Walking Backwards

In regards to my recent entry on purging my house of all the undesirables, the following is a list of a few of the books that I have that need a new home. This is not a book swap (although thanks for the sugguestion, Kay!); I have far more books on my shelf than I can read this year thanks to a few gifts cards and being at the right place at the right time when people were getting rid of things. Most of these books were given to me and I could not politely decline them. Some I've already read and will not pick up again because I've gotten all I care to out of them. Just comment with your e-mail/website if you'd like any of them. I can ship them to you if the cost isn't too outrageous, we'll figure out something if it is otherwise. Here is a starter list, there will be more when I have more time:

Simplify Your Life by Elaine St. James (newer edition)

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray

The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy and The Girlfriends' Guide to the First Year of Motherhood by Vicki Iovine (guide to pregnancy has some water damage)

The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown

The Mommy Club by Sarah Bird

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

Perfume by Patrick Suskind

Okay, that's it for now because I'm tired of being at my computer. I'll probably post more later when I'm having a slow day, but I really need to get some sleep.

Tomorrow, Joe and I will be spending the New Year in San Antonio, so I need to do my resolutions today. Despite the length of time I've been working on them, I still am a little iffy about a couple, but I think it is better to put them down now than over-think them and not do them. After all, they are just resolutions - I have no one but myself to hold me to them ;). I'm keeping to my pattern of five, that seems to work and gives me a feeling of accomplishment, because even if I don't think about them at all I can usually find some improvement in at least one:

(1) Blog better, if not more often.

Last year I said I was going to write entries more often, but it just made it seem like work and seriously hampered my quality of writing. I want to think about my entries more and give them more substance. I think that is going to work out more to my benefit in the long run.

(2) Spend less of my time at home online.

I really have a lot to do around here and repeatedly checking my e-mail and message boards is making it even harder to accomplish all I want to do around the house. I also am not doing as much as I'd like with my son. I'm accomplishing nothing by my web-surfing, so most of it just needs to go.

(3) Develop a routine in our lives

Everyone I've talked to says that life with kids is so much easier if you have a daily/weekly pattern that you follow. We don't have anything close to a pattern. I'm just winging it day-to-day. This wouldn't be as bad if Nico did not need routine, himself, so badly. He behaves much better and seems so much happier when he knows what to expect. I would also like to not have to stress about dinner when it is supposed to be on the table because I forgot about it until then. My school is starting up again, too. Yes, I need a routine.

(4) Focus on doing things that don't cost anything.

Every time we go out, it seems we pay for something. Joe and I go on the traditional date of dinner and a movie. Nicholas and I go to the zoo or to the park with a stop for snacks. There is a lot we could do that we would all love that would cost us less or nothing and be just a enjoyable, if not more.

(5) Take a family vacation that does not involve my entire extend family

Vacations are supposed to be relaxing and vacations with my family just aren't. We are looking into going to the coast or just staying at a hotel here downtown. Now we just have to find a way to pay for it.

I seem to be ready for this year to end. The past couple of days I've been boxing up the Christmas stuff and cleaning out everything in the house that is broken or hasn't been used in awhile. All of our ornaments are put up as well as the decorations, but we'll probably leave the tree up until tomorrow night so Joe can help me. I also cleared all of the expired stuff out of the pantry and all the books off of my bookshelf that I don't like or that I'll never read again. Having everything cleaned out will give us a fresh start for the year. To me, New Year's is a time to reassess and reevaluate and it is so much easier to do that when all the cobwebs are gone and you have a clear picture of where you are and what you have and what you find important. Starting that way makes me appreciate what I have and what I have to take care of all the next year. Now I need to think of those resolutions.

Isn't amazing how much you can accomplish if you get out of bed at a decent hour in the morning? I love my bed so much it is difficult to give up it's embrace and even when I do, I have to have my coffee and sit in my pajamas and check my e-mail before I can start the productive part of my day. Not this morning, though. Joe stayed in bed late this morning because he was up all night with office computer problems, so Nico and I hit the town around 9 to keep it nice and quiet at home. We headed by Star*Bucks for breakfast and coffee, we bought stamps at the almost empty post office (damn, stupid postal rate is going up next week), we went shopping at Tar*get, and picked up a prescription. All before 11! Not too bad. Of course, I got home and didn't really do anything except re-arrange my linen closet to fit some of the things I got for Christmas. But I look at how much I did before noon!! I don't think this is the kind of thing I could make a habit of, though. My bed would miss me.

