Blizzard 2013

More to come later, but a during video and an after video:

I took this one around 11:30,  right when the wind seemed to be at it's worst.  We didn't lose power, but I have no idea how we escaped that! 

Just a video of people starting the clean up effort.   This is my least favorite part,  it will be a week before the parking lot is actually clear from snow.

Only in New England

I took this picture on Monday when it was in the 60's.   It was my Little Man's first time in the swings.   He wasn't quite sure at first and then he loved it!  His little legs were kicking up a storm.

Fast Forward to Wednesday - Baby Girl is outside making snowmen and snow angels.  Seriously, these pictures were taken about 48 hours apart!

snow!

We woke up to the first snowfall this morning.   It's raining now and the world will be a big slushy mess in an hour or so,  but it was nice to see the snow while it lasted.   The first time it snows is always fun.   Then it stops being fun and I start checking out real estate listings south of the Mason Dixon line. 

Because the Gilmore Girls can always say it best:

well that didn't work so well...

I didn't finish the photo-a-day.  I had thought about just posting the rest of them in one fell swoop,  but I decided against it.  I didn't finish it,  and that's okay.   I may try another one in a few months just so I can actually get one completed.   I'd like to wait until spring though,  there will be more photo opportunities when the world is coming back to life.   I am pleased with what I was able to accomplish in this photo challenge.   I think my favorite one was Angles. 

I don't know what happened in the past week,  but life all of the sudden got crazy busy.    Andrew and I ran our last race of the season (ahem.... it was my first race of the year, but to be fair,  I was pregnant until June 25th and then I had a newborn!).    Andrew was able to do two 5Ks,  the Falmouth Road Race with is 7.1 miles,  and a 10K this year.   I put the bug in his ear to do a half marathon in the spring, we'll see if I can talk him into it or not!

I didn't do so well on Sunday;  I only beat 14 people.   But to be fair to myself,  I am not a fast runner and I broke my personal record for a 10K.   And I finished.  I beat everyone who didn't get up and race 6.2 miles!  Andrew of course ran annoyingly fast.

So.... Sandy.   I don't even have anything smarmy to say -  that was a nasty storm.

Tonight is Trick or Treating and I have a very excited Tigger ready to go out and get her parents more candy! 

lousy Smarch weather

 It snowed on Saturday and it was 75 degrees on Monday.   Only in New England. 

Baby Girl and I went to the park today but I wouldn't let her go on the swings because I didn't want to make small talk with the other mother who was also there last night.   DON'T TALK TO ME!  Two days in to a warm spell (which I do believes ends tomorrow) and I'm already sick of the park.  No, I don't want to push you in the swing for 25 minutes.   I do, since I'm the Best Mother In the World,  but I'm grumpy about it.  Kid needs to learn how to pump.

Spring!

It was in the 60's today and will be tomorrow.  It is going back down to the 40's on Friday,  but the seeds of spring are here. SOON I WILL BE WEARING FLIP FLOPS AGAIN!!!

 

Daylight savings starts this weekend.  Life is good. 

how many flip flops can I put in one blog post?

3.  (I totes just pinned that necklace too.   My birthday is coming!)

Then again,  Baby Girl doesn't quite understand daylight savings time.  She wakes up anytime between 5:45 and 6:15 these days.... which means on Sunday we could very well be greeted at 4:45 in the morning.  And when I say "we" I do mean "Andrew" because I will totally use the pregnancy card and stay in bed longer.  I will use any tricks in my bag to not have to deal with a toddler and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse before 5am.

Can I still call her a toddler?  She moves up to the pre-school room on Monday.  Is she officially a pre-schooler now? 

We signed up for Netflix again to catch up on the first season of Downton Abbey.  I really like it,  but I was bummed to find out the entire first season is like 7 episodes.    Lame. 

Irene

Pour me something tall and strong
make it a hurricane before I go insane
Alan Jackson, featuring Jimmy Buffett

Irene made it up the coast, weakening all the way. It's still a category 1, though my particular town is only in a tropical storm watch. From what I gather, we're still in for a windy day, but it shouldn't be too bad. Our electricity has flickered a few times and it went out for about 30 seconds, but so far it's been okay. Granted it's still before 10am and things could change, but I'm hoping for the best.

