

And now it is just after Christmas and the "bomb story" has become a mainstay. I have modified it to suit my needs in speaking with a four year old.

The Bomb Story

Once upon a time, a long time ago before mommy was born, before grandma was born and when great grandma was a school teacher in North Dakota, the bad Japanese (as opposed to the good Japaneses) attacked Pearl Harbor, a US base in Hawaii. They flew planes in and attacked the soldiers there. The United States then said we are at war with the Japanese (for Skadi's purposes, I haven't expanded to the axis and allies...)

Great grandma decided that she wanted to help the US and so she joined the Army Nurses Corp and she went to Spokane where we get to go to see Beauty and the Beast at the end of January to learn to be an Army nurse.

While she was there being a nurse, the bad Japanese started invading islands in the South Pacific and were pushing their soldiers through the islands and taking them over. Roar!

But while this all was happening the scientists that were living here where we live decided to make a bomb with some other scientists at another lab. The scientists here out on the Hanford site made a very special ingredient for the bomb, the plutonium. But they were messy and made a huge mess that Daddy is still working on cleaning up.

Finally the day came that they flew the two bombs named Fat Man (Skadi invariably thinks this is funny) and Little Boy over to Japan and they dropped them on the bad guys. Those bombs were the biggest bombs in the world and so Japan said to the United States, "you win, we give up!"

And all this happened just a few weeks before your great grandma was supposed to ship over and be a nurse in the war! So she didn't have to go overseas after all. So instead she met your grandpa in Seattle and they moved to Casper where they had two boys, then a girl, who was your grandma Barbara and then another boy. And Barbara was a good girl, but when she got mad at her brothers she would chase them into the corner with the broom!

And then Barbara grew up and she got married to my daddy, Perry. And soon after that they had a little girl, and that was me. And my sister just a few years later. And we had so much fun playing Barbies and Little People! I played with those exact same Little People that you have!

Pretty soon I grew up and I went to college and met AB! (At this point Skadi giggles hearing her daddy's name.) And we moved to Reno, Nevada so I could go to more college and we got married at Lake Tahoe.

Then we packed up and moved up here where mommy got a job working to protect us from bad people and Daddy got a job cleaning up the mess from the bomb. Then they had a baby named Leif and a few years later, a little baby girl named Skadi. And Skadi was a good little baby, but she did cry a lot. Her favorite food was milk and applesauce. Once she learned to walk though, she started running. Then she turned one and her grandma Barbara and Grandpa Rick came to visit and they pushed her on the swing. Then she turned two right when we moved into our new house. But she was sick on her 2nd birthday. When she turned three the year after that we had a princess dress up party in our house with all her friends. Another year passed and she turned four and she had her party at Coach Brett's gym! And now we are here, I wonder where she will have her party now

Twisted, huh?

What we did this Christmas season...

2011-12-23T12:54:00.000-08:00

I didn't work. Well that much at least, just a few hours here and there.

We didn't bake much. So I am not much of a baker and I don't have much of a sweet tooth. We did do Christmas cookie cutouts. It's a tradition in my family to make my great grandmother's sugar cookie recipe that is so finicky, but so tasty. But no nanaimo bars or Gingerbread cookies that were on my list to do.

We didn't sit in front of the TV and watch the Christmas specials. We usually do, and I love them. So do my kids. But not this year. I did rent Elf one night and was happy that many of the jokes didn't go unnoticed by my son.

I didn't put up the Christmas village. I wanted to, but ran out of time.

We managed to get a few lights on the bushes outside, but no lights on our house.

I have barely put away the Thanksgiving decorations inside, Christmas interior decorations? Ha. We have a tree and the stockings were hung a few days ago.

The Advent calendar? Sorely neglected.

We haven't driven around our town and looked at the Christmas lights.

Our Christmas Eve and Day meals are barely planned. No prepwork started.

We didn't go caroling.

I didn't even take the time to find the Muppets Christmas cd.

What did we do this Christmas season so far?

This:

We have stood by our fire.

We have petted goats, sheep, horses, camels and donkeys.

We have pulled our clothes out of Sparkle's (the sheep) mouth.

We have kneeled on the ground with our foreheads in the hay.

We have begged and pleaded with our wriggly children to be still and quiet.

We haven't cooked dinner, instead eaten whatever the church prepared for us (which has been hit and miss!).

We have coached our children in some semblence of acting.

We have stood and kneeled in front of crowds of 800-2000 people a night.

I have watched my husband guide Mary and Joseph and wrangle a donkey into a pen.

I have had tears in my eyes seeing my daughter walk up and kiss the baby Jesus a few times a night.

I have nudged my kids' bedtimes to nearly 1.5 hours later than normal, with the hopes I can nudge them back.

I have been amazed at the tenacity of my children to willingly and with minimal whining, participate in 11 performances (so far).

I have hidden Lifesaver candies in my boots for those times when tenacity is waning.

I have watched new friendships form and a community be created by us strangers brought together to perform the Nativity for strangers.

We smell like farm animals and smoke.

I am amazed at how I remain moved at each of the 11 (so far) performances we have participated in.

I have prayed the camels be well behaved this year.

I have no regrets at surrendering my evenings of Christmas prep.

We hope that the beauty of the Living Nativity has brought a season of joy to those who have witnessed it.

Crush

2011-12-19T22:37:00.000-08:00

Way back at the start of the school year, Leif met a girl.

She is a cute little blonde who wears great shoes, plays the cello and loves little kids. And she is a FOURTH grader!

It all started innocently enough. Leif was nervous to ride the bus, he never had before. I was nervous to have him ride the bus - because what if the bus dropped him at the wrong school... or left him on a street corner... or decided to drive to Texas or something? You just never know these days...

But the cute little blonde at the bus stop (with cute boots) promised me to help Leif out.

And for a few weeks she diligently rode the bus with him next to her.

And AB and I worried when we saw stars setting in Leif's eyes upon gazing at her.

"What if she wants to sit with her friends?" we started asking him.

"She doesn't want to," Leif assured us.

Gone was the crush on the girls his age... now he had his eyes set on an OLDER girl! And he would blush when her name would come up. And he would blush when he would see her at school holding the door. And he would hide from her when her class left the gym and his arrived...

Then just a few short days later Leif complained that she keeps trying to sit in other spots. And he was trying to come up with tricks to force her to sit with him. There started a war at the bus stop whereby she was trying to make him get on the bus first so that she could select her seat afterwards. And Leif tried to make her get on the bus so that he could sit next to her.

And even when she would take a seat with somebody else, Leif would squish in and make it three in the row!

AB and I tried to take the tactic of reasoning with Leif, "you know, she is older and has friends and maybe doesn't want a first grader hanging around all the time?" To which Leif would reply, "she does, she just pretends she doesn't."

Poor, poor oblivious little boy.

Then AB and I took the opposite tactic. Don't mention her at all and hopefully the heart throbbing would subside. I reluctantly followed this path. Reluctantly because to me it seemed akin to sticking my head in the sand.

Then last week the little miss sealed her own fate unknowingly.

"Leif," she said, "if you can answer a math problem that I make up, then you can sit with me for the rest of the year. BUT, if you get it wrong, then you can't sit with me the rest of the year. Ok?"

Leif agreed.

"What is 44 x 10?" she asked.

"That's easy!" replied Leif, "440!"

And so Leif has a spot saved for him on the bus for the remainder of the year.

Two weeks off!

2011-12-18T22:58:00.000-08:00

The past few months have been a real whirlwind. I am sure that is just what happens when you have two careers and two busy kids. I have got a big long list of blog topics on my phone and I am hoping to get to those over the next two weeks as I enjoy my two weeks off. But right now? Just a general catch up is in order.

Let's see... the kids started gymnastics again. This second time around, a year later, is much better for Skadi. She is now in the big kids area and not the little kids area, which is really what she wanted all along. She is quite happy being a gymnast. And same as last time, I have put Leif in gymnastics as well because I would just rather not have him sit next to me with his nose in his DS for an hour every Monday night. Nope, he gets to be out there too. Last year he loved gymnastics, this year a little less so for some reason.

Both kids are in swimming. My Skadi fish has passed up again so that she and Leif are now in the same class. While this reflects great on her, I won't tell you how many years Leif has been in this level. Some day he is going to get it, right? One day it will all click and he will take off.

Leif loves first grade and is doing so well. He has a super teacher and we are just so proud of him.

This year we decided to all volunteer to be shepherds in our church's Living Nativity. Last year AB and Leif did it, while Skadi and I stayed home and held the fort down with many "girl's nights". This year we decided we would all give it a try. I figured that Skadi and I could always bail if it became too much for her (or me). Well that worked until the first rehearsal night when she was picked to be the little shepherd to kiss baby Jesus at each performance. And suddenly we are there and commited for every performance!

Me? Things are good. A lot of changes.

I had a rough year on my one big project dealing with a demanding client, in a difficult funding year, and a team that was ripping apart at the seams. I tried and tried to deal with the team issue and I knew exactly where it was stemming from. One person. One person who was sucking the project dry funding wise, constantly pushing scope in the wrong direction, being divisive among the team, and who, no matter what I tried, I could not trust and nor could most of my coworkers.

After a long year of trying to manage the situation both from the client's side as well as our side, the client made a phone call to my superiors and asked that the person be removed. A day later it was done. It was ugly. It remains ugly. But the project is seriously one of the happy places for all of us now. My team is just this happy little cohesive unit that smiles and jokes and delivers.

It makes me sad actually though. Sad because I always liked this person, until I worked closely with him for a few years. He gave me opportunities, career changing opportunities. And I will never forget that. But I will also keep in mind the actions of someone whose career was spiraling and the desperate accusations made towards me.

On the rare occasion I see him in the hallway he always looks right at me and pushes his glasses up with his middle finger like a junior high kid. And I smile. AB has uttered the words, "hostile work environment". But I am not like that. I can get past it. I can see why he is angry and hurt and seeing his reaction only makes me feel more sorry for him. This is how you deal with adversity? With your middle finger? Well, I am better than that.

We found out last week that we won an award for this project! A big award that involves a cross country trip to receive our award in May. Wheee!

My career has recently catapulted. I managed to pick up five additional projects to manage, one of those to PI, in late September. They have kept me busy. Too busy. Then one of my favored clients had a proposal call and because I was a delinquent in returning proposal ideas for consideration (too much other stuff on my plate and I truly just forgot), I was just handed one to write up. That works. My least favored, but flush with cash, client has issued a proposal call and I have found out that my name is being put on at least 3 proposals as manager. Then on Friday one of the PI's I started working with in October asked me to manage another $3M project he is pulling in.

Yes, I have problems saying no. But my ALD, who was once my boss, once complained to me during lunch one day, "I can't believe that he told me no, that he couldn't take that project. You never say no! You say yes and then you make it happen even if you aren't the one doing the work. Delegate." My next goal starting in January is to build a team of project managers. Ones I know and trust and who can adapt to my style (if needed) and who can help me with the nearly $8M worth of projects I am presently sitting on with hopes for another few mill on top of that for the coming year.

Given all this, you would think my management would call it a good year for me. Wrong. After two years of exceeding expectations, I have apparently faltered.

I call it that I am being punished for the above issue concerning my coworker. He is the "popular" one in my group.

I can't quite figure out how I can be an author on more papers, have more deliverables, be in higher demand, but have dropped a couple notches in my manager's perspectives. This whole review process has never made much sense to me.

I made a snap decision the other day. Actually it was a decision I have been mulling over for a year and have discussed with my mentor and a few other people in higher ranking positions. But after reading my review I made the snap decision to jump ship over to the manager ladder. After all, it is those requirements that I am meeting, not the scientist ones so much anymore. According to my mentor I am functioning two levels above the manager level I map to. Time to make that change and start receiving credit for my work.

So at the first of the year I become one of the pointy haired sorts.

The other change? Early this fall I made the decision to drop to less than full time. But... I take a lot of calls at home. I always have a surplus of hours (I haven't had to actually USE vacation time for anything until this two weeks off). And I have 3-4 trips coming up this spring, which becomes a sink for hours typically speaking.

When I made the change my management told me, "just make sure you are getting paid for the hours you are working".

I need to either turn off, or get paid for it. And it is hard, so very hard, to turn it off. Especially when I have big deliverables and procurements to approve and visiting scientists that I am hosting who need things. I will be working from home the rest of my hours and going back to full time starting in February.

So there it is. My work update. And bits of updates on my kids. More on them to come over the next few days!

One post in November?

2011-12-10T17:50:00.001-08:00

That's pitiful.

I have sworn in the demise of blogging in favor of quick one liner updates that I would always maintain my blog. I mean my kids' baby books are nearly bare because it is all here. The good photos, the vacations, the milestones, the good, the bad, the ugly... you know.

But last month has kicked my booty. Seriously.

I have gone less than full time at work and so you would think that would afford me more time, right? Yeah wrong. I am considering bumping back up to full time, because when I made the decision to drop my hours my management said one thing, "just because you are at home doesn't mean you aren't working, just make sure you are getting paid for the hours you put in".

And well, here I am at home fielding phone calls, sending e-mails. All the things I said I wouldn't do.

I need to either turn off or get paid for it.

I love the time at home with the kids. And I keep telling myself that next week will be less intense. And a lot has recently happened on my big project to make the intense stress evaporate like a poof of smoke on a windy day. But it isn't happening. That poof of smoke is gone, but I keep picking up things here and there that dominate my time. And with those little things I have picked up is one client who I have worked for in the past that thinks they are the be all, end all and that a few hours is not an unreasonable time frame to demand for turnaround of documents.

Anyways, I will detail the work stuff here soon. As well as some hopeful good news that we hope will be announced on Tuesday.

And I will detail the kids and all those lists on my phone of blog topics I have made.

I work next week and then I have two weeks off. Two weeks of cooking and baking and family and holidays and love and movies and crafts and decorating and...

Until then... bear with me. I will return.

My daughter may be the funniest thing ever...

2011-11-11T12:28:00.001-08:00

Skadi: "Mommy, what kind of animals are we?"

Me: "Well we are humans, which I guess are a type of animal."

Skadi: "No, what type of ANIMALS are we."

Me: "Well we are closest to monkeys."

Skadi: "NO, what type of animals are we?"

Me: "Well Skadi we walk on two legs and most animals walk on four..."

Skadi: "So that means we are kangaroos!"

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Skadi: (Whispering in my ear.) "Mommy, your pajamas are old and ugly, you need to ask Santa for some pretty pajamas with roses on them for Christmas."

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Skadi: "Ouch, you bumped my twohead Leif."

(Love that she still calls her forehead, her twohead.)

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Skadi: "No mommy, go to the picking page."

Me: "The picking page? Is there a Dora story about picking apples?"

Skadi: "No, the picking page mommy."

Me: "Show me."

Skadi: (Annoyingly flips the book to the front to the table of contents.)

Duh.

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Skadi: "Why do we have houses mommy?"

Me: "To provide a place to sleep out of the bad weather and stuff."

Skadi: "Ha, you are silly mommy and wrong too. We have houses so that when we change our clothes no one sees us."

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Skadi: "Mommy, I love you more than strangers."

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Skadi: "Once mommy a woman came up to me, but she didn't take me."

Me: "What Skadi? When were you by yourself that a woman came up to you?"

Skadi: "She came up to me and said, 'where is your grandma' and then she said, 'where is your grandpa' and I didn't know and I told her. But I was SO happy she didn't steal me."

Me: "When did this happen Skadi?"

Skadi: "When I was jumping on the trampoline at the cabin."

Me: "Oh, that person was probably one of your relatives!"

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Me: (Reading one of the Mo Willems Trixie books.)

Skadi: "The person who wrote this book really messed up bad. He accidentally wrote my name as Trixie, not Skadi. Will you read it right please?"

Me: (Sigh.) "One time long ago before Skadi could even speak..."

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Skadi: "Mom, let's see how smart you are, what's 16+18?"

Me: "34."

Skadi: "Wrong. I think you better call dad and ask him since he is so much smarter than you."

Me: (Thinking someone better watch her little mouth if she wants Santa to visit her!)

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Skadi: "Mommy, I might not be made of bones. I think I am made of power instead because I am a good fixer."

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Leif: "Pretty please Skadi?"

Skadi: "No Leif."

Leif: "Pretty pretty please Skadi?"

Skadi: "No Leif."

Leif: "I'll say you are beautiful."

Skadi: "Ok."

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Skadi: "Mommy the only thing that will make me happy this morning is to listen to Uncle Kracker."

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Family Pictures

2011-10-29T07:12:00.001-07:00

The saddest children's book EVER!

2011-10-29T06:46:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe except for that Robert Munsch book - "Love You Forever". Do you want to turn a new mom to mush in 60 seconds or less? Give her that horrible book!! (Ok, so it isn't horrible... plenty of people think it is beautiful...)

I don't often order from the Scholastics Book flyers, but I noted recently that we had very few books about my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. So I decided to stock up on some fall and Thanksgiving books through the monthly book orders at the kids' schools. I suppose this is where the problem started. Because if I had ordered from Amazon I would have read a synopsis of the books before ordering.

But nope. I saw Amelia Bedelia's First Apple Pie and thought in my head... girl theme... apples (my daughter's favorite)... a cute little girl kind of like my own on the cover... and PIE (my families specialty)... no brainer!

But little did I know what awaited me under the cover.

Tears!

See Amelia Bedelia was spending the day with her grandma and grandpa and she and her grandma set about making an apple pie.

Right there my first thought... My mom was THE pie maker and if you have read my blog in years past, or if you know me, you know the importance of homemade pie in our family. My little girl won't ever get to make pie with her grandma. And teaching the art of making a homemade pie was extremely important to my family.

Of course I could wallow in this and feel sorry for us and let the tears keep rolling as I read it.

And yes, I did let the tears keep rolling as I read the book. But I know my charge. I know that it is *my* duty to teach the art of pie to my daughter (who appears to love to bake as much as her grandma).

My next charge is to get rid of that horrible, awful, sad book!

(Ok, so it really isn't a "horrible" or "awful" book. It is quite charming. But it doesn't belong in my house.)

Conversations with the kids

2011-10-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

I love asking my kids scientific questions and seeing how they respond. Here was our conversation from our drive home from the eye doctor this afternoon.

Me: "Leif why does the wind blow?"

Leif: "Oh, I know this one! It's because of the moon."

Me: "Nope, that's the tides."

Leif: "No, it works with wind too, the gravity pulls the wind around."

Me: "Ok... why do the colors of the leaves change?"

Skadi: "Because God makes them do that!"

Me: "Ok, good answer, why is the sky blue?"

Leif: "Because space is blue and the clouds get in the way and make the sky."

Skadi: "I wanted to answer Leif! It's because God made it blue."

Me: "Why are there volcanos."

Skadi: "Because God made volcanos."

Leif: "No Skadi, it's because wherever there is an earthquake a volcano pops up."

(Kind of sounds like a zit...)

Me: "Well I don't know if Skadi is wrong, but that's interesting Leif. Why does it get cold in winter."

Skadi (screaming): "BECAUSE GOD MADE IT!"

Leif: "That's easy, because the seasons change."

Me: "What are mountains made of?"

Leif: "Wood. Hey mom, what makes planets?"

Me: "Something like the big bang."

Leif: "Nope, you are wrong, dirt makes it and someone packs the dirt really hard together and a planet is made."

Skadi: "GOD MAKES PLANETS LEIF!"

(Yes, apparently Skadi has embraced Sunday school.)

Flooring selections

2011-10-10T18:03:00.000-07:00

This fall we plan to replace our office and dining room crap carpet with hardwood. We went and picked out five options and once home immediately narrowed it down to three.

Going from three to one has proven to be more difficult. We love them all for various reasons. Here is where you come in.

Vote! I am posting the three options below. Please post in my comments picking your favorite selection and stating why.

A few details about our house. It is a very traditional style house. Lots of windows, two stories. We only plan to use this flooring in the two front rooms of the house - the formal dining room and office. There are two - yes two - different types of tile off the formal dining room.

The builders/original owners of this house were spastic with flooring. We have about five different carpets and three different tiles throughout the house. I need some consistency. The office and dining room are separated by a dark clay/terra cotta colored smooth tile. Off the formal dining room on the other side is pale cream rough tile.

We have maple trim.

The first is tiger bamboo. It is a solid hardwood, two toned bamboo. Bamboo is of an advantage because it is also the hardest material out there - and we have dogs.

Close up of the bamboo.

The second choice is a tobacco teak, handscraped hardwood. It has a rough finish and will successfully hide little dings and dents.

Australian Cypress. The light color matches our trim very well. Disadvantage is that it is light and shiny and will show many different dings and dents.

So... what are your thoughts?

The New Normal After 1 Month

2011-10-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

It has officially been 1 month since I started my new schedule saying I would leave work at 3pm four days a week.

I like it.

I have an ongoing list of things that need to be done. Some are fun, some are chores. But I try to pick one of each most every afternoon.

And then there are the days when I abandon the list all together and do something crazy like tape off the foyer and paint the majority of it.

I like to work.

I completely respect people who choose to stay home with their kids. I don't get the SAHM vs Working Mom debate. We are all different. We have choices in this country. What works for me is not expected to work for others. Freedom to choose. Etc, etc.

I like to work. I am good at what I do. I get a jolt inside from the things I do on a daily basis. I have a whole lot of pride in my work and love my pats on the back. I need that.

But at the same time my kids' childhoods are flying by WAY WAY too fast. I need the time with them. I need them to come home to a mom in the house afterschool.

And I am in a very privileged position because *I* can make that choice. Not a lot of people can.

We are into our groove and I feel a sense of calm that has come over our house.

No more crazy rush to get something, anything on the table for dinner every night.

No more Wednesday night scramble to get the house picked up. Ok, so it is Wednesday afternoon scramble, but that leaves our nights open.

No more immediately ruling out any activity that starts before 6pm.

Less stress.

Even today, Sunday that is, I always do laundry on Sunday. And I stress about getting the laundry folded. I find myself saying in my head that if it doesn't get folded (because I am reading Bon Appetit) that I can always do it tomorrow afternoon. Ok, nevermind, that IS just called procrastination.

I am to the point where I feel like I can start adding to the schedule. That we have a routine, I know what to expect from the kids each afternoon. I am thinking I can start running on the treadmill again during that 30 minutes that I give in and put SpongeBob on. Gymnastics has moved onto the schedule (or at least we are waitlisted for the coveted classes).

Things are good. I am happy. The kids are happy. AB is happy. We are good.

Little Girl Wanderlust

2011-10-02T17:33:00.000-07:00

The other day Skadi asked me if we were never going to ever stay in a hotel again now that we have the trailer? She was quite concerned about this. I told her no way, mommy couldn’t live that way. I have to have my hotel room vacation getaways. She was pacified for a few weeks, but the question keeps popping up still, “mommy when are we going to go somewhere and stay in a hotel?”

My little girl loves to travel. AB and I have surmised that Leif will be the engineer living ~~with~~ near his parents all his life, while our little girl is going to be wandering the globe. Of course I also remind myself that my mom always thought my sister would run off from Colorado (and previously Wyoming) as quick as possible never to return. And if we hadn’t left Wyoming I am SURE that would have been true. And maybe she might at some point, but I don’t see her leaving her stomping grounds anytime soon.

