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Wednesday, June 22, 2005

C's book

Yesterday C wrote a tie-in book for Star Wars Episode 3. Here it is. I think she has a future in this, no? Warning: It gives away the end.

Front Cover

"STAR WARSE EPASOTD THREE RAVANG [revenge] OF THE SITH
"BY [C] AGE 5"




"ANAKIN SKYWAKER HAS MARED [married] PADMAY OMADOLA AND SHE GAVE BERTH TO TWINS NAMD LUKE AND LAYA AND ANAKIN SKYWAKER HAS TERND INTO DARTH VADER"




"AND DARTH VADER BECAM VAREE BAD
"AND PADMAY DID [died]"




"AND DARTH VADER LIVID [lived]"

Sunday, May 29, 2005

ouch

I would like to point out that this sticker/seed looks pretty ordinary and small:

UNTIL IT IS STUCK BETWEEN YOUR CHILD'S EYELID AND EYEBALL.

(he's fine, but I apologized to him all evening for the way I had to wrestle him to the ground and have his dad hold his panic-waving arms while his grandpa held his panic-thrashing head and I got the thing out)

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

things about today

• T was off work yesterday because his back was (is) out. This means that I keep forgetting that it's Tuesday -- which is not only the day I pay bills, but also, in this particular instance, my mother's birthday; good thing that I remembered long enough to at least have C call her at work.
• I really feel like going for a walk, except
• it is so hot out that the cooler is barely keeping up at 9:00 in the morning. Way to go with the abrupt change of seasons, there, God. I'm sure you have a fantastic reason for it. We'll adjust. Thanks.
• My feet still hurt from wearing high heels (yes, the cute black-and-white ones) at a chorus concert last night. This is the closest I ever get to feeling the effects of hard partying in the morning. Whew, yeah, that was a wild one.
• C, who says she is "Anakin's little sister", is taking apart the works from her light-up-vibrating-head-song-playing duck. Or actually, it's my duck. She has itty bitty screws all over the couch and she is really intent on fixing the head-vibration function. I'm kind of hoping she messes the whole thing up, since I got tired of the "squeeze here for a computer-chip rendering of a familiar song" stuffed-animal gimmick about three seconds after it was invented. Chances are, however, that she'll actually fix it. Drat.
• We are thinking about renting out the apartment we use for school and guests (but not the garage underneath it). Eek! This is because we are also thinking about buying this house, and that would enable us to do it. Double Eek! No, wait, triple Eek!
• I am a bad, bad girl, because I'm on the computer without having done my Bible reading first. Someone smack me.
• OK, while you're at it, smack me for all the other days I've done that too. Which is, these days, pretty much every day. Sigh.
• I am shuddering in disgust already at the google hits I'm going to get from having "smack me" and "high-heeled" in the same paragraph. GO AWAY SCARY GOOGLERS. NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

Saturday, May 07, 2005

ssshhh...

...be very quiet.

Right now there are people in my kitchen washing my dishes. And I am not sick or otherwise incapacitated.

yippee!

Also, the kids simply could not wait until tomorrow to give me the following (ooh! a list!):

• a new iced tea jug, because mine cracked
  
• two new pie/pizza spatulas, because both of mine were broken (not by me) in the space of about a week, a month or two ago
  
• chip clips with magnets, so they can always be stuck to the side of the fridge, because when I want a chip clip I can never find one, even though I am falling over them when I don't want them
  
  (do they know me or what?)
  
  
• two bookmarks, because I collect bookmarks
  AND
  
• A $25 gift certificate to Barnes and Noble.
  

Apparently this list represents a large percentage of their recycling haul from earlier this week. I am absolutely convinced that I have the world's most amazing children. And of course I'm not biased at all.

Happy Mothers' Day to all my friends who are moms... and to those who aren't yet too. (((hugs)))

Monday, May 02, 2005

out of practice II

Well, here's how you get me to shut up, I guess. Just get me my own domain and I completely run out of things to say for days on end.

Real life started again today. No sitting in the recliner crocheting for hours. No waking up in the morning and stretching lazily and going back to sleep with my leg stretched over T's. No, T went back to work, and the kids and I had a regular day filled with school and errands and housework and all that. I even cooked dinner, which I hadn't done since April 12th, which has to be some kind of record, right? Laundry, messes, getting the soap out of C's eyes in the bath, getting down the breakfast cereal, shopping for things we're out of -- all these things are once more my responsibility. I wouldn't mind, in fact it would be nice to be getting back into our routine, if it weren't for the fact that we had become accustomed to the luxury of having T home all the time and now he's not, and we just plain MISSED him today. It was almost as bad as the day he had to go back to work after two and a half months off for a broken ankle in the winter of 2002/2003. I'm inclined to make a joke about that being pitiful, but I really don't think it's pitiful, if I didn't like having him around I wouldn't have married him, right?

