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Tuesday, April 20, 2004
not QUITE Carrie Fisher
I almost feel witty tonight but it's like when a word is "on the tip of my tongue" -- the witty thoughts just keep slipping away before I can quite catch them. So instead of witticisms, here's something we inflicted on C today (well, she DID beg me to do it):
Honestly? Except for the uneven part and the hair marble thingies poking out, I think it looks really cute, even though (or perhaps because), C being not as hair-endowed as Carrie Fisher was in 1977, the buns look more like little knobs than like, well, like crescent rolls glued to the sides of her head. In fact, when I was a little girl, I wore my hair to school this way on occasion. Just in case you ever wondered why I was so popular. --------
Sunday, March 14, 2004
this will help you get your zzz's
I had just popped open a diet Coke in anticipation of sitting and reading for an hour but I CAN'T FIND MY BOOK. (The Two Towers, and I'm liking it OK). And now since I have this nice beverage o' bliss to keep me company, I can't just go to bed, now can I, so here I am typing an entry. I remember in junior high, notes written when bored were always the most boring ones. So, if you are prone to insomnia, perhaps you should save this entry to read in the middle of the night -- and in any case, make sure not to operate any heavy machinery after reading. OK?
I've been spending a lot of time away from the computer being, well, productive. In fact, this weekend overall has been a good one with lots of things getting accomplished that have been a long time coming. Ooh, a LIST!
- On Friday I finished a sewing project for the first time since last May: a denim blanket intended for picnics.
- Time spent collecting old jeans and letting them lie around in an old military laundry bag, figuring that "someday" I would make a quilt out of them: Ten years.
- Total days elapsed from starting cutting to finishing the project: about 15
- Total hours involved: Maybe 35? 40?
- Other miscellaneous costs: much frustration with my sewing machine, until we reached a truce and worked things out between us; one cassette in a 25-cassette book on tape owned by my local library, "eaten" by my extremely inexpensive generic cassette player (Light a Penny Candle by Maeve Binchy, and I was so engrossed in it that I had to check out the book at the same time as I confessed the depravity and misadventures of my cassette player to the librarian who's known me since I was a baby, and stay up till all hours reading instead of sewing to find out what happened), replacement $8.
- Saturday T put the engine in his truck. This is a big, big deal. I won't go into the mechanic-y greasy details, nor will I tell you how long the truck's been sitting in our driveway waiting for said engine (partly because I can't remember, it seems like it's always been there), but trust me, a big big deal. Yay hubby. :)
- Also Saturday I started a new sewing project (I am liking this books on tape thing, and sewing is a good excuse), this one being a dress for my daughter. I have had this very very expensive fabric stored for eight years -- since I bought more than I needed to for a maternity dress -- and have planned since then that I would eventually make a dress for my daughter (mind you, this was before I HAD a daughter) from it. I bought the pattern for the dress last spring. So after eight years of waiting and two and a half days (about eight or ten hours) of work, here it is:
- On Friday, LT had the shining moment of his life to date (or close enough anyway) when he took his savings to Target and bought THE LEGO AT-AT. He'd been coveting one for a year or so, and saving his recycling money for months. And now through the miracle of modern technology (including my new-to-me, functional digital camera! woo hoo!), you, yes, YOU, diaryland reader, can be witness to the creation of a Star Wars legend. (can you tell it's late?)
Early in the project, Friday night...
Daddy of course had to get in on this (talk about bonding! ;-)
After just a few hours' sleep, I don't think I have to tell you about the first thing he looked at when he got out of bed on Saturday...
The finished product, Saturday morning.
It was a little smaller than I expected for $100 -choke- but the owner is extremely well-pleased.
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Monday, March 08, 2004
spring, and kid questions
This is the day which comes at some point during the late winter every year.
Humans: Um, it's barely March. And last week it was really cold. What's up with the eighty degrees? I'm sweating here! I'm getting in slap-fights over the shady parking spaces at Costco! This isn't supposed to be happening. I don't even have my shorts out yet.Foolish people of North America (that is to say, "me"), DO NOT BE TAKEN IN by the capricious weather. KEEP YOUR SWEATERS WITHIN EASY REACH. In the middle of April you'll wish you had, as your frozen purple knees knock together in your cute little khaki skort. I mean it.
Weather: What are you talking about? It's SUPPOSED to be eighty degrees now. It's the normal state of things from here till November.
Humans: Um, no. Last week I KNOW it was under sixty degrees. I was wearing a sweater.
