I've got all these quasi-romantic ideas about siblings. I believe it comes from being an only child. The Boy does not share these ideas, my mom doesn't either. Maybe they're trying to tell me something.

In my sane-brain I know those ideas are silly. My kids will fight and squabble constantly, more or less, for a long time. The rest of their lives. Someday they'll come to an understanding, even be friends (maybe) but for the majority of the time they live under our roof they'll be competing as they see it for everything. I hope I'm up to the task.

I often think that we've got to get more storage in what used to be the garage. Many years/months ago. It's not quite a garage anymore. It's actually a pretty nice family room complete with fireplace, cobwebs, thirty packing cartons worth of books, and assorted cartons of Stuff that still has to be unpacked and stowed. But where are we going to put it all?

Some of the stuff should get tossed. I'll have to resist my inner packrat urges on that one. No! We can't throw that away! I might need that again in a few months. Yet I've not needed it so far, and I suspect deep down that if it was magically gone from our lives I'd never look for it again. If you're looking for garage storage, whether for an actual garage or just for more utilitarian needs, look no further. Gar Guy Garage carries a large range of cabinets, shelving, pegboards, and everything else you need to turn your disaster zone into a liveable and more importantly workable space for your home.

A sweet little day this has been. I got the Toddler down for her nap, and tried to fall asleep. A short while later I discovered that I couldn't sleep. Because my boobs itched. Because I had acquired a bra full of cereal bar crumbs.

Such is the life of a mother. Especially one with such cleavage that it apparantly encourages small children not only to rest their heads on it, but to use it as a special secret storage space for all sorts of snacks. (try saying that ten times fast)

This is not the first time I've found things in there. It won't be the last. Today it was funny, usually it means I need to resist the urge to undress outside where I can shake all those crumbs out for the birds instead of leaving them strewn over the carpet to lure sugar ants. It could be worse.

A friend of mine recently asked about how she could meet someone who shared her interests without having go hang out in wierd bars. I referred her over to a site where she could check out biker personals without having to leave the comfort and safety of her own kitchen. Which is good. Online dating is easy, relatively safe as long as you follow standard don't be a moron rules, and "biker dating" can be a fun way for a normally straitlaced girl to go out and explore a looser side of life. So often the outer impression of a person fails to reflect what's really there. I know that I've been guilty of taking the surface for granted- if the surface doesn't seem like someone I'd want to know I try to stay again from them. On the rare days I've been able to really talk with people who I'd normally stay away from I'm often surprised at how much we do have in common with one another.

Another instance of letting the dustcover define the book inside it. How many books do we pass up without giving it a chance? How many times are we surprised, pleasantly, to find something that really speaks to us deep down? The love of your life could be waiting for you, in a somewhat offputting package. Look under the surface and let your destiny find you.

My Boy walks into the room holding a book in his hands and looking sheepish.

"Do we still have book 3, or did you have to take it back already?" he asks.
"I took it back," I said.
"Oh. I need closure." he manages to look a bit more sheepish although smiling. "It was good."

So I think I'm going off to the library this afternoon. To go and look for that book. I don't mind- I thought it was pretty good too. Which is why I did an interlibrary loan for books 1 and 2. Ghost, Kildar, and Choosers of the Slain by John Ringo. Some books are like crack for the brain when I'm a certain degree of hormonal.

mmmm. yummy, yummy books.

Undercover Mama. Changing the world, one dirty diaper at a time.

I think this is going to be my new catchphrase. I'm still toying but mostly in the preliminary planning stages for a new site, still a blog, which will serve ultimately to be a more funny parent-oriented writing thing that can give one more outlet. Not completely sure about the finer details of this, and I'm saving now towards the hosting for this site, but just so you know watch for some changes/updates/ one more site to visit regularly.

And the Toddler, yes, is taking her nap without protest today. I'm plotting my next secret mama-mission to locate and obtain the latest on my must-have-now craving list. Why does Vons make such yummy signature soups? Why are they priced on the upper end of affordability? Why am I powerless to resist these soups when I know that they're again almost within my reach and I wants some NOW?

Answers to these questions and more will be forthcoming. I hope.

Times were that files weren't that large. Graphics were minimal, video and sound clips were almost unheard of... and everybody walked places because no one had invented the car. Times change. Technology changes faster than most of us are familiar with. We increasingly turn to file sharing when getting together with friends and colleagues across the globe, and email can only support so many attachments.

I know I'm not the only one out there who has from time to time come head on against the attachment limitation when sending cute baby pictures to the dozen or so of her closest fans. Fear not! There is another way! Driveway is one easy way to create file uploads and storage when sending those bulky files to someone else. Easy to use, easy to maintain. Up to 2gigs can be handled.

