Visitor?

I'm sitting on the couch watching a little TV and what do I hear...stuff moving in the closet. Do I have a visitor? YUCK. I yell up to Dr. J. "Um honey, I think we have a mouse." "I'm not surprised he says. The kids leave crap everywhere." What do I want...I want him to come down and find the thing and kill it, kill it with his bare hands if necessary. In the least I want him to put some d-con out or some traps. I hate rodents, and I spend almost all of my day in this house. I can not feel safe thinking there are mice here . Does he care. Nope not one bit. Looks like I'm going to be wearing shoes everywhere I go. I'm so grossed out I want to throw up. I hate vermin.

Already Messed Up

Well that is a shame. I already missed a day. Last night I came up stairs to nurse a sick baby, she has some kind of eye infection. While I was in bed the kids finished their movie and came up and feel asleep in bed with me. When I woke up this morning I had all three kids in bed and hubby was still asleep on the couch. Nothing got done last night. I left the salad on the table and I certainly forgot blogging. Bummer!

Night Out and two veggie dishes

Some girlfriends and I went out tonight...WHAT A BLESSING! I was starting to just feel a little worn down. It is amazing how great it feels to eat a meal you didn't cook, and then to leave the dishes on the table knowing you don't have to worry about the pans. An awesome feeling. Thanks girls, and to hubbies that watched kids and made it possible!!!

We at at this local restaurant most of us love. They have a good variety of pretty much everything and because they are on the more liberal side of the two towns they have quiet a bit of vegetarian fare. I'm not saying liberal = vegetarian but we have noticed that people that identify with the title of liberal often enjoy local places that sell local fare...often with lots of veggies :) This is not a hard fast rule. Anyway my friend Erica and I shared two veggie meals (these were not vegan).

The first was roasted artichokes on a whole wheat bagel.

On whole wheat bagel, open faced. Cover with roasted artichoke hearts. Add a chopped olives and grated carots. Place a slice of cheese on top and roast until cheese is nice and melted. DELICIOUS!

The second was a pesto pita. Why have I never thought to do this. We eat pitas and pesto almost every week...just not together.

Take a pita. Spread pesto on it. Put down some Swiss cheese. Toast. Cover with chopped tomatoes, lettuces and a little bit of red onion. Also supremely delicious.

Bad Dreams

Little E occasionally has bad dreams. It isn't often but the child is prone to anxiety (like his mama) so it occupies a lot of his thoughts before he goes to bed. Every goodnight prayer has to include, please help me not have bad dreams. He has also started a ritual where he wants to talk out ideas for potential dreams. "Mom give me some dream ideas," he ask from his top bunk. Okay I say, "How about you dream about going to party and all the games you would play there." "No mom, that is too complicated." "Alright how about you dream about playing with your sister." "No," he yells. Apparently he gets enough of that at home. "OK what about being WALL-E flying around in space with EVA." "Yes," he says with a big smile, "That is a good one."

Dentist

I took Little E to the dentist today. When we walked up to the doors E said, "I'm feeling a little nervous. This is a new place. Also do they have prizes here?" I reassured him it would be fine and there would be prizes. The hygienist was great. She let E try out all her tools. He actually shot her and the window with the sprayer. Nice. They had sun glasses to keep the light out of his eyes. Really a brilliant idea. I'm thinking about bringing some to my appointment on Thursday. She let him pick what flavor of toothpaste he wanted. When he picked grape she said, "Wow grape is my favorite too." I'm sure any flavor picked gets that response but you should have seen him smile. He was putty in her hands after that. As for the fluoride treatment, she painted it on with a tiny little brush, after she told him she was painting vitamins on. Totally painless. It maybe me think back to the misery of swishing when I was a kid. My mouth would start salivating immediately and by the time the dentist would come in to tell me I could spit, I looked like a frothing rabid chipmunk. Really this way is much better. When the dentist came in I had a stutter moment. I'd met a dentist in the lobby. He was an older, balding, Indian guy with buggy eyes. Our dentist meanwhile looks like some character off a CW show. He was young, unmarried, good looking. I thought about mentioning I had single sisters. It wouldn't hurt to have a dentist in the family. The best part of the appointment, new toothbrushes, flossers, sand timers, and prizes. G bear scored double, no appointment but they let her have all the booty :)

Public Broadcasting Service

I love PBS...so much so that when the TV signal went digital and our converter box wouldn't work well enough to pick it up I insisted we get basic cable. So now we spend nine dollars a month to watch "free TV". It is totally worth it. What I love:

Sesame Street-I watched this show as a child. Now my children love it. ELMO drives me nuts. That little voice is so annoying but everything else is great. Murry Had A Little Lamb cracks me up every time.



