Several Uplifting Things

Here are some uplifting things -- the highlights from my week...

1. An empowering message for all women (I've watched this once or twice a day, all week long):

2. Then I found an insightful TED. The title of it is misleading. It's really a video about the importance of having hard conversations and being compassionate:
www.upworthy.com/a-4-year-old-girl-asked-a-lesbian-if-shes-a-boy-she-responded-the-awesomest-way-possible?c=ufb1


3. Seth Adam Smith wrote a blog post that was nice but didn't quite sit right with me. Then I read a reactionary post, which I think sums up the situation much better (but yay for Seth and his sudden whirlwind of fame): www.askyourdadblog.com/2013/11/marriage-is-for-me-and-you-and-kids-and.html

4. A video of my brother walking: http://juliebike.blogspot.com/2013/11/bill-sat-nov-2-walking-hall.html

5. This new blog, started by a woman with whom I went to high school, which is going to be really fun (and educational) to read during the next year or so: http://myannoyingspendingfreeze.blogspot.com/

6. My novel is going to be published tomorrow. Holy. Crap.

Highlights of the last six weeks

Oh my, has it really been six weeks since I last wrote a blog post? How is that possible? I was thinking that it had been about a month but nope, my last post was April 8th. In my defense, I was sick for most of April, and life has been crazy busy...

But when is life not busy? Seems like all the careful efforts I've made recently to make life less hectic has just meant I have more time for one of the 1,000 other things that are clamoring for my time. (Sound familiar, friends?)

At this very moment, I am sitting in a hotel conference room, very far away from home. I'm here for a week-long work conference. My mom came with me to see the sights and so that I could bring my daughter. (There's no way I could have left Darling at home for the week; I would have been miserable.) They are at the public library this morning, which is just one block down the road. Yesterday they did a bit of sight-seeing. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain so I think they will get trapped inside. Thankfully we have a whole bunch of toys and books with us because we needed a lot of things to keep Darling busy on the long airplane ride, so I think they will have plenty of things to do tomorrow.

Now let's see if I can remember all of the things I've been doing and working on during the last six weeks...

We had family in town, which is definitely the highlight among recent event. Nate's brother, who currently lives in southern California with his family, had some work-related meetings in a city near us. His wife (my SIL Amy) and their daughter Maddie came with him so they could visit us and Amy's family. We got to spend several days together.

It was great to spend time with them, talk, play, and cook. Darling and Maddie had a great time together. They played and read books, and even took a bath together. Darling spent the whole long weekend saying Cousin. We tried to get her to say Cousin Maddie but she didn't seem to get that Maddie is Maddie's name -- I think she thinks that Maddie's name is Cousin. Lol. She still asks for her cousin every couple of days. It's adorable. We loved their visit but did not get enough time with them. Hopefully we'll be able to go to southern California sometime soon and visit them.

That excitement happened during the first weekend in May.

The week before their visit, I took a little day trip to visit friends Kimmy, Nathan, and Little. That's the second-best thing to happen in the past six weeks. I got to see their newly fenced garden and recently built garden boxes. We attempted to make macarons, and had many other delicious things to eat. The babes played with each other. I temporarily lost my keys. I started to panic about the lost keys while I was there, but right now I can't think why I was so worried. I'd love an excuse to move in with my friends and never go home. :o)

Since I'm ordering recent events from most-to-least favorite, I guess the next thing on the list is Mother's Day. Nate was kind enough to make it a bit of a Mother's Weekend for me. I didn't get a complete break from the madness of life, but I did get extra time to rest and read, and I had to change fewer diapers. The Saturday right before mother's day, I actually spent most of the day running some errands while Nate was Super Dad. Some of the errands were fun, others were not. But it was nice to be out of the house and able to do things at my own pace, not at the will and speed of the Toddler.

My mom's day gift this year was an ice cream maker. I specifically requested it, and even went with Nate to get it from Costco. I also picked out the gift wrap that Nate used. (He was "allowed" to pick out the card on his own, ha ha.) Nate was a little bit upset that I picked and helped buy my own gift -- he prefers for gifts to be a total surprise. I'd rather have something I know I'll like. I told him the fun part was the beautiful wrapping he was required to do, and the unknown card.

