Useful Posts

Well I have had several times when I have been tempted to blog in the past two months, but something (LIFE) has always gotten in the way. I do want you to know that I haven't forgotten about my blog, if all two readers are still left! It's just that my life is insanely busy as you know, and well it's been super crazy lately with work, school schedules, hubby's job commitments, and trying to muck out the pigsty that has been masquerading as our house.

My children are growing like weeds and getting into EVERYTHING, which is another reason I am not here blogging (even though I was not a frequent blogger anyway). My sixteen month old will come up when I'm on my laptop and attempt to wrench my screen down and the computer away from me. Oh wretched beast, that's MY spot in Mommy's lap! Go away you black-tailed devil! You can see the wheels turning in her head. Clearly she will not tolerate being displaced by The Machine.

Crazy will reach Insanity starting January, because I will be working part-time teaching at TWO colleges. Yea and verily, I am Crazy Woman, hear me scream by about mid-February when I am about to pull my hair out and have six weeks to go in the quarter. It's quite an interesting time on the old workfront, seeing as my state is experiencing Ye Olde Budget Crunch and it's not clear that the local college is planning to replace one of my full-time colleagues when he retires at the end of this year. This puts a crimp in Ye Olde Family Debt Repayment, as to get real traction I need to get a full-time gig again pretty soon. Treading water is fine and all, but at some point ya gotta swim for shore, KWIM? So if they *don't* replace him, then I am going to be looking at going back to full-time lab work, or finding a better teaching gig further afield. *sigh* I am just praying and trusting that God has a great plan and eventually He will let me in on it, too.

So that is the scoop. If I can muster up some extra energy (HAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!! Extra energy, ROFLMAO...yea, good one!) I will try to blog as inspiration strikes. Don't blame me if I start going on about the wonders of various protein models, however...professor brain strikes at odd times. Wish me luck!

Spring Cleaning

Yes, I still believe in spring cleaning. However, it has taken a different turn this year--it's been a financial house cleaning for us this spring. Yessir, the enormous refund we have received from our federal taxes is no more...we have rearranged our W-4s and can happily expect to maybe pay a little or get just a little back come next tax season. This is a good thing, because unlike many folks in America, we understand that giving Uncle Sam an interest-free loan is not good financial planning. Really if you want a tax "bonus" of a couple extra thousand dollars per year, adjust your W-4s and set up a savings account to which you automatically transfer the money that would otherwise go to Uncle Sam, and let yourself withdraw from it on April 15th. The beauty of that is not only will you still get the thousands, but you will have made some extra $$ on it too.

Anyhoo, we have improved our monthly cash flow thanks to that little change. This will be extremely helpful this summer when I'm not getting paid, and oh yeah we forgot about THIS expense, or THAT THING that we do for the kids or need to do for the kids right now but oops we didn't budget for it, how am I going to pay for that again? Things like, I don't know, our ten year anniversary weekend getaway that we are talking about doing, which will involve spending a decent amount of money. Oh sure, not in a thousands of dollars kind of way, or even a thousand dollars, but still, a fair whack of moola to throw down the tubes for a few days of family fun, know what I'm saying? So having that money pre-budgeted and knowing that yes, we CAN afford to do that, even when I'm not getting paid for three months, well that is a nice thing to know.

We are also refinancing our mortgage. Our interest rate is more than full percent higher than current 30 year rates, and seeing as we are not looking to move any time soon and we can recoup our costs for refinancing within a year, yeah, we are all over that! This move too will save us a pretty good amount of money on our mortgage, which allows us to speed up the debt paydown even further (family fun fest of a few days out of town notwithstanding). I realize that we are refinancing a mortgage which we have paid down for X years, to be paying again a higher percentage to interest, which kind of sucks. However, this enables us to pay off higher interest debt faster, which makes a lot of sense when you crunch the numbers. Therefore we are going full steam ahead with this plan, and have been conditionally approved for our refinance. Now we are submitting all the paperwork that proves, yes, we have these assets that we said we did, our house is worth what we said it's worth (here we are very blessed to live where we do in WA and not back in AZ where we used to live, ouch that would not be fun), and we are fine upstanding credit-worthy citizens with a great track record of paying what we owe, and therefore you want to own our mortgage. So all systems go, and hopefully in about 45 days we will be signing our new loan paperwork and saying hello to a new interest rate and a new lower mortgage payment.

Other than the financial stuff, I have only managed to get some new pillows for the family, get the sheets changed, and get the next size baby clothes out and deployed for our growing youngest. I hope that by tomorrow I will get caught up with the laundry, and maybe finish weeding my strawberry bed. If I can get any real housecleaning done on Friday, that will be a substantial bonus, but I'm not counting on it. Frankly, I am more pleased with the financial stuff than I would be with dusted picture frames or sewed curtain pockets. Hopefully I can get some of that done too, or get my daughter's room better organized (which will mean moving some toys out). However, I am happy with the blend of relaxing and work that has constituted most of this week. Next week we are back to our regularly scheduled work program, but it's nice to feel that a spring break is actually a *break* and still productive. Now, time to figure out when to start the vegetable garden prep...

Still Here, Just Busy

Well, let's just say the old blog has fallen off the priority list. Well, okay, it's practically fallen off a cliff, broken both of its legs and punctured a lung, but I'M HERE NOW TO GIVE LIFE SUPPORT AND YOU CAN JUST BACK OFF A LITTLE M'KAY? *ahem* A bit defensive we are, (channeling Yoda), yeah yeah, let's just say that 3(Kids) + Work + Life = Busy, and that means too busy to blog. Some days Busy = Tired or = Lazy or = Disinterested or = Distracted. There has been a lot going on around here.

In point of fact, I really ought to be grading my students' extra credit assignments right now, and answering a student's email, but frankly I just cannot do it, no I will NOT and you can't MAKE me, damn it! I am TIRED. That's TIRED, in case you didn't get my meaning. No matter how much my husband and I thought we kind of knew what to expect from having three kids, we didn't. Yeah, take the level of tiredness we thought we'd be facing, and multiply it by THREE. Totally underestimated the amount of sniping, irritation, and anger we would have toward each other due to the increased demands on our attention and energy. Any little things that used to sort of bother us have now become things that cause moments of eye twitching rage and smouldering irritation. And we did figure that out about four months ago, but nonetheless it is still very hard to remember that in a moment when one of us has just done something that really, truly pisses off the other person. And it's not like it's even big stuff, it's the little, insane bits that just gnaw at you, and even when your rational self says, "Self, this is not a big deal, this is something to work on later when we aren't crazy busy and sleep deprived all the time," it is still hard to see the bigger picture.

I am very glad that my husband and I took a good marriage class several years ago, B.C. (before children). It gave us some really good coping skills which we use daily. However, I think that the demands of 3 preschool children (including 1 infant) really exposes the microscale cracks in a marriage--and just like the effects of ice on cracks in concrete or asphalt, it widens them over time. Gary Chapman says no marriage is ever static--it's either getting better, or it's getting worse. And frankly I think my husband and I would both say ours has gotten slightly worse over the past seven or eight months. It's a small slide, but it's noticeable. It's noticeable when you say something that's not very nice to your spouse, and even if it's a product of a thoughtless or half-thought, it still hurts. And it hurts you too to realize you said something that hurt your spouse's feelings. After all, your marriage is a partnership and you are a team. It's depressing to find yourself saying or doing things that sabotage that, especially if that moment happens in front of your children--who are watching everything you do. And it's noticeable to have less time to yourselves, time to recharge and *be* and reconnect with each other. Sitting on the couch together is nice, but when you're both so tired that you're falling asleep, or zoning out on your laptop or to some TV program, that doesn't really count.

I would love to have a monthly date night, but the fact is that dates cost money, in the form of babysitters and at least a few bucks for a coffee somewhere. And we are trying to get ready for my long, lean, unpaid summer off, plus have the money to pay for finishing projects that can only be done in good weather, like the missing/rotting wall on our shed. And really, we just need to not be exhausted every night. It's very easy to tell ourselves, "this too shall pass", but given the fact that our three year old still wakes up most nights of the week needing something, and we have a seven month old baby...well, you do the math. That light at the end of that particular tunnel doesn't seem very bright or very close. Add in the fact that DH, who we are so very grateful to God remains gainfully employed, is now working EST hours, while we live PST. That makes for a really tough, long day. It's stressful, period.