Weather: Um, YES. But I'm telling you, it's spring now. I'm the one who'd know, right? S-P-R-I-N-G. Eighty degrees. Like that. Every year.
Humans: No. Wait, really?
Weather: [emphatically] Yes.
Humans: Oh. OK. Yeah, I guess you must be right. Eighty degrees, hmm. I guess I'll take my kids' shorts out of storage and put my sweaters away now.
Weather: [snickering, sotto voce] Sucker.
My children and I walked two miles today -- a mile outbound to the park, then an hour playing at the park, and a mile walking back. The first mile is basically all downhill, which means of course that the second is all uphill, with the worst and steepest stretch being the last hundred yards before reaching our house. You can imagine the mood my four-year-old was in by the time we reached the top. Oh yeah. Now add more whining. Mm-hmm. Add in two or three more dramatic declarations of "I give up!" followed by a pathetic collapse into the grass by the side of the road, and I think you pretty much have it. Surprisingly enough, this is her favorite part of the day in retrospect, as is evidenced by her answers to the ten kid questions for this week (the website where I originally found this concept seems to have stopped putting up sets of questions, so I made up my own this week. Her answers follow "C"; her 7-year-old brother's follow "LT"):
1. What does the president do?
C: He talks.
LT: He rules the country.
2. What does it mean to vote?
C: Go to the fairgrounds when it's not fair time.
LT: Well, give our things to the president and then the government will get them and see what we vote for.
3. What is the best thing that ever happened to you?
C: A walk.
LT: Launching rockets and playing with Legos.
4. What happens at a circus?
C: Animals walk and people ride them.
LT: Somebody goes and goes on a wire and goes across.
5. How does a person train an animal?
C: By using it nicely.
LT: People do it like Grandma and Grandpa trained Droopy.
6. How old should a person be when he or she gets married?
C: Ninety ninety ninety. [but is Mommy that old?]. No. [So I shouldn't be married?] Yes, you should. (Nobody ever said a 4-year-old had to be logical, I guess).
LT: Nine thousand years old. I'm kidding. About twenty.
7. What would be the most fun job ever?
C: Spending the night at [her two nearby cousins'] house.
LT: Launching rockets and learning science and being an Awana leader.
8. What part of Mommy's job do you think she likes best?
C: Sewing together the quilt.
LT: Watching our stories and things.
9. What part of Daddy's job do you think he likes best?
C: Doing rockets. (Those are a family hobby, not his job).
LT: Coming home.
10. What is your favorite part of the day? Why?
C: Launching rockets and going for walks.
LT: Going for a walk.
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Tuesday, February 17, 2004
survey for kids
I found a website with a clever twist on the usual survey meme -- you're supposed to ask your KILT the questions. I went through all four of the sets they had posted to date. My kids are a bit older than the target age on the site -- you're supposed to ask your three-year-old, but C is 4 and LT is 7. It was still fun, and even occasionally funny.
1. Name an animal that lives in the ocean.
C: a clam
LT: A whale.
2. What is a bank for?
C: Getting money and stickers.
LT: Money. You keep the money there and then when you want you can come and get it back.
3. What is a typewriter?
C: [points to computer keyboard]
LT: A machine for typing.
4. What is a bumblebee's job?
C: "bzzzzzzz".
LT: Stinging.
5. How many legs does a spider have?
C: Three or four.
LT: Eight.
6. Why does your house have windows?
C: So that bugs won't come in.
LT: So that we can look outside.
7. Name a food you hate.
C: Hay.
LT: Chicken drumsticks.
8. Who is the president?
C: President Bush.
LT: President George W. Bush.
9. What year is it?
C: I don't know.
LT: 2004.
10. Why do babies cry?
C: Cause that's how they talk.
LT: Cause they want stuff.
1. How do you make a sandwich?
LT: Fold over, or whole. With peanut butter and jelly, or just peanut butter. Get a knife and a spoon, or just a knife, and some bread, and make a sandwich.
C: Put things together. First you get two pieces of bread. Then you get peanut butter and jelly, and put them together.
2. Who fixes the dentist's teeth?
C: Grandma. [she works for a dentist -- as an office manager]
LT: The dentist!
3. Who lives in the zoo?
C: Mr. Elephant, Mr. and Mrs. Zebra, and Mr. Train, and Kiddie Land.
LT: Animals.
4. How old is Elmo?
C: I don't know, maybe two or three or four.
LT: Five.
5. What time is it?
C: It's four o'clock. And now it's six. [it's actually quarter of two; she was looking at the sweep second hand]
LT: It is 1:54.
