News of a general sort

Since it has been some time since I posted, I thought I update you, my faithful reader(s), on the general household news. Mainly this is a ploy to put off cleaning the bunny cage, which is reaching critical mass as we speak. But anyway. *cough cough*

I passed my CNA test and am now a board-certified Certified Nursing Assistant. Whoopty-do! It's a requirement for nursing school, so I had to do it. I looked into an on-call job at one of the area hospitals in the mental health unit just for grins, and it pays to start about what I make working on-call in residential mental health. But goes up from there, whereas I am about topped out in residential. Something to think about.

Speaking of nursing school, I am crossing my fingers that I will be receiving a letter in about a month, telling me I've been accepted into the program that starts in January. I had been all in a lather about getting my transcript to the college in time for selection (April 1st) and then gotten this confusing letter from the Credential Evaluation dept., so I called them to clarify (all was well, no reason to panic) and then asked them oh so casually about my points... I was told by advising that I had 46 (out of 53) and just wanted to confirm this. The friendly and helpful young lady on the phone asked which class they had used to figure up this or that point total etc, and it turned out that I actually have 49 points. Oh, she says, you stand a good chance this time!

So yeah. The mailbox. Haunting. Every day. Even though the theoretical letter wouldn't come for another month or so.

Okay, so you know all the hoopla about the terrible two's and how awful they are? Don't you believe it! The terrible two's got nothing on the almost-3's. Suddenly everything we do is a struggle -- "Baby, come get dressed, we have to leave soon." (Baby runs down the hall laughing. I pursue and capture. Baby cries angrily and kicks her feet. Repeat ad nauseum.) "Baby, come eat your lunch." (Baby refuses and has a tantrum, then demands chocolate milk.) "Baby, don't pull the cat's fur." (Baby then kicks at cat, usually missing, but still.)

Mainly it's the refusal to cooperate when I'm trying to get her out the door that really fries me. Then once we are out she's generally fine. It's just dirty and wrong.

Another fun tradition: lingering in doorways. Like, throwing open the door exposes a brand new world so exciting and beautiful that she can't take it all in and must move so-o-o-o slo-o-o-o-owly as she exits the house (or wherever we are) that I trip over her and no amount of encouragement will expedite this process. This is especially fun at places where there might be others behind us waiting to leave also. Fortunately she is fairly adorable and most people's hearts explode as soon as they look upon her, so we get relatively few dirty looks. But still! Is it so hard to pick up your feet, little girl?!

Nice weather today, maybe I'll get to paint the shed ...

Easter, Anger, Canoe

First off: Easter was fun. Delia got a big basket of mostly toys from the very wise Easter Bunny who knew that she would get roughly forty-seven thousand pounds of candy from other sources. Sure enough, at egg hunts on Saturday (Grandma's) and Sunday (church), she got her fill of magic beans (her far superior name for otherwise ordinary jelly beans), chocolate foil-wrapped goodies, and the like. Someone fed her a chocolate-iced cupcake at the fellowship hour afterward, which she very sportingly ate in the manner of Henry the Eighth, even wearing a delightful goatee afterward. I will post the photo as soon as it makes its way to me. Last year she ate a cupcake no-hands-style, a photo of which ended up in the church newsletter. The tradition lives on!

Today J went to look at a canoe from an ad on craigslist. The seller was not home but someone else showed her the canoe, which she agreed to buy and offered to leave money down on it while she ran home to get the other car, some tie-downs, etc. No need, said the fellow.

We showed up at the house as planned only to find the canoe being loaded into somebody else's truck.

She jumps out and says, "I told the guy I was coming for it."

"Yeah," said the seller, "but you didn't leave any money." (In snotty tone of voice, as if this was the stupidest thing ever.)

"I offered to leave some but he said I didn't need to!" she protested. "I told him I'd be back with the other car. He said that was fine."

"Well, why didn't you bring the other car in the first place?" says the snotty jerk seller. (WTF does that have to do with anything?! We showed up at the exact same time as the other guy!)

"I was calling from work," says J, and gets disgustedly back in the car. We drive off angrily.

You know, that would have been a totally different experience if he'd just said something like, "Oh gosh, I'm sorry for the miscommunication but the guy that was here was supposed to take a deposit for it if you were going to have to come back later." Like, would that have been so damn hard, Mr. Jerkface Seller? He was so snotty I'm glad he didn't get our money for his stupid canoe.

So we drove on to a large, well-known local retailer and purchased a nicer and larger (and new) model of the canoe from them. Last year's model, virtually identical to this year's, but on clearance. J has this kind of luck where we show up to buy something and find it's on clearance, often not learning this until it has been rung up. We call it Secret Sale. Also, because we bought a boat, all boating accessories were ten percent off, so we got paddles and life jackets. All told we spent about 200 dollars more than we would have spent for the other boat -- but a) we got a nice new one, b) it has backrests and other niceties, and c) we didn't hand our money over to a total dickwad.

We even got the baby her own little paddle. And an adorable life jacket. Far cry from those ugly orange ones we had to wear as kids!

Gaaaah!

I just read on the college website that it will be about EIGHT WEEKS before I am notified whether or not I got in to the nursing program!

EIGHT WEEKS! DON'T THESE PEOPLE KNOW THAT I COULD EASILY DIE OF ANTICIPATION IN EIGHT LONG WEEKS OF WAITING AROUND FOR THEIR STUPID LETTER!!!!

EIGHT WEEKS?!!! WHAT KIND OF SADISTS ARE THEY?!

Shed! Bunnies! Helping!

J's brother is here building us a shed and doing various other jobs. He is a very skilled carpenter and has made us the cutest, snuggest little shed ever. As I blog this, he is out putting up gutters on the patio roof and the shed. He even built a little fence to keep the dogs away from the back fence! They like to go back there and bellow at the neighbors behind us, a practice that I find odious and beating-worthy. Alas, due to societal pressures not to inflict violence on others, am restricted to yelling and shaking my fist. Stupid non-violence.

We took the bunnies out yesterday for their first ever lawn excursion! The wire enclosure is finally free for use since it is no longer serving as our hillbilly gate (as J's brother crafted two wonderful gates for us his first day here). They were unhappy about how much J's brother's dog Busty wanted to eat them -- he was literally drooling as he watched them -- but seemed to enjoy the grass and the sun and all that.



Note the ugly bald patch on Exidor's back. It has started to grow back since we began putting more toys in the cage, so I'm pretty sure it was just that Cleo was grooming it off of him. She's very energetic.



The baby wanted to help so J's brother let her do various things. He's really great with kids. She also wanted to play with her bunnies so we let her be in with them for a few minutes. Tempting as it is, we do not generally keep her in a pen.... Note the shed in background. It will be painted a lovely green with blue trim, since trying to match it with the house didn't really work out. The siding on the house is nice but as a paint color, it would have been a murky blueish-gray. Ick. So J said I could paint it as I like! She is both kind and brave. There is a ladder rack on the long side against the fence, and there will be a 2x2' window on the long side in the photo. J's brother has a place he likes to get them for cheap so he roughed in the hole and he'll just saw out the siding and put the window in next time he's here.

Three more days of CNA class and then the board exam is the 21st of this month. Yay!

Clarification

To clarify previous post, I have 46 points as of this evaluation. The other points from the CNA course and the third term of A&P will not count for this evaluation since they will not be completed by last Sunday.

Am now haunting mailbox despite how utterly unrealistic it is to expect any news this early.

Nurst

Okay, so we calculated my nursing school admission requirement points as of the end of last term. I have 46 out of 53. Gaining my certification as a nursing assistant gives me four more points, and getting an A next term would bring me up all the way to the full 53.

J showed me the statistics about admission points for the past couple of evaluation periods and 100% of applicants with 46 points and above were admitted, in both periods. A fairly decent percentage (40ish, 50ish) of applicants with either 44 or 43 and above were admitted. The tiebreaking factor is a log-in date of application and I am not sure where my log-in date stands compared to others.

At any rate, it looks like I'm in... I should know in a week or two. I would start Winter term (January 2008).

GAAAAAAAAH!

Bunny Baldness

So poor Exidor is suffering from some baldness on his back, in an area he can't reach easily. I waded through some truly heartbreaking photos and descriptions of various bunny skin diseases on the internet, but none matched his symptoms: he has no redness, no itching, no crusty stuff anywhere. Just a big and ever expanding bald area on his back.

