Yay · Me!

( Alphabet meme. )

( Music meme. )

Durn spot in my eye. It will be very odd if I get a migraine again after so long. But it's bedtime anyway, that will probably help keep it from happening.

I really need to do a few picture posts and get caught up through the Chicago trip while I still remember it. But I have four more days to do laundry, clean the house, and pack for the event. I kind of doubt that it will happen.

I've been reading a microbiology textbook, because there was one in the free bin at McKay's. It amuses me greatly that SAM keeps asking me to read him parts of it. He particularly likes the diagrams of how enzymes work. :) I guess most of my books don't have so many pictures. He has been showing more interest in them lately, though - I can't go through the sci-fi/fantasy section anymore without him taking a book off the shelf and asking me to read it to him there in the store.

There was an event or two, a wedding, all sorts of things to write about... but I didn't have time. So instead, you get ( a meme! )

Back to working on genealogy. After not touching it for more than a year, they finally fixed the program so I can combine what I got together when I was working on it with what my grandmother has been working on. Rekindled interest, yay! Some of that might have to do with not playing WoW for months. *shrug* Better thing to do. Still need to learn Italian.

EDIT: Meme cut fail! Fixed now. :)

I like the state meme, but I can't remember what states I haven't been to. Maine, I think, plus a few more. Not sure. So I did it for SAM, I have the states he's visited written in his baby book.

visited 16 states (32%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or Like this? try: The Next President

Also, Canada.

I think the cold and the ickiness are both a decent bit better today. I'm working on a balance between eating constantly so I don't feel bad, and not stuffing myself so much that I feel bad. :)

Although I am told that there were snow flurries this morning, it is still springlike out. So yay! I got a bit more of our new front garden bed dug. I'm doing it in tiny bits as the mood strikes me. I think it will look nice - and eventually it will be done and I'll be able to plant stuff! I keep forgetting to order some more coir, hmmm...

Today SAM was telling DAT, "I want to have a gun fight! Whoever can shoot Mama the fastest..." Silly boy. I find it amusing that hoshiadam was somewhat inclined never to buy toy guns for him... but the house is so full of Nerf guns he'll never need to. *rolls eyes*

A couple of weeks ago I won a diaper on hyenacart.com. :) It's a pocket diaper, not my favorite kind, but hey, free for shipping. And today I got a lot of 3T and baby clothes off diaperswappers.com, free for shipping also. They include a sleep sack, woot, I love those. I think I need to go get SAM's old baby clothes out of the condo closet and go through them, I'm getting antsy. And hey, only seven more months, I might totally run out of time. Heh. :)

( A meme for you peoples. )

Oops, I've let SAM oversleep again. At least he had a nap! I even got some lying-down time before succumbing to the call of the computer. :)

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?

So, here's how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing<<--copy & paste...
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool... <<---and it would just ruin the natural levity of the note

( Meme. )

In other news, I haven't been exactly what you could call queasy, but I haven't been feeling completely happy in the belly area. :P But I've found that if I eat every two hours it goes better. You would think I would have figured that out faster. :)

Took Mama Kitty to the vet Saturday. I found it weirdly stressful. (Especially considering I used to work for a vet...) The vet had a very abrupt manner, not sure if I liked her much. But anyway, she couldn't tell us a whole lot about when to expect kittens. (Two or three weeks, she says. I was thinking more like a week and a half - we'll see.) She thinks there are three or four kittens. Mama Kitty was very well behaved, while having all sorts of things done to her, poor thing. But now she is ear mite, flea, and worm free, and that is good.

( LJ and picture memes. )

I lost two more pounds last week, for a total of 18. Yay!

SAM was dry in the daytime from Wednesday until this morning, which was nice. He was dry through two of the nights, too! :)

We all have the cold now. :P I think SAM is starting to get past it, which is good.

Not sure what else I had to say, oh well.

