Thoughts on the economy

I am shamelessly under-educated about the financial markets and the true implications of the mess in NYC and DC. Here's a link to a short piece on what Dave Ramsey has to say about it. I have read one of his books and find his financial advice and knowledge to be right on. Trusting what the print and TV media are saying about this (okay, about anything) doesn't seem like a safe bet and I don't think it's a good idea to point fingers or listen to the political folks try to spin it (keep in mind that 40% of democrats in the House voted against it, too).

Jack and the Giant Pizza

Caroline is still playing the name game with her baby sister (of whom she has become quite possessive lately. If I'm putting my hand on my belly or talking to the baby, she says, "That's my baby sister!"). This weekend, she told someone that her name was going to be "Jack". Um, no. She told a girl at my mom's sorority house that the baby was going to be named "Ginger Ann". Where does she get this?

This past Friday, Jeff, Caroline, and I went downtown (or back downtown for Caroline and me) after school and work for a concert that is part of a concert series they do in BR in the fall. Each week a different band plays starting at 5:00 and they sell food, drinks, and generally people just hang out downtown. Caroline got bored of the dancing and singing after a while, so we took a walk and as we were walking down a street I noticed that she was grabbing my hand very tightly and kind of hiding behind my leg as we walked. I was looking around at the buildings and people, so I didn't notice that straight ahead of us on the opposite corner was a giant slice of pizza. Or I guess more accurately, a man dressed up as a giant slice of pizza.

This pizza had a smiling "face" and to top it all off, he wore gloves. Caroline has many quirks and odd aversions and hang-ups and gloves are near the top of that list. She hates gloves and if anyone wears gloves, she runs the other way. Not only was this a 6 foot tall slice of pizza, which is weird and frightening to a child who does not like big mascot type costumes, but he wore gloves and waved them at her! We passed by the pizza once without creating a scene, but when it was time to turn around and head back down the street toward our car, she insisted that we cross the street to the other side, because, she "not like that big pizza."

More Caroline-isms

Caroline has a few new sayings and phrases that have given me some laughs in the past few weeks. I'll share a few here:

"You might need to think." She says this to me when someone asks her a question she doesn't know the answer to or if I answer one of her questions by saying, "I don't know."

"I for-da-got." Meaning, I forgot.

"I just joking." Or "I just kidding." She says this when she says something or does something we don't like. For example, the little boys in her class like to pretend to shoot things and people on the playground and I'm not a big fan of that kind of talk. So, if she says that she was playing with a friend on the playground and they "shot Lauren", I'll tell her that I don't like her to play like that. She responds with "I just joking!" She has learned that if you're going to get fussed at, one way to get out of it is to pretend you were "joking" about whatever bad thing you did.

"Tell me 'bout your day." Caroline has become fascinated with what goes on during the day while we are not together. At dinner we usually ask one another how the day went, what did you do, etc. Caroline has brought this to another level by engaging in lengthy lists of what she did during the day, most of which is pulled from whatever Jeff or I said we did during our day. For example, last night she told me that during her day she "wrote trontrats (contracts), checked my he-mail, talk on the phone, have a meeting, eat my lunch, and go to the playground." Jeff observed that we need to continue to be vigilant about watching what we say and do around this little one - she takes in everything!
She also equally enjoys hearing about anyone else's day and will get very annoyed if she feels like you've left something out of your story or if you haven't described what you do enough.

"right?" She wants us to agree with everything she says, so most statements end with her adding "right?" to the end of them. You must respond by saying "That's right Caroline" or she doesn't feel validated. You can't just say "Yes", you must include the word "right" in your response.

Those are the ones that are sticking out in my head right now, I'm sure Jeff could share others, and I'm sure she will come up with some new ones in the days to come!

A breath of fresh air

In this stinky election season, this is a breath of fresh air! I love how she mixes humor with such important truth.

On another issue than can at times be equally as divisive as politics, this is a great football weekend with my two favorite teams facing big games: LSU v. Auburn and Tennessee v. Florida! I love Saturdays in the fall . . . Have a good weekend!

More on Sarah Palin, but this is not funny

After I posted the link to the website that you can generate your own "if I was a child of Sarah Palin" name, I read this and it is truly disturbing.

