There Is Too Much; Let Me Sum Up.

Holidays ate my brain?

Nope. Nope. No good. No excuses. I was just now looking at my posting numbers for the last few years (you know, the ones you can clearly see in the Archives sidebar) and trying to figure out just what, exactly, happened to cut my number of posts to a TENTH of what it was five years ago.

And the answer is, well, quite a lot of things, really. I had a second kid, and that ate up a lot of energy. Then I became published, and about a year later, started proofing and editing, and those ate up a lot of energy (and also siphoned off about a post a week to the writing blog). I started working part-time, technically, and it was very weird, how much that one extra day off every two weeks rattled my schedule. And then my marriage fell apart, and I couldn't talk about that for a while, but I couldn't really think about anything else, and so I was all but silenced. And then once the fallout from that settled...

Well, the habit of writing regularly had kind of fallen apart. I'd gotten used to making short observations on Twitter rather than long reports here. And then I moved to Facebook, and found that I really liked the fact that any given short observation could turn into an actual conversation. Blogging is great and all, but I don't get a lot of feedback.

I'm not ready to give up blogging entirely, but I don't know if I'm ready to jump back in with both feet, either.

But I might as well put up a general life update...

Did I mention that B and I broke up? Yeah, that happened back in August. (I remember because it actually happened on Penny's birthday.) It was entirely drama-free. We'd both pretty much simultaneously come to the conclusion that we'd been each others' rebound relationship, and that we'd done as much rebounding as we were ready for, and therefore the relationship had run its course. No biggie. We're still friends.

I haven't dated anyone else since, though. I got back on OKCupid for a while, got annoyed by how everyone I looked at seemed either shallow or pretentious, and decided that maybe I just wasn't in the right mindframe for dating. I feel a bit lonely from time to time (dammit but I'd wanted an actual date for Christmas Town this year!) but all in all, I'm surprisingly okay with it. At least emotionally.

The divorce is official now; it came through back in October, though my lawyer still has not sent me a hard copy of the court decree/order. I have a PDF scan of it, though.

The kids continue to surprise me with their awesomeness on a regular basis. I was expecting Christmas afternoon and evening to be full of whining -- you know, once the presents have been opened and they realize they're not getting anything else for the rest of the day? But they actually settled down to playing with their new things, and they were great for the whole day after Christmas, as well, which I found really shocking.

Penny got her hair cut to just above shoulder-length recently. It looks fabulous on her, and is much easier to keep neat. I wish she'd agreed to do it years ago.

Alex managed to stay up all the way to midnight on New Year's Eve, for the first time this year. (He was out cold by 12:05, though.)

The house... I'm very pleased with the house right now, actually, as long as I don't allow myself to look at the mess in playroom and kids' rooms. I expect to need a new water heater by the end of this year, though. (My dad told me, when I got my Christmas check from him and Mom, that he'd considered writing "Happy Water Heater" on the bottom of it instead of "Merry Christmas". I laughed, mostly because there's no way my Christmas check will cover a new water heater... Especially if you consider that they have a lifespan of approximately 15 years, which means the new one is going to endure both kids' teenage years, and is therefore going to have to be pretty bronky.)

I've seen quite a few movies lately, at least for me -- Thor 2, the second Hobbit movie, Frozen, the second Hunger Games movie... Wow, there's a lot of second movies in there, aren't there?

The editing gig is going pretty well; the writing thing... has stalled nearly as badly as this blog. Though I had a long novella/short novel come out in November have a story in an anthology that's coming out this spring or summer, and I'm trying to get on the ball about writing some more, even if it's just a tiny tiny bit each week. It all adds up, right?

In the meantime, I'll be a guest at MarsCon again this year, with a truly insane (for me) schedule. (And keeping in mind that I'll probably be spending a good chunk of the days shepherding one child or the other around, too.)

And I think that just about sums up my life at the moment.

Status Update

Still alive!

It's been a while, and lots of stuff has happened, and some more stuff is imminent, so I figured this was as good a time as any to post a status update of sorts.

Alex: Prepping for kindergarten in the fall, of course. Very excited about it. I've got an appointment to turn in most of his paperwork next week (why I need an appointment for that, I have no idea) but it won't be finished until August, because that's the earliest the doctor's office could give him the physical and immunization booster he needs to start school. He's still planning to marry his friend Claudia from daycare. Though they "graduated" preschool a couple of weeks ago, and will be going to different elementary schools. Long distance relationships are pretty hard to maintain.

Penny: She just finished the 4th grade. She's edging into puberty (not to delve into TMI, but I expect she'll need at least a training bra before she turns 11). She alternates between being an infuriating know-it-all and breathlessly generous and loving -- which, as I am given to understand, still puts me ahead of many parents of preteens. After priming me carefully so I would not freak out when she got her first "C" (in social studies, her -- and my -- least favorite subject) she squeaked through with a B anyway and was on the honor roll again for the year. She's two months away from turning 10. Holy hell.

Work: The Day Job is a bit worrisome -- we have contracts that will keep me employed (though not anything like busy) through September (the end of the Government fiscal year) and then... not really anything. I'm fretting about it a bit and considering options, but not terrified. The worst of it will be if I do end up having to look for another job, I'm fairly likely to end up having to move to either the Norfolk or Richmond areas, which will play merry havoc with our carefully-cultivated custody schedule. My mom asked what we'd do if that was the case, and I had to admit that I had no idea whatsoever. The Dream Job is going much better, though it doesn't pay remotely well enough for me to even think about taking it full-time. (I got a 1st-quarter royalty check the other day for -- hold onto your hats -- $7!) But I've got a new story being released tomorrow (June 19th), and this one has a wider readability than most of my others -- a high fantasy story. It's got some romantic elements, and some kind of dark moments, but it's being released by Torquere's YA imprint, Prizm, so you can take that into account. :-) (I'll do a separate post to pimp it when it comes out. I'm really proud of it; it's some of my best writing ever.) And I've sold my first full-length novel (a fantasy m/m romance) to Torquere!

Personal Life:  B. and I are still dating. I suspect it's a relationship with an expiration date; we like each other pretty well, but have pretty wildly different goals and approaches to life, which occasionally leads to some friction. Sometimes that bothers me and makes me wonder why I'm wasting time on something that's most likely doomed, but most of the time I'm just ignoring it and trying to have fun. I've got enough on my plate right now anyway, right? Anyway, I'm technically still married -- though that's getting closer to changing.

I spent almost three hours sitting in my lawyer's office today. The first half-hour of that was with Matt present -- we signed our formal Separation/Property Settlement, so now I guess we're officially and legally separated. In about six weeks, when we've been living apart for a full year, I'll call the lawyer back and we'll get the divorce proceedings rolling. With a no-fault, no-contest divorce, the lawyer says it'll take about six more weeks to finalize. So I should be officially and legally divorced by the end of August or early September. I'm beginning to ponder ways to commemorate the occasion.

House: The other two hours I spent at the lawyer's office were spent signing the paperwork to refinance the house in my own name only. And then I went to the bank and had them cut me a mouth-dryingly large cashier's check to buy out Matt's share of the equity. Which is to say the house is, as of today (well, technically in three days, when the chicken-out period is done and the paperwork all gets filed) solely mine.

I've also written a couple of other mildly huge checks (oh, my aching bank account) to a contractor who is supposed to come in July and August and fix my rotten porch support posts and the rotten board in my dining room, and replace the yellowing vinyl flooring in my kitchen and dining room with tile. And as long as I'll have to empty the rooms anyway, I'm pondering paint as well.

Hobbies: I'm still crocheting a lot, though my efforts have taken a kind of weird turn... It started with this chibi Cthulhu (Cutethulhu?) pattern, because everyone needs a chibi Cthulhu, right? And then KT posted a link to this picture of a whole collection of disturbingly adorable Lovecraftian horrors:

And I was looking at it and thought... Some of those wouldn't be that hard to make, really... So far I've made -- entirely on my own, without recourse to any specific patterns -- a Hastur and a Nyarlathotep. (Nyarlathotep is a little closer to the scarier versions of him I've seen online than the one in this picture, but I'm considering it an inspiration, not a pattern, so that's okay. I'm less okay with the way his "hips" bulge out and make him look like he's an Elder God with a fondness for beer and cupcakes; if I ever do him over, I'll probably try to find a way to slim him down a little. I'm pretty pleased with how the mouth and tongue turned out, though.)

