I am so fucking funny.

On my 'moms' email list, folks are discussing cooperative versus complementary marriages. One of the original posters wrote "complimentary" by mistake. I replied:

If I may... *complementary.* As in, pieces fitting together well.

A complimentary marriage would just be one in which you keep saying, "You're SO good-looking!".

Or perhaps it would be one that the salesgirl slips into your bag of purchased makeup.

I do make myself laugh sometimes.

Yellow Car mystery solved

That yellow car was still parked in front of church, so I lifted the "YOU HAVE A YELLOW CAR" paper and peeked at the other side. Apparently, Oakland has a Yellow Car Parade and they're recruiting folks to be in it.

It was funnier when I thought it just said YOU HAVE A YELLOW CAR.

3 days running

This is our third day of my dropping G off at his new school by bike, either with the bike trailer or on his trail-a-bike. There are three, count 'em, three drop-off spaces for parents to drop off more than 500 kids.

Anyway, it feels good! And he loves it. (He got to color a picture of a bike on Monday, as his way of coming to school--versus a car or a shoe.)

I'm in!

...the ranks of those who woke up with sore throats. I salute you with my cup of warm salt water.

Wish I had Jena's Camera

So I'm picking up a corrected newsletter draft at church, and as I come out, I notice a bright (non-metallic) yellow car (recent-year Mustang or something? I don't know), and it's got a yellow square of paper on its windshield, with "YOU HAVE A YELLOW CAR" computer-printed on it. As far as I could tell, that's all the note said. Hilarious.

4 days, 360 miles

From Thursday to Sunday, I drove 360 miles: home to Berkeley/Albany & back to do a friend a computer favor; home to Salinas, then Monterey, then Carmel, then Monterey, then Carmel, then home, for a wedding and its related activities; then Belmont and back, for hockey.

Yup, good times.

Favorite moment

from last night: when I fell and was down for a bit, my teammates are yelling, "Are you OK?", the ref skates over and asks, "Are you OK?", but there's Liz behind me, yelling, "Get up! Get UP!"

She's sweet, that Liz.

Big, brave kid and mushy mom

So I took G to his first day at Kindergarten today. He was a little jittery at first, asking if he would know ANYONE... thankfully, a kid we know from church walked by RIGHT after. He's going into first, but as luck would have it, he had Ms. Martin last year, and G has her this year! She seems very sweet. He came right in, signed himself in, picked up his name tag, and went and got a book to read. He was really excited! Sat right next to the teacher in Circle Time and happily waved and blew kisses as I left. Then I fell apart, walking down the hallway and crying. I still can't believe he's in regular SCHOOL. It's been a long time. He's grown so much, physically as well as emotionally and academically. Wow.

(Password for web page is 'cracker')

Great game!

The Green pick-up game last night was SO fun. Lots of Red players stayed to play and really made us greenies play up to their level, well, when we could! Steph in particular had a great game, I thought. Mean Sue Green swept my feet out at one point and I landed, somehow, with some of my fingers pointed down and jammed 2 of them (ow). But I was able to make some sweet passes if no goal shots, and really gained an appreciation for the level of play in Red. I'd like to see more of their games. It was sure fun playing on the same team as Andrea, Jena, *and* Liz. But no fun playing against Ellaine! Well, really, too fun overall.

A little better

Got a buncha stuff done today (well, out of necessity, of course), and am feeling much calmer. Of course, my sister kindly left totally late and is getting here around midnight, so I vacuumed the whole house and even mopped the kitchen floor, which just gives me tingles of accomplishment. And I put a newly laundered tablecloth on the table (and if you don't look too closely, you don't see the oil stains. What the heck were we eating last time?).

We'll power walk in the AM, then get our stuff together, go to Ross & Mervyns for a dress for me and dress shoes for G, head down to Santana Row (I can't help hearing guitar riffs when I say that) to the Crate & Barrel to buy the happy couple some items off their registry, and then down to lovely Carmel for the weekend. Where, God help us and the creeks don't rise, it will be sunny all weekend. NOT cloudy. Really.

I have no right

to complain... but I am so glad that today is Graham's last day at his preschool. It has become a royal pain to get us out of the house on time, so that I can drive him there, park, walk him in, sign him in, walk back, and drive to work--early enough so that I can leave on time to get him before 6PM.

His school is 1/2 mile from the house, about 8.5 blocks. I'm hoping to, as weather allows, bike there. I think it'll be faster than driving, as the front of the school has 3, count 'em, 3 drop-off spaces. For a school of 529, well, do the math.

And then I can bike to work, which always puts me in a better mood.

But there are folks for whom the commute to daycare alone is 1/2 hour or more. Yikes.

