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January 9th, 2017
09:03 am - New Year '17
So, it's been awhile since I wrote in this journal. I've moved to other social media sites that have a quicker snap and punch, and less archive. Still, sometimes it's nice to write something more permanent. As many have said, 2016 was a hard year, and it was nice to bid adieu to it. Some good things happened of course, but by the end of it, it seemed like alot of bad stuff. We have a president for the next four years who is if not a joke, an outright nightmare. Of course we have no idea if 2017 is going to be any better, but I like that people are hopeful. I think hope really pull us through the dark times.
I've been sick a good part of 2016. It's been a gradual decline that just snapped after Thanksgiving. I've been more or less in bed unless someone really needed me for something. I got us through Christmas. Thank the Gods for Amazon. We pretty much got all the gifts ordered and delivered from online. I think everyone had a good holiday. I sent out some Christmas cards to those who mattered most. I wrote notes to those I really cared about that I hadn't been feeling well lately. I figured if I dropped dead, I wanted them to have some heads up.
I've had mystery ailment going on, but one doc gave a tentative diagnosis of eosinosphiliac esophogitis. (I'm not going to check if I spelled that right.) It's basically an auto immune disease - allergies gone wild. The upshot is I have trouble breathing, eating or sleeping. At the moments, the only foods I'm not reacting to is bananas, rice cakes with almond butter, rice and olive oil. It gets old fast, but at least there's something that doesn't make me sick. I'm just exhausted coming and going.
I reacted to one medicine and had trouble drawing a breath for hours. Once cutting that out, at least I could suck in oxygen. If I could do that, it felt like I had a baseline to build all else from. I have more doctors' visits planned. I'm not sure what the future holds, but I am doing a bit better, and I have hope. Buckets and oceans of hope. I would like go dancing when I get better. I would like to go to England and Ireland when I get better.
I'm raising a glass of chamomile tea toward 2017. (Forgot to mention that's another thing I can tolerate.) Blessings for a better year coming! :)
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December 5th, 2016
09:27 am - Christmas Porn
Sooo, I got this book out of the library about Christmas entertaining – The Farm Chicks Christmas by Serena Thompson. It looked good for holiday porn pics and I simply intended to flip through and enjoy the pretty images. Then I read some of the text. Glowing Gods. I was amazed to read this account of the author’s own memories of Christmas . . .
On Christmas eve, just before bed, we were each allowed to open one gift, which was usually something like a great book or thrift-shop flannel jammies. We’d read The Night Before Christmas by the light of a kerosene lantern and then scamper up to the loft for an anticipation-filled night’s sleep.
We’d all awaken at the break of dawn and make our way downstairs to find our stockings stuffed with goodies like oranges, cans of olives and sardines. The rest of the day would be spent with my brother and sister, playing board games, sledding, building igloos, and having snowball fights.
I looked at the pictures of the author with her merry celebrating friends and she looked in her 30’s not her 90’s. I was like REALLY? I can’t imagine a 1980’s Christmas looking like this. We had tv commercials and plastic toys even back then folks! Okay, so we’ve got nostalgia porn going on, understood. We can bend the past a bit to sound more folksy and appealing than it actually was. Let’s look at her current recounting of her Christmases with her hubbie and four boys. (FOUR BOYS!)
Christmas morning starts bright and early for us, usually at 6 am . . . Then it’s out to the living room to open stockings and presents. Although the excitement is at an all-time high, the boys all very sweetly take turns opening their gifts and admiring each other’s surprises.
Gifts are followed by warm cinnamon rolls and hours upon hours of playing and sharing. Later on, in the afternoon, we all bundle up and head out for Grandma and Grandpa’s, where the entire clan gathers for the rest of the day and evening. A big delicious meal with dishes brought by each family is shared, games are played, and fun is had by one and all.
Really? REALLY? None of the kids are gritchy and picking fights from lack of sleep, or blasted out of their tiny minds on sugar and running laps around the living room by mid-afternoon? No one at the big gathering is sad their gay lover wasn’t welcome, or exhausted with all the work to do, and frankly tired of making that damn maple sweet potato pie every sodding year?
I’m sorry, these idyllic, white-washed perfect recounting of Christmas burn my butt. Holidays are as much difficult as they are enjoyable. There’s tricky relationships with family during all this forced joviality, there’s seasonal depression, and flu, and tons of expectations, and crammed shopping parking lots. It’s a big can of worms tied up with a red bow and sprinkled with manic glitter snowflakes for many of us.
I realize this book is holiday porn, and the writing as much as the pictures is meant to convey a feeling more than reality, but I feel like stories like this do a disservice to people. We mere mortals can feel more like crap than we already do that our holidays happen on planet Earth and not inside a Hallmark card. Gak.
