Dreaming

I've been remembering my dreams a little more lately. I think 'cause my sleep isn't being interrupted quite as much.

Anyway, I remembered last night's and it was amusing.

In the first part we were in high school and there was an extra band teacher. But she was a little creepy, like, too nice, so no one liked her. Anyway she was going around offering everyone cake and as I was about to take a slice she said "Oh, have you gained weight recently?" And I was super pissed so I said "Since the baby was born or since I got pregnant again?" and snatched some cake from her. Apparently in my dream that was me telling her off. I don't know.

Anyway Betsy is chowing down on this cake and I eat my whole piece before I realize it's flax seed cake with cream cheese frosting. It was awful.

Then I realized that I was going to have to quit school halfway through my senior year because Bean will be born in Januray. Which was sad until I remembered that I already have a BA. Then it was just funny. Apparently time has no meaning in my dreams.

In the second part of the dream school was a huge boarding school (but it was very institutional, like a hospital). And we all lived there but everyone was in the music department. I had joined Orchestra so I could play the viola (which, no offense to viola players, but that seems like the most boring string instrument to me). Then I found out that Liz Beck had quit orchestra so she could be in the color guard for marching band. I didn't know anyone in Orchestra so I wanted to quit and join color guard too. I don't remember if I got to join or not though, I think I woke up.

At least I wasn't naked and missing the bus!

May day!

We've been pretty busy since the beginning of May.

We went to Buffalo for Cinco de Mayo on May 7th. Kaida won the pool for the Kentucky Derby on a ticket her Poppy and Uncle Matt bought her. I guess she's got her Dad's luck! We left JR at home because he had to work. It was a pretty rough weekend. If I'm going to drive her alone again I'm definitely waiting until it's her bedtime.

The next weekend we went back (with JR this time) so I could go to brunch with Uncle Skip and the ladies (and Pat since it was his birthday). We went to the Roycroft which was nice.

Last weekend we stayed home. We got to celebrate Mother's day finally so that was fun. JR and Kaida went out to pick me up breakfast. She got me a book about photgraphing children so when I get my camera I'll know what I'm doing. And then we all went out shopping.

Then on Monday Mom and Aunt B came in to spend a couple days. We didn't do much but we had fun. Went to Kaida's dr. appointment on Monday then on Tuesday we worked on making a bunch of dresses that St. John's is going to send to little girls in Africa (mom's sewing machine is busted so she needed to use mine). They're pretty simple so I may need to make one for Kaida. Today we went shopping. Target and then JoAnn's to find some little embellishments for the dresses.

I like May. It's busy and exhausting but fun!

Valances

Right before Easter I made new valances for the dining room windows. Here is my tale of woe regarding them.

We bought new curtains and valances from Domestications a couple years ago. They're thermal, which is nice because that's where the sun beats down and it's nice to block it in the summer.

We installed the curtain rods incorrectly so the sheers were longer than the curtains until we switched them. And then the valances, which had a tailored look, were too narrow for the rods they were on. It was way less than awesome.

Tonic was apparently not a fan of the new look and so he peed on one of the curtains. I, being the queen of lazy, washed just that one panel. It came out of the dryer much shorter that its partner. I lived with it. I planned to use my several weeks off of work before Kaida was born to fix the curtain situation. That several weeks turned out to be just 2 days so that definitely didn't happen.

Then I started the new cleaning routine and decided to wash the curtains. Bad news bears. They came out even shorter than the previous washing. And the valances shrunk even worse in their width. With the sheers behind them the poor windows looked like they were wearing flood pants.

Since it was almost Easter, and we decided to host something had to be done. So I made new valances!

The trouble was finding a fabric that coordinated with the curtains and with the walls without being too matchy with either one. I think what I found works well though. It's a paisley fabric that actually came from the quilting department. It's thinner material so I lined it with a spare sheet I found in the fabric bin.




I'm quite proud of the workmanship. I think this is the first thing I've made where I didn't think "I should have done _________ instead."
I think they look pretty good too.

