Today is Wednesday and I Love Wednesday

We sent J packing Monday!  To Hawaii!  And work is paying for it?  Lucky dog!
We'll grudgingly hold down the fort for the next week while we freeze.  And work on getting us moved up north.

Today I got the best piece of junk mail ever.  It says "read before discarding".  I love it!  How can you not? 
And speaking of junk mail.  Why does Honda send me envelopes that look like junk mail.  I put aside an envelope for a month before I deigned to open it.  Luckily I didn't trash it because it notified me of a recall on my car.  Nothing big, but yikes!  Can you get some more formal envelopes that say "read before discarding"  or "this is real mail.  not junk." 

I guess I'll know next time. 

In other news, Gwyn hides in the closet and watches Barney.  Granted, that's where the comfy pile is.  But Barney?  Yuck.  She knows that I forget that I gave her my ipod and that there's a better chance for her to get more viewing time in if she's out of sight.  Yikes. 

I'm super stoked because I made all the hard phone calls today for moving.  The ones that involve people and buying a house.  Those are the kind of calls I can put off for forever.  So pat on the back for me for behaving like a grown up, calling strangers, and letting them know how little I know about buying a house and how much help I'll need to do it.  Yay me!

ps.  I made carnitas today in the crackpot.  Yum.  Want some?

Happy 2011

Hi!  Happy New Year! 

I've missed you terribly.  You know all those signs advertising flu shots?  Next year I'm gonna get me one of those.  I would gladly spend $25 if I could get last week back.  And now the kids are sick, too. 

Luckily for you, you don't have to hear us hacking and snorting, puking, and moaning.  But didn't that make you want to go out and get a flu shot?  Right now?  Me, too.

I've missed all sorts of special days, but I'll put them up shortly.  You are going to LOVE Gwyn's birthday lobster.  I just know it. 

See you soon! xoxo

Today

Right this second, Jesse is interviewing (by telephone) with a school in New Zealand. For whatever reason, I think it's hilarious that there is the vague possibility that we might go there. We really need a gypsy wagon.

It was 94 degrees here today. It looks like autumn is coming tomorrow or the next day. Maybe next week? I was so depressed by the heat, I looked at the weather in Maine. Perfect fall temperatures. Highs in the 60's, low 70's. Lows in the 40's. We are trying hard not to miss Maine. It's not working especially well.

We have been working especially hard with Mermaid in math. She has math anxiety. She's actually pretty good at it, just needs to gain confidence. Monkey wants to learn math, too. She's eerily quick. Sometimes, she makes me nervous.

Last week, we went on a bike ride. The bike path follows a narrow wood to the creek. The kids could almost wade across. We hear people kayak and canoe down the creek. I am a little suspicious.

Funny Friday

Totally made my day. I was completely busting up. If you're not into bleeped f-bombs, then give it a skip. But if you're an snl fan/Jack Johnson fan, so funny. Made me think "I guess he really did go to Kahuku."

Home

Whoever said you can never go back, was wrong. There are some places that change so slowly, you can go back. The sacrament bread still tastes the same. Sister M's honey whole wheat recipe. The old people are still old (ok, so they were probably not that old when I was a kid, they just had their children young, so seemed old to me).

I love being home. I'm starting to figure out how to be an adult child. I'm loving helping my mom out for completely unselfish reasons. I love that she lets me help her figure out how to remodel her kitchen. Since I don't have a house of my own, she lets me live vicariously through hers. I also love that Jesse works his tail off to improve the garage. And now he has grand plans to paint all the kitchen cupboards in the next two days. I love an ambitious man.

So in a few days we're off to the unknown. No cousins. No siblings. No moms. I'm sad already. I can't wait for the day when we're offered a job close to family.

icrazy

And can I just say, I'm all aflutter about the new gadget being revealed by Apple tomorrow. I don't even like gadgets. I have no money for i-anything. But just the invitations and marketing strategy get me- a complete technophobe- kind of excited. I'm a little aghast that I even know that it's tomorrow. I wonder what time.
(someone left their ipod touch or iphone at the gym and I turned it in to the desk because if I weren't so darn honest, I would have stolen it in a heartbeat.)

Engage 2010!

Christmas break could go on and on as far as I'm concerned. I love having no structure imposed on me. I also loved seeing my family.

But now we're back home. It's a new year. A new decade. And I do have a few goals.

I am trying to implement the monthly dinner plan. Over break I wrote out a list of dinners that the family will stomach to varying degrees. It was surprisingly long when I really looked at it. So this week has us eating enchiladas, chowder, bean burritos, spaghetti, pizza, tomato soup, and fish. We'll see if it works. Now I just have to find a store where the meat doesn't scare me.

