Toddler Blues

Today, after a week of single-parenting while Andy is in England, I took Martha to Kelsey Creek Farm in Bellevue. There are sheep, pigs, cows, horses—all of the animals from her books, alive in the flesh. What a fantastic final hurrah to our week of mother-daughter bonding!

Martha sat in the gravel pathway and ate rocks.

A few minutes later, she found a set of steps near the sensory garden and climbed up and down them four times.

One of the horses did manage to hold her attention for a bit. She reached out and offered him a rock. I grabbed her hand away from the beast's giant teeth and she cried.

I have decided to gradually start blogging again, while making no promises and keeping expectations low. I probably shouldn't have even written that sentence.

Over the past month I've fallen back in, and then back out, of love with blue cheese. Throughout July it blanketed my salads, filled my MorningStar Farms® Chik'n Nugget pitas and even replaced cream cheese on my bagels.

Andy and I went out to dinner last weekend and I ordered a cobb salad.

"Instead of the bacon and chicken, can I just get extra blue cheese?" I asked, knowing the answer would be yes, for this is America after all.

Andy, who enjoys foods in moderation, looked at me in disgust.

But sadly, my Stilton love affair is over. I made the mistake of buying Trader Joe's blue cheese and after a few helpings, something switched. The tanginess was too tangy. The closer to the rind, the more disgusting. Even writing this now, I'm on the verge of throwing up.

Worst thing is, I smell blue cheese everywhere I go. I've been washing my hands all afternoon and still can't scour the stench off my fingers. I'm the Lady Macbeth of poor dairy choices, haunted and sick to my stomach.

Barfing emoji!

Sincerely,
Margaret

The Merry Widow

I'm down in Vancouver (not BC) Washington (not DC) hanging out with Grandma Martha. We had a lovely afternoon sitting on the back deck, eating melted cheese on crackers and chatting about everything from Donald Trump to Italian-style meatloaf.

I've learned a lot. For example:

• Her parents almost named her Meta. 

• In Pittsburgh, a friend of her friend walked downstairs with a gun in a towel (so the kids wouldn't see) and shot her husband dead (her own husband, not my grandma's or my grandma's friend's). 

• She thought about being a nun but backed out for two reasons. 1) They wanted to know her dad's annual salary, which bugged her and 2) she heard the food wasn't very good. 

She talked to me for a long time about this particular track on a CD my mom made for her—'The Merry Widow'. She wanted me to hunt through the CDs and find it. I was worried I might not be able to. There was so much build up! 

"There's a song called 'The Merry Widow'. See if you can find it, will you? Yeah, look over there. Is it there? The song is called The Merry Widow. The Merry Widow!!!!"

"OK, I'm looking..."

"Try to find the one with The Merry Widow."

I went over to the CDs. I picked up one and read through the tracks. No luck. I picked up another. It had a big yellow Post-it on the case with large black lettering: 'THE ONE WITH THE MERRY WIDOW' Crisis averted.

Now it's almost bedtime. She's in her room watching Bachelor in Paradise (close captioned) and I'm going to take a bath. I'm looking forward to tomorrow. We're going towel shopping, either at PJ Maxx or Bed Blankets and Beyond.

I'll leave you with a snap of Martha Alice when she was just 26! I'm loving the dark nails.

Sweet dreams,
Margaret

From the Archives, Edition 3

Yep, it's another 'From the Archives' post! Translation: I'm feeling lazy. But oh well. You're not picky.

 Enjoy this except from my old diary (which has about four entries total...again with the laziness):

---

Saturday 9th September 2008

Just got done @ the bagel shop, then went to the library to check my email & facebook (nothing new, surprise surprise), then to the gym (gotta lose 15lbs to get back to my high school weight...I feel so middle aged referring to it was that, harhar).

School is (knock on wood) going to be decently easy this semester. The real struggle is going to be saving money. It doesn't seem like it should be too difficult, but I keep finding different things that I just have to have. I want to do yoga 2 nights a week ($90) and get my middle ear cartilage pierced ($35) and get Marc Jacobs "Daisy" perfume. The piercing & perfume can wait - but I think I'll splurge for the yoga. 

Oh - btw, the reason I need to save money is so I can go live in Edinburgh next year. I want to do this Master's program about religion & journalism ethics. It looks really interesting - but it'll cost me. 

Tori and the Freds (Jamie & Julie Fredrickson) are visiting us in Spokane this weekend. They should be here around dinner time. Should be a fun time because all 3 of them are fun and low maintenance. 

