Day #40: I'm a work in progress

I'm still working on getting myself together.  I like to tell myself that we spend our entire lives "getting ourselves together," that way with each failure, I still feel like I am moving forward.

Biggest Success of the Week: my music room is almost DONE! This was a lot more work than I thought it would be because music room has to have space to accommodate Tiny when he arrives. That meant I decided to move the heavy things around and needed Boyf to come home from work to help me. Only there isn't any light in there, so it is REALLY difficult when David always comes home after dark. After I finally moved a lamp pre-his-return, the furniture was moved successfully and TODAY I almost finished setting it all up. Unfortunately, the movers ruined one of my key pieces of equipment, which means I need a claim check before I can actually use my speakers and microphone. At least it is in the right place and the boxes are in the recycling bin. WIN.

Best Fail of the Week: I offered to make dinner for a couple in our church who just had their first baby. Time to make dinner on hottest September day ever came and I turned the oven to 400 degrees in our 88 degree apartment. I sweat. A LOT. But in the end, I took dinner only a few minutes late to their home. Afterward, I had plans to make dinner for Boyf, but I just couldn't. So I settled on making quesadillas when he came home. Too bad that I forgot to take the tortillas out of the freezer.... And haven't cooked dinner at all this week. FAIL. We ate sandwiches. I have eaten so many sandwiches in the past two weeks. I need a new lunch idea. That is just as easy. Thanks.

This weekend is General Conference for our church.  Since we don't have cable, we will probably be at church for a lot of hours... Fortunately I have already made Boyf promise to take me to THIS STORE tomorrow. So the weekend will be a success. It is in pursuit of Halloween. I love Halloween.
Last year, we made these cookies:

And I dressed up like this (I won a contest for this homemade costume and my superior dancing. PRIZE MONEY!):

And we had a party that looked like this:

 AWESOME.

 (duh. My mom was in charge and everything she does is awesome.)

This year, I would like to make these cookies:

and dress up maybe like this:

(no, it won't be as funny since no one here knows my brother, but it sure would look great on me)

and have a party that looks like this:

SUPER AWESOME.

and countdown to Halloween with my own version of this:

Also, I have already planned Tiny's first Halloween costume (next year, of course) which will be THIS (without the ruffles and with a lightning scar):

Day #25

Well, Days 23 and 24 I was "under the weather". And now that I have just written that phrase, I would appreciate it if someone could tell me the origin since I have no idea and am not sure why we even say that.

Today, Day 25 was much better. The evenings of days 23 and 24, I was still obligated to go to Charlie Brown, and let's face it, that was awful. and I played poorly. But tonight was stellar. I felt great about it and besides the wind blowing my pages a few times, it went pretty smoothly.

In other news, I also got a great little gift in the mail today. Well, the gift is technically for tiny, but I am going to pretend that it is for me since I will be paying for tiny's life and the less I have to pay for, the more for me... thus it is also a gift to me. It is this BEAUTIFUL moses basket from Restoration Hardware (which I love).

Yes, I took it out of its box and put it together, then pretended baby is already here and decided baby would like to nap/lay down by the bookcase where he could see all of the colors and learn that books are important. GET HERE ALREADY.

One of my favorite things these days is when Boyf says that he wants baby to get here.  He is getting anxious to play with tiny, and who can blame him? I'm getting anxious for tiny to stop messing with my body.  The other day I was having a very strange sharp pain in my backside and wondered if I would have some sort of reverse alien thing where baby busts out of my back. We all know that it won't happen, but I thought it.

Also, when we were in Costa Rica, I forgot that my sister-in-law Andrea became a professional photographer. She specializes in Unicorning, a process by which a normal person's dreams are fulfilled and they can visualize themselves as a unicorn by  means of a photograph. She unicorned David, and it was pretty glamorous. Luckily, I have the picture.

In case you wondered why I married him before, now you know the truth. It's because he is quite fetching as a unicorn.

now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to go use the countless over-ripe bananas sitting on my refridgerator to make several batches of banana bread while watching "Pride and Prejudice".  Or maybe "Despicable Me"....

Day #6: I Can't Grocery Shop.

Day #6. Saturday. A day of togetherness. Today I have been singing a song I learned in church as a child all day.  The lyrics are as follows:

Saturday is a special day, its the day we get ready for Sunday!

We wash our hair and we iron our clothes and we don't work again until Monday...

Well, I don't want to be a killer of the faith, but I do wash my hair and iron my clothes on Sunday. I actually had never thought about it before now... The point WAS, that we have been running errands almost all day. I say we because Boyf is finally home with me for a full day! I love that. UNFORTUNATELY, Boyf had to come with me all over town for groceries. We are having one of his co-workers over for dinner tomorrow night, and I am determined to cook her something delicious, PLUS, I thought I would be a brilliant domestic by planning meals for the week and buying the ingredients today. Only things here are not so simple. So far, I've been to the grocery store on 4 different occasions and each time, I have had to go to at least 3 places. 

