Laundry

Ok, Ok...today is the day (even a bit late, at that!) for all the cute christmas pictures, the update on the toys that JAC got, the wonderful connections via phone to friends in Canada and here in the US. But instead I'm going to talk about Laundry, because I feel reflective. I'm a bit celebrated out, and still have tomorrow night at Vernie and Co. to survive.

Laundry - the bane and the bounty of my existence. In the house I live in, I'm in charge of laundry. I go through weird phases with my clothes (physically and emotionally) where I just want the same darned clothes to wear over and over, and I want them clean. I am quite fussy about wanting them clean. I like to WEAR my clothes. I use them as dish rags, snot rags, paint easels, spot cleaners, and various other tools. They get dirty, and I like that they get dirty. And I like that they clean up nicely. :D Favorite right now are some Talbots pants (black, smart casual), some Blue Fish shirts and one of their pants, and of course my ever fashionable Blue Canoe. Beats the Target brand, but until I get my body back, this is what is working. And wearing!

So off I trudge, down to the basement (where there is a nice little TV that only seems to work for dh!? Just a big fuzzy screen for me - not even any audio) and the cement floor in my inevitably bare feet, to move, sort, pile, fold, dry, hang and wash the endless stacks of laundry. Stacks, perhaps, gives the impression of order. No order. Not until it makes it into the piles. The piles take over the floor, but they get done pretty quickly - a day or two at most. Don't try getting into the deep freeze, playing ping pong, or otherwise trying to use that space while the piles are in motion, however. The piles take OVER that space. And then the piles are gone, schlepped upstairs to sit for days, even weeks (for stuff that is moving out of seasonal circulation, for example) at the end of the big parental bed. Both kids know where to find clean underwear. JAC seems to be the only one who doesn't. And then the stack builds up, and after a few days, new piles are formed - darks, blands, brights, whites. At the end of a very very long day, those baskets may be all I have to show for 7500 worth of calories expended solely within the house. The vacuuming, floor washing, bathroom cleaning, and various other adventures in mindful home management seem to make no impact. But the laundry - thank god! - provides me with a tangible and ever wonderful smelling (Sun laundry liquid is the BOMB for clothes!) PRODUCT at the end of the day.

It's also a never ending project that is often quite disgusting (given that O is just 'barely' out of diapers and makes frequent mistakes, and JAC himself, though not newly out of diapers, seems to be heading back into them some days! There are things I LOVE about the laundry - my mama pads made by Happy Mama, seeing Beca wear the clothing I choose with love for her, seeing Orin's happily painted upon t'shirts and JAC's dirty knee'd jeans from his weekend of working away around the house and yard. I do love these tiny symbols of the people I love more than anything, anyone in the entire world. But it's all with a grain of salt, people, because look - there goes a whole pile of stuff from B's weekend sleepover, right down the chute and onto what WAS a nice, small stack.

Oh this is SO cool!

This car is SO amazingly cool, and what really jazzes me is that it is like step two in the hybrid/electric car market! YAY!!! I am SO ready to dump the big $50 every week for gas Van (although I love it, too!) and find something like this Aptera that has a backseat for us. NOT a wagon, just something safe, fun, fuel efficient, and maybe electric/hybrid. I'd go w/ethanol but there doesn't seem to yet be a good source for ethanol on the East Coast, nor are there many places to fuel it up. So ... it'll be a while before we trade the van in, and Silver Star is a wonderful van for us right now! But some day in the not so distant future... Cool Ass Car, Here I Come!!! :D

Happy Birthday to Mary Ruth today, too! It's a warmer day today, we played outside all morning, then James and Laura and Ori and Beca all played here for the afternoon. Nice! I am happy that the kids have other nice kids to play with, right nearby. This is a very good thing. :D

Winter Solstice 2007

What a nice night! We celebrated Winter Solstice with a poem and candles, breaking a candy cane to share, and sharing gifts that we can all benefit from. Beca got a new Kodak Camera - lots of mega pixels, 3x optical zoom, it does everything! I think she will be very happy with it. Now to see that she doesn't lose it or break it! LOL!

JAC got a $50 gift card to a hardware store that is really amazing here, lots and lots of aisles, but it's NOT a big box chain store, so it felt good to support them. I think he'll find lots of yummy things there for himself. :D

Ori got an indoor swing and trapeze (that he isn't strong/big enough for yet, but he loooongs to do what his big sister can do on there!), that is TOTALLY fun and cool. It's a great indoor toy for these long cold days.

