« January 2004 | Main | March 2004 »
Friday, February 27, 2004
haikus
sorry I cursed you
cheap thread causing all our woes
now can we be friends?
to my digital camera
how much I miss you
wish your fix was so easy
oh well, you were free
the depravity of inanimate things
In Anne of the Island, when Anne is meeting her romantic mysterious dark-eyed suitor during a sudden rain shower, she laughingly says, [and I'm quoting from memory here, but having read this series, oh, about five bazillion times, I think I can be pretty accurate] "It is when my umbrella turns inside out that I am convinced of the depravity of inanimate things." Well, Miss Anne, consider yourself lucky. And not just because Mr. Mysterious just walked into your life, either. Here's what's happened to my "inanimate things" in the past twelve hours. It is a conspiracy, I think.
- My sewing machine went batty and decided to start pulling about five inches of bobbin thread for every stitch. This is in the middle of a huge jeans-quilt project I've been meaning to do for, oh, say, six years, and finally started this week. I am trying all manner of things to fix it and still may succeed, as I'm putting myself through an emergency sewing machine repair course consisting of taking the bobbin carriage out, fiddling with a screw adjustment, putting it back in, and growling with rage when the problem still exists, over and over. This makes three sewing machines I own, zero of which function properly.
- My digital camera, my precious free digital camera which has so enriched my already-happy life, decided that it didn't want to do that picture-taking thing anymore. It's sulking, and instead of opening its shutter-whatever nice and wide and taking a nice bright picture, say, like this one, it slouches and whines and rolls its eyes and halfheartedly does whatever it's supposed to do in a very slacking manner and takes a picture like this or this. I am all dismayed. Stupid lame camera.
- Our plumbing has gone a little haywire. The drains are gurgling and the washer drains into the bathtub and stuff like that. This is a good time to be renting, say I. But a bad time to want to run the dishwasher and the washing machine and flush the toilet all at the same time.
- My DVD player came on all by itself this morning. Last night I had done the neato trick where you push STOP once instead of twice and you can then start the movie at that same place anytime you want to. Then this morning it just came on, at the same place, with nobody in the room. It woke me up, because even when the TV's off, the sound for the DVD player goes through our stereo speakers. It was all well and good waking up to the more romantic parts of "Pride and Prejudice", it was a little freaky. My rational self says that for some strange reason the DVD player is supposed to start up again twelve hours after it's stopped. But my irrational mind is rather sure that it must be possessed by demons.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
a kind of twist on 100 things about me
ANOTHER meme, I know. dang. But this is the kind of thing I was planning for my 200th entry, except that I was going to do one with 200 things I'd made up myself. TOO exhausting. Anyway. Here's how this works.
Instructions:
1. Copy this whole list into your journal.
2. Bold the things that you have in common with me. If you don't know how to make something bold, I dunno, put asterisks around it or something.
3. Whatever you don't bold, replace with things about you. Take note, ALL 100 are about me, the bold ones I have in common with the writer of Peyton's Place, where I got the list. You bold what you have in common with me then make up new things about YOU for the rest. You can make the non-bold things somehow related to the things I had in that place -- which is what I did -- or just make something up, as you prefer.
Please add a comment if you do it so that I can come read it!
01. I drink Diet Coke or Diet Cherry Coke all day long.
02. I love to sit quietly and listen to my children play when they don't know I'm there.
03.I like to read.
04. I am really happy with my life.
05. I love meatloaf.
06. My mother and I have had more ups than downs.
07.There are some things I would possibly go back and change, but if I did, my whole life would be different. I’m not sure if I want that.
08. I wear glasses.
09. I love to cook, but I am not as fond of cleaning.
10. I like cats.
11. I like dogs.
12. I am married.
13. I've never been to Bermuda.
14. My favorite color is cobalt blue.
15. I didn't go to college, but I will.
16. I enjoy a variety of musical styles.
17. I like to spend small sections of time by myself but most of the time I like my family around me.
18. I like shopping.
19. I want to travel (some of) the world.
20. I'm neither a morning person nor a night person. I can function at either time but don't prefer one over the other.
21. I feel guilty when I sleep in too late.
22. I don’t like certain foods, and I don't have to eat them. Yay for being an adult!
23. I love the smell of coffee.
24. I have been employed in fields far from my original career ambition.
25. My biggest vice is laziness.
26. I consider myself very analytical.
27. I am pretty creative.
28. I see a lot of my extended family.
29. I’m not a perfectionist in the least.
30. I don't hesitate to give up on a book, or shelve it to try again later, if I am not drawn into it in the first 50-100 pages.
31. I have four pillows on my bed.
32. I love baby animals. Like who’s going to say, “Damn, kittens suck!”???
33. I have no use for pretentious people. Another no brainer.
34. I think I'd rather live in the past than in the future.
35. I believe in absolutes.
36. I am pretty happy with where we are financially, if we could just stay disciplined, we'll do fine.
37. I have voted every time I had the chance since I turned 18.
38. I haven't been in the spotlight for so long that I've forgotten what it was like, but I think I liked it pretty well at the time.
