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Sunday, July 24, 2005

um...

...I got nothing.

Well, almost nothing. And it's BEEN nothing for a long time, which is why the calendar up there on the right has so few days in bold this month. Except now that I have the domain and all that (stupid stupid), this "got nothing" is costing me money. Dang. No way am I going back to blogger, though, just no way.

Today we again flea-fogged or bombed or whatever you want to call it our house. I am hoping that the reasons we failed to get the results we wanted (i.e. being able to sit still in our house without having leaping, biting insects take up residence on our shins) were that a) we failed to use enough fog for the space we have and b) we used a cheap brand and c) we let the cats back in afterward with no flea protection except flea collars. Oh please please let those be the reasons because dangit it's such a huge pain to try to get rid of these awful freakish little beasties. I saw one (1) flea on myself this afternoon, post-fogging, and I am going to assume (tra la la) that that was a flea that was on me before which means that it did not survive the Raid onslaught and that we will not be dealing with the same stupid frustrating problem in three days (tra la la).

Also, our car has no air conditioning, thanks to a really well-timed refrigerant leak. This is manifestly unfair and unkind and just mean of God, I think, since it is the hottest July I ever remember living through, and I have now lived through 31 California Julys. Or I will have lived through 31 of them, assuming I don't die of the heat in the next seven days, that is.

Also, swimming lessons are going (oh, you knew I was going to do it, didn't you) swimmingly. Both kids are enjoying them and learning lots and I'm actually taking pictures while I wait for their lessons to finish each day, which are pretty much the only pictures I've been taking at all lately, not sure why.

And I have a really awesome film camera (people moving up to digital are remarkably willing to part with nice photographic equipment), an N50 which is an SLR which means you can use all these schmancy lenses that you can change out, and all that, and I have this really awesome 70-300mm lens with a macro setting and I've been having so much fun with it, but it's a FILM CAMERA. Which means I have to, you know, get PRINTS of everything before I can even see how any of the pictures came out. How totally backward. What's really awesome, though, is that in a few years when we get me a D70 (digital SLR), the auxiliary lenses and things will work with it.

And thatisall. I told you. Almost nothing.

ETA:
P.S. I typed the above entry, posted it, shut down the computer, and went to get a drink of water before heading to bed and found that someone had put away the milk in the cupboard where the glasses go. I know that sounds like a Rachel-ish thing to do, but I swear it wasn't me. Fortunately, it was still cold.

P.P.S. Speaking of Rachel-ish things to do, I've been mulling about how many little intricacies are contained in our DNA. C not only looks a great deal like I did as a child (less now than she did, say, two years ago, though), she also has the following identical idiosyncrasies/character traits:

• She riffles the pages of the book while she reads it. (sub-item: she always, always wants to be reading. Reading is the default activity).
  
• She narrates her life, what her dolls are doing, what she's thinking -- aloud, as if she were reading a book, complete with fake British accent.
  
• She stubs her toes and smacks her head on things and falls down multiple times a day.
  
• She looks like she's drowning when she swims.
  
• She always wants to be kissing and hugging and "I love you"ing. Over and over and over and over and over.
  
• She has elaborate methods for randomly picking a book to read.
  
• She gets dirty as soon as she steps outside.
  
• She cries if you look at her sternly.
  

See what I mean? Nobody had to teach her to do these things. She isn't copying me -- especially since some of this is stuff I haven't done since well before she was born. It's fascinating, really.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

these days (updated with today's EVEN MORE APPALLING forecast)

First, a little visual:

Was it not a month ago that "63 to 73" was the (granted, quite unseasonable) range for HIGH temperatures? WHO ON EARTH SAID THIS COULD HAPPEN? I wanna know.

Oh yeah. God. Sorry, God. But WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH THIS??

Here's a concrete example of the way this heat affects me: Today I took the kids to a friend's place to swim in their swimming hole (we's country kids. we ain't got no swimmin' pools), and I forgot my camera. I haven't gone out without that camera more than five times since I got it. I take the camera to the grocery store (I lock it in the trunk while I shop, but you never know, I might see something vaguely photographable on the quarter-mile trip there or back). But I forgot to take it today, and not only were the kids eminently photogenic today, but there was a waterfall. And you know (oh, man, I'm sorry for how WELL you know) how I am about waterfall pictures.

