Devil Dog

Each day that passes, I hate our dog a little more. She is intelligent but intractable, stubborn, mischievous, recalcitrant, chewy, barky, whiny, and naughty. And, she pees in the car every morning when I take her to the dog park (or, in the case of this morning, pees and vomits).

I was complaining to my sister about the dog, and she (who has no children) patiently compared dogs to children and chided me for wanting my dog to "be perfect in a day" as I would never expect that of a child. This analogy holds no water for me. Daisy is the worst aspects of a 3-year old, and maybe a teenager rolled into one, which combination, by nature, does not exist in children.

1. I can't put Daisy in time out. I can put her outside, make her submit, put her in her kennel, but I can't say, "I'm making you lay on the ground because you got in the trash and that is naughty and we don't do that in our house." Well, I could, and I have, but it makes zero percent difference as, as soon as I let her up, she sneaks around the corner and gets in the trash again.

2. Daisy makes no sincere effort to try better. Even if sometimes Lillian's efforts are lame and token in nature, she usually does try. This morning, I was out with my lemon-water spray bottle. It went like this: BARK BARK BARK. *spray* "No barking!" _pause_ BARK BARK BARK *spray* "No Barking" _pause_ BARK BARK BARK *spray spray spray spray* "NO BARKING" and so on for about 10 minutes until I had to go inside to keep myself from delivering a swift kick to her midsection.

3. Lillian has not the size, strength, or speed of Daisy. I can easily chase Lillian down, hold her down, pick her up, or sit next to her nicely. With Daisy, I can do none of these things. I rotate watching kids with a group of ladies so that we can go to the gym. While the other ladies actually use this time to maintain their physical fitness, I take Daisy to the dog park because I've never made quite the spectacle of myself as I did when I tried to take my kids and the dog. One day, I was 15 minutes late to pick up because I couldn't catch Daisy. Even without the children, I tend to make myself look ridiculous: running around after the dog with my pregnant belly, frantically calling her, trying and failing to corner her. The dog park is probably about 2/3rd's of a football field, so it is no small amount of running. That day, there was no one else there. On normal days, Skittle's owner usually helps me out.

4. I have no natural affection for Daisy. Children do have a way of driving you to extremes and before I had children I never ever ever thought I would understand parents who put pillows over their kids faces. Now, I get it. I've been so physically and mentally ground down that I've had to put my screaming baby in her crib and take a bath with ear plugs to calm down because I wanted to shake them until they just stopped crying. But I didn't because nature builds in this natural love for your offspring. I do not have this towards Daisy. Before I figured this out, I was amazed at how quickly I would lose my temper with the dog when I hardly ever lose it with my kids.

I don't want Daisy to be perfect; I want her to listen. And, before you try to be helpful, yes, I have watched many episodes of The Dog Whisperer, skimmed Cesar Milan's book, read his website (and many others), and tried all the techniques for turning myself into the pack leader. We start obedience school this week... mostly because I signed a contract stating that I couldn't give her back to the shelter unless we completed a course.

When perspective slaps you in the face

Tyler is going to be gone for what amounts to almost 5 days at the end of the month. He's going to work all day Monday, fly to Denver Monday night, be there until Friday morning when he'll fly home, then work all day Friday. Denver is where the people who are in charge of his project physically work, so he occasionally goes up there for some face-to-face time, just to make sure everyone is actually on the same page, and it doesn't just look that way, you know, on paper, or email, as it were.

I briefly considered my options as to what to do with my time. Option 1: drive to see my sisters and parents in Southern California. Pro: Sisters and parents. Con: both sisters and parents have full time gigs that would prevent most all socializing during the day. Also, 9 hours one way. Option 2: drive to see my other sister in Draper. Con: 12 hours in the car. No way.

Being that I was drawing my possible driving circumference at about 1 hour, I realized I wasn't going to go see anybody, except maybe my friend Emily, who lives about 2 miles away, i.e. I am going to stay at home. By myself. During Rodeo Week when there is no preschool. All day. Me and the kids. All. Day.

I started feeling sorry for myself, maybe, a little bit.

Then yesterday, I was transcribing some genealogical-type papers I got from my mom. They were typed up legal sized, and I wanted them letter sized so I could print it out easier. One was called "Sketch of Eliza Collins Hunsaker, Daughter of Allen Collins, a Welshman, and Mary Broady, Scotch." If you're Mormon, you are probably related to Eliza Hunsaker, or, more specifically, to her husband, Abraham Hunsaker who in the end, had 5 wives and over 50 children.

Eliza was Abraham's first wife and they got married in 1833, when she was 15 and he was 20. They joined the church in Illinois after harboring a number of members who had been driven from their homes by mobs. Soon, they too were driven from their home. They loaded up their wagon and headed for Council Bluffs (near Omaha), in preparation for striking out across the wide prairie to who knows where. (It ended up being Utah, if you don't know the story.) While at Council Bluffs, the call came for 500 men who were needed to volunteer to fight in the Mexican War. Abraham signed up and left his wife and six small children with aught but a covered wagon for shelter for OVER A YEAR. Eliza had a brother who lived in Council Bluffs who offered to house her and her children on the condition that she renounce her husband and her religion. Spurning his offer, she lived in that wagon (and later, a crude log cabin) until her husband had walked clear to San Diego and back. He was gone from July 1846 to the fall of 1847.

Yeah, so. Maybe five days isn't so long.

Richard, What's Happening?