We took down the sheers and JR installed cordless light blocking blinds that we had cut to fit at Lowe's. I think it looks pretty nice.

A Discovery of Witches

I read A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.

The goodreads.com synopsis starts "A richly inventive novel about a centuries-old vampire, a spellbound witch, and the mysterious manuscript that draws them together."
And it gets worse from there.

It's the first book in a series. Unfortunately I didn't know that when I started it. The whole waiting for authors to finish writing their series thing is kind of annoying.

Anyhow, on to the book!

As bad as it sounds from the short descriptions it wasn't awful. I think the writing could have used a little help because I have, pretty much, no emotional connection to the characters and I noticed that early on. Once I realized I was starting to get bored I planned to read a little bit more with the stipulation that if the main character, Diana, didn't start acting like a real person I was going to stop. But then, luckily (for the book), the story got interesting so I decided to keep reading.

As the book progresses Diana starts to be a little less perfect. Or maybe not less perfect but you, and she, learn that she's achieved so much early in life because she has inadvertently been using her powers to get herself ahead. And as she starts using her powers more she encounters a few bumps in the road. So knowing that she has some failings made me warm up to her a little bit.

At the end of the book the main characters are holed up in an old farmhouse just waiting. And that's what it seemed like in the book. No real plot movement just trying to fill up empty pages (that's when I started to suspect that it might be part of a series).

As for the romance part of the story, I'm glad they didn't fall in love in two days. That would feel cheap and contrived. But I would have liked to see more signs of their attraction before the declaration of love was made. Especially something other than their physical attraction. While a vampire will always remain perfect, for the rest of us beauty fades. And we know that building a relationship on physical attraction is not sound.

Overall the story is interesting. Not nearly as drama laden as the twilight series so don't let comparisons between the two fool you. As for the ending, I can understand stretching things when you're trying to build a series but since I don't feel for the characters I really don't care what happens to them, I just want to know how it ends.

The roof is done!

The roof is all finished!
It's actually been done for more than a week but there were a bunch of loose ends to tie up.

Here it is when they first started


Here it is halfway through.


And the finished product.


I think it looks really nice, they did a good job. Unfortunately some crazy stuff happened while they were working on it.
Two of our newish bushes were crushed and killed. They're two years old and survived the winter where we got tons of really heavy snow. I have no idea what they could have done to kill them but they did a very thorough job of it. And then they stuck the broken off branches back in the ground so they would still look like a bush.
They also broke two blocks in the retaining wall. Then flipped the one over so that the broken part wasn't as visible and replaced the other with a block that doesn't match the wall.
And the third issue was how little marks of tar got all over the siding where the shingles hit it after they were thrown off the roof.

We brought the issues up to the owner of the company so he reduced the price of the roof to pay for the bushes and had the guys come back to clean the tar off the siding. He's not going to do anything about the wall but we didn't ask him to, it's in pretty bad shape and we don't really care since it will need to be replaced in the near future.

The guys had to clean the house twice to get all the tar off but it looks much better now. Probably better than it did before they started.

We're really glad they took care of the damage but a little annoyed that the guys tried to hide the problems rather than bringing them to our attention. We understand that things happen when you do home improvements. It made us more mad that they didn't say anything than if they had come to us to start with.

But right now, all's well that ends well.

Satin Sheets

We have a set of satin sheets. I think I got them at a black Friday sale several years ago. They're really nice and warm in the winter time once you get past that first super cold minute.

We didn't use them last winter because I was pregnant...

Tangent - I read a suggestion somewhere about using satin sheets when you're pregnant 'cause it makes it easier to slide in and out of bed. I guess they were forgetting the whole pregnant ladies get really hot thing.

Anyhow.

JR suggested we put them on the bed before it got too warm to use them so I pulled them out last week.
I don't remember them being such a huge pain. The pillows were sliding out from under my head and the blankets were sliding all over the bed, they even made my back hurt trying to sleep on them. It was awful. I think we had them on there for 3 nights before we couldn't take it anymore and switched to the regular cotton sheets.

