Timing is Everything

I keep a lot of notes in my calendar that repeat every year.  I've coordinated our family celebrations through so many holidays now that I have a system that works.  This year, everything is conspiring to defeat my system.

Take the amaryllis pictured above.  See how it's sitting in a turkey basket?  It's supposed to only be a few inches high.  I got the memo in mid-October to put in my amaryllis bulb order.  If I start them the third week of October, they always bloom just before Christmas.  I decided to just buy a bulb locally this year and look what happened.  It's in glorious full bloom already.  The blooms last a long time, but it wont last until Christmas.  Looks like I should have stuck with my original plan.

I spent a while putting together my Thanksgiving shopping list.  I planned to go early on Sunday morning and pick out most of my groceries before the crowds hit.  I took Wasabi Girl along nice and early - and the store was so crowded we had to hunt through the parking lot just to find a cart.  Who are these people?  They were supposed to sleep in while I browsed the aisles.  Note to self: Go in the middle of the night next year.

I even time out my cooking schedule so my Thanksgiving meal all gets to the table at the same time and everything is hot.  This year Jungle Boy will be working his job at the movie theater in the evening so we'll have to move dinner up to 2:30 in the afternoon.  This throws me a little.  But it will all be for the best in the evening when I can put my feet up and eat leftovers.  Makes for a different but still fun day.

Christmas trees are showing up in tree lots around town already.  I think it's pretty optimistic to expect them to last through Christmas.  How early do you get your tree?  Seeing all the green lots really puts me in the Christmas spirit.  Good luck to all those people who buy them this week!

Finally, a number of household products have all decided to run out at once.  My soap ran out in the bathroom - so I had to open up my Christmas-scented soap.  My "Autumn" room fragrance ran out in my bathroom  - so I had to pop in the Christmas one.  The car scent also ran out - guess what I replaced it with?  And last but not least, I had to use my gravy baster to help clear water out of a drain, and it finally developed a crack in the rubber and became useless.  Good timing though, I would hate to find that out on Thursday when I'm trying to cook the turkey.

So forces are conspiring to tell me that the Christmas season is upon us this week.  Can't really fight it any longer.  I'm ready!

I Caught It.

I was thinking I was rather smart to have avoided the nasty bug that was causing havoc at our house. The super germ that made grown men take to bed and teenagers use up tissues like there was no tomorrow.

I kept everything clean. I switched out toothbrushes to help save the uninfected. I washed and washed and washed my hands to try to avoid catching it myself.

Then it hit me. On Friday. Like a ton of bricks. How could this have happened? I counted the hours until I could take my next dose of cold medicine.  I could barely move.  It was awful.

So today, finally feeling better, I got back to my morning routine of a little workout with the wii to wake up and get my blood moving.  And it all became clear.

Workouts for me + games for them = lovely lovely place to share all the germs in the house.  Blech.  Somebody hand me the disinfecting wipes.  Even though it's too late.

Maybe someone out there can learn from my mistake and go clean off their remotes.

Finished for Friday: Nine bags full

This week is another finish in the "massive cleaning" department.  Since Jungle Boy is off to study ballet for a month at ABT, I took advantage of his absence to go through his room and clean it out.

His room didn't look bad to begin with, but once I got in there it turned into a much bigger job than I anticipated.  Stuff under the bed, stuff stuffed in drawers, stuff everywhere.  I started out with an empty bag for trash and an empty bag for items to donate.

It isn't hard to fill a donation bag when you have a kid who's grown about six inches in six months. His voice has changed now, and his tastes and sensibilities have done a lot of growing as well.  The Hungry Hungry Hippos game in the closet had to go, along with Candyland and a stack of other games that had been forgotten in there for years.  All the shirts that only skim his midriff went into bags, and all of those half-finished lego models that were missing the rest of the pieces.

The closet was like an archeological dig.  The hobby horses and jigsaw puzzles (60 pieces!) and long-sleeve shirts that now only go past his elbows all went into bags.  The more I pulled out, the more things seemed to multiply.

Then I found ballet tights.  Then another pair, and another.  Men's tights are almost like pants - thick and sturdy and about $24 each.  Oh look, another pair - had they been multiplying in the back of a dark drawer?  After I pulled out six pairs I jumped in the car and sent them to him UPS.  He told me later on the phone he doesn't think he needs them but I'd rather he have too many pairs than too few.  I was a little annoyed that he didn't check his drawers carefully enough when he was packing.  Boys!

