Joining the modern age

I'm as shocked as you are - really. When I went to check out the last time I posted, I thought I'd see an October date or something....no, it was August. Sooo, guess I have some 'splainin' to do.

Hopefully this should be easier - I finally asked to get a laptop at work, due to (at the time) impending second trip to Japan (which most sadly, took place the week of Halloween). Help facilitate my very gradual change into a workaholic type, I set us up wireless here at the old Casa de Fox, so I'm able to blog (without breaking the electronics useage policy I wrote) at home, sitting on the couch, drinking a nice little scotchy-scotch.

For those of you who want to know, here's a recap. September: uuuuhhhh...nope, drawing a blank. I have some vague memories of good weather. Otherwise I'd have to check my email to figure out what I was doing. Did remember Dad's birthday this year, and had a nice dinner at the club. (We did offer to take him out, I swear!!) Ava also started taking Gymnastics as well, with her best friend, Georgia. They're adorable, but I have to say the kid didn't exactly inherit a lot of natural skills from us... all the more reason. Hopefully she'll watch Georgia really well!

October: More glorious weather, with the only downside being the leaves not really changing until the very end of the month...not a lot of color. Time was spent working toward and worrying about going to Japan... again, to try and force Jatco HQ into thinking in a little more modern way about HR... you know, non-essentials like global HR framework for developing employees. I was pretty nervous going in...considering for a week long trip the HR department was only officially allocating 2 hours for meeting with me and other HR reps from Mexico and France. It turned out better than expected, and I have to say it's exciting to really have a strong voice and vote in the planning and creation of global HR systems for a multi-billion dollar company. Now if I could only get them to allocate a little larger fraction of those billions for me.... but more on that later. The really cruddy thing was giving up Halloween, my absolute favorite holiday. Thankfully for me, Shannon and Jeff had a holiday party the night before I had to hop on a plane, so I did get a bit of the holiday, and got to see Ava in her costume...

November: Again with the work craziness...due to a lot of both voluntary and involuntary turnover, it's been the year of recruiting for me, which of course sucks up enormous amounts of time. We'd hoped to see Angie and Crawford, who were scheduled to visit, but alas, it was not to be. Hopefully we will see them in January or February instead, so it will be really nice to have that to look forward to in the mid-winter, when all the holiday cheer has changed into winter doldrums. I was really happy to have some extra days off around thanksgiving, though - my first block of more than a couple of days off in a row without having to give up a vital body part. Thanksgiving was nice, but a touch melancholy - last Thanksgiving at Casey's aunt's house in Belding (didn't have to bring ANYTHING, which was awesome) due to the unfortunate pending divorce. Still, nice time had by all, and extremely minimal effort on our part. I've finally discovered the secret to lack of Thanksgiving work - bring a couple of poorly recieved dishes, and they let you off the hook. (Guess no one likes broccoli but me, huh?)

December: Starting off was the annual daycare Christmas pagent...got there early for once, ensuring good seats, which was kind of nice. Mom and John came with us, and true to form, John knew someone. Ava only made it about halfway through the program before crawling off the front of the stage and running over to us, claiming to be scared. This is the same girl who virtually chases down strangers to ask their names and find out what they're doing. The same girl who will gladly strip down and shake her booty at any random visitor in the house. Thankfully we don't have a lot of strangers over!! Oh well - it's all part of the drama for Madam President. She's picking up all the manipulative skills she can. We had our first episode (in a long time, anyway) of random vomiting....in the middle of the night she was crying for me, and I got there just in time to get the majority of the payload in my lap. Being relatively practical, I was just glad it was on me instead of the sheets and carpet. The episode was over in about 12 hours, but the lesson of sickness=no school is forever.

Currently, work is crazy - the only downside to the christmas break is the pressure to wrap up everything by the 21st....plus the whole year-end thing. Thankfully, my assistant is pretty quick...if I only had time to train her, it would be great. Did get good face time with the boss who seems to trust my opinion more and more, and who had good things to say at our last 2008 objectives session....don't want to jinx anything, but I hope I'll have good things to report soon. 'Course I told him I'd better have good news to report, or I'd be reporting somewhere else, so that may have something to do with it.

Tomorrow Casey and I have our annual shopping day - trying to get all the gifts out of the way before the last minute rush. Hopefully it won't be too insane!

