Category Archives: Dave

type-a mini-vacation

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With all the moving and house stuff, I sort of forgot to mention that we’re going out of town this weekend. Or rather, today. Thursday.

We’re heading over to Asheville, North Carolina, and we’ll be there until Sunday. I’m going to the Type-A Mom Conference, and since it’s only a road trip away from here and doesn’t involve airfare, we thought it’d be fun to have Dave and Catie come along. We’ve never been to Asheville, and I hear it’s beautiful there, so I’m really excited.

What’s odd about this little mini-vacation is that we each have different agendas. I’ll be at the conference, Dave wants to go hiking in the mountains, and Catie has a pass to attend “Kid Con,” which is a whole separate event for kids at the conference. I’m a little nervous about that, since Catie isn’t really used to large daycare scenarios, and I’m sort of expecting her to freak out.

But then, she may surprise me. She’s done really well at the YMCA daycare several times. And yesterday, I had a work meeting at 10:30 in the morning; Dave was at the office, and our baby-sitter is out of town this week. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I took her to a drop-in daycare facility that’s close to our new house. I’d typically be a little iffy about that kind of place, but I had heard good things about it from one of our old neighbors, and I didn’t really have any other options. Catie was very excited to go to “daycare school” (as she called it), but when it was time for me to actually leave her there, she had a full-on screaming, crying meltdown. I had to walk out the door while she cried for me, and I swear, I’ll never get used to that. Still, the daycare teachers there said that she was fine about five minutes after I left, and she had a great time playing for the next two hours. She even asked today if she could go back to daycare school. So, I’m thinking that maybe Kid Con will be fine. We’re certainly talking it up to her a lot, about how she’s going to have SO! MUCH! FUN! I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic about how she might react.

So, yes. Asheville! Road trip! Type-A Mom Conference! Getting to hang out with some of my favorite bloggers! Long weekend! Yay!

Oh, and just in case I don’t blog while we’re out of town (because I very well might not), here’s a cute video of Catie opening a present from Mimi & Pop-Pop (my parents).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmthAKc84gQ

The guitar (“gui-tahhg,” as she says) was really cute for the first 15 minutes. Now I’m taking bets on how long until it mysteriously “breaks” – or at least until the batteries disappear.

P.S. Happy 3rd birthday to my beautiful little cousin, Elizabeth! We love you & can’t wait to celebrate when we get back next week.

catching up

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I finally got the wireless set up at my parents’ house, so I can actually blog now that I can use my laptop. (My parents’ computer is not conducive for writing.) I don’t know where to start on the recap of this week, but here goes. Brace yourselves, this might get long:

1.) The flight to Mississippi was amazingly easy. Catie was an absolute angel, she had a minor meltdown on one of the three (THREE!) planes we had to take to get here, but overall, she was fun and delightful and just a complete breeze. I can only hope our return flight is as easy.

2.) The only bad part of the flight was that the airline lost our suitcases, so we panicked and ran to Wal-Mart to buy emergency supplies – pajamas for Catie, underwear and deodorant for me, etc. But the suitcases were found and delivered to my parents’ house by around 10 p.m. that night, so I returned most of the stuff that we bought.

3.) The funeral for my dad’s cousin was yesterday. It was great to see all of my cousins who I haven’t seen since my grandmother died in 1996. It’s odd because we’ve all reconnected through Facebook, so we keep up with each other and see pictures of each other’s kids, and it felt like getting to see old friends, which was fantastic. At the same time, it sucks that it takes something like a death in the family in order to bring us all together.

After the funeral, we all went to my cousin Suzette’s house for food and conversation – because, you know, that’s how we roll in the Deep South. They don’t call it comfort food for nothing, right? And all of my cousins’ babies were there, so Catie got to play with a bunch of other kids, and she had an absolute BLAST. In fact, she had so much fun that she completely wore herself out and she slept the two-hour drive back to my parents’ house. Nice.

4.) One thing that came up in the last few days that I haven’t mentioned, is that there was a remote possibility that our money issues were going to get straightened out, and that we’d be able to close on our house on schedule. So, before I left for Mississippi, I ran to the escrow attorney’s office to sign a document giving Dave power of attorney for me**, so he could close on the house without me, just in case the money came through on time. Turns out, the money DID come through on time, and Dave closed on the house today. The movers are unloading our belongings at our new house as I type this.

So, when Catie & I get home, we will be going straight from the airport to our brand-new house. My mind = BLOWN. It feels so weird that I’m not there for the move, but since Dave is calm about moving and I tend to freak out, it’s probably better to have me gone and let him handle it on his own. I’m sure he’s happier that I’m not there nagging at him about every tiny detail, but still, he is racking up the Good Husband points like you have no idea.

