it's official

I think I'm becoming an elf (I've become quite the Will Ferrell fan recently). I haven't been able to handle drinking coffee the past week or so (like my taste buds have changed on me) and have replaced my previously prodigious coffee consumption with hot chocolate. Why can't green tea taste as good as hot cocoa. why? It's a lot lower in calories and has all those wonderful antioxidants. sigh.

new banner for winter

Yeah, February will be here before you know it so I thought I'd stick up a new banner, most likely filler until I shoot something better. Been trying out my new camera (a fuji finepix with 12 megapixels and 5x zoom) I haven't actually printed out pictures yet so I can't tell if the detail is as remarkable as it's supposed to be but here are a few things I've shot with it so far.

Snowy stairs picture I took today, I should have worn boots.

Last night's sunset from the place where I go grocery shopping and to the gym every day.

very cool interactive art display at the carnegie museum of art.

Close up of the ribbon wall. you can take a ribbon if it speaks to you and tie it to your wrist (three times) while making a wish. Then you leave a wish behind and when the ribbon breaks off the wish comes true. Some very deep wishes up there - 'I wish to have the strength to divorce my husband', 'I wish it was benign', 'I wish I could tell my parents I'm gay'. Owen took 'I wish guns didn't exist' Oona took 'I wish there were no more thunderstorms' and I took 'I wish my life came with a soundtrack'. Of course I think of all these witty wishes once we left but what I wrote was I wish I didn't worry so much, like that will ever happen, I think it's hardwired in me. I think part of the reason my grandma won't die is that she's too nervous and doesn't think 'letting go' would be the proper thing to do, almost 94 and she still can't give herself a break. And here's my worry nature on full display, with these ribbons tied to a child's wrist, they quickly become nasty ass bacteria magnets, I constantly find Owen chewing on them, I should take a sample for Microbiology (I looked at a stained sample from my cheek thru a microscope today, the professor was very complimentary about my healthy big nucleus in the squamous epithelium). I gotta work my magic and make that ribbon fall off (thanks to some cutting while he's sleeping) tonight.

Owen's board break, from doing a reverse kick. He got it on his first try.

Owen getting his blue belt

3 below

No school for the kids today so I missed statistics, the professor emailed me letting me know what I missed and said to get notes off of one of the other students, none of whom I know. Sigh... So I gathered up the kids for a trip to Target because we were out of dish soap and I figured I'd get play-doh to entertain them with (our play-doh supplies were all mixed together and dried up). It is so cold here that the inside of my nose frosted over just getting the kids in the car. Of course shopping with my children we wound up with the $12.99 octopus where every arm has a different tool and you can push his sailor hat to make him squeeze out different shapes, with the corresponding aquatic attachment. Cross your fingers for me that next week is free of delays or snow related school closings. Happy weekend everybody.

snowbound

So I'm already messing up on my promise of posting more often. I've started my first week of classes and am about to have a nervous breakdown trying to coordinate my schedule with my children and husband's. I'm taking statistics and microbiology and planned on leaving microbiology a half hour early every time in order to pick up Oona from school (the professor okayed this) but then Oona's school said I could drop her off early so I could go to the earlier micro class and not need to disrupt people (and feel horribly rude) by leaving early. The prof said that was fine that all I needed to do was show up for the earlier class... which is going on now, while I sit at home with my two children due to a 2 hour snow delay. AGHHH! So I get to show up at the later class, when just yesterday I said I was switching to the early class, and leave forty-five minutes early in order to give myself ample time to get to Oona's school in order to pick her up. I hate being in positions where I feel like I'm coming across as supremely flaky or irresponsible. And trying to explain this to the professor I just know I'll flub because this is all so important to me, so I'll get emotional and just not present myself well. Where are the effects of global warming when you need them.

a touch of class

In my miscellaneous folder, which I have schlepped around with me everywhere these past fifteen years, not willing to part with certain items that I couldn't figure out a place to put, are...

1. a fifteen year old aptitude test which indicates I'm stellar at inductive reasoning and spatial relations but only average at vocabulary

2. a package of glow in the dark stickers

3. the letterhead from my great grandfather's camp, Camp Quest, in Maine (I want to turn it into a t-shirt)

4. bad poetry and writing from the past fifteen years (to shred or not to shred)

5. astrodienst print out providing detailed astrological charts on me, toby and the kids (for all that's worth)

6. and this true gem below, that I found between the pages of Martha Stewart Living when I was freelancing there. I just cannot part with it and hopefully you'll understand why. This is one of those stupid advertisements that never ceases to make me laugh (you need to enlarge it in order to read the copy, which is priceless). Enjoy!

christmas past

Conspicuous christmas consumption. To be fair over half these present were from Grandma Cat for the kids, and us. And it all looked, well I wouldn't say modest, but not quite as greedy once boxes were opened and flattened for recycling. Funny side note, I lost my keys looking for Oona's leapster. I ran to the car (right outside our front door) and came back in and the keys vanished. I seriously thought I was losing my mind, or experiencing early onset dementia. I went through two boxes of flattened cardboard (for recycling), two large bags of flattened gift wrap (more recycling), the trash, I turned the entire first floor upside down (and cleaned up for dinner in the process). The keys were found two days later, in the hood of my mom's sweatshirt...in Staten Island. She packed them up and brought them home with her and by chance put on the outfit and noticed the hood was a bit heavy (the sweatshirt had been on a piece of furniture in our entryway and I must have thrown the keys in there accidently).

