Pi Day vs. Steak & a BJ Day

Stuff and things...

Today is a duel holiday.

It's Pi Day (3.14).

It's also Steak and a Blow Job Day. (This is the man's answer to Valentine's Day, one month later.)

Jesse suggested a couple of weeks ago that we only eat pie on Pi Day...but I'm thinking he didn't think that one through. Otherwise, the words would have never left his mouth. He takes S&BJ Day very, very seriously -- we threw a formal dinner party to celebrate it once.

At any rate, it's ALSO payday. This is good, otherwise we wouldn't be celebrating either holiday in any kind of style.

I managed to run a bunch of errands this morning, which makes me feel like an accomplished grownup...even though I accomplished all of these errands wearing a silly striped hat that is too small.





One of the errands I ran was to stop by my friend Jocelyn's house to peruse her pile of outgrown little girl clothing. This was a huge success -- I ended up getting nearly a full wardrobe for Ava for $45. Not only is this cheaper than buying clothes in the store, but it was complete outfits. So, now my kid is going to look like her mom knows how to dress her. This is a bonus.

While I'd like to be able to run to the grocery store this afternoon, Wes is feeling crappy and I don't see that happening. Poor guy has a fever and a cough. This morning he coughed so hard he threw up on me. That was fun...though, it probably went better now than it would have ten years ago. At this point, I've built up a certain level of immunity to gross things that are byproducts of my children. I happened to be wearing two shirts, so I just pulled off the top one and kept on trucking.

I started using Twitter. I think I like it...though I'd like it better if I could connect it to my facebook. I guess they're having some issues setting up a connection between the two right now.

Oh, and I would like this for my birthday, please:

http://www.winningsolution.com/premium-games-for-sale/scrabble-typography-edition/

Dirty and Fun

A couple of years ago, I got bitten by the springtime-gotta-grow-things bug.

In retrospect, I'm pretty sure most of my symptoms were actually less about spring and more about the fact that I was pregnant and crazy.

At any rate, I woke up one day and decided that would be the perfect day to go to the store, buy a bunch of seeds and dirt, and ~grow things~! I was certain that this was going to be a smashing success. Failure was not an option. It smelled earthy and warm outside and, if anything, it was going to be a challenge to keep all of these lush growing things contained...right?

Not so much.

Turns out, I'm remarkably bad at growing things in pots. I have a short attention span, we live in the desert, and I have zero experience keeping anything but kids and pets alive (and they bitch at me when they're hungry or thirsty, so it's sort of like cheating).

Even though it shouldn't have been a big surprise to anybody that was sort of paying attention, I was shocked and devastated when I had pots full of cracked dirt and mummified tomato plants a couple of weeks later.

The following year, I decided to forgo vegetables in pots and try out some flowers in the front flower bed. My rationale here was (even if I managed to kill every single plant that I put in there) anything I did was going to be an improvement over the pre-existing hot mess that housing had planted.

Amazingly, this went pretty well. I didn't have a ton of money to sink into it, so I only bought a few plants, but several of my friends moved away and donated their flowers to my hand-me-down garden. I kept pretty much everything alive until winter hit and it all (presumably) went to sleep. I guess the true test will be in the coming months, when things do -- or do not -- come poking out of the ground. (Though my irises already have some new spikes, so I'm jumping the gun and calling it good.)

Pics, or it never happened.

 


At any rate, I'm feeling cocky and wanting to try the vegetables again. I've been reading as much as I can about it, so I feel significantly more prepared. (Thank you, Pinterest.) I have a game plan beyond "dirt + seeds = MAGIC!". The plan involves home-made planter boxes with water reservoirs at the bottom, using a Gregorian calendar to guide when I plant seeds (as opposed to whim and hCG), and "worm towers". I'm really excited about those worm towers -- they're like mini compost heaps in each bin.

Tonight I planted the first of the seeds -- tomatoes, peppers, and basil. In about a month, I'll sow the summer squash and cucumbers. When I move it all out to the planter boxes, I'll sow dill straight into the box. Oh, and I'm leaving one empty so I can add strawberry plants when they start selling them at Lowe's.

