Did I Mention Rain?

So today it rained most of the day. Seems like we're living in Seattle. Today was day 21 of rain this month (28 days.) Luckily tomorrow will allegedly be rain-free. I hope so as I still need to plant those darned blueberry bushes.

Yesterday was a tragic day here in the States. There was a massive storm front that spawned hundreds of tornadoes and they went through 6 states just destroying everything in their path. I've never been through a serious tornado like this one, and luckily few have as most tornadoes aren't this bad. These were just insane. A mile-wide swath of destruction is just crazy. And scary.

Riley seems to be feeling better as she is acting a little more normal. The only thing that wasn't normal today was her nap; it was a bit short today. I know she was tired since she was laying her head on my shoulder. That's what she does when she's tired. One of the cutest things she does when she's really tired is to just lay on the floor wherever she is and act like she's sleeping.

Some other "big" news yesterday was President Obama releasing the long-form version of his birth certificate. For some reason certain politicians believed that the POTUS (President of the United States) wasn't born in the United States. Some people say it's just because they disapprove of or hate or something him so much that they are just looking for anything to get him out of office or discredit him or whatever. I believe that. I don't see any other reason for this whole thing. I don't see any racism as everyone is saying now. It's interesting that they are only now saying this. How long have there been these "birther" allegations? A year?

What I find especially interesting is that the POTUS waited so long to release the document. The way I look at it, either he releases it right after the allegations are first brought out, or he ignores them and moves on. Why wait all this time and then produce it now? That doesn't make sense, especially since during his press conference after having released his birth certificate he said he found the allegations amusing. I read somewhere that he did it yesterday to try and take media attention away from his announcement about the new Secretary of Defense (Leon Panetta) and Ben Bernanke's historic press conference. That I can definitely believe. The Obama administration has used the media very well for their benefit.

On a lighter note I was excited to see that OT Gabe Carimi from the Wisconsin Badgers was drafted by the Chicago Bears today. Being a Badger fan that makes me happy and being a Bears fan I'm happy too as we have needed offensive line help for a few years. Am I convinced that Jay Cutler is the perfect quarterback for our team and the offense we run? Not completely, but Carimi will certainly help.

Did you hear about the "elders" in Korea today? The name you'll recognize is former POTUS Jimmy Carter. Sounds like his visit their wasn't very productive as the headlines afterward read "thanks for nothing, Jimmy." I've been reading a lot about Korea and specifically our involvement in the Korean war lately. I'm not sure North Korea (DPRK) will ever really cooperate with the south. They just have this deep-seeded hate against the south almost as if it's from back in the days of the birth of communism, even though they didn't get communism until later. And the nuclear situation just ruins everything. If they would lay off the development of nuclear weapons that would really help their stature in the world and especially with the south.

I saw an article just today that their was new construction sited at a nuclear site in the DPRK. The world and especially South Korea will not take anything seriously from them if they continue to develop nuclear weapons. What I did learn from former POTUS Carter's visit and press conference is that the humanitarian conditions in the north are pretty bad. Unfortunately this is what happens when you have an evil dictator like Kim Jong-Il. He doesn't care about his people at all. He has his own agenda and that's what matters. I also find it deplorable that the DPRK refuses to take responsibility for the sinking of the South Korean ship and the attack on the South Korean military base. Oh, but they have deep regret. Whatever.

Today the DPRK was threatening the south with "merciless fire" if the launches of balloons, which contain pamphlets ridiculing Kim Jong-Il & family, didn't stop. With that attitude how can they expect the south to want to meet for any kind of summit or have any food distributions. Craziness.

So Grace has off school tomorrow, but she has a birthday party to go to. We still haven't purchased a gift yet. She has started the card so she should be able to finish that up pretty easily in the morning. Looks like we'll be heading out to Target to get that gift taken care of. I'll also need to decide on something for dinner as I haven't planned anything.

