Damian playing with the water fountain.
19 March 2008

Matt, or as I like to call him, Super Amazing Perfect Husband upgraded my computer.  He upgrades my computer about once each year — a faster hard drive or faster RAM or a nicer monitor.  This year I got a new motherboard, CPU (dual!) and RAM.  He also wiped my drive and installed Windows Vista.  And say what you will about Vista, but it is pretty.

My computer is sweet now.  And after this most current upgrade, I have two bits of advice to pass on:

1. Never underestimate what a nice screensaver can do for your business. I originally wanted Vista just for the bubble screensaver.  Those bubbles are so cool.

2. If you are single and you have the choice between a Brad Pitt look-alike, a fireman, an astronaut, and a computer nerd, always take the computer nerd.  You will have the sweetest machine in the city, and it’s true what they say about computer nerds in bed (wink wink nudge nudge).

Sean stayed up all night playing World of Warcraft and
chatting online. As he slept through the afternoon the following day
on Aunt Deb’s bed, my children took their naps with him.
(I remember those days fondly… before children…
playing EverQuest until all hours of the morning with Matt… *sigh*…
maybe when the children are older we can abuse MMORPGs again.
Or is it like Senior Prom or Spring Break in Fort Launderdale — you have
a window in which to enjoy those things, but then you grow
past them? I don’t know. We’ll find out if we still enjoy MMORPGs
when the children allow us the time to explore that question.
Anyways, I completely digress; here’s the cute piccies: )
12 March 2008

When Joseph Campbell described the Japanese aesthetic, it turns out he also described my dream house: “You can’t tell where nature ends and art begins.”  In my dream house, you wouldn’t be able to tell where the outside ends and the inside begins.  I want lots of plants and windows, light and soft colors, outdoor rooms as well as indoor rooms…

Of course, my dream house has many – many – more details, but that would just translate into a long, boring entry, so I will just stop here.

Men have dream cars; women have dream houses. 🙂

Damian pushing his toy car out the back door.
08 March 2008

I’m sure you have heard the saying, “If it’s too loud, then you’re too old.”  Well, it’s been too loud for many years now.  I hate loud music and loud movies — it hurts my ears and annoys me… a lot.  And I listen to “soft rock.”  It’s true; I do.  And I’m not ashamed to admit it.

So how do I know that I’m not too old?  Because I still find this Call of Duty 4 review funny.  It has lots of cussing and crude sexual humor.  The day that I find things like this more crude than humorous is the day that I am officially “old.”

Of course, that day may be coming soon.  I found 95% of Knocked Up crude, annoying, and a complete waste of time.  However, the remaining 5% was laugh-out-loud funny.  But is it worth 126 minutes of my life for those 7 minutes of laughter?  I don’t think so.  I think I’ll stick with Colin Firth and Jane Austen.

These are the two rooms that were cleaned during this past month. I wish I had “before” pictures to show the heroic effort that was needed to clean and organize these two rooms. But, to give you an idea, it did take a week to do each room.

The playroom
25 February 2008

The computer room
25 February 2008

I forgot to share a secret I learned while we were in England over Christmas.  To set the stage of this universal truth, you must first understand that jetlag gives you an achey body and spirit.  You just feel… achey.  And, for some reason, I got a really bad case of jetlag during this past visit.  Maybe having two preschool children compounded the problem.

But, out of adversity comes knowledge and experience.  And this is what I learned:

There is nothing that paracetamol (Tylenol) and a cup of tea can’t fix.

I feel privileged that I could add to our cultural body of knowledge. 🙂

The kids watching Disney’s sing-along-songs.
14 February 2008

Well, gosh, that was quite a bloggie holiday.  I was gone for almost a month with the exception of one small angsty post.

Where have I been, you ask.  We completely organized the house.  The computer room and playroom have been cleaned and rearranged.  Both are beautiful, useable rooms now.  We had a great Valentine’s Day party with Carla’s family.  And I’ve been drawing.  And designing webpages.  And uploading.  Go see for yourself.

