Ing and I were home alone the other night, and I was making Cream of Wheat on the stovetop when the phone rang. I knew the phone was somewhere accessible in the living room, so I asked Ingrid to go get it for me, and she headed off to do that, but never found it. She came back OUT of the living room, though, holding her partially eate graham cracker to her head. I looked at her and sort of gave the “WTF?” look, and she said “Graham Cracker Telephone! Hello?! Hi Grammy. It dinnertine. blah blah blah” and had this whole conversation with my mom on her graham cracker telephone. Of course, she won’t talk to my mother on the ACTUAL telephone, but whatever.

She also likes going for walks after dinner, and now it’s dark at that hour, so walks are predicated with “Is it dark out dere? (yes) Is it cold out dere? (yes)” and then making sure her little baby has a blanket, we all have hats, and she has mittens. We see almost no one on our walks these days, probably because of the dark and cold, but I almost love it more that way. While I’m distanced quite a bit from public school right now, and NCLB bitching, etc, I have seen the No Child Left Inside phrase bandied about, and I just love it. Love Love Love. I was recommending the anti-homework book to someone last week, and talking about how kids with homework have so few opportunities to be with their families. Ingrid is learning on these walks — whether it’s investigating a slug on the garden edging by the steps, or looking for the moon or stars and talking about whether it’s full or not, or noticing the evolution of the beech tree on our path, as it ripens, drops its nuts, and then totally clutters up the sidewalk — that’s all way more important than some busywork word-search-for-science crap.

I am totally going to be That Parent, and refusing homework and raising a bigass stink about it if it’s pushed. Seriously.

Happier note: Ing will either be a peacock or a turtle at Halloween. I’ll keep you posted.

There’s a book festival this weekend, and one of the first events is a discussion on writing for children. As I am known to whine about, here, there, and elsewhere, I am really missing the writing life. I talk about it with Dave, and online, but it’s just this itch I can’t seem to reach to scratch. Pathetic, I know.

Earlier this week, Dave and I were talking about Ingrid and her love of books (seriously, the kid DEVOURS books, it’s her favorite thing to do, ever, if we took away every toy in the house and left books behind, she’d be THRILLED) and one thing led to another, and we decided we’re going to write HER a book, for Christmas. Dave is a pretty creative guy, and when he colors with Ingrid he always draws these little characters for her, and what we’re going to do is do a little illustrated book and scan it, upload to shutterfly, and have them print it. I think it would be a neat tradition to start.

The other session I want to attend is with one of the authors of “Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing our daughters from marketers’ schemes,” because it’s a topic I feel pretty strongly about. There are other sessions that I’d like to check out, too, with readings from local authors, signings, etc, and it just looks like a cool day.

I'm a total wine convert. Or at least on the road to being one.

Until this month, the last time I bought wine it was through someone older than me, had a twistcap, and featured kiwi as a main flavor. But, for a party that Ing and I were invited to, I was told to "bring wine" and when I asked "err, like what?" the answer was "something red, under 10 bucks." I didn't ask further, just twittered it and asked Jeanne, and ended up going with Jeanne's advice. When we got to the party, I had a glass, and was like OH WAIT YUM. Dave and I went to another dinner party at their house last night, and we each had a glass, and Dave actually wants to start drinking wine "for his heart" (the whole red wine thing) so I picked up a bottle of what I'd taken to J&J's a few weeks ago. Tonight, Dave is actually working a football game, but Ing is in bed, and the dishes are done and I, my friends, am kicking back with a grown-ass glass o' wine. (Smoking Loon Merlot. Jeanne's rec. Honestly, I can't remember if it was merlot or cabernet sauvignon that I took to the party, but the merlot is good, too.

