Hell has Frozen Over

This is what I wore to work yesterday:





















(please disregard the messy bathroom)

It's the first time I've worn a skirt to work. Ever. I finished grad school in 2006.

Today? I'm wearing another skirt.

Invasion of the body snatchers, peeps!

Oh, Wondrous, Joyous Day

Dunkin Donuts has finally gotten their act together and opened up a store near my office. Right across the street from my office, in fact!

No longer will I have to settle for the burnt beans at Starbucks. No longer will I have to endure the crowds of apple fan-boys and hipsters engaged in heated discussions about the latest Tori Amos CD. No longer will I fork over more than $1.50 for a simple cup of coffee.

Hallelujah!

Pure Awesome

What's better than a new 13.1 PR?

Crossing the finish line (a second time!) with little sister Katie in tow.

We leave no one behind!!



SO proud of her. Miss her already.

It's like Shark Week...

...but without the sharks. Otherwise known as, "Dad is a bad sharer."

Visit Unknown in Miami's Sunday in my City post for more photographic goodness!

Yes, Why?

Ta da!

Here it is, the finished Jedi robe.

It's Good to be the Mom

Charlie (at 6:45 this morning as we headed out the door): Can I have a cookie?

Me: No, we don't eat cookies for breakfast

Charlie: OK

(5 minutes later I was chowing on my breakfast of gummy life savers.)

I hope he gets LOTS of Milk Duds on Halloween.

I'm such a hypocrite.

30 while 30 - The Sewing Project

One of the tasks on my 30 by 30 list was to sew something. I purposely left it vague and open-ended, knowing my own history of crafty disasters. There was the time I tried to sew cow-print pajama pants, the time I tried to sew the holes on my jeans, the time I tried to hem my own pants, the time I tried to sew the hems on the curtains... I could go on. Stitch-witchery (the white tape that you use to iron-bond things together) is my best friend.

Growing up, my mom was the queen of craft. You name it, she could do it. She really shined on Halloween. While everyone else went to Bradlee's (like kmart, today) to get their cheap-o plastic Halloween costumes, my mom would go all out and create real works of art. She made costumes out of boxes and scraps and paint and glue and paper mache. I think the two best were my brother as an astronaut and my brother as the Empire State Building. I need to try to dig up some pictures. I wasn't as creative in the costume idea department - I went as a witch, a cat, a ballerina, a cheerleader. How boring. I think the worst one was the year I insisted as going as St. Lucia.

What, you don't know who St. Lucia is? Don't feel bad, neither did the rest of my 5th grade class. Or the people who answered their doors while we trick-or-treated.

Does this jog your memory?



I must have said "Swedish Patron Saint of Light" a million times. I should have just gone as a princess.

Anyway.

So now I have a kid of my own, so of course I'm continuing the tradition of handmade costumes, right? Sort of. Yes, they're handmade (with the exception of Brobee last year, because a friend offered to let Charlie borrow it), but my mom is still the one doing the making. Well, this year I decided that I was going to do it myself. Charlie wants to be a Jedi for Halloween. How hard could a brown robe be?

I searched the all-knowing Google for a pattern and found an Easy Jedi Robe, spent an hour at the fabric store trying to figure out the difference between cotton and broadcloth, measured, cut, and pinned, and bribed my neighbor with pumpkin chocolate chip cookies to bring over her sewing machine.

We were going for the Obi-Wan look.



I think we came pretty close. Maybe add a belt around the middle, and we're good to go.

30 while 30 Update

Hey, look up there! See that new page? It's where I'm going to keep my 30 by 30 list. Ideally, I'll have lots of updates and check marks to talk about every month, and that's where they'll all end up.

I've already crossed a BIG one off the list - I started and finished my first sewing project EVER (the beautifully embroidered "Fuck You" panels I made in high school don't count).

Pictures and details about the finished product coming tomorrow!

So far, 30 has been great!

It's the End of the World as We Know It

After this weekend, I think I can say that Charlie has officially given up on naps. Ugh, it pains me just to type that out! That glorious 90 minute period that I have come to expect between 1:00 and 2:30 every Saturday and Sunday is gone.

That means, on productive days, there will be no more afternoon workouts. On unproductive days (which seem to be the norm, lately), that means no more relaxing time on the couch with a book without pictures, no more naps of my own, no more catching up on junk TV on rainy afternoons.

And then I feel like a horrible parent for even thinking about mourning the loss of naptime. I should be overjoyed that we get to spend another hour together. Don't get me wrong, I love Charlie, and love spending time with him, but by the time lunch rolls around and we've played Star Wars action figures and cooked pretend grilled cheeses in the kitchen and built the same lego house over and over again and walked to the park and back... well, I'm tired. Shouldn't he be, too??

