homesick

Tony's been up to the Pacific Northwest lately, taking pictures and writing about the quirky little stores and ocean views and the rain and all the nothing for miles - no people, just trees and sky and road. I shoulda told him to go up and check out those little buildings that guy made out of rocks, the world (not to scale) in miniature. Eaglemount Rockeries, that's it. Maybe a bit out of his way, though.

I was there on my birthday, the day before Mom died. Baby Evan and Heather and her mom Shanghaied me and we went to a pumpkin patch and had ice cream at the little ice cream shop in a defunct train - the only time I've ever seen that place open. And then we stopped at Eaglemount and took some pictures, and then they dropped me at Mom's house. A few hours later, she was delirious, and ten hours after that, she was dead.

This wasn't supposed to be another post about my Mom. It was supposed to be about how, reading the busblog, looking at Tony's pictures, I can smell the rain in the evergreens and feel the damp air on my skin and the hum of the car wheels on the wet road. Tony'll be back home in southern California soon, and I'll be glad, because it's wonderful to read his words and see the pictures and know he's as enchanted by it as I am, but it also makes me homesick.

It's been beautiful here, too. The snow is pretty and it hasn't been too cold and the sky was even blue yesterday. But the weatherdudes say some bad stuff is coming tonight. Also coming tonight is Nigel - his flight gets in at 7:30 and I hope the storm doesn't delay his flight or muck up the roads so it takes forever to get him back to the house.

This is the last day of 2005, isn't it? I sure had some hopes for this year. I sure hope next year is better.

whatever that means...

Well, looks like I've made it through my first Christmas since Mom died. I'm not sure what Making It Through something actually entails, now that you mention it, but. Here I am on the other side of it, more or less intact. As alive, as sane, as whatever-I-am, as I was before.

I haven't wanted to write about her, about what happened, about how I feel now, because I can't seem to articulate it. I haven't talked about it either. But even though I haven't put it into words, I'm still thinking about her.

Every day.

Every minute.

surfacing

Haven't written in seems-like-forever, and it's not because blogging is like work and I'm on vacation, oh, no. It's because blogging is like fun and I'm at work. The kids can: entertain himself with his new swag (Firstborn) or hang out at the Oompas' for three days because he has to be home this weekend when Nigel comes (Secondborn) and Da Husband has to write Da Book so I have a quiet house to work in and my whole brain has been poured into works like this:
CREATE TRIGGER DelAuthor ON authors
FOR DELETE
AS
IF EXISTS
(SELECT 'true'
FROM Deleted d
JOIN titleauthor ta
ON d.au_id = ta.au_id
)
BEGIN
RAISERROR('Author still has titles in the database. Delete failed.',16,1)
ROLLBACK TRAN
END
So much talent. Tragically wasted. After all this struggle, someone dang well better give me a job.

And now, more homework. Gah.

hackety-hack

I don't know, I keep feeling there should be an easier way to hack this template. Meh. I'm probably just lazy.

Oh, and Merry Christmas all.

I just don't know how she does it!

How does the busy housework-addled, supportive wife-type WAHM, StAHM, (slahm, bahm, thankya mahm) get everything done? Let's listen in:

Adorable Moppet: Mama, will you read me a story?
Highly Efficient Mother: Certainly, dearest. Shall we read Managing and Using MySQL, or JavaScript for the World Wide Web?
AM: No, I want I Was So Mad.
HEM: Perhaps I should book your therapist now.

But seriously, I've been reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to Firstborn, one chapter a day, and today we reached the delightful chapter 8, which is almost a whole page long! I was pleased, but he felt a bit cheated. I told him he had to go to bed now anyway because I still have presents to wrap, and he made a grouchy face, grasped the door handle, said "Slam!" and then closed it carefully and quietly.

This is a new thing. I like this new thing.

Yuletide crabbitude

My lungs hurt when I breathe in. That's a good sign, right?

I got all the Christmas shopping done today. The boys are giving their grandmother one hell-ass ugly candle, but hey, that's what she gets for already owning everything in the universe, isn't it? They got their grandpa a ham, for pretty much the same reason. In fact, I bought both items by myself and wrapped them, so the kids will see them for the very first time on Saturday when they're opened. They have been instructed to try not to look too surprised. Shortcuts at Christmas? Yes, I am overworked and overwhelmed, and not getting enough sympathy for the fact that my mother died, so I am Queen Badass.

Incidentally, one of the many tragic side-effects of that is that I no longer have my favorite emotional blackmail line - for the past year I've been telling my husband, "My mother has cancer, so you have to be nice to me!" No, I am not sorry I said it, it was funny. There are a lot of things I regret about the last year of her life, but being able to find a joke somewhere in all that mess is certainly not one of them. Cass'll back me up on that, though he'd probably say as jokes go, that one is pretty pathetic.

