photos and our up coming family vacation

most of these pictures (if not all?) are from Oma (Ben's mom) during a parent-free weekend stay the kids spent with her.  I've (fairly) recently discovered instagram which,  in cahoots with facebook, renders this blog basically meaningless drivel that is out of date and usually just me ranting about how awful i am anyhow...

all that said, here are some pictures:

They're growing up fast, eh?

June is on the other side of the threshold staring at us with those creepy eyes that insist summer is here...
We're getting ready for our FAMILY VACATION (10th-16th).  Most of our family vacation attempts are at best, not awful, at worst really, really, swear-off-all-future-family-vacationing awful.  But here we are attempting it again.

We rented a house in Chincoteague (as Ben says, we spend our daily life practically camping in a cabin in the woods, why would we spend our vacation just as isolated - so we've rented a house in a town, a compromise between Ben's downtown city/hotel vacation dream, and my backpacking in wretched climates vacation dream).  I think we'll all be rather comfortable. And as another lessons learned, we're only packing a small portion of planned meals and we'll be having some of our family fun eating out (yes, that raises all sorts of nutritional concerns in me, but hey, lets live on the edge once in a while. A week of nothing but bacon will at least earn them shiny hair? - at least ben and i won't fight about it...)

In preparation for this fun family vacation, Esther and I are starting Misty of Chincoteague tonight.

Ok. well. hope your summer (or winter - stephen) is off to a good start. We'll see you around... hopefully...

Mother's Day and Others Day

I've taken to spending my short breaks at work (which i force myself to take every time my head feels like it may explode or my fist might "accidentally" try to punch someone in their GIANT head - ends up being about once every couple of hours) catching up on my google reader and posting to my [pathetic] blog.

Mother's day was good. Had first breakfast in bed with ben of tiramisu and strawberries. had second breakfast with my parents and brother and ceci. Ben took the kids to have lunch with his mom and I rode my motorcycle all over the place... my arms are actually sore (i know, isn't that so weird??).  Esther was super cute about mother's day. she was so excited to give me the present she made at preschool that i had to remind her a dozen times that it was a surprise and she couldn't tell me what it was. Also, she has insisted that today is Asa day and tomorrow is Esther day. Because they both need days where we tell them how special they are to us and get them special treats...

May has gone by in a flash so far. I guess that's what happens when you have event after event after event after event after... oh man, i'm soooo tired.  This weekend is the Jacob Backpacking trip to commemorate my cousin Jacob who died suddenly and tragically (dec 2010) and MAN, yep i'm still pissed...
Anyway. i'm looking forward to remembering him through blisters and woods and fires and sleeping under the stars.

After this weekend... i have nothing planned until mid-june. well, that's not entirely true. i plan on fixing up the trails in the woods around the house, making (and using) a campsite up on top the ridge behind the house, playing in the garden, taking the kids to get ice cream at Bonky's, sniffing ben's neck, and other such joyous undertakings...

if you need me, i'll be the dirt-smeared girl in 2-day old clothing at the top of the big walnut tree howling like a monkey and grinning like a loon.

recovery through reclusion...

the grants are in. the fairie festival is over. no surgical procedures on the horizon (at least until we can reschedule). 

and now for some hiding out at home with my smooch-faced babes and ben... 

monday was rough. i probably should have taken a sick day, but i just couldn't see a way around it. And honestly, if i'm going to try and shoot fire out of my eyes at everyone i come in contact with, it's probably better to be hiding out in my office all day then at home with my kids (whom i've already probably damaged beyond repair).  i've been trying to take it easy. re-collect the bits and pieces of myself that have fallen off here and there.  i've even been dressing particularly frumpy to go to work the last three days (ben says it's a backlash from costuming for fairie fest for three days straight).  

All in all the weekend was good. i made more $ than last year, but still not quite enough to justify the whole rigmarole of it. so this was my last festival as a vendor. i think i will save my talents for gifts within the family and  maybe small commissions if/when i can carve out the time.  on the upside i have lots of stock left for the babies that are all about to be born this summer. 

work is slowly killing me. i'm still trying to figure out a way to be happy here rather than trying to find a new job. but i'm just not sure how to do that. i'm toying with the idea of talking to my boss, but i should probably have a more concrete idea of what/how to present whatever it is i can come up with that will make work more tolerable. 

Once i can get copies from those who are good enough to take photos i'll post them here. in the mean time, there's a couple on facebook and one or two on instagram... 

if you don't see me in the next couple of weeks, i'm fine, just tired. 

who am i and where, what, how...

