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Sunday, November 28, 2004

tomorrow is another day

Well, I am going to be all plain-vanilla for a while; my supergold membership is about to lapse if it hasn't already. No pictures, no comments. :( The notes function is still available, though. Not going to spend money on that right now.


Our Thanksgiving Day was... ehhh. Not horrible, just not what we'd have wanted if we could have chosen. Basically, being the only two conservatives in a room full of ex-hippies and current socialists when the war news is on does not make for a very comfortable holiday atmosphere. Energizing, yes. Comfortable, no. So we weren't exactly sad when it was time to leave. At least I did get to go to sleep at the nearly-obscenely-early hour of eight-fifty-five. In the evening. It felt so good I almost cried.


I've been away from the computer a lot over the past week. This is partly because I've been doing other things, and partly because T has become a total computer HOG. It's all about the project cars. A while ago I had the idea to look for a project car which could be gradually and cheaply fixed up, to serve as a replacement for our current car when it eventually reaches the "would cost more to repair it than it is worth" stage. Which could be tomorrow, or five years from now, who knows. Anyway. T thought this was a fantastic idea -- and I think he even found it a little sexy that I would come up with it; you know how some guys are about cars -- and lately he's started actually looking around on ebay and other sources for cars. To the point where if I did not have other things to do, I'd wish I'd never thought up the darn scheme.

"Other things" include: Finishing THREE BOOKS in the past week. (yay!) In addition to the Marian Keyes, I finished Watership Down -- a beautiful book, Read This Now, This Means You -- and Little HOuse on the Prairie, which we'd started as a family months ago and never finished. I am feeling like going through those again. It doesn't help that we have the first season of the TV show on DVD, borrowed from the library. Oh, and I also read most of A Christmas Carol before I misplaced my copy (in the car, maybe?). Oh how I love that book.

Also, I went shopping Friday morning, and got fabric for a dress for C. I was in the city at 6 am, and it was truly eerie to see the streets as full of traffic as they are at rush hour. I spent an hour and a half in line at the fabric store, first waiting for my fabric to be cut, and then waiting to pay for it. I braved Wal-Mart, as well, and was in and out in fifteen minutes (all I needed was cat food, aquarium filter cartridges, and a printer cartridge), and then I endured Sears which was probably the worst experience of all of them. Ugh. When I came home from that we raked all our leaves and got them moved to the backyard where they'll serve the dual purpose of keeping grass from growing in our garden area, and turning into nice rich mulch by spring. SO nice to listen to the rain on Friday night and know that we would not have to deal with wet soggy leaves this year, like we have had to every single other year we've lived here. And it felt so good to accomplish something that the next afternoon, we rearranged furniture in the living room, and then worked on organization projects (T: garage. I: schoolroom) until bedtime. Wow. Aren't we busy little bees.

Notice I didn't mention catching up on the laundry or having a sparkly clean kitchen. That would be because I didn't, and don't. Ugh again. There's always tomorrow, right...

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

still alive, but barely

My hands are still attached, although they're also still quite sore. I finished that insane job -- which basically involved me being glued to the keyboard from 3:30 on Friday afternoon until 4:30 Monday morning, minus about eight hours for sleeping and three hours for church on Sunday morning (not because i am especially holy or legalistic, but because I had nursery duty and had weaseled out of that toooo many times). It also involved the following:

• A total role reversal in our marriage. I was the one who had to work no matter what, to the detriment of my sleep schedule, and T was the one who had to deal with the kids and the meals and all that. Except he didn't have to do laundry or dishes. Which is related to the following:


• a dismaying mess to deal with when I emerged from proofreading early Monday afternoon.


• a lingering tendency to attempt to use the keyboard shortcuts that go along with my transcribing program


• a dream wherein my husband was talking to me and I couldn't type fast enough to keep up, and my hands were actually going CTRL-ALT-U in my sleep, to try to get him to pause. (see above re: shortcuts)


• Christmas shopping money, yay!


• un-be-LIEV-able hand soreness. They're still a little sore, especially between my pinky/ring finger knuckles on my left hand. Which has to do with my lazy shifting habits, i.e., I only use the left shift/ctrl/alt trio. Ever.


• a state of exhaustion so profound that I think it was very like being extremely drunk. This hit at about 3:30 Monday morning. I couldn't walk straight. I couldn't type straight. My words were slurred, my vision was blurred. I did not, however, call any ex-boyfriends, nor did I get sick or think things were inordinately funny.