However. I am still only 2/3 through my database administration certificate thing, and I went and signed up for another course (yes I know what you're thinking, but there is an explanation. Perhaps one day I will supply it.) and my book (yet another JavaScript book - can't you people just pick one text for all your classes? The CSS people do.) came today but I haven't enrolled yet and I have one or two more things to do for the webmaster job and of course the other job isn't going anywhere so there goes my Friday. Oh poop, and I haven't even made the lemon cookies yet! Clearly, I already have enough going on, so this year Christmas can pretty much bite me.

Oh, and Firstborn? Had an English test today and forgot to turn it in. Automatic F. A native English-speaker in a German high school, in a class full of kids taking only their third year of English instruction. The Husband and I were assuming that here was at least one class where he couldn't tank.

Apparently we underestimated him.

I've been tagged! This is so cool!

My existence as a blogger, validated by the Goober Queen!

Seven things to do before I die:
1. Live in a city again.
2. Exercise regularly.
3. Work for a nonprofit outfit.
4. Make the pilgrimage to Santiago.
5. Work for a publisher or bookstore.
6. Get organized.
7. Get (and stay) on top of the housework.

Seven things I can (or will) not do:
1. Take up jogging.
2. Learn to play a musical instrument.
3. Skydive.
4. Give up coffee.
5. Stop fidgeting.
6. Get over myself.
7. Be consistent.

Seven things that attract me to my spouse:
1. His smell.
2. His shoulders.
3. His muscles.
4. His faith in me.
5. His sense of humor.
6. His hands.
7. His...um, no, sorry, that would be TMI.

Seven things I say most often:
1. You should be nicer to me.
2. Bummer.
3. This is my skeptical face.
4. You're so cute.
5. I dunno, you decide.
6. *SIGH*, Boys! (or Germans!)
7. Because I'm a bad mother, that's why.

Seven books (or series) I love:
1. The Narnia books
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. The Amelia Peabody series
4. Lost Horizon
5. Jasper Fforde's Tuesday Next series
6. Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
7. The Miles Vorkosigan series

Seven movies I watch over and over again:
1. The Princess Bride
2. Muppet Treasure Island
3. The Fifth Element
4. Casablanca
5. Beauty and the Beast
6. Galaxy Quest
7. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Seven people I want to make suffer would love to see play along (yike, do I even know seven people who haven't already done this meme? Probably not...):
1. Kel, who is way overdue for a blog entry anyway.
2. Camellia, who is too.
3. Linda
4. Kimberly Di
5. Firstborn, see #7 on the Things I Say Most Often list.
6. Vicki
7. Jeneane

a cringe to the inevitable

We all go through the same milestones, right? First tooth, first steps, first self-inflicted haircut. Today it was Secondborn's turn. Firstborn, now, he just cut a chunk out of his bangs and scotch-taped it to his upper lip to make a mustache. Nothing too...er, comprehensive, and fairly easy to repair. But Secondborn dreams bigger, I guess.

God, it looks like he used a lawnmower.

He's making that face, by the way, because we were cackling like hyenas and he couldn't decide whether to laugh with us or be offended.

UPDATE: I got out the clippers to "even it out" (i.e., cut it all down to 1/8") after dinner. Unfortunately, the Husband gave him a mirror at the mullet stage and 2b was distraught. He slid off the chair, buried his face in my lap, and howled, "I'll never be cool again." Oh dear.

i know, i know...

I haven't blogged in what, four days, which is like a decade in internet-time. I can't remember what I did during those days, but I was probably busy, since I'm rarely not. And today I have That Headache. You know, the one that feels like my right eye is digging a tunnel through to my left ear? Yeah, that one.

I think it was spawned by my job. Again. This outfit, um, publishes books, sort of, sometimes (this is me being circumspect because I blogged something about half the texts being "crap anyway" some time ago and got in trouble for it, though I did not get dooced, for which I cannot decide whether to be grateful or not. But I digress). Where was I? Oh right, books get published and subsequently reviewed, and if the reviewers are proud residents of the 21st century, the reviews are online somewhere and all I have to do is post a link to them. But come on, this is the Humanities we are talking about, so most of them haven't even caught up with the previous century - boy are they gonna be ticked if they ever find out it's been and gone. Don't worry, they won't find out.

So sometimes I get a ditto-copy of a review, three pages in two columns this last time, and I have to scan it and put it up as a readable image, which is not exactly difficult, but it's tedious, time-consuming, and so bizarrely, counter-intuitively wrong-on-so-many-levels that it gives me That Headache. I mean, I expect a certain amount of tedium from webmastering, there are some things you just have to slog through. But the cognitive dissonance created by scanning and posting three pages of text as an image makes my brain hurt.

