First, we have a winner for The Eve Tree! Email me your address Peggy and I will send you the book. I’m sure you will enjoy it.

Second, I am swamped with work. This is a really good thing but a little scary because I have deadlines looming and possibly not enough time to do my best work. I guess I’m just sharing that here so that you know what’s up if this blog goes quiet for a week or so. Though, I bet now that I’ve written that I’ll find a million and one ways to make time for blogging. I always like to make myself eat my words.

Third, if anyone wants to, you can buy my book (only $2.99!) and review it on Amazon! I will send you a copy of my alphabet cards (the nice ones that are not available in my shop right now). I just need three more reviews to hit that magical amazon number. Yes, the book is only available in electronic version for the kindle, iphone and ipad right now but it will be out in print sometimes soon I hear. I’ll keep you posted.

Updated to add: THANK YOU! I have ten reviews now and I’m out of alphabet cards for the time being.

Fourth, today is the last day to comment on my Degree post over on my review site if you want to win some mulah. Tomorrow I’ll have a new post reporting on my work-out progress that you will also be able to comment on to win $100. Spoiler: I didn’t do so hot. SAJ is all work and no working out these days which is bad bad bad. Check in tomorrow to see the sad report. New post is up!

Fifth, Aqui has not had her kittens yet but she does have an appointment with the vet on Wednesday just to get checked out. She seems to be quite happy and content in spite of her girth. I’ll keep you posted on that too.

Sixth, my nieces are not here. They are visiting their other grandparents for two weeks so that is why you haven’t had any “Girls of Summer” updates.

And that’s all I got! Now back to work!

I have a bunch of odd things to share but not really a whole blog post worth of content for any one subject. So how about I do a catch-up brain-dump that will probably end up being pretty long?

Alrighty! I love it that you are so agreeable.

First up: Summer is here. I guess it’s technically still Spring but we’ve definitely been enjoying bathing suit and flip flop weather both at the beach and out in the sticks. I turned on the swamp cooler for the first time last week and felt terribly guilty. Like I should wait for it to really be sweltering or something.

I LOVE the swamp cooler. It must bring back memories from my childhood or something, though I don’t think we had one when I was a kid. There’s just something so comforting about the cool air and that funny swampy smell. I love it. I also love that you don’t have to stress about keeping all the doors and windows closed, which is really key when you have dogs and kids who like to come and go like they were born in a barn.

I never showed you the wicker set my mom picked up at an estate sale for forty bucks a while back. What a steal. She’s letting me borrow it until she gets her other house fixed up to live in. Yes, my mom has another property. I don’t know if you keep up on the family soap opera but my brother and his family used to live there but they moved out and now it’s vacant. My mom will probably be moving back in a few months and we’re all kind of dreading it. It’s been really nice having her next door.

Anyway, wicker! Right in my driveway! It’s like I can drive right into my living room!

It’s a nice spot for for relaxing and talking to the neighbors who might be afraid of the dogs. All the other outdoor patio seating areas I have are in my yard where the dogs run free and sometimes those dogs can be downright pesky, especially when they like to jump on you (Spreckles) and snarl and growl (Holly).

It’s also a nice spot for taking pictures. The fiberglass siding provides a nice soft-box effect for taking photos. Too bad it’s about eleven-hundred years old and not very photogenic itself. I don’t know exactly what it’s made of but there are these little fibers that are coming lose from it and the birds like to pull that off to make nests. I hope it’s not poisonous to them.

What is this stuff called anyway? I tried googling fiberglass siding and that wasn’t it at all. Maybe it’s no longer used. I don’t know.

Since I’m talking about my driveway patio, how about a picture of my crunched-up car? Isn’t that sad? I backed into someone in the bank parking lot. I could swear it’s more her fault than mine but I have no proof. We both backed into each other at the same time like so:

She was in a big giant SUV and didn’t see me. I don’t know why I didn’t see her. I was going really slow, just creeping out when I heard this big BOOM! I stopped, put my car in park and jumped out of the car. And while I’m there jumping out, she was still moving and about to hit me again. Why? I guess she just didn’t even know I was there. Of course I yelled and screamed and she stopped backing up just in the nick of time before she was about to run over my body that was thinking about jumping in between our two cars. I don’t know why I thought putting myself in the way was a good idea but I felt so helpless and of protective of my poor little car.

(This is a very bad thing.)

I really wanted to hate the lady in the big SUV but she was so nice. She gave me all her insurance information and her phone numbers. She seemed genuinely concerned when I told her my husband was going to kill me when he saw the dent.

