springy house

We continue to embark on a bit of home improvement.

I showed y'all the kitchen. Here's the view at the moment if you've got your back to the kitchen counter:

Here's a closer look at those steadily growing built-in cabinet spaces in the back:

Kudos to the hubby for all his hard work on them.

And here are the results of last fall's planting. It's not much yet, but I'm told those bulbs do multiply!



We've planted some roses, too, and I even took a photo, but it's not terribly exciting as of yet. I'll post a pic when they're something to see.

an angry klutz

It is with some measure of shame that I admit the following Pregnancy Trend. And yet, is it a cop out to list this under the heading 'pregnancy trend'? Am I giving myself a too-handy excuse? Perhaps my pregnant and once-pregnant sisters (in spirit -- I have no blood sisters in fact, but I do have a sister in law that is well familiar with pregnancy) can be the judges.

I have noticed quite recently that I am prone to going way overboard when incited. I can point to huge flame-ups in the past week alone, once with the hubby and once with a coworker (I advise squabbling with neither -- better to pick random fellow metro passengers to vent your anger at, if necessary), in situations in which I might have otherwise been much less volatile. In these cases, however, I literally saw spots in front of my eyes, and a rush of anger filled me. And I spoke out, knowing that I shouldn't. (and no, my dear husband, I'm not even referring to this morning's brief couch-cushion spat. That doesn't even count. Though it's just possibly a case of me overreacting.)

I do remember this sort of thing occurring with the last pregnancy. I attribute it in part to the 'growing of a backbone,' something I needed to do somewhat the last time around. The general not caring so much about others' opinions; the relying on one's own motherly instincts to decide the good of one's offspring. The shrugging off of others' reasons to dislike the name you've chosen for your unborn child ("but I had an aunt Liz who was an alcoholic!") are of no concern to you.

But this time, it's just ridiculous. It's pointless. It serves no productive purpose. I'm just busy alienating those around me, some of whom I actually love, and all of whom I must coexist with peacefully. So perhaps this comes as some sort of confession. I have not behaved at my best recently. I need to do better.

As for the klutziness, that's just random. I realize it's to be expected, but it just seems like DUMB things, not imbalance sort of stuff. I tried to toss my keys to Matt last night in the grocery store -- an ill-advised maneuver in the first place -- and somehow threw them straight up in the air. (I was trying to avoid throwing overhand, and there wasn't enough room to create a good underhand arc, is the only reason I can come up with.) Another day, I tripped over a broom as a guy in Starbucks tried to sweep up right behind me. Fortunately, I'm a 'coordinated klutz', as one old friend called me -- he actually wasn't sure whether I was a clumsy coordinated person, or the other way 'round; it's not just a pregnancy thing? -- so I haven't fallen or anything scary like that. But I just feel ... vulnerable. And a little out of control, mentally and physically. And, hello, does it HAVE to be so darned easy to make me cry??

Speaking of trends, Lizzy's been more of a little drama queen stinker recently. Especially at school. If you ask me, it just drives home the point that we perhaps should have had this second kid years ago, to give her some competition and humility. Her teacher thinks she's acting out a bit (pushing other kids the other day, for example -- she says they 'stood too close' to her) because she feels threatened by kid No. 2. But I really don't buy that. She seems nothing but delighted and determined to be a great helper and wonderful big sister, where the baby is concerned. I just think, as I said, she's been too long the 'tiny tyrant', as my grandmother said in her infancy, of our household. She's not always willing to cede authority. Which doesn't speak awfully well of our parenting, that's for sure.

I ask you, previously pregnant ladies -- am I alone in my quick-to-angerness? Or did you experience something similar?

Go Cougs!

My team made it past the first round of the NCAA tournament. Yay! I mean, they should have, but you just never know.

Next up: Notre Dame, on Saturday night. I wonder how a school that once rated among the Top-10 party schools of America (before I went there, I hasten to point out) will fare against a Catholic school on the night before Easter. Hmmmm.

At least they're more likely to be shown on national TV. Thank goodness for CBS' streaming video of ALL the games.

two weird things

Everything's coming in twos these days, eh? Just a coincidence.

Basically, nothing lately has been interesting enough to talk about, so I'll throw out these random occurrences as an excuse to blog.

On Sunday morning, as we wended our way down the street on the way to church, we saw a sight I have never beheld in a residential neighborhood before. Granted, neither have I ever seen a turtle crossing a residential street, and we saw that on our street a couple of months ago. That's one thing we love about our neighborhood -- its proximity to some wild spaces. Even if the space does surround a golf course.

So Sunday -- in the distance of about, oh, a dozen houses down from us, we saw two birds picking at roadkill. Not too unexpected, until I registered their size (huge) and their bare heads. They were VULTURES.* By the time we got back from church, they had either carried off most of the remains, or someone did an incredibly bad job at cleaning up the mess.

