I spanked Ruby for the first time today. Her offense? I caught her on the couch walking directly on the Mac which was open, keyboard exposed. I felt bad for a few minutes, especially after her face melted from her mischievous grin to a big sad face with fat tears rolling down her cheeks, but I felt that the situation warranted a quick thwack on the bottom. A Mac is not a sidewalk and I have lost count of how many times that Heath or I have looked her in the eye and explained to her that the laptop is not her toy. She wasn’t too affected by my actions. About 5.3 seconds later she was back up running on the couch like a little madman. That’s going to be a fun habit to break.

I guess that answers that question. Yes, I will probably spank Ruby. I’m not really hard core pro-spanking but if calm verbal discussions and  warnings go unheeded then I’m okay with it. Ideally, I only want to do it when it is a situation involving something that could have serious, maybe irreversible consequences like, No, you can absolutely not run into traffic. Otherwise, time-outs will probably be the go-to discipline tool. Anyway. Guess I felt like I had to defend my actions there.

It’s been a busy week. The current show in the gallery was taken down and packed up on Monday. Things went smoothly and I was grateful for the help from interns and staff. Tuesday I worked my shift at Target and Wednesday I tried to work on shipping the work OUT of the gallery but unfortunately FedEx and UPS make that an extremely confusing process for shipping newbies so I didn’t really get anywhere with that. There is a wedding in the gallery this weekend so everything has to be hidden out of sight. Our receiving room is packed to the gills right now!

Today was my ‘off’ day but I did work a bit this morning. Afterwards I was able to spend a little time working on some of my pieces before heading to the blood bank to donate platelets. Then it was off to the grocery store, home to start dinner, time to pick up Ruby, and then back home to finish dinner (cobb salad, gotta use up all that farm share lettuce!) and take care of my girl. Dinner was yummy and after that Heath played Diablo III and I went to the gym to try my ankle at the eliptical machine. Jury is still out on that until the morning I think.

After today I will be working every day until next Saturday. Shooting another wedding, Target, unpacking the next show, finishing all the details for the next show, the opening! Oh, and my 8-year wedding anniversary is this upcoming Tuesday. A busy, busy time coming up but I’m grateful that everything is at least fun!

Today we went to the farm where we will be receiving a fruit/vegetable farm share. It was a gorgeous day and besides getting chicken crap all over my camera lens, it was a lot of fun. Ruby enjoyed running around in the grass, eating dandelions, and seeing the animals. When she saw the cows she immediately started saying, “moo!”, it was adorable. I wish I had gotten some video of her laughing when the chickens were running around her. It was just about the cutest thing ever. They had food samples including a green smoothie and the most delicious strawberries. We also got to take home a bag of sweet potatoes as a parting gift.

{super smize}

{delicious dandelions}

The pictures below pretty much say it all. We’ve got a sick little babe on our hands. She’s been running a fever since yesterday and when we got to the doctor’s office today it was up to 103.6. She was radiating heat like it was going out of style. Heath even broke a sweat from her snuggling with him.  Turns out that she has pneumonia. The strange thing is that somehow, I just had a feeling, that that was what was wrong with her. Oh, and an ear infection in her right ear.

She is still eating but the only thing we’ve been able to get her to eat is the Plum organic baby food pouches. I love those things, not just for their convenience, they actually taste pretty good too. After the appointment today I dropped off her prescription at the pharmacy and then bought one of every flavor off the shelf. I also picked up generic Pedialyte but she won’t drink it.

She’s basically slept non-stop since we came home this afternoon. I had an art event downtown that I had to attend for work but when I came home we woke her up, fed her a pouch, gave her some milk, and forced down her medicine. She was not feeling the Zithromax. I probably ended up wearing half of it on my shirt, maybe a little in my hair. So this weekend will be spent nursing my baby girl back to health. I am trying to keep my paranoia about something bad happening to her from kicking into overtime. If she’s not feeling better by Monday it’s back to the doctor she goes.

