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February 8, 2010
Gaaah! I need strategies for when I'm stuck
that are better than stay up very late, avoid
everything, and feel like crap. I'm getting unstuck now. Working
on
the "do just one single thing," and
working up to "just attack the thing that has me stuck." There's
an e-mail response I haven't written that was this month's trigger
(sorry Matt). Still, it's not any kind of excuse at all for a
wholly unproductive week and weekend.
We celebrated A's turning 7 1/2 yesterday at KidZCity. Earlier in the day,
he had characterized two of the girls in his class as "not nice."
I had corrected him to say that perhaps what they said wasn't nice, but
that didn't mean they weren't nice. By the end of the party, I
felt like I owed him an apology for my correction. I think, since
I like their moms so much, that I had graced the daughters with
characteristics that they haven't got (or grown into yet). Yikes
and away. I think, too, that they can be worse in a pack.
Three incidents I saw in particular. Once at the beginning when I
was taking one of the later-arriving girls to find some people to play
with I greeted them and waved and they rushed right on past around us
without acknowledging me or their classmate at all. Second was
after ice-cream when a different girl asked if she could play laser tag
with them. "No." I'm all for assertiveness in girls and the
ability to say no is an important skill, but she was cutting and nearly
mocking with it. Third was watching one of them making fun of
some of the other kids for trying out the "plasma cars," which go by
themselves if you turn the wheel back and forth, and calling them
babies. Oy. Their teasing of another classmate is why A
doesn't want me to pack him any sausage sticks for snack or lunch.
It does seem a bit out of hand.
Which isn't to say that A didn't have a marvelous
time at his party, because he did. I decided to celebrate his
semi-birthday (he decided my calling it a demi-birthday wasn't right
because he spell-checked it when he was writing an e-mail and
demi-birthday was rejected) because late July is an awful time in this
community to celebrate a birthday if you want to do so with
friends. Everyone (or enough of everyone) is gone to their home
countries or traveling. So, we celebrated with family in July,
and with friends at the half year mark. I was going to bake a
birthday cake, either for him or B (whose only cake was one he took in
to school), but C would prefer that I NOT sabotage his diet if I don't
have to. Maybe I'll bake it for B's Haitian Relief Bake Sale on
Thursday since I have the yogurt...
All the major projects are completed at work, so now
I can concentrate on training and knowledge transfer during the
anticipated much reduced hours I spend in the library. Catch up
on book repair and do a little reorganization. Oh, and catalogue
all of the books in the staffroom. Still, I should be able to
spend more time at home.
Heard B in the other room singing a silly song, but
with rude lyrics. When he got to "the f-word," I objected.
"Sorry," he said. I called him in and asked him if he knew what
the "f-word" was. He said he did. I asked if he knew what
it meant. He said he knew it was really rude. I agreed but
asked again if he knew what it meant. He shook his head and so I
told him. "That's a swear word?" he asked. "So when they
say that to someone they mean...?" he continued. "That's really
funny." Apparently it strikes him as curious that they would use
that act as a rude word. I'm not entirely clear, myself, on why
it is considered quite so vulgar (though the word "bloody," so
offensive to the English, I grok even less). I don't believe the
Dutch really think it's all that offensive either. In fact, there
was a local pizza company that used the word in their television ad
during prime time about a year ago, before outcry from us buitenlanders and threats of
boycott shut it down.
I figure it's part of my job to make sure both of
the boys understand the words that they use (or hear). And part
of my job to teach them about sex. Certainly I want them to come
to me instead of having it be a great schoolyard mystery... or
something he looks up on the Internet. I am glad he was amused at
the exchange rather than alarmed or chastened. Of course, this is
my eldest son - my younger is in the midst of groaning and covering his
eyes at any fictional depiction of kissing, like the grandson in
The Princess Bride. So maybe A would understand it as a swear
word for an entirely different reason!