And also, I just wanted to tell you that between my two kids and myself, we managed to eat an entire blackberry pie today, except for one piece which I'm sure will be gone by the time we go to bed tonight. Maybe that whole idyllic family-picking-blackberries-Mom-baking-with-them thing wasn't such a good idea.

Poor pie. Your days were numbered. Little did you know HOW numbered.

(I did make a really good sugar-free, whole-grain blackberry cobbler as well. The kids and T ate that one last night.)

Yesterday evening we saw a really cool thing. [Cue Wild Kingdom theme music]. We were out for our berry-picking walk and as we were going across the creek near the abandoned beaver dam, we saw two new beavers swimming around scoping out the place. So hopefully I'll be able to actually get some pictures of them before they re-abandon the place. The ones I tried last night could just as well have been pictures of Bigfoot, thanks to the dim light and my lack of a tripod. This evening (as soon as it cools down to, oh, say, NINETY FIVE DEGREES outside) I'll try again, and be better prepared.

Meanwhile I think I'll just go climb into the freezer for a while.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Can we do that again tomorrow?

Well. I didn't break any of my resolutions. Although I should perhaps have resolved not to absentmindedly back up and run into people, because, um, yeah. As I told Kristen, I'm going to have to have "Oh, I am so sorry!" carved on my headstone when I die. Sigh.

(I will note for the record that in a moment of uncharacteristic capable-ness, I managed to not keep talking loudly into a sudden silence, when the carousel music stopped and Kristen and I were having an animated discussion about, I dunno, preterism and Hank Hanegraaff and the book of Revelation, or something. I see your skeptical look, but it's true, I swear it is.)

And also, I had just the most fantastic, wonderful time. It was too short, was all. But there was not the slightest bit of awkwardness, and there were no moments of sitting uncomfortably trying to reach for a topic to discuss to fill a silence. We had a really, really great time. At least I did; I think Kristen did too.

Here are a couple of pictures (there are more from the day in the photo blog):

Kristen, modeling the headwear which everyone who's anyone will be sporting very, very soon. (Actually, it's C's "Lydia Bennet bonnet" -- her second one, as the first went over a waterfall on our trip to Hetch Hetchy).



The requisite holding-the-camera-at-arms'-length close-up



At the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. (it was very, very windy. Kristen's hair behaved beautifully but mine was being bratty.)

Golden Gate Park, by the way, would almost (ALMOST) make it worth the hassle of living in San Francisco. (but not worth the expense; there is nothing but NOTHING that could make it worth the expense, short of the death of a very wealthy distant relative with a generous will, or something of the sort). C wants to move there for the sake of the carousel alone. I've told her they'd frown on letting her have a ranch in downtown SF, and it's given her pause, but I can see the gears of her mind working to figure out a loophole.

P.S. I still hate hate hate driving on bridges.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

sigh

T is still gone. He'll probably come home tomorrow night at his regular time. We hope. He was supposed to have a four-day weekend (well, Thursday he had to go to the lab, so he took it off, but whatever) and ended up getting called on Friday evening to go in early Saturday. So the last any of us saw him was Friday night, because no, I did NOT manage to stay up till 3:30 and make him pancakes. I've done it before in situations like this but I just couldn't this time; I was nodding off sitting up, and finally headed to bed around 12:30 or 1:00 in a sleepy haze of guilt.

I have a papercut (from a paper plate. What kind of person gets papercuts from a paper plate? Oh yeah, me. Nevermind) right in that web of skin between my finger and thumb on my left hand. A papercut has always been right up there with a hangnail as favorites for sarcastic excuses for getting out of work, as if they're these negligible little nothings. Well, I did do some work today, but I am here to tell you that papercuts and hangnails hurt. They really do. Whine.

Also, VBS starts tomorrow (that's Vacation Bible School, which lasts a week and takes all morning, for those of you who are either child-free or not from the Evangelical Christian planet). I did not sign up to help this year, but odds are I'll be helping anyway, since I have nothing else to do during the four-hour duration of the event. I'm certainly not driving home (15 miles) and back (15 miles again) when I don't have to and gas is still at European-style prices. The night before something like this I always dread it, and try to figure out ways to wiggle out of it, but the fact is that the kids are really looking forward to it. Well, C is. I think LT could probably do without VBS just fine and never miss it, but C is a little social animal who loves her fun and games. And once I'm actually there I'm always glad we went.

