little mommy

This morning when I woke up, both the kids were downstairs already. Little C, who's been sick with a fever for the past three days, was watching TV on the couch. Beside her was an ottoman, on top of which was a tiny cordial glass full of water, and a big empty bowl.

"What's all this?" I said to Annika, gesturing at Celyn's setup.

"She was coughing SO hard, I thought she needed a bowl in case she threw up." She looked very proud of herself. "And I got her some water."

"You could have gotten me, you know."

"Nah, it's FINE, mom."

Wow, my little six year old is becoming quite responsible. (Although, she didn't really need to use the new cordial glasses ... )

MultiHyperFocus

Well, it's been a messy week. The day after my last post was spent almost entirely in bed, getting up only for bathroom trips and rarely, to do something child related. My kids are almost of an age where they can fend for themselves in dire straights. I warned them in the morning that I was sick and wasn't going to be doing much, and that I was going to have an instantaneous no tolerance policy on sibling fighting.

Consequently, Annika filled my water bottle for me, then they both came and massaged my hands and feet with their cool little hands. (Their idea, not mine.) I had a fever and I was just useless. Annika even made them both lunch, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pouring drinks, and putting crackers on the side. So cute. They also fought very little, and were industrious and found plenty to do, even though I forbade screen time.

Yesterday was a little better, and I only did some picking up, vacuuming and laundry.

Today I'm nearly normal, and have been painting the hallway again, and made an apple crisp, and next I think I'll do some laundry and bake something else. Or maybe a pudding from scratch. Mmm.

It was actually really nice having Annika home when she wasn't terribly ill. The kids played really well together. What happened once she went back to school -- and I KNEW this would happen -- is that Celyn is bored and all up in my face the entire day, and then all over her sister the minute she gets home. Problem is, her sister is a pissy little grump when she gets off the school bus, and the fighting and sniping commences.

I'm seriously re-entertaining homeschooling.

I know I've been away from the dojo too long, because I've been feeling the urge to hit things. While I was doing laundry, I walked by this old "heavy" training bag I had in the basement that I'd been ignoring for years, did a double take, grabbed it and brought it upstairs with me. I hung it on a hook in the mud room and started beating on it. See, the problem with this bag is that it's an "aerobic" boxing bag, meaning it's not very heavy at all, and it has a d-ring on the bottom, so that you can tether it down. Well, I have no tethers. So hanging it against the wall is the best I can do at this point. And the thing is pretty useless for kicking. But it's a start. And I need something, especially with Celyn up in my face all day whining because she's lonely without her sister. OMFG. Must! Punch!

Ahem. But with any luck, I can get back in there tonight for a weapons class at least, even though I have a love-hate relationship with weapons right now. At least it's not really strenuous. So there's that.

Now back to painting and cooking, not at the same time.

Saturday

I love Saturdays.

Today was just a bliss fest over here. I give the weather a lot of credit. We rolled out fairly early to walk to the farmer's market where we get our coffee beans, then wandered over to the park for a while, where we ran into a family from the dojo. The kids found and inspected dead crayfish, tried to pry out a live one from its watery dwelling, and saw two groundhogs peeking out from a hiding place under a rock wall. Watching those two little chubby, fuzzy faces, squished together, staring blankly out at us was unexpectedly comical. Well, for me. I'm easily amused.

We spent the rest of the day kicking around, and I made another Turkish meal because I'm obsessed with Turkish cuisine. We had Hünkar Begendi, lamb stew served over a creamy, buttery, cheesy eggplant puree, with a shepherd's salad on the side. The kids, who -- between the two of them -- hate everything, ate a lot of it. Annika ate the stew and asked for seconds, even though it was half lamb, and she claims to hate lamb. Celyn ate everything, and Quinn repeatedly exclaimed over it. So the long prep time was worthwhile. I grew parsley and mint outside the kitchen this year, and have been finding myself going out there at least once a day to pick some for something, and I love being able to do that.

I even managed to make some progress on my friend issues today, and saw the error of my ways. Yeah, really, I do that occasionally.

Ani started to struggle before dinner, and was acting up, and we were cross with her, and she had a really spectacular meltdown when it came time for her bath. Realizing that our attitudes -- well, mainly mine -- probably had a lot to do with it, I went up and held her in her bed for a long time, and talked to her, and the storm passed. She feels things very intensely, and I need to be more careful with her in general, being more sensitive to how she takes things personally.

Although she unwound, I could see that, considering the stress of a new grade and all, she needed more Mommy time. So I brought her down for some melon, then brought her up for a bath. She wanted me to get in, like old times, so I did, and we played water guns. The way she plays water guns is that the three water guns make up a family, and they swim around and talk and get into mischief and get rescued by their daddy watergun or mommy watergun and ... yeah. I just wanted to shoot each other.

After, she was very happy and relaxed, and I read her stories and put her to bed. (Cel got the Daddy bedtime treatment.) She needs a heck of a lot more from me, emotionally, than Cel does, and sometimes it's really a struggle for me. But I'm 35 and she's 6, so I have to be the one who sucks it up and deals.

Now the kids are asleep, I'm done with this entry, and I'm going to get another glass of rockin' cab sauv and go watch a movie with this man here who is going to rub my feet throughout. Yep, things are working out just fine.

Busted == More Bad Parenting

Ani came stalking into our bedroom this morning.

"Why is your PURSE in the tv room? Why are there CANDY wrappers in the garbage?" Her eyes narrowed. "Were you WATCHING TV and eating CANDY??"

"Um, yes."

"That's not fair! I'm going to go turn on the TV and then you better give me some candy!"

"Sure it's fair. Because I'm a grown up and I can do whatever I want."

Yesterday, the 3 year old (aka Bottomless Pit) ambushed me in the living room at 10:45am.

"Can you make me a sandwich?" she pleaded, with puppy dog eyes.

"Sure ... at lunchtime."