Unbeknownst to me, Nate had decided to spice up the experience. He spent a couple of weeks writing a series of rhyming riddles, which together made a scavenger hunt. I had to hunt down my present! It was great. The riddles were so well done that I thought he'd found something on the internet that he copied. But no, it was completely original! I loved it, maybe even more than the ice cream maker. So thoughtful.

I think that's it for all of the big events. So in other news, we've been working on the garden. We had some uncharacteristically warm weather in April -- it was hot! The cool-weather plants were unhappy, but then I also couldn't seem to get the warm-weather plants to sprout because it was still cool at night. I finished all of my planting last week before I left on this trip; hopefully when I get home everything will have started growing.

I sold one of our Burleys. I can't remember if I ever blogged about the fact that I have three Burley bike trailers. If I haven't explained this, then don't worry about why I have three. Chalk it up to me being crazy. The good news is that we're down to two because someone came and bought one (the little Bee). I'm working on selling the Cub. I had a couple of people show interest -- one offered me a pathetically low price, the other one wants to come see it. Let's all cross our fingers!

I've also been doing a fair amount of writing. I started a new writing project a few months ago. It's a novel about angels and demons. I feel weird saying that because "supernatural" stories are not in my normal realm of writing, and not even the kind of thing I typically read. But an idea came to me one day, and I've been going for it. Between the outline and the sections I've written, I have more than 12,000 words down. (Generally novels are 50,000+ words.)

One of my goals with this project is to create a complete, detailed outline before I dive heavily into the writing. As of right now, I have a skeleton outline for the whole novel and have written detailed scene outlines for the first half of the story. I want to finish writing the actual story by the end of this year (2013), have it edited at the start of next year, and self-publish it in spring 2014. I think I'm going to re-join a writing challenge called ROW-80 in July, when the next (3Q) round begins. Right now my unofficial goal is to write 1,200 words a week.

My biggest cheerleader for this goal has been author-friend J.R. Pearse Nelson. It's good to know someone who has already jumped through the self-publishing hoops; she's an invaluable resource. She also has another novella coming out soon. I just got to Beta Read the story -- it's the third book in her Children of the Sidhe series, called Flight. It was great. It will be out sometime in July. She plans to publish another novella (book 4 of CotS) and a novel by the end of the year! Amazing. She's such an inspiration.


With that, I think I covered the major news. I hope everyone is doing well!

Sick and books and stuff

So... I haven't written for a couple of weeks. I was violently sick with a stomach flu for about three days, and then immediately thereafter I came down with a head cold. The baby got the head cold. It had been passed on to the two of us by dad, who had spent several days decommissioned by severe back pains prior to getting sick.

In other words, February started out like this: Nate had immobilizing back pain for several days, bookended by weekends of MIM classes. The pain cleared up just in time for him to come down with a severe head cold. He was only just barely starting to get better when I got the stomach flu, sending me to bed for three days straight. (Seriously, I couldn't get up to do more than rush across the hall to the bathroom.) The first day I felt somewhat normalized after the flu, I started coming down with a head cold, too. The baby got the head cold two days later, as I was in the midst of feeling the worst of it.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, I spent many hours making final revision notes on Queen Witch for J.R. Pearse Nelson.

Whew.

I've actually managed to maintain a fairly positive attitude through most of this. I'm tired and certainly it has been trying, but really, I feel like I was reasonably upbeat this month. Except maybe at the ends of days, when I was feeling the weight of the day on my shoulders. That's when I would sit down to blog but could only find the frustration and exhaustion. So I didn't write. I felt obligated to write -- I still feel obligated, and that's why I'm putting down words right now -- but the actual desire to write is currently absent, as is the feeling that I have anything much to say. I think all of the editing for J.R. was also a drag on my word-related inclinations. (Not a diss, not a complaint, just an observation.)

Speaking of J.R. and Queen Witch, have you picked up a copy? You really should. Go to Amazon and buy the e-book. Or keep an eye on the blog for the availability of the book in print (should be out next month).

