Daily Adventures

At the moment it's 1.2° F (-17° C). The highs around here have been in the teens and lows have been a bit below zero without wind chill, with wind chill it's down around -16° F (-27° C).

It's not Minnesota or the East Coast. They're actually having warmer weather there than we are. Hmph. We usually have warmer weather than they do and it's just a bit weird to have snow so fine and dry that the only way to get it off the sidewalks is to use either a squeegie or a push broom. It's powder fine and even after a few days on the ground it still crunches under the feet.

It definitely is cold enough that my body *knows* it'll die if I stay out there much. But Jet seems to ignore it cheerfully in order to kick and push every single bit of snow he can find. Boys. *laughter*

It's been about this cold since Thursday afternoon, on Thursday you could watch the thermometer just start to drop down and down and down. Wednesday was in the 50's and we were thawed enough we could actually see a bit of ground between the white and a bit of black top right in front of the house. But about an inch or so fell on Friday, half an inch the night before Saturday, and then another two or three inches today. Powdery fine stuff. Excellent if we were a ski resort, but we're not!! Hmph.

It is beautiful, though.

( And for something completely different... )

Fragile Things by Gaiman has more of the spookiness and edge that I remembered, plus a whole lot of unresolved endings. Some of them were good that way, some just felt... left, I guess. Nothing more to say.

But the short form is very, very much a stronger point for him than the novel forms, from my point of view. I enjoy the novels, but they don't unsettle, rethink the way his short works do.

I also managed to get a copy of the Mirrormask book from the library and it's nice. *grin* I like the real cut in the one phrase at the beginning, and the resolution was very solid and good and settling. An Spider story with some of the same laughter and terror but not the "wrong" ending, not a Tiger story. I liked it. Hensonesque, perhaps, lost its edge perhaps, but I enjoyed it. :-) I'll likely enjoy the movie as much, and now feel like Jet could see it and not worry.

We saw Jet off to the bus this morning with his Pumpkin Head on, and he was happy enough with it. The other kids thought it was cool. For all that "pumpkin head!" is a mild put down by some, I don't think Jet has that in mind at all, and is enjoying the fact that most people think it's really cool and a little funny. :-) I like his world a lot.

Jet and I were making a chocolate cake from a boxed mix. I had him do as much as was possible, I did the fine measuring and opening of the tough plastic bag inside. He dragged his ladder over and pre-heated the oven, greased the pan, washed his hands thoroughly, opened the box, dumped all the mix into the bowl, and dumped everything into the bowl as soon as I measured it. We did the water, flour (necessary at altitude), and oil. Then we came to the eggs.

I automatically broke the first one in. Jet said, "I can do that!"

And I reacted, "No you can't. It'll be too messy!"

Jet just looked at me.

He waited.

I blinked.

( Hmmm... )

amberley pointed me at a review of a book called "Why?" by Charles Tilley, and it really highlights something I'd never known before about how explanations can show where a relationship is.

It really brought home to me why I'm comfortable working with Jet on listening to his stories and listening to his explanations and trying to do story for reasons rather than just "laying down the law". Sometimes straight boundaries and conventions are necessary; but how a story feeds a relationship now seems much clearer to me.

The Longmont Library is getting a copy of "Why?" and I'm now first in line. :-)

It still amazes me that I can go to the library and just pick up any book and read it and get all those ideas, thoughts, and concepts for relatively free.  I know, I know, I pay taxes to enable libraries, but STILL...

I went, last night, at the last hour, to get Jet his Farkleberry Farm video, and he tagged along, and was great when I asked him to hurry and we went upstairs to the adult section, and I peered at the new non-fiction books, in case there were any knitting books.  There was just one book called "Knittisicms:  Purls of Wisdom" which I had to get, but right next to it was a book titled Sandcastles Made Simple.  Wow.  I borrowed that and devoured it in a night and now I want to get back to a beach.  Soon.

