this is what happens when you just. can't. stop.

Sometime before Thanksgiving I became mildly obsessed with yarn. This was quite baffling because a) I can't wear wool, b) I don't knit, or do any kind of crafting with yarn and c) I have NO idea what constitutes a good yarn, what would make for a bad yarn, or even where to GET yarn besides a box store. After doing some self analyzing, I now realize my yarn obsession started when I became slightly obsessed with wool dryer balls, which I didn't even own at the time. Until my awesome friend J made me some and now I am justifiably obsessed and in love with dryer balls. Holy crap, I need a life.

Anyway, the dryer balls inspired me, I believe. I had wanted to do something a bit different for Christmas decorations this year and wanted something fun, something easy and something that I hadn't really seen before. So I bought some yarn and some Styrofoam balls, and started wrapping. And wrapping. And wrapping. I couldn't stop. I went through more yarn than I should have. If you were a cat, and living in my house, you would have been in heaven because there were yarn balls EVERYWHERE. So many yarn balls that my kids started chasing them around the house, while acting like cats. Just what I needed, 4 over grown kittens.

I was so excited to find yarn that matched the colors of both my upstairs and downstairs rooms. I wanted the whole "crazy cat lady house" theme to carry through both floors for continuity, but varied the colors on each floor to provide for some visual interest (I really have no idea what the heck I am talking about right now... just hopin I sound like I do).

So, after 2 weeks of nightly yarn wrapping parties (yes, I am that lame) I finally ran out and here is how it all came together:

yarn ball wreath and the rest of the living room

The mantle

 

please forgive the super ugly, really noisy and badly colored picture above, and below/

the garland swags with yarn ball embellishments that hang over each large window downstairs

the swag thingamajigs with yarn ball embellishments that hang over the small windows and doorways downstairs

one of the gorgeous nativity scenes up this year and a few yarn ball ornaments on the tree

leading up the stairs

the most used room in the house

new art pieces of fabric cut into shapes and glued onto another piece of fabric

more yarn balls. lots and lotsa yarn balls

In addition to all of this, each of the kids' rooms have a little tree with ornaments to match their decor too. The only rooms that aren't overly done up and grandiose are my bedroom and the upstairs bathroom... and the garage. Even the downstairs bathroom got a helping of Christmas Joy. I'm just not 100% done with it yet (don't tell M!!) so pictures will have to wait. 

And that,  my friends, is what happens when you can't stop wrapping yarn and hanging garland. I think it is time I put my obsessions to good use and start knitting, or something. I really and truly cannot wait to figure out what I am going to do in the house we are in next year. Although, I'm pretty sure the theme will be "moving boxes and packing tape". Not exactly as pretty as this year's house, but very functional.

deckin my halls with glitter bombs and other fun things

Back when I was in college I had a dream that we won the war in Iraq by dropping a glitter bomb on the place. A glitter bomb. The war didn't end because everyone was suddenly happy and sparkly after it exploded. Instead,  everyone was completely pissed off and irritated that there was glitter in EVERYTHING and they couldn't do anything because the glitter made everything break. And that is what I feel like has happened in my house; a large glitter bomb has exploded and wreaked havoc on our playroom and slowly seeped through all of the crevasses and openings, completely infesting our home. I hate glitter for this very reason-- it is my WMD. But once a year I put aside my disdain and allow the glitter to shine and sparkle and make my kids happy.

I still have some more to do, or want to do, but M has put a moratorium on my decorating. I'm trying to convince him that there is a difference between my next project and "decorating" but he isn't buying it. Bah humbug.  Technically, it won't be me doing it... it would be the kids, under my guidance... so it would really be their decorating... we will see if we get around to it...

Yes, that is W's little head sticking out from under the train table. Apparently "GET OUT OF THE PICTURE" means, "run and hide and then stick your head out". 

Beaded garland + curling ribbon + Dollar Spot ornaments=  wannabe Mardi Gras

 Custom stocking holders, painted by me... yes, the "M" is an upside down "W".

The uber cheesy white tree. Love this thing. And the bald spots have been fixed... detailed pictures to come, maybe, if I get a chance.

Pictures colored by the kids and me. 

The wreath adorning the banister on the way up to the playroom.

The outside of our house is much less "in your face". I didn't even put up lights. Instead, I used a bunch of fresh garland and grapevines and sprigs of greens and pine cones collected by my wonderful husband and sent by our produce company. I didn't really have a plan for the outside... so I just bought some twine and some ribbon spent a very cold and very windy afternoon stringing garland and making bows. I like how it turned out. I love the organic feel of it and I love the way it smells as you are walking up to the front door. If only the inside smelled that delicious...

Still to come, the upstairs hallway/ laundry room and the living room/ kitchen. I have had SO much fun decorating this house this year. This is the first year we have been "settled" enough to do it and when I haven't been pregnant. Decorating for Christmas can be pretty awesome when you have energy and aren't throwing up ever 3.7 minutes. Who knew?? I'm just dreading taking it all down. It is ok to leave your Christmas decor up until February, right?

the last laugh

This month has been a whackadoo of a month. Thanksgiving came and went with vengeance. Our turkey may have marked my butt up six ways to Sunday before Thanksgiving, but I got my say and the last laugh on Thanksgiving when I kicked that turkey's butt and made it into something delicious. I've never prepared an entire Thanksgiving meal-- I've never made a Turkey for anything but meat to put in the freezer so a) it never mattered if it was pretty and b) it didn't have to be good because it was most likely going to be soup anyway. I was nervous. You can't just screw up the biggest part of the biggest meal of the year, know what I mean?

Despite all of my planning I didn't really have a menu nailed down until the night before. I did know that I wanted to make everything from scratch. There were not going to be any cans or boxes opened or premade mixes used in my Thanksgiving dinner. I wanted to do it right. Which meant that the chances of it being a horrid epic fail, the kind of fail where in 20 years the people who were there say, "Oh my goodness, remember that one year that Joanna totally screwed up Thanksgiving??" and then everyone proceeds to tell the story AGAIN and laughs hysterically on your behalf. Ugh... so much pressure...

But I did it. I cooked an amazing meal and didn't use any boxes or cans or mixes and I didn't even make anyone sick. We started the morning with pumpkin pancakes, made completely from scratch with warm cinnamon apples and fresh maple whipped cream. Since we were going to be eating, Lord willing, around 4, I didn't want to serve a huge lunch so we had cheese and crackers (ok, so I guess I did open a box!) and salami with cut veggies and dip.

