Fourish

I had a lovely day off on Friday. I spent the morning at Panera, writing, and then Adin joined me for lunch, and after that we went shopping and got pedicures. We all met up again at Plaza Azteca for dinner, and then we went back to Adin's place so Alex could open his birthday present from them, which turned out to be an "I Spy" bingo game. (Like regular bingo, but with objects and letters of the alphabet, with a number of variations suggested by the rules, depending on how advanced the players are.) We played a few rounds of that, and then I went to my book club party.

For the first time this year, we decided to hold it at a restaurant instead of burdening anyone with the job of cleaning up and providing snacks. That turned out to be an awesome idea. We went to Food For Thought and had a fantastic time. As a clever holiday promotion, the manager was handing out what he called "Secret Santa cards" -- little envelopes that contained a surprise gift, ranging from a free glass of wine to a complete dinner for two on Valentine's Day. The catch was that we couldn't open them ourselves; we have to bring them in sometime in January and have a manager open them. So of course we decided that we have to have our January book club there, too!

Saturday was calmer -- we ran some errands in the morning (like taking a box of stuff to the post office so we can hope it gets to his mom's before we do), and Matt went to his monthly D&D game that evening. I took the kids out to dinner, and they were surprisingly good.

Sunday was a little crazier. We had the usual chores, and we exchanged presents with our next-door neighbors, and then Matt and Penny went to see a production of the Nutcracker ballet while Alex napped. After Alex woke up, I took him down to my parents', where Matt and Penny met up with us (they'd had a good time at the ballet, though as Matt said, it was a children's dance troupe, so the performances were a little uneven) for the family birthday party for Alex. Mom made her homemade mac-and-cheese, and Sam brought a gorgeous salad, and Alex seemed quite happy with all his presents. We all had big pieces of cake (except John and Sam, who were being good and making the rest of us look bad) and HOLY CRAP MY BABY IS (nearly) FOUR.

Who let that happen?

Speaking of crazier...

My office Christmas party holiday luncheon annual morale event is today. (Catered lunch, yum!) Tonight we're swapping gifts with the Hegemony. No plans yet for Tuesday, but I expect I'll spend a chunk of it packing, because. Wednesday morning has a doctor's appointment of some sort for everyone in the house except Matt, Penny has a half-day of school (if she goes at all, depending on how long her doctor appointment goes) and that evening, the Hickses are coming up to do the Christmas thing (and also so KT can give me my thirty-one gear and we can sequester ourselves in a corner and talk writer-stuff for a bit).

And then Thursday, we're off to Chicago for the holidays.

In the meantime, one of the gifts I ordered for Matt still hasn't come in, and I have to figure out a way to wrap another one. Details that I had thought long since established (like whether Santa wraps gifts) are being called into question, and since I haven't really been thinking past the Chicago trip, I was blindsided by the need to plan the events for New Year's Eve. I feel like my head isn't screwed on quite right; I'm dropping details right and left, and my body has reacted by making me drop into a drowse every time I stop moving for more than ten minutes.

But at least I finally remembered to load my holiday music onto my iPad!

WHEE!

Busy is Relative

Compared to the previous weekend, this last one was positively indolent.

Jenn and Brian came down on Friday instead of Saturday, so we took them with us over to the Hegemony for dinner and a round of Cards Against Humanity.

I'd meant to be productive Saturday, but Matt took Penny out to run some errands while Alex was napping, and I had a headache, so I went to lay down, too. I had to get up twice to answer the phone, but I crawled right back to bed and the next thing I knew, it was 5:00 and the whole afternoon was gone. So we ordered a huge order of Chinese and took it over to the Hegemony again. This time, we played Trivial Pursuit. I've always sucked at the game, but I got a fantastic selection of really ridiculously difficult questions, so eventually I gave up even really trying, and just enjoyed watching the other three jockey for the win.

Sunday made up for my indulgence Saturday, though. After I'd gotten up and done the grocery shopping, I set about clearing the kitchen of a wide assortment of items that need to be pre-prepared: I roasted five winter squash from our CSA box that have been waiting. I seeded a pomegranate. I peeled and roasted a whole bunch of root vegetables (sweet potatoes, potatoes, turnips, parsnips, and carrots). I made a batch of apple-pumpkin soup. The kitchen got cleaned not once, but a couple of times. So I felt pretty good about all that. The only things left to do on that front are another pomegranate and a batch of peanuts to be shelled and roasted.

