To participate, go to this webpage and click the big blue "Join This Fundraiser" button, then write some reviews for businesses you've had dealings with in the past 2 years.
- If you find a place that hasn't been reviewed yet, it will raise $1.50.
- Second through fourth reviews will raise 50 cents.
- Restaurants only raise a quarter each, so don't waste your time.
This is a wonderful free way to raise money for a good cause without buying or selling a thing. I hope you'll add your opinions to the people who have already contributed --
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autumnbottom , kimith , kittykatkatja , tatterdamelion , and others who remain LJ-free.This:
Crops, ponds destroyed in quest for food safety -- because God forbid a 5-year-old has been to your farm recently, or that you have a burbling stream next to those crops that are destined for Monsanto.
That:
Barren Berry Season Leads to Far Richer Discovery -- two Swedish grandmothers discover huge gold reserve while berry picking.
The Other:
Auto-Tune the News #6 -- politics sounds better when you run the debates through a synthsizer and lay in a heavy beat. If CNN sounded like this all the time I might actually watch.
petermork did some work on a decade or so ago. He had taken the evening off work so he could game the entire day. :-) A total of 11 people came and went throughout the day. Games played:
- Twilight Imperium (lasted only 4.5 hours, which is short for this game! Won by Ian with only 2 Victory Points. There was also no combat whatsoever. A very odd session of Twilight, that's for sure!)
- Small World (total of 3 games of this over the course of the day, with different groups)
- Pandemic (total of 3 sessions of this over the course of the day -- thanks to John and Lupa for the loan of the game!)
- Apples to Apples
- Clue: The Card Game. This is the only one I participated in, and I have to say that it was nowhere near as entertaining as the real Clue. It's played without the board in the middle of the table, but instead with a "location" card situated in front of each player that can be changed out using a few different Action Cards. I found that the loss of the board seemed to result in a fragmented group. No longer was there a common central element pulling us together -- the floor plan, the secret doors, the fun of characters moving around and interacting with each other.
In summary: Clue: The Card Game has all the fun of a logic puzzle on the ACT, and I say that as someone who tends to like logic puzzles... but not this one.
The girls and I had a picnic lunch outside, since all the tables inside were taken. Later they ran through the sprinkler, and after dinner, the three of us took a walk while the last few hardy gamers finished up.
After the kids were in bed and our guests had all taken off, Andrew and I sat down to watch something. To really have kept with the theme of the day, we should have watched "The Gamers," a copy of which I bought at Paizocon a few weekends ago, but instead we continued watching old episodes of "News Radio."
This struck a chord with me. I replied:
My mom died when I was 22, twelve years ago. Already, my older daughter, who is only 4, has mentioned "Mommy's Mommy" a couple of times as she's figuring out the relationships between her grandparents and parents. She hasn't come right out and asked me whether I have a mommy or where my mommy is, but I'm sure the thought has occurred to her. When she mentions "Mommy's Mommy," it definitely brings up some feelings in me, although they are more wistful than horribly sad (for the most part).
I have things of my mother's all through the house and I use them on a daily basis, and sometimes I'll mention that "this was my mother's" or "I got this from my mommy." I'll also tell her about things that my mother did with me when I was her age. So far my 4-year-old hasn't asked too much more, although I know it's coming. She's already starting to talk a lot about death and wonder when she will die, or when I will die. I'm pretty sure that she knows my mother died, but she doesn't really know what that means.
Right now I'm being matter-of-fact, and not overexplaining. My 4-year-old doesn't need to be my Listening Partner; she doesn't need to know how my mother died, or see me getting really upset, or hear too much about things that would only disturb her at this age. She'll learn more about who my mother was over time. When she gets older, I may bring out the old photos and my mother's baby book (that my grandmother made for her in the 1940s). Or then again, I may not. I don't know if I'll be ready to handle that gracefully.
It's painful to miss my mom, because her love and example has made me the mother I am today. At the same time, talking about her and bringing her memory into my daily life is the best way for me to remain true to who I am while passing along some sense of family history. I have heard of other families where after one member dies, he or she is never mentioned again by the others -- they just ignore that person's life and death entirely. To me, that's just not right.