39. My parents have been married for 32 years.
40. I tend to get in over my head taking on too much because I see things that need done that aren't getting done, and then I don't get them done either.
41. I really enjoy thoughtful gifts, even if they cost nothing.
42. I love to make people laugh and smile.
43. I have two living children.
44. I can't grow nice nails.
45. Patience is something I need to work on, but I'm trying.
46. I tolerate coleslaw.
47. I don’t really follow comedians.
48. I've never seen an episode of Sex in the City or the Sopranos.
49. I obsess when my computer isn't working right.
50. I’ve driven since I was 16.
51. I like silence at times.
52. I'm a spiritual person and I go to church most Sundays, as well as a mid-week Bible study and assorted similar activities.
53. I possess an above-average I.Q.
54. I procrastinate.
55. I hardly ever wear earrings.
56. I’ve never been snakebitten.
57. I still enjoy coloring books and crayons.
58. I used to have so much on my plate I often became overwhelmed.
59. I am not a member of the mile high club.
60. I generally know where my purse and keys are.
61. I had jobs in high school but I haven't worked outside the home since I had kids.
62. I try to do the right thing, but sometimes I slack.
63. I overreact about things sometimes. Don’t we all?
64. I have a (very) few really close friends.
65. I often remember my dreams.
66. I like to people watch.
67. I like witty people.
68. I prefer cool weather to really HOT weather.
69. I have never been to a rock concert.
70. I have never smoked pot.
71. I like going to the ballet.
72. I like an occasional candlelit bath.
73. I love my online friends.
74. I have learned to say no.
75. When confronted, I'll debate and argue, but I get all trembly. I do much better at this sort of thing via email than in person.
76. The original #76 on the list I have was a leeeetle too personal to print here, but it was true. If you follow the link back to where I got this, I'll still blush, but at least I won't get bizarre Google hits from it.
77. I own one pair of scratched sunglasses.
78. My bra and panties almost never match.
79. I think hairy, muscular men are more aesthetically pleasing than skinny, hairless ones.
80. I am sometimes overwhelmed and astounded by how much it is possible to love my children.
81. I am succeeding at losing weight for only the second time in my life.
82. My boobs are natural. (and nothing to get excited about, that's for sure)
83. I love the water and I swim like a dolphin.
84. I don’t have any known allergies.
85. I love to fly. (and I've done it all of twice).
86. I daydream sometimes.
87. Sometimes I talk to myself -- or more specifically, I imagine conversations and say my parts out loud.
88. I am very, very happy in my marriage.
89. I don’t mind spiders but I hate centipedes.
90. Noisy eating really annoys me.
91. I am easily amused.
92. I'm ready for this list thing to be over.
93. It bothers me that some news stories get huge amounts of coverage, when the same thing gets totally ignored under different circumstances.
94. I don't have a ton of true friends, but I love the hell out of the ones I have and value them highly.
95. I have secrets.
96. I am curious about everything. When I encounter something I don't know about, I love to research it until my curiosity is satisfied.
97. I like to help people.
98. I miss my grandfather.
99. I buy things for people just because.
100. I'm glad this is done!
Also, while I'm making a meme entry, I'll stick this quiz result in:
You're The Dictionary!
by Merriam-Webster
You're one of those know-it-all types, with an amazing amount of
knowledge at your command. People really enjoy spending time with you in very short
spurts, but hanging out with you for a long time tends to bore them. When folks
really need an authority to refer to, however, you're the one they seek. You're an
exceptional speller and very well organized.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
Elizabeth Berg and rain
Elizabeth Berg books should come with warning labels. Something like the following:
DANGER. This book may cause sleeplessness. May cause reader to remain awake until 2 a.m. in order to finish in one sitting, even when reader began intending only to read one chapter and go to sleep as reader must get up early next morning for something very important. WARNING. These pages contain sentences which will zing the reader with their eloquent truth, causing reader to re-read said sentences repeatedly just for the painful pleasure of letting said eloquent truths sink in. CAUTION. May cause reader, in 2 a.m. haze, to ponder the meaning of life, love, friendship, marriage, or other topics, with such joy and depth as to induce soppy diary entries which, if written for a public forum, must be deleted before the rest of Western civilization gets out of bed or cause extreme head-shaking and ridicule.
They'd be much safer then.
