Summer Recap

So long time no post.  We've been traveling for my work, and busy with Hannah, and she's started sleeping through the night (yay) but winds up getting up at around 6 most mornings (not yay).  Which means that I kind of have to rethink my whole sleep schedule, getting up early to write, how I'm going to fit in The Artist's Way etc.  Our babysitter likes to talk about how she "puzzles" things together, and that's what I'm trying to do.

I was thinking back on the summer, and how it didn't work out at all the way I'd planned.  I had planned to go to Sweden for my best friend's wedding, and North Carolina for my stepbrother's wedding.  Neither of those things happened.  Instead, the following happened.

Memorial Day Weekend: the Saturday morning of Memorial Day Weekend I went to the doctor and got meds for my bipolar disorder.  I took them that Saturday night, felt like a freight train hit me, and slept for 13 hours without waking up once.

Hannah moved into her own room Memorial Day Weekend as well.  It was a big weekend all around.

The week after that I was in New York for BookExpo where I met a lot of publishers, took lots of long walks through the city, revisited some of my old haunts, and ate a lot of Pret a Manger sandwiches.

In mid-June the shit hit the fan with our neighbor when he came pounding up our steps swearing at us (he has some anger issues).  We should have called the cops for disorderly conduct, but we were too shellshocked.  Next day the County comes out and says that:
- we have to tear down the cat shed
- we have to get an inspector out about the home office
- we need to rehome half our cats.

That night I escaped to Seattle for the launch of the Amazon Fire phone and met Jeff Bezos the next day.

When I got home we decided that we were moving back to Pennsylvania by the next summer.  We would swing seriously into Moving Mode, which meant getting rid of stuff, fixing up the house, and yes, rehoming our cats.  I stopped feeling safe in our home thanks for the asshole next door, who also started coming up more often.  Before The Incident we'd seen him twice in 7 years.  Now he's up like every week.

Ok, so we spent tons of time and energy calling cat places and trying to find homes for older cats, which is a tough sell.

Then I went to Vegas for ALA Annual.  It was hot.  That's all I can say about that.  Oh, and the Bellagio fountain show is amazing.

We started Mommy & Me swim lessons the last week in June.  Hannah had a blast with the kids in the water, and even went off the diving board.

By the 4th of July we had homes for the cats lined up, and we were delivering them.  J took down the cat shed, but it took a week because he was doing it carefully since we might wind up reassembling it in our driveway.

The inspector comes in mid July and says that J has to tear down the home office, and has 2 weeks to do so.

I work part time so he has time to disassemble, and Hannah and I spend a lot of time together in the afternoons.

We had our first yard sale on August 2, and made around $70, and got rid of 2 carloads of crap.

The home office was mostly torn down by her birthday, on August 7.  Which she spent in the ER with strep throat.  A 15 hour overnight ER visit.  I'm still recovering from that.

Sometime in there I went up to San Mateo and got pissed off at the summertime tourists clogging up the airport.

After all this, the idea of going to Sweden - just the idea of it - made me nauseated.  I just couldn't do it.  So I bailed on my best friend and his wedding.  So sad.  I also bailed on my stepbrother's wedding.  Too many people got married in August.

Hannah took her first steps August 9.  She was really seriously walking by around the 19th.  Now she's a pro.

This past week we were up in Santa Clara for a big event I do there each year.  The drive through the Central Valley with an antsy 1 year old who can walk was pretty rough.  I had told my boss back in mid July that I was moving, and was going to be working for myself.  I might still stick around with my current job on a consultant/contract basis (and in fact I think it makes sense for me to do so, at least for a year or two), but I'm also hustling for other work next year, and will be going to the Pa Library Association meeting at the end of September.

And today, to nicely wrap up the end of summer in a neat little package, we had our second yard sale and made around $250.  I sold the Asus tablet I bought in 2011 at Best Buy in Upland.  J sold his first guitar.  We're seriously getting rid of everything.  It's awesome and freeing and amazing.

This summer I also started practicing daily meditation, daily writing, and using the loseit app.  I'm within 7 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight.  I walk around the lake at least 4-5 days a week, with smaller walks the rest of the days.  It's great to start feeling healthy again.  I'm fairly well adjusted to my meds - they don't make me feel like I was hit by a freight train anymore, though I do still need 8 hours of sleep each night to not feel like death.

