my soft spot

just a mom who plays hockey and knits

Monday, December 25, 2006

Christmas gift

I'm up at my mother's in Washington for a week and a half. G has been sleeping in the attic, which has been furnished with 3/4-size mattresses for young visitors to sleep on. In order not to shove him out of the bed when K gets here, I've told him he gets to sleep in the bed with me 1 night this trip and will sleep upstairs the rest of the time. The offered nights are Christmas Eve and Christmas night. He chose Christmas Eve. We got into bed and I pulled out an illustrated copy of Hans Christian Anderson tales from which to read.

He'd been challenging that night, so I decided I was going to choose the story instead of giving him the choice. I glanced through the table of contents and spied "The Little Match Girl." I remembered reading that story when I was young, so I chose it.

It is not a long story... and not a happy one. The little girl has no shoes and is walking around in the snow trying to find someone to whom to sell matches. She has not sold any and is afraid of being beaten if she returns home with no money. (G asks, "What does 'beaten' mean?" Oh, my.) We get near the end and she is lighting matches and warming herself ever so little for a short time and sees a vision of her grandmother, "the only person who had ever loved her" but has since passed away. She lights all of the matches to see her grandmother more clearly for a brief moment. I glanced forward and stopped reading. G asked why.

I started to cry and pulled him close, not wanting to but ending up telling him that the little girl dies--but then she does get to go to Heaven and be with her grandmother, the only person who had ever loved her. I cried and cried and talked about children who never have anyone to love them, and children who are beaten, and how lucky we are to be warm and fed and have so many people who loved us. We named off all the people who love us. I said that this is why we need to do things for children who don't have anyone to love them--this is why we give money, and food, and clothing.

Hug your babies, everyone. (of all kinds)

Thank you for being part of the large group of people who love us.

Merry Christmas to those who so celebrate

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Going on vacation is so tiring

I am exhausted. I was up till midnight doing stuff to get ready to go on vacation and then up at 7 and go go go.

Today at noon, I went to the hardware store to pick up a pump switch for my wonderful 1/6 h.p. Little Giant pump. The switch is supposed to make the pump switch on automatically when the water level gets to a certain point. I had gone online and found that it existed, called Pagano's, and asked if they could order it. Got a message back--"We have that switch in stock." Picked it up today and found that there are two versions: one that turns on in 6" of water and one that turns on in 1" of water. I want the 1" one, as, at least for now, the pump will be sitting right on the floor. In the future, I'll probably get a hole made in the garage floor and pop the pump into it, but for now, I need early intervention. 6" of water in my garage is a lot! And the one they had, of course, was the 6" one. Oh, well.

I spent a ton of time moving everything from the garage floor in case it rains and floods while we're on vacation. If you think that wasn't a big job... you must not have seen my garage, ever.

Then I wrapped a present and did some checking online (someone on eBay has the switch, so I'll buy it after I get back, or just before I get back), buzzed by Taco Hell for lunch, and back to work.

Still to do: (sigh)
  • Pack clothes and shoes for the 2 of us
  • Wrap my mom's and Graham's presents (lovely K said she can do this for me, yay!) and pack them
  • Bring my hockey gear inside (it's still in the car, and won't fit anywhere in the garage now
  • Deliver presents to friends
  • Choose knitting projects
  • Decide on black pants (or something fancy!) for me to wear to a party up there
  • Figure out what to take on the airplane/airport (now that I've figured out what I can't take or need to put in the stupid ziploc bag--freaking mascara???)


I have lists everywhere of stuff I don't want to forget. Paper, PDA, recorded on my tiny digital recorder... and invariably, this is stuff I was going to forget 'till I double-checked. Oy! I need a vacation from vacation!

Another laugh-out-loud situation

On our last trip to the library, I picked up a copy of "What is Hannukah?" for G, since we were planning on going to a couple of Hanukah parties.

So he picked it up today and was reading it. In the car, he asked, "Why did the oil burn for 8 days?" I answered, "It was a miracle!" And he said, "But on the second day--it was a miracle then, right?"

LOL Of course it was. There was only oil for one day, after all. Smart kid!

Monday, December 18, 2006

I f*cking can so!

"The following error(s) occurred:

You cannot give a gift to yourself."

Stupid Family Handyman magazine. You can subscribe for 1 yr and get 1 yr free, or send 1 gift subscription and send another one for free.

But you cannot give 1 yr to someone and take the 2nd for yourself. WTF?

Update: you can, however, send the 2nd subscription to a J. VanHeuit at the same address. This is acceptable.

If you think my eyes are totally not rolling, you would be mistaken.