But it amazes me that I can pick up the experience and practical knowledge that some professional sand sculptor got from years of experience and collaboration with her cohorts and now do something I never thought I could, before.  Now *that* is magic.

I bought the workbook How to Feel as Confident and Capable as Everyone Seems to Think You Are at the end of last week, it's the one that was linked to the website about Impostor Syndrome. I hated the workbook, especially the first half. There are a few nuggets in there that are useful, but most of it feels like male bashing and some really, really terrible gender definitions that are so stereotypical I gagged. To be really harsh, it takes a lot of things people "know" about how all-else-serving women "are" and how self-serving men "are" and goes from there.

*bleh*


I think, to be fair, by reading it I did figure out that I am doing the right things in trying to work on the next steps of filing off the edges of my perfectionism, that I *do* understand that I have strengths and capabilities, and that I don't have to be a jerk to 'prove' I'm capable. I can wing things. I can figure things out and start a new job with very little knowledge and not feel like I have to know everything simple to proceed. I'm getting better at that, and getting mildly better at making decisions where I don't know everything, yet. I do understand that her perceptions of women and men are the ones that I've been trying to get away from all my life, and this just makes my struggle that much more defined. Still, the whole

As a balance to the complete imbalance of that, I finally picked up Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It is all based on finding my moral principles, and gives specific steps on how to be get to embody those principles and carry them out. No gender issues here, at all. And I think it's all about the positive things that can be done to make every aspect of my life more what I want it to be. That's important to me.

What was really funny was then going on to read Pratchett's Thud!, and seeing Vimes pretty much DO all of Covey's steps in spades.

Okay, it was even funnier after I read Where is My Cow?. Kathy had given Jet this one while giving John Thud!, and the combination floors me every time. What's even funnier is that JUST like Young Sam, Jet is running around now going "Ptui! Buglit! But 'buglit' is my favorite! Buglit! Buglit! Buglit!" The book has me rolling with laughter every time Jet and I read it. And Jet's old enough now that he anticipates all the "original book" bits very handily and they make him giggle themselves.

Jet's really into trying to read, now. He's "making books" for me and for himself, and he's happily copying any book he can get his hands on into his books. He can't read them, yet, but, like me, is writing them, first, and then figuring out from the writing what makes words and sentences and such. It's funny, because with Chinese, I'm having fun just writing, doing the brush writing as beautifully as I can and not understanding much of it, but enjoying the forming of the words and using that to become more literate. He's doing the same with English.

In just the last two weeks Jet's undergone some kind of transformation. He's sleeping all night, most nights. He's being tremendously polite, saying the "Please" and "Thank You" and even "You're welcome" like he did much more of when he was two. He's starting, again, to experiment a little with what foods he's eating, taking to canned peaches and trying half a dozen things that he hasn't liked, but I'm just amazed and happy that he TRIES them.

I'm amazed. We talk about things, now, and he tells jokes and we have a lot more fun on our days "off" together than before.

( More about the weekend. )

I love the rain.

I've gotten to walk between the campuses here while it thundered, rumbled, and rained. It's wonderful. I love the scent of the wet pavement.

I'm going to get to go to ramen with umetaro and I'm looking forward to it.

Work is tumbling through me like a well-channeled avalanche of interactions. All to the good it seems as I've even been invited out to lunch by my boss as a result of the big presentation on Monday. A good thing. Five other, different projects have each spun through my attention like facets to a gem, and I keep it all spinning with a word here, a definition there, a document to underly it all...

But I want to go back to my room and watch Sky High. No, now the teen supers movie, it's an astonishingly grisly and grabbing movie about a woman murdered and faced with the very Japanese choice of acceptance and Heaven; denial and being a ghost haunting the Earth; or cursing a single living person to death and going to Hell. There's some extremely well-staged cinematography in this one. I love the Gates of Rage.

I've also been hooked on Midnighters and gazing longingly at the last Bujold book. I may just have to buy that. Hmph.

