Author: Tanie

I meant to post yesterday but I got sucked into a packing- and list-making vortex instead. On the upside, all our clothes are packed and ready to go. Tonight/tomorrow I’m going to do toiletries, electronics, etc etc.

Last time we went to Hawaii we had to take so much extra stuff with us because of the wedding: my dress and Taylor’s suit (obviously), three extra pairs of shoes (all mine, don’t even ask), make-up, my blowdryer and straightening iron, nail polish, blah blah blah. We had a big suitcase, a small suitcase on the way there and two on the way back (yes, I bought a suitcase there), a backpack, a garment bag and my purse for the two of us for just three and a half days. This time three of us are going for a week and we’re only taking the big suitcase, one small suitcase, Taylor’s backpack (which is full of his camera equipment so I’ve absolved myself of all responsibility) and my purse. That’s it!

Usually I have a terrible habit of Vince Noir-style overpacking, but I really didn’t want to this time since I’m the one who would end up having to haul it all to the airport, so I made a real effort to reduce the amount of crap I’m bringing. Here’s how:
• Instead of just throwing stuff into the suitcase willing-nilly, I made a really specific list and packed only the items on the list after careful consideration of each one.
• Being realistic. Am I REALLY going to go running while I’m there? No I am not, so I don’t need workout clothes or running shoes. Am I REALLY going to do anything with my hair besides tie it back? No I am not, so I don’t need a ton of hair products or styling tools.
• Since I dress monochromatically, everything I’m bringing is grey, white, black or denim (it’s a neutral, okay?). Everything matches everything else.
• Since I dress like a slob, 90% of the clothes I packed double as pajamas, eliminating the need for actual pajamas.
• Dressing efficiently for travel. It’s cold here. It’s hot in Hawaii. Instead of wearing a heavy, bulky outfit on the plane and changing into a whole new outfit once I get to Maui, I’m wearing a sundress with leggings, a cardigan and a light jacket. When I get to the airport my coat will go into my checked suitcase. When we get to Maui, the cardigan and leggings will go into my purse and voila: I’m appropriately dressed. Symphony is doing the same.
• 90% of my travel clothes also double as pajamas.
• My Kindle! Two six-hour flights = lots of reading. I downloaded a four-book series with each book (in actual book form) averaging 750 pages, all in a lightweight package the size of a moleskine. So much more space efficient and lighter than actual books!
• There are some products (shampoo, bodywash, etc) that we all use. Instead of bringing full-size bottles with us, I’m packing travel sizes for the first night, and the next day we’ll go buy full-size ones to use while we’re there.

I’m feeling pretty good about nearly all our packing plans except one: I was going to bring my grey Club Monaco purse for carry-on since it zips shut (important for being stowed under plane seats), but Taylor and Symphony are both bringing their netbooks. With the only other carry-on bag being Taylor’s backpack crammed with camera equipment and no extra space, I’ve been put in charge of them, so I need
a) a second carry on bag (it would technically be Symphony’s carry-on item but I would end up carrying it, I just know it)
b) a bigger purse
I’d much rather bring a bigger purse than a whole extra bag, but the only one I have that’s both big enough AND has a closure at the top is… my MbMJ diaper bag. I guess it might get some use a bit earlier than I’d planned!

The Secret Hour 20/104, Touching Darkness 21/104, Blue Noon 22/104

I read all three Midnighters books in about three days. I really like all of Scott Westerfeld’s books that I’ve read and these were no exception! The story was cool and the history/mythology behind it all was really well thought out. I could have done without the annoying younger sister character but OH WELL. Other than that and some weird continuity issues with who-is-picking-whom-up-from-school they were great.

What I was hoping would be a fun day for my family turned out to be total poop. Why? Because I’m siiiiiiiick /whining

I’d been stuffy-nosed for the last few days, but this morning I woke up and I’ve turned into a total snot faucet! Also tired, achey, weak and floppy, all those good things. I spent most of the day in bed- I even had breakfast (pancakes) and lunch (soup & toast) in bed. Unfortunately I can’t watch movies in there anymore because I moved my computer out here to the library, so I’ve mostly just been reading on my Kindle. I actually noticed something weird about it a few weeks ago: when it goes to “sleep” it puts an image on the screen- either and old-timey drawing or a picture of a writer. For some reason Emily Dickinson shows up on mine more than any other picture. When you wake the Kindle up the screen flashes briefly and I SWEAR you can see her skull and creepy grinning teeth.

