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Wednesday, November 10, 2004
the conspiracy of depraved inanimate objects
The conspiracy on the part of inanimate things, against me personally, has progressed to an outright rebellion. Today, if it could slip between my fingers, it would. If it could fall in the butter at dinner, it did. And needless to say, whenever it was possible for something to spill, smash, shatter, or explode (OK, so maybe 'explode' is a bit of an exaggeration), it did. In spades. Even my nice cozy jammies snickered at me every time I tried to wipe my hands on their acrylicness and got, instead of dry hands (I have discovered, by the way, thanks to these jammies, that I wipe my hands on my clothes, um, way too much), that shuddery wet acrylic feeling. I shudder again now, just thinking about it. And the refrigerator has become especially crafty. I've had an ongoing feud with it for, what, a year? And tonight T pointed out that I needed to defrost it. Now. Not tomorrow, when our milk has been sitting at 55 degrees for another eighteen hours or so, but now. He wasn't so forceful about it as it sounds, he just kind of guilted me into it. So I played the martyr card -- "OK, you just go on to bed while I stay up for two more hours defrosting the freezer. You didn't know it takes that long? Well, it DOES, and if it weren't MY SOLE RESPONSIBILITY to do this task, you would have known. Go, go, off to bed, I don't need you resenting me on top of the lack of sleep and everything else, go on." (Yes, as a matter of fact, I did say every word of that. Not all together. But still. Cripes.) And then it only took ten minutes to defrost the freezer, thanks to my patented "Two Liter Bottle Filled With Hot Tap Water And Fitted With A Squirt Lid" method. So I had to putter around in the kitchen doing a lot of other stuff so that T (who probably was still awake when I finished) wouldn't hear me come over here and start typing after such a distinctly un-martyrish expanse of time. And of course it was all the refrigerator's fault. Cocky piece of... machinery.
And now the B key on my keyboard is acting all sticky. Fantastic. Now I can add that to my list. Nothing like having to spend an entire data entry paycheck on our, what, fourth ergonomic keyboard in thirteen months? so that I can keep doing data entry (and, well, everything else too, to be fair).
While I was going about my beleaguered existence today, I had the most fantastic ideas for my NaNoWriMo book -- which, by the way, is still laughably short. It's the data entry, see. Maybe if someone was paying me, what, about a quarter of a cent per keystroke? I'd be more motivated to spend time working on the novel. Anyway. I had all these great ideas and I thought, I can't wait till the kids are in bed and I can sit down and actually bang out a few thousand words, and then as soon as I sat at the computer, the whole defrosting saga began. And now that I'm at leisure to sit here if I want to, and it's "only" almost 1 AM, the ideas are fleeing my brain like it's the site of an impending nuclear attack.
On a more serious note, I'm starting to actually worry about C's hearing. The medication they gave her cleared up her congestion completely, and very quickly. She no longer has a stuffy or runny nose, or a cough. The thing is, though, that her hearing is almost no better at all. So my worry is that the hearing thing may be completely unrelated to the congestion and maybe she needs to get into a specialist, like, NOW, before it gets worse. The pediatrician thinks it's just a lingering infection (note: C has no pain or feeling of pressure in her ears) and wants to try another round of stiffer antibiotics before we move on to a specialist. I am giving it five days. If she is not 100% better on Monday she's going to an ENT whether her ped (whom, by the way, we like a great deal; she's been the kids' doctor since LT was born; in fact, she was the pediatrician in the room when they removed him from my body) thinks she needs to or not.
I'll close with one picture:
This is a self-portrait: the back of my head after spending about fifteen minutes at Salon Chez C, who says (at least while she's at it) that her "very favorite thing to do in the whole world is fix Mommy's hair." Who could say no to that?
Friday, November 05, 2004
NaNoWriMo, and other stuff
NaNoWriMo update
I had about 1100 words done on my NaNoWriMo novel, the one I'd finally settled on doing, about the group of junior high rejects ("minimal research required" being part of the appeal there). I got to a point where I was second-guessing my plot twist, reworking my idea for the middle of the book, and tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to write the darn thing without having it all be either a) a big ripoff of a Babysitter's Club Meets Sweet Valley High coming-of-age novel, or b) a thinly-veiled autobiography. Then last night I was rereading an L.M. Montgomery novel, A Tangled Web, and came across the following character:
"She was only 'old Margaret Penhallow,' with fifty drab, snubbed years behind her and nothing ahead of her but drab, snubbed old age."
