Bath Time With Emma

Momma and I found this awesome new toy... It's called Scrapblog, where you can do scrapbook pages online. It is SWEET! Anywho, this is one of the pages we did. Seriously cute.

"This is dedicated to the one I love..."

Suzy has been one lonely girl for the past two days! Hubby has left the abode to go on a work retreat off in Jersey and will be back (thank goodness) tonight. I just don't do well on my own... I end up eating cereal for dinner and chocolate cake for breakfast. I stare at the walls for long stretches of time and watch a lot of TV. My kitties have been good to me, though. I woke up this morning to Mr. Pan (pictured) rubbing his head on my hand - really sweet. Granted, it was 6:30 in the morning and I don't have to be at work till 9:00! Still, I love my critters.

Tonight should be a much better night, though. My hunny will be back from Jersey and my folks will also be here, up from VA. I'll have a full house. Baby brother may even make his stage appearance tonight at my place, I hope. This girl just needs to be surrounded by adoring people and tonight can't come soon enough! (I especially need some girl time with my momma - a girl can't get enough Blue-Eyed Girl's Club time anymore!)

And I Thought My Day Was Bad...

Man, I love the show 24 because if I think that my day was rotten, I can just say to myself, "Well, at least I didn't have to fight crime and be tortured and stop a nuclear holocaust like Jack Bauer." Boy, did my day suck, but it sure was WAY better than his. At least at the end of the day, Jack goes home feeling like he's the man. Sometimes, I come home not feeling like much of anything. Go Jack, go.

Ahh Spring...

It is a gorgeous spring day. Like, I think it is 85 degrees out there even. I am so happy that all the trees are starting to blossom and leaf out. It just looks nice. But most of all, I am happy that the tree that I park under will soon have leaves. Hopefully, it will help deflect the bird port-o-potty that my tree has become. Seriously, I'll get my car washed and the very next day, I'll have white bird diarrhea streakage all over my car. It's just vindictive. And it wouldn't be so bad if it was just a couple of small birds, but I think this must be a family of eagles or something. Sheesh.

Earth Day

Happy Earth Day, yo. I have something to address with all the ladies out there. (Men, you may not want to read this... you've been warned.) Okay, Tim and I spent some time strolling on the beach in the Cape this past weekend and I noticed something that totally appalled me. And I have decided to take a more active stand against something. While we walked the beach last weekend, I was noticing some of the debris that washed up on the Cape shores, especially after having such a crazy rain storm Sunday night. I kept seeing something in particular that I couldn't recognize. It was something plastic and it was kind of shredded to resemble an oddly-shaped opened tulip flower. It was kind of pretty, other than the fact that it was trash (thank heavens I didn't pick it up...). Yes, you may have already guessed. (Sometimes I am so naive!) The trash I saw was used plastic tampons. Oh gross. Yes, NASTY. So, to all of you women who support using those plastic versions (instead of cardboard applicators) SHAME ON YOU! And if you never realized, it is okay. But now that you know, please stop! You are sullying our shores with girl waste!

Nantucket

I've posted the Nantucket pics on Flickr, if anyone cares to check them out. (Click on the slide show feature.) I was pretty proud of how a few of them turned out. That first half of our mini-vacation was incredible (the weather had a lot to do with that, though...). I would definitely recommend a visit to this picturesque little island.

Here are some memories I just wanted to jot down...

• Seeing the house that Steinbeck wrote East of Eden in (now called Eden East)
• What the heck is a Plover?!?
• Staying in the "Forsythia Room" (for half what it usually costs!) at the beautiful Brass Lantern Inn
• The cool bookstore lady who gave me the "Librarian Tattoos"
• Not getting to see the "Blue Lobster" (stupid aquarium...)
• Gail's Van Tour - a native Nantucketeer
• LOTS and LOTS of daffodils!
• 
• Salt-shaker houses with Victorian gingerbread trim...
• Pretty little window boxes everywhere
• "Closed for the Season" signs - Doh!
• Cranberry Bogs and "Organic" Cranberry Bogs...
  