This evening, Joe, the Nico, and I went to a lovely party at a friend's house to celebrate one of the nights of Hanukkah. Honestly, we had no idea what was going on even though they were kind enough to explain what most of the Hebrew meant. It was rather fun to spend time out with friends, though. We lit candles, we said prayers, we ate and roasted marshmallows, and then Joe's freakin' pager went off. We had to make a hasty exit. Nicholas brought home his driedel and I was given some gelt, so we'll finish up the party tomorrow morning.

Right now in the down-swing of the year, Joe and I are picking up the pace on our "get this crap out of our house"-plan. My school year semester starts in two weeks and I need to really get moving on this because once that begins, I'll be lucky to shower. I thought I made progress today, but Nicholas was quick to show me that I was wrong, oh so wrong by proceeding to remove all of his carefully arranged and put away toys. I just have to face the fact that a lot of it is just going to have to go, even though he still plays with it. Then there is our stuff, increased exponentially by the recent Christmas intake of goods. You'd think that I would be done with this by now, considering that I seem to attempt to rid the clutter in our house at least once a month, but nope. I'm going to have to actually do it this time . . . AND take the stuff out of my house instead of letting it gradually replace itself in my house. So looking forward to tomorrow.

Post Christmas malaise, I suppose. Joe is off of work today and the baby is going crazy with the new toys and I'm feeling the letdown of the holiday. I'm just a little sad that we missed doing so much this year and that I really didn't start enjoying the holiday until the end. Now there is a whole year left until we can do it again. However, that is not to say that I didn't really have fun this Christmas (as amazing as it seems with the lead up to it).

Joe and I both discovered a new facet of the holiday that just renewed it for both of us: watching Nicholas enjoy the holiday. It was amazing, I didn't even care what I got, really, I just wanted to watch him get excited about everything. He loved unfilling his stocking and looking at all of his gifts, he loved picking out the presents under the tree that had his name on them and tearing off the wrapping, and he loved showing everyone what he had gotten. My parents and my brother helped him open up the packaging and spent a couple of minutes on each toy. He was smiling the entire time; it was great. I think in the end his favorite toy was a Buzz Lightyear, but he got so much else it was unbelievable. DVDs, books, new sheets, puzzles, a wooden play kitchen; that boy is spoiled.

We did end up with a serious Christmas mishap that equated to us deciding that Santa was going to wait another year to visit. Joe made the mistake of waiting until late Christmas eve to put Nicholas' Christmas gift from Santa together. We were both tired and I had had a Grey Goose martini, so probably not the best time. I was wrapping gifts in a fashion that barely disguised their contents and Joe was putting together the Big Wheel. About five minutes in I hear, um, exclamations of dismay. Joe had put the peddles on without putting the wheel in between them. Unfortunately, there was a lockwasher in place to keep the petal on. We performed the classic moves of beating on it with the hammer, poking at it with a screwdriver, and pulling on it as hard as we could; no luck. So we stuffed it back into a box in the garage and figured we'll buy him another one later. My mother suggested we just return it to the store, but I think they'll notice we've opened it as, even partially assembled, the thing barely fit in the box. Better luck next time.

I hope everyone out there had a great Christmas, that you got lots of cool stuff, and that you're expectations we're fulfilled. I think we did pretty good over here. I am, after all, sad to see it gone for the first time in awhile.

Christmas Eve, but it doesn't really feel like it. I am in total disbelief that it will all be over tomorrow. I feel both happy and sad about it all, but mostly I feel a bit of relief. Nicholas is having a good Christmas and that is all that is important to me, really, and I'm ready to stop running around. I'm not going to be able to do that right away as we have two other Christmas celebrations, a Hanukkah party, and New Years to look forward to, but we're on the downhill slide. I'm knocking out the first day of holiday get-togethers as we speak. This morning we went to brunch with several of my mother's friends (incredible crab cake hollandaise) and tonight we're getting together with friends. I took my mother shoe shopping because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I know, not very x-mas'y. I'm hoping for a nice long entry tomorrow after everyone leaves. I'm sure I'll have a lot to say then and will be able to give a review on at least one of the pairs of shoes I bought today (why can't I stop!).

