Xiaoniu 小妞

Just like Jessie mentioned, this week is busy as ever. Last weekend I made my way out to Mass. to help mom and dad move into their new house. I feel like I wasn’t much help on Friday seeing as the gang got the truck loaded and started to unload by the time I was able to get to the house and, mom and I caught up while they finished the unloading.

On Saturday I was able to get to work. Mom, dad and I all got up early and go to work bringing furniture and boxes into their respectful places in the house. We loaded and unloaded the truck with the gang. Then I proceeded to setup dad’s stereo and TV stuff in the basement before making the trek back home to see my two favorite ladies.

I brought our camera to Mass. to take pics, but totally forgot to take any. They’ll have to wait until I get back out and take a few.

On another note our garden is doing very well. We’ve been able to eat some of the spoils this week. It isn’t much, but it is a nice start. We had a handful of cherry tomatoes come out and two Asian eggplants. The tomatoes were sucked down without wasting anytime and the eggplants are destined for a home cooked meal.

By the looks of the plants it looks like we are about to be hit with a big crop of tomatoes (beefsteak ones) and more eggplants. There are some peppers coming out too, but they grow slowly so maybe we’ll have one next week. The bok choy is growing like weeds. They should be ready to devour in no time and there absence will make room for some cool weather planting at the end of the summer. We’re already planning out what we’ll put down next.

As for the rest, the strawberries are growing like mad, but there haven’t been any more fruits. Next year should be good. The asparagus will be out next year too. The napa cabbage are growing great. There are six plants and they are growing at different rates so we’ll be able to finish off a couple heads before the others are ready for picking. I can’t wait. The si gua (loofa) is starting to come out, the zuccinni and cukes are growing well and starting to flower. The long beans are growing well too.

On a different and very sad note we found out last night that Lily’s cousin died in a car accident in New York a couple days ago. It’s an absolute shame. She was only 17 years old and had just graduated from high school. While a friend drove her home late at night a drunk 22 year old hit them with a truck. It’s a senseless accident that could have been avoided if the guy wasn’t driving drunk. An article in the Post has a picture of the guy. Very sad.

James did great making the big move into his own bed this week. He was ready and willing to move out of mom and dad’s bed and into his own. Of course his bed and room were designed just for him.

First up was a nice, new book shelve. It’s a bit taller than what we shopped for, but it is good enough quality to last him for years. It already has a lot (but, not all) of his books. He’s been playing with this for months and was the first start in making this room his.

About a month ago we went out shopping with Amy to find a decent bedroom set. We found a couple and then Amy and Mike figured out which they were willing to buy and ordered it. A month later it is a no-show. So, we picked up a mattress for James and Amy put it together on the floor. He loves it.

Having the mattress on the floor is actually a great transition step. It gets them used to the bed and you get peace of mind knowing that if they do roll off the 8 inch drop is not likely to break any bones.

Of course the bed has Thomas sheets, pillow cases and comforter. The boy is in love with Thomas. I can’t say that the engine doesn’t have appeal. Emelia likes Thomas too. Ever since we found the Thomas and Friends shows on TV we usually end up watching part of an episode every day while eating breakfast.

Last up was doing something with the windows. The blinds left by the original owner of the house and the curtains were just not cutting it. The room faces south and west, which means plenty of sun during the day and evening. And at night it gets the full brunt of a street light.

The cheap and broken plastic blinds have seen their last day. Amy ordered up a set of metal blinds just like the ones that she has in the rest of her house and like the ones in Emelia’s room. I installed them on Thursday night.

Out with the old:

In with the new:

The valences are from Pottery Barn Kids and have little sailboats on them. A nice boyish touch and easily changed once he out grows them.

Here is Emelia honking the horn on her “car”. Check out the squat. She has the “asian squat” down pat. It must be in the blood, because I don’t have chance of doing it myself.

A slightly older picture of the infamous garden. It’s growing so quickly that this week old picture doesn’t look the same as it does today. Most of the plants are bigger and fuller.

Wednesday night we had our first run in with one of our neighbors. I’ll say that just about everybody in the neighborhood is excellent. Very sweet, very kind and generous people that are eager to give a wave even if they don’t know you. The people that live behind us are not part of that group.

Apparently, I offended the woman that lives behind us because I had the nerve to weed-whack the yard. She came over about 15 minutes after I went inside after doing my yard work and taking a shower. She started in on Sue until I came down to join the fun. The woman actually mistook Amy for Sue, which goes to show you how much she pays attention and interacts with us.

