torn

I had some time to spare after dropping the comforter at the cleaner's, so went by the fabric store where i used to work to look around. i happened to run into one of the older ladies that i worked with and found out that she and the other older ladies are all being phased out by the new manager who is hemming and hawing about how they're not flexible enough or something. odd that it's only the older ladies? and apparently, the manager even slipped up and said something about their age. can you say lawsuit? though i don't think it would be worth it to sue over a minimum wage job that requires lots of manual labor working for that particular manager.

but then again, the lady i was talking to is getting a lot frailer and her hands shake due to the medications she's on for her serious health problems.

how do you ask someone with buckets and buckets of experience to retire gracefully? especially if you're replacing them with younger people who don't even know how to sew.

so that's why I'm torn. besdies it's about teh fabric store, so seemed appropriate.

A bit at loose ends

DD and I were invited to a friend's house this afternoon and she just called to cancel because she doesn't feel well. I know I have stuff to do, but now I don't feel like doing it!

This morning, DD and I went to the Social Security office and signed her up for a number. Because she was born at home, the hospital didn't automatically get it ready for us to sign and I am finally getting around to it. Now we have to wait for the number to do some financial stuff and get her a passport and then she'll be fully paperworked.

I do have a package to send and a comforter to take to be cleaned, so I suppose I should get going on those before getting the boys from school and taking them to the dentist.

Oh, and I got my 249 pictures from mpix! I just realized that some I should have got doubles or triples of so each kid could have a copy in his/her own album, but they'll just have to stay in touch with each other when they grow up!

Anyone in or near Cinci on Nov 1st

Want to get me Jennifer Crusie's autograph?

http://www.booksbythebanks.org/authors.shtml

I need to get back to Ohio, plus I need to time my visits for when she's doing an appearance.

freerice.com

woah! have you played freerice lately? it used to just be english vocabulary, but now they have world capitals, multiplication tables, chemistry (yike! keep it away!) and a few languages. just click on "change subjects" and then get the answers right and they donate rice to the UN.

249 pictures.

yeesh.

$53.26 later...

for-freaking-ever

I am uploading digital pictures to mpix.com on the recommendation of a couple of friends who have gotten their pics from them. Apparently, the java tool doesn't work on my machine, so I am going through and uploading 5 pictures at a time. I'm talking about hundreds of pictures here and some are really big files so take a long time. SIGH.

Busybelly just had her first semi-solid poop. I am so proud.

The boys are watching and re-watching a Magic School Bus DVD from the library. DS2 still has a lot of homework to do, but DS1 finished his - mostly to be able to claim bragging rights, I think.

Pop quiz: which of my kids is this?

If it weren't on the computer filed under name, I might not know, either!


Now how about this one?

Yeah. Ditto.

this one's easier:

Smell-o-vision

Once the evening cools off, I often open the sliding door of our room to let the cool, clean(ish) air come in. So last night I went to sleep on top of my book. I was somewhat awakened by the sound of a bird freaking out, then I went back to sleep. Dh always shuts the door when he comes to bed because it's too cold for him.

Well, by that time it was much too late and our house reeked of skunk. I didn't realize it until this morning when I was waking up and thinking that yeeeeeeesh, Isabelle's diaper smelled much worse than usual.

Then we had our usual morning invasion of the ant forces, so I used my new poison, which is a powerful mint spray by the Safer company, to eradicate the troops and then went outside to spray along the wall where they keep coming in. If I could find an exact entry point, I'd be thrilled. I think they might have built under the house or in the wall by this time, though.

So our house stinks of skunk and mint.

DS2 said he had a headache and a stomachache this morning. He probably has what I had last week, which was just enough malaise to make me not want to do too much, but not sick enough to stop doing what I had to. But I can't imagine that the skunk and mint made him feel any better.

