a photo blog

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Behold!

Isn’t it cute how they put those little score marks on the cheesecake to indicate how big one slice should be? I find those hilarious. Two slices then? Yes, please.

I also decided to go ahead and fire up the Dyson for the first time today. And oh my god, y’all:

Is that not the grossest thing you’ve ever seen? I was kind of expecting the cat hair. And I knew that lots of my hair would be in there, since I’m in that fun post-partum hair-falling-out stage. (Lucky me!) I tend to forget that living in the country means that there is always dirt in your house. But that was only the first floor and the stairs – I haven’t even gotten to all the bedrooms yet. I’m terrified.

Catie says: “You people expect me to learn to crawl on that filth? Are you insane?”

The one thing I don’t have a photo for: earlier tonight, the teenager across the street (the one who kitty-sat for us last week) called to let us know that she had just seen a coyote heading up our driveway. I promptly freaked, and ran outside to call the cats inside. I never saw the coyote myself, and all of the cats are present and accounted for, so it all ended well. But that was quite a little moment of panic that I had there.

And it reinforced the thing I’ve been nagging Dave about for ages: I hate the country and I want to move. You know, just in case he didn’t hear me the first ten thousand times I said it.

call me June (Cleaver, that is)

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A couple of years ago, Dave and I refinanced our house to consolidate some debts, pay for our wedding, and oh yeah, invest a whoooole lotta money in fixing this place up. I wouldn’t say that Dave and I are exactly financial experts, although we’ve learned quite a bit since we got married. (Mostly lessons we learned the hard way, unfortunately.) One thing we learned was that our interest rate was only fixed for two years. So now we’re faced with having to refinance again, or else our mortgage payment will go up close to $700 a month. Fun!

A tip, if you’re ever looking to refinance or buy a house for the first time: avoid AmeriQuest. Seriously. Just stay away from them. Take my word for it.

Part of the deal when you go to refinance your house is that you have to get an appraisal, so the mortgage people know what your house is worth. They sent a guy out to do the appraisal last month when I was in Mississippi, which was nice for me, in sort of a “well, nothing I can do about it from here, so I might as well not worry about it” way.

Turns out, the company sent out an apprentice to do the appraisal, so the mortgage company won’t recognize it as valid. Um? I don’t know. Whatever. The point is, the week before we left for California, they told us they were going to have to send out another guy to do yet another appraisal. This one was free since the last one was their goof. Ok, fine. But this time I was home to worry about it, so I spent two days in Frantic Cleaning Mode. We haven’t been able to afford our housekeeper since I stopped working, and with the baby and everything, housework just hasn’t registered all that high on my “must-do” list.

And of course, it was fine. The house was in great shape by the time the guy got here, and I felt pretty good about it. We’re not sure what the status of our refinancing is yet, since we sort of forgot to check our home voicemail while we were out of town. Oops.

But the cleaning frenzy just reinforced something that I’d been thinking for a while, which is that we desperately need a new vacuum cleaner. Ours weighs a ton, it’s hard to maneuver, it’s impossible to clean the stairs, and it really just moves the dirt around rather than sucking it up.

So, I told Dave that for my very first Mother’s Day, I wanted two things:
1. A cheesecake from Costco (have you ever had their cheesecake? It’s the next best thing after my grandmother’s. Honest.)
2. A new vacuum cleaner.

I know it’s a totally trite, 1950’s housewifey kind of a gift, but that’s what I want. And behold, my wish was granted:

I haven’t used it yet. I feel like it needs some sort of special inauguration ceremony. But I will try it out soon. The cat fur is starting to get out of control now that it’s shedding season, and this is the model that’s designed for removing pet hair.

Oh, and I’m still waiting on that cheesecake.

home again

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Obviously we survived the flight home from San Jose. It was pretty uneventful, except for the stupid satellite lot where we parked our car, which promised to have vans every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day. And we waited 45 minutes for a van. With the baby. Who had been good all day, and was starting to get very cranky. I was enraged.

