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Wednesday, December 31, 2003

the gender genie

OK, according to the gender genie, I write like a man. Overwhelmingly like a man. Apparently it's because I use the words "the", "as", and "in" a lot. wha? It must not look for words like "husband", "period", or especially "austen"... although I did use the word "sex" in I think yesterday's entry -- maybe that threw it off.

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blissfully content indeed

I must be one of the only people in the world for whom today is just another day. We never do a lot of New Year's celebration -- not being the types who look for any excuse for a good party these days, we'll probably just go to bed at our regular time, which may or may not be after midnight. It is a bit interesting to look back on one year and forward to the next, but considering that one will be very much like the other, that's not something I spend a whole heck of a lot of time or energy doing either. Really I'm not a stick-in-the-mud, I swear, I've just never done much for New Year's since the days that my friends and I would stay up watching movies and then call the operator at midnight to wish her (always a her!) a happy new year (we also once called the operator to ask her, because we were curious, where the operators went to work. Turns out they were in the basement of our local phone company's offices).


This year has been just amazingly happy for us. But every year generally is. I was really wondering about that yesterday -- why do I get to be the one? What caprice made God look at me and say, "that one, she's the one who gets to marry the man of her dreams, stay madly in love with him, have a beautiful family, endure just enough hardship to make her a better person without making her a nutcase, live where she wants to live, be surrounded by people she wants near her... yes, her." I look around at so many women my age, and they're full of angst about men, about their biological clocks, about whether there is someone out there who will make them happy, about the marriage they're in where they have all this dissatisfaction, about living far away from their families, and then I look at my life and I'm almost afraid to even admit I exist for fear that they'll mail-bomb me out of envy. Not that I'm the only happily married family woman in my late 20's in Western civilization -- but it does seem like I'm inordinately blessed. It was actually my husband walking around in his black work turtleneck with his sleeves pushed back that started me thinking about it last night. Oh, man, that is a good look on him. Whoever had the brilliant idea that the casual-dress Park Service uniform would include a black turtleneck in the winter has my unending gratitude. He comes home, takes off his outer khaki button-down, pushes up his sleeves, and rrrowrr. RRROOOOWWRRR.


[several minutes staring into space, fantasizing]


Yeah. What was I saying? Oh yes, looking at my husband. I feel like the school geek in some coming-of-age teen book, this nerdy awkward girl who somehow gets noticed by the guy all the girls want to be noticed by. Girls like I was just don't get to go out with men as, well, as rrroooowwwrrr as my husband is, they just don't. And the heady thing is, the thing that makes me dizzy and that I have a bit of a hard time wrapping my brain around, is that he looks at me and thinks that I'm, well, rrowwrr, for lack of a better descriptive term. Yeah, we're a pretty happy couple. Bring on 2004.

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Monday, December 29, 2003

mostly about books

recent googles: "diaryland husband sex"; "Luann puddles"; five ZILLION hits for the 80's music quiz.

I'm childishly hoping it will snow tonight. This is especially immature of me considering that while I would get to stay indoors and look out at the pretty scenery, and perhaps bundle the kids up for a few minutes of playtime outside, my hard-working husband would have to slog through the weather to get to work, which is no fun, and actually somewhat dangerous. Not to mention that a good deal of his actual work does take place outside -- nothing like hiking through a blizzard to work on some remote radio repeater, eh? Still, though, the childish hope is still there. It's raining really well and the temperature's about 37 degrees, so there's a slight chance of it, if the temperature drops during the night.


I finished a book today -- Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I had read her Magician's Assistant a while ago, and loved it. At first I was a little disappointed in Bel Canto -- the first half of it was really more atmospheric than character-driven, and I had to make myself keep reading at times because I wasn't drawn into the story much. I was rewarded for my perseverance, however, and the second half of the book was searing and intense and wonderful. This woman is one amazing storyteller; she'll break your heart with her prose. I'm going to try The Patron Saint of Liars next.


Speaking of books, I got some REALLY great gifts for Christmas, including a good-sized balance in Barnes and Noble gift certificates. I placed a really big (well, big for ME) order online and still have the pleasure of a whole lot of browsing in the actual store to look forward to as well. With the online order I finished out my collection of Dickens novels (planning to put myself through a chronological read-through of his books this year), and got a few other odds and ends like The Making of Pride and Prejudice (referring, of course, to the 1995 BBC production-from-heaven), the P&P soundtrack, a couple of Mitford books I've read but don't own, that sort of thing. I'm counting the days till the box arrives -- Christmas all over again! :)

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Saturday, December 27, 2003

a long ramble, about nothing in particular, really

I've spent the day having a little private growl at my husband's boss, whose extreme need to be The Man Of The Hour has resulted in him calling my husband in to work with him for the last two days on something that could just as easily be done on Monday. This is the only time my husband has ever had a five-day weekend without having to take leave to get it, and for two of those days he's been in at work. His boss is just a big blue Meanie. [deleted long and sometimes funny tirade re: boss out of fear that either a) he would happen upon my diary and know he was being described and fire my husband on the spot or b) someone who knows both of us would read this and, in the usual way of our town's magical gossip mind-reading chain, without anyone ever verifiably telling anyone ANYTHING, the grapevine would carry my tirade to him, with the same end result as option a]


Other than the periodic loud, angry apostrophizing on my part towards the absent boss, the day's been quiet. If T were home it would be a perfect day -- cold outside, warm inside, nice and relaxing.


Ironic, isn't it, that I had just typed those words about fifteen minutes ago when my darling son managed to knock over a nearly-full gallon of milk? Imagine the chaos that began even as I typed the "g" in "relaxing", and it's almost funny, even to me. However, I have a question: At what age or stage do human reflexes improve to the point where a person will simply and quickly pick up, say, a gallon container of fluid when it's been tipped, rather than standing and staring in apparently impotent horror for a few seconds while the fluid obeys the laws of physics and goes glug glug splash splash onto the floor? I really want to know this. (at least the floor needed mopping anyway; it could have been worse).


I think I need a good dose of Austen to return to my former relaxed and happy state. As soon as I figure out what I'm making for dinner I'll indulge. And speaking of indulging, I have been outright avoiding my scale lately. It is looking resentfully at me every time I go past, but I just can't get involved with it right now. This is in large part the fault of my darling brother, who found the recipe for the world's most amazing clam chowder and brought the resulting big-bowl-o-bliss to our family Christmas dinner. Oh. My. Gosh. It was so good. And then how was I supposed to turn him down when he offered to send home leftovers? I swear this stuff probably has five thousand calories per serving (seriously, it consists mostly of equal portions heavy cream, half and half, whole milk, and bacon, if I remember right, with the requisite clam juice and all that as well. Well, here, here's the recipe), but it tastes so good that I was willing to eat it and face the consequences. I've finally finished the rest of the leftovers and I have sworn an oath on my size 12's not to make more than two batches of this heavenly stuff a year. Yikes. And January 1st, I am stepping on the scale whether I like it or not.


I bought a pair of inline skates with some Christmas money. I have all these grandiose plans of skating along with the kids as they ride their bicycles on bike paths. First I have to actually, um, put them on, and see if I can remain upright in them. I haven't stood on anything that rolled since roller rink trips in junior high, and maybe high school once or twice. Hmm, perhaps I should have bought the helmet as well as the knee pads, elbow pads, and gloves. If I suddenly disappear, you'll know it's because I'm in a Rollerblade-induced coma.