--Catherine
[Note: "Listening Partner" is the Hand-in-Hand term for someone who will listen to you being emotional and let you experience that emotion fully and completely so you can get rid of it... without that person trying to fix the problem or argue it away. The philosophy says that we all need one or more listening partners in our lives to help us discharge emotions in order to return to our children's emotional upsets with a calm spirit.)
I miss my mom a lot, more than I blog about or mention to my friends too often. But I know I'm doing my best to live up to her, and I know she would be proud of me and happy to see how I'm doing now.
What is Space Precinct, I hear you ask? Click to find out!
Andrew wants you to pay attention to the three-eyed alien around the 1:15 mark. He notes that it was never clear what the third eye actually did -- maybe gave them psychic powers, maybe let them chill drinks, who knows. :-)
He also comments, "Whenever I hear this, it makes me happy..."
"This," of course, does NOT refer to Space Precinct. It refers to -- Airwolf!!!
More theme songs can be found at TelevisionTunes.com, including "Sub Mariner" (1966). You can thank me later.
Pest Control Guy Steve is full of helpful information like that. Also about how, should I find myself confronting a rat, I need to be aggressive, because if it learns that I am afraid of it, it will be aggressive towards me.
Check. From now on, carry cast-iron skillet with me, even into shower.
So our walls are now full of various kinds of traps that the girls cannot get to because they are behind walls, or inside closed air vents, or behind built-in drawers, or inside locked cabinets. Outside, there are two "bait" stations that (1) will show us whether any bait is being taken and thus shed light into rat traffic patterns, (2) cause rats to become mildly intoxicated and more likely to fall into the traps.
Traces of rat (which, by the way, would be an excellent name for a garage band) were found on all three levels, and in both the finished and unfinished portions of the basement. An entry point was also found just outside the dormer window. (Near some evidence of raccoon, interestingly. Maybe the raccoons are lying in wait for a rat to leave the exit point?)
Pest Control Guy Steve says we should give it a few days before plugging it with chicken wire and expandable foam. He says that if we plugged it today, that change, plus new traps everywhere, might spook the rat and force it into the living area.
I don't want that. Honestly, I just want it to LEAVE and never return. But having it dead would be a close second choice.
Andrew is boyishly excited to get to check traps again. It reminds him of his youth. He was talking about indoctrinating the
hypermuffin into the trade, just as he was by his father, and his father by his father before him. Who was raised on a farm. So all of this was old hat to her great-great-grandfather. And yes, my grandfather was a rancher and used to hunt coyotes for bounty, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I have inherited any sort of genetic legacy... at least, not one that has come forth yet. I'm a City Girl all the way through, and to me, rats mean the Black Plague, and lice, ticks, fleas, rabies, salmonella, rancid bites, amputated limbs, gnawed-off baby fingers, garbage houses, and probably syphilis and AIDS to boot. (Just because.)
I'm wincing every time I have to open a cabinet or drawer, in case something snarls and leaps out onto me. I even found myself wincing as I was opening the fridge... which is probably a bit unnecessary, because if they can get into the fridge, we might as well just sell the house and move someplace with no rats. Like an evil star.
I am not a fan of this.
Andrew, having killed small critters for money from a young age, is unimpressed and blase about the presence of Rodentia in our walls. He seems to feel that with a BB gun and enough time, he could take it out himself.
I, on the other hand, have gotten the screaming meemees for the past three nights, as I hear it rustling and chewing the wood in the cabinet under the sink.
It pains me to admit this in public, but I am a total creampuff. I am scared to go near the sink as it's getting dark and I know that it will soon be awake. I've been trying to cook and do dishes earlier in the day instead of after the girls are in bed. Yesterday, I made Andrew open the doors and retrieve a new garbage bag from under there. I have extracted a cast-iron skillet to use as a hand weapon just in case I find myself confronting some rabid varmint. Also, right now I am wearing wooden clogs, in case I have to kick it. No flimsy slippers for me, no sir. If my feet are going to be encountering the whirling fangs of a rabid raccoon / squirrel / opossum / unusually large rat, they are going to be encased in the heaviest shoes I own.