I was the one, way back when, that never intended on leaving Colorado or my family. So who knows!

Skadi loves her vacations.

Yesterday she received (finally) a poster that I had been talking about putting together for 10 months. A poster of all her character meetings from DisneyWorld. I figured I needed to get this done before we hit the one year anniversary of the trip. I ended up putting the poster up out of arms reach yesterday after she was lying on it and kissing each princess so that I could try and avoid it being ruined before I can get a poster frame on it. She holds that poster dear.

Of course, the poster arriving prompted a whole other realm of questions, “when can we go stay in a hotel mom?”, “when can we go back to DisneyWorld?”, “well if we aren't going to go to Disneyworld, can we go to Seattle then?”

I am with my girl. I think we need a vacation, a hotel vacation.

I always cringe just a bit when I hear parents talking about looking forward to their kids getting older so that they can do certain activities. I always think that day is going to come too soon. Revel in the here and now while they are little.

But I have to admit that I was wondering how old she needs to be before we start doing mom and daughter power shopping trips in Seattle complete with fancy dinner and hotel room? It was one of my mom’s and my favorite things to do and one of the things I miss most in having lost my mom. I do look forward to these outings with the next generation.

That time of the month... Goals!

2011-10-02T16:59:00.000-07:00

I think the last time I talked about monthly goals was the end of July/first part of August. I am trying to remember (while being lazy and not scrolling back too far) what I put? I am pretty sure that it was August to select colors for the dining room/office/foyer and that in September I would paint.

For this being a late summer goal, I didn't do too bad!

We got the colors picked and I have so far, spent two afternoons painting to total one hallway in the foyer and one wall painted and two in the dining room. We need to double check our second accent color against the new taupe color of the dining room, purchase it and then paint.

We decided on a taupe neutral to use throughout the three rooms and I am thrilled with it. The second accent color will be a slate-ish grey.

Today we went and picked out new floors - or at least picked out 6 options which once home were quickly narrowed down to three.

Tiger Bamboo

Tobacco Road Teak

Australian (or was it Austrian?) Cypress

So that is the goal for this and next month - get the new floors decided on and in.

I seem to have a bit more flexibility with time lately and so my goals can be more than "clean out Leif's closet" because in theory WE can do that one day after school.

My stretch goal is that by Thanksgiving, I have a newly painted foyer and new paint and floors in the office and dining room.

Working the new normal

2011-09-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

I mentioned a week or so ago that moving toward the new normal was proving to be a challenge. That packing up from work, leaving early and then knowing what to do with myself once home, was difficult.

Leif has challenges, according to his present and former teachers, with transitions. I think I know where he gets this from.

I struggle with it too. When I work, I like to have lots of projects and lots of things on my plate, but I tend to spend large chunks of time on one project and work it until all my outstanding to do items on that project are dealt with. While everything else ~~festers~~ sits idle. I claim myself to be a multitasker, but I wonder if I am more just a person who dislikes idle time? A person who fears boredom?

Say for example I am working project X and someone from project Y calls me. I have to fight my gut response that says, "what! Don't you know I am fully entrenched in something that has nothing to do with you or your work? Go away!"

Ok, so I would never ever say that. And I probably don't think it in those terms. But when I break it down and acknowledge my annoyance with phone calls on topic Y, while working topic X, this is where my annoyance stems. I can't transition to what you are talking about on this topic!

(And what is it lately with the increase in phone calls? Doesn't anyone e-mail anymore? My phone seems to ring off the hook lately at work.)

Ok, back to the topic at hand. The new normal.

My problem for the first few weeks is that I came home to work and didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing. Should I be doing laundry? Or fixing dinner? Or answering work e-mails? Or sitting in front of the TV with my kids? Or should we go to the park? I really want to sort photos. And I really need groceries... Argh! And before I knew it AB would be home and I would feel like I hadn't used my time wisely.

This last week I have kept a list on my phone of things I *want* to do. Ok, also on it is my list of things I *need* to do. I planned out my days and our dinners and the kids activities. I checked things off my list (yes, I have been known to put something on my list just so I can check it off). And happiness ensued.

Dinner gets made. The house gets picked up. Homework gets done. Books get read.

I enjoy work. I am good at what I do. I just need to apply my same strategies for a happy work life to my time at home.

The groove isn't worn in yet. But the wheel is working it. Once I get our schedule down and the new normal sets in, then I can set about changing and adding things.

On the importance of the whole package

2011-09-15T19:50:00.000-07:00

AB and I are suffering foodies. We love good food, we love eating out. The food I can cook, but wow I get tired of my kids questioning and turning their noses up to everything. We occasionally seek to eat out, but we truly do not live in a restaurant town. There are a few places that are angling to take the area a little more in that direction. But it is bad. AB and I reflect on our years of dining out in Northern California fondly. We used to eat at some fabulous places both there and on travels.

Now that we have kids, those adventures are fewer and further between.

The other night we had AB's sister babysit and we had reservations at a local restaurant, Picazo 717. We have eaten there twice before. The first time was fabulous. The second time we shared the paella and were less than enthused. This was the third time.

If you have read my blog before you know that I have secret dreams as a food critic. I would be the undercover type...

Anyways... we had fabulous food at Picazos last week. Really the food was solid. I didn't care for the clams, but that's just me and the fact that I think I have become horribly spoiled having a family cabin on a great clamming beach.

What sucked? The service. It was so so bad that AB and I were contemplating dropping our normal 20% tip to 10%. I can't stiff a wait person, my sister is a waitress and works her butt off. But it says something when I look to drop below that 15% mark.

Indulge my critic-ness... or scroll past. I just need to get this out.

20 open tables, 3 of them occupied, we were sat at a small little two top next to two guys sitting at a 4-top. And I am talking SMALL two top. We were awkwardly close (I should have asked for a different table.)
The hostess spills my water and doesn't even return with a rag to wipe it up.
Waitress doesn't speak to us for 15 minutes, seriously we were ready to go find a wait person.
When she arrives she asks for our food order. I asked her what the specials were. She recites them and asks for our order. We sent her away while we contemplate our plan with the specials in mind. (She didn't ask for a drink order, but we didn't think to ask for drinks...)
When she finally returns we tell her we are doing tapas and salads and place the order. I call her back to ask for a glass of sangria since she never asked if we wanted drinks. Which they didn't have any sangria then. So I went back to the wine list.
After what seems like ages she brings a huge tray out with all our tapas and salads and then declares, "I don't know what YOU are going to do, all this food won't fit on this table." I said, "yes, the table is VERY small". She had the tapas on the table, I sent her back to the kitchen with the salads since there wasn't room and she suggested we don't uncover the clams until ready to eat so they don't get too cold. Duh. Doesn't seem like this took too much forethought... but I was suddenly wishing I would have sent her back with the tapas and not the salads. Oh well, my stomach will survive.
We finish the tapas, but she has disappeared again. Seriously like 20 minutes pass between being done and AB deciding to flag down the hostess to see if she can find our waitress.
She returns and asks if we want our salads now. Umm yes.
Salads were delicious.
She clears our plates and announces, "thanks for joining us, I will be back with your check".
"How about dessert?" I ask her. "Oh, your choice is X, Y or Z, what did you want?" Z we answer, with two Spanish coffees. She leaves.
Comes back with dessert that has ice cream topping. AB asks her if the coffee is on its way? It is.
5 minutes later she comes back and asks if the Spanish coffee is a bar drink. We tell her it is.
10 minutes later (dessert is gone) she comes back and says that the bartender only has Kahlua, will that work instead of "whatever else is supposed to go in"? YES, we tell her, just bring them.
Coffees finally arrive.
Check arrives. Dinner in right at 2.5 hours.

Her saving grace tip-wise was that she didn't charge us for at least $25 worth of food. Did she know she sucked it up royally?

Some people can get by with being given sucky service. But for AB and me, our opportunities to eat out are rare, we can cook food as good as ANY restaurant in the area, I will wager that hands down. Our indulgence with eating out is having the quiet atmosphere to sit and talk, not having to clean up, not having children whining and having someone wait on us. Food for us, is only a minor part of the package. When the rest of the package is screwed up, it isn't worth it.

Adventures in bedtime

2011-09-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

Each kid has their own bedtime ritual. Leif goes to bed and we do a chapter book. AB is reading the classics to him while I work my way through Harry Potter series with him. AB and Leif have read Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer (which AB has deemed highly inappropriate, but that's ok I guess) and they are now on Robin Hood. I never read the Harry Potter books at the peak of popularity and so they are new to both Leif and me. We are on the "Goblet of Fire".

Skadi gets in bed and we read three short books and then we go to YouTube. AB and I discovered awhile back she wouldn't fall asleep to books being read to her, but she would fall asleep to music. Actually, AB would sing her to sleep. When it was my turn with Skadi I would start singing, she would tell me to stop and go get daddy. I got even with him one night and pulled out my phone. YouTube has loads of songs.

Recently we happened upon a video that Skadi likes (click on it, it is only 20 seconds long...):

Skadi thinks this is THE funniest thing EVER. Ok, it is pretty cute.

Skadi has figured out that you can link to "related" content on YouTube and so lately her obsession has been "baby pandas" in general. And there are a freaky number of "baby panda" videos on YouTube and they are very adorable.

Invariably though this does NOT put her to sleep. I need to somehow switch over to a song. Last night I put the kibosh on "baby panda" movies and navigated to the stand by "Rainbow Connection" with Kermit on the log.

"NO!" Skadi screamed, "I DO NOT want to watch any videos that don't have baby pandas in them!"

I stiffled my laughter.

She got mad at me and then rolled over and promptly fell asleep.

See songs work every single time.

What's on your playlist?

2011-09-12T19:21:00.000-07:00

I'll post mine... if you post yours!

I am tiring just a bit of my current play list. I tend to update it whenever I am on vacation. Last good update was July 4th. One of my goals for the year is that whenever I sit down at the computer that I tack a stack of cd's with me and upload them. It actually doesn't take long and iTunes organizes it for me. Slick. As long as I remember where that stack of cds is...

My kids have their current favorites. Leif is full on into Les Miserables and while part of me wants to brag a bit about this I have to admit that he is nearly driving us all up the wall with it. We like Les Mis. We probably love Les Mis. But not like Leif. The last time we came back from the cabin he was a bit nauseated in the car playing his DS, so we agreed to put on Les Mis. Oh my goodness. We finally put a stop to it most of the way through the second complete play. And he was disappointed.

Whenever we get in the car that is his first request, "can we listen to Les Mis?" And my answer is becoming more often "no". I gave him my old iPod loaded with only the Les Mis soundtrack. He has his headphones, he can (and does) listen to it whenever he wants.

But oh, there was that other day a week or so ago when "Pepper" came on. (Butthole Surfers) And Leif said, "I LOVE this song Dad! Mom plays it all the time!" Ok, I don't play it ALL the time, but it is on my current playlist. He was overly humored when AB said to me, "you let Leif listen to the Butthole Surfers?" Yeah, the Butthole Surfers is a new favorite saying... joy.

Skadi on the other hand has embraced rock, both classic and contemporary. Her current favorites are "Say Hey" by Michael Frant, who she just calls simply, "Michael". Sigh, my daughter is on a first name basis with a rock star. Her second favorite is ABBA's "Dancing Queen" and the new favorite is simply identified by his name... "Uncle Kracker". Is it bad that my daughter loves, "Follow Me"? Am I corrupting her little brain to think that affairs are ok and that marriages are unhappy??

My favorites? I have always always been a big Richard Thompson fan and he will forever be my favorite. But Mike Doughty is moving up near Richard. (Yes, *I* am on a first name basis with Richard... or at least in my dreams...) I will always be a Dylan fan. And the Rolling Stones - yes when MTV first came on the air I do remember my mom's look of horror when I declared Mick Jagger "cute".

So here's my list...

Breathe Me, Sia

Bittersweet, Big Head Todd & The Monsters

Pepper, Butthole Surfers

Tangled Up In Blue, Bob Dylan

Radar Love, Golden Earring

In a Big Country (Radio), Big Country

Anchorage, Michelle Shocked

Friday I'm In Love, The Cure

Tiny Dancer, Ben Folds

Buckets Of Rain, Bob Dylan

Walking In Memphis, Marc Cohn

Sweet Child o' Mine (Rick Rubin New Mix), Sheryl Crow

Grey Ghost, Mike Doughty

Lay, Lady, Lay, Bob Dylan

Grease, Frankie Valli

Say Hey (I Love You) [feat. Cherine Anderson], Michael Franti & Spearhead

Steal My Kisses, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals

Heavy Things, Phish

Maggie May, Rod Stewart

Bubble Toes, Jack Johnson

The Gambler, Mike Doughty

Pride and Joy, Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble

Come on Eileen, Dexy's Midnight Runners

Peaches, The Presidents of the United States of America

Dream Cafe, Greg Brown

Punk Rock Girl, The Dead Milkmen

I Melt With You, Modern English

The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades, Timbuk 3

You Can't Always Get What You Want, The Rolling Stones

Landslide, Dixie Chicks

1952 Vincent Black Lightning, Richard Thompson

Walkin' On the Sun, Smash Mouth

Stayin' Alive, Bee Gees

I'll Fly Away, Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch

Electric Avenue, Eddy Grant

Follow Me, Uncle Kracker

The Cape, Eric Bibb

Cannonball, The Breeders

Tainted Love (7" Single), Soft Cell

Lips Like Sugar, Echo And The Bunnymen

Whip It, Devo

Pretty In Pink, The Psychedelic Furs

Persuasion, Richard Thompson

Hey, Soul Sister, Train

Let's Go To Bed, The Cure

Under My Thumb, The Rolling Stones

Save Tonight, Eagle-Eye Cherry

Centerfold, The J. Geils Band

Looking for the groove

2011-09-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

We are all two weeks into the new normal. Leif riding the bus to and home from school and me meeting him at the bus with Skadi and the three of us having afternoons together.

I want to say it is an easy transition, but it seems to be perplexing us all at times. I keep wondering when this is going to become the normal feeling, because it sure isn't yet.

I have to admit that I might be a bit of a workaholic. Not the one that works long hours. I was FAR from working a 60 hour week. Nope. I was 40 hours, but the vast majority of time a very productive 40 hours that makes me very proud.

I am very lucky that I love what I do (for the most part). I have my days... and my people... that make life far more difficult than it really should be. But for the most part I am really, really happy with my work life and well after I get home each night, my brain is still working.

I admit that the change to getting up and walking out of work 2 hours early a day isn't coming easy to me. I know it will get easier and I do think that the fiscal year end (read crazy ridiculous government rules imposed) has a lot to do with it and I am waiting until well into FY12, after October 1, before I start making any meaningful judgments.

I love, love being home with my kids in the afternoons. But I need to get better organized. I have a list of things on my phone I want to work on, need to do and dinner ideas. But somehow I get home and actually feel a touch lost. I have trouble turning work off, even when I am not checking my phone for e-mails. My brain rolls along wondering if person X is getting that presentation done, if contracts specialist Y is talking to that vendor, if client Z is trying to get ahold of me or who is up working in the lab and if they will lock the door at the end of the day. I worry about what people will think when they hear I am not working full time - will the managers I work to impress suddenly shy away from me? Will people be reluctant to work with me because they will view me as unreliable? Or will it go largely unnoticed?

My list of things to do in the afternoons is so often errands - go return the soccer gear to the YMCA, take Leif to the doctors, take Skadi to get new glasses, go get new paint samples from Home Depot - that I just don't feel as though I have really sunk into a good routine. I think I will. Actually I know I will.

I keep eyeing the 4:30pm tennis lessons for ages 4 and up and the club... and thinking about that stack of cds I want burned onto my computer... and the photos files that I have intent to organize during my free time and not to mention my goals. I am organized in every other aspect of my life... I need to apply it to my after schools planning!

We will get there, I am sure of it. I realize that I am so very lucky to be in a position to be able to scale my hours back and not to have to rely on after school care, but I need to sink a bit more into it and the new routine.

Soul Sister

2011-09-01T19:13:00.000-07:00

Ok yes, one of my favorite songs… Hey, Soul Sister… can I admit that here?

In the past few weeks in discussions with friends and actually online as well, we have hit on that “right person”. Who is it and how do you know?

I know my right person… my husband. We have this super marriage. A marriage that when others are in groups and venting about their significant other about all I can find to say is, “I got nothing.” (Now if they wanted to switch the topic over to work? I could so bend some ears there.)

I am lucky. Very, very lucky.

My husband supports me in everything I do. He gives me his opinion, even though I may not want it, and then he shuts up when I ask him if I asked for his opinion. We talk all the time. He has heard my stories 6832 times and I have heard his 6833 times. But we still learn from each other. We are a team and ever proud of being a family together. And I pray to God that he never finds a reason or desire to leave me.

We started dating when we were in our senior year in college, just before we each turned 22. Those first two years were rocky. We broke up a number of times. I always swore (before him) that I wouldn’t go back to a failed relationship. But something kept pulling me back each time. Then I decided to go to grad school. He followed me a few states over and by that action, I knew we were in it for the long haul, though we didn't marry for 3 years after that.

I dated a lot (read too much) in high school. I look back now and realize that I wanted someone so badly that I dated anyone who took a second glance at me. I hope I can infuse in my daughter a stronger sense of worth in herself and less of my early dependence on feeling like I was someone because I was with someone. With only a few exceptions I went from dating one person a prior weekend to having a new boyfriend the next. It wasn’t until a particularly stifling year and a half in early college that I decided I needed to be brave. I needed to be by myself for one full year. I needed to figure out who I was.

And I did it. When AB came along that senior year, I was ready.

Is he my soul mate? See I am not sure I believe in a soul mate. The whole one person for each person out there and if brought together, sparks will fly and all will be good in the world, doesn't really jive with me. And AB agrees with me.

I, in no way, believe that if the stars hadn’t aligned bringing AB to Colorado for college (because his dad decided to get his graduate degree at the same university) and then bringing me to the same university because I was dating Mr. Stifler who wanted to switch universities… or say I hadn’t put off PChem Lab that one year, maybe I decided to take it on a whim the semester prior… or say I hadn’t looked over in PChem Lab on that first day and said to myself, “OMG I so cannot be lab partners with Wayne again, I have to pounce on someone else” and AB was standing there… that we wouldn’t have been perfectly happy with someone else.

Who that someone else would have been, I have no idea.

Would I have gone on to grad school by myself and dated one of my fellow grad students? Or would I have moved along single into a job and married one of the many single (probably for a reason) nuclear physicists or engineers I worked with?

There have been other people who have come into my life that I believe, if circumstances were different, that we could have successfully made a go at it and been happy. Does that make me want to jump ship and test it out. No freaking way. I have my small list of guys in the back of my head that on a rare occasion I think back on, “if things would have been different… where would we be now?” And I think it would have been good, but I am in no way kidding myself that that list of guys is also guys that I never actually dated either.

So maybe, just maybe, I did luck out and find my soul mate. I don't know. But I look forward to spending the rest of my life with that fabulous man that is driving our children up the street right now as I sit here typing.

Domestication?

2011-09-01T18:54:00.000-07:00

This week there have been a lot of changes in the house. I have spent my week resisting the urge to fill in the space. The beloved space. The space I have craved for months... yes, actually years.

Years ago when Leif was little I said it was my goal to reduce my hours once he left our quiet peaceful private school for the hustle and bustle of the public school. I remember once my mother in law made the statement - "it is best to work when the kids are little, be home in the afternoons when the kids get older and can get in more trouble". That spoke to me way back when. And so it became my goal to reduce my hours to be home when they headed out into the world.

This week that goal was realized. On Tuesday, the first day of school, I sent my boy off on the big bus. He quickly friended a 4th grade girl who according to her mom, "loves to mother" and miracles of all miracles, he has made it successfully to school AND home every day so far this week! (Knock on wood.)

And so at 3pm when I am at work, or in a meeting, I have packed my things up, stood up and walked out.

With my managers concurrence of course.

I have to admit it has been a very weird feeling as quite often I am one of the last ones left in my hallway. Not because I work long hours, but because everyone else manages to get in WAY before me. Now I get in later than them, and I leave early. At least Monday through Thursday. Friday's AB is off and so it is his day to field the kids while I get to have my long day at work.

I tell you what, those two hours less at work are noticeable! My day seems so short. I feel that I have just enough time to get done what I need to get done. Anything extra? Well that is for Fridays. I actually love Fridays at work. It is often very quiet and I usually have a last burst of energy before the weekend to plow through my lists. Monday then becomes my busy day as everyone works off my productivity the day before the weekend.

I get home and those 2 hours at home make a world of difference. I can get settled in, go meet the bus, pick up the house, unload the dishwasher, make dinner...

Our Wednesday night pick up night? Nonexistent. Because by dinner time, my house is picked up and ready for the Thursday housecleaner. Yay me! Domestication?

I expect the downside is that my husband will gain weight since I have actual time to cook stuff... like manicotti (last night) instead of just throw together whatever is in the fridge.

The extra time I have in the afternoons affords a lot more flexibility for the family. Easier to get out for a walk in the evenings. Easier for my husband to justify time at the gym since he doesn't have to help me come home and scramble.

One other advantage? My daughter will spend less time at preschool a day, hopefully resulting in fewer opportunities for her to lose random privileges at school. Well, I can hope at least!

I am oh so tempted to add swimming, or gymnastics, or tennis lessons (just saw that option in the court club's newsletter) for the kids. But no. I am resisting the urge for a few weeks to settle in.

But I may do myself a favor and venture to the gym... just maybe!

Huh...

2011-08-25T18:05:00.001-07:00

Just noticed that the time stamps are wonky on my posts... apparently if I start a blog some long past day and the finish it today, the time stamp is from that long past day!

All I did last Tuesday was type in the title and first line to remind myself to blog on that topic. But it is coming up as being done last Tuesday during the day.

Ok, just had to comment on that.

Catching Up

2011-08-25T17:21:00.000-07:00

It wouldn't be a catching up blog without me wondering where the month has gone. Yes, wasn't it just yesterday I was posting about July? And now here I am with one more day of summer camp for Leif.

My baby boy is going to the first grade! I remember the first grade... (there's a blog topic for a another day).

So us. Let's see...

AB - he's doing great. I am constantly amazed by him waking up at 4:30am every single morning - well at least Monday thru Thursday and some Fridays and going into work and working a 10 hour day. I know many people who would have walked out on that gig a long time ago.

Skadi - things are looking up for her. She was moved out of the corner and all summer long has only lost one or two privileges. She truly has been such a pleasure to be around lately. She even has started showing an interest in wearing jeans! Gasp! I still embrace the dresses for her because I don't think this will last for long and I want to enjoy the dress phase.

I ordered a pair of cute jeans for her the other day, super flare with embroidered flowers. She was so excited when they arrived. Put them on and they were too tight. Gurr. There were tears. She couldn't believe that happened and wanted them so badly to wear a pink belt with. Me? I can't believe I just ordered size 5's to replace the ill fitting ones. 5? Really?

