2 Tiny!

Last night we went to see Chris Isaak at the Mountain Winery with the "other" Js, Jamie & Jay. It was such a blast and the recent hot weather paid off as it was just beautiful on the mountain. I wore a tank top and never needed my sweater.

Chris is the man and puts on a good show, despite the rowdy gang from Cicero's Pizza in our section. Supposedly the best pizza in town, we'll have to see about that.

After the show, Chris hung around to sign merchandise and finally Jamie and I decided to buy his cd and get in line. He was really nice and smelled very good for someone who just rocked out for two hours. Jamie liked his surfer necklace.

I asked him to sign my cd to Jessica and he looked up and said "You're so tiny!"

After we walked away, I noticed how he signed my cd.



And here is a picture of me and Jay after the show with the amazing view of the valley. Just being in a picture with Jay makes me cool, he is the coolest dude I know besides Chris Isaak.

Bill Music

Tonight I did my first free iTunes download and man is it good bill music.

It's called "You're My Kind" by Elektrochemie.

I guess that's the point because I would *never* buy this kind of music on my own or even know where to find music like this. But it has repeated about 10 times so far and I got through all the vacation mail, paid bills and opened more than two months of medical bills and made a chart of what's due and I'm still not sick of it.

If only I was an advanced blogger and knew how to upload a sample of the song.

It even made me forget about the dumbass nurse I had yesterday who totally screwed up my vein and the fact I'm going to have to pay hundreds of dollars for the pleasure of the pain plus a copay tomorrow to have it checked out.

Welcome home!

Holiday Weekend at Home

This is what we did one night on the long weekend...need I say more?



P.S. I was kicking butt with the tea cup but then we switched to the shot glass...err...Starbucks espresso shot glass that is...and I got my butt kicked.

P.S.S. For a 30-something, that means two beers by the way.

Petaluma, Two

Okay here is the story of Jaden and baby Asher. I got to hold him for almost half an hour myself and it was heavenly. Newborns just smell so yummy and they look so old and wise. It is the strangest thing since they are new to the world. He is a very mellow baby.

Jaden sat on the couch and I helped him get comfortable with Asher in his arms. I put a pillow under his arm for support.



Jaden was so gentle and sweet and when the baby would fuss a little, I'd say help him with his binky, or rock him a little or sing.

Betty told me later that he was patting the baby softly the whole time. And when I told him to try singing, Jaden used his sweet little voice to sing Asher the ABCs.

At bedtime that night, Jaden asked Jeff if a baby would come out of my belly soon. Ouch. Lately he says that everyone is his brother and sister too. I think I did okay as a lonely only but I'm not so sure how Jaden is going to fare in that role.

Petaluma, One

We went to Lulu's this weekend. This morning, Liss, Betty, Ella and I went walking to a park where we hoped to find Jeff & Jaden (we did). Along the way, I had a little fun taking pictures.

I'm not in the best mood tonight to be witty & cute in my blog so I'll just share my two favorite pictures from my walk today. They make me happy right now. That and listening to Jewel's "Again & Again" again and again.





Maybe by tomorrow night, there will be a Petaluma, Two because Jaden was in fine form, charming the houseful of girls who live across the street, seeing fireworks for the first time and this is not to mention melting the hearts of everyone in the universe when he held said girls' three-week-old brother during the party yesterday.

Raisens

Awhile ago, maybe five or six weeks, I bought new magnet letters for Jaden. Being the brilliant boy that he is, he discovered that they work on our front door. Inspired by this location, I began leaving a special word up each night for him to see in the morning with Daddy at breakfast.



I've been frustrated more than once by the lack of letters too, it really limits my spelling options. I just keep forgetting to go buy a second set of letters.

Last night I put up the word "sleepy" because I stayed up till midnight again (dumb) but when I woke up, this is the word that was on the door:



When Jeff got home from taking Jaden to school, he told me the story.

It's really funny when you know that in our house, I am the finder of everything. Jeff and Jaden can rarely, if ever, find their own items. Granted, they make an effort sometimes, but mostly it's "where is my ______"?

So this morning Jaden wanted some raisins. Jeff said we didn't have any. And Jaden says, "I think we do" and runs to the pantry and starts digging around way in the back. Jeff kept saying, "Jaden I really don't think we have any." And Jaden is rummaging and rummaging on the shelf. Finally he gets the container up front and there is one little box left. AHA!




They decided to leave me the note on the door so I would remember to buy more raisins today. Of course, there are not two "I" letters in our set so Jeff had to do some creative spelling.

