Everyday Life for Four Seasons

I get lost here. When I'm here, nothing else exists. It's amazing that I feel that way, because when I'm here, the bulk of what drives people (including me) to exhaustion is here with me - my mother, my children, and my work. Life. But somehow, none of that reaches my core, and I am able to feel peaceful, and I spend time detaching and reflecting while I'm here.


When I was younger, living on my own, before I met Jeff, I used to come here to escape. I would go out to the beach at night after my mom and Dick went to bed and I would lay down and look up at the stars and ask them what was in store for me. They never talked back, but I always felt a strong sense of comfort when I looked up at them. It was all going to be okay.


It's different now. I don't have that feeling of being lost and wondering what will happen to me. In fact, it's the complete opposite now - I know what I want to happen, and I really don't have any desire to live "like a rolling stone" anymore. Once upon a time, spontaneity and The Unknown were welcomed, because they brought with them change and new things. That's a good thing when you're in your 20's and you're fairly certain that your Boyfriend of the Moment is not the one, and you know for sure that there is a different life out there for you, just waiting for you to come and get it. These days, it's different. I'm happy with where I am and who I am with. I don't want any changes. Not big ones, anyway.


In other news, last night my Uncle Norman and Aunt Marion (they live next door) had an "Around the World" party. No, not the kind you had in college - but boy, would that have been fun! And not the kind where we all act like grown-ups and go to each other's houses for the next course. This was a party for the folks in the neighborhood who came from around the world. Cathy, her husband and children and her parents were there (representing France), I was there to represent New York (which is a different country if you ask the New Englanders), and Germany was represented by the lovely couple staying at The Studio. They are in the US for a multi-week vacation. They took a bus from New York City to Boston and then took the ferry from Boston to Provincetown, rented bikes in P-town and biked to the cottage. They travelled lightly and with high spirits, and we are all amazed with their adventure!

Below you will see my mother holding 'H' and sharing with the German couple all of the wonders of this area.


Below is the Griffin's house. You're seeing it for the first time? So am I. It was a little old cottage that had sunk into the ground and had nearly been covered with wind-swept sand. Over the winter, they raised it up a story. Now it peeks up over the dune and - surprise! - is the same height as my mother's house (right next door). Noise does carry when you're all right at the same altitude.


Enjoy your night.

I'm back at the Cape. I got a sweet surprise this week. Cathy and her family are here!


Cathy has been coming here every summer since she was a little girl - her family rents my Aunt Nancy's house down the street (actually it's my cousin's house now). We met when we were young. When I did my year abroad in Paris, we were at the same school at the same time. Oh yeah, did I mention that she lives in France? Sorry, I just had some wine. I'll back up. Cathy's grandfather was - I think I have this right - a WWII American soldier and he met his wife in France. They moved to the US and raised their children, including Cathy's mother, in Massachusetts. Cathy's mother went to college in France and met her husband there, and they stayed in France and raised their children outside of Paris. They come to the US every summer to reconnect with family and enjoy some time at the Cape.


So, back to this week - Cathy wasn't supposed to come until next week, when I would have been long gone, but she and her husband and 3 children came early and it is such a delight to see them! It is really neat to step back and remember that we have known each other through different phases of our lives, and now here we both are, running around after young children. Cathy is a great mother and an all-around wonderful role model and she has a really wonderful family.


To change the subject entirely, I don't know if you can see the tents in this next photo - they are lined up on the beach. Nice! These people are living my dream. I would love to camp on the beach. My mother would frown on that, which is why I have never done it. Also, I imagine that the morning dew would be quite heavy, with or without a fly. But think about it - how awesome would it be to fall asleep under the big open sky, listening to the sound of the gentle waves lapping at the shore?

'H's non-walking status has become a larger problem than I realized. Today I had trouble loosening my espresso maker because my hand was so sore from carrying her. This is an issue that needs to be resolved!

'H' is 16 months, 6 days old and is still not walking. This is a big issue for me now because she weighs 23 pounds and my wrist and thumb are aching because I spend so much time carrying her. Where is my sling? I misplaced it a few weeks ago and I really need to find it.


