All I'm Saying there's a joke in here somewhere

I have started writing brief articles for Associated Content. AC is a media site that accepts (read: usually pays for) exclusive rights to content submitted by freelancers. The array of subjects written about seems infinite.

So I have written a couple of articles and they have both been accepted. The money isn't great (I'm up to $10.55 so far), but it will give me a little bit of PayPal in the event that I find some great online auctions or something. It makes it much easier to rationalize purchases when I've got "pretend money" sitting in PayPal.

Also, I get $1.50 for every thousand page hits I get at AC, so if you'll just be sure to click my page a couple of times a day, I'll make another $10.55 some time in 2018 or so...

Have you been wondering why I haven't updated again, or have you assumed I have succumbed to the sucking apathy that a lot of bloggers seem to have this time of year? Is it the heat or what?

Really, I've been pretty busy. Freya is in swim lessons again this week, which pretty much knocks out our evening down time. Once I get home from work, feed her, watch Matt cook dinner (which he does most nights), we eat and then try to clean the kitchen in a flurry while stuffing Freya into her swimsuit and me scrambling around trying to find both pieces of my swimsuit, it's just too much for me to try and get a blog entry in.

However, I was overcome by a wave of exhaustion at work today and came home early to get a couple hours sleep. Boy, did that help! I feel like I'm raring to go again. Good thing, because it is time to start that nighttime cycle up by going across the street to pick up the little girl.

Things will be very quiet around here next week while we're on vacation in Northern California. How am I going to fit in talking to the housesitter with all this going on? Sheesh...

Leilani clearly has not forgiven me for eating her cinnamon sugar tortilla thingy in the fourth grade. And I want to know what kind of person looks at some PVC pipe that Freya pretends is a telephone and calls it a crack pipe?! I ask you...

For the record, this is what she was referring to, as seen in the picture of Freya making her squinchy face:

It's not like I can deny my best friend from grade school, especially when all she wants is to see more pictures of Freya. Leilani, I'm sorry I stole and ate that cinnamon-sugar tortilla thingy from your lunch that one day. It was probably fourth grade or something. I hope that these pictures will convince you to forgive me.

Freya's Croc knock-offs have not been a big hit.

We can't figure out why she has started making this face, but we think its pretty damn cute:

I recently read an interesting article about, well, it's kind of hard to encapsulate, but here's a quote:

This was the sobering theme of the 2007 Sopris Conference: Innovative Ideas for a New West, held in Missoula this weekend. Sponsored by the Sopris Foundation, which aims to promote a self-sufficient and innovative West, the conference focused on the future of the West and its people who are known for their, “rogue effort and ingenuity.”

Farther down in the article, one of the immediate action items this group says we as Americans need to take is that of using less. Less of everything. In fact, they say we need to use 50% less of everything--energy particularly, but that encompasses everything from turning off lights or your computer, driving less, buying less produce flown in from Chile or wherever, etc.

Without getting into a discussion (though I suppose you can in the comments--it's a free blog) about whether we do need to reduce that drastically, what do you think the most radical change to your life would be if you had to reduce your consumption by 50%? Would you find yourself gardening a large plot of land? Would you be more physically fit because you had to walk/bike more? Would you have more personal wealth because you bought less? On the downside, would you be able to maintain your current lifestyle? Would you be able to continue living where you are? What would happen to urban areas?

Talk amongst yourselves. Also, if you are cutting back now, please tell us what you do.

Marsha tagged me to post 8 facts about me that no one knows. I had to reply to her (in my indomitable smartass way) that if no one truly knew about them, I wouldn't be able to post them. You know, because I wouldn't know about them. So I'm going to have to post things very few people know about me, and then hope that it will suffice.

