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Sunday, December 05, 2010

SHE'S ALIVE!!

I kept trying to write a 1,000-character Facebook post and finally gave up. Look! I'm using a blog. How does this thing work again?

I am tempted to do a big catch-up blog post but let's face it, if you know about this blog, you probably know about my Facebook page and my Twitter feed and you've been following my zany antics all along, so there's no point in that.

Why am I doing this again? Oh yeah. Too Many Characters.

All right, so I can't help it. Quick recap of the last oh, say, year of my life will be AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST.

Meanwhile:

I took C to the ballet this past weekend. We went to see the Nutcracker, of course. We wanted to go see this big fancy production of it in Fresno, with (I think) a live orchestra and a couple of her 4-H friends in the company, but we couldn't afford that, so we went to this smaller one put on in a smaller city -- actually in a small outlying suburb of a smaller city -- and it was really very nice. Two thumbs up, Merced Civic Ballet. As usual, watching any kind of production made me want to be involved somehow. Not in a ballet -- ha ha oh my gosh NO -- but in something with, you know, a stage, and an audience, and lights and curtains and that rush of happy adrenaline that you get when you're in front of a crowd as part of a group.

Wow, I have no idea where C gets her drama-queen tendencies. Do you?

Apropos of nothing, I am leading a 4-H Theater Arts project this upcoming year. I know you must be shocked. (I'm also leading photography and knitting/crocheting. Pray for my soul.)

This weekend overall has been a flurry of activity, mostly because of the craft fair where C was helping in the 4-H booth and selling some of her own little crafty things that she'd made herself. This afternoon while the boys are off at a Scout event, C and I are having a quiet afternoon at home, after doing something (some things) that, I realized later, would have totally humiliated me at the age of, say, fourteen or so. Are you ready for this SHOCKING STORY?

We 1) walked 2) to a yard sale (A YARD SALE OH MOM NO WAY WHAT IF SOMEONE SEES ME) and then we 3) walked home while I 4) carried a lampshade. I didn't think anything of it until after we were home, and of course it's nothing to me now, but I am relatively certain that there was a time in my life when I would have sported an attitude that would have filled my loving mother's head with filicidal fantasies before I would have carried a lampshade along the shoulder of a public road where someone from school might see me.

Man, being a teenager was lame.

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

I've been taking chemistry this semester, along with Online PE which is exactly as awesome as it sounds like it would be. I like chemistry, I really do; I love the mathiness and mad-scientistishness of it. I even like my instructor, which I didn't at first because she is one of those instructors who looks at anyone who approaches her with a question with an expression that says, "What the hell? How'd this cockroach get in here? JANITOR!" So that took some getting used to, and still, seventeen weeks into the semester, my lab group will do a round of rock-paper-scissors to decide who has to go up to the desk to face her withering scorn if we have a question we can't figure out among the four of us.

Oh yeah. QUICK recap. I have problems with "quick".

The kids are fine by which I mean that they are growing up far, far too fast and I can't seem to do anything about that so I have to just embrace it. C is eleven -- very, very eleven, with all the drama and joy that the word implies. We have so, so much fun together. She has a new BFF, whom she actually calls her bee-eff-eff. She wrote a 15,000-word novel for the Young People's NaNoWriMo in November and it's actually not half-bad, especially for something written by an eleven-year-old at a rate of a thousand words per day. NSLT is [counts on fingers] fourteen and a half and is now the tallest member of our extended family at 6'1". (My dad used to be taller than that, but then he had back trouble.) He got his first pair of glasses in November. He looks like A MAN. There is an additional MAN LIVING IN MY HOUSE NOW. He needs to SHAVE. He and his dad go out and work on their car projects together and HE ENJOYS IT. He draws pictures on his church bulletins of HIS CAR DOING A BURNOUT. Like I said: a man! I am totally not making this up.

