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Monday, March 31, 2008

weekend

Jenn was here for the weekend. YAY! I have decided, though, that Jenn needs to live closer, so that we don't have to feel pushed to cram every fun thing we ever want to do into a 50-hour visit but can spread it out a bit. We ate Indian food (a first for me), walked around shopping in thrift stores and used-book stores and a really giant and very interesting antique store, took many pictures of green grass and happy cows, rode the bus to Yosemite and back with the most insane and rude bus driver in the universe, hiked around the aforementioned Yosemite and ate deli sandwiches (simultaneously), visited with our mutual friend Shea, tried and failed to watch some movies and do some crocheting, ate lots of junk, and oh yeah, talked each other's ears off. It was a very full 50 hours.

Meanwhile the Ts were gone at a Boy Scout camping outing, which was convenient because it meant there was room for Jenn to stay, but it was also very sad. I am still not done catching up on the hugs they missed.

Also, I finally got my ravelry invitation. No, this doesn't mean somehow became cool or found my way into the In crowd or anything -- just that ravelry, a wonderful community full of knittery goodness, is growing slowly on purpose so that the whole system doesn't implode in a shower of $20-a-skein wool-and-silk blends. (My username is mrsrachel.) I did start a knitting project while failing to watch a movie on Friday night, but it's a BIG TOP SECRET that might involve, say, something GRAY with a TRUNK. For someone who is really too old for stuffed animals, but this is an heirloom, right?

And I think thatisall. Even if it's not, it's time to fix supper for hungry people. Didn't I just feed them LAST night?

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Fourteen years ago today, it rained.*

Ordinarily I wouldn't remember random facts about the weather on a day a decade and a half ago, but when a day is a fulcrum point between the life before it and the life after it, random things tend to stick in your head.

Yes, it is once again our wedding anniversary, or as we like to think of it, our family's birthday. We're really cram-packed-busy right now, but we'll find some time soon to have a little birthday party, maybe involving the zoo and dinner at the Olive Garden. Or maybe just homemade buffalo chicken strips and a few episodes of the Twilight Zone. In other words, we are happening, people.

*The sun came out just as we were heading from the church down to the reception hall. Also, the sunset was gorgeous.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

post something -- ANYTHING

Let's see how short I can make the snippets:

I planted two kinds of tomatoes, three kinds of peppers, and broccoli in little seedling trays last week. Almost immediately, the broccoli popped up, and today we have little sprouts of everything else. Pictures soon. Maybe.

T made our little side-porch, which had previously been just kind of a non-navigable catchall closet cluttered up with garden hoses, rubber boots, tarpaulins, rags, and sundry other items, into a lovely little plant room for me. He cleaned it out, covered the excess openings to the outside with plastic sheeting, put in a shelf at just the right height, and added a fluorescent fixture with grow-light tubes as well as a clamp light for additional light and warmth. I put my trays of seedlings in there at night. I think they like it. I know I do. I like to stand in there and putter around, thinning the broccoli and sorting seeds into groups based on planting dates and such.

That one wasn't very short at all.

Speaking of T, last week he had the flu. He came home with it from a work trip to Vegas that lasted the entire previous week. This week, C had her turn (with the flu, not Vegas). And I mean THE FLU, not the kind of stuff (usually involving digestive upset) that most people call the flu. Here's hoping that LT and I continue to fight off all invading germs with our patented Immune Systems Of Steel.

Maybe brevity is overrated.

I watched Akeelah and the Bee over the weekend. As a former spelling-bee nerd, can I just say that I loved that movie and Akeelah is my new little fictional hero?

Also, I now have a new hobby: ogling sock yarn on the Internet and fine-tuning my Knitpicks.com wishlist, in anticipation of the day when I will stimulate the economy by making a somewhat sizeable purchase there. Just doing my patriotic duty as an American! I now feel that I cannot be a complete person without knowing how to knit socks. It's all Kat's fault. I am even thinking of trying my hand at dyeing my own yarn, though I can't blame that on Kat.

