Some things that are making me happy:

Mon.thly.Info - This site keeps track of your menstrual cycles and predicts when I will have my period (and ovulation, if I was into the idea more babies right now). It even e-mails a helpful reminder two days before the “event”, so I don’t have to make a rushed trip to The Store That Shall Not Be Named for tampons. Brilliant use of technology.

Ruche - This online boutique has a feeling that’s similar to Anthropologie, yet I don’t have to sell my first-born child to afford it. Also: some organic cotton items. I highly approve. I bought this Magenta Flowing Forest Scarf, this Wooden Branch Charm Necklace, and these Leafy Filigree Earrings. I wish I wasn’t too fussy to buy shoes online, because these Brown Lacey Lace Flats are calling me.

The local library added shopping baskets for use by patrons. As someone who wanders among the shelves while balancing a precarious stack of books, this addition is greatly appreciated. Now if only they could block MySpace on the public computers…Thirty-two computers, and every one is occupied by a preteen.

Twitter - Now that I have an iPhone, it is 10x more fun. I can twitter while doing interesting things, as opposed to every post being along the lines of: “Sitting at my desk. Working.” TwitPic is my friend. (Not so much: the Twitter application for Facebook. I gave it the boot after it filled up my profile page with status updates, making me look like a loser who hangs out on social networking sites all day long.)

Brady fell in love with a kiddie piano at FAO Schwarz and I hesistantly plunked down $50 to bring this one home (because a pink Baby Grand for $175? Not happening.) Would he continue to be enamored with it enough to justify the cost (as well as the hassle of dragging it through Caesars Palace)? Oh, yes. Brady thinks he’s Baby Elton John, tickling the ivories all day long (and sometimes teething on the piano lid, using it to pull himself to a semi-standing position, or falling over and hitting his head on the keys with a resounding “PLONK!”).

School starts in less than a week, and we have yet to receive our books. I can’t get organized, and my sanity depends on organization.

I’ve got an inbox full of correspondence I’ve neglected.

My hip is acting up for no discernible reason (aside from scoliosis).

Brady was fussier than usual.

And my grandpa died this afternoon.

Yeah, it was a bad day.

At least I have this to cheer me:

Brady with the piece of tortilla he mooched at Chipotle, 8/3/08

• disposing of plastic food storage containers with no matching lids (or vice versa),
• recycling cardboard boxes strewn about the garage,
• putting books on the bookcase we moved upstairs,
• packing up old school books to send back to K12 to make room for the new books that will arrive any day now,
• posting our old microwave on Freecycle,
• or pulling the creeping weeds of evilness that invaded our yard.

One project is photogenic enough to warrant mention, though. Using this starched fabric decal tutorial, I added a giraffe to Brady’s room.

The recessed area above his bed was definitely lacking something. I wanted an easily removed, cheap bit of artwork since the Pottery Barn jungle animal motif will disappear when the baby outgrows his crib. Using this lamp for inspiration:

I bought two yards of white and yellow gingham fabric for $2 at our local Store-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named, as well as a 52 cent scrap of orange. I made an enlarged paper pattern of the giraffe using Rapid Resizer, cut out the body, and stuck the fabric up there using the tutorial directions. I was concerned that the bumpy wall texture (prevalent in Arizona houses) would cause a heinous end result, but it worked out fine (although smooth walls = best results). I then cut some freehanded orange spots; in retrospect, I would have liked a lighter orange, but not enough to warrant a trip to another fabric store.

Kyle thinks that I should add a tree. And clouds. And a bird. (This project was easy, but not THAT easy.)

I vaguely recall that this was originally supposed to be a knitting blog. My knitting output has diminished greatly since the baby arrived. (Note: I was knitting prior to his arrival, but failed to document any of it. It involved booties and hats that were outgrown in the blink of an eye, because Brady is in the 90th percentile for height/weight.) But while we’re discussing crafty stuff, I’ll post this:

The second sleeve to my #@!* Hourglass Sweater, which had better fit this time around. I am so close to finishing it, but am so bored of endless stockinette stitch with Classic Elite Bam Boo (Bougainvilla) yarn that hurts my hands.

And this:

A Shadow Scarf in Knitpicks Shimmer (Bayou). I was working on one of these before my lace yarn met a tragic end and I frogged the whole thing. (Pussycat has only attacked the yarn for this scarf during the initial winding, resulting in minor damages. Knock on wood.) I like knitting lace. It appeals to my perfectionist side. This project is highly portable with an easily memorized pattern (about all I can hope for at the moment) and the resulting fabric is super soft and cuddly. Yay!

