We visit my mom at least twice a week. Usually on Saturday and lately on Tuesday. I don’t personally want to see her, but I bring Brennan over so she can see him. I also feel bad for her, since she broke her knee and has to stay home for another 2 weeks, until her cast is removed in about 2 weeks. So although, I rather stay home and do other things, I think it is important for Brennan to spend time with his grandma. And vice versa.

I am so excited for our friends JoJo and Klaudia. They are shipping out of Los Angeles and moving to Sin City. Klaudia is talking about going to Card Dealing school and I am picture JoJo doing the same thing. They were able to buy a four bedroom house for about $140,000. We will be going to their daughter’s first birthday this weekend.

Nothing really else to talk about. Except the fact that I really want Sims2.

I am still working on that paper from that unknown plant. I think the closest that I can come up with what it is, would be Day Lily. It is definitely not Day Lily, but the leaves are very similar. I couldn’t stand the strong spinach stench of it, so I ended mixing it with some bleach. Plus, I didn’t want the green color. If the paper comes out decently, maybe I will spray iit with water colors. I will be making the paper today, after I rinse out the bleach and handbeat and then blender the pulp up. But that will have to wait until daylight. Plus, it is still bleaching. There appears to be some stubborn leaves that don’t want to change from its deep green.

Oh, here is a picture of the plant. If you can identify this plant for me, please let me know. I wil be so grateful.

And here is two load of it after cooking it in washing soda and rinsed out. Oh another thing I noticed was that it was really bubbly, when rinsing.

I really have this back ass sleeping habit. A few days out of the week, I end up staying up until 5 or 6 a.m. and then go to bed, then wake up when Brennan starts pulling me out of bed. Like yesterday, he woke me up at 8:30 after only getting 3 hours of sleep. Since I already made plans to go powerwalking at the Strand two days prior, I didn’t really have a chose to cancel. I definitely did not have the energy to do any running.

Right now I am awake at 1:49 a.m., after going to bed at 7:30, right after chatting with Angie. Speaking of sleeping habits, Brennan has been starting to not go down for naps this past week for very long. Yesterday, after our walk he fell asleep in the car on the way home around 1:30. I didn’t want to leave him in inside, so I took him upstairs into our bed, thinking that I would be able to nap down with him. After breastfeeding for about 15 minutes he got of the bed and wanted to play in his room. At this point, I was completely exhausted from lack of sleep, but I had not choice but to go and play with him. We played with his shape sorters, train set, building blocks, Little People, hammer and nail set (don’t worry it is plastic) and other random toys for about 2 hours. Around 4:0o, I brought him downstairs to watch his Sesame Street Alphabets and Telatubby Animals DVDs, until Dennis got home. I just didn’t want to play with him anymore. And he gets so frustrated if I am not connected to his hip bone. At least with the DVDs, he is able to sit there and watch quietly, while snacking on oranges and crackers.

I was even to tired to make dinner, so Den prepared a nice chicken, rice, and frozen vegetable dinner. It was nice, although a half and hour before that, I downed a bunch of pastrami deli meat, but I was still hungry. LOL.

Den’s birthday is in a month. We will actually be in Yosemite next month at this time. I can’t wait!

Oh this not a complaint. It is actually nice to have a day where we have no where to go to and no one to meet up with. We can take our time with waking up and enjoy breakfast at a leisurely pace. I had two pieces of OatNut toast (sunflower, sesame, and poppy seeds combined with oats and hazelnuts by Oroweat) with butter and a glass of soy milk. Yummy! Brennan is watching Barney and enjoying toast as well. He is normally not a bread eater, until recently. Oh now it looks like he is eating the breakfast burrito that I left on his table, with apples and V8. Now Caillou is on.

Oh we do have Brennan’s doctor appointment at 2:00 today, but that doesn’t count as doing something. His appt. was originally on Tuesday, but I totally forgot about it, even though I had it written on the calendar right in front of me and posted the appt. card in front of me as well. That was the first time I forgot. It must have had to do with the headache that I had. They are all gone. Thank goodness. I think it had to do with the weather change or humidity.

So here are the big plans for the day. Cook up some more of that plant that I can’t identify. I will write up an entry more on this later today. Also, build out the website for Den’s History class. Here is a screenshot of the design. I still have to design something for his other class. I also have to finish up my personal statement still of the MLIS program. I received all of my transcripts, so now I have no excuses to not finish it.

Oh ya, I forgot to mention that Den had a paper accepted to present at a conference in Hawaii in January. It will be for 3 days in Waikiki. That means a short vacation trip for us. Yay, I can’t wait. That last time that I have been to Hawaii was when I was in elementary school. I fondly remember it raining, breaking something in a store, and getting sick from swimming too much. LOL.

