Fall in Oklahoma 2

Fall in Oklahoma 2
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

More Brenden stuff: As I was getting him ready for bed last night, he protested when I put him in his crib. I picked him up again, and got a bright idea: I took the 2 stuffed ducks out of his crib (all the time I'm carrying B) and went to one of his toy chests and took out a stuffed tiger. I offered it to him and he managed to hug it and me enthusiastically. I took him back to his crib and set him down; he immediately put the tiger in a complete bear hug and started to, uh, make sweet love to it. I put a blanket over the lovebirds and left them alone. I never heard a peep out of him after that. Every Calvin needs a Hobbes.

Oh, yeah: and this story. I don't know how it is around the rest of the country but the political way of dealing with the Methamphetamine problem here is severely restricting the sale of products containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. When you do buy them you have to go to the pharmacy counter. Most places I go simply take your name & address and want to see your driver's license.

Saturday I went to buy some Claratin-D, a product I'm fond of when my sinus headaches get bad which between the paint fumes and the changing seasons have been killer lately. The pharmacist takes my information and then takes my license and is apparently making some sort of computer check on my id.

Several minutes go by and the pharmacist apologizes and says the computer check is going slow. More time passes and Brenden is getting restless in his shopping cart seat so I ask for my license back. I'm pretty angry right then even though I know the pharmacist is simply following instructions. I do chew on her butt a bit just to vent, but I felt somewhat bad about doing that. She didn't make the rules and she certainly doesn't run the crappy-assed database Alabama had thrown together to track pseudoephedrine purchases.

But for JEBUS'S SAKE!!! 5 people came up to the pharmacy window, asked for refills, and NEVER HAD THEIR LICENSE TAKEN FOR A COMPUTER CHECK! Next time I see my doctor I'm going to ask for a prescription.

Till the cows come home

Fall in Oklahoma 3
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Ileana sent me some photos from the farm in Oklahoma. I like the Fall - it's not unpleasantly cold and the afternoons are pleasant and walking around is nice, especially with all the trees turning color.

Dooce, A.K.A. Heather Armstrong writes a wickedly funny and popular blog. Some friends pointed me to her blog when I became pregnant because she suffers from chronic depression. Today she linked to this article about depression. The guy who wrote the article is right: "depression" is a horribly poor word for that disease. Maybe in the sense of "tropical depression" because you get to listen to a lot of howling, but in your head instead of the wind.

I have done fine since the worst effects of depression dissipated after my pregnancy. I have been off of medication for over a year and have felt no need to go back. I do have bad days occasionally, but to extend the article's metaphor, those days are mild thunderstorms and not the hurricane I was in while I was pregnant. And mine was a category 1. I can't begin to imagine how someone can live in a category 5 for that long and survive.

In happier news, Brenden said "tattoo" today, while pointing at his dad's tattoo. He also likes to stick a finger in our bellybuttons and say "beebeebeebee!" because we beep his bellybutton all the time.

Having fun pressing buttons

Having fun pressing buttons
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

It has begun!

Our house is being painted as I speak but it's much more than painting - many walls were covered with wallpaper that were never primed, which translates to holes being ripped into the drywall when you try to remove the stuff. So those holes have to be patched and sanded as well. What a mess.

I am happy with the color I chose for the walls - so far our bedroom and bathroom have been painted and they look nice. No floors have been put in yet. I have taken plenty of 'before' pictures (and have yet to post them) and will take plenty of 'after' photos when the time comes. Here's a nice photo of the paneling in the living room, which should cease to exist sometimes next week.

In the meantime Brenden has mastered the art of turning door knobs so every door knob in the house now has one of those childproof knobs on it. He hates me, I know he does.



There are reasons why I love Battlestar Galactica and why Lost annoys me, and it all has to do with the characters.

In Battlestar Galactica the characters are flawed. Hella-mega flawed. Roslin tried to throw an election. Adama jr. and sr. have jeapoardized their entire species trying to rescue a comrade. Starbuck is a reckless boozehound, Tigh and Zarek are terrorists (from different wars), and we won't even begin to walk through Baltar's flaws. Yet I love them one and all because when they hurt, I hurt. Last Friday's ep (Exodus, pt. 2) was so awesome I doubt they will be able to match it the rest of the season.

It was more than the nerdy ecstacy of the Galactica jumping into New Caprica's atmosphere and freefalling while unleashing all those Vipers on unsuspecting Cylons. It was more than the Pegasus coming to the Galactica's rescue and taking two Cylon base stars out with it. What made that show ring was a broken Colonel Tigh and Starbuck's realization that she had been had in the most horrible way imaginable. The few remaining humans had been rescued from the Cylon camp and that was cause to cheer, but my two favorite characters are in more pain than I can bear.

So why does Lost annoy me? I don't like anyone. I sat through 8 seasons of indecipherable plotlines of The X-Files because I loved Mulder and Scully. I will keep watching Lost, but it better let me emphathize with someone ASAP because it's beginning to piss me off.

Skiffy shite

Tardis
Originally uploaded by Darkest Before Dawn.

I'm so very grateful that the Skiffy network is broadcasting the new Dr. Who episodes for us old nerds. I saw my first Dr. Who episode on WGN, sometime in the late 70's. That's so strange - I thought my memory has to be off but it's true because I recall watching the show on PBS in early 1979 and I know I had seen some episodes before that.

I also like that BBC gave the show new sensibilities and has started to deal with questions we fans have had for a long time: just why does and immortal (so far) being go gallavanting around the space-time continuum with a varied assortment of simian life-forms, typically those who are young, pretty, and British? Ok, so he's lonely.

I viewed the latest (U.S.) episode last night, which was very sad because we got to meet (or revisit) one of the good Doc's former companions, Sarah Jane Smith. (She has a startling resemblance to Mary McDonnell, and I was amused that my favorite recapper Jacob noticed the same on Television Without Pity.) She and the doctor run into each other while investigating some school shennanigans being masterminded by Anthony Stewart Head, whom some people might remember from those old Taster's Choice commercials.

Anyway, she and the doctor have a nice reunion, then Rose, the doc's current companion gets all shirty towards Sarah, until after some talking she discovers her insecurity is more rightly pointed at the good doctor. More important than why does he pick them up, why does he show his companions the universe then dump them so soon? Well that turns out to be a duh, too; because humans grow old and die while the doc just regenerates. I guess he dumps them after a couple of years or so so they can at least try to have a life after moving through time and space. The very sad part about this episode is it seems Sarah Jane had no life after the doctor ditched her. She is still nosy, but she never married.

She got to keep the disco dog, though.

Another boring post

Mom B and BFK
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Brenden stumbled and split his lower lip against the nightstand in the bedroom yesterday. I was folding clothes. Poor kid bled everywhere, especially on me, but he'll live. Despite the volume of blood there's only a tiny cut on his lip. He got over it pretty fast, too.

Big Fat Kitty jumped on the nightstand sometime later on (I was still trying to fold clothes in the bedroom) and Brenden rushed up to him and wagged a finger at him and yelled "No no no no no!". For the rest of the day he did the same thing to the cat no matter where kitty jumped. I guess it's wrong of me to have one set of rules for Big Fat Kitty and another for Monkey boy.

I'm getting major T.V. fixes now that Lost, Dr. Who, and Battlestar Galactica are back on, not to mention Veronica Mars, The Office and new South Park. Quick observations:

1: I like Lost better without so many damn commercial interruptions.

2: David Tennant is a good Doctor, but I miss Chris Eccleston.

3: Battlestar Galactica is still my favorite show. I could do without Fat Apollo, though.

4: I made my Veronica Mars observation yesterday. I really like how Veronica is allowed to be an asshole and I'm also really glad that her boyfriend Duncan has left (stupid baby subplot nonwithstanding). Logan might be a psychotic jackass, but at least he's an interesting psychotic jackass. And it's nice to see Charisma Carpenter get some work!

5: I actually like Michael on The Office. Of course if he were my boss I would have to kill him.

6: South Park has always been hit-or-miss. Not much else to say about that, but Blizzard must have been in 7th heaven for that 20-minute World of Warcraft commercial (which also explained in excruciating detail why I don't play multiplayer games).

Silly Face

Silly Face
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Here's a rare Sunday blogpost because Brenden is tolerating me being out of the living room for a little bit.

I had *yet another* sinus infection, but went to my way cool allergy doc instead of my overworked family physician who can't remember me from visit to visit. He put me on an aggressive antibiotic treatment and it seems to be working because I can smell things now without having to O.D. on Afrin. I am currently stripping wallpaper when I can and using a steamer (only way to go) so the whole house smells like old wallpaper glue.

