mallrats

S had a great time running around the Bicentennial Mall this morning. For those of you not in the know, which should be about 98% of you, the Nashville Farmer's Market sits just down the hill from the state capitol building. In 1996, the state built the Bicentennial Mall (aka Bicentennial State Park) to honor...you guessed it...the state's 200th birthday. The market sits right alongside the mall, which is great for giving you a place to walk around and enjoy the sunshine. TMI?

Either way, S and I played on the mall for awhile after procuring a few quarts of locally-grown berries and some bean plants. Then we had lunch from Jamaica Way, a little cafe at the market. Holy Moly. It was good. S and I had barbecued portobello mushrooms, sweet potatoes with pineapple, green beans, and a johnny cake. I have never liked mushrooms. Ever. I would eat these suckers every single day. I will now be trying all kinds of portobello mushroom dishes. Consider that a warning, M. For the record, the sweet potato/pineapple combination was a little too sweet. I wouldn't recommend that, though S would vehemently disagree as she gobbled them up.

I'm out. S should be waking up any minute.

munchkin updates

So, I've mostly been ridiculing my house on my blog lately, and letting everyone know how much I am not accomplishing, so I thought I'd take a break from all the negativity to give some updates on S. Enjoy:

• She has four molars, which are great traps for her unsalted pretzels (Snyders makes them if anyone is interested.)
• She can officially climb onto furniture. (She started climbing into rocking chairs about a week ago, but she made it onto the couch on her own yesterday as she was trying desperately to get to Feathernester's iced coffee.)
• She can say Elmo, and she does every single time she sees him. (aka: constantly when we are in stores as that little booger is everywhere.)
• She is talking a lot. Her favorite words are daddy, mama, Lily, Abbe (my cousin), bananas, apple, read, and open.
• She slept in a cloth diaper for the first time last night, she's been awake and whining since 5:30. Cloth diapers may stay daytime diapers.
• I can't seem to interest her in saying Obama. I don't think she's interested in politics.
• She loves to dance.
• She loves to walk on her tiptoes and on her knees.
• She strolls her dolls around in a play stroller and feeds them things from her kitchen.
• She gets pissed if she tries to feed you (play food or real food) and you refuse.
• She'll tell you what she's doing wrong. (Like not sitting on her bottom on the sofa.)
• She is wearing size 18-24M clothes on a good day. We're already sporting some 2T's. She's not even 16M yet. She is a big, healthy baby.
• Strawberries are her official new favorite food. Her face is pretty much constantly stained red.
  

While there is a lot more than that going on with the munchkin these days, that's all I really feel like typing. I did get Little Pea and Little Hoot yesterday, and I am in love with both books. I highly recommend them.

I'm out, peeps. S and I are going to the farmer's market in Nashville this morning as she has eaten us out of fruit since Friday's grocery trip, and I know that strawberries have made their debut at the market per their newsletter last week. We're all over that one!! Besides, my granddaddy wants me to pick up TWO HUNDRED red sweet potato plants if they have them. I'm not entirely sure where he thinks I'd put 200 plants, but I'll get him a few dozen if they've got them.

needing a bigger bubble

Oh, where to begin? I had three goals this weekend. Three. Get my new blueberry bushes and the rosebush into the ground. Get the porch swings off the floor of the porch. Get the ball rolling on the building of our deck by meeting with some company called Decks Unlimited. A fourth goal was added at the last minute: address 200 wedding invitations in brown ink that must be found at an obscure art supply store in downtown Nashville. My goals were not met. The bushes are still in their plastic containers on the back stoop. The swings are still sitting on the porch despite M and Mr. Feathernester's best efforts. Decks Unlimited never showed up. Never called.

The wedding invitations, however, are safely at the FedEx drop. Go figure. I achieved someone else's goal. That's neither here nor there.

The porch swings are proving to be quite an issue. Our entire house got new siding in the remodel, and the porch ceiling is no exception. The old wooden ceiling just got covered. That creates a problem when you're trying to find a support to hold up two five-foot porch swings. A major problem. Plus, we have no access to the space above the porch, so M and D are really stumped. An answer must be found, though. It just must. I mean, read my stupid Ouiser profile. My lifelong ambition is to be old on a porch swing. One of the reasons I fell in love with this house when I saw it was the porch. I know that M realizes that begging Charlotte Hardware to take the swings back isn't really an option. I know that he knows that this is important to me. I just hope there's an answer that doesn't involve ripping out the ceiling of the front porch. Any ideas??