Hannah is on a good schedule, and I get time in the evenings to myself these days.  Also the mornings, if I can drag my ass out of bed early enough.  Now that it's getting light so much later, the 5:45 alarm seems even more like a medieval torture instrument.

And I've read a ton of books on Oyster.  I heart Oyster.

So that's where we are.  Nothing went as expected, but that's kind of how life goes, and I'm really excited about the future.  Working for myself, however that will go.  Moving back home (which sort of fills me with dread, but is also exciting at the same time - plus J is really excited, so it's great to see him like that).  Really committing to a number of big changes, which I think will be for the best for our family, and for Hannah.  It's been a crazy summer!

Last year, J built a gorgeous home office for me.  We were expecting Hannah, I needed a place to work, and he wanted a building project.  So he leveled out a 12x16 area in the back yard, which took a lot of digging, concrete and bricks to make a retainer wall (since our backyard is a huge hill, so the home office is on much higher ground than our house), and got to work.  We got giant windows from a guy in Fresno.  We got floors at Ikea.  The whole thing was, and is, an awesome space to work.  It looks out over the trees, and in the winter when it snowed, it was so cozy up there, watching the world turn white.  Plus, as an added bonus, we put cats up there once Hannah was born.

Everything was great.

Except.

We didn't get a permit for it.


No big deal, everyone told us.  You don't need to permit that.  If you ever sell the house, they'll just permit it then.  The son of the guy who owns the house next to ours (and is rarely there - it's a vacation home for him, and we've seen him twice in 7 years), and is a contractor, told us that as long as we got along with our neighbors, it was fine.

So apparently in April, the owner wanted a home equity loan on the house, and sent an assessor up, unbeknownst to anyone.  We still had construction debris in his driveway (again, the son told us it was ok), and our Jeep was parked there, and the home office violated setback laws.

The guy calls the County, and they came out in mid June.  The code enforcement officer saw how many cats we had, also a no no.  Plus, the cat house Jonathan built in 2011, on our deck (which was there when we bought the house) is apparently on his property.

We were given 30 days to tear down the cat house, rehome 8 cats, and get a building inspector out to see what to do about the home office.  So we spent most of the next three weeks frantically finding homes for all the cats (successfully, thanks to a wonderful cat sanctuary on the mountain that was able to take the ones we couldn't find homes for), and then J spent a week tearing down the shed.  We had a brief respite when we sold the Jeep, and were waiting for the inspector to come.

He came today.  And the home office needs to come down in 2 weeks.  Apparently the inspector was heartbroken telling us.  Told Jonathan it was a gorgeous building,   And we could have tried to drag it out, but then he probably would have made a giant fuss, and forced a lien on our house.  We just want it to be over with, so we're tearing it down.  Well, Jonathan is.  I'll be working part time the rest of the week so that he can have the afternoons free to deconstruct.

It was strange, going up there today while Hannah was napping.  All the furniture was out, and he was ripping up the floors.  When I was pregnant, I used to sit there with him and read while watching him build.  The night before we had Hannah, I was up there reading magazines on my ipad, and I posted on facebook that I was craving whoopie pies.

Now it's deja vu all over again, only I'm not pregnant, and the house is coming down, not going up.

Lessons Learned:
1) get a permit on everything.  It's not worth it to try to cheapen out and risk having to tear down your work.
2) see above.
3) even if your neighbor is an asshole, if you have a permit, they can't do anything.
4) move away from the assholes

So we're taking this all as a big sign that it's time to move back to Pennsylvania.  It's been on our minds for a while, but after this, I just feel like the rug got pulled out of us so suddenly, and I don't feel safe here anymore.  The neighbor was up the day before the County came, and he stormed up our steps ranting and swearing, and called J a "fucking degenerate" while I was feeding Hannah 3 feet away.  Classy.  Oh, and he's a licensed firearms dealer.  Good times.  Out of nowhere, we had to get rid of our cats under pressure of them being taken away by animal control, and pieces of our home were coming down.

