Naturally Optimistic

Well, to us - not by us... Did I mention we bought a new house? Oh, I did but sort of not really? Well, for all of you who didn't just point blank say to me "did I miss something?" we bought a new house! There it is! We originally had a closing date at the end of Sept. Then the sellers moved it up to Sept 1 which really means Sept 2 due to Labor Day and then we moved it up to Aug 29 - so we could take advantage of the long weekend. And hey - if you're going to have 2 mortgages - what's the harm in a couple more days? (*sigh*) We're excited to get in there and rip up some carpet, tear down some wallpaper and paint some walls. Of course our "to-do" list is a million miles long and I think we'll be hiring some pros to do some of it but soon we'll be in our new little house, nestled in the woods. I can't wait! Now....if only we could sell our current house......

Pretty mellow today....the usual morning routine - up, shower, dress, get baby up, bathe her, dress - breakfast for both of us - then on to whatever we've got going on. We were on the phone with Apple for a long time today trying to figure out the wireless connection nonsense. (solution - get another Mac and dump the dell + linksys router! Amen!), we sent 3 packages - which entailed wrapping, packing & walking to the post office to send. I watched the rest of "21" which I enjoyed, I finished my book (After Dark) and started another (Gods in Alabama). I did some work including tweaking our WAB listing (for festival submissions) and final listens on soundtrack tracks. I tried a new recipe (eggplant parmesan - review...pretty darn good) and now I'm knitting & watching men's beach volleyball. Someday Dahlia will have her blanket. Tomorrow's Friday! Tomorrow we send off the soundtrack for duplication. Saturday my parents come to town. Sunday we have anothe...

Last Sunday we took a family bike ride on the Munger Trail. It rocked. We had a picnic, we biked about 10 miles in the perfect biking conditions - sunny, warm but breezy (cool) and a great trail. The bike trailer really evens out Steve & my abilities which is awesome. It gives him a extra workout (maybe I should be hauling the trailer) that's for sure!

On Saturday after Kate left we packed up and headed to my favorite vacation spot. Gordon, WI. Sometimes its hard to discern sarcam in the written word, I was using it in the first sentence. Just to clarify. Steve's Dad owns some property down there and a small little "cabin." We try to get down there once or twice a year with his Dad & Trudy as they LOVE it. For me? It's not that great. I'm scared of swimming in rivers (and lakes) so that's no good (yes, I have issues, I'm aware). There's no hiking. An overabundance of ATVers & shitty little red-neck bars and it usually rains when I'm thee. So Saturday was HOT hot hot. And we had to take the non-air-conditioned truck because we were town a trailer with some fence posts for Steve's Dad. Awesome. Nothing I like better than sitting in the middle of a hot hot hot truck (stick shift mind you) while roasting my ass off. It's awesome! We did stop at Culver's for some frozen custard wh...

Friday brought the visit of KATE to Duluth! I haven't seen her since....what did we decide...1992? The fateful trip that Laurie , Meigan & I made to visit Kate at Drake. Ay yi yi - we tried to reconstruct that trip - something about a pizza place, a frat party, the stalls in the dorm bathroom and a possible trip to the Des Moines zoo...? Anyone? Anyone? It's rather fuzzy. I'll have to dig out some photos.... Anyway - it was fabulous to see Kate. We had a great time just talk-talk-talking for hours and hours on end. She adored my baby and earned mucho bonus points for that! We sat outside til we were both quite sleepy on Friday night just catching up. It was really cool though because it didn't feel like it had been so damn long. It was really really nice. Saturday we took Dahlia out to Pizza Luce for some yummy breakfast, I gave her a mini-tour of Duluth and then she was on her way! Next time I must get her to stay for longer so we can go hiking or canoeing, work...

As Dahlia & I pulled into the Canal Park parking lot yesterday, my phone rang. It was Holly & her family. They were just passing through town on their way up the shore. They wanted to stop and give Clair an opportunity to get out of the car and stretch her legs. Perfect! So they came down and met us and we all went for a stroll. Dahlia enjoyed her afternoon bottle in Leif Ericksson park. It was a beautiful (albeit windy) day. She was fascinated by the kids, dogs, bikers, joggers, skaters, etc.

Wow! 8 Months! Hard to believe. Dahlia is getting more & more fun as the days go by. She can pretty much sit by herself now - at least for a little wile. But she generally gets too excited and then falls over. Which is also kind of cute - when she doesn't bump anything! She 'talks' her head off...no words yet but I feel they're coming soon. I've been trying to have her play on the floor more so she can roll around and try the whole crawling thing (hasn't yet) and I think she likes it. She can get herself in the oddest positions/places by rolling - under the swing, almost under the couch, etc. Too funny. We're working on "bye-bye" - too soon for it but she's kind of getting the idea. When we ask "Where's Beavis?" she looks around and looks down at the floor - very very cute. Boy she loves that cat. She is still comfortably fitting into her 3-6 month clothes...I'm going to have some out-of-season stuff - sadly. There are som...

