Is There A Craft-Blog Anonymous?

I'm addicted. Really and truly addicted. If I were to allow myself, I would spend HOURS on various craft blogs, looking for fun crafts that I can do without spending any money and using only the materials I have on hand. I get such a kick out of re-purposing things around the house that I would normally just be tossing and using them in ways I normally wouldn't.

Who's ever heard of a tshirt necklace? I surely hadn't until stumbling across it on a (what else?) craft blog. I had recently gone through my closet to exorcise some of the now-too-baggy clothing and knew I had a tshirt or two in there that could be sacrificed to the rotary cutter.

The finished product:


I also refurbished a necklace my mom made for me a few years ago. I absolutely loved this necklace, and it meant a lot to me because Mom and Marla bought the Murano glass pendant for me on their trip to Italy. Unfortunately, the wire holding the necklace together snapped, and it has been languishing in a small box ever since. After seeing the necklace my Weight Watcher leader was wearing last week, I was inspired. I grabbed some of the thin brown ribbon I had used in some Christmas gifts, strung on the pendant and clasps, made a few knots, and VIOLA! Good as new!


Besides being crafty today, I also managed to sweep/mop/vacuum all of the downstairs floors AND get the kitchen and dining room cleaned up. Nathan took the afternoon to retreat to his man cave (aka the garage) and cook up a batch of homebrew while watching the National Championship college football game. Meanwhile, our friend/neighbor from across the street, Sarah, came over and we spent a good couple of hours just chatting. All in all, it was a very relaxing and productive day...especially considering the fact that I didn't get to sleep until about 6 am (crying babies) and didn't wake up until about 2 pm.

Speaking of which, my sleep schedule continues to be on the complete fritz. Lately it's been 'awake until 3 or 4 am, sleep until 11 or 12'. Not cool. In an attempt to remedy this problem, I took a Tylenol PM...about half an hour ago...which means it's setting in right about now. Which, in turn, would explain why spelling correctly is becoming increasingly more difficult.

I think that's my cue. Night!

Our Sons: Upright & Mobile

We're not sure what prompted it. Maybe something clicked in their brains. Maybe they were tired of rug burn on their knees. Maybe they were tired of having to crane their necks to see anything higher than six inches from the ground.

All I know is that right as I was laying down for a nap this afternoon, Nathan came running up the stairs into our room. There are really only two types of things that make Nathan run up those stairs: something really really good or something really really bad. He burst into the room and informed me that Levi, our firstborn, had successfully walked a good 7 steps or so in our living room all by himself, without any prompting. I smiled, exclaimed over how very cool that was, and went to sleep. I'm an awesome Mom like that.

I have to admit, I was a little worried that Levi would walk a couple of times and then give it up for a few days. But as soon as the boys got up from their naps, Levi was at it again. It took a little encouragement, but he loved how excited Mommy and Daddy got over his new trick.

Not to be outdone, Asher promptly went to the corner of the wall he was using to hold himself up, let go, and walked a good 4-6 steps. And giggled. The ENTIRE time. Stinkin' hilarious!

And now they won't stop. The distances are getting further and further, and their balance is steadily improving. I predicted that they will be running by next week.

Thank goodness they both got little monkey backpacks with leashes as tails for Christmas!

DBSKKMBAS Strikes Again

I have an affliction. It comes in a 12 oz cup. It doesn't strike very often (due in large part to budgetary restraints) but when it does, it strikes with a vengeance.

I like to call it Dutch Bros Skinny Kicker Keeps My Butt Awake Syndrome.

Aka DBSKKMBAS.

Ok, maybe that's a little unwieldy, but we dispatchers work in acronyms all the time and it's kind of a hard habit to break.

Speaking of dispatchers, I recently rescued my favorite mug from my 'lost my job and had to clean out my drawer' box and it is currently holding the Sweet Dreams tea that I am using to combat the DBSKKMBAS. It was a present from one of my fellow dispatchers in Baker (thanks Jill!) and had been retired from public life due to the fact that my boss would probably not appreciate the sentiment printed on it:

9-1-1: Trained to save your ass, not kiss it.

Heh heh, it still gets me every time.

But on to other thoughts. Like the following...

...is anyone else ridiculously relieved that the holidays are over? My relief mostly stems from the fact that I now have no "excuse" to eat like a pig anymore. There's no more 'but it's the holidays' creeping in the back of my head. On to more weight loss, starting with a (very scary) weigh-in tomorrow - I mean THIS - morning.

