I am a geek. I know this about myself. I have always loved to know things. Trivia is a great love of mine. The internet is the treasure trove of my dreams. I think that's one of the reasons being an attorney was a perfect career fit for me: there are so many things in the law to know and knowing legal things is so helpful in so many situations. Now I realize (well conceptually at least) that there are many things in this world that are not worth knowing. I struggle with this concept. I never have been one to tell dirty jokes or otherwise salacious stories, but I still wanted to get the jokes. It was important to me to know the underlying knowledge that made them jokes in the first place. Finally I am beginning to question the merit of this aspect of my knowledge habit.
Recently I traded some facebook emails with an old friend from highschool. I teasingly chided him for being left out of one of those listing notes that are currently so popular on the site. His reply was that this particular note had a habit of generating questionable responses and he wanted to spare me the exposure. That bothered me. And it took me a while to tie it back to my knowing problem. But I finally realized that his exclusion bothered me because there were things that he didn't want me to know, that he thought I might not already know, that he thought I might not want to know. And after stewing for a while on this point, it suddenly occurred to me that I should be flattered. That it was okay that he was right: there are things that I don't know, don't want to know and even more that there are things that it is a good idea that I not know. You may say duh. That's fine. You probably don't have the knowing problem I do. I have always believed the adage that knowledge is power. So, I guess in this respect, I'm just a power junkie. And like all junkies, I found myself blinded by the desire for power to the point that I failed to see that not all power is good. Not all knowledge is good. There are things I am better not knowing. I will always struggle with wanting to know things and recognizing which things I really don't want to know. I know this now. And, as they say, knowing is half the battle.
What do you know that you wish you didn't? What sort of a junkie are you?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Breaking News!
My five year old CW just made an enormouse play-doh mess in the kitchen and CLEANED IT UP all by himself, with absolutely no prodding by me. He even swept up the play-doh crumbs. Miracles are real. I just wanted you to know.
Ode to a husband who loves me on the occasion of my 39th (gasp!) birthday
Birthdays for moms, as I have mentioned before are a tricky thing. It's not like we get time off for good behavior, a vacation day or sky writing or anything like that. But sometimes, even in absence of anything spectacular, a really great birthday comes along. My birthday was such a thing this year.
The night before my birthday, my DH took me to a wonderful churrascaria for yummy all you can eat meat (I served my mission in Brazil and a churrascaria is a native Brazilian restaurant idea where you have tasty Brazilian side dishes, yummy cheese breads and then roaving gauchos carrying long spears of perfectly seasoned and roasted meats offer their wares to you until you burst or say uncle, whichever comes first) The food was divine. The server was a native Brazilian who chatted with me about the tastiest regional dishes from the areas where I served (que saudades!) and the company was impeccable and lovestruck (well at least he better be!) (dinner had to be the night before my actual birthday because the 1/2 off coupon we had wasn't good on Saturdays--so dinner was yummy AND cheap(er))
The next morning, there were basketball games to attend and the general activities of regular Saturday life of a big and crazy family. And DH did the games without me. Perhaps this doesn't seem like a big deal to you. But since the bulk of my days lately consist of wrestling with kidlets solo and since watching my offspring develop sports skills is sapped of all joy when it must be done while wrestling with younger siblings AND since I have watched many other games and was really just wanting a "free" Saturday, being relieved of game duty was the perfect birthday gift. It also gave DH some one on one time with each athlete. Win-win!
On the way home from Z's game, DH picked up the yummy cake I requested. I have mentioned my store-bought cake prejudices. Well, there IS one kind of store-bought cake I like and that is the Nothing Bundt Cake. They are divine, if a smidge on the pricey side. I requested for this birthday, and DH delivered, a Red-Velvet cake. Oh, yummy! Also on the way home, DH and Z stopped and selected a lovely bouquet of flowers for me (of which, in my delinquency to post, I can no longer show you a picture, because it's too late and they have died, but they were lovely). This is wonderful for more than one reason. 1) I love flowers 2) It was a totally unsolicited bit of wonderfulness on DH's part and I am all about unsolicited bits of wonderfulness on my birthday, they are called "surprises" and 3) DH was teaching his darling Z how mommies, ie, women, like to be treated and that lesson is golden both for his future treatment of me and for his very future treatment of future women in his life. Yeah!
