the round of life Archives | Page 29 of 29
previous ten entries | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 |
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
a downer
Today's been kind of a dull day. We stayed home all day, which is totally, completely fine with me. Most days I wish we could. It is such an effort to go places -- all the getting the kids dressed decently and clean, and finding socks and matching shoes and hauling everything out to the car... sigh. I must be really, really boring but I would rather just stay at home. I'm not even going to Bible study tonight (T and LT are there) since C apparently has some kind of minor tummy bug or something, and we wanted her to stay home in case it was something contagious. She has had diarrhea all day, she threw up this morning (although I think that was triggered by her oversensitive gag reflex really), and she took a nap this afternoon which she never does unless we're in the car. No fever though. Who knows. At any rate we are home. She is about to fall asleep on the couch, watching 101 Dalmatians.
My parents were here for dinner; I roasted two chickens. One would have been enough, it turns out, but oh well. We have leftovers for sandwiches and stuff now. The potatoes that I cooked with them were soooo good, but they were also really greasy so I limited myself to a small serving of them. I really have no idea where this discipline is coming from unless it's from God. I have made an effort in the past to do this, and just given up after a matter of days. Now it's been three weeks and I'm still at it in spite of my -11 plateau.
I got some really depressing news today. An online friend of mine has a son who was diagnosed a year ago with a rare and vicious form of leukemia (has a 25% survival rate with treatment; 0% without). The son is C's age (almost 4). He had a bone marrow transplant in April, and was doing really well. His baby brother (born just a few weeks before the diagnosis) was his donor and it was a really inspiring story, the two brothers who kicked cancer in the butt. July 31st was Day 100 post-transplant which is apparently a really big milestone. Initial results from the testing from that day were good, and we were planning a little online party to celebrate, but today the more detailed results have revealed that he is probably relapsing. My heart just aches, I feel like I want to throw up. It's been on my mind all day, and I feel guilty when I feel cheerful about anything, thinking of the torment that mom is going through right now. I've lost a baby of my own; she died when she was nine weeks old and suffered for her entire short life from the effects of a serious heart defect. So to a degree, I know what my friend is enduring, but really, each grief is unique; they have the heartbreak involved in having thought they were out of the woods and doing fine, and then being dragged back down into a hell of worry and pain. I have been praying for them all day.
And on that note... wow, what else is there to say....
--------
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
I have earned a moment's repose...
Music: Loreena McKennitt, "The Lady of Shalott"
Mood: better than it was!
I have just finished catching up on dishes and sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor and now I have actually earned the right to sit here and type guilt-free. :) I made a pretty good dinner tonight, only 650 calories a plate: chicken breasts grilled on the barbecue with Pappy's and barbecue sauce, a caesar salad, and mashed potatoes with gravy (I cheated and used a gravy packet; with no drippings it's just so much nicer that way). The highest calorie contributor was the mashed potatoes. Even so, I ate 650 calories and I actually feel full. Like, I should have even stopped a few bites sooner. Is this what it's like for normal people? I had always thought I was the normal one, being basically an appetite on legs. I always thought people who ate small portions were either torturing themselves or putting on an act. But maybe there's hope for me to change my habits on a lifelong basis.
I was so darn crabby this afternoon. It was a combination of several factors: the literal pain in my neck, the lack of sleep last night, and my wonderfully bouncy exuberant children who really need to learn how to behave in the grocery store. They can be behaving totally normally in the car and then we go in the store and they're running and bouncing and hopping and yelling and picking each other up. Every time we go there I have to ride herd on them really hard. T says they do not do this with him. I think (and he agrees) that going to the store with Mommy is a bore, but going with Daddy is a treat because it's so rare. They haven't gotten spankings in quite a while, both being old enough to understand having privileges removed instead. But maybe a firm swat where it will do the most good would serve better than telling them, "you guys are going to be sorry when you get home and you want to do X"; perhaps home is just too far away for their hyperactive little brains to worry about.
No swimming tonight on account of my shoulder. I am trying to muster up the energy for a walk; I know I'd love it once I was doing it but I just can't bear the thought of it right now. I am enjoying being sedentary too darn much. Maybe if I get a good night's sleep tonight I'll go out first thing in the morning while T gets ready for work. Morning is even better than evening for walking. Besides, I did just burn 150 calories mopping. ;-) I think I'll settle for a nice game of computer Scrabble instead. By the way, if anyone has Scrabble 2.0 (that's the one they were giving away in cereal boxes for a while recently) and would like to help me figure out how to play a game together, I'm, er, game! :) Drop me a note and we'll set it up.