In the end, I had six bags of items for the thrift store and three bags to go out with the garbage.  I spared some things he needs to sort through himself.  I bought a new mattress pad and pillow and did everything I could to freshen up the place.

Many hours and sore back and hip later, the room doesn't look very different, but it's better equipped for my big teenager.  If I did my job right, he probably wont even notice.

What have you been up to this week?  Link up so I can visit and congratulate you.  Feel free to grab the button from my sidebar.

iTunes Problems

I have a fair-sized collection of music on my ipod. A little of everything, but a lot of Classical music. Ipods are great for everything except Classical music.

If I want to hear David Bowie, I can search by artist. If I want to listen to a jazz album, I'll search by album. But how do I usually want to search for classical music? By composer. Go look at the composer category on your ipod. It's a mess of names you wont recognize. I had about 900 composers on there.

Still, being patient, I would scroll through (not really so hard to twirl that dial around). But say I wanted to hear an afternoon of Chopin. Here were my choices:

• Frederick Chopin
• Fridirik Chopin
• Chopin, F.
• Chopin, Fryderyk
  

You get the idea. Total mess. So being the obsessive-compulsive type that I am, I've now spent hours standardizing all my Classical composers. Then I went through all my rock, pop, jazz, soundtracks - and deleted each and every composer so they wouldn't show up on the list. Actually I pasted them into the comment section of each track. I'm still not done, but now my ipod is usuable.

And now if I want to listen to Chopin, I can select him and sit back - for 9.3 hours. Or Mozart for 18.5 hours, or Beethoven for 1.4 days.

Have you tweaked your iTunes to work better for you? I'd love to hear how.

Goldilocks Syndrome

How's your pillow?

I found myself in a store yet again yesterday seeking out the perfect pillow. My expensive down pillow at home had finally died. I was in the habit of spending long minutes before I got into bed shaking and plumping that thing, only to rest my head and have it turn into a brick in the middle of the night. I would even try to fluff it while half asleep. No go.

But I'm not great when faced with a million choices in the store. The toothpaste aisle makes me break into a cold sweat until I find the Crest. Why are there so many kinds of toothpaste?

So it was probably a bad idea to go to a store with a million kinds of pillows. How are we supposed to figure out what we want? I wanted to put each one on the floor and test it with my head but I settled for hugging them. Every one was different. Hug Hug Hug. Soft enough? Too soft? Who can tell? What if I pick the wrong one?? I settled on one that seemed perfect.

I woke up at 4:00 this morning and my neck hurts. Back to the drawing board.

Quilts, Crabs and Kettle.

I'm spoiled. I'll be the first to admit it. When we remodeled the kitchen about four years ago, my wonderful indulgent husband gave the green light for all kinds of luxuries, including one of my absolute favorites, a hot water spigot.

By hot, I mean boiling. Just touch the knob and it dispenses water hot enough to make perfect tea. The kids used it all the time to make hot chocolate and hot apple cider. It was one of my favorite little touches in the kitchen.

Until the day I pressed the little handle, and only got cold water.

The plumber came out and shook his head. "The heating unit's burned out, you'll have to get a new one." At that point I found out just how much we originally paid for this lovely little convenience. Yikes. I can't justify paying that right now to get a new one.

"I've been to this house before. I remember all the great quilts." His kind words completely turned my mood around.

The plumber continued to chit chat as he filled out an estimate for the work that would need to be done. "Oh I see you have a pot-filler! Those are great!"

It's not often someone admires my pot-filler. It takes a keen eye to appreciate both quilts and high-end plumbing fixtures. "Yes, it's great for big pots of pasta, or cooking crab" I said.

"Oh crab leaves a real smell in the house," he said, as he tore off my copy of the estimate and started heading for the front door. "The best way to cook them is to clean them while they're alive - just tear off the back, remove the lungs and organs, put in a bunch of butter and garlic, wrap them in foil and put them outside on the barbecue."

My brief enjoyment of our encounter came to a screeching halt. I'm all for throwing a live crab into boiling water to let it die a quick death, but this method made my stomach churn a little.