Summer fun with Georgia

One of the best things about summer is letting the kids play outside....far less vaccuming involved.

Saturday, Geogia came over for a bit of kiddy pool excitement. I've upgraded this year's $30 kiddy pool allotment, and sprang for some kiddy pool sanitizer, meaning that I don't have to empty the thing just as soon as it gets warm. Georgia and Ava had a wonderful time spashing around (wish I could post video here) and Deanna and I had a wonderful time sitting in the shade watching.

Sunday, errand day, we ran around as usual, grocery, car wash, oil change, and Old Navy for more clothes for the little sprout, who constantly points out how big she's getting, "See this arm, Mama? See this leg?" I bought a bunch of stuff in size 5....on an untested theory that it can't be that much bigger than size 4, and she can just wear it a bit baggy to start. This theory was born because a) she grew out of the 3's so quickly, and b) Old Navy really didn't have bupkis in size 4. We'll see how it goes. If Ava looks like shes swimming in everything, I may have to relent, but at least I'll be prepared for when she is ready for the 5's, so no worries there.

Dollar Store Peanuts exhonerated

Ok, I assume I'm not alone in thinking that food sold at dollar stores is creepy, likely from China, and/or produced at the inception of the industrial revolution.

This theory seemed to be spectacularly confirmed when John, my mom's husband-without-a-marriage-a-la-Spencer-Tracy came down Monday with what seemed to be a horrible case of food poisoning. The aforementioned peanuts were the only variance in his diet to my mom's, Casey's and Mine, as we'd all had dinner together Sunday night. Said peanuts demonized, John prepared to wait it out.

When symptoms (not to be described here, you can imagine) continued, John went to Beaumont to get checked out, where they indicated it was some sort of stomach virus. John again prepared to wait it out.

Alas, the symptoms continued to get worse, so John was taken to Crittenton Hospital, where they diagnosed him with severe appendicitis....so, he had an emergency appendectomy, and found that it was indeed, in the process of rupturing, so they cleaned him up a bit, and he's in the hospital hanging out, making sure he's healthy, and blowing his birthday and the gathering he was looking forward to this weekend.

We'll be visiting him tonight, with the hopes of introducting the modern-day technology of DVD's.

photos

Somehow, photos didn't get into last post....

It was the busiest of times...

Ok, in terms of many people, it hasn't been that busy, but for us, we've been having a pretty busy summer. July started out in a nice calm way, with a couple of days of vacation for me, anyway. Unlike most vacation days, I purposely made an effort to NOT run around and do errands, or accomplish projects. Therefore, our upstairs bathroom remains a womb-like peach. Sometime when it cools down I'll get some new paint, but for now, it says peach. I also need to rebuild some sense of color conciousness....this effort sort of destroyed what little confidence I had in my ability to pick out a reasonable shade of paint. Granted, the downstairs bath came out really welll - I can pick out tan like nobody's business! When it comes to brighter colors, though, I'm a bit lost. But, you've got to keep trying if you don't want to earn some horribly bland nickname like "Champagne Livvy" right?

We were really glad to see our friends the McKernans, who came to visit for the holiday week, and came to the 4th of July parade with us and the Daguannos. We couldn't provide the entertainment value they're used to - alas, no quasi-klan type organizations, but we did get the f-14 flyover, so that's got to be worth something, right?

Sadly, we lost a friend that week - Bob Gray, great guy, gourmet, and fabulous Pirate suddenly passed away at the age of 50. I can't believe that someone so full of life could disappear on us. He and his wife Anne hosted us at their annual Pagan parties. I can never think of anything even remotely adequate to say, do, or even feel at these kinds of things, it's like whatever part of me that person occupied is suddenly torn away, I just feel the absence of that part. I also feel the shadow of age as well - 50 seems so young, and not far away. In any case, we were glad to be able to attend the funeral, which was probably the "best" and most touching example of such a thing - people were so honest and unaffected, which, ironically, made it very affecting.

Mid-month we headed up north to visit with Sara, who very generously allowed us to invite ourselves to visit her during her family week up North.
Unfortunately, it was a bit murky weather-wise on Saturday, but we had a great time hanging with the Sjobergs, who we haven't seen in quite some time. Sunday we all had a blast in the sunny weather. Of course the best part was quality time with our gal Sara - wish we could do it more often!!

