Thank you for the small things

Thank you #53 for checking to make sure none of my new socks had holes.
Thank you Chinese forefathers for coming to America and bringing egg rolls
Thank you mom for teaching me where pee goes
Thank you dad for letting us play in your garage as kids
Thank you Aunt Jamima for making pancakes easy in the mornings
Thank you Pastor Cope for teaching me that you can put peanut butter on pancakes when you have no syrup
Thank you Ray Plunkett for inventing nonstick pans
Thank you.

A Whole New Look?

First I must apologize to those of you who are male and who read my blog. I'm not sure there are any other than my husband but... if you are male and happen to stuble upon my blog I am sorry that my fitness tip of the day is geared mainly toward women today... Men can also lift weights.. there, apology complete.

Moving on...

How do you like it? The new look? Different title, different colors, for a whole different me. OK maybe I'm not so different, bigger around the middle yes but different? I'm not sure. I thought long and hard about how my life has changed in the past year and a half. I got married, had a baby, got pregnant, took some great trips with my little family, moved to another state (don't tell PA, they don't know officially yet). But for all the external change in my life, has there been any internal change? Still mulling that one over. I'll get back to you.

But externally, how about this new blog?!
Big hand for my designer!

Pap Hat

I have a pap.
He wears a hat.
He wears his hat
a lot like that.

He wears it up
a top his head.
Why like that?
It can't be said.

I guess it's genetic

Depressed or Pregnant?

Symptoms:
1. eating an entire frozen pizza (minus the two pieces your child ate)
2. Problems sleeping
3. irritability
4. Crying spells for no apparent reason
5. Unintentional weight gain
6. eating an entire family sized danish in two days by yourself
7. Feeling worthless
8. Unexplained physical problems, such as back pain or headaches

Maybe pregnancy is just depression with a due date...

Claire Fix

For those of you wondering what Claire has been up to lately... she is trying to find something to ride.. a big dog... a stuffed pig... a bunny?

Can a Birthday get better?

I think not...

Gadget of the Day

Today's gadget is a stress reliever, for all those doing midterms, weather grading them or taking them. And for those who are in the work force, still working or looking for work. And for those staying home, weather just hiding from the world or with little ones and housework. So go ahead shoot a smile... wait, that kinda contradicts my previous post, but at least they are related right?

Awfully Chain-letter-ish

What's in a smile? a lot. Today you should try to smile at as many people as you can, cause otherwise you are perpetuating a problem that I have just recently become aware of again. The problem is this; People are so miserable now, (money issues, housing issues, marital issues..ect.) that they don't smile unless someone else smiles first. But since everyone is miserable, no one is smiling.. so start something with a smile today :)

I have been a victim myself recently of the grouchy people. I went to the post office, I place I avoid usually because of the strange bullet-proof windows the tellers sit behind and the strange 'lift this, close that and step back' system they have that makes me feel REALLY far from my little town of Mars. (is it strange to miss the post office?) Anyway I had to go yesterday and the lady was so short and grouchy, and they weren't even busy! I am pretty good at trying to figure out what made them grumpy, like a busy day, pen ink on thier shirt, impatient people yelling at them... who knows? But this lady was just coming onto her shift, it wasn't busy AND she had a stoll to sit on! no excuse for her non-smiling face to snip at me... Of course I did the wrong thing, not smiling back BUT I did hold the door for an elderly lady on my way out.. does that count? And the bird is in the air (Ami you'll get your package, complete with sunshine when you get home)

Healthy and Happy

Ok maybe my blog isn't cut out for a theme... so back to what we know,
cute pictures of Claire:

While I am enjoying this pregnancy, which has been only slightly more trying than my pregnancy with my first, I am NOT enjoying the 'motherly body'. I am having dreams and fears that I will never get back to the body of a 25 year old. (btw my birthday is coming up :) )Please do not ask for pictures of my 'belly'. be content that it is BIG and that there is a baby inside it. I look roughly like Claire does in the picture above^. Which brings me to the gadget of the day, a weight loss gadget... I'm not sure if I should put it up though because then you will be losing weight while I am still gaining.. and then you will look better than me... So I think you should do the opposite of what it says... yeah.. that will make me feel better..except then you'll all be fat and unhappy.. and who wants fat unhappy friends and family? not me... just stay healthy and happy. :)

Things to Ponder

So during this blog renovation I have been giving a lot of thought to what my blog is.. is it a mommy blog? where I post an insane number of pictures of my offspring and share witty stories about my day as a mom. or how about a knitting blog? that's a pretty easy no.. I don't think I've finished one knitting project in my life. how about a cooking blog? where I share all my chef-ly wisdom and pictures of my lovely concoctions. What do you think?

