1. My favorite shoes to wear to work have no soles, so anytime I have to walk on the uncarpeted part of the floor I start to fall down. Have I gotten the soles fixed? No. Do I still wear these same shoes almost every time I work? Yes. Do I feel completely embarrassed when I almost slip in fall in front of coworkers and patrons every time I walk across the floor? Yes. Can even I figure out why I do this? No.
2. Flutterflies usually fly in water. I learned this because Liam is being a flutterfly as of late, and according to him "unfortunately he cannot eat lunch because flutterflies usually do not eat lunch." 'Unfortunately" he "cannot eat" many meals because of prior commitments he has, which include "breaking up the concrete" and other construction jobs, feeding his Baby Noah and cutting down or trimming sick trees.
3. Teething is a terrible terrible painful situation, and gets 10000% worse when you are tired. I learned this from Brendan, who now screams at the TOP of his lungs like he is being mauled by a tiger when he is tired and then proceeds to swing himself around furiously, inevitably banging his head on something, which causes him to scream louder than anyone thought possible. At other times he bites me, then cries like I bit HIM. Other times he simply walks around and plays while sucking in his cheeks and it is SO SAD.
4. My friend Kelly alluded to this point on her blog recently. When I was pregnant with Liam, but before I knew I was pregnant, I did a health evaluation thing at the gym I used to go to in Lincoln Square. I was 28 at the time, and among other things I learned that I had a body age of 21. It would have been lower, but my blood pressure was high that day. normally my blood pressure is like 90/60 or something, and when I was having each kid it dipped down to Much Too Low which made all sorts of widgets beep very loudly while I tried to sleep during labor. Anyway, three years and two babies later, I am sure my new body age would be calculated at somewhere between 62 and 67. Brendan absolutely abhors sleeping for more than 2 hours at a time. Before that I would have said my body age would have been about 43. I certainly have no time to go to the gym, nor do I even have time to walk down into the basement and use the elliptical. I have a group project and an assignment due over the next two weeks and finding time to do those WHILE my brain is capable of functioning is hard enough. Reading my book for the book club I am leading in early December is about all I can muster. When I will ever lose the 8 - 12 pounds I am up, that remains unclear. Point #4 is getting too long, though I have MUCH more to say on the subject.
5. I hope gas prices stay low because Eric and I want to take a road trip in March out to Arizona and that would be awesome if gas is cheap. I cannot believe it was this past April that we were in Dublin. I would LOVE to go to Italy even though we seriously should not spend money on that but hopefully in the next couple of years we will do that. It is nice because right now we don't have school schedules limiting our vacation times, but we also have all those projects to do on the house and the economy has seen better days. And then again you only live once, so carpe diem!
6. News no one wants to know: Brendan does not want to give up nursing, Liam does not want to give up diapers.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
This just in (ok not "just", since it was in last week, but...):
Mt. Prospect has been picked by BusinessWeek magazine as the best place in the country to raise children.
The northwest suburban community was cited today for its affordability and for the quality of its schools, where students consistently score high on reading and math tests.
The community came out on top in BusinessWeek's second annual roundup of "The Best Places in America to Raise Kids."
Village officials said they were thrilled with the honor.
Also mentioned were Phoenix; Columbus, Ohio; and Ann Arbor, Mich.
--Chicago Breaking News Center
I think that's cool, since as anyone reading this knows I miss the city terribly, so any good news about Mount Prospect makes me happy. In fact I saw a guy
going around taking pictures of houses on my street a couple months ago and I think this is what he was up to. Cool! But anyway, I've been reading different articles about this and the one I highlighted above had the following comment, which I couldn't love more:
"what will all the SUV driving, cell phone wielding, soccer moms do in naperville now - i hope my great city of of mt prospect doesn't bring all these nutjobs to our city - stay where you belong naperville nutjobs."
Somehow I literally didn't know where Mount Prospect was until we moved here (and I think I worked here at a bread company for a couple days in college, unless that was Morton Grove.)
Today Liam was crawling through this tunnel we have and it was in the living room, so when he inevitably slipped inside it he fell on his head on the hardwood and got an enormous goosegg on his forehead. I'm going to try and post a picture of it. It drives me crazy how he ALWAYS manages to hit his head. Why? He is scarily skilled with all things sports-related, can navigate pushtrucks and cars through teeny spaces, etc. etc,., but just like Eric he cannot walk without tripping over things. I mean at least he's still a toddler. But Brendan doesn't seem to have inherited this trait (thank God!)
