I dressed Baby Girl in her snowsuit, put on my jacket, and then put her into the sling to carry out to the car to get the stroller out of the trunk. I took one step outside and realized that we were horribly overdressed. It was hot out!

Most of the snow has melted; only a few small patches remain where it was piled high in the shade.

I could get used to this.

We bought cabinets today. It’s exiting to think of cooking in my new kitchen, but I’m getting dizzy just thinking how much work it is going to be to get everything set up.

These are the style we ordered.

We still have to decide on the countertops. The current front-running color is called ubatuba; isn’t that a great name? It looks like this. We are also considering jamocha.

I would love to have real granite counters. Just for fun we priced out what it would cost to include them in our current kitchen design; they came to almost nine thousand dollars just for the counters. Ouch. I guess we won’t be going that route.

Solid surfacing - Coran and such - is even more expensive.

It’s been a looooong time since I’ve done these.

Here we go

- Baby Girl is doing great. She was in a particularly good mood today.
- All is going well with the house… it looks like we will be getting possession a week early
- M is done with his thesis and has a time set to go defend it. School will end for him!
- I found a way to prepare tofu that M will actually eat. I never thought it would happen.

Not very many, but they are big ones.

So a group concerned about the loose morals of the girl scouts (they aren’t a religious based group! horrors!) has formed it’s own alternative Christian based girls’ group.

What was really so terrible about Girl Scouts?

American Heritage Girls was founded in 1995 by a Cincinnati-area woman and her friends who were unhappy that the Girl Scouts accepted lesbians as troop leaders, banned prayer at meetings and allowed girls to substitute the word “God” in the oath.

Some Unhappy With Girl Scouts Form Group

Funny. Those are some of the things that I believe makes Girl Scouts such a great organization. They accept all girls of all beliefs. They are open to new ideas and don’t issue opinions on sexual education and such. Their inclusivness and acceptance is wonderful in this day and age when so many try to separate and divide us.

Mollie Katzen, a cookbook author and a founder of the iconic vegetarian eatery Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York, takes another perspective. The former vegetarian thinks people who eschew meat would be better off if they didn’t.

Though she still advocates vegetable-based diets, Katzen sees room — and for many people a need — for flexibility.

“To base our diet there, yes. Absolutely,” she said. “However, where the protein comes from in that diet, I don’t feel it’s wrong if you’ve got a great big plate of vegetables your protein is from a healthy, happy chicken, or a grass-fed cow.”

Flexitarians: Vegetarians Who Eat Meat”

Now, I love the Moosewood cookbooks. Most of my favorite recipees come from them. I’ve always wished that I could visit the restaurant in Ithica, New York. Still, I’m not so sure that I will be buying any more.

Molly Katzen, you created an icon of the movement; now how could you turn out to be so stupid?

After all, just how healthy and happy can a chicken be when it’s all cut up into pieces on your plate?

(article via The Veg Blog)

Not to mention over ten-thousand innocent civilian Iraqi ones…

Recently posted a quotation from this article

The part that stood out for me as well as for her was as follows:

Asked on CNN’s “Late Edition” if the war was worth the lives of the 564 U.S. soldiers killed, Rumsfeld said, “Oh, my goodness, yes. There’s just no question … 25 million people in Iraq are free.”

I found an answer as to just what Rumsfeld was so proud to have accomplished today via Diane who quoted from this entry from Riverbend.

I shall quote too:

And where are we now, a year from the war? Sure- we own satellite dishes and the more prosperous own mobile phones… but where are we *really*? Where are the majority?

We’re trying to fight against the extremism that seems to be upon us like a black wave; we’re wondering, on an hourly basis, how long it will take for some semblance of normality to creep back into our lives; we’re hoping and praying against civil war…

We’re watching with disbelief as American troops roam the streets of our towns and cities and break violently into our homes… we’re watching with anger as the completely useless Puppet Council sits giving out fat contracts to foreigners and getting richer by the day- the same people who cared so little for their country, that they begged Bush and his cronies to wage a war that cost thousands of lives and is certain to cost thousands more.

