MOVING IT ON OVER....

CHECK ME OUT!!!!

Okay,so I am feeling like a super hero at this moment.... (while the thunder is rolling overhead....should I shut down my laptop? yikes!)...

I got my posts transferred from here to my NEW AND IMPROVED (okay, "improved" remains to be seen) blog over at typepad....

http://sondisees.typepad.com/


Ta-DA!!!

Thursdays Minutia

So today I'm seriously considering the pros and cons of starting a Typepad Blog and moving my daily...weekly...(er...whatever) rantings over there. So far this is what I've found:

PROS
Easier for folks to download to read
It's new and novel and I love new and novel
The 'strikeout' feature for writing drama (me likey drama!)

CONS
No ability to change fonts in entries
I have to figure out the interface and how to do stuff all over again
A year or so's worth of content down the tubes 'cause I will have to start from scratch all over again....UGH
It looks like you can't use outside html when creating widgets. So I'd have to upload all my photos (jillions) to THEIR site and re-create all my slideshows and whatnot. (DOUBLE UGH)

Anyone have some input to add here? I'd love to hear it.

ANOTHER BIGGEE in life today.....in the last week, by camera died. Kaput. Dead as a doornail. It is now null and void. It won't even turn on. Hitting it, replacing the batteries and also calling it foul names have not helped. Hubby took it over to Best Buy (or "Buy More" as it is referred to on the new show, "Chuck") and they are gonna let us know if there is any hope for it. They may or may not be charging us for providing us this insight. Also, hubby didn't know about the permanent blob on the screen that appears on all the pictures.....so that will not be addresses in the examination. SOOOOO....I have my sights set on a spanking new camera. I've done research and checked features and prices and have found an online source to purchase what I want for about a hundred bucks cheaper than Circuit City and Best Buy ("buy more" is so much more fitting!) are charging. Now I just have to wait for the crummy techs to return a verdict on the old one before I can justify the purchase. Stupid techs.
Just throw the *%&@$ thing into a volcano already and be done with it!

I, apparently, need substantially more coffee as I am completely grumpy today. Partially because I have no camera to take pictures of the quick-to-disappear wonderful fall colors all around me as well as each and every adorable little face my progeny makes. (just be glad i don't subject you to the billions of shots of them....there are so many that even their father and grandparents grow weary of them.)

So that is the latest with me.
Typepad angst and camera angst.

ugh.

Monday monday....

FINGERPAINTING


Today

i am neck deep in laundry. I have to wash all the blankets and stuff from the guestroom because there are wads of cathair all over everthing! Then I have to move all the bins and stuff I've been storing in there. I've mentioned the clothes swap parties i've had, right? I'm planning another one for October and i've got TONS of clothes in bins just waiting for it.



I've got drying laundry and art supplies (i.e. junk) all over the dining room. At the moment the diningroom table is divided in half....half is piled high with MY art stuff and the other half is Bella's stuff....glitter, pieces of paper she's cut into a jillion bits, toys etc. I told her a few minutes ago that we have to empty off the table TODAY and her eyes got BIG and round...

....it's gonna take us awhile to do.

One of the treasures i found at goodwill was a cd-rom called Barbie Screen Style. It's got screen backgrounds, sound scenarios, icons and cursors that are barbie styles from the last sixty years or so. Very Kitschy....Currently my cursor is a pink gloved hand and instead of an hourglass while the computer is 'thinking', the fingers count to five on the glove. It's awesome!

Since I started changing some of the icons on my screen to Barbie high heels and purses, I realized that I needed to update some of my other icons as well. I never did get them all moved over to my laptop from Richie's. So I spent wayyyy too long last night downloading and installing new icons. That is one of those things that you start doing thinking it will only take a minute or two and before you know it, the whole night has gone by. I hate it when that happens. On the upside, I replace all my birdie icons with high heels and art supplies. Hee hee...

I have to do some research and see if there is a goodwill facility around here

where they sell off all their furniture and bigger items.

(Anyone know where it is??)

There are always lots being donated to the store around back and never ever any on the sales floor so it must be getting shipped off somewhere!

Richie and I are teaching Bella to sound out words lately and while I was there, I got a book based on a PBS show called, 'between the lions' that teaches phonics. The book has like one word on each page and this morning she was trying to sound them out all by herself. She was SO proud. She also finally figured out how to whistle and is particurly excited about that!

Here are the girls in the Marshall's dressing room.....they were tired.....
OH....and while we were at Marshall's to get Mia some shoes, they had ALL these shoes and clothes for three and five dollars! SO FUN. I found bella some long sleeved shirts for two bucks. I got her a dress that came with a matching belt and sweater for ten dollars. And also a dress that came with a matching doll dress for like seven. Sweet Deals, man! The only downside was that the stuff we were actually THERE to shop for weren't on sale. So Mia's shoes were on sale but not clearance prices. Still, they are totally cute.... (more on that another day)....


Onwards and upwards!

ROASTED PEANUTS OF DEATH

So....... I was shopping the other day and had roasted peanuts on my grocery list.

