Crafting Time

Since I have most of the Christmas stuff put away (not including the Christmas card ribbons, which will come down after New Year's, or the small stuff I keep finding around, like the ceramic carolers on the end table and such), I am throwing myself with abandon into rearranging the 'tableaus' on my piano, buffet, and display shelves. Because, you know, it's not enough work to keep house and children clean...I must have a new seasonal display! Because we have to greet the New Year in style!

Really it's just my way of putting the holidays firmly behind us and moving forward with a clean house and clean slate. Plus things get a little stale when you don't rearrange your pictures and tchotchkes and such. Sort of a "New Look for the New Year" philosophy. So, since I recently discovered during an unpacking frenzy all the artificial flowers and holders that I bought when we lived in Arizona (and I picked up some more containers and a few flowers at Michaels on clearance) I have gotten down to business creating some new spring/summer floral arrangements for the house.

First up, I finally did the ivy topiary, which was quite tedious. Using zillions of flower pins and my wire cutters I carved up two faux ivy bushes and now have quite a nice little topiary with artfully arranged reindeer moss at the bottom. I think it looks quite nice in our hallway. Moving on, I finally pieced together an arrangement for a wire bicycle/basket thing that can only be described as a purchase inspired by one of my "I can do country cute!" moments. Thankfully it only looks just a bit twee, and I'm happy to have it on our piano.

Of course, all of this cutting and arranging and fussing was accomplished at the expense of DH, who had to deal with the kiddos and keep them away from all the sharp pointy things that Mommy was playing with. And I had to glue a leg back on my gnome (yes, yes, I KNOW) and miraculously DD stayed away from it while it dried.

Such moments of happy crafting are rare, however, and I don't want you to think that I have my whole house done up for a new season. Oh no. I've only just removed the last of the Christmas greenery and burned it, and there are half-arranged bits and bobs all over the shelves. I am moving things from room to room and I think it will probably take me the rest of the week to finish it all and have it dusted and looking pretty. And I have 3 more arrangements to do, at a minimum...a wall hanging basket, and 2 containers. Maybe I will work on that today during naptime; then again, maybe I will knit some more rows on DH's unfinished Christmas (to come, now) sweater vest. As with everything else in this house, it, too, is proceeding in fits and starts. But a little progress is sweet.

The Power of a Name

So, as I mentioned earlier, my mother calling our pet parrot by her name, as opposed to "The Bird", which had lately been in prominent use in our household, really made me reconsider her treatment since DS made his appearance nearly a year ago. Oh sure, she was getting her physical needs met, and we even held her occasionally, but watching her soak up my mom's attention and love really made me feel guilty about how often I shoved my little friend's emotional needs aside. Hearing my mom repeatedly using my parrot's name reminded me that she is a living creature and (to us) a little person with her own feelings. So now I am trying to create a new habit, where our little feathered friend comes to sit with us after the kids are in bed, so she can get her share of love, too.

I've been reminded of the power of names recently in other ways. My brother wearing his doofus "Jesus I'm Drunk" t-shirt on the day he arrived, and my dad's offended reaction, reminded me of a discussion I was in recently where we were talking about how often Jesus' name or God's name is blasphemed. "Blasphemed": a very old word, and one that we tend to mock...but we forget that one of the Ten Commandments is not to blaspheme the LORD's name! This is serious business.

One of the things we were talking about with our friends was how evocative a name is. Mother Teresa. Martin Luther King, Jr. Gandhi. All powerful names, that evoke powerful feelings. Ask the Pakistani people about Benazir Bhutto. For those who aren't Christians, the name, Jesus Christ, doesn't really evoke those kinds of feelings. And honestly, how many Christians really are reminded of the awesome, incredible God who came to earth when they hear the name, "Jesus Christ"? Let's be honest with ourselves--we have allowed his name to be watered down in meaning for those who follow Him, too. I am just as guilty of any in saying, "G--d---it!" or "J---- C-----!" when I'm annoyed by something. I've only just appreciated how serious and wrong it is to do that recently, and I'm catching myself and breaking that very bad habit.

I have run across a few instances lately of people being offended by others who use God's name in vain. My father being offended by my brother's t-shirt, a poster on an internet board describing how she was asked by her sister to not use God's name in vain around her. To those who don't follow Christ, I understand how it could be irritating to be asked not to do that. But let me ask you--would you be offended if, when someone was upset or angry, they shouted, "Martin Luther King!" in a very exasperated voice? Or they said, "MOTHER TERESA!" in the same way? Or "Muhammed!!" as an expression of disgust? Insert your own personal hero(es). Pretty offensive, isn't it? So is it really a lot for someone who holds a person in reverence to ask you not to swear by that name? Because for all the abstract talk about Christianity, Jesus Christ is a real person, and Christians claim to know Him personally. Regardless of your own personal opinion about whether that is true or not, I don't think it's too much to ask for a modicum of respect. That's tolerance, right?

The Christmas Rants & Raves

Rave: for my children, who adapted to a whacked out nap and bedtime schedule with grace.

Rant: for my brother, who wore a shirt with a picture of Jesus holding a beer that said, "Jesus, I'm drunk!" Er, you're 38, not 16...do you have to openly antagonize our parents and offend them as a matter of course, or are you ready to be a big boy now? And a mini-rant to my sister for sending it to him.

Rant: for my brother and SIL for bringing all their own sheets, pillows, and blankets, along with their own inflatable air beds. Erm, are you saying something about my linens and housekeeping? Afraid we don't have enough? Not soft enough? Pillows I can sort of understand; sheets, blankets, and even beds, I cannot. At least offer some sort of reasonable explanation, or polite explanation, if you please.

Rave: for my DH, who cooked a superlative Christmas dinner. YUM-MY!! Enough said.

Rant (well more of a lament I suppose): for DS, who missed his first Christmas dinner, due to the above whacked-out nap schedule. Poor tyke! Hopefully he will enjoy the leftovers today.

Rave: for my parents, who paid for everything associated food-wise with their visit and Christmas dinner. Thank you for sparing our budget.

Rave and Rant: for my mom, who folded all our clothes (yay!) but did up all the snaps on every piece of baby clothes. Who does this?? I'm already wrestling DS around like a greased pig trying to dress him...not helpful. Overall a rave, though.

Rave: for Niece #1, who was a great helper with DS and mediator between Niece #2 and DD. Sharing is still a tough pill to swallow for a 4 year old and nearly 3 year old.

Rant: for the snow which prevented DD from enjoying her new ride-on vehicle.

Rave: for the snow which provided a host of playtime opportunities for DD & Nieces (and, need I add, picture opportunities).

Rant: for the helpful person(s) who attempted to put away clean dishes, and who have managed to hide several things from us. Just ASK where things go, peeps!! (now I will be finding things for weeks)

Rant: for DH, who never told his mom to buy gift certs for SILs and BIL-IL, who each got only scarves and a pair of socks (respectively) from us under their Christmas tree. How skin-flinty of us!! I feel horrible and even if I order stuff from Amazon.co.uk now, it will still be pretty bad. I hate that we gypped their Christmas.

Rave: for Mom, who reminded me that our bird is not just "the bird", but actually has a name and she enjoys being petted and loved. Poor bird...she is the stepchild in the family now. I think I've already got a New Year's resolution...more on that later.

My Coping Strategy

This blog is my sanity saver. Here I can vent and complain and remain civil to family members. Last night was atrocious, due to the disrupted sleep and barking, seal-like cough of my father.

Today, Dad was persuaded to go to a local urgent care center, after much protesting about cost and "I'll just move to a hotel if it's bothering you." Uh-huh. Way to be Mr. Crochety. So Mom & Dad are waiting there, probably for a few hours, then they'll have to wait again at the pharmacy. Better today than tomorrow, I'm telling you.

The girls are all getting on reasonably well, and miraculously we managed to get DS back to sleep when he awoke at 6 am. Since both living room spaces were occupied by sleeping aunt, uncle, and cousins, it wasn't exactly possible to bring him out as usual so he can do his thing and play/explore. And, knowing that the toys we have in our bedroom for him would keep him entertained for 20 minutes at best, we opted for the harder "coax back to sleep" strategy, which did work after about 30 minutes of sporadic protest crying. He finally snuggled down and slept until after 8 AM..blissful!

Hopefully we can avoid a repeat of last night's high drama. Presents are going to be deployed at strategic intervals today, which we hope will avoid nuclear meltdowns for the kids. The adults are a whole 'nother kettle of fish...we just have to try our best to be grown ups. I'll keep you posted.

Doing My Best & Worst

Well all family members expected for Christmas are here, and the summary phrase to describe the chaotic, energetic, irritating madness is, "Why did we agree to host again?"

