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Monday, September 29, 2003

born in the 70's diaryring, shopping spree

Today a lot of really funny stuff happened, but I don't know if I have the energy to type it all up. Lemme see, just a sec.


Hmm, not yet. So I think I'll just tell you about the ring I just created. It's for anyone born in the 1970's. I personally was born in 1974, and there's no ring for that; I thought about trying to join the 1975 ring (because, you see, I am a ringaholic, and periodically I go on ring-joining binges, as you can see from this page), since I was born at the veeeeery end of 1974, and most of the people in my grade in school etc. were born in 1975. But let's face it, I didn't like most of the people in my grade anyway ;-), and I don't want to be the lone 1974-born imposter on the 1975 ring. Still, I didn't want to experience the mega-rejection that would come from starting a born-in-1974 ring and having not one single person join it (insecurity is my middle name. Well, not really. But still, you get the idea); I figured I'd have more of a chance of getting that validated feeling brought on by having someone actually notice that I exist at diaryland if I left it open to everyone born in the 70's, since there isn't one of those rings either. So. Anyone reading this who was born between 1970 and 1980 (I am not one of those purists who think that a decade or a century can only begin with a number ending in 1, but I'll make a concession to them by including 1980 ;-), go to this page and join up. Um, please?


Today I went to our local True Value (that's a hardware store for those who don't know) to get a $10 package of 5 cardboard under-bed storage cartons, for C's too-big clothes. Mysteriously, the check I wrote was for WAY more than that, even accounting for tax, which is a usurious 8.75%. Perhaps -- and this is just surmise, mind you -- perhaps that had something to do with the 3 32-gallon trash cans, the laundry hamper, the can crusher, and the trash bag liners I put in my trunk. I dunno, the whole thing is kind of a blur, in a shopping-maniacal-haze kind of way. I remember leaving the house thinking, "I REALLY need to get some of those underbed cartons for those clothes I have sitting in my living room waiting for me to sort them." Then I remember being in the store... there's a hazy vision of... what... oh yes, I remember thinking, hmm, that hamper from the bathroom has been broken ever since T sat on it a few months ago; they have hampers; I should replace it... then... my anal-retentive father-in-law is coming by tomorrow to bring C a birthday present; I really don't want him to see LT's recycling area looking like such a mess, I should price garbage cans. Right around then it all gets very fuzzy until I get home and unload all this stuff and get this bizarre-but-familiar feeling -- a mix of "goody goody new stuff for organizing" and "oh dear, how am I going to tell T?" Can I get an amen here, ladies?


My kids are watching one of their old Blue's Clue's videos. I will never look at these videos the same again; I keep picturing Steve's webpage with its cute little mouseover faces. Sooner or later I will break down and buy his album just for novelty's sake. One of my online friends observed the likelihood that the vast majority of his fans will be the parents of Blue's Clue's fans, who discover his music through some incredulous friend telling them, "You will not BELIEVE this!" Kind of like me. :)


I caught the cleaning bug pretty hard today, as you can tell by my hardware store experience (I swear that place is as bad as Wal-Mart). As I mentioned, my FIL is coming over tomorrow, and he is not one of those people who doesn't care if your house is a mess when he comes by. Which is why he schedules his visits like dental appointments, only far, far less frequently. I suppose if he's going to be all anal about what the house looks like, it is good of him to give us advance notice. Anyway, the house is clean and lemony-smelling, but there's still a pile of laundry for me to go through so off I go. :)

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Sunday, September 28, 2003

really embarrassing stuff

Here's a dubious milestone: My Google Toolbar's Popup Blocker has just blocked its thousandth popup. I installed the program maybe a month ago. This says a lot about both the prolific nature of popup ads (thank you, Google!), and the amount of time I spend online. *ahem*.



I am taking advantage of the fact that the kids are watching a home movie from a camping trip we took in Morro Bay a couple of years ago -- my parents, my brother and his family, and our family -- to sit here lazily with a diet peach Snapple, instead of folding the bazillion loads of laundry that are patiently waiting in their baskets for me. The most memorable thing about that trip was the weather. Everyone had told us that wintertime is really underrated for beach camping -- no crowds, mild weather, all that. So we braved it, and apparently we came during the worst week of weather they'd seen in years (day after Christmas through New Year's, 2001). It rained. It was unbelievably windy. It was foggy. The sun almost never came out, and we ended up going home after only three days or so, instead of six. And yet we had a wonderful time -- LT learned to ride his bike without training wheels, we saw sea elephants and otters, we took up chess and brought home a pile of fun memories. One particularly funny episode occurred: my parents had taken the kids for a walk down the beach, and T and I took off for a loverly stroll in the opposite direction, but quickly decided to take a quick walk back to camp and, er, make good use of the rare time alone. We rejoined the rest of the family as the kids were digging a deep hole on the beach. My brother asked, conversationally, where we'd gone on our walk. So I said, intending a wink-wink inside joke with T, "Oh, nowhere in particular, just up and down, you know." A totally innocent remark, right? We went up and down the beach. They were all supposed to imagine us picking up shells, holding hands, exclaiming about the view, watching the gulls, whatever. I think most of them did. But immediately my mom started trying to stifle a laugh. Then she started failing. I joined in. So I was sitting there nearly having hysterics with my mother -- both of us still making a valiant effort to look as though we weren't laughing at all -- about my sex life. It was truly a surreal moment.



I can't believe I just told you that.



While I'm embarrassing myself, though, I could have died yesterday; I definitely have a new story to add to my "Most Embarrassing Moment" rotation. I was at Smart and Final, my new favorite grocery store (12-packs of Diet Peach Snapple for $8 were my irresistable temptation this time around), and there was this fresh-out-of-puberty boy checking my purchases. While I wrote the check he asked me to stand aside so that he could bring my cart through and put the bags in it. So I did, only somehow my purse got snagged on the edge of the cart as he pulled it through. It was sitting there open, because I had just pulled out my checkbook, and it fell off the check-writing tray and dumped all its contents on the floor. Including two super-plus tampons. The guy felt so bad about dumping it out that he immediately bent over to pick stuff up; I got there first, fortunately, but he was blushing and avoiding my eyes as he handed me my change. Not that I was exactly meeting his. I don't know if I can ever go there again, in spite of my physical addiction to the chicken burger patties I can only find there; anytime that checker sees me he'll remember me as The Woman Whose Tampons Fell Out Of Her Purse. I know I shouldn't care; why should I care? But I do. sigh.



On a positive note, I have lost another pound and I'm now at 174, which means I have lost 20 pounds total so far in, hmm, nine weeks or so. That's a nice feeling. Two pounds more and I'll be at a double milestone: halfway to my goal and my prepregancy weight from my first pregnancy. So far, though, one thing is disappointing: not one single person has asked me if I've been losing weight. I've been kind of waiting for that. Maybe by the time I'm actually done losing weight, it'll happen. :)

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Saturday, September 27, 2003

fun afternoon

This will just be a quick, not-very-witty entry because in a few minutes I'm getting off the computer. The kids and I are going to have a stay-up-late-and-play-boardgames kind of night. Watch out, "Leave it to Beaver"; here comes something wholesomer. ;-)



We just had such a great afternoon. We went to Fresno with the goal of buying a family zoo membership, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while. We got there at two, and when we went to buy our membership we were told that all zoo members had free passes to Storyland AND all the rides at "Playland" today. Only problem was, the rides shut down at 4 along with the zoo (which I had expected to be open till 6), and Storyland was only open till 5:30. So we had a limited amount of time to do everything. We decided to skip the zoo for today, since we'll be able to do that for free for a year (criminy, I hope it's not for the rest of this year; gotta log onto their website and check that out...), and just enjoy the other two places. We had an absolute blast, it was the best day in a long time. I just wish T could have been there, and I wish I'd brought my camera. Next time. There were so many places in Storyland that I remembered from my own childhood -- I hadn't been in there since I was about seven. And the kids enjoyed themselves there immensely. (LT: "I sure liked Storyland better than I thought I would. I thought it would just be a bunch of boring people reading stories."). Their favorite thing in there was King Arthur's castle, which of course was renamed by them as Cair Paravel, and they took turns sitting on the throne pretending to be King Peter and Queen Lucy.


I keep forgetting to post about something I find hugely amusing. You know (well, if you're not the parent of someone who is or recently was a preschooler, you might not know) that guy Steve from Blue's Clue's? Well, I know this sounds like one of those urban legend things (why are they called that, I wonder, when they spread equally well in rural areas? anyone?), but it is really and truly true that he is now a singer/songwriter and has released an album. The music is pretty decent -- let's just say that if a really famous alternative musician came out with songs like his you might go, huh? but if your next-door neighbor's teenaged son's garage band could play this well, you might actually set up a lawn chair and listen. You can look at his website and listen to some of his music at www.steveswebpage.com. Drat, I wish I'd been the one to come up with that mouseover-face thing first, it's really kind of cool. Anyway, there's my goofy link for today. :)

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a minor household disaster

We have just been getting ready for an outing. Since C didn't get to have her party today, and she feels OK, I thought we'd go to the zoo and do some other fun stuff in the city, armed with Kleenex and antibacterial wipes. So we were getting ready to go, and LT had just poured a sippy-cup-with-valve of soda for his sister, when she dropped it on the floor. In case you've never done this, let me just tell you that it has a spectacular effect. There was a sprinkler -- a veritable rocket-engine blast of soda flying from the dining area across the living room. Ordinarily when we spill soda, we wipe it up and shrug because we drink diet soda*, which isn't sticky ("At least it's diet" is nearing catchphrase status in our household). However, this WOULD have to happen with LT's new favorite -- that nasty vile Tropical Sprite Remix, which isn't available in a diet version. So I had this GEYSER of basically flavored, carbonated sugar water spraying across my house. After three moppings I can still feel it on the floor, and the kids are watching You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown while I vent about the experience in my diary so I can avoid grumbling about it all day. ;) I will have to give the floor a few more goings-over before we leave, or we will come home to a houseful of ants. At least it's hardwood and not carpet, I suppose.



OK, I feel much better now. This is the kind of story I'm almost afraid to share with people who haven't had children yet; it may turn them off the idea altogether. ;-)



*Note: Please do not send me ill-informed, poorly researched aspartame-will-give-you-MS-or-make-you-grow-horns-and-claws-and-die-in-agony-DIE-DIE-DIE research stories. Thank you very much.

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Friday, September 26, 2003

don't want to fall behind

I am not feeling terribly articulate today, so don't expect much in the way of sparkly wit, but there's a lot going on so I felt the need to update now before I reach the dreaded death-to-journal point. You know, when you skip updating, and it seems like it'd be just too much effort to catch up right then, and the backlog builds up and builds up until updating is pointless. You know what I'm talking about, right? Anyway.


T got called out to a fire last night. No, he's not a firefighter; he's a telecommunications technician, so he gets "borrowed" from his usual job by the Forest Service or whoever is responsible for fighting the wildfire at hand, to go to their command center and set up communications. He fixes radios, sets up repeaters, that sort of thing. More than you needed to know, I know, but I have to stem the tide of reverence that always rushes toward me as soon as I mention him getting called out on a fire. ;-) He'll be gone for a minimum of a few days, and a maximum of two weeks, probably somewhere in between. The overtime from the 16-hour days will be nice to have but we really miss him.


Also, C's birthday party was to be tomorrow but we've put it off, not only because of her daddy's absence but also because she has been fighting a cold and it's not going away. I don't want to be The Bad Guy, sending her into a crowd, full of germs, infecting all her friends and cousins with my sinus whatever.


LT worked this afternoon on the piñata for the party. It's to be a barn. The party will have a horse theme but the kids (and I) objected to the idea of beating up a horse with a stick, so we had to figure out something else that could be made out of cardboard or papîer-maché that fit with a horse theme. He is outside painting it now; I'll see if I can make Snappy behave long enough to get a picture of it when he's done.


I was a baaad girl last night. Instead of getting a good healthy night's sleep, I stayed up chatting with a friend from eleven to three. I think I needed the chat more than the sleep, however, even though I'm a big on the foggy side today. And my hands are actually tired from their extensive workout; it's physically uncomfortable to type. Oh well, one benefit of my sanity lapse is that I'm sure I burned at least 300 calories laughing. ;-)



There's no Friday Five today! WELL! :) While I'm thinking about that sort of thing, though, I wanted to note that I'm working on a project which I hope will end up being a year of diary prompts. So if you have any ideas, email them to me, and I'll put them in, with credit (and links if applicable) to all who participated. Thanks. :)

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Thursday, September 25, 2003

mostly about children

Yesterday my 3-year-old daughter (I have to use that phrase as often as I can this week, since next Tuesday she will leave 3 behind forever and be 4, leaving me to NEVER AGAIN HAVE A THREE-YEAR-OLD, which I won't dwell on lest I dissolve into tears) came down with my sinus whatever. Fortunately for her, it doesn't seem to be causing her any pain, just a really really runny nose, and the cutest symptom of any childhood illness: that croaky, squeaky voice. I swear if I had the capability to do so I would upload a .wav file of it here, and you all could listen.


OK, I couldn't resist. Here it is. (I told her to think of something she had memorized and just recite it. This is her own unrehearsed performance).


As soon as she started talking like that yesterday, I began preparing mentally for a croup attack in the middle of the night. This has always been a sure warning before. Thankfully, however, it would appear that as well as being on the very brink of no longer having a three-year-old, I have also passed the threshold into a world where neither of my children is young enough to have croup. That is definitely a plus. Now if people could just grow out of the need to have their noses tended to every thirty-five seconds or so.



This is one of those school days that doesn't feel particularly stressful, but it is taking way, way longer than ordinary. LT is just dawdling along, taking about three hours to do about an hour's worth of work. Hey, if he wants to be at the kitchen table doing school all day, I suppose that's up to him... at least that's my current mood. However, if he continues squeaking his chair I may send him to someone else's kitchen table to do it. ahem. He has just asked me to turn off my music (goodbye, Roxette) because it is "a great distraction." "Great" as in "large," as in some Regency-era novel. Good heavens, this is really real; my son talks like a homeschooler.

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Wednesday, September 24, 2003

strange day

My body perplexes me. Even more perplexing is the link (or lack thereof) between my body and my brain. I ate too much yesterday, in spite of all my resolutions, and yet today I have magically shed the three pounds that I had put back on over the weekend. This behavior definitely indicates water shifting around, right? But WHY? I am so befuddled by the whole thing. Anyway, I'm back at 175, where I was at the end of last week. I'm wearing the Too Small Jeans and a little t-shirt and feeling just OK about the way I look -- whereas, over the weekend, when I was carrying around three extra pounds according to our scale, I felt like the hottest thing on two legs. Like I said, perplexing. I'm sorry I haven't lost more, but I really can't blame anything but my lack of discipline for that, and I'm just glad I haven't gained. MUST WALK. MUST RESIST. Yesterday I was pretty well-behaved food-wise, until we went to the valley in the evening to buy a birthday present for a friend, and we took the kids to Baskin-Robbins. A curse on that place, that's all I can say. Any establishment that makes mint-chocolate-chip milkshakes should just be shut down by the Weight Police. At least I only got a small.



My sinus whatever thing has subsided into a vicious runny nose. No pain! No headache! No nasty about-to-die feelings, just a box-of-kleenex-a-day runny nose punctuated by occasional violent, extremely repetitious sneezing fits. So that's a positive change. I am wondering if I have allergies. I have resisted having allergies my whole life -- I am not one of those people who seemingly thrives emotionally on the weakness implied by having an immune system which reacts to the wrong things. But through this whole episode I've not had a touch of fever... so I'm wondering. My mother has "hay fever" to a staggering degree. I hope I'm not headed for that. [achoo!]



