Andrea's Adventures in Binkyland

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jacks

Ahh, baseball, the all-American pastime. The crack of the bat hitting a ball, the roar of the crowd, the smell of beer and hot dogs, the warmth of the summer sun at your back. We went to the Mets game today, and got close to none of these things.

When we started toward the park, it was a lovely day, close to 70 degrees and sunny. The rain started about the time we hit the highway. But the tickets had been a gift to Matt's grandmother, and we didn't want to deny her her day at the park. So like little soldiers, we trooped into the park, endured the light drizzle with good humor, and set ourselves to have a good time.

Three innings later, I'm cold, wet, and huddled under a broken umbrella with a nursing baby who needs a nap but wants to See The Interesting People, Mommy, So Cut Out This Blanket Garbage. (It's a good thing the lactivist in me isn't so hung up on modesty, anymore.) I have a splitting sinus headache. My back hurts. My nose is running. I am tired. The good humor has long since expired, and the vendor calling "Getcher ice cold soda!" does not seem aware of the irony vis a vis coldness and wetness no longer being top selling points.

Thankfully, we packed it in and went home not long after that. The day wasn't a total loss, though; we went to my new favorite Italian restaurant, had a fabulous time and ate far too much, and then got soft-serve ice cream at a store that sold a disturbing amount of low-carb food products (such as pasta, breakfast cereal, granola, and bread mixes. So wrong and against nature.)

Sasha also seems to be aware that she is falling into the "merely average" range in the race to hit developmental milestones, and so today has taken big strides toward standing on her own. She's been doing it all day, up to 20 seconds at a time. She's both pulled up to stand and then let go, and also stood up from a crouch without holding onto anything. Funny how her advances are sudden, now, rather than gradual, the way they used to be.

My kitchen is: Really not so bad, but maybe I should have another party to clean it up again.

Birthdays and Tigers and Zebras, Oh My!

Just the zebras for today, but I'm going to be plugging in a couple of entries for last weekend in their correct dates. Look for May 25 and 26, coming soon! Featuring all-new narrative on our trip to the Bronx Zoo and Sasha's First Birthday bash!

In the meantime, let's get to the zebras. On Thursday, I went to a sort of sales inspiration seminar for my employer. The speaker was Tom Brown, a terrific guy who has written Zebras Don't Wear Pinstripes. Now, shattering my sales quota for this year isn't something that I'd had in mind, but it was interesting, nonetheless; my boss gave me his book, and over the next few weeks I'm going to look at it to see how I can apply these ideas to promoting Smart Llama. Let's all hope he regrets setting me on this path!

Actually, my boss has been behaving in some interesting ways lately, and I'm trying to figure out what it could all mean. I've been doing a lot of demos and conferences with him, and it looks like he's trying to get me to understand the business' Big Picture; but I'm not really getting the kind of technical projects I can sink my teeth into. Meanwhile, one of my other coworkers is getting swamped with a lot of projects, many of which I could handle just as easily as he, if not easier. Odd, all very odd. But then, I've never quite understood the dynamic at my company.

Anyway, back to the seminar. Beyond the subtle and inscrutable implications for my job in having been to such an event in the first place, there were amusing events! Anecdotes for me to recount!

There were naturally a few team-building activities. That's how this kind of seminar always plays out. The first one was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich speed contest. I was assigned to be a sandwich builder, and I was partnered with a construction supervisor. A useless one, at that. The challenge: make a legitimate PB&J as fast as you can. My knives blazed! My condiments glopped! I matched the record for sandwich-building speed at Mr. Brown's seminars: A mighty 15 seconds! As my fabulous prize, I got 100 fake pesos. Plus I got to keep the sandwich. Woohoo!

My partner for the PB&J contest was an interesting specimen of a human being. Sales staff at its worst. For some intangible reason, he rubbed me the wrong way. Not knowing much more about him than what I gathered from a really quite shallow interaction over the course of 6 hours, I still got a strong opinion on him: He's the kind of guy that cheats on his wife. He tells racist jokes on the golf course. He skips his kids' ballet recitals and soccer games because he's got a deal to close, and he screens his mom's phone calls. I don't know what about him provoked this negative reaction, because it's not typical of me, and there are sales people I've admired and liked, I swear it!