I'm officially over this mountain, and California in general.  We're going back to PA next year.  Where there's history.  And people don't drive quite as crazy.  Now we're in Full Speed Ahead on this move.  Doing it with a toddler is going to be interesting.  The fun is starting with pulling down this building, and on Saturday I have a table at a local flea market, where we're starting to get rid of our stuff.  I've become much more ruthless.  "Do I really want this," has become "do I want to move this across the country."  Much easier to say no to that.

The continuing quest to be able to live in a tiny house

In the past year or so, I have become obsessed with Tiny Houses.

Tiny Houses are homes less than around 650 square feet (the exact numbers vary depending on who you talk to), and started becoming popular during the Recession as people were being foreclosed on their giant homes they couldn't afford, and starting to turn to more sustainable forms of shelter.

Now there are entire sites like Tiny Happy Homes, and the Tiny House Listings site that focus on Tiny Homes, and you can have hours of fun on youtube looking up Tiny Houses.

I first discovered them via the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, a company based in Sonoma that sells plans for tiny houses.  My dream is to have so little stuff that I could live in a place like this, hooked up to a truck, and the three of us could drive around the country and make our home wherever we are.  I'm not sure what I'd do with Christmas decorations, but I guess if that was the only thing I had to think about, I could figure it out then.

So in other Simplifying News, I've been going through my books (again), culling more and more.  Mostly because we're starting to babyproof the house, and Hannah is at the point where she can start to reach up on the bookshelves, and I've heard horror stories about babies trying to climb bookshelves and then having them crash down.  So I've been taking out the lower shelves on my bookshelves.  

Here's how I'm deciding what to do with my books.

- Am I reading it now?  If so, it stays.

- Am I going to read it in the next month?  If so, I look to see how much it is on Amazon for my kindle, or if my library has it.  If it's less than $3 on the kindle, I'll buy it.  If it's available as an ebook through my library, I'll borrow it.

If it's one of those books I've been hanging on to, thinking I'm going to read it, I look it up on Amazon and add it to my wishlist.  I can always get it later from the library, and in the meantime, it's not taking up space. 

Now, that doesn't address the 3 dozen or so books that I'm emotionally attached to.  The books with Borders price tags, for example.  Or from the UK and not available here.  I'm still working my way through them.  At some point, maybe our next move, I'll decide I'm not as attached to them as I think I am, and I'll either sell them, or donate them.  In the meantime, they're still taking up shelf space, which I don't like.  Baby steps...

Adventures in packing simply

In three weeks Babygirl and I will be in New Zealand.

I am using my "pump money" and taking Hannah (with my mom) to see one of my dearest friends, from when I lived in London.

Right in the middle of teething.

I may be insane.

But I really want to go, and I can't see being without her for that long (she's been outside of me for a shorter time than she was inside me still) so she got a passport, and an infant bulkhead seat, and we're heading off to Auckland.

I've started my packing list, and am trying to keep things as simple as possible, taking inspiration from Project 333.  If you haven't seen it yet, it's a challenge to dress with 33 items or less for 3 months (and put the rest in storage in your attic).  And "items" includes shoes and accessories.  Every 3 months you get to pick a new 33 items (ie sweaters for winter).  

So here's a brief story of my own journey to simplicity:

Our bigger closet is in what is now the nursery.  Once Hannah was on the way, I had J build a new closet in the laundry room section of our bathroom.  We had switched over to a stackable washer/dryer, so we had all the space sitting next to that combo which had, at one point, been where the dryer had sat.  I designed a custom closet (one narrow row for shoes, one wider one with 7 shelves for folded shirts and jeans, and two hanging racks).  I got rid of a lot of stuff while moving clothes over to that closet last spring, and again once I got rid of my maternity clothes in the fall.

Then, a few weeks ago, our washer broke.  The repair man needed to get behind it in order to fix it, which necessitated taking the dryer off, which in turn led to the dismantling of the closet.  I wondered why I had a lot of the things I did.  Why do I need a Blink-182 tshirt?  I mean, yeah, I love them, and I like remembering their concert, but surely I don't need a shirt taking up space to remember that I saw them?  And back when Stephen Colbert started a SuperPac I bought a tshirt.  Why am I keeping that?  These are all taking up space in my house, which isn't large, as well as mental energy when I'm going through my closet wondering what to wear.