However. I have been a good girl this weekend and actually stuck to my diet, overall. I hate that word -- it's right up there with "blog" -- but it sounds even lamer to say something else, like "healthy eating plan" or what have you. So diet it is. For those of you who joined us late, I lost 30 pounds in the fall/winter of 2003/2004. Which is great, except that I wanted to lose 45 pounds, but I just sort of stopped at 30, way back over a year ago, last spring, and in the last few months I've actually gained five pounds back, and that is just purely unacceptable. So this past weekend has been that really fun time at the beginning of a new way of eating when you're basically starving all the time, especially in the afternoons and evenings, when I feel like I could eat a Mack truck if someone would deep-fry it and serve it with ranch sauce for dipping. If I hang in there for a week it'll get better, I know this, but augh. Oh, wait, that was a happy thing. Yay.

And I've been catching up on laundry. And the house is clean. I figure the least I can do for a man who leaves the house at 4:00 to go work two or three nineteen-hour days to feed our family when he thought he'd be at home relaxing (well, working. On projects. But... whatever. It's relaxing to HIM) is to have the house comfortable for him when he walks in. Now watch, tomorrow it'll get totally destroyed just in time for him to come in the door.

And I watched "The Phantom of the Opera" again tonight. My new favorite part this time was the Don Juan scene where the Phantom has just offed the male lead guy and taken his place on the stage and he's singing and Christine and Raoul and Madame Giry and Mssrs. Firmin and André have all just figured that out and the tension is just palpable and augh must NOT put it in again must NOT must go to BED.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

things I think

You know what is a total scam? Is laundry detergent scoops. Laundry detergent scoops are the Make Thousands A Month Stuffing Envelopes At Home of the housework world. The manufacturer sells you a box of powdered detergent, proclaiming that said box of detergent will wash, say, 80 loads of your husband's socks and your son's muddy jeans. But then they include -- here's the devious thing -- a scoop which holds THREE LOADS' WORTH of detergent. Now, they are up-front about this; they put little lines on the side of the scoop showing how little you actually need to use, but come on, they know that with a scoop that big you're going to get in a hurry and just scoop up whatever and end up buying more product after only, say, twenty-eight loads of wash.

Where is the outrage? I ask you.

(my personal solution is to replace the clear green tool of deception with a 1/3-cup measure. I'LL SHOW THEM.)

**********

Also, I need a haircut, like really badly. I can't do anything dramatic because I'm too wimpy, but it's going be going from waist-length (the few stray hairs that actually live long enough to make it that far) to above the bra strap, SOON, or I'm going to end up going completely off the deep end and getting it cut up to my jaw or something. And I'd really regret that. Especially when the divorce papers were served.

***********

And further, I think the people who are crying because cutting PBS will mean the end of quality children's programming until the end of time need to watch Nickelodeon a little bit, and also check out, say, THE SESAME STREET STORE in their local mall. I think Big Bird and the gang could probably make it on their own without the subsidy, don't you?

***********

Also, because we are moving our schoolroom stuff back into the main house since what has formerly been known as our schoolroom will (I hope) soon be rented out to some fortunate individual, I get all the fun of moving, without, well, the fun of moving. In other words, I hauled boxes and books for about three and a half hours today, and I'm not done yet, and then I get to scour and scrub and all that fun stuff. Anyone want a nice small apartment in a good location, all utilities included? :-D

************

I'm about to reveal a dirty secret. Ready?

Our house has fleas.

NOT the apartment! Oh dear me no, the apartment's clean as a whistle. Er, at least as far as INSIDIOUS DEMONIC LITTLE BEASTS are concerned. That's because the fleabags cats don't go in there. So if you were gonna come rent that apartment you just come on ahead, it's all fine and dandy, yessir.

So far we've tried flea collars for the cats and fogging (which is a HUGE pain in the derriere, oh my GOSH, the covering of food preparation items! the shutting off of aquariums and pilot lights and refrigerators! and on top of that, it completely and totally failed to have any effect whatsoever) for the house. Now we're planning on doing the drops-behind-the-shoulder-blades thing, since everyone says that is just the be-all and end-all of flea prevention. Because sitting down at the computer and having to pinch three fleas to death within about ten minutes is really lame.

