These Things Happened Today

1.  A physical therapy patient came into the office today.  He looked at me rather oddly while he was signing in, but he said nothing.  I chalked it up to the fact that I am subbing at a satellite office rather than being at the main office, so I also said nothing.  On the way out, he stopped by the front desk again.

"D'ya live in H'sk'll?"

"Pardon?"

"D'ya live in Haskell?"

"Oh!  No, sure don't, sorry."

"Hrmph. *grunt of acknowledgement* Well, ya gotta twin there."

I now have twins in McAlester and Haskell as well as one that makes appearances at one of the local hospitals.  I'm going to start telling people I'm a clone.

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2.  Doodlebug came bounding down the stairs this evening.

"MOM!  MOM!  You've got to see this.  It's SO CUTE!!!"

"What is??"

"Tom.  He's in his hide, and he has his head and one leg sticking out, and it's adorable."

I reflected for a moment that it will only be a matter of time before he stops describing anything without boobs as 'cute' and decided to go see what the lizard was doing.  Glad I went.  The little bugger was, in fact, as cute as advertised.  (Note to Self: Must start taking phone along for these things so I can share the with you all.)

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3.  After dinner, Boo decided she wanted to mime instead of talk.  I figured I'd relish the silence for ohhhh, 30 seconds or so.  But no.  She stuck it out for a good 20 minutes.  The fact that her brother joined in did help, I'll admit, especially when they started miming me and Oz and making fun of us while attempting to stifle giggles because, you know, mimes don't make noise.

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4.  I unpacked an Amazon box this evening.  Well, OK, I unpacked some of it.  One of the things I had bought was a new sieve/strainer for the kitchen since my old one is falling apart.  As I unpacked it, Oz came into the kitchen to see what I had purchased.  When he saw the strainer, his face puckered.

"Hmmmmm…"

"What?"

"Well… I bought you one of those for Christmas.  But where did I put it?"

He found it, after searching various rooms and his car.  His purchase is nicer than mine.  Now to decide whether to return mine or just have two.  I'll probably double up or give mine to someone.  The debate continues…

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Happy End of 2014, y'all!

A Day Off

So I'm sitting at home today.  I would be at work, but my girly is still sleeping, and I'll be darned if I'm going to wake her.  She needs her rest, and she'll want her mama when she wakes up.  Poor child just wasn't at all well yesterday afternoon/evening; she even missed her last violin lesson of 2014.  

I wasn't looking for a day off - heaven knows they needed me at work, but they'll have to make do.  My Boo is more important.  However… if I'm going to have a day off, I'm going to enjoy it!  I don't really have any errands to run (I need to pick up a few gifts for a few people, mostly teachers, between now and Christmas, but it'll happen sooner or later), and I'm sure my wee one won't be up to going anywhere anyway, so I'm doing some of the things that I would be doing if I didn't have a job - namely catching up on reading blogs, cross-stitching, reading, watching TV/movies, and maybe even baking.  Haven't entirely decided on that last one yet.  Since this is the first day I've taken off of work since I started 3+ months ago, it feels completely weird to be sitting on the couch at 8:46 a.m. wearing lounge pants and a hoodie.  Good weird, though, not bad weird.

As I was reading some of the blogs in my roll this morning, I ran across this little gem from Mom to the Screaming Masses.  She'd swiped it out of the back of a magazine, but I thought it was A) a lot better than a lot of the 'surveys' I've filled out in the past and B) a good way to get to know someone.  So I'm doing it.  #waystokilltime

Signature Dish: Jambalaya and pavlova.  Yes, I just combined Cajun/southern food and an Australian dessert.  I cook all over the globe.  It happens.

Worst Thing I Ate This Week: If it has to be eating, then the peppermint bark we made and I ate is probably right up there on the list, but the hot buttered rum I downed last night would be a close second.

Favorite Junk Food: Totino's.  Or mozzarella sticks.

Favorite Board Game: MONOPOLY.  But nobody will play with me.  Wonder why? *innocent face*

Household Chore I Enjoy: Cooking. Baking.   <---I'm stealing this answer from MttSM, because she and I are alike in this regard.  I could spend all day in the kitchen.  Apparently my daughter told her teacher yesterday that I should be running the school kitchens because the teacher said her leftover nachos looked delicious.

My Secret Cleaning Weapon: Essential oils, particularly lemon and lavender.  I haven't purchased a bottle of 409 - or any of its kin - in close to 10 years.  

Etiquette Pet Peeve: People who don't RSVP.  It does not mean, "Hey, lemme know if you wanna come at the last minute when you realize you have nothing better to do."  It means, "I need to know if you are OR IF YOU ARE NOT coming so that I can plan my event/life around you."  In this day of texting and Facebook and 1000 other forms of communication, it will not kill anyone to say yay or nay to an invitation.

I Will Never Care About: your gym exploits.  If you've run a 5K or marathon or something for the first time, by all means post it, but I do not need to know the details of your every workout.  Facebook, I'm looking at you.

The Last Thing I Bought Online Was: Ohhhhh I can't post that here.  Suffice it to say I did some shopping this morning for a birthday or two.   

I Drive: 2012 Ford Explorer, silver.  Her name is Sylvia.

Good Habit: Laundry.  It never piles up because I have a laundry routine - Knits and delicates get washed on Thursdays; knits, denim, towels, and sheets (biweekly) get done on Sundays. 

Bad Habit: Picking my cuticles. I'm trying to stop, honest to God.  <--- I only do this during the winter, but it's horrible.  I wrapped a Band-Aid around my left thumb over the weekend and did fine, but the minute the Band-Aid came off, I started picking again.  Ugh.

Before Company Arrives I: Sweep/vacuum the fur off the floors and wipe the bathrooms down, and depending on who it is, clean the kitchen and dust. 

Cat/Dog/Other: CATS.

Stuff I Can't Live Without: Texting. This from the woman who thought she would never text anyone EVER when she first got her phone.  Unlimited texting is the bomb-diggity.

If I Had An Extra Hour Today, I Would: If I could magically give myself an extra hour, I would tell time to shove it and use the magic to make my daughter feel better.  I'd give up an hour for her, and then some.

My Handbag Is:  TINY!  I have a little denim one and a little brown/tan woven one that I swap out.  They both desperately need to be washed.  And when I say little, the denim one is barely large enough to hold my wallet (yes, I have a men's wallet), phone, bottle of Aleve, work badge, ink pen, and keys.

On My Bucket List: Go to Germany.

Thanksgiving and Other Stuff

Time for my somewhat-regular, useless, narcissistic information dump, I think.  I'm sitting on the couch with a mug of lemon-honey tea next to me.  My neck is wrapped in a heated rice bag.  These things are 'necessary' because I have both a sore throat and a sore neck.  Note to husband: I need a new pillow for the bed.  I seem to have killed this one, and I suspect that is the cause of my sore neck.  The sore throat I'm chalking up to a combination of hormones and winter.

