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Tuesday, January 16, 2007

I've been -- I've been tagged!

[cue heavenly chord]

Have you any idea how long it's been since I've done a meme in here? Ages and ages! In blog years, anyway.

OK, Kat tagged me for the following (thank you, Kat, for validating my existence. This is like my name in a KS post. Remember the THRILL of it?):

The Page 123 Meme
1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, look down to the 5th sentence.
3. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog.
4. Include the title and the author's name.
5. Tag 3 People.

OK. The book closest to me is one of C's American Girl library books on the arm of the couch, and those don't have a page 123, which is a good thing, because the next-closest book, sitting on the coffee table, is The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury of course, which I checked out of the library even though I think I own it and it's here somewhere, because I found out that my husband had never read it. How a person reaches the age of 37 without having read The Martian Chronicles is a bit of a mystery to me. There's something wrong here somehow, for that poor man to have slipped through the cracks in such a fashion.

So, page 123, sentences 5-7:

"Having chosen you for this serious task, I find my reasons deplorably obscure, Father, but your pamphlet on planetary sin did not go unread. You are a flexible man. And Mars is like that unclean closet we have neglected for milleniums."

Ooh. Heavy.

You know, I don't know if there are three people who read this who actually still use their blogs (Debi, Kristen, and Jenn, I AM LOOKING AT YOU. Not that I have much room to talk.) Michael, Kiwiria, and Valerie, if you see this, you're IT. :)

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things that Prove I Am The Grinch in Mom's Clothing

1. I never let my kids eat candy canes. (daughter with long hair + sticky candy specifically designed not to stay in mouth = way too many baths in one day.)

2. I had never listened to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra until yesterday.

3. I keep XM on the Classical Christmas station even though the rest of the family is tired of it. My car, my XM. You get your OWN car and your OWN XM, and we'll see if maybe I'll let you decide what to listen to on it then.

4. Fake Christmas tree. (This one has lasted us since 1995, which means we're down to $2.50 a year now. If we use it for all forty or fifty years of our marriage, it'll be way under a dollar a year. That's the goal.)

5. I hate all those stupid inflated yard decorations. I mock them out loud at Costco.

6. I mock Luciano Pavarotti and José Carrera singing Christmas music on XM too.

7. My kids have known from birth that Santa is just imaginary. They don't get presents from him either. (At least we tell them not to go around spilling the beans to your kids...)

8. I haven't wrapped anything yet.

9. The kids' presents (except the Big Ones, which are in the basement) are just sitting in a big green cinch-neck bag in my room. They're on their honor not to peek. If they want to ruin their own surprise, shrug. (My brother and I 'peeked' at our presents once when we were kids. It only took that one year to realize that most of the fun was the surprise. In our household we call that a 'self-punishing action'. Like when you're running in the house and you trip over the coffee table and careen into the wall. Not that my clone has ever done that.)

10. I just bought the first of my husband's Christmas presents yesterday*.

11. I never ever ever wear reindeer antlers. Although I used to wear a Santa hat occasionally, until it made it into the kids' costume cache and got wrecked.

12. I'm not-so-secretly hoping it starts raining just in time to cancel the caroling at Awana this evening**. Tramping around where there are no sidewalks or even good road shoulders, in the freezing cold, with thirty kids, half of whom forget to bring jackets, singing Christmas carols to which only the adults have ever learned the words, then coming back in and hyping everyone up on cocoa and cookies... ugh.

13. I have had a splitting sinus headache for two days and it's apparent that I must have let it suck away every inch of cheer in my body.

*He is very intimidating with his very specific lists.

**Really I love the idea of caroling and I used to try to get the community chorus to do it every year. Just not at Awana.

Monday, October 09, 2006

can you feel the love?

Jennifer (who gets the dubious honor of being the subject of two posts in a row) tagged me for a meme. I'm supposed to do some sort of word association with four words of her choosing. Fun times. :)

OK, here goes.

encumbered: Oh, great, already this word has done that thing where it becomes the weirdest possible collection of sounds and letters ever, know what I mean? And I'm going to have to type it again. Honestly, the first phrase to come to mind is "self-loathing". As in, I have gone through my life encumbered by self-loathing. Not today, though. I'm pretty chipper today. And, well, pretty much every day. My whole life.

lofty: What my ceilings are not. Neither are my ambitions. Or my plans. Wow.

exaggerate: When I was a kid I used to exaggerate regularly, like it was an addiction. I would tell a story and then embellish it. Frequently this meant that (because I was only a kid, and while I was book-smart, I was life-stupid, thank you Edewaa Foster for that completely apt description of me; bet you didn't know I'd still be using it twenty years down the road) at some point someone would look at me, all nuh uh, that is totally impossible, and I would be stuck choosing whether to stick it out or backtrack. By my teens I had learned that the exaggeration just plain wasn't worth it. Although I still have a few of these stories come bite me in the butt from time to time, and I get to admit that I was being an idiot and I made that up.

