Don't Talk With Your Mouth Full...

...or when there's not much to say! The winter blahs seem to have gotten the best of my blog lately.

New Year

Decidedly happy.

Ready for another year!

Glad the holidays are over, though...

Five Things...

...I do daily for a healthy mind.

I've been tagged!

Here goes:

1 - I eat something I want to eat (at least once per day)

2 - I look at the sky

3 - I take a nap (most days)

4 - I think about exercising at a minimum, and on a good day I walk for a long time, or dance, or swim, or kayak

5 - I try to keep up with world affairs; arguably good for the mind but maybe not so good for peace of mind?



Funny how "healthy mind" can be interpreted to mean mental function or well-being.

Packing

Where have we been? Right here, just not blogging.

Where are we going? To Bar Harbor, Maine this Wednesday for a week with family and friends. This will be Sylvia's second air trip and first trip to Maine. I can't wait to kayak, hike, eat wild blueberries and lobster...and take a nap every day!

Top of the Park

TOP is part of Ann Arbor's Summer Festival, a month-long event that really brings out the townies. Here are Sylvia and Dan at Sylvia's first TOP outing. We saw a swing band, ate some tasty Mexican and Mediterranean food, had some frozen lemonade and watched kids running around on the grass.

The best thing about TOP is that it's free, and goes on seven days a week from mid-June to mid-July. Another reason to not leave Ann Arbor in the summer.

Breezing In

Our friends Zoe and Tashi are in town for a short visit and we went to Top of the Park, a free outdoor concert series with food booths and lots of socializing.

Zoe, Tashi and their Dan used to live here in A2 and now call Charlottesville, VA their home. Fortunately Zoe's mom (Tashi's Yia Yia) lives here still, so we're guaranteed a visit every so often.

I can't believe how big Tashi is - she was only five when I met her!

Enough About Me...

Today is Sylvia's first half-birthday, six months after she joined us and changed so much about our lives. Seems like a good enough time as any to play along with the me.me.me meme so generously not-tagged by Zoe:

What were you doing ten years ago?
I was on the road across the northern tier of states in a rickety Isuzu P'up truck (5-speed) with a manifold pipe held together by a strip of Coke can and ring clips, chugging my way toward Oregon to join two friends and get into organic farming. I had just separated from my husband of 6 years and was headed west to start a fresh life away from the unhealthy environment of New Orleans, where I had lived for ten years. I was looking for the new, the clean and the positive, and was also, in my heart, looking for true love.
While traveling through South Dakota I saw a huge line of thunderheads in the distance before me. "How nice," I thought, "that I can watch this amazing storm from a distance."
I forgot about the whole winds-come-sweeping-down-the-plain thing. Within 30 minutes the storm was on top of me. I had to pull over the truck because visibility was nil; winds were screaming and there was torrential rain and hail. Tornadoes were touching down within three miles of where I was parked. My small truck was rocking in the winds. I thought, "well, maybe I won't see Oregon after all."
The storm passed after about 20 minutes, and every car on the freeway was pulling into the same small town, no doubt with the same destination: the nearest motel. I have never enjoyed a delivered pizza, cable TV and a soft pillow with so much relish.

To Do List for today:
I just got back from NYC and Rose's funeral, so I will pick up the dog from the kennel, visit with Dan's family, do some gardening, wash some laundry, grocery shop and finish the book I'm reading. Oh yeah - and care for my daughter.

What would you do if you were a billionaire?
I would set up my family comfortably so they could live without worry. I would create a trust fund for Sylvia. I would donate generously to cancer research and to organizations supporting local food and farming. I would have an amazing flower garden. I would travel by train to visit family frequently. I would have a massage once a week.

What are 3 of your bad habits?
I'm a terrible correspondent; once I write I write well, but oh, getting it together to write!
Too quickly do I find fault in others; at least I keep these thoughts to myself, mostly.
My posture is terrible since I gave birth to Sylvia.

