Scavenger hunt!

You can read the complete rules here. (And, now that I've submitted my entry, you can play too!)

* A Shoe
From Baby Cheapskate:

I think we've outgrown Robeez (okay, Robeez knock offs, I'm cheap). I can accept that my wee one now needs real shoes (sniff!). What I can't accept is how much toddler shoes cost! I admit, I'm a shoe person; I notice shoes. I'm always commenting on the other kids' shoes at the playground. I love the look of those trendy Vincent shoes, sure, but forty bucks (on sale) for something my kid's gonna outgrow long before the shoe is worn out? Come on!

* A Tooth
From The Duchy Of Burgundy Carrots:

Look at the pictures and you will see lots of teeth!

* An Odd Name
From Doug's Blog:

The Christian Boys’ & Men’s Titanic Society Eleventh Anniversary Banquet
(I really wanted to post a link to his family picture, where you could see children with such names as Justice and Jubilee. But I couldn't find such a link quickly enough without using search tools. Oh, well. This is a mouthful of a name for an event, let alone a society.)

* A Car (fancier the better)
From LinkTheValiant:

I'd always wondered whether the stereotypes of Corvette owners were accurate, and I've received confirmation today. Coming home, I was behind a Corvette at a stoplight. He was waiting with the engine revved slightly above midrange. As soon as the light changed, he was off. I turned the corner in my usual way, and saw that the guy had accelerated to 55 in a 35 zone. Not a quarter of a mile farther on, he pulls off and turns in to a school of all places. . . It's no wonder that, aside from theft, insurance rates are so high for Corvettes.

* A Frightful Dilemma
From Not Alone:

Seriously folks -- I have not, nor do I intend to, change the ability for everyone to leave comments. I'd rather hear honest, thoughtful conversation. But I would ask for a bit of courtesy in return...If you cannot contain yourselves to appropriate comments, then I will be forced to moderate comments (which I do NOT want to do-- but I'm feeling pressed).

* A Discussion of Childbirth
From Focht Tales:

The only thing about the Jolie-Pitt baby hoopla that interested me enough to irritate me was the statement by their apparently famous and accomplished doctor (so hand-picked that they flew him all the way to Africa to deliver their child), something along the lines of: 'The baby was delivered by a planned cesarean due to a breech presentation.'

* A Theological Discussion/Debate
From Kevin & Amy's World:

Frankly, I’m disturbed at the hoopla surrounding the Pope’s passing. If the he were a true follower of Christ, he would not want Catholics to make such a big deal over him. After all, he’s a mere mortal. Or did he claim to be more than that?

* A Funny Line, Joke, or Short Post
From LinkTheValiant's Site:

Little brothers can be hilarious. Case in point, on the way home from work yesterday:
Leah, in backseat: "Thomas, can you get that bug there for me?"
Thomas gets the bug.
Leah: "Okay, thank you, can you get rid of it?"
Thomas reaches for the door.
Leah: "Just roll down the window and throw it out."
Thomas: "But I can't do that. A car might hit me!"

* A Train (the engine and cars kind)
From Breitbart.com:

Traffic on the Eurostar, the train service that runs under the English Channel and connects London and Paris, was suspended for 90 minutes after an electrical cable holder was blown onto the tracks near the city of Lille in northern France, railway officials said.

* A Hairbrush
From Focht Tales:

Who would pack a hospital bag and forget to include a hairbrush? Well, until ten minutes ago, that was me. After spending a good hour wracking my brains trying to recall anything, anything at all, that I'd read about hairbrushes in the past few weeks, it dawned on me that I hadn't packed one for the hospital! Thank you, Darren and Sara, for the timely reminder. Now Baby can come anytime!

* An appeal for money
A very tactful request from MommyLife:

So just remember - whatever shopping you have to do, please save yourself time and money while supporting MommyLife by clicking through to Amazon from the Barbara's Store button on my right sidebar.

* A Hobby
From Mom Advice:

I am passionate about getting good deals, which makes me extremely passionate about going to garage sales and visiting our local thrift stores. There is nothing that thrills me more than to get to spend an hour hunting through all of the "junk" to find that one memorable treasure to bring home with me. I have always been this way, even when we had much more money than we do now. Thrifting has always been an outlet for me and now that we are eating at home more, I am able to use our dining out allowance to score some really great thrift store finds, without busting the budget.

* Green
From The Real Food Revolution:

Open some cans of black beans, or make some in the morning in the crockpot. Add to the beans, cumin, pepper, oregano, Cajun seasoning, dried cilantro leaves, chili flakes, and chopped bell peppers. (I actually roasted the pepper I had and then pureed it with some of the beans and added it all back in, but my husband doesn’t like the texture of cooked peppers if they are in larger pieces.) Puree about a 1/4 cup of the beans and stir into the rest to make creamy, serve with the quinoa and a green salad.

Hit any key to continue...No, no, no, not that one!

I saw that in a cartoon once, and it's about how I feel re: Baby right now. I specifically didn't want Baby to come before Saturday (which, admittedly, would have been a really long shot anyway) because we had tickets to Cirque du Soleil and I really didn't want to miss it. (This was our Christmas present to each other, although as we both sheepishly acknowledged, we were going to buy the tickets anyway and calling it our Christmas present was really just a clever way to get out of wasting money buying superfluous presents for each other. We are so lame.)

Anyway we went to the show and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I told Baby afterwards that he/she was welcome to come any time now. Somewhat wishful thinking, I suppose, but I started taking Evening Primrose Oil every night just in case Baby needed a nudge. Never hurts to plan ahead, right?

Now Jane's fever is still dragging on (though she seems to be improving) and I'm thinking that I really don't want to leave a sick toddler with friends while I go off to the hospital to have another baby. So Baby can just hang on a few more days until Jane is fully recovered and no longer contagious. In fact, another week or two would be just fine, according to the original schedule, thank you very much.

Fever

Yesterday Jane came down with a high fever. I first noticed that she felt hot when I got her up from her nap, and her temperature registered at 102. We left a message for our pediatrician's answering service and meanwhile dressed her lightly, encouraged her to drink water, and tried to remember what the panic level is for fever in a young child. While we were waiting to hear back from the nurse on call we tried calling a couple of friends to ask for advice, since this was the first serious fever she's ever run. At least she exhibited no other symptoms and did make the occasional remark, thus evincing coherence and alertness despite her extreme apathy. It was a very odd evening, with us just sitting around taking turns holding a very hot (but so quiet and well-behaved!) child, not feeling very hungry, and not daring to do anything or go anywhere.

By the time the nurse called back, Jane's temperature was almost 104, but since she had no other symptoms and the fever hadn't lasted long enough to justify a visit, we were instructed to give her Tylenol to bring the fever down, keep giving her liquids, and check on her throughout the night. It was reassuring to know not to panic, though still very worrisome.

Today she's still a bit listless, but her temperature is down around 100, so we'll keep an eye on her and bring her in tomorrow morning if it persists. Otherwise, we'll just enjoy our quiet day.

Goals 2007

Now you know (probably, because I think I've mentioned it on previous January posts) that I don't do New Year's resolutions (other than goofy ones that I was going to do anyway, like 'I'm going to lose 25 lbs. by the first quarter of the year!') but the turning of the calendar always makes me nostalgic and contemplative, and this year I fell to musing on goals and the way I approach them.

What brought this about is the curious feeling of non-stress that seems to have fallen over me upon embarking on the New Year. For some reason I've felt laid back, content, and completely not worried about a thing for the past week and a half or so. It seems that our calendar is pretty clear for the near future, after a seemingly interminable run of bouts with sickness, travel plans, houseguests, parties, and the like, so that's definitely a factor. But even in the day-to-day minutiae, once we got past the relaxing holidays, I found myself chilling out on a far grander scale than I can recall doing in recent history.

For instance, we hosted our Sunday school Christmas party on Saturday, which was a lot of fun and didn't feel stressful a bit to prepare for, even with Michael having to go in to work most of the day and me doing all the preparations solo. I had gotten quantities of marked-down paper goods in my post-Christmas shopping, so we didn't have many dishes to deal with, but there were quite a few pots and pans. These I set to soak and didn't feel compelled to scrub them out for two days, making the next day (Sunday) truly a day of rest because I wasn't racing around madly trying to clean up the kitchen. Usually it is difficult for me to relax if I am conscious of work undone, which has hijacked a quiet evening or two when Michael is ready to sit down with milk and cookies and watch a movie and I am still too focused on putting away laundry to sit still.

Why then would the laundry or dishes intrude on family time? Because I didn't get to it during the day, being too busy racing around with other points on my agenda such as running long errands (to get the best shopping bargains), baking cinnamon rolls (for Michael's breakfasts, so he doesn't have to eat cold cereal), chopping vegetables for supper (because of course it's cheaper and more nutritious to do it all from scratch), etc.