Birthdays were really low key this year, as seems to be inevitable when they fall on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was a big day, though - 10 years since Casey and I met. How weird is that? Even so, we were really low key about that too. We're really good with the give-them-as-you-see-them kind of gifts, so events don't get a lot of gift-giving attention. Still, we did do well on the gift front..... we went to play golf with Dad out at the club, and he noticed that we were still using some pretty old equipment, ("That driver is about 5 generations of techology old!") and I believe it offended his golfing sensibilities, so he offered to get us new drivers for our birthdays. Well, no good deeds go unpunished, so his reward for his very generous gift was to have us go out to his club again to play with the gifts. We do love them, though, and have vowed to try to drink a little less and improve our games a bit more!

Needless to say, for those of you who know me well, the weekend of the 21st was spent reading Harry Potter book 7..... I was proud of myself though, I did manage to take my daughter out for breakfast before I sparked up the cartoons & started reading. Guilt over the perceived neglect actually had me doing more activities with her than I probably normally would, and we went to the playground and shopping as well. Mostly, I read from the second she went to sleep until about 1:30am. I was also amazed I was able to refrain from finishing the book that night - again, thoughts of being zombie-mom the next day had me putting off finishing until Sunday. Sigh - great book, but so sad it's over.

Summer of Ava

It seems that I start every post with an exclaimation of how quickly time flies, so I will forgo that message this time. Suffice it to say that when my next post goes up, it will have only seemed like mere minutes since the last one.

In any case, we've been loving the summer. Ava spent 4 days a week over the last two weeks learning to swim with Gramma Sue. She's not exactly swimming yet, but she is having a grand old time jumping off the diving board and generally spashing around. Casey and I got to enjoy the fruits of these lessons last weekend, when we went swimming with the Jones clan at their community pool. Deanna and I have been regulars over the last couple of Saturdays, but until this past Saturday, have been confining ourselves to the kiddy pool. This time the gents joined us as well, and we all had a grand old time, although it's much harder to pound cocktails while swimming, as compared to hanging feet in kiddy pool. Oh well, some sacrifices must be made, I suppose.

What, April's over?

Whew- April flew by in a work-induced haze - a trifecta of employee appraisals, a presentation for the "Big Boss" and a trip to Japan made the month fly by with hardly a blink. There was also the annual company open house, but mercifully all I had to do was show up.

Good news is that other than the usual "my appraisal isn't fair" and "Olivia is out to sabotage my career" grumblings, things went pretty well. The "Big Boss" liked the presentation, and even went out of his way to metion it to me when I saw him a week later in Japan.

The trip to Japan was a bit of a mixed bag - the HR staff over there isn't really HR...they're the poor souls who got stuck with the administrative stuff that goes along with HR. Good news is that our president is much more interested in HR than any of his predecessors, so they're starting to try and bring their heads up out of the sand. Alas, I think that progress in this area may be quite painful.

Ava is doing really really well - more talkative (is this possible?) every day, and is now actually starting to make sense! ; ) She's loving every second we can spend outside, with the only downside being the inevitable tears when it's time to come inside.

Casey and I are really going to need to start pushing the whole Stranger Program soon - Ava likes to flag down any man, woman, child or other that passes our house with an extremely cheerful "Hi! What's your name?" Sometimes, if her quarry does not immediately answer, she gives chase. I don't think this falls into the don't-talk-to-strangers thing. While I personally believe that our wonderful media turns all of us into overly fearful misanthropes, I know that I'd never be able to forgive myself if something were ever to happen to Ava because I didn't teach her to be less friendly. This, again, ties in to my child-predators-should-be-shot arguement, but I won't subject you all to that rant at this time.

As for May, lovely, beautiful May, I'm really enjoying it. The first week was "Golden Week" in Japan (a week long holiday), and as a result the office was really really quiet, and I was able to catch up after the trip. It was also good, as I generally slept so little/poorly on the trip, I was loopy and off my game for several days.

The weather has been phenomenal (thank you global warming!) and I have been planting. A friend of mine hooked me up with a few hundred dollars worth of perennials (she divided up her stuff) and I went to town. Now we'll see the true battle for survival happen out in our clay-blighted yard.

We have a wedding this weekend, Mother's Day, a special showing of Shrek 3 and Flower Day at the Eastern market next weekend, so things are really moving! Then, it's anniversary time. 5 years, who can believe it?

rock n roll!

