Zippy!

When we bought our laptop last December, we also installed a wireless router so that we could have some mobility. If you haven't experienced the mobility of wi-fi and a laptop, you are so missing out. After a few months, our router developed an annoying problem where it couldn't clearly broadcast a signal (turns out there was too much "noise", whatever that means). The solution was that we would go downstairs to reset the router multiple times throughout the day. And that didn't include the times when we felt lazy and simply tried to refresh our connection from upstairs - over, and over, and over again. Extra annoying was that you wouldn't necessarily know that you'd lost a connection - in the middle of writing blog posts, paying bills, etc., it would quietly go belly up.

A couple weeks ago, hubby started suggesting that we buy a new router. Being the slightly stingy miser that I've been evolving into over the past 5 or so years, I was having trouble justifying buying a new router when the old one was merely temperamental. Extremely, irritatingly temperamental. Hubby finally won me over, and I'm so glad he did. The new router didn't cost much, and the results of having it up and running are like having a brandnew, super fast computer. It's so speedy, the way DSL should be. I feel a sense of calm knowing that when I get to the end of this post and click "publish", it will actually do just that, and it's been saving as I type along, too. Zippy has brought computer Zen to our home.

Fieldtrips are our specialty!

Below is an email reply to an inquiry I made a number of months ago. While I appreciated the woman's frank reply, the whole thing just struck me as funny. "We give school tours" ...if you dare.

and now a little humor

Tonight, after reading a story to the kids, Little Brother was laying down next to me. He was being very still, with his body very straight, and his arms straight down along his body. Then he said to me:

"Look, Mom! I'm the Floating Bridge!"

For my non-local blog readers, the 520 Floating Bridge is one of two bridges connecting the Eastside with Seattle, across Lake Washington. My kids are both fans of this bridge. I'm not really sure why, other than we drive across it when we're on our way to cool places, like the zoo or the science center.

I should also mention that Little Brother announced to me yesterday that he'd recently had a "color divorce". This term was new to me, so he was kind enough to fill me in:

"You know how sometimes people get married, and then they decide they want to marry someone else? Well, a color divorce is like that. It's when your favorite color isn't your favorite color anymore."

For anyone keeping track, the color "green" is now single. Purple and Little Brother are now hitched.

And in other news, we were able to create a fix so that we didn't have to replace the $100 piece that broke off the washing machine earlier today. I love it when we manage to figure things out for ourselves and avoid large repair bills. The internet was hugely helpful, especially partselect.com - we were able to look at schematics online, and get an idea what we were looking for.

Off to do laundry!

They don't make them like they used to...

It seems our washing machine is broken. I'm not sure how broken, but the dial you turn to start the cycle? it just spins without any resistance. In the process of trying to pry the knob off/get it to do something other than spin there uselessly, I somehow got it to start up again. I have no idea what kind of a cycle it's currently doing, but it filled with water and sounds like its agitating. We'll see what happens.

Have you ever noticed that these sorts of things only happen after you've been out-of-town for a couple of days and are preparing to leave town again in the next 48 hours? This would never have happened if I were caught up on laundry! They also generally happen when the dear hubby is working 60+ hours/week. I'd like to have another adult in the house before I go poking around the insides of large appliances, seeing as how my mechanical aptitude doesn't extend much beyond "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey". These incidences also tend to occur immediately following the completion of all your online Christmas shopping for the kids (if I didn't get to your gifts prior to the WMI (washing machine incident), you have my apologies - don't be too surprised if you receive these from us this year, seeing as how any remaining Xmas budget may have a new purpose). Karma is kooky that way.

Let that be a lesson to ya!

