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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.)

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

things you may or may not know about me

That "Five things nobody knows about me" meme is always going around, and I hesitate to participate in it because my life has been pretty much an open book on here in the past, and the few things I haven't already shared about myself or my family or whatever are unshared for a reason. But what the heck: it's one AM and I'm wide awake with nothing else to do (except, of course, the everpresent studying, but I did a LOT of that this evening and I am now Taking A Break). I'll give the thing a try.

• I read a certain few comics online with nearly-religious devotion. If I'm up past midnight, as I am now, I read the next day's strips. Sometimes I'll stay up an extra half-hour if it means being able to find out what my comic-strip people are doing before I go to bed. These comics are, in the order in which I read them: Sally Forth, Baby Blues, Between Friends, Luann (YES OKAY LUANN SHUT UP), Zits, 9 Chickweed Lane, Dilbert, and Pearls Before Swine. For Better or For Worse used to be in the rotation as well, but when she "retired" and went back to the beginning, or whatever it is she's doing, I lost interest.

• I had forgotten what it was like, until this semester, to have a little callus on the last knuckle of my middle finger from writing, but I have worn the letters off half the keys on my beloved ergonomic keyboard, and the popular keys have grooves worn into them by my fingernails.

• I miss my piano. When I drive past the house of the people to whom we gave it, I think of it, and hope they're being nice to it and enjoying it.

• I have never danced at a wedding -- mine or anyone else's. In fact, I haven't danced outside the privacy of my own living room since high school.

• I have owed my Aunt Mary a letter since last spring. I am a bad, bad niece.
  

See? Now you know.

Monday, October 20, 2008

I feel... writery.

It's probably because I have an exam for which I could be studying right now, but suddenly I feel like composing a blog post. Or maybe it's the refreshing nap I just took. I'm not totally sure I actually slept -- I think I did, between phone calls -- but lying there thinking about what would happen if I died in my sleep (would the kids know T's work number? I'm absolutely certain they know to call 911, but who would let T know? And would his boss let him come home early from work?) was actually weirdly... relaxing. Don't tell me you never do this while you're trying to drift off to sleep. Oh. You don't? No, no, don't call the people in the white coats. I'm fine. Really. And you don't know my address anyway. Right?

Um. OK. Moving on.

I haven't been talking much about school lately. (Well, honestly, I haven't been talking about much here lately, period. Not even the books I read in September. SHUT UP. OK, I'll do it: Marian Keyes' latest: Don't buy it.) I complained a lot about my two classes this semester, early on, and I thought that I should update and say that they're not that bad. Well, one of them isn't. It's actually pretty interesting once you get past that first chapter that's all about the different theories of human development. I'm not even annoyed (much) by the application of those theories to the way children grow, not that I'm going to run and change my major to psychology or anything, being more of a hands-on kind of gal than the type to sit around analyzing why people think the way they do for eight hours a day. But that class is nice. Communications, on the other hand, has me counting down the days to the end of the semester. It's kind of this perfect storm of subject matter (they call it "communications" but what they really mean most of the time is "sensitivity training", and oh my GOSH the navel-gazing that's required in this class is heaped up in INSANE quantities), a rawther disorganized teacher who probably does much better in an in-person class than an online one, and subject matter that can only be graded subjectively, which was kind of worrisome for a couple of weeks there, after I had a calm, quiet disagreement with the instructor about something that's neither here nor there as regards the course, and suddenly all my perfect scores and glowing praise turned into Bs and Cs presented with surly silence. That appears to have turned around now, though, for whatever reason, and I'm just working my tail off to do the best I can to earn an A from her even if she doesn't want to give it to me. Next year by hook or by crook I WILL take an algebra class. I was going to take College Algebra With Trigonometry, but the class is at an impossible time for me, so I'm going to have even more fun taking the two classes separately and streeeetching them out all luxurious-like. After eighteen weeks of psychology stuff, I am looking forward to some hard and fast indisputable facts where either you know the stuff or you don't. Anyway, no matter what I'm taking, I'm loving being in school just as much as I thought I would during that looong stretch of time between high school and college. (Isn't taking a year's break all the rage? I just took that to extremes.) Just being on campus -- and while it's a nice, green-treed, pretty enough 1970's campus, it's not exactly a bricks-and-ivy university or anything -- is soothing and nice. Worth the wait, definitely.

