Our Children's Library ... or OCD ?

Or, maybe I should have titled this post Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, because this weekend, I spent it looking at my teeth thinking they're not white enough, and searching all over the darn house for Joanna's deck of 100 Beannie Baby cards that just disappeared! They are still missing, and I have combed through every inch of our house, and managed to clean out the playroom in the process.

Anyway..... this post was supposed to showcase the result of me cleaning out the playroom but I decided to focus on the library part of the playroom, because I am obsessive about books. I just love collecting them, and it's really hard for me to get rid of them! In fact, I have a box of my kids' favorite board books in the garage. But I have donated many other books simply because they do not fit in our shelves anymore. The one thing that balances my compulsion to collect books is my obsessiveness to stay organized. Otherwise, I would seriously be a hoarder. But I hate when I can't find something, so I like to have everything in the right place. In fact, I have begged my kids to stay organized. Last week, I told them, "when the house is messy, my life feels like a mess! I feel like I might need to find something important one day, but I won't be able to find it!" My kids don't like to hear me saying that, though, and always respond with, "It isn't true!" I have since confessed to them that I shouldn't be saying that. My life is richly blessed by God, and I should not feel like my life is a mess.

Anyway, let me show you my kids' organized library. The only thing I need to now is to alphabetize within the categories, but I might not do that any time soon. Also, I noticed that Joanna knocked down some books while I was taking the picture, so many of the books are kind of leaning to the side in a very unattractive fashion. Anyway, here are the categories.

1. fiction/ fiction series/ periodicals

2. general nonfiction/ science non-fiction

3. anthologies

4. informational books

5. Chinese books

6. Princess/ Fairy books

7. devotional books

Teeth whitening

Okay, so after years of drinking coffee I have really stained my teeth. This became especially obvious after my latest modeling "gig" for Brocade. I just couldn't stand seeing my teeth in the picture, which actually looked brown. I knew my dentist did Zoom whitening, but when I found out the cost was $500, I decided to try the Crest Advanced Seal instead, since it had very good reviews.

On New Year's Eve, just before dinner, I took my "before" picture, and applied my first seal strip. It was very easy to apply, and I left it on for about 60 minutes hoping to increase the effectiveness. Then I happily ate my Mexican dinner. No one ever told me that the whiteners actually open your teeth up to more staining if you eat staining things right away. So of course, I saw no improvement the next day. In fact, though the box claims improvement after 3 days, I wasn't sure if the "slight" improvement I saw was real or due to the difference in lighting.

I continue with the strips for about 2 weeks. I still was not seeing results. One night, I decided to leave them on longer. Perhaps an hour again. (30 minutes is the recommendation). The next day, my inner lip seemed irritated. Moreover, my mouth felt extra sensitive and dehydrated. I constantly had the urge to lick my lips, which was very counterproductive. I went home and put globs of Vaseline on my lips, which helped a little. But the inside of my lip, where the peroxide probably leaked out of the seal, felt uncomfortable. And the worst thing is that when my mouth felt sensitive, my whole body felt sensitive, especially to sound. Think of the sound of someone scratching a chalkboard... that's how I felt. So that was the last day of my advanced seal. I thought that perhaps, in a few months, I would try again.

Then, I found out that I was rewarded $200 from Brocade for being featured on their website. My manager told me that I was supposed to spend $200, and that I would be reimbursed. I thought about what I would like to spend $200 on, and I immediately felt like professional zoom whitening would be very appropriate.

So on 2/2, the day before my birthday, I got my teeth whitened. The procedure itself went fine. 3 15 minutes treatments under the light, after my gums were prepped by the hygeniest. I listened to my iPhone the whole time.

The results weren't as dramatic as I had hoped. I was a little disappointed that my teeth couldn't be "Hollywood white". All my friends say, "You don't want your teeth that white." But I think, "Yes, I do." I think I'm just being obssessive about it I'm sure.

Still, I compare to my old pictures, and my teeth are definitely not brown or yellow any more. In fact, they look very white in the pictures, but I have probably re-stained them since then with my coffee habit.

But I should add that the procedure HURTTSSSS like crazy. It didn't hurt too much during the procedure, which happened at 9:00am. But by 1pm, I had to ask my manager to let me go home. There was no way I could get any work done with that kind of "zinging" pain which felt like cold air being blown onto open cavities all over my mouth. I went home and writhed in pain even with 2 ibuprofens and 2 tylenols. Finally, I asked my dentist for Vicodin at 9pm after ruining my birthday eve dinner (at the Cheesecake Factory). Thankfully, I got my prescription filled 5 minutes before the pharmacy closed. By 9:10, I was in bed. The pain was still there, but my brain must have been numbed, because the pain didn't bother me. I fell asleep and the next morning the pain was gone!

I've attached 3 photos. The first one was taken before Crest Advanced Seal. The 2nd one was after 14 days of Crest. And the last photo was taken after Power Zoom Whitening.

Modeling Gig 2: Brocade

Last year, there was a contest called "The Face of Brocade". Ten winners would win an i-phone. We were supposed to write in, 60 words or less, why we liked working at Brocade, and attache a 5 Megapixel picture. I didn't have a 5 Megapixel picture, so I submitted a grainy 2 Megapixel photo of myself and wrote a couple of lines about "Brocade is a great place to work because management knows that the success of a company begins with the ownership, commitment and pride of the employees"... It wasn't that good, and I don't wish to dig up my old email to quote myself.

