It's new to me

So here are some things that I've discovered/tried/liked lately.

1. This whackadoodle gift shop at my local mall. I've walked past it many times but never gone inside until today. OMG. If you're ever in Austin and need someplace to buy a fake skull that holds restaurant-style salt and pepper shakers in its eye sockets, a life-sized semi-pornographic fairy sculpture for your garden, a neon pink katana, a crapload of cell phone charms and some Pocky, I can hook you up. One-stop shopping!
2. Elk. You know, the animal? Or more accurately, the meat from the animal? I am always looking for non-CAFO animal protein to which none of my family members are allergic (P is allergic to poultry, C is allergic to beef, my body can't metabolize non-heme iron and we are all sick of pork). My local health food store had ground elk so I made meatballs out of it and we all loved it. It's very lean and tastes a lot like beef, only richer. Not gamey at all. Will DEFINITELY buy again.
3. Starbucks. Oh, I know. But see, I've managed to completely avoid Starbucks all these years. First I didn't like coffee, then I DID like coffee but couldn't handle caffeine, and I was intimidated by all the roasts and shots and pumps and whips and whatnot. However, while we were traveling over the holidays P taught me the code words to say for the drink I like and now, a couple of months later, I've got a grande decaf soy latte monkey on my back. (And he brought his friend, the cranberry-orange scone monkey.) I feel so unclean. But I cannot deny, that freaking coffee is DELICIOUS. (And so are the scones. God help me.)
4. Sherlock, the contemporary version of the classic with Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson. My local PBS station shows this on Sunday nights right after Downton Abbey, which means Sunday nights are suddenly the most awesome nights of all time. I don't usually like "updated" classics but this one, I love. Cumberbatch is pitch perfect and I have adored Martin Freeman since The Office.
5. "Resistance" by Muse. This really could not be further from my "usual thing", musically speaking, but I heard it while sitting on an overstuffed ottoman waiting for daughter H to finish trying on clothes at Kohl's and I fell in love with it. I don't even know myself anymore, you guys. (Do I like Muse now? Am I ALLOWED to like Muse? Are they too young for me? OMG, THEY PROBABLY PLAY THIS SONG AT STARBUCKS.)

In other news:

1. I have a new laptop, because I keep killing laptops. I hope not to kill this one anytime soon. My old favorite photo editing software doesn't run on the new laptop because apparently the company that made it was bought by another company in 2004, which tells you how old my copy of this software is, and anyway I can't edit photos now so I'm not posting any until I get new software and have learned it. And since learning curves are my anathemata ... it might be a while. Is what I'm saying.
2. Son C fell in the shower yesterday and while he did not get hurt (apart from some bruising), WHICH IS THE IMPORTANT THING, he did somehow manage to destroy, like, an entire wall in the upstairs bathroom, and all the tile on it, and all the plumbing behind it. We picked an excellent time to replace our floors, eh?
3. Speaking of the floors, the dog is still completely freaked out by them and I am so over it. We have done everything but smear the floors with cheese and cat poop to convince him they are awesome and totally not going to kill him, but he is not having it. I think we might have to lobotomize him. Or I might have to move to another house and take the floors with me. Or start drinking more.

Yep. That's about all that's going on around here.

Stuff and nonsense for your Friday

So what happened was, we got new floors.

They're hand-scraped hickory, and they're only downstairs and on the actual stairs (upstairs is still manky horrible carpet).

And I love them. I love that they are all distressed and mis-matched, like crappy old wood that we just found rotting in a pile somewhere and decided to put on our floors.

Even though they show, like, every single speck of dust. As you can see by these photos. Fortunately daughter H's OCD has kicked in and she's sort of obsessive about Swiffering them (when she's home, which she wasn't when I took these photos).

UNfortunately, in getting these floors we broke the dog's brain. He has only two speeds: OFF and 11. If he isn't sitting/lying perfectly still, he is running around like a crazy thing. So, he slides on the floors. Which makes him afraid of the floors. Which makes him want to run across them even FASTER. Which causes him to slide. Which makes him afraid of the floors. Rinse, repeat.

We have a bunch of rugs thrown around everywhere and he kind of hops from one rug to another like he's playing a game of Frogger. It would be funny if it weren't driving me absolutely nuts. I'm not sure which one of us needs sedatives more, quite frankly.

Apart from the floors and the dog we are our usual busy selves around here. I found out one day before the first rehearsal that son C was going to be in a week-long musical performance for school, so that was fun. We're still in the midst of that now, and since it's at night and I can't see to drive in the dark, husband P has been ferrying him around while I stay home to help H with her homework, which seems to involve an awful lot of glue and colored sand lately for some reason.

