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Tuesday, March 08, 2005
drama queen
Today the kids and I went for a walk with my mom. I wore capris. Warm weather is nice, but I already miss winter. Come back! Before we know it it will all be about harsh hot sun directly overhead. Nooo.
We had to stop by the grocery store, where they just installed a 25c pony ride. C wanted to ride it, but I didn't have any pocket change, so she was disappointed and had to just hug it instead. We walked back to the car (thanks to the enormous hill going up to our house, we don't usually walk into town when we go for walks; we drive down the hill and park. Yeah, we're sissies.) and as we drove up the hill, C said, in a voice dripping with wistful, nostalgic longing:
"I will never forget that horse."
C, the world's foremost five-year-old teenaged drama queen.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
YAY
pictures pictures pictures:
oh yay. Now I'll go read the manual for the next TEN HOURS. Holy cow the thing is huge.
Monday, February 28, 2005
our weekend in pictures
Well, it's 3 a.m. and I'm at the computer. I have a good reason to (still) be up -- honest I do! T was called into work at 11 p.m. because, it turns out, a power outage caused some problems with radio transmission thingamabobs, and since he works in telecommunications, radio transmission thingamabobs are his job. (You can see by my extensive use of technical terminology that his knowledge has rubbed off on me a really whole lot, can't you.) He just called and said he's heading home, so he should be here within an hour or so. I just hope he doesn't have to turn around and go back in at 6AM like usual.
We had a really nice weekend up until about four hours ago. ;-) Yesterday we went with my parents to pick oranges at their neighbor's house. She is an elderly woman whose ranch, including the orange orchard, has been in her family for a hundred years (literally, this year). She can't pick the oranges herself anymore, so it's become tradition for our extended family (and a few others we drag along each year) to go do it for her when the oranges are ripe. Here are a few of the last pictures I'll be taking with my dinosaur of a digital camera before my wonderful anniversary present arrives this week:
This picture shows not only a very good reason why I need a new digital camera, but also the view from the top of the orange tree I was picking. It's harder to stand fifteen feet up a ladder and take a picture than you might think. :)
The person who finds the smallest orange each year "wins". We're not sure exactly what the person wins -- bragging rights? The first turn in the lunch buffet? (mmm, fried chicken this year. It's a good deal for all concerned -- the neighbor gets her orange crop in and we all a lot of exercise, enough oranges to last us quite a while, and five extra pounds apiece thanks to the fantastic lunch she cooks up for us.)
Cows in the road. How often do you encounter that on the way to work?
Back at my parents' ranch, we spent some time splitting wood, because we were nearly to the point of burning our furniture at home. Here are LT and C helping my dad drive the tractor into the shed to get the splitter.
We recently made a very important discovery at my parents'. Namely that straw on a steep slope is just as good as snow for tobogganing. Visits to Grandpa's will never be the same again.
C tied her shoes by herself for the first time after dinner on Saturday. That screeching sound you heard at about 6:00 Pacific time was my daughter running around to everyone in the house (and that was a lot of people) shrieking about her accomplishment.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
new contacts. And that's just the beginning of this long ol' rambly snippety entry
I am wearing contact lenses for the first time today. It is a little freaky, but not as freaky as many people think it would be. The main thing is that the darn things don't work as well as my new glasses do. Things look just a leeeetle bit blurry. So it's just as well that I hadn't planned to spend $240 four times a year to wear contacts full-time, eh? But they'll be good enough to wear for, say, chorus concerts or fancy dates, which are pretty much the only times I ever dress up.
****************
Also, tonight we framed a Jack Vettriano print we've had rolled up in our closet for SIX YEARS. Because we are all efficient like that. Actually it's because we finally figured a little while ago that it probably didn't make much sense to spend $200 for custom framing for a print that cost $35 in 1999 dollars. It's called "The Singing Butler" and it is the only piece of art with which we have ever both fallen in love at first sight.
It now hangs above our FANTASTIC NEW COUCH. Because finally we have a couch worthy of having something hung over it.