Last year I wanted to simplify my life. This year my goal is to engage.
So, I'm picking the kids up from school so we have more daylight to play. I'm really trying to be active at church, not complain about J's calling or my calling for that matter. (Though I have very little to complain about as Jesse is the only member of the bishopric w/ kids they always give him a ride and have meetings before or after bedtime so he can put them to bed.)

And if you were wondering, it's still cold, there's still snow on the ground, and we kind of like it.

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of the Year

I was looking at the Halloween post and realizing that it's now November and then comes December which is always CRAZY (and that's not counting the great flood of 2008).

Because lest you forget there's:
Christmas, Dec 25
Monkey's B-day (5), Dec 29
Jesse's B-day, Jan 1
Mermaid's B-day (8), Jan 31
Mermaid's Baptism, Feb sometime.
Valentine's Day, Feb 14.

And to make things exciting this year, we have:

Dissertation sent to advisers, Nov 16,
Thanksgiving, Nov 26,
Dissertation filed, Dec 5,
MLA Conference, Dec 27-29,
Job interviews, Feb.

I know that tons of people are way busier than I am, but for two months I feel like a CPA at tax time. CRAZY!

Volunteer

If you pass by my house, you might see these awesome volunteer tomatoes. You can't tell that well in the photo, but there are three of them.

The soil is super rich there, as that's where the sewage overflow outlet is. And we've had three backups since Christmas.

So here's the question. Just what kind of tomatoes will they be? We favor cluster tomatoes, but what do the neighbors fancy?

I wish we were going to be here to find out.

Cross Word

A couple of weeks ago, we watched Wordplay, a movie about the NY Times crossword puzzle. It seemed that I should be able to do a crossword or two. Well. Turns out the LA Times puzzle is easier and freer. Today is the first Saturday puzzle I've managed. It took 45 minutes. And Jesse helped. I can finish a Monday or Tuesday puzzle solo (they get progressively harder throughout the week).

Yay for online anti-atrophy.

Home of the Week

This is one of my favorite places to waste time. I mean get inspired for my future house, wherever it may be. It's the LA times home of the week. Love it.

Today is Monday

This weekend was Mermaid's birthday. We had a great party, took tons of pictures, and then I deleted them. I haven't gotten around to trying to retrieve them because I'm soloing. J's at his first interview in Ohio. The house is pretty clean, even without him here. Maybe he's messier than he thinks. Hmm.

Church was a little hard since the kids were sleep deprived. I had to take monkey out for a couple of minutes. After meetings I pretty much begged for an invite to dinner and the kids played with their friends. Then I put them to bed at 6:30. I've got babysitting set up for tomorrow and next week as well when J's in NY for interview #2. For FHE tonight, we'll go to the dollar movie. Of course the kids desperately miss Jesse. It's sweet.

Life

My efforts to simplify have been thwarted by LIFE. What's up with that?
Good things:
-My class this semester is a breeze. Sometimes, a breeze is a good thing.
-Mermaid passed her reading test with flying colors. Her teacher had no idea she could read so well (yet another major problem with 25 kids in a class of 1st graders).
-We've decided to put the mermaid in another school next year (if we stay) since it starts at 8:30, giving us 30 more minutes of sleep!!!!
-J and I went on a date last week. It was F-U-N. And we just made babysitting arrangements for V-day. And...last night we stayed up late playing Boggle. So much fun. Especially because I won (thank you super competitive siblings!)
-J invited friends over for a potluck. And it was also fun. It's so good to be with friends. They are our family here.

But...our camera is broken. Which is very annoying since we paid quite a bit for it. So I'm using our old camera. I want an SLR. But alas, we have a budget.

Which means that Jesse and I are now looking at our belongings and thinking "how much could I get for that off of Craigslist?"

The countdown for J's job talk continues. He's had several phone interviews, but have yet to hear. I adore upstate NY. I adore snow, rain, sleet, hail. I also adore California. And if we live here another year, that's just great. And gosh darn it. People like me.

Shoot 'em

Here's another classic photo from the flood. My dad used to be really into guns (maybe he still is?) but he'd take us shooting with him. I'm pretty junk since I can't really see. But my little brother is amazing. He had a bit of practice with the neighborhood tree rats.

I can't imagine taking my girls out to shoot. I had to have been younger than Mermaid when I shot my first 22. I think someone else is going to have to teach the girls to shoot. If at all.

What dat mell?

Yes, Nami, it smells over here, too. My niece had a bit of trouble with her th's and s's but not with her olfactory senses. We noticed something nasty when we got home on Wednesday, but today it was even worse. I came home from dropping Mermaid off at school and noticed it again. Kicked around a few rocks, picked up some flowerpots. Then noticed the toilet paper gurgling out of a pipe in the landscaping. NASTY!

