I can't believe how long it's been since I posted, but it has been a very long and stressful month. The first two weeks were taken up with a short film Steve shot for a Horror Shorts Film Fest being produced by our pals Drew Daywalt and John Crye. Steve wrote, directed and produced the whole thing, which should end up being about 5 minutes long. What made it a little more stressful for me was that we shot HERE in our house, and then at Chiodo's shop, a location I arranged. I also helped with costumes and whatever else, craft services and that kind of thing. Oh, and I have a two month old baby. And it's hot out. You know, like summer hot.

But it got finished, footage looks good, and now they go to edit. Festival is scheduled for October 20th.

The second half of the month, Dexter and I traveled back to CT to help my mom prepare to move. She and the other tenant in the old Victorian she been renting an apartment in were given 45 days to move, because the owners have to move back in. Totally understandable, but I think they could have given Mark and my mom a bit more of a heads up, especially if they were selling the place they live in now. It really blindsided the both of them. Having been in that situation myself, I have sympathy for the both of them. All's well that ends well, though, as she, through my old friend Cheryl Hilton who is now a realtor, found a great apartment on the Bristol/Southington line. It has a W/D in the unit and even a fireplace. She will never use it, but she has always wanted one and I happy for her to finally have it.

The gigantic nightmare of the whole ordeal was the stuff in the basement. There had been a serious flooding issue the past few years, and the basement was filled with a rainbow array of mold with a thick coating of termite produced sawdust. Absolutely disgusting. I wore a mask and gloves, and should have had a full white suit and goggles on as well, but it was so humid I think I would have melted. I did sweat off another couple of Baby Pounds during the ordeal as it was. I threw out 90% of the stuff down there, only salvaging two boxes of photos and "the good stuff." The really old stuff was actually packed incredibly well, and even though the box it was in may have turned into sludge (no exaggeration) my grandmother's china remained intact. Also, stuff like china, glassware and vases can be washed. The paintings were another matter. It breaks my heart to see how damaged they all were. It would be a very sad day on Antiques Roadshow. I did salvage almost all of them, and my Aunt Ruth took most of them to be evaluated. The big one both she and mom hated has been sent home with me. A dark depressing painting of the Hoboken waterfront from 1948? Why that has Steve Johnson all over it! We'll see if the hot Southern California can bake the white mold off of it.

It took over a week, but she is packed and ready for the movers to show up. The silver lining to it all was my mom got to spend some quality time with Dex, and he and I got to spend time with old friends as well. Dexter charmed everyone he met along the way.

Here's a cute picture of him makin' time with a lovely redhead over at Cheryl's.


And there went August, and Dexter is now 3 months old.

A banner day in Babyland...Dexter has figured out how to roughly bring something to his mouth to suck on it. It's not graceful, it's not terribly accurate, but this morning he managed to bring the little stuffed bugs from Cousin Allison to his mouth. His eyes popped open in awe, and he gurgled with delight. The only video camera available was on my phone, which prompted me to finally order that USB cord from Samsung so I can transfer data from my phone to my computer.

Yes, I know I COULD do it wirelessly, but I was never able to figure out how to make an"@" symbol on the phone keyboard, and I canceled the internet feature from our phone plan, since we never really use it. I tried to buy the cord at the Cingular store last month, but they were sold out. Good thing, too, as they had it for $30. Samsung had it online through their corporate website for $12.99 and free shipping.

As if I hadn't been lured into the world of online shopping already working 60 hour weeks, I now appreciate it even more with a new baby. The Herculean effort it takes to get out of the house to do basic errands even after 2 months keeps a lot of stuff on my shopping list. Now I order it online then it shows up eventually, at least sooner than I would have been able to get out to hunt and kill it. But when I do hunt and kill, I'm finding myself succumbing to the lure of Costco and it's Big Box Store cronies. I have always been the "stop at Trader Joe's" twice a week kind of gal, channeling the Parisian housewife stopping at the market every night on her way home. I'm starting to appreciate the convenience of larger sized items, at least when it comes to non-edible items like paper goods. I am desperately trying to find secret storage in our one bedroom apartment, so we don't look like a tacky warehouse. So far, it's working.

Today I'm trying to start the baby on the road to a Daytime Schedule. He is very predictable at night, and usually sleeps almost all the way through, with one feeding between 3am and 5am, but many nights he goes right through until dawn.

So this morning, I am trying to put him down for more than a 10 minute nap. In the bedroom with the shades closed, cool and relatively quiet. This is the second try of the morning, and so far it's working. He just fussed for a few minutes, but no screaming this time. We'll see how he does. It would be nice to know I could get something done during the day, even if just for an hour or two. Or that he might sleep through Mommy and Me Yoga, at least partly, so there could be more Yoga and Mommy and less Me.

I've seen a couple of great commercials recently, one for Bank of America and the other for Fruit of the Loom.

The FotL one cracks me up every time I see it. It's a parody of the Chanel No 5 commercial from the 80's, the one with the Ink Spots' song, "I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire" with a little of the Calvin Klein perfume spots thrown in for good measure.

It's in glorious technicolor instead of black and white, and it has the fruit guys in pretentious poses and girls on swings. At the end the VO whispers "Fruit of the Loom" just like the CK ad used to. I hope it wins awards.

The B of A spot takes three classic movie scenes, Charile Chaplin on a roof in LA, Rhett and Scarlett walking across the lawn in GWTW, and Rocky running up the steps in Philadelphia. Through the wonders of computer animation, it is slowly layered over footage of the exact location as it seen today. The skyline of LA 90 years later is the most remarkable to me, but it's all very cool.