just in time for christmas

style dash reports that you can have too many diamonds. i beg to differ.

a jeweler in ukraine has designed a ring with a record 837 diamonds. most of them are small and total carat weight comes in at just over 5.5 carats.

alright, it's not the most attactive piece of jewelry. but like pizza, even bad jewelry's pretty good.

i did some more christmas shopping yesterday. went here, and found some really cute stocking stuffers. for the girl, who loves to eat with chopsticks, i found her some clothespin chopsticks. cute, huh?

alas, they were out of weepy, the wee-wee boy. if you pull his pants down, he really wees! would have been a perfect stocking stuffer for brother. all three of them.

miscellany

it seems "the man" in colorado has backed down and has withdrawn its request that ms. jensen remove her wreath. thanks to ellen for giving me the update!

i already sent a link to all my friends and family, but it is worth mentioning again. the husband's friend Tom was shot while serving in iraq and his interview with fox5 news was aired last night. here's the link to the video.

the gilmore girls is new tonight. but lost won't be new until february.

after resisting the urge to get, like, creative, i read last night in real simple magazine about some easy ways to decorate for christmas. for instance, i could fill a large glass container with nothing but silver bells in different sizes. cute, right? oh, and i could also use calculator paper as tree garland and foil minimuffin tin liners as christmas light shades. huh?!?

and now back to our regularly scheduled blogging

we're baaaaack!
today i rode the subway instead of driving anywhere. whoopee!
the charm will wear off soon, i'll bet.

now that my project from hell is over at work, i'm quite free with the time at work. so much so that i have found new things to make for the christmas season by browsing the internet. so many beautiful things to make for all my friends and family! so many ways to say merry christmas. so easy, i think to myself.

i call these my crazy thoughts, as in "you are crazy to think you can hand-craft christmas cards!" or "you are crazy to think you can create soaps for every person on your list!" and "you are just plain nuts to do anything more than slice and bake cookies decorated with red or green icing and sprinkles."

forget dragees, 3-dimensional cookies and hand-crafted anything. stick with what you know, put your feet up , splash some more brandy into an egg nog and call it year.

that goes for you too!

peace out
have you heard about this? a woman in colorado is being fined by her home owner's association for displaying a wreath with a peace sign in it. read about it here.

how a peace symbol can be offensive to anyone is beyond me. i say leave it up, ms. jensen. stick it to the man!

holiday shopping

is it just me or does stuffing yourself with turkey and pie one day followed by shopping at 5 am the very next day seem a bit excessive?

the stores are opening at 5am tomorrow. that's right. 5am. in the morning. for shopping. doorbusters, early bird specials, 5 hour sales.

i am not opposed to shopping early. most saturdays i am out the door at 8am for groceries but only because i hate the saturday afternoon crowds at the store. you know the ones. miniature armies of families that need to shop all at once with multiple carts while they stock up on blue soda and treat the entire trip as part of a family visit? but i digress.

this year, i am aiming to do most of my shopping online because i just won't have the time between work and the kids to do my annual shop till you drop bonanza on the first wednesday of december. this was always a fun day for me. i would hit the mall by 8am and shop for 12 hours straight, finishing in one fell swoop all of my holiday shopping. not bad. but with two kids, most of what i used to do is but a fond memory.

i will shop online from the comfort of my home (or office), without having to deal with one surly, sour-faced cashier or having to look for parking.

here are some of my favorite shopping links

kohl's
target
lands end check out their overstocks section for amazing deals
disneyshopping authentic disney merchandise cheap
old navy they can have some pretty good prices in their bargains section
couponcabin
bizrate
buy.com if you're shopping for music and books, don't pay amazon prices
overstock.com

if i must shop "offline" one way i do it is to go late on a friday. some stores are open until midnight for the holidays. i have bought many gifts at kohl's, target and toysrus this way. and i suspect that prices are lowered on friday in preparation for the saturday rush. and you should see how fast the cashiers move when it's close to quittin' time.

you have 31 days left. let the shopping games begin.

happy thanksgiving

despite everything going on in the world, in this country and maybe in your own home, we still have many things to be thankful for. give thanks today.

happy thanksgiving!

our thanksgiving trip

the flight

with much organization and planning, we left early saturday morning for our flight to dallas with a minimal amount of yelling and crying. just as we were patting ourselves on the back for a job well done i thought i should change the boy's diaper before we hunkered down in the plane for a four hour flight. it was then that i discovered that we'd left a crucial bag behind. the diaper bag.

i quickly scanned the waiting area and scoped out a woman with three kids, one of which seemed to be the boy's age and size. i thought after explaining my predicament i'd get a kindly "oh, i've been there before" kind of look. no. the look i got was more of a you've-got-to-be-kidding-me kind of look. with very little amusement and a minimal amount of kindness. it was more of "hey, if i got here with three kids in tow, you've got no excuses" glance. all while the boy ran through the terminal like a bat out of freaking hell.

a trip within a trip

on sunday we drove 6 hours north to wichita, kansas to visit with some family.

the boy and girl sat quietly with the portable dvd player while i quietly fumed over the anti-abortion billboards posted by right-to-life organizations/terrorist cells. oh, and i gawked at the monstrous churches with huge, i mean huge signs with zippers beneath their logos.

one of the things wichita has over new york is space. there's tons of it. the kids had plenty of opportunity to run around and wear themselves out. which they did. but along with the opportunity to run came plenty of chances for the boy to bang his face against various surfaces while running: the floor (twice), the wall, stairs, a table and many other items that jut out from shelves and bookcases. the christmas card photo will need to be postponed until the nose, the bruises on both cheeks and the scratches heal.