In less than 12 hours I will be back at work. I get sucked into black-and-white thinking pretty easily so the past few hours I’ve been a little bitter about  it. So I keep telling myself that it’s only a four hour shift (at least for this week) and that’s it. Then I’m done with that and I get to go have fun in the art world again. I get to work on art-related things and then later tomorrow night I am going to a couple of opening receptions and hanging out with some friends. Focus on the positive, Laurie!

I spent my last free day working on art, having lunch with Heath (Smashing Tomato, yummy!), reading Mockingjay, cooking dinner, and shopping for some new tennis shoes. My old ones are over 4 years old and my toes were starting to peak out the sides not to mention they just weren’t that comfy. I found a pair that are really comfy and I like the color but I feel like a total nerd wearing them!  I don’t usually wear tennies unless I’m going to the gym but I need the extra support for a little while-at least I hope it’s only for a little while. All my cute heels and flats are collecting dust in my closet!

{nerd alert!}

Yesterday was the annual Easter Egg Hunt that my friend Heather is gracious enough to host at her house every year. First is the pic of all the kids last year and below that the picture from this year plus two new babes:

{2011}

{2012. W does not looked please with his status as the only boy}

We were late to this event because someone, me, thought that everything started at 11 when it really started at 10. I was all pleased that we were on trend to leave in a timely manner too. Oh well. When we got there the kids were chomping at the bit to get on with the hunt and as soon as they were released chaos ensued. No, not really but there were little puffy skirts flying around every which way. Ruby stole someones basket within two seconds. Guess she didn’t like the little beach bucket that I had deemed ‘good enough’ for her to collect eggs in. These little ladies move fast, I think all the eggs were collected and the bigger girls were upstairs playing within 15 minutes.

Then the adults got to have mimosas. Awww yeah.

1. Cutting out templates for use in artistic endeavors.

2. Ruby thinks that other baby in the mirror is pretty cute.

3. A most romantic Valentine’s Day dinner.

4. Kickin’ it old school before heading to bed.

I’ve always been kind of very anti-White Castle. After all, it doesn’t have the best reputation for fine cuisine now does it? But after Heath came home from work one day and announced, very exitedly I might add, that White Castle was taking reservations for Valentine’s Day I figured, Why Not? Why not ensure my nomination for Wife of the Year? Hahaha. I thought this might be kind of fun, at the very least a nice change from doing absolutely nothing, our usual Valentine’s Day plans. Initially I didn’t plan on telling Heath about the reservations and I would drive us there that night and be all like, SURPRISE! But unfortunately the broken ankle and the inability to drive changed that. I told him about our reservations and he thought it was “cool”.

Upon arrival to our neighborhood WC we were greeted by three employees one of which took us to our table adorned with a crisp white table cloth and pink and red cloth napkins. There balloons, flowers, and a special Valentine’s Day menu. We dined on a feast of 10 sliders, 2 fries, and large drinks (Ruby had ham and macaroni and cheese) followed by chocolate-dipped cheesecake-on-a-stick. I didn’t care for my sweet potato fries but Heath’s cheese fries were pretty good. And although I’ve had better cheesecake (red velvet cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory, anyone?) the cheesecake-on-a-stick was tasty. Everyone dining around us seemed to be having a good time and one employee even talked about how much he enjoyed the chance to get to interact with people in a different way than usual.

After our fine dining experience we came home and watched Masters of Horror on Netflix. White Castle, a broken ankle, child in tow, and horror movies. Ahhhhh, romance!

And I don’t mean cold, although it is getting there. This time I mean Chili, the adorable lab mix up for adoption at LHS. How can you resist that face??

Sorry for the lack of posts! It is certainly not for lack of photos to post, quite the opposite actually, I have a ton of things to post but I am in bit behind because I’ve been a bit under the weather. I got a sinus infection which nearly always leaves me a lump on the couch for an undetermined amount of time and then got some weird kind of eye infection which has left my eyes extremely red and swollen. This of course had led to comments about pirates and people asking me where they can get the good stuff I’ve been smoking (which momentarily raised my level of cool among some of my classmates). I am hoping the medicine will kick in and I’ll be back to being myself again. Check back soon!

Here are two more great wedding websites I recently came across. Check them out if you get the chance!

A Practical Wedding *There is a great advice article on there today*

Style Me Pretty