So let's turn for a moment to other forms of entertainment: Somewhere in the midst of being sick I read another Susan May Warren book. (You probably don't remember the review I gave of Heiress -- I read it last summer.) The book I read was "My Foolish Heart." Warren is a Christian writer and so her books always talk about God. The religion was weaved much more smoothly into this storyline than it was in Heiress, though I still found it a tad annoying (overbearing) at times. Nevertheless, I do recommend the book. It's a solid 3 or 4 star book. At times I felt like I was reading a Nicholas Sparks novel. (I mean that as a compliment, even though I'm not especially fond of Mr. Sparks.)

I also finally got to watch Dark Knight Rises. I think it took me three nights to through the movie (such is life when you only have about an hour a night to yourself.) I thought it was brilliant and beautiful. Joseph Gordon-Levitt...I could stand to see more of him. I like that guy; he's actually rather talented and surprisingly well-rounded. Nate says he has too much of a babyface. But I saw a little of him during the Oscars highlights and you know what? He can pull off much older looks, I think. So rock on, JGL!

Finally, here are three cute pictures of my kid (because this post is utterly random, so I'm just gonna roll with it...)

I asked her to smile for the camera and got about eight of these, sigh: 

She's really into books the last few days, and especially loving "Where's Waldo?" Notice her feet helping her hold up the book:

QUEEN WITCH IS HERE! Go buy a copy right now!!!!!!!

Queen Witch: Available on Amazon as an e-book, with a print edition available soon. (I'm going to get a couple of extra print copies when it comes out, so let me know if you want to borrow one!)

Finally, finally, finally!!! I have been waiting for this book to come out for six months. It doesn't even matter that I got to beta read the novel twice, I was still crazy impatient for it to finally be published.

Full disclosure: I'm friends with the author, J.R. Pearse Nelson. She's a self-publishing Indy writer. In addition to Queen Witch, she has also published a pair of novellas (Tribute and Vessel). They are paranormal romance... not really my preferred genre. I don't mind the paranormal but I could do without the "romance." Yeah, call me prudish, I won't be offended.

Queen Witch, however, is just a straight-up paranormal novel about a young witch wrestling with her destiny, her family, and her moral compass. It's written to the young adult crowd so it's (thankfully) pretty PG. But don't let the intended audience dissuade you -- I'm an older Gen Y and I still loved it.

I've read a lot of self-published stuff, and I think that Queen Witch is far and above its peers. So many of the other books I read are poorly edited, the characters fall flat, the scenes feel contrived and forced. Not Queen Witch. It's a real winner. As I said to J.R. when I finished my second beta read, it's a Grand Slam. (That's a baseball reference. Don't worry if you don't get it. :o)

The book is excellently edited. The characters are well-rounded and realistic -- and that's one of my most important criteria in a book. I like to connect with my characters. Sage, the protagonist, is real and genuine and deep. You can't help but like her and root for her, and worry about her when things get dangerous.

There are a couple of good twists in the novel, giving it a bit of thrill and just a hint of darkness.

The storyline generally progresses at an excellent pace, it's always moving forward but you don't feel rushed. I appreciate that all of the scenes have a good flow and add to the overall storyline. It's just plain good, creative writing from J.R. Pearse Nelson.

I will say that this novel started out a little bit slow for me. The story starts when Sage is 14 and those first couple of chapters, at that age, aren't as interesting. But definitely by the middle of the book I was hopelessly hooked, and as the end drew near I couldn't put it down. So if you likewise find that it starts slow, just give it a little more time, it's worth it!

And then she walked! (Plus other updates and a bunch of pictures)

Years from now when my daughter asks me, "When did I start walking?"
I will tell her, "November 10, 2012."

We went to visit my parents last week at their new house (it was Nate's first time up there). As soon as we stepped in the door and I set Baby Girl down so that I could take off my shoes... and she toddled away from me, across the room.

Up to that point in time, my daughter's walking was pretty limited. She'd use furniture and other objects to help herself stand and walk, and she would sometimes take two or three steps on her own. One time I even saw her take about six unassisted steps. But mostly, she wasn't interested.

