meet my latest obsession

As anyone who knows me well can attest to, I have quite the obsessive/addictive personality. When I find something that I think is super cool, I pretty much latch onto it like a vice and don't relinquish until I have strangled it to death. Some of my obsessions over the last year or so--

1. Ben Gibbard-He was, is, and will always be my chubby, geeky, hopelessly romantic soulmate. This one will never really die.

2. The Harry Potter series-Alas, there are no more upcoming books to fuel my obsessive need, so this one is dwindling fast.

3. Khalil Greene/Padres baseball-I took a short break during the offseason, but today is Opening Day (Go Padres!!!), so I'm back into the full swing of it.

4. The newest Shins album-Don't get me wrong, I still think this is the most fabulously fabulous album of the last year, but I have stopped listening to it 24-7.

5. Dark Angel fan fiction-Yah, this one's hard to own up to, I mean none of it is even any good, but I basically felt compelled to keep reading. I think I was looking for some kind of closure, since the show offered none. But I'm over it. I made up my own ending in my head.

6. Across the Universe (the movie)-Loved it, loved it, loved it! But I've pretty much moved on.

7. The Twilight novels-On hiatus until August.

Well, I have a new love. Meet Paul Banks, the lead singer of the band Interpol. I've been listening to the newest Interpol offering (Our Love to Admire-pick it up today!) almost exclusively for the last couple of weeks. I find Mr. Banks' voice to be super smokey sexy beyond all belief. Until today, I had absolutely no idea what he looked like, and yet that didn't stop me from being really attracted to the guy. I guess you could say, I had more of a crush on his vocal chords than anything else...but not anymore. I've seen the whole picture now and am fully prepared to commit myself to this love 100%! I'm guessing some of you won't see it..but I like scruffy, dirty looking boys (it's a mystery how I ended up with Darrin at all- he bathes every day, keeps his hair meticulously short and doesn't play any musical instrument, it must've been fate!). For those of you wondering, my little "obsessions" don' t really bother Darrin all that much. He figures what are the chances of me actually meeting either Ben Gibbard or Paul Banks? And seeing as how my newest boyfriend is dating supermodel Helena Christensen, my chances are even slimmer than none. Darrin does admit he was more comfortable when I had a crush on a fictitious teenage vampire, rather than actual living, breathing men, but he knows me well enough to realize I'll be onto something else by next month!

Can a 3-year old be eccentric?

I can't sleep for some reason, so I thought, why not post on the blog? This is a question that's been on my mind a lot lately as I've watched my bizarre little daughter go about her life...she's got some oddities that have me wondering at what point you classify a person as "eccentric"...

She is pretty much convinced that she's a puppy. You can't go an hour in our house without hearing things like "Lily, stop licking your brother" or "Lily, please stop barking while Mommy's on the phone" or "Lily, you need to use your words, I don't know what 'arf arf' means." We come downstairs to find her on all fours on the kitchen floor, eating her food like a dog out of a bowl. It's a little more than disturbing.

She has a crazy fondness for rocks. Every day when we go to pick up Connor and Maddy from school, she has to stop and pick out rocks to give to them. If we're in a hurry and I try to dissuade her from picking the rocks up, she goes into meltdown. When she's handed over her little treasures, Connor promptly throws his back onto the ground from whence it came (which, oddly enough, doesn't bother Lily at all). But Maddy is made to put them in a special pocket in her backpack, and Lily checks the pocket spontaneously to make sure all the rocks are there. I swear, Maddy's backpack probably weighs 3 pounds more because of the pocket of rocks.

Here's the weirdest thing (in my opinion). I tried to scan some of Lily's artwork, but it wasn't dark enough to show up, so I'll have to do my best to explain. Many of you have had the great pleasure of viewing one of her masterpieces, but for those of you who aren't so lucky...if you ask Lily to draw you a picture (or even if you don't), she sits down and draws a big oval/circle, with a tiny little circle sitting on top of the big one. It's fairly easy to picture, but just you try and figure out what this work of art is!!! Give up? It's a TRASH BAG!!!??? I kid you not, every notebook in our house is filled with page after page of Lily's trash bags. None of us can figure out what started this obsession, but obsession it is. She will not draw anything else, and she totally loves her trash bags. That's odd, right?

So, help me out people. Am I raising the next "neighborhood cat-lady" or is she just charmingly unique?

Happy Easter!

Couldn't let the day go by without wishing everyone a Happy Easter. I wish we could all be together to celebrate this wonderful day...but since that isn't a possibility (this year anyways), here's a few pics to brighten anyone's day. Love to all-DeEtte

The King of Baseball!

Just a quick post cause I'm a proud mama! Connor hit a homerun tonight in his baseball game. He also hit a double. He looks like such a cute little man out there on the bases. He's so stinking intense. When he's on base, he takes this little hunched over stance with one foot ahead of the other and his arms are scissored out in front of him-ready to take off in an instant. He looks like Flash (from DC Comics fame, for those of you who are confused). I'm gonna try to snap a picture at the next game so y'all can see what I'm talking about. It's really funny.

Opening Day!

Baseball season is on us again! Yesterday was opening day for Connor's Little League, and it was a day to remember. Connor is playing on the Dodgers again this year (he's none too pleased to be on the Dodgers...we're Padres fans for goodness sakes). We haven't been able to have consistent practices because the weather here has been insane, so we haven't really perfected our teamwork yet. Needless to say, we got totally creamed. Connor wasn't in top form due to an earlier injury (more on that later), but he did manage to hit a triple and had a couple really close plays at home while he was playing catcher. The lowlight of the day came during warm-ups...a teammate of Connor's wasn't paying attention to what he was doing and threw a ball that hit Connor right in the eye!! He's got a pretty killer black eye and it was really bothering him during the game yesterday. He was trying to ice it in between innings but it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Poor kid. Then while he was playing a second base, a runner ran into him at the same time a throw was coming and he got tagged in the arm with the ball. At that point, I think he really just wanted to call it a day, but he endured and ended up hitting his triple in the next inning. We have games every Monday and Saturday and practices every Wednesday, so he'll be a pretty busy kid for the next few months, but we're all looking forward to the great things that Connor will do this season! Here's a couple pics of the little cutie (when is he too old for me to call him that?) on the field...enjoy




You can't really see the eye very well in the picture, but it was looking pretty gross last night. It looks much better today (at least less swollen) and we're hoping that all the swelling and blackness will go away before next Saturday when we have to take family pictures.

Okay, this picture has nothing to do with Opening Day. On Friday we went to Legoland (our home away from home) with the Campbells. I snapped this picture of the kids in the dino egg and it was just too cute not to share. That's Connor's best friend (lady) Maddy, and her sister Lauren and brother Grant. The Campbell's are moving to Spain in a couple months (Connor's heartbroken) and we're trying to spend every second with them that we can. We had a really fun day, in case you couldn't tell from this adorable picture.