It started with our trip to Michigan, which wreaked havoc on his schedule. Signs of never-before-seen crankiness appeared. I began getting up in the middle of the night to quell the fussing in the Pack N’ Play across the room. My dad and I took Brady for numerous outings, as riding in the stroller was the only thing that ensured contentment (as long as we didn’t slow our pace, even to window shop).

He amazed our relatives with his newfound sitting and rolling prowess, but also began whining for food like an insistent dog. I think this habit started with a slice of pickle I gave him to teethe on, and was reinforced with bits of baked beans and melted marshmallow slipped to him by family members on the 4th of July. I knew that I was in serious trouble when he had a five-alarm meltdown because I wouldn’t allow him to drink my pop. (It finally dawned on me to buy teething biscuits- messy, but proffering them at meal times maintains the peace. His new fancy European cow sippy cup, courtesy of Grandpa, is also of great help.)

So traveling with Brady was not a rousing success, but his bad temper was manageable because there was a constant supply of adoring people to hand him off to. I thought he would sort himself out once we returned home, but then came a fever, followed by…

Chicken pox. (Caught from Aidan, who had the vaccine and acquired a mild case that I thought might be bug bites or an allergic reaction.) Thankfully, Brady’s case of chicken pox was also fairly tame (in comparison to mine*), but it certainly did nothing to improve his mood. He is now in the recovery phase, but the past week has been a blur of toys-whinging-bottle-lullaby-nap-repeat. (Also, I feel guilty over the fact that Brady traveled on an airplane at the height of contagiousness and exposed numerous people to his germs, including my pox-free brother.)

I am mentally preparing myself for tomorrow. Brady has an appointment with the family doctor, which will undoubtedly include shots of some sort. Fun!

* Yours truly, with chicken pox:

As opposed to the ramshackle old cargo vans plastered with stickers that travel down our streets, hawking a wide assortment of Mexican candy (possibly containing lead) in addition to the traditional sherbert cartoon character heads with gumball eyes.

And why do they all play a tinny version of the “Popeye” theme song?

As this post proves, the rumors of my demise were patently false. There were a variety of reasons behind my blog neglect, which included:

• An incident (unrelated to this blog) which made me question the wisdom of making personal information readily available on the internets,
• Pregnancy and the resulting confinement to my bed/couch, which limited my blogging inspiration to such scintillating topics as “Why hasn’t someone at All My Children told Jacob Young that his hair looks wretched?”,
• The arrival of Baby Brady and the discovery that followed: One-handed typing while holding an infant? It’s quite difficult.

Much to my chagrin, our cable provider does not carry NASA TV, so we were forced to watch the feed through the NASA website. Thanks to CNN Headline News, we discovered that this feed is not quite live, and lags behind by 10 seconds or so. But the alternative was watching 10 minutes of CNN trying too hard to link this mission with the Challenger tragedy (From what I caught out of the corner of my eye, it went something like this: “Barbara Morgan trained with Christa McAuliffe! Who died! When the Challenger exploded!” <insert footage of disaster here>), followed by 30 seconds of actual launch footage drowned out by the yappy anchor, followed by a story about about a convenience store clerk who threatened a robber with his own gun. So NASA TV web feed it was.

I actually used to watch NASA TV when I was a kid. Not only the launches- the boring stuff in between, with the little map tracking the shuttle and dry, technical communications exchanges. I also fantasized about going to Space Camp, like this local kid that collected enough soda cans to pay for his trip. And one of my most beloved books was The Space Shuttle Operator’s Manual, complete with fold-out reproduction of the shuttle instrument panel to facilitate pretend shuttle missions.

I recently unearthed a stack of Challenger-related newspaper articles that I saved at the tender age of seven. That was the first shuttle launch that I ever watched, thanks to a snow day spent at my dad’s house. I had two cheapo Christa McAuliffe posters from the NEA and a model of the Challenger…I found the whole thing to be quite exciting. I remember being very confused when the explosion happened (Does solid rocket booster separation make so much smoke?), completely traumatized when I figured out what had happened, and then became obsessed with the whole thing for an extended period of time. I acquired more posters, more articles, and checked out a massive adult non-fiction book about the tragedy from the local library a year or two later.

I was a weird child. And I never made it to Space Camp.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that I am ready to write a respectable blog post. After all, I still feel kind of wretched and the kids just busted out the guitar and accordion (seriously). But I didn’t want to leave you hanging.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging…

The leitmotif of this week is “Denise in Peril”.

Part 1, Where Denise Is Almost Swept Away In A Flood:

Monday marked the arrival of some crazy monsoon weather, which happened to roll in while the kids were at dance class. I immediately thought of Kyle standing at the bus stop (for the free shuttle that runs from the main university campus to the east campus right across the street from our house), drenched in the downpour. Since we happened to be relatively close by, I called and offered to pick him up from work. While we were talking, the power went out at his office, meaning the whole situation took on a greater sense of urgency.

