Author: Faith

Well, that wasn’t so bad

Success! E and I arrived safely and in more or less one piece on Monday. I (of course) put off packing until the night before and so I was up until 1:30 am doing laundry and lethargicly shuffling stuff in and out of suitcases. And then I took a shower and lay in bed, wide-eyed and exhausted until I finally dropped off around 2:30. I’m normally pretty mellow but the combination of packing at the last minute with the anxiety I was feeling about travelling alone with E get me worked up. But everything went swimmingly.

E was a trooper on the plane; I didn’t even have to break out his little dvd player until we were over halfway there. The plane was completely full but people seemed to be passing by the seat next to us (not that I blame them) until a mom with a 4-week old (!) plopped herself down. Hypocrite that I am, I had a flash of “Oh great, why do I have to sit next to the crying baby” but then I instantaneously quashed that sentiment and tried to be helpful and nice.

Both the baby and E were great on the plane so there wasn’t really anything to worry about. E loved looking out the window as we took off and giggled like crazy as we went “in the sky.” He was surprisingly easy to entertain. He seemed like such a big kid compared to the newborn on my other side.

And now we are at my parents house out in the middle of the woods. My mom took E with her yesterday to run some errands and so I took a luxiourous 3-hour nap. When I woke up I even had that that heavy-headed feeling you get when you’ve slept too long. Ah, sleep headache–how I’ve missed you, old friend. It’s been too long.

Love Songs

I thought I’d post a couple of my favorite love songs in honor of Valentine’s Day. I’m posting YouTube videos of them because Google/Blogger has gone all DMCA-enforcer on a bunch of people’s music blogs and has started pulling them down if they host mp3s. (Lame!)

“It’s Only Time” by The Magnetic Fields
I’ve been a fan of Stephin Merrit’s music since I borrowed a mix tape of songs from 69 Love Songs from N back in college. Merrit’s brilliant lyrics and catchy melodies played almost constantly in my car the summer after my sophomore year of college as I drove around wondering where this thing with this boy N was going. This song hadn’t yet come out when we got married and we weren’t really wedding-dance type people, per say, but I can’t think of a better wedding song.
(I have no idea about the picture (?) but this video had the best sound quality I could find.)

“In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel
This is the song that N and I tend to think of as “our song.” During the ambiguous friendship stage of our relationship that lasted months and months we sent each other long, long emails almost everyday. N would sometimes include song lyrics in the signature of his emails and one day when I was home for the summer he included these lines:

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all around the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me

When I read those lines I squealed and proceeded to spend entirely too much time trying to analyze N’s meaning. I hadn’t heard the song before but I checked the cd out from the library and listened to it and promptly had my mind blown.

“My, You Look Ravishing Tonight” by Kleenex Girl Wonder
This song is by another artist linked to our courtship days. In college N had this beat-up orange ’74 Volkswagen bug that he drove around. The thing was pretty creaky but N had installed a cd player so he could listen to music as he puttered around. One day (during our ambiguous-friendship days) N offered to give his roommate a ride to the airport to catch a very early flight home and I volunteered to come along and keep him company. We had to leave at some ridiculously hour (I think it was around 5 am) but all I knew was that I would rather tag along so I could spend the hour-ride back to campus chatting in the car with N than sleep in. (And I really like sleeping in so I think I was starting to get the idea that this may serious).

Kleenex Girl Wonder’s album Ponyoak was playing on the drive back and I remember being sleepy but almost giddy with happiness and feeling like the songs fit the occasion perfectly. I love Graham Smith’s music and Ponyoak is still one of my top ten favorite albums ever. While this song isn’t on Ponyoak, it’s my favorite song by Smith.

After having a disappointing dining experience last year on Valentine’s day at one of my favorite steak places (the service was really poor and the food sub par) I vowed not to waste money by going to a fancy place on Valentine’s day again. So instead we’re going to hit up one of our favorite ethnic dives and maybe catch a movie tonight.

Whatever your plans include I hope you have a lovely weekend!

Letter: Month Twenty-Seven

Dear E,

I can’t wait for winter to end. This winter you’ve come down with cold after cold with a bout flu and a stomach bug thrown in for good measure. Between your being sick and me having a crazy time at work this month was kind of hard. To be honest, you ended up watching a lot of tv while I was working. You still like Yo Gabba Gabba but your new favorite is The Wonder Pets. You have the words to your favorite episode memorized which to be honest is a little unsettling.