Yesterday was humid and rainy and blah and we completely ran out of things to do after naptime, so we packed up the child, drove all the way around the world to avoid the traffic from the Zac Brown Band and Kenny Chesney concert at Gillette, and went to Monkey Joe's to pass some time. Kids 2 and under are only $5, so it was a bargain that we couldn't pass up. For $5 she can run around and go on bouncy houses as long as she wants. There were two smaller ones dedicated to the 3 and under crowd which she LOVED, and we let her go on some of the bigger ones too. No one over the age of 12 is allowed on the bouncy houses, unless you are accompanying a kid under the age of 4. We still needed to go on them with Baby Girl, but I'm pretty sure by the time she is 3 she will have no problem going on them by herself. On her 3rd birthday, the price goes up to $10, but honestly, it's still a good deal. She made it an hour and 20 minutes before she had enough and we'll probably get 2 hours out of her when it's time to start paying the $10. It's a half hour away and is a madhouse of screaming children, but it's so worth the money.

They even have free wifi and an area for parents with comfy chairs and a flat screen TV! Of course it's beyond crowded on a rainy day before a hurricane, but I was okay with that. Baby girl loved it, we got out of the house for a few hours, and she was so tired by the time we got home, she fell asleep immediately.

I will definitely be going back during those long cold boring winter weekends!

suck it Irene!

Not that there is ever a good time for a hurricane to come through, but this was a particularly bad time. My father's boat is still in the water, so clearly something needed to be done about that. However my father was not in a position to be able to take today off from work - but I was. So I burned a vacation day to go down the cape to take my father's boat from one harbor to another so it could be pulled and stored for a few days. Sounds easy enough, right?

In theory it was easy. But I also did a ton of work today. I drove to the cape, met my mother at the marina so we could leave a car there. We drove to the harbor where the boat is moored, and I rowed out to the boat, brought the boat back in from the morning (towing the rowboat), but the docks were full of people trying to get their boats out of the water at the public ramp. So I took someone's empty slip, and then rowed the rowboat back to the dock where it belongs. We took the boat to the marina where it was going to be pulled, took everything off the boat and carried it back up to the car. We drove back to where the mooring is so I could properly secure the rowboat. We went to my grandmother's house to take everything, all the outdoor furniture, tables, pool supplies, etc and put it in the garage. We went BACK to get the rowboat, and I rowed from the dock where it is kept, down to the bottom of our street. I pulled it out of the water, dragged it through the marsh, to where my mother was waiting for me with a dolly and we dragged the dolly back up the street to the house (we only had to stop about 5 times to rest - that thing was heavy!) Oh, and I went to Walmart to buy some food and water (no flashlight to be had!) and some more toys for Baby Girl since I think we will be stuck in the house for a few days! I also brought the 5 gallon gas tank up to be filled and then had to carry it back and forth between the car and the pump.

I am EXHAUSTED. This hurricane has kicked my ass and it hasn't even hit North Carolina yet.

And let's review: I own neither a house nor a boat.

I probably should admit that in the middle of the day my mother and I ended up at the yacht club for lunch and to sit on the beach and take a break. And what a break it was, I enjoyed that hour at the beach more than I did any beach trip all summer!!

And after it was all done, I drove back home and was met by my daughter who had a VERY stinky bum. Mama got home just in time to change a diaper! I have the best timing...

oh what a night

Tonight has not been an easy night in the Casa de O'G. Baby Girl is so whiney. I consider myself to be a fairly easygoing parent, and I'd like to think I have patience when dealing with my toddler. But I cannot stand whining - it goes right through me and sets me on edge. Tonight has been one whiney freak out after another. The only thing that made her stop crying was putting on Dora, so right now the Map is singing his annoying song.

I had to take tomorrow off so I can go down the cape and bring my father's boat to the marina to be pulled, lest hurricane Irene eat it up and spit it out somewhere in Mashpee. Because that's how I like to spend my precious vacation days... And speaking of this stupid hurricane, if I have to drive 60 miles in the remnants of a hurricane on Monday morning, I'm going to lose it. Irene better be somewhere over Maine or the Atlantic at 6am on Monday!

chugga chugga choo choo!

yeah. There's a "choo choo" episode of Dora on right now.

Come on, Vamanos!

I gave in and let Baby Girl watch ONE episode of Dora. (Don't tell my mother that the TV is on during daylight hours. She may disown me). I told myself it was because BG hasn't been feeling great lately and this is a nice thing to do for her. But in reality I'm letting her do it because the opportunity of sitting on the couch directly in front of the AC sounded way too good to pass up.

I'm a good mother though. Really.

It's really hot. as in REALLY HOT. Hotter than the northern most edges of the arctic circle in which I reside normally gets. And tomorrow it's going to be even more hot. Fun. My little AC can barely handle these temperatures.

BUT I LOVE THEM!!! HEAT!!! SUN!!!!!

