water pouring down

I should be writing my final bracelet article right now, but I have to mention that this is the second time in the past year that we have had flooding from the floor above. . . except these happened in two different houses.  

So, is there some connection between Fort Wayne, the Price family, upstairs flooding, and who knows what else?  Or does this happen to most people on a frequent basis?

Okay.  Back to writing (which really needs to be paying me more since I'm not getting any byline credit for the freaking work.  Grrr).

Visit with Santa

Tomorrow is Stella's lunch visit with Santa at Sweetwater.  She's pretty excited about it.  The battery in my camera is completely dead (and apparently unable to recharge) so I'll have to make do with camera phone photos and I'll upload them as soon as possible.  We're going to bed so that we can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the visit  : )

Snow

It snowed like crazy today!  I don't even think it was in the forecast, or maybe I still have some missing gene that absorbs weather reports.  It is beautiful, and the whole world seems quiet and peaceful.  I love it. 

We bought a tiny little Xmas tree - 3 feet tall - just the right size for Ben (completely allergic to xmas trees, by the way) to dispose of by himself while Stella and I are gone after Xmas.  We're heading down south to pack up the rest of our belongings and visit with family. 

I am not looking forward to the packing of boxes once again, but it must be done.  We'll probably have to give the house a thorough cleaning as well - three boys living there for a year with at least three animals probably leaves the house a little dirty if I had to guess.

I am loving looking at the snowy field. . . enough so, that I'm done blogging about it & I'm just going to enjoy it.  I wish it snowed like this in GA at least once a year.  Right at Christmas would be perfect.

I made a turkey

Yup. I roasted a turkey, and I have to say it was not as hard as it seems from the kid perspective. Maybe it was because this one was relatively small, but really we just washed it and put it in to cook. That was it. I always thought making turkeys for Thanksgiving was a huge ordeal. Now I know. Well, I suppose the ordeal is in the aftermath of dishes for days on end (we don't have a dishwasher - well, we do: us).

Sylvia, Ben's mom, taught me how to make her fancy chocolate pie and we made a pumpkin pie after we put the turkey in to roast. Then I made a ton of mashed potatoes, some green bean casserole, and we cooked some of the super-wonderful-delicious corn we'd frozen from the summer. Once the turkey was done Syl made the gravy and we got everything on the table. Mmm, mmmm, mmmm. One of the best Xgiving dinners ever, if I do say so myself.

I have since used the carcass to make what the cookbook calls "turkey frame soup" - I wonder why they don't call it "turkey carcass soup". . . sounds totally appetizing, don't you think?

Today it is snowing and snowing and snowing. Some day I'll get used to it, but today I'm wondering if I'll go to my appointment tomorrow afternoon - I'm such a chicken about driving in the snow. : )

House for Rent in GA

So, we need a renter. Preferably a good one. Someone we can trust. Maybe I'll make a list like the kids in Mary Poppins.

Must be kind, must be witty, very smart and very pretty...

The renters are moving out at the end of December and I'm scared scared scared. We've got to have someone in there or I'm gonna have to move down there just so the house isn't vacant. : ( I don't want to be gone from Ben for that long. Not one bit.

So. Spread the word please.

So Excited!!!

I'm currently quite exhausted.  

Stella and I spent two very long days working at the Obama Campaign for Change here in Fort Wayne, Indiana and those days are so much longer when one of the attendees is 3 years old.  Even a wonderfully behaved 3 year old still takes a lot out of a person.  And Stella is most definitely one of those well behaved kiddos.  

I got a call requesting help from the campaign manager a month or so ago & said I'd have to arrange child care to come.  It didn't happen and didn't happen, so I asked them if it was okay if I brought her with me since we were in the final week.  I made calls (by the way, I hate making phone calls, so this was a huge thing for me) for the Get Out To Vote campaign and worked some data entry for the phone info and canvassing records.  I stayed twice as long as I planned that day and told a friend I'd go with her to canvass the next day.  