The calm before the storm. In five minutes I leave to pick up my mother. After that all goes to chaos and discord. Right now, however, my house is clean, my gifts are bought, and there is food in the fridge. My son is sleeping peacefully in my bed (my mother takes over his room), laundry mountain is being ignored, and I have a lovely cup of tea. Tomorrow, I'll either be drinking or on Xanax with the schedule she has planned for us. Wish me luck.

I found this on Kathy's weblog and had to try it myself. You can enter a picture of your own and it will match your face to the celebrity face it most resembles. The first picture I entered was my profile picture:



I apparently most resemble . . .Judy Garland



However, I think I like my second match that says I look like Audrey Tautou. She is so gorgeous:



I won't show you the second picture I used, but let's just say the results were not as complementary. I most resembled Ian Curtis in that picture.




***Edited to add the link to the place: My Heritage***

My son is sick. Well, at least I think he's sick. There is always a problem with determining whether or not Nicholas is sick, or if he has allergies, or if he is just feeling run-down, or a combination. He is three and three year-olds are not exactly know for their clarity of communication. When I asked him this morning if he felt sick, he said no, that he felt "angry". I have no idea what that means. So, being selfish for a day with my friend Maria, I took him to San Antonio. He was only running a mild fever and had a little cough and Maria was okay with us coming, even if we had the plague. Now I really suspect that he is sick. He has a higher temperature and his cough is worse, but he still wants to play and was acting fine before bedtime. I gave him some children's Ny*Quil and he's sound asleep. Maybe tomorrow he'll be better or he'll be sick or maybe he'll be melancholy.

Wow, things just keep getting better over here today. I know I'm normally not a shining beacon of happiness, but I think I have a positive outlook for the most part. Today, however, I feel annoyingly shiny. I started out the day better than normal because I had a great night last night hanging out with some of the awesome mamas from one of the parenting groups I'm a member of. Then, shortly after waking up, Nicholas and I went to Star*Bucks for breakfast; so I got to start the morning properly caffeinated. He was fairly well behaved and I didn't get into an accident in the parking lot. We had scones and he had a chocolate milk. I managed the Venti Peppermint Mocha, which I am quite fond of. The customers were charmed rather than annoyed by Nico's constant stream of conversation and doors were held open for me.

Happy and full of caffeine, we went over to a friend's house for a Christmas break playdate. Nico had fun, there we no terrible meltdowns, and I got to spend most of the time conversing with my friend because the kiddos wanted to play by themselves instead of requiring constant assistance and support. My friend made us a great lunch and Nicholas actually ate at someone else's house. I even got to oogle the newborn baby. I did regret leaving, but we are planning on getting together next week. It was great way to spend one of our days for Christmas break.

We then spent some time shopping, which, incredibly, wasn't bad at all. We stopped by World*Market and got stocking stuffers for my dad and rubber ducks for Nico. It only took a few minutes because there we so many employees there that there wasn't a line at all. Then we went to Walgreen's where I thought things starting going down-hill because they didn't have my pictures and Nicholas started misbehaving, but it didn't. As I was buckling my crying child into his car-seat, some guy walked up to me and told me that he was watching me in the store and thought I was gorgeous. Weird because Nicholas was hitting me on the head with his rubber duck and because I was kind of disheveled after being out all morning with a three year-old. He said my husband was a lucky man. AND he wasn't crazy or elderly, which are the type of people I usually attract! All I could say was "uh, thanks, thank you". I should have told him he made my day.

As if that weren't enough, I got a call from my mom asking me for Nico's social security number. She wants to set up a trust fund for him. She is going to buy him stock on every birthday and for every Christmas until he turns 21. Then he gets it all. Her brokerage firm tells her that he'll probably have approximately one-hundred thousand dollars in there by that time based on the amount she is investing. He is not going to have to worry about college. Yay!

