mindful

when i was on a meditation retreat a couple of years ago, one of the practices was an eating meditation in which each bite was taken slowly and completely before the next bite began. one was encouraged to think about how the food got to the plate - the growing, reaping, transporting, preparing, etc, in an effort to be mindful of the food's connection to the earth and to other people. (not much chemicals in the food at the meditation center!)

these days, i practically inhale my food because i never know when i'm going to be needed by one kid or the other. i hope i can get back to slow eating one day.

today i took myself and bea out to lunch. while waiting for the order, bea and i had a little coo-filled 'chat'. she fell asleep right about the time the food arrived, although she was pretty interested in my salad before she conked out. last weekend she had a fingertip's worth of rosewater gelato, and she's been mooching for food ever since. i ate the rest of my lunch realizing how quickly she's growing, and how little baby-time we're going to have.

better pic of boo

boo makes a goofy face when he's posing for pictures. it's a very stilted smile. he photographs much better in candids! this is him enjoying a horse swing that was at the tulip farm.

tiptoe...

or roll through the tulips, depending on the age.

yesterday was gray but not really raining, so i took the kids to a tulip farm about an hour away from portland. (no school due to a teacher workshop day.) it turned out to be clearer out there, and the sight of rows upon rows of tulips was amazing - boo even asked 'am i imagining this, or are we really here?'.

this sanjaya thing

let me start with the standard "but of course i don't watch american idol". which is actually true, i don't like it because i am not interested in common denominator music, even if all hipsters bow before kelly clarkson's 'since u been gone.'

while there's plenty of chatter about the sanjaya phenomenon, i haven't seen anything about the underlying reason this is happening. ladies and gentlemen, it's about race. it's about those 'other' categories on the census. don't believe me? well, can you imagine this joke (or however you think of it) going on so long if the kid in question was white?

your wish is my command

and another....

spring is in the air, erasure's on the stereo

new erasure song

they asked for erasure fan submissions of 'falling in love' for the video, and i nearly sent one in of bea and i having our first look at each other, but didn't - i wouldn't have been the only mum to have done so, it turns out.

such a sweet and happy song. waiting for the album....

seder went well

seder went very well. jun didn't come, as he started a new session of classes and was tired. the boys behaved pretty well and asked the classic four questions: can we eat yet? can we eat the orange on the seder plate? can we eat yet? when's dessert?

boo helped me make 'fruit heads' - we took a 'personal-sized' watermelon, cut it in half, scooped the innards, and made fruit kabobs with the watermelon, strawberries, mango chunks and grapes, and used the kabobs for 'hair' and pieces of fruit for faces. those we very successful desserts for the boys. we also made chocolate macaroons, which were easy and really yummy. both recipes/projects were from PBS shows we saw over the weekend - the fruit heads from Zoom, and the macaroons from everyday food. boo also helped me mix the charoset together. he really, really enjoys cooking.

lots of songs, including the 'my darlin' clementine' version of the four children's questions, and a song about the ten plagues sung to the tune of the addams family theme!

i made an 'iranian beef and eggplant stew' that was in a kosher cookbook i've owned for years. it came out really, really nicely. nancy brought matzoh ball soup - i will have to ask her to teach me to make matzoh balls, mine fall apart so i've given up. i also prepared baby carrots and baby yukon gold potatoes. and, in great jewish mom tradition, i made waaaay too much (i prepared brocolli that didn't even make it to the table!) so we'll have leftovers for a day or two. yippee!

ca-a-a-an you feel the lo-o-ove toni-i-ight

over on consumerist: (clicky)


some of those comments make me darnright misty eyed. or, erm, dewey eyed.

someone call john hughes...

