« April 2006 | Main | June 2006 »

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

LBY: What's your worry language?

I'm not the kind of person who worries a whole lot about genuinely hard situations. I've got plenty of faith for those. It's the little daily stuff that I have to constantly remind myself to turn over to God: the messy house and my lack of desire to clean it and the fact that people will just mess it up again as soon as I'm done and I'm just expected to smile and clean it up again, that's a biggie. The little stresses of interpersonal friction that turn into big stresses of whole-family friction, that's another. Or, say, if I'm using the riding lawnmower for the first time, mentally composing a go-girl-power blog post about the experience until I get stuck on a rise of dirt, and the blade's still going and it's like banging into the ground causing the thing to try to buck me off and I can't get the darn blade turned off and I'm screaming like, well, like a girl... that's maybe another example. (Can you tell that I maybe didn't have the best day today?)

T, though -- T is a bit different. He's unruffled by daily stuff, even (which wasn't always the case) things like car trouble, as long as there's no underlying long-term thing causing him stress that he's repressing like a classic textbook case of a, um, stress-repressing person. Big stuff, though -- he's taken an few days off his life stressing about big stuff. Things like the fact that his commute is going to be three hours each way for six months to a year once he goes back to work (he's off till the end of June with his back injury) -- that one was preying on him a lot last night. Whereas I'm inclined to shrug and realize that stuff like that is lame but it's never as bad in reality as it is when we're anticipating it, so why bother stressing out in advance? I have no problem passing THAT kind of issue on to God, for him to deal with. I guess that makes me a cup-half-full person. I think T secretly thinks it makes me a burying-my-head-in-the-sand person but I disagree. :)

So anyway. Here's where the the Session 8 lessons and video come into this: As Beth said, God has something for us at the end of this. Even at the end of a year of six-hours-and-$40-each-day commutes. Even at the end of the lawnmower ride from... well. From there. We've been through worse than this. He has, for sure, for us, and He is faithful.

wedding pictures and a meme

Kristen said she thought I should post photos from the 19-Year-Old's Dream Wedding (ha ha) described in my last entry. Here's a shot of the wedding party, with appropriate labels:

And here's one with a clearer view of the irreparable black hair, the linebacker shoulders, the overabundance of sequins, and the Elizabethan ruff on the back of my head:

Bit of trivia: When my son saw that picture at around the age of three, he asked, "Who's Daddy kissing? That's not Mommy!"

Really it was a pleasant, memorable, exciting day. It was just not what I'd do if I were doing the whole thing at 31 instead of 19. Which, praise be to God, I'm not.

And now a meme lifted from Michael.

What do you do to get yourself out of a bad mood?
Generally I wait it out. I mean, I pray along the way, I take deep breaths, but there's no surefire thing except the knowledge that it'll pass.

What book are you currently reading? What's stacked on your night stand waiting to be read next?
I have bookmarks in Jane Eyre (the party including Blanche Ingram has just arrived at Thornfield), Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier (liking it OK, not going to be on my top ten or anything), and Persuasion (perfection as always). I have another Chevalier book waiting for me in case I feel in the mood for it when I'm done.

You are the owner of a store with a restroom that is kept locked and patrons must come to you for a key, what have you attached the key to in order to insure that it's always returned?
That would probably depend on the nature of the store. Or I might just use a slat of wood that says RESTROOM on it in black magic marker. Who knows.

Have you ever/would you ever sing karaoke?
At my high-school graduation "sober grad" party I did. It was fun.

What kind of lunch box did you have as a kid?
Almost always just brown paper bags, but I also had a Tupperware one for a while -- the kind where the handles came up from the sides and snapped together above the lid.

What do you do when your snack gets stuck in the vending machine? You know, you put your money in, make your selection, and the snack doesn't drop down --- what do you do? Shake the dang machine, hit it, and then walk away.

Have you ever slept in and missed an important appointment?
I've missed appointments due to absentmindedness -- a homeschooling field trip I signed up for once, I remember, good thing I'd paid in advance. But I don't think I've missed them due to oversleeping.

