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Saturday, November 22, 2008

snippets part five zillion

Poor T. Here is what he hoped to do when he took the week off:

1) Relax.
2) Sleep in at least the majority of the days.
3) Hang around the house with his family.
4) Maybe do a little reloading.
5) Work on his Charger.
6) Go shooting at my parents' ranch with a friend.

Pretty simple goals, right? Except when you're a guy who is IN DEMAND, I guess. Here's a representative sample of what he ended up doing:

1) Shooting expedition was nixed.
2) We cut a lot of wood.
3) He worked on his friend's car.
4) He helped another friend butcher turkeys (we're not complaining; we got an absolutely enormous free one)
5) He... set up his reloading bench.
6) He fixed his sister's brakes.
7) He helped his grandmother with a computer project.
8) Number of days out of ten with no alarm set in the morning: One (1).

Let me be clear; I'm not really complaining about any of these except the first one and the last one. Certainly we don't mind helping people AT ALL, and the wood was necessary and important, and we did do some fun things (like play Airsoft as a family, something I'd never done before). It's just alarming how quickly the poor guy's time fills up once people catch wind of the fact that he's going to be home from work. Maybe next time we'll tell people (including ourselves!) that we're going away somewhere even if we're not.

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Our propane water heater has decided that it really doesn't like this whole heating-water business as much as it thought it did and it wants to take a little break. We do have a solar one on the roof, which does an amazing job in the summer, but on frosty November mornings it's only slightly helpful. So I'm heating huge pots of water on the stove for C's bath, which is more adventure than inconvenience to her*, while we wait for the home-warranty people (God bless home warranties) to set up an appointment with someone who can come convince the water heater that really it has a good life here with us and should be grateful.

*The only way it could have better suited her dramatic sensibilities would be if I had used snow (which, sadly, is unavailable right now) melted and heated on the woodstove.

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I am feeling increasingly Christmasy but I'm still holding off: no decorating (which, for us, means lights on the eaves, a fake wreath on the door, and a Christmas tree in one corner of the living room; Martha Stewart we aren't) or carols until the day after Thanksgiving. I did sort of cheat by importing some of my Christmas CDs to iTunes last week, but I didn't listen to any of the songs all the way through. I'm staying strong, see?

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Because I am more than a little bit insane, I cast on a new knitting project -- a triangular shawl, something I've never made before, but the mathemagical way it shapes itself tickles and pleases me -- for a Christmas gift for someone. Because, you know, I have all this spare time lying around waiting for me to figure out what to do with it between now and December 25th. I've already let knitting make me get behind on my schoolwork this week -- I now have about forty pages of notes to take between now and tomorrow evening. BAD ME.

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Random fact to close: did you know that I have not spent a night entirely alone since 1993, when my parents went to Texas to visit my dad's aunt while I was still in high school?

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

oh, come now, really?

We got a catalog in the mail earlier this week advertising a "last minute holiday shopping sale". OK, I gave in early in adulthood to the idea of Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving, and then before Halloween, but since when is mid-November THE LAST MINUTE? Come on, marketers, you can do better than that. It's not the last minute until it's 7:30 on Christmas Eve and the last store in your town is about to close in thirty minutes and you realize that you have more presents for one child than the other and you have to dash down and buy a couple of Lego kits at the supermarket to balance things out. Not that that's ever happened to me, or anything.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

this one's for Denise

...so blame her. :)

I know my poor sad blog is all lonely, but I just haven't had anything new to report.

I could relate the scintillating story of the Communications exam. THAT will have you on the edges of your seats. See, there was this exam that I had to take this week, so on Monday night when I went to take it, my thoughts went like this: Hmm, this material seems slightly familiar but not nearly as familiar as it should be considering that I've been studying like a maniac for days. Where are the questions about listening? Where are the questions about verbal and nonverbal communication? What is all this stuff about love relationships and intimacy? Am I maybe taking an exam in Human Development instead (because we ARE studying love relationships in HD), and oh crap I haven't studied really hard for that one yet? No, this IS for Communications. [still tooling along making my best guesses at the questions, by the way.] Maybe this is the wrong test. But that can't be, can it? I mean, no teacher would do that, would she? I could look in the book and see if this stuff is covered in the last third of the book, but that would be (I seriously thought this, just so you know how truly nerdy I am) looking at the book during an exam, which is FORBIDDEN. [Good thing the test was multiple choice.]

End result: Yes it was the wrong test. I got a 92, except the grading was all wonky (gave double credit for a couple of questions) and I think I really deserved an 82 or maybe a 77. Then I told the teacher it was the wrong test -- it even said Exam 3 on it instead of Exam 2, not that I noticed that going in -- and she put up the right test and ERASED MY 92. And here I'd thought I was going to be able to skate through the rest of the class and not worry about the next test.

See? Aren't you thrilled? Don't you want to send Denise a BIG THANK YOU NOTE for nudging me to post?

Um, what else. The dog. Chewed a hole. In my son's leather jacket. THAT was a banner day. The dog very nearly got banished to the outdoors for good, and if it weren't for the fact that we'd be kept awake for weeks training her not to bark all night like the neighbors' dogs do, I might have gone ahead and done it. The jacket was a hand-me-down and it'll fit him for about five more minutes, but still. Very Bad Dog.

