Saturday, October 11, 2008

Audience Participation Time

A while ago I whittled down my list of blogs because I was having a hard time keeping up.  But now I find myself looking at my feed reader and seeing “Your reading list has no unread items” too frequently.  I NEED MORE BLOGS TO READ!

This is where you come in.

Those of you who read blogs other than this one, could you please take a minute to comment with links to a couple of your favorites?  Particularly writers who you find funny, entertaining, inspiring, etc - and who you don’t have to know personally to be interested in their lives.  Also, writers who post more than once a month.

I could start going through everybody’s blogroll to find the good ones but talk about time consuming.  I’d much rather hear your recommendations.

Thanks!

Gattitown

Last night we joined some friends at GattiTown, a place Jens and I had never been before.  It’s sort of like Chuck E. Cheese (or Showbiz Pizza for all you 80’s kids), except it’s bigger and there are no scary robotic characters lurching back and forth.

We all had a great time - even Koren, who was completely overstimulated beyond belief.  When we walked into the game room with all the flashing lights and bright colors and loud noises and kids running around, his eyes just about jumped out of his head.  He was already really tired so I was trying to get him to go to sleep, but he kept craning his head back to see all the excitement. 

Finally, he ran out of steam and crashed in total exhaustion.  He woke up after about 20 minutes, at which point it was totally past his bedtime, but he managed to stay awake for the whole ride home and a bottle once we got there.

And then he slept for over 8 hours.  Straight.

Did you see that?  Did you fully absorb the magnitude of that sentence?  Go back and read it again.  My kid slept from 8:30pm to 5:00am.

Of course, at 5:00am, he was exceedingly AWAKE, but I find it much easier to watch him sit in my lap and blow raspberries at me for an hour when I’ve just gotten 7 hours of sleep.  In fact, I find that my baby’s Cute Quotient corresponds proportionately to how well rested I am:

And now, I totally want to go to Gattitown every night.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Problem Solved

Well after 2+ weeks, I think I finally figured out what was causing my eye to swell up every day.  I’ve boycotted makeup for the past 2 days and while I’m not so good at rocking the “au naturale” look, the swelling has gone down completely. 

I’m guessing that it was something on the makeup brushes. See, while I’m doing Kaelin’s hair every morning, she plays with my brushes.  And since she’s TWO, I have to admit the possibility that she’s probably, I dunno, rubbed them on her foot or something at least once.

Anyway, YAY for no longer looking like Quasimodo.

But DUDE.  I have one of those really painful under-the-skin irritated pores on my nose and I keep accidentally bumping it and it hurts like a Mother Butler Pie and is making me that kind of irrational angry you get when you trip over the same shoe 5 times because you’re too lazy to pick it up.

Also, Koren has officially entered the “4 Month Sleep Regression.” He spends much of the night trying to roll over and getting really frustrated when he can’t.  It wouldn’t matter if he could because, as I’ve found out, he doesn’t actually want to BE rolled over.  He wants to be ROLLING over.  Also, he’s recently decided that 5:00am is an appropriate time to start the day, which is SO. SO. WRONG.  In this house, Morning does not start until at least 7:00am.

One thing that has been helpful though, is this monitor.  It goes under the mattress and monitors the baby’s motion so if you put them on their tummies to sleep you don’t have to check every 10 minutes to make sure they’re still breathing.  It totally works.  Which is good because Koren will not sleep an entire night on his back.  He has to be flipped half-way through.

The only thing is, if the monitor can’t sense the breathing motion, it sounds this REALLY EAR PIERCING ALARM, which, I know, that’s what it’s supposed to do, but if the baby sleeps in your room at night and you get him out of bed for that mid-night bottle, and forget to TURN IT OFF, a few seconds later the whole household gets blasted out of bed by the BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPING!!!with-multiple-exclamation-points!!!111ONEONE!!!11ELEVENTYONE!!! 

For the record, the husband?  That one that can’t go back to sleep if he has to get up in the middle of the night?  Yeah, he doesn’t really appreciate that.  Especially if it happens multiple times.  In the same night.

So in light of my painful face and all the non-sleeping going on around here, I think I’m going to call it quits even though it’s only 9:30 on a Friday night.  I’m beat.

PS:  Guess what!!!  I took PICTURES of Koren today!!!  But you can’t see them.  Yet.  So I don’t know why I said that.  Goodnight.

Tagged!

Because I know you guys can’t get enough about me and Jens.  Or maybe you’re just dying for a break from all the political blogging.  Got this one from Erin.  Though I’m going to cheat and copy/paste some of our About section…

1. Where did you first meet your husband?
Though growing up in what seems like opposite ends of the world (Jens is from Alaska, while I’m a native Texan) we met at Seattle Pacific University in the Theatre department during my freshman and Jens’ sophomore year.  During the first quarter we were cast in a fellow student’s directing project, “Words, Words, Words”...as monkeys.  I dragged Jens all over Seattle looking for costumes (He had a car.  I didn’t.) and now I have blackmail pictures of him in a beanie.

