Always about the kid

I wrote some more stuff about my kid and how much I like being her mom over here.

Richie didn't know that if you make an "L" shape with your index finger and thumb, the one that goes the right way is the one of the left hand. Just a helpful hint for those that are directionally chanllenged.

Insert transition here.

It's going to be a busy weekend.

Tonight we're serving food at a homeless shelter then attending an art opening (because I love dichotomy). Saturday Margaret has her Sonatina Festival.

Sunday, my band is being interviewed by the local TV news and doing a photoshoot The Daily Sentinel.

And then Sunday night (Sunday night! gah!) the Supersuckers are playing here in Grand Junction.

If that's not enough, my mom is coming for a long visit on Tuesday and we're gonna have to clean the house at some point over the weekend.

Who needs sleep anyway?

Callouses

After not playing my guitar much during December and into January, it's taken me a while to get my callouses back.

For those not in the know, building up callouses on your finger tips hurts. Those strings dig into the skin. And maintaining guitar callouses takes effort.

You have to play often to keep them intact. You can't put on too much lotion or soak them in hot water. It's not uncommon to see me sitting in a hotsprings pool with my left hand in the air or putting lotion only on the backs and palms of my hands only.

Even if you get good callouses they can peel and flake. You have to reach the right balance of moisture and pressure and blah, blah, blah ... it's yet another thing to manage, like little pets living on my hands.

But it feels good to have them back, to be playing music earnestly again. It can be such a release.

And Riveter has got such big stuff coming up. We've got our big local show on the 8th, then our trip to SXSW to play the Invasion of the GoGirls showcase (This show alone is huge for us! Huge, I say).

Then in April we're playing the Fruita Fat Tire Festival (make sure you click the link, they mention us right on the front page) for the third year in a row. We love playing that festival!

And I want to mention (in hopes that he reads this) that our girl band would not be where we are today without the help of Scott. Not only has he been sitting in as our drummer for a while now, but he's recorded and mixed all our songs and coached and supported us from day one. And he's got his own little band project, too.

So a big Thank You to Scott for all he does. Scott, you rock!

Because I don't have enough stress

I wanted to write about how Frida got all indignant this morning when I threw a perfectly good, holey sock in the garbage.

She followed me to the can and stood there like, "'the hell lady? I could so use that old sock." So I gave it to her and she ran off with it excitedly and played with it until I left for work. She's probably napping with it right now.

But instead I'm swamped with work and I'm worrying about the e-mail I got from Margaret's teacher. Click over here to read more.

Gah! to Tuesday.

Politics through the eyes of a 7-year-old

The following is a paraphrased conversation I overheard between Margaret and her little friend, Lucy:

(Keep in mind these girls are 7 and 8 years old and they have tiny, little girl voices. Think squeaky mouses while reading.)

Lucy: Who do you want to be president?

Mar: Uh, I dunno. I like Obama.

(Me thinking to myself: She likes Obama? 'the hell?)

Lucy:Yeah, but we've never had a girl president before.

Mar: Yeah, it would be nice to have a girl president, but I like Obama ... he's just so ... good (said with a strong sense of passion ... well, 7-year-old passion, but passion nonetheless).

Lucy: Yeah, but Clinton would mean we'd have a girl president. I'd like a girl president.

Mar: Yeah, a girl president would be good. But I like Obama.

Lucy: Yeah, he's good, too.

Mar: I got a new jumprope ... it's got beads and ...

The political discussion tapered off then, but I was left pondering their exchange.

First, I wonder why they felt the need to start every sentence with the word, "yeah."

Second, having never discussed the presidential candidates with Margaret I was very interested in how she developed her strong like for Obama.

Third, I loved the fact that they both referred to Hillary Clinton as a girl over and over again and that they never even discusses the idea of a Republican candidate. They threw around Obama and Clinton's name with abandon, but there was nary a mutterance of McCain.

If only the 7 and 8 years old ruled the world ... Oh, I guess Miley Cyrus would be president.

Just now getting a clue?

This is my dog Quincy.



She is 7 years old. We've had her since she was a puppy. The furniture in our bedroom has been arranged the same way since we moved in: a bed, a nightstand, a dresser, a mirror.

Last night while I was trying to watch the Project Runway reunion show and do yoga (I know, yoga people, I shouldn't watch TV while doing yoga but I consider it multi-tasking and I like it so ... there), but Quincy was barking.

Barking?