Now you all don't like me anymore and you won't come around. Fine.

And, because Jennifer loves me SO MUCH*, I get the word bowel. Thank you. Um. It's been better, thanks for asking. (begin glowing, flame-hot blush.... now.)

*Speaking (again) of Jennifer, I have been contemplating the friendships in my life and thinking about making a blog post about them, but like most of the blog posts I think about, it hasn't happened. I'm having a super busy week (baby shower present to crochet, zoo date with Debi tomorrow, far far behind on librivox stuff, just got a transcribing job, plus all that school/dishes/laundry stuff that keeps repeating itself) so it's not going to be happening anytime too soon, either. But I'm thinking about it all the same.

Edited to add: I completely forgot to tag anybody.

Um, Michael, Debi, Valerie, and Susan (in my comments since you deprive the world of so much of your wonderfulness by not having a blog, even though with only four kids I know you have all kinds of free time), you are IT. And your words (I'll be nice, unlike SOME PEOPLE I KNOW) are:

desperation
clever
fractions
flirt

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Random Things That Don't Quite Warrant A Post On Their Own (because obviously if they did I'd have been posting about them... right?)

1. I am thisclose to getting my hair cut to my shoulders. I had been thinking I'd do it when I lost ten pounds because I have this thing about my head being tiny and out of proportion to my body and that being worse when I'm heavier, but it occurred to me this morning in the shower (where the world's geniuses do all their best thinking, obviously) that since my hair is always UP, in a little clip on the back of my head (because it's totally unsightly down, truly), it's not exactly lending my head an illusion of added size. So there goes that reasoning. Maybe when I get back from #2:
   
2. The Ladies' Retreat is this weekend. Oh my gosh I hope it's better than last year's, which was about organizing and simplifying our homes, which, OK, yes, I need to learn (funny how these people never take into account a husband who's even more of a pack rat than you are... am I supposed to throw his stuff away while he's not looking?), but it wasn't exactly spiritually reviving like the year before. And also, plus, six meals no planning no cooking no cleaning. And 48 hours during which nobody says I'm hungry to me as if I'm expected to pop out food like a snack machine. And nice walks among the tall pines with my mom and my sister-in-law and JENN WE WILL MISS YOU. Waah. :(
   
3. School's going pretty well overall. It's a lot of work this year, for me.
   
4. I've decided to do TWO years of US History and TWO years of World History, rather than one of each. This is, of course, because that way the kids will retain it better. Not at ALL because I had no idea how I would cram everything into half that time without giving homework, which considering I'm a homeschooler would be rather odd.
   
5. I think fall is finally really truly here. [does happy dance.] Yes, I know that it's officially here as of today, but in California that doesn't always mean much.
   
6. I successfully shopped for clothes last week. I spent more on clothes for myself than I had in five or ten years. That isn't saying much, trust me.
   
7. I'm putting off writing The Family Letter even though I totally shouldn't or it will end up sitting above my computer for months and months. Explanation: My mom's family (six sisters and a sister-in-law, plus their mom and now assorted adult female cousins and cousins-in-law) started a round-robin letter in the mid-80's. It usually takes about three years to get around even though they are constantly -- in EVERY cycle -- resolving that it should take no more than six months. My last letter in it is from 2002. I really should be doing that now instead of this.
   
8. I have a crick in my upper back which has been periodically causing my neck to clench up in the most amazing cramps I think I've ever had. The other night it was so bad that I took a muscle relaxant, which made me so sleepy that I was in bed at 8:00. PM. I think in my post-kids life I've gone to be at 8 AM more often than at 8 PM.
   
9. My kids have been getting videos of the Ramona series from the library. I am hopelessly addicted. Why did they make only one season? For most women my age, Must See T-V involves, I dunno, emergency rooms or deserted islands or something. For me: the antics of an 8-year-old Beverly Cleary creation. I am so happening.
   
