Busy weekend ahead...

So I have a drum rhythm workshop and bellydance party tonight. Should be fun! Kevin is going and I don't know if that means he won't get a nap this afternoon. I'm going to check with our sitter to see if I can come pick up the play yard we have there in case I can get him to take a nap in it sometime this afternoon. I wouldn't dream of leaving Kevin with grandma or a sitter. He LOVES drums and dancing, and I think he'd be very put out with me if he knew he'd missed today... so I'm taking him, and I'll deal with the grumpy tired Kevin tomorrow morning if need be.

Tomorrow my dad and stepmom are coming in to visit for the day. So no doubt that tomorrow afternoon we'll be busy busy.

I found a blog I like. It's paganish so if you aren't into that, don't go visit. But otherwise, the author is very witty, I really like reading her blog. The Gods Are Bored.

ah, my darling has awakened from his nap.

did I win?

so my day started with puking. yeah, stomach flu I guess. It moved on to a pointless argument with the hubby. While Kevin and I watched his new movie, The Bee, I checked some lottery tickets I had laying around. I guess if you have the Powerball number, you win. I had a ticket with the Powerball number. $3. Except that I bought the powerplay option with a multiplyer of 5... so I won $15. woo.

Kevin woke from his afternoon nap in a PISSY mood. Perhaps because he was hungry. Probably inherited that from his dad. So I fed him, and now he's better. Now we are watching Firefly episodes and teaching Kevin to sing the Firefly theme song.

I have nothing else exciting to say. The day was not great. I should have been trying to get better, that's what taking a sick day is for... it's what I hoped to do since it was J's day off. Instead he has slept all day and will probably sleep all night, while I took care of Kevin all day and tried to hold my guts in. (the puking stopped this morning, but it was the other end I was concerned about)

Nobody won. The $15 was spent on the pizza I bought for my eating disorder binge.

Florida trip report, part 2

I forgot to mention in the last post that my mom lives in a manufactured home community. We call them trailer parks up here, but honestly, there is a WORLD of difference between the type of community she lives in and our trailer parks. I did see a "trailer park" down there, so really, her place shouldn't even be considered remotely like anything we have here. It was really a retiree community though I did see people walking around that were not old by my standards. It was a lovely place actually, nearly all the homes were double-wide trailers with a lanai (a screened in porch that's really another room). Some of the newer homes were not trailers but actual manufactured homes and looked very different from the older homes. As I said, we walked the dog every morning and evening, except for the evening it rained. Every morning I woke to the sounds of roosters crowing. Roosters? yep, that's right. They live wild in the scrub along the ravine behind my mom's house. They crow all day from the butt-crack of dawn till late afternoon. There are also wild peacocks back there too. I didn't see the peacocks, just heard them. But I saw a rooster. It was black. Though mom technically lives in Sarasota, where she lives is not city but county jurisdiction. So apparently there are not rules about hunting... so people have tried to hunt those wild chickens and peacocks, without success. haha Accross from one of the main roads from my mom's community is a house where some circus folk live. They have a huge trapeze thing in their front yard. Last november when I went down, I saw them practicing, but I guess they are on the road now. Florida is still wintering site for circus folk.

Back to my report!