--------
blah
Music: None, kids are watching a movie
Mood: A wee bit blah
I have been stuck at -11 pounds for four days now. This is frustrating. And by and large, I've been behaving so well! Maybe I'm bloating, or something.
My neck is still stiff and sore from last night's swimming incident. It hurts to turn my head (which makes driving fun) or to look up or down. In the night it was absolutely excruciating any time I moved so I did not sleep well. T was so kind to me this morning, bringing me aspirin and milk while I writhed in pain, trying not to move too much.
It didn't help that an old hotel about a mile from our house burned down last night. It's been abandoned for years. It was this old wooden building with a few cabins around it; it hadn't been anything but a target for vandals for quite some time. So in the middle of the night we were awakened three separate times by sirens roaring by, and then the smoke was so heavy that our eyes were burning -- or course, it being summer, any window that's not reachable from the ground is open at night. By the time I got up this morning the smoke was cleared away, except that along the floors in the house you can still smell it (which is kind of weird). So between the sirens, the smoke, my neck, and the fact that I was tired from swimming to begin with last night (I was literally almost falling asleep standing up while I helped T collimate his telescope), I got out of bed this morning feeling like I'd had negative hours of sleep. I am having fantasies about the kids going to sleep so that I can too. Not happening, however. sigh.
--------
Monday, August 18, 2003
OUCH
Music: Rebecca St. James -- "Amazing Love"
Mood: Cautious. Very cautious.
Note: don't you hate it when you accidentally hit "alt" instead of "shift" when you're typing and some menu pops up and you've no idea what you've just done?
I just got back from swimming. I swam for 25 minutes, good aerobic heart rate and all. I also managed to nearly inhale half the pool. I am not a coordinated individual and this causes problems when I try to actually swim correctly. In my mom's words (and my mom is a REALLY tactful person, so you know if she says something harsh, it's really ten million times worse than that), I have always managed to look like I'm in the last seconds of drowning when I swim. I don't feel that way, but apparently I really look it. (I don't dance well either. Perhaps Mom would compare that to an epileptic seizure?) I did manage to learn how to swim with enough form to barely squeak by in the one or two brief swimming units we had in high school PE (no, our high school doesn't have a pool. ha! It doesn't even have a cafeteria! no, we rode school buses to the town pool for PE class). But then ten or eleven years went by before I set foot in a pool without a child. Anyone who has children knows that you can't actually swim while they're in the pool; you have to be constantly supervising. So I hadn't actually tried to swim in quite a while, and that brief spurt of knowing something about form had flown out the proverbial window. So I look moderately ridiculous when I swim (and that's even without the swimming cap), but it's good exercise and I like being in the water so I endure the knowledge that everyone goes home and laughs at me, and I just do it. Anyway. Tonight I was trying to make my body remember how to do the crawl stroke and I kept getting my timing off and inhaling while my face was in the water. Very poor idea. Also, I managed to really rip something in my shoulder -- which, while being a good excuse to stop before I drowned, is not very pleasant. I have a stabbing sort of pain from the top of the right side of my neck down to my upper arm. It even (horrors!) hurts to type. Notice how I am persevering; aren't I a very strong person? My massage therapist friend is always telling me whenever I ask (which is often) when to ice and when to use heat. And I know because of this that heat is NOT for injuries, but man, it seems like a heating pad on there would feel unbelievably good right now.
And now I am totally famished. The little demon on my shoulder is telling me to go ahead and eat something; I DID work out after all. Get thee behind me; I am not wasting this pain! We are almost out of diet Cokes. I suppose (sigh) I can drink water. ;-) I do need to make some iced tea; I have made almost none this summer, can you believe that? ("Perhaps," my logical self reminds me, "this has something to do with the 28 pounds of diet Coke cans your son recycled today?")
I have just looked at the fish tank and realized that I can barely see the gravel at the bottom through the leftover food. (that plecostamos is NOT earning his keep!). So I will be all virtuous and go take care of that now.
