productionMaven part deux

As all of you know, I have a boat-load of things TO DO. What can I say? I love making to do lists (I don't get too much into the minutae) and crossing them off. It keeps me motivated, it keeps me goal-oriented, it keeps me going.

The list continues to grow as the baby grows, to be sure. We have 8 weeks to go, and will be at my parent's house for one weekend and may be in Maine for another (the weekend of May 9, for my SIL's graduation from nursing school.... although I'm not planning on sleeping on a couch or blow-up bed and it's going to depend on if I have the medical go-ahead since I'll be just over 2 weeks from my EDC), so that leaves 6 weekends. Not a lot of time, you know.

This weekend, we had to do major furniture moving due to our new carpet being installed today (the guys are there now, as a matter of fact. G is keeping me updated as to their progress) in our bedroom, the baby's room, and the hallway. It's going to be so lovely having new carpet upstairs... not so lovely when we get our credit card bill, but we'll just suck it up and pay it off and move on. G commented that the carpet in our room was like the carpet in a frat house. Matted, filthy, hairy. All thanks to one of the dogs.

After cleaning the house and moving some furniture on Saturday, I decided to organize P's dresser: I have mentioned that she's grown out of a lot of her clothes, and there's a kids clothing swap this weekend that I plan on getting to, to score some clothes for her and The Lad, so I needed to have some things to bring to swap out. After cleaning out the drawers, I decided to then separate her tops and pants into two drawers: one with clothes for daycare, and one for non-daycare, because I am tired of sending her to school in some relatively clean, new duds and having them come home with paint and dirt ground in for all eternity. One day she came home with bread dough ground into her shirt. It's not so easy to wash a yeast-bread out of cotton, take my word for it. I guess her teacher doesn't believe in smocks or aprons.

At the end of the day, when G and I were comparing notes, I mentioned the daycare drawer, in the event that he picks out her clothes some morning. He gave me a funny look, then kind of shrugged. I asked what that was about and he said "It's ok, I guess you're just nesting!" I hadn't thought about it like that, necessarily, but when he brought it up, I guess I am nesting.... I'm getting a little hyper-vigilant about getting things "just right". When I put our bedroom and the baby's room back together this week, I plan on cleaning as I go, and getting rid of things we don't need, as well as tidying up what we will keep around. Straightening up closets, organizing them as I progress.

I have to say that I don't think nesting is a bad thing, not at all. I don't think organizing is a bad thing either: in fact, I love to take a pile of things and make them tidy, matched up, inventoried. One of my little feelings of accomplishment came this weekend, as I organized P's socks. I took out pairs that I knew were too small for her, or socks that she doesn't like to wear, and pulled the singletons out and made their own pile, in case their twins happen to show up. There's nothing at all wrong with that!!

Or, maybe I just need to get myself a life. As long as it's an organized, tidy life, I don't mind one bit.

I've been getting about 250 spams a day on the entry that I took down over a week ago. Come on, you 'bots. Get your shit together.

Idiots.

We got another 6" of snow yesterday.
The temperature's been hovering around the freezing mark today, and there's a wind coming from the north.
I made spinach balls as a test for a fundraiser that G is a part of. The recipe yields 35 balls. I need to make 125 of them. Someone on allrecipes.com rated this as a healthy recipe, despite the cup of parmesan cheese and the stick of butter. I don't know if this spinach cancels out the saturated fats, or what. but it doesn't sound too healthy to me.
P has been rather destructive today. And she just ran over her toe with an office chair.
She also is getting another cold. If I play my cards right, I might be able to be sick when I deliver the baby.
And she's belligerent as all hell.
I cleaned the house today and made brownies to take to a friend's house tonight.
We are almost done moving furniture around for the carpet install on Monday.

That is all.

I'm ready for warmer weather, sunshine - although it is out today, it's still too cold - and birds. I'm ready for springtime flowers, letting P and the dogs go outside. I'm ready for the chirping of birds to filter into the house. I'm ready for the snow to go, I'm ready for thinking about gardens and herbs and babies. I'm not complaining you know, but I am ready for all of these things.