You see, neither Wal Mart nor Target have received "Super" status, so I can't get groceries there. I avoid Safeway at all costs because if I go there, I will pay ALL COSTS, and my favorite place to shop is an open air market where I can only get produce and overpriced cheese. Then there is Trader Joe's, which I also love, but let's face it people: Trader Joe's is for people who want to PRETEND to cook.  If you want to buy a great pre-made sauce, or a frozen dinner that tastes homemade, Trader Joe's is THE place to go. They will never let you down! But what if I want to buy chili paste? or what if I want (heaven forbid) Crisco? what if I want vegetable oil? Or even French's mustard? There is no way I will find it at Trader Joe's. And Whole Foods--well, anyone who is a sucker for packaging (self-professed here) will tell you they want to shop there.  But anyone who's paid attention to the price realizes it doesn't even make sense.

So today shopping started off on a great foot at The Milk Pail, where I bought a weeks worth of produce (including obscure fresh herbs and veggies) for $23.15! that would have cost me at least $80 anywhere else, but started going downhill once we went to Wal Mart and found out they didn't have better prices than Whole Foods on milk and eggs (WHAT?!) and they had NO chocolate chips.  Boyf was done. He just walked the cart to the checkout counter and I knew that I had to follow.  Only I also knew we would have to go back out again later because we didn't even have any meat.  SOOO a few hours later, we headed to Costco and then gave in to the pull of Safeway. Safeway, I hate you. I really do. How can I buy 4 things from you and still spend the same that I did for three bags full of fruit and vegetables at The Milk Pail? You're an extortionist, that's how. 

BUT, I made my Nutella ice cream! It was a recipe that didn't require an ice cream maker--and since the movers bent the arm on my Kitchen Aid and I don't have a way to replace it yet, I was more than excited to try it out. Now that I've actually mixed it and put it in the freezer overnight, I'm fairly certain it will taste like Nutella flavored Cool-Whip, but I guess there is always a chance that could change. I found the recipe on foodgawker, which you should check out if you like food at all.  It is brilliant.

In other news, right before I started this post, tiny dancer was kicking! Not any of those little kicks either. I'm talking big enough you could feel it if you were putting your hand on my stomach. I felt a twinge of sadness when I ran into the bedroom to tell Boyf that Tiny was dancing and found Boyf passed out.  He made a valiant effort, rolled over and put his hand on my belly, but it was too late. Tiny was done.  He has been pretty quiet during the days lately and acts up at night, which gives me great hope that Tiny will be a night owl like his mother before him and his grandmother before that.  Actually, maybe I want the owl-like tendencies to conceal themselves for a few years...

Okay. After midnight. It's time to go to sleep  read in bed.  I'm a little nervous because I had a plan in my head to do wash on Monday while I was stuck at home with the piano tuner, but now I'm not sure if I will have any clean underwear for church tomorrow... Boyf says I could just be like the Russians and wear my underwear until Monday, but I think I'll pass. Oh, the worries of a housewife! (well, one with poor planning skills at least)

Pre-Day #5

Well, I'm up. I can't fall asleep. I just finished reading the most awful book (yes, even worse than Twilight) entitled "The Vampire Diaries". Technically, I finished reading two installments of said diaries in one go.  Apparently if the author didn't lump them together, no one would read the second book. TRUTH. I checked both the first and second set of two out from the library, and I just can't even bring myself to open the second set.

So I'm blogging. Tomorrow is day #5. I'm actually pretty excited for day #5 because I have some GRAND plans. I'M HEADING TO THE CITY!!

Boyf is doing his training in San Fran, so we are going to make a night of it. And before we make a night of it, I'm going to make a day of it. I don't have a complete list of things to do, but I figure that while I'm up I can do a little more research. So far my list looks like this:

1. Stop at used bookstore on my way into the city. Last time was a success--this time I'm hoping they'll buy a few of my books and give me in-store credit. OH YEAH!

2. Tour San Francisco Center for the Book.  I plan on taking several workshops so I can learn to letterpress, silk screen, and bind books as well as volunteer there while we're living in the area.

3. Head to Pier 39 and get myself some Boudin bread (sourdough, of course) for lunch. mmm, mmm, GOOD.

4. Maybe see some seals if mating season is over. (last time I tried, mating season kept them all off of Fisherman's Warf)

5. Gaze at Alcatraz and determine to book Brother's ticket to visit so we can go take a tour

6. Watch people and sneak pictures. Or maybe not sneak. Lots of people have cameras on those piers...

I can't imagine that it wouldn't be a great day. Hopefully we can find something great to do for the evening as well. Any suggestions for bay area shenanigans would be greatly appreciated.