Work is good.  I really feel like I'm part of the team now, and I've been handed a couple of small but important extra responsibilities.  I am pleased.  Today was a completely exhausting day, the kind of nonstop day we haven't had for several weeks, and I'm proud to say that while we were all thoroughly worn out by the end of it, we made it through intact.  Somehow it all got done… and done well, I think.  We'll see.

We had our office Thanksgiving lunch today.  I brought pear pie.  I hadn't made it in quite a while, and I'm proud to say it was delicious.  Or so I've been told.  I don't want to brag.  I did enjoy eating a slice of it myself, but my opinion is biased, so I'd prefer to go off of the thoughts of others.  I'll make another one soon for a coworker who specifically requested one and even offered to pay for it.  Yes, I will be the office pie maker.  I am okay with this.

Thanksgiving here at the house next week should be fun.  In addition to my mom and sister and my in-laws, we've invited some friends over as well, ones who don't have any family local or who don't have a place to crash where they can be surrounded by folks they know.  I'm going to fix a fresh ham (need to get that picked up ASAP) and a brisket and let everyone else bring sides or desserts.  I may also let the kids make some cookies or brownies.  We'll see.

We had our first snow here over the weekend.  It wasn't much - a little less than an inch, I'd say - but it was the first real snow we've had in a while and certainly the first *November* snow I can remember in even longer.  It didn't mess up the roads, either, so that was a major bonus.  A family friend of Oz's is visiting from Sydney this week, so he came for lunch. Oz fixed chili, and I made cornbread muffins.  Everyone went back for seconds.  'Tis the season for much eating!

Tomorrow is Boo's violin recital, and next week the kids are out of school.  Oz is going to work from home and I'm hopeful that he'll be able to bring them to the office one day to see Mama in her new environment.  Then they have three weeks of school and then it's Christmas break.  I need to work something out for childcare for those two weeks, I guess, since I don't exactly have time off and won't be able to get it at this point, anyway… between a coworker who took the week of Christmas off as part of her hiring terms and covering for a satellite office the week of New Year's, it won't happen.

I've started ordering Christmas gifts for the kiddos (and Oz) and stashing them away.  Hard to believe that'll be here in a little more than a month.  Nobody's getting anything big or expensive this year.  Nobody has asked; nobody shall receive.  It's just working like that this time around.

And on that bombshell, I need to go do dishes, and then I'm going to go wash my nasty hair, reheat this rice bag, and read in pajama pants until I fall asleep.  Night!

Purging & Productivity

I did not intend to be productive this weekend.  In fact, when I woke up on Saturday morning, it was with the intention of staying in bed for the entire day because I lacked both the motivation and the energy to move.  I had been sliding up and down (mostly down) the depression scale for more than a week, and it seemed that it had gotten the better of me again, to the point where I could no longer move.

However, spending the morning in bed may have been exactly what the doctor ordered.

I emerged about noon.  And then I got busy.  Very, very busy.  I made cinnamon rolls and fish & chips.  I made a menu for the week, devised a grocery list and went to the store with Doodlebug (and even stocked up on stuff for a few extra meals in case the weather turns sour later this week… having a few extra meals on hand is not a bad idea this time of year).  I cleaned a few things, tidied up some others, and generally put things in order.  Before the kids went to bed, we played a couple of family games of Uno, and after they went to bed, I spent quite a while discussing tattoo designs with Oz.  I hit the sack late, but it felt good.  *I* felt good.

The productivity continued today.  I had promised the kids I would spend some time with them, and despite Doodlebug's protests that he wanted to do something indoors (i.e. laser tag), I told them that this was going to be one of the last beautiful fall days and that I would only agree to an outdoor activity.  So they put on their skates, and Oz and I walked behind them as they skated down one of the trails of a major park system.  It was a beautiful 2-mile adventure.

We got home, and I tidied up some more and had the kids start cleaning out the game room.  This had needed to be done for a long, long time, but today I found the motivation to figure out what furniture needs to go where and how it all needs to work together.  They got everything cleaned out in a little more than an hour and a half, and Oz helped get rid of some extra furniture.  Then we moved the computer and desk from the guest room into the game room.  Eventually we'll move the chaise lounge and ottoman from the game room into the guest room and get a couch for the game room, but that hasn't happened yet.  I ordered a lamp for the guest room as well, and I'm going to have Oz hang a painting in there.  I need to get a new trash can for that room as well, but one thing at a time.

In the meantime, I started some Guinness beef stew for dinner (it's getting close to being done as I type this) and cleaned out the desk drawer.  I also ordered a few Christmas gifts for the munchkins and started officially planning the giant Thanksgiving that we're going to host here this year.

Next weekend I intend to clean out the attic while the kids clean out their bedrooms.  They'll hate me, but if it can get done before the holidays, I'll be a very happy camper.

I may clean out the bathroom cabinets tonight.  That needs to happen, too, and I figure I should get it done while I have the energy!

Because tomorrow, it's back to work.

Things I Have Learned

Occasionally people are surprised to discover my age.  The comment I hear most often is, "You look younger/that age, but you act so much older!" My current favorite is from a 22-year-old coworker who likes to tell me how 'wise' I am.

My closest friends are mostly older than I am, in two cases by more than 12 years.  I'm sure part of that is due to the fact that I married and had my children young, but I also like to think I have learned a lot out of life already.  I have also been told for many, many years that I have an "old soul."

Sometimes, though, the things I have picked up have come through hard experience… or are just plain fun.

Without further ado, I present to you a list of 10 random Friday thoughts about truths I have learned over the years.  Feel free to add your own!!

1.  Happiness cannot come from without.  You must find your own peace.

2 (aka 1a).  If you radiate happiness, it shows up as beauty.  The happiest people have the 'it' factor that makes the difference between someone plain and someone beautiful or handsome.

3.  That being said, expensive clothes and haircuts, if you can afford them, are worth every penny.  Clothes really can make the (wo)man.  They look better, fit better, and wear better.  Goodwill and consignment shops are my friends.

4.  The Joneses suck.  You aren't walking their path.  Walk your own and find others who can accept you as you are.

5.  People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.  Sometimes it's hard to know who is who until you're completely suicidal and sitting on your back porch with a blade and a beer.  The people you call in those moments?  They're the lifetimers.  I'm fortunate - I have several people on that list.

6.  People (remember the Joneses?) will judge you.  Judging them back accomplishes nothing.  Laugh (to yourself) at their insecurities and move on.

7.  Accept compliments politely.  Give them regularly.

8.  You are never done learning.  Even if you don't learn something from an academic standpoint, life will teach you things.

