SATC 2 Review {Spoiler Alert}**

I went to the movie tonight--BY MYSELF!
That was the second time I have ever done that, and I must say, I will be doing
it again. It was completely enjoyable.
After a long day of having kiddie fun..I went to see a big girl movie.

It was Hilarious to me.
A high point in the movie:
When Samantha (who is menopausal in the movie) dry humps the air in the souk in Abu Dabi and screams out "yes, I have sex!!!" All the while wearing a tank top and shorts and sweating bullets. Men in white sheet outfits gather around to gawk and holler at her.
HILARIOUS! Oh, and the movie script bothered to point out that in these Arab countries while the majority of women walk around in all black {tarps}--the night club goers get to check out girls wearing jingle bell bikinis...don't get it? Neither do I, Neither did Charlotte.

I must say, however the SATC girls are getting old. They all look old. It is even unbelievable to me, at this point.
still fun...but getting ridiculous.
My sister has reported to me, for example, that the dry humping the air is something that happens in her middle school classroom at least once a year.
Carrie seemed to whine the whole movie...did she always whine like this?
I started to think back..was all that talking to herself just whining?
She sure seemed whiny in this one..I wanted to say, "Shut the hell up with all your mellow drama!"

One other bit of commentary--There seems to be always a commentator in the audience with me at the movies. Right around me somewhere was the lady who would not shut up!
She commented and predicted throughout...she was far enough away so that she was not totally distracting.

All in all, my solo movie experience was nice...I also recommend the movie.

**Not that looking old is bad! :) Looking old is good, when you are not fighting it so hard.:)
Looking old is bad when you are trying to look 25--I am only 31, and I don't try to look 25, so people who are 52 really should not. :)

I'm not your superwoman

I love this song!
When I hear it in the car I sing and sing, and it reminds me of fifth grade.
This girl, Kuturah Midgette would sing this all the time. :)
Tutu.
Ha!
I still see her sometimes and her children now.

As always..let's see if this works

Picture Catch Up

The first picture should be of some people (Laura Beth, Elena, Luke, and Caroline) on the tube, "Big Mable" from yesterday. We all went out on a friend's boat. It was SO MUCH FUN. When I go out on a boat I feel like a dog with her head out of the car window. :)
Another one is of my Dad with his birthday dessert.
The last one should be of Eva. She is 10 months old now. She is --breathtakingly precious! I wish I could freeze the 10 month old baby stage for a couple of months.
She is also weaning herself. She would rather crawl away and explore that have a snack. :(--Which is natural, but it happens all too fast for me! Knowing she is the last baby can make me get very emotional.
That is all for the picture catch up this morning. It would be cool if I put the pictures up here when I type the posts, no?

Happy Birthday

Today is my Daddy's birthday.
He came over here to celebrate.
We had
Steak
salad
Potatoes
Rolls
And
Chocolate Cobbler (very yummy recipe from the Pioneer Woman's blog)
He turned 66.
It is also my parents' 37th Wedding anniversary.

my mama is celebrating at the beach cottage.
:)

I could not write up here, no matter how inspired I felt, no matter how hard I tried, how much I love my Daddy! It is inexplicable and only understandable {probably} to other Daddy's girls out there.
Sigh...

I think he enjoyed his birthday supper.

old random pictures

since Andy has been working out of town i have been using my old computer.
it has my old pictures on it.
the pictures are from when Victor was born, when elena was a toddler etc.
here are a couple..
These are some priceless ones to me.
Hey! speaking of, how are y'all storing your pictures, now that everything is digital?
What do you do? I mean this computer has a bunch of stuff on it, but when the computer is no longer useful to me--too old or whatever--what then? I have a bunch on walgreens too.
old timey picture books are the best bet, I am thinking..
What do y'all do?

feelings

since i was in about middle school i have had a philosophy on feelings and friends and getting one's feelings hurt. the philosophy on feelings breaks the whole thing down into two points..just like the one on jealousy.
here it is:
really there is no need to ever get your feelings hurt b/c in any situation in which one's feelings are hurt one of two things has happened:
1. the person is a good friend/relative etc. who loves you and might have said or done something to hurt you and they do not know they did the bad thing well, if they don't even know what they did...then why would they know to apologize and the person would never have hurt the feelings on purpose.
2. if a person hurts your feeling for meanness and does not apologize, well they are not a friend even, so forget em. squash it. to heck with em.

Most of the time this whole idea keeps me from getting my feelings hurt. I just don't {most of the time}....
It doesn't work all the time, though....

I guess somethings (matters of the heart) are not so easily broken down into dichotomies. ojala!

Oh No!