Also, so much for "sunny California", huh? These are the days they don't show on postcards. It is raining absolute torrents outside, and since our lovely red clay foothill soil reached the saturation point after the first few drops, everywhere the eye can see there is water moving downhill, pushing past grass stems -- "scuse me, scuse me, pardon me, gotta find my own level, scuse me" -- making little creeks on our street, gathering in a small pond at the bottom because the drain grate thingie is always, ALWAYS covered with debris after about three minutes of precipitation. I like it for a change of pace, and because it's cozy inside, but it does cause minor craziness in my kids, so generally I catch that and we end up putting on boots and taking our umbrellas to go outside and stomp in puddles. Sometime right after we got back from Florida, when we were still under that state's 75-degrees-and-sunny envy spell, T heard from one of his friends that the almanac says it's supposed to rain into and possibly through March. Ha ha, we said at the time. DANG! we are saying now, because so far it has come to pass. Yesterday was a rare break from the rain, and it was still cloudy and windy; the forecast says rain rain rain. Good thing I have a quilt to work on and some books on CD, I guess.
later....
Monday, February 23, 2004
ANOTHER meme... can you tell there's nothing funny going on in my life right now?
This one I nicked from KiwiRia.
What song....
Reminds you of an ex-lover:
I don't have ex-lovers, just ex-boyfriends. ;-) (can't really call them "lovers" when you're a teenager, can you?). Anyway. It's all so long ago that the songs just bring to mind the general time period, and not necessarily the person, but "Love Bites" by Def Leppard is probably pretty close to this.
Reminds you of your best friend:
Anything from "Phantom of the Opera", since we just watched that together.
Makes you cry:
There was a cheezy country song a few years ago called "Don't Laugh At Me" that made me cry when I heard it. THERE's an embarrassing confession. Sometimes really good classical music will bring tears to my eyes. And the "All I Ask of You" reprise that the Phantom sings, up in the angel, is just heartbreaking. I know there are other songs that fit this category that I just can't think of off the top of my head.
Makes you laugh:
"Another Postcard" -- BNL
Reminds you of the one you want:
(or the one I have, in this case). oh, tons of songs, for different reasons. The "Mission Impossible" theme, lol. A lot of 80's music. A lot of old country music. That "Breakfast at Tiffany's" song. A lot of Alanis Morissette songs. Mavericks -- especially "Oh What A Thrill". Evanescence. So many.
You wish you wrote:
hmm, good question. Maybe "My Immortal"?
You never want to hear again:
"Stacy's Mom." Gag.
You want to get married to:
I already did get married, and we used some corny-sounding Christian music with good lyrics, and the traditional wedding marches, and Canon in D on piano and violin.
Makes you want to mosh:
I don't think anything could make me want to mosh.
You used to hate but now love:
"Bitch" by Meredith Brooks
You like to wake up to:
something perky. But our clock radio is tuned to talk radio, so I don't generally get to do that. Back when I used to have to get up at 5 am and go to work, the alarm would go at 4:45, and then at 5 am Chuck Smith's program came on, and it used this one praise song as "bumper music". I always hated that song, even out of that context, because to my brain it meant it was time to actually get out of bed and get moving.
You like out of your parents record collection:
"Mon Pays Bleu" and a host of other Roger Whittaker songs.
You love that you wouldn't know about if it wasn't for a friend:
oh, lots of songs. It was mostly friends (and my husband) who got me out of Only Classical mode ten years ago or so.
Makes you think of someone who died:
Corny as it will sound, "The Heart Will Go On" reminds me of my daughter, because it was on the radio ALL THE TIME at the time that she lived and died.
You sing in the shower:
Mostly Broadway stuff, I guess. "If I Were A Rich Man" seems to figure heavily here.
You sing when you're alone:
Anything. Everything.
You love the video more than the tune:
I haven't watched more than five music videos in the past ten years. Sorry.
Reminds you of your first crush:
Again, that "Love Bites" song
Makes you think of being alone:
I don't know of any in this category.
Makes you want to go out:
I'm such a fogey and a homebody that I don't "go out" in the sense of this question. But there are several songs that make me dance around the living room, does that count? Lots of Ace of Base will make me do that, and 80's music also. REM's "Stand".
Reminds you of summer:
"There Goes My Heart" -- the Mavericks. One summer while they were working on their derby cars, my husband and his friend had the Mavericks playing almost all the time. So anytime I hear that song I smell summer.
Makes you happy:
Again, "Stand" by REM. This song has a long history of making me happy.
Makes you feel guilty for liking it:
I can't think of any that I feel guilty about liking. There are several I don't play while the kids are in the car, though. :)
Sunday, February 22, 2004
lots of fives
note: I realize that I forgot to make my 200th entry the extravaGANza I had planned. Oh well, it wasn't working out anyway.
Meanwhile, since I am, as everyone knows, addicted to surveys (I think random strangers on the street in, say, Singapore, or along trails in remote sections of Kenya, would know that hsing-mom is that one who loves surveys), here is one I nicked from just--jenn.
15 YEARS AGO I:
- was a little more than halfway through with eighth grade.
- had an enormous crush on the boy I ended up going out with for the first two years of high school, and in retrospect I have no idea what we saw in each other.
- was a part of a group of friends for the first time in my life.
- had very little self-respect, but more than I'd had the previous year.
- had already achieved my adult height of 5' 8 1/2".
10 YEARS AGO I:
- was engaged.