9.  Be passionate about at least one thing.  It's worth knowing one thing well.

10.  Everyone has stories.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

All the Nothing

Today is our first day of OMG IT'S SUMMER BREAK AND WE DON'T HAVE SCHOOL LET'S SLEEP IN AND DO ALL THE NOTHING.

At least, that's what today is according to my children.  You'd have thought that they were working from dawn till dusk every single day for the last 10 months.  *snort*

As for me, it's a Monday.  I got up, found the blood of life coffee, stripped and remade the bed, started the laundry, pulled ribs out of the freezer to thaw for tomorrow night's dinner, sat down and made a menu and grocery list for the next couple of weeks (the kids did sort of help with that… they both want to make a meal and wanted to pick the recipes themselves), etc., etc., etc.

The thing I didn't do was go upstairs and do any school with them, which means that now, at 2:53 p.m., I am parked on the couch with nothing to do.  And by 'nothing,' I mean that I could read a book I'm reading, work on my cross-stitch project, blog (WINNER!), obsessively check Facebook, text friends, or clean something.  Hobbies, mostly.  I need direction here.  Doing nothing is not something I do well.

Oh, and cleaning something isn't gonna happen.  It should, because I ran into a friend at the grocery store today, and she and her son are coming over tomorrow, but… no.  I cleaned on Friday.  That counts, right?

I did make a couple of important phone calls today.  One was to the pediatrician's office to schedule Doodlebug's physical for camp.  Why they require him to have one is beyond me, but there's a form and it has to be signed by the doctor saying that he's healthy enough to go running about in 100+-degree Oklahoma summer heat.  Or something like that.  I remembered that had to happen last night about 11 p.m. and figured I'd better call and make the appointment ASAP, and it turned out it was a good thing I called because the NP who had been at the office for several years is gone now (she was there two months ago… I'm not going to ask) and it's just the pediatrician again, and she's always busy.  I'll threaten to stalk her house if SHE ever decides to quit/move/retire before my kids are old enough to not need her any more.  Just sayin'.  Anyway, I also needed to get Doodlebug's prescription refill written and ALSO needed (yeah, I was totally the brand-new receptionist's favorite person today) to get a copy of Boo's immunization schedule.

I needed the last one so I can go down to the school sometime in the next… sooner or later, whenever I get around to it… and actually enroll the munchkins.  Details.

Speaking of the school, the psychologist called me a little while ago.  I have a meeting with him and several other people at the middle school - teachers, the gifted program director, heaven only knows who else… he said he was going to do some wrangling to get as many people there as possible - so we can get Doodlebug officially put into the gifted program and, at the same time, write a tentative 504 plan for his ASD issues.

Which means I really must actually enroll the child soon-ish.  They have most of his details; I just haven't filled out the form.

For now, however, I'm going to borrow a page from the kids' book and DO ALL THE NOTHING.

Sounds like a good Monday plan to me.

Becoming an Adult

In my head, there are certain things one should do/be/have to become a proper adult.  For example, you should be able to drive a car and fill it up with gas.  You should be able to pay a bill either online or in person.

The list is somewhat extensive.

But somewhere, for some reason, in my head, I decided that joining a gym was a very 'adult' thing to do.  It somehow meant that you were too old to go run around the park or find physical activities that would work in lieu of using machines and someone else's weights to keep in shape.

Then I got old.  I didn't become an adult… I just got old.

And I realized that while I do occasionally work out here at home using the Xbox or Wii or on-demand videos or whatever, and I do have weights that I break out for those occasions, I'm not exactly fit.  And I'm not going to the park to walk.  And I'm not joining any teams to play whatever sport might be happening that season.

And I really don't like myself when I'm out of shape.  My back goes into spasm, my joints ache more, my digestive system acts up, my hormones aren't happy… it's not a pretty picture.

So a couple of weeks ago, after much cajoling, I went to a gym with a friend of mine.  She's been a member for several months but hadn't been going regularly and really wanted a fitness buddy to help keep her on the straight and narrow.

And I liked it.

I liked it so much I went back a few days later and joined.  I could have done a free week-long trial but that only let me in the door during regular business hours, and we really wanted to meet right near their closing time, so it was easier to just join.

I have gone to the gym 4 days in the last week.  FOUR.  And I'm down the equivalent number of pounds.  Oz and Boo have both commented that my midsection seems smaller, and I agree… a pair of shorts that was slightly loose a week ago is now almost falling off my waist, and when I went to use one of the leg machines yesterday, I noticed I needed to add another 10 lbs. to the weights.

It feels really, really good.

I don't have a specific goal weight in mind, really.  I just want to be in shape.  In GOOD shape.  To set a good example for my kids.

Somehow, this feels really, really grown up.

Because Random Thursday

A few little tidbits of no importance to get you through this Thursday:

1.  Doodlebug finished Math-U-See Zeta last week.  This week he picked up the Art of Problem Solving prealgebra book.  And then I watched his brain explode.  I have to admit, it's not an easy book to follow.  It starts off by saying, "Hey look, we're going to introduce you to proofs!" and then uses half a dozen of them in the first few pages.  Whew.  Overwhelming.  But he's starting to get the hang of it.  (I say that, and he just handed me a paper of incorrect answers... be right back while we figure these out together.)  I'm happy for him to do as much as he wants in the remaining three weeks we have in our school year, and if he loses it over summer, he loses it.  I'm not getting rid of the book for a while yet.

2.  We meet with the school psychologist again next week to go over the test results of both kids' testing.  Apparently the forms that Oz and I filled out have triggered some extra testing in a couple of areas - I assume in the autism spectrum and/or ADHD category - so he'll be doing that, too.  I'm really, really glad we're not trying to do all this in the middle of next school year.  Getting the process started early has been nice.  Here's hoping we can get the 504 set up prior to August.

3.  Boo has her spring violin recital tonight.  At this point, she's kind of blasé about the whole thing.  Can't blame her; I rather am, too.  She wants to take some time over summer break to work up some fun stuff.  I'm looking forward to that as well.

4.  I went to a gym for the first time in my life on Monday night.  It wasn't bad.  I can't decide if I want to join or not.  On the one hand, if I'm paying for it, I know I'll go, and I'll work out, and I do want to get in shape.  On the other hand, I'm not sure I got any better workout than I do here at home when I do make myself exercise.  I'm debating.

5.  Summer break is going to be interminably long this year.  I warned Oz last night that the household may descend into actual chaos since I'll have the kids for three months straight with little to no structure whatsoever.  Doodlebug has one week of camp, and right now Boo is set up for one week of morning acting camp and wants to attend a horse-riding day camp, and I may even let her sign up for a one- or two-day sewing camp, because all of those together roughly equal the total of the cost for Doodlebug's away camp, but regardless of how many camps I sign them up for, I'm going to have at least one child with me at all times.  Last year they were both gone for a week - well, Doodlebug was at away camp and Boo was at a day camp - and I was insanely productive during those days.  I cleaned out closets, painted the school room, ran a bunch of errands that needed to be run but that nobody wanted to run with me, and met up with a friend or two for coffee sans kids... it was glorious.  I'm rather sad that I won't get that break this year.

