Today is one of the days when I am very very sorry that the day has only 24 hours. So much I did today and want to do more. But I need to blog, order some summer cloths for my son and go to sleep.

The best thing is I had energy today, that is a rare guest in my body. Probably it is because my son woke up at 10 am today and that never happened ever, he always was an early bird. I think we took a little bit too much freedom with his schedule but so far I think it is fixable. And for me, it would be so great to sleep more, but so far I can't find the right motivation for it yet. Maybe one day I will figure out how people go to bed by 11.00 p.m.
Anyway.
The accomplishment that I am enjoying the most is that our living room is now clean. No boxes or any kind of litter, looks very lonely, but for now it should suffice. It feels so good to go there. I've read somewhere that children need a neat and orderly environment because it gives them confidence and they think better. When living in a messy room their thoughts become scattered too. It might be true for adults too. Looking at the boxes and other stuff day after day was becoming depressing.

Also three of us had a lunch at Minado (www.minado.com) We really like that place and always enjoy but haven't being there since I was pregnant. Tried to convince our son to eat something except edammame (soybeans) and melon, but he definitely didn't feel adventures with food today. It always amuses me that he can try and eat a little bit of lemon, onion or garlic, but crab-cakes are a no, no. I wish I could understand why he picks one food and not the other.

Afterward while our tot was taking a nap my hubby and me cleared the lawn. As I was picking up some leaves and garbage, I thought that it was perfect scene for the tv crime series as this is the way how most of the body parts are found according them. But good for me I didn't find anything except couple of screws and pieces of packing foam. We even had time to enjoy a cup of tea outside after all work was done.

Other good news, is that pansies started showing up. I actually didn't know that it is going to bring me so much joy looking how those little plants are popping out. But it is very exciting. And my son surprised me when he remembered about yesterday and wanted to go and check on the "former seeds". This is how it is always with children you never know when they are actually paying attention.

Ok enough for today, amazon awaits.

Today was a nice day. Our nanny got sick so I stayed home with our son. We did our routine staff in the morning and after breakfast I thought that we should cook something for lunch so I decided that we are going to make baked sweet potato "chips" they are not exactly chips but better and my son likes to call them that. It is pretty simple process but it takes sometime, they need to be in the oven for an almost an hour and of course they are the best when fresh, so bottom line I rarely have a chance to make them although everybody loves them. I don't like peeling the potatoes, I think its my least favorite thing about cooking, but having my son sitting next to me and commenting on the process makes it much more fun, especially when he is trying on the new words that he learns in the process of cooking. Soon we put the cut potatoes in the oven. For ten minutes after that my son was trying to pronounce 350 which is the temperature, he got fifty very fast, but saying "three hundred" was a challenge, and I was very amused.

I am very excited to announce that a few of the tomatoes have grown already. Can't believe it. My son wasn't as exited I guess he is a bit young to grasp the concept of what happened. He started to run around wanting to water them, that part he loves.

The rest of the day was also nice and easy. And although its pretty late I even feel like cleaning up or something. I probably should do that while it lasts. :)

Sometimes it sucks to be a parent. After my own performance today I understand my parents and many other parents so much better. The power of wanting to make children do something because it is good for them, is great. I am sure every parent think pretty often: "Why can't he/she just shut up and do what I tell him/her to?" There is a line that you shouldn't cross, because ugly comes out, but sometimes in the middle of the power struggle it is easy to step through. Like in any fight emotional charge is like a steamroller that is starting slowly and calmly and reaching full speed it looses control and rolls over everything on its path and nothing can stop it.

I am usually very good at being calm and have a lot of self control so when I lose it is always a surprise. Why today had to be different I will never know. But I feel really bad right now. Like an alcoholic that fell of the wagon after being sober for a long time. Of course maybe I don't know how alcoholic feel but my guess something similar.

Everybody has expectations for the children. Somebody wants their child to be smart, athletic, musical, somebody wants them to be all of those things at once, I guess my thing so far is health. I want my son to be healthy, eat healthy food and be active. This is what irritates me and I have to remind myself that so far he is pretty good at it. My child eats foods that many children don't including vegetables. He is not obsessed with sweets although he tried some so I guess I shouldn't worry when he doesn't drink his milk or doesn't finish his meal but it irritates me a lot. I don't even know why, I am definitely not a health fanatic so why it sets me off?

Don't know what to write about today. I had some thoughts but nothing that I would want to record. Maybe finally I should write down my list of things that I want to do and learn in a next few years or so.

The number one on my list is to start driving again, the buses suck and I would rather spend more time with my son than on the bus stop. Not driving is not an option anymore.

Others are more like wishes:
Take a class, drawing, photography, or maybe music or creative writing.
Learn how to play a guitar.
Learn to dance tango and just dance more.
Visit Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Japan, Amsterdam, Ireland.
Take a cruise to Alaska.
Visit Omsk, it is a city where my grandmother lived, I am really curious how it looks now.
Learn another language French or Spanish can't decide yet.
Start riding bicycle again.
Learn scuba diving.
Take a scuba diving trip to Hawaii or Red Sea.
Go to a big music festival something like SXSW.

