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Thursday, April 26, 2007

shift.

Today I feel... a little better.

Well, except that I actually feel like my sinuses were run over by a truck (there's an interesting mental image). But emotionally, I feel like I've turned a little bit of a corner in the night. Yay for IMing with Jenn and yay for nice cuddles with T and yay for God and hormones and whatever.

Now if I could just get up the motivation to clean the house.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

three things

Thing I don't understand: Knitted food. I mean, more power to you and no offense intended if you're into that sort of thing, but for me personally, well, I'd rather make real food. Which I can then eat. It just seems like forty years from now, the grandchildren of this generation's knitters will be going through their grandmothers' attics, find knitted bagels with lox, and laugh uproariously. (note: LT says it would be nice for a centerpiece, instead of just using fake fruit. Not that you'll see a centerpiece any more complicated than a Styrofoam cup of wildflowers at OUR house -- in fact, I'm having a hard time figuring out where he has ever seen a fake fruit centerpiece -- but I digress. And I stand by my attic statement, regardless of LT's opinion.)

Thing that annoyed me: T went to a going-away party last night for one of his coworkers. It was held one of the two swanky restaurants in town, all California cuisine, and balsamic vinegar and olive oil for your bread instead of butter, and $15 for the very absolute cheapest thing on the rather limited menu, and such things. We ate there once a few years ago when it was new, and pretty much made a solemn compact never to return. Roped into violating this compact, T ordered the aforementioned least-expensive item on the menu and drank water. Which ended up being a complete waste because the other people ordered filet mignon and wine and who knows what all else and then dumped everything into one check and divided it up. So T ended up paying $42 for his $15 item. Oh well, it's only money. It's not like there's a shortage of that or anything.

Thing that made me laugh uproariously and yet also as subtly as possible: C's latest poem. I'm pretty sure she would short-sheet my bed if she knew I was sharing this with all of you, and I may delete this bit later once my regular readers have had their opportunity to enjoy it, but I just can't resist. This is what comes of C riding home in the car whilst thinking about recent history lessons on the French and Indian Wars, I guess.

Seat Belts (And the Indian)

by C

If you were in a car
and in that car you were driving far
If you did not wear seat belts and you stopped suddenly
out you would fly
the world flying by
An Indian comes out of a cave
And says I'll scalp you to the grave
(A) You just play and have fun
(B) You run
Answer (B), you run and yell
that Indian will surely go to Hell
Seat belts are important
Especially for infants.

This public service announcement brough to you by the "Wear a Seatbelt Or Get Scalped" ad campaign. No Indians were harmed during the production of this poem.

Friday, March 16, 2007

snippets

Today I did a bit of spring cleaning on my hard drive (I can never manage to muster the motivation to do the same for my actual house these days). I found some funny and interesting things that I'd completely forgotten about, like a wav file of LT singing the VeggieTales theme, and my old email folders. My goodness gracious I used to get a lot of email. I never understood why people gave me a hard time about it until I looked at the sheer volume of folders I had for sorting it. I think at one point I was on thirty or so different e-mail lists. It made me tired just to see it.

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

Speaking of learning things about myself: I am discovering part of the reason my peers were so annoyed with me when I was a kid (and teen). In history class, I find it very hard to shut up. I am interested, is all, except that because I'm interested I always have something to say. Parts of the class (most notably the current events portion) are kind of a free back-and-forth discussion, and I noticed that I heard my own voice way too often in those discussions, and the instructor was starting to give me That Look, which I never fully understood in school -- the Look which means, "for crying out loud, woman [or child, whatever], will you LET SOMEONE ELSE SAY IT?" So this last Tuesday I tried an experiment: I would not speak in class unless I was directly addressed. Because I knew this would be difficult and because I have a very insistent inner child when it comes to treats, I promised myself a milkshake after class if I succeeded. Also, I allowed Debi (who sits behind me) to monitor me and slap me around if I started to lose control. It was touch and go a few times, but I managed to make it without duct-taping my mouth closed. And really it was a fantastic experience. The class discussion was actually really interesting when other people had a chance to participate, and I felt all virtuous and there was no shut UP Rachel self-flagellation on the way home, like there usually is. Was. Whatever.

