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)
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.
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.
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.
Boy, it must suck when your parents try to take you somewhere fun. This picture is so pathetic. It just makes me giggle.
We started the night intending to go on a hayride, but then I reminded M that it was Saturday night (and the Saturday before Halloween at that), and the place we were supposed to go is REALLY popular. Thankfully our good friend (and former neighbor) stopped by and agreed that it would be Disneyland-in-summer crowded. So we'll try to go this week.
M thought it would be a good idea to take the kids to get ice cream since we had semi-flaked on them. I don't like going back on what I said I was going to do, so I thought that was a good substitute. On the way there, I remembered there was a pumpkin patch with tons of carnival-like rides that Mr. A had wanted to go to a few days ago. We surprised the kids by taking them there before getting ice cream.
I got no decent pictures at this pumpkin patch. None. My children were entirely uncooperative for artistic, beautiful pictures. I did, however, get genuine candids, and those are probably better than the pretty, serious shots anyway.
Miss A was like a crazy maniac. She was far too interested in anything that might possibly have been going on around her to sit still. It was frustrating for pictures, but fun to watch. The vast majority of the pictures I got were of her back. But it'll be a silly reminder of the age.
After the pumpkin patch, we made good on our promise to get ice cream. Mr. A and M got chocolate malted crunch, and Miss A and I split a double scoop of chocolate malted crunch and pecan praline. Yum!
Oh, 2009 Halloween costumes. I feel like I'll be looking at these things constantly for 10 solid days. I'm not really sure how I feel about that. On one hand, I'm hoping they come out awesome, and that makes me excited. On the other hand, I'm tired of spending what seems like forever making them.
I actually think I'm ahead of where I thought I would be on them, which is great. I didn't plan to start Miss A's until this weekend, but I've been working furiously in my "spare" time to get hers started. So last night, I began the hat. I worked on it this morning while Miss A ran around the backyard in a Izod dress that is probably too short for her and some legwarmers that probably really don't match the dress. Ehhh. . .She picked silver shoes to wear with it.
So this is what the hat looked like as of 10AM today. It's the same one I made for her last year, when she was a cat.
I spent the rest of the morning finishing it up and getting the hair ready. After Miss A laid down for her nap, I got Mr. A set up and started attaching the hair to the hat. This was the result by about 1:30PM.
And so, well, that's that, right? Yeah, right. Either our horse friend there or Mr. A stretched out the hat, and now it's too big for Miss A. Grrr. I think I might try sewing a piece of elastic around like a headband to see if that will help keep it in place. Miss A seemed to like it anyway, though. When she got up from her nap, I tried it on her, we laughed, and she said, "Pitty!" Yes, very pitty indeed. I'm hoping the yarn straightens out some before Halloween so it isn't wavy looking.
I've got to start her dress, but I'm a little overwhelmed by it, and what usually happens when I get overwhelmed by things is I either:
a. tackle them immediately to get them out of the way or b. ignore them and/or forget about them until it's almost too late
I'm really trying to do the whole "take it one step at a time" thing. But I'm already doing that with Mr. A's costume, and I don't know if I can be rational and levelheaded about two things at once. That might be asking too much.
First of all, we had a fantastic weekend in Southern California. It was wonderful to hang out with some of our friends, and I hope that our next couple of visits are just as great as that one was.
Since we got home, I've been on Halloween costume overdrive. Mr. A and I finally agreed on a costume on Friday, and I spent the weekend trying to figure out the logistics of it. I still haven't figured everything out, but I'm on the right track. I hope.
Anyway, we still have to make time for school. Today marks week 3 of Mr. A's Latin lessons. He still likes it. I'm kind of surprised. But his course is perfect for him. So here's his three-week progress:
I've been loving the weather here lately. It's cool, but not cold. It has been pretty nice for fall. When we went to the pumpkin patch last year, it was in the 90s. I remember feeling like I was torturing the kids because they were in long sleeves. This year, I feel a little bad when I take them out in short sleeves.
Yesterday, R had court because he has been on informal probation for throwing a book at another student. We had to take his community service papers to the court so they would strike the whole thing like it had never happened. We had promised R we would take him to get Japanese food (he's obsessed), and it just happened to be last night. Unfortunate timing if you ask me, because I don't like the idea of "rewarding" him for this whole court thing. On the other hand, if I say we're doing something, I will make every effort to make it happen. So we went. And I'm glad we did for the restaurant's sake. It was dead. There were only two tables seated at 7pm. Not a good sign.
I started on Mr. A's Halloween costume last night, and it's going to take me basically until Halloween to finish it. I'm going to try to take pictures of it at every stage. So here's stage one:
Ah. . .but what is it? I'm not telling. I want to see if it'll be recognizable by the end of the weekend, which it should be. If not, it should be very, very close.