Jeff was just cracking up over the whole thing because it was another example of Jaden being a mini-me, like when he walks around shutting open doors (the hallway closet especially). I am constantly shutting cupboards and doors but it's funny how I never notice Jaden doing it too.

The Price of Disorganization

I've been working really hard on the office for the past two days. I'm making progress because I can see my desk now and I made enough room so that I could move the printer to a better position. This will likely save me hours of time as I no longer have to shuffle things around to avoid paper jams as my printouts exit the printer.

As I clean and purge, I am noticing a big trend here. The nightmare that was the office costs us a lot of money . Since my new drawers were born, I have found a rebate for $100 that we never sent in for our fab front-loading washer, a $65 check that Jeff earned working on my uncle's wife's website in 2004, and some gift certificates to Cold Stone that my MIL gave us two Christmases ago.

I know there is another lost rebate here somewhere, for the fax machine I bought for $30 (post-rebate so I don't want to know how much it really cost now that I never did the rebate). This for a machine I bought before testing the phone jack to see if the line worked in the office. (It does not).

I am really tired of this uphill battle that is going on with paper and money. I am 35 now. There is something about this age that is spurring me on towards adulthood finally. I'm not a naive 18 anymore, or even a slow-to-blossom 25. I am 35. I am a blink away from my freaking 20-year high school reunion for Pete's sake.

It is HIGH time I get our life together. I want the office, the mail, the bills, the savings, the purchasing, all that stuff, to be a well-oiled machine. What kind of legacy am I leaving Jaden anyway? Not a good one! Basta!!

I am tired of looking for things for two hours in order to accomplish a two-minute task. I am tired of looking up the same 10 phone numbers on Yahoo Yellow Pages. I am tired of texting to Google when I'm away from the computer for those same 10 numbers too. I am tired of staring at the Rolodex I bought in January and never got around to setting up. Not that I should be setting it up now, it should have been done five years ago.

I'm tired of buying something only to find the original the next day (like the recent double bags of frozen strawberries and frozen peas). There was a close call with a metal putty knife back in February during the bath remodel. I recall finding it just as Jeff was about to drive off to Orchard for another one.

I also recall a tense conversation over it and my point then and now is that it's not the $10 replacement putty knife; it's a much bigger price point than that, this ongoing cluelessness about the stuff we own.

Don't even get me started on the garage -- there are now six bikes, not including Jaden's three! three bikes! are you kidding me or are we a cycling family or what's the deal here?; four wall hooks that continue to go unused while we continue to bump our heads or suck in our last breath so we can walk from one door to another without knocking over this bike or that bike; two bike boxes that never get used, but are way too expensive to replace so must be kept -- and this is just the cycling portion of the garage.

Then there are the missing file labels that I agonized over buying two weeks ago for $22 (where can they possibly be if they are not in the bag with the rest of the file products I bought that day?) Or what about the entire SET of short-handled screwdrivers that I know I used to own & needed the other night during the IKEA assembly production?

And why is my cornstarch on the lazy susan with all my spices instead of with the baking soda, brown sugar, chocolate chips and all the other baking stuff in my pantry?

As Jaden said to me the other day, "I'm fed up!"

A Path to Bliss

A couple of weeks ago I found a drawer unit at IKEA that matches my other IKEA office furniture. That sentence really is not capable of conveying how much happiness this brought to my life. Just knowing there was more storage in my future and that someday I could have a chance of sitting down in an organized, clutter-less (meaning less clutter not no clutter) Pottery Barn catalog...I mean, office...was enough to make me weep.

I sure did weep too, once when I bought them (I got two) and lugged those 57 lb. boxes home with Jaden. And I wept again last night when I finally opened one box to put it together. I seriously thought my husband, the professional IKEA putter-together, would take pity on me and take over the entire project. I even admitted my secret desire to him as he sat above me, comfortable on the couch, tapping away on his laptop, reading email from his new job (no he hasn't started yet). He just chuckled gently.

Since he is not an evil man though, he did help me every time I got stuck and couldn't understand the cryptic instructions. And he got really involved and busted out some power tools at 10:30 p.m. (I was 2.5 hours into it by then) to cut down the backer board, since (surprise) it wasn't the right size.

Anyway, I finished it up this morning while Jaden was in school.



I've already filled every drawer but one and sadly, my desk is still piled high. You can also see the overburdened bookcase to the left. I refuse to take pictures any farther to the left because it is just a scary pile of crap that has nowhere to go.

Hmm. Guess I have a lot more work to do in this room. But I'm happy. Very happy. I love the square drawers especially, I have had a soft spot for them in my heart since I first laid eyes on them.

