slippers

It's been a bit chilly lately (rained all day today, Southern Californians don't know how to drive in the rain and don't put their headlights on) so I decided to make Nina a pair of slippers. Fortunately I picked up Knit One, Felt Too recently and it has a cute toddler slipper pattern. They knit up in about 3 hours and Nina is really excited about them. They are in the dryer right now and have felted up pretty nicely; they're not completely felted, though, so I will post the finished product tomorrow. In the meantime, you'll have to be satisfied with the "before" pictures, shown off here by my lovely model.




I really thought I was pretty clever until I saw the clogs Celena knit for her son. They're super awesome. Oh, and by the way, I totally rocked NaBloPoMo!!!

everybody loves a good myth

especially doctors

I did it!

I finally am getting rid of the three nonstick skillets I was holding onto. While cleaning the garage I "found" a giant cast iron skillet--perfect for cooking up big batches of potatoes for co-op pickup day--and a medium one, so I picked up a medium enameled cast iron and a small (for eggs) stainless steel Wolfgang Puck one for 30$ combined today. My local Marshall's has a TON of Le Creuset style enameled cast iron skillets and dutch ovens right now, all for under 70$. I don't need another dutch oven but it was hard to pass up that kind of deal. Off to freecycle the nonstick!

full photo set

Now I've taken you all the way through the trip that we took to London and Paris with Franki & Larry. We used one of those open top bus tours like we had in London, but it was pretty terrible in Paris, I wouldn't recommend it. The audio tours were spotty, hard to hear, and not very well timed. Next time I would probably opt for the TaoCity handheld GPS tour. Next time I go somewhere I don't know very well I will see if there is an option like this available. We ate some lovely food, notably Le Grande Cafe and La Fregate. People talk about bad experiences with people being snotty and rude (which was true on the bus tour) but overall traveling with with a cute kid is definitely a plus. People were nice to us, I think, because we had Nina with us. One last thing: I can't say enough good things about the hotel we stayed at, the Paris Louvre Opera Best Western. It was beautiful, elegant, quiet, and centrally located. They had our rooms ready when we checked in, complete with a bed for Nina.

If you haven't had enough, you can check out the whole photo set for the trip:


You may notice that there are a lot of pictures of Larry and Nina with a book in front of monuments/places of note. We read Madeline a lot and it was Larry's brilliant idea to find the places in the book and take pictures with the book in front of the places. Cool, huh? I will have Larry help blog that because he is more familiar with the place names than I am.

they take their brand names seriously

Seriously, there are a lot of places where selling a counterfeit is illegal, but in France, just owning a counterfeit carries a HEFTY penalty.

parting shots

Does this really mean that there is an Asterix theme park?? A quick web search reveals that yes, there is. I have a hard time believing it is really appropriate for les enfants.


Requisite picture of a dog in a restaurant


Playground in airport. The most brilliant thing ever.


Nina made a friend, though this little girl is clearly a lot older than Nina, they played pretty well together.

more cemetery shots

Nina fell asleep in the backpack so I was able to take lots of pictures and linger places.

Père Lachaise

I wanted to see Jim Morrison's grave. Cliche, I know, but sometimes a tourist is just a tourist. He is buried, along with a lot of other famous people, at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Franki had already been there (though The Lizard King was not yet dead when Franki visited) so we parted ways and our little threesome headed off on the Metro.


Here is Jim Morrison's resting place. The gravestone has been replaced and once looked like this but the original was stolen. There is now an iron rail and a police officer guarding the site. For more on the current gravestone, click here.


The cemetery itself is beautiful and very peaceful. It's also a maze of cobbled avenues that is very confusing and easy to get turned around in.


Here is Oscar Wilde's monument. The red marks all over it are lipsticked kisses.

water tour

We had to walk along the river to get our tour boat. This is a restaurant boat


I thought this guy was pretty cool

bread festival continued

See? Hot chocolate croissant--so good, it made the rain go away for 5 minutes and the little girl came out from underneath the umbrella.


Everyone got in on it.


Hot baguette with chocolate? Also a crowd pleaser.


All that hot bread and chocolate made this little chicken's feathers curl. Seriously, what's the deal with this guy?

bread festival

but first, a beautiful cappuccino

a little girl with wellies and an umbrella


and now on to the star of any event it attends: pain chocolate--chocolate croissants hot out of the oven, here they are before they go into the oven


oh, and did I mention that this bread festival was going on at Notre Dame? No? Well, here's a picture of Notre Dame for you.

The Eiffel Tower

I know that in the next to last episode of Sex and the City Petrovsky's daughter describes the Eiffel Tower as "heeedyooos" but I have to say I think it's not only charming, but also beautiful.