I've been anxious, lately, I think.
To wit:

1. SUNDAY NIGHT: My dream featured the carpet installers showing up, only to realize we hadn't moved the furniture in the room that is to get some new carpet. Not only that, but there was NO ROOF over the room, only a weathered, holey tarp with icicles - huge ones - hanging off. My thought was that we really needed to fix the roof "before the rainy season started, or else we were going to ruin the new carpet".

2. MONDAY NIGHT: G, P and I are taking the green "B" line train to Logan airport (silly rabbit! You take the blue line to the airport!) early, early in the morning and running behind. We ALMOST get there, and I realize I forgot to pack ANYTHING for our trip. I tell G to go on and take P, I'll be back in a moment. I race back to our home and am packing: 1 suitcase for G and I, 1 small suitcase for P. Am trying to remember not to put the books and things that she'll want in the plane in her suitcase. I wake up out of breath, with my heart racing.

3. THURSDAY NIGHT: It's the 1950s, G and I are driving and searching for a parking space. We pass by 2 awesome looking steak houses, but keep going, park, and go upstairs to an "ethnic" restaurant, where we meet P's real parents. She starts loading the dishwaser, becaue I tell them she loves to load the dishwasher, then we have to leave her behind. My last picture of the girl I thought was my daughter was her watching me leave, a sad look on her face. I wake up teary and am in fact a little bit now as I write this.

I need a vacation.

I've been embarassing myself lately, by way of my daughter. She's grown about 3" from the beginning of the year, and the 4T clothes that fit her well are now starting to be a little snug and/or short. She's been wandering around like the mother of all floods is coming and, while I certainly expect some rain in April in Vermont, there's no reason to subject her to dressing in anticipation of the waters rising.

Add to the short pants and riding-up-her-belly shirts the fact that most of her clothes - I said most, not all - have detrius forever staining them from her adventures at daycare, and that she really hates when I brush her hair every day (it's really curly), and you have some primed pre-ragamuffin material.

So next weekend I'm going to a clothing exchange for kids, and I think right now I'm going to head on over to OldNavy's website and see what I can scrounge around for there. We don't have a super-ton of money right now, so I have to be judicious about spending, but I can't have Parker running around the way she has been. She's clean, I know that, but her clothes look ratty, so it's time for something new.

She's torn the hell out of the butt of her snowsuit, though, and it's already been patched once. I'm not sure there's much I can do to salvage that. Good thing winter's over, or at least almost over.

Riddle me this:
If you could have one wish in the whole world, aside from wishing for endless wishes, what would it be?

I have to keep this short - I volunteered to do something for a co-worker now I'm running behind. Isn't that always the way?

But tell me your #1 wish. Get as elaborate as you want.

Enquiring minds want to know.

Because March's NaBloPoMo is all about lists, and because I have nothing else to write about, and because I have a bunch of work that I need to get done before a 3:00 meeting and then I have to go to get something quoted for framing and get some birthday presents for a birthday party P's been invited to this weekend, here's a list of things that need to be done around the house / around my life in general. These aren't in any order of priority; in fact, some are "to do whenever" and some are a little more pressing. See if you can tell the difference

1. Move light stuff into guest room & studio by Friday
2. Move furniture into guest room & P's room by Sunday night
3. Finish painting mullions for studio
4. Touch up paint in studio
5. Clean house before N shows up (Friday?)
- vacuum
- dust
- windows?
- mop
6. Post photos to ofoto from Easter
7. Put up drip thingy over living room windows
8. Install quarterround in kitchen
9. Take out toilet & sink & vanity from downstairs bathroom
10. Paint downstairs bathroom
11. Install new toilet & sink in downstairs bathroom
12. Wash newborn clothes for baby
13. Organize baby's room
14. Sort through bookcases and post used books on amazon for selling
15. Take books that haven't sold to library for donation
16. Clean out fridge / organize freezer
17. When dad gets replacement piece made, put together final file cabinet
18. Finish moving things from P's room into file cabinet
19. Mount mirror in P's room

Numbers 1, 2 & 5 refer to this weekend and my cousin's visit. I'm hoping he can come and visit and help G move furniture, but then there's the whole "moving it back" thing that I'll have to help G do. Some of this has been kicking around on a list for some time, others are new additions.

