• shopping,  travel

    Happy Birthday to Me!

    I have fantastic pictures from the fourth of July. Not the regular joe grand finally shots of some city’s big fancy production either. No, I have pictures of renegade illegal fireworks shot at ground zero and all the snickering hooligans who are brave enough to set them off and get a ticket for them afterwards. It was CRAZY! Sparks and flares like you’ve never seen, right above your head! I’m surprised I still have my hearing.

    BUT…

    The pictures are on Toby’s camera and Toby has to work work work… so that means getting my pictures to this blog is second or third or fourth or fifth priority and my fantastic fourth of July blog post will probably happen sometime in December IF at all. ( Along with those Paris postcards and that movie I made of Rue Mofetard.)

    I’m just as bummed out as you are. Maybe even more because guess what else?

    My spy camera broke. $$#@!!!%$!!!! I’ll talk about it more later after I’m not so mad about it. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!!

    In other news, Happy Birthday to Me! We are going new mom car shopping today. I have to say goodbye to my old faithful honda civic. She’s been so good to me. But alas, she’s just not made for carting a car seat around and around and Toby’s never liked her anyway. Sniff. Something about her being so low to the ground and invisible. Sigh! That’s what I liked about her. She was invisible to the cops and faster than a speeding bullet!

    The good news is I’m going to sell my old loyal jalopy to my Dad and he promises not to litter up the dash with junk mail and fast food cups. He has a habit of doing that and that would just make me cry. I love my old car. She even has a MP3 player installed! My dad better appreciate that.

    I just hope I love my new car as much as I love my old car. You’d think I’d be excited about getting a new car. I am! It’s just that all cars are ugly these days. I’m a pretty loyal Honda fan but all the cars out right now look like pimp mobiles to me. That leaves Volkswagen and Toyota. Toby absolutely forbids me to get any kind of SUV. That’s okay because I’m not used to driving big cars anyway. I just really really don’t want to get a soccer-mom-on-valium volvo or a mini van. No offense to any of you soccer mom’s who take valium. It’s just your car that I hate.

    I had my heart set on an all red mini cooper. (Yeah! Small is the new BIG!) But then I had to go and get pregnant and worry about things like getting rear ended with a car seat in the back.

    Mostly I’m excited to be spending the whole day with Toby.

    I’ll keep you posted.

  • Family Matters,  movies,  Niece-com-poops

    Never a Dull Moment

    Never a Dull Moment

    I wish I could say I’m spending my summer teaching my niece how to swim and ride her bike without training wheels and how to make homemade popsicles with yogurt and real fruit. That’s the kinda Auntie I usually am but lately, I’m lazy. Either that or maybe my niece just wears me out.

    Right now I’m sitting inside my mom’s swamp cooler-ed mobile home typing this and at the same time I’m watching my niece outside through the window. She’s showing me how far she can spit cherry pits. She’s pretty good. We had a contest yesterday and she totally beat me.

    Every other minute she shouts, “Auntie I HAVE to tell you something!!!!” or “AUNTIE!!! Can you help me with something?!!!” When I give her my full attention she can’t remember what it was she wanted to tell me or what she needed my help with so she makes up something random like, “I HAVE to tell you that it’s really important that…” and then she looks around her for something to tell me about, “It’s really important that you don’t step on the end of the purple rake, cause the handle might spring up and hit you in the head.” “Okay Rapunzel, whatever. Can I go back inside and drink my iced tea now?” “No! No! Auntie! Let’s do something special together!”

    And on and on it goes… I know later when I’m all alone at home and she’s far away, I’m going to regret that I didn’t make up something fun to do with her. But it’s just that we spent all yesterday doing special stuff and I just want a minute to myself before I go insane. Plus I read somewhere that it’s good for kids to get bored so they can build their imagination skills. I know I spent plenty of long summer days being bored out of my skull when I was a kid. It’s got to be good for you.

    On the flip side when I do get a minute to myself and she’s quiet, I worry because no noise usually means trouble. I rouse myself and go find her. Thankfully she’s usually not into something too terribly bad besides eating my flavored chap stick or picking the peaches off the tree before they are ripe. When I find her, we start our chattering bartering banter all over again. Was I like this when I was seven?

    Sometimes she really cracks me up though. Earlier (when I was ignoring her), she came inside with a perfectly straight face and the plastic bag that the cherries were in on her head. The plastic is pulled down over her nostrils making her nose squash down. She says to me, matter of factly, “You don’t have to worry about me suffocating Auntie, because there’s holes in the cherry bag and I can breath just fine.”

    Oh Rapunzel Rapunzel Rapunzel… it’s moment’s like these that camera’s are made for. Because someday I’m going to enjoy this.

    * * *

    She has made some progress with swimming. My mom’s neighbor’s kid taught her how to kick off from the side and swim for one second under water. This is huge since before she would scream bloody murder if she let go of the side. It’s all in her head. She can swim, she just doesn’t know she can yet. By the end of the summer she’ll have gills and webbed feet.

    Here’s a quick little quicktime movie we made together to mark her great swimming progress.