I love my husband. I LOOOOOOOOOVE him. He does so many gorgeous, glorious, sexy, bad-ass wonderful things for me and our family. And I LOVE my kids. They are maddeningly glorious and messy and joyful dervishes whirling through life. LOVE IT ALL. It's just a lot to manage. Add in my own fantasy expectations for glorious, weed-free gardens, moss-free lawns, perfect vegetable garden, and perfectly organized, clean house (hahahaahahahahahahahahaa!!! AH HAHAHAHAHAAHAHA...no, really, I DO want an organized clean house...doesn't mean I know HOW to get there), and you have the need for serious priority-setting and realistic expectation setting. I know rationally that we are in a busy period of our lives. However, I also know that we have to do a certain amount of *maintenance* on our property and yards, in order to keep it from devaluing, and keep ourselves from creating massively expensive maintenance problems in the future. Figuring out exactly how much has to be done is the key, and this is only our second house, and our first older house. It's more of "a lot" on our plate, and we need to figure it out, because maybe then it will stop stressing me out.

Yet again we are having to adjust to the "new normal", the new parental strains, the new home ownership challenges, the new budgeting, etc. It's Life, and frankly sometimes I want to go back to being a whirling dervish myself and forget all this crap that constitutes life as a Certified Adult. Vacation, anyone? If I could only figure out how to pay for it.

The Hot Spot

It's certainly different with three children. My lap is the hot spot, with each child competing for their share of my lapfront property. Of course the newborn has top dibs, but my son and daughter are equally quick to snatch their opportunities as well. I have never felt so popular. Fortunately my scar is pretty much healed over now, and the bruises are mostly gone. This helps enormously when my son, who is quite a bruiser (a solid, stocky build--this kid will always be BIG), clambers up on my lap like he's conquering a steel playgym frame. Whereas previously such activity would cause me grimace and squirm away from his digging toes, now I am slightly more prepared.

I am having a harder time refraining from picking up my two eldest children when they need something. Yesterday I picked up our 45 lb daughter because she fell and hurt herself on the backyard playground. I've picked up our 42 lb son (and he's 2 years younger than our oldest daughter...I told you, this kid is big) several times to help him into his carseat and into a stroller or shopping cart. All of which is supposed to be verboten still, as we are only at the 2.5 week mark since my c-section. I admit to having a bit of trepidation about things settling back into their proper places internally. It seems to be taking longer for certain postpartum symptoms to subside than it did last time, but then again it's not as if I took notes! It does not help to have folks chastising me about such things as well. Please, you explain to our two year old why Mommy, the closest adult, cannot help him into his carseat and such.

I remember that our eldest daughter (I am still having to get used to this, the whole "eldest" bit is easy to forget) had the same reaction to her new baby brother. She used to get upset when I couldn't help her do something, and she definitely displayed the same type of jealousy that we are seeing with our son. I have yet to hear "When does he go back to the hospital?" that we heard from DD, but he's been quite vociferous in telling me to "Put Baby Jane down!" and demanding his share of my lap. He doesn't quite understand that when she's eating, well, she's eating and there really aren't any options for putting her down at that particular point in time.

On the other hand, he is quite an attentive brother and will give her toys that make music or alert us when she fusses. Our eldest has been quite the little mama, too, and is quite keen to hold her baby sister and give her toys and blankets, etc. Neither one of them is shy about asking where she is when they can't see her, and it seems to be unacceptable to not show her various things, such as pictures they draw or favorite toys.

My in-laws are in residence now and they are mucking in outside, in the absolute mess that is my garden. They've already weeded one bed and started on the next, and have purchased two roses for me, plus a sedum. I think by the time they leave my gardens will be drenched in water, compost, and happy attention. Good thing, too, as I haven't had much of any of that to spare, except for the guilt-induced watering I have done to keep things minimally alive. My master gardener neighbor dropped off some columbine and ferns for me yesterday, so more work awaits. I will be asking my OB about doing some light gardening at my appointment Wednesday, but until then I am benched. Some things never change, though, and thus I probably need to go and fold the mountain of clothes on my bed before my newest child decides she is unhappy in her swing. But it's a nice cool day, all of my children are happy at this moment, and my husband is back to work and wading through a mass of emails. Life is good. Thank you God!

Schmorganization

All my best intentions for clearing out my house prior to baby are evaporating in a sea of potty training and recalcitrant attitudes from my children. My four year old is continuing her nasty streak of bad attitude plus disrespectful talk, which is really wearing me down. My husband is now stepping in when she backtalks to me repeatedly, because it's like she just turns off her ears. I have put toys in time-out and she's lost shopping privileges in her store, plus she has been THIS close to losing a swimming lesson. And she's started egging on her brother in naughty behavior. "But I didn't do it..." She still gets in trouble for egging him on, but this represents a new level of sneakiness in being naughty.

Our son is well versed on using the potty to pee, but has now regressed significantly with his other business, to the point that I am having to clean out his underpants several times a day. It's a rarity for him to actually POOP on the potty and the toilet. I hope part of it is some dehydration that's contributing to a bit of constipation, so we are pushing water and reinforcing "use the potty for pooping". Still, it's more than a bit grinding to have him come in at 7:00 in the morning to tell me that he has literally JUST pooped in his underpants, not two minutes after I dressed him. THIS is the definition of frustating, folks. He's only two and a half, he's only two and a half. This is like my new mantra of sorts. That and my husband's favorite, "This, too, shall pass."

The problem is that I am already pretty cranky from being pregnant, and dealing with both of these kiddos on a daily basis is just using up 90% of the energy reserves. I am almost to the point that I don't actually care about my vegetable garden. Meh. Grow, don't grow, whatever. My corn looks incredibly pathetic, I am not hopeful about results there. My tomatoes are being stunted by our cold nights, and have I even thought about re-rigging my greenhouse? Meh. And still no carrots planted. I did re-sow the french beans that didn't come up, because my FIL specifically requested them for their visit. But everything else? Whatever. Weeds everywhere. Our lawns, which were well-watered last summer, are brown and infested with broad leaf weeds. My apple & pear trees, host to some good looking immature fruit, are probably all going to be eaten up by apple coddling moth larva because I haven't painted them with Tanglefoot or put footie nylon socks on them. I did get DH to spray my cherry trees, which were infested by pear slugs (aka sawflies). Purely a pragmatic move on my part to save my $70 investment in them, as those things can kill young trees. Still, it's a measure of my supreme indifference to the situation that I still say, "Meh."

My house is just...*sigh* I don't know how to describe it. It's hard enough to keep the living areas and the kids' bedrooms tidied. My floors haven't seen a mop in a month. Decluttering and organizing is sooooooo not happening. Bathroom? Tub is DONE! Huzzah! In working order, and I had the first bubble bath to confirm it. This is the one bright spot in the project. Installed the shower curtain rod? Em... Removing excess mortar from edges of tub surround and retexturing? Erp, no. Painting? Not so much. Trims & crown moldings? Uh, no. Linens all restored to their rightful places, with newly painted door in place? No.

Our bedroom is still a mess. I've been slowly digging out from that, as the linens get put back. However, still have baby clothes in boxes that need to be put back in the cottage until baby is ready for them. Where we had placed the pack & play previously, we now have a bookshelf. So books & bookshelf need to be moved, to make room once again for the cot. There isn't any alternative--this is the only place that it will fit in the room. Of course the baby will probably end up in bed with us, but we still need the cot for crib training. This means I have to find a place for all those books...which in turn means I need to go through ALL the books in the house, winnowing out the ones we don't need to keep, and then making a trek with them to the library to donate them. Yeah. LOL! Like THAT will happen!

I know my MIL will help me with all of these projects. My FIL is keen to get out and help clean up the garden (I didn't even mention the front flower beds...disasters!). However, we can't just put them to work 8 hours a day, every day that they are here. They are coming to visit us, not help us catch up on our crappy household management. And I'm going to have a newborn--really, how likely is it that I'm going to be all full of energy and ready to tackle decluttering and reorganizing, even with another pair of hands to do a lot of the heavy lifting? I'm quite pessimistic about the whole thing, actually, and it's depressing me.

This is just not a happy place for me right now. I'm surrounded by reminders of how much needs to be done, and every time I try to do something the kids get into something else and make a huge mess to be cleaned up. It does not help that I have a stinker baby in utero that is currently in a footling breech position, meaning a repeat c-section is on the cards instead of the VBAC I am hoping for. Baby could still turn, but right now it is just the crappy cherry on a sundae of aggravations. Wah, wah, wah! Thank you for joining my pity party.