Oh, and the car was in the garage with the windows open, then I took the boys to school and stopped by the county satellite office to get a copy of Isabelle's birth certificate (stinkin French consulate kept both copies that DH gave them to register her as French) and when I opened the car door, I realized it still stank in the car, so drove the mile home with windows all the way down.

But in better news, amazon just informed me that some of the books I ordered are on their way. Most importantly, one by Anne Gracie, the second in a series of which I really liked the first one and have been eagerly awaiting the publication of this one. Oh and some business one that DH wanted. The new Julia Quinn hasn't shipped yet, but it gives me something to look forward to.

Whoops. Baby awake. Mini nap.

Romancing the Street

Doesn't Michael Douglas look more and more like his father?

And why in the world are reporters asking him about the bail outs, etc on Wall Street, as if he were a financial guru? "I'm not a mogul, I played one in a movie - TWENTY YEARS AGO" is the correct response. OK, maybe he's also an investment whiz or something, who knows.

Questions which were diverting his press conference about an issue that he has researched and has taken a stand on - nuclear disarmament.

Dinner time! Duck!

It was Isabelle's first time sitting at the table with us. I took apart and readjusted the kid/baby seat (which means that DS2 is in a regular chair, which makes him feel very short). She had some graham crackers (about half of which seem to have gone to her tummy), a little floret of broccoli (dismantled and spread), Cheerios (which went far and wide), and applesauce (see below to find out how that went). She's been sitting on our laps (mostly DH's lap) for months now and has tried all these foods before, so it's not like I sat her down and went BAM here are 100 new things.


Making an icky face and gagging over applesauce. The delay on my digital camera meant that I missed getting a good shot of the extent of the choking and spitting and face-making.




Yeah, she's done here. Not much visible food on the table, but that's because most of it was on the foot rest and the floor...

Now the boys - whew! - they were HYPED UP by the new development. They were shouting and jumping around and pretty much insane. If it hadn't been lasagna, DS1 wouldn't have eaten anything. DS2 had a cheese stick and a piece of bread and some broccoli and a few bites of applesauce, because he doesn't like much of anything and because he was bouncing off the walls.

growth spurt, teething, tummy ache, whatever

We've had a rough couple of days. She's not feeling awful, but she's not napping well or sleeping well at night and she's been fussing more than usual.

Cranky pants. Me too, for that matter.

Gearing up, maybe. And other stuff.

DS2's best buddy (BB) is over today. His big brother had a soccer game and BB didn't really want to go. DS2 played at BB's house Wednesday afternoon, but before that they hadn't seen each other since school started, I think. DS1's mostly behaving himself, but he's starting to get more aggressive about trying to get the younger boys to do what he says, so it might be time for a break of some sort. They have done really well for about 3 hours already!

I am starting to contemplate another run at NaNoWriMo this year. I don't know if I'll have the time to do it this year, but I'd like to give it a go again. DD will probably be crawling, so my writing time will be more restricted than before. I want one of those teeny-tiny computers so I can carry it around with me, but DH already got me a laptop last year (which he has used significantly more than I have. Heck, the kids have used it more than I have because it's the only computer that can run Crazy Machines 2) (That's not completely accurate, because our PC will run it on a couple of the partitions, but those partitions don't work with our sound card. Dh is in charge of that sort of thing, so don't ask me any questions, OK?)

Good news!

My mom's friend had gall stones, not cancer :)

I'll knock yer block(s) off!

PICTURES

There are not enough words to describe the cuteness :) And she hardly ever falls over anymore. She did once yesterday, but I think she did it on purpose because she immediately started rolling.



Remember when I posted the other day about the kids sealing me in the computer room?


DS1 making his escape. Which made DS2 scream and cry and the morning generally get loud and unhappy, even though it was obvious that DS2 was not tired AT ALL.



DS2 a few hours later, after DH took them near the Polish festival (which he forgot to write the address for so they didn't find so went out for pizza and then a play in the park instead). DS2 wasn't tired AT ALL.



And extra cute of DS2 from this morning. He wants pictures taken of his teeth again and again.