--------
miscellaneous ramblings
Music: Deep Blue Something, "Breakfast At Tiffany's" -- I had thought this was by Toad the Wet Sprocket! whoops! :)
Mood: Cheerful
We went to the valley and took LT's cans and bottles to the recycler today. He wound up with $54. This is spending money for the fair; he is going to buy two books of ride tickets and have the rest ($30) to spend on food or treats or save for Christmas shopping or who knows what. He gets all our bottles and cans in exchange for doing the work involved in smashing and sorting them; also, there are a few people who know he does this and save their recyclables for him also. About three times a year he turns them in and gets his loot. :)
Somehow we can never go to the city without taking longer than we think we will. Today we went to Smart and Final to look around (verdict: more expensive than Costco, but considering that we wouldn't use Costco enough to make up the cost of our membership, still a good deal). They have banana split boats, which I've been hunting for since January, when I wanted to have banana splits at our playoff game party (only in California... and maybe south Texas... ;-). Anyway, after Smart and Final, we went to Wal-Mart to get LT a pair of Wranglers, since not only were his only remaining pair getting too snug on him, but he also wore them while helping me paint his sister's dresser a couple of months ago. >:-[. I managed to pass the 14c crayons without adding to our collection, and I even resisted the lure of the 20c pencil/crayon boxes... which I had just bought at 67c apiece a few days ago. We went to the mall so I could get a swimming cap. I am so looking forward to going swimming this evening even though I will look like a total pinhead; hopefully I will NOT be the only person there this time. It will be nice to know that I'm not chlorinating my hair like I have been the last few times I've gone. I've got enough split ends without doing that. I need to get my ends trimmed but I hate to spend a ton of money and feel all dumpy going to a salon just to get that done. I think as a reward for myself once I've lost all the weight I want to lose, I will treat myself to a new outfit, some makeup, and a nice haircut. Maybe on the day I take C to the Nutcracker. I am thinking about getting my hair cut short, and donating the length of it (if it's in decent enough shape) to Locks of Love, once I'm thinner. I really do NOT look good with short hair and extra weight -- my face gets rounded and my head looks so small on top of my big body. I have broad shoulders to begin with and the extra weight just adds to the problem. But when my face is thinner, a short haircut really does suit it nicely, if I can find a person to do a good enough job on it.
Speaking of weight, I'm still down 11 pounds, and I've been a good girl today. AND I found myself having to hike up my shorts a lot today. Suffice it to say, that has never been a problem in the past. They aren't terribly loose as I sit here but when I stand up and practice good posture they droop a little.
OK, I just got a huge major craving for chocolate chip cookies. What am I supposed to DO about this kind of thing? I do not want to be one of those people who always goes around saying, "oh, no, that's too many calories," and yet, I also do not want to be one of those people who keep creeping on more and more weight until they have to be hauled out of their chairs by strong relatives anytime they've sat down. So far my plan is to reward myself once a week, if I've had a losing week, by allowing myself one small (200 calories or less) indulgence. But am I never to have a banana split or an Its-It bar again? (I suppose I could exchange an Its-It for dinner occasionally, but one banana split would fill my entire day's calorie ration and then some, most likely...). I do not want to condemn myself to a life of eating only boring food. But I really, really, REALLY want to be a size 10 or 12 (dare I even hope for an 8? nah) instead of a 14 or 16, too. I know that one treat a week won't necessarily keep that from happening, especially once I'm in "maintain" mode rather than losing mode. But right now I just feel like I have to keep an iron grip on my discipline or all this progress will just evaporate.
I keep meaning to post about this really cool site I found the other day: FindYourSpot.com. You answer a survey (I am a total sucker for surveys regardless of the content, and this one is really fun and funny) and then, based on your answers, they pull from their database of places the 25 cities/towns that would supposedly be the best fit for you. I got a lot of southern small towns (not a single response was for Kalifornia; I think that had to do with my answer on the "government: less is more?" question). Really, you should try it. Even if you're never going to move away from the place you live, it's still interesting. Realistically, we will probably never live in any of those places, unless we somehow became independently wealthy. It's one of the traps of having a great government job -- it makes it hard to settle for less. Not that T makes oodles of money, but he has job security, benefits, a good retirement program, a job that he likes, and an income that will support a family by itself if we live carefully -- this last in particular is increasingly rare in our daycare-and-public-school-based economy. It's too scary to contemplate moving to a place where he'd have to work in the private sector. ;-). Really, whatever God has in mind would be fantastic. Politically I'd love to live somewhere else. However, having lived in the same rural area since I was born, I am not eager to move away from it, especially since my kids' grandparents are here. Not just for the kids' sake either; I love my parents to pieces and wouldn't enjoy being in a position where I could only see them a few times a year.