I got a new game, called Abounding River that is SO beautiful, I really can not wait to play it! I want to invite a special friend over to play. Maybe Lori would? She can be somewhat cynical, but I think she'd enjoy it. And it really IS beautiful! I also got an archiver machine to turn cassettes into MP3's. VERY excited about THAT!

I think it's time, now that the season is upon us, to get rid of the desktop computer (that doesn't work) and replace it with something smaller. What, exactly, is not a for sure, as so far nothing perfect has come to mind. A laptop is so easily damaged by these little demons, but a desktop is just more than we really need. So ... looking. Probably won't do anything till later this spring. Meantime, it would be nice to have the space here on the desk to do my archiving. ;-)

HAPPY SOLSTICE EVERYONE!!!



After our little celebration at home, we piled into the van and attended Beca's school Winter Concert. It was entirely bearable, and the kids had a fabulous time. After that, chinese food and some boob tube, with everyone eventually crashing out and me sneaking off to load the tree up with gifts. I LOVE the look of a fully loaded tree! :D

So more wrapping tomorrow, and finishing the sand paper letter blocks for Ori, and maybe a bit of out and about time for JAC if he has the motivation and energy. Otherwise a bit of chilling out at home time, with some tidying/laundry/dishes thrown in for good luck.

All is good. I am loved. Peace.

Morning Has Broken

Morning has broken ME. Getting up early has some benefits for me, like that by 7:30pm ds is so tired that he can't but fall asleep nicely. But for the most part, I am just not a morning person. I can't ever remember being a morning person, actually. I like sleeping in. I like the concept of sleeping in as much as I love the actual sleep part. There is something very luxurious about 'sleeping in', especially after years (and years!) of being awoken at godawful hours to nurse, rock, walk, soothe, and otherwise entertain little ones. So the extra sleep is really only a small piece of the 'sleeping in' luxury.

This morning, we slept in, Ori and I. It was well after 8am when we made our way downstairs, moved along the laundry and found goodies in the freezer for today (bread and stuff for a sausage and beef stew). We made scrambly eggs and toast together, which he barely ate any of, and then he proceeded to go into the play room and find scissors that his sister left out from her project making cards for her teachers and bus drivers. Then he cut the middle (very much all of the middle lol) of his knee hockey net. And two pieces of felt and several scraps of paper. He surely does like to make a mess! He did a fair job cleaning it up, too.

So having helped him clean up that room, he wanted to play his puter (first click leap pad). And he is actually DOING it. He's on level two of Nemo now. He sure seems to be more of a morning person than I am, at least as far as his productivity!

I burned it.

Not dinner, my enthusiasm. I was really looking forward to the winter vacation, because I love Beca, because I often miss her, because it's nice to have the kids play together. But today was a school closing day, and I gotta say I was SOOO happy when JAC came home. It was very icy out, too icy for me to feel good about driving since I haven't had the winter tires put on the van. So in we were. We did take a nice 1 hr. walk about the neighborhood, dropped off some goodies at a neighbors house, etc. But I TWICE went online looking for new ideas of things to do (and came up w/a few good ones, like sorting soup beans, and doing pin prick designs on black construction paper using a pattern and a tea towel)...just was feeling tapped out! Some days, I am sure I can do this, have lots of great ideas, and tons of energy to make forts, puppet shows, drawings, read to them, and find lots of fun things to do. Other days? I seriously wonder whether my kids got gypped. :/

Digging in the dirt...not literally

Getting into stuff with B these past few weeks, definitely me feeling hormonal, but also B going through a phase of sorts, out of sorts, needy and cuddly and simply forgetful, neglectful, remnants of her babyhood mixing with her bigger, more mature self that refuses things (like taking care of her stuff, picking up after herself, not showering when asked) and yet taking on a lot more responsibility with Ori and the neighborhood kids. I think she 'gets' that she is older than James and Laura and Ori, enough so to make it uncomfortable when stuff goes wrong. She's the ring leader (although I think Laura bullies her way into it occasionally), and in the final analysis, it's her decisions that carry the most weight.

One battle I've started to give up on recently is TV. I think that I will unblock the awful channels on our main tv, because I'm finding she's just going up or downstairs to watch the channels I can't block. Grrr. My attitude is that it's better to battle the known devil than the unknown. So I was swimming VERY much upstream with this, and then came across this gal who has this to say on the topic.



Dayna Martin seems to have her head wrapped around some stuff differently than I will/do, but all in all I think she's a good compromise between where I am and where Jerry is. So I'm going to go dig around in that stuff for a bit and see how I feel in a few weeks. We have a fairly long break coming up, so I may wait till after that to declare my major in the TV debate.