Ok, we've made you wait long enough. Here's the song Lillian was singing:

Lillian's Dance

Lillian's Dance from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

Fifty points to whoever can guess what song she's singing.

A few thoughts about some things

I've been thinking about coffee and/or tea. Being a life-long Mormon, I've only had coffee once in my life: I was in high school and we were sitting around a coffee shop that also sold smoothies and I reached down to grab my smoothie but accidentally got my friend's iced coffee-mocha-frappeé-chino-whatever that was in the same sized cup and took a sip. Eww. And until recently, I've never felt the loss of coffee: all through school, I never had trouble waking up early to study or felt the need to give up my precious precious sleep in order to study late at night (I'll just get a B on this test). So, there was a neighborhood block party a few weeks ago, and Lillian made friends with a little girl about her age. I started chatting with her mom, and she gave me her phone number. I haven't called because I have no idea what to do with her if she comes over to my house. On TV, this situation came up and the first mom said, "Why don't you come over tomorrow around 10 and have a cup of coffee?" Coffee! That social lubricant. It's perfect because it's something to do that doesn't take any planning or energy, and the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee is about as long as I want that first visit to be. In Jane Austen books, women are always coming over, drinking a cup of tea, and then leaving. This, obviously, isn't an option for me, (and not just because I don't live in Austen-era England, but because Mormons don't drink coffee or tea) but I can't come up with a good substitute. Hot chocolate seems sort of juvenile, although I wouldn't mind if someone offered me some. Chocolate milk in a frosty mug would also be delicious, but again, that seems not very grown up, and it's winter.

Any ideas?

I probably won't call for a while because we've had a rash of sickness at our house. Lillian woke me up early Sunday morning and had vomit all over her and in her bed. Gross. She threw up a few more times on Sunday, but then felt fine. Tyler stayed home with the kids from church. I was really looking forward to being able to listen to the speakers without having to play the fishing game and sing the hymns without my hymnal being snatched away to be used as a ramp for the micro-machines. I liked it for about 10 minutes... and then it was actually really boring. I kept looking around for something to do. I tried to entice the little boy behind me to come into my pew and share my strawberry newtons with me, but I guess his mom told him not to take food from strange women. Maybe I'm not that pious.

Then on Monday, I threw up, which is not news: I throw up all the time. But, I wasn't hungry, and that is not normal. With my morning sickness, I am starving and I eat and eat, and throw up, and then my body sends me signals that I must replace the food we just gave up so eat Eat EAT! I couldn't make myself eat hardly anything yesterday and I threw up and threw up some more, so I decided I probably had whatever Lillian had.

I'm so sick of being sick.

I woke up this morning and I felt marginally better, but I cracked while I was trying to get Lillian ready for preschool. Background: Lillian doesn't like bananas. It's not just that she doesn't like to eat them, she can't even been the same room as someone who is eating one, or where someone ate a banana an hour ago. Also, although we empty the dishwasher together almost every day, she's convinced that the dishes in the dishwasher are dirty, and the ones in the cupboard are clean; almost like, it's not the dishwasher that cleans them, it's the act of putting them in the cupboard. So, this morning. It was a fight to get her to go to the bathroom and get dressed (because she wanted to keep watching cartoons), then I was trying to get her to sit up to the table and eat a bowl of Kix. First, she didn't want to walk through the kitchen because Nora was eating a banana. She plugged her nose very dramatically and screamed that it smelled like "b-wana" and indicated that she was NOT going to go in there. After I got her sitting, I went to pull a bowl out of the (clean) dishwasher and she freaked out saying it was dirty. She sprung out of her chair and threw herself bodily against the dishwasher door to prevent me from extricating my hand with the offending bowl. I called my mom in tears and told her I was having a hard time. She was very supportive, even if she did laugh a little at Lillian's antics, and made the point that the fight is worth it because then she'll go to preschool and I can take a breather.

It was a good point, but turned out was incorrect because when we showed up, the woman doing preschool this week said she'd heard I was sick and was sorry, and then politely asked me to keep Lillian home.

So, Lillian is watching Hercules for the 5,000th time.

She's named all the muses except that one second from the left. I can't think of a good name for her. And, does it bother anyone else how they call the things Zeus throws "thunder bolts"? That doesn't even make any sense. They are lightning bolts, Disney. If you're going to botch up the whole of Greek mythology, maybe you could at least get one thing right.

Crossword-ease

Tyler got me Will Shortz's Greatest Hits: 150 New York Times Crossword Puzzles Personally Picked by the Puzzle Master for our anniversary. I love it when he gets me non-traditional quirky things (like a few years ago, he got me this special kind of floss that I really like). Anyway, I'm a little rusty when it comes to crosswords. It's not like riding a bike, and it's not a matter of just being smart. It's its own particular language. I've been doing the Mondays and the Tuesdays in the book (they get progressively harder during the week) to warm up. Today, I thought I'd try a Wednesday. Here is a list of facts that I didn't know that I had to cheat and look up:

• Sammy Cahn wrote the lyrics to "High Hopes"
• There's an Italian auto maker named Alfa Romeo
• Olio is another word for a hodgepodge
• Dirty Harry worked for the SFPD
• Jonathan Swift wrote a pamphlet titled "A Modest Proposal" in 1729
• Bill Cosby was in a TV show called I Spy
• Gary Lewis and the Playboys sang "This Diamond Ring"
• Paula Abdul and Stevie Wonder sang a song called "Will You Marry Me" (The puzzle was a marriage proposal for a woman named Emily Mindel, which, if I were her, I would have no idea it was meant for me because these clues and a mention of Emily Dickenson are as specific as it gets.)
• There's an artist named Paul Klee
• Cassis is a kind of black current liqueur
• Stephen Foster wrote a song called "Old Uncle Ned"
• Sedge is a kind of reed
• Rollo was a character in an old comic strip called "Nancy"
• Tyrol is the capital of Innsbruck, which is an Austrian state
• Yente is the matchmaker on Fiddler on the Roof (I think I did know this at one point)
  
• Enero is Spanish for January

So... it doesn't look promising for progressing past Wednesday.

