Same name, same attitude, different address. See you there. :)

This is the Nostepinde the Rock Star gave me for xmas. I love it!! There's also a picture of the lovely center pull yarn balls I can wind with it. These yarn balls are so beautiful, they're sitting on my desk and whenever I look at them I go, "ahhhhhh...." and feel all gushy inside. Wierd,huh?

These beautiful blues were also purchased from ebay and are destined to be socks someday. So beautiful. I couldn't take a pic that did the colors justice.

And as if knitting isn't enuf of an addiction, I've decided to try spinning. I got a spindle and some wool. Gotta love Ebay. Have had zero success with this. I'm going to try to contact some local spindlers and ask if anyone is willing to give me a demonstration and a few pointers. Here's my wool and spindle. Someday it'll be something...

Updates on the important stuff are in the extended entry.

the Rock Star is working on a couple different contracts outside the house. Most of his real work is keeping me from falling apart completely. He's a saint.

I'm alive and doing ok. I ended up going on anti-depressants a couple months ago. My father dieing unexpectedly in April was the culmination of many months worth of crap and I finally couldn't take it anymore. I was barely functional, but through the magic of the pretty pink pills, I'm feeling better now. But get this. I totalled another Subaru day before yesterday. It was a little over a year ago that the guy rear ended me. This time a woman went through a red light and smashed the crap out of the front end of the Suby we bought to replace the last one. I was alone in the car, which is a blessing, cuz this was a much worse accident than the last one. My seatbelt kept me from being injured to badly, but didn't stop my head from conking pretty hard into the door. I had a CAT scan and xrays and everything's ok. I'm just very sore. Happy fuckin' new year.

The Boy's diet is one of the biggest projects I've got going on these days. Since last I wrote he's tried mango and carrots. Loved them both. We stopped the yogurt for a few days, cuz we're not sure if it's causing him problems. He's sleeping pretty good at night these days. Goes down around 7:30 or 8:00, but wakes up way too early. The last few nights he's woken at 4:30 am. The Rock Star tries to get him back to sleep, and sometimes he does for 20 min at a time. More often it's cry until 6:00 am and then we get him (and me) up for the day. I'm working really hard at keeping to a daily routine that includes breakfast, nap, lunch, nap, dinner, bedtime with breast feeding in between each. Naps are rarely more than a half an hour. Second tooth is just under the surface, refusing to come up and I suspect it is the root of all troubles the Boy is having.

I got a set of invoices done yesterday. The Rock Star finished the 2003 taxes and made a good start on 2004. We have kept to a healthy eating plan every day since we got back from the funeral. Our goal is a month of totally healthy eating. I started walking two cocker spaniels every week day. Sometimes the Boy comes with, sometimes he stays home with whoever is here. The Rock Star comes along sometimes. He's started a new job working at his cousin's office on several programming project. It's flexible hours and will likely last through the summer, giving us a much needed income boost.

Spring has really sprung around here and everything is greening up. Magnolias have bloomed and so have tulips in many yards. Just starting to see the Rhododendrons. Can't wait for Lilacs. Love the Lilacs. I want to plant tomatos and herbs this year. Wondering how much it would cost to have someone come over and spread mulch in all the mulchy areas and do a spring clean up of the yard, plus clear a gardening patch. I love planting and tending and harvesting, but I hate clearing areas and tilling them up.

Something sweet in the extended entry.:)

Yeah, my hair is too many days from it's last washing and I'm wearing my ratty old pjs, but get a load of that cute baby, huh?

The Boy turned 6 months old on February 10th. He's 7 months old as of this post. He started eating solid foods on Feb. 13 and eats like crazy. I'm following the Super Baby Food book by Ruth Yaron and it is great! This is a fantastic book and I recommend it to everyone. She makes it so simple to feel good about what your baby is eating. He's had rice, oat and millet porridges. Also banana, sweet potato, avocado, pears, acorn squash and whole milk yogurt. Tomorrow he's getting mango. All organic and prepared with love by me. I feel really proud of how well he's eating so far. I have been making home made yogurt and we all love it. I've made granola, too. Feeding the Boy right is helping us to eat right, too.

BIL from San Francisco visited beginning of March. He taught us all how to play Texas Hold'em and I experienced a brief but intense addiction to the online live version.

The Boy started sitting up on his own at the beginning of March and we started a new ECFE class.

My 42nd birthday was Mar 30 and we celebrated at Buca di Beppo. I love me some Buca. And I really loved me some chianti that night. When we came home I was ever so nicely buzzed. A client came to pick up her dog and as I came downstairs to greet her, I tripped over the gate we keep on the bottom landing and fell down the last four steps. My slam into the new hard tiles was cushioned by the amount of chianti I'd consumed, but man oh man did I feel it the next day. And every day since then, as a matter of fact. My right knee and calf were very sore, and the bruises were spectacular. Both my wrists are still very painful, and it's likely that something is broken in my right one. I've got to get out a brace and try to take it easy for a while. It hurts whenever I use it.

