Random stories

The other day I was leaving from work and had to wait on the elevator. I heard it ding and stood next to the doors waiting for them to open. Only they didn't open! After waiting a few seconds, I turned around and caught the elevator that actually did open right before it left the floor. Luckily, there was nobody on the elevator...

Could have been the same day, but I don't remember for sure, I was sitting in a teleconference listening to a guy from Switzerland telling us about their hyper-compressor and all the cool features it has. He got to one point in the presentation and said "eunuch". I was pretty sure he wasn't trying to say that the secret behind the amazing performance of their compressors was that they make them out of castrated boys, but it took me probably two full minutes and several "eunuchs" later to figure out he was saying "unique".

The other day right before we all headed upstairs for bed, Fellan turned to us and said that regular mattresses have springs and they cause pressure points which can make you toss and turn all night. But tempurpedic mattresses are made of foam and they don't make pressure points. (I'm not kidding, he basically regurgitated the entire commercial to us completely out of the blue.) We assured him that the IKEA mattress he sleeps on is made of foam and so he shouldn't have to worry about pressure points while sleeping.

He's a walking infomercial - he tells us about 5 hour energy drink, perfect push ups, rapid bath pet bathers, and on and on. I think that means we watch too much TV.

Last day of school

Today was the last day of school for both the kids. Fellan apparently cried and cried today because he's going to have a different teacher next year. He's such a sweet little boy - I think he wanted to give his teacher another hug before leaving, but she was apparently done with that, telling the kids, "No more hugs!" I guess she's happy the year is over too. ???

Anyway, the excitement at Marxo's school was that one of her little classmates fell off the monkey bars this morning and broke her arm! Yikes! Marxo spends nearly ALL her time on the monkey bars these days - she has callouses on her hands. (If I didn't know any better, I'd think that we were forcing her to do hard labor in the fields based on those little hands.) I had no idea that falling into that springy mulch stuff could still break an arm. It's a good thing my husband, a.k.a. "Safety Dad," wasn't there. Marxo would have been banned from the monkey bars for life if he would have actually witnessed the accident.

I finally got the Sears pictures put onto my USB key and brought them to work today. Here's a cute pic of the kids. At the time this was taken (last weekend) one was a kindergartener and one was 1st year pre-school. Now I have a first-grader and a 2nd year preschooler!

Idiocracy

To top off the Memorial Day weekend, we tried to get the kids to bed early Monday night and settled down for a nice evening of watching a movie we'd had on the DVR for months: Idiocracy.

We heard about it and thought it would be funny, and although it was funny in certain ways, it was still lacking in others. The gist of the movie is that the army freezes an "average Joe" for supposedly one year, but it ends up being 500 years. Society has, by that point, degraded into stupidity-fueled, violence-ladened reality TV - as in, pretty much everything is reality TV - and everyone is now super-stupid. (And, of course, the world is covered in trash.) The "average Joe" is now the smartest person in the world and he has to save the world from itself.

So, the funny and rather sad part is that I could totally see the US going down this path! But, the movie itself just wasn't very good. My husband actually fell asleep about 30 minutes before the end. When he woke up, he asked me what happened and I was able to summarize what happened in the end in one sentence, [**spoiler alert**] "They send Joe to Rehabilitation, a reality-TV show where all contestants get killed, but just before he gets killed, they realize the plants are growing, so they save him and he ends up becoming President." I just looked it up on Wikipedia and apparently it has "achieved a cult following". Egads. Another example of why I can see the US ending up like this.

Now, if you really want to see a great post-apocalyptic movie, I highly recommend WALL-E. The downfall of society is just so much cuter and easier to watch! And the hero of the movie is a loyal, hard-working, lovable robot. What's not to love about that?

Caught in the rain

We always check the radar before we go out for a family bike ride. We got caught once in a cold, cold rain with the kids when they were little and they didn't like it one bit.

And technically, we did check the radar on Sunday morning, too, except that we checked it at 7:15am and started out for our ride at around 10:00am. Do you think a couple of hours can really make that much difference? LOL!

We ended up getting caught in a huge thunderstorm only a little over half-way through our "quick ride". We did finally make it to an underpass - just as lightning was striking right across the bayou from us! - where we could huddle with the other stranded bicyclists who didn't check the weather before heading out.