Oh yes, that bad. Within the span of the past four hours, we've had the following joyous events:

• My father yelling at my DD, "Do what your mother tells you to do young lady!" Bearing in mind that a) she is only 2, and b) at that moment she was doing what I had told her to do. After an instantaneous expression of shock, DD promptly burst into tears and I had to repair the damage as best I could, given that she was 1.5 hours past her bedtime and still hadn't eaten her dinner. And, of course, my dad did not apologize to her when I told him that she had been doing what she was told to do.
• My brother (aka Dad Junior) throwing what can only be described as a hissy fit about the planned sleeping arrangements which included them sleeping on our sleeper sofa. Brother insisted that we find our other air mattress, disclaimed loudly to SIL that, "I'm not sleeping on some damn flea-ridden sofa bed!" and in short behaved like a completely boorish asshole. Er, first of all, our sofa bed is not flea-ridden, and second, if it was such a big deal, why did you not say anything weeks ago when this plan was suggested by phone, and before I hunted down the sheets for it, washed them, and put them all on the sofa bed? Thank you for wasting my time and insulting my housekeeping.
• A tiff with DH after I had to segregate myself with our DS (again) in our bedroom to try to get him to go to sleep. This particular tiff occurred after DD and Niece #2 were running back and forth down the hallway and even came into our bedroom, looking for DS in his crib. Needless to say, I was not best pleased by this turn of events, and called DH in to suggest that a) DD needed to sleep alone in her room, so the air mattress for the Nieces needed to be removed, b) DD needed to be put to bed, and c) I needed my laptop and to be left alone. DH was annoyed to be told that he wasn't supervising DD properly, and I was annoyed that all my hard work of putting DS to sleep was being destroyed every two minutes. It was quite frustrating for both of us.
• Overheard from Brother, "(Daughter), you need to go do this, okay? You don't want me to yell at you like Uncle (DH), do you?" Em, thanks a bunch for vilifying DH to your child.
• Our very tired DD being told she had to eat "five bites more" at the dinner table before she would be excused so she could go to bed. NO. We do NOT play that game in this house, TYVM. If she wants to eat, she'll eat; if not, that's fine too. We don't make a big deal out of trying to force an overtired child into eating a "proper" dinner. I (having just returned from finally getting DS down) said she was done, and it was time for bed.
• Me being the "bad guy" and insisting that the air mattress be removed from DD's room so that she would go to SLEEP, FINALLY, TWO HOURS past her bedtime. Gee, I wonder why she wasn't going to sleep--it's not like Nieces entering and leaving the bedroom every three minutes with endless and pointless requests had anything to do with it, you think?? And this after Niece #1 was oh-so-helpfully showing DD how to jump on the air mattress! Visions of broken limbs aside, it was quite clear early on that the proposed sleeping arrangements would not work, so I was a bit peeved to have to be the Enforcer What Lays Down the Law at 9:30 pm. I could not help but grouse to myself that if the Law had been Laid Down an hour earlier, DD would have been asleep and everyone (myself included) could have enjoyed a good dinner together, as DS would have woken up AFTER I had a chance to eat.
• Me skipping dinner, because frankly, by the time I was done soothing overstimulated and overtired children to sleep, all I wanted was to BE LEFT THE HELL ALONE for a bit so I could unwind. Which, of course, made the jibes and sarcastic remarks of my Family At Large oh-so-fun as I attempted to lower my blood pressure by doing the mundane and sanity-returning practice of reading the newspaper. Thank you for being understanding, Family! Oh wait.

I love family get togethers. I would love them even more if the families involved would a) stick to planned arrangements, b) be realistic about children's behaviors (and here I include myself), c) be a bit more open-minded to how other families operate, and d) refrain from commenting on or attempting to enforce behavior codes inappropriate to the situation. I don't care if my Nieces stay up late, but would it be a teeny bit much to ask that Brother refrains from castigating or criticizing my style of parenting to his kids or a general audience at large in my own home? Hrrrhhhm, I guess so.

I hope sometime over the next few days I get a chance to blog about the flip side, the good things to getting together as a family. At the moment, however, I have a newspaper calling my name. Good evening.

Doing My Best

At the moment, I am doing my best to keep things juggled and somewhat tidy. Parents arrived this AM after a frenetic morning involving my long-awaited (well not really) appointment with the gastroenterologist, more blood sucking for me (only 2 vials today, please) and a rush through lashing rain to the airport. All this by 9:30 am. Fun!

I did not get the guest room tidied before their arrival. Instead, after getting my blood drawn, mailing the last of the Christmas cards, and racing home, I cleaned up their room. Which meant, I removed the four boxes of outgrown children's clothes which need to be stored in the cottage, removed the dirty sheets for washing, put on clean sheets, and put four additional pillowcases on pillows since we have a wide variety of pillows to choose from. Oh, and remove the 2 double/queen size comforters to their temporary staging area for the sleeper sofa and air mattress, which will be deployed on Saturday when Brother and Fam arrive for Christmas. And just to tidy it up a bit I put away the toys and miscellaneous stuff that migrated in there and set up my parents' suitcases in convenient and mostly out of the way places. I even had 3 empty coat hangers for them to use to hang up stuff as needed (with more in the coat closet...just ignore the pile of coats/pullovers in the crib there).

My sore throat is worse today, thanks to a third sleepless night. DS finally is starting to feel better, we think, as we got a solid four hours last night before he woke up for the first time. DH feels like death warmed over and I'm trying to pack in vitamin C. Shoot, I meant to get more orange juice. Oh well. My parents treated us to lunch which was nice, and I think the plan for dinner is, well, not much of a plan...maybe we'll order pizza or do soup and salad, something easy. I do have a pork shoulder blade roast to BBQ in the crockpot but methinks that is going to happen later this week, seeing as it's still a frozen hunk at the bottom of the freezer. And I have no doubt that my folks will find countless things they need/want which will necessitate trips to Costco and the grocery store, as usual.

Time to go slurp more hot tea and pray that DS, and therefore we, will sleep well the whole night through tonight! I just need some sleep and did I mention practice time for my harp? Yes, because I'm playing at church on Sunday and again at the Christmas Eve service. So I am in need of that "finesse" time for my (very easy) pieces. Ahem. Never a dull moment!

Sniffling, Snorting, and Sleepless

DD's cold is now shared by all in the house, including a miserable DS. He has enough congestion to make him wake up every 30 minutes last night because he couldn't breathe lying down, so I had to sit up and hold him sitting up for him to sleep, then when my back was killing me I'd lie back down with him. Rinse, lather, repeat all night. I was not very pleased, having congestion and a sore throat myself. Nasty little adenovirus or some other somesuch bugger we've got.

DH hauled himself off to work this AM, having slept poorly as well due to the aforementioned night wakings and his own throat and congestion misery. DD at least got a good night's sleep, even if her nose is running like a faucet.

Misery, I tell ya! I've got DS's crib propped up tonight and have slathered on the baby Vicks in the hope that we will all sleep a bit better thus equipped. I have bags the size of Rhode Island under my eyes, and my parents arrive in about 35 hours. At least I got the linen closet reorganized--something prompted by my failure to find to the sleeper sofa sheets. They are found and washed, hallelujah! Oh, there is my tea kettle...I hear a hot tea with lemon calling my name. *Sniffle* I hope my scant readers avoid the Cold of the Season.

'Tis the Season...

a) for ridiculous baking frenzies,
b) for overhyped and overstimulated children,
c) for unrealistic expectations regarding decorating/present buying/card writing,
d) for diplomatic entreaties worthy of Madeleine Albright between family members,
or e) All of the above.

If you picked e), welcome on board! Yes, it is the time of year for all of the above. Oh goody.

Lemme see, in the past 24 hours we have, yes, you guessed it, All of the Above!

First, I have just spent the better part of four hours solid baking away in the kitchen for the goodwill gesture d'anné for the neighborhood. Why? Well, because, that's why! I feel like Alton Brown here...I just wanted to do it, okay? And frankly it seemed like it was necessary since so many of them couldn't make our party last weekend, especially since those not present included the families who take our trash the 1/2 mile to the main road every week, TYVM. I bake them stuff throughout the year but since it's Christmastime it seems to call for pulling out all the stops and giving them lots of baked goodness for the kids to go into sugar induced comas enjoy since they take the cans most of the time. And after gifting all those families with copious quantities of baked goods it would just seem wrong to leave out their neighbors, and thus you have me planning goody plates for the whole neighborhood. Ahem.

And, speaking of hyped up children, I think DD is already oversaturated with all the talk of the family members who are coming to visit next week. She is sort of blasé about it now, and discussions today with my brother and his family did not produce the ecstatic squeals of delight that would normally accompany the declaration that her cousins are coming to visit. Her attitude was, "oh, that's cool," and off she went to do some imaginary doctoring of her baby doll. Hmm. I think we are overselling it to her, the neatness of having people come for Christmas. Of course the endless varieties and amounts of sugar around the house and more generally (if not always specifically) available has led to a focus on, can I reach the advent calendar now while no one is looking as opposed to asking endlessly when her grandparents or cousins will arrive (like she did last year). Chocolate advent calendars are evil, I am telling you.

Ah yes, those family members who are coming to visit...did I mention that includes a set of very spendy (read: spoiling) grandparents and a set of very non-spendy and non-spoiling parents? Yes, and who should be caught in the middle, but moi. As middle-of-the-road parents, we let the grandparents spoil to a fairly liberal degree and put our foot down on non-negotiable (i.e. dangerous) items. Brother and SIL, however, chose the course of putting their foot down over extremely stupid and silly things, and thus have invited the current situation to a certain degree...the current situation being, my mom looks at their designated wishlists for their kids, decides what she wants to buy, and then adds on to it at her choosing based on what SHE thinks their kids will enjoy instead of what Brother and SIL say they want the kids to have and that their kids will enjoy.

The latest round which has us impersonating Switzerland involves a certain ride-on vehicle for Niece #2, who is 4. DD is getting a ride-on vehicle from the grandparents for Christmas, and in the interest of fairness and to avoid the green-eyed monster my mom decided to go against what Brother and SIL had said and order one for Niece #2. Now, to be fair to Mom & Dad, Brother & SIL do not have a good track record of predicting what their kids will like. Niece #1 wanted an American Girl doll for Christmas last year, and my parents bought one for her despite the constant moans from Brother & SIL that she would "never play with it" and "she hates dolls". Well, you can guess the outcome, can't you--Niece #1 still plays with her doll, absolutely adores it, and takes it to "teas" with her friends who also have American Girl dolls. This is just the latest example of this poor predictive ability of Brother & SIL, so it came as no surprise to us when Mom & Dad ordered the ride-on vehicle for Niece #2.

However, from the way Brother & SIL reacted today when we pre-emptively warned them about it on the phone, you'd think that my parents had bought a miniature coal power plant for the girl to increase her carbon footprint, complete with an integrated Krispy Kreme doughnut machine to turn her into a couch potato. "What's wrong with people power!??" "We told them we don't want our kids using things to get around, we want them to use their own feet!" Uh, calm down, campers, ho-kay? It's not a big deal...she accepts it graciously, you can't take it home because "It won't fit in our car," and we say we'll bring it the next time we visit you...which probably won't be for a good while, by which point you can say she outgrew it and that's that. No biggie. But Brother whined about how much they spent, SIL said she wants us to serve my parents Mexican food the whole time they are here because it will make her happy (because they don't like Mexican food). The whole time DH & I were looking at each other and rolling our eyes. I wanted to scream, "GROW UP!!" but refrained. Instead we counseled them to remember that grandparents are supposed to buy things that parents won't buy, and it's their job to spoil their grandchildren, and that the way my mom expresses her love is to give lavish gifts. It's not an attack on their low consumption, granola lifestyle.