Sunday 3/16, mom of course wants to show off her grandson at church. Fortunately she didn't expect us to go to bible study. I'd have been bored silly. So we get there about 10:30ish, mom does her Proud Grandma thing before stuff starts. She mentioned there was a nursery, but I didn't feel like leaving him with strangers even if she did trust them (they also supposedly had to go through background checks and such). Anyway, we had a few things for him to play with, and he did fairly well when service started. Unfortunately, service happened during his nap time, and since it was all new to him, he had no desire to try to sleep. I finally had to step out of the sanctuary area to the lobby to get him to settle enough to nap. I was thrilled though, I was getting tired of the sermon... I am not going to diss it, but the topic was definitely NOT up my alley and certainly fit many of the reasons why I don't want to be christian. Other than that though, mom's church friends were very nice and friendly. Easy to be friendly when you never get winter cabin fever. LMAO
After church we went to a chinese buffet for lunch. I think that Kevin has a thing for little oriental women. He ALWAYS charms the waitress girls. Maybe it's because they almost always bring him a cookie after we eat.... They do it up here and they did it in florida.
After lunch we went to Sarasota Jungle Gardens! and we got to meet a message board friend and her hubby and son! It was great to meet someone that I've chatted with for a long while, and her son Kian and Kevin had fun. The Garden is like a cross between a tropical garden and a mini-zoo. It actually doesn't take up a lot of space, the path winds around on itself so that it seems like you are doing a lot of walking, but you aren't going very far. There are every type of palm tree, bamboo, and tropical plants. Interspersed are cages with tropical birds and later in the walk, a cage of lemurs and spider monkeys. The bird pictures I took myself. They have a bird show and a reptile show, and we showed Kevin the crocodiles, alligators and snakes. We also watched the bird show where parrots and cockatoos did tricks. My mom bought some of the bird food and we fed the birds, including a flamingo. The seagulls were LOUD and annoying. We saw a lovely white peacock that I kept taking pictures of, for my friend Melanie. Pmaw and her family had to go after the bird show, as they had a 4 hour drive back home. After we hugged and said goodbye, we went to the gift shop and I bought a souvineer (sp?) tshirt for Kevin and myself, a toy alligator for Kevin and a flamingo visor for a good friend of mine who is a flamingo freak. lol
When we got to the car, Kevin almost passed out instantly. So we decided to drive around for a while on Siesta Key to see some sights, look for a place to eat and then go back to Siesta Beach for the sunset drum circle. That all sounds like it would take little time, eh? No... took us a half hour just to get to the main drive of Siesta Key. Then we drove another half hour to Turtle Beach. But along the way I was able to see Siesta Key's version of "the strip". It was a strip of shops and restaurants and bars, all touristy and according to mom, all pricey. In 1993 when I went to visit them, mom took me to Turtle Beach. The beach wasn't sand, it was broken shells. You have to wear beach shoes to walk on it, it hurts so bad. But the water is fine. However one of those hurricanes that hit Sarasota (Charlie?) totally stripped Turtle beach, and there wasn't a beach left at all. They had to truck sand in and rebuild the beach, so right now it's about 2/3 sand and the shells are starting to come back so it's got about 1/3 shells. Turtles on Little Sarasota Bay is the restaurant we went to, across from Turtle Beach. I was shocked, we said we weren't picky about the table location, so they got us a table right away, and we got one on the veranda with a view of the bay! I was quite thrilled. Kevin was actually still asleep when we sat down, but he woke up shortly after. We had a lovely seafood dinner... I had some sort of fish I'd never heard of wrapped in parchment paper with a sherry sauce. Kevin had "gourmet" mac and cheese. He was happy. But he liked my fish too.
After dinner, we drove back to Siesta beach and regretted not getting there sooner. Parking had been fine when we drove by on the way to dinner, but now it was packed. We barely managed to find a place in the lot very close to where we need to go. So we head to the beach, and get to the Drum Circle. When we arrived, there were about 20 drummers, but more arrived constantly. The Drum circle starts about an hour before sunset and continues well into the night I guess. Mom says that after dark is for the "advanced" drum circle folks, in other words, clothing might come off, and things might get "rowdy". I know I got a whiff of the weed as we looked for a spot to sit. Anyway, when we arrived it was still mostly family-friendly, and people and kids were dancing in the circle with the drumming. I loved it. Kevin LOVED it. All he wanted to do was stand by the drummers and watch them and dance. It was so fun to watch him and fun to dance up there by the drummers. When it got darker, I saw the circle get smaller around the drummers and the families started leaving. Then we got a huge whiff of weed, so we decided to pack it up and head home. LOL It was a packed and eventful day!!