When playing Monopoly, which token to is your first choice? Do you have any special 'house rules' that you play by? (Ex: rolling snake eyes = $500; landing on 'free parking' wins the pot of money'; etc...)
I like the dog, and Free Parking TOTALLY means you get all the money from taxes, bail, etc., that is in the middle. I was dumbfounded when I discovered that that wasn't in the official rules. We have a Star Wars Monopoly game and there are special rules for all the doubles -- the coolest being that if you get double sixes you can challenge any other player to a dice battle for a property they own.

Do you ever have a hard time understanding the accent of people who are speaking the same language that you are?
Not really.

Do you think listening to books on cd is the same as actually sitting down & reading a book?
NO. NO NO NO. There's this whole near-magic thing that happens when you're reading -- you take this compact little thing off the shelf, open it, and the black marks on the page transform themselves into a story in your head. It's bliss. I can only tolerate books on tape/CD if I'm driving or crocheting (so that my hands and eyes are busy but my mind isn't).

Welcome to Sesame Street! You'll need a roommate though, which one of the residents of Sesame Street will you be moving in with? And why?
Grover. Hands down. Because he's Grover, that's why.

You've been given 3 parachutes, but there are 4 people who need them. Who will you not give one to: Brad Pitt, Heath Ledger, Hugh Jackman, or Johnny Depp? (Of course, all 4 of them are up really super duper high in the air, and the parachute is truly the only way to save them.)
I think I would let them choose partners and hug each other real tight. Otherwise -- there's nothing to give me any preference one over another.

Have you ever taken The Pepsi Challenge? Which did you pick, Pepsi or Coke? What do you drink now?
I am not entirely sure what that is but I think it's bananas that people think you can't tell the difference. If I had to drink a non-diet soda I would pick Pepsi, but I drink Diet Coke by the quart and can't stand Diet Pepsi which is like drinking paint thinner thank you very much.

Rock, paper, or scissors? When is the last time you've played it?
When we taught our kids how. They still don't quite get it. It's not something we do with any regularity. :)

How long was it from 'the first date' until the proposal of marriage? How long until the wedding?
Well, we were very best awesome friends and that proceeded to something more. As soon as it was "something more" we knew we wanted to marry each other, but the actual proposal and ring came along after about two months. ;) Then we were married about five months after that.

You are at Starbucks, what is your order?
Winter: caramel macchiato. Summer: Caramel frappuccino. I really don't like coffee, I like milkshakes. ;)

You open a bag of Starbursts. In which order do you eat them?
The order in which they come out of the package, obviously. I like the orange and lemon ones best, though.

What do you have in your glove compartment?
A flashlight; napkins; owner's manuals for the car, stereo, CD changer, and satellite radio receiver; pens.

Which do you dislike most: pop-up ads or spam email?
Oh geesh pop-up ads. Although the sexually-oriented spam bothers me a lot too.

What is your favorite gadget?
My cell phone. I LOVE being able to be in touch when I'm away from home.

In a spelling bee, what word would you hope you would NOT have to spell?
Um. I did a lot of spelling bees as a kid. "Perseverence" and "predominant" give me trouble sometimes.

What is your favorite day of the year?
I have several. I like my kids' birthdays. I like Christmas. I like the days when the seasons noticeably change from one into the other -- the first day I don't bring a jacket when I go out, the first day it smells like spring, the first day there's a nip in the air, the first day of shorts and a tank top.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

stuff

Here, I'll write ANOTHER POST FOR SPAMMERS TO COMMENT ON. Jerks. It's extremely annoying to have to spend so much of my precious online time (with T home right now I have to share the computer with another adult as well as the usual two kids) blasting comment spam to Mars. Or I wish I could. I ban the IPs, anyway. Three hundred sixty banned IPs and counting. And I've started closing comments on the most popular targets -- I wish MT had a function where the comments would automatically close on any post over a certain age. I say again: Jerks.

