California cornucopia

Not your traditional horn of plenty, but a pretty amazing haul from our own garden 2 days short of December.

For on-the-go worship or quickie weddings

It has been said you could sell a bag of your kitchen trash on eBay this time of year. Didn't find any listings for that, but did come up with kitchen trash bags emblazoned with the logo of the famed Auburn Tigers. Already got those? How about an inflatable church?

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all - carnivore or vegetarian, peanut butter & jelly or turkey & trimmings, low-carb or high-carb, milk or no milk, sweet potato pie or leafy green salad, family or friends, at home or away, potluck, catered, or soup kitchen. Take a small moment - right now - and be thankful.

[This space intentionally left blank while you have a thoughtful moment]

How to Buy on Ebay

Getting a good deal on eBay depends a lot on what exactly you are looking for, but there are some general rules that apply no matter what you're looking for.

Always look at the shipping cost before you bid, there are a lot of inflated shipping prices out there. The reason is, sellers pay eBay a fee based on the final bid price, not on the shipping. So they sell cheap and then overcharge on shipping to get a few more fee-free bucks in their pocket. Don't hesitate to use the "Ask Seller a Question" link on every auction page if you want to know how much shipping will be to your ZIP code (or if you have any other questions about the item.) You should know, however, that the seller will then have your email address, the one you provided to eBay. You will not have the seller's email address unless and until they reply to your question.

Don't get caught up in a bidding war (unless you are bidding on my items). Bid late, very last minute if you can. If you bid early, you are only inviting other bidders to chip away at your proxy until they either give up (and leave you paying the high end of what you wanted to pay) or "beat" you. There are some free sniping services out there that will place your bid at the very last seconds for you, or you can snipe "by hand" if you are talented. Try www.auctionsniper.com (referral link) or www.auctionstealer.com . Auctionsniper gives you 3 free snipes any time of day, then you can buy more snipes or refer people for additional free snipes. (EBay does not allow you to link to sniping sites from your auction page.) Auctionstealer gives you 10 free snipes every calendar month, but unless you upgrade to a paid subscription, you cannot place or change snipes between 7:00 PM CT and 11:00 PM CT.

Sneaky stuff. Most people find auctions by searching for terms in the title. You can look for misspellings to try to find less-visited auctions with less competition. If you find one with no bids, consider placing the minimum bid immediately - it keeps the seller from being able to change the title and correct the mistake. (They can still cancel your bid and end the auction, but many don't know that.) For example, Gymboree is a popular brand of children's clothing. Currently, a search for the misspelling "Gymobree" pulls up 9 auctions. "Gymbroee" pulls up 2. "Gymoree" pulls up 6.

Finally, be sure you search stores and the web for your item before looking on eBay. My mother was caught in an eBay bidding war over a serving dish and I found it for much less, with lower shipping cost, from a website selling replacement china pieces.

'Tis the Season

I've been buying and selling on eBay since 1998. It's high eBay season right now, and I am officially at the point where I have sold or am currently selling everything that is not nailed down (actually, I tried that too, but buyers complained about the nail holes). If you have anything you were planning on selling, do it now. For sellers, your personal eBay calendar and a couple of tips from me.

When to list. Today, Nov. 24, is a good day to list using 7-day listing. Don't begin or end auctions from Thanksgiving through the following Sunday the 30th. People are away for the holiday, traveling, and in the (gasp) brick and mortar stores, not on eBay. Then in December, go for it, all day, every day. There are lots of bits of advice about good days to begin and end auctions, but I say for December, any day is good, any time of day. I have experimented with ending at crazy times like 3 in the morning because I find people use a sniping service since they won't be up, and tend to put in a high proxy because they don't want to wake up to a loss.

Using Buy It Now. Definitely put Buy It Now on your high season auctions, it only costs a nickel and this time of year people don't want to wait around to find out if they've won an auction. I look for the highest completed auction price for the same or similar item and put a BIN a buck higher. Don't put a counter on BIN auctions (or put a hidden counter). If people see that 50 people have looked at your auction and no one has purchased, they won't purchase either. You want them to think they are the first person to stumble upon your auction at such a super deal.

