Silent Day.

Downside of maternity leave: you end up with very little vacation time, so when everyone else decides to take the week of Christmas off, you’re the only one stuck going to work. That would be me. Today I’m the only one in the office, which is both strange and oddly peaceful.

It’s actually not even close to the most boring day I’ve had at work, since I can literally do pretty much anything I want and there’s no one here to know the difference. My most boring days are when everyone else is here but no one has any actual work to do but we all want to look busy like we are actually working so we all just sit at our desks in front of our computers as if we’re responding to emails and working on spreadsheets or whatever the heck it is we’re supposedly working on in the middle of winter.

Today is different. I feel a sense of freedom and relaxation. I can play Christmas music as loud as I want. I can wear whatever I want. I can burp out loud. I can talk on the phone to friends and not care who’s listening.

Since getting to work this morning, I have….

• Done my makeup (why waste time on it at home when you can do it at work?)
• Straightened my hair better than I have in I don’t know how long (spending a half hour straightening your hair makes a WORLD of difference compared to spending my usual less than ten minutes if I even bother to do it at all…)
• Made coffee
• Drank coffee
• Ate a bowl of oatmeal
• Pumped
• Checked email about 10 times
• Spent a half hour reading about 6 month milestones and baby food on the internet
• Called Nick and was told that Nora does not seem to care for my homemade baby food

As a side note, Dundie is apparently more excited for Christmas than any of us as he began opening Christmas presents this morning. This begins a new Seevers household Christmas tradition, of not placing wrapped presents beneath the Christmas tree, but in the closet.

My fashionable husband.

Nick's sweatpants are apparently too long. This is his solution.

Yep.

Dundie, ‘Speak.’ …ARF!

Ok well if you’ve ever encountered my dog, you know it’s not quite like that. In fact it’s nothing like that.

It’s more like…

1.) Poor friendly unsuspecting neighbor approaches gate to borrow some sugar and rings bell.

2.)RAFGHFRFHGGH!!!AAAARFGHRRRRFFFFF!!RRAAAARGGGHFFF!!!RAFRFRFRAARGGHHHHHFFF!!!!AARRRGR!RRRRFF!FFAAARRFFFFFGHA!!!RGARHGRAARRFFFF!!!RRGHRAGHHFFFF!GGGGGRRARAARARARGGHGGGGGARFFFF!!!!!!!!

3.) Kim and Nick are left with zero friendly neighbors who come over to borrow sugar.

Normally we frown upon this behavior.

But yesterday, it actually paid off – literally. Dundie’s maniacal barking – 49 barks in 30 seconds to be exact – won Nick some pretty sweet prizes on a radio contest called ‘Bark for Cash’ on the Don Geronimo show. Basically people call in and get their dogs to bark as many times as possible in 30 seconds – they keep count, and the person whose dog barks the most times wins. Oh-ho-ho… moooove on over, pups… we’ve got this one in the bag. 37 barks? Pleeeeease… get outta here with your 37 barks.

So all in all, Nick won: $49 cash (a buck per bark, from Don Geronimo’s own pocket), 2 free passes to the IMAX premier of Tron in 3D, some kind of jewelry package/gift certificate (which I think is the reason Nick entered in the first place, so he would be done Christmas shopping for me…) and a 1 in 20 chance of winning a full-size Tron arcade game. (I’m not so excited about that last one. I suggested if we win, it goes out in the backyard with the dog since it was his prize, after all.)

Thanks, Dog!

Addicted.

To my baby, caffeine (yes, I realize the two shouldn’t go together…), and as of recently: coupons.

I admit that since I started really actively using coupons a few months ago in an effort to cut down on grocery spending, I may have created a monster. I now seek out new and better coupons on an almost daily basis… I use as many as I possibly can in a single shopping trip…  I have been known to cause delays in grocery lines while the checker scans through my pile of coupons (I swore I’d never be that annoying woman, but hey… if it takes a few extra minutes and a few annoyed glances as other shoppers switch to the other checkstands for me to save $50 off my total, I can live with that). I even get a little thrill when I click through the online coupons to see what new offers I might find. One of my proudest moments came a couple of months ago when I discovered that Target offered online coupons – that you can couple with manufacturer’s coupons – and use on top of Target sale prices… oh happy day!

Basically I’m a huge nerd for coupons.