--------
Sunday, August 17, 2003
Evening Walk
Music: None; the kids are watching an execrable movie (Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure,, which is a movie I despise because it's stupid, but I can't think of any rational objection to it other than that so they get to watch it occasionally)
Mood: Exultant
I just finished my evening walk. It was a GOOD one. I walked hard and fast for 40 minutes; I went the gentlest way down the hill and the way with the most harsh uphills on the way back to really get my heart rate pumping. And even so I could really enjoy it on a purely aesthetic level too. I love the smells I catch along the way (I am a very scent-oriented person; under certain circumstances, some smells can bring nostalgic tears to my eyes, isn't that sappy?). This is a very small town, and you're never far from "nature"; the residential street I like best runs right along the edge of town, and you can smell the tarweed and the trees really strongly. Someone's lawn sprinkler had gone past the edge of their lawn, and hit the tarweed in the field beside it, so it smelled like summer rain. As I walked along I could smell showery smells through someone's window, the remnant of a barbecue, and then (mmm) the wonderful muddy, minty, blackberryish smell of the creek. I lived alongside that creek for a total of about 8 of my growing-up years, so that smell is a biggie on my nostalgia list. My mom used to pick blackberries along it by the bushel in the summertime, and sell them to make a little extra money.
The town where I live is a historic one, and you can buy "listening tours" which you are supposed to put in your tape deck while you drive around town looking at the historically significant sites -- places like the courthouse, newspaper office, old houses, who knows what. I have my own personal memories of all these places, having lived here for 28 years (ie, my whole life). For instance, just after I walk down a really steep hill from my house, I pass a hotel where you can always hear people in the pool in the summer. One summer, my few friends and I spent a week or two going from hotel to hotel in town, swimming in the pools until someone caught on that we weren't guests and kicked us out. At that place, I don't know how they did it but they caught on to us in like four minutes. We'd barely gotten wet. Walking along further, I came to Mr. E's house -- he was a teacher at the elementary school for years, and I went to church with his family. His house is this lovely big boxy two-story at the edge of town. It has been sad the last few years -- he went from having a houseful of people to being all alone; his daughters (whom I remember as infants, and I know I'm not old, but it is weird to have that happen) went off to college and their own lives, and his wife died. Now he is a bona fide old man, and he never even seemed close to that until so recently.
Then I walked by the new library, the building of which was an epoch in our life. :) They were working on it the summer when LT was just 4 and C was not quite 1. We used to walk down there with C in the backpack, and bring a picnic, and sit on the lawn of the courthouse in the shade to watch the construction equipment at work. LT never wanted to leave. And of course there's the courthouse itself. One summer when I was maybe 11, my brother and I were bored at home (miles from anywhere), and we would come into town with our mother each day. To fill in the time, we would go to the courthouse and watch the hearings and trials and such. It was very informative, and fascinating.
Then I passed the high school, and I swear I could smell the auditorium smell (heaven) all the way down by the road. Next to the high school is the elementary school. It is strange that two places with so many horrible memories can also have some very pleasant associations. It is an odd contradiction, and frequently I try to deny that I have any good memories from those places at all, even to myself. Although really, the vast bulk of the bad memories are from elementary school and junior high -- high school kind of pales in comparison on the misery scale -- and the vast bulk of the good memories are from high school, not that it was all fun and games socially either, but it was a big improvement. So I suppose it makes more sense than I'd thought. Anyway.
Down the hill, I went past the place where someone has a spring in the lower part of their yard; there's a sort of concrete retaining wall at one end of it, and a life preserver on it, and an ancient sign that says, "WATCH YOUR CHILDREN". I used to think that the little pond there was intended as a place to swim, and used to beg my parents to let us swim there. It was years before I caught on that all that was there just as a precaution in case someone fell in. It smells cool there, and feels cool, like it always has, and the dirt sidewalk is carpeted with alyssum along the edges in springtime, humming with bees.