I can hardly wait to see how many fires we get to put out when everyone is under our roof for 4 nights. Oh yeah, THIS will be fun. Especially when I bring out the birthday cake for Jesus at Christmas dinner. That's going to be popular with my brother. Well, you know what...I don't care. It IS the birthday of Jesus that's ostensibly being celebrated, and in my house, it most definitely IS the birthday of Jesus that we celebrate. The whole Santa thing is not played up here, but we do emphasize the birth of Christ. So, I guess we will not be Switzerland when it comes to the reason for our celebration, and that's okay. I just hope we've bought enough wine for everyone to be a bit mellow by the time the cake is being cut!

Tour De Potties

Well, the sticker chart did the trick for DD. Using the potty is now de rigeur, and it's quite accepted that when she wakes up in the morning, we put on 'big girl panties' and that's how she spends all day. No accidents, she is doing really well!

The downside is what I am calling the Tour De Potties. DD is now fascinated by how different public restrooms can be. She absolutely loves checking out the different toilet paper holders, and whether a stall has seat covers or not. Handwashing is a whole different set of things to explore: some faucets turn themselves on and off, others require lifting a lever, others are knobs...and the soap varieties! Liquid soap! Foamy soap! Even one place with soap flakes! Who knew it could be so fascinating?? She dislikes the hand dryers ("they're too noisy Mommy, I don't like it") but loves the motion sensing paper towel dispensers. She hasn't figured out how the center 'pull' towel dispensers work yet, probably because her hands are usually too wet to grasp and pull effectively.

I did not anticipate this side of potty training. I was expecting to stop more frequently at public restrooms, but was totally unprepared for the sense of wonder my DD experiences when she gets to use a different public toilet. She just can't get over how many things are done differently in each place! So now we are subjected to, "I need to go pooooottyyyyy," whenever we are in a store where, coincidentally, she has never used the bathroom before. Hmmmmmmm. We are still in that delicate place where we don't want to discourage using the bathroom, but when my DD chooses to make this proclamation just as I've finished putting all the groceries and her brother in the car, well, it's a bit more dodgy to get everyone organized and back inside for the sole purpose of using the restroom.

I am trying to be more proactive about this, and ask her as we enter the store if she needs to go. And of course she gets a mandatory pit stop before leaving the house. When presented with these requests, I find myself gauging how long ago she finished her chocolate milk and how far we are from home, coupled with the relative new-ness of the store, etc. Should we go? Will she make it home? Questions I had not anticipated as part of this whole process. And sometimes I am boldly telling her she will have to wait until we get home, and praying we make it. So far, so good.

Yet another reminder that the world is a whooooooole different place to a (nearly) three year old. *LOL*

La La La...I Can't Hear You

If I just pretend that my house doesn't need to be cleaned, that there aren't a dozen more Christmas decorations to be put up, that my daughter isn't spreading mayhem and chaos around the living room, and that my son WILL stay asleep and not wake up in an hour's time, I can quite successfully delude myself that I have enough time to post a blog and catch up on some internet reading. Yep, nothing pending here! Nope, we're just fine and dandy, all ready for that party tomorrow, thanks!

I think DH is a bit peeved with me, because after a whole day of attempting to get stuff DONE for the party, and being stymied at every turn by a myriad of other responsibilities and whining children and naptimes and lunchtimes, I declared myself non compus mentus at approximately 5:36 pm and trooped out of the house by myself, leaving DH to shepherd the children through last minute errand running after getting out of a two hour and twenty minute work call at 5:35:50. He just stared at me blankly when I put on my jacket and said I was leaving, assumed I was pissed at him, and I left for my sanity break.

And believe me, it was a sanity break. I'm just not up for this whole house cleaning and vacuuming and mopping and toilet cleaning at the last minute gig any more. Thank you, I'm done now, can I check out? Yeah. So over the whole housecleaning thing. What I could not tell my DH and really had to take some time to figure out myself is that I am burned out on doing all the vacuuming, mopping, schlepping of recycling and trash to the bins, etc. Don't get me wrong. DH does pitch in and do his fair share. But as I've mentioned before, you get tired of doing the same old things, and, well, you don't want to do them any more. Or at least not for a while. Unfortunately for DH, this realization has occurred approximately 17 hours before our party. D'oh!

I don't know if I'm going to be in the mood to do it tomorrow, either, to be honest. I'm kind of peeved about the last minute pattern we've got going, wherein I do all the sweaty cleaning and DH preps the food. Well, I think I'd like to do food prep tomorrow, thanks. Somehow tidying up our small kitchen and slicing cheese and arranging food on trays seems more appealing than wrestling our vacuum cleaner around the house, or scrubbing the toilets, or cleaning the birdcage and moving the decaying Halloween pumpkins (finally, although to be fair we never go in or out the front door so we just forgot about them until I swept the walks today) to the compost pile. Yep, food prep sounds pretty good to me right now. I don't even care if I put up the rest of the decorations--as far as I'm concerned, I can throw my pretty red velvet tablecloth on the dining room table and prop up a wreath on the sideboard and call it good. I don't even care that our pretty crystal isn't artfully arranged on our display shelf in the living room. Ok, maybe I care just a little. But, the point being, I don't want to do the cleaning. And, well, when your husband has just gotten off a 2+ hour work call and is going to schlep two tired and cranky kids to two stores (one of which is Costco), well, how do you say that to him?

The answer, of course, is you blog about it. So there you go dear. Finally, the answer to your question. Good luck with that toilet bowl.

P.S.

My DH just walked into the closed bathroom door. LMAO!! *Snort!* It's the little things.

Random Updates

• My thyroid is just fine, thank you. All results normal, which makes the whole kafoffle with breastfeeding all the more galling as it just indicates all the tests were utterly unnecessary. I filed the appropriate 'Patient Complaint' with the clinic's patient advocate, who promised to see that changes are made. Hmmm. I dislike the lack of follow-up here, but have to trust that changes will be enacted.
• My laptop has been returned to me, with a new hard drive (as expected) and a cryptic note attached to some removed RAM complaining about "Bad 3rd Party Memory!!" Huh? My computer had no additional RAM in it--just what we bought and paid for, TYVM. DH reinstalled the RAM (1 GB of it, no less!) and it works just fine. DH was irritated and is now of the opinion that future computers will be self-insured as had we not shelled out $300 for the extra warranty, he would have fixed it himself weeks ago and I would not have had to suffer the amputation of my lifeblood, my line to the outside world the absence of email and the internet for large swaths of time in recent weeks.
• My DS took his first steps (awwwww) and is cutting his first molar (yee-ikes, is he cranky!).
• My DD is likely going to be in preschool 2 days a week starting in January. *sniff, sniff* My little girl is growing up! She is also going through another bout of major attitude which is requiring constant vigilance on DH's and my part.
• We are having a Christmas party in 40 hours, and our house is incredibly lacking in decorations and cleanliness. GACK! What was I thinking???
• I am now an adjunct faculty member at the local community college. Thank you, thank you *bows*. Yes, I interviewed and got the job--one lab section, 3 hours per week. Just about right given the kiddos, I think. Yippee!
• I am insane to be posting now when I need to be CLEANING! GACK! ttyl.

Psst...

I don't like turkey.

There, I've said it. Every year I dread Thanksgiving, when someone is bound to shove an over-hyped piece of turkey meat at me and expect me to eat it. Add in the family's 'traditional' Stove Top brand stuffing mix, some canned cranberry sauce, and either brown and serve rolls or potato rolls and frankly I'm not very interested. In fact, I could quite easily say that Thanksgiving is one of the days of the year when I DON'T eat much. Really. Ok, I will eat dessert, but pretty much the entire meal would get poked at on my plate but not actually ingested.

This year it was just our own little nuclear family at the Thanksgiving table--just me, DH, DD, and DS. Given that two of the participants are under the age of 3, DH and I felt free to chart our own course for the meal. We bought a roasting chicken and tested out a Guy Fieri recipe which involved sticking half a can of beer up the bird's posterior, and various other forms of spicy abuse prior to roasting it in the oven. We bought Costco's rolls--the GOOD ones, to accompany the meal. DH made his own chicken gravy from the drippings, and it was so good DD was practically licking it off her plate. We cooked the corn in chicken stock...mmmmm good. We even deep fried Irish-style chips instead of mashed potatoes or potato croquettes. DH even made some stuffing from scratch, with just bread crumbs, onion, butter, and tiny bit of garlic. That was it. And it was GOOD. I actually ATE the stuffing. Who knew it could actually taste, well, good?? That roasted chicken was GORGEOUS. We loved every scrap of it. I completely ignored my frozen stash of apple pie in a bag (homemade goodness, but for another day) and created my own recipe for a fig tart using fresh figs, ricotta cheese, and coconut. YUM-MY!!

I am now planning how to have another roast chicken for Christmas dinner. My parents will be with us so I think they will be expecting a turkey, but I have developed a cunning plan. Dad passed on his old electric smoker to us when he bought his new super jazzy grill-cum-smoker. We have never used it. Dad and Mom both loved smoked turkey. Do you see where I'm going with this? Dad can "teach" DH how to use the smoker and cook a turkey breast to their satisfaction for Christmas dinner, which leaves the oven wide open for a glorious roast chicken. Yes, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas (dinner that is... ).

Medical Mistake

I was referred for a thyroid scan due to an enlarged thyroid. Not a big deal, something that is relatively common, right? Except, my doctor forgot to note that I am breastfeeding my son, 9 months old. And the clinic personnel didn't ask. And I, unforgivably, did not think to look up the potential side effects of radioactive iodine on breastmilk until AFTER I had taken the d#$n pills! And guess what??? It's concentrated in breastmilk!!!

I was extremely upset after reading this (naturally), and a flurry of phone calls ensued between me and my doctor's office. First they said to pump and dump for 48 hours. Then they said they spoke to the chief radiologist and it wasn't really necessary to pump and dump, the percentages that were expressed in breastmilk were so small, but to be conservative I could pump and dump for 24 hours. And then they called my pediatrician for me and she recommended pumping and dumping for 24 hours.

