A Few of my Favorite Things

Very Oprah-esque, I know! I was thinking about things I liked yesterday and made a little list. These are a few of my favorite things:

Peanut Butter Bars

I go in cycles of making these in great quantities. They just get better and better each day they sit.

Target Jeans

I have worn a lot of jeans from a wide variety of stores and in a wide price range. These are my new love though. The 3-5-7 sizing, (because I'm an in-between gal) the 1 % spandex to eliminate the awkward gap in back when you sit down for us skinny waist/bigger hips type, and the low, low price.

Online Dictionary

Remember when you were a kid and people made fun of you for mispronouncing big words? Well that's why I love this online dictionary. The layout isn't the cleanest, but by each word there is a button to listen to its pronounciation. I love looking up words that I've known for years but never used because I didn't quite know how to say them.

Spray Paint

I actually have a blister on my thumb from all the spray painting I've been doing this week. I am on quite the crafting kick and have come to appreciate the beauty of spray paint...the way it transforms things is like magic...I'm tempted to spray paint myself. Maybe I'll go open a window now...

My Husband

While I'm not bold enough to write scandalous blog posts  like my wild cousin or get all mushy-mushy, I will say I have the best husband! He might quite possibly be my favorite thing.









Farewell Owls!

We may meet again someday.

"I love being a turtle!"

Turtles in a half shell!

Now that the pain of my slip-n-slide burn is fading, I can finally bring you the Dirty Dash report:

Basically it can be summed up in the words of the announcer as he was mocking people who came to the Dirty Dash in "serious runner" mode. "If you ask me what my finishing time was I WILL PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE, because I don't care, and you shouldn't either!!!" (Rousing cheers from bejeweled, bedazzled, and becostumed crowd.) In the true spirit of Team Turtle, we walked most of the way, when we weren't doing this:

or this:

or this:

A great way to spend a Saturday!

p.s. Thank you Sara (a.k.a. Splinter) for your great team captain-ing! I think we all had a great time!

There is a great disturbance in the Force...

Today Sammy got done with preschool (she goes two days a week) and hopped into the car exclaiming happily about a card she had for me. I love to see her artwork so I happily took the card. Too late, I realized the magnitude of what I was holding--her first birthday party invitation.

If you think I forgot to put an exclamation mark at the end of that previous sentence, I didn't. I'm not sure how I feel about all this birthday madness starting so early. Do three-year-olds really feel the need to party a la Star Wars? But really, their age and the theme of the party is not the biggest issue: I would have to go and be social and buy a present and help supervise kids running around everywhere. I have always planned to strictly avoid hosting group parties for my children, but I thought the issue of going to other kids' parties wouldn't come up until kindergarten when I wouldn't have to go with Sammy. Can I tell my child that we have temporarily converted to Jehovah's Witnesses? Do I have to tell her anything? Would a Good Mom suck it up and attend the toddler birthday party?

What the H?

Today I got to participate in one of my favorite activities: calling my credit card company. (FYI: no this is not a picture of my card. This is an example of fake information that I plant throughout my blog.) Yes, next to calling insurance companies, calling my credit card company is a favorite midday activity for me, mostly because it keeps me humble, thus allowing me to better connect with the plebians that surround me.

Some examples: Once I called to ask them to cancel a card that had been missing for...I don't know, 5 or 6 months? Hey, I just wanted to make sure it was really lost. Another time I was Indian-accent-ed and fast-talked into signing up for some sort of card insurance thingy. (Note to self: If you're asked a bunch of questions that the answer to is "yes," don't just say "yes" to the next question if you can't understand it.) I had to call back and say that I didn't want the thing I said I just wanted. You see where this is going.

So today I called to cancel a credit card and couldn't remember the password on the account. My mystery question was "A favorite vacation place." For some reason, perhaps the accent and fast-talking, I thought the question was "A favorite vacation place you went to as a child." Uhhhh...my family didn't really do a "vacation place." Unless you count working on the farm in Wyoming.  Which I guessed, by the way. I got several helpful hints from the polite Indian man, who was probably repeatedly smacking his forehead in frustration. "It's a state." "It starts with the letter 'H.'" Anona: uuuhhhhhhmmmm. Gentle readers, do you know how many states start with the letter 'H?'"

One.