If I had had this going when we recently lost our harddrive, I might have been able to save more of the pictures. I hated losing all of those. The Boy could have been sharing his gaming files with the boards over this method -hash out a few of the strategy problems with just one or two others before facing the entire forums. It could have gone better. As far as schoolwork and more data-oriented things, we could have easily taken advantage of the features that allow use of the standard Office applications through a browser.

A short followup based on my Sept 10th post .

The Little Bit is now grounded. Seriously. This afternoon I had one child gouging bloody red marks in my shoulder in her displeasure that I would not let her run wild through the library, and the other one kicking something somewhere that caused intense lower back pain. Which still hasn't let up, incidentally. And since I cannot do anything productive to fix these event-specific behaviors the unborn child is grounded and the toddler is tucked in bed a trifle early.

My boobs still hurt, in case anyone had a burning need to know that. Who knows why. Perhaps it's the four cups I've gone up within the past twelve months? Perhaps it's the reopening of closed ducts? Everybody run a status check! Drill, people, we need to drill! I pause in my day to bend over and hold them to my chest in an attempt to ease the pain. It doesn't really help. Of course, a two-year old reaching over and grabbing them violently whenever the mood strikes her doesn't help either. I don't know why she does this. Perhaps she sees the size changing and wants to explore this?

At any rate I'm tired. Sore. Tired. My fingers are slowly swelling. I gained a couple of pounds since the last time I weighed in -yippee!- and am renewing my hope that I'll gain more than three pounds from the first week of pregnancy until the day I check into the hospital to deliver this baby. I have hope. I have faith. I have love. I'm a walking billboard for 1 Corinthians 13:13. I even know where my clean towels are.

My daughter, the Active One. Sigh. I chased her around a small waiting room this morning, then she got more sillies out with the physical therapist, then fell asleep in the car- worn out by this fabulous morning of car rides and new sights.

She's getting better. I'm getting better. When I think back to all those months in her first year that I co-existed with her, I want to take that younger version of myself in a great big hug. It did get better. I knew it would, if I just hung in there long enough. My little girl really is mine; she really does love me. I really do love her with my whole heart. And the little boy will be just the same.

I know that even in my fairly insulated world there's way too much information to ever make up my mind. Parenting skills, tricks, experts. Household management experts. Financial experts. What's riding on my ability to decide is one home, one family. What if it were my job to make wider reaching decisions for a company, that in turn would effect the lives (maybe drastically) of ten or twenty employees? Or more? If those twenty families were dependant on my ability to always make the best decisions about technology, training, marketing... maybe it's a good thing that I'm not in charge of that.

One company that is helping to make those decisions easier is Contempory (business solutions) They work as consultants helping companies wade through the swamp of too much information. There are a hundred products eager for the business and your hard-won money, and they don't really care if their service is the best one for your needs as long as payment clears. Wouldn't you much rather spend the money on something that works and you need? Consider Contempory for help in researching Business Objects and Intelligence Training. They have recently revamped their website and it now includes video clip answers to important questions; instead of reading a dry and brief FAQ page isn't it nicer to see a presentation of these people letting you know in their own words "face to face" why you should choose to do business with them? Contemporary specializes in small to mid-sized businesses. They know MS products. They offer technology training for your employees. Most of all, they care. I like the look of the new website; there's not a lot of flashy graphics to take your mind off the service. It's simple, streamlined, easy to navigate. The important things.

Mommy has got to get back to exercising. The past couple of months have not been good for that; I've been tired and sick and tired and I just don't want to exercise. Not even the wimpy little minimal program I had figured out for myself. But. Gotta do it. Gotta get back into some sort of shape so that I can at least climb a flight of steps without my knees clicking and my breath panting. I'd like to blame the lack of desire on the pregnancy, but let's be honest here if nowhere else- I just hate exercising.

So what to do? How to begin? Part of it is that I've got to get off my butt and start moving around for 30 minutes a day. The trip to the fridge for snacks does not count. Unfortunately. I wish it did. I wish I was allowed to have donuts and twinkies. More the donut than the twinkie. Because, well, I always want more what I'm not allowed to have. I didn't want twinkies so much until the Boy and the docs told me that I am no longer allowed to be in the same room as one, much less consume it. Which bites. More than that, I didn't even let them know that I hadn't finish a whole twinkie serving. My sugar spiked to nearly 300 with only the majority of a twinkie. And how sad is that, to be proven right about the whole diabetic thing after so many years?