Then it was time to dig in and really eat. We had turkey, herbed mashed potatoes, lemon-nut rice stuffing, pumpkin cornbread, fresh green beans cooked in bacon, shallots, garlic and a little lemon zest, green salad with smokey ranch dressing, cranberry- pear sauce and of course, pumpkin pie made from the pumpkin I roasted and pureed earlier this fall. It was soooooooo good I ate it for breakfast for the next 2 days and put everyone else on pumpkin pie rations so I could have more. I'm mean that way.

Pumpkin Cornbread

Cranberry- Pear Sauce

The whole meal. 

Don't laugh at my serving spoons... I'm in desperate need. We are moving up in the world though. For the first time ever, I have a set of 12 plates and a complete set of silverware with 12 pieces for each type of utensil. For the past 6 years we've only had 4 plates, and 4 forks, spoons and knives. Let me tell you how awesome it is not to have to wash the forks between dinner and dessert when we have people over to eat.

While we were all suffering from the meat sweats and turkey coma, we introduced the kids to the awesomeness that is "Elf" and had homemade hot chocolate. It couldn't have been a better day. The day after I started decorating for Christmas and I have finally finished that. This house now looks like Christmas threw up in it. Pictures coming soon, I promise. But here's a sneak peek in the meantime:)

EDITED: Shout out to my sister for making the deliciously scrumptious cornbread and taking the pictures of the food. And for not knowing what her travel plans were and leaving 2 days later than she thought she was, one day due to her thinking she left the day before and the other day due to weather.

"loads" of fun

I guess the "new hot thing" in houses is to have an upstairs laundry room. I'm not impressed by it, in fact I think it is dumb. I know it is great for some people and it cuts down on lugging laundry all over the house, but honestly, my thighs could use the workout I would have gotten having a laundry room on the main floor. There are a few reasons why I can't stand the upstairs laundry room, one of them being I tend to do all of our laundry late at night because I'm cheap and for some reason think that if I do it late at night, it will somehow be cheaper. I don't know if this is true, but I like to think it is... perhaps it comes from years of living through California's Rolling Blackouts.

Doing laundry at night in an upstairs laundry room sucks because it is So. Loud. while you are trying to sleep. Thump thump thump thump rattle thump bang rattle thump bang bang kerchunk kerchunk kerchunk thump thump thump. The Army makes my husband wear these uniforms and PTs that could probably be considered weapons in themselves. The zippers and clasps on those things sound like anvils rolling around in the dryer drum. Annoying. And if either the washer or dryer are slightly off balance, the entire house shakes like you're blasting off into the stratosphere. There's no point in trying to level pictures, you can only hope they will return to their normal position on the next spin cycle.

The other reason I don't like the upstairs laundry room is because it keeps me accountable and I HATE THAT. There's no hiding the massive pile of laundry that needs to be washed or folded. Every time I walk up the stairs it is like having two huge eyes staring me down saying, "HAHA! You thought you had a moment of peace! PSYCH!!" Bite me. And then there's that whole lint and dust thing. I really don't think it is healthy to have your bedrooms be connected to or near the laundry room, with all of the dryer lint flying around. Not to mention the occasional bleach fumes and toxic hazmat quality stank that can come from your husband's workout clothes that have been left in his car for 3 days during the summer... not that that has ever happened in this house...

Our laundry room isn't so much of a "laundry room" as it is a "laundry closet" that happens to reside directly at the top of the stairs. When we chose this house we didn't exactly measure to see if our washer and dryer would actually fit in the laundry closet. I thought it was just a given they would fit, but when you have 6 people in the house including 2 babies who are cloth diapered and a husband who changes his clothes 4 times a day, you need a mammoth size washer and dryer. And laundry closets don't come in mammoth size. I ended up with a laundry closet that had to have the doors opened at all times, because there was no room for them to close. And that meant that every time I walked up the stairs, there were those 2 big eyes staring at me and a plethora of neon colored bottles and boxes with HUGE BOLD brightly colored wordage SCREAMING at me. And that was not going to work.

I needed to do a laundry room makeover, and fast. So I made a plan and dragged M 3 hours away to IKEA and roughly $100 and some sewing and painting time later, I had a pretty awesome laundry closet that I was not scared to look at and that actually made me kind of *gasp* enjoy?? *gasp* doing the 2.5 loads of laundry I do each day.

The baskets were plain wicker looking and kind of yellow and it didn't really work with the yellow of the walls, so I painstakingly painted them using acrylic paint to match the washer and dryer. Then I decided that was kind of boring so I found some cute fabric incorporating the colors of the rest of the house and made some basket liners. Then because there wasn't enough going on, I decided to make some "pictures" for the frames because I couldn't find any prints that I liked. I wasn't sure what I wanted to make but I just kind of went with what came to me. I did the flowers first, using coordinating fabric to the basket liners. Then I decided I needed a tree and who doesn't love owls, right? So I made an owl too. Each piece is individually cut and then hand sewn onto flannel using embrodery floss. It was pretty easy, if I do say so myself. They aren't perfect, but I highly doubt anyone is going to be getting that intimate with my laundry area, except for me so no one will really ever see the flaws. 

One thing I knew for sure was that I didn't want to see any plastic bottles or scoops or sprayers. So I bought glass jars and bottles to hold all of the detergents and powders. I use a lot of different types of detergent, depending on what I'm washing. I wasn't comfortable putting the more potent chemicals into the glass so because I rarely use them, I put them under my bathroom sink. The extra powders, dryer sheets and stain sprays reside in the baskets on the top shelf and then tiny basket on the "counter" holds all of the junk that is found in pockets and what has become my secret cash stash.

If we weren't renting this house, I would have gotten a counter top that could be anchored to the wall but this will work for now. It is a table top from IKEA and cost like 30 bucks. I would have also put a wooden shelf above, instead of the wire shelf, but this works. It isn't gorgeous, but since it was already there, I have to use it. It is handy for hanging cloth diapers and other hang dry items though. And for that, I painted a bunch of clothes pins to match the baskets... thank you, insomnia, for giving me that kind of time. The only thing left to get are some wool dryer balls, which I am seriously coveting but can't quite justify getting, just yet. Even though I reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally reeeeeeeaaaaaaaally want some... I must exhibit some kind of self control every now and then.

So there it is, my cute little laundry area. It is kind of excessive although potentially unimpressive comparatively, but it makes me smile and that is really all that matters, dontcha know?

super cheesy goodness with a side of halloween

Halloween is something new for us, this is the first year we've actually done anything for it. I don't really like the spooky and scary aspect of it, ok, I don't like that part of it at all so I try to keep things light and fun. Last year I cleared out Target's Halloween section the day after Halloween so we'd have plenty of decorations and fun things to look at for years to come.

