Holiday Party Silliness

Picture post for today, as it's been an incredibly long day. The usual work (and lunch break taken up scrambling for Christmas cards for Todd's teachers), karate class with promotion ceremony-- yay, yellow belt! -- and school Christmas concert where the kids were hyped up on sugary pastries and wore each other out playing tag.

Last Friday Allan and I attended a work holiday party, with just our department. It was nice to be in the company of people we actually knew, it wasn't as anonymizing (is that a word? It is now ;-) ) as the whole-company party, where we felt lost amongst a sea of faces from other departments we never interact with. It was outdoors at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, where tents and heaters protected us from the rain and cold. There was no formal set of courses for dinner-- just tons of tasty and filling appetizers and mini-meals, including such delicacies as bacon-wrapped shrimp! Drinks were free, too, so I tried a pomegranate martini (yum) and a regular margarita before washing everything else down with plain water.

The entertainment of the evening consisted of a musical chairs + scavenger hunt combo game with a flip camera prize at stake, a video put together by various members of the department, and a camera that was hooked up to a projector, instantly putting up pics the moment you take them, for all to see. Here are the ones Allan and I snapped when we took our turn:

We were forewarned that Allan standing at his full height would wind up out of the picture, so he scrunched down... wayyy down. It's not often I'm taller than him ;-)



Now that I could actually see over the top of his head, I decided to have some fun with our snapshots:



And finally, we decided to showcase exactly what effect having kids has on the average couple. After a long week, this was how we felt... even though it was barely 8:30pm!

Sleep habits and internal alarm clocks

As I shake off the sleep from a little nap I took while putting the little man to bad, I started thinking about my sleep habits lately, and how they contrast to my sleep habits of the past.

All my life I've used some sort of alarm clock. When I was younger, it was my dad tapping me upside the head with one of my stuffed animals to get me out of bed. When I started college and my working life, I used real alarm clocks-- and hit the snooze alarm so often that I had to set the alarm nearly an hour before the actual time to get up. Even my dad came with a snooze alarm-- I'd brush him off, and he'd be back in my room within 10 minutes, whopping me with the stuffed animals more insistently each time. Every once in a while I'd actually awaken a little before my alarm went off, and I felt a bit more refreshed. More often, however, the alarm would jolt me out of a deep sleep, and you know how that feels.

Two years ago, however, I stopped using alarm clocks. First, I got laid off and had no reason to be up at a certain hour anymore. But when I started working at Citrix, with its flexible schedule, I started relying on the noise of Allan and Todd getting ready for school in the morning, to wake me up. With my earplugs on, it was definitely a much smoother transition into waking up than being jolted by a blaring noise. After a while, when we moved into the larger 1-bedroom apartment, got Todd his own bed, and I started sleeping in the bedroom again, I rarely ever heard the boys getting up in the morning. Instead, I discovered that my own internal alarm clock worked quite well! I could go to sleep, telling myself to wake up at a certain hour, and sure enough, I'd awaken at the determined time. This was great! No more alarm clocks, and even the few times in the past 2 years I've set one *just in case*, I've either already been awake, or just on the surface of awakening, when the alarm went off. As a result, I feel more refreshed when I wake up, being allowed to awaken at my own natural pace/cycle. The only time my internal alarm clock doesn't really work is when I'm dead tired from lack of/poor sleep the night before, and the allotted sleep time is less than 2 hours-- and then I overshoot by 1 hour.

Wait a minute. Less than 2 hours? What's THAT all about!?

That's another thing that's changed with my sleep patterns. Before I had Todd, I'd sleep for long stretches of time. Sure, I'd awaken in the middle of the night, as everyone does, but most of the time I was unaware of it-- or if I *was* aware of it, only hazily so. But when I got pregnant, I found myself getting up more and more in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. After Todd was born, this trend persisted. Now I'd sleep 3-4 hours (sometimes a solid 5, on a good day), awaken, do a bathroom shuffle, check on Todd, and go back to sleep for another 2-3 hours. Lather, rinse, repeat. With the cycle getting shorter (to about 1 hour at a time) as the morning approaches. Even when Todd is not here, and I don't have to worry about checking on him, I've fallen into this pattern. The nights that I get a solid 5-hour chunk before the first awakening aren't so bad. But the nights I sleep in 2-3 hour bursts have more of a negative impact the next day. Even though I slept for 7-8 hours total, it's different when it's in 3 or 4 two-hour chunks, and oftentimes even LESS restful than if I *only* got a solid, uninterrupted 5 hours, nothing more.

At least, I'm lucky that when I *do* wake up, and even get up in the middle of the night, I typically don't have much trouble falling back asleep. So even a series of sequential 2-hour bursts of sleep is much better than tossing and turning and lying awake in the middle of the night after having only slept a couple hours, and then having to get up by the time you start falling back asleep!