Two guesses as to who was up at the crack of dawn and who wanted to sleep in.

Owen, the eager beaver, was up and dressed by 5:50. Fortunately we were able to keep him in his room for an hour, although he kept popping into our room every fifteen minutes practically bursting with excitement. Owen is the world's most appreciative kid when it comes to presents. What boy would be so elated to find a hat in his stocking?!

Poor Oona, it took a little while for her to perk up and grasp what was going on. She's like me when it comes to sleep, a bit of a bear who would rather burrow back in the warmth of her bed than wake up. That rat's nest at the back of her head is quickly becoming permanent, since she freaks out any time I try to brush or comb her hair.

Oona finally perked up & put on a bow, it was a lovely Christmas.

happy new year!

Hopefully you weren't partying to the extent that you wound up with powdered sugar donut all over your face like Oona... But I hope that everyone's holiday was as happy and stressfree as possible. Best wishes for 2009 and I will post more regularly than I have the past month - December was a blur, it might have to be my blog vacation month in the future. I'm taking Oona to the dr in an hour, after two rounds of antibiotics she still hasn't kicked the cold she's had since Halloween (I photoshopped out the green snot in this picture) and is now running a fever and has a horrible cough but it's not like it stops her activity level at all.

neglect

Hello, it's me again. So sorry I've been treating this blog like a spouse that you rely on to the extent that you can sort of overlook that they need to be appreciated and listened to too. Like how I personify my blog?! But I think it's something very easy to do, not be mindful, and sort of take for granted those closest to us - especially with the rat race of day to day and I'm no Palin fan but things are feeling very end of days globally of late. Soo... I will try to post more regularly. I finished my finals, looks like I've chalked up to more As. I know it's only community college but it makes me happy to have a 4.0 in school. I wish I had been this dedicated as an undergrad but, you know, being young and dumb I was more focused on boys. Oh well, it's never too late to discover your inner science geek is what I tell myself. Before Christmas arrives I have grand plans to paint over the living room, dining room, half bath and hallway - I don't know if all of this (or any) will be realized but I like to aim high. I'm getting a new camera for my birthday (yippee) so even if I don't post random interior monologues I'll try to get back to posting photos more often, although finding the photogenic parts of Pittsburgh in the winter is a somewhat herculean task. Hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving. I gorged on sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce and gravy - seriously I could eat that every day without getting bored. But... I'm trying to learn more about healthy eating and will try not to be such an emotional eater in the new year. I really don't know how any mom can not be an emotional eater but I'll try. It's odd because people will comment on me being small or there's a woman at the gym who's always assuming I have no problems with my weight but my mind is like a size 12 person stuck in a much smaller size body. It sounds so fake to say but it's true, no matter how much I weigh I always seem to look the same and I focus on the bulging parts- sort of like how I focus on all the crack in my walls. I think if you've ever struggled with an eating disorder it might make sense but otherwise it might seem like you're looking for a compliment handout. Anyhoo, I'll try to post cheery pictures in the next few days.

oona's been busy

Yep, it definitely seems to be different with girls. Oona blessed us with this creative display a couple of weeks ago. She also hit the dining room and living room walls. Mind you she did all this handiwork while I spent five, ten minutes tops, packing my bag for the gym and gathering snacks for the kids while they're at the gym. Imagine my surprise when I came upon all the scribblings.
On the plus side, these are rooms that we're planning on repainting anyway. In the spring Oona's moving out of her tiny room to Owen's room and Owen's moving up to the guest bedroom (we don't get many visitors) and Oona's room will become my craft room/office for nursing school.

I like how the scribbles sort of look like speech bubbles, but don't let Oona know that I said that. Her room looks horrible right now - no pictures (she swings them against the wall), no curtains (pulled at), broken windowshade (guess who broke it), dresser taken out of room when she tried to climb it and it almost fell on top of her. Her room is a bit like a cell but she's three and pretty destructive. There are a bunch of stuffed animals though.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

refinishing job #2

This is a buffet I got back in September for $60 from the Goodwill. Sort of had a late 60s early 70s tacky vibe to it - I hated the carving detail in the legs that was stained a darker color but I was hoping I could refinish this to work with my decor. My decor being hodgepodge on a budget, which I would define as simple country, coziness and family friendly atmosphere a must. I'm terrible at documenting 'before' pictures as I'm usually so eager to start a project I jump right in, thus the drawers were already stripped in this photo. Of course I jump right in like an energizer bunny and then hit a wall very quickly, like when I realize my vision will take longer than an afternoon to do. And the project drags out for weeks or months. But this one is finally through, thank God and I'm on to the next project in masochism.