I know I have been MIA here. Things have been a wee bit crazy. T had a consultation on Friday at which it was determined that he has to stay off work for another four weeks. On the way home from said consultation I was going to go the long way around Fresno's freeway system and stop off in downtown to take a picture of something city-ish for my 28in28 project, but as I was getting on the freeway our car started acting funny. Namely, it started, um, dying. It would just die, la di da, as I was going 70 miles an hour surrounded by other cars also going 70 miles per hour. This was so much fun. Y'all should try it the next time you want your blood pressure to go through the roof. Fortunately it would restart fine and I could steer and all, but I couldn't take my foot off the gas or let the RPM drop below 1200ish or it would die again. It was like Speed (which I've actually never seen) without the high budget. Or, thankfully, the bomb. The car has done this before, but it did it here in town where you can't go 70 miles an hour if you try and there are only about fifteen other cars on the road with you at any given time. And if you have to walk, you're less than a mile from home in a totally safe environment, not scores of miles away in downtown Fresno. With dark coming on. T says it is the camshaft position sensor and once he's better we'll mortgage one of the kids (or maybe me) so that we can afford to fix it. Or maybe we'll just shove the car off a cliff and see if we can collect the insurance. KIDDING. GEICO, I am TOTALLY kidding about that. If our car goes off a cliff with nobody in it in the near future it will TOTALLY be an accident and IN NO WAY will it be attempted insurance fraud. Totally.

We made it home. The car only died about eleventy gajillion times on the way. Or maybe twenty. When we stopped to eat fast food about thirty miles from home, T, who is supposed to be all super-careful with his back, hung over the hood of the car and rigged up a wire to do what my foot had been doing with the keeping-the-RPM-up thing. (I'm really good at shifting to Neutral to go down hills now).

And the funny thing is, yesterday and today his back has felt way better. Not all better. He still can't tie his own shoes, take off his own socks, or pick up anything. But he can get up from the couch without assistance and walk to the bathroom without a walker, and he's only taking two V!cod!n (take THAT, spammers) a day instead of maybe six. This is progress. So maybe he should go hang over the hood of a car again. (actually, he did for a little while, today, to adjust the valves on our Dart, and he's paying for it a bit now. Silly man. I'm not his mommy, he has to make his own decisions.)

After he worked on the car and we ate supper, we had a sanding party. I'm proud to say that this was my idea. I'm also proud to say that I can, with a random orbital rotary sander thingamabob, take all the layers of old paint and primer off an essential piece of a 1970 Dodge Charger. And my son sanded a whole fender thing, and I did not kiss him even though he looked so adorable in his hearing protection and horn-rimmed eye protection that it was very difficult not to. And my daughter sanded a good-sized patch of a door, and we successfully made T sit down and rest his back. Most of the time. And I earned enough brownie points to be good for AT LEAST six or eight Jane Austen movie marathons and maybe a few evening walks downtown (once he's able, of course). And it was actually fun. Go girl power.

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

This morning T got it into his head that he wanted to watch our wedding video. I've no idea why. We hadn't watched it in literally years -- C had never seen it -- and it was, ugh. quite uncomfortable for me. Here's a list of things I would do differently if I were doing my wedding today:

• Just say no to the linebacker shoulders on the dress.
  
• Definitely just say no to the bizarre frill of tulle at the back of the veil that made me look like I was wearing an Elizabethan ruff in the wrong place.
  
• I would never have dyed my hair black. Which I did like THREE MONTHS before the wedding and which I COULD NOT undo with any amount of light-colored dye.
  
• I would not fidget. My gosh did I fidget.
  
• No singing. I don't care who tells us you have to have a couple of songs to make the ceremony last longer for the people who travel five hours for a wedding. NO SINGING. Have fun at the reception, people.
  
• Speaking of which, something I have regretted since like six hours after we did it: no opening presents during the reception. I don't care if we wanted the checks that we knew would be interspersed among the really nice kitcheny stuff (most of which I still use) to spend on our honeymoon. TACK-Y.
  
