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Wednesday, August 31, 2005

traumatized

I just had a moment of panic when I realized that due to a recent growth spurt, we had no cowboy boots for LT to wear to our county fair, which starts the day after tomorrow. For nine years, since he was too little to walk, LT has worn cowboy boots to the fair, like a proper country boy descended from a long line of Okies and the like. LT quickly put my panic to rest, though, or at any rate caused it to veer off in another direction, when he told me that he didn't want any. The same little boy who used to run to his room and scramble into his size 3T overalls and little tiny boots whenever Grandpa came over! The one who had Wranglers so small that they must have taken less than half a yard of indigo denim to construct, and the pocket tag was almost as big as the whole pocket! Doesn't want cowboy boots for the fair!

Deep breath. It's OK. I'm glad he's old enough to make his own decisions about what he likes and doesn't like. I guess.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

cardboard sign says "yard sale"

We spent the afternoon preparing for tomorrow, when I hope that many obliging people will come to my house and pay staggeringly small amounts of money to haul away things I no longer have space to store. Oh please. Today was such a better day than yesterday, which ended up being one of the few days when I really really WANT a break from my kids. Or, in this case, my kid, but I won't tell you which five-year-old I'm talking about. I had an "I am the worst mother ever" headache (that is to say, a headache brought on by high levels of stress compounded by an excess of yelling), and it took "Ocean's 11" on the DVD player, some sugar-free ice cream, and a drawn-out relaxing discussion in the dark with my husband to make it go away. Then this morning I had him bring C in for a snuggle before he left for work, and by the time we got up I felt much better in every way.

And then of course today was full of that feeling of satisfaction you get when you finish a task. Drat it, why can't I get that same feeling without all the work? How manifestly unfair.

I'll leave you with a short list of seminars which my child or children are fully qualified to teach:

• Bathtime as Recreation
  
• How To Get Completely Sidetracked Without Even Trying
  
• Mud: Its Manufacture and Use
  
• Heart-Melting 101
  
• The Healing Magic of Malapropisms (with labs: Backward Letters and Cute Misspellings)
  
• Construction Workshop: Tall Piles of Stuff You Don't Want To Put Away
  
• Nutrition 17A: How to Convince Grandpa that Pop-Tarts and Sugared Cereal are Good for You
  

Hurry and book now; the conference season is just around the corner.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

this is the same child...

...as is pictured in this entry. Really it is.

*Edited: Forgot to mention, she's not grimacing in pain, she's laughing maniacally. She and her brother had been having a waterfight (hence the shield and the water pistol) and she'd started playing in the mud. She swears she wasn't eating it, and I WANT to believe her...)

Monday, July 11, 2005

so much like somebody I know...

Ah, a girl after my own heart. How often did I get dragged along as a child to rather uninteresting (or at least less interesting than a new Nancy Drew book) adult activities, and find some way to bury myself in a story?

Not that, um, I do that now. At all. Nope, way too grown up to take a book with me everywhere just in case I get to sneak in a few minutes' worth of reading at some point. Me?

P.S. The dress was a little much for a baby shower, but she wanted to wear it, and she's only going to outgrow it (very soon) anyway. And no, I didn't make that one, but I wish I had, because I swear every time I take her somewhere in it someone assumes I did.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

C's book

Yesterday C wrote a tie-in book for Star Wars Episode 3. Here it is. I think she has a future in this, no? Warning: It gives away the end.

Front Cover

"STAR WARSE EPASOTD THREE RAVANG [revenge] OF THE SITH
"BY [C] AGE 5"




"ANAKIN SKYWAKER HAS MARED [married] PADMAY OMADOLA AND SHE GAVE BERTH TO TWINS NAMD LUKE AND LAYA AND ANAKIN SKYWAKER HAS TERND INTO DARTH VADER"




"AND DARTH VADER BECAM VAREE BAD
"AND PADMAY DID [died]"




"AND DARTH VADER LIVID [lived]"

Sunday, May 29, 2005

ouch

I would like to point out that this sticker/seed looks pretty ordinary and small:

UNTIL IT IS STUCK BETWEEN YOUR CHILD'S EYELID AND EYEBALL.

