Happy Thanksgiving!

I think these pictures are fairly self-explanatory. They let me in the kitchen again. I'm using these as proof that I do actually make my own pies. From scratch. And yes, *I* actually make them. I'm not sure how edible they are. No one dies after eating them, so I guess that's good.




But this is also proof of why I shouldn't be allowed to go in the kitchen. Seriously, look at this mess. Believe it or not, my toaster and microwave didn't press charges. The jury is out on the countertop. :/


I do want to know why my forehead looks like I've just gotten botox. What's up with that shine? Ick. Seriously. And yes, I will clean my counters. . .sometime between New Year's Day and When I Actually Care. :)

Besides, who can think about cleaning counters when there are novels to finish and music history articles to write? In other words, there are much more important things.

This is sort of all over the place because I've been waiting for potatoes to boil for like an hour and I'm ridiculously tired. I should have been put to bed HOURS ago.

But the lesson of the day, kids, is if life gives you lemons, go at them with your mouth wide open. I'm not quite sure what that means, but Miss A assures me it's good advice.

The power of positive thinking

Today was an exceptionally frustrating day. It has been long. It started too early and it's still not even dinner time. That's sad. But, on the positive side, I will definitely be ASLEEP by 10PM tonight. For reals.

I had to work today. I spent what felt like forever. Off and on for 10 hours. Yes, TEN hours. It made me really tired. But, on the positive side, it's "decent" money, and money is money. I paid off half of what I spent on Mr. A at Gap.



The kids drove me nuts today. They barely let me work. Mr. A took 2 HOURS to finish 10 Latin sentences. He is the world's slowest writer. I've got to figure out how to speed him up. But, on the positive side, he dressed up as our "engineer" today. Check out the wrench in his pocket. It made me laugh.


I hate work. Specifically, my work. It just doesn't do it for me. But, on the positive side, that means a better life for my kids.



I wrote well over 2800 words today, researched 7 different topics, fed two kids, taught one, dealt with three and had a dog barking in my ear a good part of the day. It was terrible. But on the positive side, I caught R on film acting the fool. And that's always great.



So today has been long, and I'm a little sad and frustrated about lots of things today that I can't even get into yet. I hope the rest of the week gets better. But, at the end of the day, I'm going to watch Star Trek with Mr. A and M, we're eating tacos, and I'm going to bed early. :)

Shooting rockets off at the school

Which probably doesn't sound like a normal activity, but I'm sure it is. Yesterday, M came home with some sort of rocket launcher, which he said he got at Michael's for 40% off. Today, he went for the rockets, which are apparently pretty expensive. :/ So M and Mr. A spent all day putting together this rocket launcher, gluing it and letting it dry. Then we went over to the school to shoot it off on the track field. The rockets went up 1,000 feet, so it was important to be in wide-open spaces.


Miss A ran around the field while the boys set up. It was a little chilly outside, but not too bad. I actually took my camera off auto today, so the pictures only came out so-so. I wasn't impressed as the sun went down, because the pictures came out with this fake lighting quality. It was weird.


M says he's pretty sure the rocket(s) really did go up at lest 1,000 feet. In any case, it went so high up, my camera couldn't even find anything to focus on (without the zoom lens, anyway). Then it exploded, and a little parachute came out. It was kind of fun to watch. Mr. A chased down the parachute and caught it before it hit the ground. Miss A stomped her feet, clapped her hands, and screamed because it was such exciting business. :)


See that little white speck above the trees? Yeah, that's our parachute coming down after several seconds. It was waaaaaaaay up there. :)


We had three rockets today. It was sort of sad when we were done, because it was like a mini Fourth of July. I guess the rockets cost about $20 for a pack of 3, so it's definitely not something we're going to do all the time. Besides, it's getting too cold to be hanging out outside for long periods of time.


After the rockets were done, we played a little improvised soccer with the kids. Poor Miss A was really frustrated with her little legs, because she couldn't keep up with the boys on the field. So she just sort of followed behind them, crying after awhile when they got too far ahead of her. It was sad and funny at the same time. So M and I took turns putting her on our shoulders and running up and down the field with her, which made her laugh. Too bad I can't run with a baby on my shoulders and snap crappy pictures at the same time. :)


I've decided to call this one "Man Down on the Field." It's ridiculous. And it makes me laugh Every.Single.Time I look at it. Every time. It's just nonsense. All afternoon he kept pretending to be hurt.