Fortunately my big project at work has wrapped up and so this week I’ve been trying to make up for neglecting you the last few weeks. On Monday we went to the farm and you had a blast feeding corn to the animals. At first you were a little shy but by the end you were sticking your hand up to the goats and shrieking with delight when they licked your fingers. And yesterday I took you the park to swing and play on the slide. There was still snow on the ground but you wrapped your fingers around the chains and exclaimed “wee!” as I pushed you higher and higher. Watching the joy beam from your face made me feel like pushing you on the swing for hours and hours. (But I didn’t because it was cold and even something like that gets old after twenty minutes.)

There was a night this last month when you had been sick and needy all day, work had been difficult, and the house was in disarray. I was wheeling the trash cans out to the street curb and I stopped to look up at the sky. It was a clear night and the stars seemed distant but friendly. I took a deep breath and suddenly all my complaints receded and were replaced with gratitude for having a son, a job, a house. I need to work at hanging on to that gratitude more often.

You’ve been really funny lately. Once you learned about animals and shapes we started teaching you counting. Right now you skip some numbers though and usually count “two, three, four, five, six, eight, ten!” We were all in the car together and your dad and I were trying to get you to say “one” and “nine” when your dad remarked that you seemed to dislike odd numbers. You promptly exclaimed “five!” and “three!” and it was funny and weird. I know you don’t know what odd numbers are; it was just one of those little funny moments of being a parent.

Sometimes you try and use your new counting skills for evil, though. If you’re messing with something you know you shouldn’t be and we tell you not to touch it you immediately put a sweet look on your face and start pointing to the object and counting, “two, three, four, five, six…” We fall for it every time and can’t help but laugh.

Love,

Mama

Menu for the week of Feb 8th

Things seem to have calmed down with work so things shouldn’t be quite as crazy this week (phew!). But this week will still be kind of hectic since I’ll be trying to put my house back in order after letting it fall apart last week and also preparing to take E and go visit family in Washington. So we’re trying to keep it simple this week, dinner-wise.

  • Monday (N): Potstickers and rice/noodles
  • Tuesday (Faith): Homemade chicken noodle soup (made without egg noddles so E can have some. He’s been really into soup lately)
  • Wednesday (N): Salmon patty sandwiches
  • Thursday (Faith): Pulled pork sandwiches
  • Friday: Takeout
  • Saturday: Leftovers

Weekly Menu FAIL

Up until last night the whole weekly-menu-thing was going pretty well. Even though I was tired by the time I got home at 8:45 pm on Tuesday from helping out with a church youth activity I sucked it up and made the roasted shrimp and broccoli dish I had planned (I know, right? SO brave.) And I really appreciated getting home from woodworking class on Wednesday night at 9:40 and being able to eat the delicious chicken cacciatore that N had made instead of Del Taco drive-thru which used to be our usual post-woodworking-class meal.

But last night, the night I was supposed to make teriyaki chicken and salad with homemade dressing (ah, such arrogance!) was the night that the menu broke down. Notice it wasn’t on one of N’s nights; even though he has a demanding job as a corporate lawyer he still managed to cook two healthy dinners this week. Nope, it was me who caved at 9:05 last night and ordered pizza.

Granted, yesterday was a really hard day: I had been working on my big quarterly presentation and they shifted some deadlines and told me yesterday morning that I needed to have a big chunk of it finished by 9:00 last night instead of on Monday like I had been expecting. Plus E has caught his 26th cold of the season (I blame preschool) and was super whiny yesterday and threw himself on the floor and cried at the drop of a hat and he only took a 30-minute nap.

I took a clear-eyed look at everything that was going on and realized that there was no way I would be able to take care of little E, get dinner over to my friend Emily’s house at a reasonable hour, and then get back home and finish my work by 9 . Yes, that’s right. I didn’t just flake on making dinner for my family, I flaked on making dinner for another family, a family who just had a new baby a couple weeks ago (oy vay!). So yesterday I spent a few minutes gathering up my courage/fighting my embarrassment and called Emily and asked if I could bring dinner over on Friday instead of Thursday. She was very nice about it but I felt like the world’s worst friend.

