21.

When Elizabeth and I found out we had just got ourselves a brother, we woop wooped and did cartwheels around the family room. Sarah probably grunted; she was just barely 2. And actually, I never could do a true, honest cartwheel, but these glad tidings moved me to further attempts.

Thank goodness next time the anniversary of the Cameron Cartwheels come around, we'll have him to squeeze and pinch as brothers should be. I love and miss him more than I can say.

Happy Birthday and Happy Trucking to Cameron McOmber Eaton in the far away land of Ecuador, and many happy returns.

Leif Enger. What a guy.

I have read some good books this year, but it has been FAR TOO LONG since I was drunk on a book so consummately endearing that I am driven to slapping it down on the elliptical machine so I can pause to chunk out some hearty chuckles of continued delight and affection for the characters, their motivation, and their happenings.

Then I pick it back up again, impatient to find out what happens next.

Those of you who've read this book: Is it so wrong if I want to name my first daughter Swede?

Victory

Jeff watched it with me last night.

Bad Beginnings

Yesterday I was driving around on my lunch break, hum dee dum, listening to the radio (which is unusual for me), and on cometh a wee advert for the Season Premiere of Grey's Anatomy. I have spoken of this show before on this spot of internet. Seasons 1 - 3 were pretty near to perfection. I have very dear memories of me and that show and Spring 2008, quite the trio. Anyway...

Back on track. The focus of this little audio preview was:

Alex Karev: YOU MAKE ME LOVE YOU, AND THEN YOU DIE IN MY ARMS!

1. Hmm. Someone needs to have an FHE lesson with Dr. Karev about Free Agency.

2. Drippy, drippy, drip drip drip. I miss Snarky-Mean-with-a-Lot-of-Love Alex. This Emo-Mean-with-a-Lot-of-Love-Alex is a just not going to work.

Please, please, please tell me it was only the Season Premiere awkwardness. It was so much better when Burke was head of cardiothoracics.

Our Best Family Picture to Date

Just 2 flaws:

1. Cameron's got to be photoshopped in. I bet we could use his Prom picture...the year he wore his kilt.

2. That pesky strand of my bangs that's just doing its own thing. Couldn't just behave, no sir. I'll get over it. Mind over matter.

But I still love it. To small, tiny bits.

Saturday, Saturday, Saturday

I found myself unable to sleep in this morning, Jeff is at work, I am slightly crabby.

Is it criminal to anyone else when you can't sleep in on Saturday morning? I learned this week that unless I LEAP out of bed, and I do mean LEAP, which I did on Friday, I am invariably rushed and/or late. Trying to greet the day with any amount of calm doesn't mean greeting the day at all, it means lying in a sleepy stupor trying to negotiate with the powers of the universe, pleading the possibility of it magically becoming a weekend and therefore a typically schedule-deficient morning. And then next thing I know (or don't know) I'm shmoozing with Mr. Sandman again and jolting myself awake with a gasp, late late late. Bad, bad, bad.

Some other latests:

* I've been going to the gym a lot. Like, some of the 24 Hour Fitness Employees might be starting to recognize me. (!!!) It's been great; I read my books on vaguely effective cardio machines while Jeff pumps iron, we run into friends from the ward, it's a good system. I get the gymnasium equivalent of Sunday Night blues while we are en route, and my gym buddy always asks, "Do you want to just go get a donut instead?" with a mischievous smile on his face. So far self discipline has been exercised on the way to exercising.

* How about that tort reform, eh?

* Yesterday Jeff asked me how I feel about my job right now. The work is interesting to me. I love, love, love my co-workers. I am really happy there. I feel like a lucky girl. I often feel like shouting this from the rooftops, but this is the closest I've gotten.

* I'm sorry, I might alienate some of my female comrades with this next blogger statement, but I just can't get on board with the booties. I just don't get them. They make your (my) legs look funny. This is one trend I'm just going to wave at as it passes me by. May it pass by with much momentum.


* I might be frightening more than a few people now, but I have had an itching to cut my hair off, and in no trivial manner. I suppose there was no other alternative; I must eventually recalibrate into a version of my mother, and what would Meri Eaton be without her short Meri Eaton hair? I'm not about to do it, not even close, but I saw this picture in the grocery store magazine rack, and a little chime rang in the back of my head. It might be 10 more years until the day of drastic hair whacking dawns, but I'm quite sure my head will at some point look like this:

* Ok I'm going to clean my room. SATURDAY, SATURDAY, SATURDAY!