(he's fine, but I apologized to him all evening for the way I had to wrestle him to the ground and have his dad hold his panic-waving arms while his grandpa held his panic-thrashing head and I got the thing out)

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

things about today

• T was off work yesterday because his back was (is) out. This means that I keep forgetting that it's Tuesday -- which is not only the day I pay bills, but also, in this particular instance, my mother's birthday; good thing that I remembered long enough to at least have C call her at work.
• I really feel like going for a walk, except
• it is so hot out that the cooler is barely keeping up at 9:00 in the morning. Way to go with the abrupt change of seasons, there, God. I'm sure you have a fantastic reason for it. We'll adjust. Thanks.
• My feet still hurt from wearing high heels (yes, the cute black-and-white ones) at a chorus concert last night. This is the closest I ever get to feeling the effects of hard partying in the morning. Whew, yeah, that was a wild one.
• C, who says she is "Anakin's little sister", is taking apart the works from her light-up-vibrating-head-song-playing duck. Or actually, it's my duck. She has itty bitty screws all over the couch and she is really intent on fixing the head-vibration function. I'm kind of hoping she messes the whole thing up, since I got tired of the "squeeze here for a computer-chip rendering of a familiar song" stuffed-animal gimmick about three seconds after it was invented. Chances are, however, that she'll actually fix it. Drat.
• We are thinking about renting out the apartment we use for school and guests (but not the garage underneath it). Eek! This is because we are also thinking about buying this house, and that would enable us to do it. Double Eek! No, wait, triple Eek!
• I am a bad, bad girl, because I'm on the computer without having done my Bible reading first. Someone smack me.
• OK, while you're at it, smack me for all the other days I've done that too. Which is, these days, pretty much every day. Sigh.
• I am shuddering in disgust already at the google hits I'm going to get from having "smack me" and "high-heeled" in the same paragraph. GO AWAY SCARY GOOGLERS. NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

Saturday, May 07, 2005

ssshhh...

...be very quiet.

Right now there are people in my kitchen washing my dishes. And I am not sick or otherwise incapacitated.

yippee!

Also, the kids simply could not wait until tomorrow to give me the following (ooh! a list!):

• a new iced tea jug, because mine cracked
  
• two new pie/pizza spatulas, because both of mine were broken (not by me) in the space of about a week, a month or two ago
  
• chip clips with magnets, so they can always be stuck to the side of the fridge, because when I want a chip clip I can never find one, even though I am falling over them when I don't want them
  
  (do they know me or what?)
  
  
• two bookmarks, because I collect bookmarks
  AND
  
• A $25 gift certificate to Barnes and Noble.
  

Apparently this list represents a large percentage of their recycling haul from earlier this week. I am absolutely convinced that I have the world's most amazing children. And of course I'm not biased at all.

Happy Mothers' Day to all my friends who are moms... and to those who aren't yet too. (((hugs)))

Monday, May 02, 2005

out of practice II

Well, here's how you get me to shut up, I guess. Just get me my own domain and I completely run out of things to say for days on end.

Real life started again today. No sitting in the recliner crocheting for hours. No waking up in the morning and stretching lazily and going back to sleep with my leg stretched over T's. No, T went back to work, and the kids and I had a regular day filled with school and errands and housework and all that. I even cooked dinner, which I hadn't done since April 12th, which has to be some kind of record, right? Laundry, messes, getting the soap out of C's eyes in the bath, getting down the breakfast cereal, shopping for things we're out of -- all these things are once more my responsibility. I wouldn't mind, in fact it would be nice to be getting back into our routine, if it weren't for the fact that we had become accustomed to the luxury of having T home all the time and now he's not, and we just plain MISSED him today. It was almost as bad as the day he had to go back to work after two and a half months off for a broken ankle in the winter of 2002/2003. I'm inclined to make a joke about that being pitiful, but I really don't think it's pitiful, if I didn't like having him around I wouldn't have married him, right?

Also, I have to seriously start watching what I eat again. I gained FIVE POUNDS in the past three weeks, not only because I was sitting around not getting much exercise, but also because I ate like a trencherman the whole time. I think I felt like I had to make up for the three days of either liquid diet or no food at all. And people kept bringing us these fantastic meals, and the meals were so HEARTY and the quantities were so large, and T wanted to make me happy so he would bring me heaping bowls of ice cream with brownies, and anytime I was hungry I would just snack. So if you ever should NEED to gain five pounds in three weeks, (I will try hard not to hate your skinny self and) there's the method right there for you.

