My Music

I'm still loving Last.fm. The easiest way to listen to music at work plus I get to generate fun lists like this, my top ten artists for last week:

Responsibilities

Life is so much different than it was in my 20's. Two children and 4 animals later my life is full of adult responsibilities. Motopop came with two cats. The one pictured has adopted me as 'her' person and the other cat now tolerates me.

We are going away over the holidays and have to find a cat sitter for the first time. Previously we've only had to have someone check on the food and water but now one of our cats needs a pill every day for a thyroid condition. I have a hard time imagining anyone outside this house getting close enough to her to even try to give her a pill.

I wouldn't trade my life now for the footloose 20's. I will be happy when the kids are old enough to entertain themselves a little bit more. From what I hear we have about two years to go before it gets any easier.

8 Weeks

Miss V is now 8 weeks old and I have one more week before I have to go back to work :(

It has been extra nice spending more time with Boyo. I know I would have a hard time being at home full time but for some reason it's easier to imagine now even though having an infant and a 1 1/2 old running around is completely hectic.

We got a new camera when Miss V was born and I just discovered the digital macro setting. Such amazing detail. One of the most fascinating things about newborns is their eyes. Miss V's and Boyo's started out a flat dark blue and then the beautiful detail of the iris develops gradually from the pupil.

Home- New Arrivals

I am at home with my new baby girl (Miss V) and puppy (Miss B) sitting on my front step in the sun. There's been a week of rain with a few last beautiful days before the winter bears down on us. A lot has changed in the last few months and it's hard to cover in my short intermittent posts. Miss V was born a week ago and we got the puppy in July. Boyo is adjusting well but is throwing a few extra tantrums and learning that you can't poke your fingers in the baby's eyes.

Boyo seems like a giant now even though he was a full 2 lbs lighter than Miss V when he was born and still hovers at the third percentile for weight. It's hard to fathom that he was smaller than her.

Miss V was born without any of the worries that we had with Boyo. No high blood pressure for me, no complications, and she latched on right away. We even got to have the water birth that we planned. Boyo came much too quickly for us to even fill up the tub and he had to be hooked up to a monitor so the water birth was out with him. My recovery this time has been much easier. I'm guessing a few hours in warm water helps. I'll report back if Miss V seems like a calmer baby because of the gentler entrance into the world. So far, so good.

The Mollusk

I just found out that Ween will be here on August 1 so I can expose the girl to much Weenness in utero. Check out the awesome lego video for The Mollusk that a fan made and Ween posted on their site.

Hayfever

With my general hayfever, the rushing progesterone of pregnancy, and the days of crying with my dog dying my stuffy nose is a continual problem. I just tried the accupressure techniques in the picture (click on picture for instructions) and I'm actually breathing through my nose. It may be the power of the mind but I'll take it!

We are still being reminded of Voltron everyday. Yesterday was a week since we lost him. Our friends and family have been so amazing. We've gotten sympathy cards and emails and people seem to know how special that dog was to us.

Voltron R.I.P.

We had a terrible shock yesterday. Our beloved pugdog passed away with very little warning. He was almost 7 years old and a pug's life expectency should be 12 to 14 years. We've known since the day we got him though that even 14 years would have been far too short with this dog. He was truly a special dog.

Motopop and I are just heartbroken and know that it has just barely begun to hit us. We brought him everywhere we could. He went to more parties than most people. He was snuck into bars and movies inside his bag. He was most happy when he was around his 'pack'. We never had to worry when Boyo pounced on him with toddler love and exuberance. He was very patient as we were teaching the boy the meaning of 'gentle'.

We don't quite know what happened. He hadn't been eating well for about a week and he woke up with some type of episode on Saturday. Yesterday while I was at work Motopop said he was not his normal self. He didn't get excited over words like 'walk' or 'car ride' and didn't settle in to comfortable spots for napping. He went to the vet in the afternoon and aside from an elevated white cell count the bloodwork was fine.