You can walk up the first two tiers at a discounted price from taking the elevator up. I decided that was a good way to get in some exercise. Nina was asleep in the back pack so it was perfect. I felt pretty good about it when I was able to pass a lot of people younger and thinner than I am. The view is pretty spectacular! They didn't let us go up all the way to the top, though, they said it was "closed" whatever that meant, maybe too many people had gone up already, I don't know. It was disappointing but a great experience anyway.


I loved watching people from the first tier. There were some people giving out free hugs and the view of that from above was pretty cool. I took some video but somehow very little of it was hugging, most of it was of the handrail I was leaning against. Seriously, how did I manage not to know?

taking you back in time

I realized recently that I hadn't finished telling you all about our amazing trip to Paris in May. So here goes!

In Paris the hotdogs come in baguettes, of course!


first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower.


The requisite accordion player


funny little house in the middle of other buildings, like something out of Harry Potter (only maybe I'm not supposed to be able to see it, being a Muggle and all)

a dictionary of sorts

hooey oop=hula hoop
craperate=cooperate
Yiwy=Lily
Anna=Anya
Foyana=Solana
fmell=smell
Yaarry=Larry
Yorren=Lorien
Yeesow=Liesl
North Park=where sharks live (but not too near Porter & Liesl's house)

like it's 1999

I had a few friends over last night to celebrate my birthday, two even spent the night, it was fun (though I spent the whole day feeling pretty tired). Here are the only details you're gonna get: there was karaoke, some beer, wine, alcohol, and food. And there were mamas who rarely get to let their hair down. You can safely assume we partied...well, you know how.

Is it me?

Or is it drubnk in here?

my birthday rocked

I woke up one minute before the alarm clock, got up, took my time eating, reading blogs, and getting showered and dressed. Then I drove to my mom's house and got a massage and presents (one of which was a yoga ball chair, which is so comfortable). While I was getting massaged, my mom picked Arwyn up at the airport and we had cake and ice cream (at 11:00 am). We had lunch and then I put Arwyn and my mom to work cleaning my garage. In about an hour and a half it went from a crazy mess that upset me each time I entered to a neat garage you could actually park a car in. It is so awesome. Then we chilled a bit and I worked on my inbox--it's got almost 500 messages and I want to trim it down to under 50. Next stop was The Linkery for dinner, which was pretty good, though not as awesome as usual. It was fine, though, the company was good and there was a cute family with an adorable baby at the table next to us and it turns out that they belong to an online community that I belong to.

Now home to sleep, maybe watch some internet TV.

For all of you who made my birthday so awesome and those of you who still will, this is my birthday gift to you, direct from Miriam & Shoshana with love:

turkey's in

Even though I knew I was going to be without Nina and Larry for Thanksgiving, I still ordered an organic turkey. I was planning to eat alone, but before you know it, I had invited my mom and her girlfriend, then my friend Naomi and her daughter, and Tracy is coming too.

Though I was asleep by 10:15 last night I managed to sleep until 9:00 this morning, I must have really needed it. I took a little while to get going this morning, then took the turkey out of the fridge, made stuffing, and it's safely in the oven, stuffed in every cavity I could find with gluten-free stuffing. Keep it simple, don't go across the cul-de-sac and invite the neighbors who don't have a roof because they are adding another storey onto their house. Gotta keep reminding myself. May not have the self restraint, though.

Also? Must not forget to eat some food, haven't eaten yet today and it's already noon. I need Nina for structure in my life, that girl never forgets to eat and reminds me to. I was a complete idiot in Whole Foods yesterday, I didn't know how to shop without my partner in crime.

My big exciting plan for today is to neaten, de-clutter, and de-box every room in the house--I know I don't have time to actually clean, but cleaning is easier when it's neat, I think. And I can think better when my surroundings are neat.

Oh yes, I have so many things I'm thankful for; if I have time I will do a photo roundup like I did last year.

alone

Which is actually one of my favorite things in the world. I might never leave the house again if it was up to me. It was hard seeing Larry and Nina off, though, I stood at security and watched and waved for as long as I could, until they disappeared. I felt sad and worried but the day was actually a good one, if not as productive as I would have liked.

Tomorrow is a new day, and thanksgiving will be low-key here. I am making turkey and stuffing for my mom and a couple of friends. If anyone wants anything in addition to the turkey, stuffing, and cranberry I am providing, then they will have to bring it.