Only, I had to work the next day so we didn't make it out, but that's okay because it gave Stella a day off.  Monday got all snargelly (but Stella and I managed to have a wonderful day just the same), so I didn't get to go back until yesterday.  Ben had to work at 7am then go vote at 9:30 and we dropped him off at work and went straight to the campaign spot on the north side of town.  Rose, a fabulous lady who took her vacation time from work to volunteer for the campaign, was so glad to see us and so obviously exhausted from this push-week of insanity.  She told us to stay to do data entry rather than go out to canvass, since they had gotten volunteers from Chicago and even California to come work here.  

Stella and I entered data from calls and data from polls and ate cheese and veggies and managed to stay there entering data even through all the party prep and craziness.  There were a couple of cranky moments (she didn't get a nap or even a rest-time), but really we both behaved really well and helped out however we could.  

I love that Indiana counted as a vote for Senator Obama.  It's the first time the state's gone blue since 1964 & I'm so glad I was able to do something to help.  

It's weird though.  I never ever thought I'd volunteer for any political campaign - never.  Really. It's interesting what we'll do when something is important - even things we never thought we'd do.

When Stella and I got home around 8:30 (nope, we didn't stay for the party - we were already cranky) we basically went straight to bed.  I didn't know the results until I got up this morning and it is just going to be the best day ever now.  Yippee!!

Halloween

Stella informed me that she wants to be a tiger

then a rainbow tiger

then a fairy

and finally (for now)

a stripe-y rainbow tiger fairy

I love her imagination!  

We'll post pictures once we get the costume worked out.  

Should be fancy!

Garden update

Nothing in September - ah, I'm such a slacker!!

The bunnies did leave the carrots and they were yummy.  Stella was so excited when she pulled them up and said with a shocked face, "Carrots!"

We've gotten 40-50 tomatoes off the vines here and still have at least that many green that we might just have to fry up since it's getting colder and I'd rather eat them than have them be rotten in a frost.  I'm looking into dehydrators to use up some of these tomatoes since I don't really need 100 frozen tomatoes eating up my freezer space.  The beans were yummy and the broccoli never produced anything except "broccoli dudes" (that's what Stella called the little bugs that seemed to always be on the leaves) -- we planted the seeds too late in the year to get veggies from them.  

It was so much fun having a garden with Stella.  We'll be doing it again next year - maybe with even better results!

Garden notes & TMI about potty time

We went to a friend's house a couple of nights to see some of the Olympics on tv (since we don't have one for now) and since then Stella has been all about some diving and flipping aka gymnastics.  She keeps doing flips and "dives" all over the house.  It's quite cute.

In other news...

and this is BIG news...

The little chickadee I know has been sporting "big girl underpants" for a week or more now.  It is too cool to be without diapers.  It is great!

She was very nearly potty trained in January when we moved and it all got preempted.  Then we were getting close in May and we went on a trip that got her out of practice and when we did get back we moved - AGAIN.  So we've had to focus since early June and she slowly got interested again.  I gave up on the pull-ups "big-girl diapers" as a reward when I heard her say "I don't have to go potty, I'll just go in my diaper" - grr.  I thought, "it's warm enough outside, we'll just play outside today without a diaper on and she'll let me know when she's gotta go potty"  She was cranky and wanted some underpants so I told her if she kept her diaper dry all day she'd get to wear underpants.  That was it.  One day with some fancy 4T underpants by fruit of the loom as her reward and we are done with diapers.  

We were supposed to leave for a trip last weekend and couldn't make it work financially, but I think I'm really glad that it didn't happen.  It was supposed to be potty training time apparently.  Also, I was kinda hoping that the tomatoes we planted would be ripe by now - they are still green on the vine - so strange.  We've had very little rain lately and they aren't in the sunniest spot so I'm guessing that's what it is.  But I want me some 'maters dang-it!

We DO have some great zucchini growing and some beans that aren't as tasty as I'd like for them to be.  I have some spinach that the bunnies aren't eating and two carrots that I hope they leave alone (they ate all the rest).  Our squash died at the last minute and we have one broccoli plant that I think we planted too late.  The lettuce has been mostly consumed by the bunnies so I'm just looking at that one as my gift to them.  

There is a grape vine on the property that seems to put off a northern version of a red muscadine (whatever that may be) and they are getting ripe.  Stella and I check on it when we go out to play.  They are still a little sour, but I'm getting excited about it.  I love sun-warmed grapes from the vine.