January 25, 2010
So. It's hard to think of an appropriate word
with which to start
this monster post I intend. I am very aware that I haven't posted
an entry to my blog since October. And here it is a whole new
year. So. I'll just begin any old where and try to work my
way up to the present. For convenience sake, I may date them as
to when what I'm relating was actually happening. However, the
only content that was actually written when dated were the entries I'm
copying from Facebook. Hence the monstrous proportions of this
project. And the reasons I haven't started before now are long
and varied. Most recently, I really really wanted to get our
Christmas cards out the door and that required a lot more work than I'd
anticipated. So. Let's see....
There's the initial reason I stopped updating my
blog. Namely, my computer blew up. Well, not
literally. I was working on the computer, it gave me an error
code which I didn't pay enough attention to, and it got really, r e a l
l y, rr ee aa ll ll yy slow. I patiently and consistently closed
out the programs I was
using so that I could restart the computer and (I thought) fix the
problem. And it wouldn't restart. Could not. I tried
many things, but
it was clear early that I needed something I didn't have. We
bought a cable so we could try a brain transplant, and at least get the
data off of my hard drive. But it was more messed up than just a
cable could fix. I ended up trying out and then purchasing some
data recovery software from online that successfully found and
recovered most of my files. The family financials, all my
documents, my mail, and my web pages were the things I was most
concerned about recovering. I did a fair amount online and had
bookmarked a lot of sites for lots of reasons, and my bookmark file is
the thing I didn't recover that I most miss. (All of this was
exacerbated by being also between PDAs. I had too many Palm OS
devices break in one fashion or another, and had flirted with switching
over to an iTouch like C, but hadn't anything in hand yet.) Of
course,
progressing from oh #$%^! to the awaiting a cable to the purchase of a
new laptop to the transferring of recovered files to re-downloading the
programs, such as this one, with which I blog, took a fairly long
while. During which my life didn't stop and wait for me. My
mom came to visit for 4 weeks, we had a week's vacation from school, I
helped organize and participated in a big Halloween party, I turned 40,
we had B's birthday, and then there was decorating for Christmas, the
advent calendar, Sinterklaas and Christmas to prepare for. But
I'll get back to some of that later. I'm getting ahead of myself.
My laptop went kablooie and I got a new one. I
feel pretty good about the fact that my digital photographs were not at
risk or a worry to me. I would have been feeling physically ill
to lose all of my digital photos with a downed computer. And I
knew this about myself, and so was very glad to have invested several
years
ago in an offsite storage site (fotki) for my pix. I am happy
with them; I can lock the albums if I like, I can ftp the data to them,
and I have unlimited space with which to play. The family
financials had been backed up to a different hard drive in the
not-too-excruciating-to-reenter past, though I will be backing that up
in two places more often as well. The mail, though. That
was the big AAAUGH! for me. I had over 13 years' worth of mail on
that drive. So, I went about making sure that it was off-site as
well. Found a way using IMAP to copy all those years' worth of
mail from Pegasus to a gmail account, and then moved it and my
automatic forward over. I still use Pegasus for finding the
latest message, address book, and working offline, but I suspect even
that may tail off in time. Too bad, because I really liked
Pegasus, but the risk of losing it all (again) and the attraction of
having it available to me from any computer were too much to
ignore. This was not, however, a quick or painless switch.
It was a long and painful switch. That's a lot of mail. I'm
still not done sorting through it.
October 18,
2009: My laptop died a quick and horrible death. I'm
waiting on a cable to attempt a brain transplant, and deciding how I
want this new machine to work for me. "Better" and "backed-up" spring
to mind.
October 26, 2009:
My
laptop
brain transfer has been mostly successful so far, thanks to recovery
software and a cable. Mail is back up and documents retrieved, though
bookmarks are gone. Now for Quicken...
My mom came for a four week visit. She had
just arrived at the time of my last post in October. We had a
wonderful time. She feels as though she got a real sense of
living in another country, and gained the ability to really picture our
lives in context here. I had the help and companionship of
another adult in the house without the stress of having to travel or
show off. She did fall down our stairs (the steep ones between
the two main floors, not the very steep ones to the attic or the mega
steep ones to the basement)and spent a good deal of time recovering,
unfortunately. This necessitated more car rides than bike rides
to and from school, and the worsening weather meant that the kids
didn't really object. We spent the week off school lounging
about, though we did head to Efteling
for a day. Efteling was fun, though the first hour was spent in
line for a ride that shut down just after we got to the starting gates,
and the last hour was spent in our car in the parking lot reading the
Phantom Tollbooth waiting for movement. In between times, we
enjoyed multiple roller coasters, overpriced food, and talking garbage
cans.