Well, I didn't win, and when I saw who the winners were, it seemed to me like it was a photo contest. The winners all seemed to have submitted professional photos of themselves. However, I, and 9 others, were sent an email from a PR person saying that they were sorry we didn't win, but they liked our photo so much that we would be invited to a photo shoot. So off I went to a photo shoot. The photo ended up being on an internal brocade poster, and just this past month, ended up being the main photo featured on the external website. It was exciting to get this type of "visibility".

Well, of course, no one really notices the person on the website. Who actually visits the website? But it was fun to show off to my friends and my kids, who also told their friends about it.

Modeling Gig Number 1 - Adamson's French Dip

It's funny that within 6 months, I find a picture of myself on two different companies' websites. The first one is at Adamson's French Dip Sandwich website. It was taken while I was having lunch on a Friday with some of my friends from Zoran. There was a photographer there who mentioned that he would be taking those photos, and asked for our permission, and we said, "Sure!". I was pretty excited. I've always been a fame whore but never did anything substantial to deserve it. This time was not an exception, but was just due to a stroke of luck. It is funny to see the final picture, which actually looks quite natural... like a group of friends having a good time over a great meal. In actuality, we were friends having a good time, responding to the photographer's instructions to "look happy", but through my smile, I was saying the whole time. "This is funny! What should we talk about about? "

Sutter Spelling Bee champ!

Jacob won the school spelling bee today with the word, "exuberant". =)

We were given a 600 word list ahead of time, so it didn't seem like it would be too overwhelming to study for it. Word list A, word list B, and word list C. We went over the whole list once during Christmas break and narrowed it down to about 30 words that needed extra review. Then this past week, we reviewed those last 30 words. This past weekend was so busy, so we didn't adequately study. Even up to last night, I spent about 20 minutes with him and there were some words he mis-spelled. This morning, we spent another 20 minutes on it, and it seemed like he knew every word that I gave him. I knew that at the end, he just had to keep his cool and not get nervous because if he made a mistake, it would probably be due to nervousness.

The spelling bee was at 8:45am. Jacob told me that he didn't want me to watch because he didn't want me to be nervous. After I dropped him and Joanna off at school, I just could NOT resist. So at 9:00, I slipped into the cafeteria just to see what the spelling bee looked like. I caught Jacob spelling two words . "equal", and another word.

Finally, I decided that I didn't want to get Jacob nervous, so I gestured in the back to ask him whether I should stay or leave. He tilted his head toward the door, so I knew what that meant.

I drove in to work and had to send the principal an email asking for the result. Mr. Funcheon was kind enough to send me a reply at 10:21 telling me "JACOB WON! The winning word was exuberant".

At the moment, Jacob is resistant to the idea of going to the next level. I told him before the bee that I wouldn't *force* him to go. I was afraid he was throw the last word just to not have to go to the last word. In fact, during Christmas break, when I pulled him away from his friends for 20 minutes ONLY to study for the spelling bee, he said, "I knew I shouldn't have won the classroom spelling bee because you would do this to me."

Jacob had a good day

Jacob had a very bad first quarter at Sutter. I must have wrongly assumed that he was mature enough to do his homework every night without my checking, and that he would stop talking in the classroom , especially during silent reading or when the teacher was talking! Well, after weeks of me getting on his case, he finally had his first perfect week last week! All assignments turned in, and not once getting in trouble for talking. For some reason, I thought he had his homework nailed down by fourth grade, but his talking was getting to be more of a problem as he got more and more comfortable at Sutter.

In light of all this, I was very happy yesterday to hear that Jacob won the classroom spelling bee. The last time he had won was in 2nd grade. In 1st grade, he didn't even get to the spelling bee because he was spacing out during the pretest and wrote "know" instead of "no", because he was eager to show off his spelling. In 3rd and 4th grade, he was nervous and made a mistake. This year, he finally took my advice to pretend to write the word on his hand before he speaks it. I told him he's very visual and a very good speller, so that technique works for him.

Also, he told me that at recess, he made two lay-ups. I'm so glad that he's been getting into basketball now that he's been watching the Warriors on TV . He's finally working on his basketball skills at school instead of playing handball!

Need to check Joanna's homework still....

Last week, Joanna's homework was to write a special note to a secret friend as a Christmas present. The "secret friend" was drawn out of the hat. As usual, I am supposed to look over her writing, but again, I forgot to double check her writing. After all, she did a very nice job coloring her paper and making an acrostic out of the secret friend's name.

Well, yesterday, I received a note from her teacher:
"Hi Elaine, I wanted to let you know that I am going to send Joanna’s letter home today and have her redo the assignment. This assignment was intended to give the students practice writing a friendly letter. This letter will be a gift for someone. Joanna is a strong writer and a kind person, but her letter does not really show her strengths. Her assignment was to write a letter to her person telling them what is great about that person, and why it is great to have them in class. Please reread her letter and have her redo it. Thank you,Christe Farnum"

Well, as soon as I went home I read her letter and was shocked and embarrassed. Here is what she wrote.

Dear Aryanna,

Your a good friend (well sort of a friend). When you're happy, I'm sort of happy. When you're sad, I'm sort of sad. When you laugh, I sort of laugh. When you leave early, I want to leave early. When I sed "when you laugh, I sort of laugh?" Well, it's not my fault! Whenever anyone laughs , I laugh.

Sincerely, Joanna


Well, I was really embarassed, that I let Joanna turn that in. Miss Farnum must think I am a monster! What a terrible mom, that I am.

When I complained to Joanna that she didn't do a good job on her letter. She said, "I know, I didn't spell "said" correctly."