Winter is coming, first with this little mini-hurricane (that Dave is out working in, for which he will be receiving blueberry muffins tomorrow) and we're angst about oil, and the economy and EVERYTHING. And every time we go to spend any money, in the backs of our minds is "this could be another window, or the thermal blinds, or or or" and it sucks. SUCKS. Today I went to the LLB outlet and found some fleece PJs for Ingrid (12 bucks!) and a shirt for Dave, to replace one he ripped this week (an exact duplicate) and I tried on the LLB Dansko knockoffs, but they just aren't the same, and I was like, you know what? I've had these Danskos since before Dave and I got ENGAGED. I was still in my undergraduate program when I bought these. The heels are worn (I walk a bit duckfooted, so they wear on the outer edge) and they are scuffed and beatup and the leather is starting to pit, and after 6 years of basically everyday wear, dammit, I needed new ones. And I didn't have Ingrid with me, so I went to the Dansko shoe store, and I bought a pair of Marcelles, in black, which are a maryjane style, because also in my renaissance to bellydancing wine drinker, I've decided that I need cooler socks. Dave's thing is novelty boxers, he wears some themed boxer everyday, and I want funky socks. I bought several pair at Target, and the best way to show off funky socks is maryjane danskos. (RIght now, I've driven Jeanne to drink. She's anti-Dansko. I went to add myself to an I Heart Danskos! group on FB, just to drive her nuts, and hahahaha, it was started by a UMainer, so it felt a little too close to home, and I didn't.

Dave was a little horrified at the price, until I reminded him that I never buy shoes, and danskos work out to like less than 20 bucks a year. He then pointed to my shoe pile, and I was like "right, my gym shoes I got when we lived in Levant, the crocs are 2 years old, and the Born sandals I bought this year ((on super super sale at the outlet, $40!)) and my Danskos I've been wearing longer than my engagement ring. So, yeah, I spent one window's worth of cellular blinds on new damn shoes, but that's okay. Right?

Our 5th anniversary is fast approaching, and it sucks because Dave has to work a game that night, and while we knew that Halloween meant that we'd have to share the day with future children, and were cool with that, we're both bummed that he has to miss the big day this year. I don't know what we'll do for/with Ingrid, I've looked for costumes and am just so Meh on them, because it would just be daycare and me seeing them on that day, anyway, even though I think she'd kind of 'get' trick or treating this year and be excited by that, but I don't want Dave to have to miss that. Suckage. And for our anniversary last year, we got windows, but this year I'm thinking I want to get Dave an iPod (the last gen Nanos are on sale at apple.com for about 100 bucks) and I'm kind of hoping he'll get me a Roku. (Jerry was really trying to convince him at dinner; Jerry actually has one because I showed it to Jamie, who I work with, and she bought it as his father's day gift… tech that I was swooning over, and yet still don't HAVE! Anyway, I think Jerry may have sold him on it…)

As it is, Christmas is going to be scaled back — I got a $10 off $50 purchase coupon for TRU, and am probably going to use that to get Ingrid some easel supplies (I've still not given her the IKEA easel I got a year ago, because she hasn't needed it, but I think 2.5 will be a good age!) and some puzzles and playdoh, and that will be Christmas for her. Dave and I aren't doing anything, except replacing our upstairs TV with an LCD one in time for digital conversion — we use an OTA antenna and would rather get a new tv than invest 40 bucks in bringing a 20 year old Emerson 13" up to date — nothing fancy or huge, but will still be around $300 or so, and stockings. Probably mostly just stockings for my folks, his mom will get a $100 giftcard, as she always loves those, and we'll do something for my sister, since she doesn't have a boyfriend or family of her own yet. I'm hoping to convince my ILs to lower the spending amount for the giftswap there (it was $50 the last few years) to $25 or so, because, damn, winter is going to be expensive this year.

It sucks, hard, that at the time that we start making a return on the investment of my education, etc, that the cost of living has totally outpaced our incomes. Oil is almost 4x more expensive than it was when we moved in here. We have daycare costs, of course, that we expected, but gas is almost $4 a gallon, food costs more, everything does. And our incomes aren't keeping up. And yet, we are the lucky ones that we have jobs, that I can throw caution to the wind and decide to buy $100 shoes instead of a cellular shade and we'll be okay.  It just fucking SUCKS that it feels like we aren't getting ahead, at a time when we should be. You know? Argh.

New shoes and wine. That'll do for tonight. Tomorrow is another day — maybe the price of crude will freefall and we'll be warm and flush this winter. Sigh.

In case I forget — language stuff.

Last week, Ingrid added the R to her own name pronunciation. So it evolved from Innid to Ingid and now Ingwrid. (I add the w, because there is a hint of that in there right now….) Her 'yes' evolved from Yeah to Yes to okay to Tay and now to Yip!