And there's the cinderblock retaining wall that we used to walk on when I was little. There's someone's lawn on one side, and a drop to the dirt pathway on the other. When you're six and you're walking on top holding Daddy's hand, it's a perilous height; in actuality the tallest part barely reaches my shoulder. The first time I held my son's hand as he walked up there I felt a jarring sense of rightness -- with all its faults, it seemed so natural and good that I would be bringing up my children in this same place, having their young eyes taking in the same things mine did at their age.
I could go on and on (I haven't even gotten to downtown) but I'll stop. It is so nice to have a diary, and to get this stuff all out in a way that, realistically, nobody will probably ever read, so I won't be awfully embarrassed about my sappiness or feel like I have to hold a lot back, but there's always the possibility that someone will read it, which makes it worth typing out to begin with.
--------
Quiet...
I am one of those people who love rearranging furniture. Today I shifted our couch around perpendicular to where it used to be, and I'm trying to nag T into moving the piano to the place where the couch used to be, and putting the computer where the piano is, and the armchair where the computer desk is. So far he isn't caving. ;-).
Other than that today is pretty quiet, borderline boring. My parents took us to lunch (just at Burger King, and I was a good girl, had just a chicken whopper which is only 600 calories) -- with a 600 calorie dinner (which I've already had), that keeps me under 1500 for the day, and I still have hopes for a walk after T gets back from I'm-not-going-to-say-it,-i-will-have-one-diary-entry-without-mentioning-it with LT. C would rather watch (sigh) A Bug's Life than go for a walk with me, and that's OK because with her sweet short little legs, I can't get anywhere near "brisk" anyway, unless she's on my shoulders which can only last for so long before my neck protests too much. Today's weight is the same as yesterday's -- no big shock since I ate almost exactly the number of calories I would need to maintain my weight yesterday. :) Since lunch ended we've just been home -- did a lot of tidying in the living room, and the aforementioned rearranging, and not much else.
Locally, public school starts in a week. Then will begin the dozen-times-a-day question: "Why aren't you in school?" when LT is at the store or the post office or the park with me in the middle of the day. Sometimes I feel like making a placard for his chest saying, "I'm homeschooled, that's why not. It's also why I'm so well-mannered toward adults, even rude ones, and why my natural inquisitiveness hasn't been squelched by six hours a day of sitting unnaturally still listening to stuff I either already know or can't quite grasp." Most people around here, to be fair, think homeschooling is great, and we get far more positive reactions than negative ones. But it's kind of like being asked when you're due when you're pregnant -- you just get kind of tired of it.
There is a new bookstore going in in Smallish Shopping City. T and I have one of our silly bets about it -- if it is finished before October 15th, I win, and if it's after, he wins. I hate to break it to my darling life-mate but HE'S GONNA LOSE. We aren't sure what the stakes are yet -- usually it's something like getting to choose the next few movies for our biweekly date nights. The building is totally done, the glass is in the windows, the outside decorative brickwork is done, and they were laying the sidewalks when I drove by yesterday. I say it's a matter of a month or less before "my bookstore" (as the kids say) is ready for me to go in and spend a leisurely afternoon browsing. :)
--------
Saturday, August 16, 2003
Long Day
Music: Sinead O'Connor singing Elton John/Bernie Taupin's "Sacrifice"
Mood: Placid but a little guilty...
This has been one of those days where it seems impossible that this morning was just this morning, know what I mean? First off, T's alarm didn't go off. He's supposed to be at a breakfast meeting he goes to every Saturday at 7:30; this morning he woke me up at by saying "uh oh" as he looked at our clock-radio, which said 7:35. So I bustled out of bed to mix the juice he'd been assigned to bring, while he got dressed. C woke up, saw him, hopped out of bed, and there went my chances of getting back to sleep [g].