So there is this house that is beside Andy's mom and dad's house that is old.
Forever and ever there were just always "wierd" people over there. There was always an old man over there. Sometimes there were some renters. Then as of about six years ago there was his daughter and her girlfriend, one of whom was {really really into collecting clowns -even had a house in the yard for them} yeah. The house was over grown. Dilapitaded. The neighbors had yip yip dogs, and they were {wierd}.
Old man died.
Daughter sold house.
People from "Raleigh" (which usually means from actually somewhere else) bought the house.
It is their summer vacation spot/destination for when the man retires.
The point of this is coming.
But, Since the "Raleigh people" bought this house we have looked in the windows
admired their changes etc.
Today I got the chance to meet Mrs. Raliegh People, Raleighita and Raleighito...and...

Ughh...y'all

There goes my peaceful little shady beach for my children who play really well together and leave me alone to read...There it goes (insert sound of toilet flushing here).
The little girl...OBNOXIOUS. She whines with a Yankee accent Constantly and she cannot say the /r/ sound (she sounds like Calliou's twin sister). In the first five minutes I was out on the beach I had enough of her to last the entire summer.
Her mother, well this is what I learned about her in about 15 minutes:
her daddy is an oil man
her daddy has a ranch in tx.
her daddy's ranch is only 200 acres
her daddy is a chemical engineer
her daddy can weld fences for cattle
she was infertile
she almost died giving birth to jr.-who was conceived via
in vitro fertilization
the daughter was adopted
the son has a.d.d.
they want their children to have a taste of country life
that is why they bought the house
--
oh, and she commits the ultimate faux pax at the drop of a hat
SHE LEAVES HER KIDS WITH PEOPLE WHO DO NOT OFFER BABYSITTING SERVICE!!!
--
What she needs to know about me:
I do not like whiney children
I do not like ruffian bossy children who cannot say /r/s and talk like yankees
I do not like oil men from tx. who own ranches (hee hee)
I DO NOT BABYSIT OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN UNLESS I OFFER!!!
SO SHE WILL HAVE TO TAKE HER LITTLE WONDERS BACK OVER TO HER PIECE OF HEAVEN WHEN SHE LEAVES.
--
"oh," she said, "I am off to get my microwave, Just send them home when y'all go in, and feel free to speak to her if you need to, she is a little ____" ( I cannot remember the euphemism for "brat" that she used.)

MY Response in my head, "Take your little brat back over there with you. I am not going to watch her...and you don't need to give a person permission to "speak" to your child when you leave them playing."

There goes the neighborhood! :)

The blah blah recommends blah blah...

I read this in one of those magazines that tells you how to be a mommy.
blah blah blah...
Do people really read those and then do what they say?
Do people listen/mind the recommendations of a magazine over their own common sense?
So, when big E was born the rec. was NOT to feed your baby any foods that
are common allergens. I, of course, did not do that..if I made eggs the baby ate eggs, when I chewed up peanuts into mush...she ate them b/c she liked them (I freakin love peanuts!--so of course I wanted the baby to share some with me!)
I did the same with V. --even though some american academy recommended otherwise..like waiting til puberty to give them a peanut or some other non-sensical thing.
So NOW--GUESS WHAT!!
They have CHANGED THEIR MINDS FOLKS!
Yes, they now say to give the baby the allergen foods earlier....oooohhh okay.
So will I stop giving them to little E now?
No..b/c I do not just do the opposite of whatever is recommended, sino...I
just DO WHAT I THINK IS BEST FOR MY BABY!

Oh..also in that magazine was the current average age of potty training are you ready for this?...

36 months!!
DISGUSTING I say. People who wait that long are idiots!
Two is the age of independence..the classic struggle to be a baby but not be a baby..so why in the world would anyone with a typically developing child endure an entire nother year wiping shi!!y diapers??? Three year olds who are not potty trained..ugghh..that is gross.
DUMB!

What was it I said about not putting my opinions up here?

new book

whoa! when i opened my new book last night, my jaw dropped!
the book is by {one of} my favorite authors. it is about frida kahlo and diego rivera, about a man who worked for them, and his life.
stay tuned...
:)
La Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver, want to read along?

Patience

When Andy and I moved back to Washington--going on two years ago now, I started to notice something immediately when we got back here.
When I was at the grocery store--or any store.
When I was at the post office..
at church..
at the park..
in the parking lot..
at the bank...
Everywhere basically.
Patience.

He who loses it; loses.
That's it.

