The good and the bad

 
Hmm, so I feel like I should post something because I am painfully aware that it has been a week since I last posted (and that last one really wasn't very exciting anyway), but I can't think of much to say. Pat suggested I write about how Greta refuses to believe us when we tell her our full names and that she calls us "Flower House" and "Grassy Man" (sadly, I'm Grassy Man), and I suggested that perhaps HE should write about that, and he keenly noted, "I don't really write about things like that." And since Pat only writes about riding Segways and he hasn't ridden one in the past week, here I am.
 
Soooo...
 
Here's a list:
 
+ Our good friends Mike, Christy, and Colin had a new addition come into their family recently: Miles Christopher! So far they are total rockstars at doing the family-of-four thing. Miles is a sweety, and I got to hold him for a good 20 minutes and he not only didn't cry, but he made the sweetest, most expressive little faces. We love him already.
 
+ We have been continuing to work on little things around our house, from decluttering to beautifying. I recently told Pat that I am starting to appreciate our house more and more...but I still want to move ASAP. :)
 
- We keep looking at houses in Brighton, and we keep leaving disappointed. I am pretty good at recognizing the obviously sucky houses in the pictures, but sometimes I get tripped up. When I see something promising in a listing, I can't help but get completely wrapped up in obsessing about it, decorating in my head, resisting the urge to buy lamps and curtains, etc (until I actually see that it's ranges from being a dump to being just slightly not quite right). It's an emotional rollercoaster for me, and I don't know how to stop feeling that way. We're going on 6 months of looking, and I'm starting to feel drained.
 
- A couple kids in G's class have had the flu in the past two weeks - at least one with confirmed H1N1. The reasonable mom says, "It's the flu. Wash your hands. Whateves." The crazy psycho mom is two seconds from pulling her out of day care. (Serenity now.)
 
+ My mom's 60th birthday is next week, and we have a very intimate family seafood extravaganza planned. CAN'T EFFING WAIT. My brother emailed me today to say he ordered 6 whole lobsters and 75 clams. I named my lobster Pinchy. I munna eat em.
 
- Tori and Dean's son has weird short bangs and a rat tail. At first I thought maybe they didn't realize he had the rat tail (because they're not the most involved parents [but probably better than most celebrity parents]), but then one episode I noticed Tori kind of running her fingers through it. I find the whole thing troubling.
 
+ Greta is showing her smart, funny nature every day (except this weekend when she was sort of the devil). Since being in her preschool class, she has started sort of coloring in the lines and even doing some simple math. My parents got her a subscription to National Geographic Kids, and it's for kids who are a bit older than her, but when we read it and I ask her the questions in the magazine, she rocks it; it boggles my mind. It's sweet and cute to see what she "gets" and what she doesn't, though. She can recite all of The Very Hungry Caterpillar nearly verbatim, but when we read Everyone Poops and we get to the last page, there is a spread of four different shapes of poop and she says, "That's poop, that's poop, that's poop, and that's a whale." (It's actually a silhouette of poop - shocking, I know.) When we remind her it's poop, she says, "Oh," and then calls it a whale again the very next day.
 
Hey, so apparently I did have some things to say! Ta-da!
 
How are you?
 
Fran