Turns out overgrooming by a bonded mate can cause this... and I have seen Cleo groom him pretty obsessively. And they are definitely bonded. They sleep in a little pile and groom one another all the time. I had suspected she might be just wearing his fur right off but wanted to get some validation elsewhere. The cure: exercise, toys, distractions. So, we are going to borrow a no-longer-needed kid enclosure that we're pretty sure J's sister still has and see if that contains them, and if not we'll find something else for the indoor exercise. I want something kind of enclosure-y because I find that just cordoning off part of the house is not sufficient, in that it takes me twenty minutes to catch the little dears when it's time for them to go back into their hutch.

Hurrah! He doesn't have the mange!

The Oregon Coast

Went on the long-awaited beach weekend, all excited about puttering around on the shore picking up the drab shells and sand dollars between rainstorms.

Oh yeah, speaking of rainstorms? Came home early.

We were prepared for some rain, but not the constant, relentless monsooning we encountered. And which would have been kind of groovy except that staying all day with an almost-3-year-old in a motel room with no outlet for her boundless energy makes pretty much any potentially groovy circumstance Not So Groovy. We found ourselves out of dry clothes by Saturday afternoon and once it occurred to us that we were watching videos, napping, snacking, and playing with the computer, just like we do at home but at exorbitant beach prices, we decided to cut it short. So we drove home through the pouring, blowing rain.

And found that our babysitter had a) dyed her hair in our bathroom and dripped it onto the rug, and b) stolen prescription painkillers from us at some point in the past two weeks. (Hey, little word of advice: two or three pills missing from a bottle containing 15 would maybe not be noticed, but if you leave only four in the bottle -- yeah, not such a great idea, Mandy... or whichever of your little friends you might have had over. Either way, you're not coming back here. We don't need people like you or your friends around our stuff, or more importantly, our kid.)*

Great weekend huh?

On the brighter side, I just checked my grades and found that I got an A. :)

The Milton Flip

Okay, so I started Certified Nursing Assistant training this week. I'm taking it at a small, homey trade school with a fantastic success rate, run by an "I'm everybody's grandma" type woman who used to be a tester for the certification board so she clearly knows what she's doing.

The school is housed in a former cheap motel that has been converted to offices and is decorated in Middle America I Shop At Wal-Mart And Believe That Scented Candles And Tabletop Fountains Are The Height Of Home Decor. Seriously, you walk in the door and --I'm so not making this up -- there is a scented candle AND a tabletop fountain going in EVERY ROOM. Including both bathrooms. Incidentally, there is a Wal-Mart literally across the street.

We started right in with the pleasantries: Hi how are you, here's your packet, watch this industrial film about The Role Of The Certified Nursing Assistant ("Not Just A Glorified Lackey, But Also One Who Makes 25 Cents an Hour More Than An Uncertified Nursing Assistant"), and then let's learn peri-care on this (also not making this up but wish I was) anatomically correct mannequin.

Peri-care, for those of you fortunate enough not to know, means perineal care. Perineal means "extremely personal private regions south of your belt buckle." The east 40 and the west 40. The whole damn enchilada. Or taquito.

(Disclaimer: Now, I'm writing this from the part of me that is still reeling from having to think about cleaning anyone's goodies but my own, and of course the baby's. The higher-functioning, future-nurse part of my brain has already moved on to more sensible ways of thinking, along the lines of, it's all just anatomy, input/output, part of the patient, needs to be dealt with discreetly and compassionately, etc. etc. But that junior-high eeeeeeuw! corner of my inner self is writing this currently, so rest assured that I will not betray or acknowledge any part of this as the nurse I will become. Honestly, I was in the hospital for 48 hours and gave birth in front of other people, some of them total strangers, and then sat there joking with the person who sewed up the damages, so this is really not a big deal. Except that I must bring it to you, my faithful reader(s), in shocking detail, for full dramatic and humorous effect. /End Disclaimer)

So, after introductions were made and the recent yet gloriously dated film was watched, we trooped down the hall and a very pretty, very fashionable, very young woman demonstrated peri-care on the aforementioned mannequin. Between the homey-yet-stagey setting and the harsh lighting, I felt as if someone would be coming by later after closing, perhaps to film some amateur porn. We were introduced to the mannequin "Billy" and shown how to give Billy's junk a bit of a wash. Yeah. Junk. Junk that can be swapped out for male junk with a mere riiiiip of velcro. Voila! Billy becomes Bill! Whichever bit of junk not in use is stored in a handy compartment in the abdomen.

Did I mention that the class that started on Monday consisted of me and two men? Uh-huh. Um, yay?

One of those men is a really nice guy who is a very young father of six with no. 7 on the way. I like him and he's smart and polite and clearly got his head on straight, other than evidently not fully understanding where babies come from.

The other man? That would be Milton.

If you are familiar with the actor Jerry Van Dyke, you may understand this reference: if Luther Van Damme went to CNA school, he'd be Milton.

Yeah, that peri-care thing? Should have taken each of us, with coaching from the instructor and the usual studently ineptitude and dumb questions, around ten minutes. Milton volunteered to be first and half an hour later he finally managed to complete the task and let the next person give it a shot. The real sticking point had to do with how to fold a washrag into a sort of a mitt on your hand and thereby create several surfaces that can each be used once on an area. Then part of the mitt is flipped over your (latex-gloved) fingers to expose a new clean area. This flip part, really more of a pulling-over, became a total ordeal. I thought the instructor was either going to throw down her clipboard and take up strong drink or else start looking around for hidden cameras. You'd have thought Milton was reviewing a complicated brain-surgery technique from the excruciating and repetitive detail he went into to try to master this skill. I am pretty sure the dummy was about to lunge off the bed and strangle him with his/her stiff, rubbery hands if he'd gone on much longer about it.

So now when I'm practicing any kind of washing skill (peri- or otherwise) I secretly call it "the Milton Flip" when I pull the washrag-mitt over my fingers to expose a clean surface.

Finals

Finals went well. Only a few questions I had doubts about on the lab final, and I had a good idea of what they probably were, so I think I did well overall. The lecture final I think I did fine with, although sometimes I get dinged a half a point here and a half a point there for little things.

So, I think the chances are likely that I got an A in the class.

Of course, between alternately studying and feeding my WoW addiction, I was up til close to 1am Friday night (yes, technically Saturday morning) and then got up four hours later to do some last minute cramming of the minute detail stuff that likes to fall out of your brain when you sleep. Like, the names of the layers of an artery wall. I knew there were three layers of tissue and two layers of elastic material in an artery, but couldn't remember their names. Sure enough, she dragged out the giant model of blood vessels and we had to name the middle layer (tunica media) and the innermost coating of a vein (endothelium). See, now, if I hadn't suddenly gotten a wild hair about looking those up in the parking lot right before I went into the exam, I would have missed them! Providential.

Then we drove off to the farm for some birthday partying and some cow birthing. J's sister is a sort of a country vet and her husband is a truck driving, mule breeding, elk hunting type of guy. They have about 50 acres and on those acres you can usually find an interesting assortment of critters: llamas, chickens, a goat, a few cows, some mules, horses, a donkey or two, maybe a pig or three... some of the stock kind of rotates, rescue animals and the like, while others are permanent fixtures. They have three cows right now and yesterday morning one of them calved. Another of them, an enormous animal, was carrying twins and ready to pop, and went into labor while we were there. Amy had already decided that when the cow went into labor she was going to pull the calves out because this cow had lost her last calves due to a difficult birth and she didn't want to lose these two also. So, while everyone watched in horror and amazement, that's just what she did. And two little brown and white calves came into the world.

Actually, I missed the whole thing. I took the baby and one of her cousins up to the house to use the potty and once we got up there, neither wanted to leave, so I sat in a recliner and read a Mule Enthusiasts Quarterly or some such while the girls played. We headed back down just in time to see Jim carrying the second calf to the pen from the chute where they had put the cow to do her calving.

We're wondering what the entertainment will be for the next birthday party.

Saturday Suckathon

Okay, so today? Today I have two finals. Anatomy & physiology lecture and lab finals both, back to back. Normally I'd have just the lab one today and the lecture one next Friday, but we are going to the beach next weekend and I kind of scheduled that before I consulted the syllabus. Whoops.