Consider using an auction host. I highly recommend using an auction hosting site. I use Sparedollar (not a referral link), and though it is quirky as all hell, for $5 a month you can post as many photos as you want for no extra fee, schedule listings to launch at whatever time you choose for no extra fee, check all your counters, bids and prices on one screen, and you get some nice looking, simple templates too. The best feature is a photo gallery of all your current auctions right on every auction page. I get tons of hits that way.

Take it (somewhat) seriously. The best way to avoid problems is to be somewhat professional about selling. Ship quickly, pack safely, stay in touch with the buyers. Consider putting Delivery Confirmation on all your packages, even if you pay for it yourself, you are the one protected by it. I got some free business cards from vistaprint.com with my eBay seller information on it and I put one in every package.

Tomorrow: Tips for Buying on eBay.

Well, we had to have my son sleep in the pack & play in a "retreat" room off our bedroom since his room was just painted. He went to bed ok at around 7:30 but at 11 woke up and didn't like the strange bed and the strange surroundings. I picked him up and held him, he fell asleep. I returned him to the pack & play, he woke up screaming. Pick up, sleep, put down, scream, pick up, sleep, put down, scream. I decided to see if he would sleep in our bed between us. At first it looked like a good idea, he cuddled up and I heard that lovely deep breathing in minutes. I closed my eyes and started to drift off to sleep. MUM-MUM??? He was sitting up pulling on my hair. MUM-MUM??? BA-BUM (bottle)??? I lay him back down and patted him off to sleep. Boing, up like a jack-in-the-box again. We considered letting him sleep in his room, but after opening the door and being blown away by the fumes, decided he might wake up with a brain tumor, or three eyes or something.

My dear husband, who has been canonized a saint overnight, held the baby in the recliner all night. If anyone knows any chants to get paint to dry quickly, let me know.

nocapsorpunctuation2nite

i painted my son's room today and my arms are killing me so pardon any typos. Before my boy was born I decided to do his room in a sweet little tropical fish theme. I had wanted to do Curious George but had a hard time finding bedding and accessories because it was not widely licensed. Well, every time I went into his room after he was born, I felt like it was someone else's room he was borrowing. It just didn't fit him. He is a silly, curious, intrepid bundle of energy, he is quick to laugh and has a good sense of humor. So, we are redoing his room to Curious George after all. He is a good little monkey, and always very curious.

Take it with a grain of salt

A version of this anti-Atkins diet news release may have appeared in your local paper; it appeared in ours. Now, I am not defending the Atkins diet, but it is frequently painted with the same broad "low carb" brush as my beloved South Beach Diet. I think it's important to know that the author of the news release is the somewhat inaccurately named "Physicians Committee on Responsible Medicine", an adamantly pro-animal rights nonprofit organization. The agenda behind the news release is the protection of animals and the promotion of vegetarianism, not preserving the health of our human society. How did I know? I used to be a PCRM supporter and subscriber; I was vegetarian for a third of my life. While I still support animal rights, I have fallen off the vegetarian wagon and eat poultry (free range when available) and fish. So take the article with a grain of salt, and perhaps some low-carb sugar substitute.

Tonight, tonight ...

South Beach Diet meatloaf (ground turkey), South Beach surprise mashed potatoes (cauliflower) and - yippee - red wine. Hey, I've got to do something with the rest of the bottle after I take out the half cup for the recipe! Check out Nov. 4 entry for links to the recipes. I hit 119 pounds this morning, haven't seen a "1" as a middle digit since before my 3 year old was born.

Survivor

In our house, our guilty pleasure is rushing the kids to bed early and cuddling up for Survivor on Thursday night. I'm sure there are hundreds of blogs today about last night's episode so I won't go on at length about Rupert's dismissal. (In fact, I am in the minority on this one, I know, but I thought he was too darn full of himself, and I don't really feel sorry for him being a "misfit" because we are all misfits.) What I do have to ask is, what was UP with Lill giving Burton an open-mouth kiss when they won the reward challenge? It was hard to hear, but I had the captioning on and he said "Quit doing that, Lill!". Eeeeeyew.

The movie, I am sad to say, is very bad, I read today

The Cat in the Hat movie promotions have been driving me crazy. Everything from breakfast cereal and jam to the U.S. Post office is plastered with the frightening white face of Mike Meyers as Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat. Cat in the Hat t-shirts, plush toys (does any child really need another plush toy?), watches, lunchboxes, shower curtain rings - they are everywhere. eBay has more than 3300 Cat in the Hat items for auction right now. I read this review this morning with a sigh. In a nutshell, the movie stinks, a cash-grabbing bastardization of a true classic. Now what to do with the promotional clocks and socks and sidewalk chalks?