Okay, that's it for now. I'm so excited for my good day today. It's probably going to get better, too. Joe and I are going out tonight to see Chronicles of Narnia and we are bringing gifts over to our friend's house for a pre-Christmas exchange. Yay for good days!

Joe has returned to work this morning, and Nicholas and I are back to our normal routine of doing nothing in our pajamas. Well, I'm doing nothing, Nicholas is busy terrorizing the cat and destroying the universe. I know I have a lot to do, but I'm rather enjoying this little stolen moment of peace and free-time. At some point in my life I developed a guilt-complex about sitting still. You see, when you sign up for eight-hundred responsibilities, free moments are supposed to be spent on the oft-neglected ones. Why sit still when you have FSA paperwork to fill out, when you have the third revision of an article to work on in the hopes that it will fit a different journal's criteria, when you have Mt. Laundry to scale? For now, I pretend I don't have a to-do list. For now, I pretend there are no deadlines. I just sit and drink my cup of coffee and fix the pillows on my son's fort whenever he asks me. I sit on the computer and don't talk on the phone at the same time or balance my checkbook between moments of inspiration while writing. I need these moments of being still. They are my justification for being busy so often, for the few moments each day it gives me to drink my cup of coffee and be silent.

As it is almost the New Year and time again for the resolutions, I think it might be a good idea to look over the ones from last year and see how I've done and where I've fallen short. I knew even before looking over them that I wasn't going to have done that greatly because, well, I didn't even remember what they were (Yay for the power of journaling!) I'm hoping that maybe this once over will give me some ideas for the upcoming list. I'm thinking that there will be a lot of "let's not say we'll do that again". You can find the original entry here. Now to the list:

1. Update my journal at least 3 times a week.

I've actually gotten better at this. It's amazing, but I do not have huge gaping holes in my calendar anymore (except October, but I was out of the country so give me a break). I don't know if I'm up to three times a week, but much better. I say - resolution number one . . . resolved(?)!

2. Waste less time on other things on the internet.

Um, no. I love the internet and all of the riches it holds. How else would I know what Britney Spears named her baby?! I didn't actually just say that. Really, I should spend less time online, but it's a habit I'm finding very difficult to break. I should probably just turn it off after checking my email in the morning, but the I couldn't check the weather. Yeah . . . the weather.

3. Read a book a month outside of class work.

I do this now, but wasn't so good at it during the beginning of the year. I also don't know how I'm going to do in the upcoming year because I'm thinking of discontinuing my book club participation. I'm just not liking the books those people are picking. However, they are getting me to read and I have to give them that. It's just that I'm wasting my time with the Mommy Club when I want to be reading the Dubliners. Need to think this one over.

4. Finish my damn home improvement projects.

Walking slowly away from this one.

5. Go outside more.

I really started the year off great with this one, but was clubbed back inside by the unbearable summer sun of Texas. Once the ice breaks here, we are going to start work on a patio to make our backyard more cozy and I think that alone will inspire more outside activity. I just need to get it done in the next two weeks so I can get a big check-mark by this one at the end of the year.

I am not really a "handy" person. Sure, I pretend to be, but I usually can refrain from getting myself into trouble by expertly averting any real work. There are times when it is more difficult to avoid working and I just take care of this by fleeing the scene. Sadly, my husband is not a handy person either, so when anything goes wrong in the house and it is up to one of us to fix it, something will go horribly wrong because I am unable to flee and neither of us have any skills. Today, it seems my house chose to make a point of this.

This morning the new ceiling fan we put in a couple of months ago decided that it had had enough of holding up the pull-chain and just ditched the damn thing. At the base of it, too. I looked at it and Joe looked at it. We tried twisting it with our hands and we banged on it a little with our palms, but the thing that normally holds the chain would not budge. We couldn't put the chain back in with these techniques and, as they exhausted our skills repertoire, we gave up. My son will now play in the dark.

And this was only the beginning in our lesson in ineptitude. The house decided to throw in a plumbing problem because it knew that there is nothing funnier that two idiots with wrenches trying to solve an inexplicable problem in rising water. The only thing that we can figure it is, is a problem with the shut-off dangly-thing in the inside of the toilet. So, we took it apart . . . and made it worse somehow. Then we banged on it and that just made it angry. Finally, we shut off the water and closed the door deciding that we didn't need that bathroom anyway. The other bathroom will be finished with its construction in a year or so and having a functioning bathroom is just greedy.