All of a sudden I remembered a news story a few years ago in our little town about a double suicide -- the people were really into the Hemlock Society -- which had failed: the husband had died and the wife had lived. I have wondered often since then what the woman's life has been like since that happened. Judging by the lack of sensationally mis-spelled headlines in our local newspaper, she didn't just keep trying until she got it right, which is what you might expect. Anyway, Margaret Penhallow combined with this woman in my mind to give me a whole new idea. So now I have 2500 words written... in two separate stories, because I'm not ready to give up on the first idea yet. I think I may qualify as clinically insane at this point.
Politics
yay.
Other stuff
I took C to the doctor on Wednesday because of the hearing thing. I wrote up a long description of that frustrating day and then ended up not posting it. Suffice to say it involved a rainstorm, non-functioning windshield wipers, an hour spent waiting with the kids in a Verizon store while my faulty phone was replaced (yippee!), and more Hometown Buffet hot wings than were probably good for me. The doctor prescribed two medications: one is an asthma medication, and one's an allergy medication. When the pharmacist told me this, I went, "wha...?" and called the doctor, thus starting a two-day marathon session of phone tag, because -- newsflash -- C has neither asthma or allergies. Turns out that the doctor didn't have her mixed up with someone else's child after all; she just prescribed those drugs because they'll address her symptoms. What-ever. I hope they work really, really well. And that's not just because we're at a total of $70 for this round, either. My poor girl NEEDS TO HEAR. It's, you know, kind of important to me.
Also, T has been really having a bad few weeks of it. Ever since his truck's engine blew, he's been a bit depressed. We're trying to figure out what to do about that. It is such a good feeling to not be in debt. Such a good feeling. I mean, we have a credit card with a thousand-dollar limit that's closer to the top than to the bottom of its capacity, but to be normal people and not have five figures of consumer debt hanging over us has been almost euphorically good, this past year and a half or so. And we have become pretty adamant that we will keep it that way. But for T, if his truck's going to be disabled, you might as well castrate him and get it over with, almost, is his feeling. And it's all well and good to say we'll just hand it all over to God and see what He does, and that's what we're doing, but every once in a while the Signature Loan Devil sticks his head up and cackles at us in a really provoking way. We try to ignore that, because we've been on that slippery slope so many times before -- it starts out as just a couple thousand for a new engine and whatever else you use to fix a truck (I personally still believe there must be some white magic involved, but I digress), and before you know it you're looking at bills that say you owe a total of twenty-something thousand dollars going, "how the heck did THAT happen?" Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt (which says on the front, "Flush Eight Years of Your Financial Life Down the Toilet Now. Ask Me How!"). If only there was a Truck Fairy, eh?
Monday, November 01, 2004
I don't even know WHAT to call this one
Can someone please tell me: Where did November come from this year? As I get older and the years do their clichéd-but-true (after all, most clichés are true) speeding-up thing, I find myself sometimes having to think to remember not just the date, not just the MONTH even, but the season. Mentally I'm still adjusting to the fact that it's 2004. And it's about to be 2005, in two short months. Two short months, may I add, which are always the most frantic months of the year for just about everybody, and we're no exception, with a whole slew of family birthdays, and pretty much every weekend taken up between now and New Year's. So I fully expect to step outside tomorrow, feel that the air is cool, and have to look at the leaves to remember if it's fall or early spring.
I think I am going to do NaNoWriMo this year. Shut UP, just SHUT UP, I do not want to hear it. I am such a lemming.
Things we did this last weekend:
At the last minute, invited my parents to hold my grandmother's birthday party at our house instead of theirs, for some complicated reasons I won't go into here. This meant that my house went from "pigs wouldn't claim it" to "ready for a family gathering" in two hours. It was a transformation to behold. And yes, my grandmother was born on the exact day of the stock-market crash which catapulted the nation into the Great Depression. It's almost enough to make me believe in astrology, that is. Did I just SAY that?
Spilled water in our keyboard. We air-dried it, and then I used the blow-dryer for a while, and it works almost perfectly, just a little stiff with the SHIFTing.
Played probably twelve hours of board games lying in front of the fire on the hardwood floor, including an actual complete game of Monopoly, played until one person had all the money and stuff. I've done this maybe twice in my life before. (I lost first). We also played two matches of Trivial Pursuit. I won the first one and T won the second one. (Has anyone seen the BOok Lovers' Version of Trivial Pursuit at Barnes and Noble? Omigosh I WANT THAT. Except there's nobody to play it with me.)