So that's my school. The kids' school is going along quietly and fine. LT has not taken to algebra like I dreamed he might, not because he doesn't get it which he does, but because he dislikes it. I would wonder how I could give birth to such a child except that I do happen to know his father pretty well; he wanted to be an engineer but decided not to because that career would involve too much time spent studying mathematics. Anyway. It's going fine even so, and we actually have a pretty good time at it. I'm actually -- sit down -- applying some of the stuff I'm learning in PSYC-09 (the human dev class) to my teaching. And it's working. Maybe thar's sumpin in that p-sy-chology stuff after all.

Today I looked down our hill and saw that our three huge black oaks down by the creek (and the black oaks by the creek that aren't ours are charitably joining in) are turning yellow. Black oaks are pretty much the only native trees around here that put on any kind of a color show, and this was such a lovely thing to look out of my yard and see. I don't talk about it much anymore but I'm still feeling the blessing every day of having this house. It was a year ago now that we were in that terrible escrow period when I'm sure the stress took at least six months off my life and I wasn't sure I'd ever get to be here, in a place that's ours to do with as we like. (It was also a year ago that we were staying with my parents, which was so awesomely much fun that LT and C refer to it as a "three-month vacation" -- and not because they took pretty much the entire month of December off school while we were over here working on making this place livable. Maybe we'll start taking our annual vacations at Mom and Dad's. It would be much cheaper than driving to the beach.)

I had more to say but I have to change my clothes VERY fast and get ready to go to chorus rehearsal. You're off the hook THIS time (I hear your relieved sigh), but I'll be back tomorrow. Or in ten days. Whenever.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

blah blah blah.

Something tells me I shouldn't update when I'm feeling this cranky. Whoo boy! I'm in a fun mood. I missed my nap today, and then Scout woke me up when she jumped on my bed and WOULD NOT settle down, and now heartburn won't let me go back to sleep. And I feel so not cheerful about all this, and want to whine. Don't you LOVE me? Don't you want to come hang out with me right now? Oh, I know you do. But you can't, so like the accommodating person I am, I will bring the whining to you.

Well, I guess that was kind of all of it, actually. I feel... sort of better. Thank you for listening.

In other news, as I was drifting off (briefly, as it turned out) to sleep tonight, I remembered that I had completely forgotten about a transcribing job I was supposed to do within a week of last... Monday? Tuesday? I have never done this before. At least I remembered now, when I can still stay up till the wee small hours and get it in on time. For a second there, though, it was like all those nightmares I had for all those years where I would suddenly realize that I was enrolled in a college class I didn't know about (or, worse, had been thrust back into high school, adult age and all) and oh my gosh there was an assignment due YESTERDAY and I DIDN'T DO IT. (Funny how that was never shocking any of the five thousand times it actually happened between sixth and twelfth grades.) So I guess I'll work on that now (the transcribing job, not the assignment that was due yesterday in my circa-1998 nightmare). I won't be sleeping anyway, and I feel another bout of whining coming on (CAN ALL THE POLITICIANS PLEASE SHUT UP NOW being the general theme) so I will spare the Internet that discomfort and go try to be productive.

Could that paragraph have contained any more parenthetical statements? I'm not sure it's physically possible.

Friday, October 03, 2008

yes again! an entry consisting of many small snippets on various topics! I am SO ORIGINAL OMIGOSH.

I have spent the past five days studying madly and feverishly for a Human Development exam. (The teacher has us scheduled to take an exam every three weeks. Fun times!) The first one took me by surprise with its brain-bending difficulty, so I was determined to be more prepared this time, and I made myself a very nerdy fill-in-the-blank study guide based on my notes and then studied it until my eyes nearly bugged out. (You would never, ever have caught me doing this in high school. In fact, I had no real concept of studying for tests back then, and I don't think I ever actually did it. However, that was before I lost those neuron pathways in my old age, not to mention the synaptic pruning that's been going on for all these years. Gee, what do you think these Human Dev. chapters were about? You'll never guess.) At any rate, I think the studying paid off, or else the instructor had pity on us and made this test a whole heck of a lot easier, because I just took the exam and I feel pretty good about it. Now I have to study equally madly and feverishly (and nerdishly) for the Communications exam I have to take by Tuesday. The fun never ends. Until mid-December, that is, when I (hallelujah) gleefully sell my current textbooks, and put this semester behind me with much rejoicing.

