On eating out with Princess Sophie

We took Sophie out to dinner last night. Actually, I am not sure that 4pm classifies as "night" but whatever. The main thing is, we went out to dinner! We needed a restaurant that would be "baby-friendly" and we figured we would go early before all the crowds came out. Well, apparently we are part of a new social group who I never knew existed. The "We have kids and go out at 4pm" group. We took a good look around us and laughed at the fact that this is our life now. There were kids all around us. Prepared parents were toting portable high chairs, toys, and hoards of baby-friendly foods. Some kids were running around like spin tops, but most were surprisingly well-behaved. It was almost as though they wanted to bash the stereotype and adopt a level of social decorum that no one expected of them. 

Sophie was among them. She was a champ. My sometimes shy child hammed it up and smiled at strangers, sat happily in her high chair and ate everything we gave her. She loved looking at other kids and tried touching hands with a toddler sitting behind her. Later we realized she was just trying to steal her fork. But whatever, she was an absolute joy to watch! Was it a quiet elegant meal? Hell no! Did I fully eat a hot meal? No way. Did I get to finish my drink? Nope. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. I may not have left the restaurant fully satiated with food and drink, but I left beaming with pride at my little social butterfly, totally oblivious to the mushed up pasta on my pants.

-jl

Review Wednesdays - face painting

I LOVE makeup. I have cheapie makeup and I have expensive makeup. I would be willing to eat cereal for a week to buy an awesome new eyeshadow palette. I love having a wide selection of colors and textures. I love being able to change my look from cutie girl next door to vampy glam moviestar in 15 minutes. I love that I can hide a night of partying or 9 months of motherhood with a good concealer. I love getting a great deal at a drugstore on a killer product that costs under 10 dollars but feels like luxury. I HATE spending 20 dollars on a product to bring it home and find out it slides down my face in 45 minutes, or makes me look like Bozo the Clown. I am scared to death of clowns. I don't need to spend money to see one staring back at me in the mirror.

I am a huge fan of Paula Begoun. Paula is the cosmetics cop. I saw her on Cityline several years ago and have been a follower ever since. She is a consumer advocate, debunking myths and fallacies in the beauty industry. She has written numerous books or product reviews, maintains on online cosmetics database to advise consumers of worthy/terrible products and has recently started her own cosmetics line, Paula's Choice. Her line is affordable and AMAZING! I ordered a few items online a couple of weeks ago and am in awe of the quality of the eyeshadow and gel eyeliner. For more info on Paula, check out the following links:

Don't Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me

Online Product Reviews (There's a yearly fee)


Paula's Choice Cosmetics

There's also a canadian site for ordering, with slightly less product selection, http://www.cosmeticscop.ca.

Happy face painting!!

-jl

Time

I have never been as aware of time as I have been over the last few weeks.
I feel like I have no time. I feel like time is flying by. I feel like I waste time. I feel like I would like to take more time for me. I feel like I don't know what to do with time when I have it. I have a love/hate relationship with time.

I think of that song, "If I could put time in a bottle..."
If I had time in a bottle, what would I do with it?

Would I add some time between now and the end of August, giving me more time to spend with Sophie before returning to work?
Would I take some of it to work out more and as a result use some time to shop more to cloth my time-well-spent shrinking ass?
Would I save some time, like money, to use during periods of absolute busyness?
Would I use it in the middle of the night to catch more Zzzzzzz.
Or would I simply squander and waste it like I tend to do quite a bit these days?

I feel like I throw a lot of time out the window. I understand that I need to relax and enjoy some me-time, but I oftentimes feel that my me-time isn't time well spent. I tend to spend a lot of time virtually living. I spend far too much time on my laptop. I spend too much time watching TV. I spent far too much time beating myself up and feeling guilty. How do I learn to make good use of time?

I will try to start now. I won't go on facebook for the next 3 hrs. And I will remove my Scrabulous Application since I have 12 unfinished games going on at once. That should buy me a good 20 minutes a day. If I could get off facebook completely, I could probably reclaim 2 hrs a day! Sad sad sad existance. Is a virtual existance even a real existance?

And I will end this post now and go clean the floors while Mario is out with Sophie. These are the few precious hours I have per week where the house is empty and I can vacuum. No sleeping baby to wake or scare. No climbing/crawling/pokey baby to keep my 2 hands busy. At least at the end of this cleaning stint, I will have a good sense of "time well spent" and perhaps I will have burned 50 calories. Now, if only I could teach the laptop to clean the floors....

-jl

Review Wednesday - Lights, Camera, Microphone??

*** CONTAINS SPOILERS***

This past Friday night, I grabbed some girlfriends and dashed off to the hotspot that is Barrhaven to join 250 other chiquitas and 3 feet-shuffling men take in the first showing of the new Sex and the City movie.

Did I like it?

I think I need to see it again.

At about 30 minutes in, TV's (and now BIG screen's) favorite commitment-phobe, John James Preston (aka Big) nearly get's whacked in the forehead with a boom mic! No shit! The thing lingered around the upper 1/4 of the screen for much of the rest of the movie, making more appearances than Manolo Blahniks! It was more than a little distracting, and elicited many a teenage giggle from me and my fellow BFFs. Because of the distractions, I feel I can't write a decent review of the movie, because while I walked away from the movie feeling slightly dissatisfied, I can't quite nail down why. Is it because after spazzing out and fleeing the wedding Big decides at the end of the movie that yes, he would indeed like to get married, complete with cheeseball proposal on bended knee (Though there was a very pretty bejeweled shoe involved) that made me shrug my shoulders and say "why!?". Or is it because I am now a slightly older, slightly (totally) more jaded woman than I was when I first fell in love with the TV series? If the latter, does this mean my sense of romance has gone the way of the dinosaur? Or is it that I have simply tired of Carrie's wishy washy ways and inability to seem happy without a man in her life, especially one that oftentimes showed her little to no respect? Perhaps I hoped to see the 4 ladies exude more emotional confidence. Perhaps I want that because I would like more confidence in my own world? And perhaps.....just perhaps I am overthinking way too much and really need to sit back and watch it again, boom mic-free, with no judgement. And perhaps it wouldn't kill me to tap into my more romantic, non-practical, non-overthinking side from time to time.

-jl