So now I am without tea until I go buy a kettle, and I have a very disturbing image of disemboweled crabs in my mind.

That's enough home repairs for this week.

A Few Technical Difficulties

I'm sorry I haven't checked in over the last few days. My laptop turned up its toes and refused to turn on. Because I'm so smart stubborn, after many long days I seem to have it working at last. Yeah! Please learn from me and keep your data backed up. And keep those system recovery disks somewhere where you can find them.

I promise to be back on Friday for Finished for Friday. Hope you can join me!

The Perils of Laundry

I confess we are one of those families that does not park their cars in the garage. Sure, we used to, years ago, but like many Americans with kids, our posessions have somehow overtaken our "extra" space. I hate it, and wish we could park indoors, but having the garage as an extension of our living space gives me a dedicated corner for my sewing, and a place for the kids to keep their computer. My husband has his office area in the garage too, and it's worked out fairly well. Just take a left at the Christmas decor and past the laundry hampers and you'll find his space.

Sundays tend to be my sewing days. I throw in load after load of laundry and settle in with my sewing machine for some quality therapy time. Yesterday was no different. Head down, thoughts in my quilt, I hardly noticed what was going on around me.

Then my daydreams surfaced a bit and my mind started to reflect. "Gee. The water splashing into the big sink from the washer sounds just like a fountain, doesn't it?" I finished the seam. More splashing. The mind interrupted the sewing again. "Gee. I've never actually heard that fountain noise before, have I?"

I looked up, and there it was. A waterfall of water gushing over the rim of the sink. Splash!!

I can't move very fast since my surgery, so I did the most logical thing. Yelled for my husband. Luckily, he was just around the corner from the camping equipment, somewhere near the Christmas lights. "It's OVERFLOWING!!"

It's amazing how slow and helpless you feel when you see your garage being doused with gallons of water. It's amazing how quickly you can grab even "the good towels" to try to stop the creeping wave from advancing. It's gratifying to know that when you call for the kids to come right now, they will show up and form a chain to quickly pass boxes and items from the danger zone to dry ground. Bless them, they were a huge help. Even more astounding? when you post about it on facebook and your neighbor happens to read it and calls to ask if you'd like to use her washer and dryer. My husband was quite impressed with the power of social networking.

No huge harm done (although I'm not sure those are good towels any more). Looks like my Monday will be spent waiting on a plumber.

I think I'm going to need an extra day of quilt therapy this week.

Finished for Friday: Gotta Love a Man in Uniform

This week Jungle Boy had his first Boy Scout meeting. Even though he'd only been a scout for a few days, I wanted to convert his Webelos uniform shirt to his new and improved Boy Scout shirt. Because I'm a cool mom like that.

When last I had an adventure in ScoutPatchLand, I used the easy to apply gummy adhesive stuff. "Just stick it on!" they said at the Scout store. "Works great!" Sure did! All those Cub Scout patches went on easy-peasy.

Taking them off however, was another matter. First I pulled the patches off. This left big gummy splotches of blech behind. I tried all kinds of stuff to get it off. Hours to go until his meeting and I was staring at a ruined shirt. I grabbed the car keys to get him a new shirt at the Scout store because you know, cool mom.

The kind elderly gentleman at the scout store tried to talk me down. He told me I wasn't supposed to pull off the patches and assured me that if I used "Goof Off" the blech would come right off. I buzzed back home and grabbed my trusty bottle. After another 40 minutes I had a shirt with plenty of blech left that smelled like lemony Goof Off. Jungle boy didn't get to wear his shirt to the meeting that night. My cool mom level took a dive.

But the trusty dry cleaner got all the adhesive blech off, and I've sewn all his new patches on. I'm scratching this off my to-do list now. *Phew*

What have you finished up this week? Add a link below and grab a button from my sidebar if you'd like to play along. Thanks for joining in!

Newspapers Beware!

If you are unwanted and unsubscribed-to but thrown on my driveway anyway, you will be left where you fall. I can't bend over, the husband doesn't seem to have time while he rushes to his car, and the kids never see things like newspapers on the ground.

So you will be left out, cold and alone, and then it will rain. And then, adding insult to injury, I will drive over you until you are a mass of pulp and a warning to all other unsuspecting newspapers.

You have been warned.