Monday, June 13, 2005

slipping

Today I can feel myself slipping down. It has been a long time since I've felt like this, and I don't like it. Every time it goes away, I think, whew, glad that's done, won't have to deal with that again.

Oops.

Am I sensing the delicate shifting of chemical balances in my brain? Is it the devil, pulling on me and cackling merrily? Am I not spiritual enough? Not active enough? Just weak? Maybe I'm overwhelmed by the sheer work involved in pulling a household back into normalcy after a weekend of being gone almost all the time, or maybe... I don't know. All I do know is that I feel like I'm sliding down a seamless, slippery chute into a fog of gray waiting for me at the bottom. I'm trying for handholds -- get something done, that sometimes works. If you don't like your surroundings, change them. Clean up the mess and then the vicious circle will break and you'll feel normal. Go out and see something different.

Or, sit.

I sometimes think the fatigue and exhaustion associated with depression is actually related to the way that, when you're depressed, nothing at all sounds appealing. You can't even daydream and take yourself away from where you are, because all the usual daydream fodder -- I am sitting by a snapping fire. It is autumn and the rain is coming down in sheets outside the plate-glass window of the library in my beautiful new home. The whole family is with me, and quiet, with a general feeling of well-being and love in the room. I have a thick book which I've never read before, and a cup of rich hot chocolate, and a throw blanket on my lap -- feels just as empty as the thought of washing the sinkful of dishes, or getting the kids ready for running errands, or staring into space. I think it's not so much that lying in bed sounds so much more worthwhile than anything else -- it's just that when we humans get this way we tend to want to maintain the default position. So I lie around staring at the wall, thinking of nothing. Or I sit in this chair, staring at the screen, likewise thinking of nothing. (well, NOW I'm thinking, I'm thinking about typing a post. Ha ha. Depressed person's idea of a joke. To quote C: "You're supposed to laugh. Like [hysterically] 'HEE HEE HAW HAW HAW!!'" And then she sits and waits for me to indeed laugh like HEE HEE HAW HAW HAW.) Actually, since, as I mentioned, I'm still only slipping down into the fog, and haven't landed in it (yet?), I got really clever a little bit ago. If nothing was going to have any appeal, from lying in bed to discovering a never-before-known Jane Austen book to taking a beach vacation, well, I might as well do things that were ordinarily unappealing, since it wouldn't matter what I was doing. That lasted through the sinkful of dirty dishes anyway. (I think my family is doing a study. It's physics. They're wondering how many bowls and cups can be piled on top of each other -- some partly filled with their beslimed contents, some just encrusted with them -- and still stay upright in the sink. I was gone all day Saturday and then we were all gone most of the day yesterday. The dishwasher's been sitting there empty, waiting to be filled, and yet the sink was piled high with the aforementioned physics experiment. Wanna come over? It's so much fun here.)

Anyway. I think I'm going to go try to dig in my nails, or build a ladder, or, I dunno, at least accomplish a few things that really need to be done.

Saturday, June 04, 2005

a date

Tonight T whisked us all off on a date.

Yes, the whole family, it wasn't THAT kind of date, it was just a nice surprise evening. He'd known that I wanted to go take sunset pictures at a lake where we camp sometimes, and see the dam with the water as high as it has been (I AM SO GEEKILY EASY TO AMUSE. So sue me). So he loaded us all into the car, took us out for fast food, and then started driving. We had so much fun. In case I've never told you, I have the best husband in the world. Just so you know.

There are sunset pictures in the photo blog, but here are a couple of family ones.

LT and C. LT is carrying my tripod. That's not a purse. :)

The family. Except me. (In case you're wondering, T is smiling. Really. And he wonders why people sometimes find him intimidating.)