I've been keeping the thrift shop busy lately.  

I always think back to the time when I was 24 and my most prized possessions fit into three suitcases.  Somehow I've accumulated all this crap since then, and I'm all emotionally attached to it.  Why do I need to keep earrings I bought 15 years ago, which I don't wear, and would probably give me an ear infection even if I did?  Looking at my collection of earrings gives me angst.  So many beautiful dangling sparklies, and yet after thinking about it for five minutes every day I always wind up wearing the same pair for simplicity's sake.  Honestly, couldn't that five minutes be spent doing something more productive?

That's the point of Project 333, and while I haven't yet accepted the challenge of living with only 33 items or less, I am down to only 8 pairs of shoes and 5 pairs of earrings.  And most of my clothes are now sitting on top of the washer, folded in three piles (trousers, long sleeved shirts, short sleeved shirts) with about a foot's width of hanging things (dresses, etc) in Hannah's closet.  The rest is either at the thrift store (6 pairs of shoes went there yesterday) or in the attic.

I'm spending less time thinking about getting dressed, because I have fewer options.  When I go shopping, I don't get distracted by clothes and shoes, because I don't want to think about what would have to go in order to make room.  If I should come across something truly fabulous, I can figure that out later.  

And, the point of this post to start with, my packing list for Hannah is a breeze.  I'm taking laundry detergent (woolite comes in travel packs) so can wash things.  I'm packing for three days, and just planning on doing laundry every few days.  Plus an extra outfit in the carryon.  Diaper stuff (diapers, skin protectant, wipes and pads to lay on the floor).  Travel Mustela products (love).  Some tylenol (for the aforementioned teething).  A couple of toys (following advice on traveling with infants, I have purchased three new toys to distract her on the plane).  Books.  Blankets.  Formula.  Bottles.  Travel bottle dryer.  Done.

Well..."done" in theory.  We'll see how it actually works out as we get closer to the time.  Once I get it all sorted out, I'll take a picture with the final packing list.

Things I'm Giving to the Thrift Store: The "Check in My Bag" Edition

On August 22 2005, I had my first date with J.  Two weeks later, when things were still all new and unsettled, we were going to go to the Fontana raceway for the Nascar races on both Saturday (the Busch league race) and Sunday (the big race).  J came over to my place the night before and we went bowling with some of my friends.  This was a pivotal night for several reasons.  First, it was the last time J drank.  Second, it was the first, and last, time I saw J seriously drunk.  Third, he tried to make out with me in the frozen aisle at Ralph's when we went to pick up snacks to take along to Nascar after the bowling adventure.  He was all drunk and silly, hanging on to me and saying things like, "You're not my chick.  You're my Woman," real serious-like.  Fourth, he was completely hung over all weekend, and realized that if he wanted to keep me, he was going to have to quit drinking - thus, it was the last time he drank.

The other funny thing about that night was the fact that a second guy showed up who I was sort of crushing on at the same time, and J could pick up on it, so he challenged the guy to a bowling duel, and broke a score of 200, his best ever.  I just sat there and watched, amused.

So how this relates to the bag is: earlier on in the evening, before the drinking and bowling duels started, he was going to play a video game or something, and asked me if I had any change.  I was in mid-bowl, and I told him to check in my wallet, in my bag.  So he reached under the seat, grabbed my bag, and looked inside, all natural-like.  This is a pretty big step in any relationship - especially with an only-child-protective-of-my-space kind of person like me. The fact that it felt totally natural to have him digging around amidst my makeup and tampons kind of freaked me out, but was proof of how natural it was to have that kind of closeness with him.

I stopped using the bag a week or so after the Nascar race, but kept it for the sentimental value.  It's been through several rounds of cuts, and has survived every one, but the time has come for this sentimental gem to go.  But before getting rid of it, we decided to stage a re-enactment of the Inaugural Bag-Rooting Session.  

The bag is now at the thirft store, but this picture will live on in cyberspace forever, commemorating the momentous occasion.

In the mood for Spring!

Wrigley explores the snow 2 weeks ago - it's all melted now!

