bethysmalls

A few months ago, I was a Sporcle.com addict. I became truly dependent while we were sleep training the boy. You see there is literally no place in this row house where a crying, sleepy child cannot be heard so I would escape into meaningless quizzes! It actually worked very well because I’m so ridiculously competitive that I was able to turn off my acute anxiety to omgmakeittothe90thpercentile!!!!!

At one point, I was obsessed with 2 quizzes. This was actually after B-Rex was a sleeper pro so I was able to really throw myself into them. #1. Countries of the World. Our best was 89th percentile. We had to give up because Hoagey was just tired of doing that one. #2. Harry Potter Top 200. This is a quiz of the 200 most mentioned HP characters and our best score was a pitiful 82nd percentile. I could probably, if given double the time come up with 190 of the characters but in 20 minutes I can only ever remember 164. When I would try again and remember one I forgot the time before, I’d leave off 2 of the ones I previously had. I know. It’s embarrassing that I’m not better at it.

Tonight, my brother challenged me to the following: Can you name the Harry Potter Terms Missing From Each Group?

I got 19/20 but I got a bonus answer so I’d say that makes me a winner. Yes a WINNER. Shut up.

I have to go take the Harry Potter Top 200 quiz to bed.

Sweet Honeydukes dreams, everyone.

Tonight we watched one of our Netflix. It’s called F*ck: A Documentary. I give it 4 out of 5 stars. That means “I really liked it.”

It’s no 30 Rock, but what can you do? At least Modern Family is on. Anyone know when season 4 comes out?

I think I might have a problem.

My family friend Chris bought us a Webber charcoal grill as a wedding gift. Over 2 years ago. And we just started using it this week. And tonight was the first time we actually cooked a whole meal on the grill without the fear of food borne illness!

I am almost certain that we will be grilling again this week and maybe I’ll get my act together and take photos of our newly totally figured out process.

Point is, we finally used our grill which means we are using our back yard! For more than just storing my now defunct pink scooter!

We keep the ol’ pink buddy back there which is kinda stupid because if I want to start riding it again, we have to take it through the house as our back alley’s gate has a broken lock. Wah waaaaah. Anyway. We have this big back yard, for a row house, and up until this week the only stuff back there was stuff we don’t use. And now we use the one thing! Yay!

And some day we’ll have a garden. With flowers and vegetables. Until then please visit my friends’ blog, plantsondeck.com.

Justin and Char have a great roof deck and on it grows lots of wonderful things and there are tips about container gardening. They envy my big empty back yard. We promise to do something with it some day. Promise!!!

Since we moved into our house, we have been on and off the cable bandwagon. Shortly before Bruno was born, I was convinced I’d have no time for all the many, many shows I was watching and made a concerted effort to cut back. Between the DVR and nearly nightly lineup of shows we liked to watch, I was bordering on an addiction. We gave up the digital cable and the DVR for a while and then for Hoagey’s first fathers’ day, I bought him an LCD HDTV and we realized we couldn’t get the HD channels without the dreaded cable so we went crawling back. No DVR this time, cause really? We DIDN’T have time.

And then with all the TV you can get on line and all the hundreds of dollars we were paying the COMCAST to rot our brains we gave it up again and signed up for Netflix.

It’s been awesome actually. We get a lot more channels than we thought we would and we actually pay attention to what we’re watching on DVD and it’s like spending time together instead of just zoning out in front of the TV.

And then for this fathers’ day, Hoagey requested a Blu-ray player which he received a little early. Let me tell you it’s awesome. All the instant movies on Netflix are immediately at our disposal and like I said before we get to watch Bru Bru on a big screen.

The last week or so we have been watching 30 Rock from the beginning. I remember when it came out it was in competition with my boyfriend Aaron Sorkin’s show Studio 60 and I sort of boycotted. But darn it, it’s just so funny. I think Hoagey is maybe a little over it at the moment but because he’s very sweet and I’m easily overwhelmed by our stubborn toddler, he pretends to want to watch it every night. Swoon. He sure knows the way to my heart: Tina Fey.