I'm such a whiner.

We're halfway through season 2 of Veronica Mars and I must say it's a shocker what gets past the censors on that show.

Month 16

Trip2
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Brenden and Jon had a great time in Massachusetts, even though neither got much sleep. I actually didn't have much fun - I started peeling wallpaper from around the house. Oh, that reminds me:

I don't think I mentioned this, but when we decided about the laminate flooring, we also decided to repaint the whole house - this included yanking all the paneling from the living room and replacing it with drywall. We also need to repaint the ceilings because a) smokers lived there and b) we have some water stains from problems fixed a while back.

Jon has hired a contractor who is going to let Jon work with him to do everything. I'll do what I can, but for the most part I'm going to be keeping Brenden out of their way.

Speaking of B: Letter to Brenden Month 16:

Well, darling; you are getting more clever and aware. I have noticed no new words in your vocabulary recently, but I do love how if I say "no!" and you continue with whatever you are doing, if I get in your face and ask "what did I just say?" You go "no no no!" and clap your hands. Usually that's enough to make you stop.

I took you to your first Birthday Party. I thought you are a little young for such events, but it was for a girl in your same daycare and I thought it might be fun. For the most part you had a blast. Kylie's parents had rented one of those big jumping castles. You didn't go in until all the bigger kids had gone for food and then I had a tough time getting you out of there. You do love flinging yourself at bouncy things.

We also went for a hayride, which involved sitting on bales of hay in an open trailer pulled by a gigantic tractor. We passed some horses and I was all "YEEEEEEEK!" but then I felt bad because you really wanted to look at one up close. Some of the other kids started feeding hay to the horses, and you saw this and grabbed a little twig and held it up to a horse. I don't think he saw it. I was going to give you more hay to hold but the tractor decided to move at that point. I'm glad to see an animal that big didn't scare you, although I would like you to know that if you ever see a bear that's not behind a cage don't try to feed it, ok? It's probably a good idea to leave it alone altogether.

I wonder if it might be time for a trip to a zoo.

Sleeping on the Quilt

Sleeping on the Quilt
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

This week will be an interesting week because monkeyboy is with monkeyman Jon up in Massachusetts where they are visiting family. I simply don't have any vacation time left this year. Everyone keeps saying "oh, you'll miss him so much" and I'm all "Hooray!". They're coming back Thursday, and I'm sure they'll be able to handle 4 days without me. Hey, I love my kid but I need a break. What am I going to do? Drink like a pirate and watch flesh-eating zombie movies, that's what.

Speaking of watching, Jon and I finished season 2 of Lost so we'll watch season 3 as it's broadcast. Kinda bummed by some of the outcomes of season 2, but I like a show that keeps me guessing, even though I'm better at guessing than some of the main characters, apparently. Only Sayid seems to have any common sense.

Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica starts this Friday, woo-hoo! We're almost done with season 1 of Veronica Mars but I have to wait until Jon comes home to watch the last disk. I guess I could always resort to Television Without Pity to figure out who killed Lilly Kane but that would be cheating. Both Jon and I are still wierded out by Logan and Veronica getting together. I'm TiVo-ing season 3 and I'll just store them until we catch up.

I think I told this story before but I wanted to tell it again:

Back in college I was living in sin with my boyfriend when one day he went out for a jog and returned with this very small black and white kitten. Will had a thing for cats and we already had 7 or 8 living around the house. I bitched at him; "why the hell did you bring another cat home?!!?"

He said "well I was jogging by this girl getting in a car and she had this little guy with her. She asked me if it was ours and I said 'no', so she said she was taking it to the pound so I said 'give her to me'".

How could I argue with that?

But anyway, this little cat was so small she probably shouldn't have been away from her mother. I ended up feeding her wet food. None of the other cats were given wet food, so when it came time to eat, she would be on my lap eating out of a little plate. I would be knocking back the other cats with my free arm so they couldn't get at the food. In that way she and I bonded.

Thank you everyone once again for the well-wishes and sympathy. I picked up Vasquez's ashes today and have decided to hang onto them for now. They are in a nice wooden urn that will go in a high place well beyond monkeyboy's reach.

I lost an old friend

Cute Pooky
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

What do you say when you lose a cat you have had half your life?
She was old and not able to eat and I decided to let her go before things got worse.

I will miss you.

Vasquez : Sometime in 1986-September 26, 2006

Big B little b what begins with B?

Big B
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Hooray I finally uploaded some photos! This one and some of the others kind of surprised me - all of a sudden I can tell what he's going to look like when he graduates from 'toddler' to 'boy'.

I have had the worst time with insomnia lately. It might just be my sore throat, but I got maybe 3 hours of sleep last night. I feel tired, but not sleepy if that makes sense. If I tried to go to sleep right now it wouldn't happen.

Brenden can say 'gee-gee' now, which means 'cookie'. Actually it sounds more like 'Gigi', if you were pretentious or French.

TLAPD

TLAPD
Originally uploaded by poppycedes.

Brenden is just fine now. I have a sore throat, however.

I am starting to notice that B has a larger vocabulary than I'm giving him credit for. I noticed this weekend when he was pointing at Big Fat Kitty and saying "tze-tze!". He has done that several times. I need to pay more attention to what he says, but somewhere along the line he became aware that things have names. I still don't know what he calls me, however. He can say "mama" but for him that means "will someone please get me out of this crib?".

I'm going to go buy the Wallace and Gromit movie. It is Brenden's first official favorite movie - he doesn't sit still to watch anything but he will when Curse of the Were-Rabbit is on. He'll also laugh like a loon. I found out that there's a version on DVD out there that includes the 3 original Wallace and Gromit shorts.

And by the way, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I truly think they need to move this day to like the 3rd Saturday of September then re-label it as "Drink Like a Pirate Day". I believe it would become a truly celebrated holiday. I mean, come on. Cinco de Mayo wasn't celebrated by us Gringos until we discovered Corona, right?

ARRR!

Dad and Brenden

Dad and Brenden
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

I have a camera full of pictures of Brenden that I should have posted this weekend. I had a lot of things planned for this weekend, but I got a little sidetracked because poor monkeyboy is sick.

He was a little fussy and just didn't look ok when I picked him up from daycare. Sonya said he wasn't himself but he wasn't running a fever. My mom and her husband came by later that afternoon (they were in town for a car show - Price makes a little money on the side by selling car guages at these shows) and I begged out of going to dinner for them because poor B was being clingy and was obviously worn out. Still no fever at that point.

He fell asleep in my arms while I was chatting with mom, so I put him down for a nap and when he woke up, he had a 101 fever. And thus started the ultra long weekend as I didn't sleep much because I kept dosing B on tylenol and feeding him cold Pedialyte and sneaking into his room to make sure his temperature didn't get too high.

On Friday night his temp spiked its highest at 103.2. I was ready to take him to the hospital but a new dose of tylenol plus ice-cold pedialyte and a tepid bath eventually broke his fever around 9 pm. I still could not sleep and he woke up at 1 with a fever of 101. I got him to bed around 2:30 and I caught maybe 3 hours of sleep. Saturday: lather, rinse, repeat.

Sunday I was so exhausted Jon came home for 4 - 5 hours and I caught a nap. Brenden was still playing rollercoaster fever but it never got above 102. When he came home after work I immediately went to bed and didn't wake up until around 4:30 am. Jon and Brenden were in the comfy chair and B was working on some more pedialyte.

I know what you are thinking: 3 days of this; shouldn't you take him to the doctor? Jon is taking B to an appointment at 9:30 am. But anyways, Jon looked as exhausted as I had been, and just before I left for work this morning. I thanked him profusely, but he didn't smile until I told him: "You know what? You're one hell of a dad." He is.

I did get one thing accomplished, huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh.

The things I miss

Where I used to live
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

My friend Nancy has posted a blog entry about things she misses, both in Eugene, Oregon, and her current hometown of Athens, Georgia. It made me want to write one about the things I miss.

First off, see this photo? If you haven't messed around with Google Earth, you are missing out on a lot of fun. This screen cap from Google Earth is of my old stompin' grounds when I lived in Puerto Rico. To the left is a cemetary. Then there's an L- shaped building to the right of it. That's Beach Tower, where we lived for 7 years until 1977 when we moved to Stone Mountain in Georgia. As you can see, it's RIGHT ON THE BEACH! Yes, I miss having the ocean as my back yard. But as I recall when I lived there, I wanted to move back to the U.S. But when we moved I had a bad time adjusting and missed Puerto Rico horribly. I think it was because high school was hell for me.