Me - work is going well. I had posted previously about concerns with being light on work. I really should know better than to send a note to my manager and team lead before actually putting my own feelers out. Within 3 days I was back to being fully committed for the remainder of this year and the coming year. And AB cursed me - he told me this would happen - and he was right. Now I am looking at my plate and wondering if I have too much on it? Because if I am not scrambling crazy busy, I don't have enough. I sent a note to my managers the other day - please do NOT send me any work (unless you know, it is just exactly perfect for me... like this other stuff I just accepted...). Sigh.

All of this has resulted in for me a whole lot less stress. I know the source of my stress... concerns over work. I can enjoy my weekends again!

Goals? Well let's see here...

If on Friday I buy paint samples and this weekend I put them on the wall and see how they look, I think I will hit my August goal!

Probably an unpopular vent

2011-08-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

For years AB and I have supported strongly national parks. We donate money to the parks system and believe strongly that it is an important asset.

I just have one beef.

The pet policy.

That would be the pet policy that basically says your dog should never leave your vehicle and even better - leave said dog at home.

Last weekend we went to Mt. Rainier National Park to the Sunrise Visitor's Center - a side we had never been to and man it was packed. We went to the visitor's center, found a place to take some pictures, grabbed some lunch and headed out.

You know, here, yes, I can understand a no pets please request. It was busy, the trails were packed and there was hardly room to get cars parked. We were just happy it wasn't hot in the car and were able to leave the dogs in the car.

But umm, the park is big. And we wanted to hike somewhere. And the dogs need to pee.

But nowhere that we stopped were those dogs allowed to leave our car. At each stop there was a park ranger wagging his finger and threatening hefty fines.

At one stop we thought we were over the border of the National Park and into the National Forest which does not have such pet laws.

We quickly found out we were 500 feet short of the National Forest boundary and those dogs could go right back into the vehicle.

And I know this will be an unpopular post because a woman standing near me went up and congratulated the ranger on his score of booting the dogs out by saying, "I just want to thank you, the GALL of some people to think they can bring their dogs ANYWHERE!" I couldn't help a quick retort to her citing the fact that it is a bit hard to know exactly where the park and forest boundary is when you are visiting a place for the first time. She, of course, glared at me fierce - but I think she was more embarrassed at being busted with a reasonable argument that she had no quick response for (not realizing *I* was with that crazy dog guy).

I get that not all pet owners are top notch. And for this, fine them. But not everyone is a bad apple! There certainly are enough rangers around to write those tickets out (and generate revenue in the meantime for the parks that we hear are starved for cash).

We found the invisible line separating park from forest and got out and set about a hike, where the trail was packed with dogs at every turn. Dogs not allowed just 500 feet away (with the same terrain and same views).

We love to travel. We love the parks. We love our long weekend adventures. We love hiking. We love our dogs. It makes me sad that this all can't be combined.

I am planning for a Yellowstone trip next spring break and already trying to figure out what the path forward will be with our dogs... who normally travel with us.

Summer of Fun

2011-08-23T14:54:00.000-07:00

I hope that some day Leif looks back and relishes his first real summer outside of full time school/care. To this point Leif's summers have beeen about the same as his winters, work and playtime at his Montessori school. This year, things have been different...

There was robot racing...

And even some robot Sumo wrestling in August.

I wish *I* would have had a summer of camps!

He has learned a lot of lessons though throughout the summer...

like the necessity of keeping track of ones things... (one wallet lost, goggles lost...)

and that while it is good to be generous, that buying other people food results in first not having money for lunch, and second offense resulted in it coming out of his money and then tears.

that nothing comes for free. That when the concession stand at the club asks for his name after ordering a Super Nachos, a drink, a snocone, a smoothie and a push up, that it goes to mom and dad's account.

that mom and dad DO find out everything.

that it is possible to get tired of all the fun things after awhile.

Ah well. A new world awaits him (and us) a week from today when I put my baby boy on the school bus.

And I will resist in following the bus to the school to make sure everything goes ok.

Love my Beaner

2011-08-14T18:20:00.000-07:00

Me: "Hmm, the instructions are in Chinese."

Skadi: "Let me have it, I read Chinese."

(I hand her the instructions.)

Skadi: "It says this is a remote control car and it needs batteries."

---------

Time for bed.

Skadi: "Mommy, I am going to put you to bed tonight. Lay down your head here."

She rubs my head and sings me a lullaby that she made up very softly and sweetly.

Skadi: "If your hands are dirty, wash them. If your clothes are dirty, wash them." (Repeat 23 times.)

Skadi: "Mommy, you are the best mommy ever." Rolls over and falls asleep.

Me? Luckiest mom ever.

Shoe Girl Status in Question

2011-08-13T16:20:00.000-07:00

Skadi loves her Keens. She has since she was a baby and she was just learning to walk in the summer after she turned one.

We each have our preferences, and while I want really badly to love Keens, they just don’t fit my feet well. Though I am thinking I might need to try their boots… maybe those would be better? Or maybe I am just sucked into thinking that by their adorable-ness…

Anyways, every year Skadi has had pink or purple Keens. Sandals or shoes. I asked Skadi earlier this summer what kind of shoes she wanted for the fall (in case I happened upon some clearance options) and she told me, “shoes like these” (pointing to her pink Keen sandals on her feet) “that don’t have have holes in them”.

Gee… there is a surprise… shoes like she has had for the last three years.

But then a few weeks ago she found an old pair of Leif’s Keens. His only pair. And Leif, like me, didn’t care for them on. They are brown size 10’s, the size she will need for the fall.

And Skadi has latched onto them. Her dad has latched onto Skadi loving them and 9 times out of 10 when dad is getting her ready in the morning those brown Keens grace her feet.

Can I be honest? I cringe a little. I know I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t cringe at my daughter wearing brown “boy shoes”. She is pink and frilly in everything else she does in life, a little bit of ordinary brown shoes won’t change that special something about her. Right?

I keep reminding myself that it is $50 saved. And that if one day this fall she adamantly decides that she doesn’t want the brown shoes anymore, we CAN go get her a pair of pink cute Keens.

Still though… this drastic out of character move of my daughter’s to latch onto something so… so… brown… and ordinary… just perplexes me.

And makes me a bit concerned about her status as a "shoe girl".

Well shack.

2011-08-10T20:12:00.000-07:00

Leif is picking up "new" words this summer at summer camps. Skadi's new favorite movie is "Ramona and Beezus" and "guts" has been about the speed of Leif's naughty words to this point.

A few weeks ago this happened:

Leif: "Skadi get in the water and don't be a chicken shack."

Me: "What did you call her?"

Leif: "A chicken shack, you know."

Me: "We do not call each other chicken shacks!!"

----------

Then there was this week.

Leif: "He said the 'a' word."

Me: "What is the 'a' word? You can tell me, you won't get in trouble." (I am thinking ass, but wanted to see if he knew.)

Leif: "Shit."

Me: "Shit does not have an 'a' in it. And you are right, that is a bad word. Do you know what it means?"

Leif: "Dumb Donkey."

Me: "Uhhh..."

Ok, so maybe he did mean the "a" word?

Memories

2011-08-07T16:19:00.000-07:00

Ever have one of those memories that triggers so much more than "oh yeah, I remember that"?

Last night Skadi was picking YouTube songs before bed and she happened upon "Bert Sings Imagination". I couldn't have told you at all what this was about - and I am a vault of knowledge with regards to Ernie and Bert. Even as the video started I didn't know what it was.

Then the singing started.

Umm yeah. I watched it with Skadi one time and it triggered such an intense memory that I immediately recalled all the words. If someone had asked me to sing "Imagination" prior to that I would have wondered if Bert really had remade John Lennon's song.

And can I just say that "Wubba wubba" still makes me giggle? And I loved at the end when the balloons came down and my sweet baby girl squealed, "It's a miracle mommy!"

Last Sunday I sat in the church that I hadn't walked into in about 18 years.

I could not have told you what the lights looked like. But when I saw those horride funky lights from the 70's... well they immediately took me back.

I did remember the wooden strips paneling the ceiling and how I used to count them and recount them. And it must be habit because when the tears were feeling imminent, and the service was droning on, I started counting them again.

I couldn't have told you 8 days ago what color the pew fabric was.

But when I saw that horrible red and purple pattern I was a child again sitting on the pew taking Butter Rum Lifesavers from my grandmother's and mom's hands.

Hangin' with the cousins

2011-08-07T15:52:00.000-07:00

The 4th of July wasn't nearly so much fun since the closest child to my kids' age was 12. But it was a weekend of cousins under 7 for Leif's birthday!

Seriousness can only be maintained for so long.

Skadi and Hazel are always fast and inseperable friends.

Much time was spent in Signe's cabin playing dollies, putting dollies to bed, putting each other to bed, feedling the dollies...

As well as outside in the pool... with the many pool toys...

And on the trampoline...

Happy 7th Birthday Leif!

2011-08-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

Seven just seems so much bigger than six. At six, I could still get away with saying "little boy". But at seven? I am just not sure that seven is little anymore. He no longer asks for toys really... except ok a Nerf gun picked out by his sister WAS really cool...

he wants big kid stuff... like Donkey Kong Country Wii...

and Super Mario Brothers v. 63. Or it seems like they should be on v. 63 since I remember Super Mario Brothers from when I was a kid...

The nice fishing pole from grandpa Perry was MUCH appreciated...

This year Leif decided that he wanted two things - to go to the cabin for his birthday to see his cousins from Boston...

and then a sleepover with three of his friends also "gamers" to play Wii all night, with no parents and no girls allowed.

Leif had requested a three layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and a cherry on top. No problem, I thought. Then I took the three round layers out of the oven and Leif looked dismayed, "why are they the same size?" Turns out he wanted a three tier chocolate cake, like a wedding cake with a cherry on top.

Well a knife works wonders... and then *I* got to munch on cake before the actual party.

The other thing that is very important to have when you are seven years old is trick candles!

Because everyone wants their cake covered in spit from the effort taken for blowing out candles for 5 minutes...

Happy 7th birthday Leif!

Hello August

2011-08-07T15:11:00.000-07:00

This summer is flying. I am sure I say this every single summer, but this summer I really, really mean it.

So many things change, yet so many stay the same. Leif still has "threaky" things that happen to him and Skadi still bonks her "twohead".

We are into the last few weeks before school starts. We went school supply shopping and if I can make things difficult, I do. So they specify a "pink pearl" eraser but a "tub of sanitizer wipes"? Umm help? And why the two boxes of 24 ct Crayolas? Why not one of the bigger boxes?

Leif has a week of Robot Camp and then two last weeks of Adventure Camp and then blammo. First grade in public school.

I am the one freaked out.

Part of the reason we pulled Leif out a bit early from his Montessori school was to give him a bit more confidence before the big switch to public school. This summer has certainly done that more so than AB or I ever expected. Leif has done extremely well this summer in his variety of activities. But as the summer winds down, he is ready for a bit of calm. He has declared he is tired of field trips and just wants to sit down and watch a movie.

Up until this past week Leif has been overly thrilled with Adeventure Camp and no worries on our part. Until this week. This past week we have had a set of firsts for him. Both that resulted in calls to the Adventure Camp he is enrolled in. First blistering sunburn. By the time I was seven I had a handful of these and while it sucked to be in the pain, it was just kind of something that happened once or twice a year. Not so in 2011. The counselor DID apply sunscreen, I do believe her and Leif says she did. But for some reason it just didn’t work and his poor shoulders are blistered and peeling. The counselor felt horrible about it. The rest of this week we became proactive with the use of sunscreen AND a rash guard.

And the second issue was bullying. Severe in that the other child is being removed from Adventure Camp. I wouldn’t have known about it as Leif rarely talks about his day even with proding (except to tell us about his successes at poison ball or dodgeball), but the other night I went in to dig out a rash guard from his dresser well after he was supposed to be asleep. Instead of sleeping he was in bed sobbing.

Leif talked fairly easily with me about the situation, an older “mean” boy had told him that if he didn’t bring in some of his Star Wars legos guys for him that he was going to make up something to tell on him and he would have to go to Roberta’s office. Leif is a pretty by the rules kid, the thought of “going to Roberta’s” filled him with fear and tears and he didn’t know what to do. After I got him calmed down and reassured him that no, he was not taking in his Star Wars guys to the boy and that *I* would be talking to Roberta, he fell quickly asleep. It was an easy conversation with Roberta where she informed me that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back with this boy and that they do not tolerate bullying at all. Still it has taken a bit to convince Leif to go back to Adventure Club. He is afraid. And this makes me sad. A break for Robot camp next week is exactly what he needs. Then the week after he will go back to Adventure Camp, but with one of his best friends in the world with him.

And I do have to admit that as a mom of a daughter who tends to be on the edge of being a troublemaker and who has walked a line with getting booted from daycare and preschool, I do feel for the other parents of the child. I no longer believe, like I did when Leif was young, that “if the parents just did X, Y or Z, the problem would be solved”.

Skadi has been doing a bit better though. The summer started out rough with her being confined to the corner for work time. Apparently this has worked though and while I was fearing her being in the corner all year, she is being moved out and to a desk. She declared to me a few weeks ago, “I finally know what I am supposed to be doing every day!” We have only been telling her to do her works and quit bothering others for weeks, it finally sank in. Whew.

AB and I are doing fine. Our jobs are “ehh”. It is a tough time working where I work. I have my time covered through the end of the fiscal year, but after that it gets a bit sketchy. I have a list of four projects and normally four projects would have me thrilled – except that each one will only cover about 10-15% of my time. I have a bit of stretching to do to get to my newly declared 85% time. Monday through Thursday I will leave at 3pm. Then Fridays I will work a longer day since AB is off on Fridays. I am looking forward to testing this routine out as long as I can pick up a few other things to successfully cover my time fully.

AB is fine with his job, though not thrilled. I am wondering if both of us have a case of “the grass is always greener”. We are debating the merits of seeing what else is out there… in one instance there has to be something better, in the next we realize how good we have it here.

I am really looking forward to my August goals. Actually, let’s just make it August-September goals. August is looking so busy, but I do want to get started.

New flooring for the downstairs! We have nasty carpet in the dining room, office and living room. Hardwood here we come. Of course this is mostly AB’s job once I select the perfect shades of not only flooring, but paint!

Yes, back to paint color selections!

I actually think I have a good handle on what I want this time around based off my recent success with the small bathroom off the foyer.

My biggest issue is going to be scraping the time together for this. We have two busy weekends coming up, followed by a camping trip, then the weekend before school, followed by Labor Day camping trip and then soccer swings up again.

So there it is. A catch up post, goals and what’s to come for this late summer.

Definitions Time - Bejeezus

2011-07-28T21:46:00.000-07:00

Me: "Leif, you scare the bejesus out of me sometimes!"

Leif: "You have Jesus's in you that are leaving?"

Me: "No, bejesus."

Leif: "What is that?"

Me: "Ummm... ummm... ummm..."

Leif: "Is it like your taste buds?"

Me: "Ok sure, like your taste buds."

Leif: "I am going to scare your taste buds out of you!!"

Coach Nuclear Mom?

2011-07-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

I am always pushing my poor husband to coach sports teams. He actually does pretty well at it and despite his complaining I am SURE that he enjoys it.

Now that we have two children that are team sports ages it is hard to balance the obligations that team sports bring. It is easier when only one child wants to play a sport, but when they both want to... just scary.

With the YMCA sports, I like that the practices and games during the summer are actually during the week leaving weekends open. However, there is a huge demand for teams and always wait lists for the sports. You often end up taking what you can get as a parent. Two kids and you are potentially looking at 4 nights of sports a week!

Now if you are a volunteer coach... things loosen up substantially!

This was my thought. AB coaches Leif's soccer team, I coach Skadi's and between us we coordinate the practices and games. This has actually worked out quite successfully and we ended up with a number of other siblings on our teams as well as parents who have suddenly clung to us with frequent statements and e-mails of "let's do this again, let us know when you are coaching other teams!"

But can I just say that I am just not a natural coach?

Nope. Really not.

Of course my age group (3-4 year olds) makes my role feel substantially more like "preschool teacher" or "cat herder" or "zoo keeper" than "coach".

My husband gets to maintain the coach title. Not me.

Luckily I went into this with an enthusiastic co-coach who has not only picked up my slack but run with it and has had incredible commitment to the team and quite possibly more natural preschool teacher/cat herder/zoo keeper in him than I do.

I have complained a few times about parents on sports teams and I am quite sure that at least on one occasion, my husband was viewed as "one of those parents".

One more week left and really it was fun. Do it again? Unlikely. I am happy to think that my son is getting to the age and ability that his next coach needs to be someone with more than recreational commitment, which means that AB is already talking about coaching Skadi's team. Which means I should be off the hook, right??

Here are my issues...

First off I suck at Arts and Crafts and cutey things. What does this have to do with soccer? In baseball the coach (also a kindergarten teacher...) had cute little foam seat pads for the kids to sit on and every time she brought snacks it had pencils and ribbons and fancy name writing. Little pails for the kids all decorated at the end of the season.

Me? I have intentions... but I secretly comfort myself knowing that the baseball pail is lying at the bottom of he toy box stripped of its decorations...

The parents. Seriously parents. I am not your babysitter. When your child quits running off the field for the play area? That's when you get to sit in your comfy chair in the shade sipping whatever beverage of choice you might have in your Sigg. Yes, I know, my daughter is as bad as everyone else at kicking and chasing the ball 100 yards off the field... but I am out there to chase her! When I invite the parents out on the field to help steer their kids, I am serious. As in "get out here now".

Commitments. Just my feelings I suppose, but when you commit to bringing snack, being at a game, or any other plans for the team, I expect there to be some carry through. Because really, a game without snacks at the end just really, really sucks for the kids. I gave you my cell and e-mail for a reason.

I had one parent this time around with children on each my husband's and my team. She couldn't get her children out on the field. After trying for 5 minutes each night, two nights in a row, she stated to her kids, "ok, you can either go out on the field or we can go get ice cream instead, your choice".

Umm gee, what would you choose? Any surprise that neither of the kids attended more than those two nights? But of course she signed up for snacks... for both teams... which now I get to cover... while she enjoys her ice cream...

Anyways... no it wasn't all bad. I met some terrific and fun kids. I practiced my preschool teacher skills just in case this whole Ph.D. scientist thing doesn't work out. I got out and ran with the kids. I held lots of hands on the field and was the recipient of many "flowers" from the field from my kids. I got lots of hugs. I got to play the role of "monkey bars" for the kids. My kids got to win (frequently thanks to one little Beckham on my team).

Naw, it wasn't all bad. Afterall, its making it an experience for the kids.

(Maybe my tags should be a hint... when I type "Coach" in I get "purse"...)

Etiquette

2011-07-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

Me: "Leif this afternoon when Auntie Melissa gave you a gift, I wasn't happy with the way you said, 'oh, I hope it is a Wii game!' That is impolite and can make the other person feel bad."

Leif: (Looking at me blankly.) "But I liked the book a lot mom!"

Me: "I know. But ok, think of it this way, if you drew me a special picture and wrapped it up and gave it to me because you knew I would like it and I said, 'oh, I hope it is a diamond ring!' How would you feel?"

Leif: "Bad."

Me: "See what I mean. You can hurt someone's feelings by assuming the gift is something that it isn't."

Leif: "But what if it was a drawing of a diamond ring?"

Sigh.
Leif"

Well Uff-Da

2011-07-24T12:01:00.001-07:00

This morning the phone rang. It was one of my uncles. I don't hear from my mom's brothers except in times of crises. I knew what the phone call was about. As did my sister who received a similar call and immediately assumed the worst.

My 87 year old grandmother, Shirley Jeanne Perchert Walker, passed away last night.

Over the last year my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimers, moved into a full time care facility, had three major surgeries (broken femur, blood infection and colon resection) and we all knew we were losing her both mentally and physically.

My grandmother was born in 1923 in Cooperstown, North Dakota to Hanna and Albert Perchert. She had two older brothers: Dale and Albert Jr (Bud) (both deceased when I was in my teens and early 20's). Copperstown was a very, very small Norwegian farming community where she claimed being related to half the town. She grew up on a farm through the Great Depression where as she put it, they didn't have much, but they had food. They did better than much of the rest of the US during this time. My great grandmother had three younger children later - Charles (Chucky), Naomi and Bonnie - all of whom are still living.

While my grandmother was in high school she also taught school and once graduated she went to teach full time "until she found a husband". About that time, my great grandparents decided to give up the farming life and took the younger three children to the Bay area. My uncle Dale took over the farm and remained close with my grandmother. Uncle Bud moved to California and I am in contact with his daughter Mickey on a somewhat regular basis. The younger siblings I only knew in passing. I got to know Chucky when we lived in Reno and he lived and worked nearby.

After a year or so of teaching high school my grandmother decided to enroll in the Army Nurse Cadet program and she was sent to Spokane, WA for her training at Deaconess Hospital.

As I grew older my grandmother would tell me how they were "the wild bunch" at Deaconess and how she and her roommate had one of the only rooms with a window and they used to sneak their girlfriends in and out of the room to meet the soldiers stationed at the base up near Spokane.

My grandmother spent time in LaGrande, OR doing her nurses training as well. She was nearing the day to be shipped overseas when the announcement came that the war was over.

My grandmother packed up and moved to Seattle, WA where she worked in a hospital. She took up flirting with an ambulance driver who relieved the elevator operator for his lunch. My grandmother tells of making excuses to ride up and down the elevator to be with the man who was nearly 15 years her senior.

The story between Seattle to Casper, WY is foggy. She at one point admitted to me that she left Seattle for Casper when she was pregnant (unmarried) and didn't know what to do. The man she had met in the elevator wasn't sure what he wanted to do and was not supportive of the pregnancy. She up and left and arrived in Casper, WY and moved in with a girl she knew from nurses training, started working at the local hospital and started attending the Seventh Day Adventist church.

A few months Eugene Lemuel Walker showed up. There was a wedding. And a few months later my uncle David was born.

My grandfather was born in backwoods Arkansas to a native American woman named Rose Hawk in the early part of the century. He managed to attend school through the second grade.

He had done odd jobs throughout his life to this point and decided that he would attend barber school. The school requested his transcript and he lied, telling them the school burnt down. He went to barber school, opened a barber shop in downtown Casper where he worked as long as his health allowed him. During the last 10 years of his life he was largely confined to the house and struggled with heart and lung problems and not to mention diabetes. He passed away in 1985.

Jeanne and Eugene had four children; David, Michael, Barbara and Robert. It was a volatile family life with alcoholism and lots of yelling. My grandparents had warm, but hard hearts. I used to play Yahtzee with my grandmother, we would sit at the kitchen table and she had this old yellow plastic cup she would roll her dice with. And she would shake and shake that cup. Then my grandfather would start yelling, "think you need to roll those God-damned any louder?" And my grandmother would grin. And her next turn she would shake them even louder and longer. Then my grandfather would start cussing under his breath. When someone bought my grandmother a padded dice cup it was supposed to heal the marriage.

