July 13, 2008

Robin Miller can't count.

Seriously.

For those of you who don't know who Robin Miller is, she does Quick
Fix meals on Food TV and edits some food magazine, and does these
meals that are like "prepare 3 ingredients that take a long time on
the weekend, and then use them multiple times during the week" which
isn't a bad idea, mind you, but I have to admit that I inherently
distrust her due to the fact that she is skinny, and NO ONE who tells
me how to cook should be that skinny. Thin, fine, but if I can see
your bones you can't be that good a cook...

Anyway, I'm watching her show, and she assures me that all of the
dishes she is preparing on this day use five ingredients or LESS.
Now, as I am watching she makes a burger, which contains:

Ground sirloin
Bacon
Cheese
Red Onion
Mustard
Tomato
Lettuce
and....
A Bun

As you may know, I CAN count. And that is EIGHT ingredients. Not
five. Then she makes a pasta dish, which (not including the water
that she boils her pasta in, and then uses some of in the sauce)
contains six ingredients. It's not that I'm a fanatic about dishes
having fewer than five ingredients or anything. I will, quite
cheerfully, make something with 20 or more components. But don't TELL
me it has five or less when it doesn't. It forces me to assume that
you are either insufficiently educated, or have an odd number of
fingers and therefore have numerical complexes blocking your ability
to recognize "five", or just think I am stupid.

Hi everyone!

So, things to tell, things to tell... Waxor has been working hard of
late. The company has had a whole bunch of deadlines coming up, so
last week they all actually stayed late two nights. (This had awful
ramifications for Elliot and I, but we are not, at the moment, talking
about Elliot and I, so, never mind...) The days he doesn't stay late
he just sits and his computer and churns through stuff as fast as
possible. I know many of you do that on a regular basis, but Waxor's
working style tends to be a bit more relaxed (which is good for him,
and makes him more productive in the long term, because he doesn't get
burnt out) so by the end of the week he was pretty tired. The good
news is that they got a hunk of money from one investor, and the other
big investor, who might give them 2 million, did go ahead and give
them a little money, which makes it more likely that he'll go ahead
and invest. Should the 2 million come through then one of the first
things the company is going to do is hire someone new, and we're
pretty sure that that "someone new" is going to be Fuzzy, so we've got
our fingers crossed that everything works out, cause aside from job
stability we'd really like to have him and Dante in the area.

In fact, in my fantasy world, I have planned for them to move into
this very apartment (after giving the landlord a stern talking to
about the heat) because Waxor and I are moving next door. We think.
We were out walking with Elliot a few weeks ago and our next door
neighbor said "hey, you guys looking for an apartment?" Turns out
he's buying his parents house, and his family's moving over there, so
they're renting out this house as two apartments. We went in and
looked, and saw many positive things like a dishwasher, a bathtub, a
fireplace, and a much larger room for the baby. The only negative was
that there was no downstairs basement room to be our office. So, we
talked about it, and Waxor said "well, if it weren't for the office"
so I talked to the guy and said "well, if it weren't for the office"
and he said "You want a room in the basement? I can put up a room in
the basement for you..." !!!! So, we have a verbal agreement with him
to move in mid-September assuming he puts up a room in the basement
for us. :) Actually, that reminds me, I need to pop over there today
and see if he's around, because I'd like to maybe sign a rental
agreement, and have more than a verbal agreement. Waxor and I are
excited to be able to move in easy stages, and to really get to look
and think about where stuff goes, instead of just unpacking everything
as fast as possible and ending up kinda topsy turvey. We were going
to re-arrange all our stuff over here, because the baby stuff is
taking up lots of space and we can't move around the apartment
anymore, but since we'll be moving so soon we've sort of agreed to
keep everything over here as neat as possible and to save major moving
for when we, y'know, move.

Speaking of cleanliness, we got a Roomba. Waxor is in love. He has a
robot. I think he would possibly leave me for the Roomba except it
doesn't cook. Even though it doesn't cook I KNOW he would leave me
for it if it did the dishes. :) I am tolerably happy with it, as
well, especially since there''s a lot more carpet next door, and it
will be even better to have over there.

Breeden and Anya came and visited Friday night. Breeden earned my
undying gratitude by both rubbing my back AND doing the dishes. He
can't have my first born child, but pretty much anything else is up
for grabs. I talked to Anya about shipping her off to Nicaragua, and
was prepared to do so almost immediately, but she has some things...
what were those called? Oh yes, obligations. Funny word...

:)

We are hoping to make it out to Northampton the weekend of August 2nd,
mainly to have our first chance to ogle Alexander, but any of you in
the Northampton area who might be around we would be happy to ogle
you, as well. Incidentally, Maggie and Pete, you guys aren't planning
on being out of town that weekend, are you? Because that might put a
damper in our ogling plans...

And on the topic of visiting... To all who have requested further
information, I will be in Rock Hill starting August 11th for about 4
days, and then we're headed up to Asheville for the weekend, and then
I don't know what's happening after that, except I have to be back in
charlotte on the 21st for my flight home. So, with that information
in hand feel free to call me whenever to talk about getting together,
or I'll call you once I get there.

Everyone else, who is neither in NoHo or NC/SC, when are you coming to visit?

Also, Waxor's parent's annual (which one is yearly and which one is
butt realated? One n or two?) lawn party is Saturday, July 26th, so
anyone who can make it to Portland, Maine, should go. It's a slammin'
good time.

Okay, ready? Here goes:

Elliot is amazing. He's really changing - he babbles now, and laughs
when you blow on his belly, and complains vigorously when you don't do
what he wants. He can roll over, both front to back and back to
front. He sleeps long stretches at night now - as long as it's not
too hot he only wakes up once or twice a night. He's learned to
squirm his way forward, and I don't think it will be too long before
he's crawling. It seemed like all of this just happened over the
course of a week, I'm tempted to put a brick on his head and tell him
to slow down.

His favorite new toy is a bottle. The other day he was having
teething pains, and finally I took one of the bottles that got given
to us when he was born and handed it to him, and he went to town. He
LOVES gnawing on that thing. It's sort of funny, I've seen plenty of
babies get really excited over a bottle, but not an EMPTY one.

He' learning to squirm so fast because of Chimbasa. He doesn't care
enough about any of his toys in order to go after them, but he REALLY
wants that Bito, and that Bito, as you might have guessed, does NOT
want him. So Chimbasa goes and lies down somewhere, and we'll put
Elliot a few feet away on his tummy, and he'll hunch his little self
over as fast as he can, and then, when he's mere inches away from
Chimbasa, we'll pick him up and move him back again. This would,
obviously, be incredibly cruel of us, except he seems to enjoy TRYING
to get to Bito as much as he actually enjoys GETTING him, so no harm
no foul. Bito hates this game, and constantly keeps a wary eye on
Elliot lest he get too close and manage to snatch a handful of tail.
It's drastically cut into Bito's nap time, so now, whenever Elliot is
down for a nap, Chimbasa curls up in a little pile of groggy doggy.

The attached pictures are from July 4th weekend, which also happened
to be Elliot's six month birthday. That substance smeared all over
his face is half a cupcake, which he was not allowed to eat, but had a
great deal of fun smashing to bits and smearing everywhere.

:)

I had more to say, but as it is now the end of the day (why does it
take me so long to finish these emails?) I believe I will call it a
night and save my blurb on Hooters Hotpants for another time.