dual personalities

Once more into the blogosphere, dear friends

After a brief hiatus, Dual Personality #2 has returned to bring you up to date on some of my recent domestic activities. I haven’t posted for a while and we have a fair amount of catching up to do. Today, I thought I’d fill you in on slight improvements to the house; I’ll save the family news for next time. Way back in May, 2019 I wrote about my attempt to clean and reorganize our pantry. If you had asked me about it earlier today, I would have sworn that I wrote that post in March of this year, which just goes to show how completely boggled up my sense of time has become. Zut alors! Anyway, I decided to do a big closet refurb. I emptied it down to the bare walls, even removing the old wooden coat rail and shelves. You can see just how awful the many layers of dirty tan, pink and yellow paint had become. I’m rather horrified to think that it took so long to get around to doing this job.

I don’t think those walls had been washed or painted in over 50 years — certainly, not since long before we moved into the house. I scrubbed and scrubbed and then painted the whole thing from top to bottom. I even scrubbed the wooden floor. Then I added new shelving and put everything back in. Voila!

There. Doesn’t that look better? I can’t tell you how nice it is to have a clean and tidy pantry.

In other home improvement news, I participated in another online auction and won a lot consisting of two tables, a lamp (not pictured here) and a couple of small glass display boxes. The nicer table is actually a miniature card table. The top rotates open and folds out to make a square. I’ve put that table in the back hall, and, yes, our phone uses a landline.

The little display case houses my cuneiform tablets (3rd millennium Sumerian), some ancient potsherds (Greek Dark Age and Classical, and Egyptian Amarna period) and coins (Chinese and Roman).

I put the second table in the family room. It’s just a little modern half-moon piece but I like it there — at least for now.

As usual, all my photos are blurry because I’m an incompetent old lady with shaky hands, and I don’t have a fancy camera phone, but you get the idea. By the way, my talented niece and fellow blogger Mary took the photo on the wall above the table. I think it looks great against the green wall.

That’s about it for the spring home improvement, but there’s still a lot to do before the impending August nuptials, when son #2 is marrying his childhood sweetheart. Stay tuned for periodic updates and have a grand weekend!

After her busy birthday week full of adventures, Katie started going to daycare on Monday! It has been a wild ride for all of us, including my friends and family who receive live text updates from me. The quote above (from Little Women) may be a tad overkill, but really. Katie is growing up!

Here she is passed out from stress napping peacefully on her first day. She has been eating lunch and 2 snacks, drinking milk and water, and sleeping without a problem each day. We receive app notifications throughout the day with updates, such as when she has her diaper changed. (And thank god for that! I am thrilled to know any detail of the 8 hours she spends away from us, even if it’s just notice of a “BM.”)

The class has a rigorous curriculum exploring the arts, nature, language, and math and science. (I am serious.) It is sweet to think of Katie playing with the 3 other kids in her classroom, who are all just about her size and have similar one-year-old shaggy hairstyles. Some of them are a bit older and know how to do things like stand up on their own — a skill Katie apparently picked up by day 3.

The teachers let us know that Katie showed off her dress to her friends, who enjoyed looking at the animals. The monkey was their favorite. This was just about the sweetest thing I could imagine taking place with the mobile infant set.

So I think we are doing well overall. We made it over the hump of the week and are looking forward to a weekend full of family time at home (and maybe sleeping in to make up for all the exertion of a busy week). Stay tuned — what if she picks up walking by next week?!

My mother has regaled everyone with exciting tales of galavanting around Maryland and Virginia with Daughter #2 and DN and sweet baby Katie. Well, guess what? I have also done some galavanting with tales to tell. Just maybe not as exciting. And no cute babies.

On Saturday, I traveled up to Columbia in the State Tahoe to work at the Special Olympics State Summer Games helping share information about a valuable state program that can benefit the athletes. Then, on Sunday, I drove down to Springfield so the bossman could present a prize to a lucky Springfield Cardinals fan. Don’t worry, it rained. Like alternating torrential downpour to sunglasses weather on the hilly backroads one has to take to get to Springfield from Jefferson City (there’s no direct route, seriously).

After an hour rain delay, the Springfield Cardinals took on the San Antonio Missions.

It was a nice stadium and if you lived in Springfield and loved baseball, going to a game would be fun. I just checked and the Cardinals lost 2-9. I left shortly after the game started for wine time.

Like many places, Springfield has approximately one block of old buildings. Hotel Vandivort is the coolest place in Springfield and has a nice bar with actual atmosphere. When I’m forced to spend time in Springfield, I set up my laptop and partake of the wifi and wine. I did an approximate 20 point turn to get the Tahoe into a parking space. I impressed myself.

On Monday morning, I drove down to Branson to accompany the bossman to a couple of events. Whenever I go to Branson, I think of this:

This time, Google maps took me through the theater district. And whoee it really felt like Vegas if it was run by Ned Flanders. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture because I was driving. Also, did you know that half of the Titanic resides in Branson?

After a long meeting and a longer event complete with a live band and a tour of a tiny house, I got on the road back to Jefferson City. And then today at work I got the Blue Screen of Death twice. A+.

*Had to quote the Andy Williams classic in a blog post about Branson.

Happy Friday! We had lots of fun celebrating Katiebelle, toasting with margaritas on a patio.

Today we head to Winchester, VA for antiquing and more fun. We’ll be back on Monday with updates!

Mamu is here and darling Katie is one year old — can you believe it? A year ago we woke up at something like 4 a.m. to head to the hospital. I ate popsicles all day, leading up to a flurry of labor, and Katie was born at 5:30 p.m.

Katie shocked everyone by weighing in at nearly 9 lbs. (The nurses had guessed 6 lbs based on my size that morning!) On our first night at the hospital, the recovery nurse commented that she seemed like “a night two baby.” She has always been ahead of the curve, I guess.

We made it through a year of mostly staying at home, walking around the neighborhood a lot, learning how to sleep and eat and play. We worked from home together and I mostly survived with my wits intact.

Katie has always been a happy baby, endlessly fascinated and amused by her own fine motor skills. People have commented on her expressive face since the very beginning.

She quickly became a style icon (and bonnet influencer) thanks to her Aunt Mary. And over the year, she was subject to a number of mommy & me outfits…

…which you can bet will continue into toddlerhood.

We love you, Katie!

Well, it’s Tuesday and I had a rant-filled day. And now I have to write a blog post. Just like old times! But, after work, instead of hitting the (wine) bottle (just kidding), I hit the sewing machine.

Nothing clears the brain like trying to sew a rolled hem and then inserting elastic through it. This particular project requires several news skills in it and I am not quite finished. You can look forward to seeing sweet Baby Katie in it in the near future.

While sewing and driving lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of The Lumineers. Good singing along loudly music.

And in between I’ve been re-reading some Longmire books. Hence the title. It’s good to visit old friends who think things like “concentrating on the work in an attempt to try to get out of the mood into which I was descending” and “Ever since I’d gotten back from Vietnam, I’d treated the company of books like life preservers.” Even if they’re fictional characters.

Let’s all hope my mother has a smooth trip to Baltimore today where she’ll get to see this cutie (I know this is the content you’re here for anyway).