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

I am toying with the idea of posting some of my reaction papers -- those weekly current-event essays for history class -- in this space. Goodness knows there's not much other content these days.

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

Monday is T's and my thirteenth wedding anniversary. I've been thinking of us as having been married for thirteen years since the beginning of the year, so I'm used to the number now and it doesn't seem, you know, old and wise anymore, for our marriage to have made it to the ripe old age of thirteen. We are not really doing anything to celebrate it this year. Gas is over $3 a gallon here, so even a 'free' trip to the aquarium would cost $60 or $70 just for the drive, and that's just not happening, especially when you factor in lunch money and parking money and all that sort of thing.

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

LT has just joined the Boy Scouts, and T has signed up as assistant scout master for his troop. LT is a changed boy already. His confidence level is skyrocketing, and he's noticeably more considerate and patient and cheerfully obedient about things like helping out around the house. He even voluntarily came out to the clothesline tonight to help me bring in the laundry. He is also as gung-ho as any freshly-shaved Marine recruit, and he spends much of his spare time studying his handbook and working toward his Tenderfoot rank. This includes exercising, and today we paced off 110 yards from our house so that he could run his daily quarter-mile by going out and back twice. I tried it myself. It took me two minutes (nine seconds less than LT), which made me feel kind of old and decrepit. I've never been a good runner, but I used to be able to do a passing-grade under-eight-minute mile, something I don't see happening again anytime in this lifetime.

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

Also re: LT: We took him to the pediatrician a while back because his toeing-in had gotten a bit worse (he has toed in to some degree since he learned to walk; an orthopedist we saw about it when he was a toddler said he would outgrow it, but he never did) and his spine was looking crooked. It turns out that one of his legs is very slightly shorter than the other (so slightly that it's taken us nearly eleven years to notice it). We're supposed to be getting a referral to a pediatric orthopedist about that.

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

C is getting over a sore throat and ear infection, which came on the heels of a day or two of headache and fever. The poor princess was awake almost all night on Tuesday with the earache. As a result, of course, so was I, and I'm still feeling a bit off-balance as a result. The freakish early time change is not helping, although I love the longer evenings. It helps that we're in the middle of an uncanny-seeming warm spell -- it's been gorgeous weather. High 70's, fresh breezes, wildflowers popping out, green grass, puffy clouds, bliss.

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

If I were more awake I would try harder to think of an apt and coherent closing for this space, but I give up. The End.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

my life in list form

• Snow. It started while I was at my history class on Tuesday and stopped around midnight. It melted almost completely yesterday.

• Pukey child. Poor C caught a tummy bug and threw up every hour all night long on Tuesday. (the better to keep tabs on the snow, I guess). She spent Wednesday enthroned on the couch alternating between watching videos one after the other -- she only gets to do this when she's sick -- and sleeping. Her marked improvement happened Wednesday evening while I was at the store spending fifteen precious dollars on Gatorade and sundry other sick-person food, having been unable to do so earlier due to the combined forces of the sick child (couldn't see myself bringing her in the store) and the snow. She has now completely recovered and is in high spirits. Meanwhile I'm still a bit off due to lack of sleep.

• Good history test score. Yay! I am making a bit of a game out of this class. The idea is to see how well I can do in a class when I really try. Goodness knows I never found that out in high school.

• Ahem. The rough draft is not started yet. Not even one sentence. This is problematic. At some time when my kids aren't banging on the piano (making 'scary music', I think, is their goal at this precise moment), I will have to sit down and just dive into it. It's never as hard as I think it will be.

• I have not one but two memes in the works. I'm plotting them, anyway. You would be surprised, judging by how often I actually write in this thing, at how often I think about writing in it, but don't. Also, I should do my books today; I just realized this. They were all re-reads; it's been that kind of comfort-read sort of month.