Friday, June 03, 2005

busy days

I put 200 miles on our car yesterday, which I don't mind doing if I'm going, you know, on a trip or something, but when it happens in the course of running errands, UGH. A hundred and fifty of the miles were from a trip to the valley to buy a part for our washing machine; thirty to take the cat to the vet and back (not to mention that I also paid $64 for an exam and some antibiotics for poor Mary who had an abscess of some sort on her jaw); thirty to go to a planning meeting for next year's Awana club at the chapel. At this point I feel like I never want to drive again, and that's without even thinking about how much I spent on gas yesterday. (you people who don't live in California and complain about your gas prices, I don't wanna hear it, or wait, I do, because maybe for a while I can pretend to be you so that I can find $2.00 a gallon really outrageous instead of unimaginably cheap. Remember when gas topped $1.50 and everyone shrieked in agony? sigh. the good old days.). I was going to go to Yosemite today to take pictures but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Maybe on Monday. So I spent today getting the kids to clean their rooms, working on school stuff, walking to the creek (with one of the neighbor kids) to hunt for tadpoles for the neighbor kids' pond, and DOING LAUNDRY WOO HOO. (yes, I cheer, even though I hate laundry. Because even more than I hate laundry, I hate having to pay to do laundry, like I did on Monday when our washing machine was broken so I had to drop another $20 at the laundromat to do six loads). I've been busy enough for the past two days to make me want a nap really, really badly right now.

By the way, I finished My Sister's Keeper at 3 AM on Wednesday, and then I read the new Elizabeth Berg (A Year of Pleasures) on Wednesday as well. (Which means that quite by accident I read two books in 24 hours about death -- one about dying, and one about grieving, which means that sort of thing has been on my mind a lot since then.) And now I'm almost done with Emma. Overcompensating? me?

Friday, May 27, 2005

not QUITE an exercise in futility

Tonight I didn't feel like just sitting around; I wanted to do something productive. (whoops, sorry, should have warned you so that you'd be sure to be sitting down before you read that. Are you OK?) So I cleaned out the car.

I have noticed, in my walks around town, that most people's cars have... what's it called, that place under all the JUNK... um, floors. That's it. You can look in their car windows and see floor mats, and seats, not just in a couple spots where the stuff's shoved out of the way, but all the way around. I'd comfort myself with the knowledge that these people must not have kids, but I happen to know that's not always the case. (still clinging to hope that maybe the cars were NEW...). Ours used to be much, much better than it has become lately; I think it's largely that the kids are old enough to take stuff INTO the car, but they aren't old enough to take it OUT yet.

That and I'm a total and complete slob, that's also part of it. Maybe.

Anyway. I started thinking I really REALLY needed to clean out the car yesterday, when I tried to find my little bottle of glasses-cleaning solution on the way to Awana, and I couldn't. Before I was sure that it was lost, though, I'd gathered up a full grocery bag of garbage just from around my feet in the passenger side and what I could reach of the back floorboard. (not GROSS garbage, just papers and receipts and junk mail and plastic grocery bags and that sort of non-maggoty, non-food-item, non-stinky stuff. But still.) Today we went to the valley to watch Star Wars and eat at Applebee's and spend our retirement (well, not really, but it felt like it) at Wal-Mart, and when we got home, I was going to sit on the porch swing and read and listen to the snick-snick-snick of the sprinkler on the newly-mown front lawn, but I just couldn't, knowing that That Mess was out there, WAITING. So what started out as emptying out the junk, putting away the non-junk, and washing the inside of the windows (the rear window still bore the ghostly remains of a fog-written "BUSH 2004", done by my politically astute son last fall, and of course I only noticed it when I was actually driving the car down the road and hence could not exactly just reach back and clean it off) turned into a full-out wash job. Which was really pretty stupid. Because guess where we're driving tomorrow. If you guessed "down miles of dry dusty dirt road to your parents'", you are right! Bingo! You win the prize! Oh well; at least the inside will be clean.

P.S. re: Star Wars: I really enjoyed the movie, better than Episodes I and II, and also better than the earliest three episodes, at least in that it has no Mark Hamill, who, I'm sorry, belongs in a ballet class somewhere, not in an adventure movie. And the way Luke changed from a whiny teenager to a condescending know-it-all in the space of a mere three movies did not impress me. Anyway. Episode III was very nicely done, and emotionally stirring, and all that. But you know what had me in choky tears and cold chills simultaneously? Was the preview for "The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe" that came before it. MY GOSH I CAN NOT WAIT.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

our excitement for the day

Did you know that a riding lawn mower can throw a rock really, really hard, at an upward angle, for quite a distance? And that it can aim it right between the wide boards that make up the railing on a back deck? And that when a 7' by 4' panel of a sliding glass door shatters, it makes thousands and thousands of very sharp and tiny squares of glass, which take quite a lot of effort and time to clean up?

We do, now.

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