I bought plates and cups and silly straws and towels... The kids have been using the plates and cups for the past month and the towels, well, they got turned into a dress by CB so who knows where they are. Our new house has a rockin playroom and I really wanted to do that area up for Halloween but wasn't sure what exactly to do. Then I saw this little craft project from parents.com and was inspired. So, 6 black socks, 2 sets of leggings and 2 sets of baby socks from the Dollar Spot, a package of fluff, a bunch of pompoms, a whole lotta pipe cleaners and googly eyes and 16 sticks of hot glue later, I had a wall-o-fun.

W really wanted a "super silly haunted house" so I got some cheesy garland and lights and tried to outline a house. On a side note, can we please talk about those new stupid LED lights they are putting into light strands?? Putting those things up was almost deadly. Those lights are evil! I didn't realize they were the LED lights until I plugged them in and started to hang them up. My eyes started crossing and the headache hit instantly... I don't really care if they reduce energy consumption by 88% or whatever. If they are giving me a migraine and/ or a seizure every time I look at them, the lower energy consumption isn't really going to matter, ya know? I'll pay the extra $3 a month to light the regular ones! I keep having to tell the kids, "DON'T LOOK AT THE LIGHTS! YOU'LL BURN YOUR EYES OUT OF YOUR HEAD!"

If you're looking for aesthetically pleasing pictures of perfectly done little Halloween craft projects, you aren't going to find that here. My pictures are snapshots, at best, and the projects, well, I'll just say the kids helped, even though they didn't, it was all me... but it looks as if a 4 year old did them. And that is fine, it is all in good fun. Good, cheesy, Halloween fun. So cheesy... really, really cheesy.

In keeping with the festive spirit, we took the kids trick-or-treating for the first time. Rather, M took them while I stayed behind with MJ and passed out candy and made sure no one smashed our pumpkins or egged our house. This was the first time I've ever passed out candy and it was definitely interesting. I'm shocked our house wasn't egged or t-peed when we woke up, given the amount of times I told teenage girls to go home and put some clothes on. I asked one girl who was probably 14 if she borrowed her little sister's costume. That thing was so small, I'm pretty sure it was a 4T and she, well, was not.  As it got dark I kept seeing how there were all of these kids in pure black, without any kind of illumination or reflective fabric on them, so I broke out the glow sticks I had bought for my kids and started handing them out, thereby turning me into the over paranoid neighborhood safety patrol. I was half tempted to break into M's stash of reflective belts he wears for running and pass those out too. What are these people thinking, sending their kids out in all black on a dark night?? Hello!

I was well prepared for a barrage of greedy kids, but they were for the most part, polite and kind. Except for 1 kid who hit my house twice and was apparently pretty pissed off I only gave him 1 piece of candy the first time, so he decided to raid my candy bowl himself the next time. He was quick too! Little punk pulled like 15 pieces while I was sitting right next to the bowl, only stopping after I told him to get his grimy little paws out of my bowl or I'd take his entire bucket. You steal mine, I steal yours.  I'm already that scary cranky old lady that lives down the street and I'm only 28... No, I wouldn't really do that, but seriously? Where are your manners?

Overall, the day was a blast and I loved every second of it. It was the 2 year anniversary of M coming back from Iraq and coincidentally, I made the same exact meal I made the night he came home. We had a great time with some new friends and their little girl and the kids had a blast.

L, here is the recipe for the soup and crisp! :)

Minestrone Soup
1 medium onion
3 cloves of garlic, pressed
1 large carrot, diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
1 large potato, peeled and cubed into bite size pieces (use 2 if you like a thicker soup)
1 zucchini, diced
1 yellow squashed, diced
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp dried basil
2 bay leaves
1, 28oz can diced tomatoes w/ juice
6 cups chicken stock
1 can dark red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 can great northern white beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 lb green beans, trimmed and cut into bite size pieces
1/2 lb kale, washed and cut into small pieces

Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil over low heat in a large heavy pan. Add the onions and garlic and let cook until the onions are translucent. Add the carrots and celery and cook for a couple of minutes. Once those get soft, turn the heat to medium add the potatoes, zucchini and squash along with the dried spices and bay leaves and cook for about 5 minutes. Then add the tomatoes and chicken stock and bring to a slow boil. Add the beans and cook, uncovered, for about 20 minutes. When the potatoes are soft, add the green beans and kale and cook for just a couple of minutes, until the green beans are bright green.

Serve with a good crusty bread and Parmesan cheese.

You can add a small pasta, like mini penne or shells and if you do, add about a cup when you add the beans.

Apple Cranberry Crisp

Happy Halloween! Be safe out there and don't forget your glow sticks! And don't dress like a ho, or I'll yell at you.

the whirlwind that was this summer

Oy. Just, Oy. What a summer this has been. I'm pretty sure the kids spent more time sleeping in their carseats and hotel rooms than they did in their own beds. We drove well over 9000 miles this summer, traveled through 15 different states, most of them twice, packed up a house, unpacked another, completed my 11th move in 6 years, W's 9th before he turned 5 (all cross country or across state lines or across the world), I gained 10 pounds, A started walking, MJ figured out how to unscrew bottle caps (not beer caps, I promise), W started kindergarten and CB, well, let's just say she's come a LONG way this summer. And to top it all off, I got escorted out of Walmart by the manager after getting into an altercation with another customer. Yes, yes I did. I can die happy now. I think my life is complete.

This is the first time I've had a chance to sit down at the computer in over 2 weeks. Actually, I don't think I've really sat down at all in the past 3 weeks, except maybe to sleep and I'm not sure that even counts given the number of nights we were sleeping on an air mattress. Thankfully, the house is unpacked and relatively organized, just please, whatever you do, DO NOT open any of the closets. I can't be held liable for anything that may fall on your head. The closets will have to come later, I need a break.

The freezer is full again after a marathon 3 day cooking stint-- 12 dozen turkey and quinoa meatballs (egg, wheat and dairy free), 64 cups of chicken broth, 6 batches of chicken and rice soup, 6 batches of my really awesome chili, 4 whole chickens worth of shredded chicken and a serious amount of homemade spaghetti sauce. That all should last us like, a week. Ok, maybe 5. Dang, this family can eat. And after cooking through 6 pounds of onions and 12 heads of garlic in less than 3 days I can officially say that my house, and my hair, reek.

