A Cinderella Story

A warning: if you're expecting a love story, a rag-to-riches story, or a story about making your dreams come true, you're reading the wrong blog. When I say Cinderella story, I mean this is a getting-locked-in-the-bedroom kind of story.

This past weekend, my sister came to visit, just to visit and hang out. I loved getting to see her and spending time with her for a couple of days when there wasn't much else going on, since most times when she's in town it's for a family get-together or for the holidays, etc, etc. This time we just got to hang out (partly because I was sick and not up to doing a whole lot else) and she was gracious enough to babysit for us on Saturday night while Nick and I blew off his ex-work party in SF (yes, they were nice enough to still invite us and we totally ditched it...) and instead went to eat the most delicious sandwiches with french fries on them (that I've been craving since I first became pregnant almost a year and a half ago) and have a beer at this place, then headed over and had coffee and dessert at my much-missed before-work coffee spot in North Beach, Caffe Greco. It turned out to be a very nice and much overdue date night. 

The next day, we slept in (my sister stayed the night at our house after babysitting the night before), made breakfast, and relaxed a little before Kristie started getting ready to head home. She stayed in our guest room/office. Nick hopped in the shower, I was sitting in the living room feeding Nora lunch, and Kristie was getting dressed in the guest room. I then heard a bit of a struggle and jiggling of the door knob, and a muffled, "I'm stuck!" Our doors, which apparently haven't been replaced or had the door knobs replaced since the house was built in 1950, aren't the most reliable for how do you say, passing in and out of rooms easily. This door was stuck. Really stuck. The doorknob didn't appear to be locked on the inside according to Kristie, but the bolt was stuck in the out position and was not budging. Nick and I  dismantled the doorknob as much as we could, with a less-than-skillful combination of hammering, prying, unscrewing, and aggressive jiggling. More than a few broken pieces of metal fell out onto the floor and we did manage to get the door knob itself out, but could still not move the actual piece keeping the door shut. We finally gave up and my sister, who is luckily about the same size as me, was able to toss her bags and herself out the window onto the side of the house (good thing we only have a one-story house). I then crawled through the window into the bedroom and with the help of a screwdriver, was able to finally get the door open. I was relieved to get the door open, but less than happy to see that we'll still need to replace the broken door knob, part of the door jamb, and probably the door.

This is what I get for saying that I've been in a 'home improvement kind of mood' lately.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll want a glass of milk. You remember the story, right? Well, if you give me a sick day, I'll want to clean my entire house.


I've had a pretty bad sore throat the last couple of days and felt borderline sick (which by this morning had evolved into confirmed sick), so Thursday afternoon my boss told me if I was feeling sick on Friday to just stay home and take a sick day. I woke up feeling pretty crappy, so I decided to take his advice and stay home.


Before Nick left for the office, he noticed me wiping off the counter after making some tea, and asked me, "You're not going to clean all day, are you?" I looked at him with a bit of the stink-eye and defensively said, "No, why? I'm just wiping off the counter..."


"Because every time you're sick and stay home from work you spend the day cleaning the house." Well... he's right. I usually do. I keep busy taking care of Nora, but then as soon as she goes down for a nap, I feel so lazy and useless just sitting on the couch and watching TV or reading a magazine or whatever else I should be doing to 'take it easy' and rest up on my day of rest. Well of course since Nick pointed this out, I decided to prove him wrong and NOT spend the day cleaning this time. I tried anyway.


