You probably weren't wondering what I am listening to these days but I'm going to tell you anyway. It's "Lisztomania" by Phoenix, which was a big favorite of mine about two years ago. I liked the original a lot, I liked the version that the kids from New York's PS22 Chorus did, and now I can't quit listening to this "Alex Metric Remix:"
It's super dancey, isn't it? I am a little disturbed by the video footage of the chickens, but I understand it is from the 1992 movie "Baraka," which I had never heard of but which plenty of people on the internet say changed their lives. So now it's on my list of movies to see.
Little off subject there. As I was saying, super dancey, isn't it?
I have almost finished the baby hat I am crocheting, and then I have to plop it on my friend's baby's head and see if it fits! I've also started crocheting a basic wrap sweater for myself. I have been using Pinterest for a little while now, and it has this way of making you feel like you could be a super crafter if you only had the time, hence the crocheting. I also have been pinning favorite music over there if you want to have a listen.
As for my reading progress, I was enjoying "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" so much, and then somehow I just quit reading for like two weeks. I don't really know what happened. I need to pick it back up again, because I have a ton of other books on the shelf that I need to get to this year as well.
Here's a gratuitous picture of Holly wearing her new Old Navy Valentine's dress:
Yes, it was taken with my phone using the "Retro Camera" app, which those of us who don't use Instagram, due to owning Android phones, use. I guess it's a little bit hipster of me, but it sure is cute, isn't it?
We had a rare 60-degree January day today. It started off with a thunderstorm, even. If all winter was like this, aside from one or two snow days that keep me home from work, I would never have what they call "the winter doldrums" and what I call "gahhhh life sucks!!!!"
Following up from last week, my haircut experience went well. I'm pleased with how it turned out, although it does require a little more styling, "encouragement," shall we say, since I've got long bangs now. Bangs have traditionally been a problem for me. They just don't behave like bangs should. (In high school I used a curling iron to make them into a big pouf, like Charlie Brown's sister Sally, that I don't think was EVER stylish.) The bangs I have now are meant to be swept to the side, which means the hair dryer and/or the curling iron have to be briefly applied.
Here is the before
And here is the after
When I look at pictures of myself I always think I need to wear lipstick. But when I look at myself in the mirror with lipstick on, I think I look ridiculous.
Thea enjoyed skiing last week. Faith didn't enjoy it as much but she still had a fun trip and said she's willing to give it another try sometime.
I took up crocheting again last month, basically for the first time since I was in high school. I've been easing back in with simple stuff like potholders/coasters
and granny squares.
The granny squares were from this pattern and the coasters from this one. I do a couple of granny squares a week, and I figure at some point I'll have enough to sew them together and make a blanket. Neato! Now I'm ready to tackle a real project -- a little hat for my friend's baby.
New pictures, from our trip to Six Flags America (back in August, yes I'm behind on posting pictures), are up here. Enjoy!
I'm having a slumber party tonight with my favorite five-year-old.
We watched "Tangled", played a princess matching game (I lost three games in a row), and now she's zonked out in my bed. Tomorrow we will probably use her free birthday meal certificate at Bob Evans.
I just talked to Thea and Faith on Oovoo. They are in Pennsylvania with two friends and Dan (who is earning so many brownie points this weekend). Tomorrow morning bright and early they'll be heading to Jack Frost for their first time skiing.
I still miss Augie a lot. I thought I heard him meow the other day, and I keep expecting to see him laying on the dog's bed or to come climb in my lap while I'm sitting on the floor. Our other elderly cat, Spot, is turning 18 in April. For now he is in decent health. He notices Augie's absence, though. The first night Augie was gone, Spot wandered through the house all night meowing. They used to sleep together on the dog's bed.
Aside from Spotty we have two other cats, Emily and Benny, who are about 2.5 and 3 years old, respectively. Then there's good old Chester, the dog, who we guess to be about 9. I do love a house full of pets, despite the cost, the mess, the work, and the inevitable heartache that comes along with it.
Augie and Spotty enjoying a sunny spot at the back door. Nov 2011
Thea and Faith are going skiing for the first time this weekend. I've never really had an interest in skiing, but I'm happy they're going to have the opportunity to try it. They are excited. Holly and I are staying home by ourselves. I told her it was going to be a special Holly-and-Mommy night. Her eyes got wide and she said, "Let's have a movie night! With EATING!" So, movies and eating it will be.