She doesn't even like walking with help. She doesn't seem to like to have anything touching her feet. It's weird. I called the county and they are sending someone from the early intervention program out to assess her. I just need to make sure she's structurally sound before I start blaming it all on her sour attitude.


Speaking of attitudes, here is a little something that I keep with me and I pull it out every few months and spend some time thinking about it. A woman named Marilyn McPhee photocopied it for me years ago. It is from an interview with a pastor named Charles Swindoll.
"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.
"We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes"

bruschetta for dinner... mmmm.

The girls are in bed and Jeff is out with college friends, so I am taking some time to go through my Pile Of Stuff. A big part of my pile is magazines. I get a lot of magazines delivered, all free, and somehow I manage to actually read them all. I get computer magazines, parenting magazines, cooking magazines, fashion magazines, home and garden magazines, business magazines and news magazines. Okay, let's get real, I don't actually read the fashion magazines. I like them because I rip out the perfume samples and I use the samples as my Going Out perfume, and that way I don't have to buy any.

Tonight I was reading the Simply Wine magazine that I picked up at the wine store last week (Purdy's Discount Wine & Liquor, it's my favorite wine store!). In it is an article about the serving temperature of wine. I have heard that certain wines should be chilled or served at room temp, but when it comes to pouring myself a nice big glass of cheap white wine, I rarely wonder if I'm serving it at the right temperature.

Turns out, it is important because if it's too cold, you can't taste the flavor (maybe that's a good thing with the cheap wine?). If it's too warm, it doesn't have a lot of flavor either. That's for the whites. The reds will be too "alcoholy" if they are too warm, and too sharp, with little flavor, if they are too cold. It would be neat to have a wine tasting and as one aspect of the tasting, serve the same wine at different temperatures to see how it can change flavor.


Today was a good day for parent/child relationships in our house. 'A' went for her very first professional haircut today and she did a great job. It looks really cute! Both girls displayed excellent behavior this afternoon when we took 'H' to the doctor for our usual Friday afternoon emergency doctor visit. We don't go to the doctor every Friday afternoon, but we do average once a month now. I have learned that my children have the special talent of ONLY getting ill on Friday afternoons and if I take them to the doctor on Friday, they make a miraculous recovery by Saturday morning, but if I try to wait until Monday to have them seen, they become super-sick by the middle of the weekend. Now that I know all of this, we go to our pediatrician when the issue arises on Friday afternoons instead of dealing with weekend emergency visits to the doctors on call that I don't like nearly as much as I like Dr. Miller.


'H' has an infected thumb. There was a big black spot under her nail today (a blood blister, I wondered?) and it was a little red. By the time we got to his office this afternoon, it was really red. Normally I would say, "Soak it for a few days and it will be fine," but if you've ever met a 16-month old, you would know that you can't soak their thumb for a few days.


His diagnosis: "Trauma" to the finger, which caused the infection. My translation: "Her 3 year old sister probably stepped on her thumb." Thanks a lot, 'A'. She is on antibiotics and I am to do my best to get her to soak it, so tonight I stuck her in a very warm bathtub and threw 50 plastic buttons in there and had her try to pick them all up. That kept her fingers in the water for a long time! I might use this game every night, even when her finger is better.


I think I'll give myself a treat tonight and go to bed early. Goodnight! Sleep tight!

There's something that no one tells you about parenthood. It doesn't have anything to do with handling all of those mysterious bodily functions or never sleeping well again. It's not about how your body changes permanently after bearing children, or about how your mind and body never get a break.

It's about accomplishing tasks, or more precisely, not accomplishing tasks. People talk about being too tired to do anything at all, but no one really talks about how difficult it is to finish anything you start. It takes me forever to do something as simple as put something in the mail to someone. Why does it take so long? How can I be so busy all day, yet get nothing accomplished?

A year ago I submitted a paragraph for a column in the La Leche League magazine and it was about time management for new moms. I'll try to find it on the web and post it. I remember writing that it's good to break larger tasks into 5 minute increments so that they can get done when you have a few minutes. I do that. Probably too well, because I do 5 minutes of this, and 5 minutes of that, and somehow I don't get around the to next 5 minutes of the task until much, much later!

