I dream of Charlotte

Mommy guilt is always lurking around somewhere. The night after Nicholas was born, while still at the hospital, I had a horrible nightmare about Charlotte. I dreamt that I had taken her to a toddler class at Wurster Hall (a building on my college campus) and afterwards, we walked outside toward Cafe Strada, but she didn't cross the street with me. She walked to the bus stop and stood there.

I asked her what she was doing and she replied that she had to wait for the bus to go home. I asked her why she was taking the bus home and she said that she had to take the bus home by herself, her eyes welling up with tears. Her actual words in my dream were a mix of Chinese and English "yeh yeh zhi Ji take the bus to go home." Lately, in real life, she has been asking to do a lot of things on her own.

At this point in my dream, I realized that she wasn't mine and I started crying and kept asking her why she wasn't mine. Images of her parents in my dream started to form and I imagined her getting off of the bus to meet them at home. I remember sobbing in my dream pleading with her to answer why she wasn't mine and she just stood there looking for the bus to turn on Bancroft way from College Avenue. The grief and confusion I was feeling was retry unbearable. I could not grasp the fact that she wasn't mine and I kept searching for a reason that could have caused this to happen. I think it was the wrist feeling I had ever felt in a dream or in reality.

I hope this dream was a result of raging postpartum hormones and not any sort of premonition of my future with my darling Charlotte.

Crafty friends and family

Doing some organizing and realizing that I have some crafty people in my life.

A couple of cozies from my brother and his girlfriend, now fiancé.



A beaded flower ring from my friend Doris.

Baby swing recover

I haven't made or posted anything in a while. Here is something that I had been meaning to make for Char for a long time. It's a baby swing cushion that I wanted to recover with a more modern fabric. But now she's two and we are passing the swing along to a friend that just had a baby.

I chose an owl pattern and just traced the old cushion and instead of redoing the whole cover, I just covered the old one. I wish I had taken pictures of the process, but here are the before and after.

Kids Play Kitchen by Step 2

Picked up this Step 2 LifeStyle Dream Kitchenfor Charlotte last week off of craigslist for $30. The guy sold it with a bunch of other plates and utensils too, but I think I'll introduce them slowly so that she has something new to play with later. Plus, they are smaller than the ones that came with the kitchen and I don't wan her to eat them all!

This kitchen was neither wood nor modern which was what I wanted, but she seems to love it. She made sardines for us for breakfast.

Laugh and Learn Puppy and my girl

My daughter has a hand-me-down older generation of the Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Learning Puppy and loves it. We bought one for a friend and here is my daughter giving it a test run before we wrapped it up. Some updates to the Puppy include a lighted heart button on the puppy's shirt which she can push to start music or a learning phrase. The button on the nose is gone, but the lighted heart is much more entertaining for her.

Homemade Winnie the Pooh ears :)

Sent from my Samsung Epic™ 4G

Fixed my Dell Vostro 2510 laptop LCD screen

http://www.insidemylaptop.com/replace-damaged-lcd-screen-dell-vostro-1500-laptop/So, I dropped my laptop and it landed screen down and spread open and my LCD screen cracked. I forgot to take a picture of the broken screen. Here's how I replaced the screen for my Dell 2510. I followed the instructions for a Dell Vostro 1500 which was only a little different.

Tools that I used: one eyeglass screwdriver and a pair of tweezers (I dropped one of the screws in a hard to reach place).

My broken screen

I pulled off the little sticky black circles (6 total) that were covering the screws in the plastic frame or bezel.

Here's the screw behind the sticky black circle.

The top circles are actually rubber pads.

The sticky tape holding the rubber pads in place kept getting stuck to the screw.

I used the flat head of the screwdriver to pry off the sticky tape to reuse.

Picture of the sticky tape circle on my finger. I tried to keep it as circular as possible.

I stuck the tape onto the rubber pad that I picked off.

After all six screws were removed, it was easy to pull off the bezel.

Here's a photo of the bezel completely pulled off.

There were three more screws take off near the bottom of the screen at the corners and near the middle. The two screws in the corner attach the metal frame to the lid of the lap top and one in the middle that held the inverter connector in place.

Inverter connector screw.

Once the metal frame could be separated from the laptop lid, there were six more screws that needed to be removed. These six screws held the LCD screen to the metal frame. I removed the screws before I unplugged the inverter and the LCD cable connecter, but I should have unplugged the two cables first before unscrewing the LCD screen from the frame.I ended up putting the screws back in before I unplugged the cables.

The following pictures are of the LCD cable connector.

A close-up of the LCD cable connector.

The connector was held in place by some tape. I peeled the tape back slowly

I peeled it off only the LCD screen parts and left it stuck to the cable side so that I could reuse it on the new screen.

The LCD cable connector pulled straight out. I didn't have to pinch any flaps or tilt it.

Underside of the LCD cable connector.

The cable connector was also stuck to the LCD screen near the bottom of the screen.

I slowly peeled the sticky part of the cable off of the screen.

The inverter connector was at the bottom of the screen near the middle.

I pulled the pink and white wires out of the inverter.

I pulled out the old screen and screwed the new screen into the metal frame. Then I screwed the frame and inverter back in place.

  

 I removed the plastic from the new screen.

I plugged the LCD cable connector to the new screen.

I stuck the tape to the new screen.

I plugged the inverter cable back in. The new screen had a pink wire and a black wire instead of a pink and white.

I snapped the bezel back in place.

I put back all the screws in the frame and the black covers.

My new working LCD screen :)

Rewiring Thermostat to Furnace

Currently, the wiring from our furnace to our thermostat only has two wires, red and white. These two wires let our heat and fan to be on or both to be off. I want to add a third wire so that the heat and fan can be on, the fan only can be on or both are off. I got some new wire with three wires so that I can run a wire from G on the furnace to G on the thermostat. I hope that works! Below is a good website that lists the colors of wires and what they do. We don't have AC so that's less wiring for me!

I'm still looking for a good video about how to pull the new wire using the old wire.

http://www.dr-fix-it.com/ttt/10005.html

Terminal Designation	Wire Color	Function Description
Rh	Red	24 Volt Hot for Heating
Rc	Red	24 Volt Hot for Cooling
Y1	Yellow	First Stage Cooling
Y2	Blue	Second Stage Cooling
G	Green Grey *	Energizes Indoor Fan
W1	White	Energizes First Stage Heat
W2	Black	Energizes Second Stage Heat
O	Orange	Heat Pump Reversing Valve Energized In Cooling
B	Brown	Heat Pump Reversing Valve Energized In Heating
C	Brown**	24 Volt Neutral (Common) leg

Corner toilet

Where did the owner of this house find a corner toilet?

Testing email to blog with a photo from Berkeley Bowl

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