“We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.” ― E.B. White

This is so incredibly true.

Things that give me great joy:

• folding laundry
• dicing vegetables
• loading the dishwasher
• seeing a shiny sink
• hearing my kids laugh
• getting unexpected hugs
• writing letters on pretty stationary
• being a total geek

• having my husband brush hair away from my face before kissing me.
• going to Sonic

It's the little things in life.

And the Schedule Hits the Fan

I'm over-scheduled.  I admit it.  (Well, I'll admit it to anyone that's not my Husband because that would mean he was right... and I can't allow that to happen.)


At this point I'm obligated to a few things:
Homeschooling Chaos.
Maintaining medical scheduling for all four members of the family.
Running a Girl Scout Troop.
Being an Akelah for Cub Scouts.
Therapy Schedule
Plus--- I've got a rather seasonal volunteer schedule.  I bake cookies in the winter, clean the river side, etc...

I know, I know- there are TONS of people out there that do all this PLUS hold down a full time job.
I just can't do that.

What I can do is try to devote a fair amount of time to each thing on my schedule.  For example, homeschooling takes several hours per day along with a few hours on the weekend to plan things out.
Girl Scouts might only be an hour every other week, but the planning takes between 6 and 8 hours each month.
Same with Cub Scouts.
Doc's therapy schedule is generally set in stone.  However, there are often weeks when scheduling conflicts occur, either because of my schedule or the therapist's schedules.

So, the last thing I really need is to be having more black outs.  It's rather annoying to be doing my thing and have someone tell me ten minutes later that I was shaking and unresponsive.  My body aches from the physical pain of it most days.  That's neither here nor there.  There's not a lot that can be done about it.

My Therapist has ADHD

     So, I started seeing a therapist.  I figured it'd help me with some of my sarcasm issues.  (Me?  Sarcastic?  Never...)  Since I get X number of free visits per year, it at least gets me out of the house and talking to someone that's being paid to pay attention.  It turned out to be a very good thing for me.

I go into her office, take a seat and we begin talking.  And it becomes rapidly apparent that she's a bit more talkative than I anticipated.

However, the recessive Italian genes in me wouldn't let her take my talking time away and I relentlessly continued my monologue. 

In the end, she informs me that I'm one of the most interesting people she's met. 

I'm a bit surprised.  Does that mean I'm truly delusional?  Perhaps I'm just really odd.

I suppose I'll find out at a future appointment. In the meantime, I'll take it as a compliment.

And Then I Felt Ill

I remember my first experience with an FPS (first person shooter.)
I was dating this guy (that I'd later marry and then divorce), and he went over to his friend's house every Saturday to play Quake.
I tried it a few days after we discovered that I was going blind from the PTC/BIH.  Visual disturbances and shakiness is really bad on weak eyes--- and even worse on a weak stomach.

Yeah.  I lost my lunch.  And my breakfast.  And probably most of dinner from the night before.

Once my eyes settled down for a bit and I was able to stabilize my vision, I lucked out because FPS technology became smoother- less jerky, less constant rendering of pixels.

All this brings me to today, when I sat down and play tested the new Rachet and Clank demo.   I know, it's not quite what I'd expect an FPS to be, but the constant scrolling view and endless pixellations just made me wish I'd never eaten anything today.

Overall, it was a lot of fun.  The plot was a bit dull, and there were a ton of cliffs to fall off of, but in the end, it was rather nice to beat down some bad guys.

May the Yoga Gods Smite Me...

My sun salutation sucks.

I spent half my day grocery shopping with a bunch of ungrateful yahoos that followed me around calling me Mommy.  Every item I toss into the cart was met with comments of "Ew" or "I hate couscous!"
And don't get me started on the eye-rolling.  I mean, come on, I must have rolled my eyes at them a hundred times in two hours.
Then the Hubby joined in on the coversation, "Really, do I HAVE to eat that?"
I finally turned around and gave him the evil eye that said, "It's lamb, honey-bunny, shut your trap or wash your own socks and be a single parent." He kind of caught my gaze and turned pale; but he did shut up.

So, we get home and the boys- Doc, Chaos, and even the Hubby- sack out and start snoring.  Napoleon helped me sort some of the groceries before sneaking off with my laptop and watching one of the anime I put on her approved list.  (Approved- Meaning I don't find too much wrong with it such as overly sexual themes or other things I'm not ready to talk about with her yet.)  She killed the battery in my laptop and wandered downstairs just as I finished unpacking everything.  Uh-huh, a coincidence.  Sure.

