That Diana Gabaldon

For my fellow Gabaldon lovers: A new Outlander book in 2009, along with a movie in the making, and a graphic novel. Dear God, I just want this year to go by fast. Also, lots of snippets of things that might or might not happen in the next book (which won't be the last) and even two excerpts from the book. Haven't decided if I want to torture myself with those just yet. Also included is the graphic novel illustrator's preliminary drawing of Claire. V. strange. All discussed on the Gabaldon site here.

That Diana Gabaldon is one busy woman.

Scuse Me, While I Kiss This Guy

Whenever the kids watch the Dora the Explorer episode where Dora and Boots are searching for Coqui Island, I always think at first that they are saying,
Cocaine Island, and you know? That just isn't appropriate for a kids show, in my opinion.

Belated Birthday Post

I often feel like reflecting on another year when my birthday comes around, but for some reason, I didn't feel like it yesterday. Once again, I feel like my birthday is just a number, and I am stuck at 27 or so, and I know that the number of years mean nothing. I love my 30's, though - I feel like I know more about the things I want out of life, and I know who the important people are, and I know to let the other things and people slide, because life is way too short to waste time on the meaningless, and on regrets. My birthday, though, has always been tinged with regret, because I hurt people around me on my birthday one year, and every year, I wake up and regret that I caused pain, and the first thing I think of is how this birthday will inevitably be better than that birthday. And every year, it never fails, no matter how lackluster it is, it is better than the terrible birthday. Life has a funny way of giving you things to remember as horrible, and in that way gives you the gift of context; You can always compare an event to the event by which all other events are measured and be reminded that things are generally good, and you should appreciate it for what it is. See people? I can be a glass half full person. i can!

This year was no different. Todd took me out on Friday for my "real" birthday celebration, which meant that we were able to eat dinner together in a decent restaurant without dealing with whiners and spills, and cutting things up, and making sure things weren't too hot, and all the little things that a meal with children require of parents. We stayed out late, and we had hangovers on Saturday, and they were worth it, because we had fun together. Then yesterday, Todd got up with the kids, which meant i was able to sleep about 10 minutes later than usual. It sucks being an adult on your birthday - you still have to battle yucky weather, and get kids to school, and pick kids up. You still have to smear peanut butter on bread and pour milks. Nobody makes you a handmade crown. But you do get to go out that night and your family has you blow out candles (Yes, Rollie, they do have that many candles at the grocery store,) and you have cupcakes (chocolate with hot pink icing!). You get phone calls from people who don't call you regularly, and nice emails, and cards, and people remind you that they love you. And you feel loved. And you win at trivia, and that is always a great birthday gift.

Thanks to all the wonderful people who made me feel very special yesterday, in a ton of different ways. You know who you are, and I love you all.

First Snow

A little video from our brief snow experience last night.

Things I Forgot About Snow

"Mama, when i was outside in the snow, I made a ball and I threw it on you and it was fun."

Yes, Rollie, it was. It was the most fun I've had in ages. I threw an icy, wet snowball today. But it was a snowball. And I showed you how to make a really sad snow angel. And I showed you how the best place to get a snowball from is a clean surface like the car and then we tried to throw snowballs at Daddy in the bedroom window above while he was on a conference call, while Quint did the low-butt run around the cul-de-sac, like he was a pup.

I had forgotten that snow had a sound and a smell, and that it made dogs frisky, and toes tingle and eyelashes frosted, and that it made little kids and big kids giggle like they were being tickled.

p.s. Mom, I'm real sorry about that mess me and Lisa and Matt and Karen and Sean made in the house, like, every day, throughout the winter in Rochester for two years in a row. We musta been about the biggest pains in the ass ever.

Book Recommendations

So, I've been slack about updating my "What I'm Reading" section. I finished The Lies of Locke Lamora a while ago, and then went out and bought the sequel, because it was such an enjoyable read. They are pretty light fantasy. Not groundbreaking, but have a pretty interesting fantasy world that is similar enough to our world to be believable, but with some cool imaginings that stretch over into the fantastic. (Bondsmagi are way cool! And kind of mean!) I loved the main characters - They are lovable, incorrigible thieves and con artists, with wonderful self-deprecating senses of humor. The demises of some characters are downright nasty and gory, but i love that kind of stuff. I love that Lynch isn't scared to kill off some major characters either. I cried a couple of times. (Yep, i cry over books.)

The characters do have love interests, but there's not a lot of mushy crap, and in the first two books, one character is alluded to as a love interest and we never even see her, although I was constantly thinking she would show up sooner or later. Speaking of women, they are strong and cool and complete badasses in the books. The world Lynch imagines is one where men and women work and fight next to one another every day. The setting is a strange Mediterranean-style water world, with sharks, and gladiator-like sporting events, and enough magic and ancient history to make it fantasy, without spilling over into the annoying side of fantasy. The second book, Red Seas Under Red Skies hits the high seas, the landlubber characters learning the ropes (and the crimes) from the pirate world.