NOT COOL, AMAZON. NOT COOL. Another weird thing: earlier this week I was having a bath and sulking because I can’t read in the tub, so I made Taylor come read to me out of his Wired magazine (or as I call it, BORING MONTHLY). He turned the page and there was a full page ad for waterproof cases for e-readers! Serendipitous! Although I guess I could just put it in a freezer bag, ha.

I did leave the house once today- I had to mail a couple more prints (Thank you Kerri and Miranda!!) and deposit a rebate cheque I got from my KitchenAid stand mixer, but I also really really wanted to go to the art supply store to buy canvases for the mural I’m doing for my friend.

Top to bottom: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Pluto, Mini-Mecha-Fawn, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter, the Sun (all pending)

I ended up adjusting slightly from my original design- I was able to find smaller canvases for the 5 small planets, and I also decided it would look better if all the paintings were square instead of having two random rectangular ones.

Anyway that’s all. Taylor is napping since he woke up at 3:45 this morning, but I’m going to go wake him up and see if he wants to watch a movie with me or something. I’ll leave you with this picture I took of his dog this morning. I call it “Kichou in Furs.”

How excited am I that this week is almost over? SO EXCITED. Symphony has reached the spring breaking point. She’s bored of staying at home with me and the daycare kids and she’s getting pretty whiny and irritable. Yesterday she went to her friend Ali’s house to play and it was great for both of us- she got to go do something with someone her own age and I didn’t have to listen to her complaining and asking for food all day (I’ve had to make a rule that other than set meal- and snack times she isn’t allowed to ask me for things to eat because otherwise she’ll do it LITERALLY all day long).

I’m also happy that the week is almost over because HELLO it’s the weekend! which means no diapers, no fights with toddlers and hopefully, a well-rested and less crabby husband. Tomorrow I get to go to the art supply store (this is one of my favorite kinds of stores) to buy canvases for a Tanie-style mural of the solar system I’m doing for my friend. I won’t really get much time to work on it for a couple weeks but the canvases are on sale so I’m picking them up asap. This is the concept sketch I came up with yesterday:

Please note the inclusion of Mecha-Fawn.

Now the reason I’m MOST excited and why I can’t work on the paintings for a couple weeks is that we’re going away on vacation next Thursday morning. We’re going to Maui (where we were married, a year ago next weekend) for a whole week of sitting on the beach. I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT WAIT!! After this weekend I only have three more days of work and then it’s time for:

Gorgeous beaches!

Gatoradvil!

Martian-looking volcanic landscapes!

Sunsets!

Curly-haired husbands!

Breakfast mimosas at a beachfront restaurant patio from which you can see humpback whales splashing around!

Romantical re-enactments of the infamous fb profile photo (this was how we broke the news to our families that we got married, haha)!

The Hunger Games 17/104, Watch Your Mouth 18/104, Little Brother 19/104

I decided to read The Hunger Games after reading Danielle’s review on Sometimes Sweet. If there’s one thing I love, it’s young adult fiction about teens in a possibly post-apocalyptic dystopian society, and this book had all that in spades. It’s really well written and the story is super engaging, I LITERALLY could not put this book down- I started reading it last Thursday afternoon and stayed up until 2 am Friday morning to finish it. I’m holding my breath until the sequel, Catching Fire, is available for the Kindle.

Watch Your Mouth is a novel by Daniel Handler, the author of The Basic Eight (one of my all-time favorites). I’d never read this one before but I finally got it and idk, I’m not sure that I really liked it. It was definitely interesting but maybe Jewish incest opera just isn’t my genre.

What can I say about Little Brother? Another free book by Cory Doctorow, and again I found myself annoyed. The story itself (gamers vs the Department of Homeland Security) isn’t bad, although I was DECEIVED into thinking it was a book about teens in a possibly post-apocalyptic dystopian society, when really it’s about teens in the current pre-apocalyptic dystopian society, but I found someone the descriptions and explanations of cryptography and internet systems tiresome. Maybe I’m just not enough of a nerd. Also, multiple times girls were described as being h4wt. No. Just no. I also stayed up until 2 am to finish this book, but that was because I didn’t want to have to read it again today.

I was kind of wondering how long it would take for my new desk to get a bunch of random crap piled on it, and the answer is ONE WEEK.

