September 2007
Monthly Archive
Toast: The heap sort* approach to recycling at our house
Posted by aunt mommy on 27 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: TOAST
[Think Of A Something Thursday!]
Recycling at home has been a bit hard for me; mostly because I didn’t work at it. And I couldn’t figure out a system that wouldn’t be a pain in the butt. I think the fact that we had so much to recycle had a lot to do with it. Pop cans. Canned food cans. Pizza boxes. Frozen Soylent Orange Cutlet boxes. Price-a-roni boxes. Sugar bomb pop flake containers.
Some day my great grandchildren will curse my name for the number of individual half-liter water bottles I threw away. Or they’ll be feeding it to Mr. Fusion and happy at their landfill discovery of the results of my “It’s not easy enough” attitude. Continue Reading »
Dinner improbable
Posted by aunt mommy on 26 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: mundaneities
Walk into the house, with two cranky crying kids who have just spent two hours in the car on a rainy day driving back home after a crazy stressful day, and make them dinner. Now.
With the power out. And you with no idea where your emergency supplies are, or how long the power has been out. Or how far it reaches. Is the power on down the street? In the county? Anywhere in a 200 mile radius? And just how much breast milk was there stored in the freezer? If that goes off, you can’t write it as a loss into your taxes.
Other than that, dinner now should be a breeze! Did I mention the 18 gallons of water on the floor? Continue Reading »
The point of the story is, they robbed a bank with a telephone.
Posted by aunt mommy on 22 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: family
Now that Wolfie’s doing better at doctor visits, we let him play with his “doctor tools” more, instead of solely on doctor-visit days. Plus we’re starting conversations about private parts, sharing and not sharing them - our conversations are getting a bit interesting.
Last night he asked me what my nipple was doing (I was pumping milk for the youngest and the great milk cube project) and that digressed into conversations about penises and how girls pee without one. I’ve got a few private parts books to share with him, and we’ll take it at his pace.
There isn’t one catch-all book, but the few we’ve got will be a good starting point.
This morning he decided he was going to play with his doctor toys (an aunt got him a kit and we started augmenting it when I fell pregnant with his little sister, he took it along to his own doctor visits and our midwife visits). Temperature-taking, bandage binding, stethoscope application to belly, heart, lungs; this play kept us busy for at least half an hour. Then it was time for the shot.
He hasn’t seen or gotten many shots, so the injection toy is pretty theoretical to him. He happily shot me up and down my arms, enough to make me look like a heroin addict in happy fun play land. Then building on his new-found anatomical knowledge to give me a shot in the heart because I was very very sick …
Guess we should take Pulp Fiction out of his movie rotation.
Toast: Blue dryer balls … of DOOM! and my washing routine
Posted by aunt mommy on 20 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: TOAST
[Think Of A Something Thursday - why not? :)]
Laundry scents make me sneeze. They make a lot of my family sneeze, so I’ve gotten used to scent-free detergents; I don’t like anything that is even lightly scented. But I couldn’t break my addiction to dryer sheets once the scent-free ones came on the market. Fluffy, static-free clothes were what I wanted - even if the chemicals in them wrecked my towels’ absorbency and trapped stains and body odor in the clothes.
As an infomercial and catalog shopping junky, I’d seen laundry balls over the years, which claimed to eliminate the need for laundry soap. The “science” of those I disbelieved, so I took a pass. More recently I saw dryer balls, which reminded me of using tennis balls in the dryer when drying shoes. I bought a couple pair and they worked (and still work) great.
By combining them in the dry cycle with a bit of vinegar in the rinse cycle, I hardly have any static problems. My clothes are soft, the absorbency of my towels is unmarred. [Gosh, do I sound like an infomercial yet?] Absorbency is more important than ever now; I’m washing cloth diapers a couple times a week. Nothing like chemical build up to minimize the usefulness of a good diaper. And irritate tushies.
Too bad dryer balls are made of intensely sucky material: PVC. In use they are non-toxic, or so the claim goes, but what about the manufacture? Pretty toxic. Disposal, too. Guess I shouldn’t have thrown my broken ones away, or even bought these in the first place? Whoops. Continue Reading »
A pirate by any other name
Posted by aunt mommy on 18 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
They say history is written by the victors. And that the difference between a traitor and a hero is a matter of which victor scribes the tale.