And, I was supposed to have the rest of the day to spend at my leisure, alone, doing as I pleased, but for reasons beyond my control I am obliged to then immediately get into the car and drive about an hour and a half each way to a family birthday party. Don't get me wrong, it isn't that I am resentful of having to go -- these people do the same for my child, and it's family, blah blah blah, but dammit -- I'M TIRED. I just took my FINALS. Let. Me. REST!!!!

Then on Sunday I'll be headed to church and then probably going insane with the laundry and the housekeeping and yadda yadda yadda because on Monday? Oh, on Monday I'm starting the Certified Nurse's Assistant course. Which I must take to get into nursing school. Otherwise I would never in a million gazillion years take it, because at the end of the course and after passing a board certification exam I would earn the right to engage in laborious back-breaking work for a measly 8 bucks an hour or something similar. See for yourself. Look! After twenty years of doing this, you might make 32k/year! Wowee!

The good news is that I will not have to work as a CNA, it wouldn't have any bearing on the points-based system for entrance into the nursing school of my choice and I make more as a mental health on-call anyway. And, a neighbor who lives three houses away will take care of the baby. She has watched her before and could use the extra income, so I'm happy to help her out with that and that the baby won't have to go to some scary daycare that she doesn't know. They can even come here and play with the baby's own toys and stuff sometimes if she gets whiny about wanting to go home. It all fell into place one day not quite two weeks ago. I'm glad to get it over with too, but man, three weeks of Monday-through-Friday 9am to 2pm... Ick.

But if I get an A in A&P this term and next, and get my CNA certification, I'll have the maximum points to get into nursing school. :) Yay me! So far I have a 92 average in the lab and lecture both, so I am hoping to pull off the A this term.

Back to the books.

I can't help but look on what little effing bright side there is here: in 7 hours I'll be done with finals and I'll get to spend the first two weeks of CNA class not worrying about anatomy class.

OMG!!!! I did it!

I sent my dad an email about the offensive emails he sends me! Because he recently sent me an email that I did not find particularly offensive, but just didn't feel could be true. Here is the link debunking that email:

http://www.snopes.com/military/marvin.asp

So I composed a brief, hopefully not-too-inflammatory email to Dad about how not everything you read on the internet is true and included the URL. Then, I figured as long as I was going to do it I might as well do it right, so I mentioned the other email that I blogged about a while ago in this post and sent links about it from snopes.com also.

I began a bit of a blather about how offensive it is when someone tries to attribute suicide to permissive parenting but then decided I'd done enough damage for one night and wrapped it up without any such soapboxing.

Guess what kind of reaction I will get. Go ahead, guess!

None whatsoever. If he reads the links I'll bet you cash money that he won't believe any of it and will never say anything to me about it one way or the other.

It's a bet I'd love to lose.

Meme Madness!

Another meme from yellojkt.

A- Available or Single? Nope! Been together 8 years.
B- Best Friend? My wife.
C- Cake or Pie? Must I choose?
D- Drink of Choice? Coke. But Diet Cherry Pepsi if I'm avoiding sugar.
E- Essential Item? My laptop.
F- Favorite Color? Probably blue... green... purple...
G- Gummi Bears or Worms? Gummi bears, though I'm not that fond of either since there is little if any chocolate involved.
H- Hometown? Military brat, but I consider Portland (Oregon) my hometown.
I- Indulgence? Not enough room to list them all... Probably World of Warcraft.
J- January or February? September! I love fall.
K- Kids and Names? One, daughter Delia.
L- Life is incomplete without…? Friends and family.
M- Marriage Date? We have two: Dec. 31, 1999, and March 5, 2004.
N- Number of Siblings? One brother.
O- Oranges or Apples? Mandarin oranges, good crisp Fuji or Braeburn apples.
P- Phobias/Fears? Too many to list...
Q- Favorite Quote? "Beware the lollipop of mediocrity: lick it once and you'll suck forever."
R- Reasons to smile? Good music, funny comics, little kids.
S- Season? Fall. I love the get-down-to-business, new crayons and school shoes feel of the world, and the crispness in the air and the leaves.
T- Tag 3 people? I am too lazy to tag. :) ... Oh, all right: Mel and Liz.
U- Unknown Fact About Me? I think I'm easygoing but I'm really not.
V- Vegetable You Hate? Hot chili peppers.
W- Worst Habit? Staying up too late.
X- Xrays You’ve Had? Many, many, many. Starting with full-body x-rays as an infant when they found a benign bone tumor in my leg. It was a variety that generally appears all over the place but I had only one. Since then, many clumsy accidents and the occasional bout of pneumonia have exposed me to more radiation than is probably healthy, including once when I swallowed a fish bone and they x-rayed me to see if it was stuck in my throat. It was not still there but the scratch it made was painful.
Y- Your Favorite Foods? Pizza, shrimp, chocolate, a good steak.
Z- Zodiac? Virgo, Year of the Sheep.

Meme mayhem!

THE BOOK MEME! Courtesy of yellojkt (who calls 'em as he sees 'em)

* Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror? Science fiction and/or fantasy. I used to read some Steven King but haven't in a long time (like nearly twenty years), that was about it for horror.
* Hardback or Trade Paperback or Mass Market Paperback? Prefer trade paperback but hardback for the real "keepers."
* Amazon or Brick and Mortar? Amazon if I know exactly what I want and don't think it will be at the bookstore; otherwise bookstore.
* Barnes & Noble or Borders? Aren't they more or less interchangeable? I like to browse used bookstores and thriftstores, also Powell's is just across the river although it's gotten kind of expensive.
* Hitchhiker or Discworld? Hitchhiker. Have never read Discworld.
* Bookmark or Dogear? Bookmark. The one exception is if the page has been pre-dogeared.
* Magazine: Asimov’s Science Fiction or Fantasy & Science Fiction? Uh, I guess I'm not a big enough nerd/dork/geek/whatever to have read these magazines.
* Alphabetize by author, Alphabetize by title, or random? Generally, genre and then by author or at least in a visually attractive manner. I used to be a page (book-shelver) at the library so I know my craft, but I'm just not that anal about them at home.
* Keep, Throw Away or Sell? Keep the ones I can't live without, sell the rest.
* Keep dust-jacket or toss it? Keep unless it's already tatty.
* Read with dustjacket or remove it? Remove, because otherwise it drives me insane.
* Short story or novel? Novel. A good short story just leaves me wanting more anyway.
* Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? I read a little Lemony and it just didn't appeal to me. I'm a bit fanatic about Harry Potter though... :)
* Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? Usually when tired but I try to make it to chapter break if possible.
* "It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time?" Either.
* Buy or Borrow? Buy if it's important enough, borrow if it's just recreational. I can't afford the expense or the space to store books I may or may not love.
* Buying choice: Book Reviews, Recommendation or Browse? Browse and some reviews.
* Lewis or Tolkien? Both for very different reasons.
* Collection (short stories by the same author) or Anthology (short stories by different authors)? I'm not that into short stories, so neither.
* Tidy ending or Cliffhanger? Tidy ending please.
* Morning reading, Afternoon reading or Nighttime reading? Nighttime, but all day if it's a good one and I can find other times to read than just before bed.
* Standalone or Series? Either if they are good, but most series should really only run a few books long and then stop. These ones with 47 books in them are usually pretty formulaic after the first few.
* Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? : Sexing the Cherry" by Jeannette Winterson
* Top 5 favorite genre books of all time? Too much to think about, I don't read all these genres.
o Classic Science fiction:
o Modern Science Fiction:
o Classic Fantasy: Lord Of The Rings
o Modern Fantasy:
o Mystery:
o Thriller:
* Favorite genre series?
* Currently Reading? Um... mostly textbooks currently.

Fogey Central

Saw Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, Joe Ely and Guy Clark in concert last night. I went basically to see Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt, having never heard of the other two guys. I frankly still don't know who they are and wasn't that taken by their music (liked it but did not love it) but they could all play some fantastic guitar.

So, Lyle Lovett is kinda petite. He's got little skinny legs. (And great big hair, still, though not as exaggeratedly so as in the later 80's/early 90's when I became a fan.) And it was funny how they had different styles of playing. John Hiatt has kind of a muscular style, Joe a bit of a rockstar thing going on, Guy a kind of relaxed old-guy manner, and Lyle? Kinda delicate. They are all of a certain age, and good heavens, so was the audience. I was definitely on the younger end of the demographic, and frankly that just doesn't happen as often as it used to.