- was knee deep in wedding plans.
- had not slept with the man who is now my husband.
- had been a Christian for right around a year.
- had a great job as in-home child care provider for a family with three children three days a week.
FIVE YEARS AGO I:
- was pregnant with my third child.
- was planning for a visit from my best friend, which was two months off.
- was also planning a 1000-mile drive north to Tacoma, WA to visit my mother-in-law for the first time since she'd moved there just after I got married.
- had just started an online group for women due to have babies the same month as me, and that group has since become a very big and important part of my life.
- was dabbling in "professional" web design.
TWO YEARS AGO I:
- had a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and was planning my son's sixth birthday party, which was to have a "space" theme.
- was just about to get rid of the nasty old rug in this house and have the hardwood underneath refinished.
- was still nursing my daughter.
- was busily cleaning up the apartment next to our house, which had been trashed by the most recent tenants, in exchange for two months' free rent from our landlord.
- was about to start the one web design job I have now.
ONE YEAR AGO I:
- weighed 30 pounds more than I do now.
- had a diaryland diary (not this one) which I used to review books.
- was looking forward to finally being out of debt.
- was really sad about my husband going back to work after having been off for two months because of a broken ankle.
- started a crochet project which I still haven't finished (nothing new there).
YESTERDAY I:
- bought a breadbox and a paper-towel holder.
- blew my diet.
- helped install a ceiling fan.
- had a new propane tank installed.
- sent a letter certified mail.
TODAY I:
- cried because my son cried.
- blew my diet again (but the chocolate was fully worth it.)
- wanted to just spend the afternoon at home but had to go to two different places, quite far apart.
- had a worse time than I thought in some ways, and a better time in others.
- had a tea party with my daughter and her dolls.
TOMORROW I WILL:
- sweep and mop my kitchen.
- have a "dishwasher race" with my children (happiness is children old enough to help with household chores ;-).
- spend a good deal of time relaxing, I hope.
- fold some laundry.
- go for a walk if it stops raining.
FIVE ITEMS I HAVE BRAND LOYALTY TO:
- Diet. Cherry. Coke.
- Grape-Nuts
- Imperial margarine, the kind we can only get at Costco for some reason. It doesn't make toast soggy.
- Orange scented Fantastik.
- Pine Sol, again orange-scented. I am all about orange-scented cleaning stuff right now. mmm.
FIVE SNACKS I ENJOY:
- Cadbury Roast Almond bars
- a yogurt and fruit smoothie
- Oreos
- Cheez-its
- carrot sticks
FIVE THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT:
(really, I could, but I understand the gist of the question and I'm not feeling nitpicky enough to list, "gaseous oxygen, hydrogen, water, carbon, and nitrogen")
- a good book
- Diet. Cherry. Coke.
- tall glasses of cold water
- hugs and kisses from my husband and children
- my size 12 tall Eddie Bauer jeans (which now, hurrah, need a belt, and I'm daring myself to buy 10's)
FIVE THINGS I WOULD BUY WITH $1,000:
- Um, a large stack of books? does that count as one thing? Or is that cheating?
- contact lenses for myself
- contact lenses for my husband
- a large bag full of treats for my kids (cheating again, bad me)
- A new living room set. Whoops, there goes the whole thousand right there. Good thing this is just a fantasy, I guess.
FIVE BAD HABITS I HAVE:
- blowing my diet
- wiggling
- talking too much
- biting the insides of my cheeks
- saying "interesting" (in context)
FIVE THINGS I WOULD NEVER WEAR:
- low-rise jeans
- flare-leg jeans
- anything with fringe
- a midriff-baring shirt (in public, anyway)
- a bikini (good ol' "badges of motherhood" did away with those even if I DID lose 30 more pounds...)
FIVE SHOWS I LIKE(D):
- "Who's the Boss?"
- Sesame Street
- Between the Lions
- Jeopardy
- Whose Line Is It Anyway?
FIVE PLACES I’VE LIVED:
(again I am unable to answer the real question because I have always lived in the same area except for a brief stint when I was two years old.)
- Taft, California (that's the stint when I was 2)
- little yellow house which has since been demolished
- apartment above the shop where my dad worked
- my maternal grandmother's house
- the teeny apartment next to the house I live in now (which we now rent and use as a schoolroom/guest room)
Friday, February 20, 2004
clever me
Here's something for my list of Things I Shouldn't Have To Learn From Experience This Many Times (and when you're me, that list is pretty long):
- If you insist on putting a wooden spoon down into the non-moving mass at the bottom of the blender "just to get it moving", you will be picking slivers of wood out of your smoothy until you finish it. Idiot.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
not the most scintillating entry you'll ever read
I just got an email survey of a different kind, and it's one, for once, that I'm NOT going to fill out (I am a sucker for all kinds of surveys... except this one). Remember slam books? There were different varieties of them when I was in school -- one type involved writing a person's name on each page and then passing the book around to everyone and each person would write a comment about each other person. The idea was that you would be honest and nobody was supposed to get offended. Except, come on, nobody thinks anyone's PERFECT, and as soon as teenage girl A found out that teenage girl B thought that she had a funny-looking nose, there went their friendship. And this would happen a dozen times over every time the slam book made the rounds. (for a great literary treatment of this concept read Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great). Nobody turned out to be as thick-skinned as they thought. This email I got was of a similar nature -- the recipient is supposed to answer a lot of questions about the sender: Do you think I'm pretty/crazy/kind/clever... and on down the line. Now this isn't saying anything about the person who sent the email to ME. Frankly, I like her, but I haven't spent enough time around her in the past ten years to be able to answer a lot of questions about her. But there is no way I'm sending that on to anyone. Just uh-uh. I am sensitive enough without doing something stupid like that.