"Okay, great. Can you give me something while I wait? Like egg and cheese?"

"Um ..."

"And while that's cooking, can you give me some peach yogurt? Because I'm really hungry. Thanks."

No Clever Title Required

I always feel compelled to make some excuse as to why I'm not posting more. In my blogging heyday, I posted every single day. Part of the reason why I don't is that I've voluntarily given up my niche. I don't consider myself a "mommy blogger" anymore and I don't want to talk about my kids all the time, for a variety of reasons.

Almost everything else going on at the moment is a bit repetitive, and not really worth extensive obsessive updating.

Anyway, we're all recovering from "Week from Hell, the Second" of this winter. Can't wait for the next one. We all still have coughs, and the grownups have lingering sore throats, but I'm blaming either the low humidity or the mold for that.

Speaking of mold! It's a long story, but we were finally able to prod our landlord into acknowledging our existence, and we have a mold remediation company coming out on Wednesday. It's not much, but it's something. Supposedly we are to hear from some chimney/flue companies as well, but that hasn't yet happened. Things are moving, though, and I think we have some leverage. Keep your fingers crossed, if you do that kind of thing.

I was only off my normal exercise routine for four or five days, but apparently the illness was pretty thorough because I wasn't able to charge right back like nothing had happened. The first class I went back to I had to take pretty slow, and I kept up with yesterday's okay, just a little slower and weaker than usual. I'm not sure if this was a good idea, or very stupid (and honestly, I can't bring myself to care) but I started a T-Tapp bootcamp (Google it, too lazy) on Thursday. It's only a measly 15 minutes of exercise in the morning, so I can't believe it's too much, you know? I don't know why T-Tapp feels so unbelievably corny and silly to me, but it's supposedly a pretty impressive workout, and again, takes up very little time, so what the hell. I'm on Day 4 of what I hope will be a 7 Day Bootcamp, but if it ends up being less, I don't care. Four consecutive days is supposed to be the important bit, and that's now done. Yay.

The children really need to go back to school because they are kind of driving me crazy. Baby C has this new atrocious habit of speaking continuously in a totally random way. It goes sort of like this:

"Daaaad?"
"What?"
...
"Daaaaaaaad?"
"What, Cel?"
...
"Daaaaaaaaaaaaad!"
"If you want to talk to me, come here. I don't want to keep shouting!"
"What?!"
...
...
"Daaaaaaad!"

Repeat every three minutes indefinitely. Side effects include irritation, unpredictable fits of rage, inexplicable helpless laughter and hair loss. And presumably, if left untreated, insanity and death.

Another part of her plan to drive us all mad is her curious refusal to take herself to the bathroom to pee. If she has to poop, no problem. We don't hear about it until she's ready to be cleaned up. If she has to pee, she begins an elaborate song and dance routine. She denies she has to go, then she starts to whine that she needs help, then she bursts into tears because OMFGSHEHASTOPEE! but will not make any attempt to bring herself to the bathroom. You know, that same bathroom she just used to take a crap all by herself a few hours previously.

Fortunately for her, she's very, very cute, what with the dimples and the curls and her natural inclinations toward ducking her chin and batting her eyelashes, so we haven't yet sold her off to a traveling carnival.

(Though to be fair, it's a slow season for traveling carnivals.)

In Lieu of Actual Content

My husband and I were attempting to sit next to each other, on the couch. Little C was in the middle, and not happy.

"No, Daddy, you go sit over dere!" she commanded imperiously, pointing to the love seat.

"You kids are always getting in between me and romance," I murmured over my magazine.

"Getting between you and MERMEN?" Ani asked, incredulously.

Well, yes, those too. I have not had a single romantic relationship with a merman, and I'm pretty sure it's all their fault.

Bad Parenting is Fun

After being given a very thoroughly illustrated note, lamenting my cruelty and tyranny, I called both girls to my side.

"Come here, please. I have a secret to tell you!"

This lit them both up, and they forgot how evil I was.

I gathered them close around me.

"You see, I should have told you sooner, but ... I'm not actually your mother."

Their mouths fell open.

"Whaaaat?"

"Yes, you see, your mother -- your real mother -- was a beautiful, flaxen haired, milksop princess. But she died, as milksop princesses often do. And then your father married me ... your evil stepmother."

There was much giggling and gasping and "Mom! Tell the truth! Come on! Is that true!?"

Then Q chimed in with a thoroughly inappropriate (though, he assumed, adequately obfuscated) remark comparing me to the beautiful dead milksop princess. However, this remark was immediately and correctly parroted by C, and thus repeated, picked up and parroted by A.

So if you ever hear my children say I'm a firecracker in the sack, that would be why.

UnSunday

I've discovered another useful aspect to Facebook. If I scroll back through my Wall, I can track all kinds of information. I was going through my history to see which Alchemy oil I was wearing on a particular day, and happened to notice that I was in a bad mood last Sunday, too, noting in particular that the day could "stick it."

I'm combating Sunday crossness by baking cookies (chocolate chip & hazelnut!), drinking coffee, and carefully washing my clothing in anticipation of a week of sartorial fabulousness. (What, you don't think t-shirts and jeans are high fashion?) I also have a workout scheduled shortly and have talked my husband into making dinner.

My eldest may be contributing to my crankiness. When I tried on a new shirt this morning, deciding whether to wash it or return it, she chimed in with her opinion:

"Mom! You look like a woman!"

So glad I'm fooling someone, if only momentarily.

Random Threebies

If I try to post three random things every day, maybe I'll get back in the habit. I know I spend a lot of time lamenting my lack of blogging lately, but part of that is because my life is both busy and boring. At least when it was just boring, I had a lot of time to spew randomness, and write lengthy entries about something as mundane as a stupid jackass who didn't hold the door for me when I was 9 months pregnant. You know, things like that. (I still remember your face, and you better watch your back, buddy.)

