too much of a good thing

This order for my freelance client seems endless, it's like those pail carrying brooms in Fantasia. They keep putting more folders full of jpegs into my folder (all virtual on their dev site). I'd just love to try and explain virtual folders to my 92 year old grandmother, she still has a hard time with the concept of Owen's pre-k program. I know this will help us out a great deal financially (plus I think we might be able to spring for this new living room carpet, let me know what you think) but I'm at the point where I just want a breather from PhotoShop, my neck and shoulders are in very bad shape due to my poor computer posture. Hope everyone enjoys their spring weekend!

easter booty

So I mistakenly thought that Easter was this Sunday instead of next Sunday. Toby was all excited about making Easter cards from a joke I said 'Jesus lives, April fools'. Wouldn't that be weird to have it on April Fools Day? So rich in irony. But, alas, it's only Palm Sunday which I don't even know the meaning of (I'm an idiot when it comes to religion) it just seems like a marker for official countdown to the resurrection. Anyhow, I started buying Easter candy, some chocolate bars with cute vintage wrappers from TJ Maxx - God knows how tasty they'll be, their expiration date probably passed two years ago. I also got some chocolate covered peanut butter eggs and chocolate marshmallow eggs. Anyone want to take bets on if there'll be any peanut butter eggs left by Easter? I've already eaten some, ugh.

18 months

Oona's 1 1/2 today! I think this is the critical period where I can stop giving her age in months and just say she's 1 1/2 or almost 2 when she closes in on her birthday. Some of us Mom's can be downright pathological with the exact age of our children and you can always tell a non-parent by the fuzzy look you get when you've told them your baby is fifteen months old. To be honest sometimes I'd get confused and give the wrong amount of months to another Mom asking me Oona's age and I'd just get an odd, rather critical look in reply as I'm trying to count back to September out loud. Oh well.

Last night I was downloading podcasts from NPR and started looking into how to contribute an essay to 'this I believe' (right up your alley E). The thing is I have no clue what I believe in that I could write an effective essay about. Religion? I'm an optimistic agnostic. Moments when a belief was formed, tested or changed? I just think so much of what I think is, unfortunately, so inherently pessimistic. Are they really going to want a belief essay that's the written equivalent of a sigh? Name a core belief? Personal philosophies? All I see are tumbleweeds in my mind. I just draw such a huge blank on the whole thing. I believe that I'm a waffler, I said I'm agnostic so I guess that's a bit redundant. I believe our culture is too fast and vapid and I worry so so much about the future for my children. But I also believe I hear Oona crying so I better put an end to this post quick.

holy grail

In my case the coveted grail is a pair of jeans that fit and are flattering. I don't know why this is so hard. With any type of low rise pant I'm hitching up my underwear and jeans every two seconds but there are no jeans close to the waist that don't make you look like you've got an ass the size of a truck and they're usually tapered which just emphasizes the truck ass even more. To top it off my right thigh is larger than the left one, possibly a result of all my driving, so all the mom related chaffeuring makes me apoplectic with the extreme drivers (just yesterday a guy illegally passed me on a narrow, windy mountain because I was going too slow due to a hail storm) and gives me a thick thigh.

Other holy grails I'm on a quest for are a way to keep Oona from screaming when she doesn't get her way and to keep Owen from whining when he doesn't get his way.

Oh yeah, and an uninterrupted night of 8 hours sleep. A girl can dream.

after the maelstrom

Thank God last week is over and done with. Yikes - the crunch of all the freelance work that I had and the panic of my looming Monday deadline enabled me to somehow pack 24 hours worth of photoshop work in this weekend. My ass, mouse arm and neck still haven't recovered. Thank God Toby, my favorite atheist, watched the kids and kept me supplied with a steady stream of coke and peanut m&m's - the pressure brings out the junk food junkie in me. There's still more work to be done on this monster order, it seems never ending, but it is in more doable sized chunks. And it looks like we'll be able to get some new furniture for the living room which I'm ecstatic about. Our couch and chair are so stain covered (lots of coffee and soda has made it's way onto the couch) I wouldn't sit on them if I came across them in a waiting room. I thought about having them professionally cleaned but I disliked them so much I didn't want to shell out the money and commit to them in that way. It will be nice to finally own, as I'm nearing forty, a couch that I've bought. Not a couch I found off the street or a futon couch, or a couch that's been handed down to us - a real couch! So me being an overly practical Mom, I'm thinking of the Pottery Barn basic couch and chair. They're slipcovered, which seems kid friendly. Although I love the sage velvet slipcover which isn't as practical, but it's such a beautiful shade of green - darker, a bit more olive and richer than the swatch online. It's so pretty, I must have that fabric in my living room where I can look at it daily. The couch and chair are also a 'standard size' that I can buy additional fitted slipcovers for online (if I decided to change the look) at a much less expensive cost than the Pottery Barn slipcovers - close to $750 for the slipcover alone?! I was thinking of maybe getting the square arm because it looks sleeker but I don't think it will be as comfy if you're lying down and I can't get a cheap slipcover for that type arm. If anyone owns a couch or chair like this from Pottery Barn please let me know your thoughts and how it wears. In other news the house is a disaster from a week of me not cleaning - Owen's room is particularly bad with tiny lego pieces all over the floor. I can only hope one or both cats chokes on a lego. Yes, I'm regretting my temporary insanity of getting two cats. I clean litter and vaccum the bathroom daily, sometimes twice a day and it always looks like I haven't touched the bathroom in months. Litter is everywhere. Male cats also seem stinkier than female cats, they've been spayed but they can smell quite musky at times. Maybe I should buy some tainted cat food. I'd never give them away and I probably would feel bad if they died but right now they're driving everyone in the house crazy.

