It's New Year's Eve and I wish that I was going to tell you about the exciting plans that Dude and I have tonight - something involving having a babysitter, getting dolled up and going out to act like fools. Alas. That is not the case. Our big plans? Take-out after the girls are asleep. Dude mentioned something about having a quiet evening by the fire. I don't know how to say this any more clearly - NO. I will not spend my evening reading on the love seat on one side of the fire while he lies on the other love seat reading his book. Do you remember that scene from Singles where they're sitting at the table reading the paper and Kyra Sedgwick is bored out of her skull? That's what that sounds like to me. I will not allow it. I'm thinking maybe I'll get all dressed up, "spin" some tunes, open wine and have a dance party. He can join me if he wants. Otherwise, I'll act the fool by myself. Someone has to.

Part 1: Christmas recap

Some dear friends of mine in LA, Ashley and Josh, just had twins. They'd been asking questions and I'd been offering my "sage" advice ever since they found out their dilemma/wonderful news. When she was 29 weeks along, Ashley went into labor. Modern medicine was able to almost stop it and she was put on strict bed rest. When I say "almost" stop it, I mean she wasn't dilating and stuff, but she still had regular contractions and was EXTREMELY uncomfortable. Josh was as amazing as humanly possible, looking after Ashley's every want and need. What an adorable couple! At 36.5 weeks (yes, the poor dear kept those babes in the oven for another 7.5 weeks of slow, slow LABOR), she was actually induced because she was having quite a bit of swelling in one leg. Then Ashley and Josh essentially went dark, not to resurface for two weeks with the whole story. We (their friends) knew that the babies had been born, but no names, no details, no joyous pictures were shared. I was beyond worried. After several days, Josh posted something on Facebook basically saying that the babies were wonderful and that they'd get back to us soon. As I said, it took two weeks. Their story is unbelievable. It is heart-wrenching and joyous and terrifying and WILL MAKE YOU CRY. For those of you who are pregnant and are not heeding my warning to stay away from this story (you know who you are), rest assured that all's well that ends well and it does end well. But FUCK, man. What a story.

"Baby Jesus on porch wearin' washcloth. Baby Jesus daddy [is] Santa Claus. Santa Claus sleigh jingle bells; ding-a-ling-a-ling! Santa Claus bringin' pretzels. Thanks, Santa Claus!"

We went out for sushi tonight and Dude asked the girls if they wanted "edamame beans." The Bug said, "Huggle Mommy beans? Yes! Want Huggle Mommy beans!"

These last two days have... kinda sucked. Yesterday was Black Tuesday - the day I turned 35. I cannot for the life of me tell you why it hit me so hard, but it did. It just did. And yet, there's nothing I can do about it.

Sometimes I say the "wrong" thing. Sometimes I take it too far. Last night, I had So Much Fun. Dude and I went to see the Dandy Warhols at the Wonder Ballroom and they were just, well, totally kickass. They were tight, they rocked, they played for two hours. I'd never seen them live before and it was easily as good as, if not better than, what I expected. Except for one thing. And this one thing is something that I just don't get. Courtney Taylor is the lead singer and he is pretty - very, very pretty. The man is tall, has great bone structure and a pouty mouth. He looks like a star. But when he's rocking out on stage, all sweaty and playing his guitar, he does that thing. He makes orgasm face. WHY?!?! Why do some guys do that when they're playing guitar? It's not something that I want to see. I want there to be some mystery. It's like I know what it would look like to have sex with him, except it seems that it was only good for him (I certainly wasn't making bizarre faces for two hours) and now he wants me to go get him some juice or something because he's a rock star and can't be bothered to get it himself. And I guess sometimes I forget that Dude is more than my best friend because I said something along those same lines to him last night when we were driving home from the show. I didn't think about what I'd said until it was too late. Courtney Taylor having sex with his wife is probably not something Dude wanted to think about. Um. Oops. Sorry, Dude. It slipped out. I love you.

Hi. Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I've been going through some stuff - nothing major; just having some brain preoccupation. I think I'm snapping out of it, though. Life was often simpler before technology intervened. People from the past stayed in the past, as did old emotions that accompanied them. Sigh.

Someone recently friended me on Facebook whom I haven't seen since 1993ish. We used to be very close. He asked me what he's missed; how I got to who I am now. How do I sum up the past 16 years? He already knows that I'm married and have kids (thanks for covering the easy stuff for me, FB profile). Things like getting my degree and work stuff are not what he's asking about either. He's asking about ME. This is what I said...