I have one reading response left to do for class and it needs to be in tonight by
11. Let's keep our fingers crossed I can get it in. Then I just *just* have a giant group project and one other assignment and I'll be done with class. Yippee! 2 down, 8 more to go. Not a good way to think about it I now realize. This is the master's degree that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend.
Mt. Prospect has been picked by BusinessWeek magazine as the best place in the country to raise children.
The northwest suburban community was cited today for its affordability and for the quality of its schools, where students consistently score high on reading and math tests.
The community came out on top in BusinessWeek's second annual roundup of "The Best Places in America to Raise Kids."
Village officials said they were thrilled with the honor.
Also mentioned were Phoenix; Columbus, Ohio; and Ann Arbor, Mich.
--Chicago Breaking News Center
I think that's cool, since as anyone reading this knows I miss the city terribly, so any good news about Mount Prospect makes me happy. In fact I saw a guy
going around taking pictures of houses on my street a couple months ago and I think this is what he was up to. Cool! But anyway, I've been reading different articles about this and the one I highlighted above had the following comment, which I couldn't love more:
"what will all the SUV driving, cell phone wielding, soccer moms do in naperville now - i hope my great city of of mt prospect doesn't bring all these nutjobs to our city - stay where you belong naperville nutjobs."
Somehow I literally didn't know where Mount Prospect was until we moved here (and I think I worked here at a bread company for a couple days in college, unless that was Morton Grove.)
Today Liam was crawling through this tunnel we have and it was in the living room, so when he inevitably slipped inside it he fell on his head on the hardwood and got an enormous goosegg on his forehead. I'm going to try and post a picture of it. It drives me crazy how he ALWAYS manages to hit his head. Why? He is scarily skilled with all things sports-related, can navigate pushtrucks and cars through teeny spaces, etc. etc,., but just like Eric he cannot walk without tripping over things. I mean at least he's still a toddler. But Brendan doesn't seem to have inherited this trait (thank God!)
I have one reading response left to do for class and it needs to be in tonight by
11. Let's keep our fingers crossed I can get it in. Then I just *just* have a giant group project and one other assignment and I'll be done with class. Yippee! 2 down, 8 more to go. Not a good way to think about it I now realize. This is the master's degree that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Mug's Pizza & Ribs - It's Good!
Warning - totally random stream of consciousness.
Yeah, there IS another restaurant that delivers to us that's good - Mug's Pizza & Ribs. It reminds me of Perry's. And their grilled chicken sandwich is awesome. Phew! And it's the weekend! Well it is for me since I don't work Friday - Sunday this week.
If you eat an entire batch of cookies in three days it's ok as long as they are whole wheat and oatmeal, right? I mean and chocolate chips too, but that's a given. And Liam, Eric and Brendan probably had 2 or 3 too. Combined.
Isn't it funny how 56 degrees seems balmy and warm now? This was the main problem with southern California. Every single day it was between 76 and 79 degrees. You cannot be normal when that is the temperature every day. Thus, an entire region of the country, totally nuts.
I am looking for books written by women that are clever, funny, quirky and good. Or some combination thereof. Any suggestions?
I remember Kathy way back at Love's told me how housewives go nuts because it is psychologically taxing to keep doing something that keeps getting undone (i.e. cleaning up the house.) Oh my gosh that is soooooooo true. Especially when joined with a lack of good sleep. And especially when you have a house that NEVER gets really cleaned up because there are 65,001 improvments you need to make to it and never enough time or money to get a lot of them done at once. For instance we are just now starting to get new interior doors. How hard could that be? Well first you have to buy the doors and hardware. If you go with your existing door frames that is like $150 - $200 per door. Then you have to whittle out the places where the hinges and the doorknob go, stain the door, level it and who knows what else. So obviously too much work to kick it off in a weekend or something. We have 10 interior doors we want to swap out. So we called Eric's brother's handyman guy to see how much he'd charge to install the doors. $180 per door. So that's a minimum of $3,200 to replace the doors. And then we still have to finish replacing the rest of the windows, repaint the cabinets (until we can redo the whole kitchen) get new coutertops, repaint the stairwell and our bedroom ceiling which is literally peeling off, buy and install new trim for the living room, dining room, upstairs hallway and den, repaint the trim and the list goes on and on forever. And I didn't even mention knocking down the wall between the dining room and kitchen or finishing the basement or getting an addition. Thank goodness working, going to school and having a 2 year old and a 1 year old is easy, inexpensive and relaxing.
Why do I get random mail for my neighbors every week and what mail of my own am I not getting?
Yeah, there IS another restaurant that delivers to us that's good - Mug's Pizza & Ribs. It reminds me of Perry's. And their grilled chicken sandwich is awesome. Phew! And it's the weekend! Well it is for me since I don't work Friday - Sunday this week.
