I've given up fags and drugs now, baby

Welcome to Caroline's Cavalcade of Random Occurrences and Tidbits

or

What I Would Be Twittering Were I The Twittering Type, Which I'm Not


-A crow died in our backyard last weekend. It was the strangest thing. I was taking a nap (huzzah!) in our bedroom, which is at the back of the house with windows facing the backyard. I wasn't quite asleep and I heard this commotion of squirrels chattering with that angry noise they make when there's a neighborhood cat perched on the ground underneath them. I didn't think much of it until I heard this big THUMP on the ground shortly thereafter. I looked out the window and saw this dark, unidentifiable shape on the ground and figured I'd better take a look. KB and Nolan were outside raking leaves (in the front) so they didn't see anything, of course. I put on some pants (I get comfy when I nap) and shoes and went out in the back to find a giant, recently dead crow on the ground under one of the trees. (I'm not sure what distinguishes a crow from a raven from a blackbird, exactly - if it's only size, then this bird was on the large crow/small raven end of the spectrum, I'd say.) It didn't appear to be injured or mangled in any way. It was just dead. I don't know what the squirrel commotion had to do with the crow's death, if anything. I made KB come around and pick it up with a shovel and put it in a garbage bag.

Dead crow. Gotta be bad karma or bad feng shui or something. Yeesh.

-At lunch the other day Nolan kept making this "Ffffffffffff" noise with his teeth and lips. I tried to ignore it at first because I thought it was his way of provoking me - we've had a lot of discussion lately about why spitting at the table is Not Appropriate Behavior and I was pretty sure he was trying to see how close he could come to spitting before I started telling him not to do it. So he's going, "Fffffffffff" and concentrating really hard and I'm ignoring him and finally he looks at me and says, "Mommy, why are there no flames coming out of my mouth?" Apparently he was trying to breathe fire.

-Nolan is attending pre-school five mornings a week now - two at his Chinese pre-school (where he went to summer "camp") and three at a regular old pre-school. We've taken to calling the regular pre-school his "English" school to distinguish it from his Chinese school. I feel like we're Amish. "Be careful out there among them English, son!"

-There was a sign on the door of Nolan's (English) pre-school classroom the other morning that said "[this class] has 1 case of head lice." All I could think was "Already? Already with the head lice?" Next up: Pink eye!

-My Omega-3 vitamin supplement is made from fish, flax and safflower oils, but somehow, it's only the fish oil I taste when I burp later.

-If any one of the four of you who read this blog knows anything about Richmond, Virginia, please pass it along with all haste. Richmond is next up on our list of Places We May Move To. We're going down there the weekend of the 4th and 5th to check out the living situation (KB has already had one successful interview) and my assignment is researching beforehand to find out what, exactly, we might like to check out whilst down there.

-The ice maker on our fridge broke. This is the third kitchen appliance to break down in the nine months we've owned this house. Remember how awesome the kitchen looked in those pictures? How space-age and modern and upscale? Yeah, that's 'cause all the appliances are friggin' "prestige" brands like Miele and Sub-Zero and Wolf and cost like, three times as much to repair. So, we are back to making ice in trays, since $400 to repair an icemaker seemed a bit steep, considering we'll probably be moving in a few months. (What was also a pain was that we had to actually go out and buy new ice cube trays to use. What happened to all those stray ice cube trays we accumulated over years of moving from apartment to apartment? Who actually has to BUY ice cube trays? Don't they just reproduce on their own in the privacy of the freezer compartment, like wire hangers do in the closet?)

-My birthday was good. I got to go into NYC for a haircut at Devachan, which specializes in curly hair. Not only specializes in it, but proselytizes for it. They are very pro-curly. They don't want you to straighten your hair. They want you to be happy with your curly hair. The owner of the salon wrote a book about curly hair. They have their own special line of products for curly hair. I like them a lot, but a haircut alone is upwards of $120, so this was a rare and wonderful birthday treat for me. Now my hair has an actual shape to it, much more vertical volume and much less Rosanne Rosannadanna action going on.

Yay!

Thanks for reading.

Don't you know which clothes even fit me?

In which post I try to link disparate topics and sum up the past few weeks without having any reliable segues whatsoever.

Alllllllrighty then.

So: We went to Canada for a week, stopping along the way (okay, so it wasn't really along the way so much as it was a giant detour) in Boston to visit friends we hadn't seen since we'd moved last year. We tried to cram too much into our 24-hour visit to Beantown, and so left ourselves feeling rushed and almost as if we hadn't really seen much of our friends. But, short as it was, it was great to see everyone, and it did make me a bit nostalgic for Boston. And god, how I wish we had had the GPS when we lived there. It would have saved many hours and tears.

Then, we drove to Canada. Or, to be more accurate, we drove as far as we could and stopped to spend the night in Utica, New York because we were tired and the drive that should have taken two hours on the Mass Pike instead took four.

(Note: When you are road-tripping with a pregnant woman and a recently potty-trained toddler, your bathroom stop quota will rise not linearly, as you might expect, but exponentially, since no one in the car ever has to pee at the same time and all sudden urges to pee must be treated as emergencies.)

We got to Alan and Kathleen's house on Charleston Lake in Ontario the next day around lunchtime and hung out for a few hours, and then KB turned around and drove BACK to Syracuse for a second interview there and a first interview in Rochester. So he was basically working the first two days of our vacation week, and since I was stuck in the house all day with Nolan, I was working too. (I think I need to get better at communicating my expectations to people - I was sort of envisioning, "Ah, vacation! Relaxing on the porch with a trashy magazine and a glass of iced tea! Maybe KB and I can get a date night in!" and instead it was more like being at home, except without any of the familiar resources of home like the library and the car.) We definitely did have some good times later in the week - going out on Alan's boat and going to the beach, that kind of stuff, but then we had a

MAJOR TRAGEDY. Well, okay, it was, in retrospect, more of a minor tragedy, but it was horrific at the time. We were going to the beach with Kathleen and her grandson Duncan, who is 4 (and a younger brother to Alexander, 5, so he delighted in having someone younger to play with [read: boss around], and Nolan was thrilled to try and keep up with him). We had just parked the car and gotten to the beach and were walking along to a picnic table (when I say "beach" you have to picture a forest-y rocky hilly weedy lakeside beach, not a big open sandy ocean beach) when Nolan slipped on a rock and hit his mouth. Big-time. On the rock. Screaming, bloody, wailing horrible horrible-ness. When we finally got him calmed down enough to look in his mouth, one of his two front teeth was chipped and the other was at a wonky angle. We didn't know what to do. We're in the middle of rural Ontario, Canada, and our son had some apparently disfiguring damage to his mouth. Kathleen told us about a dentist she'd gone to in this tiny neighboring town, so we decided to try there and see if they'd take us as an emergency. So we drove for about 35 of the longest minutes of my life with Nolan wailing the whole way, "I don't wanna go to the doctor! I don't wanna go!" and me sitting in the backseat trying to comfort him.

But when we did get there (and I gotta be honest, the town looked like a shithole) the dentist was great. Nolan totally calmed down and she was very good with him. She gently took a look and cleaned his mouth a bit, and then we had an x-ray taken. She said it didn't look like the tooth's root was broken, so it probably won't die, but it will be crooked (and may possibly discolor) until his baby teeth fall out when he's six or seven. She said the only big problem will be if the jawbone ankyloses around the injured tooth, which will make it hard if not impossible for the adult tooth to push its way out, so if that happens we may have to have it extracted.

So we left the dentist's office with a prescription for ice cream and popsicles to reduce the swelling (the first time in my life I've ever gotten THAT from a dentist) and a recommendation to check in with our regular dentist when we got home. (And a bill for $139.95. For everything. Emergency exam, x-rays, everything. Thank you, Canadian healthcare!) I looked like an extra from a horror film, because I had blood all down my shoulder and back from holding Nolan when he was screming.

