Everything is Unfinished

I like to front that I can live without air conditioning. But I usually make statements like that when I’m in an air conditioned place, or it’s 70 degrees out. Then my story quickly changes when I come back to my own house, where there is no central air and the window units were locked up in storage somewhere by the landlords and it’s 88 degrees outside and I’m sweating just sitting here. Yeah, my story has changed for good at this point. So let the countdown begin: T-minus 27 days until we’re in our wonderful air-conditioned house with our pool and I can hopefully stop showering every 10 minutes.

On Sunday, we drove down near Walla Walla, Washington (one of my dad’s favorite cities) to the Stateline Wind Energy Center, where there are over 450 windmills. A lot of people don’t like them, saying they’re ugly or they kill birds, but I think they’re awesome: they produce quite possibly the greenest energy on the planet, they’re relatively cheap to maintain, and they just plain look cool. In fact, I’m surprised there hasn’t been an enterprising person out there who has started a tour company to take people to the wind farms, giving them information, showing them the best places to take pictures, selling little replica turbines. Maybe that’s my fortune waiting to happen; I do have these facts:

• Each turbine is 166 feet tall
• The blades are 76 feet long - each
• The turbines can operate in winds from 7 to 58 miles per hour
• The peak output of each turbine is 660 kilowatts
• Farmers can earn up to $2,000 per turbine for leasing their land to developers
• The shafts of the turbines are set in concrete about 20 feet into the earth

Here are some more pictures. There was a lot of dust blowing around so it’s hard to see just how many windmills there are, but it was quite impressive to crest the hill and see them stretching off into the distance. Actually, my initial thought at seeing how many there were was that it looked like that scene in Alien when they first see all the pods. Because they do have a sort of alien quality about them, don’t you think? Maybe they wouldn’t seem like that if they were surrounded by tulips.

Over at Mommy Knows you can win stuff! Kim, the blog’s author, owns Baby Marketplace and she’s giving away a free item every day in May. All you have to do is leave a comment on the blog. I realize that I should have posted this at the beginning of May, but she’s considering extending it into June so I figured I should send people over that way to convince her. Plus, I haven’t won anything yet. :)

Yesterday while eating lunch Dick’s, we overheard a conversation between a homeless man and woman.
Her: “Man, I been shooting dope for 18 years. I can’t do this homeless shit anymore, it’s just not worth it.”
Him: “Yeah, there’s no good drugs on the streets anyway.”

Later we drove past a photo shoot on a street corner. A tall guy dressed all in black with bright purple hair was taking pictures of two anorexic girls who were posing mopily in the doorway of a storefront that was all barred up. How very artistic.

Someday I’ll write a post about something other than my child, but today is not that day. Here’s what Jack’s been up to lately.

• Sunday, while in the car, he spontaneously started playing peekaboo with me, pulling his blanket up over his face.
• He’s been “beeping” our noses a lot lately. It’s very cute, but he doesn’t know his own strength and also sometimes tries to beep my eyes.
• He was feeding Johnny snacks on the plane on Monday which was adorable and also kept him busy for about 10 minutes.
• For some reason, he’s been flashing signs around:
  
• Baby’s first picture with the Space Needle:
  
• Despite moments of total frustration, he’s mostly a total sweetheart of course:
  

Shortly after posting that last bit and being all sentimental and weepy, Jack woke up (on his own!) at 1am. He was really upset, and even after I went and got him out of his crib and tried to rock him back to sleep he was still sniffly and clingy, so I brought him into bed with Johnny and me. He fell asleep while I watched The Secret Life of Delis and had overwhelming cravings for Katzinger’s, but once he was asleep he decided that sleeping sideways with his head against Johnny’s chest and his feet in my side was a good idea. As soon as I tried to lay him back in his crib, he was wide awake and wailing again, so I took him downstairs so Johnny could get to sleep. 9am finals are a bitch for students AND teachers.

Other than posting the pictures of Jack climbing the stairs, it’s been a week since I’ve posted. Let’s see what’s happened in that time:

1. My car stereo got stolen. I was really more surprised than anything - I didn’t know there was crime here in Wooster. Fortunately no other damage was done to the car.
2. Jack said his first word
3. I celebrated National Scrapbook Day with my mom and my friends at a crop that I organized. Everything went off without a hitch and I even got some things done.
4. We watched Jack almost take his first steps. He’s standing by himself now, but just hasn’t quite worked up the courage to go.
5. That whole climbing the stairs thing
6. I witnessed a poop so explosive that I literally had to hose down the pack-n-play.

Such is the life of a mom, eh? I also found a new blog to read which, as is my way, I read from the very beginning of the archives to the present. Aside from finding the author’s most awesome kid’s book ever, I learned more about myself as a mom. I learned that, when reading about someone else’s child, I will feel an overwhelming need to tiptoe up to my own child’s room and risk waking him up in the middle of the night just so I can have one more cuddle and kiss his curly head and smell him. He’s getting to the age where I get frustrated on a daily basis no matter how hard I try not to, and also where I get sad on a daily basis because soon he won’t be a baby anymore, but a little boy, then a teenager, then a man and he’ll be my age, and I’ll always want one more cuddle and kiss and smell. And you’ll have to excuse me now, because I must go risk waking him up again.

Well, this little experiment didn’t do anything to help me figure out why pictures are sometimes screwy in my posts, but it did allow me to give the internets what it wants: pictures of a cute baby. So here’s one more!

Again not full width, but this time not centered.

Rock on, baby guy.