The pest control guy won't be here until tomorrow. And even then there's no guarantee he'll be able to get rid of it/them quickly, especially, one presumes, if it is a nesting squirrel. So it's time for me to man up and quit wincing at every sound from the walls. It's not truly dangerous to me right now... not like an "Alien" that wants to lay its eggs in me, or something aggressive like a tiger. I don't have to lie awake in terror, as I did last night after I heard it CHEWING at 4 AM and banged on the cabinet doors with the skillet, only to hear it continue chewing as though nothing was happening.
Seriously, though, guys. This is NOT OKAY. Tomorrow's pest control appointment cannot possibly come soon enough for me.
- Mood:putting on a brave front
hypermuffin . She relished all the attention from Mom and Dad. After lunch we took her to the Experience Music Project / Science Fiction Museum, where there was an exhibit of Jim Henson's Muppets. This was a good first introduction to Muppets for her. Since she was not familiar with them before, I'm sure she didn't get the same frisson that I did when face-to-face with Kermit The Frog inside a Plexiglass case. (In case someone wants to shoot him, like the Pope?)
The biggest hit inside the Muppet exhibit? The fuzzy walls. The
hypermuffin found three or four fuzzy walls, and plastered herself against them, smiling blissfully as she nuzzled into them, HARD, trying to become one with them. She rolled around on them (vertically). She insisted that we lift her as high as we could and let her slide down the wall, again and again, until our arms were tired. I had no idea the fuzzy walls would be such a hit.
We entered the EMP and spent a lot of time in the Sky Church, a large, architecturally open space with some sort of cool rubber floor and light shows playing constantly. She danced, danced, danced to the music, and ran back and forth across the space, and did proto-cartwheels, and attempted to invent breakdancing (I am not kidding you -- she was doing some breakdancing moves that she has never been taught, and has never, as far as I know, so much as seen before). She danced until I thought she was going to pass out.
After being dragged outside, she gravitated towards a large metal sculpture on the lawn. It was this sculpture, which a bit of Googling informs me is called the "Lightning Bolt":
Photo credit: cynthiacantor
You can't tell this from the picture, but the 45-degree incline on the far left is about 7 feet off the ground at the point where it veers to go straight up. She free-climbed that incline, once she'd kicked off her sandals. She free-climbed it again and again, gripping with just hands and feet. To 7 feet off the ground. Then she slid down in various inventive ways, one of which dinged her foot a bit.
Andrew and I were laughing and yet stunned and in awe at the same time as we stood to the side to spot her in case she needed it. (She didn't.)
She's just... astounding. She's just officially astounding, and possibly half-monkey, or destined to be a ninja.
We are in humbled awe at her amazing physical prowess. Gymnastics training is just the beginning, I'm sure.
While we were standing there stunned and incredulous, Andrew said, "Give her martial arts and criminology training, and she could be Batman."
I am sympathetic to difficulties that you must face in the job you are performing. It's 8:30 AM here, but it's probably a weird time in Chennai, or Jaipur, or whichever large city is your home. I'm sure it is not very rewarding to sit in a cubicle all day and make cold calls to Americans, telling them they have been randomly chosen to receive a bundle of grocery and mall coupons totaling $500, that can be used at any grocery store or mall. And all I have to do is pay $4.95 for them to ship it to me.
Telemarketer, you must have gone to school for years to get your English this good. It's difficult to learn a second or third language, and English is not an easy one to pick up. From knowing my students in China and seeing how hard they studied for their tests, I'm sure you have spent a large portion of your life studying English-language materials and prepping for tests. I'm just sorry that you're using your expertise to sell me on the idea of paying money in order to receive coupons of dubious value.
Times are tough all over, telemarketer. You probably are doing pretty well, with your cubicle job. Your unemployed friends probably envy you. It's not a glamorous job, and I'm sure a lot of people are much more rude to you than I was when I politely told you I didn't need this and was not interested. You were still valiantly trying to sell me on the package even as my phone was hitting its cradle.
In conclusion, Telemarketer, I wish you well as a person, but also wish you could find a better job, one that doesn't involve cold-calling and selling things of questionable value.
