Lily with (from left to right) Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, Aurora, Jasmine (again),
Belle, and Snow White. Mattel’s marketing department is a bunch of 4-year-olds
playing with construction paper and crayons compared to Disney’s princess
marketing onslaught. I have bought a Barbie doll (The Angel of Peace Barbie
for my desk), but Lily has no idea who Barbie is.
06 March 2008

I’m ready to podcast… in fact, I’ve been ready to podcast for awhile.  But I can’t seem to find the time.  The cleaning, the cooking, the children, paying the bills, the laundry, the shopping… my time disappears into the daily routine of household chores.

Have you ever heard folks say that they don’t like to work from home — that they prefer to go to an office — because when they work from home they feel like they are never off from work?  They find that they constantly work.

Well, what is a housewife to do then?  The house is our work.  How does a housewife delineate work-time from play-time when the two are so intimately entertwined with one another?

I’m complaining again.  Sorry.  I’ve just been wanting to play with my websites for the past week and have not because of household chores.  So here it comes out on the blog. 🙂

Lani and the children playing in the back garden…
playing in the dirt to be exact. When they came in,
there was dirt in their hair, dirt all over their clothes,
and dirt in their diapers.
04 March 2008

We bought a silver Toyota RAV4 Limited with V6 engine and the third row seating.  And I love it!  Like a vegetarian who craves bacon, I dreamed of a Toyota Prius or Hybrid Honda Civic or experimental electric/ethanol hybrid with high-speed Wi-Fi connection…. until I test-drove the RAV4.  Then I ate the bacon.  And it was good.

The RAV4, being a small SUV, gets decent gas mileage, about the same as my Mazda Protege actually.  Sure, not the greenest car in the world, but I don’t feel like I’ve completely gone over to the dark side. 

Here she is.  She doesn’t have a name yet.

05 March 2008

Mommy vision
25 February 2008

Matt and I are considering the purchase of an SUV, the Toyota RAV4 to be exact.  “Why?!” you ask, “Why, when you are a hippy and your husband is European and both of these groups cling to small, fuel-efficient cars with an unmatched self-righteous passion, are you considering an SUV?”

SUVs really fit our current lifestyle.  After Matt, myself, and both the kids in their carseats have been put into the car and the two strollers have been put into the trunk, my car is completely full.  So we’re moving up a size.  We’re looking to move up a size in house as well within the next couple of years.  Bigger family, bigger car, bigger house, bigger bills.

My only real fear is that we will not be allowed back into Austin.  Folks that don’t live here don’t realize that you actually have to fill out a questionnaire in order to become a resident of Austin.  Here is a sample of some of the questions (to gain residency, you must answer “yes” to 90% of the questions):

———-

4.  Do you have a tattoo, body piercing, brightly colored dyed hair or dreadlocks? 

5.  Are you gay or do you have a friend who is gay?

6.  Are you in a band or do you have a friend who is in a band?

11.  Do you own at least two domain names and/or two DBAs?

15.  Is some of the software on your home computer open-source?

16.  Do you own a Linux server?

(If you don’t know what open-source software or Linux is, the city planners feel it is best that you stop at this point and move to Round Rock or Pflugerville first and slowly become acclimated to Austin society before moving directly into Austin.)

20.  Do you own a small, fuel-efficient (preferably hybrid) car and openly mock people with large vehicles?

28.  Would you vote for a transient cross-dresser and/or a fictitious comic strip character for political office?

34.  For at least five years of your life, were you enrolled in college (the years do not have to be consecutive and actual graduation is optional)?

39.  Do you feel the Democratic Party is too conservative?

———-

The longer I live in the suburbs, the more I am assimilated.  If we get this SUV, I am one step closer to being a true suburban mommy.  Now I just need a bumper sticker that says, “My child is an honor student at her preschool” to put on it.

Doll dressforms in the computer/sewing room.
28 February 2008

I really like Project Runway.  It’s the only reality show I watch; it’s a show about people who have real skill and real passion.  And Tim Gunn is great.  And what other TV show creates such memorable quotes as, “Where the hell is my chiffon?!”

In season three, the mother of four who participated, Laura Bennett, said something really funny.  She was always dressed nicely, and she said, “I never dress down.  As a mother of four, that is a slippery-slope into sweat pants.”  As a mother of two who has slid down that slope already, I laughed and laughed when she said that.

Perhaps it’s time to dress for the job I want and not the job I have.  Though I like being the mother of my two beautiful preschool children, I don’t want to always be a mom to preschool children.  I hope to eventually join the world of competent, professional adults again.  And I don’t think they wear spit-up covered sweat pants. 😉

Damian and Lani playing in the back garden.
27 February 2008

When Matt was a teenager, he participated in a 22-mile race-walk a couple of times, so he has more experience in long-distance endurance sports than I do.  He didn’t train for the race-walks; he was a teenager and naturally had that boundless energy.  But he did say that the hardest part was the middle.  He said the beginning and end are easy, but the middle is tedious.  He said in regards to this up-coming marathon, “We are training for the middle.”

This morning, while eating cheese and bread with my gorgeous son, I was thinking about how we were so excited for the first two weeks of gym and training for this marathon, and then — very easily, mind you — we dropped gym completely for three weeks.  The excitement and newness had quickly worn off.

We had entered “the middle.”  The middle of most things are tedious: training towards a physical goal, sewing, wood-working projects, curling Ariel’s hair (which we did last night by the way; we being “Matt and I,” so Matt has another experience tucked under his belt that he never even conceived of before having a daughter and a wife).

So let’s salute the character-building tedious middle, the wall that’s a pain in the ass to climb.  You are the true test.

Lily playing on the couch in the computer room.
26 February 2008

We met Shelrie’s new honey this past Saturday (we both really like him by the way, Shelrie) when we all met for lunch.  And Shelrie said she may run the Walt Disney World Marathon with us, which I would love because that would make the race really enjoyable.   And Carla and Steve have already ordered a packet from Walt Disney World on taking a vacation there.  And my mom has said she will go with us …

… and we just skipped gym for three weeks.  We’re back to square one with our training plans.

I still have hope, and more than hope: excitement and motivation.  It would be so much fun to actually run a marathon through Epcot and the Magic Kingdom and then spend a week vacation afterwards with our kids and my family.

I just need a little dedication. 😉

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. 🙂

Lily feeding her horses lunch.
03 February 2008

Matt cleaned my car today.  Actually, let me be more precise: Matt detailed my car today.   When we bought his Mazda 3 two years ago, he received three free details from the dealership as part of the deal.  So his car gets detailed once a year.  And it’s beautiful afterwards; it looks like a new car.

And I was always jealous.  My poor car, though we cleaned it, never received the tender loving care that his car does.  So Matt spent hours today giving my car a thorough cleaning, including shampooing the upholstery.

I will never leave him.  He is a good good man. 🙂

And speaking of the suburban dad as the modern day hero, check out this editorial on NPR.  Quite funny.

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.