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Tough Times
You know times are tough when Sunday morning doesn’t find me with my face in the funnies, but instead in the ‘newsy’ part of the paper, trying to suss out the facts between all of the opinions on the bailout. When instead of my hilarious “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” podcast, I first need to listen to “Planet Money” and see what the hell is going on. When I talk to Grandma and she starts railing about the stupid bailout, and how much money it’s going to cost. It’s not that I’m not usually political, but I’m not usually that involved in economics. There’s something about never having much money…
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Ina Kicks Martha’s Butt
(I found this image here) You like babies? We got babies. This summer, we had four babies born into our little condo community. One of the couples lived here already, has lived here for several years, and the other three moved in while expecting their babies. Now we have four little infants, all within a few weeks of each other, three boys and one girl. I keep telling Maya that she should go take one of those fancy babysitting classes, because there’s going to be a ton of money to be made around here pretty soon, but the child has no work ethic, and just looks at me. Of course,…
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Die How You Live
The discovery of Steve Fossett’s airplane and remains this week got me thinking about death. My first thought when I read about his plane crashing last year was, “Although I’m sure that he didn’t wish to die yet, this is probably how he would want to go.” Doing what he loved. Living his life, not shirking from it, unafraid. I had the same thought when Steve Irwin died doing what he loved, diving and spending time with animals. Roy Horn didn’t die from his injuries after being mauled by a tiger, but if he had, he also would be dying according to his passion. I have to admire that. Don’t…
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Buy A Friend A Book Week
Buy a Friend A Book Week takes place the first weeks of October, January, April, and July. The idea is that you buy a friend a book for no reason, except that you like them and would like them to have it. Hey, that’s now! OK, I’m in. Sort of. You remember how we pared down our books last year, after moving our things back into our house, right? You also remember that I’m trying to be financially responsible, right? So, instead of buying a friend a book, I’ve decided to GIVE a friend a book. Guess what? This means you! If you’re interested in any of the following books…
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Happy New Year!
(image found here) It’s Rosh Hashanah, (unless you’re Ted, and then it’s Rush Hashanah), which is the New Year according to the Jewish Calendar. I’ve made the impulsive decision to make my New Year’s resolution now rather than in January, because there are a couple of things I need to work on, and there’s no time like the present, right? I don’t generally go in for New Year’s Resolutions, actually, but this year, I feel the need. So. Here goes. 1. Floss. I know, I should have been doing this all along, but I haven’t been. I don’t enjoy flossing, and I don’t get much tartar on my teeth, so…
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Back to Work
Autumn’s Mom did a guest appearance over at The Mommy Diaries last week, and this morning I thought I’d see what else was going on over there. Well, another guest blogger had stopped by, DC Urban Dad, and he wrote a post about being thankful for his wonderful wife. In that post, he mentioned that his wife has been home with their baby for these last several months, but that time is coming to an end, and she’ll be back at work soon. It was a nice post, but really, what it triggered for me was memories, memories of my first day back at work after having Maya. Maya was…
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Sloppy Mess of Yum
Yesterday, I woke up and did the usual weekday thing…walk the dog 45 minutes (she’s coming with me less and less often, actually, because I need to get my heart rate up, and she’s 10 years old, and really slows me down…but I brought her yesterday, which she loved), come home, work out to an exercise show I like on FitTV, get Maya’s breakfast ready, and while Ted takes her to school, I sit down to my breakfast. My plan is usually to have Cheerios and fruit (especially good with a really ripe peach or raspberries), but sometimes, by the time I finish my walk, I’m starting to think of…
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R.I.P., WaMu
When we first moved back to California from Philly, we went in search of a bank, and ended up at Great Western, a bank that we knew, and that had the advantage of being smaller, not a huge B of A or Wells Fargo. We liked Great Western, liked the friendly employees, liked the neighborhood feel of it, liked that they didn’t charge us to use other people’s ATMs, that kind of thing. Then, a few years later, WaMu came to town. They bought two banks in our area, Great Western and American Savings. We thought of moving to another bank, but at the smaller bank I looked at, they…
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Wordless Wednesday ~ For Connor
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Wordless Wednesday
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Lack of Relief
(picture found here) Back when my mom was sick, I was feeling overwhelmed and frustrated because it didn’t matter who I called, met with, faxed, emailed, whatever, she was still clearly not getting better, was clearly in a serious decline, and it was scary as hell. I spoke to her on the phone every day, and every day, she sounded worse. Every day, I tried to find some way to encourage her to try physical therapy, to do things like go outside, get dressed, watch TV, anything that might lift the burden of depression that was overtaking her. And nothing was working. Not the meds the doctors gave her, not…
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Potpourri
(image found here) This is going to be one of those random blog posts, just kind of blah blah blah about what’s going on in my life. Some more serious than the rest. It’s Saturday afternoon, and we just got back from breakfast/lunch at Denny’s. Denny’s has changed a bit…they put a weird booth in where the counter used to be, and they took out the bar and the big screen TV. I never went to the bar, but I thought it was interesting that our Denny’s had one. The big screen TV, I’m thrilled to see that go. After Denny’s, we went to the Farmers’ Market and got some…
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WTF???
This is totally not going to be an in depth examination of California’s ongoing budget crisis. No one outside of California cares, and it’s Friday, so no one is reading anyway. Besides, the country’s economic issues are so serious, and we’re all so screwed for this next little while (how long? Oh, just long enough to lose your savings if you have one, just long enough to lose your house if you have one, just long enough to realize you’re how screwed you are if you have nothing), that probably the 90% of my readers who don’t live in California have bigger fish to fry. But if you live in…
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HPV for Boys
We’ve all seen the commercials, right? The ones that say, “I want to be one less”, the girls who don’t want to become a statistic, to get cervical cancer. The HPV vaccine prevents a few varieties of the virus that causes cervical cancer, so while it isn’t a cure, it could be a step in the right direction. Well, Maya is 12 now, and not really acting interested in boys. We’ve been deciding whether to vaccinate her now or later. It’s not a matter of whether to vaccinate her or not…if we can protect her from the possibility of dying from cancer, wouldn’t we want to do so? And HPV…
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Back to School
The other night was ‘back to school night’ at Maya’s middle school. The evening started with speeches with the Principal, the Superintendent of the district, and the head of the PTA. They talked about how lucky we are to have such wonderful kids, how our district is in the top 95% of the state in test scores, and how parent involvement and dedicated parents help to make this the case. They talked about how raising healthy, happy children was about much more than these test scores, but still, yay test scores! Then we went and sat in each of the classrooms that our child attends for 10 minutes each, and…