Speaking of sensitive, I'm feeling a good deal better today, overall, but I am kicking myself seriously about my diet. I've spent the last two days in the following pattern:
6 am - 3 pm: eat very conscientiously, count all my calories, virtuously drink a ton of water and avoid all temptation.
3 pm - bedtime: to heck with it, one serving of ice cream won't hurt me. Well, now that I've had ice cream I may as well finish the job and have some chips. Mmm, salt. More chips. Yum. Well, I've totally blown it for today already, I'll have some cookies. Oh, and dinner too.
bedtime: guilt guilt guilt guilt.
To try (unsuccessfully) to motivate myself to be good today, I took a progress picture and sat and looked for a while at the progress I've made so far. This is supposed to help me feel a sense of accomplishment and drive which will buoy me past temptations and make me enjoy dieting. Except today, it didn't. But for your edification, here are the pictures. (dang, I hate that before picture. I really really HATE it.)
last summer ~~~ today
So now, I'm going to try a different tack. I'm going to tape a Fatter Me picture on the fridge with the caption, "Do you want to go back here? Do you REALLY?" And if that doesn't work I'll have to get really extreme and actually --horrors-- exercise. I have been so not interested in exercising lately.
My next entry will be my 200th and I am planning an extravaGANza to celebrate. (you have to say that word like George Carlin to understand). I've been keeping this diary for about 190 days. This means that even with all the days I skipped, I still did enough multiples-in-one-day to bring my average above one entry per day. That is just. sick. ack. --------
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
pity party
One disadvantage of having a (generally accurate) reputation for being a level-headed logical person, whatever my multitudinous other faults may be, is that when I have a slump and seem more "typically" feminine as far as emotions go, I get a definite sense of letting people down. When I get hormonal or otherwise illogically emotional, T, who has often congratulated himself on finding such a straightforward wife who "thinks like a man" (his words) and doesn't generally even get real PMS, gets this "this isn't what I signed up for" kind of edge to his voice -- in the nicest possible way. My parents look at me like I'm a changeling and my kids don't know how to take this person who has taken over their mother's body. Today is one of those days. My impulse no matter what I'm doing is to find a surface to fold my arms on, and to lay my head down in them and either cry or sleep. Or maybe both. I'll look around at my life and mentally kick myself, because damn, my life is good. It really, really is. But today for some unknown reason it seems like I'm looking at my wonderful life through glass and I can't really get into it or live it. There's no reason for me to feel this way, and plenty of reasons for me NOT to feel this way, and yet there it is. ack. I hope tomorrow will be better.
--------Tuesday, February 17, 2004
I think I'll take the rest of the day off
This is the kind of afternoon I am having:
I have the beginnings of an earache. It's (again) my first day back on my strict diet and I am STARVING. Kids are moderately whiny. I am feeling very, very lazy. And just now I had a minor panic attack because for some reason one of my oven racks began vibrating noisily. Was the oven about to explode? Was there some kind of looooong earthquake going on? Demon possession, maybe? It took a while for me to figure out that it was happening because the washer (which is, hello, at the completely opposite end of the house from the kitchen) was spinning. Which, considering that it's never happened before when the washer spun, probably means that I'll go into the laundry room and find that the washer has walked even farther than its previous 2-foot record across the floor. Fun.
At least my bed is made and my kitchen's still remarkably clean (it looks like a normal person's kitchen now. Keeping it that way means that I have become this snappish person whose children don't understand why last week it was OK to do X [just pick something very messy, like, say, having them put the butter and the cheese powder in the macaroni and cheese] but this week it's not). And I've done some laundry. So can I go back to bed now? please?
survey for kids
I found a website with a clever twist on the usual survey meme -- you're supposed to ask your KILT the questions. I went through all four of the sets they had posted to date. My kids are a bit older than the target age on the site -- you're supposed to ask your three-year-old, but C is 4 and LT is 7. It was still fun, and even occasionally funny.
1. Name an animal that lives in the ocean.
C: a clam
LT: A whale.
2. What is a bank for?
C: Getting money and stickers.
LT: Money. You keep the money there and then when you want you can come and get it back.