As if that were not enough. Our sink has lost water pressure (before the bathroom incident). The sprayer works just fine, but the faucet just isn't putting out. After the rest of the day, though, Joe and I are just happy that it's not cascading water all over the walls, the counter-top, and the floor. We shall happily put down our duct-tape and screwdrivers and hammers and just thank God that we are still able to wash dishes . . . even if we end up having to do them in the dark by the end of the night.

Yesterday was my four-year wedding anniversary. Neither Joe nor I had the energy to make a huge deal out of it, so we played it fairly low-key. Joe took the day off of work and we hung around the house all day. In the evening, we went to one of our favorite restaurants and the picked up this year's ornament at the mall. As unromantic as it sounds, we took Nicholas with us. Amazingly, this turned out to be a pretty good idea. We didn't have to worry about a sitter, we didn't have to worry about packing him up for expedition, and we were able to do everything at our own pace. He was also really well behaved (for a three year-old). The waitress was terrible, the food was too salty, and they mixed up my wine order, but Joe and I didn't care. As cheesy as it sounds, we were just happy to be together. We had a great time; we smiled and laughed and talked and didn't think at all about our schedules or our to-do lists. It makes me wonder why we make such a big deal of things at times. I always find more joy in the little things it seems.

So Christmas has not exploded all over my house just yet, give me a few hours. Joe is home today (I have no idea where all of this vacation is coming from) and has smoothed out all of the wrinkles in my insane mind for now. He did have to pry the pastry bag away from my hands, but all in all he didn't have a hard time convincing me that we should be sitting on the couch eating ice cream sandwiches instead of working and driving ourselves crazy.

Baby H had his last day here before the big holiday break and we partied down, we ate edamame by the handful and kicked back the apple juice like it was going out of style. I've got a month now where it's just me and Nico hanging our during the day. I think that by the end of it, Nicholas is going to be clamoring to share his toys with the baby because mommy is boring. Right now, he is ready for a few days to ourselves, but a month is a little longer than I think he can wrap his brain around. Baby H didn't seem to understand that we were having a temporary recess from business as usual, because all he told me during my tearful goodbye was "kitty". He is only one, though, so I'll cut him some slack. I had finally gotten into the groove of our weeks and am a little worried about what is going to happen when we return from holiday scheduling. I'm also going to have some problems in the mean time I'm sure.
You see, the planning and routine in your day has to be elevated to a higher level of precision when you start adding more helpless human beings to the mix. My day has to follow a pattern or I might forget to feed someone or accidentally leave them on top of the washer. I know that next Tuesday I'm probably going to be at the mall and panic will slowly creep up on me as I wonder where I left the baby. I just hope that I don't cause too much of a scene.

Okay now, deep breath . . .

My past week or so has sucked and I am going to have to let that go and get past it. Not only do I have to get past all of the annoying and stressful crap of last week and this week - I really need to hurry up and get into the holiday spirit. With Christmas less than two weeks away, I'm running out of time. Normally, I'm all into the home part of the holidays, but I've just been letting it slip by lately. I missed Rudolph on television! I didn't see the lighting of the tree downtown or the one at Rockefeller center! What am I thinking? Nicholas is three, the perfect age to start getting into Christmas stuff, and is able to understand most of what is going on. I should be baking cookies! Holy Christ, did I just say that?

*break of several hours*

I forgot I was supposed to go out to dinner with friends, so I kind of had to rush to that. Then my mother called and told me she wants to become a lesbian, so that was a fun conversation that I couldn't leave. Now back to my entry . . .

Yes, Christmas spirit! I need to figure out how to squeeze as much of it out of these last few days as I can. Tomorrow, I'm donning my Martha Stewart apron and dragging out the glitter and construction paper and making this a holiday to remember, damnit. Tomorrow, I'm going to have those little stars of light on the corners of everything and my smile is going to go *ding*. Tomorrow, Christmas carols are going to be playing on the computer and I'm going to decorate the tree. Look out for tomorrow.