Not until the magic of Grandma's House intervened. A magic spell was cast when we walked in the door, and now my daughter is walking. She still crawls a bit, especially if she falls down while walking, but for the most part she is just toddling around as though it were the most normal thing ever.

I LOVE IT.

A lot of people tried to tell me that walking wasn't going to be much fun. They said she would get into everything and run away all the time, and that she would be too fast. I think these people must not have waited for seventeen months to see their children walk. To date, of all the things my daughter has learned to do, this is my very most favorite. It is amazing and adorable! I don't miss crawling. She's too big and too old to crawl, and created plenty of its own worries and nuisances. Bring on the walking! Heck, bring on the running!!! I love new adventures and challenges.

The next day, on Sunday, our very good friends who live an hour south (in our college town) came to visit. You might remember them from previous blog posts -- Nathan and Kimmy, whose son "Little" is nearly the same age as our daughter. We made them dinner and Kimmy took some pictures of me making my beloved new treat, pumpkin cremes! Kimmy has a food blog and wanted me to write a guest post. I was/am totally flattered! But since I'm not a great photographer, I convinced her to come and take the pictures. You can check out the post, pictures, and recipe on the Bake Shop's blog, www.kimmysbakeshop.com (here's the direct link).

Monday was a day off work (Vet's Day, belated) so we were all home and having fun. We went to see Nate's dad and then worked a bit on the chicken coop. (More on the coop in a minute.) I finally finished my edits to Queen Witch, J.R. Pearse Nelson's latest work. I sent them along and final revisions are underway. I am grateful and pleased to have participated in the writing process for such an inspiring, self-published author! The new book should be out by the end of the month. Do you want a copy? I'm going to order some extra prints to give away; just let me know.

There's a job opening at work that has me very excited. It's for the Senior Analyst position, which is one step up in pay and about five steps up in awesome from my current job. The position came open two years ago and I very much wanted to apply, but after many long deliberations, I decided the timing wasn't right. For one thing, I was four months pregnant with daughter so I knew I would be out of the office (parental leave) during a critical workload period. In the end I applied for a promotion to my current position, and I am very happy about the route I took. I've gained great experience in my job, and developed leadership skills that will be invaluable if I'm promoted again. It also gave me time to better understand and appreciate the workload of the Senior Analyst.

Now, I don't know whether I will be the top candidate. I'm a strong contender, but several smart, capable people are applying. I do know now that I am very seriously interested in the job, and I feel ready to tackle it, should things go well. The whole process will take a couple of months, so for now... stay tuned!

Today was a pretty normal Saturday. We ran a few errands and got a few things done around the house. I finally got most of the wiring set up for the chicken coop, so that we can have a light out there to keep them warm this winter. There's a covered patio out back with several lights and outlets -- too many, in fact. So I axed the last two routes on the line, hijacking them instead for the coop. I installed a light switch, and then ran wires through conduit out to the coop. (In the rain. And mud. And cold. The conditions were ugly and shoving the wire through long plastic tubing required more muscle than you would think, but when I was done and got to head inside to take a nap with the baby... total satisfaction.)

The thing is, I'm going to have to redo a bunch of work. The switch box is too small to comfortably hold all the wires, and the box doesn't mount securely. So I got a different box after nap time, and I will have to spend another hour out there sometime soon so I can swap out the switch and boxes. It's okay, it will be worthwhile in the end.

As if that wasn't enough stuff, I also tried a new bread recipe today. The goal was a bread with lots of seeds.  It has five kinds... but... it's hard to explain. The bread didn't have a big rise, so it's dense (not bad, just not great); the flavor is a bit... bitter? Some of the seeds have a great flavor, but others are kinda sour/bitter. So maybe more sugar/honey/agave next time? We'll see. I'm not going to make bread for a couple of weeks; too much is going on.

This week is Thanksgiving! Nate's parents are coming over for "dinner" at noon on the big day. We are making most of the goodies. I'm actually excited. I didn't think I would be -- who wants to go through all of that effort? -- but then we went grocery shopping today, and I got yams and potatoes and green beans and pumpkin puree and a turkey... and now, I'm feeling festive! I love Thanksgiving. If only it didn't have to be followed by the madness and annoyance of the Christmas season. (Bah humbug, I despise the holiday commercialism, masses of people everywhere, and stress. Can't I please just skip Christmas this year?)