Halloween was a big deal this year as I helped
organize the big Halloween party at the school. I was one of
three witches to read Halloween stories to kids at the lower school,
and the photographer in the Photo Booth at the Halloween party at the
upper school. I took a couple hundred pictures, most of them of
older kids in fancy dress posing for the camera. Mom helped
decorate the gym and chaperone the party, and A helped out behind the
scenes at the party too, attaching prizes at the spooky fishing
game. We all had a good time, but my feet were killing me by the
end of the evening.
October 30, 2009:
Long
fun
day at the schools doing Halloween party stuff from set-up and clean-up
to reading stories to manning the photo booth during the after-school
party, but spent all of it in witchy get-up that included heels. Ow.
Glad I don't do 9 hours so clad on any regular basis.
B got braces on October 28th. We have another
appointment on
Wednesday to see where we are, but his tooth has visibly turned almost
completely to even with the other teeth. November 1, 2009:
thought she should mention B's new braces before too much longer. He
got them (top only) Wednesday morning, had one bad night of tears (and
a bump in the face) that night, but since then has gotten used to them.
He's still figuring out what he can eat & how, and has been proudly
showing his new smile to everyone.
I turned 40. I've never been one to stress
about birthdays, and this one was pretty nice, too. It's kind of
hard to feel old when your mom's around. I think my forties will
be good years. I made sure to have my mom get pictures of me with
the kids on my birthday, but they ended up getting deleted when I was
trying to make room for a kid's play. I have a hard time getting
to be the subject instead of the photographer, and such mistakes don't
help.
Just after mom went back home, we all got
sick. They were just head colds, and not influenza, but
persistent and nasty, just the same. Overshadowing our own
illnesses, however, was the dog's. Mom left Monday, the dog got
his teeth cleaned on Tuesday, Wednesday he threw up his food, and
Thursday morning he vomited a lot of red blood. A number of vet
visits and consultations ensued. We're not really sure what
happened, why he got sick, or why he got better. Just at the
point where we were ready to brace for another vet visit, he seemed to
turn around and come back to himself. All his systems seemed to
be functioning normally again. We recently took him back in for
his regular shots, and they didn't have his weight in their records
except from April 08, probably the heaviest he's been. Still, we
don't know whether his weight loss has been gradual, or recent, or
continuing. I'll bring him back in for another weighing in a week
or two. Nevertheless, since his tooth cleaning/removal and
getting sick, I've been very aware that he is an elderly dog. I
THINK he's drinking more than before, but I can't really tell. He
doesn't seem to need to go outside with any more frequency or urgency,
and he's not had any other mistakes inside since the blood. He
isn't able to run as far or as fast as he could when he was a young
dog, but that's been true for a while. He still loves to go for
walks and runs off-leash on the heath or in the forest. So I
don't know. I worry about his upcoming trip home, though, and the
12 hours in a crate ordeal. He's a good dog and we are all
unhappy at just the idea of him dying. The worst part of owning a
dog is how short their lifespan is compared to ours.
November 12, 2009:
I
not happy
with how this week is going. Now one of two sick kids is feverish, and
the dog just vomited blood. Kids still asleep, dog won't come out from
under the bed, vet office closed and can't translate their phone
message.... Vet appointment for this afternoon. I hope the dog
emerges
before then. Poor pup thinks he's in trouble. Could use some
help.
Housekeeper's sick today too. The kids would prefer to stay home
over going with me to the vet. If you're willing to be inside with two
coughing kids, that'd help. Thanks Arja, you're fabulous! Dog
went in
and I'm to keep an eye on
him. Beth offered more complete advice so antacids and bland diet
tomorrow it is. I think I'll still give the stinky guy a bath, though,
if it doesn't stress him out too much. November 13, 2009: Dog smells
better after bath, is perkier, and is interested in eating
again. Kids are on the mend, and no more fevers, though still coughing
and home from school. Now to catch up to where I thought I would be
now...