6.  Boo has suddenly forgotten how to math.  Seriously, in the last week all mathematical ability has flown out the window.  She's been sitting there staring at her math paper for 45 minutes.  She won't ask for help.  She won't let herself take a break.  She won't try, either, though.  She just sits and stares and has convinced herself it's all too hard.  I'm chalking it up to end-of-year doneness and the cold she's been fighting, because I don't think there's anything else going on.  She knows the stuff; she's just having a mental block.

7.  People around here are preemptively freaking out about a storm system that's supposed to move through over the weekend.  I feel no such mental stress.  I'll clean out the closet under the stairs on Sunday if it comes to that, but I'm not very worried.  Yet.  When the red and black start to crop on the radar, then I'll worry.  Ain't nobody got time for worrying now!

8.  I cancelled the boy's orthodontic appointment that was scheduled for early May.  We have decided to nix the braces for now.  Just easier all 'round, and if he wants them when he's an adult, fine.  Right now it'd just be for cosmetic purposes and he doesn't care. 

And now the boy wants to use the computer for writing.  I s'pose I should let him, huh? 

Heartwarming Moments

That moment when…

… your 11-year-old son parks himself on the couch next to you and says, "Mom, I am going to snuggle you.  You have 30 seconds to prepare for snuggling.  29… 28… 27… "

… your just-turned-9-year-old daughter gets to sit between two of her closest friends at lunch, and when the meal is over and you're walking out of the restaurant, she says to the friend next to her, "Let's walk out arm in arm like they do in books."  And they do.

… your husband comes home from working all day, sees that you're still on the couch at 5:45 p.m. and decides to take care of dinner.  Steak, baked potatoes, grilled zucchini, and a lovely bottle of Cabernet sauvignon.

… you're exhausted and want nothing more than to climb into bed right after dinner, but you're the mom - so the children hunt you down and climb up on the bed, and the cats wander in and hop up on the bed, too, and the husband sits on the nearby armchair, so you have your bed and your family, and what can really be better than that?

… you find this on Pinterest and can only sit there and think, "YES" to every single one (click and zoom to enlarge or visit my Pinterest page):

… you come back from Spring Break after three weeks and everyone's done with school by 1:30, even the boy who was grouchy when he first woke up, but he snapped out of it and did what needed to be done like a mature human being.

… you strew your daughter's birthday gifts around the house throughout the day because you were too tired to wrap them the night before, and every time she finds something she shrieks with happiness and gives you a giant hug.  Way better than one big anticlimactic, "Thanks, Mom & Dad!"  

… your son comes home from an all-night gaming session (formerly known as a sleepover) and says he's played a geography game.  "And, Mom, I see what you mean when you say that world geography isn't taught very well.  We had to place flags on the countries or states.  And we all knew the US states, but then it moved to Europe, and all they knew was Italy and France!  They didn't even know England!"  (And yes, I'm painfully aware that my kids know this at the expense of knowing American history… but I'm working on that.  Really I am.)

… you call your sister and tell her that you're about to do something that is seriously going to piss off someone you both know, and she tells you that you're doing the right thing, anyway, and for the same exact reasons you had already said to yourself but didn't entirely believe.

So many good things each day.  I just have to remember to write them down sometimes!  What good thing happened to you lately?

Breaks and Endings

I realized today that I haven't posted since Valentine's Day.  That day, of course, was wonderful.  But then last week happened.

I knew it was coming.  My grandmother's health had been steadily declining since the beginning of the year, and I'd had a hunch for more than a month that this would be 'the week.'  And it was.  My mother called at 4 a.m. Wednesday to let me know that she was on her way up to Kansas and would be grabbing my sister on the way.  I waited by the phone all day until I got the word around 4:30 p.m., and then I went up Thursday morning to help my mother with final arrangements.  Oz was amazing and took care of the kids all day Thursday and Friday, including finding an entire outfit for Doodlebug and a new dress for Boo, before bringing them up for the funeral Saturday morning.  (No, I'm not sad.  It was time.  So no need for condolences.)

We got back home late yesterday afternoon.  It was odd driving home and realizing that I now have almost no reason to go back up to Kansas.  I've promised my great-aunt that I'll swing by to say hi to her if I'm up, but that might - might - be once a year, not the 3-4 times a year I'd been making the drive before.  So that was weird.

Last week was also an interest-led week around here.  I wish I was clever enough to have taken photos or videos of their presentations, but since we just did them this morning, I was tired and didn't.  Doodlebug studied particle accelerators and made a poster about them (he typed up quite the paper!); Boo studied rodents and made a Powerpoint presentation.

Then this is the last week of February already.  Spring Break is coming up quickly, and I have only a month to get ready for Boo's 9th birthday, and I haven't even begun to get her gifts yet.  I don't even know what to get her, if I'm honest.  What do you get a 9-year-old girl?  I'm at a loss.

So if I'm absent for the next few weeks, just pretend you don't notice.  March is going to be a hot mess. I'll be back sooner or later, and I'm thinking of you all!

Death is Contagious

You know how there are those days/weeks/months when it seems like everyone is getting married?  And then those days/weeks/months when everyone seems to be popping out kids left and right (and almost all of them are one gender)?

Yeah, well, welcome to the Month of Death.  El mes de muerte.  I do enjoy alliteration, perhaps a little too much.

In the last three days, three of my friends have been affected by deaths in their family.  One of my neighbors lost of her grandfather, a good friend of mine lost her father, and one of my best friends lost her grandmother.

My heart aches for them.  There is little I can do but offer support (and keep a neighborly eye on vacant homes), but I wish I could do more.

Still, sometimes I marvel at how the universe works.  My neighbor had already planned to visit her grandfather in Arizona this week when she got the news that he had passed.  So instead of celebrating a birthday, she'll be attending a funeral, but at least she has the ability to go and say goodbye.  The friend who lost her grandmother had already planned to take a trip this week as well.  She had intended to go on more of a pleasure trip to meet her boyfriend's family down South, but now she's planning a trip to West Virginia instead.  My friend who lost her father had moved her parents into her home a few months ago so she could work on their health and make their lives better.  She is the one for whom I probably ache the most.  Losing a grandparent is hard, yes, but not as unexpected.  Losing a parent is harder, I would imagine, especially when you've been planning to spend years with them and suddenly realize time has run out.

Logically, I know that death is part of life, and when it happens, it happens.  We all deal with it, and as we get older, we see more of it and with each one, we become slightly more inured to the idea of our own eventual demise (OK, I do, at least).  However, it still surprises me how these things happen in groups, how suddenly there might be a whole slew of marriages or divorces or babies or deaths within only a few months.

