Sunday, July 25, 2010

Been a While

Well hello there, internets.  It’s good to be back.

It has been a very eventful few weeks, and mid-summer took its toll on our household.  In addition to multiple illnesses, injuries and trips to the ER, we recently lost a member of our household:

I returned from a great Fourth of July weekend in Seldovia to find that good old Dell had given up the ghost.  I took it to the local repair man in desperation.  As an indication of how that diagnosis went, he gave me a huge discount on his time because he “felt sorry for” me. 

Dell was, indeed, toast.

I fretted about this for several days because in addition to the inconvenience of having to use my phone for all internet-related things, and being completely unable to download, edit or do anything with any of my photos (!!!), I had just scored my first paying graphic design job since moving here and would be unable to complete work without a computer and the rather expensive set of software being held hostage on my dead machine.

Long story short, with the help an early Christmas gift (thanks Mom & Dad!) and an educational discount (thanks Adobe!) I was able to score myself one awesome computer (thanks, Apple!) that I have been quite pleased with.

Unfortunately, my new toy arrived on the same day that my parents did, so I haven’t had time to do much more than take it out of the box and occasionally sneak upstairs to pet it for a few minutes at a time.  Therefore, I am severely behind in ... well, pretty much everything.  Pictures, blogging, software, work, editing, migrating files, etc.

I am still getting used to the way Mac handles files and have found iPhoto to be quite useful, except for the part where it pulls all my photos into the program and won’t let me access them outside of iPhoto.  It’s reminiscent of iTunes and makes me wish Apple didn’t have such a proprietary outlook on things that are mine.

My plan is to do some updating more in the next few days.  My parents left today and I’m already missing them, but this should keep me busy in the meantime.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Wee Hours

It’s 1:55am and I have been unable to sleep for the past hour and a half.  I have also been unable to destroy this stupid annoying fly that keeps passing in front of my computer monitor.

Over the course of yesterday, Jens improved about 800%.  I kept the kids out of the house all day and when we arrived home it was like meeting a different Jens.  Well, “different” meaning the “same” Jens that I knew BEFORE our happy home was plagued with the Disease - yes, Disease with a capital D, oh D that will never stand for dog or donut or daisy or dallas or anything else in this house but Disease and maybe Death and Destruction or possibly Diarrhea and once we get past this thing we are burying D and probably S in the back yard never to speak of them again because these letters?  They spell bad things.  Excuse me while I go rock myself in the corner.  Again.

He ate a banana.  While we were gone yesterday.  A whole banana.  Swallowed it and everything.  And then?  Then?  Then we had dinner and he ATE. 

TACOS. 

Two, to be precise.

I just about fainted.

He’s even sleeping in our bed tonight.  Which, you may notice, I’m not.  I’m not sure if it’s the fact that Jens is sleeping in his own bed, or the fact that I was stupid and told my mom today that, “Koren has been sleeping pretty well the last several nights” (because I’m sure it’s one of those two things) but Koren has already been up several times.

A few minutes ago, I heard, “Mama, I’m cold.”  I went in to put a blanket on him and as he laid back down, he hit his head on the music box hanging on the side of his crib.  “Hey,” he said as he turned around to glare at it, as though the music box had intentionally reached out and hit him.

Also, there was the porcupine making a racket on our front porch.  Little turd. Although, I’d rather look out and see a porcupine on the front porch than another bear trying to get into the trash bins.

I have to say though, it’s weird to see it dark outside.  I think the sun will start coming up in about an hour and if I’m still awake to see it I’m going to be very depressed about that.

Tomorrow is a big day - kids go to school, I clean the house, then we have friends come to visit for a few days from Dallas.  So I guess I’ll go back downstairs and try to get some sleep so I don’t keel over in the middle of dinner tomorrow evening.

Night!

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Random Little Things That Bug Me

You might want to just go ahead and skip this entry.  Seriously.

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Is anyone else bothered by the opening sequence of Goldilocks and the Three Bears?  I mean, even if you can get past the fact that you have 3 bears living in a cottage and eating porridge, and that Goldilocks is obviously the product of delinquent parents if she a) is allowed to go wandering through the woods by herself, and b) doesn’t have enough home training to know that you don’t just open the door and go wandering into some stranger’s house.

Even if you take all that at face value, there’s still the porridge issue, and I find myself unable to get past the porridge issue.

If you make hot porridge and pour it at the same time into 3 different sized bowls, the porridge will cool in direct proportion to the volume of the bowl.  In other words, IT IS THERMODYNAMICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR MAMA BEAR’S MEDIUM SIZED PORRIDGE TO COOL FASTER THAN BABY BEAR’S “WEE” PORRIDGE.

The only rational explanation for this is that even though Mama Bear’s bowl was bigger than Baby Bear’s bowl, Mama Bear is anorexic and poured herself the least amount of porridge because she’s afraid of getting fat.

The underlying themes of this story just get better and better.

Because you have to assume that there’s some reason that Mama and Papa bear don’t share a bed.  And don’t say it’s because Papa Bear snores.  They all sleep in the same room, so separate beds wouldn’t really make a difference there. 

Maybe Goldilocks isn’t the first blonde bombshell to sneak into the cottage and “rearrange” Papa Bear’s bed sheets.  Just saying.

And this is a story we tell our kids?

A New Day

Thanks for the encouragement.  I ended up taking a short nap right after I finished typing and when I woke up it had stopped raining and I still had time for a short run before picking the kids up from school.  Afterward, I seriously needed a shower but felt much better.

Jens appears to have strep throat.  I say “appears” because the tests came back negative, but he has all the symptoms.  The doctor told him that the test is only 85% accurate so she’s pretty sure it’s just a false negative and put him on antibiotics.  He spent most of the day in bed and then took Kaelin to Seldovia for the weekend.

If you read that last sentence and thought, “huh?” it’s because he had made plans to take Kaelin to Seldovia for the weekend and my husband?  HE IS STUBBORN.  It was a struggle to keep him home last weekend with the measly excuse of a SHATTERED ELBOW.  So this weekend I gave up and just drove him and his contagious illness to the boat.

Speaking of Jens and his shattered elbow, we are still waiting to hear back from the doctor in Anchorage on whether he thinks surgery would be necessary, based on the x-rays.

And now, it’s time for me to get off the computer and get back to all that cleaning I’m supposed to be doing while Koren is napping.