I also took Penny out shopping to get some new "fancy" shoes to go with her Christmas dress, and I stopped by Target to pick up a new pair of jeans and a pair of leggings, and I found a couple of new shirts while I was at it. (Kudos to Penny for suffering through all my trying things on and bemoaning re-gained weight; she just sat on the floor in the dressing room with my phone and held the room while I ran back and forth getting things in various sizes.)

After our dinner of pumpkin soup and roasted vegetables, we had to drop Matt's car off at the dealership for some routine maintenance, so as long as we were all in the car anyway, we took the kids down to drive through the Newport News Park's Celebration in Lights. I was driving, so I didn't take any pictures, but Penny had her camera, and delighted in taking both videos and snapshots. (I'll be interested to see if any of them turned out at all.)

The timing worked out pretty well -- by the time we got home, we were only slightly late for Alex's bath and bedtime.

This coming weekend ramps things back up. My book club Christmas party is Friday night. Matt's D&D game is Saturday. Sunday, Matt is taking Penny to see the Nutcracker ballet, after which we'll convene at my parents' for Alex's birthday party.

Humpty

So, the Day Job's HR/benefits department is making changes to the schedule for our holidays which essentially is going to screw us out of a day of vacation next year. (Worse, they're moving it around so that we don't get our annual holiday pool until after the Christmas holidays, which completely sucks. I liked that they'd been giving it to us just before Christmas, because it ensured that we always had that time available. It's now essentially a gigantic sandpaper dildo for people who aren't good at planning a whole year in advance.) They're also changing how much vacation we're allowed to save up, but that's much less of an issue for me since I'm barely keeping my vacation balance above water right now, anyway.

***

Speaking of barely keeping things above water... the schedule probably could have a few more things crammed into it, but it would take a crowbar.

Penny has a half-day today, and tonight we'll probably do our usual Friday night shindig with the Hegemony. Tomorrow, Jenn and Brian are coming into town to do some shopping and then stopping to visit with us afterward. Matt has his D&D game, so he'll probably miss some of their visit, but that'll be okay. They can help me take the kids out to dinner and then we'll figure out something to do once the kids are in bed.

Sunday, so far, has no plans. I'm hoping against hope that the Christmas cards I ordered will arrive today or Saturday so that I can spend part of Sunday signing and addressing them and they can go in the mail on Monday. And I did kind of promise Penny that I'd take her out shopping to try to find some fancy shoes to go with her Christmas dress. I'm not sure when that will happen, but I'm betting on either Saturday or Sunday this weekend.

Next week, I have two doctor appointments on the books, plus I'll probably have to schedule a bloodletting so that my GP will refill my synthyroid prescription.

Then, next weekend, I've got my book club meeting/Christmas party on Friday night, and then nothing on Saturday (except probably doing Christmas cards, if they don't arrive in time to do them this weekend, and shipping those gifts that need to be shipped -- which means we should probably get a move on the last of our gift shopping -- and a box or two of stuff to Matt's mom in advance of our trip, like some presents for the gang there, and we can fill extra space in the box with some of our bulkier clothes), and then Sunday Matt's taking Penny to a local production of The Nutcracker ballet, followed by dinner at my folks' to celebrate Alex's birthday (for which I need to acquire a cake).

And the following Wednesday, Alex and I both have appointments with the ear/nose/throat doctor at the same time that Penny has her quarterly checkup with the endocrinologist, and then she has a half-day of school. We'll spend that night and Thursday morning packing stuff, and then pretty much right after lunch that Thursday, we're off to Richmond to catch our flight to Chicago. (Which should be a hoot, as the flight was already slam-packed full when I booked it in September, and I couldn't get ANY seats together. We'll be relying on the kindness of surrounding strangers to swap around so that the kids can sit with us.)

Matt has been trying to impose some level of organization on our time in Chicago, but my impression is that he's getting a lot of, "Oh, let's just wait and see" responses, so... not so much. I'm trying to stay out of it, for the most part. I'm just chalking those 9 days up to a blur of alternating running around and trying to keep the kids from getting so bored that they wreck his mom's house, and otherwise letting the chips fall as they may.

We're coming back from Chicago on the 30th (at least our seats are all together on that flight), and then on the 31st we'll "do" a mid-day Christmas with my family and end up at the Hegemony to ring in the New Year. (I've promised Penny she can try to stay up until midnight this year. We Shall See how that goes -- and whether I manage to stay awake that late, myself.)