It almost makes me hold my breath… to see which domino will fall next.  Hopefully it is none of yours.

It is February

Approximately one month from now, the kids, Oz, and I will be headed to Australia.  It seems surreal.  Know what else seems surreal?  That this year is more than a month old already.  I haven't even bothered to get out the Valentine's decorations because no sooner will I do that than it will be time to put them away and fling something else at the mantel, and ain't nobody got time for that.  There are snowflake candles up there right now, and that's it.  I'm happy for that to suffice until the equinox, and then I'll decorate for spring.  Maybe.

We wound up being able to get Boo back yesterday evening.  Some of the snow melted off the roads (thanks to a couple of warm days, the asphalt wasn't entirely at freezing temp), and Oz was able to get out and get her.  I also sent him a short grocery list so we would have food to make it through the week.  It's probably a good thing he was able to do that, because while I had the best of intentions of getting to the store today, it's now 2 p.m. and school is nowhere near completed.  The girl is bouncing and humming and whistling and talking and won't. shut. up. and the boy is squawking incessantly.  I'm about to go out of my mind.  Plus the house is disGUSting, and while I know I should be cleaning it, I refuse to do it until everyone else around here is willing to do their fair shares.  Seriously, the kitchen counters got scrubbed two days ago, and I set my hand on the counter near the coffee maker last night and about went insane. Dearest Oz, WHEN are you going to learn that ground coffee is not invisible to the eye/touch?  And then this morning I got up to find crumbs all over every surface.  Dearest Children, WHEN are you going to learn to wipe up after yourselves when you fix anything?  I'm on kitchen strike until further notice... and master bathroom shower strike as well, after a snarky remark or two from Oz the other night.  Not that he'll have noticed.  I'm sure once he reads this, the shower will get cleaned, but until then, no.  (In other news, I may be PMS-ing, and I am currently of the firm belief that all jeans makers should be required to make PMS-sized jeans... so when you buy a size 12, you get a free size 12+ for those days when the jeans just don't fit right and you know you haven't done anything differently but you weigh 3-4 pounds more and anything you drink goes straight to your bulging muffin top because you haven't peed in days and Holy Hippo, Batman.)

And it's going to snow and people are going to be trapped with me.  This could get ugly.  Just feed me chocolate and stay the hell out of my way.

On second thought, nix the chocolate.  Clearly I don't need any more carbs.

I suppose it's time to go pull the rising bread out of the oven and see if punching that down will do anything to calm my frayed nerves.  I'm so very done with winter, and I'm stir-crazy even though I'm not trapped.  It's either feast or famine lately.  Either we have too many things on a single day or we have nothing.  I'd prefer it all to spread out, just a little bit. 


How's your week looking?

I Escaped!

My friends and I made it out last night.  I was the DD voluntarily, since they both have January birthdays.  I even made darn sure they did one shot at the bar (I let them pick, and they're suicidal, both of them, because they both picked tequila).  We talked, laughed hysterically, people-watched for a while, talked even more, laughed till we cried, and finally ended the night in the wee sma' hours of the morning.

It was rejuvenating.  I can face another week now.

This week my goal is to call up the school and find out what curricula they're using for 3rd and 5th grades and see where the kids stand in relation to their peers.  If Doodlebug looks to be a grade ahead, he'll stay home this fall.  It would be social suicide to put him in seventh grade when his classmates would have had a year to get to know the school, the teachers, and one another.  It's sixth or nothing, and there's no sense moving forward until I know where that stands.  And I want to make sure Boo is still equal to her peers.  I don't foresee problems there.

I want to use my gift certificate to get my car detailed.

Boo is supposed to start her sewing class.

I'm sure this week won't be perfect.  But if I can get through it with fewer tears and less fighting, it'll be a good week.

*poke* *poke* I Think It's Dead...

It is December.  My motivation for doing school with the children is gone.  I think if I could wake up tomorrow and put them on a school bus and wave as it drove away, I would be okay with that.  The kids seemed perfectly content to get up and do school this morning, but I heard the couch singing an awfully loud siren song when I walked past it to get to the coffeepot.

It's not just school that has me thoroughly demotivated.  I don't want to do anything else, either.  I haven't read a book in almost a month.  That giant stack of cards that I have addressed?  I don't want to go to the post office and get stamps to mail them.  I need to order photos to send out with the rest of the cards, but I don't want to go pick them up.

The kids asked me yesterday how come I didn't have the Christmas Countdown chain ready yet.  I told them I'd do it this morning during school.  And I did.  It's hanging on the curtain rod of the window next to the fireplace.  (Side note: Doodlebug can now reach that curtain rod by himself.  Disturbing.)  I put things on it like decorate cookies and read holiday books and make bird feeders, which are all traditions around here and sound fantastic if you're 8 or 11 or have motivation, but all I could think as I was filling out these slips of paper was OMG this stuff takes effort.

Even yesterday, after I pulled out all the Christmas decor, I found myself parked on the couch staring at Facebook while the kids ran around and did my decorative bidding.

I've reached a new low of lazy.

I'm not grinchy.  Au contraire, I am actually planning a holiday party for later this month, so the friends who aren't already horrendously over-scheduled can add one more thing to their list.  I'm excited about the gifts I've gotten for the kids… and probably should be done shopping but keep coming up with new ideas.  I'm having a hard time restraining myself.  I think I've found a good mental compromise, though.  I really need to focus my gift-finding ideas on Oz, but what do you get the man who buys himself whatever he wants?  So far I've had two ideas, and I've given them both to the kids.  I suppose it's time to figure something out.

In the meantime, I'm going to sit here on my backside and wish I was cross-stitching.  That, at least, has been happening.  I suppose I should be glad something is!

Sugar Hates Me: A Weight-Loss Journey Story

I don't often get onto a nutrition/eating disorder soapbox, but today I'm going to do just that.

We eat healthfully around here.  Vegetables are de rigueur, there's always fruit in the house, we don't have boxes of sugary cereal, etc., etc., etc.  But when I was a teenager, I ate crap.  Let me amend that:  When I ate, I ate crap.  A typical day for me went something like this:  Get up at 5:30, head to school at 6 and grab a gas station (QuikTrip, so does that really count as a gas station?  Never mind, I digress...) cappuccino on the way.  I would down that before band started at 7:30.  Lunch was open campus at 11:25, but I rarely went out.  If I had lunch, it was usually a container of fries or some Swiss cake rolls… and a Pepsi.