• I'd have had my dress whateveritistheycallit-ed so that the train would have been like a normal skirt during the reception and I wouldn't have had to hold it over my arm the whole time.
  
• Puffier petticoat please Rachel.
  
• And a smaller guest list. I felt guilty and wanted to apologize to all those people for making them feel obligated to come watch this whole thing. Sorry guests. You must remember, when a 19-year-old gets married it's essentially her chance to have her Very Own Prom and she goes a little haywire with the traditional boring stuff.
  
• I would not have opened my eyes during the closing prayer to peek around at the audience and at T. I still pray with my eyes open but I have always maintained that it is a habit I got into when the children were smaller and I couldn't take my eyes off them that long. Now I know that I have videographic evidence that I was wrong about that.
  
• I would not have held my hand over my very nervous butterfly-laden tummy during the little speech, one of the songs, and the beginning of our vows.
  
• I would not have whispered back and forth with T during the ceremony as if we were teenaged girls at a lecture on, I dunno, astrophysics or something.
  
• One bridesmaid, not three. In a dress she'd have worn again. I'd like to issue a public apology to my bridesmaids Tammie, Sarah, and Rhonda, for the atrocious burgundy dresses. At least you didn't have to pay for them.
  

I am required to note at this juncture that my husband disagrees with this list, thinks my whole "wedding clothing ensemble" (his words) was "lovely and fine" (ditto), and sees no problem with our wedding the way it was. That's because he is a man.

The thing I would do the same:

• Marry that wonderful handsome BABY-FACED OH MY GOSH HE WAS SO YOUNG hottie of a man. Who is way way sexier now than he was then, and that's saying a lot. Yay T.

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

Also, in case you missed it at her own blog, KRISTEN IS PREGNANT. WOO HOO! yay. I heart Kristen, a lot, a lot a lot, and just, yay.

Monday, May 22, 2006

a week in my life

T is still couch-bound. Poor guy has never had it this bad with his back, and that's saying a lot. We've all been sleeping in the living room: T because the couch is much better on his back than our bed since it keeps him from flopping around and changing positions in his sleep, I in case he needs help getting up during the night (he has a walker now, borrowed from a friend, so it's actually just the getting-back-down that he needs my help with now), and the kids because if Mom and Dad get to have a slumber party in the front room then by golly they get to too.

Yesterday I woke up at 9, looked at the clock, and thought, ooh, I am totally getting on the ball with those pain-management people (he was referred to pain management on Friday, and the insurance-referrals person at the local medical clinic messed around all day and missed faxing out his information, just in time for a weekend of lying on the couch taking Vicodin and having sciatica spasms), and I called the office in Fresno and left a polite and concise and clear message on their answering machine, and when I hung up T asked me why I'd done that. When it was Sunday. Which I had totally forgotten, I thought it was Monday and continued to have to remind myself that it wasn't, all day long. My internal clock gets totally out of whack without the rhythm of work days to keep it straight.

Honestly we love having him home. He and LT spent an evening making some really awesome Lego creations; now they have a car-model project going. And so far we've played three different games of Trivial Pursuit (Star Wars, Book Lovers', and regular Genus IV), caught up on reading, and watched a handful of movies we'd never seen. We keep saying we should do this more often, only without the excruciating pain part.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

ABC meme

T's home with really terrible back pain -- flat on his back since Sunday afternoon, chiropractor yesterday, doctor today, CT scan tomorrow. Poor guy. I needed a little light relief so here's the ABC meme that's been going around.

Accent: I don't have one. (Does anyone actually think they have an accent?) Unless you count talking too fast to be understood as an accent.

Bible Book that I like: Romans. Difficult to get my head around at times, but wow, is there some impressive, amazing, pivotal, important, life-changing stuff in there.

Chore that I don't care for: Whatever one my kids choose to undo the quickest that day. Frequently this is laundry. Nothing sends me over my yell threshold faster than finding floor-dirty clothes, still folded, all over my kids' floors or in the hamper.