Nora inevitably got tired mid-morning, and was ready for a nap. I put her down for her nap and walked out of her room. Once I walked out of her room, I noticed the plant in the hallway was looking a little thirsty... sooo, I watered it. Ok, I over-watered it. I didn't realize this, however, until a few minutes later when I was sitting on the couch attempting to not do anything and I heard a soft tap---tap---tap. I ignored it for a minute. Then I got curious. I got up and walked around a little, and noticed it was coming from the hallway; from the plant specifically. The excess water had gotten to the bottom of the pot and was pooling around the bottom of the plant on the shelf, dripping down from the top shelf, down to the middle shelf, then down to the bottom shelf and onto the floor. So I got a few paper towels and started mopping up my mess - I moved the plant, moved the little shelf out of the corner, and discovered - GASP - look how much dust is in this corner! I used the wet paper towels and quickly wiped up the dust on the floor and in the corner of the walls... and wiped the baseboards. Here is where I trapped myself: I realized how dirty the baseboards were and how easily they wiped clean with a wet paper towel. Naturally, I immediately looked to the other wall and noticed that they were also pretty dusty. How had I not noticed this before?


And that is how I ended up spending half of my sick day cleaning all of the baseboards in my house.

Holidaaaay.... Celebraaaate....

...by cleaning.


Oh yes. It needs to be done. I think I have a pretty good idea of how I'll be spending my day off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day - cleaning the house which SOOOOO needs to be done, and finally, FINALLY taking down the Christmas lights. I could say that they're 'civil rights' trees, but I would be lying. We all know they're Christmas trees, made of Christmas lights. Which also reminds me - we still have our Christmas tree sitting naked and probably quite thirsty on our back patio. I can't look at it once all the lights and ornaments are off, and both me and the tree know that its time is up. The Christmas season has come and gone, and there's really just no reason anymore to have a tree indoors. So, out it goes, and I look away and fight back tears, feeling sad and guilty, as if I'm abandoning a greyhound after its glory days of racing have come and gone. The only thing worse than banishing it out to the back patio is cutting it up into pieces small enough that will fit in the green can... I just can't do it. I'm insane, I realize this - it's just a dead tree - but I'm still making Nick do it (plus we don't actually have a real saw to cut it up, so I have no idea how this will even be done). 

I love Christmas way more than any human being probably should, so there's always a bit of a mourning period for me when all of the Christmas stuff comes down - luckily I took down all of the indoor decorations a couple of weeks ago, so the only things left are the outside lights and our sad tree. I'll still need consolation once all of this is done though, so I think I'll have to round out the day by making a small trip to Crossroads for a little retail therapy and maybe some sushi tomorrow night.

Nora the Explorer

So my family is going to Budapest in April, and we’re super excited. We’ve been talking about this trip for almost two years now, and it looks like it’s actually happening. Since we decided on going a couple of years ago, we had left it as an open invitation for our family: whoever wants to go and is able to go is welcome. So far it will be me, Nick, my brother and sister, and aunt and uncle, Kathy and Norman. …Oh, and Nora. Yes, Nora, our baby who, upon departure, will not quite be ten months old. I’ve been asking myself one question since we bought our plane tickets two days ago: am I crazy?

In the last few days I’ve been reading all kinds of air-travel tips for traveling with babies, and I don’t know if this has done more to reassure me or stress me out to no end. So many things that I had kind of thought of before but not really, and then so many other things that had never even crossed my mind. We kind of keep saying, ‘eh… we’ll figure it out.’ Will we? I, for one, like to plan… and I’m pretty sure I’ll be planning the crap out of this trip until the minute we leave.

What would possess us to make such a decision, you may ask? Well, we thought, if we leave her here with the grandparents, it will be really hard on them and on her to be away from us for ten days. If we bring her, it will probably be pretty hard on us for ten days. We decided we’d be the responsible parents this time around and bear the burden. But really, I am doing my best to be totally optimistic and remind myself of the fact that yes, we will now need to plan more carefully, we will need to pack more stuff, we will need to work around Nora’s schedule, BUT – if I was away from her for that long I just KNOW I would be missing her and worrying about how and what she was doing the entire time. At least now she will get to be with us, we’ll get to be with her, and she’ll get a taste of international traveling at a very young age. And really… how cool will it be for Nora to have a passport with stamps from halfway across the world before her first birthday? Plus I think she’ll have the cutest passport picture ever.