But, he's okay. On the whole, it wasn't such a MAJOR tragedy. It was very scary and upsetting and I felt like a lousy mother for not protecting my kid, but overall, everything's fine. KB says the crooked tooth will give him character, maybe it will make him look like a kid other kids won't want to mess with. I think it makes him look like Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel, but at least it will only be until he's six. Or seven.

And we did get in one non-horrific trip to the beach the next day where we re-visited what we dubbed The Rock Of Doom, complete with Nolan-contributed bloodstain on it. We had some swimming lessons with Kathleen and some boating with Alan and some kayaking around their little bay, disturbing the turtles, and then it was time to come home.

So that was our trip to Canada.

Note the lack of segues.

Maternity Clothes 2: Electric Boogaloo

In other news, I have had to drag my giant Rubbermaid bin of maternity clothes out of storage, as none of my regular clothes are fitting properly anymore. I've been using the rubber band around the buttonhole trick for a couple weeks now, but I guess it's time to give in. I don't even really have a belly yet, it's just that my waist seems to have decided not to exist any longer. It also feels as though this is happening a LOT sooner than it did last time around, but at least I'm able to resurrect some clothes from storage rather than being completely unprepared. Some of the leftovers are going to be completely useless, of course, since this baby will be in a totally different season than Nolan was - I'm gonna need a lot more big-belly warm clothes for December and January. But I was generously given a huge stash of leftover maternity clothes from my friend Sonya, who had her new baby Paul in July. She's worn them through two pregnancies and is like, "Get them outta here! I'm never wearing them again!" so I was the lucky recipient there.

Sadly, Sonya and Ben and Spencer and Paul have moved to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. (Sadly for us, not for them.) They are starting their new life there where Ben is a professor at Gettysburg College and Sonya will be starting in a private medical practice. Nolan will miss Spencer, I know, and I will miss their company big-time. The last time we saw Spencer Nolan was having a fit of pique and refused to give him a hug goodbye, which just served to remind me how in-the-moment kids are compared to adults. Ben and I are like, "Nolan, give him a hug! You're not going to see Spencer again for a long time!" and Nolan's like, "Whatever." To him, it was just another day playing with Spencer, and if he didn't feel like giving him a hug, he wasn't going to give him a hug, god dammit. Future be damned.

All right, I gotta stop now. I started this post over a week ago but Blogger kept crashing and refusing to save and I had to keep starting over until I quit in a fit of frustration (gee, I wonder where Nolan gets it) and now it's SEPTEMBER and I need to write about pre-school and Kathy our Chinese babysitter and "Hair" and that's just too much for one entry. More later.

Thanks for reading.

(Also, can I just say that in the Clash song from which this post takes its title, I love how, even though they are all punk and anti-establishment and revolutionary, et cetera, they still manage to use correct grammar in the line "Exactly whom I'm supposed to be..." That's just so British and awesome.

Okay then. Carry on.)

Brass monkey junkie, that funky monkey

Did I forget to mention that I purchased some monkey puzzle tree seeds off Ebay and planted them? I did? Typical.

Well, they've sprouted. Or rather, four out of five have sprouted. It took about six weeks for them to do so, during which they just sat there, inert (or so it seemed) while I wondered if I had just blown 12 dollars on duds. But now they are actually showing signs of growth, which makes me happy.


I have no idea if they will grow successfully here, but I think they're just the coolest-looking trees, so I'm willing to give it a try. Of course, I'll be leaving them in their little pots for the time being, as I have no idea yet if we're going to be staying in Princeton or moving on. Apparently, they've very slow-growing trees, so hopefully I'll be able to cart them around for a while without having to commit to a planting spot.



We first saw a monkey puzzle tree at the Barnes Foundation, an art museum with extensive gardens in Philadelphia. While we (KB, my brother Kevin and I) were walking around the arboretum we saw this tree that looked like an escapee from a Dr. Seuss book, and when we read the little identification card it said, "Monkey Puzzle Tree." I had this faint recollection of reading an Agatha Christie novel as a teenager - something about Hercule Poirot approving of monkey puzzles because they didn't shed their leaves - and wondering what the heck a monkey puzzle tree was. And then there one was in front of me. They had trimmed it to emphasize its Seussian qualities, and it was really quite striking (I wish they had a picture of that specific tree on their web site, but of course they don't and I didn't have my camera with me when we went.)

So now I am the proud owner of four monkey puzzle seedlings and one inert seed (although it may yet sprout - apparently they can take up to two months). We'll see what happens!

Thanks for reading.

I said Ouch! This really hurts!

Well, the freaking out has commenced, of course.

I found out about the pregnancy much earlier this time than I did with Nolan (I think - I really can't remember exactly.) I just knew something was up and took the test much earlier, whereas before it was a definite surprise situation. And now since I'm feeling pretty okay and normal, other than some tiredness, I'm starting to worry that something is wrong with this pregnany. People always tell you that if you feel bad (nauseous, exhausted, irritable) when you're in the first trimester it's actually a GOOD thing, because it means the hormones are flowing and your body is doing all the things it's supposed to be doing - building a placenta, storing up energy, et cetera. So of course my emotional brain is ignoring the known fact that it's really early yet and is instead freaking out about the lack of sickness.

In other words, I'm feeling bad because I don't feel bad. Brilliant!

Some couples wait to tell other people that they're pregnant just in case something does go wrong and there's a miscarriage. We tell everybody we know on the theory that, should something go wrong, we'll probably need the support and good wishes of those very same people, so why not blab now? I'm not a very competent secret keeper anyway, and I'm certainly not very good at hiding it when I'm feeling bad (as KB can testify), so why even try?

That's one of the big ironies (or perhaps, to be grammatically correct and not fall into the Alanis trap, one of the paradoxes) of early pregnancy - you feel tremendously crappy, you're constantly exhausted, cranky and nauseous, but you don't LOOK pregnant at all. There is no way for anyone who doesn't already know to tell that you're pregnant, so no one treats you any differently. All you want to do is lie down on the floor and take a nap, but everyone else around you expects you to be acting normally - handling your workload, talking intelligently in meetings, not appearing to fall into a coma periodically.

This drove me crazy early in my pregnancy with Nolan - every workday morning I would walk the mile to the T station and if I failed to get a seat on the train, it was all I could do not to crumple to the sticky floor and weep piteously. But no chivalrous man would give up his seat for me because I didn't look at all pregnant (of course, truth be told, not many men gave up their seats even when I was hugely pregnant - it was mostly sympathetic older women who had obviously been there, done that) and I didn't have the self-possesion to say "I'm pregnant. Please can I sit down?" The time when you really need the break, no one will give it to you.

So that's the reasoning behind my tell-everyone-now strategy: Maybe I'll get some sympathy. It's all about me. (Actually, it might get KB some sympathy, too. Maybe I'll start marketing T-shirts: "I'm in my first trimester. Pity my husband.")

Of course, since I haven't started having any morning sickness yet and am torturing myself with the possibility that I've already miscarried and just haven't realized it, I can now also feel guilty (in this purely hypothetical future situation) for putting everyone on red alert, garnering sympathy and then failing to actually, you know, have a baby.

I can't win.

(Also, in case you didn't know, the reason you get so friggin' tired [besides the fact that you're growing a brand-new entire human being in your body] when you're busy placentasmithing: By the end of pregnancy, the placenta, on average, weighs between 2 and 3 pounds. That might not sound too impressive, but just you try spontaneously generating 3 pounds worth of blood vessels and connective tissue, and see how you fare.)