The most amazing part is that he waited until I got home to pass. I went to pick up his perscriptions on the way home and I guess he spent several hours just sitting in the entryway before I got there. When I walked in the door he had just collapsed and thrown up. I watched Motopop try to comfort him and then he was just gone. So unexpected. We will miss him greatly.

Baby Kicks

So with my infrequent posting I haven't talked much about being pregnant again. Girl baby, due in September, very excited and nervous. It's a crazy decision to have one and I think we've had it fairly easy with Boyo. Overall he has a charming personality AND he lets us sleep in. I don't think he's woken me up on a weekend before 9am in quite sometime (watch, tomorrow he'll be up at 6). It is working great for Motopop to stay home with him. He's having a bit of a time squeezing in the real estate selling but he is wonderful with Boyo.

But here I am on Friday afternoon burnt out from a week on the job and feeling -kick, kick, kick. "Just a few somersaults to let you know I'm here." I don't know if it's the chocolate I just ate or the music I just put on but she's awake now. So I'm thinking about how crazy our lives are going to be with 2 and hoping that we are up to the task- and we can afford it. Those insurance copays sure take a hit on the paycheck.

Lost, Inc.

One of the (way too many) television shows I watch with regularity is Lost. I generally love the soap opera/sci fi/philosophical bent to the show but am becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress. What is most frustrating is the characters' lack of critical thinking and communication skills. It reminds me of working for a small business where even though there are only 30 people the left hand still doesn't know what the right hand is doing. For example, why...

• Would you not try to get as much information as possible about the 'Others' from a captive?
• Would you walk around alone in an environment rife with potential kidnappers and 'monsters'?
• Would you not have a centralized method for sharing information to learn more about your enemy?

In a small business at least we all belong to a 'department' so that we know what we are responsible for even if the lack of information about what others are doing makes what we are doing less efficient. And at least no one's life is on the line if we mess up.

Our President Stands on Things

I'll add my two cents to the internet buzz about the White House Correspondent's Association dinner. I stumbled across Stephen Colbert's keynote address while channel flipping past CSPAN and thought it was brilliantly funny. It took reviewing it on one of the many web links to realize how uncomfortable everyone in the audience was and that made it even funnier. Nobody knew how to take him and he jabbed at the press and the president. See additional fun commentary by people more witty than I.

Dirt!

I'm so relieved to see research like this out there:

Babies and dirt go together just fine

A recent study suggests that early exposure to allergens strengthens babies' immune systems and protects them from allergies and asthma later on. Read Dr. Parker's entire "Healthy Children" post on the topic (there are a couple caveats), then throw away your antibacterial soap, give the feather duster the day off, turn up the music, and roll around on the floor with your baby. As my man Dr. P says: "Life is messy and maybe that's not such a bad thing after all!"
link

I am allergic to cats, pollens, dust, etc. and yet I am an abysmal housekeeper. Lets hope Boyo benefits from my lack of cleaning! We have the optimal set-up: two cats, one dog and dust.

Marriage Schmarriage

One of the big news items here is whether to have Minnesotan voters decide whether gay marriage should be outlawed on the November ballot. This issue drives me nuts. Whoever wants to be married should be able to be and the bigots that want to limit the right should just mind their own business since it doesn't affect them anyway. There are a lot of issues that no one is talking about though. Consider:

• Why don't we start campaigning to scrap the institution of marriage altogether. This would have the extra bonus of challenging the whole construct of the nuclear family and force us to develop some alternative methods of health care coverage since so many people are covered by their spouse's insurance.
  
  
• Why are Republicans against gay marriage? You'd think they'd be all for increasing the tax base by counting so many dual-income-no-kids couples in a higher tax bracket. Not to mention the boon to the economy as thousands (millions?) more people bought into the industrial wedding complex at 12-50k per wedding. Let's get some estimates on this people!
  
  
• When do a lot of these kooks that are against gay marriage ever have to deal with the issue in real life? A lot of them probably think of gays as some kind of mythical creature, like unicorns, since everyone gay they encounter is probably in the closet or is a larger than life creation of the media.
  