I like to make thai food at home and roasted peanuts are a yummy, easy, and protein filled addition to thai dishes....So, out of habit, I'm checking out the ingredients on the bottles of peanuts. I'm thinking...."ah helloooo.....why is there a whole list of ingredients for something as simple as peanuts? Don't they just put a bunch of peanuts in an oven and roast them and viola! roasted peanuts?"

But alas, no.

Not only were there a whole list of ingredients on these innocent looking (and healthy seeming!) nuts, but mixed in with those ingredients were powdered corn syrup (huh?) and monsodium glutamate. Yup, MSG. Now, I could understand a need for a list of several ingredients if this was some sort of mixed snack food with like tidbits of crackers or whatever in it but in a seeming single ingredient item, why is there all this other junk in there???

Now you may at this point be rolling your eyes at me and thinking that I am totally overreacting over a little MSG. In my case, I avoid it like the plague because it gives me migraines for DAYS. NOT FUN.

BUT wait, there's more.

Lately I've been hearing more and more about how bad MSG and similar complex sodiums are for you. In the last couple of weeks, I've heard them referred to as neuro-toxins more than once. And today, I heard an even more disturbing update. Apparently, many of your organs have glutamate receptors. In other words, they 'read' this glutamate as an instruction to DO something. When you consume glutamate, it sits in your blood stream for quite a while and as you consume more and more, it doesn't flush thru your system like normal food items. No, it sits and ACCUMULATES in your bloodstream, building up higher and higher. Then it goes bouncing around from organ to organ wrecking havoc!

Now for some people, their heart glutamate receptors are activated and their heart goes into spasms and starts beating irregularly (the news article noted that most heart attacks 'coincidentally' occur after a meal....hmmm...). For some people, the receptors elsewhere trigger diarreah. For others, the receptors in their lungs are activated and they have an asthma attack. Are you getting the picture here? Your body is reacting to the glutamate and thinking that the brain is instructing it to do stuff.....and then the organ goes haywire! Don't even get me started on the glutamate receptors in the brain! Yikes!

So if you read labels avoid the stuff, you probably figure you are safe, right?

Ha HA! The food manufactureres would like you to THINK so.

But no......have you ever noticed that in the list of five kajillion ingredients are the words, "flavoring" and/or "artificial flavorings" ??? Like the tricky chemicals that are put into perfumes and purfumed products (like say, dishsoap or toilet paper...sheesh...) and listed under a vague "perfumes", the manufactueres can just put in the vague word 'flavorings and they are covered. No regulations against being vague apparently.

Am I the only one frustrated by this??? ARRGGHHHHHH

More Minutia

Well, there is good news and bad news.

First note of bad news...... two of my favorite shows were cancelled and are not coming back in the new fall season: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (alas, Matthew Perry!) and Veronica Mars... Sniff Sniff.... How will life go on as we know it???

Also a bit of sad news....I actually BOUGHT a copy of TV Guide to study up for the new fall season. And by 'study up', I am (almost) ashamed to admit that I looked online for info on the shows and scribbled in next to the name of each show that interests me in the new season, the date it will start airing. I have a total TV chart now! YAY!

And YES.

This IS SAD.

On MANY levels.

Now a note of GOOD NEWS....how bad can life be when the most crucial bit of news is the new fall schedule? I'm chuckling at my sad state. No really...*sigh*

ANOTHER note of good news! I finally FOUND my Alpine Gold Hazelnut chocolate bars on a global foods site. UNFORTUNATELY, when I reviewed my order, I think I may have ordered the ones with raisins and almonds. DANG IT. I am severedly addicted to these chocolate bars. Since I get them at a discount salvage type store, I stock up when they sell them and then when they run out and don't carry them anymore, I just have to sweat it out and wait for the next spring when they will carry them again. I have NO IDEA where they are actually sold. SOMEWHERE. I mean, they've got to be initally selling them at a normal retail price out there SOMEWHERE Before they end up at the discount store right??

Normally, I only eat DARK chocolate. Seriously, I just can't STAND milk chocolate. Tastes like wax to me.....But this milk chocolate is SO creamy and chocolately that I just can't get enough. It's swiss so it's not too surprising I suppose. They know their chocolate out there.....them swiss must be good people. My second favorite is the 70% cocoa Chocolove Bars (dark brown wrapper). If the bars I ordered aren't the object of my addiction, I will just have to settle for the chocolove and use the ones that arrive as CHOCOLATE BACKUP.

Another positive note....I FINALLY got around to printing out a bunch of photos, taking them to Office Max and getting Xerox copies made so I can try out some of the photo tranferring techniques I've been reading about FOREVER. YAY! I even managed to remember to buy Freezer Paper and Gum Arabic. Now, if I can only find the directions for all three or four transfer methods, I might actually know what to DO with these supplies....! Woo-hoo!

On an EVEN more boring note of minutia ....

(is that even POSSIBLE at this point????)

