Drops of Awesome

I love the line from Elf where Will Ferrell accuses the department store Santa of not being the real deal because he doesn’t smell like Santa, he smells like beef and cheese.

Well I’m not the real Santa either because I definitely smell like beef and cheese…beef, cheese and chlorine (we are LOVING my parents’ pool). Yesterday was my high school reunion and I kid you not, the buffet consisted of mounds of cheese, a few hors d’oeuvres and a giant side of beef under a hot lamp. Now I was certainly not there for the food, but beef and cheese? Seriously.

Some other random side notes include the fact that our class officers hired the reunion planning out to a random company who put on the most generic reunion I could have imagined. Not one yearbook was handy, not a single high school logo or mascot was seen. We all got a T-shirt that said our high school name and “Class of ’96” in boring sans serif font. There wasn’t even a mustang on it. Now I bet 1/3 of the high schools in America have a mustang as their school mascot. How hard would it have been to download a picture of a horse and put it on the shirts? I guess it was much harder than putting the name of the reunion planning company in HUGE print across the back with their web address and phone number in GINORMOUS letters.

A policeman was on duty in case we got out of control. He also posed us for our reunion picture while the photographer stood mutely watching.

They played music videos of songs that were popular while we were in high school. An old-school Backstreet Boys video came on, a video in which they were still boys and they had just made their American debut after becoming wildly popular with girls across Asia.

It made me wonder again how long I’ll be able to go by the name Daring “Young” Mom. At what point do I become the Backstreet-Old-Married-Men-With-Kids-Who-Refuse-to-Change-the-Name-of-Their-Group of the blog world?

I somehow conned my two best high school girlfriends into flying to Houston for the weekend to go to a reunion we swore we’d never attend and we had a great time seeing each other again. There were very few other people there that I recognized and even fewer who recognized me.

There wasn’t a great turnout and it seemed that the group largely consisted of the “popular” kids who intimidated the cheese out of me when I was 17. When chatting it up with people, we tried to find some sort of connection and the conversation tended to turn towards extra curricular activities.

Graduate: What did you do in high school?
Me: Besides eat beef and cheese? Um… homework.
Graduate: No, I mean extra-curriculars. Were you on dance team?
Me: Um…no. You weren’t a member of the Business Professionals of America club, were you? NHS? Theatre?
Graduate (blank stare): Were you there all 4 years?
Me: Nope. I moved to Texas from Canada Junior year. I was the Canadian Girl.
Graduate: Yeeeeaaahh… (moving on)

Truth be told, I actually met several really nice people and reconnected with a few old friends. The best part of the evening, besides the beef and cheese and the fact that after paying $120 to get in the door I was asked to pay $3 for a coke, was realizing that I am no longer intimidated by these people. I’m actually hardly intimidated by anyone anymore. I look back now and see that we all made different choices in our lives and became who we are and I’m happy with the way things turned out for me. Some people aren’t happy but for the most part we all became some form of the person we envisioned being in high school.

Sadly, I did not get the chance to confront the girl who “complimented” me senior year on my “sense of style” and my “bravery” to wear jeans every day to school. She even went so far as to tell me I should design my own clothing line and call it Katie’s Canadian Comfy Wear. She thought it would be so nice not to be burdened by fashion and to be able to wear whatever felt comfortable the way I could. Yes she carried the burden of driving the hot car her daddy bought her and wearing a different designer pants-suit every day to school, while I remain haunted to this day by a career in denim design that may never come to pass. Alas, we all must bear these little hardships as best we can.

…I need to work on my flexibility. Seriously. Last night we went to Cirque de Soleil and there’s this part of me that thinks, “Hey, I should work on my backbends so I can do that someday.”

I mean, I could almost – sort of – do that when I was in elementary school, the contortionism. As for today, I am far from being an athlete. I’m suffering from the post-nursing extra poundage. When I stop nursing, it takes me a few months to get used to eating for one again so I put on weight.

It comes just in time for my high school reunion this weekend. Yippee! I was looking in the mirror a couple of days ago, sizing myself up for the big fun and I realized I look much the same as I did 10 years ago.

Talking to Jen last week, (She was nice enough to fly across the country and then walk 3 miles to meet me for fish and chips. We had a great time getting acquainted and her daughter J — what a cutie!) it struck me what the main difference in my appearance is. I look like someone stuck a small hose in my mouth and puffed me up a few inches bigger, like an over-inflated tire.

