to do list-jan 18, 2009

1. write and illustrate a children's book
2. bake more bread
3. play piano daily
4. make plans to hike the west coast trail
5. make plans to spend my 40th birthday in France
6. tobaggan more often. i love it.
7. start running again.
8. be more gooder.

drawn to the cheeses of kittyness

I tried bobealia's meme with the fd mosaic maker. Fun. I like the top half best. The bottom half descended into some silliness. It is in fact a fairly accurate visual map of my brain, now that I think about it.

i shirk work

like everyone i am in denial about getting back to work after the holidays. my hiatus from work was extra long as i spend most of november working on the house. shifting gears is painful. i can't get up and put on my filthy work clothes. again. i actually might have to iron something soon. and i have to blow dry my hair. i don't think i was cut out for working away from home.
perhaps it is time to finally pursue my lifelong dream to wrtie and illustrate children's books. although we do have some bills to pay. guess i will just have to get out the shoe polish and suck it up. i guess the good news is that i am not covered in drywall dust or unnameable demolition garbage. my back and knees do not ache (too badly) and i can feel the ends of my fingertips.
today googirl is extra gooey with a cold so i am home sweet home after a nice and easy half day out in the trenches. the sun is shining which makes everything seem so very fine. the house is quiet except for the tippy tap of keyboards, upstairs and down. i might start to purr...

imagine the sound of a cassette tape on fast forward

mixed in with the sounds of drills, falling rubble, concrete setting, dust flying, snow lashing the windows, wood warping in the chilly house, lonesome and dark. (do lonesome and dark have a sound?). fast forward again with more banging and sawing and hemming and hawing and toes warming in cold upstairses where i grew up and stews stewing and sanding, sanding, sanding , sanding, sanding, sanding, then much vacumming and gathering up of stuff. Ding, dang, dong - we're BACK! back in the darned ol, fabulous new house.
yeah, i stayed away from the blog a long time. i think it was fear of pretentiousness, fear of this becoming a blog about The Reno That Ate My Brain.
also, lack of high speed internet.
and heck, i was busy!
well, that' s over.

blog post subjects under consideration:

• are my kids watching too much tv? (answer: yes)
• groups/families - mine
• boxing kangaroo pens
• road trips i would like to take (this subject inspired by boxing kangaroo pens)
• window coverings of my life, past and present
• fear
• education
• fear of education
  
• all-terrain vehicles i would prefer my neighbour didn't own
• how i should spend the next ten years of my life
• how to be good (nick hornby already wrote a book about this that i didn't like very much but maybe i need to read it again, now that i'm a little older)

june

i felt that i had to squeeze in a post before june was over to keep up with my blinding post-a-month pace.
i have been on the road a lot, catching up with friends, always feeling like the visits were too short. sweet but not enough.
i have not been obsessing over the drawing board - the house plans have reached a slight hiatus brought on by bureacracy, over, literally, a matter of inches. tomorrow i am going to post a humongous sign on my lawn announcing our intentions and inviting public scrutiny. i am feeling a little self-conscious about it. i think i had imagined a much smaller sign.
people continue to urge us to move rather than renovate but we feel like we are supposed to be here and are counting on the house to come through for us. or at least to survive the onslaught. sorry house. just remember that we love you.
just because i am not currently spending every spare moment sketching and resketching and tracing and measuring does not mean that i am not horribly distracted on a deep level. i realized today that my response time to "hey mom guess what?" is about 6 seconds. a long hmmmmmm?
must wake up. must stay present!

sniptious things

"Sniptious things for your style", in fact. My favourite junk e-mail subject line to date! I have no idea what they were trying to sell me and erased it before I could find out but now I am wondering about the snip-factor, you know? Maybe that is really what my style needs. Some sniptiousness. Sigh. Missed opportunity number fifty-three thousand and seventeen.

looth tooth

The dust is pretty thick around here. In truth I have been avoiding this blog like a pile of papers that needs sorting and tending to but which will probably end up in a drawer somewhere. What can I say? I have been doing and making and thinking in three dimensions and the last place I want to be these days is in this little text box! Je m'excuse my sweeties. And I lost my digital camera and the deadwood dvd's just kept on coming in the mail and the laundry, oh god the laundry - nearly two solid months slaving down in the laundry mines!!!!!

Green things are growing and they are not in my fridge. The rhubarb that I transplanted last fall has survived both in its original bed and the new location. This makes me ridiculously happy. Almost as happy as the discovery that Joel Plaskett is playing Mariposa this year. Hot dog! Troutie is shedding like crazy. My brother tells me that he sheds so much because he is fat. Does this make sense? The scooter and the trike are out of the shed and wearing grooves in the sidewalk. Googirl is jealous of monkeyboy's enormous snowboarding/bike helmet. Googirl continues to pee on the pottie with reasonable regularity and great pride. We have paid our taxes and taken the snow tires off of the red car. I am still running but my hips are giving me trouble this week. They feel arthritic...ooo my achin bones. I have been teaching a lot of French lately and, strangely, my french seems to be getting worse. C'est dommage, n'est-ce pas?

But the big news around here is that monkeyboy lost his first tooth on Friday at around 3pm. He spent the remainder of the day sending whispered pleas to the tooth fairy and marvelling at the new architecture of his lower jaw. "Now the air doesn't have to go between the cracks of my teeth to get to my tongue - it can just swoosh right in!". He keeps asking me to look and see if his new tooth is coming in yet. I have an excellent little sarah apple pop-open wallet with a sad baby fairy on it that I wrecked the spring on that has found a new purpose as the tooth fairy wallet. The tooth fairy pays big bucks these days - two whole dollars! And let him keep his tooth besides! (On account of it being his first one, as she explained in her very messy reply note. Monkeyboy's note: "Hi TooTh FaiRy Look my 1ST tooTh"). He has a little lisp now that just makes smith and i melt.