What followed that evening can only be described as sheer hell, as I listened to my son wailing non-stop for me, then escalate to screaming non-stop for over an hour, even with my husband holding him. AND I COULDN'T NURSE HIM. I just really cannot express in words the sheer hellishness of knowing your child is crying FOR YOU and you can't give him what he needs. We gave him milk that I had frozen (fortunately, as with no warning I hadn't had a chance to prepare a stash of stored milk) but he just needed the comfort of nursing. I ended up nursing him 16+ hours after taking the I¹²³, because I figured out that he would not be getting much at that point, based on some journal articles I found online. (Thank God for my degree!)

My son tossed and turned all night, woke repeatedly crying, and in general was inconsolable until I was finally able to nurse him. Then all was well with his world again.

What is really p!ssing me off about this whole thing is that after researching this online, I find that post-partum thyroiditis is common and can last up to 18 months postpartum! Eighteen months!! So I didn't even need to have this test! It could have waited until my son was weaned! They could have just checked my TSH levels in my blood occasionally and if it was still present at 18 months postpartum, THEN we could have gone down this road. So my son and I went through this for no good reason!

And, I am really pissed off that there was no standard information sheet given to me about this radioactive iodine, nor was I required to sign any permission form, nothing that might have said, "Tell your doctor if you are pregnant or breastfeeding." Heck, my doctor KNEW I was breastfeeding, and still sent me for this test (a mistake!). And the technician administering the test didn't even ask if I was pregnant! Not one check before I could have been giving my kid potentially damaging doses of radioactivity straight to his tiny thyroid gland. Thank the Lord I looked it up, because I then knew the seriousness and that if I had nursed him 6 hours after taking it, he would have gotten a significant dose of radiation! Come on!

I am going to be following up on this with the clinic and my doctor. They assured me they will be changing all their literature to ensure it doesn't happen again, but my point is, what literature? I wasn't given anything, I was not asked to sign anything. So they really need to do some serious retraining, because someone else could have done this and then gone home and merrily dosed their little baby up with radioactive iodine. What if it was a smaller baby, or a relative newborn, or a baby with some immune-compromising disorder? I mean, COME ON PEOPLE!!! I don't intend to sue them, but there had better be more that comes out of this than some rapid heinie-covering behavior with me on the phone and absolutely zero follow up the next day. They were supposed to call a lactation consultant and get back to me with her advice, too, but I haven't heard a d@mn thing back about that. Hello?

As you can tell, I am still very upset about the whole thing. For something so important to be missing, well, that's a huge problem. I just don't want anyone else to have to go through this, and I don't want some little baby to be exposed to something when it's so easily prevented. And I don't like knowing I was sent for a test that I probably didn't need to have right now, which caused such excruciating pain for me and my son. I pumped ELEVEN OUNCES of breastmilk from one side within an hour that night, and I STILL had a hard spot and some symptoms of mastitis that night. I was not happy. I'm still not happy. I'd better see some real changes and concern from this clinic, or I'm going to be talking to the director.

Get Your Own

...computer, that is. Because, my laptop is broken. Hard drive-toasted. Data-recovered by masterful DH with Ubuntu. So, here I am, at the slow, crappy, prone to multiple errors and random crashes old desktop.

This computer is now usually the purview of DD, who is allowed to play computer games from a website on here. She is not even three, but has gotten quite good at navigating through that website and finding the games she wants to play, and using the mouse to work through the "levels" of these preschool games. It's quite impressive really. However, it does become a trifle annoying when I'm checking my email and DD comes in and quite insistently says she needs to play her games and it's HER computer.

Of course it's even more annoying that we have encouraged her to feel a sense of ownership in this system, because it keeps her away from our laptops. So I can hardly scold her for a feeling I've encouraged, and she certainly feels that I'm poaching when I use this computer here.

So I have been relegated to using the computer surreptitiously (for the most part), to avoid constant demands for the Elmo games and indignant looks that I find amusing as well as annoying. And, it seems, DH likes to use this system for checking Facebook and other minutiae that he doesn't feel merit hauling out his work laptop, so I have come in to find all my windows closed and Facebook open. Grrrr.

I've admitted it freely before, but I really don't like sharing a computer with my DH. We do things differently, and have different opinions about operating systems and programs, etc. Whereas DH will jump on new software and platforms to play with them, I will be torn shrieking away from my older programs and OS begrudgingly accept changes to my system, often with an irascible shrieking and complaint that caused arguments in the early years of our marriage. Now DH knows better and just leaves my computer alone except for important safety updates, because every time he changes something (however small) on my system it provokes an argument and heated discussion about the necessity for the new thing.

So here I am, back to sharing a computer with DH and now DD. I don't like it. I want my laptop back NOW, TYVM, and I'm already ticked about the ridiculousness of a warranty process that requires me to send my whole laptop away when DH (a certified technician and about twelve technical competency levels above the yahoo who will end up servicing my computer) already knows it is a bad drive and just needs a new hard drive installed. Like THAT requires me to send my computer away for days, perhaps weeks, when I know DH could do it in about twenty minutes! Pfff!!! *grouse* Stupid computers...

A Tough Day

It's near the beginning of my day, and I can tell it's going to be a tough day. Not because of anything my children are doing in particular, but just because I'm tired, a bit grouchy, and want a bit of time to myself. And that is not going to happen today, I'm afraid! *LOL*

At least I can laugh at my grouchy self. My DD has wisely picked up on my grouchiness and is entertaining herself with PlayDoh for the time being. My DS has been exiled to his crib for his morning nap, and His Highness was being a super grouch as well and I was not willing to placate him for another 30 minutes to try to even out his naps. He's mildly fussing but not really crying, which tells me it was the right choice for him, as he will likely be asleep within five minutes.

I'm irritated with myself already today because I forgot about 2 regular bills, which hit our checking account and thus overdrew our account onto our credit card. *sigh* It's not a big deal, I just thought for some reason they came out on the 15th instead of the 1st of the month. Grrr. I just can't seem to keep all these financial balls in the air at the same time, and I need to get a workable system in place so that I DON'T mistake when bills are due, etc. I'm seriously considering buying the Dave Ramsey envelope system, because DH & I know we do better on a strictly cash budget. Some friends of ours just bought the deluxe system, so my cheap frugal self wants to examine this 'system' before I shell out the bucks for one for us. I figure if it's something we can duplicate using paper envelopes we already have, so much the better.

And I know I have to finish the Christmas party invitations and get them in the mail, since it's exactly 1 month from today. I am seriously thinking I might do Evite for our friends and do the paper invites to our neighbors, since I have almost enough of them made to cover the neighbors. Easy, simple, and makes my life simpler. I just don't want to do it, to be honest, because as soon as they are done then there is no excuse for postponing the start of Christmas card writing: something which I alternately love and despise as I plow through approximately 140 cards.

And I am not happy to look at the calendar and see that the "extra" paycheck of November is a myth, that in fact it's just getting ahead of bills and eliminating the shuffle back and forth between savings and checking; and there is no magic "extra" money to funnel back to various NEEDS (yes, not wants, but NEEDS) in the various e-funds and assorted requirements for moola. *sigh* Depressing.

And, what exactly am I going to buy for my parents and husband for Christmas, hmm? No clue. None. DH's sweater languishes in the corner (largely for want of time to work on it) and I need to reaffirm with my brother & sister that we aren't giving each other gifts, right? Or maybe set a $5 limit on them, something like that.

It all just makes me want to bury my head in the sand, peeps!! I want to lounge around eating Halloween candy, drinking coffee, and knitting whatever I want to make or doing a craft or wrapping the presents I have already bought for my kiddos. Anything but the depressing realities of our finances, or required Christmas cards, or planning our fixed budget.

Well, I suppose that's enough of a pity party. Time for me to go attack our mountain of laundry. Oh the joy.

A Mommy Time-Out

Well, here I am at the end of another insane day, and I just need a bit of space. Yesterday DH had to stay late in work for a "team building" dinner (and you know how fond I am of those) and after dealing with the kids all day by myself, I really needed a break THEN. However, that was not possible, obviously, so I am doing the next best thing, which is a break now. I have given myself permission to have a cocktail, to put my feet up on my bed, surf the net, watch an egregiously 'chick' flick ("Emma", if you must know), and pretend to fold some laundry but not really crank it out, just fold enough so that we can actually sleep in our bed tonight.

I might even have dinner in here. Considering that all I want to eat is a salad, this is quite appealing. There are positives here for everyone, except perhaps DH, who is tired after working all day. Of course, as he well appreciates, I have been working all day too. The end of the day is a tiring time for everyone--moms, dads, and kids. Let us hope we can all get through it with gracious aplomb and not a sea of moaning and irritation.

Part of today's chaos was holiday-related, naturally. I had set myself a semi-serious deadline of TODAY to mail off the IL's Christmas gifts, after having the panic of postal delays in previous years. I did my small grocery shop this morning with two somewhat cranky kids in tow, and of course I had forgotten entirely about my mail-in ballot for today's elections. Since I was determined to vote, that meant we had to go out again this afternoon, and thus I was unable to come up with a good excuse to delay further on boxing up all the IL's gifts and sending them on their way.

Naturally, I forgot until the last second the little souvenirs we bought for everybody from our Yellowstone vacation, which granted me another small bounty of gifts that needed to be agonized over, slowly deciding who should get what jam or tea towels to be wrapped. DD was of great help with the tags, lovingly embellishing with her script or jazzy happy faces. She was also most insistent on putting on the tape by herself, thank you very much Mommy! And DS was bemused by the flurry and somewhat annoyed that he was confined away from the action. When I finally freed DS from his confinement in his exersaucer, he happily surprised me and entertained himself with the wrapping paper (fine) instead of the packing peanuts (choking hazard).