In the middle of not getting anything completed, I am doing computer work for 3 clients right now and I am trying to refine my parenting strategies with 'A'. Every time it gets good with her - easy all day, no struggles, no whining - it changes and gets really bad soon after. She's so defiant now. She's pushing the boundaries all the time. I know all of the parenting psychological stuff, about how kids need structure, rules, that they test the limits and it's our job to provide those limits... but when you're in the middle of it and caught off guard, it takes some time to figure it all out. That's where I am now.

'H' gets away with murder compared to 'A'. When 'A' was her age, 16 months old, we were tough with her - we set rules and she was expected to understand them and follow them. And it worked. But now that there are 2 children, it's harder. Tonight in the tub, 'H' was splashing and I have a firm "No Splashing Water Outside the Tub" rule. If 'A' breaks it, she gets a warning and on her second offense she is escorted out of the tub. I gave 'H' 4 chances, not my usual 2. I let it slide because I don't want to disrupt things for 'A'. I also view 'H' as still a baby, unable to control herself, even though she isn't a baby and she is able to control herself. When 'A' was that age, I thought of her as a little kid (which she was). It's amazing how your brain plays tricks on you.

I found it - here is the question from the LLL column and my response:

Mother's Situation
I'm planning to stay home after my baby is born in a few months. Up until now, I've been employed, so I'm a little uncertain about being on my own! I've always been on a workday schedule, and I'm not sure how to create a routine for my days at home. How do stay-at-home moms structure their time? I know there aren't any rules, but I'd like to hear what works for others.

Mother's Response
Going from the employment world to the world of full-time motherhood can be a difficult adjustment. It's good that you're thinking about it in advance. There isn't an easy way to structure your time with a newborn. As nap times start to solidify, you will be able to plan around your child, but that won't happen right away. I found it helpful to have regular outings with other mothers. I attended La Leche League meetings every month, and I joined a few other mothers' groups in my area. While your baby is still young, you can also take advantage of activities that you can do for yourself, such as visiting the library or a museum. Wearing a sling, you can take your baby just about anywhere!

At work, you're probably used to accomplishing tasks: start a task or project, work on it for a while, and finish it. As a stay-at-home mother, you won't have that luxury anymore. By the end of the day, it may seem as though you didn't get anything done.

One thing you can do is break down tasks into five-minute increments. For example, instead of trying to make an entire dinner at once, take a few minutes to prepare dinner throughout the day. If you break projects down into smaller tasks, you will have a greater sense of accomplishment and feel less over-whelmed at all the things to do.

Another issue I dealt with during the transition was feeling like I wasn't contributing anything valuable to the household or society, even though I firmly believe that raising children is one of the most important things we can do! At the time, it didn't seem like the work I was doing was very important. It's helpful to remember that your baby is learning from you, and that your new job will have long-lasting rewards for years and years to come.

We wanted to watch fireworks this weekend, but it's so hit-or-miss with our kids. By the time the fireworks start, it's so late, and they are ready for bed. Today we decided to take the chance that we might catch a show because both of the girls (and me too!) took really long naps this afternoon.

We read in the paper that there would be fireworks at Saratoga Lake, but we didn't know where on the lake they would be. We asked a bunch of people and Jeff even called the local fire department, but we got no answer. So, at 8:30, we piled into the car (my new car!) and we drove down the street to the lake.

The funny thing about Saratoga Lake is that there isn't any public access. It's surrounded by private homes. We drove around and looked for a spot where we could pull over and have a clear view, but we didn't see any available spots. Then we drove past a beautiful home that had a "For Sale" sign in front and it looked vacant. And I did something that was very out of character for me: I told Jeff to turn around and park in their driveway. Usually I am the one who is nervous about doing anything remotely illegal! Anyway, we pulled in and we had a great view of the fireworks show. The girls enjoyed it as much as a 1 and 3 year old can.


Yesterday we got a huge amount of "house stuff" done. Huge. At some point in the afternoon, I set 'A' up in the backyard with a set of paints and a pile of paper. Jeff was outside washing the house and I went inside to clean. 'A' kept coming inside to wash the paint off of her hands and I finally told her that if she comes inside to wash her hands one more time, I was going to take the paints away. "Please don't paint your hands anymore." "Okay, Mommy."