By the time this stuff is done, it will be springtime officially and there will be a ton of stuff to do outside with stick pick-ups, planting some new plants around the house, getting herb and flower gardens planted, blah blah. Oh, yeah, and we'll be having a new baby too, around plantin' time. So, really, all bets could most conceivably be put off indefinitely.

Are you exhausted yet?
Do you have an on-going to-do list? What's on it? What am I missing?

Back to work - I have 23 minutes to finish something that might really take more like 4 hours.

Funny - I thought I was at 32 weeks today, but it's 31. What does it matter... I've hit the tired, logy, spent wall. Only 9 weeks to go! Then I get to push him out of my holiest of holies!

Thank you ALL for voting on the names last week!! I got 28 votes, and it's great to know that I'm reaching so many. I hope you will all check back more often and comment, I love knowing you're out there and It would be nice to drive more traffic to this site.

Without further ado, here are the results:


(apologies for the size of this image; Photobucket has a new and improved editing function and really all it does is make my browsert quit. Thanks, Photobucket!!)

I find it interesting that 2 of my favorite names finished first:
Ezra, Fletcher and Henry - 18%
Garrison is 2nd with 14%
Cletus (yes, that was the bogus name) was 3rd
and G's favorite name, Orson, tied for last with Thaddeus and Max.

Interesting. Interesting.

I will tell you that Cletus, obviously, is out. Thaddeus, too, as noble-sounding as it is, my mom said "how about a nickname like Thaddy-Fatty" and that was that. G hates Fletcher (who was my very, very dear horse when I was in high school).

The names that are officially in the race still are: Ezra, Orson, Garrison, and we've just added "Winslow".... of course, we have to wait to mee the kid before we tag him with a forever-moniker.

We thank you all for your votes, and hope you'll come back often to read updates. I'm told that NaBloPoMo for April is letters.... we'll see where that takes me. It's fun and tiring to be posting every day, but I think it's worthwhile in the long run.

Phooey.

I got busted for posting my Daring Bakers entry too early. For some reason I thought that today was the 30th... I'm all goofed up. Blame it on the preg brain.

At least I've only missed 1 day of NaBloPoMo.

And, happy easter, all! Or, Happy Zombie Jesus Day!

The more they blah blah blah.....

I am due for my annual review early in April, and I just reviewed my professional goals from 2007. I'm chagrined to say that, despite the feelings of process and progress, my goals are exactly the same because, ultimately, the BIG PICTURE stuff - schedules, getting things into my departnet on time as final documents and not requiring major rewrites, having all elements ready to go before the magazine goes out to the printer, etc etc - is still NOT getting done efficiently.

It's hard for me to complain. I know everyone does the best job they can, but I have worked in companies that put out more material, and things were never as late or delayed as they are at my current employer. It could be this way because as a general rule people work to the task and the date, without a goal of getting things done and off their desk early. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but when your job is to be poking and prodding and reminding people to get their work done - as my job has become - it can get a little annoying. I've definitely taken on an air of nagging (as G can attest to; it hops in the car when I'm not looking and comes home with me some times and gets to pester him).

I also wonder if it's because the Magazine industry is different than book publishing, which is what I spent 11 years of my professional career doing... then I keep thinking the answer to that question is that they are not different, and that they both require a lengthy schedule and prep time in order to achieve the ultimate goal of getting things done on time.

So do I suck it up and just roll with it, and continue to nag and pester and bother and poke and prod? Or do I continue to try to change the system that I seem to be the only person bothered by? The irony is, I know that there are several co-workers who hate the way the process works, and are increasingly frustrated by it. I realize I'll never get it down cut and dry "once you hand it in it's done forever all eternity amen" but there's room for some improvement.

I'll just have to see if there's room for people to stretch themselves and work to the new system, in order to implement the new and get rid of the tired.

It being Maundy Thursday and all, I thought I'd do a list of things that I think of when Easter rolls around. These are childhood memories, some are vague, some are sharp. All are true.