So...
Asa didn't get his teeth fixed. The night before we were supposed to take him to the hospital he came down with a cold which caused him to start vomiting... my kids are pukers. The slightest provocation has them hurling... for Asa this includes post nasal drip apparently.  The next morning i talked to the anesthesiologist who said we should probably reschedule because the puking could cause respiratory complications... so after getting all worked up, fighting with ben for a solid week (not just because of the stress of this, but more stresses you'll read about in a minute), it all amounted to nothing. and now we get to reschedule and go through it all again.

in other news...
i haven't be available much... as those of you who play words with friends or draw something with me, have already figured out.  Aside from trying to make stuff to sell at Fairie Festival (which is this coming weekend if you have a mind to come visit us), i have had not 1 but 3, yes THREE proposals at work.  They are all tied together, so guess it could be worse... they could be for completely separate things... however, as it was, it has been a nightmare.

in addition...
i've been spending the last 6 weeks running around the county trying to get the small encyclopedia of enrollment forms for Esther's kindergarten debut filled out by the myriad of county people, notary people, doctors, nurses, dentists, the pope, the president, and a small but prestigious penguin at the zoo... it's been a pain...

and today is mom's birthday... which i can't spend with her because i'm at the corporate office, enjoying a quiet lull between the technical and price proposals.  The techs are packed up and ready to send off (thank christ!) and now the finishing touches are being put on the other ones...

in short...
i've been a ball of stress. working lots of long hours at work, coming home to freak out about Asa's surgery (and then later his being sick and yakking on everything), and then after putting Esther and Mr. Pukey to bed, i got to stay up late and stab wool (and no less than seven fingers per project) with a sharp needle making weird things to try and sell this coming weekend.

I'm sure after this weekend i'll feel much better... no more proposals, no more fairie fest to prep for, no more papers to have signed (or stamped, or spit on), and Asa's surgery at least a couple weeks away...

can't wait to be able to breathe easy...

Asa and the Dreaded Dentistry Date

Asa is scheduled for oral surgery on April 23rd at 10:30am.  We have to starve him from midnight the night before, drive him to a hospital in Catonsville (starving and scared mind you), have him put under anesthesia for 2 hours and allow strangers to drill in his mouth.

Needless to say, i'm terrified. I'm so anxiety-ridden just thinking about it that i want to bang my head against the wall.  The reason we're doing  this is fairly obvious, his teeth are riddled with cavities. Esther's are fine, it's just Asa's... we brush his teeth every day and even floss him. it's something about his enamel not being very strong but how he should grow out of that...

Is there anyone out there who has dealt with this or something similar? Please tell me we'll be fine, we'll survive this... that i won't end up a shaking ball of nerves and end up backhanding the anesthesiologist...

psuedo-bi-polar?

You know, working in the mental health industry i should probably know these things and certainly know folks (hi jesy) who know about these things whom i could no doubt get some distinct answers from.

So are people either bi-polar or not? does it surface at some point (like women in their early thirties?) are there phases like in the spring people are more prone to mood swings?

Either way, like i said, i've been rockin' some serious emotional tsunamis lately. Yay for my family (poor lambs).  I went and saw the truly amazing and wonderful acupuncturist yesterday. I had my most intense session yet, i swear i hallucinated at one point (haha, get it? point?).  (Look up "100 meetings," which "calls in the ancestors for review of life preceding death")   anyhow it was crazy-town and awesome and for the first time in about two or three weeks, i feel like i'm looking out through my own eyes rather than trailing somewhere behind or ahead of myself un-grounded and at the mercy of the march winds...

The other thing i just discovered is that fish oil has mood stabilizing effects! how freakin' awesome is that? So i'm chowing down on fishy gummy vitamins. yum!

In other, and totally fantastic news, I'M GOING TO BE AN AUNTIE!! (again) twice over... My brother and sister-in-law are due Aug 23rd. AND j (my hetero-life-mate/twin-from-another-mother/best-cousin-ever) & een are due Sept 9th.  So, i'm super excited to have two babies (THAT AREN'T MINE) to squeeze, sniff, and make stupid faces at. (did i just end my sentence in a preposition? yes i did!)

ok. so i guess that's enough dawdling... i should probably get back to work... uninspiring, silly, stupid, political, social-anxiety inducing work. wish me luck.

Happy First Day of Spring!

Happy First Day of Spring Everyone!

