adazzle,dim

So, it’s been almost a year since I’ve updated here. Oops. I blame Facebook, where I update almost daily, for sucking the life out of my blog. Anyway, another year has passed, and Annabelle is four. Four! She’s in her second year of Montessori, still in the same 3-6 year old class. She excels in math and has lately been sounding out words to spell them. Yay, pre-literacy! She still loves musicals; her favorites are Mamma Mia and Annie. She’s getting Grease and the Wizard of Oz for Christmas, and I predict that they will be added to her favorites list. We recently chopped off all her hair. Hmm, let me see if I can remember how to add a picture in this blog editor…

Yay! This was taken last week at Christmas in Roseland. She was so darn proud of herself for going to talk to Santa. At first she was scared, but when we came back by Santa’s workshop, she said, “I’m really really going to do it.” And she did!

Hmm, well, this is my insubstantial update for now. More soon, I hope. :) Merry Christmas!

In the car this afternoon… 

Mommy: *sneeze*
Annabelle: Bless you!
*silence*
*silence*
Annabelle: Talk louder, Mommy. I can’t hear you!
Mommy: I didn’t say anything, Annabelle.
Annabelle: (pointedly) Bless you, Mommy.
Mommy: Oh! Thank you!

 ***

I’ve been blogging elsewhere because I’ve needed to write about stuff that’s not for public consumption (ie, not for my mom. Hi, Mom!), so sorry I’ve been quiet here. Hopefully I’ll be blogging more now. Oh, and Facebook is a major distraction. If you have one, look me up. Then you will hear from me, if only indirectly, at least daily. :)

xo,KJ

Annabelle helped me make dinner tonight. We had soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Annabelle was in charge of pouring the soup in the pan, stirring the soup while it cooked, and helping me to spread butter on the slices of bread. What a wonderful helper she was! While we were cooking, we had the following exchange:

Annabelle: Can I do that? (referring to flipping the sandwiches)
Me: No, baby. This is a Mommy job.
Annabelle: Someday I’ll be the Mommy.
Me: Sure you will, if you decide to have a baby.
Annabelle: And I’ll have a cake like that. (pointing to my birthday cake on the counter)
Me: Sure, if you want.
Annabelle: Just like you, Mommy.
Me: *melts* *melts* *big hugs*

Life is good.

</rule about not writing political blog entries>

Not that I think he reads my blog or anything ( :P ), but huge congratulations to our new President-elect, Barrack Obama! You weren’t my first choice, Mr. Obama, but in the last days of the campaign when my first choice morphed into Anyone But McCain, I guess I became something of a convert.

While I may not agree with all your ideals, I do think that you will begin the process of restoring this country in the wake of the Bush administration. I believe you will begin to rebuild our ties with other world powers. I believe you have already begun to awaken the American people to the fact that this is still *our* government, that we all have a voice, and that we can bring about positive change from the ground up. I believe that this country will be better - healthier, happier, more ethical, and more prosperous - for years to come because you have held the office of President. So congratulations, and thanks for the hope. I needed it.

<rule about not writing political blog entries>

My friend Laura was in town this weekend, and we had her and her boyfriend Justin and our friend Adam over for dinner Saturday night. I served Florentine Stuffed Shells, Ratatouille, and Cherry Dump Cake, and I was pleased with how everything turned out. I wish I got to cook on a grand scale more often, but between work and classes and everything else, it’s pretty rare these days. (Though I’ve also been on a cookie-baking kick - four batches in the past week, partly for the GSA Bake Sale at the university’s Fall Fest and partly just for the family.) After dinner, we played Battle of the Sexes and messed around with watching YouTubes on the new 60″ flatscreen, which Andrew has networked with our computers (somehow! It’s beyond me, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless).

We’re enjoying having Andrew around. There are always adjustments, of course, when adults have to learn to live together, but all in all we’re a good fit. I think the hardest thing for Andrew so far has been Annabelle’s crying when she’s frustrated or tired; to us it’s just part of the aural landscape, but I can tell it really grates on his nerves. For me, the hardest thing is dealing with Joey now having a “playmate” who reinforces the X-Box constantly being on. However, they’re bonding over games and so I’m trying to chill and just let them be boys. As long as the trash goes out.