• Scrimshaw and Nantucket Lightship Baskets
• Blue skies
• Tim in his Popeye coat
• Brant Point Lighthouse
• Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
• Giant Sperm Whale (teehee)
• Summer homes of Heinz, the Stillers, the guy that owns GE, and even the Gilbreths!
• Going to a FREAKY Harold Pinter play
• Ships in a bottle
• Our fellow Australian tourists - Robin, Peter, and Goronwyn
• The Wampanoags all died here...
• The local "haircut" - they must all go to the same stylist!
• That local crazy lady must be loaded!
  
• The Nantucket "Sleigh Ride"
• The Jamaican workforce - "Oh, everybody has a girl!" (gasp)
• Moving houses across the street so they don't erode into the sea...
• The Portuguese Cobblers
• "The calm before the storm"
• New Guinea Archaeologists
• The oldest house on Nantucket with am upside-down horseshoe to ward away witches
• A "Whale's Tail Pale Ale - pretty yummy!
• Amazing fresh cranberry muffins and chocolate covered cranberries... Delish!

Well, those are some fun memories of our day and a half in Nantucket... But to quote one of my favorite shows growing up, Reading Rainbow, "don't take my word for it!"

Not a Wordless Wednesday

I can't do a "wordless" Wednesday today, because I'm still playing catch-up. Also, I have a lot of news. But I'll add in lots of pictures anyways.

The first thing, big congrats to my buddy Ann who just had twin girls! Edie Bloom and Scarlett Julia are their names, and they were born on last Tuesday. I'm thrilled for Ann - she is gonna be such an awesome mom. (I already know she can do an amazing storytime!) Ann and I worked together as the children's librarians at the Mamaroneck Library (the area you've probably seen on the news lately because of all the flooding when the nor'easter hit). The babies are healthy, but still in the NICU because of how tiny they are. Hopefully, they can come home in the next few days.

Secondly, (this would have been my Wordless Wednesday picture) I was a few feet away from a fellow blogger this past Easter Sunday without knowing it. What a small world, eh? Barbara from Trying to Catch Up and I were just feet away when she snapped this photo! (See me on the left with the pink polka-dotted purse and the daisy hat?)
How wild is that?!? My hubby Tim was taking the Macy's Hat Lady's picture and I was chatting with her while Barb snapped this shot! I really wish I could have met Barbara and her family. In the hundreds of millions of people in the world, how bizarre is it that someone whose blog I read, someone who is good buddies with my mom, someone I've never met before, that we passed on the street without knowing the connection. Talk about 6 degrees of separation! Wacky.

Thirdly, my buddies Joe and Sarah got hitched this past weekend! Can you say "cute?!?" Anyone who has been a regular at my former Halloween parties in Johnson City, TN know Joe as the crazy Elvis guy in a fireman outfit and Sarah as Hermione. Or you may know them from the many plays we were all in together... Sarah is the one with the rockin' voice who always played some sort of Diva. And Joe either played a witch boy or a terrorist. Haha! I always gave him the worst costumes! Like a furry pelt loincloth with a raccoon tail or a hideously-colored biblical toga. (We had a love/hate relationship then. And as the Costume Mistress, I held the power.) Anywho, I love these guys and I am SO happy that they found each other. I wish them all the best.

And, as the final icing on the cake, my sister now has a facebook account. Color me shocked!

Adventures in the Cape...

Well, we're back! And we had a lovely time, regardless of being pummelled by a nor'easter. We left early Friday and drove to Hyannis, where we hopped aboard a speedy ferry that took us to the island of Nantucket.