I also love that Nick gets excited about it now too. When I come home from my big shopping excursions I make every couple of weeks, Nick is there at home waiting to see the receipts and hear how many coupons I used and how much I saved. Then he brags to everyone about how cheap – ahem: bargain-savvy – his wife is.

Goals.

Goals.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmingly un-ambitious.

I started thinking about goals (and my personal lack thereof) this past weekend, when Nick and I were sitting in traffic waiting to pass through the tail-end of a marathon headed toward downtown Sacramento. The only people left at this late point in the race were walking. Of course, Nick made fun of them for walking (…and of course he is so entitled to make fun of people completing a marathon as he is obviously so in shape and completes marathons all the time. Right.). I defended these people by telling him, ‘maybe they tried to run the whole way and just couldn’t make it and now need to walk because they had the goal of completing a marathon – they’re still completing it, even if they’re walking – at least they have goals…. What goals do YOU have?!’ His response: ‘to not be one of the people walking at the end of a marathon.’ In all fairness… it was nearly noon… and these people were a good six miles still from the finish line… and they were REALLY holding up traffic.

I typically am very content and proud of what I’ve accomplished thus far in my 25 years of life. And then I’ll go on facebook and see that most of my college friends now also have masters degrees, or watch The Today Show or read an article about someone much younger than me starting their own business or founding a non-profit to save lives of babies in foreign countries or something incredibly noble and meaningful like that. And then I feel lazy. And guilty that I don’t often set actual goals for myself. I wonder: is it just me? Do these other people have a spark inside them that I just don’t have? Is it bad that my ultimate goal is to make Nick make a name for himself professionally so I can just craft and take care of Nora and be a Craft-At-Home Mom?

When I think about goals, I realize that I do have them, just not any which seem that meaningful in comparison to those of the soon-to-be-doctoral candidates, or the super-entrepreneurial-life-saving-non-profit-founders. But still, they’re goals. Like using as many coupons as possible to spend under $60 on two weeks worth of groceries and toiletries for my family of three (yep, it’s been done). Or bathing the baby more than twice a week (….still working on that one… it’s much more of a challenge than one would think). But, I think it’s time to really sit down and spell out some actual, I’M GOING TO DO THIS type of goals. We’ll start out small…

I will exercise for at least 20 minutes, at least three times a week.

I will take a shot at online selling and will complete at least two craft projects each week.

I will get Nora’s baby book up to date (…including starting it…).

I will sell or at least get rid of the oven that’s been sitting in my garage for the past year.

I will find out what we’ll need to do to finally get an actual working oven installed in our kitchen.

I will completely pay off my Old Navy and Ikea credit cards before using them to make ANY additional purchases (…ouch.).

Whew… okay, that’s enough goal-setting for now. I’m exhausted. We’ll see how long this lasts.

Bye Bye Boots.

I’ve experienced a loss… today as I made my way back into the office after lunch, I literally tripped over what seemed to be my own feet. In fact, the sole of my boot was starting to peel away from the bottom of the boot and whatever was under the sole started crumbling out. You’re probably asking what I myself am asking as I read what I just wrote: what the hell kind of crappy boots are these that they’re literally crumbling away? Who knows. I bought them for about $20 in Budapest over four years ago, so I should probably be happy that they’ve survived this long. I am still, however, quite sad that they seem quite unfixable at this point, and most unwearable since I’ve been falling all over myself trying to walk around in them all afternoon. Alas, I will need to say goodbye to my favorite black boots… they might not understand English though, so instead: viszlat, boots.

Thinking about my boots and how it means I’ll need to spend the money to go out and buy another pair to get me through the winter (ugh.), I realize that they hold much more sentimental value than anything else (obviously, as I mentioned earlier, they’re clearly not the BEST boots…). It feels like I’ll be getting rid of part of my experience of studying abroad, a piece of the short four months of my life that I spent halfway around the world. My life did change pretty significantly in those short four months… it was my first time out of the country…I learned so much about my family’s history and culture when I had the chance to go visit relatives still living in my grandparents’ hometown out in the middle of the Hungarian countryside... I also got engaged! It was a life-changing experience that I’ll never forget. 