at the zoo

So last week was a typical discombobulated, Mom-busy type week. Owen had 3 days off of school while I've got a looming deadline for finishing these photos that I'm working on, nothing like that to bring the stress on. Friday was a pretty nice day though, not as lovely as today, it's close to 70, but it was much warmer than it had been of late. So I went with the kids to the zoo real early in the morning, since it was basically the only place open at 9:00 I figured we'd spend a couple hours there and then go run errands. It is so nice to have the zoo close to us and I think there were maybe six other people in the zoo, so we basically we had the place to ourselves. Mama tiger and her two cubs were nice enough to sit right next to the observation window which we all enjoyed.

Owen's favorite part of the zoo is the aquarium. There's an amazing two story fish tank holding leopard sharks and all these other fish, but Owen always runs right by it and down the ramp to the first floor where he can crawl through a tunnel under sting rays. Before his race to the ground floor he was patient enough to let me take a couple pictures at the tank holding starfish and sea urchins. I can't believe how pretty the coloring of the urchins are. Hope everyone enjoys this quick burst of warm weather, stay away from the computer if you can. I should take my own advice.

tuesday's child is full of grace

But not in the case of my daughter, who seems to utterly lack grace or even basic human agility. Last night we went out to dinner and I got a scoop of vanilla ice cream for Oona to eat. I was feeding her little spoonfuls when she yanked the spoon out of my hand and attempted to feed herself. She wound up jamming the spoon into her eye and now has a nice bruise on her eyelid. This morning a particularly heavy dust mote felled her, at least that's the only explanation I have for her falling for no apparent reason and cutting her lip. And our tv entertainment center, that I'm always eyeing with concern about the corners on the bottom, well Oona with the head that's a heat seeking missile for injury, hit her forehead against the corner, after the lip cutting fall, now her forehead is swollen and bruising nicely. At least it didn't indent and she didn't cut herself or else I'd be making yet another head injury related trip to the ER. Here's hoping she doesn't throw up during her nap. My daughter, I love her to pieces, but with every bump to the head she's shaving time off my life. I just ordered corner cushions from One Step Ahead, maybe one step closer to a nervous breakdown would be more accurate. I was considering getting this but it's letting the fear consume and it also lacks a protective face grill, which Oona would probably need.

brittle blondes

Yesterday I was at the gym, happy to be working out and happy that Oona has settled into a routine with the babysitters there and no longer freaks out when I drop her off. She usually waves and gives me a breathy 'bye' before toddling off to the toys. So I'm pleasantly zoning out on the elliptical when I see something that makes my heart rate spike. A well to do woman, around my age, was working out with a trainer and all the while she's talking on her cell phone. The ubiquity of cell phones and lack of any etiquette when it comes to using them is particularly dismaying to me. I only joined the gym in January and haven't been a gym member for a few years so I guess times have changed, but I find it freaky to see people walking the treadmill and talking on their phone. What's next is someone going to set up a laptop on the recumbent bike? The thing that really irked me about this woman (who was very high maintenance - matching exercise suit, twiggy slim, with bleached, set hair that was 'casually' pulled back in a ponytail, dripping with diamonds and sipping at a coffee between reps - just so you get a vision of her in all her loveliness) was that it struck me as so incredibly rude to be with a trainer and spend all your time on a cell phone. The trainer didn't seem to mind, maybe he's used to it, but what could be so fucking important? She's not the president, she looked like a Fox Chapel (= money. Theresa Heinz & Kerry have a compound in Fox Chapel) stay at home Mom. I just think that if it would piss you off to have your doctor or pastor talk on the phone while your meeting with them, maybe you should treat people in service oriented industries (waitress, cashier, trainer, etc...) with a shred of respect and put your bleeping phone down. I promise I'll calm down on the venting posts real soon, maybe this March coming in like a lion thing I'm taking a bit too literally.

coming in like a lion

This isn't meant towards any of my loyal readers but I have to send out a big f*ck you to ...

1. Sumner Redstone and the rest of Viacom for taking down 'The Daily Show' and 'The Colbert Report' from Youtube. You suck! Oh you took down 'South Park' too? Scrooge!

2. Ford motor company for grossly overestimating the miles per gallon that our Freestyle would get. Yeah, I might be able to get 20 mpg in the city if there were hurricaine force tail winds on my car, I had nothing in the car and there were no stop signs or red lights. How much can the Excursion get in the city, 2 mpg?

3. My post partum hips and thighs - what happened to the days when I could eat McDonalds 4 nights a week and never gain weight. Damn you middle age spread!

4. Not so intelligent design. There was a great article in Scientific American about intelligent design and how many believers felt that 'March of the Penguins' made a strong case for intelligent design. My favorite part of the article was when the author pointed out that penguins are birds who walk instead of fly.