Now I'm on to making and freezing a bunch of muffins, waffles and pie crust and pureeing and freezing my own pumpkin because we all know how much I love the pumpkin... I plan on going through at LEAST a pound a week of that stuff this fall. Speaking of which, I actually got to taste my first Pumpkin Spice Latte last week. I know, right?? My first?! Yes, my first. I can't believe it has taken me this long. But in my defense, the first year they had them I was on the elimination diet for CB, the second year they had them I was in Germany and last year I was on the elimination diet for the twins so I've never had the chance to try it. But oh my, was that thing delicious. If I wasn't on a mission to not eat out AT ALL for at least a month, I'd probably be partaking of one right now.

Even though we are (mostly) settled, there still isn't much time for rest. I have 9 voice mails to listen to, over 1300 messages in my inbox to go through, a billion facebook messages to respond to and a ton of phone calls to make, and no, I am not exaggerating, at all. Plus, I need to get my butt to the gym to work off my 10 pound love handles so I can fit into my winter clothes once it finally cools down-- I am WAY too cheap to buy new clothes this year. But first I am going to finish my coffee and sit here and savor the silence in the house as W is at school and M has taken all of the girls for a run. This is the first time I have been completely alone in like a decade and I'm going to try to savor it because Lord only knows when that will happen again...

geek squad this!

Last night I was dorking around on the computer and the wireless internet went dead. Normally when this happens it is because it is windy out or the microwave has been on for awhile or it gets really hot. But it was 10:30 at night, no wind, no one was cooking and it was nice and the device was nice and cool. I went to check the settings and the computer told me that it couldn't find our preferred network, but it wanted to connect me to a different network named "Bruce's Network".

Now, this normally wouldn't make me think twice because I'm used to living in an area that has multiple networks you can steal bandwidth from. But we live in the middle of nowhere. When I say nowhere, I mean the closest neighbor to us nearly a mile away. There's no way we could be picking up anyone's connection, let alone have a full strength signal from them. No one here had messed with any of the settings... I don't think anyone here even knows how to mess with the settings, and there's certainly no "Bruce" here, so something weird was going on. I immediately unplugged the Airport (Mac speak for the wireless router thingamajig) and made my dad go look outside to see if there was some shady person in a car sitting outside our house, trying to jack our connection or hack into our network to get our info or something. Yes, I'm paranoid. He didn't see anyone and I didn't hear any cars and there weren't any signs of a person having been outside our house either. We decided to call it a night and deal with it in the morning.

This morning I woke up and plugged in the Airport, plugged in my computer and still, I was being told to connect to "Bruce's Network". Nope, not going to happen. I don't know who Bruce is or what he wants or where he came from. I called my brother, who is an unofficial Geek, and explained the situation and was informed of the obvious: "That's weird". Yeah, no duh. Thanks, Captain Obvious. So he and I went through all of the obvious steps to try to remedy the situation, but no matter what we did, Bruce wouldn't go away and our network wouldn't appear. After doing a hard reset of the device, we were finally able to get rid of Bruce and make our network appear. And then my brother said, "Wait, wasn't the guy who lived in that house before named Bruce?"

Yes, yes, his name was Bruce, and he died a year or 2 after my parents bought and gutted the house. As far as we know, he didn't ever have internet here. I can't believe that a dude who lived in a house with original 60's green shag carpet, orange counter tops and burlap curtains until the day he sold it would have internet, and wireless internet at that. I also can't believe that the electrical system that was in this house could even support a computer, but that is besides the point.

So unless someone sat outside our house last night, hacked into our wireless settings and changed it to be "Bruce's Network" and then drove off, all in the span of 3 minutes, Bruce is back to visit us. I don't know if he's mad about his house, or just wanted to come say hi, but he's made his presence known. I've lived with ghosts before, but they have never made their names known so this is new territory.

Last night was a full moon and the owls were going nuts all night and one still is even this afternoon, so I'm not sure if he's still hanging out, or if he left, but you can sure as heck bet that I'm going to be watching the kids very closely to see if they start talking to anyone or about anyone new in the house. And I might be sleeping with the kids, with the lights on, for the next couple of nights because the Airport is in my room and that's just a little too creepy, even for me.

nature week

One of the things that seriously sucks about living way out in the middle of nowhere is that during the summer months, nature inevitably finds its way into your home and there is no escape. Our invasion began this week and it came with a vengeance. It all started on one particularly craptacular day, as I was trying to write some papers and birds kept flying themselves into our big sliding glass door. 4 in less than 30 minutes, and that was just the beginning. Because I couldn't concentrate on writing anymore, I went to take the veggie scraps out to the composter. I noticed there were a bunch of files around and then I saw the dead owl laying on the ground. Nice. Once I came back inside, 2 more birds catapulted themselves into the window. The dumb things seriously need to learn how to fly. Our windows aren't even clean (thanks to W and CB) and they are covered by a porch! It isn't like we put runway lights on the ground leading them to fly into the window.

Later that night as I was brushing my teeth, a mouse ran across my foot. It was like the icing on the cake to my craptastic day. Of course, we didn't have any traps because we used them all last year so I couldn't do anything about it, but cry, and sleep in the kids' room cause there was no way in heck I was going to let a mouse have an opportunity to be my bed buddy.

The next day was slightly less eventful, except for the fact that I managed to get bitten by a million microscopic monsters when I took W out to ride his bike. The bites were so bad and itched so horribly that I spent most of the day putting straight ice on my skin to keep from scratching it off. Oh, and one of the dogs managed to catch a bird and eat it.

The day after that, as I was out with the kids, I heard my mom screaming for help in the kitchen. So I ran my pregnant butt into the house, expecting to have to put out a fire or slam a robber over the head with a shovel or mop up a major dishwasher explosion of soap, but instead was greeted by a gutsy little mouse who wanted to play. Fine. You wanna play, I'll play. Game on. The next half hour was spent trying to trap the mouse in the kitchen so I could catch it and figure out what to do with it. Of course, we still hadn't bothered to buy traps, so I had to improvise. That is what we moms do. We figure things out. So out came boxes and buckets and canning jars to block off the space under the cabinets... it was a mess but I was pretty proud of my ingenuity. So proud that I took a picture:



I managed to trap the thing within my barricade but couldn't bend over far enough to throw a bowl over it because he was so fast, and there was NO way I was getting on my hands and knees because 1) I would never be able to get up again and 2) um, no, not getting that close to it, thank you very much. So he got away. Then that mouse either cloned himself or multiplied because the mice kept coming. And the bugs kept biting, and the birds kept dying.