I know I didn't write yesterday and I know I didn't write the day before yesterday, either. I know I'm supposed to be writing everyday, but it is really difficult sometimes. Sunday wasn't too bad really and I was planning on an entry, but then I got called in to be "helping parent" again on Monday (at this point, being "helping parent" is the worst torture that anyone could ever inflict upon me). So instead of relaxing and cleaning my house and watching Grey's Anatomy, I had to go to the grocery store to buy snack and do everything that I planned on doing Monday morning to get ready for the dreaded parent-teacher conference. Then Monday, which was horrible as expected. Even after my shift as helping parent. Joe took the car because he was going to drive back for the meeting with the teacher so I was completely unable to flee in terror. Then the meeting where we learned that Nicholas isn't having such an easy time adjusting (even though we can drop him off with no tears now) and there are other problems. The teacher wants to meet again at the end of January to talk about it further. Then the grocery store to buy food for the book club potluck I had forgotten about until an hour before I was supposed to be there . . . with food . . . and a gift. Nicholas had to be carried out screaming by Joe because we wouldn't let him grab handfuls of gummy worms out of the bulk bins and the handle to the rotisserie chicken broke while I was carrying it and a bottle of wine and a can of soup and another bottle of Nyquil. The chicken fell to the ground . . . and exploded all over my pants and shoes and I just left it there and checked out. Then book club, which was uncomfortable. Then I stayed late and was told by the other women who stayed behind that Nicholas' behavior problems sounded like Asperger's, which is what one of the women's son has. I came home and Joe was freaked because I was an hour and a half late. I can't even go over today, but all I have to say is when you leave your kid with someone - call them if you're going to be late!! Those last 45 minutes, I must have checked the clock a hundred times, really.

I think today I may have discovered the busiest shopping destination of the season. It's where all the women are flocking to in order to fill up their baskets and lay down their hard earned money. I saw people fighting in the aisles, every cashier was overrun, and the clientele kept streaming in the door. Where was this bastion of holiday consumerism, this monument to the spending jubilee of the season? Why the fabric store, of course! I know, it was hard for me to believe at first as well. I was there to buy backing for a quilt I'm working on (still day of the dead - not very Christmasy) and I stumbled into this madhouse. The store was overrun with women in holiday sweaters all snatching up Christmas village houses and then arguing with the cashier about their price. The most common purchase it seemed, was Christmas-print fabric, which I found very strange. Every person in the store had at least a bolt or two of the stuff in their cart, two weeks before Christmas! I thought these ladies were laboring under a serious misconception if they believed that the projects they envisioned sitting in their homes or under their Christmas tree would be ready by the time the big day rolled around (see for example my day of the dead quilt - over a month past due). It is not as if we all don't have enough on our plates already. Then I realized that we were all in the same boat, really; the woman in front of me at the cutting table wanted to make matching pajamas for her sons to wear on Christmas eve, the woman I spoke to in line was making a blanket for her first grandchild, and I overheard on couple debating which cross-stitched stocking they each wanted. While I didn't choose to work my holiday obsession out in fabric, I know where they are coming from. I always seem to want more intimacy in my holiday, I want less advertisement and more Norman Rockwell. When that becomes a problem is when you become so single-minded that the only way your holiday can be homey and be picture-perfect is if you do it all and do it all yourselves. I just hope these people realize that while Bobby and Johnny may remember their "gifts made with love" fondly, they will also carry the image of their mother sobbing hysterically over a sewing machine at 11 o'clock at night. I say, the ideal isn't for everyone and sometimes store-bought can taste just as good and often contains more sanity. Then again, I could just be trying to make myself feel better.

