Happy 19th of July

ABC, 123, etc.

I Made a Sleeping Bag

Where in the world is MetaMegan in this heat wave?

Sure has been hot lately, hasn't it? What has everyone been doing? Going to the pool? Staying inside in the air conditioning? Water world? The Beach? Seeing a movie?

Me, I've been sitting under a blanket, sewing. Yup! I made Dave a sleeping bag. Have I mentioned that we don't have air conditioning? I know, I know. I am a very dedicated, supportive, awesome, and crafty wife. My fatal flaw, is procrastination. Dave came up with this idea around 6 months ago. He bought the fabric (ultralight nylon with a primaloft), he sent me a link to a website that showed something similar to what he wanted. Months passed, and 12 days before Dave was scheduled to leave, I started the project!


Tuesday night I needed to work late, so in between steps in my project, I sewed. Next thing I knew, it was 1:30 am. I finished up on Wednesday night while we watched Whip It.

Dave tested the sleeping bag out on two occasions. First he wore it to watch the end of Whip It. He said, "Wow this is warm!" No kidding, it's been on my lap for 2 days!

Then Dave took the sleeping bag and all his gear for his bike ride and slept in the woods on Friday night. The low temperature was 43 degrees, and the sleeping bag did the trick. I know, Dave has been training for 6 months, and planning for a year for his 500 mile bike ride. It's all very impressive. The point of everything here is that I sewed a sleeping bag! I am awesome.


Order your slanket now, and I'll start it on December 20th and have it to you in time for Christmas!

Rootin' And Tootin'

As promised (by Dave), I took Jack to Chuck E Cheese this morning to celebrate his lone poop on the potty. While we were out, we made visits to the bathrooms at both Chuck E Cheese and Costco. He peed and CEC, but just sat there at Costco. Well, he sat there cheering. Loudly. Jack was wearing a retro Broncos tee-shirt (with the old school blue and orange colors), which he happened to notice while he was sitting on the pot gazing downwards. This caused him to cheer, "Go BRONCOS!" And once he gets in a cheering mood, there is no stopping him.

"BUFFALO! BUFFALO! GO C!U! "
"BUFFALO! BUFFALO! GO C!U! "

AND so on.

Props to Grandad for the title of this post, which evolved over dinner as I shared the story.

In Retrospect, This Could Have Been Avoided

Have you ever had one of those days, where everything went from totally perfect to perfectly horrible all of a sudden, and you thought, "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?????" And you shook your fist at the heavens and cursed and moaned and whined and cried? For example, if your house was beautifully, sparklingly clean (Thanks Rosa!) and then before you knew it, your white couch was covered in mud?

Why oh why oh why? The horror, etc.

Faced with the muddy couch and the muddy footprints, and the muddy dog, I decided to hose off the dog and then take her on a walk around the block to air dry. While we were walking, I had the following thoughts.

1.) A muddy couch is the worst thing in my life right now. I am very lucky.
2.) In retrospect, there are things I could have done to avoid this.

Read, learn, and avoid this same fate.

1.) When your 2 year old wants to water your garden, consider supervising.
This one is pretty self explanatory, but somewhat hard to follow advice. I mean, what if you are trying to cook dinner? It seemed like letting Jack water the strawberries would keep him out of my hair and out of trouble for 5 minutes. I was half right.
2.) When your 2 year old shows up at the back door, drenched, saying, "MOMMA! I got wet", consider investigating the cause.
If your first instinct is to get them out of wet clothes and into pajamas because dinner is almost ready, make a mental note to go back soon and figure out what happened. Or at least turn off the hose. In our case, Jack had partially unscrewed the nozzle from the hose. He got soaked, and dropped the hose on the ground and ran to the door. I just figured he squirted himself in the face, and didn't investigate any further.
3.) When you are eating your dinner on the patio, and you hear the puppy whine in a certain way that makes you think, "I should see what is going on" then, really, see what is going on.
Really, I can't emphasize this one enough. The hose was just creating a lake in the yard, that Lucy was turning into a mud puddle by digging and digging. And then she was running into the house, getting on the couch and running back out. And so on. I definitely thought something was going on, but I didn't look into it. Although it probably would have just ruined my dinner.

Blog Bidness

Subscribers, did you notice that you didn't get an email from me for weeks and months? Well, someone mentioned that to me, and I tried to fix it, but I made it worse. Then I tried to fix that problem, and I accidentally deleted everything. Now I am down from 1000 (ok, 13) email subscribers to 0. And I was going to do a big post about it, and how you can now resubscribe, but guess what? You won't know that because you aren't getting the emails!

Then I got sad, boo hoo hoo. For two and a half years, I have slaved away, a few days a month, building my readership to almost 20 people a day and now this. It's back to just me. I googled, "feedburner sucks" and that didn't solve my problem. I just found a blog that lost 1000 subscribers for real and then she gave away diamonds to get her readership back. I mean, it is comment month, but everyone knows the winner is just going to get a shot glass or something.

So, I think you can now resubscribe, or re-follow or whatevs. Let me know if you don't see this post. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha sob.



** Wondering about the subtitle, "Kids, Puppy, Food, Bikes, Work"? I threw that in there because I thought maybe having that section blank was causing my feedburner woes. I don't think it was, but I haven't tried taking it out. Or making it better. I don't really like it because, well, where's the Dave? But Kids, Puppy, Food, Bikes, Work, Dave? Or Dave, Kids, Puppy, Food, Bikes, Work? Kids, Dave, Puppy, Food, Bikes, Work? Argh. I need a new subtitle. Version 2.0, Coming Soon! Or something.