And then I'll have the 1st and the 2nd of January to catch up on sleep, unpack our bags, try to figure out where all the new loot fits, and start un-decorating the house.

Somewhere in all that, we need to find a time to match schedules and meet up with KT and Kevin and Jess so we can give them their presents (and I can get the stuff I ordered from KT's thirty-one show). I need to get some occasional exercise, stay on top of everything at work, finish editing the story I'm working on, and gin up a couple of promotional blurbs for my publisher. I also need to do something with an assortment of vegetables and fruits in my kitchen before they start to go bad on me, and I'd really like to try out the all-edges brownie pan that Karen sent for my birthday. (Maybe Alex will get brownies in addition to cake for his birthday. Just 'cause.)

What I'm saying is -- if I miss a day or two of posting in the next couple of weeks, don't worry; I'm not dead, just insane. And between the 22nd and the 3rd, you probably shouldn't expect to hear from me at all, though I may manage a post or two via my phone. My twitter account is much more likely to see semi-regular posts, if you find yourself saddened by the silence here.

Banner

Alex went all day yesterday wearing "big boy" underpants, and didn't have a single accident! Whahoo! Better yet, while he was watching Sesame Street before dinner, he actually stopped the show in the middle of a segment to go potty!

It's not over by any stretch, but the light at the end of the Diaper Tunnel is getting brighter!

***

Book club was fun last night. We'd read The Help by Katheryn Stockett, which was just a wonderful book. Touching and uplifting and funny and poignant. Of course, when we all agree on a book, we tend to discuss it less, and move on faster to talking about our kids.

And apparently, last night, we were all sporting the sense of humor of an 8-year-old boy, because the anecdotes we found funniest were all about body functions.

- One woman, attempting to educate her 9- and 10-year-old daughters about sex and reproduction in advance of the school's class, got them some books from the library, and sat them down for The Talk. She expected that they would be utterly mortified by the discussion, listen in embarrassed silence to what she said, and not really say anything themselves. So she was not prepared for: "Mom! Do people connect their butts?" "Can anyone connect butts?" "Do you and Dad connect butts?" "How often do you and Dad connect butts?" "When was the last time?"

- Another, who'd gotten a backyard trampoline for her kids, looked out the window one day to find her 8-year-old son peeing off the edge. She called him inside and demanded to know why; he said, "Because I had to go and couldn't make it to the house!" She told him that if he couldn't hold it long enough to get from the trampoline to the house, then he wasn't allowed outdoors anymore, and thought that was the end of it. A few days later, she saw her 10-year-old peeing off the edge... only the 7-year-old and the 4-year-old were still bouncing behind him, so his arc was shaped line a sine wave. She had real trouble stopping laughing long enough to read him the riot act.

- One 4-year-old asked her mother, "Mommy, did you pray to have babies?" She answered, "Yes, I prayed for babies." Then the 4-year-old continued, "Did you pray in the bedroom to get babies?" The mom thought, Well, there was an element of "Oh God, oh God, oh God!" at the time... This did not enable her to keep a straight face when the child said, "Where else did you pray?"

Run Run Run

Why do these emergency/last-minute software deliveries happen when I'm trying to spend most of my week working from home? I have to go into the office tomorrow to burn a couple of CDs and print labels for them. Which will take all of about half an hour, but it can't be done from home, and it has to be done by someone in my department, and it makes more sense for me to drive in than the woman who lives forty-five minutes away.

Oh, well.

I'm busy today, or at least I'll be busy tonight. I'm "hosting" the day over at the Torquere Social list on LiveJournal (come and play!), which involves my posting excerpts, posing questions for general discussion in the comments, holding a contest/drawing for someone to win a copy of my book, and asking the participants to give me some prompt words for a "flash-fic" (quick and short story).

Which is really quite fun, and I'm looking forward to it -- except that it's possible that I shouldn't have signed on to write flash fiction on the same evening as my book club meeting. I may end up being up late tonight. Aheh.

Book 'Em!

It's only Thursday? Seriously? This week has gone on long enough already, don't you think? Sheesh. And Penny forgot to bring her swimsuit for camp today, so I'm going to have to run it up to her during lunch. Though maybe that gives me an excuse to go out for lunch. Hmm.

At least the weather is nice. After the record-breaking highs of last week, this morning it was a blissful 68, with a high for the day of only 85. Ahhh. It's probably too much to hope for that this will linger through the weekend.