Something I'm doing lately, and I'm not quite sure what it is, is making my left butt cheek hurt. Yes, just the one.

More on the effing weather. There is another reason I am despising the cold. There is something wrong with the kitchen and the laundry room in this house. Although they appear to be original to the house, they are significantly colder than any other location. There was, at one point, a wind that would come in between a cabinet and the wall. I can't explain this, except that the entire house is a sublime example of free, drunken brother in law handicraft, so I can only assume it's somehow related. So, I hate to be in the kitchen to cook, because it's too effing cold, and I hate dealing with wet laundry in the 50 degree laundry room. This is making life annoying.

(And no, it's not supernatural. Not even demons will come in this house, citing the lack of structural integrity.)

Annik has an ear infection. She started abruptly acting like a crazy person on Saturday. First she was complaining that her ear was dirty and needed to be cleaned. Then she started doing things like banging on the window and crying, or laughing like a wild hooligan, and I sent her off to Urgent Care with Q. Now she's on thrice daily antibiotics for the second time this school year.

Winter, man. Freaking winter.

Just Some Pointless Rambling

I was thinking yesterday that I'm shooting my blogging wad in other places lately. Blogging used to be my primary weapon against new-mom isolation, and then new-mom-who-just-moved-into-a-new-town isolation. Now, with the advent of Twitter, and my abuse of Facebook, all of those collected tidbits that would have formed into a blog entry just get shot out, piece by piece, into the cybersphere.

Oh well. If I refocused my blog's intent, maybe that would change. But then again, maybe it wouldn't.

This morning I'm totally tired, crabby, and sore. If I consider Friday the end of the week, then I took eight karate classes this week, while subsisting on between 1200-1400 calories each day. Since I feel tired and sloppy in class, I'm inclined to blame the calorie count for that. Yesterday was particularly bad, because I forgot lunch, and then forgot to eat dinner early enough to digest before the night classes. When I got home I realized I'd consumed around 700 calories for the day and worked out (at varying intensities) for around 200 minutes. Uh, whoops. So it's a small wonder now that I was exhausted and was forgetting my katas completely.

So today I'm going to eat well, be lazy, and only exercise 30 minutes here at home. Maybe I'll crank up the heat and lie on the living room floor with a jury-rigged tropical drink and pretend I'm taking a vacation somewhere that is not EIGHT FECKING DEGREES FAHRENHEIT.

Ahem.

Preoccupations

Lately, I am so engrossed with music. Now that my Sansa is working, and fully loaded, and the dock is working (it stopped for about six months, then mysteriously restarted again), I'm using that to full advantage. I'm also blipping when I can, although lately my laptop is behaving badly and tends to crash when I'm using blip, so I've cut down a bit. That site is so much fun, I'm rediscovering all kinds of music that had completely fallen off my radar. When I hear something I loved years ago, but had forgotten, it's like all these little lights turning on in my head.

It's like a portable drug. It makes me happy. The other day, My Sharona came on the Sansa while I was out in public. Due to my overdosing on a particular YouTube video with this song as background music, I started giggling uncontrollably. I tried to pretend it was in response to something my toddler did, and buried my face into her hair, but all I could see in my head was Buster Bluth dancing in his WWI/stripper uniform, and I was helpless.

I'm also spending a lot of time at the dojo. After we were all sick with horrible illnesses in November, and I missed a lot of time, I made a goal that I was going to try to get there four times a week. I've been doing pretty well with that, and have been doing a lot of back to back classes to boot. It's been really fun and energizing for me, and helped me kick ten pounds in the last month alone. (I still have about 13 more to go, though. Grr.) I got my first stripe on my blue belt on Monday, yaaaay.

And I was on a quest to update my wardrobe, since it'd been about a year since I bought anything new and most of my things weren't fitting anymore. I finally found a pair that fit perfectly at Target, of all places, but when I tried to cheat and buy more pairs based on the ones I tried on and liked, they didn't fit, and I have to bring them back. WTF is up with that? I bought the same brand, same size, same cut, different leg styles. And they are entirely different, not just the effing leg openings. I found a place online that makes custom jeans and I swear, I'm trying that next. They're no more expensive than Gap jeans, NONE OF WHICH FIT RIGHT IN ANY WAY! Ahem.

I hate the garment industry.

Today I should blitz the laundry, and do some baking, since it's a non-dojo day for myself and A, which is rare (I think between the two of us we're there 5 days a week), and because the entire world is covered with a giant sheet of ice. It's a good day for hunkering down, holing up, and daydreaming about a vacation somewhere sultry and warm and abandoned.

If I Had Super Powers ...

Lately, I have been craving supernatural powers. Specifically, powers of mind control, or just a good Imperius Curse. Because I swear to All That Is, I am really sick of waiting for other people to take care of their own effing responsibilities. I have been waiting two years for this tree to come down. I talked to my neighbors, whose tree this is, earlier this year, expressing my concern about this tree, and its twin (which is bigger, just as dead, and has yet to fall) and about four tree-sized dead limbs which are dangling right near our fence. And they politely blew me off.

And when I saw one of those limbs fall this morning, while I was having my coffee, I shouted, "I KNEW IT!" because it did, in fact, fall into our yard, mere yards from where my children built a snowman yesterday, despite their assurance that if the limbs dropped, they would drop into their own yard.

It was a few hours later that the pine keeled over, crushing part of the fence in the process.

This only compounds my housing angst, because, though I haven't written about this, our attic and our basement are full of mold, which tested positive as "toxic black mold," which I'm told former tenants complained about, which had apparently been tidied up enough for us to rent the place and then came back full force. And since we had it analyzed and tested, my landlord has been mysteriously incommunicado.

So, if I had powers of mind control, I would spend one morning -- that's all it would take, I believe -- to force people to have fixed all the numerous health hazards in and around this house, so that I wouldn't have to go to the trouble and expense of moving again, and probably into another Mystery Rental which may have mice or lead paint or a mild demon infestation.