The final count for the week?
1 dead owl
2 dead birds thanks to the dog
4 dead birds for other reasons
1 dead rabbit (we think) thanks to the cat
9 yes NINE mice that have been caught and disposed of
1 random rooster seen in the road
73,468 bug bites on my body

The bug bite count is no exaggeration. Ok, well it may be a little bit exaggerated, but it sure as heck feels like I have that many bites. I'd share a picture, but the pictures wouldn't be very appropriate and I don't want to scare small children. These bites are ALL OVER, horrendous, give me hives and make me itch like I have rolled in poison ivy and then licked someone who had the chicken pox and then rubbed my belly against someone who had shingles. I itch so bad that I sit and cry most of the day and wake up with my skin bleeding because I've been scratching in my sleep. Aren't I hot?? Don't you wanna come sleep next to me? There is nothing that cures the itch, not even the most off the wall folk remedies. Believe me, I've tried just about everything. And this is on top of all of the other itching I've been dealing with from the pregnancy.

I'm really hoping that our Nature Week is over or that we have at least seen the worst of it. I refuse to let the mice put me into preterm labor because I was over exerting myself while throwing bowls at them... or running as fast as possible the other way. Gotta love the country life. Really.

**Side note for those of you wondering: the doctor doesn't think that I have PUPPPS, but I'm beginning to wonder if he's wrong and these bites are really a PUPPPS rash because I am the only person in the house that has them and they aren't on my face or belly button... the only thing isn't convincing me that this is PUPPPS is the itching and bumps only appear after I have been outside and/ or in the sun but the itching and bumps calm down after a few days. I guess only time will tell.**

breaking news

Well, it seems that we are finally getting what we wanted, just not how we wanted it or when we wanted it or as smoothly as we wanted it, but we rarely ever get what we want in life anyway, right?

We have known our time in Germany was coming to a close for awhile, but we just didn't know when it would be. Originally, we were supposed to stay here until November. Then we were told July, then we were told March and then July again. After we found out we were having twins, we knew we needed to have a concrete moving date because you can't exactly just fly across the world when you are 36 weeks pregnant with twins like you can when you are pregnant with 1 baby. During the height of my all day sickness in late January, we were told that we needed to move back to the States in March, giving me about 3 weeks to get the house ready to be packed and because we have to move again 5 months after we move to the States, we would be moving again about 2 days after my due date. That wasn't going to work. So we moved heaven and earth to try to get a different move date.

After tons of paperwork and way too much drama, we finally did get a different date date, and even the date we wanted. So here is the plan: The kids and I are moving back to the States in about 3 weeks. We will go back to CA and stay with my parents until after the twins are born and after M is done with this next assignment next year.

Before everyone starts speculating and talking, let me explain a few things, just to squash the inevitable rumors:

1) Our marriage is not in trouble. We are just fine, I promise. There's no need to send us inspirational emails or books on marriage. Yes, we are making a choice to be separated, but we aren't separated.

2) We are doing this purely because of logistics. M can't leave Germany until June and by then, I'll either be way too pregnant to move, in any sense of the word, or worst case, I could be holding my 2 precious babies instead of gestating them. I can't fly past the end of April, given my history of preterm labor and (EARMUFFS, boys!) early dilation, so I need to go now. I don't want to spend 2 months alone at M's next assignment with 2 kids, waiting for him to get there, so that is why we are going to CA.

3) CA is our best option for numerous reasons. The kids have a fantastic doctor there, there is a team of specialists who know and understand our history of GI problems should one or both of these babies have the same problems, W loves the preschool there and I'm sure CB will too, and can we say LIVE IN HELP?! Um, yeah. There you go.

4) This decision did not come lightly or on a whim. We have talked about this and agonized over it since the day we found out we were having twins. I am completely at peace with it, as is M. I mean, there are a few things that bother me, like I'll be missing out on Cracker Barrel and Braums, but I will be in the land of In-n-Out and REAL Mexican food (I'm just gonna say it, TexMex is NOT Mexican food, sorry!) We are going to be ok. M can fly in to see us on his long weekends and we will be able to call each other whenever we want to. Now that is a strange idea given the fact that we just went through 15 months of once every 3 week phone calls and once a week emails.

There is so much to do in the next few weeks though. The movers aren't coming until after the kids and I are gone, so I have to have the house organized by what I want in what boxes. I don't want to open up our boxes when we pull them from storage in 10 months and find the bathroom mats in with the kitchen dishes or the extra office supplies packed with the garden hose. And because all of our house hold goods are going into storage for 10 months, I need to have all of the curtains, cushions and mats washed and perfectly folded before they get boxed up. Not to mention that the customs dude is so anal that there can't be a speck of dirt on any shoe, flower pot or outdoor toy that you pack, so all of those have to be cleaned and the holes in the wall have to be filled... and the walls have to be painted... and I need to sort out what we are going to take to CA and what is going to be packed... and go through all of the baby stuff...

As much as I'm going to miss living in Germany, I'm excited to come home. I'm ready to have options where to grocery shop and be able to get my hair and nails done on a regular basis. Ok, that is SO not going to happen with twins coming. What am I thinking? Now comes the really big decision: Do I want an iPhone or a Blackberry???

our first real chirstmas

M and I have been married for 5 Christmas seasons now but this was the first time we ever had a "real" Christmas together, in our own home. The first Christmas we were married was spent at his parent's house because we had just finished our first assignment and were waiting for him to leave for Korea the next week. Our second Christmas was spent 6000 miles apart. W was just a few months old and I was living in an apartment and really didn't feel like buying a tree and decorating the house. I did however, make a lot of pie that year... Our 3rd Christmas together was actually spent together, but I was hugely pregnant w/ CB and had just moved across the world to Germany and really didn't feel like doing anything. I did put up a tree, with ornaments and all, but we didn't do anything else. We were so lame that 2 days before Christmas we decided that we should probably get W something, so we bought him a puzzle and some cars and called it good. It was only at 9 that night that I realized we didn't buy wrapping paper to wrap the presents, so W never did get to open anything on Christmas morning.

Then there was last year... which really, we can just not talk about because it was so incredibly embarrassing. Never before have I been such a scrooge. I know I had good reason but seriously, that tree was inexcusable. So this year I decided to make up for it all. Germans do Christmas right and this was my last chance to have a real German Christmas, so we went all out. Well, as out as we could. For the past 4 weekends I have been dragging my poor family through the rain and snow to almost every Christmas market in a 400 km radius from our house. We quickly found out they were all pretty much the same, but we still went, if for nothing else than to say we went.