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Friday, December 26, 2003

old letters

Short entry tonight, I'm very tired. But I had fun this afternoon/evening, reading some old letters I'd written to a friend years ago; she sent them to me and I'm to send them back. I was quite a pitiful person at 18; so many plans that fell apart (and were pretty stupid to begin with), so many vows to get over the same worthless idiotic guy, so many execrable poems. OK, so four poems. At least, four that I'd sent her that she sent back to me. gag. Anyway. It was really fun to read them, and I'm amazed how much neater my handwriting was back in the days when I actually, well, wrote things. I was inspired to buy a really chintzy $1.99 pad of stationery at the grocery store and start actually writing letters. We'll see how long that lasts. The first one is going to be a thank you for the opportunity to stumble down memory lane like a loon. :)

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Thursday, December 25, 2003

template problems (and more)

My template disappeared. I guess I'm not the only one this happened to this week. I'll fix it when I get home. I'm at my parents' now. Meanwhile, here are four signs that you're a diaryland addict:

1. You mentally plan a diary entry about what you're doing, while you're doing it, all day long.

2. You log in on your parents' computer on Christmas, just to see what your diary looks like on their system.

3. You have dreams with other diaryland people in them (had dinner at Denny's with sundry in last night's episode, for example).

4. You spend more time typing about your experiences than you do experiencing them.

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Monday, December 22, 2003

pictures! pictures!

Snapfish (I love you, I love you) just put up pictures from our most recent rolls of film. Here are three I felt I must Share Or Burst.

This is LT, on Patriotic/Military Day at Awana. I just have to love any club that encourages kids to dress up in military and/or patriotic costumes. :)

This is C (with her back to us) at her first ballet lesson. This is a stretching exercise wherein they pretend to be "big oak trees" and rock back and forth in the wind. WAY TOO PRECIOUS, no?

Here are C and myself getting ready to go to the Nutcracker. Don't we look lovely?! :) This is a textbook example of Too Much Lipstick, and the fact that the flash bleached out my face didn't help the look at all. T is not an ally in TML prevention, as he has a bit of a red lipstick, um, f*t*sh (don't want the creepy stalkers to happen upon this particular entry...) Fortunately for me and the world at large, I ate something on the way and had to reapply, and I wore much less the rest of the night.

This is my second entry today, just so you know...

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what I learned about myself at the grocery store

a note of warning: There will be lots of parentheses today. I can feel it in my bones. Beware.


Things I learned at the grocery store this afternoon:


1. I am a grownup.

I was about to bag myself a head of Romaine lettuce (caesar salad for Christmas dinner) when I looked at the price for said lettuce, and made a dismayed noise. (you would have too. Funny how I'll drop $3 for a twelve-pack of aspartame and water, and think that's a fantastic deal, and then balk at the thought of paying $2 for enough vitamin A to last me four days). Anyway. The produce guy, whom I'd always thought looked vaguely familiar but put it off to the fact that he a) lived in the same town as me, which makes EVERYONE look familiar after a while and b) looked like every 30-year-old ordinary-sized blond guy you ever saw, jokingly called out, "Hey, what's the matter over there?" I laughed a little (very very embarrassed! damn!) and said, "Oh, whoops! You weren't supposed to hear my dismayed noise at the price of your lettuce." To which he replied, "ha ha! you must have been in drama." And I went, huh? He said, "You were in drama! [name of my high school, omitted in the naive belief that a stalker, should he WANT to find someone as anonymous and dull as myself, wouldn't be able to using other information in this diary if he made an effort], class of 1993?" Inside myself I was thinking, this guy couldn't have been in my class, he looks... he looks thirty! But he was. ANd then I went (still inside myself, I'm not THIS prone to saying stupid things in public), "duh, you just had a birthday, and you turned ... wait for it ... TWENTY-NINE! You're not old, dearie, but you are, in fact, nearly thirty!" And that was it, another moment of feeling like, whoa, I am a grownup. I remember when I was a girl and a teen, I used to imagine that there would be this day (my 18th birthday figured high on the list here) where I would Be Grown-Up. Then as I actually became an adult I started kind of waiting for the feeling of adulthood to magically just happen one day. I would stop feeling like a kid and be just like all those other adults I saw going around every day. Graduating from high school? Nope. Getting married? Yeah, some. Having a baby? Yeah, some more. This continued along, and then just today I realized, there will never be a day when that happens. I won't wake up and go, NOW, now I'm like all those other adults. It'll grow by degrees until I look at myself and see that I'm old and think, "when did this happen?" Which makes me realize, maybe a lot of other people go around waiting for the same thing. I dunno.

2. I am too soft-hearted.

Exhibit A:
Our town has two podunk grocery stores. One is larger and more modern than the other but a real supermarket would laugh to see that word on the bags for these places. They're big enough to have pushed out all the little grocery stores when they came in (waah! I STILL miss Jack's Market), but really, they're shoeboxes compared to the most modest Raley's. The smaller (and older) of the two is really more like a glorified convenience store, only with less beer and shorter hours. It is run by a really nice Korean family, who moved to town (in fact, they're my neighbors) and bought the place a few years ago. Ever since the bigger store went in when I was maybe ten, the older, smaller one has gotten more shabby and more quiet. This is the store where I generally prefer to shop if I'm feeling a little less well-put-together than ordinary -- I can go there with my hair looking awry and my tackier clothes on and feel less worried about running into someone who will care. Plus it's more personal, and I've shopped there since I got married, and all that. However, if I have more substantial shopping to do, I tend to go to the other store. And -- here's where the soft-hearted part comes in -- I feel SO GUILTY about this. I feel guilty for Sam, the man behind the counter hoping his store will make it. I feel guilty for not helping him -- I rationalize: "yes, but I need three pounds of broccoli today (broccoli soup for Christmas dinner) and Sam doesn't always even HAVE three pounds of broccoli, let alone three pounds of FRESH broccoli." But I still feel bad for going to the other store. I'm so sorry, Sam. Next time, I promise.


Exhibit B:
I was finally done putting things in my cart and I was ready to check out. I picked the line for the elderly male checker, who's new to the store, because I figured he'd be more likely to be slow enough for me (I hate when I'm still fumbling for my checkbook in my purse and the super-efficient grocery drone woman is blinking bright-eyed at me with her hand out). And he was, he was comfortably slow and friendly and a little unsure of what he was doing, just perfect. Then I started picturing to myself (as he was trying to figure out how to ring up my broccoli when it was sold by the bunch instead of by the pound) his job interview with the store owner, a friendly but tough guy who actually moved here from New York twenty years ago, nobody moves here from New York. LA, yes, Bay Area, all the time, but we're generally too soft for New York people. Anyway. I was imagining the interview, and this elderly gentleman (maybe he was looking to supplement his retirement. Maybe he was lonely after his wife died and wanted something to do where he'd interact with people) assuring a guy twenty or twenty-five years his junior that he'd do a good job, and I almost actually had tears coming out of my eyes. WHAT A DORK AM I. (at least I don't feel sorry for uneaten vegetables that have to get thrown out, because of the smiling personified vegetables on produce boxes feeling left out and unwanted, like my husband used to when he was little. When he told me that I KNEW I had to marry that man.)

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100 OTHER things about me

Really you ought to also check out the original 100+ Things About Me; those are, I think, more interesting than these, on the whole. I tried hard as I was doing these not to duplicate any of the original ones.