Lacking mind control, I could just assume powers of SuperHuman Strength, crush a few skulls, and then manually move all my own furniture and belongings into the next Mystery Rental. Then there's the demons. I could bring them a sacrifice -- I have a few choice people in mind -- but as far as I know, lead paint is unmoved by human sacrifice. And so, you see, I have yet to identify the ideal Tenant Superpower.

Perhaps the ideal Tenant Superpower is as simple as a degree in law.

Snow Day

Yeah, yeah. My Holidailies are really "HoliEveryOtherDailies." As long as I won't be arrested, I'm cool with that.

We have a snow day today. I don't remember ever having a snow day called before it actually started snowing before, but by the time I got out of the shower, it was snowing pretty hard and is still going. The kids are watching Curious George or something so I can get appropriately caffeinated to deal with the day.

Because this weekend is our big holiday celebration, y'know, so I have a lot to do. My deadline is a little shorter than most people's. This is what makes the timing of our year end bonus (the 24th this year) so frakkin' annoying. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a bonus, especially when the end of the year is always so tight (the FSA's run out, we had big bills from A's double emergency room visit + limo ride ambulance transfer in between the two hospitals, etc.), but would it kill them to give it to us at the beginning of the month?


This snowstorm is perfectly timed, as we don't have much scheduled on Fridays, so it's not interfering with anything. Yesterday A had board breaking class. She broke two boards, but on the second, thicker board, she got a splinter. OMG, the drama. I couldn't get it out last night, and she was nearly hysterical and ready to be sick, so I cleaned it and bandaged it and said we'd deal with it tomorrow. Which is now today. Blech.

Then I went to my own class. I took a lot of breaks this year, but I'm thoroughly re-addicted and having a lot of fun in the classes. Maybe that's because a lot of things are starting to "click" and feel a little more natural. My goal for the new year is to go four times a week to the best of my ability. I decided on that because I realized that I wasn't going often enough to really develop cardiovascularly, even though everything else was improving. I've discovered I pretty much hate to do cardio at home or on my own, and since I'm paying a monthly fee for unlimited classes, I may as well make the most of that.

I really would like to get my brown belt in 2009. If I can manage my purple by April, which I think is a decent estimate, that gives me eight months. I know it takes longer to move between the higher belt ranks, but don't know how much longer, and this is also assuming I don't have any or many more unintended breaks. I owe a ton to karate. I am in better shape (at least cardio- and muscle-wise) than I have ever been in my adult life, and have lost thirty pounds since I started. That wasn't all karate, I had to do some calorie cutting as well, but it didn't hurt.

Now the kids are bugging me to get started on the day's activities, which are cookie frosting and gingerbread house making. And for me, laundry! Because laundry is the gift that keeps on giving. And giving. And giving! And giving!

EnTitlement Issues

Yesterday I was generally bummed and unenthused. It was my third straight day of being stuck home, and it was terribly gloomy to boot. There is only so much shit gray weather I can take, especially when there is no snow on the ground to brighten things up. I made gingerbread dough, but otherwise, I was in a crappy mood and I let the girls know it. By which I mean not that I acted like a jerk, but that I told them, "I am in a crappy mood. Please go play."

Today was better. A, who was quite perky and mischievous yesterday, went to school today. It's cold but brightly sunny. I was able to take C and go out for some odds and ends, and then I took her to lunch. We got construction paper to make an "advent" chain, and I got some glitter glue to put on paper snowflakes.

Have you ever heard the expression, "There is no bad weather, only bad clothes?" I have bad clothes. There are a hundred reasons for this and none of them matter. All that matters is that I need a new jacket and a few more sweaters/fleeces and some thermals. I have been endlessly, horribly cold ever since the weather changed and that doesn't encourage me to go outside even for the fresh air and (what little) sunlight (there is.) I also desperately want another down comforter. I gave mine to the girls', since it was too small for our bed, and I had futile hopes that they would not like it and not want to keep it. But they do, as they should, and I am jealous. Maybe I can find a big enorminous (sic) one on sale after the holidays.

(I like to say "enorminous" because of the "Big Enormous Turnip" story. After saying "enormous turnip" about a dozen times, it became "enorminous turminip.")

All I can think of at the moment is being cold, and how to fix being cold. My kitchen, in particular, is ungodly cold. It feels like someone screwed up building it, honestly. The floor is icy cold, and cabinet nteriors are so cold inside that some of my oils solidify. That's just strange. I don't think even ghostly infestations can pull that off.

So I guess I'll go fire up the oven to bake something and start knitting some socks. Brr!

FTW!

I jumped on the scale yesterday after neglecting it for about, oh, four weeks to discover a five pound loss.

The downside to this is that none of my jeans fit anymore. They were already on the awkward side, now they require serious belt cinching to hold them up, which just looks ridiculous.

I'd still like to lose another ten pounds, though, so I'm not sure I should update the old wardrobe just yet.

The coolest part is that I wasn't making any special effort. Wow, imagine if I start drinking water again.

I also -- not sure if I wrote about this here, or just everywhere else -- got my blue belt this week. I had two official goals for this year: get my blue belt and paint the rest of the house. Well, I got the blue belt. I will probably not finish the painting. Jeez. I think I'll be okay, though.

In other news of total unimportance, I finally got an adapter so that I could play my Sansa in the car. This makes me unaccountably happy. I've discovered everything is much happier with music. If I could somehow program a soundtrack into my life, I think I would have a happiness aneurysm. (*I* would have to program it, though. If somehow The Carpenters or Van Halen got in there, things would get ugly.)

Boogie oogie oogie oogie.

No fair!

We had about three whole days of moderately good health in the house. That's probably generous. Now Celyn is sick and I am sick. She's been running a 102° fever. I just have this total pervasive ache on the right side of my head and neck. Earache, sore throat, swollen glands -- all on one side. Oh, and my right eye is watering incessantly. Wtf is that. I am lying in bed with a hot water bottle across my ear and jaw.