This dog rarely barks. At. Anything. She'll bark at a neighbor's cat sometimes, but mostly she doesn't bark.

And what was she barking at last night?

Her own damn reflection in the mirror.

She's sat in front of the mirror a kajillion times over the last 7 years, but last night at 11:20 she decides that other dog in the mirror needed to be told to step off.

'the hell?

Battle of the Books, year 2

Last night Margaret participated in her second Battle of the Books competition.

Last year Margaret and her one teammate fought a noble fight but they got one wrong answer, knocking them out of a first place tie.

This year, her second grade had a full team of three. And this year Margaret and I spent most Tuesday evenings at the library reading books off the battle list.

Second graders had 22 books. Margaret read them all but one. Not too shabby. Their great teacher, Ms. Mac did a great job preparing the girls. But Mar was still nervous ... look at that face.

Like last year, I sat nervously in the audience. I don't care about her winning, but I want her to do well and be satisfied with her performance in the competition.

Her team did well, only missing two questions, but they were by far the most distracted team.

They were giggling and goofing around and not paying attention. And when it was their turn to answer they were by far the funniest team. They would answer in tandem and act out their concern over not knowing.
They didn't win, but they sure were cute while they were trying.

Being green is slow work, yo

Last night I taped a note to the cabinet to remind Bill to take out the recycling this morning.

When I came home for lunch, I found an amendment to my note:

"Takeing (sic) too long"
"Mar"

Saving the world by recycling one Fiji water bottle at a time is just too darn slow for a 7-year-old.

I like my new ...

This morning my co-worker and co-Haute Mama, Richie, sent me a message thanking me for getting Kimya Dawson's song "So Nice So Smart" stuck in her brain. Her comment was full of sour-casm (that's Mar talk for "sarcasm" but I like sour-casm so much better, so we never correct her).

But I know what she means about that song taking root in your brain. I've been pretty much listening to the Juno soundtrack non-stop for the last week. Mar has learned the words to many of the songs and during dinner one night, she sung out, "I like my new bunny suit."

It was awesome. I love Kimya's music. It's so (say it with me now) low-fi and quirky. I find it comforting in it's simplicity, yet totally get the edgy vibe of her lyrics.

And these days I like surrounding myself with things that make me feel better. I always have a bottle of Fiji water and a bag of soy nuts ... because I loves me some soy nuts. I'm doing yoga as much as I can and I spending lots of time with my Bed Buddy.

Now get your mind out of the gutter, a Bed Buddy is a long sack filled with ... uh, something that gets warm when you cook it in the microwave for two minutes. Then I sit or lie with the this thing draped over my back or along my gut or at my feet. It's awesome. I've considered taking it with me to work, but with my ever-present Fiji and Kimya-blaring iPod, I think I'll just save the Bed Buddy for home.

In Simpsons and in health

Margaret's cough is back. Or maybe it's a new cough.

Regardless, I'm home this afternoon with her. When I came home at noon, she was cuddled up on the sofa doing a puzzle and watching Simpsons episodes.

She loves herself some Simpsons. Who said TV isn't a good babysitter?

Since that's all I've got today. Here's the poster our friend made for our March 8 show:



Oh and I made a quirky and low-fi video over the weekend. Check it out.

It's quirky and low-fi

"I like my new bunny suit."

Music: "So Nice So Smart" — Kimya Dawson
"Vampire" — Antsy Pants
"My Rollercoaster" — Kimya Dawson
"Sleep" — Kimya Dawson

Not going back to rehab, we're going back to SXSW!

That's right, Riveter is going back to South by Southwest for GoGirlsMusic.com's Invasion of the GoGirls. And we're having a pre-SXSW show at our favorite watering hole, the Quincy Bar on March 8.

It's going to be a good time.

A Dear John love letter

Dear John Fluevog,

My uber-husband bought me my first pair of Fluevogs for Valentine's Day yesterday.

I love these shoes. Love them in a way that is just not right. They are quirky and anachronistic and cute and comfortable and I want to hug them and kiss them and hold hands with them ... if they had hands.

Instead, I'm going to just declare my love for them and for you for creating such uber-cute shoes. All the affection and admiration is going to Bill for getting me such a lovely gift for a holiday that has really of no significance or consequence at all.

In closing, please keep making shoes and I will start saving all my pennies to buy as many as I can.

Fluvogs forever.