1. My eyes are light brown, with darker brown flecks in them like freckles.
2. I am 5'8 1/2" tall. I reached this height in the eighth grade. This was not as much fun as it may sound.
3. I have lost 25 pounds in the past four months, on my way to a total loss goal of 44 lb.
4. I have spider veins in my legs.
5. I was born at 12:15 a.m.
6. I am far, far more in love with my husband now than I was on my honeymoon (and that's saying a lot).
7. My favorite classical composer is Mozart, but my favorite era of music is baroque.
8. I have one older brother. I always wanted younger siblings but never got any.
9. I had a very happy home life growing up. We never had a lot of money, but we had enough love and good times to make up for the unhappy time I had outside of my home.
10. I was book-smart but socially inept as a child.
11. Most of the time I still think I'm socially inept and I frequently try to get out of going places where I'll be around people who know me, but not very well (e.g. Bible study meetings, sometimes the grocery store, that kind of thing). I always think people will discuss how idiotic I am after I leave. I am most comfortable around my own family, or around total strangers.
12. I talk too much. I am always mentally kicking myself and telling myself to shut up.
13. Some people say I talk too fast, but I think most people talk too slowly. Sometimes I think they do it just ... to ... bug ... me.
14. As my dad would say (and has said!), I would lose my head if it weren't bolted on. It is like a disease with me; I set something down and lose it instantly; it takes me half an hour to find it again.
15. I have never been in an airplane. I had a five-minute flight in a helicopter once, though.
16. For a long time, I swore I would never have an online diary/weblog/journal. oops.
17. I wiggle my feet in a specific rhythmic way when I'm going to sleep. It's like a comfort mechanism; I've done it as long as I can remember. If I notice I'm doing it, I stop, but as soon as I stop thinking about it and start drifting off to sleep, it starts up again.
18. I have never had a surprise party, although I've thrown them for other people.
19. Whenever I watch an orchestra perform I get this jealous kind of feeling. I want to be down there playing, not up here watching. It doesn't last, though.
20. I can't draw, except I can make a passable-looking horse if I try really hard and erase a lot. Beyond that it's strictly stick figures. I can't even make a straight line or an even circle.
21. I make a mean pecan pie, though.
22. I grew up in the 80's but a lot of the pop culture references (like the cartoon-related ones) go right over my head, because we didn't watch a lot of TV.
23. In a similar vein, I have never watched even a single episode of a "reality TV" show, and frankly I think the idea sounds way over-hyped.
24. I also didn't watch any coverage about the OJ Simpson trial. I would have made a perfect juror in that case. When he was arrested, I heard about it on the radio and turned to my husband and said, "Who's OJ Simpson? Didn't he play a sport or something?"
25. For my nineteenth birthday I got a boxed set of the eight books in the Anne of Green Gables series. I read them over and over, starting with Anne of Green Gables and going all the way through to Rilla of Ingleside, and then starting back over at the beginning. I read the entire series fifteen or sixteen times that year. It was like an obsession for me.
26. I am extremely easy to amuse. I think it has something to do with living so rurally. When a high-school "party" is a bunch of your friends getting together and going for a walk in the middle of the night, you know it doesn't take much.
27. I haven't been sick enough to have to stay in bed, with the exception of recovering from surgery which doesn't really count, more than twice or three times since I've been married. The whole household (the whole COUNTY, it seems like) will be sick and I'm just fine.
28. I don't like Scarlett O'Hara.
29. I like reading about Jane Eyre but I think I might get tired of being friends with her.
30. I like the smell of diesel, if I don't have to be stuck behind the vehicle for miles but can just catch a whiff as it goes by.
31. I also like the smell of gasoline, and of new pavement.
32. When I was in high school I wrote an execrable poem (OK, a lot of them, but this is a specific example) with a line that went "couples dancing with their orange passion." I thought that was the best thing ever. Why nobody killed me in my sleep I still do not know, but I'm grateful.
33. I have never done any illicit drugs. I just never saw the need.
34. I have a scar on my forehead from when I slammed my bicycle into a pole when I was 5; one on my shin from when I jumped off a bus-stop bench (visiting a friend in a place civilized enough to actually have bus stop benches) and smacked my shin into a fire hydrant; one on my hand from when I was washing dishes as a teenager, put my hand inside a broken glass, and it sliced off a chunk of skin from my pinky knuckle on that hand.
35. I never put my hand inside glasses to wash them now.
36. I once stepped into a cattleguard at full walking speed. That doesn't feel good at all. (If you don't know what a cattleguard is you need to get out of the city for at least three years and then report back to me. Thank you very much).
37. I think I have pretty much confessed all the bad stuff I did as a teenager to my parents by now. (There would be a whole journal post all by itself, to go into those)
38. The only celebrities I have ever met or seen in person are authors.
39. I have a pointy chin.
40. I take the shoulder pads out of any clothing I get that has them. My shoulders are huge enough without them.
41. I walk very fast. Again, like the talking thing, though, I tend to think that I walk at a normal pace and everyone else dawdles.
42. I bring a book with me almost everywhere, especially if I'm going to be without children, just in case I get stuck waiting somewhere unexpectedly.
43. I remember smells so strongly that I can trick my brain into thinking I'm smelling a thing, and I can actually smell it at will, sort of.
44. I wear a size 12 (American).
45. I read very fast. I used to read a 300-page book each day when I had less to do (i.e. before I had children).
46. I hate centipedes and millipedes. Other than that I don't have any phobias.
47. I like to get a different kind of shampoo every time I buy it.
48. My favorite perfume is "Pleasures" by Estee Lauder, but it's too expensive to buy regularly, so most of the time I wear "Sand and Sable" instead.
49. My favorite place to visit is Morro Bay, California.
50. I live in a major tourist destination. The population of our small town mulitplies by more than 10 in the summer, if you count the people staying in the hotels.
51. My best girlfriend lives 2500 miles away from me. It makes it difficult to shop and "do lunch" together.
52. The first car with my name on the title was a 1966 Dodge Polara.
53. I get about 200-300 emails a day. That's less than it used to be.
54. Every year I try to read Jane Eyre during the first protracted spell of gray weather.
55. My husband calls me "Ducky". But absolutely nobody else does or is allowed to.
56. I do not have any furry pets, just fish, and I'm getting tired of those.
57. I had a horse from the time I was 9 until last year when she had to be put down.
58. The last furry pets I owned (never really considered my horse a pet, she was livestock ;-) were two cats named Chloe and Chelsea. They had litters within a month of each other, Chloe first. Chelsea was a poor mother so Chloe adopted her kittens. We gave them all away when we had our first baby.
59. Two of my grandmothers are still alive.
60. My husband's great-grandmother is still alive. One of her nieces is Tanya Tucker, the country singer.
61. I was raised on country music, REAL country music, and I roll my eyes at a lot of the modern stuff that gets called "country," even though I very rarely listen to that genre anymore.
62. The first computer I owned, other than the Atari 800 my family had in the 80's, was a 386 33MhZ (I think) PC with 2M RAM and a 256M hard drive. It was a really fast machine and my friends were extremely jealous that I only paid $400 for it. This was in 1993.
63. I sing alto.
64. I got an F in analytic geometry in high school, my junior year. That was the class where my extremely poor study habits finally caught up with me. Before that I was able to pull As, Bs, and the occasional C just by doing well on tests and quizzes even though I very rarely did homework in most classes.
65. I play the flute and the piano, but not often, and consequently, not very well anymore.
66. My 4-yo daughter looks a lot like me. My 7-yo son looks a lot like my husband. We joke that we cloned ourselves.
67. The woodstove is the only source of heat in my house. I like it that way. Wood's a lot of work but it's free, and it feels so cozy to have a fire.
68. We are still using the towels we got as wedding presents.
69. I wanted to try having red hair for years, so finally in late 1999 I tried it. Well, I tried auburn. It didn't look good on me.
70. We always put up our Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving, and we generally try to take it down on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.
71. Three of my parents' five grandchildren were born on the day after a holiday: my nephews on the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Valentine's Day, and my middle daughter on the day after Christmas.
72. I have a black thumb. Any plant I own, from lawn grass on up, is doomed. This is largely because I am a loser and I forget to water things. But even when I do water things, somehow, I kill them.
    
