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"One cat just leads to another." Ernest Hemingway Lunch with the Boys: 03/31/06Yesterday Sean and Ian dropped by to have lunch with me. We met at Carl's and had a lovely time. At first Sean was a little grumpy because Ian has been promising him mac' and cheese all week and he thought today would finally be the day. Instead, he'll be having it for lunch today. A quick hug and carry across the parking lot cheered Sean up and then he was his usually funny self. Putting Debugging Hat on:Sorry about the temporary outage. I was monkeying with the htaccess and apparently dropped something somewhere. Oopsie. Comments (0) Steps: 3500 Chicken Divan: 03/30/06Last night with Ian's help (to chop the chicken), I made chicken divan. It's the first time in about ten years that I've made the recipe, though this time I made many changes from the way my mother makes it. The main change I did was to use a whole chicken, chopped up like we do when making a baked chicken. I also did no precooking on the stove beyond thickening the sauce. The meal turned out beautifully and the entire house smelled like I remember home smelling as a kid. Comments (0) Steps: 4500 Two Months of Rain and People Still Can't Drive: 03/29/06I was late to work today because of a rainy commute. After two months of nearly constant rain, one would think that drivers here would have learned how to drive slowly but efficiently. But no, everyone decided to go at a snail's pace and with accidents here and there the commute took an extra twenty minutes. Steps: 3500 Preschool Good News! 03/28/06We've found a new preschool (Montessori style) that only charges $5 more a month than the current day care. Sean immediately made a new friend and got to play trains with him. Unlike the previous school, this one does actually help with potty training so they will be more than willing to remind Sean to go use the potty. And best of all, it is still in an area that is easy for Ian and me to get to. Sean will start there on April 10th. Tonight after work, Ian and I have to go there to fill out the usual paperwork. Exhausted Again:I went to bed at ten last night, an hour earlier than I usually do, but I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep and then staying asleep. Part of it was having to get up every hour in the first half of the night to head to the bathroom. The second half of the night I just couldn't get comfortable. Comments (0) Steps: 6000 Barn Owlets: 03/27/06Fans of the barn owl cam will be pleased to know that three owlets hatched over the weekend. As of today there are still two more eggs to hatch. Dry Night!We put Sean to bed last night in underwear making sure he went potty before bed and then we woke him up three hours later for another potty break. We did this because he likes a drink of water before bed (just like I do). Waking him up at eleven worked perfectly. When he got up this morning he was still dry! Comments (0) Steps: 3500 No More Diapers: 03/26/06Sean is now going cold turkey: no more pull-ups. Yesterday we bought him five more pairs of underwear and an egg timer to help him remember to go potty. Fortunately Sean is finally willing to give up his pull-ups. Comments (0) Steps: 3500 Need Another School: 03/25/06Yesterday we got the sad news that Sean's day care is closing in two weeks. On top of potty training Sean next week, Ian will have to find a new school for Sean. For one reason or another Sean has never been at a single day care for more than a year. It's so frustrating! Comments (0) Steps: 7000 Vacation Time: 03/24/06As of this evening, Ian will be on Spring break. After a hard week's work and of course all the other weeks in the semester so far, he needs the vacation. Sean will be spending next week with him as we've declared it Potty Training Week. Tomorrow we're getting a few more supplies to help Sean go cold turkey on pull-ups. Fortunately Sean is finally starting to get excited about wearing underwear. Comments (0) Steps: 3500 How to Get a Balloon: 03/23/06Last night Sean and I went to Trader Joe's to get some things for home but mostly lunch items for me at work. I had been wanting some salad fixings and some fruit. I found kumquats (one of my favorite fruits) and some other lovely things. Anyway, Sean was a huge help with holding our shopping list and reminding me of things that were on the list. When it came time to check out, he started reminding the checker about all the things in the cart: "Don't forget the milk. Don't forget the cheese." Etc. The checker and Sean had a nice time chit-chatting and then he gave Sean a white balloon. While I was paying, Sean and the checker started bonking each other on the head with the balloon! It was so silly! Comments (0) Steps: 3500 Sunny Skies: 03/22/06At long last we're having a break in the rain, though more is predicted for Friday and Saturday. I'm hoping the sunshine and heat will convince my rose bush to bloom. It's been holding onto its first bloom since before this month long rainstorm started. Hopefully soon it will be dry enough for the painters to finish the carports. Last night was our HOA's annual meeting, so Ian disappeared for three hours. He's been relected to the board for another term. Comments (0) Steps: 6000 Lots of Movement: 03/21/06Since the weekend I've been feeling the baby on a regular basis. I'd forgotten what it felt like. Sean was a very active