Well, that is i hope yours is happy. mine's turning into a craptastic day. I've said it before and i'll say it again (and i highly doubt anyone i know from work reads this so hopefully this will have no repercussions) I HATE ELECTRONIC RECORDS!!!!

work is sucking the life out of me at present. I just can't seem to get past all the bullshit... I think that i'd be happier with a job where i get to be locked into a tiny room alone and write boring manuals and step by step instructions or oh, and what a thought this is, A PROPOSAL!   well i do get to write proposals, but i also have to deal with the other craptastic-day creating b.s. too and that's what sucks. I feel like i spend all day at work fighting with people and then i go home and fight with the kids and fight with ben and believe it or not, I AM SICK OF FIGHTING! i know, i know, you never thought you'd see the day when scappy-wee me would be tired of fighting but it's true.

The other part of it is i feel as though i cannot get on top of anything. i can't stay on top of the dishes or laundry or house work of any kind. I can't eat the produce before it turns to slime in the crisper, i can't read everything in my google reader, i can't cross everything off my to-do list, i can seem to remember to buy everything i need to buy at the grocery store (always forgetting important things like toilet paper and coffee but buying yet another case of expired mayonnaise). My bathroom looks like a band of gorillas lives there. My children are always snotty of nose, filthy of face, and now that spring has arrived their feet are almost always black from running around without shoes on. I just can't seem to escape my backwoods, hillbilly upbringing... and neither can my kids...

I can't keep my house, i can't manage to accomplish enough at work so that my stomach doesn't turn to knots on the drive in anticipating the meetings, conference calls, arguments, and mountains of tedious sh*t i have to do before going home to my allergic, at-his-wits-end, exhausted husband and two insane young children.   I feel like everywhere i go someone is yelling at me... telling me they need more from me...

i don't know what to do. i don't think a new job would fix my problem because i'd still need to learn to draw boundary lines between home and work and set up reasonable goals at work and perhaps not feel so responsible for everything...

i guess it's just hard when you feel like you're failing at everything... failing at work, failing at being a wife, failing at being a mama, at being a daughter, a good friend...

Oblivia strikes again...

Springs fits and starts have begun. If i were to do a character sketch of who i think spring would be if she were a person. She'd definitely be a she, and she'd be HORMONAL and bipolar. laughing one minute, full of creativity and energy and joy and crying pitifully the next feeling utterly hopeless... This is how i feel in spring. I'm literally a crazy person.

It's been a weird few weeks. I keep forgetting things that i remembered just a moment before, i chopped off a small hunk of my left pointer finger (it's pretty gross), and one minute i'm: wall papering the house in packing paper and drawing all sorts of things, baking a quiche, dancing around in a tutu, singing out of tune but joyfully, and the next minute i'm: weeping in a pile of dirty laundry... 

oh well. i guess that's how it goes for some of us. I'd like to ask folks who i've come in contact with recently to forgive me though. as much as you can at least... there's really no excuse except oblivia seems to have taken over as the strongest of my tri-fold personalities. 

in the mean time, while we're waiting for normal me to return, not too much is going on. work is kicking along as usual. busy and slightly dissatisfying but i guess that's normal. the kiddos are doing great. and normal i guess. though they had their first dentist visit and yikes... may require taking Asa to an oral surgeon... but more on that later.  ben is ben. the hollow is trying to wake up for spring but it's so hard when it's so cozy under the covers and the alarm clock just isn't ringing very loudly. 

I can't wait for CSA to start again. for trampoline weather, for short-sleeves and hoola-hoop weather... for canoe rides and frozen bananas. 

while i'm day dreaming of warmth, here are some pictures to keep you occupied.

The Monster Calendar... Good luck with printing... :P

My folks and brother in 1979? (before Libby existed)

stop looking at me like that!

Asa's birthday post

Asa turned 3 on January 10th. We had another spaghetti dinner but this time at my parents house. He asked for chocolate chip cookies instead of a cake. So made a plate of cookies (with real chocolate and sugar - though not as much as the recipe called for) and we had several flavors of rice dream ice cream. When i asked him a week ago what he wanted for his birthday he said "Chocolate chip cookies, ice cream, and a new gun". So we also bought him a new gun. Actually several people got him a new gun.  I bought him a bubble gun which is just a bubble machine that you hold like a gun. (i'll post a video of him playing in the bubbles). My folks got him a wooden toy replica of an old flint lock pistol (and a fake coon skin cap to match AND a radio-flyer style covered wagon). And my brother made him a rubber band gun (i didn't get any pictures of this, but i will). He had a great birthday i think. And we've been taking advantage of the mild winter and throwing both kids in the covered wagon and pulling them along the drive way to collect acorn caps and shoot at pretend bad guys and food.

i've been slacking and still have yet to write Asa's birthday letter, AND Esther's is long over due now. I feel guilty about it. But not guilty enough to do much about it.

