I found it!
Look! I found the Grease book. It turned out to be on my bookshelves instead of in storage. Amazing. The cover is missing so I'm sure it has no value. Here are some inside pages; maybe they'll tickle your memory Jeanne:


Friday, August 12, 2005
My name is Highlandgal...and I'm a Penaholic
I love pens. I am absurdly pleased by pens. I collect them. I love fancy pens, colored pens, pens that light up, pens that do just about anything. A savvy gift-giver can always give me a cool pen. I have hundreds and hundreds of pens. I think my employees at work think I'm a psycho pen hoarder. They don't realize that just about every pen in my desk has a specific use. Sometimes you need ball point, or felt tip, or roller ball. You need lots of different colors for different purposes. From markers to Sharpies to .5mm tips, everything has a purpose. Anyway, here are some of my collections...







The last pic is of a collection of gel pens I received for Christmas a few years ago. I'm sure my mom thought she was taking a risk buying me something like that, considering I'm a woman in my thirties. Silly woman, that was probably the most pleasing gift I got that year!
I'm so sad...
Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. Which means that I have lost all of your generous and wonderful comments up to this point. It occurred to me that I might lose them but I hoped not. I'm sorry, I so appreciated all of your responses and encouragement. This sucks. I had to bite the bullet and go ahead and do it while the blog was still young or I would have lost even more. Now it looks so bare. Sniff.

UPDATE: If anyone feels like reposting any comments please do. I had responded to some and you probably never got to see it. Sorry again!
Grease is the word...
The last few days I’ve been listening to the Grease movie soundtrack on my way to and from work. Listening to some of those songs gives me goose bumps. That movie was such a big deal to me and my friends when it came out. We loved the movie, had to have the soundtrack, learned all the words to the songs and would “play” Grease. I had a pair of red high-heeled pointy toed shoes that my grandmother and given to me to play with and whoever played Sandy would get to wear them and sing “You’re the One That I Want.” All of the neighborhood kids were girls then and you can imagine it was a fight to determine who got to play Sandy (and wear the shoes).

Listening to the soundtrack now takes me right back to that summer, 1978. I was eight years old. As I listen to the words of the songs today I blush to think what was coming out of our little mouths then. But we didn’t understand it, not all of it anyway. The only time I got busted was when I was singing “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee.” I got to the part at the end where she says “Eh! Fongool!” I could hear Dad calling from the bedroom.

Dad: “What did you say?”
Me: “It’s the words to the song.”
Dad: “I don’t want you saying that word.”
Me: “Why not?”
Dad: “It’s a bad word, it’s not nice and I don’t want to hear it.”

I have no idea what I said at the time but I’m sure it was the eight year-old, 1978 equivalent of “whatever dude.”
Thursday, August 11, 2005
About the bruise...
The one positioned prominently on her forehead. It took us awhile to figure out what was happening. She had it a couple of weeks ago and it was purple then brown then yellow and then almost gone. Then it was dark purple again! We were thinking "what the hell?" How can she bruise the exact same spot? The best we can figure is that when she's crawling fast across the floor and overbalances and tips forward she's banging her head on the same spot. Which must hurt like hell. Poor baby.
Evasive maneuvers - dinnertime version
Several days ago I told you about Emma's evasive maneuvers at dinnertime. Here it is demonstrated for you:

evasive maneuvers.wmv
News of the Day
One in 25 fathers 'not the daddy' This tidbit has been everywhere in the news. I guess this shouldn't really come as a shock. And I really doubt it has all that much to do with modern mores. Infidelity has been with us through the ages. It's just a pretty stark statistic and probably causes a gut check when men hear it.

It reminds me of M's friend reactions when he told them I was pregnant. "Is it yours?" Ha ha. Apparently men think this is funny.

It also reminded me of my single anthropology class in college when we talked briefly about martriarchal societies. Within these societies the brothers raised their nieces and nephews and were thereby assured they were raising children who were actual blood-relatives. I googled and found a description of such a society as an example if you'd like to see what I'm talking about. I can't vouch for the research but it squares with what we discussed in college.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
I got a link-back from Newsweek!
Sorry for the blog-geek gushing! Just so you know, a program from Technorati compiles these blog entries for Newsweek. So it had nothing to do with the merit of my post, it was probably quite random. Whenever an actual human at Newsweek reads what I had to say they may delete it since the post wasn't exactly flattering to the magazine ;) But in case it's there for longer than a few minutes, here's the link:
Blog Talk

UPDATE: I've been bumped to the second page now. You have to click on "view all" to find me.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Dog Harassment II: The Other Dog
This time Beaker, the very patient chocolate lab, gets the honors...

This one is a little longer than usual, but pretty funny, I promise ;)

dogharrassment2.wmv
The Baby Whisperer a.k.a. Tracy Hogg
Emma likes her:


Mommy wasn't quite as taken.
I had this dream last night...
Just kidding...shout out to Brooklyn! Yo!
I just don't get this...
...


