Now I know my ABC's...

Baby Genius! Tyoma knows his ABC's! If you ask him a letter of the alphabet, he can point to it! Wow! Initially, I was suspicous when Mom told me, but no longer! He's memorized the alphabet and the numbers 1-10. Cool beans!

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Laundry Room…

Tennisfiend took off at four this morning for a trip to the Russian consulate in NYC. I awoke late to penetrating shrieks from Tyoma, who obviously intended to solicit anyone in the apartment complex to remove him from his crib, since I was taking so long. Gobbling breakfast and slurping a pint of coffee usually settles well with me but today, bleh, I felt swept away by nausea. Fortunately, I recovered quickly and was more or less okay for the rest of the day, although high winds caused the building to sway microscopically, making me feel a bit seasick.

In the evening I worked on my ever-evolving project of making learning cards for Tyoma (more on that another time). I liked my new Fiskars paper trimmer and enjoyed immersing myself into a project, which was timely since two hours of flight delays kept Tennisfiend away. When he finally got in at 10, he surprised me with a thoughtful present from the Metropolitan Art Museum. How sweet!!!

Tennisfiend loved the Metro and we made plans to visit sometime during the summer. Yay!

Oooo! I almost forgot, here’s my funny story:

While Tyoma played in the living room with his new books, I dashed to the laundry room to pick up a clean load of laundry (it’s 20 feet from our apartment). When I returned, I discovered that Tyoma had locked the deadbolt. We have safety knobs on the doors to keep him from escaping; nevertheless he fiddles with the deadbolt.

Anyway, I’m in my gym pants, stocking feet, with a light clingy tee. The wind outside is buffeting the building at 40 mph, its 30 degrees outside and the hike to the main office is about 400 yards (uphill). “Tyoma!” I call sweetly, “Unlock the door and let Mommy iii-nn!” “Tyoma, let Mommy iii-n. Unlock the dooo-oor!” I rattled the door know and crooned to him for another few minutes, all the while debating between the freezing walk to the main office or being murdered by the resident serial killer in 688 who will undoubtedly be the only one home in the entire building. After a total of four minutes, Tyoma unlocked the deadbolt and greeted me with a self-satisfied chortle.

Last Day of Winter

Today is the last day of winter and I’m sure that means no more snow, sleet, ice pellets, blizzards or snow squalls. I’d like to share my experiences with winter weather.


What you learn after 20 days of winter in New Hampshire...

1. You might notice that your car’s steering wheel is arctic freakin’ freezing first thing in the morning. Sure, you anticipated the snow and ice removal, but you never imagined that the steering wheel would be cold enough to make your hands ache and turn blue. Next time bring your awesome Pearl Izumi gel cycling gloves, your fingers will be super toasty! 
2. If you leave your Pearl Izumi gel cycling gloves it the car over night, they will freeze solid and be even colder than the steering wheel.
3. Defrosting your Pearl Izumi gel cycling gloves in the microwave is not recommended.
4. Always clean the snow off the top of your car. It becomes a projectile missile as you drive and will undoubtedly give a native New Mexico driver a heart attack when it hurtles towards her SUV at 30 mph.
5. On really cold days, salt and ice blend into grimy viscous slime. This slime will obscure your windshield entirely. Going through a “tank” of wiper fluid is a real possibility.
6. When the weather has mixed snow and rain, pop your windshield wipers up off the windshield to keep them from freezing in place. It takes forever to thaw them out, which really sucks after you’ve been slimed by that jerk in a red mustang.
7. When the Weather Channel states that it is a balmy 37 degrees outside, you should note the wind-chill factor before taking the trash out in your sweat pants and slippers.
8. You really should wear shoes when you take out the trash. The slime will eat your slippers.
9.  All the travel sanitizing wipes squirreled away in your car will freeze solid. Sitting on them to defrost them will give you a really cold bottom. BTW, your Purell hand sanitizer will get slushy and the teeny Lysol can you bought at Wal-Mart will loose its pressure.
10. You’ll love the snow anyway,  since big fluffy snowflakes are crazy beautiful.

Holy Mackerel!

Okay, has located a Russian Market. I'm catching the next flight back to New Mexico!!! Just joshing. This smoked beauty was Tennisfiend's lunch today along with Russian sauerkraut (they make it with cranberries!) and imported Russian sweets.

"What was so hard about that?"

Today I found the Nashua Mall. Easy peasy. Someone should point out the differnce between Nashua Drive and Nashua Street to google maps. Anyway, the concept of a "mall" here differs from my Southwestern concept of "mall."

