Spaces!

I swear that I am putting an extraneous amount of spaces between paragraphs and blogger is just ignoring them and lumping all my words together! It is infuriating me.

Monday, Monday

I don't know if you're aware but the Pittsburgh Steelers are in the Superbowl this year. This is a BIG deal. When I walk to work I pass houses that have been decorated in support of the team.

I love this window. It makes me smile every morning. I'm going to celebrate the Superbowl by eating. I'm making football food, chicken wings, buffalo dip, potato salad and cornbread. If, God forbid, the Steelers lose at least my stomach will be full of fatty goodness.

Saturday while my landlord was addressing the problems with my plumbing Eli and I went to run some errands with Suz, on the way back Eli fell asleep in his seat. He didn't budge when we brought him in and slept like this for over an hour.

When he does decide he feels like napping he naps hard. Yesterday we both fell asleep for over two hours which was fine with me this weather saps my will to do anything but eat and sleep. Hibernation mode.

My plumbing is finally fixed and I can flush my toilet, run my sink, do dishes and laundry to my hearts content. Unfortunately he had to literally sledgehammer up the cement floor in my basement and I now have two fairly good sized holes down there til he gets back to fill them. My main concern is that bugs are going to get in. Bug invasion terrifies me even when my house is not holy.

I've been getting a lot of reading done and can wholeheartedly recommend The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, American Wife and The Corrections which I haven't finished but already love. There are six more books on their way to me from Amazon, I bought two besides the corrections at Goodwill and I have a few from Christmas waiting to be read. Also I fully intend to buy more with my tax return. The original plan was to buy two more bookshelves, now I'm thinking three might be a safe bet. Have you seen my dining room/library?

I'm Looking Forward

To not having to wear these boots anymore. I want to be able to wear my flats without getting my feet soaked and frozen. There's a few more months yet before that will happen and it's starting to wear on me.



Eli and I have been having a lot more inside time than what we'd gotten used to, luckily this change has coincided with his attention span getting a lot longer. Eli's a movie fan.

Here he's watching Aladdin and clearly something very serious is taking place on screen. The Land Before Time continues to be his very favorite movie; he's started making dinosaur noises and the other day I caught him making the same faces as Sara the tricerotops. Since Eli's so attentive now I've decided it's time for him to see his first movie in the theater! I'll be taking him to see Coraline http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO3n67BQvh0 don't worry, Eli does not scare easily.

The young sir is also enjoying this weather a lot more than any of the grown ups in his life.

The Christmas sled is a hit. I exhausted myself running around the yard pulling him behind me. He was laughing and after a few passes I was gasping for breath. My throat got that raggedy feeling that's reminiscent of running the 60 yard dash in gym class. Mama's out of shape.

This really was the most snow we've had in years and I'm glad Eli had some quality outside time, cabin fever in a not quite two year old is not attractive. This kid has a whine that makes me want to drive a screwdriver into my brain.

My basement plumbing has STILL not been fixed and I get more annoyed every day. I just want to do laundry without going to the laundromat. I despise the laundromat. When I was 20 and lived in the Northside I would put off doing laundry for as long as humanly possible; sometimes I'd buy new stuff to delay the trip longer. But eventually we'd have to go so at two or three a.m. we'd venture to the 24 hour laundromat in Oakland and use a whole row of washers. I always liked those trips once I was there, so warm and the big comfy couches and lots of magazines I'd never read before. The two tiny laundromats in Bloomfield offer none of those charms and there's the added joy of Eli who finds the washers and dryers fascinating but loves to touch everything. All of this rambling is basically to say that if my landlord does not get my plumbing fixed this weekend I'm going to murder him.

Pro & Con

Cons:

My dog has destroyed my carpet and now i get to try to fix it before my landlord freaks out

Said landlord can't get my basement to stop flooding every time I do laundry and refuses to hire a plumber

I will now be hiring a plumber with my tax money when it comes

I got my work computer fixed but now it won't load pictures, not even adorable pictures of Eli enjoying his sled

I've got the winter blahs



Cons:

We have a new president!

Eli is very very adorable

I found a dollar in the parking lot

Cheese Face

All the talk on the news on Thursday and Friday was about this big storm we were supposed to get. More snow accumulation that Pittsburgh has seen in years! Below you can see Eli in this big snow:
That's right not even enough to cover the grass. And this was taken on Saturday when it rained all day, cold wet annoying rain. Since we're experiencing some major winter blahs and cabin fever at my place I decided to take Eli out anyway; and just hover over him with an umbrella while he played.

As you can see he liked it. Yesterday morning we walked a few blocks down to get brunch and he insisted on only walking on the parts of the sidewalk where there was snow. He's much more of a fan of the winter weather than his mama.

See that ridiculous face? That's the face that Eli makes now when he sees the camera. I'm pretty fond of it and plan on taking a lot of snapshots so that when he's a sullen teenager I can remember what his smile looks like.

Charming

Last night I was late with dinner (my fritatta just wouldn't firm up) and when I finally put it on the tray he clapped and said "yea!" I laughed because it was adorable but part of me thinks he was being just a little bit sarcastic. If he was he probably got it from me and I'm very proud.


And just now I called home and Jason put him on the phone and we had our very first interactive phone conversation:
Me: Eli do you want to watch the dinosaur movie?
Eli: Yesh!
Me: Do you want daddy to put it on right now?
Eli: Yesh!


He's such a big boy. And now Jason has to watch The Land Before Time, again.

Snarky

I'm having one of those days where I'm just a crank for no reason. This is making me smile:

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

Nothing like laughing at others to bring joy into your own life.

Dear 2008

Every year just goes faster and faster and before I know it it'll be 2025 and Eli will be 18, leaving for college and never calling unless he has dirty laundry or an empty wallet. If you type "Is time going faster" into google you get 819,000 results so it's reassuring that I'm not the only one feeling this way. But really 2008 I hardly knew ye.

This year I made significant progress on my cooking, I confidently call myself a good cook and will try almost any recipe. This year I hope to branch into bread making--without a bread machine. I also want to try to buy part of a cow and part of a pig from a local farm so that we can have organic meat all year round. If that actually happens surely you know and see pictures of all the lovely white wrapped meat.

This year Elijah got a lot bigger. He no longer looks a bit like a baby; my little guy is a real kid now. And while he was the most adorable baby ever he's possibly more adorable now that he has such a definitive personality. Unfortunately for my ability to discipline I even find him adorable when he's being naughty. I'll try to work on that in 2009 too.

I got a lot of reading done this year, and not just the Twilight series which took up a good bit of my life this fall. Book crack it is! Some very good non-Twilight books:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

The Things They Carried by Tim O' Brien

Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

I need to look at my shelves and the floor by my bed for more, 2008 was a good year for reading. Maybe this year I'll start using the virtual bookshelf and put it on here so that next year I won't draw a blank on what I did all year.

This year, for probably the first time in two years, I found new bands I like which excites me because I was starting to think I was my mom and would only listen to what I'd been listening to since I was 21 forever. That said I recommend City and Colour, She & Him, The Honorary Title, and Emiliana Torrini. on a side note Emiliana is a very fabulous variation on my name.

I did not get my house clean or organized this year and I really really really want to work on it. I need outside pressure. Perhaps a social worker visiting weekly and threatening to take Eli if I don't comply? Any ideas about cleaning would be much appreciated; even if they end up being ignored.

The biggest thing of the year is also the thing that doesn't feel a bit different. I guess getting married doesn't make much of an impact if you've already been living and parenting together. It does feel good that it's official just not a bit different...

I spent more blogging time on Christmas than all of 2008. I'm not sure what that says about the year.