We went on an adventure today!

Today we threw our cares to the wind and made it a family day. Off to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden we went! Milo was thrilled to take the train for the first time ever, and we all had a good time at the aquarium. It was perfect today, not too crowded, we weren't there for an overly long time, and we even went all out and went to McD's for lunch on the way home. Woo hoo! I think all 3 of us needed a day off from our usual hustle and bustle; we couldn't have asked for a better one. Check out the pictures! I took tons!

Lots and lots of photos!

I haven't been blogging much because I've been working with our new and exciting digital SLR camera! I finally made a commitment to a new camera and bought a Sony Alpha 330. The reviews call it "entry level" in the DSLR field, but I call it phenomenal. It's perfect for someone with my current skill level and it has room for me to grow as I learn more techniques. It's a giant step up from our 8 year old Sony cybershot sort-of manual digital camera! Hopefully this one will last at least 8 years as well....

Check out some of the zillions of photos I've taken over the last couple of weeks here.

Need a lift?

It was such a peach of a day today, with a perfect breeze. I definitely needed to do something fun after the last few weeks of nonstop stress. I rummaged around and found my kite, took Milo out in the field out back and showed him how to fly a kite. Once we got that sucker up in the air, it didn't want to come down! We both had a great time, and it was good to spend that hour doing something new together that we both enjoyed.


Up, up and away!

The sky was picture-perfect. I love my kite; it's like an instant rainbow isn't it? It always makes me happy!

Milo was afraid to let the spindle go, so I wedged it into the handle of the wagon. That way Milo could still turn the reel, but had more control over how fast the string ran out.

Sitting in a draft and doing homework

Jeez, it's windy in the basement tonight. The wind is blowing from an odd direction and so is finding ALL the cracks in the windows. As to the homework, well...I've been taking a photography course, to improve my skills and to refresh my memory as to techniques. It's a lot of fun. Of course, now I am aching for a new camera as ours is limited to its abilities. That situation will be remedied soon enough; meanwhile Milo and I are working together on my homework projects and having a blast!


Closeup of daffodils. I had to use a low aperture without touching the shutter speed, to show depth of field. This works because the daffys are in focus, but the background is not.

One of Corey's yellow chichlids. I had to show motion by panning the camera while pressing the shutter, so the background would blur but the subject did not.

Arty reflections in some dirty dishes. This was another depth of field exercise. In this one, the depth of field is huge, everything is in focus.

Milo running. Another panning shot.

The fountain on the front porch. Slow shutter speeds allow the water to blur out and show lots of motion.

Milo and Lily running. This is one of my favorites! I had to take about 50 pictures to get this one shot, but it came out great.

"Light painting" as the teacher calls it. Light objects in a dark room, at super slow shutter speeds make neat patterns as you move them around.

Grumpy Milo. He got tired of being my muse during the depth of field project.

Fountain again. Same picture, different shutter makes the water look different.

Fountain taken in stop motion (super fast shutter)

Corey's fish. They were supposed to be blurring in motion. A couple of them did, but one stands out clearly.

Daffodils with stinkbug.

Car is going faster than everything around it = blur.

Some more arty dirty dishes.

This is what I do with too much time on my hands

Ever since I got my first tattoo I've been hankering for another one. As the saying goes, you can't stop with just one!

Anyway, I've been turning lots of ideas around in my mind. One snow day Milo and I sat down and turned this picture (the rather boring cover of a great Buffett album, but I love the compass rose)

into this one, by a process of much tracing with markers and then coloring in the white areas with our favorite colors. It took us a couple of hours to come up with colors that we liked together, and then I stuck it in a folder and put it away for awhile.

Until this afternoon, when on a whim I went over to Ink Obsessions and asked them for an estimate on that tattoo and their input on a few other ideas I had. An hour and a half later, I came out with a lighter wallet and a very cool left leg!

Love it! It's a combo Buffett/Milo tattoo, as Milo had so much input into the final colors of it. It's not as small as I would have liked, because the guy said it would turn into a big blob after awhile if I did that, but I still like it lots.

Happy birthday to us!

Milo's 5th birthday party was a blast. It was a bit hectic getting ready for it on top of dealing with the flooded basement, but it all worked out fine in the end. Good times were had by all.

