Fun Monday--the Fire Sale Edition

Don’t know if you heard, but Northern California is pretty much aflame. Seriously, I woke up with a sore throat from all the smoke in our air. It’s bad. Really bad. None of the fires are very close to us, but the wind is working against us as far as smoke goes. And, just for the record, the beach house has a fire just a few miles from it too, so going down there isn’t much help. Thus you get the fire sale edition of Fun Monday. cough, cough

After many weeks off I decided to participate in Fun Monday again. Fun Monday this week is hosted by Hula Girl at Heart, (go check her out for more on this topic and a really, really 90's wedding dress). The topic she gave us is:

Show us those pieces of clothing you just can't part with, whether you wear them or not. It might be your grandma's vintage wedding dress, a jacket from high school, a t-shirt from an old boyfriend or those jeans you hope to get back into some day. It could be anything. Most of us have something like that we can't seem to throw away.

I was going to participate in the Fun Monday by talking about my favorite outfit, which is a teal skirt & top. I got the outfit the spring Daddy Speak & I were engaged; so it’s 8-9 years old. I love it for a lot of reasons, mostly cause it’s gorgeous and my eyes turn the same color teal when I wear it. I wore it a lot and even took my engagement photos with DaddySpeak in it, so it’s memory is well preserved to me no matter what. Once I got pregnant with BigSpeak (6 years ago) I no longer fit in it. Or at least, no longer fit in it well. I hold on to it in the hope that I will get thin enough to get back into it, although I’m pretty sure even at a size smaller than it, my hips expanded enough so that it won’t fit “right”. But I still hope, a girl‘s gotta have a dream, right? Today I decided I’m going to give up that dream. Yup, just today I decided I’m going to get rid of it. Our friends who lost their house this weekend, I’m going to pass it on to them. Well to K, I don't think D would look that good in teal, I'm just saying... They have nothing now and it’s just sitting in my closet, waiting to eventually be passed on to Goodwill. Instead it’s going to get a new life. It holds such happy memories for me, it seems fitting that it should help her move forward into new happiness.

This is not the best pix of it, but the only I could find for now. Plus look at DaddySpeak w/his long hair! Being the Rock Star he is!

Fun Monday!

I’m Back!
The lovely Mariposa is hosting this week and has chosen a topic I’m interested in participating in.

(1) Please share to us how the NAME of your BLOG was made? I can't wait to
hear interesting funny stories!
(2) Please share to us (in words or photo, though a combination of both
will be a bonus!) your favorite/ most common dish!

1) I wish I had a funny story to share on this one. I knew I wanted to start a blog, but I also knew I didn’t want to use our family’s real names, so I wanted some kind of title that would lend itself toward a name. When I first started this blog my intent was two-fold: to give myself an outlet and to have a written record of myself for my girls. (I want them to have a better understanding of me as a person, of course I won’t let them read this till I’m old and dead, so maybe it’s really for my great grandkids.) After looking up many others (already used) I came up with Mommy Speak. It allowed me to use DaddySpeak, MommySpeak, ToddlerSpeak and BabySpeak or The House O’Speak which I liked. It gave an indication of the blog topic, so it was all good. Of course, toddler and baby aren’t anymore, but it’s still a name I’m happy with.

2) My favorite dish: ummm…Chocolate! Seriously my very favorite thing to eat/drink is my daily mocha from Starbucks. Seriously. Kinda pathetic, huh? I really like a lot of other foods, I list some of those below, but if you wantta make mama happy the fastest way is a: Vente, decaf, single-shot, whole-milk, w/whip mocha. Warms me up and makes me smile just thinking about it.
Other foods high on my list:
Greek
Sushi/sashimi
Swiss Fondue
Ethiopian Food
Mexican
Tapas
Ok, now I'm hungry! Go visit Maraposa for the rest of the Fun Monday participants.

Did You Vote? AKA-- Avoiding Fun Monday

Yeah, yeah, I know I’m supposed to write a “bucket list” for Fun Monday. Honestly, this is one of the hardest things I’ve tried to do, so I’m trying to distract you; “Look! Something Shiny!” This is effectively my “The dog ate my homework of the Fun Mondays.”
When I started thinking about it, I realized I’ve done quite a few things that would typically be on the list; I’ve traveled to 11 countries in Europe & 3 in Asia, I’ve gone paragliding (run off a mountain w/a parachute, it was actually in the Alps, so a BIG mountain,) I whitewater rafted a level 5 river (also in Switzerland, BTW), I’ve hiked & skied in the Alps, so the usual things you’ll find on peoples lists; ie--thrill seeking and travel to exotic places are more or less covered. I’d still like to go to Australia & Africa, but I those are things I will probably save until after our kids have grown and if I don't make it, that's ok. I don’t really care if I do something like jump out of an airplane, I’ve run off a cliff so I think it’s more or less all the same at some point. Plus I kind of feel that now that I have children I really need to rethink the thrill seeking thing if death is a possible option.
Things I know I want to accomplish in this lifetime; I wanted to find my soul mate & grow old with him. I’m doing that. I wanted to have children and be able to be here to watch them grow. I hope to be able to be around to have a strong and happy relationship with grandchildren at some point. But these things are all things that will take my lifetime to accomplish.
I know, a bucket list is supposed to be the things you want to accomplish before you die. But if I could have spent a lifetime making happy memories w/my husband and watching my children grow up happy, healthy and into well-adjusted, successful adults who are able to meet their soul mates and have happy families, then I will have accomplished my life goals.

