Author Archives: Cindy

RABIES!!

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I thought we’d escaped the critters when we left the boonies, but I’m starting to think that our family is cursed and our critter-related woes will follow us until the end of time. Last week, we heard a story on the news that a raccoon with rabies was found less than two miles from our house. According to the news story, it seemed to be more of a threat to pets than people, and our cats are now indoor-only. So no big worry, right?

Yeah. Today I was talking with my next-door neighbor, and she said that in our very own neighborhood, a squirrel attacked some kid this past weekend. They didn’t catch the squirrel, so there’s no way of knowing if it’s rabid or not (most likely it is, since squirrels don’t generally attack teenagers who are chatting on their cell phones in their parents’ garage), so the poor kid has to get rabies shots just to be safe.

So, I think the days of Catie and I taking walks through our neighborhood greenway have come to an end. At least until I buy a baseball bat to bring along as a walking stick/rabid squirrel defense mechanism.

pretty girl on an unusually warm day
Hmm, think this stick is big enough to bash in a rabid rodent’s head? No? Ok, I’ll keep looking.

Catie throwing rocks in the creek
How about this rock? Still no?

Sorry, baby girl. This is why your mommy doesn’t like nature.

meals on the cheap

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Have y’all heard about this web series “Great Depression Cooking with Clara”? I’m always looking for ways to save money on groceries, and if I can come up with a yummy dinner recipe for very little money, I’m all for it. Last week, we decided to try out Clara’s “Poorman’s Meal.”

Only a couple of minor tweaks to the recipe:
1. I added some salt and a little garlic powder.
2. Instead of using marinara sauce from a jar, I used half a can of diced, peeled tomatoes, so I could feel like it sort of had a vegetable in it.

And let me tell you, it was fantastic. Even Catie liked it; but then, what two year-old doesn’t like hot dogs and potatoes? Those are like staples in the average toddler’s diet, right? Anyway, all three of us loved it, it made enough food to feed us for two nights, and when you average it out, it cost next to nothing. Definitely a keeper.

The weird thing is, this is not the type of food I grew up with at all, and somehow it still tasted like comfort food. I don’t know if that makes sense. I look forward to making it again, though.

Wordless Wednesday Thursday

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Note: not totally wordless, since these need captions.
lips!
Because sometimes, you just gotta make a pouty face. For no reason.

toddler fashion sense
What do you mean wearing a skirt over jeans isn’t in style? This is FASHION!! I’m avante garde, people!
(Note that her shoes are on the wrong feet too. She put them on herself.)

playing chase through the dining room
I love this face so much it hurts.

in her new pajamas
Last night, after Catie’s bath, I thought I’d get some pictures of her new pajamas, because they’re awfully cute.

playing with a ball after bathtime
Then she grabbed a ball, and that was fun too.

running around in my scarf & her rain boots
Then she found my winter scarf (which is maroon and furry and sort of looks/feels like a skinned fraggle), and decided to play dress up.

The scarf alone was pretty good, but not quite enough. Add in her pink rain boots and Mommy’s faux-fur leopard-print hat, and voila!
apparently the "playing dress-up" phase has begun
A tiny, toddler-sized pimp was born.

on the couch in her costume, eating ice cubes

her rain boots + Mommy's hat & scarf = AWESOME
I know all parents say this, but seriously, that kid is the most awesome person I have ever had the pleasure to know.

the no-fun snow day

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Like most of the east coast, we got a pretty decent amount of snow on Sunday night. I’m not sure exactly how much we got in our little section of North Carolina, I heard it was around two to four inches. It was enough for all of the schools to close down, anyway.

My plan for Monday consisted of, well, nothing. I wanted to get a couple of freelance articles written, maybe tidy up the house a little and make dinner, but that was about it. No major plans on the agenda. I was thinking how fun it was going to be to get more pictures of Catie frolicking in the snow like we did on our last snow day. As is usually the case, life had other plans.

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know this, but on Monday morning, we ended up in the emergency room. Dave started having chest pains, his face turned all red, and it seemed like he was on the verge of hyperventilating. I’ve never seen him have any sort of episode like this, but it scared the living hell out of me, so we immediately set off for the ER. I paused for about 90 seconds to drop Catie off with our next-door neighbor, but that was the only thing that slowed me down. (And seriously, our neighbors? LOVE. SO. MUCH.)

