last minute

feeding dd, so enforced time sitting down. checked out voting and my bracket in da bwaha. looks like i got the scandalous ways/delicious match up wrong, but i'm still on track for a iron kissed/spymaster's lady final.

people on facebook informing me that ohio's not actually just like fort lauderdale for spring break. huh. who knew.

head totally stuffed and aching. am thinking of taking a tylenol. or is it advil you're supposed to take when breastfeeding? i can never keep it straight.

dh let dd wander out into teh garage and isn't supervising. she' very tired. it's going to be a long day.

keep your fingers crossed for us.

747 posts!

how a propos.

was just feeding baby and discovered a spoon down the back of her shirt. just elicited a confession from ds2. it didn't bug her too much, i guess.

insane and insanerer. boy, are they amped up. watch out, granny and grandpa.

one hour 'til bedtime. one hour 'til bedtime. (and DH went to a meeting tonight)

anyone else's facebook messing up? Or is it my browser/linux/magnetic vibes?

I'm still in 450-some place in da bwaha. i'll miss the afternoon voting tomorrow, i guess. i might be able to vote in the morning's polls. i'm pulling for joanna bourne's spymaster's lady all the way baybeeee. maybe i'll even finish in the top half of the field. hahahahah. the voting today messed up my 2nd chance bracket like nobody's business.

(AND joanna bourne has a nice blog, mostly about her research for her books and she's really nice and responds to comments and such.)

ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

oh sorry, just trying to get a computer game started for ds2 and the game has been played several times and yet it had to be re-installed and ds2 apparently can't follow simple instructions from me.

dd needs to fall asleep, but i can't devote much time to that when dh isn't here, sio she's just getting wacky and screamy.

my brain is fried.

sitting here

nursing baby, not getting anything done.

need to:
wash clothes
wash diapers (hurry up and poop, baby)
pack mine & baby'[s stuff
pack various presents and bits and pieces (hey mom, did i ever send you those socks?)
find rest of library books to turn in or renew them until after we're back
look at food that's left - use/lose 10 types of crackers open, way too many bananas (anyone know if we can take bananas through airport security?)
take a shower
pick up boys at noon (!)

i had a fever last night, but it broke during the night and even though my nose is even runnier today, i feel a bit better. i might survive.

AUGH! Well, baby's done feeding now, so at least I can get a load of laundry in and take a shower

international news

Some Saudi Arabian women are organizing a boycott of lingerie stores because the only people hired by the stores are men and the women don't want to discuss their underpants with them.

So on the one side, it is an attempt to make more jobs for women.

On the other side, though, it is fairly puritanical and totally within the aims of keeping women "modest".

I generally don't discuss my lingerie with anyone at all when I buy it, so I'm not sure where I fall on this. And yes, I know that I should be measured for a bra before choosing and trying one on, but I'm pretty squicky about even women measuring me.

random celeb du jour

Valerie Bertinelli's on the cover of People in a bikini. DH had no idea who that is, so I looked her up on IMDB. "She's older than us," DH says. I guess her major TV series weren't dubbed in French and broadcast over there - or maybe he just wasn't interested in them. I'm sitting here saying, "Oh she was in this thing about a boarding school called Facts of Life," but of course, I am completely wrong and she was in One Day at a Time during the same time period.

It's like the facebook quiz about '80s TV shows I took where I got half wrong and even the ones I got right, I mostly guessed and waited for the game to eliminate one or two choices.

I didn't watch enough TV. MOMMMMMMM! No fair!

Wednesday

It's a half-day at school for conferences, so whatever I do has to be done by noon.

DD is emptying the shoe closet. Before that, she emptied the marker drawer (She can't get the caps off yet).

I'm sneezing and sneezing and sneezing and my back aches. I have spent too much time over a computer the last couple weeks and so my upper back is dodgy, and then add the aches and pains of this cold and I'm pretty much immobile.

I need to finish work on the sling I am making for my new nephew. It is wayyyyy too long and I have a spacial problem in which the ugly wrong side of the fabric ends up showing on the tail, so I need to fold the end up and sew it down, I think. Then add a pocket or two, because my favorite part of my favorite sling is the pocket that's secure enough (velcro) to hold my keys and wallet in a pinch and yet large enough to hold a diaper.

I'm going to go change the baby's diaper and see if she will take a nap. She's in here again and shrieking.

ETA: Nope. That would be too easy. We need to spend another hour or so fussing and shrieking before actually falling asleep. Yay.