Speaking of homework, son C is supposed to be reading Jane Eyre just now, although I don't think he actually is, and since I hadn't read it myself I thought it might help if I did, and so I am. (It's appalling how many classics I haven't read considering I minored in English in college.) I am enjoying it quite a lot and trying to convince C that he will too, but he's too busy playing Skyrim. Oy. Meanwhile I have ordered a paperback copy, even though I don't read real books anymore, of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and am very much looking forward to reading that as a followup, assuming I even remember how to read real books. We shall see.

Prior to starting Jane Eyre I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which I also hadn't ever read, and now that I have I'm thinking that could have been a MUCH better movie in the right hands. Just sayin'. I read TWWoO because H and I have tickets to see a Broadway Across America production of Wicked in a couple of weeks, and I was thinking I might re-read the Gregory Maguire book before seeing the musical and that it might be nice to have a frame of reference before reading the book this time, only now I've decided NOT to re-read the book beforehand and instead just to enjoy the musical for what it is without the need for comparisons. So. I'm glad we got that all worked out.

Let's see, what else is going on? I've had the same weird, nebulous crud that I get every year around this time, which I always assume is some sort of flu that my body is fighting off owing to having had the shot back in October. (Except this time it might actually be dust/cedar poisoning. Hard to tell.) I'm trying to beat it back with naps, hot toddies and lots of sriracha. That usually works.

My hair, which I shaved off in May 2010 and have been growing back for a little over a year, is making me completely insane but I am not going to let myself shave it again because boy howdy, that was a pain to maintain. Assuming I didn't want to look like a Monchhichi, which I did not.

I recently read this article and loved the concept of setting seasonal goals rather than annual goals, so I promptly resolved to make more homemade granola, take more photos and drink more chai tea this winter. So far I've made ONE batch of granola (coconut almond -- it's OKAY, but not worth sharing the recipe until I've tweaked it), taken ... the three photos you see in this post, and consumed not a single cup of chai tea. Heh. I even suck at REMEDIAL resolutions.

Yep, that's about all I've got. Enjoy your weekend.

New year, same old me

Hello, I did not mean to quit blogging at you for so long but the thing is, I have been too busy sneezing. Sneezing, blowing my nose, throwing away tissues. That is all I do now. There's no time for anything else.

We're all sneezing really, even the dog, and the reason we're sneezing is that Phase One of our big home improvement project has been completed, and that particular phase involved cleaning out closets and clearing bookshelves that hadn't been dusted in ... well, EVER ... and also ripping out 9-year-old carpet that had been professionally cleaned ONCE in its entire life, and now we're all dying of dust poisoning. I had no idea how much dust was lying dormant in my house until it all rose up in a great big angry tsunami which is still swirling around a couple of days later, trying to kill us all. You'd think opening the windows would help, but this is what's going on OUTSIDE the house right now:

Image courtesy of Your News Now.

Do you see that second column? The cedar? That is the pollen to which I am most allergic in the world. THE CHART IS NOT EVEN HIGH ENOUGH TO CONTAIN IT. I am going to die, I'm pretty sure.

I did manage to accomplish a few things earlier this week, before the very air I breathe went on its murderous rampage:

1. Bath and Body Works put their tiny little holiday-scented candles on sale, one candle and one little glass holder for $1.50. I am not even going to tell you how many of these I bought, but suffice it to say that the next several Christmasses around here are going to be EXTREMELY fragrant.
2. The prize I won during NaBloPoMo arrived! And I was very excited. And very sad that I no longer read real books. And then I looked it up on the Kindle and it was only 99 cents, so I bought it. That's right. I WON A TOTALLY FREE BOOK and then I BOUGHT ANOTHER COPY. Please mark this down as reason #4,583 why I am not a millionaire, and reason #52 why husband P is in charge of all our money.
3. Speaking of (Kindle) books, I read Darcie Chan's The Mill River Recluse and liked it well enough, and then I intended to read Jennifer McMahon's The Island of Lost Girls because I very much enjoyed Promise Not To Tell, but I accidentally read a free sample of Rob Lowe's Stories I Only Tell My Friends instead and decided that I had to read that next. So I am. And it's good.
4. I took advantage of an Amazon gift card and bought a whopping ton of MP3 music, including the first album I ever bought with my own money (Queen's News of the World) and all the Florence + The Machine I could get my hands on. (Also The Head and the Heart. And some old Chicago. I know, I am so eclectic! Or maybe just weird. I'll let you be the judge.)
5. I bought a poodle calendar for 50% off and hung it in my bathroom next to the toilet. Yes. That happened.

