Projects

My to-do list is getting pretty unmanageably long.

• Research entry-level digital SLR cameras (my under-200 diet reward to myself)


• This year's scrapbook, which I haven't even started yet, though I have the pages and several months of prints ready to go.


• Several solid story/novel writing ideas that need to be fleshed out, and half a dozen snippets that I'd like to capture somewhere before they fade.


• A game plot that I need to sketch detail into, so it's ready to go when the current scum plot is done.


• A vague notion of adding footnotes (translations, whispered comments, unexplained motives, etc.) and some side conversations to the Hall's transcripts.


• The long-standing home decluttering project.


• I promised Penny I'd take her to the beach one day this summer -- need to figure out when I'm doing that. (And buy a swimming suit, beforehand.)


• Get invitations put together for Penny's birthday party.


• Buy and install new filters in the air purifier.


• Move the rest of my old journal posts over here.


• Make appointments for various home improvements and repairs.


• Go through all my clothes and pack up everything that's a 2X or bigger (I'm in a size L now, mostly, but some of the XL stuff still fits okay), and take it to the thrift store.


• Go through the kids' things and get rid of the detritus.

And that doesn't even include my busier-than-ever work list, or the everyday stuff like housework and exercising and allergy shots and...

Am I doing any of it? No. No, I am not. I'm sitting on my ass and reading and re-reading and re-reading old Hall transcripts and other things I wrote five or six or eight years ago.

I told Karen last night that I feel like I'm looking for something, but I can't figure out what I'm trying to find. But I begin to wonder if I'm not hiding, instead. Trying to escape to a time when things were less crazy, when I had time to be me, when I didn't wonder what was slowly slipping away while I was lost in the noise.

Crushed

Penny has her first crush.

If I'd thought about it, I would have realized it was probably coming -- I was five when I had my first crush, after all. (At least, that's what I'm told. I don't remember it, myself.)

I'm not counting Ray, who lives next door and is one of Penny's best friends, even though she's been saying for over a year that she plans to marry Ray when she grows up. She doesn't get fluttery about Ray. She is very definitely fluttery about Dominic.

Dominic is nine. (Ah, the appeal of the Sophisticated Older Man...) He has blonde hair and blue eyes. And he can dive off the diving board when they go to the pool on Thursdays. And do flips. Penny's very impressed by the flips.

Penny's friend Dylan also seems to have a bit of a crush on Dominic, and from what I can read between the lines, Dominic is perhaps not entirely unaware of their admiration, though at a loss as to what to do about it. ("He was like, 'Uhhhh, why do they like me?!'") I kind of feel sorry for him -- how embarrassing must it be, when you're in the fourth grade, to have a couple of first-graders tagging around after you making unsubtle (Penny is not good at subtle) cow-eyes?

We had this conversation on the way to daycare this morning:

"So why do you like Dominic, honey?"

"I don't like him, I love him!"

"Oh, sorry. Why do you love him, then?"

"Because he's soooo handsome!"

"Mm, I see. Is he nice?"

"Well, sometimes he's pretty silly."

"As long as he isn't mean."

"He's not mean. Mom! I wish, when we're at the pool and I'm drowning that Dominic would save me!"

"I wish you wouldn't drown at all."

"Mom!" (Translation: How am I supposed to enjoy a nice rescue fantasy if you're going to spoil the setup?!) "I love Dominic, but I'm not going to marry him."

"Oh, no?"

"No. Mom, don't tell Dominic that I love him!"

"I won't, I promise."

"...Why not?"

"Because you asked me not to."

"If you told him, he would be like, 'Uh...' He would think I wanted to marry him!"

"But you don't?"

"No. I'm going to marry Ray." (She is a girl of her word, I suppose.) "The other kids think love is gross."

"Sometimes kids are like that, honey."

"Why?"

"Probably because they're just embarrassed."

"They say kissing is gross, too."

"Kids are like that, too. Anyway, you shouldn't be kissing anyone at school, so it doesn't matter."

"Just Alex."

"Yeah, you can give Alex a kiss bye-bye in the morning."

"When you love someone, you want to marry them."

"Well, sometimes."

(pause) "Dominic can hold his breath and swim underwater!"

Ah, young romance...

I Did It!

My third interim weight-loss goal has been reached, and this is the "biggie" -- for the first time in more than ten years, I weigh less than 200 pounds!

It's a hell of a mood boost, I have to say. And it doesn't hurt that I'm wearing a new shirt that clings nicely, this morning, and I've already had two people comment on my weight loss.

I still have a good ways to go before I'm into ranges that will make my doctor happy, but it's a significant milestone, anyway.

Time to start shopping seriously for my reward! And to think up a reward for the next milestone...

Yay, me!

Auspicious

Stayed up later than I expected last night. I'd meant to try to do some writing, with Matt out of the house for Rock Band, but I got sucked into reading stuff, instead.

