On the side

I told my son that tonight for dinner we were having macaroni and cheese with hamburger on the side.

He asked, "And Mac and Cheese on the front?"

A night at our house

21. I'm thankful for a sense of humor.

Little drummer boy

Alex bangs on the couch, pa rum pum pum pum ...

Claire thinks, "What the heck?" Pa rum pum pum pum ...

Holly does a facepalm. Pa rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum ...

What they hear ...

... vs. what I'm saying.

"Don't drip on the carpet" means "because it collects dirt and makes a dirty spot that we have to pay to get cleaned."

"Don't wake up the baby" means "because she just went to sleep and she's really fussy and if she wakes up I'll kill you."

"Eat your dinner" means "if you come asking for food fifteen minutes after leaving the table, you're getting cold leftovers."

"Don't hit your sister" means "OR ELSE!"

"Naptime!" means "Mommy needs a nap."

"Pick out a movie" means "I am losing my freaking mind and this will help my sanity to return."

"Pick up your toys" means "If I step on one more sharp object I'm going to scream."

"Pick up the Legos" means the same as above, but with additional screaming.

"Stop that" means "don't resume that as soon as my back is turned."

"Bedtime!" means "Mommy and Daddy want some time alone now!"

Pondering foods

That hollyhock picture right there came out so nice that I sized it for a desktop wallpaper. Click on it to grab the big version. (It looks extra-nice if you make your desktop's background color black to match.)

Anyway, I'm doing Patrice's Wednesday Words of Weight Loss today because I liked the questions.



1. I've heard it said that you should eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper. What are your meals like?

I've sat and tried to figure this one out. I've heard that saying before and I've never been able to decipher its meaning. Does that mean that for breakfast you have whole roasted pigs and roasted fowl and drink flagons of mead and throw the bones over your shoulder to the dogs? And what do princes eat, anyway? Don't they dine with the kings with the roast pigs and so forth?

And if you eat like a pauper, does that mean a crust of black bread and a cup of water at a plain wooden table lit by a single tallow candle?

Anyway, I can answer the second question. Hot meal for breakfast (either eggs or hot cereal), sandwiches or hotdogs at lunch (accompanied by fruit or chips or some other side), and dinner is usually the biggest meal and contains the most meat. So, prince > pauper > king, if I have some grasp of the metaphor.

2. Does eating out include all of the trimmings (appetizer, meal, dessert, beverages)?

Only on dates, when it's just the two of us. It's too expensive to get all that with the kids along. Also we're usually too full to order dessert. I can only get it when I'm ravenous from being pregnant or breastfeeding.

3. What's your favorite season of your wardrobe?

The one I'm not currently on. When it's summer, I long for sweaters and jeans. When it's winter, I wish for shorts and light tops.

4. If you could take a class or course in anything, what would it be?

Life drawing, like a shot. I've seen how it improved the art of all my friends, and I kick myself for not taking it while I had the chance.

5. Optimist or Pessimist?

The best thing about being a pessimist is that you're always being proven right or you're being pleasantly surprised.

I try to be optimistic, but being realistic means you have to fall somewhere in between.

Thursday pretty

Gee, it's been a whole week since I updated, just about. This blog is in danger of becoming "let's fill out memes". It makes me take pictures, though!

Anyway, it's time for another edition of {pretty, happy, funny, real} from Like Mother, Like Daughter.

{Pretty}

This is the flower bed outside the apartment office next door to ours. These are mostly pansies and snapdragons. They're well established and look fantastic. Therefore I'm sure the gardeners will rip them out and replace them with "summer" flowers any day now.

I went on a photo tour of the blooming rosebushes around our complex, and found this bush with these odd double blooms, pink on one side and purple on the other.

I think I'm going on my tour again, this time with scissors and a vase.

{Happy}

My girls!

{Funny}

Another mystery photo I discovered on my camera this morning. I don't know what's funnier, that it seems to be a butt shot, or that the pants in question are on backwards.

{Real}

It's a clear, warm, windy day, with a sky blue enough to swim in and the mountains looking clear and much nearer than they are.

I suppose it's not as real as it should be, because I cropped out the busy road at the bottom of the picture. :-)

Mystery photos

I was looking through my camera, and discovered a bunch of mysterious photos that I did not take.

Hmm. I wonder who the culprit might be?

Or maybe it was partners in crime ...

Monday night hijinks

Just some Monday-night hijinks.

Wednesday words of weight "loss"

I'm participating in Patrice's words of weight "loss" again this week, again with a spin toward gaining weight, since I'm almost eight months pregnant.

Questions:
1. As a child, were you underweight, overweight, or average?

Average, I suppose. I've always been on the small size, so according to those hilariously inaccurate weight scales at the mall, I'm 20 pounds underweight. I'm only my proper weight when I'm pregnant.

2. Do you have an exercise machine? (ie-treadmill)

Nope. We used to have one, and there was something wrong with it, so you could only make the conveyor belt move by pushing it with your feet. Walk on that thing for five minutes and your heart feels like it's going to explode. We got rid of it eventually, after the cats had claimed it as a giant tilted bed.

