Longtime Nosee

Sorry to have been in hiding so long. Lots to tell b/t the visit of the sister and the pending snow!
But I doubt we'll get it. I'll have the camera ready just in case since it'll be a first for the Soph since New Years Eve last year when she was just a day or so old. Sort of getting weird about that too. This pending birthday and what a year this has been. Got an email from Gidge about her 4 year old (right? close) and how one day you have this infant/child and then all of a sudeen you ahve this new roommate. A person of their own free will. Sophie already is so much of a little person and is starting to walk and we need to feel her days with more fun and I am not sure I am fun all the time. Anyway.... we should have little party after Christmas her in PDX, since we'll be in Clarksville for the holidays and her actually 1st.
Auntie Shell being here was amazing. I miss her so much and can still smell her on my pillows. She taught Sophie to pew-eee her feet and to hit walls and reminded me to bathe and shave. All in all a successful visit I'd say. Lots of pics from Turkey Day and our trips around town. So for now, let me ease back into this and I promise wit and satire in a day or so.
Also, pray for snow!

Slick and Covered in It

Is this finally enough?

We watched a bit of this 'committee hearing' on CSPAN or whathaveyou and it gives you a headache and a heartache to see these executives pitched softball questions by senators that are essentially their employees-since these oilcos pay for their elections, etc. Then, suffer through answers that go nowhere. It was priceless. When posed the question about 'alternative energy developments' they are working on (right!) -time happened to run out for that line of questions. It was suggested they submit those in writing. On to the next blowjob from the next bought and owned committee member.

But, any superficial study of AmHis will provide similar results. We have been a business venture from the first boat of folks sent to cut timber and skin pelts. From the importation of cheap labor, first from Africa, then from Eastern Europe (yeah, I said it) from Asia to build the railroads and mine the copper, and more recently, bodies Mexico and places Latin to cut the beef, lay the dry wall and drop the fries. This is the status qou. Hell, we are the global equivalent WalMart. A country founded as a big wholesale warehouse in a race to the bottom. Masses consuming .50 cent tires while they struggle to make minimum payments of 18% interest and go into bankruptcy when they can't pay for their $1000 medical bill. Sing while you slave!

Anyway, going to the PostOffice when trouble wakes up to send out lots of DVD goodies for the families-if we get time to burn some for friends, we will try. This was task enough. And a cheer up gift for RQ from back in the day. Heart Ya.

Looking forward to AuntieShel, even though she is already talkin' trash about my parenting skillz. Mad skills. Treated myself to a cool t-shirt on Ebay. "But I know karazay!"

Papa and cub got Peyton jerseys to show off this weekend. Yes, it is a sad household-but we take what we can get since hard core drinking and drugs are off the table for the next 20 years. But boy, will our 35 wedding anniversary party be a blowout. "I love my body....rrr rrr rrr rrrr, weeoooweeeooo." Right! That was a pretty bad techno reference if anyone gets that besides Gidget. okay. lets talk turkey. send more photos everyone so i can humiliate.

Countdown to RubDown

Yes, I am counting the days until middle big sister lands in Portland for a whole week. Sorry this is getting so far and few, etc. Chicken Pig is growing by leaps and bounds, is practically walking and I have been in a sort of haze this week about her emerging personality, etc.
Anyway, Auntie Shel will be here on Saturday night and will mostly likely give Soph and I some much needed TLC. Is that how you spell bath? Auntie Shel is famous for de-lousing me and making sure hair is removed from places it has been for months and a good scrubbing is had in places that need to be scrubbed. Sounds sorta kink, except it is a perilous job for a big sis.
All serious, I can not wait. I have been so lonesome sick for my family and Shel is always a bundle of love.
Burning the CDs of family fun and looking for a way to link some vid clips on this thing. Any ideas from anyone is much appr.
looks like the weather is getting interesting for everyone. Snow, tornados. Hell, we got 30 degrees and sunny? Go figure. okay.
lets get talking turkey and then onto the festivus season. papa got an early peyton jersey and soph is waiting on a UT jersey for peyton-all old school-so they can post up while the Colts go all the way this year. Yeah, i said it. okay. gotta get ready for indoor play madness at MOCC.
lots of love

Business As Usual

Thought yesterday was Monday. The Chicken Pig is now doing her best Daniel Day Lewis c. 'My Left Foot' and the SAHM handbook and mafia call that creeping. She has one leg folded in front, pulls a bit with her arms while the back leg sort of pushes off like some lame frog. If it wasn't so cute-it would be sad. She walks and runs much better and prefers it, but my back can not take being folding in half most of the day. She loves to patter through the house before her bath while Da chases her. It is a great way to run her down. She is running me down fo sho. More on the SAHM handbook and mafia later. I just got over my mom cruisin' phase and it does feel cheap and dirty. I am a bought and sold woman looking for companionship and yet am not good company. Baby Sing Along is 2-morrow and it is so far, so good. A little west coast hippie, but its for the babe, so i can dance and sway.