Feh on talk like a pirate day. I’m dressing the kids up, though I won’t partake myself (maybe I’ll go commercial and borrow the kid’s Pirate Mickey ears).
“Feh” because I can’t participate much (previous work committment) and “feh” on it in general. There could always be a less funny way to “commemorate” an ex’s birthday. Continue Reading »
Looking to get a Regent? Better get a move on.
Posted by aunt mommy on 14 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
I’ve been shopping around, but ended up with the Marathon clone, the Voyager by Fisher Price. According to Britax, they discontinued the agreement to make these cheaper for Fisher Price this last May, and they assume (can’t confirm) the last DOM is around May of this year. There are no plans they are aware of (that they’d tell me about) to start producing them.
Any stock that is out there is it.
A lot of places have Britax on sale, but I’ve been watching the Regent bounce up and down all week (I’ve got half a dozen screen shots with prices changing minute to minute) as well as other Britax seats on sale.
Yesterday Amazon put up a banner that Britax were 10% through the 15th of this month, but I haven’t checked the prices this morning, except for the screenshot above.
Also - replacement covers for the Regent are not currently available, but will be available towards the end of this year.
A lot of price movement and jumping up and down - probably in anticipation of the new Britax seats to debut Oct 15th.
Necessity is one Mother of an invention.
Posted by aunt mommy on 13 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: TOAST
I never could get the hang of Thursdays… oh, wait. I do okay most days of the week. I work, I write, I get through. I’m always coming up with ideas but rarely implementing them or doing more than a basic implementation. Anyone who has been around me more than a year or two knows of many many things I’ve started and not finished. So I’m trying to finish some things and get other things moving. With Real School for our eldest in progress in our lives, I’d like to work out some kind of way to balance out the change required in our lives, whatever that change may be. Working different hours, trying different ideas.
Thinking of *something*.
Sometimes my ideas come quickly, and just in the nick of time. Public Speaking Class, 7th grade. I chose speechifying as an elective, but I didn’t get along that well with the others in the class; general shyness and the gearing up of puberty for the majority of us. Getting along well with others was not normally much of a big deal, but on this day it was. Each of us needed to give a speech, as usual, but for the first time we needed visuals. Charts, notes - written on one of those ancient things you young whippersnappers might have heard of - poster board. Big, flimsy, twenty cents at the local 60’s era Michael’s equivalent. Continue Reading »
One hand on the wheel, one hand waving, one hand on the unrestrained baby bucket …
Posted by aunt mommy on 12 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
All in the front seat of a two-seater sports car (recent-model airbag-equipped, top down).
You don’t often get a friendly wave on the highways around here. You also don’t often see people signaling to make a lane change on the highway at 65 mph (indicating an intended lane change is not required here). I’m not much of a generally aggressive driver to relatively non-offensive drivers, and have no problem letting people in.
This guy, however, was a piece of work. I was cruising in my lane, preparing to exit, when a little red sports car, top down, wiggled in my view at about ten o’clock. I did a double-take, then triple take. He was steadying the “baby bucket”, presumably with a baby inside, that was literally rattling around the front seat of his sporty little car.
I slowed down to let him slide into the 11 o’clock position, getting out of his mercifully small blind spot. The car weaved a little, and he hit his turn signal to change lanes. He turned to check his blind spot, saw me drop back, then let his last hand raise free of the steering wheel to wave to me in thanks. Then I saw the cell phone … Continue Reading »
Heck of a summer break there
Posted by aunt mommy on 10 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Between figuring out where to blog and how to keep up family fun all summer, I didn’t get much public writing done. A little planning on writing, and some organization, but online it’s been rather quiet.
The kids are older, the school year has begun. My garden this spring and summer were weeds, now pulled to make room for fall crops - once I gopher proof my boxes. Maybe some carrots again, onions and squash.
But updates to come, as the youngest starts walking and the eldest starts take-home-work. And we try to find a good life and work balance that suits our little family.