We started teaching the Boy to sleep in his crib on April 1st. We got a book called Good Night, Sleep Tight by Kim West. She's called the Sleep Lady. The first night he cried for 45 minutes or so, but the Rock Star was right there with him. The idea is to leave him in his crib to figure out how to put himself to sleep, but not leave him alone to cry it out. It's hard to hear him cry, but the plan has been working for nights. Last night, for instance, I put him down at 8 pm and he slept clear through til 6 am. That's 10 hours without a peep. It's been a real relief to reclaim our bed and our night time sleep. Naps are another story, but we keep working on them. He usually naps 30-45 minutes in the morning and afternoon, and according to all we've read he should be napping 1-2 hours each time. I'm hoping that he'll start taking longer naps soon, but for now I'm glad to be on a schedule/routine that gets him to nap (in his crib) at all.

On April 5 we got very bad news. My dad had a massive heart attack and died. It was completely unexpected and we are devastated. We flew to the small town in Montana where he lived with his wife, just in time to view his body before cremation. My dad was the best man I'll ever know and I miss him terribly. The depression is threatening to overwhelm me again, but the Rock Star is helping and the Boy is giving me lots to keep me busy.

The Boy flew for the first time, to Montana and back, and he was a champ. Not a peep. He got a certificate from head flight attendant. During the trip there he was Mr. Sunshine. Really remarkable, considering he was completely outside of everything he's ever known, being passed between 20 or 30 loving relatives all day and cutting his first tooth. Just because being away from home for your father's funeral isn't fun enough, I got my period for the first time since I got pregnant and Mastitis in my left breast. Good times...

An update to my last post, I'm not as addicted to Craigslist as I was, but still check it regularly. We got a leather couch, chair and ottoman for $300 and a breadmaker for $20 and a food dryer for $10. Craigslist been berry, berry good to me. Always in need of an internet addiction, however, I'm toying with the idea of returning to Ultima Online. I stopped playing shortly after I started my blog, but kept both my accounts. It's an online role playing game that has in the past consumed massive amounts of my time. It won't be able to now, cuz I don't have much time to spare. I'll prolly have to give up the few TV shows I've started watching.

Let's see if I can dig up a couple cute pics. Check the extended entry.

Sitting on the floor at Grampa's apartment:

First thing: Holy crap how cool is GMail? I finally succumbed to one of a trillion offers of a GMail invite and Holy fuckin' wow!!! Once again those Google guys just know what we need and figure out a most elegant way to give it to us. I'm in 4 Yahoo e-mail groups and it has always bugged the shit out of me that you can't follow a simple conversation in those groups. GMail sorts them all out and puts all replies to one message together in one "conversation". It's bloody, fuckin' brilliant, I tell ya'.

Next: Did I really need another internet addiction? Not really,it's not like I'm rolling in spare time around here. But what the hell. Craigslist. Holy crapoly! I can't get enough. At first it was just the listings for furniture and household goods. Then free stuff and wanted, too. I found myself checking the pages every time I got near my puter to see if anything new had come up. Some of this stuff cracks me up. Like this. She's getting rid of it cuz she and her new boyfriend can't agree on style. My guess is he has some sense of it and she has none. I give 'em 6 months. Maybe she should just hold onto it. Just when I thought Craigslist couldn't get anymore amusing... I found the best of link. Which led me to this and I laughed so hard I nearly wet my office chair. Speaking of office chairs...From the time posted to the time it was in our possession: 1.5 hours. SCORE!!!

The other night, the Boy woke up crying at around 3:45 am. I had the Rock Star hold him while I went to pee and stepped on something wet and squishy. I barely suppressed a scream , and turned on the light (very dimly). Dead mouse. A fucking dead mouse. I stepped on a dead mouse with my bare foot in the middle of the fucking night. I ran to the bathroom and put my foot under the water in the tub, which incidentally was ice cold. The Boy was crying much harder by this time. The Rock Star was pacing around, and I was freaking out and swearing. Then when I crawled back into bed, I put my hand in something wet. It was cat puke on the bed spread. More barely suppressed screaming. More running to the bathroom and more fucking cold water. More crying by the Boy. More pacing by the Rock Star. I stripped the bed spread off, threw it down stairs and went to crawl back into bed, and as I was on hands and knees in the middle of the bed, my wrist collapsed and I fell flat on my face. Finally got into position and got the boy latched on, the Rock Star disposed of poor dead mousie and we managed to get back to sleep. Before becoming a parent I would not have thought it possible, but yes, we did actually go back to sleep after all that. That's how tired we all are lately. Now here's the part of the movie where you think it's all over and then the monster comes back to life. All the next day I was havin' the wiggins over the feeling of dead mouse on my foot, and on the way to bed that night, it happened again. Our cat really, really loves us, I guess. New rule in this house: The bedroom light stays on AT ALL TIMES!!!

