Elven Blood and Oreo Cookies

Just when I thought my addiction to the internet was waning and I might actually get something done from my never-ending/always-expanding project list, I get my umpteenth request to join something on Facebook called Elven Blood.  

Now please understand, when I first joined Facebook, I was like so many others (Ann), wide-eyed and completely agog at all the completely useless yet must-have applications that I saw filling the pages of all my friends.  I had the graveyard and the aquarium and the garden and the superwall and the fluff friend (the one thing I actually kept, I mean who can get rid of a pengiun)...need I go on.  But then a few months ago, when I realized that Asher was like nicotine patch for the internet (just like smoking with the patch on can do very bad things to you...same idea combining the internet with an awake Asher).  

So I purged (now that I think of it an urge I've had with so many things in life since he was born, hmmm, musings for another time), I purged and I put an ignore on the vast majority of requests that I was being beset with.  I didn't want to give up Facebook altogether, I do find it an extremely convenient way of keeping in touch with people and a fun distraction for the five minutes I am allowed every day to see what's going on in the virtual lives of so many people.  People I see all the time and people I haven't spoken to except by way of "Accept Friend" in over 3 years.  

And then it pulled me back in.  I blame Brayden (I love you, Brady).  *by the way, as I was typing this, Asher woke up.  It's like he knows*  Okay, so Brayden whom I don't get to talk to nearly enough, sends me an invitation to Elven Blood.  I think, great, this might be a way to keep in touch more often, we can play this game together.  And then I get there and I'm totally addicted.  I just keep hitting the 'Do Quest' button like something exciting is actually happening.  I totally forgot to even check to see if I had enough life or stamina to do a quest and had to run away in disgrace.  I was devastated. And then I discover that there are three more games just like this one.  Aack!  I'm soooo hooped.  Especially if I manage to pull others into this insidious game, because right now my party's too small to go to the next level of quests, so if you're on Facebook and I send you an invitation to Elven Blood, please, please, please accept and join my party, I neeeeed you.

Okay, on to Oreo Cookies.  I just have to complain.  Jeff takes cookies in his lunch, so I have to have them in the house.  I try not to take any, but come on, they're in the house.  So I think, well, I'll get some reduced fat Oreo's so I don't have to feel so guilty.  Big flaw in the Reduced Fat Oreos, I need to find out who to write a letter to.  They don't separate properly.  Usually, you twist an oreo and the creme stays on one cookie or the other.  Not so with these 'RF' Oreo's, oh no.  I would say my research is fairly conclusive, after all I tried it on over a dozen of the darn things.  Not a one separated properly.  So how much fat did I not ingest do you suppose trying to find one that was made right.  It's all a conspiracey if you ask me.  I challenge you all to find a Reduced Fat Oreo cookie that separate's properly.  I warn you, it's not for the weak of stomach.

PS. Just in case any of you are thinking of putting together a food intervention for me right now, I would have you know I'm exaggerating to make my story more humorous.  I only had like 3 and then gave up in disgust.  But I'm still buying the regular Oreo's next time.

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Jeff's Birthday

Yay!! Jeff is the same age as me again.  Which is to say, old.  I'm sure we're actually very young, in fact I felt quite young until I learned that a couple in our church that I was sure was older than us by at least a half dozen years is actually younger by more than a couple years.  Crap.  Now I'm old.  Oh well, Jeff's old with me.

I didn't manage a surprise party for him or anything, but I did surprise him.  Let me start at the beginning though.  I had been so stressing the past couple weeks about leading worship and other things going on that, while I had known what I want to get Jeff, I hadn't actually gone and bought it yet.  

So my plan today was, as soon as Asher woke up from his first nap at 10:30 (he never sleeps later than that), we would run out to Target and pick everything up.  Then we would be back in time to pick Jeff up for lunch at Brazzaz.  By the time we got home it would be time to put Asher down for his second nap and I could wrap presents and bake the cake.  Then when Jeff got home from work, I would announce that I didn't want to cook and go pick up pizza and on the way collect Arthur from the train station who was Jeff's surprise date to the movies tonight.  