If a person is in a line anywhere here (people who are from here, vamos) and they have to wait a long time...they just do.
It is socially unacceptable to 1.huff or puff, or 2. make an ugly face, or 3. talk about the situation to the person behind you, or 4. switch lines...
No one here does these things, and if a person happens to lose patience, this person is labeled A HOT HEAD! AN IDIOT! AN A$$.
This was very interesting to me, and I am learning to do it. It takes practice, but after a while you are good at it, and you don't even have to actively control the huffing and puffing.
Here is one example.
The first summer we lived here this older man was buying several cases of wine at food lion and they had some deal going on.
The check out clerk counted them all--very slowly, and then rang them up--it was like 50 bottles or something, then he said the total. The older man said, oh no, it should have been this amnt. The difference was like 45 cents or something. BUT the clerk began the whole process over again.
I was thinking--bleep bleep, you are in the bleeping express lane, what in the bleep?
I looked around and no one else seemed to care AT ALL! Not a bit. They just stood there. No one said a word, no one switched lines...just stood there with the same looks on their faces.
So move ahead to now, when I was at the mall in durham with sissy one day recently the guy at the nordstom's counter was making my drink--he was busy, and he was going as fast as he could, and while he worked I journeyed off to {happy patient people land}. When I came to--my drink was ready and it was looking yummy.
When the guy handed it to me, he apologized. Funny, I thought, I was not even bothered by the wait!

It seems like to me the unofficial rule is when you live in a small town one of the worst things to be labeled might be "hot head" or "impatient" or here we say a person is acting, "ugly". There is no anonimity here...someone in one of those lanes knows EXACTLY who you are and whose you are..so you better be sweet. :)
When I lived elsewhere..there was not as much need for this. Most people in the triangle are anonomous..so being ugly --well no one much cares so expressing one's impatience is more acceptable.

Okay --nighty night..I am off to read a book,now.

I'm Lovin..

Biore clear pore strips...my skin WILL NOT stay clear.
So, I just use three of them whenever I want to...forget nose strip! Hell--I just go
ahead and cover my whole face in them..

Let's see..Peanut butter in vanilla ice cream, yes, this is a re-discovered favorite
and I am about to have ANOTHER BOWL of it. :)--Don't be so....Vanilla!

Get Lost tea--by the republic of tea--Probably what I should be having right now
In stead of the ice cream treat

The show, The C!ty...Hello! It is just as good this season, just as entertaining. That Olivia Palermo--is just a ...well, it rhymes with "itch"

My kids at school...my job gets so bogged down sometimes with paperwork, and crazy BS--but kids make my job so worth it! They get excited when I show them a picture from goog!e images of some 'real briars'--it MAKES THEIR DAY! ..So sweet! They get excited just reading to me-or just when I call them a silly nickname..or going around school and looking at bugs or looking for a frog with me..I could kiss all of them silly! They are treasures and I {try} to let them know it all the time.

Heat. I love the hot weather. It makes me happy!!! :) yippie bring it on!
Today at {music lesson} we were in a house in which no AC was running and it was ...sweaty. umm hmm..
When I was little we had a window unit in the living room...so that meant in my bedroom in down the hall--it was hot.
Andy's mama can't stand AC--so their house is..Hot--of course there is always a
{breeze off the river} uhhm hmmm..

okay..that's about it right now.

nighty night
PS--this is almost spooky y'all--i have toyed with the idea of moneytizing my blog.
i.e. earning some change from posting ads here.
So..you know what this post was about. I clicked "publish" and there--boom!
there was an ad by Biore pore strips..OMG-I don't even want to know how they do that...
I am not going to try to earn money from this right now..b/c
1.it might be a PITA and 2. they get to boss you about copyrighted stuff(b/c you are
making money from it...and I already have enough bosses.

Ay que Cutie pies!

This afternoon when I went out to get the mail off of Andy's front seat I saw scurrying going on in the field behind our house. From the view out of the corner of my eye I assumed they were probably crows or turkey vultures out there...but when I looked more closely I realized that there was some kind of furry creature out there...exciting :).
I came in to get Elena (my little explorer) and the dern phone rang--it was Sissy. So, that meant Andy had to go exploring with Elena--and their whiny as heck (with no nap) tag-a-long brother. :)
These are what they discovered! So cute! Three babies!



The mama was some where over in the briars --I bet she was about to have a heart attack watching us running around out there.
Then after we looked for a bit I did the whole mama ruins everything drill..."Okay, now let's leave them alone so their mama won't be scared to come and find them."
..you know the one...
Luckily their mama did come to get them {that's my story, once again}. So around 45 minutes later, they were gone--Now the story might be plausible this time b/c they were right near the edge of the woods...so you know, probably their mama did come out and scurry them back over and tell them, "now next time, y'all need to listen and come one when i call you!"
Don't you bet?

