Cleveland

I just wanted to say what a sweetie-pie Cleve was. I know you guys loved him incredibly. I will miss him too, and please give Ghidi snuggles from us.

Test, yo!

Most a yous should be receiving this via email!

Viral, but funny...

Dear Red States:

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe
this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch o f single moms. Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens
back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.


With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines, 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, CalTech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other and, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Peace out,

Blue States

Potential new tenants

We have another family from our HighlandsMommies online mothers' group interested in looking at our Denver house for a rental - I'm trying to set up a showing this weekend, so send us good thoughts!

Tentative Wedding Date: June 2009

We finally made a decision - we're NOT getting married over Thanksgiving. There were pros and cons about the idea, but it finally occurred to me that we were stressing ourselves out with trying to get the wedding organized within a few weeks, and there's just no reason to try to push it. So life resumes its normal frenetic pace without immediate wedding plans hanging over our heads!

Although it was absolutely gorgeous weather this weekend, it was kinda tough since I had a really bad cold and John was in SD with Oliver and Bailey. I had arranged for our Mother's Helper to come give me a break on both Saturday and Sunday, but she has cystic fibrosis and shouldn't be around sick people, so we had to cancel her visits. :P So Harry and I had a very low-key weekend. The highlight of it was that the neighbor next door had raked leaves and left a leaf pile in the front yard, and by playing with a kid visiting that house, Harry got to jump in the leaf pile. From then on, every time we left the house Harry wanted to go jump in the leaf pile... and I let him! I kicked the leaves all back into a pile each time we were done - I'm sure we reduced some of them to dust, but oh well. I've promised Harry that when our tree drops its leaves, I'll rake him a good pile and let him kick and jump and scatter leaves to his heart's content. For one day. Then I'll hand him a rake. :D

I also had my first mammogram last week - happy 40th birthday! I was expecting some sort of medieval torture device with a thin veneer of modern medicine over it, but it actually wasn't at all bad - barely even uncomfortable, much less painful.

And Harry has his first black eye. He was running across the playground to his teacher and fell and hit his cheek - a nice bruise on the cheek that then traveled up to his eye. It's not as bad now as it was, but John and I are both ready to be done with it. We're probably imagining most of the stares, but it doesn't help that recently Harry has been pretty aggressive, and when he hits us, we say, "Don't hit Mama" (or Papa) and Harry responds, "Don't hit Harry!" Ack.

Damn, he's good!

I'm not entirely surprised at this point, but I just really enjoy how calm Obama stayed compared to McCain. Obviously, I'm biased, but I do find it rewarding that Obama is behaving himself. ;)

Did you guys see this article a few months ago? It graphically demonstrates how, as graphically depicted, how much both candidates' blogs are focusing on Obama.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/08/03/portrait_of_the_candidate_as_a_pile_of_words/
Kind of cool...not to mention satisfying. ;)

Dad, who are you voting for?

The joys of domesticity

John spent a good portion of this weekend installing a new toilet and sink in our second bathroom - yee-ha!! It's just been an empty room (except for the bathtub) for a year, after John and his brother ripped out the tiles and drywall and completely replaced all the wallboard, so getting the toilet functional is really, really great. (Almost as exciting as our new fridge, which appeared last week!) The new bathroom sink isn't quite functional yet - there's some problem with the drainage; apparently the original builders didn't bother making sure the plumbing was installed with the correct grade, so John's bringing in the duct tape and chewing gum to retro-fix it. But that should be done fairly soon. Then we move on to putting grout between the shower tiles, and sometime in the next month or so we might have a second fully functional bathroom!!!

And this weekend we had some really great cheese and vegetable soup, with veggies straight out of the garden, and BLTs with the L and T freshly picked and washed. I have to admit that eating just-picked carrots, tomatoes, green beans, broccoli, zucchini, etc. is pretty addictive! I've rolled my eyes in the past at the amount of time and energy John's put into planning his garden, but I'm a convert.

Harry even likes helping to pick the beans and strawberries, and enjoys eating the green beans right off the vine! He likes them cooked, too, but it's just especially funny to see him running around with an 8" long bean in each hand, chewing away. :D Of course he flatly refused to eat any of the cheese soup... because he loves cheese, chicken soup, vegetables, and the bread bowl we served it in. Therefore, since he loves all the ingredients, he wasn't at all interested in eating it all together. ???

Harry's now fulltime in the potty-training room, which means that he's able to play in the bigger-kid playground and do activities that are more challenging for him. He's been having a bit of trouble napping, although he seems to be sleeping better, so it probably works out evenly... although we'd love it if he started napping better AND sleeping better! Actually, we'd love it if all of us started napping and sleeping better. It's on the agenda.