To join in the fun:

CREATE YOUR BAND NAME & ALBUM COVER:

To Do This

1 – Go to random Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Go to random Quotations Page:
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the album title.

3 – Look at the pretty Flickr pictures at
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 – Use Photoshop, Gimp, etc. to put it all together.

5 – Post it to FB in a note with this text and TAG the friends you want to join in.

Make beautiful music!

To get me back into writing — even just until I decide what changes to make — here’s a quickie meme from It’s Not All Mary Poppins:

What is your salad dressing of choice?
Balsamic Vinaigrette

What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?
There are so many I like (and NONE where I live, grumble). I’ll say Saigon Cafe (mmmm, summer rolls and noodle bowls!) in Colorado Springs.

What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of?
Anything Asian. Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai…perhaps I could pass on Korean, though.

What are your pizza toppings of choice?
Mushrooms, spinach, feta cheese, garlic. Man, I miss pizza.

What do you like to put on your toast?
Cinnamon spiced apple sauce

What is your wallpaper on your computer?
A deserted beach in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica — from my honeymoon in December 2006.

What color cell phone do you have?
Black. They tried to sell me a pink one. Black.

Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right.

Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
Tonsils. I believe I was seven? Wisdom teeth the summer after my first year in college.

What is the last heavy item you lifted?
I hit the gym this morning. Does that count?

Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
I don’t suppose drinking myself into oblivion is what you mean? Eh, it’s been a while since that one, too.

If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
Absolutely not.

If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
I’d change the spelling of my middle name — almost did it when I signed my marriage license, but signed my regular middle out of habit. Oops.

Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
Depends. Picante? Bring it on. Sriacha? Hmmm. That’s tougher. Habanero? No way in hell. I like my tastebuds where they are, thanks.

How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
One, but they’re the wrong size, so I never wear them. Anyone want some nearly-new size 9 Earth Shoes?

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Interesting.

Favorite Season?
Oh, I love-love-love Fall. That one week in September when the aspen leaves turn up in the mountains is the best hiking weather, ever.

Favorite Holiday?
Thanksgiving. All the family togetherness, none of the gift-buying stress.

Favorite Day of the week?
Monday. Sounds crazy, huh? Keep in mind that I’m a SAHM to two kids, and the elder is at school on MWF — after two long weekend days on duty with two kids, it feels like a vacation!

Favorite Month?
September and April. I love the months when the seasons change!

Missing someone?
DH is at a conference, but since he just left yesterday, I’m still enjoying being alone.

What can you not wait to do?
I’d say grad school — but considering how I COULD have started and haven’t yet…that doesn’t work.

What’s the last movie you saw?
Hauru no ugoku shiro (Howl’s Moving Castle). We’ve been on a Miyazaki kick lately — Maya seems to really dig his work. Since she’s not reading yet, we stick to the dubs.

Do you smile often?
I’m an ENFP. What do you think? (That would be YES.)

1. I was also a single-mom then found my guy. Name one benefit of raising a child on your own, and one difficulty of co-parenting.

2. How do/will you discuss religion with your daughter, and do you (secretly) hope she follows your own path?

3. Does knowing typology (Myers-Briggs) help your relationships? Expain.

4. Describe your most difficult day as a mom.

5. Describe your fantasy job.

More on this tomorrow.

Thought: I am physically attracted to my partner.
Task: Think of one physical attribute you like.

Mmmmm. Yes. I’ll just pick one. Or two. Or three.

Mike has a smile that could stop traffic, complete with laugh lines that indicate a long-held sense of humor about life. From the very first phone call, I’ve loved his voice. When you put those together, you get a laugh that could melt the coldest blizzard…a perfect storm of attraction. Yum.

Thought: I can easily remember romantic, special times in our marriage.
Task: Pick one such time and think about it.

I skipped this yesterday. Somehow, even though I know it would help my attitude, it’s kind of tough to build up motivation do do this when deep down, you want to throttle your husband. I got over it. Ah, mawidge.

On with the exercise:

On our first *real* date (ie, alone, no child along), Mike and I had dinner together at a lovely Indian restaurant in the Cherry Creek area of Denver. The setting was fantastic, and for the first time, we were able to have a meal complete with adult conversation uninterrupted by a toddler. Bliss.

So, what did we talk about? Why, parenting, of course. (Figures. The whole eight days we spent in Costa Rica without Maya? We talked about her all. the. time. You don’t know how much you’re going to miss your kids. Maya, on the other hand didn’t ask for me a single time.) Ahem…where was I? Right, parenting.

Mike started to tell me his philosophy on raising children — one which centered largely on letting a child be who they are, and supporting them as they find their own way, rather than pushing them to conform to some preconceived notion he might have had. For some people, this might not have qualified as romantic. For me, I was nearly in tears. I’ve got an amazing man on my hands, did you know that?

Thought: I can easily speak of the good times in our marriage.
Task: Pick one good time and write a sentence about it.

Little romantic gestures don’t come naturally to my INTP spouse (who sees them as vaguely ridiculous), but knowing that I’ve said I enjoy flowers, he showed up the other night with a bright bouquet. The flowers are lovely; but, his willingness to listen to the little things I’ve told him can help me feel loved…priceless.

Day 1

Thought: I am genuinely fond of my partner.
Task: List one characteristic you find endearing or lovable.

This is easy. I *am* genuinely fond of my husband. Do I only get to list one characteristic?

Mike has a wacky, irreverent sense of humor, and he applies it to our marriage, parenting…pretty much any place where we might otherwise be at risk of taking ourselves too seriously. In the parenting area, this is especially fun — I’ve had this sort of attitude all along, but the only place I’ve had to talk about it was in my daughter’s blog (which is woefully out of date, and I’m considering switching to something that is a family site instead). While it was fun to write about my own offbeat approach to parenting and to get comments from strangers and online friends, it’s sooooo much better to share parenting with someone who *gets* me.

The other morning, we had a disagreement — maybe not even a disagreement, but just a discussion left unfinished — about discipline. I found myself hemming and hawwing (are those words?) about my perceived disconnect for a while. Later, as I thought more rationally about our approach to discipline, I had a forehead-slapping DUH moment in which I realized that I was really splitting hairs. While we might not have been on exactly the same measure of music, we were on the same page, singing the same song. What was I nit-picking about? We have a blast becoming Maya’s parents together (even though I’m finding it difficult to loosen the control I’ve been used to exclusively holding), and it’s going to be exciting again when we have a child together someday.

Having someone who “gets” me so well is quite a rush.