I shake a fist, once again, at whoever invented lawns that need mowing. :P

I'm sure I had other stuff to post. But it has melted out of my head. So I give you a link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/aug/03/schools.children
It talks about kids and risky play ("risky" as in climbing trees). It explains pretty well how I've always felt about how kids should be allowed to play - this is what I needed for the parents who were looking nervous the other day at the playground when I was letting SAM jump off everything he could climb. It always made me sad when we were working at the daycare that we weren't allowed to let the kids climb trees, or even go barefoot (even inside!). *sigh* Seems like a good way to raise really timid, weak people to me. And we all know what happens to the weak when the zombie apocalypse arrives. :)

( Late steampunk style quiz. )

I like the autosave ability on LJ, but when I'm short on time I tend to save up posts until I have time to finish them, and then they end up being super long. Here we go...

Yay event! I was unusually sore after this one - it must have been an unusually fun event! :) I had a great time. There was lots of fighting, which I always enjoy. Still not enough to be too much, of course. (The people who were trying to do business with me in the tavern might have gotten tired of me running off every time I got back inside...) I got my hand EATEN Friday night, GRRRR! and to make matters worse, we only got one of the Kezekhai responsible, in the end. During the first attack I knew they were too tough for us, and venturing out of the yurt was going to get us taken down, but hey, we couldn't leave Kino out there bleeding. Nasty sneaky pale elves. I have it in for them now.

Then there was the totem bonder adventure, which was great fun! (I just wish I had brought some water along...) I haven't often had the chance to really go out and do much with the other totem bonders, and I've NEVER had a teacher, feral or otherwise, so it was quite interesting to get some more idea of how bonders work. I need to post on Pierre's discussion, when I get a long enough time uninterrupted to let my thoughts get into a KG pattern again. Lots of food for thought...

I gained two pounds over the weekend, which was about what I expected. I don't even try to resist all the food at events, and with all the delicious wedding desserts just sitting there unguarded... It's going to be challenging fixing that with my parents here all this week giving me food, but I will try.

My loan at Kiva.org has just been repaid. Neat! For those who weren't around, it's a microlending thing that someone posted a while back. People can make loans to entrepreneurs in troubled areas, and when they have their business started up, they pay it back. Then you can get the money back or reloan it. I thought it was a pretty neat idea.

The baby song sparrows near our house grew up and flew away. They had all their feathers and were climbing around in the bush on Thursday, then when we came back they were gone. :) This morning I saw a baby Carolina wren too, I think they had a nest up in the little cedar tree. It was hopping along after its mother, acting like it was starving, and she was feeding it, but when the boys got too close the "baby" flew away. :)

( Buncha memes. )

I haven't forgotten the meme... but we're currently spending every free afternoon at the pool. If we are going to pay the exorbitant pool membership price, we're going to get our money's worth - plus swimming is SAM's most favoritest thing ever. :) We've also been going to the library, farmer's market, zoo... napping a lot... so the internet is just losing out.

Plus, I had been cut off from my planting new plants binge until next year, but then hoshiadam's mom gave me "a new plant" for Mother's Day. :) And deciding what I want requires hours of exhaustive research. :) I've decided to get a couple of pawpaw trees to go in the corner I cleared the privet out of. Should be interesting.

Also, a Public Service Announcement:

School starts back now. High school - yes, I know we all graduated years ago, but now we have to go back. There will be homework due on the first day. There will also be a test, with essays - subject matter will be the first Portals event. Yes, even for those of us who have never been to Portals. The teacher will be all of my mean English teachers rolled into one.

At least, so says the dream I had the other day. :)

( Remember this? KG-hail pictures and Easter and stuff. )

( And a bunch of memes. )

And a quick catch-up from last week, though I've forgotten what happened... We went to see Speed Racer! I had heard a bad review, and rather expected to get motion-sick, but I ended up really enjoying it! It was a fun movie. :) Still waiting for Prince Caspian though. Saturday was a really busy day. I have no idea what we did... Hmm, I guess we must have done a lot of stuff with my parents, but no idea what. I wanted to give blood that day but didn't have time, so I ran out during SAM's nap on Sunday afternoon. (Next time I can go will be after the trip to the beach, just for a note to self.) Yay, my iron was a whole point above the cutoff, instead of being right on the line. I haven't been particularly great about remembering my vitamins, so I'm thinking it was the exercise. Speaking of which, I've been doing a good job staying on my schedule, which is a change from times past. :) All the wedding and such last weekend coupled with eating out with parents and going to movies didn't help me lose any weight, sadly. I gained two pounds one week, but I think I'm back down again now. Still 10 more pounds to lose.