At least they all fit in one carseat

My 3 year old daughter, M., has imaginary friends. Well, sort of. She actually becomes her own imaginary friends. One moment I will be talking to my own sweet daughter and the next, she is correcting me "I'm Jo Jo." She becomes 3 or 4 different people now - Jo Jo, Kathleen, Julie ... I think I'm leaving someone out. Each person has their own family members. When she is Kathleen, her father and I are both known as "House" and her baby brother becomes "Album." As Jo Jo's mother, I am known as "Ada" and her brother is "Budgy Wudgy". She can keep them all straight for hours, it is quite eerie. She will tell me before breakfast she is Julie and 3 hours later I will call her brother by his given name and she will correct me "Actually, House, that is Album."

All these people first showed up when our summer babysitter, to whom our daughter had become very attached, moved away. A few days later, she was insisting we call her Julie. The connection did not dawn on me until I began to wonder where she came up with the name, since I couldn't think of anyone we knew named Julie. She watches the TV show Caillou in the morning, and Caillou has a babysitter named Julie. By becoming Julie, she was replacing the babysitter she missed so much. I thought it was a healthy way to grieve and indulged her fantasy play.

Then the other people appeared, and I began to notice that whenever she did something to be especially proud of, like drawing a beautiful picture, finishing all of her meal, or getting dressed by herself, she would attribute the feat to one of her other personas. In her eyes, Julie, Kathleen (the name of a teacher at her school) and Jo Jo (a TV character I don't particularly like) were all older, smarter and better than my daughter.

Yesterday, she said something interesting that made me very sad. She told me, near tears, that she didn't want to be a grownup. I asked her why and her exact words - at barely 3 years old - were "I want to stay a child." My heart broke. What was so terrible about being a grown up - about being like me that she was in tears over it? I realized that this is the purpose for the infallible Julie, the fearless Jo Jo, the multi-talented Kathleen: they are performing all the major accomplishments so that M. does not have to be the one growing up.

Add a little melted butter . . .

My one-year-old spent this morning's playgroup hour playing in the hostess' yard, picking and eating her social garlic. Kept him entertained and he smells so savory too.

In addition to growing eyes in the back of your head

I knew it. Motherhood affects your brain. This study found that rats who have given birth are smarter, more courageous and more resourceful than those who have never given birth. Now why can't I find my keys?

Past repasts

Let's see ... Friday we had that fabulous pizza, and that started a SBD-free weekend. Not off the wagon, but just off the book. Saturday, vegetarian "burgers" and salad; Sunday, Praram Tofu (tofu with peanut sauce on a bed of fresh spinach leaves; with home-cooked brown rice) from a local Thai restaurant. Tonight, oh my - tonight! I haven't started anything and it's quarter to five. Gotta go.

Why do I always get things half fin

It's been several days since I blogged. Why? Because I suffer from severe lack of follow-through. Look around my house, find the sewing machine under a pile of fabric scraps, the dusty guitar in the closet, the items I was going to sell on ebay in a heap in the corner, the Martha Stewart soap making kit sitting idle while we use plain white Dove soap. The problem is, I am not guided by muses, and not even driven by demons. Not that I don't have demons, I have a whole flock of them around here somewhere. But I have spent so much time and energy telling them to be quiet that they now are.
My 3 year old suggested "fishies" as my blog subject today. Fish, fish, marvelous fish. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. We have no fish, fish have not played a significant role in any formative stage of my life, I have no sweet little anecdotes about fish. It is on sale at our local grocery store, salmon filet $3.99 a pound. Will be making SBD Grilled Rosemary Salmon this week.
Note to self: Perhaps 3 year old is not muse I have been seeking.

Next, he'll be moonwalking

This Baby Signs thing cracks me up. We tried to teach my son a sign for "diaper" and so used a thumping fist on chest sign that my daughter made up when she was a baby. Over and over, we would thump our chests and hold up his diaper before a diaper change, or when we noticed he was busy using a diaper (it does not take a detective, as he tenses every muscle in his little body and turns bright red). He never repeated the sign. But then a few days ago, I told him it was time for a diaper change and he patted his crotch. He is, after all, a boy. Today he's waddling around looking for trouble, peeks in the door at me as I'm sitting in the bathroom, and pats his crotch. Good Mommy! Later, he spied his sister's Princess undies on the floor and again patted his pants. Michael Jackson would be proud.