Lunch of Champions

For dinner as a young child, I ate whatever my mom fixed.  I was (and am) not a picky eater.  But by the time I got a car, I had a job I worked from 3-6 each day (during which I might drink another Pepsi or nosh on a Three Musketeers bar, one of the few candy bars I could eat with braces on my teeth), and a couple days a week I'd go from there to tae kwon do, so by the time I got back to the house, I had to fend for myself.  My dad was usually out in his shop, my sister in her room doing homework, and my mom had taken a job teaching ballroom dance, so she was out of the house more evenings than not.  Sometimes there were leftovers, sometimes not.  I don't eat sandwiches, so sometimes I'd just skip dinner.  I didn't know how to cook and certainly wouldn't have been permitted to ransack the kitchen, so it was easier.  Some nights I didn't come home because I had social events I wanted to attend, so I might have grabbed something out, but it certainly wouldn't have been anything good for me.  Taco Bueno and I were good buddies.

Obviously, in the long run, my diet did not do good things to my metabolism.  When I gave birth to Doodlebug, I had eaten whatever I wanted and gained about 30 pounds.  I did not lose this weight while nursing.  When I got pregnant with Boo, I weighed about 50 pounds more than I had in high school… and I gained another 20-30 with her.  I was not a small woman.  I was borderline for gestational diabetes - on the happy side, so I didn't have to do any treatment other than watch what I ate - and again, I didn't lose weight after she was born.  My body holds onto poundage.  Natural consequences of my teen diet, I suspect.

I have worked hard in the years since Boo has been born to take off those extra pounds.  My body will allow me to lose about 10 pounds at a time, which I do sensibly by watching what I eat and exercising, before it will decide that it needs to readjust to its new dimensions.  I will never be as thin as I was in high school, but given the fact that I never ate a lot - or ate a ton, because on weekends when my mom was home and fixing food, I'd inhale everything in sight - that's probably a healthy thing.  But I've noticed that my body is very sensitive to weight changes.  At 170 lbs., I had migraines once a week.  I was miserable.  My blood sugar fluctuated wildly, and my doctor had me mentally flagged as a pre-diabetic.  He didn't want to write it on my chart and have insurance go nuts, but it was there in the back of his mind.  My blood pressure wasn't bad, but it wasn't ideal, either.  At 5'8", I was barely overweight, but my body was reacting as if I was morbidly obese.  As I've lost weight, the migraines have all but vanished.  I haven't filled a prescription for Treximet in several years.  My back rarely spasms any more.  Even my blood sugar stabilized.  These are all good, good things.  But I still have to watch.

When we moved into this house, we gained an extra refrigerator.  At first it was primarily used to hold leftovers and extra produce, but it also has become the 'drink fridge.'  This definitely saves us space in our refrigerator, which is barely large enough to hold the food that we go through in a normal two-week shopping cycle, let alone extra beverages, but it also means that we can keep pop on hand all the time.  And Pepsi is my Achilles' heel.

I drank the last Pepsi in the box one day last week.  I hadn't realized how often I'd been drinking it until a day or two later when my blood sugar crashed (yet again, because that's been happening more often lately) and my son ran out to find me a drink to help me stabilize.  I ate something (completely unhealthful, but helpful) instead, and I remembered that the way I lost the first five pounds when I started my long weight-loss journey was to give up Pepsi.  I've put on 6.  Hm.

Yesterday I forced myself to drink several glasses of water instead of ingesting extra liquid calories.  I'm three pounds lighter today.  I can understand a normal fluctuation of a pound or two, but three seems significant.  I am reminded of how slow my metabolism is and how sensitive my body is to extra sugar.

This infographic that I saw on Pinterest reminded me of exactly why I try to eat healthfully - and why I tend to avoid cookies and sandwiches and cake:

Click to enlarge

I hate avoiding Pepsi.  I hate how much I have to watch what I eat.  But at least I get it.  And if it means I'm not passing out every afternoon from blood sugar spikes and crashes, then it's worth it.  I can only hope that my kids will be smarter than their mother and avoid the same pitfalls.  Society is cruel, but longterm damage is far worse.  I don't want them to have the same struggles.  I don't want them to feel like they're missing out on their favorite foods (or drinks) because of bad choices they made decades earlier.  I want them to be healthy.  I think modeling that is the best way to teach them.  I can only hope I'm doing a good job.

Monday Musings

I don't usually do this, and I don't think it'll be a typical 'thing' that I do, but I read other blogs whose authors do this, and I'm rather inspired this week.  So…

Outside My Window:
It's sunny and cool today.  It was really quite warm this weekend and very windy for a cookout on Saturday night, but the weather today is more seasonally appropriate.  I'm keeping a close eye on the weather for Thanksgiving, though.  I'd love snow, but I don't want people driving in it for the holiday.  Catch-22.

In My Yard:
The trees are nearly naked.  I dug up my giant rosemary plant and tucked it into the garage before the hard freeze last weekend, and I'm glad I did.  It's actually too big for my biggest pot, but I made it fit for now.  If I can manage to make it live through the winter and can replant it in the yard next spring, I'll probably just try to cover it next winter and see what happens.

In My Home:
Thanksgiving decorations are out, and the cats are extremely hopped up on nip at the moment.  A year or so ago, when we went to Kansas City, I picked up a catnip-stuffed mouse for the cats from a store called Gatos.  The cats loved it.  One of my cats loves this mouse so much she hauls it around all the time and will sit for hours with it between her paws.  Ergo, this mouse is called "Boyfriend Mouse."  Boyfriend Mouse, however, has been looking kind of sad lately, so I got on the Interwebz and hunted down more.  This time, I ordered three.  They arrived today.  That's a lot of happy cat lolling around my living room right now.

The kids are upstairs.  Doodlebug is finishing up school, and Boo is bugging him so he can't focus.  She just requested a sinus rinse because she couldn't breathe.  How they can tolerate those things, I'll never know, but they swear they help.  The drowned-rat feeling deters me.

In My Kitchen:
Turkey pot pie is on the menu tonight.  Over the weekend the kids and I made sticky buns, and because I can't read a recipe, I made two pans instead of three… but with the same amount of dough.  Because of that, they're obscenely gooey… and I had to put some of the dough in individual pie tins just because there wasn't room.  Next time I'll know better.  Later this week I'm going to try some new recipes like beer brat chili and jalapeño cream cheese Philly cheesesteak sliders.  (If you can't see those recipes, I apologize… some of them may be exclusive to Taste of Home magazine subscribers.  I would be happy to e-mail them to you if you're interested, though!)

Crafty Stuff:
I've started a new, giant project.  It's a cross-stitch project for Doodlebug's room.  He wants to redecorate, and now that he's stopped demolishing furniture and scratching tic-tac-toe symbols into the walls, I'm considering it.  He wants a gray/black color scheme - black Ikea furniture, gray walls - and wants this to hang on his wall.  I'm taking bets on when I'll be finished with it.  I've had people suggest time frames everywhere from February (uh… no) to "about the time [Doodlebug's] finished with high school."  That's probably a closer approximation.  I've finished two colors and have started on the third… not that that means much.  I think it'll probably take me till summer to complete, depending on how often I actually sit down and work on it.