Now these are all good things and they are certainly done for the benefit of the family, but it occurred to me that I am really the impetus for all this frantic pace. Michael certainly appreciates how I stay on a budget and likes having home-cooked food around, but he is not imposing on me the details of how I run our household. In fact, it occurred to me that most of the time, it is more important to me than to him.

This is not to say that I should completely chill out and let things go to seed around here in an attempt to relax and focus solely on being a happy wife. Happiness should also come about from the satisfaction of honest industry. But the pots and pans that I left in the sink overnight did not disrupt my general feeling of well-being; at least they were stacked neatly, they were out of the way, they did not make the kitchen look cluttered, and I didn't use the slight mess as an excuse to let more mess pile up in the meantime. Therefore that was a successful incidence of a calculated deferred work plan.

I need wisdom to discern what the true benefit of any effort on my part will be, and to whom. I don't want to knock myself out to do something I think would be nice for someone, only to feel resentful and deflated when they don't appreciate it quite as much as I think the effort I put into it warranted, which should only prove to me that my motivation wasn't quite as genuine and good-hearted as I thought it was.

Of course, I'm not going to measure everything exclusively by the yardstick of quo bono - or rather, I'm not necessarily going to order my life accordingly. Some things may not matter to Michael as much but if I have a strong personal stake in it, then I may go ahead anyway. Dashing across town to get a free milkshake is just too fun to pass up, as long as I realise that I'm getting more mileage out of it than Michael.

(I toss that last paragraph in because I recently read a review of a new book that apparently claims that the secret to a happy marriage is basically for the wife to realise that her sole end in life is to be the helpmeet to her husband, and while I agree that the wife was designed to support and encourage and be the helpmeet to her husband, I don't believe that that means that every decision must personally advance the career, mental health, and personal satisfaction of the husband exclusively. Maybe that's not what the book was suggesting. But I've run across that school of thought before and I writhe when I hear it. The secret of a happy marriage, among other things, involves both parties being mature enough to defer and sacrifice when matters of personal interest conflict. The mainstream culture's pop psychology approach of negotiating 50-50 and making deals and bargains, and the extremely conservative approach of insisting that the wife's wishes and interests must always give way to the husband's because she is to submit, are both flawed, in my opinion. But I digress.)

So my goal for 2007 is to evaluate my daily goals and determine whose agenda I am pursuing. I hope this will help me streamline my daily to-do list and enable me to accomplish the truly important things without letting the house fall apart. I'll keep you posted - or maybe not, depending on where blogging ends up on the new spectrum. =)

The times, they are a-changing

We've spent a good deal of time over the last week clearing out, sorting through, and tidying up. (Incidentally, with all the days off, I hardly know what day it is; for a long stretch there every day felt like a Saturday and it was weird when we finally did go to church. Next week things should feel more normal.)

But we finally decided to move Jane out of the nursery, mostly for our own convenience so we wouldn't have the children waking each other up during nights and naptimes. At first we thought we'd just move her crib across the hall into our acting guest room/office, and keep her stuff in the nursery. Then we realised that whenever Baby is asleep (and newborns do sleep a lot, I remember) we wouldn't have access to the changing pad, supplies, etc. That forced us to consider setting up a second changing station somewhere else, and the upshot of it all is that the former office/guest room (now renamed The Yellow Room, to avoid confusion) will now be Jane's room/guest room.

So we (as in Michael) took apart the computer, took apart the desk, and moved it all up to the bonus room. The bonus room has sloping ceilings, tons of boxes, and insufficient insulation, so it's really not a viable choice for an office. Thus far it's done fine housing our old computer, which was set up on a folding table, but now the old computer will be bumped off, the folding table will return to circulation as a folding table and not a makeshift computer desk, the current computer on current computer desk will become our new old computer, and we'll get a Mac and put it on the kitchen desk. Michael has been wanting one for a while, and the turning point came when he told me that Macs can be all-inclusive, meaning that there's no need for a tower case or superfluous equipment, meaning that all we'd have on the kitchen desk would be a flat screen monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I like the idea of having a computer out there, as long as it doesn't entail having all the cords, wires, scanner, printer, and the like. The house is networked so the peripherals can go upstairs, and we can still print from downstairs. I'm always running to the office anyway to look up a phone number or a recipe, so it can only make my life easier to have the hub of the universe located in my kitchen instead of a back room.

The only thing is that we don't have the Mac - yet. Once ordered, it can be here in a matter of days, but until it arrives, I'm dependent on the computer now located upstairs. That means I'm forever running up to the bonus room just to check email, which used to be a simple matter of just jiggling the mouse whenever passing through. All this exercise must be good for me, though, and may even bring Baby here the sooner. All the same, I'm anxious for a computer within easy reach again.

Pregnancy photo

Here is one of me on New Year's Eve (you can tell it's after Christmas because the presents are all gone):



Even though I'm feeling smaller this time around, the baby is bigger. At my checkup this morning my midwife gave a rough estimate of 7 lbs. - and we still have at least three weeks to go! This is rather alarming. Fortunately Baby's not the one gaining a pound a week at this point.

Hot & haute cuisine

I've been hearing so much about paninis recently that I thought I'd try making one (that, and I had some odds and ends of mozzarella slices, leftover Christmas beefstick, and rolls to use up). Apparently they are all the rage at upscale bakeries and cafes, and are merely hot, flat sandwiches. So I sliced a roll in half, fried the inside in butter, flipped the sides and lined the inside with cheese and meat, put the top half of the roll on top, pressed it flat with a potato masher, and waited for the cheese to melt. Michael and I both agreed that it tasted delicious, and I made several more. Who needs to spend $100+ on a panini grill when you can squish the sandwich just as flat in a skillet with a potato masher??

On the other end of the spectrum, last night I decided to try my hand at making hollandaise sauce, and to my great astonishment it turned out perfectly! I spent a good bit of time reading up on it online, and it's quite the delicate procedure, requiring patience, deftness, and lots of butter, but the oil and water didn't separate and the meal turned out so perfectly that I had to take a picture:

Happy New Year!!

2007 is here! Another year is upon us. This time we didn't go anywhere because of the child's bedtime, although she did make it up past ten, happily running around our own living room. We stayed up til midnight, though, and watched It's a Wonderful Life, made ice cream, and talked about New Years past. This is the fourth New Year's we've spent together since getting married, and I've been pregnant two of them. That always makes my New Year's Resolution (if I took such things seriously) of Losing Weight This Year straightforward.

The sun is shining, the house is clean, and it looks to be a lovely year!

Ho ho ho and a bottle of eggnog

Christmas comes but once a year, but what a wonderful time it is! We had a full week and a full house, and we're still sorting ourselves and our increased possessions out.

Family came and stayed several days, and we had great fun serving up all kinds of dishes and desserts. The boys loved watching Michael's collection of Mr. Bean (very slapstick, very silly but sometimes incredibly funny British comedy). We hit up the after-Christmas sales and stockpiled ample wrapping materials for next year. Alas, none of the stores were marking down chocolates in the quantities I had hoped. Not that we really needed to go spend lots of money on chocolates.

This lull is such a peaceful time of the year as well. When I was working I always got used to a good two-week span of having more days off than on, of dressing casual and sleeping in a lot, and that still captures my mindset. Michael got three days off for Christmas (talk about short work-weeks!) and gets one day off next week, so it will be a lazy spell for a time. Fortunately we still have one more party to look forward to: our Sunday school class Christmas party, which we couldn't manage to schedule in this year, and so are holding on epiphany and calling the Twelve Days of Christmas Party. This next month is going to go so quickly.

The element of surprise

'Oh, good for you!'

'I'm so glad you're doing that!'

'How nice! That is such a good way of doing it!'

I get these comments a lot these days, it seems. Am I being complimented for some great accomplishment or tough moral stance? No, simply for not knowing whether our second child is a boy or a girl.

(Usually the way we explain it is to answer the question 'When are you going to find out?' or 'So are you finding out what it is?' by replying, 'Yes, in February,' and then watching them do a double take as they realise that was when we said the due date was.)

The almost-universal approbation with which our decision not to find out in advance is greeted puzzles me, as if there's some sort of moral high ground related to staying in the dark. As far as I'm concerned, it's not a matter of right or wrong, but simply a matter of personal preference; and as it happens, this is what works for us.

I definitely wanted the surprise the first time around, mainly from a keen sense of anticipation and an awareness that this was the most open-ended question there could possibly be. I think I was more likely to want to find out this time around, but Michael leaned very slightly toward the surprise model, and I didn't feel strongly enough to override that. Besides - the deciding factor - the practice I'm with now does not routinely order the 20-week ultrasound, meaning that it's purely elective, meaning that insurance wouldn't have covered it, meaning that we would have had to have been really dying of curiosity to find out.

Whether it's a boy or a girl, our plans are not going to change. Baby is going into the nursery and we're not going to bother repainting. And most importantly of all, it truly doesn't matter to us which one we have. We don't look upon our family as a work in progress, lacking only one piece to complete the collection. Children aren't models from cereal boxes, where you need to collect all the action figures to get the full benefit of the set. We are simply not 'hoping' for one above the other.