T is forty-one (well, he will be in three days) and is exactly the same as he was when he was thirty. Maybe he's a wee bit more grim in his expression, if that is possible, but he is still zany and funny and very, very much in love with his car. And with me. And with being a dad. We grown-ups are boring.

I am almost thirty-six and I am also very much the same. Still overparticipative in class! Still talkative and loud! Still completely fashion-clueless! Just a little fatter than I used to be. I tell all my female acquaintances who are afraid of turning 30 that the thirties are fabulous, because they are, but I do neglect to mention the way weight just kind of starts to stick on you when you're not looking. I figure why make them fret in advance, right? Or maybe it's denial and it's all my fault and nothing to do with my age. Denial and ice cream. No, it couldn't be that.

The garden did better than we thought it would do after the giant freeze we had in the middle of May. The peppers bounced back admirably. The tomato plants grew nice and big, but didn't put on much fruit. The squash was wonderful and now it's all gone and I'm sad. And nothing else did much of anything. The chickens now have the run of the frost-blasted, weary garden, and they're loving it.

We now have twenty-two hens and two roosters. Claire entered two of her birds in the fair and they actually won prizes and stuff. It was a big deal.

You know what I miss most about blogging is the books posts. I don't read nearly as much as I used to (SAD CLOWN), because of school -- mine and the kids'. (Speaking of which, homeschooling is still going swimmingly. NSLT is studying geometry, C is doing sixth-grade math, and they're both studying world history, geography, physical science, essay-writing and Julius Caesar.) But I have probably read about fifty books this year and I have reviewed none of them. Maybe I'll try to get back into that in the new year. It was a new year's resolution originally, back about five years ago, that got me doing the books posts in the first place.

And there you have it. Think of it as your bulk-mailed Family Christmas Letter (which I'm very much not planning to do this year. Here, I'll even put in a picture.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

silence: broken. More's the pity.

Summer at our house means being careful about running the sprinkler for too long, because the water level in our well drops off enough that the pump ends up gasping for water and only coming up with air. This hadn't been tested yet this year... until now. (I am always handy when laws of physics or things like this need to be tested. Everybody has a special skill. This is mine.) I turned the sprinkler on the lawn well after sunset but before dark, sternly reminding myself that I needed to shut it off in half an hour, and then I completely forgot we even had a sprinkler until I flushed the toilet at 3 AM and it did that funny "hey, there's no water to fill me back up in here" kind of panicked sort of choking sound, at which point I instantly remembered the sprinkler and the well and dashed out in my bare feet to turn off the faucet.

And T's not here -- he is coming home in about six hours from a two-week work trip to Hawaii -- so I had to handle this all on my own like a big girl, by calling him in the middle of the night on his cell phone, which he had graciously left on as he slept in a hotel room in San Francisco. I'm sure he is glad that his wife can hold down the fort while he's gone like Ma did when Pa took off for town 40 miles away. I'm sure he's contemplating this *exact* parallel as he lies in a hotel bed trying desperately to fall back asleep for 45 minutes before he has to get up anyway.

And the pump recovered so quickly that I have a sneaking suspicion that it hadn't actually gone into full-bore RED ALERT mode and was still thinking more along the lines of, "Hey. People? People? Did you forget about me? ...hey... hello?" Three in the morning is not a time for subtlety in problem assessment, though. Not for me, anyway.

Oh my goodness. I just opened the door to let in the cat and Venus was rising so beautifully next to a tree that stands in our yard that I went straight past an Anne-ish thrill to an Emily-like "flash". I did have time to notice, while I scurried around outside checking to make sure that I hadn't also left water on in the garden or elsewhere, that the stars looked amazing. Everyone should live at least for a while in a place where going outside in the middle of a clear night and looking up means having your breath taken clean away.

