Two names you go by:
1. Tiffany
2. Mommy (usually said twelve times in rapid succession or one long whine Mooooooooommmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!)

Two things you are wearing right now:
1. t-shirt from Old Navy
2. capris

Two things you would want (or have) in a relationship:
1. Hot lovin' (yeah, that's on the "want" list)
2. Trust

Two things you like to do:
1. Girl, spend $$!!
2. Read
3. Knit
4. Scrapbook
5. Take pictures (How many of these do I get to list? Oh yeah. Right. Two. Hmph)

Two things you want very bad at the moment:
1. To live back in the South
2. Lots of yummy sock yarn (I know, I'm so silly)

Two things you did last night:
1. Edited my brother's wedding photos
2. Ate ice cream with Morgan on the porch

Two things you ate today:
1. Iced Mocha from Starbuck's
2. Two animal crackers (hey.....it's the breakfast of champions)

Two people you last talked to:
1. Morgan
2. Miss Lorna

Two things you're doing tomorrow:
1. Taking Carter's 3 month pictures
2. Do laundry (yeah, right)

Two longest car rides:
1. Tennessee to Texas
2. Michigan to Tennessee

Two favorite holidays:
1. Christmas
2. Morgan's birthday

Two favorite beverages:
1. Dr. Pepper
2. Sweet Tea

Two things about me that you may not have known:
1. I would like to retire to England
2. I kill plants. :( Not intentionally, of course, but I'm the Dr. Death of greenery.

Two jobs I have had in my life:
1. Disability Claims Analyst
2. Photographer

Two Movies I would watch over and over:
1. An Affair to Remember
2. Sleepless in Seattle (see a trend here?)

Places I have lived: Seriously?

Two of my favorite foods:
1. Tex-Mex
2. Chocolate

Two places I'd rather be right now:
1. Italy (you & me both, Sister. Maybe we can go together!!)
2. Cambridge, England

Stuck At Home

So I am home with my four year old daughter today and I think I'm not going to make it. I'm serious. You think I'm kidding but I'm not. She is driving me crazy.

I never knew someone under four feet tall could talk that much. For the love, people, I'm telling you that it is like a never ending hole out of which comes continual high pitched talking.

Most sentences or questions begin with "Mommy." It's actually kind of ironic because I thought it was cute when she started saying my name. Now I cringe.

Okay, on the lighter side I love her more than my own life and usually I think her non-stop, incessantly inquisitive chatter is somewhere in the vicinity of adorable, but today.............not so much.

Today all I hoped for was a lazy start to the week. Climb out of bed, put on my slippers, grab a cuppa and catch up on my favorite message board until about - oh - noon when I might eat a small bite and lay down for a quick nap. You know to recharge my energy for the shower I was planning to take at around two. Shuffle around some clutter here, sort of make the bed and put away all of the toys so my husband is slightly fooled into believing that I at least made an effort to do something productive today.

Nope.

What I got instead was talking.

Talking about everything from how Elmo is for babies to why I should let her choose from my enormous stock of scrapbooking paper whenever she feels like making art for everyone and the Pope. I mean, seriously. Like I'm going to let her touch that paper. That collection of paper is my pride and joy........um, ya know......next to her, of course.

You may be wondering why the princess is home with me today and that would be a very fair and logical question......a question to which I cannot provide a reasonable and sensible answer. I mean, my best attemot would be something like she wouldn't go to sleep last night because she's got it in her head that someone has to sleep WITH her. The child has slept by herself all of her life and just within the last two weeks she has decided that she will never again be able to get a restful night's sleep unless she is clutching to me and breathing her four year old night breath directly into my nostrils.

Of course my conversation starts out rational.

"But Sweetie, you have your own bed with all of these pretty covers. If Mommy or Daddy sleeps with you it's going to make a big mess of your covers."

She suggests sleeping together in my bed so that if we make a big mess of the covers it doesn't matter.

"Sweet Pea, big girls can sleep by themselves. And you are SUCH a big girl now. You can go potty by yourself, you can draw beautiful pictures (see referenced picture making above), you can almost ride your bike without training wheels. Why, I'm surprised you need Mommy at all!"

She wants to know why I sleep with Daddy if big girls can sleep by themselves. She also notes that she will not ride her bike tomorrow if I will sleep with her.

