Clairvoyant

I really think I'm a little bit psychic, I always have.  Either that, or some things in my life are just really damn coincidental.  Examples:

1.) One day, my uncle posted a picture of some random guy on his Facebook, and I don't know why, but I thought "is that Walter Kronkite?"  So I go looking online, realizing it wasn't, but did a little learning about Walter Kronkite in the process.  The next day, I'm listening to the radio, and the announce the death of the famous Walter Kronkite...  I have never thought about the man before in my life, yet I research him randomly one day and the next day he dies.  Weird...

2.) I was washing dishes the other day, and I started washing a fragile wine glass.  Preston was in his jumper in the kitchen with me, and started whining, so I turned to look at him-- still washing the glass.  As I turned, I thought, "I should be careful washing this glass and not paying attention, because I could break it and cut myself," so I turned back to face the sink.  What do you know, not 5 seconds later, I bumped the glass on the side of the sink and it broke.  I was really weirded out...

3.) Yesterday, we were having a discussion at work about scary movies, and I mentioned how scared of "It" I was/am.  So last night, I'm watching TV, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show was on.  It's not inherently a scary movie, but I was really bothered by Tim Curry's character Frank. N. Furter.  This morning I Wikied that, and what do you know: Time Curry played It.  Weird that I had just been talking about that movie, and there It was on TV, scaring me again.

Now you can see why I'm so bothered at the fact that I often have visions while I'm driving on the highway of getting in really bad car accidents.  Let's hope that doesn't realize...

Happy Birthday, Preston Charles!

It's 7:58pm.  One year ago I was being wheeled up from Labor & Delivery to my room in the Mommy and Baby unit at Froedtert.  Preston had been born at 3:30, and the place was full so we had to wait to get a room upstairs.  But we finally did, and I felt like I could finally rest a bit. 

Tonight, I sit here on the couch and I watch Preston sitting on the living room floor playing with his new baby doll (thanks to Aunt Erin and Uncle Tom), and the box it came in.  Skip's playing the guitar, and Scotch is playing with Preston.  We are a little family.  I could not be more blessed.   One year ago we were marvelling at this tiny miracle that had just been brought into the world, and right now I'm marvelling at how much he has grown into a goofy, adorable, sweet, laid-back, loving little blondie.  He has brought Skip and I together more than I could have imagined, and we grow more and more each day as we learn how to be the best parents we can be.   

I would not change things for the world.

First cake (the "real" cake comes next weekend), and the ensuing enjoyment, obligatory post-cake cleanup, and playing in a box: 

Busy busy busy.

I've decided that next summer and fall, instead of keeping weekends open to schedule stuff later on, I'm going to specifically schedule nothing on some weekends just to have free time.  I've felt as if the spring just melted into the summer which has just melted into the fall.  I've realized we have something on the calendar already for every weekend through Thanksgiving.  I thought the end of the summer was going to bring some time to just chill or be spontaneous... nope.  I also realize and acknowledge that we choose to involve ourselves with a lot of activities and a lot of friends, which I wouldn't change.  We may just need to re-prioritize a bit next year. 

In the meantime, we have actually enjoyed the things we've been doing, despite being so occupied.  This past Saturday was Liz and Kermit's wedding, which was very fun.  I don't think I've ever been to such a short wedding service in my life!  Hell, our wedding hadn't even gotten through the opening blessing in the time it took Parsons' officiant to finish the whole ceremony!  It was beautiful, though-- gorgeous weather-- and a very fun reception.  I have to say, the food for Liz's wedding was some of the best of all the one's we've been to this summer.  Congratulations Parsons!

I've started back at Knightwind for the season, too.  Wednesday nights we rehearse from 7:15 to 9:30.  We're playing a great program this year, lead on the podium by our new director from Marquette.  The music is pretty challenging-- I may even have to practice... (If you know me, practicing is essentially against my religion).  I really enjoy this group, and have made some lifelong friends, despite there being such an age difference between me and them.  I'm one of the youngest members of the group, but some of them have welcomed me (and Skip and Preston) with open arms and I feel like an integral part of the group, only after 2 1/2 seasons.  I look forward to many more!

Skip and Halo of Dionysus are trucking along as well, despite some personnel changes and such that they've undergone.  They have a show out in Madison next Friday night, so it should be interesting to see how that all pans out.  I hope they're successful!  Skip has taken up the bass, so we now have probably 6 guitars of various types in our house.  That makes it 2 acoustic guitars, 2 or 3 electric, 1 bass, 3 amps, 1 tuba, 1 sousaphone, I think there's a mandolin in there somewhere, and maybe some harmonicas and other instrumental randomness.  All we need is a partridge in a pear tree, and we're all set...

Oh yeah, and Preston is great, too :).  He is at the point where he is cruising like crazy all over the house, and will even stand on his own for a few seconds-- until he realizes he's not holding onto anything, when he'll then sit down and crawl.  He loves these days to play with Scotch, and I am so proud of my pup and how patient he is with the baby.  Preston is the only person that Scotch will let play with his feet, which is a sign of ultimate tolerance for Scotch-- he hates having his feet touched.  In turn, Preston has also learned to feed the dog... urgh.  He will sit there in his high chair and hand pieces of his food to the damn dog, who will take them ever-so-gingerly if we're not watching. Little shit (the dog, that is...).  Preston will also do that with some of his toys, which has really confused poor Scotch.  He knows that Preston is an alpha to him, so he thinks it's okay to take things from him when he offers them.  Too bad it's foam blocks and food that Scotch isn't supposed to have!  We've got some work to do on this "sharing" concept...