73. I like the smell of brewing coffee but I can only tolerate the taste if it's blended with milk and stuff.
74. I taught myself HTML when I wanted to make a family webpage in 1996.
75. My husband's and my tenth wedding anniversary will be on March 19th, 2004.
76. My absolute utter money-is-no-object dream vacation would be a world tour on the Queen Elizabeth II. Assuming, that is, that I don't get seasick; since I've never been on the ocean in a boat, I don't know if I do or not.
77. My enormous forehead requires me to wear bangs. I grew them out once, and tried going without them for one school year. It was not a good thing.
78. My daughter inherited my forehead. Fortunately, she looks adorable with bangs.
79. Most of my female friends are people I've never met in person.
80. I dislike dark chocolate, except as chocolate chips in cookies.
81. I eat too many carbohydrates.
82. I am a Raiders fan by default. Before I was married I liked whatever football team was trendy (like the 49ers), or just didn't pay attention. However, becoming a Raiders fan was practically a written prerequisite for marrying my husband. ;-)
83. I love to watch ice skating, although I've only ice skated a few times myself.
84. I am not a sporty type. I don't throw well or catch well, or even run well, and I definitely don't jump well.
85. There's no such thing as too many books; there are only too few bookshelves.
86. I go to the same church as my parents, brother/SIL/nephews, and grandmother. It's like a mini-reunion every Sunday.
87. If I Google my name, I find a bunch of stuff about some woman about my age who lives in Illinois, and a few newsgroup posts from me, from the days when I wasn't so careful about putting my full name all over the Internet.
88. I do not like my feet.
89. I have worn glasses since junior high, although I didn't start wearing them constantly until I graduated from high school. I get bad headaches if I go without them.
90. I have never had braces.
91. My handwriting varies from extremely neat (but still not as neat as my mom's) to pretty messy (but not as messy as my brother's), depending on my mood more than on how quickly I'm writing.
92. When I was 15 I took a handful of Tylenol because I wanted (or, more accurately, I wanted people to think I wanted, if I am to be totally honest with my angst-y teenaged self) to kill myself. Having one's stomach pumped sucks. Don't ever try it just on a whim, OK? There are other ways to get your point across. Also, this incident left me with a distinct lack of faith (which endures to this day) in psychologists and the mental health industry in general.
93. I did a lot of stupid things as a teenager, but #92 was the stupidest.
94. I am a possessive, jealous type of person by nature, but I'm better about it than I used to be. When I was younger I would get irrationally unhappy (although I had the sense to at least try not to show it) if my close friends were close friends with other people as well. Same went for boyfriends -- if my boyfriend was friendly with my friends, it bothered me. I've improved a lot. Still, it's a good thing that I married a man who is similarly inclined.
95. On one side my extended family is quite dysfunctional. On the other it's the most normal family you could possibly imagine, for the most part.
96. I love swimming, although I am not very good at it; I always manage to look as if I were about to drown.
97. I am not picky about misspellings or grammatical errors in chats or casual emails, but it really bothers me to see them in purposefully published materials. I could go on and on about this. (just tonight I saw "post hold digger" in the "tools needed" list for a project at Home Depot and I had to physically restrain myself from shuddering).
98. I have really awful periods. My friends are all aghast when I tell them about them.
99. I don't see how it is that people think classical music is boring. A great deal of classical music makes me cry, it's so beautiful.
100. I get a new stuffed duck from my husband every year in the top of my Christmas stocking.

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my birthday party, and a resolution

recent googles: "altering driver's license" (!!); "Muleshoe Twiggy" (??); about eighty hits in the past week on "80's Music Quiz"

I haven't updated much lately; sorry about that. We had a busy and fun weekend; today was my birthday party (day itself is Thursday). I got some fun and thoughtful presents (darling cards from the kids too), and what's even better, we spent a nice day together as a family. We had a nice lunch/party and then drove to the city and walked down Christmas Tree Lane with my parents and my brother's family.


We're gearing up for Christmas. Still haven't wrapped a THING for the kids or T; all the presents are hidden around the house. That's going to be a project for the next few nights, needless to say.

I am also going to attempt to turn over a new leaf and really get on the ball (ack, I always mix my metaphors when I'm exhausted, sorry) about housework. Everyone in the house is happier when it's clean; shouldn't that be enough motivation to keep it that way, even if it means actually working at it, whether I feel like it or not? T in particular has been a bit on-edge lately, with a lot going on in several areas of his life, and I know (because he has told me in so many words) that everything feels so much lighter when he can come home to a clean house and move around in a clean house and go to bed in a clean house. So. The kids and I will work up a schedule and JUST DO IT. (and no computer for me till everything's checked off for the day! ack! Did I just say that?)

Before I go, here's my irritation du jour (this one's been festering a long time): Seeing cartoons, movies, pictures, cards, etc. wherein people are holding HOLLY over their heads pretending it's mistletoe. ARE YOU DOLTS? Holly: bright green; shiny; spiny leaves; red (poisonous) berries; grows in bush form. Mistletoe: subdued green color; very matte; round leaves; tiny, almost invisible white berries; actually a relatively ugly fungus-related parasite which proliferates on trees, to their detriment. It is nobody's best friend, and not very picturesque. But even so, please. PLEASE. Artists, filmmakers, etc., if you're gonna depict someone standing "under the mistletoe," for freak's sake get or draw some actual mistletoe! OK, I'm done. Back to your regularly scheduled holiday cheer.

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Thursday, December 18, 2003

life is good!

I hope putting this here doesn't completely tweak out my template for this entry (you can click on this picture to see it in better detail). I just had to post about how good my life is:





Note: I am relaxing on the couch. I am reading a nice thick WONDERFUL book. I have a diet Coke. It is lovely autumnal woodstove weather and I am wearing my red ribbed sweater and my new schoolgirl skirt (which, don't you just know, T just can't stand. Um, that's sarcasm). Also, this is one of the first pictures taken by our new-to-us digital camera.


Pardon me, must dash back to the couch; I just wanted to share.

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Wednesday, December 17, 2003

sizing rant

Any other tallish women get frustrated trying to find lingerie that fits? I'm not extraordinarily tall, so come on, how hard would it be to make a backless bra with an extra two inches of length in it so that it could actually reach from my waist to my breasts (hello googler! nothing interesting here, go away please!)? And yet I guess it must be pretty difficult, since I have just spent 45 minutes searching for one online, after spending considerable time struggling with the two I own, trying to force one to behave properly and failing. They all just size by bra size. How stupid is that, when the stupid thing has to go around your waist as well? I've worn the same bra size through three pregnancies (OK, so not QUITE the same, but the same BAND size anyway), 40 pounds of weight gain, and 25 pounds of weight loss; that's quite a bit of fluctuation in some other measurements which are pretty important when considering anything beyond the most basic lingerie. Obviously these companies must be headed by men, or else by irritating 5'5" size six women (not that all women of this description are irritating, although there are moments... but that's certainly not THEIR fault) who bat their eyelashes in perplexion when presented with the idea that any normal person might be sized differently from themselves.


