sunday scribblings-Now and Then

Sunday scribblings is a blog where they give you a writing prompt every week. Here's my entry for this week.

Now and Then
Now...extra long v-neck "sexy" tee
Then...cap sleeve baby tee
Way back then... pastel polo-collar UP

Now..."ugg" style furry boot slipper
Then...flip-flops
Way back then... moccasins

Now...vanilla yogurt w/frozen berries,banana,and flaxseed
Then...pb and j on frozen waffle
Way back then...pnutbutter & graham crackers


Now...1/2caf black coffee w/sugarfree syrup (peppermint,hazelnut, or white choc.)
Then...grande nonfat iced mocha valencia
Way back then...hot chocolate


Now...Pregnancy over 35 and The Peaceful Nursery
Then...Autobiography of a Yogi and Siddhartha
Way back then...Anne of Green Gables


Now...Big Fish
Then...Bridget Jones' Diary
Way back then...Stand by Me

Now...2 slices of pizza
Then...3-4 slices of pizza
Way back then...5+ slices of pizza

Now...daily yoga stretch/meditation
Then...weightlifting
Way back then...Step aerobics

Now...Soleil Moon-Frye as earth mama
Then...Katie Couric as confident, independent woman
Way back then...Soleil Moon-frye as Punky Brewster


Now...Nicole Miller metallic blue frames with zebra pattern earpieces
Then...contacts
Way back then...plastic frames with a gold apple sticker on the corner of the lense

Now...shoulder length angled "posh"-style bob w/fading hilites
Then...long, highlighted blond
Way back then...shoulder length bob/mousy brown

Geo-tracking game

Just for fun...here is a mixed up list of all the places I've lived one year or longer.
Can you put them in order?

Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia (1 year)
Miami, Florida (8 years)
East Liverpool, Ohio (3 years)
Naples, Florida (1 or 2 years)
Los Angeles, California (2 years)
Kent, Ohio (3 years)
Davie, Florida (3 years-almost)
Fort Myers, Florida (1 year)
Stow, Ohio (13 years)

Notice I did not put my current city as I have only lived here 7 months.
Leave a comment with your guess.
I will post the correct order tomorrow.

Saturday Night Fever

The dishes are done, the floor is swept, the garbage emptied. Luna is dozing with me as I work on my graduate unit class and D. watches the Patriots kick behind downstairs. As I was sudsing up the roasting pan a bit earlier, I realized it was Saturday night. When did Saturday night become an exciting night to do household chores? Not sure, but all I know is I was very happy to have the time and energy to go to bed with clean countertops and an unloaded dishwasher. And curiously, just as excited to watch my coursework DVD professors and take notes for my essay response. on. a. Saturday. night.

weird!

I started thinking about the Saturday nights of yore and came up with several distinct categories.

State 8 Roller Rink Saturday nights (from about August 1984 to 1988)
These consisted of a Saturday afternoon shopping trip to the Gold Circle store in Cuyahoga Falls (these stores were a teeny step up from K-Mart and preceded Target in our area.) You see, every Saturday I wore a new polo shirt (extra long with the collar UP) and a big beaded necklace in the exact same shade. Mint green, butter yellow, you remember those 80's sherbet colors, right? Sometimes I would go with a friend and they would sleepover; other times I went alone. It was just as much fun and there was always someone to couple skate with!


Babysitting nights
These spanned a fifteen-year period beginning in about 1988 and going all the way to 2000. Whoa! I used to sit overnight in high school for a girl in Bath, Ohio most Saturdays. I remember yummy pizza dinners and having their guest room to myself after the little girl went to sleep. In college, I worked for 3-4 local SoFla families sitting weekday afternoons and Saturday nights. Since I rotated families, I worked most Saturdays for them. These kids are now 12-26 years old! aacck! Somehow it never interfered with my social life as in college we usually went out Thursday nights anyway.


Girlie nights
These occurred pretty regularly between 1997-2000 with G and M. M's hubby used to call us witches because we always had something brewing! We would watercolor or do facials, nails or other little projects while we had dinner and of course - wine!
I loved these nights and have not found a replacement for them.


At the end of 2007 Saturday night usually means dinner with friends or a quiet night at home. In 2008 it might be time for a little additional Saturday night "out" time!
What does Saturday night mean for you?

Elements of a Healthy New Year

I don't make New Year's Resolutions; that way they can't be broken. I do, however, take stock in the idea that this last week of the year is a good time for goal-setting and action-taking. In an effort to strengthen our lives, we are starting with strengthening our bodies. Santa brought a huge purple exercise ball and a small (though heavy) medicine ball. We've been having fun tossing it around the living room, training for next year's Halloween pumpkin toss.