Drove to the city to buy school supplies. Well, C and I did. T was otherwise occupied...
Built a pig pen. T did this (thank God) while I drove to the city. And not at our house (thank God again, many times over, because pigs? they stink). Someone is giving us and his boss's family two piglets. They're going to be raised at the boss's house. I think we'll name ours Loin Roast.
Went over all our ballot propositions and decided how we're going to vote on them. Ironically, we're Republicans (more because America is enslaved to the two-party system, than because we actually agree with everything in the platform; we're considerably to the right of Republican on several issues), but I think we are going perpendicular to the party line on all but one or two of the long list of propositions. We don't expect them to go our way, however, because we so do not fit in politically in California. Talk about "disenfranchised". Yet we still vote, every single time. Both of us have voted every time it was possible since we've been old enough to do so.
Cut wood. Well, I got out of most of this (cackles with glee). I love wood heat. I really do. I also really don't like cutting wood. I mean, viewed from a distance, it's an invigorating family activity for a brisk fall day, with the smell of wood and the camaraderie and blah blah blah burning brush piles of sawdust. When you're doing it, however, you notice that stuff less than you do the noise and the muscle strain and the squished fingers. And it wasn't my fault that my dad decided to change the day for wood cutting to a day when I'd had a lunch date with a girlfriend since the summer. It really wasn't. So I hauled about ten very heavy rounds of pine, and then got back in the car, drove 45 minutes back to town with the radio up very loud, took a shower, got dressed up, and went to my favorite restaurant to talk for an hour with a friend who now lives across the country with her army husband, about girl stuff and the Iraq war and our husbands and kids and our ex-boyfriends and stuff. Then I got to go home and help stack the wood, just so that I could meet the requisite smashed-finger quota for a winter's worth of wood. (actually there will be many more days of this delightful kind of exercise before spring, and you can bet I won't get out of those. sigh.)
One of my favorite things about autumn is the way the light slants, even in the middle of the day. This picture was taken at almost ten a.m. In the summer, it's already prime sunburn time at ten, with the sun beating down on your head and crisp, ugly, short shadows squatting under everything. On the 29th of October, however, you have dew on the grass and lovely, long, blurry, cool shadows everywhere. No contest at all, if you ask me.
'Tis the season. You can't drive anywhere around here right now without encountering about a tarantula per mile. I am genuinely ambivalent about the creatures -- they don't freak me out like they do some people to whom I may or may not be married, but I am not a staunch tarantula advocate like nearly everyone else seems to be who isn't freaked out by them. I don't cringe when T purposefully runs them over (backing up if necessary) -- I just laugh. I was glad to have the opportunity to photograph this one, though, creeping his mechanical legs across the dirt road. If T sees this page he may well file for divorce. I'll keep you posted.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
ALSO.
Tonight I wore this outfit. I think from now on I'll wear it every day. I went from zero "what a cute outfit!"s from strangers in the past five years, to three tonight. Plus I saw a few heads turn casually and stuff. Not that I'm letting this go to my head. But maybe my usual policy of "if I'm not dirty and my clothes aren't stained I'm OK to go out" needs a little updating. Or something.
Also tonight I'm finding out what happens when you eat hot links for three meals in two days. Intestinally speaking, this is not a great idea and I don't recommend it. There's your public service announcement for this evening
ALSO tonight, I am going to fold laundry instead of reading or putzing around on the Internet while I wait to take C for her midnight wet-bed-prevention pee. I SWEAR I AM. As much more fun as it would be to read or even do data entry or (heaven forbid) wash the dishes... must. do. laundry. I am getting those mountains of laundry in the laundry room again. I am pretty well convinced that the clothes are breeding in there.
Monday, October 25, 2004
yay for fall!
Usually my self-image is pretty ordinary. I think of myself physically as a kind of ubermom; the way I look doesn't really matter because most people, as soon as they see me, see my mom-ness, and that's all. And that's fine. Then there are days when I think of myself as looking more like, oh, say, something that was once alive (and probably furry) but then was run over by a truck.