The second odd thing happened yesterday morning, on my way to work. I wasn't having a good morning, so rationalized that I needed an iced coffee pick-me-up. It doesn't take much to reach this rationalization, granted. As I entered the McDonald's about a half-block from my downtown office, I noticed an eccentric old man chortling to himself at a table right near the door. On my way out the door, he grinned at me and offered me a dollar. That's right -- he offered ME a dollar. How pathetic must I have looked that day?
(and, no, I did not take it. The man had a bottle of baby oil on the table in front of him. I had no idea where that dollar had been, people, and I don't want to know.)


* I fully expect to hear from SuperSam, our outdoor guru neighbor and friend, that they must've been 'American black vulture' or some similarly specific thing, and he's seen incidences like that at least 20 times since he's lived there. This happened pretty much right outside their house, but they were gone for the weekend, so they couldn't 'admire' it for themselves. The victim appeared to be a rabbit, but if it turns out it was one of their cats, I will die a thousand horrified deaths for mentioning it at all.

two pieces of mail

All the mail we got last night seemed to be for me. Which is rarely a good thing, though it sounds exciting, on the face of it.

A credit card bill; a mortgage payment slip; and two other things.

The first other thing was great news! Lizzy is now officially a M-----. (I never know how cautious I should be about personal identifiers on the blog. I figure y'all know what my married name is, though.) She was a W------- up until now. You all probably know the story, but I overrode Matt's strong preference when she was born and gave her my name. At the time, I didn't know what would happen with us, and wasn't feeling like making any decisions just then. So I wanted to cover my bases, I guess. I'm not saying it made a lot of sense. But it seemed to at the time. Neither am I saying it DIDN'T make a lot of sense. In any case, she's had to sign in and sign out each day at kindergarten using first and last names, so we've gone ahead and told her her name is Lizzy M-----, and had her being identified that way. It feels good to make it legit, though. Now to tackle her social security card, birth certificate, 529 account, etc. ...

The second piece of mail was a little more sobering. In the sense of making you shout, "NOOOOOOOOOOO!", but then realize that it's not THAT big a deal. I've been selected for jury duty. Oh, joy, rapture! My opportunity to show up, tell them I work for a newspaper, and guarantee that I'm not chosen yet still waste a day in the process! It's the least I can do for my country, I'm told. It does carefully skirt the two vacations coming up that my coworkers are taking. For that, I'm immensely grateful.

In other non-news: It's been a banner season for mindless TV, writers strike or no writers strike. I think for me, it's all about the sort of TV that I don't mind having on while my daughter is busy organizing her many miniature ponies and littlest pets and Barbie Disney princesses and their various horses in the living room. My scripted TV diet of House, Bones and e.r. do not cut it, by those standards. American Idol and college basketball do!
I freely admit that I've been a complete bandwagon-jumper this season for my Washington State Cougs. They were ranked as high as fifth (or was it fourth?) in the nation earlier this season, and are now at ... um, 21st or something. Or 19th? Anyway, right around the top 20. Guaranteed a spot in the NCAA tournament. Many of you probably have no idea what rarefied air that is for Cougs. It simply doesn't happen terribly often, and it's oh so fun when it does.

The Cougs play Stanford tonight, and I'm confronted with one of my most-hated things about the East Coast -- it is three hours off of the West Coast, which rarely matters except where sports were concerned. Think about it -- how great was it for me to work in a sports department, or be a sports fan, in the last place in the country (sorry, Alaska and Hawaii -- but you don't have any major sports teams) to get results? You get all those East Coast scores in nice and early. If it's football season, you roll out of bed at 10 a.m. and watch football absolutely all day long. Reverse that if you live in the East. To watch the Cougs tonight, I will have to stay up until at least 1:30 a.m. Argh!! Fortunately, tonight's game doesn't matter much -- the NCAA Tournament has not yet begun. This is more of a warm-up, and its only effect would be to perhaps slightly alter the Cougs' tourney seeding.

I'm not sure how the in-utero kid is doing with all the shots of adrenalin, either, as I watch. Maybe sports telecasts should be preceded by a pregnancy warning label.

two tales

Awhile back, I promised a blog post about a 'work mural.' I was waiting to scan the image, but one day found a copy of it in an e-mail somewhere. So here is that post.

Our newspaper's publisher recently retired. Someone in the company was named acting publisher, perhaps temporarily -- it's hard to know. Not that it probably affects me much, given how far down the food chain I am.

This person has run a couple of newsroom-wide meetings thus far with much aplomb. One who didn't mind getting into public trouble might say 'bombast.' But not me. I say 'aplomb.'

The send-off of the old publisher was particularly splendid. We had many gifts and stories and certificates of achievements to lavish upon him. One such gift that we as a company seem particularly proud of is a print of the following mural:

Our interim publisher, by way of explaining how special this particular masterpiece is, told (roughly) the following tale:

For those who don't know, this mural is a work of art created by a former (insert my newspaper name here) artist named D---- V-----, in the European office. All branches of the service are depicted. D---- traveled around to various bases, finding servicemembers from each branch to use as models as he drew this mural. We use it on all our most important honors (which is true -- posters, folders, coins).

