august break: day 26

Could time stop flying by so fast, please?

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 25

Did you know chickens love to eat tomatoes? I didn't, until I got to hang out with Lisa's ladies yesterday.

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 24

I got to hang out on my friend Lisa's back deck and drive iced coffee yesterday. Jealous? You should be.

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 23

One of these days I won't be able to keep up.

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 22

 

Mom of the Year.

 

 

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 21

Two pieces of mail from this week. Guess which one I'm more excited about? (HINT: the one that actually looks fun.)

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 20

I will never, ever not ever get sick of taking close-up pics of my giant dog's face. This was from today's vet visit.

august break: day 19

Saw this sign outside of a restaurant this morning. The little notation at the bottom made me laugh.

august break: day 18

Yesterday we hosted a cookout for some of the families we've become friends with through our nearly five years at Jane's daycare. One of the moms got all of the kids "BFFs" bracelets. It seriously made me teary. These last couple of weeks heading into kindergarten are going to be a little bit rough, I think.

august break: day 17

I was horrified to be in a McDonald's Playland about an hour ago. Others in my family were simply delighted.

august break: day 16

Got to visit my favorite bookstore in the state recently. I seriously think I breathe easier when I'm in there. Any bookstore, really. But this one especially.

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 15

Young James and I are not impressed with the cloudy humid weather today.

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 14

Pro parenting tip: keep your kids' toys away from the dogs, or there will be a disturbing number of missing limbs, heads, etc. (Jane had these peeps lined up for the train.) (Hopefully the train was going to the hospital.)

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 13

I did something today that I was very nervous to do. This was my reward.

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 12

Hit the high seas today. Good day for a ride. Can't believe how fast summer is flying by. 

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 11

I took Jane and my niece to see Legally Blonde the Musical last night. This is what she chose to wear for her night out. And they say no one dresses for the theater anymore...

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 10

This girl loves to draw. And I love being outside. Sidewalk chalk for the win!

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 9

Went to the farmer's market this morning with Jane. She ate approximately 500 blueberries today, I think. And that's a conservative estimate.

august break: day 8

I had a delightful iced coffee at a delightful place with a delightful friend today.

(do me a favor and pop over to her blog and tell her to post more, will you?)

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 7

We took Jane to see her first ever movie in the movie theater - Brave - yesterday. She made sure to wear her Merida costume. You can see that she had a terrible time and wasn't excited at all.

august break: day 6

Spent a portion of the afternoon proofing loan agreements. Jealous?

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 3

We just got home from dinner at our friends' house. My friend Jessica looooves to cook. This homemade tiramisu was the fifth course of the meal, and my stomach is about to explode. But in a good way.

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 2

For the first time since my final semester in college way back in the '90s, back-to-school supplies mean something to me. Jane starts kindergarten in a month. Hold me.

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

august break: day 1

And this is what one might look like if one treated Tuesday night like Friday night and had three too many glasses of wine. I think Junior's butt in the picture is extremely apropos, don't you?

I'm doing The August Break. It's easy and fun. Join me, won't you?

my weekend in three pictures.

My weekend started with this:

Really, we did have a bigger pool at Jane's birthday party. But who can understand five-year-old girls? Not me.

Continued with this:

Heather and I out past 6 p.m. on Saturday night without kids for my friend Larry's 40th! Wahoo!

And ended with this:



This would be my windshield after getting shattered as I was driving home last night from my mother's house. I was on the highway, no trucks or cars close to me, and my windshield exploded. Is someone out to get me? Scary.

How was your weekend?

weekend update.

You know what I’m excited about? The August Break. I’m doing it again! I think it’s just the thing to pull me out of my major blogging rut. So what if my camera is broken and I only have my Blackberry to take pics, right? So that’s coming up next week.

But first. It’s the weekend! And it is a crazytown one, that’s for sure. Here’s what’s up:

Friday: Tonight I’m going to see a friend of mine perform here in Death of a Salesman. No wait, first I’m going to continue cleaning my house in preparation for tomorrow. Sometimes it seems like all I do is clean my house for parties during the month of July. Then tonight I’m going to see Death of a Salesman. Nothing like some hilarious Arthur Miller to kick the weekend off, am I right?

Saturday: Ah yes. The day of Jane’s epic fairy princess birthday party. Forty-nine people. Nineteen kids. My. House. Will. Be. Trashed. PRAY FOR ME. After that we are going out for my friend Larry’s 40th birthday. I don’t know what’s so romantic about Halloween time that everyone has babies in July, but good Lord is this month crammed full of them.