I'm turning 35 in two weeks and that just doesn't seem possible. I don't think I look 35. I don't feel 35. I mean, 35 sounds old (sorry gentle readers who have already hit this milestone). I don't think 35 really fits me, you know? Can I exchange it? I'm considering being perpetually 28. Doesn't that sound a little more appropriate? Is that a midlife crisis I see on the horizon? Oh shite.

And by under the belt, I truly mean under the belt. I think I've eaten my weight in creamy dips and chocolate-peanut butter balls in the past four days. I need salad...

I have 90 other things I'm supposed to be doing right now: clearing the dishes off the table, folding laundry, cleaning up the kid debris that is all over the floor, making caramelized onion dip, baking pecan pies. And I will do all those things in the next two hours, but first I'm having a teensy glass of wine and writing this here post. Erika, Billy and D will be here in about two hours. Sissy is bringing them from the airport and I think Bri is coming over as well. I want the house to look good, blah, blah. But this is my last 10 minutes of quiet before the holiday officially begins. 

I bought our plane tickets to Arkansas for Christmas. $800 each for four tickets. If you can do simple math, then you know that I just spent $3200 to go to ARKANSAS from OREGON. Just for fun - and because we had talked about going there in 2010 - I priced flying to Germany for 10 days in March. They were only $80 more per ticket. Needless to say, we will not be able to do both Arkansas and Germany in the next year, so Arkansas it is. It hurts, people. It hurts. And don't get me started on the fact that those tickets were the cheapest I could find, they're on Southwest Airlines, and we have two stops in each direction.

The night after I wrote that last post about my old friend Michelle, I decided to google her. I hadn't done it in a couple years and you never know what'll turn up. It's a little tricky, though, because I don't have a location or anything like that to put in with her name. Two pages in, I found her obituary. She died last year. I think I almost passed out because everything went dark around me except for her name on the screen. I. Just. Couldn't. Believe. It.

When I was 18, I had a friend named Michelle. We were the best of buds, roommates and even waited tables at the same restaurant. Regardless of how much time we spent together, I never got sick of her. She was wacky and unpredictable and courageous and vulnerable. We lived in a five-bedroom apartment in Milwaukee, WI with a revolving cast of crazy roommates and it was the quintessential party pad. On any given night of the week, you could find random boys crashed on the couch or the floor or the couch and the floor. I was the baby of the house by about three years (Michelle was 25) and I enjoyed a certain level of protection from my debaucherous roomies. That's not to say that I didn't engage in some nuttiness. I won't lie. I did. But peeps, I saw some crazy stuff. 

I had a difficult time deciding whether or not to get the girls vaccinated against H1N1. I started out unsure, did a bunch of reading on the internet and came away pretty opposed to doing it. I was adamant that we'd wait until there were conclusive results from the testing that it was going to be effective (as opposed to the virus mutating so rapidly that it rendered the vaccine pointless) and that it wasn't going to harm my daughters. I wasn't saying never, just not yet - not that it was available anyway. I discussed it ad nauseum with my friends and fellow mothers of two-year-olds. I discussed it with our pediatrician. I discussed it with myself in the shower. I was totally fixated on doing what was best for our daughters. 

This day started out tremendously. We all got up early - but not too early - and walked to Grand Central Bakery for breakfast. I always get a jammer (hollowed-out biscuit filled with raspberry jam) for me and a brioche bread pudding for the girls. These are my two favorite pastries there and the girls never finish the bread pudding, which means the last few bites are mine (I wouldn't want Dude to call me a waster). Our plan was to come home, get organized, and have a fun-filled family trip to the plumbing store. I've been complaining that Dude only takes Saturdays off work and then ends up doing chores all day, leaving me without a day of co-parenting, making me cranky, causing arguments to ensue. No fun. So, a family trip to the plumbing store was a compromise. I was promised we could also look at a new mattress for the girls' bed (which hurts my back) and this was the real reason I was down with the plan. But upon arriving home, Dude called the store to make sure they had the part he needed and discovered that they would replace it for free if it could be mailed. This left us with a free morning. I was all ready to go to just the mattress store when Dude said something most unexpected: "Let's go to the zoo!" What? The ZOO? I know we have a membership and everything but Dude almost never flies by the seat of his pants like that.