Monday 3/17 we didn't do a whole lot during the day. Mom had a chiro appt so she dropped Kevin and I off at a big bookstore that reminded me of B&N. I let Kevin have the run of the store while we waited, which was good for him, he needed to run. That bookstore was in a shopping center that had a few stores I wanted to see, so we did a little shopping. I found some jammies for Kevin cheap, and a few things for me, cheap. When we were done there, I needed to pick up some more milk for Kevin. My stepdad drinks some sort of soy type milk (gross) and my mom drinks some sort of fat free (not just skim) milk that is so fat free that it's not even proper white. blech. We went home and had some lunch, and I put Kevin down for a nap. Mom and stepdad needed to go to the airport that night to pick up a friend of thiers to get her home, and since I had a friend that had moved down to florida 6 months ago and she wanted to get together, I borrowed mom's car and drove up to Clearwater to meet up with her and her sons. She knew of a great Persian restaurant, so we went there and had some fantastic food. Shish Kabobs, chicken kabobs, beef kabobs, veggie kabobs, hummus, baba ghanoush, dolmas, felafel, tabbouleh... oh I was in heaven! We also tried a couple deserts among the 5 of us, persian ice cream (ice cream with saffron and maybe cardamom? in it) and some sort of other desert that tasted like lemon sorbet but wasn't, quite. Then Annette took us all down to Pier 60 to see Clearwater beach, and it turned out that there were sidewalk performers and a craft show. We saw a guy dressed up like Captain Jack and I took a picture of everyone with him. Kevin played on the gym equipment on the sand with Annette's boys. Then we walked down the pier to look at the craft booths. Mind you, this was after dark! Almost 9pm. Annette, the trooper, insisted on carrying Kevin most of that time. She just loves little ones. Eventually though, Kevin insisted on getting down. He then ran almost half the pier, oooohing and woooing every time he went to the railing and saw the water below. Any attempt to pick him up elicited a fit of temper. lol... But, the night had to come to an end, Annette got us back to our car by 10pm and we hugged and went our way. I got us back to mom's by 11:15, not too bad.

Tuesday 3/18 was our final day, we had to be at the airport by 5:30. So we hung out at the house, letting Kevin play, packing, eating. It was a quiet final hours. We got to the airport, and after I checked in and mom and stepdad left, I discovered the plane was running late due to bad weather elsewhere. But I also found out that I would be on the same plane from Sarasota to my home airport, so I asked if there were any available first class seats that I could upgrade to. There were! it cost me $60 to upgrade to first class. Totally worth it too, she gave me a front row seat which has the most leg room and no one in front of me, so I could put Kevin down after take off and let him play in front of me, my leg was enough of a fence to keep him in. Plus, drinks (booze) was complimentary... as much as I wanted. Being a little concerned (ha! understatement) about turbulence and flying through rough weather, I started out with a vodka/cranberry and moved on to Bailey's. I had a lot of Bailey's. I was quite relaxed by the time we landed in Atlanta (no weather). I had to switch from the vodka/cranberry because Kevin was totally into the cranberry. He'd never had it before but the color attracted him and he threw a tantrum when I wouldn't let him have any. Honestly... I might have let him have a sip if I didn't think my seat neighbor would have called me a bad mom for letting my kid have booze. I was tempted... maybe he would have calmed down and slept? oh well, I will never know. However, he did fall asleep while we sat at Atlanta waiting for the plane to load. That was nice, he slept most of the last leg of the trip, waking just before landing. We were only 10 minutes late, which was better than last time. We got home by 11:30pm and Kevin went straight to bed (he was awake all the way home), then so did I.

It was 35 degrees when I got home. :(

Florida trip report, part 1

I suspect this is going to be a long report, so I'm going to break it up to make it easier to type. lol

We arrived in Florida on wednesday night at 11:30pm. It was 65 degrees. My mom was wearing a jacket and complained she was freezing. I thought it was balmy! I know it's all about perspective... but damn it felt good to be warm. I deliberately did not bring a sweater or jacket, I had faith I wouldn't need it. LOL Anyway, I had hoped (from the previous trip) that Kevin would sleep on the plane. Not so much... in fact he was incredibly active and did not want to sit on my lap. Not that I really blame him. So, when we got there, I was exhausted. Kevin was AWAKE. It was after midnight and Kevin was still awake in the pack-n-play when I passed out.

thursday 3/13 - except perhaps for Kevin, we were all kind of tired that morning, so we took it easy. Kevin met my mom's dog, a small poodle-ish dog named Nicholas (Nickie). We went for walks every morning to walk the dog, so we did that, then relaxed around the house till after Kevin's nap. After lunch, mom took me to the Whole Foods store, I had never been to one before and I wanted to get a few things for Kevin. It was awesome. I wish we had one! It was huge, more like a grocery store than the health food stores here where I live. Their deli ROCKED. We also stopped at a strip mall that was having a sidewalk craft show and I bought a couple things, one of which I forgot at mom's house! :(