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

We went to the library book sale today and spent more than we meant to. But it's on books, and books really matter, so that's OK, right? right? I mean, that's an investment, right? (I can't even remember offhand what I bought. A handful of children's books, I think, and maybe a book of plays, or did I put that back? And the kids got... lots of stuff too. But rest assured it's all very important and well worth blowing the budget a little bit.)

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

So. Politics. Anyone have any life-changing moments during the debate? Didn't think so. I think both parties did fine. I also think it was extremely boring. Next time let's have some mud-wrestling, please. Or at least a few contentious issues. Or, barring that, a serious gaffe along the lines of telling a guy in a wheelchair to stand up so that people can look at him, or discussing FDR getting on TV when the stock market crashed in 1929. Bring on the funny if you're not going to bring any passion, please. (And while I'm at it, can I please request that we ban the word "maverick" from any further public political discussion? There are synonyms you can use if you need to. Thank you. Oh, and Sarah? I still want to be your pinky-swear new best friend, and the accent is cute, and the lack of political polish is refreshing if a little scary, but please do remember that the word CLEAR is inside the world NUCLEAR. See it? Right... there. After the "nu". HOW HARD IS THIS, PEOPLE.)

I'm too sick of the subject to do any real justice to the whole not-a-bailout-but-really-it-is thing. (But watch me keep talking about it anyway.) I think it's time to let the economy correct, but that's not Politically Expedient and also it could be kind of disastrous, so whatever, bail us out to the tune of $2,500 per person if you really want to. Just stop placing all the blame on Republicans, please. We weren't the ones forcing banks to lend to people who really shouldn't have had mortgages. (Wait. That's RACIST, as Rachel Lucas would say. Nevermind. Carry on.) There are plenty of causes for this mess, but don't we all have a great time assuming that our side has no responsibility and the other side has all of it? Isn't it just inspiring? Aren't human beings awesome? Election years just make you glad to be alive, don't they?

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

O-K. Moving on.

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

C had her birthday on Tuesday. She is now nine years old, oh my gosh. (I so remember being nine. I was just like her, only without the good hair.) I just realized that I missed doing the traditional birthday post. Did I skip LT's this year too? I think I might have. I AM A BAD MOTHER. I'm very sorry, kids. A good mother would never do this; in fact, she would bore the entire Internet with intimate details of your development over every month of your lives, something I'm sure you'd relish reading later on as well. Maybe for your children, I'll do that. No? You don't think? Oh, OK.

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

WHAT book was it where the mother was constantly teasing her kids about what a Good Mother would do? Oh, yes. Izzy, Willy-Nilly. Please read this now. This means you. Thank you. (You must admit it's more polite than my usual style. I'm trying.)

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

It is raining -- the first real rain since May. (Three minutes of tiny sprinkles last Monday do not count.) I am SO SO HAPPY about this, especially since we went ahead and moved C's birthday party from tomorrow to Sunday so now we don't have to worry about the beautiful, wonderful rain keeping all sixteen of us indoors for the entire afternoon. I am, however, supposed to bury a treasure tomorrow and construct a map course for the kids to follow to find it, so I'm hoping that I get some gaps between the "afternoon showers" after the "rain in the morning" that we have been promised. Either way, THANK YOU, GOD AND NWS. KISSES.

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

And thatisall. Goodnight. I'm going to go get into comfy jammies, lie in my bed with the window open, listen to the rain falling in our little woods, and read Wives and Daughters until I can't keep my eyes open anymore. Feel free to envy me at any time. I can take it.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Snippets.

I've just realized what it is that makes my weekends feel like real weekends. It's all about the Sunday afternoon nap, people. It's no longer a luxury; it's simply essential. Yesterday we went to my parents' after fellowship and I basically headed directly for the guest bed, wrapped myself in a flannel throw, and crashed out for two hours. I am SUCH GOOD COMPANY. But I feel great today -- refreshed and ready to face the week.