• I actually wrote a pen-and-ink letter and mailed it. I haven't done this in ages. I should do it more often.

• Librivox is fun. I'm progressing with O Pioneers! and trying to talk myself out of diving into a bunch of O. Henry stories.

• Knitting is going along pretty well, actually. I finished the back of C's sweater (or... whose-ever sweater, since I'm not sure it's going to fit C and yes I checked my gauge but then she grew) and am about halfway done with the front. Then I will do the sleeves. THEN I will see how hard it is to assemble it. Maybe it will end up being my grandchild's sweater, knowing how good I am at assembling completed projects.

• That 'whose-ever' is so wrong. I know. But how else can you denote that? 'The sweater belonging to whomever' doesn't exactly flow either.

• Apparently a lot of people have the same problem with their iPods that I did, judging by my search hits in the last month. Dude, people, just thank Apple for the warranty and send the suckers back. My new-or-refurbished replacement is doing fine thus far.

• We put off the Beth Moore study for a while. We'll do it someday when our lives are less crazy. Like in, say, 2059. (Or this spring. Whatever.)

• Over the past few days, LT and I have finished all twenty-five levels of Silversphere. Click that link at your own risk; I will not be held liable for undone laundry or torn-out hair.

• And I think that's all. At least, that's all I have time to write.
  

Sunday, February 11, 2007

oh, whatever.

You know those memes people do, where they ask their readers to interview them and then they post the results in their blogs? I've been kind of wanting to do one of those, except that I'm kind of short on readers these days, what with the fact that my last ten posts include one from Christmas. I think. Anyway. So I am going to pretend that someone has interviewed me. Yes, I know, I am so totally clever. At least I'm honest.

So, Rachel, why haven't you been blogging lately?
Because every creative atom has apparently been sucked from my body.

Could you tell me why it is that it is the 42nd day of 2007, and yet your 365-day photo project is stuck on day 34?
See above. Also, it is winter, and stuff is ugly, and it gets dark before dinner, and my kids hate going for walks. But mostly... see above.

How is your knitting project coming?
Hey, I knitted an inch of it during history class last week! That makes, wow, a whole... inch. In the past week.

And how's history class?
Fun. I like going to class. I am beginning to hate writing five-paragraph essays, but hey, I only have to write eleven more of them in the next eleven weeks, so that's not too bad. I'm not (twitch) freaking out (twitch) about the research paper one bit (twitch). (Seriously, I am reading this awesome set of books in my research called The Debate on the Constitution which should be in Every. American's. Library. Unfortunately they cost $50 even on Amazon. Ouch. Thank you, library.)

Finances kind of tight?
Oh, not since we found out we get to pay almost SIX HUNDRED MORE DOLLARS to the freaking IRS this year. Not at all. Especially since we were already on a strict budget for the next two months for reasons too complicated to discuss in this space (and also, there's that whole--whatsitcalled--privacy thing). Good thing we can get by with cheap foods like spaghetti and beans. Good thing I'm never going to want to cook those foods again after April of 2007.

OK, for the last question, let's lighten up a bit. What's the funniest thing you've seen this week?
OK. I was at my mom's yesterday, right? And I remembered that I needed to find my high-school diploma and transcripts because I would eventually need those when I went to do my educational plan thingamabob down at the college, maybe this Friday, or I would at least need them sometime in, oh, four years or so, when I apply to nursing school. Plus, looking through my parents' thick file folder of Rachel's Things was more fun than working on my reaction paper, which is what I had told myself I would do in my spare time at Mom's, and hey, I had written the title. So I was looking through this stack of stuff, and in addition to the diploma, my SAT scores, and my letter of acceptance to the Conservatory of Music at the University of the Pacific (sob), none of which I had seen in many years, I found this:

In case you can't read it (I did, after all, write it in cursive and in pencil on the dark green cover), that says: Ireland: The Emerald Isle. I have a way with titles, no? Also, observe the carefully-rendered outline map.

