Tag: life
It was actually pretty quiet here this week. Monday I had this flurry of back-and-forth phone calls with the cub scout den & pack leaders, the end result of which was that we were having neither the TV station tour nor the pack meeting this week. Our Tuesday night plans were likewise nonexistent. So instead we’ve hung out with my parents a lot, weathered a really bad storm, hit the end-of-year mom’s group meeting (had an epiphany there, actually, more about that later), and took Ben to the world’s shortest doctor’s office visit (I only had one kid with me, so of course there was no wait this time). Playdates were cancelled due to Ben’s illness (ear infection + virus) or rescheduled to next week. And since we’ve not been at our house much, it’s actually stayed clean, which is heavenly.
In other news, the Great Computer Repair did not turn out well. I bought a new power supply and I have nearly enough parts for three whole computers, but enough of them either a) don’t work or b) aren’t compatible with other components that I’d actually have to spend more money than I’d like to get them all together (which in my world means that I’d be spending nearly as much to get them together as I’d spend on a new-but-cheap complete system). It’s very frustrating. We’re going to decide tomorrow whether we buy more parts or just a complete system (I love the tinkering, but I’m almost at the “just buy something new” stage).
Hope everyone is having a happy day!
We’re all sick here, except the baby, who we can’t actually tell if he’s sick or not as he can’t speak up and say “I’ve got a headache and a sore throat” like the other kids can. It took us a few hours when we got up to actually remember it was mother’s day. Once we did, the one’s whose throats weren’t so bad ate some breakfast and the rest of us just watched. Then I opened my presents: 1) a couple painted flowerpots (one from ben, one from david) 2) a pretty wine-themed apron (yes, I requested an apron–my old one was 11 years old and not pretty) 3) a Nikkon Coolpix 10 megapixel camera (actually my birthday and mother’s day gift combined). Woot!
After that I called my mom and Nick tried to call his. My mom is doing the Parade of Homes this weekend and my sister is visiting her right now as I type. Nick’s mom wasn’t home when he called, but she had a really full day planned, so we’ll try again this evening.
Then we rested a bit more and cleaned house a bit while the kids “rested.” (I send them to their rooms for 45 minutes, it’s up to them whether or not they sleep.) Nick has an apple pie in the oven right now. It smells soooo good.
We’re having my favorite Nick dinner tonight (chicken with brown butter apple sage sauce and roasted red potatoes) and then I’m going to force him to watch the second installment of Cranford on Masterpiece Classic and afterwards we’ll watch some more Doctor Who. Whee!
It’s been a really good day despite us all feeling poorly.
It’s come to my attention that when I sign things “Lisa and the boys” that people are thinking that Nick is not included. Au contraire, mon amies. Nick is a boy, albeit a big one, and is included in that signature.
(I am sick. Sick, sick, sick. I am wearing clothing so close to pajamas that I feel like I maybe never left them. Mmm…pajamas. My mother’s day dinner might need to be pureed.)
I’m trying to remember what’s been keeping us so busy and my brain just whirls on and on. Last week we had two park-related playdates, one with a new friend and one with an old friend. The new friend works at the church, but is a comic book/Green Day fan with many tattoos. The old friend is Z’s mom (Z, who is marrying Ben someday, as long as she can call him Mr. Ben-ana and they eat cookies instead of cake at the wedding). We had lots of fun on both playdates.
This week we went to the DSP with a couple different families (due to a weird misremembered scheduling accident, but it worked out) and no children were lost permanently, but some were missing for about five minutes. I’d forgotten that you can’t go anywhere in the month of May without running into some school group somewhere. Drives me nuts.
We had meals at two new=ish places in town last week. One I went to with my parents for lunch and it was a franchise of The Jalapeno Tree. It was awful. Just dreadful food and not great service. They had lovely decor though. The other place we went to for date night on Saturday and it was not part of a giant chain and did not have the loveliest decor, but had excellent service & food and even a piano/lounge singer and a mariachi band (Pico de Gallo, for those that want to know).
David has been out-and-about with cub scouts. Did a hike at the local giant-park-and-trails place. Went to a local baseball game. Next week I’m taking them all to tour a tv startion & to watch the evening broadcast. David will be getting a couple belt badges for bicycling and chess at the next pack meeting, too.
Let’s see, what else? It’s National Teacher Appreciation week: don’t forget to thank your teachers! We brought desserts to David’s school and presents for Ben & Greg’s teachers. (We bought one for David’s teacher, but he’s forgotten to take it to her all week long.) We’re going to take notes to the Sunday school teachers & nursery workers this weekend, too (they already did an appreciation thing about a month ago and we brought food for them then).