I'm also relieved to be done with all the planning and list-making that is involved when you are making most of your Christmas presents. While making said presents is incredibly fulfilling and much easier on the pocketbook, it also takes a LOT longer. That being said, I'm totally going to do it again.

Christmas was relatively relaxing (yes, I'm just NOW getting around to posting about Christmas) considering how many people were at our house. I had to work on Christmas Eve, while Nathan and the boys enjoyed dinner with my parents and grandparents here at our place. I did, however, get Christmas Day off, so we all slept in on Christmas morning and got to spend a little bit of time with just the four of us until my parents and grandparents arrived around 10. We did the whole stocking thing (stockings are a big deal in my family), had breakfast, and then proceeded to rip apart our presents while the boys took a VERY LONG nap. Their presents got piled under and around the coffee table...yes, there were THAT many presents for them.

At around 4, Nathan's dad joined us and got to watch the boys open their presents. Both Asher and Levi actually helped with the opening of some of their presents, until they got distracted by the toys coming out of them. What a huge difference from their first Christmas! Then we had an amazing dinner of prime rib, mashed potatoes, and Lawry's original recipe cream corn. Wow. Ask me to tell you about eating at the Lawry's The Prime Rib mansion in Chicago some time. I'll start to salivate and then eventually get around to telling you the story. Again, despite having a full house, the evening was very laid back and we were even graced with my father in law playing the guitar and singing for us while we made dinner. It doesn't get much better than that.

New Year's was more of the same. I had to work New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, both of which were remarkably quiet despite being a notoriously rowdy holiday. I got home at 11 on New Year's Eve, early enough to ring in 2010 with Nathan and his sister and her husband, who had joined us for the night. Nathan had uploaded all the short videos we had taken of the boys since they were born onto his new PS3 that he got for Christmas, and we watched a couple of them. I had forgotten just how tiny and helpless they use to be, my goodness! It literally brought tears to my eyes and caused me to demand that my sister in law gestate faster...

...speaking of which, I don't think I've written about this on here yet, at first because it wasn't public yet and then because of the holiday whirlwind, but I'M GOING TO BE AN AUNTIE! Kate and Eliot are expecting their first little one in June and I simply can't wait to have a newborn in my arms again...with the proviso that I get to give this newborn back to its parents when it starts to squall. No, baby fever has not hit me and I don't see it hitting any time in the foreseeable future, so don't ask. Not happenin'. Two is enough, thank you very much.

Oh, and did I mention that we got snow here on Tuesday? According to the weatherman that morning, we were only suppose to get a couple wet flakes transitioning into rain. Instead, we got about three or four inches worth...which THEN transitioned into rain. Pretty much all traces of it are now gone, but not before a snowman 'magically' appeared on the patio at work, complete with broccoli eyes, a celery mouth, a carrot nose, and a fireman jacket. I love working with people who have such an awesome sense of humor! Unfortunately, by the time we got back to work the next day, Mr. Snowman was reduced to a couple small piles of snow surrounded by vegetables. At least I can say I got one snow-fall in this winter!

Ok, I have to get up in about 4 1/2 hours, so I should probably call this good. Sorry there aren't any Christmas photos to post, but we didn't take our camera out all day (bad photographers!) and I have yet to nab any photos from my parents, grandparents, or Nathan's dad. We'll get them eventually...and a goal for this year is to get our online family photo album updated. Yeah. Bear with me on that one.

Night!

Just When You Think You've Got It All Figured Out...

...your child is once again up at 2 am, crying his little eyes out.

GAH!

Levi has been changed, given a bottle, snuggled, read a book, given Tylenol and gas drops, and allowed to play until he curled up on the floor with a teddy. Which Mommy took as a very good hint to put said child to bed.

And now he's is alternating between 5 minutes of quiet and 1 minute or so of crying at the top of his lungs. Eventually he will cry himself to sleep...

...right?

RIGHT?!

Seriously, both the boys have been sleeping SO well for the past week or so, it's been blissful.

To escape the frustration and exhaustion, I'm going to journey back to happier days; more specifically, last night, when the boys had another confrontation with Daddy's spaghetti sauce and body painting came back into vogue.

Asher: Who made this mess?!

Oh...right...that would be me.

Attack of the spaghetti sauce!

Levi: I'm cleaner than my brother, Mommy!

Touch the camera?

SPAGHETTI GRIN!

Needless to say, Asher is a bit more... exuberant than his brother in the art of spaghetti sauce painting.

The good news?

Levi has now extended his quiet times to about 10 minutes at a time, and the crying fits have shortened to about 10 seconds long. Hopefully this is a good sign

Here's To You, Boys In Blue (And Brown)!