Sunglasses, a giant novelty-size calculator, the notebook I keep my daycare waiting list in, Symphony’s second term report card (straight MFs except for one M in phys ed), five necklaces of hers I’m trying to untangle, her wallet, some hair clips and discs, and two new vinyl toys I got this past weekend.

On the left is a KidRobot Dunny from the ~Fatale~ line. I keep buying them because one is a unicorn but so far I’m having no luck finding it! This one is cool though, it was designed by Catalina Estrada, who is actually one of my favorite artists! On the right is a grey Tokidoki Cactus Pup that Symphony gave to me because she already has this one and she knows I like grey.

Because baby M naps in Sym’s room, separately from the other kids, at lunchtime I asked Sym to go pick out the toys and things she wanted to bring out to the living room for the afternoon. Today she chose a pillow from her bed, a My Little Pony book, and three toys: the tadpole mascot pictured above, a different tadpole mascot that has legs (both from the Aranzi Aronzo Cute Book, although I altered the legged tadpole pattern slightly), and her favorite stuffed puppy from when she was a baby.

It’s very hard to get a picture of her not moving and/or making a weird face, so I gave up and gave her this rainbow-ribbon-stick thing. Her grandma gave us six of them and so far they have proved very useful for entertaining little kids, playing with the cat and also just being rainbows.

Just for Symphony though, I’m still working. Right now all the daycare kids are napping so she and I watched The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning and then I helped her build a hedge maze on Farmville. And YES, I said ALL the daycare kids are napping, even M, the new baby who started last week and cried all day every day. Her mom spent the whole weekend working on getting M to nap by herself and I don’t know what she did or how she did it, but it WORKED. Amazing! She definitely deserves a Mom Medal!

You can also kind of see in that picture that I’m wearing earrings (which I usually don’t). I just got these in the mail today from my mom as a belated birthday gift. She got them in Guadalajara and forgot to give them to me in person when she visited the other week. I think they are amethyst, which would make sense since it’s my birthstone.

We had a pretty fun weekend around here. On Saturday morning it was really sunny so we went to the park to play badminton until it got too windy. After lunch we went shopping for some shorts for Sym and myself since we’ve both outgrown all of last summer’s and we need them to wear in Hawaii in A WEEK AND A HALF. Later Sym went to her dad’s and Taylor and I read (me) and napped (him). Once I was able to wake him up we went out for Mongolian BBQ and after, came home and watched Weird Science, a movie that is definitely not as awesome as it was when I was ten!

Love this sequined dress and enormous hair combination though.

On Sunday we had a few more errands to run but I got totally distracted in Winners looking at RAINBOW KNIVES. “Rainbow” is the theme in our kitchen and most of our knives were super old, cheap and not particularly sharp so I ended up replacing them all (except for two inexplicable Henkel knives Taylor had).

(also pictured, Sharky the Shark Knife, which I got at Target last year)

I also got these salad hands, which make me feel like a Muppet Babies version of Wolverine.

thank you card from Secret Leaves Paperworks

I just want to give a big Thank You! from Symphony and myself to
Tanya
Anne
Lindsay
Karra
Sinead
and
Kaitlin
… who bought fawn and unicorn prints this week.
You guys are the best!!!

It’s really been a while since I made one of these posts! I was so busy with painting pictures and ugh work that I’ve been slacking on reading, which is no good, since I’m currently behind last year’s pace. Last year I read 87 books so if I want to reach 104 I need to pick it up!

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter 14/104, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom 15/104, The Basic Eight 16/104

Last year my two favorite new books were both short story collections, which is unusually since I don’t usually like short stories. One was The Secrets of a Fire King, by Kim Edwards, and it made me want to read me to read The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. I promptly forgot about it until a few weeks ago when one of my clients suggested I read it. I was apprehensive because I know how much she loved Twilight, but I bought it in spite of my reservations and I really liked it.

Taylor downloaded Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom since it’s free, and I basically read it just because it was there. I guess I liked it well enough but I don’t think it’s going to be a rereader for me, unlike…

… The Basic Eight is one of my favorite books of all time, I’ve read it probably dozens of times and I never get sick of it. Originally I borrowed-slash-stole it from my mom, but she eventually took it back and I had to go buy my own copy. I took a break from my kindle to read it (mostly in the bath). It’s funny and weird and horrifying and tragic. Have you read this book? Why or why not? Would you read it now that I’ve recommended it? Why or why not? WHY OR WHY NOT?