My daughter is seven years old, and she's desperately wanted a swingset for as long as I can remember. That child has always loved the swings. ALWAYS. When we'd take her to the park, she'd spend the entire time on the swings, and if we were able to pull her off of them and over to the slide? She'd slide down and then race straight back over to the swings, as if to say: "Are you happy now? I went down the slide! FOR YOU!! Now I'd like a push, please."

My daughter, who is an only child, also snubs almost any toy she gets. Moon Sand? She had to have it, played with it once. American Girl Doll? She couldn't live without Nicki (and her horse, and her dog), but really isn't interested in playing with her. Wii? No thanks. A bicycle? Sometimes. She's just not interested in any of them. However, give the kid an artbox and a pile of paper and she's making drawings and pictures until the cows come home. While she's extremely talented when it comes to drawing, she's a kid and she should go outside and play! Put down your markers and go run around! 

We decided to make her swingset dreams come true and we bought her a Rainbow Play System. This is where I tell you that we didn't specifically set out to buy her a Rainbow, but it ended up that way, and we could not be happier. It was installed on May 5th, and she's outside playing on it every chance she gets. Friends are popping up from the subdivision too, which is really nice to see because when we moved to Menomonee Falls we chose to keep our daughter in the school she was previously attending, which meant not living near school friends.

And the added bonus (besides the fact that she's watching a lot less Sponge Bob Squarepants and Hannah Montana)? The Rainbow is big enough so that I can play on it too. There's nothing like revisiting my own childhood on the swings for a while, and yes, I've even jumped off mid-swing. Wouldn't you? 

Saturday morning I decided to check out a growing puddle of water in my basement. I grabbed the mop and started to clean it up, and that is when I saw where it was coming from. It was flowing out of the bottom of my hot water heater. HOT WATER. OUT OF THE BOTTOM OF MY HOT WATER HEATER.

And all I could think about was how much my next water bill was going to be.

I've heard tales of the $900 water bill from neighbors of neighbors who've had something go wrong in the basement and they didn't know they had a problem with wasting water until the bill arrived. And I've head there is no credit given when something breaks and money runs down the drain.

My husband figures that the water is leaking at the rate of one gallon per hour. That's a lot. And who knows how long it was leaking before I noticed it. A week? A few days?

On Saturday we purchased a new water heater, but since it was the weekend I'm sure I'll have to wait until Monday to get the install scheduled. If you know me, you know that I'm stressing about the water going down the drain. I know how expensive the water is here in Menomonee Falls, and with gas being $3.79 a gallon, and grocery store visits costing nearly $200 a week, the last thing we need is an out of ordinary water bill next quarter.

My husband has been hounding me for years now to make the switch from plastic bags to paper bags. I've always preferred plastic, due to the handles of course. However, the whole "green movement" hit me over the head last weekend and I've found myself balking at the thought of plastic. It's like it has cooties or something. Plastic bag? Do I look like someone who uses a plastic bag? You offer me plastic and I've never been more insulted in my whole life. And the thing is, I don't know why all of a sudden this is important to me. Why now?

Why not now? It's not too late to make a difference. And even if it's a small difference, and even it's only me, I can feel proud of myself for being greener than I was before.

However, with this comes that. And that is like a big can of worms that is too squirmy to handle. Where does that begin? Where does it lead to? And where does it end? So far it's leading to subscribing to The Green Guide, which is put out by National Geographic. It's also leading me to scrutinize the ingredients in the products that my family uses.

Let me ask you this: How green are you?

(Cross posted @ Thoughts Outside My Head)

Currently I'm reading 21: Bringing Down The House, by Ben Mezrich, which is the book that the movie "21" is based on. I'm totally into this book! Have you read it? Have you seen the movie? These MIT kids make blackjack seem sooooooooooooo easy. I've only played blackjack a handful of times, and never for real money. I've never been to Vegas, and quite honestly, I'm not sure that I ever want to go. So the book, it's fascinating! I've only got about 60 more pages to go and then I'm done. Then I can go break out my deck of cards and start practicing, because you know what? Someday I just might change my mind about Vegas.

