Six years ago today

That was the best early birthday present ever.

Then, a few years later, Jane was the best late birthday present ever.

I think I'd be hard pressed to find a stretch of the year out of which I couldn't eke a few happy memories.

Easter photos

Easter egg hunt

On Saturday we went to an Easter festival hosted by a local church (our church's bash was considerably farther away, and also did not feature a free hot dog lunch). Jane was thrilled to dance with a giant bunny.
























Both girls enjoyed the petting zoo.

Beware already

And here's an old but clever little jingle for National Pi Day:

Tangent, secant, cosine, sine;
Three point one four one five nine

Guess who's two??

Two years ago today Ella joined our family.



One year ago she was full of mirth and mischief (but, alas, still short on hair).

















Today she is full of fun, energy, sweetness, and joy. Happy birthday to our Ella Bella!

Stepping foot and other turns of phrase I despise

Suddenly it's everywhere. Careless people were writing it before, in blogs and emails, but now it's made its way into actual articles and other places where sloppiness can no longer plead an excuse and the only remaining explanation is plain ignorance. Do people really think that 'stepping foot' is an acceptable way of describing perambulation?

Let's get this clear. If you stepped foot somewhere, that can only possibly mean that you stepped on a foot. It is to be hoped that you weren't dancing at the time. Perhaps you were trying to be clever and abstruse in referring to your own respective feet ('I stepped my right foot, then my left foot, then my right foot again...it was the last time I ever stepped foot in Walmart, I can tell you that!'), but it's still a cumbersome and awkward way of going about it.

If you want to talk about your feet, then think about what it is your feet are doing. If your feet are doing the stepping, then for heaven's sake let them be the subject of the sentence: 'My feet will never step in Walmart again!' Stepping is not something you do to your feet; it is something your feet do. If you want to talk about what you do with your feet, then use a verb that works: 'I will never set foot in Walmart again.' Passive vs. active, people. (Oh, my stars. Do I sound crochety?)

Then there's the growing trend toward substituting then for than, which I think comes not just from sloppy misspelling but from an actual misapprehension of which word means what. (That sort of thing can happen more and more as people read less and learn their lingo from hearsay rather than from the original written form. After all, if one has never seen the word 'could've' spelled out, and one doesn't understand the significance of the contraction, it is perfectly reasonable that one would assume the phrase is 'could of.' I've seen this.)

But back to this particular mondegreen. It crops up everywhere now: 'It is better to be happy then miserable,' for instance. Well, Solomon did say that even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness, but personally, I'd rather be miserable first, and then happy. Heh heh.

RE: Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008

Dear Senator,

The aforementioned piece of legislation has just come to my attention, and I am appalled at the potential ramifications that enforcing this bill may have, both for the flailing economy in general and for my family in particular. As I understand it, requiring all products (clothing and toys) designed for children 12 and under to be tested for lead and phthalates could have the unintended consequence of wiping out the second-hand industry as we know it.

I understand the desire to protect our children from shoddy goods imported from China, but this legislation was absolutely the wrong way to go about it. With times as tight as they are, it is unimaginable that the US Congress would allow this legislation to be actually enforced. I depend solely on second-hand sources to clothe my children, and with a third child expected this summer, I know I cannot afford to pay full-price for new children's items.

Seriously, children are far more threatened by second-hand cigarette smoke than by the potential side effects from hypothetical lead in the occasional beadwork on their clothing. Let me, as the consumer, make the choice to purchase items for my family, using my own discretion to weigh the risk of whether I feel threatened by the potential lead content of any particular toy or item of clothing.

If you want to require this testing for all children's products going forward, that would be a more fair way of handling the situation. At the very least, this legislation needs to be revised to apply only to new products being manufactured, and should never apply retroactively to all the goods out there already in circulation. We need much more clarification and revision to this law before it takes effect next month.

My main concern, of course, is with the availability of second-hand items for my family and the effect this law will have on the second-hand industry in general; I haven't even touched on the devastating consequences this would have for small business owners, artisans, craftsmen, and the like, who run their small cottage industries in the best of the entrepreneurial spirit, and who cannot afford to have expensive product testing for their handmade hairbows, aprons, and other goods they sell on Etsy, for example.