With the snow day yesterday, it seems the weekend is already upon us, when it actually starts tomorrow. Having today feel like a weekend made getting out of bed this morning even more difficult. I don't know why, but my bed is even cozier and more comfortable in the winter than at any other point in the year; the sheets seem softer, the mattress cushier, and the pillows fluffier. So, you see, this new level of comfort is difficult to tear myself away from. Especially when I am getting up to drive through rush hour traffic in freezing temperatures so that I can be "helping parent" in my son's preschool classroom (damn cooperative preschools!). The class itself isn't too bad, and when I arrived I discovered that over half of the class was out today making my job loads easier, but the problem that I have with helping at my son's school is my son himself. When I'm there, my son is the most horribly behaved child on the face of the planet. Really, I am not over-exaggerating on this and I have the scars to prove it. He bites, he claws, he gnashes, but only at me and only when I'm in his preschool class. It is almost as if he is feeling the need to defend his territory or that he needs to show his three year-old friends that, yeah, he knows how to keep his parents in line. So now I drink beer and begin the slow process of bracing myself for the helping parent shift in January. I can't wait to get back in bed.

Joe and I are sitting here glued to the television/internet awaiting news of the latest road and work closures. Apparently the ice on the road is enough to shut the city down for the day. All of the schools in town are closed and most of the offices. Joe is home because the road to his office is barricaded off. His employer's are hoping for an office opening at around noon. We'll see. I'm making my judgment based upon the ice formations on my patio. As long as the ice next to my warm house is still thick and frozen, he is not going anywhere. It has only gone up a third of a degree since seven this morning, so I'm not expecting any drastic changes to the condition of the roads any time soon. Yay for snow days! I just wish it happened tomorrow so that I didn't have to be "helping parent" at my son's school.

As much as I am enjoying this stolen free-time, I really need to figure out something to do today or my toddler is going to be climbing up the walls and swinging from the chandeliers. He needs his running wildly time and being stuck inside all day is not going to do well for his constitution. We have already exhausted arts and crafts time since it was raining and cold yesterday, so I didn't want to set foot outside if I could avoid it. Now that we really can't go outside, I need to pull out the reserves. Last time we made giant blocks out of paper bags filled with newspaper and played Godzilla. The time before that we filled up the playpen with plastic balls and bounced around in that. I think today we'll probably end up making Christmas ornaments or fill the bathtub with colored shaving cream and go swimming.

ps. I forgot to add to my calamitous chain of circumstances yesterday that, while I was on my way to pick up my son, the car in front of me caught on fire and enveloped me in a cloud of smoke. Afraid that it was going to blow, I fled (there were three people who were offering aid when I left). I was having such a bad day, I might have cursed them to doom. I must have had a bad day to forget that.

Today is the first day of my Holidalies postings and if you found my website through that, let me preface this entry by saying that I'm sorry. I was intending this entry as a sort of introduction and was going to include some heart-warming allegory involving my son or a kindly stranger or a flower blooming in the winter or some crap like that, but my day has sucked and, to be honest, the last thing I wanted to do today was write an entry about it. I would just like to get my laundry done, take a dose of Nyquil, and go to bed. However, I think that this is just the reason I signed up for this little experiment in journalistic continuity and will not be hampered by the bad times or business of the season. So, I give you the bulleted list of my day so I can move on:

- I was rear-ended on the highway while driving my son to preschool in rush-hour traffic. I told the driver that as long as she was fine, not to worry about it because the scratches on my bumper seemed minimal. They weren't upon further inspection.

- I had a handful of paperwork that I was supposed to turn in to several businesses about a charity auction I am on the committee of appear magically under the front seat of my car. This must be why these places have not called yet.

- The xerox machine kept messing up my double-sided copies.

- A cold front came through accompanied by freezing rain. It is now iced over outside and twenty-degrees. If you have anything to say about how this is not that bad compared to your part of the world - I say shove-it. I am living in Texas and should receive temperance in our cold at least. It was one-hundred and fifteen degrees this September, there is no middle-ground here.

- Apparently every business and school let out early because of the change in weather and the grocery store was a mad-house. Some woman stole the gallon of milk out of my cart because there was no more organic milk on the shelf.

This is the holiday season. Normally I'm not this bitter about it and I will be fine tomorrow, but I have to wonder if the joy of the season and the quest that people have for perfection is why I'm so bent out of shape. I want a joyous theme-song and a glowing aura of light to surround my activities and life during the holidays, especially now that I have my son. I want them to be as magical for him as they were for me when I was little. Damn everything else that gets in the way.

Better tomorrow - not so caustic and probably not holiday related.