1. I remember being at my brother's godparent's house one year for Easter (these are people that I've always regarded as my aunt and uncle and cousins, despite the lack of any blood relation. My aunt is the one that died last June after being diagnosed with cancer three months prior) and I got a Wizard of Oz Dorothy action figure. I LOVED that doll - she had a little plastic Toto and the red shoes and white ankle socks and braids and the blue gingham pinafore dress and everything. She was absolutely one of my most favorite "barbie" type dolls - she grew up to have an amazing career riding my Breyer horses around my room.

2. I think at that same visit I ate so much spaghetti so quickly that I puked it up immediately. My aunt refused to serve me spaghetti after that.

3. This also might have been the year that my brother asked my mother - in the middle of the Sunday service - if the Easter Bunny helped to get Jesus off the cross.

4. I don't remember how old I was but I remember going, another year, to my biological aunt's house in central New York somewhere - it was a brown house, she lived there with my uncle before they were married, and we had boiled corn in a bag for dinner one night that I thought was terribly exotic and efficient. I also swear I saw the Easter bunny that night, because I slept on the couch and I remember woozily waking up and seeing a big white figure with tall pointy ears in the kitchen. I believe we also went horseback riding during this visit, because I have memories of being on a horse and walking alongside some water. I think this was the year that the Easter Baskets were hidden with such skill that they could not be found.

5. One Easter - I must have been 10 or 12 or old enough to know better - I remember sitting on my grandparent's front step with my brother and we were teaching my baby cousin, who was just learning how to talk, swear words. We would teach him a word, he would repeat it, and we would say "ok, you can forget that word now". I think this year I had a lovely yellow dress and horrible, heavy, brown glasses. I wanted a hat, but I don't recall getting one.

6. As a matter of fact, I don't remember ever getting an official "Easter Bonnet". I am 35 and still don't have, and have never received, an Easter Bonnet.

7. There were several years that I know I woke up early to scout out the jelly bean hiding spots so that when we were "allowed" to start hunting I could have a strategy and get more than my brother. Sorry, J.

8. When I was older - much, much, much older, I went up to my aunt & uncle's house (see items #1 and #2) for Easter weekend from college and did some shopping during the day with my cousins, then we went out the night before Easter to the bar that my parents had frequented while they were students in college and got absolutely hammered-drunk and were smooching with a bunch of army guys who were on leave from a nearby base (I scored 2, my cousins each had one). The night ended, believe it or not, when we were all getting ready to go out and find some early morning breakfast - I think it was doughnuts that we were craving - and one of my guys jumped over a little guardrail around a parking lot to get to to an ATM and he actually fell down an embankment 15 feet or some such thing and broke his leg and my cousin (the not-drunk one) had to drive him to the hospital. The other three rode with my cousin to get their buddy fixed, the guy with the broken leg was in the trunk of the Honda Civic (named Truuvie), and my other cousin and I walked to the hospital to meet up with the cousin-who-could-drive and we headed home, laughing our asses off. We STILL talk about this adventure, and it's now 17 years later. I wonder what that soldier is doing, if he limps as a result of his Easter-eve fall after a night of serious drinking. I only remember that it was Easter because my aunt gave me a stuffed rabbit and it smelled like the perfume I had bought before the debauchery ensued.

I can only remember 8 right now, so I'm calling this entry done. However, one little Easter tradition that I do have, and enjoy very much, is listening to Peter Gabriel's album, Passion, which was the soundtrack to the powder-keg film, Martin Scorsesee's Last Temptation of Christ. Longest film ever, actually, but the music is lovely and sad and tragic and evocative, so I recommend you listen to it, whether you be Christian or Jew, Pagan or Baptist.

What kind of Easter traditions and/or memories do you have, dear reader? Do tell, do tell.

I had to take down this entry because I was getting 3,000 trackbacks/spams a day to it. Let's see if I can re-post and not get the same results....

This is from January.
Kind of a lame NaBloPoMo post, but I didn't want to lose it forever. Keep it in the annals, you know.

Jesus, god, who do I have to kill or pay off to find an affordable daycare that will take both of my kids, feed them nutritious snacks (am & pm) and a good lunch, read to them, teach them basic rules and enforce them, not stick them in front of the television for 6 hours (that's my job on Fridays when I'm home), exercise them, and not require that I cut off my arm to accomplish all of these things?

Seriously.