Beyond the porch swing, we continue to have bathroom issues, and I am afraid that I may be found guilty of aggravated assault if the contractor doesn't properly finish my bathroom tomorrow. I am seriously about to snap. M is not far behind.

Send some happy house thoughts our way if you've got any. Feathernester, you're excused from this request, and if I've got any excess happy house thoughts, I'll send them your way.

Oh, I would like to give a green shout out to G. He's harvesting rainwater. Without a hundred dollar barrel. Way to be green...and still have some green.
I'm out, peeps.

put it in a friggin' bubble

So, my friend A in Lexington taught me this lovely little phrase, "put it in a bubble, and let it go." As in, quit whining/complaining/moping/obsessing over whatever is bothering you. Just let it go. M even makes me do hand motions. Several of you have seen me do this.

I am not so good at it. In fact, I am the type of person to let things fester.

Fester, fester, fester. Rot, rot, rot. (Anyone out there seen French Kiss with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline?)

What's all this about, you ask. The stupid ticket I got a couple of hours ago. Rolling through a stop sign. Really, I'm sure I probably did pull a stoptional. But, really? I'm tooling around in my hybrid with my adorable child safely buckled into her carseat and my Aunt Mel smiling politely beside me heading to friggin' Kmart on a Wednesday. I'm being pleasant...answering all of Mr. Police Officer's questions about how my hybrid vehicle works...explaining that I actually get better city mileage than highway...blah, blah. I was prepared for him to bring me the ticket. Okay, I get that I disobeyed the laws of the traffic gods. I'm thinking something in the neighborhood of fifty bucks. Maybe sixty. Definitely not $137. I guess I now know how the City of Dickson stays afloat in these times of financial want.

Anyway, I'm growing more and more annoyed at the situation every minute. I just told M about it on the phone, and as I explained that I could probably get it dismissed in court or by going to traffic school, he calmly just said, "or you could just pay it." God bless my husband. While the recalcitrant twenty-something in me wants to do everything in my power to keep that 137 bucks in my bank account, the mature mama in me knows that my husband is probably right. Besides, writing the check is sort of like letting go of the bubble.

We'll see if I can.

I'm out. I'm going to alphabetize and arrange all of our CDs into the case I bought at Kmart.

sticker shock

So, the continued greening of the Ouiser family is forcing the continued de-greening of the Ouiser family's bank accounts. I realized last week that I buy organic milk but all our other dairy products were still just the conventional stuff. What's up with that? So, the only cheese I bought at the grocery store this week was organic string cheese for M and S. We've still got cheese here that has to be eaten before I can really start switching us over. Just so you know, I must be really committed to greening things up around here (hubby, too) because we are tight-wads. Seriously. I paid the extra money for the cheese, but I just couldn't bite the bullet this time and spring for the organic butter. Baby steps...I'm not ready for $5 butter. I felt pretty good about our little grocery trip, though, as our small town Kroger has expanded its crazy hippie section, so I can now buy our recycled toilet paper, 7th Generation baby wipes, and all of our cleaning products right here in town. No internet orders. No special trips to Nashville. Okay, that's not entirely true, I will still use Method floor cleaners, and I still have to get those from somewhere other than here. Maybe Lowe's will expand their Method selection beyond hand soaps. A green girl can dream, right?

Beyond that, it's been a busy week full of poop here. S has basically had major intestinal distress since I got home from New York. She spent most of the past week on the BRAT diet, and we let her have regular food yesterday, which led to the largest blowout to date. Poor kid woke up this morning soaked in poop. Not covered, soaked. She had a very thorough bath at 7am. Now sweet L is sick, too, so I can't imagine there will be a lot of Ouier/Feathernester hanging out this weekend. Fingers crossed for poop and puke free weekends here in DC.

I'm out, peeps. I'm going to handwash some plastic containers because the Ouisers no longer put plastic in the dishwasher because I don't want to leech BPA into the water supply and cause genetic mutations in fish. I have to stop watching National Geographic shows. And, for the record, we're still trying to phase plastics out altogether to really eliminate the problem. In fact, I ordered Sigg bottles yesterday. I love the one I got for myself. M's is also crazy awesome...though decidedly more conservative than mine. Ha.
Have a great weekend.