It's Spanish for....

Tornado off Huntington Beach Pier, sent to me by my SIL who lives there (Meghan, did you take this?)

The last time El Niño came around, I was in high school. There was a lot of talk about all the severe weather we were going to have and making sure you had enough flashlights and powdered milk. And then what happened? Nothing. I was on the swim team, and I can remember swimming in the rain, but I think that happened every year.

Then, the first full year we're out of California, El Niño hits again (is it an every 10 year thing?), but this time, it was serious. No messing around. Tornadoes. Hail. Flooding. And, I'm not trying to gloss over all the people who had real damage to their homes or property, but I'm totally jealous. I love severe weather. It's like taking a vacation in your own home: you get to see new sights, smell new smells, be inconvenienced by things out of your control, get awed by natural wonders.

Of course, I can write this from the comfort of my 55˚-partly-cloudy Southern Arizona (we did get a little bit of that last storm... just enough to make everything soggy and get our backyard good and muddy for Daisy to run around in) and my house is in the same place as opposed to being picked up and moved 100 feet away by a mudslide. My family in California is probably thinking that this storm was exactly the opposite of fun and that they wish the next 10-year storm will be a dud like 1999, or whenever it was.

Oh well, at least I have monsoon season to look forward to.

Well, we have done SOME things.

Back in September, we decided how we were going to do up the backyard. That was pretty much all we did about that. Then we got this dog. If it were up to me, the dog would be a 99.9% outside dog. I realize that we do have some extreme temperatures here where we'd have to let her inside, like the 6 months where it's so hot, you want to take off your skin and soak your bones in a bucket of ice water. But, it's a short haired dog... right? This prejudice is probably because my dogs growing up were 99.999% outside and the concept of an inside dog is completely bizarre to me. But, I think Tyler likes the dog to lay at his feet while he watches Dead Like Me (by himself because I'm sleeping). This means that we let her in. Which means she jumps on the counter. And pees on the carpet (although, not anymore). And steals the kids snacks. And jumps on the couch. I have thought about shooting the dog with our shotgun, but I don't know where the shells are. I would use the .57 magnum, but because of my irrational fear of pistols, I don't know how to use it and I'd probably end up killing myself or one of my small charges that I actually like, which would look bad.

Canineicide aside, the dog brings in a lot of dirt into the house during these jumping, stealing, peeing ventures. Dirt from our backyard, that is still dirt.


This dirt grossness was the catalyst for us actually getting in the car and going to the landscaping place to look at pavers. Tyler decided on this pattern, and I think we're going to go with this color which is actually kind of a gray-purple, if you can't tell from the pictures..


I realize that we're still not all that much closer to being done, but it's one small step towards finishing, one giant leap towards getting started. I think the next step is renting a jackhammer to dig up our hard-as-rock dirt. So... that will be fun, not that I'll get to use it. Dumb pregnancy; it ruins all my fun.



Also, this is how Lillian spent all of dinner last night. We had ravioli. She likes ravioli. Usually.

Nothing to report

Tyler and Lillian at the Palo Alto Children's Museum over Thanksgiving

My brother Austin told me about the Enigma machine. He explained in great detail all about how it worked and how it was supposed to create codes that were unbreakable (which, incidentally, is what Austin does for a living). It made sense at the time, sort of, but like so many things that my genius brother has explained to me: the theory of relativity, how to "see ahead" in chess, alternating currents, my grasp on it lasted only as long as he was talking. The one thing I solidly remember from our conversation is that they way Team B (Britain?) was able to crack Team A's (Germany?) code is because Team A sent the same message over and over again, which was: Nothing to report.

Such is my life, but without the Enigma machine part. I'm feeling a little better, but I still throw up mostly every day. Aaaaaaaand... that's about all that's happening around here. I just hang out with the kids and the dog (well, mostly I yell at the dog). I get unbelievably tired and/or barfy around 8:00 at night, and I used to just go to bed, but Tyler requested that I at least sleep on the couch until he goes to bed, so we can pretend that we're spending time together.

Um.... what else is news... Lillian has a cold. Nora's getting a tooth. The software on my phone crashed, so I'm incommunicado (by phone) for a few days. And today after storytime, I'm thinking of getting down the mystery box in the garage to see what's in it. It's from our storage shed that we had at our apartment in SLO, so I haven't seen the contents for about a year and a half. I have no idea what's in it. It could be really exciting... or really lame. I'm hoping for exciting.

Meet Daisy

Tyler and I have talked extensively about the day we get a dog. We haven't gotten one before now because we were always moving around and living in small apartments and we knew we wanted a substantial dog that wouldn't fit in a small apartment.