Then, having found the one box sans egregious moving company labels (unacceptable on international packages), I laboriously patched the couple of weak points with packaging tape, and sealed it all up...to turn around and find a lone gift, removed by DD--"I was helping you, Mommy!" Er, thanks! Luckily, I already have to mail another smaller box, due to some items that are on order, so I can just toss that one in too. *phew*

The kids were (mostly) behaved at the post office, I choked at the price of international postage for the (large) box and sweated bullets while the postal clerk consulted his enormous book to make sure my box wasn't too big for An Post. I squeaked under the limits on that one, and got my ballot mailed off. Mission accomplished. I even managed to do a craft with DD this morning, which was quite spur of the moment and quite a hit.

So it really was a good day, even with the insanity of holiday parcels and post offices and shopping. That being said, I still find it necessary to recuperate from yesterday's irritations, including a very irritable DS and an annoyed DD, who was quite peeved when Daddy wasn't home at the appointed time. And it's good for the kids to get some one-on-one time with Daddy when I'm not in the same room. I just hope the kids continue being SO GOOD, for DH's sake. I know he's tired too...I just need a bit of a mommy time-out. And thankfully, DH is a BRILLIANT MAN and understands this need. Thank the good LORD for good husbands!

A Revolutionary Concept

Just do it. No, not the Nike ad tagline. Just pick up that stray sock. Just put away those toys. Just empty the dishwasher. Just do it.

There, that's simple. You'd think it would be easy to encapsulate those three little words into everyday life. But in actuality, it's quite difficult. Because life intrudes, you see. Your daughter gets frustrated with her computer games, and demands your attention while you're dealing with the dirty dishes. Your son pulls himself up on the open dishwasher and tries to pull out every dirty piece of silverware he can reach. Your husband comes home and wants five minutes of peace and quiet before preparing dinner or entertaining the kids so you can prepare (or finish preparing) dinner.

It's a simple concept, but not that easy to practice. It's well and dandy to say it glibly, and even demonstrate it a few times in front of a perceived careless spouse. I do it to my DH, he does it to me. Sometimes we both get frustrated with each other over the gradual slide into messiness and clutter that we find ourselves enmeshed in on a routine basis. And like spawning salmon we struggle valiantly upstream, to be rewarded with a mostly clean house, and a week later we find ourselves sliding with the tide back out to sea again.

It's frustrating. It really is. I look at our behemoth laundry pile and whine to myself, "I just DID that." And every morning I grumble about the d@rn dishes. Why couldn't someone invent a dishwasher that puts away the dishes after they're clean...and while they're at it they could invent a machine to take the dirty dishes from the table to the dishwasher, I grumble to myself. And I get tired of doing the same things I do all the time, so sometimes, I just don't do them. And hopefully DH will step up and do them while I take a little "la la la" vacation from my usual chores, but usually not. And the same things happen with DH. He gets tired of doing all the stuff he normally does, he stops doing it and has his own "la la la" break, and we end up back out to sea in our messy cluttered house.

*sigh* It's a mundanity of life, and sometimes I get really irritated by it. But then that little voice inside me reminds me of how blessed I am to HAVE so much STUFF, and to HAVE enough dishes to go three meals without needing to wash anything...and well, I get my perspective reoriented. I just read an article about Burma and life in a refugee camp, and well, I am humbled by my poor spirit (and that's NOT poor-spiritedness in the Beatitudes way, either). Yep, I can (and often am) a pretty ungrateful bugger. I'm glad God hasn't washed His hands of me and all my grousing.

The Busy Season

So, here it is...the busy time of year. Whoever said it doesn't really get crazy until after Thanksgiving, doesn't know what it's like to try to bargain hunt for Christmas, convince siblings that really, it's time to stop giving each other gifts now that we're all in our thirties, convince Mom and Dad that yes, we really will buy you something and FOR PETE'S SAKE quit buying crap for yourselves when Christmas is 7 weeks away(!!), and figure out what the heck we are giving to family in Ireland and get that all bought (or made!), wrapped, packed, and shipped by the middle of next week, thank you very much.

Yep, I've got at present 4 emails from friends that are going unanswered, because even with all of the above, I am still expected to parent my children, clean my house, and run all the errands I normally do. SO. TOTALLY. UNFAIR! < /whine>

Let me see, today was crazyness personified. First off, DH is coming home late from work, thus rendering my normal parenting day about 4 hours longer than it normally would be. Which, frankly, might as well be 24 hours, because it meant I had to get the kiddos fed, diapered, PJ'ed, and into bed--a mean feat when DS screamed his head off while I read DD stories, then DD thumped and bumped in her room doing her best to either a) drive me batty or b) keep DS awake, or c) both...oh yes, and during all of this the bird was shrieking because SHE hadn't been put to bed. Oh joy.

And I have to send "The List" to MIL. These are things we usually enjoy for the holidays and which normally we buy at exorbitant prices from an online British grocer, but this year due to DH's small inheritance from his great-aunt and the annoyance of changing it to dollars, etc, my MIL is going to buy it all in Ireland and then ship it over. So we get to look like TOTAL pigs to them, basically, because here is our list:

Lyons tea (5)
Lyons decaffeinated tea (3)
Cadburys selection boxes (4)
Harvey Nicks mulled fruit jam (2 jars)
Mr. Kipling cherry bakewells (2 boxes)
Mr. Kipling Viennese whirls (2 boxes)
Marks & Spencer mini flapjacks (3 cans)
Marks & Spencer dark chocolate jaffa cakes (3)
Marks & Spencer deluxe mini mince pies (with the cherries & nuts) -- 2
Marks & Spencer mini mince pies (no cherries or nuts) -- 2
milk chocolate Hobnobs (2)
plain Hobnobs (2)

Yep, PIGS. Oh, and today for some reason that I find unfathomable, I invited our neighbor over with her two kids to decorate pumpkins. And then, I couldn't actually FIND any pumpkins at the grocery store, except for 2 behemoth pumpkins totally unsuitable for small kids to glue goggly eyes and other small decorations on. So I had to use my neighbor's two small pumpkins. Talk about feeling bad! And after that was done, help her out by picking them up from their mechanic's after they dropped their car off for servicing, come home, put my kids down for their naps (a prequel to tonight's bedtime, btw), then...make cookie dough! Because, of course, I didn't have ENOUGH to do, I had to make cookies for Halloween! We couldn't let our Halloween cookie shapes and sprinkles go unused! Oh no! So basically during the hour that DS slept, I made cookie dough, and managed to write a few more sentences on some reply emails. Then I got to schlep the kids to the grocery store to finish our shopping, after getting DD some lunch at a drive-through (because she was so tired from the excitement of having her friend in OUR car that she went straight to bed when we got home). And then come home and bake cookies.

So here I sit, eating mini Snickers bars and drinking milk, telling myself that surely this counts as a full meal because the Snickers have peanut, so there's my protein...and I'm drinking milk... Uh-huh. And what am I going to do after I finish this blog? Well, I can either go design our invitations for our Christmas party, or I can go finish undoing my totally, horrendously screwed up row of knit/purl stitches on DH's sweater, that I'm attempting to make for him for Christmas. And to think I do all of this to myself...I must be crazy!

An Open Letter to JK Rowling

Dear Ms. Rowling,

You said Albus Dumbledore was/is gay. And you went on to explain how he actually loved Gellert Grindelwald, and how that made him blind to that wizard's Dark Magic leanings. My question for you is, why would you say this now, if it was irrelevant to the books' plots?

Let's ignore for the purposes of this discussion the inflammatory nature of this statement to your fans who are devout Christians, Jews, Mormons, or Muslims. Instead, let's look at the target audience for your books--kids. While the later books are long, they are books that are read by your average 8 to 10 year olds, plus or minus a few years. Is it really necessary to sexualize the books for this age of child? Isn't it bad enough that kids are barraged by our sex-saturated media and the aggressive politicization of bedroom behavior? Do you have to detract from what is a children's story by extemporizing publicly about all the adult characters' sexuality?

And don't think that adults won't be poring through your books for any hint that Albus had an overly fond interest in Harry, either. This is the age of sex scandals in the Catholic church, victims suing over priests molesting them, and the "man-boy love" association. The second someone finds a sentence like, "Dumbledore patted Harry fondly" or some such, someone will claim it's an indication of an unhealthy relationship between Dumbledore and Harry. After all, Rita Skeeter hinted at it, so it MUST be true...where there's smoke there's fire and all that, right? People will be blogging about this being the real reason Harry was getting so angry with Dumbledore during the later books--he was getting too old for Dumbledore's tastes, etc. Think I'm exaggerating? Just take a look here at the discussion...it's already there. So now the Dumbledore/Harry mentor relationship is questionable, which sours all of the books.

I can't fathom what motives you had for outing Albus. Were you not concerned that Dumbledore is now going to be used as another poster child in the outspoken political gay movement? It took about two nanoseconds for t-shirts and all sorts of slogans to be invented, and no doubt worn at gay pride parades and protests all over the world. I can only assume that at best this doesn't bother you, to see one of your beloved (and assiduously defended from copyright infringement, if your lawyers' previous actions are any indication) characters reduced to a strawman. At worst I could ascribe political motives and an attempt to force your own socio-political views on your reading audience, which, if it is the case, I frankly find despicable from an author of children's literature. Kids have enough of a hard time learning how to sort through all the socio-political debates when they are teens and their brains are developing the ability to reason and use logic. Younger than that, and they are capable only of concrete knowledge, and not able to question why or how. If I were being cynical, I could say this is the point.

Further, why does there have to be some sort of "explanation" for the fact that Dumbledore was single? What is wrong with never marrying? Our society has the unfortunate habit of speculating about sexuality when adults choose not to marry, and shame on you for feeding it. It's okay to be single! Are we now to speculate about Sprout and McGonagall, as they, too, are unmarried?

Lastly, it does irritate me that so much "backstory" is being given out left, right, and center about the characters and their continuing lives, etc. When I finish a book or a series of books, I expect the words, "THE END", to really be THE END. To have an author continue to drip out information that was obviously irrelevant to the story is annoying at best and pandering at worst. I don't care if Neville Longbottom married Hannah Abbott. I don't even remember who she is, she is such a minor character in the books. I have no opinion on Hermione's career choices, or Ron's, or Harry's. And I really don't give a crap about Albus Dumbledore's sexuality. The thing is, all of the above are irrelevant to the story. There's a reason you didn't put it in the books--because it is irrelevant. If it was too irrelevant to be included, then isn't it too irrelevant to discuss with fans? Isn't there enough meat in the books themselves to talk about for ages? When you give out all of these meaningless bits, you ruin people's own ideas about the characters. That's the best part of books--you have your own vision of the characters, and what they were like eating dinner or chatting with friends at the pub, or growing up, or as parents or grown-ups. When you start feeding out your ideas, you rob your readers of the joy of imagining their own endings and stories. And that, frankly, disappoints me the most. For all of the above reasons, I'm disappointed in you, Jo.