I asked the landlord if it was okay if I planted a raspberry bush.  I think it would grow here just fine...we'll see if I get around to it.  : )   I'm already waiting for next year's asparagus crop.  Mmmm.

the saga continues

Apparently it was a fan w/vcable, k36

that's what the service detail statement from Apple says.  I think it is probably more than that, but we'll see if it makes the noise again. 

The computer was gone for a couple of weeks and - I don't want to admit this - I missed it.  I didn't write and I like the freedom of working wherever I want (whether ergonomic or no).  There's just something about checking email on the sofa instead of at the desk.  Also, I really missed having speakers on my computer.  The whole time the Olympics were on I got to see them with no sound...not so very cool.

Anyway, the computer is back.  We are really going to be friends this time.  It only took me a month and a half to warm up to it.  :)

making peace

My laptop and I are starting over.

We are taking things slowly this time, and hopefully eventually becoming good friends.

It has occurred to me in the past couple of days that my old laptop might be salvageable, but I am wondering if it is worth repairing and whether any of the data would be salvageable. We'll see what happens. Someone I know recently had a hard drive die without a back up and described it as something similar to a house fire. You just lose so much stuff so suddenly.

apparently

they don't "do" returns.

and said they couldn't find a problem with my computer...

I'm running it all day today with fingers crossed that it makes the same terror-inducing noises it made a week ago so I can take it to the service desk while it's still making the noise.

I was pissed yesterday when I got the message.

Thought I'd returned it at 9am.

I'm a bit pissed that I didn't take the offer for a trade.   

Since they are making me keep it anyway.

apparently.  

ugh.

It's my magnetic field perhaps

Ben bought me a new macbook a few weeks ago for my birthday. Last week it started making noises very similar to the aforementioned laptop (that would be the sound of a hard drive dying). The noise comes and goes - and the noise is a bit different each time, but generally getting worse all week. Today it sounded like a plane getting prepared to take off. I just closed the computer and walked away.

I decided that I am just not meant to have a laptop right now. I am taking the signs. I am listening. I can repeatedly kill them with my aura for so long. At some point I have to listen. I am trying to be a better listener in so many ways.

Perhaps my magnetic field changed in the past 8 months & now I'm incompatible with laptops. It's not a bad thing since I feel like a better mommie without a computer or tv on to distract me. Reading is good. Perhaps I'll blog about what I've read since we moved up here. It's quite a list. Mostly vampire books. Speaking of which...I think I need to go get one in a couple of hours...

Tomorrow I am wiping the drive - correction, I am getting Ben to help me do whatever is necessary to get my info off there, since I historically don't do such things as they "should" be done. Then it's off to return it.

I am practicing "good stewardship" in the words of my extended father-in-law. I am using that which I already own and not contributing to the continued waste and consumerism that is this society. Plus I'll be saving us quite a few dollars by doing so. If I find in time that I can't stand sitting at a desk and using a slightly more ergonomic setup then I'll go pretend to be typing on my mostly dead laptop. I'll punish my carpal tunnel that way.

I believe this is for the best.

oh yeah

and we moved again too.

we're still in fort wayne, just in a new place -bye bye dog-house

i'll put up pictures maybe if I figure out how...it can't be hard, but I have to find the time.  Quite honestly I prefer sleeping to blogging, so we'll be figuring that one out later.

back in the saddle

So apparently it was the hard drive.  In a very large way.  I did some backups and it died so much that there isn't even a startup screen or a c prompt or anything except the words "error drive not found" or some such reassuring thing.

It took Ben's computer hours to scan the drive for errors remotely because there were so many errors to compile for the list.  If I'd run the scan it could have taken days because I don't know what I'm doing with computers most of the time, but Ben knows what he's doing and was a bit appalled at the state of my hard drive.  

And to put the cherry on top with a bit of flair. . . 

all that backing up I was so good about...

apparently I don't know how to appropriately back up a drive.  

Ben told me that my "backup" isn't really a backup since I failed to copy some particular thing for the files when I did my "backups". I sort of shut down after hearing that and don't really know what I did wrong.  I didn't absorb anything beyond the fact that I lost all my data.