Title page. I got an A-. At the time I probably thought this was a rip-off, but in re-reading it, I can see how topic sentences like "Ireland has quite a few resources" and "Irish people must be happy to be who they are" or "Ireland has a great deal of history" (my personal favorite) could wear on a person.

CHECK OUT the illustrative decorations. Every single page of text had a crayon shamrock on it. I bet you wonder why I didn't go into graphic design.

The report came complete with pictures cut out of travel magazines. Boys and girls, did you know that before Priceline.com, there were things called "travel agencies"? Some people thought travel agencies were there to arrange trips for you; we were too poor to use them for that, and plus we had AAA, so we just glommed their free magazines for school reports.

My masterpiece. Notice that it is done in the colors of the Irish flag. Notice that even after writing a multi-page report on Ireland I had not caught on to the fact that Northern Ireland is part of a whole separate country. I have not always been the politically astute historian you see before you. (ha ha! oh, just let me collect myself here.)

So. I think I'll just go ahead and turn that in instead of the paper (twitch) I'm planning to write on the topic of the origin of the Bill of Rights. Saved myself a lot of work, no?

Monday, January 29, 2007

I am here. Sort of.

Thank you, Denise, for sending me a "I hope you're not dead" (roughly paraphrased) comment and obligating me to prove that I do indeed have a pulse and measurable brain waves by writing an actual post. (Seriously, there was a time, when I was really involved in this thing and posted every day, sometimes more than once a day, when I used to actually devote some time to wondering how my survivors would let my vast blogging public -- um, sarcasm -- know if I were to drop dead suddenly. And you thought only melodramatic fourteen-year-olds played out those kinds of scenarios!)

So. Here's what's been happening.

History class is going well. I am actually really liking it. I am using index cards and taking actual notes. I almost never did this in high school (and truly never, with the index cards). About the only classes where I really took any notes were math and science ones, and in those classes I would randomly find a piece of paper or open a notebook to a random page, write the date so I'd know what day the assignment was for (because I honestly usually believed that I would do my homework. Does that fit the oft-used definition of insanity, do you think?), and take down whatever the teacher taught that day. Then I would never look at those notes again.

I can feel all of you college-educated teachery types shuddering from here.

Anyway, the night class is a lot of fun. I probably don't have to work as hard as I do, because the teacher (do you call them professors if they have master's degrees and are teaching one night class for a community college but teach junior high history during the day? Someone honestly please fill me in. I've been just calling him a teacher) gives all indications of being not only the world's easiest grader, but also he outright says that he will tell us on review days exactly what will be on the test, sometimes including answers to specific questions. So I have a friend who mocks me for studying so hard, but you know what, I don't have to be doing this at all. My husband could continue to support me, I don't have to have a job or a career or any further education than I do right now. I'm doing this because I want to, and the main reason I want to is that I enjoy learning and I enjoy a challenge. Also, I can pretty much guarantee that at some point I will have a class that's not so easy, and if I don't establish some sort of organized study habits, that will be Analytic Geometry, sixth period, spring semester 1992 all over again. And we don't want that, do we.

Plus I fully intend to have the kids quiz me with my index cards and that will lead to discussions that will count as their US History lessons too. Two birds with one stone and all that.

OK. Enough about school. On to the real news.

MY IPOD IS BROKEN.

I am so, so sad. It charged and did its little sync routine thing Saturday morning, and I ejected it properly and all that, and then when I went to use it, it wouldn't turn on (and no, the Hold switch was not on). So I plugged it into the computer and the only thing it would do was give me this "Please Wait, Very Low Battery" message, even though the battery was fully charged. The computer won't even SEE it. (My theory is that it crashed because I got it too close to full. It had about 400M of its 4G capacity free, and it was the fullest I'd ever made it.) It's under warranty, so the Apple people are going to take care of it, but in the meanwhile, folding laundry is much, much less fun.