• three whole days that went by without me reading a book AT ALL. I think this is some sort of record. In a bad way. I meant to bring one to church to read in the nursery, but I forgot.


• a lingering aversion to the computer, which explains why I am only just now starting to catch up on my journal reading, etc.


• a whole new understanding for:
  • businessmen
  • cell phone networks
  • digital imaging
  • nerdiness
  (I was transcribing sessions from a mobile digital imaging seminar)


• A conviction that if I am ever asked to do this again (which is a distinct possibility), I will insist (or, knowing me, tentatively suggest) that I be given the material, say, a little further ahead of the deadline. Because sleep is nice.

After all that, I swore up and down that Monday night would see me asleep before midnight (which is, these days, quite an early bedtime for me). I was in bed at 12:01, ready to collapse into oblivion, when I remembered (and this is the story of my life, this happens all the time) that T needed rolls made for his Thanksgiving luncheon on Tuesday. He needed specific sort of rolls that he'd been promising the guys for weeks. And I had been given plenty of advance warning, and I should have made them Monday afternoon. Instead I was up till 2:30, and I could have cried, except I spent the rising and baking times catching up on my reading. (The Other Side Of The Story, by Marian Keyes. I really liked it; I think it might be her best one yet. It's not as riotously funny as her previous books, but it did for the publishing/agenting/authoring industry what Rachel's Holiday did for addiction -- that is to say, let me into a world I'd had no real clue about before. I recommend it.)


Last night, however, I was asleep at 11:20. Which was two hours later than I had meant to be asleep, but I was finishing my book, just because I could.


And now I have to get back into regular life. The laundry is backed up, like always; I have to make two or three pies for Thanksgiving at my in-laws' tomorrow; I think I am actually going to brave the early-morning post-Thanksgiving sale at the fabric store, to get materials to make C a dress for Christmas. Which basically means that I have gone around the bend once and for all.

Friday, November 19, 2004

YIKES

WHAT HAVE I DONE???

A friend of mine very generously recommended to a friend of hers that he hire me to do some transcription work. Cool beans, I love this work-at-home kind of stuff, especially when we've racked up like $150 in medical bills etc. in the last month, and Christmas is coming. The guy said he had six sessions from a seminar thingybob for me to transcribe, at an hour apiece. When a person gets moving along really well transcribing, it takes about three times the amount of time in the recording to do the work. So, eighteen hours of work, at a decent rate of pay, done by Monday, it's an adventure! Which pays! right?

Except he has ELEVEN sessions to be done Monday. Not so much an adventure anymore. More of a hands-falling-off wishing-for-death caffeine-mainlining carpal tunnel marathon. Which still, heck, pays well, right? So goodbye, cruel world; this is my last foray into recreational computer use until I come out on The Other Side. Hands intact or not.

playlist meme

I stole this really cool meme from Beth.

Here’s what you do. You open Winamp or whatever media player you use, make a playlist with all the songs on your computer (all LEGALLY ACQUIRED, of course!), and randomize the list. Then you write down the first twenty songs in the list. (Beth only did ten. But I am a classic overachiever where slackerish things like diary memes are concerned). Mine came up with:

1. Foreigner -- "Juke Box Hero" (I hate this song. T loves it.)
2. Jars of Clay -- "I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever"
3. Nirvana -- "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
4. CPE Bach -- Concerto for Flute and Orchestra
5. Vanessa Williams -- "Save The Best For Last" (shut up.)
6. Mercy Me -- "Word Of God Speak"
7. Veggie Tales -- "StuffMart Rap"
8. WOW Worship -- "Shout to the Lord"
9. Evanescence -- "Fields of Innocence"
10. Clarke -- Trumpet Voluntary
11. Alison Krauss -- "Now That I've Found You"
12. Roger Whitaker -- "The Last Farewell" (shut up again.)
13. Chanticleer -- "Lo, How A Rose"
14. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir -- "Hallelujah Amen"
15. The Flaming Lips -- "Do You Realize"
    
16. Amadeus Soundtrack -- Early 18th-Century Gypsy Music
17. Roxette -- The Look
18. Pearl Jam -- "Last Kiss"
19. Alison Krauss -- "When You Say Nothing At All"
20. Journey -- "Open Arms"

Try it, you'll like it. ;-)

Thursday, November 18, 2004

ooh goody a list, and my slackerness

Things I should buy in bulk and store in 55-gallon drums around the house, so as to avoid near-constant searching for one item or another:

• Hairbrushes
  
• Hair elastics
  
• Hair claw clips
  
• cordless phones
  
• remote controls
  
• when C was a baby, pacifiers would have been on this list
  
• sponges
  
• garlic presses
  
• salt shakers (full)
  
• sharp pencils
  
• working pens
  
• those butane hand-held bbq lighter thingies

And I know I'm forgetting some things.