Since I don't want to end on that Scrooge-like note, here are a ton of cute pictures from the last three months:

Set A) Climbing, crawling, exploring: She'll get into everything. It use to be "Where did we put the baby?" but now it's, "Where did the baby put herself?"

Sitting in a crock pot -- I swear she did all of this on her own:

Climbing on the step ladder -- she loves this:

In her room, she climbs onto her chair, then onto her desk, and perches up there:

And now here are a bunch of cute pictures of various things, many of them with food...

Pretty much one of the worst things I've ever seen:

Halloween Costume: Monkey

(Her) Feelings about Costume: Hatred

Time spent wearing it: Minimal

Playing with Buckle Bear! She doesn't hate him after all:

Diaper Hat -- She can thank her dad for this idea:

The back of her hair is getting long. Sadly, the font is not. Insert nickname: Mullet Girl

(Sleeping. This is what she's doing right now. I love it when she sleeps -- so peaceful.)

It's all B-stuff this week? (baby, books, Ben, and B's birthday)

If you saw my kid this week you might think we, her caretakers, are abusive or at least highly negligent. She's started standing up a lot more and "cruising" around a little bit, which has meant a few bumps and bruises. Until this week I always prided myself on the fact that I keep a close eye on her and she hasn't had any serious nicks or falls. After a series of hurts this week, I now hang my head in shame.

At the sitter's this week, on Monday, she fell down and bit herself, resulting in a cut and bruised lip. (It only just finally healed.) Wednesday when grandma was watching her, Baby Girl bonked her head on the piano bench, right next to her eye, so she had a nasty little bruise on her temple. Then on Friday morning while I was making breakfast, she got tangled up in the small metal step ladder -- tried to climb it, of course -- and managed to both scrape and bruise her thigh. As if that wasn't bad enough, she also kicked a piece of chicken wire yesterday while I was carrying her and got two long, angry-looking cuts on her calf. Arrg! I feel like an awful parent. Poor girl.

The neat thing about Darling's slowly increasing mobility is that she's shown an interest in climbing. I can't really let her out of my sight anymore, but it's a lot of fun! She likes to climb up onto chairs. She has her own special chair for which I'm planning to sew a slipcover (I have the material, I just need to find the time and courage; I might work on that tomorrow, on my day off). Isn't it such a cute chair? She loves it and so do I!

Check out the video of her crawling into her chair...

This week Darling demonstrated her understanding of "bye bye" and kissing. She now says "buuuh buh" and waves when we say goodbye. And if you ask for a kiss, and she's willing, she'll pucker her little lips and make a "mwah" sound when you kiss her. She mostly only does the kissing thing for her dad, of course. She's pretty fond of him.  :o)

Moving on: I just finished a book this evening called "War Wives" and I'm still not really sure if I liked it. The premise was good, the setting interesting and the story line very detailed. But there were a lot of characters and I feel like I never really got enough time with each person in the story, never got to hear each woman's story and connect with the characters. The book was a good length, but tried to cover too many people, events, and too long a period of time (several years) within it's pages. It either needed to be longer or have fewer characters, quite honestly. But I'm not sorry that I read it...?

Here's some news that isn't mine but is very exciting: My BIL and his wife Amy (you remember them, of course) finally found a house! They have been looking for awhile and have wrestled with the market in San Diego, where buying is still competitive and it's tough to find a started home in a decent neighborhood for a decent price. But they found a great house this week and we are VERY happy and excited for them. We can hardly wait to go visit. If you care to know more about it, you can check out my SIL's blog (amykissesmike.blogspot.com).