Our 5k training was interrupted as well as blogging.  So we are back to square one for training.  But that is the best thing about every sunrise: you get another chance. 🙂

The heart swells and the tears fall alongside a lonely lake in the mind.  There is no map; only trust and the inaudible voice of an angel.

Faith is a bitch.

Matt’s brother, Ben, is getting married this coming June.
This is his fiance and our soon-to-be sister, Allison, with Lily.
31 December 2007

Photos: 

I post photos with my blog entries because I have found with other blogs that I read, photos really break up the text and actually add to readability.  And personally, I like seeing photos of the folks I know, so I figure that my family and friends who read this like to see the photos too.

And, to be honest, I fancy myself a bit of an amateur photographer… that is, until I see pictures like this one.  The exquisite beauty of that photo, taken by an amateur by the way, is beyond words.  The funny thing is: that site is supposed to be inspirational to other photographers.  All I thought, when I saw that photo, was, “Boy, I suck!”  Heh heh… I have a lot still to learn about photography… and perhaps inspiration as well. 😉

Running:

I told Matt that I would post our 5k Training Schedule.  So here it is.  There is some bizarreness to the schedule, such as it begins on a Tuesday.  That’s because we weigh ourselves on Monday night, and I post our weight with the week’s schedule.  Also, there was a random “Spa Day” last Wednesday because Matt forgot his gym shoes and we couldn’t work out.  So we took a spa day (the kids stay in the child center at the gym, and we go to the hot tub 😉 ).

I don’t know much about training for long distance races, but I’m reading and learning, so I’m sure the schedule will change as I learn more.  Our schedule is a hybrid between this schedule and this schedule.  I added weights because I think weights are very beneficial and do not want to give them up.  However, we are just doing hi reps, low weight to build stamina and not bulk.  We do two sets of 12 for upper body and two sets of 15 for lower body.  I ordered this book, and will modify the weight training as I learn more.  We also added stretching because I have learned, from the bit I have read so far, that if you don’t stretch, you are much more likely to get an injury.

Our training is slightly different from most long distance runners because we are not training to be competitive.  We’re just training to have fun, for general fitness, and to just finish the race.  I’m quite okay with just walking part of the race.  My intent is simply to finish and to enjoy it along the way.

We’re still excited by all the newness.  Let’s see if we can keep this up week after week after week.  I figure, if we actually participate in a 10k, then we are serious and I will start to plan our vacation to Orlando next January.  There is a huge leap between excited talk and actually doing the work — let’s see if we make that leap. 🙂

Oh, and one more unusual thing happened with our exercise changing to meet these new goals: I’m a lot happier and motivated.  Before, we had a “goal weight” because Matt and I are tired of being unfit and overweight.  But we no longer have a goal weight.  Our goal now is to simply finish a marathon next January.  For some reason which I haven’t figured out yet, that goal is so much more motivating.

Sadness:

Auntie Vera, Matt’s great aunt and one of Lily’s namesakes, passed away last night.  I only knew her for a little while, but I truly liked her.  So, in honor of Auntie Vera, here is a photo so others can see this beautiful lady:

Auntie Vera with Damian when he was six-months-old.
Newark, England
18 July 2007

Some Longhorns were spotted in Lincoln, England. 😉
Sam, Matt’s brother, in the kitchen.
Lincoln, England
02 January 2008

Matt and I have been together for seven and a half years.  We met in May 2000 and started dating in July 2000.  Today I was thinking of the movie The Seven Year Itch which is a comedy about a man who has been married for seven years, and he briefly fantasizes about an affair with Marilyn Monroe.  With my first boyfriend, I knew that something was wrong by seven months into the relationship.  I called it The Seven Month Itch.  (We should have broken up then, but we stayed together for another four years and then broke up — not the wisest choice I’ve ever made in my life.)

There is no Seven Year Itch with Matt.  Seven Year Love, Seven Year Amazing Husband, Seven Years with a good, honorable, kind, generous man.