Back to the moral high ground question. It seems that a lot of people tend to think it's good to be surprised because 1) that's uncommon these days, and anyone who bucks the trend is to be commended; 2) that's the way it used to be, hence old-fashioned, hence more natural. Both of these ideas are rather silly. It's uncommon in our culture and old-fashioned not to shower every day, but does that mean that's necessarily a good thing?

Okay, I know there are some possible risks to fetal ultrasounds and there haven't been enough conclusive studies done to conclude long-term effects, so there's the slight possibility that we should all avoid ultrasound until we know for sure just what the side effects really are. I'm still inclined to think that they're relatively harmless (of course, that's what they thought about x-rays too, back in the days when they were so casual about this new science that they'd let kids x-ray their feet just to try on shoes) and I'm not going to be that worried to the point of avoiding them for that reason alone. After all, sound waves bounce around in this world all the time, right?

Why am I up so early on a Saturday morning? Baby literally prodded me awake. Whoever you are, child, you will have no problems keeping up with your older sister - and believe me, I thought she was a live wire.

'Tis the darkest day of the year

But Christmas is only four days away!

I'm happy because:

* We are completely better and feeling SO glad to be back in the land of the living! The bout with illness made me very grateful for our health, which we usually take for granted, and it also made me very thankful that we didn't get sick this weekend.

* Jane and I got to decorate cookies at play group this morning, and I love sugar cookies! We haven't had a cookie bake yet this year so it was wonderful to get our fingers sticky with frosting and make pretty stars, trees, gingerbread men, and candy canes.

* My family is coming down this weekend and we are going to have a wonderful time! The house will be full of song and mirth and good food aplenty.

* A chicken roasteth in the oven and the house is filled with its aroma.

For the shortest ones of the year, these days sure feel long...

We've been battling stomach flu in our family, and gaining at best a pyrrhic victory. Suffice it to say that this has not been a house of mirth for the last few days. Now we seem to be on the road to recovery, considerably weakened but with a firm conviction that we (at least the grown-ups, the one who are safely past the risk of contracting autism) shall jolly well take the flu shot from now on.

Back to square one again

Over the last few months we've been developing patterns and systems, and we've fallen into a very comfortable routine at last. I like the pleasant tenor of our life. Jane is old enough to be responsive to simple instructions, and that's very gratifying. She is independent enough now to require much less intensive supervision, freeing me up to do a lot more around the house, so I've really taken off on the domesticity front in the last few months. I've figured out a good schedule for housecleaning, laundry (tossing the bibs and napkins in the wash just often enough to keep fresh ones always in supply but infrequently enough so as not to make them disappear too quickly down the lint screen), baking, cooking, snacking on fresh, healthful foods, shopping the sales, and playing. We've finally rearranged the furniture in the nursery to suit us, and I can't imagine why I didn't attack that project long before. (Until a few months ago, the nursery closets still contained camping gear, luggage, and other miscellaneous stuff that we threw in there upon our move, figuring that we'd find a place for it eventually.) Now the nursery is practical and efficient, not to mention bright and cheery, and I've been doing the same thing to the rest of the house as well, bit by bit, clearing out closets and finding stuff that we haven't touched since we moved in. It's all very satisfying and rewarding.

However, there is a slight cloud on my horizon as I contemplate this blissful state of things: it can't last. All these months of settling, all these experiences of adapting with Jane, all this trial and experimentation - it's finally paid off, and we've found our niche, just in time to have everything upset and rearranged. We're going to have to go off and invent the wheel again with an entirely new set of parameters. Baking, shopping, cleaning, laundry - all will fall prey to the demands of the new imperative, and only time will sort all these things out again. Oh, well. At least I'll have a baby out of the deal.

Unconventional thoughts on common enough occurrences

There's a lovely passage in Cheaper By The Dozen that describes the Gilbreths' obsession with efficiency, which they consider next to godliness. While visiting her parents in California, Mother spends an afternoon making calls on old friends. She returns in triumph and announces to her mother, 'There! Six calls in two hours! Wasn't I efficient?'

'Perhaps, Lillie dear,' replies grandmother, 'perhaps you were a little too efficient.'

Which was as severe as the Gilbreth children had ever heard their grandmother sound, and it came as a surprise to them, since they were all in an agreement of admiration for their mother's efficiency.

I want my children to appreciate efficiency, of course. I'm just not sure I want them to be quite as warped as their mother is:

On wearing makeup:
Oh, bother, I have to wash my face tonight.

On being given a nice present for Jane:
Uh-oh, does it use batteries?

On receiving a complimentary 'three-day' sample of an expensive cosmetic:
Ha! Watch me make this last three months!

On picking up a quarter while shopping:
Wow, that just brought down my weekly budget!

Overheard during the Scrabble game

'Of ag, ig, and og, which do you think is the most likely to be a real word?'

'Oy vey! I don't have many options. Oy vey, I'll do my best.' Plays oy.
'Is that a real American word?'
'Oy vey! People use it all the time!'

'So at which point do acronyms pass into commonly accepted vernacular? I mean, nobody capitalises laser anymore.'
'Well, at the very least, it doesn't count if people still say the letters indivudually.'
'So SUV doesn't count.'
'Uhhhh...no.'

A cake and a catastrophe

Scarcely had we returned from our Thanksgiving travels when we received a houseguest in the form of my grandmother, Oma. Oma is slowing down these days so her pace exactly fit the relaxed week we needed to recover from travel. We had carefully not booked anything that whole week, so we had a very pleasant visit with short daily to-do lists, along the lines of Buy A Christmas Present For Jane and Mail A Letter.

On Wednesday I determined to bake an apple cake, based on a newly-discovered recipe that I thought would be scrumptious. I used all the finest ingredients: three fresh Rome apples, honey instead of sugar, freshly-ground oat flour, lots of nuts, etc. It was a perfect cake. It rose properly and smelled lovely when it came out of the oven. In addition to all this, I made Michael's favourite meal of roast chicken, not even forgetting to put the potatoes on to boil ten minutes before his return home.

I was just in time to greet him at the door when we heard a large crash. Running into the kitchen, we were greeted with the sight of broken glass strewn all over the floor, and a smoking heap of cake crumbs on top of the stove. Meanwhile the potatoes were stone cold. I had turned on the wrong burner, and the cake pan had heated and shattered. Dinner was over an hour late, since we couldn't turn on the potatoes until we had cleaned everything up thoroughly. I was torn between relief that there hadn't been a fire, disappointment over the loss of my one 13x9 glass baking pan, and despair over the thought of all those fine, expensive ingredients gone to waste (we had to throw the whole thing away for fear of glass shards. Even I wasn't desperate enough to go picking through the crumbs in search of the occasional edible morsel).

However, the story ends happily enough, because Oma bought me a new glass pan the next day. I made another apple cake and carefully set it to cool on the counter, and all is well.

Nineteen months old

Analysis of Thanksgiving plans

In case you were wondering whether to stay or go next Thanksgiving, I've compiled the following synopsis of Thanksgiving travel - just a few thoughts to keep in mind:

Pros:
Free meal
Money savings by not shopping the day after
Sleep savings by not shopping the day after

Cons:
Inability to hoard leftovers for self
Cost of gas, plane tickets, etc.
Loss of sleep from travel time, unfamiliar surroundings, etc.
Unpacking afterwards
Laundry afterwards
House cold upon return
Inability to put up tree the day after Thanksgiving, thus losing at least one more day from the already too-short Christmas season

Our little girl is growing up

She must be growing by leaps and bounds, but it seems to be happening so gradually that I hardly notice the change, expect in retrospect. I think I'm at grave risk of underestimating her at this stage and letting something of her tremendous potential fall through the cracks, because she continues to amaze me with what she comprehends and grasps. I keep discovering by accident things she can do, and then reminding myself that I should be on a rampage to equip her to be independent.

I've been talking aloud to her for months now, of course, but only recently did I happen to voice an instruction, probably without any idea of her actually understanding me. She is, however, capable of understanding much more than she can say, and can follow pretty much any simple instruction by now. New instructions she picks up quickly by my speaking slowly and clearly, using at least a word or two she knows, pointing to the steps involved, and modeling the action for her. She has been picking up her toys for the past couple of weeks now, she puts away the Tupperware when she's done playing in the drawer, and she puts whatever I tell her to in the trash. (The drawback of this newfound talent is that she puts pretty much anything in the trash, so we have to keep a sharp lookout for abandoned sippy cups, shoes, and the like.)

A few days ago she went into a little coughing fit. 'Are you okay?' I asked absently, patting her gently on the back. Later that day she coughed, and then came over, patting her shoulder (which was as far back as she could reach) and saying 'Kay? Kay?' Now every time she coughs, if I do not inquire after her health quickly enough, she prompts me. Sometimes she even fakes coughs to elicit a pat on the back.

It's an exciting time. I'm glad to see her independence and confidence growing daily, and I look forward to the time (very soon, I hope) when we can begin to have intelligent conversations together. Or at least a greater degree of comprehension than we now enjoy.