Dinner last night was a huge bowl of plain and vanilla yogurt with bananas, blueberries, raspberries and flaxseed paired with two slices of whole wheat toast and peanutbutter and 2 steaming cups of cherry berry herbal tea. We've been snacking on tangerines.

I start a kickboxing class Tues. Jan. 15th and am very excited about that. Also very motivated by D's gift; my first ipod! Isn't this ipod shuffle cute? Wishing you a happy, healthy last week of the year!

Christmas Day

Before

Lu in heaven

Christmas Eve

Home colors

I spent the day happily cleaning around the house; you know all that dusting and and cleaning off the "hot spots" like the table etc. So, a friend is stopping by to hang out tonight before he leaves town to visit his girlfriend's house for the holidays. The candles are lit, the halls are still decked, and the live tree is holding out. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. As I walked through the house after the last dryer load was folded and the dishwasher emptied, I was just enjoying the color schemes throughout the house. Here they are:

Living/Dining room- dark royal blue, dark red, and burnt orange with touches of dark yellow and copper accents

Kitchen- Brighter red, blue, and yellow accents and coffee art (Red trashcan, red striped valance) If there is a theme, it's might develop off the wooden Portuguese painted rooster someday. I have this idea to create a mosaic backsplash with the bright colors. (For winter it has snowman accents-cookie jar and oven towel with red)

Laundry room- sage green and white

1/2 bath downstairs- dark red with orange accents

flooring throughout the first level is dark laminate wood

Master bedroom- dark red bedding/curtains with chocolate brown carpet
(walls are pale yellow)

Master bath- sand and sea (light aqua and sandy brown)

2nd bedroom- currently butter yellow- will be repainting apple green

3rd bedroom-(D's studio) Silver and Red with silver glaze-black accents

up bath- currently purple and green (thinking of ideas for future)

last post today

I think.

Well, Lester and I bonded, then I ate him, and now he's resting in peace. Mostly in my belly, but also in the SimpleHuman trashcan. He was good. very, very good. So were the clams we had for an appetizer. So, thank you Tico Joe. We had a lovely, lovely pre-Christmas holiday dinner tonight by firelight. Sweet dreams, everyone.

Happy Winter Solstice to you...

Spent the day driving around town doing some last minute errands and shopping while listening to Sarah Maclachan's Wintersongs and viewing the world through my brand-new crystal clear high-index, non-reflective lenses! Yup, I got new glasses! whoo-hoo! At 4:56, I was driving down into the valley and there was a gorgeous pink-blue sky with a full-ish white moon. It was one of those perfect moments where everything is in balance and the world seems gorgeous, peaceful, and kind. Here are some snippets of my afternoon...

*hopping the fence (!) to get into my school campus and pick up the gingerbread house thank you cards to send off to my students
*viewing the adoption room full of kitties at the local Petco...all the cages were decked out for Christmas with red, white, and green embroidered hammocks and blankets.
*opening a STACK of cards (yay yay yay!)

For those of you holding your breath waiting for a card from us, relax. We've decided on New Year's cards this year.
Our winter solstice celebration includes the following:
lobster and clams dinner in front of the fire
watching a movie
wrapping some surprises! (hee-hee)

The Story of The Gingerbread Boys and Girls

So, as part of our December curriculum, our class completed an author study of Jan Brett's books, including The Hat, The Mitten, The Gingerbread Baby, The Three Snow Bears, The Wild Christmas Reindeer, and The Christmas Trolls. (Of course, we covered all the winter holidays this month, not just Christmas.) Predictably, The Gingerbread Baby was one of the favorites. As an offshoot of this, we compared and contrasted other stories with gingerbread-centric characters, such as The original Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Cowboy, and The Gingerbread Girl (GM's younger, more cunning sister, who ties the fox's mouth shut with a strand of her shoestring licorice hair.) So, of course, one of our last activities for the year was tasting real gingerbread cookies and brainstorming descriptive sensory words about gingerbread. Later, we would take just one bite of our cookies and graph whether we bit off the head, the arm or the leg. (In Kindergarten, we have creative ways of connecting our Math standards, don't we?) Anyway, in years past, I have always purchased a couple bags of the Pepperidge Farm gingerbread men. Somehow, though enjoyed by the kids, these always fell short of my hopes. This year, I thought I would bake some.

Those of you who know me can guess where this story is heading.