Meanwhile, as an undercurrent to this whole morning, there's a huge sadness. A woman I've known my whole life -- in typical small-town fashion, she is: the daughter of my grandmother's boss, the wife of a man on my husband's destruction derby team, the sister-in-law of one of T's work buddies and one of my friends, a member of a past "pregnancy club" when it seemed like every female I knew was pregnant including myself, and someone whose sister and brother I went to school with -- was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year. It spread, and last week she started having headaches; a scan yesterday showed tumors in her brain; last night she stopped breathing and now she is on life support, not expected to survive. It is really hard to see this happening. Watching someone face eternity is a hugely serious experience even when I have faith and confidence about the person's eternal state -- which is not the case here. And also, just as hard to deal with is the thought of this woman's daughter, who is a few months older than my middle daughter would have been had she lived, growing up without a mother. And not just as a little girl and a teenager -- I have only fully come to understand the importance of my mother as I've become an adult and a mother myself. My heart aches for the woman this little girl will become, having her own children and not having her mom there to experience the strengthened bond between the two of them that that brings. OK, now I'm getting all maudlin and teary... gonna stop and go sneeze some more. Hug your mom today.

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Tuesday, September 23, 2003

sinus hell

In some ways today is really pretty lame. For a week and a half I have felt all sinusy and gross, and I am hoping that today is kind of a last-hurrah for that, as it's worse than it's been to date (this happened with morning sickness -- setting an unfortunate precedent, I fear, because since that time, I always expect any ailment to go away the day after it gets really bad, and I'm often disappointed). I have felt like doing absolutely nothing all day. We got through school, without enthusiasm on any side, to tell the truth. Then, I sat. And sat. And filled out a stupid survey. And sat some more, looking around at the wreckage of my living room like I had no control over it at all. Finally, I struggled upright, ate some leftovers from last night (yummy -- chicken cacciatore, I haven't made that in ages), and tidied up just a bit, while on the phone with T, who pretty much told me it was OK if I didn't do a whole lot. At least I hope that's what he said... I'm in kind of a fog. Don't you hate it when you bend over and your head just feels like it's going to explode all of a sudden? ouch.


But all is not lost. The kids are having a nice, fun day -- they just got done having a water fight in the front yard, where it is still way over ninety degrees. (hello, God, it's autumn now, just thought I'd remind you). They're being good and cooperative. And I feel like Silas Marner, looking at my lovely stack of twelve-packs of diet Cherry Coke. And the house isn't so bad, although I really do need to do something about the kitchen floor. Not now, though. Anyway, things could be a whole lot worse than they are.


With that, I'm going to go put up my feet and read something, I think. mmm. yes.

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a long (and often idiotic) survey

do you type really fast? I would say that I type pretty fast, but not really fast.

does it annoy people who are around you (like in the library)? I almost never type around other people.

do you/did you like high school? I liked learning. I liked being with my few friends. The rest of high school pretty much sucked.

how old are you? 28

do you know anyone who has the same birthday as you? if so name them There was a boy in my freshman English class who was born ten minutes before me (except he was actually born 2 hours and 10 minutes before me, because he was born in Colorado). Um, I think there are a few others I know but I'm blanking on them.

favorite pen color I don't care, black or blue is fine.

what word do you constantly misspell when typing? I don't misspell. I do make a lot of typos but generally I correct them.

do you have trees in your yard? Yes, lots.

name one comedian that everyone thinks is funny but you absolutely cannot stand Um, I don't watch comedians. Sorry.

name one director you hate and tell why I am not good at this kind of question. There are movies I like and movies I don't; I don't generally pay attention to who directs them.

do you like tim burton? I am not sure I've ever seen anything he directed.

what annoys you more than anything? a mosquito whining around my ear at night.

tell me about the weirdest pair of socks you own I do not own weird socks.

if you woke up tomorrow morning as the opposite sex, what would you do first? Shave.

did you read fear street books? um, no, these were after my time.

how about sweet valley high? only when forced to.

babysitter's club? the boxcar children? babysitter's club, I read a couple of in junior high. I didn't read any Boxcar Children books until I had children of my own.

goosebumps? Are you kidding? Kids I babysat read Goosebumps books.

favorite show on nickelodeon (can be from the late 80's/early 90's when nick was good) The Donna Reed Show.

did you watch are you afraid of the dark? Ask me if I've heard of this and the answer would be the same: no.

did zeebo the clown scare you? who?

where do you vacation every summer? Morro Bay

do you like the beach? Yes

do you tan or burn easily? I will burn if I'm not careful. Then I tan afterward.

do you make up your own words and lingo? if so tell me about it not really.

do you eat lots of tv dinners? I haven't eaten a TV dinner in about 20 years.

favorite hot pocket flavor Um, I wouldn't know. I think I ate one of these once but I don't know what was in it.

if you could make one celebrity magically disappear, who would it be? Oh, there are many. Too many to list.

how is life treating you? just dandy

do people like you? some do. Most don't, I think.

what do you think it is that makes the "popular" people popular? Believe it or not I have dedicated lots of serious thought to this over the years. To an extent, it's obvious: conformity (even if that means conforming via obvious non-conformity), the right clothes, the right look. But there's something more to it -- something I've never been able to put my finger on. We all know people from our school experience who weren't really ugly, weren't stupid, yet even if you put them in the clothes of the moment and gave them the right haircut and stuff, still, they wouldn't be It. It's really scary that there's an environment to which we are all expected to subject our children (although not all of us do!) where they can be made miserable so easily just because they don't have that magical elusive Something.

what do you wear the most: jeans, cords, dickies, khakis, skirts, or shorts? Um, probably jeans, followed by shorts.

are you using a pc or mac? an antiquated Pleistocene-era PC

do you like chunky peanut butter? Yes. But we don't buy it often because my daughter hates it. It has only recently occurred to me that I could buy both.

what amazes you about the opposite sex? The fact that they can be so hung up on cars. It's a CAR. It's not a friend or a loved one or even anything alive like a horse or a pet. But you would never know it based on typical male behavior. It doesn't bother me, it's just totally foreign to me.

are you in love with anyone? Yep.

do you like anyone? I like lots of people! ;-) (if no other question in this survey did so, that right there proves that this was written by someone born after 1986, no?)

if so, who see above

why do you like them/why are you in love with them? Oh dear. Do you have all day? My husband is my other half, the completion of me. He is the one person I can always trust to be on my side, he knows me inside and out, stands by me no matter what, sees the beauty in me that everyone else misses, and holds my soul in the palms of his hands. Plus, he has really sexy arms. ;-)

favorite cereal Grape-Nuts.

name a movie that makes you cry Lots of movies make me cry. Especially, and this is kind of goofy, movies with scenes where a lot of people are emotional all at once. Like the end of Mr. Holland's Opus or even the end of, God forbid, SpaceCamp. But also tender scenes -- like when Kathleen Kelly is closing her store for the last time and remembering twirling with her mother. That one gets me every time.

what's something you like about the opposite sex, physically, that your friends think is odd? I don't know if my friends think it's odd, but they might. Arms. mmm. wrists.

is it true that only the good die young? This is an idiotic question.

if so, are you going to live forever or die soon? see above.

do you live for today? Not entirely. I enjoy today as much as I can, and get out of it whatever I can (well, except the days when I spend all my time washing dishes, folding laundry, and sitting in front of the computer), but I have to live for the future or when the future came I'd be very sorry I hadn't.

how fast can you run? I used to be able to run faster than average, with decent endurance, but nothing spectacular. I haven't run much in the last ten years. I walk extremely fast, though. I hate getting behind slow people walking, even more than I hate getting behind slow people driving.

favorite band from the 60's/70's Simon and Garfunkel.

have any of your friends had kids as teenagers? not my close friends, but school acquaintances, yes. (heck, my MOM was a teenager when she had my brother. But she was married. She was 19. And I had my first baby at 21.)

did they finish high school? Yep.

favorite 80's television show "Who's The Boss?"

were you even born in the 80's? NO! Crap! I am ancient!

what year? 1974

have you ever taught a little kid a curse word? when I was about 13 I did

if so which one was it? I don't remember

do you think little boys are horrendously ill behaved? Little boys vary, just like all people. There are even, believe it or not, teenage boys who don't wear low-rise ill-fitting pants. I know, I know, but really, it's true.

have you ever thrown anything at a moving car? if so, what? No. But in high school, my best friend, on her last day before moving away, threw a rock at a boy on the bus. She lived with me, and we were of course together at the time, having just gotten off the bus to go home. She was on the ground, he was in the bus, and it was moving away. She broke the back window of the bus, because she failed to account properly for the bus's forward motion when she threw the rock. Oops. The boy really deserved it, too.

name a villian in a movie that scared you when you were a kid it's a TV show, not a movie, but that guy with the mask in that episode of Little House On The Prairie where the girl gets raped -- that totally freaked me out. I had nightmares about that guy for YEARS.

have you seen the original friday the thirteenth? nope. But I did see the first few Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

the original chucky? nope

the original halloween? nope

what's your favorite channel? I do not watch TV. Really. I have a television, but no antenna or cable is attached to it; it is simply a monitor for the DVD player and the VCR. So I am FREE from all this crap, and I do NOT HAVE A FAVORITE CHANNEL. Although sometimes I miss PBS, for the kids' shows.

what do you say when you stub your toe off of the corner of the coffee table? I repeat OW a lot. Sometimes I say "crap".

what's the highest thing you've ever jumped off of and landed unharmed? this is kind of a goofy question. Um, when I was little we used to suspend ourselves from our porch railing (we being my brother and myself) and drop. I'd guess it was about six feet from our feet to the ground.

does it snow where you live? sometimes.

if yes, do you go sled riding? we don't get that much snow. And I don't own a sled.

have you ever used anything weird, like a frisbee or a trashcan lid, for a sled? no, but I've used an old car hood. And of course tractor inner tubes. Who doesn't?

how many people do you know who were born in november? Um, right offhand I can think of three.

what month has the most people you know born in it? Um, maybe September.

do holidays make you festive? To a degree, yes.

magazines you subscribe to None, but my husband buys "Sky and Telescope" every month.

do you read the supermarket tabloids? Since there's usually nothing else for my eyes to rest on in the supermarket line, I read the headlines and laugh.

have you ever smashed somebody's halloween pumpkin? um, no. Again with the weird questions.

ever had yours smashed? Also no.

do you celebrate christmas? Yes.

if not, do you still watch "how the grinch stole christmas" when it comes on television? See above re:television.

do you think the grinch movie starring jim carrey was a waste of money? Probably, but I never saw it.

ever had a hot teacher? I had crushes on a few teachers but I wouldn't say they were "hot".

if yes, did you flirt with him/her? No. I just tried to avoid blushing when they spoke to me, and when I spoke to them.

how do you treat people you are attracted to? (this is not a stupid question; some people are immature and are mean to those they like) I think I was pretty stupid around them, back in the day.

what do you want for your birthday this year? A 100-disc CD changer, a new stereo receiver unit, and Barnes and Noble gift certificates.

have you ever egged somebody's house? Nope

has someone ever egged yours? No, but our car got TP'd and shaving-creamed once.

do we all go a little mad sometimes? Um, probably.

what pisses you off more than anything in the world? Abortion.

do you still go trick or treating? No

do you believe in santa claus? No

have you ever worked in a supermarket? No

how about a restaurant? Yes, several

if yes, do you agree with me when i say that those are the two worst establishments to work in? Actually, I liked working in restaurants. I thought it was fun.

what color is your bedspread? um, blue, with flowers.

do your eyes change colors? nope, but they have freckles.

do you believe that we walked on the moon? yes

do you live by yourself? no

have you ever gotten a computer virus? years and years ago, before Internet, from a floppy disk my brother-in-law used on our computer.

if so, what was it and how did you get rid of it? My brother-in-law fixed it.

describe your junior high/middle school gym teacher Well, I had two different ones in junior high (both men) and two in high school (both women). They were pretty boring as far as description goes. 7th grade: soft kind of nice man I'd known my whole life. 8th grade: this guy looked like the drawings of Neanderthal Man in our school books, but he was really nice; I remember at some school talent show he dressed up as one of the guys in ZZ Top and did a lip-synch thing. High school #1: skinny, not young. She had been my mother's PE teacher as well. Everyone says she's a lesbian but I know her personally and she's not. High school #2: buxom, feminine, ag-oriented. She was nicer to the popular girls than to the unpopular ones, which really bothers me in a teacher, but overall she was a good teacher.

how do you react when someone is talking to you --up in your face-- and they have really bad breath? as subtly as possible.

what was your first date like? Um, my parents took us and dropped us off at the theater in the next town over. We watched "Look Who's Talking". If I remember correctly my best friend was also there. She pretended to time us kissing (my first real kiss). I was in ninth grade.

did you go/are you going to the prom? Yes, I did.

if you've already gone, was it good or bad? explain why It sucked. My date was a dolt.

do you get uneasy when you see a person of a different color than you walking down the same street as you in the middle of the night? I generally do not walk down the street in the middle of the night, and I live in a town that is 99% caucasian, so I don't have this experience. However, when I'm in the city at night, I'm wary of almost everyone, regardless of pigmentation levels.

if yes, do you think that makes you racist? n/a

are you a vegetarian? nope

how about vegan? see above

if no to both, do you think you could be? only if absolutely necessary.

have you ever given up a certain type of food? if so, what was it and why did you do it? For one summer in high school I stopped eating meat, to lose weight, because I always ate too much meat.

spit out a random song lyric for me. make sure you tell me the name of the song and who sings it! I have Simon and Garfunkel on the brain thanks to a question up there, so here goes: "in the halo of a streetlamp, I turned my collar to the cold and damp, when my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light that split the night" -- Sound of Silence

who does the chores around your house? We all have various chores. Mostly the kids and me, since we're the ones home all day.

what movie could you watch a million times and never get tired of? Probably none, really, but Pride and Prejudice is probably the closest to this.

what movie have you watched a million times, and you still laugh at the jokes? do you know that to watch a movie a million times would take 228 years of constant watching for a 2-hour movie? I don't think anyone would be laughing at jokes after 228 years. But that scene in Sleepless in Seattle when the men are making fun of the way the woman talks about a movie -- that one hasn't failed yet...)

what movie do you hope you never see again? there are many, I'm sure, but I can't think of one offhand.

have you ever hugged a stuffed animal or pillow and pretended that it was your significant other, or someone you had a crush on, and then someone caught you talking to it, and stroking its soft, fuzzy fur, and laughed at you and told the whole school? speaking of stupid questions... no.

do you drive? Yes

if so, do you like to drive at night or in the day time? I like driving at night if there's not a lot of oncoming traffic; the headlights bother my eyes after a while.

has anyone ever called you a bitch? Yes, a long time ago.

has anyone ever called you an asshole? Probably

are you a bitch/asshole? No.

what's the first thing you do when you get home from school/work? I don't go to school/work.

favorite pop tart flavor The ONLY pop tarts I like are strawberry ones WITHOUT frosting. That frosting stuff is terrifying.

do you play any musical instruments? Yes, I play the piano and the flute.

have you ever built a snowman? Yes

did you cry when it melted, or when the kid next door knocked its head off with a shovel? "the kid next door" is a pair of ladies who are probably in their late 80's; they don't do a lot of snowman vandalism. And no, I didn't cry when it melted.

what's your religion? Christian

do you try to force it on other people? sigh. It is impossible to force religion on ANYONE, we all have the ability and right to decide things for ourselves. I occasionally tell people what I believe and why. But even if I could, I wouldn't force it on anyone; if it were possible to do so, it would fully negate the value of any beliefs at all.

do you knock on people's doors at 7 a.m. on saturdays, trying to give them a pamphlet and tell them about the lord, or ask random people at the mall if they’ve been saved, yet you think that doesn’t count as forcing religion, you son of a bitch? I do not do these things. People who do are annoying to the general populace. However, they're not forcing. See above.

have you ever been flipping channels late at night and caught a glimpse of some porn on skinemax? see above re:television.

if so, did you watch it? don't say no, i know you did n/a

what's the code word or phrase you and your friends use for the word SEX? um, sex. Sorry to disappoint you, but we're adults.

is sex an uncomfortable topic for you? Not in the right company.

what is the one thing in the world that just looking at it makes you vomit, or come close to it? I can't think of anything genuine offhand. In a previous life I would have put something rude and bitter here. But I'm not like that now. ;)

when other people vomit, does it make you sick? Are you kidding? I'm a mother. I can change puky clothes, wipe puky faces, tables, and chairs, and then resume eating my own meal. Or if T is dealing with the mess, I can eat right through the whole thing.

do your clothes match? generally I try to make sure they don't clash.

what are you wearing right now? a pair of cheezy overall shorts, too short for someone built like me. I'm not going out of the house in this, I just got tired of being in my jammies every day for hours, so I resolved to start getting dressed as soon as I got out of bed. And this was the first thing I pulled out of my drawer this morning.

did you ever have those fisher price roller skates that go over top of your shoes? No, but I had a pair of the roller-rink kind.

did you have a bike with a banana seat? Yes

could you ride it? Yes

have you lived in the same house your entire life? No. have lived in about 15 different houses -- only two (on the same property) since I got married though.

what’s the weirdest thing you’ve lived next to? hmm. I lived next to a wrecking yard once, and I lived in an apartment above the shop at a sand and gravel plant. Most people would probably think that was the weirdest place. Especially since it is next to a man-made pond on a creek about a mile down from the local sewage treatment facility, and your average person from my town has the mistaken idea that that pond has something to do with the sewer. But it doesn't.

who is the ugliest person you’ve ever seen? This is a mean question. I'm not gonna answer it.

do you watch talk shows? see above re:television.

do you think miss cleo is full of shit? who the heck is miss cleo?

if not, have you called her and wasted your money, you idiot? huh?

what are your thoughts on keeping animals in captivity? It's very useful in zoos. Most of us would never see most of those animals live and in person if they weren't in a zoo. And I have no problem with domesticated animals either.

what do you think of all the “superstores” that are popping up everywhere? (super walmart, super k-mart, super target)? They're very convenient. (there are super Targets?). But I've never been in one, unfortunately.

what do you think of pop music? Some of it is OK, especially from the 80's.

tell me something i don’t know In France, they say that ducks say "Couin", and roosters say "Co-co-ri-co!"

