Adventures in Living!

Reunion

A couple of weeks ago, I had lunch with an old friend from high school who was passing through this area on his way to the inauguration. Tommy and I were friends from junior high, starting with band class, and even though our paths diverted a little in high school (and he graduated a year before I did), we were still friendly with each other and had many of the same friends (mostly band people).

Because I moved out of Florida, and basically never looked back, I haven't seen anyone from high school in years.  I was thrilled to have this chance to see a friend from those days. We met up on one of the coldest days of the winter at a huge outdoor shopping center west of Richmond. Lunch was wonderful, but even more wonderful was the company and the long conversation. I was seriously worried things would be awkward and that we'd run out of things to talk about, but we didn't. Mostly it was life story stuff and who was doing what in Miami now, and what was going on in my old area. We did manage to stay away from politics somewhat, and I do't think we talked much about religion, but we sure managed a bunch of other topics: family, goals, career choices, what we do for fun these days, approaching the age of forty, the college experience, memories from high school and junior high, and other things. I remembered our junior high band director and what a high-strung nutcase he seemed to be, and he remembered how he and I used to ride our bikes around our junior high.

Finally, we promised to stay in touch, and I invited him to come visit us this summer (he has a friend in Norfolk he couldn't go out of his way to see this trip). Wemight go down to Florida in June, so he hoped his band would have a gig during that time, and he'd get all our old friends together.

Before we went on his way to DC, we took a picture of ourselves. Neither of us have changed very much in twenty years, really.

Could high school really have been twenty years ago?

Grey and rainy

Richmond winters have just been terrifically sucky the last few years. We get plenty of rain and ice and slush, but very little snow. Like none. The kids haven't had a snow day in at least three years that I can think of, and frankly, I'm up for one. I'm sure Kira is, too. High on the winter-annoyance list is the fact that just about every surrounding county school system is closed -- in pretty much all four directions, from as close as 20 miles from downtown Richmond. All we get is this:
There's a small pile of slush on the deck chair, and everything else is just wet and cold and muddy. Bleh.

In other news, I am still working on the sewing space in the newly-refinished office. So far, this is what I have set up:
I own a LOT of sewing equipment and supplies. This probably represents about half of it. There are three Bernina sewing machines on those two tables, and behind me is the closet which I am fitting with shelves to hold my fabric and other stuff. On the wall to the right will be 2 four-foot-long shelves which will hold the big stack of labeled boxes (they contain notions), and the collection of quart glass canning jars. Those hold my thread.

It's all almost put together.

I'm going to work some more on it, while Wren "naps". Before I go, here is a photo of Noah, being all cute and stuff, just because I have to post something sunny on a day like this.
Yeah, he is covered in food, but he's cute nonetheless.

Domestic Paradise, VA 23236

It's another Monday morning here in Domestic Paradise. Wren is running around and being loud, while Noah is attached to my leg, crying for me to carry him around the house. Both kids have had food and sippy cups, and are dressed. I'm just now getting to my breakfast. Kira is upstairs, still asleep. I won't wake her until at least 10; there's no school today. It's grey and cold outside -- so is my mood.

There's a meeting coming up at work on Wednesday that I am dreading and apprehensive about. I don't think I will be losing hours (I only average about ten a week), but in fact --

wait. I have to go retrieve Noah from out of the oven.

--where was I? Oh.....but in fact, I think I will be asked for more hours. This is not a bad thing, the company president likes me and my work very much. I am making a good hourly rate, and I do enjoy the majority of what I am doing. So why am I apprehensive? I think it has something to do with being ultra-ultra protective of my time.

hang on. Wren is standing on the glass coffee table.

The majority of my time is spent staying home and taking care of my kids. I am lucky enough to have a work situation with extremely flexible hours, and a very small need for me to be actually IN an office. Most of my work is done remotely, at all hours of the day and night. I like that. It probably won't change too much. But I worry, nonetheless, because that's the kind of person I am.

It's probably not overstating the obvious, but taking care of little kids is fun, difficult, draining work. While they need me and my supervision so much, I can't just be doing other things all the time. It's hard to concentrate when I am constantly retrieving someone from --

Wren! Get down off the baby gate!

--someplace they shouldn't be. We need for me to work some hours. I need time to myself. I also want to be able to exercise, practice yoga and get some creative time in. Is it too much to ask to be able to do all that in one day?

Yeah. Probably.