In that, I suspect that you hold the same ambition for your future as do I.
Sincerely,
Catherine
PS: Don't call Americans on the Fourth of July. It makes them cranky.
tatterdamelion knocked at our door. "Are you running the dishwasher, by any chance?" he asked. We were. "I seem to have a bit of a leak." From that, we expected, you know, a bit of a leak. What we found downstairs was nothing less than buckets of water gushing from the ceiling behind his television, cascading down the wall like a miniature indoor soapy waterfall. We turned off the dishwasher, caught the torrents in buckets, and wiped off the wall. I placed a call to our plumber, but it was 9:30 at night. A bit of experimentation showed that the upstairs kitchen sink was OK to use, so I washed the dishes by hand while talking with Andrew about our cashflow situation.
This morning, Andrew's intrepid parents came over, as per usual during their visit with us, and sprang into action about the whole dishwasher situation. The problem was the drain hose, which had been rubbing, rubbing, rubbing against the wooden wall it went through until it finally ruptured.
Rupture!
Replacing the drain hose should be simple, I was told. Even I could do it! (Hardly... I am about as handy as an endoplasmic reticulum, which is to say, not at all.)
10:00 dragged on to noon, and barbecue sandwiches were acquired from Manna Texas BBQ to the south (nom! nom!). Noon dragged on to 2:00, and then to 3:00. The drain hose was easily replaced, but it had originally been routed through the cabinets in a stupid way that Andrew's parents, being responsible homeowners, decided was not good enough and needed to be remedied.
Andrew's gamers arrived for an early session of "Three Havens." 3:00 dragged to 4:00. The basement was searched several times for tools, and found lacking. Neither of my two power drills were charged up, and I owned no drill bits (and, embarrassingly, was not quite sure what a drill bit was).
Multiple trips to various hardware stores ensued. Tools were rejected for being nonfunctional, and I need to return one and get my $20 back (tomorrow, I hope).
aawhitewood proved his manliness by smashing through the cabinet wall with a hammer, thus negating the necessity of acquiring a better drill. 
A hose splice, two test stints of dishwashing, and several moppings of the floor later, and the dishwasher appears to be functioning better than it did before. As soon as the wren is in bed and I have made fried rice and cleaned up the kitchen a bit, I am treating myself to an iced coffee drink with creme de cacao in it.
Hugh and Karen have gone out for a much-deserved dinner. They don't drink, but they have most certainly earned one. Did I mention that both girls spent all day melting down?
It was a rough third of July... but at the end of it was a functioning dishwasher once more, and a few new tools. And I now know what a drill bit is.
And the plumber still hasn't called back.
Moms Go Back to School
 | Obama asks moms to return to school. Finish your degree using government grants and scholarships. See degrees now. |
or that "Obama" just instituted lower mortgage rates -- click HERE to find out what they are in my state!, etc. etc. etc.
Can we just agree that waving your hands in the air and saying "Obama!" is not the same as actually having something meaningful and/or accurate to say? Can we??
- Mood:irked
Anyway, the bokashi is going well -- so well that when they asked around the office for a volunteer to be our floor "Compost Captain," I tossed my name in the hat. Apparently 40% of the building's solid waste is actually compostable, and they're going to try to change that for the better.
I'm going to be co-compost-captaining (CCCing?) with two other women: Abby and Kristen. Having them to fall back on makes me feel somewhat less guilty about taking time away from my very urgent paid duties to attend to burning questions like what to do with used coffee grounds. Our compost orientation meeting will be next Tuesday.
In 3-Day news, my father sent a generous donation -- Thanks, Dad!!! -- that, together with my "InsiderPages" fundraiser, puts me at over $1,000 by the end of June -- which was an unofficial goal of mine.
ROCK ON!!!! Only $1,300 (or so) to go!
Finally, Day 1 of inventory has officially wiped the floor with me. Gotta go back tomorrow and do it all again, and probably Thursday, too.
forthright . It is about misleading or unclear traffic signs. If you're already cracking a smile and thinking "oooh, ooooh, there was this one time I saw a sign that seemed downright wrong" (and you know who you are), then head over and become amused. On a related tangent: The other week I drove past a beggar holding a sign that read, "I seldom lie / I never steal. / All I need / is a decent meal." (It did not end with "Burma Shave," unfortunately, or I might have actually given him something.)