Tonight I made blueberry pancakes and you'd think I had made everyone's favorite meal. I made two batches (Julie cooked most of the second batch) and they are all gone. I think I could have made more and at least some of them would have been eaten also. That Riley just love, love, loves pancakes. If I feed her them for breakfast she will eat like 6 of them. In her defense I do make them a little on the small side, but she had at least 5 I think for dinner tonight. She is pretty much the same way though with a waffle. Those seem to be some of her favorite foods. She gets very excited.

You should have seen her tonight. It was just too funny. After she finished her fourth pancake I think it was, she was actually licking her plate. And I don't mean a little bit, I mean really cleaning it off. She had blueberries everywhere: pants, shirt, face, table. This girl really enjoys her food. Here is a cellphone photo of her after she enjoyed a marshmallow bunny a couple days ago.



You can really see her eye crossing in this picture unfortunately. Try to focus on the messy face. Most meals this is how her face looks. Today she took her "extra" yogurt and was rubbing it all over her arms and hands and calling it soap (hope.)

I have a few more cellphone photos I can share. These next two are from a walk we took. She was walking her bear in it's stroller. In the second one you can see Grace racing down the hill way out in front of Riley. This was just before Grace crashed. It wasn't pretty.





This last one is Riley in a shoe box. She's almost getting too big to do things like this anymore, but she still tries. Sad to see her growing up, but I have to admit we're spending the time to enjoy watching her grow up as opposed to when we had Grace at this age. It's amazing how different you are with a second child. I'm not even sure it's only that she's the second child so much as that Grace is 8 already.



Alright, I must go and get some sleep.

Rain

Today turned out to be a little more rain filled than the weather man would have had us believe last night during the news. But the amount of precipitation wasn't really all that substantial so I guess he wasn't all that far off. Unfortunately that means I didn't get the blueberry plants I need to get planted into the ground yet. They're leafing out in my kitchen. And I haven't even watered them since they are in plastic bags and not pots.

I suppose I'll get them planted one of these days. Right now I'm watching the Blackhawks game against the Canucks. I'm not impressed so far. The Canuck defense has been pretty strong so far. We'll see how it turns out. Only a few minutes left and they're down 1-0. They're certainly capable of winning this game but they haven't displayed that yet tonight.

Everything else today went a little more normal. Except Riley was awake for a lot of the morning while Grace was getting ready for school. Lucky for me she went back to sleep again. You know you're in trouble when she's asking for a book to "read" in her crib at 8 in the morning. Like I said yesterday, she's normally up between 9 and 10. This week has not been normal for her because she's been awake early but then sleeping late. I think she might be getting another tooth. Guess we'll find out soon enough.

She did do something really exciting today when she was eating lunch. She has this terrible habit of throwing the food she no longer wishes to eat. Leftover macaroni and cheese? Throw it on the floor. Little extra applesauce from Dad? That goes on the floor. So what did she do today? She actually said she didn't want any more and handed me her bowl. BTW "bowl" is one of her favorite words. She's been trying to say "more" the last couple of days too. It's really cute. She really emphasizes the "r."

She also did the same thing when she was eating her apple (app-al.) She would be chewing off the skin and putting it in her bowl instead of throwing it on the floor or across the room. This is a very welcome change. I'm really tired of cleaning the floor and the table and her and the tray on her booster seat and the booster seat every time she eats. One fewer thing to clean...very exciting!

Now the true question is whether it will continue. Obviously I don't know but I can hope right? Thank goodness we're officially past the whole undressing in her crib thing. OMG. This went on entirely too long. It's nice to not have to change her sheets every day. And I clearly don't miss cleaning up poop from all over her and the crib and the wall. That's not fun to wake up to.

She also said a semi-sentence today. She said "Ri-Ri app-al nummy." Or maybe she switched nummy and apple. Apple is one of the few words she uses for food besides nummy. Generally ALL food is a "nummy." She really likes apples! That's good considering we have an apple tree in the back yard.

Alright, the Blackhawks lost in overtime. That stinks. Guess I can concentrate on baseball now.

Julie is much better today. I hope it was just an anomaly yesterday where she ate too much of something she shouldn't have. I still haven't gone to the grocery store. I have to go tomorrow now. We have nothing to eat and Riley has no milk to drink. Guess I'll have to start working on that menu...