As I wrap up this blog post and it approaches midnight, I anticipate going to sleep around 1:00-1:30am, by the time I get my teeth brushed, Todd changed, and myself settled into bed with a bit of reading. With any luck, I'll sleep uninterrupted till 6:00am, put my earplugs and eyeshades on, and settle back into a dream-filled sleep till 8:00-8:30am.

And so, dear readers, I shall bid you a fond good night... even though it will be morning by the time most of you read this, in which case-- good morning! :-)

Upcoming week

No post yesterday, as I was busy working. Gotta love being able to work remotely from home :-) I was anxious to finish some work that I had wanted to finish last Friday, but got delayed by unexpected difficulties with the code. Stayed up till nearly midnight, but got a lot cranked out, and was able to finish everything at work today (though I had to pick up Todd and then zip right back to the office with him to wrap things up). Why the rush? Because I want to tackle some other work that's remaining on our backlog, before I take some last-minute time off next week. Destination? Vegas!

I'm about to break out a spreadsheet and start mapping out our itinerary. Already got the room booked-- for the first time in my half-dozen or so trips to Vegas, I'll be staying ON the Strip. Not off-Strip. Not downtown Las Vegas. But right smack-dab in the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard :-) Now we just gotta figure out what we want to see and do while we're there for 3 days-- hence, the spreadsheet, which will track venues, costs and times :-)

The week will end with a variety of end-of-year activities, with Todd's karate promotion ceremony, his school Christmas concert, and a party with gift exchange (why, oh why do school personnel deem this a necessary activity?) Plenty to keep us busy, and now I have to foist my poor giftwrapping skills upon an innocent present. Thank goodness its recipient is a 5-year-old who really won't notice such things ;-)

Friday evening Todd and I will head back to LA, where he will spend the next 2 weeks of winter vacation with them. On Sunday Allan and I will head to Vegas. In the meantime, the upcoming week will be a blur of chores alongside the usual after-school activities for Todd, since we need clean clothes for our trip and we want the house to be nice and clean, as we'll be gone this weekend and would like a nice clean place to come back to afterward.

Speaking of which... better get the dishes done right now...!

Living Spaces

In the 8 years I've lived in Santa Barbara, I've moved a total of 7 times (including the initial move upon my arrival). That's roughly one move per year ;-) Since Allan and I have been married, we've moved a total of 5 times:

1. A 350-square-foot studio (brand new)
2. An 800-sq-ft 2BR/1BA apartment in family student housing (built in the '70s)
3. A 450-sq-ft 1BR/1BA apartment in family student housing (built in the '50s)
4. A 750-sq-ft 1BR/1BA apartment built in 2003
5. A 1000-sq-ft 2BR/2BA apartment -- our current one.

So as you can see, our current apartment is the largest place we've lived in to date. I can still remember our cleaning endeavors in the previous apartments. The studio, while being the smallest, was the hardest to maintain because it was so cramped. The next apartment, I only lived in for a total of 10 months, because Todd was born around then, I spent the summer at my parents' house, graduated the following school year, and lived with my parents again while working at Amgen. The third apartment was again small and cramped, especially when Todd began living with us full-time a year after we moved in. The next apartment was a welcome breath of fresh air, but as Todd got bigger and we eventually had to get him his own bed, things started feeling crowded once more. Especially since we couldn't, as we had in all our previous residences, store our extra stuff on the patio.

When we moved into our current apartment, I mused that if we had trouble keeping a 450 and 750 square foot living space clean, how were we going to fare with something even larger? To my surprise, we've been doing better at the upkeep of this place than we have in the others. I realized it's precisely *because* we have so much more space to store things (one of the walk-in closets is large enough to use as a micro-room-- it has a window, you can stick a twin mattress in it, and still have plenty of room to move about and reach all the shelves). Now there is a place for everything, and stuff isn't just stashed willy-nilly into closets, or left lying around because said closets are too full. Because no matter how neatly you arrange things on table and countertops, too much stuff still gives a cluttered, untidy appearance.

I think the other factor is that the apartment IS so much more spacious, it *looks* so much nicer when it's cleaned up (that sounds like a self-evident statement, but I'm comparing our clean 1-BR with the clean 2-BR, there's a difference!) -- even the tiniest bit of clutter is contrasts sharply and turns into such an eyesore, motivating me that much more to tidy up.

Well, so far, I'm enjoying a neat and clean living space. Then again, we've only been living here 3 weeks. Let's see how things fare in the coming months! ;-)

And if you haven't already seen it, I've finally, after 5 moves, managed to take before and after pictures of the apartment:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2436941&id=3605072

Reading memories

I've gotten into the routine of going to the library every week with Todd to select an armload of new books to tide him over the week. While I was busy looking for selections in the children's section, I also wandered off into the youth section and came across many old, familiar titles of books I had read and enjoyed as a child. Since it had been well over 20 years since I'd read many of these, I thought I'd relive my childhood and re-read them. And I must say-- what a difference a couple of decades makes! It made me realize how much my worldview has changed since I was a child. Back then, my limited life experience painted completely different pictures in my mind of the stories I read. This was especially true of the "Little House" series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, because her writing was always so descriptive of the minutiae of her surroundings. In the eyes of a little girl (Laura Ingalls, and little Helly as a reader), the world and even the little houses seemed so vast and big. As I got older, those same mental pictures were colored with the perspective of an older, bigger person-- an adult.