I spent the next fifteen minutes teaching her how to fine mince a carrot and sweat mirepoix.  Thirty minutes later, she'd finished whining about constantly tending the pan on the stove and I finished up dinner.  (Roasted chicken, vegetable couscous, garlic-parm broccoli, and cheddar biscuits)

But, during the process (in which I used several tottering yoga poses and breathing techniques) I discovered a sure-fire method to stop the whining.  I just reminded Napoleon that if she didn't stop whining, she'd lose concentration and most likely chop off her fingers.  (Yeah, not terribly likely, but still, it made her stop and think.)

Yes, I'm the world's meanest Mom-tator (kind of like a dictator crossed with a Mom only FAAAAR meaner) but I get results and for some odd reason my kids still love me.

Now that everyone is finally in bed, I'm going to go finish my yoga and hopefully get some sleep early tonight. 

Sweet Pickles are Icky

Most kids growing up like sweet pickles.  (I guess some places call them bread and butter pickles or something innocuous like that.)  I thought they'd be awesome, after all- I like bread and butter.

Yuck.  Icky.  EW.

Hand me a kosher dill pickle any day of the week.  That salty goodness, a nice snappy crunch, and the brine is heavenly.

Even better, hand me one of the type of pickles my Mom religiously puts away every year.  She grows her own grape leaves to put in the jar!  They have that perfect crunchy goodness that just makes my mouth water to think about them.

Growing up, Mom used to give us a "family night" of sorts.  Usually, Dad would be off working somewhere and Mom would make a huge tray of cheese, olives, homemade baby pickles, and then a ton of those chicken flavored crackers and my brothers and I would sit around, late into the night, watching Dr. Who.  (The good Dr. Who- you know the series I'm talking about- there was a wild-eyed guy named Tom Baker running about in a scarf...)  I think I was about seven or so, but I still remember the series finale.

And those were salty pickles.

And that's why sweet pickles seriously suck a purple gannon.

My Little Drama-Tween

Yesterday was Napoleon's 10th birthday.

We've started calling her Napoleon because she has some major height envy.  Even for 10 she's short.  Heck, at 10 she's short for a 6 year old. 

This entire summer has been nothing but a long drawn out hormonal temper tantrum.  I love my kids, but this whole tween-ager drama thing is wearing thin.  Very thin.

She wants to stay up late (until 10 because she's 10) and that got vetoes.
She feels entitled to boss her little brothers around and then takes it personally when they don't listen to her.
She gets "sick" or "sore" or "not feeling good" at the drop of a hat.  And the amount of discomfort is directly related to how little fun she finds a task.  Folding laundry- yeah, she'll manage to injure herself doing it.  Playing in the pool?  Even with an obvious sunburn and five bruises appearing from water fights with her brother, she's feeling just fine.

Yeah... I'm secretly cursing her to have daughters that are just as dramatic as she is.  And to make certain there are some traumatized little brothers in there as well.  lol!

Desperate Nerds are Funny Looking

So, I play in a gamer group.  At the moment, I'm the only girl.  I'm also the DM.  For those of you that aren't gamers, DM stands for Dungeon Master.  Before you get some grand idea of kinky fun, I should probably also say that sometimes I'm called the GM- Game Master.  Basically, I'm the story teller for the game.

So, today, the guys came over to game in the Wednesday night game-which I don't take part in, only the Hubby does- and they were visibly agitated.

One of our regular players quit.  That drops us to three regular players and five part-timers.  Apparently, this isn't good enough for the guys.  They're terrified that somewhere in my vaginal-and-overly-hormonal story telling that I will kill their characters.

I was instructed to find new players to round out the party.

**shakes head**

This reminds me a bit of some of the indie-gamer-mockumentaries.  I can easily see my gamer-boys as the guys in Dorkness Rising. 

The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

The Week of Single Parenting Begins Anew

Every third week, my husband goes "on call" for his company.
I hate "on call".
My Hubby works for a wireless company that will remain nameless but would probably be revealed should I mention that my phone is a Droid.  Oh wait, I wasn't supposed to say that.