What?

So today was kind of a strange day. I never knew what was coming next. Got up at my normal time but when I went to get Grace up for school, Riley was awake and whispering "daddy." I just said to go night-night in hopes she'd go back to sleep. She's never up that early. Each time I tried to wake Grace up she'd snore and complain so I left her to sleep a little longer.

After giving Grace an extra 20 minutes of sleep I went to get her up and she actually woke up this time. I don't know why I then bothered to tell her that she had 15 minutes to get ready because two minutes after we normally get ready to walk out the door she was starting to brush her teeth with her pajamas on. I was thinking there is no way she's going to make the bus, but it seemed like only one minute later she was running down the stairs with her clothes on and heading to get her shoes on. I was surprised. Good thing she had her clothes picked out already.

She did make the bus, and we didn't even have to run. Talking to the neighbor at the bus stop and she had some similar issues this morning. When I got back in the house Riley was saying hi to me. Luckily she did fall back asleep. And she slept for quite a while as she didn't wake up until 11:45. Actually that's later than normal nowadays. Normal for her these days is between 9 and 10. But Monday's are hard because she's sometimes recovering from the weekend when she doesn't always get a very long nap.

When Grace got home from school she was in a very good mood. She even watched Sesame Street with us...of course while she was doing her homework. I swear she can't do her homework without the TV on. Last week was turn off the TV week (which reminds me, she was supposed to return the paperwork for that today.) So she can do homework without the TV being on, but she seems to feel she can't. It was about this time when Julie said she was leaving work and coming home because she'd gotten sick and it wasn't getting any better.

After she got home she put Riley down for a nap and went for a nap herself. Unfortunately it was only a few minutes later that our neighbor started playing volleyball outside of our bedroom window. They practice by bouncing the ball and then "serving" or hitting it up against the side of their house. But our houses are pretty close together, so it also inevitably hits our house too. So anyway, she didn't get much of a nap. And unfortunately Julie really didn't get much better for the rest of the night. Oh, she felt better, but she still couldn't eat anything. Let's hope tomorrow is a much better day for her.

We made a ham for easter and so we have leftovers. Julie leaves this note this morning that maybe we could have ham for dinner tonight. If you read the last paragraph, you know she didn't even eat dinner, but the problem I had is that we don't really have anything else in the house to eat. So I had it for lunch and dinner. And I'll probably have it for lunch tomorrow. I haven't planned any meals for the week so I'm not certain what we'll do for dinner. I'm just hoping I don't have to plan for ham again.

I try to go as few places as possible these days. I don't want to pay to put gas in my car unless I have to. So I've been going fewer places. I'll be happy when the weather is warmer and Riley and I can get out on my bicycle and go places. Right now it's raining and the high today was a cold feeling 50 or so. Not such great bicycling weather, especially with a 2 year old.

Anyone out there use Twitter and/or Facebook? I have to say I'm addicted. But my addiction has changed. I'm not so addicted to Facebook anymore, but much more so to Twitter. I find myself posting completely different things on each one and spending much more time with Twitter. Facebook has mostly become a Mafia Wars habit and a good goto for checking in with my friends to see what they've been doing and to see pictures and things like that. With Twitter, you have a window into things you're interested in as well your friends. So I can still keep up with friends plus I can add in some news and fun interests.

I wonder why everyone isn't disenchanted with the gasoline situation. Certainly if you're very wealthy a 25% increase in gasoline costs probably isn't a big deal. But this is seriously a big expense for us. With Julie driving so many miles to work each day it really adds up if you look at it from a monthly viewpoint. 60-70 miles a day for 20 days at least each month. Luckily her car gets pretty good fuel mileage, but it's not THAT good. She doesn't get what I get and I wouldn't get much better mileage than her driving where she does every day anyway since I get my best mileage around town which is what I mostly do. So lets generalize and say Julie uses about 3 gallons of gas a day for about 20 days a month. That's 60 gallons at the new price today of $4.29 that's about $250. Then add in the gas I use and it's at $400 or so. That's like having another car payment. And what do we get in return?