The one thing that hasn't shaped up yet: I would like to do something good helping somebody. Right now I feel so removed from all problems and too wrapped up into my own life, and it doesn't feel good. Maybe I should look for a job in a non-profit organization working with children. Do they need any designers?

When the nose is stuffed there is no joy in life. The head feels like a balloon and somebody is trying to squeeze out the last air. When the kid is sick mommy doesn't sleep. Probably this gives you the idea what kind of day I had today. On top of it there were rain and work.

On the train I was trying to solve hard level sudoku, just tried to finish it and couldn't. I guess I need to learn more about strategy. I can do easy and medium levels. They are pretty much solved by finding in which box cannot be more than one number and some using a very simple logic. Generating sudoku tables probably would be a good excercise for begginer programmer course. I still remember that we did a lot of randomized number generators in our informatics classes. If I still was into that I probably would try to write something like that just for fun, I love sudoku. But I haven't written a piece of code since the time I was gardening. (not sure this sentence make sense and wondering if one of my liberal art teachers would write here "awkward, re-phrase")

Speaking of teachers. I am unpacking my college boxes and decided to get rid of as much of stuff as I can. Looking at all of those exams and papers I wrote. I kept them since I was so proud of my As and B pluses and now I know that those doesn't mean too much in a real world. But still going through them is fun. I really enjoyed going to art school here, it was really hard but also very rewarding. I like to learn and some time I wish I could do only that. Is there a profession like that?

On this note, I will try to clean up a bit a go to bed, I am getting too little sleep.

Keeping up is becoming tough. This morning I woke up with the stuffed nose. I have being waking every hour all night to clear it up and thankfully went easily back to sleep. It was raining as I waited for a bus and it was raining as I was coming back from work. And it is going to rain tomorrow and possibly Wednesday. What a time to be sick and have to go to work. My son seems to get it too, his little nose was running by the end of the day. Probably this is a result of being on public during the weekend.

Today I was thinking a lot about what I should write here. Should I describe what I felt and did when I heard about Moscow terrorist attacks or not? Should I write about other serious issues I am thinking about or keep those things out of here? Still no decision has being made, so any help will be gladly accepted.

At work I am working on the cover design, it is pretty much at the finishing stage. I sent one of the designs to the office printer and the production person brought it to me who was very much exited about it. She had an interior designs in her hand and showed them to me since the cover design was in her opinion tied with it.

Honestly I don't like seeing interiors for the books I am working on, unless I specifically asked to tie the cover and interior. The interior graphics are often pretty limited and you can do much more for the cover. But once I had seeing the interior it keeps coming up in my mind when I am trying to think up the new ideas so it spoils the whole process. I always do many variations one after another, changing things around and most of the times I come up with something interesting, even if i don't I always have a few good layouts to show.

Corporate policy doesn't agree with me although I think it works for them too since my designs are almost always accepted in a first round, and almost never get rejected so I never have to start over, but O well, being one of the thousands in a company they can't allow to make exceptions. This is one of the reasons I rarely speak at the meetings when people discussing new policies that seem to me just to be another interruption of the creative process, too many procedures kill the inspiration. But I understand that this is what they think they need to run an effective business, and since I still work there I accepted that this is the way it has to work. I always have a choice to find myself another job but for now it works for and I since I got promoted recently for them too.

I hope all of this makes sense since I feel that only half of my brain is working right now. Time to go and check of my meatloaf.

So another day another post.

Today is the day when I am going to refresh my gardening skills. We went to Home Depot and I bought some seeds and over stuff. I hope I still remember how to do it. Last time I gardened I was 18 or 19 years old which was more years ago than I am willing to accept. I had being visiting my grandmother during the summer months for a few years, and we had an agreement that if I help her with the garden in the morning and can do whatever I want for the rest of the day, which was very great agreement although I had to wake up sometimes at 7 o'clock. Now I am grateful to her because I learned a lot back then. I hope she knew that I actually enjoyed spending time with her like that.

I still need to buy a book or find some good resource on-line. I am going to start slow. I bought pansy seeds, a few dahlias, tomatoes and sweet peas and plan to plant peonies in the fall. Everything is ready for the time my son will wake up from his nap so we could do it together. He was especially exited about his own water can, he was hugging it for the long time as he was riding in a Home Depot cart. We are going to plant pansies and tomatoes today and other seeds and roots we will plant in the ground in couple of weeks when it will be warmer and I will finally pick the place for all of them.

As I was thinking about gardening I took another look at our back yard, and found it in a pretty bad shape. We really need to clean it up and soon, or grass won't be able to grow. As I tried to talk about it with my husband he didn't answer me, but I hope as it will sink in for a bit we can have a conversation because it is one additional thing that nobody has time for. :)

I am actually exited and very hopeful that at least some plants will survive until the fall.