Not Nesting

To borrow a theme from a friend's blog, I am going to list all the things that I'm not doing today... *wink, wink, nudge nudge*

• I am not nesting. I have not determined a new configuration of the living room furniture which necessitates my husband moving every single piece of furniture to a new location (including the outrageously heavy piano). Nope, not me!
• I did not buy a piece of chocolate candy at Fred Meyer which I promptly ate while drinking a (gasp!) caffeinated soda when I got home.
• I did not lose my flash drive with all my lecture notes & grades on it (although I have back-ups in two different locations).
• I am not making my friend Hanna's killer salsa because I saw all the ingredients laid out in the same place in the grocery store, as if it was a sign from God that homemade salsa should be made.
• I am not the proud mama of a big boy who wore big boy underwear all afternoon yesterday and had not a SINGLE accident, even when we went out to dinner.
• I am not that wife who sends her husband to pick up the kids from daycare because she wants some more time to herself before they come barreling back in.

Yep, that's not me!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Or, La Fheile Padraig, as they say "as na gaeilge" in Ireland. My quarter is finally winding down, and although I have 4 more assignments to grade and a final to write before tomorrow evening, I am taking some time for some PEACE and FOOSTERING, because I need it, darn it. There has been waaaaaaaaay too much going on in this household for any sense of sanity of late, and I really need to take a few deep breaths and R&R before I plunge in to catching up on all the housework and spring cleaning that is desperately needed. The multi-tasking has gotten to an insane level lately, and my brain is crying out for some quiet and brain-dead activities.

Foostering, by the way, is my father-in-law's quaint term for sort of loitering around aimlessly, doing little things here and there that feel tremendously satisfying and like a big accomplishment personally, but are really meaningless little nothings that no one else sees or understands. My FIL is a master at foostering, and finds it particularly efficacious when he does so while others are waiting for him to do something else. My DH is working from home today and I know he is waiting to see me spring into cleaning action like I said I was going to do this week, or start writing that final that I have to give tomorrow and Thursday.

However, I feel like in honor of my FIL (or because it's as good an excuse as any), today is a foostering day for me. It feels quite Irish for St. Patrick's Day, although I have visions of (finally) making the Irish cream cheesecake that I bought ingredients for several days ago to enjoy with some nice (i.e. not run-of-the-mill) dinner concocted from various frozen cuts of beef or whole chickens or some such.

I just have been juggling too many balls lately. It is so bad on the housework side of the equation that I have had to do special loads of laundry at odd hours of the evening and morning just to have maternity underwear, people! And I can't get by with the regular underwear any more--this little one has grown too big for that particular trick. I have narrowly resisted the urge to buy more maternity underwear, several times, because I don't particularly like the style readily available in my ONE local maternity shop, and I am hesistant to buy such items, sight unseen, from online retailers at $30 per pair. Even with "Satisfaction Guaranteed", it just seems wrong to return undewear, KWIM?

I also fell face down on my baking for Paddy's Day. Is there any soda bread in the house? No! Did I get my barmbrack baked after an hour's rise? No. Of course, I blame the power outage for that one, how the heck can I bake the brack if the power is off and we have an electric oven? So it had a long, slow 24 hour rise, which ate up all the sugar in the dough and left us with a "sharp" loaf of barmbrack (as my husband delicately put it). Oh, yes, it's fine when toasted and slathered with jam, but for someone who is not used to a 'tangy' loaf of barmbrack, it represents a serious failure with expensive ingredients (have you priced golden raisins and currants lately? Yikes...I had about $3.50 alone of dried fruit in that bread!).

My grading has been very much at the last minute and harried, and an endless parade of students emailing begging sickness, theft, beggardom, hospitalized children (ok, ok, I am lenient with that one), etc as an excuse to turn in their pieces of missing assignments at the last stampede of the quarter or make up quizzes has not put me in a good mood. It means I have to wade through and find old homework answer keys and try to remember how many points I took off for various mistakes, etc. Students pestering me for grades on those piecemeal assignments do not make me happy either. Um, I have over 400 pieces of paper waiting for grading from this week's assignments ALONE, how the heck do you think I am going to make a priority of YOUR SPECIFIC LATE assignment over that?? Grrrrrr. *eye twitch*

I am testy. And my house's relative lack of cleanliness is exacerbated by the knowledge that we babysat 2 little girls on Sunday, one of whom is getting over a case of MRSA. Yes, that is the methicillin resistant bacteria that causes open wounds on skin, and can be fatal. Yep-per. Why did we do this? Well, first off, the little girl in question is only 10 months' old. Secondly, they are foster children, who were placed with some dear friends of ours two months ago. Thirdly, our friends are childless and have never been parents before, and it was their wedding anniversary. Fourth, they haven't been out without the kids since getting them, and were not told of the baby's MRSA until she had a wound on her leg and the pediatrician diagnosed it, and then the CPS people said, "Oh, didn't we tell you about that? It's been passed around in their house." Uh, so not cool.

Anywho, I know rationally that this little baby is not contagious (her lesion has healed up and it's not 'active', and was covered by her clothing), and basic hygiene like wiping down surfaces and such is all that is required to alleviate any concerns we may have. And I held the child and fed her and cuddled her, etc, without fear of MRSA bacteria crawling over my skin. But it still creeps me out a teeny, tiny, bit, and so I have resolved to do a thorough spring cleaning, and until I get that done I will not feel like we have been 100% proactive to prevent any wild outbreak of MRSA in our house. (Rationally I know the child was only in our house for 6 hours and really she played with baby toys and crawled on the floor, so it's not like she was coughing this dangerous bacteria all over. I KNOW this. But I still want to clean like a madwoman.)

*sigh* It's what friends do. They needed a break. But now, I worry. You understand.

Well, I suppose there is nothing for it but to quit foostering and get on with it. Not that I WANT to, but I know I NEED to, and that pesky responsibility thing just won't leave me alone! Maybe after my finals are given I will give myself permission to get a hair cut & a pedicure, something like that. We'll see.

Cool Jobs

On our way to daycare this morning, we got stopped at a red light next to a cement truck, which inspired much pointing and shouting, "Mama, twuck! Seh-mahn twuck!" from DS and a discussion of how the cement was inside the rolling drum, turning around and around until it was ready to be used. DD & DS were both vastly entertained watching the drum spin around and around, and I realized that certain jobs have a cachet for kids that is lost for grown-ups.

For example, a fire truck never fails to inspire comment from both of our kids, as do ambulances, cherry pickers, cranes, "bobbies" (any form of construction equipment, be it diggers, excavators, etc). Likewise the guys who are up in the cherry picker trimming trees or working on power lines are viewed with a certain awe by kids. Anything where the person is up high or using a big machine will never cease to be cool to little ones.

Similiarly, anyone who gets to use neat equipment or make big noises has a cool job. Even the garbage man has a cool job to kids. He drives this neat truck with a special lift on it and he gets to stop whenever he likes and use flashing lights. Ditto the street sweeper, or the schoolbus driver. Schoolbuses never fail to inspire comments, as they might be carrying other kids inside and thus are worthy of great scrutiny and speculation about where they are going. Are they coming from school, or going to school?

The fire truck and police cars at the county fair were nearly as a big a hit as the rides for our kids, I think. The police cars and motorcycles were littered with neat lights and sirens and equipment, and the fire truck has all the bells and whistles (literally) that you could imagine. All hot stuff to young children, and all the people who work in them are just cool, in a way that kids get and adults sometimes forget.

I have decided that if it's a cool job to a kid, it has to be a cool job forever. I mean, what job could be better than having little kids point at you in awe or keep a fervent watch for your vehicle while they are being towed around town by their parents? Those types of jobs can never lose their 'cool' cachet. Impressing children has to count for something even when you're old enough to be annoyed at being caught behind the street sweeper. After all, a lot of those jobs have precious few perks to adults, might as well enjoy the adulation that comes from the pint-sized perspective!

All I Want for Christmas

I want my linen closet back. Seriously. Its shelves are covered with construction materials and tools, while my linens are strewn all over the house in vacuum space bags. Our children are ripping them one by one by playing on them like their own version of the preformed foam play structures at the mall. I trip over two bags when I go into the laundry room to do laundry, I skirt around five in our bedroom, and have to move two more from in front of my sewing machine when I need to sew, or in front of the hall closet when I need to get something or put something away. I am really tired of it, almost more so than the whole lack of a tiled tub surround thing. It's just the last straw at this point, as I contemplate our cluttered surfaces and what needs to be done before my parents arrive on Sunday. I just don't need that "one more thing", know what I mean?

