switchfan

Dear Mom,

This Mother's Day, I just want to make sure you know how much I appreciate you.  You have always been, and still are, a huge part of my life, and I'm VERY thankful that I don't just get to enjoy you as a mother, but also as a grandmother.

~Thank you for all the times you woke up in the middle of the night for me.  Especially the ones after I didn't need to eat anymore.

~Thank you for the thousands of hours you spent reading out loud to me. You are the reason I love The Lord of the Rings, and Narnia. Some may not thank you for that, since they would say I take it a teensy bit (ok, a LOT) too seriously, but that's neither here nor there O:).  I am especially thankful for your example, because now I can read to my son(s) and know what will come of it.

~Thank you for all the meals you cooked for me that I never thanked you for. Maybe not so much the lima beans, but everything else - yes ;)

~Thank you for homeschooling me, and sticking with it. Thank you for making it fun, even in the face of my groaning and complaining and general uncooperative spirit that I'm sure I exhibited quite a bit. I felt embarrassed by you a lot when I was a kid, but it was only because I way taking myself waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too seriously.  (Guys, my mom wrote songs to help us remember stuff. Like, all the countries in Africa.  And we went on a Marco Polo expedition. And she made us eat hardtack.  And we spent the whole day stuck on the porch to simulate being on an explorers ship in the 1600's. She's amazing).

~Thank you for letting me be who I wanted to, and not trying to live your desires vicariously through me.

~Thank you for disciplining me.

~Thank you for looking 45 when you're actually almost.... a bit older than you look. I'm excited about those genes :D

~Thank you for making homemade bread and cooking lots of vegetables.

~And last, but certainly not least, thank you for taking over a week out of your life, to come to my crowded, cluttered house, and sacrifice the whole time you were here.  Thank you for washing dishes, packing tons of boxes, keeping a very busy toddler occupied, holding a very large baby, staying up late, getting up early, cleaning my kitchen(s) and bathroom(s), and doing it all my way. I literally COULD NOT have done it without you.

I hope I can be as good a mom to my kids as you were/are to me.

Happy Mother's Day :-*

Now that I have a 2 y/o in my life (with a younger brother who is so far unable to grab things away from him), this is VERY funny. Thank you Family Action Council of TN for emailing this to me....

Wow.

I knew it had been a long time since I posted something, but I hadn't realized that it's been almost 5 months.  For the record, I wrote a LOT of posts in my head, but.... well.... life was more important than posting them (as it should be), so it didn't happen. 

But, I did want to drop in and say that, despite not really caring about New Years, or the whole "resolutions" thing, Jonesey has inspired me to try some anyway. So, here they are, mostly so y'all can feel free to ask me how it's going, and maybe that guilt will help me keep them for a bit longer.

1 ~ Read through the Bible in a year chronologically: I have read through the entire Bible ONCE so far in my life, but that took 2.5 years, so we'll see how this goes.  It would be really good for me if I could keep this up..... I gotta be honest, I skipped the first 3 chapters of Genesis, but the I've probably read those more than any other passage in the Bible. Other than that, I'm on track so far. 

2 ~ Regularly start my day early enough to have down time/quiet time BEFORE the kid(s) are up, rather than waiting until after they go to bed (and staying up until midnight or 1 am): Got up this morning by 6:30, the earliest I have been awake (without going back to sleep) since Thanksgiving.

3 ~ Be more organized and keep the house cleaner: I found a "52 weeks to an organized home" challenge, which I think will really help IF I buckle down and stick to it.  Isn't that always the way?  Maybe I'll even blog about how it's going every week.... we'll see. 

In other news, I made doughnuts in my new doughnut pan last night (given to me by my hubby, who knows how much I love them), and they're pretty good. I also used my new measuring cups when mixing them up :D.  I love Christmas presents. And, I think it's time I left to start getting all the stuff I need to do out of the way so I can start organizing. 

I got this book from the library about 2 weeks ago, because I have finally decided that I need to stop knowing almost nothing about economics.  And, there was a great little article in World Mag a few issues ago about books to read to understand the housing bust and banking bailout, and what led up to it.  So, with that impetus, I went looking for those books. 

( Thumbs down to my library system... )

Whenever summer rolls around, with it's abundance of fruit, I always have grand, ethereal schemes to pick tons of said fruit, and turn it into enough jam to last me all year (and give as gifts).  Of course, most of the time, said grand schemes turn into eaten fruit, rotted fruit (which I DID pick, but then never did anything with, except eventually throw it in the trash), or absolutely nothing at all.

But, this morning, I actually did it! All by myself, and with a very cranky 18M old who had decided I wasn't pay enough attention to him (when he wasn't being distracted by Blues Clues).