I spent a few frustrating hours yesterday calling around to put my current on-the-ground kid and my child-to-be on waiting lists for September. That's right - seven months from now. Most places won't take kids under 2. One place that will take kids under 2 won't take kids over 3 (!!!) and also have 10 kids in front of us on the waiting list. I was told that some of the prospective kids on that list haven't even been conceived yet, or the parents are waiting to adopt. Now, not to be a total bitch, but I've got the preg belly and a due date and the fluttery tummy in place NOW. Doesn't that give me at least a little bit of an advantage to babies that aren't even in utero yet? It may be that P will stay at the place that she's at now - I wouldn't be unhappy about that, but I think they should be together. One drop off, one pick-up. I don't mean to make it sound like it absolutely needs to be convenient for me, because believe me I'll sacrifice what I need to. However, the one place that will take both kids will be $81 DOLLARS A DAY!!!!

Now I understand why women become stay-at-home moms, especially when the 2nd kid lands on the ground. $81 A DAY?!?!? Seriously? And that's rural, mid-Vermont prices. I'm sure you city folk pay that for one kid, at a place that's not too fancy or high-brow. I need my job, that's how our budget is set up. That said, I also need someone to watch the kids so that I can do my job. What a snake-eating-its-own-tail mess.

And that's where the crazy idea of a few posts back - starting my own daycare - starts to look better and better. I'm back into researching to see if this is an option for me and the two kids that I'll have under my care come late-May.

Briefly- it's closing day today at work, which means that our bi-monthly magazine should be ready to go out to the printers today, all done, everything complete, etc etc.

Suffice it to say, it's not at all ready. It will make for a late night for me, and that's fine. I feel bad for my boss, who has been putting some insane hours in lately to get it all done. I just don't understand why we can't move dates on our schedule up a week or so to insure that everything is in when we need it to be. People work to the task and date given, and if you give them a little leeway, they'll take that and a couple more days on top of it. I was never the type of person to procrastinate in school - I got my assignments and did them ahead of time so that they were handed in on time. College was stressful for other reasons, but not because of my work for classes. I pulled 2 all-nighters in school, and they were more of a "hey, I've never done an all-nighter, let's stay up and goof around" than an "holy shit I have to cram". I never crammed for exams, either. By my calculations, if I didn't have a semester's worth of information at the ready, it was NOT going to be absorbed in a night of frenzied coffee slurping. And I guess my inclination to get things done ahead of time has translated into the professional world, where it continually bites me in the ass because I'm ready and no one else is.

But, that's because I'm perfect and no one else is and if you would all please model yourselves after me the world would be much smoother and efficient and a better place to live. Mmmkay?

I won't bore you with the weekend details, aside from saying that I don't think we'll be seeing G's family as often as we have. It's a psychic-vampire suck of energy, and besides, his sisters both have small houses and for us all to get together, so 9 people, a baby, and 4 dogs, it's a little - ok a lot - close for comfort. And with a new baby, I just don't see it happening as often.

We DID get to Coldstone Creamery, and let me just say that it's a damn good thing there's not one of those around here because I would be there every night trying out new combinations. Deadly stuff, that! I had a vanilla with peanut butter, snickers, and hot fudge. Man, it was good.

But now to the naming. G and I have some names picked out for the Lad, some are bogus, some are real contenders. Bear in mind that the middle name will begin with a "T" and our last name starts with "B" and is a color. Please choose from the following names, and if you think of any heinous nick-names having to do with any of these names, leave them in the comments section.



I'll report back next Monday with the most popular name, the least popular name, and the funniest nickname that you all come up with. Vote early, vote often!

I think this baby thing will become the regular Monday entry, at least until the kid gets here.

We're off to Maine for the night to visit G's sisters, mother, newly transplanted grandmother (from Florida), our brothers-in-law and our niece. Should be interesting. I'm getting over this cold that I sincerely hope is not contageous because I think it would really be a problem for his grandmother (who has emphasema).

My only request for this visit (aside from my mother-in-law acting somewhat normal) is to get to a Coldstone Creamery. We've been meaning to go over and over again, and it just hasn't happened. Hopefully it will this time. We'll be back on Sunday, having checked our monthly or at least every-6-weeks visit off the "to do" list.