The most amazing thing to me about the experience was that our kids didn't complain a single time. I was expecting to get an earful from Marxo because she didn't want to go for the bike ride in the first place and she always complains about being cold on bike rides - even when it's 80ºF outside!

Apparently, we subject the children to enough "adventures" that they've gotten to the point where they silently accept the fact that we're going to torture them throughout their childhood. (Well, there are many more examples of how we torture them, however, I guess I haven't blogged about them! I can't find another entry to which to link!)

Other than that, I guess we had a fairly uneventful Memorial Day weekend. We got some pictures taken of the kiddos at Sears on Saturday morning, had dinner with some friends on Sunday evening, and watched a million episodes of Scooby Doo. Or at least it seemed like it. :)

New Office - Old Bathroom

So, my company moved our office to a new building at the beginning of the year. However, when they started moving people over here, they suddenly realized that there wasn't enough room in the building to hold everyone, so some of us stayed behind at the old building. In the last month, however, they finished the build-out of the final floor (and apparently laid-off enough people) and moved my project over here. This has tripled my commute! It used to be 2 miles and now it's 6 miles. (I'm very spoiled. In Houston, a commute this short is completely unheard of.)

Anyway, this morning, they were doing some work on the women's bathroom of my floor, so I had to go down one floor to use the bathroom. As soon as I opened the door, I realized that they must have run out of money right as they got to the bathrooms of my floor. It's a different world down there - everything has motion sensors - even the soap dispenser. Hrmph, and to think we still have to flush our own toilets and pump the soap dispenser ourselves. Not to mention the fact that the soap dispenser is actually installed in the spot where the hot water handle would be! (it's one of the strangest things I've ever seen, actually) But anyway...

The good thing about moving to the new office building is that there is a workout facility in the basement and it's really nice, too. I lifted weights today for the second time since moving here, but I miss my weight-lifting buddy, Courtney. I'm the only female down there and the guys are just waaaayyyy too serious about building muscle-mass for me. I went in, changed clothes, did my little weights circuit (legs, arms, legs, sit-ups, arms), went back into the locker room, changed, and left. I think the guys were still on the same machine they were on when I started. They all stared at me when I left.

In other news, we spent nearly all of Mother's Day cleaning the kids' bedroom. About once every six months, we have to spend pretty much the entire weekend trying to clean and re-organize the kids' bedroom. We have a nanny that likes to "pick up" the house before she leaves every day, which sounds really nice, but her idea of picking up means that she finds the closest open container and puts everything in it. The kids' bedroom had three Pull-Up boxes full of junk that had been stuffed in there because, Hey Look! How handy, an open container to fill! Two times ago when I found a used Pull-Up in one of their toy storage boxes (which, I hate to say, made me so enraged that I said some pretty nasty things about the nanny in front of the kids...), we went through this ritual and I got out the label maker, labeling everything in their room. I was hoping that the kids might learn to read through osmosis and that the nanny might stop long enough to actually read the labels. Neither of those things happened.

So we went through the process again around Christmastime and again this past weekend. This time, however, I think we're going to take my mom's advice and designate something - maybe a laundry basket - as the place she can stuff things (during the organizing process I usually come up with one place in particular I'd like for her to stuff things) and then each night, we'll have to get better about forcing the kids to put away their toys. We'll see how that goes. I have a feeling that along with many other things we have tried to tell her, this concept just won't make it through to her. Good thing she's really great with the kids... :)

The other topic that's keeping me busy is trying to keep up with this Feingold thing. But that's a-whole-nother post of it's own. Hopefully soon.

Fellan is 6 today

Today is Fellan's 6th birthday. I can't believe he's gotten that old! He'll soon be off to college. (I included that sentence just for my mom because that's what she always says.)

He crashed on his skateboard last week on the way home from my birthday dinner and ended up with a huge scab above his upper lip. My parents and brother were in town for the weekend and my brother actually made him raise his arm at an angle in front of him with his hand straight in line with his arm (try this and see what you end up looking like...) and took a picture of him that way. Poor Fellan, he'll never be able to run for public office if that little gem ever gets out there.

His birthday party went well enough on Saturday, I guess. I think everyone had a good time, but when you have 30 little kids running, biking, and scootering all over the place, it's kind of hard to tell. Or maybe that's just the sign of a good party.