But, anyway, Hubby goes on call and my life screeches to a halt. 
Being on call means that Hubby must have a working vehicle from 5pm to 8 am.  So, any and all errands I run must happen between 9am and 4pm--- and during the weekend I'm not allowed to go anywhere at all.  And when I do go out, I can't go more than five minutes away.  This is all to prevent the odd chance that he "might" get called with an outage. 

Does it happen?  Yeah, from time to time.  But, normally the things he's called for are things that were already on the schedule or were expected such as an install or a freak storm.

To make matter worse- on call weeks are automatic night shifts.  This means he's gone all night and asleep all day.  And, since he's injured his knee, he sleeps on the couch so he doesn't have to climb the stairs to our room.

ASLEEP ALL DAY ON THE COUCH WITH THREE KIDS UNDER TEN IN THE HOUSE!!!!
So, I can't go anywhere to take the kids.  THE LOUD, NOISY, WHINY, ACTIVE KIDS.

This is the very definition of insanity.

Turning Japanese

I would LOVE to move to Japan.  With or without the family, if an opportunity came up for me to move there, I'd be on the next plane out.

My husband thinks it's funny- I'm horridly allergic to seafood- ALL seafood.  And yes, even with this allergy, I want to move to a country who thrives on seafood.

I love the tradition.  I love the dichotomy of old meets new.  I love that women are traditionalists in their home roles.  (Yes, I'm a huge feminist- and I'm a follower of gender roles, but that's a whole different post.)  I love the religions, the ettiquette and the formality of it all.  I even love the whole technologically advanced hand in hand with the ancient wonders of nature.


I think mainly I love the simplicity that is bourne from the frenetic.

I cook a lot of Japanese food.  Two of my favorite cookbooks are In the Japanese Kitchen, and Food from Japan.  To get the kids involved, I started making bento lunches.  We watch a lot of anime. 

Yes, I'm a Japan geek.  I don't want to go to Japan and be one of those tourist types that wants to do all this "traditional" stuff.  I want to go and fit in.

A Mom's Ingenuity at the Tennis Courts

Today the geeklets (my older kids Chaos and Evil, specifically) had tennis lessons over at Wheeling Jesuit University.  I enforce tennis lessons because a) I'm apparently a mean and evil Mom-dictator who paid attention when the kids promised they'd at least attempt three lessons each before quitting and b) these are free through the local recreation department and I'm all about taking advantage of the word "free".
It was hot. To that effect, I'd brought three bottles of water that had been in the freezer over night.  I also brought some curtains and hung them against the side of the tennis court to create shade.  There is NO shade to be found there.  I had a ton of the other Moms stare at me as I sat, knitting and eating rice balls in the comfort of the shade, waiting for the hours of tennis to end.  I cheerfully invited anyone who passed by to sit and then offered them sunscreen when they refused.
Between lessons the kids ate their way through a tray of rice balls (onigiri) that had been decorated to look like baby chicks.  I don't know whether it was the cute food or the audacity I had to hang curtains on the tennis court, but I was definitely stared at today.

And, you know what?  It doesn't bother me in the least.  I'm not one of those Moms that really cares what other Moms think of me.

You see, I'm a pragmatic person.  What do I mean by that?  Well, let's use an example that really happened to me.  In college, a friend's desk lamp wouldn't turn off.  This was the kind that was built in to the wall so it couldn't just be unplugged.  He tried the switch many times in vain before calling the dorm supervisor.  The dorm supervisor tried several times and finally put in a call to the facility manager.  In the meantime, everyone was panicking because it was almost time for curfew and he couldn't get his light off.  They started making arrangements to change his room for the night.  I wander over and finally suggest with a bit of derision that they could always unscrew the light bulb.  You'd never believe that NONE of them had even thought of that as a method for turning off the light until the switch could be repaired.  Like I said, I'm a pragmatic person.

My parenting techniques are pretty much what I'd consider "pragmatic" as well.  They get results with the fewest possible bribes, tantrums, or other side stepping techniques.  (That's not to say that there's not a time or place for bribes or tantrums.)

So, that being said, I needed shade at the tennis courts.  So, very pragmatically, I hung curtains and made shade.  And I got stared at like a weirdo.

How on Earth did they ever guess I was a weirdo?  I promise, I kept that bit of info on the down-low.