B turned 9 and we had a birthday party. Part
of our birthday
tradition is pictures of kid feet with their dad's reference
feet.
That started with some photos taken of B as a week-old infant.
Another
part is a weighing and measuring of both boys. I measured three
or
four times and finally used a level to confirm that A has now overtaken
B in height as well as weight. They've both grown tremendously,
mind
you, and I burst out in laughter when attacking the mending pile last
week and putting some of the pants in there up against a boy - talk
about high waters! There is not much difference between them
though,
and we'll measure again midway between birthdays for another pencil
mark on the wall. It's not a race, certainly. It's just one
more
reason they're still taken for twins so often.
November 23, 2009:
I
would
rather take a nap listening to the rain instead of attacking the
monstrous list of things that MUST BE DONE TODAY. Grumble. The
idea of adding more to the list (even naps) makes me shudder. It's not
that I don't want to do the things on the list (exactly), but that I
don't want to have to do it all TODAY, and the fear I'm going to drop
one of these juggling balls onto someone's head. (Happy birthday,
kiddo. Splat!)
November 24, 2009:
Birthday
cake baked, gluten-free cookies made, party invitations sent,
pizza money collected and tallied, costumes for play partially sorted
and email out, chicken de-boned, dogs walked, ride for tomorrow
arranged, people fed, photos uploading, and I even got a 1/2 hour nap
after the kids went to bed. I'm pretty sure it was raining.
November is always a busy month for us with two
birthdays to celebrate. I had thought, in the optimism of
September and October, that I might try another NaNoWriMo. In
fact, inspired by a friend's exhortation to a group of laid off folk to
do what you feel compelled to do, I decided to write about the
cafe/used bookstore I have been designing in my head for years. I
had planned to start this after "retirement" and I have a name picked
out, decor, employment policies, et cetera. I started thinking,
though, about what it might take to start this big project "now"
instead of later. I wanted to figure out what I knew, what I
needed to know and didn't, and start going after it. But, I
discovered that first off, November is never going to be my month to
write 50,000 words. Any further participation in NaNoWriMo is
going to have to be in another month and mailing in the daily word
count in sync with whatever month I actually do it in. And
second, if I'm going to write 50,000 words in 30 days, it's going to
have to be a work of fiction. I can't spew non-fiction or write
what I'm researching without an internal editor hard at work. So,
lesson learned. As far as The Well-Read Dish goes, I have some
directions to pursue when I return to the States, and some identified
knowledge to gather. We shall see...
November 4, 2009:
Gah!
Went upstairs to write and haven't yet. Don't want to get too far
behind on my word count. (Okay, I'm going already!)
November 5, 2009:
Needs
some
help with research. If you've started your own business (any
sort), please drop me a line. I'm interested to hear about any problems
you had, how you identified the things you needed to know, the
checklists you had of next steps, and the hiccups and surprises you
encountered along the way. Thanks!
November 16, 2009:
Ha.
Well. It's on hold until the Bazaar is over. Maybe by then this
awful cold will have let go of me (and AB&C). I haven't given up
hope completely, but definitely believe that November is not the month
for me to be doing WriMo despite the NaNo part of it. 2 birthdays,
Christmas prep, colds, and (in the States) TG combine for short days.
June was much better.
Ah, yes. Our school holds an annual Christmas
Bazaar in
mid-November, and this year I was a vendor, offering my holiday gift
bags and over 60 jars of grape jelly made up from some (!) of the juice
collected from our backyard grapes. The grape jelly sold well,
but I
didn't get rid of it as thoroughly as I'd hoped. The gift bags
did
pretty well, but I wished I'd had all of my stock with me instead of
just the holiday fabrics; the two Dutch fabric designs I found in
Utrecht sold out, and I think if I had had some wine bags made up
they'd have sold well too. Last week I found a bunch of fabrics
that
would make great gift bags, but put off buying. I think I'll go
back
this week and go for it. I might as well go all in if I'm going
to be
successful at spreading the idea of a nice alternative to disposable
wrapping paper. So, now I have added sewing a few dozen bags and
making jars and jars of jelly to my November tally.