That’s about it. I better get the plant cooking, since it has to simmer for about 3 hours.

I’ve been having the worst headache. I have been pretty much laying in bed, with this terrible pounding. I just took two more pain medicines. I have no idea if it related to allergies. Saturday, I was all congested up, but was fine on Sunday. I was just mainly aching.

So if you happen to notice that I am not around, it means I am wallowing in pain.

Dennis took off one of the side bars on Brennan’s crib three days ago. Since then, we have revisited that whole sleeping in his crib thing. I am not quite sure yet if it is a great idea. For one, I have to lay with him to get him to go to sleep. Secondly, he has been waking up around 3:30 or so. I hear him because he wakes up crying, but results in me waking up from my deep slumber. Thirdly, he usually ends up back in our bed. I still get about 4-5 hours sleep, but still, isn’t the point of him sleeeping in his crib, is so that he will stay sleeping in his crib? We have only been doing it for three days, so I guess we will have to give it some time. He does sleep with his panda bear, which is so sweet to see him cuddling up with his lovey.

I’ve been suffering from allergies this past week. I guess the weather is slowly turning to fall. The mornings are like June Gloom, foggy, but then the sun breaks out around 12:00 p.m. I get allergies about 2-3 times a year and I hate them. My eyes and the roof of my mouth itches. My sinuses hurt. I can’t take any allergy meds because it makes Brennan constipated. So I usually have to suffer for a few weeks until the weather changes, or whatever happens with the damn blossoming of flowers. Blah!

We also started Parenting classes this week. Although, we’ve only attended one class, so far I am quite impressed. There is a big play area for the little ones to run around in. There is a toolshed filled with a bunch of riding cars and tricycles. Which is great because I can’t afford buy them. Inside the classroom there are even more toys. Anyways, when we got there Brennan was being his usual clingy self. He is like that when we get to a new environment. He gets very shy and clingy. I guess it is more like that he is being conscious about the new surroundings and scouting it out to make sure everything is safe. I wanted to go into the class to sign in, but he wanted to stay outside. Finally, after we got inside he was pretty much crying and pressing his face onto the front door/gate. I had to convince him of all the other fun things inside as well. We did a little bit of singing and the teacher read a book. We introduced ourselves, and for pretty much the rest of class she gave us a run down of all the activities. Since the class is from 11:00 until 1:30, we have lunch. We each have to take turns bringing it with another person. I for reason signed up for the first week, so who knows what I will bring. I guess I want to get it out of the way. I will most likely pick up some sandwiches from Cosco. Hopefully, I will get in touch with the other mother that I signed up with, so we don’t bring the same items. After a while Brennan relaxed more and played with the other toys in the classroom, but by the time he was comfortable the teacher let us outside again. I am really looking forward to see how Brennnan develops through this class. I am sure he will develop more language skills, and most of all some social skills. Of course, he will be introduced to painting, which I am sure will be a big mess.

Oh yesterday we had a lot of fun. A group of us got together for Naked Thursday on Friday. It was at the one SAHFather’s house that we hang out with. We had hotdogs. I made this artichoke dip that I don’t think anybody touched. See that’s why I never cook anything. I suck at it and no one usually eats my food. Or they are usually just polite about it. LOL. We first went to this nearby park and then came back to eat. The sun finally came out and then we put on the sprinklers. The kids ran around naked through the sprinklers. It was a great sight to see. There were four boys and one girl. I unfortunately didn’t have my camera to capture the moment. One mom did, so hopefully she will get around to sending us a copy or two. I actually couldn’t bring mine because yesterday my battery died out when we went to King Harbor the day before.

Speaking of, Den took the day off from working on his thesis to spend with us. It was really a sweet day. We went to King Harbor and just walked around a bit. Although, I got my camera in December I am still learning how to use it. I was fooling around with it on Shutter-priority, where you have control of the shutter speed, but then the camera automatically sets the aperture for you. I am horrible with composition. I guess I lack the eye. Anyways, here are a couple of test shots.

You can see more in my gallery. These are more of my test shots and these are of Brennan.

Also, I was playing with the circular polarizer and it is really hard to see the difference. The sun is so bright out, so it is hard to see if the color is richer or not on the screen. I still have to play with reflections though.

Anyways, today we are going to my parent’s house. So maybe I will have a chance to take some macro shots.

I finally installed Kubrick v1.25. It is a tight design and was so easy to install. Although, I’ve fiddled faddled with it for a while. Thanks Michael Heilemann!

The new header picture was taken at Manhattan Beach. Supposedly, that roundish building that you see on the pier is going to get torn down and built into a fancy restaurant.