2. What was the first thing you said to your husband?
Ok honestly, I have no idea.  Probably something totally boring like, “hi.”

3. Where was your first date?
Um… depends on what you would qualify as a date.  We went on a couple of outings, like bowling, that were SUPPOSED to be group events, but somehow nobody else ever showed up.  There was a long period of time during which I was in denial that we were actually dating.

4. Where was your first kiss?
In the common room of our dorm.  I had recently come out of a relationship that left me rather anti-physical-affection (I wouldn’t even let Jens hold my hand) and one day he decided that he had had enough and just kissed me.  And left me standing there in utter shock.  And I suddenly realized that maybe kissing wasn’t so bad ...

5. Did you have a long or short engagement/courtship?
It was kinda long.  We had to wait until Jens was out of school, so we dated for about 15 months, then were engaged for another 15 months.

6. Where did you get engaged?
Jens flew down to Houston to surprise me and sent me on a wild goose hunt which ended with a huge bouquet of gorgeous roses and him showing up at my door.  Of course, he was bent down on one knee so I couldn’t see him and thought there was nobody at the door when I looked out the window.  When I finally came back and opened the door, I was so happy to see him that I kept trying to pull him up off the ground for a hug, completely clueless as to what he was doing.  Sometimes I don’t pick up on things too quickly.

7. Where did you get married?
Leavenworth, a Bavarian village in the mountains of Washington.  It was perfect.

8. How did the reception go?
Great.  We had a great turnout, despite the fact that the wedding wasn’t local for ANYBODY.  The weather was beautiful.  Apparently the food was spectacular, though we didn’t get the chance to eat any of it.  But people were still talking about the food at our wedding several years later at other weddings we attended.

9. How was the honeymoon?
Lots of fun.  We went to the Bahamas and relaxed at an all-inclusive resort.  There were giant thunderstorms every night that would circle the island and move inward, so we would watch the lightening from the beach for an hour and then race back to the room before it started to pour.  We tried to get drunk off the free alcohol just for fun, but it was SO BAD that we just couldn’t do it.  By the end of the trip, we were ordering virgin daiquiris.  The only downsides were when we discovered that Jens is allergic to the sun, and a minor case of food poisoning from one of the restaurants.

Thursday, October 09, 2008

I Miss Mike Huckabee

This is the first time I have ever voted or even really paid attention to a political election.  I have no experience in political science, campaign marketing or political history.  So I will be the first to admit that the idea of me offering advice to the experts probably seems a little… pretentious?  Laughable?  However…

Like most bloggers, that doesn’t stop me from running my ... keyboard.

* * *

Dear Senator McCain,

I’m fairly certain that you are going to lose this election.  This was going to be a tough one for the Pubs to win from the get-go, but I think you royally screwed up.

You’re an interesting paradox of being eternally stuck in the past, yet refusing to learn from it.  All your honor and examples of your upstanding and sacrificial character come from many, many years ago.  What about NOW?  You seem to have changed, even since the 2000 election.  You have run a smear campaign despite vows against it.  Stories about your honor are tough to swallow when followed immediately by deliberate distortions of the truth.  You are correct that you “won’t win Miss Congeniality,” but not for the reasons you profess.

In the past, politicians owned the information, but that has changed.  You can’t mangle and reshape facts to suit your purposes and think nobody is going to notice.  Who wants a president that talks in such a way that everything he says has to be called into question? 

Your behavior has been erratic and reactionary.  People don’t know what to expect from you.  THAT IS NOT A GOOD THING.  Despite mediocre (and declining) approval ratings, George W. Bush beat John Kerry in the last election - an election that should have been a handover to the Democrats.  WHY?  Because Kerry completely failed at establishing himself, his stances and his plans.  His central message of, “I’m not Bush” wasn’t good enough.  He was an unknown, and the public decided that they would stick with Bush because even if they doubted him, at least they knew what they were getting.

You watched the showdown between Obama and Hillary Clinton.  You saw Clinton throw the same kinds of mud-slinging, distortionary, smear campaign tactics that ruled politics in previous elections.  And they didn’t work for her.  Why then, do you think they’re going to work for you???  Learn from the past.  Don’t stay stuck in it.  The race has changed.

* * *

Dear Governor Palin,

I think you have an interesting political career ahead of you once you get some more legitimate experience.  I say go for it, but I don’t think having John McCain as a mentor is going to help you.  His tactics don’t work for you.

