I found it!

I have been REALLY struggling to get in gear lately. I just don’t want to run. It happens to me this time of year every year. Despite knowing that I will warm up and even enjoy a nice chilly breeze, I just can’t convince myself to go outside. That is majorly compounded by the fact that it is dark leaving for and getting home from work and I will not go out in the dark. Not to mention I just haven’t been enjoying it much anymore these days.
So I was stumped with what I should do. I hate bikes at the moment, swimming is good but labor intensive. I attempted to go hard core yogi; I did a one week trial at the Core Power Yoga studio that is steps from work. This was actually pretty great but I decided I like a bit more high energy and a whole lot less cost (yoga is pricey!).
With Michael at home right now he has opened up our evenings by having dinner ready or at least prepped. The extra hour this buys is SO FREAKING HELPFUL. It has allowed me to start going to the 7:30pm Group X classes at the 24 hour fitness down the street. The timing on this is great, the gym is really close so I can leave at 7:20 and A goes to bed at 8:00 so I am not missing a ton of playtime.
The downside though (or so I thought) was that the 7:30 classes were M/W Zumba and T/Th Yoga. About three Wednesdays ago I bit the bullet and went to Zumba. I was really nervous. I mean, Zumba has its own clothes. These people are serious.
Turns out I was nervous for no reason. It was so much fun. Almost everyone there was pretty terrible but hot damn, they were into it. Nobody seemed to care what everyone else was doing and just let it out. I danced as a kid but I would never have said I loved dancing (in the hittin’ the club sense) but it was really refreshing to just move. I told M when I got home that I could have gotten a better workout in the same amount of time but the mood boost made it totally worthwhile.

And it really is. The class is a ton of fun. I have since been to three more weekday classes and a weekend one. Zumba, for the uninitiated is a dance style cardio class set to Latin/hip hop music. After my first couple classes I thought that I still like step aerobics better because it seems like a better workout overall. But the Sunday class was insane. It was completely full which should have tipped me off to the quality of instructor. That class was perfect! It was a great workout, to the point I really had to push myself not to stop, while still being a ton of fun. It is fun to dance and I find myself dancing more emphatically in the car and dancing even sillier with Andrew .

Bad news, they switched the Wednesday class to 6:30. Good news I am asking Santa for the Zumba for Kinect and I am going to try to make the Sunday morning class a staple.
More bad news, I am signed up for the 12ks of Christmas in December, so I really ought to run. I am being sort of lackadaisical about it with an “eh, I can do 7 miles,” attitude. That might not end well.


Because posts without pictures are lame:









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Wordless weekend

Ready to go geocaching at St. Edward Park


Cool containers


My passenger


More cool containers


Good deed (I'll explain later)



Visitor adoration


Playing indoors


Playing outdoors


Laundry help


Art and leisure


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Wordless Weekend

I'm ready for another, but here's what we did last weekend.

We got to play with baby Margot!


Finally found teeny tiny rain boots


Family pics


Poultry Predictor 5K (I ran super fast on accident and A was not amused by the cold)


So many blocks!


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Dirty Laundry

Laundry is my favorite chore. I actually really like doing laundry. It is a passive activity so you can be doing other things while it is getting done. It is directly beneficial and necessary for everyday life. Unlike some chores which either don’t actually matter or kills you so slowly you don’t actually notice, like dusting for example, you need fresh clothes for social acceptance.


But I also love laundry because it is sort of a chemistry problem. I remember when I was in high school being really stoked when I realized I could use hydrogen peroxide to clean up an embarrassing menstrual blood situation. In college I hung out a lot with a friend who was a pro with the stain stick.


And now, I am getting lots of practice thanks to my VERY messy toddler.
Andrew comes home from daycare a complete and utter disaster. Which I think means he is doing toddlerhood right but WHOA, that kid is a mess. I am getting good at remembering to pre-treat and so far mostly use a spray and wash stain stick. That will usually get any “washable” paint that my teeny artist brings home on his clothes.


Food stains are a bit tougher and I have started doing oxiclean in a screw top Tupperware container and soaking for a few days. I think this weakens the clothing a bit because shirts I do this to wind up getting small laundry holes pretty soon after.


I do AWESOME on clothes that have large patches of white thanks to Clorox foaming spray bleach. I saved two of my favorite of his tops this way and still can’t believe it when I take them out of the closet.
My challenge is when they are mostly colored.