Thanks, Eleanor's Mommy, for sending me a picture of the family on Halloween with our last-minute costume changes! Funny - it looks like I'm at a Halloween party with my kids and some dude just happened to sit down near us...

I'm feeling awfully lazy at the moment, so in lieu of a real post I give you a list of highlights from this Halloween weekend:

The Bug has been a giant handful for the last month or so and I've been feeling really deflated because I don't know what to do to curb her punky behavior. I've tried time outs and gentle warnings and screaming and this and that and everything except full-blown spankings. Nothing has really worked. After talking it over with a good friend and whining to Dude endlessly about it, it came to light that maybe she just needs more undivided attention. Duh. Of course that's the problem!

Today is the last day my girls are one. The last day I could say "23 months." Tomorrow they will be two and I well up every time I think about it. I just can't believe that those teeny, tiny babies - the smallest babies I'd ever seen - are KIDS. There's no denying it, either. They can say their full names, as well as mine and Dude's. They are working on counting and the alphabet. They are, quite simply, pretty cool little people and while I miss their babyhood something fierce, I am dazzled by their toddlerness (look at me making up words as I go - wheeee!). I thought about writing this post as a letter to them, but I think it's more than I can handle right now. I'd end up blubbering all over the keyboard and I just can't go there tonight. Instead, I give you a list of some of the things that I think make my girls two of the most awesome people I know.

Have you ever eaten crickets? I have had them on several different occasions and I think they're pretty tasty.

Dude is many things: a great dad to our girls, the best companion for me ever, an excellent dish washer, etc., etc. (I could expound upon this at length, but that's not the point of this here post). There are also many things he is NOT: dancer, reality television watcher, shopper, and more than anything else - waster. Oooohhhhh noooooooooo. My man does not waste. Waste what? Anything. He is very mindful of the environment and doesn't waste water or electricity or gas heat. He doesn't waste those last dribs of toothpaste in the bottom of the tube or those couple drops that seem to take three years to get to the cap in the upside-down shampoo bottle. He most definitely does not waste money or time. And he does not waste food. Let me repeat that: The man does not waste food. No siree. I just watched him down the last of the rainbow cake, even though he didn't want it, because he couldn't stand to let it be thrown away (nevermind that it's more than a week old and just a cheap cake mix anyway). He will drink iffy milk, carve out the moldy part of cheese, eat cooked meat long after I would consider it a goner. If he doesn't, that would mean wasting the food and he simply will not tolerate that. I hear on a pretty regular basis about my wasting habits when I throw old produce away out of the veggie drawer in the fridge. I don't mean to let stuff go bad, but I have a very difficult time using everything perishable within its shelf life. Some things have to be sacrificed (often this includes half-full containers of buttermilk, baggies of long-forgotten chopped onions, and stray yogurt tubs that have wandered to the very back of the fridge).

So, some of you have let it be known that you want to see the object of my house-love affection. I can understand this. It is, after all, the Charmer. I haven't really posted pictures previously because I don't have any "perfect" pictures - you know, the ones where there aren't toys scattered or dirty dishes in the background. I'd love to be able to post pictures of my darling in "show" condition... but that's just not reality around here. I have two toddlers that leave a wake akin to that of a category 5 hurricane and, well, I'm a stay-at-home mom, not a housewife. In my mind at least, there is a HUGE difference. I think of a housewife as someone who stays home to keep the house neat and tidy, bakes pies, wears pearls. I am decidedly not that person. My daily activities are much more kid-entertainment-education-centric with a large side of coffee, friends, Facebook, minor errands, etc. I try to do a sweep of the house at least once a day to put everything back in their places but I've been pretty lazy about even that lately. ANYWAY - my point is this: I'm posting pictures and they are not perfect shots. And they're only of the rooms on the main level (there's also upstairs and the family room downstairs in the finished basement). I'll post more pictures as I get it together (which will be... ?). I've also decided that it's not wise to post pictures of the outside of the house in case I were to get some sort of crazy blog stalker. Conceited? Oh, probably. Likely? Oh, probably not. But I'm erring on the side of caution. So here we go - tour of the main level of the Charmer:

Standing just inside the front door, looking down the living room (left side of the house). The red couch in the background will be disappearing, but we haven't gotten around to that yet. Eventually, I'd love a piano back there. The stairs are just to the right of this picture and you can see up them from the front door. That's the sun porch/play room at the end. There are glass French doors between the living room and play room, but they're open so you can't see them.

