Yellow Wallpaper

Things we did today: Got up, ate breakfast outside on the patio, and watched S-Boogie play in the sandbox for nearly an hour. Drove out to visit my Mom's classroom and to see my Dad in the hospital (he had surgery, but should be home tomorrow). Stopped by In-N-Out for lunch. Finished reading Girl in Hyacinth Blue and took a nap. Talked to my sister in Morocco on the phone for half-an-hour (yay!) Played with S-Boogie in the pool for an hour. Went out for Indian food; S-Boogie pretty much just had nan for dinner, but she was very well behaved in the restaurant. Let Grandma completely indulge S-Boogie by taking her to the Shark Reef and buying her cool things from the gift shop, like a stuffed shark that comes in its own purse and a marine life coloring book. Can't wait to see what we're going to do tomorrow...

I should wait to post until tomorrow when I'm feeling more awake, but I feel compelled to blog right now. I enjoyed the blog party last night and was glad to see everyone who showed up. I really like entertaining and it's fun to get together with so many friends. I woke up feeling pretty nasty this morning, since I ate way too much food yesterday and then stayed up way too late talking. So of course the best thing to do when you're feeling gross is to get in the car for a 6 hour drive with a two-year-old. We left shortly before naptime, but unfortunately it took us nearly 4 hours of the drive to convince her to go to sleep. I don't sleep well in the car either, but at least I don't (usually) scream and cry about it. The last 2 hours of the drive were much more pleasant; and I discovered today that listening to books on tape is a great way to pass the time in the car. We're now in Vegas for the next few days, and hopefully tomorrow will be fun and relaxing. S-Boo...

I love the fact that the end of the semester has coincided with the beginning of spring. I feel light and unburdened, and the beautiful weather is certainly helping my mood. Today I got to meet with my thesis committee about my prospectus. Basically, a prospectus is a few pages that talk about your thesis and outline your plan for it, along with a bibliography of stuff you're going to use. I was nervous about meeting with them, since some of my ideas are still a little vague and stuff, but they all were very positive and liked it a lot. So, now it is filed and the next step is just writing the thesis (that's all, ha ha). It was a nice feeling to get it out of the way and to know that I really am getting closer to being done with my degree. Some days I don't know if it's worth it or not, but today it certainly feels like it is! And now I can breathe a sigh of relief, because tomorrow we have a big party with all our friends and then on Thursday we drive to Vegas to spend...

Well, it's done and it's totally crappy. But I don't care and I'm going to go turn it in now. I think that this class cured me of any sort of fascination with linguistics I might have had. Then again, even the students doing Spanish linguistics told me that they wouldn't want to take a grad level syntax class. So maybe I was crazy to take it, but at least I survived. I don't think I did badly enough to fail (crossing my fingers); hopefully this professor won't hate me forever now.

For anyone who reads my blog without reading Master Fob's as well, we're having another blog party next Wednesday. It's mainly because Th. and Lady Steed are going to be in town, but also because we like to entertain and because it's amusing to see how many people we can cram into our apartment. Actually, the weather will hopefully be nice enough that we can use the patch of grass that is kind of our "backyard". We will provide hot dogs, hamburgers, baked beans, potato salad, and some kind of fruit or vegtable. If you want to contribute anything, bring chips/munchies, dessert, or drinks. Or just bring yourself if you want. If you need directions, my email is linked at the bottom of the page. Oh, and it starts at 5:30 or so.

For some reason, I have always felt like going to the doctor is a rare occurence that should be preserved for obvious, life-threatening conditions that are causing major pain. I feel funny going to the doctor for littler annoyances and so I usually don't. But, I've had a weird rash by my mouth for the last month or so that wasn't going away. It's mostly been an aesthetic problem, since it doesn't hurt or anything, but after a month I decided maybe it was time to do something about it. Today I had an appointment with the dermatologist. I was a little nervous about going, because I was afraid he would laugh at me for coming in over something so small and trivial. Well, it was a short appointment, but I did find out that I have perioral dermatitis , which won't go away unless you treat it. So, I could have waited for months and it never would have gone away. Unfortunately I can't do the quicker antibiotic treatment since I'm pregnant, but with special cream...

I feel like such an old lady lately. My body is stiff and sore, I worry about my blood pressure, and I realized yesterday that I use all of the following products on a regular basis: fiber pills, antacids, and hemorrhoid cream. Nice. Does anyone want to buy me a Jazzy ?

For people who only read my blog and not those of my friends, "svithe" is a lovely word invented by Th. to describe his weekly religously-themed posts. I don't plan on starting a tradition of weekly religous/philosophical musings, but I do have occasional thoughts that might be interesting to share. Also, I'm not very good at expressing my feelings and opinions on things, so I hope that the practice of writing will help me get better at organizing and articulating them. The other night I was reading chapter 4 of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon, which includes King Benjamin's speech to his people. As I read the familiar words starting in verse 13 that list all the things we should be doing in order to be righteous people (not letting our children fight, giving generously and unjudgementally to those in need, living peaceably with others, etc), I started to get that familiar uncomfortable feeling that I am a selfish, petty person incapable of truly loving others. But...

S-Boogie has a blog now. You can find it here . It's mainly for pictures and stuff about her. Enjoy.

