Groovy!

I saw the below on eBay recently and was faintly appalled at myself with the visceral need to MAKE IT MINE.

But I mean honestly - it came personalized already (that reads HEATHER if you can't really tell), it's from the 1970s, which I have come to realize is my default decade of accessorizing and occasionally dressing AND I got it for fairly cheap. And god knows, I really need another purse.

Ahem.

It does also read ANGEL on the side, which I hope does not make anyone snort coffee through their noses, but I'll just try to cover that up with, I dunno, some fabulous boho vintage scarf. I am reminded once more, however, of the fact that my name was rilly rilly rilly rilly rilly rilly popular in that era. Le sigh.

Bipedalismintality

She's not quite abandoning her push toy just yet, but as of Sunday last, Peabo joined the ranks of the upright and independent. We think she mostly liked staggering between us only to dive at us with shrieks of glee, but then, we kind of liked that too.

I did notice today, however, that she made a valiant effort to walk away from me in a restaurant parking lot so as to avoid the car seat and going home. Because, of course. Why bother walking away from the mother somewhere contained and non-car filled?

Pwned

Just to jump on the bandwagon of smirking at Clinton's apparent inability (and then indifference) to pronounce correctly the president-elect of Russia, here is an amusing video from the London Times online, where the Foreign Editor shows us how it should be done. To be fair, he mildly botches the president of Turkmenistan:

Video

Resistance Is Futile

A friend pointed me to this site, and while I was giggling throughout, it was a cringing, painful, self recognizing giggle. The shame. Especially now that I am eying our upstairs bathroom with a stack of Architectural Digest and California Home + Design in hand.

HOWEVER. I do not particularly care for hip hop. So.

Dorks On Holiday!

My best friend from halcyon university days lives in Vancouver, and as we are both now, like, old, and, like, mothers, we decided a girls' weekend away was definitely in order. Seattle was the best halfway point and so we have been researching hotels and the like. Below, please find a slightly edited for entertainment copy of our IM session:

heddyh; we could schedule in room spa services
wildkitten9t7: oooh...really?
wildkitten9t7: cool
heddyh: yup
heddyh: omg
heddyh: this is our hotel
heddyh: check it out
heddyh: Check Out at Check In Program, offering literature lovers the chance to check out books from the neighboring Seattle Public Library or enjoy one of the hotel's collection during their stay
wildkitten9t7: ooooh
wildkitten9t7: yup
wildkitten9t7: that's us
wildkitten9t7: all those amenities and it's the BOOKS that get us
heddyh: at least we're self aware

On A Vastly Lighter Note

This is causing me to kick my heels on the floor while screaming with laughter. Slightly NSFW.

Visceral

First off, my sister is fortunately not even at home at this time, but she lives about five blocks from where this is currently taking place.

My senior year of university, I lived about five blocks from that intersection too. I bought my one and only adult bike (a super ghetto green 3 speed for $30) at Duke's Cycle, which is apparently no more. We got videos at Suspect Video. I don't yet know what the human casualty rate is, and I hope to hell it's at zero, but for what it's worth, it hurts to see part of my memories go up in smoke.

You Know You Live In California

When the first lemonade stand of the season shows up on President's Day weekend.

That's February, for my Canadian and overseas readers.

Sigh. Am I *THAT MOTHER*?

This week has been particularly busy in terms of Kindergarten involvement, starting with the "100 Things" collage needed to celebrate 100 days of Kindergarten (I guess, I don't really know - I just do the homework they tell me to do). I offer up this advice to any of my readers who have children not yet in school, and feel free to take it or leave it but here goes: get real good with scissors and glue. Now.

It is extraordinarily challenging to find 100 'things' to cut out of magazines or similar and not have fourteen thousand cars and blingy watches, especially with my new regime of immediately tossing most catalogs after a cursory glance. I had to laugh at the collection I did manage to amass; let's just say school is going to be able to figure out our socio-economic status pretty quickly. At least I didn't pilfer one of Gene's boat magazines.

Today being Valentine's day, Bean has parties in both her classrooms, which is fun and all, but of course, requires food to be sent from home. Jello and/or Handi-Snacks were suggested but I offered to send in fruit or veggies - yeah, I did that. I'm that mother. I guess it's better than tofu dogs or kelp chips or something but all I could think was, I've done a good enough job with this that apparently my child doesn't even want to eat the corn dog in the cafeteria when I don't have time to make her lunch. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. Arguably, cutting up oranges into slices is somewhat easier (not to mention cheaper) than making Jello or cleaning the grocery store out of Handi-Snacks, but still. I comfort myself with the fact that we live in California and thus can get away with the healthy food parental default.

$25.46

That's the price of silence in the Hoffman house currently. I'm not sure about normal toddlers but my eccentric one is rather into stickers at the moment, and I'm constantly amazed at her ability to deftly bend the paper to expose a corner, peel one off, and actually stick it to something else. Over and over and over again.