10. I have read so many library books this month. This means that:
    
11. I have been sadly neglecting my Librivox commitments. Next week I promise.
    
12. C's birthday party is coming up in a week. Well, a week from Saturday. To say that she's excited would be a vast understatement. She will be seven. Fortunately her brother has blazed this trail before her, so that number is not so terribly shocking as it once was. She's actually almost as excited about getting to ride in the front seat of the car (see: California's oppressive Big-Brother-style laws) as she is about having a party.
    
13. We have a 'school-year reading program' which mimics the library's summer reading program. For each (appropriate-length) book the kids read, they get a treat or points toward a big prize (25 books' worth of points = a trip to the Monterey Aquarium, for example). Plus every thousand pages they get to buy a new book. I'm thinking that last bit is going to break us. They've each already earned a free book, and if they continue at their current rate (which would, you know, totally break my heart) they'll be getting one every two weeks or so. Maybe it's time to start visiting the SPCA yard sale.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Sunday Seven

lifted from Jenn, who I think made it up herself. :)

1. What is your first memory?
I have a few scattered bits of memory from when I was around 2. One is from, if I'm correct about this, the national bicentennial, which would have been when I was nineteen months old. I remember bunting everywhere and being at the history center in town with the stamp mill going, and I remember I was wearing something frilly over my diaper. I don't know why I've always thought this was the bicentennial, come to think of it. I'll have to ask my mom where we were that day and see if I'm right.

I also remember sitting on a railing made of pipe in front of someone's house and falling off it into a bed of cactus. THAT was fun. I asked my dad about this later and he said that was at someone's house in Maricopa, where we lived for five or six months in 1977, the only time we've ever lived away from here since I was born. So I was about 2 1/2 when that happened.

2. What was your favorite thing to do as a child?
Reading. Closely followed by playing outside. As I got older, after I got my horse (I was 9), riding her was definitely way up there too.

3. What was your favorite family moment as a child?
When we were in the car going for a drive. This was a good cheap fulfilling form of family entertainment. We'd sing and play car games and look at the scenery. Much of the time we'd be in the pickup truck and my brother and I would ride in the camper. We had an intercom so we could talk to Mom and Dad in the front, or in some of our campers we had that boot-thing where you could open the back window of the truck and the front window of the camper and put the boot-thing around the opening to block the wind and voila, an SUV. Except without seatbelts (or even seats) in the rear. Man that was fun.

4. When and what was your first exposure to religion?
We went to the Methodist church my whole childhood (my mom had gone there for HER whole childhood as well). So my first exposure to religion was sitting on a pew surrounded by a bunch of VERY nice people whose Bibles were very dusty, listening to bland but brief sermons without any noticeable connection to the Bible. Your Methodist mileage may vary.

5. What was your worst nightmare as a child?
You know, I don't remember. I remember some strange dreams (going swimming in a river of paint with my brother's friend; this was when I was maybe 7) but I can't remember any nightmares right now. I know I had them.

6. What was your most embarrassing childhood moment?
I'm trying to think of one from early childhood but I was so clueless then. I have some memories that are painful ones because at the time I didn't know that I should be embarrassed, but those don't technically count as embarrassing moments. So I'll count childhood as including sixth grade. (no, this is not the dog-biscuit story; I've told that one too many times already). One day I found a note in my desk from a boy I liked, saying that he liked me and would I "go with him"? I was on my way to the library where I helped check out books, so when he put his book on the desk to check out, I put the note with a Yes written on the bottom into his book like a bookmark. He pulled it out and looked at it and was pretty embarrassed himself (he was a nice kid; I wonder whatever happened to him. I can't even remember his last name) because he hadn't written it. It was a prank, masterminded by a girl I still don't like much (not just because of this) and carried out by a boy with whom I later became decent friends. I never mentioned that incident to him, though.

7. Name one person who hurt you as a child that you have forgiven.
Tim Preston. I always swore I would hate him till the end of my life, because he had truly been very mean to me. Then I ran into him a year ago at the county fair and he approached me, spoke very kindly to me as if we'd never been anything but great friends, shook my hand, and walked away, and I couldn't hate him anymore. Sometimes I forget that they were just children, all those children, and that most of us grew up to be adults who didn't necessarily have a whole lot in common with our younger selves.

Sam M., though, that's another story. ;-)

Friday, September 15, 2006

Friday Feast

Appetizer
What was the very last song you listened to?

It was a Scarlatti piano sonata. Not sure which one.

Soup
What is one company/store/corporation you would recommend that people stay away from?

