Grounded

Last weekend I sprained my rotater cuff and I am confined to sling at the moment. I hope to be back shortly. In the meantime, take care.

The gift that doesn't move

I haven’t talked about it much, but in 3 more days my Cute Respectable Bank will become Mega Bank. Jobs lay in the balance and everyone who has been with this bank for 15 years are saying tearful goodbyes. Especially the CEO, we are having a lunch in his honor on Friday and when he first announced this, he said what a hard decision it was to make. I am sure it was, luckily he has $15 million that he earned from the sale to console him in retirement. Do I blame him? No. I would probably bend over and sell out to for that amount of money too.

I am not all doom and gloom about Mega Bank. I think this will be a great opportunity to do something different. My goal is to get back into marketing of some sort. I think I will enjoy it more than being an Executive Assistant. I have been sunshine and roses about the whole thing. I like to think as change as a new opportunity for something good. But what do I have to console me through my new transition? Paper weights.

A few months ago I passed my one year anniversary with the company, and on your one year they give you a crystal paper weight with the bank logo on it. I think paper weights are pretty useless anyways since my papers tend to stay where I put them. Fine. I will use it for god knows what.

The past few weeks we have been having games and if you win you get a prize. Unbeknownst to me, I won one of the games. Guess what I got? Another paper weight. Good thing because I was at a loss without a matching set. All I have to say is my paper is going nowhere. I have all my shit under control with my TWO completely useless paperweights. They could have at least given me a pen, I can use that.

View from the Toilet

I am going to be gross for two seconds. I use the bathroom with the door open. Not because I was born in a barn, but because with a precocious three year old, it is out of pure necessity to be able to help or save him. Otherwise he will just bang his head on the door until I come out.

Yesterday I got home from work and I was using the facilities in my bathroom that is attached to my bedroom. From my view on the toilet I can see into the bedroom. Dresser on the right, bed in the middle is the view that I have from my bathroom. I was getting ready to go out with my husband; we had plans with my parents to go to a tequila tasting and dinner.

As I was using the facilities, shall we say, I see Drew next to the dresser, he is sanding it with his pretend Bob the Builder sander. I turn my head for two seconds and he pulls the bottom drawer out of the dresser, stands in it causing the whole dresser to fall on him and pin him in between the dresser and the bed. The vase of flowers that were on top of the dresser flies off, missing his head by two inches, crashes onto the edge of the bed frame and breaks all over the floor, while I am sitting on the toilet.

Thankfully he was fine, however it did scare the crap out of him and me. Why didn’t I have the dresser strapped to the wall for just these occasions? I just finished staining it, and I hadn’t gotten around to securing it back to the wall. I get everything cleaned up and find that I can’t get the bottom drawer in, that’s right, it’s broken. I spent 3 days staining that damn thing, and now we are going to have to replace it.

Even though I had the door open for safety sake, I was still not able to keep the child from hurting himself, so I might as well close the door. Why do kids insist on scaring the crap out of you?

So you think you can stain

For six years I have been staring out our unfinished pine dresser. Next to our dark and dignified bedroom furniture, this dresser screams at me, "I'm Yelllloooowww". So this past labor day weekend I decided I was going to turn that knotty, yellow pine creature into Black Cherry. It's been six years, I thought I should stain it. Now I have stained before, about five years before I had two pine nightstands.

Exhibit A: So You Think You Can Stain 2002 - Nightstands. (sorry the pictures are sideways, but I know an awesome chiropractor if you need one)This was the first time I had ever stained anything. I was not aware of the wipe on/wipe off nature that is required in staining. I painted it on with a paint brush. And I wondered why it took three days to dry before I could seal it. I even conditioned the wood before I stained it, I just forgot to wipe off the excess. I was going for all over coverage and I achieved that, even if it was a little gloppy.

So when 2007 came around and I decided yellow dresser be damned, I got my wipe off rags and headed for the garage. I have learned from my mistakes. I was ready for the zen nature of the wipe on/wipe off.

Exhibit B: So You Think You Can Stain 2007 - The Dresser Edition
Hmmmm, that's curious, I have applied four layers of stain and these drawers that are supposed to be a sexy Black Cherry are still yellow! Well Ava, did you stir the can of stain? Uuuggghh? Shit! You see I had lovingly sanded, conditioned the dresser and I forgot that LITTLE step of stirring the damn can. Once we got past that issue, the stain was working out much better. Once stained it took all of the next day to dry. Luckily it was labor day weekend and I had a few more days to deal with my mistake. I put the polyurethane on it on Monday and let it chill for a week.

A week later my husband was poking at my dresser shaking his head. Apparently I had not wiped off the edges very well and there were still wet spots everywhere. I spent the whole next Saturday after labor day weekend performing surgery on my dresser. I scraped the stain bubbles that were still wet, dried them with a hairdryer, re-sealed them, and dried it with a hairdryer some more.

Here is the finished product, finally! (Again, sorry it's sideways, I am lame and could not get it to flip around)


There are two lessons to the story. One, I am only allowed to buy stained furniture. I think I can stain, but I can't. Two, I really need to learn Photoshop so I can flip photos around.

Drew's Crew

It’s weird to think that Drew has a life outside of
us, but we got a glimpse of it this weekend when we
went to Starbucks. My daycare lady is great and always
takes Drew on outings. I really like that. Since he
can’t be with me, I want him to go and do fun things.
Ms. April has takes him to watch the planes take off,
feed the geese at Shoreline, and lunch at Nordstrom’s.
One of the outings she takes him to is a walk to the
local Starbucks. Drew gets chocolate milk while Ms.
April gets a latte. We always hear little tales of the
regulars.