ETA(2): It took me 45+ minutes to unpick the hem on the sling and then 10 minutes to sew the end over. And now the end is too short and too thick - well, it will work, but it'll be a bit awkward. Still need to do a pocket. red/orange? yellow/orange? Or more blue?

habba cold

go way.

come back later when my head's not all ouchie and gross.

ds2 had a hard time sleeping last night because his ear hurt. ear infection? SUCH good timing all around.

New book

At 32k words. Probably enough in my head to get to 50 or 60K. And we'll see what more comes bubbling out.

It's quite episodic and half flashbacks, but both my characters are living in the past in some ways and are deep in their own heads.

I've written a chapter that's near the end, now I have to go back and fill in a lot...

fume fume fume

Book group was at 7. It's 7:45 and DH isn't home yet. So do I go all the way to book group - 20 or 30 minute drive - when he gets here? Or do I drop it and wait for next month? I read the book and wanted to talk about it. I'm not happy. I will get over it though.

Training bras through the ages

I was futzing around, looking for pictures of 1877-1882 corsetry in England.

And on this one site, there was this thing: a child's stay band. What the heck? I guess it's a practice corset?

Looking at some of the other child/adolescent corsets, they say they were probably primarily intended to make the girl stand and sit up straight. But really, boys had to sit up straight too. I think it was to get the girls used to being squeezed and squished as soon as possible.

Now, I have never been good at sitting up straight, but am definitely glad that I never had to wear one of those.

I am an enthusiast of the Rational Dress Movement. ONLY seven pounds of undergarments for me!

How I started writing

This was a response to a question on a blog I read, about how people got started writing.

I was a reader. I read everything. I read anything. I loved journal/creative writing in elementary school. I never kept a diary for long - I would write a bit when really blue and then not touch it again until the next time. I didn't write fiction again except for assignments in high school (But I was a poet. Whew, bad adolescent poetry. Pee-yew!). I was still reading though - I would check out a big stack of books and read them all by the next week.

And then college and grad school (French master's) ruined all writing and reading for me for several years. (And what do you do with French master's? If you are really, really sick of school and have no desire for a PhD? Work in marketing, of course.)

I have to admit that I became a bit of a snob, if someone who hardly ever reads or writes anything can be a literary snob. I only read worthy things and only wrote reports for work. I was picky about grammar and syntax, but otherwise, nothing.

It was after I left the country and married and had children - and didn't have a work visa until I was completely immersed in motherhood - that I started reading again. I started with the dribs and drabs of things that I had heard of. I joined my first book club and was suddenly reading things that weren't in French and weren't written in the 17th century. What a revelation!

It wasn't until a few years ago, when I came across Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer's first collaborative novel, Don't Look Down, that I began to read romance. I dove head first into romance. I read everything, any author, any time period, any place. I started to get pickier, though, not finishing books that I hated, picking apart the stories and characters, and trying to understand why something worked or didn't.

I also started to realize that some of these published works that people were getting paid for.... I could write better than that. I know that's a total cliche and a snobby thing to say, but take it as I felt it, please: I knew I could write. I know I can create characters and plots. I know I can draw people in.

I have a few false starts at novels floating around and now have one that's finished but needs work and another under way.

Someday!

ACK!

I need to make something for my brand new nephew. I'm thinking a sling. I have the rings and I'm sure I can come up with enough fabric. That's a little inside joke there, since I have 7 huge bins of fabric in my sewing room.

I realized that we should get some small gifts for the big brothers, too. And oh, yeah, the parents who made it all possible. Maybe a tote bag/diaper bag. I don't know if I have enough time....

And then I realized, had a dim recollection of a conversation, thought about the dates involved... DH's birthday will happen while we're in Oxford. Oh yeah! Oops! And it's the big FOUR OH. So what's the present? No idea. Well, I have a few ideas, but don't know how feasible they are.

So anyway, i just fixed some trousers of mine that were sliding off. i have lost some weight since I bought them, but they're always been a bit too low-slung for me and they stretch out quickly. Anyway, they seem to fit now, but I goofed up one side a bit and it has a weird pleat. Too bad, I'm wearing them anyway.

Oh, and I weighed myself last week and am 4 pounds down from my start weight of a couple of months ago. so not huge progress, but progress. I need to go to karate class more!

