Walking Backwards

WooHoo! Gotta love those caffeine-driven days. I spent most of the day today getting together some activities for Nicholas. I've been reading the 'Toddler Busy Book' and have gotten some great ideas. So today we went by Hobby Lobby to stock up on construction paper and felt and the like. The next couple of weeks should be interesting. Although, I am a bit trepidacious about giving my son a paintbrush full of washable tempera and have him go at it, even if it is outside. I still have some materials to pick up, but they can wait until we've exhausted this stash. I am going to build him a velcro playboard for his high-chair tonight after he goes to bed. Hope that turns out okay. I also want to make him paper bag blocks and play-doh. I can't wait. His short time in pre-school has inspired me it seems. Now all I want to do is plan and participate in educational activities for the little one.

I spoke to my mother on the phone for over two hours yesterday. It was nice to be able to talk to her for so long as the baby usually pulls my attention away from the phone quite awhile before my conversation is finished. He played with the cat, his ball cage, and watched his baby Einstein video quietly. She told me that we are going to be unable to scatter my grandmother's ashes until late July because the area she wants to be her final resting place will be frozen and inaccessible until then. This is actually advantageous to us because Joe will be able to go. We are going to fly into Wenachee instead of Seattle and stay in the small town of Winthrop. It is the most beautiful time of year there. I'm looking forward to it. Not the plane ride there, though.

Joe and I are still trying to finalize plans for his vacation this year. He has three weeks to burn before April 22nd and we really need to figure out what we are going to do now. He has to get a temporary replacement to do his job while he is away and his company needs the dates to set that up. His company got re-structured today so there is no telling how difficult figuring out the dates is going to be. I hope we get to go to the coast. I want to go to Port Aransas and rent a cabin and stay there for a whole week. It will be nice even if the water is a little cold. I wouldn't mind sitting at home, either. I'm just happy with the idea of getting to spend that much time with Joe.

No comment on the progress in the garden except to say damn, those landscape timbers are heavy. I have gotten the site stared for my garden blog, but no layout or content. I'm still looking for an appropriate template.

As everyone must know, the democratic primary election in Iowa had been won by Sen. Kerry. I don't know how I feel about this, but it has made me realize that I don't completely like a single one of the democratic candidates I've researched. Dean just pissed me off when I heard his speech here because it was all Bush bashing and not enough talk about what he plans to do himself. I never like when someone tries to get ahead by bad mouthing the opponent. Honestly, everyone in that crowd thought Bush was doing a bad job and Dean was just pandering to their sense of frustration with the current commander-in-chief. Kerry doesn't sit well with me either, but that is probably because he is a middle-of-the-fence democrat. He doesn't have radical reform ideas for the current state of the union, but thinks that what is going on now isn't right. He initially supported the war (although thinks it is being mismanaged now) and doesn't believe in repealing quite a few of Bush's tax cuts (some of them benefit me so I probably shouldn't complain). Bah! I hate politics. This is why I feel the way I do, though. I'm probably talking out of my ass anyway. There websites do make them out to be all-powerful, capable of destroying the nations problems in a single bound. I'm sorry to have missed that state of the union address tonight. I like to know what state my union is in. Plus, it can be funny to watch.

More tomorrow, hopefully.