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Sunday, September 21, 2003

stupid spam and diet cherry coke

Obviously spammers must expect that any recipient of their glurge who actually takes it seriously and replies will be a little low on gray matter, or at least seriously naïve, and they profit from that without being bothered by it. But exactly how stupid do they think people can be? Here's a spam I got just a few minutes ago (you can click on it to view it larger; it'll open in a new window):

Look, I don't know how to say this without coming across all Ugly-American and everything, but for crying out loud, if you're going to attempt credit-card fraud against people in the U.S. or other English-speaking nations, it might be a good idea to learn freaking English. Otherwise absolutely nobody, not even some really nice naïve elderly person who just gave her social security number, credit card number, and physical address to that nice-sounding young boy on the phone who was entering her in a contest to win a timeshare in Alaska, is going to fall for your idiotic scheme. Cripes.


As an aside, why, I wonder, are the elderly particularly vulnerable to stuff like that? It sounds so awful to say that... and yet they are -- not just to fraud schemes either; they seem particularly gullible about a lot of things. Maybe it's because they are from a more trusting time. I've no idea. In every other way they are pretty reliably intelligent, but even my smart, spunky, feisty grandmother who brought up seven kids on a shoestring and worked every day from the time her youngest flew the nest (and lots before that too) till she had her hip replaced at 75 repeats that stupid ball-pit story like she heard it from God himself. I don't get it.


My almost-4-year-old daughter has discovered the remote control. She is giddy with the glee of putting in Homecoming (that Showtime movie based on the book by Cynthia Voigt; we have it on video) and watching everyone run around in fast-forward and rewind. It sounds goofy until I remember how much giddy enjoyment I (at a considerably later age, considering that pretty much nobody but millionaires owned VCRs when I was 3) got from doing the same thing with music videos recorded off TV, and movies like Top Gun (the sex scene in that one was especially funny on rewind or FF. In fact, now that I think of it, I would probably still think so now).


The boys should be home anytime from their trip to southern CA. I really hope they're bringing me some diet Cherry Coke. For some idiotic reason, the northern CA bottler doesn't manufacture it, but the southern CA one does. T and I didn't even know it existed till this summer. Ever since we got our 2-(24-)pack-a-week Diet Coke habit -- well, even before that, since we liked Diet Coke for a long time before we could afford an addiction -- we have spent considerable time wishing there was such a thing. Then we were in Morro Bay over the summer, and we literally could not believe our eyes at first when we saw THE GRAIL -- Diet Cherry Coke in 12-packs. We bought three 12-packs on the spot, loved it, and rejoiced that the Powers the Be at Coca-Cola had finally gotten the idea and started making it. Then we got home and there was no diet Cherry Coke here. We had been tricked -- teased! After extensive internet research I unearthed the truth: Diet Cherry Coke has actually existed for a long time, it's just that the Communists in northern California have been keeping it from us. I actually called the Northern CA bottler and was further led on by their spokesperson who said (in July) that they were planning to start producing Diet Cherry Coke within the month. She must have just said that to keep me from bombing their facility, because hello, it's September now, and still no diet Cherry Coke in our local stores. But T and LT have just spent 18 hours below the Grapevine, which is even further south than Morro Bay, and hence must be under the direct patronage of the good guys. Please please let them have remembered on time, before they passed back up into the diet cherry wasteland.


On that note, I have sat long enough and should really wash the dishes so that T doesn't take one look at the kitchen and say, "You spent the entire time I was gone chatting with Jenn and hanging out at Diaryland, didn't you." Which would not be entirely true. ahem.


* * * * * * * * ULTRA MEGA IMPORTANT DIET CHERRY COKE UPDATE * * * * * * * *

9:30 PM


I have the best husband in the world. Sorry ladies, you can stop looking, the perfect man is married. I knew that even BEFORE he came home with six 12-packs of diet cherry coke for me (all they had at Ralph's in Bakersfield). But it was just strongly reinforced. He brought me two on a bed of ice, as an homage to the way he used to put Peach Snapple in my car while I was at work, when we were dating. He would buy up every bottle of it they had in our small town -- which in the early 90's wasn't much as Snapple wasn't as big a deal yet then as it is now -- and put them by to leave for me a few at a time.


My regular diet Coke cans are looking at me resentfully. They'll just have to learn to share me for the next seventy-two cans' worth.

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Saturday, September 20, 2003

all by my little lonesome self

Well, the boys are off on their San Diego adventure, and we girls had our nice dinner out as planned. It was nice; C was far more ladylike than you might expect a girl of almost-4 to be; the food was good; several people stopped by our table to tell C how lovely she looked in her pretty dress. And she did look very pretty. We had gone out shopping (already beginning with the mother-daughter shopping trips! ;-) earlier today, and I bought her some white dress shoes since she had none to fit her. Then we came home and relaxed for a while before going to the video store and then to our dinner. After we got home we got into our jammies and popped popcorn (I am amazed at how much she ate!) and watched a cute video of a ballet production of several of Beatrix Potter's stories. We purposefully got a video that we knew her brother would not like, and sure enough, when they called from their motel room (they are staying at the same one where T and I spent the last two nights of our honeymoon trip), and he asked what video he heard playing in the background, he was just plain disgusted. He's not much on ballet or Beatrix Potter. Anyway, C crashed on the couch just as the video was getting over, and I'm sitting here starting to feel lonely.


I am vacillating between wanting to stay up late and watch the DVD I rented for myself, and wanting to go fall unconscious on my bed, hogging the whole thing which is my sole comfort in having to have it all to myself. Darnit, it's a $2.50 DVD (Two Weeks Notice) and I know if I put it off till tomorrow night (the store's closed Sundays so no videos are due that day) it won't get watched. Really I don't have to go to early service at church tomorrow, although C loves her Sunday School class so she should get to go. I, on the other hand, do not love any of the adult Sunday School classes that are available, so I tend to feel at loose ends during the first service if I don't have nursery duty or whatever. But most likely, we'll go, which means I should be up at 7:30 so as to be ready to leave the house at 8:30. Which means starting a movie at 10:30 would be lunacy. Look at me talking myself into wasting that $2.50! Bad me! (maybe, just maybe, T will want to watch it with me tomorrow evening... right... when he has to get up at 5 the next morning and he'll have been driving all afternoon...). sigh.


YAWN. I am definitely leaning toward the unconsciousness-on-the-bed option. I am rapidly losing the ability to put a sentence together, even mentally, let alone in type. This is a boring enough post (please, if this is the first one of mine you've ever read, realize I'm not really this dull... pretty close, but not quite this dull...) without having it lapse into gibberish, which is about to start happening.

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Friday, September 19, 2003

nap, and the Friday Five

T shifted his work schedule today -- went in two hours early so he could get off two hours early as well -- and when he came home, he was going to take our trash to the dump. Both kids inexplicably wanted to go with him. As an aside, garbage time is one of those times I am SO glad to be a woman, married to a big manly man. It's his job, I don't have to go to the stinky smelly dump and throw bags of nasty trash into a hole or a huge dumpster or whatever they have set up for the purpose for that trip. Hey, I'll bear the children and do the cooking and cleaning up and child-teaching and nose-wiping and 2:30 a.m. tending and stuff, if he'll be the one to get up at five every weekday and go work his hiney off 40 minutes from home so that we can have a roof over our heads and food to eat and stuff like that... if he'll go to the dump too. That's the deal. Anyway, I digress. The kids both wanted to go with him, so I got an unexpected nap, which was just what I needed. I lay on the couch with two cans of diet Coke, two Advil, an Outlander book, my heating pad, my three pillows, a blanket, and a deep sense of pervading joy. I took the Advil with the first drink of diet Coke, and pretty much slammed the whole can right down; then I drank the second can slightly more slowly while I read for a while. Meanwhile my heating pad was not cooperating -- I'm not sure it was even reflecting my own body heat, let alone producing its own. Granted, it's a very old heating pad, and you know how they all say on that read-this-or-thou-shalt-surely-die warning label thingie that you should never lie on them? Well who pays any attention to that? Of course we've been lying on it for the entire nine years of our ownership of it (and I think we got it from my parents when they got a new one, so it was probably well-used before that also). Anyway, maybe there's a reason you're not supposed to do that; maybe they just sort of stop working after ten or twenty years of being laid upon. Who knew. I ignored it though, and figured I could sleep without the extra heat, but I'd snuggle my lower back up against it really nicely just in case it decided to do its job. Then just as I was about to drift off, I started getting this bizarre tingly-fingers feeling, and my heart rate acted a little funny. Now, in retrospect, I know that this was most likely just the effect of having drunk 24 oz of caffeinated soda just prior to lying down and attempting to sleep -- all that drug-induced energy had to go somewhere, so it was just kind of fizzling through my body looking for an outlet, is my thought. At the time, however, just on the verge of sleep (last night at this stage I had a long and detailed semi-dream about meeting Diana Gabaldon on a shuttle bus in Yosemite, for example), I was relatively certain that it was that heating pad seeking revenge for having been relentlessly laid down upon for so many years by slowly electrocuting me. Hey, I was on the verge of sleep, shut up.


At any rate, I was too tired to care, and I had such a nice long solid nap, so solid and long that I woke up with that dreadful slept-in-the-daytime feeling just as T and the kids arrived home. I consoled myself with another diet Coke and a chicken caesar salad, and everything looked so much brighter.


Tomorrow T and LT are heading for San Diego overnight, and C and I will be having a ladies' weekend in, for the most part. We'll play "dress-up princess" (in other words, she'll try on all the hand-me-downs I just got from my aunt for her, to see which ones will go in her drawers/closet and which ones will go in a box for next year), and I have made us a reservation at our favorite semi-fancy restaurant, where we'll wear nice dresses. This is to make the time special for us too, since we couldn't go with the boys on their Charger-sheet-metal pickup trip. I've been looking forward to it as much as T has been looking forward to acquiring his rear quarter skins, or whatever they're called.



Here's the Friday Five.


1. Who is your favorite singer/musician? Why?

I am awful at this question and I can never pick one person/group/artist. I like such a variety of music. If I had to pick one artist to listen to for the rest of my life, I'd probably pick, hmm, Mozart.



2. What one singer/musician can you not stand? Why?

I don't know any names, and one benefit of adulthood is that I don't have to listen to music I don't like, so I'm not highly qualified to answer this question. I don't like rap, I can say that for sure.



3. If your favorite singer wasn't in the music business, do you think you would still like him/her as a person?

This is a bit of a strange question. Liking someone as an artist doesn't imply liking him or her as a person to begin with. It would vary with the person.



4. Have you been to any concerts? If yes, who put on the best show?

n/a, never been to a concert. I have been to The Phantom of the Opera during its extended run in San Francisco a few years ago, and it was just incredible.



5. What are your thoughts on downloading free music online vs. purchasing albums? Do you feel the RIAA is right in its pursuit to stop people from dowloading free music?Well, I think this is not necessarily the artists talking. It's the recording industry, and they do have a lot to lose if people don't buy CDs. But I see them as a middle-man with a foot on the neck of the public, exploiting artists. If I were a famous artist right now, I'd cut my ties with the recording industry, offer my music for free or really cheap online, and give really awesome concerts that drew large crowds.

One possible solution as I see it would be for the artists to arrange to have pay-per-song downloading. This way you could get a CD you liked for $15, instead of one that has two songs you like and a dozen songs you're ambivalent about. I think that problem is the reason for a lot of the downloading that goes on -- I know it's been mine at times.

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3:00 a.m., can't sleep

This won't be a long entry; I remember with shame how I used to plague my friends by writing letters to them when I couldn't sleep which were so boring they could have been used as a form of torture. So I won't duplicate that here if I can help it. :)


I hate 2:30 a.m. That's always the hour when I wake up and have to pee and can't find a comfortable position to go back to sleep afterward; then C will wake from a bad dream or fall out of bed or both, and she'll want a drink of water along with a comforting. Tonight, to add to the general mood, LT came tottering out of his room and into the bathroom just as I was again trying to get back to sleep after tending to C. Now, he is NOT a night time person; he doesn't wake well and usually sleeps all night, although in his sleep, he generally looks like he's had a wrestling match with his blankets before beating them into submission. Anyway, his 2:30 wake-up call this morning was a bloody nose. He gets these with some frequency but they're never severe. So after I tended to him and got him back to bed, I decided to give up for the time being on going to sleep, and I turned on the computer. [g] The accursed 2:30 was redeemed -- the first thing I saw in my email was a notify-list notification from a friend of mine, and I read her journal to discover that she is expecting baby #2. Great news! And to add to it, another mutual friend of ours had left a comment with the URL to her journal; I haven't been in regular contact with this person and I've missed her, and I got to read all about her wedding last month which was another treat.


Now if only I had some chocolate. As I was trying to go to sleep, I calculated my calories yesterday and unless I'm mistaken, I was about 100 calories under my minimum yesterday. I'd love to be making up for that now with part of a Dairy Milk bar. mmm. Somehow a nice practical glass of nonfat milk doesn't have the same effect...

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Thursday, September 18, 2003

my driver's license speaks the truth

Well, when I weighed myself this morning the scale said 175 (actually the needle was hovering juuust to the left of the 175 mark, can't let those two ounces or so go unrecognized ;-). That's a net loss of 19 pounds in about 8 weeks. This is a banner day because now, for the first time since I was in high school, my driver's license is not lying about my weight. I last renewed it in December of 1998, and I weighed more than 175 at the time but I did NOT want to put down my true weight, no sirree. Hopefully before long my license will be lying again; this is well-timed since I have to renew it in three months.