If I don't

get my period soon, someone's gonna die.

Crabby and stressed

Ugh, I am so tired of feeling so crazy before my period. Short-tempered, negative, brusque... my poor kid gets the brunt of it.

But if I may vent: I have 2 or 3 Lab Rescue calls to return, 2 candidates for the childcare job at church need to be contacted (and if good, interviews need to be scheduled), the whole church newsletter to be slapped together, my house to clean, 3 loads of laundry to be run, the kitchen completely caught up, and our suitcase packed for this weekend. Oh, and run to a friends' house and do something on their computer for them.

Did I mention I have to do this all by the end of the day tomorrow?

I must be insane.

I feel sick.

I just replaced the battery in my iPod. I'm sure I messed up the sides somehow. I got the replacement battery from Other World Computing last January at MacWorld SF. They have handy how-to movies on their website, but they supply the battery with two nylon "no-scratch" tools. Might as well call them "no-use" tools; I just couldn't get the back off with them. Finally broke out an old dissection tool and just cranked part of it open and then shoved in said useless nylon spreader and got the back off. Finished it OK but still feel nervous... yoiks.

I'm a dork

Just figured out that some of you folks who say "LoTech" are referring to the Logitech rink. Yeah, just put that together just now.

OK, Andrea, have I blogged enough to appease you now? Gotta run & pick up the Little Nipper.

Gross.

When I am queen, all toilets will have a sign posted above them that says, "Do NOT pee on the seat! And if you do by accident, clean it up for Pete's sake!"

Nah, scratch that, I'll just have the offenders killed.

A great week

I would have blogged from my mother's house, but she has dial-up and is on Mac OS 9. In other words, ssssssllllllllllooooooooooooowwwwwww. Unbelievably slow. It took an hour and a half to get into my .Mac account to change the storage settings so I could stop bouncing email.

But... we had a GREAT week of vacation. Best yet. We flew out on Monday from Oakland to Portland on Southwest. They let us preboard even though G is technically too old (if they had asked, I would have told the truth...). True to form, they served us Kraft Foods-Nabisco-Honey Maid Soft Baked Oatmeal Raisin Snack Bars, which I could not even bring myself to eat, as it contains no fewer than nine forms of sugar. Y'all know I am not a macrobiotic, all-tofu health nut. But...! That seems beyond the pale. (Although it doesn't really nudge the cold PopTarts they offered us on another flight out of first place. The guy next to me and I just handed them back wordlessly. Ew.)

Got in just fine, Mom picked us up, and then we realized that one of our bags hadn't made it. It turned out that the TSA had (probably) held back the duffle bag--containing G's booster seat!--because it contained a sleeve of 6-8 cans of pâté from my uncle to my mom. It's a little hard to blame them, as I'm sure it looked like a good-sized metal cylinder.

Southwest loaned us a booster seat and later paid some guy to drive the bag 2.5 hours from Portland to my mom's home. (wow) We met G's third grandmother (really, Jack and Anna's grandmother) and Jack and Anna, G's adored cousins, in Portland for lunch. The highlight of lunch was Anna, with wet fingers, managing to squirt a quarter of lemon past me and G into the corner of the restaurant without it touching the table at all. That takes skill! (Olive Garden only gives out two crayons at a time. Kinda lame.)

We checked back in with the airline before leaving Portland (no update), and left for mom's house, on the Long Beach Peninsula. We were there for the Kite Festival! We stopped at Costco on the way, in Warrenton, and I encouraged Mom to buy a DVD player. She ended up choosing a DVD/VHS player, despite my protests, but it turned out to be the right choice. I hooked it up and put her displaced VHS player in her bedroom. She's now ecstatic to be able to watch TV and iron. Um, yay, Mom.

We got a ton of stuff done that week. Mom always has a list of things she needs me to do, or to help her do, mostly on the computer. Unlike previous visits, I didn't end up making her cry at all (this is monumental). Part of it is that she is finally getting more self-confident on the computer and willing to try things & guess what something does/is. We got Retrospect Express installed and backed up her whole computer onto 2 DVD-Rs. Phew! She has a nice G4, but damn! Why did they make them so you have to use their horrible keyboards to open the CD/DVD drive??? I ended up downloading a program to assign to the F12 key on her new (larger) USB keyboard just to open the freaking drive. Smooth move, Apple. Gotta rethink that one.

Later in the week, I buried Max's ashes next to the grave for my mom's last dog, Rosie. Both great dogs, although Max still takes the award for "You Were Such a Pain In the Ass But Damn I Miss You." I was remembering how it was nearly impossible to barricade her from my bed and I'd invariably come home to a nest of black dog hair on my bed. Thanks. Rosie was a Mastiff-GSD mix, a leggy, somewhat graceful, tall dog. She looked (and sounded) scary but was a total marshmallow. Huge sweetheart.

