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I was delighted with the information shared with us by Aaron and Joelle (who I have affectionately nicknamed “The Pretties” on Lost night: $3 dollar wine!

Am I the last to know about this??? While I dish out 8-20 dollars a bottle, there’s this extreme cheapo wine that’s really not half bad! Charles Shaw, you’ve saved Lost night (because Lord knows I can’t keep up with the goodies offered at the premiere!)

So we’re headed out to Trader Joe’s today for groceries (first time!) and I can’t wait to see if they have any other hidden cheap gems!

Gotta love a bargain!

EDIT*  OHMYGOSH I am a new BIG FAN of Trader Joe’s. How come so many people told me it was expensive!??! Since my nearest grocery store is Whole Foods, I found Trader Joe’s full, FULL of cheap foods. I mean, organic apples for 69 cents a pound?! Avocado’s for 75 cents each (this was the cheapest they ever went in central FL and that was at a produce stand so they were over ripe!) A quart of maple cream top yogurt (I normally pay $4-5 dollars for) was only about $2.50. Just about everything I found was 25-50% cheaper than I usually pay for it. This is my new grocery store, without a doubt!

If only it weren’t for the LOST PREMIERE tomorrow, we would definitely love to go down to Last Thursday on Alberta and check out what’s happening. The family we will be swapping care with will be showing (dad’s) art at a gallery he co-owns, they’ll be serving hot chocolate and winter themed art, sounds nice!

I found this little video on Alberta, and I think it does a great job showing just how special the little neighborhoods of Portland  are, particular Alberta, one of my favorites, and walking distance away too! Check it out!!!

We will be riding our bikes down there today to check out the home Lil E will be going for the swap, which is a great excuse to lock up the bikes and walk around Alberta, grab some pizza and stuff. Love it!

I think this is kinda ironic because I had the baby bug when I first moved to Portland. Something about all the midwives and breastfeeding, baby-wearing mamas made me think this place was like a tonic for a mom-to-be or new mom. Now Fit Pregnancy makes it official!

While I don’t plan on having a baby anytime soon, I think this is a really special recognition for a city to have. Bravo, PDX!

Read more about this here! It provides a quick recap of the factors considered and how Portland ranked.

Just a neat tidbit while I scour Powell’s for used nutrition books. Think I might try “The Best Life Diet”, watcha think?

We’ve been going to a new church for a couple of weeks, (I’ll be sure to blog about this another time in more detail). This church happens to meet at a pub house, and after service a good bit of the church stays around to order lunch and hang out with each other. Due to our increasing need to save money, we split a lunch last week and snacked on a bowl of salted in-shell peanuts. Yum!

When we saw how much Lil’ E enjoyed them, we bought a big bag at Whole Foods. Today our downstairs neighbors and friends were out on the back porch and told us that this bird has been eating peanuts out of their hand! I quickly joined the fiasco (anything to avoid work, I tell ya!) by opening up the window and handing the bird peanuts we bought this week. We’ve been feeding this Western Scrub-Jay all afternoon, he is very friendly and comes right up to our windowsill for a snack (see video). Apparently they are known for hoarding brightly colored objects (I had to fend Hubby off of my few pieces of jewelry when he read that!)

Just had to give “Scrub” an honorary mention in my blog!

Well well well.

There certainly is a knitting craze (that has probably been all the rage for some time, but leave it to me to be the last to find out!). And I’m not the only one who thinks Portland in particular has a knitting fetish. First it was just watching these women knitting up a storm on the bus. Then it was passing all these incredibly posh knitting stores like this one and this one and this one and this one. The bug was starting to itch and now I see Fluffy Flowers creations with a sewing machine and recycled materials and I’m about to jump on the flow of the tide!

I’ve got a sneaky feeling that this little hobby would be a tad time consuming  (relative to the time available for a full-time working stay-at-home mom of a toddler?) and a tad expensive (relative to a full-time working stay-at-home mom of a toddler with about $50 to her name?)… so perhaps embarking on this little venture will have to wait. Seriously, though, check out those links and LOOK me in the eye and TELL me you don’t want a seat on that bandwagon? YEAH, that’s what I thought…

How cool is this!

Anything that has J.R. Tolkien, live music, food, all-ages welcome and canned goods entry fee is FINE BY ME!

I luuuuuuv Portland.

Quite truthfully, Portland’s month of rain, rain and more rain is not really that bad. Maybe its the honeymoon phase. Perhaps I’m being idealistic. My survival mechanism is to go about life as usual, get on your jacket and head out. DO NOT STAY IN DOORS! Yes, the backyard is too soggy to play in, and the parks are pretty much the same. BUT the sidewalks and streets are filled with minor puddles on my way to indoor activities. Besides, without a car, staying out of the rain is hardly a choice. Walk we must, come rain or come shine. And its been a while since there was shine.