6. What does Daddy do at work?
C: Works on things. Telephones.
LT: Works on electricity.
7. What planet do we live on?
C: Earth.
LT: Earth.
8. What season is it?
C: Foggy.
LT: It is winter.
9. What's your favorite vegetable?
C: Broccoli.
LT: Tomatoes.
10. Count backwards from 5 to 1.
C: Five, one. One, five. Or five, one.
[I: "Like you were lifting off a rocket."]
Five, four, three, two, one.
LT:
Five! Four! Three! Two! One!
1. Where do babies come from?
C: Tummies.
LT: Mommies.
2. What does Mommy do when she isn't taking care of you?
C: Look for me.
LT: Nothing.
3. When is your birthday?
C: March February 13th.
LT: April 21st.
4. What do you want to be when you grow up?
C: A cowgirl and an astronaut.
LT: Whatever Daddy is.
5. Where do apples come from?
C: Trees.
LT: Trees.
6. What does Yellow and blue make?
C: Green.
LT: Green.
7. If you have two sandwiches and eat one, how many are left?
C: One.
LT: One.
8. Who is mommy's mommy?
C: Grandma.
LT: Grandma.
9. What does a spider eat?
C: Bugs.
LT: Icky food.
10. Who are you going to marry when you grow up?
C: [elaborate shrug]. [Do you want to guess?] No.
LT: I don't know! [Do you want to guess?] No.
1. What is your favorite food?
C: Broccoli and baked potatoes and red tomatoes.
LT: Macaroni and cheese.
2. How much does a hat cost?
C: How about $50, no less.
LT: $99,099,099.01
3. What is the moon made out of?
C: Rock.
LT: Rock.
4. What is your favorite tv show?
C: Grapes of Wrath [the Veggietales version]
LT: Star Wars.
5. Why is the sky blue?
C: Cause rain comes trickling down.
LT: Well, because there's no clouds!
6. How old is mommy?
C: I don't know. Sixteen?
LT: 29.
7. What is your last name?
C: [states correct last name]
LT:
8. Why do zebras have stripes?
C: Cause they are zebras.
LT: Because they do.
9. What does a plumber do?
C: Works on pipes.
LT: Fixes pipes. And he sells plums, ha ha! (that's a class-A 7-year-old joke for you)
10. Where do you live?
C: United States of America.
LT: On [name of our street]. And I guess that our address is 5848 [it's not, but he's close].
Monday, December 22, 2003
pictures! pictures!
Snapfish (I love you, I love you) just put up pictures from our most recent rolls of film. Here are three I felt I must Share Or Burst.
This is LT, on Patriotic/Military Day at Awana. I just have to love any club that encourages kids to dress up in military and/or patriotic costumes. :)
This is C (with her back to us) at her first ballet lesson. This is a stretching exercise wherein they pretend to be "big oak trees" and rock back and forth in the wind. WAY TOO PRECIOUS, no?
Here are C and myself getting ready to go to the Nutcracker. Don't we look lovely?! :) This is a textbook example of Too Much Lipstick, and the fact that the flash bleached out my face didn't help the look at all. T is not an ally in TML prevention, as he has a bit of a red lipstick, um, f*t*sh (don't want the creepy stalkers to happen upon this particular entry...) Fortunately for me and the world at large, I ate something on the way and had to reapply, and I wore much less the rest of the night.
This is my second entry today, just so you know...
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Monday, December 08, 2003
sugar makes me sick (literally)
This is so cool. Every time I've eaten sweets this past week I've gotten really sick to my stomach. This will be fantastic motivation for me not to eat them anymore! Right?
OK, so much for that; can you see me trying to find something good in this? It sucks. Right before Christmas too. Oh well. My mom stopped eating any sugar at all in 1987 and is still at it -- not to lose weight, although that happened; it's because sugar gives her un-be-LIEV-able mood swings -- so I can survive without it, I guess. Until my body pulls itself together and realizes that A LITTLE PECAN PIE NOW AND THEN ISN'T GOING TO HURT ME. Come on, body, get the message. Please?
In other news, I had a new low weigh-in today, at 168 pounds. I tried on a semi-formal dress I'd forgotten I owned; I got it when I was my friend's matron of honor in 1996. If I do say so myself, I look totally fabulous in it. I'm going to wear it to the Nutcracker with C this weekend. We don't know anyone there, so what does it matter if we're overdressed? It'll be a fun evening just for the two of us.
