holy boxes, batman.

So, we're here. Correction: Wii're here. (Meaning we've moved in and acquired a Wii thanks to G!!)

Everything is still a bit of a disaster. We're having all sorts of trouble with the showers, but I'm hoping it's all sorted out by this afternoon. Just know that you should never take hot showers for granted. While I don't think I ever have, I assure you I won't now. Our new driveway was poured on Tuesday, and we keep admiring it from the window. We aren't supposed to drive on it until next Tuesday. Our storage shed will be started tomorrow, and that will be great as we can get all the garage/storage boxes out of the guest room and out of Feathernester's garage. Once that's done, it will seem a lot more like home. I'm not good at living in messiness. I get panicky, and M can attest to the fact that I've been in a wad for about a week now. My kitchen is pretty well put together, though, and that helps. I've even been able to make dinner a few times...though nothing fancy or interesting.

We've also got to figure out the TV situation...we had these great, huge built-ins in the Lexington house, which means we have nowhere to put our TV in the living room here. Right now, our end tables are pushed together and covered with a red gingham sheet, proudly holding up the behemoth boob tube. Our dilemma in finding a suitable TV-holding solution is that we didn't get a flat-panel TV and now we can't find anything big enough to hold the sucker...or strong enough to support the weight. Plus, we have to keep the components away from the munchkin, who likes to push any and all buttons. We've thought about having built-ins done again, but I'm going to check out a furniture store tomorrow before we make any decisions. Unfortunately, we don't really have forever to make this decision as everything else in the family room is on hold until we get this figured out. I guess I'm doing alright if that's my biggest problem, eh?

Anyway, the girl is waking up, and I'm about to cart her to Columbia to spend a couple of days at my dad's. This will be the second time she's spent the night away from us since we got here. Poor kid thinks we're abandoning her. I just want everything to get put away and be safe for her and Otis, and I can't do that with both of them under my feet all the livelong day.

I'm out, peeps. Happy Thursday...and GO TIGERS...I've picked them to win it all!!

home skillet

I just laughed out loud at one line from MSN's Oscar recap. Allow me to share: "This is the Oscars, Home Skillet." It's not even important what the quotation refers to. The important thing is that somewhere out there, someone who gets paid to write actually typed "home skillet." It has cracked me up, and I feel certain that I will start overusing the how-white-are-you phrase immediately. I won't be able to help myself.

Beyond that, not much excitement here. S and I got home yesterday around lunchtime. We were supposed to be home Friday, but the trip was a complete pain in the rear and was dragged out a couple of extra days. I won't even bore you with the details. Besides, I'm not sure my blood pressure can handle a recap. I might blow a gasket.

Now that we're home, packing must resume. I started working more on the kitchen yesterday afternoon, and I hope to get the bathrooms finished up this evening (minus the very bare essentials, of course). S's room is the only room that is virtually untouched, but I have taken all of her pictures off the walls and all of the knick-knacks off the shelves. I haven't even begun to pack her dresser, though, and I am sure it will be one of the last projects I tackle. The guest room is still a disaster, too, and I am trying to decide if there's a way I can just burn it all without doing so much damage that the new owners would notice. Big, smoldering, gaping hole on the front of the house? No problem. That could work.

I'm punchy. Can you tell? Have a great Monday afternoon, peeps. I'm out.

two days and counting

My daughter is 363 days old today. In two days she's eligible for full-on dairy privileges. I actually gave her a couple of teaspoons of my milk this morning. So far, so good. I don't actually anticipate any problems as the kid has been scarfing yogurt and cheese for ages. Friday means milk, though, and I'm pretty excited about it. I've already (sort of) started the weaning process, and she's not really liking it. She had been nursing when she woke up in the morning and before bed, plus before and after naps...only it was sort of half-hearted for the nap time feedings. I started eliminating the "after the afternoon nap" feeding last week, and S is not happy about it. In hindsight, eliminating the before nap feeding would've been easier. Live and learn. Anyway, we'll keep plugging away at it, and I hope I'm able to cut one feeding a week until we're mama-milk free. So, I guess we're about a month and a half away from that goal.

Of course, I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not to go through this right before we move or to wait. Part of me thinks it would be better to have her used to not nursing before we move...you know, one less thing to change once we're moved. The other part of me thinks the transition of the move would be easier on her if she was still nursing. If every single aspect of her routine was the same and only the geography changed it might be less jarring...

I have no idea what to do here. I guess I could call the pediatrician and ask for his recommendation. Part of me is selfish and doesn't want to wait two more months to start the process. Besides, Scarlet Lily is having a party in late April, and I want S to be completely adjusted to non-nursing before I go. I don't want to be in the middle of weaning her and then "abandon" her for a weekend. That seems like it would be really bad for both of us. I can just imagine me being a real party animal while my milk is drying up. Sorry for the image burned into the brains of the men at M's office. You all know that you're reading a chick blog...you should be prepared for these things.