So it's getting cold

And I'm reminded why I don't like the cold. But I much prefer it over the heat. If I had my choice, I think I'd rather live in a cold place than a warm place.

The sad thing is, it's not really that cold here. It's in the 50s and 60s right now, and I think it's supposed to drop down to the 40s. But nothing too cold. My Canadians would laugh at me right about now. Still, it feels ridiculously cold to me, especially after 105+ degree summers.


The reason I've been obsessing over coldness lately is because I know that we're going to head up to the mountains (read: the snow) soon. I don't think I like snow. Don't get me wrong--I like to look at it. I especially like to look at it through large picture windows in a mountain cabin while sitting by a fire and drinking hot chocolate. But I don't think I like being in it. As part of my attempted (literal) renaissance, though, the rules state I have to jump into life feet first and not just pansy around on the fringes. So into the snow I will go.


And no, these pictures have nothing to do with the snow. They're from park/shopping trips we've done over the last week. But I had nothing interesting to go along with them, so I thought I would talk about the snow.

On a funny note, Thanksgiving is in a week and a half, and I have to cook for it. Seriously. Well, this should be interesting. Let's hope whatever I do turns out edible, eh? Otherwise, that would be rather unfortunate.


Oh! One last thing. We're going to Disneyland with the grandparents (GeeGee and Papa of the cemetery fame--haha, wow, that sounds wrong) in December. It should be fun. I got a suite at a Marriott in Anaheim for $30/night. What could be better than that? We're staying down there after that to hang with M's family through Christmas. I don't know how I feel about being away from home during our last US Christmas. Sometimes it makes me sad and sometimes I don't care.

Visiting family. . .

I've had these pictures up in Photobucket for over a week, but I haven't made a post about them. I'm trying really hard to get caught up on blogging, so there will probably be multiple posts today.

Last weekend, my dad came to town. Well, sort of. He came two hours south of us, anyway. His kids stayed with my aunt last week while my dad and his wife went to Hawaii. Nice vacation for them! :)

Anyway, we decided to head down there to see them, because it has been well over a year since I've seen my dad. Some people ask if that's weird. The frame of mind I'm in now after my mom died, well, nothing is weird anymore. So no, it's not really weird.

The family is fun. They're willing to risk looking uncool to have fun playing things like Rock Band, which makes them decidedly cool. The adults got into it, the kids were definitely into it, and I think (or hope) everyone had a good time.


I'm glad they chose to go to my aunt's house, because her house rocks. It really does. She's got all these sheep, pigs, horses, dogs and chickens. Oh, and the cats. Miss A is in heaven when we go because of all the cats, and if there's anything other than Poodle and Care Bears that Miss A obsesses over, it's the cats. Mr. A, on the other hand, likes playing City Boy Farmer. He likes collecting eggs and just generally looking at (not really doing much else to) the horses and sheep.


We did get some pictures of the kids with my dad before we left. It was a rather silly photoshoot. Mr. A really gets a kick out of J, who yes, is technically his uncle. But honestly, I don't really think about labels, not even with other members of my family. It's a byproduct of being weird, I guess. J is three years younger than Mr. A, but they get along pretty well.


The baby on my dad's lap isn't Miss A, who is obviously on his right. That's S, HIS baby. If you're thinking, "Wow, Miss A and S look very close in age!", you're right. Miss A is one month older than S. For some odd reason, though, Amazon Miss A is a bit taller than the petite S, who is really a very sweet baby. S also seems a bit more into socializing with people, unlike Miss A who acted like she was borderline autistic throughout our visit. Go figure.



So all the kids had a blast together, except Miss A, who had a blast by herself.

I hate laundry day

And because I hate laundry day, I often choose to ignore it. Which makes laundry day turn into laundry week. It really sucks. I need to get it through my thick skull that laundry DAY is better than laundry WEEK.

Miss A and Mr. A have the worst laundry. I do theirs last, which is a mistake, because then it gets avoided for weeks at a time. And when I finally get around to doing it, this is what happens.



This is my favorite, because the tights are so little and cute.



So imagine this three times, sometimes per child, plus the stuff that is dried. Yes, it's ridiculous. I agree. But it could really be controlled if I would just do the darn laundry once a week.