Update on last night's entry: the tank was not finished on time. Nope. It took them until 9:30 (T's friend called and that added to their time). I just have to realize that my husband and son are the Jedi Masters of Lego, as they claim, and stop doubting their abilities; that's all.
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Friday, November 07, 2003
pictures of the boa
We just got a CD from my FIL of pictures from his birthday. Here are a couple of C with the infamous feather boa.
Close-up, with just the boa and the tiara
The whole ensemble. The pink blur to her left is the wand, which was being waved in a wandish sort of way.
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Monday, November 03, 2003
lego-mania
We just got back from an impromptu trip to the toy store (oh, and a whole bunch of other places too, but really, what else matters?). So now, not only is the floor behind my chair strewn with Lego creations awaiting the big Daddy Vs. Son Lego Battle tomorrow morning, but the table also the site of much Lego-mania. Both "boys" (one age 7, the other 33) got new kits tonight. T got one with his hero and alter ego, Darth Vader. They're discussing how they're going to destroy each other in the battle tomorrow. I think half the reason T wanted a son first (which he got) was so that he would have less time to wait before he'd have an excuse to play with Legos. And we haven't even made the trip up to his mother's yet, to get the much-discussed ICE CHEST FULL OF LEGOS which was T's when he was a boy (we did, however, get about a bushel of them -- that's a small laundry basket worth, people -- at a flea market last summer for $3. Yes, $3. T gloated about that one for at least a month). I foresee a thousand-mile-each-way trip in our near future.
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inundated by punk flamingo feathers
Yesterday we went to my father-in-law's house to celebrate his birthday; my brother-in-law and his wife were also there, and they brought presents for my kids since they had missed their birthday parties this year. C got a dress-up set -- shiny pink shoes with fuzzy feather trim, a beaded, beribboned, glittery wand, likewise with feather trim, a tiara (with beads and "jewels", but alas, no feathers), a frilly little skirt, and the pièce de résistance -- a 4-foot-long vivid pink feather boa. This is C's newest Princess Outfit, and periodically she puts it all on and parades around in a princess-like manner, gathering accolades left and right, posing for pictures, you name it (gotta teach her that wave, her public would love that). The one drawback of this get-up, aside from the fact that C's head is getting so inflated that she'll soon have to give up passing through doorways, is that the feather boa sheds feathers in a really most magnificent manner. Everywhere you look in this house, you see bright-pink-with-magenta-tips feathers. Adhered to the carpet, floating through the air, skidding gracefully across the hardwood, collecting in corners -- they're everywhere. It's like a troop of punk flamingoes took up residence for a few days and then left in a hurry. Minus the really stinky droppings.
* * * * * *
feather update: I think they're surreptitiously breeding. Surely there are more of them loose than can possibly have been part of the boa -- and the boa is still just as poofy and full as ever. At this rate, by this evening we'll be buried in feathers, like Pat Boone and James Mason in that eiderdown warehouse in "Journey to the Center of the Earth".
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Thursday, September 25, 2003
mostly about children
Yesterday my 3-year-old daughter (I have to use that phrase as often as I can this week, since next Tuesday she will leave 3 behind forever and be 4, leaving me to NEVER AGAIN HAVE A THREE-YEAR-OLD, which I won't dwell on lest I dissolve into tears) came down with my sinus whatever. Fortunately for her, it doesn't seem to be causing her any pain, just a really really runny nose, and the cutest symptom of any childhood illness: that croaky, squeaky voice. I swear if I had the capability to do so I would upload a .wav file of it here, and you all could listen.
OK, I couldn't resist. Here it is. (I told her to think of something she had memorized and just recite it. This is her own unrehearsed performance).
As soon as she started talking like that yesterday, I began preparing mentally for a croup attack in the middle of the night. This has always been a sure warning before. Thankfully, however, it would appear that as well as being on the very brink of no longer having a three-year-old, I have also passed the threshold into a world where neither of my children is young enough to have croup. That is definitely a plus. Now if people could just grow out of the need to have their noses tended to every thirty-five seconds or so.
This is one of those school days that doesn't feel particularly stressful, but it is taking way, way longer than ordinary. LT is just dawdling along, taking about three hours to do about an hour's worth of work. Hey, if he wants to be at the kitchen table doing school all day, I suppose that's up to him... at least that's my current mood. However, if he continues squeaking his chair I may send him to someone else's kitchen table to do it. ahem. He has just asked me to turn off my music (goodbye, Roxette) because it is "a great distraction." "Great" as in "large," as in some Regency-era novel. Good heavens, this is really real; my son talks like a homeschooler.
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