I took a linguistics class in college. I loved it. The highlight being that I learned to write messages to my roommates on the message board using all the phonetic sounds and symbols. I am sure they were very appreciative.
:: all of these words : kutless :: with a little love from JD and Turk ::
:: ikea opening soon near me :: this counter storage unit :: these mirrors for my new red bathroom ::these salt + pepper shakers :: this stair storage :: this watch ::
This post contains actual swear words, not derivatives of or rhyming words, but ACTUAL swear words.
A friend came over today to teach me to clean. The bathroom is nice and clean and now there are cheerios and popcorn smashed on every other surface. Her daughter spilled baking soda in me bed. Her son hit Gentry and my friend did nothing about it. Gentry cried the entire time. Her daughter sucked on both our toothbrushes. I cannot find anything because everything has been rearranged. No one bled blood though.
To this, jj replied:
Doc: Well, bring her along. This concerns her too.
Marty: Wait a minute, Doc. What are you talking about? What happens to us in the future? What do we become assholes or something?
Doc: No no no no no, Marty, both you and Jennifer turn out fine. It's your kids, Marty, something has got to be done about your kids.
I think it finally sunk into today, as the boy went flying from his stroller onto the ground smacking his elbow and forehead on the sidewalk, that I am the mother of a rough and tumble little boy. And that yesterday was probably not our last trip to the emergency room. Since it was his second for the year I am hoping it is the last for the year, or at least a little while.
Here's to having little boys and Elmo band aids making things better.
Don't touch that it is VERY fragile. Put that back. Put it back. Put it down. Don't throw things. Don't throw them at me. Stop running. Don't hit me. Don't hit the wall. Don't hit.
Get the screwdriver out of your nose. Where did you get a screwdriver? You may not have a screwdriver with your big plate of air for lunch. Where did you get a screwdriver, I thought I put it away with the handgun and the machete. If you eat lunch, I will let you play with a screwdriver or possibly a small hand held rake or a really sharp knife. Those are the best sort of bribes, the ones with a little danger involved.
Done with dinner. Fine. Go play with your toys. The big plate of air has given him a jump in energy and he starts his evening of swimming laps in the kitchen. That is where the longest stretch of virgin terrain exists.
As I am about to leave for my very favorite book club, the club that I faithfully attend. He falls and splits his lip open and gets a bloody nose. His lip swells to a quarter the size of his head and there is blood. The kind of blood that makes me a little woozy and the kind that we don't like to get on the carpet.
What is that you say? You have a dagger in your heart? Well get off the carpet, I am not going to be paying THAT carpet cleaning bill.
A series of calls ensue to mothers, doctors and ask a nurse; which I really appreciate being there at all hours of the day to ask my first time mother insane questions of. Does he need stitches? Of course no one knows with out having a look at him and so we head up to Primary Children's Medical Center. Where they tell us that they don't put stitches in the mouth unless you have bitten off your tongue or only bitten it off half way. This is good to know.
We head home with the most expensive sprite, stickers and neosporin samples on the planet. For the rest of the night we should be safe. Maybe he is hiding the screwdrivers in his bed.
I never feel like I am in an exotic local. I usually feel like Utah, blaaaaaaaaah. Why on Earth if you were living any where else, Why would you come here?
Then I am reminded of the beauty that I live in.
I love waking up and seeing the suns rays shooting over the mountains into the clouds.
I love how you can smell winter coming and feel crispness in the air before fall actually arrives.
I love the way everything, almost over night, turns from icky gray and sludge to green grass and peaking new tulips.
I love being so close to the mountains I can run in them, they are that close to me.
I love the way the sun shines and warms me.
So Italy and Japan and Hawaii are all exotic to me, but I love where I am. I like returning to my home and to the comfort I have always known. I am surrounded by beauty and most days I forget.
I found some old journals over the weekend. It reminded me of my old sexcapades, and by sexcapades I mean, there was none. But I did talk about each and every boy that I ever dated and kissed. I am really embarrassed by them and considering throwing them away. I don't want my kids to find these and realize what a hussy I was, and by hussy I mean hussy. Dang it.