Then, on top of that, they were super hard to fold and when I carried them upstairs in a stack they just started sliding to the floor.

Maybe we'll try again in two more years.

Aren't I clever!

I had to buy Kaida some stuff from Babies R Us, including waterproof pads (that kid pees on the changing table several times a day). The pads and sleep sacks came in those heavy duty plastic envelopes. The kind with snaps that have a little hanger for display purposes.

I tried to think of something to do with them since they're pretty sturdy but I came up blank so I tossed them in the waste basket. But later that night I remembered all of the shoes that have been passed down to Kaida. They've been sitting in a shopping bag on the floor of her nursery for a long time.

These plastic envelopes seemed like the perfect solution so I dug them out of the trash and put them to use.

I'm so resourceful.

Blood

Today I gave blood.

There was a blood drive at church so I signed up. I haven't given blood since college. The main reason being that the Red Cross doesn't operate blood donation sites here, just blood drives. I looked them up right after we got married but couldn't find anything. A couple years after that I heard about a drive in the office park I was working at so I went to try to donate there. That's where I found out that Central Blood Bank does the collection in and around Pittsburgh. And that you can't donate blood until a year after you've visited the ruins in Mexico because of the chance of malaria.

I guess after that I didn't think about it again, I still didn't know where to go, and I had a job. And then I had a baby.

But now that I've donated with Central Blood Bank I'm sure they'll start hounding me and I'll learn all about the places I can go to donate.

Anyway. I don't remember it being quite so draining. I mean, I couldn't play in a soccer game after donating but I could walk up some stairs and stand around. After I carried Kaida upstairs to change her diaper I had to sit down. I guess I'm getting old. And it is lame.

So I think I've only donated at two other blood drives before (I would normally just go to one of the Red Cross's permanent sites) but this still seemed a little disorganized to me. I had an appointment for 11. I was 10 minutes early. They took me back to do my questions at 11:40ish. Why did I make an appointment if they were just going to take all the walk-ins ahead of me?

And their instructions weren't very clear. I understand that they say the same instructions a hundred times a day. But I only hear them once and if you're walking away from me and pointing at things while I'm on the other side of a wall from you, your meaning is not going to come across very well.

Maybe Blood Drives get the B-Team, especailly weekend blood drives.

I'm going to get some water now, and go to sleep.

New Roof!

The roofers came today to start our new roof. They started in the back since it's "walkable". They had to rip off two layers of old roof to get back down to the bare boards. That is very noisy business. The whole house was shaking sometimes.

They asked JR to go up in the attic to check if certain pipes are still connected inside the house, so I went with him. The boards that are usually underneath the shingles run across the roof from one side of the house to the other and there are big spaces in between them. So we could see them working and see the sky too.

We have boards instead of plywood for the floors too. If you look up at the ceiling/floor when you're in the basement you can see them. But even the floor boards seem to be put together tighter than the roof. It seems odd to me. But I'm not a builder, so maybe it makes sense.

We chose Colonial Slate for our shingles. The back part of the roof is so high up that you can't see it so I have no idea if they actually put any shingles up today or not.

Here is the house as it is now. Ok, more like 4 or 5 years ago.



And this is what it will hopefully look like, I'll post pictures once it's all done.
My DesignEyeQ™ Shared Project

Potato Kielbasa Skillet

I found a recipe for Potato Kielbasa Skillet on Recipe Shoebox through another website I follow.

JR said he'd eat it (I guess his love of kielbasa overpowers his hatred of wilted greens) so I put it on the list and made it for dinner tonight.

We both approved!

You mix together some brown sugar, mustard, vinegar, pepper, and thyme to add to the meat and potatoes right near the end and as I was dumping it in I was very worried. I was sure the sauce was going to ruin it. It smelled fantastic with just the kielbasa and potatoes cooking together and I couldn't imagine it tasting better.

But it did. It was really good.

Next time I'll do the whole pound of Kielbasa, since that's how it comes. And I made some notes to myself on the recipe. Like, start the bacon first, and, while the bacon is cooking chop up everything else you need. Since it comes together pretty quickly.