Flamingos- Fingalos Elephant – Elphalant Animals – Aminoles. Guitar – Gotar. Gretchen – Gwreshen Dave – Daves Giraffe – graf Cherries – Chewwies Squirrel – Whirl Paul and Sirje (neighbors) = People and Cereal Computer- pooter Washcloth — lockoff (which we think sounds like someone in a russion army, which we've changed to 'General Lokov,' or "summoning the general," means 'get me a washcloth….')

Words that just sound cute when she says them: Hello! (often said with a level of eagerness not matched in other words), Fire Engine, Motorcycle, Bicycle, Telephone.

Also, I have a doc appt this afternoon because I think I have some form of vertigo. Not puking or anything, just having moments when I move a certain way that keeps the room spinning and me not. Very odd.

My friend Amity wrote a really nice post on her blog about me (to me?) yesterday, and it really couldn't have come at a better time. Summer is so odd here, not many faculty are around, it's easy to start wondering if what you do is valuable and important. Or, better yet, if you really are any good at what you do. Sometimes, I read all the professional blogs and tweets and stuff and feel a little like "Oh man, I only have a Master's Degree!" but then again…. I have a Master's Degree!! Because I eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff, it can start to feel like maybe I'm not all that valuable — after all, most of the stuff is just out there for people to find themselves. But again, not everyone knows where to look. Amity is really, really tech-savvy (I have used her sites as examples before) so it's especially cool to be able to help HER, when many of my faculty don't hold a candle to her, so, I don't know, it's good to know that I still have something to offer. That probably sounds weird.

There's more and more talk about moving me to full time instructional technology, and I hope that it happens relatively soon. I've been here a year and a half, in a split position, and it's one of the biggest challenges for me. Because we are a service office, most people assume that they are "bugging me" or "taking me away from my work" when they ask me for help, but really, this is my job! That part of it is in a busy office just distracts people. I'd love to have an office away from here, not too far, with a micro-lab set up in or near it, so that faculty can sit down and work with me. (Currently, we are not at 1:1 faculty laptops.) I'd also like a different schedule. I keep harping on it, over and over, but even just an afternoon a week makes such a big difference in my work/life balance. I get that over the summer (today is my last one, though, sigh) and sometimes I get Ingrid, and sometimes I don't. (She naps from 12-2, so I always get a couple hours to myself before getting her, anyway.) I can run errands, get lunch with Dave, meet Andy for coffee (so hard these days, with our opposing schedules) or just do what.ever. I love it. My ideal would be a 4 day schedule, honestly, but even an afternoon a week would be so great. If I were just doing IT, I think I could negotiate that — after all, there are lots of components of my job (that job) that can be done from home. And then, when Ingrid (and any other kids) are school age, I could shift to working a 5 day schedule, but one where I get out when the kiddos do, to be there after school. A raise wouldn't be bad, either, but if it were between cash and time, I'd choose time right now.

I don't know when the shift will happen, or what it will take, but I do hope it comes around. The more I can do IT and not be distracted by my desk job, the better it will be, I think. Even if it means moving to an office without AC.

Tutu in a mudpuddle, edited
Originally uploaded by gretchen04401

I made this for Ingrid this weekend. She picked out all the colors, and I tied it up while she slept, and today we went out to play — she played in the dirt, and I played with my camera.

She's growing SO FAST, it's like when she was an infant, her physical growth was always astounding me, and now it's the developmental stuff. She has opinions and shares them. She is playing independently more and more (today, she played independently in her room for the first two hours of her nap, and then took a really late nap…) Tonight we finger painted, and colored with markers, and crayons, and then we went outside and she mastered climbing her climber to get to the slide. Then Dave came out, and we played in the hammock, and with her ball, kicking it and throwing it, and her chasing it around, laughing hysterically. Before we came in for a bath, she ran at me, and lunged, wrapped her arms around my legs and just hugged me. Spontaneously. It was awesome. The spontaneity is just so cool — eating dinner the other night, she stopped and said "Mama, I love you." and then went back to eating. She's just so unbelievable.

Spoooooky
Originally uploaded by gretchen04401

We went up to the future preschool (cross fingers, knock on wood) and took pics over the weekend. I also requested (through interlibrary loan) a book about the history of the place, which I think would be neat to read. Anyway, I tweaked with the contrast on this, it’s not actually about to be overrun with a swarm of locusts. Dave and I both love how spooky it looks, though.

