I have a new blog!
No, I'm not forsaking my incorrigibility. This is not a replacement; it's an addition to the family. Check it out!
So, Robert is out of town overnight. Yeah, yeah, bummer, boohoo and all that crap, and yet: YAY! Because what he did was rent a car for the weekend, leaving me with AN AUTOMOBILE with which I can actually LEAVE THE HOUSE WHENEVER I WANT TO!! I took JZ out running errands this morning and ENJOYED it because it was me! Out of the house! Doing whatever I wanted!
Pathetic.
He will be back around noon tomorrow. I will tag him at the door and jump in the rental car and be off for MY overnight stay. I am staying up in Oklahoma City near my favorite mall and plan to have yummy meals and do a spot of shopping...oh yes, and see my very favorite Beatles tribute band TWICE. (Have I mentioned?) Tomorrow night at 8 is the first show, which I will attend solo. (Please save your pity - I actually like going to concerts by myself more than with other people. I let my hair down a bit more when I'm on my own. ) Sunday Robert and the kids will drive up and meet me for the 3:00 show.
Today is day #5 of doing Weight Watchers and it's going very well. I have gotten back "the spark" that I had the first time I went on WW and was very successful (prior to having JZ). Since JZ was born I have tried numerous times to get back on but have never been able to find that spark I had the first time. In these subsequent tries I resented having to account for everything that went into my mouth and had a litany of "I hate this I hate this I hate this" playing on continuous loop in the back of my mind. This usually resulted in me not even making it through an entire day before I "cheated" or just scrapped the entire program entirely. This time, though, I'm actually kind of enjoying myself. Instead of feeling defeated and sad when I look at my clothes that are a little snug I am now getting excited because it hits me that they will be loose before too long. Perhaps it's just my imagination but I am already feeling less bulky and I swear my fat gut isn't quite so prominent. Also my jeans today felt a little loose but that may have been because it was the second time I was wearing them. We're real class acts around here.
I even led myself into temptation today and came through with flying colors. I took JZ to McDonald's and split a meal with him. I got a taste of what I was craving and I was happy with it. No temptation to snag some of his food or go back and order more. And I also discovered that I can pour a half diet, half regular Coke and it actually tastes acceptable to me and I enjoy it, which is HUGE.
Tonight I am taking the kids down to the restaurant to eat. Also to finagle some cash out of BIL for my trip tomorrow. It's a half-hour drive down there but I am looking forward to it because, again, pathetic no-car person = happy for any excuse to get out of the house. Next month, though....next month we should (tap wood) be able to remedy my sorry situation!
Have a lurvely weekend, everyone
This time I have a good excuse for disappearing off the face of the blog for a while. We just moved on Wednesday. Check that - the movers came on Wednesday and moved all of our furniture and we brought over some essentials and have been spending the night here ever since. Our former house, however, is still littered with all manner of non-essential items. So not only have I been dealing with all of that I also was without a computer from Monday morning until Wednesday evening, as it was in the shop.
Since we started staying here we have been going back to the other house to work on packing periodically. We bring over a carload of stuff every time we come away but the bulk of it will be moved via rental truck which we hope to be ready to procure a week from Monday. Our intial plan, because we are idiots, was to get a truck this past Thursday and bring at least part of the remaining contents over, despite the fact that most of said contents had not come within five yards of a box, let alone actually taking up residence inside one. It finally occurred to us that if we waited on the truck and packed up everything first we could probably get it all in one load. We also have the added bonus of being able to draft my brother-in-law to help us by waiting until a Monday to do it. So that is the current plan.
Meanwhile I am not the least bit sorry to be out of the old house and I'm having fun figuring out how to arrange this one. We have even more square footage here than there and we might actually be able to afford to buy some new furniture to fill it up. We've already been out looking.
Will write more later about the new place. I may even be persuaded to do a photo essay of some sort once I get things put in order.
Completely unrelated aside: 6 more days until I see 1964! And 7 more days till I see them the second time! Hee. I'm a Beatle geek.
Ingredients:
1) A good meal
2) Money in the pocket, waiting to burn
3) GymBucks
4) A sandwich from Panera Bread
5) Gay cowboys
Combine and result will hopefully be a fun day. The first four ingredients are staples for me but the gay cowboys are something new. I got the recipe from a guy in West Hollywood, you see, so I have no choice. I'm trying to broaden my horizons.
It's cats....looking at cats.....looking at cats.....looking at...
I promise I will talk about other topics after this entry. I really should consider starting a Beatles blog to keep all this separate.
Anyhow, this just happened yesterday afternoon and I was so proud. We were in the car listening to the radio. The station played one of those bumpers they are wont to play that has snippets of a bunch of different songs in it. One of the snippets was from "Hey Jude." It was a micro-snippet, really; it was four words in its entirety. But John-Zachary (age 2.5) caught it and began singing from the backseat: "Hey Jude, don't make it bad...."
I've at least done one thing right.
Why is it that after 12 years of listening to the Beatles almost non-stop my face still lights up when I hear one of their songs come on the radio?
It just never gets old.
Earlier this evening I ordered the Muzzy Language Learning System for the kids. It is supposed to be the best of its kind. I have had my eye on these videos since Madalyn was a baby but never made a move to get them until now. I feel as though it's always advantageous to know a second language and even moreso if that language is Spanish. It would be handy to know nowadays and I imagine it will be even more prevalent by the time the kids get older, which is one of the reasons I picked it.
Another reason I chose Spanish is that John-Zachary already has a start on it from watching Dora the Explorer. Laugh if you will, but the fact remains that the child, at only 2.5, counts better in Spanish than he does in English. In English he leaves out four and five every time but he can count perfectly up to ten in Spanish. And it's not just rote; he actually counts objects. He also uses other Spanish words. When he wants something open he will say abrir. Earlier tonight he had a telephone cord and he was stretching it out to maximum length and saying "gordo" (fat). Then he squished it up small and wanted to know what that was so I told him pequeño. He went back and forth for a while, stretch, squish, stretch, squish, saying "gordo....pequeño" the entire time. What fascinates me is it's totally organic. It's not me quizzing him, coaxing him to say things. It's just part of his normal vocabulary. He'll be off, playing by himself, and I hear him counting in Spanish. I think he's definitely a willing vessel to receive the information. Madalyn doesn't use any Spanish words in conversation but she can count 1-10 and does know some other words so I think she will learn a lot, too. With her it is just something she'll say if you prompt her; she didn't watch Dora when she was JZ's age so it's coming later to her and you can already tell a difference. She has to make a conscious effort to say the words whereas JZ seems to say them without thinking about it first. There's an extra advantage with Madalyn, though, and that is she will watch just about anything, so at least I don't worry about whether it will hold her attention or not. JZ is a crapshoot whether or not he'll actually sit through an entire video.
Incidentally, I also dug out the potty video today, for the first time, and JZ watched it twice. So who knows? Perhaps by his third birthday he will be both potty-trained AND bilingual. How good would that make me look? People will never know it was all achieved through the magic of television.