I've been calling them my Little Horrors, and yes, I'm planning to do the whole set. I'll probably do Yog-Sothoth next, now that I have a notion of how I think I want to do it.

(A few days ago, B. texted me and asked what I was up to, and I said, "trying to figure out how to crochet Nyarlathotep." He texted back and said, "Yet another reason why you're my girlfriend," and I responded, "The fact that you find this good rather than disturbing would be on the list of reasons you're my boyfriend.")

New Year's Resolutions

Here's a funny little take-away I got from, of all places, my day job: You shouldn't have too many serious goals at one time. Our annual performance review process allows for up to – but not exceeding – five major goals for each year, and my last several supervisors (I get a new one each year, thanks to the Major Corporate Machine's constant reorganizing) have stressed that you really should try to have no more than three.

So I've spent the last few weeks thinking about my New Year's resolutions, and pondering what are the priorities I have in my life right now, and what are the few things that I really care about changing. What are the things that I'm willing to put some energy into improving? At the moment, my priority list looks like this:

Effort #1: Stop watching so much freaking TV. I've lost whole days to the tube, lately. I'm trying to get caught up on a bunch of shows, and they're great and fun, but in the meantime, I'm not doing anything productive. This, by the way, also includes watching DVDs and shows on YouTube. Basically, any time spent passively watching a screen. It does not, however, include watching movies with friends or on a date, because those are social activities.

Effort #2: Be more productive. There are a gajillion projects I want or need to do. Writing and editing. Promotion of my writing, which is a whole job unto itself. I have an embarrasingly high stack of books I've been meaning to read. Scrapbooking, a little, at least to finish out the year in which I last left off. Re-organize and redecorate the house (or at least parts of it). Some of these are open-ended tasks, some of them are huge, and some just require me to get off my ass and do them.

Effort #3: Be more social. This falls into three sub-categories:
Effort #3a: Family: I'd like to spend more time with my brother and sister-in-law, who are actually fantastic people and who only live half an hour away, which makes it completely stupid that I only see them a few times a year. I'd also like to make a point of talking to my parents (who likewise live only half an hour away) at least once a week.
Effort #3b: Friends: I'd like to spend more time with various friends. It's come to my attention lately that, due to my proper Southern upbringing, I am intensely uncomfortable with inviting myself along on events or over to friends' houses, while the truth is that most of my friends are not only open but enthusiastic about this sort of thing.
Effort #3c: Dating: I've been separated for the best part of half a year now, and I think I'm ready to look around out there again. It's been entirely too long since I've dated, so it's hard to make resolutions about this, but I want to remember not to simply settle, and not to neglect my friends in the event that someone wonderful does come along.

Effort #4: Be a better parent. I waste far too much of my time with my kids. Penny was unequivocally enthusiastic about the time I had lunch with her at school; I'd like to do that more often. I'd also like to get them excited about things and do things with them that get us all out of the house once in a while.

Note #1: I'm okay with having four goals instead of just three, because accomplishing the less-TV goal will actually make it easier to work on the others: by watching less TV, I will have more time to spend on the projects and people on which my other three goals are focused.

Note #2: I feel like working on my weight should be somewhere on that list – exercising more and/or eating better – it falls pretty low on my list of priorities. It shouldn't, but it just does. It's not like I'm going to completely forget about my health or anything, but I'm going to give myself permission not to stress over it this year. Maybe, as I get wrapped up in projects and people and spend more time doing things instead of staring at a screen and chewing my cud, some health improvement will happen organically. And if not, then that's okay, too, and I can worry about diet and exercise again next year, when all this stuff has gotten wrapped into my personal patterns and habits.

It's a lot of stuff to wrap my head around, and it's all but impossible to make rules covering everything here and expect to actually follow them all. I've been turning the whole mess around in my head for a while, as I said, and here's the ideas I've come up with to (hopefully) make it work, along with their explanations and notes:

The List: Because my schedules and deadlines are so ephemeral, there's no way to just assign myself a day-by-day task list. So each day, I will evaluate my situation, and assign myself a reasonable productivity list. That list will include not only big project stuff (e.g., edit 2 stories, spend 2 hours writing, scrapbook 2 months' worth of pictures, etc.) but also the little, routine stuff (e.g., take out the trash, write a blog entry, make lunches, etc.) that has to fit into my schedule. The list will take into account whether I happen to have the kids that day, planned activities, and my general well-being. (As I write this, for example, I've got a sinus infection or a cold or something similar, and so I give myself permission to be a little slack on the productivity front – not to skip it entirely, because I'm not that sick, but to choose tasks that suit my current mental and physical state. I can do some editing right now, for example, but I feel way too mentally blah to want to do anything creative, like writing.) They may include large tasks (e.g., clean out and re-organize the pantry) or small ones (e.g., make an appointment with the eye doctor). There will be no time limit, either minimum or maximum. The goal here is a list of things that I can look at an think, “Yes, that seems like a day that was not wasted.”

TV: Until the day's productivity goals are done, I get no more than 1 hour of TV. (Yes, I'm letting myself have some TV before I do my work. I sometimes want to watch YouTube videos in the morning while the kids are eating breakfast, or unwind with a show while I have dinner by myself.) Once the day's goals are all met, I can watch all the TV I want. (Nyah.)

Parenting: One day in the next week, one of my goals will be to make up a schedule for things to do with the kids. That schedule will include: 1 day each month that I will have lunch with each kid (2 lunches/month, not including summer break), and 1 day each month that we will do an out-of-house activity, along with a list of activity options. Once that schedule is made up, I'll load those dates and activities into my calendars so that I remember to do them. That's not saying I won't need to change some of them, but it takes less inertia to move a date than to create it.

Social Stuff: This one is trickier, because it necessarily involves other people. And unlike my children, I don't have significant control over my friends' and families' schedules. I do want to take at least two solo long-weekend type vacations this year, at least one of which will be to an author's convention (GayRomLit or somesuch, depending on how the schedules fall out) where I can meet some of the Torquere staff in person; the other will either be to visit a friend or see a new place; I'm not sure yet. I want to make a date with KT and Kevin to come down to their house every so often (once a month? Every six weeks? Eight?) during the week, on a night I'm child-free, just to hang out. And ditto for hanging out with Jenn and Brian. And my friends who live in town, too, but those are easier to arrange and don't so much need to be scheduled to remind me to do it. But I need to remind myself that it's okay to say, “Hey, what's going on; can I come over and hang out?” and that if the answer is that they're too busy, it doesn't mean I'm being rude and needy; it means THEY'RE TOO BUSY, and I should try again another time.

So there are my New Year's resolutions. I don't know if I'll stick to it. Sometimes, YouTube is just too compelling, sometimes I go through mental downs where I don't want to be social, and sometimes, my kids are infuriating and don't deserve to be taken out anywhere. Such is life.

But here's the thing about a resolution. It's not an unbreakable vow. It's resolve. You plunge into the fight and sometimes you take a hit, but resolve is squaring your shoulders and going right back in. If these annual goals and targets were easy, they wouldn't be so significant.

I grew up in a house surrounded by art inspired by Don Quixote and Man of La Mancha, after all. It would be a little crazy if I didn't want to reach for unreachable stars once in a while.

Thanks Given

What a very weird Thanksgiving holiday that was. Some parts were fantastic, some incredibly frustrating, and some just plain weird.

There wasn't anything much happening at work on Wednesday, so I took my day off and headed down to Jenn and Brian's around mid-morning. The plan... the plan was that Jenn was going to ride with me, and we'd follow Brian to Blacksburg.

All was ready. The dogs were loaded in the car with Brian to drop off at the kennel, Jenn and I were in my car, and I turned it on...

...and the dashboard lit up with all kinds of lights and warnings. Most notably, the "Check Engine" light, which can occasionally be merely ignored, and the "Engine Hazard" light, which... probably should not be.

Well.

After some discussion, we decided we'd just all ride up together, and Jenn and Brian would head back home a day early so I could keep my schedule. Brian, who is a Car Guy, promised to check out a diagnostic computer from their local auto repair shop when we got back on Friday so that he could read the error codes and decide whether the car was safe to drive home or if we'd need to call AAA to tow it to the local shop and try to find a rental for the weekend.

