Author Archives: Cindy

I'm digging September in NC

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We’ve had the most gorgeous weather here for the past few days – it’s been mild and in the mid-70’s, just about perfect. I really hope this is how summer is going to end, because last weekend it was in the 90’s and absolutely brutal. But this? This, I can totally handle.

On Friday, Cate and I met up with Cat and hit up a big consignment sale at one of the local outlet malls. Because did you hear? They’re having a boy! So Cat needed to stock up on onesies with puppy dogs and fire engines on them, and well, Cate and I just needed to get out of the house.

Which reminds me: the car situation. The movers finally sent me a check for $2400, based on the car’s weight. (Apparently our moving insurance was only 60 cents per pound, which makes no sense at all, since you can have a heavy thing that’s worth nothing or a lightweight thing that’s very expensive, but whatever.) I had AAA tow it to a local repair shop – one that was recommended by my insurance company – and they said that the repairs are going to cost over $4,000. My insurance company told me to send back the movers’ check with a “thanks, but this isn’t sufficient” letter, which I did. So, my car will get fixed, I’ll pay my $500 deductible, and that’ll be the last of it for me. Meanwhile, Progressive is going to unleash their Mighty Lawyer Hellhounds on the moving company to try to get the full amount out of them. But either way, I have nothing to do with it from that point onward. So hooray! My car is getting fixed! And it should be ready this Wednesday, which is great. I mean, boo on paying $500, but at least they promised that this won’t make our insurance premiums go up since this whole thing was in no way my fault. I wasn’t even there when it happened.

The point is, after 6 weeks of being a single-car family, we’re kind of going insane. There have been a lot of days that Dave has to go into the office, which means he takes the car and Cate and I are stuck at home with no transportation. So, since he was able to work from home on Friday and we had the opportunity to meet up with Cat and go shopping? Even though I was just tagging along and didn’t need to buy anything? HECK YEAH! Anything to rid myself of this cabin fever.

(Oh, and for the people who suggest that I drop Dave off at the office so I could have the car all day: yes, I suppose we could do that. But it’s 12 miles from our house to his office. That’s 24 miles round-trip, and if I’m dropping him off & picking him up, that’s 48 miles in one day. Gas is expensive, and Cate tends to throw up if she’s in the car for more than 15 minutes. So really? Kind of not worth it.)

Ok, apologies for the random aside. Back to the weekend recap. Yesterday, we hit Target in the morning and got some items crossed off our shopping list. In the afternoon, since the weather was so nice, we headed over to our town’s community park. It was our first time there, and it was really nice. There’s a big lake, with ducks and geese in it. I had brought some bread to feed them, so they swarmed all around us, which was pretty exciting, since Cate had never been that close to a duck or a goose before.

But, some of the ducks were either shy or not hungry, and they didn’t come onto the shore. Cate decided that was no good, so she’d just go hop in the lake and try to grab them herself. When her plan to go splash in the filthy lake with the big “NO WADING OR SWIMMING AT ANY TIME” sign was thwarted… oh, she was angry. She threw quite an epic tantrum, to the point that we had to move far away from the lake and the assorted water fowl, just to get her to chill out. She eventually did, and we had fun people-watching. Especially the people who brought their dogs to the park. (Oh, how my girl loves doggies. She freaks out every time one is within view.)

Today is another gorgeous day, although Dave and I spent most of the morning cleaning. Bummer, but the house is looking (and smelling) really nice. Cate is napping right now, but when she wakes up, we’re going to head over to our neighborhood playground. It’s pretty dinky, but she likes it, and it’s a nice 15-minute walk to get there, so mama will get some exercise too. Should be fun.

birthday shout-out for my hubby

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I’ve been a bad blogger this week. There’s lots of stuff swirling around in my head, but I can’t seem to figure out how to put it all into a string of coherent sentences. I’ll work on it and try to be better next week, I promise.

In the meantime: today is Dave’s birthday! So I just wanted to throw a little birthday shout-out for my favorite 37 year-old Brit.

So, to Dave: Thank you for always being such a great husband and daddy, and for putting up with us. We love you.

weekend photo essay

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I don’t really know how to sum up our weekend, so here are some of the 100 or so pictures we took.

First, Cate got some new toys from my parents that she really, really loved.

Tracy & Cate (with her new toy)

And she was generally loved on by everyone.

my brother's face in the background cracks me up

Cate & Tracy going out for a walk

Pop-Pop and Cate having some snuggle time

The musicians in our family kept us entertained.

Cate dancing while my brother plays guitar

Cate helping her daddy play guitar

We also had a playdate with Cat, Tony & Elizabeth.

Cat juggling 2 toddlers

Later, we went out for dinner, where my sister took this fantastic picture of Cat & Elizabeth.

Cat & Elizabeth

The girls sat in their booster chairs next to each other and were pretty well-behaved for the entire meal.

Two Toddlers at TGI Friday's

More than any other activity this weekend, though, Cate ran in circles playing peekaboo with everyone. It kept us all laughing, and made her hysterically happy, so that worked out well.

look at how long her hair has gotten!!

It was a good weekend. (You can see the whole set here if you want.)

family weekend

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Quick post just to say that my parents are flying in this afternoon, my sister is flying in tomorrow, and my brother is driving over at some point, so we’re going to have one big family-filled weekend. No big reason for the event, it’s just for fun. And everyone wants to see the new house, even though I’ve warned them that there’s still large portions of it in boxes, so they shouldn’t have high expectations.