Happy Wednesday, peeps. I've got to go make some lunch.

so much to say

I'm on one of my green kicks today. I think it's mostly because we got the latest Organic Gardening in the mail yesterday, and I've been poring over its pages. We just started getting it last month, and I'm so happy that M noticed it in the "what magazines are available from this school fundraiser" brochure as I was just about to sign up for Cottage Living, which I love but don't need. Besides, my Aunt Mel gets it, and she's about to live about ten doors down. No need for both if us to subscribe to it, right? Of course, I do harbor a little guilt over subscribing to another magazine at all, but I really love the magazines that we get right now (the too long list includes Southern Living, Cooking Light, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Parents, Parenting, National Geographic, and now Organic Gardening). That's a lot of paper. In our defense, we ordered all of them for school fundraisers, except the two that are gifts every year. At least we recycle all of them, right? Please tell me that makes it okay. Anyway...

I'm really excited about things for the new house. I really wish that we'd gotten into the whole thing before the house was done so we could've gotten a solar-powered water heater, but the one in the house will give out someday, and when that day comes, we'll see what we can do. For now, we'll do what we can. I've been looking into how to landscape around your home to maximize your home's energy efficiency and minimize the need for watering the lawn. I'm really, really, really excited about getting to do some of these things. First and foremost, I'll finally get rain barrels, and I am super, super excited about that. I'd also like to take all the grass out of the tiny front lawn and plant it in a groundcover plant that doesn't have to be mowed. Less energy wasted there. I know that M has been looking at electric lawnmowers, too, as we will still have a lawn that requires mowing out back. Then there's the clothesline that I'll put up, and I'd like to add some solar-powered lights to the exterior of the house. There's just so much to be done, and I can't wait to get started. If anyone has any great ideas, pass them along. Oh, and I'm starting to think about seeds for the garden, if anyone has a no-fail supplier, let me know. (Morton Monkey Mama and MoWask, I'm pretty much talking to you guys.)

Oh, how I wish it was spring. I'm ready to play outside and grow some stuff.

And, since I missed it yesterday:
FIVE SENSES FRIDAY
Sight: a dust-free living room, an empty laundry hamper, the compost pile
Sound: S laughing when Otis licks her tummy
Smell: walking into the house when it smells like food
Touch: S hugs
Taste: fresh blueberry muffins, homemade polenta (it was so good and surprisingly easy)

And...(how many ands are there??)...here are some pictures from last week, as promised.

art vomit

My friend P's blog has a great title. This mosaic. I was just thinking about it and how brilliant it is and how life is a big mosaic of all of your loves and experiences and whatnot. Life is art. What a lovely thought. My life, however, would be quite a disastrous work of art right now. It would look like Picasso and Dali upchucked on canvas and then let Jackson Pollack do his thing with the results. Not a pretty picture.

Things just seem so insane right now, but nothing is actually happening. It's a "hurry up and wait" situation. There is so much on the horizon but instead of moving toward the horizon, I feel like we're stuck on a hamster wheel. Cruel, cruel hamster wheel. I think several of you picked up on the fact that the P family is getting ready to make a move. We've bought a house in my hometown, and our house here is on the market. So, we have this fabulously remodeled old bungalow down in Tennessee, waiting for us to fill it up. We have a house here that we need to sell, and M and I are nervous wrecks about it. I'm not sure we could've picked a worse time to try to sell a house...stupid housing bust. M will transfer to Nashville with his current company, so while things will be the same, they'll be really different for him, which adds to the great unknown. (Speaking of unknowns, we have no move date.) Those are the big things.

The devil is in the details, though. Anyone out there have a house on the market recently? Wouldn't be a problem if it were just me and M, but throw Otis and S into the mix, and it's suddenly way harder to keep the house in pristine shape. Plus, I'm constantly on edge about the realtor calling and having to get out of the house with the baby and the pooch at a moment's notice. Of course, that hasn't happened, and that, in and of itself, is worrisome. Where are all the people who should be beating down my door to buy my adorable house in the perfect little neighborhood? Plus, there was a leak in the new house that is being fixed, and we're working on having a garage and storage built, and at some point I have to shop for appliances, and I'm dizzy just thinking about it. Oh, and we're buying a condo for Mr. P, too. I swear I'm about to run out of steam.

I'll quit belly-aching now. I have to go find the second elephant from S's Noah's Ark. I think she left it in the car, and I am way too anal retentive to have something like that missing in action. I'm off to hunt me some elephant. Have a nice Thursday, peeps. Enjoy the new 30 Rock tonight.