Thanks for reading.

Nausea, oh, nausea, and we're gone

Oh my.

(As KB said when I told him, "That didn't take long.")

I'm glad we had our Saturday night of sushi and beer before I found out.

Thanks for reading.

Sleep a lot, eat a lot, brush 'em like crazy

Hey hey! We got vegetables!

I noticed the first peas tentatively showing their faces a few days ago:

On Tuesday I coerced Nolan into going out into the garden to check out the peas, and we picked the first one!
(I love that picture - I love how solemn he looks, like he senses the gravity of the occasion: The First Pea From Our Garden.) Then, of course, we ate it:


Nolan does what he likes to do when he eats pea pods, which is open it up and eat all the peas inside one by one, then crunch the whole pod into his mouth and eat that. (Isn't that required when you're a kid? Some sort of kiddie by-law? "Article 9, Section b: Any child coming into possession of that vegetable commonly known as a pea pod shall hereby be compelled to split open said pea pod by insertion of the thumb along the seam and consume, one by one, all the individual peas contained in said pod. Consumption of the pod itself is optional and left to the gustatory inclination of the individual.")

So we should have lots more peas coming soon:
And the green beans and tomatoes have also started to get flowers, finally, so I'm expecting those to start fruiting (vegetabling?) soon.


Now I just have to figure out what exactly I'm going to do with all these vegetables. I really have no big plans, food-wise, so I guess I'd better bone up on my tomato/pea/green bean recipes. I'm going to make some Dilly Beans from the green beans (according, of course, to my mother-in-law's great recipe) which are basically like pickles, only with beans instead of cucumbers. They are excellent and addictive. But I only have twelve canning jars, which I have a feeling is going to account for about 1/3 of my bean harvest, so I'd better do some research.

Thanks for reading.

The yard is nothing but a fence; the sun just hurts our eyes

On this rainy Wednesday I thought I'd share some garden pix with y'all, as promised, since I can't be outside working in said garden at the moment. (I took these a week ago.)


This is the kitchen garden, looking out from the barn-style doors on the back end of the garage. The house is on the left (duh) and the windows you see are the guest bedroom and the master bedroom and master bath. The open gate at the end goes out into the back yard. As you can see, the near end is a patio with paver stones, and then there are more pavers that make a path through the center of the garden (with a little island right in the center). The whole thing is fenced in, which is nice for keeping the deer out (we do see them, even in the middle of Princeton as we are).


This is the 180 degree opposite view, looking from the gate back towards the garage and the house. To the right are all the tomatoes - some in containers and some right in the ground. We (meaning KB's mom and I) weren't sure about the soil quality so we fudged by putting some in containers. This way we'll be sure to get some good tomatoes even if the ones that went in the ground don't make it. Also on the right you can see the potting bench - that was left here by the previous owners, along with lots of tools and empty pots, which is nice.


Here you can see what's behind the open garage door. Below the light on the left side of the frame is a clematis vine that was also left here by the previous owners (I wouldn't have known what the heck it was if Ann hadn't identified it for me). The window you see is the kitchen window right above the sink - I put the daisies in the window boxes. On the ground underneath are some containers with maple tree seedlings that I brought with us from Quincy - I wanted to put them in the ground wherever we settled, so we'd have a little piece of our first house with us. Guess I may have to wait and see before I do anything with them now! There are also a couple containers of herbs - sage and mint, which I understand (again, from Ann) you shouldn't put in the ground because they are aggressive and will take over your garden.


Speaking of herbs, this is the little island in the middle of the garden that I've christened Herb Island, seeing as how it consists solely of herbs. (I'm clever like that.) I've got rosemary right in the center, and then basil, parsley, lemon thyme, plain thyme, and cilantro all around it. Since I took this picture one of the cilantro plants bit the dust, leaving one survivor (but that one seems pretty healthy - although it's flowering - is that a good thing? If I want to use the leaves? Should I pinch the flowers off? I dunno.)

This is the right side of the patio - you can't really see it very well, but at the bottom of the frame there's a table there which, once I clean off all the accumulated gardening crap, we can use to have coffee or whatever out here in the mornings. The big container on the left has three jalapeno pepper plants in it, which seem to be doing well. The big plant is another leftover, which we believe (i.e., we have no real idea) is another variety of clematis - the woody portion of the plant is intertwined with the lattice of the fence, so it can't really be moved without hurting the plant.



These are a couple close-ups of that mystery plant showing the crazy flowers and an enterprising spider who decided to build his home there. Which is fine. We like spiders. They eat the bad bugs.


This is the left side of the garden under the windows - in front are a row of marigolds, which supposedly are good for repelling squirrels and bunnies and other critters (both of which we have in abundance in our yard) and in the back are green beans and peas that I grew from seeds in that little garden kit.

And speaking of spiders, here's a big daddy long-legs on one of the green beans. I have no idea if daddy long-legs count as spiders in the gardening sense (meaning they're good because they eat other bugs) but I'm going to leave this guy be, I think. The beans and peas seem to be doing well so far, so what the hey.













On the right, the lettuce seedlings awaiting transfer (which, a week later now, are HUGE and need to be planted!) and on the left, the tomato seedlings which I'm letting gather their strength (two of these have also bit the big one since the pictures were taken). Both of these I grew from seeds - the other tomatoes we cheated and bought as plants from the garden store. So we'll see how they do compared to each other.

And here's the above-mentioned tomatoes. The one in the back on the right is a volunteer, meaning he just showed up with all the other weeds that were in the ground already this spring. I decided to give him a chance, and didn't yank him out. As long as he doesn't give the other tomatoes any gross bugs, he can stay.

Alrighty, that's all for now. Lots more garden stuff to discuss, but this is enough pix for one post.

Thanks for reading.

I get up again, over and over

So here we go again; the interviews, the real estate tours, the lists of pros and cons about each city, the endless debates, blah blah blah. All the stuff I thought (or hoped) we were done with, all the things I felt such relief last year that we'd NEVER HAVE TO DO AGAIN...yes. We're doing them again.

Tomorrow we drive up to Valhalla for KB to interview (all I can think is, "Valhalla? Isn't that where Thor and Freja and Wotan and all those crazy Norse gods hang out?" and so that Led Zeppelin song that has the lyric, "Hammer of the gods" is stuck in my head. I don't even know which song it is; it's the one that goes "We come from the land of the ice and snow..." et cetera.) at the hospital there; Nolan and I will be heading down to Manhattan to Fort Tryon park to hang out.

Then Wednesday KB has another interview at another place right near where my grandparents used to live, and then Thursday he has ANOTHER one at a hospital in New Brunswick. He has a week of vacation this week, thankfully, so we have time to do all these interviews.

I know if I were a more optimistic person I might be excited about the possibility of seeing new places, meeting new people, blah blah blah, but I'm just not. I'm terrified at the thought of having to move again and start all over again.

I think I thought that if I just wanted this (this being Princeton) to work out badly enough, it would. Or rather, it didn't even occur to me that it might now work out - that's how much I wanted it to. My brain refused to even entertain the possibility that things might not work out here. And we see how well that turned out. Wanting something to be true does not make it true.

It's weird how I vacillate. Some days I'm like, "Ah, what's the big deal? We still have each other, we're all healthy, we're (relatively) young, KB's a friggin doctor, it's not like we're going to starve. What am I whining about? We'll land on our feet." and other days I just freak myself out hyperventilating about moving and selling the house and finding new doctors, dentists, dry cleaners, grocery stores, preschools, violin teachers, FRIENDS, et cetera. I guess I need to get better at this process, because who knows? It could happen again.

So anyway. Whine, moan, complain.

