Maybe this post will not quite seem blog worthy – other options would be how cute Pippin is when playing with his mouse (and sliding on the new hallway floor), house remodel, Jay’s insane work schedule (can we say average of 4 hrs of sleep per night these days?), my itchy skin, or baby stuff. The story of my neighbor seems like the most ‘unusual’ so we’ll go with that.
Jay and I know the names of the neighbors who live closest to us and we wave at each other if we’re outside at the same time. Rarely to we have a conversation of more than, ‘How are you?’ They all seem like perfectly nice people, but at different stages in life than we are. The neighbor I talk the most to is the woman who lives next door to us and lives alone (important for later in post). This woman had been on vacation recently, but had seemingly returned. Then last Thursday evening, I noticed her garage door was still open, car in driveway, yard waste container not put away (2 of the 3 are unusual – she rarely has her garage door open for longer than a short time span and always puts her garbage/etc containers away promptly – unlike us). Friday, same picture. Saturday, also the same picture – though no sign of our neighbor herself. By this point I was becoming concerned – and hoping she hadn’t slipped in her house somewhere and was lying in pain, unable to get help… I mentioned it to Jay and he too seemed concerned. We decided that if nothing had changed by Sunday, we’d go talk to our neighbor across the street with whom this woman is better friends. Sunday rolls around and no change, so Jay and I went to knock on our neighbor’s doors, Jay checked to see if they were locked and if he could see in any windows – and I was trying not to feel like a snoop. After no results from this search, we went and talked to our neighbor across the street who knew nothing about this woman being gone again and was also concerned when we mentioned the garage door had been open for a few days. First the three of us went to close the garage door. Then she and I went and spoke to the neighbors on the other side of said missing neighbor – again with no new info, but more concern on their part. Luckily, both sets of neighbors had some ways to contact my neighbor and an email message and phone call were sent off. Tuesday my neighbor across the street got a call from the ‘missing’ woman – all was well, she was on vacation with her father in eastern Oregon and hadn’t checked email/messages in days. She’d rented a car and therefore, probably just forgot to close the garage door as her car was in the driveway. Mystery solved, in the best way possible. Exciting times at the Blanton/Otten household

For a while now, Clara has been convinced she would love to be an outside kitty. We let the cats out on the patio, but that does not always satisfy Clara. Since we’ve been remodeling, the side door has been used much more than usual – and Clara can often be found waiting by the door, hoping to sneak outside. Last week, she was finally successful in not only getting out the door, but also in not being noticed… I think she was only out for about an hour, but that was enough time to get into a cat fight, lose her collar, and tangle with a rusty nail. Ah Clara… When she came in, I tortured her by washing out her wounds. The next day I called the vet to see if I should bring her in – I thought her wounds were minor, but wanted to be sure there was nothing else I should do. The vet’s office said that as long as the wounds were not red and infected, she should be fine. Yesterday I had to take her in for a check-up and showed the vet her largest wound – and found out it was more serious than I thought. Poor girl had a big tear that had opened up (I thought she’d just lost the top layer of skin…). So today, she’s having minor surgery to repair the wound (the vet did not think it would heal on its own and it was too long since it happened to just glue it closed). I think the worst part will be that she will have to wear a special kitty cone so that she doesn’t like the sight – any guesses on how often a day we’ll get hissed at? Poor girl! And thus she continues to be our expensive kitty – Pippin only has to go for yearly check-ups, but Clara, no, she gets to make many more trips for all kinds of reasons. Good thing she’s so darn cute!

I first heard Cynthia Lair share recipes on NPR, including from a snippet of her online cooking show which can be pretty funny. After this, I looked up her website and printed off some recipes that sounded good – and they were! I think it was her apple-walnut kale recipe that really sold me. I had never cooked much with dark greens as they can be bitter and tougher, but I began giving them a try thanks to Cynthia. And I discovered I really like them – and (a bit of a shock to me) so does Jay.
Cynthia Lair focuses on making food that is fresh, uses more natural ingredients, and is fairly simple to cook. Ideas that sound good to me! For Christmas, Jay got me her cookbook which I have recently been using A LOT. The recipes are a little different than our standard fare, usually quite tasty, and, for the most part, do not require a lot of time in the kitchen. Did I mention they are quite filling too? I mean, I know this is the goal with food, but sometimes a meal just doesn’t stick with me as long as others. An added bonus with her cookbook, tips for feeding kids a variety of foods as well as how to make parts of meals baby friendly — both of which I’m sure will come in handy in this house soon.
I would suggest checking our her website and see what you think!

One of the many things I love about Ballard is its Scandinavian heritage. Every year our neighborhood celebrates Norwegian Independence day with gusto (I believe it’s the biggest party outside Norway) and besides the two hour long parade there were events all day.  On a Monday.  Sweet!  Slanky already wrote about it here but I wanted to post a few pictures I took with my phone.

Last year was really fun when we got to check out the Norwegian Fjorde Horses but sadly they weren’t in attendance this year.  We did check out the parade though and there were a ton of marching bands, Scandinavian themed clubs and even cops on harleys.

I feel like I had more to say about this but since it’s been a while I can’t remember it now.  Can you believe no one has posted on the blog for almost a month?!

Here are some photos….

Cops on Harleys

Flags

Enjoying the parade

Viking Ship?

1.  Thought some of you might be interested in Format 126, a pretty cool, free, iPhone app.  Here are some photos I’ve processed with it.

2.  i’ve heard that there will probably be a new iPhone this summer, hopefully with a 5 megapixel camera.  at first i was really excited about this.  easier to get clear photos!  especially of moving children!  but then i started thinking about how part of the charm of iPhone photography is the imperfections.  would i start looking for apps to add in imperfections??  maybe i’ll just stick with the 3G when we move to colorado.  thoughts?

