Say you buy a yellow car. You’re driving around in your new yellow car and then all of the sudden, you are seeing yellow cars everywhere. Same goes for red cars. Or perhaps you got a pretty cool pair of brown shoes – and then you realize, Wow, look at all the people wearing brown shoes like mine.

Or you see an article in a magazine about a medical condition. Then you see a second article about the same condition. Then maybe someone loans you a book, and that ALSO has to do with the same obscure-ish condition. That is how I have come to be bombarded with numerous mentions of Locked In Syndrome this week. First, an article in People magazine. Then another article about The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (about a man with LIS). And now I’m reading The Second Opinion by Michael Palmer about a doctor with LIS. And before this week, I’d never even heard of Locked In Syndrome.

So far – the book is decent – but I like medical mystery/drama/thrillers (i.e. House meets Law & Order). If you’re into this sort of book – or you like books by Robin Cook or Tess Gerritsen, for example – you may want to give this one a try.

I may never get used to the fact that a Michigan winter lasts about half of a year. Not a fan of cold weather, I had foolishly almost packed away the mittens, hats and scarves until next winter (Laziness stopped me). I’m glad I didn’t put them away because yeah – last night, snow. The next few days are going to be cold, and hello? The kids are on SPRING BREAK. In the snow.

Today, we had planned for The Princess to have a playdate with a friend from her class. She’d been looking forward to it all weekend, even cleaned her room for it. This morning, the friend’s mom called me and unfortunately had to cancel because her daughter had been puking all night and all morning. (No fun!!). Understandably, The Princess was pretty bummed out and though we’ve rescheduled it put a mighty big damper on today.

Here’s hoping the rest of the vacation gets better from here.

1. At my last job, I occasionally had to travel through an Amish area in order to get to one of our locations for work. For lunch, we’d sometimes eat at the amazing Amish restaurant that had awesome chicken noodle soup (with the amazing homemade noodles) and desserts that were so phenomenal that we were always sure to order something low key (like SOUP) for lunch to have room for dessert. One of my favorites was this amazing peanut butter pie. Yuuuum. Related: Yesterday, I had peanut butter pie. It was good. Not quite Amish good. But good.

2. I have never made peanut butter pie. If I did, I don’t think I would use crunchy peanut butter though.

3. I’m not sure I get the whole “Popular Download” theme of American Idol this week. I guess I kind of figured they would all be singing from the list of iTunes Top 100 downloads list – which would have made sense. Instead, it was a mishmash potpourri of stuff which sent Megan Corkrey home. Initially I liked her (loved her version of “Put Your Records On” way back when) – but she attempted Marley. And it was bad.

4. I thought I was re-reading “Catcher In The Rye” but it’s painfully obvious to me now that I’ve never read it – because as much and as often as I read, I think I would remember. I know I read “Franny and Zooey” so maybe that’s what I confused. Not sure, but I definitely hadn’t read “Catcher” before.

5. Happy day is learning Matt Nathanson in guitar lesson. Wheeee.

6. Tonight is the last episode of “ER” and part of me feels like I want to watch. The other part of me wonders why when I haven’t watched that show with any regularity for about seven years.

7. Yesterday as we were walking to the car, Pumpkin started singing, “Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you…” Yes. My three year old is singing Oasis. She’s also a tremendous Miley Cyrus fan. I don’t foresee a break from the Miley/Hannah hooha for another several years. Meh.

8. I haven’t really purchased any new music this week.

9. Thinking of cookies. I want to make cookies – I have a recipe that tastes like those funky white and pink frosted animal cookies with the sprinkles (Aren’t those the best?), but unfortunately, there are no eggs in the fridge. Debating how badly I really want to make them.

10. I rented “Bolt” for the girls the other day. I have now seen BOLT far more than any one person should – and my girls have seen it at least DOUBLE that. It’s insane. They both quote the movie like crazy, and while it’s mildly cute – I’m ready to take the movie back. Now.

Pumpkin is far and away so different than the kind of kiddo that The Princess was (and it’s been like that every step of the way – while The Princess was sleeping through the night by eight weeks of age, Pumpkin still remains a wakeful sleeper – even now, at three and a half, it’s not uncommon for her to wake up at least once each night. Ugh). While The Princess definitely had her willful moments, Pumpkin is by far more stubborn, more defiant.