And I won't even go into the bizarre-but-common method of sizing bras which would make one think that I have negative-sized breasts. They really are convex; I can see them; why then should I be wearing a negative B, if such a thing existed, according to their goofy measurement system?


Speaking of googlers (well, I was): of all the things Andrew intended when he designed the stats section here at Diaryland, I don't imagine he planned that one of them would be to make diarylanders feel more normal. However, seeing probably half a dozen people find my diary in the past few days by searching Yahoo and Google for "sugar makes my stomach hurt" and "anxiety attack tingling" has done just that. Whew, I am not the only one.


Now, that doesn't mean that all Googlers are normal. Nuh-UH. Some of the things I have seen in there make me shudder.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2003

guilt

Now I feel a little guilty for poking gentle fun at my little hypochondriac yesterday, because now she really and truly is sick. The cough is now just part of one of those ubiquitous childhood-illness complexes consisting of a high fever, a sore throat, and a really, really goopy nose. Poor sweetie. And she's like her father in that anytime she gets a fever, her tummy gets upset. So, darling daughter (or "double density", as altavista translates dd), I am so sorry to have teased you in such a manner. Here's hoping you don't throw up the Tylenol next time.


SpaceCamp just got over and I counted the seconds until LT was over here asking, "Can I play Starfighter [his beloved Star Wars game]?" It took six. So I'll vacate the computer for him and his obsession, and go do a guilt-assuaging load of laundry before I sit down on the couch with C's head in my lap and read one of the five or so books which have earned a place, for one reason or another, on my MUST BE READ NOW list.

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hypochondriac, airline tickets, and a runaway freight train

C has a cough. This doesn't bother her a bit; I think she actually enjoys it. She is always kind of hoping she's just a little bit sick -- not sick enough to be really miserable, but enough to get some attention. To illustrate my point: she just coughed, and then said to her brother, "I sure have some big coughs, don't I? Poor me!" Those words exactly! I worry about her future; she has potential pill-fiending tendencies (oh, Mommy, please can I have some red medicine? I think I might have a sniffly nose...)


I have just done a very exciting thing. Last night, for the first time in my life, I actually purchased airline tickets. Yes, I, who have never been in an airplane, never been further east than Kansas, never seen the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, am GOING TO FLORIDA IN AN AIRPLANE in about a month and a half, along with T and both kids, to visit my best friend. She and I met in a Christian chat room at WBS Chat. Does anyone else remember WBS chat? Chat-room chatting is kind of an Internet-newbie staple, and it's the kind of thing we all look back at with embarrassment (I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning doing what?), but by the grace of God, in January 1997, I "met" a kindred spirit there, in among all the sig lines and little icon pictures and server-push text scrolling up and up and up. Yay for WBS. ;-). And I finally get to go see her, after mentally planning this trip scores of times (she's been here once, in the spring of 1999).


Can everyone please join with me in a minor panic? Christmas is a week and two days away! It's not that I don't love Christmas, because I do, and it's not that I'm not ready for it, because I am (well, pretty much. THe house needs a little tidying before we can achieve the Norman Rockwell Christmas-morning scene), it's just that it came running up so fast! What happened to November and December? For that matter, what happened to 2003? It makes reasonable sense that the years keep seeming faster and faster -- after all, when I was ten, the time between Christmases was one-tenth of my life; at 30 it's only one-thirtieth of my life -- but still, if it keeps up like this, by the time I'm fifty I'll go to sleep on Christmas night and wake up on the next Christmas morning, another year older. This is insane, and more than a little frightening. There's got to be a happy medium between that desolate childhood December 26th feeling of looking across the unending desert of the year to come at the tiny little Christmas oasis that is so depressingly far away on the other side, and this runaway freight train where the years fly by so fast we can hardly see them. Maybe I passed that happy medium when I was 19.3 years old, or something. sigh.

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Monday, December 15, 2003

Laugh-Out-Loud Time Waster for Wednesday, December 15th

A little laugh brought to you (to me, anyway) courtesy of Babelfish and Altavista:


This is what happens when you translate Friday night's entry into French and back:

Things I will be sure to remember after this evening:

Anyhow happy you must adapt in a dress which you could not wear during years, really should try to you to downwards rest in it before you the use it with an event where you will sit down. In this way you can discover in front of time if it transforms as by magic your section median into rather decent imitation of the man of Michelin any time that you slacken in resting position, and plane around that.

the coat + the tights of crepe skirt Floor-length + of wools calf-length = more static cling than you ever saw apart from an advertising film of sheet of desiccator of rebound. FYI Right.


Carrying lodging when one does not have the heels used in a really long time should be gradually approximate, like the development. The exaggeration of him the first harms outside is not a wise idea. The attention with this would also eliminate the possibility of discovering as you obtain equipped who the only pair of marine-blue shoes that you have are a too small half-size.

In spite of this little of minor lesson, and makes that I never found a restaurant to eat with still as a long time as I live (I completely never saw resembling it of jambalaya this eew), double density and I had this evening an absolutely sensational time. I will not enter a ton of details and will not annoy you all, but we looked at enough, we were treated as the ladies everywhere that we went, perfectly comprised double density, the ballet was superb, the music was astonishing, and I am even parvenu not to feel me as a dolt once (thanks to the fact that one time that I discovered the thing of statics-fixing, I just did not remove my coat when I walked around). Not ONCE THAT all the evening, not even when I was parking or control around in a sector familiar semi-little or anything. It IS an enormous achievement for me.

It took me a minute to figure out that "double density" is C, i.e. "Dear Daughter". Too funny. This is a lot of fun; try it yourself with an email (and Russian maybe?) and see if you can waste a few hours at it. :)

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Saturday, December 13, 2003

ouch

note to self: When adding wood to the wood stove, for pete's sake remember that the wood stove has a top. It's wise to avoid contact with said top if possible if the stove has had fire in it for any substantial amount of time.


ouchie.

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the Nutcracker ballet

Things I will be sure to remember after tonight:

No matter how glad you are to fit into a dress you haven't been able to wear for years, you really should try sitting down in it before you wear it to an event where you will be sitting down. That way you can find out ahead of time if it magically transforms your midsection into a fairly decent imitation of the Michelin Man anytime you relax in a sitting position, and plan around that.

Floor-length crepe skirt + calf-length wool coat + tights = more static cling than you've ever seen outside a Bounce dryer sheet commercial. Just FYI.

Wearing heels when one hasn't worn heels in a really long time should be approached gradually, like working out. Overdoing it the first night out is not a wise idea. Attention to this would also eliminate the possibility of discovering as you're getting dressed that the only pair of navy-blue shoes you possess are a half-size too small.

In spite of these few minor lessons, and the fact that I found a restaurant NEVER to eat at again as long as I live (I have never seen jambalaya look quite like that. eew), C and I had an absolutely smashing time tonight. I won't go into a ton of details and bore you all, but we looked pretty, we were treated like ladies everywhere we went, C behaved perfectly, the ballet was superb, the music was amazing, and I even managed not to feel like a dolt once (thanks to the fact that once I discovered the static-cling thing, I just didn't take my coat off when I was walking around). Not ONCE the whole evening, not even when I was parking or driving around in a semi-unfamiliar area or anything. THAT is a huge accomplishment for me.