Dog or Cat: I like cats better, as far as owning one. Less maintenance, less noise. I don't dislike dogs, but we are certainly not in a place right now where I'd feel comfortable having one. However, if that darn cat keeps peeing on all my possessions I may rethink this. I spent four or so hours on Sunday afternoon (yes, happy Mother's Day to you too!) completely gutting the bottom of my closet and using Mr. Clean and Febreze on the hardwood even though I know that's a big no-no. I figure cat pee is a worse no-no, though. And I'm still trying to catch up with all the stinky laundry. Of course if I'd kept my closet floor clean in the FIRST place... ahem.

Essential Electronics: This dratted computer. My camera (although the last couple days I have been totally uninspired in that department).

Favorite Cologne: I like to wear Pleasures perfume when I get all dressed up. I like T to wear Aspen or Preferred Stock if he must wear anything to mask that wonderful man-scent. ;) He absolutely cannot wear Old Spice; Old Spice means my dad, so understandably T wearing it puts a damper on the whole Eros thing. :)

Gold or Silver: I have a gold wedding ring, and don't wear other jewelry. Gold really goes far better with my complexion than silver does.

Handbag I Carry most often: I only ever have one at a time. These days that's a fake leather backpack one.

Insomnia: No, sleeping is something I'm really good at. Too good sometimes. Only very rarely if I have Nameless Dread or WAY too much diet Coke do I have difficulty dropping off at night.

Job Title: Homeschooling homemaker with a (very small) side of transcriptionist.

Kids: LT is my son who just turned ten. C is my six-and-a-half-year-old clone daughter. Between the two of them we had a daughter, Natalie, who died at nine weeks of age. She'd be eight now.

Most Admirable Trait: Couldn't say. Ask my husband. :)

Naughtiest childhood behavior: Hmm. I was a dreadful tattletale. I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes. I was very, very untidy.

Overnight hospital stays: Tonsillectomy at age 9, one scary episode at 33 weeks with first child, three caesarian births and one hysterectomy.

Phobias: Just centipedes. But that's totally rational. So I don't have any. :)

Quote: I've got a frivolous one in my head right now. "Don't go looking for comfort in a bag of cookies. Cookies don't care. They just make you fat."

Religion: is man trying to reach God. Whereas Christianity is God reaching down to man.

Siblings: One older brother.

Time I wake up: Usually eight-ish.

Unusual Talent or skill: I don't know. Ask my husband.

Vegetable I refuse to eat: Lima beans. Unless someone else makes them for me and then I smile politely and get it over with as quickly as possible. :)

Worst habit: Laziness. Which is really more of an anti-habit.

X-rays: I've had dental x-rays but other than that I don't remember having had any since I broke my shoulder when I was three or four.

Yummy stuff I cook: Well, if I didn't think it was yummy, I wouldn't cook it. Except beans, which I make because I'm the only one in the family who doesn't like them, and they're cheap.

Zoo animal I like most: Monkeys.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Living Beyond Yourself, Week 6

What do you mean, it's not Friday? It's Thursday? Oh, so I'm early? Ah. Six days late. I see.

Ahem.

I might have gone ahead and let this one slide by without a post, seeing has how I should be doing one tomorrow evening for week 7, but this was possibly a life-changing study for me, so I wanted to share a few things, even though it's way off-schedule and will confuse everyone and they'll have to reset the atomic clock because Rachel is never late with anything so it must be wrong.

Ahem again.

Anyway. Life-changing, yes, back to that life-changing bit. Much as the first week of this study revolutionized my prayer life (thinking of it as 'pouring out' and 'pouring in' rather than the drier kind of confess/thank/ask paradigm I've heard discussed makes a wonderful difference), I think Week Six, which I actually completed earlier this week, is going to revolutionize my thought life and my practical day-to-day existence, in two major areas. If I let it.