I am about to confess one of the ways in which I am hypocritical, judgemental, and basically a bad person. I'm sorry to disappoint all of you, but I'm not perfect. When I was a small child we did not have a television set at all. Apparently it broke before I was born and my parents never got around to fixing it. When I was about 8 or so, my dad bought a car from an old man who decided to throw in a TV as part of the deal. I remember that one of the first things we watched was some Disney movie of the week about a guide dog for the blind. It made me cry. After that, we had a variety of random old television sets until I was about 13 when we got a real, brand new TV. My parents just replaced it last year with a giant flat screen. I have always said that I'm not a big fan of television and I don't watch it that much. If we had not received one as a wedding gift, I'm not sure when we would have gotten around to getting one. But, since we have one and we have cable, I wi...

Do not buy an economy sized box of 150 diapers without being able to try them first. S-Boogie goes through 3-4 diapers per day, which means we'll be using them up for nearly a month. Unfortunately, Costco only sells their diapers in the enormous box so we took a gamble and lost. I love their baby wipes, but within the last 5 days or so we've had several incidents of leakage from wetness as well as at least one leaky poopy diaper. I'm sticking with Luvs, they make me happy and they don't leak like this. If anyone wants to buy a nearly full box of Kirkland diapers, email me (it's at the bottom of my blog). They're size 5, so for kids over 28 pounds (I think that includes you, Tolkien Boy :))

One of the semi-infamous incidents from my childhood was the time my mother tried to feed us garbanzo bean casserole. We were actually pretty adventurous eaters as kids and ate a number of healthy, natural foods readily. But for some reason, the name "garbanzo beans" threw us off and we rebelled. Just the sound of the word "garbanzo" was enough to send us running away from the table in horror. Now that it's been about 20 years and I am a much more mature (ha) sort of person, I actually enjoy garbanzo beans, or chickpeas if you prefer a more sonorous name. They eat them in Spain in a variety of dishes, and I've even had them toasted and salted like peanuts. Tonight we ate one of our new favorite vegetarian recipes, curried chickpeas *, and as I watched S-Boogie eat her rice and garbanzos I realized that I can't ever eat them without thinking back to my first exposure to the dreaded word "garbanzo". So far, S-Boogie doesn't seem to share my a...

Yesterday afternoon I happened to be at Costco and we happened to be needing new diapers, so I decided to try theirs out for the first time. I was a little nervous about buying a giant box (140) of an unknown product, but I'd heard good things about them and they were the same price per diaper as our usual favorite, Luvs. We took the giant box home and stored it in S-Boogie's room this morning. However, I was feeling lazy and didn't get around to making room for it in her closet before her nap. I should have known better. Naps lately have been somewhat hit and miss for her. Some days she is really tired and falls asleep quickly, and stays that way for several hours. Other days it's more the routine of quiet time that prompts nap time and she just plays in her room for an hour or so before I give up and let her out. Today seemed like one of those days, since just a few minutes after I read her stories and put her in her bed I heard the tinkling of her little play piano. ...

The sun came out today and it was glorious. The snow-covered mountains actually look pretty cool as a backdrop to all the bright green spring grass. And I went and got a haircut today that turned out pretty well. I decided to try a new place, since I had a coupon for something called "The Works". It turned out to be a good deal, since I got my hair washed, cut, and styled for only $14. I know I could look better if I were willing to spend more money on my hair, but I'm just too cheap. Also, I just found out that a paper I submitted for a conference got accepted and they want me to present. We were required to submit our papers as part of my women's writing class, and all of us who did got accepted for the conference (there are 5 of us grad students in all). I think it would be tons of fun, especially since several other people I know and like to hang out with are going. It's put on by the Asociacion de Escritoras de Espana y las Americas , or the "Association...

On Tuesday I wore a short-sleeved shirt and sandals and rejoiced in the warm weather. This morning I woke up to snow and it hasn't stopped during the last three hours. Snow in April is just sick and wrong.

Tonight Master Fob and I went to the Spanish Department's annual end of the year dinner. It was mostly a chance to hang out with my friends and eat free burritos from Bajio (yum). I often take S-Boogie to things like this by myself, so it was nice to go somewhere as a family for a change. S-Boogie behaved reasonably well, although we had a few technical difficulties when the side effects from her antibiotic decided to kick in and she managed to blow out two diapers in less than an hour. Luckily her pants weren't too bad so she could wear them home and she was distracted enough by carrot cake that she didn't even notice the leakage. The thing I realized tonight is that I really like attention and getting awards, and I feel bad when I don't get them. I like the spotlight, and I have always tried to repress this part of me. I don't know why, but I crave attention and then feel horribly guilty when I seek it. The thing is, they only give out a few awards and there was ...

A few weeks ago I got a coupon in the mail for a Thai restaurant a few blocks away on State Street. It's been pinned to my bulletin board taunting me ever since, so last night I decided that we needed to ignore our budget woes and go out for Thai food. I think it's called Bangkok Grill, and it hasn't been open for a very long time (well, maybe a year). When we first got there, the entire place was empty, which was kind of nice since we had S-Boogie with us. It also meant that our service was fast and we got all our food quickly, another plus. The food, however, was only OK. We wanted chicken satay, but they were out of chicken so we got pork. The meat was so-so, I thought, but the peanut sauce was very tasty. We also got a green curry with beef and some Pad Thai. The curry was fairly good too, but the Pad Thai definitely wasn't my favorite. The amount of fish sauce on it had crossed the line from delightful accent to nauseatingly rotten flavor. We put the rest of our pe...

I was just reading an interesting NY Times story about people who get tatoos with Chinese characters only to find out that they don't say what they intended to say (like "putrid moth balls" instead of "true love"). They had a link to a fabulous website, which literally had me peeing my pants with laughter. So, if you need some fun, get your daily dose of "Engrish" here: http://www.engrish.com