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Friday, December 12, 2003

it's tomorrow!

No way should I be up this late. This is really dumb of me. But since I'm here, I have to tell you the wonderful, wonderful news:


Diet Cherry Coke has come to our town.

Yes, I know it sounds too good to be true. But it is true, it really is! I have one of those new funky-looking fridge packs in my refrigerator to prove it. My dad (I have the best dad in the world. I really do, and not just because he has been such an ally in the quest for diet Cherry Coke) brought me some today; I was just going about my housewife-ish business, making my Christmas card list and getting lunch for the kids or whatever, and the doorbell rang and there he was like Santa Claus in overalls, with a brown paper bag from our own little small-town wannabe supermarket, containing a 12-pack of nirvana just for me. yay! My only fear is that now that they've teased me in this manner, the northern CA bottler will stop making it for some reason, and I'll be left with a serious addiction, instead of a simple craving, and I'll have real withdrawals. But I'll stop borrowing trouble and just go load up on it while I can. Carpe Diem! (Carpe... colum? carpe colum non calorum cum cherrium? You can tell that the full extent of the Latin with which I am familiar came from Dead Poets' Society, phrases in books, and high-school chorus, can't you?)


Anyway. I just had to share the joy.

Speaking of joy, today (since it IS today; it's 1 AM almost) is Nutcracker Day, which means, in my daughter's way of reckoning time, it's actually Tomorrow. Whenever a day arrives for which she's been waiting eagerly (like, for instance, Thursday which is Awana day, or a Saturday on which DACY THE MAGNIFICENT is going to be home all day), she sprints out of bed, clobbers me awake, and says, "Mommy, I just remembered! Today is tomorrow!!" It's very Little Elizabeth in Anne of Windy Poplars, really, don't you think?

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Wednesday, December 10, 2003

We're in the money

We got something in the mail today from "Check Processing Center" -- a generic-looking envelope; I was almost sure it was going to be yet another junk-mail-disguised-as-something-important-in-a-spammish-attempt-to-make-you-open-it-instead-of-throwing-it-out-on-the-way-out-of-the-post-office scam (dang, I know I do a lot of those hyphenated adjective phrases, but that has GOT to be a record, even for me. Thought about switching to quotes halfway through but I'd have had to go back and change all the hyphens to spaces and I didn't have the energy. Yet I had the energy for a six-line parenthetical statement. Never said I was logical. Well, yes, actually, I have said that, come to think of it. Shut up, Rachel.). Yet it (what? oh yes, the envelope. I was talking about mail) turned out to actually contain a real honest-to-goodness check. Yessir, we are in the money; all our worries are over; we have been a member of the winning party in a class-action lawsuit against a credit-card company, to the tune of... drumroll please...

seventy-four cents.

Why even BOTHER? Why? Seventy-four CENTS? Sheesh, just the absurdity of cashing or depositing a check like that will probably prevent me from doing so. Can you picture it at the credit union? Maybe I'll add a penny so I can get it in quarters and let the kids put them in a candy machine.


no, I won't, I think I'll just be one of the thousands of people who screw up the lawyers' accounting by tossing it in the woodstove.

Also, in other news, did you hear about the global warming on Mars? Next thing you know they'll be finding SUVs and industrial complexes there, since those, like, cause global warming, right? Oh, wait, Mars is just having a cyclic climate change. Earth stopped having those at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. I forgot. Otherwise a whole lot of environmentalists could be out of a job.

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Tuesday, December 09, 2003

raking

I have come to the conclusion that deciduous trees are the direct invention of the Devil. I realize this afresh every autumn, and it's largely the fault of this enormous tree in our front yard. I don't know what kind of tree it is; it's built kind of like a cottonwood except (praise the Lord for small mercies) it doesn't shed cottony wisps all over everything. It does, however, try to fill the San Joaquin Valley with leaves. It makes a valiant effort. Usually I rake the leaves into a pile or two on the grass, with the intention of eventually getting them into bags and taken who knows where, the dump, whatever. Then, because I like putting leaves in bags about as much as I like putting away laundry, they sit around in piles till it's rained a few times and they're sodden and weigh about a pound apiece and of course by that time it's a lost cause and they just sit there in their piles and rot, and ruin that part of the lawn for the next eight months or so. This year, however, we had A Plan. We want to rototill our backyard in the early spring and plant grass seed there, in hopes of transforming the mown field weeds into an actual, you know, lawn. Then the kids can play back there instead of the front yard, and the front of the house will cease to be so cluttered up with their toys that it looks like we were holding a yard sale and had to run away from an oncoming tornado just in time to spare our lives. However, our soil is classic red clay. You could practically sculpt with this stuff. Water pools on it, runs off it, and makes it into slippery red staining mud that hardens into something so hard that only weeds can tolerate it, and those only barely, as soon as it's dry. We called our local ag advisor to ask how to remedy this, and his reply was "six inches of organic matter". Well, thanks to our tree(s -- there're three ornamental plum trees out front that contribute their fair share to the Lawn-Killing Leaf Piles each year), we had a plenitude of organic waste on hand, and it was just a matter of moving it to the backyard. That sounds so simple. ha. At least I got a workout today and yesterday. I hope I never hold another rake as long as I live.

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Monday, December 08, 2003

sugar makes me sick (literally)

This is so cool. Every time I've eaten sweets this past week I've gotten really sick to my stomach. This will be fantastic motivation for me not to eat them anymore! Right?


OK, so much for that; can you see me trying to find something good in this? It sucks. Right before Christmas too. Oh well. My mom stopped eating any sugar at all in 1987 and is still at it -- not to lose weight, although that happened; it's because sugar gives her un-be-LIEV-able mood swings -- so I can survive without it, I guess. Until my body pulls itself together and realizes that A LITTLE PECAN PIE NOW AND THEN ISN'T GOING TO HURT ME. Come on, body, get the message. Please?


In other news, I had a new low weigh-in today, at 168 pounds. I tried on a semi-formal dress I'd forgotten I owned; I got it when I was my friend's matron of honor in 1996. If I do say so myself, I look totally fabulous in it. I'm going to wear it to the Nutcracker with C this weekend. We don't know anyone there, so what does it matter if we're overdressed? It'll be a fun evening just for the two of us.


Update on last night's entry: the tank was not finished on time. Nope. It took them until 9:30 (T's friend called and that added to their time). I just have to realize that my husband and son are the Jedi Masters of Lego, as they claim, and stop doubting their abilities; that's all.

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Sunday, December 07, 2003

uuuuuurrrrrgggggghhhhhh

T's birthday party was this afternoon. The crowning glory of the birthday present stack (even more brilliant than the atomic-synchonized solar-powered watch I got him) is the Lego-wannabe M1 tank. It has about five zillion pieces. OK, so it's more like 850, close enough. Almost as soon as the last guest was off the porch they began sorting (don't worry, Debi; we weren't glad to see you go, I promise). T predicts that he and LT will have it built by 9:00 p.m. You may note from the time of this entry that that is just over two and a half hours away. I am dubious. My tummy didn't appreciate getting a chunk of pecan pie (leave it to T to request pecan pie and cheesecake for his birthday dessert instead of cake) after nearly a week of strict dieting, so I am going to to bed. My prediction, however, is that there will still be sorted Lego-wannabe-pieces, along with a half-constructed tank, on my dining room table in the morning. We shall see; perhaps I'll end up eating my words. As long as I don't have to eat anything SWEET with them (oh, my stomach is lurching just thinking of the pecan pie, urrgh) I don't care.