I volunteered at Little Brother's school today. They needed some volunteers to help with the hearing and vision screening they do on all the kids each fall. I found a friend to ship Big Sister off to, and decided to give it a go. I was assigned to test hearing. It went well, with the exception of the poor little girl who I injured shortly after she sat down at my hearing station. I was about to fit the headphones over her ears when I accidently let go of one side, which caused the ear piece to spring back into her face. She looked absolutely horrified, and would no longer make eye contact. I told her that when she got back out with her classmates, be sure to tell them to watch out for the mean blonde lady with glasses. That's right. Don't mess with me.









...only kidding on that last part.... Unfortunately I really did smack her in the face with the headphones. What? It's not like she cried! But she did remain very still and did exactly what I asked of her for the rest of her time at my station.

Hey, that's my dog!

These USA puzzles are kickin' my rear. All those square states look the same! LOL - I'm sure the residents of the square states are shaking their heads at me.

Because you have nothing better to do with your time...

Don't go to JigZone if you know what's good for you. I found out about it from vegiemama, and I now spend far too much time putting puzzles together. I'm getting faster! ...so easily amused...

h e l p

I'm going to the dentist in the morning. I should have been in for this tooth a few years ago. I have serious dentist issues. I'll have to share my horror story with you sometime. For now? just think good thoughts for me, and I'll try to remember to breathe.

Slightly new layout

Thanks to http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/ I went in and edited my template to create a 3-column layout for my blog. I like it!

Rain, rain, go away. Do you think my tomatoes will ever ripen if summer doesn't make a final stand in the next week or so?

Day 3 of OGTKTBE: The youngest was asleep by 8:30. He was sound asleep within a few minutes of his head hitting the pillow. The oldest and I got caught up watching the first episode of Different Strokes on YouTube. It's not the first time YouTube has led me astray. Full of rabbit trails, I tell you! Would you like to hear how we ended up there? We were reading a comic strip that mentioned a "dumb waiter". Of course N. didn't know what one was, so I googled it to find an image. This reminded me of that show in the 80's with Emanuel Lewis: Webster (for those of you who don't remember, Webster would sometimes ride in their dumb waiter). Off I went to YouTube, where there were surprisingly few episodes to be found. But what did I see in related videos? Diff'rent Strokes. Yes indeed - YouTube is the blackhole of cyberspace.

Anyway, she's now asleep next to me on the couch, and I'll be hauling her 70lbs. sleeping body off to her room as soon as I'm done here. G'nite!

It is 87 degrees...

...in my living room. Waaaah.

Have you tried Mike's Hard Pomegranate Lemonade yet? I highly recommend it for those evenings when the temperature in your house exceeds 85 degrees. You're welcome.

Investing bug

Do any of you invest in the stock market? The realm of finance has always intimidated me, and hubby too, to some extent. We are overly cautious wusses when it comes to investing and trying to grow our money.

Some events took place in hubby's family recently that caused me to take another look at stocks, and I decided to invest some "fake" money into a few that I was interested in. Just dabble a little to see what this is all about. I really like the yahoo finance tool for following investments. I can track daily ups and downs, as well as how I'm doing in each stock overall, and my portfolio collectively. You can look at charts and graphs for varying lengths of time, and put it against a graph of the market's performance for the same time frame. I also like that it pulls up headlines pertaining to companies and business sectors that you own stock in.

The fun part is that my portfolio is up 12% in the first month! My lowest performing stock is finally on the plus side as of yesterday, and a couple of my stocks are doing better than 20%. This is really addictive! And also really safe - ridiculously safe since I didn't actually make any money during this time, yet I could have made almost $700. Anyone have any advice for taking the plunge with *real* money?

Don't play with your food

Andrew, singing during lunch today:

"The Fritos have given this land to us,
No need to fuss,
They know what they're doing.
We know that they will take care of us,
if we just follow them."

Veggie Tales fans everywhere are cringing at this very moment. I'm a bit taken aback myself!