It's our 5-year anniversary on Friday and I wanted to do something special for Tyler. I decided that the time had come, and I wanted it to be a surprise. All week, I looked at the dogs they had online, and I thought about going down there and scoping the place out, but I knew Lillian would totally rat me out and spill the beans to Tyler. Then, on Friday, I was chatting dog adoptions with my sister on the phone, and as soon as I hung up, Lillian piped up, "we're getting a dog for daddy!!!" Crap. I tried to impress upon her young mind how this was a secret and that we weren't going to tell daddy about it. She didn't mention it all day, so I thought she'd forgotten... until Saturday morning and we were getting in the car to go down there and she blabbed all about it to Tyler.



There were two dogs we were considering- Daisy here, and a German Shepherd mix-type dog. I was leaning toward the German Shepherd because that's the dog I had for a large chunk of my childhood, and she was a good dog. Plus, she was all sad and whimpered when we left and my maternal instincts cried out for me to take her home and pet her and let her lick the kids faces after they eat lunch. But, Tyler got final say because, after all, it was his present, and he fell hard for those floppy ears and droopy eyes.

The shelter was run by retired old ladies who were not in a hurry and didn't seem to notice that our kids were both DONE with the adoption process 45 minutes before it was over. We only had to sign two papers, but this somehow took an hour... probably because our adoption specialist had to tell us all the possible ways my children will try to torment the dog and possibly get their face bitten off and/or all the things the dog will possible chew up/pee on. I kept saying, "our kids have been around dogs quite a bit, they know not to try to ride them (pull their ears, pull their tails, jump on them, bite them, stick their hands in her mouth)," and "I've had a few dogs, I know that they chew on things/are territorial." It was way more stressful than having a human child. I didn't have to sign any papers for that and no one threatened to make an unannounced stop at my house to make sure everything was in order.

Daisy is a hound dog mix (of what, they wouldn't tell us, but we think she looks a little labrador-y). She's 1.5 years old and was found out by Elephant Head. She's great with the kids and is Lillian's new best friend. She's not quite house broken and peed in our laundry room where we made her sleep and pood all over our loft this morning (after we had taken our outside 2 or 3 times)... so, that will be fun.

On Morning Sickness

I would write a Reminiscence, but my brain is broken from all the nausea and vomiting.

I often think about Eddie Izzard while I'm throwing up. You can find several of his shows bootlegged on youtube and I would link to one, but I'm afraid my mother would click on it. You see, Eddie Izzard has a mouth on him. A dirty, British mouth. And, he's a cross-dresser. But, he's so funny that in the days of my youthful rebellion, I couldn't stay away. I was addicted.

Back to why I think about him when vomiting. He does a sort of irreverent bit about God assigning the body parts their functions and he gets to the inner ear and assigns it hearing and vomiting. The inner ear protests saying, "the stomach, surely, should be in charge of vomiting. Stomach, food..?" No, no. Hearing and vomiting. Mr. Izzard goes on to talk about how there's a lot of odd associations in life: like how seals are good with balls. Who figured that one out? How many failed combinations did they try before they got one that worked (lions with banjos?)

No one knows for sure why pregnancy makes women throw up. There are several theories that range from the plausable (hormones that help establish the placenta and prevent early miscarriage) to the crackpot (an evolved defense mechanism against eating plant toxins. (Yeah, like there's any less toxins in the normally disgusting Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits that are oh so good to my nauseous tummy (I don't know why) than in oatmeal which I couldn't choke down if my life depended on it)). I like the placenta establishment idea, but whenever I throw up, I think of God, with Eddie Izzard's voice, assigning the placenta to support the life of an unborn child and cause vomiting. Surely it must have protested saying that the inner ear already had the vomiting position covered. No, no. Life support and vomiting.

Questions and answer

Here's a list of questions people have been asking recently:

• Why do you sleep so much and/or go to bed at 8:30?
• Why do you throw up all the time?
• Why do you never leave your house?
• Why do you stay in your pajamas until three?
• Why are you getting so fat?
• Why do you eat so much and/or do you really think the number of egg-in-the-holes you eat is healthy?

The answer is expected July 18th. Stay tuned.

PS: no one has really asked me any of these questions, except maybe Tyler has complained about the going to bed early thing.

Saturday: FAIL

My dad asked me if I would leave my kids with him, just him, for a week. I said no because we were there for 40 minutes and this is what happened. Granted, it was my brother Andrew who actually gave her that sucker, but I bet my dad was thinking about doing it, or something like it.

Tyler had/took 6 days off for Christmas break, came back and worked 2 days, and then had another 4-day weekend. It's been great up until yesterday.

Tyler's sister gave us a box of Omaha Steaks for Christmas, which meant that we had to buy a new BBQ, I guess. We used to have Tyler's parent's old Weber BBQ, which was probably like 25 years old. We left it out in one too many monsoons and the bottom rusted out. Dang. On our new house, there's a natural gas port in the backyard, so we've (read: Tyler) has wanted to buy a new one since we moved, and I guess this box of steaks was as good a reason as any.

We first went to the Tucson Children's Museum which is always a good time. Lillian likes the jungle room and the veterinarian room. It all started to go south when we left. The tears. Oh, the tears. Disaster 1. And they didn't really let up once we got to Lowe's. Both children were generally irritated while looking at the BBQs. This was our second BBQ buying trip, our first was to Home Depot, but their selection (of BBQs in our price range) was crappy. We found one we liked and Tyler had it on a cart when he asked a sales rep if there was a conversion kit to make it work with natural gas. The sales rep said that the model didn't work with natural gas, and in fact, they didn't carry many models that did, so we just left. Disaster 2.