IV Weather

It is crazy hot here the past two days. It is so hot still at 9:35 at night that I could easily start my own IV right here at my desk. Too bad it's not 100 degrees at the hospital and oncology offices. If only they realized how many veins shy away from the frigid air conditioning. (It was literally 65 degrees in my hospital room last week).

I have veins popping out all over the place tonight. There is a time and a place for air conditioning: do NOT have it when and where you need IV access to someone's body and DO have it when and where you need to relax and sleep. Hello!

Okay that is the most positive spin I can put on the fact that it's 79 degrees outside and still about 90 in my house. That the multiple fans running are not doing a damn thing to cool this shoebox down, my hair looks like crap and I have a big fever blister from the heat! Nice!

And to top it all off, my boy (MBE) wanted a cruiser too and I was so excited about it and now he is looking at some really ugly weird green Bianchis, the weirdest Italian company of all time since they have absolutely no taste and are clearly color blind if they pick such pukey shades of green for everything they make!





Not that it matters what I think!

(My boy knows what he's getting himself into when he asks his Sicilian girl for her opinion).

(Especially on a hot day!)

Keds, Part Two

I have been too upset about the Keds since Thursday to blog about them. To have so much anticipation and excitement over a shoe and then IT DOES NOT FIT is really too much for me to bear.

Long story short, and two sets of "heel grips" later, I was determined to wear them despite the pain (Crazed Heel Rubbers is what they should be called). Adding to all the angst was the Oregon Mission was not accomplished in one fell swoop at Nordstrom after all, but in more than four fell swoops at Meijer Somethings.

My point is that in a martyr state of mind, I hopped on my Calypso with Jaden after dinner last night and guess what? They are rad for cruising. No heel rubbing because your foot basically stays in place on the pedal, unlike walking (rub, rub, rub).

YAY!!! There is a happy ending after all.

No Noodle Tonight

My noodle is sleeping over at his Nana's tonight.

It is always great to have a date, but too weird to come home to an empty house. This is his third sleepover I think, where we came home. The other two were for our wedding night and our first anniversary, both of those times we went to a hotel for the night. If I feel this bad on these overnights, how will I ever survive when he's off to college?

Anyway, this afternoon, we built a rad racetrack for his trains. We started it in his room and snaked it all the way down the hall to the living room.



You can see him enjoying a nice cold one after a hard day of train conducting.

I didn't have the heart to take it all down before I brought him over to Nana's and now it is a sad reminder of the noodle being gone.

Does he even know how many times a night I peek into his room to see him sleeping, kiss his cheek (yum) and inhale the fabulous lavendar calming lotion smell that is Jaden and bedtime and routine?

Is it morning yet?

Slower than Cruising

Yesterday after MBE (Mister Blue Eyes) picked me up from the hospital, he took me to a bike shop that had built up a Trek Calypso cruiser for me to test ride. I had tried this bike awhile back at the beginning of my cruiser search. I really loved it this time and MBE got it for me. What a sweety!



Jaden was so excited when I showed him last night and I promised him we'd go on a ride together today. So we took the Calypso out on her maiden voyage with the red Animator.



So what is slower than cruising?

Well whatever it's called, I just did it.

I was overly ambitious and we tried to go all the way over to Bennett Way, our old street that is a mile away. I said, "Let's go visit the Corns!" But the kid cannot go that far, what was I thinking? And he didn't want to turn around and quit either (where does he get that from? that blind allegiance to an ill-formed goal?)

We went down Bird and up Byerley and I finally convinced him to head back three blocks before our old street.

Went. That implies motion. Let me be more clear:

I had to ration out bites of granola bar to get him to the next corner.

"Come on Jaden, next corner, you get a sip of water."
"Come on Jaden, next corner, you get a bite of granola bar."

Repeat.
Twenty-five times (or so).

One hour and 20 minutes later we are home.

Yikes!

I know...it's called "Stopping."

I felt like one of those evil parent coaches too, every time Jaden said "my legs hurt," I replied with "pedal pedal pedal Jaden, keep those pedals moving."

Next time, I think we'll just stay in our complex and go to the grass down the street.

A Craze of Destroyed Giddiness

If you've known me since high school, you know how giddy I can get over a new pair of Keds. Call me geeky but Keds are cool.

I haven't really indulged my Keds habit at all since Jeff and I got together. He really feels they are "unsupportive" and "not hiking shoes." I guess on an early date, he had the great idea to go hiking together and I automatically reached for my trusty white Keds.

Well by the end, my feet ached, they weren't very white anymore and Jeff convinced me to go A16 in LA and buy some "real" hiking boots. Five years later, they still gather dust despite their special shoe home with all my other shoes in their special shoe neighborhood. (Bottom row, far left).