Next book on my shelf is Lush Life by Richard Price. I started to read it, but I had to put it down to read the blackjack book. It was on the New York Times Bestseller list, which is why I picked it up. I've found that some of the best books I've read over the past year have been the books that I picked specifically from the bestseller list. Case in point: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Hands down one of the best books I've ever read.

What was the best book? The Time Travellers Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. If you haven't read it, you simply must. 

What are you reading? Any suggestions?

Last week Monday we went to the library, it’s a very small library, maybe 1000 sq. feet.  See? Very, very, small. Anyhow, we were there for the Monday night pajama story time (for Zoe) and I happened to have a couple audio books being held for me. I checked out the audio books, Zoe went to story time, and then we came home. Somewhere around 10 p.m. I checked my receipt that says what books I checked out and when they were due, and low and behold, it seems that I checked out Consumer Report 2007.

First off, I didn’t.

And second, do I really look like someone who would check out Consumer Report?

(I don’t)

The next day I called the librarian and told her about it, and she said she fully remembers that I did NOT check it out, but there is no explanation as to why it’s on my receipt, and futhermore, on my library card record.

Okay, I have to be honest here, this is bugging me to no end. I mean, it’s really REALLY bugging me. The librarian is all, “oh, don’t worry about it, I wrote a little note and taped it to the desk so everyone knows.” And outwardly I’m all, “did you figure out that Consumer Report thing yet?” but inside my head I’m all, “Look, I don’t have the stupid magazine, and I need to have you remove it from my library card record!!! WHY CAN’T YOU JUST PRESS THE DELETE BUTTON??? FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD, JUST PRESS THE STINKING DELETE BUTTON!!!!”

That stupid magazine is due back today, and I don’t have it, and the librarian says not to worry because she wrote a note and taped it to her desk, but someone out there has Consumer Report 2007 and God only knows what they are doing with it, how long they plan on reading it!

Do you think that they know that I might break out in hives if they don’t bring it back soon??? Do they? Huh? 

HIVES!!!

Have you seen it?

Do you have it?

(Cross posted @ Thoughts Outside My Head)

Yesterday my daughter and I spent the day at the Milwaukee Art Museum. We were there for a children's class about Georgia O'Keeffe, however Art in Bloom was also going on and we stayed the day so we could attend the workshop with the lovely Lois Ehlert who wrote and illustrated many children's books. The event is going on again today, and Lois will be there again from 1-4PM, I highly recommend stopping in to meet her, read a few of her books, and then create some art to add to the flower garden. It was a lot of fun!

Who knew that a cat needed to have his teeth brushed? I mean really, really, really needed to have his teeth brushed -- especially a diabetic cat who has excess sugar in his body, and apparently diabetic cats have lower immunity in their mouths and therefore have a higher chances of getting tooth and gum disease. I didn't know. Did you?

The bottom line is that having your cat's teeth extracted is costly. And now my cat needs to get a job. Are you hiring? He's really good at looking out a window, rolling in cat nip, and playing with glitter balls in the middle of the night.

On Friday I came home from work, and for no good reason I looked at my cat's front teeth. NO GOOD REASON! What normal person looks at her cat's front teeth??? (Oh hello, have we met?) Well, I found that one of those four little top ones was hanging down like a fang, and it was wiggly. Very. Wiggly. So on Saturday I took him to the vet, where I was told that he needed 4 teeth removed, possibly 6. Yesterday I picked him up after his surgery -- 7 teeth had to go. After having a handful of teeth extracted two years ago, this is leaving him with not so many teeth. My poor cat needs dentures, that is, if they made dentures for a cat.  

Cross Posted @ Thoughts Outside My Head

I'm dreaming of a getaway to Door County. Last June, right before the busy season, we vacationed for five days in Fish Creek and it was wonderful! We spent our time doing things like: riding our bikes through Peninsula State Park, painting pottery at the Hands On Art Studio, visiting The Peninsula Bookman (where the owner has my dream job), drinking lots of coffee at Blue Horse Bistro (where the owners have my other dream job), and eating as much pizza as we can at Moretti's Pizzeria -- YUM!