The real estate market has benefited greatly by the internet and all the "new" technologies. It's easier than ever to conduct business online. More especially, it has made relocating and house hunting better for all concerned.

How many people have to relocate and find new homes way out of their community? It used to be a more uncommon thing to move a state away. Now it's a matter of course to move across the country. With money being tighter and so much distance between home and prospective buyer, it's important to be able to do things online. The realtors that make the process painless and provide the best info are the ones who get the business. Virtual home tours, community links and maps from one centralized location, fast answers to phone, email, or fax; all these are signs of a really good realtor. One such company is The Holm Group in Arizona, where mcdowell mountain ranch homes are currently one of their hot properties. Find real time availability in Scottsdale and Phoenix communities and subdivisions near shopping and top golf courses. Check out everything the community has to offer you before making a trip in person to look at the properties- why spend a ten day trip chasing your tail in an unfamiliar area when you can get the basics ahead of time and pinpoint your searches and time to what best suits your interests?

On Suburban Bliss today she's talking about the side door of possibility, and briefly mentioned having imagined sticker shock at the market. This ties into something my mom brought up the other week on one of her phone calls home. "You just wouldn't believe it! Some things are just so dirt cheap and some other things are so expensive."

Case in point: milk.

Now, I realize that milk prices are, to a certain extent, subsidized by the government and are relatively stable. I know that at a local market you can expect to pay $3.20 a gallon for whole milk of the local, WIC approved brand, and $3.60 for a "better" bigger dairy's product. Milk prices vary from store to store. Walmart is around that $3.20 mark. One large market with the ability to carry three different brands of milk has in fact broken that $4 ceiling. When and who can pay $4 for a gallon of milk? Maybe if that's not a staple of your pantry. We are currently going through about 2.5 gallons a week. We could push that way up if we tried.

Other things in the dirt cheap category include broccoli (48 cents a bunch last week) , and local-type produce. Grapes are usually cheap. For the past month it seemed they were giving away watermelons (whole, seedless, less than $2 per). I haven't been here long enough to really tune into the market fluctuations, and I no longer get paid to track the grocery prices obsessively -time was I could give you prices for all dairy products in a three state radius. Now? I still have the time, maybe, to do that. I don't get paid for it though, and I see no real need for that level of knowledge when I'm living as close to the smack-dab center of California as I care to come. According to the weather-lady's map, Fresno is the red dot in the middle of the state-shape. We're a hair or two south.

Centrally located. Does that mean that we're average? And if we're average, when can I expect to see gas prices coming down beyond $2.70 ever again in my lifetime? We just pushed past the 3-dollar mark again. Hence, my renewed commitment to those paid postings. No offense, people, but every little bit helps. Besides, I really do want and need to get a new diaper pail in the house. This week will pay for that, and a case of diapers, and possibly even a domain. Mama wants a new website. One that's hers. One she can shamelessly whore to the public while getting her nuttiness out into the open. Does then mean my kids will be less embarassed by me as tweens and teens? I'm not insane enough to think so.

Nowadays everybody's living longer. Not only do you have to think ahead financially, but one has to consider romance. Seniors aren't dead from the heart down. Really. Part of a well-balanced and rounded life has got to include romance, "companionship", and a host of other things. But where to go to find these things? http://www.datingforseniors.com - "senior dating" is a good place to start. Especially if you haven't been out on the dating scene for a while. Gone are the days when all that was available were smoky bars or flourescent-lit senior center mingles for "senior dating"- not that there's anything wrong with them if they're your taste. I just don't know many people who would want to.

Who are senior singles? They are the people at church, at the store, anywhere you go. Maybe they aren't comfortable going out publically to meet people. Maybe they're more comfortable and feel safer chatting with someone over the computer before committing to meetup in real time. Nothing wrong with that at all. The thing is, you can't sit home alone and lonely waiting for a knock on your door. Do what you can in your comfort zone to reach out and find someone today. Who knows? A new life might await.

Here's a nice idea. The Fifty for Fall contest, run by Nanashi-inc.net. The terms are, write a 50 word minimum post with a couple links (specified) and at the end of the month all the people who submit entries go into the hat. A virtual hat, maybe? The winner gets fifty dollars. Which, as I'm sure you know, gets you a tank of gas in California. What could I do with this money? I could replace the diaper pail. Buy a tank of gas. Get a bunch of adorable little outfits for the Little Bit. Or even- gasp- buy myself a payperiod's worth of chai latte's. Which isn't on my current diet, but if I'm extra good and can cut out every other little tiny thing I splurge on I might just be able to manage it.

