Georgia on my mind...

Dear Peyton,

Thank you for the wonderful photos-- you are as cute as ever! I bet you are even cuter in person... and I would be able to verify that if only your Uncle [PH] would get his act together and order our plane tickets already! Please don't take it personally-- he's just very cheap and wants to make sure he gets the best deal. In fact, he was considering making us take the train down (20 hours on the train!) until he found out it was almost as expensive as a plane ticket (only four hours on the plane!) While most people would have rejected the train idea purely because of the time issue, I can assure you your Uncle PH still would have done it if it meant saving a couple more bucks.

I will keep telling your Uncle PH that a trip to Georgia means all those Wii games played late into the night with his brother-in-law get to be in person (perhaps you shouldn't listen to their language when that happens-- you don't need to know what "Suck it!" means just yet...)

I hope to see you very soon and will have plenty of kisses for you (and the loudest, flashiest, most inappropriate toy I can find... as long as I can sneak it past your mom).

Love, Aunt Busty

Happy Birthday, dude! And some other stuff.

Actually, it's not the blog's birthday.

It's my bloggy friend Pat's birthday. His *30th* birthday - which is kind of a big deal.

So if you get a chance, please endear him with happy birthday wishes and assure him that he is not old, particularly because every time he says that, it makes me feel older.

Pat, here's my gift to you:


What's that, you ask? What did I do this weekend? Well, I had fun. It involved singing Irish folk songs, singing karaoke (badly) after with my friend Henry (Pictured below. He's single, ladies. Just saying. Quite the catch. And totally made me look almost good at karaoke.) and some other fabulous friends and I topped it all off with a fun New Haven adventure that involved Frank Pepe's pizza *and* seeing dinosaurs (the Peabody museum at Yale).

All in all - good times.

Friday Favorites from SJ

So to pick up on Twitter's #followfriday trend (yes, I twitter. do you?), I have decided to declare Fridays "Favorite Fridays" and announce to you my five favorite things today. It could have just as easily been four, but I was feeling generous and optimistic.

Yay for Favorite things!

These things may change from day to day, but today, as of right now, these are my favorites.

Favorite childhood toy: Glamour Gals -- followed very closely by Lincoln Logs. The old school kind that were made of wood -- not those cheap plastic imitation wood kind.

Favorite blog post this week: This one, from Muffy. That may be the best birthday present ever. The only thing better than this would be Clive Owen himself. (My birthday is in July, Interweb. Just saying.)

Favorite food: the tomato, mozzarella and basil panini I ate yesterday. This will likely change this weekend when I eat something not canned or boxed.

Favorite girl scout cookie: Tagalongs have replaced Thin Mints this week. But I may need to do a blog poll to explore everyone else's thoughts about those Lemon ginger ones. I find them oddly fascinating and yet repellent.

Favorite song: Whiskey in the Jar because that's the kind of thing you listen to when you are dressed up like a Disney reject from Fantasyland.

How to get your house egged in three easy steps

Since we moved into our new-old house, we’ve been dealing with a “situation.” I have been transformed– kicking and screaming and with a lot of whining to the Pretend Husband– into the neighborhood witch. You know, that mean lady down the block who would keep your ball if it accidentally got thrown into her yard? That’s apparently me.

 We have a pond in our yard next to our house. It’s a nice pond that was one of the reasons I was most excited to move back to that house… and one of the reasons the PH was dreading it (silly lawyer with all his worrying about lawsuits!). It all started this winter when I looked out the window to see someone shoveling off the pond while his four kids ice skated around him. Wait, what?!? I hadn’t been on the ice, hadn’t checked to make sure it was safe and definitely hadn’t invited anyone to skate.

We let it go because we weren’t sure if my dad had given anyone permission to skate (and we were sure the ice was safe). But after talking to Dad and finding out he hadn’t given anyone blanket permission that would extend beyond him owning the home, then finding out a school vacation day had brought a whole bunch of kids onto the pond (without adults) while we were at work, we decided to needed to set some rules. For the record, I was all, “But not everyone is lucky enough to have a pond in their yard and it would be a good way to meet people and…” (The PH was all, “All we need is someone breaking through the ice and suing us! We could lose the house! How would you feel if someone got hurt in our yard?!?”) (The PH is a lot more logical than I am, obviously.)

I was all for holding neighborhood skate parties… until I looked out the window to see someone clearing the ice with a snow blower he had dragged down the road from a quarter-mile away and then was extremely dismissive when I went out to talk to him about our concerns. Then it was on like Donkey Kong.

So it’s been a struggle the last few months (until, thankfully, the ice melted) with a plan of attack that included me enlisting Neighbor Lady Z to keep watch (we have awesome neighbors who keep an eye on things for us and are willing to not only put up with us, but to lend us things and do things for us like moving our piano), me having to chase two 10-year-olds off the ice (“Did you know this is private property?” “Noooo.” “Really? Did you think it was a park? No, it’s my yard.”) and us having to consider asking the police to swing by our yard on school vacation days (which we luckily never had to do).

And I thought this had all ended (without me bitching and moaning about it on the blog even!) until I had a dream the other night that I looked outside to see that someone had set up those bounce house things on the edge of the pond. When I went outside, a couple of girls were hang gliding over the water and Neighbor Lady Z’s husband and kids were swimming in the pond. Then I got in a fight with Neighbor Lady Z’s husband because he thought I was being mean for asking everyone to get off our property (when in reality, he agrees with our concerns).

If we make it through the summer without having our cars broken into or our house egged, I will be shocked. And yes, I AM keeping your ball. Maybe next time you’ll be more careful where you throw it.

SJ's Weekend: A Brief Pictorial

I had fun. I had fake hair.



So awesome. I felt like a pop star. Except that my pop star was more like... an Irish Lady in Waiting. Which is what I was for a Renaissance dinner on Saturday. What. Are my glasses "not period?"


And then I got to be at a photo shoot for the New England Pirate Faire in Gloucester -- which was awesome. It was like being on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean. Except there was no Johnny Depp. Which was kind of disappointing. But it was still awesomely amazing.



How was your weekend?