Part of it is the whole “being three” thing. I laugh now how I was petrified of the “terrible two’s”. Two ain’t nothin’. Three (even for my oldest kiddo) has been worse, and though I was lucky enough to forget about it – much like you forget the pain of childbirth – there are days when Pumpkin reminds me of the joys of having a three year old.

Yesterday, that joy came in the form of an incident report when I picked her up from preschool. They had recently “promoted” her to the four year old room (though she won’t be four for another several months) and yesterday was her very first day in that room – though she had visited them several times before over the past few weeks. Her visits had gone really well, so I was shocked to see an incident report paper clipped to her folder on her cubby. I picked it up: “Pumpkin dumped out a jar of glitter. We put her in time out and talked to her about it.” Then there was a follow up: “Should we be making her take a nap?” Um – YES. Turns out, Pumpkin didn’t want to take her nap. She wanted to play. She wanted to play now. She wanted to play with this bottle of glitter. No? Okay, well, this bottle of glitter is on the carpet now. Ugh.

Pumpkin is in that other lovely three stage – growing out of her nap – and though she hates taking one, when she doesn’t, you sure know it. I talked to her teacher, we came up with a strategy and here’s hoping that this is the last of THAT. I guess with this all is somewhat of a sense of relief – I mean, I’d so much rather get an incident report for glitter-spilling versus biting or hitting other kids. But it’s still no fun.

1. Today was my second bake sale to raise money for the breast cancer walk. Amazing that even with the craptastic economy, people were so generous to donate towards an amazing cause. I’m impressed.

2. I spent all day yesterday baking. You know in Forest Gump, when Bubba’s listing the eleventy-billion ways to serve shrimp? That’s how I feel when I list everything I made for the sale – lots of sugar, chocolate, and holy cow, I went through about two dozen eggs yesterday.

3. Peanut butter cheesecake brownie bites? Yum.

4. New music this week – The Matt Nathanson EP on iTunes. He does a version of “All I Have to Do Is Dream” – and I love it. But I loved the original, and I don’t think he really tweaked it too much.

5. Pumpkin got sent to time out at school the other day for refusing to wear her hat outside. Kid is definitely in a stubborn phase right now. I remember this from The Princess, but boy… not fun.

6. Spring Break is coming up at The Princess’s school. All the other families are going on amazing vacations – and I feel badly for not having anything planned, but I just wasn’t planning on it. Will have to come up with some fun things to keep the kiddos occupied so they will be distracted from the fact that we’re not going to Florida like so-and-so’s family.

7. I’m hungry. And if I see another cookie right now, I might be sick. Pass the Cheetos.

8. Are there any good movies coming out? I think there’s one for kids coming out this weekend? I am so behind on that stuff.

9. I am still working on “Wonderwall” in guitar lessons. I learned the rest of the song today. It’s pretty fun to learn a WHOLE song (that isn’t a Christmas carol) and even cooler is that the guys in Oasis aren’t that great of singers, so I could even sing along… and even if it was bad (AND IT WOULD BE), it would still be about right.

10. I just downloaded the Weather Channel application for my phone. This means that at the touch of the screen, I can see what crappy weather we have. Fun times.

It’s easy to love them at the first grade level, I think – but last night’s conference for The Princess was FUN. We spent five minutes listening to how much the teacher adores The Princess and the rest of the time talking about second grade, college sports, graduate school programs (not for The Princess – I feel like I need to clarify that while it was a GOOD conference, she’s not Doogie Howser). It was a very mellow meeting, and most likely the highlight of my day. My favorite part was hearing about how well my daughter reads, though. If she loves reading, it will carry her so far.

First of all – holy cow – when I asked people what song they hate people would list songs and I would think to myself, “Well… that’s not that bad.” (Case in point: I can still appreciate “Ice Ice Baby”).