And that pretty much brings you up to speed. More soon, I hope. If I don't die.

Year's end

The older I get, the more this becomes my favorite part of the holidays -- the part when they're over. I don't mean that in quite the nihilistic way it sounds. I just mean ... no more stressing over when I'll have time to decorate, because the decorations are up. No more stressing over what to bake, because the cookies have been eaten. No more stressing over which presents to buy for whom and when to wrap them, because the presents have been received and opened and put into use. No more stressing about travel, because that's over. No more stressing about anything related to the holidays because they've come and gone, for better or worse.

So much didn't get done at our house during this holiday season -- so many unbaked cookies, unsent cards, unbought presents, undecorated corners of the house -- and I felt bad about that until yesterday afternoon, when I realized it was too late to do anything about any of it anyway. And that everything had really turned out okay. And that we were all happy. Even me.

Since then, even though we have a very busy week ahead, I've felt my shoulders lowering themselves from my earlobes, where they've been clenched for most of the month of December (and bits of November)(and October too, for that matter). This week will bring appointments and errands and chores, but it's all mundane stuff. Daily rhythm stuff. Background stuff that we could do with our eyes closed, really.

The part of my brain that's been cluttered up with worry and stress is being given over to other things now. Things like:

• Being so grateful for all the rain we've had this month. Pretty much our entire December has been filled with gentle, soaking rains. It feels like a bit of a miracle after the last several long, brutally hot, bone-dry months we've had. I've learned to love walking the dog in the drizzly mist, seeing all the wet-black tree trunks against the late autumn gold and crimson leaves.
• Thinking back over all the new-to-me things I discovered in 2011. Like negronis (I've tried to like them, but I don't really), American Horror Story (surprisingly good and so creepy/fun), and Florence + The Machine (LOVE!). I read some books I loved, some I wanted to love but didn't, and I started and abandoned a few I didn't care for at all. More about that in another blog entry, I think.
• Looking forward to the year to come. Somehow our home-improvement project of switching my downstairs office with our upstairs guest bedroom has morphed into giving H the guest bedroom furniture, moving my office upstairs, and turning my former downstairs office into an exercise/game room. I guess it's good we don't get overnight guests very often, eh? So we still need to finish that up, and do something about our horrible manky floors, and I've decided to take up running again but I haven't yet figured out how to work it back into my day/week. All in good time, I suppose.

Bring it on, Winter. Let's do this, January. Come on, 2012. I'm ready for you.

The fog

I was all set to whine at you this morning about how stressed out I've been all week, with the decorating and the baking and the shopping and the upcoming travel and the kids' end-of-semester school stuff and husband P deciding we need to do this home improvement project RIGHT NOW and how I am coming down with the crud in a big way and possibly C is also, but then!

We woke up to a pea soup fog.

As soon as the kids were deposited at school, I grabbed my camera and Herr Pudel and I hit the greenbelt.

I don't know about you, but I feel a whole lot calmer now.

Even though my camera batteries ran out at the end there and I had to switch to my phone. Heh.

Day 30 (thank goodness)

Well! This final day of November/NaBloPoMo has been rather eventful.

First, I decided El Guapo and I should hit the greenbelt this morning instead of our usual walking route though the 'hood. I don't know why, exactly. I just felt like seeing some cactus, I guess. This being Texas and it being November and whatnot, the greenbelt was positively lousy with white-tailed deer. All does, no bucks. Absolutely gorgeous.

Can ya see 'em?

Mr. Awful Adorable was on his best behavior, curious but not the least bit interested in any sort of up-close investigation. I snapped a few photos with my cell phone camera and we walked on. A couple of seconds later, we saw a doe tearing full-speed through the brush with two unleashed dogs in hot pursuit. The owners came looking for their dogs soon after, shrugging it off and saying that they just couldn't hold onto them with all those deer around. Um, maybe don't walk your dog through the greenbelt during deer season, then? Just a thought. (The "dumbass" is implied there, right? Good.)

The afternoon was spent in the company of an absolutely adorable young man (like seriously romcom-level adorable)(hush, I am old enough to be his youthful, hip auntie) from a local family-run flooring company who came to measure our square footage and talk to us about laminates vs. engineered wood and how to get our dog to stop eating our house. So that was fun.

While he was finishing up my folks called to say they were in the neighborhood and wanted to drop something by, and P and I realized we hadn't eaten lunch and were STARVING, so the guy finishing and the folks dropping by and the lunch eating all sort of happened simultaneously and with a quickness, because I had to leave to pick up daughter H about five minutes later.