November 17, 2009:
I
am
hating the vagaries of space time. When I need my husband to be home, I
don't want it to take an hour. Teleportation please.
Whew. I think that's pretty much October and
November. Onward...
What with being newly healthy and homebodies, we didn't go down the
canal to see Sinterklaas arrive this year mid-November. There was
a
lot of foot traffic, but even the appeal of pepernoten cookies was not
enough to rouse the kids from their electronics to brave the
cold. In
fact I think, looking back at last year, we just happened upon the same
spectacle on our walk along the canal and joined in a bit. We
didn't
do any shoe gifts this year either, though we did celebrate the day
(December 6) with the traditional chocolate letters. A and B were
white chocolate, and N & C were dark chocolate, and we were all
happy. Oh hey. I still have some N left. Hmmm.
One of our cherished holiday traditions is the
advent calendar. We
have the one my mom made ages ago, with the 11 and 12 reversed; like
her, I made a bunch and gave them away years ago as well. It has
a
large green felt tree on the front and numbered pockets with a felt
ornament in each. We always have the partridge on the first, the
pear
on the second, the star on the 24th, and the kids rotate which year
they are odd or even. The correct child gets to pull out the felt
ornament and place it on the tree, distribute the small treat evenly,
and read the card. It's the card that they like the best (and is
sometimes the hardest part for the busy mom). It spells out an
activity to do together as a family on that day. We usually have
take
our family card photo in there, play dreidel with M&Ms on the first
night of Hannukah, light all the candles on the solstice, and all
school and other scheduled holiday activities get placed appropriately,
of course.
This year we had a lot of those, it seemed.
School celebrations
for Sinterklaas, each child performed in a class play, there was a
Scout holiday potluck, a school dinner/singing performance, and I had a
staff lunch too. The kids' plays went well. A played an
earthling in
a play about their
unit of inquiry, and B was a narrator in a performance of the Green
Wolf. They both did great. Part of the Sinterklaas
celebration here
is a surprise ("su PREEZE"), which consists of a small (5 euro) gift,
elaborately wrapped - often in paper mache - and accompanied by a poem
that can refer to their bad habits or foibles. Very Dutch.
We had
four of these to do this year - C had one for work, B one for school,
and both A and B one for Scouts. In addition to the shopping
expedition for the small gifts, I wrote one poem and helped with the
paper mache on three. B had a great time with the poem part,
especially, and wrote some masterful limericks. Paper mache
creations
included an artist's palette, a pair of flip flops, and a nearly three
foot tall musical note. Since the tradition is that you don't
reveal
the giver of the gift and the recipient has to guess, the viewing for
parents at the school is a bit frustrating, at least for me, because
you can't tell what belongs to who, or whose work is on display.
I
guess I'd like to be a part of the opening and guessing part too.
Maybe this tradition is something we can take home with us, and the
boys can do something for each other.
December 7, 2009:
House
decorated,
snowflakes hung, tree up and festooned, Sinterklaas over,
advent calendar in action. Still to come: the Christmas photo (after
the Movember 'stache is shaved), school plays, dinners at Scouts and
school, vacation. Oh, and gifts.
December 11, 2009:
Of
COURSE
it's more complicated to comprehensively organize a life than a
library. That's why it's easier to stay and do inventory than tackle my
IMAP gmail iTouch Outlook Christmas-card address-list Fotki-tag blog
and communication issues. And why I'm here instead of Alt Tabbed.
Ah
but my point is that the library is approaching "done" while my life
organization is a total mess. December
14,
2009: It's not really a contest, or even a ranking on
some imaginary
objective "organized" scale; the problem is living up to one's own
ideals. And my expectations for myself are always higher than for
others in my life.