Also, I have to seriously start watching what I eat again. I gained FIVE POUNDS in the past three weeks, not only because I was sitting around not getting much exercise, but also because I ate like a trencherman the whole time. I think I felt like I had to make up for the three days of either liquid diet or no food at all. And people kept bringing us these fantastic meals, and the meals were so HEARTY and the quantities were so large, and T wanted to make me happy so he would bring me heaping bowls of ice cream with brownies, and anytime I was hungry I would just snack. So if you ever should NEED to gain five pounds in three weeks, (I will try hard not to hate your skinny self and) there's the method right there for you.

Good things about today:

• School. The kids were cooperative and we all really enjoyed ourselves. LT gets to basically skip the chapters in his math book that deal with the multiplication tables, since he learned those last year, so now he's doing geometry and measurement, which C is learning along with him as well as doing two-digit addition. They both have books they're really into right now -- LT is tearing it up in his Hardy Boys series (well, tearing it up for a nine-year-old, at least), and C has one of those old-fashioned school reading textbooks, maybe from the 40's, which she borrowed from my parents yesterday, and she's halfway through it. Every time I hear her read out loud she surprises me with how FAST she's getting better and better at it.
  
• The library. I hadn't been there in weeks. I didn't find any books I wanted (when I'm reading Austen, nothing else has any appeal) but I found a few movies. And it was good to just BE there.
  
• LT discussing Austen adaptations with the librarian.
  
• The rebate from the purchase of The Nikon finally arrived, just in time to pay (pause to push down the wave of white-hot self-loathing trying to overtake me) the fine from my traffic ticket.
  
• I went back to the community chorus and I really enjoyed myself.

Oh, man, I am just SO un-funny tonight. You know the scene in The Phantom Tollbooth when Milo winds up in the Doldrums? And the doldrums kind of slink around and talk slower and slower until Milo is lulled into a state of exhausted apathy? I am that tired.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

out of practice

I've had a lot of little thoughts buzzing around in my head, but I'm having a hard time writing about them. So here are a few little tidbits, none of which is worthy of anywhere near an entire journal entry on its own.

• I'm feeling SO MUCH BETTER. Seriously, yesterday was, like, the turnaround day for me. I was able to take not one but TWO (very short) walks yesterday; I am not up to my normal levels of activity yet, but I'm acting a lot less like an invalid and I'm not suffering for it like I did even on Monday when I decided to just live normally. I'm glad T has stayed home, because I am not supposed to so much as lift a gallon of milk, and he's handy for keeping me from OVER-doing it (plus, hey, we've blown our entire vacation budget for the summer on this surgery, so T being at home for these three weeks is pretty much all we're going to get; might as well enjoy it, right?). But he doesn't have to be constantly at my beck and call now, which I think is probably a good thing. And that's hopefully the last time I'll write ANYTHING in this journal about this whole recuperation thing -- I know everyone must be bored with it by now.
  
  
• LT has decided to spend all of his money (that's $110, $50 of which he just got for his birthday) on a Father's Day present for T. He's actually been planning this for quite some time. I would say "there's not a selfish bone in his body" but that's not QUITE true. But there are certainly fewer selfish bones than there were in my body when I was nine.
  
  
• Also about LT: doesn't this look... vaguely disturbing? Or at least decidedly uncomfortable? He was just lying like that, all ho-hum, writing in his journal during school this morning. (I remember being a kid and sitting on my bottom with my knees splayed out to the side like an M and hearing similar comments from adults about that. I guess kids are just made of rubber.)
  

• I have a whole post about Hosea 4 written but I set it aside until I can read it with some objectivity because right now I think it seems really scattered and nearly pointless.
  
  
• I haven't done nearly as much reading this month as I had thought I would. I've only read 4 books. I can't even remember finishing anything before I went in for surgery. And everything I've been reading has been rereads, except for one book which I'm not sure I'm going to finish called Theodora's Diary. It's supposed to be a kind of Christian Bridget Jones. Except that it relies a wee bit too heavily on the kind of bland humor that gets passed around via email -- you know, the whole funny-mistakes-in-church-bulletins stuff -- and on caricatures of various Christian fringe-ish sorts of groups. I think the author (and publisher) figured she had a captive audience, consisting of all these Christian women whose consciences won't let them really get into the more vulgar humor on the market today -- and hey, she's British, so that's a plus, right? All I can say about this book is: YAWN. The four books I've finished are two Austens (S&S and P&P; I'm on MP now) and two L.M. Montgomerys (Anne of the Island and Anne of Avonlea. Neither of those last two is doing anything for me this time around either, which is sad. Must be something wrong with me.)
  