Anyway, I don't have any pictures to post of that, either, because the computer onto which we download our pictures is now at my husband's office and since he doesn't read my blog, he doesn't know that I would like to be posting pictures of these momentous events.

Tonight for his birthday, Fellan requested that we go out to eat at the same restaurant we went to last week. We're forbidding any skateboard-riding tonight because his lip has finally healed enough that he doesn't look like an infamous dictator.

We're hoping, also, that it doesn't rain any more tonight. We had a huge rainstorm this morning that dumped more than 10 inches on the west side of Houston and the bayou's are full to the brim. Around here, it wasn't so bad, but the streets were still flooded. I had to be really creative this morning to get to my office and not stall my car in a flooded street.

One woman from my office said that she got to the area here this morning just before 5am (which, to me, is a feat in and of itself!) and when she got to one flooded intersection, she plowed into it, not knowing it was so deep. Water came up over the hood of her car and onto her windshield. She said that she yelled some expletives, her car somehow stayed running, she made it through, and was able to get to the office. I think I'll go rub her head now and see if I can get some of that luck to transfer onto me.

Happy Birthday to me!

Today is my birthday - I'm not quite 40. Wow. I'm still old.

So, this morning, the husband got the kids up and they wished me a happy birthday this morning before I left for work. They gave me some ear rings that a friend of ours designs and makes. They're really cool. (of course, I did pick them out - but forgot about them, so I was still pleasantly surprised. Don't they say the mind is the first thing to go?...)

Anyway, I've been meaning to post about our camping trip from Easter weekend, but I still don't have the pictures to post, so I've been putting it off. The camping trip was very fun, even if I can't prove it with pictures. Well, both the kids ended up falling and hitting their heads in different places. Marxo still has a scab at her hairline from where she fell on the blacktop, but Fellan healed up quickly (as he always does). He had a busted lip and a huge chunk of skin taken out of his hand. Good times.

One week from today is Fellan's birthday, so we're having his birthday party this weekend. I couldn't go to sleep last night, thinking about all the things I still need to do for his birthday. I need to make a list so I don't forget everything. At lunch today, I'm going to order the cake, then I need to attempt to go order the balloons and find some goodie-bag chachke...

In other news, I've been actually enjoying being around Fellan for the past week. We started trying to follow the Feingold diet a little over a week ago and while I can't say that he has been a calm and focused child, I noticed that I was just enjoying being around him. Until last night, that is. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with him - he was crashing his toy cars, making loud, guttural noises and I was really doubting the effectiveness of this diet thing. I finally asked him what he ate for a snack in the afternoon. "Honey Nut Cheerios!" Ugh. I hadn't gotten around to taking them out of the pantry. I labeled everything that is acceptable with little tags that say "OK", but apparently in the week since I did that, the idea wore off in the babysitters head...

I'm hoping that he'll recover quickly from this infraction. I want all of us to have a good time for his birthday weekend.

I was right! For once...

Well, I said on Monday that I thought Fellan would lose his tooth that night and I was actually right. My husband had a meeting that night, so he missed the actual - only slightly bloody - event. (lucky him)

Mondays are very busy for us - the kids have tennis lessons and then swimming lessons and by the time we drive through Wendy's for some nuggets, get home and take a bath, it's well past their bedtime.

After his nuggets, Fellan decided to eat some animal crackers. As he was sitting there eating them, I could see that his tooth was moving. It was really grossing me out but it didn't seem to bother him in the slightest!

I headed upstairs to get the bath started while he finished his animal crackers and a few minutes later, he came running in saying, "I think my tooth fell out!" And he pulled it out of his mouth to show me. Sure enough, there was his first tooth, sitting in my hand. (It kind of gave me the willies.)

I expected him to be a little freaked out because it was bleeding a little, but Fellan was soooo excited. He just couldn't wait to get to school and tell his little girlfriend that he lost his tooth.

A little while later, he said, "I was eating my animal crackers and then I thought, 'Hey, animal crackers don't have seeds!'" I laughed out loud - I love to hear his thought process.

We, of course, put the tooth under his pillow and the toothfairy replace it later in the night with a Sacagewea dollar. What a momentous occasion.