Um, what else. Jenn and Debi and I are embarking on a Beth Moore online study, "Believing God". I really truly need this right now. We should be blogging about it on Fridays or Saturdays.

Also, I am almost out of Librivox projects, and we can't have that, so I just signed up to read O Pioneers! for them. I won't bother posting about it here, but I'll post when it's done. Or if you're absolutely bored and you have nothing else to do at all you can follow its progress here. "Listen" links will show up as I finish and upload chapters.

I am knitting a cotton sweater for C. I am having a wonderful time with it. Cotton is SO SO NICE. I also bought some actual real wool, to make a scarf and hat for myself (and teach myself cabling), but i haven't started those yet.

And I think that's all. I have a ton of things I should be doing, so I'll go do them.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

the hard-working coed

It's a good thing I didn't make a resolution to blog more, isn't it.

Seriously, I have been really busy. I have been subscribing to podcasts and knitting and listening to my iPod. All these things take much time, as I'm sure you understand.

OK, OK, so I have been doing a little laundry too. See, T made me this shelf in my laundry room that folds down from the wall (in the fashion of a very large built-in ironing board, except I don't need one of those, seeing as how I pretty much never iron, unless I'm sewing, and having to travel back to the laundry room to press a seam would be a bit of a hindrance in most projects) and it is just perfect for folding my laundry. Now I pull a load out of the dryer, shift one over from the washer and start it drying, load the washer and start it, and then bring down my handy-dandy shelf table and stand right there and fold the freshly cleaned and dried clothes (while listening to a podcast or a Librivox book on my iPod, generally). And then I call the kids in to take theirs to their rooms, and put my clothes and T's on our bed. The baskets -- they do not sit around full of clean clothes. There is no... no coffee table involved. It's all rather new to me but it seems to be an interesting way of life and I'm seeing how I like it. So far so good.

Also, my dad had a project this past week that involved digging a trench on Saturday (with a trencher, and my main contribution here was to stand around with my camera around my neck looking like an idiot while Dad, T and my brother ran the thing), and then laying PVC pipe and electrical conduit and all kinds of lovely things in all these several hundred feet of trench on Monday, Tuesday, and today. And then covering up the trenches with dirt. I was slightly more instrumental in these tasks, since it was just my dad and myself and the kids who were doing the work. My muscles are very very disgruntled, but it felt good to do something with a little permanence -- something, unlike sweeping a floor or folding clothes, that wouldn't be undone within twenty-four hours. Except for that wee little thing about one of the joints bursting underground this evening after I left, and water gushing out and washing out many many many feet of freshly-filled trench much more deeply than it had originally been dug, moving all our carefully-placed dirt into the barn at the bottom of the hill, which barn now has a pond in the feed room . LT pointed out helpfully that this happened not long after I verbalized that bit about a job staying done. Maybe God was displeased at my lack of submission to the housewife's repetitive role, I dunno.

And ALSO, also also ALSO, I signed up for a night class on Tuesday! An actual, honest, graded, for-credit, first-small-step-on-the-long-road-to-the-RN-after-my-name class! It's a history class, and it's the first time since 1993 that I will have done anything for a grade. Or honestly much of anything associated with any kind of merit-based, objective assessment. This is exciting and scary at the same time. What if I'm still an undisciplined loser? What if I somehow turned stupid in the past thirteen years? What if I totally completely embarrass myself in class??

Well, honestly, that last one is sort of a given.

In keeping with my status as a matriculated individual, T has started calling me a coed (usually preceded by some endearing spouses-only adjective or another). I've told him that if he doesn't watch out I'll wear a plaid skirt and oxfords on the first day of class just to provoke him. He, um, doesn't seem to mind that idea. Men. I swear.

Monday, December 25, 2006

you know you're a grown-up when...

...you're glad to see the end of Christmas Day.