Been having that...where do we go from here conversation a bit last week and it always ends up with, we could stay here, we could go somewhere else. What are the pros and cons, etc. I think about a big west side chicago bungalo and seeing my family all the time ( a good thing) and then i think about the mountains, healthy living and being out west ( a good thing) and then we think about somewhere half way (why bother) somewhere totally new (TORONTO?) and it just goes full circle. Papa says he will interview at Rush to see if Chi-town is a possibility and sometimes I think he just wants to me demand we go there for all sorts of reasons so the pressure is off him for once. Family is what will ultimately keep us grounded and I think our egos can handle the blow of facing the middle ground of existence as oppossed to this far out west all alone reality we have here, but it seems like a lot to give up to get a lot in return.
This never gets easy. But as time ticks, we will eventually decide.
My cousin and his wife had a long hard labor this weekend and gave b. to a baby boy. I watched Soph's first week DVD the other night and it was the happiest, most emotional, most frightening, most empowering time of our life to date for sure. I hope my cousins the same. okay.
no politics for today, though i am loving the COLBERT REPORT. I cry every time the eagle close-up squawks into my living room. "Somebody get a bucket, I think I'm gonna truth."
It's like Fox News and all that drama personality rolled into one huge satire. Love it.
okay. no picture for today...

Working for the Weekend

Didn't sleep much last night. We moved the bed around and I was worried it would be hard on Chicken! Ha. I'm the one who was wide awake at 2am. I did think about lots of things to write and why, if for once, the baby was sleeping, I was not. This never levels out. Every day is something new in my mind or my body. This whole reproduction thing is a impossible to manage and maintain any sense of self or normalcy. I can't write or spell anymore or hold a five minute conversation. Did I get out of the wrong side this morning. Literally.
On a good note, I managed to read three pages of something last night and one of my favorite American citizen-scholars is featured in this week's The Nation (at least the one that just got to my door the other day)-it is good to see a small feature on him, even as he continues to grow old. Any guesses. Hint: This sometimes ex-pat lives in Ravello, Italy most of the time and in light of his privy status as a literary, cultural and political player from birth has much to say on most things American and otherwise. These days they aremostly fatalistic classical history references to the decline of the American Republic and the monster that is our Empire. I know you know.
The other question for the day is- what is new favorite children's program. It features an emerald isle pig who is always exclaiming the rated G version of an Irish expletive! Or at least that's my take on it! Each day I bounce between loving my new life and wondering where my old life has gone. Papa says this is the most important thing I'll ever do, and I admit, watching this little primate grow and develop has it's Goodall moments and having something that looks at you like it looks to you for all ques to what is and what isn't EVERYTHING has a Karl Rove feeling to it, but I am spiritually exhausted. I guess just today.
Looking forward to dinner with our pal, Dr. Mango Sidecar this evening and the UT NotreDame game tommorrow. Vols are working on a loosing season, so lets see if they can pull this off. Cooking some game grub and we may go crabbing on Sunday. Record crabs, Papa said.
Okay. this is rambled enough. This is all over the place. How about someone tell me a story.
This picture is stolen off another friend's blog some time back, but it makes me smile and I need one today.

Rainy Day Portland

Well, the rain has settled in for this week. Took the babe to her first Baby Sing Along class with fun music, instruments and a parachute. I think I was more excited than she was. Papa will be off next Thurs and can come along. He'll enjoy some time with the Chicken. Chicken is now sitting up in bed in her sleep, so we moved the bedroom around. I know all you non co-sleepers say, get that baby in a crib-but we, and she enjoy all the snuggles. Let me have fun with the first one. By time we get to baby number three or four, it'll be heating it's own bottle of water and crunching stale bread crumbs in the corner. I mean look at me.
But the Soph is getting soooo big. Opps. crying now. gotta run.
Looks like the sibling smack is getting pretty heavy. Leave it to those two to stir up trouble with my happy childhood memories. Why can't they just love for who I am? kidding. easy.