What else? Nolan is potty learning (that's right, kids, they don't call it potty "training" anymore) and doing surprisingly well. We started trying to motivate him with a calendar on the wall that he got to put stars on. One star for peeing in the potty, two stars for pooping. That lasted about four days, until he realized that he wasn't really GETTING anything. So now he gets candy. We just cut straight to the bribery. If he produces anything in the potty, he gets to pick either six M&Ms or one Hershey's kiss. He wears either Lightning McQueen or Elmo big-boy underpants (Ha! I initially typed "big-goy" underpants - I guess they're that, too!) and those seem to be an additional motivation for him. We have to bring the potty with us EVERYWHERE, and for long car trips and quiet time we wear pull-ups.

So that's exciting. For us. And pretty much no one else in the known universe.

And his birthday is coming up fast! Three years old, believe it or not. (By the way, if any of y'all sent us a gift for Nolan off his Amazon wish list, could you let me know? We got a couple things in the mail with no sender listed (other than Amazon) and no invoice included in the box, so we have no idea who they're from.) We're having a par-tay on Sunday, so I will be sure to put up some new photos from that shindig next week.

All right, that's all I got. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Thanks for reading.

There ain't too much sadder than the tears of a clown (when there's no one around)

KB's mom left this morning. Nolan and I drove her to the Newark airport and dropped her off, and she is even as I type winging her way across the country back to the Bay.

I am bereft. I suppose I should feel lucky that I get along so well with my mother-in-law, and I do, but right now I'm feeling sorry for myself at losing my wing man. She's like a combination mom/friend/sage/mentor/protector figure in my life, and it's been a great two weeks having her here. She has endless patience for Nolan and all his foibles, and is always willing to get him when he wakes up, or play with him when he wants to play, or just generally take the pressure off of me being the only adult at home all day.

She loves to cook, and we always eat well while she says with us. Plus she's so considerate - pretty much every morning during her visit she's unload the clean dishes from the dishwasher, and just this morning when she was making herself a turkey sandwich for the flight home, she made an extra one, wrapped it in Saran and stuck in the fridge for me to eat later.

She just knitted another sweater/hat combo for Nolan, this time in a pretty teal blue and gray pattern that he looks adorable in, so he's all set for this winter. Nolan got so used to having her here - the first thing he said when we got home from dropping her off was "Where's Grandmama?" as if he expected her to be waiting for us even after we just watched her walk into the airport an hour before. Sigh.

Plus, she's like the greatest gardening guru of all time. She's been instrumental in planning where to put things and deciding what plants to buy, so any success we have with our beans, peas, tomatos and herbs will be mostly to her credit. I wish I had taken a "before" photo of the garden (although the camera was dead) so you could see how much it has improved. I'm going to take some extensive photos of the house (one day, when it stops raining every day) and I'll get the garden in there so you can see how much we've done.

So I am sad.

Thanks for reading.

I can see for miles and miles

Well, this has been a shitty weekend, both literally and figuratively.

On Thursday night, KB was told that the practice won't be offering him a partnership. In other words, he needs to find another job. The reasons are complicated, but a lot of it boils down to the practice putting their business interests before their employee (KB)'s interests. In some ways, it's a relief, as this possibility has been hanging over us since about mid-March, and now that the proverbial sword of Damocles has dropped, we at least know what the hell's going on. Hell being the key word there.

All of the things I though we had going for us here in Princeton - stability, permanence, a feeling of finally being "home," have turned out to be mere chimeras, like desert mirages that disappear as you get close. We stupidly, and mostly at my urging, just bought a house three months ago, because I was sure things would work out here, and now we may be in the position of having to sell the place six months after buying it. Not a smart idea even in a robust real estate market, much less in the kind of market the U.S. is in right now.

We don't know where we'll be going next - we have until December to find something else - and we don't necessarily have to pull up stakes and move across the country. The non-compete clause in KB's contract only specifies that he not work within a 10-mile radius of any of the current group's sites, so that means we could conceivably still live here while KB commutes to another position.

I'm trying to take the long view - some day we'll look back at this and go "Whew." KB was actually starting to get quite unhappy with his workload with this group - he was doing a lot of the modalities and specialties he's not as well trained in and doesn't like as much (mammo, nucs, ultrasound) and didn't get to do much of the ones he really likes and is well-trained in (musculoskeletal, body-imaging, cross-sectional), so I think he actually is a bit relieved. I can't really blame the group, either (although I'm plenty angry with them) since they have to, as a business entity, put their business interests first. But it's still shitty.

AND speaking of shitty (nice blend, Fozzie, thank you, Fozzie!) I spent the entire weekend either in bed moaning or on the toilet moaning with some intestinal virus I mysteriously contracted while no one else in the family has (thank god for small favors). I'm not sure if it was a psychosomatic reaction to the news (not really likely, but the timing seemed more than coincidental) or what, but suffice to say, it was ugly. I just started feeling better yesterday (Mother's Day) and am almost back to normal today. Yecccch. Too much sharing, I know, but I just had to convey the complete well of blackness that we'd fallen into this last few days, and that was certainly a big part of it for me.

Sigh.

Thankfully, KB's mom is here staying with us for another week - she's been a godsend. She took Nolan all day Friday while I lay in bed sobbing and writhing. I can't imagine what it would have been like had she not been here. That's one of the good things about being married - you get to co-opt your spouse's family members as your own, and when you're sick, nothing helps like having a mom around.

And then, to complete the trifecta of crappiness (not literally) we had a wind-and-rain storm last night and one of the mostly dead trees ("I'm not dead yet!") in the back fell over on the house. At 3:12 a.m. Scared the crap out of me and KB, but nobody else woke up and no damage was done (except to the tree), so it could have been worse.

And so could all of this, really. This isn't the worst thing that could happen in our lives, not by a long shot, (I know one person in particular out there who knows about the worst thing happening, but that's her story, not mine, and I know she'll tell it, and tell it well, when she's good and goddamn ready) and we'll get through it and figure things out. And then there's that whole thing about being stronger at the broken places.* But it sure hurts while you're healing.

Thanks for reading.

*"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway.

With a knick-knack paddywhack

Well, we've been to Washington and back, and it was a great vacation, but it's always so hard to come back to real life once you've had a vacation. Erica and El Jefe were awesome hosts, cooking dinner almost every night and providing tons of distraction (bath toys! art projects! books!) for Nolan. Plus we had the whole upstairs of the house to ourselves - it was like our own little apartment in their house. We didn't do a whole heck of a lot, really. We went to the wedding of KB's friend Weissy (the ostensible purpose for the trip), and we made one other trip into Seattle to go to the Frye museum and of course Pike's Place market, but other than that we mostly hung out in Olympia. Erica and I got to have a girls' night out (which meant Nolan, KB and Jefe had a boys' night in, complete with steaks and bourbon) and it was soooooo nice to just hang out for a little while. We've been friends for over 20 years now (yipe!) and it's incredibly easy to fall back into our same rhythm of talking and laughing together. (The sparkling wine and gourmet food didn't hurt, either.) We almost didn't go out because we had all gotten sick (thank you, airplane travel) and we were kind of sniffly and sore throat-y, but again, the sparkling wine was a lifesaver. The girl-time binge made the return to Princeton a little hard for me - I'm once again reminded of my dearth of close friends here, and while I know things will get better with time and there's no rushing it, I still miss it.

So what else is going on, you ask?

Well. Our camera died, for one. The day of Weissy's wedding, right at the beginning of the ceremony. KB picked up the camera, pushed the shutter button, and it just froze, dead. So I am looking for any and all input into digital SLRs the four of you who read this blog might have for me - considering the Canon digital Rebel XTi, but willing to listen to other opinions. And that also means we have zero pictures of our trip.