And yes, that's a huge gap between his top teeth. Yay.

I'm still trying to upload the short movie I made of DD knocking down blocks this morning and her brothers rebuilding. Well, DS1 rebuilding and DS2 thinking I was about to take a picture, so sitting there grinning at the camera, waiting for the flash to go off. :)

Thinking good thoughts

I just had an email from my mom. One of her best friends who has been battling cancer for 20+ years has some sort of blockage on her upper GI tract and is going in for exploratory poking around. It might be a gall stone, but then it might not. My mom is driving out to Indiana to see her this weekend.

Then just now another email appeared and a friend of mine in England's mom, who has been waiting for a diagnosis, etc on possible pancreatic cancer has found out that the tumor surrounds some major blood vessels and is inoperable and they're almost sure that it is cancer. She's in the hospital for the weekend with a drip to reduce her jaundice then she'll have a stent and then who knows.

So it's not a happy weekend. Pray 'em if you got 'em.

Book report

My Lord and Spymaster isn't as good as I hoped it would be. It's BETTER.

It's a historical romance, and is set during the Napoleonic Wars/Regency period. The heroine is the daughter of a fairly shady merchant marine and she is the brains behind his shipping empire. She was initially raised by her mother in the slums and when she was 9, went to work for the underworld kingpin, by whom she was trained as a thief and for whom she ran errands. Her father came back from overseas and stole her away when she was about 12. She is 21 and has been all over the world with her father, who has hired governesses to educate her and try to make her into more of a lady. Her father has been arrested for treason, having been accused of carrying shipping secrets from the English government to the French.

Some of the English spy network believe he's guilty while others aren't so sure that he's the spy called Cinq. All the different government offices don't seem to care if he's guilty or not, they want someone caught, even if it's not necessarily the right person, and they want their hands on the father's wealth and ships and so on. Some of them want their hands on his beautiful daughter.

The man who gathered the evidence against the father is a sea captain and the head of another shipping company, who lost a ship (and some friends) to the French after the traitor passed information about it to them. He is working with the spy network to prove that the father is Cinq while the daughter is trying to prove her father's innocence and believes that this man is Cinq. She sets up a sort of ambush for the man so she can pick his pockets, but during that, a gang of murderous men show up with knives and the captain and his spy friend manage to kill a few of them and rescue the girl. And it all gets more complicated after that.

Definitely a good book. I swear that Joanna Bourne could write her grocery list and I would buy it. She's that good. It's only her second book, so I certainly hope she keeps getting better and better. Yes, I'm about to squeal and clap and pass out or whatever....

must... slow... down...

Since picking up my library books from the hold shelf yesterday, I have already read Cry Wolf and am 1/4 of the way through My Lord and Spymaster. I've been waiting too long for the books and they're both shorter than I expected them to be.

Cry Wolf (by Patricia Briggs) was OK, but not as great as I hoped. I felt that you really needed to have read the short story in the On the Prowl anthology (which wasn't great overall), which by itself felt woefully unfinished. Like, oh, the first 1/4 of this book instead of something separate. I also thought that Anna should have been asking more questions about herself as the story went on and she gained more confidence and lost some of her fear.

My Lord and Spymaster is pretty good so far. Each of the two main characters thinks the other person is the spy and everyone's trying to outsmart the people they should be working with.

2 minutes to space out

Not that I don't have time to sit or lie down during the day, since I need that time to breastfeed the baby, but right now it feels like I have been going without stop since 2 pm, for 4 1/2 hours. It's not totally true, since I did lie down once and feed the baby (and read 30-ish pages of a book) and she almost went to sleep.

I went to Trader Joe's and returned a packet of rice that had mold in it, then on to school, where I had to get myself and the baby out of the car again and get the boys, then back in the car to karate where I slowed down and shoved ds1 out, then peeled (pealed?) out with ds2 for him to go to a friend's house where I sat down for 20 minutes, then back to get ds1, then home and that's when I fed Isabelle..... Then in the car to get ds2 from his friend's, then home and get dinner cooking and take care of some laundry.