I went to book club last night. There were only five of us this time -- everyone else had commitments and unexpected delays. And of the five of us, two hadn't even started reading the book, so we didn't talk about it much. But we had a good time, anyway. We got a bit punchy toward the end, as we were planning out the next few books. After we'd done a few, we decided to start assigning various absent members hosting duties... and then we started matching them up with some wonderfully awful, bizarre, or just plain weird books.

...That's all I got.

Location Location Location

I went to Book Club last night, and we had a nice time. We didn't want to talk about the book much, so we spent most of the meeting talking about our kids, which is what usually happens.

Somewhere in there, someone mentioned that the Jumping Joey where Penny's had her last three birthday parties is closing next month.

Well... crap. She'd already settled on having yet another birthday there, of course. I broke the news to her this morning, and tried to be upbeat. "We'll figure out someplace else for your party, okay? We could go bowling, or to the Virginia Living Museum -- you really enjoyed Heidi's party there last year, right?"

"How about our house?"

"No, I'd really rather go somewhere, hon. Parties at our house are a lot of work for me and Daddy."

Sulk. "But it's my birthday, and I get to be the queen! And I want our house!"

"Sweetie, our house just isn't big enough to have more than one or two friends over at a time."

"...I guess, Rachael and Jess."

Oh, good lord. She'd rather cut down her guest list than go somewhere else? Crap. "But don't you want to invite Ray? And Gillian?"

"Well, but I don't see Jess that often! I want to catch up with her"

"Honey, that's great, but if we had the party somewhere else, you could invite all your friends!"

She's still not convinced. So I've got about three months to talk her into an alternate location for her party. Joy.

Blah Blah Blah

Nothing bad happened, but whole stacks of little irritants piled up. I ended up spending the entire afternoon yesterday in a self-indulgent case of the sulks.

And I can't even blame it on PMS, because the timing for that is completely wrong.

I wasn't sure I even wanted to go to book club last night, but I knew I had to get out of the house, so I went.

It turned out to be an excellent idea. A couple of us really liked the book, and several of us hated it. Those always lead to the best discussions. When we all feel the same about a book -- even if we really loved it -- there's not much to discuss. But with wildly diverging opinions, we all get to talk about what we did and didn't like, what drew us in and what pushed us away. We actually spent a good 2 hours talking about the book last night, which was fantastic -- we usually fall off at about half an hour.

It gave me some distance from some of my problems, or at least a short break from them, and let me regain my footing.

Today seems to have started out better. Let's hope it stays that way.

Improvement

Yeah, I can be awfully damned whiny sometimes, can't I?

I still hate my job. But I'm coping a little better today.

I made a modified Cobb Salad for dinner last night, and it turned out much better than I'd expected. Penny loved it -- she especially liked the avocado, which was a new food for her -- and even Alex ate most of the bits and pieces I put in his bowl! (He got the meat and cheese and egg and avocado and orange bell pepper. I knew better than to try him on broccoli, cucumber, or lettuce. I flat out forgot to put tomatoes on the salads, too, or he'd have eaten that as well.)

Anyway, it was fewer points and much more filling than I expected it to be, and Matt and Penny were both so enthusiastic that I think I'll be trying to make it more often.

After dinner I went to book club, and we had a baby shower for Becky, which was fun.



Reactions to the book (Waiter Rant) were mixed, but we enjoyed talking about it and the experiences it reminded us of, so I'm calling it a success. (Books I suggest are not always such good picks.)

They're even taking a chance on another of my recommendations (The Graveyard Book) for our October book. Though I think that hung on the fact that Heather -- who we tease for never liking the books -- said she'd already read it and loved it, and had moved on to M Is for Magic and Coraline and wanted my suggestion for other Gaiman books to try. Since Heather wasn't part of the book club yet when we did American Gods, I suggested that. (It got pretty mixed reviews from the book club, too -- it's kind of an in-joke that the books I suggest are going to be about as far as you can get from chick lit and other usual "book clubby" books, and that our opinions on them are going to vary pretty wildly.)

Today, Matt's taking Penny down to Chesapeake to have a long play date with Jess. So they took Alex to school for me, and I got to work most of an hour earlier than usual, which is nice. (It's especially nice if they end up staying down there for dinner, rather than fighting the traffic to come back, and I have to leave a bit early to pick Alex up.) Penny's been excited about this for a week, so I hope they have a fantastic time.