Back again

We're back from Ohio for the Thanksgiving holiday, older and wiser and shorter on sleep than when we left. Our next New Year's resolution will be easy to carry out: Never travel on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving again. Traffic was so nightmarish that we decided to curtail our visit and leave a day early simply to avoid the crush on Sunday. Sorry to miss an extra day with family, but glad we were to get home in decent shape. Jane was an absolute brick the whole time, laughing and giggling to herself in the carseat for much of the trip, sleeping a little bit, and 'reading' books and cuddling toys quite a bit.

There was no snow. And now we can settle back and wait for the Christmas whirl of gaiety to descend upon us, for we're not planning to go anywhere for a good long while, except to the hospital in February. Currently I'm trying to plan a Christmas party for our Sunday school class, which I do so hope comes off, because I have so many hilarious and clever ideas for the white elephant gift exchange.

Overheard this weekend

Me: Ah-choo!
Michael: Bless you.
Me(again): Ah-choo!
Michael: Bless you!
Me(shortly thereafter): Ah-choo!
Michael: Yeah, yeah. You just want attention!

In sickness and in health

We are all sick here, and seem to have been that way for a long time. It started on my part a couple of weeks ago with a scratchy throat, which I chalked up to the dry weather and turning the heat on in the house for the first time this season. But it dragged on and on, and by the time I had gone through a couple of rounds of losing my voice, Jane had a runny nose, and Michael had a bad cough, I broke down and admitted that we were all fighting a very bad cold.

The most annoying thing about it, as far as I am concerned, is the lingering tenacity of it, and not the severity, because a sore throat and occasional coughing fit do not represent the most miserable state I've ever been in. It just seems like this has lasted long enough. But my midwife told me at my checkup this week that it's not uncommon for colds to last 3 weeks or more, since pregnancy affects the immune system in random ways. At least there's a good excuse for this and we don't have to assume it's strep throat or anything dire.

Michael worked from home two days this week to rest up and recover his strength, and seems to be doing much better. Jane never had much worse than a runny nose, and that didn't seem to bother her. I am reminded of the classic A.A. Milne poem:

In spite of her sniffle
Isabel's chiffle.

Blah. I just want us to be feeling all better before we leave for Ohio next week.

Health kick update

So I'm trying not to go overboard on this regimen, while still implementing some minor changes, since I'm convinced there's always room for improvement. The current rule of thumb is nothing too sweeping, nothing too drastic, nothing too expensive, nothing too complicated, and nothing in huge quantities, in case it doesn't work out, and meantime carry on with the research.

The obvious first step is the peanut butter. I was delighted to find that the completely natural stuff is available right next to the regular stuff on the shelf at Kroger, and for not too much more. We do eat some peanut butter, but not a lot (but we really should eat more!) so for now switching to good, wholesome peanut butter will not require too much of a sacrifice. Jane likes the taste of it, and I can't tell that much of a difference.

I'm not quite ready to swear off ever eating any hydrogenated fats or high fructose corn syrup ever again, but I am definitely wary of them, and I'm going to scrupulously read labels from now on and cast a skeptical eye on anything containing them. We'd better really love the final product if we do decide to go on eating it.

I was shocked and disappointed to find out how horrible the packs of hot cocoa mix are. It doesn't even appear that they contain real chocolate! There are few winter things I savour so much as curling up with a good steaming mug of hot cocoa. I will stop the ridiculous sugar dose, however, and try to mix up my own with cocoa powder and powdered sugar (alas! How many failed cups must I drink until I discover the correct dosage? 'Ah, too sweet.' 'Oh, too chocolatey') when the urge seizes me. Meanwhile, I am delighted to discover the delights of a good cup of tea. This is something I've brewed on occasion and always enjoyed, but I haven't really ever established a habit. I intend to do so now, especially as herbal teas offer so much for pregnancy. A delicate cup of hot tea with a touch of wild honey is now becoming my daily ritual.

I really want us to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. This is one concession, however, that my budget is not quite willing to relinquish. This is the worst time of year to be thinking about buying lots of fresh produce, and most of the stuff in the grocery store wouldn't be that fresh or nutritious anyway. So I've decided that I will start sprouting things on our countertops. My mom used to do this Oregon long ago, and I always loved eating the fresh alfalfa sprouts (not to mention watching them grow! I didn't even need a chia pet!) I need to find a source for alfalfa sprout seeds, and I may even try bean sprouts if I feel that ambitious. I would love to have two or three strainers going at once, so I have a tablespoon or so of fresh sprouts to eat every day. The kids will grow up loving them because they won't know any different, and they will think that leftover turkey-cream cheese-cranberry sauce-alfalfa sprout sandwiches are perfectly normal, which I do, because I grew up eating them, whereas Michael did not.

The grand prize of the last week and a half of health food foraging came in the jams and jellies department. We had just finished a jar of blackberry jam, and when shopping for replenishment I was not surprised to find most labels listing massive quantities of artificial sweetenings and preservatives. Now jellies do require a good bit of sugar to jell, but not all that fake stuff! Even the stuff billed as natural was pretty stiffly laced with unpleasantness. So I looked up a recipe for blueberry jam, and cooked up a batch! It was so easy. Not at all daunting, nor as tedious or cumbersome as I'd remembered, stirring for hours and hours over a hot stove while melting down apple peels for the pectin or some such. We still had several ziploc bags of blueberries in our freezer from last summer's catch, which I have been hoarding (and I am determined to stop hoarding things and start enjoying them! But that's a story for another post) but decided it was time to use up. The recipe entailed:

4 cups of blueberries
1/4 cup of sugar (I was amazed at this! Most jelly recipes I remember require about one part sugar to one part fruit in order to jell!)
1/4 cup orange juice (to simplify matters I just bought an orange and squeezed it fresh)
2 packets unflavoured gelatin (nothing sinister about this, as far as I could see; as Michael said, 'pure unvarnished horse's hooves')

I spent maybe half an hour on the whole operation, and ended up with a quart jar of lovely jelled-up blueberry jam. It's very tasty, and we've been enjoying it on pancakes and English muffins for the past week now. I am definitely going to make all our jam from now on, and wish only that blackberries grew as profusely here as they did in Oregon.

How I'm feeling today

'We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.' ~ 2 Corinthians 4:8

It's discouraging, to be sure, but I suppose it could have been worse. There have been elections much more victorious-feeling than this and others far more bleak and grim. This is about what we were all expecting, anyway, despite that valiant spark of hope that springs eternal in the heart of man.

Guy Fawkes Day!

Remember, remember, the 5th of November-
Gunpowder, treason and plot;
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

~English nursery rhyme

Go out and light a bonfire! Maybe even burn a modern-day terrorist in effigy!

I've decided...

...that the third trimester figure is my favourite look of pregnancy (with the possible exception of the first trimester figure, which is virtually identical to the normal figure look). The second trimester is my favourite feel of pregnancy. If I could feel as good as I do during the second trimester, and look like the third trimester (or, even better, the first - but I'm merely being hypothetical here, not unrealistic), then I'd like pregnancy a whole lot more.

The reason I like this look is that it's nice to look honest-to-goodness pregnant, thus finally eradicating the hesitant almost-questions and unspoken wonderings of whether the thickening waist simply betokens the fact that I've been putting on weight (or, horrors, still struggling to lose it from last time around!) Second trimester is just an awkward transitional phase, when I'm sort of outgrowing my regular clothes but can still wear them, only to look stout and - well, spilling out of my clothes. It's too soon for maternity clothes, though, and when I did try to wear them early in the second trimester I just felt silly.

I must point out that the only reason I like this look is because of the nice maternity fashions of the day. They are generally cute, trendy, and flattering, and do their best to make one feel happy to be pregnant. If I had to wear the gunnysacks and tents of even a decade ago, I'm sure I'd feel much less happy.

Food for thought

Recently I've found myself evaluating our diet and considering 1) how seriously to take concerns about health; 2) to what extent our food budget should accommodate improving the quality of the food we eat. I've gamely avoided the organics fad up til now, figuring that the dire effects of pesticides et al in the food are most likely exaggerated, very inconsequential, and certainly not worth the horrific additional expense to avoid. I've shied away from the nutty health movement, which I would (perhaps unfairly) summarise as consisting of soy milk, alfalfa sprouts, and flax seed, not for the cost reason but for the taste reason. I don't want a healthy lifestyle to be bland and boring. (There is an ongoing angst over the whole wheat flour issue, but that's a matter for another day.)

But when faced with the issue of quality over cheapness, I find myself at a real crossroads. It seems that I have been hearing from so many sources recently about the danger of high fructose corn syrup and certain fats (I really need to do a lot of research on fats and understand the difference between polyunsaturated and mono-, trans, hydrogenated, and so on) that I'm really beginning to contemplate what it would mean to cut these things out of our diet.