Crazy how things can change in two weeks.  Two weeks ago we had a massive snowstorm coming, which knocked out our electricity for 40 hours, and dumped three feet of snow in our yard.  I was still pregnant then, though I had started spotting and was trying to stay chilled out about it, because I knew that lots of pregnancies had spotting.

Two weeks later, I've lost a second baby, and the weather has warmed up so that the snow has mostly melted, except for some of the big piles and berms made by the plow.  I'm looking forward to springtime, and spring cleaning, which we got a head start on today.  I'm working at home today anyway, so at lunchtime we spent an hour cleaning the last of the snow off the deck, taking up the mats and rugs that were wet so it could dry underneath, and hauling a crap-load of junk to the dump and thrift store.  Our deck is empty of old crap, the kitchen has more space, and my office doesn't have the extra big chair which we were keeping around because the cats liked to lay on it.  They might enjoy the chair, but when you live in less than 800 square feet, which we do, you can't have extra giant office chairs laying around.

I've been on another Peter Cetera kick - he's my go-to-guy when I'm sad - and this morning I told J that I was going to rock out to PC, and he wasn't allowed to make fun of it.  So half an hour later, J comes in to ask me something, purses his lips, stifles a snort, and walks out.  I ask my Rise Against-loving hubby what's going on, and he says, "I'm not allowed to comment.  I'll be back in later."  So I turned it up and sang along even more.

AND I bought two bottles of wine last night, since, you know, I'm taking a break from the whole getting-preggo-scene.  I might get drunk for the first time in almost a year!  Not tonight, though.  I'm waking up super-early tomorrow to go to the LA Flower Market.  It's the giant market district where all the professionals go to get their flowers, which they open up to the public two days a week, and it's the most magical place on earth.  If I had another life to live, I'd totally be a florist.  When we lived by Dodger Stadium, I'd go to the flower market once a month or so, and for two weeks the house would be filled to the brim with gerber daisies and lilies and tulips and all kinds of colorful things.

For our wedding, we went to the flower market early in the morning the day before the ceremony, and loaded up the car with roses of all colors, and tons of gorgeous fall flowers, and for less than $400 we made all the bouquets, centerpieces, and corsages, and had enough left over to cover the archway in ivy and autumn-colored flowers.  I'm lucky to have crafty ladies in my family circle, who know how to arrange flowers, and we had so much fun that day - buckets of flowers in the bathtub, clippings all over the floor, vases filling the refrigerator, flower wire caught in our hair...it was the best part of our wedding, I think.

So tomorrow, for my Artist's Way Artist's Date, I'm going to haul my butt out to the flower market early in the morning (to get the best selection you have to get there before 8am, and it's an hour and a half away) and drop $25 and get enough flowers to brighten up every spot in the house.  I only hope the cats don't go crazy on them.

Things I'm Giving to the Thrift Store: Target Bag Edition

Bag available at the thrift store.  Cat napping on the bed.

This week, I'm getting rid of this lavender Mossimo tote from Target.  Here's the story on it:

I bought it in January 2005 in Nashvegas at the Target in Franklin.  There was another Target north of me, close to where I bought my Aveo, but I didn't like that one as much.  So this came from Franklin.  I remember it was dreary and cold, and I thought the lavender would cheer me up.  I used it right away as a laptop bag at ALA Midwinter, which was in Boston that year (incidentally, it was in Boston last year, too, but I didn't use this bag then).  

On the same shopping trip when I got this bag, I used a bookstore gift card that my boyfriend at the time had given me for Christmas.  You know a guy's not going to work out when he gives you a gift card for Christmas.  I mean, I'm all for gift cards.  And Lord knows, I enjoy shopping, so gift cards are usually good.  But from a boyfriend?  On your first Christmas together?  Does anything scream "I didn't really take the time to think about what you might like on this, our first major holiday together, and plus I was kind of in a hurry and you're not worth spending more than five minutes gift shopping for," more than a gift card? 

I actually really like this bag.  It's a perfect size.  It has lots of pockets.  It's a springtime color that you don't see that often.  It popped when I wore it with all black.  

But, you see, the reason I haven't used this bag in over five years is:  In 2006, I found a black widow spider living in it.  

