Fickle Friday

Today is a magnificently gorgeous day.  October 10th, and 75 degrees outside!!  Playgroup plans got shuffled around a bit this morning, and we ended up spending some time at a playground this morning, instead.  What a beautiful morning it was!! 

After some lunch, Melinda and Jacob went to their Art Play class, where they made the crafts pictured at the left, Melinda's on the left, and Jacob's on the right.  Alex and I went to the Cylburn Arboretum again.  I picked a nice shady spot (because, amazingly, I was just slightly too uncomfortable in the sun!!!), laid some things out, and read a book while Alex alternated between exploring the grass and clobbering/tackling me.  (Side note:  It's hard to believe I'm outside in just a t-shirt, seeking shade, days after I've started thinking seriously about Christmas gifts.  Hello???)  While laying there, a few times I just stopped reading to enjoy the scenery.  What a lovely day to be laying out on the grass, listening to birds, crickets, squirrels, even dragonflies, and enjoying the sun.  And enjoying the beginnings of such vivid autumn colors, too.6 Then I realized that this would probably be the last time I enjoy the sun like that until next summer, and I got all nostalgic.  I remembered similar perfect days in college where I could lay out on the common lawn between buildings, eating my lunch or studying, while feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin, or heating my hair.  I honestly got a little bit sad for those days before kids, where I could just close my eyes if I wanted to, and ignore everything else around me.  As much as I love my kids, and certainly enjoyed spending quiet time with Alex this afternoon, sometimes it's still hard to be constantly responsible for someone else's well-being. 

It's also a little odd that a warm, sunny day made me think about college ... since I went to college in eastern Idaho, where, let's face it, it's often more cold, snowy and miserable than places even in the arctic circle.  Hard to believe, I know.  But Jesse's older brother went on a mission to Norway, and after coming home went to Ricks College in Idaho (now BYU-Idaho), he remarked to his parents that the weather was worse than Norway.

I digress.  Not that I had a very specific direction for all this rambling, anyway. 

Alex is officially teething.  This explains why, for the past 1-2 weeks, I have felt very much like a walking zombie.  Like I haven't been sleeping well.  Right, because I haven't.  Alex has been falling asleep later at night (which, in hindsight, is probably because he's uncomfortable), and of course it takes me a good long while to fall asleep, too, as per usual.  Then suddenly I'm being woken up by cries, and I swear it feels like I had just barely fallen asleep.  And morning comes all too soon, with kids waking up and demanding breakfast.  Makes me wish I had taught them how to pour their own cereal and milk, you know?  Anyway, bottom line is, Alex is getting his first tooth at this very moment.  It's already cutting through his gums.  I'm glad for the explanation for all the poor naps and bedtimes we've had over the last week or so.  But I'm also a little sad.  I love the toothless grins so so much.  I didn't have as much time to enjoy Alex's as I did with Melinda and Jacob.  Why does my baby insist on growing up so fast????

There were some great moments on TV last night.  The opening scene of The Office had Jesse and I just dying with laughter!  Alex got a kick out of our reactions, that's for sure!  Here's the scene that we both just loved:  (Warning, if you're not caught up with the story line, there is a spoiler in this clip)
The Office:  Jim makes an announcement to his coworkers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3yjHXfric4

And after The Office, we were surprised to see a Thursday edition of Saturday Night Live.  This may be comedy show, but what they're saying here really makes a lot of sense.  It's hard to be mad and amused at the same time, but they made it happen.  This clip is in regards to "The Bailout" and AIG.  And I really think that part of being bailed out by the government should include top exec's being either fired or severely penalized in pay and benefits.  They ruined the company with poor choices - they shouldn't be rewarded in any way, shape or form.  And company retreats with hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on food alone should simply NOT. HAPPEN.  Especially not when people all over the country are losing their jobs and homes.  Not cool.
SNL Weekend Update:  REALLY?!? with Seth and Amy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp77WR6b6Ao

Did you notice the new little flower icon that accompanies my blog page?  If you're using a browser with tabbed windows, it should show up on the tab next to the name of the blog.  Or, if you bookmark my page, you'll see the flower icon instead of the bright orange B icon associated with Blogger in your bookmarks window.  Fun little change, huh?  I learned how to do it here:
http://blogger-tricks.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_archive.html

Procrastinating Mama

I am officially a horrible procrastinator. Well, truth be told, it's been official for many years... but this just about puts the nail in the coffin.

Melinda's birthday is next week. 8 days from this post. And I still haven't gotten around to figuring out when to do her party. Since most of her friends have school or preschool now, I wanted to avoid scheduling problems. Which left Saturdays as the easiest option. But with Halloween coming up, and a church Halloween party the week before, I also didn't want to over schedule people's weekends. Also, Melinda's good friends Anna and Leah, in Pennsylvania, would not be able to come on a Saturday. So I hemmed and hawed about it a little too long, until it hit me - no matter what I picked for the party's date, it would be much too late to really plan anything and give people enough notice for attending.

