I've been surrounded by short people all weekend. Saturday, neighbor kids Ian, Oliver and Davis came over to play with Jesse. Funny side story about Davis. He's 4 now, but when he was born, his older brother, Eli, refused to let anyone call him Davis. We had to call the baby Buzz. Funny side story about Eli. This kid was always naked when he was little. They live about a block and a half from us now, but when he lived across the street, he never had clothes on. I always said "it's not officially summer until I've seen Eli naked." He once peed into my bushes from my front porch. Sunday, I came home from grocery shopping to find neighbor kids Ashlyn and Katelyn in my house playing with Jesse. They were soon joined by Alice. Later, SkooterPie and I had to run and errand and left Jesse in the care of Lori (Ian and Oliver's mom). Bless her, she also had Ashlyn, Katelyn, Alice, and other neighbor kids Colby and Lucy at her house. At least those are the kids I know of. Lori's husband Richard recently petitioned the city to put speed bumps on our street. We need them. I can't believe how many kids we have running around here. It's wonderful, actually. I love that Jesse has all these kids to play with.

It was P.E. Demonstration Night at Campus School last night, which meant hundreds of parents packed a gym at the U of M to watch elementary students perform folk dances, square dances and show their skills in such time-honored P.E. activities as jump roping and playing with a parachute. There was even a Maypole dance. Jesse's class demonstrated lummi sticks. They hammered out rhythms using two sticks while dancing to music, which included a tune I think was called "Alexander's Ragtime Disco." It was all very cute to watch (especially the chicken dance performed by a group of first-graders--hilarious), although the program didn't let out until 8:30. I did good in getting Jesse to bed by 10. And the seats in the gym of the Elma Roane Fieldhouse are instruments of torture. The Lady Tiger basketball team got the short end of the facilities stick, I'm afraid. The men get to play at FedExForum. The women play in a place not much bigger than my old high school gym.

Today is the teacher appreciation luncheon at Campus School, and I've volunteered to watch Jesse's class so his teacher can sit down and enjoy a nice lunch served by other parents. Jesse has no idea that I'm subbing for his teacher.

What are people in my hometown naming their babies this week?

Baby boys:
Kaninn Lynn
Dennis Alan
Dylan Nathaniel
Dicen Cole

Baby girls:
Camryn Elizabeth
Marissa Shea
Hannah Belle

I like to think of these kids getting married decades from now. Wouldn't it be great to see a Kaninn Lynn/Camryn Elizabeth merger later? The could even become famous enough to warrant the Hollywood name-blending nickname of Kanryn or Caminn.

In the latest Tiger basketball news, Darius Washington (our sophomore point guard) and Shawne Williams (a freshman forward) have both decided to make themselves eligible for the NBA draft. It appears that Shawne will forego hiring an agent, which means he could still come back and play for us next year. But Darius is pretty much gone no matter what. I wish him the best. My heart broke for him last year when he missed those free throws against Louisville. And I have loved watching him play.

Now I can focus on where Tiger football stars DeAngelo Williams and (kicker) Stephen Grostkowski end up in the NFL draft this weekend. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that DeAngelo goes in the first round. He deserves it. Whoever gets him will not be disappointed.

Do I stink?

I decided recently that I needed to add a little color to my skin before the wedding, and during my many, many visits to Walgreens I'd been eyeing the shelves of lotion that claim to have a little bit of self-tanner in them. The idea is that you're moisturizing while gradually getting a tan. So I bought a bottle yesterday and used it for the first time last night. It went on smelling quite pleasant. But at some point during the night that smell turned on me.

I thought maybe it was because I bought an unfamiliar brand. The store I went to was out of the Jergen's lotion for light skin tones, so I bought something with the name "Glow" in the name. But I've just been reassured that it was not the brand of lotion. Comments on epinions for the Jergen's Natural Glow Daily Moisturizer have many nice things to say about the results of using this lotion. But among the cons, many reviewers mention the smell, which some categorize as resembling steak sauce, chemical chicken fat and plain old stinky. The lotion I used last night had me smelling like a box of crackers when I woke up this morning. And I can't get that smell out of nose. I hope that I'm not walking around smelling like that today. Nasty. I don't know if I can take another night of that.

I managed to spend most of the weekend sitting out in my front yard, reading a book and watching Jesse play with the neighbor kids. It was very relaxing. I also became little Miss Susie Homemaker Sunday when I cooked a pot roast and made a cake. SkooterPie completed the picture when he brought me a bouquet of tulips when he got home from grocery shopping. All I needed was a freakin' apron.

