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Thursday, August 28, 2003

What They Never Tell You

C has just made a picture of a ducky for me. She is 3 which means that while the picture is adorable, I certainly needed her to tell me it was a ducky, know what I mean? Of course once she's named it I can see its legs and feet and body and head and bill. Nobody told me being a mom would be this much fun. I mean, I knew it would be nice having a baby, and I knew it would be nice having little children who grew up into big people, but all the little details like ducky pictures and stuck-on kisses and favorite storybooks requested over and over -- they more than make up for all the little stresses.


As you can tell I am back to my chipper self. Whether this has anything to do with the fact that I am ANOTHER POUND DOWN (woo hoo!), I leave to you to decide. I really don't think it is. I think it is a relief from all these agitating hormones that have been bouncing around inside me for a week, making me feel easily stressed and frustrated and bored and sleepy and mindless.



I am supposed to be going to the valley and going shopping, but I put that off until tomorrow. I did get lesson plans worked up for next week, as well as a lot of long-range school year plans done. However, I did not clean the school room. You see, all summer it's been the play room, and right now LT has the floor covered in army men, all set up and waiting for T to have time to have a battle with him. This weekend is going to be crazy-busy, but I think I can pencil in about three hours on Sunday evening to clean that room -- so they'd better have the battle done by then.



Another aspect of motherhood nobody tells you about, right? Scheduling your housekeeping around your son's militaristic tendencies (gee, wonder where he got THOSE).


I spent most of this morning chauffeuring around my neighbors. They are two little old ladies who were finally convinced by their chiropractor (funny how people who see chiropractors with regularity frequently come to see them as God-figures who are all-knowing, isn't it?) to give up driving. This is a good thing since neither of them sees or hears very well. They have lived together for years; they used to run a children's Christian camp in the mountains near here but when they retired from that and sold it, they bought the house next to ours to spend their quieter years. One is very deaf but moves around OK; the other hears slightly better but takes literally ten minutes to walk thirty yards. Or rather, to shuffle thirty yards. So understandably, taking them anywhere is an exercise in patience, as well as an adventure. Small errands turn into two- or three-hour affairs. It's VERY good for the kids to be around them; they enjoy each other, and the kids are learning patience and respect for a generation that will soon be gone. I love old people; I love talking with them. They have seen so much. I mean, I feel all mature when I meet a college student whom I knew as a newborn; these ladies were already old before I was born. They lived through times I've only read about in historical articles and school history texts. So it is definitely worth the time and effort of helping them, just to listen to them talk.


Another website I've been meaning to post about in here is BookCrossing so I'm doing it before I forget. It's a really neat concept, and the website does a better job of explaining it than I can, but basically, you "release" books in public places and then the person who finds them will ideally go online (thanks to a bookmark or bookplate or whatever that you leave in the book, with instructions), post their thoughts about the book, and then "release" it again somewhere else. So far, I have released three books which were never posted about again. :(. But I shall keep trying.



I finished reading Silas Marner and now I'm buried in Pride and Prejudice again. I LOVE THIS BOOK. This means, according to some diehard Jane Austen fans (of which I actually consider myself one) that I am not as mature a fan as someone who has Emma or Persuasion or even maybe Mansfield Park for a favorite. Too darn bad, this is a wonderful story, delightfully told. Not that the others aren't. But I suppose they're deeper, while P&P is "just" romantic. Sigh. Perfectly romantic, if you ask me. [flutter flutter]

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Thursday, August 21, 2003

Dinner out etc.

We went out to dinner tonight at my favorite local restaurant. I was relatively well-behaved but not totally uptight either. (in other words, I ate a couple of zucchini stick appetizers which I'm sure threw me WAY over my calorie quota for the meal all by themselves, I got a salad but not the additional soup I usually get, I gave my totally scrumptious roll (this place is famous for its rolls) to the kids, and I did what all the "weight loss tips" articles always suggest: I divided my dinner in half and brought half of it home for lunch tomorrow. So now I essentially get to have my favorite restaurant food two days in a row. :)