And then there are the weirdest days. Days like today, when I get dressed and look in the mirror and think, wow, I'm actually really good-looking. All day I've felt like this about myself. To commemorate the occasion I put on makeup and wore my red plaid skirt and a cozy, thick, cable-knit red sweater and black tights... all day long. And all day I was very aware of my legs and my hair and my cute little outfit. And the thing is, I look just exactly like I do every other day, except the clothes. I have no idea what it is that gives me a mood like this, but I am grateful to God that it's rare, because I would annoy the living daylights out of myself if I went around thinking like this all the time. I wonder if it's hormonal. I should track my moods like some women do their bodily fluids and basal body temperatures, and see if this goes in, ahem, a cycle.
We have been having such fantastic fall weather. Red-sweater-and-bowl-of-apples weather. Soup-and-French-bread weather. Snuggling-down-by-the-woodstove-with-a-book weather. My goodness, no wonder people gain weight in the wintertime; everything that sounds appealing involves eating and relaxing. Tonight there's supposed to be a good cold storm coming in. Tomorrow we should have really nice hard cold driving rain. T gives me the evil eye every time I say stuff like this, because while I get to sit by the woodstove in my red sweater with my apples, soup, French bread, and book, (oh, and kids), he has to go out and do who knows what uncomfortable work sort of things, in the nasty cold wet (or snowy) weather. Then I feel all guilty... for about three seconds. I just can't help it. Autumn just suits me.
Meanwhile, even though (or maybe because) I got an obscenely luxurious quantity of solid sleep last night, I am really very tired. So I am going to very virtuously not forget to wash my makeup off, like I usually do on the rare occasions I wear any, and I am going to go snuggle up under a nice thick stack of blankets, next to my nice warm husband. yay for fall. :)
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
thank you kitty. also plumbing. and other stuff.
Our bigger, more aggressive cat has strong hunting instincts. However, due to the dearth of mice at her location, she's turned to June bugs. And I hate Junebugs. So I will leave you to imagine my reaction when she hops up on our bed and offers me an enormous, twitching, oozing, spiky-legged, furry-antennaed specimen, like a gift.
Also, our plumbing (actually the town sewer system) is freaking out again. It happens when we get a lot of rain. Last spring we called a plumber, and he and the public utilities people passed the buck back and forth like it was some kind of new rainy-day elementary-school game. So today, when the washer drained onto the utility-room floor instead of into the sewer system like it's supposed to, I took matters into my own hands, and went out and checked the sewage access myself, while it was (here's a brainwave for the public utilities people) actually still raining. And lo and behold the pipe was full to the brim of rainwater, along with a lot of other nasty stuff. THEN I called them, told them it was definitively their problem, and supposedly they're going come out as soon as possible. I've no idea what they're going to be able to do about the situation, though. The water and sewer systems in this town were outdated in the forties when this development was built.
Dawn got me thinking yesterday about things I've lost. I started to make a mental list and I know I'm forgetting a lot of things, or blocking them out, more likely. But here are a few memorable ones.
- My high-school class ring. Last time I absolutely knew I had it was when I got engaged (October of 1993). The first time I missed it and absolutely couldn't find it was when I got back from my honeymoon (March of 1994). So there are six months during which, at some point, it vanished into thin air. For years after the wedding I would remember yet another place where I thought maybe I remembered setting it aside to keep it safe; I would check that spot next time I was at my parents', and I would be wrong. Finally I gave up. Old habits die hard, though; the other day I found myself wondering if Mom and Dad had ever had the traps out of their drains since then. Nevermind that the house was new when we moved in, and the drain covers have all been intact the entire time; the brain of a chronic thing-loser doesn't care about things like that.
- A ring my mom gave me in high school. This one makes me just sick. The ring wasn't worth much monetarily, but my mom bought it for me when she was on a work-related trip, and brought it home and gave it to me during one of the rare periods of my adolescence when we were just not getting along at all. I was so touched by the gesture, and then I lost the ring not two weeks later at a beach by the river, when I went there with "friends" late at night (that whole night was a total disaster). The next day I went back and looked for it for hours, but it was gone.
- A Zip-loc bag of crochet squares. This is the biggie. This is the item that we are still kind of actively looking for, because it just HAS to be somewhere, a gallon ziploc bag full to bursting with six months' worth of work doesn't just disappear. Except apparently it does.
Like I said, I know there are more things for this list. Someday when I die I will march straight up to God and ask Him where the vast repository is for all this kind of stuff that people lose and never find again. Because surely at least He must know.