The day after Thanksgiving I pulled out all of the Christmas decorations and went to town. And 20 minutes later, I was done. Didn't have that many Christmas decorations to put up... I had picked up a few from here and there over the years, but really, my collection was pitiful. That is what online Black Friday sales are for, right? Over the next 2 weeks boxes came and our house started to look like a bad Christmas catalog. Oh well, we were in the spirit and that is all that mattered.

Christmas Day itself was incredibly uneventful. The kids woke up way too early and we put them back to bed, then we finally gave into their demands for food and took them downstairs, had some breakfast and started in on the stockings. CB was like, "What the heck is the big deal?" Probably because half the stuff in her stocking was left over from our trip back to Germany... bad mommy! W was excited as always and couldn't wait to get to the big presents.

After we were done opening all of the presents and taking all of the required pictures, M got to experience his first marathon "quick, put everything together and find batteries to make everything work before the kids revolt" session. And then I spent the rest of the morning discreetly putting tape over any and all speakers on the new toys to make them quieter. Why toy manufactures only put loud, louder and loudest as the volume settings is beyond me, but you can bet there will be some letter writing going on because there is NO reason that a child's toy needs to be that loud!

Christmas dinner was tradtional and might as well have been Thanksgiving dinner: turkey breast, green bean casserole with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce... delish. It actually wasn't bad, considering the entire week before I had the flu and had lost 4 pounds and didn't exactly feel like cooking or eating.

And that was our Christmas. Nothing exciting, but we actually did it this year. I hope it will be the start of many special Christmas days to come, but I'm not holding my breath. It looks like next Christmas will be spent moving, which means we will end up at Denny's for breakfast after opening presents under a 2 foot Charlie Brown tree in our temporary housing because all of our stuff will be in boxes, most likely 2 weeks behind us. It's gonna be great!

Here are some pictures of our house for your enjoyment and my memory books:

their room, revised

After the fiasco of moving the guest bed downstairs for CB to use and our bed up to the third floor to use it as a guest bed to make room for the new bed, I figured I'd share what W and CB's room looks like now...

I LOVE their room. It is my favorite room in the house and I'll admit it, I get a little bit excited when one of them wants me to cuddle with them before bed or curl up and read a book because I love being in there so much. It is cozy and calm and fun and really flipping comfortable. I'm not going to lie though, I am little sad that it isn't a baby room anymore. Soon the changing pad will come off the changing table because we don't use it anyway (I'm just too lazy to unscrew the pad from the back of the drawers) and then all traces of what was their nursery will be gone.

But I am proud of their room. It is no easy task trying to turn a nursery into a big kid's room, while decorating for both a girl and a boy. I think it turned out ok. Not too much pink and not too much blue and it all blends nicely. Props to Pottery Barn Kids for the quilts (even though they discontinued the pink one and I had to scour ebay for 3 weeks before I finally found one that wasn't used) and the duvet covers, Tommy Hilfiger for the awesome surf board and hula girl sheets, and Target for the fun picture frames I bought for $.50 each on clearance this summer (and then spent $10 to ship to Germany... but whatever!)

Before:





After:

all for a good night's sleep

A few weeks after I moved back to Germany, I decided we had to get a new mattress. I was waking up all geriatric like every morning-- stiff back, sore neck, aching knees. And that was even with sleeping with an extra pillow or 2 for support. I went to the on post furniture store and picked out the fluffiest, biggest pillow top mattress I found and ordered it. Then I was told they didn't have it in stock, but they would order it and it would be here in 4 weeks. That was a bummer because I was really hoping I could get it before M came home because he is just as geriatric as I am...

In anticipation of our mattress arriving, we converted CB's crib into a bed and moved our full size mattress set from the 3rd floor guest room to the kids' room so CB could sleep on it. The plan was to move our existing queen size bed from our room to the third floor guest room and use it as a guest bed once our new bed got here.

4 weeks came and went, and there was still no sign of our new bed coming. The day after Thanksgiving we went down there and asked what was up. It was then that they chose to inform me that the bed I had ordered was actually on purchase order status, which meant that the company would not ship the mattress until they had an entire crate worth of orders for that mattress from our particular furniture store. Oh, ok. Glad you told me that NOW, idiot.

We were in desperate need of a bed because M's parents were coming in a week and there was no way I was going to convert CB's bed back into the crib and move that mattress back upstairs. I asked the guy to go to the stock room and tell me exactly what queen size beds they had so I could choose one. Of course, they had a plethora of firm mattresses, but only 2 plush ones and one pillow top and one wanna be pillow top. The good pillow top was actually a discontinued mattress and wasn't on the floor, so I never saw it, but they had like 6 of them in the back. Here's a tip for you guys: If you want to sell something, PUT IT WHERE PEOPLE CAN SEE IT! We went and looked at the mattress and it had a great pillow top, it was soft but supportive and really quite comfortable, so we bought it. I thought we had the favor of God because it was actually nicer than the first one I had ordered and since it was a discontinued model, it was $400 cheaper.

Since we had the van now, we thought we were awesome and M could just come back without the kids and I and pick the mattress. That would have been great, except for the fact that the box spring was just 2 inches too long, and I was a stinker and refused to let him tie down the back. If there hadn't of been 2 inches of snow and 6 inches of salt on the ground, I would have let him, but I didn't want all of that grime kicked up into my trunk and on my beautiful new mattress. So he put the mattress back in the warehouse and tagged it with our hold tag before he went to schedule delivery.

They promised us the mattress set would be delivered on Monday, which was great. That gave me time to get the rooms ready before M's parents came. Right on time, the delivery guys came and shoved the mattress up the stairs. I went to look at it as they were leaving and realized that they had brought the wrong one. The mattress they delivered was not the fabulous pillow top we had bought, it was some cheap, firm, regular spring mattress. I ran down the stairs and told them they had to take it back. M got on the phone with the furniture store and asked what was going on. Why had we been given the wrong mattress when he had tagged the mattress we had ordered himself. The tag on the mattress that was delivered to us was the same tag that M had placed on the one we had really bought, so someone stupid had switched them at some point.