Didn't want to drag out of bed this morning, surprise surprise.

As we were lining up to head out the door, Alex picked up Penny's drink bottle and then promptly dropped it on his foot. That hurt, so he wailed and was pitiful, and I had to comfort him for a few minutes before I could get around to making sure he hadn't actually injured himself with it.

Then Penny pitched a fit at Matt for the terrible crime of putting her lunch bag in the front seat instead of next to her. She started crying when he got mad at her for threatening to hit him, which made Alex upset again. And then she continued to whine at me halfway to daycare about wanting to hold her lunch bag. She was such a pill, I made her do a blood sugar check, but she came back at 101, which is a good level for even a non-diabetic, so I guess it was just a Mood. I finally had to threaten her with not going on today's field trip to get her to shut up.

Got to daycare and dropped Alex off, and he wandered off in search of a toy and I thought I was going to get out without him getting upset, but the teacher prompted him to wave bye-bye to me, and he realized I was leaving and tried to follow me out the door. I realized as I was signing the kids in at the front desk that today is the toddler class's water-play day and I'd forgotten to bring his swimsuit and towel.

And then I got to work to find that neither our badge-reader nor our iris-scanner is functional, which means no one is going to be able to get in and out of the front door, which means I'm going to spend all day answering the doorbell. And our code repository, which crashed yesterday, is still not back up to speed, and I'm not sure how I'm going to put my hands on the code that I need for today's delivery. (I can't even skip the repository and get it straight off the developer's machine, because he's on travel this week and took his laptop with him.)

And just now I'm finding out that apparently something happened to the code repository's backup process, and we haven't done a full backup since early June...

So, you know. An auspicious beginning to the day.

Bash

Awesome weekend!

Saturday afternoon was the annual summer bash. We went to a park near KT and Kevin's, and it really couldn't have been much nicer. They staked out a couple of picnic benches in the shade, with a grill, a large open area on one side (for the water-gun fight) and a toddler playground on the other, and a big-kid playground just on the other side of the open area, so we could let the older kids run free and still keep an eye on them. The weather, despite reports of it getting up into the 90s, stayed in the mid-to-high 80s, exactly right to keep the water-gunners from getting chilled but not drenching the rest of us in sweat.

There were old friends from far away -- Karen, of course, and Justin had come in from San Francisco. And other old friends that I hadn't seen for years, like T and Sara. And of course friends that I see fairly frequently but am always happy to see again, like Elizabeth and Dave.

Penny and Jess had a fantastic time running all over and climbing on the playgrounds and shooting water guns and generally wearing themselves completely out. Matt and I lowballed her insulin dosages to account for the extra activity, and she stayed almost entirely within range all day -- one mini-low, which was so close to in-range that it barely counted. I felt pretty good about that.

Alex was fantastic and adorable -- he clung close to Matt and I, but he was willing to wave "hello" to people on request, and eventually relaxed enough to start jabbering. He did have a little meltdown at one point, but Matt took him for a walk down a secluded path and he calmed down pretty quickly and was great for the rest of the afternoon, so it was probably simple overstimulation more than anything else. He loved the playground, bouncing back and forth between the swings and the slide with great glee. And though Matt or I hovered protectively, he climbed the stairs for the slide, sat down and inched onto the chute, and came down entirely by himself, without so much as a steadying hand.

We had good food and great fun, and it was, all in all, a spectacularly fun afternoon. We didn't leave until 6:30, and then only because Alex was beginning to show signs of oncoming exhaustion.

One Of Those

I got the kids all the way to daycare this morning and was getting Alex unbuckled from his seat when I realized we'd left Penny's diabetes kit at home.

So I took Alex in to class and then had to drive all the way home again to get the kit, which is 40-45 minutes, round trip.

Here's hoping it gets better.

Mini Holiday

My mini-vacation is upon me!

I'm at work this morning, but I'll leave at noon, and not coming back in until Friday.

My plans for today include going to the gym and then hanging out with Karen until Matt and the kids get home (whether we Do Things or just sit around and talk is left up to the winds of whim). Karen's staying for dinner -- I'm making chicken-fried steak, which she's never had before, so that should be interesting. It's a pretty quintessentially Southern dish (though this particular recipe is lightened somewhat).

Tomorrow I'll go straight to the gym after I drop the kids off at school, then I have a doctor's appointment for some bloodwork. After that, KT and Karen are coming up and we'll have a mostly girlie day. We're planning to shop for much-needed clothes. (KT's shrunk out of her summer clothes already, and I need something to wear to my high school reunion in a couple of weeks. I don't know what Karen's mission is.) We'll meet Matt -- and anyone else who wants to join us -- for lunch, and Matt and I need to run over to the bank, but after that, it's back to shopping! And since we'll be in New Town, there's plenty of options for when we're done with clothes. I'm looking forward to it absurdly -- I hate shopping for clothes, but it's a much less onerous chore with friends along.

Yay, vacation!