The odd thing about having lost is that I don't feel like I lost, I feel like I just gained back all 19 pounds I've lost so far (cripes, what a nightmare!). I'm wearing jeans that were tight when I started this whole thing, and they're loose when I stand up, but sitting down, well, maybe they're not exactly tight, but they don't feel loose. I'm sure that Bloat Week is altering my perception a bit. I was never so aware of the in-between times of my menstrual cycle before. I've never been prone to the over-emotional aspects of PMS -- maybe one day right beforehand where I get crabby more easily than ordinarily, but none of the sobby b!+¢hy cross-made-of-fingers-backing-away stuff that men like to joke about (I was a really pleasant pregnant person too). And before I lost weight, I never noticed the physical aspects either, but I am noticing them now. Yuck.



LT is having what I jokingly refer to as a Ritalin day. He's a very active, wired little boy, and I'm sure if he were in a public school environment he'd be bringing home a lot of teacher notes about getting him checked for ATD. Fortunately, in our homeschool, we can lovingly harness his energy, refocus him, and of course send him outside to run back and forth around the yard for a while to get rid of some of the excess energy before going on with schoolwork (when he's older he'll split wood). We are about to reach that point. He's practically vibrating. We could power our small town with his little dynamo of a body, I think, if we could just figure out how. And he hasn't even had any caffeine today.

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Wednesday, September 17, 2003

things are improving

OK, I'm feeling a little better now. I've paid bills (including a lot for lab work I had done back in May, and I barely refrained from writing snide comments on the statements, but it's not the lab's fault my insurance sucks -- seriously, I am unsure why their offices have never been car-bombed...), done my Bible study for tonight, helped LT do his Bible study for tonight, and (key to my current sense of contentment) made myself a Nescafé Frothé beverage. These are probably the be-all and end-all of cheezy instant coffee-sorta-drinks. But really, for so little effort -- no grinding, no filling, no filtering, no espresso machine screaming, no mixing, no blending, NOTHING! you just heat water and add it to powder -- you get something that tastes actually decent and gives you that nice caffeine jolt. And for only 90 calories per serving.


Also, it is actually a little bit cold in my house. This is my second-favorite day of the season -- the day when it feels too cool for shorts and bare feet in the house, and I go put on a sweatshirt and long pants and socks. My very favorite day of this season (counted as the time between Labor Day and Thanksgiving; OK, so I set up my own seasons, so sue me) is whatever day on which we build the first fire of the year. Extra bonus points if that day happens to be foggy or gray or even (bliss!) pouring down rain. Mmm, Curled-Up-With-Jane-Eyre-Under-A-Blanket-With-Hot-Beverage kind of weather. I can't wait. Summer can't last forever.

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Tuesday, September 16, 2003

bleak and gray... Fresno will do that to you...

yuck. What a day. I had to go to Fresno again. I swear, if you ever want to feel thoroughly stressed out, pick yourself three or four places you have to go on Blackstone Avenue, and then go to them during lunch hours. It's not necessary to space them out too much -- but let's say you have to get on and off the freeway twice, and drive at least two major lights' worth. If, I dunno, you have on a holter monitor and your doctor says you have to find out what happens to you under stress, I can personally guarantee that this will do far better than a treadmill would. Bonus points for adding in two wonderful but energetic and hungry children; bonus points also for spending more than you'd planned to spend buying supplies, food, decorations, and favors for a 4th birthday party, as well as a handful of school supplies.


Anyway. Today was not SO awful. Really it wasn't. But I just hate, hate, hate having an agenda and a limited time in any city, because things will go against you. I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the contrast in per-capita suicide rates between small-town people and city dwellers. I have felt so gray and tired all afternoon that in trying to fiddle with a new template idea, all I could come up with was this bleak plain gray, black, white, and navy thing. I'll try again tomorrow. sigh.

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Monday, September 15, 2003

good school day

We had a really good school day today. I was looking for gaps in LT's math knowledge so far by going over chapter tests in a second-grade book, and found that he knew how to do everything in Chapter 3 except for rounding. So we started on rounding today, and had a really good, fun, informative discussion. He learned a lot without getting that "this is school, I dislike school, therefore I will dislike this no matter what" kind of attitude. Then instead of a reading comprehension worksheet, I started teaching him how to use the Internet for research. I asked him what he wanted to look up; first it was dinosaurs. He wanted to find a place to see dinosaur skeletons etc. in California. So we learned a great deal about the Brea tar pits; he even saw practical application for addition as he calculated how much we would have to spend to get our family into the museum. We added this to our list of places we want to visit. There are a lot of problems with California but really, it is a wonderful state to live in the middle of from an educational perspective. There are so many varied things we can see in a day or cheap weekend trip. Every major landform except a jungle, within half a day's drive. Both the highest and the lowest places in the continental United States; huge metropolitan areas as well as dozens and dozens of out-of-the-way small towns, and open spaces that go on for hours. And wow, it looks like our daily high temperature will get down below 90 just in time for the first day of fall! ;-) (OK, so it's definitely not perfect).


Anyway. After we looked up dinosaur stuff (I'd completely forgotten I was talking about school; had you?), he wanted to see if we could find bird calls for local birds. And boy, could we -- there are a lot of really neat sites. Here's one of our favorites: Bird Watchers' Digest's audio pages. Really useful and interesting. What on earth did we do before the Internet?


I'm back to my disciplined self regarding diet. Somehow, in spite of the fact that this is Bloat Week, and that I ate like I was meant to be having a growth spurt over the weekend, I weigh the same this morning as I did last Friday, and I'm wearing The Too Small Jeans again today. I will take that, with thanks, as special grace from God, and endeavor to keep things from going downhill (or up-scale as the case may be) from here on out. Tonight I'll have a good start -- I have chorus rehearsal and that means a walk there and back.



If T wins the ebay auction he's bidding on right now (which is likely, since the guy wants to sell these car parts to someone who will pick them up, rather than having them shipped), he'll be driving down to San Diego this weekend. We were trying to figure out how we'd manage it exactly; he has two trucks, but one has too short a bed (and too expensive a 4wd setup and tires) to be useful on this trip, and one is out of commission until he finishes rebuilding it. So he will be borrowing a friend's truck; the four of us won't fit in it; he and I can't go on our own because our overnight sitters (my parents) are, to put it nicely, a bit grandkidded-out after this last weekend and I don't want to foist my two on them for an overnight two weekends in a row; the friend who owns the truck can't go because he teaches a class at church on Sunday. Finally he figured out that if he wins, he'll take our son, which is perfect. They'll have a fantastic father-son trip, and C and I will have a girls' night in. I'm actually looking forward to it.



We went yard-sailing ;) over the weekend and bought a SORRY! game. LT is now fully obsessed with it. When nobody will play it with him (which is not often; I like it a lot better than Candyland and Monopoly, and I'm not yet as tired of it as I am of UNO; however, I do have stuff to do, like, for example, read diaryland diaries and update mine ;), he sits and plays for two players by himself. There are a lot of worse things he could spend his time doing -- not that he knows about any of those yet...

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Sunday, September 14, 2003

weight, discouragement, and anticipation

This weekend my eating sucked. This will teach me to say it's easy! I slacked, and while I didn't eat quite like I used to, I certainly didn't count the calories and I know I was a bad, bad girl. Tomorrow is a new day (what a totally novel concept; I should trademark that, don't you think?) and I will be back to it. I am not terribly discouraged. I just scared myself a little because I saw how easy it might be to go back to my old ways. Until Friday night I had thought it would be actually difficult. Now I've learned my lesson and I'll really be on my guard.

My digestive system is not happy with me, either. Ever since my big dinner on Friday night I have been uncomfortable. Last night instead of dinner I bought a bag of dried apricots, which, let's just say, have always given me a fresh start in the past, intestinally speaking. Didn't work this time. I refuse to resort to prunes, I just won't; I hate the things. I'll just drink a lot of water and watch my fiber intake.

The good news is that the scale still said the same thing this morning that it said on Friday morning. I'll stop kidding around, anyone who reads this who knows me personally will just have to be polite and not bring it up, and what's it matter to the people who don't know me? My starting weight was 194. Now I'm at 176 and my goal weight is 150. As previously stated I am 5' 8 1/2" tall; according to standard weight charts I should weigh between 126 and 154 pounds. There, now you know, and the great thing is, I can't see you pointing your fingers and laughing, or hear your gasps of disgust, or whatever. So go ahead. You won't bother me.



I really don't have anything interesting going on except for my weight saga. I've been doing some web design work, a bit of reading, teaching, keeping house... nothing very interesting. Oh, and I've fallen in love with another piece of property. I hate when I do this. We are looking at buying/building our first house next year, except that with the financial stuff we're doing right now we could shift things around and do it now if the right place were available at the right price. For at least the three or four months I've been looking, there's been a listing on our local board of realtors' website for some bare land at a good price, and yesterday I drove out and looked at it, and I'm totally infatuated. A dirt road, which I love and other people hate, which works out well in a lot of ways. Not too many neighbors. Good location regarding T's work commute. Snow in winter but not too much snow. A road that is perfect for a morning or evening walk. Woods. Power not too far away. Now we are waiting to hear back from a realtor -- going to try to wrangle the truth out of him about why it's been on the market for a while at this excellent price. Is it just the dirt road and the brushing that needs to be done, or is there some deep dark secret, like, for example, you have to dig down 400 feet to hit water and then it's sulfurous? In all likelihood nothing will come of it. Which is why I'm kicking myself for getting so wrapped up in the idea of living there.

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Saturday, September 13, 2003

Shopping

My parents invited our kids to spend the night tonight, so T and I took advantage of our loneliness (the house is sure quiet without them in it!) to go to dinner and then go to the valley to do some shopping. Dinner was good. I got too full. I am inclined to skip breakfast to help atone for it, and I wish I'd had time for a good walk tonight. At least we walked fast in the mall instead of strolling. ;-) C's birthday is at the end of September, and we bought her the most beautiful dress tonight. It makes me wish the birthday was tomorrow instead. It's black velvet with a purple taffeta skirt and a purple organdy overskirt with black polka dots. It has a little sash with a rosette. Just lovely. She is going to go all giddy when she opens it. We also bought her a purple sweater (purple is really her color) with flowers. We originally had planned to get her jeans and a sweater. It is awful trying to find just plain jeans without flared legs (tacky tacky tacky. I'm really sorry, girls, but the 70's should have stayed dead) for little girls, though. The only ones they had at Sears were Land's End brand which meant $$$. We were thinking about getting them anyway but then we saw the dress and knew that we had to have it for her. If my Snappy unit weren't on the fritz again I'd take a picture of it. I just looked on Sears' website and they don't have their kids' clothes on there so I can't just send a link.


We also bought me a pair of hiking boots. I haven't had a good pair in quite a while, and these were on one of those awesome sales at Big 5. It's interesting and nice -- I am down half a shoe size. I really do NOT think this is from losing weight. When I got pregnant with my first child, I wore a size 8 1/2, as I had since junior high. By the time he was born, I was in a size 9 and they never shrank back, even though I weighed less a month after he was born than I had when he was conceived (it didn't last, though). But lately I've been noticing that my size 9 shoes are loose, so when I tried on the boots tonight, I tried on an 8 1/2 first and it fit fine. yay! It just sounds so much nicer to say I wear an 8 1/2 than a 9.


As usual we got home later than we wanted to. We didn't expect much different, though, since we didn't even leave town till around seven. We came home to the world's cutest message on our answering machine, from our son. I am going to find a way to permanently save it so that when he is 25 years old and living on his own and married and maybe giving me grandchildren, I can play it back and have his seven-year-old self back, hoping that I have "a good sleep"....

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Friday, September 12, 2003

mostly about weight loss

I weighed this morning and I was another pound down; I have reached -18. I have given up trying to predict what my body will do (after losing 11 pounds in two weeks and then taking the next four weeks to lose the next 6 pounds) but it is nice that the trend is overall downward. The funny thing is, I think maybe I was "starving" my system before, because on the day after I splurged a bit on a dinner out and probably ate 2200 calories that day instead of 1300-1400 like I usually aim for, that's when I broke through the plateau. But maybe the two things were totally unrelated. At any rate, I now feel a lot less bad if I'm at 1400 cals instead of 1300. Weighing what I do, and making it a point to get out for a good brisk walk at least a few times a week, I can do 1400 and still lose pretty well.



One thing that is totally different about this attempt to lose weight, from any of my previous attempts, is that I genuinely do not find it hard to make myself stay within my boundaries. If I plan a dinner out (having another tonight, on a date with T), I eat a little less early in the day, and I don't guilt myself as long as I am sensible and reasonable. And overall I'm not going around day to day wishing I could just eat what I want, and succumbing to temptation and ruining my motivation. I have times that I feel munchy, but I'm rarely very hungry; I'm satisfied on *far* less at mealtime than I used to be, and I don't feel hungry between meals either. At the risk of jinxing myself, I'll go ahead and say it -- the eating-less part is actually *easy*, which it's never been before when I've tried to lose; before I've always given up pretty early on. I don't know what the difference is but I like it.



Now I need to remind myself that exercise is important too. Last night's walk was the first one in a while. I really enjoy them while I'm doing them, and even the killer uphill at the end isn't ever as bad as I make it in my imagination. It just seems like the only time I have free to walk alone is generally when I am tired, or at any rate it seems more appealing to vege in front of the computer. sigh.


Yesterday I had a fat day. I told my husband this and he said that Kate Moss probably has fat days. I doubt that, but I understand his point. Then today is another "I'm slim, I'm svelte, sheesh, LOOK at yourself, woman, aren't you great?" kind of day. So far anyway. Which is funny because I'm not slim or svelte. I'm still "at an unhealthy weight, outside my healthy weight range" according my favorite online Healthy Body Calculator. but the contrast between how I was, and how I am now, is beginning to be visible. I'm toying with the idea of posting pictures in here of my progress. I'm a bit leery of it, not that it's likely that there would be any creepy negative repercussions, but in the unlikely event that there were any, they'd be pretty darn negative and creepy. I'm thinking about it.

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Thursday, September 11, 2003

The Book List

Emily graciously gave me her permission to steal the book list idea from her and Jenn. So here are my comments. The list originally came from ivillage, where they think you "must have been an English major" if you can correctly answer ten insanely easy multiple-choice first-line-of-what-book quiz questions. So be warned, this isn't the most authoritative "100 Best Books" list you can imagine. Oddly, though, it's hard to find any good ones, so this one will have to do.

1. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

I own this. I've read it just a couple of times. It's a good book, much deeper than the movie which is also good. But in my opinion, Scarlet O'Hara, whom we're all supposed to admire, crosses the fine line between "strong woman" and "conniving bitch" and I do not like her.


2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I have this book and read it probably once a year. I have never been to the South (I'm really sorry about that, really I am, please do not throw tomatoes) but this is how I picture really small southern towns, or at least how I imagine they were in the past. Quiet, dusty, and full of life under the surface.



3. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon


I have this whole series. Diana Gabaldon is a phenomenal writer and researcher. These will keep you up all night reading. They're sometimes classified as "romance" novels but they are so much more. Try 'em, you'll like 'em. :)



4. Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley


I have never read this. I suppose if I'm going to give a rave review to a historical fiction romance novel at #3, I can't say rude things about how shallow it seems to have this be #4 on this list. Maybe I'll give it a try.



5. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving


I tried. I have a hard time with most John Irving. I own this but have never managed to get past the first few pages.



6. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein

I've read The Hobbit, and I own the trilogy after it, but I've never read them. The Hobbit seemed to be more of a mainstream sort of book than these are, and I am really not into fantasy. I'll try them again sometime though, and see if I change my mind.



7. I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb

I love Wally Lamb. This book is marvelous -- just as She's Come Undone amazes us with the ability of a male author to get inside a woman's head, I Know This Much Is True amazes me with the way it lets me get inside a man's head. And there are scenes that will rip you up with sadness as well. So well-written.



8. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

I've never read this.



9. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Never read this either. I think about it sometimes. Maybe I'll get it from the library.



10. The Stand by Stephen King

I've read this three times. If you aren't a Stephen King fan, you should still try this book, because it is not like his usual books. This is an epic novel, dealing with human nature and the nature of good and evil, creating some very real and memorable characters and putting them in a fascinating situation. Try to forget who wrote it, and try it. Even my AP English teacher in high school, who was even more of a literary snob than I am, admitted that King had come close to The Great American Novel when he wrote this one.



11. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel

Another one that I tried. I really did. Such rave reviews, and I couldn't get past the first 50 pages.



12. A Tree Grows in Brookyn by Betty Smith


This is a wonderful, wonderful book. For me, it does for New York what To Kill A Mockingbird does for the deep South -- gives a tangible sense of what life was like there once upon a time.



13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte


I read this because I like Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. This has none of JE's good qualities, and JE's few bad qualities are magnified in this book to the nth degree. It is far too dark and foggy for me. And like I said in my movie list, it's like a soap opera published in Gothic language.



14. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott


I liked this better when I was younger than I do now, but I do still like it. I don't agree with all the people who are upset that Jo and Laurie don't end up together. Laurie was a flake, and Jo needed someone to challenge her and take her seriously. Laurie was much better suited to Amy.



15. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez


Never heard of it.



16. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery


One of my favorites. I have all of L.M. Montgomery's novels. If AoGG is too childish for you, though, try A Tangled Web. It's a cat of a completely different color, and really funny and clever.



17. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger


I read it and did not see what all the hype has always been about. It's not a bad book; I just didn't find it as deep or important as everyone else seems to. Maybe it's going over my head. Who knows.



18. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald


I could not finish this book. That was about eight years ago, though, so maybe I'll try it again now. I just got fed up with the high society whining and moaning, and I hated the characters, and I even hated the way they dressed (the 20's are not my favorite historical period from a fashion perspective, to say the least).



19. Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins


OK, this book is interesting for Christians to read. I've read the whole series and liked it OK for what it was. But it doesn't belong on a 100-best list, in my opinion. Shades of things to come further down, methinks.



20. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas


Never read it.



21. The Color Purple by Alice Walker


Never read it.



22. Dune by Frank Herbert


I tried this in junior high. It was highly recommended to me by a teacher, but I hated it and didn't finish it. I remember something about a box, and a guy putting his hand in it and being in a lot of pain. Or something. I do not like sci-fi so I've never tried it again.



23. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton


Never heard of it. (sorry)



24. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand


I've heard of this but not read it. It's supposed to be An Important Book so maybe, snob that I am, I'll add it to my to-be-read list.



25. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen


One of my very favorite books. It's beautiful. Like Kathleen Kelly, I just get caught up in the language. And the characters. And the humor. And the satire. And the romance. YUM. I just finished re-reading this the other day.



26. A Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford


My mom owns this, and she used to recommend it to me often. Someday when I'm housesitting for her or something, I'll have to pick it up and see if it grabs me.



27. Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts


This totally shouldn't be here. Sorry. Cute book, but empty and not worthy to be on the same webpage as Jane Eyre, let alone 70 places ahead of it.



28. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein


Never read it. Not a sci-fi/fantasy fan.



29. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis


Now, there I go saying I'm not a fantasy fan, but these books are so, so much more. I love them all. My kids are also infatuated with the books and the BBC movies.



30. Exodus by Leon Uris


Never read it.



31. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb


I touched on this briefly above, but this is an amazing book. Every woman should read it. Tomorrow. It's another one that will keep you up late reading, too.



32. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle


This is a good book but I don't re-read it very often. Don't know why. It's full of interesting ideas and characters.



33. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough


Never read it.



34. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry


I had a copy of this once but I never read it.



35. Beloved by Toni Morrison


Never read it.



36. The Witching Hour by Anne Rice


Never read it.



37. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy


I have this, and War And Peace. Every few years I try them both again to see if I've grown into them yet. So far, nope.



38. The Game of Kings: The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett


I think I started one of these once but I couldn't get into it. I was having a reading slump at the time so it's not necessarily the book's fault.



39. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck


I loved this book in high school. I'm not so keen on it now. It's really well-written, and gives an excellent view of what life was like for those people in that time period, but the overarching political message in it is bothersome to me, whereas once I gloried in it.



40. The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery


Funny, my two senior AP term paper subjects, right here in a row (Steinbeck and Saint-Exupéry). This is a great little book. We read it in the original French in French class, and I didn't even read an English translation till years later. Both are good. You should have seen our French teacher trying to explain via pantomime, without speaking English which was forbidden in class, the concept of taming an animal, since none of us could figure out what that word meant in the story. Classic.



41. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone by J.K. Rowling


I have never read these. Maybe someday I will, when the series is complete, the hype has died down, and my kids are old enough to have some discernment and we can discuss them together. I will say that I idly read through the first few pages of this at the library and wasn't sucked in at ALL.



42. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks


I had heard such great things about Nicholas Sparks that I thought I would love this. I didn't. It was like it was written by a junior high student in creative writing class. The style was so choppy and undeveloped and obvious that the interesting story couldn't compensate for it.



43. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison


Never read it.



44. The Awakening by Kate Chopin


Never read it.



45. Insomnia by Stephen King


Never read it.



46. Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton


Never read it, but I'd like to.



47. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett


Never read it.



48. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx


Never read it.



49. Katherine by Anya Seton


Never heard of it.



50. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson


I tried this one. I kept going and going, waiting for it to cast the spell over me that it did over apparently everyone else. When I was a third of the way through and still not into the book at all, I gave up.



51. 1984 by George Orwell


Yet another person I wrote a term paper about. He was a very interesting, disturbed man. 1984 was a work of prophetic genius. He also wrote a short story about shooting an elephant that has really stuck with me through all the years since I read it. You should find if you can, and read it.



52. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov


Never read it, don't particularly care to.



53. Beach Music by Pat Conroy


Never read it.



54. Portnoy's Complaint by Phillip Roth


Never read it.



55. The World According to Garp by John Irving


I read this in high school. Someone totally spoiled the most surprising moment of it for me, and now almost all I can remember of the story is that part, and how I went through the whole book waiting for it to happen. I think it was a good book though. :)



56. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury


Never read it, although I do like a lot of Bradbury's stories.



57. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne


I read this in high school and then again a couple of years ago. I liked it much better the second time. Some books are forced on teenagers too young, I think.



58. Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice


Never read it, not into the vampire genre at ALL.



59. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel


Never read it. I don't think. Wait, maybe I have, is this the one that describes the marriage bed sheets for the strict Catholics? And where some woman takes off on a horse with a guy? I think I read this while babysitting once; it was on the family's bookshelf.



60. The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher


Never read any Pilcher.



61. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells


I read this and was not terribly impressed. I kept waiting for it to be something other than a falsely deep piece of chick-lit. I didn't even bother with the movie.



62. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams


I've tried this a few times and did not find it nearly as funny as everyone else seems to. (no tomatoes please).



63. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll


You know, I used to really like this story until I got the annotated version and read more about Lewis Carroll. That was one creepy guy. Now I can't get that out of my head and it sort of ruins the story for me.



64. East of Eden by John Steinbeck


I own this and have read it a couple of times. I don't remember much about it -- just a few scattered mental images. A woman with thin lips, boys learning how to drive a crank-start car, a dour moralistic woman, and a failed experiment in refrigeration. Maybe I should try reading it again...



65. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole


You know, this book was SO highly recommended to me. I ran right out and got it from the library. I read the first 90 pages or so and gave up. It was like one long fart joke.



66. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo


I haven't read this, but I want to.



67. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant


This is a book that all women should read, IMO. It's beautiful and terrible and wonderful, and vivid, and heartbreaking, and uplifting. Ack, now I want to go get it off my shelf and read it till dawn.



68. The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams


Never read it.



69. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier


Never read it.



70. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier


Never read it, but I probably should.



71. Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice


Never read it.



72. My Antonia by Willa Cather


Never read it, but I want to.



73. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison


Never read it.



74. The Bone People by Keri Hulme


Never heard of it.



75. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


I've read a few of the stories (Hound of the Baskervilles comes to mind). I like them.



76. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky


Never read it. I suppose I should.



77. The Call of the Wild by Jack London


I read this when I was maybe 10 but haven't since. I think I'll have my son read it when he's junior-high age, and read it with him then.



78. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad


Never read it. I have Lord Jim by the same author and I can't get into it. Is Heart of Darkness better?



79. Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg


Another one that all women should read. Go and get it, today, and read it. It's short and you'll be so glad you did. It'll make you go hug your girlfriends.



80. Time and Again by Jack Finney


Never read it.



81. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain


I've read this several times and I like it.



82. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley


Never read it.



83. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende


Never read it.



84. Watership Down by Richard Adams


I love this book. It is one that I get a hankering for every few years and then I just immerse myself in it for days. When my kids are a few years older, we'll read it as a family.



85. Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky


Never read it.



86. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck


Never read it.



87. …And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer


Never read it.



88. Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns


Never heard of it.



89. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen


This had a comment by some ivillager about "Ah, Mr. Darcy." I wonder if she felt stupid when she realized what she'd done. And I wonder how the ivillage editors happened to choose that for the quote to go with that title. *ahem* perhaps they've not read it? I do like this book, although I'm not quite as ecstatic about it as I am about Pride and Prejudice. I actually just finished reading it a couple of days ago, too.



90. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie


Never read any Christies.



91. Dracula by Bram Stoker


Never read it. That vampire thing again.



92. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan


I read this once. It was engrossing, and seems like it's probably an important book. I wasn't as impressed as most people seem to be but it's worth a read.



93. The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve


I read this. My SIL loves Anita Shreve. I couldn't put it down while I read it but I felt a little manipulated by it, and the ending was a total shock to me. I didn't feel like the body of the book had done even the slightest bit of foreshadowing about that. But it was pretty good, all things considered.



94. Sophie's Choice by William Styron


Never read it.



95. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner


Never heard of it.



96. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston


Never read it.



97. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy


Never heard of it.



98. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett


Read it, liked it, have never seen a movie of it because I'm afraid they'd ruin it. Focus on the Family has a pretty neat radio theater presentation of it though.



99. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte


WHY WHY WHY is this #99? Uncultured swine. I have a very hard time picking a favorite book, but whenever I'm forced to do so, this is it. I have sections of it memorized. Bliss.



100. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens


I read this aloud to T one Christmastime (I had read it a few times previously). We meant to make a tradition of it but didn't. Usually I get it out around Thanksgiving, and maybe read a chapter aloud, but then I get sucked into the book and by the time he's ready for chapter 2 a few days later, I'm done and don't want to start over. I like Dickens, paid by the word or not.

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Ducky and Tinkertoys and an ouchy

This afternoon was a big financial day for us. We "borrowed" from T's retirement to pay off a lot of various debts we'd had sitting around. We are paying much less interest, and the interest we're paying is to ourselves, and unless my T's boss doesn't know what he's talking about, this makes our credit report look better because the retirement account loan doesn't show up on it. Who knows. It can't make it look any worse, at any rate. Now we will accomplish a few things we've been needing to do (like get new glasses for me, and fix T's truck), and by Christmas we'll be socking away a substantial amount into a savings account to pay loan origination fees etc. when we buy a house next spring or summer. We've had debt to one degree or another for the entire nine and a half years we've been married. We've been working hard to pay it down for the past five years, and it feels good to finish it off.


I still managed to have a pretty stressful afternoon sorting out all the paperwork and details involved. I wanted nothing more than just to lay in bed and vege all evening but families, you know, darnit, they need to be FED, can you believe that? They all stand around like baby birds with their beaks wide open, cheeping, looking so pitiful and helpless. So I made dinner, and then I went for a long hard fast walk. I actually had an aerobic heart rate for at least 25 continuous minutes of this 45-minute walk, and I wasn't shuffling along for the other 20 either, it just wasn't uphill all the way like the second part. I am all gleeful thinking about my body going, "calories! calories! where ARE you, calories?" and finally resorting to burning up some nasty old fat cells that have been sitting around in my thighs since before my first pregnancy. ha! gotcha! However, I'm not as thrilled about how sore my legs will be tomorrow. Oh well, it's a good trade-off. :)


Speaking of baby birds (well, I was, up there ^ ), I must show you what my daughter made out of Tinkertoys today. I must preface this by explaining that since around the beginning of our engagement ten years ago, T has called me "Ducky" and variations thereon. This explains, by the way, the fuzzy duckling in the layout, in addition to the fact that it's just plain adorable). Don't ask me why the heck he thought of that one (I have always said that it was because I had a short little haircut at the time and my unruly hair wanted to flip up in the back like a little duck tail, but he says it wasn't that). We were just out for a walk, holding hands and being all cute and lovey-dovey, and he blurted it out: "Duck-y!" in this cute little voice. Nobody who knows my husband only, say, at work, or at the VFW, would believe that he can be this silly. But he is. This led to my being called Ducky, and Coin (pronounced "Kwaa" with that nasaly French n at the end; it's what the French claim ducks say), and Quacky, and every other duck-related name you can think of, and some you can't. It never wore off and consequently my children have been exposed to this for years and probably think that everyone's mom is named after poultry. Anyway. Today my daughter made me a ducky out of Tinkertoys. Generally her Tinkertoy creations to date have been the kind of thing where you believe it's what it is supposed to be, only because she says it's what it's supposed to be. This is her first really recognizable item. Here it is:

Is that not the cutest? Can't you hear it quacking?

I think we'll see if we can make it last all year and enter it in the fair next year. LT has also made some really neat creations, like his interlocking angled gear drive:

I've no idea what is up with the green lines on the picture. My snappy unit is very old but why it should choose to freak out in the space of about five minutes between the last picture and this one is anyone's guess. At any rate, if you turn the crank on the horizontal wheel, its spines interlock with the vertical one and cause it to spin. He hasn't figured out a use for it yet -- just give him time. :)

OK, I was just going to talk about how happy I am that the weather is beginning to cool down enough that the cooler is too cold at night, but as I stood up to turn it off, I stepped on a toy train that was lurking in the shadows and tore the bottom of my foot. Um, OUCH. There are a few things that make me wish I could just let loose with a string of profanity, and injuring the bottom of my foot is one of them. OUCH. Good thing I had just taken a shower, and it was after my walk. I asked LT to bring me the bandaids (after I told him as calmly as I could, which wasn't very calmly, what I thought of his train), and C hovered over me -- "Is it a bleed? Oh, let me see. Oh dear. Oh honey. Just hold still, honey." -- as I was doctoring myself. That is why I don't let loose with the string of profanity -- because the very next time my little 3-year-old mimic damaged herself, she'd do the very same thing. She has an amazing memory capacity for speech, and gets the inflections the same and everything. It's cute (and a little amazing) when it's whole scenes from Bambi or Monsters Inc. Wouldn't be so cute if it was the aforementioned string of profanity. :-/


While I wait for T to get finished working on his buddy's truck and get his shower, I'm going to work on ivillage's book list, another idea I'm stealing from Jenn and Emily. And I'm going to moan quietly about the pain in my foot, too. OUCH.

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what a great day

I just had such a good day. It shows how petty I am, I suppose, that being able to wear clothes I hadn't been able to in the past can make me feel so happy. But there it is. Not only the "too small" jeans, either. After I got home from Bible study tonight I got out a denim dress from that same box -- a short dress with blue and white flowers embroidered on it -- feminine yet sturdy yet sexy. T had told me that he'd like it if I could wear it -- back when I couldn't even button it closed. It fit like a dream tonight. I was so pleased.