I guess I don't know my own strength. Just the simple act of stapling a 50 page document Strips the shelf upon which said instrument was placed of its ability to perform its one task in the world: to hold stuff up.

It would have been less awkward if the shelf had been mine and not my co-worker's.

And a happy Friday to you all.



-- Post From My iPhone

Confession

I listened to a few Christmas songs last night.  I needed them.  I don't think it's spoiled the season.  I know I need to wait at least 2 more months to unleash the Christmas Monomania.  You might not already know this, but the Christmas season doesn't officially begin until you hear the first 2 piano chords of Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song, and I only gave audience to Sufjan Stevens in the last 24 hours.  I'm still clear.

Non-Confession: After 2 long years of service, my space heater has gone all the way of the world.  As I sat in front of my computer at work today I noticed a prickle on my forearm.  Goose bumps!  I looked down and to my left -- where is my private oven???  Lunked.  I shouldn't be upset; it gave me its very best, its ONLY years of life.  And now it must be replaced forthwit, because guess what: I get cold.

Bits

Would you believe me if I told you I made an entire meal and didn't want to fling myself from the Brooklyn Bridge at any point whatsoever?  

What what, y'all, I did!  

I'll go a step further.  I cooked a PORK LOIN WITH SAGE AND APPLES.  In a crock pot.  I suppose I always thought crock pots were cool, but now I'm a little bit in love with them.  It is just the baby step I was needing.  The unsightly guilt bricks of "As far as I can see I'll be cooking Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and Chocolate Chip Cookies until I'm 90" have started to disintegrate.  

After some ginger brocc at Pei Wei on Friday we got back in time to catch 90% of The Beach on tv.  Remember that one?  Leo Dio when he still resembled Peter Pan?  This particular film was a little too much of a marijuana-infused Lord of the Flies for a minute, there, and the White Witch really needs to stretch herself and get out of the villainous "creepy steel eye looks" roles, but the best was the internet cafe al fin.  Our baked hero is back in civilization and sits down in front of a 50 lb., turquoise bubble-behind Mac Monitor, and then he logs into his EXCITE account, and THEN he downloads a picture from an email that takes 5 minutes to chonk out!  I thought it was funny and was partly and irrationally offended, since the movie was released around the time I was ordering my high school cap and gown and Elizabeth was returning home from London with the Felicity haircut.  It wasn't that long ago, was it?  

Just lie to me.

Is it Monday again?

It is.

Penultimate

Floating to Ellis Island, March 1999

My mom and I have our share of differences.  Por ejemplo: My mom could eat brussel sprouts morning, noon, and night, and the very smell of them makes me want to dry heave.  I fidget almost constantly and clomp around from place to place.  She sits in statue mode and when it's necessary to move she sort of glides.  I worry about certain things I can't control, and worry so much I work myself into a dither.  I don't think she's done things like that since the 80s.  

We do have some similarities, though.  We have the same hands, the same initials, the same hair color, and lift our pinkies off glasses that carry cold liquid.  "Pinkies aren't big enough to hold up against such a temperature," said she.  My boyfriend in high school pointed out to me once that I'd picked up the habit.  We're most happy with a movie at home on Saturday night, laugh at our own jokes, get punchy when it's past bedtime, do funny voices when it's just us girls, and exhibit particularly uptight behavior when threatened or made vulnerable in any way. 

One thing, one very cool thing we have in common, is our love of Penultimate Moments.  OOoooh they are thrilling and sweet.  When she was an English major in college she was given the assignment of reciting one of Shakespeare's sonnets.  She chose his 73rd.  When I had the same assignment in the same major about a quarter of a century later, I unwittingly chose the same sonnet, and for the same reasons she'd had!  Which means when she's dead and gone I'll have to keep this sonnet 30 miles away from me at all times, lest the sentimental value and situation in life cause me to cry myself into oblivion.

Read it:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire

Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Devoid of Labor, Overflowing with Lovely

Just a quick Santa Barbara FYI: I'm still accumulating pictures, so this isn't the last of me nudging my Labor Day jaunt out into the internet.

OooooOOOOOoohh I sit here, for some reason getting my second wind, thinking as I did at the close of So Brave, Young, and Handsome, "Why did it have to end??" We maximized our time with activities*, ate like 16 year old boys, chortled heartily at our own and each others' jokes, and still somehow found time to watch the BYU/OU game and get know some R&R.