The weather has finally gotten consistently warm enough that it's time to do the bi-annual switcheroo of clothes. Because we live in a tiny house, I have to store my off-season clothes in storage containers in the attic. Today SkooterPie brought my warm weather clothes down, and I tackled the chore of going through and discarding the clothes (warm-weather and cold-weather) that I don't want anymore.

I ended up with three trash bags full that we'll try to get rid of during the neighborhood yard sale in May. I got rid of a lot of winter clothes, which means I'm in for spending some serious bucks on clothes later this year. But some of the stuff should have been donated to good will years ago.

I must have done the same thing at the end of the summer last year because my closet is looking pretty scarce even with the new infusion of summer clothes. Shopping will have to become a priority some recent weekend. Just not this one.

But I love summer for one very specific reason: I don't have to worry about the length of things when dressing Jesse in shorts. Everything we bought last year still fits him. Hooray!

I have been ordered by someone much wiser than me to go blog something fun. And I really need to because this has been a terrible, stress-filled week. So without further ado, I give you the new weekly feature for my little site:

What are people in my hometown naming their babies this week

Yes, I know I shouldn't make fun of people's names, but we all do it. C'mon 'fess up. You do too. And this is coming from a girl who for the longest was stuck on the following names for a little girl: Emily Lenore and Frances Scout. I wanted Campbell to be Jesse's first name instead of his middle name. Although now that we know a little more about our kid, we probably should have named him Calvin. And I'm not really making fun of other people's names so much as conducting a long-term study of what small-town parents are naming their kids. So join me now with our first batch of names from the Wednesday April 19 issue of my hometown newspaper (I'm leaving last names off):

Baby Boy: Lelan DaRay
Baby Boy: Ian Preston
Baby Boy: Justin Manuel Hernandez

Nothing really shocking there, but I think little Lelan DaRay is going to have to grasp the concept of lower case and upper case letters fairly quickly. And that name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

And as a companion to this, I'd like to choose a couple of names from the obituary listings. Because I love reading old people's names. Old people have the BEST names. People just don't name their kids like they used to. And why not, I ask you? There's nothing wrong with these names. From the same issue, we have the following names in the obituaries:

Isiah, who died at age 91. He was the last survivor of 11 (!) siblings. Check out some of their names: (brothers) Elvis, Ezra; (sisters) Delia, Gertrude.
Cora L., who died at age 81
Florence who died at age 76
Mary Edna who died at age 93
Mary Oledia who died at age 77

See, great names!

Weekend recap:
Dinner with SkooterPie and Jesse at Huey's Friday night. Saturday I attended April's wedding shower at her mother's house. The weather was beautiful and food was filling. I ate soooo much. Sunday Jesse and I hunted for Easter eggs that SkooterPie hid from us in the back yard. Then Jesse and I went to the zoo with Ron and Bethany. SkooterPie was having too much fun tearing his garage/studio apart.

Polar bears are so much more entertaining than Pandas. The new Northwest Passage exhibit at the zoo is amazing. The pics I'm posting were taken by Bethany. That's Jesse pressed up against the glass watching the bears frolic in the water.

Wednesday's headlines: Alabama booster killed in murder mystery
Thursday's headlines: Young's death may have been accidental
Friday's headlines: Young died from tragic fall on stairs

I can't wait for the next headline: Young not really dead after all

Actual conversation with my spouse at 9 a.m. this morning:
Him: "Hello."
Me: "Hey, are you awake?"
Him: "Muffle gurble gargle humfle Elmo."
Me: "What?"
Him: "Gurdle slarble spirit of Elmo humfel sladdle coming to disrupt babble memble."
Me: "Elmo? Skooter, what are you talking about?"
Him: "I think the spirit of Elmo is coming to disrupt the power waves of the morning."
Me: "Are you OK?"
Him: "Yeah. I'm asleep. Sorry."
Me: "I got the phone number for the orthodontist. Do you want it?"
Him: "I don't have any paper."
Me: "OK, well I'm so irritated right now that I'm just going to hang up and call them myself."
Him: "OK."

SkooterPie and Jesse are both at home today. It's probably a good thing that I'm at work because I'm in a foul mood. Not outright mean or anything, just easily irritated. It started last night. SkooterPie was smart enough to leave me alone in the bedroom with the door closed so I could watch some TV in peace. But then I decided to come out of hiding and start cleaning the house. I was straightening up an end table in the living room and started doing some addition on all the art magazines I was sorting through. I was holding $50 worth of magazines in my hand, and went into attack mode. I was not a pleasant person to be around last night. Reasons for my irritation? The house being filthy had a lot to do with it, I think. I really hope SkooterPie vacuums for me today.