I know that I am going to continue to divest us of extraneous "stuff" in the coming year. In fact, if I can get my parents to be accommodating enough with the kids, I am going to clean out a few things while they are here. Maybe by setting a good example they will do the same in their house when they get home. I have no illusions about where I get my clutterbug tendencies from. What I am realizing, however, is that if you don't use something on a regular basis, it's really not necessary to have it in your house. There are a lot of things that can be multi-taskers, and the uni-taskers are getting the boot around here. I don't have the energy to put it all away and the kids certainly don't do us any favors in that respect.

I still don't have all the Christmas decorations up. Frankly there are 2 more things that I want to see up, and the rest I can happily see packed away in the attic until next year, when hopefully I will have more energy.

If you haven't checked it out, read Luke 16. Talk about a convicting chapter on money and how to be a wise steward of it! I am humbled by our abysmal money management, in particular my abysmal money management. That, too, needs to change in the New Year. I can't do it alone, though. I am going to have to stick to a plan and be accountable. It is hard to change bad habits, because they are so very comfortable to us here. Ugh. Ever noticed how what is the most comfortable is often the worst thing for you in the long term? Luke 16--it's all there. I'm telling you, we need to be accountable. I'm thinking it's time to call our friends who have successfully completed their debt snowball and get some serious monthly accountability going. Big sigh. Yeah, it's going to suck, but it's so completely necessary it's not even funny. We need to kiss our credit card debt goodbye yesterday with this economy. Wish us luck!

Mid-December Madness

Well as seems to be warranted with our house, there is always a perpetual problem popping up requiring prompt attention. (Boy would my English teacher Mrs. Wilson be proud of that alliteration...) Now we have an open neutral somewhere on the circuit that powers most of our bedroom and our son's bedroom. Oh joy. After checking all the non-working outlets and the working outlets adjacent to the non-working ones, my DH thinks he has pinpointed the trouble spot to be a poor splice that is probably in the attic. We spotted this little bit of wire and electrical tape over by the far wall once when we were up there, and said to ourselves that this was something that required further investigation. Apparently that time has come, because from what we can figure out, that is where some prior owner spliced in the electrical line for the exterior lights on the cottage/garage. It's sort of a good thing that they left it sort of poking up there from the wall, because if that had done it correctly with a junction box we would have no idea that it was there. DH suspects that the pigtail going back to the outlet on my side of the bed has come loose, which gives us an open neutral on the rest of the circuit. So we are going to buy a junction box and properly install it in the attic, and DH is going to ensure that splice is correct so we don't need to worry about fire hazards and such. In the meantime, we are on day two of the circuit remaining off for safety, and I am using a floor lamp with an extension cord for our bedroom.



Additionally, I have finally solved the MIL present dilemma and hastily shipped off a cute old-style photograph of the kiddos to her, with enough time that it should arrive before Christmas and be safely tucked under the tree. MIL was a bit sad that there was no present for her under the tree in the box I shipped earlier, and that left DH & I scrambling to find something appropriate. I mean, the reason there was nothing in there for her, was that we didn't find anything she'd like or would use! So given the exorbitant cost of shipping things to Ireland, it didn't seem wise to ship something that we knew was just useless crap. We fall on the old standbys of gift cards when nothing appropriate presents itself on this side of the water, and thus was my MIL left with no personally wrapped and addressed present. *sigh* As an aside, how is it that wives get stuck with the Christmas shopping for their husband's family?? Anyway, I feel confident she will love the photo and we can send along an accessory for her new mobile phone from an Irish website, and we're done. *Phew* Fortunately DH's brother-in-law and younger sister will be just as happy with gift cards, so we just have to order those and call it good.



I also have not bought anything for my mother, or my grandparents or great aunt. I should be able to get Wal Mart gift cards or some such for my grandparents and great aunt, as they are too old for useless stuff and I know they would actually use and appreciate the money toward their Wal Mart purchases. My mom is a bit more puzzling, because despite her Amazon wishlist there is nothing that really screams, "I would love this!" We got a pass this year on my dad because my siblings and I chipped in on a really expensive Shun knife that he wanted, so I know he will use it and love it. It's harder to convince myself that my mom will love getting the new Enya Christmas CD on Christmas Day (if she hasn't bought it for herself already), or a new pair of Lee Women's pants in chocolate twill. Just not feeling the love there. She buys her favorite author's books as soon as they come out, and again, pre-ordering a book that is not out for four months is just a little weeny for my taste.



We are still working through the massive pile of Christmas cards that need to be addressed and mailed off. It's great on the one hand to have so many friends and family, but on the other hand it is a lot of work too. I am just hoping that more of our friends reciprocate, because I really love getting Christmas cards. It's the right thing to do to send the cards, but it's hard to justify sending out 200+ cards if you only get about 50-60 in return.



And I still don't have all the Christmas decorations up. Both trees are in the house, and upright...but only one is fully decorated. I was working on the other one today, but discovered that the new lights we just bought at Wal Mart do not work. Grrrrr...*eye tic* So now I get to return them to Wal Mart, and go to another store to buy more lights (because really, if the first box didn't work, who in their right mind would buy the same brand again?).



Did I mention that the bathroom isn't done yet? Yeah. No tub surround. Not even the tile backerboard up. Does this annoy me? Oh yeah, you bet it does. My parents arrive in a little over a WEEK. I would like to have tile up, thanks. You know, the whole progress thing that indicates that our children will SOMEDAY be able to have baths again in their new $400 tub. Little things like that. And my drywall seaming is still too imperfect for my liking, so I have to smooth over some of the rough spots and re-texture the walls, then re-paint those areas. I don't think we'll ever be done.



And we have other good stuff and bad stuff going on too. DH stepped on a nail on Sunday and had to get a tetanus shot. We had a coyote in our yard yesterday morning, which I had to scare off (I don't want them feeling at home in our yard, TYVM). At least the small birds seem to have rediscovered the suet feeder, which I finally re-hung after being certain that large mammals of the genus Ursus would be hibernating by now. And DH is actually getting a Christmas bonus, which is a big praise in this day and age! Of course it is all going to our debt snowball, but YAY REDUCTION OF DEBT!



Nothing to do but press on, I'm afraid. I still have apples to can. Someday, I will be done...someday...

Slothfulness Here I Come

I've been pretty quiet on here for the past few weeks, as you've probably (hopefully) noticed. It has not been just the product of my insane amount of multi-tasking, but also the result of my DH's work trips to Memphis for the past two weeks. He gets home today and I am pooped! I don't know how families with a parent who travels a lot actually accomplish anything. I have fed myself and the children fast food or convenience food for about one meal per day. I quickly exhausted leftovers in the freezer and at dinnertime I am especially vulnerable to convenience. I have had enough take-out pizza and fast food chicken nuggets to last me for a while, I think.

It is perhaps a good thing that I was not allowed to be so slothful as to never tidy up the house while DH has been gone. He has been home for the weekends and pitched in to get the kids to tidy up their toys and such, but in addition I have had babysitters in the house on my teaching days, and I have had friends over for playdates to keep a bit of fresh perspective and sanity. Nothing like having a Navy wife over, whose husband is currently on a multi-month deployment, to make me stop carping about my terrible luck having a husband who has to be gone for nearly two whole weeks!

However, it is a lot of work being "on" all the time for children. Evenings are the most dreadful, because I am tired after dealing with them all day, and there is still a lot of work involved in getting dinner on the table, getting into PJs, getting teeth brushed and getting both of them put to bed, solo. I have been very cranky, and it shows. That is the time of day when they are most likely to be missing Daddy and cry for him (and having a cranky Mommy putting them to bed doesn't help, I imagine).

So, that has me feeling pretty beat. And I had to deal with some other issues, too, in DH's absence. The night before he left, we had a clog in our sewer line that backed up sewage into our shower stall, new bathtub, and hole for the kids' bathroom toilet that is currently plugged up with a towel. Yeah. Suffice it to say, cleaning up sewage from our bathroom shower, new tub, and not completely laid tile floor in the other bathroom, SUCKED. Did I mention that this was at about 9:30 pm? And DH was leaving the next day? DH got to stand out in the dark and cold with the rooter guy while he dug up our septic and snaked back from there. That's how we found out that our septic needed to be pumped. Oh joy. So I had to schedule that (for the day I was teaching, don't you know) and also had to play phone tag with three friends trying to get a babysitter, due to people having jury duty (maybe), a husband's heart stress test (cancelled, as it turned out) and a mother-in-law arriving on Friday. Yipper, I like knowing I HAVE to go to work without having someone definitively in place to watch my kids until the morning of. Totally non-stressful!