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

We had a wild night last night. Well, wild for us; not very wild for most people my age, I don't think. Because I am Miss Muffet. I'd planned for a week to cook a turkey for our usual Wednesday-night dinner with my parents before Bible study. I decided, not at the last minute but near it, that I would also invite our neighbor family up to join us and help us eat it. There are two parents and four kids in that family; the kids are all good friends with my kids, and I would say we're probably friends with the parents by now, and not just acquaintances. Anyway. So that meant we had six kids at a kids' table and six adults at the adult table, and I couldn't find the dang salt, and I overcooked the brown-and-serve rolls. At least the house was pretty clean when we started. It was fun, but unlike Thanksgiving last year, things did NOT get done early; we ran about half an hour late, and I ended up staying home from Bible study with the kids to do the cleanup. (oops). But our friends stayed too, so we had a nice chat, above the noise the kids were making with swordfights and Battleship games and My Little Pony (Gag) videos and what not.

Then my pinky-swear best friend called from Florida, and we talked until eleven. It was one of those times when I genuinely had no idea how late it was when I got off the phone. THEN I put the kids to bed and read a new Marian Keyes book until about 1 a.m., and THEN I went on the computer and spent some time looking at old emails from the early days of the pinky-swear best friendship. Can I just say right now that I totally despise my twenty-two-year-old self? Ouch. And I won't say how late I was up doing that, or how long I read the Marian Keyes book afterward, but I will say that this morning when the phone rang at 8:15 I was not terribly chipper when I answered. I am such a slacker.

Monday, November 15, 2004

late night ramble ack

I am a failure at some things. This cannot be denied. I could not write a novel in a month. I frankly don't think I have it in me to write a novel given an infinite amount of time, because every time I open the file to add anything to the story, I'd naturally re-read what I'd written so far, and then I'd end up spending the time I had intended to spend writing new stuff in attempting to undo the suckiness of what had already been written. I think this would be a neverending cycle. Plus it's not that important and the stories were both kind of pedantic and I don't feel any kind of real urge to ever write a book ever. And that's fine.

I also was a failure at analytic geometry, during the second half of my junior year in high school. I'm actually sad about this. Not because I particularly enjoyed that class or because I think it would have been useful in my daily life (but hey, you never know when you'll have to draw a perfect freaking rose curve which I could never do never ever ever no matter how hard I tried my rose curves always looked like something a four-year-old colored with a fat crayon), but because, man, I got an F on my report card. Only bona fide slackers do that, right? That was the class where my cruddy study skills caught up with me and I could no longer sail through with Bs and As (and the occasional C) on the strength of my test scores, while virtually ignoring homework and any real studying. Whoops.

Also, I don't know if I will ever succeed at learning to knit. And I'm not good at social stuff.

But. BUT.

I can figure out how to make pinch-pleat drapes, all by myself, and construct a set that looks like it was bought at the store, without any instructions at all! See? See?


Now is not the time to tell me that even your GRANDMOTHER has finally figured out that pinch-pleats were oh-so-over fifteen years ago. I don't like valances and T doesn't like tab-tops and some ladies from chorus were coming over for a sectional rehearsal so I needed something on that sliding-glass door besides the who-knows-how-old tattered, old, dirty, ugly, beige pinch-pleat drapes that were there when we moved in eight years ago. And the hardware was all in place, and white muslin was 99c a yard on sale.

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

in other news.

Isn't it funny how a family can go for a long time without any medical problems to speak of, and then all of a sudden, WHAM, they start coming in one after the other? We had C's whole super-head-congestion-ear-infection-temporary-loss-of-hearing thing going on for a few weeks. Then yesterday T complained of a burning feeling on the back of his leg, and when I checked it for him I found a tick chowing down on the blood vessels behind his knee (thanks to the Internet, by the way, I now finally know the best way to remove a tick. It really works. Too gross to go into here, though). Since we live in Lyme Disease Central, now we have that to worry about. Also this weekend, a little bump on the inside of my elbow, which I'd been kind of keeping an eye on in a general way because I thought maybe it was a wart or something, suddenly got way, way bigger than it had been. It's not tender, isn't a boil or a pimple or any of those pleasant things. And oddly enough, if you look up "wart change size" in Google, a little man in a white coat leaps out of your computer and says "GET YOURSELF TO THE DOCTOR PRONTO!!!". Well, not quite. But close. So I'm going to get that looked at tomorrow. It's probably nothing at all but I'd rather KNOW that it was nothing at all, than wonder, the way things have been going.