Poor LT. He and C had a late lunch; they ate around 2:30. He had two deep-fried burritos. Then he ate a snack consisting of probably six or eight quarter-round slices of watermelon about 4:00. Then we went to the restaurant at 6; right away he got a glass of rich chocolate milk with whipped cream on top, and he ate some of the zucchini appetizer and half my roll. Then his food came and he kind of dabbled with it, meanwhile drinking about a cup and a half of chocolate milk. Just as I was asking the waitress to package up my extra portion, he said his tummy hurt, asked me to pray for his tummy, then said, "Pray fast... I gotta...." We skipped praying and he ran into the men's room (thankfully we were right near it) with Daddy on his heels. Apparently everything from lunch onward made a reappearance, poor boy. There is something about my kids (and me) and chocolate milk. C has it BAD -- if she has chocolate milk or a chocolate shake or any sweet dairy drink (say from Starbucks) in the car, she WILL throw up. If she eats too much at a meal and then drinks chocolate milk, or vice versa, up it comes. Now me, I just get a bit of an upset tummy if I have too much; LT has thrown up once before (years ago, I think he was maybe 4) after eating a large meal and topping it off with chocolate milk. This was at Hometown Buffet, and he had fully overdone it on the all-you-can-eat macaroni and cheese. That time we were NOT next to the bathroom and we did NOT make it on time (we also did NOT go back to that particular location for a long time). For about a year he referred to HB not by its proper name but as "the restaurant where I frew up." Anyway. This was only the second time it caused any problem for him, but when I really thought about all he'd eaten in the space of about 4 hours (remember, the kid's only 7), I was not surprised. He was fine almost immediately, for which we are really glad. With C losing it yesterday morning, and then that tonight, I was beginning to think they had a virus or an intestinal infection or something.



I have learned today never to say that I've never gotten a copy of a rampant virus. My online friends are all abuzz about how many copies they were getting in ten minutes and I was rather smug. Well, my regular ISP has good virus protection, but I have an address for my sole web design client and at about five this evening the virus messages just started rolling in. I wasn't stupid enough to open any of them; I even turned off the preview pane just to be sure. But that address has probably received 20 or 30 copies of it in five hours. I am getting royally tired of it, to tell the truth.



Well, I am off to bed. T and the kids watched Star Wars Episode 1 this evening while I worked on my dad's birthday present (his birthday is today, the party is Saturday). I'm reading him a book on tape. Probably a flagrant copyright violation, but he likes to be read to and this way his darling daughter and delightful grandchildren are the voices he's hearing tell the story. :) (Well, grandCHILD; LT reads; C talks on the tapes but can't read yet). He gets a tape set for every birthday, Father's Day, and Christmas; so far I've done about six for him. Anyway. Thanks to reading for an hour and twenty minutes straight tonight, I have a nearly unquenchable thirst and my throat is scratchy. It's also surprisingly tiring doing all the voices. :) I have to be heading off early in the day tomorrow for the valley so I should get going before I fall asleep sitting up.

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Tuesday, August 19, 2003

I have earned a moment's repose...

Music: Loreena McKennitt, "The Lady of Shalott"

Mood: better than it was!

I have just finished catching up on dishes and sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor and now I have actually earned the right to sit here and type guilt-free. :) I made a pretty good dinner tonight, only 650 calories a plate: chicken breasts grilled on the barbecue with Pappy's and barbecue sauce, a caesar salad, and mashed potatoes with gravy (I cheated and used a gravy packet; with no drippings it's just so much nicer that way). The highest calorie contributor was the mashed potatoes. Even so, I ate 650 calories and I actually feel full. Like, I should have even stopped a few bites sooner. Is this what it's like for normal people? I had always thought I was the normal one, being basically an appetite on legs. I always thought people who ate small portions were either torturing themselves or putting on an act. But maybe there's hope for me to change my habits on a lifelong basis.

I was so darn crabby this afternoon. It was a combination of several factors: the literal pain in my neck, the lack of sleep last night, and my wonderfully bouncy exuberant children who really need to learn how to behave in the grocery store. They can be behaving totally normally in the car and then we go in the store and they're running and bouncing and hopping and yelling and picking each other up. Every time we go there I have to ride herd on them really hard. T says they do not do this with him. I think (and he agrees) that going to the store with Mommy is a bore, but going with Daddy is a treat because it's so rare. They haven't gotten spankings in quite a while, both being old enough to understand having privileges removed instead. But maybe a firm swat where it will do the most good would serve better than telling them, "you guys are going to be sorry when you get home and you want to do X"; perhaps home is just too far away for their hyperactive little brains to worry about.



No swimming tonight on account of my shoulder. I am trying to muster up the energy for a walk; I know I'd love it once I was doing it but I just can't bear the thought of it right now. I am enjoying being sedentary too darn much. Maybe if I get a good night's sleep tonight I'll go out first thing in the morning while T gets ready for work. Morning is even better than evening for walking. Besides, I did just burn 150 calories mopping. ;-) I think I'll settle for a nice game of computer Scrabble instead. By the way, if anyone has Scrabble 2.0 (that's the one they were giving away in cereal boxes for a while recently) and would like to help me figure out how to play a game together, I'm, er, game! :) Drop me a note and we'll set it up.

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