Book group tonight. We read parts 1 and 2 of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (sp?). She's an Iranian who was a little girl during the revolution. Her parents opposed the Shah, but didn't get very far with actual freedom before the religious forces came into power. (Oh, you mean like in Iraq?....) She spent much of her adolescence in Austria and then went back to Iran, but left again for France in her 20's after her failed marriage. And that was the end of book 2 and I haven't yet read any of the rest, but obviously she went on to make a mark as a succesful artist, as the books are graphic novel compilations of the comic strips (not funny comic, just the format) from a French newspaper.

well, maybe i'm entering a new phase. or it's just a quiz.

Your result for The New Greek Goddess Archetype Test...

You are Artemis!

The Goddess of the Hunt, Animals, and the Young

Artemis is driven to succeed, thriving in adventurous or unique situations. She sets her goals, and her ambition, determination, and perseverance lets her achieve them. Her competition sometimes intimidates others, but she is also widely admired. She is healthy, independent, believes in feminism, and needs little help to go after what she wants. On the other hand, she can be rebellious and isolate herself from relationships and emotions.

Take The New Greek Goddess Archetype Test at HelloQuizzy

Going back and forth

between "AUGH!" and laughing.

DS2 has decided that he hates chicken. Well, except for chicken nuggets which might as well not be chicken after all.

So this evening, that alphabet pasta? Mixed with twirly-whirly and with some leftover macaroni? He was spelling out "I hate chicken." he ended up writing "I hate" and then put a piece of chicken. He softened it by writing "I luv U, but I hate *piece of chicken*"

He got pretty close to getting sent away from the table for a bit there, though.

The baby ate about three tons of pasta and a half ton of corn. She doesn't usually eat all that much. She was really cranky before dinner, so I guess she was hungry in spite of the milkies she had not that long before. She's still fairly cranky, but I'm thinking it's because it's almost bedtime.

DS1 was being virtuous, even though he has been making both DS2 and DD scream at various times all day. He wrote "I love this" and made an arrow and was changing what he put next to it.

Sunday evening

I have too many things to do before Friday.

I am using this opportunity to clear a lot of stuff out of my cupboards. Found some bagels from last week that were still just fine when toasted. Emptying the half-empty pasta bags tonight. We had rice and couscous mixed the other night.

Trying to decide if I should take some cloth diapers along for nights or if I should put my whole confidence in disposables. I guess I'll buy some disps and take a few cloth ones along and not use them unless she tends to leak out. My other kids did and DS2 always had a rash from them when we went on vacation.

I need to reserve a hotel room for midnight on the 27th/28th. My parents will come get us the next morning, but it's pretty late for them to be driving us home. I can't seem to tweak the rental car sites so that we can rent a car at the airport and turn it in the next day in my hometown. I'm not sure I want to be driving that late at night after a whole day of travel anyway. So hotel it is.

I need to get a gluten-free cake or something for DS1's teacher's surprise going away party. The baby's due in April or maybe May and she's taking leave as of the beginning of spring break. I want to find her a gift, too. I should make something. It will either be something really simple or it will be a gift card.

Oh, and I wrote over 6500 words today, which is a lot. I had a couple/three scenes that I have been turning over in my mind for days and now they're typed, all but the second half of the one where my character confronts her sister. She cries after the sister goes out and she never cries. I think her husband's going to come in to see what happened. And one of the flashback scenes I finished has set up an idea for another scene.

The boys are playing a loud, thumping game in the hallway, kicking balls back and forth. Why can't they play it outside, you ask? Good question. Because they won't. That good enough? They might be going out for a bit now that it's almost dinner time and they've been told off enough times about endangering their sister's health. She's now standing at the patio door fussing because she wants to go out and fall down the concrete steps and eat plants.

I'll go cook some pasta (twirly-whirly AND alphabet) and dig through the freezer in hopes of finding some vegetables that we haven't already had three times this week. I think there's some corn. Maybe I'll make a salad instead.

37 houseplants

I don't even know what I was searching for when I came across it in the library's online catalog, but I requested and received 37 Houseplants Even You Can't Kill.

I'm taking it as a personal challenge.

In fact, I was going through it, saying, "Yep. Killed that one. Yup, that one, too."

I have to defend myself though. A few of the deaths were because my Freshman college roommate had some friends over one night and they were smoking in our room (Here's me. Not happy. :( ) and she opened the window and they froze. NE Ohio, Winter, you do the math.

But yes, I have killed a jade plant and a spider plant and a kalanchoe and a few others that are unkillable, all on my own.