Too much for one post

Well, it was another great weekend and I have almost too much to write for one post! The weather was amazing all weekend (except for that wind!) and we spent nearly the entire weekend outside. It's now the short time of the year that we get to enjoy the outdoors here in Houston before it becomes unbearably muggy and generally an annoying place to live, unless you love air conditioning. Set at 65ºF. Everywhere. Sigh... I'm never happy.

Except for this past weekend! It made me very happy! After dropping off the kids at school on Friday morning, my husband and I went for a bike ride and then stopped by the bagel shop on the way home for some brunch. It was a nice and relaxing morning.

That evening was our elementary school's fundraising auction. We signed up for several "events", which was kind of a nice change from having to actually buy something that we would then have to garage sale next year.

On Saturday morning, we had a tee ball game and then we generally relaxed for the rest of the day. We ended up going to the grocery store a couple of times and we're still out of milk this morning because both times, I forgot to get milk. We also went to Home Depot while we were out and about so that we could get a weed eater to do some yard work over at the husband's office on Sunday. And I finally convinced the husband to break down and get a new doorknob for the door that opens to our back deck. He ripped the original one off the door right after Hurricane Ike (the door jam was swollen) and he kept thinking he would somehow figure out how to fix it without buying a new one. Considering the fact that we still haven't gotten the tiles replaced around our fireplace three years after they fell off, I think this is a major victory - it only took us eight months to get a new doorknob! Yippee!

Yesterday, we went for a family bike ride and spent the rest of the day doing yard work at my husband's office. There's a little section of ground cover in front of his office between the sidewalk and the street, which is slowly being killed by all the dogs who like to pee in it. We got a "no pooping dogs" sign for the dead spot a couple of months ago, but it hasn't deterred them. So, as a last-ditch effort, we bought three azalea bushes at the neighborhood plant sale on Saturday (forgot about that when I was mentioning Saturday's events), which we planted in the area to try to further discourage them. We figure they'll either be killed by the dogs as well, or they'll be killed by the City of Houston when they begin construction on our street in the next year or so. Good thing we got to the plant sale just when they put the plants on sale for half price!

And we topped off the day by having dinner at Chuy's last night. Yum!!!

So, today, I'm again recovering from our weekend. My butt is sore from going on two bike rides this weekend (we haven't done that in so long!), my hands are sore from using the trimmers to trim all the vines and bushes, and my back is sore from attempting to bend at the same angle while trimming the bushes so that they would all be even.

Another great weekend, if you ask me. And now I'd better go down to the post office here in the building to see if they have stamp machines. Gotta get those Sacagewea's - I think tonight could be the night!

Still loose, getting looser

Remember Fellan's tooth that was loose? Well, it's still hanging in there, but it's gotten to the point that it's really just hanging there by a thread. I'm afraid that it's going to fall out before the tooth fairy makes sure to stock up on Sacagawea's.

I swallowed my first loose tooth. I was in kindergarten, too, and I refused to let anyone touch it. I woke up in the middle of the night in the process of swallowing my tooth. This caused my mother much concern and consternation. I remember her taking me to the doctor to make sure that was OK and it wasn't going to somehow hurt me. Of course, I was fine, but we never got that first tooth back. (the tooth fairy did visit me, though - luckily, my parents informed her of the situation)

Speaking of Fellan, lately he has been saying things that are just really cute. For instance, he was sitting on the couch just now, playing with his cars and he turned to my husband and said, "I just pulled out one of my eyebrow hairs. It was bothering me, so I pulled it out! ...pause... Daddy, can I have a Nutella hot dog? It's been hours since I ate anything!" I find this funny because not only does he feel the need to narrate his life to us, he also still has no idea of the concept of time, so saying that it's been hours since he ate is just funny to me.

The other day at breakfast, Marxo asked for some water. Here's the exchange that took place between my husband, Marxo, and Fellan-
M: Daddy, would you get me some water, please?
H: Certainly
M: Daddy... it's all wet
H: It's just water, it'll dry
M: (eye roll) Daddy, I want it dry right now!
H: (laughing, laughing, drying - placed it back on table with a sigh)
F: Your wish is my command, princess. (with perfect "servant" inflection)

I was happy to hear that Fellan is learning some sarcasm after living with me for so many years. :)