"Oh, I'm sorry, sir, I don't know what happened. Send the other mattress back with the delivery guys and we will get the one you ordered to you soon. The soonest delivery slot we have is 4 days from now". Yeah, ok, NO. That is not going to work for me, thanks though. At that point I thought M was being way too nice, so I made him give me the phone-- it is the control freak in me, I can't help it. 4 days from now was not acceptable, especially when we paid $70 for delivery and they were the ones who had messed up. So I told the dude to fix the problem, and to fix it today, or I wanted the delivery charge refunded. After 32 minutes of going back and forth with this guy on the phone, no joke, 32 minutes, he finally came back and said, "The manager won't refund your delivery fee, but we will get the mattress to you tomorrow." to which I responded something similar to, "You had better tell your manager that if that mattress isn't here today, by 6 o'clock, I will be down there tomorrow, at least twice, to tell the manager just how crappy her store is and how simply unacceptable this is and I will raise the biggest fuss any of you have ever seen. I don't think you want me to do that."

Low and behold, 2 hours later there was a knock at the door and there was my mattress. The guys who delivered it were actually the stock room employees, not regular delivery people, who had to make a special trip out. When they got here they gave the requisite "I don't know what happened" speech. Save it. I don't want to hear it. I don't care anymore, just get out of my house, you smell like smoke.

So they left and M went to work on taking our old mattress up to the third floor room. One would think, since we got the mattress set up to the second floor without problem, that it wouldn't be a problem to get the mattress set up to the third floor because the 2 flights of stairs are identical. Apparently, the flights of stairs aren't identical. The first floor stairs have about an inch of extra room somewhere that allows for the ridged box spring to pass through. The second flight of stairs would not allow the box spring to go up. There was NO way it was getting up there. So after all of the irritation and stress of getting the stupid new mattress here in the first place, it looked like we weren't even going to be able to get the old one up to the guest room.

I was thinking we were just going to have to put the old mattress on the floor and our company was going to have to sleep like a broke college kid until we could order a platform bed or something. But my husband, being the ingenious man that he is, decided he could fix the problem with a couple of tools. As long as there were no holes in the wall in the end, I really didn't care what he did, but I didn't want to watch.

I left, went to the grocery store, and when I came back, he was beaming with pride and told me to go upstairs. And this is what I saw:




Not only had he removed a good portion of the stairs, he had also taken off the banisters and then somehow managed to push the box spring up the stairs (or what was left of them) while maneuvering himself over the gapping hole that opened all the way to the first floor of the house. All I could think of was that one wrong step that would have sent him falling a story and a half... Ironically, that morning I had read a post in my friend A's blog about a call she got (she's an EMT) to help a guy who had fallen through his attic and tumbled down a flight of stairs, onto his first floor. Yeah... thank goodness we have gates on the stairs to keep the kids from climbing on them. These stairs scare me to death anyway, but this, well, just took the cake.

I couldn't complain, the old mattress set was on the third floor, our new glorious mattress was on our bed and oh so wonderful. That night we both slept very well, and woke up feeling like people in the mid to late 20s should feel. It was worth every second of irritation and all of that plaster that came off the ceiling and the walls as M was moving the box spring up. I guess I will just have to buy a big tub of putty before we leave... and yes, we do realize that we have to get the mattress down some how when it is time to move. We both agree that is what the professional movers are for.

bittersweet

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I promise. We are trying to get settled here in Germany and that's a process that always takes longer than I expect or want. I can't believe we are back. Honestly, even though I knew the date was fast approaching, it didn't hit me that we were actually leaving until I locked the door to my parent's house for the last time and drove away.

I had been making fantastic progress on organizing and cleaning all of our junk in the week before we were leaving until I got sick. It started as one of those "Oh, I must have slept with my mouth open" sore throats you get in the morning and turned into a full blown raging sinus infection from hell. It was so bad that I was completely down for the count 2 days before we had to fly. I couldn't even lift my head and every time I did, I cursed the Almond (pronounced ALL-mond, thank you. NOT Am-ond) gods for making me sick. Freaking almond harvesting season. Why does it have to come every year?!

Compounding my misery was the fact that I decided to self diagnose and self medicate my sinus infection with antibiotics that I never took last time I had a sinus infection. Note to self: Biaxin is not your friend. It will hurt you and make you want to die. Feeling like you are going to throw up everything you have eaten in the past 7 weeks while having a sinus infection is almost as pleasent as having a root canal done without Novocaine. Almost.

The day before we flew I sucked it up and called to make an appointment with my doctor. I must have sounded as miserable as I felt because I was able to get an appointment 2 hours later. When I showed up the doctor was like "Wow, you look amazing" and I was like "Shut your face and be nice to me because my insurance is going to pay you $117 for you to tell me the obvious and write 2 lines on a prescription note." $117 for 5 flipping minutes. I should have been a doctor. To be fair, he did spend about a half an hour with me, mostly because we were shooting the breeze and talking about the kids and my husband. He's known both my husband and I for almost ever and he's always interested to hear how we are doing and what my current thoughts are on the political drama going on... something you should not ask me, or even think about asking me right now because I will not give you the answer you want to hear and I will talk down to you and make you feel stupid. I can't help it. It just happens.

He only made it through the conversation alive because I knew he had the drugs and I wanted them (and because he actually agreed with me on almost everything, which is a very rare thing these days). When we were done chatting he told me he was going to see if he had any samples of the meds he wanted to give me because they were the "good" ones, so good in fact that he didn't think my insurance would cover them. That right there should have been a red flag or a warning to take them with caution but it didn't catch on and ended up spending the better part of that day and the next all kinds of jacked up on Mountain Dew and a decongestant that should have simply been labeled "Methamphetamine". Good God almighty, that was some serious stuff. I wouldn't have drank the Mountain Dew if I had know that those pills were going to do the same thing to me as if I had shot up speed.

The only pleasant side effect from the pills was that I did get a lot of packing done and made up for some of the prior day that I had spent flat on my back. I didn't get everything done though. There was so much to do. So much to clean. So many people to say goodbye to. I didn't get to do it all and I feel bad for that. I forgot to pack more than I care to mention and the house is a serious serious disaster of broken toys, out grown shoes and tulle left overs. I feel bad for my mom who has to clean it all up.

The final few hours before we left were much more emotional than I expected them to be. I was, once again, uprooting my family and this time we had a lot more invested than we ever had before. W had made some really good friends and I was taking him away from them and a school that he loved. I had actually spent more time in CA this time than I have anywhere else in the past 9 years and I was leaving some solid relationships and the place where CB grew from a baby to a toddler. We were leaving the place that she learned to crawl and walk (something I didn't think she would ever do), the place where W saw his daddy for the first time in 10 months, the families that had consistently stuck by us through all of the sickness and pain through the previous 11 months and the place where I did some serious growing.