Must Be Bath Night Because Some Ears Need to be Cleaned Out!

Luke: I am rooting for The Netherlands.
Me: Don't be offended, but I think I am going to root for Spain.
Dave: Oooh - in house rivalry. Do you to want to place bets?
Luke: NO! I took a bath last night!

???

Me: Jack, can you finish your yogurt or is that now impossible?
Jack: I can't. It's a popsicle.

???

In other news, we went to The Library today, and because it only takes 100 times for me to learn my lesson, I took Jack into the bathroom as soon as we got there. No dice. He just slowly backed out, somberly shaking his head "no". It paid off though, because after dinner, I brought a big stack of reading material into the bathroom with Jack and... He POOPED on the POTTY! Big news. We now owe him a trip to Chuck E Cheese. Or Chuckie Cheese, as Luke would say.

Then, I heard Dave scheming with Luke and they planned a trip to Casa Bonita to celebrate a full week of pooping on the potty, when and if that ever happens. Not sure how I feel about it, because that place sounds like it could scare the poop out of anyone. Luke went there on a camp field trip, and in my research, I found this description, "it's like Disney had sex with Tijuana and left the goofy-looking bastard to fend for itself in a random strip mall on Colfax. "

In other poop related news, my new favorite line from a book is, "Mr. B is making it happen."

July Is Commenting Month at MetaMegan

Happy Half Birthday to me! And welcome to July, also known as comment month. Each comment during the month of July is one entry into the comment contest. The prize is always to be determined, but it will probably be something I pick up on my summer vacation.

This year I am celebrating my half birthday (today), the 19th of July! (tm) and I am also thinking of a Christmas in July theme. I'll keep you posted.

In TV news, we just finished the season finale of Lost, so maybe I will have time to blog now. Here is the only question that is unanswered for me. How did we start watching 1.5 hours of TV at 10:00 and finish at 1:00 am? How did that happen? We may never know.

The Library

Once, some Thanksgiving or another, I was wondering where my Grandmother was and, when I asked, someone told me she was in the library. I wandered and wandered and I couldn't find her. I kept wondering which room was the library. How sophisticated! Was there a room in the house that I had never even seen? And it was full of books?

No, she was just in the bathroom.

The other day, I had books to return after dinner at The Southern Sun, and I had the stroller with me. So Dave took Luke home, and Jack and I strolled to the library. I still had on my work clothes, so I was looking cute, it was a nice evening, and I was walking to the library after a dinner out with my toddler in the stroller. It felt very urban and sophisticated. Euro even.

In my mind, I have this idea of Jack and I casually picking out a stack of books and settling in to the kids area to read for a while. I think that would be fun. And we do always pick out some books, and then I start to find a nice place to sit and then I notice Jack is gone. But just for a second! There he is again, no need to panic. But now he doesn't want to sit, he wants to be read to while he stands. And why do you think that is? Because he just snuck into the stacks to poop. Every. Single. Time.

You'd think after the 4th time that happened, I would think to try to put him on the pot at the library as soon as we get there. Or at the VERY LEAST, bring a diaper and some wipes. But these casual trips to the library, so spur of the moment, so whimsical, never involve a diaper bag. So, just as soon as we have gotten there, we have to leave. Except now I have the stroller, and a pile of books, and have to walk a mile home, downwind of a diaper. In my work clothes and heels. Suddenly, it isn't so urban sophisticate. It's more harried housewife. And man, the smell.

I was fanning myself as we checked out, just to endure the stench, when the sympathetic librarian asked if it had been a long day. I had to come clean. She laughed and laughed. So did the other librarian who had overheard. They told me about their fabulous area for diaper changing. I confessed I did not have a diaper. They laughed and said, "we are glad he finds the library such a relaxing and comfortable place."

Yes, it is definitely time for Jack to start spending time in our personal library.

Safe From Sippy Cups

Part of MetaMegan 2.0 has to do with decreasing the amount of plastic in my life, and finding a substitute drinking "glass" made of something other than plastic that is also not going to break the first time it gets used. So far I haven't made any progress on that one. I think about it whenever a Crate and Barrel catalog graces my door. So, that's something.

This evening Lucy was looking out into the back yard when suddenly she got crazy! There was something in the backyard and she was gonna git it. I sort of cocked my head to the side, as my little girl has been known to do to consider the situation.

From 2010

If it's a cat or a squirrel, I want her to run out there and scare it out of the litter-sandbox and/or garden. If it's a bird, I want to avoid prying feathers out of her teeth. If it's a skunk... well I never want to go through that again. Squirrel? Skunk? Squirrel? Oh what the heck, I'll let her out and follow to see what it is. (Great plan if it's a skunk, right?) She took off! All the way to the other side of the patio table five feet away! Then she ran in circles! Then she charged! OMG! Retreat! Charge! Retreat! CHARGE! She GOT IT. It was one of two plastic cups that had blown off the table and were rolling around on the patio. So - I will be saved from the evils of plastic. Lucy will protect us all.

Dave's Bike Ride

The boys and I successfully completed our role as support crew for the Bailey Hundo. It was a long day, but it was a lot of fun. We mostly just drove around from one aid station to the next and cheered for Dave, and I think we did a great job! It was probably harder to mountain bike the 107 miles on a single speed, but I'll let Dave tell that story!