"Okay, Sweetheart. I've been patient with you. I've sung songs, I've rubbed your back, we've said your night-night prayers, I kissed your babies, you've gone to the bathroom and had a sip of water and we played paper-rock-scissors to see who gets to say the rules (that's a whole other post) so you should be more than ready to go to sleep. I promise if you just close your eyes and be still for five minutes you will go to sleep."

This prompts the water works with a comment that all she wants is to go to sleep while holding my arm.

Ugh. I don't know what to say about the arm holding. So I start making the transition toward mean-mommy.

"Go to sleep. It's time to go to sleep. I'm right downstairs if you need anything."

Five minutes later I hear feet. Small feet. Damn! She's up and she's calling me from the top of the stairs. Doesn't she want Daddy instead? No, it must be Mommy.

"What is it, Baby? What do you need?"

Am I hearing this? Am I going to laugh out loud because she just said that she can't find a cold place for her feet and she can't sleep with hot feet because it makes her legs hot and then her hands?

You see where this is going, right? We started this bedtime adventure at 8:30. It was after 11:00 before I was convinced she was asleep.

So Sleeping Beauty didn't wake up until almost 9:30 today. Since she is my alarm clock and I take her to daycare once she wakes me up, I also did not wake up until 9:30. Too late to go today.

That means we get to spend the WHOLE day together. And she gets to talk to me ALL day.

Am I in hell?

Socks

So I'm going to admit something that will likely make my husband hide his face in shame.

I'm a knitter.

I taught myself to knit almost three years ago and I've been going at it non-stop since then. I have to admit that I usually get distracted by the big projects so I have yet to finish anything larger than a poncho for myself and several baby sweaters that I have given away as gifts. But I am starting a new adventure tomorrow. Socks.

That's right. I said socks.

I am undescribably drawn to the thought of knitting socks. For days I have been telling myself that I was going to go to the store and get some fingering weight yarn and some dpn (double pointed needles for you non-knitters!). Wink, wink!

Then tonight (or last night rather, but who's checking?) we went to CityFest in downtown Detroit and I visited City Knits (www.cityknits.com). It is in the Fisher Building and I was instantly mesmerized. Drawn into the yarn store by a magic tractor beam, I tell ya. Thank God I actually kept from drooling, but I was awful close. Awful close.

I got several skeins of wool that is just yummy....but these two were my favorites.

These were meant to be socks just for lil' ol' me. I am geeked!! One problem: I haven't found the perfect pattern. Clearly the fact that I am posting at 4:48 am EST must be clueing you in to the fact that I definitely should be in bed by now, but I cannot give up my relentless search for the perfect sock pattern for beginners.

I'll find them, don't you worry. 'Cause these skeins were meant for me and they were destined to be socks. It's in the stars. Or the needles. Or something witty I can't come up with right now because I'm seven hours past my bedtime and bleary-eyed from staring at my computer screen.

So I'll post more as I make progress. At the least it will provide a good laugh!

To the Socks......and BEYOND!

In Honor of Independence Day

So normally I don't participate in the blog challenges on this little website I frequent like twelve times a day, but I thought this challenge was pretty good. It is a challenge to write why you love your country or what it is that you love about your country.

Well, here goes:

1. I love that we're a scrappy bunch. I mean, we declared our independence and won! Our country's founders saw that they could be free and they made it happen. I regret that so many days go by and I forget that because of what they started I have the freedom to agree or disagree with my fellow Americans and that, as difficult and impossible as it may seem, I can have an impact on my country.

2. I can vote. It is my pleasure to stand in a really long line (and usually behind somebody a tad on the stinky side) and have my say. It doesn't always go the way I want it to, but darnit....I still have the freedom to do it. And you know what...I have the freedom to go in there and write in my own freakin' name if I don't like the choices given to me. That's right, kids. Mommy's running for President!

3. I like all of our accents. I'm not kidding! I love that you go just a couple of states over and those people sound different - but they're still us! They are Americans. And I love that people from other countries can come to us and then THEY can become Americans. And you know what....I even love that other people are so jealous of what we have that they will go to incredible lengths to destroy us. But they can't. You hear that Osama? You can knock down buildings and try to kill as many of us as possible, but can't kill our spirit.

And we do have a spirit.