Next thing I know, she's painted her legs and her arms... and the funny thing is, she didn't paint her hands until after I laughed about it and told her she could paint them. Was that a creative way of getting around the painted-hands issue, or straight-up rebellion? Either way, it was pretty cute.


We have barely stopped moving since the weekend started. Today we went to downtown Saratoga to the BBQ and Dessert Festival. It was pretty neat. The Bread Basket had the best dessert, and Jeff thought Cantina had the best BBQ.


Last night we put the girls to bed and sat outside by our fire pit. We roasted marshmallows and had a great time.

My Aunt Judi called me this afternoon and we had a nice long catch-up chat. Judi lives in Utah and so do her 3 kids and their families. The big news is that my cousin Heather, who has 3 children in elementary & middle school, is pregnant! I knew she wanted to have a few more children because she loves babies so much, and I am so happy for her. It's always so nice talking with Judi because she is so genuine and she is a really great person.

I started making my photos smaller for this blog because I notice that it takes longer to open the page now, and I'm assuming it's because my photos are so large.


I haven't completely solved my programming problem but I am working on a few leads (thanks Ryan!). Yesterday I had to finish up a few other parts of the site and I am so happy I'm almost done. I'm also really proud of myself for doing this in ASP.Net. ASP.Net is pretty cool because it's loaded with classes and you spend a lot less time writing lines and lines of code and more time pushing the functionality of the pages to new levels. (not that I mind writing all that code, it's actually pretty relaxing to zone out like that, but the hard part is keeping track of it all). This whole project has been one learning experience after another. As much as I swear I never want to work again, I know I won't stop - I am too excited about applying this technology to other things to keep my hands out of it.

Has anyone noticed how great their perennials look this year? Despite all of my attempts to ignore and kill my plants, they are all looking fabulous. My dad says it's an exceptionally good year for them because ... I can't remember why, but it has something to do with last winter or this spring ... or something. Anyway, perennials all across the northeast are apparently quite happy this summer.
PS, If I refer to my dad when I talk about plants and I make it sound like he's God, it's because he is. He knows quite a bit about plants and agriculture.

Tonight I am making Spicy Thai Coconut Shrimp for dinner. It's a Cooking Light recipe so I know it will be good.

Ingredients
2 cups uncooked rice
1 1/2 tablespoons water
1 1/2 teaspoons red curry paste (such as Maesri) or chile paste with garlic
1 1/2 pounds medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
Cooking spray
2 1/2 cups (1-inch) sliced asparagus (about 3/4 pound)
1 1/2 cups sliced green onions
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 (14-ounce) can light coconut milk

Preparation
Cook the rice according to package directions, omitting salt and fat.

While the rice is cooking, combine the water and curry paste in a medium bowl; add shrimp, tossing to coat.

Place a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat until hot.

Add the shrimp mixture, and sauté for 4 minutes.

Add sliced asparagus and green onions; cover and cook for 3 minutes or until the asparagus is crisp-tender.

Stir in salt and coconut milk.

Cook for 3 minutes or until thoroughly heated, stirring occasionally.

Serve over rice.

I need help.

I'm stuck on this ASP.Net application. I have a few controls on the page that all link up to 2 tables. The one I am stuck on is the Ajax Reorderlist. The Reorderlist is a list that has drag-and-drop capability. You can drag each item in the list and reorder it. For a demo of the Reorderlist, see this link: http://www.asp.net/AJAX/AjaxControlToolkit/Samples/ReorderList/ReorderList.aspx

My reorderlist is hooked up to a SQL datasource and it displays a list of items. The client wants to be able to change the order of the items so that the items appear on the main page of the website in a particular order. At first glance, the Reorderlist seems to be just the answer.

This is my problem: how do I add new records and still be able to reorder them? I have the datasource connected to the Reorderlist and it all works great, as long as I don't add new records to the database. Here's the thing: when you set up the table that holds the items you are going to reorder, you have to add a column to the table with a datatype of INT and this column will hold the Sort Order. This column cannot contain Null values. When you drag and drop the list items on the page, the Sort Order is posted back to the server and the values in the Sort Order column of the table are updated.