I thought Cyprus would have changed me into a much more social person (all we did there was socialize — clubs, parties, sittin' around the school cafeteria), but I'm afraid I left my socializing desire on the island. The few times I've tried "going out" this semester I just wasn't feeling it. Partly, I don't really want to drink...also...I'm usually really tired from working early and nothing will compare to Cyprus, Ireland & Edinburgh.

My current interests/things in my life:

Books

Just read: Devil in the White City

Reading: Youth in Revolt

Will read next: The River Why

Foods

Oatmeal, Dannon strawberry lite 'n fit yogurt, cashew carrot ginger soup, wholewheat cinnamon raisin bagels, bananas

Clothes

Thin t-shirts found in sleepwear section of target, H&M zip-ups w/ droopy turtlenecks, "Internationals United" t-shirt I took from my friend Haitham in Cyprus, black Lucy yoga pants & zip-up

Make up

Bare Minerals foundation, Benefit eyeshadow & mascara, Dr.Pepper flavor chapstick

TV Shows

Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Gossip Girl, Weeds

Activities

Gym, library (blogging, surfin' the net), reading, TV, planning my future, hanging out in CM with Martha

Anyhoo, as soon as something interesting happens in my life this diary should get better. Frankly, it's pretty dern dull at the moment. I need a crush BAD. That's what diaries are for. We'll see...doubtful.

- M

Keen as a Bean

Mrs.Bean, the world's best school bus driver, taped a sign in the bus window that said, "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice." What a doll. On the last day of school she gave us all copies of the quote that she'd printed out on small bits of paper and laminated. I promised myself I would keep it forever.

I would say "and it's still hanging up on my bedroom bulletin board to this very day," but I have just learned that my room has recently been swept of any last remnants of my existence so it can be transformed into a nursery for Baby Fitz. Somehow I doubt Mrs.Bean's small laminated message made the cut.

Hmmm...this says the author is unknown, but here it is credited to Alyssa Milano.
Who to believe?

Perhaps it's for the best that this dear childhood keepsake got the heave-ho. The more I think about the quote, the more I find it misleading. Indeed, being nice AND ALSO being important is the best outcome of them all. Why not strive for both?

Here are some tips for being nice and important that I've learned from my friends/fam.

Being Nice:

Scratch other people's arms or give them back massages when they ask. (Martha Foley)

If you have a car, be grateful and offer to give those without one a ride. (Tori Mueller)

Keep bandaids handy at all times so you can instantly offer them to the wounded. (Barbie and Char)

Being Important:

Type "sent from blackberry" or "sent from iPad" at the bottom of your emails. Much cheaper than actually buying one and it has the same image-boosting effect! (Andy)

Refer to yourself as "Doctor" when making a doctor appointment or asking the Verizon rep for a cell phone upgrade. It slices through bureaucracy like a Cutco knife through an avocado. (Nancy Padden)


Unfortunately, that's all I have at the moment. I've been struggling for blog topics in what has been the inevitable comedown from my Special K winnings. Luckily, I have something to look forward to. I'm going to go to Oxford (famous university for smart people in England) for a fancy dinner at the beginning of June. Talk about being important! Also, it's a chance to debut the dress.

Well, I'm off to trade the Edinburgh blood bank a pint of my blood for a fun-sized chocolate bar (several, actually). Worth it.

Bye,

Margaret

Breaking the Law of Attraction

Did you notice I changed the quote in the header? I'm going to switch the quote around every so often just you keep you on your toes.

I asked my friends the other day, "Who do you think is unconventionally attractive (it can be a celeb if you can't think of a 'real' person)?" And by "unconventional" I simply mean they are not obviously attractive- they aren't known for their good looks.

Barbie's answer: -you guessed it- Uncle Joey Gladstone.

Isabel's answer: Anthony Bourdain from the Travel Channel show "No Reservations"

I didn't ask Martha, but she often strays from the norms of conventional beauty when seeking a celeb crush. Her stipulations include, big nose, pale skin, scrawny physique.... basically, she prefers the "weak and sickly" look. Believe it or not, this look can actually work for some people. Michael Cera, for example.

Who do you find unconventionally attractive?

I can't think of anyone right now. It's not that there aren't a lot of weirdly cute people out there...but off the top of my head none are coming to mind. This could be because I am distracted by the INSANELY loud conversation the people next to me are having. I am in a study area/coffee/hangout place on campus where I come to blog, eavesdrop, and read the latest New Yorker mag. Pretty soon I am going to head to aerobics and yoga with Clare. Hopefully the classes are challenging enough and not too crowded. And hopefully I don't fart. 