1. “She Drives Me Crazy” Fine Young Cannibals
2. “Waterfalls” TLC
3. “Butterfly Kisses” (gaaaaaaaaaaack)
4. “Viva la Vida” Coldplay (the only way you can get me to turn the radio off is for this song to come on, and it’s still getting a TON of airplay)
5. “Who Let the Dogs Out” Loooove that the daycare plays this for the kids so Pumpkin sings this one. Frequently
6. “Macarena” I can still DO the Macarena, but, the song is the biggest earworm ever. Someone starts singing it and FORGET IT
7. Basically anything Beyonce sings

Other contenders based on the people I know – “Tubthumping”, “Oh What a Night”, “Mambo #5”, and from my mother, “Having My Baby” (which IS a pretty repulsive song).

Tiff did a cool post for “10 Things Tuesday” of the Ten Songs she Hates, and since I love a good MeMe, I was thinking, “Awesome! I’ll do this too.”

Only… I could only think of two.

“Waterfalls” by TLC and “She Drives Me Crazy” by Fine Young Cannibals.

I love music – that is not new-news, but only two songs? That can’t be right. Must revisit this question again in the morning. After coffee.

Ever since I heard about the Kindle I was iffy about it – while I love the premise – bunches of books with you everywhere you go without actually having to carry bunches of books – I am one of those people who actually LIKES the feel of books. I like to hold books, I like cracking open a new book, the smell of books. I truly felt like reading books on a gadget would take something away from the whole experience for me.

(Plus, the Kindle price tag? That doesn’t help).

So, I was kind of curious when I saw that there is a free Kindle app for the iPhone. I “bought” it and put it on my phone, and “bought” a Kindle format book (“Little Women”, if you must know – I’ve never read it and swore I’d read it for my 101 Project). I did all this a few weeks ago.

And…

I think I’ve read the equivalent of four pages of the book.

I hate it. Everything I thought I would not like about the Kindle is exactly what I don’t like about the Kindle app. And, yeah, I’ll leave it on my phone for those times I’m sitting somewhere and I’ve forgotten to bring a book (like almost every time I go to get an oil change for the car), but, as for actually BUYING books for it? I’m sure I’ll pass.

1. I just finished reading “Handle With Care” by Jodi Picoult. If you are a fan of her books, you’ll probably like this one too – though it made me cry more than most. The book is about a family whose daughter has osteogenesis imperfecta (OI – aka brittle bone disease) and reading about the bone breaks – wow…

2. So weird to not have guitar lesson yesterday – my whole day felt a little bit off kilter. It’s alright – I had plenty of work to do instead, but, it’s definitely a part of my routine to have that to look forward to.

3. Music I’m loving – I have loved the few songs I’ve heard from “Slumdog Millionaire”. I still haven’t seen the movie – but love “Jai Ho” and “Latika’s Theme”. Awesome.

4. I almost wrote this post in haiku and realized I didn’t want to work that hard.

5. On Tuesday, I picked up some new shoes for The Princess. When she got home, we realized they didn’t fit and ended up going back to the store to swap them for a bigger size shoe. Shoe shopping with my daughter? Not the most pleasant experience.

6. Pumpkin’s preschool let her visit the four year old room yesterday and she was THRILLED. She didn’t want to leave her big kid friends at the end of the day, and was quick to point out to me repeatedly that SHE is a big kid now too. Makes me smile. I try to let her flex those big kid muscles enough so that she truly feels like she’s able to do more things – even when it comes to pouring her own (red) KoolAid. I let her do it because she’s so proud of herself when she’s done (Besides, she’ll help mop up any spills, though she almost never spills).

7. American Idol the other night – wow, that was a whole lot of Michael Jackson music. Surprised at some of the song choices – and surprised there were so many lesser known songs. I did end up with “PYT” stuck in my head for an hour or so afterward.

8. Currently the sun is shining. It almost doesn’t matter that it’s so cold when I have sunshine coming in my window. Don’t get me wrong, if it were 75 and the sun were shining, I’d love it… but it’s just nice to see a blue sky.

9. How had I not known about “Big Bang Theory” until the other night? I caught most of the show while I was waiting for “How I Met Your Mother”. Very funny.

10. Wheat Thins are not a food group on their own but they totally should be.