So my seder tonight includes 2 babies, 2 six-year-old boys, 2 non-jewish husbands and possibly a Japanese exchange student.

librarians are hiding something

the most my brain has worked in a while

there's a buzz about the brooklyn public library considering offering netflix services, for free, for its patrons. it reached consumerist. the long-ass comment from 'dewey decimated' is mine.

mamadramalates

so i'm ready to start exercising again. now that we've moved to the hawthorne area, and the weather has been blissful as of late, i'm doing a lot more walking. but i wanted to do something structured, and something that would help get rid of the post-c-section abdominal pudge. there is a 'mamalates' class for moms and babies at zenana spa, so i thought i'd check it out.

it's taught by wendy foster of divine pilates. i went to her website to get contact information for registration. and that's when i see she has a page about c-section recovery that includes tips on 'getting rid of the toxins and emotional baggage' from having a c-section. and 're-birth your baby with your ideal birth.' and 'talk with your baby about your feelings around your labor and delivery.'

crap like this has got to stop. it's similar to an article in a recent issue of mothering, in which being 'supportive' to a mom who has had a c-section is phrased as 'it's okay, dear, you didn't know any better and next time you can have a VBAC.' it's condescending.

yeah, i want a flatter tummy, but not because it's being pressed down by someone else's idea of how guilty i should feel about having a c-section.

whew

the mac is finally working right again. new MIMO router is making it superhappy.

my son is now 6. my daughter sleeps through the night, at 7 weeks!! (this took the son about 2 years to accomplish.)

my tub doesn't leak, but it doesn't bubble yet. the kitchen sink, on the other hand... sigh.

the library called and asked very gently if i'd like to come back to work, and when. i'll return to my sunday shifts in may. the new branch may or may not be open by then.

house

so today's the third day this week i've been hanging around the house, waiting on a contractor/tech/repair person.

today it's for a ge tech, to see why my dishwasher doesn't work. the builder reinstalled it because it leaked the first time he put it in, causing damage to the wood floor. he seems to have fixed this by preventing water from getting into the dishwasher at all now. ge's warranty doesn't cover installation errors. of course, the builder's assistant swore to me that they ran the machine, so i'm obviously incompetant when it comes to... closing a door and pressing a start button. and hearing the machine run the cycle, and finding a machine full of hot, dry, dirty dishes.

yesterday's wait was for the same assistant. he came by to open the drain for the washing machine. the cap on it had been epoxyed in place, so the sears installer couldn't complete the hookup that i waited for all day on wednesday. mysteriously, the 'it should just pop off, why didn't the sears guy know that' drain cap needed to be drilled open.

last week was fun with qwest, in which we found out that the DSL in our area is painfully slow. also, the phone jacks that the builder put in weren't actually connected to anything. dish network tried to install, but the trees behind our house obscure the signal too much. so, i get to wait on comcast next week. i'm sure we'll find that the cable jacks don't hook up to anything, either.

the builder's assistant will be by on monday, too, to repair the tub. this is a vast improvement from the initial response of 'what's the problem, the shower works, right?'.

so why are we finally getting any help from the builder? because we threatened to go to the contractors' board. and we discovered he's been operating without a license or insurance since october. we know he's working on another house now, and we know we should be reporting him. it makes us ill that someone else will have to deal with the same kinds of issues and nonresponsiveness (until the threat) that we have. but for right now, the threat of reporting him is the only leverage we have to get things fixed.

i'm naming names. the builder is will speakman, his company is reserve construction, and here's a link to his license info:

https://ccbed.ccb.state.or.us/ccb_frames/consumer_info/search_results.asp?regno=167336

and here's how it affects us, although we can say we did not knowingly buy from an unlicensed builder - his real estate agent told us several times he was licensed, bonded and insured.

from the ccb site:

"Check on a Contractor's License

Why check a contractor’s license? The Construction Contractors Board (CCB) believes the best way to a successful home improvement, repair or new home project is to know your contractor. Checking a contractor’s license can tell you:

If the contractor is actively licensed, which means they have a surety bond and liability insurance;
If the contractor carries Workers' Comp Insurance to protect its workers on the project;
Breach of contract complaints filed with the CCB in the past seven years.
CCB disciplinary actions against business in the pasts seven years.

IMPORTANT: Homeowners lose the ability to recover damages through the bond and insurance as well as the CCB Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) if they use an unlicensed contractor."



diagnosis?






