Eye spy

Me and my Granny, age 99 in March 2006

Unlike my grandmother, who lived to 100, didn't wear glasses and could still spot a dropped sewing needle on the floor across a room, I had undiagnosed vision problems as a kid and didn’t get glasses until I was 10 or 11. My teachers thought I sat in the front row because I was eager. Who am I kidding: I was eager. But I also couldn't see if I sat farther back.

My two best friends had glasses, so when I asked for some, my folks thought I just wanted them  because my friends had them. Riiight. Because all the COOL kids are rocking prescription glasses with extra thick lenses. Hawtie alert!

It turned out that I’m VERY nearsighted: 20/650 uncorrected. Meaning if I knock my glasses off the night table, I have to get on my knees and feel around for them on the floor. Not. Pretty. On the upside, in every apartment and house where I've lived, I can walk around unimpeded in the dark. See: "The perks of nearsightedness," said Ms. Glass Half-Full.

Still, I was annoyed (caution: first world complaint ahead) to wake up a couple days ago and discover a screw missing from my glasses, leaving me with one missing ear hook. Fortunately, I still had a previous pair with a weaker prescription to tide me over until I can get mine repaired or upgraded. But it reminded me that there are organizations that collect old glasses for those who don't have the luxury of first world complaining about things like missing eyeglass screws.

If you have a pair of old glasses taking up space, consider donating them to organizations that help those who can't afford them. It's environmentally friendly and a way to put your extraneous items to good use.

Also, if you have kids, get their eyes checked early. Sometimes kids are incorrectly diagnosed with learning disabilities when they really have vision problems.

Judging by Ava and Dylan's ability to see me unwrapping a piece of gum from the other side of the house, I'm guessing they got my grandmother's eye genes.

New gig, new challenges

On the heels of news that the Employment Index in U.S. Climbs to Highest Level in Two Years as reported by Bloomberg Business Week, I'm happy to report that I too am moving up in employment to a new position overseeing customer service for a branch of local government. Lots of low-hanging fruit, right?

I've met with my new team, who are all experienced in community outreach and helping residents get involved with their government, so that is a huge plus.

I'm still getting up to speed in the new role but I'm looking forward to the opportunities. It seems well-suited to my background in communications and social media, my interest in open government and Gov 2.0, and my customer-centric approach to public service.

I'll see how the work-life-balance adjusts over the coming weeks and months. Dylan's a month away from the one year mark, which means no more pumping during the day for me, just nursing evenings and weekends as needed. That means no more bottle washing, packing and transporting every day, making getting prepped for each day a little easier.

Conversely, he seems poised to walk/run/climb any day now, so we'll need to spend some time nailing down everything under three feet in the house.

Ava has started complaining about her brother's increasing mobility and interest in her things and everything that she was just about to play with or was playing with yesterday, with "DYL-an! I am so FLUS-trated! No! Uh-uh! No touch!"

But most of the time she's the loving big sister with him, instantly launching into Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star at the first sign of his distress, which amazingly distracts and soothes him.

So work and life are going well. I'll keep you posted on balance.

11 month old romantic

Dylan's giving out kisses these days when prompted. We'll work on fixing the drooly, open mouth part. On a separate note, his other top tooth and another bottom broke through on Friday. He's been an eating machine with 1 1/2 teeth. He'll be T2 with four!

Ava spots some shoe bling

At the Nordstom half yearly sale, Ava homes in on some major bunion bling. It's a madhouse down here and I turned around to make sure she was still close by and found her transfixed like this. This is a kid who would wear her white dress shoes with the sequin embellishment every day if she could. I see lots of haggling over clothing in our future.

Getting back on the blogging horse

Between family, work, and serving on one volunteer board, I feel like I have a pretty overloaded full life. I like to joke: work life balance - choose two.

Several friends have remarked how well I seem to manage all of my competing responsibiliies, which seems to speak to the value of those smoke and mirrors I bought on sale that time.

Despite my time pressures, I've missed having a creative outlet besides the napkin or kiddie menu drawings I do for Ava when we go out to eat. I like to help her practice letters by writing short words with matching illustrations and having her pick out letters she knows. She knows "A" well because of her name, so a fan favorite is the string BAT CAT FAT HAT MAT SAT VAT. Vat is a tough one to explain to a three year old though. Nothing modern really comes in vats. Pickles? I digress, mightily.

So to get back on the ball with writing regularly in more than just a Tweet-length message, I'm taking part in National Blog Posting Month or NoBloPoMo in which the goal is to post something every day for the month of November. So far, the month has presented sufficient blog fodder.

In the interest of trying to emphasize that "life" more than the "work" in work-life-balance, a couple nights ago, we loaded up the whole family and my folks to try a new restaurant, Crawfish King, in Seattle's International District. For anyone who's been to New Orleans or similar places where crawfish are on the menu, it's one of those places where they hand you a bib, mallets, crab crackers and all manner of implements along with a pile of steaming, butter-slathered seafood, corn, potatoes and sausage on the table and leave you to get all medieval with your meal.

Note to self: if you've let your 3 year old see parts of the Alien movies with you recently (because A) there is always one showing on cable somewhere and B) your husband is incapable of NOT watching it if he sees it on the cable guide), when the waitress rips open a bag on the table and yummy, yet kinda creepy looking crawfish spill out suddenly in all directions, things are going to get ugly.

3 year old math:

=

Alien image courtesy this site

Specifically, said 3 year old will violently push her chair back from the table screaming as if one of the crawrish is about to jump off the table and attach itself to her face. Seriously, haven't you people seen what these things do when they make it through stasis?!

After peeling her off the ceiling, calming her down, and reassuring diners at nearby tables that we hadn't inadvertently poured a scalding hot bucket of crawfish and vegetables on our child, we settled in for a lovely, though messy, meal with both kids happily chowing down on crawfish, sausage, jambalaya, gumbo, fried catfish and fried okra. We're from the south: two fried dishes where one is a vegetable is a balanced food pyramid, right?

Thanks to the butcher paper-covered tables, before we were surrounded by pools of buttery, seafood goodness, we had a chance to practice  BAT CAT FAT HAT MAT SAT VAT. Because if you're going to be terrified by alien-esque seafood, you should at least fit in some book learnin' first.