Does anyone else think that admitting the occasional lie seems an ill-judged way to introduce a supplication for money and/or free food? I mean, what if he's lying about the other two statements on his placard? (Two beggars are hanging out on the intersection of Northgate Way and Aurora. One of them can only lie, and the other can only tell the truth...)
Next: For the next three days I'm going to be working hard down in Kent at our annual company inventory count. I have to be there at 7:15 AM for the next three days, and I have to be Prepared To Count. Oh yes. It's that time again... So don't be surprised if you don't hear from me for awhile. I'll either be counting, or preparing for the next stint of counting. Luckily Andrew's parents are going to be here to help out for the next two afternoons when we had gaps in the childcare.
And finally: If you haven't yet given much thought to writing online reviews for my 3-Day fundraiser, please give it another thought. I've done some more research, and it seems that you CAN post reviews for businesses in different places from the large metropolitan areas I listed out -- the reviews just won't get the top rate -- only 50 cents instead of $1.50. Still, every little bit adds up. Just ten reviews of places off the beaten track and you've added $5 to the pot.
So if you know a hotel in Sitka, Alaska, or a game shop in Rockville, Maryland, or a knitting store in Northfield, Minnesota, consider giving your opinino about it after clicking the big blue "Join This Fundraiser" button. My 3-Day thermometer will thank you!
What is a hyperbolic plane? I hear some of you ask. Well, the book is teaching me, and here's what I've gleaned so far. Think of hills and valleys. A hill has positive curvature, and a valley has negative curvature. In places where it is flat there is zero curvature. OK, so a sphere has constant positive curvature; there is no place on the sphere that is not positively curved. What, if anything, has constant negative curvature?
It turns out that exotic, frilly, deeply scalloped shapes, like kale leaves or certain blossoms, have constant negative curvature. Geometry behaves differently on them; parallel lines curve towards each other and then away, and the points of triangles never quite meet. And you can crochet all this.
So now I need crochet hooks (one size smaller than the yard skein package recommends), and acrylic yarn (for a tight weave), and I need to learn how to make some of these. Not only will they be fun for the girls, I will also be able to loop strings through them and turn them into Christmas ornaments.
Yes, I am planning to give everyone non-Euclidean geometric yarn sculpture ornaments for Christmas this year. I blame too many sessions of "Call of Cthulhu."
(also, I haven't forgotten that I still owe four of my readers something that I have made specifically for them.
jessicac , brighids_own , aawhitewood , and echsdoc , you may be encountering non-Euclidean crochet sooner than you thought...)hypermuffinwalked up to Carkeek Park for the 80th anniversary celebration, while Andrew's mom, the wren, and I hit the grocery store. I was even able to take a nap before Andrew's dad called us from the park for extraction by car. Lunch was hamburgers, and delectable black raspberry-chip ice cream sandwiches. Then the girls ran through the sprinkler, and then colored. Now "The Emperor's New Groove" is in. The wren requested it as "Noo Gof," which took me a few tries to comprehend.
The
hypermuffin is currently engaged in signing her name while Andrew's dad runs him in to downtown for work -- his bus never came, probably because of the Greenwood Car Show. All this and it's only 4:30 PM. If I were really ambitious, I would go to the Silent Auction for the girls' daycare tonight... but I just don't think I have the time (and budget) for it. :-P
For the next three weeks, I have a "fundraiser" slot at InsiderPages.com. For every review you write (subject to their limits -- see below), you can "earn" money towards my goal of $500.00. This is FREE to you -- they're putting money into the pot in return for your quality reviews, and the money goes to my 3-Day fundraising!
Here are the limitations of this offer:
- You have to be 18 or older.
- Please only write about experiences you've had personally at the business -- no hearsay -- within the past 2 years.
- Chains don't count -- you know, places that don't really need reviews, like "the McDonalds on 145th" or "1-800 Flowers."
- If you write the first review of a business that's not a restaurant (or coffee shop or similar type of business), you earn $1.50.
