Hockey, Hockey, Hockey

Zippy and I went to the Wild vs. San Jose Sharks game last night. Pretty much my boys STUNK!!!! There was no fights (um, what is the point of going to a hockey game if there are no fights?), but lots of penalties (all minors/no majors). But, it was fun.

First, I got to leave work early (which may have been the highlight of my day) to get ready for the game. My boss said to leave and I'm not strong enough to say no. So I went grocery shopping, spent just over $16 on $48 worth of groceries. Man, I'm good.

Then I went home and showered. Poonch II came and we left him and Baba to hunt the Wili. Zippy and I stopped at BK for supper (what can I say!? When we go out, we go all out) because if you bought a value meal (for Zippy) a happy meal (the perfect amount of food) was only 99 cents. And someone (Zippy) had to get one of the BK King Xbox games.

The Xcel was pretty amazing. Our seats were awesome - 15th row! The two minutes where San Jose had a 5 on 3 power play were awesome. The goal we scored 2 minutes into the game was awesome. The rest of the game. Eh. But, Manny wasn't looking good and Gabby is injuried so what can you do?

There was really annoying kid sitting next to us. He kept hitting me with his pom-poms and he kept swearing. He looked about 10. If, when Baba is 10, he swears, we are going to have problems. This kid thought that every time the Wild hit the puck it was necessary to yell, "Nice shot!" The Wild had 12 shots on goal all night, which means they had 12 "nice shots" not 9,257.

But still, I love hockey and can't wait until Baba is old enough to play. I'm thinking about joining a women's hockey league. I wonder if I can fight and what the league record for penalty minutes is.

Heaven on Earth

On Saturday, Baba, Zippy, and myself headed out to my grandparent's farm. Baba was in heaven. Almost all of his favorite things are on the farm: cows (moos!), tractors (putt-putts), and cats ('ilis). All that we were missing was his other obsession, trains.

Baba and I spent almost the entire day outside. He tried to befriend some cats, but they kept running away from him.

It always makes me laugh that he is so surprised that the small, defenseless farm cats run away from him (okay, okay, I know that farm cats aren't defenseless - I have a couple scars on my arms to prove it). I tried to explain the difference between domesticated and ferrel cats, but he didn't seem to get it.

He did get to drive, with his great-grandpa's help, a bobcat, a four-wheeler, and a putt-putt.
He has driven 3 different brands of tractors, John Deere (Zippy's dad is a John Deere man), Oliver (his great-grandpa loves Olivers), and White (interesting tractor history side-note: at some point in history Oliver became White, so I guess, technically, Oliver and White are sort of the same brand, but still, 3 different brands of tractors before the age of 2? How many people can claim that?).
This trip to the farm he was not scared of the cows at all. He befriend a calf, who tried to suck the mittens off of Baba's hands (calves, like baby's have a strong need to suck and will suck anything that comes close to them, hands, milk replacer, mittens, what have you). He also enjoyed "sneaking" up on the cows in their pens and saying "boo!" He thought scaring the cows was hilarious.

And, thankfully, before the end of the day, he befriended a cat. This cat, who for some reason followed Baba everywhere, was probably insane. Encouraged by his kitty shadow, Baba walked around the farm telling the 'ili about the farm. He'd say, " 'ili moo!" and point to the cows. Or " 'ili putt-putt" and point to the tractor.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that this 'ili had grown up on the farm and had probably seen all the moos and putt-putts before. When he got too far ahead of his new friend, he would stop, turn around, and say " 'ili go!"

A picture is worth 50,000 words

I've really got nothing more to say, the picture says it all. I finished my first draft on my still nameless novel with 7 days to spare. Hooray!

Gobble, gobble!

My family is all about tradition. There is the tradition of laying under the Christmas tree and singing (yelling) Christmas carols as loud as we can. There is the tradition of my mother never putting our names on our Christmas presents, only a code (one year Ditty was all prime numbers and I was numbers that weren't prime, etc).

We also like to play "fun" games. Ditty started a "fun" game where you put a deck of cards into four piles, cout to three, and then everyone grabs a pile. Lots of fun. There is also Bing-offs. Which is really an abbreviated version of BINGO. You play until one spot on your card is covered.

But now we have a new fun game and tradition. Its called bend over and play catch between your legs until the boy laughs. Then when he doesn't think that is funny any more, you fall over. It's really quite enjoyable. Happy Thanksgiving!

Why Doesn't Wili Like Me?

Wili is Baba' s best friend. I mean, BESTEST BEST BEST BEST friend. The first thing when he wakes up in the morning and is freed from his cell he starts his quest for 'ili'. Much to a certain cat's delight the quest is not ended until she gets her good morning kiss and Baba gets his good morning mouthful of fur.

So why doesn't Wili return Baba' s love with the same gusto?

I don't know.

They both love climbing the cat tree and looking out the window. They both love curling up on a warm lap.


They both love the cat tent, although Wili tends to sit in the cat tent and Baba tends to wear the cat tent as a hat.

They both like decorating cookies and eating frosting (yes, my cat eats frosting. Never open a box of Nerds around my cat, a friend of mine learned that the hard way when Wili nearly took her hand off to get some of the Nerds she was eating).