On Saturday, Ingrid and I were in Sears, in the kids’ section, and I saw a guy that looked really familiar. After about 20 seconds of mental debate, I finally just said “excuse, me is your name Shannon?” He looked up and sure enough, it was, and he recognized me and we talked a bit. He had been one of Aton’s best friends, and the last time I saw him was at the funeral. He’d been living in VA, was in the middle of a divorce, and had just moved back here. Ing and I left, and when I got to my car, the car that had parked next to us had a spiderweb painted across the hood.

Aton’s signature thing (It was the late 90s, we were young) was a spider, he used to say his middle initial stood for that, and his big thing was that we were all connected by these spiderwebs, that the invisible threads were all there, blah blah blah we were writing majors blah.

So, seeing Shannon, and then this spiderweb, sort of threw me back to that, and I realized that it was August 2, 10 years to the day that they found his body. It is still making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Damn you, LLBean Fall Catalog. It’s not that I really want anything specific from you, I mean, you’re LLBean, there’s not a lot of innovation appearing season to season. It’s not like an Apple keynote. But what you’ve done is made me think “oooh, fall is coming. Then winter. Fluffy snow! Cookies. … oil bills. OMG, what are we going to do. Money is going to be so tight.”

To that end, I’ve been once again fiddling with finance sites (wesabe.com, mint.com) and trying to estimate costs for the winter, bleeding the turnip, etc etc. If you don’t heat with oil, it means nothing to you, really, but if you do (and I do) the price of oil is going through the roof at an alarming rate. We heat exclusively with oil, and are cheap, cheap, cheap about it, and average 450 gallons per heating season, which is less than anyone else I know. (And I know a lot.) Running the numbers, assuming oil will be $5 a gallon ( almost $4 more than our first winter, four years ago), it basically works out to about $375/month for the heating season. We’ve installed windows in all the primary living spaces, and we’ll be rearranging the living room so that the couch is away from the big window, just to keep us more comfortable, hopefully. I plan on spending ~$300 on honeycomb shades before we turn on the boiler this year, as well, in an effort to keep what heat we do produce, inside. It’s freaking me out.

Our debts are our house and my student loan. Our commutes are about 3 miles apiece, including daycare stops. Our cars are paid for and get 25+ mpg, pretty good for their ages. We don’t spend frivolously, we don’t eat out, I budget for food and for one takeout meal per weekend, we don’t go to movies, or on ‘real’ vacations, or anything like that. We don’t have cable, we have the cheapest cell plan available (200 minutes), and even our Netflix is the $9 version. After our mortgage, our single biggest expense is daycare (although, Ingrid just switched to Jr Preschool, so we get our first daycare break, EVER, from 667 to a cool $630 a month) and we just aren’t extravagant spenders. We work on saving, but car repairs this summer ate up a chunk of that, on top of the money we’d earmarked for windows, and we haven’t even finished all the windows! Argh.

So, I spend a lot of time thinking about this. The other track is that I think about how in the FUCK I can ever afford a second, how utterly wrong it is that money dictates the size and timing of my family in such a way, and trying to just figure. it. out. We’ve decided it’s time to start hoarding sick and vacation days (and besides, I can’t afford a vacation, anyway) to hopefully create a stockpile for a hypothetical 2010 maternity leave. I’ve trolled craigslist wondering if there’s an ideal, but cheaper, option for childcare. (Answer: No.) It’s just weighing heavily.

So, in light of all that, I decided to fantasy spend some fantasy money. If I had the following, this is what I’d do with it: $1 : go buy a diet coke from the campus center. (I might do that in a minute.) $10: make plans with Andy to get coffee or something on Friday. $100: put it towards the thermal shades $1000: dining room windows, and some thermal shades $10000: finish windows, do the roof $100000: windows, roof, siding, pay off student loan, save money with some earmarked for my dream car (the 09 Forester… lame, I know, but oh how I long for that car!). $1000000: windows, roof,siding — wait, with a millionbucks, I might even figure out how to add a master suite and first floor bathroom. Or buy out a neighbor or something — and, of course, pay off student loan, get that sweet, sweet 09 Forester, and save. Maybe just get pregnant and do the SAHM thing. Wouldn’t that be lovely? Alas.

