She's Alive
I know it barely seems that way. To me too. I've been wanting to post for awhile and even have something to blog but haven't had time to download the pictures. I've got some serious catching up to do.
Mostly, I've been trying to catch up with my life and friends. Actually trying to be a little social. Buying off my friends with Starbucks and chocolate chip cookies to remind them to like me. Trying to get into the swing of things at C's school. It's nice to be there for drop off AND pick up. She's so loving it there. In fact, on Wednesday we were in the drop off line and I usually park and walk her in. I asked if she wanted to be dropped off and she said enthusiastically "YEAH!". So I pulled over, unbuckled the carseat and one of her teachers was there to great her. Got a quick hug and she ran out of the car. Can't ask for anything more than having your kid run into school.
Tazzie the wonder dog, aka Houdini, is still finding a way to escape from the backyard. This has been going on for about a month now. In the past, we've been able to find her escape route. Not this time. She's quite stealth. For those that don't know, this is a dog that has climbed trees 5 feet in the air to get over a chainlink fence. Crawled under said chainlink fence to get into Hidden Hills. That's happened lots of times. She's jumped over our side wall into the neighbor's yard countless times. Now she's getting out and going down the street or something. We don't really know. The only good thing (is there a good thing when your dog constantly escapes?) is that Tazzie is ridiculously smart. This is a dog that talks to you. She's got something to say all the time. That being said, she knows how to get home. Don't know where she goes but after about an hour or so, she's on the front doorstep. She either barks, Keely (the other dog) hears her and starts whining or several times now, Gregg's driven in the driveway and she's walked right into the garage.
I remember one time when both dogs escaped and C was less than a year old. I had been driving around the neighborhood looking for them. Went to the guard gate at Hidden Hills and asked if they'd seen two dogs. At about 7PM one night, I got a call from them saying they saw two dogs. They had been gone pretty much all day at this point. I threw C into the car and started driving around and after about 20 minutes, gave up and came home. I'm then rocking C to sleep when I hear barking at the front door. I run downstairs and there they both are, dirty and tired but "Hi, we're home."
Nowadays, Keely would never leave. She's a big love dog and is the type that you could walk without a leash, take to work and she'd lay by your feet all day and be perfectly happy. She won't follow Tazzie on her walkabouts. Houdini on the other hand, clearly has some ulterior motive. It's that Australian cattledog in her that feels the need to wander around the outback. She's so not happy when we leave her in house now when we go out. But gee, TFB dog.
Since C has only been in school 8 days this month, thanks to the gaggle of Jewish holidays, we went bowling today with our friends J & C. The kids had a great time and so did me and G. The local bowling alley isn't quite as modern as Vegas. It's half the size (which makes no difference as long as there's room right?) but for the kids they have the pullup bumpers. That's great. But in Vegas, they could program when it was the kid's turn so that it would go up and down and be clear for the adults. Here, they're up all the time or down all the time. Anyway, I bowled my best game ever. I bowled a 159! I got 5 strikes and a spare! Holy Cow! I was having a bad day so this perked me up. It was very fun and I was proud of myself. Then again, it was just dumb luck.
More to come, I promise. (as if anyone cares at this point. Is this thing on??)
The Donatos
Saw this in the office today and thought it was fantastic. Had to share.
Commenting on the hamsters
The comments from my last post were all BB related thanks to some of my fellow groupies. So I feel I should say a little something.
S - thanks for the confidence that I had *ANYTHING* to do with the success of this season. My main contribution is getting each of the live shows off the air on time. As some of my followers may know, that can be quite a challenge and with some people on the show (ok, one in particular who truly doesn't understand how to time a live TV show), it's been the biggest challenge of my three years on the show. 1 minute over, 1:45 under all within the same hour. But if you want to give me credit, I'll take it and giggle.
I'm also of the opinion that Dick should win if only to spite Daniele. Totally agreed that every time she started a sentence with "Honestly..." that was a sure sign that no truths would be following. And her constant "It sucks" is equally annoying. And when something doesn't go her way, she pouts way worse than my 4 year old.