Yes, that's right. I don't think New Hampshire counts. After possibly injuring himself from the forehead smacking, the nice man passed me on to an even nicer lady, who also tried to get me to guess the password but quickly gave up and moved on to trying to get me to guess where I used the card back in April when I last used it. "It was in Murray." Anona: uuuuhhhmmm. "A tea shop in Murray." Anona: Hmm. That's odd. I don't drink tea. Are there any tea shops in Utah?  Was it a Thai place? I'm pretty sure it was Thai. Lady: "No, sorry."

So was I. But really, if I can't guess Hawaii then how am I supposed to remember my non-existant trip to a tea shop in Murray? Finally I was asked for my routing number. (Here, let me give it to you. 567834129) It took me a while to find the checkbook--I forgot where I put it--but my native intelligence triumphed in the end! We'll just ignore the part where I had to ask the nice lady which numbers on my check were the routing numbers.

Psycho-delic Owls

The owls....they're, they're staring at me! They're so cute and colorful, yet so creepy! So I've been having a few problems with my blog recently. I woke up one day, and something had happened to my font. I've been messing with it ever since, but haven't quite gotten it right.

I mean, the debate just between serif and sans-serif  (in French: feet, no feet) can be a lengthy one in and of itself. Serif makes for a faster read and includes comfortable old friends like Times New Roman. Sans-serif is crisp, clean-cut, easy on the design-attuned eye. I love you too, Calibri.  But where is the quirky yet straightforward font that falls somewhere in between? If it's too weak, I've tried the bold, no bold mix-up, and then there's getting the right size of font for people to take the whole thing seriously.

I thought a new layout might fix it, but I'm still not satisfied....favorite fonts, anyone?

Run, Forrest, Run!

Running. Ugh.

That has been my attitude for most of my life, probably because I'm not a very good runner. I just feel really awkward when I run, and I really don't like running outside because I feel like people are watching me. In college I went to the gym almost every night and would run a mile or two as part of my workout, but that was just a sacrifice to look good for the men.  I've philosophized that running has become very trendy in the last little while because it is a physical manifestation of how we fill our lives with things to do but never actually accomplish anything important...you know, we are running in circles with no particular destination, but feeling good about ourselves while we are doing it. You think I'm overthinking this? I understand people who run to get in shape. I like that cool feeling when you get off the treadmill and start walking but can't feel your legs. I understand people who run to get away from life for a little while. But I really don't understand people who run for fun.

I personally would be fine the rest of my life to just walk fast to where I need to go, but I'm committed to do the Dirty Dash 5k with my friend Sara next Saturday. It looks like a lot of fun, but I have felt like I should do some sort of training for it, so I've been pushing a double stroller all over God's green hills and running a little bit in the park when it is empty. Last night I decided to go to our community center and run on the treadmill to see how long it would actually take me to complete a 3.125 mile run. Well, I only went 3 miles, (My face gets really red when I run--yet another reason to walk--and the two very fit ladies on the ellipticals behind me were starting to look concerned) and that was with me walking fast a lot and running a little. It took me 40 minutes. Not stellar, people.  Is it lame to dream of someday running a 10-minute mile? I think if you're so bad that that's your goal, you should just stick to walking fast. Which I fully intend to do, right after next Saturday.

I didn't get the memo...

Austin and I stayed in Coeur d'Alene and Seattle for a couple months when Sammy was a year and a half old. In Seattle we stayed close to the Children's Museum, so I got a membership and strollered over there every day. It was fun, but I felt a little out of it as I observed the other moms. Maybe it was because I lived in the backwater state of Montana, but I seemed to have missed the memo that we mothers with small kids have to show a significant amount of cleavage and sport a nose stud to prove (however desperately) that we are still cool and sexy, even though we are at a children's museum in the middle of the morning.

Unfortunately for me, I didn't pack my push-up bra and my husband has forbidden me from ever getting a nose stud. He thinks they're gross. (And I think they have the unfortunate tedancy to look like large zits.) Anyway, I realized I just was not ever going to fit in when a bunch of people at the museum started exclaiming over a little kid's outfit and how cute and amazing it was. This kid was completely dressed in white, people. Not only is it completely impractical when it comes to keeping the kid clean, it's gender neutral (hence your child gets called "kid") and could potentially lead to some sort of Jesus complex down the line.

So here I am. My kids don't wear white. I don't sport cleavage, especially in January in Seattle. I don't like to pick my nose every time I put my jewelry on for the day. But you know what? I think the world has enough moms who got the cool and sexy memo. Add me to the nerd list, because that's where I belong.