Whassfodinna

Screw South Beach, tonight it's the North Beach Diet - pizza and red wine! Hubby is home early after having seen The Matrix Re-Reloaded or whatever it's called. I am not a fan. Not anti-Matrix, mind you, just not a 'Trixie. Yeah, I just made that up. Must be the red wine. Oh, and the pizza does have a whole wheat crust so we are not totally going to South Beach Hell.

haiku

housebound
we really need to go out
fill prescription pick up milk
my daughter in her tutu
says no

Jently evolving

I'm still in the process of figuring out my template. For now, I'm planning to have one set of links to like-genre ("jenre") blogs - personal, humorous blogs on parenting (please don't email me to tell me you didn't know mine was humorous). I'm also adding links to "jeneral interest" blogs on all different subjects, ones that made me laugh, made me think, or - what really pops my toast - ones that gave me a glimpse into what it would be like to be in a totally different skin. Why live one life when you can vicariously live hundreds? The Jeneral Interest links are likely to change weekly.

Ho ho ho!

Hey, did you just roll your eyes at that title? I know it's early. I used to get really mad about all the marketing of Christmas months in advance, now I'm excited like a little kid. My daughter loves Christmas, we watch her Wiggles Christmas videos year-round and her favorite bedtime song is Silent Night. So I can't wait to start decorating the house and playing Christmas songs.
Thinking about Christmas makes me think about gifts, wouldn't the retailers be so pleased. The best gift I ever received came from my brother. I was a freshman in college and he gave me a tin candy box full of - not candy, but quarters. There was $80 in quarters in that box. Besides being a huge wad of cash to an 18-year-old, I never had to scrounge for quarters for the laundry. Made me very popular in the dorms as well. When that box ran out, I realized what a pain it was to always be hoarding quarters, praying that the change machine worked, asking disgruntled cashiers if they could cash a $5 for me.
The quarters are long gone, turned into nearly-clean clothing and damp-dried sheets. But I kept the box, and whenever I look at it, I remember what a great gift that was.

What's for Dinner

Tonight's South Beach ... Salsa Chicken - spicy cubes of chicken cooked up with some salsa, served on a bed of shredded lettuce with some sour cream. Even the kids ate it, and it's good enough for company. Even people you like. Sorry I couldn't find a link to the recipe. They are fairly well guarded so that you have to buy the book.

About the Book - South Beach Diet - it's a great diet; it's a pretty lousy book. There are great gaps in information, there is conflicting advice in different chapters, and most annoying, the number of servings each recipe makes is completely random. The dinner menu may call for an entree, a vegetable and a dessert - but the dinner recipe serves 4, the vegetable recipe serves 2 and the dessert serves 1. Maybe they expect people to start leaving once you have served them dinner. You have to check each recipe carefully before you begin to be sure you are making the right amount and you need to be a mathmetician as well as a fairly comfortable cook. Another gripe - the time given for cooking chicken and fish almost always results in undercooking. Also, some recipes give the amount in ounces - "add 2 ounces of fat free half and half". Hang on, let me grab my beaker ...

Bang, bang

We've been careful since our daughter was born to limit her exposure to violence. We don't watch television (other than pre-approved children's shows) at any time when either child is awake, and don't listen to news radio when children are in the car. We edit their books as needed so that, for example, Curious George (written in 1941) gets a "time out" rather than going to prison for accidentally calling the fire department, and the Cat in the Hat's "Little Cats" use "shooters" to "get" the pink snow spots instead of, as written, "guns" that "kill" the harmless little pink blobs. Now, I don't think for a moment I am going to shield her from the realities of the world forever. However, I do think that the longer we can postpone her eventual bombardment with sensationalized violence, the better equipped she will be to deal with it; the more she has been steeped in a peaceful home environment the more she will be able to identify peace as her way and recognize that violence exists, but is not her way.

She turned 3 in September. This morning she came running to her father with two attached pieces of Lego and said "I have a shooter". She waved it around - "Shoot, shoot!". I was still hoping she was thinking of a rocket ship, "shooting" into space. The next words out of her mouth, however, as she grasped her little toy - "Bang, bang!". Sigh.