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Last night I was telling LT about a restaurant that used to be in town called The Sugar Pine. It was just a little diner but I loved it and still miss it often. I told LT that for $6.31 including tax but not tip you could get a big basket of just-right crispy fries and two enormous chocolate milkshakes, served in a glass with the rest of the shake making frost on the outside of the metal canister in which it had been mixed, the best milkshakes ever made. LT protested that they couldn't be better than my milkshakes, and I told him that indeed they are way better than any milkshake I could ever make, and he said, in a very serious voice, AND I QUOTE, "Well, then they would have to be made by Jesus."
THAT'S MY BOY. Who got a chocolate milkshake when we got home.
******************
Also, one fun thing about five-year-olds -- or mine anyway -- is that they really believe it when you tell them that the white screen when there's no slide in the projector is a picture of a polar bear standing by an igloo in the snow. And they assure you that they can see it, see, there's the head.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
I AM SOREYE
This morning we had a minor computer disaster. I was elbow-deep in the fishtank, which needed a really thorough cleaning, when a nervous LT came and told me that he'd done something to the computer. We have a screen saver which shows a slideshow of pictures to the accompaniment of a playlist of sound files, and he knew that "F-something" would make it advance through the pictures, and there was one he really wanted to see. So he pushed all the function buttons from F1 to F12, without having hit F-Lock first. So basically, he told the computer: Help, Undo, Redo, New, Open, Close, Reply, Forward, Send, Spell, Save, and Print, and somewhere along the line the whole system froze up so badly that I had to shut the thing off without shutting down for only the second time since we got this computer a year and a half ago. And then when it restarted the email didn't work. He was distraught and apologized repeatedly, profusely, and with tears, which of course made me feel protective of him, rather than angry -- mustn't let him catch on to how that works. And his sister (who was somehow complicit in the whole thing but I didn't quite catch how) wrote me the following letter of apology:
that's a picture of herself crying. and give her a break on the spelling; she's 5.
Who could be angry after that? I ask you.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
as normal as I ever am
So I'm doing a lot better than I was on Monday. Basically, except for a lingering tendency to get all choked up over songs that would ordinarily have no effect on me (I can see "With or Without You" -- but "Fields of Gold"?!), I am normal and fine. Well, as normal and fine as I ever am.
What I am as well, however, is again extremely pissed off at T's boss. So much that it's not satisfying to look at other job listings, like I usually do to let off steam when T's job satisfaction levels hit a low point thanks to that loser, because I would want to actually send in his resumé, which would possibly involve being willing to move out of California, which is one of those things that's great in theory but scary as hell when you actually look at it, up close, personal, and seriously. Not because I wouldn't be unbelievably glad to get out of the politics and price-craziness of the left coast, but because:
- I love everything physical about California. I need relative proximity to mountains and ocean simultaneously. And frankly that's kind of hard to come by in places that aren't expensive and therefore populated by a lot of, well, people whose voting decisions make me want to scream out loud.
- Also, my parents, T's parents, my brother and SIL and nephews, T's friends (my local "friends", except for the aforementioned SIL and parents, could pretty much take me or leave me; we're not all that close) -- all are here within half an hour's drive. And that's a lot to throw away -- especially since my dad's health is poor, and that makes it even more important to us to be near him. It would seem scungy (funny, I have never tried to spell that particular junior-high word before) to move out of state just for our own selfish reasons and leave all that behind.
All this to say, this is why I'm not having a usajobs.gov/realtor.com spree right now. As much as I would probably enjoy it.
Darnit, T keeps altering my Yahoo Launch settings so that they play No Doubt ALL THE TIME*. They are definitely a two-or-three-star group for me, not a four-star one. GET YOUR OWN LAUNCH. Now I'm going to have "Underneath it All" in my head for DAYS. I do not appreciate this.
*He is also prone to giving anything by Pink Floyd a "Never Play Again" rating. Stinker.
I was carrying C to bed a few minutes ago (she is ill with a nasty sinusy thing so we are home from Bible study), because she had fallen asleep in her chair, and we had the following conversation:
She [mumbling, eyes still closed]: "Mommy, where are you taking me?"
I: "To bed, dearest."
She: "But I'm not tired."
I: "No, you're just asleep."
She: "I'm not asleep. I'm just resting."