I am astounded that this legislation somehow passed without general consumer knowledge. I wish we had had time to lobby about it before it was voted upon, but as far as I can see, the information is just now hitting the blogosphere. Trust me, this thing will spread like wildfire. Small cottage industries, frugal families, second-hand stores, and environmentalists concerned about the impact of trashing all the perfectly good items whose only crime was to be manufactured before February 10th, 2009, will all rise in protest. There will be a huge backlash if this thing goes through. I respectfully request that you be our advocate on this issue and make every effort to repeal or substantially amend this devastating piece of legislation before it is enforced.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Rose Focht

'Tis the season

Christmas music rings through the house, and the season of Christmas parties is upon us. How glad am I to be back to liking food in time for the holidays! Here's a picture of us before Michael's office Christmas party:























I think it's funny that we usually take pictures of us standing in front of pictures of us. It's hard to find a wall that doesn't feature us. We're terribly vain.

And here's the first in the obligatory Pregnancy Pictures. You can tell this is the third baby by how long it took before we got around to starting this series, and the updates are probably going to happen about once a month or so instead of every week:























This is that awkward transitional stage where I suck it in desperately for the pictures so I can look back later and gloat over how good I looked at three months along, and then protrude as much as possible everywhere else so that no one has any doubt at all that it is a baby and not mere belly bulge.

We're still eating Thanksgiving leftovers, and yet it just dawned on me that Christmas is three weeks from today! Christmas music got short shrift this year.

Third time's a charm

Not that Jane and Ella aren't charming enough in their own right, of course.

In other news, today marks the five-year anniversary of moving into our current home, meaning that I've lived in this house longer than I ever lived in Virginia. At this rate, this house may very well end up being the single place I've lived the longest (the farm in Oregon holds the current record, at seven years).

Last but not least, today is our sixty-third month-aversary. Yes, we've been married over five years, and we still count up the months (when we can remember it).

Another book post

Thanks to Carrie, I have another list to write: All the books I've read from A to Z. I don't necessarily recommend or like every one, and I have to leave off a lot due to duplicate letters, and of course I'll drop 'the,' and I haven't time to mull much so it will be a quick list, but I'll try to keep the favourites on the front lines:

A: Alice in Wonderland
B: [The] Blue Castle
C: Caddie Woodlawn
D: Drink to Yesterday
E: Ella Enchanted
F: Foundation trilogy
G: Gold Fears No Fire
H: [The] House at Pooh Corner
I: I Capture the Castle
J: Johnny Tremain
K: Knight's Castle
L: [The] Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
M: [Les] Miserables
N: Northanger ABbey
O: Out of the Silent Planet
P: Pride & Prejudice
Q: Queen Margot
R: Rumpole of the Bailey
S: Scaramouche
T: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
U: [The Mysteries of] Udolpho
V: Vanity Fair
W: [The] Wind in the Willows
X: ??
Y: [A] Year in Provence
Z: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Consumer rant - Omaha Steaks

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a great deal, and signed up promptly. It's one of those you-had-to-be-there-at-the-right-time deals, like combining a great coupon that doubles with a great sale. Basically, if you fulfilled a particular offer with a particular merchant, that merchant would send you a code for a $25 gift card to Omaha Steaks. Then, you apply that $25 gift card to a then-current promotion at Omaha Steaks, to receive not only an order of burgers, but also a free gift with purchase. So far, so good. I signed up, got my gift card code, ordered the burgers and the free gift, received my confirmation email, and waited for my order to arrive.

However. Never having been one to consider spending phenomenal amounts of money for overpriced (and, according to reports I've heard, not really all-that-great quality) meats and other edibles, I've never actually ordered from Omaha Steaks before. Turns out that their Unconditional Guarantee isn't quite so unconditional after all: apparently, you have to spend a certain amount of money on the order before they consider you a customer worth trying to keep. They certainly will never get my business again, and I will recount the saga in hopes of discouraging anyone else from ever risking getting burned by this company with truly abysmal customer service.