Sunday: No real plan for Sunday, although I am sure I will be cleaning the wreckage that will be my house after the lunatics descend upon it on Saturday.

So I guess the theme for this weekend is birthdays. And cleaning.

What are you up to?

Five.

Jane turns five years old in about 90 minutes. Five is kind of magic, isn't it? She's had two cupcakes today already. If that isn't a sign of a pretty magical year, I don't know what is.

Things Jane loves at five:
*princesses
*purple
*being an extreme drama queen
*dancing
*saying "YESSS!!" when she gets the answer she wants
*coloring and drawing, specifically mermaids and princesses
*Barbies
*dressing up
*Disney movies (favorites right now are The Lion King and Pinocchio)
*the beach
*Singing songs to people after telling them to listen to her but not to look at her or laugh at her (they are allowed to clap for her when it's over)
*macaroni and cheese
*popsicles
*her friends

Every year, I think I can't possibly love her more. And every year I'm wrong.

Happy Birthday, sweet Jane.

Birth
One
Two
Three
Four

(week)end update.

A little programming note:

I will be away this week on vacation in Rhode Island with 15 other people. Two houses on the beach stuffed with some of my favorite friends. Yes, yes...this sounds very agreeable to me.

So my lack of posting this upcoming week will be because I will hopefully have my feet in the sand and a smile on my face. When I get back I do plan on starting to post again in earnest. No, seriously this time.

I hope you have a fabulous week and weekend!

the time I met the internet girls.

SO.

Nearly a month ago, a really cool thing happened. And it’s already been written about here, here and here, but I wanted to weigh in too.

A few months ago, when I saw on the Twitter that O was going to be heading from London to visit D in Brooklyn for a couple of weeks in June, I knew I had to barge in and invite myself along for the fun. So we picked a Monday in June that I would come into the NYC and hang with them for the day.

A few days before the visit, I heard from J, who said that she would be in Connecticut from Washington State visiting family the weekend preceding the NYC Tweetup, and did I want to meet for a drink? YES, PLEASE, I said, and couldn’t believe that in the span of 24 hours, I would meet three of my fave bloggers and Tweeters, a couple of whom live thousands and thousands of miles away.

AND THEN. J had the epiphany that instead of going to Long Island on Monday as planned, why didn’t she instead join me on the train into Manhattan so we could both meet up with D and O in Brooklyn.

YES, PLEASE, I said.

And then I got nervous.

I never did the Internet dating thing. I’d never met a blogger or Tweeter that I hadn’t already known previously in real life. I am such a tool, I reminded myself. SUCH a nerd. And boring! What if they think I’m cool in person? I’m NOT cool! Have I presented myself in a way that would make someone think I’m cool?

Well, no. There’s no way I managed to do THAT.

But I was, in fact, nervous. So when I pulled up to J’s hotel about 20 minutes from my house on the way to the train station in New Haven, I handled my nerves the best way I know how. With an intense case of verbal diarrhea.

I talked her ear off about pop culture and the 80s for the entire ride down to New Haven and the two-hour train ride to NYC. Poor thing.

Fact: J is awesome. And rad. And so pretty. And cool. And smart. And very stylish. And yes, I’m gushing. SHUT UP. There’s more where that came from.

After mostly-successfully navigating the subway system from Grand Central to Brooklyn, we went to our appointed meeting place to hook up with O and D and friends. So yeah, there we were, just scanning the streets looking for faces that matched the Twitter avatars we’ve come to know so well over the past year. And then we heard:

“Hello, Internet friends.”

Yup, there were D and O. And it was fucking awesome. It felt so surreal to see them in real life but yet so completely NORMAL. I have to say that the conversation (and ridiculous amounts of laughter over topics like DIABETES) started the moment we met outside the subway station, carried through our walking around looking for a restaurant, lunch, and park time, and didn’t stop until we had to head back to the subway and go home (Connecticut for me, Long Island for J).

D and O? Incredibly cool. Way cooler than me, that’s for sure. Sassy and intelligent and gorgeous and forces to be reckoned with.

Hands down, meeting those three ladies was one of the best days of my summer. And I cannot wait for it to happen again.

my (not-so-triumphant) return.

Oh Lord.

I have sucked so bad at this blogging thing over the past few months. And it keeps popping into my head, and I keep not writing anything.

Sorry about that.