On friday 3/14 we were feeling a lot more energetic, so we went down to St Armand's Circle on Lido Key. Mom says the key was originally bought and used by the Ringling circus as their winter site. Now there is an upscale pedestrian shopping mall in a large circle, where you can buy fine art, expensive jewelry, classy clothes and nice imports. My favorite store was Binjara Imports. Mom and I (and Kevin) window shopped. Most of the stores were above our price range, it was just a nice place to go and have a pleasant afternoon. We came to an ice cream parlor called "Scoop Daddy's". Mom said it was the best ice cream, so we stopped to have some. Kevin had the "Superman" flavor... the ice cream was bright blue, yellow, red and green. Yum!!! haha... I had ice cream called Hazelnut chocolate chip latte. It was good stuff. Naturally we had dessert before the meal... so we kept going around the circle till we came to a cafe called Crab & Fin. We had expensive crab salad sandwiches... but they were GOOD crab salad sandwiches. It was sprinkling rain off and on all afternoon. Not enough to get us wet, but just enough to keep us from considering swimming at the beach. The clouds and sprinkles made it just cool enough (even for me) to skip swimming. But we drove down to Lido beach to see it and let Kevin get his toes wet. He is crazy about beaches. Of course they are one huge sandbox, but he loves the water like mad. I have to keep a sharp eye on him as soon as his feet hit the sand, he takes off for the water's edge on his own. There was a small boat bay between St. Armands and the beach, and mom said it's popular with the local manatees for a breeding ground. Since it was manatee breeding season, we checked the bay on the way off the key, to see if any were there, but didn't see any. Mom thinks it's because of the rain and clouds... they apparently prefer sunny warm days to come up to that bay.

Saturday 3/15 we went to the beach! Siesta beach of course. Siesta has the finest, softest white sand of all the beaches there. It's my favorite. During the drive (which was a little long due to the extra traffic from spring break) I looked at big houses on the bay side for examples of what our Winter Home will look like after I win the lottery. ha ha! I forgot to take pictures, as Kevin was quite the handful if I let go of him, and I was freaking out about the idea of him getting washed away by the waves, which were high enough to push me around. So, the camera never entered my mind. We did try to get him to play in the sand, but he wasn't interested after he caught sight of the water. So, we took him down and carried him far enough for us to get our butts wet and his feet wet. Then I took him to the edge where the highest waves came to, and we sat and played in the sand and let the higher waves get us wet. Kevin loved that. I kept showing him how to dig a big hole to let water fill it. He liked that. In spite of the huge SPF lotion I put on him, he got a little pink over his nose and cheeks. I had lotion on too, but the side of my chest facing the sun I got a little burned. Not bad though. We had a blast, and wore ourselves out. Kevin and I went up to the refreshment stand and had some cheese fries (he was STARVING apparently) while mom brought our stuff up. The beach is really wide and a long walk. Mom had to walk a half mile to where she parked the car so we could go home. The crowds were crazy for parking but the beach was so big that it didn't seem so bad... it was crowded, but not packed. I wonder what parking is like on a packed day.

ok, that's enough for this post. Kevin needs a little lovin'.

stuff

ugh! I am wiped out tired. I only worked two days this week and they were busy, trying to catch up from vacation. I was going to post a long trip report, but it will have to wait till tomorrow.

I applied for the job that I've been waiting for it to be posted. It's open to the public as an "entry level" position though, even though it would be a promotion for me. So I won't know what my chances are for a while. I do know the supervisor wants to hire internally instead of outside the organization. That may help... if I pass the test.

Happy Ostara or Spring Equinox, however you call it. Did you balance an egg? I did not. I think ours aren't quite fresh enough. Can't wait to see what Kevin does with his basket!

Back from heaven...

yeah... I was in heaven. Or was it florida? doesn't matter, wish I was still there. I plan to write a good post about it tomorrow. Too late now, I must get to bed!

I just finished putting together Kevin's Ostara basket. Spent too much, I'm sure. I'm considering waiting till friday morning to give it to him though, so daddy can be there for it.

More to come!

basket ideas

When I was at Walmart a couple days ago, J and I went down some aisles so I could get some Ostara basket filler ideas. In the crayola aisle (have you noticed that it's not just crayola crayons anymore? crayola gets a whole fricken AISLE for markers, crayons, coloring books, etc etc) I found toddler crayons. They are egg shaped (nothing to do with easter) to be easier to hold in toddler hands. Also, they aren't a crayon that can be broken into bite-sized pieces and eaten! So, I will be picking up some toddler crayons for Kevin to color with. I think that we will color some eggs and tape them to the windows next week!