I’m comforted by the fact that people will likely be too concerned about the way THEY look to notice the increase in my PSI.

This morning I was awakened by Laylee. She crept down the hall to my room and slowly opened the door. Hoping she’d go back to bed, I pretended to be asleep. With much effort, she hoisted herself up to stand on the box spring so her little face was level with mine.

Then she did what I do every night after she falls asleep. She kissed me on the forehead and whispered in my ear very softly, “Mommy, I love you. Have a nice dream.”

She then climbed down, crept down the hall and flooded the bathroom.

We recently celebrated Magoo’s birthday in the classic style by allowing him to saturate his nostrils with soft water-insoluble man-made chocolate “product”. For a gift, we gave him some age-appropriate furniture and commended him for his many one-ish talents and skills, none more heartily applauded than his ability to walk 5 steps out into the middle of the room and then fall in slow-motion, stunt-man style.

Magoo’s main problem now is that he’s supposed to get his nutrition from actual food. I’m still breast feeding a bit (just the hat and the nose) but he mostly eats man-food now. Today I’d love suggestions for soft, nutritionally dense foods for the dentally-impaired.

My favorites are hyper-blanched baby carrot sticks (boiled to death and then refrigerated for future consumption), noodles and cheese worms (melted cheese on toast, sliced into strips sounds so unappealing, but “cheese worms”? That’s a meal you really wanna sink your teeth/tooth into).

Hit me with the soft stuff. What are your ideas?

Move over Donny T cause there are new real estate moguls in town and we don’t need no steenkeen apprentice. We’ve already got two of our own. We just need a robo-realtor (played by “Nadine”), a disco-dancing family of marshmallow-eating bird wranglers to stay with for the weekend (played by “Lynn” and “Steffon”), a brilliant inspirational mastermind (played by Heavenly Father) and an opera-professor-turned-mortgage-broker in a pear tree (played by “Henry”).

So it’s hard to blog about things like home buying and selling homes without giving away too much personal information. I will say this, we are blessed!

Just over two weeks ago we decided to start seriously looking for a new home. By Sunday we were really discouraged and felt that there was no way we could find something in our price range that was worth buying.

The next morning, the first property we went to was priced well below the others we had looked at and it instantly felt like the right one. It had been sitting on the market for a “while” (take that with a grain of salt in this crazy market) and so we were able to get it for below their asking price. Within minutes of their counter-offer, another full price offer was made which they were unable to take because they had already signed with us.

The inspection turned out very clean. The house has a lot of “potential” (meaning we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us) but is in really good condition and move-in ready. It has a big back yard, 4 bedrooms, a tiled eating area (No more scraping macaroni off the dining room rug? Be still my heart!), and a family/play room on the main floor besides the formal living room (To become the music room/office. Who needs a formal living room, I ask you?). It is exactly what we were looking for.

Then this rainy weekend we put our house on the market and left to stay with Lynn and Steffon, with whom we had a great vacation. They are so fun and great to take us in when we didn’t want to be anywhere near the realtors and potential buyers milling around our home. And “milling” they were, I’m told. Our realtor did a fabulous job.

Within two days we had multiple offers on the table with the price escalating well above our asking price. Not only did the winning bidder pay more for our condo than we did for our new place, but they had no “out clauses” attached, no neighborhood review, no inspection required, no financial contingency. A completely clean deal, with a large amount of earnest money down.

We moved back into our home to pack with no showings to do, no realtors to talk to, done, done duh done done done. They are willing to close whenever we want to so we will be able to use the proceeds from the sale to buy the new home.

I’m kind of in shock and so grateful. Things could not have worked out more perfectly. We will be moving in a few weeks and then I’ll be more able to tell you how much “potential” the new home really has and how much slave labor it requires.

What it means to me is that we now have a home big enough to raise a fairly large family (no, still not an announcement) and even if the prices continue to skyrocket to insanity, we will be able to stay in an area we love and with a job Dan really enjoys and not be forced out for financial reasons. Yippee! Now to work with us all. I plan to pay Laylee one penny for every rock she picks out of the grass in the back yard.

I’m not posting pictures because it would be too easy to identify it on the MLS but I will say, it has a red front door and a face that looks like an owl with massive slanting eyebrows.

When I see a sign like this, I don’t think of great furniture deals. Instead, I reach frantically for the wipes and pray that I’ve got a spare change of clothes in the car.