First was that bit about judgment. I've always kind of pushed aside the judgment issue by bringing forward the idea of discernment and making right judgments and not being hypocritical. Not to downplay any of those; it's very important to use discernment and make right judgments and avoid hypocrisy. But that doesn't give me carte blanche to throw around condemning comments and snide thoughts like I have been known to do. (Not to anyone's face. Not that that's an excuse. It's just that I'm so nonconfrontational, you see.) I'll give an example. There is a person I know. This person has, well, really ungodly priorities, and really non-family-friendly priorities (do you see how neutral I'm being here? I'm not saying "screwed-up priorities" even though I really wanted to. Oops.), and these wrong priorities affect my husband (and hence our family) in a very real and negative way. Now, I don't think there's a problem with that sentence, if you leave out that first parenthesis; it's a simple statement of fact. Where I have gone wrong so many times in the past is in going beyond that simple statement of fact and into some really ugly territory where I assume things about this man's relationships with his family members, and I call him rude names when I'm talking about him with my husband, and I complain about him to my friends, and the things I have thought about him are really not fit to type. I've always known that this isn't really a Christian kind of attitude to have (especially that last part) but I did a lot of rationalizing. I was entitled to think and talk like that. The man hurts me. He endangers the man I love. He angers me.

I can't rationalize it anymore. And this person isn't the only one who has inspired this kind of reaction in me, as God showed me when I asked Him to. God has really laid on my heart that this reaction is wrong, plain and simple. I'm putting this in writing here so that I have some accountability, to myself and maybe to others, so that I don't ease back into a wrong mindset, quench the Holy Spirit, and give up on the painful and difficult Eustace-the-dragon type of change that I know God wants me to experience in this area.

Now for the second major change God is bringing about in me. I cannot even remember what passage triggered this thought, but at one point during the study on patience I had a sudden mental image of what would happen if God reacted to me with the same merciful patience (what a beautiful, wonderful concept all by itself -- merciful patience) as I show my children. I mean, let's take, for a quick example, something that happens in my house on very nearly a daily basis: My children have just thoughtlessly made a mess of something I have just finished cleaning (or folding, or whatever). My reaction is to, in super-intellectual psychology parlance, blow a gasket. Sometimes I yell. I rant and rave about how if you CARED at all about your mother's feelings and sanity you would THINK about what you're doing and not just WRECK half an hour of her work in one fell SWOOP (emphasis in original).

Which is exactly the opposite of how God deals with me. And that's a good thing, or I'd have been struck by lightning and smashed flat as a pancake, oh, say, five thousand times by now.

But really, how often do I thoughtlessly discard what God has done? How often do I cause people to think less of Him because I am His child? How often do I undo His good work because I'm just not thinking? Too often to contemplate, really. Probably far more often than such a thing is done to me.

And how often does he rain down a (justifiable) punishment on me?

Um, never. He never does. He pours down grace instead. I kind of picture him standing there with his hands on his hips and one eyebrow arched, waiting for me to turn around and see him and go, oh yeah, oh gosh, I'm so sorry, and fall into his arms, and stay there until the next time I wander off and do something stupid.

So. This doesn't mean my children will now live in a free-for-all. Merciful patience does not preclude well-administered, thoughtful, gentle, loving discipline. It does mean that I hope -- I pray -- that I can call that mental image to mind, the one of the pancake-flattening lightning-striking God who doesn't exist, the next time I am about to let loose with an impatient and unmerciful reaction to one of the people whom I love most in the world.

And this is why even if I got nothing else out of this whole study -- and I did, I'm loving it, I'm loving seeing other people's reactions to it, and wasn't Beth's hair in the week 6 video so nice and puffy and Texasy and 80's-ish? You know what's really fantastic, is to watch the video at the same time as someone else and then you can IM each other when Beth reaches right through the screen and POKES you with that sizzling-cattleprod-of-conviction thing she uses sometimes -- anyway, I digress. If I got nothing else out of it, it would be worth every minute and every penny a thousand times over to have got the message that God used this study to give me this week.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Mother's Day, early