All in all, we still probably get too much TV but at least it’s a lot more PBS (Mostly Sesame Street) and a lot less 1200 copies of the same Daily Show.

Today at the park, when asked who he is, this kid replied,

“Bru-Bru!”

He threw a pretty filthy change up.

He also was ripping off the T.

Went on a date tonight. And we got to see all this:

Chooch giving Halladay the mound from his perfect game.

The Halladays

A self portrait for the ages!

Bell rings for Werth's 2-run homer!

And the bll rings for Jamie Moyer's 100th win as since turning 40/complete, 98 pitch game!

Hope you’re having a good weekend. Good night, all.

A few times every day, Bruno will start naming out loud everybody he knows. It usually goes like this:

Bruno: Mommy, Daddy, Elmo, Cookie.

Or sometimes it’s:

Bruno: Daddy, Nona, Pop Pop, Ernie.

Other names he knows are Bom Bom (for Pom Pom) and Cat (for Uncle Skippy) Abby (from Sesame St.) Osky (Oscar the grouch) Ita (Rosita from Sesame St.) Harry (Harry potter and Herry from Sesame St. What?) and he has a word for Grover but I’m just not sure what it is yet.

Speaking of words he has for things that aren’t the actual words here is a short glossary.

Cshooo – Chooch/Phillies. It’s complicated.

Goldie/Goggy – Dog. This is because one of my mom’s dogs is named Goldie.

Hamey – Hungry

Muh – Milk or More.

Wuhwuh – Water. Okay that one’s pretty close but still.

Almost every day it’s like he learns a new thing. He knows the sounds that elephants, sheep, cows, lions, cats and roosters make and will do them for us. I have to get a video of that. And he even knows what sound a bunny makes and you’re probably like, “What sound does a bunny make exactly?” It doesn’t to be honest but according to his See and Say, “The bunny says, “Boing! Boing!’” And so that’s what sound Bruno makes. He knows how to put things away and he also knows how to completely disobey whatever we’ve asked him to (not) do.

Next time you see Bruno and after he’s warmed up to you a little, ask him what a gorilla does. You’re welcome.

Hey! We just got a blu-ray player and it’s amazing. Not only do we not have to use our play station controller as a remote control (which sucks) BUT we get the INTERNET on the TV!

Last night Hoagey and I watched several of Bruno’s greatest hits on our TEEVEEE, you guys! It was the greatest. I was watching my formerly tiny boy babbling and cooing and dancing before he could even stand up on his own.

Please go and get yourselves a blu-ray player so that you can watch Bruno’s YouTube videos.

Here’s the link—–> awesome.

Here is a world premie r for you.

This is from a couple months ago. He’s very good at it now.

Ok, I do actually have a favorite poem. I studied it in my senior year of high school and it’s by  John Donne. The next year in college, I asked my friend Rachel if she had any books of poems by John Donne because I wanted to try and find it and she got a little nervous because apparently most of his poetry is about death and she thought I might be dying. This poem is not, I don’t think, about death. Not entirely way anyway. It’s called Meditation 17. Go on and read it.

This poem is clearly very spiritual but for me, it helped cement the fact in my brain that we are all connected. We are all affected by one another. Our successes, our failures and our losses resonate.

It’s interesting to me, now, because as a member of the social media community (facebook and especially twitter) I see the joys and sorrows of people who I have never laid eyes upon in real life and yet my emotional response is always at least as strong as if it were a co-worker and much more so than if it were many of my neighbors. But I guess that’s not even really true. If I knew about my neighbors the kind of things I know about my internet posse, I would surely care just as much.

Wouldn’t it be crazy if the people who lived next door to me read my twitter stream? They’d know when I’m having a good or bad day. They’d know if I’m frustrated with my child’s teeth or new found willfulness. They’d know how I feel about BP and Rush Limbaugh and that I’m still breastfeeding and I rarely exchange more than pleasantries with these folks. It would be easier, I guess, to not have to explain to every person I might pass on my street why I haven’t showered yet (Bruno cut his nap about 2 hours short today) or why I’m home on a Tuesday (Second ear infection in 1 month!). But I would surely censor myself a great deal more than I already do if I knew Kathy & Nick and Charlie across the street were reading my every mundane thought.