G behaved very well during the week. We went swimming at the local overly heated & chlorinated pool twice. He is really coming along in swim lessons. I'm impressed! At one point, he swam two full strokes with his face under water. It's wonderful to see.

Mom always likes to take us out to one big dinner when we visit, so I'd packed a nice dress for me and G's dressy clothes for him (navy slacks and cardigan and white long-sleeved shirt, plus natty red tie). She took us out to the Shoalwater, which isn't usually so pricey, but I encouraged her to get an appetizer, we both had drinks and then wine, and we all got dessert, so the bill was over $120. Boy, was I glad I wasn't paying! Everything was incredibly yummy, even G's Kraft Mac & Cheese! (some kinda boil-in-bag thing)

We also had one of my favorite dinners, cold cracked crab with mayonnaise, and buttered French bread. Yum.

Our flight back wasn't till 7:20, but Mom doesn't like to drive in the dark, so I encouraged her to drop us off really early so she could get an early start back. She ended up dropping us off at about 6 and got home while it was still light. We had gotten to Portland about 1, so we had some good time at Powell's City of Books (something like 4 floors of books! Paradise!), then got our watches fixed at the local Sears (who knew? I kind of liked my dress watch always reading 5 minutes to 6, though). We hit the mall's Radio Shack, bought mom a new USB microphone and USB hub (so now, she can finally plug in her scanner that she never uses, her protests to the contrary; and she can speak French to her French-learning program), and headed over to the Bay something-or-other restaurant for an early dinner so we wouldn't be paying the inflated prices at the airport. (I still paid $3 for a very small amount of iced latte and a lot of ice while there. Um, thanks, Coffee People!)

Painted my nails (only dropping the nail polish bottle once) while waiting for the (late!) plane, then loaded with all the other B passengers. (On the way down to the plane, I learned that the only way to get into the A loading group is to log on to southwest.com just after midnight on the day you leave. Wow!)

G had never in his life been so far back on a plane, and for some reason, was zipping the whole time--About the orange horizon from the sunset: "What is that, Mom?"; about the tray table: "Can we put it down now, Mom?" then "I want to put mine up. Put my drink and snacks on your tray table. Now I want it down again."; and then, about a million times, "I want my wings!" (they always have little packets for kids with a 4-color pencil/crayon, activity book, and stick-on wings. they didn't have time or something and I didn't hear the end of it. They did give him some just after we deplaned.) I read the SkyMall magazine, having brought all sorts of other stuff to do; I just love that magazine. Cool things and really stupid things, all in one. Paradise!

We got home to an empty house (Maddy being at friends') that was still messy (damn those lazy elves!), and a crammed-full mailbox (I forgot to do anything about the mail; fortunately, I had asked a friend to stop by a few times and she took one load of mail inside). Good to be home. I do wish the elves had cleaned up, though.

Ah, memories

A coworker has his Bedlington Terrier in today. Something about the way she's resting reminded me of how Max used to lay her head down so not gently. She'd lie down, and then, wham, her head would hit the floor. Never seemed to bother her. Rest in peace, ya big lug.

Shaking off a bad mood

Well, this morning I discovered two things: first, I need to find a better consequence for G kicking me (I nearly kicked him back, it made me so mad!). Two*, we both need food first thing in the morning. This eating-breakfast-in-the-car is just not cutting it.

So, I arrived at work in a stormy mood. One thing that helped was to read a bit of Lamentations of the Father, which I had to re-find, as it keeps disappearing where I've bookmarked it (thank goodness for google). Another thing is reading a bit of Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing, 'cause damn, that is funny. (and scary, truth be told.) (I haven't seen "Murray" on there, nor G's name, so we're good.)

And after I made more decaf when it was all gone before 11AM (!!!), OK, felt mostly better.

*anyone a fan of Mad About You? Paul Buchman always enumerated inconsistently.

Suicidal worms

Twice on my power walk today at noon, I found worms on the sidewalk, less than 2 inches from the nearby grass. They were drying out and flailing wildly. I put them on the grass but wonder if their wormy brains were already toast.

But... why the heck would they be there? You'd think their wormy instincts would be to stay in the grass. I felt bad for them.

(Yeah, and then there's the Sudan.)

Cube people: how do you do it?

I'm in my office with my door (and outside window) closed. My neighbor is having a work discussion with a colleague who's here from India (used to work here, moved back home, still works for us). His voice comes right through the wall. I can't imagine how it would be if I were in a cubicle. I do think he'd be dead by now. Argh!