Next week, I'm taking a day off to take Penny to the beach, which I'd promised to do this summer. I figure I'll just take her to Yorktown beach, which is more river than ocean, but it's not all that different an experience (deep salty water, sandy beach -- the waves are smaller, but she's six, for petesake). That way, if the novelty wears off after only an hour or so, we haven't put in an hour and change to get down to the "real" beach, and we can go do something else -- go shopping, or visit my parents, or something. The key (for me, anyway) is to get in some one-on-one time with Penny, because as fantastic as she is with Alex, he does eat up a lot of attention, and I think it'll be good for her to get some time in the spotlight.

And somewhere around the middle of September, Matt's taking a week off. One of his stated goals for the week is to work on cleaning/purging the house, and then imposing some organization on what remains -- especially the kids' stuff. I'm all in favor of this plan, so I plan to take a couple of days (or a day and a couple of half-days, or whatever I can wangle, given my work schedule) to help him out. Which won't be very relaxing, but it might do a lot for my state of mind.

Worked Out

I got home from work and realized I'd forgotten to take the chicken out of the freezer for dinner. After a few moments' frenzy, I realized that it was actually an opportunity. If I'd been thinking when I made this week's menu, I would've planned leftovers for Wednesday anyway, to give me more time to get ready for Book Club.

And Matt'd had an enormous lunch and didn't want dinner anyway. So I fed Alex and Penny on leftovers, and fixed myself a can of soup.

Which gave me more points to use on snacking during the book club meeting, so it all worked out. I love it when that happens.

---

Book Club itself was nice, though small -- only three people came, and one of them was late and only stayed for about an hour. And everyone was gone before 10.

We universally agreed that while the book (Woman of a Thousand Secrets, by Barbara Wood) hadn't been a complete waste of time, there were parts of it that really annoyed us. And then we moved on to talk about our kids and husbands, as usual.

---

I have to say, it's a damned good thing I'm not PMSing right now. Because just lately, there have been a whole rash of incidents that my PMS-brain would absolutely, positively interpret as "no one wants to be around you" and it would be a huge mess. Or at least, I would be a huge mess.

So, yay for being semi-rational.

Book 'Em.

Book club at our house tonight. Which means that sometime between now and when I head for home, I need to figure out what I'm going to serve, so that I can stop at the store on my way home and buy it.

Good thing I already have a bottle of wine ready to go, I guess.

So I'm leaving work at 5:30, stopping at the grocery store on my way home, getting home and making dinner, eating dinner, cleaning up the kitchen, living room, dining room, and downstairs bathroom (good thing the maid service came yesterday) and setting out chairs and food for book club before 7:30.

Note to self: Don't plan on anything requiring more preparation than "open package, put food on serving dish" or I'll run out of time.

---

I'm trying out a new "to-do" app on my iPhone. I fidgeted with several free ones, but they didn't have any of the features that made having a to-do application worth the effort of entering things.

This one is missing one key feature that I want, and one or two "would be nice" features, but their website says they're working on the key feature for a future release (which will be free for people who've already bought the app), and it's got lots of other nice features. I don't know if it's going to replace my Daytimer for my work list -- writing is still faster than the phone, especially if what I'm entering has big/long acronyms, which almost all my work tasks do (iPhone really needs a caps lock feature). But I have my phone with me all day, unlike my Daytimer, which mostly just stays at work, so this is a good way to capture personal tasks and things that I happen to think of when I'm not at work.

It's got a matching desktop application, and I downloaded the trial version, just to play with it. It's got more features than the mobile app, which only makes sense, including the feature I want for the mobile app. And it syncs perfectly and wirelessly with the iPhone, which is nice. But since I'm not at my Mac all day, I don't think I'm going to be paying for the desktop app when the trial period runs out. It's handy, but not handy enough to justify the price tag.

Mountains and Valleys

I took half the day off yesterday so I could take Alex to his 15-month checkup and then go to the gym without feeling guilty about it.

Alex was awesome. He finally officially outweighs the cat, at 25-ish pounds, and is up to 32 inches tall, which makes him pretty darned tall for his age, though that measurement is suspect, since the nurse marked his head and heels, then straightened a crease in the paper, which could have added as much as an inch. (But even if you subtract that inch, he's still well above average height.)

He was well-behaved for the nurse and the doctor. He wasn't too keen on having his ears looked at or his little testicles prodded, but he didn't fuss up, just tried to squirm a little and gave the doctor a very dubious look.