Anyway. Back to the STORY. The crisis was past by 3:30 and I came in the house all hyped up on adrenaline and decided that I would get a head start on dinner by setting up the crock-pot now, instead of trying to do it between getting up at 6 and leaving at 7. And then I couldn't go to bed, because I had to cook the giblets for the cats. It is against my household rules to a) give raw meat to pets b) throw away usable food or c) have chicken innards just sitting there in a bowl in my refrigerator, so what else could I do? And while my hands were performing the rather unpleasant tasks involved in getting a chicken ready to be cooked, my brain was thinking, "Hey. I should write a blog post. Maybe while the giblets cook."

So there it is. A month of blog silence broken by a water emergency-or-not and chicken liver.

I know I say this every time but I really have been thinking how I need to post more. For one thing, if you don't see me on Facebook you have NO IDEA how my garden is doing right now, none at ALL, and that's all my fault and I'm sorry. I know it's hard on you, the wondering. And you don't know that I've been sick or what I thought of Atlas Shrugged (well, nobody knows that; I'm not even sure I know yet) or how the summer reading program is going for the kids or what our chickens look like now or how C did at State Presentation Day or how tall LT is or anything important.

But also, I'm discovering a major flaw in my "I'll put off blogging and just use twitter or Facebook or both to express myself about this thought that's in my head" plan, and that is that the archiving at twitter and Facebook simply stinks. You can't call something up by date or topic and search is pretty much useless or nonexistent; you have to sit there and click "more" 300 times to get to something you wrote six months ago and for some reason now want to remember. So one of the pleasant byproducts I've enjoyed since I began communicating with people via the Internet, first via email and then through archivable chats and then through this blog and then finally through social networking sites, is eliminated: I can't easily use my own writings as a diary. I can't go back and find that link to a knitting pattern, or laugh at my own jokes or at people's comments, or even remember what I'd done on a certain day.

(Also, T can't access Facebook -- not that he'd want to; he wants a T-shirt he saw that proclaims REAL MEN DON'T FACEBOOK -- or Twitter, or even read the little Twitter snippets in my blog sidebar, from his work computer, due to network regulations meant to keep government employees from spending all day socializing instead of working. [This would be the web 2.0 version of "the entire workforce of the state of Virginia had to have Solitaire removed from their computers because they hadn't done any work in six weeks.… You know what this is, you know what we're seeing here? We're seeing the end of Western civilization as we know it.." Name that quote!] But he can read my blog, and we both used to like it, that he could peek in on our day at home while he was away.)

So I'm going to try to make a conscious effort to document stuff here again. Don't bother thanking me. I know you're all grateful.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

A few little updates

I'm about to do a books post, but I wanted to get some updates out of the way first because I know you all are on the edges of your seats wondering what I've been up to. Right? Hee.

Festus is still gone, presumably fitting in fine with his new family because they were going to call if he didn't. I am still sad. Not like that first day when I actually cried... a lot... but still sad. Good news in that department, though: Mary is back around and in the house, looking sleek and lovely again and coming right out in the open instead of skulking around like she had been before she finally fled to the under-house crawlspace. So that's good anyway.

I am typing this on a brand-new laptop. We had some money coming in and I've been wanting a laptop for various purposes for a long time, so now I have one. It'll be good for school, and for doing things like transcribing and Librivoxing (if I ever get back in the swing of that) in the front room where they won't bother my sleeping husband.

Speaking of my sleeping husband, he's really sick right now. We'd all had various ailments this past week -- T had a pretty bad cough and some chest congestion, and the kids and I all took turns with a 24-hour stomach virus that knocked us flat. But poor T -- today his chest got way, way worse, and he spiked a fever, and on top of that he seems to have finally caught the stomach thing too. Needless to say we're not going anywhere in the morning.

OK, enough boring life stuff. Books! Next!

Sunday, February 15, 2009

blew it. oops.

And I was doing SO WELL.

It's just been very, very crazy. My niece is still in the hospital, and we have her brother staying with us, and there have been trips to the valley and droppings off and pickings up at school and much homework and snowstorms (yes, MORE snowstorms -- 6 inches of powder in two hours on Friday morning, all gone now) and afternoons at my parents' and it's just been generally very nutty. And I haven't even really wanted to post, let alone had time and energy to do so.