Since it’s been dead at work D-E-A-D dead, I’ve had lots of time to fantasize, dwell, worry, etc on just Life As We Know It. I’ve used the ol’ plate-spinning analogy before, where my plates are Family, Work, Body, Money, Brain.

Work is going well — the only thing I’d change would be to have a 4 or 4.5 day schedule, as I find that even having Friday afternoons off for summer hours makes a huge difference in how I feel about the work/life balance.

Body, I’m working on as well — I am back into the groove of Group Power and the Y and all of that, and watching what I eat (but have totally slacked on the WW tracking, because I suck. Well, that and the online tools kept crashing on me, so I stopped wanting to open them) and have lost about 10 pounds in the last few months, even though it’s the season of Ice Cream and Hamburgers. I am now a Regular at the Y, which continues to amaze me, and honestly makes me more committed to showing up. I even use the elliptical now! Yeah.

Money — I love wesabe, and am being good about updating that. We are saving (or, were saving until 1500 bucks of car repairs popped up the same week we paid 900 for four more windows) and we aren’t in debt, and that’s good. I am freaking the fuck OUT about heating our house this winter though — we’ve regularly used 450 gallons a season, and are hoping that the new windows (and thermal blinds I plan to get by winter) will make a difference. Maybe not in our oil usage, but in how warm and comfortable we are inside. But with oil approaching $5/gallon, that’s about 4x what it was our first winter, and it works out to about $375/month through the heating season, which is a lot. We don’t drive much, our commutes are 2 and 3 miles, respectively, so I’m not terribly freaked about that. i think September will be another no-buying month (August is Dave’s birthday, so that would hardly be fair…) just to stockpile some oil money and such.

Brain — It’s still weird for September to not be greeted with getting a parking pass at UM or figuring out my textbooks or whatever, and that’s weird. I also am trying to figure out how to WRITE again, which seems weird as well. I can barely get a blog post up these days (but I am twittering daily — www.twitter.com/snappity — if you’re a twitterin’ too, feel free to add me!) but I just feel so… uninspired. About everything. Not depressed, just… bored. Or something.

In all of that, I’m kind of trying to think of a way to bring in some more money, somehow, to be able to be saving more, to increase our cashflow, to have more of a safety net, all of that. I really, really, desperately want another child, but that can’t happen until Ingrid is on her way out of private daycare and into public schools, so our timeline would be to TTC no EARLIER than a year from now, which would get us a spring/summer baby (KNOCK ON WOOD) and a 4 year old, and one year of daycare costing $1200/month. Not to mention a mat leave — I’d take my 12 weeks, hell or high water, but I’m already planning to start stockpiling vacation and sick days, but even THEN, I won’t have enough to cover an entire mat leave, even if I didn’t take another day off for two goddamn years. That weighs on my mind, too.

When it comes to extra income, Dave and are both into it. His freelance gig has kind of dried up for now, and that was always good for him to use as spending money. Overtime for him picks up in the fall, but oil will certainly eat a pile of that, if not all of it. I do work for my folks in May and June (and a little shot in February), which helps, but it would be so cool if together, we could come up with $1000 of Other Money. Not from our current jobs, but from other sources. $1000 is about exactly our mortgage payment, and in my mental ledger, it would just be cool to cover that — our biggest expense, currently (and yes, 2 kids in daycare will cost more than our HOUSE) — and use our incomes for the other bills, and for savings. So, yeah. That’s a plate that’s wobbling.

For me, it ties up so many of the other ones — Family (could have a 2nd kid!), Money, Brain. I feel like I need to schedule something, some Writing Time or even time to update my local baby stuff blog. (Adsense has earned me 8 dollars in the last year. I’d love if that one could be self sufficient.)

So, dear readers, is anyone out there moonlighting? Supplementing? Anything like that? I don’t want to get a retail job (though the lure of another LLB discount is strong, I really don’t think I could hack the hours), but I’d like to set myself a goal to at least try to write more, even if it’s just “I’m going to take my laptop and disappear to an internet-free coffeeshop for an hour, once a week.” Or “I’m going to research how to write a query letter, or find a place that might be a good place to submit, or …. SOMETHING.” You know?