Until we find swimming lessons (thanks, Marisa, for the tip about the Christian Street Y!) or a regular pool to visit (does anyone have information regarding rumors I've heard that some Center City hotels offer pool memberships to locals?), there's always the plastic baby pool that we picked up at Babies 'R Us for like five bucks. It was a total impulse buy; we sort of just shrugged and figured if the Beaner used it once, we'd have gotten...
January 15, 2007
Today is Martin Luther King day, and Al has off from work. I do not, and neither do M's mother or our sharecare nanny, Jess, so the Beaner is at sharecare as usual today. This means that Al is doing what he would normally do on a Saturday if he had any control over his weekends anymore: namely, hitting golfballs, running errands, and tackling the larger items on his to-do list, like cleaning out the storage room....
August 3, 2005
The Beaner has a Pooh bear that sings (why is it that in-laws always buy NOISY toys for your kids? at least this one is cute...) a catchy little tune about bees: "The BEES in my shirt are shining brightly" — and here Pooh's shirt lights up with little bee outlines — "oh so LIGHTLY! shining BRIGHTLY! The BEES in my shirt are shining brightly, oh my twinkle BEES." Then Pooh says something like, "bees, bees, silly bees," followed...
July 18, 2005
Today is Al's 38th birthday, and to celebrate the occasion I made him the most awesome double chocolate cake with truffle icing. SO YUMMY, if I do say so myself. It looks beautiful, too. Happy Birthday, my love!...
May 24, 2005
Remember how I said Austen's first food was paper? It's also been his second, third, fourth, and so on: If he's in the Bjorn when I'm opening the mail, he'll grab it and stuff it into his mouth with stunning quickness and force. (It reminds me a bit of a shark attack: one minute he's eyeing a solicitation from Capital One calmly, the next minute he's ripped it out of my hand and shoved it down his maw.) He...
May 20, 2005
No, it's not the diaper pail. This is more like a "we found the body when the neighbors called to complain about the smell" smell. I'm starting to wonder whether the guys who installed our new heat pump did a favor for a local mob boss or something. Seriously, it's bad....
November 22, 2004
So I don't remember if I mentioned this here or not, but a couple weeks ago, our washing machine broke. (A week to the day, incidentally, after our dryer had been repaired. Why, oh why, couldn't they have both broken—and been repaired—on the same day? I mean, they were obviously scheduled to break after four years, right? How hard would it have been to make sure that they broke on the same day?) I'd been washing the second and...
October 25, 2004
[I'm obviously catching up on some pent-up blogging in between crying jags. This is my first day in the house alone without Annie, and I'm trying to cope with her absence by going about my normal routine and by sorting through cat photos for a post I'd planned to put together before I knew she was sick (look for that soon).] I love Christmastime, and the cynical romantic in me (not to mention the chocolate lover) is fond of...
May 14, 2003
Al returned home from a trip to the store yesterday to find a notice hanging on our gate, telling us that our new water main didn't pass inspection. Reason: Male PVC fittings may only be coupled to plastic female fittings. I am unsure whether it is the gender or the genetics of our fittings that is the problem....
May 6, 2003
On Saturday night we finally got our water turned back on at the house, though Plumber #2 warned us to "watch out for bread in the line." Apparently he'd plugged the various pieces of copper tubing with bits of squished-up white bread to keep dirt from getting in the line. Of course, now there was *bread* in the line, and I'm not sure that that's any better. It certainly wasn't for the kitchen faucet, which clogged immediately; my husband...
April 30, 2003
After not being able to reach my family (most importantly, my dad or my brother-in-law, who know about plumbing and piping and digging), I called my husband back with my $.02 on the situation: I don't care about the cost. My priorities are getting the job done right, and getting it done quickly. Ideally, I'd like to be able to have a glass of water when I get home, and to take a shower in the morning. He said...
The water main at our house broke today (or, more likely, last night, when I noticed a trickle of water running down the side of the driveway). My husband is busy dealing with plumbers when he should be teaching a class (hopefully the other instructor can manage on his own for a bit), we're stressing out about the cost and the likelihood that we won't be able to use the facilities until tomorrow, and my entire family has gone...