This website that I just discovered pointed out a very good thing about, for example, cheap peanut butter: look at the list of ingredients. You should be paying for peanuts and (possibly) salt. If your peanut butter is loaded with lard and icing sugar, you're not getting a bargain, no matter how much cheaper the junk stuff is than the natural stuff. After all, if you want to bring down the cost of the peanut butter, would you buy pure peanut butter and add lard and sugar to stretch it when you get home? Of course not. Then why pay to have the store do it for you?

Elsewhere I have read that if the list of ingredients contains words you can't pronounce, you probably shouldn't be eating it. Now that's perhaps a bit more extreme than I'm willing to get at this point (besides, who would know how to pronounce triticale without having heard it before?), but I thought it was an interesting bit of advice, anyway. Intrigued by this new thought process, I looked at the label of the bottle of lemon juice I keep on hand for drinking with hot water and honey to nurse those winter sore throats (so healthy of me, right?). The ingredients were water, lemon juice concentrate (?), and two preservatives. Now, obviously I must have bought this lemon juice because it was the cheapest bottle, and while I hate spending money, I hate getting ripped off even more. If I had wanted watered-down fake lemon juice, I could have bought Gatorade!

Furthermore, it dawned on me that I already make a budget concession for food quality when the driving factor is flavour, not health. We already consume only pure maple syrup, because we vastly prefer the taste to the fake stuff, even though it costs so many times more than Mrs. Butterworths. And we already use real butter for all everyday use and baking, because the taste and the texture is far superior to margarine. I don't even think twice about these 'splurges' in my shopping, because that's what we do and always have done and we take that for granted. I can't even imagine spreading margarine on a slice of bread. Suppose I felt this way about natural peanut butter? Suppose I had grown up preferring the unique texture and thought the packaged store-bought stuff was gross?

In theory, I'm all in favour of quality vs. quantity. I love the idea of savouring one good piece of dark European chocolate and truly appreciating a dessert over carelessly chomping down ten candy bars. I would love for my kids to grow up with a discriminating palate. But can we afford it? If I had grown up eating margarine, and now believed that butter was better for our health, would I bother to make the switch and learn to cultivate a taste for it, or just leave well enough alone? Is puzzlement.

Overheard on the walk

Me: Thanks for pushing the stroller!
Michael: Not a problem. Hey, thanks for holding the Baby!

Thirty days of nothing

A while ago I came across an article in which the author was challenged to undergo Thirty Days of Nothing, i.e. a period of thirty days in which absolutely nothing non-essential would be bought in the household. Only non-fancy food for the week (or even the day) ahead was allowed; no splurges, no discretionary spending, no drinks but water. This brought up all sorts of ponderings on simplicity and money management (on the part of the author, I mean, who thought it was a very good idea).

It was an intriguing idea, and I think it can be a good challenge for a family if the goal is experimentation and exploration. However, as a solution to out-of-control spending habits and impulse buying, it strikes me as a bit similar to yo-yo dieting: sure, it works in the short term, but it's not a plan that's realistically sustainable, and without an intrinsic change of heart and lifestyle, the bad habits and their bad effects are going to come right back.

This challenge would never work for me, or perhaps I should say it probably wouldn't be very helpful for our family, and not because I'm inclined to the whole impulse spending on non-essential items habit. Rather, I rely on purchasing non-essential items (by which I mean non-emergency items, in that I don't need them right away, but will certainly require them at some point, as opposed to frivolous junk) when the price is right, not when the need is high. By replenishing my stores of hand soap, dish detergent, tissues, tomato sauce cans, etc., when there's a great deal, I'm able to stockpile even if I didn't need them right away and insulate myself from unpleasant surprises when the common demand outruns the supply. If only I could do that with gasoline!

Perhaps a more helpful exercise for the would-be budget-conscious would be to curtail all superfluous spending for a month, and see where that leaves them. By superfluous I mean the truly non-essential items like CDs, candy, DVD players, and the like. This kind of challenge wouldn't really apply to our family since we hardly buy consumer stuff nowadays anyway. But, it is a big change from my former lifestyle when I was single, in which I bought stuff off of Amazon and E-bay whenever the whim seized me. So perhaps this challenge would have been an interesting venture back then. Nowadays my priorities are so patently different from building up a sound library and jewelry collection that I don't really need a challenge to remind me of it.

On the contrary, I'm getting more and more disenchanted with the Culture of Stuff. We have friends who are planning on leaving for the mission field within the next year, and it has been inspiring to observe how that expectation has changed their viewpoint on ownership. Pretty much everything they currently own will either need to be shipped overseas (and crammed into a far smaller apartment) at considerable expense or sold or given away within the year, so they definitely think twice before purchasing something and are certainly not in the mentality of mindless accumulation. That's such a great perspective, because in a sense we should all be aware of our temporary residency here and not set our hearts on treasures below. Not to say that we necessarily need to sell all that we have and give it to the poor; but it does help me not to get caught up in materialistic greed to view possessions as a burden requiring maintenance, and a short-term proposition, at best. And it is easier to vacuum and clean the house without so much furniture cluttering up the living space.

A quick succession of busy somethings

Lots going on and not much time to write about it leaves the impression that not much is happening around here. Not so. Quite the reverse.

* Last Friday we hired a babysitter for the very first time (as opposed to putting Jane in the nursery, or leaving her with friends) so we could attend a performance of Fiddler On The Roof at a small community theater about an hour and a half away. It was great fun to see, and the play was very well performed, though we were hard pressed not to compare it to our production last summer. As it happened, several other Fiddler alumni (among them, all three sons-in-law and the director herself) also attended this performance, so we had a jolly time discussing everything during intermission. We had seats on the very front row and enjoyed every minute of it, though it was after midnight before we got back.

* This weekend I will be working for my old company once again at their annual tent sale. I loved working there, and even though I actually worked there full-time for less than a year, still keep in touch with many of my former colleagues. They were all so helpful and supportive during my pregnancy, threw me a wonderful shower, and are always delighted to see Jane and me stop by. Except that it's been a few months since I've last visited, and I haven't happened to notice my latest news, so I think they're all going to be surprised when I show up this weekend sporting another baby belly.

* We still have not gotten into the habit of taking a weekly picture of us. This pregnancy is not going to be nearly as well documented as the last. But we already knew that successive children would never be photographed as much as Jane, so it's not as if we need to berate ourselves for falling down on the job. Good grief, they'll have older siblings to play with, blaze trails for them, and wear us down on rules for them, so I'm sure they'll be well rewarded for not getting such coverage on the photo department.

* I had another OB visit yesterday whereat I drank the nasty orange drink, and it really wasn't nearly as bad as I had been dreading. Either I had been building it up excessively in my memory, or chilling it first really helped. Still, I hope not to drink another one for a goodly long time.

* There is a new super Walmart opening just down the road from us tomorrow. Hurrah for local, convenient, and cheap supplies!

* It appears that we may be going abroad next year or the next, so I got Jane's passport photo taken last week and will take in the paperwork this week to apply. Maybe in five years, when this passport wears out, they'll have changed the rules back to allow smiling again. I am so glad I got my photo taken just before the rule change.

* The weather has taken an apparently irrevocable turn for the cooler, which is nice and cosy at this point. I'm still enamoured of fall colours and pumpkin-and-spice smells, and hope we can enjoy more crisp, cool, sunshiny weather and less cold, grey, drippy weather.

Jane and the jump rope

Yes, that really is an egg on her face

Jane and the camels

Jane and the ferrets

I can't resist...

What I have done is in bold.

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula - yeah, does having a pane of glass between me and the tarantula count?
07. Taken a candlelit bath
08. Said “I love you" and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea - okay, did the storm have to be at sea, or me while I was watching it?
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights - I wish!
15. Gone to a huge sports game (and survived the crush afterwards)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa - next on my to-do list
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg [lettuce]
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten tipsy on champagne - but only a very little.
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope - Halley's Comet!
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment - many, many times
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse - lunar and solar!
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day - oooh, this would be a good one
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer - good heavens, we must have six or seven!
40. Visited all 50 states - working on it!
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe - well, we had a car, but we got out a lot and walked around and wore our passports in a pouch! Does that count?
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach - not midnight, but night-time?
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs - by artist!
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day - mostly when sick
60. *edited* - Good heavens, what was this one? Now I'm dying to find out.
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain - but not upside-down
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites - kinda goes with the Great Pyramid thing
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight - D&D? Did Jane Austen even write a book of that title?
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie - do home videos count?
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest - well, but it was in a 4-H competition, and everyone was winning a first prize.
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. *edited*
89. Gone to Thailand - okay, what's with this Japan/Thailand/Great Wall theme? Why didn't someone write up a list with Greece/Egypt/Cyprus/Holland??
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents - in sand
93. Been on a cruise ship - honeymoon!
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children - working on it
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over - I did pick up and move to another city and just start over; thanks to the ambiguous placement of 'just,' this sentence is flexible.
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking - all the time. Why should that stop me? They can't hear me!
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication - just how large?
106. Lost over 100 pounds - cumulatively? Over my whole life?
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane - well, I was briefly allowed to take the controls in a private plane, but I'm sure the pilot wouldn't have let us crash if it had gone awry
109. Petted a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth - hand-delivered a calf while wearing high heels
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone - on me? Or someone else?
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced - well, when I bend over, then my ears are below my neck...
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild - surely some of the mushrooms they sell in the store started off in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states - ooh, this is a tricky one. I guess it depends on if you count 1) layovers in foreign airports; 2) driving through a state without getting out and stopping.
124. Visited all 7 continents - oh, come on. Who besides scientists would go to Antarctica?
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat – not so far as I know
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about - not sure about this one. I certainly hope so
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Petted a cockroach - yeah, with the sole of my shoe
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - what, never? No, never! Well, hardly ever.
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating - rabbit
137. Skipped all your school reunions - every family vacation is a school reunion
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office - precinct committeeman back in Oregon
140. Written your own computer language - Ha!
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream - but of course I am!
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts - well, I'm married to someone who has
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