I'm getting a haircut tomorrow. This is only news because I don't get my hair cut often, and when I do, it's usually just a trim. This time I really am looking for a new style (if you can call the shapeless mess I have now a "style"). It remains to be seen whether I can communicate my wishes to the stylist, whether she can cut it that way, whether my hair will actually do what the girl's hair in the picture is doing, and then whether I can actually pull it off myself at home.
Today we had to say goodbye to Augie, our oldest cat. You never think of this moment... when you are holding the tiny kitten in the palm of your hand; when he is chasing a string you are dragging around the house; when he is tumbling on the carpet with his adopted sister; when he is snuggled next to you in bed purring; when he is rubbing his head on your chin; when he is meowing for his dinner; when he realizes you are sad and climbs into your lap to comfort you... You never think of this moment that you will have to say goodbye. This is the crappy side of pet ownership.
Augie was only about 8 weeks old when we brought him home from the pound. He was indeed small enough to sit in the palm of Rick's hand. Over the years he moved with us to three more houses, saw many adopted brothers and sisters come and go, and saw three rambunctious children added to the mix. Augie accepted the kids with grace -- he never scratched or bit them, although he stayed well out of their way when he didn't feel like dealing with them.
Augie lived nearly 19 years with us. He was a good friend. He was a good cat. The doctor and techs at Arbutus Veterinary Hospital helped him complete his life's journey with peace and dignity, and I held him at the end and thanked him for everything and told him how much I love him.
Rest now in peace, Augie. 1993-2012
Augie performing his trademark forehead-bump on his first day home from the pound. 1993
Tiny Augie 1993
Augie and Allie the day they knocked a bag of flour off the top of the refrigerator and made little white footprints all over the apartment. 1994
My first babies. 1994
Augie watching over me and just-born Holly. 2006
Just this past summer, Augie relaxing on Holly's bed. 2011
Despite the fact that it is a kind of arduous process to manually crop, size, place and caption pictures in my current photo album setup, I am still doing it until I work up the time and commitment to look for another option. And because of that arduous process, I'm about five months behind in posting pictures. Here are the links to see pictures from August 2011 -- page one and page two. Soon there will be a third page of pictures from our trips to Six Flags America in August.
I surpassed my 2011 book-reading goal -- my goal was 18 books and I read 34. I usually have a huge surge in the summer and early fall, and then tail off through the last two months. That was how it was this year. I finished reading the 32nd book in early October. Anyway, you can see the list here if you are interested. By and large it was a good bunch of books.
This year's goal is 20 books. I have about that many waiting on the shelf to be read. I'm starting off this year with 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winner The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. I'm about a quarter of the way through, and let me say that it is definitely a crushing novel for a wanna-be novelist to read. The story is awesome so far, and yet I have to keep stopping and reading back over paragraphs just for sheer enjoyment of the way the sentences are crafted.
What are you reading this year, or what did you love last year? I would love to hear your recommendations.
A few days before her birthday, I told Holly about the night she was born. When I got to the part about giving her her name, she frowned and said, "But I didn't want my name to be Holly! I wanted it to be Rapunzel."
I gave Thea the Hunger Games trilogy for Christmas. She read the first book in 24 hours. Then she read the second book in the next 24 hours. I'm so happy to have her reading and being excited about a book, but it seems like kind of a waste if she's going to "use up" this Christmas present in three days.
Tonight I had to deal with a puking incident and a disgustingly clogged sink (not related) at the same time. Kind of an overload of Ick.
My great-grandmother taught me to crochet when I was a kid. I haven't done it in years, but in just the past couple of weeks I've picked it back up again. It is so satisfying to sit with the needle and yarn and a mug of coffee and some music playing. It feels very grounding and at the same time brings back fond memories. So far I've made a bunch of coasters/potholders, and one head wrap with a flower on it that is not very attractive. The coasters are kind of rough but I'm still enjoying using things I made. And I think with the right yarn, the head wrap could be really pretty.
Today there was only one radio station left, that I could find, still playing all Christmas music. (101.9 FM) As much as I wanted to avoid that grating music all of December... today I found myself listening to that station, and actually singing along.
I'm glad that Christmas is over, and look forward to a brand new year, but boy do I dislike the winter. I don't like January or February and thinking of all those gray days stretching ahead of me makes me want to hunker down in bed (in my new flannel sheets -- Christmas presents!)
Pez candy: Nasty. Did I actually like that stuff, as a kid, or was it just fun playing with the dispensers?
Before I forget, here is what went wrong, and what went right, for the girls' party (a long woohoo-dammit, of sorts :) ). Pictures at the bottom of the page.