They sat in a row, Lyle on the left (my left, is that stage left?), then John, then Joe, then Guy. They started with Guy and worked their way on down the line, each one playing and singing a song, with purportedly no playlist and no particular agenda (and no clue, according to Guy). Generally they did their songs solo or with one other person assisting: Joe would accompany Guy, John would accompany Joe or Lyle, but Lyle and Guy didn't really join anyone. I was a little disappointed in that, I had kinda hoped for more of a "jam" feel, but it was still a lot of fun. They would start over at Guy each time and went through the lineup several times, then did one song all together, then left the stage to a standing ovation and came back immediately for an encore. The time-honored concert tradition, just like how one moron has to yell "Freebird!" and some other morons have to find this hilarious and original and applause-worthy.

So, despite the repeated ridicule by a certain probably Neil Diamond fan blogfriend, we had a fantastic time and I remain a devoted Lyle Lovett fan. And now I would definitely go see John Hiatt in concert too.

The Next Step

All of a sudden I'm going to take the CNA (Certified Nurse's Assistant) course starting March 19th. Good heavens. It all just came together yesterday.

I have to take this course to start nursing school; no way would I ever work as a CNA because they do all of the crap work and get peanuts for it. I will be doing plenty of crap work as a nurse anyway, and I can make twice as much (nearly) working oncall in mental health. But! I do solemnly swear (laying hand on copy of Gray's Anatomy) to treat the CNA's that I work with in the future as if they were real, actual human beings, and I will encourage them to become nurses or whatever it is they want to do, because they too deserve to make a living wage. I have worked my share of dead-end, no-future jobs. We all deserve to move on to greener pastures.

Anyway the course is 9a-2p every weekday for 3 1/2 weeks, and the board exam is something like April 21st. A lady down the street will watch Delia for us and we will pay her good money, so I feel good that I won't have to find child care someplace else and the baby won't have to go someplace new and scary. And from what I hear they are scraping by a little at the moment and could use the money, so that makes me feel good.

Funny how things work out when you need them to. We also managed to find a babysitter at short notice for a concert tonight. We're going to see Lyle Lovett. I've had the tickets for ages but spaced off getting a sitter...

A Prodigy. No, seriously!

It's official: Baby is a potty-training prodigy.

Yesterday we just stayed home all day and worked on the whole potty concept. I put her in a pair of sweatpants and reminded her to use the potty occasionally and -- drum roll please -- she did it! All day with no diaper and no accidents! She went all on her own a few times even, would just run over and yank her pants down (or yank her pants down and then hobble over; she's a little unclear on the order of events) and yell to me, "MAMA! I'm going PEE PEE!" I even dragged the potty outside so she could avail herself of it while playing (mostly just to spare the carpet from her muddy boots).

Then, we went to the floor store to make our final decision about flooring, after which we went to a local Mexican restaurant that we like a lot. Baby always eats like a horse there. Well, more like a pig really. I had not taken a diaper bag with me (she was in a Pull-Up) so had no baby wipes with which to clean her up, so I took her to the restroom to wash her slimy, bean-encrusted appendages. Before we left the table I asked if she would like to use the potty and she said Yes!, but I wasn't that sure if she'd come through in the clutch. Woah! I put her up there on the big, scary, adult-sized toilet and she made it look like she'd been using one of these old things forever. Not only that but I was hanging on to her so she wouldn't have to balance and she told me, "Mama! Let go of me!" Now I think she's just showing off...

You know they say that one day it just clicks for them and they just potty train like a dream if you don't push it, and for crying out loud, it looks like it's really true. We just offered some incentive and she was all over it like a duck on a junebug. Go figure.

An amusing anecdote involving the cat: Baby's potty is a Fisher-Price "Royal Flush" potty that makes a fanfare sound when it is sat upon or when (ahem) a "contribution" is made therein. Well, the resident doofus cat Ringo (the Doofus King is his new title I think) discovered that if he stuck his paw into the bowl of the potty, he could trigger the fanfare sound. Yeah, so for several days he could be found leaping around the potty sticking his foot in it and listening intently to the noise. Repeatedly. Over and over again. Until the battery wore out.

Yep. Probably a good thing he's neutered. We wouldn't want any of those genes passed on.

Book meme

Stolen, as many of my better memes are, from yellojkt.

* Bold the ones you’ve read
* Italicize the ones you want to read
* Leave blank the ones that you aren't interested in.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)

2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)

5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) Read these books aloud to J. as we drove to Alaska a few years ago. Actually ran out of time and didn't quite finish the last book though.

6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)

7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)

8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)

9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)

10.A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)

11.Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)

12.Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)

13.Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)

14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)

15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)

16.Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)

17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald) -- started but never finished.

18. The Stand (Stephen King)

19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)

20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)

22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) -- Actually have an autographed copy of the trilogy with a bonus short story (Young Zaphod something something). Very sad when he died. Also have autographed towel though it has gotten somewhat worn.

27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) Just a few years ago.

29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)

30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)

31. Dune (Frank Herbert) Long, long ago. I wasn't that into it.

32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)

33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)

34. 1984 (Orwell)

35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) -- started, couldn't finish.

36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)

37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)

38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb) -- tried it, didn't get what all the fuss was about.

39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)

40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel), or, Ayla the blond girl discovers everything including the missionary position.

42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)

44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)

45. Bible – not cover to cover, but enough to get the gist of it.

46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)

47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) -- an old favorite.

48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)

49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)

51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)

53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)

54. Great Expectations (Dickens)

55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) -- skimmed this but never really read it.

56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)

57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)

58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)

59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) -- tried to read but couldn't.

60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)

61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)

63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)

64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)

65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)

66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)

68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

69. Les Miserables (Hugo) -- didn't read but saw on DVD. :)

70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) -- a big, big favorite. The movie was actually not bad either.

72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)

73. Shogun (James Clavell)

74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)

75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)

76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)

77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith) -- read and re-read a gazillion times in junior high and high school.

78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)

79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)

80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)

81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)

82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)

83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)

85. Emma (Jane Austen)

86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)

87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)

89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)

90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)

91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)

92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) -- Tried to read in high school.

93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)

94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)

95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)

96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)

97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)

98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)

99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)

100.Ulysses (James Joyce)

Swellness!

Not only did we learn this morning that J gets a bonus at work, but the baby got up and used her potty! It just doesn't get any better than this, folks.

Last night we went clothes shopping. I got a couple pairs of capris and a shirt and a sweater, J got some pants and shirts, and we got the baby some new water shoes, you know the kind you wear in the water. They are great for your natural environment type water play, like where there is gravel, and I like for her to wear them at the pool so she does not get foot-rot from the showers. Baby has undergone explosive foot growth lately and last summer's pair no longer fits her massive gunboat feet.

Initially I selected a pair in a festive bright blue and green (i.e. kind of "boys") color scheme but as we prepared to depart from the rack they were hanging on, Baby's tiny little girlish voice pipes up, "I want the pink ones!" Followed by a sigh from J, who cannot believe that our daughter loves pink more than any other color in the whole world. We got her the pink ones, but J retaliated by buying a Tonka dump truck for her to play with in the dirt in our garden.

You know, while wearing her pink kitty cat rubber boots. :)

A Very Big Girl

So, I have been trying not to get anxious about potty training. For the baby. I myself have been successfully trained (more or less) for years, but the baby has been happily soiling diaper after diaper since birth, oblivious to my urgent attempts to influence her behavior via psychic messages. "Magically develop the urge to use the potty!" I would beam to her with my mind, "Suddenly eschew even the Pull-Up!" .... Alas, to no avail.

You know, to motivate someone you have to figure out their particular currency. We tried personal competition by holding up one of her little friends as an example: "Look, Julia is going to go use the potty! She doesn't wear diapers anymore. She uses the potty!" This was met with complete indifference. She could care less! Look, the diaper afforded her total freedom -- why, she could continue playing right through those pesky bodily functions with no interruptions. Sure, changing time was kind of irksome, but it probably took less time than constantly having to run off to the restroom. No thanks.

We tried a minor reward in the form of a Pull-Up. See, these have cartoon characters on them! But the catch is you have to sit on the potty to earn the right to wear them. She decided it wasn't worth the personal toll it took on her to sit on that potty. Thank you but no.