Well, Asher slept to 11.  His first two hour nap, ever!  Well, since he was a baby and just falling asleep and waking up at random.  When I should have been celebrating I was pacing outside his bedroom door, watching the clock and trying to decide if I should just bang around the kitchen really loudly.  He finally woke up but only with enough time to get to Walgreens to buy Birthday cards.  I know, I'm a terrible wife, I hadn't even got a card yet.  

We make it to Jeff's office exactly at noon to pick him up for lunch.  Even better, we find a meter two blocks from the restaurant with an hour still on it.  Sweet!  Lunch was great, Asher ate his own lunch of rice cereal in the high chair like a big boy and behaved beautifully.  I guess there's something to be said for a good nap.  We even got a birthday dessert.  Jeff was kind of meh about it so I totally scored.  Mmmmm, chocolate mousse.  And as birthday meals out go, this was pretty conservative for us.  We gave Jeff his cards at lunch, including a gift card for AMC.  (Little did he know he would get a chance to use it that night.)

However lunch at Brazzaz takes a long time and of course, Asher fell asleep on the way home.  So I decide to do something silly.  I decide to try and nurse him while he's asleep so I can put him down and he'll sleep longer instead of waking up 20 minutes later hungry.  At first it seems to go well, he nurses, staying asleep the whole time.  Then, the moment he pops off, bing!  Wide awake.  Well crap.  It's only 2:30, he should be sleeping to 3 so he's not wanting to go to bed at 5:30.  Oh well, I still have to get to Target.  So off we go again.

We finally get home at 4:30 with all our goodies.  Jeff is going to be home just after 5 and Arthur is going to be here by 5:30 and they have to leave by 6 to get to the show on time.  I've got a cake to bake, pizza to get, and Asher to feed, who by now is ready to throw a fit at the drop of a hat.  You know you're a mom when, you A) learn how to eat with your left hand so you can enjoy your lunch out at the same time as you feed your 6 month old hi lunch,  B) manage to mix up cake batter also left-handed while you feed your now cranky 6 month old dinner, and C) are kind of glad you've arranged for your husband to go out on his birthday without you so you can have a nice long bath after your 6 month old, now so exhausted he can't even nurse before bed, finally goes down for the night.

So not everything went as planned, the presents were bagged instead of wrapped, the house looked like a small, localized tornado had blown through, the pizza was pepperoni instead of Hawaiian because I didn't get to call an order in ahead of time, Arthur had to walk from the train instead of get picked up, the cake was still cooling when the guys left the house and didn't get decorated until after Asher went to bed (that's okay, I'm still to full from lunch to even think about eating anything else), but all in all, I think it was a good birthday for Jeff.  His first as a Dad.  Momentous.  And of course, the night isn't over yet ;) so I better get my bath in while I can.

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Sundays

There are several momentous things happening in our life right now and Jeff has been getting after me to blog.  I always hate starting when so much is going on, because I feel like I have to catch people up.  Well, whatever, at this point I'm sure there will always be something.

Okay, so this weekend.  It was my second Sunday of my first group of Sundays for leading worship.  If that makes sense.  It still feels fairly new, even though technically last week was the first time and even though I've led at Home Group and for Thursday evening prayer services and led the occasional song on a Sunday morning.  But I have to say being responsible for the full deal is way different.  I spend the half hour leading up to the service trying not to think too much because I just get freaked out that I have no idea what I said we were going to do for the transitions between songs.  Thing is that actually happened today, I had to go back through a section again to give myself time to think and I still have no idea if I did it the way I said I was going to.