Perfect timing, too, because we had our 3-year well-check at the pedi's office last week. I blame her, because she asked the question. "Is he still napping?" Then I blame myself, because I smiled happily and said "Oh, yes! 90 minutes every day!" And then I'm back to blaming her for telling us that we should expect those to come to an end.

Now I'm WTF-ing her, too, because she also said that when the naps go away, we still need to encourage him to have at least an hour of quiet time. Quiet time? 3-year-old? Those two phrases don't really belong in the same sentence.

Of course, I took the question to Facebook. All moms commiserated with me on the loss of naptime. Some offered "Quiet Time" advice. It ranged from books and quiet toys to making them lie down anyway to (my personal favorite) Blackberry Whiskey (is that for him? or for me?).

Looks like we'll be hitting up Target this week for a quiet toy and an egg timer. I also found a super cute pattern for a Jedi Quiet Book online. I may have to get it, it can be my second crafty sewing project.

What, I didn't tell you about the first? That's coming soon :)

Apples

I only own one Apple product (a shuffle) and don't plan on buying any others. I may not a big Apple Fangirl, but I do appreciate good innovation when I see it. I also appreciate well-thought-out philosophizing. I first heard the now-famous Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech in grad school. It was a stressful time in my life, and when I'm stressed out, my OCD symptoms get worse. One of my biggest trains of excessive thoughts centers around aging and death. These are two things that no one really likes to think about, OCD or not - the difference is that, for me, these things literally keep me up at night. Many nights.

The way that Mr. Jobs talks about aging and death in this address really spoke to me. It was the first time that I had heard this kind of spin on the topic, and as I pondered it and admired the logic behind it, I felt a sense of peace on the issue for the first time, ever. Of course, the obsessive nature of my thinking assured that the peace was somewhat short-lasting, but it was there, nonetheless. When my thinking starts to spiral into sleeplessness or feeling like I want to crawl out of my skin, this is what I go back to. This is what refocuses my mind and helps me feel more ok with the fact that our lives are finite.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

I can't thank Steve Jobs for the ipod, the iphone, or the imac, but I can thank him for speaking frankly on a topic that most people shy away from, and for the eloquence with which he shared his beliefs.

The rest of it is pretty amazing, too. Check it out.

Tantrums, Revisited

Holy cow, last night we saw a tantrum like no other! We had to go to Target after dinner to get granola bars and kitty litter (odd combination, no?). Charlie was in rare form. It started out easy enough, he rode on the cart as we headed back to the pet supply aisle. It all began to roll downhill when we passed the toy aisle. For the past few months, there's been a car display where you can push a button and the cars race around the track. Well, last night it was GONE! There was no button to press! The world came to an abrupt end, complete with screaming and sobbing and flailing, like I've never seen before. He eventually calmed down, but decided that he was going to walk through the rest of the store. Ok, Charlie, but you have to hold my hand or hold the cart.

That lasted a whole 30 seconds, and then he was zooming down the aisle ahead of us. My pleas for him to slow down or stop went unnoticed, so I was left with no choice but to sprint after him while the crowd snickered.

The screaming got worse when I finally caught up. There was NO WAY he was getting back in the cart, so I did the logical thing - left the husband with the cart of litter and took Charlie out to the car. It was a totally new "walk of shame" as I carried a struggling ball of cranky toddler while rushing toward the exit. And then, the unthinkable happened. Just as we reached the door, he reached up and slapped me in the face. I've never seen that kind of behavior from him. I was so shocked that all I could do was laugh. Of course, that's when the screams of "I want to behave! I want to behave! I want to go back in!" started.

I thought the Disappearing Armpit Act was bad when he was 2, but 30 pounds of toddler pulling that trick is just unmanageable. I had to stop numerous times to adjust my carrying stance.

We finally made it out to the car, and then began the task of trying to get him into the carseat. He held his entire body completely rigid. Try shoving a 40 inch 2x4 into the backseat of a car and bending it into a carseat, and then you'll know my pain. I somehow managed to get him strapped in. I closed the door and breathed deeply, grateful for the silence (well, technically you could still hear him shrieking, but there was a car door to muffle the sound). I looked up to see a woman laughing at me as she put her groceries in the car. And what does she say when she looks up? She cracks, "I should call child services on you!"

WTF? Not funny, lady.

Please, don't let this be the start of a "phase." There isn't enough vodka in the world to get me through that.

Ummmm, oops.

I think we may have figured out why Charlie may have recently developed a fear of lightning...



I don't know why we failed to connect the dots, earlier.

Mom fail, of epic proportions.