But, it was so nice to just have to call maintenance and have them there in 5 minutes flat. I LOVE RENTING!!! Now if they'd only come back and clean up the stuff that spilled.

Week in Review

It has been a short, but filling week. School. Homework. Then Saturday we decided to have an adventure and include some garage saling. This is after we spent an hour and a bit cleaning and decluttering. I guess we did make some room for new stuff. Jesse found a whole bunch of tools and junk drawer stuff that everyone needs, but hates to buy. And the girls were given three used handbags. The crazy part is that one is a suede Coach bag and the other is a snakeskin Oleg Cassini bag. I mean, these aren't super expensive, but they're not cheap. I mean. My goodness. The girls are giving me the Coach bag for Christmas.
"But then you'll know what you're getting!"
"That's ok."

Then we went to the beach because it was 92 degrees or something crazy hot like that. We saw some pretty cool tide pools. The water was freezing. But I managed to get a little sunburnt.

The downside of this week-
The Santa Ana's are blowing.
And parts of orange county are on fire (not close to us). But we're getting lots of smoke and my eyes sting and I can't breathe very well.
And there were protesters outside of church yelling at us even though we have an Obama Biden sticker on our car. And Jesse didn't follow the directions to keep your windows rolled up so I heard someone calling us mormon bigots (which felt like a bit of bigotry itself as he has no idea how I voted, if I contributed anything to prop 8, or how I feel about anything and I really don't think mormon bigots drive turquoise ford escorts). And they scared the mermaid, which upsets me even more (and isn't it great when you have a new reader who wants to know if we'd read the signs because she would like us to tell her what they said).

Discounts and FREE STUFF

Did you see the Snapfish Freebie on Oprah? Log on today or tomorrow and get a free photo book (Christmas present anyone?) http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/20081029_tows_messyhouse/7
The catch is that you have to order it by Sunday, the 16th. Kind of a lot of work, but worth the 29.95 of freeness in my opinion.

And, I got an email with a code for 30% off at the Gap/Old Navy/Banana Republic. It's only good for in store, but might be worth the trip. It's good until the 16th of November. And 5% of your purchase will go towards charity. Pretty decent deal. I've been eying a sweater at the Gap. Hmmmm. Anywho, drop me a line on my emaill (see my profile) and I'll forward the coupon to you.

What other freebies do you know about?

Heat Wave

I know it's autumn in some parts of the Northern Hemisphere. I've seen friends' blogs with pictures of snow. BRRRRR! I have this display on my table to remind it is October. But yesterday it was 98 degrees. WOW! Now I somewhat pine for cooler temperatures (I like sweaters but I hate being cold).

But...my lawn was reseeded a week ago and really needs this warm spell for optimal growth. So instead of enjoying the fall colors. I'm watching grass grow. (really. I check it every day. at dinner last night I couldn't stop talking about how exciting it was that the grass finally started growing.)

Where have you gone, darling Bekah?

I have been:
-fixing my computer. Yes, an English/psychology/music major can fix her own computer without calling Adam! (It just needed to be cleaned, but I ended up rebooting OSX. Got a little carried away)Check out that fancy schmancy monitor and keyboard that J got through Craigslist. We feel so high class. We just need speakers so Miriam can listen to Faded Paper Figures, her favorite band. She's a bit of a groupie.
-catching up in my classes. After running around campus two days in a row, I am officially enrolled and have two assignments and two discussion boards to contribute to before we go to Santa Barbara tomorrow.
-ferrying kids on the extracycle.
-Missing Jesse while he was at a conference and visiting my dad and Joe, Leslie, kids, and Lance. Not fair.
-Welcoming Jesse home with a semi-immaculate home.
-Reading books one and two of Twilight. It's every teenagers dream, gorgeous boy, who has the maturity of a 100 year old man. Gee, that's every woman's dream. No offense, babe.

So that's where I've been. In bloglalaland. It's sort of like Bob Loblaw's Law blog, but not quite.

Hello America

My first impression of America. Grass. Lots of green Grass. It's really pretty. Second impression upon receiving change for my meal at Ikea. Your money is GROSS! Dirty, yucky, icky. I didn't want to touch it. I'm still grossed out by it. Luckily, I can't remember my atm number, so I can't get any more of it until Jesse comes to America. What a relief.

It's also nice to go from GARGANTUAN GAIJIN to average sized american.

And now that I'm back in America, I need a car. And I'm having a doozy of a time finding one. I'm actually sick to my stomach about finding a car. Here are our options:
A- spend all of our money or go into debt for a good reliable car.
B- spend some of our money and get a decent, probably will need work car.
C- spend a little bit of our money and hope it lasts for two years, make sure to have towing covered.

Fun, huh? Can you imagine us buying a house?