*you know, I have no idea how writers who are mother's ever get any writing done. I just got up to help the DH feed Asher, he's still not sure how to prepare the homemade stuff, and I ended up changing over the load of laundry and almost folding the diapers until I remembered I was actually in the middle of something else entirely.  I so want to be writing again, I have no idea how I'm going to manage it.  We'll see.*

Okay, so Sunday morning.  In the end, it went well.  Much better than practice would have indicated.  But of course, as my mom reminded me, the worse the rehearsal the better the performance.  Sucks, but it's true.  I am always amazed at what God uses though.  The song I was least concerned about, not even sure if I was going to do, at the end just in case I decided to drop it, looked at the clock and thought well, we'll just run through it once real quick.  The Spirit starts to move (well I suppose had been moving all along, but you know, more so), Pastor gets up and starts to speak words of wisdom over the church and pray for people, we end up hanging on that song for a good 15 minutes, or at least if felt like it.  God is so cool.

Other momentous things...we just put the mattress level in Asher's crib down this afternoon.  Realized it wasn't even really good enough just to go down by one notch, we had to take it down two.  This will make us practice that whole, 'put them down while they're sleepy not when they're asleep' thing.  Mostly because it won't be so much putting him down as dropping him int there.  At least for me, Jeff's got a bit more height and arm length on me.  Let's just say, Asher has to be able to crawl in and out by the time I'm largely pregnant again because I won't be able to reach him.  He could play a hilarious game of 'run away from mommy' right in his crib if he wanted to.  Real funny.  If any of you teach him that game I will seriously have to reconsider our friendship. 

I honestly think Jeff is more traumatized by this crib thing than I am.  Neither of us are prepared for him to be growing up so fast, but Jeff gets more flustered by 'event's' like putting the crib down.  I, on the other hand, am struck dumb by the fact that I pulled out the nine month clothes last month and now I'm having to put them away in favour of the twelve month ones.  For those of you wondering, Asher turns seven months next Sunday.  I really thought I had the clothing thing licked until at least February or March, now I'm going to be lucky if I have enough clothes to last us until January.  The nice thing is that these hand-me-downs will certainly not look or feel that way.  There are some things that he literally only got to wear once.  

I could talk about Asher all day, and I will, later.  For now, onto other momentous-ness.  Jeff has officially been offered a job in Oxford, England.  I suppose it's not so new to be offered a job in the UK, we've already turned one down this year because it wasn't going to pay us enough to live.  This one is offering more, probably enough to live on, but possibly not quite enough to pay off our debts with.  Having a PhD is great, but it comes with quite a price tag.  Moving across the continent to Chicago is great, but not having expenses paid hurts a little.  Being a stay-at-home mom is awesome, but I haven't been working for quite a bit longer than I've been a mom.  You get the picture.  Anyway, we're still doing the math and as Jeff says, saying no because of money is a sucky reason.  And of course we realize not really a good enough reason.  We want to be saying no only because we're saying yes to where God wants us to go.  (Do you like that turn of phrase?  I was quite impressed with it when I came up with in the car on the way home from church today.  So much so, that I thought I would quote it to you now.  I still have so much work to do on the whole pride thing.)  

So where else might God want us to go?  Well, there's always the possibility of staying here.  Jeff has an interview on Friday with a firm here in Chicago that could be very exciting (and we certainly wouldn't be saying no because of the money).  And then there's the job in France that he's quite excited about.  Right now, it's almost too much to think about so we're putting it off until after his interview.  But I realized today that we will very likely know where we are going (or not going) by the end of November.  Especially seeing as if we are going, it will be within the first couple weeks of January.  Holy crap!!  That's like two months from now.  That's nuts.  Unless of course we stay in Chicago and then all of this will be moot.

Okay, last thing for now.  Jeff's birthday is tomorrow.  Yay!!  He's turning 33.  I'm allowed to share that because I've already turned 33 and he never lets me forget that I'm older than him.  He managed to give me a much better birthday than I'm giving him, poor guy.  He had a surprise birthday party for me and everything.  The best part was that the way he kept me out of the house for people to get in and decorate, was to take me out to lunch for my birthday.  There will be a meal out and presents and a performance of Wicked in November.  That means finding a baby sitter.  Wow, we haven't done that since Father's Day and Asher was a touch less high-maintenance back then.  And hey, now that I think of it, why are we only getting sitters and going out on Jeff occasions, where's my night out baby-free?  Well, that's a blog for another time.

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