He screamed for the immunization shots, of course, but stopped as soon as I picked him up afterward, and was fine while I got him dressed. He dozed off in the car and when we got to daycare, wandered off to see what his classmates were doing at the water-table without so much as a backward glance. Yay, independence!

And then last night, Penny had a birthday party to attend, and since it was at a restaurant literally next-door to the daycare, we just went straight there after picking up Alex. He was really good for that, too -- happy and excited to be somewhere new, wandering and exploring but mostly good-tempered about being "redirected" to stay in the party area. I panicked briefly over having forgotten to bring a sippy cup for him -- but then he figured out what to do with a straw! Whoo!

Penny had a great time at the party, though she was frequently overexcited and loud -- but then, so were the other three girls. It's a good thing the restaurant was only sparsely attended. Of course, when the party wound down and it was time to go, she got grouchy about it (pizza, cake, and ice cream smacking into her blood sugar -- I'm almost surprised she was able to walk) and was surly all the way home.

At which point I dumped both the tired Alex and grouchy Penny on Matt and fled to Book Club, where I covered myself in glory by offering up a diatribe about the difference between God and Jesus and why I'm not a Christian anymore (it had to do with the book, really) in front of our new book club member, who is... wait for it... the pastor's wife. Whoo, go me! Well, I've always been the club's token non-Christian, the frog amongst the fish.

I'd post my personal review of the book here, but then I'd have to get into the whole religion thing, and I don't have that kind of energy right now. Or time. Maybe someday, I'll get around to it.

Back At The Helm

Alex slept all morning for Matt, so naturally he was the No Sleep Baby for me. I tried putting him down for a nap a couple of different times, and both times he was still awake and talking after half an hour, so I ended up getting him up again. He never threw up on us, and by the time dinner rolled around, the fever was gone and he'd recovered much of his appetite.

So we sent him back to school today, and I'm at work. Whoo, I guess.

I'm trying to decide whether today should be a gym day or an allergy day. The original plan was for it to be allergy day. And since I wasn't in the mood to pack anything for my lunch this morning, I have to go out for lunch (or at least go out to get lunch), which also would fit into my schedule better if it was allergy day. But on the other hand, Penny has a half-day at school tomorrow, and if I'm doing that pickup, then it makes more sense for me to haul her along while I get my allergy shot than to drag her with me to the gym.

That, and I missed going to the gym yesterday. I'd meant to go after dinner, and then Matt reminded me that it was Book Club night. Which for some reason, I had set in my mind was next week. Oops. So I guess it's the gym for me today, and I'll have to figure out something to grab for lunch on my way back to the office.

Book Club was fun, though. I hadn't read the book yet (my order got delayed, so it hasn't arrived yet) but listening to the others talk about it increased my desire to read it, so I'm eagerly anticipating its arrival.

Busy Busy

So last night was the book club's holiday meeting. The book exchange was lively (several books were in high demand and changed hands more than once) and the food was good, and Dawn brought a pot of homemade >rumtopf to liven the festivities.

Saturday is already promising to be busy. I realized that if I'm going to pick up gifts for Penny's teachers, then this is the weekend to do it, as it's the last weekend before school is out for the holidays. And since Penny just finished filling in a chore chart, she's due a reward toy, so I'll probably take her to Yankee Candle and kill two birds with one stone, there. ("...Why can't we go tonight?" she whined, last night. Life can never happen fast enough for little kids.)

And we're having the moon cookie party that afternoon at our house. (Which means I need to not only completely clear off the dining table, but also most of the kitchen counter, for cooling racks... Oy. Well, at least it's a temporary thing, and I can just lug stuff upstairs and dump it in our room until we're done.)

I'm looking forward to it, though. If anything can manage to revive my guttering spark of holiday spirit, it'll be moon cookies.

Picta Picta

Well, I did promise (or, depending on your view, threaten) pictures, once I figured out how to get them off Braz's camera. (Simple USB transfer with iPhoto, as it turns out. Good thing I have a spare USB cable hanging around.)

I'm having fun the camera. Of course, I'm completely obsessed with perfecting this shot of our Christmas lights. I'm not sure why, but what the heck, right? I read somewhere that one of the best ways to improve one's photography skills was to choose one thing that you love and take as many pictures of it as possible, in as many different ways as you can. I guess that's sort of what I'm doing here...





Of course, lights aren't the only things I've been taking pictures of.