My Yahtzee experiences I expect were only the tip of the iceburg with their 40-some year marriage, but said so much about those 40 years.

My grandmother worked nights as a nurse at the hospital and my grandfather was a barber.

In 1972 her first grandchild was born. That would be me.

I spent days with my grandmother while my mom attended the community college to get her AA degree. My grandmother and I were fast friends. Best of buddies. I spent loads of time at her house growing up. We had all our holidays together. She was my Bonka.

My grandmother was never one to smooth things over. She didn't hide her feelings or thoughts. And many people were hurt from this. Many family members. My grandmother told me one day, "people try to pretend like it isn't true, but your first is always your favorite. My first child was my favorite and my first grandchild was my favorite." She didn't have to say this, we all knew it was true, unfortunately. She tuned out with my little sister and her oldest son could do no wrong, but the other three struggled to live up despite one going to medical school and one becoming a small business owner of a contract research lab doing research for the giant firms. In this regard, I feel sorry for my grandmother, because she failed to look beyond her feelings to discover the beauty of the other children and adults in the family. I worked so hard to make up for her shortcomings with my sister, but I was hiding nothing from her.

I find it interesting that my sister was the one that was really thoroughly left on the sidelines with regards to my grandmother, but in the last year, my sister is the one who saw her most as she went to the home and visited her regularly in every hospital. I want to say I would have done the same thing in her shoes... but I admit I have not taken those steps with my father's mom.

My grandmother was a bull in the china shop. She was an excellent nurse and retired a few years after my grandfather died. She held her achievements as a nurse close to her heart. One of her favorite possessions, which is now in my possession, was her years of service pins from the hospital. When the hospital started putting computers at the stations, she switched from nursing to serving as a Pink Lady and she was incredibly proud of her volunteer service and built her hours of service with pride.

My grandmother took my sister and I on our first plane ride when I was in the 4th grade and my sister in 1st grade to North Dakota to meet her extended family. When I was 13, she took us to Disneyland. And when we moved to Colorado she drove the 4 hours up and back on I-25 regularly to be there for every major event.

My grandmother was one of my biggest advocates. When I was a little girl I said that I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up, she replied, "no, you don't want to be a nurse, you will be a doctor". When I decided to go to grad school instead of medical school she was not happy with me.

She lived in her home (in one of the worst parts of Casper, which I should also blog about how they bought this home) until she was 85 years old. Two years ago we convinced her to go and live with David in Denver, he needed her as his health was declining. Everyone hoped it would be to their mutual benefit. As she lived there, David started realizing how poor off she really was. Her mental capacity was declining rapidly and as a consequence of this her finances needed serious interference.

Shortly thereafter she was diagnosed with mild Alzheimers about the same time my mother was diagnosed with liver cancer. This became a very difficult time for the both of them. My mom still harbored a lot of animosity that had never played out between she and my grandmother and tried to balance it with the fact that she was fighting for her life and still felt that she needed her mom to be there. My grandmother started having animosity because my mom wasn't there, she wasn't the one stepping up to help care for her and in her Alzheimers state, was not realizing that there were other things at play here. A liftime of difficult communication was coming to head.

My grandmother was eventually moved from my uncles house when he finally admitted he could not care for her, into an assisted living home where she had her own apartment. This was short lived when it was realized by the assisted living personnel that she needed substantially more than they could offer her, particularly after she broke her leg. She was moved into nursing home and quickly forgot about thoughts of going home.

We all went up to Casper and cleaned out her house - ok, some more than others cleaned - I went up and went through items taking a few boxfuls of things. The house sold a few months later.

Her health started rapidly declining, but she spoke regularly about how she loved the home, how good to her the staff was, and such. This was amazing to me, I never thought she would be happy with such a living situation. What angels.

Last week I received an e-mail from my uncle indicating that once again she was in the hospital and had undergone emergency surgery to remove a portion of her colon that had died. I spoke to her on the phone and it was so difficult to understand her, but her regular humor was still there.

I decided to make plans to go see her in the next 6-8 weeks, once she got out of the hospital. Unfortunately that wasn't to be. The last time I saw her was the day the kids, AB and I went to see her before celebrating my mom's life. We explained the situation that she had passed away and I held her tiny bony frame as she sobbed that it should have been her. Then as typical with Alzheimers patients, the minute lunch was mentioned she was off on a new topic and quickly forgot. Then during lunch she asked, "so how is your mother doing?"

I have many many funny and happy stories of my grandmother. She was one of my biggest fans and me one of hers. While I am sad that she has departed, I am happy that it was quiet, in her sleep, that she was lucky enough to have 87 years under her belt, had lived through so many fantastic times and accomplished so much for a woman in her lifetime (attaining her bachelor's degree in science). Living without memories is no way to live. She is truly in a better place now.

4th of July at the Cabin

2011-07-08T17:12:00.001-07:00

Strolling the beach.

Every trip to Shelton has to have a trip to see Cecil.

The neighborhood friendly Harbor seal has gotten awfully used to us. He doesn't budge when we paddle up right next to him. Seriously, *I* was the one getting freaked out here.

Skadi was determined to catch fish for dinner.

But she only kept turning up these jellyfish.

The kids were freaked out by them, but AB notsomuch.

Fishergirl.

Ok, this guy, we will be freaked out a bit by. He was a BIG jellyfish. Nets out of the water.

Where did my baby girl go?

Missing, one baby girl. Seems to have been replaced by a big girl.

Best Purchase Ever

2011-07-08T16:37:00.000-07:00

The past few years AB and I have debated and studied RVs. (Yes, my 16 year old self is so laughing at me right now.) We finally honed in on a travel trailer and after another year or so decided what we wanted... queen bed (preferably with a separation wall), bunks and preferably four seasons since we had hopes at the time of using it year round... or at least 3 seasons of the year. This May we happened upon a lesser known brand at a great price (similar to what we were going to pay for a used version) and pounced.

We worried... were we going to suffer buyer's regret? Will we really use it? Will we LIKE it?

Four trips out later and we are sold. We love it. We use it. And no buyer's regret.

The step stool is there for the kids to access the bunk. Bathroom behind the door.

Leif gets the top bunk and loves it. Skadi is less enthused with the bunks for some reason. I am wondering if she isn't a bit clautrophobic. But after a few trips out and her waking and screaming all throughout the nights we gave in and put her on the fold out sofa. It pretty much never gets folded in actually as the kids like it out and it is more comfortable that way.

Yep, we are all quite sold on our new purchase. We enjoy having the place to sleep indoors, the heater when needed and the AC when needed. So far we have mostly dry camped, which has its own learning curve. But we have it pretty well mastered so far. The generator that AB purchased gives us an extra bit of insurance.

But best of all it has enabled trips that created memories for the kids like the ones below:

Leif's Rainbow Salmon... or Trout... whichever it is...

Still Leif's rainbow trout... but Skadi wanted a picture holding it.

Hiking and playing with the slugs.

More fishing...

Everyone loves fishing.

Even "Girl Grover" loves fishing!

July

2011-07-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

July

How can it be July already? Do I ask this every month? Why do the months just keep going faster and faster?

So my June goals were pretty much a complete bust. But I am going to blame money there.

I wanted to find something to organize my jewelry. I found a cute jewelry hanger to mount on the wall, went to go buy it and found out it was no longer in stock. And the thing is I want a wall hanging one. I have some long necklaces and I don’t want to devote the counter space. Wall mount only.

This caveat has made procuring the right system difficult. I actually found a few, but they were freaky expensive. Like $140 expensive. And I just have a horrible time committing about what I would spend on a good pair of shoes for some wire thing to hang my jewelry by. I may just resort to an 8 pack box of those Command hooks and keep my earring system as is – as in little votive holders next to my bed and on my bathroom counter. Or at least until I find something new and acceptable.

My quilt is pretty much ready to go to the long arm shop. Except that committing $200 to this endeavor, while easier to swallow than the $140 jewelry holder, is just not as pressing for some reason. I have it ready to go… and when I have an extra $200 sitting around… it will be first on deck. (And umm no, this having an extra $200 sitting around does NOT happen regularly.)

So July. Hello July.

July is going to be my month of not spending ANYTHING on my monthly goals. Yes, I have become freaky about spending money. I am tired of it. I mean, I want the stuff that results from it, but I am tired of not having it.

We have been gone – out camping usually – about every other weekend since early May. Yay us! We are using our trailer and loving it. Happy days! Except that those weekends at home are all about recovery. Mountains of laundry, groceries, fitting in everything else basically.

Our next trip isn’t until July 29th when we head back over to the cabin so the kids can hang with their Boston cousins for a weekend.

Three whole weekends! Three whole weekends with no soccer (soccer is during the week in the summer), no swimming lessons, no excuses. And on one of them – no AB! He is going to Minnesota for a friend’s wedding and we decided that in the goal of saving money, that he would venture on his own. That gives me a whole weekend of not compromising! Of course it also gives me a whole weekend of single parenting…

With busy weekends and soccer two nights a week, I have fallen seriously behind in getting stuff done around the house. I have flat surfaces with just stacks of papers to be sorted, filed, shredded, tossed, etc. I have piles to go to Goodwill. I have piles of stuff to think about listing for sale. The kids’ closets are rapidly descending somewhere ugly. And my daughter’s hair accessory drawers has taken on a life of their own. Oh and did I mention I have a guest room? Yeah, it is hidden somewhere behind a stack of stuff.

Organization.

And planning for the future. I want to get some plans for our outdoor kitchen/patio going (maybe even contacting an architect for some ideas… if I can get AB on board there). I want to start thinking about this fall’s project – hardwood flooring in the front office and dining room (along with paint).

July is all about taking control of the clutter and planning for the remaining half year.

Foodie Inspirations

2011-07-07T18:07:00.000-07:00

One of my old issues of Bon Appetit (it is an older issue as I have no time to read it anymore it seems) had a section on defining food moments. What, in your lifetime, was your defining food moment or moments? That point where food became more than just sustenance? Where food became intriguing? What helped you define yourself further from being a mere consumer?

Ok, so those last three are my spin on the question since in Bon Appetit it was posed to a bunch of chefs. And I am not a chef – but I think the question is still relevant.

I was always a horribly picky child. Horribly. I rarely tried anything new and I preferred bland food. I ate mild salsa. And I dipped my chip carefully so as to not get any chunks on my chip, then I would shake it so I didn’t get too much salsa. Seriously.

Wow have I come a long way.

I recall a few food defining moments…

The first one that pops to mind was when I started dating a guy in my freshman year of college. He had a bit of hippy to him and had worked in kitchens throughout Northern Colorado. In that nearly two years we dated, he taught me to cook. Really cook, as in not food preparation for mere sustenance. We ate at some fabulous restaurants and cooked great food and used it as an excuse to gather with friends.

When we were first starting to date he took me to El Chapultapec in downtown Denver and we ordered green chili. I was still picky, but despite my fear, I wasn’t going to let it show.

I took one bite of my steaming bowlful of green chili in front of me and I started to cry. It burned. It hit my tastebuds. It paralyzed my taste buds. I gagged. I gulped water. I cried some more.

And then I went back for more.

It was delicious and had flavors I never knew existed.

I am positive I permanently maimed my taste buds that evening. But it was a good thing.

My second food defining moment was when I was new in my job out of grad school. AB and I were invited to go have Thanksgiving dinner with one of my managers. It was one of the first times that we either weren’t traveling to Colorado to be with my family, or weren’t hosting ourselves. We felt a bit out of sorts about eating at someone else’s house for Thanksgiving, but we embraced it.

Dinner was very traditional and good. But everyone was so excited for dessert – pie! I knew I could embrace this. I love pie. Pie is my family’s way of doing dessert. I had eaten pie since I was a child and there is NO other way to finish up Thanksgiving dinner. Pie is what Thanksgiving is all about to me. I could care less about turkey usually. But pie? Yum. So when the manager told me a week in advance that pie was their centerpiece for the meal, I knew this would go over well.

Once there though, my perceptions changed. Then I was a bit horrified.

My hosts pulled out a few boxes out of the freezer and tossed frozen pies into the oven.

They pulled the pies out later and everyone ooh’d and aah’d over the pies.

I tried not to turn up my nose. I took a piece.

Then I went home and vowed to learn to make pie crust. To this point I had accepted that I was not a pie crust maker and relied on eating my mom’s pies. Only occasionally attempting pie myself and dealing with the fact that I had tough ugly crusts.

A year or so later I had mastered pie crust and resolved to never ever ever be forced to eat frozen box pies for Thanksgiving dinner ever again.

My pie crusts may not be pretty, but I can crank the pies out with ease.

The perils of a child's increased awareness of his surroundings...

2011-07-07T17:29:00.001-07:00

The setting: Leif and I in some skuzzy male/female gas station bathroom on the way back from the coast. Normally I let him go in by himself, but I hesitated here and went in with him.

Leif: “Look mom, you can buy stuff in here!” (Pointing to the questionable dispenser on the wall.)

Me: “Yep.”

Leif: “It costs 50 cents mom.”

Me: “Yep.”

Leif: “It looks like it is a fun game mom, see it says ‘Fun’ on it!”

Me: “Oh yeah, I bet it is a lot of fun.”

Leif: “Do you have 50 cents mom? I want one of those games.”

Me: “No.”

Leif: “But it says it is fun mom.”

Me: “Those are just for adults.”

Leif: “Why would they put fun games to buy in the bathrooms that are just for adults mom? That just doesn’t make sense.”

Me: “Nope, it doesn’t make any sense at all, you are right. Let’s hurry and go.”

Social Styles Redux

2011-06-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

Back when Leif was little, I was pulled into a program at work where one of the courses that I took was Social Styles. I remember watching the descriptions of the styles, reading the descriptions of the styles and yes (because these classes are ALL about repetition) then hearing about the styles. And I knew I was an analytical. And I blogged a lot about it here, just search Social Style on this blog.

Ask vs. Tell?

Ask. Easy. I never TELL anyone what to do, I ask them to do it. And I get into humongous trouble doing what comes naturally to me with my kids. I can ask my kids to get their shoes on 572 times, but I only have to tell them to get their shoes on 43 times. See? There is a benefit to being more direct.

Task vs. People?

Task. Easy. I am not a people person, I struggle (since I was a kid) with eye contact, but have worked really really hard at that over the years. I prefer to hide in my office and I don’t feed off of people interactions. Oftentimes they make me nervous.

Ask + Tell = Analytical

No surprise.

What happened then was they subdivided the quadrant and lo and behold I was shoved even further out there – Analytical Analytical.

Oh and my versatility score? Abysmal.

Over the last few years I have worked on my style. Yes, I could sit and push my way, taking forever to make a decision, waiting until I had ALL the facts. Or I could try and learn from the class.

Flash forward 6 years later and while in another program I was given an opportunity to take the class again. I jumped on it hoping to have increased my versatility and see if I am really, really that bad. I mean, I know I am Analytical, but I am not *that* Analytical, right?

Right.

Because this time, I came out to be a medium versatile Amiable. That would be Ask + People = Amiable.

Amiable? Me?

I have struggled with this diagnosis nearly as hard as I struggled with labeled Analytical Analytical. I am so not Amiable.

So how did I get there? It is funny actually because the first time around I had only 3 respondents (you are supposed to have 5) and they were each from far ends of the spectrum themselves. Well duh, compared to those two Expressives and that Driver, of course I would be viewed as the far end of Analytical. That’s it, it was my respondents fault!

So this time around I carefully selected my respondents making sure to hit all the social styles. Everyone I selected I have known pretty well for the last three years at least.

So, larger pool, better statistics. People who know me better, better precision. All this makes for good accuracy, right?

Except that I don’t feel it. Not at all.

Ok, well there was that day at Home Depot…

Back Up Behaviors… an Amiable when pushed will acquiesce. Pushed further will attack. Even further you have avoid. And push them to their limit and they become autocratic.

At Home Depot with AB…

“Fine do whatever you want.”

“You never listen to me, you want my input, but you don’t listen and you do whatever you want anyway. I don’t know why I am here. This is ridiculous.”

“I am going to go get the paint now.”

“Ok I am back and this is how we are going to do it and that is final.”

Acquiesce, Attack, Avoid, Autocratic.

Point taken.

And further understanding as to how I routinely end up getting my way… my husband is a Driver and his back up behavior is opposite of mine… Autocratic, Avoid, Attack and finally Acquiesce.

And now that I have realized this I can use it to my full advantage... right?

Are all boys like this?

2011-06-23T21:33:00.000-07:00

Me: "Leif get off the computer and come talk to me."

Leif: "What?"

Me: "What did you do today?"

Leif: "Nothing."

Me: "Did you go to the library?"

Leif: "Yes."

Me: "What did you do there?"

Leif: "Like nothing."

Me: "Did you look at books?"

Leif: "No."

Me: "Did you walk around?"

Leif: "No."

Me: "What did you do then?"

Leif: "I told you, nothing!"

Me: "Did you do the Pacific Science Center Rock and Roll thing after?"

Leif: "No."

Me: "I thought that was what you were doing today. What did they have?"

Leif: "It was a park."

Me: "So what did you do at the park?"

Leif: "Talked on the phone?"

Me: "To who?"

Leif: "Everyone."

Me: "All your group?"

Leif: "Yes. I talked into it and it was loud."

Me: "Was there singing at the ROck and Roll thing?"

Leif: "No."

Me: "So all there was, was a big phone."

Leif: "Yes, at the park."

Me: "Ok, so where did you eat lunch?"

Leif: "At the park."

Me: "Did you see anyone there you knew?"

Leif: "No."

Me: "No one there you knew at all? Not a girl?"

Leif: "No."

Me: "A girl with long black hair?"

Leif: "No."

Me: "Did she hug you?"

Leif: "Nobody hugged me mom."

Me: "Well Sophia's mom said that they saw you at the park."

Leif: "They saw C, not me."

Me: "Ok, did you swim today?"

Leif: "Yes."

Me: "Did you have fun?"

Leif: "I taught C a new move on protecting herself from flying water."

Me: "Oh, ok! What else."

Leif: "Just swimming mom."

Me: "Wow, sounds like not a very fun day. Did you have a good time or should we go back to your old school?"

Leif: "NO MOM! I had a great time!"

Me: "I wouldn't know that."

Leif: "May I be excused from this now?"

Me: "Yes."

Psychoanalyze my daughter

2011-06-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

This is Skadi's 2nd favorite YouTube right now - she requests it every night.

Discuss please.

Wasn't it just yesterday?

2011-06-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

I know, it is so cliche. But yes, it feels like just yesterday I brought my oldest home from the hospital and now he is off wandering the streets and making his own purchases!

We could have left Leif in his school for the summer this year and moved him to public school in the fall. And it was awfully tempting. But his teacher discouraged us from this a bit and I agreed with her. Leif has always been pretty tentative about doing anything on his own.

Compare to me at 5 when I was going across the street to the park by myself, while my mom stayed home with my napping little sister. And it wasn't too long after that I was walking the three blocks to Mini Mart with a dollar in my hand to buy candy. When Leif even sees kids out doing things on his own he is worried for them.

Making the big leap to public school and riding the bus (without me)? We decided he needed a change of scenery and an opportunity to gain some self confidence to prepare for this.

I signed him up for three science camps at the local branch University as well as Adventure Club at our health club.

In two days of Adventure Camp I think he has grown amazingly.

This morning he didn't really want me to leave him there, stating, "mom, you would have lots of fun with us all day!" I know I would, I told him, but I need to go to work.

Then he hit the door of the Kid's Club Fitness Room and a few kids yelled his name and the word "dodgeball" was uttered and he was off. No time even for a kiss goodbye.

I waited anxiously all day to hear how his day went. It consisted of games and also on the schedule was a field trip to a local grocery store.

I have had to learn a lot too. I have had to trust that he will eat his lunch (fail today), get sunscreen on, knows how to use his inhaler (or at least get help) if he needs it, not lose his swimsuit, towel, goggles, etc. Then there is the whole thing with money. The girl who registered him told me that it is probably good to send him with a few bucks so that when they go on field trips that the kids can buy snacks or drinks.

The whole concept of my son having pocket money is a new one for both of us. On vacations, this hasn't been hugely successful, but probably more because AB and I haven't embraced it fully. Even when he wants to spend his money we have him hand us the money and order it online or pay for it ourselves. Leif is funny with money, he loves to have it, doesn't really want to spend it.

So today I suppose it shouldn't surprise me when he came home with treats that "he" purchased at the grocery store on the field trip, but still had his $4. He presented me with a receipt, so I was a little concerned until he finally owned up to the fact that his good friend spotted him the dollar. He frowned when I explained that he didn't need to accept money from his friend, he had his own for that purpose.

"But she wanted me to have it," he tried to convince me. (And I am not sure that I don't believe him.)

"You WILL be repaying her the dollar," I instructed much to his dismay.

A milestone of sorts... my son's first trip to the grocery store without me, with money in hand and the ability to buy whatever he wanted. (I am not sure how far "whatever" extended...)

He came home proudly holding two bags of caramels. "Look mom! TWO for $1!" he prided himself on. He also told me they were chocolate... he is in for a surprise.

He also came home talking about "Chef Boyardee".

I used to love Spaghetti-O's when I was growing up. But call me a snob... we haven't gone to that yet.

Tomorrow he is going to "Rollerena" for roller skating and I have pretty nearly given him permission to play air hockey the whole time and not skate in order to save his neck (and butt, and head, and knees, and elbows). I have taken him a few times with little success.

Last night I asked him what his favorite thing was, "dodgeball" was his quick reply. But thye do random sports (tennis, wallyball, swimming, etc., at the club) as well. I asked him tonight if he would rather go back to his Montessori school and I have never heard him scream "NO!" more vigorously. "We get to play fun games ALL day long!" And when I asked him how his day was it wasn't just a shrug - he uttered the word, "GREAT!"

Next week they are taking them to the library, a Dust Devils baseball game, the movie theater and to a gymnastics gym for play.

I am thinking maybe I should take him up on the offer to join him. First, before he gets the idea that he doesn't need me and second, because it sounds like a whole lot of fun!

Feeling the neighborhood love

2011-06-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Or not.

When AB and I were looking for our second home we weren't terribly particular with neighborhoods. We just wanted a nice home and really, in our part of the town, anything was open to us as we just wanted to be in the South end of the city.

When we found our house we didn't really think about the temple on the corner of a particular religious persuassion. Maybe we should have thought about that we were living in "Temple Meadows".

When I tell people where I live I can easily say, "behind the temple" and people know where we are. I have had more than one person say, "oh, are you XXX religion?" Maybe we should have known? Or maybe we were just naive.

Honestly I don't know how many of our neighbors are of that particular religion.

I believe this is partly because after just over two years in our home, we don't know our neighbors.

In our old neighborhood we knew the first names of our neighbors on each side, their kids and families up and down the street. We had two teenagers ready to babysit and knew that the guy four houses down was running for Mayor. We met and banded together to oppose construction of an apartment complex behind us as well as to request that a builder who came in to develop the last two lots in our neighborhood follow the code established (that required that 1/3 of the front of the house be in rock or brick). We were a community.