What Will They Be?

Being a parent means I have (mostly) moved from wondering what I will be when I grow up, to wondering what my kids will be when they grow up. Even at their young ages, they have some preferences for things that make DH & I wonder if they are going to be inclined toward those things when they grow up.

DD loves music and dancing. When I have the cover off of my harp, she is right there, clamoring to be allowed to play and wanting to sit on my chair and pull the harp back to play it like I do. She even puts up two fingers, her thumb and middle finger, to pluck two strings at once the way I do when I play chords (well I play 3 strings but you get the point). She also loves to dance to celebrate anything ordinary--a change of clothes, a breakfast dance, a new library book dance...she will dance to anything. Our favorite is when she does her "whisk" dance, where she goes to the kitchen, gets a whisk, and then proceeds to dance around like an pygmy, banging the whisk and shaking her feet.

Did I mention the songs she makes up? She will start singing her own songs, filled with la-la's and oh's and any other sounds which she thinks are part of songs. She will add in sentences about the activity, "Oh, this is pretty, la-la..." and in general describe her day or mood with the exuberance of her singing. THAT is cute, my friends.

And DS is already showing signs of being a foodie. He rejects artificially flavored ice cream, but give that child some real vanilla bean ice cream and he's all over it. Ditto the toaster waffles...yeah, they are okay to chew on, but to actually EAT he prefers toast with butter. And he loves real maple syrup--the dark B grade with lots of flavor. Will suck it right off the toaster waffle strips and leave the waffle on his tray. He also loves roasted garlic potatoes and DH's seasoned chicken. Those pre-formed chicken nuggets? Yuck! Spits them right out.

He also adores TV. If the TV is on, he wants to watch it. I admit to using Teletubbies on occasion to keep him entertained, but he has definite couch potato tendencies. I have to turn it off if he's in the room, or he will watch TV. DD only likes a few shows anyway, so I don't mind saying goodbye to Sprout's endless re-runs throughout the day and their chirpy hosts. I'd rather put on some good music and watch DD dance.

Life's Little Annoyances

Yesterday was a very frustrating day for me, and then for DH. My DD woke up in a mood that is best described as "ornery", and it only went downhill from there. She's going to be three in a few months and she has started having major attitude problems--a sign of her continuing desire for independence. However, this is very difficult for me to deal with, as DS is teething and cruising, and thus requires near constant supervision. Any time I have to punish DD with a time-out as opposed to a spanking (which only works in certain circumstances, thus the need to escalate to time-out), I have to supervise it because her attitude results in banging the walls repeatedly or throwing things during time-out in her room, neither of which is acceptable behavior in this house. So I have to supervise while DS cries in the other room, usually from the confinement of his exersaucer because I can't trust that he's not going to hurt himself if I leave him to cruise around at will.

To be fair to DD & DS, the morning went well enough, with trips to two different grocery stores for this week's Grocery Game deals. DD was quite helpful at one of the stores, and scanned some of the cans herself and put the coupons in the slot by herself. This is a big thing for her recently, doing things by herself--she has to dress herself, brush her own hair, put on her own shoes and socks, and in general prove that she CAN do things alone. It's very cute and I try to let her do things her own way, including leaving it alone if she puts on her pants backwards. Independence is a good thing, and is the whole point of growing up.

However, when she wants to balance on the arm of a chair, or play with the bird's toys or close the bird's cage, or climb up onto her stepstool to reach forbidden items like candy...well, those independent behaviors have to be nipped in the bud (especially before the bird nips her). This is what she was attempting to do repeatedly yesterday afternoon, and it drove me crazy. She refused to stop when I told her too. She was also being bratty toward her brother, taking toys away from him and then attempting to mow him down with a push walker that she's been told is not her toy, but belongs to her brother. Stern & calm rebukes and spankings did nothing to dent her behavior, and I had to put her in time-out three times yesterday before she finally calmed down for a brief period before her daddy got home.

In the meantime, DS was clinging to me for dear life when I wasn't disciplining his sister, probably due to the combination of enforced confinement and hearing his sister screaming and crying about her punishment. He refused to play independently, and was quite grabby and demanding comfort nursing which was NOT very comfortable for me, as he preferred to chew instead of eat! Arrrghh. Yep, that's a good combination--trying to train a nursing child not to bite/chew when he's already a bit upset and clingy. Yep, good times.

So DH got home and I fled the house to run a Christmas errand. I brought DS with me to the bookstore because he's quite manageable on errands and I knew DH was tired. Apparently while I was gone, DD had more misbehavior and time-out. Instead of the comfort food & tea we had planned for dinner, DD ate cereal with chocolate milk, I fed DS some butternut squash that he was very indifferent about (throwing half of it out because he stopped eating it). And we gave both of them baths, because DS smeared squash all over himself and DD had graffiti'ed her leg with a pen. I had to let DS cry for a bit before he settled down and got serious about going to sleep, and DD kept with the theme of the rest of the day and whined during her bedtime routine. DH & I collapsed onto the couch and ate a motley assortment of snack foods & toaster waffles for dinner...yum.

And to top it off, we watched a British car show where they came to the States, bought 3 cars for under $1000 each, and then proceeded to take a road trip with the intention of provoking rural yokels into attacking or arresting them by writing offensive slogans all over their cars. And then they wondered why they were nearly attacked and had rocks thrown at them! Then we were treated to sanctimonious attitudes about the wreckage from Katrina that was still visible to them as they drove through New Orleans a year later. The comment was, "How is it that the wealthiest country in the world hasn't fixed this? How do people in America sleep in their beds at night, knowing this is still here?" GRRRRRR!!! How sanctimonious and ignorant can you get??? I was so irritated, it was the perfect end to an irritating day. DH had to stop me when I started talking back to the TV--"Well for a start a lot of the residents don't live there any more, they took their compensation from the government and now live in Texas or Alabama or other states...and why the heck do you find it surprising that when you deliberately try to provoke rural yokels into attacking you in the Deep South that they actually WERE offended and were GOING to attack you???"

So DH turned off the TV and we went to bed. Is it any wonder that Europeans have a bad impression of America? I'm still miffed, as you can tell.

Yes, a bad day all around. Hopefully today will be better.

No Secret Knitting

I am attempting to knit my first sweater. I have the circular needles in 2 sizes, I have cast on 254 stitches, and now I am belatedly making a gauge square because the stitches look too small to me. The genesis of this project was my overweening confidence in my knitting after blowing through several easy "fun fur" scarves, and even the completion of a somewhat lopsided modern art keyhole scarf. And, my DH had commented on a little sweater vest that DS wears occasionally, and lamented how he would love to have one that matched. Awwwwwwwwww.

I thought, Well of COURSE I could do that! and marched myself down to my local yarn store to buy an easy pattern and enough yarn to do a set of sweater vests for DH & DS. My LYS people were extremely helpful (of course they tend to be effusive in their assurances if they see another prospective customer being introduced the wide world of specialty yarns) and assured me that, yes, I can do this, and that they would help me out if I got stuck. OK.

I was going to be very industrious and work on this sweater only when DH was at work. By keeping it from him, I was going to have a beautiful sweater vest, lovingly hand-knit, and wrapped up in beautiful paper under the Christmas tree. That was the plan.

After a week of trying to skulk around, dealing with my GI issues and doctor's visits, and having precious knitting time constantly interrupted by DD ("What are you doing Mommy? Can you help me with my shoes/my game/onto the potty?") and DS (who I believe is a budding yarn monster), I gave up. (Note that DS is 9 months old, and if there is a ball of yarn in view he pursues it with the determination of a dog after a treat. He LOVES playing with yarn.)

Anyway, I finally gave up all pretense last night, shoved the pattern into the hand-knit stocking which my great-aunt knitted for DS for Christmas, and said, "Merry Christmas" to DH and handed it to him while he was cooking dinner. Somewhat befuddled, DH pulled out the knitting pattern and I explained that, if I was to have any HOPE of completing this sweater for him sometime before 2015, I would have to knit whenever I had the chance and thus he would know what I was making. Merry Christmas. DH laughed and said thank you very much, and he is looking forward to wearing it. He sagely advised me not to attempt to alter the pattern to put some ribbing at the neck, but to keep it as simple as possible.

So now I am done skulking around with circular needles and a ball of blue wool stuffed into my purse or laundry basket. I can knit out in the open, and I can run off to the LYS to ask for help, as I inevitably will. Just as soon as I finish this gauge square, which I believe is going to show me I need to use #8s instead of the #6s. Which means casting on 254 stitches again. Oh goody. Who started me on this knitting business again?

Medical Testing Fun

Back when I was young and green, I thought that just about the worst thing you could have in terms of medical testing was having your blood drawn. I hated the prick of the needle, hated the idea of all that perfectly good blood being taken from my body, and hated the anticipation of it beforehand.

Now that I've gone through childbirth and then a c-section, I know there are far worse things. Having a catheter in your bladder is one. Having an IV is another, especially when your nurse can't seem to find a vein without hitting a valve (can we say Ouch!?). But now there is a new king at the top of the hill--a CT scan. Not the scan itself, mind you, but the barium sulfate you have to drink twice before you go in for one.

I thought I'd pulled a muscle in my abdomen about two weeks ago, when I experienced some intense, burning pain in my lower right side. (I know what you're thinking...I'm getting there.) I figured it was from hefting DS, who is quite a chunk and at the top of the growth charts. So I figured it would be better in a few days and left it at that. It did fade back and became an annoyance at best.