No one is posting or they're on vacation or just too busy with real lives today. *sigh* I'm not really posting either so I guess I can't complain. Laurie posted a good update...that was nice...but I'm feeling a little lonely in my internet world today for some reason. Emails gone unanswered, blah blah blah, poor me. Anyway. I almost took Dahlia to a "Baby & Mama Dance Class" today at the Y but only learned about it about 45 minutes before it started and there just wasn't enough time to get her a bottle, and get there in time. So instead we danced around the kitchen a bit. I think we might try to go next week. I certainly need to do SOMETHING about the heifer that I currently am. It's getting old. And I have no self control, apparently, so I better start working out more. Steve & I might join the Y this fall as I think he & Dahlia are going to take swimming lessons together (cute!) and then I could maybe work out or something. But mostly I a...

Steve & I had a date on Saturday! It was so much fun. We had a showing of our house at 3:15 so at that time I took Dahlia to make a Target run, while Steve headed up to Hartley to work on his adopted section of the SHT. After Target I dropped Dahlia off at Grandma B's and headed over to Hartley to meet up with Steve. I hiked in and found him quite happily working away. It was a beautiful day - perfect temperature for wielding the weed cutter thingy. I even joined him! I trimmed up some grasses/weeds on a rock staircase - just to make it even prettier than it already is. The trail is looking awesome. It's such a great time of year for trails - not too wet, not too dry, beautiful foliage, filtered sunshine...you get the idea. After that we stealthily changed our clothes at the trailhead and headed over to Sammy's Pizza in Woodland for some awesome pizza. I was going to take a photo but forgot my camera in the car and was too lazy to go get it. I'm telling you - that ...

I always do theme gifts (or I try to) for my sister for her birthday. This year's theme is "music" - I already have for her a CD, a musical (DVD) and a Symphony Chocolate bar - but I wanted to think of a couple of other really clever (cheap!) things to throw in...but I am stumped. Anyone have any Musical ideas? Food or candy items that have a music related name? (rhapsody, allegro, etc etc)...I know there must be things out there but my brain is totally stuck. Her birthday's this Saturday so I have to mail off the package by Thursday so she gets it on time. Your input is greatly appreciated!

Good lord. Have you read this ? I am just so sick of every g.d politician or person in "power" having freaking affairs. What is wrong with people? If you're want to have lots of sex & girlfriends or whatever, just don't be married & have kids, okay? God. I'm sick of it. And I'm a really huge John Edwards fan...Hmph.

We've had a few showings of our house in the past week* and I'm feeling a bit like Goldilocks' unfortunate best friend...."This house is too small," "This house has too steep of steps," "This house has an ugly kitchen floor." You get the idea. But I still have faith that for someone our house will be JUST RIGHT. It only takes one, right? *all in all I am very grateful that we're getting some action on the house, period. I know that when the right person finds it it will be no problem. :)

Last night I went out for margaritas with FeistyMnGirl - it was great. We've been reading each other's blogs for a while now and emailing a bit back and forth and discovered that we have a ton in common. She thinks my knowledge of rain barrels & turbidity is dorky (and so do I) and I think the fact that she's building a new *green* house in Hawk Ridge is beyond fantastic. We both love fine tequila (or not so fine, whatever), preserving the natural beauty of Duluth and finding out more about sustainable energy & how to incorporate them into every day life. So yeah, it was cool and I hope I didn't scare her off my talking my head off - which is what I usually do. Sadly I came home to a screaming Dahlia but I think that was because she fell asleep during her last bottle - and a couple more ounces put her right back to sleep (whew) at least for a few hours. She's on a 3am wake up kick lately which is getting very old. Last night's 3am rocking session coinci...

Our house is back online. Thank God. Our realtor actually ended up just doing a new listing & new MLS for us since the programmers still couldn't figure out their end of it. So, we deleted the old, added the new and it's all hunky dory. In addition she took out a real estate classified w/photo for us for Saturday & Sunday so that was cool. I think we'll probably have another open house next week. Keeping the house clean & tidy 24/7 is SO. MUCH. FUN. Not. Steve & I noticed some people walking through the alley yesterday, totally checking out our sweet backyard. :) Then we saw them SLOOOOOOWLY driving by the front. Perhaps their interest has been piqued. I hope so!

Soooo frustrating. Apparently when "paragon" updated their site on Tuesday, they had some problems and not all properties are showing up. Timing is VERY POOR for us as the clock is tick-tick-ticking. But we do still show up when realtors search so hopefully someone will want to see the house soon. So far we've had 4 people look. *sigh* Buying the first house is SO much easier/more fun than buying the 2nd.