We’re watching sardonically as an Iranian cleric in the south turns a once secular country into America’s worst nightmare- a carbon copy of Iran. We’re watching as the lies unravel slowly in front of the world- the WMD farce and the Al-Qaeda mockery.

And where are we now? Well, our governmental facilities have been burned to the ground by a combination of ‘liberators’ and ‘Free Iraqi Fighters’; 50% of the working population is jobless and hungry; summer is looming close and our electrical situation is a joke; the streets are dirty and overflowing with sewage; our jails are fuller than ever with thousands of innocent people; we’ve seen more explosions, tanks, fighter planes and troops in the last year than almost a decade of war with Iran brought; our homes are being raided and our cars are stopped in the streets for inspections… journalists are being killed ‘accidentally’ and the seeds of a civil war are being sown by those who find it most useful; the hospitals overflow with patients but are short on just about everything else- medical supplies, medicine and doctors; and all the while, the oil is flowing.

But we’ve learned a lot. We’ve learned that terrorism isn’t actually the act of creating terror. It isn’t the act of killing innocent people and frightening others… no, you see, that’s called a ‘liberation’. It doesn’t matter what you burn or who you kill- if you wear khaki, ride a tank or Apache or fighter plane and drop missiles and bombs, then you’re not a terrorist- you’re a liberator.

The war on terror is a joke… Madrid was proof of that last week… Iraq is proof of that everyday.

I hope someone feels safer, because we certainly don’t.

from Riverbend

And that was probably more than was fair to quote, but not nearly as much as I wanted to. Go read the rest yourself.

We’ve spent thousands of lives to purchase chaos. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

This week’s Friday Five.

If you…

1. …owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve? Vegetarian, of course.

2. …owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell? Another easy one: books.

3. …wrote a book, what genre would it be? science fiction or fantasy, most likely.

4. …ran a school, what would you teach? Either math or English lit.. hard choice. Probably math. I love reading, but math would be much more fun to teach.

5. …recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it? It would have to be something instramental since I can’t sing a single note on key.

muuj m m, , jmnm hg 67677C^rdvv

Baby Girl just wanted to say hi. Typing with her on my lap was much easier back in the days when she didn’t know how to use her hands. She keeps grabbing the keyboard from me now, and I have had to delete several little additions to this paragraph. My girl just won’t stand for being silenced!

I really must dig through the basement and find that old keyboard I ruined by spilling water on so that she can have her own to play with. Supervised, of course.

We’ve all had colds here this week, but other than that life is good. The house purchase is coming nicely. We have a plan for the kitchen and think that we will be able to get it done before we move in. I just keep getting more and more excited about it.

Baby Girl is eating solids now, but there will be a journal entry about that soon, so I will leave discussion of it ’til then.

Life is good. I hear so many people complain about not having a life once they become a parent, and I admit that I don’t have one at all outside of being a mother these days (and at that I missed the new moms’ group this week due to the aformentioned cold) but really, what more do I need? I have a wonderful husband and the cutest baby in the world. This is perfect. Why would I need to get out of the house and away from all this?

As for Internet life, it seems that I don’t have one of those either. I missed Dawny’s virtual baby shower today as the invitation got sent to an account I rarely check and so I didn’t get it until about three hours too late (sorry Dawny). I rarely get on AIM anymore these days, but when I do no one is ever there (well, Emcee was today which was great, but where oh where are you, Kellyne?). No one ever emails me any more just because I never get around to writing them back, silly people.

To top it all off, I posted something really stupid in a forum last night and today discovered that I’d been jumped all over and accused of all sorts of nasty things in my absense. Whatever happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt and a chance to explain themselves before you start with the cursing and name calling? Sheesh. I really do miss good manners, but I supposed it’s too much to expect them on the Internet. Still, I always try to treat people decently, even online, and so it annoying that others don’t feel the same need.