I used to have a green thumb, sort of. I think it was having kids that put the plants so far down on my priority list that I am a real danger to them.

Oh preserve me

DS2 is going to a birthday party for two girls in his class. They're cousins and are turning 6. He has no idea what they want.

This is going to be fun, if I don't grind my teeth to nubs before we even get started because he was ready to go at 7:30 this morning. (Yes, same child that I have to drag out of bed on school days)

I'm thinking books, because they both have younger siblings. Though one has only a younger brother and I was thinking more Fancy Nancy than gender neutral, but anyway.

And I put the baby's Thomas the Tank Engine shirt on her the other day and yes, she wore it out in public with cute pants and pink shoes. And yes, girls can like trains, too. *sigh*

Yeah!

I'm tied for 545th place in the DABWAHA romance novel march madness tourney so far (with 1/4th of the first-round voting done). Out of 720-some people.

Can I call em or what?


ETA: SAturday morning, end of round 1, I'm tied for 393rd. baybee!

Musings on romance novels

Because the baby has decided to not nap and wants lots of attention, so my brain is fragmented...

Why is it that so many people are so snide about the entire romance genre? It's a shorthand for bonbon eating moron to admit to reading a book whose main focus is the love story.

And yet, there's a romance in about 75% of other books you read.

Romantic comedies are big business at the box office and though guys roll their eyes for the most part, men and women who sneer at romance novels will shell out their $10 per ticket to go out to a movie.

Even obnoxious movies about getting laid are usually about getting laid with the right person.

Tragedies spring from romances going sour. Dramas spring from love that isn't going smooth. Shakespeare wrote romantic comedies.

Most of the songs you hear are about love - finding love, impossible love, losing love.

So you can see love stories everywhere except in a book that is a love story?

Why are books about love such an anathema?

Even sci-fi and fantasy and thrillers and mysteries and other oddball genre books get more respect than romance novels do. Is it because they are, in the majority, written and read by men? I don't want to play the gender card, but I will if I have to.

And so there's a sort of middle ground that is rather amorphous, called chick lit. It's sneered at too, because it's about women who are trying to find themselves and who learn life's lessons. Most of them have happy endings with them finding love.

Erica Jong wrote a piece a few years ago sneering at chick lit. But isn't Fear of Flying.... chick lit? Oh, but it's a work of art, of course! It's LLLLiterature! It's erotic! A woman with a heart-wrenching past who is looking for a romantic/sexual ideal, who cheats on her husband and finds that mindless, "zipless f****" aren't all that great and goes back to her husband, who takes her back. That's not chick lit? Back in the day, it was wild and crazy - a woman cheating! A woman saying f***! And she doesn't die a horrible tragic death! But today? Chick lit.

Which is to say that chick lit books can be good, they can be bad, they can be awful, they can be extraordinary.

And the woman who wrote Time Traveler's Wife (sci-fi love story) just got paid $5 MILLION for her second novel. Whose plot sounds like about 20 romance novels currently available at a book store near you.

And how many times have I read a LLLLiterature book and thought "romance novel" or "chick lit", especially if it's a classic novel. Jane Austen (what is Sense and Sensibility but romance for the main character, Eleanor, and chick lit for her sister, Marianne?), the Brontes (well, not Wuthering Heights because the happy ending came because those awful people finally died, thank goodness), the Tale of Genji, here people - considered to be the first novel EVER.

Typically, a romance novel that is published as a romance novel doesn't have a cheating wife as the heroine (though some do) and focuses on the love story aspect (though some don't) and has a happy ending (though some are a bit more up in the air).

That's it. That's the definition. So yeah, some of the romance novels are awful. Some, however, deserve a lot more respect than they get. So many of the LLLLiterature novels out there are much worse, and they don't even have a happy ending, so you've just lost X hours of your life to wade through something by someone who thinks s/he can write prose poetry about bad stuff happening AND you are left feeling glum. But they get nominated for awards and Oprah recommends them.

Basically, you need a good hook and you need to pretend that it's not a romance novel. Then you can get respect for your romance novel.

So I'm not writing romance novels anymore. I am writing historical fiction about the role of women and of science and of education and of poverty in Victorian society, as a mirror for our modern society.

If I start writing really strangely, the way that no one actually talks and that makes your brain hurt to find the verb, then it will be LLLLLiterature.

And if I kill everyone off, Oprah will read it. Yay!

But if I call it romance, then people will wrinkle their noses and get snooty.