She started off by asking if we were “at war” with her. She seemed to think that I was purposefully making her live miserable and doing everything I could to annoy her and her family. What did I do? I finished up the weed-whacking that I started to do on Tuesday night, but had to stop since I ran out of line. I picked up more line Wednesday and finished the whacking. What she figures is that I went out of my way to wait until she had somebody over her house and then started to weed-whack just to make things difficult for her.

Then, we apparently had a “family get-together” in the back yard near our garden. What were we doing? Well, after weed-whacking I started to put up a small fence around our garden to keep the rodents out and hopefully save some of our veggies. The family get-together part must be when Amy, Sue, Emelia and James came back from their walk around the yard. They came to see how the veggies were growing. To our neighbor it must have seemed like a grande family reunion. All those people out in our yard.

Of course she didn’t stop there. She continued on to say that she could not believe that we took down the bushes in our back yard. Those overgrown, vine infested “bushes” came out last year. We’re still dealing with the vines. She implied that we took then down so that we could see them when they use their pool. Seriously.

Then she goes on to say that she can’t believe that we put in a garden in our backyard, in the place where we took out the bushes. “There of all places!” What the hell does that mean?

Her last “thought” was that we put the garden on her property. She claims that her fence is one and a half feet from the property line. Since we put our garden next to the fence we’re on her property by one and a half feet. She, “Checked with the town”. I’m not so sure myself. I know where one corner of the property is and if anything the fence is either on the line or on my side.

Not to mention the raspberry bushes that are growing immediately next to the fence were planted by the original owners of our house 40 years ago, long before she owned her house. Two other neighbors can confirm when the raspberries went in. However, the fence is much, much newer. The fence went in after the berries. I think she’s barking up the wrong tree. I’ve very tempted to spend the money to get the property lines marked out by a professional. It’ll cost me money, but it would be worth it in the end by stopping this shit now.

She finished up by saying that she wanted to put in a privacy fence, but it costs a lot of money and that she may just put up bushes instead. She said, “It isn’t that we don’t love having you as neighbors and being able to talk with you, but we don’t want to be that open.” She also said, “You must have grown up in a city to like things so open, but we bought this house in this neighborhood because we loved all of the trees.” First off, I grew up in an area more rural than this. Second, I love the trees too, but I don’t love the overgrown jungle that was allowed to grown out of hand for 30+ years.

It took me a while to really digest all of this. She brought up things that we did to our own property last year and took my weed-whacking the yard that night as a declaration of war on her family. That’s quite a stretch. If anything we are much more polite and courteous than her and her family.

Every summer her kids come home from college they spend many nights having parties in their back yard. Loud parties with plenty of screaming and rough playing in the pool. It’s loud enough where we can’t sleep with the windows open at night and they do this until 2 or 3am. Then everybody piles into cars and goes home. Lucky me has to get up 2 hours after than to start the day. But we don’t complain. They’ve had at least three of these parties this summer already and one of them was last night. Go figure.

She lets her dog loose in the neighborhood so that it can shit and piss on my lawn. We don’t say anything. They have a family reunion / graduation party last Saturday, which was the day I planned to mow, but at the time I decided to be polite and not mow next to their party. I thought that was pretty nice. The trade-off was that I had to wait until Tuesday for the rain to stop enough for me to mow (it actually ended up showering while I mowed). Then I ran out of line and had to weed-whack the following day. Why? Because the weeds were two feet high and I’m busy until Monday. The weeds can’t wait that long.

I don’t see how I’m in the wrong here. We’ve been nothing but polite and get nothing in return but crap. Despite her coming over we did our best not to stoop to her level. She made an ass out of herself and I hope she realizes it and is ashamed. No other neighbor except her has a problem with me weed-whacking my yard at 5pm on a weekday. No neighbor except her has anything to say accept praise for the work we’ve done to make the yard and house look great. Her family is the most disrespectful of others and she has the nerve to point fingers.

If I didn’t plan to spend many more years in this house I would have told her where she can shove that damn fence of hers, but I’m not going to bring myself to her level and make things worse even though it would taste so sweet. This only strengthens my opinion of her and her family. We never butted heads, but we never got along well either. I can and do talk with every other neighbor, but not them. And to think this is the same woman that brought over a plate of brownies when we moved in. I guess she was just buttering us up for years of crap that she’ll serve up. I’m just glad all the other neighbors are sane and don’t take offense to my lawn maintenance and my planting a garden on my properly (of all places).