I needed to call the orthodontist because one of Jesse's braces is loose. He'd been complaining about this one tooth bothering him after his last appointment. The doctor had adjusted his lip bumper, and I attributed his complaints to a change in pressure and thought it would work itself out. But last night Jesse was looking at his teeth in the mirror and hollered for me. He showed me where he could wiggle the brace on one of his molars. I told him to take the lip bumper out and asked if that made his tooth stop hurting. It did. So I let him sleep without it last night and promised I would try to call the orthodontist this morning. But, it being Good Friday and all, the office isn't open. I told Jesse last night that he'd have to wear the lip bumper anyway this weekend because I don't know what the effect on his teeth will be from not wearing the bumper for several days. If the brace pops out, obviously he's not going to be able to wear it anyway. And if he keeps fooling with it, it will pop out. Hopefully I can get him in to the orthodontist on an emergency appointment Monday morning.

So Coach Cal is staying (and Lisa is neck high in promises made to keep him here-tee hee), but as far as I'm concerned the reasons to worry about the future of Tiger basketball are greater than ever before. Clearly if Coach Cal leaves, and he will someday, we are screwed. No coach of any merit is going to want to coach a team in what's left of the C-USA conference. So the next area of business HAS to be getting the U of M out of C-USA. The second area of business should probably be replacing RC Johnson (our AD) because the fact that Cal even considered NC State is his fault for dithering around with Cal's contract. And Coach West's contract for that matter. It's April, why is our football coach's new contract just now being finalized? Especially after he took us to our third straight bowl game this year.

The weather was so nice yesterday that we spent a lot of time in the back yard after work. I jumped on the trampoline with Jesse, which is great exercise. SkooterPie pulled weeds. Then when I went inside to cook, SkooterPie and Jesse "played" "basketball." Everyone slept really, really well last night.

Thing I'm worrying about today:
Will Coach Cal stay or leave? Sigh.

Things I think about during my drive to work:
Someone really needs to write a broadway play called "Cheerleaders: The Musical."
Crap! I left my planner at home.
It's interesting that the new Tennessee license plates have a squiggly mark down the middle that looks like a tornado.

root beer marinated shrimp

Because of all the wacky weather Friday night, we opted to stay home. I had a nice dinner planned of fettucini alfredo with shrimp. Said shrimp was sitting in a baggie in the sink thawing when I told Jesse (a.k.a. Captain Chaos) to pour out the rest of his root beer and throw the can in the recycle bin. The next time I saw the shrimp there was a curious brown colored condensation on the bag. I thought Jesse had gotten careless with his root beer and had splashed the bag. I called him over and was telling him to be more careful when pouring something out. Then I noticed that the brown colored condensation was inside the bag. THEN I picked up the bag and noticed that it was full of shrimp and root beer. Jesse had "accidentally" poured the root beer into the bag of thawing shrimp. "I thought it was just garbage!" he told me. So I threw the shrimp in a collander and rinsed it thoroughly. And dinner was fine. If not a little more tangy than usual.

Weekend recap:
I got the family up early on Saturday and we had a nice breakfast at Brother Juniper's. I took Jesse to get fitted for his tuxedo Saturday afternoon. Then we visited Deliece for a much-needed haircut. When we arrived at Overton Square, there were cars and people everywhere. We had wandered into the annual crawfish festival. So after the haircut, Jesse and I bought a box of crawfish to bring back and share with SkooterPie.

Sunday I went to work for a couple of hours and then I played with Jesse on the trampoline and delivered neighborhood newsletters on our street.

Man, that's the most boring weekend we've had in a while.

My obsession

Well, maybe obsession is not exactly the right word. But I am extremely focused right now on paying off our debt. A couple of months ago I found a treasure trove of personal finance blogs. A lot of them are kept by average people who are recording their progress in paying off debt and sharing some ideas that have worked for them. Here are some of my favorites:
Frugal For Life
Mighty Bargain Hunger
Personal Finance Advice
Debt Hater
Five Cent Nickel
Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
Free Money Finance
Financial Baby Steps
My Open Wallet
Financial Train Wreck
No Credit Needed
Debt Defier

Then of course there's the debt reducing guru, Dave Ramsey. Dad tried to get me to read Dave's book "Financial Peace" years ago. I did skim it, and I was so put off by the male-oriented tone of the book that I tossed it aside in disgust. I do like Dave's methods for reducing debt, though, and for the most part I'm following his advice in trying to get rid of our debt right now. I just wish Dave weren't so ... evangelical in his financial advice. But I love going to his Web site and reading the stories told through the "We did it!" and "Stupid Tax" links.

I wish I had the time to do a debt blog, but instead I save it all up and send hilariously detailed e-mails about my finances to my friend Melissa. I know she'd miss those e-mails, right Mel?