Back from Houston now and totally exhausted. Nicholas skipped school today because we need some time to recuperate. I was planning on dropping him off and playing catch-up myself, but then we woke up late and then I found out there was a substitute and then I realized that Nico needed a bath before we went to school (he didn't have one the entire weekend because of thrown-off schedules) . . . so we are playing it cool and staying home today. Days like this always make me wonder why I go through the stress of sending Nicholas to school at all. I really know why I do - he needs to be around kids his own age, I need the break, he needs time away from me, etc. - but this morning we are just really enjoying having nothing to do together. It makes me wish we had downtime like this more often. I know, though, that this idea is going to be sorely tested when winter break starts in just under two weeks.

Houston was fun, but tiring. We didn't get anything done because Nicholas wasn't keen on letting us sleep at night or taking naps during the day. Because of this his behavior wasn't the best; not that we expected it to be under the circumstances, but we weren't going to press our luck by taking him into new and challenging situations that he would be unaccustomed to (like the mall during Christmas shopping season). We mainly just watched tv at the in-laws. I saw my sister-in-law's new house which is very cute. Joe helped his dad put Christmas lights on their house so that he could live vicariously through that (we haven't bought x-mas lights yet and don't plan on doing it for years). Joe's dad got a hernia when he almost fell off of the ladder, putting a damper on Joe's over-eagerness to get more lights. We played a lot of skee-ball. Glad to be home, though.

We made it to Houston last night in one piece and with all of our luggage. Yay us! Plus, we were only one hour late this time around. Joe and I are sitting around trying to figure out what we need to get done here this weekend. Houston is far enough away to try to accomplish something after making the trip. After all we don't want to have to waste another two and a half hour drive again. They have an IKEA after all and an outlet store that is less than an hour away. We'll probably be making that last stop for sure as Nicholas seems to have outgrown all of his winter pants since the begining of October. Really, though, we're bad planners and should have figured this out before now because we are wasting precious time out of the house. We've already been to my nephew's birthday party, had the cake, saw Chuck E'Cheese dance around, and are now sitting in an empty house with a laundry list of things to do. Joe is vacuuming the ceiling fan in the living room; that is how bored we are. I think part of our lack of motivation comes from the fact that we never get to sit around and not do anything and not have to worry about anything (one of the joys garnered from returning to the familial home). I just don't want the in-laws to think this is how we truely live.

I really should be getting ready to leave, but I just got the wish list from the family that we are buying gifts for and I'm really pissed. I love doing this normally and normally I get close to everything, if not everything, that they ask for and extras as well. Joe and I are not super well off, but we feel that everyone should have something for Christmas. Apparently I was wrong to do this. On the list for our family this year are a portable DVD player, some expensive dvd boxed sets, a leather jacket, and a gold watch. I'm not kidding. I am livid and really don't know what to do. I haven't spent this much on my own family, ever, total, something.

Working on re-doing the template for this here blog. Let me know if you see/experience any problems.

** Joe, I don't think you read my blog, but in case you do . . .DO NOT read any further. I speak of your x-mas gifts, 'k?**

Joe and I usually don't exchange Christmas gifts. Our gift to each other is the freedom from fighting at the malls or standing in line at the major-chain discount superstore. It's a good gift, I like it, and, best of all, it's free! The money we save from this we spend on the family we "adopt" for Christmas. Their gifts are pricey enough and along with the twelve-billion family members in Joe's French-Catholic family that all have to exchange gifts instead of drawing names like logical people would do (sorry, I'm having a hard time adjusting from my small family of three - in comparison his family is HUGE!)we need to cut costs any where we can. However, this year Joe has expressed an interest in getting me something for the holidays. I'm kind of pissed because now I had to get him something and we, therefore, had two extra people to add to our already razor-thin budget. We decided to limit the spending to a small amount each and I had already gotten him some small things, but then I found it - the perfect gift for my uber-nerd husband who works on computers all day and plays Dungeons and Dragons in his free time. I don't think that anyone could take a person wearing this seriously:


The Shirt of Smiting

I signed up for Holidalies this year. I've missed it in years past, but remembered this year on the first day of registration. Now I just have to figure out what I have worth talking about that can fill up a month.