OK, I just had a call back to reality. I had to go make my washing machine behave. You know how some washers have a buzzer that goes off if the load is off-balance? This one doesn't need a buzzer, because when it is off-balance it makes as much noise as a mounted cavalry running through my linoleumed laundry room would. And of course since the laundry room is right next to both kids' rooms, and both kids are both asleep and afraid of loud noises that wake them in the night, I had to go make the darn thing shut up. T would sleep through just about anything and it even had him in there, blinking at me, asking me if I needed help. Hmm, maybe I should empty the garbage in the middle of the night, and make a lot of noise at it....


Anyway, back to my great day. Not only was there the weight loss thing, but school went really nicely, and for dinner, we had a picnic at the park in town for which I made deli sandwiches. And T and I had a big argument about something stupid last night, so we were still in the tender gentle happy make-up stage today.


The kids and I watched Return to Snowy River today, which also added to the overall mood of cheerfulness. Perhaps it is silly of me, but I really love a good pretty horse movie. Nice scenery and running horses just give me a happy little thrill. (I should start making a list of all the things I say that about!). Really. I love watching the Snowy River movies, and The Black Stallion (which is a really rare thing: a movie that is better than the book), and this version of Black Beauty that we bought from the bargain DVD bin at Wal-Mart. When I was little I was the same way (I'll have to find Phar Lap and National Velvet and see if they're as pretty as I remember them being). The dialogue can be hokey as anything, but if there's pretty scenery, nice music, and plenty of horsey eye candy, I can't help enjoying watching it. Hey, I never said I was a movie purist. Luckily I have a daughter as an excuse. :)


I'm starting to feel hungry so I'm going to get a good drink of water and go to bed before I start munching. (must forget about Cadbury bar in fridge. Must forget.)

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Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Movie List

I stole this from Emiline220, who stole it from Jenn. I'm thinking about stealing their book list thing too, even though it's just from ivillage and it has "The Mists of Avalon" on it. ;-) I can't seem to find a more authoritative one that goes beyond the 20th century but doesn't include a bunch of foreign stuff.

1. CITIZEN KANE (1941)

Um, I've seen most of this. But I really wasn't paying attention. It was my grandfather's favorite movie because he used to work for William Randolph Hearst (kept his aviary, of all things). So when I was in a spate of Grandpa-reminiscence I tried to watch it -- key word being "tried". I kept wondering what the hype had all been about. Which shows what an uncultured individual I am.


2. CASABLANCA(1942)

Yes, I have seen this. I liked it pretty well, not so much as a romantic love story, because it's really not that. It was like watching Schindler's List and wondering at exactly what point the hero's motive changed from mercenary to humanitarian.


3. THE GODFATHER (1972)

I've seen this several times. First as a teenager, and I didn't like watching it because it felt creepy to feel sympathetic toward the Mafia. Then I watched it as an adult and wondered how it could have made me feel sympathetic toward them at all -- I guess I hadn't learned the concept of the antihero yet at 15.



4. GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)

Seen it a few times. I like it pretty well but I think its huge popularity was based on factors that are a bit dated now. It was the biggest deal in movies at the time, based on a then-current bestseller. It's still a great story, but not the be-all and end-all, if you ask me.


5. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)

Never seen it.


6. THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)

Of course I've seen this one, several times. It's another one that was great for its time -- although it is a prime example of how little filmmakers cared about faithful adaptation at that time. Baum's stories are hardly reflected here at all.


7. THE GRADUATE (1967)

I've seen it twice -- in high school because of the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, and as an adult on Turner Classics. It was... very interesting. Especially seeing the woman I thought of as Gram from Homecoming playing a jealous seductress.


8. ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)

Never seen it.


9. SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993)

We own this. We watch it once every couple of years. We actually watched it in the theater on our honeymoon, how's that for a mood setter? But it is probably the most important movie I've ever seen. Everyone over the age of 13 or so should watch it.


10. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952)

Seen it, loved it. :) Did you know that all the songs were just kind of thrown in there? None of them were written with this story in mind.


11. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)

One of my very favorites. I love it, love it, love it. And I own it.


12. SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)

Never seen it.


13. THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)

T and I watched this not long ago. I liked it. I surprise myself with my ability to enjoy war movies. This is the same person (well, not really) who committed an act of peacable protest by putting my head on my desk with my eyes closed when we watched Glory and Patton during history class. Oh yes, I was deep.


14. SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)

Never seen it, don't particularly want to.


15. STAR WARS (1977)

Not only did I watch this when I was little, but my son is as obsessed with it as my brother (and my husband) were as children. I've probably watched it half a dozen times in the last two months; we borrow it from the library over and over. T and I watched The Empire Strikes Back in our hotel room the second morning of our honeymoon. (weren't we the romantic ones! but hey, we were TIRED!). The hotel offered free video rentals but everything else they had was lame.


16. ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)

Never seen it.


17. THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)

I've seen it a few times. I like it.


18. PSYCHO (1960)

Never seen it.


19. CHINATOWN (1974)

Never seen it.


20. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)

Never seen it. Did you know that Ken Kesey (who wrote the book) refused to watch this movie? So I figure I definitely should at least read the book before I watch it, and I haven't gotten around to it yet.


21. THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)

I've seen this a lot of times. It was one of my other grandfather's favorites. When I was in high school, my socialist self was in love with Steinbeck. My copy of this is shamelessly highlit all over -- every single reference that a "deep" 16-year-old would find important. Gag. My brother-in-law borrowed my copy years ago, and I keep meaning to buy him one and take mine back so that I can keep the incriminating evidence under close supervision. :)


22. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

I have started to watch this several times. Someday I'll finish it.


23. THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)

Never watched it.


24. RAGING BULL (1980)

Never watched it.


25. E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)

I watched this in the theater when I was 7 or so. I haven't seen it in years, though.


26. DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)

I've never seen it. T loves it though, so eventually we will have to rent it.


27. BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)

Never seen it.


28. APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

Never seen it.


29. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939)

I've watched this. I liked it. I am a big Jimmy Stewart fan.


30. THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)

Never seen it.


31. ANNIE HALL (1977)

You know, I read a clip from an interview with Woody Allen, where he was talking to Europeans about how Americans don't like him; they wonder what the fuss is all about. That's me! me! right there. I watched this on TCM because it's one of those "important" movies and I hated it.


32. THE GODFATHER PART II (1974)

I think I watched this once years ago, but I don't remember much from it.


33. HIGH NOON (1952)

Um, this is an Eastwood one, right? That means I've seen it, but I don't remember anything specific about it.


34. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962)

I LOVE THIS MOVIE. Oh wow. Love love love it. Here is my IMDB review of it.


35. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)

I saw this once. I really liked it! Did you know that Bugs Bunny gnawing a carrot was based on a scene from this movie? And that almost nobody ate raw carrots till this movie came out? (I love the IMDB).


36. MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)

I saw the beginning of this on Turner Classics but never finished it. It didn't look appealing.


37. THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)

This is the first one on this list that I have never even heard of.


38. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)

And here's the second one.


39. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)

I watched this once when I was maybe junior high age. It didn't capture my attention. I'll probably have to watch it again sometime, maybe after I read the book.


40. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)

I adore Cary Grant, and I really liked this movie as well. Interesting twists in it.


41. WEST SIDE STORY (1961)

I own this. It's one of my favorites. The weird thing is that the guy who plays Tony (I know his name but it's not coming to me right now) looks JUST like the guy who used to be the pastor of our church. So much like him that I can't get it out of my head watching the movie that it is him. Kind of distracting.


42. REAR WINDOW (1954)

Another one I own. This was the first Hitchcock movie I'd ever seen and it was an excellent introduction. I recorded it off cable. Grace Kelly's clothes are just amazing in it, and all the actors do a really good job. (IMDB-gleaned trivia tidbit: all the sound in this movie is internal --in other words it's all happening in the movie, not superimposed over it for effect. It's neat to watch it and pay attention to that.)


43. KING KONG (1933)

Never seen it. I've only ever seen clips from it.


44. THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915)

Never seen it.


45. A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)

Never seen it.


46. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

Never seen it.


47. TAXI DRIVER (1976)

Never seen it.


48. JAWS (1975)

I watched this a long time ago on HBO, as in, when I was a little girl. Scared me to death, I think it was my first horror movie. Or maybe it was Jaws 3 I saw. Who knows.


49. SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937)

I've seen this. I did a biographical report on Walt Disney when I was in ninth grade and it's very interesting for me to watch his movies, especially the early ones, after learning a lot about him.


50. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)

Never seen it.


51. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940)

I read the play first. Then I saw the movie. It was well-made and all, it just deals with an aspect of life with which I am fully unfamiliar. The whole high society thing kind of leaves me cold. But like I said, a well-made movie nonetheless.


52. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)

Never seen it, and I really want to.


53. AMADEUS (1984)

Another of my favorites. I gush about this movie endlessly to my husband after we've watched it. I'll spare you that and just show you my IMDB review of it.


54. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)

I watched this once, in ninth grade, after I think we read the book in class. It was also during my war-protest days but I at least had sense to realize that it was an anti-war story. Doesn't mean I watched the movie though. I did not "do" battle at the time. I was too pure. And angst-y. And altogether too teenaged.


55. THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)

We own this on DVD AND video (it's a great one for putting both on at once and switching back and forth to see how much DVD kicks butt over VHS). Sappy or not, we love it.


56. M*A*S*H (1970)

I watched the TV show when it was on when I was little (and I might add that it all flew directly over my head. I was so puzzled, among other things, about why the guy dressed in women's clothes. Dad told me it was because he was trying to prove he was crazy so he could get out of the Army. ahem. :), but never saw the movie.


57. THE THIRD MAN (1949)

And the third one I've never heard of. :)


58. FANTASIA (1940)

Another one of my kids' favorites, although we don't own it. I have the 3-DVD anthology on my Christmas list. We LOVE the whole idea of Fantasia, and my kids "play Fantasia" whenever we listen to classical music -- they tell me "what it is saying." Needless to say this totally breaks my heart. waah.


59. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)

Never saw it, and keep meaning to.


60. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

I've seen it a couple of times. It's funny.


61. VERTIGO (1958)

My second Hitchcock. I love it. So creepy and hard to figure out the first time! Trivia: they had to use computers to superimpose the tower on that mission because it doesn't have one. I've been there plenty of times. It's much more interesting to go there having seen the movie, and vice versa.


62. TOOTSIE (1982)

This is a great movie. Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman worked so well together, and Teri Garr, and Jessica Lange too. This was another one that I saw when I was younger and didn't really "get". I really enjoy it as an adult though.


63. STAGECOACH (1939)

Never seen it.


64. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)

I think I saw part of this once, when I was little, but I have very little memory of it.


65. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

Great, great movie. T hates it, but I don't. So creepy.


66. NETWORK (1976)

Never heard of it.


67. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)

This is such a well-made movie. People in film-making school should have to take a class in it. Except Frank Sinatra, he's kind of what NOT to do. But overall, WOW. Here's my IMDB review for it.


68. AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951)

I watched part of this on Turner Classics but didn't get to finish it. I'll have to give it another shot some day; it looked pretty good.


69. SHANE (1953)

I read the book in elementary school but I've never seen the movie.


70. THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)

Never seen it.


71. FORREST GUMP (1994)

Watched it on video when it was pretty new; I thought it was OK but I wasn't as impressed as everyone else seemed to be.


72. BEN-HUR (1959)

My daughter loves this movie. She's 3!! She wants to watch the chariot race over and over. And it is a pretty good movie. I think this is the only thing I've seen Charlton Heston in.


73.WUTHERING HEIGHTS(1939)

I've never seen it. I had a hard time seeing colors after reading the book, though; it was so dark and depressing. I love Jane Eyre but Charlotte should have taught Emily a thing or two. This book was like a soap opera set in Gothic/Victorian language. Anyway, I digress, I've never seen the movie.


74. THE GOLD RUSH (1925)

Never heard of it.


75. DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990)

I saw it once. I didn't really pay attention. Poor Kevin Costner, he was the hottest thing going for a while and now nobody will look at him.


76. CITY LIGHTS (1931)

Never seen it.


77. AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)

T and I watched this, and liked it. He is a car buff. For me, the most fun part was racking my brain trying to figure out who the actors were -- "I KNOW THAT GUY! WHO IS THAT?" I could hardly wait for the credits to roll before I ran to the IMDB to find out.


78. ROCKY (1976)

I think I saw this one. But it may have been Rocky III. Come to think of it, yes, it was, because that was the one with Mr. T. So I've never actually seen the original.


79. THE DEER HUNTER (1978)

Never seen it.


80. THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

Never seen it.


81. MODERN TIMES (1936)

Never seen it.


82. GIANT (1956)

Never seen it.


83. PLATOON (1986)

Never seen it, don't want to.


84. FARGO (1996)

Never seen it. When it was new I didn't want to but now that that hype has died down I think it sounds interesting and maybe I'll rent it.


85. DUCK SOUP (1933)

Never seen it.


86. MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935)

I saw part of it on cable once but never got to finish it. I keep meaning to, though.


87. FRANKENSTEIN (1931)

Never seen it. Never read the book either.


88. EASY RIDER (1969)

Never seen it.


89. PATTON (1970)

See above re: Bridge on the River Kwai.


90. THE JAZZ SINGER (1927)

Never seen it.


91. MY FAIR LADY (1964)

We own this. It is a family favorite. I wish they'd have let Audrey Hepburn do her own singing though. The clips I've heard of her sound better than Rex Harrison did, speaking his songs, and the dubbing sounds a bit fake. Marni Nixon did a great job, though; it's beyond me why she didn't have more up-front roles.


92. A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951)

Never seen it.


93. THE APARTMENT (1960)

Never seen it.


94. GOODFELLAS (1990)

Never seen it.


95. PULP FICTION (1994)

Never seen it and don't particularly want to.


96. THE SEARCHERS (1956)

Never seen it.


97. BRINGING UP BABY (1938)

I'm torn about whether I want to see this or not. I might.


98. UNFORGIVEN (1992)

We watched this when it was new. My dad and brother were disapppointed in Clint having gone a bit soft. If they'd only known that Bridges of Madison County was coming, they'd have counted their blessings...


99. GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967)

Never seen it.


100. YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942)
Never seen it.


OK, now my fingers are totally, totally worn out from typing. They actually feel bruised. Ouchy.

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The Too Small Jeans

Remember how I kept telling myself I wasn't going to break out the Too Small For Me clothes for another 7 lb? Well, I lost my resolve. For lack of a better place to keep them, I had stored them in a box, which was sitting in the schoolroom near the pencil sharpener. I was just back there sharpening pencils (there should be a law against putting broken pencils in pen cups!), and saw the the top of a pair of jeans poking out. Lovely nice dark blue size 32 jeans, which my mom gave to me. They'd been given to her by a girl she works with, who'd, um, gotten too slender for them. They are very new, and more expensive than I'd ordinarily buy. When Mom first gave them to me a couple of months ago, I tried them on but couldn't even button them and I was really upset with myself about that. At any rate, as I mentioned, my resolve flew out the window and before I knew it I was pulling them on under my sundress. And buttoning them. And zipping them. WITHOUT ANY EFFORT. They fit! I look great! I keep going and looking in the mirror at myself. Not in a "damn I'm hot" way exactly, but just, "wow, I honestly was not sure I'd ever see myself look that way again." I also pulled on a ribbed knit tank top from the bag. The color (a kind of vivid rose pink) is really not me, but the style looks much better on me than it when I originally tried the shirt on.


OK, back to your regularly scheduled programming. Just had to share before I exploded. :) It is so nice to have my discipline paying off in a tangible way.