The thing about Celyn is -- and almost no one, outside our immediately family, knows this or could even guess -- she never stops talking. And somehow, when she's sick, it's even worse. Just about every waking moment is, "Mommy? 'Scuse me, Mommy? Mommy? Mommy? I mean, Daddy?"

And when she's sick, she has no patience at all. So if you say yes to a request, and don't immediately HOP TO, she asks again. And again. And again. Politely, but at the same time, it still makes your head want to break. The past two nights, she's woken up around eleven and just talked continually, like she was on speed.

So it's hard enough to take care of her when she's sick, but being sick myself as well? That's just really not fair. I still haven't done all my laundry from vacation, ffs.

But hey, I'm happy about the election!

YouTube Nostalgia

I watched an unholy load of videos today. Old music videos. Lots of them were videos I loved as a Young Whippersnapper, and others were from songs I loved but I had never seen the videos. I mean, I had never seen the video for Tainted Love? How is that possible? But perhaps that is a good thing, because I think I'd have been totally creeped out. But now I'm old and jaded and nothing creeps me out. Not even Dead or Alive.

(Well, that's not exactly true. Seeing the way that guy has abused his face over the last twenty years IS somewhat horrifying.)

I'm also pretty sure that either Don't You Want Me, Baby?, by the Human League, or Genesis' That's All was the very first video I ever saw on MTV. I kind of prefer to think it was the Human League. This is probably because I didn't especially like That's All, but I did think (at the ripe old age of 9) that Phil's mugging in that video was HI-larious.

But really, how could anyone not love the 80s? The days when women wore boy haircuts and boys wore eyeliner? Come on. I want some big shouldered sport coats now. I may have to suppress the urge to tuck my jeans into my socks before I leave the house tonight.

Will this one make it out of the gate?

I've started and abandoned countless blog posts lately. Maybe I'm aiming too high. Maybe my goal should just be to post SOMETHING, instead of these long rambling missives which then fall into the ether.

So here's a quickie:

I'm sitting next to Cel, who is eating her lunch. She looks ... funny. On Monday, when we were playing outside on our last day of decent weather, I noticed two small marks on her nose and forehead, and a little bit of swelling.

"What happened to you?" I asked.

"A leaf scwatched me," she said, shrugging.

Yesterday, her bumps were bigger. This morning, her eyelid was starting to join the party. So I gave her some Benadryl before school, and she looks better. She has not complained at all about these lumps, which look suspiciously like wasp stings. And given that there were about ten wasps on our back porch, eating a discarded apple, makes that scenario seem very likely. Yet, she is adamant it was a leaf and it doesn't hurt, and she never cried. Strange? Yes.

I keep waking up at 3am because someone is shoving elbows and knees into my sides. Ani keeps creeping into bed with us this week. This morning, she said it was because of a nightmare that Celyn jumped off something and "her arm broke off." Jeez.

But yesterday, she told me it wasn't a bad dream, it was just a secret.

"The secret is," she whispered, "I just love you."

So I'm trying to be tolerant, although her mere presence messes up my entire "wake up early and be sneaky" routine so I can get things done before they need to be up for school.

I'm also sitting next to my brand new tumbler, which is test-tumbling a pendant that I really hope doesn't get ruined, and washing clothes, and trying hard not to worry about packing for a trip we're taking this weekend. I refuse to worry. Worry gets me nowhere. I think I'd rather be unprepared than waste time and energy worrying. Even if I worry and prepare endlessly, I'll usually forget something anyway. Why bother?

Celyn recently discovered a love for "Itsy Bitsy Spider." Except her spider isn't "itsy" or "bitsy;" in her song, the spider is "itchy" and "bitchy."

And really, you couldn't ask for a better variation.

Catching Up

I should just rename this blog to "catching up." Just like I told someone at karate, I'm going to change my name to, "I haven't seen you around in a while."

For the last two or three weeks, we've been embroiled in trying to buy a used car. This has been ridiculous. We tried a few, found one we liked, started to buy it, felt like the dealership was taking too long and screwing around with us, and walked. Found another car, tried to buy it, felt like the dealership was screwing around with us, and waited. Finally signed paperwork after a week of dickering, and now, one week after that, today, we should be able to pick the damn car up. I am so emotionally wrung out by the experience I'm not even excited. I keep expecting to get a phone call saying, "The mother decided to keep it," as if it were a big, one ton metal baby I was trying to adopt.

I've also been trying to get the jewelry thing up off the ground. Start up expenses for a jewelry business are, I'm guessing, slightly higher than your average crafting business. I've been out of silver for weeks, so I have all these cabs lying around forlornly, waiting to be wrapped. I've finally, finally been able to order some of the finishing equipment I need, but I'm still waiting for it to arrive, so I'm a bit locked in limbo.

See, again with the waiting?

Since we finally decided to go ahead and buy a car because I essentially snapped and refused to chauffeur anymore, while we've been waiting for a car to materialize, I've been going hardly anywhere. Which is actually fine with me, but we have been skipping things we should be going to. Ani hasn't wanted to go to karate lately, which is An Issue, but especially lately, I am not going to force her to go if it means I have to drive 24 extra miles a day of rush hour commuting JUST to take her 2 miles to and from the dojo in the middle of the afternoon. Sorry, not doing it.

Ironically, I am buying a car so that I can stay home more.

Annika has been a handful lately. Well, you know, she's always a handful, but there's been a lot of moodiness and extra intensity and drama, and I'm trying to hit it from every angle, supportively (diet, extra sleep, vitamins, blah blah) but she does tend to cross me at every turn. When she's most in need of emotional support is when she's at her most unsympathetic, and generally when we're both tired, she's clinging for interaction and I'm trying to squiggle away for headspace, and it just doesn't jive very well.