I anticipated a large indoor collection of stores, much like the Pheasant Lane Mall (you know, like Simon malls), but instead I found a cluster of seperate outdoor buildings bordered by a huge parking lot. Totally cool, but not what I was expecting.

I loved the closeness of all the great stores, especially the baby stores. Tyoma is officially a toddler, but Babies R’Us still has cool clothes and toys. I treated him to a cool educational toy to compensate for the batch of toys abandoned at the last minute in New Mexico. I should have picked him up some little gloves while I was at LL Bean, but I felt tired.

After the mall trip, I detoured to Lincoln Park for a little outing. I met another mother, my age (yay!) with a little boy Tyoma’s age. Tyoma was a good head taller than her son, James, and T seemed like a sumo wrestler compared to J's petite frame, but the little guy had a killer grip. He grabbed Tyoma’s fingers and squeezed so hard that James’ knuckles turned white. Tyoma was more astonished than hurt, and James looked rather placid, as if his superior knowledge of other kids was worth the ten pounds Tyoma had on him. I really liked Amy, who gave me her contact info and a few recommendations for daycare. Cool.

Two Hour Tour

I spent two hours this morning looking for the "Nashua Mall," only to find that google maps had it all wrong.

My trip looked super-easy from internet. Left here, right there, 101a this, Main Street that and viola! The reality was far grimmer. It took me an hour to realize that 101a magically manifests itself as a number of streets, many of which are not clearly labeled and a few of which take convoluted and unexpected turns. Once I finally found the “Canal Street” branch of 101a, I drove by “Nashua” drive (twice) before turning around and pulling into a shabby parking lot that was indicated as belonging to the mall. The lot looked more like a lot adjacent to the border crossing at Juarez than a lot to a classy East Coast mall.

Lampposts on every row bore intimidating "PRIVATE PARKING: ALL OTHERS WILL BE TOWED AT OWNERS EXPENSE" signs. Perplexed, I drove up and down the parking lot looking for “MALL PARKING FOR CLUELESS MIDDLE AGED WOMEN, HAVE A NICE DAY! ” signs. Finally, I located a sign declaring “BAE PERSONEL PARKING ONLY.” I left in disgust.

Disoriented, I naturally took off in wrong direction, winding up in Some Strange Town. Hmmph. During the trip, Tyoma’s complaints reached an aggravating crescendo despite the snacks I gave him. I should have been suspicious when he became suddenly very quiet, but I was too relieved to care. Unsurprisingly, he fell into a deep black sleep, which lasted just long enough to guarantee that he would skip today’s nap.

After arriving home, feeding baby and consulting the internet, I realized that the directions that google gave me were whack. Why it sent me to a parking lot off Nashua drive I’ll never know. (E.T.A. Nashua Mall is off of Nashua Street, not Nashua Drive; google maps confused the two addresses). 

After frazzled nerves were mended on both sides of our generations, Tyoma and I took off to find the Pheasant Lane Mall. Big signs abounded. Despite a wrong turn or two, we made it in a half an hour (mapquest says 21 minutes). We celebrated by gorging on Chick Fil-a sandwiches and waffle fries. My bright-eyed baby was clearly impressed by the merry-go-rounds, slides, play yards, miniature train station and row after row of colorful kiosks featuring breakable items. We passed by a bigheaded, slightly creepy Easter Bunny who waved at us. Tyoma looked at me with astonishment, as if to say “You’re freaking, kidding me, right?!”  

I came home feeling very satisfied, as if I had just handed in a killer composition to a sniffy professor who did not appreciate my genius. Heh.

Still Recovering

Still recovering from the flu that zapped mom, though not as tired as yesterday. Picked up monster vacuum from Sears, laundry and did some cooking. Moongate water aggravation--they turned off our water!!! I'm pretty unhappy since no water means that our pool pump could die. Engaged in some fist shaking at Moongate water, asking who's responsible, finally called my realtor who gave me the name of owner of company. The  blithe girl at Moongate Water actually followed up. Turns out leak was out in street not at our place. Duh. She should have told me this Monday!

Isty Bitsy Flu Bug

I'm going to die if I read this once more!!! Six times today! My day started out swell with dual shopping trips to Sears and Market Basket in the snow. Tyoma protested me putting his hood up by stiffening up like a board. Why bother with the hood when the end result is still a face full of snow?