On top of that, I have been plagued with technological devils too. My laptop hard drive died, just went tttthhhhpppppttt!! at me and refused to be seen when I booted up the computer. A pain in the ass, to be sure, but ordinarily not a super huge deal. Except we are only 3 weeks into this quarter, I was out of the habit of emailing my grade file to myself (not teaching for the whole summer will do that to you), and I hadn't emailed my grades to myself. Guess what that means? Sending it off to a data recovery service, with an expected pricepoint of $500 and counting to get that file I have to have. Oh, joy. I hope they can get that file for me, or I am going to be facing some unpleasant alternatives. Thank you, I needed that new pilfering of our already depleted emergency fund. *sigh* And, my online moms' group which I have been participating in since 2004, has to move websites and that has resulted in confusion and basically a total non-participation by everyone, because no one knows which of the new sites we are actually committing to using, and since no one is posting on the original site, we haven't even had a proper discussion about it. I suspect this is in large part due to the fact that once we tried to move to their new partner site, the original site came up with a message that took up the whole screen and appeared (at least to me) as if they had already taken down our old site. Ugh. It's just a PITA, and I have been too busy to keep up with any discussions that are taking place across three different websites. Sorry, I just don't have the bandwidth!!

And my husband is in the final two weeks of his thesis writing for his master's degree. This would be the master's degree he started years ago, and only has to complete the thesis in order to receive it. The degree that his company has paid for. And now he is up against the clock because the school changed their requirements and this is the absolute last chance to squeak through with his old class requirements. And he's hemming and hawing to me about what he's actually, you know, WRITTEN, which makes me worry hugely about whether he is going to finish it in time. November 19th, and he is either done or he fails. Yeah. I am not happy about him waiting this long to do it. Seriously, he started this master's way before children. He even participated in the graduation ceremony, that his parents flew over from Ireland specifically to attend...even though he wasn't technically finished. Am I a bit steamed about him not doing it before? You think? Yepper. Believe me, he knows this. He also knows I have little sympathy for him, since he was a serious pain in my ass when I was writing my dissertation, so many, many moons ago. I got it done by getting up at 4 AM and writing until I burned out, for many weeks. So I am not a sympathetic ear, and hearing him prevaricate about whether he's going to actually finish, well, it pisses me off not a little. And that means that even though it's not my employer, it's not my degree, and it's not my thesis, I am sweating it out right along with him.

So I am very much looking forward to imitating a three toed sloth and not bestirring myself for anything over the next few days. I need a break, badly, from all of this crap. I need to go to Barnes & Noble, plop my butt down on a comfy chair, and read a book from start to finish without worrying once about my children, house, hard drive, unfinished bathroom, budget, my husband's job, thesis, or what have you. Whether or not this is actually going to be possible remains to be seen (thesis deadline? Yeah). I might just have to get a babysitter, boot my DH out of the house with his papers & laptop to go hibernate at Starbucks and WRITE THAT THESIS MISTER NO MORE EXCUSES! while I hie myself to Barnes & Noble and the quiet of a nice book. Now if I can just work the budget out sans my Quicken files to find the money to pay her...

Leg o' Lamb

I am going to put up my leg now, but I wanted you, the small crew of blog readers who might be interested, to know that I am now sporting seven stitches on my leg since Sunday. The short story is I had a fight with a garden trailer and I lost, haha. However I am feeling a bit grumpy after standing up for a good portion of the afternoon teaching, so I will go elevate my leg and allow myself a bit of misery wallowing, then give you the story proper tomorrow. Good night!

Randomania

First, I am eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking root beer for breakfast. Worse still, they are not home-made chocolate chip cookies, merely home-baked. So who knows what preservatives I am filling my system with--whatever preservatives the Doughboy uses, I suppose, as it was Pillsbury ready to bake cookie dough. I confess I subscribed to momentary weakness when I saw them on sale through the Grocery Game. And worst of all, I am letting my children drink root beer with me. Oh the horror!

So why am I eating whatever is easily available for breakfast with a minimal effort? Well, I will attribute it to being over in the Emerald City last night for a nice dinner out with DH, the kids, and a former co-worker of mine. We did dinner reasonably early to (hopefully) ensure good behavior on the part of our children. Thankfully they did behave pretty well, although DS did start melting down a bit toward the end of the meal. I had thought about getting a sitter for them, but on a school night our teenage babysitter was unavailable, and our normal adult babysitter was out of town, so we were SOL.

Yesterday was a strange modge-podge of a day, since I had a plumber back out to correct the tub spout, which was too low for our tub. That was achieved by remarkable negotiation on the part of DH, who ended up talking to the plumbing company's VP after we called to take them up on their plumber's assurance of a "no charge" call to fix anything that was amiss after he re-did the bathtub/shower plumbing. Yeah, well, it was no charge, but only after DH spoke to the VP and refused to be drawn into a "he said, we said" situation. We were both there, we both know what the guy said, and thankfully the VP had the common sense to do the right thing for their company and take care of it for us. This is why I leave these things to DH, because I would be red in the face and irritated in vocal tone on the phone, whereas DH can sit there placidly and say things like, "My wife informed {Plumber's Name} that our new tub was 18" high and the old one was 15" high. Furthermore we offered to go purchase the tub at Home Depot, for which we had all the technical information online, and be back in twenty minutes, but {Plumber's Name} insisted that was not necessary and that he would happily return free of charge to fix any problems." I would have been irritable and just a *touch* cranky with the guy, but DH is a master at skillful silences and completely dispassionate discourse with CSRs, so this was right up his alley. Score one for DH, and one for the plumbing company for doing the right thing and securing any future business from us.

Anyway, I also had a friend from church drop by with some ingredients for two special desserts which I am making for tonight's first meeting our women's Bible study. This resulted in me doing some frantic tidying up and organizing right after lunch, a time when I am normally putting my feet up to enjoy some quiet time while the kids are napping (DS) or playing quietly in their rooms (DD). All this while I was turning off the water for the plumber and sort of hovering to do...well I don't know why I was hovering, really! Some odd part of my brain was hoping he wasn't thinking, "This is far more complicated than we thought! This will be a (bazillion) dollars, not FREE!" As if me hovering and popping in to see how he's getting on with fixing it is going to help that at all. I know, I am strange.

And then I had the business of getting the kids in the car, hopping the ferry, and changing their clothes in the car, on the ferry to something less "street urchin" and more "presentable, clean". Dinner was really nice, and I had a great time catching up with my old co-worker. He has landed on his feet in a much better job, and I am very happy for him. My former workplace is still the king of high turnover and low pay, and nearly everyone I counted as a friend is gone now. I have one lone stalwart remaining, but at least he has secured for himself a relative degree of autonomy which helps him deal with the ridiculous nature of some of the "management" that goes on there. In short everyone of whom I think well there, has secured a decent position or advanced, so that makes me happy.

Lastly, I got called to teach this quarter, which is good. In the usual fashion, the college has called with about two weeks' notice, but frankly I don't mind as NOW I have already taught this course before, and thus will be a bit better prepared (stop laughing, I can hope, people!!) to teach it. And the secretary let slip that the person I am teaching for (instead of?) is easing toward retirement, so maybe in a few years when he fully retires, they will have a full-time position open. And THAT is happy news indeed! Time for me to finish up rewriting a lab that I mentioned to him last quarter as an inquiry-based lab. Nothing like a bit of eagerness to underscore my affirmative interest in teaching there on a more permanent basis.

All in all it was one of those odd days where all the disjointed bits of my universe seem to collide and meld into a crazy collage, but it's still somewhat pretty in its way. I got to feel useful (teaching!), organized (tidying!), helpful & charitable (baking for church!), handy (plumbing supervision!), educated (discussion of science!) and civilized (dinner out! with clean & reasonably behaved children!). Rare day indeed, as usually I feel incompetent (what was that about group seventeen elements?), disorganized (I know I put that bill somewhere around here...*waves arm generally at mass of untidy mail on counter*), selfish & proud (I can make this recipe for church because I'm SUCH a good from-scratch baker), decidely UN-handy (need I remind you of the copper soldering post?), uneducated (I know I got a Ph.D. but all I can do is sing The Backyardigans theme song again and again), and decidely uncivilized (I think the sticky hair can be hidden with a headband...and his shirt's not THAT dirty, it will do for the playdate). It's a crazy roller coaster ride, but sometimes the views from the heights remind me that it's worth all the dips.