In the car, both children were starting to fall apart. I was getting really hungry so we (read: I) decided we would drive through McDonald's and get a Hot 'N Spicy Chicken Sandwich and small fry for the kids to tie me over until dinner. This took forever. I don't know if they were harvesting the potatoes or plucking the chickens or what but we waited in line at the drive-thru for at least 10 minutes. I was regretting my decision because I was really really hungry and if we had just gone home, I could have been eating 5 minutes ago. Disaster 3.

I had taken out two of the steaks out of the freezer to cook for dinner on our new BBQ and was kind of looking forward to them, so I looked in the handy recipe book that came with our package how to cook them on the stove/in the oven. You sear them in a pan and then put that pan into the oven and bake them for 5 minutes until they're done. When I took the pan out of the oven, I put it up on the glass cooktop. After I took the steaks and put them on plates, I realized that I had set the pan on the burner that I had just used to make mac and cheese, and it was probably still hot. Without thinking, I grabbed the pan handle to scoot it over. My hand only made contact with it for approximately 0.2 seconds, but that was enough to give me 2nd degree burns on my palm. Disaster 4.

As soon as dinner was over, Lillian said she had to go to the bathroom. Tyler took her as I was languishing on the couch with my hand in some frozen peas. I could hear the argument about whether or not Lillian should go poo. It went on for some time. "I want mom! I want mom!" I got up and for half and hour, I sat on the floor of the bathroom with my hand under running water and coaxed, cheered on, yelled at, and was exasperated with Lillian. Finally, I had to pull out the big guns: the liquid glycerine suppository, which worked in about 30 seconds. Disaster 5.

As we were putting the kids to bed, Tyler said, "man, I'm worn out."

Books of 2009

This is the first full year that I haven't been in school, so I decided to try to read 50 books. Done. I'm copying Bridget and publishing the list, with my favorites in red. Also, I tried to give you credit if you recommended a book. Here we go:

Juvenile Fiction
Gideon The Cutpurse, The Time Thief, Time Quake, Linda Buckley-Archer, recommended by my SIL Chantel. I liked this series. I read the first two early in the year, and then had to wait for the third to come out later. Because so much time had passed between numbers 2 and 3, I was pretty confused as the author doesn't rely on that age-old device of explaining the whole plot of the previous book in the first chapter. So, read them all at the same time.

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, Jessica Day-George, recommended by Allison. Cute. Compelling.

Graceling, Kristin Cashore
Fire, Kristin Cashore, recommended by GoodReads. I quote my original review:

I read this book in 1.5 days, much to the dismay of my family. I think Bridget said it best (although she was talking about a different book):

The point here is that Catching Fire is one of those lovely, delicious books that sucks you into its world and makes you want to ignore every other responsibility in your life, every other engagement, commitment, or member of your family, even the tiny helpless ones, and just READ. As much as I love reading, this particular kind of book doesn't come around very often (the Twilight series and some of the Shannon Hale books come to mind as other examples...)

This book did remind me a lot of Goose Girl in style and the mythical world milieu but edgier and it didn't end quite how I wanted it to end. But, I couldn't put it down, and will probably read the companion prequel, even though the review says it has dragons in it, and I usually draw the line at dragons. And Fairies.

Fire did have dragons, but it wasn't so bad. Not as good as Graceling.

The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets, Forrest Born
, Shannon Hale. Check 'um out. You'll probably like them, even if you have to pretend you don't to keep up your rep.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins, recommended by Bridget by way of Stephenie Meyers. Hunger Games: don't start this unless you have at least 20 hours of free time. Right then.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin, recommended by Myriah. Both books from my childhood that I wanted to read again to see if they were still good. They are.

The Calder Game, Blue Balliet. I only grabbed this one because of the title. It was lame.

Harry Potter #6, Harry Potter #7, J.K. Rowling. Always a good time. We re-read #6 to prepare for the movie, and then had to read #7 for closure.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley. Another Goodreads recommendation and a right good one at that. I liked this book so much, I read it twice. I can't wait for the next Flavia book to come out in March.

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, Fannie Flagg. Not as funny as everyone says it is.

Book of a Thousand Days, Shannon Hale. I like Shannon Hale, ok?

A Year Down Yonder, Long Way From Chicago, Richard Peck. When Allison told me to read these she said, "I want you to read these so I can say, 'hey, wasn't that book funny?' and you'll say, 'yeah, it was.'"

The Girl Who Could Fly, Victoria Forester, recommended by Bridget. Fun at the time, but mostly forgettable.

The Host, Stephenie Meyer. I think of this book almost every time I see Picacho Peak. (Which Tyler and I for a long time pronounced it peak-a-chu, because we didn't know better, and we thought it was funny. Our real estate agent informed us it's pick-aw-sho, or even slightly pick-aw-sha. So now, you won't make the same mistake as us.)

The Thief, The King of Attolia, The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen-Turner, recommended by Lu. I had the same problem as Bridget as the author's mind's eye worked differently than mine, and I often had trouble visualizing rooms, or how people were situated in relation to each other, which meant I had to re-read complicated passages more than once to figure out what the heck happened.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg. For book club.

Replay, Sharon Creech. Not as good as Walk Two Moons.

Peter and the Sword of Mercy, by David Barry and Ridley Pearson. A recently discovered FOURTH Peter and the Starcatchers book. How exciting. I hope they write more, they are so much fun to read.