I heard the story on the news last night about someone hacking into her personal email, which in itself is bothersome and indicative of what this election season has become. But the extent to which this was taken as you can see from the link goes beyond bothersome to truly disgusting. I saw something on a blog the other day and I won't link to it because it is also in the camp of the "disgusting" that I've seen in the past two weeks, but the blog writer had a letter that is circulating on the internet and on left leaning blogs. The letter is from some PAC and encourages people to send in donations to Pl@nned P@renthood in Sarah Palin's name. They note "how funny" it will be when she gets all of these cards from PP saying so much money has been donated in her name. Hysterical. Making a joke out of an issue that is not only something a person is against, but has some very personal issues that make her stand on that more than a political choice.

I said a while back that I wasn't going to post political things on this blog during this election, but this is more a matter of decency. Lately this election has become about saying nasty things about a vice presidential candidate and it gives credence to the reason so many people stay out of politics and political issues: it is dirty and personal and not about the American people or even the candidates' and their stand on issues. Like Sarah Palin or dislike her, the list of what is going on in the "news" and internet is disgusting and I hope people from both parties can distance themselves from the list of atrocities in the site I linked to above.

What we should be talking about: Is she qualified? Are any of the candidates qualified? Where do they stand on issues that are important to me and my family? Those are all valid questions that each of us has to answer for ourselves.

Hi! I'm Nixon, Nixon Hailfire

Go to this website to see what your name would be if you were Sarah Palin's child. As I said in the title, I'm Nixon Hailfire Palin, nice to meet you.

Tidy up.

Wait till the kids go to bed and watch this. Funny.

oh no.

No. Please tell me this isn't serious.



Seriously. I'm embarrassed for them.

Recent pictures

These are just a few random pictures that I've taken recently and thought I'd share.  

Caroline playing dress up.  Yes, she has on a sleeping beauty dress with a cowboy hat.  And a baby doll on her lap wearing a cowboy hat of her own.  

"I'm 3!"  

Caroline and Jeff getting ready for a bike ride in the neighborhood.  

We were lucky enough to spend a couple of days at Lake Rosemound at the camp of some our friends.  This is Caroline and Jeff headed down to the lake for an evening ride in the kayak.  

Gustav

Well, we weathered Hurricane Gustav and I'm finally getting a chance to share a little about it and post some pictures from a crazy few days.  We decided to stay at our house for the hurricane.  Being from Baton Rouge, I haven't been through any storms here that felt especially threatening.  There have been occasions where we've done without electricity for a few days, but beyond some wind and rain, I couldn't remember a time where it felt dangerous to be in a hurricane.  Gustav definitely changed all of that for me!  The winds were pretty incredible.  I'm not sure if they know the sustained wind speeds in the heart of Baton Rouge though I've heard that there were sustained winds were at about 80 mph out at the airport, probably ten miles or so from our house.  I have no way of knowing how fast winds are, but there were times when we were sure there was a tornado close just because of how the trees were whipping around and swirling.  

Our neighborhood is full of lots of old trees, which is nice most of the time for shade and it makes for a pretty neighborhood.  That beauty is deadly in a storm with strong winds though and there were trees falling right and left on our street and throughout our neighborhood. Plenty of people had trees fall on their houses and we are very fortunate that we are not among their numbers.  We did lose a couple of trees in our yard and plenty of branches from larger trees, but nothing on our house or cars.  At about noon on Monday we lost electricity and wouldn't see it again until this past Saturday.  The first couple of days were bearable, but the heat and boredom got to us and in order to be good parents we had to leave on Thursday to go stay in Slidell for a couple of days.  

We came home Sunday to a house with an AC running and a stove that worked!  Baton Rouge is still not back to normal though, there are many, many neighborhoods without power and they are saying that it will likely be until September 24 until all of Baton Rouge has power again.  Consequently traffic lights are out and that makes for a long commute for those of us used to spending maybe 15 minutes or so in our cars on the way to and from work.  We have much to be thankful for though and all of this truly does put life in perspective and shows me how blessed we are to have all that we do, most especially our wonderful family and friends.  

Caroline handled it all remarkably well and as I said earlier, we really left Baton Rouge for Jeff and me, she was great through it all and found new games to play and was generally the bright spot to our days!  

I'll post some pictures that give you a visual on our week.  

This is the view from the street of our house after the storm.  

Another view of the house.  Pictures don't ever quite do something like this justice, but suffice it to say that there were trees or pieces of trees EVERYWHERE.  

Caroline and Jeff playing in her room while the storm raged on outside.  

We went to a little splash park in Slidell on Friday and Caroline had a blast.  

Our girl playing it cool in Papa's sunglasses and talking on his cell phone at lunch after our splash park outing.