Year: 2007

Recovering from this cold has turned Edda into a grump-meister. Her throat must be killing her because every time she coughs, she has a huge grimace on her face and she’s pretty much refusing to eat anything.

There has also been occasional screaming and biting. We are all standing a little further away from her today since, although she can’t coordinate her movements very well, she’s got the accuracy of a shark going after a surfer’s leg when it comes to getting you with her chompers when she wants to let you know that she’s pissed. Yeow!

Determined to get out of the house, Jeremy and I led a noontime expedition from his parent’s house to the campus center. A greuling one third of a mile. The goal – the vending machine on the 2nd floor filled with Doritos, Life Savers and Starbursts.

Vince whined not to go, he wanted to stay at home and watch videos. Edda wailed like a wet cat the whole way there. Jeremy couldn’t talk because of his sore throat. I haven’t showered in a few days. We were not at our best. But we made it and purchased a roll of Life Savers. Then we headed back home for afternoon naps.

Well, sorry to cause some confusion there. I’m back in the states no after a whirlwind of 12 days in the French countryside (yes, France the country) and Paris. The short summary: Fenney and Sanh’s wedding in a Chateaux in the Loire Valley, Ted and I went biking thru the countryside around Tours for 6 days. We spent 3 days in Paris afterwards just doing tourist stuff and eating a ton. I have never drank so much alcohol in my life. 🙂 Good times. Good times..,

 

Anyone know where Donald is and what he’s up to? His cell phone’s been off for over a week now and I’ve only gotten one cryptic blog comment – “hi from france”. What the heck does that mean? Did he meet some cute French woman and is now eating baguettes and brie under the Eiffel tower? Zut alors! Sacrebleu! Any info would be appreciated.

P.S. We are all still sick as dogs, we are chugging ibuprofen every 6-8 hours and going to bed at 7:30 (except me – I stay up late blogging). I don’t know why they advertise Tylenol for fevers because from my experimental data, Tylenol works as well as water for fevers. It does nothing! If your kid has a fever, go straight for the Motrin.

P.P.S. This advice given by a person with NO medical training!

We are all sick, especially the kids. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few days trying to get Edda to drink more fluids.

That’s Vince in there.. (What the heck is in Jeremy’s pocket? Were cell phones really that big in 2001?)

And here’s Vince on the outside. I didn’t notice until I sat down to write this entry, but he seems to be making an obscene gesture.

When I was growing up, we were the last folks on the block to get a color TV and my parents only got rid of the trusty Gremlin in 1988 when I learned to drive (which they replaced with the tank-like Ford Crown Victoria). My parents were thrifty and frugal.

However, there were two things we were allowed to spend money on: books – I remember going to the Crown Books behind the Dart Drug and picking out first Little House on the Prairie books and later Sweet Valley High books and second, food – I remember going to the Giant with a hand basket and Donald and I would each carry a handle and we’d walk up and down the isles filling the basket with whatever caught our fancy.

So now that I’m grown up, those are the two things I like to spend money on. I don’t have many gadgets, don’t buy any makeup, I have fewer clothes/shoes than Jeremy. I just love bookstores and grocery stores.

My bookstore habit was getting pretty pricey, so now I’ve replaced that habit with libraries mostly. But I’ve never paid much attention to how much we’ve been spending on our grocery bills. The year Edda was born, I really ramped up my cooking skills and I pretty much had a different dinner on the table every night for 6 months. This involved reading lots of magazines and cookbooks and writing down ingredients on a shopping list and buying whatever I needed – jars of paprika, marmalade, capers, fish sauce, adobo sauce. It was a lot of yummy dinners, but also pretty high grocery bills.

I’m not back up to speed on cooking like that yet, living in Singapore meant that a lot of ingredients I was familiar with weren’t available unless I trekked into downtown and here, well, it’s just a mess here – but I have made a great discovery on my quest to spend less money on groceries!

The store brand!

You got store brand organic milk, organic sour dough bread, frozen lemonade concentrate, cottage cheese, and cran-rasberry cocktail. Sitting right next to the thing that you want, there is a store brand equivalent sitting right next to it, usually about 25% less expensive. I know they’ve had this stuff for years, but I guess I didn’t pay much attention to it. You know, I’m so used to buying Land ‘o Lakes butter that it just felt weird buying the store brand. Also, it’s been 5 years since we’ve owned a TV, maybe it’s just taken that long to debrainwash me from buying the branded stuff. Who knows! I just love a good bargain.

So now that I’m in my mid-30s and have experienced many, many, many moves and many, many, many apartments/condos/houses/hotel rooms, I figured I had outgrown two things. IKEA and U-Haul. I think I swore to myself 3 years ago, I would never buy furniture from IKEA (as the year-old dining room chair I was sitting on broke from under me) or ever move myself in a U-Haul (which must have been in 1999, it was a painful experience and we didn’t even have kids then).

However, it seems I can’t keep a promise to myself. In Singapore, our apartment was furnished 100% IKEA even down to the wine racks and the bathroom mats thanks to our landlord. And now I see my U-Haul vow soon to be broken as well. I think we might save thousands of dollars by hiring guys locally at both ends to load/unload and renting and driving the damn U-Haul ourselves. Hmmm. We are waiting for a 2nd quote from a mover tomorrow and then decide. As long as I don’t have to lift the washing machine.

Didn’t we just unpack? Oh yeah, that’s right, just 3 weeks ago!

Vince is a little sick today (he’s wearing his favorite Sponge Bob pjs!).

Went swimming in Lake George – the water must have been freezing.

Here’s looking at you, kid!

Jeremy and I are trying to have at least one outing a day with the kids so we don’t go batty. The catch is that it has to be free – or as close to free as possible. Usually, we go on a walk, but it was raining today. A few weeks ago, I had joined the local children’s museum as members and as a member you get free admission into the Albany Institute of History and Art. So that’s where we went. Neither child particularly enjoyed this outing, but we got out of the house on a rainy day.

We saw oil paintings:

They did have a children’s room where we could all chill out. Edda and I dressed up like early settlers.