Thought I'd post the best Halloween costume evah. Santino and his mama. Gotta love 'em. She makes sure he sees pictures of all of us here in Portland so we don't seem so far away. After his makeup was on, she asked him who he was. He said.....uncle jason. priceless.

All Souls' Day

This is a little late, but I was commissioned by sisters plural to list 10 memories about our Halloweens together-boy were they amazing. We are German and women, so they were methodical and efficient. We hit the streets right after school let out-I guess more SAHMs in the 70's early 80's-and were gone until after 9pm easily. Pretty much the same route each year-up 85th place, knocking out the houses of people we long wondered about-Crazy Joe and the people with the son who had a basement rock band-weaving our way to more familiar and then less familiar territory.
My Portland pal T'RaySah says it is always raining and cold in Pdx in Halloween. Last week we had blue skies, balmy winds and lots of sun. Truly, in 6 days we are in a cloud of grey. I feel for the kids here. Yankee towns seems to get that Indian Summer ( is that offensive, like Columbus Day, Black Hawks or Seminoles Football?) and I have very few memories about bad weather while T/T-ing. Some wet leaves here and their, but all in all, doable.
So my first memory is a smell. M'Shell mentioned shaving cream fights in the park as one of her memories and b/c we were so behaved that is how we lived that aspect of the Halloween ritual. But for others, it was all out graffiti rock. Halloween smells like shaving cream. Barbarsol to be exact. Big red cans, then when they came out with lemon lime flavor, the neon green. It was a given, every street you turned down, the street signs, stop signs, people's cars-shaving cream. In fact, the warfare ritual included (I am a little fuzzy, again, we were never quite those good of holligans) ripping off some part of the top and inserting a needle and heating it (am i right) which does not sound very safe, to make the cream shoot out thin and far, instead of foamy short (mom, get your head out the gutter) It really was one of the biggest constants of Halloween.
Of course I have the memories of grandiose bounty and the trades that went on upstairs in the big front bedroom for days, and how stakes would change as days went by. Downstairs that night was mostly for sorting and counting (yes, that means you Jennifer) and it reminds me that raising kids is supposed to be about fun and being pretty laid back. I saw a few T/T'ers and they mostly had 3:1 parent ratios, lots of flash lights and even heard mention of "lets go home to eat dinner." Dinner? Dinner was a few pulls off your take to keep your sugar level up so you could cross the next busy street and hit neighborhoods where the kids didn't even go to the same school. Dinner my ass.
So, I guess this isn't a list, but I hope it hits close to 10 things. Seeing the schools hit with shaving cream made it feel like Escape from New York or The City of Lost Children. Having the liberty to knock on peoples' doors we had dreamed about getting closer to was straight up knocking on the porch door of Bo Radley....oh, those people have plastic covers on their couches, oh, their house smells like moth ball, oh, this house has some odd religious statue on a coffee table, that lady cooks with garlic. It fleshed these people out and made us all the more curious.
As for remembering costumes M'shell , yes, I was Dolly Parton in kindergarten circa 1978. I remeber having the balloons in my shirt and the toilet paper roll covered in tinfoil microphone. Even at that young age, I recall adults finding this rather humorous and thanks to Monty Python and Benny Hill, had a rather advanced sense of psuedo-sexual and cross dressing humor. You could never get away with that s**t today. Someone would call DCFS. I was a pirate and gypsy (we took tap and ballet at the park district as kids, so most costumes were black leotards at their core with some aspect of odd clothing layered on top) and one year a bunch of grapes. Grapes kept popping, and again, I was more leotard than balloons by the end of the day. Lastly, gum and pennies in the bottom of the plastic pumpkin after a few days and thoughts about how it would soon be Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Love you both, Drizella and Anastasia. Miss you alot. Gidget, thanks for keeping me in good spirits. T'RaySah, yes we live in the same city and yet, can not manage a date. We need an intervention. Dr. Dave, "don't you say hey to me you ugly gurl." Miss everyone.
okay, does this make up for being grumpy yesterday?
Sorry this pix os so small. B/c I do this in the few minutes the Chicken Pig sleeps, I never get time to really learn how to use this. Any small suggestions would help, like captions, getting pix in other places, L-Lu, I know you know how...let me know..
MamaDuck