She says she doesn't really want to quit karate, but she feels like karate and kindergarten is too much, and she can't quit kindergarten. Well, and she's right, she really can't. If she actually hated kindergarten, then we'd have to look for another program or school or something, because we can't homeschool. She would kill me and feast on my brains. I've said it before and I'll say it again: she is too much extroverted child for little old introverted me. Anyone who claims there is an easy solution for this has never met her. I've spent MANY MANY a day together with her all day, and whether we're staying home, going hither, thither and yon or somewhere in between, she is unsatisfied and I am totally exhausted. She needs a more communal structure, and short of me buying some extended family to live in our house with us, school is going to have to do.

(Yeah, she did just have a five day weekend. How did you know?)

Celyn gets short shrift in my blog just because she's so darn easy going. When we stay home all day together, she's totally happy with that. And she's happy to go out. Happy to play near me while I make the bed or write or knit, asking for something every once in a while, or just hang out. My biggest problem with Celyn is that she hates pants.

I thank the Universe every day for Celyn, for without Celyn, I'd have continued to think that my head-butting with Annika was just proof that I was and am totally unsuitable for parenthood. It's a little easier for me to accept it's temperamental differences, since my relationship with Celyn is pretty much how I imagined parenthood to be, before I actually had a kid. Annika is a terrific kid, but she's also turbocharged. It's really exhausting to be her center of gravity for long stretches of time.

Celyn is doing amazingly well at preschool. She loves it, can't wait to go on school days. She adores her teachers, and plays every day with her "best friend Owen." Owen is actually in the older kid class, he might be nearly four now, and oddly enough, he and Annika were good buddies buddies over the summer. Celyn lets me know, however, that she does not like the boys in her class, because they are clumsy and rough when they play.

Celyn also started writing her name recently, which really surprised me because I wasn't even sure she knew very many letters on sight yet. I guess Annika showed her how, and now she writes her name almost every day, and points out the letters in her name whenever she sees them.

"Dere's a Y! Dere's a Y in my name, too!" she'll cackle gleefully.

She'll be three in just a few months. Three? How can that be?

I have also kept busy lately selling as much excess stuff around the house that I can find on eBay, to further help fund the purchase of precious metals and semiprecious stones. Unfortunately, with several moves over the last few years and much clutter purging, I don't have a lot of things worth selling. Now, worthless junk? I've got all kinds of that.

Now, I better stop wasting time and do some laundry and finish touch up painting in the foyer before the littlest gets home and wants lunch.

And I really could use some coffee.

A variety of minor bitches

1) I ordered shoes twice from a big shoe etailer. The first ones didn't fit, and I returned them for store credit. The second batch (I got two for the same store credit, plus an extra $15) didn't fit either. This time I requested my money back. Except, apparently, I only get that $15 back, because once store credit, always store credit?

Except, they haven't processed that monetarily huge part of the return, even though both returns were sent in the same box. What?

2) I ordered shoes for Cel from a different shoe etailer. I got free shipping for buying over $50. Except, hey, the shoes don't fit. Now, they want me to mail them back, and send them an extra $5 to ship them again. What? Maybe I'll just take my money back, instead, fyvm.

So as of right now, I'm out almost $200, and no shoes.

3) I sent a bitchy email to Rival, the Crockpot company, after my third Crockpot in a decade fell apart from minor use. The first one threw sparks and short circuited. Two and three both had their lid handles break while I was using them, dropping the steaming hot lids at my feet.

So I send them this bitchy email to tell them this, and they reply, essentially, in order to help me, they will require the product number, the date number, the date of purchase and the location of purchase. Despite this being a Major Pain in the Ass, I was able to locate most of this information. How will this help me? I have no idea, because I doubt they'll do anything about it. Consumer boards are rife with complaints about Rival's customer service and product quality. Yay.

All of these minor things in one day have put me into a very bad mood. Thank goodness I have a sushi date tonight. Sushi and a glass of wine might salvage this whole day's worth of customer disservice.

Almost Vegan; But Will Kill Deer for Tomatoes

No matter how much I feel the need to recoil from wasting time online, I shouldn't stop blogging. At least, for myself. I have tried paper journaling again, and while it might be good for some things too embarrassing to disclose publically -- like my superstitions, or whom I have a grugde against -- my paper journaling is awful. I don't know whether to blame my handwriting, or what, but things don't flow as well, and they can't be easily expunged and rewritten. Somehow, just writing in a paper journal, with my handwriting, makes me feel (and sound) a whiny angsty 13 years old.

(Don't say it.)

So, what has been going on with me? I'm almost vegan. I would say, "I'm vegan," except as a new vegan, there are plenty of slip ups and adjustments. I'm not forcing my family to go vegan; they're still having their organic dairy, though I keep introducing new foods to see if there are any substitutions we can all agree on. So far, Annika is not appeased by any dairy substitutes, but Celyn will happily eat soy or coconut milk ice cream (oh, Turtle Mountain, how I love thee) and coconut milk yogurt. I'm also trying to be quite conscientious with my substitutions or replacements, trying to avoid highly processed stuff and a ton of soy (except for the odd treat like the "non dairy frozen desserts") so it's been quite an adventure. I'm not being sarcastic there, by the way.

The change is helping me use up my CSA share creatively, as well. At the least, it's not more difficult. I'm not entirely happy with my CSA, but that's another post for another time.

My garden isn't faring very well, and I blame myself. I didn't amend the soil from last year, and didn't add fertilizer until it was very late in the season. My lettuce did well, as did my collards, but in the square foot box, that was IT. I planted four tomato plants in the SQG box, and three in my Earth Box, and the Earth Box tomatoes are huge and full of tomatoes, and my SFG box tomatoes are spindly and short and only one has a tomato on it. Lesson learned.