Cranking the Indigo Girls louder...

I've found it!

The perfect position for a bisexual in hockey: center. You play both defense and offense, often one after the other. I need to get my wind better (and my sprinting), but DANG it is fun to play both D & O at the same time!

Now I've REALLY seen everything.

Have you seen this??? I thought it was a joke when I first heard about it. I'm SCREAMING. It is too funny.

Ahhh.

We had a lazy day but started with a bit of a flurry. We got up reasonably early, tumbled into the car, and went to a local Safeway store for their "Grand Reopening." They were giving out "mini DVD players," by which I and another patron thought they meant "portable DVD players," as in, plugs into the cigarette lighter and has a screen--well, they actually meant "DVD players that are small but are used at home w/your TV." Anyway, we went through the checkstand 7 times before we finally won one! When I realized they weren't portable, I was still happy, as I've wanted to get one for my bedroom for a while. (When G wanted to watch a DVD but I wanted to, too, he had to watch a video in my room and was quite put out--and vocal--over it.)

So, that was nice! We headed home but stopped at a neighborhood garage sale first. Got some Lakeshore Learning paint cups for just $4, G got given a Mickey Mouse big cup (must have had popcorn in it, but cute with Mickey Mouse ears on the conical top) for free, I got a new hockey stick for $1, G got a Spongebob toy he's been bugging me for forever ($.25), and I bought G a used, but still useful, full-sized basketball ($1). He's been saying basketball is his favorite sport, and since he is likely to be all of 5'9", he'd better be damned good. So he might as well start now.

At home, we set out our purchases (including all 8 from Safeway!), and then I started setting up the DVD player. Something got me interested in reorganizing my room the way I've wanted to, so I started moving things around and cleaning so that I could. I love it! I now have my bed against the far wall, the giant red thing which G has now christened "Fudgie" ("because it sounds cute") in the corner next to it, and my dresser w/TV&VCR& now DVD on top of it, on the wall across from the window. So now G and I can sit on Fudgie and read books, or I can relax on Fudgie or my bed to watch TV.

AND the upshot of the room reorg was dealing with a lot of papers and stuff that's been hiding in my room since I had to quickly clean out my car for... um.... someone. I can't remember who, but I ended up with two sacks of random stuff that I tucked away in my room oh-so-long-ago. Went through it all, swept up massive amounts of hiding dog hair (including some that was black, oh R.I.P. Max my sweet girl) and dust (with a bandana on since my dust allergies really like to crop up in these moments), and generally cleaned and reorganized other stuff. Nice! I'm very pleased. I still need to put up the reading lap over the new spot on my bed but otherwise, I'm pretty much ready for bear! Yeah!

It's a Pensieve

My sister loaned me the CDs for a new organizational system called "Getting Things Done Fast." I listened to most of it last weekend while driving between here and Gilroy.

What I've gleaned so far is that you should always have a method of jotting down a thought you'll need to have later. So I've bought a handheld digital recorder and have taken to carrying around the foldup keyboard to my PDA with me. The concept is that if you have a safe place to put that thought (and the follow-through to deal with it once you get home/to your computer/to the office), then you don't have to keep that thought in your mind, cluttering it up and distracting you from the taskat hand (like driving, or work).

And it occurred to me: It's a Pensieve--the device that Dumbledore uses in the Harry Potter books. He retrieves thoughts from his head (as smoky strings) and puts them in a basin called a Pensieve, and then theyaren't in his head at all any more. Cool!

I gotta get out more often

Yesterday, I dropped a piece of popcorn down my cleavage. When I went to retrieve it, I brushed the side of my boob and had two thoughts in quick succession: "Mm, breasts are soft and warm." and "Man, I need to go out on a date."

Yoiks.

People don't always suck.

We had a whirlwind weekend, starting off with getting up early Saturday and heading down to Gilroy to meet G's friend R for a last fling at Bonfante Gardens (can you say that without sounding dramatic?) when it opened. Spent 2 hrs there, then headed up to San Jose for a tea/bridal shower for my stepsister at Lisa's Tea House while wonderful Liz & Andrea took G to see March of the Penguins just around the corner. This was at Santana Row, which I hadn't seen before. It's spiffy!

Headed back down to Bonfante G after changing back out of my prissy dress into comfy shirt & shorts to close the place down. Here's the not-sucking part: When I got into our car and started to get settled, I noticed the right-hand window all the way down.

And I hadn't just done that.

No, it was wide open for like three solid hours. I flipped open the glove, and there was my iPod... nothing was missing as far as I could see.

That is pretty cool. (But my bad for leaving the window down!)