One time my husband stopped into to have coffee on his
way to work after dropping Drew off, as he was
ordering the barista said, “You’re Andrews Dad, aren’t
you”. That’s how much my son looks like his Dad. Well
apparently Drew is one of the regulars.

We were in the area this weekend, so we stopped in for
coffee. As soon as he got into the shop he beelines
it for the handicapped table where I nice old lady was
sitting enjoying her paper and her coffee. Drew
immediately drummed up a conversation about volcanoes
with her. She listened intently. This was the
infamous Mary Jane. We have heard about Mary Jane, it
was nice to meet his daily coffee buddy. I apologized
for him helping himself to her table. She said, “That’s
ok, he does that every day, I don’t mind”. After he
had regaled Mary Jane with volcanoes he headed
straight for the refrigerator case where he helped
himself to a chocolate milk (which we paid for), while
Mary Jane an I chatted for a few minutes.

As he made his way to the other end of the coffee shop
he ran into Ruth the barista, she gave him a big hug and
they exchanged pleasantries. Our kid was working the
room! He said hi to a few more of the employees, he
forgot that we even existed. It was if he was Norm
from Cheers, clearly everyone knew his name, all that
was missing was a beer and a bar stool. He finally
returned to us after he had greeted everyone to guzzle
down his chocolate milk and then we headed out to
finish the rest of our day.

Grandma the Sandbox

It’s really hard to raise good grand parents. I am preparing once again, for a talk with my mother, the one who insists on battery powered everything and imagination nothing. Her latest antic is when she is on the phone with Drew she says, “This is Grandma _____, the one who gave you the sandbox”. This is the second time that she has done this, and both times I have ranked the phone from my son and asked my Mother, why she feels the need to identify herself with an object. And when I nicely state that he knows who she is and that she does not need to align herself with plastic and sand, with a heavy tone of indignation and annoyance says, “Well does he?!?!”. Give the three year old a break mother.

Yes, my son does know her; she has made quite an impression on him. He refers to her as the “Scary Grandma”. He didn’t get that from us, we make a point to not talk about her in front of him, it makes me squeamish, but I can’t deny his feelings. She is scary when she is around him, she physically gets in his face and talks to him two inches away from his nose, gives him no personal space. She puts lot of pressure on the things that he is playing with and tries to steer him towards the things that she bought him. She quizzes him about what he likes about the gifts she gave him. If we are giving him instructions or talking to him, she counters with the opposite thing we are trying to say. We make a point not to be around her because she is just stressful. This is the reason that I listen in on the phone calls when he is talking to her and why I watch her like a hawk when I am around her, to try and stop the crazy behavior.

Now it is at the point where her and I are going to have to talk, and I am hoping it will not end like most of our conversations end, where I express my feelings, she yells at me and then hangs up on me. I am not trying to punish her, but I need to draw attention to what she is doing. She has made it very clear that how disappointed she is that her other Grandson, Peter is materialistic. She complains A LOT about how he only wants expensive gifts from her and she can’t keep up. My mother is starting to repeat the cycle, but only with my son, and it’s clear she is hoping for better results. As we have discussed before I am pro-people and pro-imagination. I would rather she give herself (the non-crazy side) than things. I would rather she not gift at all if she is going to attach all this ugliness to it.

I am going to have a talk with her today or tomorrow, trying a new strategy, I will let you know how it goes.

Attack of the Cowlick

My son inherited lots of great things from my husband. But his cowlicks are not one of them. We noticed when he got all of his hair in that he had these two nasty little twisters on the back of his head, in a position that allows for the maximum amount of standing up and standing out. After suffering much hair humiliation as a child (I will cover that in another post), I am very sensitive to my sons hair cutting needs. However this cowlick has me a little flustered. When you grow it out, it doesn't lay down, it in fact takes all the hair, and fans it out. Please see exhibit 1.

Exhibit 1: Cowlick does not lay down when grown out

I know it's a little hard to see, I am still learning how to use the camera on a moving object and I really need to learn photoshop. But as you can see that thing is standing straight up. I think it's funny that cowlick is spelled cow+lick. I wonder if I popped over to the Pioneer Woman and had one of her cows lick my sons head, if that would make that pesky cowlick stay down.

Faced with the fact there we could not try one of those cool boy haircuts, we decided we are going to have go with the ever-so-traditional buzz cut. Please see Exhibit 2.

Exhibit 2: Removal of hair

Even with the hair cut, you can see where those two twisters on the back of his head are just waitning to grow more and turn it into a frenzy.

This look says: Really? A cow is going to lick my hair? You're silly mommy. All he really cares about is that we got icecream afterwards.

The White Hotel Room

When we went on vacation we stayed in style. My husband used is Internet findings powers and got us a 4 star hotel room for only $130 bucks a night. I immediately had a heart attack when I came in the room because I have three year old and everything was white. I resisted the urge to wrap all three of us in Ziploc backs. I managed my fear of white enough to not say, "Don't touch anything". But it's not the three year old that I am afraid of, it's me. I am notorious for stains and spills. I was having trouble relaxing in this room with no stain remover or washing machine readily available. All I was armed with were baby wipes and a couple of Shout! wet naps.

So before I could sleep in this pristine bed, I had to make sure I was clean enough.

So I took a shower in this beautiful shower, and then I could crawl into bed confident that I would not get anything dirty.

This is the beautiful credenza that housed free water, that was replaced everyday. I was in shock.

This is the sink that I cleaned every time we used it.

There is Drew enjoying the white chairs.

I loved the hotel room, it was beautiful. It was so sweet of my husband to put us up some place so luxurious. I spent the whole time cleaning up after ourselves because I didn't want to mess up something so beautiful.