But look! I just have.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

OK, that was a REALLY long day.

So a few hours after I sat here and complained about my day yesterday while pretending NOT to complain about my day, my SIL called: her daughter was really, really sick, something the matter with her pancreas, the local ER had said*, and she was being ambulanced to the children's hospital in Fresno. My SIL didn't know how to get there or what to do. So, seeing as how 12:40 AM is the Rachel equivalent of, say, 8 PM, I had no problem offering to drive her down there, impending snowstorm or no impending snowstorm. We got about eight miles along the shorter but more mountainous route (about 12 miles shorter, no crossing the city on surface streets once you get there or having to take the long freeway loop around, but 55mph or less all the way instead of half the route being on the freeway, so it ALMOST evens out time-wise) when it became obvious that we were going to get stuck putting on chains in the pelting snow if we kept going that way, so we turned around and took the low road.

I am typing this on a non-ergonomic keyboard and it's driving me CRAZY. I just had to share.

We narrowly missing someone's cattle who had strayed onto the highway on our way out of the mountains, but the rest of the trip was uneventful. At 3 AM when it's raining I can almost tolerate Fresno: no traffic, much less smelly, no heat, no fog. We got to the hospital, found my niece**, got an update on her condition (acute pancreatitis, which I have to say seems like NO FUN AT ALL), and ate in the awesome cafeteria before I headed for home with my nephew to get some sleep while my niece got admitted and her mom found a place to sleep in her room.

You know, that thing they tell you to do where you pull over to the side of the road and take a nap if you're driving drowsy REALLY HELPS. I slept for 25 minutes at the halfway point just after full daylight and was good to go for the rest of the drive home, whereas I had actually, um, NOT BEEN for about fifteen miles before that. I got home at 8:00, made a couple of phone calls, and then slept from 8:30 to noon. That, by the way, is feeling like NOT ENOUGH, and I am secretly*** hoping for a serious snowstorm that causes us to cancel Bible study tonight so I can sleep some more this afternoon instead of OH MY GOSH cleaning my house. Please?

*Our local ER is sometimes infuriating. The doctor who saw my niece kept telling my SIL that my niece was obviously "doing this" (having a 40+minute episode of unrelenting vomiting with a side of severe upper abdominal pain) "to get attention". In front of my niece, no less, who was nearly unconscious from weakness at that point. When the blood results showed something actually wrong, he smoothly changed his tune. Unfortunately, this kind of treatment seems to be the rule rather than the exception there, in our experience. SUCH a difference from the quality of care at the children's hospital. Too bad their ER is an hour and some away.

**My niece is really brave. I kept thinking about how my children would handle it if they had to go all that way in an ambulance full of strangers without their mom. I think they'd have to be sedated, no joke, because of the freaking out.

***or not so secretly anymore, I guess.

Monday, February 09, 2009

just like pioneer folks!

In the spirit of full disclosure I must admit that I am backdating this post by three minutes so as to have it dated Monday. I am allowing myself this small cheat because:

I am still up from Monday, and hence Monday is still mentally "today" instead of "yesterday".

I just got home less than half an hour ago from school

AND

We have been without DSL all day, and still are. I know, it is remarkable that we have survived. I have only logged on to the Internet twice today, both times via dial-up. Didn't Ma and Pa use dial-up? I think they did. See, we had this GINORMOUS lightning storm last night. It was really, really loud and sudden and hail-y (to continue with the Little House theme, it's the kind of storm they'd have had hit them just as Pa was making a list of all the wonderful needful things he planned to buy with the bumper crop of wheat he had standing in the field), and at one point there was a strike that seemed like it was right on top of us, and not only did the thunder sound like an eighteen-wheeler being dropped on our roof, not only did the lightning light up the entire interior of our house JUST as all the lights blinked out and then came back on, but I think our modem got completely fried. But I wasn't quite SURE, because when I called our ISP to ask if I could buy a new modem in our small town or if I had to drive to the not-so-near and not-so-small town to get one, they had a recording on that said that their DSL service to our area had been partly knocked out by the storm. So I've been waiting all day to see if it was their problem or mine. Short answer: It's mine. Dang. This is our second modem in a year. Time to buy a surge protector for the phone line.