Despite being a little fretful about the car, we had a good couple of days. Jenn's Aunt Jeanne and Uncle David are great people, and I got to meet her oft-mentioned cousin, Chris. We went for a hike on Thanksgiving morning (apparently a family tradition) that was quite nice, and then came back and had a really great dinner. We broke for a nap and then came back for dessert, and then wrapped up the day with a game of Cards Against Humanity, and inaugurated a homemade question card: "Thanksgiving is incomplete without _____." It would've been perfect if we could've played "Smallpox blankets" as the answer card. I forget, now, what actually won that one, but the game itself was quite fun.

As re-planned, we came home Friday. I have to admit, the drive was much more pleasant with friends in the car to talk to.

When we pulled into Jenn and Brian's again, I figured I should check my car again before Brian headed out to get the diagnostic computer. I started the car up and... the hazard light was gone. Just the check engine light remained. Which rather underscored my suspicion that the car had been pitching a hissy about an electrical hiccup having to do with plugging my phone into the DC power adapter before turning the car on, and made me decide I could risk driving home before taking it to the shop, at least.

So I turned the car back off and went inside to use the bathroom and let them know about my decision. I promised I'd call if I had any more problems, and then went back out... and this time, when I turned the car on, not even the check engine light came on. Nothing. The dashboard stayed dark, innocent as puppy eyes.

Apparently, the gods had just REALLY wanted us to all drive up to Blacksburg together.

So I came home and picked up the kids and life continued apace.

Saturday morning I started putting up our Christmas decorations, exciting the kids to a fever pitch. And that afternoon, we went down to my parents' for my family Thanksgiving, and that was great. Not really anything to report -- it was a pretty standard family gathering. Penny and Alex were pretty fantastic, playing together most of the time so I actually got to talk to my family a bit. Alex hit Maximum Fun Quotient a few times, but being Alex, cheered up again pretty quickly afterward.

Sunday morning at breakfast, a... noise came from the heater vent. A weird, rattle-y, shuddery noise. You know in Doctor Horrible, when the Freeze Ray fails and Dr. Horrible looks around at it and says, "That's... not a good noise"? It was kind of like that. The kids looked at the vent as if it might explode, and then the heater fan stopped working. I poked at things a bit, but eventually had to turn the whole thing off because a sort of burned-plastic smell was leaking from the vents in other parts of the house.

The rest of the day was better -- we got the Christmas tree up, and Penny befriended a couple of cats wandering the neighborhood who had decided to camp on our deck. (They were obviously not actually homeless, as they were well-fed and in excellent health, but she tried to convince me to keep them anyway, as they were very friendly and happy for her to pet them.) We generally had a nice, low-key kind of day, despite the slowly dropping temperature.

I didn't post yesterday because I was at home in the morning, waiting for the repair guy to come and fix the heater. Fortunately, the problem with the fan took him all of about ten minutes to find and fix. Unfortunately, while he was at it, he noticed a pretty nasty leak in the heater's innards that suggested some ugly things, culminating in the news that I need to have an entirely new unit installed. Shouldn't have surprised me too much, really, because this unit is 14 years old, and these things typically have a life span of 10-15 years, so... yeah. He called around and got some estimates, and the price he eventually quoted me is a lot less than I was afraid it would be... but still a pretty big chunk of cash.

So that's scheduled for Thursday. In the meantime, I've only got the emergency heat setting, which works, but draws a lot more power than the usual setting, so I'm trying to keep it set as low as I can tolerate (around 65), and remembering to turn it down to about 60 when I leave for work in the morning, and being grateful that the house's insulation is actually fairly decent, and hoping that the new unit will be more efficient.

Argh. All my stuff is elderly and starting to fail.

Up and Up and Down

Friday was great. I met Elizabeth to go see ParaNorman -- it was really cute and fun, though probably too scary for my kids, so I'm glad I saw it without them -- and then we went to Ichiban for sushi. Mmm, sushi.

As I was leaving -- literally, as I was opening the car door to head home -- my phone rang, and it was Braz, wanting to know what I was doing and if I wanted to hang out and see what he's doing with his place. So I did, and got to meet his new girlfriend in the bargain.

Saturday morning, I put up a border in the dining room for my soon-to-be Mexican theme:

(The lovely thing about a Mexico theme is that, not only do all your colors not have to match, it's actually better if they don't.) I was going to start hanging the art pieces as well, but my stupid cough was getting in the way, and all the dust I was stirring up wasn't making things any easier, so I decided that was enough for one day.

As previously mentioned, I had a date Saturday evening. He turned out to be neither a serial killer nor a creep, and he agreed that contrary to what certain older co-workers of his had feared, I didn't seem to be a psychotic black widow murderess. either. Though, of course, I could just be biding my time. We had a nice dinner, then sat at the Barnes and Noble cafe and talked until the store closed, and then we walked over to Sweet Frog and got yogurt and sat outside and talked some more until it started raining very hard, so we waited for a lull and then called it a night.

Sunday should have been a marvelously lazy day, but instead I woke up in a bit of a funk that I couldn't seem to shake off. I decided to distract myself with a movie, but like an idiot, I put in my waiting Netflix, which was a romantic comedy, exactly the wrong thing for my mood. It's a good thing I have a strict rule against drinking when I'm alone, or the maudlin Twitter posts I made would've been oh dear lord so much worse, or even more horrific, turned into drunken maudlin emails I would have regretted immediately upon hitting Send.

I did manage to mostly pull myself together enough to go out to meet up with the GM of a local RPG I might join. He explained some of the rules of the system to me; it sounds pretty similar to most of the other games I've played, so I don't anticipate a lot of problems getting the hang of it. So I'm going to come up with a few character concepts and shoot them his way, and he's going to juggle schedules to try to get most of the players together for a character creation session sometime in the next few weeks. It sounds like getting the schedules lined up is going to be a real trick, though, so I'm not really holding my breath on this.

So, all in all, I want to say it was a pretty good weekend, but it's hard to do when it ended on a down note. For no apparent reason. Stupid brain.

Activity!

I am, as they say, keeping busy.

I have an appointment with my therapist today. Those are sometimes painful, occasionally actually fun, and almost always draining.

Tomorrow, I'm meeting Elizabeth for a movie and sushi. There was a Groupon a little while back for a local Japanese restaurant -- $20 for $40 worth of food. Which is a great deal for a restaurant I love eating at... but there's no way I can eat $40 worth of food on my own (especially within the limits of these sorts of coupons, which generally stipulate you have to use them in one visit, and alcohol is not included). So I said something on Twitter about being willing to split it with someone, and Elizabeth took me up on it. So yay, girldate! If we can both get out of work early, we're going to see ParaNorman; if not, we're going to catch Bourne Legacy.

Saturday's project is to start redecorating the dining room. I decided a few weeks back that I was going to gather all my Cancun stuff in there and give the room a Mexico theme. I found a border sticker that's not blatantly Mexican, but has that same sort of bright color going on for it, so that's my step one -- putting that up. Then I'll work on rearranging the artwork.

Saturday night, I have a date. I'm hoping it goes well. Or at least, better than the lunch date I had on Tuesday, with a gentleman who was very nice and ridiculously smart but not a terribly good conversationalist, so there were a lot of awkward silences. (Yes, for my concerned friends, appropriate levels of caution are being taken such as meeting in public places and not giving out more personal information than necessary. And at the other end of the caution scale, yes, I've got condoms. And no, I am not going to blog about their use, or lack thereof.)

Sunday's excitement, beyond the usual chores (whoo! chores!) is a meetup to see about possibly joining a local gaming group for an Ars Magica campaign. It sounds like schedule might be an issue, though, so I'm not holding my breath.

Now, if I can just bludgeon this stupid damn cough out of existence, I'll be ready to take on the world. (Yay, Happy Fun Cough Syrup...)

Good, but OW.

What a weekend! I'm still sore.

Friday night, I went out with my friends Elizabeth and Vicki and some of their other friends to PBR, a cowboy themed bar/club down in Hampton. That turned out to be lots of fun; I haven't gone dancing in way too long. I could've done without all the line dancing (I'm so uncoordinated I can't even do the Electric Slide) but I shrugged and stood on the sidelines (or in our roped-off VIP/party area!) and danced the way I wanted to.