Ouch. I turned baby girl around on my lap in order to type this, and she is now quite happily trying to yank out all my hair. You can tell how much I love her by just how cute I find this, despite the great pain in my head. She’s such a strong little girl!

I’ve tried three times, and for the life of me, I just can’t seem to pass the third grade.

Where the heck is Arkansaw, anyways?

This entry of Donna’s made me suddenly yearn for a camera phone. I’m not quite sure why. It’s not something that I’ve ever felt the need to have before.

I guess I must be a wanna-be techno-tool. I’m a sad, sad person.

Really though, I would like to be a discrete picture taker. For some reason I’m quite shy of pulling out the old digital camera in public places. I don’t know why I feel so silly about the idea of people seeing me *gasp* taking a picture. It must be something akin to a phobia of carrying a cake. Anyone who actually understood that last sentence has read way too much L.M. Montgomery.

The above paragraph does not apply when Baby Girl is around, which she always is these days, so long as the camera is pointed at her. I lack any sense of moderation when it comes to taking picture of her. Can anyone guess what practically the first thing I did upon fixing my computer earlier today? Of course it was burn all photos of Baby Girl to CD yet again. I will not risk losing a single one of them. In fact, I must go get a safe deposit box just so I can keep a copy of my digital photo albums there…

I get sad sometimes thinking that I am the only one who will remember so much of the time we spend together. She’s far to young to retain a memory of the late nights we stay up together or the long walks we go on, just the two of us. To make it worse, there is hardly any record of the two of us together, hardly any pictures of her with me in them. This is partly because I am generally the one behind the camera and partly because I still am hanging on to quite a bit of the baby-weight and hate the way I look in pictures these days. It’s making me sad though.

I must do something about it. I don’t like trying to put her baby book together and filling it with pictures of her and her with her daddy and even her with her grandparents but not having any of her with me to put in it.

What if something were to happen to me. Not likely, and not something I worry about, but if it did, how would she know how much I love her?

Just when I thought my husband’s super-slow computer would be the end of me..

We have a new power supply, people!

My computer seems so fast now. For the record, it only has a decrepit old 600 or so mHz chip… if this seems fast to me, you can immagine what M’s computer is like.. oh the horror.

A new baby store opened in town recently. It sells babies, of course. I must be really tired to think that was funny.

Starting over. A new store selling used childrens’ clothing and items opened up in town recently. We’ve been there twice already and bought quite a few items, including her new snow suit which is as cute as can be. They also sell some new items. Among the new items they have are baby-sized sunglasses.

Baby-sized sunglasses! How ridiculous is that. As if they would stay on a baby more than two seconds. My glasses don’t even stay on my face any longer than that when she is within grabbing distance.

Still.. was it terribly wrong of me that I desperately wanted to buy a pair for my daughter? They were just so darn cute.

Want a laugh? Here are the first three of twelve reasons that gay marriage will harm my heterosexual marriage:

1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control are not natural.

2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people cannot get legally married because the world needs more children.

3. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children because straight parents only raise straight children.

For the other nine, go to the source.

On a more serious note, this boggles the mind. If what they are saying is true, and homosexual marriage was a recognized rite in the church, then why did things change so much? For that matter, why did people start having so many issues about sex and who is having it with who in the first place?

I think we would all be much better off if certain people just learned to relax a little.

Both of today’s links via Madelah

Umm.. by any chance did I mention that we bought a house last Sunday night?

The inspection was this morning, and other than a few minor things, it all looks good.

It looks like we are really going through with this.

More to come…

Yes, I had cold pizza for breakfast this morning.

I am a bad, bad person.

Is it any wonder that I’m not losing weight?

I’m going through my closet pulling out and boxing up anything that I don’t wear. I’m coming across all these size eight jeans and being amazed at just how tiny they look and I just can’t believe that they fit perfectly just two years ago.

The thing is, I thought I was pretty horribly fat back then.

Note to self: get back there, but this time be happy at that size.