I figured that when I made my triumphant return over here, I damn well better have something monumental to say. Instead, I will bore you with the standard minutiae of my life, per usual.

It’s been fairly chaotic around here lately, for reasons I’ll talk on the blog and reasons I won’t. We hosted our big annual Fourth of July party at my house, and prepping for that was the nightmare it always is when you’re having a bunch of people over. Two days later I had the cast from the show I was in recently over to watch the DVD, which was so much fun. I also went to my friends’ family summer party, Greg’s family’s summer party, and a triple-birthday party. I also went to dinner on two separate nights with different friends. And went to coffee with another friend. And the beach with another friend. And drank an epic amount of wine and sangria. And this was just the past week.

This week I am looking to detox myself of all of the alcohol and bad food I ate. I am going to exercise, hopefully a lot, which I haven’t done in well over a week. I’m going to try to combat some anxiety I’ve been having. And what I am going to do the most is look forward to my vacation, which starts next Saturday.

And how are you? I’ve missed you.

weekend update.

It’s the freakin’ weekend, and I am so happy. We finally have a nice stretch of excellent weather coming up here in the Northeast, and I am ALL ABOUT IT. This week has been a little bit of lunacy – my workplace was in lockdown for a few hours the other morning because of a threat of violence, Jane graduated from preschool (I don’t know how she’s almost five when I haven’t aged a day since she was born), I found out a young friend had a serious, and seriously freaky, health scare – all in all, a little too much drama for this mama. Here’s what’s on tap this weekend:

Friday: After-work coffee date with friends, then happy hour with other friends, then going to see another friend in Guys and Dolls, one of my very favorite musicals. It’s a friends day – what’s better than that?

Saturday: Going to my friend’s daughter’s birthday party, and get to see a bunch of my peeps I haven’t seen in way too long, considering they are my best friends. Life, you know? But I’m really looking forward to this. I would not be surprised at all if Jane and I headed down to the boat after to meet up with Greg and stay ‘til Sunday.

Sunday: Well, it’s Father’s Day, so Greg gets his way – you know what that means. ALL BOAT, ALL THE TIME. My mom is coming down too, and probably my in-laws. Supposed to be gorgeous, so I’m down with it.

Monday: Monday is part of my weekend, and I am just waaaay too excited about it not to report that I will be in my favorite city with some of my favorite tweeps. Holy shit. I have never had a Tweet-up before and I am BEYOND about this. BE. YOND.  (And nervous. I hope they don’t think I’m going to be cool in any way. I am a huge nerd. Everyone knows this, right?)

What’s up with your weekend?

in which I pretended to know at least a little bit about golf.

So, instead of writing yet another post about how much I love love love doing theater, I thought I'd post some pics of rehearsal and tech run of the show I did a couple of weeks ago. Loved this cast. Great audiences. Epic good time. Can't wait for the next one!

summer.

There are things I need to report to you. I haven't been here in weeks, really, and in the meantime I did that show (the one I Tweeted and Facebooked about mercilessly), Jane had her first dance recital, we received the invite to her preschool graduation (!!!!) that happens this Thursday, and we went on vacation.

We returned today from a week that was a little sunny, moderately rainy and a lot cloudy. But we made it fun. We went to a children's museum we'd never been to, a Navy submarine base and museum, an art museum, one of our favorite zoos, and even managed to go to the beach a couple of times. Oh, and I squeezed in a couple of trips to my all-time favorite bookstore. I'd live there if I could, I swear.

I promise to get back here. I'm itching to get back here. I hate that when I'm the busiest, and I have so much to write about, I just don't have time to do it. But summer's here. I'm calling it the Summer of Amanda and Jane - her last before she heads off to the wacky world of public school

And I know I've already shared this elsewhere, but it must be said that this is one of my all-time favorite pictures of my girl.

Are you having as much fun as she is? Are you loving life as much? Am I? We should try, no?

purgatory week.

There's this thing in theater called hell week. That's usually the last week of rehearsals, where you move from wherever you've been rehearsing on to the actual stage where you will be performing the show. It's the week when you incorporate lights, sounds, props and costumes. It's when you stop calling for lines and start realizing that hey, you're going to actually do this thing in front of real, breathing people. It's a pretty intense week of rehearsals, and if you're doing community theater, it also means you're working and attending to family obligations during the other hours of the day. Oh, and sleeping. Ha! And trying to remain healthy. Ha HA!

