Seeing Clearly

While we were out in Utah for Bud's wedding, my glasses were broken by a friend's children. As glasses are a big pain to replace and fairly expensive I was quite bummed. When I told Ryan about the incident I mentioned that I was tired of having to worry about glasses and I was ready to consider surgery. He was so excited. He has been trying to talk me into considering surgery forever and I just have been too afraid to even think about it.

So I started to read up on what actually happens when you get eye surgery. And I started to get nauseated. I am not kidding just reading about the surgery made me queasy. Now I have a new approach, I am just going to read up on the best doctors and then get an exam to see if I am even a candidate. If I am, then I will read up on the surgery.

I must say, it would be really nice to see clearly without glasses, I just don't know if it would be nice enough to get surgery.

Bergdorf Blonds: book review

Sadly I am reviewing chick lit on my blog. Perhaps even more sadly, I am reading chick lit. And saddest of all, I enjoyed this book immensely.

It took me a while (probably 30 pages) to get into the characters and their non-frugal ways (which I found annoying - don't even bother with the shopaholic series if you are frugal like me) but in the end, I thought the characters were well developed and I really liked the twist at the end.

So if you are looking for a light and easy read, dig right in.

Pink Painting Fiasco

While William was in town, she and I did all kinds of fun house projects. And if we are going to be completely honest, William really did the lion's share of most of them.

One of these projects was to paint the entire main living level. We started with the living room. We painted it green - it looked great. So we moved on to the library - which we also painted green. That was another success story. So aimed with new found color picking confidence, I went bold and picked pink for my kitchen/dining room. We painted that (which was by far the hardest of the three rooms because of the sheer volume of trim work) - and it just didn't look right.

The pink looked rather nice in the dining room portion of the room. I have black furniture in there and it was a really nice contrast. However, in the kitchen portion, it made the cherry cabinets look orange. Orange just doesn't go so well with pink and wasn't what I was hoping for at all. The think that made me decide to repaint however, was the effect the pink room had on the other rooms on the floor. The whole floor is open and with the pink in the middle it made the whole floor look like a cute little girl room in lovely pastels. The strange part about that was that the green on its own was a deep and muted green that didn't look pastelly at all.

I will never be a professional painter, but I certainly learned something. One wrong color can change the whole feel of the house.

We just finished repainting the kitchen today. We painted it beige. Which actually turned out quite nice and my green rooms are back to looking elegant and not little kiddish.

Awkward Moments

I was just thinking of some of my most awkward moments.

One that comes to mind took place at the second law firm that I worked at in DC. I had been there about a month and I was starting to get to know the staff by name. So in an effort to be friendly (and also not forget names too quickly) I said hello to the fellow delivering the mail.

Me: Hey Robert, How's it going? (in a very cheery voice).

Dwight: I'm Dwight! Robert died two weeks ago. (In a very scolding and disgusted way).

Me: Oh. (long awkward pause - I mean really how do you recover from that) Bye (in a much less, cheery and wishing I was invisible voice).

Rearranging

One of my favorite Sunday activities for as long as I have been able to push furniture - has been to rearrange my room - and now with a whole house - to rearrange the house.

Growing up, every Sunday they would give you a program for Sacrament Meeting. I quickly realized that the programs had a great number of uses - from origami, to drawing, to tic-tac-toe. My favorite use was to make a floorplan of my bedroom and then try to fill in the furniture in a new and appealing way. Since I shared a room with my sister, William, she was of course my PIC (partner in crime) in these useful Sunday endeavors.

Well, the habit was so enjoyable and so cemented, that I still wake up on Sunday mornings wanting to do a little something different in my house. I now try to channel that energy into various projects, like sweeping the garage or putting up towel racks, etc. But it is the same drive. I now have two PICs - Ryan and William. Unfortunately, Ryan does not share the same rearranging drive and William is far away, so I can only benefit from her assistance via phone these days.

At William's wise suggestion, I have started a list of house projects that I eventually want to do. I am hoping to get lots of assistance when she comes to visit. Maybe I should start an "improve the room" fund in the meantime.

What's in a name?

In an attempt to be frugal, I shop at a very obscure grocery store that is dirt cheap and that we affectionately refer to as "the used food store". So as you can imagine, such a store is located in a rather run down part of town in a strip-mall with a few other obscure shops.

Well, yesterday as I was going there, one of the shops, "Campos Furniture" had printed up a huge banner of a sign that was hung on the side of big box-truck parked in the parking lot.

The sign read:

CAMPOS FURNITURE

Remodiling Sale

Our name says it all

There were two fabulously funny things about this sign. The first is that they misspelled "remodiling" on a huge printed banner (if you could see the area it is in, you would also appreciate the humor in them remodeling at all). And second, that the store's slogan is: our name says it all. Now maybe I am ignorant to the deeper meaning of the words "Campos Furniture" but to me, that name does not really say a whole lot, let alone, say it all.

