Our Family Beginnings

Today sucks.  We got the news yesterda that we have to put our dear Furley to sleep.  She started losing weight and acting lethargic a week or so ago, and when I took her to the vet, we basically were told that it was the most humane thing to do.  So I will muster up my game face and remember that I have to be a mom today after I put her to rest.  Today I share some of my favorite pictures of her, including some taken this morning.

She was a mouthly girl who loved to be around people, and leaves behind her littermate of 10 years, Roper.

Did you ever get a gift of a page a day calendar?  Did you ever get through the whole year?  Me neither.  I’d always forget I had it, and then pick off a whole month and eventually just toss it at the end of the year.

Last year, my friend D got me the Cute Overload page a day, and I LOVED IT. I went through each page – and it was so fun to see what cuteness awaited me each day.  I liked it so much that Mr. Badger got me the “Bad Cat” page a day for this year.  So I am showing off my old and new calendars today.

Major props to my friends for knowing just what I like.  Adorable anthropomorphized animals.

Growing up, Christmas eve was always the big deal in my house.  My folks got married on Christmas Eve, and that was always the night that we spent with my favorite grandparents. We’d listen to the top 40 station’s holiday music, sometimes go to the movies, and have a midnight snack of Froot Loops.  It never occurred to me that Christmas itself was actually a big deal, seeing as how we were all MOT.

Enter Mr. Badger.  I have spent the past 10 or so Christmases with him, including before we were married.  His grandfather has four kids, and they would all go to bed with no decorations in the house on Christmas Eve.  Santa would visit that night and put up a tree and all of the presents.  Pretty cool, no?  When I went to his folks’ house, they too put up the most amazing tree.  It’s always huge and even with that, I have no idea how all of the ornaments find a space.  Don’t get me started on the lights.  That’s just something I could never stand.  You see, there’s an art to it – winding it just the right way to get maximum lighting and all.  I tried to do it once with our own tree, as opposed to just assisting, and it was a disaster.  After about 5 minutes, I gave up.  I’m used to a Menorah. You light a match, sing a few prayers, and voila! Done.

They have lots of other traditions that really have made me, well, like a kid at Christmas. So I look forward to this time of year – the ceremony of it all, the faces when people open gifts they were either hoping for or were happily surprised to receive, it makes me melt in the happy.

This year, Mr. Badger has had a very busy year at work, and so I wanted to surprise him and bring home and put up the tree on my own.  Before I get too far, I have to mention that you have to get the right kind of tree, specifically a Frasier fir. I got to the tree place and had a massive brain fart.  I asked for the Douglas firs.  The salesman even said, “Sure, but so you know, our Frasiers are a bit fresher.”  I nodded and reiterated that I needed a Douglas.  We’ve never gotten a Douglas.  I, of course, did not get the sanity kicked back into my head until the tree was cut, on my car, and I was on the highway.

Luckily, when I got it in the house, it was very full and beautiful, and Mr. Badger loved it anyway.  I got up the lights and the ornaments and bows and…whew!  The only downside is that there aren’t a lot of strong branches on this tree, so it was hard to put some of the heavier ornaments up.  Again, you wouldn’t know just from looking at it.  I’m pretty impressed if I do say so myself.  Not bad for a 10-year-old in Christmas time!

I have said before that I am tough to shop for, and believe me, I am.  If I want something bad enough, I usually go get it – within reason.  Tonight, though, I went over to Mel’s house for dinner with V and the kids and she surprised me with a birthday gift.  It’s  a fair trade bracelet made out of recycled paper and then lacquered.  It’s gorgeous, and totally me.  All the colors I love to wear.  She rocks.

I was talking to my cousin yesterday as we exchanged tales of our kids. Her daughter is 5 hours older than V and will meet for the first time in a few weeks. She asked if we had stairs in our house, and I said not really. We do, but they go to the basement, so it’s not like we ever have cause for him to be down there. She also doesn’t have stairs and so was amazed when they went to a friend’s house the other day and she climbed on up with ease.

I was curious as we sat at the hotel this morning, and wouldn’t you know it, stairs are a breeze.