The day after placing my order, I received the following email from Omaha Steaks Customer Service:

Thank you for shopping at Omaha Steaks! We appreciate your business and are confident you will be delighted with your order.

We do show when placing this order, a special offer for a free item was combined with the $25 reward card. As stated in all promotions for free items, offers cannot be combined. Your order will ship without the free item.

If you have any questions regarding your order, please contact us at 1-800-329-6500. We would be happy to assist you.

I promptly replied with the following email:

Excuse me??

No, this was never stated at any step of the promotion. My order confirmation includes both the free gift - which rang up with my order, without EVER stating any exclusion - and the gift card. Furthermore, the gift card code I used is a GIFT CARD, not a "special promotion."

If this was true, the free gift should have voided out of my order upon placement. This is the first I am hearing of your so-called rule. You are changing the rules of the offer on me, and that is fraud.

I was promised a free gift with my order, and you do not have the right to change the terms of the offer on me, especially after receiving my payment and personal information.

I will expect my complete order with my shipment.

To which Omaha Steaks Customer 'Care' replied:

Thank you for contacting us. We appreciate your interest in Omaha Steaks and we apologize for any confusion with our special offers.

All Omaha Steaks free item promotions state that they cannot be combined with any other offer. The Reward Gift Card that you received is a special promotion offered through Geico and while this Reward Gift Card did not stipulate that it could not be combined with another offer, the Omaha Steaks free item promotion did state that it could not be combined with any other offers. Therefore, the free item was removed.

If we can be of further assistance please contact us via email or by phone at 1-800-329-6500.

Meanwhile, my shipment arrived sans the free gift. My card was charged for the amount indicated on the confirmation email, the amount that I had calculated would include the extra burgers. Without the free gift, the order was just a bunch of overpriced meat.

Let's be clear on this. The free gift showed as shipped. The confirmation email showed it as included. There was never any question about the use of a gift card voiding out a free gift offer. It was not until a day later that I received an email informing me that the free gift was going to be removed from my order.

Clearly the response to this offer was overwhelming, and some dolt in Customer Care decided that the best way to cut their losses would simply be to reneg on the terms of their offer, re-define the Geico gift card as a 'Rewards Promotion,' and tick off hundreds (thousands?) of customers instead of accepting the loss of their loss leader advertising. If that's how they do business, they probably won't be in it very long.

Really simply, eh?

I've pretty much ignored the buzz over RSS feeds up until now, deciding that, for my own purposes, the best way to streamline my online time and stop frittering away time reading blogs is simply to spend less time online reading blogs. I really don't waste that much time clicking aimlessly away at blogs and waiting for them to load (we have a fast connection) and I'm usually eating or doing something else productive at the same time, so the time saving factor is negligible.

On the other hand, I've heretofore neglected to look into adding an RSS feed to my blog for the simple fact that it seemed too conceited - to syndicate myself?! To assume that there are hordes of people waiting with bated breath for morsels of wisdom to spring from my keyboard? It turns out, however, that there is at least one person who would appreciate it, so upon request (hi, Lisa!) I've turned on the settings to allow full RSS feeds. I assume that's all I need to do. If it doesn't work or if I must needs tinker more with codes and suchlike, by all means please advise, all you RSS fans and experts.

Dear Scranton Times-Tribune

To Whom It May Concern:

I understand that you recently published a story wherein reporter David Singleton alleged that someone in the crowd shouted "Kill him!" (referring to Obama) at a Palin rally, and that you continue to stand by the story, insisting that "the facts reported are true and that's really all there is," despite the fact that the Secret Service investigated the matter thoroughly and found no evidence that this event actually transpired. I really appreciate how you stand up for your employees, even when there's no corroborating evidence for their stories and all eyewitnesses interviewed deny the story's veracity.

(Actually, it kind of reminds me of the old saw: "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?" If someone yells, "Kill him!" at a political rally, and no one hears it, did he still say it?)