This morning, the clouds parted, and a very nice day broke through for a few hours. I was able to run out and feed the bunnies, take my counter composter to the bin, and inspect the vegetable garden a bit. It was enough to give me an itch for the glory days, namely, May-July when we had just moved here and the clear skies smelled of bloomin’ roses, and tulips and wild flowers greeted you at every turn!  I can hardly remember our yard, sprouting with overgrowth that covered the paths, a gorgeous display of colors so rich in beauty that we ran out to take pictures and eat strawberries from the garden all month.

But as I’ve told many of you, the rains have brought with them, for me, a nice kind of hibernation. Bears do it, bees do it, let’s fall in love- type of feeling. At first, I had to turn to St. John’s Wort to keep the dark couped-up mood at bay. But that only lasted about a month (I’m way too forgetful to have to take something for very long!) and it was enough to get my spirits up and get my lifestyle OUT of the house. Since then, I’ve welcomed the rain and cold as a much needed r&r for this gal whose spent the past 23 years in the Florida sun. LOOOOOVIN’ the cafe’s and bookstores with their bottomless cups of java and cute mittens on my hands to hold my mug. Still prefer it to climates so UN-wintery.

But must admit, sometimes those darn puddles just annoy the ever livin’ crap out of me. Sometimes the constant drizzle of rain that makes any work put into your hairdo completely worthless gets under my skin. Sometimes I get the urge to put on a bikini and grab a beach towel and lay out in the grassy backyard and have some good ol’ Vitamin D toast me up. Sometimes the darkness by 4 pm is just the most ridiculous concept and I literally contemplate how some one needs to write a report about it and hand it in to the Big Guy.

All this to say, I can SURE appreciate Portland’s amazing Spring/summer combination, and I can’t wait. Just a few more months that, if all goes as usual, will fly by and then, oh the joys we will see of our bulbs spring back to life, of the wisteria on the gazebo start popping with little green leaves, the wild flowers I hope to plant after the last frost start to liven up our curb-side appeal. Such images and thoughts keep my heart nice and toasty during this month. Needless to say, we’ve been reading lots of The Cat in the Hat lately, and I’ve scoured my Rainy Day Activities with Toddlers book a few times!

On a side note, my amazing and beautiful pride of my heart two year old finally, tearfully, could not hold his bladder while straddling his potty today. Having been given an amount of water equal to the Willamette River, he ended up peeing at least 5 times in two hours; 3 times in his potty, twice on the chair during dinner. Poor guy!!! BUT he was SO happy to finally “make water” in the potty and the difference was completely and utterly due to giving him a book to read while doing his business. Hmmm… both Hubby and I like reading material while we take our potty breaks, so I suppose its no wonder! We are interested/anxious to see how the next few days play out as we use diapers for only outings and night… particularly when it’s time for Lil’ E’s mid-morning Numero Dos.

Job Update: Hubby still working to find employment, part of the 5% of the nation we heard about last week. Has applied to upwards of 20 or so legitimate ads, in addition to unemployment agencies, with several follow up phone calls on his part but no leads as of yet. We are working to stay busy and positive and not blow any money we have because we are so depressed! I literally got on my knees in the shower yesterday praying for a job that would make my husband happy. I know some how that all this will turn out all right in the end. There are so so many people we know that are going through just incredible hardships right now, so it certainly puts us in the “can’t complain” category! Thank GAWD!

Hope you all are trudgin’ through your January’s with high spirits, by and large unaffected (at least negatively!) by whatever weather and life conditions you’re facing!

Dear Diary,

8:45am: I woke up later than I wanted to, for I had to be at work by 10 am which is like SO early for a WAHM to be decently dressed and walking 1/2 mile to pick up the #4 to downtown, ready to pull off my first ever Podcasting experience. It was all the windows fault. There was too much light coming in last night and I couldn’t sleep. So I did what all of us po’ folk do- I grab the nearest blanket I could live without and stuffed it up around the top of the mini-blinds so as to create makeshift drapes. That was about midnight or so, I suppose. So in the morning, when I normally get up by at least 7:30, it was nice and dark and quiet (just so happens Lil’ E ALSO slept in … thankyoujesus.)

9:15am: Catch the #6 instead so I can make a stop at the Starbucks for a quick po’ folk 8 oz. coffee, then catch the MAX from the convention center into downtown. Wait for the MAX for what felt like forever, coffee already cold, and a few sightings of snowflakes. It was a very rainy day and I was cute dumb enough to wear little gray ballet looking slip-ons. Real good, Viv, real good.

9:59am: Arrive to the office with one minute to spare, having bounded through the rain and puddles downtown with my purse and digital camcorder on my shoulders and my laptop case trailing behind me on wheels. Office is still dark and locked up- I’ve beat the boss! Dang I’m good.