Usually I get tired in the afternoon after giving blood, but this time I never got the chance, I was off and running again. The busy-ness will never end! We had a really good dinner with my parents for Mother's Day, mmm, Melting Pot. My mom had never been before, so that was cool. SAM was not entirely cooperative, but he was at least really good about never trying to get into the cooking stuff. I figured he'd do okay with that, since he never tries to touch the hot table at Japanese steakhouses.

And that's all I can remember. I finally got my blueberry bush planted, along with my alumroots, and I planted some nasturtium seeds in the front flowerbed where nothing was growing.

Yesterday I made it out to the farmer's market, finally! They didn't have a whole lot, it's probably too early in the year. But we got some really tasty strawberries (hmm, I should remember to give SAM some before I devour them all) and some creamed strawberry honey, which I just want to eat with a spoon... :)

My mom brought up a bunch of books of poetry for us, since SAM has been liking it so much. We've read a book of Edward Lear and one of Robert Frost (he didn't seem too impressed by most of them, but made me read "The Road Not Taken" three times), and now we're starting on a Children's Treasury with stories and poems. These seem to have a good number of fairy tales and fables, so I'm glad. I never feel like I'm remembering them quite right when I just tell them to him.

( But first, feeding time for cannibals. )

So yesterday I was mowing again, after checking the yard for sticks and toys and bunnies and metal poles. I was mowing over by the heater, where some weeds had sprung up, and out popped a bunny! AGAIN! *headexplode* Phew... it was the same bunny that popped out last time, it has a little white spot on its head. Once again it was unhurt. I searched around, and the second bunny was there and unhurt too, in an indentation right next to the heater, under some tall grass. Crazy, crazy bunnies. They are RIGHT NEXT to the water spigot, where I had been working with the hose all morning. I had been spraying water around, and right before mowing I was standing right there winding the hose back up. Never saw them at all. *shakes head* Anyway, the hiding bunny stayed in the hole. The runaway bunny had gone over to hide in the old nest in the cardboard shelter, but when I started the mower up (away from the area), it ran off into the dog-free neighbor's yard. They are about twice as big as when I last saw them, and very fast now! I am pretty sure the runaway bunny is quite capable of finding its way back to the nest again, but I don't want to check on them any more, since they get scared. Anyway, it's impossible to see them without moving grass, even when I know right where they are.

Let me just say... Who ever thought it would be a good idea to plant all our yards with this stuff that would grow too tall and have to be cut at least once a week? Who thought that was a good idea? Seriously, people...

And now back to your regularly scheduled pre-event panic fest. AAAAAAAAA, printing new rules packets! Aaaaaaaa, packing, aaaa, baby supplies, aaaaaa, food and tags and armor maintenance and sewing and rides!!!!

SAM is still waking around 5 each morning, but the last few days he's been going back to sleep again. That's good, but today it took him an hour and a half, and then I couldn't get back to sleep. V. frustrating, especially since I used to be able to sleep anywhere, any time. *sigh* I think I've gotten too used to being woken up. My brain won't stop listening for SAM's footssteps, or hoshiadam's alarm, and when it's not listening for interruptions it's going, "Well? Are you alseep yet? How about now? You're not going to be able to get back to sleep." Stupid brain. :P But at least that was the only time he woke up.

I just miss sleep. I used to get 11 hours a night, when it was up to me. *sigh* I'm just lazy like that, I guess. I should quit talking myself out of naptime.

( Articles and memes I happened across this morning. )

Oh, and it's Valentine's Day. Any holiday which results in chocolate for me is good in my book. SAM got a purple heart-shaped balloon at the store yesterday, and we had lunch with hoshiadam this morning. So that was nice. And hoshiadam got me chocolate, and the restaurant gave me a rose, so that was pretty nice. :)

Hoshiadam took SAM out shopping this morning and I got to sleep in. It was lovely. :)

We finally tried the Gondolier restaurant, since there is one right near our new house. It was tasty. (Not as good as Altruda's, though, ikara_fox.)

And now, sigh. We need to be getting stuff done. I struggled to get SAM to sleep, then back to sleep because he woke up when I put him down - and then he woke up again after less than half an hour. Oh well.

( Food meme )