And then I write only to complain, so see, you should probably be glad you haven't heard from me in four days!

Oh, but here's a very small story about my neighbor: I bumped into her Saturday, both of us having recently had spats with our husbands and still seething, and I made a joking reference to Strangers on a Train. She didn't get it, so I sketched out the basic plot for her, and she said "Oh, okay. Well then, please don't actually kill my husband, all right? Because I really do want to do it myself."

hahahahaha(um, you're scaring me?)hahahahaha...

And a good time was had by all

Today was the day of dread, Ignatz's birthday party. Wherein we invite seven of his closest little hoodlum friends to hang out with us for an entire day (we would have invited more, but we only had two cars and two drivers, so there was only room for 8 kids altogether), with great trepidation. The weather turned grim last night, so it was all slushy roads and bad visibility and of course I hate driving in the best of circumstances, so I concentrated fiercely, and now I'm so tired I feel like I kept the car on the road through sheer psychic force. Gah.

We took them all to the Burger King at the airport, and they behaved themselves, mostly, and then we hustled them all to the movie theater to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the German title of which translates to "The King of Narnia," further proof, as if we needed it, that Germans Just Don't Get It (you know what the German title of Little Women is? Do you? It translates to "Betty and her Sisters." Seriously. Somebody needs slapping for that.). And there were no crises, no fights, no disappearances, and no car accidents, and everyone seems to have had a good time, miracle of miracles. So that's that survived.

I actually did enjoy the movie, even though I saw it not in its original English, but dubbed into German by actors who talk like typewriters. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was THE book that really hooked me on reading at the age of 9 - it was the first chapter-book I ever read all in one sitting, and my dad let me stay up til 4:30 a.m. on a school night to finish it. So it's very important that I get to enjoy the movie, and that means seeing it in its original language.

The rhinoceros was a nice touch.

Boys rock

In response to the "I have an 11-year-old" post, Kimberlydi says,

Wait until he's 16 going on 17, wearing size 14 shoes, and towers a head taller than you... It just gets better. :)

I am so looking forward to that! I think it's really cool that my boys will be bigger than I am someday. Potentially a lot bigger: my brother-in-law is 6'4". Okay, I'm not looking forward to how smelly boys get, but I can deal with that. My friends who have daughters have fabulous wonderful daughters, but still, I'm really really glad I have sons. Can't wait till they wear the same shoe size as me and I can buy them really nice shoes which then become my shoes three months later. Heh.

Happy Birthday Ignatz!

That's right. As of today, I have an 11-year-old son. Does it ever go away, that sense of astonishment over the fact that you have (more or less) successfully reproduced? My friend Dan, whose kids are 18 and 20, says no, it will be perpetually amazing. But some days you feel it more than others.

Eleven. Wow. Happy birthday, kid.

just to clarify...

In response to my last post, about ambivalence and Texas, my brother emailed: "There are good people in good quantities just about everywhere." Which is absolutely true, and I'm not ambivalent about the people there. Mainly I was thinking about how West Texas is sort of in the desert-y bit of the USA, and I come from the more rain-foresty bit, and I can get a whopper of a sunburn in about ten minutes. Also, I read in "The Bean Trees" about how you need to drink a lot of water in the desert or you'll die or something, and I've posted before about how much I hate water.

On the other hand, I would have regular access to Mexican food. Okay, that settles it. I'll start packing.

an entry from my personal dictionary

ambivalent, adj.

1. Robert had a job interview today with a school in Lubbock, TX
2. It didn't go well. They probably won't offer him the job.
   

Lemon Stars-n-Moons

(makes oh, 2 dozen I guess)

1/2c. room-temperature butter
1/3c. + 2T. sugar
1 egg
1/2t. light corn syrup
1t. lemon extract
1t. grated lemon rind
1 3/4c. all-purpose flour
1/8t. salt
-----
for the glaze:
powdered sugar
lemon juice
yellow sugar crystals

Beat butter and sugar together until fluffy. Beat in egg, corn syrup, lemon extract and lemon rind. Gradually beat in flour and salt. Divide dough into two parts and refrigerate at least an hour. Set out at room temperature to soften before rolling it out to 1/4-inch thick between two sheets of waxed paper. Cut out moons and stars. Bake oh, 12 minutes, or until very lightly browned just on the edges. Cool 5 minutes on baking sheet, then transfer to wire racks and let them cool thoroughly, or the glaze will be too slimy. Oh right, the glaze: Mix the powdered sugar and lemon juice, ice the cookies and dip the edges in the yellow sugar crystals.