Feeling pretty good today

My online weight loss support group weighs in on Thursdays, but i forgot this morning, which is fine because all that PMS comfort eating.... I'll see what it looks like tomorrow and pretend I didn't if it's bad.

We forgot to put out the trash cans last night and the first I thought of it was when I was still in bed this morning and heard the truck. So the recycling bin was full and now has to wait 2 weeks. I put the garbage one out and I hear the truck coming now, so at least the stinky stuff will be gone.

And I have some ideas for scenes for my new story. I should do more editing of the old one, but am letting it rest for now. I'll blow another $15-20 to get the whole thing printed out again in a few weeks and then really have to work on its structure. Or maybe I should identify the structure and work on it before printing it again, but right now my head's in this other book.

And I filled out my brackets for the romance novel march madness "Da BWAHA" which started voting today. I haven't read more than half of the books and didn't think to consult what I had guessed before voting this morning, so voted against my predictions. Still, I've got some points and am still in the running...

And the baby's fussing. It's about naptime, which means it's about writing time. YAY!

copied from Book ninja....

SHEEP! LOTS OF SHEEP!

Really really.... waaaaaaaaay too much time on their hands.

A new record! The crowd goes wild!

Too much information! Oversharing!






41 day menstrual cycle.

It's the longest one that I have charted, other than the pregnancy ones, since 2003, when I started using fertilityfriend.com.

And now I'll be a little grumpy for a couple of days with cramps and all, but my emotions are already calming down.

does anyone else think...

That the new Pepsi logo looks like the Obama logo upside down?

Well, when I was looking for images to steal, I came across this article on gawker that begins: "Last year Pepsi spent several hundred million dollars on a new logo. Everyone figured they had just ripped off the Obama logo. But now an internal document from the branding company has surfaced: Breathtaking bulls***."

ARG!

DH took my laptop with him to a meeting, so I am trying to write a scene in my email account and copy paste to the work in progress.

So right after I started it, I clicked on "save draft" and that was fine. I was really getting into it, had about 20 lines of text and my email account froze.

So it was all gone, not even the 2 lines in the draft folder survived.

So it was only 300 or so words, but I was on a roll and it's a scene I already wrote once that I wanted to do again because it was so much better in my head.

feet and pms and stuff

i had forgotten about the newspaper trick. and it's not the shoes it's the feet that go in them. the canvas shoes were airy enough that they only smelled a little, but the ones before that - PEW. he wore socks today. with any luck it'll keep the kids in his class from commenting and me from fainting.

and no i'm not pregnant. deffo pms. har har priya. *glare*

dh got up and took the boys to school so he could go on from there to meet with his business partner. the baby got up, too - had been up nursing for a bit already - so i very nearly drifted off to sleep in that half hour of boys running up and down the hall. ds1 seems to think he will have caught a leprechaun at school. if it's like last year, the leprechauns will have created havoc, but not been caught.

anyway, i got up as they were about to leave and when they'd gone, i found that we have no milk. i thought we'd all make it through b-fast with some to spare. and dh has the car. looks like i'll be taking the stroller to the kwik save...

dd is nursing again, which is why i'm not using capitals. i need to leave for the chiro, but am feeling blah, so i'm going to reschedule.

something like... wet dog. And.... parmesan?

DS2 won't wear socks. He had canvas converse shoes for a few months, but they didn't have the velcro ones this time at the store, so he got others.

MAN his feet smell. He walks into a room and I know he's there. I sprayed some stuff in his shoes, but I'm not sure that's going to do much.

A friend of mine has her kids wear crocs pretty much year round. I should say they WANT to wear crocs pretty much year round. That way, they don't have to wear socks. it doesn't snow here, but when it's wet and there's frost on the grass, I wouldn't think that shoes with holes were the answer, but hey, the oldest one wears shorts in winter, too.

***^((* leprechauns

DS1's class at school does various leprechaun activities at this time every year. This year, they made leprechaun traps. So, of course, DS2 had to make one, too, when we got home, so DS1 had to make another one, so we have cut up boxes and silvery wrapping paper and all kinds of stuff all over. They're very inventive, I have to say.

I'm not sure if they quite understand about the, um, mythical status of leprechauns. Do I do some silly pranks and make it look like the traps triggered and the leprechauns escaped?

PMS Watch: Day 3

I've been a bad mom for a couple of days, losing my temper, threatening things that under normal circumstance I wouldn't threaten, etc.