What are some snacks you enjoy?
Anything with chocolate & mint in it.
Sliiced baguette, sliced mozarella, sliced tomato and basil leaves.
I don't get them often, but I love love love my great-aunt Betty's cheese straws.

What were the last 5 books you read?
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close also by JSF
Brooklyn Dreams by JM deMatteis, illustrated by Glenn Barr (amazing graphic novel)

What are 5 jobs you've had?
Dental assistant
Organic farm laborer
Children's museum educator
Children's outdoor science educator
Barista

What are 5 places where you have lived?
Salem, Oregon
New Orleans, Louisiana
Plantation, Florida
Franklin, Tennessee
Memphis, Tennessee
(bonus: Marietta, Georgia and before that, Tucker, Georgia)

Quirky Tag

Six things Dan finds quirky about me:

1 - I am always looking for the punchline of the "that's what she said" joke, which won't die. Or become unfunny. Ever.

2 - I'll eat, but won't touch raw, chicken.

3 - See the post titled "Your Mama is Crazy" regarding making up nicknames and songs for Sylvia.

4 - I can remember the lyrics to many songs.

5 - I like some fast food occasionally (Taco Bell...yuck).

6 - I'm only quirky in five ways.


Six things I find quirky about me:

1 - Despite having done quite a bit of air travel in my life, I hate traveling by plane and spend days and days psyching myself up for a plane trip. My body doesn't like being way way way up off the ground.

2 - I count things, like steps I take to a door, the number of syllables in a spoken sentence - not always, not all things, but just enough to place me on this side of obsessive-compulsive.

3 - Except when I'm talking or listening to someone (or the TV, music, or a movie) I almost always hear music in my head. Mostly other people's recordings, sometimes my own compositions.

4 - Even though I will wear the same shirt more than once, enjoy eating tempeh, prefer to buy used clothes and furniture, own a drum, and "dig cool vibes, man," I most definitely do NOT identify as a hippie.

5 - I live to be sarcastic, biting and appropriately catty, but my own skin is thin, and I take jabs at me to heart.

Oh Yeah...the Job!

After four years of looking Dan finally has a new job that he's very excited about!

He'll be working for the Ann Arbor Business Review covering real estate and development in the area. The Review's offices are in Livonia (20-25 minutes east by freeway) and there is a small office in the newsroom of the Ann Arbor News that he'll also use. He starts next Monday.

At the very least we'll be able to have lunch together every so often, and perhaps he'll be able to do a lot of work in town with not too much commuting.

I'm excited to hear positive stories about work at the end of his day!

Lull

Not much to report, in between the hustle and bustle of the Meisler family visit and my parents' visit next week.

We had a nice visit with buddies Sheryl & Brian from Indiana. And Dan got a new job (which is a big deal and really deserves its own post!) which he starts Monday.

Laundry, cooking, diapers, feeding, naps, sleeping...nice routine going on.

Memoir Meme

I was tagged by my buddy Zoe to compose a 6-word memoir; sorry I'm not tagging others or posting more scoop on this meme, but here goes:

Brassy belle digs dirt, dancing, dazzle.

Hard to sum it up in six words. I suspect this meme was spurred on by an article in a recent New Yorker magazine; it said Hemingway wrote a miniature masterpiece: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn," which itself must have inspired SMITH online magazine to have a reader contest - your life story in six words.

Stephen Colbert posted "Well, I thought it was funny."
Aimee Mann: "Couldn't cope so I wrote songs."

Here's a snapshot that will be included in my verbose memoir someday, with the caption "Bliss in a Recliner."

No Comments

Strange thing, blogs. I never would have imagined myself a blogger, and still don't really consider myself one.

I created this blog mostly for my parents' benefit, and then realized my friends might be interested in seeing pics of Sylvia, if not also reading my thoughts on random baby-related topics. The blog also serves as a journal, a place for me to air mental laundry.

I've become sensitive to the quantity and content of the comments posted (or not posted) in response to my posts in a way I never expected. If a post gets no comments it bugs me a little. When one gets a comment I'm excited to continue the virtual conversation.