I’m really looking forward to it. But I doubt I’ll be updating my blog between now and when they leave on Monday. But I’m sure I’ll be back with tons of pictures to help make up for it.

In the meantime, here’s a completely gratuitous photo of Cate running in circles with glee over the shiny red shoes that her fabulous aunt Tracy sent her.

on the run from the camera

Adorable, no? (That was the best shot I could get. She wouldn’t stop running long enough for me to take her picture.)

Ok, back to frantically cleaning!

a different kind of automobile-related rage

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So… my car. My caaarrrr. I wrote about this before, but the movers? They are PISSING. ME. OFF.

After FIVE WEEKS of having no driveable car, I have made absolutely zero progress with these people. After harassing them mercilessly, they said that they mailed us a check for some completely bizarre amount: $2,424, because we were insured for 60 cents a pound. Apparently it’s based on my car’s weight. So, if it had been totalled, I would’ve only gotten 2 grand? WTF?

Anyway, they said they mailed the check on August 21st, and we never got it. I called them back and asked the address that it went to, and they said the wrong zip code. We asked them to send a new check, but then they backtracked and said that no no no, actually, it DID go to the correct zip. What? Freaking liars.

Oh, and my Progressive claims guy? Kinda useless. He called them a few times, called me back and said he could understand why I was frustrated because he couldn’t get anywhere with them either. Um…? Yeah, great, thanks for your help, dude!

I finally went back to the franchise moving company – the people that we actually hired in the first place, which is a small company based in Seattle. They were mortified, and called the headquarters to tell them to send us a new check. They said they sent it last Tuesday. So it’s been a week, and we still don’t have it. They’re based in Chicago, it really should only take maybe 2-3 days for something to get to us through the regular mail.

Want to know how angry I am? These are the movers we used: National Van Lines. I was trying not to say their name because I don’t want to badmouth specific companies on my blog, but seriously. Enough is enough. Avoid these people at all costs.

I’ve just filed complaints with both the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. We’ll see if THAT helps me make some progress with these jackasses.

seeking employment

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I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this or not, but my job back in Seattle technically moved out here with me. As in, they still consider me one of their freelance employees. But because my projects were all tech writing assignments for Microsoft, I don’t qualify for the projects where I might be required to go on-site. Which sadly, is… well, most assignments. It’s not like I can just hop in my car and be there in 15 minutes, right? So I haven’t had any work from them since sometime around June.

The move hit us pretty hard financially, so I’m now looking for another job to help us make up the difference. I know I don’t have to, we’d be ok in a few months either way, but I really miss using my brain every day. I’m overdosing on Noggin here. (I think when you form an opinion about whether you prefer Joe or Steve on “Blue’s Clues,” you’ve probably been watching it too much.) (And for what it’s worth, I like Joe, but Dave prefers the episodes with Steve.) So now I’m spending a whole lot of time browsing job sites. Which is a bit of a time-sucker.

And I feel guilty saying this, but I’m actually looking forward to Cate going to daycare again. She’s much happier when she gets to run around and play with other kids (and the energy she burns at daycare really seems to help with her sleeping, because she conks out), and I’m much more patient when I get a break from her, even if it’s just for a couple of hours.

Of course, everything you see on the news about the economy is not so great, so it’s entirely possible that my job hunting will prove useless and won’t turn up anything. And really, we’ll be ok if I don’t get a job. I’m just kind of hoping that I do.

soggy moving day

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If you read my cousin Cat’s blog, you know that they’re doing a massive house renovation and expansion to make room for baby #2 (arriving in February!). So to keep themselves from having their daily routines disrupted – and to keep e-baby from trampling through construction dust every day – they’ve moved into an apartment for the next three months.

Today was moving day, so Dave, Cate and I headed over to help. In the middle of a tropical storm. I’m not kidding; Hanna blew through here this morning, and we had some really crazy winds and pouring rain. The good news is that it cleared up by early afternoon, so we didn’t get too terribly soggy.

Cat hired a baby-sitter who took both girls to the children’s museum for a few hours. (The original plan had been a playground, but the rain sort of ruled that out.) Poor thing, she’s a teenager and after trying to wrangle two toddlers in a very crowded public place, we’ve probably put her off the idea of ever having kids. If I had half a brain, I would’ve just brought the sitter and e-baby over here to our house; they could’ve been indoors with easy access to snacks, TV, and whatever else they needed. Unfortunately I didn’t think of it until after the fact, but I guess we’ll know next time. In any case, it was nice to have a break so the grown-ups could get the moving done. I think they’re mostly settled at the new place now, and we got a little unpacking done too.

So it was a fun, although pretty tiring, day. And I still get such a kick out of watching Cate and Elizabeth play together. They seem to be noticing each other more and more – I wouldn’t exactly call it interacting at this point, but there’s definitely some interest there. And Cate’s picking up on more words and signs from being around another kid who talks and signs so much, which is pretty neat.

That reminds me: Cate now seems to understand threats. Last night I was sitting next to her crib waiting for her her to fall asleep (still doing the sleep-training thing), and she was squirming and chatting and not settling down. Finally, I said, “Catie, you need to go night-night right now or mama is gonna go bye-bye.” She said “noooo!”, but almost immediately lay down and went to sleep. I know it’s kind of mean to threaten abandonment, but it’s really a nice trick to have in my arsenal.