There's a guy who runs a business selling auto interior parts and my husband placed a $2700 order with him last November. Ten months later the order is, eh, about two-thirds complete. The guy doesn't return phone calls or emails and when he DOES contact T, he feeds him a line about how it's all just about ready and blah blah blah. Except it's not. So. In case any of my blog readers were going to go and purchase any auto body parts ;), steer clear of A 1 C a n v a s. (I'm so softhearted I can't stand to think of the guy googling his business and finding this).

Salad
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how much do you enjoy having your picture made?

Someone else taking it: 3. My grandmother in particular taking it: 1. (for some reason I gain thirty pounds and look absolutely hideous -- as in, literally, like scarily bad -- whenever she takes my picture). Me taking my own picture: 8, because I know that's my best chance to make myself look like a normal person when really I don't.

Main Course
Besides a bookmark, what is something you’ve used to keep your place in a book?

Oh, everything. A bill (especially fun when they come due and you can't find them), junk mail, a CD, a hair elastic, a barrette, a pencil, a napkin, a photograph, an envelope, a receipt, another book.

Dessert
Name a food that you like that most people don’t.

Leftover spaghetti with ranch dressing mixed in. MMM.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

a few things

I need a favor. I'm doing a little poll. Those of you who know French in any way -- by which I mean, you took French in high school, you taught French in a high school, you have a friend who lives in Montréal, you once watched a movie where someone said 'bonjour', you can read the word 'French' and know what it means: If you were going to pronounce, say, the name of the Charlotte Brontë book "Villette", say like if you were going to, I dunno, read the book aloud (I am totally not obsessed and you need to just shut up, I heard you), would you say it:

a) Vill-ette?
b) Vee-lette?
c) Vee-yette?
d) Some other way?

Tomorrow I might call my high-school French teacher and ask her (there are advantages to living in the same small town your whole life -- see?). But I may not, if someone can answer with authority here. Or else take a stab in the dark and inadvertently confirm that my super-secret suspicion is correct.

And also I have a meme. Thank you, Michael, for always being willing to supply me with blog content on those dry days.

What do you do with a drunken sailor?
Put him in a long-boat till he's sober, of course! Earleye in the mornin! Sheesh. Don't you people know anything?

Would you rather fall and skin your knee on carpet, pavement, or a clay tennis court?
You know... who comes UP with these things? (no offense, Michael, I know you feel the same way). Really there's no point in answering this because all of these will happen to me sooner or later anyway. But come on, what's next? "Death by drowning, electrocution, or rabies?" Oh, wait, I think I saw that in a survey not too long ago.

Who let the dogs out? Who? Who?
You know, I actually have serious negative associations for this song thanks to a bunch of drunk people on a train on a day about six years ago when I did not look my best after a long day of traveling. Shuddery horrific schoolbus flashbacks start... now.

What's the strangest thing that has happened to you lately?
I posted to my blog three days in a row. I think.

If you could, would you be a taxi driver for a day? In what city?
Ah, no. City driving is enough of a struggle without paying passengers.

In high school, the kids voted you "Most Likely" to do what?
Most Likely to Trip Over a Crack in the Sidewalk, Tossing Her Books and Papers Hither and Yon Whilst Causing Serious Bodily Injury to Herself and at Least One Passerby. Or they would have, if they'd had space in the yearbook. I was a shoo-in. Instead I only got Most Likely to Forgetfully Leave a Trail of Her Belongings from Classroom to Classroom Throughout the Day. Or something along those lines.

What is your favorite color of a rose?
Pink for small ones, cream-colored with pink edges for big ones.

Why does Mickey Mouse wear gloves all the time?
Because he's such a dapper young mouse. He is totally puttin' on the Ritz.

Where would you hide a safe in your house to assure that it couldn't be easily found?
We have our secrets.

What's bedtime like for you? Do you still sleep with a teddy bear from childhood? Do you mind that little crack of light through the curtains or do you need to have total darkness?
Oh gosh, no teddy bear. Books, and a really handsome good-sized husband who's asleep loooong before I am, would be more accurate. We leave the hall light on and the bedroom door open so we can see to get to the bathroom. And now that you know this, your life will never be the same, right? Yeah, I know. You can thank me later.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Barb made me do it.

Well, actually, Lauren had a hand in it too. And honestly it just sounded like a fun idea, so here I am, doing it.

Barb wants to know why I named my blog what I did. And since there actually is a little bit of a story that goes along with that, I thought perhaps I'd tell it.