(I'm so tempted to disguise my Virgo tendencies by making this photo black & white but screw it, here's my closet in all its glory with clear tidy shoeboxes, matching hangers and clothes in sections by color.)

Actually now that I think about it, I have busted these shoes out once (maybe twice?) in five years. I think I even smiled.

Back to the Keds story. Jeff's bad attitude towards them must have really rubbed off on me. Although I have admired many a Ked in the past five years, every time I got to the register with a box in my size, I couldn't reach for my wallet. They were so, well, impractical, for the sporty girl that I am now. My sports are running (errands), lifting (a preschooler) and swimming (in a sea of dishes). My point is that Keds are cute but highly impractical for the stay-at-home-mom life that I lead. If this is not making sense, that's okay. My life doesn't always make sense.

Fast forward to yesterday. After my oncology check-up, and the huge shock that is my low white count (ha), I needed a little retail therapy. So I went a few blocks down the street to check out the new Campbell Kohl's. I was just minding my business when I found myself in the shoe aisle where they had a whole row of Keds. Earlier that day, I just so happened to go into my overflowing Hotmail account and actually opened one of the Keds emails where I promptly fell for a black mary jane version.

Well guess what they had at Kohl's? Yes, they had the beloved mary jane in white. But NOT IN MY SIZE. I spent about 10 minutes wondering if I could make a 7 work for me somehow (I wear a 6). I asked if they had my size in "the back." Nope. Did another Kohl's have my size? Apparently Kohl's won't even get an employee to answer the phone for other employees, even after 14 minutes on hold!, so I gave up.

But I am persistent. I went to the other location in person myself first thing this morning. And guess what? They had the mary janes in a different, way better color (blue). This time I spent another 10 minutes wondering how to make a 6.5 work for me. I asked again if there were some in the back. Nope.

I picked Jaden up from school and he asked me for a story. "You tell me a torie please Mama?" So I told him all about my long, two-day, fruitless search for the mary janes. And that I really was giving up. He said, "Not in our family Mama, we don't give up." (Where does he get this stuff?)

So I said, OK! and called Marsh & Bob who are really good at missions and happened to be on their way to the Nordstrom Half-Yearly sale in Oregon. Less than two hours later, I got the call: the mary janes were in hand! on sale! and no sales tax!

Like I said, I feel giddy. Here they are, direct from the Keds site, my beautiful new Craze Destroyed Mary Janes. Is it the shoe or the name that is so appealing? Who cares! They're mine now.

Inspired

I've been inspired by a recent magazine article on easy home-based businesses. So I have been researching the idea and letting my brain spin and I think I might have come up with a name for this potential business.

It is a lot harder than you'd think to come up with a name: something meaningful (but not limiting) to your business idea; something catchy and/or witty; and last, but definitely not least these days, available as a domain name as well.

And will you please tell the dog that it is a nice, sunny day and theoretically possible to hang out in the backyard without barking every three minutes!! Sheesh!

Swim Kisses

Yesterday I was Buzz Lightyear and brave and went swimming with Jaden even though it was only 85 degrees outside and the water was colder than the ocean in the Pacific Northwest. I summoned Jeff and Buzz Lightyear Jr. near the deep end so I could get hugs (aka some body heat) as soon as I surfaced. I stood at the very edge on my tippy toes and yelled "To Infinity and Beyond!" Then I plugged my nose, screamed and jumped in!

For all my trauma, I earned a five-star kiss from Jaden.



And you know what? I actually had lots of fun in the pool. Lots of shivering, but lots of fun.

It was worth it.

Forklift

Yesterday, as I was driving to our friend's house for a playdate, Jaden taught me how to simplify my life.

Our friend lives in Los Gatos, in a lovely, single-family home, and we live on the outskirts of Willow Glen, in a cramped townhouse. It takes about 20 minutes to get to her house.

About 2/3 of the way there, this is the conversation we had:

Jaden: "I wish we lived closer to Jack's house so we don't have to drive for so long to get there."

Me: "I wish we lived closer too. I like Los Gatos and would love to live there. But it costs a lot more money to live there so Mommy would have to work away from home as much as Daddy does."

Jaden: "A forklift would help because it's really heavy."

Me: "What's really heavy?"

Jaden: "Our house, so we would need a forklift to move close to Jack."

I just love the way his brain works. Who needs a Bay Area double income to move to a better neighborhood? Let's get back to basics and just move our current home to the new location. Awesome!