So: I miss the beach. I miss not ever being cold. I miss the food, especially bacalaitos, empanadas, medianoches, and cubanos. I've had cubanos (they're sandwiches, people!) here. They're just not the same. When Jon and I went on vacation to St. John, the thing that made me happiest was being able to hear the surf AND the coquís. Eventually I want to take Brenden to Puerto Rico, but when he's a little older so he can appreciate it.

As I mentioned, high school was hell. Why? I was a NERD. I hated every moment of every day I was in that place. Well, I made one good friend - Lisa. She lives out in Los Angeles and to my delight she's moving back to Atlanta pretty soon. Here's something funny: the only reason I applied to Georgia Southern College was because that's where she was going. Through her I met Alan and his roommate Mark. My friend Nancy met and married Mark, and Nancy's high school friend Helly met her husband Alan because of Nancy. So guys, we all owe it to Lisa.

So I hated high school and therefore can't think of a bloody thing I miss about Stone Mountain. Well, there was one thing. I discovered that I could walk into Stone Mountain (about 15 minute walk) to catch the bus, then go wherever I damn well pleased in Atlanta. Like Nancy I like Public Transportation. I always took a paperback with me and read until I got to where I wanted to go.

I also miss my weekend Dungeons and Dragons games. They were with some of Lisa's older friends, who were more hippies than nerds. I won't go into details but let's just say this was the 70's. I sure do miss those sessions. Much fun!

As much as I hated high school I loved college. So much I went for 6 years (actually I stayed out a year because I joined the Army Reserves). In high school nerds are treated harshly. In college you just find other nerds and have fun because the people that picked on you the worst were back home working at McDonald's (NERDS RULE!).

What I miss most: walking everywhere, drinking that godawful $0.20 coffee at the student center, hanging out with Mark and Alan (and their roommate Glenn {hi, Glenn! Hope you are doing well!}, who became my boyfriend), being a DJ at the college radio station, pitchers of beer (18 was the drinking age back then) and playing table-top Super Mario Brothers II, and I actually, truly for once, enjoyed learning. I took the one required Algebra class, and I was stunned at how much I ended up loving it, even though I scrambled like hell to play catch up because I never paid attention in High School. I loved it so much it became kind of a mini-minor. I took Trig and Calc 1 & 2 before I ran out of electives. I LOVED math.

I could have stayed in college forever. So that's what I miss. but above all else, I miss goofing off. I get to for maybe an hour or so here or there, but for the most part, taking 2-3 weeks and JUST NOT DOING A DAMN THING is a thing of the past. I had to grow up sometime.

El Fin de Semana

El Morro
Originally uploaded by Daquella manera.

Brenden and I had a good weekend, surprisingly. He had no tantrums. I can't, however, take him shopping with me any more, at least not for a while until he gets a little older because I can't keep him in the little shopping cart seat. No matter how tight I snap the belt, he fights his way out. I can't keep him in the cart either, because he likes to investigate everything then throw it out of the cart.

but everything else was good. We're starting to interact more - I build things and he wrecks them; he'll climb into the clothes basket and I'll push him around. He'll try to climb onto our bed so I'll pick him up and fling him into the covers. He will absolutely squeal when I do that. Helpful handy tip though: do not feed a toddler chocolate Teddy Grahams then toss him onto your white down comforter.

What I'm Watching:

The weekend before I accidentally continued my Bruce Willis film festival when I caught Die Hard. Willis has improved as an actor considerably since that movie. I think it's overrated even though I admittedly enjoy it. I also caught Sin City, which is wonderfully depraved. Then I saw 5 minutes of The Hostage, got bored and decided I'd had enough of Mr. Willis for one weekend so I watched Ravenous about cannibals in the late 1800's. Great, bloody movie! Makes you see meat-eaters throught the eyes of vegetarians.

Jon and I put Veronica Mars on semi-hold because Lost Season 2 is now out on disk so we're trying to plow through them so we can start watching when season 3 begins. Speaking of, the 2nd disk is MIA so we put in disk2 of Veronica Mars and it was cracked. I don't blame Netflix; they immediately put a replacement disk in the mail but that one is MIA too. I blame the Hartselle Post Office: you guys suck!

This weekend I watched an interesting documentary:Yo soy Boricua, pa'que tu lo sepas! (I'm Boricua [Puerto Rican], just so you know), about Puerto Rico and it's relationship to the rest of the United States, and how frustrating it can be for Puerto Ricans who have to constantly deal with mainlander's ignorance. At one point Rosie Perez (who co-directed) was downright indignant about people she met who didn't even know where the island is. I understand the frustration, but most people in the U.S. can't even find Idaho on a map so don't take it so personally. Anyway, the doc was pretty good with the history and politics, but I wished it had spent more time with the people and the culture (not to mention on-island!).

I watched Summer Rental, a fairly throw-away 80's summer comedy starring John Candy (miss you). He plays a family man who takes his family on vacation to Florida by renting a summer house for a month. His family has a great time but he's miserable until he bonds with a local sailor who likes to ramp up his 'salty sea dog' image (Rip Torn, perfectly cast). 'Scully' (heh) teaches Candy how to sail. It's a stupid movie but it has a place in my heart. While I watched it I wondered if this movie is what put the bug in my ear about preferring rental homes to hotels when I go on vacation.

Brenden watched Wallace and Grommit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit with me. Ralph Fiennes supplied the voice of the villain! Much fun claymation movie. Highly recommended. If you can find them, the other Wallace and Grommit shorts are fun too.

Last and most definitely least I watched The Fantastic 4. It's a lame superhero movie. Ioan Gruffudd was in it but I like him with his accent intact and he hid it for this one.

Are You Ready to Rumble?

blue eyes
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Letter to Brenden month 15: I promise not to cheat this month, honey, as you enter into a year and a quarter of existence. You celebrated by having your full first tantrum yesterday. It was a sight to behold! You rolled around on the kitchen floor, screaming and crying, turning purple, rejecting any and all comfort. I watched, amazed, for about 2 minutes, and when you didn't let up, I started laughing.

I'm sorry, but it was funny! It really looked like you were discovering what a tantrum was and so you were trying it on for size. I sobered up when I realized I have years of this ahead of me. Oh, joy.

For the record, you were pissed at me because I brought you indoors because you were getting fussy. So after I quit laughing I thought about it for a second, and considered laying next to you to show you how to beat your heels on the linoleum. I thought better of it, so I went and did the dishes because hon, if you don't want a hug or a cookie, there's not much else I can do until you cool down. Once I ignored you, you calmed down enough to where I could take you outside again for a nice refreshing dip in the pool with your dad.

It's hard to explain your development in the last couple of months. You are basically refining your skills (like going from fussy to full-blown conniption fit) and trying to climb everything. You are able to navigate over obstacles without me holding your hand and I'm deeply afraid that you will figure out how to get out of your crib pretty soon.

Words are still a mystery, although you have figured out how to yell "MAMA!" when you want out of your crib at 4 in the morning. Little dude, it's "DADA!" I have to work so your dad takes care of your 4 am fits whick are fortunately rare.

One thing I have noticed is that if you don't really understand the words, you get the meaning of what I am indicating. You understand more than we think you do. Dad says when he gets you ready in the morning you ask him to get his shoes and you do. I can ask you for things and you will bring them to me, too. Pretty neat. You go stupid again when I tell you to quit pressing buttons on the TV.

In closing, sweetie, your dad and I love you more and more, even as you turn more and more into a fire-breathing toddler. I know we have some rough days ahead but as long as dad and I tag-team you, I'm hoping we can wear you down before you wear us down. Are you ready to rumble?

Wierd Week

Crocodile pool, "The Gambia West-Africa"
Originally uploaded by Dennis Bouman.

Last week was a wierd one because of my job. On Tuesday while driving to work, I found out while listening to the news on the radio that one of the people killed in the Comair plane crash worked for the same company I do. She was a Project Manager - a pm pretty much orchestrates everything while getting a client from signing the contracts to actually using our products in the field. She was on her way to a site which was getting ready to go live when she died.

I didn't know her but we had emailed each other, especially in the last few weeks because I was helping with some customizations/problems with the products I specialize in for the site. I was pretty bummed about her death. She was a good PM, able to get things done with a sense of humor.

Then at the end of the week, I come in on Friday and find out that the company has been sold and is going private. The upper management may very well be blowing sunshine up our butts but they insist that they didn't spend all that time restructuring just to have someone else come in and restructure. I'll believe them because what else can I do? The fact that they are buying up all the shares at over %20 of what they were valued at on Thursday doesn't hurt either. I've been with them for a while. If my calculations are correct, and everything goes according to plan (when does it ever, of course), I will make enough money out of the deal to pay off the Cessna and placate the IRS. That means the only debt that Jon and I will have will be the house. That's it. And we don't exactly live in a mansion. So it has been kind of a wierd week at work.