Oh man, I screamed.  J took it outside and took care of it, and he said he'd never seen such a big spider.  To this day, I'm afraid that I might open some pocket, and a fang-toothed hairy eight-legged spider is going to jump out and poison me with her venom.  

Like that bag is extra attractive to spiders or something.  I don't know.  

Anyway, I just can't bring myself to use it anymore.  It's been hanging on my wall for years, with me thinking I might get over my arachnid fear someday and wear it, but it's not gonna happen.  I just can't reach into it for anything without getting freaked out anymore.

Since I had to dig through an old hard drive to find this picture, I found some other ones of Little Wrigley when she was a Baby.

So for the second day in a row:  Cute Cat Pictures.   Awwwwwwww.  They were scanned from 'real' pictures...'member them?  You had to take film to get developed?  What a hassle!  They aren't good quality, but looking at these reminds me why I still clean up her poop.

Simplicity, Apps, and Video Game Randomness

Probably selling for $1 at my local thrift store

So we all know that I'm on a simplicity kick, which started when I got pregnant, because we have a serious disconnect between the amount of space in our home, and the amount of stuff we seem to have.

When we lost Baby T I stayed on the simplicity kick because if I want to live the kind of life I say I want to live, I can't do that with craploads of stuff.  I want to travel, and live in lots of different places, and you can't do that with 33 pairs of shoes.  You just can't.

It all goes back to this time in my life when I could fit all my important stuff into 3-4 suitcases - ok, so they were big suitcases - but still...

I realized that many of the things I'm still holding on to are staying not because I like them, or wear them, but because I have a sentimental attachment to them.  Which, in my view, isn't the right reason for keeping something.  So I've decided to share the stories behind some of the objects that I'm most dreading getting rid of, and then, once posted, I am releasing them as an offering to the Thrift Store Donation Gods.

First off, these sneakers.  The story behind these is that, as those of you who have known me for a long time will remember, I once had a teeny obsession with a completely inappropriate guy.  From February of 2000 until approximately September 2004, I was kind of off-and-on in love with a British choral singer.  He was kind of partly the reason I moved to the UK in the first place - you know, I figured I could make him fall in love with me back.

Ok, so this gentleman - we'll call him Joe (that's not his name.  I've never been in love with a Joe) lived near the Archway station on the Northern Line.  I was also a north-Londoner, living in Barnet, Highgate, Muswell Hill, and finally Finsbury Park.  For three out of four of those places, I passed through the Archway station every day.  I used to check myself in my compact to make sure that my makeup was perfect as the train would leave Highgate, because, well, you never knew when he might wind up in my carriage.

So you kind of have to get the absurdity of that thought.  Northern Line trains have about 12-15 carriages.  Each holds maybe 50 people, closer to 75 at rush hour.  The trains run every 5-7 minutes. The chances of Joe coming on to my carriage on any given day were completely astronomical.  But still, I would pull out my compact and arrange my hair in my reflection on the window.

After a year or so of living in London I started forgetting about Joe.  Not in a conscious "I'm going to get over him" kind of way.  But more in a "man, I'm having fun, and there are such lovely other guys around me...hmmm...would you look at that...I haven't thought about Joe in 2 weeks..." kind of way.

I was taking singing lessons from a Welshman who lived near Crystal Palace, which would have me get off the train at Victoria, get the Victoria Line to Euston, cross over to the platform for the Northern Line, and wait for my train up to NoLo (I just made that up - it's short for North London - I'm going to start using it in conversation - feel free to do the same).

So one afternoon in July, I was hoofing it from Victoria, running like crazy to try to make all the connections in the sweltering summer heat.  By this point I was familiar enough with the route to know which carriage I should get in that would allow me the fastest change.  Incidentally, there are people who study this stuff.  The novel Tunnel Visions is about a guy who makes a bet that he can go to all the stations in one day, which happens to be the day before his wedding.  It's a hilarious story, and I highly recommend it, if for no other reason than the next time you find yourself wondering what the easiest route is from Ealing to Maida Vale, you can probably figure it out using this book.  Incidentally, there's also an iphone app which tells you which carriage to get in based on your route - where the exits are, the changes, etc.

Ok, back to my story.