Joana is, among other things, one of the payperpost people that I read regularly. She always manages to put such a nice spin on things. And no, I'm not just sucking up :)

And in other news, how about this chilly snap of overnight weather around these parts? It's been low 50s for a week. I've gotten my coat out for the early morning drive to base. Is that insane? Cold and moist enough in the air this morning that I got that nifty smell of Cow in the Morning. Yup. We're still in the country after all, not just a desert.

The Toddler grows more stubborn by leaps and bounds. She's using more of her words, and not just in her daily effort to escape bedtime. This morning we got up, cleaned up, and I lifted her out of bed. She followed me to the door, then firmly closed it behind me. Well, I got to eat my breakfast in peace before she agreed to exit the bedroom and sit down for her own breakfast.

She never ceases to amaze me. I know this entire post isn't very coherent, and I could go on for pages and pages and pages about her. That's motherhood in a nutshell. Particularly motherhood before 0800.

I couldn't sleep last night so in an effort to take my mind off whatever-the-heck was keeping me up I tried a virtual vacation. This is the problem with being fascinated with global history of certain times, and the drawback of having read so very much on so very many topics. With all the things I could have been thinking off to try and steer my dreams back on point I had to choose China.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Quite. Has everyone heard of the terra cotta army that was buried way back when? They're at the British Museum this winter, as part of a special exhibit. Unfortunately you can never quite get the full feeling of the thing unless you're there, standing in front of hundreds and thousands of these lifesize sculptures. Dialaflight is having a special deal on Terracotta Warriors tours right now, if you live in/near the UK and can get away. I think the Chinese culture and history are so fascinating because in one sense it's so far away from everything I grew up with. And living in the same spot where your immigrant ancestors landed and settled 400 years ago can really instill a certain sense of history in a person! It wasn't just that my mother the family historian could give me chapter and verse on the ancestors and family legends. She could drive me to the actual plots of land and point things out. I grew up a mile or two from their graves. Morbid, maybe, but it makes you feel connected. Countries that have a similar sense of history are endlessly fascinating to me. Most of Europe, for example. But how much more so the Orient, where written languages and traditions peaked when Europe shivered in the little ice age? Tours of foreign countries are absolutely the best; you're guided through the best of the best, sheltered from miscommunication with locals (if like me, you don't have a large language capacity and get scared of being lost in a country where you can't talk to anyone), where the arrangements are mostly all laid out ahead of time for you and you just have to follow the leader for days on end. Personally, I think it's worth it. Look for good deals with reliable companies. Dialaflight has a good reputation for helping people pick the package that's right for them and for making the entire experience as painless as possible.

It's been four years since the Boy and I held hands and signed papers at a courthouse, far far away. Four years of laughter, tears, and everything in between. We've been separated by oceans and continents. We've been reunited in more airports than I care to remember. We had one child and conceived two.

For the past four years, for the time I learned that I never want to do without you, I thank you dearest. May we have a hundred more.

Perfect moments are by nature nearly impossible to plan. Things happen just so. Lighting, temperature, smells and textures. How much more difficult is the creation of a perfect moment when it involves a finicky toddler?

This moment was such a moment. Chilly but not quite cold. French toast with cinnamon and a little sugar. A pajama-clad toddler giggling from her high chair. It doesn't get much better than that. Only the Boy would have made it better- but try creating that on demand. The only thing that comes on demand around here are Tubbies and CSI. Usually.

Long distance rates are hard to comparison shop for. International, or cross-country, in this age where very few people stay put and long distance relationships are the norm. You can spend a fortune on phone calls. The Boy and I try to use our cells for everything, but his has roaming fees attached during certain daytime hours and whenever he's overseas... well, let's just say that they add up awfully fast.
We even know people in Canada now. People we'd call more, if we could figure out time zones and roaming charges and fees, and what happens when the cell-reception is so crappy that you just need to use a land line? One solution for that, obviously, is to get a Canada calling card. Or we can call the United States for 1.8cents a minute, which is about as cheap as long distance rates stateside can go.
Why choose Pingo as your provider of prepaid calling cards? It works like all the regular discount prepaid cards, with the benefits of being run by the same service that provides the Big Name networks with their coverage. Tollfree numbers are available from most areas to get you into the network. You can arrange for several different “sub”accounts bundled together under your main account if you're running a business (or if you have a couple of teenagers who you'd like to monitor use on?) Sign up and get a bonus on your card- if you use this special phone card blog discount coupon: “ppp3” valid for $3 off Pingo you will get a $25 card for only $17. That's almost 5 hours of free international calling.