See the photos here.

a little slice o' suburbia

The township changed our trash collection from twice a week to once a week. So of course half the time we forget to put the trash out on trash day because we're still not used to the new routine. Last week this totally typical suburban housewife moment happened to me:

It was 6:30 last Thursday morning and I was in the middle of brushing my teeth when I heard the trash truck at the house next door. I immediately realized that we hadn't put the can at the end of the driveway, although it was full, so I went tearing out the door in my pjs . I ran pell mell down the driveway with the trash can and parked it right as the guys on the truck were getting ready to pull up to our driveway. For my stunning performance I received a resounding toot on their horn plus big thumbs up from the guys. I gave them a proper curtsy for their applause, before going back in the house. I must have looked a lovely sight, with my hair all snarly and my slippers slopping off my feet, not to mention I was wearing my scuzzy pajamas. I found the whole experience quite amusing!

We have lived through one of my worst homeowner nightmares

The basement flooded yesterday due to the massive amounts of rain. Combine that with no electricity for 16 hours and it spells big trouble. We were fortunate to only lose "stuff," no major appliances (so far). We have to sort through all the wet crud and throw out whatever is totally destroyed and save the rest if possible.

One important lesson we learned is that totes float! We keep a lot of stuff in the basement in plastic totes, just for convenience's sake. When I saw that the water was going to be worse than usual, I piled stuff on top of the totes, thinking that since the totes are all so darn heavy, they were never going to float. Wrong!! Totes especially like to go buoyant and tip over around 3 in the morning, dumping everything on and near them into the water.

It was like living in a Stephen King novel in this house last night and this morning, what with the relentless rain, the rising water downstairs, listening to the neighbor's generator run (and making us most jealous: if we had a generator, this never woulda happened!) and being generally isolated from the rest of the world because everyone else's power was out also. Add the periodic splashy crashes to the silence and it got really creepy. Especially when we were sloshing around downstairs at 3am trying to salvage some stuff, and all I had to work with was a small handheld flashlight; anything bigger I would have dropped right in the drink because I'm so clumsy.

Thankfully the power came back on sooner than expected though. When I called PSE&G, they told me that the power would be out until at least Tuesday. Visions of much ruined appliances and furniture danced through my head as the panic attacks swelled....but we were able to avoid complete catastrophe this time. For lots of lovely flood pictures, click here.

My poor parents and Corey's poor parents have been without power since 9am Saturday and it is now after 10 on Sunday night...they have generators and such so they're not too badly off, but still, it sucks big time! My parents power is out because trees fell directly on the power lines by their house, and dragged the poles partially down along with the lines. I'm not sure of why Corey's parents don't have electric.

more iditarod fun..this time in the huge field behind our house

Go dogs go! They can run for ages with the right motivation!

I tried to upload more than this one video but it was taking forever and I have other things to do. Perhaps next time!

Ready for the Iditarod?

Our dogs will do anything for a cookie. Including learning how to be the world's goofiest sled dogs!

growing up so fast...

Today we registered Milo for kindergarten. We can't believe Milo's going to be going to school in the fall! It seems like just last week we were still changing his diapies and giving him bottles. Milo is a little nervous about going to school, but he's excited about it too. We have several more visits to the school before September, so he can get used to being there and get an idea of how the days will be. It's very exciting, for Corey and I anyway. If you asked Milo if anything interesting happened today, he would say "I took a big poop that stood up like a lever!" instead of "Mommy and Daddy took me to big kid school to register for kindergarten."

And the snow fun continues

Yesterday was pretty crummy. My streak of bad luck continued when I stepped outside this morning, to check on the snow-clearing job ahead of us so I could go to work, and saw this.

Yep. That's a tree. On, around and in front of my truck.

Amazingly enough, for the size of the branch, there was no damage to the truck at all. The antenna isn't even bent!
Since its the neighbor's tree, Corey just cut enough of the branches away to get the truck out from under it. The tree is pretty much frozen to the ground, so we can't move it until it thaws. Once it thaws, we're hauling it further over into the neighbors yard so its not blocking the driveway anymore. Since there was no damage to the truck we're not making a big stink about it to them. Once the branch is on their property completely, they can clean it up at their leisure.

And a pretty moment, the sun shining through the ice on the maple out front.

The view from the end of our driveway. Corey took this while he took a break from cleaning up the snow.

I ended up staying home from work today, to be on the safe side. The tree on the truck was a sure sign from whoever runs the universe, and for once I listened to the instructions. Losing two days worth of pay is worth still being alive!

Us girls gotta stick together

The usual morning scene before the hustle and bustle of getting ready for work and school. Milo's not awake yet, and I'm able to sit still, drink my coffee and watch the morning news...the animals take full advantage of my lap!