Yesterday I was looking over my shoulder to back up while I was driving, and my neck totally spazzed. The pain got worse for an hour or so until I just couldn't move my head at all. So I spent the day lying around on a heating pad, reading. You may or may not recall that Sunday afternoon was spent the same way, minus the heating pad. Interestingly enough, one day of lying around leisurely plowing through a library book feels pleasantly decadent. Two days feels like I'm a lazy bum who needs to get off her couch and get something done, for crying out loud. Who knew my laziness tolerance would be quite so low? I've always craved a week where I could just do whatever I wanted, that being mostly sitting around and reading. And yet I get the opportunity and I can't even last two days without getting fidgety. Another of life's little dreams destroyed. **sigh**
Sunday, October 17, 2004
I am so spoiled.
This is a link to a news story about the freaky stuff that was going on in Yosemite the other day. Although the most horrific part wasn't known about until last night.
T came home late last night, after the arsonist's body was found and the weather made it evident that the fire suppression crew wasn't going to be needing his services. We were in the midst of a really big sleepover -- our neighbors' babysitter backed out at the last minute and they had a concert to attend, so they asked me if they could send the kids up to our house. It was fun, and a little crazy. It made me think about those dreams I used to have of having a family that size (we had six kids between three and ten here for the night, counting my two), and how different our lives would be if God had had things work out that way. Even just having that many kids at the table for a meal is an adventure and takes substantial planning. My hat is off to both my grandmothers, who dealt with that sort of thing every day.
And to the neighbor kids' mom, who brought us a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts as a thank you. Diet forsooth!
Today we had just a nice quiet lazy Sunday afternoon in the house. We're having our first rainstorm of the season, and we built a little fire, and I read an entire book (Good Hope Road by Lisa Wingate -- I recommend it. It's somewhere on a line between Jan Karon and Elizabeth Berg, if a little bit less professionally-done), and I don't know when the last time was that I read an entire book in one day. Oh, wait, it was Friday -- except that took part of early Saturday morning too -- when I read the new Maeve Binchy, Nights of Rain and Stars I think it's called -- which is a little less poetic than her usual books but still a good story. So, wow, two whole library books in one weekend, and a fire in the woodstove, and a "shooting-down" (C's phrase) rainstorm. I am just plain spoiled rotten, that's all there is to it.
Monday, October 04, 2004
snippety snippets, again (including an update on T)
Yesterday I bought fabric-softener sheets. I bought them at Costco, so they're in a two-pack, sealed in shrink-wrap, sitting on my dryer behind a closed door, and yet the smell of them has now completely pervaded my house. I am more than a little afraid to take the wrapping off, let alone actually -- egads -- open one of the boxes.
An update on poor T: He ended up going to the doctor today, because the pain in his jaw (which, I don't remember if I mentioned this yesterday and I'm too lazy to check, was really sore after his fall, even though he hit the back of his head, and it wouldn't close properly for a while, and won't again now) got worse and worse. The doctor thinks it may be dislocated, and sent him for an X-ray. In looking at the films, I think the doctor is wrong, but then, there's more than one reason (like, say, six or eight years of schooling) why I'm not the person who's paid a six-figure salary to read X-rays, and we'll know what the actual professional says probably tomorrow. Meanwhile T is on muscle relaxants (read: T is sleepy, and a little loopy) and is off work until at least Thursday. Good times.
With Daddy home, as usually happens, we got almost nothing at all done today. C did go to her first ballet lesson of the year, looking as cute as it is possible for a little five-year-old girl with positively enormous eyes wearing a pink leotard and pink tights to look, which is pretty darn cute. And she had a good time. LT spent a great deal of time playing Legos with Daddy. Tomorrow, even with him home, we're going to have to get back into our routine or the house will be unlivable by the end of the week, and the kids will have totally forgotten how to sit still at school and, you know, learn stuff.
I'm trying to read Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife, which is one of many sequels written to Pride and Prejudice. I will just say that Jane Austen rotates furiously in her grave every time anyone picks this book up off a shelf, and not just because it is full of really explicit sex scenes (complete with phrases like "torch of love" [yes, that means what you think it means] and "piercing a maidenhead" and "emit his seed". I swear I am not making this up). The author makes a very painful effort to use Austenian language, and fails utterly. In fact, she crashes and burns. And she is apparently about to write in an illegitimate son for Darcy. I do not plan on finishing this book. Isn't it great about books -- I've always thought this, since I was a little girl -- that the lives in them are just words on paper, smashed between covers, until we do that magical thing where our brains read the words and flesh out the stories in our imaginations, and then they are as real to us as the lives of real people whom we just happen to never see? I love that. And conversely, by not reading this book, I am effectively making its execrableness cease to exist in my own personal world. Bye-bye.