I'll extend an invitation to those of you without blogger or gmail ID's to e-mail me directly if you'd like to comment off-blog. The feedback would be nice!

More Yuck

Here it is Day Eight Of The Yuck. Sylvia's tired of having a sick mama. Do not catch this virus.

I am fortunate to have Linda Diane Feldt, holistic health practitioner and all-around goddess, as not only a healer but a friend too. I had a session with her yesterday and she convinced my liver to relax, my GI tract to feel comfortable, and my energy level to level out while dealing with processing the remaining toxins from the virus. Today I feel much better. Not 100%, but better by bounds.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

Yuck

So I managed to get the creeping crud, and I'm now on day three of stomach woes and fatigue. What a drag. It's hard to do more than feed Sylvia, and so much more needs doing. Thank goodness Dan is here, well and willing!

Seven Weird Jobs

Okay, slightly unrelated to our overarching subject, but I've been tagged by vale of evening fog for the 7 weird jobs meme:

1) As a sophomore in high school I was paid by a CPA to update binders containing finance law information. These packets of hard copy would arrive in the mail, and I'd have to find the appropriate binder out of a collection of about 100, remove the oudated pages, then insert the updated pages. I would listen to "90125" by Yes and a mix tape a really cute senior had made for me. Alas, he did not return the crush.

2) Backing up, as a freshman I lied about my age to work at a sub sandwich shop owned by an Italian-American named Charles Mastropaolo. I was hired to work behind the line, meaning I would assemble personal pizzas (pita, sauce, pepperoni, cheese), sandwiches, and occasionally cook on the grill with supervision. My main and least favorite task was to hand-scrub the grease vents from the grill every night. I would come out of the place stinking of pepperoni and grease. On Fridays my friends and I would go to an alcohol-free teen dance club downtown, and I usually didn't have time to take a shower. Nice.

3) In college I was a building manager for the student activities center. I would work one night per week from 6-midnight, and one shift on a weekend. This involved carrying a walkie-talkie, a key ring, setting up meeting rooms if needed, doing rounds to make sure all was well in the building, and sitting behind a desk studying (or reading, or visiting with friends). I didn't have to dress up per se, but I did have to look presentable.

4) Fresh out of college I landed a gig as volunteer coordinator at the homeless shelter where I'd been a volunteer myself. The job required no work - all the volunteer groups that served meals and worked the kitchen scheduled themselves a year in advance, and worked the same times every time. Had I been more industrious, I would have figured out a way to broaden the program, but the status quo was strongly in effect there. I quit when I got pissed that the board of directors voted to not give the staff a Christmas bonus, but spent hundreds of dollars getting photos taken and framed of the past presidents of the board to hang in the shelter's front hallway. Whenever I gave a tour to friends I always referred to the wall of photos as our Christmas bonus. I learned my lesson about not quitting a job until you have another job lined up, because...

5)...I became a barista. I had to arrive at 6am to sling java, and work until 2pm. The first week I trained at the cafe I would go to bed at night and dream of nothing but work. Then get up and work. Sigh.

6) After some searching I landed an administrative assistant position with a group of pediatricians at a local children's hospital. The head doctor, Gary Peck, was a real jerk. For some reason he didn't like me, although the doctor I worked most closely with, did. He got me fired, but she arranged to have me hired back through a temp agency to answer phones, so I ended up doing less for more money. I played a lot of solitaire. Plus I got to stick around and annoy Gary Peck. Doctor Peckerhead. What a jerk.

7) After the temp gig ended, I worked again as a barista at a different cafe (so GenX!) and also picked up some evening shifts at a dry cleaner pick-up location. I didn't actually handle any chemicals, but would retrieve clean clothes for customers, and take dirty drop-offs. The clothes were cleaned at another location. I would sit at the desk and read or visit with friends; the storefront was downstairs from my apartment so I didn't have far to go, and there were lots of my buddies working/living on the block. During my mid-twenties drifting-but-not-lost phase.

I'm tagging lindadianefeldt.com/blog/, because I'm sure she'll have interesting stories to tell.