The jury house interrogation was late last night, taped after the Showtime feeds (that's after midnight local time). So it was a late night for everyone. I go in to the office today and I'll hear how it went. From what I've read, the jury hates Daniele and it looks like Dick could be the winner. I'm ok with that. She won't be. I guess she's been nothing but a bitch to Dick since Thursday night since there's nothing he can do for her. While I don't have much sympathy for him, I do feel bad for her. She's treated him like dirt the entire summer and hopefully he's realizing that she just used him. I'm sorry that he's tried so hard for nothing 'cause she'll have nothing to do with him when this is over, especially is he wins.
One of the websites I read thinks that Dick could win 6-1 with only Jameka voting for Daniele. After the jury questions last night, they think that Dick might win unanimously. I'd love to see that. I'll see what I can suss out at the office today.
Glub Glub
That's me still drowning but I'm slowly making my way up to the surface. For awhile there, to quote my friends M & S, it was "all tunnel - no light". That might make a good t-shirt slogan. It's quite appropriate. Anyway, a few more days and then I'll feel like I can breathe and have some semblance of a life back.
We're in the final two for "Big Brother 8" with the winner being crowned on Tuesday. The Donatos have taken over the hamster world. Love 'em or hate 'em, they've been good TV, the show's ratings have been up and the demographics have been huge. Just what the network wants so I'd venture to say that it's looking solid for a BB9 for next summer. Hey, it's work for me so that's nice and you can't knock the shows that you can count on year after year. That's one of the nice things about freelance and actually makes work feel "regular" when you know there are certain shows you can count on. Other than that, I couldn't care less which one of the "Evels" wins. Both have legitimate "anti-vote" arguments. I would think that Daniele will win since she actually played the game unlike her abusive, riding on the coattails Dad. But she's also a manipulative bee-otch and the jury could vote for Dick just to spite her. They're both awful humans. I hope Nick realizes what an immature, self-centered brat Dani is and how she sulks when she doesn't get her way. Since the other boyfriend is long gone, he should run for the hill fast too.
I start some DGA work tomorrow. We're starting in with the national contract negotiations and I was named to the negotiations committee so our first meeting is tomorrow. There's like 50 people from all the different categories represented. I'm sure I'll be intimidated by the whole process but I'll definitely learn alot. And hopefully some of that knowledge will help me when we get to the National Board stuff starting in January.
C is loving school which is great. I'm looking forward to being done with all this work so I can actually get involved. I'm feeling very separated from the whole process. It's hard to get into the groove when I'm not there.
And I'm looking forward to just catching up with everything and everyone. I need to do some serious cleaning and purging. I need a massage desperately. I need to be social and see some of my friends who I haven't seen in months because I haven't had time. What a pathetic friend I am. And the fall season starts next week and I still have a few random episodes from last season to watch. I really want to take a nap. 4 more days...
First Day of School
Wow, C is growing up. She had her first day of TK (transitional kindergarten) yesterday. We arrived at 9AM to a classroom of 16 kids, about 25 parents and 4 teachers. It was overwhelming for a second but we walked in and saw our other friend C (who's also staying at our house - another story) sitting at one of the tables when we walked in. C sat down and started to do a sand and glue project. C enjoyed using the orange and blue sand and she wanted to "spell" her name with the sand which we did. Then C picked up a sharpie and wrote her name, ALL BY HERSELF, on the plate. I had never seen her do that before and I didn't have to spell it or write if out for her to copy or anything. I was SO proud of her.
Then she went across the room to play with peg boards and rubber bands and boards.
She went into the other room where C and C went, by themselves, to the reading area and started flipping through books.
Then it was time for some playdoh.
And then circle time. Margie, her main teacher, played the guitar and the kids sang some songs.
And then we took a first day of school class photo.
Not all the kids wanted to be in it but most of them are in this shot. It's a really cute group of kids and the moms all seem nice too. I think (hope) it'll be a good year for C.
Today was the first full day. I got there late (don't get me started, I was going out of my mind) because it took me 17 minutes just to get to the freeway. Then only another 6 on the freeway but by then we were late. UGH. One of my pet peeves and sets me over the edge. We'll be leaving at 8AM every day to get there on time which will be a huge adjustment for C. And me too. But she had a great day. Her job this week is to feed the fish. She's partnered with a girl she can't remember her name. LOL. That's the beauty of making new friends.