  
• Let's figure out an alternate way to deal with some of these marriage issues. For example, legal agreements that are recognized by hospitals in case of emergencies, adoption law reform, working to validate gay couples in our circles of family and friends since there are fewer formal opportunities to do that, etc.
  
  
• Lobbying for a ballot measure to legalize gay marriage instead of letting the fearmongers drive the debate.

Music Nonstop

Now that my office has moved to a slightly more isolated part of the building I am listening to music while I work more often. My fave is last.fm where I can plug in a band like Architecture in Helsinki and hear similar artists. I guess I didn't realize that this was also a social networking thing. There are groups you can join and you can make friends. I now have my first friend since a Finnish teenager added me to his friends list. Who knew you could find out you had so much in common with someone across the world.?

Another cool feature, being able to add a chart of the music you've been listening to on your blog:

Invention #2: Short Pants

You know how boys used to wear short pants and then graduated to long pants when they were fully grown? Why can't we do the same thing with baby clothes? How about pants with snaps down the sides- they start out with a cuff folded up several times and the snaps hold the cuffs up. As the legs get longer you take the snaps down a notch and get a longer leg. You could have some cool, patterned fabric lining the pants.
















I haven't bought any baby clothes for Boyo yet because my mom is such a gifted second hand shopper. But if I did it would sure burn me if I bought something that he grew out of after wearing it only a couple of times.

Rhymesayer's Settin' to Bust Out of the Minneapple

MNSpeak has a nice round up of recent press coverage on Atmosphere. I'm so excited to go to the show tomorrow night. It caps off their tour and I hear there are a lot of special guests scheduled to celebrate their return home.

Invention #1: Sensory Gloves

On occasion I get crazy invention ideas so I am going to start adding them here. The latest is a 'Sensory Glove'. This would allow workers to have hand protection but not sacrifice touch sensitivity. For example, if you are working with dangerous chemicals but still need to feel small computer parts on an assembly line or for surgeons or if you are digging through rubble and need to feel where the glass pieces are.

The fingertips and palm area would be covered with pinhead sized sensors. The inside of the glove would have and array of microscopic 'wires' that would transmit the outside sensor signals to the skin of the user. That way the user could remotely feel what is on the other side of the glove.

Coco Verde

Mango Salsa

My new favorite recipe is for Mango Salsa:

1 mango cut into small cubes
1/4 cup diced onion
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
hot sauce to taste- I use 1/2 tsp Marie Sharp's carrot hot sauce

Mmmmm

Kiva

I love the idea of Kiva! This site allows you to make microloans to African businesses. It is amazing how a small investment in American terms can make such a huge difference for someone's quality of life in the developing world. See also the picture of the Hippo Roller. I can't imagine how much work it is to go fetch the water you need from miles away every day. Go Boing Boing for publicizing these great ideas.

Fire, Stilts and Large Puppets

It is not ALL on the Internet but I'm trying to add more. Every year Barebones Productions puts on a Halloween production at a local park. Every year I start searching online for which park it will be at and have trouble finding out. I suppose I am not hooked in enough with the puppet subculture in the cities to hear about it word of mouth like I'm supposed to. In any case I got the info on the 2005 production, "Foretold" and trekked off on a cold Halloween evening to watch a giant puppet show in the dark.

It was a story of a village of the dead who hid in their houses because they were afraid of moving on to the next world. It had all the elements that make the Barebones Halloween show so memorable- huge puppets, fire, people on stilts. . .

The best puppet was a 10 foot tall T-rex skeleton that moved incredibly fluidly. The best moment was walking from the first stage will hundreds of people carrying canterns (lanterns made out of cans with holes punched in the side) to the finale at the river. Then there were fire-twirlers and rafts rowing up to take the village of the dead to the other world.

After the show a huge barge came up the river and eerily lit the fog swirling off the surface. I'm sure the bargemen were a bit baffled at the crowd of hundreds of people waving at them from the bank at 9pm.

Favorite quote of the evening from my friend C: "T is learning fire-twirling. Maybe she can be in the show next year. Maybe not- she might not fit in with those fire-twirlers who wear leather, ride unicycles and kick ass."