It sucks about Steve Irwin, too.

R-A-M-B-L-I-N... apostrohpe....

Once I get dosed up on Afrin, I can breathe! I can smell!!! I made something with garlic and onions last night just because. I unfortunately also fried something and I can't get that fried chicken smell out of my nose.

More viewing notes:

Posiedon is a remake of the old Gene Hackman disaster movie. Instead of Hackman's Priest with and Attitude, we have Josh Lucas' Reluctant Hero and Kurt Russell's Overprotective Dad (code name:Dead Meat) leading a diverse group to the bow of an overturned ship to try to escape before it sinks. Actually in the original I don't think it ever sank - it was just a matter of getting the hell out of there. This new version added some urgency to the wanting-to-survive-ors' plight. Hey I liked it but I'm a sucker for disaster movies. This one didn't try to pretend to be anything but what it is. Hell, the only surprise was not that Kevin Dillon's Obnoxious Gambler died, but how fast it happens. And it was satisfyingly brutal, too. I'll watch anything with Kurt Russell, anyways. Just because.

I'm salivating at the thought of a remake of the Towering Inferno. This time, instead of Paul Newman as the Architect and Steve McQueen as the Fire Chief, it can be Clive Owen and Bruce Willis, respectively. I don't really care about Mr.Owen, he just has some standard good looks and I think he'll play well against Willis' no-nonsense tough-guy fireman. I'll give Harrison Ford some work - he can over William Holden's role as Wealthy Building Owner, and his beatiful Daughter A.K.A Trophy wife to the Evil Contractor who Cut Corners (Susan Blakely and Richard Chamberlain in the original) can be played by Sarah Michelle Gellar (just trying to get her work other than Japanese Horror Movies) and Josh Lucas. He played a decent guy in Posiedon but he can be an excellent scumbag. See Hulk for details.

Let's see: the O.J. Simpson role as Security Guard can be played by whatever rapper is trying to become a movie star. Forgive me, I'm just not up on that stuff. But we need more ethnicity than that, so the Mayor (originally Robert Vaughn) can be played by Laurence Fishburne and Benjamin Bratt can play the Boss (Robert Wagner) having an affair with his secretary (I forget here). And because this is the 21st century, instead of pandering to older people with the Inept Conman (Fred Astaire) and his Willing Mark (Jennifer Jones), we'll have to throw in a couple of Teen-Aged Lovers (just like what Posiedon did when they got rid of Shelley Winters' and Red Buttons' characters!) and I don't care who play them. Maybe Kurt Russell can show up as the Overprotective Dad who ultimately sacrifices himself to save both of them. Whoops, hope I didn't spoil anything.

Last but not least (or maybe least) Jennifer Lopez gets Faye Dunaway's role - she was the Career Woman Having an Affair with the Architect. They were having problems, because his Job is in X and hers is in Y. Being the 70's, Faye Dunaway left her job at the end of the movie to be with Paul Newman. I'm sure in this updated version Clive will leave his job to be with her. After all, he's the one who designed the crappy building so maybe he should try something other than being an architect.

*Whew!* I sincerely hope that someone a-googling reads the above paragraphs out of context and starts an internet rumor about a Towering Inferno remake. Anyway, where am I? Oh, yeah:

Jon and I watched Disk 1 Season 1 of Veronica Mars and it didn't suck. I'm still not stuck to it, but I liked it enough to rent the next disc. I can see why people describe Buffy the Vampire Slayer as the template for the show - girl w/a shady rep in high school, friends are nerds, missing parent, etc. There are differences - Neptune has more ethnic types. I guess that's not fair; Sunnydale had white people, vampires and demonic monsters of all shapes and colors. That's pretty ethnic. If Richard Pryor is correct, the African-Americans stayed away from Sunnydale because they had more sense than to live among bloodsuckers. But I digress.

I like the actor who plays Veronica. She seems to be doing a capable job so far. Since Buffy is the template, I'm not holding any expectations about who ends up dating whom. It looks like it's going to get messy. Also it better be in the Buffy/Babylon 5/Battlestar Galactica category of shows whose story arcs make sense and not in the same arena as 24 and The X-Files where they just make it up as they go along. Damn, I am such a dork!!!

Back from Tennessee

cessnamark
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Jon, B, and I flew to the Sieverville airport last Friday in our 182. General Aviation has its advantages - we took a 5-hour drive in about 1 hour 45 minutes. Monkey Boy loved it - for about 10 minutes then he fell asleep for the whole trip. It only took him 2 minutes to fall asleep on the way back.

I didn't do much - we invited a couple we knew through skydiving and we all went to Gatlinburg on Saturday to the aquarium. It's a nifty one - you can walk through the main tanks through these plexiglass tunnels and they have sharks and other kewl fishes to stare at. Brenden had no idea what he was looking at, but because we use a baby backpack, he gets to look at everything instead of people's butts like he would if he was in a stroller.

The highlight of the visit was when Brenden winged his Spongebob sippy cup into one of the tanks. It was funny, but I was appropriately contrite when we asked some people who worked there to fish it out for us.

Saturday and Sunday I just felt awful still, but the good news was I could smell! Of course downtown Gatlinburg isn't that pleasant but hell I shouldn't complain after 2-3 years of little to no use of one of my 5 senses. I stayed in the house we rented keeping tabs on El Jefe while Glenn, Jon, and Marnie rented inner tubes and floated down a river. I didn't mind; I just laid on the couch, watched TV, and shared a box of vanilla wafers with Brenden.

I watched The 5th Element and The Whole 9 yards, which made me realize how much I love Bruce Willis in Unbreakable but not much else. I also watched The Mummy which is fun but could have used deeper characters. I really think if they had brought a little depth to the protagonists and some symapthy to the antagonists, the movie would have been *great*. At least more memorable.

Monday I felt better and today I feel fantastic. I'm also busy as hell so sayonara.

Oh, yeah. I forgot my camera and Jon forgot his memory card for his camera, so no pictures of the trip. It's a shame, because I would have loved a photo of Brenden in his car seat strapped into the plane.

Oh! one other thing. Remember me mentioning trying to teach Brenden animal sounds? ("This is a cow! Cow! Cow goes moo! This is a duck! Duck goes quack quack!") Well he astonished all of us when I handed him his little sheep and asked: "Brenden, what does a sheep say?" He replied, "BAA!"

He didn't do that just once; he now does it repeatedly. He still hasn't learned how to quack yet.

Cowgirl bugging Mom

Cowgirl bugging Mom
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

I still haven't done a Month 14 letter to Brenden and it's almost month 15:

Dear Brenden: you now have 4 molars in addition to your 8 front teeth. Stay off the coffee table!

Okay now onto something else. Since 24 and Battlestar Galactica are in hiatus for the moment, I have turned to other things. Since American Idol is in the same state (thank goodness!) I have been catching up with The Office reruns. I have seen a few episodes here and there of the British series so I caught the first season of the American version. While I'm one of those people who find Steve Carrell funny (sue me) I was on the fence about this series. But I am loving this second season. The Office is of course the Hell's eye view of working in the small-time corporate world, and it owes it's DNA not only to the wickedly funny BBC series but to of Course Mike Judge's Office Space.

Yes the series is made by Steve Carrell's Clueless Boss from the Bowels of Purgatory but I think all the characters are what makes it so funny and appealing. They are recognizable. There's the harried secretary who also spends too much time working on her wedding on office time, the slacker/practical joker who slacks too much and is obnoxious, there's the co-worker from outer space who brown noses so much it makes even the boss uncomfortable, and the temp worker who treats his job like a jail sentence.

I'm also watching The 4400 even though I'm only sort of blah about it. It's something to watch while I'm waiting for better shows to come back on.

As far as movies go I finally got to see V for Vendetta. I'm all about movies where people fight the system and I liked this one, but am a little iffy about it because of what V did to Evie. You know what I mean if you saw it. If I had found out someone did that to me I think it would have earned him at least one punch to the 'nads.

We re-watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom the other night and while I'm not fond of the constantly screaming Kate Capshaw I always defended this movie. I liked it better than the third movie and I still do, but this time around I noticed how sloppy Spielberg's direction was. There are really too many sloppily choreographed fight scenes. I've seen better in TV shows.