My most recent forays into childhood favorites included the Ramona Quimby series by Beverly Cleary. I remembered snapshots of parts of each story in my head, so memories came flooding back when I re-read the stories again for the first time in 20+ years. Again, the mental pictures the stories evoked now were a little different from the ones that developed when I was little. And now that I have a little kid of my own, the stories, which always expressed Ramona's point of view, really take on a new dimension.

I enjoyed "The Incredible Journey" even more now because my love of animals has grown so much since then. I now marveled at the ingenuity and resourcefulness of "The Boxcar Children", whereas years ago I simply got lost in the details of their day-to-day living: the food, the furniture, the scavenged dishes.

I even decided to try a classic that I hadn't read at all before: "Caddie Woodlawn", contemporary to Laura Ingalls. And while the Little House series will remain a perennial favorite, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Caddie. It wasn't, as I expected, another version of Laura Ingalls, it was completely different, and both stories are enjoyable in their own right.

While the memories of what exactly I read were only piecemeal until now, the things that certain books evoked are long-lasting:
"The Babysitters Club" series inspired me to try to start my own babysitting club in my neighborhood.
Ramona Quimby's campaign to stop her father from smoking in "Ramona and her Father" inspired me to do the same with my uncle, who was visiting around the time I read the book. Some of the ideas were drawn from the book, as well-- such as putting up "no smoking" signs all over the house.
"Bread and Butter Indian" started my love affair with eating bread with white sugar on top, as it sounded so savory when the girl in the story enjoyed it as a treat.
In high school my best friend and I were avid readers of Nancy Drew, and she and I would devise our own mystery stories, starring ourselves (with different names, of course) as the protagonists.

I've been taking many strolls back into memory lane this past few weeks, thanks to the selections at our local library. It's been a blast having old memories resurface and become refreshed with a new point of view. I have a feeling I'll be making more visits to the library even while Todd is away during winter break!

What are some of your childhood favorites?

Childbirth Memories

The first of the babies in our small group has arrived, a little earlier than expected. We got an email update from the father, and I got to read about the details of their experiences over the past several days at the hospital. It reminded me of my own experience with childbirth 5 years ago. I remember that not long after Todd was born, I'd written out a long essay documenting the minutiae of the experience, down to the exact times that things happened. It spanned 2 pages, single-spaced, in Word, and I intended to keep it as a private memory. Alas, my computer crashed sometime later that year and I lost the document. Reading about my friend's experience made me decide to jot down some of the details I can still remember, before I completely forget them. I'll skip some of the gorier details, though, since this is now a public rather than private memory ;-)

It began at 7am on Wednesday, May 19, 2004. Todd was due in 2 weeks, and I was ready to enjoy being able to sleep on my back again. I got up and sleepily shuffled to the bathroom, where I noticed that my mucous plug had come out. I thought nothing of it and went back to bed, except that I couldn't really sleep because I was starting to feel contractions. They were extremely mild-- contractions feel like really really bad gas pains, and this was more like uncomfortable gas pains. Not painful, but uncomfortable enough to keep me from sleeping. And they were very far apart.

So we decided to get up and go about our day. We went shopping, and a contraction hit while we were at the checkout line. I simply leaned over the counter and pretended to be interested in the items behind it, until it subsided. The rest of the day was pretty low-key. I took a shower and washed my hair (thinking that if I had to go to the hospital soon, it'd be a few days before I could wash it again). I even managed a nap in the afternoon. As evening approached, the contractions started coming more frequently. 30 minutes. 20 minutes. 10 minutes. I remember we were in the middle of watching a "Law and Order" episode on NBC when the contractions finally achieved regularity at 5-minute intervals. So at 10:30 pm, we loaded up our stuff (suitcase of clothes and hygiene things for me, plus a cooler of snacks and drinks for both of us) into the car and headed to the hospital.

We checked in leisurely and settled down for the night. The contractions started becoming more and more painful until, several hours in, I requested some pain medication. The nurse administered a dose of Fentanyl, which dulled things, so even though I could still feel my tummy bulging and contorting with each contraction, it didn't bother me enough to prevent sleep. Allan and I napped in the wee hours of the dawn. In the morning, things were the same-- hard contractions, yet no improvements in dilation. At around 11:30am, my Ob/Gyn stopped by to see how I was doing. No different from 12 hours ago. So he decided to manually break my water. I asked him how long it would take after that, and he figured a couple of hours. He left, and that's when the contractions started coming fast and furious. Thinking I'd have a 2-hour stretch of this ahead of me, I requested another dose of Fentanyl. The nurse checked my dilation before she gave it to me, and was shocked to discover that it went from 3cm to 8cm almost instantaneously! She couldn't give it to me, and rushed off to call the doctor back.