Anyway, it's been a good, exciting, milestone week. New school, TK AND writing our name for the first time. Definitely a memory for the scrapbook.
Labels: School, TK
Telethon finale
Well, after being up for 35 hours, it was a successful Telethon. We raised over $63.8 million for Jerry and his kids. A few bumps in the road, another 38 minutes over and lack of food in the truck, but we got through it once again. I've survived my 18th Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon.
8:15A
Okay, NOW I'm tired. And drinking a Trader Joe's Triple Mocha Espresso in a can. Hope that kicks in soon...
Sunrise in Vegas
The sun just came up and we're only 2:10 over. We'll so be back on time by 8AM.
Thanks Megan for humoring me by commenting and keeping me awake.
Closing in...
It's 3AM and we're only 16 minutes and 30 seconds over. Slowing chipping away back to zero.
Telethon updates
I know only a few of my readers might actually get this but we just finished Hour 4 and we're 38 minutes and 16 seconds over. Thanks JL!
On the Air
I've got a few Vegas things to update on but it might take a few days. In the meantime, John Ondrasik just sang "100 Years" and had his daughter at the end say "We love you Augie" to one of the MDA patients. I lost it as did pretty much everyone else in the house.
Anyway, one of the virtues of Judaism is "Tzedakah" (sounds similar to Sedaka as in Neil). It means charity. One of the things we've always taught C is that when we put money in our piggy bank, we split the coins into 3's - 2 for her piggy bank and 1 for tzedakah. Over the year, her tzedakah bank has gotten quite full. After some discussion about helping kids who aren't as lucky as we are with toys or need help with doctors, we suggested that we give our tzedakah money to Jerry "Lewlis" (as C calls him) to help Jerry's Kids. C was all for it. So we bought a jar, brought a bunch of my stuff from my scrapbooking stash and we decorated away. When all was done, the jar looked fantastic. C made all the artistic choices. I helped with some (and only some) of the glue. And on the top of the jar she put 3 red rhinestones because that's JL's favorite color and 3 blue rhinestone because that's her favorite color.
On Wednesday, C couldn't wait for Jerry to come into the office. As soon as he came in, she came running to me saying "Mommy! Where's the money jar? There's Jerry Lewlis!" We went up to him with C carrying the jar in her hand. JL asked her what she had and she said "Money!". He asked her what the money was for and that's when she got shy. So I had to explain that this was the money that she had saved all year for tzedakah and wanted to give it to Jerry Lewlis and his kids. He was very impressed and said that this was the first money had had gotten handed to him this year. There was $28.87 in the jar and C was very proud of herself.
(sorry for the picture of a picture but I don't have my scanner with me)
Counting Down
We're approximately 25 hours to air on the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon. Anyone willing to stay up with me? If you're up anytime in the middle of night, feel free to IM me. I'll be here and looking for anything to help keep me awake.
So today we did the pre-tape for Bear in the Big Blue House. He's been on the show for a number of years but missed last year because his son (baby bear?) was sick. He was sorely missed so we were glad to have him back this year. So C was all psyched up for this. Her friend here in Vegas, M was also really excited. M is S (our babysitter's niece) who lives here in town and the two of them are totally buds. M has come the previous 2 years that Bear was taping in LA in 2004 and 2005 so she came today and brought a few friends with her. They all had a great time.
C and M spent a lot of time playing together last year when we were here for the show and all year C has been saying, "when we go to Las Vegas, I'm bringing *this* to M's". And whenever S came for a visit, M would say "Where's C?" It's cute that they've got friends that they know in other states. This week, they've done plenty of swimming and playing, they went to Circus Circus and did all the kids roller coasters and played mini-golf (which C loved). Today they were talking about going bowling again. It's all too cute.
Anyway, back to Bear. My cutie pie niece E showed up today to see Bear as well. We were worried that she'd be a little freaked by his 7 foot self but she did great. Oh, and E apparently took her first steps after she left the pre-tape this morning. A momentous day all around!
Here are some photos for your celebrity viewing pleasure.