We tried to watch The Island last night but the DVD we had received was too scratched. So we watched Zathura instead, a cute little kid's movie about two brothers who play an old board game about outer space and end up there. It was fun, but cuts close to the bone in the beginning as a divorced dad tries to keep the peace between an older 10 year old son who is a bully, and a 6 year old son who is a spaz. The movie did great in portraying the brutality of siblings but of course when they go through an adventure together their relationship becomes more loving.

I haven't had a chance to watch the whole thing, but BBC America has been running a small series of movies which are remakes of Shakespearean plays and I taped "Much Ado About Nothing" which features my favorite redhead who plays the part of Benedick. This re-telling takes place in a television news room, with Benedick and Beatrice being bickering co-anchors, and Hero being the somewhat ditzy weathergirl. I have it TiVo'ed but I have only seen part of the ending. It looks fun, though.

I go see the hottie surgeon today. I finally have run out of happy pills, which I'm unhappy about but then again they have kind of lost their effectiveness after taking them for two weeks. I have been able to smell a little bit.

And back to Brenden: he's had a constant runny nose for a while. I suspect allergies. You know what I think? Rise in use of carpeting in homes - rise of allergy sufferers = mere coincidence? I think not! Jon, Brenden and I are flying to Gatlinburg today after work for a 3 day weekend. We're celebrating our 7 year wedding anniversary. When we get back, we're going to rip up all the carpeting and replace it with faux wood flooring.

Pontificating

Pontificating
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Argh. I suppose I'm healing just fine - I'm not hawking up as much blood today as I have been. I still get headaches if not properly dosed with lortabs, which I quit taking. Poor, poor, pitiful me.

Brenden and I didn't do much this weekend. I bought him some of those big leggos so I had a lot of fun building things. He would destroy them for me, plus he seemed far more interested in pushing the large plastic container they came in. He would stop occasionally and throw things in the container, then push it all around the house some more.

He finally aggravated me to the point I decided I really needed to punish him on Sunday. He just *would not* leave the TV buttons alone! I decided I needed to be creative, because I just can't bring myself to hit him in any fashion. Theoretically I'm not against a slap on the wrist or butt, but I just don't have it in me to whack him hard enough for him to even notice. I like the idea of "Time Outs" but I can't make him sit and I don't want to throw him in his crib. It is hard enough getting him to sleep without associating his bed with punishment.

It occured to me that Mr. Ant-in-his-pants totally hates sitting still for even a few seconds, so I gave him 'time outs' by sitting on the couch with him in my lap. He would squirm and cry about it, and I annoyed him even further by lecturing him about why he couldn't get up for 60 seconds. It worked pretty well about the 4th or 5th time I did it. He'd touch a knob and I'd say "No, Brenden!" then he'd reach again and I'd say 'Do you want a time out?" and you could see him thinking about it. He understands a lot more than I tend to give him credit for.

Sleepy Time

sleepy
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Quick update:

I'm still out of it - if I take my happy pills, I'm pretty happy and useless. On the other hand, if I don't, I'm pretty grouchy and useless. I saw the hottie doc yesterday and he said everything is healing fine and do I want a refill on my pain meds?

Ha. I should have a pretty nice weekend.

Congrats to Lachele on the sale of her house, hugs and words of encouragement to Nancy on trying to find new employment, and Snakes on a motherjumpin' Plane to the deli worker who poisoned Helly.

I am still working on my spanish a bit - I can't concentrate very well but I will get back to it when I can. In the meantime I'm playing a lot of this silly Yahoo! game called Tropix: you play these silly games - everything from Sudoku to solitaire for Sand Dollars and when you get enough Dollars you can buy tropical beachfront property and decorate it. A little monkey will come an play with the things you put on your property. I find it very soothing because the background noise is ocean surf, birds, etc.

Hey, look. I could spend this post explaining to you in Dooce-like detail of what has happened to my excretory system since the operation, but I'm not. Be grateful.

Good Morning

Good Morning
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

oOooOh mY heAd....

Oh, I'm fine. A hell of a lot better than I thought I'd be. It *could* be the Hydrocodone, but it also might be the psychological effect of having the operation over and done with. Plus my head feels 5 pounds lighter.

I can't smell anything yet, but I know that I need to do some healing first. The way the doctor and nurses were talking, I expected to be an invalid for the next week. I really think I could work today except I probably shouldn't be operating any heavy machinery.

This photo is from this morning - as you can see the doc didn't leave any bruising. I get to take a happy pill every 4 hours. They gave me a weeks supply and I sincerely doubt that I will need them that much.

I am also irrigating my nose every 2-4 hours with sterile saline solution. I can't blow my nose but this helps keep it clean. I'm also taking another antibiotic. I hope this one will be able to do its job now that my sinuses can actually drain.

I was also prescribed a suppository, of all things, if I experienced nausea. So far, I'm fine. The only thing that makes me even remotely nauseated is the thought of shoving something up my butt.

I can feel the lastest dose of meds taking effect so I'll stop blogging now. Thank you for the well-wishes! As a reward, there's a picture on flickr that the doc gave me as a souvenier. Don't look at it too closely. If you get nauseated, I have some suppositories I'll send you if you would like.

Sandy and Brenden at Loco's

Sandy and Brenden at Loco's
Originally uploaded by nheiges.

Check me out - too lazy to post my own photos so I'm stealing from Nancy again!

24 hours to go before Dr. Light goes spelunking. Hope he doesn't find anything too extraordinary, like a diamond or a hidden tomb. I suppose I could make some tired Jimmy Hoffa joke or something.

Actually I'm thinking about the last season of the Sopranos, when Tony was in the hospital after being shot by his uncle and he makes friends with a physicist who went in for sinus surgery but the docs found cancer and removed his thorax. Wait. I mean larynx. Yeah. I'm a little worried.

I remember having outpatient work done because I had a whoppin' case of GERD. I'm thinking this was back in 2000 or 01. The doc shoved an endoscope down my throat to look for a hiatal hernia. I'm very glad I was asleep for that. I remember that whatever the anesthesiologist gave me was awesome. I woke up and I was insanely happy. I was so tranquil. I loooooved everyone! Later when I came down, I recall being amused by some of the questions someone asked me while I was grooving (that's the only word that fits). She was asking for feedback on patient care! I thought that was quite clever, asking my opinion of how I was treated while I was high as a weather balloon. I bet that facility boasts %1000 percent customer satisfaction.

I am fervently hoping for the same drugs tomorrow.

My doctor's appointment in a nutshell - the surgery is a go and set for Thursday afternoon.

The doc took one look at my CT scans and showed me how socked in my sinuses are. Basically I have inflammation and infection in all my sinus cavities; especially my right maxillary cavity which has been infected for some time. Years, maybe. Which begs the question I never asked: if it's been so bad, how was I able to skydive and even moreso, how was I able to scuba dive? My guess is it wasn't that bad yet at those points in time. I last did both of those activities in September/early October of '04 although I distinctly remember losing my sense of smell some time before that.

The doc - incidentally, he's a hottie - explained that the surgery would last about 3 hours and he would be opening the sinuses some and cleaning them out. Do the holes he's knocking into my skull count as trepanning? But I digress - afterwards I won't be able to lift anything heavier than 10 pounds for a few weeks so Jon gets to chase Brenden around without me for a while.

The doc also explained to me that this operation should alleviate the symptoms but they were not a cure. He said that if I do not work to aggresively keep my allergies in check, I would probably be right back in the surgery center in 5 - 10 years time. I am currently doing 2 of the 3 things I need to be doing to keep them in check: 1) medications - the coticosteroids I'm taking (Nasonex) to keep the swelling down. 2) Allergy shots. The third thing is to go through the house and allergen-proof it. Which means ripping up the carpets and putting a different flooring down. Hooray! I've been tempted to put wood flooring anyway. We'll also replace the couch and bed and use HEPA filters and all that jazz. One thing we will not do is get rid of the cats. Vasquez doesn't have much mileage left in her anyways, and I couldn't part with BFK. I think I'm not allergic to him anyway.

Yeah I'm a little scared but I'm also looking forward to not only maybe being able to smell and taste my food again, but also a mini-vacation from my responsibilities.

I'm back from a great weekend at Nancy, Mark and Anthony's house: Brenden and I woke up early Saturday morning and drove to Athens with little incident. Despite my protests concerning the costs of the vehicle, the Town and Country mini-van my husband bought us is perfect for travelling long distance with a small one. We have the back seat out so when I stop for food, I swing through a drive-thru then park and let Brenden out to crawl around the van for a while while we eat.

