I do NOT love these babies (yet?)

We've got lots of babies this spring... baby plants, that is. I've got a new windowsill herb garden, Alfie has a couple of tomato plants out back, and the kids have pansies, lavender, tomatoes, wildflowers and herbs. Oh, and these little darlings.


We got these Venus flytrap seedlings at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show about 6 weeks ago. I thought they were disgusting. The kids fell in love.

At the time, they were just tiny shoots, like a small leaf poking out of the ground. I thought they'd die for sure. For the first 3 weeks we didn't even water them with distilled water like we were supposed to (apparently they are very sensitive to the chlorine and other minerals in regular tap water). I kept "forgetting" to buy the water. But in spite of it all, they survived, and continue to thrive.

I have to admit, I now find them quite fascinating. They're not quite big enough to swallow flies yet, but their traps are growing quite nicely, and you can already see the little hairs on them. And who would have guessed that they have heart-shaped leaves?

Now they get lots of sunshine, water (yes, distilled water at last) and love. And if they do end up swallowing up all the flies and mosquitoes around the house, even I will fall in love with them.

For more images of love, click here.

I just met a girl named Maria

Yesterday I attended a Maria Shriver book signing event and met the First Lady of California in person. I got to mingle and chat with the awesome bloggers of the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, have Maria sign me a copy of her wonderfully inspirational book, Just Who Will You Be? (read my full review here), and chow down on scoopfuls of Lovin' Scoopful, the new ice cream that she and her brother created (read my full review here).

You can read more about what we did and what she said here , and you can read about the stupid things that happened to me during the event here. For now I'm content to reflect upon what I thought and felt.


As I stood back and listened to her speak, my initial impression was, There you have it, The Best of America, right in front of me. Looking at her, it's impossible not to be reminded of the incredible legacy she bears; it's in her hair, in her face, in her voice, and it hits you like a punch in the face. The blood of JFK, Bobby Kennedy and Ted Kennedy runs in her veins. Her father founded the Peace Corps; her mother, the Special Olympics. She's married to a superstar and a governor. She's a famous journalist in her own right.

The only thing we have in common is our first name, Maria.

But as she spoke and answered questions, I got a little glimpse of the Maria behind all of that.

Ways Maria Shriver is not like me (besides the money, the career, the husband, the famous family):

She's punctual.
She dresses like she stepped out of Vanity Fair.
She looks like she weighs about as much as my right thigh.
She's at ease with anyone and everyone.
She finds the time to do a million things and be a million things every day.
Because she knows how to prioritize and say No.


Ways Maria Shriver is like me:

She has a hunky husband (ok, I had to write that out of loyalty; truth is, I think maybe Ahnuld might be a little bit hunkier than Alfie)
She comes from a big Catholic family.
She's a mom.
She thinks parenthood is the hardest job in the world but she doesn't want to be seen as just a mom.
She gets insecure, tired, and stressed.
She wants to make the most of her "wild and precious life".



So when it was my turn to meet her, I felt a rush of affinity. We spoke for a couple of minutes. And after it was all over, I was left with one thought: She gets what I'm going through.

Maria Shriver and I are totally soulmates!

Meet FrankenBear

This has got to be the worst patch job ever. Meet Peanuthead, a small blue teddy that 3Po won at some carnival game in Vegas. When Peanuthead's crotch started to split, 3Po came to me for help. I was too lazy to get the sewing box out, so I got the glue gun (which is right beside the sewing box) and tried to hot-glue the seams together. As you can see, it didn't work. I was forced to sew them together anyway, and the glue just hardened Peanuthead's fur and made it impossible to make fine, delicate stitches. It was like pushing a needle through a plastic plate.

Moral of the story: Do it right the first time. Unless you want your son's teddy to look like he's been eunuched by Frankenstein.

MOMocrats giveaway

How's this for a cool giveaway -- you could win some cool Hillary/Obama/MOMOcrats swag! My favorite political moms, the MOMocrats, are hosting a Mother's Day giveaway

In case of emergency, get ice

You're relaxing in your hotel room, when all of a sudden the fire alarm rings. You stare at the doorway in shock -- smoke is coming out from below!


You open the door and rush into the smoke-filled hallway. Of course, the elevators aren't working! You reach a door marked "Fire Exit -- Emergency Only". Sobbing with relief, you open the door.....


... Only to realize that the door leads... to an ice machine! And a Coke vending machine! And the exact same hallway you were in before!!

We were doubled over with laughter when we saw this at our hotel in Las Vegas. We figured they had done some renovations and had forgotten to take off the Fire Exit signs.

It took us a while to realize that the door actually did serve a purpose. It is right beside the elevators, and in a fire, steel doors actually come down (see the metal track on the ceiling and walls?), shutting the elevator area off from the rest of the hallway. So if you happen to be waiting for an elevator when someone pulls the fire alarm, you'd be trapped -- unless you use that door to get back to the hallway. So it's not so funny after all. But we still had a good laugh.

For more funny signs, click here.

Spread awareness, not malaria!

Today is World Malaria Day. Malaria. It sounds like such an antiquated disease, one that should have gone away with polio and ricketts. But it is very real for too many people today.