I’d rather read about the burnt turkey, and the tree that caught on fire, and the kid who threw up Christmas eve at church, and the presents that got lost, and the Grinch stealing everything, and people still mustering up the courage to be happy over something anyway. That’s the place I live in. Perhaps you do too.
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August 5th, 2016
03:50 pm - Missed Lammas
Somehow we just missed Lammas this year. We were traveling, coming back from the beach and it got lost in the wash. Had a pretty good week at Perdido Key. I'm so glad my parents were feeling well enough to do the trip. I could see them really slowing down, but I'm glad we could do it - get all the family together again. The waves were lovely though peppered with a few jellyfish, and we had a few dangerous waves red flag days. I ended up spending a good bit of time at the pool with Bri. As I told my sister as she wrangled her boys on the beach, it's so hard watching your small kids in the ocean. As a mom, you become this crazed OCD person thinking on one hand you're having fun and I should let you, and on the other hand, you could get swept away and I'll never see you again. It's such a relief to watch your spawn in a confined little pool as you float on top of pool noodles. Just saying.
We missed the week of oppressive heat in MD, and a big thunderstorm. Our planes got delayed all day long coming home due to the storms up and down the East Coast, but as CZ says, it's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than in the air wishing you were on the ground.
We got home just minutes after the big flood came that destroyed Ellicott City last Saturday. I saw footage,and a lot of damage was done - waves went up to the second floor on some of the historic buildings. My very favorite coffee shop must have been hurt - Bean Hollow. I am the sad. The governor declared the area a disaster zone, so they should get some federal money to rebuild. I look forward to seeing things repaired. I adore Main Street Ellicott City.
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March 19th, 2016
10:33 am - Noise
I feel like the Grinch - oh the noise, noise, noise. I just want to stop it. People with heavy machinery are working on the field behind our house, building a new elementary school. The school will open on Aug 2017 so they're on an advanced schedule to get this done, working on Saturdays, working 12 hour days. Some times the house rattles with what they are doing. Sigh. Some times it's just the drone of bulldozers shoving dirt around endlessly. Other times, it's the maddening beep, beep, beep as equipment backs up. Ack. I'm sure the new school will be lovely. The ongoing construction, and the ugly moonscape that the field had become is awful. More sigh.
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February 16th, 2016
06:59 pm - Place of Memories
I always like keeping an eye on the creepy little daycare place on the main drag of town. They've been shut down numerous times for violations, and rise again with another ludicrous name, and another stab at staying open.
The new name on the sign outside is "Place of Memories." For quite awhile, it was "Bundles of Agape." Before that it was "Future Leaders of Tomorrow," and before that it was "Little Darlings." I might even be missing one. I feel sorry for the place, and the folks who use it. It doesn't look that great. It doesn't have a yard for the kids to play in, just a bit of pavement out back with a jungle gym on it next to the parking lot of the drug store.
Our country does just a piss poor job of helping with preschool kids. It's not like American workers arrive ready formed to contribute to the Gross National Product. They have to be potty trained, and spoon fed, and raised up through years of shoe lace tying and schooling before they become those ready-to-work adults. We have no government support until kids hit kindergarten age. It's up to each family to scrabble together care and nursey school as they are able. We are a poor nation in many ways.
Speaking of child care, the kids have been home four days in a row again. We had another snow closing today after a day off for Presidents day. The kids are thrilled at first, but I think by now, even they are ready to go back to school for a few days. I start to feel like the walls are closing in, and I remind myself its just February. The month does pass eventually, and in the meanwhile - half-price Valentines chocolate! Whee!
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February 12th, 2016
07:06 am - candy and hearts
The temp is single digits today. I am reminded of a joke I saw recently online - how to dress for cold weather - step 1. take off your pants, step 2. get back into bed. (snort) Brrrrrr. I don't want to go out.
B has her Valentine party at school today. I continue to laugh about the de-evolution of Valentine giving with your kids. With your first kid, you handmake hearts to give out at school together, and look snidely at the people who bought cards at the store. With your second one, you buy the store-bought cards with some cartoon character that everyone likes and grumble about all the people giving out candy. With the third child, you just give up and buy wrapped candy with a place to write people's names on the wrapper because it gives your child more street cred with the classmates. I'm glad that things nearing an end with giving out Valentines at school tbh.
Another grumble for the day. Why do they have to sell those boxes of Valentine candy in groups of 20? If they did 25, it would cover most classes and you wouldn't have to get two boxes. Nooooo, they want you to buy two boxes of candy the evil candy-selling bastards.
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February 11th, 2016
09:42 am - the great crushing weight of being
Oh February, oh the great crushing weight that is February. Everything you do seems to be against the force of a landslide of mud. So.hard.to.get.anything,done.