Christmas Crinkles

(makes about 3 dozen)
1c. sugar
1/4c. vegetable oil
1t. vanilla
2oz. unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled
2 eggs
1c. all-purpose flour
1t. baking powder
1/4t. salt
(1/2t. peppermint extract)
1/2c. powdered sugar

Mix sugar, oil, vanilla and chocolate (and mint extract, if you're using it) in large bowl. Mix in eggs, one at a time. Stir in flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover and chill at least 3 hours. Grease cookie sheet and heat oven to 175C/350F. Drop balls of dough (those little trigger-action scoopers are great for this, if you can find the 1-inch size) into the powdered sugar and roll 'em around a bit. Place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Bake 10 or 12 minutes for 1-inch cookies, probably more if they're bigger. Cool on wire rack.

Mmmm, cookies...

Speaking of holiday traditions for the catastrophically disorganized...

What that means is that even though I have lots and lots of holiday traditions, I observe them extreeeeemely patchily, and this year so far I've only managed the Advent calendars and the "wreath" with candles (this year's wreath is a bowl of water with floaty-candles in it: for the last three years it was a real (well, fake, but very wreathy) wreath with silver candles, which we hung from the ceiling to keep it away from Son2, but I think he's finally old enough that we can stop that). If you judge by the "annual" ornament tradition, Son1 is about 6, and Son2 is probably 3 or so (IRL, they are about-to-turn-11 and just-turned-5, respectively). Candy canes for the tree? Uh, not yet. A tree? Er, still arguing about that one. The Nativity scene is Playmobil, and I think it got mixed in with the other stuff. I'm fairly sure I saw a pot of frankincense in the luggage compartment of Son2's airplane.

But I'll be doing cookies this year, by cracky! Two years ago I did Total Cookie Warfare, I must have made 10 or 12 different kinds. Gave them to everyone we know, and still had lots leftover. Last year I was about halfway through the Whole Thing (you prep them in advance, and then freeze them, it's the only way a person with a job can make 12 different kinds of cookies and still have at least a few of each kind around when Christmas arrives) when that pediatrician told us we should try to cut sugar completely out of Firstborn's diet. And there's me with a freezer full of cookie dough. Gack.

So anyway! Cookies this year! Because we decided the pediatrician was a crazy man! But I don't want to make myself crazy (okay, okay, crazier) this time, so this year there will only be four kinds, two of which are recipe-ed here. If you try 'em, let me know what you think.

Diva, thwarted

So as I was saying, in three weeks my contract expires and I won't be renewing at the JOB. That's right, I'm quitting, though in a no-hard-feelings kind of way. Even so, I must admit that in the darkest corner of my evil little soul, I want them to miss me. I want them to tear their hair out and cry "Why, oh why did we ever let her go!" Unfortunately, their publications maven is also leaving, at the same time I do, and an urgent email has already gone around, to the tune of "OMG K is leaving, does anybody know anyone who might be persuaded to take her job, OMG we are so screwed." That's right, my thunder has been thoroughly stolen. Dang.

Of course, a large part of the story is that they all understand what she does, and they don't understand what I actually do there (okay, two of them do, but one of them is my husband, so he doesn't count). So they have no idea how easy or difficult it will be to replace me. My dread secret? I have restructured the whole site so that a reasonably intelligent chimpanzee could run it. So it actually wouldn't be that hard. Hm. May have shot myself in the foot there.

Which means that if I were to go bounding into the office, say, next June, and say "Didja miss me?" (which I won't), they'll be like, "Um, why, did you go somewhere?"

That's okay (grr, is not, grumble grumble). My inner diva probably shouldn't be fed anyway.

bit late to be asking this question, but...

Your Career Type: Social

You are helpful, friendly, and trustworthy. (harf, harf, harf) Your talents lie in teaching, nursing, giving information, and solving social problems. You would make an excellent: Counselor - Dental Hygienist - Librarian Nurse - Parole Officer - Personal Trainer Physical Therapist - Social Worker - Teacher The worst career options for your are realistic careers, like truck driver or farmer. (That's right. No realism for me, thanks.)

What's Your Ideal Career?

circadian hell

Is there any logical explanation for this? I spent nearly the whole day studying (database backup and recovery) and worrying (der Husband is pushing himself perilously close to mental breakdown just in time for the holidays, and frankly, I don't have enough reserves to cope with that right now), and by 5:30 I was so tired I thought my eyes would fall out. But I'm a mother, and I have to stay up long enough to get the kids (well, kid, since Son2 is with the grandparents tonight) fed and watered and put to bed, so I stare miserably at the clock and cling desperately to consciousness - just survive till 8:00 and then I can collapse. And what happens? It's 7:30 now, and foink! I'm wide awake.

This makes no sense.