Yes, I sit in a cube 9 hours a day, but it's an air conditioned cube!

It's a grand old flag

Per usual (at least for this year) today is cloudy, a smidge bit foggy, and in the low 70's in Olde Cape Cod.

In the past 48 hours I have gone to the beach, gone in the pool twice, gone to Smitty's, read my book the hammock, eaten practically every meal from the grill, and forgot to reapply my sunblock. I've been avoiding the yacht club so I don't spend any more money, but other than that I've pretty much done everything there is to do and I can go home now.

The weather isn't cooperating to give us a super 4th, but in the immortal, but very overused words of Dave Matthew's Band..

celebrate we will because life is short, but sweet for certain

4th of July Family Picture, 2008

Here comes the sun

ha ha ha, just kidding. At least if you live in New England, the sun isn't coming any time soon. We did have a brief period of sunshine this past Saturday. Baby Girl was at my parents' house while Andrew and I were running and when we came back we found them on the little porch. It's probably 3 feet wide and 10 feet long. My mother said my girl was running up and down the porch yelling "I outside!! I outside!!". She was giddy when I came back and saw them. The poor kid had been couped up all week, and even though she was cooped up all winter, it was more painful last week. When it's 4 degrees out you don't have a choice but to stay inside. But when it's 50 degrees and you could go outside (play bubbles outside Mama?) except it's raining cats and dogs for the 7th day in a row... well that's just about unbearable. Baby girl now just looks outside and says "no go outside, it's WAINING outside" over and over.

We only have another week of cold and rain. It's cool, I've only been counting the days to Memorial Day since February...

sad panda.

After the winter and spring that we have had, we better have 90 and sunny every day in July.

rainy day

Today is such a dark dismal dreary day. If it was a weekend, it would totally be a stay in your pajamas all day and watch movies day. That is, if you don't have an almost-two year old who is insane and would never dream of sitting still for more than 5 seconds.

As dark and depressing as this weather is, at least it is seasonally appropriate. April showers bring May flowers and all that jazz (and May flowers bring Pilgrims! HA!). It's not snowing anymore - and I'm almost ready to say we won't see any more snow. Well - we won't see any more NEW snow, we do still have the dirty, sandy, icy, nasty remnants of 8 feet tall mounds of snow.

Hopefully this rain will bring on some more green. Our grass is actually green now, but all the buds and flowers seem to be late this year - probably because of the insanely cold March we had, but what do I know about such things!

If you happen to live in New England, or any other place that's rainy and dark and dreary today, here's a little bit of color to cheer you up:

brrr

It's almost April! Why is it still SO COLD? My poor kid got a taste of playing outside after a very long, cold, and snowy winter, and now all she wants to do is play outside. But today it was 30 degrees outside - not really appropriate weather for frolicking in the park.

"Mama! Go outside!"
"Sorry Baby Girl, it's too cold"
"too cold?"
"yup, it's too cold. Maybe next week will be warmer"
"next week"
"yup"
"NO NEXT WEEK MAMA! OUTSIIIIIIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

We all wish we could go out Baby Girl. Unfortunately, I'm not down with turning into an icicle.

When is it going to be spring weather!!! Also, when am I supposed to start running if I can't get outside without the fear of frostbite? I can do a dance to the sun god if that will help. I'm really good at the short uncoordinated white girl dance.

It's coming... I know it

Spring has to come around again, right? I mean at some point during the calendar year of 2011 it WILL be warmer - at least I think this is the case. In the middle of winter it's so hard to comprehend the thermometer hitting anything about 40. But I think we're getting there... there hasn't been any real accumulation with snow in eight days (EIGHT DAYS! That's longer than a week!), it's still light out till 5:15ish, daylight savings is less than 2 months away.

I just don't know how much longer I can deal with this. This is usually the time of year I start perusing real estate listings in North Carolina and dreaming of ways of getting jobs in Charlotte.

I just want Spring. I want 50-60 degree weather, I want to be able to take a walk after dinner, I want to take Baby Girl to the park, I want to see the grass, not 3 feet of snow, I want leaves on the trees and birds chirping!

Last year we had this freakish heat wave in March. It was around 90 degrees for a few days and then dropped down to the 80's for a few more days. It was a nice break, but the best part about it was the trees bloomed early because of it. We had trees with actual leaves on them in early April. That generally doesn't happen until May around here. Fingers crossed it can happen again!!

This too shall pass

I never really thought about that saying before I was in the middle of the awful baby blues, dealing with an infant and trying to go at least 2 hours without crying. My mother said it to me, and it became my mantra until things got better, around 6 weeks.