We had a really nice weekend, the highlight of which was a day trip to Monterey, a Mother's Day present for me. (Yes, I know, Mother's Day is next weekend, but next weekend T will be up to his elbows and a few other body parts in the engine compartment of a car whose engine he's replacing as a side job.) We had a really wonderful time, in spite of the fact that like so many major outings, the whole thing started with everyone bickering with everyone else (Are we the only people who do this? There has got to be some deep-seated psychological thing at work here). Once the air had cleared of that icky not-getting-along feeling, things were fine. I spent the time in the car alternating between reading out loud to everyone else from Tales From Watership Down -- which does not compare AT ALL with the original, but T likes it, because he likes Watership Down even more than I do, and he's grateful just to hear the characters' names again -- and reading quietly to myself from The Tenth Circle. We forgot (again) how far it is from the wharf to the end of Cannery Row where the aquarium is, so we parked at the wharf to walk even though T's back was tired and I was carrying approximately fifteen pounds of camera etc. on my shoulder. On the way C had her first encounter with the organ grinder and his monkey, and ever since if anyone brings up Monterey she will repeat her affectionate effusions about how the cute little soft monkey put his little paw like this on the back of her hand and it was so soft and so small and SO CUTE (it's a different organ grinder and of course a different monkey than were there when I was a child, but they were always my favorite thing about trips to Monterey too).

The aquarium was fabulous. Worth the $100 we paid for a year's membership. Worth the atrocious amount of money we spent on gas to get to Monterey. Worth sore feet and sore shoulders (see above re: 15-lb camera bag) and dealing with crowds. Worth not getting home till nearly eleven and being so tired we skipped Sunday school the next day. I hadn't been there since 1992. We will not make that same mistake again. :)

And of course I took a few pictures.

Yesterday we hung around home and recovered. We slept in until we felt like getting up around nine. I did a lot of laundry (the aforementioned bickering on Saturday had begun when C could not find any clean underwear, even though she was supposed to have laid all her clothes out the night before), while T worked on his car project. I cooked both lunch and dinner to make up for not having cooked since Wednesday. I used the clothesline for the first time this year. After everyone was in bed I read the new Jennifer Crusie book. All of it. That made two sizable books I'd read in their entirety in one weekend. Which is fun, in a sleep-deprived bleary-eyed rebellious-feeling sort of way.

And now it's back to real life. Even though I had pie for breakfast.

Friday, May 05, 2006

two memes because I'm a lazy blogger

Ten years ago, it was 1996. Take this survey, post the results, and see how many things have changed since then.

(Apparently I am more a static character than a dynamic one. :)

1) How old were you?
THEN: 21
NOW: 31

2) Where did you go to school?
THEN: Wasn't going to school.
NOW: Am not going to school.

3) Where did you work?
THEN: I didn't.
NOW: I don't.

4) Where did you live?
THEN: The apartment over the garage detached from this house (for two more months until we moved into...)
NOW: This house.

5) How was your hair style?
THEN: Somewhere between my chin and my shoulders.
NOW: Waist-length.

6) Did you wear braces?
THEN: No.
NOW: No.

7) Did you wear contacts?
THEN: No.
NOW: No.

8) Did you wear glasses?
THEN: Yes.
NOW: Yes.

9) Who was your best friend?
THEN: T.
NOW: T.

10) Which of your pets were still alive?
THEN: Actually we had two cats named Chloe and Chelsea and they had each just had a litter of kittens. Fun times.
NOW: Have two different cats named Mary and Elizabeth and we have robbed them of their reproductive choice.

11) Who was your boyfriend/girlfriend?
THEN: Married to T.
NOW: Married to T.

12) Who was your celebrity crush?
THEN: Didn't have one.
NOW: Don't have one.

13) Who was your regular-person crush?
THEN: Didn't have one.
NOW: Don't have one.

14) How many piercings did you have?
THEN: One in each ear (the second hole in each ear may not have been COMPLETELY closed over by this time).
NOW: One in each ear.