After T got back from his meeting, we drove him to (you guessed it) the place where he's working on the derby car. (note: the link doesn't take you to HIS derby car, although those of you who know us know that he has a web page about that. It just takes you to a generic demo derby association site that will explain what the heck a destruction derby is, in case you're not rednecky enough to know already ;-) ). Then we headed straight down to Smallish Shopping City, to do some necessary grocery shopping. I bought twelve more boxes of crayons at Wal-Mart. Who can pass up 14c a box? You should be proud that I did not get twice that many! I also bought pull-ups (someday C will be dry at night and then we will no longer have to buy those... SOMEday...) and half a dozen little tank-top girls' shirts which Wal-Mart had marked down to $1 apiece. They're not my favorite style of shirt -- even on a 3-year-old they manage to look vaguely trampy, although I don't think they're meant to -- but they'll do her for wearing around the house. That child goes through more laundry than any 3 other kids.
We ate lunch at Hometown Buffet, which we all like for different reasons. I like it because the kids get their food right away, and there's enough variety that we can get a small portion of each of a dozen things. Also, it has a fair salad bar, and often, I can get meatloaf, which I never have at home because T hates it. The kids like it because they can get all the macaroni and cheese they can eat, and all the chocolate milk they can pour in on top of that. After a quick trip through the grocery store we came home. I got some delectable-looking pork sirloin chops which are simmering away in some 98%-fat-free cream-of-mushroom soup as I type this.
Drat. I just realized that the watermelon is still in the trunk.
I have been virtuously folding laundry. I hate, hate, hate this task. I don't mind washing it and drying it (although sometimes I cheat and use the dryer rather than the clothesline in summer, if I don't feel like going out in the blazing heat), but I always end up with every one of my laundry baskets in use, holding heaps of clean unfolded laundry. Then I put in a movie and sit there and fold it all while I watch; unless I want to waste my alone-after-kids-are-asleep time in folding laundry rather than reading, generally I have to pick a movie that is at least kid-friendly (ie no graphic sex or profanity and nothing scary). Today the movie was The Man From Snowy River, chosen as a surprise for me by LT, who loves to surprise people. We had a funny little incident as it was beginning. C, who is 3, was watching the opening credits. "Kirk Douglas" showed up on the screen; she said, "K!" I was a little surprised she knew K; then "Jack Thompson" went up on the screen, and she called out, "Jack!" WHO HAS BEEN TEACHING MY CHILD? I wondered. I mean, we talk about letters in an abstract way; she's just barely getting to the part where she learns they all have sounds that go along with them. I rewound the tape, paused it, and had her go up and point to where it said Jack. She pointed in just the right place, of course, and as I was about to call Mensa or something, I asked her who had taught her that. "Grandpa! See! The thing with the line across the top and the line down and the curl at the bottom, that's a JACK!" O-K, sanity restored, she was talking about playing cards. Still and all, I was pleased she remembered that, and she could tell me most of the other letters that were on the screen as well. (this also explains why she knew "K". Grandpa's teaching her to be quite a card shark apparently ;-).
I hadn't watched Snowy River in years. I *have* watched it as an adult, so I am not quite as infatuated with it as I was as a little girl. I remember going to a party at the house of one of my school friends; we had rented that movie, or maybe it was Return to Snowy River. Picture half a dozen preteen girls staring at the screen, and imagine our outcries and rewindings when the horse dies after the fall down the hill -- we were sure that the horse was REALLY dead and that those people who made that movie were pure murderers.
Diet-wise I have been baaaad today. I have got to get ahold of myself. NO SNACKS tomorrow, 1200 calories or DIE. Well, not really DIE, that's a bit strong. But today I have eaten a bowl of cheerios with milk, two Hostess donuts which T brought home from his breakfast meeting, a cautious assortment of bits of meat, some green beans, and a salad with lowfat dressing at Hometown Buffet, and, just now, a pork cutlet with a tiny bit of mushroom-soup-based sauce. Total about 2000 calories, which is well over my limit. After the children go to bed, I will attempt to force myself to put on my Reebok exercise video and do it. I'd also LOVE to go for a half-hour's brisk walk, but you can't do "brisk" with a 7 yo and a 3 yo, and I can't leave them behind at home. (must start getting up with T at 5 so that I can do a brisk walk while he gets ready for work).