NPR Books (which I heard about on NPR, or Tyler did and then told me about it.)
*You Are Here: Why we can find our way to the moon, but get lost in the mall, Colin Ellard, recommended by Tyler. I didn't quite finish this one by the time it was supposed to go back to the library. It was really interesting, but I couldn't quite digest all of what he was saying between all the baby vomit and potty training.

Alphabet Juice: the energies, jists, and spirits of letters, words and combinations thereof; their roots, bone, innards, piths, pips, and secret parts; with examples of their usage foul and savory, Roy Blount, Jr. I wish I owned this book so I could dip into it every now and again when I need a pick-me-up.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith. Or, as Tyler called it, Pride and Prejudice and Not Enough Zombies.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, David Grann
American Buffalo: In Search of A Lost Icon, Stephen Rinella. I had the word vomit about both these books. I couldn't stop telling people about the worms in the Amazon that live right under your skin that tormented early explorers until they learned that the indigenous people could whistle a special way to make them pop their head out for easy removal. Or, I told more than one person who didn't want to hear about it how buffalo weren't over hunted until there was a breakthrough in the tanning process that allowed both the winter and summer coats to be processed, thus not allowing their numbers to bounce back in the winter months. Both were really interesting, I thought.

Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghese. My attempt at reading serious adult fiction. It was ok.

How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer. I read this book before, except it was called Blink and it was by Malcolm Gladwell. The two books are different to a certain degree: How We Decide was much more focused on how the brain works to make decisions, while Blink focused on the types of decisions we can make without thinking.

I thought it was interesting enough, the writing was pretty good, and it made me understand why babies make me so superstitious. The author uses the example of slot machines and explains that our brains are addicted to making predictions and then being right and that slot machines are so alluring because our brains can't figure them out (because they operate on a complicated random number generator). This is exactly like babies with colic, to me anyway. My brain can't figure out what is wrong and all that trial and error is very taxing. So, when you make a prediction like, 'the baby will stop crying if the swing is set to level 3' and it works, you hold on to it with all your might.

Non-Fiction
The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment, A.J. Jacobs. Funny, impressive. Inspiration for my own unitasking experiment, which is floundering, but that's a different post.

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, Ammon Shea. Ammon Shea and I are completely opposite in temperament and ideology: he is a painfully introverted, psycho-leftist whiner, and I'm normal. He had something negative to say about every word concerning marriage (as in it's an outdated fascist-Nazi institution perpetuated by the unwashed masses who have yet to become enlightened on The Better Way To Live) and children (as in they are screaming brats who do nothing but annoy and take away your freedom to do whatever you want. Which, in the author's case, seems to be complain about sitting in the library for 8-10 hours a day.

I liked the words he found, but his commentary on them made me want to punch him in the face.

Two words I especially liked:
1. Minimifidian: (n) A person who has the bare minimum of faith (in something). As in, you assume movies will be horrible before you see them (but then they turn out great so you are always pleased and never let down).

2. Obganiate: (v) To annoy by repeating over and over and over again. See: my 3-year-old daughter.

Something Cleverish, Various. Good cause, clever-ish, but not clever. Actually, kinda lame sometimes.

Outliers, Malcom Gladwell

The Places In Between, Rory Stewart, recommended by Carrie. This guy is gutsy, and a little crazy, and probably very smart.

Braniac, Ken Jennings, recommended by Bridget.

*Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, Cheryl Mendelson. Every homemaker should read her essay on housework and homemaking. So good. I like her empowering view of housework as a part of homemaking, even if I think her views are a little extreme (I mean, she insinuates that if I don't do my dishes as soon as dinner is over or dust weekly, my family will fall ill and die). The asterisk is because this book is like 5,000 pages long and I've just been skimming what I feel are the relevant parts. I mean, I don't really need to know how to care for antique furniture or marble statues.

Adult Fiction
The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway

Tomato Rhapsody: A Novel of Love, Lust, and Forbidden Fruit, Adam Schell. I won this book off Goodreads and I liked it... mostly. One too many mentions of bastones for my taste, however.

The Actor and the Housewife, Shannon Hale. Lame ending.
Austenland, Shannon Hale. Eh.

These Is My Words, Nancy E. Turner. This book really struck a chord with me. Maybe I read it when I was all hopped up on post-partum hormones, maybe I was feeling really lonely here in Tucson (just like the main character), but I loved it.

Persuasion, Jane Austen. I think the movie is also excellent.

Charms for the Easy Life, Kaye Gibbons

Playing For Pizza: A Novel, John Grisham. Yeah, he should stick to thrillers and stay away from regular fiction.

Abandoned
The Hour I First Believed: A Novel, Wally Lamb. People really like this, I didn't.

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz. Won the Pulitzer so it must be good, WAY too much swearing for me to handle.

Paper Towns, John Green. Not interesting enough, too high school-y.

She's Gonna Blow!: Real Help For Moms Dealing With Anger, Julie Anne Barnhill. I'd say (from what I skimmed) 80% of this book was the author's experiences with her own anger and trying to deal with it. And from what I could tell, the 'real help' was "pray more," which is not helpful at all. Ok, well, probably a little helpful.

Stealing my own Christmas

Being sick has totally made me Grinchy about this Christmas. Where does one find the extra energy to actually bake things? Make my own wreath? Are you kidding me?