In Our Homeschool:
We're about halfway done with our school year.  We'll take next week off for Thanksgiving, and the week we come back will be our second interest week.  Boo has decided she wants to study food; Doodlebug hasn't chosen a topic yet.  We're studying worms in science this week, the New Kingdom of Egypt (i.e. King Tut) in history, and I uploaded Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin America) onto the computer today.  That turned out to be an epic journey.  I already had Rosetta Stone German on the computer, so I just added the Spanish to it… but when I went to register the curriculum, it didn't give me the option to add the homeschool code.  It just asked me for an 'upgrade' code and then wouldn't accept the homeschool code that I had.  I wound up calling and talking to a very patient (and fairly clear-spoken) tech support guy from India.  It took him a bit before he worked out that the version of Rosetta Stone I already had on the computer (Totale, or version 4) was too advanced for the homeschool curriculum that they still sell (version 3).  So now I have two versions of Rosetta Stone.  *shrug*  Technology.  Not really my gig.

In Our Lives:
The kids are fighting now.  I swear that's all they do.  They can't even pour bowls of breakfast cereal without sniping at one another.  We're still using the respect jar - actually just went out last night for their reward for filling it - but it hasn't helped Doodlebug one bit.  One of my friends said today that her boys have been doing the same thing - sort of a male lion domination thing that her her dad calls "testosterone flashes" - and it's driving me crazy.  He has to be right EVERY time, and if he's not, he'll bully his sister or run his mouth to me and/or Oz until he gets himself in trouble.  That appointment with the counselor can't come quickly enough.  *insert virtual pause here* I just broke up the second fight between them.  Doodlebug wanted to play Monopoly and Boo agreed if she could be banker, which Doodlebug initially agreed to and then decided he thought it would be too hard for Boo.  He thought he was being nice; she was angry that he took the job away from her.  Had to side with her on this one and tell him that he needed to let her try and decide for herself whether it would be too hard or not.  She's perfectly capable of doing the math; she'll just be slower than he wants to deal with.  I'm sure that's where the rub comes in.  Ugh.  Time to bury myself in something else - cross-stitching or dinner.

How are things in your neck of the woods?

Thoughts on a Frosty Wednesday (A Post with Literary Ambitions)

Morning came hard.  I had fallen asleep last night under the drowsing influence of NyQuil, my head sandwiched between two pillows and my being cosseted with blankets and warmed from beneath by the heated mattress pad that was cranked up more than usual.  When I woke this morning I could sense the cold of the house, the tip of my nose chilly compared to the warmth of my bed, and even though the children had already come down and were noisily banging about in the kitchen, I wanted nothing more than to stay snug in my warren until the groundhog saw his shadow and predicted spring.

Eventually pragmatism won, and I hauled myself out of bed, dressed, and emerged from my bedroom in search of coffee.  I glanced out the back door as I passed, and the sight caused me a moment's pause.

The ground was glittering.  A fine layer of white covered everything from the edge of the black grill cover to the individual blades of grass that browned the yard.  In the past two years, I realized, I could have counted the hard freezes and glittering frosts on the fingers of a single hand, and seeing the phenomenon again was beautiful.  Glorious.  A winter memory brought back to life.

I poured my coffee and walked to the back door.  I rested my hand against the glass and felt the heat loss, the exchange of the house's warmth for the nip of the outdoors.  I removed my hand from the glass and wrapped it around my coffee mug, the contrast between cold door and warm mug stark against my skin.

After staring outside for a minute, curiosity plucked up the courage to order me about, and I opened the door and stepped outside, barefoot on the concrete.  The air was cold but still.  No September wind ruffled the leaves.  No summer crickets chirped, no spring peepers croaked - even the birds were silent, likely sleeping late in their warm holes and nests, realizing that in this cold, there would be no worms to be early for.

I walked to the edge of the porch, and a few sounds made their way to my straining ears.  A clatter off to the left - a squirrel picking its way up a tree, heading back to a snug den after digging breakfast from under the frozen leaves.  Ticking noises to the right - leaves clattering against branches on their way to the ground, soldiers falling, having lost the battle with winter, their movements made louder by the deathly silence all around.

Frost is a callous thing, a bitter master, not caring whether it coats the weed or the rose, the mundane or the exotic.  Life, and warmth, and a dry wind are its only nemeses.  I poked at some of the frost with a naked toe and felt it attack me with shards of fire, stinging like a honeybee and, also like a bee, losing its life in the fight.  When I pulled back my foot, a dark spot remained, the now-dead grass a victim of the siege that had taken place overnight.

Listening to the silence once more, it became reminiscent of Christmases past, and a waiting, expectant thrill ran through me like a shiver.  I looked at houses nearby and pictured them covered in long white strings of holiday lights.  It was a cozy thought.  Turning back to the house, I saw the glint of sunlight peeking over the horizon, and the ice flashed.  One last stand, it said, before I make way for the relative warmth of the day.

I returned to the house and its artificial heat, letting it clothe me in comfort and decadence. A swirl of steam from my coffee reminded me that there were other sources of heat, and I took a sip as I walked to the stairs.  The outdoors could remain in the grasp of dead, wintry frost for a while longer; I was made of life and would avoid it.

Breathe… Just Breathe

Sometimes breathing is difficult!  Don't worry, I'm not stressed… I simply caught whatever bug Doodlebug had, and it's reminding me of all the respiratory ailments I caught as a child.  I never had asthma, but every time I caught something, it would go straight to my lungs and cause what the doctor called "asthmatic symptoms."  And then I'd have to take yet another round of Theo-Dur (raise your hand if you remember THAT shit… all those nasty little white sprinkles.  My mom would make Jell-O and pour the capsules into little Jell-O squares.  Jell-O shots for the under-21 crowd).

Doodlebug is on the mend, though he's still emitting enough snot to drown a whole slew of rats.  We skipped his swim meet tonight because when I made him try to take several deep breaths in a row, he dissolved into coughs by the #3.  Nobody wants to race in that condition.  We'll keep him on Mucinex and his inhaler and do a few sinus rinses, and he should be good… and if that doesn't work, we still have that prescription for the antibiotics.  I just don't want to go down that road if we don't have to.

Doodlebug also lost another tooth today.  This would be something like his seventh or eighth this year.  I would know which it was if I was a good mom and kept track of those sorts of things.  The problem with this particular tooth is that it was one of his adult canines.  So in addition to missing one of his laterals and having the other lateral be something called a 'peg lateral,' he'll now be missing a canine.  I had canceled our second orthodontic consult that had been scheduled for last Monday, since I was out of town, but after he yanked that tooth today, I called and got us back on the schedule.  I had really hoped to avoid braces, but I think they're inevitable, darn the luck.  Maybe they can just put a veneer on the peg and shave down the other canine and make them look similar, kinda like mine.  I'm missing both my laterals, so they took the points off the canines so I looked less vampire-ish, and just left everything else as is.  Easy answers - I could use some of those.