What makes it so much cooler (to me), is that the blackberries had been sitting in the fridge for 10 days at this point, and had matured.... past the point of ripeness.  In fact, they smelled like they were trying to decide between heading towards wine, or skipping that altogether and going straight to vinegar.  Naturally, I was very disappointed in myself, since I had BOUGHT new lids+rims and pectin JUST for this batch that I'd spent 2 hours picking. Boo.  

So I fled to my trusty internets, which rarely lets me down, and found this forum post by a lady who had the same problem: can fermented fruit still be turned into yummy jam? Turns out, it can!  All I did was boil the fruit (before adding the pectin) until it smelled like fruit again, instead of wannabe wine.  Took 5-10 minutes. THEN I continued on with the "add pectin, add sugar, bring to a rolling boil for 1 full minute, etc..." steps. I also had to close one eye, and squint past the very STERN and DIRE warnings in the instructions on EXACT measuring (or not only will your jam be a completely worthless pile of wasted time and effort, but your life will be ruined, and bats may even move into your attic.... or something like that). Anyway, they made me very nervous.  But, I started out THINKING I had enough for a full batch, only come to find out that crushed berries fill a lot less cups than whole berries..... yes, seems elementary doesn't it? But, I measured the pectin out via ratios very carefully (the sugar was much easier), and then threw in a little extra for good measure (lumpy jam is better than runny jam).

AND IT WORKED!!! YAY!!  So, despite two strikes against me at the outset, I think I can claim a home run :D. But better, 'cause I have jam, and not just a point (baseball is boring, anyway, so jam is TONS better).

Also today, William discovered that he could sit in his large dump truck, and scoot himself around the living room.












also, I uploaded some videos to facebook, if you like to watch him.  If you don't care, that's ok.  You're just missing out on the CUTEST KID EVER!!!!  

just kidding. I'm not really that vain.

I managed to sell my old Nikon d50 on ebay a few weeks ago, and now that the window for returning it has lapsed, I can spend the extra money I earned (over the cost of my new Nikon d90). Well, I probably shouldn't say "spend", since it's already spent.  I got 2 backup batteries, and a new 8 GB SD card (which means VERY long movies now.... only, probably not, because William isn't usually that interesting for more than a minute or two at a time).

ANYWAY, I was going to also buy this:

Which makes indoor pictures MUCH better. I have actually purchased 2 already, but they were both gifts...  But, then I got distracted by this book:



We got this at our local used bookstore (for a song, I'm sure, since I get ALL children's board books there for a song - or, multiple songs, if you prefer), and it's currently one of william's favorite books.  It's very large (about 12 inches in height), and the pictures are beautiful.  I assume, since I don't know a whole lot about Africa, that all of the accompanying birds and fauna are real subspecies that a giraffe would encounter.  In any case, it's ridiculously beautiful AND educational at the same time.

I've been meaning to look it up on Amazon to see if there were any others (since the back of the book said there were many books in the series), and lo and behold....:

















There are actually at least 5 more that I didn't post, mainly because I didn't buy those.  So, instead of a light scoop, over the next few days we will be the proud new owners of ALL of these books!!!

Thank you Amazon for a) free prime 2day-shipping, b) having enough of these books on a "buy 4 get the cheapest one free" special, and c) selling me the little rabbit book for $.01 AND giving me free shipping on it!  I thought about waiting until I could get back to the used book store, but that would have required WAITING. And having to comb through the entire children's section in search of specific books (which I hate to do, because I'm always trying to keep William from wandering off to flirt with strangers (who are probably all fine upstanding citizens... but it's my job to be paranoid (within reason))).  I much prefer to just grab a handful of books off the shelf, flip through them real quick, replace them, and grab another. I'm really looking forward to when William likes books enough to sit down and look at them IN PUBLIC instead of wanting to run around EVERYWHERE. Of course, by that point, I will probably have another one who is doing the running around. Maybe I just should give up and get a leash....

In any case, I got all of those books for $27.59, which isn't an AMAZING deal, but it's a GOOD deal, considering they are all in very good condition.

Moving on....