It was nowhere near as bad as last year, when C was sick and T thought she was well enough to go to his immuno-compromised stepmother's house for dinner but she threw up there and wasn't THAT grand (really, this is one of the hardest kinds of little decisions to make. Do we wreck the holiday for everyone for what could be a case of 'I ate too much junk', or do you run the risk of finidng out too late that you should have?). Fortunately. It was just crazy. And there were only 13 people here! I mean, I've had more and it's gone more smoothly. This year the main problems were that a) I started dinner too late, because I swear time went straight from 8:30 AM to 10:50, I've no idea how or why but I swear it did, and b) the turkey was possessed by the devil. It just WOULD NOT COOK as fast as it usually does. And there was this whole comedy of errors wherein I checked it with the broken meat thermometer (why hadn't I already thrown this out if I knew it was broken? [kicks self]) and thought it was done so I turned the roaster oven off but then I remembered about that stupid meat thermometer and checked it with the real one and it still had twenty degrees to go. And then the roaster oven and the coffee maker conspired between them to throw the overload-protection switch on their joint power strip, which we didn't find out until I noticed that the turkey juices weren't hissing and sizzling anymore, and that it was remarkably stubborn about staying at 165 degrees. So we ended up just having the ham with all the sides for dinner, and I didn't even carve the turkey until just before we ate dessert. Yes, this means I now have the meat from an ENTIRE TURKEY in my refrigerator and WHEN are we ever going to eat that? sigh.

And I'm getting a kind of hoarse sore throat thingy so I DID NOT sleep well last night what with the congestion. Also, this morning after we finished opening presents, C had a little fit because she didn't get this one particular enormous stuffed duck that she wanted, so she had to get sent to her room until she could stop being so Veruca Salt-ish, at which point she shifted from crying because of greed into crying because of (a flair for the dramatic and) shame. So THAT made for a fun little interlude.

However. Everyone left with full tummies (we had seven pies. For thirteen people.), and the dishes are clean, thanks to my angelic and hard-working mom, and everything was good to eat and we remembered Jesus, so even if the day didn't feel birthdayish to me in the slightest, it's all good. Especially since the three days leading up to today have felt like three birthdays all in a row. I hope that doesn't mean I have to be 35 now.

P.S. I have been putting pictures up at Flickr lately. I am planning something different for the photo blog for next year, and Flickr has become the place where I upload the few pictures I take that I think are worth showing to anyone. There are a lot of older photos up there right now too. If you are someone I actually know, online or off, and you'd like access to our family album which is set to private, drop me a line and let me know and It Shall Be Done.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

zoom.

Life feels just a wee bit crazy right now. This last weekend was packed full of a variety of things -- shopping and a flat tire* on Friday; a baby shower (for which Debi and I had to come up with games**, ugh), extended-family drama, and a visit to my in-laws' on Saturday; and a birthday party for one of LT's friends followed by T's birthday party here at our house on Sunday. Except it didn't feel like there were any commas involved, let alone any semicolons; it was more like shoppingtripflattirebabyshowerfamilydramainlawsbirthdaypartybirthdayparty. I'm still trying to recover; the nightly routine neither helps or is helped by this insanity. Meaning that I still stay up late but I'm too exhausted to do the things I'm supposed to do, so I putter around a bit, do one or two tasks, go to bed in the wee sma's, and get up at an obscene hour***, falling slowly behind on sewing projects, which means frantic nights of scrabbling to catch up are coming soon.

Meanwhile I went to the community chorus concert (ah, remember the days when I was in the chorus? I miss that so much) last night, and all of a sudden BOOM, it felt like Christmas. So that was nice. Except now that it feels like Christmas I know how very behind I am. Yikes.

*I changed this tire by myself. Granted, some passing strangers were helpful in telling me about the little slit doohickey in my bumper -- I had never changed a tire on my beloved Dart before -- where the jack went, and I had a little trouble figuring out how to convince the thing that I really did want it to go back down when I was done, but overall this was actually a kind of positive experience, because all the rest of the shopping trip I went around with the glow of a woman who has successfully changed her own tire, practically unaided.