So I realized that I will have to do double duty right now and work on Miss A's costume as well. But I didn't get anything for it when I went to the craft store yesterday. Oops. So we had to go back again today. I bought rust-colored yarn and fabric quarters. Running total for Mr. A's costume: $5. Running total for Miss A's costume: $10.
After our trip to the craft store, we stopped by our aunt's house for a quick visit. The kids enjoyed playing with their cousins, and Miss A enjoyed terrorizing the neighbor's cat. She screamed "CAT! No, you stop it!" when the bigger kids tried to pull her away from it. It really is a good thing that she's so sweet, because she is a feisty thing.
After we got home, I tried to organize their room a little bit. Combining the As was hard because Miss A's room wasn't exactly set up originally for another person. I really need to get in there and deep clean/organize/purge, but I honestly don't have more than a few hours here and there to do it. And by the time I'm done with one area, it takes so darn long on the next area that the original area needs attention by the time I'm done. It's a frustrating cycle.
If you ever wonder why there is a disproportionate number of pics of Miss A on here, this is why:
Me: "Hey, Mr. A. Look at me and say 'cheese,' please." Mr. A. : "Uhhh. . .hang on. I'm in a battle. I have to defeat this bad guy." OR "Argh. Mommy! I'm playing with my friends." Me: Sigh. "Nevermind."
Oh! And one last thing for the night. This was the exciting delivery of the day: black & white hi-top Chucks. I got both pairs for $25 from Sears (Buy One, Get One 50% off PLUS 20% coupon code). Yes, this is a lame thing to get excited about, but look at this! Miss A already had a pair, so now we can all match. Except for M. I don't buy him Converse because his feet are so big that the narrow, abnormally long Converse style makes his feet look like clown feet. On the flip side, he can carry off the fatter skate style, and those just look silly on me. But anyway, yeah. I'm lame enough to get excited about matching with my kids.
After we picked R up from school and dropped him off at work, I decided we ought to do something. I was initially going to take the kids to the museum, because they've got this great hands-on art exhibit, as well as a brain teaser exhibit. But I knew Miss A was already a tiny bit cranky and would be due to eat fairly soon.
So we drove almost to Yosemite. It was fun. Our first stop was Coarsegold. I took the kids to a restaurant for grilled cheese sandwiches and milkshakes, which Mr. A declared were the best he'd ever tasted (I'm pretty sure it was handmade ice cream). I don't think I've ever taken the kids out to a real restaurant by myself, which is too bad.
I whipped out the Nikon at the restaurant, ready to document the entire trip and take beautiful pictures of the kids with the fall foliage and the pumpkins, but my battery was dead. And this thing doesn't run on double As. It takes a lithium ion. Blah! M & A's adventures last night killed the battery, and M forgot to charge it. Lesson learned. Now I'll check before I leave the house. Mr. A said, "Oh yeah. I forgot the battery was dead." Thanks, kiddo. So I was stuck taking pictures on my phone camera. That explains the lack of pictures and the poor quality of the ones I got.
Mr. A wanted SO badly to go gold panning, but it was shut down for the day. I think it's only open on the weekends. Bummer.
We walked around the historic village a little bit, but there wasn't a lot for the kids to do. I think Mr. A would have been ok with it, but Miss A was sleepy, so she wasn't on her best behavior. It was absolutely gorgeous up there. The temperature was in the low 70s, so it truly was the perfect day.
The kids beelined it for the little teepee that's at the entrance to the historic village. There are little pumpkins growing around it on the vine for the season. It was seriously too cute. The teepee was damaged (it was ripped on the other side), which is too bad, but it's still cute. It was definitely the coolest thing Mr. A has seen all week.
Since the gold panning wasn't open and I wasn't quite ready to go home yet, I loaded up the kids in the car and kept driving. I wanted to see Oakhurst. But I didn't see anything really special about it. Don't get me wrong--it was cute, but it wasn't fantastic or anything. Maybe it's cuter when you get off the main road, which I couldn't because Mr. A was freaking out about getting lost.
Oakhurst was a bust, but a sign came up that said Bass Lake was only 7 miles up the road. So we kept driving. . .into the Sierra Nevadas. . .a little past Bass Lake and back down again. The smell of the pine trees was fantastic. We rolled the windows down, and it wasn't overwhelming, but every couple of minutes, we would get a strong whiff of pine. Mmmmm. Nice.
Miss A was really excited to have her window rolled down, but we had to take Poodle away from her because Mr. A was irrationally freaking out that she was going to toss the poodle out the window.
It took about an hour to get home from Bass Lake. On the way home, I swerved at a police officer. Cute, huh? So obviously I'm a grandma driver, but I noticed my leg was getting tired because M moved my seat back and I thought it would be better for me to move it up a little. I tried to move it up, but the bar got stuck. Finally, it unlocked, causing the seat to go flying forward. It jolted (and scared) me, causing me to move the wheel. So I corrected quickly, but a police officer was the oncoming traffic. It literally looked like I was swerving at him. Nice. And to top it all off, I had Old Man Backseat Driver Mr. A in the back making sure I wouldn't forget that I had almost "hit" a police officer. :/
All in all, it was a good day for us. I got the last transcript for my Fulbright scholarship, which was a big relief for me. Now just comes the final editing and submission. On top of traveling to SoCal and going to a baby shower this weekend, I've also got to make time to do that.