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Tuesday, September 09, 2003

SpaceCamp

My kids are watching SpaceCamp. (note: from reading my diary you'd conclude that my children watch videos non stop since they seem to always be watching one while I type. Really, though, it's not like that -- it's just that the only times I can sit and relax and write up an entry are when they're settled quietly, and one way to do that is with a video). Until they borrowed this movie from my grandmother a few months ago (they have since returned it and re-borrowed it, by the way, must clarify lest you think I let them keep borrowed movies for years ;-), I hadn't seen it since I think 1986, on New Year's Eve. I must confess that I was totally convinced that "Daedalus" as portrayed in the movie was a real actual space station. When we watched it as a family, I told T that a boy in junior high had done a History Day project about Daedalus, but that he'd spelled the name wrong. T very diplomatically said that he was 99.9% sure, having been a space buff since grade school (which was longer ago than my grade school, let's just say that), that Daedalus was invented solely for that movie. I was not as diplomatic; I insisted, I'm afraid, that it had to be a real thing since Richard had done his project about it. Whoops. I did a lot of research online, and finally found out for sure on an astronomy newsgroup that T was right and I was wrong. I do not remember what the stakes were of our silly little bet on that topic, but I was utterly demoralized and felt like a buffoon. Not as much of a buffoon as Richard, though. He got a lot more than the spelling of the name wrong. What I have to wonder is where the heck he did any research for that project. Granted, it was eighth grade, but we had to have at least some sources.


Not, by the way, that I can claim much superiority in the area of History Day projects. I was in seventh grade that year, and my school friend and I decided to work together on a project. She would do the art, and she was really into drawing with perspective at the time, and wanted to do some kind of interior of a cathedral or something for the background art for our project. The only problem was that the topic of the project had to have something to do with "frontiers". So how to incorporate a cathedral with that? Simple, you title your display "Frontiers In Christianity." ACK. We did a good job -- we wrote a lot about the changes in religious culture from Biblical times to the present, and typed up blurbs of text and put them on little scrolls which we glued to the background. And of course the cathedral interior looked just great. :) But what a stupid idiotic name for a project. I'm surprised we didn't overhear the judges laughing about it. Maybe they were still in shock from "Deadelos."



C's doctor appointment went fine, by the way. The doctor says that the pigment loss on the side of her neck isn't anything to worry about, and that it's really common (which went along with the research I'd done online). She was more puzzled by the discoloration above her mouth, and finally concluded that it looked most like a bruise of some kind, like she was sucking a glass down over her mouth, but if it's still there next week I'm to bring her back in. C loves going to the doctor. She's been asking me at least once an hour to check the white spot on her neck, in a very serious little 3-year-old voice. She likes taking medicine too, little booger. She gets that from her dad, who used to try to drink Triaminic recreationally when he was a little boy. I, on the other hand, will generally suffer with a headache for hours before I finally give in to T's cajoling and take two aspirin. I tell him it's my anti-addictive personality -- unlike some people, I don't need to seek chemical solutions to my problems, physical or otherwise. ;-)



I was just getting a good laugh reading California's voter guide for the special election in October. Here's a quote from Larry Flynt's blurb: "California is the most progressive state in the union and I'm sure its citizens would welcome having a smut peddler who cares as their Governor." That's really funny, except that it's also true. This election is making South Florida look like a think tank in comparison. Dave Barry had a really great column about this a few weeks ago.

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kid stuff

I'm taking C to the pediatrician today. She has some odd skin discolorations, one on her face, and one on her neck. Her neck has a pale splotch, and her upper lip has a brownish area where it looks like her blood vessels have come to the surface. Not like a bruise, and not like a rash. I've looked online and there are a couple things that it looks like it could be, and neither are a hazard, but I would like to take her to the doctor to get it checked just to be sure. Of course with our sucky insurance (one definite drawback of living in a rural area is that all the good HMOs pulled out of our county, which was not profitable enough for them once they started chasing the doctors away by lowering and lowering their contracted rates, and left us with a bunch of cruddy and expensive PPOs and FFSs) this will cost way more than we're used to paying for healthcare. Man, I miss the good old golden days of Pacificare. sigh. Before, we would have a $10 copay for the office visit and that was it. Now we have $20 for the office visit and about five different bills ranging from $20 to $40, for copayments for lab stuff and who knows what all. And half the bills get contested and we have to fight tooth and nail to get them paid by the insurance at all. T broke his ankle last Thanksgiving and it has been totally depressing, calculating the difference between what we paid and what we would have paid under the insurance we had for the first eight years of our marriage. But I'll stop whining now. Must remind myself that even with all the hassles I like it better than I would some socialized 40%-of-your-income providing-insurance-for-everyone-whether-they-can-afford-it-on-their-own-or-not nationalized health care system. To each his own, right? [grin]



Anyway. School went OK today. LT is writing a play. He wants to put on a puppet show, put up signs, charge admission, that kind of thing. What the heck am I supposed to DO about this kind of stuff? He wants to do it all on his own and he's convinced it will be something that people would pay to see. But his materials are paper bags and crayons, and he's only seven years old. I hate having to give him these painful little lessons in reality, but I have to figure out a way to break it to him eventually. sigh. Maybe I'll offer a compromise -- I'll help him make the puppets with some of that construction foam stuff, he can write the story all on his own, and we'll invite friends, family, and neighbors to come and watch. Admission can be free but he could sell lemonade and brownies, or something. (taking a cue from movie theaters, who actually pretty much only profit from the concession stands :).



Well, I just received a call from the neighbor ladies, who want me to get their mail before we leave for the doctor's office. This has just shortened our get-ready time to almost nothing, so I have to get a move on.

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Monday, September 08, 2003

100+ Things About me

100+ THINGS ABOUT ME

1. I was born on Christmas in 1974.

2. I lived in 7 or so houses my first 4 years of life, then in 6 more houses in the next 24 years.

3. I was born in the same small town where I live now.

4. I lived in Taft and Maricopa, CA for a few months when I was around 2 years of age.

5. Other than that I have never lived anywhere but this small town.

6. My brother taught me to read when I was 3 years old.

7. By the time I was in kindergarten I was reading at a 3rd grade level.

8. I also had a really bad cold when I started kindergarten.

9. Kids on the bus, including high schoolers, called me "Green Slime" and the nickname stuck for that whole year on the bus.

10. Socially my elementary school years absolutely sucked.

11. When I was in 6th grade the class bully put dog biscuits in my lunch bag when we were eating indoors (because, you see, I was a dog, ie, a very ugly person).

12. Even the teacher laughed, although she tried to hide it.

13. I did not laugh. I did try very hard not to cry in front of everyone.

14. I was pretty homely but I didn't deserve the treatment I got.

15. Being smart didn't help.

16. In sixth grade I won the California State Spelling Championship.

17. Greg Evans, who draws the comic strip "Luann", was there as the guest speaker at the banquet.

18. As the winner, I got to ask him to draw me a poster of one of his characters. I chose Puddles the dog.

19. I still have that poster somewhere.

20. When I got back to school they held a special assembly for me, and then the principal sent me around to all the classrooms to tell the other kids about my experience and to have them see if they could stump me with words to spell.

21. I spelled "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and "antidisestablishmentarianism" in every single classroom.

22. That little "parade around the spelling champion" bit didn't help my popularity at all. (thanks, Mr. Principal).

23. In eighth grade I met the girl who would become my best friend for the next five years.

24. We had a lot, a whole lot, of fun together.

25. It was the first time I had ever been part of a group of friends.

26. My best friend lived with her aunt and uncle. Her mother lived in LA. At Christmastime during my junior year (her sophomore year) her aunt and uncle didn't want her to live with them anymore. So my parents and I asked her to move in with us, and she did.

27. It was a really great experience, even though we had little fights like sisters do. (not that I would know since I don't have a sister).

28. A year later she wanted to live with her mom again so we moved her back down to LA.

29. I went down to visit her three times that spring and summer. These were some of my first trips on my own without my parents.

30. I have never seen her since that summer.

31. We spoke on the phone twice during the first five years and that was all.

32. Then, after ten years of being apart, I tracked her down and called her this last spring.

33. We are very good friends again. (yay!)

34. Halfway through my senior year in high school I became a born-again Christian.

35. I got married the March after I graduated from high school, to a man who had been my archenemy and then my best friend before we fell hopelessly in love.

36. Nine and a half years later we are still hopelessly in love. In fact, much more in love than we were when we started out.

37. And we are still best friends.

38. We did not have sex with each other until our wedding night.

39. When we had been married two years, our son was born.

40. I had had a dream during my pregnancy about having a blue-eyed blond-haired girl. I thought the girl aspect was much more likely to come true than the blue eyes and the blond hair. However, my brown/brown husband and my brown/brown self produced a stunningly gorgeous blue/blond son.

41. When our son was 20 months old, we had a daughter.

42. She had a very severe and rare congenital heart defect.

43. She was supposed to have surgery to correct it when she was three months old. But she died when she was two months and one week old.

44. Our son does not remember her. :(

45. But we do.

46. When our son was 3 1/2, we had another daughter.

47. This little girl was and is perfectly healthy, praise God.

48. I knew before I had children that I wanted to homeschool them. My husband agreed wholeheartedly.

49. Originally our reasons were pretty much solely religious in nature.

50. Now, however, that is only a small part of the reason we homeschool. It's still very important to us, but so are a lot of other reasons.

51. I am 5' 8 1/2" tall.

52. I am trying to lose 44 lb. So far I have lost 15 pounds.

53. I have been stuck at 15 lb. so long that I have lost track of the days.

54. When I got married I weighed 155 lb and wore a size 10/11.

55. My lowest adult weight (just before my senior year of high school) was 142. At that weight I wore a size 9, or 8 in tight jeans ;-).

56. I was getting really uncomfortable in my 14s when I decided to lose weight.

57. I have brown hair that goes to my waist.

58. It is really thin and fine, though.

59. My favorite of my physical features is my eyes.

60. The list of my least favorite of my physical features would be pretty long. At the top, though, are probably my nose, my lips, my skin, and my legs, where I have just discovered a gazillion spider veins.

61. Spider veins, and I'm only 28 years old. Life is totally not fair.

62. My parents, brother, and I lived with my grandma for 5 years while I was growing up.

63. I did not get along AT ALL with my grandmother while I lived with her.

64. Now, however, we get along totally fine and enjoy each other's company.

65. I still have two grandmothers living.

66. My two grandpas and my step-grandma (who was "Grandma" to me and had raised my dad from babyhood) died within 5 years when I was in junior high and high school.

67. My parents have been married to each other for 32 years.

68. I adore my parents. I would choose them as friends even if we were not related.

69. My husband also gets along wonderfully with them.

70. I have a brother who is 2 1/2 years older than me.

71. When we were little it seemed like we fought all the time, but looking back, almost all I remember are fun times with him.

72. When I was 9 1/2 years old I spent my life savings (just over $200) on a small horse. She was a Welsh pony with leopard Appaloosa coloring. I named her Spot. My brother thought this was a stupid name. In fact, pretty much everyone except me thought it was a stupid name.

73. My brother also had a horse. His had been given to him by our grandpa when he was born (family tradition). We rode our horses all over creation until he got a job and got all interested in the girl he ended up marrying. In the summer we would get on our horses in the early morning and ride around the very rural valley we lived in until dinner time.

74. We just had to put Spot down a year ago because she was totally blind and stopped eating.

75. I am almost literally addicted to Diet Coke.

79. I love romantic comedies. My favorite right now is Return To Me

80. I am also a sucker for surveys. Filling in blanks and answering questions just gives me a little thrill.

81. I love doing people's taxes. I am considering taking night classes to become a CPA so that I can get paid for it.

82. I also think about becoming a librarian or a lactation consultant, but I wouldn't do that until the kids were done being homeschooled (in other words, grown).

83. Before I had kids, I had a job as an in-home child-care provider for a local family. I loved that job. I loved the kids. Now they are all teenagers.

84. I love to read. I like reading even better than being on the computer. :)

85. I like classic literature best. In fact I used to only read classics. Then in 2000 I really branched out a lot and now I like a lot of different authors.

86. I am on 19 email lists. I manage them via a stunning array of email filters and folders.

87. I got a job from one of them. It's for an author I like. The author actually runs the list. One day she posted that she needed someone to take over maintaining her webpage. I used to do web design professionally. So I wrote to her and got the job. It is only a few hours a month but it is a lot of fun.

88. I breastfed my children for a total of 3 1/2 years. My son for a year, and my daughter for 2 1/2 years. One of my biggest gripes about the way my middle daughter's situation was handled was that we were told by people (mostly NICU nurses for whom I suspect it would have been inconvenient for us to really try) that she couldn't nurse. By the time we found out she could, my milk was almost dried up and it never caught up. She developed an oral aversion from being tube fed. Some of my most precious memories with her are of the few times I nursed her.

89. I am a staunch breastfeeding advocate. Which is part of the reason I think about becoming a lactation consultant "when I grow up".

90. I love winter weather. Even when it's here and everyone else who was complaining about the summer heat has started to complain about the winter cold, I still love it. I count the weeks until we can have fires in the woodstove and wear sweaters.

91. I applied at four or five colleges when I was in high school, and I got accepted at all of them.

92. My dream college was the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA. I got accepted there, and auditioned and was accepted into their Conservatory of Music. But we just did not have the money or the financial aid to send me there. I was very mad at God for a few days, until the man who would later become my husband (unbeknownst to either of us) pointed out that God had something even better planned for me, if he was saying "no" to that. Little did we know...!

93. I decided to start out at a community college and see where God led me from there.

94. Then I got the child care job and wanted to do that instead, and save up money.

95. Then I got engaged and married, and we wanted to have kids pretty much right away. There is always time to go to college.

96. I have never regretted that decision for a minute.

97. I loved taking tests in school. I took the SAT a second time just for fun. I scored in the 99+ percentile both times. But I only ranked twenty-fourth in my class of 105, because my study skills totally sucked and I only wound up with a 3.75 GPA.

98. I played the cornet in 5th, 6th, and 7th grades, until I learned the flute which I played throughout high school and still sometimes play. I also play the piano, but I haven't done much of any instrument since high school.

99. We are planning to buy our first house next year. We have been renting in the same place since we got married.

100. My favorite candy bar is Cadbury Roast Almond. YUM.



101. I have never been in a car accident or had a ticket, in 12 years of driving. Well, except the time when I was 17 that I tried to stop too fast and tapped into a guardrail. But there was no damage.



102. I have never done drugs, at all.



103. In high school I got drunk twice. Once on a stupid blind date, and once on my front porch. Both times it was because I was really thirsty and beer was all that was convenient to drink. It only took one beer each time. Since then, except for champagne on my first wedding anniversary, I've not had a drop of alcohol. It's not exactly because I think it's wrong; I just don't need to do it to have fun, and I'm afraid of losing my inhibitions and looking silly. Someday maybe at a fancy dinner when I don't have to drive anywhere, I'll have a nice drink. who knows.



104. I had two longish-term boyfriends in high school. One was a nice guy, if a bit geeky, but we were just way too immature for a relationship as heavy as ours was, and not really compatible either. The other was, well, a jerk, in a typical testosterone-overloaded juvenile male kind of way.



105. I have a tendency to rely more on people's affection than they do on mine.



106. One of my favorite things about my husband is that this isn't the case with him.



107. I plan to bring my children up with a totally different view of teenage relationships than I had, or than most people have.



108. I adore my husband's arms. Just looking at his wrists... mmm. I have always had a thing for arms.



109. In our household we do not watch television. Really. We have a TV, but it only serves as a monitor for the DVD player and the VCR -- no cable or antenna is attached to it. We like it this way. Occasionally I miss a few things (like kids' shows and documentaries) but we never miss them enough to allow the rest of that glurge into our house.


110. This list was originally just going to have 100 things but I kept thinking of more things.

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Every homeschooling mom's dream day

We have just had a monumental day in school. I have to make record of the fact that my 7-year-old jiggly, wiggly, energetic little boy did all his work quickly and correctly, without one single moan, whine, or complaint. This is indeed a red-letter day.