:)

Good night...baby raccoons.

Pictures

If you know of any little boys who need a cute present there is a toy shaving kit at Target that is so cute! It has a pretend razor and a can of shaving cream. Victor has been having fun shabin with Daddy. Elena get to have fun too of course b/c she shaves her legs in the tub. :)
I finally got around to putting up the picture of Morgan and me. The Carolina Inn is just beautiful! If you ever feel like partying --just go there..there were at least three functions going on there the night we were there. With the right clothes and some energy, we could have partied all night!
And on the top here, My sweet Elena posing with my Mother's day stash. She is modeling the present I picked out for myself at the Pandora store at Southpoint mall. :) I love it, vamos (of course I do, I picked it out!) And don't forget all the handmade sweet presents that are also being displayed! Our babysitter, Camelia, brought me those sweet flowers this morning. :)
Now, I am off to write a couple notes. Happy Mother's Day all my bloggy land people! :)

When people {lose themselves} to you. ..

So just now I was settling in to watch Wife Swap..ughh..sad but true.
Ring Ring goes the phone.
A friend was calling.
She is one who loses herself to me with regularity.
It was SO GOOD to hear her voice!
We have been friends since childhood.
We have lived in dorm rooms together.
houses.
neighborhoods.
then all of a sudden...
We are lost.

Then I was watching this show with Andy on PBS Explorer. It was about raggae music and jamaica..
I started wondering where another friend of mine is. Avril Berry is her name.
She is from London.
She is Jamaican.
I met her near the beach cottage.
We were in touch for years.
I visited her family in London for week or so once.
Then she went to Africa one summer to teach...and we lost touch.

I hate it when that happens!! It is nice to at least know where the person is. :)

Okay..i am off to read now. Yippie tomorrow is a Saturday WITH NO OBLIGATIONS!!
woo hoo!!

Here I go {again}

This is a post I have had in my head for a while--it stays there b/c
it is one of my more concrete opinions..one might just venture out a bit and call it
a personal philosophy...hell if I were on the faculty at UNC I might conduct
the same piece of research on it for 35 years and re-do some charts and graphs on it over and over on each new word processing software that comes out... :) (that was not a necessary comment-but fun nevertheless)

Here it is: Jealousy is the most wasted emotion that one can feel.
I have found that the most jealous people are the most miserable..and this is a
shame b/c if they could realize that there is never a logical reason to be jealous,
then they would be happy--or at the very least neutral.
Two reasons that one could easily decide not to be jealous.
1. If the thing/person/idea/emotion/status (insert noun here) that you are jealous of is something you can have--stop being jealous and work to get it.
2 If the thing (etc.) that you are jealous of is something you could never have anyway..get the hell over it..you are wasting your time.
Booyow! Problem solved, Problem solved.

So pick anything that someone else has had that you might have wanted...
Let's go with a shirt that was cool at a given moment.
You can probably get a shirt by some means or another..buy one, sweet talk a parent into buying you one, work really hard in the food l!on deli and make some money to buy one, find a cheaper version and sport it like a rock star...
This situation = No reason to be jealous..you could get that shirt. Don't waste time being jealous--sino use that time to find a way to get what you want.
Okay another (sort of crazy example) of a situation of jealousy...
You want to be Princess Jasmine...
Let's see you are a blond girl who lives in BFE Oh!o and you are a protestant Christian in the 21st century...
Newsflash...you aint' ever gonna be princess jasmine--she lived hundreds of years ago, she was a brown chica and she was an Ar@b--so this would go in the get the hell over it category...
Get it...???

This has basically always worked for me.
Even when I thought I would never have children--people would come to me and apologize for being pregnant...One day I finally told someone..
"What in the world? You are apologizing b/c you are able to have children..this is nuts!! This is a blessing for you! This is the most wonderful news of your life--do not go around apologizing for it...hello!!"
I did go with the second route on this one--the get the hell over it and move on route...meanwhile..
well, y'all know the rest of that story..If you don't well ask someone who does, or read more of my blog b/c there is photo proof of what happened. ;).

Good night, I am off to read a book by Elizabeth Berg. She is a great author!

Update on the bluebirds

They did not pick our property after all!
The real estate market really is dried up, no?
When you can't even get some birds in a prime location bird house!
FOR FREE!

While ago there were some other birds out there hovering about--they were
reddish brown.
So I thought, "those birds had better not be messing with my bluebird babies!"
I got up--put on long socks and my clogs--to avoid the poison ivy
that is {probably} growing around that tree.
I went and got the ladder-propped it against the tree--the whole time i was thinking..oh please don't let a bird fly out at my face! (like in a movie)
guess what...