Jenn is coming for a visit in two weeks. I'm so excited! I'm also a little freaked out, because the whole "we can paint the bathrooms after we're moved in" thing has turned (as I secretly feared it would even as I uttered the aforementioned rationalization) into "hey, we've lived with the ugly walls in the bathrooms this long; how bad can they be?" (Answer: very, very bad. As Jenn will soon be able to tell you.) We are going to take a trip to Yosemite and possibly also a separate flower-ogling picture-taking road trip to maybe Columbia State Historical Park or something. (I so would love to do Bodie and Mono Lake, but the nearest open highway across the Sierras at this time of year is... not very near.) And we are just generally going to gab each other's ears off and also maybe do some crocheting and watching of Lost, which I have never seen even thirty seconds of in my life before, but I want to. Oh, dear, what am I getting myself into? Jericho was addictive enough, and there were (will be) only ever something on the order of twenty episodes of that.

School is going well. I find that carrying only six units at a time is definitely the best way to maintain a 4.0 average. And at this rate it would only take me six or eight years to earn an associates' degree!

Scout is doing much better. No more dog-logs or puddles in the house (yay!). She's more comfortable and relaxed overall (yay!), but she STILL growls at my husband whenever he walks into the room. She never acts like she's going to bite him, and as soon as he approaches her and she smells him she's fine, and if he sits or lies down, she is all about the love and kisses and snuggles. But the growling really hurts his feelings (à la that annoying miniature cowboy in Night at the Museum, which I also watched over the weekend, but not for the first time).

And I think that is all. If it isn't, judging by the time (2:39 and hello the time change is killing me AGAIN), it should be.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

it's crowded in there

I've been quiet, but not because I didn't have anything to say. Really it's because I have too much to say, and I can't begin to say it all decently and in order, and in some cases I don't have the energy to slog through the effort of recording a whole bunch of bothersome emotions for posterity. So I've been in blog avoidance mode. Maybe if I give a bare-bones synopsis of the past week, I'll be able to make a fresh start and move on.

• Kids' social issues: We're going to keep trying. I wasn't serious about barricading ourselves in the house. Quite.

• My uncle died on Wednesday. He was my father's nearest-in-age brother. He was... oh, see, here's all that emotional stuff I didn't want to mess with. He made a lot of stupid choices in his life and caused himself a lot of unnecessary heartache, not to mention a death from diabetes, MRSA, cirrhosis, liver cancer, and hepatitis combined at the age of not-quite-57. But he was a gentle, generous, loving, affectionate, charming, kindhearted man who spent his whole life here in this little town, and we will miss him very much. His funeral was yesterday.

• Also on Wednesday, my sister-in-law and her kids moved to town. This is much happier news. Her kids and mine have hit it off splendidly, especially her boy and mine, who are a scant year apart in age and have all the important things (Airsoft, Lego, Mopars, and hunting) in common. The kids spent Wednesday through Friday with us, while their mom was driving down here and getting things settled in their apartment. We had a blast.

• It's been ten years today since our infant daughter Natalie died. A whole decade between us -- it just doesn't seem possible.

• As I mentioned before, our eight years of involvement with the congregation we've been attending came to an end this winter. Now it appears that our five years of service at AWANA will also be ending, against our will. See, MORE blathering about emotional stuff is about to happen here if I don't get control of myself. Can I just say how much I hate the fact that Christians don't TALK to each other? When I was a new believer I would hear unbelievers say that they hated the idea of organized religion and I would smugly and sorrowfully assume that they just didn't know how loving God's people really were. Then when I'd been in a church for about three years we went through a really ugly time (no Bereans need apply, basically), and I walked away hurt but assuming that that one problem had been an anomaly. Now, a dozenish years later, I have reached a point where I am as disillusioned and disgusted with the behavior of "organized" Christians toward each other as any nonbeliever could ever be. I know it sounds like I'm being mysterious and evasive, but really I'm just... too tired to go into further detail about it. And too disgusted. And too hurt. And probably still too angry, to boot.

Now there's a cheerful note to end on. I promise I'll try to be back with your regularly scheduled self-deprecating humor as soon as I can, now that I've got this whole week off my chest.