I collected the kids and started to slowly make my way to Tempe. The rain brings out an amazing amount of stupidity in Arizona drivers, it was rush hour, it was raining so hard that I could barely make out the lane lines- I was pretty stressed out by the time I exited the freeway. As I followed the surface streets to our destination, the level of water in the street suddenly increased. As in, so deep that one could not see the sidewalks or median. The police had seen fit to close the side streets in the surrounding area, but left everyone to slog their way through something resembling more a river than a street. To make matters worse, the power outage extended to the street lights.

Visions of the kids and I being rescued from the roof of our car on the local news broadcast ran through my head (but there would be no news helicopters to show my plight). I saw a man on the sidewalk nearby walking along with the water lapping his knees and I knew I was in trouble. Because things looked a heck of a lot worse at the intersection ahead, I said a prayer and gunned through the water into a grocery store parking lot. This conveniently allowed me to cut through to the street near Kyle’s building, where he was standing outside along with other employees who were contemplating the best approach for wading to their cars parked down the street. Things got better after that- if you can call creeping along for 1 1/2 hours in heavy traffic “better”.

And to think all of this was caused by 0.57″ of precipitation.

Note to the city of Tempe: Invest some tax dollars in a better drainage system.

Note to Michael Crow: It’s kind of absurd to expect your professional staff to pay $180-660 a year for the privilege of rolling up their pant legs, taking off their shoes (which may float away down the river/street- true story!), and wading for a great distance to get their cars. I’m sure your gold-plated Bentley is parked right next to your office, so you may have difficulty empathizing with their situation…but trust me, it truly sucks.

Part 2, Where Denise Is Followed By A Mysterious Person:

I left the house to run to the post office today with the boys in tow. As we pulled out of the driveway, a man sitting in a car parked in front of the vacant neighboring house pulled out behind us. I had a suspicious feeling about the situation, so I followed the roundabout back the direction we came. And the guy followed. So I took a turn down some random little side street- and he did too! I determined that it was time for some evasive action, so I started doing some crafty manuevers and eventually lost the car that was apparently tailing us. Quite weird and creepifying.

So if anyone reading this has hired a private investigator to follow me: he’s not very subtle, and you should get your money back. And in the event that you’re a stalker: I am totally going to take you out with my handy-dandy pellet gun.

So stay tuned for further adventures, as it’s only Wednesday.

I usually choose to sit in the car, because (a) I prefer to sit in the shade (reduced risk of skin cancer, you know- redheads have to think about these things), (b) I dislike endlessly discussing the social lives of my children, and (c ) I’d rather knit or type or listen to the news on satellite radio than expend the energy required to fit in with them. So I paint myself as the anti-social mom.

This thought always lingers in the back of my head…Maybe I’m not cut out for the stay-at-home mom thing. Is it a requirement to be a slightly vapid pod person to qualify as a successful parent, or are there other women out there like me? Quirky, strong, intelligent, entirely imperfect moms?

In an alternate universe somewhere, Denise is probably writing a doctoral thesis or launching a hostile takeover. Here in the real world, I sit in the car and ponder the course of my life.

Since I was a little girl, I’ve played in a bracket pool. Dad used to run a large pool comprised mainly of school district employees, and I have fond memories of him shuffling through the stack of photocopied brackets as he tallied the points by hand. The mantle has passed from Dad to someone else and the pool is maintained online now, but I still see the familiar names of teachers who knew me as a redheaded sprite with pigtails. (And then I relish obliterating them. Mwah-ha-ha!)

When I was younger, I would pencil in teams based on the appeal of their mascots or an unsubstantiated hunch. I progressed to following the higher seeds, throwing in some requisite upsets for good measure. My bracket-picking technique has now been refined somewhat. I spend the days leading up to March Madness cruising the sports websites, armed with a notebook in which I tally up the various experts’ opinions. It works for me- my finish is always respectable, and (most importantly) always ahead of my husband (who is a sports fan).

This year was a bit dicey. Since we were in Vegas when the bracket was released, I didn’t have time to do my usual amount of research, so I did an rushed job of it on the night the entries closed. I was resigned to not placing, so imagine my surprise when I saw this on Sunday:

(That’s me in second place, under someone who picked Ohio State to win.)

If Florida wins tonight, I am going to be over $400 richer. I will also be able to do a gloating “Winner!” dance around Kyle, and that is always a good thing.

If I lose… well, at least I can still do the “Winner!” dance around Kyle.