Fortunately, if you find yourself at the admitting desk of an ER, and you use the words “chest” and “pain,” they tend to get you to a room tout de suite. They ran some tests on Dave: EKG, chest x-ray, bloodwork. And of course, as with all hospital visits, there was a whole lot of sitting and waiting. So much waiting.

Everything came back normal, so we don’t really know what happened. Panic attack? Too much stress and caffeine? Weird reaction to some new medication? No idea. They sent him home with a few Valium and an order to follow up with his regular doctor for more tests. Which I fully intend to make him do, because Dave’s granddad died when he was 50, and I’m terrified of something like that happening to him. Dave keeps reassuring me that his granddad had some sort of heart defect, plus he ate bacon and fried bread (i.e., white bread that’s been deep fried in bacon fat) for breakfast every morning, but still. I don’t eff around when one of his symptoms includes chest pains.

So yeah, it was basically a horrible, terrifying experience, and it seems that we have already broken my “no hospitals in 2009” goal, but at least Dave seems to be ok now, which I’m thankful for. And Catie had a great time at the neighbors’ house. When I went to pick her up, Meredith (the mom-next-door) was feeding about 8 of the neighborhood kids lunch, and Catie was sitting at the dining table with the big kids, chowing down on chicken nuggets and apple slices. Kind of hilarious to see my relatively tiny girl sitting with all of these other kids who are about 7-10 years old.

That night, I was in the kitchen making dinner. Dave came over to give me a kiss.
Him: “Thanks for being such a good wife today.”
Me: “That’s ok, thanks for not dropping dead.”
Him: “You’re welcome! Anytime.”

We joke, because sometimes that’s the only way we know how to cope with these really scary things.

I'm going to BlogHer

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Last week I made the decision to go to BlogHer. Well, I didn’t make the decision on my own, Dave is actively encouraging me to go, which kind of surprised me. I hemmed and hawed for a while. I mean, sure, I want to go, it sounds like a lot of fun. But it means 3 nights away from Catie, which is more than I’ve ever done (so far, I’ve spent a grand total of one night away from her. ONE! In her whole life!). Plus it’s expensive, paying for a plane ticket, hotel, conference pass, etc. And it’s scary to think about meeting some of the bloggers who I’ve been reading for years. I’m a little scared that it’s going to trigger some sort of high school flashback and I’ll be sitting by myself while all the cool kids party it up. (And yes, I do realize exactly how ridiculous I am for thinking that.)

But here’s the thing. Most of my job-hunting is turning up zilch, so in the meantime, I’ve started doing a little bit of freelance writing. And I love it. So if I really want to market myself as a freelance writer and blogger (and I think that I do), then it makes sense to go to a conference to learn more about the business side of blogging. Right? Honestly, I’m really looking forward to that side of it. I imagine that I’ll learn a lot.

Of course, there are a ton of bloggers who I would absolutely love to meet in person: Heather, Yvonne, Jodi, etc. I’m going to be totally overwhelmed by the Genius and Awesomeness. And there are also the rock star bloggers (you know who they are) who I will try really hard not to squee or pee my pants if I should happen to get the chance to meet them. But let’s face it, I’m a huge dork, anything could happen.

So I bought the conference pass, and I booked my plane ticket with frequent flyer miles (thank you, American Airlines!). All that’s left is the hotel. Which brings me to my main point: if anybody who reads this site is also going to BlogHer, and if you want a roommate to go halvsies on a hotel room with you, leave me a comment or drop me an email. (Um, women only, please. I don’t need to go getting myself into trouble with my husband.) I sort of love the idea of having a hotel room to myself for three whole nights with no one (read: Catie) to interrupt my sleep, but they’re hosting BlogHer at the Sheraton, and it’s kind of expensive.

Also: holy mother of God, I can’t believe I’m actually going. Only almost-5 months left to freak out about it!

on Sleeping Beauty

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Catie is currently in love with Sleeping Beauty, which I bought on DVD last year. She calls her “Teedee,” which is as close to “Beauty” as she can say. I’m surprised that she loves it as much as she does, I thought movies with plots were still going to be another year or two from now for her. Also, I expected the witch to freak her out (because Maleficent is scary), but she seems totally unphased. She tries to imitate the witch’s evil cackle, and a couple of times she’s tried to scream, “Fools! Imbeciles!” along with her, so obviously she’s not too spooked. (And btw, a 2 year-old trying to say “imbecile” is just about the funniest thing ever.)