Some snow day

More like a slush day. Argh. Its a very frustrating day, that's for sure. Things have been happening around here in perfect storm fashion all morning. As in, Milo is in the process of getting poop all over his hands while he's wiping his butt, the phone is ringing and he actually got up off the pot to answer it, I was trying to put away laundry and had to race to intercept him and then tripped over the dogs and almost got my foot bitten off because I scared the crap out of Quinn.

Then, I was trying to give the dogs their daily medicines, which involves me sticking my hands halfway down their throats. Normally this is a non issue and the dogs just choke down their pills. Not today. As Lily kept spitting her meds out, I hear "OH NO!!" from Milo's room. Milo spilled an entire cup of pomegranate juice on his light beige rug. He wanted to clean it up himself and I had to frantically finish dealing with the dogs and then go round up the portable steam cleaner to get the vibrant red stains out of the rug. Of course, the phone started ringing again.

THEN I was cleaning up the juice spill (the portable cleaner is AWESOME, at least that went right!!) and Milo decided he was going to use the phone. I had said he could make one phone call, but who the heck knows who he was talking to. I asked him who he called and he said "I dunno. I was trying to call you at work and some lady answered." After I took a VERY deep breath, I asked him "Why would you call me at work when I AM STANDING RIGHT HERE?" and he said "Because you couldnt' hear me over the noise of the rug scrubber." Um, do I have a phone attached to my butt? I don't think so. Especially not a work phone!

AND THEN. We went outside to play and start clearing the extremely heavy wet snow from the driveway and patio. Milo was outside for five whole minutes before he started screaming because snow got inside his boots. I sent him inside (and went in with him to set up the tv for video-watching, and managed to track a ton of snow all over the place because it wasn't worth taking off all my gear after just struggling into it five minutes before that). I attempted to snow blow the driveway. I got a good start over by Corey's car and then the blower quit on me and I couldn't get it started again. I came inside to check on Milo, all seemed well. Then I realized that I had forgotten that the dogs were still out back. Poor things had been out there for ages in the wet, and they were soaked! Those two pups were never so happy to come inside. The stoopid snowblower still won't start and Corey is at work. There is NO WAY I'm shoveling that heavy snow on my lonesome, so its just going to have to wait till he gets home. If he gets home. Who knows when that will be. Yes, I'm having a crappy day. I was hoping to have a real, fun snow day but so far it's turned out to be a major PMS instigator!!

By the way, if anyone reading this works for Onstar: Quit calling here. WE ARE NOT INTERESTED. Plus you Onstar people always call at the worst possible moments. Save your breath and my patience, please.

And the word of the day is...

Ludicrous.

It means "silly or ridiculous" as according to Milo, who used it in perfect context today. When I asked him what ludicrous meant, that's what he told me, and he is absolutely right.

We were leaving the house this morning and going through our usual goodbye routine with the dogs, which consists of locking them in the kitchen and saying "Have a good day, behave, don't eat anything you're not supposed to," as we give them a hug. Milo added "And don't do anything LUDICROUS, Lily!!" as we were walking out the door. I about fell over laughing, because that is the perfect word to describe that hound!

Milo's first model airplane

This past Sunday was rainy and gloomy, so Milo and I built a model airplane together. He really enjoyed it painting it, after I did all the necessary gluing. It turned out really great!

The kid definitely has my taste in colors!

Naked Cat

Monet is getting older, and the older she gets, the less she takes care of herself. The lil' furry slob gets matted pretty easily, and doesn't really let us brush her as often as she needs to be brushed, so I solved the problem by cutting her hair off. I had done it once before, with my scissors and much patience, but this time around I borrowed Corey's dad's animal clippers. They weren't powerful enough to really get through her woolly undercoat as nicely as I would have liked. We ended up buying heavy duty animal clippers that go through Monet and Quinn's forests of hair like buttah. I practiced a bit on Quinn, just trimming up his shaggy bits on his tummy and legs, and giving him a much needed butt-cut to keep his hiney clean, and then I turned the clippers back on Monet. She was not happy to be put through torture two days in a row, but she feels so much better because of it! And now that we have clippers of our own, I can trim her hair regularly to keep her from turning into the fuzzball that she was before. And Quinn can get a full on summer hair cut when it gets warmer out! (Can you tell that I miss playing with my Barbie head?!)



This pile o' hair is from round one of clipping Monet. It took me an hour or so to do this to her. The next night, with the tougher clippers, it took another hour and I got just as much fur off her again!

Haircut #1. It was definitely rough around the edges and you could really see where I had messed up and cut her hair too short. For all her caterwauling though, Monet held pretty still as long as I plied her with tuna fish.

