46 posts tagged “family”

The favorite sleeping spots of the cats (top of dresser, cat condo, etc) have been moved to the new place.  Thus, all three cats could be found on the bed together.  Which is a rare occurrence indeed.

Happy Birthday to my sister Kiki and my nephew J!

(he likes yellow)

I have been meaning to post on a wide variety of topics, but have not gotten around to it.  So here are all those topics together:

Prince E and I had a good time in New York City for our anniversary.  I hope you liked the photos I posted from my cell phone during the trip (see below).  Prince E was happy that he was able to buy a "Rolex."  We had fun with my brother and sister-in-law going to Little Italy and Chinatown and my brother joined Prince E and I on a fun duck boat tour, despite the rain.  We saw South Pacific and were very impressed with the singing.  We were all dressed up and I was surprised to see the guy next to me in jeans.  I was also surprised that they only had one ticket taker for the whole balcony area, but had enough money to pay a woman to stand next to the ticket taker and shout "hold your own ticket!" even though that quite obviously slowed the ticket taker down in his scanning of tickets (the individual holding of tickets, not the shouting.  Although it could have been the shouting, too).  After the show we enjoyed a walk in Central Park which would have been better if I had not been wearing dress shoes.  On Monday I got up early to try to get stand-by tickets to The View.  I was not early enough, though, as they took the first 8 and I was 10th.  I won't mention how the women who were numbers 16-18 got in because they knew some gray-haired guy who came out and helped them cut the line.  We ended our visit with a long walk from the Guggenheim back to our hotel, walking on Madison Avenue past all the fancy shops.  I was amused to find this toy for sale (and no it was not a vintage/resale store and yes that price tag says $25).

The New Kids on the Block concert this past weekend was everything that the 13-year-old girl inside of me could have dreamed. I must admit I did tear up a bit when they first came out onto the stage.  The concert was a great mix of their old and new material, and they even surprised me by having Joe and Jordan due their successful songs from their solo careers.  It was pretty amazing to see/hear an arena filed with 20,000 people, mostly 30-something women like my sister and me, all singing in unison.  How we all remember all the words to this day I have no idea.  I also loved how genuinely happy all the New Kids seemed to be.  I think they truly understand how rare it is to have a second go-round at this type of popularity and they are savoring every second.  Their new music is a lot more "adult," for lack of a better term.  While a lot of their old material is quite innocent, the new stuff is much more blatantly about sex.  I found myself not really wanting them to be gyrating their pelvises and singing about giving me "some grown man" because I still see them then way I did was 13.  I wanted them to hold my hand and think I was cute, not have sex with them. I was happy that Kiki came to the concert with me, especially because we shared our love for NKOTB growing up.  I still remember when she got the cassette single of "The Right Stuff" and I was so jealous.

I was also glad that Kiki brought her hubby and son with her.  It was little Kai's first trip to Illinois.
It was also his first time meeting cats.  He was able to pet both Simba and Eggy, but Jiblets was too scared to show his face all weekend.
*************************************

On a completely unrelated to anything else note, one of the most annoying and common misuses of a word to me lately is "bias" used as an adjective.  Like "That man is so bias against me."  No, he is not.  He is BIASED.  With an ED.  It annoys me a lot. I am seeing this more and more in the e-mails I get about The View.  I am seriously considering not even reading anymore until the election is over, but every once in awhile some e-mails me a tip or an article and I don't want to miss those by ignoring all the "The View is bias" e-mails.

This weekend I was able to see all three of my nephews and they were able to finally wear the clothing that I made for them on my sewing machine.  The two older boys each got a pair of Cars shorts and the little one got the jumper that I posted a photo of previously.  The boys liked their Cars shorts and I was impressed that the shorts managed to hold up through a lot of rough and tumble play.

This past weekend, Prince E and I went to visit my sister Kiki and her new baby.  He was so scrumptiously cute that I wanted to eat his little ears. And his feet.  And kiss his cheeks over and over.

I managed to carry him around and not worry about breaking him.  For some reason he didn't seem as fragile as my other nephew did when I first held him at seven weeks, but I imagine it is more me and my maturity (ha!) than the actual difference between the babies.

Here are some photos of the little one (log in for more including his "My aunt is a hottie" shirt.)

As part of the preparation for my upcoming triathlon (as well as an effort to knock another thing of my 101 list), Prince E attempted to teach me how to use the fancy clipless pedals on my bicycle last weekend.  Being that I am chicken, I opted to wear one regular shoe and one bike shoe, so that my right foot remained unconnected to the bike for safety.