5.) One bit of bad news: when the movers came to pack up our stuff yesterday, they had both the front and garage doors open, and somehow Beaumont got outside. Dave has searched everywhere and hasn’t been able to find him. Our neighbors are all on the lookout, and I’ve posted a “lost cat” ad on craigslist, but I’m sick with worry. He hasn’t been an outdoor cat for a long time, and even when he was, we lived in the sticks. The street behind our house is very busy (with a 45 mph speed limit), and I’m freaked out that he could’ve gotten hit by a car. Or that he’s hiding in the woods, terrified. I hope he turns up. He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s ours and we love him. Please come home, Mr. B.

** For the record, the power of attorney document only applies to this one real estate transaction. It does not give Dave the right to have me committed to a loony bin. I sure hope he realizes that.

EDITED TO ADD: Beaumont has been found. Apparently he was hiding from the movers inside our box spring (there’s a tear in the fabric on the bottom, he hides in there a lot), and so he got loaded onto the moving van & spent the night there. He’s completely freaked out, but ok. I’m saying a prayer of thanks that we closed today and didn’t have our stuff sitting on the moving van for a week!

karma

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I believe in karma.

Admittedly, I’m not a Buddhist, so maybe I’m not an expert on the exact definition of karma. But I believe in the basic principle that what comes around goes around. That if you try to put positive things out into the world, positive things will come back to you. Same is true for the negative.

About seven years ago, I had a job that required me to drive all over the greater Seattle area on a daily basis. I’d start my day at my company’s office in Redmond (a relatively posh suburb), then set off from there to whatever client’s office needed me. If I knew that my day’s agenda involved going through downtown Seattle, I knew there was a good chance that I’d pass a homeless person on the side of the road. I always felt guilty about just driving past them. Sometimes I’d give them a couple of quarters or whatever spare change I had in my car’s cup holder, but it never felt like enough. But with that job, I never carried cash on me (too risky), so what else could I do?

One day, when I heard I was going to be heading into Seattle, I stopped at the 7-11 next to my office to buy a Diet Coke before I set off. I decided to also grab a couple of other things – a sandwich and a bottle of water – to take with me. When I saw a frail old man standing at the end of the I-5 off-ramp with his cardboard sign, I rolled down my window and handed them to him.

Later that day, my boss called me into his office and gave me a raise. No lie. I was not expecting any sort of payoff that fast, but that’s how it worked for me. From that point on, I always stopped at 7-11 to get food for the homeless people I would pass, and those days always ended up being my best days. It became something of a habit for me.

In fact, I gave some sort of snack (I think it was just some peanut butter crackers that I happened to have in my laptop bag) to a homeless person on May 24, 2004. Later that evening, I had a first date with a cute British guy that had contacted me through match.com.

Yeah. That was Dave.

Now, is there some cosmic connection there, like would I have not met Dave (or would we not have “clicked” as much as we did) if I hadn’t given crackers to a homeless guy earlier that day? Probably not. Our date had been scheduled for a couple of days, I don’t think it had much to do with the homeless guy. But I like to think that the two things are related. That because I did a good deed, something good (in this case, Dave) came to me.

There are also times when I’ve tried to do something good for someone, and it’s backfired horribly. Either my motives were misinterpreted, or the person took advantage of my generosity and I was left feeling used and horrible. But for every one of those experiences, there are so many more where the rewards were a million times better than whatever my small gesture was.

I refuse to let the negative experiences make me cynical or jaded. I will not sacrifice my desire to help people who are truly in need, just because of a few “bad eggs.” If I honestly know that my motives are pure, then I have to believe that something good will result from it. Even if it takes me a while to see it, I have to believe that the positive is there, somewhere.

Father's Day

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I’ll be honest, Father’s Day is maybe not the biggest holiday in our house. Neither is Mother’s Day. We tend to make a bigger deal out of birthdays and Christmas than random Hallmark-sanctioned holidays.

Still, as far as Father’s Days go, I think Dave’s had a pretty good one. He got up early and went for a 7-mile hike while I took Catie out to run errands. The plan is to relax this afternoon and then go out for dinner tonight. So yeah, it’s a pretty good day.

Also, I decided to play around with this new Smilebox feature on Hallmark.com that lets you create photo collage e-cards. This is the one I sent to Dave earlier.

Click to play this Smilebox greeting:
Create your own greeting - Powered by Smilebox
Make a Smilebox greeting

I also created one for my dad. (Yeah, same card. I know. I’m lazy.)

Click to play this Smilebox greeting:
Create your own greeting - Powered by Smilebox
Make a Smilebox greeting

I’m also thinking a lot about Mike today; I cannot imagine how hard this day is for him without Maddie. The Room 704 girls wrote a really beautiful post for Mike; I don’t think there’s anything I can add to that.

I hope all you dads out there have a happy Father’s Day.

marine life & the trip home

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We came home from Wilmington yesterday. But first, we went on a completely ridiculous detour to go to the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher. We saw that it was about 20 miles out of our way, but we didn’t know that we’d be going 30 mph on a local road most of that way. Argh.