Well sure, we get the money we need to survive in the lifestyle we want to live in. I definitely understand that as I pay the bills and see the money come in and the money go out. It goes out quickly when you have only one income, I'll attest to that. But let's look at a year ago when gas was "only" $2.85 a gallon. That same scenario would have put us at around $250-270 a month. Compare that to now and all my gas would be free since Julie is buying that much just for her car.

Julie was just saying tonight after the gas prices went up today that we need only wait and the price will come down. And she's absolutely right as they just play this game with you. This morning gas was $4.07 and they raised it to $4.29. Tomorrow it probably won't change, but if it does it will come down to $4.28 or maybe even $4.27. Then in another day or two it will be down to $4.20 maybe or $4.19. Then it will come down as low as it will get going forward; probably something like $4.10 or $4.14. Then it will start all over and jump 25 cents the next time to $4.35 or $4.39. So this cyclical up and down shows the general trend of only going up. It never really goes down, it just comes down to a false low that only feels low compared to how high they raised it a few days prior. The actual trend is up, up, up. I'm not surprised at all that they're calling for $6 gas by summertime. Around here we'll pay more for the summer blend of gas plus all this price gouging for gasoline made from crude oil that cost less than the gas we bought a few months ago for $3.25. It's just a big ripoff that lets oil companies get rich and crude oil producing countries get richer. And the gas we use to get to our jobs continues to cost more so our pitiful little raises are actually decreases in income because it's costing more to get to our job every day.

And how is all this going help our economy? I'm not going to spend money on anything I don't absolutely need because quite honestly I don't have extra income anymore. That all goes to the oil companies.

And...I'm off my soapbox. Have a good night.

Happy Easter

Believe it or not, I do remember I have a blog. I know...surprising.

We scored a bonus (in my mind at least) by getting my favorite priest at church today. Of course all the people that only come to church on Easter and Christmas kind of ruin it for the rest of us. I really wish us regulars could get priority seating. Is it wrong to want that? And saving seats for people coming ten minutes after the service has started? Really? What is this, high school?

I think I surprised Julie today. We parked a block away and walked into the church. As soon as we walked in you could see they had set up rows of chairs in the outer area (sorry, I can't think what that area is called.) We walked into the sanctuary and tried to see if we couldn't squeeze into one of the pews, but their just wasn't enough room. So we came back out of the sanctuary and tried to find a spot in the chairs that were set up. But those were all taken also, so I just sat down at the spot I was in when I realized there just wasn't any place to sit. It's very disappointing. Not being able to sit in a seat. I have to admit we aren't exactly early to church on a normal week, but we actually got to church a few minutes early. It made no difference.

Oh and then after church we were leaving and had made it a whole block away from church and were at a stop sign. There was a little cross-traffic, but I was hesitating at the stop sign because of the volume of traffic we'd be turning into compared to a normal Sunday service. I wasn't certain if I should go the normal way or turn and go the long way to avoid the traffic. There was this "older" person behind me and after I hesitated when the cross-traffic had passed, they honked at me. Well, let's just say I wasn't nice back to this lady (nothing illegal mind you, just a little rude.) Is this what the world has come to that even people in their 60's are in a hurry and can't wait an extra 2 seconds at a stop sign? Grrrr.

We had Easter at our house today. It went really well. The food was good and I'm pretty sure everyone had a good time. Here's to more low-stress holidays!

Really excited that the Chicago Blackhawks won game 6 of their playoff series tonight against Vancouver. It was a pretty darned exciting game. I can't wait for game 7 on Tuesday!

Grace will have her first communion in a couple weeks. We're getting ready for that now with both the things that have to be done for her actual communion service and also for the party afterwards.

We took little Riley to the pediatric ophthalmologist on Thursday and our own personal "not-a-doctor" analysis was spot-on (spock-on.) She needs glasses for now for her lazy eye with a follow-up in a month to see how she's doing with them. The good news is that we're treating her earlier than Grace was treated so there is a possibility that we could avoid surgery.

Hopefully I can start writing more regularly. Only time will tell.