Where are you dreaming about getting away to?

I love Macy's, don't you? And reason I love it is because it's a great place to park at Mayfair (it's my secret parking place, so don't tell anyone). I also love it because of the ladies shoe department. Every time I go to Mayfair, I park by Macy's, enter by the ladies shoes, and then browse through the shoe sale racks in the hopes of finding The Shoe of My Dreams -- which, by the way, has yet to happen. Oh, I've found The Shoe of My Dreams, but they weren't on the sale rack.

After I browse through the shoes, then I move over to the Coach and handbag department where I drool over the latest handbag that I'm not going to buy for myself because everyone else already has it -- the last thing I want is to be just like everyone else. It's the same story as the shoes, I'm also always on the lookout for The Handbag of My Dreams.

From there I usually leave Macy's, but that all changed when my husband's uncle gave me a bar of soap from Lush for Christmas. Yes, a bar of soap. How boring, right? WRONG.

I love Lush! It's located right there in Macy's too and the products are all awesome, and the solid shampoo does wonders for my hair! If you have curly hair, Tricomania is the shampoo for you. My husband uses New! and our daughter uses Seanik. 

If you want soap, they've got oodles to pick from (personally, I love Mud Flats). The bath bombs and bubble bars are really nice .... if you want rock star bubbles, wow, get yourself a bubble bar! Our daughter loves the bubble bars! I've been cutting them into smaller chunks to reduce the bubbles actually, no kid needs to have THAT many bubbles in their bubble bath.

So there ya go. Lush is my newest favorite.

I'm so tired of the snow. Will it ever be spring? I can't believe Easter has come and gone and I haven't seen a single tulip sprouting out of the ground yet. I'm so over winter! Aren't you?

March 22nd marks my one month anniversary of being a dedicated member of Weight Watchers. One whole month! And I did it! I took my crazy busy life (work, grad school, a 10 hour movie marathon, wine club, PIZZA!) and I managed to successfuly make it through my first month of Weight Watchers.

I think I've lost about 7 lbs so far, and I have to say that I've really worked hard for it. I've only got 20 points to use each day, and that's not a whole lot. I had to completely change all of my eating habits. Granola in my yogurt? Gone. A bowl of ice cream to reward myself for working out? Gone. Or how about a glass of wine most nights with dinner? Gone. Eating an entire sleeve of Thin Mints at once? Well, sadly that habit has been broken too.

New habits have set in, and now I get up at 6 a.m. four days a week and run 3-4 miles before I even wake up my daughter for school. Sure, I'm sound asleep by 10 p.m. but I've put in a good workout before the day even starts. And I'm eating salads for lunch every single day, and making smarter choices for dinner. I feel great, and you know what? I can fit into my favorite pair of jeans again! I'm so Lucky!

I've always struggled with my weight, sometimes better than others. I've always been very active, I run a lot, and I spend a great deal of time at the YMCA (did you hear that they are lowering their membership fees?), but my body was like: Okay, you want to eat that bowl of ice cream? Let's put it right here! and then it was attached to my hips and I couldn't zip my jeans.

I am sad to report that I haven't been to Kopp's once in the past month. I'm really sorry Kopp's, it's not that I don't love you, it's just that a scoop of tiramisu custard in a waffle cone is something like a gabillion points! (I just checked, as I write this tiramisu is the flavor. I didn't know that. Jeez, way to make a girl feel bad about her decision! I think it's calling me like an old boyfriend who just won't give up. Or like Natalie thinking Matty is her soul mate on Big Brother, that girl is so clueless. Did you hear that tiramisu: YOU ARE CLUELESS!!!)

So here's to one month down and a bunch more to go!

(Cross posted @ Thoughts Outside My Head)

Last night was Super-Tuscan night at my monthly wine club. What are Super-Tuscans? I've got a bit more about them here, but most would say they are a cult wine.  I think they are delicious! If you ever find them on a wine list be forewarned that they’ll be very pricey, if you buy them at the store they run anywhere from $15 (hard to find at that price) to $75 a bottle.