Engineers, Big and Small

Yesterday I found out my husband is a cutting edge engineer. I think maybe only two weeks ago I learned the term Web 2.0 and then come to find out my husband is a Web 2.0 engineer. He is so modest too, you should have seen the look on his face when I asked him about it. "Well I have done some new stuff in the past six months."

Yesterday I found out my son is going to be just like DaDa in more ways than one. They were sitting on the couch trying to watch movie trailers from Apple's site on Jeff's new MacBook. It was taking longer than a millisecond (Jaden's maximum waiting time) and he says impatiently, "It's not downloading!"

Okay so he takes after both of us. Recently I complained to my IT dept. (aka Jeff) that something was wrong with my iMac because it was taking forever to let me log in. So he does his razamataz magic on the computer and tells me to give it another try. It was as slow as usual. I said "See that little rainbow wheel is going and going again!" He snorted on his way out of the room and said "When they make a computer that works INSTANTLY, I'll let you know." Apparently it takes SOME time for the computer to wake up.

Date Night

After a fun-filled afternoon in Capitola, and a sweet overall Mother's Day (minus bathtime where Jaden whacked me on the thigh with his spray bottle because I told him we had to wash his hair, geez what an evil mom), I got the ice cream on the cake and a date with Jeff provided by Betty. What a cool mother-in-law I have to babysit on Mother's Day.

Okay that was a massive run-on sentence but I don't care. It was a crazy warm night and instead of our usual mad dash to a movie as movie-deprived parents, we opted for dining al fresco at the Pruneyard. El Burro stood us up by closing their patio early so we headed almost next door to Rock Bottom Brewery where we joined their beer club and ordered yummy fried foods to go with our big-ass beers. Our server was a little 25-year-old boy in a punk band and we even stayed after leaving an $8 tip to ask him about his punk band and their first upcoming show. See we're not old fogies, we are young at heart and interested in local punk bands! Go us!

(I think I do well as long as I fool the outside world and Mr. Punk Rock Waiter has no idea I'm a cancer survivor, then I am doing a good job. It's similar to my insistence on dressing up for doctor visits, I am convinced if I look cute then my docs will have more faith in my prognosis. I have even admitted this to my doctor and she, of course, tells me it has no bearing whatsoever.)

Now it's way past my "bedtime" (9 p.m. is a way to make me a chronic failure) so I'm going to crawl into my bed and beg these aching, Neulasta-soaked bones to cut me some slack. Got a big date with the hospital tomorrow and Jeff said if they have wireless internet, he'll work from my room! Woohoo! A day at the hospital can't get any better than that! Now let's hope Good Sam has internet access. They have non-gray walls (actually a quite lovely shade of blue) so there is actually hope.

Today in Capitola, we ended our day with a visit to the former Polar Bear Ice Cream shop, and I got my fave summer flavor, bubble gum. What can I say, I'm a kid at heart. Anyway the point is that I only got two measly gumballs in my entire scoop and being the fantastically generous mother that I am, I gave one whole gumball to Jaden. It was his first gumball too. He seemed very focused on my gum rules, "Chew and then spit it into the cup" and overall he was more interested in the color of our tongues (blue and purple) than the gum-chewing experience. Either way, it might be one of the highlights of motherhood so far.

To-Do List:

* go to bed!

So what if I'm trying to set myself up to succeed for a change, I'll share a real list tomorrow.

Ciao,
Jess

Just start

Various people have been telling me for so long that I should do a blog. I was an English major in college and I do remotely recall having some writing ability back then. For the past eight years, it has only been unleashed in email form and pity the recipient of my late-night ramblings when I can't sleep and have too much on my mind.

Since I was diagnosed with cancer six years ago, I have had a strong desire to write a book, if only for my own sake, to record the craziness that became my life. But you know, when you have cancer, you feel sick and tired, and honestly my book just gets pushed to the bottom of my to-do list. So now here we are six years later and I'm starting a blog instead. Maybe after a year of posts, I'll just hit "print" and take it down to Kinko's and have it bound. Then I can cross it off my list!

Well we are experimenting with naps at our house with our three-year-old son and today's experiment was a one-hour nap.

I am now 17 minutes late in waking up my boy.

I'll share my to-do list for today and then head off.

* wake up Jaden after one hour
* finish three more loads of laundry (already done three loads)
* finish cleaning up backyard from last weekend's birthday party
* write thank you's for aforementioned birthday party
* finish Mother's Day cards (better late than never)
* grocery store
* enter receipts
* get two new movies

Okay my list is way, way longer than that but I'm late and trying to be polite for my introduction.

Ciao,
Jess

P.S. I am now officially 20 minutes late to wake Jaden.

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