To be fair, it wasn’t entirely the parking lot people’s fault. There had been one van that came by earlier, but the other people who were waiting saw us with all our baby gear and bolted for it, so by the time we got to the van, there was no room left and we had to wait for the next one. Jerks. I hope they all got speeding tickets on their way home.

The trip did, however, accomplish one goal, as far as deciding whether or not we could move to the Bay area someday. The conclusion that Dave and I came to? Probably not. The minute we got back to Seattle, we were both like, “Ah, trees! And clouds! We’re home!”

It’s not the weather, which was honestly fine the whole time we were there. The lack of trees was sort of unnerving (no shade! anywhere!), although I could deal with that if I had to. Really, it’s just the idea of dropping over a million dollars on some teeny-tiny house that doesn’t seem very realistic. Our financial stability is already iffy with me not working. I know that people somehow do manage the cost of living down there, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how they do it.

Also, a lot of the people seem kind of tense. You’d think there would be sort of a laid-back, west coast, surfer dude vibe happening, but there isn’t. Especially not on the freeways. I complain about Seattle drivers, but man, they’ve got nothing on the Bay area. I could see myself developing a major case of road rage if I had to battle that traffic on a daily basis.

That’s not to say we won’t relocate someday. Dave and I are kicking around some ideas on that topic, although I don’t know if they’ll turn into anything. I do love the Pacific Northwest, so no matter where we go, I’d be sad to leave. But we’ll do what’s best for our family, and in the immortal words of Tim Gunn, we’ll make it work.

Anyway, now we’re in trip recovery mode: tons of laundry needs to be done, the fridge needs to be restocked (you’d be surprised how much stuff can go bad in a week), and the litter boxes… man, y’all don’t even want to know about them. We paid the teenager across the street to feed the cats while we were gone, but I didn’t ask her to tend to the litter boxes, and hoo boy, they are scary now. So there’s tons o’ fun to be had for me!

claim to fame

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Today, an internet rock star held my baby:

Amanda is a total sweetheart, just super-nice and easy to talk to. And her kids are gorgeous. Genoa is so cute, and constantly on the move – she wants to walk, walk, walk everywhere. Alex is really funny, and way chattier than I expected. Most kids I know don’t really talk to adults, but he has no problem with that. And I learned quickly that I don’t speak Little Boy – he mentioned something about a crane, and I thought he meant a bird. Um, no. Construction equipment, duh. I suppose that if I ever have a little boy, I’m going to have to learn that stuff pretty quickly.

Oh, and I now have a major case of Camera Envy. And Christmas is a loooong way off. Rats.

There’s not much else to report. Monday, Cate and I lounged around the hotel and did nothing while Dave was at work. Yesterday, mommy & baby drove around to explore some more neighborhoods, and that night we all went to dinner with my aunt. It’s always fun to catch up with people in my family, so that was a good time.

Oh, the story I forgot to tell. So, we’re staying at an Embassy Suites. If you’ve ever been inside one, you know they’re all the same: a big center atrium with rooms all around the perimeter, and 4 elevators – two in front and two in back. After we first checked in and got our luggage to our room, Dave and Cate went to lie down for a nap, and I went back to the car to haul in our stash of groceries (the perk of having a mini-fridge in the room).

I noticed that there were about a dozen or so kids on various floors, running around the perimeter hallway. I didn’t think anything of it until I was trying to get on an elevator to go downstairs. It took well over five minutes to get an elevator, and when it finally stopped on my floor, it was going up instead of down. Fine, whatever. We’re on the fifth floor. A girl who was probably about twelve years old got on the elevator at the 6th floor, pressed the buttons for both 7 and 9, then jumped off at the 7th floor. Since she had also pushed the button for 9, I was confused and said, “um, what?” as she was getting off, and she kind of giggled and ran off. Little brat.

So that’s why the elevators were taking forever. The kids were jumping into an elevator, pressing a whole bunch of buttons, then jumping off at the next floor to run around to the other end of the atrium and do it all over again. Meanwhile, the elevator has to keep stopping at every floor. Either that or they’d hit the elevator call button and dash away, so it would stop at a floor and there would be no one there.