The Fava Bean Breakfast

Much to my delight, when we came home our vegetable garden was producing abundantly. Apparently none of the neighbors took us up on our offer to help themselves to anything they liked, as we have a full crop of peas (some of which are drying on the vine), fava beans, and lettuces. Perhaps they had a few ripe tomatoes, but otherwise it is untouched. Thus I have been busy picking & shelling peas and beans, plus figuring out how to serve them up for dinner in a way that my DH might actually eat them.

I had forgotten from my childhood exactly how tiresome a process shelling peas is. In the youthful exuberance of a five or six year old, I simply remembered the fun of picking and shelling your own peas, eating a few as you went. I did not remember having to pick off the little bits of stem still attached to the pea, nor did I remember the annoyance of pods that wouldn't fully separate, so you had to peel them around and around like an apple to get the peas out of the pod. Nonetheless, the "Little Marvel" peas that we ate with dinner on Saturday night were really sweet and yummy. They tasted a lot like sweet corn to me, except with a creamier texture. I ate them until they got cold on my plate, and then I wouldn't touch them (ditto with sweet corn, I'm afraid--just not as appetizing). The kids loved them and even our possibly-picky son enjoyed eating them raw from the pod, and then ate some cooked peas. My DH mixed them in with his spaghetti and ate them, which is a huge step for him. He did rib me about the peas I left on my plate--I don't think he believed me about them going cold.

Anyway, I also picked a bunch of fava bean pods and they were sitting there, waiting to be shelled. I did that last night, and had a bunch of fat fava beans sitting in a bowl to be cooked. However, we forgot to cook them and after I read that I had to peel the beans after cooking, well, I just wasn't too enthused for that chore last night. So when I got up this morning, I was confronted by my bowl of shelled fava beans, looking for a home. I figured the best thing was to cook them and eat them! I am not sure of the shelf life of shelled fava beans, and some were already discolored from their 12 hour time outside of their pods...so I forged on with cooking them for...breakfast! Hey, it's a high protein food, low fat, right? And my kids probably won't care, they will eat them anyway.

It took about five minutes to cook them in some salted water, and about fifteen to shuck them out of their outer skins. The kids ate some and I ate some, but I have to admit that a fava bean breakfast isn't so hot. As a side dish to a meal, yeah, these things would rock. But as a starring starter for the day...hmmm. I am going to cook some oatmeal now, and my cooked fava beans might be reintroduced in a salad later today. Or they might be tossed out. I haven't decided yet. Flavor, good. Looks, good. Timing, bad. My bad.

Will We Make It?

That is the question of the day...will we make it in time for our trip? We have a lot left to do: finish weeding, Preen the vegetable garden, mow lawns one more time, make packing lists, pay or schedule all bills, plan clothing to take, wash clothes one more week, clean the house again, and finish cleaning the bathrooms. We have gotten a lot done, so that is good. I've finally started the front flower bed, having yanked all the brambles from the beds around the house. DH weed whacked the overgrown driveway and all the other bits around the property, so he just has to do a good mowing before we go.

Keeping the house in a reasonable state of cleanliness is the major issue. The kids are getting in everything, and my normal vacuum & mop schedule is out of whack with how fast they are dirtying the house. DH suggested that we get rid of some of their toys that they don't play with. I agree whole-heartedly, but it will have to wait until we get home. I don't need another task on my plate! Toys are everywhere, books are everywhere, and DS has decided DVDs are great toys...no! So I am playing DVD police because we have open shelving and I don't want to spend the money on a pricey new closed storage cabinet. Trying to get him to comprehend the meaning of "No" is occupying a large amount of my time.

Plus we have to finish cleaning up under the kitchen sink...the new cabinet floor is in, but we are still having some mildewy smell. Yuck. I think we are going to end up taking out the new floor, ripping out the drywall, installing new drywall, and then re-installing the cabinet floor. Because, you know, EVERYONE wants to be doing a project like that a week before their vacation!

We are at that stage where it is not close enough to our departure to really get excited, but too close to ignore some of the prep work, if you know what I mean. And it's just adding more to my day than I like, especially with our current heat wave. I just want to park in front of our portable air conditioner for the vast majority of the afternoon and call it good...unfortunately, life demands I spend time folding clothes in our bedroom (the hottest room in the house) and keeping our children from attempting to stick their fingers into the fans.

I am sure it will all get done, and we will be happy enough with the results. Our house will hopefully be mostly clean when we leave it, and that will make life a bit easier when we return to it, horribly jet-lagged and cranky. Tell me, why do we go on vacation again?

That Murphy

With our upcoming trip to Ireland (three weeks and counting!), you'd think that it would be the sole preoccupation of my time. You would be wrong. I would like to have it be the sole preoccupation of my time, such that I could leisurely make lists of what to pack, what to bring for the kids clothing-wise (what kind of weather to pack for? How much clothing is really necessary when we have a washing machine available at all times?), what we want to bring back with us (requests from friends, our own personal tea stash, assorted goodies, etc). But no, instead I am dealing with the House What Wants to Fall Apart and the Yard That is Weed Possessed Requiring Serious Intervention.

More house falling apart, you ask? Yes, yes indeed. Because after I fixed our shower, new pipe stems and all, DH discovered a "little leak" under the kitchen sink. A "little leak" from the new connection to the dishwasher, which had resulted in a slight drip and a sagging and smelly cabinet floor with mildew spreading across it! EWWWW!! We removed everything from the cabinet, got a fan going to air it out, and that succeeded merely in making our entire house smell like Mildew. We are on Day Five of the Mildew Smell, and I am thinking that if I can ever host a playdate again I will have to welcome our guests with, "Hello, please ignore the odor, this is the House of Mildew...no allergies in your family?"

DH has fixed the "little leak" with some teflon tape...I will spare you the ungenerous thoughts that rabbitted through my head on about Day Three of The Smell™, but suffice it to say after days of living in the house with the neverending funk, I am a wee bit testy about suggestions to make it smell better (no, Febreze does not work, and no, opening all the windows when it's FIFTY-SIX DEGREES OUT IN JUNE FOR PETE'S SAKE, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS STATE'S CLIMATE?? COLDER THAN SIBERIA, A NEW RECORD IN SEATTLE FOLKS...erg...*wipes foam from mouth* sorry about that...).

So yesterday, I took matters into my own hands after DH had casually suggested, after observing the SAGGING BIT in the back of the cabinet, that perhaps we needed to remove the bottom and replace it. One of our friendly neighbors stopped by for a cup of tea and ended up going home for her crowbar, and together we whacked out the entire bottom while my kids were napping (good sleepers, those kids). And we discovered a wet subfloor, and mildewy drywall and insulation around the copper pipes. Oh. Goody. Because I NEEDED another fix-it project, you know? Just to cap it all off, right before vacation. Thank you.

I pulled in our portable air conditioning unit, not because we NEEDED A/C, but because it has a dehumidifying feature and I wanted to dry out that subfloor, pronto! Voila, 24 hours later and we are looking good. My house still reeks of mildew, and I hustled down to Lowes this afternoon for a quart of odor-killing primer. It's waiting for me in the kitchen now, where I will prime it with a craft brush, because I'm too lazy to go find my painting frame and a clean roller when I can whip it out in twenty minutes with a foam craft brush that I can readily access. Technically I am supposed to use something to kill mildew on it, yada yada yada...but I sprayed it with diluted bleach yesterday, so I'm calling it good. I just want the smell GONE, YESTERDAY. We have plywood, we have a new $12 jigsaw (nothing but the best on our budget, I'm telling you), and I am going to cut out that new cabinet floor tomorrow and drill or nail that puppy in. For good measure, I think I will caulk all around the inside too. Because, you know, I'm DONE with the whole putrefying house smell. I cannot begin to imagine how the folks dealt with it post-Katrina.

And I haven't even discussed today's visit to the pediatrician, where DS was diagnosed with eczema (I see a diet journal looming in my future, along with copious quantities of Aquaphor and Cetaphil), and DD had a large splinter removed from the bottom of her foot. And I didn't mention the ticket I got while driving DH's car for expired tags! I'm thinking we need to plan out meals for the next three weeks, and no one leaves the house until we are headed for the airport. Provided, of course, that I can get our house to stop smelling like a bad episode of "Dirty Jobs".