Larry's parents gave us a webcam and headset so we set up the computer for skype and I got to talk to Nina and see her before she went to bed this evening. I am off to bed too, early, but I'm tired and got plenty of time to myself today so I don't need to stay up late taking it.

you can say I told you so

Tomorrow Larry and Nina are going to Florida for almost a week, which I have been looking forward to; it's my birthday gift. People keep asking me what I'm going to do, to which I have been replying "Whatever I want!" with glee. The truth is that I plan to do some much needed things like clean the garage, blog about stuff I have missed, update and spiff up my Etsy shop, etc.

I'm kinda freaking out a little now that it's down to the wire; Nina has never been away from me for longer than over night and I know I will miss her and worry intensely about her. It's kind of the way I deal, I'm totally calm, even indifferent, until the last minute, at which point I start to freak out. It'll be ok, right? I know I'll enjoy the freedom but I'll also be a little sad.

I got nothing to say

So you'll have to be content with this.

Huh???

I'm reading a book right now and I'm at least 1/4 of the way into it. And I have no idea what the plot is, I don't even really know who the characters are or who (if there is one) the "bad guy" is. Yet I keep at it; why?

And just for the record, if you've read it and are now thinking I am a complete moron, I do know that many of the characters are famous figures in science history.

If you feel bad about not breastfeeding...

please don't blame me. If you feel bad about it, it's because of you, not because of me; stop blaming me. Just because I am pro-breastfeeding doesn't make me any kind of Nazi. It means I want every child to get the best start they can. In fact, I think you should have to have a prescription for formula.

Thanks!

PS, if I want to breastfeed in public, I don't care how you feel about it. Not even a little.

Soccer Mom Vote

My post for this month is up over there, click here to read it.

feed reader infidelity

I read a lot of blogs; probably around 120 (that seems like a lot to me, maybe not so much to you). Some of them have tons of posts every day and some have a post every now and then. How do I manage to keep up with it all? When I first started down the blog road, I had them all bookmarked and would check back every so often but I definitely missed a lot. Then Wannabe Hippie told me about Bloglines. Wow, all I had to do was subscribe the blogs I was interested in, and when there was a new post, it would appear right there, no more checking back until there was something to see! I was in love and I just kept adding and adding to it until it became the huge list it is now. Some blogs didn't show up well in it, though, and my celebrity gossip blog's feed was often days behind. So when I stumbled across Google's feed reader, I decided to give it a try. It's sexy, let me tell you. You can set it to only list the stuff that's new, and as you scroll through entries, it marks them as read. You can star stuff (just like in gmail) and go back and look at the list of stuff you've starred. Also, since I do email and blog on google, it is even that much more convenient to read blogs there as well.

In the beginning I was only cheating on Bloglines, having a dalliance, but after a few days' quality time with the google reader I am breaking it off with Bloglines. It was good for a starter and taught me a lot, but the time has come to part company. I think we'll both be happier.

why can't we all just craperate?

We often ask Nina to cooperate with us when doing things like brushing her teeth, getting dressed, etc. She was telling us a story tonight about Beep and how she didn't cooperate so Nina didn't snuggle with her before she went to bed. Only when Nina says "cooperate" it comes out "craperate" and oh my god it's too funny.

seriously?

I found this on Celebrity Baby Blog:

During a chance encounter at a Halloween party, like many new mothers, Britney Spears and Heidi Klum found themselves talking babies. Little did Heidi know that the conversation would prove to be so beneficial, both for herself and her three children, Leni, 3 1/2, Henry, 2, and Johan, 11-months. She joked,

We were talking about babies and diapers and she explained to me a lot of things about diapers I that didn’t know. You know these sticky things on the side? I never knew that they were there. To close them in the front, I was always putting string around. I had no idea.

Added Heidi, "It’s very clever. I learned a lot of things."

She had to be joking, right? I mean, I know she has nannies, but...

google at your own risk

So, a bunch of us were talking about googling people who are no longer in our lives--ex boyfriends, old friends, etc. I do it about once a month or so when I'm bored; today I googled an ex who I was really sure was "the one" while we were together and for a long time after. Heck, his mom was convinced of it and was shocked when he dumped me (what seemed to both of us like) out of the blue. He was an amazing artist, an old soul, just an all around cute little guy. He was in art school while we were dating and I was convinced that he was going to go somewhere in the art world, he was really good. His website (no, I'm not going to link it, we're not still in touch, and I'd rather he didn't know that I sometimes stalk him from afar) has his latest work on it and I don't know what to say about it other than that it is spectacularly uninspiring, bland, and unoriginal. And not particularly well executed. So maybe he will make it big because that's kind of my opinion about a lot of modern art.

I know that this is awesome

I don't even begin to know enough about physics to know why, but it is pretty effing cool.


Here's an excerpt from the comments section (written by the person who uploaded the video) about how it works.