And zero pictures of my seedlings, which I just planted yesterday. We had one of these indoor plant-starting kits that we, well, started before we left for WA, and while we were gone the green bean seedlings went berserk and pushed the lid off, they grew so fast. So I got the peas and the green beans in the ground yesterday, and I'm giving the tomatoes a few more days to get their strength up (and to hope the weather warms up a little) before I subject them to the same treatment. I put down chicken wire to keep the squirrels from digging up the plants (because I was told that squirrels aren't really interested in the plants themselves, they just like digging in freshly turned earth - who knew?) and think I probably killed more seedlings trying to get them through the holes in the chicken wire than the squirrels would have. Sigh. So we'll see.

Aaaaaaaand...what else?

Fiddle lessons are continuing. My teacher said something last week that really struck me, which was "Musicians are athletes of the small muscles." We were talking about the importance of practice and how there's really no shortcut or substitute for it. You have to tell your muscles the correct way to do things ("No, ring finger, for C sharp you're right next to the pinky, not the middle finger.") over and over and over again until they can do it from memory. Even if your brain can think it correctly, that doesn't mean your fingers and arms can play it correctly. So you have to commit yourself to practicing scales over and over just like a tennis player practices serves over and over. There's no other way to do it, to the chagrin of slackers like me who have a dream scenario in mind of playing in an Irish bar pick-up band but don't necessarily want to, you know, work to get to that point.

(And please, can someone explain to me why the names of the scales never have anything to do with the notes that are sharped or flatted in said scales? G major has one sharp, F#. A major has three sharps, F#, G#, and C#. Why? Why isn't a scale with only an F# called F#? I think I need to take a music theory class.)

I guess that's it for now. Nolan is good, KB is good, the weather sucks, the cats are annoying. You know, the usual.

Oh, and we still have no working washer-dryer set up. The new washing machine is installed, but the old dryer won't stack on top of it without a special stacking kit and new legs, so I've ordered those and when they come in I get to find out if KB and I can do it (stack the dryer on top of the washer and hook it up, that is) ourselves. So I'm washing clothes and hanging them on a clothesline I rigged last week. We're so eco-friendly, if not strictly by choice.

Thanks for reading.

Bow down before the one you serve

Fucking Sears.

Fucking "American Home Shield" home warranty.

Why is it so difficult to get anything done simply these days? Why do I have to spend so many of my precious Nolan-free minutes on the goddamn phone with a goddamn robot trying to get someone to come fix my goddamn washing machine? It's not just: "Oh, the washing machine's broken, let me call the repairman." And the repairman shows up and fixes the stupid thing.

Instead, it's: "Oh, the washing machine's broken." Let me call the home warranty place (on a Friday) and get a robot and push button after button on their voice menu before getting a live human, who then proceeds to tell me to wait for a call back. So I wait for a call back and speak to a human for 30 seconds before being transferred to Sears to talk to their robot (who at least has voice-recognition software so I can talk instead of pushing buttons). I finally speak with a Sears human and am given an appointment time five days in the future (a Tuesday), which means five days of toddler living with no laundry getting done. Then when the repairman comes he tells me he needs to order a part, and when the part arrives THEN I can call to make another appointment to effect the actual repair. Under no circumstances am I to call BEFORE the part arrives (even though there seems to be a five-day lag in appointment-getting). The part finally arrives on the following Monday (after one Thursday trip to the laundromat sans car, trying to get Nolan to walk at a pace slightly faster than a handicapped caterpillar as I push my little-old-lady grocery cart full of dirty laundry and hold his hand at the same time. That was three hours round trip, only an hour and a half of which was actual laundry-doing.) and I call to make a new appointment. I am told Tuesday afternoon from 1pm to 5pm. I am stupidly happy to get an appointment for the next day. I foolishly assume that the information given to me on the phone by a Sears rep will be accurate and go to the gym in the morning, only to miss 3 phone calls from Sears wondering where I am when my appointment was for 8-12 that morning. I call back upon returning home from the gym (going through all the robot brou-ha-ha yet again) and am told that I'll have to reschedule. I say, "I don't want to reschedule, I want my washer fixed when you told me you were going to fix it." I am transferred to a "tech repair" specialist who takes my phone number and tells me she will call the local repair routing office and have them call me. Two hours go by. No one calls. I call the main Sears number again and am forced, through gritted teeth, to once more recite my phone number and address for the robot. The customer service rep based in Manila, Phillippines tells me she cannot transfer me to anyone in the "tech repair" department because she doesn't have that capability. I tell her the previous rep did exactly that, but she persists in wanting me to reschedule instead. I am unfailingly polite - I say, "That is unacceptable. I would like my washing machine repaired today, as I was told it would be." She clearly does not know what the hell to do and ends up giving me the phone number for what she says is my local repair department. I thank her, hang up, and call the number (which does have a local area code) and, like something from a Sartre play, am connected to the same fucking robot who wants me to tell her my phone number and address. I hang up and jump up and down furiously while hissing "fucking fuckity fuckity fuck fucking fuckers" under my breath, startling the cats, but thankfully not waking up Nolan. I decide it's really not worth getting that mad and surrender to the robot. I call back one more time and get an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. From 1 to 5.

I will keep my fingers crossed. And shove one more day's laundry into the hamper.

I hate that this has me so upset, and I hate that this is the kind of thing that's making me upset these days - it's so lame. It's so 1950s housewife. I'm in pearls and a full skirt vacuuming and telling KB "Darling, the washer repair got a bit botched, I'm afraid, and so you shall have no clean hankies for work this week." Blargghg! There are more important things I could be doing with my time!

Thanks for reading. Sigh.

My friends say she's a dumb blonde, but they don't know she dyes her hair

So here's a stupid quesiton:

(Or, at least, I'm assuming it's stupid. It may, in fact, be a wicked smart question, but I'm defaulting to my life-long habit of just presuming everyone else in the entire world to be smarter, cooler, and more competent than me. It saves time.)

What do I have to do to be "safe" with my computer when I go to a public wi-fi spot? Now that we have a babysitter coming on a regular basis (3 days a week, woo-hoo! For a couple hours, anyway.*) I would like to take my laptop to...say...a coffee shop (gasp!) and actually, you know, do stuff on the computer for a while. By myself. In public. With a latte.

What should I be doing so that I don't have some crazy Princeton student/hacker/mad genius stealing all my private info? I have FileVault. Is that enough? Am I safe-ish (from viruses, anyway) because I have a Mac and not a PC? I'm not going to be going crazy with the online shoe-shopping or anything (not in public, that is), but if I wanted to buy a book from Amazon, would it be a very very bad idea to do it on a public wi-fi hookup? Is there some way you can encrypt your transmissions?

I never use my computer in public because I'm so freaked out about not having performed the correct prophylactic procedure on it. I would like to take it out and about more (it is a friggin' laptop, after all), but I don't want to risk getting our identity stolen. Am I just being paranoid? Do all those people typing away in Panera know something I don't? Or are they taking foolish risks?

I need someone to just walk me through it, step by step.

I've tried searching on a couple different online forums for help with this, but most of the discussions are either waaaay over my head (mostly on the Mac users forums), or directed specifically at PC users.

As Nolan would say, "Need help!"

*I have to say, despite her absolute wonderfulness, I have mixed feelings about having Kathy (that's the babysitter's name) here three days a week. Even though it's only 9-12, I somehow feel like I'm cheating by having someone else take care of my child during regular working hours. Nolan is my job right now, right? So how many people have a pinch-hitter at their regular nine-to-five job? (Of course, to be fair to myself, I have to say Nolan is more than a nine-to-five job. I don't get a lunch break. Or vacation. I'm on call 24-7. So I do need some time to do other things, like mail packages and buy groceries.) There. I've just justified myself to myself.