As he spoke, my jaw dropped lower and lower. We were in a conference room with lots of bigwigs, though, so I tried to rein in my surprise. It seemed a rather audacious version of the story. Let me explain why.

Here's my version of the mural's creation: D---- V-----, a pleasant fellow but not a necessarily driven, deadline-minded one (like other artists I've known, frankly), was assigned to do this mural thing. He set up a photo shoot, and laid hold of military uniforms of all types, across the parking lot from the newsroom there in Germany. This was all unknown to me, then a 13-month temporary employee on the sports desk (the year: 1999), until he corralled me as I innocently walked out the door on my way home. "Hey -- I need a favor! I'm taking photos of people for this mural I'm doing, and a few people didn't show up. I could use an extra woman. Can you stop by for a few minutes?" I felt half-flulike that day, but ... fine. Sure. I'd love to have my photo taken after a work shift.

So D---- sets me up with a uniform shirt that's two sizes too small, and takes a few photos of me saluting. As if I know a proper salute from a hole in the ground. (when he got the photos back, he made fun of it. Thanks, pal!) But he assured me that he would draw my shirt the right size, and draw my salute looking official. Okay -- then why do you need someone to pose at all? I wonder to myself. Yeesh.

After a few shifts of playing video games during the day, and charging the company OT to stay all night and labor over the mural, D---- presents the 'finished' copy to the powers that be. Who, I must assume, were delighted with it. I was not alone in secretly wondering if D---- had simply run out of time/enthusiasm to color in the uniforms. That part seems strange.

If you look closely, you'll see yours truly on the right side. And if you look even more closely, you can see that one of the guys is represented twice -- once with his double chin, and once without, poor guy.

So to sit there in a meeting and hear that story -- no, I've never been in the military, if you're at all confused on that point -- was quite something. I suppose the "good" news is, I'll never be forgotten around here. Until it's decided that a new mural must be drawn, that is.

halfway there

I'm now 21 weeks pregnant. I figure since we pregnant ladies get spotted two weeks at the beginning, that means the kid is half-cooked.

It's going pretty well -- except when it's not, I should perhaps say. But all in all, good times, as pregnancies go. I'm having my usual problem of gaining a pound if I so much as think about food, and that's already becoming unfortunate for my back and knees. I'm hoping that as it gets lighter and warmer outside, my opportunities to walk will increase. I can honestly say that I don't think I've EVER been in this bad shape. Quite terrible. And if I don't wish to re-buy a wardrobe every six weeks or so -- in the next size up -- something's got to be done. Darn those girl scout cookies, anyway.

Aside from that, though, all is well. The kid's definitely moving around in there -- even enough for Matt and Lizzy to feel now and then. But nineteen more weeks seems like an awfully long time ...

kitchen collaboration

I had a Classic Marital Dilemma this weekend. So classic, I had to poll a few married friends at church for counsel.

The dilemma was this: Matt kindly agreed to a kitchen/fireplace room paint color that he wasn't sure about. I convinced him that we needed something 'warmish'. Not quite yellow, or orange, or brown, but some combo thereof. We settled on a color called 'Honey pot,' bought two gallons, and Matt and his brother painstakingly prepped the area (just the kitchen; both rooms was too big a project for one weekend) and dived into the painting part.

I went downstairs Sunday morning and had a gander. Um. Not so good. I started feeling a little queasy at the thought of all the hard work the boys had put into it, and the impression I had that Matt didn't like it much, and was just doing it to please me. But I wasn't that pleased. Should I say something at that point, or not? The edges WERE still taped. And the other half of the room had yet to be painted ...

Here's what we had. (Matt's holding up a jar of peanut butter because his dad, who actually said he liked the color, compared it to PB. If you ask me, you're being overly insulting of said sandwich spread.)

When we moved in, the walls were covered with blue-and-white flowery wallpaper. They've been blindingly primer white for the past six or eight weeks, ever since Matt and Nick stripped off the paper. So in a sense, any color was welcome.

More:

It doesn't look TOO bad in the kitchen, but on the big empty walls of the adjoining room ... I just couldn't see it.

So here's what we've got now. Feel free to render your honest opinion. The new one is a bit too 'male/austere' for me, but it's an improvement. And I can't honestly think of what color would be better ... and, c'mon! Oregon dunes! The only thing that would be more perfect would perhaps be 'Starbucks mocha' or 'Cougar pride'. But that last one would've meant crimson walls, which ... ew.

It'll all come together with the darker laminate countertops (granite's too rich for our blood just yet) and hardwood floor we're planning.

If anyone's wondering, yes, I do feel twinges of guilt for spending more time pondering kitchen improvements than the plight of starving children worldwide. But, there it is.