And now the timer just beeped, so it's time to eat!

More hurricane news

My little brother finally got his electricity back and my mom cleaned the stuff out of his fridge and freezer that might have gone bad. My little sister still doesn't have power. They're all in the same town in Ohio. Schools are closed or maybe open or maybe on delay or something, that part of Mom's email wasn't clear.

A couple of fluffy clouds in the sky here today. Not as hot - upper 80s - so maybe fall is coming.

well, mostly

I finished all but the last 20 or so pages of Blindness last night before book club. I read the last 2 pages, too and we had a great discussion. It was not a really difficult read (though not the simplest either, due to the author's choice to eliminate the use of mundane stuff like names for his characters and "she said" every here and there so we can track the conversation) and contains a wealth of things to talk about (life, death, literal and spiritual blindness, hunger, Lord of the Flies, violence, family, etc).

Turns out the last 20 pages are pivotal and then when I got home and read them, I felt that the church scene and the denouement were overly rushed.

Definitely not my place to criticize a Nobel prize laureate, I know, especially since Saramaga won the Nobel just a couple of years after the book was published, so I am assuming it was what pushed the committee over the edge.

Up next month in this group is The Other by, um, dunno. David something? I'm on the waiting list at the library and might not get it any time soon. In my other book group it's the something or other Moon by Alice Sebold, which is already in transit for me. I didn't read last month's book, Pillars of the Earth, because I kept picking it up and pulling a few muscles and shuddering. I just couldn't do it.

And in other news, a couple of the books I have been DYING to get from the library came in today, so my next read is Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs and then My Lord and Spymaster by, um, someone else, but I read the first Spymaster book by her and really liked it. Joanna Bourne.

so instead of reading...

I need to read 150+ pages of Blindness by Jose Saramago by 7:30 tonight. I read fast, but it's not a terribly quick read.

So here I am blogging instead.

Oh, and I started quilting the quilt for my brother and his wife and got one side done, then started through the middle, but discovered a huge wrinkle in the batting, so need to un-pin and re-pin the rest of it to go on. If I were a true quilting perfectionist, I would un-sew everything I've done so far.
I don't THINK so!

And still. 150+ pages. Here I go....

big trouble

DD just demonstrated that she can get up on her hands and knees. She's been rolling and wriggling for a month or two and shoving herself forward for the last couple of weeks. We are in big trouble.

baby proofing!

More babies!

DS1's teacher is pregnant! She's way at the beginning and having been burned by announcing to everyone and miscarrying, I am leary (sp? leery?) about people announcing early on, but hey, I certainly did with my first two kids with no problems. She got married over the summer, which I didn't know until school started again and I spotted some of her wedding pics up on the wall.

So it's another person I know whose name starts with J who is about to have a baby. I am assuming it's because all those millions of kids whose names start with J are about 30 now, not just because there's something mystical affecting women whose names start with J....

Oh, and DS1's teacher from 2 years ago - name also starts with J - is going to pop at any minute. She's 38 weeks along, I think. Maybe 39. And she's subbing at the school until she goes into labor. Well, unless she went into labor over the weekend, because I didn't go in and see her this morning! I have a bag of clothes and stuff in the trunk, plus I want to give her our bouncy chair. DD still sits in it for a few minutes at a time and it's nice containment so she can't roll over to where the legos are and try to eat them, but she is doing sit-ups and trying to roll and it's only the seatbelt that's keeping her from going flying.

All the hurricane news

Email from my mom: Ike caused power outages in SW Ohio, so she was out of touch for about 24 hours. Winds of 50 mph, gusting to 75 mph. They cooked over sterno (old camping stove kept around for winter blizzard blackouts) and went to bed early. The schools were closed, roads were closed, trees down everywhere, etc etc.