Somewhere in the middle of the day o' games, I got to go on a long unhurried run by myself. It was lovely, it was energizing, it was perfect. I was talking to my sister today about trying to find non-food rewards to give myself in lieu of actual sugar based treats. The problem being that non-food rewards are either pricey, time-consuming when we least have any to spare, or both. Long unhurried runs are high on my list of good non-food rewards which are difficult to actually treat myself. So, another wonderful gift facillitated by my DH.
Last on the list of little wonderful pleasures of my birthday, was dinner. We didn't go out because we did that the night before. But I didn't have to cook either because DH went and got take-out --Panda Express orange chicken for the less adventurous of the family and yummy (and cheap!) thai food for the grown-ups. Yum Yum Yum.
Even though I told him, I don't think DH gets how wonderful this birthday was for me. There were no fireworks or expensive and extravagent gifts. Just fine-tuned attention to my needs, wants and personality. My complaint lately is one of being invisible, of being neither seen nor heard in this crazy chaos I'm supposed to be managing. This birthday I got the best gift of all: I was seen; I was heard; I was not invisible. What love!
The night before my birthday, my DH took me to a wonderful churrascaria for yummy all you can eat meat (I served my mission in Brazil and a churrascaria is a native Brazilian restaurant idea where you have tasty Brazilian side dishes, yummy cheese breads and then roaving gauchos carrying long spears of perfectly seasoned and roasted meats offer their wares to you until you burst or say uncle, whichever comes first) The food was divine. The server was a native Brazilian who chatted with me about the tastiest regional dishes from the areas where I served (que saudades!) and the company was impeccable and lovestruck (well at least he better be!) (dinner had to be the night before my actual birthday because the 1/2 off coupon we had wasn't good on Saturdays--so dinner was yummy AND cheap(er))
The next morning, there were basketball games to attend and the general activities of regular Saturday life of a big and crazy family. And DH did the games without me. Perhaps this doesn't seem like a big deal to you. But since the bulk of my days lately consist of wrestling with kidlets solo and since watching my offspring develop sports skills is sapped of all joy when it must be done while wrestling with younger siblings AND since I have watched many other games and was really just wanting a "free" Saturday, being relieved of game duty was the perfect birthday gift. It also gave DH some one on one time with each athlete. Win-win!
On the way home from Z's game, DH picked up the yummy cake I requested. I have mentioned my store-bought cake prejudices. Well, there IS one kind of store-bought cake I like and that is the Nothing Bundt Cake. They are divine, if a smidge on the pricey side. I requested for this birthday, and DH delivered, a Red-Velvet cake. Oh, yummy! Also on the way home, DH and Z stopped and selected a lovely bouquet of flowers for me (of which, in my delinquency to post, I can no longer show you a picture, because it's too late and they have died, but they were lovely). This is wonderful for more than one reason. 1) I love flowers 2) It was a totally unsolicited bit of wonderfulness on DH's part and I am all about unsolicited bits of wonderfulness on my birthday, they are called "surprises" and 3) DH was teaching his darling Z how mommies, ie, women, like to be treated and that lesson is golden both for his future treatment of me and for his very future treatment of future women in his life. Yeah!
Somewhere in the middle of the day o' games, I got to go on a long unhurried run by myself. It was lovely, it was energizing, it was perfect. I was talking to my sister today about trying to find non-food rewards to give myself in lieu of actual sugar based treats. The problem being that non-food rewards are either pricey, time-consuming when we least have any to spare, or both. Long unhurried runs are high on my list of good non-food rewards which are difficult to actually treat myself. So, another wonderful gift facillitated by my DH.
Last on the list of little wonderful pleasures of my birthday, was dinner. We didn't go out because we did that the night before. But I didn't have to cook either because DH went and got take-out --Panda Express orange chicken for the less adventurous of the family and yummy (and cheap!) thai food for the grown-ups. Yum Yum Yum.
Even though I told him, I don't think DH gets how wonderful this birthday was for me. There were no fireworks or expensive and extravagent gifts. Just fine-tuned attention to my needs, wants and personality. My complaint lately is one of being invisible, of being neither seen nor heard in this crazy chaos I'm supposed to be managing. This birthday I got the best gift of all: I was seen; I was heard; I was not invisible. What love!
