Favorite Food Swap

I recently participated in a Favorite Food Swap hosted by Laural and Elaine. The premise is that you get hooked up with someone in the U.S. who's in a different region than you. You send them some of your favorite foods and they send you some of theirs. Even better is if you send them something you can only get in your area!

I got my Food Package from Elaine a couple days before Christmas. If you visit her blog (link above), you'll see that she provided a picture of all the items she received from me. Uh, as for me, I didn't think of that before I devoured the awesome locally-made peanut brittle she sent. Oops.

She also sent me a box of two chocolate and caramel-covered pecans. I'm pretty sure they had a proper name, but seeing as though I ate those the night I got them, the box is no longer around. And thank god there were only two because I seriously loved them and would've eaten all of them, no matter how many there were, in one sitting.

She also sent me "K-Ann's Strawberry Jam," which, surprisingly, is the only thing I haven't wolfed down yet. It won't last long, though, once it's opened. It's pretty obvious that I have no self-control.

Thank you, Laural and Elaine, for hosting this fabulous event. You have made a valuable contribution to my holiday weight gain. : )

They Missed the Mark

I love reading with my daughter and I think she really likes it, too. She's a very touchy-feely baby, so books with paper pages are kind of dangerous for her right now. She's already gotten one paper cut, so I'm sticking to board books for the time being.

There are series of books called "Baby Touch and Feel" in which each page contains a different texture for baby to feel. They're usually about animals and you touch the animal's "fur." My/her favorite is called "Frosty Friends." Not only does it have awesome pictures of animals, but it also has information about each animal, plus it rhymes, so it makes it that much more fun to read aloud.

Here's an example from the book:

Fluffy little penguin chicks
huddle close together.
Mommy's fur protects them
from the cold and icy weather.

or

The polar bear is king
of this cold and snowy land.
No other creature on the ice
is quite as strong and grand.

Both of those are good, yes? They're factually correct and they're cute! However, the authors really missed the mark on some of the animals:

Can you feel the wolf's pink tongue?
Forget about your fears.
He's just a big and hairy dog
with furry, pointed ears.

Uh, yeah...wolves are real friendly! Nevermind that if you tried to touch a wolf's tongue he'd probably tear you to shreads.

This one's a little less ironic, but still:

With big and furry antlers,
this reindeer is so sweet...

When I think of reindeer, the word "sweet" doesn't come to mind. Hell, even fictionalized, reindeer are mean with not letting Rudolph join in their games and all!

There are others, like calling a seal gorgeous and friendly, that make me laugh and wonder how difficult it is to write these things without freaking kids out. I'll have to try my hand at trying to make tigers sound cute and fun or making sharks sound like great swimming partners.

Any requests or suggestions?

They Say Everyone Has a Twin

I'm getting really bad at posting. I guess I feel I don't have much to say anymore. I mean, I'm home all day doing pretty much the same thing over and over: nursing, reading, playing, changing diapers, cleaning...repeat. There's not much interesting stuff going on in my life right now. This is not to say I don't like my life right now. I just wouldn't call it exciting.

However, I will share this: What the hell is up with my upstairs neighbor? I really hope he never reads this because he will totally know I'm talking about him. The reason he will know is that I'm going to tell you his name. Arnie. But I call him F'Arnie. You can guess what the "F" stands for.

The worst thing about Arnie is that I like him. He's a really great guy (even though he's a Scientologist. Uh-oh...I've offended somebody. Please don't send me weird comments, people, like someone did with my "Good Thing I Don't Believe in Hell" post. I'm sorry if I've offended you.). Anyway, he's a really nice guy, very funny, pleasant, blah, blah, blah...but he is ALWAYS on the phone. ALWAYS. I know this because I am always home and our building is very, VERY noisy. I can hear his alarm go off in the morning and, after pressing snooze 4 times, he gets up and gets immediately on the phone. Yeah, I can hear all this...it sucks.

F'Arnie keeps strange hours. He is in business for himself and always seems to come home whenever my daughter is trying to go to sleep. Mind you, she sleeps, like, every 3 hours and whenever she is on the verge of falling asleep, I'll hear him (and so will she) walking around (the floors creak terribly) yapping away on his phone. It drives me crazy! I just want to yell, "SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!! PUT THE PHONE DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING TO ANYWAY????"

Because, seriously, who the hell is he talking to all the live-long day? I know that somewhere in the world is someone who lives below the person he's on the phone with, rocking her baby to sleep, cursing the name of her upstairs neighbor, and wondering just who the hell her neighbor is talking to. Well, whoever you are, you now know he's talking to F'Arnie.