she just keeps growing up

In less than a week my baby girl will be five years old.  It’s so clichéd but I really can’t believe how fast these five years have gone by!

We transitioned her into a toddler bed when she was 2 1/2.

Look at how little she was!  She still had her pacifier!

And now she’s a giant.  Ray set up her bed today and we let her pick out her own bedding set.  Of course she chooses the one with the guitars.  After I spread it out I noticed it also says ‘I love boys.’  Yay.

She seems pretty happy with the bed, right?  It’s not a strange bed to her too.  It’s the bed that she sleeps in at my parents’ house when she spends the night there.  She was not happy about moving into a bigger bed until we told her she could have Ba-Chan’s bed.

Of course, she loves the bed but for some reason she wants to hang out underneath it.  She brought her blanket, CD player and a book of Japanese Fairy Tales with her.  The book has a CD that reads along with the stories so that’s what she’s got in there.

She was excited to go to bed for once!  Hopefully she has sweet dreams and doesn’t fall out of the bed!

tea time

I love, love tea.  Mostly I alternate between Earl Gray with cream and sugar and a blend of Jasmine Green Tea and Rooibos Tropica from Teavana.  Here’s how you can make my perfect tea.  You’ll need to take a trip to Teavana first and pick up a few things, but it will be sooooooo worth it!

Heat your water to 175°.

The Rooibos Tropica I get from Teavana, the Jasmine we get from an Asian market in San Jose.  This was ridiculously cheap compared to buying it at Teavana and it’s still super good.

Teavana sells German Rock Cane Sugar.  In my opinion it is what makes everything soooooo perfect.

This is the large Perfect Tea Maker.  It makes about 3.5 cups.  It’s much easier than using any other kind of steeper.  Believe me, we’ve tried ‘em all.

Making a cup for both Ray and I it takes 3 scoops of each the Jasmine, the Rooibos & the sugar.

Add the water.

Let it steep for 3 minutes.

The best thing about the Perfect Tea Maker is that you just set it on top of your cup and the liquid comes out straining all by itself!

Now go and enjoy your perfect cup of tea!

I cannot wait

photo courtesy of slashfilm.com

the best thing

The best thing about having a Nook is being able to put it in a giant ziploc bag and lay in the bathtub without fear of dropping the book in the water!

virals

Definitely a step above the normal YA books.  Kathy Reichs brings her technical knowledge to teen reading with Virals. 

Tory Brennan is niece to Temperance Brennan and it shows.  Her intellect has got to be genius levels and her interest in all things science definitely comes from her aunt.  Living on a small island of the coast of South Carolina she hangs out with three boys who also live on the island.  Each member of the group brings along his/her own gifts and together they seem to have no boundaries.  Not a stranger to breaking rules Tory convinces the guys to explore places they shouldn’t be exploring and they discover a mystery that is over 40 years old.

Kathy Reichs does not believe teen readers are dummies.  She holds nothing back in Virals.  Explaining technical jargon just as she does in the Temperance Brennan novels.  The only difference really is that instead of being an well know forensic anthropologist, Tory is a off the charts genius high school student.

Tory is almost like a younger version of Tempe.  Slightly irritating and also easily irritated she tends to get herself in situations she really should try to steer away from.  However, though sometimes Tempe’s escapades frustrate me (a 40 something year old woman should really know better by now) Tory’s adventure is forgiven because, well, she’s a teenager.

The story was fast paced and exciting and though technical quite easy to understand.  I would almost go as far as to say I liked this book better than any Tempe book so far! 

entice

The third book in what is easily becoming a never-ending, boring series.  Ugh.

If you haven’t read Need or Captivate don’t read any further.  Spoiler alert on those two.

Zara is hell bent on saving Nick from Valhalla where he has been taken after being nearly killed by the evil pixie king Frank.  Yeah, scary name, I know.  How do you come up with Frank when you’ve got names like Issie, Devyn, Astley and Zara?  Anyway, Frank kills Nick and a valkyrie takes Nick away to Valhalla.  That all happened in Captivate.  Now Zara, a newly minted pixie queen is willing to risk everything, including her friends and family to bring Nick back.

It takes FOREVER!  The book is only 264 pages long but it feels like an eternity.  I can’t say that I really even loved the other two books, I just thought they were okay.  Now this one … meh.  I’m done.

The book ends with a huge dose of uncertainly leaving the door wide open for yet another book.  Why can’t anyone just write trilogies?  What’s wrong with ending a series and moving on to something else?

Yeah, so to sum it up, not my favorite book.

from my broken heart

I said I was going to start posting my old writings here, but that last time I did that was in February in this post here.  I am nothing if not inconsistent.

So here’s a couple of poems.  I’m not sure when they’re written.  I think one was probably one of the last poems I wrote, sometime in 2004.  The others were probably written sometime in the late 90’s.  They’re not award winning or anything, but I like ‘em.

untitled

how does it change

without anyone ever knowing

one day you wake up and realize

the love that burned so bright

has died

there are no harsh words

or acts of infidelity

there is only nothing

yet here I am

holding onto nothing

as tightly as I can

there is a silence

that neither will breach

not one word of comfort

is exchanged by either

we stay here only because

we know nothing else

there is a hope that lives

inside us both

things will go back

to the way it was before

and maybe it will

but no one has built the bridge

that will fill the gap between us

so for the moment we stand

at opposite sides of a river

filled only with regret

with fear that jumping in

will drown what little we have left

how much you don't know

she laughs out loud

knowing you don't understand her

although you think you do

her insanity bubbles through her body

and no one knows how close

to the surface it is

she implores you with her eyes

please help, they cry

but you only see the green of her irises

and you think you find her beautiful

while she calculates

how much weight she may have gained

and how she can scrub the dirt from her fingers

to finally cleanse them

from the evils she has done

she wishes for nothing more

than normalcy

but at the same time in her mind

she giggles at herself

how pathetic can one person be

sometimes she wants to scream

she likes the way the demons

scratch her throat on the way out

but somehow they always find a way

back into her soul

precious years

it seems i spent my whole life

searching for happiness

like it was something i could buy

at a low, low price

or now, with shipping and handling

delivered right to my front door

it seems no matter what i tried

or where i went, it wasn't to be found

and then it came to me

that happiness was these

precious years

these dreams that i have dreamt

the tears that i have cried

and the smiles that i have smiled

and all i had to do was

look inside myself and see

how i shined