In house news, the city took our huge pile of brush that we set out last weekend.  I was afraid they wouldn't take it all, but they did.  Great!  Now I can put more out there for them to take!

Some pics:

Preston trying to escape

At the park swinging

A bit dangly...

Yard Work

In case you don't remember, I posted back in June about our yard.  It was a forest.  Well, Saturday I gathered a work crew: Me, Mom, Dad, Jim, Nancy, Skip (when he woke up), Mary, and Sarah and Andy Z.  Here is a chronical of the work we did:

Preston, waiting for everyone to get to the house.  He likes to go under the table and go "Scchh" and yell really loud.  It's probably because we usually are yelling at "Scchh" when he goes under the table!

Here's Jim and Mom working in the yard.  The white poles were trellis' that were buried 4 feet into the ground, and then into concrete.  This was just the beginning of us realizing how difficult it was going to be to get this stuff up. Jim: "Hey, you guys better get your Chinese food orders ready, because I'm about to hit China!"

Nancy and Jim digging and hauling flagstone.  Mom's playing with fire in the background.

Here's Nancy and Jim assessing more of the damage.  Little did we know that bird-feeder pole was also buried in concrete.  There were just all kinds of weird things used in this yard.  There were random pieces of edging, rocks, wood framing... just all kinds of crap.  It's as if the people were bracing for armageddon or something.  This yard was going nowhere!

I didn't think this tree was going to get to come down that day, but it did!

Here's Preston, just hanging out watching all the fun!  Notice his adorable "candy corn" hat made by Cassandra for the Halloween season.

The tree is down!

The city of Milwaukee will pick up our brush, I just hope it's not over the limit for what they'll take.  This was only the beginning of what we left out there...

This is the ugly root system from the tree.  It took most of the time to get that all dug up.

I got Scotch a bone to keep him occupied.  A couple of times he came up to me with a stick or something in his mouth thinking he had something he wasn't supposed to have.  I thought, "chew on whatever the heck you want, buddy!"

Once we got the big pond tarp up, we realized the edges of the pond had been laid out with railroad ties held together with 4-ft long rhibar.  The rhibar was ALSO in concrete.

Andy had to go get his sledgehammer so we could break up the concrete.  Then Skip just sawed the wood from the tree house down as far as possible, and we just buried over what we couldn't dig up. 

We thought there was concrete UNDER the pond, too... Thank god it was just clay which had been kind of oxidized so it was white.

Here's a view from the back looking front.  You can see along the left side that there are still some nice trees and shrubs that we just cut back, so next spring we should have more controlled growth.  Not to mention a.) we didn't pull EVERYTHING up, and b.) we won't have to plant much.  I can't believe the difference a day made in making the yard look totally different.  We've still got some hauling and brush removal to do, but in the spring we'll be able to plant grass seed and get a real lawn going!

New schedule these days

Skip has gone up a "point" at Sinai, and is now working 5 shifts every 2 weeks (as before), but will now be working 7pm-7am.  He's also, in case I didn't post it before, working as a transport nurse for Meda-Care once or twice a month.  He's still occasionally working as an EMT there, too.  I'm so proud of all his hard work, because it's really paying off in terms of him being a successful nurse.  However, it means we're having to rearrange things here and there with our schedules, which is always a bit more complicated when a one-year-old is involved.

Preston is still going to Cassandra's, except now on the days after Skip's shifts he's there all day, as opposed to just the morning.  Depending on what time Skip gets home in the mornings, he will sometimes be the one taking Preston to Cassandra's, which will save me some time in getting to work.  We kept the same babysitter even though we moved a little farther away, but that means I have to leave way earlier on the mornings when I have to take Preston.  Such is life.  So, we tested that out this morning, and it was a little crazy.  But it worked, with Skip getting home just in time for me to pass Preston off to him so he could take him and I could go to work.  I'll pick Preston up in the afternoons now, which will be a little different since Skip was usually the one to pick him up before.  I think this new schedule will work out okay for us, and it will be nice having a little extra income, as well.

Our poor dog is totally confused, though, since he was used to Skip getting home at 3:30 every morning.  He stayed downstairs most of the night last night, and scared the bejeezus out of me when I got up to go to the bathroom at 4, when he was standing outside the door when I came out.  He looked so confused as to why Skip wasn't home yet.  He'll get used to it, but he's a pretty sensitive dog, so it'll be interesting to see if it affects him at all.  Listen to me-- I'm talking about my dog like he's our child.  :)  Well, he is our hairy 1st child...

Anyways, I'm off to Menards, the grocery store, and Discount Liquor tonight to get supplies for tomorrow's "yard party."  We've got folks coming up to help us get our yard in order, finally, as this really is the first weekend since the summer started that we've been able to specifically dedicate our day to the yard.  It's about time!  Let's just pray that the weather is nice enough...