I think if I broke it all down, here is what I want to cram into a day:

caring for the kids and playing with them (the majority of the hours in the day)
some household chores (laundry loads, dishes, something -- 30 mins)
writing
sewing or glass
yoga (20-60 mins)
work (an hour or 2 a day)
doing nothing / playing on the computer
exercise bike time
cooking and meals (45 mins or so for lunch and dinner)
time with my husband (theoretically)

I'm sure there are plenty of things I have left out, like sleeping, but you get the idea. It seems like way too much and like not that much at all, depending on your perspective. I feel like I should just be organized, and then it will all fit in, but I can't seem to get organized enough to make it work.

And if I just 'go with the flow', then I feel like I get nothing done that I want to.

Arg.

Ah, well. I've spent my allotment of time writing already today. I really shouldn't think too much. When I do, I realize how far behind I am sometimes, and how I feel like I will never catch up.

Deep breath. A library run today? Maybe.

Bomb squad

The upstairs of my house now looks like a bomb went off that generated a ton of dragon figurine and plastic shrapnel. I don't think my daughter is capable of throwing anything away. I also found her secret stash of candy, which is highly amusing. Haven't decided what I'm going to do about that yet.

There will be big black garbage bags filled with junk leaving her room this afternoon. It doesn't look like the little kids will be taking a nap today.

flat screen

Yay! The office/sewing space is coming together and I will be trading in my huge, hulking 17" old monitor for a nice, shiny 17' flat screen monitor in the coming days! Thank you, Travis. :)

Today we have a plan to ensconce the little ones in our bedroom with a baby gate and some movies while Travis and I migrate all of Kira's junk from her room to her new room. Being a pre-teen, her room is currently a disaster area. I think we might have to petition the government for disaster relief. Hopefully we won't need hazmat suits. We have to accomplish the room-changing all at once, because the little kids have to nap in their new rooms this afternoon.

I cannot wait to sew in my new space.

Okay, time to rearrange rooms.

Ah, Saturday morning...

 Noah actually let me sleep until 7:15 this morning, so it's some kind of miracle. Of course, he wasn't going to let me do that without waking me up at 2:00am for 15 minutes of snuggling and rocking before he'd go back to sleep. I can't really blame him for waking up, though. He's got a crummy stuffy nose and he's teething. Poor little guy.

Wren woke me up at midnight, crying, for reasons still unknown. Her language skills were not engaged at that hour, so all I could do was tuck her back in and give her a kiss. She quieted down, and did go back to sleep without further incident, so that was good.

I feel like I actually got some sleep last night! A miracle, for sure!

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Today I have a long list of things I want to accomplish, but I don't know how much will get done. The Great Bedroom Migration is on, but I need to have help with furniture moving and other logistical things. I had thought I would paint Kira's new room today, but that is unlikely. I should spackle some holes in the wall, first. And move Noah's stuff out of it. Sigh. It's really hard to not get overwhelmed with this kind of project.

I feel like my house is a dusty, dirty, cluttered wreck. There's crap everywhere that neds to be somewhere else, but the 'somewhere else' is a temporary holding space for other things that are waiting to get into their new home. Ack. I have a metric boatload of craft supplies that need to really go away. I also need to decide if we are going to box our SCA garb up and put it in the attic, or if we are really under the delusion that we will need it for an event sometime soon.

Since the last event we attended was Sapphire Joust in May last year, I seriously doubt we will need our garb and other medieval supplies soon.

Maybe today I should focus on getting groceries in the house, and buying the shelves I need for my sewing space so I can put more things away. I'm almost ready to sew in there...I just need to clear off my worktables so I can use the machines. A new pattern arrived in the mail yesterday and I am itching to make it. It's this one, a backpack / tote bag, which I think will be perfect for using on outings with the kids. I hope I have a perfect fabric already in my stash, though. I really want to use up some of my fabric stash first before buying more (HA! Riiight!).

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I just got some really sad news. A friend and lovely lady who I knew through the SCA passed away last night. She had a really terrible year of battling cancer, and while I am very sad she is gone, at least she doesn't have to fight anymore. She passed at home in her sleep last night.

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I guess I'd better get some breakfast and get moving. It's going to take a while to tackle the to-do list today.

Okay.....

Better now, more or less. I realize that you can't fix stupid, and people are going to be jerks no matter what. 

It has been a busy morning. Wren had a playdate with a friend from preschool, whose dad just happens to be a high school classmate of mine. Eric and I chatted about high school and junior high while our kids ran around and took out every toy we had. It was fun!

The tree guys are here, cleaning up the logs and other debris from 'denuding' our yard. It's gonna be great when all the stumps are ground down and we can get to landscaping and planting grass and flowers. I want three lilac bushes somewhere in the yard, one for each of my kids. I love lilacs.

The fence should be replaced sometime in the next few weeks.