**You know, every woman with whom I have spoken about baby shower games hates them (except the friend for whom we were having the shower, of course; she requested them). I don't like them much myself. Why do we continue to do this to ourselves? Anyone? Anyone? I went to a shower a couple of months ago where instead of games the organizers had set up tables where the guests sat, with scrapbooking supplies in little homemade kits, and at the end of the shower there was a 'baby's first year' album to give to the mom. It's the only scrapbooking I have ever done, and if it hadn't been for Debi, who was my partner, the poor baby's June page would have been a sad sight indeed. But it was a far better idea than a bunch of kids' party games for grown women, in my opinion.

***I won't tell you what time it was this morning, but it started with a 1. And it wasn't the first hour that starts with 1. I am so ashamed.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

a million snippets. Or eight. Whatever.

Hmm. List, or rows of asterisks? decisions, decisions.

• You know what is really good? Or... are really good? But that construction is very awkward. The thing is, it's plural, but -- oh, shut up, Rachel. Hershey's kisses with peanut butter are extremely, extremely good. Oh my gosh. I needed a little bit of chocolate to use while transcribing, and as I reached out my hand for the Roast Almond bar (the Jolly Ranchers were already in my basket), I saw Hershey's Kisses with Peanut Butter and couldn't resist. Like I wasn't fat enough already! Guess what I'm going to buy to give to T to put in my stocking!

• Something else that's really good: "White and Nerdy". I have always loved Weird Al, but he has totally surpassed himself here. I can embarrass myself in record time (which, considering my history, is quite an accomplishment) singing this song aloud, especially at, say, a Bible-study potluck when Debi is showing me her iPod. Not that I've DONE that, of course, that's a purely hypothetical example. Even my kids can sing along, and they get the humor although they don't quite get the concept of "nerdy". 'Why can't people just like what they like?' That's homeschooled social deprivation for you.

• I have been sewing sewing sewing. Actually I have a little nightly All-Christmas-All-The-Time routine going (just when I had firmly resolved to start going to bed when normal people go to bed, instead of when some normal people get out of bed! Oh well. December 26th, maybe). As soon as the kids are in bed (which has to happen actually on time for a change or the whole thing falls apart), I transcribe my one file a day for this really well-timed job I've got going, which will hopefully enable me to purchase my husband's birthday and Christmas presents with money that he himself did not work to earn, for a change. This takes anywhere from an hour for a shorty where people speak clearly and the background noise is minimized, to two or three hours if it's a long one recorded inside a jet engine which I SWEAR I have had to do in the past. Or maybe it was a food court, or a trade show, or something. Same difference.
  
  So. I transcribe. Then I get up from the computer where I've fallen into a kind of dozing-while-typing thing (the chocolate helps keep this at bay, honest, I swear that's precisely why I bought it; it was a medical/occupational necessity, see) and I go into the dining room where my sewing machine currently lives because we are RENTING OUT my SEWING ROOM (sob), and I work on whatever project is current. I just finished [whispering] a Jedi bathrobe for LT, and now I'm working on a nightgown for C, after which I'll make a robe for my mom (guess I don't have to whisper that one... she doesn't even have Internet access) and then matching aprons for myself and C and then if I have time a Jedi tunic pajama top and possibly some doll clothes. Also, on Saturday C and I made five adorable fleece hats (we fringed the tops) for her friends for Christmas. I am a busy bee, no?
  
  So. I transcribe, and then I sew, and then I head back to the computer to read a chapter of Anne of Green Gables for Librivox/my dad. I have fifteen chapters to go if I'm going to give it to Dad for Christmas. I love, love, love that book, so it's not really a hardship; it's a great way to fit in some reading before I go collapse in bed, generally sometime between 2 and 3, but it has on occasion been as late as 4.

• In case the above paragraph didn't convince you that I've gone around the bend, I was at Joann (fabric/craft store) at 6 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving. The dollar-a-yard flannel sucks me in every year. I had a great day shopping, I really did. Even buying a washing machine went smoothly. (what an UNsatisfying thing to spend money on, though. Ugh.)