My laptop failure and iTouch acquisition in November
meant that I
really wanted to get our address list in shape for this year's holiday
greeting cards. But (of course) I wanted to do it "right."
"Right"
meant that I needed to pull all of our existing data from our Excel
spreadsheet, and from my Palm calendar, and from Facebook, and from
e-mail messages, and from bits of paper and old Christmas cards.
"Right" meant wrestling with a program that was designed as a business
app rather than to do what I wanted it to do, just so we could share
data between each other and all our respective electronic
devices.
"Right" meant a separate entry for everyone in each family so I could
have a comprehensive birthday list. "Right" took me a long
time. And
I know I don't have everything right, and I'm still forgetting folks,
and some data I'm sure is wrong, but at least the corrected and revised
information all has one place to go now. And the New Year's
letter is
written, attached to the family photo, and starting to make its way to
its recipients, at least in North America so far.
Just before Christmas was also the time I
essentially fired our
housekeeper. And awkward as it was (carried out in text messages
which
morphed from her discovery at my paying her only for the work she'd
been doing to "Vase broken dog and you know!I cant beliewe how with
people i was working!This money pick up somebody els!Nice Christmans
and Happy 2010 year!"), oh my heavens, what a RELIEF it was! I
hadn't
quite realized how stressful it was to have her come in and
clean. How
much I suddenly didn't have to do just in preparation of her coming
(like hiding the dish sponges, or buying chemicals I wasn't sure I
wanted used). How much I hated not knowing if I was going to come
home
to a clean house or a text message about why she couldn't come because
her sister was sick in Poland. How frustrating it was that she
thought
she knew what I was saying when she clearly hadn't listened. How
glad
I was to be done with her. And, yes, there was some ambivalence
there
about paying someone to do something I could just as easily do, but it
was definitely exacerbated by the fact that I could do it so much
better than she did (which is why I did the dishes before she came, and
vacuumed before guests arrived). So, the house has been a bit
messier
this year, but it has been a lot more comfortable.
And Christmas is also when C initiated our family
after-dinner
clean up. Every night (barring an exceptionally light load) the
whole
family puts dinner away, clears and wipes the table, and does the
dishes. It's fantastic. The kids are surprisingly unwhiny
about it
all, and get a real kick out of discovering every night that there
aren't really all that many dishes to do - and when there are, they
split them up, or happily rinse and stack instead of wash. I
think the
only remaining hurdles, really, are a firm pick it up and put it away
habit in place of drop it where it's convenient or get it out and go to
something else, and the bathrooms. Oy, the bathrooms.
Doesn't seem
fair that the one who never misses AND has a keen sense of smell does
the rubber gloves, hands and knees work. There is definitely room
for
improvement with the rest of the house, but I'm still incredibly happy
with our new after dinner habit.
Christmas itself was very nice. The boys were
both keen to get up
early and open presents. A had quickly cottoned on to the hook in
the
"open one present Christmas Eve" idea, complained that he didn't want a
new pair of pajamas, and tried to wiggle into opening a different
present, but we held firm. As has been the case since we've been
here,
no one came to visit and we didn't travel anywhere for Christmas, so it
was just our family for Christmas stockings, breakfast, and gifts.
December 24, 2009:
The
rain
is making serious inroads on our snowy blanket. It's a race now
between the rain and the boys, who want to get up astonishingly early
to open gifts. Merry Christmas everyone, green OR white!
The boys won, even though, fortunately, they didn't
get up as early
as they wanted. It has been white here for most of the last two
months. Cold too. Climate change. I know it's still
mid-winter, but
I'm ready for a change myself. I have noticed that our days are
getting lighter again, though. Hooray! Today it was not
full dark at
5:30 pm, or when my alarm went off this morning. I will be glad
to be
those few degrees further south next winter.
After Christmas we went a few degrees south
ourselves, and visited Rome over the New Year. December 26, 2009:
Please help, local peeps! We need dog-sitting from the 28th til the 1st
while we're in Rome. Any help or ideas gladly welcomed!