Because this is the kind of job security I'd value, and because I'm starting to get a feel for the kind of sensational yet utterly unassailable stories you run, I would like to submit my own article for publication to your newspaper, recounting the events which I personally witnessed at a local McCain rally. I was there in person, and at one point I distinctly heard a fervent McCain supporter yell, "Tar and feather him! Draw and quarter him! Run him out of town on a rail!" when Biden's name was mentioned. Actually, I also heard another unmistakable McCain supporter yell, "Roast him! Boil him! Squash him into jelly!" *

No one else heard or saw any of this, aside from me, but I was there and I swear it happened. I know you take your reporters' observational skills seriously, so I'd like to get on the payroll quickly and have my investigative skills bolstered and strengthened by the dignity of this great paper. Please advise me of your word limits and deadlines, and I'll get the article written up posthaste.

Sincerely,

Concerned (and Attentive) Citizen

* There was actually a UFO hovering over the platform during this event, too, but I think I'll save that for my next article. As fate would have it, no one else noticed it, so - lucky you! - you'll get a national scoop on that one too!

Fall fun

Here are the girls, enjoying the swings at our little playground.
















Ella can swing on the tire swing all by herself!















Jane loves to dangle. After I helped her across the monkey bars, she spent a good bit of time dangling from the 'Capital A' (you can see it right behind her).



















**************************************************************
Speaking of letters, Jane is all fired up about reading. She sounds out letters on signs, and always asks me what that word says. One of her favourites is: 'C-V-S; that spells kah-VISS!'

On a rainy day last week, I asked her what letter umbrella started with. After correctly answering U, she added, 'It's a short U. If umbrella had a long U, it would be OOM-brella!' This is another one of her favourite pastimes, the random hypothetical. 'But if you said yes, Mama, then I could climb on the back of the couch!'

"They have reconstituted themselves"

Wow, you'd think that the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan were really dehydrated. Obama makes them sound like powdered milk.

Silliest lame comeback of the entire debate: "Well, I have a bracelet too..."

Boring stuff

It seems that we've been terribly busy here of late, but we haven't much to say as there's nothing very riveting about our various cooking misadventures, shopping trips, and following the news with bated breath.

Ella is very communicative. She clearly understands pretty much everything we say to her, shakes and nods her head emphatically, and follows complicated instructions. Jane's sense of make-believe is growing stronger by the day. She now has an imaginary parallel universe in which her name is Elody (sp?) (pronounced L.E.D.) and my name is Aralyn (sp?). Michael's and Ella's imaginary names she tends to make up on the spot. I'll post a few pictures if I can remember to take them. (Must first replace batteries in camera.)

In other news, Michael may be going out of town for a few days for some computer training. (Note to prospective burglars: No, I'm not going to mention which days, and he's leaving all the guns anyway.) (Addendum to pediatricians: Ha ha, no, of course we don't have any guns, and even if we did, we'd keep them locked up and unloaded.) I'm wishing there were someone I could invite over to stay with us, the way I used to hang out with S.J. when her globe-trotting husband was off on office business (speaking of which, only two weeks!), but the sad reality of moving to Georgia as a married woman is that I haven't really had an opportunity to make any single girlfriends. Sunday schools are so pigeon-holed and the nature of mom's groups is rather exclusive, so I'm not really sure where to begin. I just know that I, as a single girl in Virginia, had a lot of married friends. Not that I'm complaining. I just wonder.

Wedding musings

The main reason destination honeymoons were invented, aside from obvious ones like When Else Will We Get To Go To Hawaii, is that it provides a plausible excuse for the happy couple not to go to church the next day. Because, of course, that just Would Not Do. I'm not sure if there's a socially recognised standard for the acceptable lag time after which it is appropriate to appear in public again, but it seems that a week would allow ample time for the snickers to have died down. My theory is that the Sunday wedding phenomenon has taken hold as a clever way to dodge both the heathen approach of not going to church and the tactless faux pas of turning up too soon and having everyone glance away and pretend not to wonder what you were doing last night.