I have a list of things going that I want to accomplish. They're non-academic goals, like learn how to play the guitar, knit things and finish my book. In any given day, we have a lot going on. Between playing chauffeur to R, Mr. A being homeschooled, Miss A trashing the house, sometimes work, sometimes the lab, I just shut down sometimes. It can be overwhelming. But I'm not writing to complain. If I wanted to drop something, then it would be done.
My point is, sometimes it can be really hard to make (not find) time to get around to the things I want to do to enrich my life instead of just living it. My biggest nemesis is the computer, for a variety of reasons, the most prominent being that I've used this stupid thing to work for four years, and that's a hard habit to break. And school was on the computer for two years before that.
No more. There's a story online that I'm wrapping up, and I don't mind accessing my lessons on YouTube, but I'm done. I'm unplugging my brain. I'm giving myself permission to do these things:
1. Check my email 2. Update my blog (that was one of my goals) 3. Read the two blogs I read 4. Watch my daily lessons 5. Play the original Oregon Trail online with Mr. A
I'm actually excited about it. In a few weeks, I'll probably go back to Facebook on occasion. I'm tired of my entire homepage being covered with political crap. That's not networking.
Another benefit of unplugging is I think my life will get a lot more interesting. I'll have the time and the energy to do things that aren't on my enrichment list. It'll be good.
Now that the weather has cooled down, I want to make good on my promise to take the kids to the park often. I can knit or study Latin while they play, or if I'm REALLY feeling like unplugging, I can revert back to being an oversized kid and play with them. It's a little harder when you're lugging around a giant camera all the time, but I think I can manage every once in awhile. ;)
Last night, M set up the camera to take long exposure shots, and he and Mr. A drew pictures with a light. I've never joined them before, but I did last night. It was fun. I think we should do it more often.
I really like rainy days. I usually get nothing done on them, and that's just fine with me. We had such a day on Tuesday. The original weather forecast said we would get 2 inches of rain on Tuesday and 4 (FOUR!!) on Wednesday. What did we end up with? We ended up with a decent rainfall (although not the storm they were promising) on Tuesday and really sunny skies on Wednesday. Because we don't have a traditional rainy season, I feel cheated. :) Besides, it usually rains at night here. But I keep telling myself that next year it will be different.
Mr. A was sad when the rain left, because he was so excited to get to wear his rain boots and splash in puddles. There's always next time.
It was really nice out today, so I let Mr. A do his science and reading outside. I'm not sure if that was a good idea or not. He was just very distracted by Miss A, who insisted on rolling golf balls on our table, trying to climb into the pond, and climbing over the mini fence to the No-Man Zone of the wood pile (aka Land of a Thousand Black Widows). The thing about Mr. A is, none of this was really any of his concern. I spent my time chasing after her. But he makes it his concern. I guess if I'm being honest, this would happen no matter where we were. He looks very studious here.
Finally, Miss A found a nice spot behind some plants to "veg" out for a bit. She's so strange sometimes. But her time behind the plants did her some good, because when she reemerged 5 or so minutes later, she was much calmer.
Today, Mr. A learned about fish. Most of the lesson went really well, but when I got to talking about the gills, I thought we could use something more visual. So I took him to the pet store where he could some fish up close because the goldfish in our pond was hiding at the moment. The cool thing about the pet store we went to is that it has a little shark.
Miss A also enjoyed the pet store, but she was more interested in the kitties they had for adoption. She also managed to squeeze her hand into a parrot cage. Sigh again. Although fish are usually boring unless you've got a reason for looking at them, she actually wasn't too disinterested.
The other great thing about the fish section in the pet store is you can almost always see the fish from Finding Nemo, which the kids always think is the coolest thing in the world. It's always one of the first things Mr. A points out. At any rate, the pet store trip opened up a discussion about why sharks are different from other fish, how not everything in the ocean is a fish, etc.
When we got home, it was time for his first Latin lesson. He did well, although I think he got really confused in the beginning. Learning a foreign language is awesome for gaining a better understanding of English, too, and I think all this talk of English parts of speech vs. Latin parts of speech made him a little goofy in the head for awhile. But he got the hang of it finally. I do like the book I got for him. I think it'll do exactly what we need it to do this year.
On the home front, P90X starts back up tonight (ugh!). M picked up the new Wii Fit game, and it doesn't seem like it's going to do much. But he seems to like it. So he can use it. As for me, I think I'll stick to P90X. I think it'll be a little more effective.