STOREWIDE? Are you kidding me? How many wipes do you think that would take?

Much has been said about the Idaho Bloggirls get-together last weekend. The other attendees’ narrations of the evening are a lot of fun but a bit exaggerated to make it sound like THE BEST NIGHT EVER!!!!

I’m worried people are getting jealous so I think it’s time I share my version of the events. Basically all we did was sit around, eat potatoes and surf the web. A few people talked via instant messenger across the table on their laptops.

The truth is, we’re all so socially inept, it’s become increasingly hard to speak with our voices or look at someone without a computer screen as a shield. Thank goodness Karen was able to find a restaurant with wireless internet AND killer french fries. Sadly, most of the girls forgot their webcams so I didn’t actually get to see them speak or move.

Man, those mashed potatoes were creamy.

I was able to pass my camera around the table and have everyone take pictures of themselves, which I then photoshopped together to make it look like we actually interacted.

Karli, Stephanie and “Elizabeth”, the girl Stephanie brought to trick us into thinking she has friends in real life

Mary, April, Beth

Heather and Taffi

Emily, Alicia, Moi (yes, I do have a body to go with the floating head), and Brooke

It’s been said by many people that we were all afraid someone would turn out to be an old hairy man. No one was old, I was the only one that sounded like a man (it was a cold, I swear) and none but Alicia was plagued with facial hair.

Karen and Heather are both lovely girls, AND no one ever said they don’t have freakishly long tongues. They made us proud.

Erin, my longtime “real” friend and new blogging friend looks exactly like Natalie Portman. Feel free to check out her site and encourage her.

Honestly, to quote Mr. Bingley, “Upon my honour I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life, as I [did that] evening; and there [were] several of them, you see, uncommonly pretty.” We had a blast and I hope to meet many more of you, my internet girlfriends.

A girl in every “port”, ya know?

Also – Did anyone else see David Hasselhoff crying at the end of American Idol? Yeah… me too.

Um… buying a house while selling a house is WAY more complicated than just buying a house.

That is all.

P.S. Thanks for all the great tips. If I live through this week, I may get the chance to use them.

So we’re a-movin’. I’m not an experienced mover or a shaker. Okay, that’s a lie. I can shake a little boo-tay when called upon. I’ve also moved a lot but this is my first experience moving with kids or into a single-family home. I am stinkin’ excited but also scared and I have an insane amount of stuff to get done… and here I blog.

It does help that we’ve hired Robo-Realtor. This woman has been cleaning my kitchen, putting in laundry loads, rearranging things and bringing in all kinds of furniture and home décor items that she thinks I’ll give back to her after she sells my house. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

The house is starting to look so great, I may not want to leave it after all. I’ll just live here with Robo-Realtor’s belongings and maybe she’ll use her laser eye beams to demolish the unit next-door and then plant us a lovely lawn. She is working so hard for us and is so sweet with the kids. She is an amazing advisor.

Please give me moving and packing advice today. How do I stay sane while showing the house? What do I do? How do I organize? Help please.

The three wonderful ladies at MommyBloggers have gotten together to send a fellow breeding cyber pontificator to BlogHer this summer.

I’m shocked and more than way excited to be the one they chose to send. I’m guessing in the end they picked the applicant who could benefit most from meeting all the amazing women there and basking in their wise bloggishness. I am seriously so grateful and so nervous. Chris has graciously offered to take me in off the street so we can be hotel roomies. Now all I have left to take care of is airfare…

Any takers? If you have airmiles or Benjamins you’d like to donate to send me from Seattle to San Jose, you can expect to receive your very own Daring-Young-Hand-Crafted Disney princess dress or other costume of your choice in time for Halloween this year. Here are some samples of my work:

What? You don’t usually spend $250 on Halloween costumes for your kids? I weep for them.

I also weep for Alicia who will be paying dearly for the unflattering pictures she posted of me on her blog today. I have PhotoShop and I’m not afraid to use it. As I repeatedly tell Laylee, there will be consequences… and they will happen on approximately Wednesday. Tomorrow I’m gonna be asking for moving tips.

Magoo took his first unassisted steps while I was out of town and Laylee greeted me this morning by telling me that she had goobies in her eyes last night. It’s okay because she took them out of her eyes and fed them to the monsters. Hmm…okay. Welcome home to me. The trip was great (details to follow) but I sure missed these crazy kids… and Dan, don’t get me started. That man is sweetness personified.