My 4-almost-5 year old, Maddie, is now sans training wheels!! She's just madly excited, and growing older much too quickly.

I was just looking at old pictures of Gage when he was 4 and he looks so *little* compared to how I see Maddie. I keep having to remind myself that in a couple years I'm going to look at her pictures from today and feel the same way I do about Gage's pics. Life's short...

Things I've realized today:

I can make a pretty mean red sauce from scratch with no recipe! Even my son liked it, so there.

After putting in a pinch of black pepper, wash your hands before touching your face for god's sake. Fiiiiiiiiiire, smoke she is a risin'! It burns like a sum bitch.

And last but definitely not least, I freaking hate judgemental people. This one poster at a site I visit is so mean and judgemental in her posts it drives me nuts. She's one of those know it alls who you just know *doesn't* know it all, you know?! I just wanna smack her.

You are a sea sponge!

You are a modern hippy. You love the earth and all
of its creatures, and you could care less what
society thinks of you. You are a peaceful
person, and your body is your temple. You have
very diverse friendships, and you form close
bonds with the people you allow to get close to
you.


What menstrual product are you?
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My husband and brother are in NYC as I type. So half of the trip down, half to go. I'm feeling less stressed by the hour....

I know another rant against the media isn't getting anyone anywhere, but here I go again.

All this "fat" stuff got me thinking again. How come all the t.v. shows, movies, commercials and videos have absolutely no problem pairing a fat guy with a hot woman but almost never do you see a fat woman with a hot guy? Yet another example of the media telling us one pairing is ok but the other is not. That fat women are not sexual beings, not worthy of attraction. I know, I know, I shouldn't expect more of the media. I guess it just bothers me that so many people buy into it, that if a woman on TV gains a few pounds it's a travesty but men can be as heavy as they wanna be. I admit I'm all hot and bothered by Kevin James (the King of Queens guy) but do you really think Leah Remini would give him a second look in real life?

The problem is that yes, she probably would. You see, most women aren't totally visually stimulated where most men are. At least the men and women I know. Women seem to be more likely to overlook physical stuff if the emotional and personality stuff is there. Men? They usually first see a rack and a hot ass.

Women are so much cooler than men. I wish I were a lesbian.

Methinks I'm ready for Mace to start walking, or crawling, or something. He's almost 10 months old and still doesn't want to maneuver himself around. He'll roll, but that's about it. So mostly his mode of transportation is my arms. And at 25 lbs he's massive and my arms and back are killing me!

There is a tad more drama going on around here. My husband and my brother are going to drive into New York City, into the worst neighborhood in NYC, to pick up my sister and her family who are moving back here. So a nine hour drive, and no one is acting like this is a big deal, like it's a big request to make of one's family. I'm stressed about the drive, the crazy traffic in NYC (where neither my husband or my brother have ever been) and the fact that no one is even appreciative of what they're doing. Well, my sister and her family are not at least. It's a long story, but I'm assuming it's only going to get worse when they do finally get here as far as their expectations of us. Fun fun!

I rode approximately 4 miles on my NEW bike this morning!! Yay me! I've been walking a mile a day for a few weeks but this kicked my butt.

Plus, just as a kicker, we got an amazing deal on the bike. Got it originally on clearance for $25, it didn't work so we got to exchange it for a full price one!

So it was cheap and is a great workout that I can do with the kids when I wanna take it easy. I'm happy...at least more than I was at 4:15pm last Thursday when the lights went out in Ohio...ugh!

There’s been a lot of “weighty” issues around the blogs this week (least the ones I regularly read) and it’s got me thinking.

I think the single most annoying assumption people make about those with weight problems is that we don’t know anything about losing weight/eating healthy/good exercise habits. Most people assume we’re just waiting around for that one hot diet tip or new exercise routine; that we don’t know what we should eat instead of that pint of Ben and Jerry’s. And you know what? That’s so totally wrong. Most overweight people I know are more knowledgeable about this stuff that your average joe. We have to be. We read all the articles, we know plyometric and isometric exercises, we know our resting heart rate and target heart rate, we know the physiological reason the high protein diet is so effective (if not the most healthful). At least, again, most of the people of size I know personally know these things. I know these things...it doesn’t stop me from lying on the couch and choosing not to exercise on some days or going ahead and eating that pint of B&J’s (of course along with an otherwise healthy diet the rest of the day). And I know if I exercised every day and didn’t eat the whole pint I could lose weight. I’ve done it before and I know I can. I’m not going to say my genes make me fat or place blame. I know why I, myself, am overweight. I do eat more than I should and move less than I should. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know anything about health. It doesn’t mean that I don’t walk a mile most days. It just means I’m unfortunately being defined by a few poor choices I make in my daily life.