One definite benefit of having someone else move in has been that it has forced us to do some Spring cleaning. When we switched the bedrooms around, we initially took out everything but the furniture, storing everything in the alcove off what is now the master bedroom. We’re being selective as we put things back into the rooms (which has turned into an ongoing weeks-long process), and we’re selling some things on Craigslist, putting some things at the curb, and creating a big garage sale pile as we go. This is perfect for item #15 of my 101 Things (15. Go through every room in the house and get rid of anything that is not useful, beautiful or in some way life-enriching. Be seriously ruthless.), and I’m looking forward to being done with it and having a less-cluttered house. Also, I’m looking forward to getting back into my alcove!!! :P

I remember when Saturday mornings were spent lazing about in bed or on the couch, taking til noon to wake up, and casually touching base with friends about plans for Saturday night. Ah, young days. Now, I am up by 7 at the very latest, often planning my day before my family even opens their eyes, trying to figure out how to get everything done before the weekend is gone.

Today will be a particularly busy Saturday as I will be preparing for the arrival of my cousin Andrew, who is moving in with us tomorrow. I still need to hang new curtains in his room, finish cleaning out his closet, take down the last of Annabelle’s decor (since his room was her nursery til last week),  and make the room cozy with new bedding and what-have-you. I also need to get into the backyard and trim back the vines on both gates since he will probably be coming through the back more often than not. I want to clean out the freezer today to get a handle on what’s in it and reorganize it more efficiently. I want to finish decorating Annabelle’s new room.

Joey will take AB to gymnastics this morning and then to lunch afterwards, so my goal is to get as much done as possible while they’re gone. She has a friend’s birthday party at 5, and I have an adult birthday party later tonight.

So, yeah. Busy day, I think.

Full of reminders of how many blessings we have in our life.

There are milestones we watch for as our children grow: the first word, the first tooth, the first “I love you” - the things we’re just waiting to write down in baby books and call our mothers and friends about. Yesterday I realized another kind of milestone: the ones that you recognize only as you pass them and think, wow, have we come that far?

Daddy was chasing Annabelle toward the kitchen where I was making lunch. I watched as she turned in the kitchen doorway, put her hands on her hips, and sing-songed, “You-ou ca-an’t ca-atch meeee!” My surprised laughter at my little one dropping this classic childhood play-taunt held a tinge of sadness as I realized: Just three, she is already barreling toward the end of toddlerhood. She’s becoming a full-fledged kid. And then she’ll be a pre-teen, and then a teenager. Eighteen years sounds like a long time, but three have flown by already.

Last week she moved into her big girl bed, a twin. When I sneaked in that first night to straighten her covers and plant an extra night-night kiss on her little forehead, I marveled at how tiny she looked on the great big twin mattress. And she *is* tiny. But she’s growing, and soon - too soon - she’ll no longer look so small in that sea of quilt and pillows. And then someday she’ll see that great big bed as a “baby bed,” and she’ll want a bigger one.

May I ever be aware of how precious these days are. How amazing it is, accompanying AB on this first leg of her life’s journey. May I cherish every mile along the way, and often stop to appreciate how far we’ve come.

So, I was too busy to write, and I had so much going on, and then I didn’t know where to begin, and now there is no way I can write it all. I’m accepting that it’s not all going to make it into digital print and just picking up from here.

We visited Joey’s family in Pensacola. Annabelle celebrated her third birthday. I finished the Race for the Cure 5K, though it was in a different city than I’d planned. (Next year I hope I’ll run for time. I’m watching DeAnn and Susie and Jen and looping the Little Engine that Could in my head!) Fall classes started (a month and a half ago. Wow.). I’m taking 6 hours, Joey’s taking 9 hours, and we’re both still working full time. Fun. … That’s the big stuff, I guess. It’s the little things, though, that make a blog, and I’ll try to get back on top of them.

We’re working this week to make our house ready for a new addition. Lol, no, not that. My cousin Andrew, who’s 20, is moving in with us to start school. He’ll be with us for a semester or two until he gets his own place. I think it’s going to be good for everyone involved. He’s a good kid, and I’m glad we’re in a position to help him out.

This may be short, my dears, but I have at least damn-skippety blogged now, so it should flow more easily next time. :P

Til then! xo

Annabelle started Montessori school today. My baby! She was so excited. Last night at about 10, after a couple hours of sleep, she woke up asking, “I can go to school now? I can see my teacher? I can see my friends?” I could only laugh and tell her that, no, she would have to sleep just a little bit more before she could go to school.