Word Girl-Teaches awesome vocabulary.

The Electric Company-Both my kids love this show. A lot of language art skills are still above their pay grade but it amazing what they pick up. The story lines are silly but tolerable for parents and I love seeing the different ways they introduce topics.





Masterpiece Theater - Um everything. I love everything. To many jewels to mention. The same goes for it's sister series Mystery. Many of these productions were produced in England and they are of English works. I love English writers, especially mystery so this is a treat for me. BBC produces many of them. Who doesn't love BBC for their news. Just one more reason PBS is the best. Dr. Who is another personal favorite. Do we see a trend emerging. I tried to tell Dr. J we need to spend some time in England. He doesn't get it. I might be obsessed.

Nature is awesome. Last night we were watching a special on babies...mama lions trying to prevent their babies from being killed by the new king of their group. It was intense. I could go on and on. But I think I've made my point :)

Mac Book...I wish!

Our laptop is on its last leg. We bought it the summer before G bear was born. At almost three, G bear is doing great, not so for the three year old computer. Each day she gets faster the laptop gets slower. More knowledge increases her abilities...not so for our little Dell. Dr. J and I have started hinting around to each other that maybe it is time to move on to a new computer. At Sam's while we peruse the shelves we talk about how laptops today have more memory than our desk top. We talk about speed. We talk about nifty options. We mention the fact that decent memory is actually very affordable. At our home computer advertisements are being looked at and left out for the other spouse to see. Each day involves a yelling session at our dell about how slow it is. Secretly I hid my birthday money and a cash back visa card and figured that after Dr. J's b-day we'd add his loot to mine and go out and get something new, fast, and sleek...something that can handle life more like our daughter. What I had not anticipated would be the Apple Dilemma. You see I come from an Apple family. I can still remember our first Apple computer. My mom bought it used from some business park when I was in first grade. It had a tiny screen, maybe ten inches diagonal and the only colors were green and brighter green. There was a writing program and some sort of drawing program. I swear it was called kidpics but that is probably just my imagination. It had a printer that used reels of paper. It had this awesome little rainbow apple logo. I thought it was the greatest ever because I could typed out my cub reporter articles rather then turning them in hand written. I could use spell check, although I rarely did. That computer was probably the only cool thing my family ever accomplished. My mother recognized computers were going to be household objects long before the rest of the public did. Since that time my family has had many different computers and during my mom's second marriage we even had a long stint of PC use, but since her divorce she has reverted to her Apple loving days. I think it has something to do with her being a teacher. These are the people in my immediate family who own a Mac Book. My mother, my sister JoJo, my sister Flo, my brother David, and my brother Danny who actually owns two. Meanwhile my sister Ang and I, the two married ones, are using Dell computers. For the most part I haven't minded. In fact for years I got irritated at Apple for their obvious branding (stupid white) but in the interest of good research I decided to check them out again. One of the most disappointing feature with our laptop has been it's battery life. Enter the Mac Book....I feel like angles should be singing. Their computer has a seven hour battery life. Add to that the fact that it is suppose to last five years...well seriously lets shout a hallelujah! Have you ever paid to replace your battery? It is not pretty. Another irritation has been our susceptibility to viruses. Even using our firewalls we've been hit a couple times. Apple, because of it's smaller market value has been largely left alone. Apple also has cool features like built in web cam (although most new PC have this feature as well) and great programs like garage band and movie making software. And then there was the whole Windows fiasco. Did I really want to join the Vista crew? Was it worth it to switch everything over to Windows 7? The thoughts are just exhausting. I actually decided I was going to opt in to the fruit business my family so fully enjoys. Then reality struck. For your money Apple is just so much more expensive. How did my family afford to go this path. Have they picked computers over food? My mother says if you love something you are willing to make sacrifices, but seriously folks, the thing is like three times as expensive when you add everything you need. How depressing. So here is the Apple Dilemma. Now I'm itching to take a bite but realize I'm going to need a whole lot more birthdays to be able to afford it :(