Good things about today:

• School. The kids were cooperative and we all really enjoyed ourselves. LT gets to basically skip the chapters in his math book that deal with the multiplication tables, since he learned those last year, so now he's doing geometry and measurement, which C is learning along with him as well as doing two-digit addition. They both have books they're really into right now -- LT is tearing it up in his Hardy Boys series (well, tearing it up for a nine-year-old, at least), and C has one of those old-fashioned school reading textbooks, maybe from the 40's, which she borrowed from my parents yesterday, and she's halfway through it. Every time I hear her read out loud she surprises me with how FAST she's getting better and better at it.
  
• The library. I hadn't been there in weeks. I didn't find any books I wanted (when I'm reading Austen, nothing else has any appeal) but I found a few movies. And it was good to just BE there.
  
• LT discussing Austen adaptations with the librarian.
  
• The rebate from the purchase of The Nikon finally arrived, just in time to pay (pause to push down the wave of white-hot self-loathing trying to overtake me) the fine from my traffic ticket.
  
• I went back to the community chorus and I really enjoyed myself.

Oh, man, I am just SO un-funny tonight. You know the scene in The Phantom Tollbooth when Milo winds up in the Doldrums? And the doldrums kind of slink around and talk slower and slower until Milo is lulled into a state of exhausted apathy? I am that tired.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

out of practice

I've had a lot of little thoughts buzzing around in my head, but I'm having a hard time writing about them. So here are a few little tidbits, none of which is worthy of anywhere near an entire journal entry on its own.

• I'm feeling SO MUCH BETTER. Seriously, yesterday was, like, the turnaround day for me. I was able to take not one but TWO (very short) walks yesterday; I am not up to my normal levels of activity yet, but I'm acting a lot less like an invalid and I'm not suffering for it like I did even on Monday when I decided to just live normally. I'm glad T has stayed home, because I am not supposed to so much as lift a gallon of milk, and he's handy for keeping me from OVER-doing it (plus, hey, we've blown our entire vacation budget for the summer on this surgery, so T being at home for these three weeks is pretty much all we're going to get; might as well enjoy it, right?). But he doesn't have to be constantly at my beck and call now, which I think is probably a good thing. And that's hopefully the last time I'll write ANYTHING in this journal about this whole recuperation thing -- I know everyone must be bored with it by now.
  
  
• LT has decided to spend all of his money (that's $110, $50 of which he just got for his birthday) on a Father's Day present for T. He's actually been planning this for quite some time. I would say "there's not a selfish bone in his body" but that's not QUITE true. But there are certainly fewer selfish bones than there were in my body when I was nine.
  
  
• Also about LT: doesn't this look... vaguely disturbing? Or at least decidedly uncomfortable? He was just lying like that, all ho-hum, writing in his journal during school this morning. (I remember being a kid and sitting on my bottom with my knees splayed out to the side like an M and hearing similar comments from adults about that. I guess kids are just made of rubber.)
  

• I have a whole post about Hosea 4 written but I set it aside until I can read it with some objectivity because right now I think it seems really scattered and nearly pointless.
  
  
• I haven't done nearly as much reading this month as I had thought I would. I've only read 4 books. I can't even remember finishing anything before I went in for surgery. And everything I've been reading has been rereads, except for one book which I'm not sure I'm going to finish called Theodora's Diary. It's supposed to be a kind of Christian Bridget Jones. Except that it relies a wee bit too heavily on the kind of bland humor that gets passed around via email -- you know, the whole funny-mistakes-in-church-bulletins stuff -- and on caricatures of various Christian fringe-ish sorts of groups. I think the author (and publisher) figured she had a captive audience, consisting of all these Christian women whose consciences won't let them really get into the more vulgar humor on the market today -- and hey, she's British, so that's a plus, right? All I can say about this book is: YAWN. The four books I've finished are two Austens (S&S and P&P; I'm on MP now) and two L.M. Montgomerys (Anne of the Island and Anne of Avonlea. Neither of those last two is doing anything for me this time around either, which is sad. Must be something wrong with me.)
  

• Um, I think that's finally all. Cripes, SHUT UP, Rachel.

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