And after. Overall I'm happy with the way it turned out, although the 'rusty red' iron pulls and knobs don't match (the knobs are rustier). I'm not a huge fan of 'rusty red' for a hardware finish but the boring size for the pulls is 4 1/2" which makes your pull pickings very slim. Now I can't wait to fill this puppy up with all the crap cluttering the bookshelves in our living room. My goal for the new year is to streamline/declutter the living room and dining room (as much as I can having two kids). Let me know what you think and if you have any idea how I can tone down the rustiness on the knobs.

cold snap

The cold weather has come too early to Pittsburgh. Here in the house of Amelia Plum that means... Oona's is experiencing the static induced bad hair days a month or two sooner than usual. Fortunately she's cute enough that she seems to be able to pull off the look. I've tried lightly coating my hands in lotion and then patting down her hair. But, honestly, nothing seems to work. It's so fine and she's adamant about having no barrettes or other type of hair accessories in said hair (I'm lucky to get a hat on her).

And Owen's back to hogging all the hot air coming out of the living room register. No wonder it's always so darn cold in the living room. I understand why Owen does it though, at times I think I should start a blog Feed Owen where I just put a picture up of him in all his skinny glory and see how much money we could collect in food donations. But I wouldn't do that because it's fraud and he does eat a lot it just doesn't seem to stick on him. Don't we wish we all had that problem?!

bruise dementia

Two posts in one day, can you handle it? In other mundane news I have had this bruise for over a week now ( I just took this totally unflattering picture) and I have absolutely no idea how this bruise got there. I notice this happening more and more as I approach 40 (less than one month away, yikes) that I get bruises on my legs, usually on the thighs and I have no idea how they got there or what I bumped into. So last week I'm changing into my pj's and notice this huge oval and I'm completely baffled, did I inadvertently use the hose attachment on the vacuum on my leg? In other news my vacuum died a spectacular death last week. I'm cleaning when all of a sudden I jumped because it sounded like gunfire but it was only the belt breaking on the vacuum. I would have brought it for repair until I noticed that a piece of plastic and a screw blew right off the vacuum's body (I found it under the sofa a nasty jagged triangle of death) and was thankful that my kids weren't in the living room when I was cleaning, imagine getting impaled by a vacuum remnant. Toby was playing X-box at the time but he also escaped injury. Does anyone know if those Dyson's are worth the obscene amount of money they charge for them?

hello goodbye halloween and october

Okay, so I'm obviously terribly behind in posting to my blog. The country's so different, halloween has passed, we have the hope of our new president-elect - thank you Florida, Ohio, and all you other awesome states that turned blue this election! My Grandma is on hospice and no longer can get around on her own, she's declined cognitively a bunch but don't count her out yet - she's back to eating, well nibbling on her favorite frosted cookies, and she's gotten back that fiesty spark in her eyes. Well, back to Halloween, I totally dropped the ball and didn't take pictures when the kids went trick or treating but fortunately my neighbor got one pic of our kids from that night. Owen would be the one wearing the somewhat scary Anakin Skywalker (from The Clone Wars he'd have you know!) mask.

Oona's titled her costume 'Bad Princess Kitty' a girl who at three is already in touch with the virgin whore dichotomy. She loved twirling around and playing with her artfully shredded skirt but wasn't so keen on wearing the mask or the elbow length velvet gloves. Miraculously Pittsburgh experienced its second straight year of beautifully mild Halloween weather (I always feel so bad for the kids when it's a nasty night of freezing rain and they have to cover up their costumes with coats) so it was a great day out.

Oona's school had a halloween parade (like how I 'framed' the picture with the two spidermen in her class) and here she is hugging one of her buddies. Her teachers had come to our house for a parent teacher conference a few weeks ago and they mentioned that a few of the girls in the class have already formed cliques where they'll exclude other girls (it's baffling and horrible that this crap starts at 3 and 4) which, obviously, upsets the girls that are excluded. But they said Oona doesn't care at all. She'll play with whomever, boys, girls, popular or not. Thank God! Owen's the same way at his school, he'll play with anyone as long as they aren't bullies or bossy, which makes me happy as a clam that they're kind.

Just a little fyi about the picture. Owen voted in school yesterday - for Obama for president, pizza as his favorite food and when asked his favorite color he wrote all. He also drew this picture, which is now in the front window. The purple person in front of the white house is Owen, Obama is holding the flag in one hand and a net in the other because he's trying to get McCain in his net (McCain being the tiny man in the bottom corner). Oh I wish he'd made this earlier so I could have turned it into a t-shirt!