Do As I Say

"Be careful with the cat food! Don't spill the cat food! Careful! Watch it with the cat food!"

So of course, after they've heard me say this over and over, who spilled the cat food? Me. At least the kids were kind enough to sweep it up for me.


"Quit banging the plates! Put them away carefully please! Gentle! Watch the plates!"


Yup. Me again. It slipped out of my soapy hands. Maybe I need someone to warn me about these things all the time.

Remember that plant?

Remember that big plant in the living room behind the chair?

Neither did I.

I refuse to follow instructions

Dear people at GK gymnastics wear,

Thank you for attaching care instructions to the garment I purchased for Wasabi Girl today. I'm sure they took some effort to compose, and you attached no fewer than two copies, so you must be pretty serious about them.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to comply, because my life is already a little too busy, and I can't organize even one more routine.

Let's review what you would like me to do;

DO NOT HAND WASH

All caps, separate paragraph. You really don't want me to hand wash this, do you? Just what damage do you think I'm going to do with my bare hands and a little woolite?

Turn garment inside out. Machine wash individually in a large volume of cold water on gentle cycle. Must use a very mild *liquid* detergent. We strongly recommend using Ivory Snow *liquid* detergent.

The inside out part shouldn't be a problem, since most of my children deliver most of their clothes to the wash inside out. Washing individually in a large volume of cold water though, seems a tad impractical, no? Does this garment need to swim free to get really clean? I do so many loads of laundry, I really cannot fit in another two loads during the week to wash this twice for Wasabi Girl's class. So sorry. And it gets Tide liquid. That will just have to be close enough.

DO NOT use bleach, harsh or granular detergents or liquid fabric softener.

Again with the capital letters. Did you know that's considered shouting? And if a load seems skanky, it's getting a shovel full of oxy-clean. Great grainy wonderful stuff.

DO remove immediately from washer and tumble dry on low or no heat setting.

Whoa. Sorry again. I have to drive around a lot, like to that gymnastics place, ballet school, piano lessons - you get my drift. I throw a load in and put it in the dryer when I have time when I get back. I really can't just sit there waiting for a load to finish.

Do Not hang or lay flat to dry and DO NOT use dryer sheets.

Or what? Are you going to come check on me? I'm thinking at this point I may lay it flat to dry just to spite you. And dryer sheets? My best friend, next to the oxy-clean.

I guess I'm just going to have to be a rebel.

You see Jungle Boy was on the gymnastics team for a few years and I was more than a little haphazard when I washed his garments. They never faded, or pilled, or curled, or did anything awful. On the day he outgrew each piece it was as bright and perfect as the day he got it.

So I'm just going to throw all caution to the wind, because this garment? It's underwear. If it really gets trashed after I wash it a bajillion times the wrong way, I will buy her a brand new pair.

But I'll never say you didn't warn me.

Guest Post: Ashleigh

Hello. I am Ashleigh and I am in charge. Not just because my slaves are away. I'm in charge all the time. I'm a 17 year old British Shorthair, with something called "papers." I believe they give me all the authority I need. I've seen a lot of things around this house, and I have a few things to say.

1. Nobody listens to me. I can't help it if I don't really have much of a voice. Here I am telling the world that it's time to feed me, and nobody is listening. Because no sound is coming out.


2. I have a sister named Nina. She's shy. So nobody ever sees her except woman-slave. People think I'm the only cat in the house. Not true, here she is. Man-slave didn't want two cats, but woman-slave talked him into it. We adore her for that.

3) I'm not lazy, just a little motivationally challenged. But that is no reason to use me as a pillow. The kids do this all the time. I'm too tired to care.


4) I've met Santa. Because I know where to wait for him. He's cool.

5) I don't think cats need hats, despite what any books say. I don't think red is my best color either.

6) It's nap time now. Do not disturb.

I'm an Electronics Genius

"Mo-om! The wiimotes don't work!"

"The what?"

"The remotes for the wii. They stopped working!"

"Put in fresh batteries."

"We did. They still don't work! What should we do? Can you fix them?"

"I don't know. Ask your dad when he gets home. He set the whole thing up. Maybe you have to re-sync them or something. Are you sure you put in fresh batteries?"

"Yes mom, it's not like we don't know how to put in batteries! Sheesh!"