Hopefully I'll be able to update this blog with all kinds of amazing, green progress.

Today I...

...went grocery shopping hungry.
...added what looks to be a promising white board system to the big kids' chore rotations.
...learned some very humbling and enlightening truths about infertility and infant loss from a new friend's blog.
...played several rounds of Draw Something! on my phone.
...withdrew Max from guitar lessons based on his teacher's recommendation.
...signed both of them up for baseball. (The last frontier of Youth Sports for my kids - they have already done soccer, football, and basketball.)
...had my first (virtual, thank God) exposure to Hydnellum Peckii AKA "bleeding tooth fungus".
...was charmed by my husband's geeky enthusiasm about an upcoming anime convention.
...put off several of my planned chores so my son could nap in my lap.
...stayed up entirely too late reading fan fiction for the first time in probably more than a year.

Elaboration on the shopping trip, via my facebook status:

**Grocery shopping on an empty stomach = Fail.

...and I mean "fail" in the most delicious and ridiculous ways possible.

**There is more crap in those grocery bags right now than there has been cumulatively in our pantry for the last six months.

Ava went with me (also starving) and the entire time sounded something like, "Ohh! Coconut marshmallows?!? I didn't know they made those!"

"You know what those would be great for? S'mores!!"

"We've got to go back for chocolate and graham crackers!"

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. We must have backtracked four times. lol

**I like how she has mastered the concepts of "sarcasm" and "enabling". Now we just need "flagrant lack of regard for savings accounts" and she'll be the ultimate shopping buddy.

**I just assessed the damage. I did buy everything on my list...AND two bags of marshmallows (coconut and regular), six chocolate bars, two boxes of graham crackers, four boxes of pudding, a package of birthday oreos, three brownie mixes (two original and one mudpie), four small containers of Ben and Jerry's (two mint cookie, two chocolate fudge), a pineapple-orange bundt cake (wtf??), whipped cream, three rolls of cinnamon rolls, and two boxes of PopTarts (apple strudel and cookies n cream).

Also, we realized at the end that we hadn't picked up anything for dinner tonight, so we bought three packages of frozen appetizer thingies from Friday's...and a big box of Bagelbites.

...then we realized we didn't have time to cook it, so we got Burger King on the way home.

*THUD*

I swear!! It didn't seem like ~that~ much while we were shopping! lol

The beginning...again.

Apparently, I created this blog and nabbed "Maavax" in May of 2009.

Then, in true Reece-fashion, I left it completely blank and forgot all about it.

In more recent history, Google has taken over the world.

I'd been reluctant to join the Cult of Google beyond some daily searches. I've already established some comfortable niches on the Internet -- I've got my email, I've got my Myspace Multiply Facebook that I update every day, I've got my Camtu where I keep in touch with my 'tu girls -- and I didn't relish the thought of revamping the whole system just so everything could be streamlined with one log-in. Plus, I kind of like how they're NOT all connected. I want my peas over here, I want my mashed potatoes over here, I want my meatloaf over here (so to speak -- and a very unlikely metaphor for me, as I like it all plopped in the same bowl and covered in gravy).

My reluctance has been waning and little by little Google has been chipping away at the walls between my internet presences...and then today was the tipping point.

I woke up to an email in my inbox from an author that I used to follow faithfully and then lost track of quite a long time ago. I can't even tell you how much that email meant to me - I'm talking "Beiber-fever" levels of excitement. Turns out, she keeps a blog on Blogger. There you have it. That's enough to make me want to be a part of it.

Really, there's no reason not to -- it's not like I ever present any persona other than the real one anywhere online. And I'm not shy about sharing my various contact information with pretty much anybody.

I make no promises, to myself or anybody else. It's entirely possible that this will be the only entry for the next three years...though, a more likely scenario is that I will over-use it for several days or weeks and THEN abandon it for a long time again. I'm nothing if not consistently inconsistent.