LT (age 7) has been declaring since just after his last birthday, in the spring, that his next birthday will have a Star Wars theme. He is obsessed with Star Wars. He has the entire party planned out, minute by minute, and he's done a very good job. Maybe he's got a career as a party planner in his future, who knows. They're to play "Pin The Light Saber In Luke's Hand" among other games. We all think it's pretty cool that his first real obsession has been with Star Wars, because, of course, our generation was also nuts about the same movies at his age. (He has only seen the middle 3 episodes, with the exception of Episode 1 which he watched ages ago, when T rented it just after it came out on DVD). I particularly remember a set of Star Wars bedsheets my brother had; also, one Halloween (when I was in kindergarten, around the time of the release of The Empire Strikes Back), I dressed up as Princess Leia, and he was Darth Vader. Weren't WE cute. :)
Speaking of LT, he is now requesting that I vacate the computer chair and let him play one of his games. I'm lobbying for "Curious George Reads, Writes, and Spells"; he's hoping for "Monopoly".
--------
Friday, August 15, 2003
midafternoon
Music: "Hands Clean", Alanis Morissette
Mood: Cheerful
OK, we'll try this again. :) We just got back from Fresno not very long ago. It wasn't as bad as it usually is, except that I was starving. But that wasn't Fresno's fault. Usually, here is what it's like to go to downtown Fresno:
Open up hell.
Add ten degrees.
Pave an area about ten miles by ten miles, and add some tacky architecture, adult video stores, gang shootings, and graffiti.
Today it was not so bad. We DID have to go downtown, but it was not as hot as we thought it would be so that made up for that a bit -- plus we just got out at a military surplus store (did you know you could use an ammunition can as a transmission cooler in a destruction derby car? Me either) and got back in the car and drove away. We had stopped at Krispy Kreme, where I was a REALLY REALLY good girl and did not even get a latte, let alone a caramel donut which looked SO good. LT had brought money and wanted to treat himself and C to a donut. Then we drove through the only nice part of downtown, right alongside the big park they have there, got on the freeway,and headed back toward the foothills and sanity. And FOOD. I came home and ate a part of a barbecued pork strip left over from Wednesday night.
When I hopped on the scale this morning it said my weight was 3 lb lower than it had been yesterday morning. This is weird, since yesterday I horked out, ate three donuts instead of lunch. (bad me). But I also went swimming so I imagine I lost a lot of water. T says he can see a difference in the way I look -- and realistically, I'm down ten pounds; I suppose that should show a bit. But I don't feel like I look any different yet. At any rate I'm not pulling out my "medium clothes" (size 12s) for another ten pounds. Twenty pounds after that I'll have a little party and pull out my "skinny clothes" (not really skinny, they're size 10's) and take them to get cleaned and pressed. Good thing my adult tastes have generally run to timeless kinds of fashion, or else they'd be useless by now. (also, I'm not in high school anymore and I can dress however the heck I want. evil cackle.).
Speaking of high school, my class is having its ten-year reunion in a couple of weeks and I'm not going. I still live in the same town I've always lived in, and the reunion is about a mile from my house, but I just do not want to go. I'm just glad to be out of that environment. There are a few people and things I miss about high school, but none of them are or were part of my class, and if I want to contact the people or revisit the events, I can manage it without hanging around with a bunch of people who managed to do me enough emotional damage from kindergarten through twelfth grade that, even after ten years of freedom, I'm still suffering from some aspects of the complex I developed. (and you wonder why I homeschool my kids...) Also, my life is now. It's not ten years ago. I don't long for those days, I don't feel nostalgic about them, and I am never in the mood to put up with a bunch of people saying, "see how successful I am!!" and the like.
I'm not bitter. Really I'm not. But I'm not going either.
You'll have noticed that my name is hsing-mom, and if you have some creativity you may have figured out that that stands for "homeschooling mom". So why do I never talk about school? :) Because it's summer. In two weeks (from next Tuesday) we'll start our school year. Our school is a mass of contradictions. We follow a standard school year and say the pledge of allegiance and have school desks and do school every day, like school-at-home folks, but our approach to education is really eclectic and not-quite-unschooling. I think this is because I'm relaxed, and T is a drill sergeant at heart. :) So what we have is a good compromise. I've made my goals list for each child (C will be 4 next month and LT is 7) for the year, and done most of my supply shopping. C and I are looking forward to the start of school, and LT is not. Tough cookies, boy, you'll enjoy it more once we're actually in the thick of it. ;)
--------
the round of life Archives | Page 29 of 29
previous ten entries | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 |