She was fully unconscious again three (3) seconds after I put her down in her bed.
edited to add:
HE GAVE SHANIA TWAIN FOUR STARS. I cannot believe he would do that to me. What's next, Faith "you pretend you listen to me because you like my music but that's not really your reason, now is it, big guy" Hill?? gag.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
drama queen, awana games, leftovers, and absolutely no title creativity
C's latest Drama Queen moment, on learning that she must take a bath even though she has a cut on her hand: "I wish my whole life was just a dream!" (emphasis in original).
The big event for today was Awana Games. This is an activity where Awana kids (Awana, for those of you joining us late, is a Bible club for kids, wherein they get together and memorize Bible verses and listen to stories and play these club-specific sort of outdoor games involving bean bags and bowling pins and a few other oddments) from various churches get together and play all their games against each other. There's also, for the middle/older-elementary kids, of which LT is one, a "quizzing" segment where the kids sit there looking all serious and use little paddles with letters to answer multiple-choice questions, and then there's a free-response round where they buzz in like on "Jeopardy!". Last year, LT was a total basket case for this entire day (and he wasn't even doing the quizzing); it was not terribly long after his Tourette's had first manifested itself, and he was in a particularly anxious, crowd-phobic period, and the gym full of stomping, yelling people and all the strangeness and the fact that his awful, bad mother had left him with his aunt and a group of near-strangers because she had to run to the bathroom when we first arrived sent him into a ticcing, melting-down tailspin. He came out of it a bit when T told him a joke about Luke Skywalker wetting himself when he had to fight Darth Vader, and by the end of the event he was doing relatively OK, although he swore he never wanted to do anything in a high-school gym again. That was last year, though; this year he had a fine time, and didn't even really tic more than normal, which is a good sign for his stress level. And he even placed second with his team in both quizzing and games. Meanwhile C spent the day distracting her cousins, who are in Sparkies (that's the Awana division for K-2) with her, and then asking EVERY THIRTY FREAKING SECONDS if LT was almost done, once her part was over. While I ate half a bag of pretzels (I accidentally bought unsalted ones so nobody else wanted them) and wished I'd brought the seat cushion I made in Girl Scouts in the fourth grade. I'd forgotten how hard seats are in school gyms.
Do you know what I did today? I finally threw out the Christmas leftovers. Not that we'd been EATING them since about New Year's Eve. I just hadn't gotten around to cleaning out the fridge yet. Now you will never ever come over to my house. Sorry.
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
another late-night ramble, with pictures!
It's past midnight and I'm comfortably sleepy, but the fire in the living room is so nice that I am sitting here for a while just so that its glowy warmth won't go to waste. Also, I'm hoping that I can relax the sewing-machine-induced tension out of my shoulders, and furthermore, I just finished off my can of diet vanilla Coke (just for a change of pace, that's why), and I know that if I were to go to bed now, then just as soon as I was about to drift off to sleep, I would inevitably have to get up and go to the bathroom anyway.
I am making a purple dress for C. Purple is her favorite color and it is just right for her coloring. It's just a simple, plain cotton dress, with a little pinafore over it. Of course, there's a complication, in that it's supposed to be a Christmas gift and I started it, um, today. And just for kicks, I've allowed the situation to become complicated further by putting off for MONTHS starting to sew LT's bathrobe. Which should be really, really simple to make. I hope. Since I also decided to make it a Christmas present. And now you see, in a roundabout way, why every report card I got from fourth grade on up had "Not working to potential" printed on it somewhere. It's because I am a consummate professional when it comes to procrastinating.
Did I mention the scarf I'm crocheting for C, also for Christmas? Hey, at least I have the hat done that goes with it. And that one, I can work on while she's present, because she thinks it's for her aunt. (I would say that that was clever except that I did start it out as a project for my SIL, but changed mid-stream -- or mid-hat as the case may be -- when I realized that for an obscenely small amount of money, an adult can go buy a hat that is precisely what s/he wants, and probably more fashionable than a crocheted one in bright colors. C, on the other hand, will love the one I'm making. Aren't kids grand. ;-)
And we're having Christmas dinner here, and I have pies and cookies to bake and all sorts of fun things, and the Christmas dinner crowd keeps on growing and now it looks like it's up to 21 and where the heck we're going to put 21 people I have no idea. Yet I am remarkably calm. I think I am in denial.