In the meantime, I was given my anesthetic options: it was too late to hook me up to an epidural, but they offered a spinal, which is similar, but is injected directly in and lasts only 2 hours. I said yes, and then had to wait while they located an anesthesiologist. Meantime, I had to suppress the urge to push the baby out, as I wasn't fully ready yet. This is when all those breathing techniques we learned in childbirth class came in handy-- breathing in rapid puffs (like you see on TV) while focusing on a single point (I stared at the warning labels on one of the machines) really worked, to my great surprise! I remember the contractions, which were about a minute apart, causing a Jekyll-and-Hyde effect. One minute I'd be flipped over on my hands and knees, cursing at the world, and the next minute I'd be calmly sitting back down, chatting with the nurse and Allan as though we were having a tranquil cup of tea together. That's how much of a difference there was between the troughs and the peaks.

At last the anesthesiologist came in, administered the spinal, and went on his way, but not before I called out "I love you!" after it took effect ;-) I'm sure he gets that all the time from women in labor.

Since I could no longer feel the contractions, the nurses had to rely on the fetal monitor printouts to see when contractions were coming. No need-- even though I didn't feel any pain, the contractions would cause my belly to bulge and distort in odd shapes, pushing hard against the fetal monitor belt wrapped around it. All I had to do was look at my belly to figure out when a contraction was coming, and hence when to start pushing again.

And so at 12:31pm, on Thursday, May 20, 2004, Todd entered the world, hollering from here to eternity.

The only thing I remember after that was how HUNGRY I was! After getting me and Todd cleaned up, it was past 1pm, and past lunchtime! We spent a couple days at the hospital, where I was treated to visits by a lactation consultant that can only be described as a lactation Nazi. Clearly this woman either had no kids of her own, or was one of the lucky ones for whom breastfeeding was such a breeze, she assumed it would be the same for everyone. When it was time to try to nurse Todd, he refused to latch on. She kept trying to force him to, which only mad matters worse. And after a day, I decided I couldn't let my baby go hungry, and gave him a bottle of formula, despite her insistence that I shouldn't. No thanks, I'm not letting my poor little guy starve. I mean, I wholeheartedly endorse breastfeeding when possible-- there is no question that breastmilk is superior to formula, but that doesn't make formula akin to poison. Many babies have been raised just fine and healthy with only formula. She kept insisting I keep trying to force Todd to latch on. I eventually just brushed her off with a "sure, sure" just to get her to leave me alone. Which she did-- until the day I left the hospital. As I was being wheeled out, baby in arms, she passed by us in the corridor and actually STOPPED us to ask if I'd tried to latch Todd on again. Of course I said yes, and turned around, hoping to never see her again. As it turned out, Todd never did manage to latch on, BUT I was able to start a really strong milk supply with a breastpump, which we fed Todd in a bottle (and froze the excess for future use). He wound up getting breastmilk for the first 6 months of his life, and though I would've liked to have done it longer, circumstances didn't allow, and 6 months is better than none at all, right?

To this day I still get rankled when I think about that lactation nurse. She had to have been the most rude, insensitive person I'd ever met. When a woman is frustrated by her failed attempts to nurse her baby, the answer is not to respond with brusqueness, but with kindness. The new mother is already feeling bad enough about not being able to feed her baby-- why compound it? It just turns people off. I hope that my friend who is there now, and had a more difficult birthing process than I did, doesn't encounter this epitome of the term "boob Nazi".

I have no regrets about the way I did things w.r.t. feeding Todd. And I feel very fortunate that my pregnancy and delivery were both very uneventful. Probably my only regret is not having arranged to videotape the birth. At the time, I thought, "who would want to see that?", not realizing that as time went on, *I* would become curious to see the events unfold that I was unable to see myself at the time-- things Allan had the privilege of witnessing. I really wish we had done that. I'd recommend it for all expecting moms. If, for the rest of your life, you never want to see it, that video can remain tucked away in storage. Thrown away, even. But if, like me, you change your mind years later, you'll be glad to have it available.

But for me, this long post will have to suffice for "memories" :-) As if having a rambunctious 5-year-old running around isn't enough to remind me that this event took place! ;-)

Retail therapy... conservatively!

Retail therapy. Ah, there's something you hear about every so often. Boyfriend dumped you? Retail therapy! Rotten day at work? Retail therapy! Creditors hounding you? Retail... oh, wait.

I've never been much for that sort of extravagance-- the word "therapy" is probably the most amusing euphemism I've ever heard to downplay flagrant shopping sprees. My idea of "splurging" is most people's idea of normal shopping. Still, I get the euphoria that comes with treating yourself to something nice. I just don't think you have to shell out of lots of dough to accomplish that. Therefore, Wal-mart and the dollar store are my playground. Some would call me cheap, but when it comes to the important things, I'll spend wisely. Everything else is just a nice-to-have instead of a real need.