Recently I've also snagged a year long membership to the zoo for $27 (thank you, groupon), and so we've been twice already.  Surprisingly, William seems to enjoy the owl and the snakes the most.  Which is funny to me, because neither of those animals move when we're looking at them. And he's been randomly saying "Camel!" for the past three days. (Also, someone else bought the deal with the link I sent them, which enabled me to turn around and purchase a $50 photobook credit for $5 - sweet :D)

And, I also managed to snag my Dad's future birthday present for FREE because of credits on ANOTHER daily deal site (he reads my blog, so you don't get any more details than that)

In case you care, William just turned 18 months.  He's running, walking down stairs (but only holding on to someone's hand - however, that's just in case his own balance fails), "helping" me in the kitchen (for about 1 minute, until the mess gets too big and I send him off to do something else, usually with a food bribe), being obsessed with his cars (thank you Joshua J), asking to watch the "tee!" (TV), oh! and TALKING!!!  We're a long way away from complete sentences (or even complete/correct pronunciation on everything), but he can come up with more than 60 words on his own (with no prompting), and he knows a lot more than that.  It's so much fun :D  I love being a mom :D  And, he likes to "snuggle with the baby" by pulling my shirt up and laying his head on my belly.  It's pretty darn cute. And mostly not too uncomfortable.

Alright, I'm done bragging.  And I can't think of anything else to regale you with, so it's off to eat some cereal and get more stuff done.

Up before 7 - check
Tea made - check
Bible read - check
child nursed - check
child snuggled - check
child diapered and dressed - check
child fed - check
child cleaned - check
self fed - check (for now....)
child's room cleaned - che... (ok, only got 1/2way done with that one)
child's sheet changed - check
child's clothes unpacked - check
child's clothes PUT AWAY - CHECK!!! (what is it about putting them away? they get folded nice and neat... and then sit in the basket for another 3 days.... geez... but NOT THIS TIME!)
kitchen cleaned - later
check email - check
child taken on a walk - check
help child throw rocks in the creek - check
creek delivered from rotting possum carcass - check (don't worry, I just sent it on downstream for someone ELSE to deal with)
suddenly helpless and whining child carried back to the house - check
books read (with appropriate sound effects) to child - check
milk warmed and given to child - check
child rocked - check
child put into bed - check

All accomplished before 10 am - check

staff meeting - check
living room straightened - check
check email - check
distract self with book and read for 40 minutes - check (wait... should this even be on here?)
child wakes up - check

All accomplished before noon - check (*note to self* see what a difference a book makes? SELF CONTROL!)

child snuggled - check
child told he could NOT go outside because it was raining - check
discovered that you had left the lid off of the sandbox you were trying to dry out - check
change child's diaper - check
feed child - check
feed self - check
read proverbs to child - check
try to hush child who always tries to talk loudest when his mom is reading from the Bible - check
child cleaned - check
child re-diapered - check
child told he could NOT go outside because it was STILL raining - check
trash taken out to dumpster with child on hip - check
calm down crying child who insists he be allowed back outside in the rain - check
read books to child - check
tickle child - check
give child horsey ride - check
convince child to play by himself for a while - che.... (this worked on and off)
check email - check
try to shoot video of child pretending to eat out of the dog bowl in his book - fail (boo.)
make grocery list - check
go to grocery store - later
turn on Milo and Otis - check
read World magazine - ch.....
turn off Milo and Otis 30 minutes later - check
convince complaining child that he would rather have milk and snuggle (and then bed) than watch Milo and Otis - check
put child to bed - check

All accomplished before 3:30pm - check

start working for boss - check
read World magazine while computer processes things - check
check email 10 times - check
child wakes up - check

All accomplished before 5 pm - check

snuggle child to get him to stop crying/complaining - nope
tickle child to get him to stop crying/complaining - he laughed, but when back to moaning afterwards
threaten child with punishment to get him to stop crying/complaining - not a chance, mom
take moaning child into the bedroom to wake up night shift husband - check
decide that if child is going to moan anyway, he might as well be doing it during a diaper change - check
enlist sleepy hubby to hold screaming child down - check
try to get child to stop screaming bloody murder - this one took a while, but finally happened
snuggle and sing to child in rocking chair for 5 minutes while they calm down - check (FINALLY.... this ended a 30 minute bad mood spree)
give child juice, raisins and cheezits - check
warm up supper - check
cook noodles - check
convince child to eat peas instead of chocolate - check (mix them with mashed potatoes)
family worship - check
nanner puddin' - check
clean child - check
leave child crying in father's arms to go the grocery store - check
run outside in the rain - check
forget coupons and have to go back in the house - check
leave crying child again - check
grocery shopping - check
successfully avoid drowning in the small river running across the parking lot - check
unload/put away groceries - check
warm milk and give to child - check
put child in bed with said milk - check
finish book - check
clean kitchen - later
get on facebook and look up last week's storm damage/tornado information instead of cleaning kitchen - check
write this blog post instead of going to bed on time - check

All accomplished by 11:27 pm

To Do: go to bed.