We had an event-filled weekend overall, though -- we went to Bodie on Saturday, a place I hadn't been since I was maybe ten years old. I took a million (or, OK, slightly under 200) pictures but what with having actual work to do (transcribing and school) I haven't edited and posted them yet. Soon. Maybe.

Also, Smokey (our very favorite cat in the whole wide world) came up missing over the weekend. He didn't come in when we got home on Saturday night, and he stayed out all day Sunday and last night too. We were very worried. In fact, one or more of us may have cried a little about him. But -- happy ending -- this morning he was pawing at the front door, fat on gophers or maybe purloined quail (we love the quail, but cats will be cats, even when we put bells on their collars), perfectly OK, and eager for his regular weekday-morning saucer of milk. (T has a soft spot for Smokey that is roughly the size of the Ring Nebula, let's just put it that way.)

Last week I was reading my blog archives a little bit and I got all bummed when I realized that I used to write (occasionally, at least) Really Important Posts about Subjects That Matter. I contemplated trying to do this again but I just don't have it in me right now. Maybe I just don't think anymore. No, that's not true; I think a lot; I just don't devote creative energy to making my thoughts make sense to anyone else. Maybe all the energy I have for that kind of thing gets sucked away by school. At any rate, just so you know, don't plan on this becoming an Important Blog anytime in the foreseeable future.

Monday, September 15, 2008

isn't it Friday yet?

I can't believe we just had a weekend. What weekend? All I remember is running around like a chicken with my head cut off for three days. (Minus the mess. Chickens running around with their heads cut off-- that's not something you want on your new carpet.) I feel completely unrested and also completely unready to face a week of two kinds of school and all kinds of meetings. To top things off, C decided to start her day with an explosive attitude problem, which, coupled with my insufficient sleep last night, is making me wish we could all just go back to bed. Or go out and play, with no responsibilities in the world. Of the two, the "going back to bed" seems more plausible. I wonder if I could justify that somehow. Is today a holiday?

[cue sounds of rummaging through the Internet]

Hmm. It's "Make a Hat Day." Sounds a little too... productive for me. Although Saturday was National Cream-Filled Donut Day. I can't believe I missed it! I'll have to have a belated celebration.

I made strawberry jam yesterday. It tastes yummy but the berries FLOATED GRR. Oh well -- I think it looks pretty, with a gradient effect from clear red jelly into jewelled strawberry goodness. I also canned MORE peaches. (I think that's enough peaches, don't you? I have about thirteen quarts in there now.) The fruit came from a farmer's market in the valley where the prices are really good, even when I take into consideration my quietly-held suspicions about their scales.

(Special note just for Denise: Hi, Denise! Um, if you read my reply to your comment on the last post already, I sincerely hope you didn't do anything with it yet. It's DRIED herbs, not GROUND herbs. Don't know where that came from -- probably the part of my brain that started dying on my thirtieth birthday. I edited my comment, and I would have emailed you except I haven't your address. So you get a paragraph all to yourself in a post instead.)

Oh! If you're not reading this via a feed reader you may have noticed that the blue is gone. I was thoroughly tired of the blue, so since I didn't have anything else to do last night (well, except sleep and homework, but who wants to do those? and my hands were too sore to knit, thanks to a transcribing sprint -- not a marathon, a sprint -- on Saturday night), I sat here and edited the stylesheet and made a new header and I even posted new photos in the sidebar, two of which I took specially for the occasion. (LT picked his own costume. In fact he insisted I take a new photo of him for the sidebar, rather than simply updating it with "just a plain one of him smiling", no matter how recent; he disappeared into his room and emerged fully equipped. I drew the line at the airsoft gun, which looks so much like a real M-16 that I'm sure our house would have been surrounded by BATF and CPS before the site finished rebuilding if I'd let him pose with it.)

OK. SIGH. I can't put the day off any longer. Time for school. Either that or it's off to the bakery for cream-filled donuts all around.

Saturday, September 06, 2008

we've had a full day.