WRONG: Had to move the party completely indoors thanks to frigid temperatures, drizzle and mud. Most of my games and activities were subsequently cut from the agenda. RIGHT: Let the kids turn on the Wii and play "Just Dance." That game never fails to entertain. Even boys and parents were dancing. RIGHT: Ghost cookies -- these were knockoff Nutter Butters dipped in melted white candy chips, with black sprinkles for eyes -- and witch hat cookies -- knockoff Keebler Fudge Stripes, turned upside down, with Hershey Kisses secured to them with a line of orange icing. Kids loved them. RIGHT: Frozen party-size macaroni and cheese. I only got one of these, on a whim, and when it came down from the oven it disappeared in record time. WRONG: The mummy dogs -- hot dogs wrapped in strips of refrigerated crescent roll dough -- didn't look like mummies at all. WRONG: Also baking the first batch of mummy dogs on top of waxed paper was a bad idea since the paper melted and stuck to the dogs. (This was an accident, not something I did on purpose.) RIGHT: Despite the mummy dogs' disappointing appearance, they were gobbled up -- waxed paper and all. WRONG: Eyeball sandwiches -- two meatballs on a dinner roll, with sliced olives attached to look like the pupils of the eyeballs -- were a pain to assemble, and didn't really get eaten. WRONG: "Pin the heart on the skeleton" game wasn't really fair since I attached to the wall a poseable cardboard skeleton and thus the blindfolded kids just had to quickly feel him up to locate where his heart should go. Only the two youngest kids missed by placing their hearts on the elbow and in the pelvis. WRONG and RIGHT: Bobbing for donuts -- donuts tied with twine to the bottom of the ceiling light fixture -- was messy and wasteful. I ran this in three heats of four each, and the kids had to hold their hands behind their backs and try to be the first to finish eating their donuts without them falling onto the floor. The powdered donuts made a huge mess on faces and the carpet, and most kids' donuts fell onto the floor only half eaten. However, not surprisingly, this game was a huge hit. RIGHT: Black punch in a plastic cauldron I got at Walmart hours before the party. The punch was two packages of Koolaid (two different colors that would be dark and muddy when mixed together) with the appropriate amount of sugar and water, plus two liters of ginger ale. Tasty. WRONG: The ice hands floating in the punch did not work well. I froze water in rinsed plastic gloves, and it should have been great, but the fingers kept falling off (one of my floating hands was doing the sign of the devil) and the plastic was difficult to remove. I found a couple small pieces of plastic floating in the punch. I think using a different kind of glove would have worked better. RIGHT: The three fog machines excited the kids and would have been very cool if we could have kept them running on their intermittent timers, but... WRONG: The fog set off my smoke alarm twice, which is wired into the alarm system at the house and so the potential for the fire department showing up was high. So we had to set the fog machines on manual and an adult had to go flick them on from time to time. WRONG and RIGHT: I forgot to set out the Goldfish crackers and the cheese cubes and crackers that I had gotten. However we had so freaking much food left over, it was just as well. RIGHT and WRONG: We made these adorable Tootsie Pop spiders to be party favors. Then I forgot them in a box in my room until after all the kids had gone home.
Tootsie Pop spiders
Ghost cookies
Witch hat cookies
Cupcakes decorated by the birthday girls
Me and my daughter's "BFF"
The "haunted hallway". Fog came out of the skull's mouth.
Woohoo, the temperatures have been in the 60s and the 70s all month, which was great because I was planning a bunch of outdoor activities for the girls' birthday/Halloween party tomorrow night. Well guess what? Tomorrow, temperatures are not even supposed to reach 50 degrees. There is a 100% chance of rain during the day. At night, temperatures will dip into the 30s, and there is a 70% chance of SNOW. Dammit!!!
I am not sure now what I am going to do with nearly 20 kids stuck in my house.
I have a "haunted hallway" getting set up with black lights and fog machines. I have glow-in-the-dark bugs to put all over, and I found this cool idea online and did it -- printed out antique-looking photos and touched them up with a yellow highlighter to look creepier under the black light. For future reference, the best photos were the ones that had a lot of white space on them to begin with, as that glows better and the yellow highlighter shows up extremely well. The darker photos make it harder to see my embellishments. The best photo of all was this one --
it printed out pretty creepy-looking on its own. I colored in the guy's eyes with the highlighter and he is impressive.