We got out into the driveway in front of our apartment building and Prince E explained how to get my left foot in the fancy pedal.  He said he wouldn't go too fast and then started up the sidewalk.  I got my left foot hooked into the pedal, tried to move forward and promptly fell over onto the driveway.

I wanted to go upstairs and get my other regular shoe and give up on the whole thing, but he convinced me to keep trying.  I eventually was able to get going and managed to ride around pretty easily.  He also explained to me how to stop, which I practiced a few times in the neighboring church lot.

We then decided to bike to his work because he needed to pick something up.  I made it there fine and without incident.  Then it came time to stop.  And I fell over again.  The second fall was a bit worse as it scraped a bigger part of my leg and bruised part of my hand.  Luckily though, nothing was broken and I managed to miss hitting my head on the nearby garbage can.

Undeterred I rode laps around the parking lot of his work, periodically stopping just to make sure I could.  We had brought the other bike shoe with us and I tried, briefly, to use both shoes.  We soon discovered though that there was some kind of defect, because even with all of my might, I could not easily get my right foot unhooked, even though the pedal was at the loosest setting. 

I certainly did not feel safe enough to ride around with both shoes attached to the bike where there was a very good chance I wouldn't be able to easily get out of it when I needed to stop.  So, we stopped the lesson and went to Dairy Queen.

Yesterday I rode my bike to the library, using two regular shoes and that was fun.  I like the idea of being able to have an option to driving, especially to places like the library that talk to long to walk to.  When I got home, I got out the step ladder and put my bike away all by myself way up onto the second rung of the bike rack.  I was so proud of myself, I jumped down from the ladder with glee...and promptly caught the side of my thing on the hard back part of the couch, resulting in a nasty looking and even nastier feeling bruise.

Did I mention I also burned myself with a cookie sheet on Sunday?  It has just been a klutzy kind of week.  I realized today talking to my mom that I probably inherited it from her when she revealed that she badly bruised herself while changing the filter of her vacuum.  Sounds like something I would do.

I am in Michigan visiting my family until Saturday.  My nephews, aged almost six and three are pretty entertaining. The three year old has very good manners. On Christmas Eve, he got a toy that had plastic cookies.  He carried around a tray of plastic cookies, handing them out to each person.  When my aunt took one, he said, "You didn't say thank you!"  He also accused Prince E of cheating because he used a giant ball to knock over some plastic bowling pins, instead of the little plastic bowling ball.

Prince E had to head back home for work and to take care of the cats. After Prince E headed back to Chicagoland on Tuesday, and my sister and her husband left as well, the three year old said to my mom, pointing at me, "Hey!  She forgot to leave!"

My poor cats all had to have a lime/sulfur dip due to ringworm.  Remember when the vet said that Eggy ate her tail because she was nervous because I made her go in the car to Michigan?  And I felt really guilty?  Turns out she had ringworm.  (Oh, and if you don't know, it is not really a worm, it is a skin fungus.  It is only called worm because it leave a circle shaped mark).

Here is poor (normally) white Eggy after the dip.  Did I mention that it smells like rotten eggs?

Eggy takes after me.  She has spilled her water bowl several times and today knocked over the freezie cup of water for the second day in a row.  For some reason she likes to check the temperature of the water with her paw before drinking, which usually ends with the water on the floor.

I love how in this video she just steps over the mess that she made and goes on with drinking.

By the way, if you clicked that link above for "freezie cup", you saw the picture of little Jiblets from a year ago.  I can't believe he was ever that little.  Here are a couple of picture of him with his best friend Eggy.

And this last picture is just funny:

Growing up we always decorated quite a lot for Christmas.  We had the usual tree and then also had some other touches here and there.  The best was when we (I should say my mom and dad) put a whole bunch of red bows on the giant blue spruce tree in the yard.  It looked great. 

That tree was special because it had been our Christmas tree a few years earlier.  For several years, before they bought an artificial tree, my parents made a point to buy Christmas trees with the roots still attached so that it could be replanted in our yard after the big day.

While I love Christmas and Christmas trees, it always makes me a bit sad to see the cut trees in the tree lots and on top of people's cars.  It seems unfair that the poor trees have to die for tradition.  Although I know that the trees are planted for this very purpose, it still makes me a little sad.

I really don't think that having an artificial tree makes Christmas any less Christmas-y.  If you want it to seem more authentic, just buy some pine scented air freshener.

* Topic idea from No One Cares What you Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for your blog by Margaret Mason (Idea 13)