Sappy, yes. But truly the way I feel.

Look! Over there, something sparkly and shiny!

Fun Monday

The lovely Ann is hosting today’s Fun Monday. Her topic is:
For today's Fun Monday, I want to hear about a web site that's changed your life. A web site that you can't live without. A web site whose inventor you'd like to see win a McArthur Genius Grant. A lot of people have said that they didn't think they could narrow it down to one, and that's okay. A top-5 list or a top-3 list is completely acceptable.

You’d think (Well, I’d think) that this would be easy for me. OMG there’s so much we do via the web. At one time I did all my grocery shopping via the web (oh, how I miss you Web Van.) Most of my groups of friends have formed groups on various sites; yahoogroups, googlegroups, facebook, etc…and that’s how we organize all our activities. But still other than say, My Yahoo and Google, I can’t think of any website I “can’t live with out.” To be honest, I prefer those two portals, but if I had to live w/out them I think I’d get by. It would be a bummer, but I’d manage. So I guess, you’re going to get a little story. Lucky you! I’m going to talk about a website that changed my life. I don’t use it anymore, but that’s because of the change it made for me.

DaddySpeak and I met online. Gasp. Yes, we’re one of those couples. This was in the heyday of the dot.com boom. You could do anything and everything on line, for FREE. I was working at a (semiconductor) chip maker and he was working at a small bio-tech, who was backed by a much larger international bio-tech. In other words, we were both at companies that were pretty flush. That means we both were in a world where everyone worked hard & played hard. Twelve to fourteen hour days were the norm, so were signing bonuses, stock options and Friday Afternoon beer busts (at work). Silicon Valley was flush with money & that mean flush w/people. Even the best of commutes would take an hour. As a result, it could be really hard to socialize. In my case, I was working in MarCom and managing a pretty active tradeshow schedule, so my travel was 1-2 weeks every month. I met lots of single guys, but most were geographically undesirable. I had a good friend who worked at an ad agency (where I would soon end up, cause it’s not so much what you know as who you know,) who asked me to check out the beta site on a dating website they were designing. I did, and in the process decided to sign up (the first month or something) was free. You filled out a questionnaire, a couple of essay questions and then based on your answers you were given a match with others. A high match was usually somewhere in the high 20's. From the day I got on there, DS and I were a 37% match, so high it was almost unheard of, except, we wouldn't contact each other. DS is rather youthful looking, and at that time he had long hair, which made him look even younger. I figured he was lying about his age and wasn't interested in someone who was going to start out lying. Ironically, DS wouldn't write to me because of my picture as well. The most recent digital photo I had (this was like 10 yrs ago, digital photos weren't that common then) was from my 30th birthday. I had gotten all dolled up for the party & was wearing a black cocktail dress, long black gloves and a tiara. He thought I was advertising that I was a princess, so he wasn't interested. Funny, huh? Lucky for us his friends were also all on the site & short story long, I became good friends with all of them. DS was dating someone else at the time. But a few months later, when he was single again, he and I sat next to each other during a group dinner (he was single by that time) and well, we've been together ever since.

So I would say that website was life changeing wouldn't you? It was http://www.matchmaker.com/ Tell you what, the one thing I learned from all of this was that sometimes you should pay attention to what others are telling you; you're "type" might not really be your type at all.

FUN Monday (whee!!!)