Also. Can I just say something? NOVEMBER IS HALFWAY OVER AUUUGGGGHHHH!

Saturday, November 13, 2004

you may not know it, but you're glad this is short

I just typed a long post updating about a few things, but seeing as how it's after midnight and I'm tired, it was, well, really stupid. So here's the abbreviated version:

C's hearing: pretty much back to normal. Thank you all for your well-wishes and prayers for her.

NaNoWriMo: not happening. Basically because I suck at writing books, is why.

Stupid Things I Did Today: I finally made new curtains to replace the ones the cats destroyed, back when they were kittens. The new curtains look only marginally better than if I'd thumb-tacked white bedsheets over the windows. But they have to stay up until we can manage something better.

Off to bed to seek some much-needed oblivion. (In all honesty, today really has not been bad. I am just tired, and the sucky waste-of-time-and-effort sewing project gave me a crick in my back that makes me grumpy).

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

the conspiracy of depraved inanimate objects

The conspiracy on the part of inanimate things, against me personally, has progressed to an outright rebellion. Today, if it could slip between my fingers, it would. If it could fall in the butter at dinner, it did. And needless to say, whenever it was possible for something to spill, smash, shatter, or explode (OK, so maybe 'explode' is a bit of an exaggeration), it did. In spades. Even my nice cozy jammies snickered at me every time I tried to wipe my hands on their acrylicness and got, instead of dry hands (I have discovered, by the way, thanks to these jammies, that I wipe my hands on my clothes, um, way too much), that shuddery wet acrylic feeling. I shudder again now, just thinking about it. And the refrigerator has become especially crafty. I've had an ongoing feud with it for, what, a year? And tonight T pointed out that I needed to defrost it. Now. Not tomorrow, when our milk has been sitting at 55 degrees for another eighteen hours or so, but now. He wasn't so forceful about it as it sounds, he just kind of guilted me into it. So I played the martyr card -- "OK, you just go on to bed while I stay up for two more hours defrosting the freezer. You didn't know it takes that long? Well, it DOES, and if it weren't MY SOLE RESPONSIBILITY to do this task, you would have known. Go, go, off to bed, I don't need you resenting me on top of the lack of sleep and everything else, go on." (Yes, as a matter of fact, I did say every word of that. Not all together. But still. Cripes.) And then it only took ten minutes to defrost the freezer, thanks to my patented "Two Liter Bottle Filled With Hot Tap Water And Fitted With A Squirt Lid" method. So I had to putter around in the kitchen doing a lot of other stuff so that T (who probably was still awake when I finished) wouldn't hear me come over here and start typing after such a distinctly un-martyrish expanse of time. And of course it was all the refrigerator's fault. Cocky piece of... machinery.

And now the B key on my keyboard is acting all sticky. Fantastic. Now I can add that to my list. Nothing like having to spend an entire data entry paycheck on our, what, fourth ergonomic keyboard in thirteen months? so that I can keep doing data entry (and, well, everything else too, to be fair).

While I was going about my beleaguered existence today, I had the most fantastic ideas for my NaNoWriMo book -- which, by the way, is still laughably short. It's the data entry, see. Maybe if someone was paying me, what, about a quarter of a cent per keystroke? I'd be more motivated to spend time working on the novel. Anyway. I had all these great ideas and I thought, I can't wait till the kids are in bed and I can sit down and actually bang out a few thousand words, and then as soon as I sat at the computer, the whole defrosting saga began. And now that I'm at leisure to sit here if I want to, and it's "only" almost 1 AM, the ideas are fleeing my brain like it's the site of an impending nuclear attack.

On a more serious note, I'm starting to actually worry about C's hearing. The medication they gave her cleared up her congestion completely, and very quickly. She no longer has a stuffy or runny nose, or a cough. The thing is, though, that her hearing is almost no better at all. So my worry is that the hearing thing may be completely unrelated to the congestion and maybe she needs to get into a specialist, like, NOW, before it gets worse. The pediatrician thinks it's just a lingering infection (note: C has no pain or feeling of pressure in her ears) and wants to try another round of stiffer antibiotics before we move on to a specialist. I am giving it five days. If she is not 100% better on Monday she's going to an ENT whether her ped (whom, by the way, we like a great deal; she's been the kids' doctor since LT was born; in fact, she was the pediatrician in the room when they removed him from my body) thinks she needs to or not.