Watching the bullriders was even more fun, though. WHEW. If the waitresses in hot pants and chaps were there for the guys to look at, then the two guys operating the mechanical bull ring were definitely there to appeal to the ladies present. (I'm not ashamed to admit that I was shipping them, a bit, in my head.) I posted one of several videos I took with my iPhone to YouTube on Saturday morning; if you missed me Twittering about it, it's here. (I think I've embedded it below, but as YouTube is blocked at the Day Job, I can't test it to be sure. If it doesn't work, leave a comment and I'll try to fix it when I get home.)

Saturday, once I'd woken up and taken a hot shower to loosen muscles that had forgotten they existed, I went out to run a couple of errands, including a stop at Bed Bath & Beyond to find some curtains for the living room windows. It was a little frustrating -- I'm not too keen on the current color selections (god, I thought we'd left avocado and orange in the seventies!) and I'm not a fan of curtains that look like hanging rugs, and since I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do with that room, decor-wise, I wanted something that would fit a wide variety of styles... and everything I liked turned out to be unlined (for a west-facing window, I really need lined curtains), or only in stock in the wrong length.

Finally, I found something and got a rod to match, and took them home, and after lunch I gathered my tools and started to put the rod up. That ran into a series of errors (including apparently trying to drill through nails or a metal plate, the size drill bit suggested by the instructions being too small for the wall anchor but too big for a naked screw, and my failing to take the hanger length into account when measuring where to put the brackets) so that project took me a solid two and a half hours to complete. And by the time I was done, I'd stepped onto and off of the kitchen chair I was using so much that I spent Sunday barely able to walk. Going up and down stairs was so unbearable that by mid-afternoon, I started scooting up and down on my butt, relying mostly on my (non-existent) arm muscles to do the work. (Today, after another hot shower and some extensive stretching, it's down to merely "very sore".)

But I got the curtains up and the broken blinds down and took all the brackets for the blinds out of the wall, and they look good, and now I can see out again! Hooray! Now I just need to go buy some spackle to take care of all the holes in the wall from the blinds brackets and my curtain-rod goofs. (Next project: curtains for Penny's room so she can get dressed without the boy across the street watching. Luckily, there are curtain rod brackets already in that room, left over from when it was our guest room, so I won't have to install those -- just buy the curtains and a new rod of the correct diameter.)

I spent most of Sunday loafing around, nursing my aching leg (just the one; apparently if I'm not paying attention, I always step up with my right leg first). I did run a couple of errands, and then ducked into Pier 1 to wait out a rain shower. Man, that would be a dangerous store for me if 1) the combination of scents going on in there doesn't immediately bring on a blinding headache, and 2) their prices weren't so ludicrous. I did buy a pair of martini glasses on clearance, though, that I walked past three times trying not to buy, but they were too gorgeously tacky to resist. (I don't even drink martinis, but especially with those colors and designs, they'd make fantastic margarita glasses.)

Sunday night, I gave some thought to an idle half-plot I'd considered for an upcoming Torquere anthology and decided I'd see if I could get some of it out before the deadline hits. I'd tried writing it a couple of months ago, but it got bogged down in its own details, so I backed up and started over... and wow. I blew out nearly 900 words in less than an hour and a half, and then I took a break to watch Leverage, and then I took my iPad upstairs to bed with me and wrote another 400 words before I finally decided I needed to turn out the light and get some sleep at midnight. God, that felt great. I haven't really written anything of substance (barring a couple of exercises for my therapist) since June.

Hope I can keep it up... When I hit Torquere's site to double-check the due date, I noticed that the minimum word limit is 5000 words, not the 3000 I'd originally assumed. Which means I need to write almost 1000 words a night for the rest of this week so I can turn this in by Saturday. Talk about shaving it close!

Gamed

Friday was supposed to be a D&D game, but one of our players was recovering from surgery, so neither she nor her husband could make it. So we decided instead to introduce the girls to a sort of D&D Lite via a free module that Matt found a while back.

Not Very Scary Monsters

It's a brilliant system, to be honest, a great introduction to some of the concepts of tabletop gaming without overwhelming you with choices. There are five pre-built characters to use. Each character has a number of hit points, an armor class, a speed/move rate, one "normal" attack, and one special ability. And that's pretty much it. Each player needs only two dice: a d20 and a d6. They roll the d20 to hit. Successful attacks do 1 point of damage. (Unless their special ability changes it, or they roll a natural 20, in which case they do a d6 damage.)

That's pretty much it. It's just enough game mechanic to get them used to moving around the game grid and rolling dice to attempt things and begin to understand some of the strategies of teamwork. Because it's aimed at kids, the artwork in the module is downright adorable. ("I want to be a girl!" they insisted when we started handing out characters. Thankfully, the names and character pictures are generic enough that they could be either gender, so we assured them that no one had to play a boy.)

The math is fairly simple -- basic addition and over/under comparison -- making it perfect for our 6-to-10 age range. To avoid squabbling over who got which character, we had them draw blind. Emma drew the elf wizard and made a gasping squee noise. "I'm an elf mage! That's all I've ever wanted in my life!" Penny drew the human fighter; I was worried she'd find it a boring choice, but she promptly dove into the character and began demanding blood and death from every opponent. (She also demanded to know what the damsel in distress looked like, and while I know her motives for asking were not along the typical fighter's line of thought, it still amused the hell out of me.)

"I want to spill blood!"

 Matt ran the adventure as it was written, with Braz sitting in to play the fifth character and Adin hovering nearby to help Ripley (who didn't really need help after the first few rounds, but was tired and therefore believed she did). I dashed back and forth taking pictures and live-tweeting it from my cell.

Aah! Scary monster!

Penny's fighter was swallowed by a bulette -- there was much squealing and "ewwww!"ing, but we promised her that the best kind of gaming events were the ones that you could tell awesome stories about later. (She survived the encounter, I promise.)

They cottoned on to simple strategy more quickly than I'd expected. The adults were gritting our teeth in frustration that they would flit from monster to monster instead of concentrating on one until it was dead, but they did quickly realize that they should try to arrange themselves to make it possible for Sarah (playing the rogue) to use her special backstab power (for which she had to be positioned directly opposite a party member), and Penny eventually started positioning her character to allow her to use her charge power.

When they successfully completed the module, Matt sealed their fates: he handed out a "hero badge" to each player that he had printed out for them to keep. They were so excited, it took us nearly an hour to get them calmed down and to bed, despite it being past 10pm.

The next day, all four of them demanded another game. So Braz wrote up a quick module, and this time he ran it while I played the spare character he'd played the previous night. He hammed it up for his audience with larger-than-life gestures and appropriately silly/gross touches like having Sarah's rogue attack hit the troll in his butt. Emma busted out a Princess Bride quote early on -- not just a TPB quote, but an adapted quote. "Hit it with the axe!" We swelled with pride.

Once again, everyone got an actual, physical reward for successful completion of the game -- this time, a penny that represented a token promising a favor from the town's mayor.

The girls would have demanded a third game on Sunday, but we told them more or less immediately that it wasn't going to happen, the adults having actual things to do. But we promised them another game soon. I guess it's my turn to write and run one.

Who'd have guessed that gaming with a bunch of elementary school kids would be so much fun?!

***

I also spent part of the weekend sanding and staining our new entertainment center/bookcase. There's not much to say about that. I planned marvelously for the actual sanding and painting, and made sure we got a dropcloth, and a tarp to put over it so it could stay outside overnight while it's drying, and everything... but didn't even think about cleanup. I had to call Matt and Penny back from an errand they were running on Saturday because I had polyurethane stain all over my hands and couldn't get it off with any cleaning substance to be found in the house. Matt kindly ran to the store and got some mineral spirits and Lava soap for me, and also some disposable gloves so I wouldn't have the same problem again for the second coat. Ah-heh.

At any rate, I got the shelf sanded and put two coats of stain on it over the weekend, and though my whole body still hurts this morning, I'm looking forward to getting it into place soon! Admittedly, it doesn't look like a professional job (either the carpentry or the finishing), but neither does it look bad. (It's those little imperfections that point to a handmade item, anyway, right?) Oh, well, whatever it looks like, it's going to do the job that our old entertainment center no longer does, and then we'll be able to hang our TV on the wall and get back the chair it's currently propped on!