Now, onto the wines from last night. We had six different wines, and they were all very good.

Bigi Umbria Vipra Rossa, 2004. A blend of Merlot and Sangiovese.

Banfi Centine, 2005. $13.99

Villa Antinori, 2003. A blend of 60% Sangiovese, 20% Cabernet, 15% Merlot and 5% Syrah. This was a remarkable wine! $23.99

Santa Cristina, 2006. A blend of 90% Sangiovese and 10% Merlot. This was very good.

Arceno Prima Voce, 2003. A blend of  blend of 13% Sangiovese, 22% Cabernet, 57% Merlot and 8% Syrah. This was nice, but it smelled like a perm. If you’ve ever spent an hour in your mother’s kitchen getting a perm then you know the smell. $19.00

Capineto Dogojolo, 2005. A blend of 80% Sangiovese and 20% Cabernet.

It's been a super busy week! And Daylight Savings hasn't exactly helped. My sleep is all off, my body clock is off, and I'm hungry for lunch at 11 a.m. -- sometimes 10:30! I don't know how I've managed to get out of bed early every morning so that I can run 3-4 miles before I get my daughter ready for school, and then go to work. Perhaps it's just because I know that I won't have the time in the evening to do it. And my pants were getting too tight. And those darn Thin Mints are so good!!!

So what is on my agenda for the weekend? Well first up is wine club on Friday night. This month we are tasting Super Tuscans. I don't have a lot of experience with these wines because they are rather pricey, but what I've had, I've loved!

Saturday is Sleeping Beauty at First Stage Children's Theatre. We haven't been to a theatre performance in a while, but they are always enjoyable.

Then on Sunday afternoon is the Admirals hockey game with my daughter's school, Milwaukee French Immersion. She received a free ticket for reading and she's pretty excited. I haven't been to a hockey game in years, but I used to go fairly often when I was in my early 20's. There was a point where I was as in to hockey as I'm now into grand slam tennis (VERY!).

In between all of that I have a final project due for my Productions and Operations graduate course.

Have a great weekend! I'll post a wine recap on Saturday.

p.s. In case any of you are wondering, my phones are plugged back in. That's right, the phone company had unplugged my wire at the big box up on the corner. They thwarted my phone-lines-are-located-in-the-basement security system and everything! Kudos to you AT&T! But I'm plugged back in, my iPod is charged, and since my DSL is working too I can continue to blog about stupid little trivial things .... like how much I love this video and I'm trying to talk my husband into taking our two treadmills and putting them side-by-side so that I can practice the moves.

I love art, and my daughter, Zoe, has inherited this love. She is also extremely talented (what kind of mom would I be if I didn't think that?), and spends hours upon hours working on art projects and drawings. She'll be 7 years old next month, and to this day, any toys she gets are only played with for a small period of time before she goes back to the drawing board. Literally, the drawing board.

I found a few art classes at the Milwaukee Art Museum that are specifically for kids. Tomorrow is the her first class, it's a parent and kid class so I'll be there too. We'll be learning about Andy Warhol, then create a work of art using him as inspiration. I think it'll be fun, and Zoe is pretty excited too. Next month is my very most favorite artist of all time, Georgia O'Keeffe.

Other happenings around the area this weekend for kids include:

Alice in Wonderland, which is being performed at the Theatre on Main, 25 S. Main St., Oconomowoc.

Sleeping Beauty, which is being performed at First Stage Children's Theater.

Behind the Scenes, Milwaukee County Zoo.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss, Milwaukee Public Library, Center St., Capitol Dr., and Mill Rd. locations.

Saturdays at Central, Milwaukee Public Library Central St.

Story Time, Menomonee Falls Public Library.

Have a great weekend!

We have no phone service at home, and no DSL either. No one ever calls us, but my iPod desperately needs to sync up with the mother ship — that’d be iTunes. Oh, and I’ve kinda gotta get back to my Scrabulous game on Facebook too.