I discovered that Kevin likes things with lights, especially if they blink. heaven forbid that he get ahold of one of J's flashlights (J has a zillion flashlights... in my perception lol) because I can never get him to give it up. I saw some easter blinky light things... I might get one of those to put in the basket. I think I might also look for some more large plastic non-moving-parts dinosaurs to go with his T-rex that he got at the Walking with Dinosaurs show last weekend. He loves his Rrrarrrr and plays with it all the time. I think T-Rex Rrrarrrr needs a stegosaurus or tricerotops to eat.

I am going to skip that grass shit that is usually sold to put in those baskets. I'll get it when he's older. But I'll never forget my stepsisters daughter, at the easter when she was a year old, she somehow managed to eat some of that grass, and when it came out the other end later, one end of that grass was stuck in a turd in her diaper, and the other end was stuck in a turd still inside her. I will never forget watching my mom pull that piece of grass out gently while my stepsister (who was f-n 16 at the time) hold her daughter while the poor kid screamed. No thanks. Keep your plastic grass, Walmart.

new family traditions...

So, Kevin's first year I was too wrapped up in being a new mom to consider what we would do for the holidays as a family. For those who don't really know, I am wiccan, been so for oh... 15ish years. Was practicing solitary, then part of a small group since 94. But I still practice solitary at home. My husband J is not wiccan, though he's cool with it and sometimes does go to my group's family celebrations. And he has participated in some of the things I've done at home, like wardings. Anyway... the equinox is coming. Ostara. It is thursday the 20th. I have to work that day. That's okay... maybe in the future I will take off work on holidays so that we can celebrate the holidays better.

But this comes to the major question... what traditions do we want to do to celebrate Ostara? Kevin is too young for teaching anything, and thats good because I'm not quite prepared yet, since I'm only just now figuring this stuff out. But I need to figure out what I want to do this year. In the future, I'll tell Kevin the story of how the Eostre bunny and the eggs came about. This year, for Kevin I will make him a basket of toys and a couple of plastic eggs with treasures in them that I will "hide" in the living room. I will probably make some hard boiled eggs for decorating and later eating. Since I'm going to try and garden again this year, I will be making my garden egg for burying. That will probably be a tradition I can include Kevin in, in the future. Unfortunately, I don't have time to do any psanky eggs this year, since I'll be in florida soon. I really enjoy doing psanky, but damn, it's time consuming. I'd consider doing some later, but with the cleaning I need to do, I'll wait till next year.

One good thing is that Ostara and Easter are around the same time. So saturday the 22nd, there's all kinds of egg hunts going on around town. I think I'll take Kevin to the one at the petting zoo for sure. We'll see about going to another one not far from our house. Depends on Kevin. I don't really want him to eat candy anyway so if that's all the egg hunts are, I can do without going to several.

Meme

jennyquarx tagged me to particpate in a meme. This is a rather interesting one, and I'm required to tag 5 of you in turn.

The meme is that you need to turn to page 123 of any book, and then quote the 5th sentence on the page either in a post of your own or in my comments. Then you get to tag 5 people as well.

Here's mine:

I can't speak for anybody else, but maybe it's because so many of us are outsiders.

I don't think anyone reads my blog besides most of the people that Julie and Jennyquarx already tagged. But Melanie, if you happen to read this, you are tagged. anyone else not tagged yet, consider yourself tagged. haha

gonna dance like no one is watching...

I've decided to take a sabbatical from teaching dance. My students already know. I probably wouldn't have decided this if I didn't have a senior student who'd decided to teach and another good friend teaching not too far away. This gives my ladies some choices to continue their dance learning.

For me, I'm going back to class to learn again myself. I'm going to get my groove back. I love to dance but lately... that love was stale. So I'm going to work on that. Then, instead of teaching weekly classes, I will probably do workshops now and then, when I create dances that I really like.

Not sure what's going on with the job opening I'm waiting for. I heard some talk that it's supposed to be posted this week. I'm waiting for that. Part of the talk included that it might be open to the public, rather than internal only. That would suck for me. I don't know if that's true or not, but if it is open to the public, my seniority and stuff may mean nothing. I don't know how they can justify not going internal first. I guess it's just something I have to wait and see.

I have nothing witty to write about. Sorry! I've been so busy at work and after work, that when I finally get home, I just want to go to bed.

ok, I'm going to watch an episode of Lost before I crash. Peace out! (miss you Doobie!)