Nowhere near as bad as Texas, of course. Sending lots of good thoughts to people there and with family and friends there. I lived in Austin for a few years, though I'm barely in touch with just a few people still, I am hoping they are fine.

She had sent her spare sterno stove to my brother in Louisiana who didn't have power for over a week after Gustav, leaving my sister and her family without a sterno stove. Anyway, my brother and his wife got their power back a week after the storm and just got their phone landline back a couple days ago.

My friends in SC didn't get smacked by Hanna, so they didn't have to evacuate with J's 2 month old baby. Phew!

lazy Sunday morning

I informed DH he was getting up with the kids this morning and I went back to sleep. Aaaaaaaah.

DS1 had a space maintainer put in at the orthodontist's on Thursday morning and was in too much pain to eat his lunch so came home. He's still a bit sensitive now, but is eating solids again.

DS2 has a strange, patchy rash and I'm thinking it looks like when my friend's son had scabies. Urg!

Dh took them outside this morning and they cut down some volunteer baby trees in the front yard and edged the sidewalk and other such fascinating work. I trimmed back the hedges a few days ago so we can get to our front door again without a machete, in case anyone wants to come visit :)

I' ve been uploading digital pictures to mpix so I can get prints for baby books. I finally put together a baby book for DS2, since he's over 6 now, but we've been mostly digital since he was about 18 months old and have other pics on the computer even of DS1 that have never been printed out. I'm trying to find some that look the most like DD and then we'll play a guessing game ;)

Fifi and the Flowertots????

No, really. WHat the H***?????

We don't have cable, but we do have the internet.

And I won't tell you which of my boys is playing on the Hit Entertainment website.

See? What did I say? I told you so!

See??? See???? I told you so!!

Now, they're predicting "mostly sunny" for the same days they were predicting thunderstorms. There's a picture of a tiny, wispy cloud in front of the sun instead of one of torrential rain.

So why do they bother predicting 10 days in advance, when they know they're just making stuff up?

Oh, and now I'm trapped in the computer room with DD. The boys have blocked the door with couch cushions. And I wanted another cup of coffee!

I don't THINK so!!!!!

(found at Abriendo Puertas. Read her books!)

Your result for Reincarnation Placement Exam...

Pyramid Slave

38% Intrigue, 49% Civilization, 46% Humanity, 46% Urbanization.

You get to be a pyramid slave!

Somebody's got to do it. Evidently, your answers didn't indicate any strong objection to being a worker in a big city, even if it's one too primitive to offer diversion, technology or social pleasures.

For you, it's good, solid work! Job security, an impressive physique, plus all the beer you can drink.

I know, I know, you wanted to be a Pharaoh. No such luck, but if you work hard enough, you can make foreman. You do like to work hard... don't you?

Take Reincarnation Placement Exam at HelloQuizzy

PSA: In honor of a friend's husband

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_nK1CEo5ho

He found a lump (had it for a while, but never did anything about it. MEN!) and it';s been biopsied. They have to wait until Monday for answers.

personality test

Mostly right, for a change...

Forgot to say I got this from Jen R!

Your result for The Perception Personality Image Test...

HFPS - The Humanitarian

Humanity, Foreground, Big Picture, and Shape

You perceive the world with particular attention to humanity. You focus on what's in front of you (the foreground) and how that fits into the larger picture. You are also particularly drawn towards the shapes around you. Because of the value you place on humanity, you tend to seek out other people and get energized by being around others. You like to deal directly with whatever comes your way without dealing with speculating possibilities or outcomes you can't control. You are in tune with all that is around you and understand your life as part of a larger whole. You prefer a structured environment within which to live and you like things to be predictable.

http://www.helloquizzy.com/tests/the-perception-personality-image-test

Understanding evolution...

http://www.partiallyclips.com/index.php?id=1318

99% chance of making stuff up

weather.com is predicting rain, maybe even thunderstorms.... for 10 days from now. Oh yeah. Sure. A Prediction based on what, exactly?