3. Would you prefer a stationery bike or a real one?

A real bike, man! This is Southern CA. Even in our worst weather, it's never too bad for a bike ride. Unfortunately we don't have anywhere to put one at the moment, so we lack bikes. My husband had one when we got married, but someone stole it.

4. What's the strangest diet you ever heard of?

Probably the "all-coffee" diet, but I know there's lots like that, where you eat only one thing for months. I think there used to be one to purge you, like all cod-liver oil, and then they found out cod-liver oil is toxic in large amounts. Whoops.

5. Please finish this sentence: I will be kind to myself this week by...

I'll answer this one in pictures.

A chocolate cream cheese cupcake. We didn't even frost them. They were that good.

This is technically a picture of apricot cobbler, but I made peach cobbler with some of the thousands of peaches I froze last summer, and it looked exactly like this.

Boy was it good. I ate the majority myself, standing secretly in the kitchen with a spoon, "evening up the edges". We all know how dangerous that is.

Wednesday Words of weight "loss"

I'm doing a linkup with Patrice at Everyday Ruralty for her Words of Weight Loss. Except I'm going to do it a little differently. I'm seven months pregnant, and I'm not real worried about losing weight at this point.

In fact, I really want to gain some weight, because I have to have SOME fat on my body if I'm going to breastfeed. If I told you my weight now, you would laugh.

So I'm going to answer the weight-loss questions with a spin toward gaining, not losing. Hee hee. I hope I don't get disqualified.

Questions:
1.Have you tried various diets or programs? What works best for you?

Not really, but I picked up a lot of healthy habits from my mom over the years. So right now, my secret hide-it-from-the-kids dessert snack is some kind of flavored Yoplait yogurt poured over cottage cheese. Yes. I'm so naughty.

2. Have you ever dieted or exercised with a buddy?

I almost can't exercise unless it's with someone else. I walked with my mom when I was single, I walk with my husband and kids now. The only thing I can do alone is exercise videos, because you still feel like somebody's egging you on.

3. What's your favorite type of salad?

You know those pre-assembled bagged ones? I just love the southwest taco salad mix. With the salsa/sour cream dressing and the little multicolored tortilla strips.

4. What's the first place you start to notice that you're losing weight? (ie. tummy, arms)

My thighs, generally. My pants start fitting weird. But then, I also tend to only gain weight while pregnant, which makes my pants fit weird in general.

5. What's one thing you can do to pamper yourself this week?

Go out for ice cream. :-)

A little under the weather

Been a little under the weather lately ... had a bunch of pregnancy-related bloodwork done on Monday and haven't really been myself since.

Anyway, feeling a bit better today, and thought I'd share something funny I saw the other day.

First off, there was a really spiffy sky that morning, so I went out to snap some pictures of it.

I noticed a small black dog go running by. A lot of people in the apartments around us have small dogs and cats, and these animals all seem to escape in the morning, right after their owners leave for work. I don't know if they escape or are let out, but lots of them get stolen or wind up as roadkill.

Anyway, I hadn't seen this black dog before, but he was trotting like he knew where he was going, and he ignored me.

Then I saw these two cats come tearing around the side of the building.

They were after that dog. The dog looked over his shoulder, saw them, and took off running with his tail between his legs. He stopped once, and these cats both arched their backs at him and hissed, and he ran for it again. They chased him all the way down to the end of the buildings, where you could see their territory ended, because then they got all smug and walked back where they had come from.

It happened so fast I never did get a picture of the dog, just the cats. But you can see that they're total thugs.

Kid's eye view

Imagine you are this goofball almost-four-year-old.

Imagine Mommy has taught you how to take pictures on her camera, and then tosses you outside with it.

There were a lot more pictures than this, but they were either very blurry or extreme closeups of mystery objects.

Like this.

He just adores my camera. He runs the batteries down in it every time I lend it to him, and that's with the flash turned off, too. I think he has the makings of a real good photographer.

Attack of the giant centipede

I was checking our weather satellite to see if the valley fog was letting up any.

See that big long chunk of white? That's the fog sitting in the basin of the San Joaquin valley.

Anyway, as I looked on it, I noticed this. Click the picture to see the GIANT CENTIPEDE.

Look at it! Coming ashore to attack California! And nobody even noticed it!

What do you get when ...

What do you get when you cross Pioneer Woman's Eggs-In-A-Hole recipe with the Sizzler Cheese Toast recipe?

Happy munchkins!

And even happier mom and dad, who thought it tasted divine. Here's our reaction:

(Original pic here)

*heavenly choir*

A Christmas diversion

Here is my cockatiel, sneaking a bite out of our tree while I was cleaning his cage.

To his disappointment, it's a fake tree. Too bad, or his breath would have been pine fresh.

Thanksgiving '10

Here it is Monday night, and I'm just finally going through the pictures I took at our Thanksgiving get-together.