Thanks for reading.

I used to love her, but I had to kill her

Argh. Can't sleep (clown'll eat me!) so I'm writing.

Why does my brain wait until I'm all ready for bed - teeth brushed, face washed, prayers prayed (Ha! just seeing if you're paying attention) - and I've gotten snuggled into my warm bed before going into Hyper Creative Drive? Is it just that my sense of what is actually worthy of being written down is skewed by my tiredness and everything seems like a brilliant idea? (kind of like when you're stoned and everything you think seems REVOLUTIONARY!) Or does my brain just like to torture me by waiting until I'm all snuzzy drowsy cuddly with KB before it goes, "Psst. You know what would be a great way to introduce the FBI agent in that horror script? Here listen, I'll tell you..." and I find myself laying there arguing with myself:

Me: "I'll write it down in the morning."
My Brain: "You'll have forgotten it. I promise you."
Me: "No, this is too good. I'll remember it. I know I will."
My Brain: "You won't get all the detail. You won't get the feeling of it. You'll get some vague outline and most of the facts, but it won't be as meaningful and good as it is now."
Me: "God dammit."

And I get out of bed and go into the office and turn on the blinding light and write it down. And it's true, My Brain is right, because it's happened before - I tell myself I'll remember it in the morning, turn over and go to sleep, and then when it's the next morning (or afternoon when Nolan's napping, as is usually the case) and I do try to get it down on paper, I find myself going, "Now what was that great line? Shit."

I have, since the great The Wind That Shakes The Barley tragedy of Ought Eight, been given a virtual kick in the butt, writing-wise. I am simultaneously trying to work harder at writing at least something every day, and also giving myself a break for not being able to be Superwoman and do it all plus be a great writer. KB has said to me many times that this is just one phase in our lives, the stay-at-home-and-raise-your-kids phase, and there will be other phases (hopefully the write and sell and make movies phase) in the future, and I know that's true. It's just so hard sometimes to cut myself slack.

Which leads me to my next thought.

Nolan and I were at the library today, because we've been staying home entirely too much lately, being all homebound and cocoony with no appointments or playdates and I really felt we just needed to get out. It's hard to convince Nolan to change the status quo most of the time - if he's happy playing Constructables, he doesn't want to get a coat and hat and shoes on and go out in the cold and get in the car. So I usually defer to him and we stay home and play on the floor until I'm drooling with ennui.

But not today! Today, I forced him into the coat, etc. and we went to the Library for some interaction with other human beings.

And in the lobby, we ran into this woman, let's call her, um...Heidi. Nolan and I have run into Heidi and her kids numerous times in the past at various playgrounds in Princeton, mostly last fall, just after she had had her third child. She's a pediatrician who works part time, and did I mention she has three kids? When we first met her last fall, the baby had just been born and she was on her six-week maternity leave from work. (And she was completely free of any leftover baby weight that I could see.) We met for a couple playdates (her middle child, a girl, is Nolan's age) and lunch and whatnot, and I wish I could think of a bad thing to say about her, because...there isn't one. The woman's perfect. She has three kids under the age of 5, she works part time as a friggin' doctor, and she's totally cool. About everything. She makes homemade cookies. She knits. She wears Chuck Taylors in a completely un-ironic way, and she gets away with it! And she's not that annoying kind of holier-than-thou mom who let you KNOW that she knits and makes homemade cookies and doen't give her kids any food with high fructose corn syrup. She just does those things. And is totally self-deprecating and slightly goofy and doesn't wear makeup and I hate her.

I have one kid and am home full time with him, I don't knit or bake or do anything crafty, and all I do when KB comes home from work is bitch about what a tough day I had and how difficult Nolan was to deal with. Sometimes I think I just need to turn in my Parenting License to the Parenting Agency and say, "Sorry, I really thought I could handle this, but as it turns out, I cannot. I am a complete wimp and am totally incapable of dealing with adversity in any form, especially as it pertains to my child. Sorry about that. Better luck next time!"

Aigh.

So anyway, we met this woman in the lobby of the library, and we chatted and I invited her and her husband over for dinner. Because I'm an idiot, and apparently a masochistic one at that. I'll get to know her even better over dinner, I'm sure, and it will turn out that she volunteers for Save the Children in her spare time, knits afghans for elderly Katrina survivors, and that she once rescued a litter of puppies from a burning building. While wearing her Chucks. Sigh.

So I'm looking forward to that dinner.

But, and I have no smooth segue here (alas), the real thing I wanted to write about when I sat down was...Paul Haggis. KB and I just watched "In The Valley Of Elah," and I have to say, that's the first Paul Haggis film I've seen that didn't make me want to retch. Or hoot. Or both. Repeatedly. It was actually quite good - some clunky dialogue and some rather obvious foreshadowing of plot points, but on the whole very balanced and subtle and...mature.

I guess it's surprising to me, because when "Crash" won Best Picture in 2006, it really just hurt my brain. I couldn't fathom that anyone could think that trite, preachy, poorly written, hammily acted, obvious, treacly, ponderous, mish-mash of cliches could be on anyone's list of Not Too Awful movies, much less the Best Friggin' Movie of the Year. I laughed when it was nominated, it seemed like such a joke, and when it won I was just flabbergasted.

Not to mention "Million Dollar Baby," which was slightly less painful due to the mollifying presence of Morgan Freeman (he can make reading the phone book seem like Fine Art), but in which I was still able to predict the "big" moments, right down to almost getting the dialogue word for word in some scenes. (My mom hates watching movies with me now - she says I've gotten too snobby - and this was a particularly bad one. We were watching it at her house, since she has the pay cable and the big flat screen TV, and when I started guessing what the lines were going to be, out loud, to KB, she got up and left the room she was so annoyed. Sorry, Mom!)

So with those two movies (plus the screenplay for "The Last Kiss!" Yecch! Now there's a winner!) comprising the entirety of my knowledge of Paul Haggis's, how do you say, oov-rah, I did not have high hopes for Elah. I guess when you go into something with low expectations, it's not too hard to pleasantly surprised. I don't want to be damning the movie with faint praise, because it actually really was quite good. My theory (espoused to KB, my current sounding-board/victim for theories) was that Haggis had written and directed Crash, but only written Elah, and thus had another person (the theoretical director) to reign in his worst impulses and sort of balance him out.

Buzz! Wrong! Thank you for playing, Caroline! Take your year's supply of Rice-A-Roni, the San Franscisco treat, and leave quietly, won't you? He wrote and directed both of them. Huh. What do you know. Maybe he's growing and learning as a director and writer? That was the thing about Crash, it was so...juvenile. All the ideas were on the surface, nothing was left for the audience to understand. He might as well have just bought one of those giant billboards on Sunset and wrote "Racism and stereotypes...BAD. Caring about people as individuals...GOOD." and saved us all two hours.

But then, he's the one with the shelf full of shiny gold statues, now, isn't he?

Thanks for reading.

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids

Inspired by this thread on Fark. (WARNING: Don't read the thread unless you are prepared to spend about an hour giving yourself lots of new things to be afraid of and a massive case of the heebie-jeebies.)

Things I am irrationally afraid of:

-Spiders and roaches and silverfish, oh my! Anything with lots of wiggly legs and a tendency toward fast, jerky, unpredictable movement. Mice, fine. Lizards, great. Snakes, cool. I have no problem with any of them. Flying 3-inch roach skittering up the wall in my bathroom? Kill me now. *shudder*

-Those cans of biscuits/pizza dough that you peel the paper off of and they POP open. I hate those! The suspense! The weird, doughy, sploot noise! The worst is when they don't pop even when you've peeled off all the paper and then you have to go find a spoon to "press at seam" to MAKE it pop. *shiver* I usually make someone else do it for me, and even then I have to leave the room or cower in fear with my hands over my ears.

