Sweet nothings

It's always nice to get unsolicited notes from the cute kids at church. . . and the inner-workings of their brains never cease to amuse! This one's from 6-year-old Grace.

Anybody seen Daddy Warbucks?

Dressing up to humor the church kids at our Halloween party. Hardly any of them know who Annie is. What is the world coming to?

Fashion show

I like to think I look like Peggy from Mad Men in this dress. I certainly will never look like Betty or Joan, but Peggy I can do. Traded some of my older thrift store finds for this at one of the vintage shops in town. It's late 50s - early 60s, I think. I added the belt for kicks, but it's cute without too.

I just wish girls back then weren't so small because I can rarely fit into their dresses. *sigh*

Have you ever seen a more beautiful sandwich?

This was my lunch today. It was inspired by a recipe for Ham Banh Mi I saw in Real Simple Magazine this morning while babysitting for some friends.

"Banh" is Vietnamese for "sandwich." After my babysitting gig I went straight to the store for the ingredients, made a few tweaks to suit my tastes and promptly inhaled the whole creation. You're lucky I held off long enough to snap a photo. Delicious.

A peaceful coexistence

Frequently a long-legged spider will greet me in the shower, usually dangling from an invisible thread below the soap holder.

We have an agreement. The spider is welcome to share my shower. If it can survive the down pour like the itsy bitsy spider from the song, more power to him. The smart ones hunker down beneath the soap holder and wait. Most don't run for cover in time and end up mangled with my tangled hair on the drain basket.

Is this humane? I'm not sure, but it seems just as bad as chasing/smashing the spider before I shower. At least this way I'm giving the smart ones a fighting chance at survival, right?

There are other critters that don't get such kind treatment. Take the giant cockroach/beetle thing I caught crawling on my kitchen counter the other night when the dead battery beeps from a fire alarm pulled me out of bed at 3 a.m.

That cockroach when straight into the toilet, but swam so hard against my repeated flushes that I final gave up and left him floating in the bowl. The next morning I peeked under the lid and happily saw that he was gone, only to discover him crouched at the lip of the seat waiting for a chance to escape.

Sorry little sucker. I made sure he went down the drain for sure then.

Babies!

I rented this movie from Redbox yesterday and was completely captivated. Not a word of dialogue - until the babies start to speak, that is.

The film follows four babies from their first breath to their first steps. It's a compare and contrast of fascinating images - the babies are in Namibia, Mongolia, Tokyo and San Francisco.
In Japan and America, the babies are guarded and coddled and taken to baby yoga and singing classes. In Mongolia and Namibia they're carefully preened, but also left to amuse themselves and discover the world - without diapers or toys.

I came away marveling at how resilient babies are and how unnecessary are the many trappings of our Americanized baby-rearing. Not that any approach is wrong, but the contrast is eye-opening.

I recommend this movie for sure - and I bet kids would like it too! It's really very funny and engrossing.

Getting my ducks in a row

Had a bit of a traffic jam on the road outside my office parking lot yesterday. I was in a hurry to get back to my desk, but the geese weren't too interested in my needs. The cars lined up in either direction and we all sat there for at least 5 minutes as the geese waddled by single-file like kids on a field trip. Usually they live in an slimy fake pond/lake in back of our office. No idea where they were headed, but there was no rushing them. (Honking, cars inching forward, nothing worked.) I didn't dare get out and shoo them because I've seen geese attack people on America's Funniest Home Videos and I know they're vicious. Only thing to be done was wait patiently and play paparazzi.

"Hey Paris, over here! Lindsay, give us a smile! Work it Britney!"

Ringing in my ears

A couple of massage therapists came to the office yesterday offering short little sessions in a chair. I signed up, though I'm not usually a fan of massages that last less than an hour and don't let me lie on a table.

These ladies weren't just doing the regular knead-and-rub back massage. They use sound vibrations to realign your energy points (I'm not saying this right but I can't remember the actual terms they used.)

Essentially it entails one person massaging your back, arms and neck while the other waves tuning forks around your ears and occasionally presses them into your shoulders and neck so you can feel the gentle vibrations thrum through your body.

I can't say that the tuning forks made the massage any more healing. But I did notice that I went into that "empty zone" much faster during the massage. There was so much going on with the muscle kneading and the tuning forks moving around my body that I lost track of what was happening and just let go of everything for a few minutes.

Normally it takes me a long time during a regular massage or yoga session to get to that spot. For that reason alone, I'd be willing to try tuning fork massage again.