My nails, they mock me. They fray and tear at the tips, and rip just looking at the dishes. From time to time, I have had the gumption to not bite them for a few weeks or even a few months, but it never stuck. I’d always get to some sort of stressful life event and *poof*, they’d be bitten to the quick before I even gave them a second thought. Heck, I even mentioned this in a tagging meme last year.

In September of 2008 though, I just decided, I was done. I wanted to be able to paint my nails to go with this dress:

And so I stopped biting them, cold turkey.

It’s now more than a year later, and I haven’t gone on a biting spree yet.  While there have been a few times where a nail has begun to rip, and so I have bit that one to keep it from tearing down, I have managed to keep it at that one nail.  I always fix it with clippers when I get home, and I can count on two hands (har har har) the number of times I have done it.

Today, my trick is simple.  In the past, I had hoped that by not biting them, I’d get long hand-model like nails.  But like I’ll never look like Gisele Bundchen, no matter how much dieting I do, my nails would never look that strong and sleek.  So, I keep them relatively short.  If they get long, I give it a few days to enjoy, and then out come the clippers, so that I don’t get tempted to bite.

By the way, do you know how hard it is to take a good picture of your own hands?  This is one of them, this morning.

This is almost a wordless Wednesday, though I have a teeny setup for it before getting to the pictures.  A few weeks ago, I was at our Friends of the Library bookstore, and saw a book on adoption for kids.  For 25 cents, I figured I’d just pick it up and read it later. It’s from 1974, and wow, it’s pretty bad – especially the other book titles in this particular series.  Enjoy for a good laugh at how random the book is. “I’m adopted. Trees are green. I have a shoelace.” more or less.

About a year before we started trying for a baby, I took up knitting. I’m not very good beyond basic square shapes, but I saw this one item in the “Stitch & Bitch” book that called out to me as a challenge: The Big Bad Baby Blanket.

I started and stopped, and started and stopped. I think I finally finished it 3 (4?) years after I started it. It’s getting cooler here at night, and took a breath and grabbed it out of the hiding spot it has stayed in the linen closet. V gets to sleep with it at night, my big bad baby.

This is our male cat, Roper:

This is our washing machine, older than we are, also Roper:

Basically, starting last Thursday, both Ropers were equally as effective at doing the laundry.  That is to say, our washer died.  I smelled smoke, and let me tell you when you have a gas dryer, smelling smoke in the laundry room is a bit scary.  Eventually, I opened the lid of the washer, and sure enough, it REEKED of smoke.  We figure that the motor literally burnt out.  So we drained the washer, rescuing the first load of the day and resigned ourselves to getting a new washer.

Because I am a dork (and proud) and a ridiculously good shopper, we got a $1400 washer for $900.

• List price: 1400
• Less 15% (10% for being on sale, 5% because they got the delivery day wrong)
• Less 50 off 100 coupon
• Less the $250 visa gift card that miraculously showed up the day the old washer died.  (I enter online contests and won one.  I won another one a few years ago where we got to go to Key Biscayne and stayed at the Ritz Carlton, flew first class, and our car for use was a Mercedes, all for free.)
• Less the $50 I didn’t have to spend on two weeks of disposable diapers because Home Depot delivered faster than the two weeks I was quoted at Best Buy.

I give you my new washer, and no joke, it doesn’t just ding when it’s done.  It plays a little tune!

This was meant to be my part II of S&T a few weeks ago, but I didn’t get around to putting this up. Though I didn’t get to go to BlogHer this year, I was lucky enough to have a mole on the inside grabbing me swag for the little guy. We haven’t gotten V a lot of toys. I mean, he likes the ones we have, and really, loves the things that aren’t labeled as toys just as much as true marketed items. He’s a baby. He doesn’t know the difference between a coaster and a teething toy.

Enter “Rosita” and “Ricardo” as dubbed by Mr. Badger, the little bug/butterflylike cars. Mel opened up her bag of fun and we clipped off the tags to see what V would do with the Playskool Busy Little Garden Pal. At the time he was scooting forward but not yet full on crawling as he is now. He was very good at pushing things just out of reach and then scooting up to get them. So for show and tell, look at his joy of having something big enough to grab and push and play! Ah, the bliss of babyhood.