Haircut #2. Much better!

Oh Mom. You're embarrassing me! But I do look 10 pounds skinnier!

Its all butts from here on out

My life at home pretty much revolves around poop and/or puke. If I'm not scraping crap or barf off of something, I'm wiping somebody's butt. It would be nice to just be responsible for my own butt for a while, but unfortunately, it looks like that is never going to happen. By the time Milo is finally able to wipe his own butt without assistance and the dogs drop dead, my parents will totally enfeebled and will be needing me to wipe their butts. And then Corey will be too old and fat to wipe his butt so I'll have to take care of him too. Who, I ask, WHO is going to wipe my butt when I can't reach it anymore???

The reason for this tirade is the current goings on at our house. Quinn had to go back to the vet again for digestion problems. He was not near death this time (whew!) but he had been throwing up a lot recently and having horrible awful stinky gas for days at a time, and occasionally icky poops. The dumb dog is a stress mess and is causing his own tummy to be in turmoil, so the diagnosis is that he has to stay on low dose antibiotics for the rest of his life, eat easy to digest food (expensive!! The bag of food the vet sold me is 8lbs and costs $24!) and try to stay out of stressful situations. Since living is a stressful situation for Quinn, we have to look into ways to keep him calm. I would opt for doggie prozac but the vet said no. So I've been doing lots of research on homeopathic calming methods. We have one thing called Rescue Remedy that is a liquid potion of flower essences, that seems to help Quinn keep his cool. We'll see what happens in the long run. In the meantime I'm also researching different dog foods to see what else is out there that is comparable to what the vet sold me, but won't cost a small fortune. I can see into my future now, that I'll be buying whole chickens and boiling them up for the damn dog, along with his daily ration of rice that he already eats. I'll be one of those dog owners, which I vowed I would never be!

In other digestive tract news, Lily managed to get hold of our outdoor thermometer today and ate it. Glass and all. We're pretty sure it was an alcohol thermometer, as the stuff inside it was red, so hopefully Lily won't croak of mercury poisoning. The glass shards are going to feel really good moving through her insides. I don't know what gets into that dumb dog sometimes. The other day I found some sort of horrid spiky seed pod thing in her poop; it looked like a smaller version of those gumball things that fall off trees. Why in heck would that even look inviting to eat? Can you imagine what that felt like coming out the other end?? Jeez. No wonder the dog howls instead of barks! I would howl a lot too if my butt was always on fire from something I ate.

At least Milo isn't having any weird problems. Yet.

This and that

We took Tuckerton to the vet today for a full checkup. He is hale and hearty and has no health problems at all. The vet said Tuckerton is in excellent condition for being 10 years old. Woo hoo! I finally picked a healthy animal! Hopefully he will stay that way.

Monet has accepted Tuckerton's presence in the basement and deigns to look at him once in a while. There was some hissing and spatting going on yesterday but today they were both probably thinking "We're too old for this crap, I'm just going to put up with that other one." Tuckerton took to the dogs right away and they did the same to him. Tuckerton spends most of his time hanging out in the basement, and comes upstairs once in a while to check on us and make sure we're still around to feed and brush him. He is purely a pleasure to have here. So far. Give me a month or so, when Tuckerton starts acting like Monet and barfing in my shoes and treating me as if I only exist for feeding purposes.

And now on to today's random pictures:
We had a brief snowstorm the other day. I thought the light was pretty neat, coming through the snow clouds, and reflecting off the little bit of snow on the ground.

Milo pulled a practical joke on me. He said he was brushing his teeth, and I heard him banging around in the bathroom and using his electric toothbrush, so I assumed he was doing what he said. Then I went in there to check the progress, and Milo turned around and grinned at me. He was brushing his gold bling-bling teeth! I cracked up laughing, because it totally reminded me of the scene in the Christmas Story when all the kids in the classroom have their fake teeth in and say "Good morning Miss Shields."

Note to self

Next time we make home-made dumplings, use the stand mixer and dough hook. The hand mixer just don't cut it. Plus it makes a big giant mess. And dough gets so far up inside the mixer that a person has to take it apart to clean it out. I was not happy when I thought I had the crud all cleaned up, and turned the mixer on sans attachments to see what would happen....and oodles of gummy dough oozed out! Much cursing and a few minutes later, I had the mixer apart to find this lovely mess. Corey's a great cook, but he can be a bit hard on my kitchen electronics!!


I did finally get most of the goop out, using toothpicks and the last tiny shreds of my patience.