I was hoofing it, the weather was hot, we're like three hundred feet underground in a subway infrastructure that's a hundred years old, and I'm kind of sweating.  And my hair is a wreck.  And I probably hadn't shaved my legs in eternity.  And my pedicure was bad.

And I ran from the Victoria Line platform to the Northern Line platform in Euston station, hoping I'd timed it just right, and I'm huffing and puffing and get to the platform and realize the train is still a minute away, and I'm giving myself an inner high-five and thinking I can sit down for a minute, when who would be on the bench where I wanted to sit but...you guessed it...Joe.

He didn't notice me at first, and I thought I could get away with passing him by to the other end of the platform, but just as I was tippy-toeing past him, he looked up from his newspaper, and said my name.  I considered pretending that I wasn't me, or I was deaf, or anything to avoid showing my sticky, sweaty face to him, but it didn't work.  I had to sit there and make conversation, and when the train came, I had to ride for like four stops with him.

This relates to my shoes because he happened to be wearing these trainers that looked like bowling shoes (trainer is British for sneaker).  It was mid-2001, and I think it was quite trendy at the time.

On a trip home, I went to Target, and they had these quite-trendy-in-a-knockoff-sort-of-way shoes, and I used some advanced algebra to figure out that if I bought these shoes, Joe would love me.  Example using the transitive property:  Joe likes these types of shoes.  I get these shoes.  Ergo, Joe likes these shoes on me.  Resulting in: Joe is madly in love with me.

It kind of made sense at the time.

Anyway, they're comfortable, and I've worn them loads since, and I never even think about Joe when I wear them now, BUT the damn soles are broken, and the other day I was walking in snow and my feet got soaked.  So, sentimental value or no sentimental value, they are going to the thrift store.  Maybe somebody can repair them with super glue.  My hubby probably could, but I'm too lazy to ask him.

Ok.  The Story of the Bowling Trainers has been told and documented for the ages, and I am now releasing the shoes to the thrift store.

That felt good :)

On a side note, I started playing Oblivion again last night.  I started playing Oblivion in 2008.  I spent much of that spring and early summer obsessed with closing the Oblivion gates.  Then it kind of faded and I picked it up again in 2009 and bought the Shivering Isles expansion pack, which really rocked once I got a powerful invisibility spell.  Then I did all of the quests, finally, except the Daedra ones, which kind of freak me out because they involve clearing out these ancient shrines and there are a lot of vampires and the music is scary.  I hardly played at all in 2010.  But then the PS3 broke and we bought a new one.  Which meant that all the data was lost, and I got to start all over again.  This is a good thing.  Which brings me to my favorite App this week: the Elder Scrolls Discussion Forums.  I can use the app to search for game tips and cheats, walk-throughs, and hints...because sometimes going to the Elder Scrolls Wiki on my laptop is just too much work, you know?   (That was meant to be sarcastic)  There's going to be a new Elder Scrolls game released in November, which has me completely excited.  That gives me just enough time to do Oblivion properly again.

2010 can kiss my @ss. And App Fun.

In the East Coast it's already 2011!  Yay for getting rid of the suckiest year ever.  Man, this year blows.  And not just for me.  A quick google search of "2010 sucks" yields over 426 million hits.  That compares to the 31 million results for "2009 sucks," thus proving that 2010 Really Did Suck.

So I say good riddance.  Only another 2.5 hours of you, you crummy year.  And don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Ok.  I want to stick to my App Fun schedule, and this week I want to say why I am now a big proponent of ebooks.  A year ago I swore up and down that I would never get an ereader, you couldn't make me, I didn't care how big they got, I was sticking to paper, and nanny nanny boo boo to you.  This year?  I have a kindle.  It all started with the kindle app for my droid, which I downloaded sometime over the summer.

See, the big reason why I'm a luddite about paper books isn't the whole "feel" of turning the pages, or anything like that.  It's the fact that my main area to read books is in the bathtub.  And there ain't no way I'm taking my kindle in the bathtub (although I have heard of someone who puts it in a ziploc to read in the hot tub).