"Errmm.... you're screwed."

oookay....

so it appears that the mac/google problem has something to do with airport. this was determined by hooking a cable up to the router, instead of using the wireless connection. boom - instant google, gmail, and blogger. but how the heck do i fix the problem? ran a software update, and it says all my mac software is current....

dammit dammit

this was one of those 'start stupidly, get progressively worse' kinds of days.

for starters.... since yesterday, i've been unable to access any google services from my mac. no searching, no gmail, and while i can look at blogspot sites, i can't get into blogger to edit my own (i am on a windows laptop right now). no freaking idea why. i have rebooted the mac, the modem and the router. i have cleared the cache, erased cookies and reset safari. i downloaded firefox and still no go. WTF?

i went over to boo's new school for next year and went on the introductory tour. thankfully there were other parents of first-graders there (the tour is usually for kindergarteners' parents) because i could let them ask the questions and just listen. i was too tired to engage my brain enough to formulate my own questions.

then, over to the new house. we're having all the furniture moved over on thursday, but we've been bringing in bits and pieces each day - and last night, my muscles were not happy with me. still sore today. so, over to the new house to try out the lovely jetted tub in the master bedroom.

hmmm, i push the button but the jets don't work. so it's just a normal bath. there's also a handheld shower thingy that isn't working. annoying, and since it's a feature that helped sell us on the house, i decide to at least report it in to the builder. after getting dressed, i head downstairs to grab the cell phone and ask husband for the builder's cell phone number so i can let him know about this. and that's when i find water dripping from the ceiling onto the kitchen floor. when i head back up, i open the access panel and see the floor under the tub is wet, and the carpet in the bedroom is soaked. husband didn't have the number, i call my real estate agent and get the builder's number. as contracts are all done and signed, there isn't much she can do now besides friendly advice.

i call the builder, he returns the call. and it turns out HE KNEW THAT THE PLUMBERS WHO INSTALLED THE TUB NEEDED TO REPLACE A PART and that without the replacement, the jets wouldn't work and this leak would happen. he neither followed up to make sure it was done nor notified us that there was a problem. he was going to come to the house this afternoon.... but didn't. last time i talked to him, he couldn't get in touch with the plumbers.

so, i've emailed this to my real estate agent, and asked for a referral to a lawyer. because if this isn't repaired tomorrow, yeah we're gonna need one.

about the only thing that went smoothly today was walking around my new neighborhood, hitting a record shop (why do i still think in this term when they sell very little vinyl?), and quickly finding the cd's i hoped to give boodad for valentine's day. and not getting any snark from the guys behind the counter.

btw - tones - we went with the 32". upon measuring the larger tv, we found we had a 27" so this will still feel like enough of an upgrade. however, upon bringing the small tv there i found that rabbit ears do no good in our house, so we will wind up with dish or cable of some type. oh well.

i'm gonna go self-medicate with chocolate now.

bwaa haa, horoscope

"If you are contemplating a session of retail therapy today, think again. Buying things to make yourself feel better may provide temporary relief. But in a couple of day's time, whatever has been bothering you will still be bothering you. Any impulse buys you make today could drain your bank account of much-needed funds. Save your money for another day and don't take any financial risks -- especially with new technical gadgets that you have not researched."

kinda busy

yep. i'm in those days when taking a shower and doing two loads of laundry counts as being highly productive.

despite this, we are moving to the new house next week. mainly because it's driving us crazy that we're paying for two houses and we're not living in the nicer one.

dumb question for my reader(s): we're contemplating a new tv. we have a 13" that we do most of our viewing on, since it's in the master bedroom. the 32" is downstairs, and doesn't get decent reception as a result (we're on rabbit ears, no cable). the 32" no longer has its remote, and the universal remote we got for it needs reprogramming for time to time - a gigantic pain in the pitoot - and it is so heavy that it's making the cabinet we store it on hard to open. we're looking at the pretty LCDs that my husband's employer makes, which gives us the benefit of not paying retail price, as well as new furniture.

so - do we get a 32" flat tv, or pay almost twice the amount for 42"?

we've been saying we're "not tv people", but i'm not 100% sure if this is a chicken and egg thing -are we not tv people because we have 6 channels, or do we only have 6 channels because we're not tv people? a good chunk of the reason we don't have more is because of our loathing of comcast - which we did give one chance to show up for an installation appointment, and comcast failed - and reluctance to put a dish on a nearly 100-yr-old house. we'd go with dish for the new place.

if we get the 32", will we regret it down the road? and how would we get justify buying a bigger one later?

ugh. technology.

curls!

we're not sure where this comes from on the family tree, but bea's hair forms tight ringlet curls when she has a bath. and this morning, one was right in the middle of her forehead....

awwww 2.0

big brother and sister chat