I did find myself in possession of some extra energy and volition yesterday, so I thought I'd bake snickerdoodles and fill up the cute Martha Stewart goodie bags I bought for half off at Michael's. Tyler always complains when I bake things just to give them away (although one time, he told me that this was one of the things that attracted him to me... maybe because I was giving them away to him?), so I was going to bake a double batch. Turns out though, I didn't have enough cream of tartar for double. That cream of tartar, although I'm fairly sure it has other uses, I think I've only ever used it for snickerdoodles, which I usually only bake at Christmas time. Every 3 years or so, I run out and it always surprises me.

Anyway, we got the cookies baked and wrapped up, but failed at delivering them. We were only 2 for 4 at finding people home and/or remembering exactly what house they lived in once we got there. We'll get the rest of them. Don't worry. Then for extra holiday spirit, we drove up to Winterhaven to check out the lights. Every place I've lived has had that one neighborhood that goes all out for Christmas. Eagle Hills. Vine Street. Winterhaven. It was a lot of fun, until Nora started screaming and wouldn't stop. That part, not so much. But, I especially liked the Harry Potter house complete with Whomping Willow, Harry and Voldemort locked in mortal combat, and Bellatrix LeStrange up on the neighbor's roof shooting hexes. Also, I liked the Festivus house which was simply decorated with a Festivus Pole and a sign that said "A Festivus for the rest of us!"

At the risk of making this post extra extra long, I want to briefly tell about our two firsts that I had this weekend.

First first: My mother-in-law very generously and very unexpectedly gave Tyler and I a sum of money for Christmas and I used my share to buy a Shark Steam Pocket Mop. I used it, and I loved every second of it. It cleaned my floors wonderfully and I found all the complaints of online people completely unfounded. My one complaint is that it didn't clean the grout very well, but neither does my regular mop. Actually, my other complaint is that because it just uses water, it doesn't make my house smell pine-sol fresh. How are other people supposed to know I put in all this hard work mopping if they can't smell it? Maybe I'll make a button: "I mopped today, thank me!"

Second first: I usually only wash my hair every other day. I have a lot of hair, like a lot, a lot, and it's very time consuming to wash it and style it. And I dislike doing it, mostly because I'm not dedicated enough to get up before my children to shower, so it's likely I have small children hanging on my legs, whining and complaining about how I'm taking too long. Which, I get that it's my own fault. Anyway, I read this article which was completely liberating. It talks about how dermatologists recommend only washing your hair 2 or 3 times a week. Fabulous! On day 3, which happened to be Sunday, a day I'm normally crunched for time because church is at 8, I put some cornstarch in a salt shaker, shook it all over my hair, concentrating on the roots, let it sit for a bit, then brushed it out. Granted my hair lacked the volume or bounce you get with a wash and a blow out, but it didn't look greasy at all. I curled it like Stacey London and I actually got a lot of compliments on it. Little did they know it hadn't washed it in 48 hours! Ha! The only word of caution I have about this is that it will only work on blonde hair. Sorry brunettes, I guess you're stuck showering like a sucker.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember throwing up

I've been throwing up... a lot... um... recently, so I thought I'd tell a throw up story.

Lillian was 4 months old. My husband and my friend Stephanie's husband were in the same program at Cal Poly, and I think they were working on their senior projects, or their theses, or something to do with airplanes that was taking up a lot of their time, so we decided to take a day trip down to Santa Barbara and leave the men folk to their eigenvectors.

As you travel south from San Luis Obispo, about an hour away, 30 minutes north of Santa Barbara, is Solvang. I'm not really sure why this place exists, but it's a Danish tourist trap. All the houses have Danish architecture, they have statues of Hans Christian Andersen strewn about, you can buy Danish pastries at every turn... you get the idea. I had been there when I was young and if I was more dedicated to this post, I would have found the picture of me with my siblings behind this wood thing and put it up for comparison. But, I'm lazy. Also, I didn't know Lillian was chewing on the wood at the time. I was just trying to get her head over a body while holding her out sideways from me, which was very tiring.

We decided to stop there for lunch.

I had a chicken sandwich with sun-dried tomatoes, and it was delicious. As I was eating, I realized I couldn't see my food very well as there were bright flashes across my vision. And, anyone who gets migraines with aura knows what's coming. I took two Excedrin and tried to lay down on a cold stone bench in front of a bookstore. Stephanie took Lillian for a walk around while I prayed that the Excedrin would kick in before the headache.

No. Such. Luck.

After laying down for approximately 10 minutes, I felt a rumbling in my tummy. I sat up and quickly figured out that I couldn't make it to the bathroom in the bookstore as I didn't know where it was in the store, or even if they had one. I turned around, and threw up my chicken sandwich with sun-dried tomatoes (and probably the Excedrin) into the bush behind the bench. I felt really bad doing it because it was a shallow planter at about shoulder level if you're sitting, so there was no hiding what I had just done.

Stephanie came back and I said that we had to leave and that she had to drive us back to SLO. She was really nervous about this because 1. She had never driven our car and didn't like driving anyway and 2. We had to get gas for the return trip and she's from Oregon, the land where you don't pump your own gas, so I don't think she'd ever done it before.

We got back just fine but I couldn't eat sun-dried tomatoes again for at least a year.

Operation Unitask: Day Five

Wow, this is tiring.