And, sadly, it isn't just Wili who runs away when Baba toddles in her direction. It's most 'ili's (Baba's word for cat). It's really quite sad when you think about it. All Baba wants to do is kiss them. What could a small, defenseless cat have to fear in Baba?

Oh, happy day!

Once upon a time I bought a used text book on half.com. Well, the stupid poo-poo head selling it took my money and never shipped it (I can think of several names to call her, but I won't write them, I'll just call her multiple names in my head. There, I feel better). Long story short, I found out this morning that the good people at half.com are refunding my money and $90.80 will be credited to my credit card within 72 hours.

I am so rich we went to Target and spent half of my refund. Only 12,000 words until my novel is el fine and I can get back to blogging. Hooray!

Bam!

30,000 words. Bam! Just 20,000 more measly little words and then I can return to the things that are truly important: blogging and playing Diablo.

And editing my novel and submitting it for publishing, etc. etc. etc.

Side note: How come when I spell check through my blog, 'blogging' isn't a word? Hmm.

Fil

So today we went up to Zecker Zinnesota to pick the boy up from my parent's house (my mom's birthday was on Saturday and she wanted the boy overnight as a birthday present. That was a present I could afford!). We went to lunch at Zippy's parents house.

To say that Zippy's father is special would be an understatment. Today Fil (father-in-law, get it? get it?) compared the condition of college football players to slaves. I'll let that sink in.

First of all, WTF? Second of all, are you kidding? Although my understanding of history may be sketchy at best, I don't remember reading about the slaves getting full rides to top notch universities. If Zippy wouldn't have grabbed me with Fil opened mouth and inserted foot I probably would have leapt across the room and kicked him.

After getting dogged at Zippy's sister's wedding (I, who have been married to Zippy for 3 years and have been with Zippy for 7 years, did not have a seat at a family table) I didn't think anything could surprise me. I was wrong.

I don't know what to say besides WTF?

Time and Words

How come at work (not necessarily my new job, just work in general) a minute takes an hour and an hour takes a lifetime, yet when I get home, time goes so fast I don't have enough hours in the day to finish everything I need or want to do?

I hit the 20,000 word mark last night on my novel. 20 days let to write an additional 30,000 words. Sometimes this work is writing itself and sometimes I can't imagine finding another 30,000 words of story. It's quite daunting and exciting.

Laundry Woes

It seems that ever since I became a mother, I've been doing a ridiculous amount of laundry, so it would be reasonable to conclude that I would be fairly good at sorting the copious amounts of clean laundry, right?

Wrong.

Oh sure. I'm good at sorting some of the clean laundry. Underwear are fairly straight forward. My undies are cute, Zippy's are more masculine (ie more fabric), and Baba's underwear are of the disposable diaper variety and don't end up in wash.

Pants are pretty easy, too. The shortest pants belong to Baba. If the number on the size of the larger pants is below 32 the pants are mine. If the number is 32 or larger then they are Zippy's. No problems there.

Shirts aren't too much trouble either. Neat cartoon characters? Baba's! Button up and formal? Zippy's. Large T-shirt? Zippy's. Cute shirt or medium T-shirt? Mine. (Just ask me how much I paid for this shirt: Okay, I'll tell you. Less than $3! I got 3 shirts and 2 pairs of pants at Vanity for $21.75).

So what's the problem? Socks! Baba and my socks are almost identical. There have been several times when one of my socks will end up in his drawer. As Baba would say, "Uh-oh!"

(from left to right: Baba's sock, my sock, Zippy's sock)

Bring it on!

Because writing 50,000 words in a month isn't enough of a challenge I decided to make it harder by writing in a genre (chick lit) that I've never written in before. Why oh why couldn't I just stick to sci fi and/or fantasy?

By the way, I'm at 9215, still ahead of schedule (yeah!). Next year I am doing the blog everyday instead of the novel in a month thing. Oh well. Live and learn. Back to the novel.

Day 3

I've written 6,179 words. My goal for to day was to be at 5,001 words. Hooray! So far, so good.

100th Post Extravaganza

This started off with a little, tiny, baby thought, "Hey, I could blog." If I survived my first year of being a mother I can do anything. So I thought about it for a while, did my research, and discovered a glorious, time consuming community full of women like myself.

I took a deep breath and created a new blog. I inspired ZennieZou to do the same. It is so much easier to type for a few minutes and hit 'publish post' than write in my journal everyday. My journal, by the way, feels neglected and dust covered. My computer does not.

There are a million things to write about and I always want to publish one more thing, tell one more story, or post one more picture of a certain Baba.











I am very thankful to my loyal fan (Thank you ZennieZou!), and my frequent readers (Zippy, Ditty, and whoever else is lurking out there), and I'm confident within the next 100 or so posts my blog will take off like Baba avoiding getting dressed after his bath!














I probably just wasted 100 or so words that could have been used towards my novel. That's it. I'm copying and pasting all my blogs into a word doc and my novel is done! Just kidding, I am at 2,830 words and avoiding increasing my total very nicely, thank you.