15) How many tattoos did you have?
THEN: 0
NOW: 0

16) What was your favorite band/singer?
THEN: Tchaikovsky.
NOW: Vivaldi.

17) Had you smoked a cigarette?
THEN: A few during high school.
NOW: A few during high school.

18) Had you gotten drunk?
THEN: Silly twice during high school.
NOW: Silly twice during high school.

19) Had you driven yet?
THEN: yes
NOW: yes

20) If so which car?
THEN: At that time we were driving a 1972 Ford LTD (ugly ugly huge ugly car) and a 1966 Dodge Polara (OK except it had really odd-looking tail lights. Really powerful. Really awful gas mileage). T also had a truck, and his Charger which I think ran intermittently back then.
NOW: Daily driver is a 1991 Buick Park Avenue. We also have three other registered insured vehicles and a handful of project cars including the Charger.

21) Looking back, are you where you thought you would be in 2006?
Um, yeah, pretty much exactly, although I had thought we might own a home and have more kids than we do.

And another meme borrowed from Jenn:

I AM: up later than I ought to be considering that we're getting up at 5:30 tomorrow.
I WANT: to lose twenty-five pounds. Is that so much to ask, Rachel? Can you not stop stuffing yourself with Panda Express (YES AGAIN TODAY KRISTEN MMM YUM BLACK PEPPER BEEF) and apple pie long enough to lose twenty-five measly pounds?
I WISH: I had more discipline, and not just in the above area (and yeah, wishing is TOTALLY the way to make that happen).
I HATE: rip-off endings in books (yes My Sister's Keeper I am talking to you)
I MISS: Jenn. :) I miss a lot of people -- well, several -- but this is kind of a big time in Jenn's life right now and I really wish I could be there in person for it.
I FEAR: irrevocably damaging my children in some way.
I HEAR: silence. blessed, blissful solitude and silence.
I WONDER: if I will ever be the kind of person who just keeps a neat house all the time.
I REGRET: not buying this house for a hundred thousand dollars five years ago, because we could have sold it for three hundred thousand this year if we'd wanted to.
I AM NOT: tired, like I should be.
I DANCE: only when I absolutely know nobody is looking at me, and not often then.
I SING: constantly. decently.
I CRY: for every hokey romantic-comedy daughter-growing-up heart-tugging manipulative scene that comes down the pike. Well, not quite. But close.
I AM NOT ALWAYS: coherent.
I MAKE WITH MY HANDS: food. and baby blankets.
I WRITE: drivel much of the time.
I CONFUSE: the names Marian and Miriam. If someone's name is Marian I can only be sure of remembering that forever by picturing her as a librarian.
I NEED: some new summer shirts.
I SHOULD: do some laundry and catch up on Living Beyond Yourself.
I START: annoying people after only a few minutes in some cases.
I FINISH: crochet projects after many years have passed.
I TAG: I was going to say "whoever wants to do this", but Kristen, who doesn't do memes much, hasn't updated in too long. So Kristen, this one's yours. And Debi, you too.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

another new photographic venture

The thirty days of self-portraits are done. I had so much fun torturing myself with that project that I've moved on to another, details of which are here (click the "about this project" link). Anyone else want to join me? :)

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Books for April

Oops, I forgot to do these earlier. I also forgot to write down my books this month, and I also lost the page of extensive, insightful, and useful notes about Remains of the Day, which was the first book I finished this month. So now: It was brilliant. You should read it. The end.

I started Possession (by A.S. Byatt) but I couldn't get into it like I did before. It's still a really good book; I just wasn't in the mood for it, I think.

I also read Pride and Prejudice. It was, of course, excessively brilliant. And witty, and clever, and romantic, and ... well, brilliant. The end.

And then I read Northanger Abbey, which struck me as much more brilliant than it did the last time I read it. Scathingly witty in parts, really. Even though Catherine is more than a bit of a clueless ditz, bless her heart.

And I think that was all. But I wouldn't know for sure, because I didn't write them down. Because I'm all on top of things that way.