3. What is a typewriter?
C: [points to computer keyboard]
LT: A machine for typing.
4. What is a bumblebee's job?
C: "bzzzzzzz".
LT: Stinging.
5. How many legs does a spider have?
C: Three or four.
LT: Eight.
6. Why does your house have windows?
C: So that bugs won't come in.
LT: So that we can look outside.
7. Name a food you hate.
C: Hay.
LT: Chicken drumsticks.
8. Who is the president?
C: President Bush.
LT: President George W. Bush.
9. What year is it?
C: I don't know.
LT: 2004.
10. Why do babies cry?
C: Cause that's how they talk.
LT: Cause they want stuff.
1. How do you make a sandwich?
LT: Fold over, or whole. With peanut butter and jelly, or just peanut butter. Get a knife and a spoon, or just a knife, and some bread, and make a sandwich.
C: Put things together. First you get two pieces of bread. Then you get peanut butter and jelly, and put them together.
2. Who fixes the dentist's teeth?
C: Grandma. [she works for a dentist -- as an office manager]
LT: The dentist!
3. Who lives in the zoo?
C: Mr. Elephant, Mr. and Mrs. Zebra, and Mr. Train, and Kiddie Land.
LT: Animals.
4. How old is Elmo?
C: I don't know, maybe two or three or four.
LT: Five.
5. What time is it?
C: It's four o'clock. And now it's six. [it's actually quarter of two; she was looking at the sweep second hand]
LT: It is 1:54.
6. What does Daddy do at work?
C: Works on things. Telephones.
LT: Works on electricity.
7. What planet do we live on?
C: Earth.
LT: Earth.
8. What season is it?
C: Foggy.
LT: It is winter.
9. What's your favorite vegetable?
C: Broccoli.
LT: Tomatoes.
10. Count backwards from 5 to 1.
C: Five, one. One, five. Or five, one.
[I: "Like you were lifting off a rocket."]
Five, four, three, two, one.
LT:
Five! Four! Three! Two! One!
1. Where do babies come from?
C: Tummies.
LT: Mommies.
2. What does Mommy do when she isn't taking care of you?
C: Look for me.
LT: Nothing.
3. When is your birthday?
C: March February 13th.
LT: April 21st.
4. What do you want to be when you grow up?
C: A cowgirl and an astronaut.
LT: Whatever Daddy is.
5. Where do apples come from?
C: Trees.
LT: Trees.
6. What does Yellow and blue make?
C: Green.
LT: Green.
7. If you have two sandwiches and eat one, how many are left?
C: One.
LT: One.
8. Who is mommy's mommy?
C: Grandma.
LT: Grandma.
9. What does a spider eat?
C: Bugs.
LT: Icky food.
10. Who are you going to marry when you grow up?
C: [elaborate shrug]. [Do you want to guess?] No.
LT: I don't know! [Do you want to guess?] No.
1. What is your favorite food?
C: Broccoli and baked potatoes and red tomatoes.
LT: Macaroni and cheese.
2. How much does a hat cost?
C: How about $50, no less.
LT: $99,099,099.01
3. What is the moon made out of?
C: Rock.
LT: Rock.
4. What is your favorite tv show?
C: Grapes of Wrath [the Veggietales version]
LT: Star Wars.
5. Why is the sky blue?
C: Cause rain comes trickling down.
LT: Well, because there's no clouds!
6. How old is mommy?
C: I don't know. Sixteen?
LT: 29.
7. What is your last name?
C: [states correct last name]
LT:
8. Why do zebras have stripes?
C: Cause they are zebras.
LT: Because they do.
9. What does a plumber do?
C: Works on pipes.
LT: Fixes pipes. And he sells plums, ha ha! (that's a class-A 7-year-old joke for you)
10. Where do you live?
C: United States of America.
LT: On [name of our street]. And I guess that our address is 5848 [it's not, but he's close].
Thursday, February 12, 2004
notes from Operation Sanitary Conditions
A few things I noted in my Restore My Home To Sanity organizational/cleaning buzz today:
1. If I ever smelled a misty breeze that smelled like Formula 409's "Misty Breeze" scent I would assume a terrorist attack had just occurred in my vicinity. What were they THINKING? It doesn't even smell bad in an ammoniac reeks-but-clean sort of way. It just reeks.
2. Oven cleaner + torn cuticle = pain so bad it makes me want to puke. They mean it with that "long gloves" thing.
3. Once you start a thorough cleaning job it's hard to stop. No, this is not a motivational doesn't-it-feel-good-to-get-it-done moment. It's just that, when one area's clean, it makes everything else look much, much worse. HOW did I live like this? There is -- there is CRUD under my stove! And between my stove and the counter! I will be up for the next three days going from one disaster to the next, I think.
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR part 3
Ah, the joy of gold-member referral stats. How would my life have been complete if I hadn't known that someone found my diary after Googling for "pee for ages"?