Speaking of houses, we have way too much on our plates right now. My brother Ben came down for a couple of days this week and did some housework for us. The to-do list is just impossibly long -- I need to stop adding projects to the list, blarg, bad B! Ben started primer-painting the chicken coop and sanded most of the pieces of wood that are going to become the stairs on our front deck. I started staining the wood, but have only gotten about halfway through. Meanwhile the deck has no stairs.... I'm sure it's wearing on our mailman's patience. (Sorry buddy, and thanks.) But on the bright side it's probably deterring would-be salesman... because we get a lot of those (not) in our neighborhood.

The biggest news of late is that my birthday is very soon... it's tomorrow! Yay! Nate's been bugging me for a birthday list. I finally provided one on Thursday. Basically I asked for a day off from stress and responsibility. I'd like to sleep in, take a long shower, perhaps go bike riding or shopping, do some craft projects, not have to clean anything or change diapers.... and I'd like breakfast foods available all day. Nate said he was going to buy me presents, but I said no, what I really want is just to sleep and take it easy. Seriously. I don't want people or stuff. I also don't want a messy house or an unhappy kid. I just want to be selfish and unburdened for one day. Tuesday I will go back to work and life will resume, but tomorrow... tomorrow I get the day off.

I know I still owe you news about baby bike seats, plus I want to talk about making candy, but oh... I'd rather get started on that very long stretch of sleep! Another time my loves. Until then, adieu.

Now that it's later, here's lots more!

You probably don't care to hear about MY GARDEN. But it's our first big garden, and it's doing great, and I like to give updates! If you don't care, just skip along to the section on books...

Our zucchini plants are huge, starting to get out of control. They get way too much water. Nate is big on watering them every morning. I keep trying to tell him no, they're fine, they can get a light watering most days and they will be perfectly content, but he thinks we won't get any veggies off the plants if they don't get water. Well, I picked 12 zucchinis yesterday and added them to the seven I picked on Friday. I think the plants are doing fine.

For the record, the 12 zuchs did not come from one plant. Some how I ended up with three plants. I promise you, I only deliberately planted one. The other two were supposed to be other types of squash, but I guess I got my seeds mixed up or something. The strangest thing is that none of the three zucchini plants look alike (each have different shaped leaves) and the zucchini they yield is unique (one yields dark and skinny zuchs, one light and plump, and the third in the middle of these two extremes).

Almost none of my squash-family plants (including the pumpkins) ended up as planned. There's a scallop squash that was supposed to be a zucchini squash (or maybe a crook-neck; I can't remember exactly -- but not a scallop). There was supposed to be an acorn squash. Two pumpkins ended up in the main garden, where they are going crazy and making a mess of things. They were supposed to be in a different part of the yard where they would have plenty of room to run wild, but again, I must have mixed up the seeds when I planted them because it's a mess. In fact, I had to cut back a lot of the pumpkin runners in the main garden area because they are taking over, attacking the onions and such. Sad.

Half the corn came up and is going strong, the other half is struggling. They are in two long rows, and the healthy half are in a lower-elevation part of the garden, so I think they get more moisture. Before it became garden, that area also had more compost-like material enriching the soil. I'm noting this for next year, so we can make sure the "upper" area gets extra compost.

Some of the onions are struggling. No surprise. Onions like cooler weather; ideally they should have been harvested by now. But I didn't get them in the ground early enough, so they aren't big enough yet to harvest. Hopefully they will weather the heat and I'll get a good yield in another month or so.

The tomatoes are happy and have been thriving in the heat. I had a lot of "volunteer" plants again this year. I made room for as many as I could, so there's about 10 of them around the backyard (not including the four that I deliberately planted). It will be too much fruit when it comes to bear, but I can probably give some away at church. Oh! And to my mom. She didn't get to garden this year. .:Sad face:. for her.

The bell peppers are still growing slowly. I'm just praying that they yield something before the end of the season. Next year I will get the seeds started earlier in the green house, for sure. I also need to do more research on how to make them happy, and put them in the sunniest spot in the garden.

Finally, the sunflowers: small but cute. They are out front in the side yard. We ended up with about 25 plants. They are all for chicken food and I have no idea how much we'll get from them or how long it will feed the chickens, but I'm hoping the fresh squash and pumpkins will feed them for a couple of months, and then the dried corn and sunflower seeds will make it through a few more months. Nate's parents say that chicken feed is expensive (of course, we're just going to get two chickens, which is a lot less expensive to feed than 20+ animals.)