***

And finally, a momentous moment for us: Matt and I took our baby boosters out of our cars this weekend. Alex is now officially, full-time on the regular booster, and Penny is now officially, full-time sitting on the car seat like a big kid!

Carpeted

We finally had a professional carpet-cleaning service come out and clean our living room yesterday. I swear, just prepping for them resulted in cleaning up about four cubic meters of dust and debris, not to mention going through stuff I hadn't even looked at in over five years and deciding that 80% of it could be summarily thrown out. Even when we put all our crap back where it belongs, I suspect it will look 100% better, just for that. And I think Matt's and my allergies will be significantly less troublesome, because we got rid of so much dust (or at least they will be once all the remaining dust settles).

And a good half of the stuff we moved out of the living room is stuff that, to be honest, we don't need to keep around. So this weekend, I think I'll be making a trip to drop that stuff off in our storage unit, and that, too, will improve our house.

The carpet cleaner gave me the name of an enzyme cleaner they recommend using on "pet stains" which we'll have to pick up and try. And she made some suggestions for when we get around to having the carpet torn out and replaced (which we'll have to do eventually).

They couldn't get all the stains out of our carpet, but they got most of them, and even the worst ones look much better. And they raked the carpet to fluff it back up, and the whole things looks like 2000% better.

We spent last night walking around barefoot or in socks, to keep dirt to a minimum while it's drying. I worried there might be trouble with Alex, who really likes to keep his shoes on all the time, but I asked Matt to prime him on the drive home, and he did great.

So great, in fact, that he didn't want to put his shoes on this morning when it was time to go to school. Aheh.

Early

Matt and Penny are taking the day off today to go to Busch Gardens. Penny's excited right out of her head; she's been dying to go back to Busch Gardens since last year, and we just haven't made the time for it until now.

Since they're home this morning anyway, and since I'll be picking Alex up this afternoon, Matt offered to take Alex to daycare for me. So I got to work at about 7:30 this morning. I haven't done this regularly since Penny started school and I had to start dropping her off at 8:15. I was wondering if it would feel different, but quite honestly, it feels pretty good. Even though I don't particularly like being up early in the morning, I've always been more productive then. Not getting to work until 8:30 drags on me, even though I've been doing it for two years.

(Alas, I've got about nine more years of it before Alex gets to middle school and I can start planning on moving my mornings back again.)

Not that I actually expect today to be terribly productive, early start notwithstanding; the blower motor on our air conditioning went out over the weekend, and the repair guy is supposed to call sometime today and let me know when he's on his way over to fix it. Which means I'll need to a) stay close to my phone, and b) go home when he calls.

Yes, that is the second time our A/C has broken down this summer. And about the umpteenth since we moved in. I'm starting to wonder if we ought to just replace the whole damn unit (except that would be a whole order of magnitude more expensive than these piecemeal repairs).

Oh, well. It'll be a short week for me, anyway, since I'm taking Friday off to fly down to Atlanta for my cousin's wedding and visit with family. There are activities planned for the whole weekend, too -- the rehearsal dinner Friday evening, a family breakfast on Saturday morning and the wedding itself that evening, of course, and then a "day after" brunch on Sunday. Guess it's good I hadn't planned to fly home until Monday!

I anticipate spending a significant percentage of the next few days trying to figure out how to pack all my stuff for the weekend into the smallest possible carryon bag.

Relief

Lots of little things to be happy about, today:

The AC was fixed. The guys showed up a bit before 3, replaced a capacitor, and were gone before 3:30. It took until after dinner for the house to actually cool back down, but as soon as I could feel the cold air blowing from the vents, I felt better. The brain is a funny thing, ain't it?

* * *

I updated my iPhone's OS last night to iOS 4. Multitasking doesn't function on the 3G (I wasn't actually expecting it to; the 3G has a lot less memory, and multitasking is, by definition, something of a hog) but I finally figured out this morning how to get the feature I wanted most, which is the spring-loaded folders. Now I can cluster all my books/book-reading apps together, and all the games, and all the useful-but-seldom-used utilities together and still have them all on the same page, and getting to them is two taps instead of several swipes.

And it's not new to this OS, but while I was exploring, I finally figured out how to get Caps Lock to function. (I knew the possibility was there, but it wouldn't work for me. Apparently, there's a switch in the settings to turn the ability on and off that I'd never noticed before. I don't know why they'd have made it "off" by default, though.)

I'm still considering an Android for my next phone, though. I love my iPhone to pieces, but I'd really like to be able to get calls and text messages while I'm at work. I would totally upgrade to the iPhone 4 if I could ditch AT&T for Verizon. Are you listening, Apple?! I missed a message yesterday setting up lunch with friends, and it made me sad. More critically, Penny's caregivers tend to try my cell phone first when they need to get in touch with me, and if my phone actually worked, I could get into the habit of carrying it around with me so I'd be available. So I'm looking at going Android for the next two years, at least. (But is there a PVZ app for Android?! I might have to keep the iPhone around just for that!)

* * *

I finished the first round of edits on the story I've been working last night. I want to give it another polish before I send it out, but if I don't manage it, at least I've got something to send.

* * *

And just this morning I learned that Adin, who's looking to move to this area, got a job! Now she just has to find someone to rent her current house. Anyone looking to move to Richmond?

Restful

Well, that was fun.

The handyman service I'd hired to replace our cracked bedroom window called Tuesday to say the window was in and could they replace it Wednesday morning? They told me it would take 4-6 hours, so I arranged to work from home Wednesday, which was easy because we're pretty slow at the office this week.

Naturally, taking the old window out let a lot of very cold air in the house, so I spent most of the morning with blue fingernails. But they finished the job in closer to four hours than six, and for a little less than their original estimate, so I guess it's a win. Though it was still way more expensive than I'd originally expected, when I asked them to give me an estimate for the job. Holy crap, but windows are expensive. (Also, they screwed up the blinds when they put them back up. I need to remember to call them today and tell them to come fix it.)

Anyway, I paid the crew and then went to the gym and the grocery store, and I was just getting home and checking my emails when Matt called to tell me that Alex had thrown up at daycare. Twice. In his sleep. So he was bringing the kid home. We worried briefly over various symptoms, and decided we'd wait until Thursday morning to decide if he needed a doctor. So I sent an email to work to let them know I'd be home again on Thursday and, with the kid in tow, I'd be lucky to clock half a day's worth of work, but that I'd at least check emails during his nap so I could review the day's documents.

Alex threw up twice more Wednesday evening, but woke up bright and early and chipper on Thursday. Whatever hit him seemed to have passed. Which was good news (because I really wasn't looking forward to cleaning any more upchuck, even if it was mostly apple juice and water) and also bad news, because he was not content to just sit on the couch and watch TV and let me work, or do much of anything else.

I wound up taking him to Target around mid-morning and letting him run around for the better part of an hour, just to get him out of the house. He was pretty good -- he would pick things up, but put them back when I asked him to. Even toys, he hugged and kissed and said "bye-bye!" before handing them to me to put back on the shelf. (Note to self: seriously, go back and snag a couple of those dollar plushies to save for Valentine's Day.) I managed to lure him into the clothing section long enough to pick up a couple of clearance-rack items for me (and a new pair of gym pants, which were not on clearance, but sorely needed) but mostly we just wandered around, looking at things and playing peek-a-boo-I-see-you around support pillars. It was kind of fun, actually.

Matt came home in the afternoon, but he had more work to do than I did, so I kept being the go-to parent. Just to try to burn off a little of Alex's energy (and give Matt some peace and quiet for half an hour) I took Alex with me to pick Penny up from school. He walked the entire half-mile (ish) from our house to the school (except that I carried him across the busiest road) and somewhere between a third and a half of the distance back home, once we'd collected Penny. It didn't even take the edge off his energy, though. Silly Mommy.

Back home, I juggled the kids, reading to Alex and helping Penny proofread her very first report for school, on wolves. (Consider "report" to be in fingerquotes. It was five sentences, four of which answered very specific questions asked by the instructions. But I guess they've got to start somewhere.) Also, I made dinner and ran to the store for an ingredient that I hadn't realized we were out of. (I sat in the store parking lot in the quiet car and pondered just staying there long enough to take a little nap, if I must tell the truth.)

