One Quarter, Each Thing

First, a picture of her on her field trip playing an old fashioned game, tossing a wooden ring with wooden sticks (the way she holds them in other pictures makes me think she should be in band later, in the percussion section!) Anyway, they really got into this game. Looks like some sort of dance in the picture.





We had our garage sale today, and it was extremely successful. It goes tomorrow, too, but I imagine it won't be quite as popular as it was today.

It's time for a bath now. One more week of work next week. Then it will be June! Our house is emptying out. It's really happening! If we could only sell our house. The garage sale seemed to generate a bit of interest in the house as well. My fingers are crossed!

In Other News

Well. Now I have nice clean, undented car. The body shop even cleaned the inside of the car. It's honestly like new.

First of all, everyone is totally fine. Okay? Just so you know.

Saturday, Doug took the kids to the co-op for quinoa (which had accidentally gotten thrown out with some older grains and beans in order to get the big chest freezer empty for moving or selling). I wanted quinoa for a salad that I intended to bring over that evening for dinner at Ame's house (which was WONDERFUL). On the way back home, Doug was hit by a girl in her dad's truck. He was in the left turn lane going west (in order to turn on the street to our town) and she pulled out of a Mobil parking lot in a very wide turn, trying to go east. She totally hit the front left of his car and continued her way down the rest of the left side of the car (the side Sophia was on, by the way). Doug could see this about to happen, so he slowed his car down quite a bit. Hopefully, this will all get taken care of smoothly with our insurance companies. The girl (and her dad, who came later) was very nice (and is also fine as well) and the kids have had no nightmares or anything. I'm still amazed this girl was born in 1990 (!!), but that doesn't mean I'm OLD or anything. No, no, no.

It took ME most of the day to recover (and Doug as well, who did not want to drive for a bit), especially as when Doug called, the first thing he said (or maybe the first thing I heard) was "there has been a bad accident". Just waiting for the grey hairs to start appearing now.

So we are out one car again, but the good news is that (hopefully) the repairs should be done by the time we need to drive down to Texas. The cars also need oil changes, etc, so hopefully we can also squeeze that in. Yes, that's really coming up fast now. I think we leave in about 3 1/2 weeks. HOLY SHIT. Sorry, I just realized I should probably stop writing and get back to trying to sell our crap on Craigslist. I want to have a garage sale this weekend, and I need to get ready for that, too. That will be difficult as I'll be spending most of the day Thursday at Fiona's field trip to the Billings Farm and Museum and I work Wednesday and Friday. So that leaves today to do...everything. Which is why I'm writing and drinking coffee.

I took the girls to Lilac Sunday at the Shelburne Museum for one last time.








I've just sent in Sophia's application for a Montessori preschool, so hopefully that will go smoothly. Suddenly I have 30 minutes to do 2 hours worth of work, so more news later! Oh! We finally have a showing this Wednesday at 4 PM. Now if they would only buy the house. At our asking price. That'd be GREAT.

Please remove the maggots, rat carcasses, and corpses of shocked health inspectors and make the place fit for the preparation of sodding food.

Here's the episode I was referring to. If you don't want to watch the whole thing (do try), the salt fun beings at about the 5 minute mark.

And Without Tasting It, You Call for SALT? I Hate You With a Passion You Can Only Dream of.

(The title of this is from the best episode of Chef! One of my most favorite lines ever.)

Okay! Here is a picture Triana took of me outside Hen of the Wood. I finally found the menu, so I can share. For the first time, one of the dishes was slightly disappointing. Triana and I shared two appetizers: the wild leek soup and the Niman Ranch pork cheeks (I thought, "what if I never eat here again?" and promptly decided we must have pork cheeks, especially as Triana has never had them). The pork cheeks were, naturally, most tender and sublime. The wild leek soup? It was perfectly smooth. It had lovely little crisp flavorful croutons. The soup itself was bland. I think it actually needed salt. There are no salt shakers or pepper on the tables here, of course. There is usually no need. So while we had no trouble finishing it (for while it was bland, it also not hard to eat!), I would not order it again, and found myself wishing we had ordered the hen of the woods mushrooms. Or the oysters. Or the calamari.