They do that to give us hope, I know. I'm to the point where I've seen them predict it too many times to believe it. Anything over a day or two in the future is what, when I worked in the business world, we called a WAG. That's Wild-A** Guess.

OK, this is bad. I'm even cynical about the weather.

stuff and grammar

dh is out for the 2nd dinnertime in a row.

he was supposed to be home by 6 yesterday so i could go to karate, but he came in at 7:30 or so. i could have gone to the higher-level class at 8, but that's such a stinky time to be out, for my own sake and that of the kidlets (and dh who's left holding the baby). but i really need to get to class twice a week, which i don't always manage, so i'm going to try for the all-level 8 pm class tonight.

DD has been nursing like crazy the last few days, apparently to make up for not eating as much when the cold was bad. she's pretty cranky and tired right now; she took a good nap this morning, but has only done a mini-nap since then. we didn't sleep very well last night, so i'm a bit worn out, too.

i got all my paperwork for driving on ds2's field trip. this meant i spent 45 minutes waiting in the dmv for someone to hit "print" and take $5 from me. while people who came in after me got waited on first. there's this system of letters and numbers and i have no idea what letters mean what. but note to the dmv people: if you're going to take someone out of turn, choose someone unobtrusive, not the 6'4" guy with a mohawk. (and me sitting there humming 80's punk/alt music)

Grammar question: "...and get all your paper work turned into the office before Friday." So IMO, there are enough spaces, just not in the right places. Is it just me or are there way too many people who always write in to and on to as one word? (one word each, i mean) even when it's wrong? and now i've seen it wrong so many times that i can't explain why.

though who am i to talk, since i'm typing without capitals (left-handed with a baby nursing. gold medalist in the mom olympics thankyouverymuch.)

Maybe it would have eaten the ants....

I went to move the lunchboxes and DS2's spelling test paper from the top of the stove and saw a little, skinny lizard, about 4 inches long total go whizzing across the stove top. I jumped back and had a heart attack, then got a plastic bag (because it was right there) and managed to poke it around him until he went in. I took him outside and released him.

My heart's almost done pounding.

Walkie-Screamies

All I can say is: pass the earplugs.

Or: dot-dot-dot dash-dash-dash dot-dot-dot.

thunderbirds are go!

So I hadn't even heard of them until I lived in France. The puppets have American accents, but it's a British show. Production values are..... ah not so much. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbirds_(TV_series).

But anyway, with the magic of the Internet, DH and the boys spent most of the day watching and re-watching Thunderbirds on youtube.

As of last night, DS2 is building lego space ships for a new series.... Bunderbirds. (*snicker*)

Pinning

I have started pinning the batting and backing on the quilt I am making for my brother and sister-in-law. It's a big job and I don't have enough pins, but I used all I have and will start adjusting and smoothing sometime soon. Their 1st anniversary will be next month, so I really have to get busy

The baby just squawked, so it'll have to be another time. Though now she's quiet again, so I can type for another minute or two.

Oh, and by the way, my mom reported that my brother and SIL are cooking ramen over a candle while waiting for their electricity to go back on. And they asked my mom to mail them some food because mail and UPS are still delivering, but the grocery stores are all closed.

I'm waaaaaaiting!

The Third Circle / Amanda Quick. 7 of 48 holds
My Lord and Spymaster 1 of 3 holds
Fearless fourteen / Janet Evanovich. 39 of 291 holds
A Hollywood ending / Robyn Sisman. 3 of 3 holds
Death angel : a novel / Linda Howard. 33 of 139 holds
Victorian & Edwardian fashion : a photographic survey / by Alison Gernsheim. 1 of 1 holds
Into the fire : a novel / Suzanne Brockmann. 13 of 58 holds
Cry wolf / Patricia Briggs. 4 of 41 holds


The Victorian fashion book, I have been 1 of 1 hold for a couple of months now. I'm not even sure why I requested the Robyn Sisman book, because I couldn't get into another of her books that I checked out a couple of months ago so it went back to the library unread. My Lord and Spymaster has 4 copies noted in the system, but 3 are still "in processing". The library system has 90+ copies of the Evanovich book, so I should be getting that in a week or two. They have 24 copies of the Brockmann, 48 of the Quick, and 31 of the Howard, so ditto.