I have a bunch of food I have to make tomorrow, mostly ideas I collected on Pinterest -- Nutter Butter ghosts, decorated cupcakes and brownies, witch hat cookies, mummy hot dogs, eyeball (meatball) sandwiches, and a veggie tray with dip that is coming out of a sick-looking jack o'lantern's mouth. Hehehe. Oh and a black punch with a floating ice hand in it. Can't wait to see how that turns out!
I was going to play pin-the-heart-on-the-skeleton outside, as well as have a balloon stomp (balloons tied with a length of yarn to the kids' feet -- the object is to stomp on other people's balloons while protecting your own), a balloon-ghost popping relay race, and a treat hunt through the yard. Those ideas are all way up in the air now. I don't have a room large enough for 20 kids stomping on balloons, or a room long enough for a relay race. Maybe I can still pull off the skeleton. More likely the kids will just run wild through the house. Or worse, sit around bored!
October... It's my absolute favorite time of year. Colors, warmth and chill, orange sunshine, the smell of wet earth and leaves.
On Saturday, after showering and dressing, I stood out on the back porch and let the sun and the wind dry my hair. Being as that I live in the middle of the city, I'm sure there were traffic noises and train whistles, but I didn't hear any of that. I heard birds, and I heard the wind in the trees, and I remembered other October days when I thought to myself, "This is my absolute favorite time of year."
It was one of those quiet wistful moments in time that you feel like you might remember forever, but you know it'll more likely be forgotten in a matter of days. If you're lucky, though, the elusive feeling will return to you in another time and place.
This was the song playing through my head on Saturday, and it captures that wistful, warm feeling of October sun and childhood memories. Gosh, I love this band.
Work continues on the girls' Halloween costumes. My time frame has been cut short by the fact that they want to wear these costumes to a party at Thea's old school, this weekend. So I have two whole less weeks than originally thought.At the moment Faith's is closest to being done, followed by Holly's. Thea's costume... I don't know what I'll do about it.
But at least tonight we finished up the invitations to their Halloween/birthday party. The girls did most of the work themselves -- Thea made the ribbon bats, while Faith cut all the paper and glued it together. I had to come along behind them and re-glue the eyes on the bats and the bats to the invitations, since the "Tacky Glue" that Thea had used was failing to hold very well. I ended up using hot glue. They turned out pretty cute!
Have you ever noticed that when you visit your Gmail spam folder, the Google-generated ads that appear at the top of the screen usually involve recipes using Spam? Is Google just trying to be funny? Because they're supposed to know all about me, and that makes me think their algorithms are crap. I already know that Facebook doesn't really know me.
Faith's and Holly's Halloween costumes will be done soon and I'll post pictures.
Check out this flashback. Seven years ago this weekend, a friend and I took our girls camping. Thea was 5, Faith was 3, and Paige, my friend's daughter, was 4. It was a very cold and rainy weekend, and would have been miserable except for the fact that we allowed ourselves to gripe and laugh about the situation and in turn be more patient with the unhappy kids. In particular I remember that we said "oh well" and let the girls play on a drenched playground in the rain, not worrying about the fact that they were getting soaked.
Anyway, we visited that same park this past weekend, and took a picture of the same three girls along a trail. Now ages 12, 10 and 11, my how they have changed!
We had no landline phone service for two days, and no one would have noticed except that the alarm system control panel started beeping because it recognized it had no connection to the alarm company. The problem was somewhere between the main road and the telephone pole across the street from my house, meaning it was NOT MY FAULT and I didn't have to pay Verizon to fix it. HA. Actually now my phone line sounds better than it has in years. It was so staticky that you couldn't really talk to anyone. Maybe now I'll actually answer the phone when someone calls. Yeah.... probably not.
It was chilly in the house today so I turned on the heat, mainly just as a test to make sure it was going to come on when I REALLY needed it. The boiler lit right up. I am glad.
Neighbor News
Apparently one of the neighbor ladies has a live-in boyfriend. Well, HAD, because tonight Dan heard her yelling at him and telling him he had to move out. What? I never saw this guy before this weekend. How long did he live there, 24 hours?
Halloween Costumes Update
My friend Carrie went shopping with me this weekend and we knocked out most of Faith's costume. We have a few pieces of Thea's costume, although she is much more difficult because she is trying to exactly match a picture of a costume she found on the internet. We have zero pieces of Holly's costume.
This pleasant exchange took place at dinner: Holly: There are bad people in the world. Me: But I'm not a bad person, right? Holly: You're fat. Thea busts out laughing, so Holly looks to her. Holly, to Thea: And you're lazy. Me: And what is Faith? Holly thinks for a minute. Holly: A crybaby. Thea: And what about Dan? Holly: He's a fart machine.