You know what's cool about older kids? Instead of freaking out during lightning storms, they're right there with you shouting about how awesome it is. Now I just have to convince them -- or at least one of them -- that roller coasters and really high, fast waterslides are nothing to be freaked out about and maybe I'll have someone I can take with me to theme- and water-parks. Worth a try, anyway.

In other news:

Both my classes have tests in two weeks. YES. I love tests. Except: ACK. In the algebra class, your test scores ARE your grade. No pressure there.

I just tried to upload a few pictures to Flickr via dial-up. HAR HAR HAW I have such a sense of humor. (OK, trying again after resizing them to 800px and it looks like it MIGHT finish before it's time for me to get up in the morning.)

FINALLY. OH. my. GOSH. It HURTS.

Standing on my front stoop, looking slightly to the left, this morning when I (finally; it was a late night) got out of bed. (Don't ask me why I didn't take pictures looking straight ahead or to the right. Sun on the lens maybe? Just wasn't thinking. This is the best view anyway.) That little shack-looking thing is an Airsoft bunker. It's supposed to be temporary -- if by "temporary" you mean "it's there until the kids move out and if we don't act quickly at that point we'll end up leaving it up for the grandkids". I love that the boys have fun playing Airsoft with their friends. I'm not so overjoyed about the fact that (one of) their bunker(s) is smack in the middle of my favorite view, but you can't have everything.

Claire, tobogganing down our sledding hill. It is an enviable hill for sledding. Steep enough to get up some speed but not so steep you're going to get a concussion; no rocks; no trees; no fences; no roads. Come on over next time it snows. BYOI. (That's Bring Your Own Innertube, of course.)

LT, who can actually steer his disc and keep it pointing straight ahead all the way to the bottom, a skill I certainly never mastered.

This is a mountain that's across our little valley from us; I can see it really well from my kitchen window. Anytime the weather is the least bit interesting, it's likely that I'll look across at it and see that it is having different weather than we are. When we're in the sun, it's often under dark clouds. It can be raining on us, and lovely and sunny there. Cloud shadows look divine skidding along it. I don't know why this tickles me so, but it does.

They look SO unthrilled to be out sliding on a beautiful sunny snowy morning when most of their peers are stuck in classrooms. Really, though, they were just unthrilled to have to stop to pose for a picture with the sun in their eyes. I am such a mean mom.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

generalized snippets, followed by some miscellaneous... snippets. With a bonus FUNNY DOG PICTURE.

I was knitting on the couch, sitting next to Scout (who's on the left). I walked away and came back a few minutes later to find that Festus the Foster-Dog had taken my spot and was already asleep, rather humorously.

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

Speaking of Festus. He's, um, still here. This morning a friend of T's happened by, heard Festus's story, and mentioned that he knew a guy who might want him, and I had to throttle a visceral instinct to shove our friend out the door and slam it shut behind him. So I guess I'm maybe getting a little bit attached to Festus, in spite of the fact that we may have to take out a second mortgage to buy him food.

And then today he ran off. I encountered our family vet in Barnes and Noble on the day after Christmas, and in spite of the fact that I know she must be so tired of people talking shop with her every time she meets someone she knows, I couldn't help asking if she had perchance met Festus at any point in time. She hadn't, and when I told her about how we happened to have him in our care she said, "Hounds run away. That's what hounds do. Consider him temporary and don't spend too much money on him." Festus's history as our neighbors' dog bore this out -- they spent considerable time driving around looking for him -- and so did his behavior today, when he slipped through a gate and didn't come back no matter how much we called until the second or third time I went out looking for him, when I found him in a (different) neighbor's yard and he came home with me willingly enough. Anyway. As if it hadn't been enough having our friend trying to give him away, he had to go and take off and make me really aware of how much I kind of sort of hope that nobody wants him but us.