Whee! Are you having fun yet? I’m a little delirious about now, this cold is getting to me.
Ok, well I’m actually NOT having fun right now. I was all excited to share my pet photos with you and guess what?! Remember that CPU that got fried from the power outage on Friday? Um yeah. We didn’t lose the photos, we have them backed up in like 4 hard drives, but we don’t have a working CPU to access them right now. Yes, I could hook them up to this laptop, but that would take a while and I’m really don’t have the energy to get that involved in it. So I have some photos they just aren’t as recent as I had hoped and they won’t include our neighbors dog either. You'll have to settle for some old pix for now. Sorry deal with it, you're getting two posts in one day, don' t push it ok? ;-)
So Lisa over at Lisa's Chaos is hosting Fun Monday this week, here's her topic:
Let’s meet your pets. I think most of us have at least one pet and I would like to see your fluffy or scaly pal. If you don’t have a camera you can tell us about him/her/them. If you don’t have a pet tell us about a pet you had or a pet you want. If for some weird reason you hate all animals we want to know why gosh-dang-it.
Ok Lisa, you asked for it:
My mom (and quite possibly my husband) would tell you I bring home every stray in the county, which is totally not true (only the cute ones). I do, however, love my babies. I’ve had a pet of some sort for most of my life, mostly dogs, but after my teen years I started with my kitties too. In college (the dorms) I suddenly didn’t have any pets and boy did I miss them. After college & the dorms, there was a kitty who lived in apartments with me. I had this kitty for 7 years and there was a lot of drama involved with this kitty, A LOT OF DRAMA. But any story involving that kitty is a series of posts and in the not all happy, (he had what they call "behavior issues") so we’re going to focus on happier times and the current babies.

Once I purchased my first home (by myself) I got Merit. Merit is 7 now. When I got her I worked at an ad agency which allowed you to bring your dog to work. Quite possibly one of the best places I'll ever work. We dubbed Merit, “Director of Dog Services” and she l became the department mascot. She learned tons of tricks while I worked there. I’d go to a meeting with her sleeping under my desk and come back to a monitor filled with post its notes of all the people who came & got her and took her places. In turn I had a “cookie jar” of dog treats on my desk and on Mondays I would put a post it on the top describing our trick of the week. She wasn’t to get treats unless she earned them. As a result of this Merit knows how to do the following: sit, down, come, shake, high-five, play dead (roll on her side), drop (whatever is in her mouth, including food), wait (when she's eating we make her stop and take food from her, so she won't get food aggression), heel (although she’s pretty rotten about that one if she thinks she can get away with it), bed (get on her bed), find “daddy” (or mommy, or either of our kids), crawl (we call it sneaky-sneaky), and hold, which involves holding a piece of food on her snout until given the command of ok, at which time she’ll flip the food into her mouth. (When we had Mowry we had them trained to do it in tandem). Yeah, I could go on and on about Merit she’s my baby. I choose this pix (taken in Oct) because it reminds me of how much of a part of our family she really is, as usually she's right in the middle of the action.
This is Mama. A few years back I was feeling a bit maternal. Daddyspeak and I had gotten married, purchased our first home together, etc…but I wanted a kitty to snuggle with again. I went to the Humane Society to adopt a kitten. While I was waiting they were asking people to come hold the older cats and someone handed me Mama. What a snugger! She chose me right there and then. When it got to be my turn I found out that the last girl kitten had just been adopted, but I couldn’t help myself I was already in love with Mama. She was 2 at that time, so that makes her about 9 (wow, I just realized how old she is, I haven’t really thought about it in a while!) Mama runs the show. She allows the kids to pet her and generally just moves when she is done with them. She’s still very much a lap kitty.
The last of my brood is Monkey. Yes, I know that’s an odd name for a cat. (My mom has a cat named Mouse, so Monkey suddenly isn’t so weird is it?) After getting Mama I was still feeling maternal & wanting a kitten so we went to the one of the local rescue groups and adopted Monkey. Her original name was Samba, as they named all the kitties in her litter after different dances. Monkey was a teeny, tiny kitty for a very long time. (Part of why Mama kept her name as Mama seeing as she was the bigger of the two.) One day when I got up from sitting on our bed and she launched herself onto my back in play. She was so little it didn’t hurt and it was funny as all get out (I imagine she looked a lot like small backpack) and I called her “Monkey-cat” and it just stuck. She’s much bigger now. I n fact, I just told her the other day I was going to change her name to “Fatty” for obvious reasons. She’s very much my cat & tends to follow me around the house. In fact, she won’t go to bed until I do, so she’s sitting next to me right now. Occasionally, she’ll meow at me cause she wants to go to bed & I’m taking too long. Monkey is surprisingly, also really good with the kids. Monkey’s always been a bit skittish and tends to go hide when new people are around or if someone is just moving too fast; like kids will do. But lately she’s decided she likes the attention and now that DD2 really understands how to scratch her she’ll go looking for her for some lovin’. Mama & Monkey mostly get along, but occasionally get into spats where we’ll have to separate them & reintroduce them to each other. They’re like to old ladies who get sassy with each other once in awhile, but most of the time (even when they supposedly aren’t getting along) we’ll find them sleeping all curled up with each other.
I guess my novel gives you an idea of how much I love my babies. This is inspiring to maybe have a weekly post about my babies or maybe more directly about my family. Hmmm…no promises, but I’m thinking about it.
Alright, I’ve typing for so long now that I’ve missed Fun Monday and this will be posting on Fun Tuesday! Monkey’s meowing at me again so I’m off to bed!