Sincerely,
Fluevog-wearing Rivetergirl

Happy Fluevog Day to me

It's Valentine's Day. Margaret made me a beautiful card adorned with Christmas tress and hearts (really, Christmas trees). Bill brought me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers and a box of nuts and chews (my favorite).

Bill got a pair of hockey breezers — aka hockey pants. I think they look like he's wearing a barrel and getting ready to go over the falls, but he's super excited about them, so happy Valentine's Day to him.

In addition to the flowers and chocolate, Bill got me a very special gift. They haven't come yet, but I know what it is and couldn't be more excited. Bill got me my very first pair of Fluevogs.



So it's been a special day and it had a very special start this morning. Click over here to see a video of Mar doing a Valentine's Day dance to Mott the Hoople.

A case of the losies

Bill lost his giant set of work keys.

Sean lost one of his giant Christmas shoes. (The other one still sits on the front porch waiting for its mate ... )

Margaret lost her homework packet.

I lost my groovy little wallet/bag/thing with my iPod chords and my 1 gig jump drive.

Doh!

I hate losing things. I feel so discombobulated and am now fearful that everything is going to get lost. I keep checking my purse and bag over and over again.

Maybe it's just another manifestation of what I'm sure is going to blossom into a full-blown, keeping-my-pee-in-jars case of OCD.

Angelina's foot issue

I had a dream last night that Bill and I met Angelina Jolie and ended up hanging out with her. For some reason she needed to borrow my brand-new snow boots.

At the end of the dream, Bill and I were leaving her house and he handed me my boots saying that I should boil them before I wear them as she had a really terrible foot fungus.

Why? Why would that be what I dream about? Gah! My stupid subconscious wasting a completely good celebrity.

Because Emily asked

Here's a picture of the rack in my bathroom ... because Emily asked so nice and I like Emily. She's fun ... I miss her.


I took this one of Mar's room during my lunch hour, too. It's a sucky photo, but it shows the wall decals we put up this weekend ... yet another Bed, Bath and Beyond clearance item ($2.50 thankyouverymuch). And it shows a bit of the head board we got there as well ($19.98 oh yeah!).
It's such a crappy picture because I didn't want anyone to call the wildlife officials when they saw the number of animals roaming free on Margaret's unmade bed.

A weekend of miracles and accidents

It wasn't an exciting rock 'n' roll weekend, but it was one of the better weekends I've had for a long time. Bill and I had a retail therapy experience at Bed, Bath and Beyond's clearance aisle.

Dude, we got a bunch of stuff for the house for 75 percent off. Woot for the clearance aisle.

The one thing we plunked a whopping 5 bucks for was a rack that sits over the toilet.

This $5 rack has been quite the focus of our attention.

First of all, we had to remove a towel bar to allow the installation of the aforementioned rack. The towel bar had been installed by the previous owners. I assumed (stupidly) that I could unscrew the four screws patch the holes and call it good.

Uh no.

I stripped out one of the screws and another one would not budget. Then we realized that the rack had been glued to the wall and attached via giant molly bolts.

After much swearing and sweating, we got the rack off the wall, but two gigantic holes in the blue paint remained. Not wanting to repaint the entire bathroom for a $5 rack, I scraped a bunch of tiny paint chips into a baggie and took them to our neighborhood True Value store.

I showed the nice paint guy my chips. He sighed and said that need about a quarter size area to match paint. He then meticulously taped the tiny chips together and put them into his machine.

The resulting paint looked close, but we had no idea how close. Worst case scenario was that I'd have to repaint the entire bathroom with the new color.

A miracle happened. The nice paint guy created a virtually exact match. I'm amazed.

So the paint looks good, but the rack ... we're still not sure about that $5 rack. It takes up a lot of room in an already tiny bathroom. We're going to try it out for a while and see if we like it. If not, we're only out $5 for the rack (I'll ignoring the $11 I spent on paint).

Bill helped me complete other small projects around the house, despite the fact that he wanted to be spending his time trying on his new hockey gear and skates.

All this shopping and home-improvement projects and trying on of the hockey gear was accompanied by the sounds of the Juno soundtrack.

I haven't seen the movie yet and I didn't really want to buy the soundtrack. I was trying to buy a Moldy Peaches album and carelessly bought the soundtrack instead. It turned out to be such a happy accident. With songs by Mott the Hoople and Sonic Youth mixed with the lo-fi quirkness of Kimya Dawson and the bands she's associated with, it's exactly what I've been wanting to hear lately.

Oh and I also make sugar cookies from scratch. Read about that over here.