When we got there, she just ran right on into her room with barely a glance back. No trauma, no drama, and certainly no tears. I was able to at least talk her into coming back to the door to give me a bye-bye kiss. :P

Here are some pics we took at home this morning…

And the backpack, which is Mommy’s favorite thing of the moment - purchased last month at the zoo:

She didn’t want to leave this afternoon when I picked her up, and she chattered for the first hour or so, practically nonstop, about her day. Good, good stuff. :)

Dear Friends and Family,

I recently accepted the challenge to raise funds to support the Komen Shreveport-Bossier City Race for the Cure® on September 20, 2008 in the fight against breast cancer. One in eight women will be stricken with breast cancer in her lifetime and the more we raise, the more the Shreveport-Bossier City Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure can give back to fund vital breast cancer education, screening and treatment programs in our own community and support the national search for a cure.

Please join me in the fight by pledging in support of my participation in the Race or contributing to the Komen Shreveport-Bossier City Affiliate. Your tax-deductible contribution will fund innovative outreach and awareness programs for medically underserved communities in Shreveport & Bossier City and national breast cancer research.

It is faster and easier than ever to support this great cause - you can make a donation online by simply clicking on the link at the bottom of this message.

I truly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress. Thank you so much for your time and support in the fight against breast cancer! Every step counts!

Click here to support me with a pledge.

Love and Light,

Kathy

I give up. If you’re RSS-feeding me, I apologize if you’ve been flooded with reposts and edits. Embedded YouTubes are messing up the alignment on the rest of my blog, and the only way I can find to fix it is paragraph-by-paragraph. I think I’m going to let it be.

Effing html and css and all the rest. Grr and Bah!

</rant> (She typed with a smirk)

Reading Elmo. Taken May 2.
Annabelle was reading an Elmo book in the car. Yes, dear, I was driving when I took this. They haven’t outlawed that yet.

Annabelle Hopscotching. Taken May 30th.
At the Carter’s store on the Boardwalk, they have a hopscotch board taped on the floor just inside the door. Since AB’s gymnastics class introduced her to the game, we can’t go to Carter’s without hopscotching. Repeat: Shopping with AB is never dull (and usually fun).

I moved - no exaggeration - 1200 pictures from two cameras to my laptop last night. I will be editing pictures for a week, at least. In the meantime, here are three videos that I pulled off the Fuji - all featuring Little Miss AB.

Alice in Candyland. Taken April 14th.
Points of interest:
1. AB is wearing her Alice in Wonderland dress over her clothes at her own insistence.
2. AB sees me holding the camera and immediately says “cheese.”
3. I ask her to clean up a mess, and she begins to launch into the “Clean up” song, which moms will recognize.
4. She counts three bags of jellybeans twice - once when picking up, then when putting up. My baby!

Shopping with AB is never dull.

Email to my friend DeAnn, at work…

Subject: Formal meeting request

Body:

Ms. XXXXX,

I am writing to request a meeting to discuss issues of timeless importance, including but not limited to potty-training, play dates and weight loss endeavors. I would like to seek your expert input on several of my projects in addition to offering support to yours. I believe this meeting will be to our mutual strategic benefit.

While lunch is my preferred venue, I am certainly open to any other suggestion you may offer. I understand that your time is valuable. Please consider me to be at your disposal; whenever you are able to meet, I will gladly arrange affairs on my end so as to synchronize with your availability.

I am excited about the opportunity to meet with you, and I eagerly await your response.

Yours most cordially and hoity-toitily,

Katherine J. XXXXX, Esq.

***

Her response:

Yo dawg, how about lunch tomorra?