This shirt for example I did the spray and wash, I did the oxiclean soak, I even tried diluted bleach (see slight discoloration on one stripe). The trick I always forget about though is what came through. THE SUN! I sunned this shirt for a day or two in the window and now it looks great. I learned the sunning trick from cloth diapers. You’d be amazed the kind of stains a day in the sun can get out.



So yeah, I like laundry. I want to get better at it. For most routine laundry happening I am pretty much all about efficiency and don’t even look through for adult generated stains. I am also awful about preserving fabric integrity- so many pilly sweaters. I would like to figure out a good trick to prevent/clean deodorant stains. I am considering scouring the internet for laundry people. I haven’t ever seen such a thing but I would bet my bleach it exists. I’d love a group that gives tricks and formulations for cleaning solvents.
My true trick for maintaining sanity amidst the toddler stains is shopping consignment. The shirt pictured above was $0.75 at the big fall consignment sale so I wasn’t too concerned if it was a lost cause. Although, my dear boy tries to foil this plan by doing his messy best in his full price fanciest clothes.



(see that really cute sweater that I bought from actual Gymboree? It required a serious Tide pen session and hand wash not 15 minutes after we took that picture. Nice try buddy!)



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I possibly need an intervention

This happened today:



Now, in my defense. My current strategy is to get a new diaper whenever a new one comes out and replace the ghetto ones that I'd bought used.

But they are rolling new ones out so damn fast. And I've so far been really bad at actually removing the others from circulation. So now I just go too long between washes and get lazy about diaper laundry cause I have a ton.

But the old ones do need to go. They are stained, holey and embarrassing to take to daycare.

Also, this genius is named for Harper Lee. So there's that.

I actually don't regret buying at all. I just think I should have done a pocket instead of freetime. And this is when addiction is dangerous, when you can't admit it is a problem.

I probably don't need to bore you dear people with my (extremely ridiculous and boring) problems.

So here is Andrew wearing a hat, playing underneath his table and interacting with the cat:









(He's about to get bopped on the head)


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Document, Document, Document

I’m really, really sad.

My iPhone 5S blue screened (AKA died in a sudden and spectacular way, never to be repaired). They replaced the phone but the last time I made a full back up…JULY 17th. Let’s run down event since that date: Our 3rd wedding anniversary, Andrew’s FIRST birthday (his first ever), meeting baby Margot, and other stuff. Turns out the pictures in the cloud are only the past 30 days. So I do have October.







I am so, so sad. But let’s explore whether I should be quite this bummed. I am pretty good at using my actual camera. Plus I share photos on Facebook, on this blog and on Instagram. If you really break it down, there isn’t one week of this child’s life that isn’t still safely documented. So it should be OK. I should just –wait for it- remember those days fondly, without the need for excessive photographic evidence. It has been done before. In the dark ages.

I will confess that I already miss having them for my 3 O’clock family fix. Most days of the week I would find myself browsing my phone for a quick mood booster.
So I shouldn’t be too devastated, but I sort of am.

My post traumatic experience coping mechanisms going forward: BACK UP THE DAMN PHONE. I also bought more storage space for iCloud (bastards). I am also going to blog more and blast my pics on Facebook more often.
Yep, pretty sad.


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Costume FTW

Andrew and I went to my nephews’ Halloween dance last weekend. I’ve gone with them every year and Andrew has gone his entire life. And every year I wear the same costume.
The idea of this costume was born one Halloween long ago. I was working in Fremont and had recently made friends with a cool girl who worked in the same building as me. We were super cool single gals with no real plans for Halloween. As we walked out of our building we found ourselves in a sea of people, all ages, in costume parading through the streets. Someone told us it was Troll-oween and everyone was welcome in the parade. We looked at each other, shrugged and decided to join in. We went back into lab, put on lab coats, goggles and gloves and set out to parade Fremont.

Then she moved away and my biggest Halloween plan was the elementary school dance. And every year I rehashed the same costume. My nephews always liked it and it was easy.



This year I thought about leaving it at home. My sister never dresses up and since I had the world’s cutest banana with me, I figured I didn’t need any embellishment. But I thought, it is cool to be a scientist and I like helping remind kids of that.



So I donned my stock costume.
About halfway through the dance a teenage girl, who had obviously been dragged along to her little siblings’ school dance, asked me if my coat was real. I said it was and we started talking about research and science and how science is the most fun subject in school. She said she wants to be a pilot. I wish her lots of luck. High school is a hard time and staying focused/figuring out what you want is hard. Even if our little interaction was a microscopic nano-encouragement, it is still the most worthwhile Halloween costume I’ve worn to date.



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