Do you remember when I wrote this:

The only access I have to my backyard from my house is my sliding glass doors. I have no idea why I don’t have a back door, or a door to the yard from the garage. My best guess is that the guy who built this house thought it would be too much of a security issue. Yes. Right here in Menomonee Falls. I can’t understand it either. All I know is that my house is wired up the wazoo for just about everything. I’ve got a security system, overhead sprinklers in the hallways, motion detectors, and my phone lines are located in the house – you know just in case my life turned into a suspense thriller movie and I dunno, the bad guy came and cut my phone lines. Now you know that you have to invite yourself into my basement to cut my phone lines. Good luck with that. Have you seen my Boxer?

And now I’m wondering, did someone sneak into my house and tamper with my phone lines while I was escorting my daughter onto the school bus yesterday morning? Or, did AT&T decide to cut me off?

(Cross posted @ Thoughts Outside My Head)

There were plenty of shells on the beach in Riviera Maya, most of them had occupants in them though. My husband picked a few very very small ones to bring back to Zoe. He put them on the countertop in the bathroom, and a couple of them got up and moved. Oops. Those he had to take back to where he got them from.

Here’s a few pictures of a hermit crab that he followed. As well as one of the many lizards that lived at the resort. Sometimes I’d forget about the lizards and then they’d scare the crap out of me when they’d scurry past me on my walks.

There were signs in front of our villa that said there were Howler Monkeys living in the brush. I never saw one, but I looked.

Here is the beach. We spent our first morning here, mostly snorkling. I saw a lot of fish, and got the bejeezus scared out of me with a sea urchin in some coral I was about to float over. You’d have thought Jaws was coming up on me with all the flailing I was doing.

My husband came across this crab, isn’t he cute? 

Do you remember the bridges I wrote about? This is what they looked like, you had to walk up and down them to get anywhere.

That’s all for now! Have a great weekend!

My husband and I  spent yesterday in the movie theater at the Best Picture Showcase. We saw all of the 2008 Oscar Nominees. It was a long day, and the theater was a lot more crowded than I had expected. Were you there too?

My predictions are the following:

Actor

Will Win: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood

Want To Win: George Clooney, Michael Clayton

Support Actor:

Will Win: Javier Barden, No Country For Old Men

Want To Win: Casey Affleck, Really Long Jesse James Movie

Actress:

Will Win and Want To Win Ellen Page, Juno

Support Actress:

Will Win: Ruby Dee, American Gangster

Want To Win: Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

Directing:

Will Win: Toss up between No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood

Want To Win: Juno or Michael Clayton

Best Picture:

Will Win: No Country For Old Men

Want To Win: Michael Clayton

Who Should Have Been Nominated: Gone Baby Gone

I love the movies! I am a huge movie fan, but I am an even bigger fan of the movies that are nominated for an Academy Award. Each year I watch as many of those movies that I can from the time they are nominated right up to the awards ceremony, keeping careful track of each and every movie I see by highlighting them on my printable ballot. This year my deadline is this Sunday, February 24th, at 4:49 p.m. -- which is approaching fast, by the way. 

I admit that trying to see all the movies is somewhat crazy, but I do it each and every year. I'm thankful for Netflix and Blockbuster, and that I have a husband who goes along with me on this ridiculous quest each season. He's had to sit through a long list of movies that he might not have normally watched as a result.

So far this year we have watched the following Oscar nominated movies: Michael Clayton, Eastern Promises, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Away From Her, Gone Baby Gone, Ratatouille, Surf's Up, The Golden Compass, The Bourne Ultamatum, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, 3:10 To Yuma, and Enchanted. He's watched Transformers, but I opted out of that one. (my reviews of these movies and others can be read here)

What left to see? I have Norbit and Once on their way via Netflix, and I have American Gangster and In The Valley of Elah checked out from Blockbuster which I'd like to watch tonight. Since this is crunch time, I'm trying to catch Atonement, Juno, No Country For Old Men, and There Will Be Blood on Saturday at the Mayfair May 18 for their 2nd annual AMC Best Picture Showcase (all 5 Oscar Nominees for only $30). I know I'm still missing some, but that's just they way it'll have to be.