Now, I've been to some beautiful places in the world before, and I have to say that Nantucket ranks pretty high on my pretty places list. Even though it was totally not in season (read: very windy and somewhat brown), the locals were amazing and the flower boxes more than compensated for the not yet green grasses. I can only imagine how glorious it must look when everything is flourishing - I couldn't help but notice how meticulously kept the gardens were, with their trailing vines and espaliered trees. Incredible.

Here is another thing I want to write about: Tim and I've talked about this quite a bit. How weird is it to actually visit some of these places that you've only ever read about?!? Tim remembers doing a (salt dough) clay model of the island of Nantucket way back in elementary school. Who would have thought he'd ever in his lifetime visit this place?!? And me, I never dreamed of seeing the Cape, let alone Nantucket! Crazy. I am now a firm believer in collecting memories - not dust.

Well, after Nantucket (which I'll write more about later... I'm just giving an overview of the trip in this blog entry) we took the ferry back to Hyannis on Saturday night. That is when the storm hit. Sunday was a soaking mess, but we managed to do some cool things and visit some neat museums. It was kind of a bummer that we picked such a crappy weekend weather-wise, but we made the most of it. We drove all over the lower end of the Cape that day, accomplishing a couple of things like having a sandwich in Sandwich, and so forth. Yeah, that's how I roll.

Monday was a much nicer day - the sun finally came out! It was so windy though. I think the winds got up to about 55 mph - at least that is what the kids at CNN said. Tim took a great wind picture of me (mind that it was raining and I haven't photoshopped it yet...). Pretty dang funny. Yeah, that was Sunday. But on Monday, we drove up to Provincetown and had a nice time. We even were able to take a stroll along Race Point Beach, which is the furthest tip of the Cape.

So, that is a quick recap of the vacation. I'll fill in details tomorrow morning after I've had some time to unwind a bit. We really did have a nice time. We need to get away more often!

See Suzy Write...

Well, here comes a bunch of random Suzy thoughts. Once again, it was one of those weeks where I had a lot going on, but not enough willpower (is this one word?) to sit and write about any of it. So here goes, in no particular order...

My dad is good. He had his surgery on Tuesday on the SECOND hernia. I hope he realizes now that God did not intend for him to be a weight-lifter. That's cool, though. It would be freaky to have a dad shaped like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I just hope my pops allows himself enough time to recover before he starts back at his job.

Tim and I are going on a vacation tomorrow - and it's about dang time! I noticed that I was getting really irritated at little things at work and over dirty dishes and whatnot. And poor Tim, he just got a HUGE promotion at work and he has been stressing too. It will be a nice getaway for us both. We are going to take a long weekend (starting tomorrow) and go up to the Cape. We were planning on going to Maine and seeing Acadia, but it is TOO FREAKIN' COLD!!! They still have snow and ice and nothing is open yet, so it wouldn't be worth the drive. Instead, we are driving up to Hyannis and staying in that region of Mass. We'll spend one night in Nantucket (or so we plan...) and also try to see Martha's Vineyard. We may even go on a whale watch, if the weather permits. (Don't I sound old?!?) But really, one thing I want to see is a cranberry bog. Did you know cranberries grow in bogs?!? Bizarre.

Also, did you know that polar bears cover their black noses with their paws when hunting?!? So that they blend in! Now that is intelligent design! I just learned that today. Sometimes it pays to be a children's librarian.

And sometimes it doesn't. Can I just say that I absolutely HATE book-banners?!? I especially hate it when the person who has issue with a book doesn't even read the full text. Just a warning, if you want to bring an issue up with me about my book selections, you had better read the whole book. Otherwise, you are just gonna have to talk to the hand. And that is all I'm gonna say about that. (And I'm also gonna say that the book in question was an ALA notable book of the year. So my choice can't be all that bad now, can it? - Yeah, as in American Library Association.)

And one last thing... For some reason, every time I go to the dentist (I had a cleaning on Wednesday) I seem to break out all around my mouth right before. What is that?!? I usually have a decent complexion, but it is like my body senses that I hate going to the dentist and it wants to torture me further by giving me tiny little welts of pain for my dentist to poke while he is exploring the nether-regions of my mouth with that tiny crooked mirror of his. Ugg. Does this happen to anyone else?!?