Now on to my next topic, one of my other favorite things: BOOKS

A couple of weeks ago I read Memoirs of a Geisha. It's a moderately dense book and takes a little while to get through. We own the movie and I've watched it several times, so it was playing in the back of my mind as I read. I was impressed at how well the movie tracks the book. It picks up on a lot of subtle details from the story line, even though it didn't have the time to get in to everything.

Apparently that put me in an Asian mood because last week I read Pearl S. Buck's timeless classic, The Good Earth. Oh... such a good book. The story was very dense so it lasted me most of the week. When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it. I was still  "digesting" it days after I finished reading. In fact, I'm still pondering motives and themes. It is the kind of story that literature teachers probably love to assign to students. I know I would have loved reading it for a class in college, and being able to participate in discussions and write a paper or two. I'm thinking about writing a paper on it just for fun. (It's that good.) It was a hard  read, though; it's not a standard "western" story where everything works out and the characters live happily ever after. Parts of it left me deeply troubled and saddened -- I have to remind myself that it's only a book, not a true story.

Now that I'm physically done and mentally almost done with The Good Earth I need a new book. It's August, so I can get a new "free" book on my Fire this month. I don't know what to read, though! Suggestions anyone? Grandma? I'd like to check out another Susan May Warren book but I haven't seen a free one that appeals to me. I might have to just buckle down and pay for Duchess.

My friend who is an author will be publishing a new novel by the end of the month, Queen Witch. I get to be a beta reader and I'm waiting for her to drop a copy of the manuscript in my hands. Any day now... I'm very excited! I'm hoping she might let me tease out a bit of the story line here on my blog. I might even interview her about the book, just for fun and promo. You should all be sure to download a copy when it's available and support my inspiring, aspiring friend! I'll let you know when and where you can get it.


Before I move on to the beloved topic of Baby Girl, I have a few OTHER updates...

Nate's best friend (and his lovely wife and their kids) moved into town one week ago. We've been out to see them twice -- the first of many visits! They are really easy people to spend time with, and I just adore the wife. She's a sweet woman and an amazing mom. She doesn't know it, but every time I'm with her I'm quietly watching her mothering skills and trying to pick up as many tips as possible. She inspires me; I want to be just like her.

I got a haircut this week and chopped it in half. I guess the new 'do is kinda cute.With the heat, I've just had it up, though. Whatever. It's just hair.

Nate and I are continuing to remodel in the basement, mostly in the hallway and utility room. Nate framed the door for the water heater, so there's a whole section of the wall under the stairs that's now ready for drywall! I asked him to buy a drywall knife-saw and I am ridiculously excited to use it. I've been doing a lot of wiring work in the basement. I was just going to add an outlet in the hallway, then I decided to replace (i.e. update) several sections of wiring, and I moved a light switch, and now I'm feeling so confident  in my skills that I'm going try and rewire a big section of the utility room. Doing wiring makes Nate uncomfortable but I've been reading a how-to book on basic wiring and electricity, and I don't have a problem doing the work. Plus, it's fun! A bit of puzzles and problem-solving. (Where does this why go? How do these things connect?) The downsides are that it's dirty, so I can't chase my kid around while I'm working, which means Nate has to watch her; and it takes awhile because you have to be very careful. Hopefully I can find enough time this week to finish the parts that I've started so we can get the power back on to the currently shut-down half of the basement.

I've had water on my mind a lot lately. Maybe it's the heat, or The Good Earth or Dune, or my obsession with Africa, or maybe just because I'm a hippie. (Probably all of those reasons and more.) Whatever the reason, thoughts on how to use less water and preserve/reclaim water have been swirling in my head for quite some time. Last week I ended up spending a whole evening doing research on rainwater collection and storage systems. Nate and I have been discussing this topic for quite some time; he wants to store water to prepare against a natural disaster or Armageddon, and I just want to save some money and create a more sustainable home (For once our extreme differences in opinion are a non-issue, yay!)