I don't get that in our new neighborhood. We know our neighbors immediately adjacent on one side alright, an elderly couple who are quite sweet and very helpful with RV and yard questions. And I know the family down from them only a little. Their kids are staggered from ours and the oldest isn't terribly interested in playing with someone 18 months younger than him and their youngest has a weird and vocal aversion to girls.

Yeah, we don't do much with them.

It isn't like we hide in our house. We walk most evenings around the neighborhood. We sit out on our patio and the kids play in the yard.

Still I feel as though the neighbors walk a wide berth.

I have wondered if it is because we aren't one of "them". (The ones who attend the temple.)

Or if we just live in an unfriendly neighborhood?

This blog has been rolling around in my head for a few months. Maybe even a year. How do I write this without whining. Or seeming like I am opposed to their religious persuassion (I think I blogged about Leif stating that Darth Vadar lived in the temple.)

Tonight kind of kicked it over that edge.

We were out for our evening walk and walked down a street that we walk maybe once or twice a month. Skadi was on her trike (as she is boycotting the bike with training wheels we were loaned), Leif was walking and the dogs were ambling along. A woman came out of her house.

AB: "Hello, what a lovely evening!"

Witch: "I don't like you or your dogs because they poop in my yard."

Umm hello to you too.

Nope. My dogs don't poop in your yard. They might walk there on occasion. But they don't poop there.

Rudeness? My neighborhood has it.

Memorial Day Camping Trip in Photos

2011-05-31T21:43:00.001-07:00

Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other

2011-05-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

I haven’t done a decent update in awhile. I have a huge list of blog topics, but a lack of time to actually write them. And for me it is kind of like a snowball effect. It starts out little, and then as time goes on the snowball gets bigger and bigger as it threatens to run me over. Maybe I have been run over. In some effort to start new after being run over, I will try and get caught up, let's see how I do.

Major Purchase:

We bought a travel trailer in early May. AB and I love camping, we both grew up camping, we want our kids to enjoy camping. But I have reached a point where a dome tent with two kids and two dogs on an air mattress just takes all pleasure out of it. Over the last few years we have identified what exactly we want in a trailer and this spring we surprised ourselves and pulled the trigger. We had been looking for used 4-season bunkhouses and knew what was reasonable to pay for them. Last fall we negotiated on a used unit, but gave up when they failed to negotiate more than $500 lower off the sticker price. This spring we bought a new one for that same price.

We have taken the trailer out twice, and the kids love it. We are still learning it, but after our first longer trip (3 nights this past Memorial Day weekend) we have it pretty well figured out. And I am even getting good with my handsigns. AB is even better at interpreting my handsigns.

We weren’t actually quite where we wanted to be financially before buying it. But in the last year I have given a lot of thought to what living means. I look at my mom’s life and while she had a good life, I look at the things left undone. The things she hoped to accomplish. No one knows our fate. But I have embraced living more in the last year. Taking off and doing the things we want to do instead of just talk about them. I want my kids to love the outdoors and to tramp around the forests like my sister and I did as kids as well as AB and his family did, and have those experiences that we both remember so fondly. I have to make that happen. Purchasing the trailer is making that happen for us.

And my 16 year old self is so laughing at me for “RV’ing”.

Leif:

Leif is wrapping up his last year at the Montessori school he has been at since he was one year old. 6 years here, the end of a legacy of sorts. Wah. My baby Is growing up.

Leif is so very excited to move on to bigger and better things, though he is so very tentative. He really isn't sure about this whole riding the bus without me thing. He will be in public first grade this coming fall. This summer he is looking forward to some science camps at the local branch university and Adventure camp through our health club.

Leif is such a sweet, loving, tender hearted little boy. Poor kid doesn’t understand girls at all and is constantly confounded by them. He surprises me daily with the things he knows and remembers.

The other day Leif and one of his friends was playing at the park as Skadi practiced TBall. I looked over and saw him crawling up the outside of the slide tube. When I went over to him I asked him if that was very safe. He thought for a bit and then replied, “No, but it was impressive.”

We opened a 529 account for the kids awhile back and because I am a geek I maintain a spreadsheet that forecasts the funds growth on a quarterly basis. I set it up and forecasted out and then calculated the year that Leif will go to college. When I realized that I didn’t have to scroll down 3 pages to get to that year it made me a bit ill. My baby is growing up. College is only one Excel page view of quarters away! GAH!

Skadi:

Oh Skadi Skadi Skadi. My sweet little girl… sometimes. The other time she is something else.

We are struggling with Skadi in preschool, out of preschool, through the night… What can I say? It’s darn good that she is as cute as she is! I contemplated last week pulling her out of the Montessori preschool she has been at for three years now. I was *this* close to pulling the trigger. Then AB went in and talked with the teachers a bit and we decided to sit in the holding pattern for a bit. See how things go through the summer.

I talk and talk to that child.

“You had fun on your McDonalds field trip, right?” (She agrees.) “If you don’t behave you will continue to lose field trips and won’t be able to go do these fun things.” (She agrees to be good.)

She is a smart girl. She is pretty mouthy – the other day threats looming that she was bordering upon losing the “Beach Party Day” at school she dared to tell her teachers they could go ahead and take away the privilege from her, she didn’t care, because she planned to tell her mommy to keep her home and we would have our own party and not invite them, so there.

Sigh.

And no, that is so not happening.

She is quick on her feet with her words, but reminds me a lot of my grandmother when she talks, “betend” is “pretend”. “Yesternight” is last night. “Two-head” is still forehead.

This weekend while camping I went over and started poking (or in AB’s words, “fiddling”) with the campfire. My husband is a bit particular about his campfires and with the wet weather this weekend, he had his work cut out for him. Skadi sees me and said, “"Mom, hurry up fiddling with the fire before daddy gets back and sees you!"

The other day Skadi came out of the bathroom and announced, “Mom, I think I am finally old enough to learn how to pee like a boy.”

And then there are days unlike the start of this section where I so agree with her and know she is my daughter, “Leif: "I want to listen to Les Miserables, the Battle Scene in Act 2."
Skadi: "I want to listen to Dancing Queen."

AB:

AB recently had the joy of jury duty. I have always wanted to serve on a jury panel. Yes, seriously. My friends and coworkers look at me like I am nuts when I say this. But for some reason I would like to see first hand our legal system in action. After AB was on a jury panel for a week he can unequivocally say that there is little "action" and that he hopes to never have to rely on our judicial system.

Anyways, I was still jealous. He actually got picked after offering up every reason why he shouldn’t… “I know the prosecutor”, “I work at the same place as the defendant and he looks familiar to me”, “I don’t want to serve, but I know it is my civil duty” (among a group of people who said they did want to serve nonetheless)… but alas he was picked and got to hear abuse stories that still make him cringe. Yeah, maybe I don't want to serve on a jury... I have a friend that served on one about a farmer stealing another one's goats - and a friend's wife who served on a jury about poaching of eagles... nope, AB got a real nasty one.

Work:

My work. Blah.

It’s hard to get very enthused about it when people around me are struggling to find enough work to prevent themselves from being laid off. I am normally in a position to help people out a bit, but this FY, not so. I don’t have much buffer myself. I have even set up an Excel sheet to plan out my upcoming work to make sure I can cover myself. I may be embracing 3-day weekends this summer more than I have in the past.

One of my topics on my list to blog about is the whole “best friend” at work thing. We do these polls that estimate our happiness as a group with our place of employment. Historically my group scores high, which is pretty cool. One of the questions on the poll asks if you have a best friend at work. For years I have been in a position to answer yes to that simply because one of my best friends works here, though I have never had the occasion to work with her. The fact still remains that I have a best friend at work.

In the last few months I have actually had occasion to fully embrace the notion of having a best friend at work in the context of the question. What they want to know is do you have someone you work with that you can go and talk to about what is going on. Sure my good friend down in the other building, who I can’t actually talk to about what I do on a daily basis qualifies to a certain degree. As do the couple of women in my hallway who I can go and talk about daycare or restaurants or hotels, but once again have never really actually worked with them. In the last year I have found my best friends at work… two unassuming guys I work with regularly that I don’t think anyone would really peg them as my “best friends”. But the last 6 months or so they have heard me whine, bitch, cry and complain – and I have heard it from them too. Ok, so they don’t cry. And I only almost cried once.

It’s a big step for me actually. I work on a lot of varied projects with lots of different people and rarely a single core group as so many people do. I get good reviews from people and word of mouth (I believe) is why I am not short on work right now when so many people I know are. I have gotten to know a lot of different people and get called up to do lots of varied projects. I have talked with the two about teaming more regularly and we have a few concepts in the pipeline. I enjoy working with them, appreciate their strong work ethics and we work well as a team. What more could you ask for?

There is a lot of tension here as work is becoming more scarce. Project work has become competitive when jobs are suddenly at stake. While I am funded right now, it is the end of the fiscal year that scares the daylights out of me. Most of my “little” projects wrap up between now and then due to either lack of funding or meeting our completion date. I have a big proposal that was sent out to my least favorite client this morning. One of the guys I wrote the proposal with told me last week that the program manager was already telling him congratulations on it. So I am crossing my fingers that project comes through, though I fully expect another CR and thus actual money won’t arrive until well into FY12 I am sure.

Work… eh, it’s ok. But AB and I have started talking… wonder what else is out there? Where in the world could we wander to? Do we want to live here forever and ever?

Goals:

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Yes typically speaking about this time of year my goals start going by the wayside. Summer is just hard to maintain that “do the work around the house” attitude when we have so much we are doing outside and the days are long.

As of today though the quilt is very nearly ready to haul down to the long arm to be quilted. That will be my big checkmark.

AB cleaned the garage pretty well… I intended to help. And I intended to get down and dirty by digging out every last little remnant and adorning the garage with plastic bins and random storage notions.

Well the garage is clean and that is that. My motivation to go out there and work at it more is nill. Not when I have my MIL coming for a visit, a trailer that needs to be cleaned and mopped for the next Father’s Day trip and laundry stacked up to the ceiling upstairs.

June optional goals… if I have time I plan to:

June goal #1 – Think about the outdoor patio kitchen and get some drawings with ideas down on paper.

June goal #2 – detangle my jewelry and figure out something for actual storage of bling that I use on a regular basis.

Yep, I am one of those moms

2011-05-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

You know the ones - the ones that share everything hilarious their child says and expects that everyone else will find it every bit as humorous.

Since I have admitted this as a problem, I can embrace it.

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Skadi: “Do you know how I got to you?”

Me: “I have an idea...”

Skadi: “God was holding me in his hands like this,” (cups her hands) “and then he said ‘whoops!’ and dropped me into a field of tall grass. You were wandering by and picked me up and said, ‘hmm, I think I will keep this little girl baby’.”

Me: “I remember you being in my tummy.”

Skadi: “I wasn’t finished mom. THEN you cut your tummy open and tucked me in, pulled your tummy back together and taped it up really good until I got too big to be in there, then you RIPPED the tape off and out I came!”

Hmm...

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Leif with a pained tone to his voice:

"Mom, I am having trouble. It feels like granvity isn't working on my boxer shorts!"

One of "those" parents?

2011-05-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

T-ball game. My daughter in her dress, pink leggings and green t-ball shirt is out in the field. Daddy is behind her – about half the parents are out there.

The ball comes straight to Skadi, she has it! Then that other little brat rips it out of her hand! Then my husband pries the ball out of the little brats hand and hands it back to Skadi.

Parents gasp.

Sigh.

We are a proud YMCA sports family. We appreciate their lack of competitiveness among the younger set. We have participated since Leif was Skadi’s age – that would be for going on three years now – and have taken our turns at coaching.

Every team we have participated on before has had a great coach. Caring, fair, kids adore them. When AB has coached we have for the most part had good experiences. As a coach you are volunteering your time for the sake of the kids. It isn’t just a two hour a week obligation (one hour practice and one hour game). Nope, there is organizing the snacks. Calling parents when games are cancelled (this spring there was a lot of that for these coaches). Thinking up drills. Engaging the kids and generally keeping them corralled with help from the parents (you always hope). Organizing the end of the year party. Ordering trophies.

As coaches, we have had a few parents get mad at us. There was the Indoor Soccer team that we cancelled the picture day (team agreed) and decided to do pictures on our own as the picture day was horribly inconvenient. Of course, there was one parent who missed the e-mails and showed up with her son at the appointed place and time. And she was ticked. And gave us an earful. And we took it all the while mumbling, “but we sent 3 e-mails and talked about it at the prior practice and game?!?”

Then we got chewed out this spring because one of the boys last fall was “never contacted”. Umm he was. We e-mailed the e-mail address we were given for every single update, we phoned twice and the number was disconnected. But apparently we didn’t try hard enough… we finally got a not so happy e-mail back this spring.

But we move on.

2/3’s of the t-ball season has been me. AB and Leif had soccer and other obligations pretty consistently. So AB just got to hear my whining about the coaches and kept reminding me “they are volunteers”.

Skadi is on a team with one other very demure little girl and 8 very rough and tumble boys. Leif is not so rough and tumble. He loves sports and gets in there, but he isn’t and never has been aggressive like I see many of these little boys behaving. The first two practices I thought Skadi was going to hold her own. She got into the dog piles and often came out on top. My friend commented that t-ball really meant tackle ball.

Two practices was about her limit. Then she quit getting into the mix.

And here is the cycle:

Skadi standing waiting for the ball.
Skadi runs to the ball.
Skadi doesn’t get the ball.
Skadi gets frustrated.
“Nobody EVER lets me get the ball!”
Skadi doesn’t get the ball.
Skadi gets bored and wanders off and wants to play on the playground equipment.
Skadi doesn’t want to go back out into the field.

The female coach has been a touch sympathetic towards her, “come on Skadi, let’s you and me get the ball from these boys!”

And she buys it for a few hits.

And if she is lucky she gets a ball and it sustains her for the inning.

And if not the cycle repeats.

I know my daughter is difficult. I know she is a whole bunch of drama wrapped up inside one little girl. I know she is one child in a team of 10. But come on.

The male coach ignores her and gets visibly annoyed with her when she starts screwing around. (But the boys can roll all over the ground and battle each other.)

For the later third of the season AB started showing up since soccer finished – and going into the field with Skadi – and running the bases with Skadi – in an effort to keep his thumb on her and to help her out a bit. Still Skadi never gets to play first base (the coveted position since the players all throw the balls to first base) and is consistently one of the last batters.

And I bite my tongue, because the coaches are doing their best and they are volunteering their time. I didn’t step up (this time).

Then there was last night. Skadi is in the field next to one of the bratty boys. I saw him step on her hand to release the ball. Skadi cried. I saw him pry the ball out of her hand three times. AB talked to both coaches, who shrugged their shoulders.

See we don’t tolerate bullies on our teams when we coach. They sit out. And parents are usually – or at least they act that way towards us – very supportive.

So when I saw AB pry the ball out of the brats hands and give it to Skadi. I sighed. I looked around at the parents scowling. And my friend I was standing with proclaimed, “go daddy! Stand up for your girl!”

The brat started bawling. Dad picked him up, glaring at AB.

AB came off the field saying, “I don’t think I made any friends.”

Yeah probably not. But my daughter finally got her hand on the ball and with that experience she can maybe finish out the season.

T-Ball – not Skadi’s sport. Swimming is still looking like the winner.

All I wanted...

2011-04-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

You know I don't ask for much...

Really, I don't.

You would think I was a horribly insistent mom.

Abusive? Am I abusive?

Just one...

Please, pretty please?

Thank goodness this is a digital camera and not film.

Both of you, look this way...

I am serious now.

Look at me! Both of you. Smile. Hold still.

What is it going to take?

Seriously, I am not going to get a single picture of you guys with your eggs?

Guess not.

The T-Ball Princess

2011-04-25T19:30:00.001-07:00

April Goals

2011-04-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Colorado I was fond of saying that “April is one of the snowiest months”. And I loved that it was true.

Normally here, April is a beautiful month as the cherry trees bloom and the sun shines without baking us. But so far? April has been a horrid month weather-wise. I am beyond sick of the wind. I lived in Casper, Wyoming until I was 13, I get rights to complain about the wind. It has been like February here. Dreary, grey and windy. Blah. I can’t even seem to wrap my head around the fact that it is April and not February yet.

I suppose the advantage to it being April with crummy weather is that we have been inside more and my spring cleaning/organization goals have yielded great results.

For the month of April my goals were to organize the hall/entry closet. Done. Check. Finished. I bought fabric bins, one for each of us, and put them in the top of the closet and sorted the laundry basket that used to hold outdoor gear into the four baskets. I bought more hangers, cleaned out the bottom of the closet and hung coats up. It looks fabulous – if a coat closet has fabulous-ness to it.

My second goal was to clean out and organize the laundry room. Given the size of the house, I have a teeny, tiny laundry room. The washer and dryer fit in and I can stand in there holding a basket. I squish over to one side and wedge myself in between the utility sink and the washer to open the dryer and pull stuff out of the washer and into the dryer. Oh yeah, the cat fits too. He likes to help with laundry. Given the lack of floor space I somehow have a ton of storage space in there. The prior owners did a good job of utilizing the wall space for racks of shelves and cupboards above the washer and dryer.

Before tackling the laundry room I looked online for ideas for organization. Martha Stewart was timely in posting a laundry room redo that made me drool. But my biggest problem with all the neat things that they showed in the inspiration gallery was that I don’t use my laundry room, except for, well laundry. Ok, so I feed the cat there.

Anyways, the laundry room has been cleaned out, cleaning and laundry supplies separated. My fabric bins cleaned out (I ditched all the cables I was saving… coax cables, gone, phone cords, gond, power cords, gone, old cell phone chargers, gone. Yes, for some reason I save all that crap. I even do at work, I have a drawer of cords in my office AND in my lab. You just never know when you are going to need a random cord. Ok, well at home at least, I got over it. I don’t need random cords at home. Like ever.

After cleaning out and organizing I discovered a fair amount of storage space. Empty shelves and half empty cupboards. I have batteries, light bulbs, cleaning supplies, laundry supplies, cat food, a bin of extra odds and ends (rubber gloves, trash bags, etc) in there now. I have this need to fill the space… but I am trying to convince myself to simply embrace empty shelves for now.

The last thing on my April goal list is the quilt. I have everything I need to finish it, now I just need a good block of time to get everything laid out. It seems like lately I have had 1-2 hour blocks of time and I can’t justify laying everything out to just have to pick it all up. My coming weekend is blissfully empty and I am hoping to hit that third check mark with finishing off the quilt.

Next month… I really want something fun. A cool goal. A pretty painting goal… or something like that.

But no.

Alas, the garage really needs a thorough clean and organize. I love my husband, but cleaning and organizing is not his thing. He has started on the garage a few times this spring. But what really needs to happen is that we both get out there and clean. And then I go nuts with the organization.

And yes, this WILL take an entire month it is that bad.

Catching Up

2011-04-17T16:47:00.000-07:00

I have a list of blog topics from the past few weeks. I just have had no time to sit down and blog. Let's see how many I can knock out here before the kids need something...

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Starbuck's April Fools

Way back on April Fools Day we went to Starbucks. I am not a fan of April Fool's Day at all. What with being named April, I heard one too many times growing up, "It's April's Day, April is a fool!" Honestly I have never been a fan of the month in general starting way back in kindergarten when I would bring home stacks upon stacks of papers from school that weren't mine. We were required to put the date on papers and the kids always just gave me all the ones that said April. My mom would sort them out and send the majority back to school with me.

Anyways, we don't do April Fool's Day in this house. I suck at jokes and just can never get pranks right.

We got up like any normal day and I needed coffee that morning. At the window the girl offered us some samples of breads. I saw that they had chocolate chips in them and grabbed two, one for each kid. I handed them back and not surprisingly, Skadi took a bite and declared it icky. She declares most everything icky. Not surprising.

Then Leif pipes up:

"Hey, Starbucks played an April Fool's Joke on us. This bread is icky!" he declared.

"What? What is wrong with it?" I knew if Leif was declaring anything with chocolate chips icky, then there was a problem.

"It's banana with chocolate chips," he started.

"You like that?" I asked perplexed.

"But these chocolate chips are MINT!" he cried.

I tasted it. He was right. Nasty. Banana chocolate chips would have flown, but yeah, there was a reason they were giving away hunks of that bread. Ick.

------

Every once in awhile when I am running behind on a Wednesday night getting things picked up for the housecleaner, I admit it, I will pay Leif to do some extra things. Believe me, $1 to pick up Skadi's bedroom, is seriously a bargain for me. He does a decent job, Skadi doesn't end up in tears and time out for not helping, and Leif earns a dollar to put in his bank.

The other day though I went up and found Skadi's piggy bank open on the floor. Raided.

Skadi kind of doesn't care about money, so I was confused. Not like her brother who is ALL about the money.

"Skadi, what is your piggy bank doing on the floor?" I asked.

"Leif wanted some money," she told me.

"What did he want money for?" I asked her getting a bit confused.

"I wanted him to play with me and he didn't want to, so I offered him money," she said.

"LEIF!"

-----

One day Skadi was in the bath singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes". I could tell that was the song only from the tune. She was getting all the words wrong.

"No Skadi," I corrected her, "HEAD, SHOULDERS, KNEES, TOES."

She looks at me like I am an idiot and goes on singing her mumbo jumbo.

Then I found out the next day at school she was singing it in Japanese.

Stupid American move #2? We went out for Japanese food and the kids decided they wanted to sing to the waitress.

They sang the song in Japanese to the waitress.

"Oh neat," she said carefully in her thick accent, "the only thing I know in Japanese is how to say hi since I am Chinese."

-----

And there it is, the whining for mom! Three topics off my list.

Skadi's Castle on a Cloud

2011-04-17T14:55:00.000-07:00

Or somewhere... not quite sure where... last I heard it was at "the North Pole and 12 miles west".

About 6 months ago Skadi first told us about her castle. (Coincidentally this was about the same time she was requesting "Castle on a Cloud" from AB each night as her bedtime song.)

"I want to take you there sometime mommy," she told me.

Some kids have imaginary friends, Skadi has her imaginary place. Her stories of her castle haven't ceased, they continue and they sometime become quite elaborate.

"At my castle the princesses were dancing inside yesterday and the princes waited outside in the yard till they quit dancing so they could go inside and then have chicken nuggets with the princesses," she told us.

The other day we had Chinese food and Skadi declared, "I have chicken with Chinese ketchup at my castle all the time." (Chinese ketchup = sweet and sour sauce)

"At my castle I have pictures on the wall of Spring, Summer and Fall, but not Winter," she declared the other day.

AB built the kids an elevated playhouse hoping that would satisfy Skadi's need for a castle and that it could be in our backyard. Naw, it's just the tree house now, it isn't a castle, or so Skadi tells us.

"We are going to plant flowers at my castle this weekend," she explained when I asked what we should do this weekend.

We used to giggle and marvel about her imagination when the castle first came up. Now the castle is just a multiple times a day conversation pieces. I wish I could see in her brain what her castle looks like!

Two Heads

2011-04-10T18:05:00.000-07:00

Kids say the funniest stuff. Then they hit a certain age and things change. It isn't so much that they say the funny stuff, it's that their reasoning becomes funny.