Best Laid Plans…..

Yeah, so I was supposed to post on Fun Monday…silence….and now it’s Wednesday.


I think I missed it. I took pictures during the weekend and outlined in my head what I would write about, I was so prepared! But it just didn’t happen. I’ve been having a rough week. It hasn’t been awful or anything, just unbelievably busy and exhausting and Gawd it’s not over yet, it’s only Wednesday! sob I guess I mean, “It’s only Wednesday!” In spite of the fact that I haven’t had an opportunity to sit down for two minutes I still have TONS of things to do.

Soooo the biggest obstacle I faced in participating correctly in Fun Monday was the lack of sleep I got Sunday night. DD2 has been teething for going on a month now. About a month ago, out of nowhere; low-grade fever, drool-y (from a kid who doesn’t typically have that issue), wants her bink all the time, wants to be held all the time, cranky….you get the picture: teething.

DD1 never complained about getting teeth. In fact, the way we would know she got a new tooth was because she was nursing and would tend to bite me whenever a new one was coming in. Testing it out I guess. She got 4 teeth at 4 months (all at once) and then got one a month until she was a year. After that, I stopped nursing (because she was biting me enough to draw blood for several days, think pink milk; there’s your visual. You’re welcome.) And one day it was like, “Oh look, she’s got molars.”
Not so much with DD2. She’s been pretty low key about her teeth up till now, but these ones are killing her. So that was my very long way of telling you she couldn’t sleep Sunday night because of teething. She wanted to be rocked & held. This started around midnight & at 1 AM I was dying so I brought her to bed with me. I’ve never done that before. Having sleep issues create a whole different dynamic about bringing your kids in bed with you. Anything that might prevent you from sleeping well, you avoid. So up until Sunday neither of my child had spent a whole night in our bed. So all 3 of us were miserable. Thing about it was that she was happy enough to be in our bed, but what she really want was to lay ON ME and be held, while holding Daddy’s hand. After less then 2 hours sleep (and not all in one shot) I was a bit loopy all day Monday. I was lucky I made it to work in one piece, much less put a full sentence together.

Yesterday, I crammed and got the Grandparent’s scrapbooks finished. So that’s what I took up my time with on Tuesday. I’m really happy with them and I’m really happy I didn’t have to pay extra postage in order for the one to make it to Kansas before Christmas. But I AM SHOT.

Today, I’m dealing with the rental home we have and trying to get a credit report done on an applicant. She didn’t meet the criteria, but because of the way the system is set up now, I don’t know any details. I’m debating about what my standards should be, but I still feel that I ought to stick with my original plan, so I’ve had to relist it. So Much Fun!!!

And, of course, I have not finished my Christmas shopping. Tonight after the girls go to bed I’ll be out trying to finish up. Sigh. I’m tired. Oh, and I forgot to bring the hard drive with my photos on it to post for Fun Monday. I do believe I have missed Fun Monday for this week. I suck, which I wouldn’t mind so much if I could just get some sleep while I was sucking…

FUN MONDAY--X-MAS STYLE

I know Monday is almost over (it is over on the East Coast, but it's only 7 in Hawaii) but I'm still making it. I recently discovered a couple new blogs and via that I came across Fun Monday. It seemed like such a cool idea that I jumped in! Plus I think the topic is such a good one. I just so happens that we decorated our tree last night & when I sat back to enjoy it I decided to take a picture of my favorite ornament for a blog post. Queue Twilight Zone music. I'm physic or something. So without further ado:

This week is hosted by Lady K and is about your favorite ornament:

In the spirit of the season I would like to see your favorite Christmas
tree ornament. Not to be confused with the WHOLE tree. I want you to zoom in and show me one or a few(you know I can't choose just one!) of your favorite
ornaments. If you don't decorate a tree, show me your menorah or dreidel,
Kinara, or Yule Log. I want to see your favorite decoration for this holiday
season.

I have many favorite ornaments. I have several really cool ones that were made by my Godmother as "cards" on Christmas gifts. They're things like felt angels and wooden animals. They contain our names & the years in which they were made. I get the impression that my
mom thinks they're kind of a hippie thing, but I think they're cool. I also have a set of Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz wooden ornaments. But my overall very, very favorite ornament is one that is only 7 years old. It was given to me by DaddySpeak on our first Christmas as a married couple. It contains a picture of us on our wedding day. We're standing outside of the church kissing. When I look at it I'm reminded of how happy I was that day, and how very lucky I am to have him in my life (remind me of this next time I'm bitching about him, OK?) So I think it's pretty evident why it's my favorite.