I'm all hot to try making home made yogurt. I hear it is vastly superior to storebought, tastewise and I aim to find out. I've read many different methods, and given my ginchiness about food spoilage have decided that I want a temperature controlled machine to do the job for me. There are many expensive models available, but the Salton for $13.50 gets rave reviews so I'm starting there. I had to order it from the internet and pay $9.00 in shipping because, and you're not going to believe this: I could NOT find one for sale anywhere in the city of Minneapolis. I called every natural food store, every co-op, every fancy appliance vendor I could think of and they all sounded like I was some kind of nut for asking. Anyhow that should get here by the end of next week and by Sunday I should be seeing what all the fuss is about. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I have a list of fun things to update about, just no time right now. See the extended entry to be gobsmacked by the cuteness.

Peace:

Huh? What?:

Tubby Time:

So the Boy has decided he is not all that interested in my grand plan to get him on a napping schedule. Turns out he's not much interested in napping at all, let alone on a schedule. We had that one great week, then since this last Saturday, it's been Sleepless in Minneapolis. Since we're doing complete turnarounds, I guess I can hold out hope that next week he'll nap 2 hours at a time every day next week. mm-hmmm, yeah, fat chance.

A few pics in the extended entry.

Mommy's keyboard is fun!

The view of our yard on this snowy day:

I wrote a bunch more, but erased it, cause it makes me too fucking mad to be coherent. It boils down to this: A lot of us just plain folks are struggling to get along. It's obscene that a few people will feast, while many worry about how to buy groceries. It's immoral that a few few will be wallowing in luxuries, while many of us worry about how to modestly provide for our families. It's offensive that there will be drinking and dancing, while soldiers and their families suffer separation and fear for thier lives. It's infuriating that the President and his supporters can't see how wrong this is. I'm disgusted.

$28 million. What the fuck?

I didn't get my bath last night. Instead, the Rock Star and I could not take our eyes off the last several episodes of the 6th season of Buffy. OMG. Evil Willow. We usually just watch one or two, then go to bed...last night I think we watched 5. I'm paying for it today. It's possible I'm just too damned old to be staying up til 3:00 am. Woot! Partay!

I'm in the mood for a long hot bubble bath!! I think that's what I'll do tonight. I'll get some lobster boilin' hot water in that tub and sit in it til I'm bright red and pruney. Sorry for the mental picture there folks, just count yourself lucky I don't post an actual pic. Ya'll know I left my modesty in the hospital when I had the baby. Anyhow, I'll soak and read. I'm reading The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. Very common sensical. I love how this woman writes and thinks.

The Boy is doing really great on his naps. The next phase of the "Grand Plan" is to get him used to sleeping in his Pack-n-Play bassinet. Right now he naps in his swing, so he's used to the motion while he sleeps. Today I started putting him down for his nap in the swing, but not turning it on, so we'll try that for a few days. Then we'll try the bassinet for naps.

The pediatrician said we should start trying to give him some rice cereal when he's 5 months old. I'm not really sure how I feel about that, but it can't really hurt to try it. Should make for some cute pics!

Portions of the proceeds will go to progressive causes and there's a page where you can vote which ones you like best. To buy a wristband, you'll be directed to their Ebay store. I didn't want to bid and wait, so I scrolled clear to last page and found the Buy it Now options. I got 2 for $4.99 plus 1.00 shipping.

I'll wear it 'til it rots off my arm, or until Bush is gone.

[via the fabulous Mac at Pesky Apostrophe]

The husband has been working with our friends on a contracting crew all week doing sheetrocking. He came home with steaks yesterday, so tonite it's steaks, backed potatoes and a vegetable! mmmmmmm. Yummy!

I finally have some pics. They're in the extended entry:

Toe peeking out:

Daddy decorated the tree, while we watched:

Bundillyicous:

Happy hat day!!:

Mommy smushed the car:

Look at me sittin' up!:

Fun at Santa's house:

With Santa:

My favorite gift on xmas eve:

Flying Boy:

Xmas day with my cousin:

Xmas wore me out:

Mommy figuring out how to wear me on her back:

Baby in a turtleneck!:

Mom's two best guys:

Chillin' at the computer with Dad:

Boy went down for a nap at 11:00 am. Sister shows up at 11:05 to help out. Boy sleeps til 2:45. We finally woke him up. Way to waste her time...Great nap though. Yesterday he took two 1 hour long naps, when I had no one here to manage him. Today 3 flippin' hours when I have someone to help. Go figure.