Kids were off school again one day this week for "snow." It was an artisanal dusting of snow that didn't really stick. Still they had to be off, and two hour delay the next day. What can you say . . . February.
I took the youngest child into see our usual psychologist. Her anxiety levels seem to have increased this year, and she's getting to where she doesn't want to eat anything that isn't strictly uniform in shape and color. We're down to sugar cereal, goldfish crackers, and saltines. She worries endlessly about radiation on her clothes and poison in her food. Can I say I was hoping one of the kids would be normal? Eh, what's normal.
They continue to muck about in the field behind the house destroying a once pretty landscape to build this new school - a far off, one day dream as they create a moonscape of destruction. It isn't very pretty to see out of the back windows. Ah . . .February.
Arctic cold is predicted for this weekend, and it's Valentine's day, got to address a box of suckers for the little one to give out at school. I'm not really feeling Valentinish this year. Ah . . .February.
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January 28th, 2016
09:46 pm - Escaped the bubble
The kids I escaped our "Little House on the Prarie" snowbound house today to go hit the mall for a couple of hours. It's a little silly that the county schools have closed for THE ENTIRE WEEK. I think they're just waiting for the snow to completely melt. All the main roads are plowed out, and besides peering around snow mountains while making turns, it's perfectly safe to be out. My hubs of course didn't even take a day off work at all. We're lucky he has a snow blower and took delight in clearing the driveway out. It's definitely a bubble out of time - everyone is playing video games and staying up past midnight and sleeping in till near lunch. It will be so painful when the teens have to be back up at 6 am when school starts back in!
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January 26th, 2016
10:43 pm - Snooow, snow, and more snow
So It snowed over the weekend. And kept snowing. And then it snowed some more. I think we get a big dumping at least once a year, and every couple of years we get a really spectacular accumulation. We were about due. I've heard this particular snowfall called "Snowzilla." I agree with this name. I think we got at least 30 inches, with of course deeper accumulation in snowdrift areas.
Kudos to my hubbie for plowing out our driveway built into the side of the hill. Today, I made myself useful and dug our trash cans out of a four foot deep snowbank. My glamorous life!!!!
The schools have just given up. Tomorrow, they are still closed and we are on day six of no school. It's basically winter break part 2. I'm kind of down with it. Thankfully everyone has video games to play, and I have Tumblr, and no one has killed anyone yet. We are running low on supplies though. I will brave partially-plowed streets tomorrow to forage out for sustenance.
Dylan and Bri and I did a grocery run on Thursday before the snow hit. It wasn't too crowded when we went fairly late at night, but the soup and frozen food section was kind of picked through. I love that everyone FREAKS the hell out and has to run to the store and get everything white - bread, milk, and toilet paper.
I don't mind telling you that I spent 48 hours in the same pj pants and fleece top. It's January. It's Snowzilla. It's allowed. ;)
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January 7th, 2016
11:47 am - SHERLOCKED - The Abominal Bride
Wow, so it has been a very Sherlock week.
I watched the Sherlock special on PBS on Jan 1st. I knew it aired five hours earlier on BBC in the UK, and if I found some streaming sites, I could watch it earlier. Still, I know those sites are unreliable and crap out, so I made myself wait to watch it air on US tv. That was haaaard. I just went off the internet for the rest of the day at 3 pm to stay unspoiled.
I was confused with my first viewing. Parts of the show were just fun, but I found myself soooo confuuused through much of it. Watched it again the next day from a recording someone made online so I could listen to the Three Patch Podcast watch along with it. That was fun. Spend the next few days tearing through meta and quick fics inspired by the special to do a review on them for the podcast.
Then on Jan. 5th, I went in to DC to see the theater release of the special with a Sherlock DC meet-up. That was interesting - so many there were the "in-crowd" and we had already been steeping in the episode for a few days. It was a charged room. We angsted, hoped, squeed, and sighed through the movie. It was a range of emotions shared, and we clapped wildly at the end. It was kind of exhausting.
Then the next night, my son actually expressed an interest in seeing the movie, so I took him on the second showing day to a local mall theater, and saw THE ABOMINABLE BRIDE for the 4th time in so many days. The theater room was huge, three times the size of the DC cinema. A goodly sized crowd showed up, but it was by no means packed. Dylan and I got excellent seats. It was relaxing seeing the show with casuals. About the only response people had throughout the evening was on-going light-hearted laughter. When I see movies, I so often seem to laugh at differnet times from everyone else, I am so weird, so I am yukking it up through Moriarty fellating a gun while everyone else is kind of ugh, but then to be honest I was kind of shocked the first viewing as well.
So, Jeez. I guess I can stop watching Sherlock for a couple of days. Whew. I'm exhausted.
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