Then on Sunday I had some, er, gastrointestinal issues, to put it delicately, that had me wondering if perhaps the abdominal pain was partially responsible. I called my doctor and got in to see him the next day, oh fun. As luck would have it I already had an appointment with my OB for my annual exam (oh glee!), and she ruled out an ectopic pregnancy (and pregnancy, period--phew) and a hernia along my c-section incision. Oh-kay. The family practice doc I saw later in the day said I needed a CT scan right away, and hemmed and hawed around truly nasty possibilities (like colorectal cancer) and the more obvious (appendicitis, anyone?). However, he also said it could be a nasty intestinal parasite or germ causing my symptoms...oh and by the way did I know my thyroid is enlarged? So let's take a look at that too. *sigh*

So I went home, toting my 2 bottles of berry flavored barium sulfate to chug 2 hours and 1 hour before my appointment, respectively. And no food for 4 hours prior. Hmm. The next day I choked my way through the first bottle, which DH kindly put in a glass so I could attempt to delude myself for 10 nanoseconds that I wasn't drinking a horrible, chalky, DISGUSTING CONCOCTION OF SATAN...er, sorry about that...memories. *shudder* I don't know how I choked down the 2nd batch, but I finally told DH to toss the last 10 or so mL because I was going to throw up if I attempted to drink any more.

That done, I got to go to the clinic and wait. I swear, and DH can attest this is the truth, every single time I was doing something complicated with my keyhole scarf (like undoing stitches and picking them back up to re-do a section where I twisted one side...but it's all fine now, yes, just fine...) they called me back for something else! First to poke me with a needle, take my blood, and set up an IV. An IV? For a CT scan? For pete's sake! And then they had me sign the permission form for the contrast dye (hey, I thought they only wanted to look at my abdomen here, why do you need to light up my veins like Christmas trees?), and then to get undressed and into a very gaping gown and finally get put in place inside what can only be described as Homer Simpson's fondest dream, i.e., a very large doughnut. And hold my breath for ages, while being injected with dye that made me feel as if I was wetting myself. Oh the absolute FUN of these CT scans, I'm telling you! Did I mention the 200 mL of barium sulfate I had to drink just before? No? Well that was the best part! < /sarcasm>

Anyhoo, then we got sent to a mysterious "Dr. X's office upstairs" without any word of who he was or why I was being sent to see him, and then we see that he is a general surgeon. So of course I have visions of tumors or other nasty things, as we thought that if it were my appendix they would have sent me straight to the hospital. But then the nurse gives me a pamphlet kindly titled, 'Appendicitis: Diagnosis and Treatment'. Oh thank you very much. And we waited, and waited, and waited some more for Dr. X to finally show up and tell me what the heck was going on with my system, which was clearly doomed...

And Dr. X came in, and reviewed my PERFECTLY NORMAL CT scan with me. No inflammation. No tumors. Nothing out of the ordinary. Dr. X thinks I have either a virus or nasty germ inhabiting my intestines, and the bloodwork and additional tests (we will just gloss over what THOSE are, TYVM) should pinpoint the culprit. My abdominal pain? It could be related to the bug, could just be a pulled muscle like I originally thought. We don't know for sure.

So I'm going back in a week to review the test results, and I also have a thyroid scan to look forward to next week. And once again modern medicine proves how, even with all the machines that go beep and bip, they don't always know what is going on with your body and quite often are scratching their heads and covering their rears for insurance purposes. Not that I mind that, I would much rather know if it were something serious...but after all that portentous waiting and silence, one does get one's knickers in a twist about the vagaries of the medical "process".

And Then There Is This...and This...and This...

So we've been trying to unpack more of our stuff because, well, after living here for eighteen months it seems appropriate to finally finish unpacking. Naturally the thought has crossed our minds that if we've lived without it for eighteen months, we don't need it. And this is true for many things. The sole remaining tealight candleholder of a matching set of three--going away. It's an opalescent glass finish that I never cared for anyway, and now that its two sisters are broken and long forgotten I am quite happy to say goodbye. Ditto the etched pub glasses, surplus wineglasses (which we have in abundance), yucky inherited vases from my great aunt...and there's plenty more.

Some of this stuff should have been disposed of sooner. For instance, the aforementioned vases from my great aunt were handed down with the instruction to get rid of them as we chose. I will attempt to Ebay them, as they are somewhat old and not in a style which I like. I can add a few biscuit jars to that list, also courtesy of my great aunt. And, we don't really need the 18" electric lawnmower now that we have a HUGE lawn to maintain and have a riding lawnmower.

DH & I spent some enlightening time unpacking and sorting things. At first we were going to give it all away, but then we remembered the church rummage sale, and oh yeah, that big thing called our DEBT that could use any extra funds we could amass through a garage sale.

We also found some fun stuff--pictures for our walls, forgotten objets d'art which I'm quite fond of and am now quite happy to display again (including my Irish pottery collection). And unpacking my formal china at long last means I finally have it to use on the rare occasion that I feel like doing so, even if it does mean handwashing them. Likewise finding the family heirloom silver is a good thing, even if it means I have to buy silver polish again. Still, it's nice to have those pieces of family history out, and I even hung up the 1814 sampler stitched by some long-forgotten relative. It also reminded me that I need to have that professionally cleaned and mounted, and so I will start my piddly fund to save up the $200-$500 for that piece of work.

Naturally we also found toys for DS, which DD has outgrown. The instant she saw them, she laid claim to them, but we are slowly reinforcing the notion that she's outgrown them and they are DS' toys now. I think that will take a few years months to sink in.

So we have a slowly growing pile of things to Ebay (including a never used REI camping/hiking backpack--any takers?) and things to sell at our garage sale, at some nebulous time next spring/summer. And things to donate to the church rummage sale next fall. Piles again, people! I just can't get rid of them! These are GOOD piles though, right? That's my opinion, anyway.

The Art of Giving Directions

SO, apparently in addition to the need for hospitality training (see prior blog here), people need to be informed of how to give directions that actually bring people to your house. Today we trekked two hours away to visit DH's mother's sister's neighbors' son and his family. Convoluted, yes, but the short story is this woman is a longtime friend of MIL, she and her husband were visiting their son who also lives here (relatively speaking), and they insisted we come to visit them with the kids, since their kids are the same ages. Ho-kay.

DH asked for directions a few days ago, and we received an email with a link to an online map, but no actual address (hmmm) and the added information that "no search engine we've found" has been able to properly map their address. Upon reading this forwarded email from DH, my brow wrinkled momentarily but I figured we would get the address and then see for ourselves what we could turn up.

Today we piled into the car hurriedly, as we were leaving about 20 minutes later than we thought we should, and even though the Irish are notoriously lax about timing we didn't want to assume that courtesy (or lack thereof!) extended to the unknown expat son and fam. So we were in a rush and I didn't print up the map. DH had his Blackberry, he could pull up the email, and besides we had the hand-me-down GPS unit which my parents gifted us with on their last trip. No problem.

So the first problem was the GPS unit did not recognize the house number and street which we entered in, which DH had pried from the son in a last minute email yesterday. Ok, we can wing it, right? Second problem was DH's Blackberry could not load the online map which was contained in the email. Apparently it does not have the right interface for Blackberry (I could hint as to what corporation provided this online map system but I will be polite and refrain, as the aforementioned neighbors' son works for it). Gee thanks.

DH used a GPS program on his Blackberry to locate the general vicinity to which we were headed, and we picked a random address that the hand-me-down GPS unit recognized in the same neighborhood and just went with that. The hand-me-down unit started failing us due to the incorrect address, and then we relied solely on the Blackberry's GPS program. We got to the correct, supposedly last street before the turn-off for their street, and drove up and down it for five minutes before concluding that we would require their assistance and rang.

That is when we were told that we had to look for Xth Street, and turn onto that street before we turned onto THEIR street. Ah, you see, that is a critical bit of information. If the last street before you turn onto your street is in fact, the second to last street, don't you think it would be polite to mention that to guests? Would you not have noted down the name of this street in the, oh, seven years you've lived there? So you can tell people how to get to your house without issue?

Oh yes, and what is wrong with using some other recognizable landmarks? Such as, the clearly printed name of your subdivision which is visible from the name of the road you DID give out as the "last street" before you turn onto the street which your house is actually on? When that "last street" is really the second-to-last street? Hmmm? Or even saying, "It's a very quick right onto Xth Street, then another very quick right"? Is that so very difficult to do?

I guess we are just odd. We give directions in terms of right and left, as well as compass directions (north, south, etc), and also give some clues as to landmarks (near this store/gas station/strip mall; up the big hill, etc). Basically, when we invite people over to our house, we sincerely want them to arrive on time and having been able to easily find us. We don't like to find frazzled guests on our doorstop, late, and irritated by the hassle of trying to decipher poor directions to find us at long last. But I suppose it's yet another indication of thoughtlessness at best and apathy at worst!

Now we are going to reciprocate with an invitation for them to come to visit us soon, but I don't know if they will come. The connection being tenuous at best, coupled with the 2 hour drive, makes it a bit of a stretch under the best of circumstances. However, we do feel obligated to do so, and I'm sure MIL and her friend will be badgering both of us (both families) to "get together again soon". So we will invite them and we will be happy for them to come. I doubt there will be lifelong friendships born, but it is always nice to have a touchpoint for DH in terms of a fellow countryman who knows what life is like in a big, nosy Irish family. That is worth some bungled directions, I suppose. *LOL*

Requiem for a Spider

I did something bad today. I immolated a spider in our woodstove. I don't think it stood a chance, what with the 4 hour Duraflame log I used to kickstart things. I did try to get it to climb onto the poker when I saw it crawling in the back corner of the stove, but I think crawling near the flames licking the newspaper kindling was a bit too much for its tiny brain to accept, as well as crawling onto a metal bar instead of staying on the familiar wood log, which unfortunately was piled on top of the Duraflame log.

*sigh* I know some of you are probably laughing now. It's just a spider, you say. Well, yes. But, it is a living creature, and where possible we are supposed to preserve life. Just look at Genesis 2:15, "Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it." You see that? "Keep it", as in, take care of it. All of it. The plants, animals, the whole works. Heck, it was Adam who named everything (Gen. 2:20).