A final snippet: Our cats' collars have bells. As annoying as this sometimes is (say, when one of them is sleeping on our bed and decides to vigorously scratch her neck, at that awful moment which is ten minutes before the alarm goes off), we have left them on as a kind of protection for the quail families who live in the field next to our house. However, I frequently remind myself that the sound I'm hearing is just the cat's collar only after I have freaked out, thinking there was a dog in the house with its tags jingling. Sometimes my own mental vacuity astounds me.
Sunday, October 03, 2004
injured T, cute 5-year-old pictures, and Turkish Delight
You know what isn't fun? When your 8-year-old son walks into the kitchen and says, "Daddy fell down and he wants you to come." No, fun isn't what I would call that. It turns out that T was working on a carcass of a car on a trailer, and stepped down backward forgetting that he was four or five feet up in the air. He landed flat on his back and his head was a little whirly for a while. We called the nurse hotline provided by our insurance company (a couple more incidents and we'll be exchanging Christmas cards with those nurses) and now I have a long list of faculties to check, every two hours for the next 24 hours. Fun times. But it could have been much, much worse.
and now for some astoundingly cute C pictures*:
That's the nightgown I made her for her birthday. Because having a daughter is so darn much fun.
*I need to get some pictures of LT up here too. Not that he has ANY idea about what is here... oh please God let it stay that way... but I just feel guilty that the vast majority of the pictures are of C.
Watching "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" (or more specifically, being in the room typing at the computer while T and the kids are watching it) has reminded me of one of life's greatest disappointments: Turkish Delight. I've read that series over and over, starting when I was seven or so, and up until a few years ago I pictured Turkish Delight being a sort of cakey, fudge-consistencied confection, tasting sweet, and with the flavor of coffee and spices. (I can hear non-North-American readers laughing already). Imagine my surprise when a European friend sent me some, and I found it to be exactly like if I were eating my grandmother's rose-scented hand lotion, thickened and dipped in chocolate. Another of life's little disappointments...
Thursday, September 30, 2004
just rambling around going on and on about widely varied topics
LT had his first nosebleed in three weeks tonight. Just when we were thinking that his nose had healed fully and nosebleeds would be a thing of the past, wham. It wasn't a terribly bad one but it didn't stop as soon as I'd have liked. sigh. Just something else to add to Nameless Dread.
If Nameless Dread didn't have such a catchy title already I'd call it, I dunno, Trying to Be God or Not Trusting God Enough. Because that's what it is. I know that and yet it doesn't keep it from happening sometimes. There's a whole list of things that can trigger it or pass through my mind while it's going on. LT's Tourette's. T's lack of energy (which is getting worse and doesn't seem to need sugar as a trigger anymore, although sugar definitely doesn't help). T's boss. T's job. The real estate market. North Korea. LT's nosebleeds. Money. The everlasting worry about whether I'm doing the right things with my kids. Terrorism. And it goes on. And sometimes there's no trigger and nothing specific in my head, I just get this feeling of foreboding and worry in the pit of my stomach that won't go away. I know I should just give this over to God and trust Him. I'm trying. I keep giving it to Him and then taking it all right back. sigh.
I just tonight started working on the nightgown we're going to give C for her birthday. I'll work on it some more tomorrow night, and then Friday morning T will be off; I'll get him to keep the kids occupied while I finish it. I so totally should have started this days ago. It's my own fault -- I actually completely forgot about it last night and Monday night. whoops.
I am not sure there were enough adverbs in those last two sentences. Maybe I should add a few "very"s and a "surely" or two.
Tomorrow -- well, technically speaking, today -- my little girl will be five. A whole hand. I've said this before in here, I think, but I never realized before I had kids how big a deal a birthday is for the person's mother. I always thought of my birthdays as just my own thing -- as much as a birthday can be one's own thing when it is on Christmas -- and never thought about what was going through Mom's head. Now I know. Five years ago right now I was extremely uncomfortable, just finally going to bed after getting the house all clean so that I could go down to the hospital in the morning and not come home to an absolute pigsty. In fact, here: the last picture of me pregnant, not counting the wretched ones with me in a hospital gown. Five years and half an hour ago. (note the wrist brace. In addition to a separating pelvis, I had carpal tunnel syndrome in a very bad way at the end of that pregnancy. Ouch.)
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