on monday, my father-in-law took us to lunch then over to a farm owned by his friend. there we got to ride in a combine with farmer bob and harvest milo. never in a million years did i ever think i'd ride in a huge piece of farm equipment harvesting feed grain. but i went and it was very interesting and actually kinda fun. but don't tell my husband that or he'll up and move us to kansas!

there is a barn on farmer bob's property that was moved there from another location in town. it is over 100 years old. the barn was set onto its present site onto a state-of-the-art foundation that was laser guided to perfectly match the structure of the barn. the barn now sits perfectly level. and now none of the doors close properly.

in another building on the farm is an old wwII plane farmer bob and some buddies are rebuilding. it sat in pieces around the hanger but they are two years away from completion.

we're not in kansas anymore...

on the way back from wichita we stopped for lunch in oklahoma city with the husband's step-sister. we drove around her lovely neighborhood and saw really beautiful pre-war homes in the mesta park and heritage hills neighborhoods. we at lunch at my favorite fast food place (sonic) in bricktown. then we paid our respects at the site of the oklahoma city bombing. gave us a lot to be thankful for this week.

i've offically reached the point in my journey when i get homesick. don't get me wrong, i'm enjoying myself a lot. but i miss the crowds, the coffee, eating breakfast at my desk instead of eating it right when i roll out of bed, tired of strapping the kids into their car seats everytime we want to go somewhere. oh, and my hair is flat. but the kids are sleeping through the night so who can complain?

exciting news.....i almost forgot!

the girl woke me at the crack of dawn on monday morning to tell me that her tooth was loose! as in they are about to fall out and be replaced with adult teeth. let the orthodontia games begin....

tomkat ties the knot/thanksgiving travels

tomorrow tomkat ties the knot. can we all move on with our lives now?

in other less pressing news....

tomorrow is also the day that we fly to grammy jane's for a thanksgiving visit. while i am stressing about getting everyone packed and ready to go, the girl is so excited she tells anyone who will listen where she's going, how she's getting there and that she will not be in school or at the babysitter's for a whole week.

i've noticed in my travels that everywhere we go, whether it is for a weekend or an entire week, we have to bring an extra bag with us. it contains nothing but electronic equipment. cameras, wires, extra batteries, chargers for said batteries as well as chargers for our blackberries, cell phones and organizers. oh, and don't forget about the mini dvd player for the kids to watch movies on.

more maddening than having to bring all this stuff with us is the fact that some of these charger gizmos don't have printed on it which device it is intended for. i have crashed, more than once, my palm pilot because i tried to charge it with my cell phone charger. someone needs to invent me a gadget that i can plug all my devices into and charge all them all at once. i should channel my inner martha and label everything with cool stickers or something. but i'm not into channeling these days.

shout outs: hey andie, thanks for being the first to read this thing. and hey to ellen....the first to comment on the blog site itself. peace out.

sleep? we don't need no stinkin' sleep!

lately my son doesn't need as much sleep as he used to. as his need for sleep decreases, ours increases. on a typical day the boy is up at 5:30am. now, i can do 6 standing on my head but 5:30 is ungodly.

you see, it's not just that he is awake and snuggling with us at 5:30. he is wide-awake, rarin' to go, weeding through the toy box for a truck/car/train toy (preferably one that makes noise) and demanding a bottle, Thomas and Friends On-Demand and his lovey. NOW.

and the nap? cheap. an hour, hour and a half, tops.

eventually, bedtime rolls around and he begins to look tired. he doesn't look half as tired as i actually am but, still, he looks fatigued. we get him ready for bed.

the first order of business is to rearrange his crib. he moves his pillow to the other end of the mattress. he throws the stuffed animals out but keeps his rabbit (without the pajama top, thank you very much) and pooh. sometimes elmo is invited to the party. sometimes he reads his books, sometimes he calls us. "come back!" is his new favorite phrase. eventually he finds a train and holds onto it with one hand, and drapes lovey against his cheek. then he goes through the litany of the Thomas and Friends characters (henry, percy, toby, fergus.......). sometimes his sings the theme to wonder pets. finally, finally, he falls asleep. and we pass out from exhaustion.

before we know it, our little sleep bandit is at it again. greeting the dawn with his trusty sidekick lovey in one hand, milk bottle in the other, ready to take on the day.

4 things you probably didn't want to know about me

assuming their audience is comprised of at least one person the writer doesn't know, one of the things bloggers do to help their readers get to know them better is write to 100 things about themselves.

here are the first four things about me you probably didn't want to know:

1.aAt 34, i am still naive to think that most people are kind and good but smart enough to know i'm probably fooling myself.

2. i am numerically dyslexic. i can remember, quite accurately, the digits in phone numbers, just not in the proper sequence. i call a lot of wrong numbers.

3. i know lots of useless stuff. tons of it. to wit: you know how you get a song "stuck" in your head? like after you ride "its a small world?" that's called an earworm. oh, yes it is! if you don't believe me, look it up here.

4. i hate the smell of Play-Doh. and elmer's glue? blech. the smell of it makes me gag.
but school paste? the weird minty-smelling kind? divine.

why blog?

why not? it seems everyone is doing it. there are real estate blogs, political blogs, knitting blogs, entertainment news blogs....the list is endless. i'm an opinionated New Yorker. why not add my two cents?

will anyone read it? probably not. well, maybe my mom.