About time I posted...

For crying out loud, it's been two months or something.

What's new: joined a health club, going to coached swimming, about to embark on a healthier eating plan (no junk, fewer bad carbs, etc). We have high hopes.

Baby is talking a lot. Today she said, "I found a crayon." We were at church and she herself had dropped the crayon, but that does not detract from the magnificence of the full, complete, grammatically sound sentence that she uttered when she happened upon it moments later. Clearly she is a total genius.

Here she is a few weeks ago peeking through a fake tree stump at the Hands-On Children's Museum in Olympia, Washington. Let us all take a moment to adore her perfection.

... That being done, we can move on to other topics, as if there were any more worthy than my precious child's every move. Ha!

Okay, I'll lay off the adoring parent routine. But she really is quite a corker!

I'm going to nursing school. This fall I'll start with the pre-reqs, then once I have those out of the way I'll bully my way into the program (if necessary: I'll start softly and work my way up to hacking and slaying if need be; it is a competitive program but I'm smart and have a lot of experience working with medically and psychiatrically challenged individuals).

Best of all, I have been promised a laptop after my first term back at school! Drooooool...

What else is new? Hmm... we finally got The Trench filled in with dirt, and Joodles has begun planting vegetable seeds and starts. Now we have to actually bag up the dog poop instead of tossing it in The Trench. We must also find ways to deal with the chicken manure and the grass clippings... Feh. So much easier to be slovenly, but the end result, some few years from now, would have been a 50'x6'x2' planter full of dog poop, chicken manure, and grass clippings. And probably some sort of court proceeding.

I am a little squeamish about eating vegetables grown atop dog doo, but there is a good 18 inches of quality soil and compost covering it, and if we all contract bizarre diseases at least we will have had the satisfaction of having grown our own vegetables.

The chickens laid four eggs today. They slacked off for a while and we were only getting 1-2 per day but they seem to be happy with all the sun lately and have stepped up production. They all crowd around and squawk very satisfyingly when I bring them table scraps, and I feel better knowing our leftovers go to good use. I would urge anyone reading this blog to watch a chicken eat leftover spaghetti noodles someday. Your very soul will sing out with the delight of it.

I have been reading a fair amount recently, mostly fluff such as "The DaVinci Code" (try not to think ill of me, yellojkt) and mouldering historical chick fiction like the works of Gwen Bristow. Once it warms up a bit more I anticipate evenings spent lounging on the patio with a good book after the small one hits the crib.

Ah, the patio... I do so love it. It's going to be an excellent summer.

I didn't admit this until recently, but before Delia was born I had this fantasy that I would spend the occasional morning reading the paper on the porch with her snoozing next to me in a bassinet or some such. In my defense, I had witnessed other parents doing similar things and knew it to be a possible outcome. Imagine my shock and horror at finding that not only was it never going to happen, but that instead I would spend my days sitting on an exercise ball trying to watch dvd's while bouncing her vigorously in the hopes that she would eventually sleep.

Those days are over and good riddance, and now she is known to play in the yard for a half hour at a time while I putter or sit and read nearby. It's a good life. :)