I was at Michael's the other day in an effort to get better stickers than the random ones I had around the house (very small and very prone to being stuck to the floor and staying there) - ended up with three books of Sandylion ones touting "550 STICKERS INSIDE!", and a Little Einsteins book, nay, volume, of stickers stating "OVER 770 STICKERS INSIDE!". If you've done the math, that's 2120 stickers, and seriously, if that gets us through the weekend, I will be so happy.

True Story

We watch a lot of Noggin TV around here (listen, don't hate on me, they don't advertise anything except their shows. And I need coffee in the morning); one of the constant interlude themes is "winter wonderland" - no need to explain that one, but understand it's a pretty constant refrain. So the other day, we were listening to it go on about how fabulous the frozy, cozy weather is, and all I could think was "christ, when is this whole winter thing going to be played out? It's JANUARY, people - time to start thinking about spring".

Yeah. I've clearly lived in California just a bit too long, you think?

Ta-home

Surprisingly easy weekend trekking up to the snow. And through the snow. And shoveling the snow. And using the snow as a freezer (no shit, we really did that). So Tahoe got a *lot* of snow recently with all the stormy weather California has been having, and it was exceedingly lovely, albeit exceedingly drifty; the girls and I drove up on Friday midday as Gene was coming home from the east coast (I picked him up in Reno LATE that night - thank you again to Fu for coming with). Amazingly, we a) left about when I had hoped and b) made it up there about when I had hoped, including a lunch stop. The kids were great, with the exception of 40 minutes outside of Truckee when Peabo lost her marbles due to no nap (neither of my two are big on the car naps, alas); she finally yowled herself into a fitful nap, but what are you going to do. I had stopped at a McDonald's north of Sacramento and had to do the drive-through and eat in the parking lot thing because, not so much wanting to dig the stroller out of the pile of crap in the backseat and you know, faster. Anyway, I also did not get to hit the bathroom and let me assure you, I was drawing on every vestigial memory of being nicknamed "Camel" as a child.

The roads were both clear and empty of traffic for the most part, which was a relief; Truckee/Tahoe Donner was a bit sloppy but our bruiser of a car scoffed at the muck and fetched up at our lovely rental house to find...a lot of snow. Okay. I can deal with this, I grew up in the frozen North. Fortunately the driveway had been mostly plowed, so it was just getting into snow up to my hips to get the key out of the lockbox and then up to knees to start sherpa-ing stuff into the house. Got the kids inside, got Peabo eventually into the portable crib to scream at me more about the whole nap thing, got Bean situated with toys and Spongebob on TV, and then started shoveling. The good news was that the snow itself, while incredibly deep, was also incredibly powdery. If I cared anything about downhill skiing, I would have been sacrificing marmots to the weather gods. There was also something rather nostalgic about getting out there with the shovel - when you grow up in a two daughter house, someone gets to be 'the boy', and generally speaking that meant Heather, so I've shoveled my fair share of the white stuff. I did pay for it the next day, admittedly, but it was a minor casualty and I felt insanely virtuous having the porch and stairs cleared off before anyone else arrived.

Got the kids into bed at a normal hour, had dinner with everyone else, tried to keep my eyes propped open with coffee until 10:30 when we left for Reno. In passing, I-80 between Truckee and Reno SUCKS. As Fu sagely pointed out, it's a bit distressing that this is our lifeline between us and the rest of the country. Still and all, we made it there and back and the snowstorm didn't start in earnest until the next day, after which point the five foot snow drift on the back porch became less a bed of ice for conveniently freezing leftovers and beer and more of a deep chest walk in freezer of industrial proportions. We were debating leaving stuff and placing bets on when exactly someone would unearth it, but the need for beer outweighed that decision.

Saturday became a sit around on our asses and eat crap and drink more crap and you know, that was really quite all right. We did rouse ourselves in the afternoon to take the three kids outside and try out the saucer sleds we found in the garage, but it was a) damn cold and b) damn blowy with the snow; the two toddlers gave up about 5 minutes in and were taken back inside, but Bean loved loved loved the whole experience, maintaining giggles even after falling into a snowbank. Quite honestly, that made the whole trip for me. Peabo was hilarious all bundled up into an immobile little fireplug...unhappy immobile little fireplug, admittedly, but hilarious all the same.

Poker was played Saturday night, booze was consumed, more slackassitude. Over night the wind and snow continued and we awoke on Sunday to hear that all the roads in and out of Tahoe were closed; however, they do know how to deal with this sort of thing up there and by 10 or 11 am, it was down to chain control for non-4WD vehicles, and by the time we left at 2, there wasn't any control. Which would have been great if a Safeway truck hadn't jackknifed across westbound I-80 at Blue Canyon. Yeah. So we were literally parked on the freeway for close to 2 hours, during which time I just kept shoving snacks into the kids to keep them close to a semblance of happy. However, made it through and got home about 8:30, both kids straight to bed, and me glopping lotion on any exposed part of my body. It is effing DRY up there. You don't remember that fact until you get home and feel like a charred leaf pile in the middle of the desert. Bleh.

It was a really good weekend though - one of the best, I'd have to say. Thanks to all y'all who came up with and made dinners and helped with kids, and all that good stuff. Next year, the compound!