C also did her preschool things nicely and well. But she is young enough to actually be excited about school every day (I remember the days when my son was like that!) so that is more common.



On other topics: I am tired of weighing myself. I want to just throw my scale through the window. It just says the SAME STUPID -15 WEIGHT every time I step on it. It must be the scale's fault, right? I keep swearing I will only weigh on Thursdays, which is the weigh-in day for one of my weight loss online support groups. But I go past the scale every time I use the bathroom and the lure is just too great (hmm! maybe I will have miraculously lost two pounds in the past hour!). But if I only weighed once a week and I saw no progress at all after a whole week, I would be at risk of totally derailing myself with discouragement. This way it's a daily challenge -- "I will whip that rebellious scale into submission and make it show me a lower weight tomorrow!" I have been so good and careful. It's not fair. T is also losing weight -- he has lost about the same percentage of his goal as I have, and he's already breaking out his next-size-down jeans. Which is appealing, but I can't help being a wee bit jealous of the obviousness of his success. What am I doing wrong?


Still and all, it's better to be staying at -15 than to be going back up -- so I will keep working at it, even if all I ever do is maintain the same loss. And sooner or later I will have to lose more -- I have confidence in my scientific methods. ;-)

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Sunday, September 07, 2003

most embarrassing moment

Today's Diarist.net spark is the following:


What's the first thing you remember? Or rather, what is the oldest memory you have?



The first flash of memory I have, I was probably about 19 months old, because I think it was at our town's celebration of the bicentennial. But it could have been at a different kind of patriotic celebration, and hence I could easily have been a different age. At any rate, I remember walking along, being conscious that I had a frilly cover on over my diaper; the stamp mill at our town's historical museum was running, and there were American flags and red, white, and blue swags everywhere. I don't remember anything that happened; I just have that 2-second loop of mental videotape.


My first memories of events start when I was about 3. I remember when we were moving into a house where we lived for a couple of years when I was preschool age; my parents were occupied moving furniture and things into the house, and I was sitting on a little ledge and found a bottle of something on the ground. Either it was hair dye, or I thought it was, and I poured it over my head. It stung my eyes, I cried, and my mom came over and dealt with the situation. That is the first house I have any memories of living in.

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whine mope groan complain

I didn't make an entry yesterday. (I don't think. Did I? Maybe I did. I don't think so though). This is because yesterday was an unbelievably boring day. We had sort of loosely planned to maybe take the kids to the movies, T had some work to do around the house, that kind of thing. But on his way home from his astronomy do on Friday night, he noticed a problem with the brakes on our car, so he took them apart Saturday morning to examine them, and couldn't fix them right away because by the time he got the part in his hot little hands, it was time for him to leave with a friend who wanted him to go look at a car that the friend was going to buy. In the Bay Area. Which is a 3-hour drive from here. So he was gone all afternoon, and my car was unusable while he was gone. I had all these GO SOMEWHERE urges and nothing to do with them -- couldn't even walk downtown in the heat because I knew (and the kids acknowledged) that my dear kidlets would whine and moan and complain (gee, I don't know anyone who does that!) when it was time to come up our steep hill. So we stayed around the house. The kids chain-watched a few videos, we played a few games. I was not the bright sparkly inventive creative mom that I love to be; I wanted nothing more than to vege out and mope about not being able to go anywhere.


On the brighter side, today I have had a crushing sinus headache. :-D. And a stiff neck too. I did get to take about a three-hour nap after we got home from church. But everyone else is perky and jovial, and hungry, and I feel guilty for not wanting to deal with that. Someone please, slap some sense into me. I have a wonderful family and a wonderful life. Well, except for this sinus headache/stiff neck thing. But still. What's a little physical misery in the face of the wonderfulness of my life?


OK, so right now it's a lot. How lame I am...

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Friday, September 05, 2003

miscellaneous rambly thoughts

This is weird, I have just sat here literally with my fingers sitting on the keys, unable to think what to type. This is the equivalent of me not knowing what to say, which, let's face it, never happens. If I'm quiet (which I have to be from time to time) I'm either asleep, or it's the result of a serious effort of discipline. And the "diarrhea of the mouth" (what a repulsive phrase, really! ugh!) runs to email and chatting also. Fortunately, it's easier to control myself in typed electronic communication because I generally have the opportunity to think things over and delete before I send (though this certainly does not mean that I never stick my foot in it). If anyone figures out how to do that with speaking, please do let me know, I'll pay anything. :)


OK, I just had my best laugh of the day at something totally inane. My kids have this goofy video about construction equipment, and they're watching it backward, and the dirt is just magically going back up into loaders and spreading itself out before retreating bulldozers and the like. LT said it was like they were "using the force" to pick the dirt up. I am easily amused. My kids got this from me. Say what you will, it's a very handy character trait. :)


Tonight T is leading a group of local boy scouts toward their astronomy merit badges, via a three-hour observation session. It's a good time for it -- the moon is waxing gibbous, which means it will interfere just a little bit with the best seeing, but that is the best time to look at the moon itself because the "terminator" (line where it goes from light to dark) is in clear relief, which is very interesting to look at. And Mars is still putting on a good show. Astronomy is a lot like classical music, now that I think of it. To the non-fanatic, much of it seems really boring, but there are some aspects which are interesting even to people who will never in a million years get into it deeply. Not everyone would enjoy a Messier-object-finding-party that lasts all night, just as most people don't cry when they really listen hard to CPE Bach or Vivaldi or Schubert or even Gershwin (me? what?). But everyone likes to take a good close-up (relatively speaking) look at the moon, or Mars, or, say, the Ring Nebula (picture), just like everyone recognizes and probably likes, say, "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik", or "Fur Elise" (which my classmates used to ask me to play on the piano thus: "Do you know that song from the McDonald's commercial?" grr), or (of course) Pachelbel's "Canon in D" (I once saw an album for sale called "Pachelbel's Greatest Hit", consisting of a dozen or so different renditions of that one song.). I don't know exactly where I was going with this concept, other than trying to use as many parentheses as humanly possible, except to say that I am in the "when you get something interesting in there, hon, call me and I'll go look at it" camp as regards my husband's astronomy fixation. I really think it's neat to look at recognizable or very-different-looking stuff. And I'm really glad that he is able to enjoy something that he's so interested in. But I am certainly not as into it as he is.


We are having a mini-party tonight. Sometimes when T is gone overnight, the kids and I will stay up late, eat junk food, bring all our pillows out in the front room and crash on the floor watching movies, build ornate castles with blocks, dance to the Cranberries, that sort of thing. That's not happening tonight but I did get us some junk food, and they are vegging out watching a video. I even ate 400 calories' worth of junk myself. (a portion of Pringles and an ice-cream sandwich). I have been doing pretty well; I am now at -15. I'm not losing as fast as I did at the beginning but realistically it's probably better for me this way. That doesn't mean I like it better. grr. It was so satisfying when it was just falling off early on. I can tell a difference, though, looking at video of myself. We were watching my son's birthday party, from April, and WOW, I was fatter. The jeans I was wearing were quite snug and now I can do that holding-them-out-in-front-of-me bit. I am still not getting out my slenderer clothes until I hit -20 or so. My memory must be a little tweaked, because other of my clothes don't seem any looser than they were. Which makes no logical sense, so I must be mis-remembering how tight they were before. Thinking positively never hurt anyone, right? :)

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Friday Five

OK, this is a Friday Five that's near and dear to my heart...

1. What housekeeping chore(s) do you hate doing the most?


I hate putting away laundry. I am to the point where I enjoy sorting it and putting it in the washer and dryer, and don't even mind folding it, but somehow it always stays in its piles and takes days to get put away. sigh. I also do not like washing dishes, AT ALL, or dealing with the messy clutter that makes it so hard to do real cleaning like mopping floors, which I actually enjoy.


2. Are there any that you like or don't mind doing?

See above re: mopping floors. I also like making beds. This doesn't mean I make mine every day. But I should. It's such a satisfying chore -- five minutes, max, and you have a lovely tidy bed where there was a mess.


3. Do you have a routine throughout the week or just clean as it's needed?

Ideally, I have a routine. I have really neat check-off charts for myself, and when I follow them everything practically takes care of itself. However, I rarely follow them. Man, that says a lot of negative things about me. *sigh*.



4. Do you have any odd cleaning/housekeeping quirks or rules?

Um, no. Unless you count that I love rearranging furniture. You get most of the fun of moving, with none of the huge hassle.



5. What was the last thing you cleaned?

The last thing I did a very thorough cleaning job on was our living room, last night, while rearranging furniture. :) (see, the hobby is good for something!). I have done a lot of basic tidying and folded a load of laundry today as well. But the dishwasher looks at me disapprovingly every time I walk by. *sigh*

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Wednesday, September 03, 2003

"not much to report" -- right

Not much to report today.


You know, I always find that after I say that I think up five zillion things to say and it ends up being a really long entry.



hmm. nope. Not happening today. Really, there's not much. School went fine. (LT's writing prompt response: "The fair was fun. It is sad that the fair is over. My favorite is the 'wrestle' ride. My least favorite is the Tornado." explanation: the "wrestle" ride is actually the Indiana-Jones-decorated obstacle course sort of thing, so named by the kids because when they were on it once, three "big boys" were also on it, and they were wrestling each other, knocking into my kids, and really causing me to get in touch with my mama-bear side, if you know what I mean. grr. And the Tornado is a teenager ride which my kids would never even watch for long, let alone go on. Need I remind you that they are 3 and 7? Anyway, I promised no more posts about the fair, and besides, so far about 80% of this one is one long parenthetical statement, so I'll shut up about this now.). Other subjects also went well. LT loved his solar system quiz. It is amazing that I, being really pretty anal about spelling and grammar, can find his misspellings so adorable that I have a hard time correcting him on them. I mean, 'Plooto'? 'Joopitr' (can't duplicate the backward J)? Of course he does have to learn the correct spellings, and I have him write the missed ones over, but I make sure to keep his original papers intact so that when I look at them in five years I can sob because I'll never have a little boy who spells things so cutely again.



C did more pencil-control tracing and tried her first color-by-number. She had fun. She also totally blew away my plans for patterns and counting with Unifix cubes; I underestimated her abilities there. I'm going to have to step back and re-plan her math goals for the year, since she's pretty much met the ones I had for her, in the first two days. Not that she's excessively brilliant (although she is, aren't everyone's kids? ;-) ), just that I hadn't realized how much she already knew until we sat down and worked on it together.



In other topics...


I got the official Brush-Off from an old friend today. Last spring I started getting this desire to get in touch with some of my high school friends. It started because my class started planning its reunion. I did not want to go to that (posted about that in I think my first entry) but it did get me thinking about friends that I did want to find and get back in touch with. I ran into someone from my old crowd at the library, and we were both asking about the same person (whom we'd asked each other about every time we ran into each other for the last ten years or so) so I started with her. She has a really common name herself, but her half-brother doesn't, so I googled him, found him, emailed him, got my friend's phone number, and called her. Now, I hadn't had any relationship with this woman in ten years, almost no contact with her in that long, due to a lot of things, but we hit it off well, in spite of the differences between us (which had been what kept us from keeping the friendship going years ago, when we were less mature) and have been emailing back and forth, IMing, etc., and we're great friends again. We were glad about the way that turned out, and she and I were wondering about another of our close friends, so we googled her, and my friend emailed her. She emailed my friend back cheerfully, and expressed an interest in hearing from me, so I emailed her too, just before she went on vacation, as I found out later. She came back from vacation and emailed me to tell me she doesn't think a friendship between us would work, too much time has passed, we're too different, maybe if she had more time, etc etc etc. O-K. I'm really not bothered about it in any real way. It's not like this is a part of my life that's being taken away or ended; it never started and that's fine. I just got so glad about the success of one "reunion" that I thought another would go well too, and it didn't. Can't win 'em all.



OK, this is nuts, it's like a curse. Or a blessing. If I want to write a really long entry, all I have to do is start it with "not much to report today" and I'll go on and on filling several screens, unable to stop typing. sigh.

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Tuesday, September 02, 2003

Grapes for sale

LT has set up a "grape stand" on our porch. We have some grapevines that just kind of grow wild among some lilac bushes and a flowering quince bush alongside our driveway. He has picked several bunches of grapes, washed them, and is selling them for a penny apiece (that's a penny per grape, not a penny a bunch). He also has ice water, at a dollar a glass. So of course T and I have patronized his business. It is so sweet and funny to see him set up these little ventures. Last fall he gathered two paper lunch sacks full of really big acorns when we were cutting wood. He didn't quite know what he would do with them when he got them, but soon after getting home, I went out on the front porch to find him assiduously painting a sign -- "ACORNS 98¢". He set the sign by our driveway, and sat back down in his chair on the porch with his bags of acorns and a cash box. I asked him if the price was per bag, and he was shocked that I would think so -- no, it was per acorn! I managed to talk him into making it 5 for that price, and bought 5 acorns. We had some friends over and they also bought 5 acorns apiece. That was going to be the end of his sale except that T figured out that he could use some PVC from an old laundry hamper of mine, and hook it up to his compressor's air hose, and we could launch acorns from it. My dad found out about this and bought many, many acorns to launch. This was the beginning of LT's entrepreneurial streak -- he began making plans for machines to make him money. First was an acorn-shelling machine which used two spinning gears to break the shells, and a fan to blow the shells away from the nuts; then a can squisher machine which would have filled our living room (he informed us that we had better ask our landlord's permission before he built it in the backyard since it might be too big to move when we move out of this house). We had a lot of discussions about supply and demand and the free market economy and how nobody would pay to use a machine to shell acorns since nobody has a use for acorns in our modern world. And people would rather squish their own cans than pay someone else to do so. Imagine our surprise when a few months later we were in an "ag museum" near here and saw a couple of Rube Goldberg contraptions which someone had made, one to squish cans, and one which used two gears to crack walnuts! At any rate, undaunted by the logical failure of his first two ideas, he continued coming up with more and more plans, and more and more money-making schemes. He has contented himself for the past six months or so with being the one to handle our recycling, and getting the money for that, but now that I've paid a $1.05 for a glass of ice water and a small handful of seedy grapes, I wonder if he's going to start coming up with more hare-brained seven-year-old ideas. :)

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boring dull test entry

I just finished doing a lot of fiddling -- added the comments feature, among other things. So this is a very dull test entry. Don't even bother reading it. (oops.)

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First day of school

This was our first day back at school. It went pretty well overall. C is totally enthusiastic about the whole idea, and she cheerfully memorized our week's Bible verse ("Do everything without complaining or arguing" -- appropriate, no?), traced lines and shapes (and an elephant -- learning pencil control), made patterns with unifix cubes, counted unifix cubes, and then did a lot of coloring, while LT got through his work without an unbearable amount of complaining. He did a writing prompt first (topic: How do you feel about starting school? text: I am feeling bad about starting school. Because I would rather just go in the pool.). Then he had a page of math, which was actually a pretest from a second-grade curriculum. I wanted to reassess where he is and what we'll have to go back over after taking a summer off. The verdict is, he's fully, FULLY done with first grade math, and probably beyond much of second even (we'll find this out over the next few days) but he could use some flash-card style reinforcement of basic math facts, since he keeps using his fingers. After the math, he read a story to C, and then he had a state worksheet. Perhaps I was unwise in having him do Hawaii first. All those darn island names. That probably took half our school time, considering that we were interrupted in the middle of it by someone coming by to drop something off for T.


Next we have to go to the library; LT is ecstatic because I checked their website and the Star Wars Incredible Cross-Sections book he requested is there waiting for him. We have to go to the bank too, and maybe the store. It feels good to be getting back in the school-year rhythm (although I really enjoyed the break from it as well) -- now if only the weather would get more autumnal, things would be even better. Blech, a hundred degrees really bites.

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