Finally I tried what Julia's family used as a motivator: the garbageman. He was so happy to haul Julia's binky away he gave her a present! He was so happy to stop taking dirty diapers away that he brought her another one! So, we told the baby that the first time she went pee in the potty, The Garbageman would bring her a neat present!

She mulled this over for a day or so and suddenly last night she became extremely focused. For two solid hours she sat on the potty or played near it, bottomless, and anytime we tried to dissuade her because it was getting late, she very emphatically informed us that she wanted to Go Pee-Pee! In! The! Potty! ALL BY MYSELF!!! So, we let her be until it got so late we just had to pack her off to bed with promises that she could resume in the morning.

This morning she was back at it within minutes of getting up. She continued for about an hour in the same vein, bottomless, lingering on or near the potty as she played and watched a cartoon, until finally just as I was dozing off on the couch I heard J shouting joyfully, "You DID it!" I sprang up to witness the first peeing in the potty. Jubilation! Huzzah! Etc.! And then ran to fetch the wrapped gift from The Garbageman, as promised. A little miniature post office with letter carrier figure, scooter, mailbox, and tiny letters to mail. She grooved on it. I was just glad I had bought and stashed that post office toy last year, intending to give it to one of the nieces.

After this momentous occasion we told her that the first time she went, uh, you know, in the potty, The Garbageman would bring her another present. And then I raced to the store to buy it just in case she pulled it off anytime soon. She didn't even really want to stop for breakfast until we plied her with frozen waffles topped with blueberries.

Go baby! Yay!

Good News! Nothin' but Good News!

Ok, so we have this car. It's paid for and (of course) out of warranty. And it has this misfire problem. We took it to two garages and neither could find the problem. So we just let it be, and finally after more than a year the problem got to be bad enough that we had to just bite the bullet and take it to a dealership service department.

Now, generally I consider car dealerships to be the very devil. I think the process of buying a car, wherein you may or may not get as good a price (or as screwed) as some other schmuck just depending on, oh, I don't know, moons, tides, etc. -- that's just wrong. It's f*cked up. And a huge sleazy waste of my time. And I don't know about you, but if there's going to be a huge, sleazy waste of my time, I'd rather it involved more gratuitous nudity than your average car sales transaction. At least the ones I've been privy to thus far.

And service departments? Please. Six hundred dollars for a tuneup? That's just nuts.

But! The service guy called today and told me that the car had lost (or blown or something) some kind of valve and that's what was causing the "hesitation" problem and the engine light coming on and so forth. The part and installation to fix this: oh, in the four hundred dollar range, plus tax. Ok, so that actually didn't bother me too much because I was worried the problem was much worse and exponentially more expensive than this, like the engine was being dissolved by exotic aluminum-eating insects and would have to be replaced for more than the car cost new, etc. The bad news: the broken part had taken the catalytic converter with it. "Oooooh," I said, "those are spendy aren't they?" "Yes," he said, "they are, BUT! I can get that covered for you under the Mazda Something Or Another (I've really got to start writing this crap down) Warranty Program, free of charge."

Yay!

"But," he said, and it sounded as if he was worried I'd tear him a new one right through the phone line when I heard this, "I don't have either part in stock and it'll be at least Monday before I can get them."

Are you kidding me? A year's worth of worry, anxiety, and hassle, and it will cost a mere five hundred bucks and less than a week out of my life for someone else to fix? Good heavens, man, I'd wait a MONTH and pay -- okay, five hundred is pretty much my limit, but you get the idea.

Hurray! Yippee! Etc.!

Ventilation! And vinyl.

As noted in previous entry, the fan in the laundry room gave up its tiny little ghost a couple of weeks back, and air quality in the vicinity plummeted sharply as this is where we keep the (duhn duhn DUHN) litterbox. And while litterboxes in general are unpleasant, Mr. Stinky Cat Butt made it even more so. It smelled like an open cesspool in Mississipi in July, no matter how often I cleaned it.

So the other day we go to Home Improvement Megalomart in a vain search for new flooring (more on that shortly) and while we are there fruitlessly attempting to attract the attention of the single, lone, overwhelmed Foor Coverings Specialist (tm), we pick up a new fan. We engaged in the usual debate over cost/noise/cosmetics, and opted for the El Cheapo thirteen dollars-plus-tax fan because it was similar to the one already installed. Sure, you can pay a hundred bucks for a fan, but we didn't need one with a light and chances were good that the one we were replacing was the cheap one, and it served us just fine for nearly two years of constant use. And twelve years before us of occasional use.

This turned out to be The. Best. Decision. Ever. Because, when we got home and J went in there all prepared to do battle with wiring and so forth, it turned out that the fan lives in a little housing, and just plugs in to an outlet -- a standard, ordinary, two-pronged outlet like the ones all over your house -- that is part of the housing. This means that if you buy the same type of fan, you can just take the actual fan part out of the new housing, swap it out with the old burned-out fan, and plug it in! Two minutes! If that! And immediately the fan will begin to suck nasty poisonous cat poop air out of your house! Yay!!!

In other home-improvement-related news, we are finally replacing the kitchen floor. Good golly, our kitchen is black and white. Dark grey-almost-black countertops, white cabinetry, black-and-white patterned linoleum. The previous owner Emmy (who had the house built) chose this purposely, pointing out to us that we could swap out the accessories such as towels and knick-knacks for "a whole new look." I felt that this new look was best described as "the same black and white kitchen with differently colored towels and knick-knacks" but I liked Emmy and wisely kept my mouth shut. I did swap out the black porcelain knobs for brushed-nickel ones though. I just couldn't take those big ugly knobs. I sold 'em on craigslist for ten bucks. :)

At any rate, once when Emmy was out of town for an extended period the refrigerator icemaker leaked all over the floor and the water stood there for weeks or something, so the subflooring was ruined and starting to deform and basically rot. We were advised of this before purchasing the house and knew this day would come, and my discovery recently that the fridge is now sinking inexorably into the crawl space made it apparent that This Day Is Now. So, tax refund in hand, we schlepped off to the flooring store and chose some vinyl. (We saw other Home Improvement Megalomart customers there too, who had wandered in after having the same type of experience we did, presumably). We were pleased to find some we liked that was clearanced -- cheap! -- and there was enough available to do the entire family room too, but when we talked to the installer it turned out that the family room would need to be built up with particle board to be the same height as the kitchen, yadda yadda yadda, maybe we should consider laminate wood flooring for that room, blah blah blah, and before we knew it the estimate had doubled.

Okay, so after thinking about it, and considering looming nursing school tuition and daycare and so forth, we just couldn't do it. We ultimately decided to scale it back, replace just the kitchen vinyl, and squeeze a few more years out of the crappy pearly-grey, easily-stained existing carpet. With cleaning it isn't so bad, like if we were having a party or something; it's just that within a week the family room looks like we hold monster-truck mud bog rallies in it. But I think I'm going to request that we use a little of the money we aren't spending on the major floor remodel to get the carpet professionally cleaned.

Oh, and in case you ever consider using Home Improvement Megalomart type stores for your big projects, like they show in the commercials where they have their contractors come out and build your fence or whatever? Yeah, when we had to get siding on the house we got an estimate from them just for laughs. It was fifteen thousand dollars. That's about twice what we actually paid Kenny, our sidingwallah, and he was nice enough to knock off for lunch right about the time the baby napped, and made funny faces at her through the windows. She thought he was the greatest guy in the world. I don't think you're gonna get that from the big box stores.

One final home improvement note: J's brother is going to build gates for us, and do a variety of other work, including every little stupid thing you can think of like hang miniblinds and put gutters on the porch roof and help paint the family room and you name it, in exchange for a new computer. I am so stoked. Gates! No more plywood held up by a wheelbarrow! Gutters! Miniblinds! And I won't have to do any of it! Hurray!

Here We Go Again

So, this week I registered once again for the Danskin Triathlon. This is a big sprint tri geared for the beginner in that there is a lot of hand-holding and babysitting of the newbie, lot of back-patting and go-girling and so forth. I completed part of this tri two years ago, and registered last year but could not attend, and so this year -- this year -- is the year I finally do it.

First order of business: uh, get in shape. The running part will suck for me, because I have bad feet, but the rest should be okay.