\Here are some pictures to keep you occupied.

January, my old frienemy

So. January. End of...
We're enemies,  January Through mid-March. Or maybe more like frienemies. I think i like winter. i like the idea of winter. i love snow. i even like feeling cold (sort of). But the 8 weeks between the middle of January to the middle of March, is the slowest, most awkward, most bipolar inducing 8 weeks of the year for me. So say hello to one of my many alter-egos "Blubby" (a combination of blubbering and Libby.  Both cause i feel fat these months (shut up) and because i am a whiny blubbering fool.  Other alter egos include "Oblivia" (spacey and slightly hyper Libby), "Libidia" (combination of libido and libby, this also usually involves alcohol) , and "The Liberator" (super hero libby and sometimes trouble maker but in a wholesome way).

A couple years ago i decided that if i plan adventures for Jan, Feb, and March i will have things to look forward to and distract me enough to help get me through the winter without going to the super dark place and making everyone miserable and possibly greeting each person i came into contact with on a daily basis with a punch in the ear (if your so tall i can't reach your ear, i'd likely go for the groin, so no short jokes).

January's Distraction - So last weekend we had the joyous adventure of THE MIDWINTER BALL! The MidWinter Ball is a huge contra dance put on by the Baltimore Folk Music Society. This year they got one of my all-time favorite contra bands to play, Perpetual E-motion.  If you're not a contra dancer or you're a music snob (like my husband) you may not be that into them. But let me tell you, they are REALLY fun to dance to.  Also, the theme of this years dance was "Steampunk". Which, at first, seems very odd. But after some goofing around with costumes, turned out to be a fantastic theme!  So we all dressed up. I say we, because jesy, casey, mom, and myself all went together. So that was January's adventure. I'm not sure how i'm going to fair over the next two weeks while January comes to an agonizingly slow close. But Restaurant week in bmore starts this weekend so maybe food will do the trick.

(photo courtesy of ian)

February's Distraction - So far my scheduled distraction is driving up to pittsburgh (with ben and the kiddos) to celebrate my sister's birthday with her and her husband. Perhaps if we're lucky, it'll be a fun trip with little hassle and lots of sleeping children in the car.  I'm also hoping to schedule ben and my baby-free get away during either february or april, we haven't nailed down a time yet though.  We were considering not planning anything and just driving where-ever the wind blows us and sleeping in the car. you know, for old-times sake. and cause we're poor-ish.

March's Distraction - I bought a plane ticket to Boston. to see Kit again. No better way to round off the winter blues session with a fellow winter-bluer.  If you recall, last February i went to Boston to see Kit for the first time in TEN years. Determined to ensure that it's not another TEN years before i see her again, the gods have been selling cheap airfare through jetblue. So i bought a round trip ticket to Boston for a grand total of $89.

That will likely do it for the winter's distractions. Hopefully, the little things will help to. like doing yoga with jesy this thursday, taking ceci out for her birthday date, driving to the accountants office for the 3rd time in a week to do our taxes because we forgot yet something else...

so how are you this lonely and rainy winter?

The Incredible, Fantastic, Oh-so-creative, Unca-EEEEEN

Firstly, i want to thank Unca-EEEN for my christmas presents. He made new headers for my blog, 5 different ones to be exact. One of which you can see RIGHT NOW! They're wonderful and amazing and i'm so stinking excited about them. 

Secondly, the pic here shows you the very amazing Christmas present he made for his Esther. This dry-erase board has our faces as magnets so we can be anything we want to be. This has been the only thing that makes our poor sad, sick esther feel better these last couple of days. She draws and draws and draws. So thank you Unca-EEEEEN. We love you!

 

Christmas 2011

The little ones are sick. Double ear infections for both of them. Fevers, ralphing, in a lot of pain... quite miserable.  Esther was sick on christmas day and the poor thing was opening presents in between the chills and the ralphing. Asa got sick yesterday. They're living on toast, oj, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen...

Other than that our holiday has been a good one. Our house is now crammed with very small and weird toys, not to mention clothes, boxes, FOOD (please come eat all this food!!), and those tiny medicine cups with that disgusting sticky residue crusting on the bottom.

Hopefully, we'll be back up and running at normal speed come this weekend, as Tita and Badu are coming to celebrate the new year and dad's 60th birthday.