Birthday Presents

I think I was 4 or 5 when my mom asked me if there was something special I wanted for my birthday that year. In fact there was. I had been eyeing the Mac'n Cheese sleeping bag offered on the back of specially marked boxes for sometime. My mom double and triple checked that a Mac'n Cheese sleeping bag was what I really wanted. She made sure that I knew that if she ordered it, that I couldn't change my mind and get a toy later on, etc. But I was positive - I really wanted that Mac'n Cheese sleeping bag. The sleeping bag looked just like the blue box with orange food on it.

She ordered it and I had to wait for the longest 6-8 weeks of my life in anticipation of its arrival. It finally came and I slept in it immediately and for the next few days, I would not sleep anywhere except in my new sleeping bag on the floor of my room. I remember some adult - probably my mom - commenting on how thin and flimsy it was, but to me it was heaven. I was sleeping inside a giant box of Kraft Mac'n Cheese. :)

Indigo Girls

The Indigo Girls are my favorite band. Now while my husband finds that as a convienient reason to tease me about having been a lesbian in a past life, I really just love their lyrics and their music. Oftentimes I disagree with some of their more political songs, but I still love their music because it feels very real and sometimes very raw.

Social Awkwardness

Ryan's Grandma died over the weekend. She was very old and had a great life. So we are headed out to the funeral this week.

I have only been to a couple of funerals in my life so far. The most recent was my grandfather's about 8 years ago. I felt a little uncomfortable at the funeral - which I think is normal. I must admit to feeling v. uncomfortable about this upcoming funeral - for more formal reasons. At my own grandfather's funeral any faux paus that I may have made in funeral ettiquete would have been dismissed as a grandchild greiving. At this one, I am hoping I don't just say something terribly strange or imprudent.

All or nothing

Life seems to be an all or nothing sort of game. You can be going along fine, maybe even feeling that life is a little monotonous and then all of a sudden, every big event in your life happens at once or everything that can go wrong does.

This week it has been the case of things going wrong. The weekend started off with Audrey having a fever, so we had to cancel our trip to Charlottesville to attend Ryan's bff's law school graduation dinner party. Then right as Audrey is feeling better, I lose my wallet, and her fever turns into a cold on the day the new babysitter started. Everyone knows when you are sick, you just want your mommy. Then Ryan's car has a flat tire and today it just plain won't start at all, so I had to drive him in to work at the last minute and then I am driving all the way to Baltimore and back to go to my BIL's medical school graduation and dinner party. Mind you, I still don't have a license and/or any money to even fill the car with gas and Audrey still has a cold. And to top it all off, we seem to have a leaking toilet that is pooling water in our master bath.

To be honest, at this point, it has become funny.

New Nanny

I have a new person working for me as Audrey's babysitter.

She is a home-schooled teenager, who can come over in the mornings. It seems to be working out pretty well so far. She is really nice and Audrey likes her a lot.

Plus I find that I am a little more comfortable bossing around people younger than me. So when Audrey takes a nap, I have no problem assigning little projects to her. I am hoping that having a helper on projects, is going to help me get some of the ever-present projects (like putting stuff up on free-cycle) moving along.

The bathroom project

All of my interior decorating for the whole house has started (and apparently stalled) with the entry bathroom.

We painted it a lovely light grey, replaced the towel rod with a towel ring, added some frameless glass-covered rose pictures and viola - we have a pretty bathroom.

I would still like to add a small white floor rug, paint the light fixture silver and put a couple of single flower vases on the main wall to put roses in.

Treasures

I was decluttering a couple of "treasure boxes" that I keep. Turns out most of my "treasures" were actually trash. Shells that I can't remember what beach I picked them up on, keychains saved for some strange reason, broken pieces of cheap jewelry, etc. Why in the world have I kept all of this stuff for so long?

Vacation

We just got back from a family vacation with my husband's family to Williamsburg, VA. It was actually a lot of fun. We went to Colonial Williamsburg for one day, the guys went golfing and the girls went shopping in the morning of another day, then we all just hung out and relaxed for the afternoon and on the last day we went to Busch Gardens all day and in the evening R and I took a lovely stroll around the market area of Colonial Williamsburg. And of course, we ate at really good restaurants every evening for dinner. And I think a good dinner really makes for a good vacation.

We absolutely loved the area. It was beautiful. I really liked Colonial Williamsburg. The revolutionary war period is my favorite part of American history, so I really enjoyed being in a restored city and seeing all of the houses and the little shops and hearing all the stories and such.

On our stroll we walked around the William and Mary campus. I am really hoping that R decides to go to law school there.

Discipline

Working from home takes a lot of self-discipline. I remember working at an office - (at some jobs) it was easy to putz around for a day (chatting with co-workers, volunteering to pick up lunch, and then afternoon snacks, checking my email, signing up for electronic bill-pay, etc.) if I wasn't feeling so great. It just doesn't work the same way anymore. When I check my personal email, it is now on my dime. Even so, the positives of working from home, especially when I have a little one, far out weigh the negatives. However, I definitely cannot do it without a babysitter. If you thought co-workers were a distraction, a cute little girl sitting on your feet, smiling and babbling, is just plain irresistible.