3.  Screamlet.  it’s my new favorite word.  love it!  it’s so completely perfect, and should definitely be in the dictionary.

4.  i never, ever, ever, want to do an international move again.

5.  eve has got me thinking about baby-names-that-never-were, and i’m getting sadder and sadder about philippa.

4.  there is a photo of mine up at Pixels at an Exhibition.  i don’t know if this is an honor or not.  their submission guidelines don’t seem to mention any hows or whys regarding acceptance.  i submitted five photos, and only one is up, and i’ve noticed that other photographers have more than one photo up….so i’m leaning towards honor.  i hope!  we’ll just go with that.  so…yay, me!

5.  i am thinking of getting Photoshop and taking Photoshop classes in the fall.  but i’m a little unsure about my ability to fully and effectively utilize the program.  i get worried about overediting photos.  i feel like i have an okay eye (with tons of room for improvement) for taking photos, but the art of enhancing???  it could very well be like painting, or interior design, or fashion.  i know what i like, but have no ability to do anything with the aforementioned arts myself.  and Photoshop + classes is a fairly large investment for something i’m not sure about.

6.  speaking of fashion i’ve been trying to incorporate scarves into my wardrobe.  something i was staunchly against for myself until about a year ago.  how do you feel about scarves?  yay or nay?  i’m still not sure if i’m able to pull this off without it looking all contrived, but am forging ahead anyway.

7.  business trips suck.

8.  miss you guys a ton and wish we weren’t moving to colorado.

9.  the morges book club is reading Eden’s Outcasts:  The Story of Louisa May Alcott and her Father.  it was my choice, and started out a bit slow, but after that really picked up.  i loved it.  i’m hoping that it will be a good book club book, with a lot to talk about.  i had no idea that bronson alcott was anybody of any importance.  it was fascinating to read about him, louisa, and their relationship with other transcendentalists like thoreau and emerson.  did you know that ralph waldo emerson was a unitarian pastor?

10.  seriously.  no more international moves.  none.

Jay and I had our ultrasound today — looks like we’re having a girl!!! Let the ‘discussions’ over names begin!

Possibly a less-than-interesting post for many (or all) of you, but here’s what you get for a little new reading material (tomorrow, if we’re lucky, the answer to boy or girl?).
A month ago or so, sleeping became a bit uncomfortable as my hips would start aching by the end of the night (and not only can I not sleep on my stomach, but no back either – !). I mentioned this to my friend Jennifer and she told me about the Snoogle pillow. Ok, she raved about it. As soon as we got off the phone, a link to the pillow on Amazon was in my in-box. A couple days later, I ordered it and since its arrival, have been sleeping more comfortably. It’s kind of a large ‘C’ shaped pillow that goes around the neck and then down between the knees – the idea is to help keep you aligned. Jay jokingly says he feels a little replaced – or maybe literally feels replaced as it takes up just a little space in the bed… just a little… It required its own suitcase when we went to the Salish… but it’s so worth it (Sorry Jay!) to be able to sleep for longer stretches!
I’m going to attempt to post a link (the pictures of the woman resting with it are humorous) but no Jay here to guide my way (yes, I am that lame) and I might give up…

My friend Kara, who’s son Phoenix is one of Jonah’s closest buddies, told me that Phoenix said he’d like to name his little brother Jody! His little brother will be here in May.

Luckily for them, Jody spelled with a “y” is how you spell the boy version of my name so it’s really all covered.

So I hear it’s not uncommon to have some wild and crazy dreams while pregnant. This woman I sit next to in class who is pregnant told me she regularly dreams that Satan is telling her he’ll be coming for her soon. Fortunatly, Satan has not visited my dreams, but for the past I’m not sure how many weeks, I’ve had, on average, one to three very vivid, usually at least slightly weird dreams per night. Sometimes they are about people I know or once knew, sometimes I cannot figure out where the people may have come from – someone standing in front of me in line? Last night I dreamt that I was at Rio Disney (pretty sure that’s not in the plans of Disney expansion…) and randomly met up with this family who used to go to the preschool I worked at in Bellevue. I ended up taking care of their little girl and we were having fun swimming with unicorn fish in a ‘jungle’ pool until some kid taunted a large water snake who then jumped into the pool – at which point my dream stopped, maybe due to Jay waking me? (which apparently happens more than usual due to thrashing around/making loud noises on my part as I sleep) By far the weirdest and most disturbing dream occurred a few nights ago when, in my dream, Jay decided he had to poison someone who had done some (now unremembered) bad thing. In the dream, I found out about it and then became afraid I would be next so I decided to beat Jay to the punch and poison him first. Then when the effects of the poison began to take hold I started screaming and called 911 to come save him. Paramedics soon appeared, all of them well-known movie stars. They revived Jay and took him to the hospital, at which point my dream transitioned into a new one in which Jay and I were looking at new homes to buy… with huge backyards that had large raspberry beds (a key factor for any house we would even consider buying)… bizarre…

As one of our Valentine’s Day activities at school, my kids made Valentines for their families. While they were working on them, Kristen and I went around and asked them what they would like to say on their Valentines, which I then typed up and they glued on today. Here are the messages from five of my 3 year olds:

I love you. Next time I won’t be mean to my sisters. And thank you for my family.

Thank you to my family. I love my dog. I love my sisters.

I made this for you! I did it for you and you can have it when I go home.

For my family!

I love my Mom. I love my Dad and my sister, Eva. I love cats.