***************
Later that evening.

[husband] "Honey, I've tried everything! I've reset the system, re-synced the remotes, unplugged the tv, the wii, restarted it, reinstalled it, and called customer support where I waited on hold for them to tell me they were not available because of the 4th of July holiday. We'll just have to wait and call customer service another time. I've tried everything."

***************
One week later, I finally got around to looking into the whole remote dilemma.

[husband] "Honey, I'm home. Oh wow! You got the wii working! What did you have to do?"

[me] "You'll never believe. I was on the phone with customer service for an hour and a half. I had to take apart the wii to check something inside, then I had to go to Best Buy and get a new sensor strip to put on top of the tv. Then I had to call customer service again and do some more troubleshooting before I figured out that we needed to switch out one of these cables. I had to go to 2 different Radio Shacks to find the right kind of cable, then I had to splice it in because it didn't have the right kind of connection. . ."

[at this point, my husband had his mouth open and stopped rooting around in the refrigerator to listen to my story. He closed the refrigerator door.] "Whaa?"

[Wasabi girl, who can't stand it any longer and is giggling uncontrollably] "DADDY! Mommy's lying! All she did was put in fresh batteries!"


Yep, that's me. Electronics genius. Apparently the only one in the house who knows how to put batteries in a remote control.

Physics 101

centrifugal force

–noun

an outward force on a body rotating about an axis, assumed equal and opposite to the centripetal force and postulated to account for the phenomena seen by an observer in the rotating body.

---

[Origin: 1715–25]

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.


Translation: What happens to a tiger when a little boy spins it around and around while holding on to the tail.

The Honeymoon is over, Wii-Fit

That's it. I'm done.

Wasabi Girl stepped on and clicked on her profile. While she was getting assessed do you know what that Wii Fit said to her?

"Have you heard? Mommy's not getting enough exercise."

Well, we all heard *that* thankyouverymuch wii fit! What a blabbermouth! And here we had just spent some quality time together today! What kind of a jerk are you, talking about me behind my back?! What genius in game design thought up that strategy?

And not only that, you have some definite weirdness to you that I'm just beginning to discover. My son has a virtual personal trainer who is male. At one point, Jungle Boy went to do a yoga move and the female trainer showed up and said "I hope you don't mind, I'm filling in for your regular trainer." Whaaaaat? Was he on a virtual coffee break or something?

My son has learned to override the running game by sprinting whenever he sees a dog. Then the dog becomes his guide and they sprint together, until another dog shows up. But if he runs too fast, my virtual son falls on his face on the screen, which is hilarious to the rest of us but is starting to make him mad.

One time my son was running, and as he passed a bunch of miis running different directions, he tripped me! er, mii! um my mii - oh you know what I mean. What the heck? I don't think it's very nice to have him trip his mom.

So really, I'm just about ready to throw you out the window, wii fit. The only thing that saves you is that you told me today that I'm 33. You sly dog you. Flattery works for me every time. I'll let you hang around a little while more, but you really have to keep your mouth shut and behave when we're not together, ok?

Ever Stab Yourself in the Chest?

It's So Hot

Ophelia broke a string in protest. Poor old girl.

Hospice or Euthanasia?

Dearest,
I've loved you since I was 10 years old. It hasn't always been an easy relationship, and I'm not going to say I was always happy to see you. We've seen the highs and lows of passion and intensity and utter neglect. But through it all, you were always there for me, waiting for me to come around again.

You haven't been strong lately. Not as strong as you used to be, and we both know it. I suspected something was going on for a while now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you can't live forever, or at least longer than me. These things happen, and when the specialist told me the news yesterday I nearly wept. How can such a relationship end like this? Memories have been flooding back over the past hours of all the happy hours we've spent together. Even the not-so-happy hours.

The poor children. They'll recover faster than I will, but will they ever know what a special gift you have been to them? I believe they will look back fondly. We have so many pictures of you with them, I especially love the Christmas cards we sent.

I know you'll forgive me if I find another, and I think for the sake of the children, it's important that I do replace you. I hope it makes you feel better knowing that the work you've begun will be carried on until they grow and leave this house.

But your days are numbered. The specialist tells me you can't hold out much longer. I hope I can find someplace where you will be happy in your last days, but it's not always possible. I'd never want to cause anyone pain.

All pianos die sometime.