Poor Toby. I don’t know why he bought me this car. I did pay for a big chunk of it myself from freelance jobs but if it had been up to me I would have bought more of a clunker that could handle nicks and dings without feeling like I’ve damaged a collector’s item. It’s so sad. I’ve got dings on all sides. I look like I’m a drunk driving by Braille. Only two of them are my fault though. The rest is beach parking. Stupid tourists.

Anyway! I’ve got a call into my insurance agent and I think it should work out. Thankfully it’s only the bumper and not the frame. My dad says I could get an auto body shop to just punch it out for $100.

Next up! Easter Party!

I know, this is old news. I’m so sorry. I meant to type up a whole post about Easter because my new best friend across the street put so much time and effort into it. It really deserves a post all on it’s own. But it’s old news now so I’ll just wrap it in right here. Sorry Wendy!

We had a lot of fun. I have to say this neighborhood we live in is pretty great. If you want to see all the pictures, click here for flickr and click here for facebook. If you aren’t a friend, email me and I’ll friend you. I’m always accepting friend applications. Just kidding. Though it is pretty funny how we call everybody friends these days.

My uncle was giving a little Sunday School talk at meeting (church) a week ago and he told how an acquaintance of his kept emailing him asking if he’d be his friend on facebook. Well, my uncle has no use for facebook. He doesn’t have time for that kind of stuff. He has a big family, a pretty busy job etc etc… So finally after the fifth or sixth email from this guy, my uncle just got on the phone and dialed him up. Of course this friend wasn’t there so he left a message saying, Why don’t we get together and have lunch sometime and catch up like real friends?

You guessed it, the wanna-be friend never called back. But sure enough the emails requesting friendship kept coming. So pretty much the moral of my uncle’s story was, be careful who you associate with because often friends don’t really want to be your friend. They just want to keep track of you! I kind of smiled sheepishly through out this whole message.

Since we’re talking about friends, here’s some of Bug’s artwork of her and her friend Olivia. They’re best friends in preschool. I hear all about Olivia every day. I’m learning all about peer pressure already. Bug wants to wear everything Olivia has. Olivia has Twinkle Toe Sketchers, a layered skirt and little bow-thingys in her hair. So now Bug does too. High school, here we come.

I also liked this picture. It’s algae of course. Didn’t you know? We learned all about algae because I have my homepage set to Bing and that was that day’s picture. Everyday they put up a really cool photo with interesting links. I don’t love Microsoft products but I do have to say this is a pretty neat feature. Bethany turned me onto it.

This is the Liquid Web Guy. If you like them on twitter or something like that they send you one of these toys in the mail. It’s kinda cool. Of course Bug broke his arms off the day after he arrived but it’s a pretty neat toy if you don’t try to make him do gymnastics with his massive 24-hour-support arms. I’m still really happy with their web service and hey, a free toy!

What else do I have around here to share?

Apparently Spreckles won a bake sale. That’s newworthy. Though my film-making skills are not.

My silly kid.

Lastly (or near the last…I think I have two more things after this) we ran a race this weekend! And this is the only picture I have to show for it that I took with my non-smart phone. I left the big camera at home because I didn’t want it banging against my hip while I ran and my small water-proof point-and-shoot was dead which it is a lot these days since I’ve misplaced the charger. This is what happens when you get new bigger better camera. The old one gets neglected.

Anyway the race was a bit of a bust because I didn’t read the instructions carefully and I missed it! It was at 7:15 in the morning and I was parking about that time. The whole place was a crowded and I had no hope of getting to the starting line on time. By the time I got to registration, it was well on it’s way and I was lost. I called my friend Calee, who was also running the race, and she said I could just come with her on the 9:30 walking 5K instead. That sounded good to me since I haven’t really been working out much lately and I was not really ready to run a race anyway. I had Bug with me. She was going to stay with her dad during the race but things got complicated and she ended up coming with me instead.

Long story short, it was a good twist of events because the race turned out to be a massive kid zone with five or six bounce houses, a petting zoo, trampolines, live music and face painting!!! Wooo to the hoooo! But the best part is that when Bug got her face painted and the lady did kind of a bad job. How can that be good you think? Well…Bug wanted a butterfly that took over her whole face (We might be a bit spoiled.) and the lady did a pathetic pink “x’ between her eyes. It was so sad. I could see Bug’s disappointment when she looked into the mirror so I politely asked if I could take a hand at painting. It was a bit forward of me to ask and I’m so happy that the face painter didn’t take it personally. But I’ve been dying to be a face painter since forever and I knew I could do a better job. So I did!

It didn’t turn out that great but I know if I practice more I could do a lot better. I’m really serious about becoming a face painter. Just wait and see!

I think that’s my last picture. But I do want to share that we are going to Disneyland on Thursday and if anybody has any hints/tips for us I’d love to hear them. I realize not many people will make it this far down in the post but if you did, please share! This will be Bug’s first time to Disneyland outside of that time I took her when she was one. Remember this movie?