- If you write the second through the fourth review of a business that's not a restaurant, you earn 50 cents.
- Reviews beyond the fourth do not earn any money. (So don't waste your time!)
- Reviews for restaurants, coffee shops, etc., only earn 25 cents -- there are apparently tons of people who can review restaurants, so they have a glut of those types of reviews.
- They're only looking for reviews in the cities and suburbs of the following major metropolitan areas: New York, Los Angeles (including Orange County), San Francisco (including Oakland and Silicon Valley), Austin, Seattle, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Portland (OR), Boston, Minneapolis, Triangle (RDU), Dallas, Denver, Philadelphia, Miami, Las Vegas, San Diego, Phoenix, Charlotte. (List of locations) So, splagxna , I don't know whether your new town counts as a suburb, but I rather think not. Unfortunately. BUT, I know I have readers in Minneapolis and Seattle. Consider yourself unleashed!
Wow, that was a lot of conditions -- and it may seem daunting. But just remember, they're putting FREE MONEY into the pot in exchange for YOUR reviews. A way to help without buying or selling anything, or giving up your lunch money. Hooray!
To sign up for my fundraiser, go to this page and click the blue button that says "Join This Fundraiser."
So far,
tatterdamelion and I have written enough to earn $5.00. We only have until July 16th until the window for my fundraiser closes -- let's see how far we can get!
We started out with dinner at Bick's, the very good restaurant that's close enough to our house that sometimes we've even walked there. We tried an appetizer that was new to us, Thai red curry mussels, and loved it. I'm wondering if I can recreate the recipe the next time we go out to Ed and Charlotte's place on the Hood Canal, with its copious supplies of fresh shellfish.
My entree was hazelnut-crusted ling cod with chorizo rice and asparagus. It was very good -- anything with both fish and hazelnuts is a win for me. If only it had somehow included bacon! But the chorizo was close enough. ;-)
For dessert we split a Mocha Mousse in a Mug -- our favorite taste sensation there. It's divine. I have no pretensions of being able to recreate this myself at home. It's just too good.
After dinner, we went down to Seward Park for a once-a-month "event" / piece of performance art: "Lullaby Moon," which happens one night a month on the new moon. (Yes, my birthday this year was not only almost on the summer solstice, but was also on a new moon. Neato!)
The description of this event, from their website: "Lullaby Moon is a year-long invitation to Seattle to explore a world of dream.
A celebration of the night sky, the series of performance events brings bedtime whimsy and wonder to parks and other public spaces throughout the city, enlivening and enlightening the dark time of each month. Performances take place on each new moon for an entire lunar year beginning in October 2008."
I've been trying to get to one of these for months, but I have to admit that I didn't quite know what to expect.
We found parking with much difficulty and found a large group of people waiting for the show to begin, some on folding chairs but most seated on the grass. A white canopied bed was the centerpiece, on grass in front of the water, set off by lights. A string quartet and a portable keyboard were underneath another canopy, playing classical music. Down the path near the water were some women in white with white cat heads. The website later told me that these were "Alchemist Cats."
As dusk fell, five adorable little children clothed in white gowns or white satin knickers came in. I say "adorable," although I don't really know that for sure, because their heads were enclosed in glowing clocks. It sounds creepy, but they were very sweet. (I bet the
hypermuffin would love to be a dancing clock!) They danced a "clock dance" to the music, and then the two big clocks put the three smaller clocks to bed while the music changed. Three tall figures slowly rode in from the right on huge unicycle-like apparatuses. They were dressed in white with large, surreal bunny heads as headdresses. They weren't actually on unicycles; two small wheels were down at the bottom for stability. After slowing riding in and parking their giant tricycles (which had lights on the axels), the rabbits did a leaping and jumping dance.
While that was midway through, Andrew leaned down and whispered, "There's something coming on the right." I looked around and saw four ghostly female figures in white Victorian dresses and giant horse heads, pushing perambulators, drifting towards us ever so slowly down another path. A glow came from their strollers, and they performed slow, gentle, synchronized movements of rocking the strollers and making courtly gestures. It was like a dream -- like white knights from a chessboard had come to life.