This should explain why I wasn't updating last week. I was truly buried in dirty clothes.

I am not Julia Child

Personally, I think there should be a law against me being in the kitchen for longer than it takes to grab food or unload the dishwasher. I am really not into anything kitchen related. It has always been this way. In fact, I was just talking to my grandparents today about how much I suck at life to the point where I can't even enjoy baking things. I never wanted an Easy Bake oven. I never liked decorating cookies or cupcakes.

So I fake it for my kids.



Last night, we made puzzle piece cookies. I don't know how much they enjoyed it. Miss A seems to take after me. She's done in about five minutes. Mr. A, on the other hand, does seem to like to decorate a little bit. It took him about an hour to decorate his cookie. he did it all by himself because Miss A pooped out on us at around 9:30. I don't know how much she would have liked the whole decorating thing anyway.


I ended up decorating the second one, which, if you've read the above stuff, you know was right up my alley. I literally spent five minutes on it, just slapping frosting down wherever so it would be covered.



After Mr. A went to sleep, I finished making the Halloween fudge for M to take to work, as well as these cheesecake fudge things that totally didn't come out right. They didn't bake long enough, even though I baked them for the maximum recommended time and the instructions were all crazy about NOT overbaking. Humph. But of course I didn't realize they were underbaked until this morning. Oh, well. Mr. A said they weren' that good anyway. At least the Halloween fudge came out ok.


You know what else isn't coming out? The darn Halloween costumes I've spent too much time on. They're just not what I envisioned. But they'll work for trick or treating. So I give you:

Unfinished Jack


Unfinished Sally (yes, the wig will look better tomorrow when it's actually attached)

Halloween hayrides, car accidents and costumes

We'll get the gross stuff out of the way first. I like Wednesdays. That's not really gross. I like them because those are the days when I'm free from the kids for a few hours in the morning and I get to do grown up stuff like process archaeological collections and compile artifact lists. It's a lot of fun.

On my way to the lab today, I was getting off the freeway and there was a red light. Normally red means stop, so my car decided it would be best to stop. Good stuff, right? Well, the car behind me decided it wasn't having any of that red light stuff, and so it not-so-gently tapped my car to. . .encourage. . .it to go through the red light. And now I have a nice case of whiplash, which is the first one I have ever had. It's not enough for me to need to immobilize my neck or anything, and I can still do things around the house (darn!), but it is sore. And I do have a slight headache tonight that may or may not be related.

Fortunately, there wasn't much damage to the car. Sometimes I like my car.



Ok, now that the bummer stuff is out of the way, we can talk fun things. We made good on our promise to take the kids on the hayride last night. It was a lot of fun. It was a "haunted" hayride, and there were lots of semi-scary things that jumped out at us on our trip.

There were also other things to do there, like play in a corn kernel. . .pit(?). The kids really enjoyed that, but they couldn't wear shoes, and it was cold outside. I felt a little bad, but they didn't seem to be bothered by it at all.


M talked Mr. A into trying to make a corn kernel angel. It didn't come out well, but he tried. And he spent the next couple of minutes picking corn out of his clothes.


There were all these characters walking around the property, and one of them was this mutant rat. I can't remember what his name was, but it was something like Leroy. Anyway, Miss A was positively enthralled with him. It was actually kind of funny. She kept wanting to touch him and give him high fives.


When the rat had to leave, Miss A was very concerned about where he was going. After he left, she was ready to put her shoes back on and follow him all over the place.


And so that was our adventure last night. Tonight I get to keep going on the Halloween costumes, because I'm getting closer to finishing. Now comes the sewing part, which is the worst. Blah. Here is Miss A's stuff in its disassembled state. I made my own pattern from one of her other dresses. I'm not sure how it will come out. It makes me nervous.


And here is the next phase of Mr. A's costume. Now comes fitting the eye holes with the sunken-in "netting" and smoothing out the rough edges (like the nose holes). It should be completely finished tomorrow and I can start on his actual clothes. The head is lumpy, but in my defense, I've never done papier mache before, and I didn't have a round mold to help guide me. Hopefully my inability to craft properly won't cause Mr. A to need therapy. It'll be good enough for trick-or-treating at any rate.