It’s a shame really. Because what I think ol’ JD was trying to say was that people deserve our sympathy and our cheers no matter who they are because, really? It matters to us. The tide raises all the boats and the shabbiest house on the block brings down everyone’s property value.

I guess Meditation 17 helped me be a more compassionate person and that’s why it’s my favorite poem.

But my second favorite poem is Shel Silverstein’s The Dirtiest Man In The World. So.

Today’s prompt for June’s edition of NaBloPoMo is “What did you want to be when you grew up?” and I have a 4 act response to this question.

ACT 1 Student of the month -

I recall that in elementary school, our teachers gave out an honor called “Student Of the Month” which was a sheet of green card stock with a place in the top left corner to be filled with a picture and many questions about the exemplary student such as, Favorite Food – Pizza and Spaghetti. Favorite Color – Blue (This was my attempt to be rebellious or at least different. Girls were supposed to like pink and red. Not me. I’m a Blue/Green girl! Bad assss! And now I have a pink scooter sitting in my back yard. I digress.). And one of the questions was What do you want to be when you grow up? And I said “House Wife.” I’m not kidding. I know filled out more than one of these things, not to brag, but THIS answer is the one that stayed with me. Now. I think what I actually meant was “Stay At Home Mom” but that’s what we called SAHMs back in the day. And I have to say, that is what I still wish to be.

Act 2 – College

Throughout high school and into college, I went back and forth on what I would study. It began with theater because that’s what I was involved in when I started looking at colleges. That and Field Hockey but you can’t major in Field Hockey. Then I decided that I wasn’t all that “good” at “acting” and “singing” and figured I should pick something that could actually get me employed post graduation. And of course I picked International Studies. Because I wanted to be a Diplomat. Naturally. And as I wised up further and learned that you really need to KNOW PEOPLE to get into that line of work, I settled on the next logical area of study: Sports Medicine. (This, by the way, is how I came to study Exercise Science at one of the best schools for International Studies in the world. Go figure.)

Act 3 – Real World (actual reality not reality TV types)

It was at my real job a few years ago that I discovered the blog www.dooce.com. I was checking my email and the quote of the day on my igoogle page was:
“People often write me and ask how I keep my wood floors so clean when I live with a child and a dog, and my answer is that I use a technique called Suffering From a Mental Illness.
Heather Armstrong, Dooce, 07-07-06″
I looked her up and I was hooked. I went pouring through archives and caught up on Heather’s fascinating life. I had a blog myself but had no idea what you could actually DO with it. Through Dooce I went on to find Amalah, Fussy, Finslippy and MightyGirl to name a few and found my inspiration. I tried to commit myself to writing more regularly and managed to increase my output somewhat. Then when I was expecting Bruno I decided it was time to get a big girl website and bought this domain name. I spent the last year and a half trying to figure out how to do this “blogging” thing. I was struggling struggling to do something serious and legitimate but with my one “internet class” in college, I was in way over my head.

Act 4 – fin

So one day I decided I should ask for help. This is a big deal for me since I sort of have the attitude that anything I ever need to do I can figure out on my own. With the help of google, of course.

In February, we bought web hosting for this site and it wasn’t until last week that I actually made the switch over to this NEW and IMPROVED site! Sure it looks very similar, thanks to Jon Solomon*, but it IS different.

I am going to the Blog Her conference this year. I have the chance to meet people who do what I want to do when I grow up. People who tell their stories and write well and say what they think in ways that help us understand the world in a different way. People that have helped me find a passion.

This month will kick off my 2nd NaBloPoMo and, with any luck, my new thing-that-I-do. I realize I will need my day job for a long time but that’s okay with me even if a long time is forever. I want this in my life and I want to be good at it. I want to entertain you! Just think of me as your ridiculously pretty court jester.

*if anyone is looking for blog help, Jon Solomon is your man. feel free to contact me for his info.