Today (well, OK, yesterday) we had a family event that we look forward to each year almost as much as Christmas and the Fair: it was the day we had tickets for Lick Observatory's summer visitor's program. We all love the observatory. We also all love the 3 1/2-hour drive to get there, especially the last bit (well, on the way there it's the last bit; on the way home it's the first bit, but then that's in the middle of the night and you can't see anything -- oh shut up, Rachel) which is on a lonely winding road where the scenery (and, minus pavement, the road) looks just like it did a hundred years ago. The steep-but-smooth hills crisscrossed with cow trails, the tumbleweed, the solitary ranches with small old houses and big older barns... it all makes me understand what gave early Californians the urge to write stirring novels. (Don't worry, I won't inflict any more purple prose on you. I'm all out.)

Also, we saw what appears to be a mine shaft cut into an embankment, which we'd somehow never noticed before on any of our many drives past it; obviously the local youth know all about it, though, seeing as how it's covered with graffiti and littered with beer bottles. Open letter to juvenile miscreants: You think you're all cool but you're not. In fact, you're really pretty lame.

Further also, while we were at the observatory we were looking at the readout from their seismograph and we basically saw this earthquake happen -- although we didn't feel it.

ALSO further also -- this is not so nice, so be prepared for a shift in mood -- we drove past what we thought was a car accident on the lonely winding road on the way there, but it turns out, sadly and kind of freakily, that it is something more sinister (maybe the half-mile of sheriff's deputies' cars parked in the road should have clued us in...), according to the news.

Plus I got to eat at KFC and that's just not something that happens every day. And they had a jukebox (seeing as how it's one of those KFCs that's also an A&W) and the jukebox was free. Exactly how much more awesome can something be than this day?

The observatory shindig got over around 11; I drove home, because I'm the one who's used to staying up till all hours. We pulled in at 2:10 AM and I hadn't yawned once. (I didn't even need caffeine.) Now even T must admit that all this late-night Internetting is worthwhile.

And now I have run out of parentheses so I must close.

Friday, August 29, 2008

County fair! Whee!

I KNOW, two posts in one day. I ought to save it for tomorrow just to spread things out a bit, but oh well.

We're back from an insanely expensive evening at the fair. I don't even want to break it down to the per-hour rate, but we were only there for three hours, we ate dinner there, and we had to pay (THREE ADULT TICKETS! Who told that boy he could turn twelve?) to get in. We had a good time, though. The kids did nicely on their entries, and I just KNOW you all are on the edges of your seats wondering how I did, right? right? OK, you twisted my arm. I'll tell you.

Baked goods: Four blue ribbons, three red, one white, two nothings. I don't think I beat my grandmother at anything except maybe dinner rolls.

For photography, I didn't want to spend a ton of money on prints, and I hadn't done a whole lot lately that really excited me, so I just looked at the folder of pictures I want to print for the house anyway and selected eight that were from within the last eighteen months, which is the fair's limit for photography entries. So. WIthout further ado:

I won three blue ribbons:



in the "digitally manipulated" category






in the 5x7-and-under Animals category





and

in the greater-than-5x7 Animals category, which is HUGE with a whole wall of entries, so that was a nice surprise. (There's a sponsored award for first place in that category, so that's nice. I think that's also maybe why so many people enter it. Last time I won it, it was $50.)





Also one red ribbon:



(5x7)





And two white ribbons (3rd place):



(seascape, enlargements)





and

(this one was also in the very large Animals category, so I was glad about how it did.)





Two didn't place, one of poppies and one of the infamous baby possum. That one is probably my favorite of all the pictures I've ever taken, and I was a little surprised that it didn't do better, but I mainly wanted the print to hang on my wall anyway, so oh well.

Anyway, we all had a good time and now I really must go to bed because we have to get up early to get good seats for the parade tomorrow. Grandma's one of the grand marshals and that's just not something that happens every day. Besides, there might be candy.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

little things part deux

Apparently all I can post these days is these little randomy snippetish posts. Ah well. Better than nothing? Maybe. Wait, don't answer that.