NOTHING!
There is not a thing in that box!

So I guess it would be fine for those reddish brown birds to move in now..
I have probably scared them off.

Ay que Wimp!

Good lord,

Everytime I get the slightest bit over-
excited
worked
stressed
emotional
nervous...
You name it..

I GET PHYSICALLY ILL!
My emotions are SO tied to my immune system--it's not even funny--I think
everyone's are actually.

So today, after working 1/2 the day I went to the urging care.
DX --raging strep throat.
STrange heart beat

Ughhh..This is the LEAST perfect time to be missing so much work!
ughhh...

Other people...

make you sick!, you can't quite put your finger on why, and it always bugs
you, but there is just no chemistry!

Morgan and I encountered some of them on our Chapel Hill quest for continuing education
credits.
For some reason, I encountered a lot of these types among the
faculty and academic folks at UNC!
I would really love to figure out the reason why...
For the reason to reveal itself to me.

Just walking over to the new building I could feel the anxiety rising
both in myself and in Morgan.
We had to go and spend time among these nerdy butt-kissing horn-tooting self important
mousy nerds!! (The entire staff in that dept. needs to be turned in to a make-over show)
I am a nerd--but the kind we had to deal with in our Master's program
are cut from an even nerdier cloth. (or maybe it's the butt-kissing self-important part that is dispicable to me).

So, for two hours we listened to them toot their horns in the new building.

What is so bad about this bad chemistry is that I NEVER feel this way.
I love lots of information--super nerdy research.
Statistics was fun to me.
But for some reason--the nerds in our department were just
super-unappealing --in that most rooted way.

From now on, I will seek other CEU opportunities.
From now on, when we go to Chapel Hill it will be for fun only.
Because--when dealing with that bad chemistry--avoidance is key I am thinking.
After all, why would one intentionally and knowingly put themselves in a room full of
people almost all of whom induce the worst attitude problem ever??

So I won't anymore. :)

Some people

are just --
chemically,
right for you.
This is the way Morgan and I have always been!
I met her my junior year of college.
She already had her runnin buddies.
I was {pretty much constantly} occupied with chasing Andy--which was a full-time
occupation when we were in college, vamos.
AND--I had a couple buddies...
But Morgan and I had instant friend chemistry.
From the day we met--we could talk for hours, make one another
laugh really hard, have comfortable silences, be brutally honest...it is
amazing really, and special!
There are some important things about our lives that are the same too.
Same scholarship
Same graduate school plans
Our husbands are going to have the same jobs soon
We even have some of the same mannerisms as eachother...
Same opinions on lots of things--oh and don't forget LOTS OF OPINIONS!
SMART,
BEAUTIFUL..
okay..I am getting carried away here! ;)
Yesterday we got to spend the whole afternoon together and we basically could not
shut up!
I have a cute picture but my camera battery is dead--that will come later. :)
We got to stay at the Carolina Inn--eat some yummy sushi, and walk around
our old stomping groundS for a while. :)

--oh, morgan, i have your debit card! you have mine! :)
I'll send it Monday in the mail.

Take care!

Taylor Swift

turns me into a 13 year old girl again! not kidding.
last summer when I was HUGE we danced around all summer to that boyfriend song..
"you belong to me"
this time it's that romeo and juliet song.
Now, those of you who know me know that i can really wear a song out.
When I decide a song is my newest one..I just really can't get enough.
I bought the Taylor Swift CD today {for elena} --she also loves these songs.
So I opened it up..there is an old timey booklet in there with all the words!!
Oh yeah! :)
Turns out--this chica {if you believe that jacket} and {{I do!!}}--writes these songs!! :)
Very good!

I am not sure if this is going to put itself up here--but I love this song!!
So sweet!

she ate her peanut butter and jelly sandwich...

oh!, she said, "and some ice cream!"
and then...
She passed away--Friday, right after she ate lunch..
Grandma Eva was 97.
She still taught Sunday school on Sunday mornings at 10 at the nursing home.
She could still read books.
She still enjoyed yummy food.
She could still tell you stories about her childhood and life.
She was probably the most positive person I have ever known.
I never heard her say anything negative--except one time.
She could almost have served as the definition of the word, "sweet"
There are many people around here who will say the same words about her if they
have the chance.
How perfect! :)
Andy's mama was there when she ordered her lunch.
Grandma Eva was sick and she was in the bed not sitting in her wheel chair where she was most days when she felt well.


Grandma Eva did not like for people to cry a lot.
She told me one time that her mama was a really emotional person and when
she was little girl her mama cried all the time.

I guess that means I am going to stop typing now. ;).
Hasta luego Miss Eva! :)