Helpful hints (at least they helped ME)

The first half of this post I have been mulling over for some little time, debating whether to bother sharing it because my suspicion is that none of my friends out there are quite as obsessed with the sheer joy of finding bargains and free things as I am. =) But I love to share good news and spill over with enthusiasm about things that excite me, so I'll just toss it out there and hope that it proves useful to someone. There now.

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Walgreens Easy Saver Catalogue

For those fortunate enough to live near a Walgreens, I can think of no reason not to get excited about getting wonderful free stuff every month. I discovered this program by accident a year ago this month, very skeptically bought the stuff, got my money back, and have been an ardent Walgreens Easy Saver shopper ever since. Click on the Catalog button from the link above to see this month's deals. (Warning: this month is juicier than most. Some months there are just one or two items. Some months there are ten.)

In its most simple form, you can use it as a rebate. Simply buy all the items listed in the middle of the flyer, which are advertised as being free, from your local Walgreens; fill out the rebate form; and send away for your check. You will get a rebate check for the entire amount of the purchase, less, of course, sales tax. If you choose to follow this option, then you will probably only want to buy the stuff you can actually use (sanitary pads, toothbrushes, etc.) because you are going to be stuck with the cost of the sales tax.

However, the way I use the Easy Saver rebate is to elect to receive my rebate in the form of a Walgreens gift card instead of a check. If you choose this option, you will get not only your money back, but also a 10% bonus, which easily covers the cost of the sales tax AND the stamp used to mail off the rebate each month. Once you receive the card, you can choose to simply reload it in future months, saving time in the mail. I always get my rebate reloaded onto my card well in time to buy the stuff for next month.

Because I use this gift card system, I have a sort of 'revolving balance' with Walgreens on this rebate system, which enables me to buy every free item every month, no matter how useful to me. I gamely buy everything they offer and decide how to use it later. Some of the medications (cold, flu, nasal stuff, etc.) that we wouldn't use I can give away. Some items (reading glasses) I can donate to missionary causes. Some of the random stuff (hemorrhoid treatment, anti-itch cream) I can save for gag gifts and such. It's all free, and the more stuff I buy, the more of a balance I accrue on my gift card. I think I started off by spending about $25 on the rebate items the first month I tried it out, and I've now worked up my gift card balance to around $40. So I am still 'out' my initial investment of $25, but I've gotten a year's worth of free stuff for it, and anytime I decide to opt out of playing this game, I can choose to have my final purchase refunded to me in the form of a check, completely cashing me out and then some.

A caution: you do have to follow through with the rebate paperwork. I am not good with details, so I have to make myself fill out the paperwork the instant I return from shopping. The instructions in the flyer are pretty clear, but it is a bit of hoop-jumping: you have to fill out the rebate form, circle the items on the receipt, and write the offer numbers by each item. There is, thankfully, no requirement to include UPC symbols. I make a copy of the paperwork before I mail it, just to be careful. You must follow the instructions scrupulously, you must buy the stuff (and send off the paperwork) within the allotted time frame, and you must make sure that the item does indeed cost less than the maximum rebate amount. Walgreens is usually pretty good about making sure that if they advertise something as free, the price will be less than the rebate amount; but I still have to watch it and make sure I don't buy the wrong size shampoo and end up paying more than what I will get refunded.

A suggestion: if you want to start doing this, I'd recommend getting the check rebate this month rather than the gift card, because there's a lot of stuff this month and you probably don't need to wind up with a $50+ gift card. As mentioned before, most months aren't this lucrative, and sometimes I end up spending only $10 on one or two things.

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MotherLoad: A wonderful blog!

This is a really great blog that I recently stumbled across, and I've been lurking thereabouts ever since, especially on Fridays. Why, you ask? Because every Friday she writes a post featuring various free things you can sign up for, and I love getting free things!

At first, I must admit that I was a bit skeptical. I don't hold truck with handing out my personal information wholesale, and I'm very cautious about signing up for stuff online which may open me up to receiving scads of junk mail. But I tentatively signed up for something, and received my free sample in the mail so promptly that I was addicted.

Every week I spend about ten minutes online, filling out various forms and submitting them. Hardly a day goes by when I don't get something in the mail. I've gotten diaper samples, toothpaste samples, cute little .05 oz. deodorant samples, shampoo samples, and any number of other useful (and otherwise!) stuff. I haven't seen any increase in my junk mail, which isn't surprising since most of the forms ask me if they can share my email address/other information with other vendors, and I of course select no. These are reputable vendors, like Proctor & Gamble, so you know they won't sell your information without your permission.

Just to be safe, I use my rarely-used first name, so that any junk mail which does show up would be a dead giveaway. I also enter my throwaway Yahoo email address, when an email address is required. Very tidy and simple, very little time investment, very rewarding mail runs these days.

Movie diatribes

Yet another batch of toffee is cooling hopefully in the refrigerator, and I take a moment to document my thoughts on recent movies watched. The background is the receipt of another free trial offer from Netflix, which we gamely accepted on the premise that it would allow us to watch a few of those movies that we sort of wanted to see but certainly wouldn't have gone out and paid money to watch.

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Total Recall

Michael saw this movie many, many times when it first came out, the summer he spent in Alaska. He watched it so much because 1) he was desperate for movies to watch in Alaska; and 2) he was thrilled to be able to go to a movie theatre at all, movies having been off-limits for the past two years at Moody. So this film has sentimental value for him, and it was important that I understand where he was going with random quotes like 'Two weeks.'

By an amazing coincidence, I actually saw a preview for it when it first came out, just about the first time I ever went to a movie theatre, too: when my parents took me to see Driving Miss Daisy. Don't ask me how such a preview ever got in front of such a movie. Several key scenes from the preview made a strong impression on me and gave me nightmares for weeks, to wit: 1) People walking behind a screen and their bones showing! They were skeletons! 2) Someone's head landing in someone's hands, saying, 'Get ready for a surprise!' and then exploding.

I was relieved to discover that the movie is by no means as scary as my ten-year-old memories led me to believe. With Michael there to warn me when to close my eyes, I completely missed out on any gory scenes (Me: Is it worse than the Nazis' face-melting in Indiana Jones? Michael: Hmm, maybe about the same. Me: Okay, I'm closing my eyes. Warn me whenever it happens.) and was pleasantly surprised to find that: 1) the skeletons were just people walking through an x-ray machine, scanning for weapons; and 2) the exploding head was that of a robot.

The plot was interesting, in that it really kept you wondering; it reminded me a bit of a simplified Matrix, without the high-tech special effects. It was a fascinating premise, and made me question a little bit the boundaries of reality, perception, and how we can be sure at any given time that we are awake, aware, and in full possession of our memories.

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Pride and Prejudice (the new one)

I saw this with a girlfriend when it came out last year, and enjoyed it for what it was: it by no means did justice to the book, and certainly didn't seem to measure up to the spectacular A&E version, but felt like a good enough movie in its own right. I remember having a distinct impression of reading an abridged novel where the pace continues breathlessly and minor details are never sufficiently fleshed out, but I was so familiar with the story myself that my mind gamely filled in all the blanks, leaving me with a pleasant overall impression.

Well. Watching it again (and with Michael) was certainly a come-down. Second time through, it shone forth as a cheesy romantic comedy/period-piece-costume-drama-wannabe. Michael kept groaning, issuing eye rolls and such commentary as 'Oh puleeeeeze!' 'Yeah, right!' and 'You have got to be kidding me.' And I was much inclined to agree with him.

I can forgive the director leaving out so many characters in the interests of brevity. But the characters that were left were sadly undeveloped. Wickham never really makes that much of an impression on us as a good and wronged soul (nor do his initial attentions to Lizzie really show up much), so that his unveiling is surprisingly un-startling and unmoving. Bingley is an idiotic nincompoop. ('Yes. I mean, I'm glad....that is, I'm sorry you're ill...') Charlotte's pragmatism and calm philosophy are overshadowed by her desperation and fright. Lydia and Kitty never seem to register as that shocking of flirts.