For the record, I don’t encourage the Disney princess stuff, but I figure that most little girls go through a princess phase at some point or another. And if it makes her happy, fine. I don’t mind the movie that much, at least the music is nice. A lot of the Disney movies grate on my feminist nerve, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Sleeping Beauty is really not all that bad. Because really, the three fairies are the ones who save the day. The prince would’ve stayed chained up in the witch’s dungeon forever if they hadn’t sprung him from his cell, plus they save his butt about a dozen times on his way to rescue Sleeping Beauty. (Remember? They turn the arrows being shot at him into flowers, the boulders into bubbles, etc.) Heck, they were the ones who gave him the sword and shield he needed to kill the witch. So yeah, Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather can rock on with their bad selves. They kick butt in their own little flibbertygibbet fairy way.

And ok, yeah, the whole idea that she meets the prince one time and decides she’s in love with him, and the presumption that of course she’ll be married off on her sixteenth birthday… yeah. I know. But they do say something about it being the 14th century, and really, both of those plot points are no more absurd than anything in Romeo and Juliet. Why not get married at 16, since the Black Death will probably kill you before you turn 30? Go for it. Carpe diem, whatever.

Anyway, since I’ve now seen Sleeping Beauty approximately 10,000 times in the past few weeks (how else do you think I came up with such a thorough analysis of how it isn’t as anti-feminist as it might seem at first glance?), I decided it was time to try something else. When I was pregnant, I bought a ton of movies on DVD for Catie to watch when she was older. I have E.T., Dumbo, Lady & the Tramp, Charlotte’s Web, Mary Poppins, Wizard of Oz, you name it. But since Catie is kind of digging the whole princess thing, I suddenly remembered that we have both Cinderella and the Little Mermaid. Score!

(Don’t get me started about how awful an example Ariel is for little girls. She gives up her freaking voice in order to get the man of her dreams. I know. I KNOW!! But the music is gorgeous and fun, and right now I figure that Catie is too little to understand the plot anyway.)

So I went looking for either movie, and… they’re gone. As in, not on the bookshelf that contains all of our DVDs. And nowhere else in the house as far as I can tell. And now that I think about it, I haven’t seen them since we moved in this house. I can’t think of any other movies off the top of my head that are lost, but I’m just baffled. Did the movers lose yet another box? Were the DVDs in a miscellaneous box that got shoved in the attic? I don’t have a clue. And I’m feeling a little ridiculous, since we moved here almost seven months ago, and I’m just now noticing things that are missing.

Oh well. Seems we’re stuck with Sleeping Beauty in the meantime.
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Quick note on the health front: We’ve been really lucky with this cold, Catie’s only had a few minor asthma attacks which have cleared up with a dose of albuterol. She’s been generally pretty perky and happy through all of it, she’s been sleeping semi-decently, and she’s kept her appetite. So overall, it hasn’t been that bad. I keep waiting for it to take a turn for the worse, and maybe she will, but she’s on Day 5 of the gunk and so far, so good.

technologically-advanced toddler

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Today, Catie decided to make my head explode with a new trick: she knows which remote goes with the TV and which one controls the DVD player. I kid you not. She brought me a DVD she wanted to watch, and I said, “Ok, but first I need to find the remote.” She picked up the silver TV remote, studied it for a second, then put it down and said, “no.” Then she found the black DVD remote, handed it to me, and said, “Here ‘mote, Mommy.”

Of course, then she freaked out because she brought me the wrong DVD – she wanted Baby Beethoven, which has a giraffe on the cover, and she brought me Baby Galileo, which has a kangaroo on it (same color scheme). When the movie started, she threw herself on the floor screaming, “Giraffe!!!” because she couldn’t understand that I couldn’t change the disc with a press of a button on the remote.

Still. She’s TWO, for crying out loud. She’ll be 25 months old on Friday. She’s a baby! The fact that she already knows which remote goes with which appliance completely freaks me out. Now it’s only a matter of time before she figures out how to actually operate the buttons on the remote, and then she’s going to be charging all sorts of pay-per-view movies to our cable bill. Next thing you know, she’ll be on MySpace and Facebook, and she’ll probably start sending Twitter updates from Dave’s iPhone, and oh my lord, I need an ibuprofen and a nap.