Another five minutes later, I’d had to stop on every. single. damn. floor. And I lost it. It had already been a long day, flying with the baby and everything, and I had just had enough. Finally, these two little boys got on the elevator. They were maybe 9 or 10 years old. As one of the kids reached for the buttons, I said in my best stern mother tone, “Don’t you dare touch a single button on that elevator.”

They both stopped dead and stared at me. I went on: “It has taken forever for me to get downstairs on this elevator, I am sick of this stupid little game you guys are playing. Where on earth are your parents? I’m telling the manager because this is bullsh*t.” Sometimes cursing in front of kids seems to be a pretty good way to get their attention. It worked, I’m pretty sure I scared the crap out of them.

And I wasn’t bluffing, I really did tell the manager. As I was coming back in with the groceries, I saw a couple of hotel security guards at one of the rooms. Since the kids were all around the same age and of various races (and because there were so many of them), I’m guessing that it was some sort of school or church trip, and the chaperones weren’t staying on top of things. Who knows. But I was kind of proud of myself for the fact that I was able to get children to listen to me. Whaddya know, apparently I’m really an adult. I’m also proud of myself for not hauling off and smacking them upside the head, because believe me, I was tempted.

beach trauma

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We flew in to San Jose on Saturday, which was one of those nightmare “everything you do only makes you an hour later than you should be” experiences. But we finally got here, settled into the hotel, and both Dave and Cate took naps. (I had consumed way too much Diet Coke, there were no naps in sight for me.) That night, we got to meet up with Cat, Tony & e-baby for dinner, which was great. I almost never get to see them more than once a year, so twice in less than three months is a real treat.

Yesterday, Dave and I went house-hunting. It’s an idea we’re kicking around – if he wants to stay at his new job long-term, it may require us to relocate to the Bay area. It’s not necessarily my preference. I love Washington, and I have friends there, so moving isn’t something I’d be terribly excited about. But if it’s important for Dave’s career, then that’s what we’ll do.

The problem is, the housing market here is so insane – we tend to think that the Seattle area is expensive until we come down here, and then it’s like, “wait, a 2 bedroom, one bath bungalow for $850K? Are you KIDDING me???” For what our nice big four-bedroom house on two acres is worth, we could maybe get a 2-bedroom condo in a sketchy neighborhood here. It’s unbelievable.

So we drove all over the place yesterday, and definitely found some places where we know we absolutely don’t want to live, but we found a couple of places that we could stand and which we might possibly be able to afford without selling any of our internal organs or our future children.

We ended up in Santa Cruz, which is one of the places where I would absolutely love to live – it’s a beautiful town, and there are parts of it that we could possibly afford, although the commute wouldn’t be very practical for Dave. While we were there, we went to the beach to dip Cate’s toes in the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt4GgZLFJoo

As you can see, she was not fan of the beach at all. Hopefully we didn’t traumatize her too badly, but we thought it was pretty hilarious.

Oh, and I surprised myself at the beach with my maternal instincts. There were dogs running around all over the place, playing frisbee and whatnot. After we filmed that video and Cate was still screaming, I lay her on a towel on the sand to try to calm her down. This little Boston terrier came over, probably just to check out the small screaming creature on the beach. I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm, but without even thinking about it, I yelled “no!” and shoved him away. Um, what? I normally wouldn’t touch a stranger’s dog, but I didn’t know the dog, I wasn’t sure if he was gentle or not, and my Big Ol’ Mama Bear instinct kicked in and told me to get him the hell away from my baby. His owners – two guys who were several yards away – saw me and called the dog back, and I thought about apologizing to them for pushing their dog. I know I didn’t hurt him, I just felt kind of rude. But then I decided that maybe they should have been more vigilant about making sure their dog wasn’t around any little kids, so whatever.

Oh, and remind me to tell y’all about how I scared the bejeezus out of some punk kids at our hotel. I’m pretty proud of myself for that one.