Unfortunately she probably nailed all of us...
Another night we were having tortellini for dinner, and Holly gushed, "I love tortellini! But I hate Tokyo!" It took me a few minutes to realize that the last time we had tortellini for dinner, we also had gnocchi. Not Tokyo.
In honor of National Coffee Day I am having a cup at 8:30 pm. In it I put my new favorite creamer:
International Delight Almond Joy. Yeee-umm!
Going to try to post more regularly in October, practice using my words in anticipation of NaNoWriMo in November. Although I have hardly been writing, I have been reading a lot this year, 31 books so far.
Trying to organize and archive some old pictures I took with my phone, two or three phones ago.
(Did I mention I got a new phone? I moved into the Technology Age in July with a bona fide smart phone, the Samsung Gravity. As hard as I resisted, I have to say, I really love this phone.)
So as I was saying, here are a few pictures I took with previous phones for various reasons:
May 2010 -- label-making fail, at the library of all places
April 2010 -- Holly having some private time
April 2010 -- My Explorer hit a milestone. It lasted almost another year before the transmission went kaput and I had to say goodbye.
If you are disturbed or annoyed by large amounts of pink, don't look at these pictures of Holly's room re-do.
For many months now Holly has been saying she wants a pink room. More often than not she uses it in her arsenal of sleep-avoiding tactics -- "I can't sleep in a room that isn't pink!" Well, when she gets home, she won't have that excuse anymore.
First some before pictures:
^ The wall by the door, her cluttered-up dresser, her bed pushed into the corner.
The wall to the left of the door, with a gross stain on the floor that was hidden by a toy chest we had already moved before taking this picture.
^ Furniture moved to the center of the room, walls primed!
^ The first coat of pink is on and drying.
^ And this is the finished product!
^ I wanted to paint the toy chest white and get some pink cushions for it, but I didn't get around to that. Maybe later.
^ Love this cute pink tree! It is a removable static-cling type wall decoration. It came in about 105 pieces. I'm wondering how long before Holly picks at it and starts peeling it off.
^ Window and radiator. I didn't get new curtains, but I painted the cornice and hung the little wooden "H".
^ Her bed, with Faith's old comforter and her own collection of pillows.
^ And the crowning piece, a 3 ft by 4 ft mirror for her to dance and preen in front of!
^ With rope lighting! How cool is that!
^ Pretty fun nighttime effect. The rope lights are LED so they won't waste a lot of energy.
I think the little girl is going to be pretty excited!!
By the way, Thea, if you read this, don't you dare tell her!
Faith comes home tomorrow from spending five weeks with her dad. I can't wait to see my sweet girl get off the plane. Just under two weeks to go and I will get my other girls back as well!
If you didn't even realize they were gone, it's because I meant to post here about a hundred times and never did. I had lots of other stuff to talk about... my gardening, our new cat, redoing Holly's room, the U2 concert I went to, etc etc. But even though the day-to-day responsibility of three kids was removed, somehow I filled up the time with other stuff and squeezed out time for just goofing off, reading or updating this journal. Not sure how I managed that exactly.
This song is several years old but I have recently rediscovered it. Previously "Wish You Were Here" had been my favorite Incubus song, but I think it has just lost its title, as I can't stop playing and replaying "Dig".
This song is awesome -- all the instruments have strong and interweaving parts (listen for the bass, it's stirring), and Brandon Boyd's emotional vocals elevate it to something really moving. I love the lyrics, which suggest to me a commitment to remember and look for a friend's or lover's true person, underneath the changes and facades that we all go through or take on over time.
"If I turn into another, dig me out from under what is covering the better part of me..."
I don't have a "bucket list" or anything, but one of the things I always wanted to do was see a space shuttle launch in person. From the first launch I watched on TV as a child to the one I just watched a few minutes ago (Endeavour), I have been excited and moved by the power and the spectacle of lift-off every time.
I guess I never considered that one day the shuttles would be retired, or maybe I didn't realize that so much time had actually passed. With the last shuttle launch taking place next month, turns out I'll never get to cross that item off my mental to-do list.
I'm not crying about it or anything, but just now I found myself thinking about what this means. There are plenty of other things that I intend to get around to doing someday -- some long-term goals, but also things that I could easily do today that I just put off -- and for each of these things there will come a day when it's too late. It will sneak up on me, just like the final space shuttle launch did, whether it takes a day or two weeks or (unbelievable!) 30 years.