Since Alex was in fine form all day yesterday, he's back to school today, and I'm back in the office. Thank goodness. This is much more restful.

Resolve

I made resolutions last year. How did I do, and what are my plans for moving forward?

Health:  I don't think I did too badly on the health front. The desired five days of exercise a week didn't happen until about a month ago, when I started doing fifteen minutes of yoga/strength exercises on the Wii Fit each weekday morning, but I was pretty good about keeping up the three days a week at the YMCA -- I missed a few weeks, here and there, due to holidays or illness, but all in all, I managed to keep that up. My sessions haven't gotten much longer -- from 40 minutes I moved up to 45 minutes, and there I stayed. That's a scheduling issue more than anything else, though, so I suspect it's just going to stay there for a while.  Plus, thanks to Weight Watchers, I lost about 70 pounds in 2009, so I think that's worth some credit. Grade for 2009:  A-

This year: I want to keep up with the morning workout, and possibly expand it somewhat, though once again, I'm pretty limited in my schedule. I might be able to get it up to 20 or 25 minutes, but much beyond that is just not going to happen. My resolution for the gym is to make some alterations to my workout. For a good six months now, I've been doing 30 minutes on the elliptical, followed by 15 minutes either on (usually) the treadmill or (occasionally) the recumbent bike. It's a nice fat-burning cardio workout, but I haven't changed it (except for the resistance and incline levels) in months. And now that I'm approaching 100 total pounds lost, I'm starting to reach a point where mere weight loss isn't enough: my muscles need some serious toning, especially my bad case of flappy-grandmom-arms (which is mostly loose skin, but working on the muscles there will help.) In short, I need to step outside my comfort zone at least twice a week and trade the shorter cardio workout for some weight training. And once I get comfortable with that, I need to start adding some high-intensity intervals to my cardio.

Also, having deliberately fallen off the Weight Watchers wagon for a couple of weeks for the holidays (as much as a test to see how I'd do, as anything else) it's time to get back on it and go back to losing weight. I didn't do as badly as I could have, especially considering the nascent temptation level of the holidays, but I've got at least thirty more pounds to lose before I'll be ready to consider it done. I'd like to think I can get rid of them all this year, but we'll see -- my rate of loss has slowed considerably. I'll settle, if I must, for continuing the downward trend.

Family:  I was supposed to try to meet up with Matt twice a month for lunch, and I pretty much failed at this one, though I think it's at least partially not my fault. One of my projects at work really, really likes meetings, so I'm currently scheduled for a minimum of six of the damn things a week -- three of which snuggle right up against lunchtime (and two of which run through what normal people consider lunchtime). Combined with my three trips a week to the gym and my once-a-week allergy shot, my schedule is pretty crazy. And the day that I'm most free to go out to lunch (Thursday) is the day that Matt's office has their big meeting. And combined with that is the whole Weight Watchers thing: eating out is kind of a stress for me, because I have impulse control issues. Grade for 2009: F

In the end, though, those are pretty much just excuses. Twice a month might be too ambitious, but I think I could resolve to manage at least once a month. Especially if I build it into my mental structure so I can plan a light dinner, to take some of the stress off the eating-out thing.

Personal:  Well, I'd wanted to scale back on WoW, and I did... I gave up and quit entirely. It didn't make me very happy -- the game was about 80% of my social life -- but I'd discovered that I just wasn't capable of playing only once or twice a week. If the game was available, I'd log in, just because it was easy and right there. So I quit, and while I still spend a lot of nights just dorking around on the computer (Facebook games are evil) I've also started (slowly) to get caught up on my scrapbooking (I'm almost through August!) and I'm spending more time reading, which is, quite frankly, very nice. I was pushing along on the writing front for a while, but it seems to come and go in spurts. And I did buy that SLR camera I was talking about (my diet reward for dropping below 200 pounds) and start taking pictures again, and I'm enjoying that, still. The decluttering project is happening, albeit very slowly, but just knowing that we have the storage unit available and that I can clear stuff out and pack it away if I want to has been a big relief. Once in a while I get a wild hair and clean out a closet or a book shelf, and take a bunch of boxes over to the thrift store and another few boxes to the storage unit, and I feel much better. Matt and I took a day off in August to clean out the kids' stuff, and that did a lot of good for my level of Stuff-Stress, too. Emotional baggage is... somewhat better, I think, but could still use some work. Grade for 2009: C+

This year... it's hard to say. I want to keep up with the decluttering, and the scrapbooking, and the photography. I'd like to pick the writing back up again, but I don't know if I have the discipline. One thing that's become surprisingly high-profile in my brain is social activity. I've always been a bit of an introvert, and I do need plenty of downtime, but it's really surprised me how much, the last few months, I've really craved the company of others, and how much I've enjoyed the evenings we've managed to have friends over. So I'm thinking that's something to try to work on, as well. Matt's offered many times to let me take his place on Rock Band Nights; I think I'll start taking him up on it once in a while. And to invite friends over more often, as well.

Overall grade for 2009: C.  Some spectacular achievements, some spectacular failures, and some reasonable efforts.

Prognosis for 2009: Not too bad. I think I've made my goals fairly reasonable and attainable. They're things I want to do as much as things I ought to do, which makes a difference. Here's hoping for a good start to the decade!

Scattered Thoughts

The promotion and pay raise my boss has been promising me for about six months now finally got through all the corporate red tape, whoo! I honestly don't care about the promotion that much (I went from a "level 1" manager to a "level 2" manager, big whoop) but the pay raise was quite significant. (My boss ran a comparison to see what people in equivalent positions were making in this area, and came up with a median salary a solid $15,000 more than what I was making. Corporate balked at giving me the whole $15,000, but I got a significant chunk of it.) And he got the whole thing back-dated to the end of September, so in a month or six weeks, once it filters through HR, I'll get a check for the difference since then. That should help out with the Christmas bills!

---

Penny threw up after lunch yesterday, so they called Matt and sent her home early, and I told everyone in my office that I'd be working from home in the morning so I could stay home with her.

But when I got home, she was cheerful and perky and Matt told me that the nurse had said if she didn't throw up any more or come down with a fever, she could go back to school today. So I'm working from home, but Penny is at school. Whoo, an actually productive morning! (Despite myself, even, because I'm really not feeling it. But I've chugged through a whole stack of paperwork that piled up while I was out.)

I need to actually put it on my calendar to work from home at least once a month or so, because I really do burn through these piled-up tasks when I do.

---

If we let Alex watch TV in the morning before school, he throws a screaming fit when I turn it off and tell him it's time to get ready for school. If we don't let him watch TV, he pouts a little but is otherwise fine. I think it's time to pull the plug on morning TV for a while.

---

While Penny and I were in Atlanta, the faucet in the master bathroom tub got stuck so that you can't pull up the tab that switches it between tub and shower settings. If it had gotten stuck in "shower" mode, that would be reasonable, but of course it's stuck in "tub" mode, so Matt and I are taking our showers in the kids' bathroom until we can get it fixed. It's very annoying, so I need to remember to call someone to come and fix it. And as long as I'm getting that fixed, I might as well get some other things done -- like replacing the cracked window in the bedroom, fixing the door to the kids' bathroom so it can actually close all the way again, and having my pantry door rehung so it opens on the opposite side. Ahh, the joys of home ownership.

---

Apparently all the walking around I did in Atlanta balanced out all the eating I did, and I lost weight this week, which means I made my latest 10% goal. Five more pounds and I will be 1) officially "overweight" instead of "obese" and I will have lost 100 pounds, total. Those are both some really impressive milestones, so I think I'll wait until I hit that point before I pick out my goal rewards.

Calm Weekend

Quiet, calm, relaxing weekend.

We took the kids to the park for an hour or so on Saturday, just to get them out of the house for a while. I left the camera at home, and even left my phone and purse in the car. Not having anything to lug around with me made it much less of a pain to chase Alex all over, I must admit. I want a camera built into my head that I can control with subvocal commands, though, because he was so freaking cute on the swings and going down the slide.

After the park, we took the kids to La Tolteca for dinner -- thanks to various events, we haven't actually had a dinner out in quite a while, so that was nice, too. Alex got bored and squirmy before we were done, but all in all was pretty cool.