...and today was the first time I saw a live mole above ground, just toddling around and minding his own business.  I don't ever remember seeing a mole doing anything before, except maybe on a tv special about wildlife, or dead on our welcome mat (cats like to give presents to beloved owners).

William was very excited.  These days he's meeting many new animal friends that, hitherto, he's only come across in books. And, when it clicks that "This is a REAL BEE!!!", he gets VERY enthusiastic.  In fact, after the pointing and the screeching stage is over (about 5 seconds), he immediately switches to the "oh boy Mom, let me HOLD IT!!!!" stage, which is showcased by him frantically rubbing his stomach.  Though this might confuse many of you, in fact, he's using sign language to say "please", in his own male way (you're actually supposed to rub your chest right below your neck.... he rubs his stomach).

Now, when this involves a dog or a cat (that I know has a willing owner), I have no problem complying with this.  But in fact, I'm not going to let my 1.3 year old anywhere near a Carpenter Bee, even if they don't have stingers (there are HUNDREDS floating around our complex... flying, technically.... you get the point).  Or the small jumping spider he discovered on the bedroom wall the other morning (I let that one go outside, rather than suffer a gruesome death + I would have to clean spider guts off of his hands + who knows if the spider would get a bite off before he died).  William hasn't tried to pick up any ants yet, thank goodness, since they are everywhere. And birds are rightly much too cautious to let him anywhere near them.  But the mole.... I was actually more worried about the mole's well being than William's in this case (although, again, he probably has a mean bite).

Fortunately, William understands "gentle" (most of the time), and I managed to pick the mole up without him thinking he was being attacked.  He was very cute.... and very fuzzy.  I kind of want one now..... Where was I? Right, so I picked it up and put on William's outstretched hand a few times (the mole kept climbing off onto my hand, which was strategically placed RIGHT UNDER William's hand), and after about 3 minutes of this we put it back on the ground and watched it toddle off.  For quite a while, because William kept following it, and trying to pet it some more (he wasn't QUITE quick enough.... by the time he leaned down to where the mole had been when he started the lean, the mole had moved on, so William had to move on, and the process was repeated many times).  He also kept trying to give the mole sticks, even though I continued informing him that mole had NO INTEREST in a stick.  Apparently in some situations William does like to share, imagine that.

All this occurred at the neighbors house where I babysit, and they have 3 cats.  In fact, last week we came outside to the spectacle of one of the cats playing playing with it's food - a live chipmunk that looked fine except for being rather dazed.... and missing all the hair on its tail. That was a little much.  I mean, I like meat just as much as the next person, and I think PETA is silly.... but I also sympathize very much with Fern, and am very glad that Wilbur ended up being "some pig" instead of bacon (mmmmmm, bacon.... I should get some of that....).

Changing the subject, another first for me was seeing a household item that I owned in a tv show (Mac computers not withstanding).  Yes, if you watch Season 3 of Bones (it's on Netflix), and pay attention to when Dr. Brennan is in the lab, drinking out of tall yellow mugs with a black Jeffersonian symbol on them.... I own one of those.  Well, without the symbol.  I got mine at Target in August '08.  I think that season ran in '07, but I'm not positive.

And William's big first of yesterday was playing, with semi-abandon, in a muddy puddle.  Mom, I had visions of that picture you took of ME in a mud puddle, and I took some of him, but I think your picture is better.  This particular puddle appears in our front "yard" when it rains (a space of grass about 3ft by 12 ft), and so far William had contented himself with throwing pebbles and hitting it with sticks.  But, yesterday he discovered that he could, in fact, walk in it and start splashing with his feet.  It was very funny to watch.  And it really wasn't THAT muddy (no hose required), so I let him have fun.

Of course, today, he tries to do the same thing, despite being told "DON'T TOUCH!!!", and, well.... let's just say he wasn't as happy with the results today.

And I'm out of firsts....

Then you will probably be interested to know, if you already don't, that





1) Is based on real science - about 80% on average.  (See this Popular Mechanic's article)

2) Cal Lightman and Gillian _____ (forgot her name) are based on two real scientists and their work (Dr. Paul Ekman and his partner).

3) There really are "naturals" (like Ria Torres), and they're VERY rare.  Out of the 15,000 people Dr. Ekman studied, only 50 ended up being able to spot lies and micro expressions correctly more than 50% of the time.  He calls them "Wizards at deception detecting".

4) One of the 50 people has a blog called Eyes for Lies and does consulting like Lightman's character.  It's very interesting.

5) Dr. Eckman is actually consulted about every episode of Lie to Me, and writes a blog about the true science of each episode (which means that now I have to go back and start over with Season 1, and then go read about each episode after I watch it *grin*).

so cool.... I should probably go do something useful now.....