I am truly lucky to have such a man as my husband.  I don’t know what karmic thing I did in a past life, but I must have been a saint to be given such a man in this life. 😉

A Bob Mackie creation, circa 1991.
I think this is a really beautiful dress,
and an adult version of the Disney
Princess dresses made for children.
I got the pictures from this website.

Before I begin with the topic at hand, I would like to say that, when you have two preschool children, writing a blog entry becomes an act of will.

Now, onto “The romance of romance” or, more precisely, “The strange appeal of the Disney Princesses.”  Lily is very much a girly-girl.  She grew into this personality all by herself; Matt and I merely gave her the freedom to explore her own tastes.  And, being such a girly-girl, she was early-on attracted to clothes.  In fact, I quit dressing her before she turned two-years-old because the arguments weren’t worth the trouble.  She insisted on picking her own clothes.

As she has become more explorative with clothes, she has been attracted to the Disney Princess line of dresses, and, from there, to the Disney Princesses in general.  And, here’s my dirty little secret: I like the Disney Princess line of merchandising as well.  I don’t like the ubiquitous quality of the line — like all things that do financially well in corporate America, Disney milks that cash cow for every little penny it can possibly get.

Since the Princesses have invaded my house, partially due to Lily and partially due to myself, I have been thinking about their appeal to the feminine.  And I think it comes down to romance.  And I don’t mean romance as in “falling in love.”  Lily could care less about the princes; they are just a minor plot point as far as she is concerned.  And I am already in love; my prince charming exists in my life on a daily basis.

I mean romance as in beautiful dresses, climbing roses, the smell of lilies, and idealic pastoral afternoons.  I think the Disney Princesses are a representation of this; they are always in their flowing dresses and surrounded by flowers.  (Their Prince Charmings are very rarely pictured with them.)  For American culture, they have evolved into the archetype of the romantic feminine within us — the part of us that longs to live an idealic romantic life full of flowers and kitchen gardens in the French countryside.

I looked up the term “archetype” to make sure I was using the word correctly, and dictionary.com said “the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based; a model or first form; prototype.”  And I thought, “Well, something can’t really evolve into an archetype, can it?”  But the sentence still settles really well with me.  Culture evolves; archetypes evolve.  And our children are looking to Ariel and Snow White, not Venus, to define the American romantic feminine.  Which, truthfully, is a bit scary.  As far as I know, none of the Disney princesses went to university.  Maybe, just like our mothers did, we need to expose them to Gloria Steinem as well as Snow White.

Anyways, these are my humble thoughts on the strange appeal of the Disney Princesses to both young and old women.  Since I’ve ferreted out their base note, I’m looking elsewhere for iconic images that conjure dreams of a romantic life.  The Disney Princesses are a bit… well, packaged.  They have the shiny coating and one-dimensional lack of depth that comes from corporate mass marketing.

… I do still like them though. 😉

ps. For another take on the Disney Princesses, you can read this article, titled “What’s Wrong with Cinderella?” by Peggy Orenstein and written for the NY Times.

pps. There is an excellent movie whose main character also dreams of a romantic life (romantic as I have defined it here, and not as in “falling in love”), titled “Kamikaze Girls.”  It’s Japanese so it’s subtitled, but I can’t recommend this movie strongly enough.  I really really enjoyed it.

Grannie with her grandson, Christmas Holiday 2007

25 December 2007

30 December 2007

We’re knackered.  We’ve had a very busy, very enjoyable, very full holiday.  But now we’re knackered.  The thing is, we’re not done yet.  It’s only January 1st — Lily’s 3rd birthday, by the way.  We still have a visit to Auntie Lily and Auntie Vera, Damian’s 1st birthday party, going to the Pantomime, and we have to exchange a clock at Toys R Us because it has a broken second hand.  (Matt’s mum said that our clock from Toys R Us was a bit “naff.”  Turns out that means “without taste.”  It has a fluffy pink feather boa glued around the edge — perhaps a bit “naff,” but certainly with a bit of fun. 😉 )

Happy New Year.  It’s been great so far. 🙂