And oh, the shopping. The unbelievable deals and strength of the American dollar in a country not yet on the Euro. And, especially now as we get closer to Christmas, I remember the festive Christmas market in the middle of the city in the weeks before Christmas. Walking around in the cold after class, browsing the handmade crafts, smelling smoked sausage and fresh pastries, drinking a hot mug of mulled wine. We’ve tried recreating the mulled wine at home, but of course, it’s never as good. Plus somehow drinking wine out of a mug in my own house makes me feel a lot less festive and lot more like an alcoholic.

The start to the holidays and real food.

I can't believe it's already time for Christmas trees and decorations and that Thanksgiving has already come and gone. We had a really nice Thanksgiving, spent pretty equally between mine and Nick's families, and it was actually pretty relaxing and enjoyable even with driving back and forth between houses. I just wish I hadn't gotten a terrible stomach ache so I could've eaten more - of course the one day of the year when all I want to do is completely stuff myself is the day I get the worst stomach ache ever... Luckily it eventually went away and there weren't any trips to the hospital or anything like that, but I was still ashamed that I was only able to put away ONE full plate of food. I will definitely need to make up for it on Christmas.

Of course, once Thanksgiving is over, it's Christmas. Which means it's time to get Christmas trees. (YAY!) This is one of my favorite days of the year, since Christmas-time is my favorite time of the year, and this kicks everything off. We had a lot of fun toting Nora around with us this time, and also found a really perfect tree which is now also decorated and proudly standing in our living room.

To finish off a weekend of fun, we decided to venture into new territory with Nora's expanding diet: peas. We started giving her rice cereal a couple of weeks ago, and since she seems to be loving that and is still extremely interested in everything else she sees everyone eating and drinking, we decided it was time to try something new. Needless to say, she now loves peas too, based on the feeding frenzy we experienced tonight. However, I'm still convinced that this child will devour anything since she seems equally interested in her fingers and anything else that she can get near her mouth, including my face. But fingers are her favorite. I think she only enjoys peas as long as they're accompanied by a side of fingers.

Halloween... a little late.

It was a double-treat of a Halloween this year, with it falling on a Sunday. Halloween party with friends Saturday night, and fun with family and baby on Sunday. I must say it worked out nicely to enjoy the best of both worlds.

We of course waited until the very last minute to figure out costumes to wear to our party on Saturday night, resulting in somewhat unimaginative costumes which were mostly non-identifiable to most. The upside: Nick and I both dressed as our favorite TV heroes: Liz Lemon and Don Draper (me obviously being the former and Nick being the latter… although wouldn’t it have been more fun if it was the other way around? Noted for next year’s last minute costume ideas).

I have to say that I think we did a fairly decent job, although as I said, only a handful of people could actually come close to guessing who we were actually supposed to be… hard to believe, since Nick so CLEARLY is a dead ringer for Jon Hamm, and I am without a doubt just as, or probably even more so, as much of a dork as Liz Lemon. I felt like I could identify with Liz Lemon even more than usual that night, as I realized that the major plusses of this costume were (1) that I could leave my hair in its naturally frizzy state and didn’t need to make any effort to make it look any better, and (2) that this costume, unlike so many typical ‘sexy’ female Halloween costumes, did not require me to shave my legs. Liz would be so proud.

We had some much anticipated grown-up fun at the party, enjoying adult beverages (me, drinking all of mine out of my signature ‘TGS with Tracy Jordan’ coffee mug, and Nick drinking all of his from his authentic 1960s-era glass tumbler, in fine Sterling-Cooper fashion) and acting generally silly with good friends we hadn’t seen much since the arrival of Nora.

I think Nora enjoyed her first Halloween weekend – she got to spend the evening with her two Omas while we were at our Halloween party, and even got to stay up extra late (which wasn’t a bad thing since it meant she slept in extra late the next morning and let mom also sleep in after her evening of enjoying her yummy Mommy beverages out of her mug). She was the most adorable pumpkin for Halloween, and we of course took way too many pictures of her in costume… as well as a few of Dundie in his vampire cape, which he didn’t seem all too fond of.

What's in a name?

So my display name is Kimbers-Krizl.

My husband, upon reading my first entry of my new blog last night (after much prodding by me), asks me... 'Kimbers-Krizl?'

Yes, Kimbers-Krizl. A name given to me by Father Arnold several years ago when I served as an altar server.