This week has been a week of splurging, Helly-style :-)

It began with an upgrade to my phone. It's been nearly 3 years since I upgraded from a standard Samsung bar phone to my beloved RAZR phone with the dragon tattoo. Yesterday the UPS guy delivered by brand-new T-Mobile (HTC) Shadow. It's amazingly lightweight and, in closed form, not much bulkier than my ultra-slim RAZR. It cost me $50, so I figured this was my Christmas gift to myself :-)



Last night I went to K-Mart with Todd and treated myself to a pair of nice, soft, fleece pajamas (last week they were 40% off, this week it was 50% :-D) to help keep me warm in this cold weather. The apartment can turn into an icebox at night and I knew it was time for something warmer when I woke up one morning, wearing flannel pajamas and snuggled deep under a thick comforter... shivering! I'm looking forward to snuggling in my new fleece pj's tonight!


I also got a bottle of Garnier Fructis leave-in conditioner. Normally I don't fuss much with hair products, and care even less about brand names, but with my trying to grow out my bangs and grow out a haircut (note to self: Helly cannot wear layers well!) I figured I needed a little help. And it's still cheaper than going to a salon! My hair's unruly, but it's not really in such bad shape.



I'm having fun with all of my new purchases, and yet they are all still practical things. I suppose retail therapy has its uses... and can be very enjoyable, when partaken of in moderation! :-)

Le Festin

See, I knew I shouldn't have let a day go by between postings... now it's been 2 days, and I don't want to start that slippery slide down into infrequent posting again. I do have a post in mind that I've been mulling over in my head since Sunday, but just haven't had time to properly write. So rather than put it off another day because of that, I'm getting the juices flowing with a short post on a different topic today. Nothing of substance, but fun to share nonetheless.

Ever have days where the same song just runs through your head all day long, for days at a time? Of course you have.
Given how many times I've watched "Wall-E", it's no surprise that for the longest time that song was "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" from "Hello Dolly". But since I never really heard all the words, it was more of an idle tune to hum.

Recently we watched "Ratatouille", where the French song "Le Festin" really caught my... ears? It stuck in my head and I resolved to find it online, where listening to the song in its entirety (instead of interspersed between scenes) made me enjoy it even more. So I went even further and resolved to find the lyrics to it, since my French, rudimentary to begin with, is extremely rusty, not having touched it since high school. I found variations of the lyrics in a couple of different places, and after listening to the song long and hard, I pieced together the correct lyrics (which, of course, was a combination of the various sources). And then I set about learning it by heart. All I can say is-- good thing WMP has a "repeat" function ;-) It's a really cute song and I am enjoying mastering it.

Because this song is in French, it also reminds me of two people-- Amal and Jenna. Amal because the first time I met her was in Mme. Kampe's French class, sophomore year of high school. And Jenna because she, as a Canadian, speaks it.

Anyway, I thought I'd spread the wealth and maybe put the tune in your head as well (cue evil cackle):

Mini Reunion

... and so endeth my streak of blogging every single day. But at least I've only skipped one day, so I'm not *too* off the habit. Besides, I think I had a valid excuse-- yesterday was a fun-filled, jam-packed day :-)

It started off with a trip to the Santa Barbara Zoo. Aside from a baby shower that afternoon and the usual chores/errands, I didn't have any plans for Saturday until I spied a friend's FB status about going there for snow day. Snow! The little man has been clamoring for snow since, oh, I don't even know when. He wants to drive up to the mountains where Daddy used to live, to play in the snow. He is convinced that it would be ultra cool to move to a place with snowy climes. So when I learned that the zoo was having snow that day, I decided it would not only be fun to go, but a great opportunity to see an old high school friend I haven't seen since graduation 16 years ago.

After getting turned around several times due to construction closing off the normal freeway ramps, and then struggling to find parking, we finally arrived at the long-awaited snow and worked up a surprising sweat throwing snowballs at each other and building mini snowmen. And after playing some phone tag, we finally met up with her, her husband, and their little daughter, who is every bit as adorable as I've seen in their photos. It was great seeing her after all these years (and I don't think she's changed a bit!). It felt a bit surreal to see ourselves as wives and mothers now. And it was amusing to find out that Todd isn't the only one who throws the whole "I don't like you" pout at his parents when he doesn't want to do something that's asked of him ;-)

The morning and early afternoon flew by fast, and I had to head out to a baby shower at the Four Seasons Biltmore between Santa Barbara and Montecito. It was so near the zoo (which itself is about 13 miles south of our place) that Allan and I took separate cars so I could just head straight there from the zoo. When I arrived I was greeted with the splendor that is typical of such an upscale hotel. We had afternoon tea (the expectant mother's sister, who arranged the shower, lives in the UK), where I decided to try the peaches-and-ginger infused black tea. We started off with finger sandwiches and then moved to scones and other assorted, delicious pastries. It was all very fancy. Even the bathrooms had me confused a bit when I washed my hands and couldn't find paper towels with which to dry them-- instead there were trays of rolled-up washcloths for our use. It felt like such a waste to use one just to dry my hands and throw it into the hamper for washing. Knowing that I would be returning to the bathroom again during the course of the shower (and I did, considering I downed the entire pot of tea), I felt like I should be taking the towel with me to reuse until my last bathroom visit ;-)

The shower itself was a lot of fun, and definitely a first experience for me-- such luxury! The games were fun, the company was great, and even the gift-opening was amusing, as the mom-to-be received TWO baby bathtubs and 4-5 packages of baby toiletries. If nothing else, she'll certainly have a very clean baby!