Skadi since she learned what her forehead was called has called it her "twohead".

WHACK!

She is walking along and whacks her head on the granite edge of the countertop.

"OUCH!" She wails, "MY TWOHEAD, I hit my twohead."

And while I want to just hug her and give her loves I have to chocke back the giggles... twohead...

It's all about what's up at work

2011-04-10T17:38:00.000-07:00

I think I tend to get quiet on my blog when things are bothering me. Specifically, work stuff. I have gone in phases over the past 6.5 years with blogging about work. From venting about all the crazy stuff early on, to overflowing with love for what I do, to not saying anything out of a paranoid fear of "who's reading?" Still I try to give glimpses on occasion of what is going on there, what life is like as a Ph.D. mid-career chemist and as a working mom.

Work can be challenging at times and I am presently trying to negotiate a difficult path. Walking the line between management and science without fully committing to or rejecting either. Each has its own challenges.

Things were going along swimmingly as a scientist until this funding cycle when I appear to be left out standing on the porch with one of the clients. As I have stated before, when one door closes another creeps open and surprisingly one of the other clients gave us the go ahead to write a lifecycle plan, which in this funding climate was a surprise.

On the last project, things have been flying around doing wonderfully, except interactions with one person. I have been all over the map with my feelings about this. From questioning every single move I make out of fear of stepping on toes, to being ticked off, to trying to be nice, to being ticked off. Back and forth, forth and back.

It has expended so much of my energy these last few months and has been incredibly frustrating. What should be a fabulous project is causing me heartache.

I have known this person since I was a post-doc. We have worked together on a few other projects. And now our friendship has been reduced to shreds. There will be no saving this friendship when all is said and done I fear.

And it breaks my heart.

But at the same time it ticks me off to be stepped on, walked all over and disrespected. I know for a fact, in my heart, that this person would not treat a male coworker in this manner. But this is not what I have documentation for. No gender card here.

I worried that I was blowing things out of proportion and just PMS'y... it has happened before... but I brought a few close confidents into the fold who have hit the ceiling.

I have lost sleep, I have wallowed, I have been self absorbed and not terribly attentive to what else is going on, thanks to all this. And wet drops inexplicable came out of my eyes at work... not sure what happened there or how my rhino work skin was penetrated, but it happened. Thankfully I have those couple of people to pick me up and stand behind me. Thank you guys.

But there it is in obscure, vague terms. The certain end of a friendship, the potential end of a work relationship in so much as I will never ever ever work another project with this person again. Ever. I am sure the feeling is mutual there.

And I don't take that lightly.

Being a woman in science

2011-04-05T20:18:00.000-07:00

I love reading stories about women in science and the unique hurdles they had to overcome to get to where they are today. The American Chemical Society posted a link to these articles from a Fairbanks, Alaska newspaper for Women in Science month.

I am now – amazingly – in that “mid-career” category. Not a newbie by any amount. I have been around the block once or twice. I am still young enough that I went into science in college thinking equality was in. Men had grown up or moved on. I was a professional product of the 90’s. YES, the 90’s. But still my stories aren’t too far off from the women who shared in these articles who have more experience than me.

Do I think things are changing? YES. I hosted a student last year who was a chemical engineer from Yale and one of my most memorable conversations with her was after one of our big team meetings for the Navy project. We left and I can’t remember how she put it, but she was surprised. “They are all guys,” she exclaimed. And went on to tell me that all her classes were at least 50-50.

My hallway at work is estrogen lane. There are 13 offices in my hallway and all but two are occupied by women.

My team lead? A woman. My manager? A woman. I love it!

Because in my daily activities? The projects I work on daily and the people I work with?

All men.

And that is how it has been since I started here. No joke. Now I am a physical scientist with a little more engineering and physics to my chemistry life, but that shouldn’t be an excuse. Where are the women?

I liked the questions posed to these women scientists in Alaska and figured I would take it upon myself to answer them. If you are a woman in science, answer them in the comments, e-mail your answers to me and I will post them here in my blog or post the answers on your blog and provide me the link, okay?

“Were there more hurdles for you to clear in science because you were a woman?” (Ok, poorly written question, “are” they ARE women, they aren’t men now…)

I don’t believe there were more hurdles to clear education-wise because I am a woman. I believe that I had every opportunity presented to me as an undergrad and grad student in the 90’s based on the path I chose. Now I did reject one school after I had a very disheartening visit. I visited on the same day as another male potential graduate student at Colorado State and professors took him out to lunch – at the same place that the female graduate student assigned to take me out, took me. Later when I asked the department head if I would have an opportunity to teach upper division chemistry, he told me that female TA’s were not well received by the student body. I ran the other way. Once I was settled in a great program I experienced little gender disconnect. In my first year, I was teaching an upper division lab class. I should note that I went to a school with a very young faculty and with (gasp) three female faculty members.

I believe that I had a few more hurdles in the workplace than I had in education as a women. When I signed on as a post-doc, my mentor made sure to get me a p-card immediately, so I could place the teams' orders and I worked editing their reports and pulling their presentations together. I was a glorified admin. When I was in the lab and the guys walked in they would say, “hi honey, I am home” and the like. The team I was hired into was very unfriendly to women and when I started asking around the other women nodded and one even said that the whole group was shocked when this team brought a woman post-doc on. In order to advance I had to pick myself up, meet others, prove myself to others and make a name for myself. The guys who came in the same time as me were being paraded around like princes while I was struggling to get someone to give me the time of day.

“Has public perception changed about women scientists?”

Yes, I had the student last summer who as a senior had never encountered anything less than 50% female student body. I never had anything close to 50% women in my classes at a very liberal college. But this is college, in the workplace I think there is a ways to go.

Today, I am working in project management and I recently had an incident with a coworker that was not happy with me. Some of the things he said, and the analogies he made to our managers lead me to sit and wonder if he would have said these things of a man sitting across the table from him. I am quite positive not. I think (large stereotype here) "older" men are not afraid to challenge a woman in the workplace more on her knowledge or leadership abilities. There seems to be a perception that you have to be a ball breaker to move up, act like a man, don’t bring your femininity, but these are the same things that are frowned upon when we look up to women who have made it. I work quite well with men in the same general age group as myself. My Gen-X counterparts get it. They are the ones pulling double duty with their wives in child rearing and who have heard their wives come home with tales like mine. I tend to think that they would never treat a woman in a way they wouldn’t want their wives treated. Older generations (complete generalization here) their wives didn’t work in technical fields and many never worked at all. They don't have that same thought process or female professors or mentors to draw upon that the Gen X'ers did.

“Have there been hurdles you have faced that a man would not have faced?”

Getting exposure. When I first started as a post-doc so often it was assumed I was an admin assistant. I will claim that it is all about who you know. There are men here that are afraid to know a woman. Many deals are brokered over lunch, but many men are afraid to go have lunch with a female colleague – at least outside of a group. It presents a Catch-22. I work with a woman who told me about asking a manager to have dinner with her one night. She was married, he was married. She had some technical questions she wanted to pose and suggested they grab a bite to eat. He was so taken aback that he actually mentioned to her “sexual harassment”. Would this happen with two guys? No, they would go grab a beer at the local sports bar.

Another aspect, I went through a spell there working for a manager whose wife had never worked out of the home. The realities I faced with being a working mom with a newborn were foreign to him and he pretty much chalked me up as a whiner and told me there was no reason I couldn’t pump in the bathroom. When I pointed out there were no outlets he told me to get a battery pack. While I was out on my first maternity leave I had my first proposal funded. He handed it off to a man in my group citing he, “didn’t know what I wanted to do when I came back from leave”. He also never asked.

“What would you tell a girl who is contemplating a career in science?”

To find a good mentor at every stage. And by mentor I don’t mean manager – they have their own interests at heart in what they want you to do. Find someone you can talk freely to about what you want to do with your career. I wish I would have had more mentors in my career. Bachelors and then Masters or PhD so often is the given in science, but a mentor will be able to make suggestions based off experience, what do you really need to get where you want? What is the reality of academic positions? What if you love science, but wonder if there are other opportunities than standing in the lab? I have learned in the last few years that I have a propensity for management and business development. There are times when, despite the fact that this is what I want to be doing, I wonder if I am wasting my Ph.D. as I interact with managers sporting MBAs? The closest thing I have to a mentor right now (I am getting a new one in May) has told me no way, that in his product line he values highly technical managers. But just maybe, had I had someone early on in deciding what my career was going to be like and what life I wanted, maybe someone would have pointed me another way?

April Goals Update

2011-04-03T20:02:00.001-07:00

When I declared way back when what my goals were for the month of April, I had blinders on. I admit it. They are really, really big blinders and when I held my head exactly straight, they worked. They worked so that I could totally ignore my daughter's bedroom.

She has serious, serious bedroom issues. Mostly in that she has too much stuff. Then she has less organizational storage and third she is a little tornado. By the time pick up night comes on Wednesday, all her stuff tends to get stuffed in big plastic bins and shoved off to the side.

Then AB vigorously and ruthlessly whipped my blinders off when I happily announced I was going to orgnize the coat closet and laundry room.

"What really needs to be done is Skadi's room," he mumbled.

"But I was going to wait until an Ikea trip so that I could organize at the same time!" I argued truthfully. I had actually been browsing the Ikea website to get ahead of the game for the yet to be planned trip to an Ikea.

He then pointed out that a ton of stuff in her room could be thrown away, pulled out and donated or whatever. She doesn't need it, he said while referring mostly to the stacks upon stacks of books.

"But she likes the board books," I argued.

"She likes EVERY book. If the board books aren't there she will happily choose some of the others here that actually tell a story," he argued.

I sighed. Apparent that an Ikea trip was not in my immediate future and that my blinders were now broken. AB knows me well, once he breaks my blinders, I can no longer tell myself there is no problem.

So this weekend AFTER I took care of the coat closet, I started in one corner of Skadi's bedroom and worked through her room systematically through it and even tackled portions of her closet. We moved the big soft rocker out of her room, that we use to rock her to sleep in (before Skadi, it was Leif's, sigh... ). Well then it just served as the time out chair. Then it housed a mountain of stuffed animals. Not that the time outs went by the wayside of course...

We did it. I pulled out a huge stack of board books. I hauled off a full garbage bag full of c.r.a.p. We now have a plastic bucket overflowing with stuffed animals, a new small toybox from Target that will double as a bench and a treasure chest of dress up clothes.

Phew! Two for one weekend. My house is well on its way to an organized bliss!

Cool iPhone uses

2011-03-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

For a long time there Skadi would only go to sleep if I put her to bed. AB would walk into her room and much to the horror of us all, she would start screaming. It broke AB’s heart, it wasn’t fair to Leif who then never got me for bedtime, and it was hard on me too being the only one who could put her to bed.

This shifted when a few years back I had to start traveling again for work. Suddenly her choices were daddy or nobody. She picked daddy and he wormed his way into the preferred bedtime person by singing her songs at bedtime. Somehow my husband’s soft soothing voice singing “The Rainbow Connection” or “Castle on a Cloud” became her Ambien. And more recently he has become her preferred “putter to bedder”.

This doesn’t bother me. I am making up for lost time with Leif and since Skadi goes to bed before Leif, AB gets to bed earlier. Works out for everyone.

Out of fear of simply swapping roles and getting into a situation where I *can’t* put her to bed, we do switch this up. Skadi is fine with this, but this was the usual result.

Finished reading books.

Skadi: “Mommy, I need a song.”

Me: “Ok, ‘twinkle twinkle…”

Skadi: “No mommy, I need a song from daddy.”

My dad used to always ask my sister and I, “what did you do with the money? The money I gave you for singing lessons?”

Yes, my singing isn’t a pretty thing.

Usually I get up and go drag AB out of Leif’s room to sing her a song and thus finalize the deal.

I figured out something new though the other night that may just give AB a run for his money in the singing department.

YouTube on my iPhone.

Not only does she get to hear “The Rainbow Connection” but she gets to see Kermit sitting on a log singing it!

NM scores one!

I fear though that we are on a slippery slope.

Skadi: “Mommy, play the crocodile song!”

Skadi: “Now mommy, play the pink dancing girls song!”

Skadi: “Wouldn’t it be funny if the crocodile came and ate the girls like he did the frogs?”

Me: “You should be sleeping.” (Stifling laughter.)

Skadi: “I am going to have daddy sing ‘Mahna Mahna’ to me tomorrow night.”

And she drifts off the sleep.

(Another cool use for my iPhone – videocamera! I plan to have my phone there to record this.)

March Goals Wrap-Up

2011-03-27T16:44:00.000-07:00

My goals for the month of March included cleaning out our closet and with that, organizing the closet and donating a bunch of stuff. I always have better intentions than actual follow through when it comes to clothes. I wish I could stick to that rule that "if I haven't worn it in 6 months to get rid of it".

I don't know what happens but I start flipping through hangers and one or two things actually fall into the pile. This time around I pulled out jeans I will never wear again for a variety of reasons - mostly style issues - and dumped them in the stack. Then I sacraficed one or two shirts and called it good. I did hit the closet hard with organization though. My closet rocks now.

The quilt was number two. And while I never actually did any sewing, thanks to a very, very busy month of March and my sewing machine being held hostage by a little red-haired girl requesting pretty dresse, I did make some decisions about the path forward on my quilt. I need to put the border on it and then haul it down to the Quiltworks store with the backing material I bought on sale at JoAnn's and the batting I bought also on sale. Then I will part, momentarily with the quilt, permanently with $200 and come back to retrieve a beautifully quilted quilt for our bed.

We have done surprisingly well at clearing out our freezer as I discovered today when I went to the freezer to scrounge for a protein for dinner. I moved a few things, but only a few, to reach to the bottom of the freezer to retrieve a flank steak. Much of what is left is pot pies and spaghetti sauce and a few random chili containers. Note to self, when freezing chili, be specific. I need to indicate if I or AB made it (we have very different chili styles) and particularly if AB made it I need to know the cuts of meat, whether there are beans and the color (because once frozen, green and red are remarkably similar in appearance).

Next weekend starts the month of April. My quilt tops the goals for April. Though also on the list is my laundry room and my coat closet. Low hanging fruit really - in hopes that it will push me to devote the time to the quilt.

Our laundry room appears to have been an afterthought in the house. Our washer and dryer barely fit. And as the theme for the house extends to the laundry room, there are shelves and cabinets all over. Untapped storage space. I need to clean out and label the fabric storage boxes I do have on the shelves and just organize the rest of the area.

Then my first floor coat closet is a few hours job at most. I need hangers. Must buy hangers. And I need four storage boxes to split up the gazillions of gloves and hats and ski goggles and snow boots and scarves and earbands out of the one big laundry basket they are currently occupying.

I have the spring cleaning bug, this shouldn't be an issue to do these two things here very soon.

March 23, 2011

2011-03-26T15:58:00.001-07:00

Four Year Old Celebration

2011-03-26T15:42:00.001-07:00

Skadi opted to have her 4th birthday party at "Coach Brett's". The only hairy thing here is that "Coach Brett" had to be there. Otherwise she wanted a swimming party.

So I picked up the phone and called "Coach Brett's".

Me: "Yes, I want to schedule my daughter's birthday party, but here is the catch, Coach Brett has to be there... yes, I understand his schedule is busy... yes, we will come whenever he is available... yes, just tell him that it is for Skadi and that we are EXTREMELY flexible... yes, call me back after you talk to him..."

Success. Coach Brett would be there as long as I could plan the party for this time on this date.

I agreed and sent in our deposit.

4 Year Well Child

2011-03-26T14:54:00.000-07:00

I can't believe my baby is four! What has happened to the time?

So I will try and type between my sobs here...

Skadi had a good 4 year well child exam. She enjoyed telling long stories to her doctor and answering all her questions.

Dr: "Skadi do you know what opposites are?"

Skadi: "No."

Dr: "Ok, if I say 'tall' then the opposite of that is 'short', right?"

Skadi: "Yes, or really tall."

Dr: "Ok, let's see, what is the opposite of hot?"

Skadi: "Really hot."

Dr: "Well no, would it be cold?"

Skadi: "It could be but if it isn't hot than it might just be warm, you just never know about these things."

Dr: "She has a very advanced vocabulary.

The four shots were murder. The doctor actually gave us the option of putting them off until she was five, but since we had already talked about it and had the gummy worms ready in the car, I pulled the trigger.

Skadi cried, "I don't want shots! NO mommy!"

Me: "But they are good for you honey and keep you from getting very sick. And you didn't even cry when you got your flu shot, you will do great!"

Skadi: "I will only do shots if they give me band-aids."

Me: "If the nurse comes in without band-aids I will send her out to go get some."

Of course the nurse came in with band-aids.

Skadi didn't hold her end of the bargain up. She struggled.

And not only does she have a large vocabulary and reasoning skills for her age, but the nurse said she is freaky strong.

She screamed bloody murder.

Me: "Skadi, the band-aids are on."

Skadi: (suddenly stops screaming bloody murder) "I want to see them."

And that was that.

The nurse gave her four stickers and a lollipop and life was excellent again.

The details:

Height - 40 squirmy inches - 55th percentile
Weight - 36 lbs - 50th percentile.

"Let me give you a hint"

2011-03-18T21:38:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite stories about one of my cousins was the Christmas they told her what they bought her dad for Christmas.

She gave him a hint:

"It goes tick tock tick tock."

Every year after they started telling her wacky stuff, like that her sister was getting a dishwasher for Christmas because she spilled the beans.

Skadi is showing signs of being the same way.

Leif is a vault. He loves keeping secrets.

I can do it, but it is very difficult. I am an open book really. I tell my husband everything. I tell my coworkers things I later wish I hadn't. Not only can I not keep a secret, but I tend to tell more than is really necessary.

Anyways, enough about me.

The other day when I picked Skadi up at school they were playing "hide the play tiger" and "hot and cold".

Skadi hid the tiger.

About 5 seconds went by and she lead the 6 or so kids over and said, "let me give you a hint," she paused. Then she pointed at the tiger and said, "IT'S RIGHT THERE!"

And she jumped up and down and squealed.

Aunt Tara came over this evening, picked her up and said, "who has a birthday in a few days?"

Skadi replies, "Ok, I will give you a hint, it's ME!"

Yep, Skadi is showing every single sign of following in my direction with not being able to keep a secret very well.

Apparently it is genetic.

How to catch a leprechaun!

2011-03-15T21:43:00.000-07:00

Ranking right up there with Santa, is...

Larry the Leprechaun!

Leif's teachers have this tradition that has captivated my son something fierce for the last few years. The kids all get to build a trap to catch a leprechaun. And not just any leprechaun. LARRY the leprechaun. Leif has been talking for months about his plans for his trap.

And now the day is just around the corner. Leif's plans to catch Larry are nearly all we hear about.

"You should see my trap," Leif carries on, "and Parker and I are connecting are traps together to make one massive trap and we are putting it on Mrs. S's desk because last year the leprechaun tipped over her chair!! And he left his shoe behind on the window ledge!"

Seriously the fact that her chair was tipped over was HUGE.

See Larry breaks into the classroom during one of the outside times and wreaks havoc tipping over chairs and disturbing things. Every year Larry leaves some small memento behind that the kids find in the room. Evidence that Larry WAS there!

And just maybe, one of the traps will catch him! Though none actually have caught him in the three years that Leif has been in the room.

"And you get to keep all his gold!" Leif tells us, "but I heard one time that if two people catch it they get to share the gold." Apparently he and Parker have decided they will deal with having half the gold by teaming up and putting their traps conjoined in the most obvious place to catch a leprechaun - his teacher's desk. "Because doesn't every leprechaun want to dance on the teacher's desk?"

This is the first year I am fearing massive disappointment because Leif knows he will not be there in the class next year. It's his last chance to catch Larry. And he is SO determined. SO SO SO determined.

"Mom, what if they don't try to catch Larry at [public school]?" he asked me today.

"Well they probably don't, you might need to ask C how they celebrate St. Patrick's Day," I told him.

I told him we could set a trap at home, but so far no leprechauns have made an appearance at our house, no havoc has been wreaked. (I might have to rectify this...)

----

Yay me! This is post # 1400!

Nothing sweeter...

2011-03-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

Me: "Ok, I will go get you a piece of cheese if you say your prayers."

(Skadi insists on eating a piece of cheese before bed every night. I don't know why.)

Skadi: "Dear God. Are you there God? I said, are you there? Oh ok. Please help me to sleep and be good and don't let the shiny sharks get me. Amen."

If only my whole house could look this nice...

2011-03-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

I just have to say that I still – a few weeks after finishing it off – walk into my half bath just to look and obtain a sense of calm. I still love it! And it is kicking some serious motivation into me to make the rest of my house pretty.

Insert my husband’s eye roll.

This weekend I cleaned my closet out. I split it up – my side on Saturday and AB’s side on Sunday. As always happens with this type of organization project, I envision that it is going to take days, maybe even weeks! I look at the daunting mess and worry about getting lost in there and no one finding me.

I was wrong. It took me an hour on each day and this includes hanging hooks, piling up trash, piling up Goodwill stacks and actually bringing stuff into the closet to store. AB gets up before the crack of dawn and he tends to go back and forth from the dresser to the bathroom and closet. I emptied about 1/3 of his dresser out into his shelves. I KNOW my husband well and so I KNOW that these shelves will become messy quickly. He made mention of possibly putting cupboard fronts on the faces of the shelves, but I don’t think that will work easily and I think his time will be better spent just folding and not stuffing stuff on the shelves. Or *my* time will be better spent finding a few low tray like baskets to hold the small loose things. We will see.

In the meantime I have belts, bags and scarves all separated and on their own hooks.

I had to walk in the closet a few times today just to look around and admire.

Our house was a parade home once upon a time. So little details were paid attention to. We have loads of shelves in our closet. I love that. My bank of shelves doesn’t hold clothes. It holds shoes. And I took a little ribbing about the sheer number of shoes on my shelves. Oh well. I can deal.

The last thing I need though is a step ladder to just put in and keep in the closet. A very tall person built our house. Many of these fabulous shelves are up high and I need to be able to utilize them without going to get a ladder. If I can do that then my closet becomes so much more effective at its job.

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The other part of my goals that I am working this month is tackling my quilt.

I packed it up and went to the local Quiltworks store that I heard had a long arm machine and could likely quilt my quilt in a very short time. And yes, they can do it, and yes, it will look fancy and fabulous when finished. For only $240.

Sigh.

AB heaved a big sigh and said, “what?”

Then I ignored him and pulled out the three fabrics I found – two for a double border and one for a dress for Skadi.

Quilt – zero progress.

Dress? And matching dolly dress? Done! Skadi had found a pattern for a dress in my stacks of my mom’s sewing stuff. I am sure she bought it intending to make the dress for Skadi at some point (or for Celeste before this). (See I DO get this affliction from someone.) So when I saw the cute fishy fabric I knew I had to have it.

Skadi was a bit disappointed that little mice didn’t come out to help us sew and that flinging the fabric into the air didn’t magically create a gown. But she was very interested in watching me sew and “helping”.

