What I've been up to, I guess

This is a ceramic piece I found at an antique sale. It has some birds on it.

 This is a yard sale shelf that had Noah's Ark on it, but I primed it and repainted it so that it (mostly) matches my shower curtain. Yeah, this is what they mean by "having it all."

I had all my spices on this set of shelves, but they kept getting knocked over in the doing of the laundry, so we got some magnets and dollar store tupperware and repurposed a white board, and voila! 

But then we had these shelves left over. And also primer left over. And also an assortment of adorable toys that held significance/were adorable (as previously noted) and didn't want the children ruining. 

 The Fisher Price chicken on the top shelf was the start of this whole assortment. Also, a knockoff Luffy that I got for a dollar at a chinese restaurant (sorry, Oda sensei!), wind up teeth like you always see, but never in real life, some of our Mold A Ramas and Hedora.

 More Mold A Ramas, Big Mo the Biscuit, a ceramic viking Lily painted for father's day one year, and more wind ups and cars.

I paid $3 for the Fozzie mug at a yard sale. I balked at first, but she justified her price as it was "collectible." I suppose she was right. The onion dome plays music when you pick it up? The thing on top is a manta ray Mold A Rama, and it does not really work, as such.

Mold A Ramas are machines that, for $2, will extrude* you a plastic figurine. Florida is apparently ground zero for this type of thing, though you can find the machines in lots of places. The internet presence for collectors of this stuff is very limited and mostly not updated. But the zoo we got a membership to has several of the machines, and apparently they change out the molds for Halloween and Christmas, so we are super excited about that. And yes, I do nerd out similarly for the elongated penny machines. Maybe we can talk about that later.

*Extrude is probably the wrong word. There is a mold that plastic goes into, air is blown into the mold to get the plastic to form a hollow figure, and then the mold is cooled (somewhat), scraped off the platform and dropped into the basket. When you pick it up, you should hold it upside down for the first few minutes so no molten plastic bits drop onto your hand. Not sure why places children frequent wouldn't be super into these... (Note: the molten plastic bit dripping has never happened to me, but it does seem like a reasonable precaution.)

What you missed

My lord, the time I wasted watching this. So much. Easily covers six of the fourteen months I wasn't blogging.

Other internet based repositories of that time
- www.bookmooch.com
       My internet book swap site of choice. The selection is limited, but it has frequently come through for me.
       Sometimes for things quite obscure. (I'm looking at you, Chretien.) Also a good way to slough off the
       children's books we have outgrown. (Looking at you, Captain Underpants.) At media mail rates, it;s about
       2.50 for an average-sized book. Mooching more than one book from a person subsidizes that rate greatly.
- esquire.com/politics
       Charlie Pierce is brilliant. Like, four times a day, every week day. I will totally have what he is having.
        He even has enough left over to sound highly amused on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.
- http://www.balloon-juice.com/
       If you like your current events with snark, this is high grade black tar stuff.

Non-internet time spendage
- did go back to school. Did ok. Managed to not withdraw from anything.
- Henry turned two.
- Lily is in the second grade.
- I got pleurisy.

More later.

Hello World!

So, I live in Tampa now. I'm a Floridian. Which is odd. Me being way down here and everyone being okay with that. Whatever.

I'm a stay at home Mom, too. There's, like, 12% unemployment in Tampa, so SAHM it is.

Been going to the library and reading a good bit. Read two books on smallpox, one book on yellow fever and currently working my way through the history of garbage. Still to come, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Vonnegut and the Dalai Lama. Also reading a lot of children's literature and have come up with two observations. One, it's not so hard to write a children's book. Two, a lot of people who think that are really really wrong.

But, Tampa is nice. The fall is just beautiful, and the verdance (I'm going with it) in general is amazing. It. Is. So. Green. Everywhere. All. The. Time. It loses impact if I do that repeatedly, huh?

I suppose I should also mention that I have another kid now. Henry was born in February. He's almost 8 months old with blond hair and blue eyes. Yup. I now have two 24-karat Aryan babies. Lily is in the first grade and loving it. She just lost her first front top tooth, very exciting!

The pants is teaching, working on his dissertation, and still finding time to pitch in on the laundry and discuss The Venture Brothers every now and again. Could I love him more?

My role, as I see it, is to make everyone's (meaning Lily and the pants') life go smoother. I get to stay home, run the budget, and read books when not directly mothering, so I think it shakes out to fair. I am a fervent disciple of Mark Bittman's cooking and writing. (hint for christmas!) My plan is to go back to school in the spring, but it's still under discussion at this point.

I have big plans for this blog for the rest of this year! Maybe you won't have to wait until 2011 to hear about it!

More health care

I am for health care reform. What I am not for, are the Operation Rescue attacks currently being employed by certain advocates for reform. They literally stand outside places of business and call the people walking in "murderers." One of these people was the mother of a child who died after being denied a transplant. She was holding a sign accusing the company of murder and someone walking in to their job gave her the finger. Was this person an example of saintlike compassion, and all that is good in thew world? Maybe this jerkface was the same person who denied her daughter the care and is the source of all that is wrong with this industry. But just perhaps, this person is one of many who works a crappy job (with little to no decision making power) that they really need for the insurance (which is most likely crappy). But they are being told horror stories about reform by their management and now those reformers are calling everyone in the building murderers. It might be a bit much to take before coffee. My point is - not everyone who works at an insurance company is a certified death panel member. We are all angry, but perhaps we could more directly focus our anger, and not demonize an entire workforce. Nobody ever solved a problem with pitchforks and torches. Holding up inflammatory posters might feel like action, but it brings us no closer to a solution, and it does no actual person one single damn bit of actual good.

Relocation Edition

This may be my favorite picture of Lily yet. It's waiting for the bus on the first day of Kindergarten. Which she has quite taken to.

We are now living in Alabama.

Baby #2 is due in late february, early march. Things on that front are uneventful, which is just fine.

Jeremy will not be teaching this fall and instead just working on the dissertation and in the spring he will teach online for ASU again and graduate in May.

Votes for baby names can be made here. http://babynames.com/namelist/9719076

Suggestions (other than Sergio), may be left in the comments.

Thanks everybody!

Health Care Choice

http://baselinescenario.com/2009/07/27/health-insurance-innovation/

This is an article I found on huffington post, minutes after completing an email survey about whether I could afford not to have health care. For $300 a month I could get the health equivalent of collision insurance (hosp coverage only) and the two packages at $1100 and $2200 a month offered things like prescription coverage and doctor visit copays. And that would be if I could qualify for insurance. I have a chronic medical condition, and last time I applied for insurance on my own, I was described as "uninsurable." All the discussions about health care mention health care choice being limited by reform. What choices are those exactly?

Co-Blogging With Lily! (diet coke free!)

Lily says "Boo boo." I have stopped drinking soda and now drink mostly water. I tried substituting it with hot tea, but gave that up mostly as the sugar required was deleterious. Lily thinks you should now that she really lies to make pizza. She is less enthusiastic about consuming the results. She likes the name "Helium" for a little brother. Thank you http://www.strindbergandhelium.com/index.html and Rob who showed it to all of us. We are still in NY. Brother Herb has had some awesome-rific successes as of late. These can be viewed at his website: www.herbwilliamsart.com He's awesome. More later.