I always enjoy seeing Anthony because in many ways it's like a sneak-preview. Like Nancy I was interested in how Anthony and Brenden would interact. I thought Anthony did quite well - he didn't much like Brenden or I playing with his toys, but with some gentle prompting he would be generous. At one point he was playing with something, Brenden started playing with something, so Anthony took it away from him. I pointed out to him (very gently - I would not reprimand someone else's kid unless he was doing something extreme like trying to drown the cat in the toilet) that he couldn't play with both toys at once. He gave the toy back to Brenden. I was very impressed - it's no simple trick to appeal to a 3-year-old's logic with success. And there was one point where Brenden was crying and I was consoling him - Anthony asked me "why he crying?" and patted Brenden gently on the leg.

Both Nancy and Nancy's mom (who is as nifty and loving as I remember her) don't recall Anthony being as supercharged at 1 as Brenden is. This pretty much confirmed my suspicion that B is more active than normal. Everyone got a good demonstration of how B likes to run me ragged. There was so much to !!!INVESTIGATE!!! in this new place!

Between running around and keeping Brenden from trouble, I did actually get to visit with Nancy and Mark, and I was very happy to spend some time talking with Helly, who is as wickedly funny and smart as her blog indicates. I still feel like I didn't get a chance to get to know her but after this weekend I must say I am very happy for Alan. They complement each other wonderfully. Lachelle dropped by Saturday night as well and added to the adult conversation which I didn't realize I missed so badly.

Brenden and I had a fantastic time, even though both of us were out of sorts - B has some congestion and didn't sleep as well as he normally did, which means neither did I, plus I now have a raging sore throat that started Saturday - yep, my sinuses. I swear, and now that I've written it down maybe I won't ignore it, to visit more. And my offer is still open - anyone who wants to swing by the thriving metropolis of Hartselle Alabamastan, is more than welcome. And the next time I *do* visit either Brenden stays with Jon or Jon's coming with me to keep B in check.

Anyway, thank you Nancy and Mark for being such good friends and gracious hosts, thank you Helly and Alan for coming up and visiting and putting up with my hellspawn rambunctious child, and thank you mrs. Morris for helping out with B and for lunch Sunday. I promise not to be such a stranger, if you all will promise to give me sh*t if I let a year go by without visiting again.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming, wherein I whine about my sinuses. Vía Lachelle:

A: "I think I need my sinuses removed."
B: "You can't have your sinuses removed -- they're cavities."
A: "Maybe -your- sinuses are cavities."

Indeed!

Mostly dead and evil dead

Evil Dead 2 : Dead By Dawn VHS
Originally uploaded by p r o f a n i c.

Brenden can say "mama" and "dada" upon prompting now - no thanks to me. He's picked that up in daycare. Yes, I'm feeling guilty.

So that's my Brenden update for the week. This weekend I'm going to Georgia to my friend Nancy's to visit with her and her family, as well as newly-hitched Helly and Alan. I'm looking forward to a change of routine, and yes I'm bringing the rug rat.

I saw Superman last night, and I'm relieved to report it wasn't the cheeseball fest that Superman II was. I'm not going to add to all the speculation about why Richard Donner got shitcanned and what happened with the sequel. It's a crying shame, is all I'm gonna say. Something tells me the producers told Donner to tone down the dark stuff (re-watch it for nothing else than Lois Lane's death. That's some pretty harsh shit right there!) and he told them to kiss his ass. And another promising movie franchise goes down in flames. I am now totally intrigued to see Bryan Singer's spin on the story.

I have 2 more movies to add to the list:

8)Robocop: This movie is extremely violent and cynical but it's a late 80's classic. What's not to love about ED-209? Robocop would have been totally bankrupt if it weren't for Peter Weller bringing so much humanity to the cyborg. It also brought us Kurtwood Smith as an Evil Bad Guy and he was absolutely fabulous!

9)Evil Dead II: If you haven't seen this movie, why not? It has chainsaws, shotguns, eyeball swallowing, posessive demons, and Bruce Campbell.

I had a C-T scan of my sinuses yesterday. Guess what? I still have a sinus infection. My doc has referred me to another doc. Can you say functional endoscopic sinus surgery? Well, I won't jump the gun but everything I have read makes me think that is what he'll suggest. We shall see.

For some reason I've been watching a bunch of mid-to-late 70's movies lately. I watched "the Deep", which did nothing except make me miss Robert Shaw, the apotheosis of pushy bastard. And Nick Nolte was once considered sexy! Imagine that! Okay, don't. It makes me nauseated too. Jon and I watched "Animal House" last night - sometimes movies just become trite because they were copied one too many times. Still, it's kind of a classic.

"Rollerball" was on - we flipped by that one. I haven't seen the remake and from what I understand I haven't missed anything. It all looks so dated now! The best part about that movie is the Bach soundtrack.

Lastly we watched "Superman II". You know, I don't remember it being that lame but hoo-ya what a lame movie! The special effects were atrocious! Hard to believe it was made a year after "Star Wars". Oddly enough, the best thing about this movie is Christopher Reeve. He handled the duality of Superman/Clark Kent quite effectively, even though everything/everybody else was hilariously, well, comical. Even Gene Hackman. Tsk tsk tsk. Although I still love it when Terence Stamp commands "Kneel before ZOD!" but who doesn't? I want to see the new Superman movie even though no one else seemed to want to. I set up TiVo to record the first movie, to see if it was as good as I remembered, or simply a lame movie I liked when I was a teenager.

I'm compiling a new top 10 list: Top 10 pre-1990 Movies I want to watch with Brenden (when he gets old enough) that aren't Star Wars or Indiana Jones movies (because of course he'll watch all those):

1)The Terminator: The original. Because it's a frickin kewl movie, that's why! And James Cameron set a standard with this low-budget action/love story.

2)Jaws: a 70's movie that didn't date. Even with the 70's hair and clothes styles, it looks like it was filmed yesterday. Plus you know, it has Robert Shaw being a pushy bastard. This movie didn't become trite even though other movies copied it again and again and again, because all those movies missed the point about what "Jaws" was trying to say. It's a movie about what it means to be a man and if you don't believe me watch it again!

3)Ghostbusters: Bill Murray! Dan Ackroyd! Sigourney Weaver making out with Rick Moranis! Because it's a classic comedy, that's why! I bet you have that song stuck in your head now.

4)The Road Warrior: Hyper action movies before Michael Bay infected the world with shaky-cam ruled. Mad Max is a pretty good low-budget item and Beyond Thunderdome is only so-so, but RW is a monumental post-apocalypse movie that no one seems to remember.

5)The Princess Bride: Like the young boy being read to, it will be interesting to see if Brenden appreciates this sardonic/romantic tale.

6)Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Will MP's offbeat humor translate to another generation? Knee!

7)Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: Did you notice this movie never garnered a sequel? Imagine that! I loved it when it came out. Speaking of, I wonder if I'll be able to find unexpurgated versions of the Looney Tunes I grew up with. It just ain't a Daffy/Elmer cartoon without Daffy getting his beak blown off on-screen.

I'm still working on this list. Missing noticeably is my favorite movie of all-time, "Aliens". And flesh-eating zombie movies. And Clint Eastwood westerns, gangster movies, and James Bond movies. Of course he'll get to watch those! Although it might be a while before I show him "Dawn of the Dead".

What I'm not doing

Foot drag
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Well the pool was perfectly beautiful for exactly one day. Then we had a pretty fierce pop-up thunderstorm which blew a bunch of leaves into the pool.

El monito and I spent the weekend working on the outdoors - I went shopping early Saturday, first to the pool place to make sure the chemicals were balanced, then to Lowe's for assorted neccesities, then to Publix for groceries, then to the Verizon store to find out the phone Jon gave me can't be fixed, only replaced. I don't have a warranty so I'll have to buy a new one. Feh. Brenden did fairly well up until the verizon visit. I had to chase him down several times.

In all fairness he was just bushed by that time. Once I strapped him into the car seat he was asleep before we left the Verizon parking lot. I spent his nap time putting together a nifty kitchen table that folds down into almost nothing so now I can actually eat meals with Brenden in the kitchen. After lunch on our new table B and I went out to do some work in the yard. Bored yet? Me too.

Sunday we worked in the yard, played in the pool, then played in the sprinkler in the front yard as I tried to revitalize the dead grass. I found out that if Brenden tries to fight me when I'm removing him from a not-so-safe situation (like running out into the street - I can move pretty fast for an elderly mom!) he tucks quite easily under an arm. I can keep him from pulling my hair that way, too.

In other words, SSDD.