Anyway, I loved the books for the fact that they were the fun reading that reminds you why you first loved to read in the first place: You find a world that captures your imagination and stays with you long after you finish the read.

Highly recommended for reading right after finishing some pretentious or difficult read, when you just want to remind yourself that reading doesn't have to be a struggle to be good.

I'm sad they are over and I can't wait for the third.

p.s. Thanks again to Kat and Mike for sending it!

Don't Worry

I'm fine. Just had a pretty crappy day there. Today has been much better and I've just been trying to be patient and appreciative of the good things in life. It is interesting how some days it is hard to see those good things, though.

Anyway, if you are reading this, and you know me, I am pretty sure I appreciate you. And if you were worried about me after reading yesterday's post, don't. I'm okay.

The Kind of Mother I Wanted to Be

One of the major things that you never hear about having children is how completely isolating it is. I spend all week with my kids, except for when I play trivia on Tuesday nights, or when I go out if Todd watches the kids. I get a couple hours off on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings when they are in MMO. Rollie goes all week, so i have some mornings without Rollie, but I still have Tiller. More manageable, but not what I would call relaxing. My weekends are exactly like my weekdays, so that they blur together and become one big block of monotony that continues for weeks, only being broken up by occasional trips out of town. Before I had children, I thought I would be someone with well-behaved children who could travel anywhere, who would be well-behaved whenever i took them out, and who would thrive on the interesting and stimulating things that i wanted to do with them.

This, of course, is making anyone who has children laugh their asses off. Unless you have one child under a year old, in which case you are still in the honeymoon phase, thinking that your child will always nap well in public, and that those people with kids having tantrums in restaurants are just crappy parents who did everything wrong.

The thing is, a parent wants to go out in public every once in a while, and so you take the chance on your kids. You explain that we have to use inside voices, and show respect for others, and that anything else will not be tolerated. If the kids can't follow the rules, then they must understand that we will leave the restaurant. If they can't behave, they will not get to go run errands with Mama, like we planned. So, when you take them to a restaurant, everything is fine, until someone takes a crayon from someone else, and the one warning is issued, and the bad behavior continues, and then you have to cowboy up as a parent. You have to leave the restaurant, and take the little offender home, with apologies to all the patrons staring at you as you leave the restaurant near tears. And you pile them in the car, and feel sorry for yourself because you can't even have one fucking meal in peace, or have one Saturday afternoon where you walk around with your child and look in shop windows, or get a coffee, or stop by the bike shop, like you had planned all fucking week. Nope, you gotta go back to the fucking house, and be stuck with the little assholes who fucked up your day in the first place. And then you feel like you could die, because you love them so much, and what if something happened to one of them, and you had written something so terrible about them?

Truth is, i am lonely. We made a choice to live somewhere that has lots of things to do that Todd and I like to do, but that really don't translate all that well to the preschool set. We live in a neighborhood where there are no kids Rollie's age. Mom says she used to have friends in her neighborhood who had kids our age, and so they watched each other's kids. That sounds awesome, but there are no Stay-at-home moms in my neighborhood, and I just don't think trading dogsitting and babysitting services with the gay neighbors is an option. Babysitter, you say? Yeah, we use one for special events, but babysitters do not come cheap, and for a family on a very tight budget, it just isn't something you are going to do weekly.

So, we continue to watch the kids for each other, and that is cool and much appreciated by both of us, and we go out with friends and it is fun, but it would be nice to go out with my husband every once in a while. Another thing about parenting, especially once you have two children, is how dividing it is. There is just not enough time for everyone to get what they need, and so you go out of your way to watch the kids for each other, so that each person gets kid-free time, but what you never get is kid-free time together. It would be nice to win the lottery and have a night each week where i get to go out in public with him and not have the kids with us.

Most of all, it would be nice to not feel like I'm turning into some desperate housewife (I have never watched that show, so i have no idea what it means to be that kind of desperate housewife.) My son seems to pretty much despise me, except when he wants something. He is four, for God's sake. I used to tear up a little when he screamed and cried for Daddy at bedtime, but now i just feel a little dead inside, like here is what I got myself into, and there is nothing honorable to do but keep on loving him and taking care of him, and just shut off the part of my heart that used to hurt when he insulted me every night. I just know that I lose my temper too much, raise my voice too much, often dread being with my children, and feel resentment that I never have any free time to think straight. And so I can see why they love their father more.

There, i said it: Sometimes i dread being with my children, and I cringe at the sound of their grating little voices, and sometimes I wish I was the one that felt fresh and renewed and fun when I was with them.

And I hate myself for that, because that is never the kind of mother I wanted to be.