With that out of the way, I have to say that I have conquered yet another Tim-Allenish household job. My refrigerator had been leaking for years -- the water from the automatic defrosting cycle would, instead of going placidly down its little pipe into the evaporation tray in the back of the fridge, leak down into the fridge, through the two openings intended to be air vents to allow the cold air to circulate between the freezer and the refrigerator. I don't think I could have made that any more complicated-sounding, but I can try if you really want me to. Anyway. What this meant was that I had to have pitchers under those vents to catch the drips or else wind up with puddles of water in and around the refrigerator. I finally (after two years or so -- this started, of course, just after the fridge's warranty ran out) got fed up with this and called a repairman. He said it would cost us $60 for him to come out and run a wire through the pipe to clear out whatever's blocking it. My pupils dilated -- I could feel an I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR moment coming on -- and I began to plan my attack. I emptied the fridge/freezer, defrosted it, found the drain tube, and ran an altered plumbers' snake down it -- and our refrigerator is now potty trained, so to speak. I have informed my husband that I will accept payment of the $60 in bookstore expenditures. :)
Gee, I wonder what Google hits that paragraph will eventually rack up...
Being the Master of the Leaking Fridge helped put me in a better mood yesterday; this was helped along by the fact that I am having an almost nesting-style organizational surge. I have cleaned all the fingerprints and goop off the fronts of half of my kitchen cabinets and drawers (I'll finish this tonight); I moved some infrequently-used-but-really-important stuff from my kitchen to the kitchen in our apartment next door, so that I could reorganize my cabinets; I bought and installed new shelf liner which involved much pleasant organizing; I designated a spot inside a cupboard for my husband's lunchbox/briefcase which will hopefully help us to keep countertop clutter under control. I do still have to clean out the catchall cabinets above the refrigerator (what designer's quirk, I wonder, caused them to make that cabinet without a door?) and under the sink. But overall I'm very pleased with the progress I've made toward a Susan-ish uncluttered airy kind of house, even if we are going to be stuck with the 70's-bachelor-pad-style knotty pine walls. I can at least improve what we have, even if I can't have (sigh) perfection. ;-)
Monday, February 09, 2004
recap of our vacation
Ways In Which My Fabulous Vacation in Florida Totally Ruined My Life:
- My house sucks now. My best friend (with whom we stayed in FL) has, well, the most awesome house I think I have ever been in personally. Or at least, the most awesome house I've ever been in where I wasn't being paid to wait tables and clean up for an enormous Christmas party where the hostess nearly had fisticuffs with her two daughters-in-law over which of their four exhorbitantly elegant and expensive sets of family Christmas silver they should use. So, the most awesome house of any normal human being I've ever known, how's that? And it's not that Susan is wealthy, it's just that her house is laid out exactly like the ones in all those dream-house blueprints I invent, and it's all bright and airy and clutter-free and just plain wonderful. Anyway. I came home from that house, where my entire family of four was made to feel perfectly comfortable and at home and just generally all happy in many ways, to my now-hovel. Mind you, I didn't mind my house terribly before we left. I kind of liked it, except for the 1970's dungeon atmosphere brought about by the dark knotty pine walls and cruddy wall lighting. But now my house is depressing and I hate it, because I Have Seen Perfection.
- I am a total slob. This is somewhat related to item 1. Too much stuff and nowhere to put it, combined with a severe case of slothfulness, combine to make my house a virtual eyesore. As a family, we have now begun the process of un-hoveling ourselves, but it's a slow road. My housecleaning mantra is now, "What would Susan do?" And aside from the instances where I realize that Susan would put the item in question neatly away in one of her five-zillion-more-than-I-have cupboards, it really does help. So this at least we're working on.
- My long-standing love of winter is in jeopardy. Now, I fully realize that, having lived in California since birth, I've never actually experienced winter, but I have always enjoyed our paltry 45-degree-high-for-the-day semblance of that season. Not anymore. The weather in Florida, well, it just excelled. It started out at about 68 degrees on Sunday and went up throughout the week until it was a brilliantly sunny eighty-degree day on the last day we were there. It never got cold at night; we could be outside at midnight in t-shirts, which won't happen until sometime in May here. We got off the plane in sixty-degree Sacramento, drove an hour and a half, got out to eat, and almost died, because the sun had gone down and the temperature had plummeted to all of 48 degrees. It was all I could do not to get directly back in the car and return to the airport. I'm acclimating to it again now but it's not easy.
- I have minivan envy. We rented one for the week and I was fully smitten. Now I drool watching them go down the road, thinking of all that open space, of the way-back seat, of the capability to carry two small families at once. I'll get over it, but that's not easy, either.
That said, there was one annoying thing about Florida. Can you say, "tolls"? My goodness, it was like driving back and forth over the Golden Gate Bridge for seven days. And I just know that all the locals, who knew which back roads were quick and which ones would add two hours to your travel time (and that's if you didn't get lost) and could thus travel unimpeded by the dreaded "exact change" sign (what happens if you don't have exact change? Do you go to jail? Do you face a firing squad? I shudder to think), laughed raucously in their cars watching the hapless tourists pay for their highway system for them.