When I first started blogging (I will NEVER like that word. It's like that whole www thing. If they'd known how many times people would be saying that they would never have used w's and so made the entirety of Western civilization look like idiots going around saying doubleyou-doubleyou-doubleyou-dot before everything. Don't you think? I know, I know, World Wide Web and all -- which is actually shorter to say than www, but you look like even more of an idiot saying that instead. I think they could have come up with something that flowed better instead of 'www', and that sounded less like a bodily function in the case of 'blogging'. Is all I'm saying. In a really, really long parenthesis.), I was at diaryland. I started at Diaryland because there were a few people on an e-mail list I was on who used it, and I liked the idea of keeping a diary, and I'm an exhibitionist nerd-type and I got the idea that it would be fun to do it online.

I digress. A lot.

Anyway. That first diary was called 'blissful contentment', kind of as a rebuttal to all the angsty teenagers who seemed to make up the majority of the population at diaryland who liked to write bleak things about how much life sucks. I still like the title 'blissful contentment'. But then there came a time when I wrote this post about homeschooling, and Thicket Dweller linked to it, I think, and people came to see it, and left comments, and I went to their blogs. And I felt really convicted, because here were all these bright, intelligent, witty women with blogs where they would exegete Scripture and where their relationships with Jesus were the primary focus of what they wrote. I had been going through a bit of a spiritual re-awakening, not to sound too granola and new-agey, but it was slow, and seeing all those blogs (Kristen, I am looking at you) gave the re-awakening a bit of a kick in the pants, and like the follower I am :), I decided that I wanted my blog to focus on my spiritual life too. Initially I started it as a separate thing, and I was going to maintain the diaryland diary for the daily-life kind of posts and keep surrounded-by-treasures for the whiz-bang convicting intelligent brilliant Scriptural exegesis. (You're allowed to snort; I'm being facetious). So I titled it in accordance with the spiritual re-awakening kind of idea -- I was going to be having New Life Part II or some such thing. Except sometime not much later I merged the daily-life stuff with the not-so-frequent heavy-duty posts. In fact I haven't done a heavy duty post in a long time. Great, now I have guilt.

But now you know. If you didn't already.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

quiz lifted from Kristen

Since I actually spend quite a bit of time contemplating college, I jumped on this quiz a few days ago but decided not to post it because I was in the middle of a flurry of posts. Better to save it for a time when I needed to fill a gap to keep the blank page at bay. ;)

You scored as Linguistics. You should be a Linguistics major! Linguistics 100% English 92% Journalism 83% Engineering 75% Chemistry 75% Philosophy 67% Theater 67% Biology 67% Psychology 50% Anthropology 50% Mathematics 50% Dance 33% Art 33% Sociology 25% What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3) created with QuizFarm.com

Interesting. I do like the idea of studying linguistics, being a nerd-girl type who likes to dissect words and see where they came from and who still sometimes thinks in French even though I haven't sat in a French class for over thirteen years. I don't suppose it's a highly marketable field of study, though, outside the world of academia (and I am SO not a professional academic. SO SO not), not that the sole purpose of study is to prepare for a career, but still, four years and however much money is a bit of a big investment, probably too big to toss away on something that's for personal enrichment alone. I guess a translator is a linguist, and that would be fun work. Still, though, I feel a real pull toward nursing. Not that all this matters at this point, when I'm who knows how long from actually doing anything about it (T's work schedule changed this summer, making it pretty much impossible for me to take any night classes without enlisting a babysitter). What I should be thinking about is this upcoming school year for the kids, which starts in eight days and for which I have only the barest outline done up. I do have a good stock of crayons and glue laid in, though.**

** What a bittersweet day it will be when we no longer need crayons for school. *snif*. (I hear Marilla's voice in my ear: "For pity's sake, if you must borrow trouble, borrow it handier home.")

Thursday, August 10, 2006

I never once said I wasn't a sheep. baa.

This is something that people who have Myspace pages do. I do not have a Myspace page, so I am inflicting it on all of you here since I don't know what else to do with it and I just used an hour of my life making it.

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

You're welcome.

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(see, this way you don't have two of them on the screen at once, and you can't sue me -- as if you'd be able to wring any blood from this very stony stone -- for the crippling migraine that would ensue otherwise)


Also, here's one made up of the pictures I'm entering in the fair, with a few of the runners-up thrown in to fill up space.

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* Aaaand here's the one I made with the results of the 30-day self-portrait challenge. In looking at all three of these I notice that they compress the living daylights out of some of the pictures. Yikes.

Whew. I've got that out of my system now.

oh, great, another meme Archives | Page 2 of 10

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