Sleeping Like a ...

Last night:
7:30 p.m.: 1 year old to bed
8:30 p.m.: 3 year old to bed
8:35, 8:45, 8:48, 8:50 p.m.: 3 year old needs water, is cold, needs a hug, has an owie on her finger
10:00 p.m.: Mom and Dad to bed after watching our tape of last night's 24, followed by South Park
11:15 p.m. Insomnia-stricken mother finally falls asleep
11:58 p.m.: 1 year old awakens for bottle and rocking
12:08 a.m.: Sleeping 1 year old deposited in crib
12:35 a.m.: 1 year old awakens for more bottle and more rocking, tries to convince grown-ups to join him in rousing round of E-I-E-I-O
1 - 2 a.m.: Blur of sleep deprived parents rotating into and out of crying baby's room, bringing milk, infant Tylenol for teething, turning on the heat, turning off the heat
5:56 a.m.: 1 year old, having had wonderful night of social activity and warm milk, awakens refreshed and with a soaking wet diaper, pajama, and bed.

Whash for dinna

More South Beach for dinner. Pina coladas, cheeseburgers, and fries. Nope, just kidding. Leftover SBD meatloaf (it really is better the second day) and Oven Roasted Vegetables. Amazing that this stick-to-your-ribs food peels off the weight.

May I kvell for a moment? My 13-month old has started Baby Signing in earnest, and I am so proud. My husband and I (and, in fact, our three-year-old, who also was a signing baby) have been demonstrating signs for him for several months, and it looked for a while like it just wasn't going to click for him. Suddenly, the diminutive little lightbulb went on, and he now has signs for telephone, more, all done, diaper, elephant, monkey, fish, dog, sheep, and hat. Added to his few spoken words, Mama, Dada, A-Ma (derivation of his sister's name), kitty cat, bye-bye, night-night and bottle (ba-ba), he has more than doubled his vocabulary due to Baby Signs. I recommend this for any parents of infants/early toddlers and parents-to-be. My daughter commanded dozens and dozens of signs by 18 months, and used some of them (for harder-to-pronounce words like "elephant" and "giraffe") until nearly 2 1/2 years.

Are these just Stupid Baby Tricks? Though it at first may not seem very useful for your baby to be able to sign to you about zoo animals, the point is, Baby Signs allow your baby to communicate, and they get a big kick out of that. When you see the glee on your baby's face when he signs "giraffe" for the print on his footie sleepers, and he hears you say "oh, you see a giraffe?" it makes all the hours of thumping your head, stroking your throat, and flapping your arms worthwhile.

South Beach Diet meatloaf and mashed "potatoes" for dinner. Shh ... they're really cauliflower. Yeah, the diet's great. Lost 12 pounds of ugly fat without cutting off my head.

Time to do the Babysitter Rag. In order to take my daughter to the aforementioned co-operative preschool, I have to hire a sitter to take care of my son, as unenrolled siblings aren't allowed at school. Yes, we may be a bunch of tree-hugging granola eaters but we do have some standards. So I pay a college student to come watch my son between 8:30 and noon. I know he naps for a good hour and a half to two hours of this time. I know there may not be much for a college student to do while trapped in my home - like, I don't know - study? Or even watch the TV. But when I got home, it was clear to me she had been napping, because left the blanket she unfolded and the pillow she had been using on the sofa. The baby needed a new diaper, and had not had a new one since I changed him in the morning. Breakfast dishes - granted, they were the kids', and not the sitter's - languished in the sink. There were 2 messages on the answering machine because she had not answered the phone. Gee, I hope it didn't wake her.

Off to school with my daughter this morning. She's in a co-operative preschool, which means that each class session of 24 children is staffed by 2 paid, credentialed teachers, plus 7 parents. So I "work" every 2 weeks at the school, staffing a designated area. It works beautifully. The adult-to-child ratio is such that many children get one-on-one play with a grownup. Squabbles are few. The children thrive. Plus, having been "home" with my daughter since she was a year old, I can't imagine having her disappear three hours a day and having no idea what she is doing.
Time flies when you are getting yourself plus a one-year-old and three-year-old washed, dressed and breakfasted all before 8:30 a.m. I have to go. More later.