While mom was here at Thanksgiving, she found a box of organic gingerbread cookie mix with a free cookie cutter inside. Having promised my kids we would try the cookies last Monday, I bravely entered the kitchen Sunday evening. I took out the box, reviewed the directions, and realized salvation was mine. The recipe called for molasses. Since we didn't have any, I was off the hook,for twenty-four hours at least. Monday morning, I answered the kids truthfully when asked if we would taste gingerbread that day. "We didn't have any molasses." I explained. I doubt if they know what molasses is, but they accepted my answer. That night, molasses in hand, I mixed up the dough and started looking for the rolling pin. My dough was not looking so good;it seemed too dry. Derek was in Anaheim at a Van Halen concert, so not being able to find the rolling pin was a good reason to stick the bowl of dough in the fridge and go to bed. After all, I reasoned, the dough is good for 24 hours. This time, however, I couldn't just tell the kids, "I couldn't find the rolling pin." So here is what I said:

"You see, boys and girls, I was so excited about the gingerbread, that I opened the oven door to peek and they all jumped out! They started running around the house and Luna was chasing them and then they ran up the Christmas tree and pretended to be ornaments. She chased them up and ate them all up!" The students' bewildered faces proved that they were eating this up. "Is that real?" asked Firma*, one of my more precocious students. "Do you think it's real?" I volleyed, with a gleeful twinkle in my eye. "Yes!" they all shouted. That night, I relayed the story to my baker-husband, and pleaded with him to help me "fix" the dough. He agreed, and then went out to finish up some shopping. As is the norm on most weeknights, I was cozy in bed with a good book when he returned at 10ish. "Oh, what about the gingerbread?" I said. He gave me an exasperated look, but said, "Come on, I'll help you. Let's do it," even though he was tired from the rock concert the night before. "But you're the baker..." I pleaded, "can't you just whip them up?" I knew I wasn't being fair. He said nothing, but when I got up the next morning 24 little men were waiting in the kitchen. I made it up to him when I shared his heroic action with the students later that day.

"Mr. Luna heard what happened and he felt so bad for you that he made ANOTHER batch of gingerbread, and he wouldn't let me peek." Cheers to you, Mr. Luna. and thanks. Next year I'll stick to store-bought.**

*names changed to protect the precocious
**or make a practice batch. I will be baking this week, homemade cinnamon rolls from my gramma's recipe. I'll start very early in the morning.

There's something living in my refrigerator...

Dear Tico Joe,

I am feeling a bit conflicted. When D. arrived home last night he reported that we would be having a fresh lobster dinner tonight, (Thank you!) I was excited. "Yum", I thought to my sleepy self, I haven't had lobster in quite some time. I remembered a trip to New Hampshire with J., where I tried it for the first time (at the age of 16).
Then I went to sleep. It was only this morning, when I descended to feed "the Lu", that I saw the empty shipping boxes, the lobster pot sitting innocently on the counter, and the directions.

That's when I realized the lobsters were behind the tall silver doors of the icebox, trapped and still...ALIVE!

Enter conflicted feeling.

You see, unlike you and D., I grew up in Ohio, surrounded by mid-western states and Great Lakes, NOT oceans. I have NO clambake experience. This is all new to me. I will certainly enjoy the lobster dinner---what a treat! I'll just step out for some last minute shopping while it is being prepared. Wish you were here to enjoy it with us. Happy holidays to you and all the blogreading public. Stay tuned for a cute gingerbread man story later today.

If you take me to the movies...

I remember going to movies 2-3 times a month when I was a teenager. Matinees cost about $3.75 and there were dollar theaters too. In Bolivia, I would pay 3 bolivianos for a double feature and sit in the town square theater watching two movies at a time. I average 2-3 movies a YEAR in the theater now. Yesterday was one of those times. We went to see "I Am Legend"; a matinee feature of course. We can't afford the evening showings. Well, we could barely afford the $9.00 matinee ticket without gaping! Our two entrances cost the equivalent of a month of Netflix! (This is roughly the cost of 6 movies at our rate of viewing.) We certainly enjoy having unlimited rentals from Netflix! But this was one of those movies we didn't want to wait to see. For my part, I love movies set in the future that show daily life at that time. I can overlook the sci-fi or phantasmagoric elements for a peek into the main character's kitchen cupboards or daily routine. In this, Legend provided. I thoroughly enjoyed the portrayal of a surviving military scientist in post-virulent NY and his efforts to find a cure for The Dark Seekers. Now, of course, I have several new-ish movies of interest to see. The top three of these include:
Sweeney Todd, The demon barber rock-opera type Tim Burton showpiece
Atonement
and
August Rush

only wednesday?

What do you do when...
there is a fire drill and one student refuses to come out of the bathroom
it's 7:30 p.m. and you can easily sleep all night
you forget you live in *chilly* socal and wear a skirt to school with bare legs
your new student comes with a dose of nostalgia for all those *special* students of years gone by...have a been bragging about a dream class?
it's only wednesday and you could swear you've worked an entire week


answer:
come home, wrap Hannukah gifts for the neighbor's kids, light the tree, sip some peppermint mocha( 4 packs on sale at Target),share a potato-egg omelet with my sweets, take a bubble bath, play with the kitty, make plans for the 3 week vaca!

