Half Changed World

If I get up at 5.30 into order to exercise before taking D to school and heading into work, the odds of my being coherent enough to blog at 10 pm are very low.l

I’m usually into New Year’s resolutions, but somehow can’t come up with ones this year that I’m both excited about and can really commit to.  Last year was a year of many changes — new job, D starting kindergarten, N starting preschool — and I feel like this is sort of a consolidation year.

Susan at Crunchy Granola says that her family has a tradition of coming up with a hope, a fear, and a prediction for the new year.  That feels like more the right speed.  My hope is that I will really come into my own in the new job, my fear is about my mother’s health, and my prediction is that I will really enjoy watching my kids’ personalities develop.

I do have some exercise goals for the month of January — 10-50-500.  10 pushups a day (starting out with full ones, moving to my knees if I run out of steam), 50 crunches a day, and 500 minutes of aerobic exercise over the course of the month.  I’ve been working on editing the photos from the holidays, and I am NOT happy with how I look.

Last year at this time, things were looking pretty dark.  Intellectually, I knew that things would eventually brighten up, but emotionally I wasn’t buying it. 

A year later, I’m doing a lot better.  The Administration is still doing really stupid mean-spirited things about welfare, but at least I no longer need to defend them.  We’re stuck with Bush for another 2 years, but a Democratic Congress will limit the bad things he can do.  I think my current job is probably a better fit for me than the one I was rejected for last year.  And I’m just doing a better job of dealing with the world.

To all my readers, whatever holidays you are celebrating this week, I wish you a season filled with light and joy.

About a month ago, T noticed that the ceiling in our dining room was a bit saggy.  Turns out that we had a slow leak from the upstairs bathroom.  We had the leak fixed, but the ceiling is still saggy.  We’ve learned the hard way that neither of us is able to repair drywall in ceilings even halfway decently, so we’re going to have to get someone in to do it.  That’s ok — we’ve got a long list of odds and ends that should be fixed and that we’re clearly never going to get to, so it makes sense to do them all at once.

Since several of the things on the repair list are patches from electrical work we had done 3 years ago, it occurred to us that we should get someone in to do another round of electrical work BEFORE we get all the walls patched and painted.  So today we had new fixtures installed in the dining room and over the stairs.  The old stair fixtures were just really poorly designed — the typical life span of a light bulb in them was about two weeks, and they were enough of a pain to change that we usually just managed in the dark.  So we had new ones put in, with florescent bulbs that are supposed to last 8 years.

The problem is, with all this light, all the dings and dirt on the stairs show up really well.

Lesson learned:  if you’re an indifferent housekeeper, dim light is your friend.

The pie (apple) and muffins (pumpkin) are baked, the stuffing is prepped, and the turkey is drying in the fridge after being brined (according to the NYTimes recipe that Libby recommended).  I’ve got two batches of cranberry sauce — I let the first one burn last weekend when we unpacked the Wii and I forgot it was on the stove.  I sort of like how that batch tastes anyway, but I don’t think anyone else will, so I made another batch last night. T is in charge of the mashed potatoes and I’ll make brussels sprouts in the afternoon.

My parents and one of my siblings and her husband are coming down to spend the holiday with us.  I am so very grateful that they’re coming.  The line that keeps running through my head is "bless this house, for we are all together."  I’m also grateful that after the boys woke up at 5.30 am from coughing, I managed to get them back to sleep and they slept until nearly 10 am.

Like Dawn, I accepted the UCC blogad even though I’m not Christian.  I’m embarassingly ignorant about different Christian denominations, but I can’t object to a request that we "pray for ‘all the people’ — our friends, family and coworkers as well as the vulnerable, the lonely and the outcasts."

May we all be filled with blessing this Thanksgiving.