Random Bits of Life

I replied to an email inquiring about the general state of my life given my recent silence in the blogosphere, and now will shamelessly repatriate the email for the general audience of my blog. Here goes...

Anyhow, I am doing good. I have just been very busy of late, mostly chasing after a very active little boy who has learned how to climb and is busily trying to scale every piece of furniture in the house. My job is Safety Spotter these days. Oh, and Argument Mediator, since he's figured out how to annoy his sister, and Attention Giver, since DD interprets me hovering around DS (trying to keep him from breaking his skull), as Attention, and she insists on getting Her Fair Share.

Thus my house and yard and other bits have been suffering lately, and it's kind of depressing. I was in a good groove for a few months, the house was reasonably tidy, the clutter was diminishing, the yard was perking up--then Sickness! Calamity! Child Development! And everything changed once again. I suppose I should expect that but it took me by surprise yet again. So I am just now re-equilibrating and attempting to find another new groove in order to keep on top of everything. Blogging went out the window, unsurprisingly. I am sure I will get back into a habit soon, hopefully.

Fortunately I finally managed to plant my vegetable garden (always a source of cheer in the summertime), and now just need to tackle the bed cleaning and weeding tasks that are multitudinous at this time of year. Eventually I might, just might, get my yard looking all nice and clean...when the kids are moved out! I have given up all pretense at organic gardening and am enrolling my new favorite friends, Weed N Feed and Preen, as my gardening companions. Perhaps with their assistance I will finally have a shot at weed-free lawn and planting beds...but I will not hold my breath. It's really more of a war at this stage, as the blessing & curse of very fertile soil makes quite the home for weedy pests like Scottish thistle, creeping buttercup, and brambles of all sorts. I don't mind the chickweed, but thorny/spiky plants are just not welcome with little ones running around the yard and garden. DH is jonesing for one of those flame weeders to keep the gravel driveways clear, and darn if I'm not thinking of getting him one! I am just a tad concerned that he will become overexuberant with it next to our (wood) house.

We have had quite the crew of intrepid birds around the yard lately. The spotted towhees have become accustomed to our presence and talk quite loudly to us when we bumble around the yard, interrupting their vociferous chatter and search for food. The downy/hairy woodpeckers are downright friendly, staying on the suet feeder when I'm only a few feet away. The pileated woodpeckers are doing their own thing during the summer, it seems, but the variety of hummingbirds are making up for their loud & large presence. And we saw a redtailed hawk at the end of our lane last weekend, early in the morning. It was on the ground and flew off as we approached, a small tailed rodent firmly clutched in its talons. It settled in a nearby alder for its breakfast. Alas, no camera! Always my luck on such occasions, I'm afraid.

My friend had expressed some concern over developments in his (formerly, our) workplace, and my take on the proposed changes was,
"Anyway you orient it, it's ugly--and I'm betting it won't work. But hey, maybe he (this would be the former co-worker who made it seem like everything he did worked even when it patently didn't, and our boss swallowed it all because it was easier that way) will get some great results...I doubt it, though. It's a good thing I don't work on it any more. I'd hate to have the discussions with X...and I'd hate even more any "trial attempts" he would ram in, then creatively interpret to make {Ex-Boss} think it worked like a charm. Ugh. See, I'm already annoyed and I'm not even working on it! Good thing I'm just being a plain old adjunct faculty member up here. I just don't have the creative suspension of disbelief that is apparently required for research these days. I'd probably end up labeled "Bad Attitude" like Y and shuttled around between projects at whim. Plus, you know, I'm one of those scientists who think Intelligent Design poses good questions that should be answered, so I'd just be Expelled like the rest, because I probably would say something at some point to get myself in hot water. Yep, I'll stick with Safety Spotter, thanks."

And thus sums up my life at present, folks. Oh, that and the mildew issue in the laundry room, which perhaps I will avoid until after this weekend, but then-again-perhaps-not because I don't want to deal with a VERY mildewy laundry room after the weekend. *sigh* Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow?

Another "Meme"

The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?
That would be the end of my first year of graduate school, so I was figuring out that most of my fellow first years were just as or more whacked out than I was. I had already figured out that the party/drinking scene was so totally not me. I tried it for three months to fit in and figure out which of my fellow students were certifiably insane really whacked out and should be avoided at all costs, and found out quickly that the whole get drunk for fun thing is just not me. In fact I never got drunk with my fellow students, having quite quickly figured out that they were not to be trusted when pictures of drunken-off-their-arse fellow students were taken in odd/humorous positions. Yeah. I ditched my crazy roommate who accused me of stealing her mayo (as if, I don't even eat mayo), moved in a new roomie/fellow grad student who promptly hooked up with another grad student, so I had 2 roomies de facto. By this time of year ten years ago, we were all moving out of the 2 bedroom place, they were moving in together (later to get married), and I gave up on roommates and found a glorious, mine, all mine, all to myself, gloriously alone! one bedroom for the princely sum of $544 per month. It had only two windows and hideously ugly '70s pale yellow laminate countertops, but I could paint the place to make it mine, so I put a huge dark blue wall with stars in my living room and a cheery yellow in the bedroom. I loved it. And, by the end of June of that year, I was going to "meet" DH in an Anúna chat room. Ah, love. :)

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):
Well today is almost over so I'd better give you a hybrid of today/tomorrow--
1. Start (and finish) grading my students' lab reports & quizzes from last week.
2. Input all their grades into my spreadsheet.
3. Write their quiz & email it to the college's duplicating services, to be magically copied and whizzed into my mailbox prior to my arrival on site tomorrow afternoon.
4. Remind myself what the heck we are doing in lab tomorrow, and make sure I'm ready to teach it.
5. Figure out if DH left some water in the laundry room which is making it smell mildewy, and how best to clean it up (tomorrow morning, probably). (It's a long story but suffice it to say that our water is very, very cold coming out of the tap and our kids are very small, and kiddie pools need hot water don't they, and DH says let's just run a hose to the hot water line...I think you know where I'm going here...)

3) Snacks I enjoy:
ripe pears, cherries, or strawberries
Trader Joes bruschetta on their everything bagel chips
good potato chips (as opposed to the wafer thin ones covered in salt masquerading as potatoes)
ice cream cones in summertime

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
fund Christian missionary work
fund charitable work in third world countries--housing, self-sufficiency, orphanages, clean water, etc.

5) Places I have lived:
Virginia, Oklahoma, Florida, California, Arizona, Washington, Japan

6) 6 peeps I wanna know more about:
Carol, Dana, Stan, Fiona, Stephanie, Tricia--consider yourselves tagged!

Fire, Pestilence & Plagues

Whatever lesson God is trying to teach me right now, I'm crying "Uncle!" and begging Him to just say it directly into my apparently thick head, because I am just about done with the toads, locusts, hail, and other sundry and assorted calamities that have befallen our household in recent weeks. All right, maybe the toads and locusts are a slight exaggeration, but consider the following:

• We've had mice in our house, AGAIN. I don't know if I mentioned the fun little episode where I found a mouse IN OUR COUCH by sitting down on it, and seeing a little gray tail between the cushions making its way toward me. I did not know I could simultaneously scream in that high of a pitch and leapfrog into the air such that I nearly hit my head on the ceiling. We trapped and removed that little bugger, but then caught two more with a snap trap and a sticky trap. I removed the still living mouse from the sticky trap with some used cooking oil, and released him outside. Hopefully that mouse learned its lesson and didn't come back inside. I am really going to fire our pest control (or lack thereof) company now, and have bought fine steel wool and constructive adhesive and a caulk gun to seal up all crevices under our cabinets myself. And, I am going to have to move every heavy piece of furniture in the house to make sure I have vacuumed & mopped up any and all mouse droppings. And I have to clean out the pantry floor & do the same. And finally finish sanding and painting the pantry door, so they can't get in there again.
• My DD, not content with bringing home Every Cold & Flu Bug Under the Sun, has topped off our cold season with the Cold That Never Ends®. She got this cold over two weeks ago, and STILL has the wheezy, slightly phlegmmy cough. She has shared this cold with every other member of the family, including myself. I finally succumbed about four days ago and have been miserably expelling mucus and dealing with my own nighttime phlegmmy cough. DS is completely and utterly miserable, being as he is cutting teeth again, and is sick. Baby Vicks is nice, but it doesn't quite do the job when mucus production is in high gear. So DH & I have been perpetually sleep deprived for going on, oh, about three weeks.
• DS & DD had their first dentist visit, and DS has EIGHT cavities. Yes, EIGHT. No, we are not feeding him Caro syrup in a bottle at night. However, I have been night-nursing him still (at 15 months of age) and we took away the pacifier from him at 12 months of age, which apparently was a recipe for Calamitous Early Childhood Caries. Now, I won't dwell on my deep, undying bitterness at being told that both of these things were okay by our pediatrician unhappiness with the conflicting nature of the advice we were given by the pediatrician, to which our pediatric dentist cheerfully, as she pictured the vacation to Maui we are going to fund when we pay the bill for DS' dental care said in a blasé fashion, "Well, this is why the pediatric dentist association is now recommending that you bring in your baby for their first dental visit when the first tooth erupts, because it can cause problems to have the pediatrician give good nutritional advice which conflicts with good dental advice." Oh, gee, thanks for the warning, now that my son's teeth are cavity-ridden. I'll be sure to bring that up with my pediatrician, when I bring in my son for a physical exam necessitated by the fact that he has to go under general anesthesia to get his cavities filled! Nope, no bitterness here, folks!
• Our kitchen sink began backing up a week ago, which caused several rounds of plunging of the sink, plus opening up the drain clean-out under the window, and even borrowing a neighbor's snake (and the neighbors) to disassemble the p-trap and check for clogs. It seemed to be okay again, finally...until we discovered we had left the clean-out cap off, and all of our kitchen sink and dishwasher draining was just flowing out there and into the (fortunately gravel, and therefore absorbent) driveway. I had a plumber come out on Monday. He snaked the whole drain line and couldn't find a clog, so said it was either a clog in the 3" line or that the septic tank was full, and asked for a check for $95. I paid him and called a rooter service, after rummaging through our house paperwork and reassuring ourselves that the septic was pumped 2 years ago, and thus should not be in need of being pumped again. The rooter fellow came out yesterday, and found that our kitchen line was sludged. He got it all cleaned out and working, and $175 later, we were back in business, with the caveat that our drain line is improperly bracketed, causing sags between brackets, which are more prone to sludging. So DH can look forward to a messy and smelly hour or so in the crawlspace sometime soon, installing more brackets so our drain line is mostly level.
• This morning, I woke up and stumbled out in search of coffee & breakfast, and my designated time to catch up on email and get myself ready to teach today. No email! No internet! No phone, even! I spent an hour on my (pay as you go, how much did that cost me) cell phone with tech support for our cable company, unplugging our modem, disconnecting the battery, disconnecting the splitter, all while DS howled endlessly because I wasn't devoting 100% of my attention to his feeling-bad self. Boy was that fun. Oh, and while I turned the phone away to cough and blow my nose multiple times. Then, after a service call was set up for today, I called my neighbor. Her internet was out too. So I was just the first on our road to call, apparently. Two hours later, and it is back on and we are back in business. I just happened to notice.
• I have to call my former employer who, in a remarkable show of their efficiency and drive, sent me a ticket two years later asking for $25 because I didn't return my parking pass gatecard. Are you $%^*ing kidding me? I am tempted to call it the Last Revenge of the Parking Nazis. I have the gatecard. I want to send it to them, I just need an address. And I want them to take their ticket and waive it, because it did take them TWENTY-FOUR MONTHS to ask for the thing back! Also, I have to call my old cell phone company, who want me to pay them $65 per month for the remaining 6 months of my contract. Erm, no. Just cancel it. I said this to them six months ago, and instead they put my contract "on hold". I'm willing to pay for April's service because I hadn't called them yet, but that's it. I should have done it when I initially said I was going to, but DH said, "Why are we going to pay them $200 to cancel it? I don't want to do that." Because the MATH says it's cheaper than paying $65 a month for 6 months! So now I get to pay the Stupid Tax. Grrrr. Note to self, when you've done the math, just make the call--or tell DH, "Fine, it's now your responsibility. Make the call and negotiate."

So I'm done now. I don't want any more nasty events, thanks. I've had my share for the year. And if you're trying to teach me something, Lord, I'm begging you to just whisper it in my ear. Because I just can't pay attention well when my ears are clogged and my son is pulling on my leg. Thanks.

The Spare

As I reflect back on the chaos and anarchy of the past few hours of today, I am mindful of a parenting adage which I will have to pass on to my friend, whose baby shower I unfortunately spaced on today. And that is, "If they have a 'lovey', keep a spare."

I didn't think DD was going to be attached to any one particular stuffed animal or blanket or whatnot, and indeed for the first two and a half years she didn't develop any particular affections. She did go through a spurt of wanting a set of farm animals (small, thank goodness) in bed with her, but those fell out of favor and then there was a long spell in which she was happy to just be surrounded with an assortment of stuffed animals and blankets at bedtime, with her stories read to her while she lay (drowsily, if we were lucky) cocooned and listening to the bedtime stories and asking for water, etc.

A few months ago, however, it became clear that one of the stuffed animals was an absolute necessity at bedtime, and that is, Lamby. Fortunately for us, we have two Lambs, which kind friends bequeathed as baby gifts. So we were set with Lamb and the Spare. Various misfortunes have befallen Lamby, and the original was jammed with strawberry jam. I decided to wash Lamby, and then found a de-stuffed Lamb in the dryer, with bits of polyester fluff clinging to all the clothes. I dutifully removed all the fluff, re-stuffed Lamby, and then let it sit on the dryer for about four or five months, because I needed to re-stitch the seams and didn't bother doing it right then. The spare was deployed, and all was well.

Then there came today. Today was wildly busy, with a free playset to be collected (DH's job, it took 2+ hours to disassemble and bring home the bits), more frenetic garden work to be done, kids to be fed/entertained/napped/etc., and a baby shower to be attended. We got the playset, but it will take a good few weeks to get it re-assembled, thanks to some new hardware that needs to be purchased (bolts, etc). So that is all stacked up next to our cottage. The kids were up early, slept poorly last night, and so napped early too. DD had a meltdown in the parking lot at Costco, so I nixed that shopping trip and deployed fast food (drive-thru) for lunch, an hour earlier than normal. I got the kids in bed for their naps, then slogged through digging the rest of the mounded beds in our veggie garden. Kids were up, all were at play outside, while DH broke out the weed whacker (firepit ring), then the chainsaw (fallen tree branches from December). I borrowed the neighbor's front-loader to do the last line of digging in the veggie bed, turned our compost piles, and in a fit of what can only be called insanity, called and invited a friend and the two college student choir members they are hosting for the evening before our church concert tomorrow, for dinner.

That is when it all went absolutely chaotic. Our friend showed up, and the two amiable college students settled in. My daughter was tired and out of sorts, but I had no idea how out of sorts until she threw up all over herself in the kitchen. Erg, okay...a once-off? I got her cleaned up, put on her jammies, and let her watch a video on the computer. Rounded up the guests, headed out to the deck to enjoy the great outdoors for dinner, and then came back in to DD puking again, all over the computer chair and herself. OH. Dear. I excused myself, gave her a bath, got her cleaned up, calmed down, in a new pair of jammies, and she insisted on coming out to the deck because she wanted to see our friend. Ok, fine. Nothing to eat except 2 teaspoons of apple sauce, which she didn't touch. Only water.

Well, she couldn't keep water down. She's on her fourth pair of pajamas. Our friend and her college student choir guests fled shortly thereafter, with us praying that they don't catch whatever bug DD has. DS spit up once, as if testing us, so we're praying he doesn't have it, too. I have emergency laundry loads cycling through the washer & dryer. I am not sure if our computer chair (upholstered, unfortunately) will ever be clean again...I will have to borrow a steam cleaner for it. And DD, bless her heart, went to bed asking for more water, which we would not give her...and Lamby. The last time she threw up, she hit Lamby too.

So, here I sat, with needle and white thread, and the spare Lamby, finally sewing it back together after months of sitting on the dryer. In about five minutes I had whipstitched the seam, and if a little lumpy, it was at least in one piece and ready for cuddling and nighttime reassuring. I brought Lamby in to DD, who was snuggled down and looking a little wan. "Why does it look like this?" she asked. Clearly it looked somehow different. DH assured her it was because I cleaned Lamby, since she 'spit up' on it; and that placated her and she snuggled quite happily with her little Lamby. I hope Lamby keeps her cozy and content all night.