* Activities out of the routine in our 2 day stay: Solvang time, Hiking, SB State Street Shopping
Activities quite routine to us but fun nonetheless in new surroundings: Chlorinated and Salty breeds of water

Hike-tacular

I think this is when we were sharing listening to Africa on Jeff's ear buds.  "There's nothin that a hundred men or more could ever dooooo...." (are those even the words?  Hold me close I'm Tony Danza?) 

A BBQ place.  It was scrubby but good.  I got steamed veggies and onion rings.

My 2nd wind has been short lived and I'm out of pictures to blog......zzzzzzzzzzzz

Guys, his heart hurts.



He should be ashamed, so so ashamed, but I can tell you this picture in this week's people magazine is just one more thing to throw onto the outskirts of the offense pile.


-- Post From My iPhone

As an added bonus,

I discovered yesterday I could get Pride and Prejudice on my phone to read. Free!

I like having an old friend at my electronic beck and call.


-- Post From My iPhone

Santa Barbara is for people that have been dating for a year

We skeedaddled with some friends, breaching the Orange Curtain, and hit the brakes in Santa Barbara. I haven't been here since my days as an EFY participant, and BOY OH BOY are a lot of things different!



Game faces? Check.
Humidity so intense my hair is a la costa rica? Check check.

More soon....

-- Post From My iPhone

Conundrums

A fun new development this week: Jim-a-lim and Murdy Eaton join the Smart Phone Community.

Mom + Dad + Blackberry = Lurve. This is quite earth shattering, not so much for my dad but for my mom. She used to think they were called raspberries. My mother is a very independent woman, didn't even WANT a cell phone (an "electronic leash"), and fought possession of one such item for years until she realized its value when she blew a sorry tire on the 5 South on her way to pick up Sarah from her summer job. Had I not been there with my mobile device she would have been, as they say, high and dry.

Not only has she been a fairly regular user of a cell phone since 2005, but now they both have the world wide web at their finger tips, and all that goes along with that.

Kris and Elizabeth have recently acquired Palm Pres.

This is a time of renewed love for email in the Eaton family. It's as easy as 1, 2, 3. Boom, boom pow.

The past 2 days my inbox has been hopping with "Reply All"s on subjects varying from religious doctrine to tales of grandchild hilarity to what one of us is wearing on our feet. Here's a snippet of today's fruits, bleeding off of yesterday's theme of "Conundrums":

Sarah:

Anymore conundrums today? It is Friday, so we should be able to think of SOMETHING.

For example I just read that Francis Ford Coppola made a new movie, but it's not looking too hopeful.

Me:
if i were FFC in female form (francesca?), i would be lazing about on the deck of my mansion in the pacific palisades, with my catholic grandkiddies roaming about. i would wear a wide brimmed hat. i would drink diet shirley temples. i would make no more attempts to relive the glory days. j.k. rowling doesn't expect to have another harry potter; "you only get one," says she. it would be ever the same with el padrino.

Sarah:

what is FFC?

future farmers of california?

fluff filled crisps?
fast and furious congressmen?

felicitously fat chubbies?

furry furrowed critters?

oh, francis ford coppola. yes that was what you meant.

Me:
or felicitously fat chubbies. those are the best. and kind of like julia.



Sarah:
if i were a felicitously fat chubby, i would live like Julia and be fed in a high chair and have flower clips put in my hair.

Me:
and stand at the edge of the poofy green couch and watch her older siblings play with star wars action figures, contributing nothing verbal but much by way of moral support and flattering invested interest.

Elizabeth:
Felicitously fat chubbies, such as Julia, have no teeth and like to spend the day looking at Lucy and saying, "Dot!," with all the energy she can muster, and then dubbing everything else she sees as, "Yuck." Pig tails are also required. Plus the occasional gnawing on my shoulder . It is a good life. But she's not much for FFC flicks. We're all about C&L and the all mesmerizing B.E. I think ffc's catholic grand kids might approve.

Me:

C&L = Charlie and Lola for the unlearned.

Sarah:
what is B.E.?

Elizabeth:
Baby Einstein. It makes us smarter every day.

Sarah:
Remember that one Thanksgiving when we were all watching "Baby Einsteins" in a trance, long after Sam had lost interest?

i have been looking up recipes alllllll morning. blueberry zucchini bread? yes.

The End

Was that as much fun for you as it was for me? Maybe, maybe not. But I like them, every single one.

Happy Labor Day!

P.S. to the previous post

a couple of people have mentioned the incredibly expecting woman hauling herself up the way to her sandy towel in the picture of addie below.  i didn't notice her when i was snapping that picture, but that baby MUST have arrived by now, so i say, "all hail the happy babe!"