But! Once again, something is eating green tomatoes, whole and entire, off my Earth Box plants. This happened last year, too, and whatever it was managed to eat ALL my green tomatoes in one night. Then, in a horrible coincidence, all the plants died within the week. (Or maybe it wasn't a coincidence, maybe a blighting demon ate all my tomatoes.) Anyway, either it's a demon or it's a deer. Small difference. We're not allowed to shoot guns within the village or the town, so I've been thinking about investing in a crossbow and taking a few out. Maybe not now, but soon ... and ... for the rest of my life?

Seeing as that's not a terribly practical solution, I sprayed my plants liberally with Deer and Rabbit Repellent. Oh, my GOD, it's horrifically repellent. It smells like rotting eggs ... stuffed inside a corpse. Which has been peed on. I bought it ages ago, but was hesitant to actually spray such foul stuff on my beautiful tomato plants unless there was a clear need. Well, seeing as I lost four tomatoes last night, there is now a clear and present need.

There is some sort of crazy irony in the fact that we (not the Royal We) use so many resources producing beef and pork and chicken, when there are approximately 80 kajillion deer and Canada geese running amok, completely unchecked. Am I the only one who sees a paradox here?

So lately, I've been obsessed with vegan food blogs -- of which there are many with stupendous recipes -- Maine, and yurts. I know, I didn't say anything about Maine or yurts in this entry. Don't rush me!

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I went out of town. Not sure if I mentioned that. But just before that, my laptop decided to spiral into crappiness in several different directions.

So I didn't use it at all while we were gone, though we brought it, and haven't used it much since we got home. And perhaps not oddly, I feel happier for it.

So if writing is sparse, that's why. I'm only checking email maybe once per day, and other sites with extreme randomness. I don't know if my laptop is fixable without like, actually sending it away for repairs, and right now, I'm not really feeling the urge to get on that right away.

FYI.

Weekly Recap

Like I really need a recap, right; I've written every day! Well, I'm hoping it'll build my momentum.

First, a fitness recap:

Karate: I did five classes this week, two on Mon, two on Tues, and one last night. Though, that one is usually 75-90 minutes long and like a double in itself. Monday was all partner work on basics, Tuesday was a lot of self-defense, and yesterday was the conditioning class. On Tuesday, I got to do circle of self-defense for the first time. It was intimidating, but way more fun than I expected. (That's where you have a group of people (we had 8) in a circle, taking turns having one in the middle getting randomly attacked from all sides. Fun! No, really!

Bikram: Only one this week, on Monday. The only other time during the week they have a 6am is Wednesday, and I skipped it, because ...

Running: I finished Week 1 of Couch to 5K this morning. I had intended to do Day 2 on Tuesday, but was wiped that morning, so I did it Wednesday instead of Bikram. No problems; my ankles and feet are a little sore, muscle-wise. My toes feel like they are coming to life. I find myself wiggling them and stretching them an awful lot lately, as well as gripping things with them. Monkey toes.

I've been counting calories on SparkPeople, but am completely confused. It gave me a range of 1200-1550 to use as my target, and I've been trying to stay within that, but then, it's chiding me on my fitness tracker page that, "*You've gone over your weekly calories burned goal by a significant amount. This will not change your calories eaten goal automatically. If you'd like, you can change your fitness settings here." But, doing that still doesn't tell me how many calories I should be eating, and I don't trust their estimation of my calories burned anyway. I haven't had a scale in the house for weeks, so I'm getting no feedback there. I should pick one up, but I kind of worry if I get one, and see no change, it'll dampen my enthusiasm. And I've got a good momentum going at the moment.

In other news, I'm tired of it being chilly and rainy. It was supposed to do this in April and be done. My plants aren't doing great, and bunnies are eating all my stuff because the repellent keeps washing away. If only I knew how to skin and dress a rabbit ...

Now, I'm off to shower and start doing laundry (that I won't be able to hang out, mumble mumble curse mumble,) and cook up some of my CSA pickup for lunch. This week we got a bunch of turnips with greens, mustard greens, kale, two heads of lettuce, a pound of spinach, and 1.5 pints of strawberries. Mmmm. Strawberries. Also have to figure out what to do this weekend.

What are you doing this weekend?

The Zoo

I really dislike the zoo. The kids love it, so I try to go a few times a year. It's amazing just how expensive it is, and everything inside it that you might want to do besides just gawping at the animals costs extra, and yet, they still have ALL these tiny inadequate enclosures for most of the animals.

The kids are also at an age where they don't like to look at anything for very long, so we zip around the zoo like monkeys on crack. The children's zoo may as well have been closed, since all of the animals were hidden inside their little sheds, and the Lorikeet Landing was closed. Bitches.

And for all of that, I blew $30.

Still, it had its moments. The kids loved the mandrills; I don't think they realized they probably wanted to crack our heads together. They sat just feet away from us, behind the plexiglass viewing area; the male kept baring his considerable teeth at us, and a female wandered down to the glass, picking around on the ground, and suddenly leapt at Celyn, smacking both her hands on the glass in front of poor Cel's face. She took it well, though.

The macaques were much more playful and friendly. One of the tiny juveniles came down to the glass and went nose to nose with Celyn for a little while.

I really need a new camera.

After I had decided to go to the zoo, I found out a local mommy board to which I belong was also going to go, and I debated trying to meet up and find them, and decided it was probably going to be more hassle than it was worth. I don't mind tailing the girls as they go hither and thither as the mood strikes, but trying to herd them in a particular direction with a group is a pain in the ass. It's a lot like this, actually:



And I don't have a horse.

I worked for EDS when that commercial came out, coincidentally.

I always think it's more fun to go places with kids and just drop any expectations about what we'll do or see and just let them lead. I try not to care if they only want to stare at the grizzly for 15 seconds, and dash away right before he does something spectacularly interesting, like licking his toes. If they'd rather go on the carousel or dig in the fake dinosaur pit and chase seagulls than look at the animals, or leave after thirty minutes, whatever. I don't let them do EVERYTHING they want to do -- my god, I am not paying $2 to ride a tiny train in a circle -- though I did drop $3 to take one ride on the carousel. I refuse to eat there. The food is exorbitantly priced and is terrible. Well, what do you expect from a Beastro? (No, I'm not making that up.)