I'll close with one picture:


This is a self-portrait: the back of my head after spending about fifteen minutes at Salon Chez C, who says (at least while she's at it) that her "very favorite thing to do in the whole world is fix Mommy's hair." Who could say no to that?

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

the joy of middle age: comfortable clothes

I have discovered the secret to happiness. It's middle-aged-lady clothes.

I have a large extended family (each parent has six siblings, for those of you who are new) and on my mom's side, we are big on hand-me-downs, or hand-me-arounds might be a better term. Kids' clothes get passed from one cousin to another (and frequently, to another and another). If someone gains or loses weight she'll give her clothes to someone who has just shrunk (or grown) into the size she used to be -- which, with six sisters between the ages of 41 and 60, and so many adult female cousins that I've lost count, is pretty much constantly going on. So yesterday I inherited two bags of things from my aunt. In one of the bags was a two-piece set -- I think the proper term is "loungewear" -- which is the closest thing I have ever seen to a footed blanket sleeper for grown-ups. It's wedgewood blue. It's fuzzy. It's warm. The pants have an elastic waist. C was quite convinced that I made it out of the blue fuzzy blanket from my bed until I showed her that the blanket was still whole. And I think I may never wear anything else again. Except, of course, when I actually have to, you know, leave the house. sigh.

Sunday, November 07, 2004

holding onto sanity by my fingernails

This last week has made me eat every word I ever said about my children's utter lack of sibling rivalry. It is as if they have been possessed by the spirits of my brother at 8 and me at 5. In other words, you know they love each other, but they keep driving each other (and hence their mother) absolutely bananas. I think it was Thursday, or maybe it was Tuesday, when I was awakened at around eight o'clock by my son's voice: "MOMMY! C said [swear word beginning with S, and yes, this is all my fault, because I am the best mom ever]!!" Of course that meant he had said it too, so I let him know that he would share her punishment, which was to have to write forty nice words, in addition to their schoolwork. He called her a name for "getting him into trouble", so in addition to the forty pleasant words, he had to write ten nice words about his sister. All in his best handwriting. C's words were largely illegible, and very faint, but they ran heavy to horses and names of flowers. Here is LT's list, spelling intact:


10 NICE THINGS ABOUT C

1. Prety
   
2. Swete
3. nice
4. cute
5. smart
6. good
7. sciny ["skinny" (!!)]
8. Gubby (one of her nicknames)
9. Hoy (another nickname, because she used to get up in the morning, stumble into our room, and say, "Hoy, Daddy")
10. C-girl (did I mention T gives out nicknames like some dads give out noogies?)

OTHER NICE WORDS

1. happy
2. rainy day
3. cheerful
4. Morobay
5. soft
6. dry
7. warm
8. flours (flowers)
9. fun
10. games
11. elifent
12. ducks
13. crusht tranchlas
14. playing
15. frends
16. love
17. singing
18. Mopar
19. Legos
20. choclit
21. snoeflakes
22. grene
23. moon
24. rose
25. ladybugs
26. grass
27. trees
28. cute
29. crusht joonbugs
30. swimming
31. no school
32. Daddy home
33. holiday
34. thanksgiveing
35. reeding
36. drawing
37. creeks
38. rivers
39. lakes
40. frendly

Hey, I'll take my parenting high points where I can get them, in a week like that one.

Friday, November 05, 2004

NaNoWriMo, and other stuff

NaNoWriMo update
I had about 1100 words done on my NaNoWriMo novel, the one I'd finally settled on doing, about the group of junior high rejects ("minimal research required" being part of the appeal there). I got to a point where I was second-guessing my plot twist, reworking my idea for the middle of the book, and tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to write the darn thing without having it all be either a) a big ripoff of a Babysitter's Club Meets Sweet Valley High coming-of-age novel, or b) a thinly-veiled autobiography. Then last night I was rereading an L.M. Montgomery novel, A Tangled Web, and came across the following character:

"She was only 'old Margaret Penhallow,' with fifty drab, snubbed years behind her and nothing ahead of her but drab, snubbed old age."