Thoughts on London

Last post for the day. I just had a lot to catch up on, and I didn't want to include this with everything else.

I've spent the past couple of days obsessing over things I can't control, which is what I do best. Anyway, I started looking at the schools in the area we'll probably be living, and I found myself increasingly stressed out over the lack of secular schools in England. The concept of state-run religious schools is completely foreign to me. It is just a bizarre concept. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it is very different for me. The closest schools to where we will be living are all run by either the Church of England (Anglican) or the Roman Catholic Church. The closest secular school is almost 30 minutes on foot. Even with the tube, it's 20-ish minutes away.

Anyway, this is all really frustrating to me, and if you know me, you can probably understand why.

Last night, we took the kids for a walk, and I told M that I was really having a down day and I was second-guessing my love for England. I was worried that my "romantic" view of England had largely overshadowed the reality of what it would be like to live there, and that's never good.

Depending on how well you know me, this might be a surprise: I HATED France the first time I visited. I'm being serious. Hate is a strong word, and I'm not being dramatic. We were locked into moving by the time we visited, and I was pretty sure we had made a mistake. Still, I went ahead with it. The first month we were in Paris, I knew we had made a mistake. It was so hard. It was frustrating. I couldn't understand anyone, I felt completely helpless, and we had no money (our house hadn't sold yet). Nothing had worked out the way it was supposed to, and life generally sucked.

Two months later, you couldn't pry me away from that city with a crowbar. Of course, I'm not there anymore, and circumstances change, but it's pretty safe to say that Paris is the best city in the world in my opinion.

Likewise, I didn't like London at all when we went. I thought it was a horrible city, and I couldn't understand why anyone would want to go there voluntarily. And that frustrated me, because you see, even then, I knew I would end up there. London is my calling, and it has been for at least 6-7 years. I don't know why. I don't know what I'm going to find there or why it's necessary that I'm there, but it is.

I try to hold onto these things when I'm feeling less than enthusiastic about moving. Today I woke up and realized that this situation somewhat mirrors the move to France, and that turned out really well for us.

The weird thing about this move is that EVERYTHING seems to be falling into place with it. I'm telling you, London is my calling. It HAS to happen, and I almost feel like I'm not in control of the situation anymore. It's a very bizarre feeling, especially for someone who likes to be in control of her life.

The graduate tutor with the Institute of Archaeology told me back in September that I was being recommended a place. Still, I have to wait for a letter from the admissions department for it to be "official." And today, when I was feeling the most exasperated and unsure of this move, this arrives.



These are the types of things that seem to happen. Kismet, destiny, fate, coincidence--it doesn't really matter. The good thing is, it reaffirms my belief that this is the right course of action.

It's-a me, Mario!

M got this hat because we've officially become those losers who buy too many Wii games. They've mistaken us for Mario and now we get his dry cleaning. Wow, that was lame. Either way, Miss A has commandeered the Mario hat. In fact, she's wearing it as I'm typing this. No joke.

And what does Miss A/Mario do when she's not wearing the red hat? Make gigantic messes, of course. This one was created during Mr. A's lessons today. That is glitter you're seeing. M thought it might have been Oreos. Oh, no. It is most definitely glitter. You can see it better if you click on the picture. Yikes. And the cleanup in the playroom wasn't fun either.


She was seriously so proud of herself. She spent the rest of the early afternoon before her nap trying to dig back in the craft box.


In non mess-related news, we've been trying to make the most out of our last American Halloween. I know the Brits have been making more of an effort with Halloween, and I'm a little comforted by that, but we're really trying to enjoy what we can here while we can. We've been watching lots of "spooky" movies, mostly whatever is on ABC Family. So far, we've run through The Witches, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Corpse Bride, The Addams Family, and Beetlejuice (only the last half, because I didn't realize it was on). We have Edward Scissorhands (Mr. A really wants to see it) and Hocus Pocus on DVR.

The costumes are coming along. The hard part is coming up, and I've been putting it off. I need to just jump in and give it a go. They're coming together, though. They'll be good enough for trick-or-treating anyway. I don't think I have anything else to buy, so the running total so far is $9 for Miss A and $19.5 for Mr. A.


M says if for some reason they don't turn out, the kids can always go as Mario and Peach. The problem is, I don't know which one would go as Mario. I think we'd see a huge fight break out over the hat.