Daughter H has athletics right at the end of the school day, and she was still in her uniform when she walked out to my car, which wasn't unusual. What WAS unusual were all the bandages and the giant ice pack on her wrist. She (gingerly) hopped into my car and asked if it would be at all possible for her to get an x-ray, like soon-ish, because she had fallen while doing sprints and the right side of her body was one long road rash from shoulder to ankle and she couldn't use her right hand or rotate her forearm. Yep.

This was excellent timing, unlike the time she broke her collarbone (every family has an emergency room kid; H is ours) while P was out of town several years ago. P was home today, and fortunately able to take her for her x-ray because I had to pick up son C from his after-school activity and take him to neurotherapy. Whee! Parenting is never boring, I'll tell you what.

While C was getting his brain re-wired, I tried to get hold of P to find out what the diagnosis was for H, but my cell phone decided to quit working. Swell! Turns out she does not have any detectable bone breaks but she might have broken her growth plate. That takes a few days to show up, apparently. For now she's in a splint (and like a million bandages) and seems to be okay, though she's in a bit of pain. Argh. Worst belated birthday present ever!

Despite the moderately sucky conclusion, overall November was not a terrible month. The weather was nice, the kids and I survived P's absence for two weeks, and I managed to complete NaBloPoMo despite all our crazy busy-ness. Sure it was all quantity and very little in the way of quality, but IT COUNTS. And I even won a prize doing it, so that is way swell.

I also really enjoyed taking daily photos for the habit flickr pool this month. And my photos were even featured on the habit blog five times, on the 4th, 11th, 20th, 21st and 25th! Very cool! You can see the entire set of photos I took/submitted this month here, if you're interested (clicking on the thumbnails brings up bigger photos + captions). And I encourage you to check out the habit flickr pool proper because there are some amazing, inspiring, heartbreaking, encouraging words and photos there. I will definitely try to participate the next time they open it up for submissions. And you should, too! It's not scary at all, I promise! Everyone is so nice. If I can do it, you can do it, believe me.

So that pretty much wraps up November. I leave you with one last gratuitous dog photo:

I am a very good boy if there are deer nearby, but I will totally eat your entire house.

Alrighty! Thanks so much for hanging in there with me this month! Now go forth and have an awesome December!

Happy happy

This darling baby is 14 years old today!

Happy birthday, daughter H. You are amazing.

Day 28

Oh, you guys. I have totally half-assed this NaBloPoMo thing, I know, and I am really sorry about that. It seemed like such a good idea back in the idyllic days of October, knowing that both C's marching band practice/performances and H's theater rehearsals would be ending at the beginning of the month, and that I'd be able to sleep later than normal and go to bed at a decent hour which should TOTALLY get the creative juices flowing, right? As it turns out: not so much.

And then husband P unexpectedly got shipped halfway across the world on business. He was in India mostly, with a brief stop in the UK on his way home, and he was gone for two weeks, and get this -- he LOST HIS CELL PHONE like five minutes after he got to India. At the very beginning of his trip. I've never been a very good multi-tasker and it turns out I was completely unable to worry every second of the day about him dying in India, unable to reach me so I could hear his last words, AND blog at you at the same time. I know. My bad.

Anyway, he is home now, thank goodness. He brought loads and loads of presents back with him -- jewelry and pashminas and yards of silk and tiny sandalwood carvings and larger non-sandalwood carvings and single-malt scotch and Israeli pottery and silver goblets (and an upper-respiratory infection, but that seems to be on the mend). I have no idea how he fit all of this stuff into his luggage. Turns out when he's not watching podcasts and reading news articles and playing Angry Birds on his phone, he goes shopping! (He still hasn't gotten a new phone. Guess where he is right now? SHOPPING.)

December is going to be even busier than November was, as we are taking advantage of P's annual Month o' Personal Days off from work (his company has a use 'em or lose 'em policy on those, so he saves them up for the holidays) to do some major stuff around the house, switching my downstairs office with the upstairs guest/exercise room and painting all the walls and re-doing all the floors. To say I'm not looking forward to tackling a project like this right in the middle of kid exams and holiday decorating/shopping/cooking/travel would be an understatement, but when it's all over I'll be glad we did it. Right? OH GOD, I HOPE SO.

So, don't expect to hear from me much in December, is what I'm saying.

In the meantime, we still have two days of NaBloPoMo to get through. And I still have a bunch of pictures of my dog that I haven't even shown you yet!

This one actually is a photo of my dog

But it's a cute picture, so that totally makes it okay, right?

Right?

Hello?

Sigh.

My girl

I went into labor with daughter H fourteen years ago today.

But her birthday isn't until Tuesday.

Go ahead, do the math.

(She was worth every single one of those 80 hours.)