Tough to be the mom

I must admit, I may be a little bit of a softy as a mom. But I really can't just let her cry herself to sleep like all the books say.

Don't get me wrong, I will let her blow off a little steam if she is just overly tired or just being fussy. But when she really crys, I always go in and try to comfort her. It just breaks my heart to hear her crying for real. The times that I am trying to be tough, I will go and sit outside her doorway and cry right along with her. Finally it feels like my heart will break and I go on in and try again. I'll feed her, rock her, sing to her and just cuddle and kiss her. Sometimes, I think I am being selfish for just wanting to treasure as much of her babyhood as I possibly can. But is there really such a thing as too much cuddling and kissing for babies?

A rose by any other name.

I have been surprised by how buying a brand-new house has made me even more excited about home improvement projects. I think with our old house, there was just so much work to do to even start to make it look fabulous that it just felt daunting.

My current dream to-do list is:
-Paint color in every room (and I would love to paint the inside of the closets a complementary color, just for the fun of it).
-Put in a patio in the backyard
-Create an edible garden (veggies for the summer)
-Create a rose garden (to put on my table)
-Install the garage door opener and make our garage into a usable space (for both the car and other stuff)
-Put in a storage door (we have a lot of dead space behind a couple of walls that I would love to take advantage of)

This weekend we are going to start some home improvement projects. My husband, R, agreed to painting the bathroom (we are starting small, but it is still a start). I am hoping to do a lovely shade of warm grey. It has hardwood floors and white fixtures, and 4 frameless glass pictures of roses, so I think that will work well. Maybe I will take a before and after picture.

We also have a couple of people coming over to give us an estimate on how much it will cost to install a garage door opener and put a small door in the wall to access some space for storage. If the price is right, we can have that going soon too I hope.

A project I am really excited about is my rose garden. I bought 5 rose bushes - all different shades, and i want to plant them this weekend. In Provo, we lived in a little house right across the street from the BYU arboretum. The arboretum had lots of lovely little paths through the plants, but my favorite place was the roses circle. They had so many types and I loved to walk through there and just smell them. I also fondly remember going to see a beautiful rose garden in Switzerland when I was a teenager. So when I saw rose bushes on sale at aldi for really cheap I couldn't resist the chance to create my own little rose garden - in the hope that I will be able to cut flowers for my table regularly.

A New Addiction

When C&C came out over Christmas, I had no idea they would introduce me to a new addiction. I am a not-so-closet Sudoku Addict.

In fact, I own 3 different Sudoku books and whenever I am watching TV or just experiencing a little down time, I indulge myself. I have even come up with a number of very good justifications for why I should do sudoku every day - maybe even spend hours doing it every day.

-It is a great brain stimulation and no one wants alzhimers disease
-It is a social sport - I can still carry on a conversation whilst enjoying sudoku (R may disagree with this one)

That is all I have come up with so far. I did however, come across the greatest thing yet - samurai Sudoku. It is 5 intertwined sudoku puzzles - could it get any better? Well apparently it does! There is killer butterfly samurai sudoku - I haven't tried that one... yet.

(see www.djape.net to try out some great free puzzles)

Domestic Help

Today was the first day with a nanny - whose name, ironically enough is Nana. She is going to be coming over every morning for 2 hours. It was really nice. She basically just read to Audrey and played with her and fed her some food. Audrey really likes her - she always smiles for her and goes right to her.

I must admit, it is a little awkward to have someone else here working for me. I don't know how to set the whole thing up. For example, as I was going upstairs to my office, I realized I had not given her a tour of our house or showed her where I would be working or where Audrey's room was, so I did that quickly before I started to work. I think there will definitely be an adjustment period for us to figure things out.

Nana has agreed to help by doing some light cleaning if/when Audrey sleeps. However, I don't even know what to tell her to do. Flylady suggests everyone keep a control journal to keep the house running smoothly, so I think I will try to use that. In the meantime, today I noticed that Nana had organized Audrey's bookshelf - so she may just find little things to do on her own anyway.

24

So I am finally, after 4 seasons, starting to watch 24. And last night they had a 2 hour 24. During which 40% or some other extremely large number of people working at CTU were killed by nerve gas. The premise that CTU only found out about it with 2 minutes until it was released and sent everyone running out of the building and only was able to seal off 3 rooms in the whole building, and so anyone in the building not in those 3 rooms died, was just crazy.

I used to work at DARPA - a rather small DoD agency. I knew within 10 minutes of starting exactly where each safe room in the building was. In fact, they gave me a card to attach to my badge that listed emergency procedures and safe rooms for each floor of both buildings. I also knew that each safe room had enough hoods and masks as well as other emergency supplies to protect each person in the building. None of these rooms was more than 30 seconds away from me at any given moment and at a panic run, I am sure that I could have found one very quickly.

A few jobs before that, I worked at a law firm in DC. Not exactly the sort of place known for high security measures. Even so, each employee was fitted with a mask - that we were given to keep at our desks - for any sort of emergency.

My point is, I appreciate non-realistic shows as much as the next person (Gilmore Girls is my favorite show), but this was a little too far fetched even for me.