Polling the Audiance

Does anyone know if salt goes bad? like at some point are you supposed to get rid of it? We don't use that much salt, and Grandma bought it in BIG containers... It is still salty, so that's not a problem..but Bible quizzing taught me that. (thanks mom and dad).
See how much better my activities were than my evil sister who danced around in frilly costumes to hokey music?
So if you know if salt goes bad, please pass along the love. Thanks.

How Many Times did You Try to Pass?

OK today we add the parking game in honor of the many times I tried to pass my drivers test.. I think it took 4? tries. The first time I think I failed before we left the parking lot... he said 'turn on the headlights' and I instead made the wipers go. The next time I 'ran' a red light, but that wasn't my fault.. I'm not sure what happened the third time, I think that was just the parallel parking... yes... I remember now, because it was the first time they even let me attempt the parallel parking part of the test, the other times they saved me the humiliation...And in the end the guy giving me the test told me what to do to parallel park the car... Now I am fully licensed and a very good driver with only one accident ever and I live in NYC land of parallel parking, imagine that :)
Anyway since the instructions are for the visually super gifted I'll hash them out here so that everyone can enjoy hours of frustration trying to parallel park a car. After all we here at 'ugly blog central' are equal opportunity time suckers.
To play you must hit the 'continue' on the first page and then you will move to the second page which tells you where you have to park (the yellow parking spot)... then you have to hit 'enter' (on your keyboard). To control the front wheel drive car use your arrow keys to control the wheels and the brake is the space bar... have fun.

A Ploy to Keep you Reading

So while I am in ugly blog purgatory awaiting the proper number of hail Mary's to be sent out for me, I plan to make the most of it... Already you can do so many absurd things on my blog and I plan to add a new one every day until the Great Fix! So far you can play pacman.. go ahead >>> try it. It leaves you on my page so that you can log your blogging time while not actually reading my blog. You can also watch the underside of a frog walk 'up' my blog (at least 2 in. of it). Tomorrow I plan to add the Andy Warhol art of the day.. I don't know how long that will last though I mean he painted many masterpeices but still I plan to blog for a LOOOong time, will they begin to repeat masterpeices? That seems like cheating to me... maybe instead of that silly thing I will add the fashion tip of the day or the worlds most strange hit counter... Stay tuned.

I Did a Stupid Thing

Well here is what happens when you are looking for something to do... While most of my time is occupied with my lovely little one, sometimes she does not require undivided attention. This leaves me looking for something to do, that can be stopped at a moments notice and doesnt require much brain power (I conserve it during down time).
My blog looks like this.... I have been BEGGing! my lovely 'blog designer' to make my blog pretty... she has done some others, Miss Brenda and Amidala are only some. Although she only takes credit for her 'creativity' on my blog (see bottom) my blog is still just the standard template. :(
So yesterday during naptime, I got myself into the biggest pickle... (moment for hot benny)... I decided 'how hard can it be' 'I can stop anytime and come back to it and finish tonight' 'I have photoshop' 'I WILL MAKE MY BLOG PRETTY all by myself'.
This was a bad idea for several reasons: I don't know what I'm doing (I am so out of touch, did you know HTML is obselete now it's all X rated, It's like XMTL or something like that)... it is much harder than you may think it is (at least for me)... you can't really stop anytime, cause you have screwed up your blog so badly it is unrecognizable... and you will live in constant fear, losing sleep over that fact that your blog designer will see this as a revolt and LEAVE IT THIS WAY!! >:O
I tried really hard, I followed all the instructions that were given, I upgraded... peice of advice NEVER UPGRADE!... This is because apparently Blogger wanted to make it more difficult for ameatures like me to update their blogs, so the 'new' betablogger is near impossible to alter and make pretty, I found this out AFTER I hit the little button.. I saw it... I said 'what does this button do?' and my brain (remember it was in conservation mode) said 'PUSH IT!'.. never a good idea, in StarTrek or Blogging.
The only silver lining to this all is that since I don't know what I'm doing my blog designer is still taking the credit for my blog although it looks ... well... you can see for yourselves.