.....it's a rainy Sunday afternoon and I'm wearing a sweater and socks again today. This after a full week of HOT HUMID weather when ANY clothes seemed to be too many layers. The kind of heat where you want to get right back IN the shower after towelling off from a shower because you are instantly sweaty. The kind of heat where you have to be in an air conditioned room to apply your makeup or it goes on all blotchy (from the sweat). Maine is yet another one of those places (every state with weird weather seems to claim it as it's own) whose slogan is, "Don't Like the Weather??? Just Wait A Minute". Stupid Weather.

I've been feeling vaguely guilty at looking forward to 9/11 this year. Every year tensions seem to rise, people are more on alert to strange behavior and completely worried some new catastrophe will befall them. But my little one was BORN on that day and so is turning TWO this year. And even though we don't celebrate birthdays, it just really seems like a big milestone in the life of someone who is only almost-two. So I'm counting down the days and every one ELSE is just preoccupied with trying NOT to think about it. Tick, Tick, Tick...

ORPHAN TRAINS

"The Greatest Thing
You'll Ever Learn
Is Just to Love
And be Loved
In Return"

These words, sung by Nat King Cole (and David Bowie, and others I'm sure) were written by a child from an Orphan Train. What is an 'orphan train 'you ask?

Well, did I ever get an ear full today! I was listening to Maines Public Radio station this afternoon and they were running a segment created by http://www.soundprint.org/ called "The Orphan Train". It includes tons of testimonials of children (now senior citizens) who related stories about how they were orphaned or why their families were forced to give them up -- Often because one parent died and the other didn't have the means to care for them while they worked or because of destitution and the inability to feed their many children. In some cases, the older children in a family were kept because they could work (child labor) and the youngest were sent to orphanages. This program was about (the part I heard anyhow) how the New York City Orphanages were overflowing so, to solve this problem, they placed the children on a train bound for the west, to homes of people who could take them in. In 1854 estimates put the number of homeless children in New York City at 34,000. This was a class of people referred to as "street Arabs" or "the dangerous classes". The orphanages could not hold all the homeless children. So they sent as many children as possible west to find homes with farm families. They ran advertisements explaining when the trains would be arriving and then as the train made its stops the children would be paraded in front of the crowd of onlookers.

Some of them were cared for well, allowed to attend school, and well loved. Some ended up as forced labor on farms. Some were molested or forced to earn wages thru prostitution. Some were reunited with their parents (few) and some were never heard from again.

Hearing the accounts from the voices of people who lived them was heart wrenching. Although these people were world-weary adults now, with a lifetime of experience behind them, you could still hear the pain and heart break in their voices as they recounted the things they felt, and saw, and experienced when their families could no longer care for them... They experienced a stigma and the embarrassment of coming from a family not able to care for their basic needs.

All this really forced me to stop and think about how blessed *MY* life really is. Not only can I care for my children's basic needs but, considered in relation to those children of the past, my children live in luxury. I don't have to worry that an illness or job loss will result in the loss also of our family unit.... That my babies could be scattered to the winds, not knowing their parents, where they come from or even, and, in the few cases where the children were too young to speak, their own names. We may be in debt (like typical Amercians) but these kinds of scenarios would never even enter the average mother's minds! My kids waste time watching tv, they play to their hearts content, they eat until they are full and they have two parents who adore them. They aren't required to chop wood, start a fire, and cook breakfast for a house full of people, and all before they left for school. Amazing.

If you are curious about these orphan trains or the people who experienced them (makes me wonder about my great grandmother who was an orphan and whose history we know nothing about), here are a few of the links I found. (Since I have an interest in genealogy, and my family's history, this was of particular interest to me. )

http://www.outfitters.com/~melissa/ot/ot.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/
http://www.rootsweb.com/~mogrundy/orphans.html

KYLE XY

So the off-season shows are all wrapping up and its time we bid these characters adieu until next year. This, sad as it is to admit, drives me nuts. I am clearly WAY too addicted to the television when waiting for a new episode of a television series to air can make me so frustrated. Hellloooo.....get a life, already!

But for anyone else that is also addicted to this show (it's one of those where you are kept guessing and they only reveal small clues in each episode), you probably understand. The KYLE XY season 2 finale episode, "Leap of Faith", ends with this song playing in the background which I absolutely love. Very haunting tagline, "shouldn't that save you".....

It took me quite a while (searching online high and low) to figure out who this song was by but FINALLY I found it on emusic. com. (itunes didn't seem to have it) For anyone interested, the song is called, "Save You" and is sung by Matthew Perryman Jones . I don't know about anyone else, but if I hear a great song on a television show or movie, it drives me nuts until I can find out who it was by. There was a song in the movie, "Because I said so" that was like that. And IT led me to discover a new group that I absolutely love (new to me, but they have a couple of cds out), The Weepies. LOVE LOVE LOVE them..... This song was like that. The chorus kept going 'round and 'round in my head. The only way to get it out is to download it and put it on my ipod!!!

I've got a raging headache so that's all I'm writing for now.....

Later!