baby and still is as a child. This baby is active but hasn't reached Sean's level of activity yet but has developed a knack for bad timing. For example, if I'm trying to go to bed or take a cat nap, the baby is awake and doing gymnastics. The cat has even shot me a few dirty looks because of the kicks she has received when sitting on my lap. Comments (0) Steps: 4000 Spring: 03/20/06Today is the Spring Equinox and the official start of the dry season in the Bay Area: it's raining again. Comments (0) Steps: 3500 Birthday Dinner: 03/19/06Tomorrow is Ian's birthday but Mondays are busy for us so I cooked his birthday dinner today instead. As it is a couple days after St. Patrick's Day, I made corned beef and cabbage (along with carrots, potatoes and parsnips). I started cooking it at noon and at two, turned it down to low where it slowly stewed for four more hours. Then at four-thirty I made a cherry pie (with homemade crust). Dinner was ready for Ian when he got home from Berkeley and it was delicious! We'll have leftovers tomorrow for his actual birthday. Comments (0) Steps: 3500 Blue Skies: 03/18/06We're having our first sunny day in about six weeks and we're stuck inside because Sean is still under-the-weather! As it turned out, Sean was feeling well enough to venture out, though he's still not one hundred percent. We returned one of our rented DVDs and rented something else (War Games). Then we headed into Pleasanton to the mall to look for a copy of Howl's Moving Castle but didn't find one. We did, however, come home with a starter box of Legos for Sean. Comments (0) Steps: 10000 Home with a Stomach Bug: 03/17/06Sean and Ian are home today. Shortly after waking up, Sean threw up. So he's at home, tucked under some blankets on the couch watching his favorite movies or maybe playing golf. Later if he's up to it, he'll be dining on Jell-o and ginger-ale. Fortunately Ian doesn't have classes today. Comments (0) Steps: 3500 News: 03/16/06Yesterday I got a huge and wonderful surprise: a raise! To celebrate all this good news, we went out to dinner which was a Herculean task. Sean did not like the change in the nightly plan at all. He started to fall apart when I honked the horn for Ian when we picked him up at home. Sean normally does the honking and he was incredibly miffed that I didn't let him do it last night. Then we didn't go to the restaurant he wanted to go to: Denny's is not my idea of a place to celebrate. So by the time we got to the restaurant, we had to carry and drag him to the building and to his seat. When it came time to order, he insisted he didn't want any food so we didn't order for him. Later he realized he was in fact hungry and he calmed down enough to politely ask for dinner. We then ordered for him so the meal wasn't a complete loss. Twenty-one Payments:I've made one more payment to my student loans. It's in the final race to the end and it's nice to see the total amount owed go down by significant amounts with each payment. Comments (0) Steps: 6000 BookCrossing: 03/15/06Last night we had our monthly meeting at the Starbuck's in Dublin. There was a thunder storm brewing over my Livermore so the sky was lit up with lightning on my way to the meeting. On the way home it was raining again once I got over the hill to Castro Valley. We had a full meeting. Most everyone showed up so seating was limited and space around the tables, even more so. In a year of attending, this was one of my first meetings where all the books I took were ones I had actually read. Also most of the books I released were books that had come to me from other BookCrossers. My goal this year is to work through the backlog of books I've been sent or caught in the wild and get them read and released. Comments (0) Steps: 4500 The Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Nightmare: 03/14/06Sean woke up this morning crying. He had just had a bad dream. He described it like this: "Alex ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich so I had to eat Dempsey's!" I think this stems from a lot of the temper tantrums that have been happening at school. The rainy weather and some illnesses have kept the kids trapped in doors and they've gotten cabin fever. Sharing gets hard under these circumstances. Good Sleep:I actually slept the night through. Ian agreed to stay up a little longer to let me get to sleep first and it worked! I slept through the entire night. Even the baby didn't get me up for a bathroom run. I had the best night's sleep I've had in weeks. Comments (0) Steps: 4000 Exhausted: 03/13/06Due to a combination of factors last night, today I'm tired. I got about four hours of sleep after Ian was nice enough to move upstairs to the couch. If I go to bed before he does and fall asleep before he gets in bed, then I can sleep through his snoring. Last night that didn't happen and the combination of being cold and hearing his snoring kept me awake until two in the morning. Comments (0) Steps: 3500 Soccer and Golf: 03/12/06It's another rainy day and we're trapped inside. While Ian worked downstairs in his hobbit hole office on homework, Sean and I pushed aside the furniture in our living room and played a little indoor soccer on the hardwood floors. Then we were tired of chasing the out of bound ball down the stairs, we settled in for 18 holes of Mario golf. We had a lot of fun! Comments (0) Steps: 6000
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