Wow, that got long.

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

We brought in the New Year in style today. We invited family over to burn our brush piles with us.

Really, we did.

(We also roasted hot dogs and hot sausages and let the kids become one giant mass of stickiness as they made smores, a food I personally detest, not least because it's impossible to eat them without getting sticky and I hate sticky.)

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

I am working up the energy for a books post. Really, even with two weeks free of school this month, I didn't do as much reading as I thought I might -- only finished four books, and I already reviewed one of those. I blame knitting.

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

Speaking of knitting, I made my very first scarf last week. I felt like a baby knitter. Here's a picture:

That's not stockinette; that's k1p1 rib. I'm giving it away. The color doesn't really suit me.

That scarf took two skeins of Patons SWS yarn; I'd bought four just in case, but I didn't want to do another scarf in the same colors, so I went to Michaels while I was in the valley yesterday to get a couple of different colors of the same yarn, which I love (going back to cheap yarn after working with it kind of makes you feel like you're trying to knit with cardboard until you get used to it again) but which is ordinarily kind of pricey for me at $6 for a 2.5-oz skein. It was on sale, two skeins for $3. What could I do but take this as a sign? I ended up buying fifteen skeins. Which I then took home and photographed for my Ravelry stash because I am just that far gone into knitter-nerd insanity.

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

So this week has been a cheerful way to end what was, for us, in spite of all the general worldwide crappiness, a really good year.

I feel a list coming on. Here... it... comes.

A Small Samplings Of Good Things About Last Year (A Year That Apparently Actually Sucked In Real Life, But What Do I Know)

• We spent it living in our own new home.
  
• We had a really great time with our garden.
  
• We even ate some food from our garden.
  
• We got a dog.
  
• Or, um, maybe, um, two. But not really. Not yet.
  
• Good grades! even in the classes I disliked.
  
• I knocked out some required classes that I will never have to take again. (See? I'm all about the silver lining.)
  
• Gas prices! (At the end of the year, not the beginning.)
  
• We discovered I Spy. OH MY GOSH LOVE THIS SHOW. Usually.
  
• We all enjoyed good overall health.
  
• Nobody broke any bones or required any surgeries.
  
• We developed a few really lovely traditions, at least one of which involves mass quantities of deliciously unhealthy food, which is always a plus.
  
• My sister-in-law and two of her kids moved to town.
  
• We had two bathrooms for the first time in our family's history.
  
• Facebook and Twitter have enabled me to be in better touch with some of my distant friends than I have been in years. Yes, I am a sheep. Baa. But I'm a happy sheep.
  
• We solidified and put into practice some of our ideas about self-sufficiency and pleasure in small things.
  

So yeah, I liked 2008 -- economical issues notwithstanding. But then I'm an annoying Pollyannaish type -- or maybe more of an ostrich, depending on your point of view. But hey, I'm a happy and sane ostrich, and life is too short to freak out about stuff. (Prepare: good. Freak out: bad.) Here's to a blessed 2009 rich in the things that really matter.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

It was a good year.

I liked 2008 -- economical issues notwithstanding. But then I'm an annoying Pollyannaish type who -- if you listen to some people -- goes around with her head buried in the sand like an ostrich. But hey, I'm a happy and sane ostrich, and life is too short to freak out about stuff before its time. (Prepare: good. Freak out: bad.)

I feel a list coming on. Here... it... comes.

Good Things About This Year (A Year That Apparently Actually Sucked In Real Life, But What Do I Know)

1. We spent it living in our own new home.
   
2. We had a really great time with our garden.
   
3. We even ate some food from our garden.
   
4. We got a dog.
   
5. Or, um, maybe, um, two. But not really. Not yet.
   
6. Good grades! even in the classes I disliked.
   
7. Gas prices! (At the end of the year, not the beginning.)
   
8. We all enjoyed good overall health.
   
9. Nobody broke any bones or required any surgeries.
   
10. We developed a few really lovely traditions, at least one of which involves mass quantities of deliciously unhealthy food.
    