Once the dress was nearly done I needed to sew the shoulder straps on. Skadi squealed, “wait!” And she ran up to her room and found her little baggie of cute buttons from my mom and pulled out two smiley faced orange buttons and handed them to me. Instead of sewing the straps on and putting a zipper in the back, I sewed up the back and put buttons on.

I know my mom was looking down smiling.

Anyways… back to my issue. I have a decision to make. Try and tackle quilting a king sized quilt myself. Pay the local shop's price. Finding a less expensive place online. Or deciding that it is just worth it to try and quilt it myself. Or – and as a quilter, I can’t believe I am thinking this – tie it?

Arranged marriages?

2011-03-08T19:56:00.000-08:00

When I was about Leif’s age I was playing in my backyard with two of the neighbor girls, Dani and Jennifer, and the neighbor boy, Brandon. Brandon declared a rule:

“Whoever says me first, gets to marry me.”

I have never been terribly quick with my tongue and suffice to say I came in last. I stormed in crying and went to my dad explaining the situation. His reply was, “well why would you want to marry Brandon, he’s just a goofy kid from down the street?”

Brandon moved away or didn’t come around much after that, not sure which. I don’t remember what happened to him he just quit coming around shortly after that.

And I survived.

Leif seems to have a bit of a crush.

He is bound and determined that he is going to marry Niranjana, our good friends’ daughter. Trouble is that Niranjana has other plans.

“I am going to marry Ken,” she announces routinely.

At 6 years old I never thought I would see my son aiming to “break up” other kids!

“What does it mean to ‘break them up’?” I asked. He couldn’t possibly understand dating and boyfriend and girlfriend, could he?

“It means I don’t want them to get married, I want to break them up so they don’t get married,” he replied.

I have listed off all the reasons in the world why we just don’t need to worry about this right now.

… “but Niranjana’s mom says she can’t get married until she goes to college and I think that is a good idea too”…

… “there are so many other people out there, you will meet other people, other girls you might want to marry”…

… “it is a long time till you need to worry about who you will marry”…

(Leif replied the other day that this past year has gone by faster than the others he remembers, so he is going to need to worry about it sooner than we all thought… he has no idea how right he is.)

Nothing helps.

I went and picked Leif up the other day and the kids were all in the same room. Niranjana and Ken were coloring and Niranjana was leading the conversation.

“See Ken is from China and I am from India and so that makes us a perfect match!” (Chuckled to myself at this line of reasoning.)

Leif asked me the other day if he colored his hair black if I thought Niranjana might want to marry him.

Maybe I was getting a bit tired of this obsession. I broke loose and started on the long conversation about why would you want to marry a person who doesn’t want to marry you? Everyone deserves to marry someone who thinks that they are their perfect match regardless of hair color or anything else. Then I added – because I know that what a mom thinks bears heavily on her son’s mind (ha ha ha) – “Leif, I love your strawberry blonde hair and if you ever color it black it would make me so sad.”

He gave up the obsession for a day.

Finally yesterday a line of reasoning that might make sense to Leif entered. And it came from Niranjana.

“Niranjana says that we CAN’T marry each other because we are cousins!” he announced.

I could try and clarify… then I thought wiser of this and decided I would just take this for now.

Things I will never understand...

2011-03-07T21:02:00.001-08:00

Why my son will eat his boogers, but refuses to taste an olive, or a bean, or allow his food to touch, or drink a carbonated beverage.

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Why my daughter shrieks in pain when anyone looks at her and falls on the floor faint with utter pain when someone brushes by her or the cat looks at her. But she will clip a clothespin on her own earlobe and then say simply, "oh mommy, that hurt!" (Giggle, giggle, giggle!)

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How everything in the world that Skadi ever does is an "ansident", but cannot accept that anything done to her might also be. "Mommy, I ansidentally hit my brother on the head with my doll while he was watching TV!"

My new project

2011-03-06T15:20:00.000-08:00

Because I have NOTHING better to occupy my time. (Said VERY sarcastically.)

I don't have many expectations of extensive posting. Just something I want to work at. I would like to say that everytime I sit down to post here that I would post there as well.

Check it out:

Four Generations in the Kitchen

The introduction post is here - explaining why I am doing this crazy posting of recipes that I may or may not ever make!

Boys = Fighting and Farting

2011-03-06T13:30:00.000-08:00

When AB and I talked (well before we had kids) about how we would raise a boy we agreed (or at least I insisted) that my sons wouldn't have guns or shooting implements or have anything to do with fighting.

Then reality hit. For some reason "fighting" seems to be built into boys' psyche. We channeled Leif towards sword play and lightsabers, but even I have been loosening up on the toys that shoot things.

Like nearly all parents I know out there, we read to the kids regularly. When I am not sure whichever child I am reading to is paying attention, or to test their wakefulness at bedtime storytime I start changing the story. Inserting other names into the stories.

"Young Yolanda Skadi is yelling on a yellow yak."

"Now there are two Leif's on your head!"

Skadi is less receptive to this and usually tells me to "read it right mommy or don't read it at all".

Leif laughs.

Transformers are NOT my favorite toys in the world. Far from it. And when Leif starts asking for Transformer stories I try to keep my eyes from floating to the top of my head.

I have a new solution... there isn't much that ranks up there with stories about fighting... but farting gets dang close.

About a month or so ago, I started substituting some words here and adding in an occasional sentence about how stinky Earth is becoming due to all this flatulance.

And now I have to admit, those Transformer stories can be danged funny!

The only downside is that giggling little boys are usually not as prone to falling asleep during storytime.

Just my way of combating violence with "hilarious" bodily functions.

A brand new half bath

2011-03-06T13:18:00.000-08:00

The last touch to the bathroom was finished this past week - crown moulding! I loved the way the hotel room we stayed at in Palm Springs used dark crown moulding at the intersection of the walls and the ceiling. So I stole the idea for my bathroom makeover.

The crown moulding at Home Depot - you know the stuff labelled crown moulding was wide. Too wide, in my opinion for my little half bath. So I found some trim I liked instead and painted it.

Then I bought some new accessories - towel and soap pump shown here and finished the room off. I love the mirror in this room - it came with the house.

This is an awful crooked picture below, but it shows the toilet paper/flower pot thingy that I bought (that AB laughs at). You can also see the green color that has to go at some point.

Yay! I am really happy with how the half bath came out. February goal was a success!

I can't say much for March yet... I bought a few hooks for the closet to hang my belts and shawls/scarves. We will claim 10% complete on the status of the closet. By the end of the day if I am lucky I might be able to see the floor. I can't claim any status on the quilt - not even a trip to the fabric store to buy the supplies. Though we are slowly working our way through the freezer... last night we had both sturgeon and salmon from the freezer - and it was delicious.

Tonight we are having paella... of which nothing came from the freezer. Oh well.

Words that strike fear into my heart...

2011-02-27T19:37:00.001-08:00

Me: "What is Skadi doing?"

AB: "She's downstairs watching the Academy awards."

My gamer

2011-02-26T15:47:00.000-08:00

Leif is very much a little gamer. He comes by it honestly really. Both AB and I enjoy board games and computer games. I vaguely remember a long distant past where I would sit for hours in front of the computer playing Diablo and Civilization. It is a vague memory that doesn't include little voices around me. As a kid I was much more intrigued by an afternoon in front of the Colecovision or my Commodore Vic 20 than going outside.

Leif inherited this unfortunate quality. I should probably apologize now to all his future girlfriends because he inherited this from both sides.

Today one of Leif's female friends - who isn't a gamer - came over for a play date. It didn't start out well when she went to play with Skadi's dollhouse and Leif had a despondent and somewhat desperate look on his face. We let this rest a little to see how long the doll thing would last.

It went on a little long for Leif (Skadi was thrilled) and so we released him to his DS for a bit.

After a little while I picked up the Wii Tangled game that she brought with. Leif siezed the opportunity to get the Wii remote in his hand by agreeing readily to being Flynn Rider.

"I have a sword!" he exclaimed.

Pretty soon they were playing away. But I loved the conversations during.

Leif: "I am going to get that guy!"

C: "No, you are supposed to ask him if he has the radish drink instead."

Leif: "Oh."

Few minutes pass...

Leif: "I am going to slice that bad guy in half!"

C: "That's not a bad guy, you have to see if he has a jewel."

Leif: "Oh."

Few minutes pass...

Leif: "Hi-YA! Let me go tackle that one and fight him C!"

C: "C, no Leif we just have to see if he has the answer."

Leif: "Oh."

I was impressed that despite there being no bashing or whacking or sword slicing that he hung in there. I was worried we would see tears, but no. And he didn't even make any requests for teaching C how to play "Lightsaber Duel".

I was impressed that he was just happy enough to be able to play Wii that he willingly and enthusiastically (mostly) played a "girls" game (dubbed so a little bit later because there "isn't enough attacking").

It's good my kids make me laugh...

2011-02-24T20:30:00.000-08:00

Me putting Skadi to bed:

Skadi: "Mom, I need a song."

Me: "Never smile at a croco-"

Skadi: "No mom, I need a song-"

Me: "Twinkle twinkle little-"

Skadi: "No MOM! I need a song from daddy, go get him please."

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Me: "Skadi, why does the wind blow?"

Skadi: "Because it is rude that way."

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Me: "Where does snow come from?"

Skadi: "From the clouds."

Leif: "No Skadi it comes from little drops of water in the sky that dry out and turn to snow."

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Skadi: "Mommy, can we give me to Niranjana since she doesn't have a sister?"

Me: "Well if you were Niranjana's sister that means you wouldn't be my little girl anymore, you would be Auntie Melissa's little girl."

Skadi: "That's ok, I like Auntie Melissa."

Me: (Sob.)

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Me: "Skadi why is the sky blue?"

Skadi: "Because it is supposed to be."

Me: "Leif, why is the grass green?"

Leif: "Because that means it is healthy."

Me: "Well why is it brown now?"

Leif: "Because it hasn't rained in a long time."

Me: "Does that mean it isn't healthy."

Leif: (Sighing) "Mom, it means it is dormant."

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Leif: "Mom, I want to read 'The Lion, The Witch and the Warthog'."

Me: "I think you mean 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe'."

Leif: "No, I mean warthog, why would it be wardrobe?"

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Leif: "I have to have my snow gear today!"

Me: "Well it didn't really snow much, there's barely any out there."

Leif: "Well Ms. M said that if we brought our snow gear we could have a snowball fight!"

Me: "But there isn't enough snow for a snowball fight?"

Leif: "Well then why would she say we could have a snowball fight?"

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Me: "Skadi where were you before you were in my tummy?"

Skadi: "North America."

Me: "What were you doing?"

Skadi: "Just playing dolls and stuff."

Leif: "Mom, babies come from EITHER places or tummies."

Me: "No, all babies come from tummies."

Leif: "No mom, you are wrong, some come from places."

Me: "What do you mean?"

Leif: "Well we came from your tummy, but Niranjana came from India and that is a place."

Me: (Still haven't continued this conversation.)

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Me: "Skadi how are clouds made?"

Skadi: "By God."

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Me: "Skadi how do bushes grow?"

Skadi: "Up."

Leif: "From the ground Skadi, say from the ground, they grow from the ground, it is a trick question."

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Me: "Skadi why is the grass green?"

Skadi: "Because it is supposed to be."

Me: "Leif, why do the trees have leaves?"

Leif: "Because the tree sucks up water and water makes the leaves and the leaves catch more water and make more leaves and more leaves."

Me: "Sounds like you have a pretty firm grasp of science."

Leif: "Yeah, but I want to be a computer engineer spy who works for the CIA mom, I don't want to work with you anymore."

Signs my daughter has been in trouble at preschool...

2011-02-23T19:31:00.000-08:00

This morning.

Me: Skadi get your shoes on.

Me: Skadi get your shoes on.

Me: Skadi, I said get your shoes on, we have to get to school.

Skadi: Well Ms. A told me that I lost the privilege of wearing shoes to school.

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At dinner.

AB: Skadi eat your dinner.

AB: Skadi eat your dinner.

AB: Skadi, I said you need to eat your dinner.

Skadi: Well Ms. A told me that I lost the privilege of eating dinner.

Goals Update

2011-02-23T19:30:00.000-08:00

I spent this past weekend working on my February goal. I am actually really, really pleased with myself. It is not 100% complete. But I have a very good chance of it being completed on time and within budget by the end of the month.

I, with the help of a good friend, painted my little half bathroom on Saturday and finished it up on Sunday. It took about an hour to tape it all and get it prepped. She came over and manned the roller while I crawled around the floor painting around the toilet and sink and chatted away. Normally AB does a lot of the painting with me, but it was nice to have a friend to help.

My little tiny bathroom went from blah white to elegant and spicy! (If I may say so myself.) I am really, really happy with the bathroom. I had to run to Michael’s on a secret errand this weekend and ended up buying a few decorative elements for the bathroom. I haven’t been happy with this little cabinet I have in the bathroom that sits on the floor that I use to hold the TP. So I got a tallish metal cylindrical vase thing and stacked the TP in there. Ok, so AB thought this was about the most ridiculous thing ever… But I like it. It looks stylish. I think.

AB loves the bathroom and commented that it looks like it belongs in some other house… not our house! It really did change the feel of the bathroom.

The one thing I have left is to paint the crown moulding and have AB install it. He is pleased about this revelation of mine that I suddenly “need” crown moulding in the bathroom because it lends credence to his long standing claim that he “needs” an air compressor and nail gun.

When we were in Palm Springs last week I loved the look of the black crown moudling in the hotel room. I opted for “espresso” to match other elements in the bathroom and the furniture we have in the front lower level of the house.

Once the crown moudling is in and I have bought a few hand towels that match the bathroom better than the ones I presently have… and a new valence… and a soap dispenser… then I will be done!

Which brings us to the topic of March.

March is going to be multi-faceted.

I want to finish the quilt I started (yes, the one I swore would only take me 3 weeks to do the top, and then the dog killed the sewing machine…). I want to finish that for spring so that I can pull my duvet off the bed and have smooth lines of a pretty quilt. My biggest issue is trying to figure out how to “quilt” a king sized quilt. It may be that hand quilting – which I HAVE done before (a long time ago) – may be my best option. Yikes. Not sure a month is long enough for that.

My closet has recently fallen to absolute disaster levels. Not only does it need cleaned out, but I need some more hooks for accessories and I need a good purge of the clothes I no longer wear.

The last one that AB has challenged us to? Eat our freezer to the bottom. This isn’t entirely possible. Because I am NOT eating the four or five chicken pot pies I have saved in there. And I think we probably have 15 containers of spaghetti sauce. I have seriously like 3 weeks of food if we only ate chicken pot pies and spaghetti sauce. I have a tortierre from a friend that I am saving for a special occasion to savor in there too. All the other stuff? The meat and such that we have purchased and not cooked? Bring it on.

The other tasks on my list for 2011 are (in no particular order):

Patio for the backyard (we may opt to take the backyard remodel that we want in steps and just start with getting a nice concrete pad out there).

Hardwood flooring for the office and formal dining room.

Paint the foyer/dining room/office.

Master bedroom… just take my word for it, it needs a serious overhaul.

Switching away from pink

2011-02-17T19:34:00.001-08:00

When you know someone who is suffering cancer it seems like there just isn't enough money out there for research. As a scientist, albeit a non-medical, non-bio scientist, I get the proposal and funding process and fully understand that there is limited funds out there for really great ideas.

Breast cancer, at one point, was the cancer that people didn't talk about. A woman's problem. And not always terribly survivable. Thanks in large part, or maybe huge part, to the Susan G. Komen foundation this has changed. Breast cancer has turned into, in the last decade or so, a cancer with a much higher survival rate. Thankfully.

As someone who has lost a family member to cancer, I have seen in the cancer communities online, frustration with breast cancer research. "All the money goes to breast cancer", is the common lament. As someone who lost a family member to a rare cancer, it would be easy to fall into this. Nobody researched rare cancers. There is no payoff. A cancer that 4000 people get a year is terribly unfortunate. But who is going to research and make a medication to treat 4000 people a year. It doesn't make financial sense. (And I am a capitalist at heart.) I found this frustrating, financial sense be damned, you are talking about my mom.

Once my mom exhausted the routine treatments for her type of cancer (pretty quickly) she moved onto clinical trials where none of her options were targeted treatments for her cancer. It was frustrating to her. To all of us. Her participation in a clinical trial was akin to playing the lotto with the major benefit being to check off a researchers list - nope it doesn't work for this rare cancer. The researcher didn't hit the lotto and neither did my mom.

In the last few years I quit opting for pink. I bought the obligatory pink pin at work for $5, but my money hasn't gone to breast cancer research or to buy pink blankets with ribbons on them, or appliances with little ribbons on them. Instead my giving to the American Cancer Society went up as well as to the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation. A small foundation that is devoted to this rare and fatal cancer.

I never stuff my change or money into the jars in the check out lines at the grocery store. But I stood there today reading what the cause of the day was, surprised to find out it wasn't breast cancer. Nope, pancreatic cancer. A cancer thought to be highly related to my mom's rare cancer, cholangiocarcinoma. I immediately opened my wallet and stuffed some bills in the cup that held pennies and a few dimes and nickels.

As a scientist I do understand that the research performed on breast cancer may very well lead to discoveries that help different cancers. That there are markers that are similar and may respond. I believe that the researchers are doing their best to save a lot of women. And they are saving a lot of women, thank God. (I have a high school friend who is battling breast cancer right now and I am very happy for the research that will hopefully give her a new lease on life.)

But my point? Let's not forget about all the others. A once small foundation has turned pink on its head and enabled many women to live strong.

Let's change the way people think about green now.

Making Decisions

2011-02-16T19:53:00.000-08:00

I have always been a tad bit indecisive. This is part of my versatility thing that I have been working on the past few years. Analyze the situation (quickly) and make a decision when one needs to be made. I am getting much better at this in my professional life.

Personal life? Not so much.

Leif will start public school... first grade, this fall. I am taking a big gulp and registering him for this new phase of his life on March 1 with a good friend who is also in the same position. Declining that private school option that we have been with for the last 6 years with Leif and jumping over to the scary unknown. The place where kids are eaten alive.

Ok, kidding. I have friends whose kids are surviving with minimal scars.

I survived public school.

But I also had my mom home there waiting with homemade cookies and orange juice at the end of the day.

This has been killing me for the last year or so as I stare down this new aspect of Leif's life. Public school. A bus. A class with actual desks in rows. A teacher to student ratio of more than one to six.

Today I met with one of my managers. I truly am lucky to be in such a great group with two women who have children and have been through this all before.

I am also extremely lucky to be in a position where I can make decisions about my career and schedule. Not many women can choose whether they work 40 hours a day, flex their time and work from home, or opt for a less than full time schedule.

I trust my managers and appreciate their input. So when my manager had a quick answer for me this morning on what I should do this fall with my son going into first grade, as one mom who has been there and done that with a very successful career, I truly appreciated it.

Last year I carried seven projects where six of them were my own with my name as PI or Co-PI. This year it dropped to four. Three of those finish (or wind down substantially) on September 30th. I am in a position where (if my proposals pending out there don't come through) I will be looking for work. This hasn't happened in years.

"Do it now," she said. "It won't hurt your promotability, do it when you actually have a decrease in work. Try not to go below 80% time."

And I left her office elated. My answer! And it felt right.

Starting late this summer I am dropping from full full time. To just mostly full time. Or almost full time.

And with any luck I will have more time in the evenings to hang with my kids, get dinner made and just be happy.

And to be there with homemade cookies and orange juice. (Maybe.)

Keeping it simple... and clean...

2011-02-08T20:55:00.000-08:00

One of the really, really neat things about raising kids is seeing their evolution. Lots of people love babies. Ok, yes, I love babies. But I really, really love the toddler to young child time. I love when they start interacting. Trying to communicate, developing their own styles of communication, saying funny things. I don’t care for the Terrible Twos and Threes and I have had a lot of that the past two years, but we can just use a partition coefficient here and pretend that doesn’t exist for now. I keep saying it, and I will say it again. It just keeps getting better.

Since Leif was little he always showed a bit of OCD. In fact, I think I have a topic reserved in this blog for Leif’s OCD. The past few months this has spread into a new and interesting area. His bedroom.

If you saw Leif’s bedroom you would assume he is a poor abused child with no toys. While the reality is that the kid has a closet that rivals our Master closet and a toy room. But that’s not all of it… His closet? Skadi spends the vast majority of the time in the closet rifling through stuff, generally destroying the area. And I have about 6 Rubbermaid containers stacked in there as well. I will take storage space wherever I can get it.

Nope, Leif likes things simple. All he really needs are a bookshelf for his books, a place to put his clothes, a place to store his electronics (i.e., charge the DS, keep his headphones handy, etc.), and a few shelves to show off his trophies and his Harry Potter collections and to keep his new locked box. (I bought him a $10 cash box with a key at Target… best thing since sliced bread according to Leif.)

Compare to Skadi’s room that is just unmanageable. Seriously. That child can destroy her room faster than you can blink your eye. Tornado Skadi. And she has toys and loves her toys and wants them all out in her room at all the same times. This is a scary tale for another day. Leif's closet? Well she endured his wrath the other night when she pulled out a box of trucks and didn't put them back.

Back to Leif.

We have “pick up night” every Wednesday evening. The kids’ rooms get picked up along with common areas throughout the house to enable the housecleaner to be able to actually clean.

Leif is a master bedroom cleaner. When he says it is done, you can bet he is not joking. It’s done, it’s perfect and it took him less than 3 minutes. (I have started paying him to help Skadi with her room.) On top of that, Leif has started cleaning his room ahead of time so that he doesn’t have to do it on Wednesday. Because according to him he just has “too much stuff to do on Wednesday with spelling test on Thursday and all”.

Last Tuesday night I finished reading him a book and tossed it on the floor next to the bed. Wow did I unleash the wrath.

Leif: “MOM! I just picked up my room, I don’t want to have to pick it up again tomorrow, would you please put that book back where it belongs?!”

(I could have sworn I have heard this line many times before... only not starting with "mom".)

Leif loves having friends over, but he gets pretty massive anxiety after they leave and his room is a mess. In fact, I have decided that from now on we need to incorporate pick up time into play dates. I did this when I was a kid. I remember storming out of one friend’s house and marching home because we (once again) got into a fight about something. I got home and Jennifer’s mother had called my mom and told her I didn’t help clean up. Dang it. I had to march back up there (tail between legs) to go help her pick up.

Yes, picking up is going to be part of the new play date routine.

I see Leif’s future… a sparsely furnished, stylish (thanks to his interior decorator sister) minimalist loft. Hopefully he can find a woman who will put up with his neat freakiness…

Having Leif jump on me about not putting his book away made me smile.

My mom was somewhere looking down with a big grin on her face.

Hola February

2011-02-05T16:44:00.000-08:00

I have really been looking forward to my February goals. I needed a change up from organizing and picking through stuff and trashing stuff and sending stuff to Goodwill... I need a pretty project.