We think it would go nicely with the pear gorgonzola salad kit we can get from Giant eagle. Sadly they were out this week and I didn't think to check if they had a pear gorgonzola salad dressing by itself.

Anyway, yum!

CSH

This past weekend we went up to RIT to celebrate Computer Science House's 35th anniversary.

We hung out on floor. JR took me on a tour since I've only been there one other time. We saw a lot of people who were there when he was. There was a lounge set aside just for people to hang out and tell "remember when" stories.

In the evening there was a dinner in the SAU cafeteria. The food was ok, better than school food but not really fancy. RIT is a dry campus and the organizers forgot to submit the paperwork for drinks. I'm not sure if that means alcoholic drinks or soft drinks. 'Cause there were neither. Luckily the wait staff was very good about making sure that our water glasses were full.

We went back to Buffalo for the night. Everyone was like, oh wow, an hour and 20 minute drive? That's rough. But we drive it pretty frequently so we don't consider it very long. $20 in gas compared to $100 + for a hotel room. Seems like a pretty good deal to me. Plus the built in babysitters were pretty handy.

On Sunday we took Kaida back with us for an informal lunch. So Jenna and Baer, and Chris got to meet her. Brock and Erin didn't come on Sunday. I guess Brock wanted to meet his niece more than Kaida. I can't imagine why!
We had DiBella's for lunch. It was good but now that we have DiBella's here it's not quite as much of a novelty.

I think the organizers did a pretty good job. Especially considering that they're students there now. It's hard to think of everything to throw a party at your house even when you've done it a dozen times. Organizing something big like that is quite the feat.

It was a nice way to spend the weekend.

Holy Savings Batman!

Last week I wrote about our trip to Sam's Club

The membership cost us $40. So that finally gave us a reason to actually compare what things cost at Sam's Club vs. what they cost at Giant eagle and Target. We looked at the receipt and figured out the unit price of everything we bought.

Yesterday I was at Target so I took the list with me. I figured out the unit prices while I was in the store. This morning I figured out the difference and multiplied that out by the number of units we bought. I was really surprised by my findings.

I knew there was a difference, otherwise Sam's Club wouldn't exist but I didn't expect it to be so dramatic.

In our one trip we saved $147.51. If we subtract out the price of the membership we still saved $107.51. And that's just on Toiletries and cleaning supplies. I haven't done the grocery side of it yet. Hopefully those savings are equally as dramatic.

Our biggest savings were on razor blades, vitamins, and toothbrush heads. The vitamin savings alone almost paid for the membership.

There have been two things so far that we didn't save on by buying it at Sam's, tissues and my deoderant.

I also noticed that the savings differences were generally larger on Men's products. I have the feeling that they think men won't comparison shop. Good to know!

Cleaning

I started a new cleaning schedule/chore chart this week.




I found in on Home Ec 101

I've switched Wednesday and Thursday since we grocery shop on Thursday (And story time is on Wednesday and I don't think we could do both) but otherwise I've been able to pretty much stick to it. At least the big task. Sometimes the small task only gets partially taken care of.

But so far it's pretty tiring. I'm hoping that after I've gone all the way through once or twice the tasks won't be quite as tough since the built up dirt will be gone.

I'm also hoping that it will take a little less time. Kaida's been taking really long naps in the afternoon but I'm still not able to get everything done while she's asleep. So then I have to leave her to play by herself while I finish up. So I feel a little bad about that.

I guess finidng a home for everything (or getting rid of a bunch of stuff) would make dusting at least go a lot faster. Hopefully we can deal with that when we spring clean. Or if I magically find some extra time once I'm done cleaning!

Sam's Club

So when I left my job I still had my Sam's Club membership through them. C. sent me a note with some tax info in it a couple months after K. was born and it also said that my membership would expire on march 31st.

Our plan was to go to Sam's Club and buy everything we would need, that wouldn't expire, using the business membership. Then we'd wait a couple months and see if we missed having it. If we did we'd buy our own membership.