-Injury to my eyes, specifically having a paper cut on my eyeball or having someone (who? who would do this? I don't know, that's why it's irrational) pull out my eyelid and use a hole punch on it. I distinctly remember the first time I thought of this - it was in Mr. Smith's literature class in high school and we were reading 1984. There was the whole thing with Winston's worst fear being having his head stuck into a cage full of rats, and that made me ponder what it would take for me to confess to the government torturer things I hadn't done, and the dark recesses of my brain came up with Hole Punch In The Eyelid. *flaps hands around and whimpers*

-I also, since seeing 28 Days Later, have a horrible fear of being unable to protect my defenseless son from zombies or any other huge natural-disaster type occurrence where humanity's dark side is revealed, people go feral and run amok, and you can't trust anybody. I am seriously thinking about training to use a gun and taking a wilderness survival kind of course in an attempt to allay those fears. This one doesn't strike me as irrational (well, maybe the zombies part) so much as Highly Unlikely But Still Definitely Possible And You Should Cover Your Ass Just To Be On The Safe Side.

Brrrrrrrr. I have to go hug Nolan now.

Thanks for reading.

Saved by zero

Happy New Year and all that crap.

I have, as usual, several semi-literate mostly unpublishable half-posts sitting here in my dashboard, and I have run out of motivation and inclination to finish and/or delete them.

My computer was held hostage by a highly incompetent computer "repair" shop here in Princeton for three weeks with no actual repairs ever effected, so I was using KB's computer for a while, which I really don't like doing. Not because it's not a perfectly fine (if PC) computer, because it is, but because it's not MINE. It doesn't have the passwords pre-typed like my computer, it doesn't have the same shortcuts as my computer, it doesn't have my address book and my contacts, my photos, my notes, et cetera. It just makes for very difficult computer time.

The reason my computer was being "repaired" was that the CD drive has crapped out on me - it will accept a disk and whirr industriously for awhile, igniting false hopes in my breast and fooling me into thinking that it will actually work, but then nothing happens. No icon on desktop, no music on iTunes, no DVD playing, et cetera. So I figured I needed a new drive. I took it to this local place, thinking I'd do my part to support the local economy (plus I hate Apple stores - love the products, but really truly hate the stores. Genius bar, my fanny.) but they had it for, as I said, three weeks and didn't do anything with it. Whenever I called in to see what the heck was going on, no one seemed to know anything, or I was told that the person who DID know something was on vacation. One time I called and got no answer at all (this was at 10:30 am) and when the voice mail picked up, the sultry anonymous computer female told me that the box could not accept messages and that there had been an error. These kinds of things, in a supposedly tech-savvy place, do not engender much confidence in me.

So now that I have rescued my computer from their evil clutches (and warded off the $150 "diagnostic fee" they tried to hit me with) I am bravely (and perhaps foolhardily) going to attempt to repair it myself. My awesome brother-in-law knows his stuff, Mac-wise - he helped me find a site to buy a new drive from and promised to talk me through the surgery on the phone if need be. So wish me luck with that.

AND. Yes, we're closing on the new house next week. We are currently booking movers and changing our address with all 8 million businesses/publishers/utilities/banks that need to know. Sigh. I hope we don't have to do this again for a looong time.

NOW that I've forced you to listen to my whiny bitching, here's what I know you're really after. Nolan pics:

Nolan petting a random cat on the street while we were out for a walk. I feel bad for him that Joe Street Cat is friendlier with him than our kitties are. I wish they would get over their fear of him (Jake's actually getting better and more tolerant, but Lola still flees in terror) because it would work out so well - the cats are constantly looking for attention and Nolan is constantly trying to pet them. I want to shake their little kitty shoulders and say, "Wake up! This is a win-win situation! He wants to pet you! You want to be petted! What exactly is the problem?" Maybe it's just that he will pet them gently and contentedly suck his thumb for a little while, and then grab an empty wrapping-paper tube and try to clonk them on the head with it. That could have something to do with their antipathy, perhaps.




Nolan experimentally tasting one of Erica's homemade peppermint marshmallows. She sent a whole bag of them, along with homemade pumpkin truffles and a present for Nolan. When I first gave him the hot cocoa and said I had a special treat for him, he got all excited. Then when I dramatically brought out the marshmallows, he looked at me like, "What the hell is that supposed to be?" I encouraged him to taste it, and this is the moment his expression changed from "What the hell?" to "You've been keeping this delicious sugar treat from me my whole life, evil wench!"

I think it's fair to say he enjoyed it.

He now treats the hot cocoa as more of a marshmallow delivery device than a beverage in its own right. Each one is the perfect size pillowy little square to fit in his cup, and he lets them get a little soggy, scoops them out, and sucks the hot cocoa out of them before re-immersing in the cocoa. We'll be in trouble when they run out. (Nolan did not get any of the pumpkin truffles. KB and I reserved [hid] those delectably smooth little nuggets for ourselves.)



Nolan on Christmas morning. You'll notice there is a dearth of ornaments on the lower half of the tree. This is because from the moment we set up the tree to the moment Nolan broke his first little shiny glass ball type ornament was approximately 2.3 minutes. The second one wasn't for another couple hours, but we quickly discerned that if we wanted to preserve any of our $3.99 per dozen Target ornaments, we'd best take action. So all the glass balls were shifted to the top of the tree and we moved as many soft or wooden ornaments as we could to the bottom of the tree, but we just don't have that many. Thus, the bare-bottomed tree.








Nolan at the Museum of Natural History (after a New Year's Eve haircut of which no pictures exist because KB took him, not me. You know if I'd been there, you would have gotten a three-part photo essay entitled "My Baby's Fourth Haircut. Sob.") in New York. He was more enthralled (and exhausted) by the train and subway rides that got us there than the museum itself. He had a huge freak-out about an hour into our visit, when we had to take him into the Astor Turret and just let him sob and scream, but it seemed okay because there were about 30 other toddlers and their various nannies/parents/minders also there. (The Astor Turret re-purposed as The Toddler Freak-Out Room.) I think we'll skip going again until he can read - it's much more interesting if you know WHY all those bones and stones are there, and his attention span is just too short right now. Did I mention he's not taking a nap anymore? Yes. We now have "quiet time" every afternoon, where he is free to sleep or not sleep, on his own, in his room. Most times he doesn't sleep, and that makes for very cranky evenings, let me tell you.

So anyway. Them's the haps round these parts.

Thanks for reading.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

People!

Sorry it's been awhile since I rapped at ya, as my man Jim Anchower often says, but we have had some serious shit going down.

We are buying a new house! It's true. It's all happening. There was much back-and-forthing with the offer and the lawyers and the blah blah blah, so things were up in the air for quite a while, but now it appears that all is well and we will be closing some time in mid-to-late January (it's set for the 18th right now). Woo-hoo! Now that it seems it will actually happen, I feel comfortable showing you some pix.

There are lots of pictures of the snazzy kitchen, because when they remodeled it in 1997 it was featured in a kitchen-design magazine. It is the most well-appointed kitchen I have ever been in (prep sink! pot-filler! indoor grill!), and it is certainly the nicest room in the house. What they don't show you, of course, are the original 50's-era bathrooms with the buzzing fluorescent lights and peeling caulk, but hey. All the better opportunity to remodel them and make the house our own, right?

We had the inspection yesterday and things look good. Nolan came with me for the inspection and saw the house for the first time, and he approves. Sample conversation (from the ride home in the car after the inspection):

Me: Did you like that house, Nolan?