So here it is my tiny half bath on the bottom floor of our house. It is most commonly used by my kids. Next would be guests. Last would be AB and I. I want something pretty and elegant, a bit edgey and fun.

I never used to have a hard time picking paint colors, but I have seriously been all over the map with this room. Partly because I want a unified theme for the entire first floor. Specifically the office, foyer, dining room and half bath. I have lots of two toned woods, grey carpets that will hopefully see the curb this year in favor of hardwood and clayish, terra cotta-ish colored tile.

And this green foyer. The green foyer is going bye bye. I can't coordinate anything with it. It's killing me.

February is a short month, so I can tackle the half bath and get a start on my redecorate the front first level of the house.

I started with some brown/deep purple/plum colors. I want something a bit dramatic and am not overly concerned with making the space appear small. It is a half bathroom after all, it is never going to appear spacious.

The main color I was targeting was the one next to the mirror. (Don't you love the wooden mirror? I do.)

I went a tone or two softer to test because so many people said, "you can't go that dark in that room".

And well... maybe they were right. But I also couldn't do the mauve.

Back to square one.

One evening of after Christmas shopping I came across these iris paintings on a great clearance. And I love irises. Reminds me of living in Boulder and the iris field on Broadway as well as my wedding flower.

See in addition to the dark color and the mauve, I had also picked out an "acorn spice" color. When we put it on the wall we said, "ewww, breastfed baby poop". (The mustard on the right by the window. Yes, I will be replacing the valence.)

Then I put the picture up.

And suddenly the breastfed baby poop color wasn't so bad. The gold on the frame really popped!

But I wanted to play with the color a bit more, I am not a fan of yellows that much... I was attracted to the color because of the name... acorn spice.

I went and bought a few more colors. Four more to be precise. And this is the collection so far.

See the color at the top on the right? Loving that for the bathroom. Just enough orange and gold to bring out the gold on the frame. On photo #2 it is the color to the left of the picture.

See the brick color on the bottom? Loving that for my foyer. AB has issued a "we'll see about that" decree. (He still loves the green.)

So President's Day - a forced day off since the kids' school is closed - I hope to paint the bathroom. Then we will need new rugs, a new valence and I would like some decorative element to go on the little cabinet I have in there that holds the TP and all that stuff.

I had kind of hoped to piggy back on another goal this month. But it is seeming short enough as is. My March goal I am hoping to devote to backing my quilt and quilting it for spring use in the bedroom.

Kid-isms

2011-01-26T19:39:00.000-08:00

Skadi-ism #1

“Ok parents,” she says.

We are “parents”.

We aren’t “mom and dad” or “mommy and daddy”.

Nope.

“Parents.”

“Parents, I want to know if you would like your children to sing you a song?”

“Parents, you should go in the other room and not look over here.”

“Parents, can I have a snack?”

---------------------

At a restaurant waiting for food. The kids have their complimentary crayons and placemat. Skadi is coloring away. Leif is writing words. He prints “fo” on his placemat.

AB: “That’s not a word.”

(I know where this is going. Leif is always writing fo as opposed to “of”.)

Leif: “Yes it is daddy.”

AB: “No it isn’t, it says fo. Fo isn’t a word.”

Leif (becoming insistent): “Yes daddy, it is a word!”

AB: “Ok, use it in a sentence.”

Leif: “Someone who isn’t a SuperHero friend is a foe!”

AB: (Silence.)

Me: “Take that daddy!”

----------------

Skadi has a knack for spinning yarns. She gets on a roll and it just doesn't stop.

Leif asked me what my name was before I got married and I told him my maiden name.

Skadi: "My name before I was in mommy's tummy was Vanya and I was a person who helped other people and made sure they were ok and I did good at my job. Then something happened and I don't know what it was and I was in my mommy's tummy."

Me: "Okaaaaaayyyyy..."

Leif: "Before I was in mommy's tummy, she was in her mommy's tummy and I was still in her tummy and all people are in tummys now."

Me: "Wow, this is deep." (Change subject fast.)

Things I suck at...

2011-01-23T21:18:00.000-08:00

-Lying – seriously. I suck at this. I quiver and shake and my eyes start darting. I used to try to lie to my mom way back in high school and she would laugh at me. Now I look at Leif and see what she saw when she would look at me lying. Poor Leif is never going to get away with anything. (His sister, however, freaks me out with her amazing fibbing abilities. Her teachers have also marveled at her ability to pull one over on them.)

-History – I wish I knew more about history. But I don’t. I suck at it.

-Speaking Spanish – Yes, I know I had like 6 years of Spanish from Junior High through High School and I did at one point speak it fluently. I can understand Spanish, but I cannot any longer wrap my tongue around speaking it. (I have a Spanish speaking intern I am sharing with another colleague coming in and this concerns me a bit.)

-Baking – So maybe I don’t suck suck at it. I have a small repertoire of items I can bake. But baking is not my forte. Cooking a fabulous meal, yes.

-Growing indoor plants – I bought a lemon tree after a long hiatus of living in no plant land. They are messy and I just don’t like them. But dang, I wanted a lemon tree! Poor baby lemon tree…

-Cleaning – I suck at this. I also don’t like it. But mostly I suck at it. No wait… mostly I don’t like it… (Question – which came first, the chicken or the egg?)

-Meeting new people – I become a clam. I never know what to say. I get nervous. I worry that I will do something wrong. I worry what they will think of me. And I always come off wrong. Yes, I suck at meeting new people.

-Keeping a secret – Maybe I should caveat this… keeping a secret from my husband! I had a very exciting thing happen this last week. I made a wee tiny inquiry and received a fabulous response from someone regarding an anniversary gift for AB. And it is absolutely killing me to keep this secret. And I have to keep it for TWO FREAKING MONTHS. I am queen of ruining presents for him. This one I am not going to ruin. Nope, not going to spill the beans. Going to forget ALL about it.

Seriously. This is hard.

Yep, keeping secrets is my number one thing I suck at.

Winding down the month

2011-01-22T19:17:00.000-08:00

As typical for most resolutioners, my first of the year goals are filled with lots of spunk and promise. Promises of an organized house, followed by a beautiful and elegant new half guest bathroom and lots of ideas to follow for the months after. Then by summer I am talking about taking months off because we are too busy. And goals over the holidays? Yeah right.

I wandered the Target aisles over lunch yesterday with AB… and no kids. He doesn’t work on Fridays and I met him for a quick and easy lunch and then to grab a few things.

I have been coveting some cute desk organizers for our office. I didn’t find much.

I haven’t found much online either.

The desk organization part of my January goals is not flying. I bought a little square caddy thing that can either lie on its side for cds, or sit upwards to hold – what I am thinking – pads of paper and midsize desk stuff. I bought a couple magazine storage containers. But I don’t need an In box or an Out box or alphabetical storage. We walk in the house through the garage and everything lands on the surface in the opposite corner of the house. Office type stuff often gets stored and organized in the kitchen first instead because of this. If I am looking for a piece of paper, I don’t go straight to my office. The kitchen is the first stop.

Our computer desk just raises a big question mark for me.

I think I did my shopping for organizing items prematurely. I think I should have cleaned off the desk, figured out what really needs to be there and then gone shopping. I knew we needed a pens container and I bought that. But it isn’t cute. In fact, I am already wondering if it would be better suited for Leif’s room and wondering if I would be better suited for a trip to Hobby Lobby?

Oh well. It’s on my list for the weekend, clear off the desk and organize. (Maybe go to Hobby Lobby…)

Today I worked on Leif’s mess of a closet. (A trip to Hobby Lobby would definitely serve as reward that effort…) Done. Finished. Whew. Not fun. Skadi has already started back to destroying it now that she can see all the fun things.

I am trying to finish out my January organization tactics before getting too amped about the downstairs half bath. But I found these… and I fell in love with them:

I love irises. Always have. There was an iris field in Boulder near my apartment in college that I loved. Irises were my wedding flower.

And oh, they were on sale. I got one for $36 and the other for $41. Yay me!

They are going to look spectacular in my bathroom! And now I have color inspiration for the lackluster room!

Stuff that lasts a lifetime? Or a lifetime of stuff?

2011-01-19T20:50:00.000-08:00

The other day while skiing with AB, we were sitting on the ski lift (because our children were in ski school – yay ski school!) and he commented that all his ski gear was getting old. We had purchased nearly it all in Reno, which was 9 years ago. I looked at my stuff and felt a fondness.

There have been lots of articles out there lately about how purchases are not satisfying, they don’t fill ones soul, basically. I think in the down economy it is an attempt to make people feel better about not having the cash-oh-la to go out and buy buy buy. There is a lot of talk out there about reusing and what a wasteful society we have become. Disposable is bad.

I like shopping. I like stuff. I admit it.

My family likes stuff. My grandmother REALLY liked stuff. This last summer we cleaned (I use the term “we” loosely here) out her house as she went into an Alzheimer’s care facility. As a kid I thought she had loads of treasures. Turns out? She bought the cheapest stuff she could find. I found a little crystal tea service set that I loved – I don’t remember seeing it as a kid – it was stashed away in a secret spot. Very retro and fun looking, but missing a cup. I went to replacements.com and was a bit disappointed to find out I could only order the entire set, not just the missing cup. But then again, the entire set was $14. (And yes, I do still love it.)

This is the type of stuff my grandmother had. Depression era mindset, never spend money on luxuries for yourself, save everything. My mom, a few years ago, went to my grandmother’s house to help her clean stuff out and found an entire cabinet full of all the lotions and soaps she had ever given her for Mother’s Days, Christmas, her birthday.

“Why haven’t you used these?” my mom asked picking up the dusty, cruddy old bottles.

“I am saving them,” was her reply.

“For what?” my mom asked.

“To use,” she replied.

And I expect my mom rolled her eyes and left the conversation there. No one ever won arguments with my grandmother.

Lately I have been looking through my stuff with a bit of a critical eye given the articles and general opinion out there about buying new stuff, as well as combined with my recent experiences “helping” clean out my grandmother’s and my mom’s belongings.

My purchasing habits have changed over the last few years. I do still find joy in my older purchases though – the common consensus out there that purchases won’t fill your soul is a bit flawed I think.

My ski bibs and my ski gloves are two of these things. I truly believe that these two items will last my lifetime. High quality, good fitting and timeless items. Clarification, they will last my lifetime at my current level of commitment to skiing and cold weather activities, which is that I am a fair weather skier living in a warm-ish climate that is 2 hours 45 minutes drive to ski.

I bought my grandmother a good set of stacking stainless steel mixing bowls just like mine after she visited my house and commented a few times, “I wish I had a good set of bowls”. I love my stainless steel nesting bowls. They will be with me for life.

My kitchen items – I have a ton of kitchen stuff. But instead of replacing my $4.99 Woolworth special hand mixer that my grandmother bought for me with another of its type, I plan to get a Kitchen Aid hand mixer (in cocoa silver, in case you were wondering) and never ever have to replace it again.

This blog topic has been floating around in my head for a few weeks. And as I have walked around my house I have made mental note of the things I have purchased that will last a lifetime. What do I believe I have bought or been given that I will never have to replace?

And it isn’t always the most expensive things.

My ski bibs, for example. I think I bought them for $28 on clearance at Sierra Trading Post in Reno. But they ARE fabulous.

A few shirts/sweaters I have may go the distance. I have a few of those chunky wool sweaters that were so in style in Boulder in the 90’s. I love those still (shhh, don’t tell) and I expect they will go the distance if only because I don’t wear them currently – I would roast and well my colleagues might mistake me for a hippy. But a weekend in the mountains? Yes sir!

My hutch. Yes. My shelves that AB built me exactly 8 years ago. Yes. NOT the crappy dressers from Furniture Row. (I need to work on the furniture aspect of this mindset in my house.)

My All Clad griddle, my Le Creuset pieces (have I sung enough praises lately about my Dutch Oven and Skillet?), my Kitchen Aid Professional mixer has made it 10 years with no sign of decline.

My beautiful, lovely purse will last – especially if I continue to stop by the retailer I bought it from to swoon at other purses and random sales people continue to clean it and massage it with lotion for me.

Years ago as a shopper I sought quantity. I need to outfit a kitchen, what do I need? I want a new work wardrobe, what should I buy?

Now as a shopper, I seek quality. I don’t always want to pay the prices for quality, I am a danged good sale shopper. Retailmenot.com is my best friend in online shopping.

I wonder if it seems morbid to ponder if something will last my lifetime? But I plan on living a long, long time.

Age 108 here I come with my Le Creuset and Coach purse!

January Goals Update

2011-01-12T20:07:00.000-08:00

It is almost halfway through January, so I figured it was time to update my goals!

Goal #1 – Organization Needs

I have addressed a few of my organization needs throughout the house.

Recycling Bin – Done – I bought a neat big basket from Target that seems to be doing the job – as long as I continually remind the occupants of the house to RINSE out the containers and BREAK DOWN the cardboard.

Dog Food – Purchased today! Who knew that Amazon was THE place to go? I have had a horrible time lately finding anything I need on Amazon and with Prime shipping. (Leif ski gloves, hello? Hello?) Anyways, I got a nice rolling bin AND a scoop. The rolling bin will be super because I have two dogs who cannot eat together. Unless you want to listen to growling. I mean you each have your own bowl, what is the big deal? Fill one bowl, roll the bin over and fill the other. And for $21.

Stairs – Did these. Found some cute leather containers that sit at the foot of the stairs. Now if I could just get some small people to empty them…

The Wii stuff – I bought an el cheapo storage ottoman. Ottoman for someone who has small feet or butt – whatever you are supposed to put on an ottoman. Anyways, it actually looks halfway decent and fits perfectly save for the Wii lightsabers – which are never used. For some reason Leif doesn’t actually like them, go figure.

Shelves in the kids’ room – Done and I am thinking both kids might need a few more shelves since I really only addressed the stuff that was sitting out in their rooms and not the box of breakable stuff still packed up in Leif’s closet.

The desk in the office - it is a nice big open flat space with stacks of stuff. Seriously in need of some pen holders and desk organizers and the like. This is still pending. And it is pending me finding some NEAT and in the colors I have selected for the paint accessories. So, this is pending…

SO this was the stuff I set out to tackle in December. I did a few more things too – we got a Hobby Lobby recently. Yay us! Anyways, I bought a nice, large leather tray for my peninsula in the kitchen. It is the stacking place, the landing place. I have tried tactics to minimize this and I have finally just embraced it. The tray at least makes it look a little nicer. Or better yet, when I need it to look nice quickly, it can be done.

I have additional organizational needs. They just keep popping up.

The tops of my and AB’s dressers in our rooms. And the area next to our nightstands. Our nightstands actually hold a lot. But we still have stuff stacked. I am halfway wondering though if I don’t need to devote an entire month to the needs of our Master bedroom… I am not sure 2 weeks can do it justice and I fear I really need a more functional piece of furniture there. AB tonight told me it didn't just need a piece of furniture, it needs all new furniture and by the way, why have we never had a bed frame?

Leif’s closet. The poor child can’t even walk into it – the largest closet in the house. Now it is his fault for dumping his stuff in the doorway. But we need to fix this. THIS IS on the schedule for one of the last two weekends of the month. It shouldn’t really take purchasing anything, just some organization time.

My closet. Specifically my clothes. I have a thing with buying more. I just bought a boatload on after Christmas uber-clearance. Like seriously a sweater originally priced for $150 that I bought for $24. I hate to even admit that last week, I found a pair of really cute cords. Found them. As in forgot I even bought them last year. I need to ruthlessly purge my closet. Who knows what treasures I will find.

Goal #2 Paint Colors

We are working the paint thing. Working and working it. AB and I have narrowed into a color scheme, now it is just a matter of testing said colors and then deciding where to put them - and where to stop. Very difficult in a foyer that is two stories tall. And if you know AB you will not be surprised to hear that the word "scaffold" has come up with enthusiasm. I know. Scary.

My husband, the beggar

2011-01-09T19:33:00.000-08:00

We were in Costco on Saturday and AB had gone to fetch food for the kids to eat in the cart on the run. We shop, they eat. Works out great.

We are nearly halfway through the store - the VERY packed store, mind you - and I say to the kids, "I wonder where your dad is?"

Leif: "He is probably up at the front of the store begging for money," he replies matter of factly.

Me: "What?" I am positive I didn't hear him right.

Leif: "I bet he is begging for money again."

Me: "What are you talking about?" (Stifling the laughter and confusion.)

Leif: "He begged for money a few weeks ago. He is probably doing this again."

Mind you, we are in a very busy store and it isn't like Leif is whispering this. Nope, he is announcing it to the entire store. And it was no use convincing him he was mistaken, so I dropped it.

Later that evening I told AB about the comments and he (in between laughter and confusion) called Leif in to explain.

Leif: "You remember daddy, it was a few weeks ago, but you said, 'give me some money' and the lady gave you some money and there were chickens squaking too."

AB: "WHAT? What in the THE WORLD are you talking about?"

Leif: "Dad, you were being a beggar. You told the woman to give you money and she did and there were chickens."

AB: "Was this a dream? This had to be a dream."

Leif: (Getting annoyed.) "No dad, you remember! It was not a dream, you begged for money the other day!"

AB: "Wait a second... was this when we went to the store and I bought a candybar and asked for money back?"

AB does this. He doesn't like to drive all the way to the BofA ATM and doesn't want to pay $2 to use a nonbank ATM. So he goes into the grocery store, buys something in the checkstand and gets his cash.

Leif: "You asked the woman for money and she gave it to you! You were begging for money dad."

AB: (Huge sigh.) "No, that isn't really what happened."

No telling what daycare thinks of us.

(Oh and we haven't figured out the squeaky chicken aspect yet.)

Reflections of book club and of 39 years of life

2011-01-08T14:58:00.000-08:00

I love my book club.

We have been together for 5.5 years (I think... or is it 6.5 years?) I think it is 5.5 years because I am pretty sure my son was just shy of one year. It is a great core group of women. One of my best friends suggested starting it to my other best friend and myself way back when. We each invited 2-3 women and wa la. Here we are 5.5 years later.

Last night we noted that it was our original core group of women. We have added to the group, but it is interesting to me that none of the newer additions seem to have as strong of a commitment to the group and I am not sure why. I wonder if those of us there from the start just had a stronger investment? Or if we failed in making other people feel welcome? Or maybe some of both.

Last night I failed to even buy the book. I had excellent intentions actually, but the book I was reading, "The Girl Who Played With Fire" just kept going on and on. And I am not one of those people who can successfully read two books at once. I must finish one before starting another.

The book was The Alchemist and I did read a primer and a few spoilers and reviews on the book before going to book club so that I wasn't completely clueless. But yes, I did a lot of smiling and nodding. As the conversation went on I actually did have a lot of thoughts to add based off of the flow of conversation, though I didn't so much because it isn't my thing to jump in and yap about a book I didn't read. I was there just to enjoy the company.

Thoughts on the book were all over the place, from one woman who absolutely loved the book and would put it in her top two (or did she say five) to others who said, "eh". That's par for the course with our book club. We rarely get across the board agreement on a book, yet we all still love each other.

A few of the thoughts really resonated with me. How do you move throughout your life? How do you make the decisions you make? Why do you make the decisions you make? Are there omens? Are there signs? What if you get to the end of your life and well, it sucked? Are you the only one to blame? Is that because you were ignoring the signs? What is happiness in life?

Huge questions.

The woman who loved the book made me want to read it most when she talked about how in her life, she goes along a bit and then evaluates - "am I happy?" If yes, great. If not, "how do I make it better? How do I fix it?" Then make it happen.

I can completely identify with this.

When I was growing up and through college I let things happen. I rarely made things happen for myself. Things just happened around me. I followed the crowd, I did what others did. If it made them happy, certainly it would make me happy, right? I majored in chemistry because I did well in it, not because I loved lab class (though I fell in love with my lab partner).

I think I got this from my parents. They are/were both great people, but they were young when I was little. Things happened to them, and while they both got better at making things happen for themselves as they got older, my early formative years saw them as being thrown around by circumstances and not in charge of the circumstances.

It wasn't until I graduated from college, worked for a year, applied (unsuccessfully) to grad schools my advisor told me to apply to, that I really realized it was up to me to pick myself up, quit whining about things that have happened to me - because really, I had a great upbringing and life and a future wide open to me - and make things happen for me.

I applied to grad school again and picked myself up and moved a few states away to a mid-range school that seemed to fit. It was the single hardest thing I have ever done, but really my first jumping off point.

Many of my decisions have been gut reactions. What feels right? Then do it.

I have had to remind myself a few times to take the reigns and make things happen for myself. I can only really rely on myself to know and do what is right for me.

I have talked a few times before about making decisions to change course, to make myself happier, to move myself in a different direction. I have recently made another move in life to make things just a smidge better. I finally realized that in my career I have been doing what is expected of me as a scientist. What my mentor a few years ago wanted for me. I kept ignoring and denying a direction that was popping up for me.

In October I decided to listen to that inner voice and make the step to follow a different career path. I went and talked to a few people who have since jumped onto my team and have encouraged me to follow a new path and have even gone so far as to put me into positions to enable me to further this career path.

I look at my path since leaving Colorado for grad school and I have to say, it just keeps getting better. 39 years so far (that realization is starting to hurt my gut), 15 years of following my heart and wow.

Who knew it could be so good?

The nuclear life, literally and figuratively

My Space

Best purchase ever...

Remembering back to rabbit's feet

Goals?

It's good we can cook...

Quiche, Latkes and Meatball Sandwiches

Elf Calamities

The Bomb Story

What we did this Christmas season...

Crush

Two weeks off!

One post in November?

My daughter may be the funniest thing ever...

Family Pictures

The saddest children's book EVER!

Conversations with the kids

Flooring selections

The New Normal After 1 Month

Little Girl Wanderlust

That time of the month... Goals!

Working the new normal

On the importance of the whole package

Adventures in bedtime

What's on your playlist?

Looking for the groove

Soul Sister

Domestication?

Huh...

Catching Up

Probably an unpopular vent

Summer of Fun

Love my Beaner

Shoe Girl Status in Question

Well shack.

Memories

Hangin' with the cousins

Happy 7th Birthday Leif!

Hello August

Definitions Time - Bejeezus

Coach Nuclear Mom?

Etiquette

Well Uff-Da

4th of July at the Cabin

Best Purchase Ever

July

Foodie Inspirations

The perils of a child's increased awareness of his surroundings...

Social Styles Redux

Are all boys like this?

Psychoanalyze my daughter

Wasn't it just yesterday?

Feeling the neighborhood love

Memorial Day Camping Trip in Photos

Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other

Yep, I am one of those moms

One of "those" parents?

More stories from the castle

All I wanted...

The T-Ball Princess

April Goals

Catching Up

Skadi's Castle on a Cloud

Two Heads

It's all about what's up at work

Being a woman in science

April Goals Update

Cool iPhone uses

March Goals Wrap-Up

March 23, 2011

Four Year Old Celebration

4 Year Well Child

"Let me give you a hint"

How to catch a leprechaun!

Nothing sweeter...

If only my whole house could look this nice...

Arranged marriages?

Things I will never understand...

My new project

Boys = Fighting and Farting