Sun porch/play room - there's a big cradle to the left filled with stuffed animals, some bins of blocks, etc., that didn't make this frame. And you can see out to the back deck and back yard. There's a pink dogwood that comes up through the deck. It is GORGEOUS when it blooms, and it just drops crap the other 11 months of the year.

Okay, turning back around and looking the other way down the living room. You can see the stairs on the left now. See that second step where the stairs curve around? That's the Time Out spot - a very important landmark in our household.

Details of the stairs - I have visions of the girls sneaking down to see if Santa has arrived...

This is the library. Standing at the front door, this is the front-right corner of the house (note the front door in the background). This room was brown before we painted it lavender. 

Standing the other way in the library and looking down the right side of the house, toward the dining room and kitchen. There are glass pocket doors (the kind with a bunch of little windows) that slide out between the library and dining room.

Dining room - this room was blood red. Now it's pea soup! To the right of this picture is the double doorway into the far end of the living room. It's got a circular flow, see? The girls run laps. That doorway also has a pocket door, but instead of glass, it's a heavy, solid wood door. To the left of this picture are 4 tall windows that look out onto the driveway and our neighbor's house. The girls give a running commentary on the comings and goings of our neighbors.

Here's the kitchen from the doorway of the dining room. The kitchen was a soft green color. I painted it tangerine so it will be cheery even when we are in the throes of Portland gray outside. There are more cupboards, a small counter and the fridge to the left of this picture. And see that closed door on the left? Go through there and down three steps and you're in a little hallway. Turn right to go out the back door or turn left to go down more steps into the laundry room and the finished basement/family room + full bath beyond that.

And that's it! Upstairs is a full bath, a sitting area that is totally empty at the moment, Dude's office, our bedroom, the girls' bedroom, some closets, blah, blah. Maybe I'll do an upstairs tour once we get Dude's office redone. Or maybe you will be so completely bored after this post that you will beg me to not do any more tours...

It's been six days since my last post and it can almost be entirely summed up with this: First the girls had colds and then Belly has had a fever that keeps spiking in the 102s. I took her to the doctor this morning and she has an ear infection. Hi, amoxicillin! You're our new friend! We're also hosting a birthday party tonight for my nieces and nephew. A bigger, better post will follow in the next day or so, hopefully with some pictures of the chemically-enhanced rainbow birthday cakes I made!

Two weeks ago, I called the OHSU (Oregon Health Sciences University) Women's Center to make a couple appointments for myself. I needed an annual exam and also just a general visit because I needed a new prescription for an allergy medication. I checked the website first and then verified with the scheduler that I could do all of this on the same visit. Fast forward to 3:15p this afternoon. I was one of two not-pregnant women in the waiting room and it seemed pretty evident that this was going to be a straight-up GYN visit. Bummer. I asked the nurse about it while she was taking my vitals. She said she didn't think they could do the prescription but she'd ask the doctor. I changed into my gown and the nurse stuck her head in to say the doctor would be with me shortly. She'd asked him about the allergy medication and he said he wanted to talk to me about it. Great. I started to feel like I was coming off as some sort of pill popper. When the doctor came in, one of the first things he asked me about was this prescription that I was after. I explained the apparent miscommunication when I scheduled the appointment.

Okay, I know that I said I wouldn't talk much about football in this forum but tonight was so dang bittersweet. I'm sitting here all emotional and I gots to get it out.

I am LOVING the internets right now. I just spent about 30-45 minutes watching my friend Blaine on BlogTV. An artist friend of his in Britain is doing a 24-hour BlogTV benefit to raise money to buy his young son a prosthetic hand. Trying to help him out, Blaine was on spilling celebrity stories from his many years of working at Spago (which is how I met him - I worked there from 1997 to 2002; Blaine still works there). Blaine also happens to be one of the funniest people I've ever met, better than most successful standup comedians I've seen. He even does impressions. Anyway, I haven't seen him in about two and a half years and all of a sudden there he was - talking to me, doing the celebrity impressions that I was calling off, telling the funny stories that I reminded him of from years ago, etc. We even got someone to give a $50 donation just to hear Blaine's Julio Iglesias impression. How fun and in-the-spirit-of-giving is that?

I haven't written about house-love in awhile, so this one's dedicated to the one I love: The Charmer.

This cracked me up so much that I'm posting it here. It's a status update and comments from Facebook (names have been replaced by initials to protect the guilty):