Also, I magically managed to gain five pounds over the course of the week. This came as a total shock to me, because I thought I was eating really reasonably, considering that I was on vacation. Can I just blame all that on Chick-fil-A right now? Actually we only ate there twice, so maybe the weight gain was water. (yeah, that sounds good). Or maybe it had something to do with the nightly bowl of ice cream, and the Olive Garden trip and the stop for fries at Denny's (which was a harrowing experience, really, from a personal safety standpoint, for this bucolic rube; that Denny's was not in the best of neighborhoods) after watching Phantom of the Opera, and so on... no, it couldn't be that, I like the water idea much better.
Things I did for the first time on this trip:
- Placed a call on a cell phone, alone and unaided. Yes, you read that right.
- Valet parked.
- Had a real honest-to-God girls' night out with my best friend while our hubbies watched the kids (and the Super Bowl); we went to the aforementioned production of Phantom and had The Best Time.
- Saw the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.
- Traveled east of the state of Kansas.
- Flew in an airplane.
- Watched VH1 Classic. (this really belongs in the list at the top of the page, because I now have to daily talk myself out of calling and ordering digital cable RIGHT NOW).
- Rented a car.
- Bought something at an outlet mall. (not as exciting as it is made out to be, in my opinion, but whatever makes you happy...)
- Saw a swamp. Several small patches of swamp as a matter of fact.
- Experienced eighty-degree temperatures during a rainstorm.
- Ate at Chick-fil-A. I love their kids' meal goodies.
I know there are more things for that list, but it's hard to think of them right now what with having to croak (I am so congested and sniffly and sinusy right now, it's not even funny) passionately along with Christine on my Phantom CD, and with my son asking me every three seconds if he can play Starfighter yet (a week without it wasn't a problem but he'd love to be able to make up for lost time). I give up, the computer is his for now. ;-)
--------
Saturday, February 07, 2004
the world is full of grief this week
I've mentioned before that I had a daughter who died when she was nine weeks old, of a congenital heart defect. When she was born I joined an online community of parents of children with CHDs. One woman in particular, I remember, mentioned a painting she'd seen and how it reflected her life on the day when she drove down a busy freeway and through a bustling city to a university hospital and found out that there was something very wrong with her yet-to-be-born son's heart; in the painting, a man was falling off a cliff in the background, while everyone else just went about their business like nothing was going on. When my daughter died I instantly remembered that painting, and the image has stuck with me ever since, of someone's life being drastically altered while everyone else just goes on unaffected by the events taking place. I remember driving to her funeral on a Friday afternoon, looking at the people in town -- women on their lunch breaks in business suits and tennis shoes walking around the block, kids on their way back to the high school, tourists -- and thinking, this is a day I will always remember with incredible sadness, and to them it's just another day. The word "surreal" doesn't really seem appropriate because it's used so lightly so often, but that's really what it was. And this past week I've found myself thinking of that painting again, with the shifted perspective that my own experience gave me years ago. I just got back from a week's vacation in Florida, visiting my best friend and her family. We had a marvelous time. But while we were obtaining boarding passes and going to the petting zoo and watching Phantom of the Opera and lounging around the house and going to Chick-Fil-A, and while the people we saw were just going about their ordinary business, and while the people back home and in between and everywhere around the world were just doing their normal first-week-of-February stuff, another close friend of mine, on the day before her thirty-first birthday, wrapped her son in his favorite blanket and held him as he gave up the ferocious struggle with cancer he's been engaged in for the last year and a half. Another mother, a total stranger to me, in a more public story, found out that her daughter had been kidnapped and then brutally murdered. A woman I've known since we were in junior high together lost her four-day-old daughter to SILT. If I don't carefully distance myself from these tragedies I will plummet into depression -- and yet I have that freedom, I can distance myself a little, just enough to go on about my normal life, with an undercurrent of grief. Those mothers can't do that. They can't set it aside or step away from it, it's right there with them, all around them, inside them. They will forever remember the first week of February 2004 as one racked with unbelievable pain, while I'll think of it as the week I took my first trip in an airplane, and while millions of people won't remember the week at all once it's been over for a while.
I remember when I was a little girl, maybe in second grade, I had this epiphany wherein I really actually realized that all the people I saw around me every day, the kids at school and teachers and parents and everyone else -- they were just as complicated on the inside as me. They had wants and thoughts, they had private lives and imaginations. And I was just overwhelmed (still am when I really let myself dwell on this) with the complexity of the world with all these souls in it. How full the world was of people, of individuals. And today all I could think of as I drove down the freeway coming home from the airport was: how many of these people are facing something they don't think they can face? How many are looking around at the people around them thinking for them it's just a normal day; how strange...? The world is just too full of grief this week. My prayers are so heavy.