Naturally, I feel like crap right now. I came down with some strange virus or something on Friday and now I'm exhausted. So, it's off to bed. :)

Walrus Loaf

Our good friends Graham and Liz once lived in Nome, Alaska. We flew there to see them for New Year's 2004, figuring, when would we ever have another chance or reason to see Nome? I was pregnant at the time and just beginning to show (if you knew where to look) so we bundled me up like the kid brother on "A Christmas Story" and toured me gingerly around town. There's not much to see so for the rest of our visit we mostly watched "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on DVD. Thus was our addiction born. We have so much to thank Graham and Liz for!

Another thing to thank them for is Walrus Loaf. Liz sent me the occasional interesting tidbit from Nome inluding a sandwich baggie of musk ox fur, which is harvested by the locals from the areas that the musk oxen hang out while shedding. It is fine and silky and sells for a bazillion dollars an ounce to fancy pants yarn folk. And, she sent me a sheaf of recipes entitled "Walrus in the Cooking Pot," put out by the Cooperative Extension Service of the Unversity of Alaska. From this booklet I made "Walrus Meat Loaf" for a church function and my, was it tasty. Of course, walrus meat is scarce and spendy outside of remote villages most of the time, so I substituted the more pedestrian ground beef.

Well, now J has developed the occasional taste for walrus loaf so this afternoon while I napped on the couch (still suffering some nameless malaise) she mixed up a batch and it is just finishing up as I type this. Yum!

Excrement Day

Having as many animals as we do (two each of dogs, cats, bunnies; four chickens; three goldfish; one toddler) means that a certain (cough cough HUGE) amount of my time is spent dealing with excrement. Litter box, bunny cage, diaper changes account for the most frequent tasks I am faced with. Occasionally I clean out the chicken hut, when it gets too damp and/or smelly for even the chickens to face. Generally I try to delegate the task of Yard Scoopage to my better half, but sometimes it falls to me for various reasons.

Here is the approximate schedule:
Daily: diapers
Every few days: litter box, bunny cage
Every couple of weeks: chicken hut

Now, this schedule is pretty loose (aside from diaper changes) so it's not like I always clean the litter box on Wednesdays, etc. Most days I deal with one or the other of these things at most (aside from diaper changes, which you can now just exclude from the list hereafter).

However. Once in a while, the planets line up and I must take care of all of them at once. Company coming over, extreme slacking on my part, kismet, whatever. It just happens. Like today. Little Miss Terrible Two and a Half and I went out to re-pot some houseplants (following the Great Cat-Induced Flying Houseplant Debacle of a week or so ago) and that naturally led to visiting the chickens which in turn led to cleaning the hut out, which was damp and smelly and littered with little chicken beer bottles and little chicken pizza boxes and little chicken dirty sweat socks. Chickens are like bachelors.

Now I'm taking a break to recover from the trauma of sticking most of my upper body into a plywood box redolent of guano, repeatedly, to remove stinking pine shavings caked with, well, guano. Once I feel sufficiently recuperated, I'll move on to (ominous peal of thunder) the litter box. It's kept in the laundry room, which is a very small walk-through from the house to the garage, and the ventilation fan has been running continuously in that room for about 18 months. Yes, we probably lost some heat in the winter and cool in the summer, but it kept the house free of litter box stank and was therefore worth it. Except it died a couple of weeks ago. We moved the hepa filter in there but it's just not doing anything but blow the smell around. And, Ringo is the King Of The Stinky Cat Butt, so it reeks in there no matter how often I clean it, since he is also the Master of Using The Cat Box Right After It Has Been Cleaned. Needless to say, we will be obtaining and installing a new ventilation fan this weekend.

And, well, I haven't been that scrupulous of late about scooping.

To add to this delightful state of affairs is the fact that one or both of the cats likes to pee on the floor right in front of the box. (I blogged about this long ago, of the many times I moved the laundry machines around to clean up the cat pee that had run beneath them, of the angst and agony that this caused me, and of my eventual discovery of the Wee-Wee Pad. ) I am still using the pads, and every time I get one out a silent but heartfelt prayer of thanks wings its way toward the saintly person or persons who created this marvelous product. However. While they are marvelous at catching the pee and soaking it up, they do nothing in the way of deodorizing said pee. Which means that they reek once peed on, and right at this very moment our laundry room smells like a urology ward. In Calcutta. In monsoon season.

So, I'll spend a richly rewarding fifteen minutes setting all that to rights, only to move on to (duhn duhn DUHN) the rabbit cage.

Did you know that two bunnies produce twice the, erm, output of one bunny? And that twice the output means twice the stink? If not more? Yeah, see, guess who didn't really think that through before agreeing to another bunny. Although, seeing them sleep in a little pile and groom one another and generally groove on being together makes it worthwhile, truly. Still. Yeah. What fun.

So I have achieved it, my friends: the Excrement Trifecta.

MEMEMEMEME

58 Uninteresting Things About Me.

Stolen from Mel. I like memes.

1. The phone rings. Who do you want it to be?
Karen, Katie, Graham and/or Liz, Alison, Mom, Ed McMahon, etc.

2. When shopping at the grocery store, do you return your cart?
Yes, but if there is one (or more) other cart(s) languishing nearby but NOT in the cart return, I'll cop out and put mine there too. But I always make sure it won't roll. I didn't use to be this conscientious and I'm not sure why I am now.

3. In a social setting, are you more of a talker or a listener?
Kinda depends. Usually a bit more of a talker unless I'm really trying to Be A Better Person (infrequent as that is).

4 Do you take compliments well?
Um, kinda... Mostly I just get embarrassed, but if it's a really sincere compliment I'll savor it all day long.

5. Do you play Sudoku?
When I have time. I would really love an electronic hand held sudoku thingy (backlit, please) for Valentine's Day but I don't think J. reads my blog anymore so I'll have to hint at home. :(

6. If abandoned alone in the wilderness, would you survive?
Well, if it wasn't for too long, i.e. I could hike out or someone could find me, I like to think I would. But it wouldn't be pretty. I'd be the one they find wearing only underwear and gibbering.

7. Did you ever go to camp as a kid?
Only Outdoor School, which is a school thing. I always kinda wanted to go to camp but I don't think it's as prevalent in the Pacific Northwest as say the Midwest or East coast. I did hear a thing about summer camp culture on This American Life once that highlighted the spastic emotional hyperactivity of large groups of prepubescent and pubescent girls and after that I wasn't so sure it was a bad thing that I'd missed out.

8. What was your favorite game as a kid?
Ghost in the Graveyard, for outdoor games, and Sorry for board games.


9. If a sexy person was pursuing you, but you knew he/she was married, would you?
OMG no, but if I was single, I'd be harder pressed to answer this. Probably not but it would be tough.


10. Could you date someone with different religious beliefs than you?
If they were fundamentalist anything, no. If I would eventually be required to cover my head in church or submit to their dominance or whatever, no. If they were laid back about it, no problem.


11. Do you like to pursue or be pursued?
Um, be pursued I guess. But pursuit is okay too if I feel like it's more or less a sure thing. This is hypothetical of course.


12. Use three words to describe yourself? Funny. Smart. Insecure.


13. Do any songs make you cry?
Yes.

14. Are you continuing your education?
Yes.

15. Do you know how to shoot a gun?
Yes but I haven't had a lot of practice. Best to stand off to the side and wear body armor.

16. If your house was on fire, what would be the first thing you grabbed?
Baby, pets, laptop, desktop (unless we'd burned the photos off it onto cd's in which case the cd's).

17. How often do you read books?
Constantly.

18. Do you think more about the past, present or future?
Future.

19. What is your favorite children’s book?
The Big Clean Up.

20.What color are your eyes?
Blue.

21. How tall are you?
5'8"

22. Where is your dream house located?
Near family and friends. But out in the sticks a little. But not too far from the amenities: coffee place, library, mall, movies, etc.

23. Have you ever taken pictures in a photo booth?
Long ago, with a girlfriend, on the Santa Monica pier.

24. When was the last time you were at Olive Garden?
Um, within the past few weeks, with Alison.

25. Where was the furthest place you traveled today?
It's 7am, so far just up the hall to the bathroom.

26. Do you like mustard?
Yes but in sparing amounts, and preferably dijon or spicy brown or anything other than the bright yellow kind. And only on hot dogs and only with ketchup too.

