Woot. Look at me! I'm keeping a promise!

Wow, it's like New Year's in August with this resolution and all. I suppose that's fitting, since there's Christmas in July - which, if you live in my house, comes complete with christmas music courtesy of Pokechop the iPod.

H'anyway, I know I promised blogs with pictures, and I know you're all terribly disappointed that this blog will not be discussing anything that I promised to discuss from the previous post, but it's my blog, dammit, and I'm going to wax poetic for a while, because my husband doesn't want to hear it.

Lucky you.

It doesn't feel it, but it's fall here. The temperature is still balmy, still humid, still oppressive. The leaves are slowly yellowing and dropping into the impatiens in the back yard. Driving with Cecilia today, a birch tree has lost the majority of it's leaves. Those are always my favorite kind to step on, they have good "crunch."

I'm sure the hurricane spinning off the coast is helping the leaves to drop, even if they aren't quite ready. It hasn't made landfall yet, but already, even 300 miles north, the winds are kicking up that moist air, and the sky is ominous. I love it. I love hurricanes. Ernesto is making me terribly homesick.

Growing up when a hurricane would hit the coast, we'd pile into the truck after the eye wall had shifted and the sun would be out for an hour or two. We would drive to the beach, and look at the wave ravaged shore. Sometimes, after a particularly vicious one, like Gloria, we'd only be able to get within a few blocks of the beach, because we'd be met on the way by a tidal flood.

But on days where we could see the beach, it was amazing. The waves were huge, and dark, churning with the bottom of the sea all caught up in the salty water. You could taste the spray from the boardwalk and feel the mist on your eyelashes once you were closer. Hurricane waves always brought the best shells, but most were usually broken. Every once in a while, a giant intact conch shell, or huge oyster shell would be laying on the beach, waiting to be taken home, and my sister and I were always happy to oblige.

And now, in Virginia, closer to the mountains than the shore, I watch the hurricane approach on the weather station. From my window I can see the trees starting to bend over the neighbor's splitlevel house. Not how it should be - it changes a powerful hurricane into just another rainy day. I'm guessing it will take with it the last of summer, and before long, all the trees will be bare, and we'll be settling in for another winter, tucked inside our little house.

Neglected, but not forgotten

During a conversation with the lovely Lauren, today, she tactfully reminded me I needed to post by saying "You need to blog something, I'm tired of seeing the "Squishalicious" one."

I have a blog?

Heh...oh right. I do have a blog.

So, it's not that I have been intentionally neglecting the blog, because in all actuality, I have several posts in queue, but have been too busy(no.) hectic(no.) LAZY(yes, that's the right word) to put them up. Blogs about random things I get in the mail (with pictures), blogs about the day that Lauren singlehandedly lifted the motorcycle (with pictures!), blogs about the day a 6' hole appeared in my house (with pictures!) and blogs about the fact that my baby isn't a baby anymore and it makes me sob (which will probably also have pictures.)

And so, starting tomorrow, i hereby declare that I will no longer ignore my blog, just to make my Lauren happy*


*Disclaimer: I will no longer consciously ignore my blog. However, this does not take into consideration lags in posting due to weather, fatigue, grumpiness, the fact that the president is an asshat, sheer forgetfulness, lack of ambition, lack of enthusiasm, lack of working internets, headaches, backaches, muscle spasms or days where it's too nice to stay inside.

Squish-a-licious

Being the type of mom who is a firm believer in letting babies be babies, dinner time at our house makes for quite the adventure. Cecilia has recently discovered that not only does she have hands that fit in her mouth, she has hands that can grab other things and squish them around and bring them to her mouth.

She likes being part of the table activities. She's not content in her swing, or god forbid, the bouncy chair, but will sit content on someone's knee, with her hands on the table as if waiting for her plate of food. She usually has a napkin to tear up, or my keys to jingle, but sometimes she gets an extra special something to play with, like the fresh whipped cream from dessert.

The Newbie

We have a new resident here on Costa Dr. PeterPeterSkeeterEater. I lubs him

It's Jemma Time!

My sister is here for the week, all the way from NJ! YAY!! JEMMA TIME!

Well, that's creepy.

So I'm sitting here in my mostly dark dining room, distracting myself from writing the 40 some thank you's I still have left to write on Cecilia's behalf from the Christening, and I happen upon Laurens blog (by the way, have you seen Lauren? She's about this tall, and very pretty, and funny and smells pretty good and has a buick. If you find her, can you point her in my direction? She's missed on Costa Dr.) and I leave a snarky comment, as always, and I notice next to the 'type these funny looking letters into the box" box, there's a little blue man in a wheel chair.

Hm. Intrastink.

So, I click the little blue man in the wheel chair, and through my computer comes a bit of eerie white noise, followed by some weird girl saying things like "one...one...one...one..."

AHHH.

I turned my speakers off, because really, in the dark, it was THAT weird. I regained my wits and turned them back on, and this time heard and man and a woman "Three...three..six....nine....three" What the hell? Why are the creepy voices in a wheelchair? What will become of the crooked letters if I click them? Why do I care so much?

Oh right. Because I don't want to write thank yous.