Sunday was even quieter. Aside from the grocery store run, we didn't leave the house at all. Alex read (well, had read to him) a gajillion books, and Penny played with Play-doh and various other crafts, and helped me assemble the soup we had for dinner.

I have to say that the new organization of the toys is working out pretty well -- after Penny cleans up at night, when I do my inspection, I do still sometimes find things that she's missed and forgotten to put away, but so far I haven't found anything put away in the wrong place.

Better still, Alex seems to be picking up the notion of putting things away -- he usually puts things more or less back where he got them if we ask him to. Yesterday, he was playing in the kitchen while Penny and I were making the soup, pulling tupperware containers out of their cabinet and bringing them to me. After he brought me about three, I said, "You're such a helper! Can you put them away now, please?"

And he said, "'Way! P'ease!" and nodded his torso (you'd think the kid's neck didn't work if he didn't tip his head back so eagerly to be tickled) and picked up a container. I'd have been happy if he'd just chucked it into the cabinet, really -- but he carefully stacked it on the other bowls against the side that were the same size! And then did the same thing with the other pieces. (No, I know better than to think it'll last very long, but I'm treasuring it while it lasts!)

Alex had a couple of episodes over the weekend where he decided he coveted some toy Penny was playing with and went into fits of screaming, "Mine! Mine! Mine!" Penny's amazingly patient with Alex -- she usually asks him for things rather than snatching them, and if he asks nicely for something she's got, she almost always surrenders it without complaint. (We do step in if he fixates on something she's actively playing with and is reluctant to give up. But she indulges him more often than not. We lavishly praise good sharing habits from either kid in a hope of encouraging them. So far, it seems to be working.) But we let Penny know that we'd rather she not give in to the Greedy Greebles. She tried her best to hint him along: "Alex, can you say please? Say please, Alex? Please?" but he just kept hollering, "Mine! Mine! Mine!" and dissolving into tears. Those episodes were swiftly followed with rest times, and I suspect tiredness was their main trigger. Still, I think we can see the shape of Two on the horizon.

Overall, I give the weekend a B+. Nothing thrilling or exciting, but lots of good, solid, everyday fun. Now, to hope for a calm, productive week.

Working Vacation

I should have taken "before" and "after" pictures, I swear.

Matt and I spent Tuesday morning cleaning up the playroom. We sorted toys, threw out a bunch, set aside a bunch more to donate to the thrift store, and put everything into bins and baskets. I tackled the kids' stuff in the living room, too -- mostly Alex's tub o' toys and their bookshelf, which was a hideous mess.

Both kids seemed completely thrilled by the changes when they got home. Alex gleefully pulled a dozen toys off his shelves that he had forgotten he had to show them to me, and (I swear) worked his way straight through his entire collection of board books, reacquainting himself with old favorites and happily discovering new ones.

Penny was vocal in her appreciation of the change, and how neat and organized everything was. She's not even whining (so far) that we're making her put things back in their organized spots rather than just any-old-place when she cleans up. And for at least the next week or so, I'm doing inspections after her nightly clean-up, to make sure things are going where they belong. (I'm not penalizing her for putting things in the wrong places, for the time being, just having her correct it.) She's even getting involved, to a small extent -- she protested our having put her Batarangs in the dress-up box (even though that's where her Batman costume stuff is). Honestly, I don't care how her stuff is organized, as long as it stays organized and not in a huge jumble on the floor, so Matt helped her move all the Batarangs to their own separate bin, which is now the Batarang bin. Or possibly the Batman Gadgets bin, or something of that sort. Matt is intending to make labels for all the bins, but we didn't have batteries to fit the label maker he bought.

Then on Wednesday morning, we tackled the kids' rooms. Penny's room yielded a lot of stuff to go into storage or the thrift store, because her closet had been stuffed with stuff belonging to Matt and I (old magazines, my old stereo system, etc.) that we just hadn't gotten around to ditching yet, and a big box of old-favorite baby toys I'd been saving for Alex that are now pretty much superfluous, as he has more than enough of his own things. With the closet cleared out, we made it the new home for her stuffed animals that are too big to fit on shelves. (They're still in a big pile on the floor, but at least the pile is behind closed doors.)

Alex's room produced a lot of junk, too, but we didn't tackle his closet quite as hard, because he doesn't really need closet space just yet. Since he doesn't have free run of the stairs yet, all his toys are downstairs anyway, so Matt and I are happy to continue using his closet for our random junk. We'll figure out what to do with that clutter in another two or three years, when he's old enough to actually need his closet for his stuff. So the change in his room wasn't nearly as dramatic.

In both rooms, we sorted through all their clothes and packed up the things that are too small, and threw away things that are stained beyond use. I found out this past weekend that the thrift store is accepting kids' stuff again (they have to ship it up to their home office for lead testing, but at least they'll take it) so we gleefully dumped several boxes of outgrown clothes and more toys than we could shake a stick at on them.

We cleaned off the banister and the bookshelf in the upstairs hall, too -- being flat surfaces, they've both collected quite a detritus of stuff that doesn't belong there. We got the banister cleared off, but I was kind of running out of steam by the time we got to the bookshelf. There's still a bunch of old magazines there that should probably be sorted and most of them dumped into the recycling bin, when I get a chance. And some books that I don't need or want anymore and can take to the used bookstore.

Amazingly, that only took us up to lunchtime. So we knocked off cleaning at that point. We took a load of garbage to my office's dumpster (our own was already full to overflowing), took two boxes of books to the used bookstore (and picked up a handful of Ramona and Junie B. books for Penny) then went to Panera for lunch. After lunch, I dragged Matt with me to the Old Navy store to see if they had any fall stuff out. We were there entirely too long (but I came away with five shirts with long or three-quarter-length sleeves, so I have a minimum wardrobe for the fall), so we stopped at the bank to cash some checks, but didn't have time for me to get my allergy shots before heading back to pick Penny up from school.

So instead, after we got Penny, we relaxed around the house for a bit and then I took her with me to get my shots and pick Alex up from daycare, so Matt could get an hour of peace and calm.

So it was anything but a quiet day and a half off, but we got a lot done, and the house looks so much better, it's just incredible.

Now, we just need to make time to tackle our crap!

Unrest

I had, actually, a really fantastic weekend.

Saturday, as I'd mentioned, I volunteered a few hours for the JDRF "Hope Floats" fundraiser at the Fresh Market. I had expected it to be somewhat hectic, which it was. I hadn't expected it to be fun, though.

One of my fellow volunteers worked for the Fresh Market; the other was the father of a diabetic. Both of them had brought their kids and friends, so there were six or so preteens hanging around the whole time I was there. They had far more energy than anyone else, but they were great kids. They begged for drinks and hot dogs, but didn't whine about being bored or having to put in this time as volunteers. They squabbled with each other over whose turn it was to get to make the floats, were more or less polite to adults, and they helped out with a will when things got busy. They were also unfailingly funny, even if sometimes unintentionally.

The dad had a sharp, sarcastic sense of humor that I enjoyed, and when Matt brought the kids up for a visit, he tried to talk Penny into some interest in an insulin pump. (No success, but I appreciate his trying.)


Though I have to say that my favorite donor was the man who walked up, dropped a check for $25 into our donations jar, then harassed the kids to make sure they put extra ice cream and plenty of root beer in his float. He was a hoot.

I was scheduled for two hours, and actually stayed for three. Surprisingly, my feet didn't give me any trouble -- they ached when I was done, but not horribly, and they were fine after I was able to sit for a while. My hips and back are still a little sore today from all the standing, though.

That night was our monthly D&D game with Jen and Brian and Braz, and that was lots of fun, too. We had tacos for dinner beforehand, and snacked on chips and salsa while we gamed. (Okay, my weigh-in this Wednesday might not be all that much fun...)

Sunday, mostly, we just sat around and relaxed. I did run a box of books out to the storage unit, and a couple of boxes of my old, too-big clothes up to the thrift store. (And learned that the thrift store is accepting childrens' things again -- they have to send them up to HQ to be tested for lead, but at least they have testing in place now! So now I can clean out the several boxes of outgrown kids' clothes from the storage unit, whoo!)

But other than that? Sat around the house on my behind and tried to imagine getting caught up on sleep.