So, for instance, if I have 3 items in my table and they start out like this:

ItemID	SortOrderID
1	1
2	2
3	3

And if I drag and drop them, then check the table after the post-backs occur, I will see something like this:

ItemID	SortOrderID
1	3
2	1
3	2

Now, if I add a new record, what the heck do I put in the SortOrderID field for a value? I can't auto-increment that column for 2 reasons: #1, ItemID is already an Identity column and I can't have 2 Identity columns; and #2, the values in an identity column keep their value even if you try to reorder them - they don't update.

I could query for the largest SortOrderID value just before I insert a new record and then add "1" to it, which will give me the next available value, then insert that number into the table. But that is my last choice. It's too risky to do that -- what happens when 2 people are adding new records at the exact same time and they pull that value at exactly the same time? It'll screw up the Reorderlist and I'll get a call telling me that it's not working. And then I'll be right back where I am now.

I tried to make the default value zero (0) on inserting, which does technically work but it is extremely sloppy. When I added a few records in a row and then tried to reorder them, the reorderlist got really funky and confused and things started falling out of order.

If I add a null, then the items won't reorder at all - they just snap back in place on the screen.

One more option I tried was putting the Insert screen (see screenshot below) into the InsertItemTemplate of the reorderlist. When you add new rows through this template, the SortOrderID is automatically calculated for you. Brilliant, right? Not exactly. Once I'm in the template I can't access some of the controls, like the dropdown list I use to select a category for the new item.

I know I am not the only person who is doing this. When I google this issue, so many people are connecting their SQL Datasource to a Reorderlist, and I have to believe that they are adding new records to those databases.

Please, if you have any words of wisdom for me, I am all ears....

I am going to post on the ASP.Net message boards, and maybe EXPERT SEXCHANGE.com too. Yes, Jeff, I threw that one in there for you! Jeff likes to point out that Experts Exchange actually spells Expert Sexchange.

Thanks!

I have a lot of things to be happy about today. First, I am ALMOST done with the website I have been working on and I am so happy about it. Happy, because it's been taking up a lot of my time and energy, and also because I am really proud of myself for plunging head-first into a new technology and making it work.

Second, I am happy because it's a great time of year to sit back and appreciate our yard and our house. Jeff is almost done painting the family room and today we put things back on the walls and filled up the bookcase. It's looking really nice!


I will tell you this: if I take on any more work, I am going to do 2 things differently. I am getting regular child care for my kids; and I am going to write in C#, not VB. I went with VB for this project because I've been doing sites with ASP in vbscript and VB for a few years and it seemed like a natural transition, but after I started, I realized that everyone is writing in C#. I think I can pick it up OK - years ago, when I first started to think that I might like programming, I took classes at UConn and learned C++. It seems like C# is similar to C++, and it also seems similar to java, which is what I used to build the US Computer Connection shopping cart (although now I would never build a cart in java, or anything else in java for that matter). These past few weeks, I have been a little crazy about the fact that all of the help on the web for .NET applications is in C#, not VB.


It's raining now, so we are staying inside this afternoon and we are going to hang up the *new* mirror in 'A's room and move her mirror to 'H's room. This new mirror was actually a frameless one that was in our bathroom, and when we replaced it with a nicer one, my stepfather took me to the hardware store to pick out some moulding so we could make a frame for it and hang it in 'A's room. It's a wonderful $17 framed mirror! After we hang it, I'll paint it and it will look great. It's heavy - 50 lbs. - so Jeff gets to do the majority of the work.

Have a great weekend!

It's official: our girls have given each other nicknames. 'A' calls 'H' "Sahti", and 'H' calls 'A' "Ba." It all started when 'H' was first born, and 'A' wanted to call her "My Sweetie," but couldn't say the whole thing, so she tried and tried, but could only say, "My Sweet Sahti." It stuck, and Jeff and I refer to 'H' as Sweet Sahti from time to time. This weekend, 'H' started talking more and one day she was looking for 'A', and looked around and looked around, then started yelling, "Ba! Ba!" and it was really clear that she was calling for 'A'. Funny!