The kids were supposed to clean their rooms yesterday. DS2 especially, spent about 2 hours complaining and 10 minutes cleaning, and he was the one who had to make space on his floor for his new desk. I threatened to throw everything away that was still on the floor. I gave in when he made space for the desk and he has until the end of today.

Now what have I been doing today? Well, I was driving the kids to school and thought of a really sad flashback scene for the heroine in my new novel, an example of why she tends to fade into the background and not attract attention and why she has very little self-esteem. And I spent most of the drive thinking about it and wiping away tears. Yes, I am completely insane, fellow drivers. Just drive on, never mind the crying lady who's trying to keep her kids from seeing...

I didn't note down my, uh, let's say my cycle, so I'm not exactly sure when my period is due because with all the breastfeeding, it's erratic, but it can't come fast enough. So for now, I'm going to write that scene down. Pass the tissues.

I was about to get on the kids' case

because they left a gallon of 2% milk out on the table after finishing breakfast (and the boxes of cereal and their bowls). Then I looked further and realized that I had left the gallon of 1% milk out, too.

DD's cold is getting better, but she has taken to wiping her nose on me. She also has decided that in order to breathe while nursing, she can clamp down with her teeth to hold her place. (Though my big kids both tried this strategy when they were a bit younger and had to be cured of it quickly) I yelp and pop her off and don't let her have more milk for a while, which worked with the boys.

I have a scene for my new book jumping around in my head and DS2 is using my laptop to play Crazy Machines 2. I will take some notes, I guess.

Dh found DS2 a nice desk sitting by the side of the road with a sign on it that said "Free" and he got our neighbors to help with their pick up. And now DS2's floor is almost completely invisible with all the crap he didn't bother to pick up shoved all over the place and the desk in front of the closet so he can't even put the crap in the closet. I've just sent him off to clean up in there which means I also get the computer, at least until DD decides she's going to nurse without biting and maybe go to sleep.

And my brain is just friend. Darn PMS.

stupid freaking piece of garbage!!!!

I am attempting to change the batteries in the kids' battery-powered trains. I can't get the freaking top off of James to do it. Percy came right apart, but James...

I am NOT in the mood to deal with this and am about to rip James' wheels off.

I'm going to wring my son's neck now

Hope that's OK with everyone.

He keeps building a house out of couch cushions and getting the baby inside and then not letting her out until she screams and I end up having to come get her out.

Attention-seeking behavior, anyone?

ding dong the witch is... um, not even close to dead

But we have her on the run!

According to the drought monitor, our county's only in a D1 moderate drought instead of D2 severe. 94.8% of the state is still D0 abnormally dry.

So not totally out of the woods.

It's supposed to rain a bit tomorrow and Monday. Fingers crossed.

vampire in Italy!

Don't read while eating.

I made that mistake. Just an apple, but still. ew.

I finished my book (again)

I was re-reading and editing my NaNo book and realized that I was nowhere close to being really done with tying up all the plot points, so I wrote a few more chapters and finally feel like I'm at the end now - finished today!

Lots of editing yet to be done and adding to stuff and deleting other stuff, but I feel more like it's getting somewhere. I started reading through it again, too, and cut out some big chunks of useless stuff.

I really need to make some notes for myself on themes that need to be worked out better in different places.

Karate belt promotion tonight. I'm going to be a blue belt, which is the top of the intermediate class. Just 4 more months and I'll be a red belt and advanced! We're going to be gone for part of the next cycle, so I'm not sure DS1 will know the stuff well enough to promote to advanced red, but I think we'll ask for some private lessons over the next 2 weeks so he and I can learn his stuff so I can help him with it when we're gone. We might bring the sticks to Granny's house, which could be a good time....

(VIDEO) The Baby walking!

False starts




Here she goes!

PICTURES (finally)

Boys first:


DS1 on the phone with Granny


DS2 confused moose

NOW DD's birthday:


WANT


Well, it's not as great as she hoped


But it sure made a happy mess...

More pics:



DD decided that the fireplace was a good place to play


Wearing her new, pretty dress/tunic from Granny. Looking pouty, but that's mostly because of the lag time on the camera which makes it so I can't get exactly the pic I want. Usually, she looks away before it clicks.




DH had all the kids outside and came back in with a very wet and dirty girl.

Random act of violence

An old friend of mine, from summer church camp way, way, way back in the day, with whom I (and my brother and my mom) have just reconnected on facebook was riding his bike home from work and some guy stopped him and hit him so hard that he's got some broken bones in his face.