1. I have, in the past year or so, developed a horror of plane crashes. I think it has something to do with motherhood and the fear of something happening to sever my relationship with Freya. So I pay very close attention to media about plane crashes, and (here's the insane quirky part) every time I notice a plane taking off, flying over or landing, I send a thought out just saying, "Safe journey." It's like a karmic thing for me. And it keeps me busy, as our house is under the take-off path for planes flying out of Boise, and my office literally abuts the tarmac at the airport.

2. I have had three moles removed from portions of my anatomy during my lifetime: one on my temple, one in the small of my back, and one whose former location shall remain unidentified.

3. I just had the oil changed in my car, and it had been over 8,000 miles since the last oil change and I hadn't checked the oil levels. My mechanic didn't even yell at me.

4. I know a few of you already saw this, but it is at least recent: Freya and I are featured on a website about
workplaces that allow babies. We are also here.

5. I haven't had a period in almost two and a half years, thanks to pregnancy and extended breastfeeding.

6. I just don't get the whole Harry Potter phenomenon, and am getting utterly exhausted by the constant internet chatter over spoilers, speculation and who's wearing what to the bookstore for the midnight release party. I cannot believe so many people could care so much.

7. I donate part of every paycheck to Planned Parenthood of Idaho.

8. The optic nerve in each of my eyes is tilted, which is evidently part of what makes me nearsighted.

There! Eight things no one all you guys now know about me. Who's next?

I had a question sort of come to me over the weekend, and it was bugging the crap out of me. I never remembered it when I was anywhere near a computer, but it just popped into my head again and I was able to hop over to Google and get it answered. Want to know what it is?

Where does the Vice President of the United States live? We all know the Prez lives in the White House, and so that got me to wondering if there was a particular executive residence for the Veep that you just didn't hear much about.

So today I found the answer--I'll post it in the extended entry, and you can ponder on it for a while. Or you can excitedly go to the comments section and post that you already know the answer because what kind of publicly-schooled eggplant-for-brains doesn't know where the Vice President lives?

Continue reading "What's On My Mind"

The air quality around here has been crap lately. You may think of Idaho as the home of the famous potatoes, you may think of purple mountains' majesty. But if you come to Boise in the heat of the summer (or Janurary-February, for that matter), you'll find that the air here is roughly brown. In color. And texture.

We've had days on end of orange air quality warnings. Fires burning in the rangelands to the west of us, oppressive heat, atmospheric conditions, and lots of cars driving around makes it pretty damn crappy breath-wise.

I had the bright idea that I'd ride my bike to my weight-training class at the gym this morning. Everything went along splendidly until the ride home, when the density and texture of the air had changed enough that I felt like I had a mitten inside each lung by the time I got home. Isn't that a bitter irony, that I tried to save both gas and emissions by riding my bike, and ended up feeling like dog shit for the rest of the day?

A quick catch-up is surely in order. Seems like I post about stuff that ought to require follow-up posts, and then I never can remember what I was planning on talking about. So:

Savings & Spending This issue is going both well and badly. I opened my savings account and have religiously been depositing $100 into it every pay period. I'm accruing a nice amount of interest, and I figure I've probably saved 4% of our total trip. That seems small on one hand, but on the other hand, I've only been doing it for what? Two months? Three? So that's the good. The bad is that I have had a recent lapse in my ability to turn down bargains. I bought two pieces of pottery this last weekend that were collectively a great deal, but were absolutely not in the budget. I also bought Freya some used clothing--similar great deal, but
not needed or budgeted for. I really feel the pinch with these unplanned items. I have not and likely will not tap the savings account, and will try to use the memory of this budgetary tightness to help me remember to not impulse buy in the future.

Freya's Swimming Lessons If you'll recall, they were apocalyptic in the beginning. But each lesson got progressively easier and involved less crying and clinging, until on our last night, Freya would clamber (assisted by me) out of the pool and would then sit down on the side, grab my fingers, and flop/jump into the water. She was having a great time. We still technically have a couple of nights left to go, and I really need to call and schedule them. She has also shown a huge increase in interest in both playing with her inflatable pool, and in splashing about unassisted in the bathtub.