After I shut the door and drove away, and had to go back and do it again because I forgot to put my cell phone in the diaper bag, I had a good cry. I only needed 5 minutes of being sad before I could put on my game face and remember all we had to look forward to. Then the panic attack hit. Having one while driving 85 miles an hour is never a good thing. If you know me, you know that I absolutely hate to fly. Hate isn't even a strong enough word for it. To me, flying is the ultimate in giving up control and we control freaks don't give up our power very well. I only fly because I have to but if I could take a boat, I totally would. After bargaining with God for a couple of minutes I was able to calm down and then I received the sign I needed.

On the other side of the highway there was a convoy of National Guard troops heading to or from their latest training exercise. That might not seem like a big deal, but it is too me. That is my sign that everything is going to be ok. For the past 4 or 5 times that I've had a freak out session, I have seen a convoy of military vehicles within minutes and it's not like they should be traveling around me, as I'm never near a military installation when they drive by. But for some reason, they are always there. Maybe they are my angels. I don't know, I don't care. I just know that when they are around, it's all going to be ok.

And it is all ok. We are home and we are safe, despite the sheer torture of descending from 35,000 feet with a sinus infection. If you ever want to know what it feels like to have your eyeball pulled through your nose, that will give you a good indication. And my kids are healthy, except for the teething, and thriving better than I ever imagined they could.

Walking into this house was like walking into a time capsule of one of the most challenging times in my life. We left Germany at the height of CB's medical mystery that made her scream 20 hours a day and everything was just as it was when we shut the door that last time. It's been so nice to put those reminders away for good. To pack up all of the burp rags and baby gear and to hide the baby toys is just confirmation of how far we have come and what is going to happen next and believe me, I can't wait for what is going to happen next.

the only time it will ever be this clean, part duex

Since 99% of you slackers will never come visit me, I guess I will share what the rest of our house looks like. I need to boast about my hard work somehow!

When we moved here, the house had been empty for a year and a half. It was filthy and full of spiders. M steam cleaned the carpet 3x and the water still came out black. Can't wait for CB to start crawling on it, really. YUCK! All of the walls were primer white. I can't even say they were painted white because what was/is on the walls was/is not paint. It's some weird concoction to cover the cement blocks they used to build the house. I really wish I had taken "before" pictures so you could see how ugly this place was.

Since moving in, we've painted most of the rooms, except the really large ones because I'm too lazy, added curtains, scrubbed all hard surfaces to get rid of the film of grime, spent way too much money on the finishing touches, and done up the back "yard". It's been a lot of work, but fun.

This is the first actual house I get to play with and while it's a lot to keep up with, it's much better than renting an apartment and living with white walls and venetian blinds. As soon as I found out M was leaving, we decided to really invest in this place to make it comfortable and a place I wanted to spend most of my time. Now, I can say I like our house and won't go too insane living here.

Enjoy!

thank goodness the baby swing is battery powered

Today I decided to be productive. I had it all planned out. I was going to spend the morning with the kids, put them down for their naps at 11:30, cook a big one pot meal to eat from for the next couple of days, clean the kitchen, vacuum, and then when the kids woke up, I was going to go to post to demand the money they short changed me yesterday.

Yeah... none of that happened. W went down for his nap at 11:45 but CB didn't want to. I started cooking around 1 and she started crying around 1:15. I fed her while the meal was cooking, praying she would finally fall asleep. She did around 1:30 and I was just about to get up to put her down when I heard a loud pop, followed by an even louder scream. Then it was silent. Eerily silent. Then there was more screaming.

I realized then that the power had gone out and being the paranoid person I am, I concluded the screaming was because W had figured out the plug covers and had electrocuted himself, making the power go out. So I flew up the stairs as fast as I could only to find he wasn't electrocuted, but just really scared because the pop and subsequent silencing of his noisemaker had woken him up.

Dang. What was I going to do? There's no man around and this is, for sure, Man's Work. I went next door to find out if they had power, and they did, so the husband came to my rescue. He found the circuit breaker and flipped it. And it flipped right off. And he flipped it again and it flipped right off. Over and over. Well, that must be the problem. duh.

Eventually I tracked down the number for the housing office, who's machine told me to call another number, who gave me a number to call, and then they gave me another number to call. All of this being done on the neighbor's phone because we, being modern people, don't have a phone that works without power. (Don't worry, I'll be getting one tomorrow...) They told me they would send someone out to fix it.

2 hours later, that someone still wasn't there. I was starving. Famished, actually. I hadn't eaten all day. The meal I was making was ruined because it didn't cook and had been sitting out too long to be saved. I couldn't get something out of the fridge because we all know you have to stand in front of the open refrigerator for 10 minutes while you look over every shelf repeatedly to find something that you actually want to eat. I can't afford to lose the entire content of my fridge right now from letting all the cold air out. (Really, all that is in there right now is caramel topping, ketchup, and old carrots. Yuck.) Everything in the freezer has to be microwaved to eat so that wasn't an option. So I was left with whatever was in the pantry that didn't have to be cooked. Yummy. Wheat Thins and M&Ms, not such a great combo and definitely doesn't satisfy a hungry stomach.

It's amazing how quiet the house is without power. No hum of the fridge or computer allowed me to hear the clocks tick, which was totally annoying because the 4 clocks in the downstairs area don't tick in unison. They are all a millisecond off from each other. It reminds me of a rhythmically challenged person clapping loudly on the off beat during a church worship service. Annoying, to say the least.

It's also amazing what you can get done when you aren't distracted by electrical things. I was able to read a magazine, file my nails and even go through the Pottery Barn catalog. Because I need an $89 ceramic bowl vase that holds an enormous amount of artichokes to put in my living room, as seen on page 5 or here. Actually, I would probably have nice Pottery Barn like decorations in my house, if I could guarantee that W wouldn't use them to mark the strike zone for his pitching practice.

Finally at around 4, the guy showed up to fix my power. He flipped the circuit breaker and the power came back on. And stayed on. So he left but not before he made sure to look at me like I was an idiot because he came all the way out here just to flip a stupid switch... Something any smart person would know how to do. 4 minutes later, the power was out again. It's gone out 3 more times since I've started writing this and the people at the 4th phone number are telling me there isn't anything they can do until Monday.

Tonight, we will most likely dine by Maglite, if I ever manage to be able to cook. If you don't hear from me for a couple of days, it's because we're living Survivor style: eating bugs, showering in cold water and making fire with sticks. We're going to die.