• Um, I think that's finally all. Cripes, SHUT UP, Rachel.

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Thursday, April 21, 2005

that was then...

and this is now...

Happy ninth birthday to the first person to ever make me a mother. *snif*

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

grab for Grover, honey

I have a stuffed Grover. People think it's the kids' Grover, but it's mine (as are, ahem, ALL of the stuffed ducks in our house, but that's another story). T bought Grover for me when I had Natalie; I had always been a Grover fan and had been coveting this particular cheerful blue Grover at our drugstore for quite some time, so when I needed something cuddly to apply counterpressure to my incision (somehow this helps. and pillows = too bulky and quite impersonal, really, don't you think?), and my baby was miles away in a different hospital from me, he thought Grover would be a nice touch. And he was. Grover came along with C was born, as well, and he has been invaluable during these last few weird days of lounging around in soft-waisted pants all day while people get stuff and do things for me. Especially this morning.

See, in case you've never had abdominal surgery, here's a little tidbit of information: Laughing, really letting loose and belly laughing -- it hurts (as do coughing, sneezing, standing up, sitting down, um, breathing deep -- but I digress). So this morning, when T came in and told me to grab Grover before he brought C in, I knew something was up (after all, she HAD been awfully quiet for about a quarter of an hour...). He had advised me wisely, let's just put it that way.

This is what happens when C is left alone with a piece of blue sidewalk chalk in front of the bathroom mirror. Isn't she lovely?
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Sunday, April 10, 2005

bye-bye, Snickers (and Special Dark and big bowls of Rocky Road and...)

T has hypoglycemia, specifically reactive hypoglycemia, or if you want to get really technical, he has "nonhypoglycemic hypoglycemia", since when he goes in for a 3-hour glucose screen, even though he's very nearly comatose about fifteen minutes after the glucose hits his system and he stays that way for the entire three hours, nothing shows up in his bloodwork. For quite some time, maybe two or three years, he's noticed that if he eats sweets, especially on an empty stomach, he gets a) very tired, sometimes to the point of literally HAVING to go to sleep b) a thudding headache in his temples and c) extremely irritable. Nowadays if he even eats, say, not-sugared but not-whole-grain breakfast cereal, he is in bad shape. Yesterday he had cake with lunch and spent the afternoon unconscious on the couch, and the rest of the weekend was not a whole heck of a lot better for him. When all this mess surrounding my medical issues is all cleared up, he's going to see a new doctor; meanwhile, since his symptoms match reactive hypoglycemia exactly, we're going to assume this is what he has and act accordingly, and see if all symptoms clear up.

Which, frankly, is not going to be a whole lot of fun.

Well, there is that aspect that's kind of fun, wherein I get to be all methodical and make lists of possible foods to eat and create SIX MEALS A DAY from them. But let's face it, a man who can ordinarily eat nearly an entire single batch of waffles in one sitting is not going to like having one-inch cubes of cheese become a regular part of his diet. My favorite teenaged-boys-eating-horror-story is: when T was in high school and then in the Navy, he would frequently buy a pound of sharp cheddar cheese and a quart of chocolate milk, and that was a meal. Or he and a friend would go buy a dozen donuts. Each. For breakfast. He doesn't do that anymore, of course, but still, it's a big step from where he is to where he'll be from now on: looking at a dinner plate with, for example, two six-inch whole-wheat tortillas holding a total of two ounces of meat and some vegetables. But hey, lettuce is a free food! As is celery! So he should be really happy about those, at least. I mean, come on. Lettuce and celery! Who needs cheesecake when you have those?

I'll sign off with two pictures. This evening at almost exactly five o'clock the whole family started in at the same time with the "I'm HUNGRY" thing, looking at me as if they expected me to pull a roast turkey and all the trimmings out of thin air or some such thing. I told them I'd make dinner but first I asked them if, just to humor me, they could do an actual baby-birds-in-the-nest imitation, to send me into a kitchen with a smile. And they did.

And then here's a picture of me, coloring with C. Did you know that Crayola manufactures a crayon called "purple mountain's majesty"? Anyone who can tell me why that made me send a tersely-worded email to Crayola gets a free signed first edition of my first book: The Essential Guide to Grammar Snobbery.

That's just the working title, of course.

Sunday, April 03, 2005

you know you wish he was YOUR dad

Here's what the kids (the 35-year-old, the 8-year-old, and the 5-year-old) spent Saturday afternoon building:

that old dryer just keeps on giving

LT as gunner and C as driver (I think those are the correct technical terms)

inside view. I told them to "look angry." Remind me not to tick LT off, will you?

It was his idea. That should not be surprising to you. :)

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