This is the spring of my particular breed of environmentalism. I believe we have been entrusted with all of these resources, and we are to take care of them and cultivate them. So even though a lowly, tiny spider might seem insignificant, it had a job to play, too. And frankly I was too lazy when I saw it skitter over the log, to take it outside and shake it off. I hoped that the spider had fallen off onto the logs below, but I didn't check. I was careless. Like many, I thought, "It's just a little spider," and recklessly shoved the log into our stove and lit the fire. But seeing it skitter around in there, well, it made me realize that I was just being callous. I was too lazy to put the spider outside in the garden, where he/she belonged. Instead I just tossed him away, subjecting him to a terrible death by fire. :(

Yes, it was just a little spider. But at what point does callousness turn into cruelty? I think our society would be far, far better off if we all checked ourselves for callousness in the "little things" before we reach the cruel stage. Because it's insidious, and deadly, because at the heart of it, it's sin. And we need to be mindful of our attitudes about life, however small and insignificant it appears to us.

I mourn for the spider. I'm sorry. :~(

Is It Supposed to Work This Way?

I have this fungal infection of some sort going on in my thumb. Something that's been bugging me for nearly the whole summer, which finally festered over and emerged as ugly dry, cracked, bleeding skin that hurt like h3LL whenever I had to push the carseat buttons or do anything else with my thumb.

So I finally dragged myself to our family practice doctor for the first time, and she diagnosed it as some type of fungal infection and prescribed an antifungal and steroidal cream to apply three times a day or whenever I get a second with 2 preschool children. (She's a mom to a preschooler--she knows how often handwashing is occurring around here.)

That was nearly a month ago. She casually suggested I might also soak the offending digit in a diluted vinegar solution twice a day. As can be expected, I was quite vigilant about applying the cream and skipped the vinegar for the first week, and it appeared to be clearing up. I thought, "Hooray!" and became less vigilant about applying the cream. Lo and behold, a week later, there I was with cracked and bleeding skin again, and a very sour outlook on this whole "unknown fungus" that my skin is battling against.

I mean, is it fair that I do a good thing, trying to improve our yard by gardening, and am attacked by some virulent pathogenic fungus from my soil for my efforts?? It just doesn't seem right! Now I am tossing out my gardening gloves in case they are harboring these nasty spores, and eyeing the rhododendrons and weeds with an evil eye lest they are responsible for this calamity. I was actually trying to play my harp on a semi-regular basis here! I was getting reasonably decent with some easy Christmas pieces! And now this! I'm liable to split my thumb open if I touch my harp, spewing venomous fungal spores all over its strings!

*sulk* SO, here I sit, with my thumb in vinegar. It stings like h3LL and after I can't take it any more, I will lather it with cream that will make it sting in a whole new, semi-numbing way. Is this how the cure is SUPPOSED to work? Hmmm? And at what point am I going to be sick of having a thumb smelling of vinegar? Since I'm still breastfeeding, oral antifungal medication is out. So I guess I will continue to have a stinging thumb, smelling of vinegar, and hope eventually whatever this nasty little single-celled organism is, it DIES and leaves my skin alone! Harrumph.

Would This Be Acceptable...

...to the Department of Health? I find myself asking this question when I peruse the state of my kickboard under the kitchen cabinets. I am quite sure that most days the Department of Health would not certify my kitchen "A", given that I routinely have bits of stuff in that annoying under cabinet space where my vacuum cleaner does not reach and I have to use the wand attachment to clean out. And frankly this only happens every three weeks or so, when I ask myself "the Department of Health" question and thereby convince myself of the necessity for vacuuming my cabinet kickplate space.

Of course you think to yourself that "people will notice!" when your house is dirty, but the reality is that most people probably don't notice, and I've been looking at other people's homes to reassure myself of this fact. When company is coming not everyone has the entire house spic and span. Mind you, most of the people we know have their house significantly less cluttered and decidedly minimalist, but I am afraid you'll have to give me another decade or so to unlearn ingrained family clutterbug tendencies.

I think most people have their hot button things that they can't have dirty when company comes. As I discovered during my recovery from DS' birth, my MIL cannot abide cluttered surfaces, and swept all of our clutter into bags for her own personal sanity in advance of guests arriving. Personally I don't like having dirty toilets when company is coming. If my commodes are less than spic and span, I am not a happy camper. I can tolerate dirty floors to a degree if they are freshly vacuumed, and can even tolerate mildly dirty floors in need of vacuuming. I absolutely cannot have dirty dishes in the sink or a dirty stovetop. Kickplate space I can ignore as a general rule if I had to vacuum in a hurry. Likewise clutter is completely not on my radar.

I've been lucky today because both of our urchins tolerated a good vacuuming with reasonable good humor, although their beneficence in the behavior arena did not extend long enough for me to clean the birdcage. And now that I really need to fold about 4 loads of laundry and put them away, of course DS is being, well, bratty. He is insisting on conking his head on every surface, has spilled stale urine from DD's training potty (the potty itself awaits DH's cleaning attention, as I get so P!$$ed, haha, that he has the nasty habit of not emptying it promptly after she uses it), and is in general being an Obnoxious Teething Monster. DD is being very good, and has drawn a lovely collage of faces for me. Apart from the fact that she is in a PullUp after having yet another accident, she is doing good.

Now the plan! I'm going to fold laundry when DH gets home, sans children. My own little 30 minutes of child-free time, watching a snippet of "Pride and Prejudice" for the umpteenth time. Ahhhhh. Everyone has to have a plan, even if it's asking yourself, "Would the Department of Health tolerate this?"

Everyone Does This, Right?

So it's nearly time for DH to be home and I'm so glad it's Friday, but we are facing a dilemma of sorts this evening. The question: to attend or not attend the family Bible study tonight?

Now I know for a lot of people the answer is a no brainer--"Go!" "No, we'd never go!" Yeah, it isn't that clear cut for us right now. On the one hand, they are just starting a new study that is supposed to be pretty good, and tonight they give out the books and do the introductory material, etc. So it would be a great time to jump back in after a spring/summer break from it. On the other hand, DD would now be the only toddler present, and instead of having a 12 year old there to sort of ride herd on the younger kids while they all watch a movie, it would just be our DD and three other kids who are all 5 years older (or more). Hmmmmmmm. In addition, we have DS to consider--who is now a mobile baby who isn't interested in sleeping through the whole study time or being confined to my lap with a few small (and quiet!) toys.

Frankly I am leaning toward not going right now. I don't anticipate that DD is going to be able to behave herself without adult supervision, which knocks either me or DH out of the study group from the get-go. Secondly, I don't think DS is going to be well behaved without close supervision either, and at that point we are just kindly making a dinner entree or dessert for 8-10 people out of the goodness of our hearts and trucking it 24 minutes away to be able to eat it cold and pass up a lot of the other offerings due to our own pickiness as eaters. Oh, and that while we try to convince DD to eat something, anything, because she's so excited by the other kids (already) and doesn't want to waste time eating, for pete's sake!

However, I did make a big 13" x 9" pan of cookie-brownie bars this afternoon on the original plan of going, which will just go straight to my ample buttocks and thighs if we don't get it out of our house. And I am curious about the study they are going to do. And it would be nice to have some fellowship time with some of the folks from church, with DH.

It does seem like a cop-out to beg the "young kids" excuse to not do stuff, but really, if we're not able to participate at all because we are busy keeping our kids from inconveniencing everyone else (and not doing that well, given my DD's shrieking the last few aborted times we went)...is that worth it? I don't think so. I'm just trying to be honest here. And of course I'd be lying if I didn't say that vegging out on the couch with DH watching our recorded Survivor and eating some brownie-cookie bars with a big glass of milk doesn't sound oh-so-attractive after I've spent some time cleaning out baby spit-up from the Lego box (doesn't everyone have to do that on a regular basis?). And I really do think that my children going without baths for three days requires rectification this evening, don't you? Something which would not happen if we dashed off to Bible study the minute DH came in the door.

Hmmmmmm. I'm thinking the scales have been weighed here, folks. I'm calling it Survivor and bath night...and hopefully that is best for everybody.

Finding the Fulcrum Point

So I have the continual struggle (as all SAHMs do, probably) of finding the right balance between housework (so my house is not a pit of despair), playing with my children (so they aren't over tugging at me begging for attention or being naughty for same), and doing things that make me a happy person outside of being "Mommy" 24/7 (Bible study, gardening, sudoku, harp, knitting). Some days I think I handle it better than others.

Case in point: dirty dishes in the sink. Now, that does bother me. I hate having a sprawling mass of dirty dishes, pots, & pans that has taken over my double sink and part of my countertop. Rationally I know that it's only 1 dishwasher load, but nonetheless, it's been sitting there all day, demanding to be fixed and annoying me when I passed it.

However, there were other more important demands on my time thus far today. I had to do all five days of my Bible study homework today. And believe me, God does answer prayer, because I asked Him to keep my kids both asleep at the same time so that I could do it all, and He did! I have 1 table I haven't filled in, but that's it--the rest is done. I even got time to play around with my Greek lexicons and look up some of the original Greek for words that were bothering me. Hallelujah!

Also, DD had to be taken to the library for new books & storytime, something which she has missed out on for a month due to some page ripping in library books. After that, because she was so well behaved, we had lunch at our favorite local specialty market, and I miraculously made it out of there for only $16 after purchasing some Comice pears (*drool*) and lunch for DD & myself. DS ate all the tomatoes from my pizza (gobbled them up greedily is a more accurate description) and BOTH of them sacked out in the car on the way home, paving the way for my Bible study homework.

Lastly, my DS got some quality time with Mommy while his sister slept on, after I finished my homework. We played and laughed together, and then DD got the same attention while he slept when she woke up. I even went through my scrap fabric pile and sewed a little dragon hand puppet for her, after she saw something similiar on TV yesterday.

Yep, some days I think I do okay. However, pushing it to do the dishes and then blog today was clearly too much non-kiddo time for DD...who has just been "knitting" like Mommy, and unraveled part of my pain-in-the-@$$, slippery "cha-cha" yarn scarf. Grrrr!! *bangs head here* Why do I push it, why why why?? *sigh*

To be continued.