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The Unbearable Cuteness of Ian

This weekend we had my three little sisses for the weekend (Rachel [8], Nikki [7], Lexi [4.9]).  Here they are last time they were with us--on Balboa Island, eating ice cream in the cold, cold evening.

Hmm.  My parenting skills might need a little work. 

Anyway, what fun we had this weekend.  Friday I took the girls for manicures and pedicures with me.  They were SO excited;  I just loved it.  They each got their toes and fingernails painted, with flowers on both thumbs and big toes, for $10/each.  I thought that was pretty reasonable.  We ate A LOT of things that Weight Watchers would scold me for and went to the beach (which, if you know me, you know is a mixed bag: love the peace, love the majesty; not so much love for the sand, saltwater and feeling of not being 100% clean).

Sunday we took the girls to lunch at Island's after church, and there we met up with my dear friend Desiree who now lives in Azusa (very close to Pasadena).  She lived in Brea when I was in Monrovia, so I thought moving to Anaheim would mean I'd see her more (due to the relative closeness of the cities).  Then she went and bought a condo back near Monrovia!  After lunch we took the girls home and hung out with the 'rents for awhile.  We watched Mona Lisa Smile.  I liked the young girls in it (Julia Stiles, Kirsten Dunst, etc.), but actually felt like the story was really incomplete.  It seemed to be missing a good chunk of exposition about Julia Roberts' character.

But the most exciting part of yesterday was that Julie and Rob called me (see previous post) to tell me that they were passing through the San Fernando Valley on their way home from his parents house where they'd been visiting, and they wanted to know if they could stop by my parents' house to show off Ian.  You betcha!

So, lucky me, I got to hold beautiful baby Ian for something like two hours.  Just hold him, tickle his little chin and his adorable little round baby feet.  I even got to feed him and burp him.  I know that this probably sounds mundane to anyone who is already a mom or who just tolerates babies, but I love babies.  I want one.  Badly.  But I've got a few years yet before I can get one.  (After I, oh, say...get married.  And The Boy finishes school so he can be around to help me.  Let's face it.  I'm a wimp and I get cranky really easily.  We're going to need to be able to tag-team.)

Oh, it was lovely.  He's just as beautiful in person as his pictures suggest.  Here's an earlier picture of him, when he was really new.

Don't you just want to eat him up?!

Lastly, I'm knitting my very first socks with the help of a Wednesday night sock knitting class.  If you've never seen anyone knitting socks, let me tell you: it looks dangerous.  Look at the picture on this page to see what it looks like.  Then throw in an extra needle, and you have what I'm working on.  Starting with five needles, each with the diameter of about a toothpick, and 6" long, the knitting is done in a tube.  In order to move onto the next--complicated--step of turning the heel (going from knitting straight, to curve the heel of the sock), my instructor has asked us to have 6" of length completed by Wednesday.

Saturday I dropped one of my needles in The Boy's car.  It rolled under the seat, never to be seen again.  I even violated several child labor laws and had my little sister crawling around the passenger area of the car, reaching and peering under the passenger's seat.  Then I was stuck.  My knitting store is closed on Sundays and Mondays, Michael's doesn't carry them (they're too specialized) and I couldn't find another place that had them. 

Cue The Boy.  If you can believe this, he took a wooden chopstick from Panda Express and a Swiss Army knife and whittled me a temporary knitting needle until I can find a store selling them and buy a new set (because, naturally, you have to buy 4 or 5 at a time).  And it actually works!  It looked like shaping it so that it matched the diameter of the other 4 needles was the hardes part, but it's pretty darn good.  I mean, it's not the machine-manufactured, soft bamboo of the $10 Crystal Palace needles, but it's an awfully good facsimile made from a chopstick!!  I guess that's just Reason #765,897,345 to love The Boy.

More Bad Stuff

Kat mentioned in my comments this new fascination by Bushco with postponing elections should there be a terrorist attack on election eve or election day. It's funny she brought it up because it was going to be my main blog subject today. As Josh Marshall writes, "But my understanding is that we already have a policy in place on postponements: i.e., we don't do them."

The more I hear or read about the subject, the more I grow suspicious of what Marshall calls the "unseemly eagerness on the part of the White House to canvass ideas (embodied in legislation) for a possible delay of the November election in the event of a terrorist attack." More here.

Dontcha think it's a bit transparent to be floating this trial balloon around? Hmmm? If a terrorist attack were to occur, and Bush then postponed the elctions, using the authority he got by a safety measure that his team just so happened to pursue out of the blue in July...um, who would buy that?

And what of this nice little contradiction? Ridge warned Thursday that al Qaeda terrorists were planning a large-scale attack on the United States "in an effort to disrupt the democratic process." and " Ridge said he had no specific or credible information about threats to the political conventions." Wow, these guys are super at intelligence gathering, eh?

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And what of this? "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Also, according to an ISI [Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence] (ISI) official, a White House aide said last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT [high value target, such as OBL, al-Zawahiri, or Mullah Mohammed Omar] were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston."

Is it just me, or does that seem just the teeniest bit self-serving? Anticipating big bounces in the polls, they would knock out coverage of the Dem convention in the papers and on TV. And doesn't making these kind of demands sort of imply that they know it is possible to do this? Implying that it could have been done at other times, but wasn't convenient for the administration?

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A few funnies.

First, from the Onion [gotta love 'em!], there are times I definitely know I have this!