Lesson Learned #1: The light in our living room, especially in the evenings, is very, very yellow. That shot of Alex has actually been doctored to bring it closer to true, believe it or not. The picture of Penny was taken with natural daylight, and is much better.

Lesson Learned #2: As much as I've yearned for true manual focus over the last ten years or so of owning digital cameras... Turn the freaking autofocus back on (or even switch it over to full automatic mode) when I'm taking pictures of the kids. They move way too much to be fidgeting with the dials and buttons every time I want to snap a shot of them doing something cute. I've had to delete about thirty pictures that I thought were priceless and adorable because, once I got them downloaded, I realized they were badly out of focus.

I'll keep playing. The moon cookie party is this weekend, and that should make for some fun photography.

Tonight is book club. (I sat down last night to decide what I was going to do with my evening, and realized that -- hey -- maybe I should read the book. Luckily, it's a short, 2-act play, and it only took me about an hour to read.) I'm looking forward to it immensely; we're doing our annual Christmas exchange. Should I bring the camera along for that? I might. Some of the tussles over particularly coveted books can be funny.

Dang Book Club

Went to book club last night, had several drinks in celebration of my first club meeting in over a year where I could both a) drink and b) stay later than 9:45. (Whoo, pregnancy/nursing!)

The book was Momzillas. I don't remember the author's name, because I only got about forty pages into the book before deciding I don't have enough spare time to be reading a book I actively hate. The writing wasn't bad, though a little heavy on unexplained and unnecessary flashbacks (at least in the 40 pages I read). There were glimmers of real humor, here and there, and she kept throwing in references to a surprisingly wonderful list of movies. But I couldn't get past the Mom-Competition thing. Which was the whole point of the book, I know, but... Seriously, I have enough issues with worrying about whether people are judging me and my parenting as it is without having to put up with even a fictional set of judges. (I do like "momzilla" as a nickname for these people, though.)

Also, since I skipped ahead and read the ending when I decided that I wasn't going to bother with the middle of the book -- the ending was trite, insipid, and too "perfect" for believability. (Spoiler warning... Skip to the next paragraph if you actually think you might read this.) Okay, I can kind of buy the best friend suddenly winding up with the husband's best friend because that kind of thing does sometimes happen in real life. But the gargoyle mother-in-law suddenly becoming warm and caring just because the husband finally stood up to her? HA. HA. HA. Yeah, maybe she finally shut her mouth -- but actually changing her attitude? No way. I say this in all honesty with the perspective of someone who still feels kind of inadequate in the MiL's eyes, despite an honest, unforced increase in warmth from her -- I can't imagine an ultimatum actually changing her opinions, and I can't imagine her opinions not making themselves known, subtly, even if she's technically toeing the line.

Also, the whole person-by-person epilogue blurby thing... that's a device for movies that don't have time to actually tie off all the threads properly. One real epilogue chapter in the book could have easily gotten across all those tie-offs without being nearly so gimmicky. Ug.

Anyway, that's my quickie review. The book club was divided about evenly between "loved it" and "hated it" -- and sometimes that leads to interesting discussions of the book, but this time, the book being so fluffy, we mostly just talked about the real momzillas in our lives and segued off into stories about the kids and such, as usual.

But while we were there, Kris and Tammy talked up Facebook and kind of pushed the rest of us to join, so... *sigh* I did. I'd managed to avoid social networking sites up until now, but I suppose it was inevitable, eventually. More shocking yet -- it's not blocked from my office. I have to assume some higher-ups are using it as a networking tool, because I can't imagine a major site like that actually escaped the notice of the content-blocker gargoyles. You know, 'cause I really needed another thing to eat up my time.

Especially since my boss decided it was time for me to dive into proposal management, so in the grand spirit of "throw the baby in the pool and see if she floats," he's given me two proposals to coordinate, both of which are on tight schedules. (Even tighter than most proposals, in fact. Which is really saying something.)

Whee...

Stuff and Toof

Took Penny to her pediatrician yesterday for her pre-kindergarten physical. She's 41.5" tall (at the 25% mark -- which doesn't surprise me; I already knew she was one of the shorter kids in her class, if not the shortest), and 45 pounds (at the 75% mark).

They tested her vision -- 20/40 on each eye individually; 20/30 with both. That is, good enough not to need glasses, but we'll want to keep an eye on it, especially since Matt was in glasses at a fairly early age, and she's practically his clone.