We are all so so so very excited. The water ball probably won’t blow her mind like last time but the princesses will. Unfortunately, she’s still a midget in the height department and not 42-inches tall yet so a lot of the rides will still be off limits but I think we’ll manage.

And lastly! (for reals this time) I’ve got a mop post up on my review site. This one is a good one. I really really like this product. If you’re the mopping type, you might too! Especially since you can win $100 and a free mop if you’re lucky!

Life is quiet out here in the sticks outside of my incessant sneezing. The cold rages on as you can see. Thankfully even wadded up used tissues look better with a 50mm lens.

In other news, I rearranged my bedroom. Huzzah! I love it that I can rearrange furniture whenever I please. This new arrangement is not for beauty or any kind of bren* shui though. It’s purely because I got tired of the drafts from the window wafting down on me in the night. It gets cold out here at night!

I think I’ll move the bed back under the window in the summer because then drafts are quite nice. For now though this is much cozier and it only hampers our path to the bathroom by a few steps. We don’t use that bathroom much anyway so it’s no big deal to have to walk all the way around the bed to get to it. In Bug and Holly’s case, you can just lumber right over the top of the bed and save yourself five steps.

Since we’re doing a “home tour” I might as well show you Bug’s fairies. She draws them (with some help from me) and then tapes them around the house. Look right below the red poppies painting and you’ll see this little guy:

I think this is me as a “mom fairy.” She watches over me when I sleep or maybe this is just here so I know where my bed is. Who knows. If you give your kid paper and things to draw with and access to scissors and tape, you never know what you are going to find randomly taped around the house. Right now as I type this, I see there is a colorful Easter egg taped to the living room window. She’s very proactive with her seasonal decorating.

Holly has a fairy too but it was too dark when I took that photo and it was too blurry. (You can see it in the window shot, just really really small. That’s where Holly’s dog bed usually is.)

This is Bug’s fairy. I drew this one (per her instruction) and she colored it.

While I’m in Bug’s room I might as well show you her giant shoe collection. Do you think this kid has enough shoes? (Most of them are hand-me-downs or gifts.) You’d think she does but there is aways some outfit that doesn’t match with any of these. Good thing kid-fashion is pretty carefree. She wears the craziest combos and nobody even blinks an eye anymore. I think she also has a giant shoe collection because her feet never grow. She’s been a size 7/8 for a whole year now. She’s just like me with tiny feet.

Also, the vacuum cleaner lives in her closet. I do feel a bit bad about that but there is no room anywhere else and it’s almost like that shelf was built just for vacuum cleaners. Thankfully Bug doesn’t know any better and thinks it’s totally normal to have a vacuum cleaner in your closet.

These are some very important rock star concert documents. Can’t you tell? The one on the right is a contract that I had to sign and on the left is some sheet music I presume. Bug made this really long movie describing them all and what they are for, (the card is for zoom-zooming in the zoom zoom machine) but then after she was done and I was watching the movie, I noticed my shirt was gaping wide open sideways showing some armpit/boob action so I deleted that movie. Sorry Bug. I’ll have to have her do it again. It was all very funny of course as most doomed things are.

And that concludes my boring Tuesday in the life of Brenda post!

*Bren shui is my own form of feng shui that has no system of aesthetics other than my gut feeling of where things should be.

p.s. New banner! Empty your cache and refresh! RSS-ites, click over!

I’m kinda feeling under the weather today. Don’t feel too bad for me. I’ve been healthy as an ox all winter and just now caught something. It’s about time I caught one of the many viruses Bug brings home from preschool. I also attended a Bikram Yoga class on Saturday for the first time in my life and I am sore!! Oh my goodness, hot sweaty yoga is not for wimps! Have you ever tried it?

It’s regular yoga with simple poses except they crank up the heater to 110°F or something. I’m so proud of myself for making it through all the way to the end and not fainting. At first I thought it was a cinch. I thought, I can totally do yoga even though I haven’t worked out in an entire year. Ha!

Then I woke up the next day and I couldn’t bend my legs. So yeah, I’m not feeling so hot. I am also worried about all the other people in the class who were sitting in a hot damp petri dish with all of my germs. It was pretty gross. I wonder how they clean those rooms after everyone has dripped five pounds of sweat each onto the sticky carpet. It was low pile carpet, thankfully, but it still looked pretty gross. I’m just going to stop thinking about it and tell myself that the benefits of a deep workout offset the grossness of hot damp germy floors.