I guess I feel it's more worthwhile to spend the money and just Let Them Be than try to force them to get The Experience but be unhappy about it, you know? Which is part of the reason I don't like to go places like the museum or the zoo in groups with other moms and kids. What is the fun of being nagged around even a terrifically interesting location? Well, it keeps my stress level down, anyway. If I go en masse, I feel pressured to talk to the other mothers, and it's very hard to do that and participate with your kids at the same time. It is for ME, anyway, because I'm sort of defective.

Now we get to go to karate, pick up our CSA share, and then tomorrow is Friday! Wheeee!

More Random Blathering

It's another cold and drizzly day here in fabulous Western NY. I had just gotten used to the heat and was actively enjoying it and ... zip, it's off. I just bought a load of tank tops on sale! That is what brought the cold front in, I tell you.

I got up before the rest of the family to do the second day of the first week of Couch to 5K in the drizzle. It was fine, though I was reminded of another fabulous reason to run in Vibrams instead of really barefoot: I stepped in dog poo. I think it's time we, as a society, started to toilet train our dogs. This crapping in the grass stuff is So Very Last Week. Don't give me any of this, "it's natural" garbage. If large wolfpacks ever roamed freely in towns and left huge piles of carnivorous dung within our midst, I'd lend some credence to that argument.

We've been picking up a CSA share for the past two weeks, and tomorrow will be our third pick up. I'd have blogged about it, but you know, without pictures, it just seems stupid. Same with the paneer. I made a perfectly passable batch of paneer yesterday, and I thought, "This'd be fun to blog about," but alas. Our camera is like a chain gang prisoner; it has prematurely aged due to the harsh lifestyle and is staggering along with very little functionality left. It will take one picture before it horks and chokes and turns itself off. Until we replace it, it doesn't even seem worthwhile to bother with.

Anyway, I still have some giant stalks of asparagus and a load of beets leftover from last week's pickup. I'm going to use the asparagus tonight in a pasta/shrimp combo, and maybe cram the beets into a salad or something. No one here is a fan of beets, but I'll give it my best shot. Last week I made a leek and goat cheese galette, to use up our leeks, and no one liked it but me. (And I didn't want to like it, given the fat content of galette pastry.) This is back when it was actually hot and leek soup seemed like an intolerable choice, considering.

I'm feeling way uninspired in other areas of housekeeping. I'm so tired of picking up the same messes and losing and finding the same things and the endless cycle of food prep and food cleanup. It's hard for me to get motivated to do anything special, particularly knowing I will be interrupted about 698 times during the course of any project. But! Next week, the girls start summer preschool. So for at least six hours a week, I might be able to do things unhindered. Woah, dude. I was also thinking of digging out my bike, so I can run simple errands without bothering with the whole Car Trading Fandango. I haven't ridden my bike in, oh, eons. Though I'll probably break the law and ride on the sidewalk, because I don't trust all the Hummers and Escalades and Navigators that speed through the village. I know their drivers can't park for shit, so why would I trust them in motion?

This weekend is going to be my 8th wedding anniversary! And I've not really given it any thought and we've made no plans! Whoopeee!

Murphy's Law Strikes Again

Hey! It's a magical formula for making a handyman who has been absent for a month appear before your very eyes!

1) Assume that he'll call first, as he always does, and assume that call will be an, "I'm not coming, I'll come tomorrow," as it always is.

2) Put on something somewhat skimpy that you'd never wear out of the house, for the sole purpose of getting some sun obtaining the maximum amount of Vitamin D.

3) Go play in the backyard with your naked kids.

And voila! Within a half hour, a handyman will be at your back fence gate going, "HI!"

*facepalm*

Preoccupation

Yeah, I've been scarce. This week kicked my ass. Fortunately, it's over.

Friday was our big "moving" day. My brain is reeling from it -- not the event in isolation, but the reminder of how much of a hassle moving is, how much 'stuff' we've acquired, how much of a pain and expense it will be to move it all again, if we have to ...

I'm trying not to think about it. I feel both blessed and burdened by our new acquisitions, if that makes sense. A lot of it is absolutely fantastic, and a lot of it I shouldn't have taken and I feel weighted down with what to do with it.

The good: We have a new bedroom set. It's very large, very ornate, Chippendale style, and I think mahogany. It's from the days when furniture was made out of wood. Somehow, mentally, I didn't realize how large it was. We intended to just replace highboy with highboy, lowboy with lowboy, and it never occurred to me that their furniture could be so much larger than ours. Our bedroom looks so grown up, suddenly.

We also got a sleeper sofa, which is very soft and cushy, and also -- unfortunately -- white leather. It's in the spare room and I plan on covering it liberally with throws.

My daughters got the bed from the grandparents' set, since we already have a bigger bed, and I went out and got them a fun, bright new quilt and equally bright, zingy sheets, to make it less of "grandma's old bed" and more of "big fun happy new bed." Doing this also required liberal amounts of Febreze under a vinyl zippered mattress cover. They seem to like it. Our furniture sets are becoming all mismatched and strange, but I can't bring myself to care. We moved their twin and the accompanying trundle up into the attic playroom.

We also now have some new living room chairs, a second dining room table and chairs (both sets are still in the dining room, bah) and a huge china cabinet/breakfront. It has nothing in it at present, but Annika tells me we need to put things in it, "you know, fancy things."

I got two small tables for the playroom, one will hopefully hold the dollhouse we got for Annika's birthday, which is next week. Our garage is full, including a fridge and a freezer we don't need, and as Celyn would say, "alla kinda 'tuff."

Pictures to follow, if I ever get things relatively clean and organized. But now, because I have to while the kids are shopping with Quinn, I am going to KNIT.