Well, some things are just destiny, I guess. I am cursed to be surrounded by those with love of hard rock/ metal music. First my brother, then my roommates, (with the exception of Deanna and Susan, although I think Deanna hid a heavy metal past), then my husband. Now, the final blow - my daughter. Almost from birth, she's always responded to those heavy beats and sreaming guitars. The photo above was taken while driving with Daddy, in between cries of "Rock and Roll!!". When System of a Down comes on, she goes for full head banging glory. I guess I must be the only one to have inherited the apparently recessive dance music gene.

Fancy Cake

Here's the cake we had made for Ava's birthday....looked pretty good, but alas, tasted dry and mealy.

Maybe we should have explained it as a metaphor for life...so many things that look perfect on the outside are a bit lacking on the inside, and vice versa.

Of course, Ava didn't complain. I wonder if kids really register taste, or simply sugar content.

Birthday!

Whee! Ava's had a great time celebrating her birthday this year - a party at school, one at our place, and one at Aunt Shannon's and Uncle Jeff's! I didn't have that much fuss made over me when I turned 16! But then again, I probably would have "died" of embarrasment if my parents HAD tried to throw me a 16th birthday party....

In any case, Ava was queen for the day three times, which was probably her favorite part, even above presents. I got a really fancy cake - with the Little Mermaid and everything, but alas, she didn't even seem to care. Goes to show you that even when you're in charge of almost every aspect of their lives, you still can't really predict what a person will really go for! Still, we did ok - She did really enjoy her goodies, particularly all the "princess" gear that she received. Every day she's been dressing up, and now seems to walk as well in heels as I do.

On the parent front, three seems to be much better than the latter part of two...we've cut down on tantrums by a significant percent, and have even logged a few "naughty-chair" free days! Thank goodness....I feared I might lose my mind in the days of the constant battles for supremacy. Obviously, we've won the battle, but not the war, and we maintain constant vigilance. :)

Post Holiday Run-Down

Ahh, January....

Christmas this year was a blur....with Casey working up to Christmas Eve, three separate Christmas celebrations in two days, then Casey back to work, all I can say is that I think it was fun. I know Ava had a great time opening presents, and even playing with them this year. She got so many things that when we finally unpacked all the goods back at our house, she was excited all over again, as if she hadn't seen these items before.

After Christmas, Ava spent a couple of days with Grandma Sue while Grandma Joan and I tackled the dreaded upstairs bathroom. I hope there's a kind of decorator's karma, becuase the woman who wallpapered that bathroom deserves to be punished very severely. After about 8 hours of scraping brackish, green/gray paste off the walls (and ceiling), my hands started to cramp up, and I realized that no matter how much I scraped, the walls were never going to be perfect. Next day, I primed and painted. Unfortunately, the color of the paint didn't come out nearly as tan as I wanted it to be, and is actually amazingly close in color to the tile itself, which is kind of peach-pink. So, on the whole, the place looks like a womb. However, I could barely lift my arms after about 20 hours combined scraping and painting, and Ava came home from Grandma's, so for the time being, it's staying. At least the hard part is done.

Saturday, I started to feel a bit funny....I thought it was some sort of weird leftover muscle pain from the scraping-priming-crappy-painting festival, but alas, it was not to be. By Sunday afternoon, the pains had increased, and I was running a fever. by Sunday evening (New Year's Eve) I was shaking uncontrollably in bed, with pain and fever. Not wanting to partake in the fun of a New Year's Eve with drunks and such in the ER, I held on till Tuesday, when Urgent Care opened. I came away with large antibiotics, and was out of work for a few days. Thankfully, Grandma Sue had Ava again, so I was able to moan on the couch with limited interruption. Finally, Friday, when I was beginning to feel better, the clinic threw in a nice ending to the whole situation, by calling me up and asking me to come in for more tests....something about an abnormal white count. So, I start freaking out that I have leukemia. Turns out, that's what they were worried about as well. Apparently, most folks who have white cell counts as high as mine was on Tuesday aren't in the condition to be walking around...they're usually in the hospital. Thankfully, yours truly tested out fine, and was just admonished for being stubborn about getting care earlier. Thank goodness for Sue, and of course for Casey, who is generally super-hubby when it comes to illness. It's a good thing I'm genetically stubborn about admitting to illness....otherwise Casey would probably have a total hypocondriatic wife, just for the perks.