All of a sudden I remembered a news story a few years ago in our little town about a double suicide -- the people were really into the Hemlock Society -- which had failed: the husband had died and the wife had lived. I have wondered often since then what the woman's life has been like since that happened. Judging by the lack of sensationally mis-spelled headlines in our local newspaper, she didn't just keep trying until she got it right, which is what you might expect. Anyway, Margaret Penhallow combined with this woman in my mind to give me a whole new idea. So now I have 2500 words written... in two separate stories, because I'm not ready to give up on the first idea yet. I think I may qualify as clinically insane at this point.

Politics
yay.

Other stuff
I took C to the doctor on Wednesday because of the hearing thing. I wrote up a long description of that frustrating day and then ended up not posting it. Suffice to say it involved a rainstorm, non-functioning windshield wipers, an hour spent waiting with the kids in a Verizon store while my faulty phone was replaced (yippee!), and more Hometown Buffet hot wings than were probably good for me. The doctor prescribed two medications: one is an asthma medication, and one's an allergy medication. When the pharmacist told me this, I went, "wha...?" and called the doctor, thus starting a two-day marathon session of phone tag, because -- newsflash -- C has neither asthma or allergies. Turns out that the doctor didn't have her mixed up with someone else's child after all; she just prescribed those drugs because they'll address her symptoms. What-ever. I hope they work really, really well. And that's not just because we're at a total of $70 for this round, either. My poor girl NEEDS TO HEAR. It's, you know, kind of important to me.

Also, T has been really having a bad few weeks of it. Ever since his truck's engine blew, he's been a bit depressed. We're trying to figure out what to do about that. It is such a good feeling to not be in debt. Such a good feeling. I mean, we have a credit card with a thousand-dollar limit that's closer to the top than to the bottom of its capacity, but to be normal people and not have five figures of consumer debt hanging over us has been almost euphorically good, this past year and a half or so. And we have become pretty adamant that we will keep it that way. But for T, if his truck's going to be disabled, you might as well castrate him and get it over with, almost, is his feeling. And it's all well and good to say we'll just hand it all over to God and see what He does, and that's what we're doing, but every once in a while the Signature Loan Devil sticks his head up and cackles at us in a really provoking way. We try to ignore that, because we've been on that slippery slope so many times before -- it starts out as just a couple thousand for a new engine and whatever else you use to fix a truck (I personally still believe there must be some white magic involved, but I digress), and before you know it you're looking at bills that say you owe a total of twenty-something thousand dollars going, "how the heck did THAT happen?" Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt (which says on the front, "Flush Eight Years of Your Financial Life Down the Toilet Now. Ask Me How!"). If only there was a Truck Fairy, eh?

Thursday, November 04, 2004

three things I'm sick of

I've been kind of lying low online for the last few days, because I figure it would be impolite to gloat about Tuesday, and I figure that people need a chance to lick their wounds and rant a bit. However, I do have to say that I'm tired of three things:

1. People assuming that life and freedom have now come to an end. Excuse me, but we conservatives lived through eight years of Clinton and didn't kill ourselves. Most of us didn't even kill anyone else, as much as we may have been tempted to at times. And we weren't exactly pleased with the way things went, but we survived. Life goes on; quit panicking and live it. If you're so inclined, start planning something constructive to do for the next election, or run for Congress, or put a "Run Hillary Run" sticker on your car. Knock yourself out, it's a free country. But everyone knows that whining doesn't solve anything.

2. People denigrating the people who voted for Bush, or acting shocked and horrified that we can even exist. We do exist (in fact, there are more of us than there are of you, not that you would believe this if all you ever pay attention to are your like-thinking friends and the mainstream media), we are just as likely to be intelligent people as you are, and we have reasons for voting the way we did. We don't go around screeching about how unfathomable and evil it is that 48% of Americans could vote for Kerry; all we ask from you is the same courtesy. Erica at Peyton's Place has a great post about this today. Go read it; she said it well and saved me the effort of writing it.

3. The phrase "reach across party lines". Doesn't mean I don't think it should happen. I'm just already sick to death of hearing it.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

I cannot believe how viciously I can hate a place I love so much.

Not just because of the presidential uselessness of conservative votes, but also because of the way our ballot propositions are going, T and I are now looking up job listings outside the state of California. Only thing is, we'd have to find a place where my parents would live with/near us, because it would be unfathomable for us to leave them with my dad's health the way it is.

I am just sickened to be living in this state right now. It's a shame such a beautiful place has to be ruined for people like me.

Fantasizing about a state called "Inland California"...

* * * * * * 11:30 * * * * * *

OK, deep breath. I'm a bit calmer. Not everything is bad here. The two things that make me the most upset:

Stem-cell research. I really think the focus for stem-cell research should be on adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood stem cells -- which is the field of study that has actually seen results, whereas embryonic stem cell has had zero. I think the idea of creating new individuals simply to destroy them for their cells is absolutely abominable, and it's really not a great idea even if you aren't a staunch pro-lifer, IMO. It's a manifestation of our extraordinary hubris as human beings, creating life and then destroying it for what we think is a good purpose. And this is before you even bring up the taxpayer cost of 3 billion dollars -- which is almost inconsequential in comparison to the other arguments for me.

The DNA registry. This had the potential to be a really helpful concept, except that they made it an enormous violation of the privacy of innocent people, because you only need to be arrested, not convicted, to have your DNA added to the database. That's a system that is wide open for misuse, if you ask me. And it's another enormous taxpayer expense.

But there are some decent things too. California decided to spend some money in a good place, on children's hospitals. I have a soft spot in my heart for those and they do a lot of good, and need the chance to have the best equipment and personnel and facilities they can, in my opinion. And my beloved Fresno Zoo, which, hello, my grandmother used to go to as a young person, has been saved by a sales tax measure. As has our local hospital.

And federally things look good, although I'm afraid to breathe quite yet. ;-) Overall, I think the stress probably took a few months off my life tonight, but I feel less ill than I did a few hours ago. Not that I don't still think the Inland California (Western California -- whatever, I'll take it) thing is a good idea.

What the HECK?? (no, this is not about the election)

As aforementioned, we have the TV hooked up to the antenna and we're watching ABC as the election returns come in. I just have to ask, what the heck has happened to TV decency standards since I watched it last?? There was a commercial for some bizarre-looking "Desperate Housewives" show, not even eight o'clock, and they were showing stuff in a commercial that they couldn't show at ten o'clock at night the last time I really paid attention to TV. Which, granted, aside from the occasional foray into cable for the sake of documentaries and Jeopardy, has been around eleven years. We actually literally covered our son's eyes and ears.

going crazy; wanna come along?

Why on earth did I sign up for this?. Really it's not that bad. It's kind of fun. And it's not like I have anything else to do besides spending more time sitting in front of this time-eating machine, right?

Stats to date:

Words written (and saved, as opposed to words written, read, selected, and deleted en masse): 600.
Times I've changed my mind about the main point of my book: 3.
Times I've contemplated tossing out this whole idea and frantically tried to figure out something else to write about: I can't count that high.

And because my life is not crazy enough, my kids have decided to spend the last two days driving me completely out of my mind, with everything from traditional sibling rivalry, to accidental clumsy injuries, to absolutely involuntary stuff like noisily snotty noses and repetitive coughs. And LT just finally dragged all the dirty clothes out of his room -- I had been wondering a) why my hamper looked like I was caught up on laundry and also b) why his room smelled like it did. I just can't wait till he's a teenager. And it's not her fault, and I'm actually a little bit worried about it, but my daughter is like half-deaf right now. I think it has to do with this massive cold that she has, but I'm about on the point of taking her to the doctor about it and not waiting for the cold to go away like T and I had previously planned. Until we figured out yesterday that she really couldn't hear us, we were laying down punishments left and right because we thought she was just ignoring us and lying about not being able to hear us. Parents of the Year award, right there.

Also, for the What Was I Thinking category: You all know by now exactly what kind of housekeeper I am, right? I'm somewhere between your average male college student and, say, Oscar Madison. Then why, WHY, when one of my fellow altos suggested to the other altos that we use my house for a sectional rehearsal this weekend, because I live in town and I have a piano, did I not do something besides go completely tharn (read Watership Down if you don't know what that means; it's such a great word that it ought to be in regular circulation) and stammer, "Um, OK. Sure. Sunday afternoon good for you?" Because now I have to clean my house. Really REALLY clean it, because people are coming over who are not related to me in any way. And my couch. Oh good Lord, my freaky ugly couch. I wonder how long it would take my husband to forgive me if I called one of those Twelve Months No Payments No Interest places and ordered a new living room set to be delivered by the weekend?

Monday, November 01, 2004

I don't even know WHAT to call this one

Can someone please tell me: Where did November come from this year? As I get older and the years do their clichéd-but-true (after all, most clichés are true) speeding-up thing, I find myself sometimes having to think to remember not just the date, not just the MONTH even, but the season. Mentally I'm still adjusting to the fact that it's 2004. And it's about to be 2005, in two short months. Two short months, may I add, which are always the most frantic months of the year for just about everybody, and we're no exception, with a whole slew of family birthdays, and pretty much every weekend taken up between now and New Year's. So I fully expect to step outside tomorrow, feel that the air is cool, and have to look at the leaves to remember if it's fall or early spring.


I think I am going to do NaNoWriMo this year. Shut UP, just SHUT UP, I do not want to hear it. I am such a lemming.

Things we did this last weekend:

At the last minute, invited my parents to hold my grandmother's birthday party at our house instead of theirs, for some complicated reasons I won't go into here. This meant that my house went from "pigs wouldn't claim it" to "ready for a family gathering" in two hours. It was a transformation to behold. And yes, my grandmother was born on the exact day of the stock-market crash which catapulted the nation into the Great Depression. It's almost enough to make me believe in astrology, that is. Did I just SAY that?

Spilled water in our keyboard. We air-dried it, and then I used the blow-dryer for a while, and it works almost perfectly, just a little stiff with the SHIFTing.

Played probably twelve hours of board games lying in front of the fire on the hardwood floor, including an actual complete game of Monopoly, played until one person had all the money and stuff. I've done this maybe twice in my life before. (I lost first). We also played two matches of Trivial Pursuit. I won the first one and T won the second one. (Has anyone seen the BOok Lovers' Version of Trivial Pursuit at Barnes and Noble? Omigosh I WANT THAT. Except there's nobody to play it with me.)

Drove to the city to buy school supplies. Well, C and I did. T was otherwise occupied...

Built a pig pen. T did this (thank God) while I drove to the city. And not at our house (thank God again, many times over, because pigs? they stink). Someone is giving us and his boss's family two piglets. They're going to be raised at the boss's house. I think we'll name ours Loin Roast.

Went over all our ballot propositions and decided how we're going to vote on them. Ironically, we're Republicans (more because America is enslaved to the two-party system, than because we actually agree with everything in the platform; we're considerably to the right of Republican on several issues), but I think we are going perpendicular to the party line on all but one or two of the long list of propositions. We don't expect them to go our way, however, because we so do not fit in politically in California. Talk about "disenfranchised". Yet we still vote, every single time. Both of us have voted every time it was possible since we've been old enough to do so.

Cut wood. Well, I got out of most of this (cackles with glee). I love wood heat. I really do. I also really don't like cutting wood. I mean, viewed from a distance, it's an invigorating family activity for a brisk fall day, with the smell of wood and the camaraderie and blah blah blah burning brush piles of sawdust. When you're doing it, however, you notice that stuff less than you do the noise and the muscle strain and the squished fingers. And it wasn't my fault that my dad decided to change the day for wood cutting to a day when I'd had a lunch date with a girlfriend since the summer. It really wasn't. So I hauled about ten very heavy rounds of pine, and then got back in the car, drove 45 minutes back to town with the radio up very loud, took a shower, got dressed up, and went to my favorite restaurant to talk for an hour with a friend who now lives across the country with her army husband, about girl stuff and the Iraq war and our husbands and kids and our ex-boyfriends and stuff. Then I got to go home and help stack the wood, just so that I could meet the requisite smashed-finger quota for a winter's worth of wood. (actually there will be many more days of this delightful kind of exercise before spring, and you can bet I won't get out of those. sigh.)

One of my favorite things about autumn is the way the light slants, even in the middle of the day. This picture was taken at almost ten a.m. In the summer, it's already prime sunburn time at ten, with the sun beating down on your head and crisp, ugly, short shadows squatting under everything. On the 29th of October, however, you have dew on the grass and lovely, long, blurry, cool shadows everywhere. No contest at all, if you ask me.

'Tis the season. You can't drive anywhere around here right now without encountering about a tarantula per mile. I am genuinely ambivalent about the creatures -- they don't freak me out like they do some people to whom I may or may not be married, but I am not a staunch tarantula advocate like nearly everyone else seems to be who isn't freaked out by them. I don't cringe when T purposefully runs them over (backing up if necessary) -- I just laugh. I was glad to have the opportunity to photograph this one, though, creeping his mechanical legs across the dirt road. If T sees this page he may well file for divorce. I'll keep you posted.