***

I love my friends. :)

For Mom, whose compliments on my cooking are the ones I cherish most. :)

This is actually a really simple recipe, but it comes together just right! Originally this called for a pound each of carrots, potatoes and parsnips. I couldn’t find any good parsnips in town when I was shopping for this recipe, so I upped the potatoes and carrots and added an onion to give it a little zing. So, here it is:

1.5 lb. small red potatoes
1.5 lb. carrots, peeled and cut into 1″ pieces
1 white onion, chopped coarsely
1 T + 2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 boneless turkey breast half

Heat oven to 425. Place potatoes, carrots and onion in a large roasting pan and toss with 1 T of olive oil. Season with half of seasonings. Roast at 425 for 15 minutes, turning halfway through cooking. Rub turkey breast with 2 tsp olive oil and remaining seasonings. Press turkey into vegetables and continue to roast at 425 for 45 minutes or until temp reaches 165 on instant-read thermometer. Remove turkey, cover loosely with foil and allow to rest in a warm place. Stir vegetables and roast for an additional 5 to 10 minutes if necessary until fork tender. Slice turkey and serve with roasted veggies.

Don passed away Saturday. He left peacefully after spending his last weeks surrounded by the love of his family.  He’s going to be so missed. I think - hope - his son Andrew is going to move up to Shreveport from Alexandria, where he lives now, and enroll in college here.  More on this later as developments, um, develop. :P

Saturday night I came down with a gastrointestinal  yuckiness that is just now beginning to subside. I’ve been out of work two days so far and - per the doctor - have to stay home tomorrow too. I went up to my office for awhile this evening and brought home a stack of work. One, I am just about done with lying on the couch. Two, I have too damn much work to do. Anyway. Joey now has the affliction and so I expect to be taking care of him tomorrow too. We saw the doctor today, and she said that this has been spreading through town like wildfire and generally lasts three to four days. So, yay, there’s the rest of my week: sick husband. At least AB seems to have dodged the bullet. I suspect that she brought this home from Mimi’s and just bore it a lot better than us.

I need to update my 101 Things progress and completions. Hmm, maybe I’ll do that tomorrow. Right now I’m gonna post a recipe for my mom and then hit the hay.

xoxo

I’m at my parents’ house, waiting for the gang to arrive with Donnie. Beds made, coffee brewing, dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow arranged… So I’m going to not-think with a meme. My first in this blog, I think? Yeah. From zalary and others, mostly over at LJ…

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

Making my own rules:
1. Bolded those I have read.
2. Italicized those I have on my bookshelves but have not read yet.
3. Crossed out the ones I have no intention of reading, ever.
4. Underlined my three favorites from the list.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (yep, cover to cover.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Has anyone read the complete works of Shakespeare? I do own them, though. :)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I tried to read this once before and will have to try again.)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (Not on my shelf yet, but on my Amazon wishlist. Birthday’s November 12, if you were wondering. ;))
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Oddly, I’ve read a lot of literary commentary and explication on this but never actually read the book.)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (Again, I’ve tried to read this and will try again. Maybe with help.)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (A good story, but that’s all it is. Dammit.)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl (The book is so different. And Dahl is skeery. James and the Giant Peach freaked my sh!t as a child)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Uncle Don has been in ICU since night before last, and hospice released him tonight to come home to my parents’ house. Everyone is coming in, and that is where I will be. I’ll have time to write more later, but for now this is the fastest way to let everyone know what’s going on. (I find the Twitter word limit… limiting. Usually in a good way, but I’m too brain-tired to condense right now.)

I wrote not long ago about my Uncle Donnie but then quickly made the entry private out of concern for his privacy. In case you didn’t see it or hear it from me directly, here’s the catch-up version: Don is my mom’s youngest brother at 47. Not long ago my parents brought him up to Shreveport to find a doctor as he was having serious back problems and couldn’t even walk without excruciating pain. We assumed it was something like a slipped disc.

It was cancer - tumors growing on his spine and in other areas of his body. It’s a small-cell cancer that they said would respond well to chemo but would come back quickly. Don’s been receiving radiation and was set to start chemo tomorrow. Last night he started running fever, and my parents rushed him to the hospital where he experienced some respiratory distress. They’re running tests right now, trying to determine whether it’s the cancer or something like pneumonia (since his immune system was suppressed by the radiation).

We would sure appreciate your prayers. (Regardless of my stance on religious cosmology, I do believe in the power of prayer.) So, please, do whatever works for you: light a candle, send some light, raise energy, or pray to your God/gods. Not just for Donnie but more especially for his son, who is 20-ish and very close to his dad. And for my mom and her other three brothers, all of whom are facing the loss of their baby brother.

As for me, well, that’s a conversation for later. Existential rants and carpe diems can wait. Right now I’m concentrating on loving my family through this.