FIVE SENSES FRIDAY
Sight: S's face when she finally climbed into the rocking chair on her own

Sound: new Jack Johnson

Smell: Burt's Bees baby lotion

Touch: S sleeping on my chest

Taste: cranberry oatmeal cookies I just made

mid-day pick-me-up

Scarlet Lily posed the brilliant question recently: if you could have any job in the world (even a made-up one) what would it be? I was, as usual, completely indecisive, leaving a handful of options in the comment section. Mostly, I couldn't commit to one answer because I was incapable of settling on a made-up vocation, choosing instead to list every conceivable real job I might want. Either way, my made-up occupation was "professional chiller-outer." Huh? I know. I described it as having musicians play gigs in my backyard, so I could chill out and drink wine or beer all afternoon while enjoying live tunes. The number one musician that I'd like to have playing in my backyard is Jack Johnson. While he's not exactly my favorite musician, I think that he is definitely chilling out material, and he's pretty easy on the eyes, too. So...to sum it all up, I thought some of you might need a little mid-day pick me up.

Here it is.
Now imagine that you're in my backyard, sipping a nice, cold Shiner Bock, enjoying the breezy, sunny afternoon. I don't know about you, but my imagination is pretty much in heaven right now.

happy old timers day

In most civilized parts of the world, the first Saturday in May is Derby Day. Not here. Today is Old Timers Day, and the Ouiser clan was out in full force with the Feather Nester peeps for the parade this morning. Here are some pictures from the festivities. I've got some really good pictures of Feather Nester's family, too, but I thought she might want to share those...

Happy First Saturday of May...whether you're celebrating the ponies or the geriatrics.

I think D went across the street 3 times for sausage biscuits.

The crowd.

Playing with padre.

Walking down Main Street with Aunt Mel.

Watching the parade. She loved the horses.

The Ouiser peeps.

one sense friday

This is Old Timer's Weekend in DC. (It's the local festival...because every small town in the south has a festival.) The church across the street is barbecuing chickens and selling them over the weekend to benefit Relay for Life. So, S and I got home from my daddy's this afternoon to the unbelievably delicious smell of barbecue chicken. It is so mind-numbingly glorious that it reminds me of Memphis when you're walking down the alley to The Rendezvous (once you get up-wind of the dumpster). It's like heaven is in the churchyard across the street.

In honor of the heavenly aroma, I declare this ONE SENSE FRIDAY. My other senses can't even come up with anything adequately comparable this week.

Happy Weekending, folks. I'm out.

biz's beat of the day

So S is a rapper now. Our new favorite show to watch (correction: the children's show that I like to watch) is Yo Gabba Gabba! We occasionally caught it in Lexington, but a combination of one-nap-a-day and the blessed central time zone means we get to see it most days now. I like it because there is lots and lots of dancing, which S loves, and we get to parade around the living room acting silly right before lunch. Anyway, the show was somehow developed by Biz Markie, and there is a segment called "Biz's Beat of the Day," which strangely enough is not part of the program every day despite the moniker. Today, I was rapping right along with Biz (go ahead and create your mental picture, and go ahead and laugh, too). Then S walked away making some random noises that I slowly realized were her attempts at rapping along. It was hysterical. Completely and utterly hysterical.

Of course, she has been increasingly funny lately as her vocabulary continues to expand. I guess we're approaching that time when she'll start picking up something like a dozen words every day. We aren't there yet, but she is trying to say almost every word she hears now. We spend hours every day looking through magazines and naming things, and the girls at the nursery at the gym think it's great fun to think of words for her to say. She's going to be talking my ear off pretty soon. She's also started mimicking a lot of the things we do. Like...pulling weeds. M and I were pulling weeds in the backyard after dinner last evening, and we throw the weeds into a big box (because what the bejesus are we supposed to do with them??) after we pull them. I started noticing that S was walking back and forth to the box a lot, so I started watching her, and I realized that she was carrying little fistfuls of grass to the box and throwing them in. It was great. She also cleans and throws things into the garbage can now (poor kid can't reach the recycle bins), so she's picking up on a lot of things that we do around here. It's really fun to watch.

Beyond the adventures of S, I'm still sitting on all of the plants for my garden. Our dirt is in such bad shape that I can't really take care of the prep work alone, so I'll have to wait until M and I have some time to work on it together. My tomato plants are starting to scream for some space to grow, but they'll be alright a little longer. My basil, which I have to start from seed because we require a lot of basil, is coming up nicely, and I have about thirty plants coming up in the little peat pods. It makes me so happy. Especially when I see the $6 price tag on the basil pesto at the store. We've been having spinach pesto lately, though, so we won't be headed to the poor house just yet. Don't worry. I also found this super great website today. I'm looking forward to checking it out a bit more.

Alright, I'm out. I promised my uncle that I would make him whole wheat pizza dough today, and I need to get the show on the road. Here are some new pictures of the girl. Later, peeps.