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Thursday, January 27, 2005
feeling snippety
I feel snippety. All these little journal-thoughts keep skittering through my head, but nothing long enough for a whole entry. So, here; I'll nail a few of them down long enough to type them, as I do other stuff online:
Today's Lessons had not one but TWO concepts I wanted to steal today. One was blogging every hour all day long about what had gone on in the previous hour (which is much, MUCH more interesting in that particular author's house with her five children than it would be in mine) -- and one, which I may actually go ahead and steal since she OFFERED it like that, is "Before and After Thursdays" -- where I would take a picture of a room in my house before cleaning it, then clean it, then take a picture after, and blog about the whole thing. Oh good Lord that could get a little embarrassing though. Maybe nevermind on that one.
You know what motherhood smells like? It smells like VapoRub. We were not a Vick's family when I was growing up -- I did not even know that there was anything you could do about a stuffy nose besides drink hot tea and wait, until I was a nanny and was introduced to the wonderful world of Dimetapp Elixir -- but when I married T, I found that any time he was stuffy he'd use VapoRub. I still don't like to use it myself, but it works wonders for the kids so anytime we all start getting sick, I smell like it, from spreading it on their sweet little narrow chests. Sometimes as I'm applying it I think about the change that ten more short years will make to those knobby little kid chests, and I just want to grab my kids and take them someplace where they will stay young until I'm tired of it and can let them proceed with growing up.
Henry (the cat, remember?) is sleeping on the chair near me. He wakes up and sneezes periodically, and it startles me. I am such a worrywart about pets (kids' illnesses, I am familiar with; animals are a whole different world) that I have to work hard to stem the fear that he's going to get sick and die. Because he sneezes.
I was tucking LT into bed tonight and I put an extra blanket on him; it was the Toy Story one he got for I think his second birthday. One side features Buzz and the other Woody. When I put it on him I remembered that I used to ask him, as I made his bed each day, whether he wanted Buzz or Woody showing. He would almost always say Buzz, but occasionally would relent and choose Woody because he knew that Woody was my favorite. I reminded him about it, and we laughed. I had completely forgotten about that little ritual until tonight. It makes me wonder how many other things I've forgotten. While I was clearing out our dresser so that I could move it to paint our room (I AM DONE PAINTING), I came across a little note from myself to T from the first year of our marriage and it contained an inside joke of which I have absolutely no recollection. There was a time when I thought that could never happen. That's thirty for you, I guess. :)
Since the other snippets have skittered away, apparently never to return, I present:
11:05 PM At Rachel's House
A Photo Essay
Henry, asleep on C's coat. (now he is coughing a little bit too. Must not panic.)
Mary, in her favorite sleeping position (although she does often get more contorted than this).
DO YOU SEE THE EMPTINESS? I walk into this room and the shock is, well, shocking. It's unrecognizable. Laundry has been my let's-return-to-sanity-now-shall-we occupation this week. I am not sure HOW sane it is to obsess about getting to the bottoms of every single one of our hampers, to the tune of about 20 (small, because our new-to-us washer and dryer were apparently made for single people, or something) loads of laundry washed, dried, folded, and put away, over the course of three days, but oh well. At least I made it all the way through "Pride and Prejudice" while I did the folding.
Me. Man, I look tired. And also, more like my dad every time I see myself. Dad, in turn, looks remarkably like a Caucasian version of Bill Cosby (which is not, you understand, a bad thing for HIM, being male, but oh goody, just think what's in store for me in about 20 more years).
In between loads of laundry this afternoon, since P&P had long since been finished, and, well, because I am the kind of person who likes this sort of thing, I rearranged my living room. The atrocious couch used to be on the left, and the computer and ugly loveseat on the right, with the computer nearer the camera. I also switched positions of the stereo cabinet and TV. The reason for this (other than just my love of change) was so that I could wire the computer sound through the stereo. Which I did ALL BY MYSELF, and I also fixed it so that the DVD player's sound can go through the TV or the stereo or both, instead of just the stereo as was previously the case. This is all thanks to Dawn and her Go Girl Power inspiration, dating from early in our diaryland acquaintance when we were both so new at it that we were using the stock templates. Or I may have been in the fuzzy duckling stage by then; I don't remember.
Notice the little container of VapoRub sitting on top of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Now please avert your eyes from the rest of the clutter, especially the one basket of laundry which I swear I am folding as soon as I post this, I SWEAR, and also my shoe, which is sticking out from the edge of the coffee table, even though I am always scolding the kids for leaving their shoes in the living room. Because I am the world's best mom, that's why.