But I realized there were a lot of times when I could read books during other times in the day, and there's always Vanity Fair for the bathtub.  Or library books, though I shouldn't admit to that (listen, I'm really careful about it, and those water marks are not from me, I promise).   I spend a lot of time driving, for example, and this being Southern California, you always have to leave more time than you need to get somewhere, so I also spend a lot of time waiting in my car.  I can read then, and it'd be nice to not have to lug my books around with me.

Then the idea of space-saving really came around.  As recently as June, I blogged about why I couldn't get into ebooks.  The point of that blog entry was that, unlike cd's, you can't easily "rip" a book and put it onto your device.  And I still think that Amazon should let me re-buy the kindle version of books that I already own at a discounted rate.

But then I got on this simplicity-kick, and I'm getting rid of stuff left and right.  I own almost 1000 books, and they take up a crap-load of space.  If I could have them all on one device - man, that would simplify my life (and additionally, it would let me gloat to my husband about how much more crap he owns than I do).  So the kindle started to look appealing, at least in terms of buying new books.

Then I spent the weekend at a rock festival in the roasting-hot Fontana Raceway parking lot, almost dying of heat stroke.  The upside was that I spent a lot of time sitting under the cooling tents where they had these mists floating down on you, and it was almost bearable.  During that time, I read ebooks on my phone.  And I realized that it wasn't that bad.  And that was on a phone, without the awesome kindle e-ink screen.

After two full days of rocking out and phone-reading with no apparent lasting negative effects (the headache was as much from Rise Against as it was from reading on my phone) I decided to ask for a kindle for Christmas.  And I officially stopped buying paper books.

I'm still in the predicament of wondering what to do with my current library.  I've been buying copies of the books I already own at the rate of 1 every 2 weeks or so, and it really has made me examine the idea behind owning a book vs having access to it.  I read a saying once to the effect of "try not to own too much because once you possess something, it also possesses you."  

I've been hanging on to these books for so long, and why?  Some of them have been moved 16 times.  That's a crap-load of moving, if you ask me.  And for what purpose?  So I can look at them and feel smug because I read so much?  To remind me how Haruki Murakami is a good replacement for chocolate?  I don't know.  There are some authors that I definitely want to revisit (like Haruki Murakami and Arthur Neresian) and I will probably wind up re-buying the books to have them on my kindle.

But there are so many that I read once, and I'm never going to read again.  I don't know why I'm hanging on to them.  So I have a new policy now of really examining a book, and if it's not worth the $9.99 to re-buy the kindle version, I'm going to just make a log of it, write down what I liked about it, and then donate it to someone else.

And then when we move the next time, I will have all my books on my little kindle, and feel very smug as J packs box after box of astronomy texts.

So the kindle app got me started on ebooks, and I'm glad of it.  If you're into simplifying your life, and are open to the idea that you could radically change the way you feel about ownership vs access, then try it out.

And Happy 2011!

Things that are making me happy today

My little town is turning into quite the artsy-fartsy place.  The second monthly Art-tiques Walk took place on Saturday night, which was fun.  We went out and bought a lovely photography print from John Hummell called Glazed April - frost on the trees on the rim...totally beautiful.  They are starting a mentoring program and classes up here, so I'm excited about that.  I love all the cool stuff my town is doing.  Yay!

Baby Teysko is almost 16 weeks old in my belly, which is totally cool.  I'm getting a lot more energy back.  Actually woke up before the alarm this morning.  I'm still not sleeping very well, but I'm excited and happy that I don't feel like crap every day now.

I'm also happy because I'm getting rid of junk.  We went to a flea market two weeks ago and got rid of about 15 garbage-bags worth of stuff and made $178.  And now I'm selling more stuff on ebay, and getting rid of my elliptical, which makes me sad because I really do use it and love it, but I'm excited to have the space back, so that we can actually start making the nursery.

And finally, I'm super-excited because we agreed that I should go to England in October.  I think I'm going to go up to Cambridge for a night and get up super-early in the morning and take pictures of the bridges and the mist.  That will be just heavenly.  I can't wait!

So those are all the things I am supremely happy about today.  And it was a three day weekend.  Every weekend should be a three day weekend.  When I become Queen, I shall decree it.  J and I had a Stupid Movie Festival and watched Cop Out, Hot Tub Time Machine, and other silly movies.  Good times.