This is brought into focus by a “friend” I have who recently lost a bit of weight. She now takes it upon herself to try to enlighten me on proper weight loss techniques. Um, I KNOW how to do it, I’m just not choosing to make it a priority at this particular moment. And just because I look heavy, how do you KNOW that I’m NOT working on it? It’s these assumptions that bother me, especially coming from someone who has been where I am and knows more closely what I’m feeling than most people.

I guess my point is, don’t judge fat people. We’re not stupid or lazy, most of us just have a passion for good food which is just one small trait of our personalities, ourselves.

I just put in some quality pint-diving time. Can someone tell me why ice cream is so good right out of the container? I mean really. I can feel myself expanding already.

Gregory Hines died yesterday. He was 57. I think I’m going to go out and rent Jelly’s Last Jam and just revel in his amazing feet. I love tap and this man was just amazing at it. I’m sad that he’s gone on...

Just reading Holly's recent blog entry about her mother in law and I started thinking.


My mother in law drives me bats. Anyone who knows me, knows this. She doesn't agree with any of our lifestyle or parenting choices. She takes many opportunities to say so. I get the distinct impression that she just doesn't like ME personally; that I'm the reason we've made these choices and were it not for me her son would be some 9-5 working stiff who only cared about money and having nice things.


But, differing from Holly's MIL, mine genuinely loves her grandkids and wants to spend time with them. Well, I think she's partial to our oldest (she hasn't wanted us to have three kids, she didn't speak to us for three days after hearing about Macey's pending arrival...still pissed about that one but I digress...) but she does seem to care about them. Part of me almost wishes she would leave us alone though...how weird is that? I don't actually want her doing things with my kids, I don't want her to be an influence on them, you know? I realize that most people with uninvolved relatives wish for more involved ones, but I really and honestly don't. Her values and ideals are so far removed from ours that I'm truly afraid of what kind of effect she will have on our kids. I think it makes me a lesser person for admitting that, but there it is.

I guess I feel that if she doesn't respect us and our ability to make our own choices, then she earns less access to our kids, and us. Unfortunately, while S sees her as annoying, he doesn't see her as dangerous like I do. He would never want to intentionally take her out of our family picture as it were. He puts more value on family than I do, and maybe that plays a part here. But she just really gets under my skin with her comments and actions. I agree to an extent that you choose to pick up arrows others shoot at you, you choose to inflict the pain on yourself. But damn this woman is one helluva markswoman.

"That's how you beat a president who can get as many $2,000 checks as he wants, is to bring three or four million new people into the process, give them a reason to vote, and then you can beat George Bush."

I'm lovin' Howard Dean more and more every time I hear about him. Check out deanforamerica.com and see if you don't agree. Let's get him nominated!!

My mother sat an old box down in front of me, told me I could have what I wanted of it’s contents. I opened it and faces stared back at me. Oddly familiar faces, but ones I’d never seen in my lifetime.
My father was a very private person, almost to a fault. He never shared his life with us, his childhood, his past. He was evasive with his answers to our questions. We never met our family on his side, no grandparents, no uncles, no cousins.
This box contained pictures of his family. His younger brother, his only sibling. His mother. His father. The haunting pictures of his grandparents, my great grandparents...her picture lined with her hair. Hair, hair that I have a physical connection to. What I am made of is also in that 100 year old hair. These people lived and without their lives I would not be. But I don’t know them, I don’t know what their lives were like. My father was born in the middle of the depression, but all the pictures were full of happiness. I only really remember my father as an older man, he was approaching 50 when I was born, but seeing pictures of him as a young adult looking almost Hollywood handsome. These pictures are amazing.
I feel like I’ve gotten to know my father in a much more intimate way than I did in his lifetime, unfortunately for me. I will never know many things, like what took him to Ireland, what led him to teach college level agronomy, they whys of many of the things he did in his lifetime. But I know, even with all his aloofness, that he loved my brother and I. As much as I remember some of the words said in anger I will equally now remember the little things kept hidden away; a poem written by myself as a teenager, cards made by children’s hands, the menus my brother and I made for our bake shop (we sold my parents little cakes made in my Holly Hobbie oven; we were ever the entrepreneurs) and now these pictures. These things were important to him, as I now know we were. Unfortunate that we couldn’t know these things about him in his lifetime.

I’m enjoying these pictures, though. Seeing glimpses of the person he was before he was our father. Half the pictures don’t have anything on the back or any indication who the people are in the picture; this is why I will place the ones we do know in our scrapbook. I want to make sure my kids know who these people are even if I didn’t.

OMG Y..E..S!!! You must read this....it's freaking fabulous!