The Garden I think our soil is somewhat deficient, so I have been fertilizing the bejesus out of everything and hoping that I don't overdo it. But we never had any blossoms on our tomato plants, which frustrated me tremendously because I wanted tomatoes and basil more than anything else in the garden. (Hello, bruschetta!) We gave in last week and got some new tomato plants, which I planted in containers on the patio. There are two baby tomatoes coming in, though I do think one of the new plants is about to die. It was friggin' 107 degrees the day after we planted, and I think it just got traumatized. And now I have flowers on 2 of the old tomato plants, so maybe they're not a total loss.

In other news, my out-laws have scheduled their next visit. They'll be here the end of August. Again, I am so conflicted. I want them to know Freya and vice versa, but they're not the easiest guests in the world. The good news is that because of Malia's visit happening immediately before that, they will truly only be here about a week this time. I owe Malia big!

I think that's got you mostly caught up. Did I miss anything you've been wondering about?

Sweet baby, maybe this isn't the best day for me to try and write my monthly love letter to you. On the other hand, maybe someday when you are reading these, you'll see that motherhood is challenging and that (hopefully) we faced the challenges together and came through the other side as allies.

That said, why the heck won't you take your stinking nap?! Things have been fine all week; yesterday morning you took a great nap. But when it came time for your afternoon nap, you wouldn't have anything to do with it. To make it all worse, we had your daddy's boss's wedding to attend later that evening. I tried for 45 minutes yesterday afternoon to get you to sleep, but you were stronger than I was.

You pulled the same thing this morning: usually you nap within a couple hours of waking up, but after I tried for an hour and forty-five minutes, it was time for us to get ready to go on our pre-scheduled field trip. We went to a lavendar farm that was holding a cut-your-own festival with some friends of mine. I had planned it all because you are fascinated with both flowers and with bees lately, and I knew you'd get a huge kick out of those, combined with the tasty food, music and interesting people. Provided, of course, that you'd had a nap.

It was after a 45-minute car ride, 45 minutes at the festival, and 5 minutes of cutting lavendar that you Wigged Out. The lack of sleep put your sunny nature into an eclipse. We pulled the plug and headed for home, and you got 30 minutes of sleep in the car.

Now you're downstairs playing with your daddy because I just need a little time to recoup. You stood at the foot of the stairs yelling, "Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!" for several minutes, but you've since moved on to doing a puzzle. I think the problem may be that your upper canine teeth might be coming in. They are at least floating around in your gums enough to bother you, so that you hold your head and say, "Ouch" sometimes.

I hope you're feeling better soon. I hope you sleep soon. Please give this smiling baby back to me!

I love you so, sweetheart.
Mommy

It is bloody damned hot here. I just checked the weather website, and it said it is 104. That's a new record, breaking the one from 1985 that was a measly 102.

I dwell in a land of extremes. My poorly-insulated office area ends up being about 65 degrees during the summer because the people downstairs fool with the thermostat, and then it is about 78 degrees in the winter.

Coming home today, I found that Matt hadn't turned the air conditioner on until about five minutes before I got here. Additionally, we signed up for a limiter switch from the power company last year, which allows them to regulate the cycling of our air conditioner during peak use time. That usually equates to about 3 extra degrees on hot days, which usually isn't a big deal (compared with the $7/month we save on the power bill in exchange). But since I got home, the temperature in the house has actually gone up two degrees and it is now 81 downstairs and 86 upstairs.

I keep expecting a fiery little imp to come stab me in the butt with a pitchfork. But the only little imp I have seen tonight is just sweaty little Freya.

Freya just picked up her first dog turd in the back yard. Matt is really good about doing poopy patrol, but this one might be a little fresher than his last pass with the shovel. So...several handwashes later, here we are.

As Olivia's mother said in the book to her daughter, "I love you, but you wear me out."

And Olivia replied, "I love you anyway, too."