Nolan: There was a night light! That was my favorite.

Me: Yes, there was a night light in the hallway. Would you like to live in that house?

Nolan: There were no cars in the rooms.

Me: Well, that will just mean more room for your cars!

Nolan: I want some snack.

And...scene! Nolan seems to have the expectation of lots of toy cars in the bedrooms of every house we've looked at. Not sure if he thinks every home has small boys living there and thus large amounts of toy cars, or if he just assumes that everyone is interested in cars and therefore has a room full of them in their homes.

So that's what we've been up to. Lots of phone calls and e-mails and scheduling and huge check-writing. I am excited and eager to get into the house and get situated, but not real thrilled about the prospect of moving in mid-January amidst the cold and the wind with the muddy boots on the wall-to-wall carpeting and the glaven. (It's been fucking COLD and windy here lately - I swear I saw a tumbleweed the other day whilst walking home from the grocery store. Made me think I was back in Wyoming.)

Plus we're already in the thick of applying to pre-schools for Nolan for NEXT FALL. Next fall! I was worried that KB had lost his mind when he mentioned pre-school applications, and that we were falling into the cliche of the snooty parents trying to get their dumpling enrolled into simply the BEST pre-school to ensure the little darling's entry into the Ivy-league college he is so obviously destined for, but it turns out that you have to apply a year ahead for EVERY pre-school, snooty or not. So we've also been consumed with decisions like: 3 days a week? Or 5? Co-op? Or Montessori? And all the fevered worrying about what is best for our child that that entails.

Thus endeth my long-winded list of reasons for Why I Am Not Posting More Frequently.

Thanks for reading.

Quick! Someone call the girl police, and file a report

It is currently 77 degrees here in Princeton, at five o'clock in the afternoon in late October - does anyone else feel that there's something wrong with that? Pumpkins on the porch, leaves on the ground...and shorts and flip-flops on every passerby. Although occasionally I do see someone engaging in what I call "wishful dressing" wearing jeans and a turtleneck, pretending it's autumn and sweating like crazy.

Whew. I'm glad I wrote that last back-to-reality post before I checked everyone else's blogs...Doc Broc's post would have made me a wee bit self-conscious, I think. I don't post those lists to sound cooler than I am*, honestly...it's more like, since I consider this blog (and all y'alls blogs) the way that we keep in touch with each other, I like to tell you what I'm up to. And read what you're up to. And then if we've read the same thing or seen the same movie we can talk about it. You know. Connect. Promote interaction. As much as is possible on the web, anyway.

I kind of went on total non-computer status there for a while - didn't read anyone else's blogs, didn't check e-mail, didn't surf the web at all. I'm not exactly sure why...I just needed to disconnect for a while, I guess. These past few months have felt like a sort of time out of time, an extended summer vacation, and the ridiculously warm weather hasn't done anything to disabuse me of that notion. I keep feeling like this life we're living in Princeton is just for now, and that sooner or later we'll have to go back to "real" life, whatever that is. Maybe it's because we lived like that for so long that I expect it to continue, or maybe it's because we're only renting this house so I don't think of it as our "real" house. I don't know. But there's been a feeling of impermanence hanging around me, and I need to take steps to remedy that - start getting involved in life in Princeton in a real way.

*Precisely 19% cool, if you want to know.

And now, a cute Nolan story, apropos of nothing:

Jake (the bigger, male, slightly-less-astonishingly-dumb one of our pair of cats) was having a spazz attack, running around the house in that sudden urgent way that cats have. Nolan was eating breakfast at the table. Nolan says, "Why are you running around, Jake?" and then answers himself as Jake and says, "I'm chasing my tail!"

And another bizarre message has arrived from the outlands of my brain regarding my choice of reading material and inter-arts confusion: I'm reading a book called "The Shadow of the Wind," a sort of gothic, multi-layered book-within-a-book set in Spain around the time of the revolution. It was recommended to me by my mother-in-law, who read it for her book club, and although I normally steer clear of "book club" books and anything that comes with a so-called "reader's guide" in the back, Ann (my mother-in-law) has pretty good taste in books and has recommended some past winners to me, so I'm checking it out. Of course, every time I go to pick the book up and see "The Shadow of the Wind" on the cover, I get the song from Pocahontas stuck in my head, the one that goes, "Can you paint with all the colors of the wind..." but since I never really got into Pocahontas the way I did some of the earlier "new" Disney movies (see also: Little Mermaid, Aladdin, etc.) I don't know the rest of the words to that song, just a vague scrap of the melody, and then that runs over and over through my head and becomes distorted until it further resembles Ronnie Dobbs' plaintive show-stopper "Y'all Are Brutalizing Me" from Mr. Show's second season. And then I start thinking about that episode and how the movie they made from it, "Run, Ronnie Run" (with a guest appearance by Ebony's mayun) never really lived up to the brilliance of that episode, and how some comedy skits should just be left in their short incandescent wonderfulness and not be stretched and tortured into full-length films. Not that anyone from Saturday Night Live would listen to my puny little opinion, and not that I'm not grateful for the sight of Mandy Patinkin, stark naked, singing "Can't a man not control his bitch with violence?," but still. You see where I'm going with this? Neither do I, but it's far, far away from General Franco and the plight of everyday people in war-torn Spain, which is where I started.

Sigh.

Sometimes I worry about me.

Thanks for reading.


P.S. Yes, some new Nolan pictures are coming soon. Soon, I tell you!

Let's call the whole thing off

So guess what these plants are?

This little area between the front porch and the side porch used to be where we kept our garbage and recycling cans. There were four of them, two trash and two recycling, lined up front to back, and they sat on top of a whole bunch of what I assumed to be weeds.

Now, what you have to understand (and I really should have taken a "before" photo to illustrate this) is that these plants were NOT staked up , as they are shown in the photo. I did that after I discovered what they were. Before, they were all laying down and matted into the ground by the trash cans. Which the previous tenants had put there, by the way. So I don't feel I should be ridiculed too much for not recognizing initially that, amongst the clover and other assorted weeds, we have two very much alive and very actively fruiting tomato plants!

My mom was over two weekends ago, and why were we outside? I guess we were playing with Nolan and his tricycle, or she was getting in her car to leave, I don't really remember, and my mom knelt down and said, "Carrie, these are tomato plants!" I was all Scooby-Doo with my "Hurh?" I knelt down next to her, and sure enough, there were little green globes hanging from some of the branches.

The plants were practically on the verge of being run over by the car, so far out into the driveway had they protruded, and since I thought they were weeds, I hadn't really thought to do much about it.

But yes, they are tomatoes, and so I went inside and found some cheapie old brass curtain rods, pulled off the little finials, shoved them into the ground and tied the plants up to them. Then I dug all the weeds out with a cultivator and threw out some of the assorted trash and debris that had collected there because of the trash cans.

God know how these things got there, since I'm given to understand that tomatoes generally aren't perennials, and I certainly wasn't doing anything to take care of them in any way. Until now. Maybe the previous tenants planted them long ago, and the trash ooze leaking from the cans helped to fertilize them? I don't know.

So I went to the Home Despot and got a couple tomato cages and some vegetable fertilizer. Trying to shove the quite-mature plants into the tomato cages did not work very well, however, and in the end I gave up after only getting one of them into a cage, with much accidental breaking of stems and crushing of flowers and the glaven.

So who knows? Maybe in a few weeks we'll have tons of tomaters and a crushing need for my mother-in-law's fabulous Cream of Tomato Soup recipe. Or mabye we'll get a few stunted runty tomatoes and the rest will be killed by some bug that I don't know enough about gardening to prevent.

But in the meantime, yay! Tomatoes!

Thanks for reading.