So, that was shower #2 done with-- only one more to go in January :-)

By the time I arrived back home that evening, I had just enough energy to nibble on some pizza and watch movies with my boys before beginning the daily get-ready-for-bed routine. Speaking of bed, it's high time I finished this and headed there, myself, now! Good night!

Holiday Parade 2009

Every year for the past 57 years Santa Barbara has held a holiday parade. I've never gone. Not a single time. Shivering in the cold while battling crowds and traffic and fighting for parking just did not appeal to me. Until this year, that is. This year, Todd participated in the parade with his karate class, and I was one of dozens of parent volunteers helping to keep the kids organized as we walked down State Street.

I was a bit anxious about the cold and being out there for so long, so I made sure to bundle up Todd and myself as snugly as we could. We left later than planned, hit traffic everywhere, and had Allan drop us off near the parade start point-- 10 minutes before the 6:30 parade start time. Luckily, they were still forming the lines when we arrived, and Todd was whisked off to the front of the line. And even more luckily, most of the parent volunteers stationed themselves at the line their kids were in, so I took my place right next to Todd, who was on the far left side of the first row. Great opportunity to keep an eye on him while helping to keep the rest of the line in order.

We wound up staying where we were for a long time before we finally started marching-- it wasn't until about 7:10 that we finally started making our way down the street. I started getting cold, but it wasn't too bad. My extremities were chilled but the rest of me was warm. Better still was the fact that when I grabbed Todd's gloved hand, I could feel the heat radiating through both his glove and my glove, so I was heartened by the fact that he was clearly nice and warm.

Then we finally started moving! That helped keep everyone really warm-- walking. We strode briskly for several blocks before we finally started stopping about every half block so the kids could perform some of their moves for the crowd.

I tried to scan the vast sea of faces in the crowds on the sidelines to see if I could find anyone I recognized, but no. There were just too many people and most of the time I was too busy keeping an eye on the line, anyway.

Before we knew it, we'd reached the end of the parade line and dispersed. It was over surprisingly quickly, although you could tell the kids were getting tired by then. By the time we made our way to the car and I sank in my seat, I, too, was surprised to discover how tired I actually was. It was a lot more work than I imagined, even though I couldn't feel it at the time. At the same time, it was also a lot more fun than I thought it would be, and I was certainly glad that being able to walk kept me nice and warm in the biting, chilly air.

Here's to next year's parade! :-)

Not at home

By the way, if anyone is still visiting this site and isn't aware, I've moved yet again. You know where to find me. And if not, you know how to contact me for the new address :-) And those of you subscribed by email should've been getting the posts from the new site all week-- let me know if you haven't.

See you around!

On Commutes

When it rains, it pours. I've mentioned in previous posts about how 3 of our friends from church are all pregnant and due simultaneously. Three couples (including 2 of the expecting ones) are also in various stages of home-buying-- all in Buellton, a small town about 35 miles away. It made me think of my work colleagues, many of whom live in Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo (one even as far away as Moorpark). Long commutes either way. The trade-off is cheaper housing. Santa Barbara is *expensive*, even with recently falling home prices.

I'm also reminded of my own commuting challenges throughout my life.

When I was an undergrad, I lived with my parents in the north San Fernando Valley while commuting to and from UCLA. The campus was only about 20 miles from my parents' house, but it meant commuting on the 405, and fighting traffic every day, turning it into a nearly hour-long commute one way. But since I grew up in sprawling metropolitan LA, I was used to heavy traffic and long commutes, and it didn't really faze me-- it was part of life, the only life I knew.

Then I graduated and spent 4 years in Germany, where I lived on base and had a short 4-minute drive to and from work every day. Thus began my becoming accustomed to short commutes to work and short drives to places I needed to be.

When I returned from my stint in the Army, I moved to Santa Barbara and began grad school at UCSB. Although I have moved a total of 7 times since I arrived here in September 2001, it has always been within town (and mostly in Goleta-- the furthest south I ever lived was off Turnpike Rd) and never more than a 10-minute drive to school. Downtown Santa Barbara, a mere 10-12 miles away, suddenly seemed "far away". Interesting how your perspective changes! 10 miles is nothing in LA.