10:20am: Call my boss. Realize I missed the e-mail that he wasn’t going to be in until after 11am.

10:45am: Finally get my STUPID VISTA OPERATING SYSTEM to connect to the unsecured network of the ground floor’s coffee shop to plug in to work and enjoy some HOT tea while I wait.

11:45am - 3:00pm: Podcasting 101.

3:00pm: Dismissed from work but its pouring. Sit down at the coffee shop once again and have my lunch- I’m told the “Stinky Hippie” is a soy chai latte. “Ah, that’s a wholesome po’ folk lunch”, I think. I order. I taste. Nope, this is a soy latte. No Chai. (You know, if you can’t get a drink right, how about try NOT naming it things like, oh I don’t know, STINKY HIPPIE, when all it is is a soy chai. Might that clear up some confusion? Just a thought.) But I am really a-okay with soy latte’s so I drink anyway. I forget about my problem of espresso on an empty stomach. (And no, I’m not referring to the BM’s… that is not to say this isn’t also a problem, but for now I simply mean the shaky hands and queasy stomach feeling.)

3:45pm: Waiting for MAX again. Once on, I must decide which way to turn my nose… to my right is a man in black leather with a long gray beard who smells something awful of cigarette’s, while periodically laughing at himself for no reason in particularly. To my left: a fairly normal looking, just-over-the-hill-aged man who must have a cat hoarding problem; he smells like PAH-IS! Naturally, I pick the powerfully odored urine man with the slightly less creepy disposition.

4:00pm: Getting more nauseous from the urine smell and praying I don’t pass out completely. Some one has got to guard my purse, digital camcorder and laptop.

4:15pm: Home again, home again, clickity clack.

5:00pm: We needs diapers, eggs and yogurt. What does a car-less family do in such circumstances? Layer up, walk the mile to the grocery store. Dark outside? Raining? Cold? Minor insignificant details. We are tough cookies, yes we are.

6:00pm: Eating a po’ man’s dinner for a family of 3 with no time to prepare a meal: Cheesy bread - $2.99 (an actual pizza is too expensive). Family dinner? Priceless.

6:45pm: Lil’ E to bed. I tried to think of something witty for this one but I’m at a loss.

7:30pm: Yoga night!

8:30pm: Ouch! The Scorpion. I point out to the yoga instructor, “this is the type of stuff they do on the magazine covers”; Little ol’ noobie Vivian cannot do this. But try, little engine, try. Does any one know about this stuff? Why is it that from this position on I have had some crazy lower back feelings of an almost maternal nature? Some powerful mothering feelings, almost like some deep seated tension from carrying a belly with a hyper-extended back for 9.5 months. Who knows.

9:30pm: My new hobby of skyping (and I’ll have to blog about that another time!) with my best friend for several hours, where I get to practice all of my comedic lines to blog about later. If they fly on her, they are in.

12:00am: Shower. Lay down in bed. The whole room is a-quiver with Hubby’s snoring- his body a 215 pound subwoofer.

12:20am: Up again. Grab some rice milk and cookie dough and start blogging.

12:30am: Dang this cookie dough is da bomb diggity. And 70% organic ingredients too!

Yep, that’s right ya’ll: Organic Fat. Only the best fat for this ass.

(Chat-practiced that line too. Might copyright it, whatcha think?)

For the record, no, this is not my typical diet!

Tonight the fam tried out the Flexcar for the first time, reserving it for a 6 hour excursion out to Hood River city to climb aboard the Mt. Hood Railway train “Polar Express” themed ride. (Flexcar was fab, btw). Lil’ E started off the ride a bit bewildered- the Polar Express is one of his all time favorite movies to watch and he’s very familiar with tunes and music in movies, so when we boarded to the movie’s soundtrack he was trying to piece it all together for awhile. Eventually the Styrofoam cup of hot chocolate and the molasses cookie was enough of a sugar high to make him go a little bananas (he even tried to eat the table a bit at one point.) The ride was neat, you listen to music, have a little snack, and hear the cd version of the Polar Express book read aloud. At the end you get to the “north pole” where the train picks up Santa and he comes around to each table. EACH TABLE, each child, out of sooo many on 3 cars of this train. So, instead of the scheduled 6:30pm end time, the train went back and forth on the tracks (and every one knows how motion sensitive I am, right?) until Santa could make it to all the kids, which didn’t happen until 7:15pm. Suffice to say, the second half of the evening was dragged on more than necessary. They did have some caroler’s come sing to us while we waited for Santa, and they were even kind enough to honor Lil’ E’s unorthodox request of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (see video below).

As far as how Lil’ E liked St. Nick, I’ll just let you watch the video for yourself!

Enjoy!

Bewildered Lil’ E

Twinkle Twinkle, by request

Santa experience…

Once I sat down in Santa’s lap with him, it was all good