Now, unless he's changed a HECK of a lot in the last 20-ish years, this is a really nice guy. So what the heck?????

I don't have any more details, so don't know if he was mugged or if the guy just decided there's a guy I'd like to hit or what.

more about books

I just finished Where Serpents Sleep (by, uh, Harris?), the 4th book in the Sebastian St Cyr series. I liked it better than I liked the 3rd one, though Old Seb needs to wake up about his relationship to his father...

That makes about 3 books in a row that I really liked, right after 3 or 4 in a row that were stinkers.

I'm starting the latest J.S. Krentz Arcane Society book next. I wasn't all that excited about the last one, but some of them have been good.

Half-hearted gardening

I pulled some of the weeds out of my raised bed. I think it's just going to be that one section this year, not that there's much more space anywhere else. There was when we first moved in, but I put some lavender plants in one part and they have completely taken over. I have 3 different plants and they all bloom at different times and the flowers are slightly different. Who knew? Oh, and one narrow section is now all African Daisies.

Anyway, I need to get out there and dig out the stinking buffalo grass and then I might try some spring things like carrots and lettuce (I've never managed to get carrots, but have had some great lettuce before) before switching to tomato plants when it warms up some more.

My brother and SIL have a much bigger garden than I do and I was just looking at pics of it on facebook and am starting to get the urge.

I'll need to dig through my compost bins again. Sigh.

Oh, and I just allowed DH to be the one who helped the boys retrieve their piece of Lego from the a/c unit outside.

And the baby has a cold ans is generating enough snot for 20 babies.

Baby and books

I was at the grocery with the baby this afternoon and got a couple of comments about what a good girl she is. Of course she is! She's a baby, so there's no malicious intent, even though just the aisle before I got the first comment, she had been shouting her head off at me and signing 'done' and 'down' and yanking on my shirt and generally pitching a fit.

Speaking of the baby, she is getting to be fabulously bipedal and can go across the room and down the hall. Her latest step (har) is that she can sometimes stand up without pulling up on something or leaning against the wall. She's quick.

She also now says "uh-mmm" when she tosses her food on the floor. And when I was chatting with her about putting out bird food, she signed 'bird' and 'food/eat'. Such a smarty pants.

If she would sleep through the night, I'd be one happy mother. She went to sleep nursing last night and then I gave her a quick snack at about 10 and got her to sleep after she was done. At 12-ish, though, she had a little nip and then screamed and cried off and on until 1:40, when I gave up and fed her again. Then she was up again at 4:30 and 6:30 and we slept in until about 8. It was a loud night.

I wrote a chapter and a half on my book that's almost done, but got stuck halfway through the second chapter and gave it up. I'm going to cut it out and try it from a different angle. My new book is shaping up in my head. I don't know if there's enough there to make a whole novel, so it might be short!

I'm reading The Coroner's Lunch bu Colin Cotterill and really enjoying it. It's a mystery set in the 70's in Laos, just after the Communists have taken over and the coroner of the title is a 70+ year old doctor who has only been a coroner for a year, though he was a doctor and a Communist since the 20's. Apparently, there are a couple more books (ETA: four books, to be precise) about the same guy that I'll have to find if I keep liking this one.

Weather again

Skip this post if you're tired of me talking about the weather...

One chart that I finally found said that our area has had 99% of the rainfall that it's supposed to for the year to date. I'm not sure if that means for the whole rainy season, because I'm pretty sure we were way behind for Oct - Dec of 2008 and Jan and Feb didn't make up for that shortfall. Some things measure rainfall for a year from July-June and I need to figure out what this one did, but I'd have to find it first; I seem to have not bookmarked it.

It's not supposed to rain again over the next ten days or so, according to the weather.com 10-day forecast. Fingers crossed that we get our "March miracle" and we get more rian and there's a lot more snow up in the mountains.

Update on Dad

Well, it's not electrolytes, that's not what the doctors said. it's something electrical in the part of his brain that regulates blood pressure.

Which made me think of Greg of the Wiggles who was diagnosed with Orthostatic Intolerance. Hmmm....

They're going to do tests on my dad and have him lie down and then the bed will flip him upright and then they can monitor what it's like when he stands up.

Will my children

EVER and I mean EVER learn to start a sentence without saying, "Mommy? Mommy? Mommy?"
And then when I say "Yes?" they say, "Mommy?" and I say "WHAT?" and they say "Mommy? uh...."