Wren is, of course, not sleeping. I am enjoying relative silence and hoping she will just stay upstairs for another hour or so to give me a little breathing room. It's the first afternoon in a week that there hasn't been the roar of chainsaws or heavy equipment around my house, and it's nice.

I think I am going to bake some M&M bars and maybe relax on the couch for a few minutes.

Bastards

This is what Travis pulled out of the mailbox in the pre-dawn hours of the morning today:

Nice. Hate mail. In my suburban paradise.

It would have been at least a little tolerable if the douchebag who put this in our box would have had the balls to, you know, actually own up to it and stand face-to-face with myself and/or my husband.

Of course, their little tree-hugging, uber-environmentalist diatribe leaves out the part about how most of the trees we took were infested with pine borers and/or carpenter ants, providing a fantastic home for the termites that were living in our yard fence. And said infested trees are all over 60 feet tall, and would have done some serious economic and environmental damage should they give up the ghost and oh, FALL onto my HOUSE! I'm sure those anonymous jerks would have loved to have their power cut out for days after the next storm took out one of the twelve trees that grew next to our power lines. Dominion Power isn't always speedy about replacing lines in my neighborhood.

And if anon letter-writers were worried about people doing things to their own property that they didn't like, or thought unsightly, then those folks have the option to live in a neighborhood that has restrictive covenants. Ours doesn't, and we bought our house here because it doesn't.

So, fuck you, anonymous "neighbors". It's our yard, and our (dead, dying, infested, dangerous) trees. Don't like it? Tough shit.

Grrrr.

Of course, Travis finds this whole thing amusing.

just stuff

We are having a number of very large trees removed from our yard, and it has been an impressive show of skill from the tree guys. Some of the pines are well over 60 feet tall, and those guys were dropping them into clear spaces in the yard with almost surgical precision. Travis posted a video on YouTube that we took from a second story window of a huge pine top coming down and landing within a few feet of our deck. Here is a 'before' picture of the backyard, with all the trees intact:
Here is basically the same view of the yard, minus the trees (and the fence) that came down today:

Kind of a major difference, no? The fenceline will get replaced with the three-board fence that is around the rest of the yard, and the big area of leaves will hopefully grow some grass this year and next. I'm planning a flower bed, vegetable bed, and herb bed in the general area, too. I want a massive hedge of basil! It will be nice to have a lawn in the backyard instead of a mudpit or a dustbowl. 

The guys will be back tomorrow to tackle the front yard. Those should be interesting because the three scheduled for removal are about five feet from the house.

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I'll write some about the inauguration later....the weekend was busy, as were the past three days, and I have a lot to  think about. And a lot to say, at least in my mind.

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Yoga practice with Kira tonight. I think I am coming down with Noah's cold, and I really wanted to skip yoga again tonight, but I didn't.

Discipline is freedom.

I didn't do too badly, and the shadows I cast on the wall reminded me of dancing in front of the studio mirrors, so there was that.

More later.

just....exhausted....

The second night in a row with less than five hours of sleep. I love my son, but I really, really, really need to get some sleep. He woke up at midnight, which was about 30 minutes after I went to slep, and then proceeded to scream for nearly two hours. The only time he wasn't screaming was when I was holding him. No, I take that back. He cried even when I was holding him. I tried putting him down to let him deal with it and cry himself to sleep (a sad, sad way to go to sleep, in my opinion), but no dice. Finally, at around 2am, having been in and out of his room every 20 minutes or so, rocking him, holding him, et cetera, I gave up and took him downstairs. In desperation, I administered a dose of Motrin,  a double handful of cheerios on his highchair tray, and two sippy cup refills.

He scarfed up the cereal, drained his cup twice, yawned and rubbed his eyes. When we went back upstairs around 3am, he allowed me to actually put him down in bed, and there he remained, quietly sleeping, until 7:30.

Sigh. Today he is a bit fussy, but refuses to nap. An ear infection? Teeth? Just plain Mommy-loving neediness? A growth spurt? Who knows!? Such is the joy of parenting, sometimes.

"Here, take this stress-inducing situation --a screaming baby-- in the middle of the night, and try, in the dark and cold, to figure out what combination of factors will relieve the problem and allow us all to resume sleeping peacefully. Oh, and know that no matter how many kids you have had before, this one will not be like the others and will require a totally different combination of methods."

Parenting is so not for the faint of heart. Or the can't-operate-on-no-sleep. And no, I'm not looking at you, Balynar. :)

Okay, I think I will try to make banana bread. Otherwise, I might fall asleep.

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Yoga practice last night was all about balancing poses. I sucked at them, which annoyed me, but
I am letting it go. Tonight will be better. Every day is a new opportunity.