So there it is. Because I cannot get on the ball, and because I can't make simple decisions, my daughter won't be having a birthday party for her 5th birthday. Ugh, I feel pretty horrible about this, and I really have no excuse.

So, this is our plan, to try to make up for it: We'll have a family dinner, at a place of her choice. And of course, we'll still have cake and ice cream. We'll also have a family outing to "the bouncy place" down the road, which she's been begging to go to for months now. And, since she really did want a party so she could have fun with friends and balloons and decorations and everything, we'll also plan a "holiday" party for sometime in November or December that we can invite her friends to. Then we can do either fall-themed or holiday-themed decorations/treats/games/etc., and I'll have more time to plan and make a proper party.

And hopefully I won't procrastinate on the planning for this one.

Hopefully.

Melinda is generous with her ability to be placated in situations like this, and is actually excited for the change of plans. I am forgiven. Now if only I could somehow get myself more on the ball for these kinds of things!!

Teaching an Old Car New Tricks

We have old cars. Our Nissan Sentra is a '96 that I bought, used, in college. Our Chrysler Town & Country is a '97 that we bought used about a year and a half ago. It scares me just a little to realize that they are now selling vehicles that are '09 models. That's 13 years newer than my oldest car. And 12 years newer than my van.

It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that they keep falling apart on us.

This past Saturday happened to be rare perfect weather. Jesse woke up bright and early to go work on the Nissan. Because, as he told me, it's complete death was imminent if the weather should get cool enough to freeze. His water pump needed replacing. It had been slowly and steadily leaking for months, and had nothing but water in it. No antifreeze. Well, he managed to replace it, and get antifreeze in it, so yay, his car won't die a horribly predictable death now. When he came in from fixing it, his hands and forearms were completely blackened. And that was after scrubbing a few times. Here is is Tuesday night, and his fingernails are still pretty gross looking, despite more and more scrubbings. That car was really dirty, huh??

Unfortunately, he didn't have time for even more car work on Saturday, because the van needs it pretty desperately, too.

For several months, now, the van has been randomly dying while being driven. (That's it's new trick - playing dead.) We can't seem to find any rhyme or reason to the engine cutting out. It simply does. Could be turning a corner, could be driving straight down the road. Often after sitting idle, or just letting go of the break to hit the gas again after waiting at a light. Luckily, it's easy to get going again - just throw it into neutral and turn the key again, and bam! You're back in the game. Unfortunately, you know what happens when an engine stops running while you're driving? The power steering goes out. So in order to turn at all, you really have to crank the steering wheel with every muscle you've got. The worst it's been was when the car died mid-turn for me. Got halfway through the turn, the engine cut out, and I had to finish the turn while cranking the steering wheel and coasting through the corner. Interestingly, it has never died while driving on the highway (though it has definitely stuttered a lot), and never on an uphill (thank goodness - hard to coast forward on an incline while your engine is dead).

Now, it wasn't too bad, for a while. It used to be that the van would die maybe once every few weeks. But recently, it decided to get worse. The engine cuts out at least once a day, now. Yesterday, while driving home from the grocery store that was 3 miles away, the car died three times. It's now to the point where I'm very nervous when driving - anytime I have to make a left turn, or pull out of a parking lot, or out of the apartment complex, etc., ... anytime I have to cross traffic, really ... I get really really nervous that the engine's going to die and I'm going to get hit. So I've started driving like an old granny, not pulling out until the coast is more than clear, in order to make sure that I've got enough time for restarting the car if things die on me while traffic is heading right towards me.

Jesse thinks it's probably the spark plugs. I'm doubtful... He changed the easiest-to-reach spark plugs a while back, and they were extremely far gone. He said they were worse than the first time he changed our Sentra's spark plugs. And when he changed those, back in our Colorado days, they were so bad that they were the sole reason our car wouldn't even start in the morning. The reason he didn't change all the spark plugs at once was because he didn't have time to try and reach the others... they're very hard to maneuver to, and he doesn't have a lot of tools to work with. Anyway, so he's hoping that a simple thing like replacing the spark plugs will fix the problem. We can only hope. If not, we'll probably end up going to a mechanic pretty soon and shelling out who-knows-how-much money to figure out the probelm and get it fixed. (Jesse's second guess is an issue with the timing - but that's not something he's equipped to deal with.) At least we know of a good, honest mechanic, now, thanks to our transmission troubles last December.

Jesse also needs to try and fix the heater in the car. It wasn't working last winter, either, but we just bundled up and dealt with it. We didn't have all that many freezing cold days that we were driving, anyway. But I don't want to subject Alex to a cold car when we're driving. Jesse hopes that he can just replace the thermostat in the van to get the heater to work again. We'll see, I suppose. We may have good weather again this Saturday, and I hope that we do. I'm eager to see if we can get this engine dying thing fixed.