• Tonight I had an in-class session for my Interpersonal Communications class. While the textbook looks as though it's going to annoy me beyond measure (it's full of touchy-feely stuff AND meaningless pretentious words for stuff that could be described much more simply by using straightforward terms like "body language" and "talking" and the like), the class tonight was actually... kind of fun. Kind of Quest-ish (OK, so people who didn't go to my high school may or may not know what Quest was, but I'm too lazy to explain. Was it a broadly-used curriculum, or just something we did in our schools, I wonder?), but not too bad. However. HOW-EVER. We did this one exercise where we each wrote something on an index card that people wouldn't know by looking at us, and then the cards were redistributed and we had to guess who went with which fact. One person's fact was "I have been married for 23 years", and some barely-post-pubescent little college student with no crow's feet and a 7-inch waist guessed that I HAD SAID THAT. No, I am sorry, we do not live in Saudi Arabia; people in the United States generally don't get married when they are TEN YEARS OLD which is where I KNOW you made your mistake, little person, right? Because obviously you couldn't have estimated that I was at least ten years older than I am. Because if you thought that I might have to go, I dunno, buy some Oil of Olay or something. Or obsess over how hag-ish I must look. One of the two.

• Speaking of school, it's time for me to get down to business and start planning our homeschool year. I am freaking out (not in an "I can't do this" way, but in a "holy bejeebers, where on earth did the time go" way) about the fact that I have a seventh grader this year. Seventh grade is... old. For a child, I mean. He's doing beginning algebra this year, which I'm actually kind of looking forward to teaching. I love algebra.

• I drove through Raymond today. To many local people, Raymond is this near-mythical place because you are always coming upon signs that point to it, but most people have never been there. Raymond makes my town look like a bustling metropolis on a major thoroughfare. Raymond is still charming and quiet and the general store there is trapped in several different time warps: the inside hasn't changed since I used to go there with my grandpa on the way to the feed store in Madera when I was small; the solitary gas pump outside is frozen in time at $1.89 a gallon; most of the building still looks pretty much exactly like it did when it was built in the nineteenth century. Raymond feels like my own personal little secret even though I know it's really not. I hadn't been there in years, but I had to go to Madera today to pick up some Charger parts for T, so I took the scenic route. There was an old couple sitting in the little café inside the store who reminded me very much of my grandparents the way they were when I was a child, and it actually caused this wave of something between intense nostalgia and vertiginous déjà vu to sweep over me: for a split second I stood there looking at them and thinking: Am I thirty-three? Is thirty-three a dream and I'm really ten? (I think I've been watching too many Twilight Zone episodes.)

• One of the blogs I read a lot has a cats vs. dogs debate going on -- you know, the old "dogs are loyal and cats are useless" vs. "you don't understand cats because you don't love cats like I do" thing. Personally? I prefer cats. Yes, dogs are more useful. Yes, cats act like their owners are their personal slaves. But none of my cats has ever dragged anyone's dirty underwear into the front room and chewed it affectionately and energetically to shreds, and that clinches it for me right there. It's not that I can't like a dog; I'm pretty fond of Scout, and when I was a kid I had several different dogs at different times that I loved a lot. But dogs in general are not something I'm ever excited about. (Really, the best description of dogs I have ever read is in Watership Down, chapter 41. Read This Now; This Means You. When the kids were plaguing me to get a dog, I agreed to do it only if we could name him Rowsby Woof. Or the Fairy Wogdog. Or (her) Queen Dripslobber. It was a narrow escape for Scout, and I still call her Postwiddle or Sniffbottom when she annoys me.)

• Lastly, a few things you already know if you follow me on twitter (or, um, facebook, I guess): We still don't have our car back. I'm in the community chorus again (for this semester, at least). Fair baking proceeds apace. And most importantly of all: Chick-Fil-A, which, as far as I knew, only existed in places far, far away from California, has expanded to a city that is a mere 75-minute drive from my house. Oh, my, am I going to get fat. (Actually, it kind of balances out, because as far as I can tell they're moving into the building that used to house the Krispy Kreme until it shut down.)

And thatisall. Dang, look at the TIME. I'd forgotten how much school nights throw off my internal clock, what with the getting-home-after-ten thing. I still have transcribing to do. This will require extra Diet Coke, for sure.

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