This week will be slightly hectic -- lots of weird stuff going on at work, including an assortment of "this is going to go out soon but we won't be able to tell you exactly when until the day before" deliveries. And Matt's taking the week off from work, so I'm trying to fit in a day and a half to take off with him and help him organize the kids' junk a little. (That's not all he's doing with his vacation, but that's my top priority for the time I'm taking off.) Depending on how those last-minute deliveries fall, it currently looks like I'm taking tomorrow morning, and all day Wednesday. We'll see if it actually happens that way, but if it does, there may not be entries from me for a couple of days.

Wish me luck!

Stuff stuff stuff stuff.

Really enjoying both of the email games I'm in, lately. Though I could wish they moved faster. It always takes me by surprise to look back at the archives and realize how long they've been running -- the Meadehall/Scum game for nearly a year and a half, and the 7th Sea game for over 5 years!

I'm ready for this weekend, though. Nothing in particular on the schedule for a couple of days sounds really good. We'll gather up the boxes of stuff for charity that we've been gathering and finally get around to taking them over to the thrift store, and possibly we'll pick a room and start working on the decluttering and moving of stuff to storage and/or the thrift store and/or the trash.

We might take the kids down to my parents' for a change of scenery at some point. Who knows? Not me.

---

I've reached the point of the winter where I'm seriously considering shaving my head. The static is making me crazy, and the dry air is making my scalp tight and itchy no matter how much moisturizing shampoo/conditioner I use (which has the charming side effect of making my hair lank and oily -- but not oily enough to resist static, ARGH).

If I shaved my head, then static-floaty hair would stop sticking to my face, and I could use real moisturizer on my scalp. Plus I'd have an excuse to wear awesome hats.

What could go wrong?

Resolved

Before I get into it -- pictures from the trip are posted at flickr, along with moderately exhaustive commentary. They're all slightly grainy, unfortunately, because the iPhone does not have a flash.

(Really must start researching SLRs so I can take pictures in low-light situations.)

---

But really, I wanted to talk about my resolutions.

It's about that time of year, after all. All the other blogs are doing retrospectives, but I just got back from vacation and there's a huge pile of crap work on my desk, and I don't have the time it takes to troll my archives and pull out the significant stuff -- much less provide all the links and import all the pictures for a really good review. Sorry. But if you actually want a retrospective, you could just go read it yourself, right?

(What I'd really like to do is a retrospective for five years ago. Maybe next year, I'll do a 10-year retrospective, since I started Reflections in January '99. That would be fun.)

So instead of looking back, I'm looking forward.

Category: Health

My health is improving -- I started exercising regularly over the summer, and I joined the YMCA and have been going three times a week (well, most weeks) for the last few months, and I've been making progress. My bum knee and my feet are a major problem ("Walk!" they all say, but walking more than a hundred yards or so is intensely painful, not just during the walk but for several days afterward) but I'm slowly finding ways around it. I managed our trek through the airports on our vacation without nearly as much pain and suffering as usual, though I'm still a little stiff and sore today.

So my health resolution is to keep moving forward with the exercising. Gym three times a week continues, with continuing lengthening of the sessions. Last month I switched from 30 minutes on the stationary bike to 20 minutes on the bike plus 20 minutes on the elliptical. I was a little nervous about the elliptical, but its effect on my feet and knee is not too bad.

Of course, as my sessions get longer, I'm going to need to find new ways to fit them into my schedule -- 40 minutes of exercise (plus 30-40 minutes travel time) is really pushing my "lunch hour." But starting in January, we're going to be taking Penny to the Y on Saturdays for swim lessons (if she doesn't get into the actual swim lessons that she's currently waitlisted for, she and Matt will be playing in the Family Swim area, just to acclimate her to being in the water some), so I may be dropping Alex off in the babysitter room and doing my exercise at the same time, which would lend itself to, say, two shortish sessions during the week and a longer session on Saturdays.

I should also pick up some short exercises on days I'm not going to the gym. I picked up a cheap resistance band to keep at work, and downloaded the 100 Pushup Challenge schedule, and somewhere I've got a DVD of 15-minute exercise segments that I intend to rip and put on my iPhone so I can use them more or less anywhere/anytime. I'm not sure exactly how everything will fit in, but I'd like to see at least 5 days a week with some level of exercise.

Of course, this will all be much easier to schedule when I'm down to getting my allergy shots only once a week instead of twice. (I can't exercise within about 8 hours on either side of getting an allergy shot, I've found -- if I do, the site gets inflamed and itchy and generally miserable.)

Category: Family

I think I do okay with spending enough time on the kids, if only because they demand attention when they want it. But between the gym and the allergy shots eating into my lunch hours, it's a real effort to manage to spend any one-on-one time with Matt.

Obviously, this will get easier when the frequency of allergy shots decreases, but my intention, my resolution is to try to meet Matt for lunch at least twice a month.

Category: Personal

I was so horribly stressed about the clutter in my life (of many kinds -- physical, emotional, and schedule clutter) that I wound up in therapy. I've worked out a lot of the kinks since then, and I'm no longer hyperventilating every time I turn onto my street on the way home from work and fantasizing about turning the car around and running away. So that's progress. I'm still occasionally overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of fitting in everything that I want to do around all the things that I have to do, and the resulting need to pare things down and put things on hold. That's what I'll be working on this year, I think.

I do think I'm starting to get a good handle on scheduling and managing my commitments, especially for work. Home-management needs some work, though. I took a hiatus from Warcraft for most of the month of December, and that was incredibly useful. It was also very eye-opening, because I did not spend a single evening sitting around twiddling my thumbs and wondering what to do. I don't want to give up Warcraft entirely (it's almost my only contact with too many of my friends), but I think I need to scale it back to only once or twice a week, which will make time for things like scrapbooking and reading and other personal projects.

It will also open up some time for me to work on the physical de-cluttering of the house -- Matt and I decided last year that the compromise between my wanting to get rid of all the Stuff, and his wanting to keep all the Stuff, would be to give up and rent a storage unit. But the organization and packing of the unit is more or less my job (since I'm the one that wants the Stuff out of the house), and I don't want to start paying for the storage unit until I've actually got the Stuff ready to put in it. I bought a bunch of boxes a couple of months ago, but still haven't gotten around to filling them. I need to get on with that project. My goal is to get at least 10 boxes into storage before summer. And to get rid of all the baby stuff that Alex has outgrown, ASAP.

My mental and emotional clutter is harder to manage, because it's literally all in my head, so I've got a serious "can't see the forest for the trees" thing going. I do think I'm sometimes a little too self-centered -- possibly in reaction to having my introverted Self pulled so far, in so many directions, by so many different people -- and I'm going to consider some ways to counteract that... but I want to make sure that I'm not giving up the self-consideration that I really need.

And all that is... quite a list. There are more things I'd like to tackle -- I'd like to buy an SLR camera and get back into photography; I'd like to start writing again; I'd like to work on my self-esteem and various other emotional baggage. But I think I've put enough on my plate for this year.

Now, let's hope I don't choke on it.

Crash!

I used to have two metal shelves on the wall in the kitchen. They held ten wine glasses of various origin, a pewter wine goblet with a glass bowl, and two glass candlesticks with candles from our wedding service. I also had a fruit basket hanging from one of the shelves, which I knew wasn't the ideal place for it, but it worked well enough that I kept forgetting to go to the store and get a chain so I could suspend the basket from the ceiling and still reach it.

Notice that I said, "used to have."

Penny tried to get a banana out of the fruit basket yesterday at lunch, and it didn't occur to her to take the whole bunch out of the basket before yanking the one she wanted off. The basket jerked the shelf off the wall, and apparently as it fell, it knocked the other shelf off the wall, too.

Three wine glasses somehow managed to survive the fall. Everything else... got smashed to bits. Penny, too panicked to heed me when I told her not to move, ran across the broken glass -- in her bare feet -- to get to me. Miraculously, she did not get cut.

Seven wine glasses, a goblet, and two candlesticks makes for a very impressive mess, I must say.

And since Alex likes to play in the kitchen, I wound up going out to the grocery store to pick up a swiffer, because I didn't trust the broom to have gotten all the little bits up.

So Matt and I pretty much spent the rest of the day being mildly ticked at Penny.

But on the plus side, I've been meaning to get a set of shelves for the kitchen and not getting around to it for a year, now. Now I have incentive, I guess.

Whee.