It’s also doctor’s appointment week, it seems. I finally got David in for his 7-year-old well-child check-up (I had no idea it would take so long for them to get him on the schedule). He’s 4 foot, one inch tall now and weighs 56lbs. I loved watching the neuro-check, it’s hysterical. He and Gregory both got the HepA or HepB shots (whichever is the one they give to kids in school & daycare; I never can remember). So I took them to McDonald’s afterwards, which has become a tradition. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow for a check-up and actually found a friend both willing & available to watch my kids so they don’t have to be dragged along (It’s a hard combination to find, sadly).
Next week Nick will be out of town, as he’s going to some big long training/study session for his PE exam (which he’s taking in October). It may not technically be the PE exam; he told me the other initials of the specific branch of the exam he’s taking and I can’t remember exactly (CSEPE? Maybe? Control Systems Engineer Practical Exam?). I’m doing both the TV studio tour and the pack meeting on my own (with all three children), not to mention mom’s group and everything else. I may go insane. If you hear a giant “argh!” out of nowhere, it’s probably me. (I did have a friend offer to take one of my kids during key moments next week if necessary, which is very much appreciated, but I’ll have to reciprocate during the next week with one of hers. Fortunately, both kids we need to have out of the way are the laid-back, easy to deal with kids.)
Is that really all? I don’t know. I’m still finding jello soup everywhere….
Five things make a post (or My Day as a List)
1. Jello Soup. On the floor. On the walls. On my feet. In my hair. In the laundry basket.
2. “You’re only inviting me over because you’re an Otter and I’m staying at home because I’m a Golden Retriever (and I love the rain.)”
3. Only my own child can kick one of my children.
4. ”Let’s just exterminate the dirty dishes!”
5. I typed this in its entirety with a child climbing in my hair, one of his fingers shoved into my eyeball, one leg on one side of my chest, the other on my back. (and then, as if that were not enough, he leapt into the upholstered chair next to me, which had two other children in it, and knocked the whole thing over–it’s now on top of David and Greg’s back in it. ”gregory put his foot on my penis! Penis! penis! Order in the court!”)
This morning my mom called me, in a panic, because there was a storm headed our way. We get these calls from time to time, but usually it’s just a little bit of a storm, no worries. I had a weird feeling about this one, though, so I made the kids put on shoes (I did, too) and put together some stuff on the counter just in case, then went about the rest of our morning.
It got darker and darker outside. The wind came up and the thunder started roaring. And then it got very very quiet. I heard this whine from outside that I realized was actually the tornado siren. I picked up kids and pillows, all I could carry, and tossed them into the hallway. Ran and grabbed out drinks, crackers, flashlight, phone charger & radio (which does have batteries in it, just in case, but I plugged it in, as we had power at that point).
The kids thought this was hysterical, of course. Ben wanted me to go back out of our little shelter to put on my “cute little red shoes” and Greg wanted his bottle instead of the cup. They couldn’t understand that this was scary, not fun. I tried to tell them that when I was little that we always went to the basement, but that in our house there isn’t one, so they have to go here, to this hallway made safe by shut doors, when they hear that oh-so-distant whine of the siren.
Nick tried to call me, but phone calls weren’t making it through. He texted me about the siren, but by then it had stopped running. The news on the radio said very little about what was happening, only advising people not to leave their homes and to seek shelter immediately. The kids got quiet at this point and just crawled into my lap to snuggle in. We stayed in that position for quite a while before Nick called again. He still couldn’t hear me talking, though I could hear him. Eventually he got through for real and told me that he had heard that we could go out to the rest of the house again, but to stay inside just in case.
I plugged the TV and computer systems back in. The internet was useless at that point, but one of the TV stations said that the bad part had passed by us already, by mere minutes. We watched the news, huddled together on the couch, as the sky got lighter and the branches grew more still. We watched on radar as the hail passed through other towns and were fascinated by the new computer radar system that could show us how the clouds that held the hail were formed in the sky and touched the ground.
Eventually we grew brave and left the house to explore the garden. Ben wanted to make sure his plants were all okay, looking at all their leaves. Gregory checked out the gym and the trampoline, inspecting bits too small for the rest of us to notice. I just stared up into the trees, searching out the weakest branches, making sure nothing looked like it would fall on my house again.
My parents have been in town two days now. Yesterday my kids each drank a bunch of creme soda and ran around like crazy wild beasts. Today after the kids each drank another can apiece (special treats, ya know. only at grandma’s. at home they drink no soda.) we took a closer look at the cans, which in addition to not being diet (my mom knew they weren’t, but bought them anyway) now include among their ingredients: caffeine!