I’m sorry I had to drag your mind over to that ugly place. Here, feast your eyes on some blurry coasters from Paris! Aren’t they pretty? Everything is prettier with a 50mm lens blurring out the background. Today I wish I could wear 50mm glasses and then crawl into bed and read a book very close up. Maybe I will if I can convince Bug to nap with me (not likely).

I just thought I’d check in and do a quick blog. Maybe I’ll start a habit of it. Probably not. I’m always promising things and then not following through. But I’ve been working really hard on a post about painting and my insecurities about it and I’m not making very much progress. I’m starting to think that posts that take more than a week to write aren’t meant to be shared. Blogging is not supposed to be work. I don’t have time to be that deep. I should take the time but I have a five year old bopping around interrupting me constantly.

Bug’s bopping is so awesome though. She drives me crazy regularly but the minute she’s not around, I miss her with the heat of a thousands suns. I wouldn’t want her any other way.

Look at her messy desk. I used to brag to anyone that would listen that my child was naturally neat. She does like to match things up and put out of order products back in order in the grocery store but her OCD stops there. Her room is a mess daily. I think I’m going to have to take back all that bragging. I’ve probably spoiled her by tidying up after her. I can’t help myself sometimes. I just hate clutter! She will clean up with a lot nagging of course (maybe even less nagging than most kids) but she often drags her feet and tells me that cleaning up is so BOOOOORRRING. To which I roll my eyes. A lot of things in life are boring, kid.

I guess compared to her imaginary world where she changes characters hourly, cleaning is very boring. Does your kid do this? She’s a cat on the left and a knight or a Barbie Musketeer or something on the right.

Then she’s a hula girl…it never ends. I’m thankful for her imagination but I’ve had to make a rule that she has to keep whatever outfit she’s wearing on until she puts the last one away. This has helped with the constant piles of clothes on the floor but now I’m finding perfectly clean clothes stashed in the laundry and behind hanging clothes in the closet. Kids!

Sometimes I get in on the action too. But not very often.

Definitely not today.

Today I’m going to hide behind my 50mm lens and pretend the world is blurry around the edges.

Tell me what you really think. Or just answer the question at the end of my post on my review blog and possibly win $100.

While you’re at it you can read about my extraordinary family AND enter to win my Juicy Juice contest before it’s over! It’s still going on but it will end soon!

As you can see we had a pretty good time at the lake. I don’t think I’m going to back-blog it like I have other years but I did sketch the whole time so after I dig my scanner out from under the pile of un-opened mail, I might scan those and put them up.

If I had to pick a theme for this year’s trip it would NOT be fishing like it was last year. We did fish but we only caught bluegills. I would probably have to say that getting a kick-ass tan would be this year’s theme. It wasn’t intentional…I do have to worry about skin cancer and all but when you spend all day out on a lake basking in the sun, a few rays are bound to break through the 50 SPF sunblock. I think I have FINALLY gotten rid of my usual all-year-around farmer’s tan.

And Bug got stung by a hornet. But other than that it was just pretty much your average fun family trip at the lake!

It’s good to be back. Now if only I could figure out a way to ignore all these dishes, the pesky deadlines, an empty refrigerator, two hungry mouths that need to be fed and all the other thousands of household chores that need my attention…

We’ve been keeping busy. I’m trying to stay home more. Do things locally and all that. We’ve hit the dollar theatre, all our regular parks and the local museum. Our local museum hosts a kids’ event every second Sunday of the month with crafts and interactive exhibits. It’s actually pretty cool. I don’t know why we haven’t gone before.

National Library Week has been saving us this week. I love all the free events they have scheduled. I’m going to be sad when it’s over.

Today we went to the Silly Science Show put on by the Friends of the Library. It was a hoot. Whoever is donating money to the library in my neighborhood has been seriously contributing to the happiness of my kid. This show was top notch. The wild-haired professor had the kids rolling with laughter and learning scientific principles at the same time. He covered subjects I learned in high school and those kids ate it up. Of course there were some kids who were squirrelly who needed to be kept in line but he handled them pretty well. Better than I would.

So that’s what we’ve been up to. I know it’s not the most exciting post but I thought I better at least put something up.

Sigh. We’re finally home. Or maybe I should say I’m finally getting around to posting about being home. I’m finding it a bit tricky to adjust to the real life routine but I should be back to normal soon…I hope! I wrote a thousand posts in my brain today when I was miles away from my laptop but now that I actually have some sit-down time with my beloved laptop, I feel my pillow calling me instead. Isn’t that how it always is?

So I’ll just leave you with some photos and fill you in on the rest later.

Bug and I are arguing over which picture she wants to show you. I want the funny bunny face one (it’s my blog so I win) and she wanted this one:

So Happy Easter from both of us! And now we must rush off and get ready for church!

I lost my mojo there for a little bit. But I’ll be back.