If you eat an entire batch of cookies in three days it's ok as long as they are whole wheat and oatmeal, right? I mean and chocolate chips too, but that's a given. And Liam, Eric and Brendan probably had 2 or 3 too. Combined.
Isn't it funny how 56 degrees seems balmy and warm now? This was the main problem with southern California. Every single day it was between 76 and 79 degrees. You cannot be normal when that is the temperature every day. Thus, an entire region of the country, totally nuts.
I am looking for books written by women that are clever, funny, quirky and good. Or some combination thereof. Any suggestions?
I remember Kathy way back at Love's told me how housewives go nuts because it is psychologically taxing to keep doing something that keeps getting undone (i.e. cleaning up the house.) Oh my gosh that is soooooooo true. Especially when joined with a lack of good sleep. And especially when you have a house that NEVER gets really cleaned up because there are 65,001 improvments you need to make to it and never enough time or money to get a lot of them done at once. For instance we are just now starting to get new interior doors. How hard could that be? Well first you have to buy the doors and hardware. If you go with your existing door frames that is like $150 - $200 per door. Then you have to whittle out the places where the hinges and the doorknob go, stain the door, level it and who knows what else. So obviously too much work to kick it off in a weekend or something. We have 10 interior doors we want to swap out. So we called Eric's brother's handyman guy to see how much he'd charge to install the doors. $180 per door. So that's a minimum of $3,200 to replace the doors. And then we still have to finish replacing the rest of the windows, repaint the cabinets (until we can redo the whole kitchen) get new coutertops, repaint the stairwell and our bedroom ceiling which is literally peeling off, buy and install new trim for the living room, dining room, upstairs hallway and den, repaint the trim and the list goes on and on forever. And I didn't even mention knocking down the wall between the dining room and kitchen or finishing the basement or getting an addition. Thank goodness working, going to school and having a 2 year old and a 1 year old is easy, inexpensive and relaxing.
Why do I get random mail for my neighbors every week and what mail of my own am I not getting?
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Mug's Pizza & Ribs?
Well, we've found a new restaurant that does deliver to our house and seems to have a good menu. Could they be a replacement for our old place? I'll let you know.
We are thinking of going to the Funkadesi concert at Old Town School this Sunday. The tickets are $15, which isn't bad, except that now when we have to multiply everything by 4 cheap things get pricey.
We are thinking of going to the Funkadesi concert at Old Town School this Sunday. The tickets are $15, which isn't bad, except that now when we have to multiply everything by 4 cheap things get pricey.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
VOTE
Well today is the big day! I have to work until 9:00 (it was supposed to be 10 but my awesome supervisor is letting me leave at 9 to watch the returns.) We voted as a family at 10:00, walked right in and encountered no lines. The other precinct that votes at our polling place had a little line, but not too bad. Liam and Brendan were good (well apparently Brando was a little squirmy but he was with Eric so he seemed good to me :o) ) One of Eric's colleagues lives I think in LA or MS said he waited over 3 hours. Wow. It could not be a more beautiful day to vote, so I hope that is a good omen for our country.
On a sort of unrelated vote, what happened to gas prices? And, um, why did they go down like almost $2/gal with no fanfare. I thought the News was predicting it's be $4/gal for the foreseeable future and that's why airlines had to raise prices and charge extra if you carried pocket change on board. And why trucking companies were going out of business and yada yada yada. I know prices can and do fluctuate but a few weeks ago I filled up for $4.20 and then yesterday it was $2.40ish. Maybe I'm hallucinating but something weird is going on here.
Anyway, Happy Voting!!!!
On a sort of unrelated vote, what happened to gas prices? And, um, why did they go down like almost $2/gal with no fanfare. I thought the News was predicting it's be $4/gal for the foreseeable future and that's why airlines had to raise prices and charge extra if you carried pocket change on board. And why trucking companies were going out of business and yada yada yada. I know prices can and do fluctuate but a few weeks ago I filled up for $4.20 and then yesterday it was $2.40ish. Maybe I'm hallucinating but something weird is going on here.
Anyway, Happy Voting!!!!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Buy Organic (free range, fair trade, non GMO...)
I am too tired to summarize this article, but it's a good one to read
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/01/business/01organic.html?em
If you want something uplifting and life-affirming, on the other hand, The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar is not a good book to read. Very well written, thought-provoking, and sucks the happiness right out of you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/01/business/01organic.html?em
If you want something uplifting and life-affirming, on the other hand, The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar is not a good book to read. Very well written, thought-provoking, and sucks the happiness right out of you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)