This was sent to me by someone who shall remain nameless, and my co-workers and I found it pretty hysterical. Maybe you have to be in law enforcement in order to get it, but there is a lot of truth hidden behind the comedy. Most people hate cops until the moment when they need the police the most. Either the officers are 'harassing innocent people' (HAH! what are those?), not getting there fast enough (what did you expect to happen when you moved to the very edge of the county?), or doing their jobs in other unsatisfactory ways. For 98% of calls, they're the 'bad guys'. My job is sometimes hard and thankless, but I wouldn't ever trade them places.

_______________________________

Police Harassment

Recently, the Chula Vista Police Department ran an e-mail forum (a question and answer exchange) with the topic being, "Community Policing."

One of the civilian email participants posed the following question, "I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?"

From the law enforcement side, Sgt. Bennett, obviously a cop with a sense of humor replied:

"First of all, let me tell you this...it's not easy. In Chula Vista , we average one cop for every 600 people. Only about 60% of those cops are on general duty (or what you might refer to as "patrol") where we do most of our harassing. The rest are in non-harassing departments that do not allow them contact with the day to day innocents. And at any given moment, only one-fifth of the 60% patrollers are on duty and available for harassing people while the rest are off duty. So roughly,
one cop is responsible for harassing about 5,000 residents.

When you toss in the commercial business, and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 10,000 or more people a day.

Now, your average ten-hour shift runs 36,000 seconds long. This gives a cop one second to harass a person, and then only three-fourths of a second to eat a donut AND then find a new person to harass. This is not an easy task. To be honest, most cops are not up to this challenge day in and day out. It is just too tiring. What we do is utilize some tools to help us narrow down those people which we can realistically harass.

The tools available to us are as follows:

PHONE: People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. "My neighbor is beating his wife" is a code phrase used often. This means we'll come out and give somebody some special harassment. Another popular one is, "There's a
guy breaking into a house." The harassment team is then put into action.

CARS: We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars with no insurance or no driver's licenses and the like. It's lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light. Sometimes
you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, they are drunk, or have an outstanding warrant on file.

RUNNERS: Some people take off running just at the sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as satisfying as running after them like a beagle on the scent of a bunny. When you catch them you can harass them for hours.

STATUTES: When we don't have PHONES or CARS and have nothing better to do, there are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks. They are called "Statutes"; Criminal Codes, Motor Vehicle Codes, etc... They all spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people. After you read the statute, you can just drive around for awhile until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them. Just last week I saw a guy trying to steal a car. Well, there's this book we have that says that's not allowed. That meant I got permission to harass this guy. It is a really cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty well.

We seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because for the good citizens who pay the tab, we try to keep the streets safe for them, and they pay us to "harass" some people. Next time you are in my town, give me the old "single finger
wave." That's another one of those codes. It means, "You can't harass me." It's one of our favorites.

_______________________________

I have to admit, I get pretty defensive when I hear someone make a blanket comment along the lines of "all cops are jerks". There are so many misconceptions about what it is our officers and deputies do while on duty, and I think if the general public knew what they deal with on a daily basis they'd be a little more forgiving if an officer or deputy is a bit brusque with them. After all, when was the last time you had to tackle a guy so hopped up on drugs that he had no concept of strength or pain? Or the last time you had go to a fatal car crash and then inform the mother that her child was killed in the accident? While most people are good, law-abiding citizens, they only make up a tiny portion of our calls...and most of THOSE calls are medical.

Next time you see an officer pulling someone over or arresting a shady-looking character, just remember that they're making YOUR world a safer place. I, for one, am incredibly proud of and thankful for our boys (and girls) in Blue and Brown.

...brown is worn by the Sheriff's Deputies. FYI.

Another Day, Another Project

It's almost 2 am and I'm still up. Really Lindy, must you do this to yourself?

Here's the problem: I rented Julie & Julia. And me being, well, ME there was no way I could sit through a movie without a project to keep my little hands busy. Thankfully, I needed to make an ornament to give my boss for our ornament swap at work. Anyone can go out and buy someone an ornament, but a handmade one is so much fun not to mention one of a kind. And I just happened to finish it at the exact same time the movie ended. Fate? I think so. It would have only taken about 3o minutes (if that) if I hadn't decided to do some decorative hand stitching around the edges and on the front.

Also, here are a couple of pictures of the purse I made for my sister in law. My mom was very sad that she didn't get to see the finished product since she was with me when I found (and fell in love with) the corduroy fabric I used. So here are a couple of photos, Mom.