I chatted with my awesome mom about my research, my hopes for our system, and the possibilities. She went into research mode (gotta love it when that big brain gets set on a task -- there's no stopping her!) and found a place about 20 minutes east of here that sells slightly-used barrels for a bargain. So on Friday Nate and I took the baby out to the store and picked up five 55-gallon barrels for the price of two brand-new ones. (Nate and Kimmy, we should chat, I think you'll want to check this out.) We've lined them up at the back of the house and are planning to pipe them together, then hook up one of the rain gutters to divert the runoff into the barrels. I ordered a filter for the gutter. We also need to install an overflow valve.

Eventually we'd like to set up barrels at three or four different places around the outside of the house. It will be a tricky balancing act -- we need rain in the summer, when it doesn't rain much; they will be totally full in the winter, when we won't need rain. Hopefully we can set up enough of them to store rain in the spring that will last us through a month or two of summer. Someday I'd love to make a system that feeds some of the water back into our house, or at least into the sprinkler system. How cool would that be? We could do something like this:

At long last, here's a mix of general updates and things to do with BABY GIRL...

Nate goes back to work next week, and I go back to working part time. I will have to be in the office one more day each week, but since I will be on a reduced schedule it will only a couple more hours a week in the office. Still.... I'm not wholly thrilled about being in the office another day a week. I'm not as productive from the office, and I don't like the environment. Being at home brings me much closer to a decent work-life balance. While I'm researching away at my day job, Baby Girl will have a couple of days a week with grandma, and then a couple days a week with a friend from church. My mom very generously got a car seat for the sitter to use for Darling. It was an unexpected blessing, and frees up the money I was going to spend on a car seat for use on a bike seat!

That's right, the biking fever is intense in our house. Last week's 10 mile race got me in the mood for more. I have been back at it a little bit in recent weeks and looking forward to more time out, and taking my daughter for rides. I just ordered Darling a helmet; I'm looking at bike seats.

I'm particularly interested in this bike seat (from Amazon, available here): The WeeRide "Kangaroo" child bike seat. Instead of the traditional seat that goes behind the rider, this one is designed to sit right behind the handle bars, in front of the biker. That's appealing for several reasons, but also has its drawbacks. There's a Britax-brand seat that goes behind the rider which also appeals to me, but its a little more expensive.
I'm still in the research phase, so we'll just see where my analysis leads me. (Don't worry, I'm not going to drag you through every option and indecision with this purchase!)

My mom is helping us look for a bike trailer. She found a promising ad from someone who lives near her current house. Hopefully the trailer will be in good condition because the price is quite reasonable!

Now how about a few words exclusively on my beautiful daughter?

Baby Girl is becoming significantly more expressive. She's been clapping for awhile, and is just now mastering waving. She loves to wave at people driving by or people in the store, which tends to make people very happy -- it's really sweet. We're working on teaching her ASL signs. She has her own sign for "up" when she wants to be held (she makes a Y with her arms). She can do the asl sign for "more" food, but she's still learning that one. I'm not sure if she really understands what it means, but she will sign "more" when we're at the table feeding her. She can also do the sign for "milk" but I don't know if she's connected it to the white drink in her sippy cup. In general, Darling is very interested in signing and I wouldn't be surprised if she started picking up more things soon. I love it.

Her spoken vocabulary is still very limited (mama and dada, mostly) but she has "baby words" for things. Yesterday, for instance, when she was eating black beans for breakfast, she pointed to the dish of beans and said "bla-ba" and signed "more". So I think "bla-ba" is her version of black beans. She also has a word for water... kinda like "ar-rrr". And she definitely understands a lot of our words, but you can only tell by her face or body reactions. Still, I'm loving this phase where we can interact more and understand her needs!

In just the last week, Darling has started to stand up and "cruise" around. I've been telling people for ages that I want her to start standing and walking (I'm tired of holding her and fighting her when she wants to crawl in unclean or unsafe places), but now that she is getting on her feet, I'm a little sad. I realized that walking will be the end of crawling... it's just sad to see the end of a phase. But she really is a big girl and it's appropriate that she gets on her feet. To that end, here's a parting picture (obviously from bedtime) of my little stander: