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Friday, December 31, 2004

the year in review

I've been expressly saving this survey to do tonight. So here it is. Never say I can't show self-restraint; you know how much I am addicted to surveys. :)

1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?
I took a trip in an airplane, and went to Florida. I got furry pets for my children (and, well, me, too, but furry pets + children is the new thing).

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't think I made any last year. I just now decided that my 2005 resolution will be to get back on the housecleaning wagon. Did I just say that? But it's true. I say "get back on" as if it were longer than two months five years ago that I was on it. But for those two months -- wow, I had a system, it worked, my house was always ready for company. I am going to try the system again.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My dear, beloved, sister-friend Susan did. In June. Yay Susan!

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Sadly, a friend's son, Conor, died of cancer at the age of 4 on I think February 2.

5. What countries did you visit?
ha! you're funny.

6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?
Financial discipline. And house-cleaning discipline too.

7. What date from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
The first week of February was really eventful -- we were on our trip to Florida, and my friend's son died. Lots of up-and-down emotions that week.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
hmm. My son learned his multiplication tables and my daughter can read. But those are their accomplishments; I just helped. I started sewing again, I guess, and had a lot of fun and made some nice things doing that.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not gaining any financial or other discipline.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing other than the usual clutzy Rachel-ish stubbed toes and smacked noggins, no.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Ack, I dunno.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
I dunno, I think pretty much everyone with whom I've been in contact this year did pretty well. My husband loved me, my kids learned a lot, my friends weathered difficult situations with grace.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
It takes a lot in a public sort of thing to depress me. But when mothers injure their children, which made the news a few times this year, that does it. Also, the mainstream media and its 'fear sells' mentality didn't exactly get my stamp of approval.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent. And gasoline, ack! and groceries. The usual.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Going to Florida. Camping in Morro Bay. Christmas.

16. What song will always remind you of 2004?
Probably Vivaldi's "Gloria", since we worked very hard on that in chorus, and performed it twice.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
happier or sadder? Well, looking back at my journal, I was apparently at a really high point this time last year. Now I'm happy, but not all elated like that. So probably a teeny weeny bit sadder, but not sad at all.
thinner or fatter? The same. Sigh.
richer or poorer? Also the same, no sigh this time.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Spiritual stuff. Even after the amazing retreat in the fall -- things are better but not as good as they should be. Also, did I mention housecleaning? And reading. And hugging my children. Can't do too much of that.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Yelling. I'm better about yelling but it still happens sometimes.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Already spent it, the usual way, with family and the whole turkey dinner and all.

22. Did you fall in love in 2004?
Again and again, with the same man. :)

23. How many one-night stands?
Um. Zero.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
n/a, the only TV I watched was the election returns and that certainly would never qualify as my favorite anything, even if they did go basically the way I hoped they would.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I am not a very hateful person. I can't think of anyone I know personally whom I hate. I don't LIKE everybody, but I don't think I hate anyone either. So no.

26. What was the best book you read?
Dang, I knew this was coming. This is so hard. I will stick to books that were not re-reads this year, otherwise I would never be able to shut up, and I will just say these:

• Possession, by A.S. Byatt. Very complex and rich.


• A Catch of Consequence by Diana Norman. Historical fiction, very very readable, almost has the feel of classic literature in a way.


• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (actually the end of December 2003). All I can say about Ann Patchett, especially this amazing book, is WOW.


• Fire Along the Sky by Sara Donati -- fourth in her Into the Wilderness series


• I read Stephanie Plum books for the first time this year. By the time I whizzed through to #10 I was heartily tired of them. HOWEVER. If I had stuck with just reading one or two, she might have made this list. So in the spirit of goodwill, I will list One for the Money. But don't expect Austen.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Yahoo Launchcast radio. Yay. I hope that link works.

28. What did you want and get?
Two or three new Jane Austen movie adaptations on DVD. Lots of books. A new schoolroom, because this is the year we started renting the apartment next door. A trip to Florida. Lots and LOTS of love. It was a good, good year.

29. What did you want and not get?
I am so spoiled. I can't think of anything. Oh, except a house. We had originally thought 2004 was the year we would buy a house, but by the time 2004 began we had discovered that the real estate market was (and is) too insane for us to seriously contemplate ever doing that in California, unless a miracle occurs. Oh well.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
There were several that I watched over and over, which I've loved for more than just this year, like "Pride and Prejudice". Then there were some that I discovered this year, but which were not new this year, like "Moulin Rouge". I don't know if any 2004 movies will be on my favorites list.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 30 on Christmas, and spent the day quietly with my family, which, considering when my birthday is, was a rare and welcome event. We also had a little party a few days beforehand, wherein my extended family went out to eat, I opened presents, and then we walked Christmas Tree Lane in Fresno, as is our annual tradition. This was nice also.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
If my house had always been clean. If we had been able to buy a house.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?
Housewife casual.

34. What kept you sane?
My faith. My family.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I really don't spend a lot of energy fancying celebrities.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The U.S. election, of course. :)

37. Whom did you miss?
Plenty of people at various times. Some because they live far away, some because they are no longer living. As I get older I realize more and more how good it would have been to have known my deceased grandparents as an adult.

38. Who were the best new people you met?
I don't meet a lot of new people in any given year, and 2004 was no exception. There is, however, a family in our church I'd never met before this past May and we're becoming pretty good friends with them. Not FRIENDS friends, but casual friends.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004:
God really wants to be front and center in my life. Also, always ALWAYS bring plenty of water on an airline flight.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I am not good at finding song lyrics that fit situations. I left that behind in my days of falling in infatuation with a boy and writing intensely-worded notes to my friends (with big circles for dots over the i's) about how much this song fits how I feel about The Boy. I do not mean this as a slight to people who DO find lyrics that are meaningful to them. Maybe it's because most of the music I listen to does not have lyrics.
Oh, and after typing up all of that I DID think of a song with lyrics that are fitting for this year, spiritually speaking. It's called "Remember Surrender" and it's by Sara Groves.
Remember surrender, remember the rest
Remember that weight lifting off of your chest
And realizing that it's not up to you
and it never was

Remember surrender, remember relief
Remember how tears rolled down both of your cheeks
As the warmth of a heavenly father
came closing in

I want to do that again
Why can't I live there and make my home
In sweet surrender
I want to do so much more than remember

Remember surrender, remember the peace
Remember how soundly you fell fast asleep
In the face of your troubles your future still shone
like the morning sun

Remember surrender, remember that sound
Of all of those voices inside dying down
But one who speaks clearly of helping and healing you deep within

I want to do that again
Why can't I live there and make my home
In sweet surrender
I want to do so much more than remember...

Thursday, December 30, 2004

I don't know what to call this one

I want to start off this entry with a little explanation. I have tended, in the year and a half I've been keeping this online journal, to keep it light in mood, or at least to focus it on the ins and outs of my daily life, rather than on large-scale world issues. I don't know why it started that way, but that's the way it's gone. I am not oblivious to these issues in real life. I do not ignore them. My heart is breaking for the tragedy in south Asia, especially for the parents who've lost children, and vice versa. I suppose I feel inadequate to do justice to things like that in writing; maybe that's why 99% of my posts here are full of frothy self-deprecating attempts at humor, instead of serious things that affect us all.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled shallow entry:

I feel guilty being happy about weather that is causing damage in other places. I really do. And I'm especially sorry for people in Southern California where apparently nobody knows how to drive if the roads are damp. Because they're, um, more than damp now. Bad days for you guys, no? And then there's my poor T, for whom this weather just means working in the snow instead of working in bright sunny sixty-five-degree conditions. Sorry, sweetie. But I AM LOVING THIS WEATHER. I am not having the best of days, hormonally-speaking, and I have to take the ashes out of the woodstove every other day because of the constant need for fires, and this wire-cage sign we'd made for Christmas fell over on our roof in the wind and I'm actually losing sleep worrying about what it might be doing to the shingles but I can't go up on the roof in this wind to fix it, and I keep hearing this mysterious noise like a fog horn which is either really quiet and very nearby (like, say, the sign sliding slowly down the roof, pulling off shingles as it goes?) or really loud and far away, in which case I got nothing. And I stayed up till 2 am last night doing a jigsaw puzzle and I don't even particularly like jigsaw puzzles. But even with all of this, I am in a state of glee because the wind is literally roaring outside and the snow level's supposed to get down to 3500 feet tomorrow (which still doesn't mean snow for us, but oh well), and there's not a single day in the seven-day forecast with no rain in it. I am TOTALLY going to bundle up and go out in this weather today, just to feel the force of the wind and the cold on my face when I get out of the car, and for the pleasure of coming home to a warm house (well, and to take back library books and get the mail, too). My life is so good, and don't think I don't know how blessed I am.

Monday, December 27, 2004

In which Rachel is not Martha

Before I go one step (er, keystroke?) further, I must pause to clear up a gross misconception. Here is an example, from Dawn:

Happy Happy and a Merry Merry to you, Miss Rach! Beautiful job on the clothes and the kids too! You're giving me extreeeeme Martha envy, though.

ackity ack ack. You know that little plaque you can get from catalogs that says "Martha Stewart Doesn't Live Here"? That belongs on the wall of my living room. I sew like some people watch TV, because it soothes and relaxes me; I sew because it's a quiet way to spend some time alone doing something I enjoy; I sew because my kids need clothes and it's cheaper to sew them than it is to buy them already made; I sew because I don't like modern fashions for kids and like to be able to get them more traditional-looking things without spending three arms and two legs. Note the absence of "I sew because I am the Queen of Domesticity" on that list, because I SO am not.

Here is a list of things that do not relax or soothe me, and which I do not enjoy, and hence which only get done in this house in a tardy, haphazard manner until there's a reason to do them any other way:

• Dishes. I do them, but generally there's at least a small stack of them on the counter.
  
• Floors.
  
• Laundry. I am perenially behind and it's a really great day when nobody has to come to me and ask where s/he could find clean underwear, other than Wal-mart.
  
• Tidying up. See picture below for example, and note that while my kitchen/dining area is in such a state of disarray, where am I? I am at the computer. Typing a diaryland entry.
  

I doubt Martha's house ever looked like this, even after dinner for 19, including eight kids:

Those are TOY guns on the chair. Mostly not from Christmas; the kids (including the 35-year-old one) have quite a collection.

So. I hope that clears things up for everyone.

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

If I were the person solely responsible for defining what is traditional in my extended family, I would decree that from now on, we would be celebrating Christmas on two separate days: One day for the big dinner with grandparents and cousins and friends, and with the presents to and from those people being exchanged, and another day (Christmas itself) would be reserved just for the small family celebration. It made this weekend SO much nicer, that things ended up that way. It was my favorite Christmas yet, even though it was one of our more broke ones.

Also? it is raining. So my life is totally complete. I think I'll read Jane Eyre this week.

Saturday, December 25, 2004

the best-laid plans

You know how sometimes you say, "This is so not my day..."? Well, it would seem logically to indicate that there must be such a thing as a day that is one's day, or it wouldn't be worth noting when it wasn't, right? Well, finally it came. Today was my day. It really was. And how fitting that this should happen on my birthday, no?

It started off with presents this morning. Just as we were about to start opening things, my mom called to tell us that she and my dad couldn't be here for Christmas dinner because she had some sort of stomach bug. (As an aside, I am offering up a huge apostrophic apology to my mom, for the fact that My Day hinged on her feeling so miserable. I'm sorry, Mom. But if you HAD to feel miserable, at least some good came of it, right?). So we decided to put off Christmas dinner until tomorrow, to give Mom a chance to feel better, which only involved calling two households, and everyone seemed agreeable to it. So I proceeded to have, for the first time, a birthday that actually felt like a birthday. I have never had the day of my birthday itself be a day when there was the luxury of just doing what I wanted, just because the nature of the day involves a big family dinner and a lot of preparation and stuff. With that gone from the day, we just hung around home doing what we (I) wanted to do. We played a game; we watched a few movies; we went for a walk. It was perfect; if I could have been given a day to spend in any way I chose, it's what I would have chosen. And we still have the fun of the family-and-friends gathering tomorrow afternoon. I'm just (again) sorry that it was my mom's misery that brought it all about. I DO REALLY LOVE MY MOM. I promise.

It's just as well that we didn't try to cook that turkey today anyway, since it is too big for the roaster oven, and I would have been unable to buy a roasting bag without traveling 45 miles to the city, so we'd have had to just make do with the ham by itself, and then the side dishes. (yes, as a matter of fact, a 25-lb turkey and a 13-lb ham for 13 people does make for an enormous quantity of leftovers; why do you ask? There were going to be 19 people, not 21 as we were just confused about the in-laws coming, but our friends' family of 6 is ill.) Tomorrow I'll get a roasting bag on the way to church, and the turkey will be done to a turn by 3:00. YUM.

And here's a C-ism for today, before I sign off with pictures.

We got C a video for Christmas. It had one of those flyers in the packaging, advertising other movies you can buy from the distributor or studio or whatever. C was looking at the flyer, reading the names of the movies, and she laughed out loud and said, "This one's called 'Tomb Sewer'!" We went, whaaat? until T figured out, just before she brought me the flyer to show me, that she meant "Tom Sawyer".

C's hand is really stronger than you might think, when she is using it to cover your mouth to keep you from laughing out loud at her cute little 5-year-old reading mistakes. I just thought I should warn you. Not that I would know from experience or anything...

C with her new dress held up over her nightgown

actually wearing the dress. Whenever I see this dress, until I die, I will be nearly overcome with the desire to speak with a French accent, because I sewed it while listening to A Tale of Two Cities on CD.

LT in his bathrobe. (My back is cramping up just looking at these pictures.) I had some of the space-themed flannel left over from the pajamas I made him last spring, so I used it as accent material on the robe.

anyone says "merry birthday" and they get smacked. In a loving, friendly way, of course.

When I was a little girl, if I was awake at midnight Christmas Eve (and most of the time I was, because, hello, CHRISTMAS EVE), I would watch the clock until it said 12:15 and then hum "Happy Birthday" to myself, because at that time I was precisely another year older. So, as of the time of my sitting down at the computer to write this entry before going to bed (wrapping presents = work. Nobody tell the kids though), I am exactly thirty years old. Funny. I don't feel any older. ;-)

(which was also exactly the same feeling I had on every birthday for my entire childhood. Ten should feel different from nine. What a rip-off.)

So we're all ready for the kids to tumble out of bed at some awful hour in the morning. Up until now on Christmas morning we have always had to drag LT out of his bed at 7:00, still sleeping, and deposit him on the couch to start waking up so that we could open presents. He is not a morning person, let's just say that. Once he's awake he's quite personable, but the transition from sleeping to waking sometimes requires some pretty extreme measures, even on Christmas. This year might be different. We shall see.

By the way, I finished all my last-minute projects on time. LT's robe (and a new Christmas stocking too -- he says he's too old for the one I made him for his second Christmas, with construction equipment on it, so now he has a camouflage one like Daddy's, *snif*) and C's dress/pinafore are wrapped neatly under the tree. Well, the stocking's not wrapped... you know what I mean. The dress only narrowly escaped being wrapped up with the buttons on the pinafore sewn on inside-out. Because I am Suzy Domestic, that's why. I'll try to get good pictures tomorrow, so that when I wonder when I'm fifty why my shoulders are permanently hunched over, I will be able to look at the photos and remember: oh yeah. It dates back to that Christmas when I spent the three days beforehand hunched over my sewing machine like a crone.

Merry Christmas everyone. And I mean that, I hope you are having a day filled with family and joy and memories, and with a very real sense of the reason for this whole celebration (go read Valerie for more eloquence than I feel capable of at this precise sleepy moment on that topic). Thank you all for making me feel like writing in this thing is worthwhile. It's been a lot of fun, and I am so glad that I'm doing it, but if I knew nobody was reading it, I'd have given up long ago. So if you get bored and leave, just don't tell me, and I'll sit here talking to the empty room like I've been known to do in real life from time to time, only this time I'll never know any different. So that's cool.

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

another late-night ramble, with pictures!

It's past midnight and I'm comfortably sleepy, but the fire in the living room is so nice that I am sitting here for a while just so that its glowy warmth won't go to waste. Also, I'm hoping that I can relax the sewing-machine-induced tension out of my shoulders, and furthermore, I just finished off my can of diet vanilla Coke (just for a change of pace, that's why), and I know that if I were to go to bed now, then just as soon as I was about to drift off to sleep, I would inevitably have to get up and go to the bathroom anyway.

I am making a purple dress for C. Purple is her favorite color and it is just right for her coloring. It's just a simple, plain cotton dress, with a little pinafore over it. Of course, there's a complication, in that it's supposed to be a Christmas gift and I started it, um, today. And just for kicks, I've allowed the situation to become complicated further by putting off for MONTHS starting to sew LT's bathrobe. Which should be really, really simple to make. I hope. Since I also decided to make it a Christmas present. And now you see, in a roundabout way, why every report card I got from fourth grade on up had "Not working to potential" printed on it somewhere. It's because I am a consummate professional when it comes to procrastinating.

Did I mention the scarf I'm crocheting for C, also for Christmas? Hey, at least I have the hat done that goes with it. And that one, I can work on while she's present, because she thinks it's for her aunt. (I would say that that was clever except that I did start it out as a project for my SIL, but changed mid-stream -- or mid-hat as the case may be -- when I realized that for an obscenely small amount of money, an adult can go buy a hat that is precisely what s/he wants, and probably more fashionable than a crocheted one in bright colors. C, on the other hand, will love the one I'm making. Aren't kids grand. ;-)

And we're having Christmas dinner here, and I have pies and cookies to bake and all sorts of fun things, and the Christmas dinner crowd keeps on growing and now it looks like it's up to 21 and where the heck we're going to put 21 people I have no idea. Yet I am remarkably calm. I think I am in denial.

And now, before I ramble on even further and this entry degenerates into complete incomprehensibility: some pictures.

Here's C wearing the green dress I made for her last spring, probably for the last time, as she's nearly outgrown it. This is one of those pictures where her resemblance to me is startling, in my opinion, but it's also bewildering because she is (and I am not fishing for compliments here) so much prettier than I am. I mean, just as an example, look at her skin. Oh, what I would do to have skin like that. Except that I wouldn't go back to being five again -- no, not even for that beautiful pale English-looking clear complexion -- which, honestly, I never had anyway. I was browner than that.

I'm putting this up just because he looks so handsome in it. And honestly because his sister seems to dominate the story-and-anecdote portion of my journal, and I didn't want you all to think I loved her more than this gorgeous boy who made me a mother. ;-)

This is a pretty little spot near where T works. The kids and I were up there taking a walk today while we waited for him to get off work, and I'd brought my camera, to try and capture some pictures of the most slanted light of the year. Because you know how I am about slanting light. I did not succeed overmuch -- I really, REALLY want a nice new digital camera someday, one that's capable of at least zooming -- but I did like this picture.

And now I think my shoulders are sufficiently relaxed, and I can go, um, take care of business and get into my nice warm bed. My eyes are drifting closed just as I sit here thinking about it. mmm.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

A Very Special Episode, Based On An Inspiring True Story

This weekend we were expecting some friends to come up for a visit; they were supposed to show up late last night and sleep in our "guest apartment" (aka schoolroom, storage area, and 'that extraneous area over the garage which is the REAL reason we rent that space'), and depart late this evening after driving around looking at property in the afternoon, because they are planning to move near here in the very near future. They did not show up, so when the phone rang this morning while we were getting ready to leave for church, we knew it would be them with an explanation. Said explanation totally floored us.

They didn't come because the wife is in labor. Now, that's not the surprising part, unless you're familiar with the situation, which, come on, you can't be, I'm just telling you about it now, aren't I. We hadn't been told she was pregnant. That's not the surprising part either; T and C have been friends for about twenty-five years and they are the sort of friends who may not see each other often in person, but they ALWAYS have a running gag or a joke to play on each other, so that (the "surprise! My wife is out to here!" moment), in addition to the fact that there have been many, many pregnancy disappointments up till this point for this couple, is an understandable reason why we'd not have found this out yet in all the conversations T and C have had in the past months. Which is tied into what IS the surprising part. (you knew I'd get here if you just hung in long enough, didn't you.)

C and S have been married for maybe thirteen years. For about eight of those years they tried very hard to have a baby, but S kept miscarrying. As in, ten or twelve times, ranging anywhere from just after she found out she was pregnant up to one stillbirth at five months' gestation; her doctor finally told her that she has a malformed uterus (my own personal theory is that she is a DES daughter, but that's beside the point) and that she was probably never going to carry a baby to term. So they stopped trying. Fast forward five years or so to this past summer: S was feeling sick and tired all the time. S was gaining weight no matter how much she watched what she ate and worked out. S went to the doctor to find out that she was three months pregnant. Her OB told her after a sonogram not to expect anything good; her uterus hadn't changed at all and she would probably lose this baby.

So C and S went to their church and told them about the situation. The people laid hands on S, prayed for her, anointed her, and (forgive me for sounding crass about this, but I am inexperienced) did whatever else it is that charismatic congregations do in this sort of situation. We are talking some serious praying going on. S went back to the doctor and the doctor said that her uterus was completely normal and called it a miracle.

Which we call it too. And anytime they want to skip out on a weekend date with us because they're having a healthy full-term miracle, they're welcome to do so. Even though I spent most of the day yesterday getting that guest apartment ready.

Friday, December 17, 2004

oh dear, another ramble. And it started out so... organized.

I don't think I have the energy to really type a real entry. So here, the abbreviated version of my day, in list form:

1. My feet hurt.

2. I found a sweater of the type I've wanted my entire adult life (soft, cashmere-ish, off-shoulder) and found that it was utterly unflattering on me. Of course, it was white, and ugh, white is, as aforementioned the epitome of "not my color." Someday maybe I'll try a black one, but I'm not holding out much hope. So there's another dream smashed. "'My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.' That's a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I'm disappointed in anything."

3. Also, it itched.

4. I. Hate. Crowded. Stores.

5. Especially when THE AISLES ARE TOO DARN NARROW and PEOPLE PARK THEIR CARTS IN MY WAY.

6. I was "that person" whose problem with her receipt held up the grocery store line. I will never feel quite so malevolently toward "that person" again. It wasn't MY fault; it was the idiotic cashier (sigh. OK, that's not nice. It was the poor overworked idiotic cashier) who couldn't understand the fact that, when there are three cases of Diet Coke on my receipt and only two in my cart, he indeed had (inadvertently and with no malice aforethought, of course) overcharged me, or that I was entitled to either another case of soda or a refund for $5.99 plus CRV.

7. I did not blow anybody up today. (pats self on back.)

8. I didn't even swear. Not out loud, anyway. (pats self again, goes to get self a diet Cherry Coke from the fridge as a reward)

9. Something I ate did not agree with my lower intestinal tract, let's just say that. And it being a prime Christmas shopping day, the public ladies' room at Penney's was full. So my annoyed lower intestine had an audience. Beautiful.

10. Men's slippers are either way too cheesy, or they cost too much, especially when slippers are just something your husband kind of wants, and not something he's really really hoping to find underneath the tree.

11. I finally wised up and bought two tubes of toothpaste instead of one. That way, when either T or I (probably T; I rarely go anywhere overnight without him) has to travel somewhere, either the traveler or the person at home isn't stuck using blecchy bubble-gum flavored kids' toothpaste.

12. When you're in a hurry and you go to pick up takeout which you've ordered on the phone, it takes forever. Everybody knows this. If, however, you should happen to sort of look forward to a solo trip to the local "diner" (and I use this term loosely, and anyone who is familiar with the diner to which I'm referring will know why) to use your husband's birthday gift certificates to get a free and easy dinner at the end of a day from hell, and you've brought a book in anticipation of twenty minutes of sitting at a table, listening to songs you've chosen on the jukebox, the food will be done before you sit down. I just thought I would warn you.

OK, I think that's all.

Oh. Wait, no it's not. I have a survey of sorts for you people who read this. I had a nightmare the other night, in which my husband was leaving me for the accompanist for our community chorus (I will leave for another time the discussion of the huge billboards my dreams may as well have rented lately, to plaster with the gargantuan text "YOU ARE INSECURE". Or maybe I won't), and in my sleep (as well as in the dream), I distinctly -- well, I said, "You son of a b***h!" T was quite shocked by this. He says that that particular phrase is a swear on a level with the Big One. Whereas I think it's below the mid-grade swears, somewhere on a level juuuuust above "crap" on the shock scale. What do you all think? On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being "darn" and 10 being, well, we all know what 10 is; it's the one my mom told me I must never even spell, it was so bad, after a kindergarten classmate had yelled it -- not spelling it -- at the teacher and I'd come home and asked my mom what those particular four letters meant -- anyway. Wow, what a convoluted sentence, I'm afraid to go back and try to fix it for fear I might get lost. On such a scale, where is that particular swear which I called my husband in my sleep when I thought he was a philandering homewrecker? Input please.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

just odds and ends

We have installed a pet door for our cats. One cat has adjusted to it fine, although she didn't like it for the first couple of days. The other cat still protests by standing outside it (it's one of the type that goes into a sliding glass door, and is itself made of glass), meowing plaintively at us for several minutes before she finally gives in and paws at the pet door until she gets it to open toward her enough to stick her head in and wriggle through. She has a decided look of contempt for us in her eyes these days. How dare we subject her to such an indignity any time she wants in or out, she says as she turns her back on us and washes her face meticulously as soon as she's finally inside.

C is watching Ben Hur. She has loved this movie since she was probably three, especially the chariot race. I guess it's just the horses, I don't know. She is not your typical child in many ways, I don't suppose.

Also in the "not your typical child" category -- my son earnestly wants to crochet a blanket for his cousin who's due to arrive next June. His efforts are adorable. And again I'm lost between the desire to encourage him to be creative by leaving him somewhat alone with it, and my desire to help him make something that will be of higher quality by correcting him more often than would be ideal. I'm leaning toward the granola-mom unschooling "leave him be" side for the time being.

Today I had another of those episodes that some people call panic attacks, but I don't because I do not have any sense of panic when I'm having one, and that's a pretty central symptom. My heart pounds and races, I get weak and sweaty and trembly and my throat constricts and my extremities tingle. It is Not Fun. And so far I've never had one when there was an adult around to help me. Fortunately LT is a great hulking eight-year-old who is actually big enough to be helpful in supporting me when I walk, and whose natural tendency when either of his parents is having a problem is to FIX IT FIX IT ANYTHING TO FIX IT. His anxiety has ebbed to the point where I don't mentally call him Anxiety Boy anymore. He's still not terribly comfortable in new situations, but he's much improved overall as far as that goes.

AND speaking of panic, I have to go clothes shopping tomorrow -- for myself. This is trying enough in the best of circumstances (oh, wow, I am so turning into my mother). To make things worse, right now I have two rather prominent "spots" (I love the British way of saying this; so much more dignified than "zits" or "pimples"), and I feel fat, and ick. But I need a new white blouse, or sweater, or whatever I find that is please God not TOO unflattering -- I do not like myself in white -- for chorus concerts, one of which I have on Saturday. My preferred concert blouse got washed in the wrong load, because I am the new Martha Stewart, and it is definitely more gray than white now. And my backup shirts (three Land's End white button-downs which my mom got as uniform shirts in 1989, and which I got from her before I finished high school) are, well, fifteen years old and getting rather threadbare. They also have some of the kinds of stains that never show up in my house, but mutate into glaring atrocities under the lights of whatever my destination may be. So I have to shop. I always feel like such a dowd in clothing stores -- with everything except me all clean and new and perfect-looking. ah well. By this time tomorrow it will all be over, right? :)

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

The Thursday Bookworm

I had these all answered and then I clicked "add entry" and my DSL modem spazzed and my entry was eaten by this blasted machine. And it was long and well-thought-out too. So I had to go away from the computer for a while before I had the energy to try to re-create it. No promises though.

I am a slave to surveys, as anyone who has spent three seconds reading this journal probably knows. This one is from The Thursday Bookworm. I've lifted these surveys from KiwiRia before but this is the first time I've gone to the source myself.

1. What is your favorite movie adapted from a book that you have actually read? Was it pretty true to the original author's vision, or was too much vital information left out or changed?
Pride and Prejudice -- the 5-hour A&E/BBC version. Even after repeated viewings I still do not find flaws in it.

A close second on this one is To Kill A Mockingbird.

2. What, in your opinion, is the worst movie adaptation of a book? What did you not like about it?
Possession by A.S. Byatt. The book was so rich, so fascinating -- and the movie was a hollow shell, with two Americans in the lead of what is a very British story (and one of them wasn't even pretending to be British; they wrote his character as an American, which was a travesty in this case).

3. Have you ever liked the movie version of a book despite its glaring differences from the original story?
This is going to be very shocking to people who know me. Debi, are you sitting down? Susan? Everyone else? OK. I really, really like Patricia Rozema's movie Mansfield Park. In all honesty, I rented it once (for free, from the library) because I wanted to be able to criticize it and know what I was criticizing. But wow. For once in my life I was able to separate the movie from the book (which I love) and enjoy the movie as its own work even though it deviated in staggering ways from the source material. It was an interpretation rather than a retelling, which is something I usually do not let filmmakers get away with, when defenders of movies which deviate from the original use it as their reasoning. Usually I say, if you're not going to tell the story the way the author intended it, you can write your own story with your own characters and not try to ride on the author's coattails. But maybe it was because Rozema strayed so far from the original in so many ways that I was able to forgive her for it in this case, I don't know. All I know is that I really enjoyed this pretty, emotionally rich, originally-directed film, even with its flaws (and there were a few, even apart from the adaptation thing).

And then there are movies that have been part of our lives and culture for so long, so thoroughly ingrained in our childhoods, that we can like them even though they stray wildly from the books on which they were based. Two that come ot mind are The Wizard of Oz and "Little House on the Prairie".

4. Have you ever seen a movie adaptation that actually made you go out and read that book after seeing the film?
Hmm. Pollyanna. The Man from Snowy River (a really great Australian poem is the basis for this pretty movie). The Fiddler on the Roof (Sholem Alecheim's stories are hard to get through if I read a lot of them at a time, but one at a time, they were very interesting). Bambi (didn't like the book). Forrest Gump (book was execrable). I don't remember if I read Pygmalion before I saw My Fair Lady or not. I have gone seeking autobiographies of the people depicted in The Sound of Music. And I know there are some examples I'm forgetting here.

And there are a lot of adaptations where I'm already familiar with the book, but watching the movie gives me the itch to read that particular book again. Just about any film adaptation will do that to me.

5. Have you ever seen a movie without knowing beforehand that it had first been published in book form?
Mostly when I was little -- things like Mary Poppins, etc. Well, here's a big example: Every single Disney animated feature film up until The Lion King was based on outside source material, and I had no idea about some of those -- again, when I was little. I know there are some from my adulthood too but I just can't think of them offhand.

One question that was left off here that I think is a good one is: Are there any adaptations where you like the movie better than the book? And two that come to mind here are The Black Stallion (heart-poundingly beautiful movie, just stunning, based on an average-at-best boy-and-horse book -- but let's give the author credit; from what I understand he wrote it in high school) and Forrest Gump as mentioned before. I don't love the movie of that one, but I couldn't even get five pages into the book. Oh, and Wings of the Dove. I just cannot get into Henry James -- and I'm not afraid of older literature. He is just so dry and bleak in his writing style; I can read a page and have no idea what I've just read. But the 1997 movie of this is, well, very racy, and also quite engaging.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

another C funny

OK, since I have had two people not roll their eyes and shoot at me for yesterday's entry (which is long and stuff, you should go read it, if you want to), I will share another C story. This one is ongoing and she just added to it.

On Sunday we went to dinner at my in-laws'. We watched "The Wizard of Oz" -- a first for the kids. In the two days since C has been slowly digesting this film in her mind and asking me series of questions. One question theme has been the following:

(yesterday morning)
C: Mommy, in that movie yesterday, with the suit of armor [she means the tin woodman] and the scarecrow and the girl with the dog and the red shoes and the green witch -- what's it called again?
I: "The Wizard of Oz."
C: Yes, "The Wizard of Oz." In "The Wizard of Oz", why, when they're going through the woods, do they say [perfect dramatic imitation] "Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my!"?
I: Because they were afraid of lions and tigers and bears.
[pause]
C: Oh, that's kind of silly. Because what if the lions and tigers and bears thought they were calling them, and they came?
I: [turn back, cover mouth, try to contain shaking shoulders]


(and then just now, this morning)
C: Mommy, in the movie we watched at Grandpa T's with the scarecrow and the girl with red shoes and the suit of armor... what's it called again?
I: "The Wizard of Oz."
C: Yes, "The Wizard of Oz." Why, when they were saying [again with the mimicry], "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" did they not say, "Lions and tigers and bears and wolves, oh my!"?
I: Well, I guess they weren't afraid of wolves, just of lions and tigers and bears. They didn't think about wolves.
[pause]
C: Well, then they all don't have brains!

(ba-da CHING. Except that the funniest part is that she is utterly serious.)

late-night ramble, ack

"Are you ready for Christmas?"

You can't get away from that question in the month of December. It's a conversation starter -- it takes the place of talk about the weather, and just as any pregnant woman is seen as fair game for such questions as "when are you due?" and "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?", it's simply a given that any time you encounter anyone during the first three and a half weeks of December, from the post office clerk up to your close friends, the conversation is likely to open with "Are you ready for Christmas?" And, God help me, I answer it every time with, "Yes, almost done with the shopping." It just comes flying out of my mouth. I should come up with something witty, or just smile, or maybe I should be super-spiritual and expound on how we're preparing spiritually for this celebration of the incarnation of Christ. But I don't, I take the easy way out and give the expected response about (gack) shopping. I was never brave about it when I was pregnant, either. I always wanted to come up with smartass comments: "[sigh] No, I'm not pregnant. I guess I really need to lose this weight." Or "The next person who asks me that will feel the significant force of my wrath. Beware." I never even made the t-shirt I always joked about, with all the pertinent information, so as to avoid having to answer the same-three-questions over and over and over. It's easy to shrug philosophically now, and figure that people don't mean to be annoying; they just like to know what to SAY to a person, and dang, an obvious pregnancy makes it really simple. It was not so easy then, as any woman in late pregnancy will attest. It's the same trap with the Christmas shopping line, except that I do feel a faint sense of spiritual betrayal when I cave in, because after all, aren't I contributing to the crass commercialization of this holiday when I take the easy way out? Ah well.

As an aside, we are doing something nice this year, and we did it last year too. We made up a set of ornaments last year, each with a date (1 through 25) and a Bible verse reference having to do with the birth of Jesus or the reason for it, written on it in gold paint pen. Each night LT looks up the verse and reads it, and the kids take turns hanging the ornaments on the tree. It does help to focus us, at least once a day, on what this is all about. It's not just shopping, or cooking, or even family and togetherness and generosity. And it's certainly not just about Mommy spending three hours on the roof, risking life and limb and getting sore muscles on Sunday afternoon putting up Christmas lights which now look really cool, although she's mighty proud of that (go girl power!).

******Possibly Boring/Mildly Bragging Homeschooling Blurb Follows********

Speaking of LT and "proud of that" -- he surprised the living daylights out of us the other day. He was quizzing C on math problems, asking her things like 5+3 and 4+4, things that she has the barest grasp on (because, hey, she's not even halfway through kindergarten!). So I thought I'd teach LT a little bit of humility and even the scales a bit, and I presented him with a scrap of paper with "3x=6" on it, and asked him, "What's x?" I thought he'd be stumped. He didn't even THINK about it, just said, "Two." So I gave him some harder ones, and he got them all. This is, you have to understand, an eight-year-old boy who "hates math", who adds with his fingers, who probably wouldn't know how to calculate "fifteen divided by three" if you just presented it to him in those terms. So his father and I are giving really basic algebra problems, like 5x+4=44 or 8x-6=50, and he's nailing them all. This is both a homeschooler's dream, and a homeschooler's nightmare (well, nightmare is too strong a word. It gives me a thrilling, excited, challenged feeling like a roller coaster, not a horrified, ominous feeling like a bad dream), because hello, now the rubber actually meets the road and I have to do what I've always said is so great about homeschooling: work up a customized solution. For a person whose grasp of concepts is advanced, but whose practical working-out of grade-level things is average. Fun and rewarding, and definitely possible, but challenging too. He's shown signs of being able to grasp concepts that he couldn't explain since he was a very little boy -- things like knowing how many animals would be in each group of you divided 25 into 5 pens when he was in kindergarten. But it took much time and effort to get the multiplication tables into his head, and he still doesn't have them "memorized to automaticity" -- heck, he doesn't even have addition facts to that point yet. I am thinking he's strong on concepts and not so strong on memorization -- which, hey, if he has to be weak in one area and strong in the other, that's the way I'd want it to go. I asked him today how his brain solved those problems so fast -- what did he think about to get the answer? It took him a while to be able to slow it down enough to tell me, and he says that he knows that the 5x has to be 40, so the x has to be 8. He says that he does not think about subtracting the 4 from both sides, which is of course the "proper" way to solve the problem, and the way he'll have to learn when he's older in order to be able to move on to more complicated equations.

While I'm on the subject of school, I should put in that C is also doing really well. She finished her kindergarten math book a couple of weeks ago, so I'm having her go through the homework workbook that goes along with it, as a review, and then I'll move her on to the next grade's book. She is the opposite of her brother in learning styles -- she has a very good visual memory, and when she's read something, it stays in her head if she wants it to. She is also at the age where she is always coming up with little sayings that sound very funny to her parents, but which bore the pants off people not related to her, so I won't torture you with expectant punch lines here.

OK, OK, one story, I can't resist. But only one, I promise. We were watching footage online of elk damaging vehicles and chasing after people in Yellowstone National Park. The elk in one video would make his high-pitched yelling sound just before charging at cars driven by people who had stopped to look at him. C's cheerful, matter-of-fact comment about elk was: "Well, they make cute sounds. Buuuut, they're evil." I cannot possibly duplicate her expressiveness in type. See, I told you. I don't expect you to gush so don't feel guilty if you don't.

Good Lord I should never update this thing after midnight. I get so stupid. I'll probably delete this in the morning.

Monday, December 13, 2004

crafty me

I finished a baby blanket yesterday. This wouldn't be funny except that I started it for a friend's baby when she was pregnant... two babies and 2 1/2 years ago. That "baby" just turned 2 in October. I have this habit of starting craft projects and then letting them languish in Ziploc bags for eons until I feel like working on them some more. I also have a 1/4 finished cross-stitch -- got in a little over my head on that one -- which I started for my parents in 1998, as well as a daisy afghan which I meant as a second-birthday present for my daughter who is now five. That one has a story, but I am not sure I have the energy to go into it right now. Also, I made up for the lack of a blanket for the friend's baby by sending her a dress I'd started making for my daughter... who is, do the math, three years older than hers. I think it is some kind of incurable disease.

Anyway, here's the blanket:



Is it blocks with yellow tops? Or blocks with alternating green and blue tops? Or is it stars? Or is it Q-Bert's little tower thingie? You decide.)

Next I think I'll work on the Christmas doily I started two years ago. Or else maybe I'll start some new projects, because after all, I don't have anything scheduled for the winter of 2006 yet.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

car-dancing fool

Today I drove down to the valley to buy more Christmas lights, as mentioned in my previous post. I went... ALONE. Now, to a lot of people -- a staggering quantity, really, judging by how few vehicles qualify for the carpool lane on city freeways -- being alone in the car is just part of daily life. However, for a full-time homeschooling mom, it's a rare event. I almost always have my children with me, and frequently my husband too, or occasionally we leave the kids with my parents and it's just T and myself in the car. Maybe five times a year I am actually in the car alone for any extended period of time (i.e. longer than it takes to drive to the podunk grocery store in town for an emergency evening shopping expedition). So when it happens, I go... a little crazy. Today I car danced to 80's songs for half an hour, and sang at the top of my lungs, and oh gaw, I am sure I gave the people in the car behind me something to laugh about for years. ("Remember that time we were on our way to the city and there was that total spazz of a woman in the car in front of us?") I lay all the blame at the feet of Men At Work, because if I hadn't started out the trip with "Down Under" I probably would not have been put into such a slap-happy mood. But then that was followed by 99 Luftballons. Now, you generally wouldn't think that a song about nuclear annihilation would be so darn dance-able. But that song's not just a late-Cold War classic; it's my childhood. Also, I sing along with the German version even though I have no idea what I'm saying and only catch every tenth word or so, and then I think about how funny that would be to someone who actually spoke German, and ack. The thing is that when I get into that kind of mood it just sort of spirals out of control. (ask anyone who's ever chatted with me at one o'clock in the morning).

And I won't even bother telling you about going stoplight-to-stoplight listening to "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" at volume setting 24 (25 is "shatter glass", I think), which is one of the two songs composed during the 1980's which, IMO, validate the existence of the electronic synthesizer, which was used so criminally by many, many "musicians" of that era. (the other song is "Axel F", by the way. SHUT UP.)

Shopping killed my buzz pretty thoroughly, though. We have always bought Christmas lights at Big Lots, and Big Lots was an utter zoo. ZOO. And they were also completely cleaned out of the kind of Christmas lights we use, so I had to go to (cue sinister music) Wal-Mart. Two Saturdays before Christmas. I actually had to perform deep-breathing relaxation exercises several times as I went around in that store. Also, I was looking at purses and found a box cutter, with its handle wrapped in black tape, inside a really cute little clutch wallet thing. There's a story there, and it could be creepy, but I have no idea what it is.

such sticks in the mud as we are

I grew up in a household where we didn't have a lot of money and generally our houses were small, but gas was relatively cheap, and so one of our favorite ways to enjoy ourselves was to just go rambling in the car. We were a spontaneous bunch and we'd take off on a weekend trip to the Bay Area to visit my mom's sister's family with very little more than a phone call to say we were on the way. So I have this gene, strengthened by my upbringing, which makes me want to be spontaneous. Often.

However, T is different. His nature and nurture push him in the other direction. He is a big planner, and sudden changes in plans stress him out A LOT, even if the change is for the better. This means that in the past ten years my spontaneity has been squelched to the point where we have gone beyond not-spontaneous and into the realm where even fun things we've had planned for months don't happen.

OK, now I'm being unfair. We're not so bad as that, and a lot of our fun plans do come to pass. But the thing is, there's this really really high tide this weekend, see? It's a proxigean spring tide (there's your vocabulary word of the day), where the earth is close to the sun and it's a new moon and so the high tide gets really high and the low tide gets really low. This happens every few years or so, for a couple of months in a row. And ever since the summer I've wanted to drive to Morro Bay for the proxigean tide and see the ocean come clear up across the beach to the dunes. Sounds silly but I'm silly in general so that's OK, right? But now the weekend has actually arrived, and T has a really unpleasant cold so he's exhausted, and we just bought this 1969 Dart and he wants to stay home and play with it, and plus we spent seven hours in the car(s) yesterday as well as seven hours in the car the previous Friday, and blah blah blah no Morro Bay trip blah.

Grr.

I could go by myself, but honestly, I would be so lonely for ten hours in the car and all night in a hotel room (but oh! the reading! it almost sways me...) that even the tide thingie wouldn't make it worthwhile, I don't think. Oh well, there's another identical tide next month. So what if it's a Monday, and the chances of T being allowed to take a day or two off work to go over there with me are laughable, and the weather's good this weekend but who knows what it will be in 29 days, and so on and so forth. I can still pin my hopes to that. And I can also (this is the really fun part) milk my disappointment for all its worth, and imply to T that because we're not spending money on my long-planned Morro Bay trip, I have the right to buy more Christmas lights and put them up, and the right to renew my gold Diaryland membership, and to go out to dinner instead of cooking, and to also hold this over his head and use it as a bargaining chip for months to come. Oh, it takes practice to be the kind of wife I am, and after ten years, I'm beginning to really get good at it.

Thursday, December 09, 2004

Holiday dinner survey

Here's another survey. I promise a real entry soon. I seem to have lost the muse for the past few days ;-). Can't think of anything to write about to save my life.

1. What is your favorite pie?
Pecan, if it's not too sweet. Otherwise it gets hard to choose. Cherry probably. With vanilla ice cream.

2. How many people were at Thanksgiving dinner?
13 (superstitious people need not apply, eh? Fitting, though, because it WAS at my in-laws'...)

3. What will you be drinking?
Diet Coke.

4. Do you help with the dishes?
Yes. Fortunately there are generally a lot of people who help. I don't mind doing the dishes as long as there're people to help with the clearing, wiping down surfaces, all that. It's the WHOLE clean-up -- which has been dumped all on me a few times, just by mistake, everyone else was distracted -- that intimidates me.

5. What have you burnt before?
Generally I am more of a not-starting-things-in-time-so-they're-underdone-and-we-have-to-wait person. In high school, though, a friend and I were making spaghetti dinner for our two families to eat when our parents got back from a trip they were on together, and we had the bread under the broiler ready to toast, but they were so late getting home that we got hungry and decided to heat up some corn dogs for ourselves to eat while we waited. We put them in the oven and forgot about the bread under the broiler, which caught on fire. It was exciting. We took pictures.

6. Do you bring the host or hostess a gift?
Shoot. No. I should but we have just never been that kind of family. I know nothing about wine, and I am death to all plants, and what else do you bring? Input please.

7. Is anyone going out of state for dinner?
No.

8. Is anyone coming in from another state?
No.

9. If celebrated at your house, what will the centerpiece on the table
be?
We don't have centerpieces. It's hard enough fitting the food on the table. Someday in my permanent house I'd like to have a nice sideboard in my nice dining room, to hold the food as well as napkins and silverware and all that, and then we'll do centerpieces on the table.

10. Who carves the turkey?
Either my dad or me. I'm pretty good at it, but he's better.

11. Do you look forward to going shopping the day after
Thanksgiving?
Occasionally, if there's a specific sale that has something I wanted to buy anyway (like this year at the fabric store)

12. When do you put up your Christmas tree?
The day after Thanksgiving, every year.

13. What is on your Christmas list this year?
A soft fuzzy red sweater. Black boots to go with aforementioned red sweater and my plaid skirt. Books. The movie "Emma" with Kate Beckinsale.

14. Do you write out a list for Christmas?
Yes

15. Do you have a budget for Christmas or just buy stuff when you
see it?
We budget. Then in the week before Christmas we generally ruin our grocery budget for the month of January by hopelessly overspending on Christmas presents for the kids.

16. What are your favorite traditions?
We usually drive around looking at Christmas lights several times during the year. We put up the Christmas tree as soon as it gets dark the day after Thanksgiving without fail. We made a set of 25 ornaments, which we start putting on the tree on December 1st, and we put one on each evening and one on Christmas morning, each with a Bible verse relating to Jesus.

17. Did you have any traditions when you were younger that you
didn't like?
No.

18. Do you usually make a New Year's resolution?
About half the time I make one. And about half those times I keep it.

computer use survey

Here's a little computer-use survey:

How often do you check your email?
Almost constantly. If I'm going by doing something else, I'll just do a quick send-and-receive and see what's there. This is very baaad and is a major reason why I don't get enough done around here.

How often do you check your favorite sites (journals, etc)?
I have a list of them that I go through several times a day. Some of them I only check every few days, however, because they don't update as often.

How many folders do you have in your email program?
24, counting the default ones (inbox, outbox, deleted, etc)

How many emails are in your deleted folder?
9724 (I empty it maybe once a week. No, not that often. A few times a month.)

When did you first use the Internet?
In the summer of 1996.

What was the first thing you remember using the Internet to do?
I went online at the library to look up recipes for homemade baby food (and was bewildered when page 20 of an altavista search for baby food recipes had stuff totally unrelated to baby food). I also looked up information about L.M. Montgomery, author of the Anne of Green Gables books.

When did you first get Internet access at home?
email summer 1996, actual Internet in the fall of 1996.

What do you use the computer for most?
Email and Internet usually. When I have a job (transcription or data entry) the email and stuff falls by the wayside and I use the other programs more.

Are you on any email lists?
I am on about 10. Which is way down from the 30-something I used to be on. Most are fairly inactive but there are a few that put out a hundred or so messages a day.

How often do you update your online journal, if you have one?
Um. It used to be every day. Now it's more like twice or three times a week.

How much time to you spend IMing?
Not much these days. It used to be more. Often I don't even turn Yahoo on.

How many people are in your IM buddy list? How many of those do you chat with on a regular basis?
Um, maybe thirty people on the list. I chat regularly with... two.

What takes up most of the space on your hard drive?
Music.

What was the first computer you remember using? Where was it?
We had a little Atari 800 at home, which was not just a game machine, it also had a keyboard and you could run little BASIC programs in it. I remember we made one that looked like a rocket launching, in ASCII. Mostly, however, it was for games. We got that when I was in third grade, I think -- around 1983 or 1984. Then at school we had first Ataris, which we didn't use much, and then Apple IIs, and we played Oregon Trail and learned how to make basic little databases and do word processing with those. That was in sixth grade, so 1986.

Monday, December 06, 2004

busy days

Yesterday we drove to the Bay Area (twitch. twitch) to look at a car
we've been thinking about buying. We didn't end up getting it (although we're still thinking about it) but we had a nice long drive and a mostly-pleasant day. Except for the wretched 580/680 interchange which is everything that people who hate freeway interchanges hate about freeway interchanges. Ack. And for some strange reason, even though I always plan to have T* drive in places like that, I end up being the one with my white knuckles clamped to the wheel trying to look in four or five directions at once, so as to be able to merge without becoming part of a horrific mangled freeway accident. Because that would make the traffic even worse, with all the rubber-necking.

Then today we cut wood (and I did not skip out this time!) before
having T's birthday dinner at my parents' house. He wanted spaghetti, which is, hallelujah, something I'm good at making and I can do it reliably and it doesn't take a gazillion pots and pans or have to be kept warm in the oven while I cook it in batches or ANYTHING. Good old spaghetti. But T always gets (meaning I always make) German chocolate cake for his birthday. Eew. The cake part is bland and the frosting has (puke) coconut. Ah well, it's only once a year, and it makes the chances of my blowing my diet on leftovers virtually nonexistent. Which will not be the case after my birthday (which is in three weeks), because I am all about either a) a Costco cake, which is the be-all and end-all of cakes, or, if we can't spring for that, b) chocolate cake from a mix with chocolate frosting from a can. What other kind of cake does there really need to be, after all? And Dulce de Leche (Spanish
for "Let's Make Rachel Fat") ice cream. mmm.

I can tell that I've been reading the Little House books too much when I really start obsessing about food. Next time you read those, pay attention to how few pages can go by without a description of some kind of hearty Early American meal. Even during The Long Winter there's all that talk about grinding wheat to make nutty-tasting whole-wheat bread. And when they're not on the verge of starvation it's even worse. The roast geese! The fried chicken! The venison! Oh good Lord, the blackbird pie!! I think I maybe gained five pounds this past week just reading about it all.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

a book meme

Another book meme lifted from KiwiRia.

The idea is to recommend a few books from each genre.

01. Horror:

• The Stand by Stephen King. This is in a different vein from most of the other stuff he wrote -- at least, what he'd written up until the early 90's when I stopped reading his books.


• Edgar Allen Poe's short stories. The Pit and the Pendulum, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell -Tale Heart -- wow. One of my junior-high friends had a tape set of Vincent Price reading some of Poe's short stories; we lay in her rec room listening to them on Halloween night and neither of us could get up afterward to
  blow out the candles we'd lit, so we just let them burn down until they were gone.

02. Suspense/Mystery: I am drawing a blank here. I know I've read some good suspense stuff in the last few years but I just can't remember any of it. So I'll shrug and say, "Trixie Belden. She was way better than Nancy Drew."

03. Science-Fiction/Fantasy:

• The Martian Chronicles -- Ray Bradbury


• The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. The movies are pretty well-made, but as is the case with almost all adaptations, if you've seen them, you haven't experienced the whole stories. The books are much richer, and the characters are more admirable in the original than they're portrayed to be in the movies.


• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. These are, no pun intended, an absolute staple in our household.

04. Romance/Chick Lit:

• Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series


• Sara Donati's Into the Wilderness series (both of the
  above are really deeply researched historical fiction)


• A few of Jennifer Crusie's books. Some of them are too over-the-top for me, but I really like her latest one, called Bet Me.


• Elizabeth Berg -- she writes chick lit but not romances. Read with tissues.


• Marian Keyes. So funny and yet she's not JUST funny.

05. American Classic:

• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee -- this is an absolute, utter must-read, in my opinion.


• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Don't be turned off by having been forced to read this in high school. Read it in your twenties or beyond and you'll get a lot more out of it.


• Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series. They're ostensibly for kids but they're an amazing look at pioneer life.


• Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain


• Of Mice and Men, and even though I disagree with its overarching political message, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

06. British/World Classic:

• Any of Jane Austen's six novels (yes, even Mansfield Park), along with her juvenilia and unpublished work.


• Dickens: David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist ... I could go on.


• Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera


• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë


• L.M. Montgomery's books. Not just the Anne of Green Gables series, although that's wonderful; she wrote a dozen other novels, and they're all worth reading.

07. Drama (Play):

• Shakespeare of course, when you feel like slogging through a lot of words to get the meaning of a great story ;-) (also, reading Shakespeare is great because you realize just how many of his phrases and quotations have made their way into common speech)


• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

08. Biography/Autobiography:

• MiG Pilot by John Barron, about Viktor Belenko. This tells the story of a Russian fighter pilot who, in the late 70's, defected to the US along with his top-secret jet. His impressions of America alone make the book worth reading.


• Mover of Men and Mountains by R.G. LeTourneau.
  Autobiography of a Christian inventor who lived to see (and in great part brought about) mind-blowing changes in the mechanical and earth-moving industries. Not just a Christian testimony or a book about tractors; you get a very good picture of life in the early 20th century and beyond from this book.


• The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery in five volumes.
  There was a lot going on behind the scenes as all those tranquil "children's" books were being written.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

moving day

(originally posted at blogger)

I feel all dirty and guilty, going behind Diaryland's back like this. But the fact is that you can get the same stuff here for free that you get for $55 a year at Diaryland, except the stats tracking. And apparently except for the "actually being able to post when you want to" part. Since it just took literally fifteen minutes for this add-an-entry page to show up. Still and all, I will give it a little try.

There's been nothing of note going on this week in our household. I did forget to mention that we put our Christmas tree and decorations (such as they are) up on the day after Thanksgiving, as is our tradition. This is the first time our cats have encountered a Christmas tree. For the first two days they didn't even notice, but then, um, they did. So until they figure out that touching an ornament=tiny smack on my cute little nose, they can't be left alone in the house with it. It is like having toddlers.

Also, I am back on my hardcore diet, because the scale was starting to creep in the wrong direction, and I knew if I didn't get it in hand it would be leaping and cavorting into higher and higher numbers pretty soon. So. This means I spend the majority of every afternoon having to verbally remind myself to get out of the kitchen and go drink some water. It also means that I'm back to going through four or five cans of diet soda a day. I was so hopped up on diet Cherry Coke last night that I couldn't sleep until after midnight, even though I went to bed at the virtuous hour of ten-thirty.

And I'm whizzing through the Little House books. I am finding they're great for reading during the winter. Also that I can read two in one day if I neglect the laundry, and hey, what's new about that?

by the way. IT IS DECEMBER AUGH. Just thought I'd share.