There's TOO MANY THINGS I want to do while I have the time to just do them instead of taking care of my family, but I miss my family something fierce, too. Bah... It's a good thing that the lender of the books has said that I may take them home and ship them back when I'm done. Whew.

I am tired. The hotel bed is not my home bed and the pillows don't rustle when I shape them as my buckwheat hulls do at home. Sniff.

It's rare when I read a book that I've wanted to throw across the room into a wall half a dozen times.

( Read more... )

It was a strange kind of weekend. Saturday I tried to let John sleep in, but he was up before 8. We had the muffins and coffeecake I'd baked on Friday for breakfast, and all we did was do small stuff around the house. Laundry, playing game, watching a bit of TV.

Jet loves Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi. Aiee. Kathy gave Jet a whole box of Comicon stuff, including a Nick regular DVD that included a bunch of episodes of stuff they show. Jet fell in love with the Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi, and cheerfully pushed the button on the Monkey Robot Hyper Team GO! giveaway hundreds and hundreds of times. Aiee. But he loved it and I hadn't the heart to take it away.

Someone came and bought a bunch of John's old Land Rover parts at 10. Then Jet and I did all the errands that I wasn't able to do yesterday. When we came home, John left on a bike ride to the local farmer's stand and bought sweet corn. John really felt that he'd finally had a bit of time to himself that didn't involve taking care of Jet at the Bible school. That was good.

Then we had a quiet dinner at home and puttered some more. Then we all went to sleep early as we had to get up really early.

I read a lot, too. Both The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge and Nix's very dark Shade's Children, especially when one had a child...

So I dreamed of apocalypses that night, and it was pretty darned bad.

We got up at 6:30, I'd been up with Jet at 2:30 and sleeping by him helped the bad dreams go away for a bit. Maybe some physical concept of I can be there between him and Other Things helped. I'm not sure.

But we were up at 6:30, gulped what breakfast we could and then headed to church. We got there at about 7:50 and I started coffee for all the parents and that was a good thing as they had their first and last dress rehearsal of By the Sea. I made coffee for most of the morning, so that when they actually did the musical I was able to video tape the whole thing. Yay! Okay, and watch it and they did a darn good job for a one week production. :-) It was fun, too, for all the kids.

Lots of coffee and time later we headed towards home, stopped very briefly, and then headed south to Flat Irons where we got to see March of the Penguins. It's gorgeous, sad, and amazing. Very much what I remembered of old Disney animal kingdom type movies, which I haven't seen in decades, and as oddly sad and gorgeous at the same time. Afterwards Jet wanted to see talking penguins, not these kind. Then he asked, "Why couldn't the momma penguin keep her baby safe?" I said stuff about the really cold temperatures, the insane winds, the lack of food by the nesting site... and Jet shook his head and sighed, "I still don't get why the momma couldn't keep her baby safe."

And I just hugged him and he hugged me back.

Maybe that was enough.

When we got home, Jet was asleep. I went up and napped and dreamed some more of death and ice hard bodies and loss.

Bleh.

When I got up John made enchiladas for dinner. Yum. When Jet finished ALL his dinner, we headed to Cold Stone and had ice cream. Jet got his free cone with gummi bears and sprinkles on lemon sorbet. I had mango ice cream with yellow cake and a last minute addition of pistachios. I hadn't known they had those! If the ice cream had actually tasted of mango, I probably would have loved it. As it was it was oddly like vanilla ice cream without the vanilla and a faint hint of peaches...

John got banana with pistachios as well, though he'd seen the nuts before and had decided the time before to have them.

It was good though to just sit outside of the shop in the warmth of the summer evening and eat ice cream and talk with my boys.

When I got home I picked up Carpe Jugulum and a few chapters about pictsies and the witches later I didn't dream in apocalypse now images. Whew... but my left eye has started to twitch and I can't quite figure out why.