Serenity Sunday #2

With a continuing hat tip to NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, here are the things that are making me happy right now.

Birthday flowers. No idea what they are -- lavender roses and some kind of dark purple things that might be delphiniums, maybe, and these big stalky things that kind of look like miniature hollyhocks -- but they're super-pretty and they smell divine and they came in a purple vase because my husband knows what makes me happy.

Also: my brand new birthday computer, which is all sleek and shiny and space-age and AMAZING and it smells like money and the future and all kinds of awesome. No pictures yet, because I still want to keep it to myself a little bit, but BOY HOWDY. I should have a birthday every year or something.

This kid and her goofy faces, which never cease to entertain and amuse me. (Even though I am secretly jealous that she looks better in my new glasses than I do.) It is sure to be a great Mother's Day (or, as she called it just a few minutes ago, "Muffin's Day") with her around to crack me up.

Technical Difficulties

Hi there! This was supposed to be the first blog post that I wrote on my new birthday iMac, but unfortunately it's still at my friendly neighborhood Apple store because the data transfer from my old computer failed. Because OF COURSE IT DID, since this is me we're talking about. I was going to share the playlist for our upcoming trip to Disneyland -- did you forget about that? it's only been like 20 minutes since I mentioned it -- but none of the iTunes files transferred from the old machine, and I am missing a year's worth of pictures, and all of my scrapbooking stuff. Hopefully tomorrow (possibly even later today) I'll have an update. In the meantime, some free advice: the "one-to-one" service costs extra, but it's COMPLETELY WORTH IT, because if I had to troubleshoot the data transfer myself, someone would have ended up seriously injured. (Probably me.)

Dept. of Redundancy Dept.

Wanna know some things I never get sick of taking (or posting) pictures of?

(1) My kid.

(2) Cupcakes.

(3) My kid, eating cupcakes.

(4) Miscellaneous.

Over and Done

Shae's last swimming class for the spring was the Saturday before Easter. So these are the last pictures you'll see of her swimming for a few weeks, until Memorial Day or so, when we head out to California for the big vacation that I need so badly I just cannot even tell you. For serious: this will be the longest three weeks of my life, I think. I should probably start with the daytime drinking right now, but they continue to refuse to put vodka in the vending machine at work, those bastards.

I'm not sure what, exactly, Shae got out of these classes. She learned to float on her back, and she learned a lot of basic water safety, like not to go into water that is deeper than she can stand in unless she has some kind of PFD -- I think she might have known that already, but it's good to get reinforcement on this point from someone who is not me. Mostly we had an excuse to get out of the house for the last few months. I guess I'll take what I can get.

Once we get back from the O.C., summer will have officially started, and I'm going to find someone to give Shae lessons on the weekends. Lord knows she won't listen to me, but basically everybody else in my entire family is on a swim team or coaches a swim team or whatever -- I'm pretty much the only slacker ex-swimmer I know -- so I'm sure that someone would be willing to spend an hour a week in the pool for a few bucks. Probably the college-age kids. It's not like the have much else to do except mow lawns or whatever else The Kids doing for beer money these days. (No, I don't want to know. Don't tell me. And get a haircut. And get a real job. And get off my lawn!)

(Although, college-age cousins: If you read this, let me know your starting price. I was thinking $5, a bag of Doritos, and your choice of icy-cold beverage per lesson, but I am willing to negotiate. We can potentially get as high as $10 per lesson, but then the beverage is off the table because I Am Not Made Of Money. And also, you'll have to share the Doritos with Shae and her tapeworm with the hollow leg.)

Serenity Sunday #1

A new feature I am starting, which is a callback to an earlier post, wherein I discuss the Things That Are Making Me Happy Right Now, with a continuing hat tip to NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. (Oh, and you know how some NPR shows have that "This is NPR" tagline at the end? This one definitely should, because even if you hate NPR for whatever reason, I believe that most people will find this particular podcast thoroughly entertaining. And their Facebook page is a hoot. Seriously, go check it out.)

Anyway: once again the things that are making me happy this week are garden-related. Because it's spring, and there are many things about spring that do NOT make me happy (ahem, allergies), but my garden ain't one of them.

This tulip is not from my garden -- it grows in the courtyard of the building where I work. Or at least it did until we had heavy rains and high winds earlier this week. Most of the time, the landscapers put in assorted annuals to fill in the "empty" spaces around the trees, but every year, there is one or two random bulbs that manage to sprout. I love the color of this tulip. It's so happy.

I love this flowering tree, also in the work courtyard. No idea what it is -- a crape myrtle, maybe? -- but it is lovely. I am not generally a fan of pink, but I love pink-flowering trees. I continue to adore weeping cherry trees, even though they're pretty much done at this point.

My lilac bush. I think I might have missed the "best" of the blooming, but I managed to get out there at least once to sniff the flowers. I wish that my allergies weren't so bad; I'd love to be able to snip some bunches and put them in every room of my house.

So that's what making me happy right now. What about you?