Of all the movies so far, my favorites have been Michael Clayton, The Bourne Ultimatum, Gone Baby Gone, and of course, Disney's Ratatouille. What are your favorites this year? Are any of the readers also on the same quest that I am?

I can't believe that I'm writing about politics as it's a topic that I purposely don't write about. However, being that it's Super Tuesday in Wisconsin, I feel the need to remind you to get out there and vote.

I've already been to the polls today, and I have to say that I'm pretty excited about my vote. Are you excited about yours? Regardless of who you voted for, who do you think will win both the Republican and the Democratic presidential primaries?

If you don't know where you polling place is, please visit elections.state.wi.us.

Okay, so I’m home from Riviera Maya. We stayed at the Grand Palladium which was very nice … if you like walking over a gazillion very tall bridges to get where ever you need to go. Yes, it was a workout, and it was confusing at times because all the bridges looked exactly the same as the others. I don’t know how in the world a drunk person would be able to find their way back to their room in the dark, in the daylight they might be okay, but in the dark no way, and since it was an all-inclusive place the drinks were flowing —  CONSTANTLY.

I couldn’t help but notice a few slightly weird things about Mexico. For instance, you know that big spoon that you get with your place settings? The one that your mother uses to serve mashed potatos to you at Thanksgiving? Well that spoon is the soup spoon down there in Mexico. Very confusing, especially when eating at a chinese restaurant, because you know when you are being served chinese they always give you a giant serving spoon. So the waiter handed me the serving spoon and I was all thinking: yum, dinner! but instead it meant: soup. And it felt very wrong to be eating what little soup I did with the big giant serving spoon. In fact, I had no choice but to the alert the waiter that it was not a soup spoon, but a serving spoon, and I kinda expected him to notice his error and take it back and bring me a real soup spoon, but instead he looked at me like he didn’t understand what I was saying.

Another thing, which my brother fully warned me about because he was at the resort the five days prior to me, was that the bed would short-sheeted. Every night he said he came back to his room and remade his bed. What? That’s insane! Yet every single night my husband and I found that our bed was also short-sheeted.  Since it bothered both myself and my brother, I’m going to blame my mother for this tick that we both have because she was all about the sheets always being straight and properly tucked in when we were growing up. Imagine a mattress, and the bottom sheet is a flat sheet, not a fitted sheet, and it doesn’t stretch down to the very foot of the bed. Some nights it was only 5 or 6″ short, but one night was actually a full 12″ from the bottom. I’m sorry, but my feet totally noticed that they were not on a sheet and instead on a bare mattress, which is gross and I’d like to note a bit unsanitary because of the all the sand that is on the beach which is only about 20 yards from my room. Anyhow, each night we tore the sheets off the bed and remade it. One day we were in the room when the maid came and I did my best to convey to her through the language barrier how we wanted the sheet to cover the entire mattress. She shook her head that she understood and then made the bed with two sheets on the bottom, overlapping each other so that the entire mattress was covered. Whatever. It’s not like the sheet wasn’t big enough to cover the whole thing, because it was.

Okay, and then when we were at the airport coming home I bought a couple magazines (Time and Shape if you must know) and while I was checking out I threw a Kit Kat candy bar on there because they had the Nestle Kit Kat’s and in the US we have Reeses Kit Kat’s and this is a secret, but I’m going to tell you anyway, the Nestle ones are better. I handed over my credit card and then I noticed that the clerk was putting a price tag on the USA Today newspaper: 430 Pesos. 430 Pesos!! That’s $4.30 American!!! And the price on the newspaper says 75 cents. I rubbed my eyes, then verified the price was correct and the clerk tells me that everything in Cancun is expensive. So I had to ask, I just had to. How much did I just pay for that Kit Kat? And the clerk replied, 300 Pesos. $3.00 American, that’s how much I paid for a Nestle Kit Kat, and candy bars in the States are only something like 65 cents. And no, I haven’t eaten that Kit Kat yet. Something that ridiculously expensive deserves to be paired with the finest of wines for sure.

(My adventure continues here and here)