I know this post is crap and I probably repeated myself, but I just don’t care. I’m just bitching.

We’re finally going on a vacation. It’s been four years since we’ve been on a real vacation. I don’t count our honeymoon and the longest we’ve been away from home was two days. This will be our first vacation in four years and Emelia’s first vacation ever. I’m really looking forward to getting away.

What are we going to do? We’ll be heading out to the cape for a week. We’re renting a house that is about 1/3 mile from the ocean and we plan to hit the beaches, rest and relax, and if we are lucky make a trip to various parts of the cape. Sue and I like Provincetown, but due to our deciding to go away later than most folks there were no places in Provincetown that we would be willing to rent. So, we’ll settle for a visit.

Emelia is getting a bit demanding while riding in my truck these days. Sue put together a mix of Chinese kids’ songs (with a Japanese song thrown in for fun) and the little one just loves it. We’ve been listening to it a lot lately. The songs are catchy and I’ve caught myself listening to them even when Emelia is not in the truck.

By demanding I mean that when we get in the truck to go to daycare or when we are going home she starts pointing at the radio and grunting. That’s her indication that she wants to hear her songs and not what is on the radio at the moment. While listening to the CD she’ll again point at the radio and whine until I change the song. The tricky part is figuring out which of the 18 songs on the disc she wants to hear. Luckily, I’ve learned her favorites. Oddly enough the one Japanese song on the disc is one of our favorites.

In addition to her love for music Xuemei has started to show interest in dancing. She’s always loved stepping on my feet while I hold her hands and try to walk and dance her around. It’s a shame that she isn’t good enough on her feet to do it for long or very often.

She is able to dance on her own now. She and the other kids in her room dance and have fun with some songs on the radio. I don’t know what songs they dance to, but it is usually something that the people that work at the daycare like. Emelia isn’t picky though. She’s likely to start dancing to the TV commercial music.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, but Xuemei isn’t loving her high-chair anymore. We still eat dinner in the dining room, but nowadays she wants to sit in the big chair like us. She’ll throw a fit unless because she wants to sit in the big chair, but sometimes we can entertain her enough to keep her in her high-chair. It’s just easier cleanup and she sits still better (when strapped to the chair .

Is it odd that I know the words to more Chinese kids’ songs than I do English language songs? I remember at least parts of some American kids’ songs, but not enough to actually sing it. When it comes to singing Emelia a Chinese song and I can usually whip out at least five of them and can sing & hum along to at least a few more. It’s a great learning tool, but I’ll be honest that I know all of the words, but I don’t know what each word means. I at least know what the song is about, but that’s where it ends. I believe that learning songs is a great way to learn a language.

Work has been crazy as ever lately. We’ve been up to our ears in Java land for a couple years now and even now I learn something new and exciting just about every day. There is so much to learn and so many great tools out there that it seems like you could learn this stuff for a lifetime. I will say one that I wish I had gotten past my phobia over Maven and pushed to learn it earlier. If you’re a Java developer and don’t know about and love Maven then you’re missing out. If I get a chance I may just have to post something about the stuff we’ve been delving into lately. Geek talk.

If you haven’t downloaded and installed Firefox 3 then you’re missing out. I’ve been using it since RC and haven’t regretted the upgrade yet. The “awesome bar” took some getting used to, but once you get the hang of what it can do it’ll save you some time and save you some typing. The smaller memory footprint and faster JavaScript execution are the best features. I can’t believe that we had to deal with the poor memory issues of FF2 for so long. Better late than never I guess.

Last, but not least mom and dad finally closed on their new house. It’s been many months since they started the transition to move and it’s all coming to a close. There is still plenty of work left to do with moving into a house, but they are now back to living in their own place and living by their own rules. I can only imagine what it was like. No offense, but after living on my own for so many years I’m not too eager to move in with somebody else. I’m too stuck in my ways for that to be anything but a recipe for disaster.

I took this video for my own purposes, so it isn’t like the others I’ve posted in the past. Emelia was playing quietly all by herself Friday afternoon and I just had to record it. Thankfully, getting the camera out and turning it on did not completely deter her from her task at hand; namely, playing with her mega-blocks.

The first twenty seconds are the best. She makes faces and actually amuses herself. I didn’t say a word the entire time. The remaining five minutes and ten seconds is just Emelia playing with her blocks. Entertaining to me, but maybe not the rest of you.

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It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.

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Playing around on the couch.

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Keeping busy while mommy gets ready to go out.

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Our own happy, little monkey girl.

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Emelia pushing her mower around the house.

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