A lot of them are the kind of terrible candid photos that you save to blackmail people with. "I have a shot of you mid-blink with your mouth open! HAHAHA!"

But I did have a few decent pics. Like these.

Alex, Holly and one of the twin cousins, being read to by their aunt.

My youngest brother and sister-in-law. She's trying to put those dried, crunchy onions on her green beans, and he's munching on them.

Here the locals gang up to make four boxes of stuffing at once. Yum, Stove Top is the best.

A summary of the local craziness: an eyeball wound up on the counter next to the napkins and nice china dishes.

I didn't know my brother still HAD that eyeball. He used to roll it in amongst the feet of the ladies when we had a Bible study at our house, eons and eons ago ... now his sons roll it in amongst the aunts and uncles.

Clinic woes

I'm going to moan and groan in this post. You have been warned.

Yesterday I finally bit the bullet and went down to the local clinic to get my Official First Pregnancy Test done so I can start regular doctor's visits.

I know I left it a bit late, seeing as I'm going on four months here. But as I learned when I was pregnant with my first two, if you don't go to the doc until after the first 3 months, there's a bunch of tests they can't do on you. You know, a bunch of those tests that tell you something's horribly wrong with the baby and you should abort it right now.

Those ones that are only about 40% accurate and give false positives all the time. Yeah, THOSE tests.

Anyway, I also left it a bit late because I hate going to the clinic.

Someday we'll have decent insurance and I won't have to go there. But until then, lowest common denominator, and that's the clinic.

I went equipped with a thick book, and stuff to write my menu and grocery list on, since I hadn't done that. I knew I was in for a long wait, because you have to stand in the Walk Ins line for a pregnancy test. They don't let you make an appointment for it.


So I stood in line for an hour. I got my lists all made and ploughed through a decent chunk of my book. My book being The Dark Lord of Derkholm, which is 517 pages, I thought it was a good candidate for a long, long doctor's office visit.

Finally made it up to the clerk, and found out the test was only going to be half price, since they like returning patients. That was nice. I got my number and sat down.

Slowly the waiting room drained out, and they called all the numbers above and below mine, but never mine. So I read my book and waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Finally I noticed the various nurses packing up and leaving, and I was the last person still waiting. So, feeling near tears (this was now two hours later), I got up and asked the clerk if they had called my number. She checked, looked horrified, and said that they'd be with me in just a moment.

And indeed, in just a moment they whisked me into the back, did the test, filled out my paperwork, and had me all finished up in about five minutes. Turns out I'm due April 9th. If I can hit this due date, I'll have a birthday in March, April, and May.

Oh, dear clinic. My first visit back, you make me wait three and a half hours because you forgot about me. How I have not missed our long, awful relationship.

Missed Wordless Wednesday

(Click to enlarge)

I was going to post this yesterday, but got busy with my commission pic (which you can see over on my art blog) and forgot to post it. Thus it is Thursday, and I have to use, you know, WORDS.

The clouds looked so Halloweenish last night, drifting past the moon, that I had to get a picture. I even got the star over there to show up.

There's a red dot off to the left, too, which I think is an airplane. But upon zooming in and turning up the brightness ...

...it's obviously a UFO. *grin*

Friday night blog meme

Farmgirl tagged me with the Versatile Blogger Award!

The trouble is, I don't qualify because I'm not going to do all the steps. For one thing, I don't think I even read 15 blogs.

Anyway, here goes the meme:

To accept the Versatile Blogger Award the rules are:

* Thank and link back to who gave you the award.
* Share 7 things about yourself.
* Pass it along to 15 blogs you've recently discovered and enjoy
* Leave your recipients a note, telling them about the award.

Things about Me:

1. I've written videogame fanfiction since I was about 14.

2. My favorite book genre to read right now is juvenile fantasy/science fiction, because you get all the cool worlds and creatures without all the sex.

3. Sometimes I wish I were a black person, because they get to wear really awesome clothes.

4. I am a World of Warcraft junkie.

5. Indie techno bands for the win.

6. I learned HTML and CSS as my foreign language requirement in high school. I can't talk to anyone who doesn't speak English, but man, we could code web pages.

7. My husband and I wrote stories together years before we even started dating.

Now for the blog thing: ....

....

...I'm too shy. The blogs I like are there in my blogroll. *points* So I don't win the versatile blogger award. Sorry Farmgirl, I tried.

Thursday cricket

The past couple of nights, we have had a cricket that came to sing under our bedroom window. It was a nice, summer sound, and I enjoyed getting to hear it. (And it must be really pesticide-resistant, because there's like five types of poison on the shrubs and ground around here.)

Anyway, last night I got up to use the restroom, and noticed that the cricket was awfully loud. I walked into the living room and discovered that the cricket was behind the armchair. He didn't even shut up until I leaned right over him.

So we waited until morning, pulled out the chair, and caught him in a jar.

Tough little guy.

The munchkins don't like bugs much. They kind of oogled the cricket and wandered off.

I released him later into a bunch of ivy an apartment block down.