And now, before I ramble on even further and this entry degenerates into complete incomprehensibility: some pictures.
Here's C wearing the green dress I made for her last spring, probably for the last time, as she's nearly outgrown it. This is one of those pictures where her resemblance to me is startling, in my opinion, but it's also bewildering because she is (and I am not fishing for compliments here) so much prettier than I am. I mean, just as an example, look at her skin. Oh, what I would do to have skin like that. Except that I wouldn't go back to being five again -- no, not even for that beautiful pale English-looking clear complexion -- which, honestly, I never had anyway. I was browner than that.
I'm putting this up just because he looks so handsome in it. And honestly because his sister seems to dominate the story-and-anecdote portion of my journal, and I didn't want you all to think I loved her more than this gorgeous boy who made me a mother. ;-)
This is a pretty little spot near where T works. The kids and I were up there taking a walk today while we waited for him to get off work, and I'd brought my camera, to try and capture some pictures of the most slanted light of the year. Because you know how I am about slanting light. I did not succeed overmuch -- I really, REALLY want a nice new digital camera someday, one that's capable of at least zooming -- but I did like this picture.
And now I think my shoulders are sufficiently relaxed, and I can go, um, take care of business and get into my nice warm bed. My eyes are drifting closed just as I sit here thinking about it. mmm.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
another C funny
OK, since I have had two people not roll their eyes and shoot at me for yesterday's entry (which is long and stuff, you should go read it, if you want to), I will share another C story. This one is ongoing and she just added to it.
On Sunday we went to dinner at my in-laws'. We watched "The Wizard of Oz" -- a first for the kids. In the two days since C has been slowly digesting this film in her mind and asking me series of questions. One question theme has been the following:
(yesterday morning)
C: Mommy, in that movie yesterday, with the suit of armor [she means the tin woodman] and the scarecrow and the girl with the dog and the red shoes and the green witch -- what's it called again?
I: "The Wizard of Oz."
C: Yes, "The Wizard of Oz." In "The Wizard of Oz", why, when they're going through the woods, do they say [perfect dramatic imitation] "Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my!"?
I: Because they were afraid of lions and tigers and bears.
[pause]
C: Oh, that's kind of silly. Because what if the lions and tigers and bears thought they were calling them, and they came?
I: [turn back, cover mouth, try to contain shaking shoulders]
(and then just now, this morning)
C: Mommy, in the movie we watched at Grandpa T's with the scarecrow and the girl with red shoes and the suit of armor... what's it called again?
I: "The Wizard of Oz."
C: Yes, "The Wizard of Oz." Why, when they were saying [again with the mimicry], "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" did they not say, "Lions and tigers and bears and wolves, oh my!"?
I: Well, I guess they weren't afraid of wolves, just of lions and tigers and bears. They didn't think about wolves.
[pause]
C: Well, then they all don't have brains!
(ba-da CHING. Except that the funniest part is that she is utterly serious.)
late-night ramble, ack
"Are you ready for Christmas?"
You can't get away from that question in the month of December. It's a conversation starter -- it takes the place of talk about the weather, and just as any pregnant woman is seen as fair game for such questions as "when are you due?" and "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?", it's simply a given that any time you encounter anyone during the first three and a half weeks of December, from the post office clerk up to your close friends, the conversation is likely to open with "Are you ready for Christmas?" And, God help me, I answer it every time with, "Yes, almost done with the shopping." It just comes flying out of my mouth. I should come up with something witty, or just smile, or maybe I should be super-spiritual and expound on how we're preparing spiritually for this celebration of the incarnation of Christ. But I don't, I take the easy way out and give the expected response about (gack) shopping. I was never brave about it when I was pregnant, either. I always wanted to come up with smartass comments: "[sigh] No, I'm not pregnant. I guess I really need to lose this weight." Or "The next person who asks me that will feel the significant force of my wrath. Beware." I never even made the t-shirt I always joked about, with all the pertinent information, so as to avoid having to answer the same-three-questions over and over and over. It's easy to shrug philosophically now, and figure that people don't mean to be annoying; they just like to know what to SAY to a person, and dang, an obvious pregnancy makes it really simple. It was not so easy then, as any woman in late pregnancy will attest. It's the same trap with the Christmas shopping line, except that I do feel a faint sense of spiritual betrayal when I cave in, because after all, aren't I contributing to the crass commercialization of this holiday when I take the easy way out? Ah well.