2-bath day

Neighborhood
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Yesterday was a 2-bath day at the Maynard household. Since I pretty much spend the entire weekend at home, and since Brenden loooooves the outdoors, I decided it would be a good time to do some work on our badly neglected landscaping. I decided to start by weeding and raking around the bushes in the front yart and spreading new mulch. I especially wanted to lay new mulch down because the previous owner used some sort of water permeable tarp around the bushes and a lot of it is uncovered because the last mulch is totally decomposed/washed away.

Brenden and I drove to Home Depot where I bought a few miscellaneous tools we didn't have and 3 bags of pretty red wood mulch. I figured I would need more but this is a long-term project because 1) it's too hot to stay outdoors for very long 2) I have to keep an eye on Brenden and 3) because I have to keep an eye on Brenden, I don't want to use any power tools so that I can hear him as well.

So yesterday I start raking around the weedy-looking and overgrown bushes to the right of our porch, and I finally discovered where all those freakin ants come from when they invade our house. There was so much leaf/compost buildup around the base of the plants they were living in there! Thank goodness these ants don't bite otherwise B and I would be in poor shape. So I didn't even get around spreading the wood chips - I cleaned up as best as I could and Jon should spray near the base and kill all those farging bastiches. I hope to get out there this evening and spread.

Brenden of course helped a lot, mainly by pulling clods of dirt up and tasting them. Oh, well - parasites can be removed. I grew up on a tropical island so I know all about parasites. Brenden of course helped rake and sweep; he spent a lot of time in the open garage where it was substantially cooler investigating everything in there (I spent Saturday cleaning up the garage so that Brenden wouldn't try to eat any spiders he found).

I'm making tentative plans to rip up the whole farging front landscaping this winter, and replacing the poorly-laid plastic border (ick) and the tarp (double-ick) and replacing it with a nicer brick border. I'll also do some initial prepping of the ground to get it ready for some new plants in the spring. I need to take photos so we can have a before-after comparison. As you can see from the above photo, we have a ginormous oak tree in our lawn with a very scraggly-looking area underneath. Poor watering and zero shade caused that. I'm still working out what I'm going to do about this area. The tree stays - it's huge, beautiful and in great shape. It definitely needs some pruning but that should be done when it's colder.

And then there's the landscaping around the pool - I'm going to wait for at least a year before I attempt to tackle it because I hope by then Brenden will have enough sense not to fall into the pool.

Brenden Loves Bananas!

hippie
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

My sinus problems seem to be improving, if only a tiny bit. Every once in a while, I can smell something fairly strongly. Most of the time it's something strong, like the garbage or the cat box or one of Brenden's diaper loads. Yesterday I realized I could smell and so I rushed into the refrigerator and opened a container full of some arroz con pollo I had cooked the day before and took a big whiff. Aaaaah, garlic!

I'm finally losing weight again, and the past month I have dropped to 140. I was pushing 143 when I found out I was pregant, so I have officially dropped all my pregnancy weight (yay!). I'm not happy though because that's still heavier than I'm comfortable with. The nice thing is I am still in a groove where I'm comfortable not eating and am having no cravings. And if I stay away from beer (which I am) they tend to stay away. My comfortable weight would be around 125.

I'm also walking a mile and a half Monday - Friday and I'm weightlifting again 3 times a week although I'm nowhere near the shape I was way back in '04.

Brenden's official 1st word is "Bow!" as in "Bow wow wow". It might be that he's practicing to be King of the Universe but I don't know. He loves pointing to things and saying "bow" so I think that he finally understands that the sounds we make have a distinct purpose. Well he actually has 2 phrases then. He says "Uh-uh-uh-uh" which means "hurry up and feed me/give me that/come with me/pick me up!"

He also has two other molars coming in. No wonder he likes ice in his drinks!

Before the haircut

Before the haircut
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Ahg. If it's Thursday, it must mean a visit to the allergy doctor. Why do I always get sinus headaches when I go see him? Is that some kind of joke? So anyway, since I had a reaction to the last antibiotic (Avalox) he prescribed me amoxcillin or some sort of -cillin but it didn't have any effect. I've got something new and unpronouncable to take plus at the beginning of August I get to have a CT scan of my sinuses.

Next week my husband gets a whole week with el monito. That should be fun for both of them! Really! I hope. I love watching Jon interact with Brenden. Like last night he gave monkey-boy his bath and it's so neat to watch them together. I never thought having a family would mean so much to me.

I'm doing pretty good on the Spanish front. Since I had a 4-day weekend I managed to do a rather intensive review (in between being led around by the finger by B), and after a while I was able to listen to something and pick up the meaning, not just small phrases. My favorite channel on XM now is CNN en español. I also listen to los deportes, but I have a harder time with that because I don't really have the specialized vocabulary to follow sports talk, plus the announcers get all excited when they're giving the play-by-play so I don't know what's going on. I wish I could find the TV remote so I could use the SAP button for Braves games. Yeah, I don't care if they are sucking wind this year. Been there, done that, and yes, I still have the t-shirt.

I also love love looove the HBO Latino channel. I watched "Titanic" and "Shrek 2" en español over the weekend. The familiarity with the movies help me decode what they're saying by the context. I also tried to watch "Elektra" but it was plenty boring even in Spanish so I wandered off. Both MSN and Yahoo have Spanish versions of their news pages available so I'm reading noticias when I can.

First Haircut

New cut
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Letter to Brenden Month 13:

Hey buddy; I thought you were going to slow down a little. Was I wrong! During your first month in your second year, you decided to work on communication. You don't exactly speak yet, but I knew something had clicked in your head when you sat down next to me a few weeks ago with your favorite book in your hands. You grabbed my finger and placed it on the book!

When I read to you I put my finger under the words as I say them, so I didn't have to be Einstein to guess what you wanted. You wanted me to read you "Moo Baa La La La" (again and again and again). What's really nifty is when I get to the part where some dogs go "BOW WOW WOW" you smile and go "WOWOWOWOWOW!"

That communication method took another leap as you learned that you could grab a finger and lead me around. Most of the time you simply wanted out to the back yard. I'd slather you with sunblock and we'd go, but not enough for you. Little dude, I did not want sunstroke! As it was I'm surprised neither of us are sunburnt despite the goop.

You have also learned to ask to be picked up - like all little kids, you hold both arms up to me. You take it a step further if I'm slow to respond. You took my hands and placed both of them under your armpits. Pretty cool, hon.

You are also sorting pretty well and are sorting all shapes not just circles any more. You can also stack a bit, but if you don't get something on a few tries you will throw the object impatiently across the room. Shades of your dad there, buddy.

I bit the bullet this weekend and I gave you your first haircut. I had to buy dad a new pair of hair clippers anyway, so I bought a nice set and used the clippers on you. You didn't seem afraid of the noise, just curious. I think it looks pretty good!

So you keep advancing. It looks like you finally have found the time to develop your noggin some now that you have conquered all of the first stage of physical development (walking, climbing the furniture, pulling kitty's tail, negotiating steps, emptying drawers, etc). I hope this time next month I can report your first real word, but I'm also dreading when you use that Boeing 747 brain of yours to start climbing by stacking things, and opening doors.

El coquí

El coqui
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

I have copycatted my friend Nancy twice: she started a blog, I started a blog. She had a son; I had a son. She now maintains a blog in Arabic because she is studying that language. I said a while back I wanted to start studying Spanish again; I have been slacking off but I brushed off my Spanish CDs and am listening to them. And I am copycatting her once more: here is my Spanish blog, Yo Soy La Slacker. For those of you in my viewing audience (all 2 of you) who speak Spanish, feel free to peruse my new blog (only 1 entry so far) and let me know what I did wrong. I know like many English speakers trying to learn Spanish I don't have the hang of the difference between para and por, among many deficiencies.

Upon reviewing what I know, I think my biggest deficiencies in the language lie in word order and prepositions (like para and por). I simply don't know how to put together complex sentences. I may catch a few words here and there, but if I don't understand their context within the sentence I can easily confuse what is going on. I mean, something as simple as "te amo" can be easily misconstrued if you don't understand Spanish word order. We say "I love you" and a word-for-word translation in Spanish is (Yo) amo tú which of course is way wrong.

I also think the reason I have not been able to retain any Spanish I've learned is because I simply am reluctant to speak. Hell, I'm reluctant to speak English! But this is the internet world - I enjoy writing so why not write in Spanish? That way I can take my time and do some research on what I'm trying to say. I also have a great deal of resources on the internet for reading.

One nifty thing that I have discovered is closed captioning. We get the HBO latin channel, which will show movies dubbed in Spanish, and the closed captioning is in Spanish as well. I watched part of Revenge of the Sith the other day. Of course, Univisión is freely available as well with Spanish captions. I hope this time I can stick to it and really learn the language, for once.