On the good side of lame books

I just read an early work by Susan Andersen, who writes romance novels and romantic suspense. It was from the late 80's and even though the edition I read was updated in the early 00's it was still a stinker. I won't even tell you the title because really? Not worth it.

Could you PLEASE mention the heroine's dead sister another twenty times in the first ten pages? I don't think we've heard enough vague hints about how she's dead. Because you know, it makes the heroine sad and uptight. And wait, what? her sister died?

Anyway, this is not to mock the novel (well, maybe a little), but to point out that Susan Andersen has improved ENORMOUSLY since then. She's still not writing Capital-L-Literature or even the very best romance novels out there, but she has written a lot of them and they are good for a nice escape with you know, plot and character and foreshadowing that foreshadows instead of beating you over the head until you pass out.

And what the h??? is this with a Scottish guy as a cop from Seattle who has come to Reno to help with the investigation. And Anderson writes his lovely brogue into it and he calls everyone 'lass' and I was about to shoot him. And no mention of how he became a cop in the US after growing up in a Scottish orphanage. No mention of how he became a cop at all, really.

So anyway, I am extending the novel that I have been working on and trying to get rid of some deadwood in the middle (that I love a lot, but which doesn't drive the action or even the characters. It's nice stuff, just void of plot) and suddenly I have a new character in my head who's been sort of fidgeting around and who thinks that she'd like to make friends with my other characters, but you know, after they're married, so could she have her own story, please? And she's already married to her hero, but they don't know each other well, even after five years, and are both lonely.

So I've written 3470 words on the computer and another couple hundred on paper today.

On a different book.

But really, I AM going to finish the book I was working on before.

Jennifer Crusie, who is one of my favorite authors ever, had a first book (that was published second, I think?) called Sizzle that was.... well, average. She heartily discourages anyone from ever reading it and hopes that no one ever wants to reprint it. I managed to find a copy and it's.... average. Not even average maybe. The germs of greatness are in there, but whoooo.

And Jane Austen? Have you read Lady Susan? Pffffff.

And my whole point here was that even if it stinks big time, even if the second one stinks like dying fish in the local river on a hot afternoon with the water table low due to drought, it will be an early novel and I can get better. So stinky early novels aren't that bad, really :)

Person of the Day

In DS2's K/1 class, they have a different student as person of the day each school day. That student brings the snack for everyone, brings things for sharing (they aren't supposed to bring toys), and is in charge of the calendar and other such things at circle time.

DS2 was quite clear that his teacher told him that when he's person of the day, he is person of the day ALL DAY which means he gets to pick what's for dinner (sure, grilled cheese works for me). He was hinting that he needed a cake, too. Ah, hmmm... no.

Embarrassment of riches

I went to the library today and checked out 11 books that I had requested that had come in. About 5 or 6 are at the top of my must-read now list, which means that the book I started yesterday just went way down in importance, because I just am not getting into it.

I think I'm going to start with Lisa McMann's FADE. Though the next Sebastian St. Cyr (name of the character, not the author) novel is up there, vying for position. Or maybe the Arcane Society one by Jayne Ann Krentz that's been out for a while and I've been waiting for.

Now, if the Brockmann one had come in, it would win, but no sign of that one yet.

And then, I still have a dozen or more out from the library that I haven't read yet. They're all going ahead of finishing the one I started yesterday, I think...

ooooooh my head

My friend brought her two boys and two pizzas over and we're taking care of the boys and eating the pizza while she and her husband get some stuff unpacked and shifted around and moved and so on.

And lordy, but boys who are 6, 7, 8, and 9 years old are loud and goofy and uncontrolled. My head almost exploded just from eating dinner with them. A certain one of them is just loud for the sake of loudness because he gets really really wound up. The biggest problem is that he shouts over the top of anything anyone else tries to say, especially my DS1.

The baby was all wound up and ready to take a nap before they got here and well, there's no way she's going to sleep until they're gone. I'm hoping she'll just go down for the night and not for a nap that ends at 8 pm and then she's up until 11 or midnight. She ate a lot of pear at supper, so half her problem was that she was hungry.

So now they're starting in on saying butt and stupid. SIGH.

Sort of embarrassing.

(Especially because I have a hard time spelling embarrassing)

I read 34 books in February.

Many were lightweight, I have no problem admitting that. Some of them were a lot more serious and harder to read, I have to add in my own defense.

So that's, um, a lot of books.