P.S. Pics from the trip so far are here. I’ll keep adding to that set as we take more photos.

not really a vacation, but…

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Dave has to go to California for work next week. Seeing as our two-year anniversary is on Tuesday, and I didn’t love the idea of being alone in the boonies with the baby for a week, I decided that Cate and I would tag along with him. I already know that she does pretty well on planes, and it’s only a two hour flight, so why not? His company is paying for the hotel and the rental car, all we have to fork over is the plane fare (which really isn’t that bad from here to the Bay area). I’ll drop him off at work in the morning so Cate and I can have the rental car during the day, and oh, the fun we will have.

So, we’re flying out on Saturday (as in, the day after tomorrow), and coming back next Friday. Turns out that my cousin Cat is also in the Bay area this week for work, so we’ll get to see her, Tony and e-baby before they leave. Woo! Also on the agenda: dinner with my aunt, meeting up with a girlfriend from college, and I’m retardly excited that Cate and I have a playdate with the lovely and talented Amanda, who I’ve had a blog-crush on for years.

Of course, this also means that we’ll be out of town on my very first Mother’s Day, so my plans for the day will have to be postponed a week. (More on that later.) But that’s ok, we’ll just pretend that Mother’s Day is on the 20th instead of the 13th. Works for me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have about 50 loads of laundry to wash, I need to get a copy of our house key made for the teenager across the street (she’s going to check on the kitties for us), and oh yeah, the baby is screaming. The fun never stops!

everybody loves Naked Time

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Two things that are totally unrelated to each other…

1.) Spring has officially arrived here, which means the cats are back into Hunting Mode. Normally this is fine, as long as they do their business outside. Not having mice in the house is a-ok with me, I just don’t want to know about the Great Outdoor Killing Spree. Unfortunately, Beaumont hasn’t quite figured that out. A couple of days ago, I found him with a tiny little bird in our foyer. I chased him off and screamed for Dave. The bird was cowering in the corner making this really horrible little squeaking noise. I thought for sure he was a goner. Dave told me to go upstairs – I don’t know what he was going to do with it, I’m honestly afraid to ask – but he said that as soon as he took the bird outside, it flew away. So I guess it wasn’t injured too badly. Or at least I hope not.

The other incident happened this morning. I was heading upstairs to get dressed, and I spotted Beaumont in my office, halfway behind my desk. That’s not a place where any of the cats hang out, so I thought it might be smart to go investigate. Sure enough, he had caught himself a teeny-tiny baby bunny rabbit. Again, I screamed for Dave, because I am totally useless in these situations. I honestly thought the rabbit was dead because it was frozen stiff when I saw it, but apparently he was just terrified. After Dave chased the cat out of the room and closed the door, the bunny started hopping around all over the place and it took Dave a while to catch him. It seems that he was totally uninjured. And he was so cute, I really wanted to keep him, but I know that isn’t very practical in a house with four cats and a baby. Dave set him loose in the woods behind our house, where he will hopefully be reunited with his little bunny family and live a long, happy life.

2.) Cate and I have a little morning ritual that I call Naked Time. Apparently a good cure for diaper rash is to let your baby go diaper-free for 10 minutes a day. She doesn’t have diaper rash, but I figure this is a good way to make sure she doesn’t get it. So, every morning, when I change her out of her pajamas, I lay a waterproof mat on the floor (you know, just in case), toss a blanket over it, and strip her down to her birthday suit. She really seems to enjoy it, she laughs and kicks her little legs in the air. It’s pretty funny.

This morning, we were playing with this little stuffed giraffe that plays different children’s songs when you squeeze his tummy (“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” “London Bridge,” etc.). Dave came in the room to play with us for a while. He squeezed the giraffe and it started playing “Three Blind Mice.”

Me: You know, I’m realizing that I’ve forgotten most of the words to these songs. Like this one. All I remember is something about the farmer’s wife, and she cut off their tails with a garden knife.
Dave: It’s a carving knife.
Me: Oh, right. Whatever.
Dave (to Cate, in baby-talk): Isn’t your mommy dumb? She thinks the song talks about a garden knife, but there’s no such thing. She’s so silly. And wrong.
Me (to Cate, in baby-talk): Your daddy’s kind of a jackass, isn’t he?

We do this whole “making snide remarks to each other through the baby” thing all the time now. I know we’ll have to cut it out when she gets older, but it’s so much fun.