I also found them incredibly irresistible reads. I could not put them down. I was truly fascinated by my old self and the person that I was. There were also times that I was so depressed. It made me sad for that person.
You know e.e.cummings, this was my sad attempt at poetry. I think it was very telling. There were journal entries from when I was a child. It made me want to be a better parent. I want to be remembered well.
I work out everyday except Sunday, and even then I try to get a walk in.
This is how it works. jj gets up at 7:00 and works out. I get up and 6:30 and read and go potty. When he gets home on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday I go work out at the local gym. When I get home he leaves for work. On Tuesday and Friday I do the video Slim Physiqueand sometimes a 15-minute segment from I Want That Body.On Saturday I do Get Ripped 1000.It is a major workout that is sure to make you sore.
On Monday, Wednesday and Thursday I do these workouts. I rotate. I ripped these out of Self Magazine a few years ago and have been doing them for about a year. I am impressed with how I look, if you can call it that. I don't like my rear, I have flabbish arms. I have a hard time controlling the intake of food, but I feel like I am really fit and I am proud of what I look like. I would wear a bikini to the splash pool if I had the guts to be seen in one.
Playing trains. Notice King Tut in the lower corner. My, my, my. Who do we have here? This guy looks so much like my HOA president, we have named him to match and Gentry now calls him his name.
:: this guy :: :: flowers from this guy :: petal pots he made while in college :: :: strawberries :: :: orange puree from The Sneaky Chef:: :: this flickr set :: this danish blog, beauty doesn't have a language ::
As many of you know I am NOT pregnant, nor do I want to be anytime soon. In fact, that is one part of life I would like to skip completely from now on. However, I feel like there is another little person that needs to be added to our family. I feel guilty because I do not let myself get pregnant, and there are so many people who cannot get pregnant and would give anything to be able to do it.
I hate the person that I turn into for six month before the baby is due and a year after. I love the kid. I think he is amazing. I don't trust myself to be ok with a baby that I make. I understand the thoughts that go through extreme post-partum mothers, I do not excuse it, but I empathize. I have had awful thoughts before, I don't want to expound. It makes me feel awful.
I think if a baby was given to me now, in my current state of mind, I would be fine. We could all be happy. I would not have to have someone come and check on me everyday. I would not have to abandoned my children at the neighbors while I try to figure out how to escape my life. If I was given a child today I would adapt, I would love it. I would not go crazy.
While I was pregnant with Gentry I tried to escape. I would lie in the tub all day long, crying and trying to figure out what jj was going to do with an infant and without me. I was not going to kill myself, just leave. When it got to be 4 in the afternoon I would get out of the tub and put myself together and pretend I had been productive.
I did not tell jj about all this until about a year after. I was so ashamed. I should have been on some sort of medication and next time I will do it better. If there ever is a next time of being pregnant.
The more I think about it, the more I think I want to adopt. I don't know if we ever will, maybe medication would do the trick. I am not yet ready to try. I like our life the way it is now and I still remember the pain that I felt from having a baby. Not the physical pain, but the pain of being sad and anxious.
As I have mentioned before, I have a son who is beyond picky with his eating. I have a really hard time getting him to eat anything that is not corn chips or fruit. He usually has big plates of air for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I received The Sneaky Chef in the mail on Friday. I have made three recipes from it and the boy has eaten them all. He has had garbonzo beans, avacado, wheat germ, spinach, and blueberries all cleverly disguised in foods he loves. It is amazing.
These are brownies that have spinach, blueberries and lots of good grains in them. I was very skeptical of them, but they are actually quite good. I do feel like they need frosting, but that would kind of defeat the semi-healthiness of them. By semi, I mean that they still have chocolate and sugar in them, but a lot of the sweetness comes from blueberries. There is actually very little sugar and you cannot taste the spinach. I would say this is 5-star recipe and I think that this is going to be my brownies of choice from now on.