I’m feeling low energy, so turning to the cute kid story category for an easy post:

• When I got in this evening, the boys were running around with blankets over their heads and crashing into things and saying "who turned out the lights?"  D. thought it was absolutely hysterical when we found in the Ranger Rick he brought home from school a picture of a squirrel with its head in a peanut butter jar.  The caption, of course, was "who turned out the lights?"
• I went up to my bedroom to change into jeans.  I was hoping to maybe sneak in 2 minutes of checking my messages, but N followed me upstairs, saying "I keep you company, mommy."  When I had the nerve to shut the bathroom door on him, he protested "I need to keep you company."  I told him "I want my privacy."  "Are you using the potty, mommy?"
• When N finished eating, he was playing around with what happened to his plate when he put it on top of the tines of the fork and pushed down on the handle.  "No catapults at the table," I told him. "Oh, wight, I fowgot, no cataputs at the table.  At dinner," he responded.
• For my birthday, D gave me Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and we’ve been reading it out loud.  It’s a near-perfect read-aloud book — short chapters, each of which end on a cliffhanger.
• In D’s folder, we received notice of an "honors ceremony" tomorrow morning.  It’s possible that this notice was sent home on Friday, since D was out sick then, but we didn’t get it until today.  For K-2, it’s from 8.30 to 9.15, which is right when N needs to be dropped off at preschool.  I can go into work an hour late, so I’ll show the flag, but I’m still a bit irritated.

Not only did T get up early this morning to wait on line for a Wii, he took the boys with him so I could sleep in, read the newspaper, etc.

At the church where my son’s Hebrew school meets, there’s a poster on a wall that says something like: "It’s October — are you feeling overloaded yet?"  Well, it’s November, and I’m feeling overloaded.

This week we have a PTA event at the school, the end of season dinner for D’s soccer team, and parent teacher conferences.  Some people from my office are going out for post-election drinks tomorrow evening.  I’m going to try to join them, as I’m sure a cranberry-tini will make me appreciate Math Night all the more.

I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is next week.  I’ve got people coming to my house, and have done nothing to prepare yet.  The last time I  hosted, I made the turkey using a non-conventional recipe that called for a short cooking time at a high heat.  It came out great and I’d like to do it again — but I have absolutely no idea what I did with the recipe.  Stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberries.  What else should I make?  My son the ridiculously picky eater won’t taste any of this — should I be kind to him and make biscuits as well?  Gack.

Hanukah is on the early side this year — mid-December — so we need to figure out what we’re getting the boys.  Basically D would like the entire lego catalog.  I think the rule this year is that all presents have to fit inside a shoe box. 

I’m feeling somewhat out of control at work.  I’m much better at coming up with ideas for things that I’d like to do than I am at following through, especially when there’s no deadline.  (I’m very good with deadlines.)

Today my CASA case had a review hearing.  The protective order was dismissed, which means that my CASA assignment to that case is over.  I think it was probably the right decision even though the family still has lots of issues, since I don’t think any of them rise to the level of requiring the courts or the child welfare agency to be involved.  I do think the kids are going to be safe.  I just wish I were more hopeful that they are going to get from the adults in their lives what they need to succeed.

We had N’s birthday party today.  For D, we had gotten away with having only family parties until last year, but since that put the idea of a "party" into N’s head, he would have been disappointed without one.  We had the sort of small-scale at-home party that everyone I knew had when I was growing up, and that is becoming less and less common in these parts.  Hullaballo, Pass the Parcel, pizza, cake, playdoh.  We invited the two other boys from his preschool class, of whom only one could come, and a family friend.  It was lovely.

And, even with such a small scale party, I’m exhausted.  I feel like I spent most of the weekend cleaning.  I don’t know the parents of N’s preschool classmates well, and was not willing to let their first impression be our usual level of benign chaos. (And even after the cleaning, I still worry that they think we’re slobs.)  At least three times today, D got overwhelmed by his frustration that N was getting all sorts of cool presents and he wasn’t and burst into tears.  It’s hard; I understand.

Tired.  Cranky.  Maybe getting sick.

Too little sunlight.

Bad memories.

Reading excellent but depressing book.

Going to bed.