We have a spirit of giving. When New Orleans was drowning, people from all over the United States were offering their homes to displaced families. They offered money, food, beds, trailers...whatever they could come up with. Yeah, a lot of bad things happened during that time, but a lot of good stuff happened too.

We have a spirit of justice. We avenge the wrongs done to us but forgive when we can. We want to spread our spirit of justice all over the world, which has gotten us into some sticky situations and has caused some contention here at home. But there's a reason people love America and it's because what it all comes down to is that here in America, you can be yourself.

That's right. As paradoxical as it sounds, we have a spirit of individualism. You have the freedom to walk around however you please. Like blue jeans and flip flops? Great. Wear 'em. You like burqas? Great. Wear 'em. But nobody is going to tell you that you can't wear blue jeans or that you have to wear a burqa. That's just how we roll. Free.

The definition of freedom is "the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical constraint" (dictionary.com).

For all the wrong and all the complaints you may have, you can't argue with the fact that as an American you are free.

'Oer the land of the free....and the home of the brave.

Hi.

It's been a while.

I turned 30 three days ago, which has put me in a sort of pensive mood. I am considering keeping a journal of my 30th year and then comparing it to how it was when I was 20. I'm sure I have made some interesting developments since that time.

This afternoon I was in the airport flying home from a relaxing week at the beach. I sat down with my knitting (definitely didn't do that when I was 20) and my Starbuck's (or that either) and across from me were these two girls. I call them girls because I wouldn't call them women and I certainly wouldn't call them ladies, so I'm going with girls.

Anyway, they were not like me. They both had on frayed jeans and flip-flops (okay so far) and very colorful tube tops (yeah, there's the not-like-me part). One of the girls was pretty fleshy and I have to admit that I would occasionally look over my knitting to ponder how on God's green earth that thing was staying on her. There was an excessive amount of elastic, which, in my estimation, was the only thing working for her. I pictured her at home trying to get out of that thing and the only visual I could come up with was a rubberband that's been pulled almost to its limit and then let go. You know how it sort of "pashoongs" around in the cartoons, bouncing off of walls and people ducking out of its way. Maybe she should warn her boyfriend before she takes that thing off. Seriously. She might put out somebody's eye or something.

But I digress.

Back at the oh-so-barely-20 terminal my girls decided they were going to look academic and they busted out their books. Keep in mind that at this point I was thoroughly engaging myself by watching their every move, so I can't say that I was all that surprised when one of them pulled a Harry Potter paperbook out of her bag. It was somewhat humorous that she was still in the first chapter and though I hate to judge people based on their looks (this is me rolling my eyes) I got the impression that reading was not something she did very often.

Now before you go all "no-she-dit-unt" on me, I know lots of people in various age categories read the Harry Potter books, but trust me when I say that she was not in the targeted demographic. I would bet my right arm that she borrowed it from her little sister because she didn't have any books of her own. Though I will give my girls props for actually busting out books instead of "Seventeen" or "Teen Glamour."

Again, I digress.

So if smacking their gum like cud-chewing cows was not enough, they turned out to be gigglers. This was when I really knew that my age was starting to kick in because my first thought was "If they are sitting any where near me on the plane I will poke myself in the ears until the rushing sound of blood drowns out their hideous cackling." While that may sound somewhat dramatic I was already starting to put together a plan for how I would bribe the flight attendant to muzzle them with those air bags they have for emergency situations......you know, in the event that the ear-poking didn't turn out to be such an effective plan.

Good Lord, I haven't heard giggling like that since I was in 7th grade. And that probably explains why the girl hadn't gotten past page 35 of the Harry Potter book. They couldn't stop laughing. At one point I considered suggesting to them that they try out for "America's Got Talent."

The Hoff: "And what's your talent?"
Girls: "We wear really tight tube tops and then we laugh hysterically until they fly off and poke somebody in the eye!"

My imagining was interrupted by the boarding call and I was all too relieved when I saw that they were in the first few rows and I was sitting closer to the back of the plane. It did give me a quick opportunity to size up how they were able to move around in those ungodly tight tube tops and I'm proud to say that they managed it without flashing so much as half a nipple.

Some day they will be me. Thirty years old and losing tolerance for the giddy girls with nothing more to worry about than how they'll keep their boobies inside of their tube tops. I guess in a way it's presumptuous of me to judge them by how they looked and assume that they have no worries. But it sure made me feel a hell of a lot better.