For entrees we shared the Sheep's Milk Gnocchi. I cannot remember what it was served with (the menu I have is from the previous day, so it is slightly different from what we actually had), but the gnocchi was lightly seared so they were a bit crisp on the outside with a creamy, herby inside. Great texture. I do remember there was lemon and pine nuts. Outstanding. We also ordered the short ribs, which I believe was served with kale (always done perfectly) and more gnocchi--but different gnocchi! Two kinds of gnocchi! It is not on the menu, and as I'm writing about this two weeks later, details escape me. I will say they were a delight to eat and creamy.

We finished with three kinds of local cheese (going to have to hunt down some Vermont cheese sources while I'm in Texas). Oh, the wine! I didn't take a picture. We had the Orogeny Pinot Noir, 2006. It took about 20 minutes to really open up, but it had a great blackberry jam thing going on. Not so great with the soup (also not a surprise), but quite complementary with the other dishes. Even the Sheep's Milk Gnocchi!

For Sale, One Purple House

It's very busy around here with the packing and the cleaning. Today the house finally went on the market and our realtor took some indoor pictures.



We had a great visit with Kendra, and she took this very cute photo of Fiona and Sophia.



Here's us!

So we found a house in Texas on our last trip. It's in the school district we want and it's a cute house. We haven't closed on the house, though. That we can't do until after we get there. We should get there about mid June. Now we're just waiting for the movers to come look at our stuff to estimate what they'll need to do. Once we know the date they will come move our stuff, we can figure out what day we will actually leave.

Blogging will be quite sporadic (so...nothing new there) in the next 5 weeks and then I imagine it will be a bit dead from mid June for a couple of weeks. I'll try to write as often as possible between now and then. I'm trying to write at the worst possible time right now (4-5 PM is never a good time, and the kids are extremely loud today...full of energy even after waking us up at 5:30 AM. Happy Mother's Day!).

Oh, and I just remembered!



I got rear-ended a while ago! No kids were in the car and no one was hurt. I was making a left turn (I saw that Dog River Farm had the first fresh eggs of the season!) and the woman behind me put on her breaks, but they didn't catch. They caught the second time, which is good, because the speed limit on this road is 50 MPH. She was very nice and GEICO, her insurance company, is so far being fabulous. An insurance company being fabulous. Yes, I said that. The car is all fixed now. I believe this is my first accident as the driver. Hopefully, my last.

And Here We Go

Fiona came home indignant the other day. She said, in an incredulous tone of voice, "Did you know some people didn't vote for Obama because he's black?".

While I am pleased that she is flabbergasted that it would even occur to someone to vote for a person based on the color of their skin, I am sad that she even has to be exposed to this idea.

We did have a nice little chat about the irrelevance of physical appearance vs. the actions of a person.

The reason for this outburst is that one of her friends made a declaration to Fiona that, in their school election, she didn't vote for Obama, because she doesn't like people with black skin.

Sigh.

In other news, Fiona also apparently mooned some of her friends at school and we got a little phone call about that. That's a big deal now. If you moon your friends on the playground, the playground supervisor talks to you, the nurse talks to you, the teacher talks to you, your MOM talks to you (look, I'm just trying to figure out what's going on!), and they call the parents of all the kids who were mooned. When the playground supervisor came up after school to talk to me and said an incident had occurred with Fiona on the playground, I immediately thought something had happened like she had taken someone out or something.

Anyway, it seems Fiona was handled okay and not shamed or anything. There apparently was no daring or bullying or anything weird going on. I guess it's a tricky line for the school. As to why she pulled down her pants in front of people, Fiona said she thought it would be funny. This is completely plausible to me.

Thursday we're meeting with a realtor, who has looked at our house, and hopefully after this meeting our house will be on the market for sale! Saturday we leave for just over a week for Houston/Galveston. I believe the goal is to find a house to buy in Friendswood. I'm going to visit the schools in Friendswood because they seem great online, but nothing replaces a personal inspection.

Yay, Vermont!

This was so nice to come home to. It was also satisfying that it was done by a veto override. Very satisfying.

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Ah, So You're a Waffle Man!

Classic Red Dwarf. One of my favorite scenes. Ever.

I'm Waving at Fat

I have nothing to say, really. Just wanted an excuse to share a picture of The Adipose from the fourth season of Dr. Who. Creatures of fat! Totally adorable.