It's been months and I'm so glad to have a computer to work on again.  

I miss my old one.  It was slow and cranky and old, but we had some good times.  

Maybe some day I'll get the pictures off the drive.  

If any of you have pictures of Stella please send them my way.  Send me an email and I'll forward you my snapfish info so you can load them on there.  All the ones I had on the drive and hadn't gotten around to copying to snapfish are gone gone gone...that makes me sad.  There were sooo many on there to be copied over.

Honestly I'm hoping Ben's wrong about the hard drive.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.

my tired old laptop

Last night I thought my computer had died completely - and me, here, without a backup - eeekkkk! 

I couldn't take the trauma of it so I went to bed and pretended it was fine.  When I got up this morning I waited - again with the ignoring of the trauma - until Stella took a nap today and tried to boot the little beast.  Hooray!   

First thing I did was back up just about every bit of info on the computer.  

But, just in case I don't show up here for a very long time. . . it could be that it happened again. Poor thing has been making some moaning noises for quite some time now.  

We'll see how long we can stick it out  : )

March Forth!

Ah, well, I missed it by a day. Whenever I get to the date March 4th I think of my mom & her dad who said that day was also a command. And so we shall march forth!

March 4th at our house consisted of a whole lot of time spent in the bathroom. Though not as painful as that sounds by itself. : ) Stella is potty training and we spent a good part of the day yesterday running upstairs to get her to the potty on time and then "hanging out" while she waited for the pee to come.

The high temp was at about 7am and it got colder and colder all day long. A "wintry mix" - which is a euphemism if I've ever heard one - all day long and apparently it turned to snow last night because we woke up with the most snow we've had so far. Probably 5 1/2 or 6 inches. The sad part to me is when it gets warm enough to melt it. Really. That is the sad part. : )

I got up at 5:30 this morning (not by choice. . . that'd be one of the perks of having a toddler) and got the driveway shoveled before Ben left for work around 8. I'd rather shovel it early and get to it before the tires pack it down and make it really really hard work. Stella cried inside while I was working because she wanted to help me. Once Ben let me know she was crying I came back in and got her all jacketed and scarfed and we went back out to finish. Her "help" involves wiping the snow off the little metal animals on our porch and knocking the snow off the handrails. She also scuffs around in her boots (which aren't really snow boots, but that's what she's got this year) and makes trails next to the stray cat's footprints all over our yard.

Last time it snowed like this we made a mountain out of the shoveled snow and made a snowman (perhaps my first snowman with a ball diameter longer than a foot ever!). So far today we've only made a snow mountain, but that is still mightily impressive.

SNOW!

Last night it started snowing right around the time Ben got home from work.  7 ish.

  

Stella and I heard the frozen rain from inside the house an hour or so later, making me wonder if we might be in for an unmentioned ice storm.

I woke up at 7 this morning and I think it must've snowed all night.  

It is wonderful out there!  This is what snow is all about - yay winter!

sleep & books

some nights it is pretty easy to find
others....

Lately the thing that has kept me from sleep are the books I'm reading. That's too bad, because I love sleep. I would say I prefer sleep over reading. Judging from my behavior over the past two months though I suppose it may not be true. I've been getting very very little sleep some nights just so I can read a little further in the book.

Maybe that just shows how good these books are.

The ones that have kept me up lately are:
The Mercury Visions of Louis DaGuerre - night before last I was crying as I neared the end
Fluke - this one was more amusing than compelling
Dead to the World - this is part of the Sookie Stackhouse series that I am trying to pretend I'm not addicted to - notice the word "trying"

I'm aiming to read a book about my baby's self-esteem next. Another highly recommended one, although not nearly as escapist as the fiction is for me. I hope to enjoy it.

Good morning!

In-Laws etc

Ben's parents came up last weekend.
They were our first houseguests here.

The bed upstairs has no boxspring so I'm sure that was fun for them. They camp, so they'll survive, but it's just not very comfy to have to get all the way on the floor.

The kitchen was out-of-order for half their stay since the landlords decided to receiling it the weekend before and sand/repaint it this weekend. It looked amazing by the end of the weekend though, and we got a great meal or two cooked before they left.