Snow Frida Saturday

We've been getting regular snow storms here which is odd for us. It's not a lot of snow, but it's been wreaking some havoc.

I think our cats are going to revolt on us. They spend most of their time staring at us wondering why in the hell haven't we removed the snow from the outdoor places they like to be.

I've wondered what would happen if they got the dog and decided to mutiny. Three cats and a skinny dog. Pretty scary.

Hopefully we'll never have to see that played out.

We were doing some stuff around the house and on one of my trips to the shed, I noticed all the kitty prints in the snow.

Markel know all the funny shit

The fake Match.com photo below was sent to me by my friend, Markel. He knows all the funny Internets stuff.

As a follow up to the picture, he sent this link.

Awesomely funny for a Friday.

So glad I'm not single

Beans for yoga

I've started doing yoga again. It is really a necessity for my sanity and the well-being of my family. I'm hoping that the practice will bring me back to center instead of the wild pendulous spinning from extreme to extreme that seems to be my norm.

I seem to have moved beyond the one "just irritated" mood to variations of that mood. I like to call them the "completely despondent" mood or "fake good" mood or the most common mood of "indifference." There's no relaxed mood or contented mood or fun mood, "just irritated" and its variants.

I'd like to see my regular moods again, so I'm back to yoga. And it pleased me to see that Fussy posted a new installment of Yogabeans. If Aquaman can do yoga with one arm and Storm Shadow can do it with one foot, I certainly can do it with my one mood.

I'm doing it at home, because I can't find a class that will fit into the 90 seconds of free time that I eek out on a daily basis. I'm hoping to get the figured out, too. I think going to a class is way better than practicing while Bill asks me questions about what movies we should put on our Netflix queue.

Even if I don't get my old moods back, I like doing yoga. It makes me at least feel like I'm doing something good for myself.

Automatic

Before I had a kid, all of the cars I owned were manual transmissions.

I loved driving a standard. I loved clutching and shifting and being in charge.

Then I got pregnant with Mar and we bought an SUV that was an automatic. It took me a while to get used to it. I thought it was an aberration, that the next car would be a manual and I'd be back to shifting and clutching again.

I was wrong. I like the automatic. It's easier.

When Mar was just a tiny nut, I used to have to find the lost pacifier and plug it back into her crying gob at stop signs. This is much easier to do without having to worry about keeping the clutch in.

Now we have a car/truck/SUV/whatever that I like and want to keep for a long time.

I realized today one of the things that I really like about it is that it's an automatic.

It's not just because automatics shift smoother and are easier to operate than a manual transmission, it's that it's WAY easier to eat a Peppermint Patty while driving an automatic.

I like to nibble my Patties, not gobble them down while driving. This requires holding of the Patty for a long period of time and a gently rotation of it to maximize the snacking pleasure. This is not something that can be done if one needs hands free to operate a car.

So, I've given in to the simple joy of gassing and braking of the automatic transmission.

More talk, less snow

I wrote more about Margaret's snow day over here. I even admit that I'm glad that she has the Nintendo DS my brother and sister-in-law sent her for Christmas this year.

Their gifts arrived in the middle of January. I think this is great, because it takes the pressure off me sending my nephew's birthday present. His birthday was Jan. 11. I have had the gift since about Jan. 13. All that needs to happen now is for the magic gift-wrapping elves to come wrap them and put them in the box. Then the box can sit on my table for another week or so.

Then Zoom! off Colby's gifts will go.

Lickety split. Dearing style.

Snow day

This is what it looks like across my desk today ... littered with little kid stuff and a little kid.
She's not sick, Bill's not too sick today and neither am I ... but the school district is. Over night they decided that the 5 inches of snow and the threat of cold temperatures and forecast of more white stuff caused them to close all schools for the day.

And guess what?

It's sunny and relatively mild today. No bitter cold. No more snow. Just sun and wet streets.

We have been having a bad winter. But I think the district jumped the gun on this snow day. Hopefully, this will be as bad as it gets.

The face of flu

Bill actually perked up a bit last night and was hungry for dinner. I offered to heat up some soup and make some grilled sandwiches. He wanted KFC.

Bliech! I'm not a fan, but I went to KFC for Bill ... because he's got the flu ... and I'm trying to be all nice 'n' shit.

And how could I say no to such a sad, sick dude wearing a cold wash cloth on his head?

Not to mention he's been wearing those "Surrounded by nuts!" pants.