11. My sister-in-law and two of her kids moved to town.
    
12. We had two bathrooms for the first time in our family's history.
    
13. We discovered I Spy.
    
14. I do not know where the rest of this entry went. It vanished into the ether.

    
    

Monday, December 15, 2008

Things I would have been posting about if I posted here anymore

I'm beginning to live my life in 140-character snippets. It's really bad of me. And I've just been very very busy -- too busy to blog, obviously, but not too busy to stare at Facebook for half an hour at a stretch. So I resolved that this time, instead of dorkily clicking around the Internet like a channel surfer on a Sunday afternoon, I would write something memorable that would succinctly yet cohesively update my loyal friends about what I've been doing and thinking.

Or, you know, maybe just post in my blog about a bunch of junk no one cares about.

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

So, um. It snowed here. It was such a laugh, really. The National Weather Service (query: why oh why do I rely so heavily on their weather forecasts when they have repeatedly proven themselves to be untrustworthy? Is it the official-sounding name? You have to trust THE national weather SERVICE, right?) had been telling us for days and days about this cold storm that was coming in. And we did get a cold storm, but at one point the NWS was predicting TWENTY-ONE INCHES of snow out of it in 36 hours, and that simply did not happen. There are a lot of people who got more than we did, because we're not that high in elevation, but we only got two inches and then the rain we had all day today pretty much obliterated it. But the kids got in some fun sliding this morning before the rain got too bad. We were right; that hill is great for sledding.

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

We took family pictures on Friday. I had prepared the family for this all week, but I still didn't want to take up too much of everyone's time (the kids especially are rather weary of having THE NIKON pointed at their faces, although they're good sports about it) so I only used three different locations around our yard and kept it under 100 shots. WHAT.

I really liked this pose (the kids are sitting on a low branch of their Fort Tree in the "forest"), but when I looked at the images on the computer, I discovered that the fill flash didn't do enough to overcome the tree shadows. We'll try this one another time at a different time of day, maybe with all four of us sitting on the branch just for fun.

This is the one that we got printed.

This one was LT's favorite. Have you noticed that LT is not so L anymore? (Those of you who didn't know what LT stands for probably just had a light bulb moment...). I liked the idea but it just ended up looking a little awkward. (Notably, at first glance it looks like I have one REALLY LONG leg.)

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

Wednesday, we had a Bible study potluck/Christmas party here, complete with gift exchange. I was surprisingly sane about the whole thing. I have just learned to expect and accept that the first fifteen minutes after everyone arrives will be a little crazy and hectic, but that I don't need to ruin a whole day worrying about how things will go, because things will generally go fine. (As long as my mom is here, that is. MOMMY!) We completely rearranged our living room for the season (T's birthday party, the Bible study party, and Christmas all here, with 20 people at each) to allow for tables to be set up down the length of our "great room", and I really like it. It makes me want to host more things. OK, someone please shoot me now because obviously I've gone completely around the bend.

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

I finally finished this semester's classes. GOOD RIDDANCE. Well, OK, they ended up not being as bad as they were at the beginning, and I found some things to like in both classes, but I can't deny that I'm still looking forward to Monday night algebra classes next semester as if they were chocolate factory tours with free samples. In Europe. All expenses paid. Plus incidentals. Seriously, though: no research papers, no navel-gazing, no "I language", no psychological developmental theories, just hours and hours of sweet precise equations with answers that are either right or wrong. B-L-I-S-S.

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Thank you everyone for the book recommendations. I have placed many, many holds at the library. Meanwhile I'm reading Elizabeth Berg short stories, which are just amazingly good. And I don't even have to take notes! Awesome.

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?

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