Do these bother anyone else? I found the Bratz line of dolls fairly annoying to begin with. These Baby Bratz are beyond the pale. I realize I might be betraying myself as being way out of touch, but damn people! "Babies" wearing leather, exposed midriffs, painted toenails, heavy face makeup and sporting bling, does this not raise any alarms? These tarted up dolls are being sold to our daughters. I guess I shouldn't be so puzzled why people sexualize young children; here sexualized "babies" are being mass marketed and the target audience is children...who will want to dress like them and look like them. I mean seriously! Is this an evil plot by some pedophile in corporate drag? Damn! I'm getting the vapors high on this horse.

This is the sort of thing that an informed parent cannot resist. What do they know about my baby's brain? What do I need to know? What am I doing wrong? What should I be doing? I am just convinced all of the answers are going to be in this weekly magazine that I wouldn't otherwise cross the street for. You can read the article yourself, they give you the whole thing online. Here's my burning question...how did they get that baby to sit still so they could put contraption on her head?
Monday, August 08, 2005
Watching James Bond again
This is almost a default for us. I've been watching since I was a child. I always associate it with James Bond Marathons around the holidays. Of course my favorite James is Sean Connery. His movies are the coolest; everyone looks so grown-up and the sets are ring-a-ding 60's cool. His James Bond was the most mercenary and ruthless; Moore was way too punny. My favorite Connery Bond film is either Thunderball or From Russia With Love. The Lazenby film was fine, I have no quarrel with him, he just wasn't Connery. Roger Moore had the misfortune of being Bond in the 70's, when it was impossible to be cool. The worst example of uncool was Live and Let Die, the voodoo movie featuring Jane Seymour and a redneck sheriff who also appeared in a later movie. Timothy Dalton was a disaster as James Bond, I don't even want to discuss that fallow period. If anyone had to be James in the 90's then Pierce Brosnan was the perfect choice. I can't think of anyone who could have done it better. My favorite Brosnan bond film was Goldeneye, I love rooting against the Soviets again and the tank chase was wild. I shudder to think of having to accept a new face as Bond, James Bond.
Conversational Coughing
The first conversation I ever had with Emma was in cough-ese. She'd cough a little and then I'd cough, she'd cough, I'd cough; it was the first real give and take. It seemed to please her as much as it pleased me. Now that she's more vocal she'll still do it sometimes. I tried to start a conversation with her earlier this evening and she thought it was funny.

Let's roll the tape:
funnycoughing.wmv
Sunday, August 07, 2005
It's not all wine and roses...
I'm having a bad day. One of those days when you have an endless loop circling in your head, reciting all your deficiencies as a human being. I'm not usually one for naval-gazing; I'm from stoic Presbyterian stock. But sometimes you're just overwhelmed and miserable and you have to ponder why.

I don't blame Emma at all. No resentment there. I do realize that being on duty 100% of the time is taking it's toll, but hey! That's motherhood, shut up about it already, right? I just feel like I'm sacrificing all the time to keep my family running smoothly and it's wearing me out. This is groundbreaking stuff, I know.

The reason I'm having a real pity party is that I can come up with at litany of problems but no solutions. I could talk to my husband about things like getting some free time for me, but then I ask myself "what would I do?" I have no idea. I'm off work on Saturday and Sunday and I'm still on 100% Emma duty. M. works six days a week and when he gets a day off he can do things because I'm watching Emma. Does that sound fair? Should I complain about it? Well, it sound like a legitimate complaint until you realize what M. does with his "free" time is mow the lawn, build a porch railing to protect his daughter, or saw, split and stack a tandem load of firewood to keep his family warm this winter. It's not like he's sitting around playing video games. So I keep my mouth shut and return to default mode, stoic sacrifice. (Can you hear the violins in the background? I did mention this is a pity party)

I could go on and on, but I'm making myself sick of me. Sometimes Sundays suck.
Mommy, Having a moment
We were upstairs playing in Emma's room. Picture Emma crawling around happily from toy to toy while mommy is lying on the floor watching her. Mommy, overcome with emotions watching her little miracle, says "I love you Emma." Emma pauses and crawls toward mommy, Thwack! Smacks her on the forehead. You just want to savor these precious moments forever.
Odd Behavior 101
It used to be when Emma wanted to block an incoming spoon at mealtime she'd deploy kung-fu blocking maneuvers. Now she's taken to bowing her head and rubbing her eyes. Unfortunately her hands usually have food on them so she's rubbing food into her eyes and eyebrows.
New Favorite Game
It's called "What she got in her mouth now?"

It's not really my favorite, but we play it a lot. Answers so far: rock, nut (as in nut and bolt), paper, rubberband, food from floor, and I don't even want to contemplate what I've missed.