N was a trooper and as soon as he got home he took E off my hands so I could finish my work. I emailed my report in at 9:00 pm and ordered a pizza at 9:02 pm. N was very gracious about the whole thing. I still have a lot of work to do today on the next stage of my presentation but I’ll have enough time to make dinner tonight.

On a fairly-related note, I think I’m going to scale back the frequency of my posts here. There are several things in my life that I need to be spending more time on, mostly E and work and up-keeping my house which is threatening to reach a Hoarders-level of clutter. Once I get my crap under a bit of control I’ll probably go back to posting everyday. But as for right now it’s become a bit of a stretch to find the time to post or to think of things to post about. I still love blogging and I still thrive on structure so instead of posting on every weekday I think I’ll switch to posting on Monday/Wednesdays/Fridays and see how it goes. I hope you’ll still stick around.

Holga from The Egyptian

I’m approaching official burnout regarding Sundance; I’m guessing you guys are might be getting tired of it too. The festival ended over the weekend and the awards were given out. I was pleased to see that Red Chapel won best foreign documentary.

Even with the burnout I have one more review that I have to write though, mostly because the movie was so lame I feel the need to warn people about it. But I’ll save that for later. Today I wanted to post a picture I took with my Holga camera when we were up in Ogden last Saturday for Sundance.

The shows we saw played at Peery’s Egyptian Theater, a lovely historic theater. While we waited for the shows to begin we sat and listened to the octogenarian organist play show tunes which was fun. I took this photo by using a long shutter speed and trying standing very still. I obviously wobbled a bit but I like how it turned out.

Very Polite

Good manners are pretty important to me (probably because I grew up with a Korean mom and a dad from the south) and I’ve been trying to instill them in E. He has saying “thank you” and “please” down pretty well so now I’m trying to teach him how to introduce himself.

This morning it kind of seemed to click. During breakfast he looked me in the eye and announced, “Hi! I’m eeeott!” I praised him effusively and he beamed.

But my parental pride promptly dissolved into giggles when he continued on: “Hi, I’m Mama!…Hi, I’m cereal!…Hi, I’m milk!…Hi, I’m bowl!…Hi, I’m chair!…”

Menu for the week of Feb 1st

Starting this week, I’m going to be making a real effort to plan out our dinners. I hate the sinking feeling I get when I look at the clock to realize it’s 9 pm, it’s my turn to cook and I have no idea what to make (Yeah, we eat ridiculously late sometimes.). Plus, I think planning will help us save money and not make as many trips to the grocery store.

I know planning a weekly menus isn’t anything new and that most of you probably already do this already (Check out the yummy menus Citymama posts on Mondays). But I really need to improve my household management skills and this is me taking baby steps in the right direction. I’m planning on posting the menu here to help keep me on track–you know, peer pressure and whatnot.

How are you guys? I always like to see what other people are cooking. Whatcha making?

Sundance 2010: Louis CK “Hilarious”

Even though he sometimes uses language that would make my mother faint, Louis CK is one of my favorite comedians. (And the part about my mom is no exaggeration. My brother Steven is a huge Howie Mandel fan (yes, apparently there is such a thing) and for his birthday he wanted to go see Howie perform but when Mr. Deal-Or-No-Deal started dropping the swears my mom freaked out and wanted to leave but Steven wanted to stay. So she covered her ears and successfully blocked the evening from her memory.)

You may have seen one of Louis CK’s comedy specials on Comedy Central or noticed him as Amy Pohler’s cop love interest on Parks and Recreation. Hilarious, is a two-hour performance movie by Louis CK. It was really funny but I wouldn’t recommend it if you have delicate sensibilities (This means you, Mom!).

The best part of the viewing was that Louis CK was there in person! He introduced the film and then held a lengthy Q&A session afterward. It was fun to see him in person. He definitely had a self-loathing vibe roiling off him (surprise, surprise) but he was very nice. I was tempted to ask to take a picture with him but decided it would be tacky; he looked really tired by the end of the Q&A.

Louis CK did a bit on Conan’s show that’s been making the rounds on the ol’ internets. It’s pretty great (and swear-free since it was on network tv). He included a longer version of it in the movie. Check it out.