Today is in the 50s and rainy. It's definitely time to get the deer deterrent spray (A mixture of rotten egg, chili pepper, and garlic. Mmmmm.) It's been so warm, plants are going to pop out any minute and when I'm not paying attention (my usual state of being), the deer will have their buffet. I'm sitting here with my hair saturated with henna again (meeting girl friends in Vegas makes me want to freshen my hair color and rip the hair out of my legs in case I wear a bathing suit). Not really sure why. It also helps me feel less funky now that I work in a bakery. You get really funky working in a bakery. Nails of dried dough is definitely not a good look.

Oh, and I have to share this from Triana's site. Go see Fashion is Danger there, too. I can't wait for the second season of Flight of the Concords. (The lyrics to this fine song are under "More Info" on the YouTube site--just double click the video to get there).

One More Bowie Clip

Thanks to the friend who sent me this gem!

In a Bowie Mood Today

Not many men can pull off this look. In fact, I think only David Bowie can.



This is actually new to me. I love it.



Just awesome.



Can you imagine seeing Bowie live? Damn.

I'm in this Bowie mood because I've been going through my vinyl records and found Let's Dance and Tonight. Most of his older stuff I have on cassette tape, unfortunately.

Oh, how could I forget this?

Mmmm. Noodles.

You can find eight more sexy/amusing/tasteless food commericals here. Don't bother with the Paris Hilton one. Yawn. My favorite one is this one and the Guinness one. The dog one is just strange.

I gave my job notice today and it went well. It also helps make the fact that we are moving seem more real. Now if I could just get appointments set up for interior painting and some minor carpentry jobs! Hopefully we can get someone in to do that before June. I'm hearing about all the spring-ness going on down there right now (sigh, bluebonnets!) and I'm so impatient to be there already. However, it will be nice to see my tulips one last time. I'm not sure the gray squirrels have left anything left of our lilac. I may have to get my lilac in at the Shelburne Museum.

Ah, and on that note, here is my top 10 list of places I want to visit one last time before we move. This does not include visiting friends. For one thing, that will hopefully happen more than once (!!!). Okay. I'm not going to bawl. I'm going to talk mostly about food.

1. A Single Pebble (natch)
2. Hen of the Woods
3. Okay. This is not Vermont, but on the border of New Hampshire and Vermont, there is this country store that makes the best smoked bacon I have ever had. Ever. I think I can mail order it, but I still want to visit there one more time. I'll have to come back with the name.
4. Montshire Museum of Science
5. ECHO center and Lake Champlain (The view is nice. Plus I want pictures.)
6. I would like to finally hike to the top of Camel's Hump, but I don't think that is going to happen.
7. The Alchemist
8. The Montpelier Farmer's Market (definitely taking the camera to that venue).
9. Shelburne Museum
10. Dairy Creme stand and eating sugar on snow at Morse Farm (with pickle!)

We'll miss the apple picking, the strawberry picking, the fairs, and the 1,000 jack o'lanterns at Ellie's, but c'est la vie! If I could 12 things, I'd add King Arthur Flour (they have great mail order, great customer service, and I can get their stuff nationwide, I believe, so it won't really be GONE) and the Savoy Theater. I was just at Main Street Bar and Grill, and that was enough. That one is mostly for nostalgia's sake, but the food was quite good. I'd rather have gone to the Chef's Table for fine dining, but it's not a fine dining restaurant anymore--I believe the school uses it for catering. I'll also miss the fabulous Kellogg-Hubbard Library (great children's library!) and La Brioche. Okay! I'll stop now.

And Now For Something Completely Different

It's official. Doug has accepted a job offer in Galveston, TX and we're moving in June after school is out (so far, that's June 12th if there are no more snow days). We won't live right in Galveston, but we'll probably be 25-45 minutes away or so. We're hoping to visit the third week of April (the kids' Spring Break) to buy a house. Now to figure out how to sell ours! Good times.

And yes, the above picture was taken after Ike went through. That's a bit of roof.