Then there was the 2 years after I graduated from UCSB, when I got a job at Amgen in Thousand Oaks and wound up living with my parents again (who were taking care of the little man) and commuting from their home to Thousand Oaks every day. In the meantime, Allan remained in Santa Barbara, as he was still in school. We'd see each other on weekends. Either way, it was a hellish commute for me, and I was fortunate enough that I was allowed to work a 10am-7pm schedule, allowing me to avoid most of the rush hour gridlock, and making the commute only 45 minutes instead of 1+ hour each way. At the time, thinking that I would remain there long term, we began thinking about where we wanted to live, and considered getting an apartment in Oxnard or Ventura, which would mean that Allan would bear the brunt of the heavy commute to and from SB every day.

As luck would have it, I got laid off and soon found a job here. We are once more living about a 7-minute WALK to work, and a 7-minute drive to Todd's school.

And I see my friends and co-workers making such long treks to and from work every day, and I can't fathom returning to that sort of drudgery myself. Someday we will buy a house, and when we do, we intend to stay in Santa Barbara (preferably Goleta, where it's cheaper and more spacious). The lower cost of housing in places like Ventura or Buellton simply isn't worth all the headache of long commutes. That's almost 2 hours of your life wasted EVERY day, driving. Not to mention the wear and tear on your car, and gas costs. I think those long daily commutes are ultimately what destroyed my beloved Neon. I've decided that I rather like being "spoiled" by living close to everything I need-- school, work, shopping. And although I still wish Santa Barbara had a Food4Less, a Target, a Wal-Mart, a true dollar store and a JCPenney, we get by, as those are stores we only hit once a month anyway, and we can always drive up to Lompoc or down to Ventura once a month or less to stock up on bargains.

Housing costs vs. long commutes. After enough experience with the latter, we're definitely opting to avoid it in future!

Then and Now (22 vs 32)

Today's inspiration comes from Tabitha, who in turn stole her blog idea from someone else. Hey, spread the joy, right? The theme today is to compare yourself: then vs. now. They did 5 years. My life has been pretty steady and unchanging for the past 5 years, so I thought I'd expand it to 10 years.

Career-wise:
1999: by the end of it I was halfway through my active duty career in the U.S. Army. Despite the ungodly hours, I was actually enjoying the routine and the concreteness of my work. Unfortunately, all that uprooting isn't very conducive to a stable family life, so I knew this wasn't what I was going to do long term. I had started taking computer science classes at the University of Maryland, which has branches on larger Army bases throughout the world and had, at the time, the most extensive online course offerings of any other college. Why computer science? Because I was in the Signal Corps, which fits in perfectly with that area of study, and the majority of my colleagues had degrees in some engineering field.

2009: wrapping up my 2nd year at Citrix Online alongside hubby. Still pondering what I want to do for the rest of my life, because programming and software engineering can be fun for a while, I just cannot scrounge up real interest or passion for it-- I do my job and that's it, I go home and don't want to think about it until the next day. These days I'm miffed that my husband not only gets paid more than I do for doing less work, but he also *enjoys* it very much :-P So yeah, much like 1999, I'm still on the search path for a suitable career.

Socially:
1999: I was living in Germany and living it up. Making up for my sheltered existence up until then by really letting loose: bar-hopping till 3am, dating guys that were all wrong for me, and generally enjoying being thousands of miles away from family. I worked hard and played hard, and decadent Europe was the perfect playground.

2009: Total opposite. I think I've gotten all my partying and wild living out of my system, and when I returned to the States and went back to school, where I met and married my husband, I seemed to turn into an old fuddy-duddy overnight. Relatively speaking, anyway. I remember a few years ago, celebrating a friend's birthday. We hit a bar after dinner, and I was already yawning and yearning for my bed... at 10pm! I wasn't even 30! These days my life is one long routine, and I like it just fine. I like the stability and comfort of a daily routine, and always crave it when I'm gone from it too long.

Family:
1999: Just the 'rents. And my grandmother, who had been living with us since I was 8. Of course, I was living in Germany this year, so there really wasn't any family nearby to speak of. I was single and enjoying the single life to its fullest. I figured I'd wait till I was 30 to get married, and then wait a few years after that to have kids. That is, if I even wanted kids. I was still on the fence and wasn't sure I liked them or the idea of having them.

2009: Family's still small: me, hubby, the boy. There's still the 'rents, but they're only 100 miles away instead of thousands (or, for my entire life before going off to the military, a few YARDS away :-P) Life has a funny way of turning out: got married and started a family a little sooner than I expected, but it's actually working out better this way. I'm still young enough to be able to handle a rambunctious kid and by the time he's old enough to leave the nest, I'll still be young enough to enjoy it! As for more kids-- nah, just the one. That's it. No more. We made sure of that. And other (people's) kids? I still don't like them. Sounds kind of funny coming from a woman who has a child of her own, but honestly, it's very different when it's someone else's kids, and I just can't stand being around them. They're loud and messy and yucky and germy and possess entirely different personalities that I'm not sure I can address/handle. As antisocial as I am around adults, I'm even worse around kids. What do you DO with them!?!?