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stress. sigh.

It is really, really raining outside. This is nice. I am all conflicted about whether I should go to bed (which would be the sane thing to do, considering the time and the fact that the alarm goes off to bring in a busy, busy day at 7:00), or stay up and read by the fire, enjoying the quiet and the sound of the rain. Such hard decisions.


I've been quiet the last few days; things have been kind of stressful, and very busy. What with Christmas, Thanksgiving, and three people's birthdays, we are having gatherings of the same 12-15 people FIVE TIMES in these four weeks, three of them at my house. Someday we'll have to break down and combine celebrations but I have always resisted that. We like each one to be fully separate. But this is getting ridiculous. At any rate, I'll be glad when things are more normal, and I hate that my favorite time of year is becoming such a dreaded source of stress. We've got to figure out how to change that.

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Friday, December 05, 2003

mostly about yesterday

ooh, rain that's supposed to last all weekend started last night. It Is Time. My annual reading of Jane Eyre can commence. Although maybe the Christmas tree is too cheerful to allow the proper atmosphere? Should I hold out for a foggy week in January?


In other news, I totally, fully suck. I completely blew off my discussion chapters for one of my reading Yahoogroups this week. I've been getting later and later with them and this week I fully FORGOT about them until someone posted the next section. This is like high school all over again, and that feeling of shame as I walked into class after class without homework. I just never got around to doing a lot of it. Someone please just beat me with sticks. I'd feel so much better afterward.


Other than that today is a pretty good day, so far. I am feeling much better than I was yesterday. Although the meltdown LT just had does not bode well for the rest of the day. Oh please, please just let me hold it together better today...


I'm all motivated again to watch what I eat. I was really well-behaved diet-wise yesterday; it was a huge struggle because I never really have got back on the well-behaved bandwagon after getting waylaid back in, oh, October I think. I haven't gained but I've only lost about three pounds in all that time. So yesterday I decided that it was The Day, I was going to just DO it, and I had growly cranky hunger to deal with all day in addition to a really ridiculous case of PMS, and a cluttery house. Is it any wonder my mood was so awful? I ask you.


Plus, on a serious note, yesterday morning when I woke up I had just been having a dream about my middle daughter, who died when she was two months old. The date that would have been her sixth birthday is approaching and I always dream about her around her birthday (as well as a lot of other times, but the birthday is a without-fail kind of thing). In all the dreams, she is still a baby; in this one, she was in a crib in our living room, except when I picked her up it turned out that the baby I'd been caring for all these years was my (living) daughter's doll. So I looked in the other crib in my living room, and it was full of dolls; my best friend was there (a definite dream-thing -- she lives in Florida; I only WISH she could just drop by like she did in this dream) and she kept giving me dolls saying, "Is she this one?" and I was panicking because she was lost, until the crib was empty and the realization hit me that she had been dead for almost six years and then the phone rang and I woke up. Crying. This did not help to set a positive tone for the rest of the day.


Wow, that turned serious, didn't it. I don't usually talk about my dreams -- in fact few things are more mind-numbingly boring to me than hearing someone detail every moment of a dream, so don't worry that this will become a daily occurrence -- but that one was key to how I felt yesterday, in combination with all the other factors. I also never know how much to talk about my daughter. I know a lady whose husband died five years before I met her. When we first met, the first thing she said to me was something to the effect of how hard it was dealing with life without her husband, giving the impression that he had just died, and I had a hard time maintaining a straight face when I found out that he'd been gone for so long. While I know that if MY husband died I would still be missing him unbearably after five years, bringing it up like that takes on a certain level of ridiculousness -- like someone you'd read about in an L.M. Montgomery book or something -- and I resolved at that moment that I would not be the person who brought up my daughter as a sympathy ploy to everyone I met. And yet her memory is very dear to us, and we still miss her, and I don't want the world to think that I have forgotten her, either. It's a hard line to draw; please forgive me if I've crossed it today. :)

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Thursday, December 04, 2003

missing, one ordinary self

There is a short story in a compilation called Irish Girls About Town called "The Twenty-Eighth Day". Most anyone, especially women, can probably figure out based just on the title what it's about, using a bit of creative thought. And that is so ME today -- except, because God must have extra lessons in humility and patience to teach me, this day is actually the twenty-fourth day. Yeah, don't you wish you were me. As for me, I am just wishing that tomorrow would get here so that I can get over being this crabby b***h with a tension headache that goes all the way to my shoulders and a raging case of Social Anxiety Disorder (not helped by the cluster of spots on my cheek that looks, I swear, exactly like Orion's belt and sword. And I never get spots on my cheeks, only my chin, upper lip, and forehead. What is UP with this?) and a few stray pounds of bloat hanging around, and change back into my ordinary self. My ordinary self isn't perfect -- she's got a moderately low yell threshold and she's pretty lazy and not very good-looking overall -- but today, I really, really miss her. Come back, Ordinary Self. Please come back.

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Wednesday, December 03, 2003

the smell of beans, and other stuff

My house smells of beans. blecch. As is usual on Wednesday nights, my parents came over for dinner (the Bible study we all go to is on Wednesdays, and Mom and Dad live half an hour out of town, so Mom would have to zip home, scarf some dinner, and then zip back into town with Dad; instead, they just stay in town and eat with us instead. Nothing fancy, as you will see from what I'm about to relate). Dad's favorite meal on Earth is -- get this, this is about as Okie as you can get, when this is your Last Meal fantasy -- pinto beans, cornbread, and fried potatoes. Conveniently, this meal is also extremely cheap to prepare, which means that we ate it A LOT when I was growing up since we frequently had very little money. Partly due to this fact, and partly due to the fact that pinto beans taste, pardon me, like farts, I would be content the entire rest of my life without ever eating it again. I don't hate it (anymore), I just never, ever want to eat it. However, I had this big meaty ham bone from the Thanksgiving ham, which I altruistically set aside for a Wednesday night pot of beans, knowing that Dad would love it. Except I almost never cook pinto beans. I don't mind black beans or red beans so I make chili or soup with those a lot, which left me with the false idea that I knew how to cook beans. Beans are beans. Or... not. After a proper soaking and three hours of cooking, these pinto beans could still have been rinsed off and used in a marbles game, I am not kidding. Pinto beans are from the devil. So anyway, I ended up leaving them cooking and we had take-n-bake pizza for supper instead. Which means that not only does my house reek of beans (funny, can't even smell the pizza at ALL), but we now have an entire huge POT of beans -- nasty puky PINTO beans -- just for the four of us. As of this moment I predict that at least half of that pot will be going in the compost bin. Which is a shame because that ham would have made a fantastic split pea soup and now it is doomed to be wasted. Unless I package it up and send it home with Dad....

I have had a creeping headache all day. At times it's almost gone, and I think, YES, victory is mine, but then it starts coming back in like the tide or something, and before I know it I'm mindlessly clutching the sides of my head, which I'm sure is a really flattering pose, but I lapse into it without thinking when the headache starts coming back. Yeah, I'm that cool. And do I take anything for my headache? Nooo. Because, you see, I want to know when it goes away on its own. T and I have actual arguments about this. He says it's ridiculous of me not to take something to make the pain go away. I say, DON'T call me ridiculous, you know I HATE being called ridiculous, and let me deal with this my own way please, and he says not if you're going to complain about it I'm not, OK, look, just TAKE something, and I say he's a closet drug addict who hasn't learned to allow himself to feel the pain without running for a chemical solution (got this line of thought from Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes, which is a really funny-but-interesting book, and which is also pretty much the sum total of my post-elementary education about addiction of any type), and the discussion generally degenerates from there into a "You can't just let other people live their lives without interfering"/"You are goofy and impractical and ridiculous/"DON'T call me RIDICULOUS" kind of thing. Not that this has happened today, which is good, because today was a good husband/wife affection kind of day and I didn't want to ruin that with one of our petty and stupid arguments. (We take the cake for petty and stupid arguments. We once had a harrowing, frustrating, voice-raising, laughable-to-those-around-us argument about whether every object with mass has its own inherent gravity. I won, by the way, that time, although I lost the one about how the space shuttle maneuvers in a vacuum. These arguments are much more easily solved -- but perhaps less interesting -- since the advent of the Internet).