Rome was very nice. None of us had been
before. We got a hotel
with a pool, which helped the boys deal with leaving their new presents
and comforts of home. We enjoyed our tour of the Coliseum so much
that
we rejoined our guide for the Vatican the next day. A got lost in
the
Vatican museum for about 15 minutes despite the radios, but was
recovered without too much trauma. This was put into perspective
somewhat when C pried open the closing doors of the metro car and
pulled a quick B out to rejoin his family. We had a couple of
discussions of What to Do If... We enjoyed the city and the
somewhat
warmer temperatures, saw a few fireworks reflected off the airport
windows behind a pillar, and came home to the pets safe and sound.
January 3, 2010:
We
had a very nice time in Rome. The dog and cat seem to have weathered
our absence just fine. New Year's Eve can be pretty explosive here, but
no one mentioned a problem. (Of course, the relevant parties are
animals and a teenage boy with limited English and a house down the
street, so who knows... Perhaps instead of hiding under the bed, the
pets played poker.) The cat's small enough to
travel but hates it and the
dog loves the car and has only flown the 10+ hour ordeal to get here. I
think we know about more options for pet care than we did before this
vacation's panic, so that's a bonus.
One of the things we did while in Rome was get the
kids their own e-mail addresses. January
4,
2010:
Recently got the kids their own e-mail accounts and is very happy
they're spelling, typing and having a ball sending messages (often
across the room). And it's a lot of fun to send e-mail signed
"mom."
Very much a good thing, I think. I'm trying to find the right
balance
between the privacy of their own conversations and concern about what
they could get into with the help of some ill-meaning folks.
That's a
mom's road, though, and I'm not particularly worried that I'm walking
it this early with them. I'm not sure why I've never taken to
heart
any of the messages from fear mongers about internet predators or the
need for filters and consors, except that I'm always skeptical about
those peddling fear for profit or thrills and believe strongly in the
ability of anyone to discern crap from non-crap given a wide (rather
than narrow) choice of reading material. I don't mean that I'm
blithely letting them sail about undirected, but I do hope that the
right knowledge about their own boats and the rocks and shoals I know
about will help them avoid some dangers and know when to ask for help
with others.
This begins the second week in a row that C has been
away all
week. At least this week he's in the same time zone. Cat,
dog, kids,
cleaning, and school have all been left to me for a bit.
Wrestling at
night helps with the kids. And I've been keeping a sleep diary,
which
has helped somewhat, or at least has illuminated why I really really
need to go to bed with the kids on one night and shouldn't expect to
get up as early as my first alarm. The pets, however, have no
respect
for such things as my need for sleep.
January 14, 2009:
Teaching
the
cat to meow instead of scratch. So she meows, I get up to let her
out, sick or not. Except she wants a treat like the dog, which I gave
her earlier. Apparently since I wouldn't normally be in bed at this
time, it's now her job to get me up... to give her treats. Cats!
January 17, 2009:
I
was
just going to send a couple of messages before I went to bed and here
it is three hours later. Ah, the power of the internet to suck sleep
from my life. Can't blame it on C's absence since it just as often
happens when he's next to me.
Volunteer work turned into paid work
(supposedly) Of course, at this rate, it's likely that I won't
get paid until after I've finished the cataloguing and full inventory
of every book, tape, and poster in the library. Nevertheless, I'm
considered staff instead of an uber-volunteer, and am invited to staff
functions, and have hours I'm supposed to keep. Given my progress
at the big projects that have been keeping me at the library (this is
my first school day not working this month), I believe I can actually
start being at the library for just those hours. Then I can spend
my time getting the rest of my life organized and up to speed.
This
monster post was just the next thing on my list. I have a number
of
languishing bits of correspondence to tackle next. And pictures
to
tag. And the hand-sewing to finish off (pun not intended, but
recognized as funny; it's late now and punny's funny). And and
and...
And it's now very late and I still have some steps
to go through
before I can post this thing. And I want to do that and go to
bed.
So. I'm mostly pretty much caught up. I'll try to remember
today if
ever I consider letting it slide for this long again. I hope that
it
will be relatively easy again now that everything is in place.
Peace,