The laptop generates the musical signals. The coil responds to those signals and generates the sparks.
Think of it as a CD player and amplifier and speakers, where the laptop is the CD player, the Tesla coil is the amplifier, and the sparks are the speakers. The spark frequency follows the musical signal from the laptop the same way a speaker would follow the musical signal from the Cd player.

contra dancing, more on...

Remember when I promised more about contra dancing? Well, here it is.

This first video has a lot of the moves typical in contra dancing, but the formation is different--maybe it's a square? Probably. I generally dislike squares, but this one looks fun and it features Two Sock Knitters prominently. When Larry and The Fiddling Fool get together it's dance mayhem, it's better to keep half a country between them, for everyone's sake.


This one appears to have been shot through someone's sleeve, but it's a New England dance, which I miss soooo much and the band is so HOT I had to include it.


I love the aerial view of contra dancing.


Here is an interesting series of "how to" videos. Included are parts 2, 7, and 12. Maybe the rest are too top secret for the rest of us.

Oh, and if you're interested in taking up contra dancing, there is probably one near you. Here is schedule for the one I go to and here's a map that you can click on to find one near you.

yeah, baby!

Larry and I went contra dancing tonight and boy was it a good dance--not only did I get asked to dance right away by the hottest guy I've ever seen contra dancing, but I danced all night and almost all the dances were really good and fun. And take that look off of your face, Larry thought the guy was hot too.

homeschooling

I suspect this is one of the reasons so many people do it.

is it wrong

that I kind of want this?

Happy Popsadom!

In case you have never heard of Popsadom, you should know that it has become, in the last two days, an extremely important holiday in our house. I have not been able to discern the exact details of the how and why of the holiday, but it seems mostly to entail wishing each other "Happy Popsadom" repeatedly and enthusiastically. Anyone know how long Popsadom traditionally lasts?

Breaking news about Popsadom:
Apparently, another one of the ways you celebrate Popsadom is to have a green rose cake. I have it on good authority that it's really tasty.

Nina's birthday

I didn't write about this on Saturday, but it's too important to let it pass without note here. My baby is three. Possibly (and probably) the only baby I will ever have is three. She is amazing, sweet, smart, and funny. And the coolest person ever, though I can see that three will be a challenge that two didn't begin to touch.

Having a child has tapped into areas of my being that I had no idea (but secretly hoped) were there. There is simply nothing like it for expanding your soul and taking it to new levels and depths. My life changed for the better when Nina was born. November 3rd will always be the most special day of the year for me. I have a friend whose mother calls her every year at the time she was born on her birthday and recounts her birth story, and I have always thought that was so sweet and special. I would like to develop a ritual like that for Nina and carry it through to her adulthood. I can see that it is something we will have to evolve together over the years, which I look forward to. Here's to many more, little one.

have to crow about an awesome deal

As you may know, I started a small co-op that is made up mostly of my friends and mostly based out of my house. Recently one of our members co-ordinated a clothing order; I got a t-shirt for me, one for Larry, and one for Nina, two tank tops for me, and a onesie to give away, all organic cotton, for 30$ including shipping. I LOVE deals!!!

bad bad bad

So, already I have missed blogging for a day. But, you see, as of yesterday, I am the mother of a three year old and I fell asleep before I could blog (or see the middle and end of the Bones episode Larry, Arwyn, and I were watching). So please forgive me and know there are some cute pictures of Nina and her birthday loot. She got some seriously cool presents for her birthday.

wow

Car seat saves child's life in cessna crash. Click here to read the story.

NaBloPoMo

A few years ago I lucked into a calendar called "Wise Words" which is a perpetual calendar with quotes from The New Dimensions radio series. Sometimes the stuff is just silly, but a lot of time it hits home. Today the quote (by John Halifax, author of Shamanic Voices*) is:

The practice of mindfulness in our relationship to our ordinary, immediate lives can be every bit as rewarding and instructive as taking wild journeys to far-off and exotic places to be with the greatest teachers in the world.

That really hit home for me and got right into the heart of why I (and many others, I suspect) blog. Some poke fun at blogging as a foray into the profoundly narcissistic, and often it can be (though everyone's mom thinks they're a genius, so most of it is great stuff to someone). But the truth is, there is a LOT of great stuff being blogged out there, the blogosphere is an explosion of amazing creativity, heartbreaking honesty, and gut aching humor.

This quote spoke to me so eloquently today that it finalized my decision to participate in NaBloPoMo, though I had been toying with the idea. So for the month of November I will post at least once each day. I have been slacking a bit lately, so I owe some good stuff to my one or two readers anyway.

*Don't think for a minute I have read this book, I haven't, though it looks really good.