I could almost set my watch by my babbling. I always start getting like this right after eleven. This is not a good time to start an IM chat because I will stay up until two laughing myself sick about things that will not sound at all funny the next day. Bedtime for me tonight, before I make a fool of myself any further.

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Tuesday, December 02, 2003

seventeen years ago today

I was always afraid of both of my grandfathers. I felt like I embarrassed them, like they didn't know me and what they did know about me, they didn't like. This began to change a bit, with my maternal grandfather, when I was eleven and started winning spelling bees. All of a sudden Grandpa was bragging about me to people -- something I was not accustomed to. My trophies grew a foot apiece every tim he told anyone about them. Up till this point Grandpa had always been terribly intimidating to me, and a small bit embarrassing. We moved into his house, my brother, parents, and myself, when I was 10 and he was 75. He had had a variety of careers -- he'd gone to college late in life, studied agriculture specializing in bird diseases (I later found out that he and Beverly Cleary's husband were in the same department at the same college at the same time; I wonder if they knew each other?). Then he kept William Randolph Hearst's aviaries until the beginning of WWII, when he enlisted in the Navy. He was a mechanic; he got the end of his finger cut off showing one of his superiors that a motor was functioning properly. (item: the only other Really Old Person I knew was my great-great aunt Hazel, Grandpa's aunt; she was also missing a finger, which caused me, in my early childhood, to believe that when you got old you just started getting fingers cut off as a matter of course, like getting glasses and gray hair). After the war he married my grandmother, seventeen years his junior, and they proceeded to bear and bring up seven children -- one boy and six girls -- on a narrow shoestring. They must have done a remarkably good job because there is not one "bad egg" in the bunch. Grandpa built his house and his barn by hand (although his methods were -- interesting, to say the least. Growing up I thought everybody's grandpas had cattle gates made from Model T frames); he ran a chicken ranch; he taught junior high. I bear a strong resemblance to both sides of my family; the people who knew my mother and aunts in school tend to ask me if I am one of them, and when I explain that no, they're my mom/aunts, invariably the next thing the other person says is, "Oh, yes, I had your grandfather as a teacher in junior high. What a man." As a matter of fact, Grandpa's first meetings with my dad took place in the classroom and were not auspicious. Dad was neither an excellent student or a model pupil where behavior was concerned (he was the guy smuggling kittens into the class and passing them around behind the teacher's back.). He should have had the foresight to know that he was going to fall in love with one of the teacher's fair daughters, because when Mom announced at eighteen that she and Dad were an item, soon to share a last name, Grandpa took quite a while to get used to the idea. But he eventually came around and had quite a bit of respect for Dad, in spite of the rocky start to their relationship.


When I lived with Grandpa, I got to know him as a mandolin-playing crotchety-seeming old man. He was on a restricted diet due to his heart problems and it was impossible for anyone serving him food to win where that was concerned. If we offered him ice cream or milk we were trying to kill him. If we didn't we were excluding him. Heaven help the person who spoke too loudly while Ronald Reagan was speaking on television; Grandpa had been a huge fan of Reagan all the way from Hollywood on.
He used to walk around the house strumming the mandolin and belting out old songs like "Has Anybody Seen My Gal" and "This Old House". At the time -- I was, you remember, in that sensitive and easily-embarrassed preteen stage -- I found this mildly humiliating, but to this day, those tunes bring back my grandfather so strongly to me that I can smell his goat's-milk-and-wool-flannel kind of smell.


Grandpa wrote his memoirs something like three or four times. This fact bears a bit of a breath of self-importance in it, doesn't it. But now I'm glad he did. It's very interesting to read about the life of someone who lived through all the things he lived through -- and to laugh a little at the grandiose way he describes everything, especially his experiences with women. (more than one of his daughters bore as one part of their names, the name of one of his former flames. Wonder how Grandma felt about that...). He was born in 1910 in blazing San Joaquin Valley heat, well before the advent of air conditioning, weighing 12 pounds, at the end of a two-day labor. His poor mother. It's a wonder she got near her husband ever again. He rode streetcars around Fresno for a nickel, and survived the flu epidemic, two world wars, the Great Depression, and severe heart disease, all by the age of 40.

This is the seventeenth anniversary of the day my grandfather died. His was the first death of anyone I was even remotely close to -- my first grief, my first funeral. We were on the way home from a Thanksgiving dinner when he became terribly ill in a city far from his home in the hills. He died in their hospital a few days later. At the time I felt very Important And Sad because Someone Close To Me Had Died. I didn't understand him very well when he was alive. I had no idea how much more I would grieve for him years later, wishing I'd had the chance to know him as an adult.

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Monday, December 01, 2003

happy list

Today is hard to describe without a list. Sorry, ANOTHER one, yes. Today I...

• ...found my way onto the DSL superhighway, OH yeah. :)
  
• ...folded a lot of laundry and actually didn't mind it (but don't ask me if I've put it away)
  
• ...had a good chat with a good friend
  
• ...drove in the rain, listening to Christmas music
  
• ...drove up the hill to my house and saw my own Christmas lights at night for the first time (including my "I Can Conquer The World" icicle lights)
  
• ...watched "When Harry Met Sally"; laughed at the funny parts, longed for those CLOTHES, contemplated female friendship
  
• ...got a whole lot of childish hugs and kisses (and more than a few marital ones too, of course)
  
• ...watched my little ballerina daughter and her new best friend whisper secrets, kiss cheeks, and walk with arms entwined
  
• ...bought two tickets to the Nutcracker, for the aforementioned ballerina daughter and myself
  
• ...turned the calendar to December, which, if I had to choose a favorite month, would be it.
  
• ...measured my waist (for a new skirt) for the first time since the summer, and found that I've lost five inches from it in that period of time. (high fives all around)
  

In other words, I am indeed blissfully content (joyful sigh).

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DSL ROCKS

Oh. My. GAWRRSHH. I feel like I just emerged from the Stone Age into downtown Los Angeles, or something. LTL, where have you been all my life? My test page was Getty Images, which was a useful but painfully slow page with 56K access (which, back in the dark ages when we first connected to the Internet with a 33.6 modem, was lightning-fast). I used to do a search and then go make a cup of tea or something while the results loaded. Now I barely had time to inhale. I will have a fond feeling for that phone-check guy who was just here for the rest of my life. What a nice man, opening up this whole world of non-waiting.


ooh, I'm gonna go try downloading something. Just for fun.

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update: It is downloading an 11.5M file in 3 minutes. Download speed 80 KB/sec. I am just totally speechless. Think of the MUSIC I could download! (that is, if I weren't an ethical-type person who is way too afraid of getting in trouble to download any... more... music). But... more CHRISTMAS music! it's almost tempting. But not quite.

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