Ok, it's seriously time for bed now. Night all!

PS. I'm trying to find a fun project that will give me an excuse to go out and find some fabric that I absolutely love...you know, without hoping to get lucky at the remnant bin. I don't want to make any sort of clothes yet, though, on account of the whole still losing weight thing. Any ideas?

Speaking of losing weight, I DID manage to lose another 0.8 lbs when I weighed in on Saturday. It was a minor miracle. I have now lost a total of 27.4 lbs!

Peace Like A River In My Soul

Today was a good day.

A little hectic to start out with, but good. Asher kept me up until about 4 am (I was on baby duty while Daddy got some much-needed rest) so I got to sleep in a little bit while Nathan fed the boys their breakfast. Unfortunately, in my sleep-deprived stupor I miscalculated how long I could sleep in; somehow I thought sleeping until 9:45 would give me and hour and a half until our 'departure time' at 10:15. Don't ask.

We didn't get out of the house until 11:00. Oops.

But get out of the house we did, and headed up to Hillsboro to have Christmas festivities with Nathan's mom's side of the family...but not before dropping the boys off at Grandma's and braving Costco on the last weekend day before Christmas. One word: stupid. We did, however, manage to get in and out of Costco in 25 minutes flat. And yes, I do believe that may be a world record. It was nice to have a chance to hang out with my husband, just the two of us, doing the sort of every day stuff we use to be able to do so easily...you know, before twins.

The Christmas festivities were a bit delayed, yet incredibly relaxed which was a bit of a departure from the norm. I think my favorite part was that the gifts were all truly from the heart. With the budget being a bit tight for all of us this year, we had to get creative with our gift giving and it was such a pleasure to sit back and watch how touching each gift was. It's so easy to lose ourselves in the commercialism of Christmas and this year I really desired something...deeper. I think I got my Christmas wish.

After we got home, I (fueled by a Dutch Bro's skinny Kicker) immediately tackled the four loads worth of laundry that needed folded and put away, not to mention the dusting and rearranging of our room that has been taunting me for weeks on end. Seriously, does anyone want to hire someone to just fold and put away my laundry? That's all I want in life...to not have to fold and put away FOUR LOADS OF LAUNDRY. EVERY WEEK. Guess I should have thought of that before having twins.

I had just gotten done with putting away said laundry and was proceeding to give our master bathroom a much-needed scrub down (Got the toilet bowl cleaner from Dollar Tree, Kate. It works like a charm!) when I heard something resembling an "OH NO!" from downstairs. Evidently the downstairs bathroom door had been left open and our sons immediately proceeded to give themselves a bath in the dog's water bowl. Keep in mind that we had already attempted to put Levi and Asher to bed at this point, so we thought leaving the door open was safe.

Needless to say, a 10:30 pm bath became necessary. Have I mentioned how much the boys enjoy splashing in the bath these days?

I realized tonight just how much I wish I could be home for the nightly bedtime routine. It's pretty much impossible for Nathan to pull off the whole bath-and-a-story act by himself, with twins...they're just too wiggly. Tonight after their bath, however, we turned down the lights, curled up on our bed, and read The First Christmas while the boys snuggled with their new stuffed animals from their Auntie Kate and Uncle Eliot. Once the story was finished, they immediately settled into their cribs and I haven't heard a peep from them since. And I can pretty much same the same thing for their father, too!

I, on the other hand, finished cleaning the downstairs. I love that feeling when you get your house all clean and tidy, and then you have some time to yourself to just enjoy the order of it all before it is torn to shreds again by your children/husband/dog. Determined to make the most of it, I settled into the recliner with my down blanket, a cup of mint tea, and P.S. I Love You (the only movie that is 100% guaranteed to make me cry EVERY TIME).

Like I said, it was a good day.

Remember how I mentioned that Asher kept me up until 4 am? Here's what I did to fill the time until I was certain he was going to stay asleep for longer than 20 minutes at a time.



I must say that I've become a bit addicted to sewing. I can't seem to stop. I guess I find it soothing and rewarding, something that gives me a bit of a break from being mom/wife/911 dispatcher. I found these two fabrics in the 99 cent fat quarter bin at Joann Fabrics and instantly fell in love...they're so soft and I love how they contrast (one is modern while the other is flowery-girly) and yet compliment each other so well. And the pattern was incredibly easy. You can find it here. I left out a couple of elements because I didn't want to clutter up the simplicity of the outer fabric but I made a second purse for my sister in law with more of the detail work and it was still quick and simple.

Now I just have to find my next project!