Anyway - this too shall pass. This time - not baby related.

The weather.

I spent 3 hours in the car today. That's how great my commute was. And had my boss not let me go about an hour and 15 minutes early, I was seriously considering staying at a hotel near my office. On a good day I can tolerate my commute. On a bad day, I want to drive my car into at tree (in the most non-suicidal way possible, of course). Today was a tree day.

Also, my toddler was in rare form today. She didn't really nap at school and just looking at her the wrong way would cause her to burst into tears for a good 10 minutes.

Today has just been one of those days.

fall: autumn

Yesterday it was pushing ninety degrees. Today is barely hitting 70. I love New England.

(except during the months of January, February, and March. I hate New England during that time)

I bought a new sweater yesterday. I felt guilty about spending the money. And then I realized it was $17.50 and I was buying it from Old Navy. Then I stopped feeling guilty; though I kept thinking that for $17.50 I could buy Baby Girl 2 complete outfits (I'm a big fan of the Circo $4 pieces). But Mama needs some clothes too, right? Plus it's a cute sweater:
I also went out to dinner with a bunch of people to celebrate our 30th birthdays. I am not yet 30, but I still got to celebrate. It was a whole night all for me! Shopping for me! Out to dinner with just me! (and my friends, natch). Yay for me!

Speaking of me time, it's currently naptime which SHOULD mean it's Mama's naptime too, but it really means it's time go to make my chili for lunches for the week.

Labor Day

As if Labor Day isn't hard enough.... I *should* be on my way to the cape right now. I'm not, because the cape is going to be pummeled by Hurricane Earl.

I hate you, Earl.

I have lived through countless storms and northeasters that did significant damage, but I have only lived through two major hurricanes that packed a giant punch to New England: Hurricane Gloria and Hurricane Bob.

Hurricane Gloria: I believe I was 4 years old. My grandparents were at my house because at the time they lived in a VERY floody area (yes, I just invented the word "floody"). I was playing on the swingset and my father and grandfather were standing around. It began to rain as I was going down the slide and my father said something to the effect of "the hurricane started, time to go inside" and I was all I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE HURRICANE!!!!! I don't remember anything else.

Hurricane Bob: I was older, wikipedia is telling me I was 10, but would have sworn I was older than that. Anyway, Bob hit earlier in the summer (obviously, as his name was Bob) and all the boats were still in the water. When I say "all the boats" I mean my father's boat, all of his friends' boats, and our little sailboats. If I was 10 that means my brother was 13 (though I'm still not convinced we were that young...) and we both had N10's in the water. So my dad and all the other dads were were taking care of their boats and we (all the children of these men) were running our little sailboats across the street. Seriously. Imagine driving down a street and stopping so like 6 or 7 young kids can run their sailboats across the street. We were on the news - some random newscaster was setting up to do his obligatory "look, I'm at the water telling you how bad it will be!" newscast and I guess he couldn't help himself from filming a bunch of kids literally running around carrying boats. And I say "little" boats, but if memory serves me correctly, those N10's are about 12 feet long. I'm sure it was a sight to behold

So GO AWAY EARL!! I want to go down the cape for one last weekend!

hot hot hot!

Ahhh, heat and humidity. How I miss you during those long cold winter months. How I loathe and despise you when you are here. I'm learning that I'm actually much more of a spring and fall girl than a summer girl.

Heat never bothered me when I was younger. I suppose that's due in large part to the fact that I sailed all summer long and there was usually a breeze out on the water on those hazy humid days. And if there wasn't... well cooling off was as far away as jumping off the boat. But now that I'm an adult and don't even live in a town near the water (don't worry South Shore - I'm coming back as soon as this housing market turns around. I fully expect to be there by the time my baby is in high school), the heat and humidity is tough.

Yesterday my baby girl turned one. Can someone please explain to me where that year went? Where did my little 6 pound, 13 ounce baby go? She's now 22.9 pounds. And she was 19 inches long when she was born. She's 29 inches now!!! How is it humanly possible to grow 10 inches in a single year?

Random aside - I got a pedicure today and every single woman there had a DD iced coffee except me. I had planned on getting mine after I was finished. As soon as I walked in, I clearly knew how wrong that decision was, but it was too late. I don't think I've ever wanted a DD iced coffee as much as I did during my pedicure. They should deliver!

meh

I will not complain about the heat. I will not complain about the heat. I will remember the 6 months out of the year that is dark and gray and cold and dirty and icy and cold and cold and snowy and dead. I will enjoy the unseasonably hot weather even though I cannot go to the beach.