We got up early and went for a hike with my mom and her boyfriend and Tazia. The hike was Adam's Peak and it is near Cherry Hill, is that Ogden? Maybe Layton. Anyway, I carried Gentry in the pack on the way up. He was really cute and kept yelling to everyone. "Keep going." "Big rocks." "REALLY BIG ROCKS!" One time he yelled to my mom and asked what she was doing, she told him that she was hiking. She asked him what he was doing, he said, "I'm a backpack." At the top of the hike we sat and ate and let Gentry play around a little bit, but it was really steep and there was a river right next to us. One the way back down, jj carried Gentry. jj is a mountain goat. He practically ran down the mountain, like Cronk with Yzma (eezma) on his back. Spinach puffs anyone. He practically had his own theme music.
Later we had friends come over to eat dinner and die eggs. That was fun. They have a cute little girl a year younger than Gentry. They fought and played and played and fought. Normal kids. Gentry did most of the fighting, she just wanted to follow him around and do what he was doing. We made bunny eggs. It was Martha's idea. Peek-a-boo. Easter baskets with lots of treats from the Asian Market. Happy Easter
I saw an accident on the freeway today. It was right behind me. I think it was one of those dart in and out of traffic drivers and they clipped the front edge of one car, flipped around and got hit on the front of the passengers side. But I was driving away and I did not stop. I would not have been any help anyway.
Lately when bad things happen I get sick to my stomach. When I cut my finger I had to lie down for a while and I could not look at it for two days after without getting nauseas. The same thing happened today, my stomach tightened up and turned into a ball of nerves.
It made me think of how blessed I am to be safe and protected so much of the time. I am grateful for being watched over.
:: remembering one year ago :: :: and two years ago :: :: learning to be an adult :: trying to be a good and smart parent ::
:: pulling out the summer clothes :: basking the the just warm enough sun :: leaving the windows open :: digging :: finding rocks and sticks all over the house that little hands have brought in ::
:: singing about alligators :: ernie on the moon :: itsy bitsy spider :: bumble bee :: rubber ducky ::
:: new friends for me and gentry :: watching to little bodies run around the yard ::
In jj's lunch there is edemame with a small container of soy sauce, sushi pizza, dried mangoes and Carob Fudge that is to die for, and a sliced apple.
Mr. Bento is a Japanese lunch box. It comes from the Japanese way a cooking and compartmentalizing different foods. You can view here, here and here.
Mr. Bento is especially nice because it has four different containers that you put in a larger stainless steal container. We put the stainless steal container in the fridge over night and it keeps the food that we put in it cold all day long. It also makes you feel very on top of things to have lunch prepared the night before, you can just grab it and run out the door. The smaller containers each have different purposes, there is the rice container, the liquid container with a rubber ring around it to keep things in or out, and then two smaller container for what ever else you would like.
We initially only bought one for jj, but I go out occasionaly and felt left out. So we got me one also. Usually jj just rotates between the two. When I need one I fill it with food for me and Gentry to take. The other day we went to Discovery Gateway, up where they have the helicopter on the deck we pulled it out and ate it. I had a spinach salad with raisins, cashews and blue cheese dressing. Gentry had his usual of corn chips and salsa. We shared an orange and some mango slices and were ready to go and play some more. It was also nice because it fit in the backpack that I had with me and I did not have to pay the astronomical McDonald's prices for the food that was in the museum. The food was also nice and cold, like I had just gotten it out of the fridge.
We are a bento family, always on the lookout for good things to fill our bentos with. You can see what people are doing with their Mr. Bento's here.
Carob Fudge (from Simple Foods For the Pack) 1 cup sunflower seeds 2 tablespoons carob powder (I just used cocoa powder) 2 tablespoons honey 1 tablespoon water
Put seeds in a food processor and grind to a powder. Add remaining ingredients and blend well. Store in a lidded container.
:: when we asked him what she was doing, he said she was loving :: :: spending time in Logan :: taking relaxing walks while holding little hands or bodies ::
:: driving home in a misty blue storm :: :: ikebana flower arranging :: this one and this one also ::
and sometimes a 15-minute segment from
On Saturday I do 
It is a major workout that is sure to make you sore.
::