The good things: the girls really looked like teenagers. Lydia actually looked her age. Jane was really beautiful. The impoverished gentility of the Bennets was well portrayed in the shabby everyday clothes they wore. Judi Dench as Lady Catherine was imperious and superb.

The bad things: the almost-kiss at the rain-drenched rotunda. The lack of explanations for the customs of that time. The incessant listening-at-the-door trick, which got real old real fast. The overdone melodrama (Lady Catherine's midnight visit? Darcy letting himself in the room, in the dark, to deliver his letter?) for the sake of inciting indignation or sympathy in the breasts of the audience. You know what it made me think of, through and through? One of those badly-done faux historical romances, with the rippling muscles and low-cut bodices on the cover, absolutely riveting questions on the back, and 20th-century characters capering about inside. It's as if the director thought, 'Let's dress them all up in old-fashioned clothes, give them English accents, and the audience will think it's about people in Jane Austen's day!'

Still, it was a pleasure to watch. It wasn't scandalous, it was clean and wholesome, the music was lovely, the scenery was English, and Keira Knightly is a delight to watch.

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Prime

I actually just saw the preview for this, in front of P&P. The plot, from what I could gather, involves a woman who meets and falls in love with a guy who turns out to be the son of her therapist, which apparently none of them figure out until far enough along in the movie so as to be embarrassing for all. Common enough fodder for your average romantic comedy, right? Right, so I forthwith had no intention of seeing it. But yesterday as I walked through Target I happened to see it on the shelf, so I picked it up and read the cover, from which I gleaned the following information: 1) The movie stars Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep. 2) The female character is a 37-year-old divorcee; the male character is 23. 3) The movie's title comes from the premise that both characters are in their respective sexual prime, hence well-matched for each other.

Ugh. I can't even work up enough ire to rant about the tragedy of boiling down the merits of a relationship to the purely physical, but it did make me wonder whether the movie-makers considered the characters to be remotely near, say, their emotional prime, their financial prime, their intellectual prime, their maturity prime? Probably not. Naturally we all know those factors have far less to do, generally speaking, with how we relate to other people and how well we get along in life, than does the physical aspect. That, of course, is the pivotal point upon which most good relationships are built.

Sweet nothings

Me (to Michael, observing that Jane was looking a bit droopy): Do you think she's ready to go down?
Jane (immediately perking up): No! No!

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Michael (to me): You have a hump on your belly...kind of like a camel, in reverse.

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Me: How do you pronounce vidalia onions? VIE- or VEE-? DAH-lia or DAY-lia?
Michael: Well, Bertie always called his aunt Aunt DAY-lia.
Me: Certainly we should sound British if at all possible.
Michael: Do they even have vidalia onions in England?
Me: Oh, well, there you go.

Overheard at playtime

Jane was languidly rocking in her little toddler rocking chair, while Michael pushed her and sang the words to Rock-A-Bye Baby. Or rather, he sang the first line over and over again, because she seemed to like it.

Michael: Rocka, rocka, rocka...
Me: You know, you're going to be in danger of the council.
Michael: Never mind! She doesn't speak Greek!

A somewhat indelicate topic

But one which demands addressing, nonetheless.

Last night we went to our electric cooperative's annual company picnic, mainly for the free BBQ dinner and promised Mayfield ice cream truck. We hadn't read the minutes, didn't pay attention to the meeting, and left before the final drawing for the grand prize.

We arrived in a somewhat frazzled condition, having been held up for two hours by a terrible wreck on the highway right in front of us. We didn't see it happen, but it must have happened just a minute or two before, as we could actually see clear highway ahead and saw the ambulances zoom past a few minutes after we came to a complete standstill. They actually stopped traffic going the other way so as to land helicopters on the road (why couldn't they have landed the helicopters on the road in front of the wreck? That was nice and clear), and cars were giving up by the droves, crossing the grassy median, and turning back for the last exit, nine miles distant. We weren't sure our car could handle the dip in the middle, nor were we sure how to get there from the wrong exit, so we stayed put and ended up sitting there for just over two hours.

So our condition upon arriving at the picnic, just before they stopped serving the food, was not ideal. Normally I try to avoid unsanitary bathroom conditions, but after spending longer in traffic than I even intended to be out, circumstances dictated otherwise. There was a small cluster of rented toilets off in a corner of the parking lot, and would you believe it, there were three for women and three for men!! Completely unsatisfactory for a crowd of that size, and sure enough, there was a whole line of women waiting while the men trooped happily in and out of their bathrooms. It infuriated me to the point of waxing philosophical, to wit: 1) Why would anyone manufacture male-specific portable restrooms? 2) Are they somehow cheaper to manufacture than the standard kind? 3) Why would anyone with any PR experience even bother renting male-specific portable restrooms? 4) Whoever ran the statistics for the planning for a crowd of this size? 5) WHY would it be cheaper to make a special kind of portable restroom for men only? Isn't standardization always the best method? And so on.

I was waxing eloquent to Michael about this later, and was considering researching the matter further, calling various port-a-potty manufacturers and demanding to know their costs of production for various units, when Michael informed me that, in fact, all the units were identical, and they were probably just labeled 'Men' and 'Women' because people are used to having separate, designated restrooms.

!!!

Sugar high

Last month at my checkup it was mentioned that next time, I'd get the horrid sugar water to drink for the glucose test at the next visit, and my midwife suggested that I could also take home a bag of jelly beans to eat instead, if I preferred. This got me all excited about the possibilities of eating sugar without drinking the dreadful fake orange juice, and I had just decided to make a batch of toffee for my glucose overdose, when I discovered, this last visit, that it had to be a very carefully controlled dose such that only a certain number of Brach's jelly beans would do. The hassle of tracking down the right brand and size and having to chew all those jelly beans in five minutes didn't seem worth it, so I resigned myself to drinking the orange stuff after all. However, having gotten all excited about making a batch of toffee, I decided to go ahead and make some anyway, which I did.

I have yet to find a good recipe for it; I remember that it requires roughly equal parts butter and brown sugar, which must be boiled for a certain length of time before being poured over chopped nuts and topped with chocolate chips, but the only recipe I found in all my cookbooks required corn syrup and water as well. This didn't sound right, but I tried it, and it turned out pretty well, although the finished product was a bit too chewy around the edges. Perhaps actually having a candy thermometer would have helped.

Trapped

Last night we were eating dinner with friends, and I discovered upon reaching home that I'd left my purse there. The friend graciously offered to drop the purse off at Michael's work today, so I should be reunited with it tonight, but in the meantime I am stranded at home without my cell phone, car keys, driver's license, library card, or any number of those useful things which make the world go 'round. I don't have a bicycle so I can't even bike to a store or the library, and I've gotten several notices that books have come in for me. It's a grey, cloudy day, perfect for curling up with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate, and all I can do is bustle around and clean the house all day. Alas and alack for pregnancy forgetfulness.

Halfway there

Baby is 6 1/2 inches now, or else 10 inches from head to toe. Apparently until 20 weeks, the length is measured from 'crown to rump,' because until then the baby is too curled up to be measurable full-length. Although I must say, there is nothing curled up about this baby. We may have thought Jane was an active one, but this child takes the cake. Whatever the 'quickening' is supposed to feel like, there is nothing fluttery about Baby's movements over the past few weeks.

Some people last week, even after seeing me, didn't know I was pregnant.

We still haven't started taking our weekly profile pictures. At this point, since we have no good 'before' shot, we may just not bother. Also, there is some debate as to whether these pictures ought to include Jane or not.

Sara and me with our babies

Audra and me with our babies

Courtney and me with our babies

Mrs. Hall: Turn sideways and bump bellies!
Courtney: There's nothing to bump.

Reagan playing Peekaboo with Jane

Jane, fallen asleep on the long drive home

Carry me back to Old Virginia

This afternoon we will set off for our family's annual Labor Day campout at a YMCA camp in Maryland. I'm a little nervous about the weather, as we are driving and it appears that we'll be following the storm (or vice versa) all the way up the coast. Yesterday heavy rains hit the Atlanta area, and traffic slowed to a crawl. Not fun for the poor little baby in the backseat, who already thinks a ten-hour-drive is quite long enough.

The following week Michael has computer training for work in North Carolina, and we decided that rather than drive home to an empty house for four days, Jane and I would hang out in Virginia the meanwhile and visit with friends and family before picking him up on Friday. We have no fixed engagements at present, but hope to see everyone while we're there!

So to speak

The other night we were reading Luke 6, about the ears of corn and the reference to David and the consecrated bread. (We're reading through the New Testament together in the ASV this time, for variety and a refreshing change of perspective.)

Me: Do you know what that's called in the King James version?
Michael: Shewbread, isn't it?
Me: With an E. And you know what I always say?
Michael: I think I heard this last time we read this...
Me (eagerly, before he can cut me off): There's no bread like shewbread!