But really of all that? Cry Wolf is the one I'm most eager to read. I liked her Blood Bound books with werewolves and a skin walker coyote and this is more werewolves.

And these are just some of the 25 books I have requested.

Big boy PICTURES

On the way from school to karate class on Wednesday, the boys were being silly in the back seat and pretty soon, DS2 wailed, "DS1 knocked my tooth out!" The top front left tooth had been hanging by a thread, so it wasn't like he really hauled off and whacked him, but still they're not supposed to be wrestling around back there... So anyway, he now has a big gap. The other top front tooth is hanging by a thread, too, but his adult tooth is already most of the way in and sticking out in front. Yay more orthodontia!




By the way, DS1 had another visit at the ortho for more spacers. He'll have a space maintainer put in next Thursday and then he's set for a while. Oh not quite: he still needs to see an oral surgeon about having one of his top baby teeth out.


No pictures of DS1 at this time, but a picture of his plans for a robot. Click on it for a very large image.

all baby, all the time - PICTURES

So you can appreciate the bits and crumbs on her face.


Better picture, crumbs not so obvious.


Reading a book - on her LOUD crib sheet.


Not a great shot, but gives you an idea of snot and puffy eyes and such.



Just for the cuteness factor

oh thank heavens!

P just informed me in a comment thatr the great harvest bakery is closed on mondays. which means life as we know it is not over after all. whew!

and P, I'm not sure i still have your email. no wait never mind, there it is!

snot! snot! snot!

Yesterday, Isabelle's nose was slightly runny and she was a bit grumpy for the last part of the day. Last night, she didn't want to go to sleep, even though she was exhausted. She finally went to sleep at 10:30.

Two hours later, she woke up, rolled over for some mom juice, latched on, and promptly started screaming because she could hardly breathe through her nose. I got her to calm down and I wiped her nose and she settled in to drink without too much snorting. She proceeded to wake up every 2 hours all night. YAWN.

This morning, she sneezed a lot, prompting many more nose-wipings (prompting screams), and this afternoon, she's pretty settled about the whole thing.

So the incubation period for this cold is 10 1/2 days. Or at least that was how long ago DS2 suddenly felt icky and then woke up the next morning with a head full of snot.

Second-hand report from Louisiana

This from my mom, reporting on my brother in Baton Rouge, well away from storm surges, but not from high winds and rain and such:

"D. [my brother] just called. He and his family and, I presume, K.'s [his wife - and even a year later it's funny to write that, sorry, y'all!] family are all well. The pecan tree didn't fall on the house. Nothing is flooded. Electricity is out in the whole parish and who knows when that will be restored. The neighbor's oak split in half and half is lying across their driveway, having taking electric, etc wires with it. We talked quickly as the cell is the only phone they have and there is no way to recharge it right now. Good to know all is well, even though a bit difficult."

Same sh*t, different hairdo.

Jackbooted THUGS. Never thought I'd use those words, actually. Sounds all separatist and survivalist or something.

But whoa damn.

Anyone remember Kent State? Back in 1970? Yeah. Just watch. Pretty soon it'll be "Four dead in Minnesota."

What happened to the right to assemble? The right to free speech?

Peace activists being blasted with pepper spray and water cannons, then arrested - lawyers who are observing and not even participating arrested - so the Republicans can pretend that everyone is happy about the war? And about our loss of civil liberties? Stupid a**hole militaristic thugs.

And I don't even want to get into the token little woman VP candidate. Same sh*t, different hairdo.

And here I was thinking I was so cynical that it was all rolling off my back, but boy howdy I am about to explode.