And that, my friends, is the week I've had - give or take a few details.

Wordless Wednesday - Macys Flower Show

(Once a year, Macys covers the Herald Square store in flowers...
I got to see it this year.)

Good Thoughts For Pops...

Here is a pic of my silly dad. He is undergoing the knife today to get a hernia fixed, so everybody please say a prayer or think some happy thoughts for him. Okay?

I'm a daddy's girl, so I am a bit worried about his surgery. My dad works so very hard and is always lifting twice his body weight (does he think he's an ant?!?), so I am hoping he will just cut that out. He is a very important person to me, and I need him to stick around, ya know? (He's also the biggest fan of the blue-eyed girl club and I love my fans.) I just really don't like surgeries of any kind, and this is a SECOND hernia surgery for him. After this, he is under strict Suzy orders to frolic for AT LEAST two months while he heals. (You hear that Pops?!? If I find out you've been playing Hercules again, I will be SO mad.)

Easter Hat Parade in NYC

Now THIS was fun! Tim took me to the NYC Easter Hat Parade yesterday and we had a blast. We met up with some friends of ours, Lou and Anne and their hilarious sons (who each made a hat to sport), and made a morning out of it. My hat was relatively plain compared to some of the wild and crazy hats we saw yesterday! Good Lord. I don't know how these people balanced the hats on top of their heads. I don't even know where these people found the time to make some of these crazy hats. You can go view my slide show of pretty hats here. (You'll notice that I'm in a lot of them... I just went up to people and said "I like your hat. Will you be in a picture with me?" I hugged/put-my-arm-around a lot of random people yesterday.) The picture here is of me and Super Bunny. I don't actually know what Super Bunny is good for, but he sure is cute, isn't he? What do you think his super powers could be?

One thought about yesterday: I have to say, as silly as I felt walking through Manhattan to get to that parade with my silly daisy hat, when we actually arrived at the parade, I was so glad to even have a hat! I felt so out of place while people gawked at me on the train/subway, but when I was at the parade, having that hat made me feel like I had a private joke with all the other hat people. I would look at another hat person and grin, and that hat person would shoot back an even bigger grin. I felt like I was part of a club or something. Oh what fun.

I can cross another thing off my list now!!!

Easter Hat Parade Preview...

Here's me in mine... more pictures to come later.

Easter Dance

Here's my Meez doing a happy dance (yeah, my "Elaine" dance... I know) because Tim is taking me to the Easter Hat Parade in the city on Sunday! Now I just have to make the cutest and best looking flower cap to sport - I don't wanna be shown up, you know. And if I play my cards right, we might even go to the Macy's Flower Show afterwards!

My Little Panda Bear.

Andy (baby brother) has always loved pandas. I thought that he'd probably get a kick out of this, too. Click on the link... it's pretty freaky. And make sure you turn your sound way up, too. (You'll thank me for it. Heehee...)

Watch me turn into a
Panda Cub at YouWild.org

Wordless Wednesday (kind of)

For this Wednesday, I borrowed this guy's alphabet to create a sign.
Can you read it?

My First Video

Eat your heart out, Steven Spielberg.

Dang April Fools...

I love the beginning of April. I especially love April Fool's Day. But this year was no fun - I miss my fellow partner in crime, my buddy Tennessee Celeste. You know, for a good solid prank, you MUST have a partner in crime (hence the great partnerships of history - Bonnie and Clyde and so forth...). You can't really bask in the hilariousness of trickery unless someone else knows of your wrong doing. You just can't. So this post is for you Celeste. And boy, we coulda really gotten some people with this one! Here's to "broken-down beer trucks that are giving away free ones" and fuzz-ball mice in people's chairs. (Link to the Fairy Mummy)