They tried to test her hearing, but she either didn't quite understand the instructions or she got bored with the test, because she didn't seem interested in raising her hand when she heard the beeps. I'm not too worried about it. If she's got the same hearing problems I do, the tests won't catch it anyway and she'll eventually learn to compensate (mostly).

They did a blood hemoglobin test. I forestalled them using the generic (read: too deep) lancet by suggesting that Penny do her own "stick" for them to use. The nurses and doctor were very impressed with her -- apparently some kids make as big a fuss over the lancet as they do over the shots.

I won't pretend that the shots went smoothly. I had to hold her down, and she screamed. Loudly. The tears stopped eventually, though she made me lift her in and out of the car for the rest of the day. Other than that, though, she did really well, and now we can gather together the rest of the paperwork we need to get her enrolled in kindergarten.

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I had book club last night. We read Momfidence!: An Oreo Never Killed Anybody and Other Secrets of Happier Parenting, and pretty much all of us liked it a lot. Except for Kris, who thought it was funny but couldn't quite get behind the low-pressure approach to parenting.

But we all had fun sitting around talking and drinking and eating, which is about 75% of the reason we have book club, anyway.

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Alex slept until 5:45 this morning, which I would have bet against, given how poorly he nursed at 10. He was all smiles when I picked him up, though. (Alex wakes up fast and happy, unlike his sister, whom we've learned to just give as wide a berth as possible in the mornings until she decides she's ready to deal with being awake.)

After he'd eaten, I played with him a bit, and as he was gnawing on my finger, I realized that something in there felt... hard. I couldn't manage to pry his mouth open and keep his tongue out of the way long enough, but Matt confirmed my suspicion -- his first tooth has broken the gum. (Timing! I'd said I was going to wean Alex when he started teething or at 6 months, whichever came first, and I'd already put together a plan to start reducing the pumping next week.

And the Cool and Collected Award Goes To...

Not me, that's for sure.

Apparently, I have only one nerve left, and every single thing seems to be getting on it today.

We can start with the sunburn, because constant pain isn't good for anyone's mood.

My hair looked fabulous this morning -- but I absolutely cannot stand for it to touch my shoulders right now, because even that is painful, and naturally, hair that's looking fabulous down looks lopsided and weird pulled back in a ponytail.

Alex was hungry and hungry and hungry this morning, which means I'm not going to get any milk from the morning pumping -- and I'm missing the afternoon pumping to take Penny to a doctor appointment, so he's going to be Formula Boy tomorrow. (Why this bothers me so much when he's less than a month from being weaned, I'm not sure.)

And after being hungry and hungry and hungry, he managed a spitup that drooled over his shoulder and pooled on my pants, so it looks like I've wet myself. Did I mention that I only have two pairs of pants that I can wear right now, because of the knee brace?

Shortly after that, Penny threw a baby blanket at my face. She was only playing, but it pulled hair out of my lopsided and precarious pony tail and smacked the sunburn on my neck and I lost my cool and screamed at her. No, I don't mean "raised my voice." I mean "screamed."

When I dropped the kids off at school this morning, Penny witnessed a toddler pitching a fit when his mom left, and somehow that triggered her to get clingy and whiny about not wanting to be at school.

The school, by the way, announced yesterday that they're changing hands; Minnieland has sold them to another daycare company. Will the new company's policy let them keep doing Penny's insulin shots? We don't know yet. Matt or I are going to have to go to the parent-question session next Tuesday evening. But I'm getting a lot of mixed messages -- the director told me there were no personnel changes planned, but the announcement letter started with the phrase "mixed emotions" and she's acting noticeably tense about it.

I forgot to bring Penny's insulin chart with me to work today, so it's not going to get faxed in, again.

I've got Book Club at my house tonight, and while I'm really looking forward to it, I still have shopping to do, and then I need to clean the house (non-trivial, especially since the simple act of bending over to pick up something off the floor makes my sunburn suddenly shriek with pain) and get the food set out. Which will all be done with Penny in tow.

How can a house that looked blessedly clean yesterday after the cleaning service came look so sloppy and horrible this morning?

And speaking of sloppy and horrible, my glasses are crooked and I can't get new ones until August; my boobs are hanging to my waist and it doesn't make sense to get new ones until Alex is weaned, and I'm feeling particularly fat lately.

Maybe the extra physical sensitivity caused by the sunburn is triggering some variety of mental sensitivity as well. I want to just shut my office door and sulk until it's time to go pick Penny up for her appointment.