Showed them around town some: the city and checking out the different neighborhoods/parts of town. Sylvia and I talked about going to the science center with Stella, but Stella took a nap instead.

We took them on an extended tour of Sweetwater (where Ben works) and then had lunch there too and played some video games. Stella made sure to explain to them in detail how the boxes travel up and down the conveyor belt in the warehouse - there's an observation spot near the bathrooms and I think she could probably watch boxes all day if we packed a lunch.

They managed to come up for a relatively balmy weekend here. It got up into the low 40s and has since gotten down to single digits (and they only left yesterday).

Stella had SO much fun with them & keeps talking about them and asking when they'll come over again. I have a feeling that we wouldn't be seeing so much of them if we hadn't just moved their only grandbaby away. That's okay though, I don't take any offense. I know they love her. She loves them too, so I'm glad they want to see her.

We had snow on and off while they were here. It's funny how quickly you get used to things. One month and already the snow is not such a big deal. Don't get me wrong - it's still cool. There's just so much of it and so often that is really is like any other precipitation here.
Not like the phantom-magic-scarcely-ever-seen-perhaps-even-mythological snow of the south. : )

land

Ben got a "talking to" by the landbaroness
(that's instead of landlord, see - it's funny)
for my blog(s) disrespecting the house here.

She took it personally when I said the house smelled like a dog.

Well.
It did.
It still does sometimes, but mostly in the basement now.

I get it. I hurt her feelings. I didn't think my landlord would be reading my blog on myspace, but really it's not like I named her or gave the address or did anything to let other people know who it was.

I was venting about things that have been stressing me out and making me physically react since I moved here.

That is what this kind of thing is for, right?

we moved

So, we have talked about moving someplace where there are real winters for years and years and in January 2008 we did just that.  We moved.  From Georgia to northeastern Indiana.  We've gotten snow and snow and snow and it now feels warm out when it's over 32, so it's official - we moved north.

We had been talking about Boston, Chicago, New York, Portland, and perhaps a few others.  By early December Chicago won out.  We got a renter for our house in Atlanta (Decatur, actually), we put a deposit down on an apartment near Wrigley in Chicago, and started packing up the house, even though we had no job(s) and no real idea of what we'd be doing.

The day after we put the deposit down in Chicago, Ben got a call from Sweetwater in Fort Wayne, Indiana asking him to come out for a job interview.  He went for the interview a week and a half later and got the job offer two or three days before Xmas.  So, just for funsies we added to holiday stress by deciding to pack up and move to Indiana.  

Ben left on New Year's Day to come up and find us a house to live in before he started work on the 7th, while Stella and I stayed behind to finish packing up the house & prepping for the move.  Who knew we'd end up with more than we could stuff in a well-packed twenty-four foot truck?!  We have a lot of stuff apparently.  We've decided that maybe we should be more zen/buddhist/... and learn to live without things.  We'll see how that goes.  : )

And so. . . we moved.  It seemed like a sudden thing to some folks, but we'd been working on this plan for some time.  Moving is kind of like the first three months of pregnancy - you don't really want to start talking about it until it is really more likely to actually happen, otherwise you get people all focused on that possibility and then something else comes up.  No need to ruffle feathers and get people thinking we are moving until we actually are.  Right?   

Good.  

That's how we felt about it anyway.

And so. . . we have moved.  And here we are.  In Fort Wayne, Indiana.  We are now Hoosiers.  Unless there is some requirement that you be born here or live here for more than a month before you officially don the title "Hoosier"

I'll post my dog-house adventures at a later time (date actually, since it's past my bedtime). . .

number 1

I told myself I'd do this, so I don't have to worry about who I've written this email to or that email to and what did I tell them and what did I leave out . . . by writing/posting this blog I absolve myself of the guilt of not doing a great job and staying in touch with everyone and of the responsibility of informing everyone of every little thing that is going on with me via phone or email.  

Now, if they care to know what's up they can check here first and then, if I've written nothing in a while, they may email me and bite nails while waiting for me to respond.  : )

Well, all emails and nail biting are welcome whether I've posted anything recently or not.

That said.  I must go change the laundry and will return soon to post number 2