The next phase included the "Alchemist Cats," who slowly approached from the left during the final phase of the horses' dance, and then performed a cat-like dance while the rabbits hid behind a tree and then slowly crept up behind them.
All the characters then did the same "clock dance," and then a large circle dance to a rousing, folk-song-like number.
Then a soprano in a tuxedo sang "Lullaby and Good Night" as four rowboats out on the water with stars on top were rowed back and forth and in and out by men in tuxedos.
The characters came out into the audience at some point and scattered white rose petals over every child there. My heart was touched as I saw the baby to our left and the 2-year-old to our right in awe and wonder over these large, white, impressive-looking cats and horses and rabbits coming right up to them and scattering them with flowers.
The characters gradually left on the path to the right, and disappeared somewhere -- no idea where they went, because on the walk back to the car I was looking for them, and the woods were empty.
On our way back to the car, I felt a sense of beauty and of having been taken "out of myself."
On the freeway home, we passed four road construction vehicles in a row, moving slowly, with flashing lights. Both Andrew and I had the strange mental whiplash moment in which we expected them to somehow have giant horse heads.
Next month I want to try to find a way to go with the
hypermuffin , and perhaps other people who appreciate the strange and the surreal. I regret to say that things are still ridiculously busy. I was hoping to be able to blog tonight about the amazing performance of "Lullaby Moon" that Andrew and I were able to attend on my birthday, but it's already after 10 and I am now far too tired. The
hypermuffin didn't want to go to bed tonight, and came downstairs again and again insisting on clinging to me, smothering me with kisses, and begging to sleep in my bed ("I promise I will be quiet!" ohhh, the heartbreak!). She's finally settled upstairs. If that had happened an hour ago, then fine, you'd have a real entry tonight. But it didn't. So you do not.
- Snuggled with the wren
- Made scones
- Got people together
- Played in yard with the girls and ramonarjona and daughter (she has a scooter!!!! d00d!)
- Went out to lunch for Father's Day
- Welcomed the ever-intrepid aawhitewood for yet another stint of babysitting
- Went to clothing exchange hosted by the sparkly shimmerdance . I brought home 2 new pairs of shoes, some new dresses that look great on me, including a sexy black TANGO DRESS!!!, a bunch of new tops I can wear with stuff I already own, a blood-red Chinese-inspired jacket that falls dramatically just to my calves and will look great over something simple and black, an orange and saffron bathrobe of raw silk, new dangly earrings, and a tiara. More importantly, I participated honestly in the somewhat scary personal-growth phase of the party in which we exchanged observations about our shopping partner. I was given several stunning compliments that made my hair stand on end, and I realized how uncomfortable I tend to be with expressing emotion overtly. It was good to step outside my comfort zone. Also, did I mention -- new shoes?!?
- Drove home dreamingcrow so as not to leave her at the mercy of the Metro bus system
- Had impromptu picnic with the girls out in the yard
- Chased girls all over the yard
- Put the wren to bed an hour late
- Put the hypermuffin to bed an hour and a half late
- Wasted time on internet to decompress -- this is RIGHT NOW
An awesome, wonderful day. I very much enjoyed my last day of being 33.
And now, to bed.
My friends tend to aim for good situations and success, and more often than not, they hit what they're aiming for. But the flip side of having high standards is that they, and I, tend to be just a bit unforgiving of weaknesses.
Some of my friends turn this outwards, on others whom they judge to be failing at some important part of life. These same friends, and others, also have the nasty tendency of turning it inwards on themselves. I see so much harshness in my friends sometimes, harshness and rigidity directed towards themselves and their weaknesses and perceived imperfections.
I know about this because I have done it too. I still do it, too.
As I was in the shower this morning, I felt the urge to write about this tendency towards harshness on today, the longest day of the year.
I have just one thing to say to anyone who recognizes him or herself in the above: Show some forgiveness to yourself.
Yes, you have high standards. Yes, you are trying hard and never quite get there, and that's frustrating, but you are still worthy of love. You are doing a really, really good job under very difficult circumstances. Show some softness and mercy towards yourself. You are worth it.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled LiveJournal friends page.
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