Spiritually:
1999: A practicing agnostic ;-) No, seriously-- I wasn't raised to believe anything, but I wasn't raised to disbelieve anything, either. Religion was more of an outside curiosity. I knew that there was something bigger than us out there, but didn't know what it was nor did I really care to research it or even just give it much thought. If I had any passing interest in the Bible or religion in general, it was more from an academic standpoint, like learning about new cultures. Not that I even had *that* sort of interest in it back then.

2009: I definitely do believe in God and in Jesus. I believe that the Bible *is* inerrant-- it's our fallible human interpretation that is full of error and ego. I believe in a just God who will judge fairly, despite what (decidedly human) fundamentalists insist on. Yet I still have lots and lots of questions. There are still things I don't profess to understand, and there is much with established Christian doctrine that I either don't get or outright disagree with. I believe faith and intellect are closely tied together, not mutually exclusive. And I'm always learning.

Hm, I think that about covers the major aspects of my life. Oh, save for one more: this last one comes at Allan's suggestion:

1999: Still innocently exploring, um, things.

2009: The woman who out-pervs her husband at nearly every turn, and on whom even raucous guys like Joe refuse to turn their backs.

O:-D

Nature's Beauty

Those of you who know me may be surprised to read a post title such as "Nature's Beauty". After all, Mother Nature and I have never gotten along. After 8 years of military training environments, I'm all camped out, and refuse to camp or hike or spend any more time outdoors than is absolutely necessary. After all, "Thou shalt not hike" is one of the core tenets of my religion. Yet one of the questions on Plinky.com caught my eye, and I thought I'd answer it for today's post:

What's one of the most beautiful things you've seen in nature?

You all know that I'm not much of an aesthete. It's why I don't really dabble in the arts, and why my home decorating skills revolve around practicality: what looks neat and tidy and what is easy to clean. This lack of aesthetic sensibility stretches to nature, as well. Blue oceans and red sunsets and black starry skies and orange canyons and purple mountain majesties are all well and good, and I do enjoy them simply because their existence are a sign of a healthy (part of the) planet. But visually? I don't find anything striking in that sort of beauty.

True to form, I find beauty in functionality. And that is why the beautiful things I've ever seen in nature are its living creatures (except for humans :-P) Everyone knows that not only do I have a soft spot for animals, but most of the time I actually like them a lot better than I like people. But that's for another post... this is about why animals are the most beautiful things I've observed in nature. Every creature is perfectly engineered for its surroundings. Porcupines have quills and turtles have shells for protection. Many have fur to keep warm. Some live in amazing tandem, like crocodiles and their feathered "toothbrushes". Fish are streamlined to glide effortlessly through the water. Even the ugliest animals, such as the star-nosed mole, are marvels in their function. The food chain, albeit heartless at first glance, provides a good balance of life and predator and prey work to keep things in harmony.

Not every creature is visually pleasing, but each of their unique adaptibilities to their environments is stunning to me. Nothing is more beautiful than seeing animals living peacefully, free of human interference, in their own habitats, the way they were meant to. It doesn't get more "natural" than that, in my opinion!

How about you?

Playing in the Sandbox

I've definitely been making the most of the 3 cents per day I shelled out for custom CSS on this thing. I spent the evening playing around with various themes and tweaking them, still dissatisfied because so many different themes had different pieces of what I like best in a blog layout, yet none would allow me to fully tweak everything to my liking.

Then I discovered the "Sandbox" theme, which is exactly as the name implies-- a no-frills sandbox that gives you free reign to add all the customization you want from the ground up, rather than having to tweak existing CSS. Of course, that means more work for me, as now I have to discover everything from scratch, but hey-- such full flexibility is really the only way I'm going to be able to cram most of my desired features into a theme, so why not? :-) It's also been a good way to learn about CSS :-)

I like the general 2-column layouts, but many of them have widths that are too narrow-- a long post would spill over too many lines and make it harder to read. Adjusting the widths of most of the prettier themes meant destroying the seamlesslness of the blog body with the header. Another look I like is the "boxy" look, in which each individual post is encapsulated within its own "box", so it's easy to tell it apart from the other posts. That is why I particularly like the "Rounded" theme I started out with. I would've stuck with it, too (rounded corners are nicer than square corners) except for the fact that the line breaks were too close together, making several long paragraphs look like one giant blob. Defeats the purpose of line breaks :-P

This current them isn't ideal, but I was able to play with the width of it without making the header *too* wonky. And I figured, since I'm still trying to post everyday and folks *do* visit this site to comment, a finished theme would look nicer than my current work-in-progress. So if you ever stop by here and see a very wonky layout, you'll know that I'm currently online and continuing my quest to perfect my theme :-)

In the meantime, I'm open to suggestions. My Blogger blog had a distinct coffee theme, which was fun, but I'd like to try something different now. Any ideas for color schemes? Backgrounds? Fonts? (the only non-negotiable font is the post font itself-- I like my 10-pt Arial, and it is always the first thing I change when customizing a theme! :-))