Neighborhood

Neighborhood
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

I spent most of the weekend working with my young fella on his vocabulary:
I'd say "Kitty!" he'd say "BUH!"
I'd say "Mama!" he'd say "Vava!" (he's just learned the V sound)
I'd say "Dada!" he'd say "Dada!" (dang)
I'd say "Chicken!" he'd say "BUH!"

So I got clever and say "Book!" and he'd say "BUH!" and I'd go "Yay! That's right!!"

And so on. He also tried to get a finger up one of my nostrils quite often. I guess he's curious.

Yesterday he didn't eat much of his dinner which was chicken nuggets and green beans. I found out why he didn't have much of an appetite when I fed him his last bottle at 7. He threw it up, along with what little of his dinner he ate, poor guy.

I bathed him and changed him, and we waited a bit to see how he felt. He seemed okay but naturally about 10 minutes later once I put him to bed he hurled his lunch. I'm serious - he had pineapple and cheese and it came up in whole undigested chunks. I'll pause for a minute so you can concentrate on the visual.

I got him cleaned up and the bed changed and rocked him until he got quiet again. He threw up once more, but it was only a little liquid so after a little cleanup he finally got to sleep around 9pm.

Oh, I also think I had a reaction to the new round of antibiotics: my arms have bumps all up and down them with little red welts in the center. They don't itch, it just looks bad. I'm waiting to hear from my doc to see what he recommends.

Here's the last two installments of the trip report with the nifty pictures:

Part 4

Part 5

Behold the Mighty Hunter

mighty hunter
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Nancy's comments from my last post reminded me of something:

I was tested twice for allergens - once when I was very young (4? 5?), and once recently, a few months after I gave birth. When I was very young I remembered the skin tests were all done with reusable syringes - it was that long ago - and my mom told me that I went into anaphylactic shock when I was tested against horses.

With this new round of testing, the nurse used these things that looked kind of like the things they use to poke you in the finger for just a little blood. Except in this case she was poking me in the arm, on a grid she drew with a ball-point pen. She was poking away when I finally got curious and actually looked at her little case with all the pokers and read the labels and saw one labelled "horse". Eep.

I asked her "have you poked me with the horse yet?"

"Just did".

"I guess I should tell you this: when I was tested as a kid I went into anaphylactic shock when I was tested for horses."

The nurse stared at me a second, then said "Now you tell me?!??"

I didn't go into shock, but. If you are allergic to something, your skin will develop a little weal, its size depending on how allergic you are. So I had a bunch of little bumps ranging from the size of a mosquito bite to the size of a dime. The horse test, however, was the size of a silver dollar. And man did it itch!!

Here's part 3 of that nifty travel report. I note with amusement that they were the last group cancelled out of the villa that is being blogged about here.

Paint your Wagon

wagon
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Today is random nattering day:

I do have new photos of Brenden on one of our daily neighborhood excursions - I've just been too lazy to post them.

Brenden's 12 month checkup went well. The doc was pleased with his development. The one thing I liked most was his physical development has been in the 98% since he was born - but on this visit his weight dropped to the 50% level. In other words, he's still growing like a weed but ever since he learned how to walk he's been burning up the calories. That's good because when he was in the hospital the doctor kept making comments "Wow, he certainly doesn't miss a meal!". It kind of upset me because I didn't see Brenden as obese. Now he's pretty skinny. I also don't force his food. Mealtime is over as soon as he starts showing disintrest with his food (usually signalled by using his sippy cup to mash whatever is on the tray).

Speaking of doctors, I have previously mentioned my sinus infection. What I haven't talked about is the doctors I have been seeing. I've been going to my general practicioner for these infections since my first one this past November. Stupid me, I didn't equate sinus problems to my allergy problems. At my last visit my doc threw his hands in the air and said go see a specialist. I asked what kind, he said "an allergist". Oh.

So I went to see my way cool allergist Dr. Krishna, who has made some recommendations and prescribed some meds. I should have gone to see him in the first place.

Dr. Krishna took a personal interest in my problems when I first went to see him during the 2nd trimester when I was having such horrible problems with athsma. He really seemed to care about me. It's so common for doctors not to show compassion these days, and considering how busy they tend to be it's no wonder they can't remember you from visit to visit. I really like my doc.

I don't think everything is cleared up, however; I still can't smell anything. Once the prednisone prescription was finished I slowly sank back into an odorless world. I have another appointment in a week; in the meantime I'm working with a 'home' remedy which consists of me snorting salt water. Actually I use a dropper to put salt water up my nose. What I need to do is spend 2 weeks at the beach and go swimming every day. That will burn the infection out!

Speaking of beaches, even though I haven't been to one since I got pregnant, I dream about it a lot. We're hoping to go somewhere next summer, maybe with my brother Ed and his wife Jen (they both Scuba dive). So I poke around alot on the web and I found this amusing site about building a villa on St. John. It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Unless I won the Powerball and didn't have to worry about money at all. But anyway, the blog starts out so optimistic and slides into slow panic and despair as deadlines are missed and budgets are blown sky high.

But like I said, it's a nice place to visit. Here is a relatively short trip report with some great pictures that someone posted:

Part 1

Part 2

At least look at the pics if you want to blah through the travelogue.

What now?

What now
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

My brain has finally stopped melting, and I think I have recovered enough to compose a coherent post. I owe the letter to Brenden Month 12.

One whole year old. Your physical development is above average, but your communication skills aren't. You don't say anything intelligible yet, but you can point at what you want - usually your sippy cup during dinner. I won't leave it on your tray because you will use it to mash your peas or green beans or drop it on the cat's head (who is hanging around waiting for you to drop something). Speaking of your sippy cup, I have you almost completely off of bottles. I have one left with which I feed you your only bottle of formula just before you go to bed, and that will end as soon as this can of formula is gone. Considering that I mix up 4 oz. of formula and top that with 4 oz. of milk, that can will be finished by November 2008.

I could just give you a sippy cup of milk and you'd be happy, but I'm being a mommy-head and am reluctant to give up the time before bed where I get to hold and rock you and feed you a bottle. Indulge me just a little bit longer.

You have developed a taste for Vienna Sausages, or what the Gerber folks package under the name 'meat sticks'. Real Vienna Sausages are about 90% fat, and have enough salt to shrivel a slug per sausage. The Gerber 'meat sticks' at least actually do have meat in them plus far less sodium. You also like chicken nuggets and catfish - anything you can pick up and shove in your mouth. You are getting cross with me if I try to give you anything by spoon.

I am reading to you more - your favority book is "Moo Baa La La La" by Sandra Boynton. I think you like all the animal sounds I make ("Rhinoceroses snort and snuff, and little dogs go 'ruff ruff ruff!'"). Speaking of animal sounds, I have a ritual we go through every night: I line up your little Fisher Price Little People on the table, and we go through each one of them and the sounds they make ("This is a chicken. Chicken! Chicken says 'Bock bock bock!' This is a cow. Cow! Cow says 'Moooooo! Mooooo!' This is a farmer. Farmer! Farmer says 'Howdy! Howdy howdy howdy!'"). After that I ask you to pick up a specific animal. You have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. You do seem to like trying to grab the sheep and sticking him in my mouth. I do like lamb chops dear, but not plastic ones.

You like being cooped up in the house less and less, so I make it a point to go on a walk with you every evening. It's like taking a cat for a walk because you don't listen to me very well plus you have so many interesting things to investigate and try to put in your mouth, like rocks, leaves, bugs, small stray pieces of trash, and flowers. I only pick you up and move you if we get close to a car parked on the street and you try to lick the bumper. I also pick you up if a car comes - most of the people who live on the street are very nice and thoughtful (most of them have young children too). There's one jerk who drives like a maniac and I hate it when I see his car. It's the one with the blue flashy lights on top. I guess he thinks he can get away with driving like an idiot teen-ager because he's a cop.

So anyway: we have your 1 year Well-baby checkup today which means more shots! Hooray!

Very Tasty

Very Tasty
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Here's Brenden enjoying his birthday cake. We enjoyed it too. Still not inspired. My brain resembles overcooked tapioca because I'm trying to fire an event from an MFC application where the interface container is derived from CCmdTarget and not COleControl like any sane rational human being would have coded.

In the desperate attempt not to get Dooced, I shall stop here.

1 Year Old

AtMoms
Originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Happy Birthday, Brenden! One year ago today your mother was goofed up on Demerol and doesn't remember much except the look on your little newborn face when she first met you. You looked a little confused.

12 Months later you are a healthy, massively rambunctious little toddler. Please don't be too rough on your Grandma today, OK? I'll write more when I feel a little more inspired.