As an aside, we are doing something nice this year, and we did it last year too. We made up a set of ornaments last year, each with a date (1 through 25) and a Bible verse reference having to do with the birth of Jesus or the reason for it, written on it in gold paint pen. Each night LT looks up the verse and reads it, and the kids take turns hanging the ornaments on the tree. It does help to focus us, at least once a day, on what this is all about. It's not just shopping, or cooking, or even family and togetherness and generosity. And it's certainly not just about Mommy spending three hours on the roof, risking life and limb and getting sore muscles on Sunday afternoon putting up Christmas lights which now look really cool, although she's mighty proud of that (go girl power!).
******Possibly Boring/Mildly Bragging Homeschooling Blurb Follows********
Speaking of LT and "proud of that" -- he surprised the living daylights out of us the other day. He was quizzing C on math problems, asking her things like 5+3 and 4+4, things that she has the barest grasp on (because, hey, she's not even halfway through kindergarten!). So I thought I'd teach LT a little bit of humility and even the scales a bit, and I presented him with a scrap of paper with "3x=6" on it, and asked him, "What's x?" I thought he'd be stumped. He didn't even THINK about it, just said, "Two." So I gave him some harder ones, and he got them all. This is, you have to understand, an eight-year-old boy who "hates math", who adds with his fingers, who probably wouldn't know how to calculate "fifteen divided by three" if you just presented it to him in those terms. So his father and I are giving really basic algebra problems, like 5x+4=44 or 8x-6=50, and he's nailing them all. This is both a homeschooler's dream, and a homeschooler's nightmare (well, nightmare is too strong a word. It gives me a thrilling, excited, challenged feeling like a roller coaster, not a horrified, ominous feeling like a bad dream), because hello, now the rubber actually meets the road and I have to do what I've always said is so great about homeschooling: work up a customized solution. For a person whose grasp of concepts is advanced, but whose practical working-out of grade-level things is average. Fun and rewarding, and definitely possible, but challenging too. He's shown signs of being able to grasp concepts that he couldn't explain since he was a very little boy -- things like knowing how many animals would be in each group of you divided 25 into 5 pens when he was in kindergarten. But it took much time and effort to get the multiplication tables into his head, and he still doesn't have them "memorized to automaticity" -- heck, he doesn't even have addition facts to that point yet. I am thinking he's strong on concepts and not so strong on memorization -- which, hey, if he has to be weak in one area and strong in the other, that's the way I'd want it to go. I asked him today how his brain solved those problems so fast -- what did he think about to get the answer? It took him a while to be able to slow it down enough to tell me, and he says that he knows that the 5x has to be 40, so the x has to be 8. He says that he does not think about subtracting the 4 from both sides, which is of course the "proper" way to solve the problem, and the way he'll have to learn when he's older in order to be able to move on to more complicated equations.
While I'm on the subject of school, I should put in that C is also doing really well. She finished her kindergarten math book a couple of weeks ago, so I'm having her go through the homework workbook that goes along with it, as a review, and then I'll move her on to the next grade's book. She is the opposite of her brother in learning styles -- she has a very good visual memory, and when she's read something, it stays in her head if she wants it to. She is also at the age where she is always coming up with little sayings that sound very funny to her parents, but which bore the pants off people not related to her, so I won't torture you with expectant punch lines here.
OK, OK, one story, I can't resist. But only one, I promise. We were watching footage online of elk damaging vehicles and chasing after people in Yellowstone National Park. The elk in one video would make his high-pitched yelling sound just before charging at cars driven by people who had stopped to look at him. C's cheerful, matter-of-fact comment about elk was: "Well, they make cute sounds. Buuuut, they're evil." I cannot possibly duplicate her expressiveness in type. See, I told you. I don't expect you to gush so don't feel guilty if you don't.
Good Lord I should never update this thing after midnight. I get so stupid. I'll probably delete this in the morning.
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