Random post

Driving in to work this morning, I saw a guy in a parachute floating around the Downtown sky. I lost track of him before I could get parked, so I have no idea where he landed. For a minute, I thought I'd hallucinated it, but then I asked the security guard standing outside my garage if he'd seen it. Thankfully he had. "What was that about?" I asked him. "Just some guy's idea of fun, I guess." "Yeah, but I want to know where he landed." "I want to know where he jumped from." Good point.

I was talking to one of my freelancers on the phone to find out when I could expect a story I'd assigned to him. He said he had wanted to get it done yesterday, but then Reuters had called and asked him to drive up to Dyer and Gibson counties to write about the tornadoes. "It was pretty bad, huh?" I asked Richard. "I saw things I'd only read about in books," he answered. "Let me give you a piece of advice. Do not try to survive a tornado above the ground." He said he had trouble wrapping his mind around the damage. A conversation with a farmer struck him later on after he'd left. "I had dairy cows," he told Richard. "I have no idea where they are." That's when Richard realized that, while driving around this rural area dominated by farms, he hadn't seen any cows, horses, cats, dogs. No livestock, he said. No birds, he said.

New thing to watch out for: Jesse has been trying his hardest to avoid changing his socks. I have to check his feet every morning to make sure he has on a clean pair. I have no idea why he's doing this.

We've had beautiful weather this week. Unfortunately Jesse and his schoolmates have had to stay inside their school building with all the blinds pulled down all day long. Why? Because anti-abortion protesters on campus have set up graphic display in the middle of campus. The letter Jesse's principal sent home to us last week also warned that there would be a truck carrying billboards with these images around the perimeter of campus during the week. So, no recess for the campus school kids. Nice.

Weekend recap:
Low-key dinner with Jesse and SkooterPie at Jason's Deli Friday night. FYI: They have free ice cream cones. And the best tomato and basil soup I've ever eaten. SkooterPie did the art opening thing afterward, but Jesse and I decided we weren't really in the mood. So we stayed home. He snuggled up beside me in my bed, and pretty soon both cats joined us. And I wish someone could have snapped a photo of me with a kid and two cats lying on top of me.

Housework Saturday. The neighborhood kids were out in full force, and so I let Jesse roam around a bit. He spent time at Lori and Richard's house, which is three houses down. They have two little boys, Oliver and Ian. I like them. Lori does freelance work transcribing depositions for attorneys, and Richard is a musician in a well-known band here in Memphis. I walked over to tell Jesse that he needed to come home and eat lunch, and Lori was throwing hot dogs on a grill. "Mind if Jesse has a hot dog?" she asked. That was totally fine with me. They were all running around their backyard, and Richard was squirting them with a water gun. He was having a blast. Lori walked Jesse home a little while later, and he was soaking wet. So I took that opportunity to just go ahead and get him in the bathtub. That afternoon, Jesse and I went to Target where he bought some Yu-Gi-Oh cards and a Star Wars action figure. I bought Goblet of Fire on DVD. Walking out of Target, a lady smiled at me at me and then said "Wow, you and your son look exactly alike!" Then we went to Schneesel's so I could get brownies to take to a party. I also bought Jesse some strawberries, and he ate practically the entire container that afternoon. We went to the going away party that night for a colleague. I had asked ahead of time if we could bring Jesse with us, and our hostess said there'd be other kids there. But Jesse ended up being the only urchin. Thank goodness he was on his best behavior. Being an only child means he's used to entertaining himself, and because we've taken him to so many art openings and such, he's used to hanging around with and talking to adults. One of the adults reported this conversation she had with him:
Jesse: "I'm trying to be an artist. My dad's an artist."
Girl: "Really? What kind of art?"
Jesse: "I mostly like to draw. I'm pretty good at drawing the Simpson's. I can trace them, and I can draw them really good when I have the pictures to look at."
Girl: "That is so cool."
She was totally charmed by him. We only stayed for about an hour and a half. Jesse and I watched half of Goblet of Fire when we got home.

I took Jesse to the Children's Museum Sunday. They have had an exhibit on games that Jesse's been dying to see. Specifically he wanted to see the giant chess set. But once we got there, he wasn't all that interested in it. There was a game there that he had learned to play at Lindenwood. He taught me how to play it and then beat my pants off at it. It involved moving rocks around trays. I have no idea what it's called. I did the grocery shopping and Targeting that afternoon and then didn't do a whole lot else for the rest of the day. Jesse played outside a bit more. A little boy from across the street, Colby, came over and played for a little while. But it was kind of late, so he didn't get to stay very long. His dad, Joe, came over to collect him and saw "Antiques Road Show" on the television. "I just left one geek watching this across the street," he said laughing. I love our neighbors. Unfortunately, The Colby's (which is what we call Colby's family) are moving at the end of the school year. I hope we get some new neighbors with kids.