I love eating bountiful feasts at lavish wedding receptions, and I always maintain that you can skimp on the wedding decorations, because no one (except the ten chums who stayed up all night to decorate your palace for you) will notice how many sprinkles of confetti adorn each centerpiece, but what the guests will take away with them is a solid impression of the food. But I know it wasn't always this way, and I'm a bit nostalgic for the old days when cake, nuts, and punch were the standard, because that allowed for more leeway on the guest list. I remember getting invited to a lot of weddings when I was a child, and I'm sure the lack of fanfare on the food front had something to do with it. Weddings are getting more expensive, and the unhappy side effect is that kids don't get invited to weddings as much. I guess, in short, I love to go to weddings. I love great food at receptions, but I'd rather get invited to a wedding and eat cake and punch than not get invited at all.

These thoughts and many others swirled through my mind tonight as I capered about town playing the Wedding Registry Scavenger Hunt. Ooh, look! This perfect punch bowl - which is beautiful, meaningful, and in my price range - was on the registry when I checked earlier, but it's mysteriously gone! What nimble fellow player, racing against the clock, beat me to this prize?? All shall be revealed at the buffet/feast/punchbowl tomorrow!

Stuff and nonsense

Last week I came across this website, and have been mulling over The Story of Stuff ever since. It's about a twenty-minute video, and well worth watching, although I don't appreciate the political potshots which the narrator takes toward the beginning.

(I don't necessarily agree with her assumptions about the limited amount of resources or 'our fair share' of the planetary pie. I guess it comes down to a fundamental difference in worldview - an atheist/evolutionist will see things in the light of chance and survival of the fittest, in which we'd better play the best with the cards we've been dealt, while I believe that God gave us this earth to take dominion over, and provided the resources needed to sustain life in His image. So I'm a little irritated by her trite statistics about the percentage of polluted waterways and the square miles of Amazon rainforest chopped down every day. Treating the water supply and the forests as a finite resource, the draining of which is exacerbated by a growing world population, instead of as a renewable resource that simply needs to be managed better, is a typical alarmist cliche. I am sure that there is irresponsible logging going on out there, but coming from Oregon, where the logging industry is a mainstay and the loggers, realising and respecting this fact - and not wanting to work themselves out of a job - consistently replant at or above replacement level, I tend to resent the all-too-common assumption that cutting down trees is synonymous with trashing the planet.)

Back to The Story of Stuff. Once I got past her alarmist propaganda, I found the rest of the video gripping and enlightening. I am astounded by the notion that our current economic model of rampant consumerism was a deliberate scheme, concocted and constructed according to plan. Apparently the economic advisers of the Eisenhower administration, in drawing up a blueprint for the American economy coming out of the post-war boom, envisioned a long-term model of ever-growing prosperity and expansion, industrialisation and consumption. They developed a shift in the consumer mentality by the precise implementation of planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence.

Planned obsolescence is when things are designed to be thrown away, so the consumer always has to keep coming back for more. You can see this principle at work with the obvious disposables such as paper goods, diapers, and the like. (Prior to WWII, disposables were almost unheard-of; cloth diapers, personal care and linens were the norm.) Nowadays, we've moved so far away from that notion that we even have such ridiculous 'convenience' items as disposable mops, toilet scrubbers, and, apparently, BBQ grills. (?!?)

More subtle is the planned obsolescence of poor quality goods purporting to be reusable but so cheaply made that they will break often enough to keep the consumer buying and buying again. It's all a cleverly orchestrated balance between having the goods break quickly enough to ensure a steady demand while lasting just long enough to ensure that the consumers will not lose faith in the product. Our expectations have been re-programmed, and we no longer hope for the durability and quality from long-term goods that were the norm a generation or so ago. Hence the very true expression, 'They just don't make them like they used to.' No, and it's no accident.

Perceived obsolescence is simply the cultural pressure to buy a new one, even if the old one isn't broken or dysfunctional. This is the driving force behind fashion, sleek newer cars, bigger houses, and the like. Surely some scientific improvements come with time, but for the most part, the need to buy new stuff is merely imaginary.

The whole thing is very, very annoying to me.

Love a rainy night

'Good thing I didn't mow,' said Michael.

'Good thing I didn't water the tomatoes,' said I.

And we sat and continued to read our respective books, very pleased at how well our procrastinating had paid off.

Wooden silverware

Six years ago today I met the man of my dreams.

Five years ago yesterday I married him.

My, how fast the years have flown.