On an unrelated note, I took this quiz online. Alas, I only scored 75% because I kept clicking on the Next arrow when no correction was needed, and the quiz read that as a skipped answer.

Maternal musings

- I just started wearing maternity clothes this week. I can still squeeze into most of my normal clothes, but I've decided that I'd rather look pregnant-and-hardly-showing than normal-and-rather-pudgy. Maternity tops have a way of subtly yet unmistakably announcing the baby's existence.

- After Jane was born, I was shocked and dismayed at the residual belly I was left with. I hadn't expected to lose all the weight immediately, of course, but I wasn't prepared for the immensity of the bulge. At the time I joked that I had reverted to three months pregnant. This weekend, however, we were looking over pictures of the first day or two, and I definitely looked far bulgier then than I am even now. So maybe post-partum actually leaves you looking four or five months pregnant.

- I'm glad Baby waited to launch onto its immense growth spurt until after the play was over. It would have been embarrassing to keep asking the costume people to take out the waist after every performance.

Free Pepsi!

I don't shop often enough at CVS to pay attention to the ads, but I just stumbled across their flier online and discovered that they have a terrific sale on Pepsi products this week. In a word - aside from the sales tax and the postage stamp for the rebate - free!

You buy four 12-packs of any Pepsi product for $10, and send away for a $10 rebate. Simple!

We're not in the habit of drinking soft drinks. But anything free is pretty irresistible! Besides, it's great to have soda pop to bring to potlucks and whatnot. I can hardly wait for Jane to get up from her nap so we can dash off to the nearest CVS and buy our dose of sugar water.

Nor iron bars a cage

On Friday we watched The Shawshank Redemption, a brilliantly made movie with way too much bad language and a horrifying depiction of prison life. It made me wonder how accurate to real life the portrayal of the brutality of the guards - and the unconcern of those in charge as to how the prisoners treated each other - is. The utter hopelessness and despair gave rise to the consideration of other imprisonments, which led to the random compilation of the Ten Worst Imprisonments of All Time. Except I couldn't think of ten right off. But for Jean Valjean it could be the Ten Worst Unjust Imprisonments of All Time:

- Judah's mother and sister, walled into the Tower, in Ben-Hur (Being bricked in! The leprosy!)
- Edmond Dantes in the Chateau D'If, from Count of Monte Cristo (The suddenness! The reversal of fortune!)
- Doctor Manette in the Bastille, from A Tale of Two Cities (Having to write your memoirs with your own blood!)
- Jean Valjean in Les Miserables (Well, so he did commit a crime, but in disproportion to the punishment. And having his footsteps so dogged by Javert!)
- Westley in the Pit of Despair (The Machine! The Albino!)
- The poor sap in The Pit and the Pendulum (Shivers!)

I'm sure there are others equally as horrible in terms of length of duration, uncertainty as to duration, suffering while incarcerated, and effects on family and fortune meanwhile.

Round Two

Now that the play is over, we can sit back, draw a deep breath, and prepare for the next big event looming on our horizon: the arrival of Jane's little brother or sister, coming February 2007. Jane will be an active almost-two-year-old, and no doubt much in need of a fellow child to share in the spotlight and spare her from spoilage. Alas for the new baby, which will have a hard act to follow to be as model a child as Jane has been. (Or perhaps its making its arrival just as Jane hits the vaunted Terrible Twos was a clever stroke of genius on its part.) We are all much excited at the addition and look forward to meeting our new little one next February.

Overheard last night

Michael (rummaging through the freezer): What's this?
Me: I don't know.
Michael: Good. Can we throw it away then?
Me: No! I'll work it off on my brothers next visit!
Michael: Do you actually like saving money, or do you just like feeling clever when you think you're doing it? Because it wouldn't actually cost us anything to throw this away.

Goodbye Dolly

Our final performance was on Saturday night, and with that last show ends an era of our lives - hectic, frenzied, short, but so much fun. We were delighted at how many friends turned up throughout its two-week run, and thrilled to have my family come down this past weekend to watch. They enjoyed it thoroughly, and when we got home that night at almost midnight everyone crawled out of bed to talk over the play in excited and voluble whispers (because the 'everyone' did not, of course, include Jane).

So now that's done with, and we are feeling a bit lost, rather like Bilbo once he got back from the Lonely Mountain. I hope we don't go off and do something rash and wasteful with our sudden influx of free time, like sign up for Netflix or something. Plenty of yard work and bills to catch up on.

And with all that excitement of guests and plays and Jane walking this last weekend, the thing I'm most thrilled about is the $100 Kroger gift card I won yesterday! I saw fliers at our local Kroger last week advertising a back-to-school day for kids on Sunday, and I determined to take all five of my brothers, who I was sure would appreciate meeting the Keebler Elf and the Mayfield cow and participating in the Oreo Stacking Contest and the Milk Mustache Contest. But little did I dream that a local radio station would be there passing out prizes just for stopping by! My mom had dashed to the store earlier in the day and ended up winning a box of pop tarts, so I made sure to stop by the table in hopes of a similar fate. It was the perfect ending to a perfect weekend.

No, actually the perfect ending came that night, when we celebrated my dad's birthday with chocolate cake and homemade ice cream. Hurrah for celebrations, and for causes for which to celebrate!

That bwessed awwangement...that dweam within a dweam...

Three years ago today was the happiest day of our lives, as of then. And the intervening years, swiftly though they have flown by, have only gotten better. Why do I love being married to Michael so much? Let me count the ways:

- Every so often he will remark, 'We haven't seen Pride and Prejudice in a while. It's about time to watch it again, isn't it?'

- I love to watch him play with Jane. She absolutely adores her Papa, and for good reason.

- He is always willing to help with the dishes if I had a long day.

- He always compliments my cooking and is impressed with the littlest things, such as homemade piecrust.

- He takes pride in ownership and maintains the house and lawn well, without making it an idol.

Oh, and speaking of P&P, on Monday night we watched Sense & Sensibility and I remembered having seen it first when it came out ten years ago, at which time I distinctly recall identifying more with Marianne. I didn't quite approve of the indecorous excesses of her behaviour, but I certainly sympathised with her passion for books and reading, romantic fancies, and volatile temperament. As we watched the scene of her meeting with Willoughby and her almost-swoon upon discovering that he reads and glibly recites Shakespeare sonnets too, I realised that my notions of felicity in marriage have changed drastically since that time. Ten years ago I probably would have placed a lot more weight on the discovery of shared interests, which after all is nothing but a happy coincidence. By far the most important element is the character; the personality is just frills.

When Michael and I first met and struck up correspondence, we established an easy rapport by email because we had read many of the same books and recognised each other's quotes and nonsense. (Gandalf: 'Think of the riddles they both knew, for instance.') But that has very little to do with the basis for our relationship. In our marriage, we don't spend a whole lot of time sitting around going off on quoting sprees. It's nice to have common interests, but those can grow over time, and indeed we have each been responsible for introducing the other to a lot of new horizons. How silly it would have been for Michael to have been waiting all those years for a girl who liked sushi! How silly it would have been for me to have put 'Has read Emma' on my List. In the end, it is far more significant that I married a man of good character who is deferent enough to learn to appreciate my tastes than it would have been to have snagged a guy who just happened to like the same things that, at that time in my life, were top of my list.

Here is Jane, right after a bath

Her hair is so fun to play with!

The show must go on

Five performances down, three to go! Last week was a whirlwind of dress rehearsals, performances, cheering crowds, and late nights, but this week promises to be a bit calmer: one show on Friday and two on Saturday, and then we're done for good. It's been so fun, but I'll be relieved when it is over!

I think I'm tired at the end of a show, what with all the dance numbers and quick changes, but I must remember that whatever I do, Michael does too, plus all the scenes he does on his own. We have several dance numbers together, and then he participates in several scenes involving mainly male characters. The second act is especially grueling for the guys, as they dash straight from the Elegance dance scene backstage to madly change into their waiter costumes for the intensely physically demanding waiter's Galop (involving seven sequences of jumping across stage in time, waving napkins and saltshakers and menus around, jumping up and clicking the heels in the air, and other equally exhausting vignettes), followed immediately by the somewhat slower but no less active title piece Hello Dolly! for which they had to learn a complicated dance step called the soft shoe, after which they dash backstage and change even more quickly into evening clothes for the riotous and energetic polka competition, after which the lights go out and we all immediately find ourselves standing on stage under the hot glare of the lights for about ten minutes for the courtroom scene. Whew! I get tired out just dashing back and forth to stage left and stage right in an attempt to meet him for a split second in the wings and apply the water bottle!

But it's fun and rewarding and brings the usual adrenaline rush, especially when the crowd really gets into it. Amazingly enough, there haven't been any major mistakes; all the main characters are remembering their lines or ad-libbing convincingly, and the occasional misstep that happens in a dance number is easily covered. As long as you smile brilliantly and confidently enough the audience will assume you know what you are doing.

Yes, it's been grand, and this coming weekend will be the crowning fun, but I think it will be our last play for a while.