The Real Housewives of Orange County is on tonight. I think this has been the best season so far because the two new housewives are NOT meshing well with the preexisting housewives. I've been watching this show since season 1, so I feel like I know them all. It's great.

Ta, 

Madge

There's only two types of people in the world...

...the ones that blog and the ones that do stuff with their lives.

I just purchased Britney Spears' "Circus" on iTunes. It's fab. I now have 12 whole songs on my iTunes!!! I know, I know, there are programs I can download that will let me transfer all my iPod songs to my iTunes and BLAH BLAH BLAH- it's all so stressful and I promise I'll get to it eventually but for some reason I just have a mental block against the whole iTunes/iPod song-getting and storing process. I'm sweatin' just thinkin about it. And every time iTunes asks me to update it I go back and forth for 5 minutes AGONIZING over the decision. What if it erases my songs (all 12 of them)!??!?! Why am I like this?? I've never been tragically screwed over by iTunes or anything...maybe I've just heard other people's horror stories. 

I made the mistake of eating a pomagranate while I sat on lamby (my lambskin rug. infamous freshman year Costco impulse buy) watched 30Rock on my WHITE macbook. Fuschia pom juice splattered across the keys and I since I didn't have a napkin available and I was too lazy to lean forward I had to wipe it off with my toes. Now my toes are sticky. 

Martha and I walked downtown today to get a dark chocolate bar. She just informed me that MUFAs are an important part of a healthy diet (especially if you want a flat stomach). They are Monounsaturated Fatty Acids and they lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) while increasing HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol). Nuts, dark chocolate, avocados, and olive oil are high in MUFAs. MUFAs have been found to help in weight loss, particularly body fat. 

So we chowed down on a Moonstruck dark chocolate bar. Moonstruck is a chocolate company based out of Portland and Martha actually knows the family that started it. It was also mentioned in O magazine as one of her favorite treats! Yummmm.

It's only 7:26 pm! I have over two hours until the new episode of "Real Housewives of Orange County". Killing time- it's all I do lately. Maybe I will buy another song on iTunes and belly dance to it in front of my mirror. Belly dancing is a natural skill I was born with and I always feel good, like it's worked out my abs, after I do it. That will kill about 15 minutes. Then maybe I will wikipedia stuff that I've been curious about- like hemispherectomies, alopecia and Switzerland.

Until next time, 

Madge

Explorers of Various Frontiers

Halloween was a spectacular spectacle as expected. 

If I had to boil it down to a theme, I'd say it was "Explorers/Pioneers" because beyond even the obvious (Lewis and Clark) there were many different costumes of various pioneers throughout time. 

Isabel was an astronaut (Explorer of SPACE)

Barbie was Barbie, Alison was Rosie the Riveter, Clare was Sacajawea (all Womans-rights Pioneers)

Meghan was a bubble bath (Pioneer of polio-treatment....trust me, I read it in a book)

 

Meghan's basement was the BEST place for a halloween party. She decorated it with black lights, cobwebs and many a plastic pumpkin filled with candy. 

I love Halloween because everyone puts in SUCH a big effort- and it really pays off! Sometimes I think people are so set on being grown up that they forget how to be creative. But Halloween proves me wrong- I only wish people were this un-boring all year!

My favorite part of the night was my involvement in a random, spur-of-the-moment dance party with Martha, her friend Michelle and their cronies. It happened after I miraculously FOUND Martha, aka my dear counter-part Merriwether, from whom I'd been briefly separated. The reunion was joyous, and the expedition was refueled by some much-needed dancing to one of my fave euro-dance hits "Destination Unknown". Ridiculous!

Last night Martha and I wanted to "get away from it all- leave the hustle and bustle of the city for some much-needed peace and quiet" and so we went to Couer De' Alene (I DOUBT that's how it's spelled but I do not have the energy to google it). After quickly agreeing not to waste the money and calories on dinner, we went to a gas station to get a snack. We settled on a root beer (mar) and a tea (me) after MUCH deliberation. The indecisiveness was so abundant you would have thought we were in Blockbuster (I always wander the aisles there for about an hour before settling on "Center Stage"). Then we hood-ratted it up and sat on the dock with our beverages, playing the cliff-game as rain delicately fell on the lake. 

I have two papers to write. I am half-way though one and 1/6 of the way through the other. I'm considering setting my alarm and finishing them both during the wee hours dawn. I work best under pressure anyway, and my stomach is being weird right now, and I want to work on my Edinburgh app, and there's probably other stuff too that I just can't think of. 

November is always an awesome month, 

Madge