What a weird, schizophrenic kind of day

N. started day camp today! This is the daycamp through the Humane Society. The ratio of campers to counselors is really low - her group has three girls in it altogether, and one of them had to leave early in the day. The remaining girl is a friend of hers, and together they got to meet their cat mascot "Ashley". They have been charged with the duty of getting Ashley adopted by Friday. N came home with all sorts of buttons/pins with Ashley's name and picture on them so that family and friends can wear her kitty face around town and try to get her a new home. Apparently she's a very sweet, adult, calico kitty, very good with kids, and quite the snuggler. She'll make a great pet for someone... not us. (Kila? LOL) They started out the day clicker training dogs, and later in the day a veterinarian came by and gave them each a stethoscope to take home. They used the scope to listen to a puppies heartbeat. Pretty fun stuff.

After dropping N off at camp, Lil' A. and I went over to get him registered for kindergarten. As luck would have it, they only have an AM kindergarten available for half-day. That was my last "out" by the way - I'd been saying that if they couldn't get him into AM, then we wouldn't do it. Looks like kindergarten is a go. This is supposed to be an easy thing, right? I mean, parents do this all the time and don't feel all conflicted about it, don't they?

So my intent with A. going to kindergarten for 2.5 hours/day is kind of twofold. First of all, it will give me some dedicated one-on-one time with N. Five years ago, when we first stepped foot into the world of homeschooling, I'd projected that this school year would be the one where she was finally working independently, heck - at least reading independently, and I'd be able to devote some more time to A. The reality is that N. is still struggling with reading, writing, and spelling, and I really want to get her over the hurdle this year with some focused work. So far I've not found a good way to either separate the kids from each other long enough to give me the time of day, without grumbling that a). it's not fair that one gets to do school with me while the other has to do something else, or b). it's not fair that the other gets to play instead of doing school. Surely some homeschooling parent holds the answer to this conundrum.

Secondly, it's time for A. to just grow up already! Kidding. Kidding. Really. Mostly. Okay, in truth we're kind of sending him to the sharks. He gets along great with his sister, and has been making more friends in the past few months with some boys he sees regularly, but he really can't deal with more than one kid at a time. He basically gets up and walks away once there are more kids involved. For a long time I thought he didn't like to play with other kids, period, but was relieved to see him finally building some friendships. We've also had the experience of him not dealing well with groups of kids when he's been in swimming, and gymnastics. He doesn't like for other kids to be in his space, or to be too loud, nor does he like it when they don't follow the teacher's directions. All of these things cause him to completely shut down physically, mentally, and emotionally. I guess part of what I want to see is if giving him more opportunities to try to work through that will somehow give him the skills to at least manage his reactions in a different way. Oh, I didn't mention that one of his more common reactions now is to bite himself on the arm or hand, and to punch himself in the head. Yeah. So kindergarten could be interesting. At least we're not afraid to pull him out and homeschool him. Though if they could have him reading before we did that, that would be pretty cool - the reading thing hasn't gone well with kid #1.

So I get kid #2 signed up at the local grade school, and then I came home to work on my outline for homeschooling kid #1 this year. Do you see how I'm bouncing from one extreme to the next here? This is going to be a really strange year.

I love coffee.

Nothing to add to that. I haven't even poured my first cup yet, but I'm in the living room on the laptop, and I can smell my fresh brewed coffee waiting for me. Life is good.

Feeling "at home"

Aside from physical location, people will often say that they "feel at home" in certain situations. For example, maybe you feel right at home when you are out shopping on the streets of a big city, or hiking through the backcountry. Conversely, either one of those things might make you feel completely out of your element.

I bring this up because last week Hubby came home from work with an invitation to an upcoming awards dinner. He's up for Engineer of the Year, and is one of 3 finalists, narrowed down from a pool of nominees. This is a well-deserved honor, as this past year has been especially grueling for him. It feels good to see hard work and quality being noticed. Of course with Hubby and I both being fairly introverted by nature, him especially so, we're having trouble seeing past the dinner that's taking place at a yacht club on Lake Washington. My stomach gets tied up in knots just thinking about it, but then I tend to get myself worked up in advance of things like this, creating more suffering than will actually take place once the big day arrives. It's my nature. I'm so much fun to live with, LOL!