Las Vegas

Next Friday (Incredibly. Time goes by so fast.) I will be on my way to Vegas for my friend Annie's 40th birthday! I have another friend there who I'm hoping to see. Honestly, Vegas is one of those places I have been totally uninterested in until recently. Now I can't wait to go. I guess I thought you had to like gambling to want to go to Vegas, but now I see that is not the case at all. Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing my friends from culinary school and my Vegas friend and meeting new ones coming to this birthday celebration. I expect there will be many adult beverages and lots of great conversation. Oh, and of course, food. Most everyone coming to her party is some sort of foodie. I'll be staying at the above casino/spa (the palm trees look a little sad in this picture, I have to say). The pool looks nice. Whee! I'm not sure it will be warm enough for that, though.

Monday night we are going to the Vintner Grill for her birthday, which was arranged by her husband and sister. Should be a great 40th birthday for her!

I will be sure to take lots of pictures and write it all down.

Oh, and here is a trailer for Sita Sings the Blues to at least give you an idea of part of the animation style. You don't see the modern parts of the story in the trailer.

Sita Sings the Blues

Have an hour and a half to kill? Yesterday I saw Sita Sings the Blues, which, while a bit of a sad topic, was very well done and has excellent music.

You can watch the whole thing here.

I actually saw it at the Green Mountain Film Festival yesterday. I went online to try to find the music (can't), but hey! You can watch the movie online. Tres cool.

I think we killed the L-i-c-e. Guess I'll find out in a week or two.

Working at the bakery tonight, noon until who knows when. My feet protest!

Update! You can get 3 of the songs (the first one is the one I wanted!) here for $2.98.

Checking In

I'm still here. It's been gorgeous here. Cold, still, naturally, but it's definitely spring. Vermont is a tease about spring, so I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. The next snow. However, the crocuses are coming up! I'll take a picture when they bloom, like I always do. Deer poop is already all over the yard. They're already looking for my tulips! Fuckers.

Guess what? We have lice again. I think it's just Fiona this time (I did find ONE nit in Sophia's hair like last time). I think I even know where she got them, but I'm not going to point fingers. So on this sunny day, I find ourselves at the laundromat because our dryer is still broken.

I'll write more later, but I'm in a Bruce Springsteen mood, so here's a video:

This Time Change

Is kicking my ass. It's so hard to get up in the morning. I guess because it's dark. I usually wake up before the alarm clock and have no trouble getting up (it takes my brain a bit longer, though). Now I do not want to leave my warm bed at all. This is problematic when there are lunches and breakfasts to make, and showers to have. I don't have to be at work until noon, so that's okay.

I found this on Cute Overload, which I'm sure you all visit on a regular basis.

I think this is my favorite:


It's almost certain we are indeed moving to Houston/Galveston at this point. I guess the next step involves the buying and selling of houses. Gulp.

Once More, With Blathering

It was a long trip home. We didn't get back to our house until 2:30 AM. Grim. We rode jetBlue, which has now spoiled me. There's more leg room (and at 5'2", I don't really need a whole lot of leg room), they have snacks (some Dorito/pretzel/Sun Chip thing, blue potato chips, cashews, animal crackers, "breakfast biscuits"--which are cookies, good chocolate chip cookies, and maybe one or two other ones), and they have the usual selection of beverages. There are also TVs on the backs of the chairs. This is sort of okay...Fiona loved the episode on the History channel on George Washington and then wanted more shows on presidents. That was not to be had (we watched a bit on the Civil War, but that didn't hold her interest as well). Then she found SpongeBob. She's never seen SpongeBob before, and I wasn't impressed with what I saw, I have to say. She seemed to like it. It stayed off pretty much the rest of the time and she was surprisingly good about it (I caught her watching some sort of talk show before we turned it off...the look on her face was total fascination. Mouth slightly agape and eyes wide.)



Here's Sophia winking at either her reflection or some fish.

So there is still not an official offer yet. Still waiting. I think the kids would be okay living there as long as we find a good school. I'd prefer to live closer to family, but at least we could get up there fairly easily. Still a little worried about living in a hurricane prone area. Traffic is mostly normal big city/bad drivers/jammed traffic, but during one very small traffic jam (it was Sunday and they were doing some construction, so two right lanes were closed), people were not only freely driving over the median between the frontage road and the highway--you could see lots of old marks on the grass showing that this is done all the time--people were getting off the highway in a line via the entrance ramp to the highway. What the hell! I only saw that once, and hopefully, that was a weird fluke. The traffic honestly wasn't even that bad. I've been in Vermont for 10 years, believe me, there is no traffic here and if I thought this traffic jam was not bad, it wasn't. I was astounded.