It kills up to 3 MILLION people each year.

It is one of the leading causes of death for children.

Malaria is entirely curable and preventable! Anti-malarial drugs are becoming accessible to even the poorest people on the planet. And just sleeping under a mosquito net can prevent the disease from striking.

Only poverty and ignorance and apathy and stopping us from eradicating this disease. So please join me and people all over the world in spreading awareness of this horrible disease.

Bloggers, let's spread some linky love: If you are blogging about malaria and World Malaria Day, leave me a comment and I'll go to your site, pronto, and leave a comment too!

And now for some fluffy stuff....

I could (and will) blog about Haitians eating mud cakes to ward off hunger, or about how people are still dying from malaria. But for now I will blog about a different kind of feast. And I am doubly grateful to be able to blog about trivial as well as serious things...

Appetizer
Name something you would categorize as weird.
I hear the new James Bond movie is jinxed.....oooooh!

Soup
What color was the last piece of food you ate?
I had a brownie and it was a rich, chocolatey brown. Yum......

Salad
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how much do you enjoy being alone?
9 -- I like having time to myself. I will happily shop, watch a movie, or take a walk all alone.

Main Course
Fill in the blank: I will NOT vote for JOHN McCAIN in NOVEMBER (actually, I won't be voting for any candidate since I'm not a US citizen)

Dessert
Describe your sleeping habits.
I sleep like Dracula, straight on my back with my hands clasped together on my stomach. Alfie says I don't even close my eyes properly so you can see the whites rolling around!

What does daddy do all day?

The kids got to play hooky from school today (and mama got to sneak in a couple of hours at the outlet mall)! It was "Take your sons and daughters to work day" at Alfie's office, so they spent the day doing crafts, eating donuts, playing foosball and making photocopies of their hands. They got some nice tshirts to wear....



All the kids got together and painted a canvas that will go up on permanent display at the company office.



But most importantly, they got to see daddy at work and learn about what he does the whole day...
... drink tea!

What's your kid's Eco Footprint?

.. and for more Earth Day fun, check out my post at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog on how we're getting the kids involved. Happy Earth Day, everyone!

What's your Eco Footprint?

To commemorate Earth Day, The Pea and her Brownie troupe spent Sunday afternoon cleaning up the bike path near the railroad trash. She and five other seven-year-old girls picked up trash for two hours. It got me thinking about how the rest of us could celebrate Earth Day as well.

Over the past few years, we've made several lifestyle changes to lessen our impact on the environment:

* I walk with The Pea to school each morning
* Alfie takes his 45 miles-per-gallon motorcycle to work each day
* We recycle paper, aluminum, glass and plastic
* We use filtered tap water instead of bottled spring water.
* We use cloth bags instead of paper or plastic to carry groceries
* We use a front-loading clothes washer
* We wash almost everything in cold water
* We planted native, drought-tolerant plants in our back yard
* We use a drip irrigation system to water our plants
* We use non-toxic, earth-friendly cleaning products
* We pack lunches in reusable containers


But before you wear yourselves out patting me on the back, realize that we still have a long way to go before we can say that we live an eco-friendly lifestyle. For instance:

* We use way too many paper towels. I try to rationalize this by telling myself that I'd have to wash the dirty dishcloths anyway and use up more water.

* I semi-lied about using non-toxic, earth-friendly cleaning products and packing lunch in reusable containers. I do use Method and Simply Green cleaning products, but I had to switch back from Ecover laundry detergent to regular Tide -- Ecover just wasn't getting those stains out. Ditto for our automatic dishwasher detergent (I went back to Cascade). Again, I told myself that washing a pile of dirty dishes for the second time around ends up using more water, which isn't good for the environment anyway.

* And I also semi-lied about the reusable containers. Sometimes (ok, lots of times) I get lazy and I pack sandwiches in ziplock plastic bags.

* We buy most of groceries the old-fashioned way, from a regular grocery store. Yes, we do stock up on pesticide-laden tomatoes and grapes imported from Chile and milk with hormones and non-local, processed, overly-packaged food. And we buy waaay too many single-serve bottles of water or juice for lunch boxes and travel.

* We still drive the van quite a bit. The boys' preschool, the gym, the kids' ballet, soccer and ice-skating lessons are all too far away to walk. And I still like to go on occasional late-night runs to Target.

* I've been telling myself that I should dry our bedsheets and towels on a clothesline but I just can't bring myself to do it.


So in reality, my Ecological Footprint sucks. According to a test I took on the Earth Day network, it would take almost 6 Planet Earths to support mankind if everyone lived like me. Part of that is a consequence of living in a developed country (the US in particular), and I can deal with that. I'm not about to give up little luxuries like electricity or central heating or chicken breasts in styrofoam trays.

But I know there are still ways we can chip away at our wasteful lifestyle to do our part to save the Earth -- line-drying the sheets, learning to live without strawberries in winter, doing away with ziploc bags once and for all. There's no time like the present to begin. After all, it's Earth Day -- and doesn't the planet deserve a gift from humankind for once?