• I've kind of given up on the bouclé sweater for now (got tired of it, honestly, and I think it's going to be too small, and it wouldn't be ready by Christmas anyway so it got bumped). Now I'm working on a camouflage-colored hat that I'm sure Kat would have had done in an hour but on which I have been doggedly working (in my vast stretches of spare time, of course) for almost a week. I LOVE CIRCULAR NEEDLES. They solve the biggest problem I have with knitting, to wit: I am extremely, terribly uncoordinated, as anyone who has ever read two words of this blog knows. Figuring out how to control the 14" needles weighted down by all that yarn while simultaneously making the two inches at the tips do what I wanted them to do was sometimes a bit of a stumbling block. The circular needles kind of hold onto themselves (itself?), leaving my hands free to mess up stitches with abandon.

• Because I am so awesome, I cooked a turkey on Monday. The thing is, I really don't like turkey. I like the stuff that goes along with it, but the bird itself I could take or leave, and I get so tired of it this time of year*, but honestly I just couldn't pass up $7 for a week's worth of food at Vons. And I couldn't keep it in the freezer until Christmas (which I am hosting, ack, in my cave of a house) because it took up too much space, and Thanksgiving was at my in-laws' so we didn't have any leftovers from that, so I made a big bang-up turkey dinner this week. Because two in the space of a month apparently just isn't enough.
  
  *Because of this turkey-related ennui, one year when I hosted Christmas I had the brilliant idea to make lasagna and its fixings instead. If I do say so myself, I make really good lasagna, yet this went over like the heaviest, hugest, fattest, most solid of lead balloons. So much for bucking tradition in this family.

• Somehow what was supposed to be very strictly a two-week trial membership to Netflix turned into $20 a month and a queue as long as my arm, with selections ranging from the first season of "The Muppet Show" to Bride and Prejudice which I've always wanted to watch and something called Junebug which I had never ever heard of but it looked really good. I think it started because the kids and T ran out of time on the Star Blazers series, so we were going to keep it for Just One Month so that they could finish. And then I started watching movie trailers one after the other one night. Is there some kind of award for the most insidious, clever marketing technique ever invented? Because that should win, hands-down. EAT MORE POPCORN has absolutely nothing on it. You just sit there, and movie previews just flow by one after the other in front of you (doesn't help that I LOVE previews, actually seek them out on DVDs, and am always bummed if I'm too late for them at the movie theater), and there's this ADD button, and... wow. Before you know it it's three AM (this was before the All Christmas All The Time routine got started) and you have at least five months' worth of movies lined up that you just can't not watch. Brilliant.

• You know, I've been a mother for over ten years now (sniff), and just yesterday I finally figured out how to elucidate something that should have been really simple. All stay-at-home moms, as well as all people who have ever spoken to a stay-at-home mom or, heaven forbid, insulted a SAHM by saying that she 'doesn't work' or that her 'life is a weekend' (Susan, I'm still flabbergasted by this one) know that the hardest aspect of our chosen career is the neverendingness of it. You're always on duty blah blah blah you've heard this all before. Of course I am familiar with the head-exploding frustration of this problem. And yet I chose this life and I truly love it and you couldn't pay me enough to give it up, and I don't want to sound like I don't love my kids or that I regret for a minute the decision to devote the most energetic years of my life to their care and education. Last night as I was dealing with bedtime, two tightly-wound offspring, and two of the possibly messiest bedrooms I have ever personally encountered, I thought, I need a vacation. Not -- this is key, this is where the guilt thing always came in before when I would let that beautiful V word pop into my brain -- not from my kids. I want them around. I just need a vacation (very brief -- and the thought of anyone else filling the position while I'm gone actually makes me, well, jealous, which probably means I have some undiagnosed psychiatric disorder) from being responsible for them, from being the person who has to bear the brunt of their messes and noises and feed them and wash and fold their neverfreakingending laundry.

Ha. Like that will ever happen.

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