27. Do you prefer to sleep or eat?
My affections for both are evenly divided.

28. Do you look like your mom or dad?
Both, Mom's coloration, Dad's features.

29. How long does it take you in the shower?
10-15 minutes

30. Can you do the splits?
Uh, no.

31. What movie do you want to see right now?
Harry Potter when it comes out. I have no idea what is out right now.

32. What did you do for New Year’s?
Drank sparking cider, watched a movie, caught the ball dropping by about 3 seconds.

33. Do you think The Grudge was scary?
Didn't see, don't care.

34. Do you own a camera phone?
No. No camera, no tunes, no nothing. Very primitive. Like a small brick with an antenna.

35. Was your mom a cheerleader?
Nooooooo.

36. What’s the last letter of your middle name?
E

37. How many hours of sleep do you get a night?
About 6. (See answer #58)

38. Do you like Care Bears?
Not in the least. On WoW playe,rs who play on non-PVP servers (where other players using opposing-faction characters can't kill you) are known as Care Bears. I play on a PVP server though I suck at PVP.

39. What do you buy at the movies?
Pop, chocolate in some form. No popcorn unless I'm with somebody else who likes it and then I usually eat some if they buy it.

40. Do you know how to play poker?
Sorta. I play it about every ten years. For an hour.

41. Do you wear your seat belt?
Always. Once you've nearly lost someone dear to you in a bad accident and they say, The seatbelt saved their life, or, It wouldn't have been this bad if they had been wearing their seatbelt, (both of which have happened in my life) you start wearing yours religiously.

42. What do you wear to sleep?
Flannel pajamas (winter), jersey pajamas (summer), socks if my feet are cold (sometimes). Not very titillating but, the honeymoon's over, folks. :)

43. Anything big ever happen in your hometown?
Um, Mt St Helens exploded nearby once...

44. How many meals do you eat a day?
Three, generally.

45. Is your tongue pierced?
No. I had a hard enough time getting my ears to heal, and I'm not that interested in other piercings really. Tattoos, though, are another story.

46. Do you always read MySpace bulletins?
Nah. Not sure what they are.

47. Do you like funny or serious people better?
Funny, hands down.

48. Ever been to L.A.?
Yes, several times. Why anyone LIVES there I'm not sure.

49. Did you eat a cookie today?
Yesterday but it was kind of out of character. The baby and I were at the store and I had this funny little cart with an upper and lower basket (first time I'd ever seen them at the local Safeway) and the baby was so excited -- at last, a cart she could put stuff into! But she was torn because she couldn't ride in it. Anyway she took the liberty of adding a big package of bakery cookies, the frosted shortbread type, and I compromised by buying a couple of single cookies which we shared.

50. Do you use cuss words in other languages?
Merde! Yes! But not out loud, usually.

51. Do you steal or pay for your music downloads?
Pay for it. I'm more paranoid than goody-goody, but I do have a few downloads from long ago before the whole file-sharing thing got weird.

52. Do you hate chocolate?
How could you even think such a thing! Bite your tongue!

53. What do you and your parents fight about the most?
Mom and I don't fight, and Dad and I .... well, I don't know if I'd call it fighting, but we have butted heads a few times about some stuff. It's in my blog.

54. Are you a gullible person?
Occasionally.

55. Do you need a boyfriend/girlfriend to be happy?
Hm. I prefer to have someone than not.

56. If you could have any job (assuming you have the skills) what would it be?
ER physician. Or else zoo vet. Or rich, rich woman with no responsibilities.

57. Are you easy to get along with?
Generally. But once you piss me off, you're in for a bit of turbulence. Until I get over it.

58. What is your favorite time of day?
Evening after the baby goes to bed, so I can play WoW til my eyes bleed.

So Fast

It all happened so fast, today. We painted her room yesterday and today we were talking about what kind of bed to get her eventually and I fired up craigslist and the next thing I knew, I was driving to some stranger's house to buy the perfect little toddler bed, which he had listed mere moments before for twenty bucks.

I thought we'd ease her into it but she saw it and wanted to know what it was, so I told her and she "helped" me assemble it in her room, and given the choice between the crib and the bed, she chose the bed. Maybe it helped that she had spent the night before with me in my big bed (where she slept sideways and wiggled a lot and I got very little sleep). She has slept in regular beds when visiting my mother or my father and taken it completely in stride. Tonight she gave us the usual song and dance around putting off bedtime ("one more" book, "one more!" stuffed animal, etc) but settled into her bed with nary a complaint.

Where is my baby? Who is this big grown up bed-sleeping girl?!

Blurry bunny pics etc

Well, it's official: we have buntegration. Our bunnies are corabbitating.

You'd never know he was neutered from the way Exidor humped poor Cleo like a, well, bunny for the first few minutes. But, after the novelty wore off he settled down and now they are like an old married couple only much, much cuter.

I was not able to really hunker down for an extended photo shoot so can offer only these sad pictures, blurry as they are.

Here is Cleo with an Excitingly Artificially Colored Rabbit Toy. Note that she is your standard white dwarf rabbit with pink eyes.



Here is a really bad photo but I had to show you Exidor's belly:



Snorgling in lazy afternoon bliss:



And, in an un-bunny-related matter, remember that sleek young Siamese-ish kitten we adopted last summer? Behold! He turned out to be very, very fluffy.



Here the baby, in all her bed-headed, pajama'ed splendor, gives him a tour of the kitchen in her wagon. Note new stove in background (burners not only all work but do not slant, bonus!) and ugly floor that is being replaced once we get our taxes back, what with the dry rot causing the fridge to slowly sink into the crawl space...

Eeeeeuw

Dropped a brand new packet of dental floss in the dog water dish tonight. Total loss.

In other dog/floss related news, left a packet of floss on the counter the other night only to find empty container on the floor come morning. Am watching dogs closely for any signs of distress... they are so stupid. They will eat anything. Hope waits for us to take the baby to bed at night so she can plunder the countertops and highchair tray undisturbed.

In other news... washed cars Saturday in what felt like gale force winds, it was cold and windy but sunny so it seemed like a good idea until about halfway through. Then, not so much... Yesterday cleaned out interiors of garbage, toys, sippy cups, etc. -- found 7 sippy cups between the two cars, 6 of them in my car. So that's where they all went! Then I had time to vacuum out my car, and took the time to do super thorough job, under/between all the seats, etc. Even put up the 3rd row of seats so I could get under them. I amaze me. I even cleaned the interior surface of the windows and cleaned all the spilled latte' spots off anyplace I could find them. Go, me!

It was all very worthwhile for just the sheer pleasure of having a very clean vehicle once again, but made doubly so by finding the lost key-card to a friend's condo building. I used it to get in while I was cat sitting and then it just disappeared. I looked everywhere and thought I was going to go clean out of my mind. It must have fallen out of my coat pocket and down between the seat and center console... whew! It was quite satisfying to race into the house and call her to tell her. Yay!

Our chickens are laying eggs like mad. The extended molt they went through really bummed me out, I thought they wouldn't lay anymore, but now I'm pretty sure they are all laying. I find 3 or 4 eggs per day, so I think one of them is a bit sporadic, as we have four banties. Still, the eggs are starting to accumulate. French toast! Tapioca pudding! Mmmmm!

The new bunny is doing fine, I will clean cages tomorrow and take some photos while I'm at it. She still sneezes but doesn't seem sick, maybe she just has allergies to dust? I notice she does it after rooting around in her food dish sometimes, maybe that's it. I gave her antibiotics twice a day for two weeks, and she seems all right so I guess we'll just keep an eye on her.

It's not exciting news like some people have, but that's all I have to report. :)

6 Things That Make Me Unique

Courtesy of yellojkt, who did not tag me but merely listed it on his blog. I'm not tagging anyone because I hate that kind of pressure.

1. I have put on my left shoe first since I badly, badly sprained my left ankle in the 8th grade. Every. Single. Time. I do not put the baby's shoes on left-side-first, because I am not completely psychotic. But my own, yes.

2. One of my legs is longer than the other and my back is slightly twisted because I had a bone graft in my leg as a wee toddler. Spent 7 months in a long cast and 2 months in a short cast. My mother, who is a total saint, donated part of her hipbone to bridge the gap left when part of my left tibia was removed due to a tumor. And then she had to change my diapers while I waved an unwieldy and potentially dangerous cast in her face, for months and months. Bone grafts really take off in babies, and photos of me from a year or two later show my left kneecap riding almost completely offset above my right. As I grew up it sort of evened out but I'm a little crooked and always failed the scoliosis screenings in junior high. I still can't carry a bag on my right shoulder, it slides right off, and when I had my leathers custom-made at Langlitz they cut the jacket to accomodate this slight, yet charming, imperfection. :)

3. I like pickled beets to the point of insanity. They are like candy...

4. When I visit foreign countries I like to buy toothpaste to use at home as a reminder of my trip.

5. I studied in Moscow when it was still a communist countryj (and was hungover most of the time).

6. I have had every single one of my limbs in a cast at some point or another, some more than once.

Snow!