I uprooted the poor, finished, frost-blasted plants in the garden yesterday. I heaped the cornstalks to burn (because of the nasty corn smut) and piled everything else up to make into mulch. Then today the Fire Safe Council people came to chip up one of our burn piles (our tax dollars at work in a way I can actually appreciate; it's cheaper than fighting fires) and while they were at it they ran my small-brushpile-sized heap of garden remains through their shredder and blew the shredded bits right back into the garden where I wanted it for mulch. AND I have a good-sized pile of wood chips for top-dressing-mulch-stuff to go on top of the newspapers that will go on top of the dirt and compost and worms that I hope might help make next year's garden more of a success than this year's was. We'll see.

T is taking next week off work. Tomorrow (Thursday) is the only day standing between us and TEN DAYS O' BLISS. Well, bliss and miscellaneous handyman types of jobs. He is also taking off a week in December. Yay for use-or-lose!

Random links: "All & Sundry" is a blog I have read for years, since we were both at Diaryland. She's gone on to be relatively famous in blogland (while I obviously have not, and for equally obvious reasons) and I still love to read just about every one of her posts. (This, by the way, is not mutual, and that's obviously fine, but I didn't want to make it sound like we were pinky-swear best friends when really she doesn't know me from Adam. Or Eve. Shut UP, Rachel.) Today's was something she'd posted elsewhere before, but it was new to me; it's a collection of her free-verse poetry about being a mom to a boy and it had me snorting with laughter, until it made me cry. You might like to laugh and cry too, especially if you've ever wiped poop off someone's scrotum or felt like your head-balloon was about to pop all over the interior of the car from the neverending screaming, so here's a link.

Also, a more recent blog-find -- I think I started reading it last spring -- is A Handmade Life, written by ANOTHER woman who doesn't know me from Adam or Eve but who is, whether she knows it or not, my gardening HERO. She and I have similar ideas about other Important Stuff as well, which is why I am totally stealing this poem that she posted recently (she didn't write it).

I Have Found Such Joy
I have found such joy in simple things;
A plain, clean room, a nut-brown loaf of bread,
A cup of milk, a kettle as it sings,
The shelter of a roof above my head,
And in a leaf-laced square along the floor,
Where yellow sunlight glimmers through the door.
I have found such joy in things that fill
My quiet days: a curtain's blowing grace,
A potted plant upon my window sill,
A rose, fresh-cut and placed within a vase;
A table cleared, a lamp beside a chair,
And books I long have loved beside me there.
Oh, I have found such joys I wish I might
Tell every woman who goes seeking far
For some elusive, feverish delight,
That very close to home the great joys are
The elemental things- old as the race,
Yet never, through the ages, commonplace.
~ Grace Noll Crowell

Ack! That makes me get an Anne-Shirleyish "queer ache" -- and if you don't know what that means, you have some reading to do.

And thatisall. Thank you, Denise. The world is a better place for this post, don't you think? Hee. Or not. :)
(But really seriously thank you for making me feel appreciated and missed. Hugs.)

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Why do I even bother....

...when Rachel Lucas and Bill Whittle say everything I think only five million times better? I am feeling more cheerful this morning. Life goes on. Time for school.

ah well. can't win 'em all.

I had a rather incoherent trying-not-to-whine-and-failing post written and posted but I think I unpublished it before it hit the feed. (If I didn't and you read it, lucky you, right? or not.) I'm not depressed, and I'm not scared, and I'm certainly not surprised. And come on, it's not like the alternative was Ronald Reagan, right? (moment of respectful silence.) Or John Wayne. (Another.) I'm just weary, I think, and maybe a bit apprehensive about the possible dismantling of what I see as some defining American freedoms and ideals. Mostly, though, I'm very much reinforced in my realization that my happiness, my family life, my joys and pleasures and sorrows, my faith, that most of what really matters to me, has nothing to do with who's in charge in Washington*. (Also that worrying and whining never solved anything.)

*Let's just hope it stays that way. Sigh. I couldn't help it. Sorry.

And now I'm going to go add wood to my nice quieted-down fire and go to sleep. My usual unflappable cheery optimism has been ordered to return by morning.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

I had a post all prepared for this event (because really, who didn't suspect this was coming?). Trouble is, I can't muster the chirpy resolute cheerfulness that I'd planned. I am going to recklessly proceed without it. I may regret this. We'll see.

Things No President (and Congress and Senate and Slate of Judges) Can Reasonably Be Expected To Be Able To Take Away From Me:

• My children.

• My husband. (Although he's, um, not at all happy right now. Poor guy. He's taking it way harder than I am.)

• My extended family.

• My faith. (Although I wouldn't put it past some people to try.)

• My house. Assuming we don't wind up paying such punitive energy prices that we can't pay our mortgage anymore. Maybe I should strike this one. Because I already don't drive an SUV or leave my lights on -- I don't even use my heater or a/c, fercryinoutloud -- and our budget could not easily absorb a "spike".

• My garden. Except as noted above.

• My joie de vivre. Except maybe. Temporarily. In waves. Like right now.

• The way you wear your hat? The way you sip your tea? I'm running out of things here.
  

Really, that's some pretty important stuff up there. And deep down I'm not so freaked out -- after all, the guy can't do everything at once, right? But I must confess I'm feeling weary. Tune in again next post for a return to the usual blithe unconcern, unflagging optimism, and self-deprecating humor that is my speciality. Tonight I'm just not feelin' it.