As for the aquarium itself: well, to be fair, I’m a little spoiled. Once you’ve been to the aquariums in Monterey and New Orleans, it’s going to take a little more than a couple of sharks in a big see-through tank to impress you. And there are three aquariums in North Carolina, and we’ve only been to this one, so I can’t say that all of the aquariums here are bad. But, um… I was less than impressed. Dave and I agreed that on a scale of 1 to 10, we’d give it a 4 or 5. Still, we got some cute pictures.

digging the aquarium

I love that you can see her smiling face reflected in the glass

Catie & me at the aquarium

love this picture of the two of them

My main complaint is that there were a few things Catie was asking to see, and they didn’t have them: not a single dolphin, otter, or octopus in the entire place. Boo.

Really, the best part of the whole aquarium was the gift shop. Catie isn’t huge on stuffed animals, but she’s really into little plastic action figures. Like the Little People type things? The animals are her favorites. They have conversations with each other and act out entire storylines – most of the dialog is jibberish to us, but it obviously makes sense to her. So we got her a few of their very realistic-looking plastic animals: a sea turtle, an alligator, and an otter. (Seriously, NC Aquarium? You sell toy otters, octopi, dolphins – even freaking penguins – but none of those creatures are actually in your facility? WTF? Lame!)

Anyway, these are Catie’s new favorite creatures:
Catie's new BFFs

I don’t get it, because I think the turtle and the alligator are both a little scary-looking. But she adores them, and even insisted on bringing them to bed with her last night. Personally, I wouldn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night and see that alligator’s face staring at me in the dark, but maybe that’s just me.

After the aquarium, we stopped to gas up the car and grab some lunch, then headed home. Perfect timing, too, because Catie slept the whole way home. She woke up when we were about three miles away from our house. Lovely.

Catie-girl is happy to be back home

LOVE this pic

I think she was pretty happy to be back home. We were too.

not-so-beachy vacation

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Dave and I have decided we really love Wilmington, North Carolina. Our vacation so far has been great. Cocktails in the evening, naps during the day – basically an ideal vacation. Neither one of us can remember the last time we did this, so obviously it’s been way too long.

Of course, there is the small issue that we came to Wilmington to go to the beach, and Catie, um, well, pretty much hates the beach.

Catie & Dave

this face just about sums up her feelings on the beach

Really, I should’ve known. She hates all forms of dirt and messiness. This is a kid who eats a cookie and then immediately says “oh no! Mess!” and gives me her hands to wipe off. So why we thought she’d dig the sand? Um, yeah. Not our brightest move. The hotel pool, on the other hand, was a much bigger hit.

Catie in her pirate ship float

Tonight, we went to check out downtown Wilmington, which was a lot of fun. We had a fabulous dinner (actually, all of our meals here have been amazing; we’ve really lucked out). I didn’t really know anything about Wilmington before this trip, but it’s really a very cool town.

my 2 Wilkinsons on Wilkinson Alley

Tomorrow we head home; we’re going to try to swing by the aquarium first, to let Catie check out the fishies & burn off some energy so she’ll sleep on the way back.

Hope everyone else is having a nice holiday weekend!

sand in my toes

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Apparently Catie’s virus was just a 24-hour thing. She took 2 naps yesterday, and when she woke up from her second nap, her fever was down. She also started eating for the first time all day – just saltine crackers, I didn’t want her to have anything too harsh on her tummy. But today she woke up feeling great and pretty much ate her weight in fried eggs and toast for breakfast. So I think it’s safe to say that it’s all over. And thank God, because man, that sucked.

Since Catie is better, Dave and I decided that tomorrow, we’re going to pack up the car and head to the beach for the holiday weekend. We’re going to Wilmington, North Carolina, which is just a couple of hours from here. Honestly, we’ve lived in North Carolina for what, 9 months now? And we really haven’t checked out much of the state other than our own immediate surroundings, so we’re trying to correct that. I think a trip to the mountains might be in our near future too.

Of course, I’m not really a beach-type girl – I hate how sand gets everywhere, and I’m not a big fan of wearing a swimsuit in public. But I think Catie will love it, so I can sacrifice a little of my self-loathing about my thighs and suffer a little grit in my flip-flops in the interest of letting her experience this for the first time.

Well actually, this isn’t her first trip to the beach. But let’s hope that she likes it more than she did last time.

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

(Yes, we put our 3 month-old’s toes in the ocean repeatedly because we thought it was funny that she went so completely ballistic about it. We are clearly the worst parents ever.)

(Also, nice muffin top there, Cindy. God. Note to self: buy longer shirts. And higher-waisted pants.)

And you know, if Catie still hates the beach, the hotel has a pool, so maybe we’ll just hang out there.

Happy Memorial Day, everyone!