The second seminar challenge involved a puzzle: two bent nails hooked together. Without speaking, you and your partner both had to unhook and rehook the nails. This is the sort of puzzle I can do in my sleep, so I did the unhooking and rehooking right quickly, and then I positioned the nails such that my partner couldn't help but get them apart again, took 'em back, positioned them so that he couldn't help but hook 'em back together again. And we won golf towels. Woohoo!

After that, I decided it would be impolitic to continue winning their little challenges. But that's what they get for putting technical staff in with a bunch of sheep^D^D^D^D^D salesmen. And me the only girl, to boot. So not a level playing field, the suckers.

My kitchen is: filled with balloons and streamers. I guess I should take the birthday decorations down sometime.

Social Advancement

Today, Sasha hit her little friend Lauren and took Lauren's binky out of her mouth. Sasha is clearly forming the valuable life skills she needs in the jungle that is daycare.

I am so proud.

One Year

Once upon a time, there was a baby girl. In the fullness of time, she learned to roll and sit and babble, and one day, her parents realized she was one year old. So of course they threw a big party.

This whole affair came about because of my pigheaded decision that my daughter deserved better than some store-bought birthday cake. I am decidedly on the snobbish side of the culinary fence, and that meant no buttercream, no partially hydrogenated palm oil, no saccharine expression in icing on my Sasha's cake.

This also gave me an opportunity to exact a passive-aggressive revenge on my in-laws. I do not care for chocolate. I enjoy it from time to time, certainly, but there are many other things in life I enjoy much more. My hidden agenda, therefore, was to offer no chocolate to my guests, because when I have dessert with that side of the family, I am never offered anything else. So HAH. Take THAT!

This was the first cake I ever made. No, no cake mix was involved. For those who want the details: It was a buttermilk cake in two layers, filled with vanilla pastry cream and strawberries, frosted with whipped cream, with ladyfingers, crushed sugar wafers, and gumdrops as decoration. Not bad, but I'll have to do something more impressive next year. Perhaps something involving fondant.

The birthday girl had a fabulous time at her party for the first couple of hours. She particularly enjoyed eating the pita and hummus. Yay, another way to get protein and fat into her! Sadly, she petered out in the middle of the party and had to go down for a nap. As a result, she never actually ATE any of her birthday cake, and the presents had to wait until much later in the evening.

Before and during the party, Michelle and Jake were absolute heroes. They were willing kitchen assistants, decorators, baby wranglers, and more! Jake grilled out in the pouring rain! Michelle suffered the grossness of salmonella juice to help me assemble chicken skewers! Without them, I would not have pulled off the party as gracefully as I did.

Of course, without them, I also wouldn't have gone to the zoo the day before and would have done a lot of party prep a lot earlier. But I am still exceedingly grateful. Michelle also took a lot of photos and assembled a wonderful photo gallery. Check it out for a more complete record of events.

Later on, we all changed into our skivvies and checked out the loot. Sasha got a lot of fun toys, and was even willing to share. Such a good girl!

It should also be noted that Timothy enjoyed Sasha's toys, too. I think he was getting high off new plastic fumes or something.

My kitchen is: Actually cleaner the day after the party (and before the cleaners came) than it had been the morning *before* the party. Funny how that works. Although we did discover an odd little mystery: We bought a package of 22 hot dogs, and 3 packages totaling 24 buns. We were left with no hot dogs and 6 buns. Hmmm.

Ph34R

Sasha has discovered the limitless enjoyment to be provided by the buttons on the TV. For example, the TV/Video button.

Back to Normal

I am wresting myself, finally, from the clutches of a bone-crushing fatigue that has gripped me for the past week or two. Last week, I had a conference in Atlantic City to attend, and since Sasha is still not quite ready to try going overnight without me, she and Matt attended. I have had more restful weeks. And Matt deserves some sort of Congressional honor for his valiant efforts at handling Sasha by himself for three days (but not nights.)

A lot of exciting stories could be told here, about Atlantic City, Sasha's new tricks, my first Mother's Day, but I'm still in a delicate stage of recovery, and writing this journal should not be a burden. So *poof* those exciting stories are gone, I have no obligation to report them. Sorry, folks!