We made our big shopping trip yesterday. About $500 worth of toiletries, cleaning supplies, and pantry items.

And our cards didn't work. Looks like they took me off the account.

We ended up getting our own membership.

Shutterfly

So I'm a pretty big fan of shutterfly. I can't remember if I signed up with them because my yahoo picture account was closing down or if I saw one of my friends using it and liked it.

Anyway, their photobooks are what I really like. I've made a couple that you can see on my share site.

But most recently I did two for Kaida's grandparents of all their current grandkids.
I did this one for Grammy and Poppy.

And this one for Grandmom and Pop Pop.

There was a groupon that I couldn't pass up. I think it was worth it.

They came out pretty nice except they seem to over saturate the pictures. I noticed it when I ordered prints from them as well. It's like they have one skin tone that they aim for and then saturate the picture until they get that tone. Unfortunately most of our pictures are of babies and they just don't have that same skin color as us old people. They're pink. Oh well.

I'll still use them until someone shows me something better.

That was eventful

We went to Evansville this weekend. It was fun. Monday we left early and started making our way back home. That part was not so fun.

The first leg was just fine. We made it almost all the way through Kentucky when we needed gas, it was lunch time, Kaida needed to eat, and it started raining. So we pulled off a little bit before Cincinnati.

After lunch it was still raining but not too bad.

By the time we got to Columbus it was raining pretty hard. Everyone was slamming on their brakes every quarter mile and it was getting hard to see because there was so much spray being thrown up by everyone's tires. That part was frustrating because people weren't just driving, they were driving like they got their licenses in Ohio. Oh wait...

After columbus but before West Virginia JR and I switched at a rest stop. I had noticed that it was starting to freeze but so far our only problem had been a ton of water on the road. At the rest area, though, the ground was slippery.

Once we got back on the road all hell broke loose. Cars were off the road in the median, everyone was driving about 40 in a 70, and snow started to accumulate. We were only 90 minutes from home according to Lee but the arrival time just kept getting later and later and later. And then Jen and Jamie who were a ways ahead of us said that it wasn't better closer to home and they had heard that Pittsburgh was a huge mess. so we pulled off and found a Holiday Inn Express.

So the baby got to bed at a reasonable hour, we got dinner eventually, and we didn't wreck the car. Those are all good things.

This was Kaida's third hotel stay and she did very well. Better than some other baby I heard crying in the morning and a toddler yelling about a banana at 6:45 am. She just started this new screaming-as-loud-as-she-possibly-can thing this past weekend so we were trying to keep her quiet in the evening but she was asleep by 9 so I don't think she disturbed anyone.

In the morning the trip took way longer than we thought but at least it had stopped snowing. The roads were sort of almost clear. We made it to her doctor's appointment with just enough time to feed her before hand.

This is why I make JR pack an extra set of clothes whenever we go anywhere. I am smart.

Hair Dresser

I'm not sure if I trust my hair dresser or not.

She seems to have been doing a pretty good job since I started going to her last year. But I've been growing it out so she hasn't had to try too hard. If I could see and reach the back of my own head I think I could have done it by myself.

She doesn't listen when I talk but so far we haven't had any miscommunications about my hair.

Also every time I go she's the only one there. It just seems odd.
She's not really nice when she answers the phone.
The salon is pretty run down.
She keeps suggesting that I get a bob. It worries me, maybe that's all she knows how to do.
She doesn't take credit cards.
She uses the same hair dryer I do.
And she's constantly curling my hair.

But on the positive side she's nice in person.
The salon is very close. walking distance close.
I never have to wait and it's pretty easy to get an appointment.
So far there haven't been any problems with my hair.

I'm just not sure if I trust her to do a drastic cut. I guess I'll try her and see how it goes. It's just hair.

New Blog

So I've started a new blog. Livejournal kind of went completely crazy so it hasn't been working for me lately.

And since Kaida's blog is on blogger I've decided to start another one here.

If you want baby news this isn't really the place to find it. It's more for my random ramblings.

Fun!