So it snowed four inches yesterday between 5am and 5pm. For us, that's a lot of snow. I took the baby out in it twice, and thanked my parental instincts (more like shopaholic ways) for getting snow bibs and mittens for her a while ago when they were on sale. She stayed warm and toasty and played for ages. We live in a pretty flat loop so entertainment mainly centered on mucking around in the snow with shovels and dustpans, helping Aunt Shannon and cousin Thomas make a sort of heapy igloo-ish thing in their driveway, and pulling the kids around on a toboggan. Then after the first round of play I made real homemade hot cocoa with marshmallows and we all got warmed up.

Here's Delia in the igloo:


It's finally starting to melt, slowly, and traffic is starting to be able to move without bashing into things more than usual, so J. went in for a half day. She came home early yesterday when the roads started getting bad.

Best of all, I got to drive to the store! It was a double duty trip: grocery store for chowder fixin's and then mall for WoW expansion software! I put the rig in 4wd-hi and it gave me no trouble at all, just a wee bit of slippage going around one corner. I would not have driven this morning for love nor money, it was like a skating rink out there with the packed snow now frozen to a gloss on the freeways, but yesterday it was just fine as long as you went cautiously. And the snow was falling so prettily... I needed something like this.

Now vast sheets of it are slipping off the porch roof and everything's starting to drip. I hate to see it go, but it was such fun while it lasted. :)

Meme stealing fun!

Okay, I may not have been as tempted to steal these memes but I was named personally in yello's answers so what could I do?!

Meme #1

1. When you buy a greetings card are the words or the picture more important to you?
They are equally important, though a funny picture will win if necessary.

2. What's your favorite kind of cake?
Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, preferably made by my mother.

3. Do you ever make gifts for people, if so what, or do you buy them?
I string necklaces and bracelets and earrings and car charms, also sometimes make little scrapbooky photo albums that are way, way cooler than they sound here.

4. What's your favorite holiday - i.e. Christmas?
Probably Christmas, because I get to see everybody. And gifts! I love them.

5. Are you going on holiday this year? If so, where?
Maybe to the coast or camping or hopefully both.

6. What was the best party you've ever been to?
Years ago we had a party at my house for my friend's birthday. It was huge and so much fun. There was a large, fun mix of people, plenty tequila, etc. Good times!

7. If you are married, describe your wedding. If not, what would your ideal wedding be like?
Wedding #1, small at a UCC church, after which we went for coffee with some of the guests.
Wedding #2, (to same person, read on), in mezzanine lobby of local auditorium when our county decided to issue same-sex marriage licenses. It was really fun. I was 6 and a half months pregnant and was battling a bladder infection, and J. had gotten home late the night before from a business trip. I got up super early and went down to stand in line for the license, and a friend went to get J. and we all waited. I had to fill out the paperwork 3 times because you couldn't make any mistakes and I was so excited I kept writing stuff wrong. Then we went to get another friend to be a witness and we all went to the auditorium, where officials of all types were performing ceremonies for free. We were asked, publicity or non-publicity? We chose non, and next available officiant, and were led through the lobby (all around hearing ceremonies and Mazel Tov! and so forth, flashbulbs going off everywhere) until we got to our official. (Who turned out to be a UCC minister whose brother used to be J's minister years ago. And now we go to his church.) Anyway the guys in front of us needed another witness so I volunteered. Then it was our turn and the guys stuck around to watch, and because I am a total sap and was hormonal besides, I got all choky-uppy and by the time I was done I was crying and dammit, I took 'em all down with me. Not a dry eye in the house. :)

A while later the state supreme court invalidated all the marriages and we got our sixty bucks back. We were one of 3000 couples who got married during all of that.

8. What's the most romantic thing that's ever happened to you?
J gave me beautiful earrings last Christmas (2005) which made me cry.

9. What's your favorite romantic song?
Hmm. Have to think. Probably Dave Matthews "Two Step" which isn't romantic exactly.

10. Favorite heartbreak song?
Lyle Lovett, "North Dakota", or Sting, "Inside"

11. Which celebrity would you like a dream date with?
Angelina Jolie, or Alan Cumming.

12. Which female celebrity do you find beautiful?
Angelina Jolie is the Hottest. Woman. Ever. (I agree with yello here)

13. Which male celebrity do you think is attractive?
Brendan Fraser. George of Jungle look good in Armani! And Alan Cumming, something about him.

14. Describe the kind of underwear you normally wear.
Standard-issue cotton granny panties which do not ride up or otherwise make nuisances of themselves. Sorry to be so boring.... but I do go for bright colors and patterns.

15. If you could be in a television sit-com, which would you choose?
That 70's Show, or Scrubs.

16. Which character would you like to be?
Donna, or JD.

17. What are your favorite boy and girl names?
Boy: Hamish
Girl: Delia

18. What's your supermarket of choice?
Winco for cheapness, Fred Meyer for things other than food, Trader Joe's for fun.

19. What is your best character trait?
I'm funny. And I'm a good friend (I hope).

20. What is your worst habit?
Obsessively playing WoW when I should be doing housework. Also, blogging.

Meme #2

1. Elaborate on your default icon.
No idea what this means.

2. What’s your current relationship status?
Partnered (married in all the important ways) for 7 years.

3. Ever have a near-death experience?
Nearly got t-boned by a semi once going through an intersection, it stopped about 3 inches from my car. Also have nearly been killed on freeways when riding my motorcycle.

4. Name an obvious quality you have.
I’m a natural redhead but you’re gonna have to take my word for it.

5. What’s the name of the song that’s stuck in your head right now?
"The Internet is for Porn!" which sometimes gets combined with "We Are Santa's Elves" from the Rudolph tv special. It then goes something like this: "We are Santa's elves! We stock Santa's shelves! So grab your dick and double click for elves, elves, elves!"

I didn't say it was pretty.

6. Name a celebrity you would marry.
Hmmmm not sure. Marry? kd lang so she would sing to me.

7. Who will cut and paste this meme first?
No idea.

8. Has anyone ever said you look like a celebrity?
Once a woman at the library where I used to work said I looked like somebody in a Gustav Klimt painting. At the time I didn't really know who that was but looking back it was a huge compliment and probably a pick up line. Damn! Hindsight!

9. Do you wear a watch? What kind?
Sometimes, cheesy Timex or (when I get batteries replaced) a Bulova Marine Star.

10. Do you have anything pierced?
Ears, one hole each.

11. Do you have any tattoos?
Many.

12. Do you like pain?
Er, no.

13. Do you like to shop?
Yes! Mmmmmmmmm shopping...

14. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?
Probably a coffee drink.

15. What was the last thing you paid for with your credit card?
Some books off the internet.

16. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?
J's sister.

17. What is on your desktop background?
This picture:


18. What is the background on your cell phone?
My cellphone is antiquated and does not have pictures or fancy ringtones or music on it.

19. What was the last movie you watched?
Hmmm. Probably "Under the Tuscan Sun" while studying or something.

20. What was the last book you read?
Currently working on "Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction," though I just finished re-reading "The Eyre Affair."

Thus endeth ye memes. Read them and weep. Thanks, yellojkt. :)

Little Bunny, we hardly knew ye.

I'm still in shock.

Little Clem developed diarrhea yesterday; we thought, well, let's not give any fresh fruits or veggies, it's probably just the change in diet and the new surroundings. This morning it was not any better so I thought, I'll call the vet when I get home from the gym.

Well, after the gym I had to go pick up a prescription and that took bloody ages. When I got home.... Little Clem was gone. His poor little body was stretched out in the litter box. I can't believe it. Poor little guy.

J. is on her way home, we're returning his remains to the pet store. Our other bunny is totally fine, no evidence of any illness at all.

I'm so sorry, little guy. I just didn't know you were so sick that you'd be gone in just a few hours. I wish I could turn back the hands of time and do right by you.