Click here for a great protest message. We need this on the 101, 5, 405, etc. out here in SoCal.

And, finally, make Georgie do your bidding! He's not quite the Subservient Chicken, but you can make him say some of those things you've been thinking about him. "I'm a moron. I only got this office because of my daddy's friends. I'm ruining this whole damned country, but heck, I'll be out of here after I lose the election! I'm moving to Saudi Arabia, where my good friend Prince Bandar and I can go play golf everyday!"

Okay, maybe he can't say that, but you can definitely play around with him a bit.

Stuff I've Missed

I've been so busy at work, and the so-called liberal media has been so inept, that I haven't heard about these fascinating happenings. Have you?

BEWARE: SOME OF THE INFORMATION TO FOLLOW WILL IRRITATE AND/OR INFURIATE!

Michigan GOP gathers names for Nader. Gee, do you think if he were a real threat to the Right that they would be going to so much effort to support him?!?

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The Associated Press filed, in accordance with the Freedom Of Information Act, for documents pertaining to Bush's record in the Texas Air National Guard. When the White House released their records a couple months back, some information was 'mysteriously' missing. The AP sought to get the rest of the info. But due to some strange cosmic alignment, the records are no longer available. As Josh Marshall so eloquently puts it here, "This guy just can't catch a break." He goes on to explain a bit more about "the president's latest brush with cruel fate." For more, you can go here and to the subsequent links on Kos' site (a good site, indeed, for pretty up-to-the minute politicking, btw).

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This may be the first (and last) time I will ever have kudos for Donald Trump, but if you haven't seen him fire GWB yet, go here. Hee hee. You can also read this pseudo-article. Dare I say, "You go, Trumpy!" Hmmm, maybe not. But I do like what he has to say re: Dubya... And, no, I would NOT vote for him.

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Did you hear about Richard Riordan's antics in Santa Barbara. What a jerk. Sounds like little Isis is more of an adult that good ol' Richie Rich.

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Just for the record, I'm not responsible for the guy making all the changes to Jenny's work. I think she's fabulous! But his inability to make a decision is not unique to him; instead it is rather peculiarly endemic to my entire company. It's been a rough couple of weeks on the Marketing front, I must say!

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Current Comforter Count: Holding steady at 9. We went out to dinner last night and missed the Comforter Queen's homecoming to see whether she added to her stash. My latest theory is that she's turning her entire apartment into one big moon bounce. No shoes allowed!

Today's comforter count: +2

Blankets & Books

A new neighbor moved into our apartment building recently, a few doors down from us. Over the last two weeks I'd seen her come home on 3 separate occassions with 4 of those enormous clear plastic bags that comforters/blankets (or those bed-in-a-bag kits) come in when you buy them at the store.

Sunday I was reading in the bedroom, watching the illegal fireworks going off around us, when The Boy came running in to tell me that the neighbor had come home with another plastic bag containing a comforter. And some similarly packaged pillows. We began to think that something strange must be going on. Now we're hyper-aware of this woman's activities.

Then last night I'm watching TV in the living room and she walks by again carrying another plastic bag with another comforter, and trailing 4 more King size pillows in plastic cases. I ran to get The Boy. We watched her--discreetly, of course--as she struggled to get all of these into her apartment without opening the door more than a crack or turning on any lights. Then we had to scramble away from the door as she returned downstairs and came back with another blanket and even more pillows. What the heck is she doing?!?

The Boy and I are now obsessed with her actions. Is she padding the walls of her apartment with them? Is she running a linens store out of her apartment? Did she get a really good deal at Bed Bath & Beyond. What? What? What?

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And I was reading The Daily Kos today and saw that last night he had an open thread for post-Bush administration book titles. Here are some great ones (complete list here):

"Hair Care and Other Personal Grooming Tips," by Paul Wolfowitz

"Me Talk Presidential One Day," The memoirs of George W.

"Constitution Schmonstitution," by John Ashcroft

"The Presidency of George W. Bush," with foreword by Stephen King

"NEO-CONNED: How the US got lied into war"

"VACATION, ALL I EVER WANTED: The presidency of George W. Bush"

"Inept Evil For Dummies" by Dick Cheney

"Hey, Dubya, Quit Bringing Me Into This" by God

"You Don't Bring Me Flowers: An Angry message to the People of Iraq," by Dick Cheney

"Who Moved My WMDs?"

"Have Your Cakewalk and Eat It Too," by Richard Perle, Ken Adelman, and the Neoconservative Alliance

Heh

I've Been Thinking

As a liberal I'm often accused of not being patriotic. But I think that today's rabid version of what the Bush administration likes to calls patriotism is really a misnomer. I think that there is a distinction between nationalism and patriotism.

na-tion-al-ism -- 1. Devotion to the interests or culture of one's nation. 2. The belief that nations will benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather than international goals. 3. Aspirations for national independence in a country under foreign domination.

pa-tri-ot-ism -- 1. Love of and devotion to one's country.

According to this definition, I am definitely patriotic. But I don't think I'm nationalistic; at least, not at the exclusion of the rest of the world. But I will say that I think the Bush administration is: for instance the U.S. is more important than anyone else; our lives are more valuable than anyone else's; we can do whatever we want in the world but don't anyone dare question us; etc.

Okay, well I need to go to a Dr.'s appointment, but I'm interested in developing this idea further and getting other peoples' feedback.