This week's baby related news:
2 pregnancies announced, two babies born within the past two weeks (one we knew about and another friends' surprise), 1 baby arriving in the next two weeks.

Total 2007 babies: 21
so far for 2008: 3

Christmas Meme-

from the blog of dandelion mama:
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Whatever is in the closet! My goal is to use what I have, reuse or create in any way possible to avoid actually spending money on more paper.

2. Real tree or artificial? This year we found a real tree- my first ever. It smells wonderful, and is so soft to touch.

3. When do you put up the tree? The first weekend in December.

4. When do you take the tree down? New Year's Day, or when it's falling apart, whichever comes first.

5. Favorite gift received as a child? Where do I begin? Amazing play kitchen with working sink made by parents? Amazing huge Victorian dollhouse made by parents? humongous jar of pickles? Everything was amazing.

6. Do you have a nativity scene? Nope.

7. Hardest person to buy for? husband
8. Easiest person to buy for? Lu

9. Worst Christmas gift ever received? don't know?

10. Mail or email Christmas card? mail!

11. Favorite Christmas Movie? A Christmas Story

12. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Sort of all year, depends what I find. (I like to make some.)

13. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Absolutely! Especially when you receive something others would enjoy more than you. (Think teacher gifts and small cousins!)

14. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? candy canes

15. Lights on the tree? wheat lights yes.

16. Favorite Christmas song? all of them. The First Noel, Silver Bells, Winter Wonderland, Silent Night are faves

17. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Both. Sometimes we spend it at family, recently it’s been at home. There are good things about both ways. We’ll be home this year, and I think it will finally make our new house feel like home.

18. Can you name Santa’s reindeer? Can’t you? Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blizten and Rudolph

19. Angel on top or a star? An angel

20. What do you leave out for Santa? We'll just have to see. Maybe some mint chocolate Bailey's?

The halls are decked...

Holiday Cheer

Weekend To-Do List
1. Mail 1 Hannukah box (it's not too late; there are still a few days of Hannukah left!)
2. Pick out our tree. We are getting a real tree, this year. (My first ever) I have always been happy with the trusty vintage silver tree my mom used to use in the 60's, but I guess we need to "christen" the house on it's first holiday.
3. Decorate said tree.
4. Look at gas logs for the fireplace. (Apparently, the fireplace in our place has never been used; it is wood-burning and gas too. We are choosing to go with gas.)
5. crochet a scarf. (I am a knitter, if I am anything. Just ask my mom about my finger-crochet technique)
I'm sure the weekend will be peppered with mundane chores and dismal errands (especially if the weather keeps up but the funny thing is, I'm starting to acclimate to California winters. (If that sounds like an oxymoron to you, today's low temp. was 40 degrees with icy rain. yuck, but actually cozy for spending the day in kindergarten.

Almost winter...

Despite the wild weather and war, the energy crisis and global warming, I find myself in a definitively holiday-type mood. I don't even mind the early nightfall. Tonight, for example, I find myself enjoying a cup of hot tea and a generous square of moist gingerbread for dinner. (For dinner, you say?) Well, yes. For dinner. There is no tree up yet; that is scheduled for Saturday, but the stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and the mantel/mantle is lit with a curling strand of light-studded greenery and three stocking hangers. I stayed at school til 6 pm tonight, til it was dark as night, putsying around my classroom and just enjoying it. So nice to know it's only a five minute drive home. It makes it much more attractive to stay later. (And so productive!)
In one week get ready for the casitaluna version of the 12 days of Christmas. yay!

weekend pix

I don't know hwy some of these are coming out sideways. Enjoy!

Holiday guests

We here at CasaLuna have been enjoying the company of my folks. We were able to share a scrumptious Thanksgiving dinner, a trip to Disneyland for lunch with our San Diego cousins, and a trip to the local Hart park last weekend. Hart park is a hidden treasure in the hills of Newhall. It features farm animals and two deer- John Deere and Jane Doe. There is a pretty uphill walk past the bison pasture to "La Casa de los Vientos", a Spanish style mansion built by silent film star William S. Hart in the 1920's. Tours of the home are free. Hart was also an author and dog-lover. There is a dog bedroom in the mansion with beds for each of his great danes, and a dog cemetery partway down the hill. Today more adventures are in store, as we head south a few minutes out of our beloved valley to Sylmar to visit the Nethercutt museum, a private classic car and music collection open to the public by reservation (but free). Later mom and I will visit the local teacher supply store (first visit, if you can believe it), and tomorrow afternoon, a highlight of the trip will be an organ concert given by Hector Olivera in LA at the First Congregational Church. They head out of town early Monday morning, about a month too soon. It's been wonderful sharing our CA life and hometown, both of which they adore. Pix to come!