The Bachelorette

I've never watched The Bachelor OR The Bachelorette before, but for whatever reason (probably the lack of Tivo the last week or so) I was drawn into the previews. So here I am, it's nearly midnight on a Tuesday and I'm finishing the second episode of The Bachelorette. It's so odd, this artificial environment where 15 men are trying to fall in 'love' with one woman they have never met, yet just know she is The One. Seeing the testosterone come out (particularly with several of professional athletes - one being a mullet-loving shiny-suit-wearing martial artist), the competitive nature of the show is I imagine more pronounced than in the shows where 15 women are after one man (though I have no doubts the catfights abound there too).

It's weird, and I sit and judge these people for trying to find love in this 21st century way, but I am still watching. I wonder what that says about me...

I am just sad the oyster farmer didn't make the cut.

I used to be smarter.

45

Oh it's funny...

If you've paid attention to YouTube for the last year or two, you'll get a kick out of this.

When it rains, it pours

In the last month or so, Max has:

Gotten FIVE teeth (4 on top all came in a few days when I posted about her teeth a few weeks ago, and we just noticed one on the bottom this evening)
Learned to get to sitting from lying
Learned to get to hands and knees from sitting
Learned to crawl
Is trying to walk (assisted by mom, but she can get a good four feet pretty solidly)

There may be more. She clearly likes to lump things together!

Closed On Sundays

As it turns out, half of Chapel Hill is closed on Sundays. Lawrence drove from place to place trying to find us lunch that wasn't Quiznos. BBQ place - Closed. Local delicious deli - Closed. We ended up with Subway. Sigh.

Another interesting Chapel Hill (and greater Triangle area) thing is that liquor sales are regulated by the government. Some counties are actually dry, but the ones that aren't sell hard alcohol only in the government-run ABC Stores. Oh yeah, and that stands for Alcohol and Beverage Control, courtesy of the agency aka 'commission' of the same name.

Weird.

And she's crawling...

I asked Maxine nicely at least 27 times to please wait to crawl until we moved to North Carolina. She obliged...by 1 week! So at just a week shy of 10 months, I think it's safe to say she's officially crawling. While she hardly qualifies as 'all over the place' she is on hands and knees going in a mostly-forward direction. She's been rolling her way to where she wants to be for awhile now, but she's never been really motivated to get anywhere. But tonight she's enjoying practicing her new skill and is all over the place! Roll, crawl crawl, fall on face, roll, crawl some more. It's fun!

Yeast, kelp, and water.

That's what's going in my sofa and area rug right now. After a disastrous carpet cleaning a few weeks ago, Max and I both started getting reactions to the chemicals used. Max got rashes on her arms and legs after coming into contact with the 'clean' carpet, and I got joint aches after walking or crawling around on them. It was easy to figure out with Max - no rash, crawl on carpet for 10 minutes, raging red rash on bare skin that was in contact with the floor (when this didn't happpen at all pre-cleaning). But for me, I just felt achey and though maybe I was coming down with something, or not getting enough sleep or something. Then I started noticing it would happen only after I was walking with bare feet on the carpet, or after wearing a short sleeve shirt while sitting on the couch for extended periods (like while knitting).

I looked into some options to remove the chemicals, and settled on a natural carpet cleaning service, Naturell, http://naturellclean.com/. When I spoke with the owner of the company and mentioned the weird joint thing and that I wasn't sure it was related, he said YES indeed, joint pain can be a common reaction to the chemicals in the cleaning agents traditional carpet cleaning uses. As for Max's rash, he thought that was likely a reaction to the detergent/deodorizers used (like you may get a rash when switching to a new soap or laundry detergent). It all made sense to me, so I figured it couldn't hurt at this point, I needed to do something! Max had been playing on a sheet but since she's mobile(ish) now, I can't really keep her on it, so every time she wanders off she ends up with a nasty rash.

So that brings us to today. My couch and area rug are currently being cleaned with an unscented, organic mixture of kelp, yeast, and water. There is some sort of fermentation process that activates surfectants, making the mixture worthy of being a cleaning agent. Cross your fingers for us! And regardless, we will be doing all carpet/upholstery cleaning with a 'green' service from now on. I only hope we can find something similar to Naturell in NC!