Aww, well. After I stuffed my astonished snow covered child in his carseat, I was overcome by fatigue. I still had to drive home and haul him up two flights of stairs. Sigh. During the tiny one's nap, I watched Feast. It was a surprisingly good movie for a lowbudget horror/comedy. It was very gory at the beginning, and with an upset stomach, my tummy lurched a few times, but I soldiered through. It was damn funny. Unexpected! BTW, Henry Rollins, you sexy beast, thank you for owning your grey hair and for being a convincing actor. :) Super campy!

New Car!

It's pretty much a given that we need to get a new car, but with everything going on, I just didn't have the energy to lug the little guy around town while E looked for the newest member of the family.  He was so happy when I said, "Go on with out me, just give me a call before you buy anything."

He came home at lunch with a blue Camry, eyes aglow. I trotted down with squirmer, asked E how he liked it and trying to hide his jubilance, he said, "It's really nice."  I didn't want to keep him in suspense, so I said, "Cool. Let's get it!"

He was so happy and excited!  He drove back, made a down payment and scheduled car pick up for tomorrow. Unbelievable! We pick our brand new car up tomorrow. Smokey Joe has a sibling. Yay!

My Totally Insane Day Before the Big Airplane Trip

 Just thinking about today makes my fingers jam up! Here’s a quick and easy chronology of my day:

I called Hertz at 7:00 a.m. to confirm car rental for the airport trip. Hertz goofed up my reservation, resulting in telephone crankiness. Nicole at Hertz sweetly squared everything away, nevertheless.

At 8:00 am, I dashed off to pick up rental car with Tyoma in tow. Hilton parking lot was JAMMED full of cars. I found the last space in the lot. Turns out, the Western Pecan Growers Association was having its annual meeting this morning. Jolly farmers in plaid shirts were everywhere.

The rental car, a monstrous Ford Expedition, partially blocked traffic in the lot since I parked illegally behind B.T. to install the car seat. Tyoma squalled as I fiddled with the seat, simultaneously freaked out by pecan growers in big deisel trucks inching around the Expedition and the strangeness of the super huge rental car’s interior.

We got home after 9:00 to find that the cleaning crew from Merry Maids consisted not of the three girls I was promised, but by one stressed out twenty-two year old named “Memorie.” I immediately quipped, “I bet everyone remembers your name.” Instantly I felt like an ass, so I quickly added, “Sorry, you must hear that a thousand times.” We had a little laugh (she probably hears that a lot, too). Having a new person in the house pushed Tyoma over the edge. He was inconsolable for the next twenty minutes.

The next few hours bounced between comforting Tyoma, packing up stuff and calling Mom, who had gotten ill. To compound matters, Dad had been selected for jury duty this morning, so he was not able to help Mom out as expected. Around one, Mom was still feeling sick so we cancelled her trip. It will work out better for her to come at another time anyway, without the insane rush.

At 1:30 the carpet cleaners came and Tyoma officially declared his nap skipped with lusty, heart-wrenching wails. Memorie was still cleaning house. To spare everyone the agonized shrieks of my son, I hauled Tyoma off to the post office where I mailed three final boxes of book to NH.

I was the mother with “that uncontrollable child” in line. I ran another errand or two and arrived home in time to write the carpet guy a check and to wave farewell to Memorie—she had been at our place for almost six hours (with ample tip in hand).

Ten minutes later, I realized that Memorie had not finished cleaning all of the household’s cabinets. I felt so sorry for her, but darn it, Merry Maids charged me an arm and a leg for the cleaning and they needed to complete the job or give me money. Another cranky phone call instantly made me $100 richer. All I had to do was drop off a check for the price adjustment before 5:00 (30 minutes from phone call). On the bright side, Tyoma is now less freaked by the Expedition.

At 6:15 I realized that I seriously underestimated luggage capacity, especially with Mom not coming. My carry on items were so overloaded that I had to leave one of his new travel toys behind and pack another in the checked luggage. Curses! Fortunately his cool magnetic gear thingy fit fine! Other toys and clothing items from the checked luggage were left behind, too—everything was way too heavy!!!

Near 7:00, I remembered that I was going to freeze my butt off sleeping on an air mattress in the sunroom. I had to relocate my bed since the carpets were still wet and smelly from the earlier cleaning. I frantically called Ewbliette and asked her to rescue me. She brought a blanket and a fluffy animal print comforter. Heh. Too bad my suitcases were so full, I’ve always liked that comforter….

It was so good to see her and say goodbye (sob!). It was even better that she helped me pack the last two suitcases and weigh everything (twice!). After she left, I seemed to find innumerable tiny things to occupy myself with until 10, when I passed out.