So for me, feeling at home does not resemble getting dressed up and attending a multi-course dinner with a bunch of strangers. It would probably help if you knew that for me getting dressed up involves putting on my best pair of jeans, clean tennis shoes, and one of my nice t-shirts. For hubby, feeling at home definitely doesn't involve being singled out in front of others to receive an award. He'd probably appreciate it more if they handed the award to him at his desk some afternoon, along with a gift certificate to Black Angus. It would certainly involve less anxiety.

My question to you is: Where do you feel like a fish out of water?

...and, maybe more importantly: Where do you feel at home?

Home is where you make it...

Home is where you make it. I'm learning that as I get older, and move from place to place. Shortly after hubby and I got married, we packed up and moved 1000 miles away from all our family and friends. It was scary. And lonely. I attribute some of that to the shock of moving from the Pacific Northwest down to southern California. It was like moving to a foreign land - we didn't even speak the language (Hello? Who drinks "soda"?). For years, anytime we made a visit to our family in Oregon I'd pine away for our "home" up north for months after. I would devise plans for us to pick up and move out of that barren cesspool that is L.A. Ironically, when it finally came time for us to leave sunny CA, I couldn't bare to leave the close family of friends we had created during our nine years there. I got my wish to move back up north, yet I'd learned over the years that there's more to home than location. When we arrived in Washington 2 1/2 years ago, I found that same isolation, just a different place. Happily, though it took a while, we're creating a home for ourselves again. We're making connections to our community, and nurturing new friendships. Home is that place where you make the effort to make yourself at home.

Like riding a bike

I went on a bike ride tonight with some of my homeschooling mom friends. It felt great to get out and ride with other adults - I think hubby and I have only done that once since having kids (together that is - he goes all the time by himself). Riding at an adult pace is significantly different than riding with kids on a family ride. While my oldest is quite capable of a 9-12 mile ride, it would take us the better part of a day, not a short evening. The ride out was kinda tough, but the ride back was more leisurely. I'm looking forward to making this a weekly event for the summer.

Thinking about bike riding takes me back to being a kid in eastern Washington. Moses Lake is a place I considered my home for a long while, in part because we lived there longer than any place I ever lived during my childhood - we lived in that neighborhood in that small town for almost 3 years. I spent the "golden years" of my childhood there (ages 6-8), and I still can recall all my close friends by name. One activity that we all took part in was bike riding. We rode our bikes everywhere, and our world seemed huge, though by adult standards it probably didn't amount to much. We felt independent and "big" being out on our bikes with friends, where adults knew only our general whereabouts. I feel badly that most kids nowadays don't have that same experience. I remember on the morning that Mt. St. Helens erupted I rode further than I'd ever gone before - across the main road that led to our street, and into the next neighborhood up. Everything about that day seemed so surreal, but besides the popcorn clouds, and the sky going dark at noon, I remember the freedom of riding my bike far enough to expand my world just a little bit more.

Oh, and for the record: I rode a pink Schwinn with a banana seat, and the seat had flowers on it. Like this, but without the fancy handbrakes:
I know you're jealous.

Say "Cheese"!

(photo taken by N)

Woohoo!

Testing is done! Doing a happy dance over here.

In celebration, we are going to go see Horton Hears a Who today. It's spring break week in our district, so I tried to talk N. into waiting to see it next week instead. I absolutely LOVE having the theater to ourselves when we go see movies mid-week when all the ps kids are in school. Makes me feel special, LOL!

Well, no surprise there...

I mean, really - how often do you come across someone like me who is both goofy AND brilliant? To know me is to love me.

Your Personality is Very Rare (INTP)

Your personality type is goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant. Only about 4% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 6% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

Thanks, Vegiemama, for bringing this to my attention. ;P