Also, it saddens me to hear reports (from Republicans, no less) that you’re being treated “like a secretary” by the McCain camp.  I hate to say that I called it.  I was hoping to be wrong.

* * *

Dear Senator Obama,

I’m predicting that you’re going to have a pretty big win, unless McCain can pull some kind of 11th hour miracle.  But I’m also predicting that you will be under a lot of pressure to fix things in a very short time span.  The country is going to put trust in your “Change” message, but our trust is usually tentative and even the most optimistic supporters can turn on a dime if things don’t meet their expectations.

We’re Americans.  We have high expectations.

If, after 3 years, there hasn’t been significant progress (just “progress” will not be enough), I’m betting the Republicans will be booting you out of the White House the next time around.  I hope you’re up for the challenge.

This is Getting Stupid

This is shaping up to be a monumental historical election.  In the midst of all the existing political drama, now ACORN, the government-supported, left-leaning and somewhat controversial community organizer group, is being investigated for voter fraud.  AGAIN.  They are already under investigation for previous instances of such crimes in at least 12 states.

In some areas, over half the voter registrations turned in by ACORN belong to people who are dead, don’t exist, or didn’t actually register with ACORN to vote (such as the entire Dallas Cowboys team).  Multiple registrations have been written and signed in the same handwriting.  Phone numbers on the registration forms are all disconnected lines.  Addresses are actually commercial buildings. 

In short, it’s a very time-consuming mess for the people who have to try to sort them all out.

ACORN employees have been fired over the issue.  Yet the group dismisses the problem as, “attacks from groups threatened by our historic success..., motivated by partisan politics and often perpetuated by the media without full investigation of the facts.”

The McCain camp wasted no time in sounding the alarm on Barrack Obama’s affiliation with the group. 

And they should.  ACORN’s history of voter fraud is no secret.  Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State.  ACORN has been implicated in similar voter fraud schemes in Missouri, Ohio and at least 12 other states.  Yet the Obama campaign paid them $800,000 to register new voters. Apparently they didn’t specify that they were looking for REAL voters.

At the very least, it calls into question Obama’s judgment of character and affiliations, an issue that has been recently spotlighted with some of his other acquaintances.  One or two questionable past affiliations can be overlooked, as most politicians have them.  But there comes a point when it begins to cast doubt on the candidate’s associations - whether his intentional choices or his lack of discernment therein - and Obama has been having to distance himself from a lot of people lately.

While I’m not one to subscribe to the “guilty by association” mantra, I think McCain is right to call this issue into question with respect to Obama.  I would like to hear Obama’s reasons for singling out an organization with a shady history when it comes to voter registrations, and paying them to collect voter registrations.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Proabably Should Have Made 3 Separate Posts

While speaking at a children’s hospital yesterday, Cindy McCain stated that Barrack Obama has “waged the dirtiest campaign in American history.” She said she looked forward to seeing her husband clear the record at the debate, and-

Whoa, whoa, whoa, BACK THE TRUCK UP.  Obama is the one waging the dirty campaign?

Regardless of political leanings, I think we can all pause for a minute to fully absorb the hilarity of that statement.

*blink* *blink* Ok, moving on…

In other totally important news, Koren has learned a new trick.  He can now pull the pacifier out of his mouth, waive it around, and put it back in.  This provides him with endless amusement until he drops the paci and the world pretty much crashes down around our ears.

He drops the paci a lot.

And for that reason, the jury is still out on whether this new trick should be lauded or cursed.

And on the Kaelin homefront, I would just like to say that my daughter says some pretty funny stuff when she’s not really awake.  Last night I heard her calling, and when I walked into her room we had this conversation:

Kaelin: I.. I ... I ... I need ... I need… I need ... (sometimes she has trouble getting the words out when she’s sleepy, so I’ll spare you the additional 12 times she said that) I need da pee on the phjvgch.
Mama: You need ... to pee on the potty?
Kaelin: No, I need the pattern.
Mama: You need the pattern?
Kaelin: Yes.
Mama: What pattern?
Kaelin: The flag pattern.  I need the flag pattern.
Mama: ...
Kaelin: I need the flag pattern.
Mama: Is… that something you did at school?
Kaelin: Yes.
Mama: I think you’re dreaming.  Why don’t you go back to sleep?
Kaelin: Ok.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Kaelinisms:  Modern Technology Edition

Yesterday we were driving in the car and Kaelin was babbling in the back seat as usual, when she says, “Oh, hold on a minute.  I’m getting a text message.”

Daddo: You’re getting a ... text message???
Kaelin: Yes.  You can read it if you want.

Ok, I don’t even get text messages.  I have officially been out-technologied by my 2-year-old.