Return to January Pt 2: Fun with Cousins
Fun with cousins was an essential part of our trip in January. I could have been sad, otherwise, that the cold, the craziness of 4 million people camping out in the district to watch the inauguration or the finite energy and attention levels of my children kept us from seeing everything (or some reasonably calibrated portion thereof) there is to see in Washington, DC and environs. But in the fun with cousins category, we were not disappointed. (And my dear nephew T wants, I am told, to appear in at least some of the pictures in this post since he participated in the fun)
Essential to fun with cousins is having a "fun aunt" which my children are blessed to have in Aunt Tiffie T. (T because they have two and while both Aunt Tiffies are fun, they weren't both in Virginia) Aunt Tiffie decided that the kids needed to have a mentos and diet coke rocket experience and so she did research as to the best method for making the best explosions. She convinced Grandpa T to get out tools and drill the mentos for the best delivery system
and she heated the diet coke because the best instructions said to (and there was no sun or heat to be had naturally outdoors). And then, the amazing fun began:
Another part of the fabulous fun with cousins was, of course, going to the cool museums with them.
I mean, really, what could be cooler than sitting in the cockpit of a real live plane pretending to fly it, than sitting in that plane pretending with your real live cool cousin?
For some reason, whenever we go to the grandparents', we end up spending at least one excursion at Frying Pan Park. It is a working historical farm complete with exhibition space for horse shows, farm animals to investigate and ogle and playground and picnic accoutrements. And since all these things are essential in the growth and development of your average full-energied kid, we always go there, no matter what the weather. So, despite the less than toasty temp of the days this trip, we visited the park as usual. The picnic just looked a bit different:
But coats and hats aside, our trip to the park was about as cool and as similar as it always is. And I'm sure it will not be the last.
On our last full day with cousins on our trip, we (the adults involved) thought long and hard about what to do. It was a holiday, so all the adults were at least nominally free from at least the location of work. But it was a holiday, the day before the inauguration and wicked cold, so we worried that all tourist destinations would be miserable and crowded. But we didn't want to spend our last day together cooped up telling the children to stop and don't and get down and all other least favorite words heard by children from their parents. So, Grandma T hit upon a grand idea: let's have a day of activities in stations at the Brown house. There was a craft station:
a Wii station:
and an art station: (the new definition of "shirts and skins")
Really, what more could you want? Such a delightful trip. I'm getting wistful all over again just remembering it. I feel like I'm displaying my embarrassment of riches: a crazy wonderful family that loves each other and wants to spend time together in (literally) all kinds of weather. What could be better than this?
Essential to fun with cousins is having a "fun aunt" which my children are blessed to have in Aunt Tiffie T. (T because they have two and while both Aunt Tiffies are fun, they weren't both in Virginia) Aunt Tiffie decided that the kids needed to have a mentos and diet coke rocket experience and so she did research as to the best method for making the best explosions. She convinced Grandpa T to get out tools and drill the mentos for the best delivery system
and she heated the diet coke because the best instructions said to (and there was no sun or heat to be had naturally outdoors). And then, the amazing fun began:
Another part of the fabulous fun with cousins was, of course, going to the cool museums with them.
I mean, really, what could be cooler than sitting in the cockpit of a real live plane pretending to fly it, than sitting in that plane pretending with your real live cool cousin?
For some reason, whenever we go to the grandparents', we end up spending at least one excursion at Frying Pan Park. It is a working historical farm complete with exhibition space for horse shows, farm animals to investigate and ogle and playground and picnic accoutrements. And since all these things are essential in the growth and development of your average full-energied kid, we always go there, no matter what the weather. So, despite the less than toasty temp of the days this trip, we visited the park as usual. The picnic just looked a bit different:
But coats and hats aside, our trip to the park was about as cool and as similar as it always is. And I'm sure it will not be the last.
On our last full day with cousins on our trip, we (the adults involved) thought long and hard about what to do. It was a holiday, so all the adults were at least nominally free from at least the location of work. But it was a holiday, the day before the inauguration and wicked cold, so we worried that all tourist destinations would be miserable and crowded. But we didn't want to spend our last day together cooped up telling the children to stop and don't and get down and all other least favorite words heard by children from their parents. So, Grandma T hit upon a grand idea: let's have a day of activities in stations at the Brown house. There was a craft station:
a Wii station:
and an art station: (the new definition of "shirts and skins")
Really, what more could you want? Such a delightful trip. I'm getting wistful all over again just remembering it. I feel like I'm displaying my embarrassment of riches: a crazy wonderful family that loves each other and wants to spend time together in (literally) all kinds of weather. What could be better than this?
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