In other news, apparently the l-i-c-e may indeed be...gone? I still check and check because I think now is about the time when new ones would hatch (EW), but nothing so far. We did give Fiona another chemical treatment right before the trip and did not put anything else in her hair for a few days. Hopefully, that did the trick. It does seem to irritate her scalp, though, just mildly.

My first day of (part time) work at a local bakery (wholesale) is Friday, and I'm both nervous about it and excited. Hopefully, I won't be blowing my nose every 5 minutes like I am now and the coughing will be gone. It's a little awkward working in any food service job when you have a cold. Ideally, you'd stay home, of course, but this is the real world we work in. I won't even wear my whites. It looks like we all wear comfortable clothes and baseball caps. Most people wear shorts.



Okay, one more picture of the trip. This is Sophia at Moody Gardens Aquarium ("Yes! We are open!"). I love this picture because it reminds me of this one:



This is Sophia in February of 2006 at the Montreal Biodome. Cool place. Great city. Not a whole lot to do with small kids in the winter, though.

I'm really looking forward to April 3rd through the 7th, when I will be flying to Las Vegas to see my friend Annie for her 40th birthday! I have the plane tickets and everything. I'm really going! We're all staying here (you may want to turn your volume down, there's music). Don't look at the prices. We're getting some sort of group rate, which is far more sane. I am very excited! I haven't seen Annie in way too long and I'll also get to meet her sister, a friend of hers from Maine, and see my friend Andrea, who I haven't seen since we were all at NECI. Has it really been that long?

Houston, Part Deux

There were several nice playgrounds in the area, which is definitely one thing I wish we had more of here. There were flowers! Butterflies! Oh, and a lizard. Yes. While looking at houses on Friday, we found a lizard in the back yard (Psst! Run away lizard! Run while you can!) Actually, I think it was a gecko. I'm not a herpetologist (And yes, I had to look up that word. What did we do before The Google?). So, I foolishly drew the kids' attention to said reptile and this creature completely captivated their interest. This could have gone on for hours, but we had houses to see, colds to develop. Wish I had a picture of this fascination! That house remained the favorite for the day because it was the "Lizard House". Actually, that house is one that went right in the bin. Plus it was next door to a barking dog.



We ate breakfast twice at Mamasita's (the NASA location). The girls had the scrambled egg and bacon tacos both times. They didn't have the fresh orange juice either time we went (which was too bad on Saturday; I could have really used it). I had the scrambled egg and dried beef and the next day just the scrambled eggs with potatoes. I wanted the shredded beef, but that wasn't ready right at opening time (why?). I asked for tea Saturday morning and got iced. Note to self: next time, specify. You're in the South, now. I love iced tea (unsweetened here, too, hooray!), so it was okay. The oranges were to help entertain the kids. Okay, I lie. I just like making orange smiles.

I need a hot bath. The kind that peels paint off the walls. I'll have to do this in parts.

Houston

We're back from Houston, and I have the worst cold. Thankfully, we seem to have boxes upon boxes of tissues. Something to use up before the move.

No decision has been reached yet, so there's no new news on that front, but here are some pictures:



We flew on JetBlue and they let Fiona sit in the cockpit after our flight to JFK. Unfortunately, we somehow left her red plaid baby blanket either on the plane or in JFK airport. We've called Lost and Found at the JFK airport, but they haven't called back yet. She's not happy about losing her blanket.





Planning something, I'm sure. This is at the JFK airport.



We had Indian food Thursday night. It was really good. We ordered way too much naan. Fiona had two mango lassis. She is sort of a mango lassi junkie. We took her to a big HEB (a grocery store down there) and a Houston Central Market (Central Market is this amazing grocery store, which I'll discuss later) and showed her the massive amounts of inexpensive mangoes available here. As opposed to the rock hard, expensive, 15 mangoes you can get here.



They went to the Moody Gardens Aquarium on Saturday. I didn't go, as I stayed at the hotel coughing up organs and watched Religulous on the pay per view. They loved it. Fiona wrote down the names of most of the fish so she could tell me (and her class) what she saw.

More to come later! I have to take a roasting hot shower to soothe my lungs and then it's off to the dentist for Sophia.