And my head? It is pounding so hard that while I was lying on the bed I noticed that my cell phone, lovingly placed on my forehead by a boy, was throbbing in rhythym with my heartbeat.
(So yes, the boys are watching The Goonies in the next room. I know it’s terribly inappropriate for 1-year-olds and 4-year-olds and 7-year-olds. I may have been 9 by the time it came out, but I know that my sister, then 6, and my best friends sister, age 4, loved it.)
I’m on a reading binge again.
I have no idea what order I read these in, as I entered them into GoodReads.com all at once in some cases, but here’s the list:
7. Halting State by Charles Stross
This was really interesting, but took me forever, it seemed, to get through because of the multiple viewpoints. I wasn’t really emotionally invested in any of them, which may have been part of the point.
8. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks
Surprisingly, I was unable to finish this book. In part because it’s listed at “New Fiction” at my public library and I’d had it out, then renewed it once, then tried to recheck it out the day I returned it (but they don’t let you do that). But really it was because all the case studies sounded freakishly the same after a while and I was tired of hearing about people with perfect pitch whining about no longer having it.
9. The Bible: A Biography by Karen Armstrong
Another book I didn’t finish, but by choice. It just went on and on and I found that I wasn’t really that interested.
10. Atonement by Ian McEwan
I loved it up to the last section and then I loathed it. Read it, you’ll see why.
11. Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs
The usual, pretty muchly.
12. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Omnibus 2
More yummy extra stories to my favorite vampire series.
13. Magic’s Child by Justine Larbalestier
You know what? While I loved this book, I was still disappointed by the lack of tying things up at the end.
14. Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen
Lovely.
16. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
I’d seen all the movie versions (and loved them all in their differentness), but never read the book. Wow. This was sooo boring.
17. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
Yum.
18. The Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards
The movie was coming on in 24 hours, so I sped through this one. It was readable, but not as outstanding as the recommendations would have had me believe.
19. Devilish by Maureen Johnson
This was so good & cute and I wanted so much more.
20. Mozart’s Sister by Rita Charbonnier
Umm, I was once again thwarted by our library’s weird check-out rules (although I guess since I’d had it a month and hadn’t finished it, I can see their point a bit), so I didn’t finish it, but by about half-way through I was annoyed with the “And so yet again, while I was more talented, my brother got all the credit/attention/women/etc.”
21. The Forgetting Room by Nick Bantock
Either his books are A)getting predictable or B)lost they’re magic or C) I’ve just read too many of them now. (I’m thinking the answer is A.)
22. A Year Without ‘Made In China’ by Sara Bongiorni
This was an interesting look at one family’s decision to stand up for what they believed in. I learned a lot about where a bunch of products come from. It was entertaining, too.
23. Sky Coyote by Kage Baker
Steph warned me that this one would be harder to get through than the first one and it was, sort of. Technically I got through it faster than the first book in The Company series, but it wasn’t as interesting. I felt like they just made up the tribe and location (though they didn’t) and the language versus the setting was a bit weird. Still I’ll read the next book (the worldview it’s set in is very interesting to me)
I’m currently reading: 1) The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and 2) The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
Books we checked out this week:
For the kids:
Ellsworth’s extraordinary electric ears and other amazing alphabet anecdotes by Fisher, Valorie.
Izzy and Skunk by Fitzpatrick, Marie-Louise. *
Grandpa takes me to the moon by Gaffney, Timothy R.
Dinner at Magritte’s by Garland, Michael,
The stupids take off by Allard, Harry.
There’s something at the mail slot by Alborough, Jez.
Ida and the wool smugglers by Alderson, Sue Ann.
Miss Nelson has a field day by Allard, Harry.
Henrietta the clumsy hippo by Greaves, John. *
Basil Brush builds a house by Firmin, Peter
For me:
The monsters of Templeton by Groff, Lauren.
The *’s are for books we’ve checked out more than once. Here’s our method of choosing books. It happens one of three ways; either a) Ben or David has a subject in mind. We spend forever finding books in this category that are actually on the shelves. This does not work often. b) Ben &/or Greg go through the shelves and drag things out at random. c) I get fed up, pull off anything I can find in either New Kids Fiction or in the Awards Kids section. My own method of choosing books is either a) looking endlessly in the catalogue & find something I want & then search fruitlessly through the shelves, where the book is never at or b) go to “New Fiction” or “New Non-Fiction” and laugh maniacally when I find things from 1998 or 1993, then check them out, because really, it could be worse.
Lisa Holcomb 