The computer has been moved upstairs which, I've found, is good and bad:
Good - I engage with my children much more often, like when Nora's eating breakfast, or when Lillian is picking up her blocks. Little bits of time that I used to spend checking my email.
Bad - I moved the computer into the office upstairs which is the most un-kid-friendly place we have in our house. Nora has spent the last five days upending my sewing box, going through the craft drawers, taking out all of my check books, finding and chewing on stray staples, pulling all our year books off the bookshelf, and trying to pull all the electronic equipment down onto her head. Maybe I should spend less time in here. I'm just saying.

The thing about so much engagement, is that you have to actually find things to do to fill up all that time. We spend a lot of time at home because Nora's 2 naps perfectly straddle Lillian's nap, so during the day, I most always have at least one child asleep. All this home time is a perfect recipe for stir-craziness and a complete exhaustion of all the activities our house has to offer. I've tried pushing Nora to stay awake and take one nap the same time as Lillian, but 80% of the time, this ends in disaster and at least two of us in tears. She's just not ready. Coming up with enough things to do to fill in those hours is a lot of work, and as I've been feeling under the weather lately (hint hint), we end up watching a lot of Disney Princess Sing-A-Long Songs.

Time for a new objective: Make (and try to stick to) a schedule. We don't have many house rules, mostly because Lillian's pretty obedient, and we don't really have a set schedule because we don't really have a whole lot that has to get done during the day. But Supernanny says that a schedule will organize our family and make us awesome, so I'm going to try it. I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to put on this schedule (see above and how I don't know what to do with my kids all day) but I'm going to make one.

I'm curious: what does your daily schedule look like?

Good, Better

I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes a good mom. I tried doing some research to answer this question, but a lot of what is out there when you Google "good mom" is about giving yourself credit, not burning yourself out, not judging yourself by how clean your toilets are, and whatever else under appreciated, overworked moms need to hear. I'm not under appreciated or overworked, and I know I'm a good mom. But, I want to be an awesome mom.

How does one become an awesome mom? I started observing moms that I thought were awesome, and I started thinking about how it was mostly about making life special for your kids, which doesn't mean making making their desserts into dragons, getting them the greatest toys, or being cutsie-pie (because kids don't really appreciate that). But, what does that mean for me?

Then yesterday, I was reading The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs. In the book, he performs a series of social experiments in his own life. He decides to tell the truth for a month, live by George Washington's 110 rules of conduct for a month ("adjust not yourself in public"), do everything his wife tells him for a month, and he decides to unitask for a month. The unitasking chapter was a little bit of a revelation. Of course, it's humorous in the book how he describes tying himself to his chair so he doesn't get distracted, and wearing a blindfold when he talks on the phone, but the essence of it is that he becomes more mindful of what he's doing at any given time.

This is what I need.

So, I'm starting my own month-long unitasking experiment. Or, more like a Mindful Mothering experiment.

Day one objective: move the computer upstairs into the office. We have a laptop and I keep it in the kitchen, and in my minds eye, I can see the scene play out a million times in which I'm telling Lillian to do X, Y, or Z, and she's dilly-dallying because I'm playing on FaceBook or checking my email for the 20th time, and I get more and more upset with her because she's not doing what I'm asking, and then it's really time for us to leave and she hasn't got her shoes on, like I told her 10 times, but made no real effort to help her find them, or sort out which was right from left. I've tried to do this in the past (put the computer upstairs), but ended up hiding in there a lot, so we'll see how it goes. I'm hoping it will help me be more focused on my mothering tasks and not so distracted by the siren call of Ask Prudie.

Mormon Mafia

My friend Bridget posted this on FaceBook and said, "I can't stop watching this." I can't stop watching it either. The "moving my hips like 'yeah'" is so hypnotic. But, that's not what I want to talk about.

Both of us just know that this guy is Mormon. But how are we so sure? Sometimes I see women at the library or wherever and they look Mormon, so I casually look for clues. Nine out of ten times, I can spot some dead giveaway, like a Young Women's bag or a glimpse of their garments as they wrestle their kids.

It's not like being able to spot Mormon churches. One time, I was up in Half Moon Bay with Candie on a Sunday, and we were driving to church. I had never been to that building before, so we were driving along the street slowly, looking for addresses. I looked up ahead a little and saw it on the left and said, "oh, it's up there." It was probably 150 yards away and obscured by the building next to it, so Candie didn't believe me.

Me: That's it. Trust me.
Candie: But how do you know?
Me: I just. Know.

All the churches kind of have the same sort of architectural style with a steeple instead of a cross so once you've been to 40 or 50, they become pretty easy to pick out.

But, what about the people? Is it their squeaky-clean look? Their penchant for doing silly things like making a movie of themselves doing ASL to Miley Cyrus?

Or, is this my superpower?

NaBloPoMo Roundup

Phew. It's over. Thirty posts in 30 days is tricky, especially since for approximately 27 of those days either one or both of my children, my husband, or I was sick, which I could have discussed, but I think it would have gotten really boring. I held back. I really did.

Instead, I discussed hot button topics like illegal immigration, 2nd amendment rights, and immunizations. Here's the stats on the rest of the posts:

Crafts- 1
Kids- 4
Mommy Madness - 4
Books- 2
Adventures- 2
Sickness - 3

Add a couple of Tuesday Reminiscences in there, plus a very successful De-Lurk Day! (even if the person from Montrouge, France never showed up), and you get 30 posts.

I'm sorry if the writing started going down hill towards the end, or the editing got sloppy, but I tried my best, and I did it.

P.S.- To all those people who, on De-Lurk Day wrote some variation of "I don't know if you remember me but we were in [whatever] together," I remember all of you! Thanks for reading.