He knew my first name was Kimberly, but wasn't as familiar with my last name. 'Who is your family?' he asked me, trying to figure out whose faces he had seen with me in the congregation before this first official meeting. 'My grandparents are the Krizls' I told him. 'Oh, the KRIZLS!' And that was that.

My grandparents have been devoted Catholics all their lives, and have been faithful members of the parish for decades, so it's no wonder that their name rings a familiar bell in the heads of many of the other parishioners and priests. Church is funny that way: there are many 'church families' that my family feels they know, simply due to the fact that we've heard their last name and seen their faces once a week for a few years or in some cases, a few decades. But at the same time, we wouldn't know most of their first names or anything else about them, besides the fact that they go to church. Who knows if they're super nice and volunteer every spare minute to serve hot meals at homeless shelters and pray the rosary together every night... or if they're completely whacked out and horrible people who just happen to get together every Sunday to go to church together in between bank robberies and drug deals... hmm. Maybe that's a part of the experience of attending mass that I never thought about: having faith that the people standing right next to your kid and your purse aren't going to snatch both, run out the door to the waiting get-away car, and send you a ransom note right after brunch.

Hello! My name is...

I'm new to blogging... obviously. This is my first post.

And I think it's a good idea to start off on the right foot, so I'm going to be completely honest here:
I have started a blog out of sheer boredom.

Now, this is not to say that my life is boring, in fact, far from it. Just my job. My utterly, completely, DESPERATELY boring job. To put it plainly and without getting into too much detail, I essentially spend eight hours a day (...make that seven, since I take a full hour for lunch everyday to go home and feed my four-month-old...) at my desk thinking of ways to pass the time. Now, I do have little bits of work now and then that keep me busy for a little while, but that still leaves me with a solid five to six hours of nothing-ness. So I've recently begun reading a number of very entertaining blogs that keep me sane and awake throughout the day, and I started thinking, this morning in fact, 'why can't I do that?' which I'm sure is what every blogger says when they decide to start a blog. Hence, the plethora of mostly-mediocre blogs out there full of ramblings about the uneventful events of everyday life which, let's be honest, only the authors and their mothers probably care about. ...And hence, I suppose, the surprising popularity of obscure 30 Rock references when it comes to naming a blog (which I discovered after five attempts at naming this blog... apparently there are at least five other fans of 30 Rock in the world.). So, to that plethora of mediocrity, I add another. And unless I'm more entertaining than I think I am (which I'm sure I'm not), I will be the only one reading this blog since my mother doesn't know how to use the internet.

Now, as I said, my life is not boring. I have a beautiful baby girl named Nora, who I love to death, and who I'm convinced will grow up to be quite a cheeky little girl. (Please note that I am not British, and therefore have no authority to use this term; however, I've always thought it was a great word and that it captures a quality lacking in its fellow American synonyms. Thank you to Thomas the Tank Engine and Shining Time Station for teaching it to me at such an impressionable young age.)

I also have a wonderful husband, who I've been married to for two years, although we've been together for ten years this month. True story: high school sweethearts and everything. We make each other laugh and have been through a lot together. He's great. And he's a great dad. As a real estate agent, he's able to work from home about 90% of the time, and is therefore a stay-at-home/work-at-home dad for Nora. I'm completely grateful for this and the fact that it saves us from having to deal with daycare, although I must say that I'm a little envious of him getting to spend so much time with her while I'm away at work (obviously very busy and doing Very Important Work Things) as she is definitely turning into a daddy's girl. I also must say that I'm a little worried about what else he may be turning her into... a Braves fan... a Ron Paul supporter... I may need to invest in a nanny cam.

And, we have a crazy dog. He was our first baby. Dundie is a spunky and slightly-terroristic 3 1/2-year-old American Eskimo (or 'Eski' to the dog people... note: he is a 'standard', and not to offend any mini- or toy-Eski owners, but that means he's the normal-looking kind of Eski. Not the kind with the googly-eyes. You know what I mean.).

Now, continuing in the spirit of full disclosure, I feel I need to mention that much of this blog will be written while pumping (as you remember, I have a four-month-old baby). I feel I need to mention this in case any one of you are uncomfortable with the idea of pumping breastmilk... although keep this in mind: I assure you that it is much more awkward and uncomfortable for me... as it only leaves me one free hand for typing. I mean think about how long this entry is. Honestly.