Resolution Broken

One thing that I don't like about having kids is that even on Saturday morning, I sometimes only drink about half a cup of coffee before having to do something like mop the whole kitchen after the kids dump their milk all over the floor for fun. This of course happened while I was in the bathroom for all of about one minute. Look in kitchen and it's perfectly clean. Go in bathroom for a minute, and come out to hear that "not good" silence that all parents dread. Walk into kitchen to find Tiller sitting at the table eating, surrounded by milk everywhere: Covering the table, in both chairs, all over the floor in an approximately 10X10 foot space. Rollie is nowhere to be found, but I finally locate him hiding inside the pantry doors, a sure sign of guilt if I have ever seen one. He proceeds to blame Tiller for the whole thing, and like a good little sheep, when asked about it, she says yes, she did it.

riiiiigght.

Spent the next 30 minutes cleaning the milk up, then mopping, all the while breaking one of my New Year's Resolutions, the one about raising my voice to the children.

Okay, It Wasn't All Bad

Okay, so the bad news is, I was kind of a slacker about working out yesterday, which was made worse by Tiller taking a monumental 2-hour plus nap, and at trivia on Tuesday I had more than a nibble off the fruit and cheese plate. (Brie! For the love of God!)

The good news is that other than trivia cheese and beer and the slacker workout, I was pretty good. Also, I haven't run in more than a month and I hadn't completely lost it. I did 4.4 miles Wed. and 4.54 today. So, I feel confident about being able to get back in the saddle without too much pain and suffering. That being said, I am sore as hell.

Yay me!

Show Tori the Love

She's my friend. She is nominated for Favorite Fark TV Girl. You must vote for her. (She is listed as "Fake Wife #1.)

Go!

Resolution

I hate New Year's Resolutions. I never keep them. Ever. Okay, I did make a NY resolution to quit smoking and it stuck. Twice. The first time I quit for two years and then I decided I could have one when I was drinking and then suddenly I was smoking again. A couple of years later, though, i decided enough was enough. I quit in January of 2002, and this January makes six years I've gone without one, which is more than I can say for a certain Creeker who would have had me beat by years if he hadn't given in to drunken nostalgia one fateful night in December of 2006. That is surely bad karma catching up with him for teaching me to smoke in the first place.

Blame others. That's what my family does.

Anyway, in the spirit of New Year's Resolve, here is my plan for things I'd like to do this year.

Open-Ended Nebulous Stuff:

Watch Less TV, Write More
Be more Patient, especially with the children
Not raise my voice as much with the children
Be more consistent with children's discipline, (in particular, Timeouts.)
Go Out More
Be more positive

Measurable Goals:
Lose the stupid weight already!!!!
Run at least 1 10k
Run a Half.
Do my first tri.
Complete three short stories that I am happy with and make sure other people read them, rather than hording them and telling myself I am not good enough.

The hard one here is the tri, because of the need to have real time on the bike, and that requires TIME. Time is definitely my difficulty, management-wise. I am amazed that people with children ever become serious athletes. (Steph and Nat amaze me, pretty much daily, with their dedication and time management skills.)

Okay, the letting people read what I write part is hard, too, because I am pretty self-conscious about it, and the first go-round did not go very well. I am going to bite the bullet, though.

Anyway, that's what's up for me this year. Make sure to ask me how I'm doing, so that I am embarrassed into action every once in a while. I have a funny feeling that this is going to turn into a "Todd picking his hangnails" situation. When Todd and I first started dating, I noticed he wore band-aids on his fingers a lot. I did not like that. Band aids are gross. So, he admitted that picking at his hangnails was a bad habit he would like to quit and for me to tell him if he was doing it in front of me, because sometimes he didn't even realize he was doing it. I don't think he realized back in '99 that he would still be sitting next to me on the couch in 2008, and I would still be telling him to stop picking at his hangnails.

Rhyme Time

Rollie is learning to sound out words, and even recognizes some on sight (like "Max" on the boat in Where the Wild Things Are), and it is fascinating to talk about words and letters and languages and sounds and to see how his brain is grasping things. Today on the way to school, he asked me "What rhymes with caution?" I was stumped. I told him,
"Um, okay, you stumped Mama. I can't think of one. Give me another."

"How about 'mailbox."

Geez, kid, I've only had one cup of coffee! I decided to pull a Seuss.

"Snailfox rhymes with mailbox."

In the rearview, I could see Rollie looking at me with suspicion. Parenting is hard.

Bonus: One smartypants point for each real word you come up with that rhymes with caution or mailbox. . . .

Happy Birthday, Pop!

1930s_berryschool_WalterPalmer
Originally uploaded by Dogwood Girl.

My grandfather turns 92 today. That just awes and amazes me. I've written about him before, here and here, if you want to read more about him. The picture is him around the time of his graduation from the Martha Berry School, which is now Berry College, in Rome, Georgia. I think that was about 1934.