This show that I'm doing has had a pretty short rehearsal period for these sorts of things - usually it's a couple of weeks longer. This means that we've been rehearsing more days per week than normal, and weird days too - sometimes Friday nights, sometimes Sunday afternoons, always Tuesdays, and these days Wednesdays too. This week we have four days in a row beginning tomorrow  - our director called it "purgatory week" in our most recent email from him. I'm not saying it's not needed or if I were directed I wouldn't do the same thing - but between work and theater, Jane is extremely unhappy with me right now. And the guilt is in high gear.

I bang the "Moms get to have hobbies too" drum the loudest and hardest. I see way too many people abandon who they are completely when they have kids. It freaks me out, and it sucks, and I will not have it. So, sure, I've limited what I do in terms of theater since I had Jane, but I never completely stopped. But I knew this round was taking its toll after I got back from New York City last weekend (went with my friends, had an amazing time, if you missed the drunk Tweeting than you're a lucky person) when I received the ultimatum: "No more theater or New York City this summer" from Jane. 

And sure, trips to New York and theater are two of my very favorite things. And I've been doing a lot of both lately. But Jane's on that list too. In fact, she's at the top. So once this show is over, we go straight into our first vacation at the beach. (Well - in between I have to work graduation at my place of employment - but right after that.) The week after that she has preschool graduation. For reals - they are doing a whole ceremony. Holy waterworks, I am going to need a box of tissues and/or a flask for this event. Do you think they will play 'Pomp and Circumstance'? Because holy shit, the tears will flow. I can't even think about it.

Aaaanyway, after that (oh, and Jane's dance recital too - Jesus Christ, what else can we squeeze in in the next two weeks?),I've declared it the "Summer of Amanda and Jane (and Greg too, but he works a lot)" - we are going to do tons of cool shit before she embarks on the craziest journey of all - 12 years of public school. If you have any ideas of fun things we can do, I'd love to hear them!

 Mother's Day

 Subway rats

 Happy girls in NYC

 show cast

and this is happening

weekend update.

I’m not even going to start with the excuses on why I haven’t been blogging lately. You know the drill:

*Work

*Birthday parties*Freelance work*Rehearsals*More birthday parties

One excuse I don’t have is sleep, because man oh man, I have NOT been sleeping well lately. This week when I got home from rehearsal at night I was blasting through my book club book (Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand – a hilarious story of a WWII POW – and by “hilarious” I mean “horrific”). I hadn’t read a word of it until Sunday, so for the past five days, finishing this 400-page beast was my goal. Which I did. Because I am awesome.  Well….awesome with a side of dark circles under my eyes.

And today it’s Friday Friday Friday and I couldn’t be happier. Here’s what’s up:

Friday: Tonight I have my book club meeting. My friend Alan, also a devoted member of the club, is off working and living a fancy-pants international life in Germany for six months, will be Skyping in to the meeting. This is to illustrate how devoted we are. Insane levels of devoted, I tell you. I, of course, don't need to remind you how much I love book club. Buckets.

Saturday: DRAMATIC SIGH. Jane and I will be going to my cousin’s daughter’s First Communion and reception. I’ve given Greg a free pass to skip it so he can go down to the boat. He has so taken one for the team lately, taking care of Jane a lot because the rehearsal schedule for the show I’m in is super-busy. After that, I am not sure what we’re doing, but I intend to be outside because it was rainy and gloomy here all week, and it’s going to be again next week, but tomorrow is supposed to be beeyootiful and I NEED SUN AND VITAMIN D, PLEASE.

Sunday: Mother’s Day! I’ve got my fingers crossed for a new iPod, if I’m being truthful. Jane and I will probably take a quick trip to my mom’s in the morning, and then in the afternoon I’m heading off to the NYC for crazy good times with my friends Beth and Lisa until Monday. That’s right – I’m abandoning my family on Mother’s Day. I AM A JERK.

(But seriously, side note: I am racking up some major mom guilt for being away from Jane so much the past few weeks. I feel like an asshole and a jerk but I only do shows a couple of times a year and it makes me happy to do something for me but OH THE GUILT. Ugh.)

Anyway, if you follow me on Twitter, you know by now that you are going to be assaulted with many  NYC-themed and probably increasingly drunk tweets, and I’m pre-apologizing for that. I AM SORRY, DEAR TWEEPS. My Twitter finger gets itchy when I'm with these people.

And that’s what up, peeps. But what I really want to know is, what’s up with YOU?