Boo had another violin solo festival on Saturday and got straight 1s again.  That's the best score a judge can give.  She's thrilled, because in addition to getting another (pink) ribbon, that means she's gotten three sets of 1s in a row (we took a break from competitions for a while prior to that).  As we were leaving, she announced, "I like judges.  They're always really nice."  Lucky girl hasn't met one of those old hags with unrealistic expectations yet.  There are some major benefits to being 8.

Realized the other day that I'm staring Christmas in the face and haven't even thought about gifts for various family members.  I have a stash started for each kid… need to fill in a few more things for the girl.  The boy has actually been the easier child to shop for this year.  My kids have never been trend-followers, so there's never a fight to find exactly what they want.  But yeah… haven't thought at all about what to get my sister and her husband for their December birthdays, or to get my father.  Must be time for a Target run.

I can hear the cold front blowing in.  The wind is whistling down the chimney.  Very glad I dug up and repotted the rosemary and had the boy bring in his garlic last weekend.  I certainly wouldn't have wanted to try doing it when we all feel so icky!

House Elves Are Real (and Living in my Bedroom Ceiling)

We've been in our house for more than a year now.  We've celebrated two of Doodlebug's birthdays here, two Halloweens; we're setting up to host our first family holiday dinner at Thanksgiving. (Have I mentioned I don't mind Thanksgiving?  I don't love it, but I don't hate it.  It's far better than the commercial hoopla of Christmas that turns me into the Annual Christmas Grinch, but never mind... I won't go there right now.)  We're technically inside city limits, but between the creek and the actual location of our house on the outskirts of town, we do get wildlife.  We'd been here only a few months when we saw our first opossum, and the kids have sighted rabbits, turtles, frogs, lizards, bats, and snakes.  I'm sure there are raccoons and skunks, too - raccoons for certain, because we have crawfish and perch in the creek, and raccoons love to eat crawfish and small fish for dinner.  Just because I haven't seen them doesn't mean they aren't there.

This spring we hosted a family of birds in our roof.  It wasn't a voluntary thing on our part, but they nested, raised their babies, and left.  We've tried plugging the holes, but I still see them flitting about. 

A month or two ago, I noticed that the cats would seem particularly agitated right around bedtime - midnight-ish in our abode, at least for the adult denizens.  Vixen, our fluffy gray genie-pants of a cat, was especially keen on staring at certain corners of the bathroom.  She would dash from the corner of the jetted tub to my vanity at the opposite end of the bathroom and stare intently upward, tail twitching, as if something was roosting in the corners that only she could see.  Oz and I could never hear (or see) anything, so we just decided it was a case of the night crazies and laughed at the antics.  Over time, when Vixen would start dashing about, I would joke that she was chasing the house elves.

Then Tempest, our not-so-fluffy-but-also-gray matriarchal feline, joined in.  Hm.  Then Kuro, aka Beasticat, aka Fatty Boomsticks, ran into the bedroom one evening, and there were three cats all staring simultaneously at various points in the ceiling, their heads turning in unison as the noises jumped from place to place.

That was a bit much.  I listened hard, and I heard it.  A faint scratching.  Very faint.  Oz couldn't hear it.  When he did hear it a few nights later, he thought it sounded like birds.  I'd never heard birds moving about at midnight before, and so I disagreed with his assumption.  I still do.  The noises don't happen every night, but when they do happen, the cats alert us with their perked ears and upturned faces.  Oz has poked around in the attic a few times but finds absolutely nothing up there... except insulation that would muffle the sounds of most creatures.  So who knows.  For now, I'm just convinced that the house elves have their room right above mine.  Any time they want to come down and start doing the cooking and cleaning and everything else that I thought house elves are supposed to do, I'm okay with that!

And if it isn't house elves... well, let's just say it better not die up there.  I don't mind the noises.  I do mind the smell of decomp.  There are some parts of nature that I don't care to deal with, and Eau de Death is one of them.

Any thoughts on what it might actually be?  And how to get rid of it?  Enlighten me!

Once More Into the Fray

I'm sitting in the school room on this fine Friday morning.  I say 'fine' only because the weather outside is crisp and calm and sunny and 50% of the children in this house are in a decent mood.  The other 50% are in a state of perpetual pissiness (and no, autocorrect, I do not mean prissiness) because he woke up this morning and informed me he felt better, so I marched him upstairs to do school.  He thought feeling better still equated to a day on the couch.

Not so, good sir... not so.  Mostly because I know that by 10:30 a.m. he'd be bored and deliberately antagonizing his sister.  The boy thrives on structure, so whine as he will, structure is what he gets.  Nobody needs a day of fighting.

We were supposed to attend a field trip today, but with the boy still snotty and borderline not okay (methinks he decided he was better on the basis of sleepover(s) planned for this weekend that he was unaware had already been canceled), I decided we'd spend the day at home.  Nobody wants us to spread the love.  Or germs.  Mostly germs...

Fridays are our light school days, anyway, so all we had was a little writing, some grammar, math, and logic, and I plan to let the kids watch a documentary later for both history and science.  Boo is done, having pranced out of here with ostentatious glee a few minutes ago - ah, there she is... she's back to measure the dog.  She wants to make him a homemade harness.  I worry, but I keep my mouth shut.  I'm aware that my concerns will be brushed aside.  So I'll watch silently and dry the tears when they come, and then I'll take her to the pet store to see how harnesses are made.  And then if she still wants to make one, we'll try again.  Together, or at least partially so.

Doodlebug is doodling around.  He's completed his writing and was making a mess of his math until I told him we would do it cooperatively in a little bit and to finish the rest of his work first.  He'd rather blow his nose and toss the used snot-rags on the floor and 'supervise' his sister than do work, so I guess he must be feeling a little better, and this week has been sort of a blow-off week, anyway - they did work with Oz while I was gone, but he's still a 'substitute,' and I wrote yesterday off altogether, and today has sort of a 'first day back' feel to it - so I'm not getting upset.  It simply amuses me how the kids think I'll forget how these days are supposed to go just because I wasn't here for a few of them.  I sympathize with public school teachers in that respect, I suppose.

This feels a lot more like the first day home I'd expected to have.  It feels good to get back into a normal routine.  I like structure, too, and yesterday's chaos culminated in multiple glasses of wine and chocolate cupcakes and a large quantity of kettle corn.

I think we're all recovering from Mama's trip.  I loved it.  Every minute.  But today feels like my first true day home.  It's good to be back to 'normal!'