Actually freezing

I reset my indoor/outdoor thermometer last night, so when I pushed the button today, I saw last night's actual low: 31.8F. Yoiks! That's genuinely below freezing, folks! Had to actually scrape my car window this morning and all. Dang, my fingers and toes are still chilly now, and it's 11!

I called my mom up to see what the temp is up there, and she said it got down to 40 last night. Hey, that's warmer than here, right on! We leave Friday at the buttcrack of dawn. If you think I don't have a huge "must do before we leave" list, yeah, you'd be way wrong.

I must transform into the Master Giftwrapper and get some stuff wrapped. And some of it, shipped. *sigh*

But I'm still looking forward to it. I love vacation.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Turn up the heat!

My indoor/outdoor thermometer tells me it got down to 34F last night. All I know is that I keep repeating, "It is SO cold!" in the morning and at night. I know folks who grew up elsewhere really know cold, but man! this is way too chilly for this born-and-raised SoCal girl.

I'd write more, but I need to go push the thermostat up a notch.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Me, A Sharp Knife in a Drawer of Sharper Ones

Just realized, as I was listening to NPR just now, that 'podcast' is used in part because it rhymes with 'broadcast.' (I recognized the 'pod' part before.)

Yeah, I can be a little slow on the uptake.

(And I still don't get how one subscribes to podcasts. All in good time, I'm thinking.)

Amusing

Spotted on a minivan today: license plate "7 2BEMUP." That really cracked me up. The "Camp Blue" license-plate frame didn't hurt, either. Ha!

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I love teachable moments

This morning, my son asked what the difference is between an alligator and a crocodile. I said that when their mouths are closed, you can't see an alligator's teeth. "What about a crocodile?" he asks. Well, you can see theirs. (If you read the above link, I wasn't entirely accurate.)

"I believe alligators are generally smaller than crocodiles," I continued. (Turns out that was wrong.) Then I thought a moment, and asked, "Do you know what 'generally' means?" Nope, he didn't. Glad I asked.

So I explained that if you say alligators are generally smaller, you can probably find an alligator that is bigger than a certain crocodile, but if you look at a group, most alligators are smaller than most crocodiles...

Anyway, I really love those teaching moments: checking in with him, him being willing to say when he doesn't know something (will get rarer, I think), us talking about what something means and how to apply it to other situations. In hockey, sometimes our (wonderful) volunteer coaches will say something about "the crease" or "point" and I'll see some nodding heads and then ask, "Does everyone know what 'point' means?" and inevitably, there will be 3 or more folks who don't know.

It's all about learning, and I love it.

Monday, December 11, 2006

"1-2-3 Not It!"

I'd totally forgotten this, but it came up when we went into deliberation. I had planned on being the Presiding Juror from about 2 days into the trial. OK, maybe 1 day.

Then the day came, and our first assignment was to choose a Presiding Juror. Someone said, OK, who wants to be it? and I raised my hand and looked around a table at eleven relieved faces and no other raised hands. I laughed and said I'd been sure someone else would want it. One of the other jurors touched his nose and said the above phrase and I'd remembered that from school days, when you didn't want to be It for Tag.

So, Dharma, it wasn't that they recognized me as anything all that special. But I really did enjoy it and did find the power of the position really fascinating.

Dry spell

I never did manage to finish out NaBloPoMo, but I think I gave it the old college try. The end of Nov was challenging largely because I was on jury duty starting Nov 21. Tuesday before Thanksgiving, no problem, right?

Wrong. Not only did we have to fill out long questionnaires, but we also had to return the next Monday for jury selection*. And after a full day of questioning and bouncing potential jurors, the two attorneys finally accepted our full group of 12 jurors + 2 alternates. Yep, my first time in a courtroom and I got picked. Ended up being Presiding Juror (the new term for Jury Foreman).

*which is freaking fascinating, by the way. I commented to the prosecuting attorney after the trial that it seemed like a chess game at the end. He was flipping through the questionnaires of the next 2-3 potential jurors and trying to decide whether to "thank and excuse" one of us in favor of taking a chance on a new one. He agreed that it was really like a chess game. Wild.

It was a robbery--by the way, I can blog about it, because the case is over, but if you want to buy the written story, we can't negotiate for 90 days from last Friday (that cracked me up--it wasn't that interesting a case)--and I have to say, it was really interesting going over all of the evidence. We were very careful and methodical and came up with a unanimous guilty verdict. It was interesting how serious everyone took the case, when the evidence looked pretty damning as is. Come to find out, after the verdict was read, that the guy is likely eligible for Three Strikes in CA (please Google it if you aren't familiar). Whoah. In jail more than out in the past 10-15 yrs. Gives one pause.

Anyway, I thought about blogging but there was so much I couldn't say. And T'giving was good but tiring.

Anyway, I'm back. G is in his last week of school in 2006 and we are ready and rarin' to go on our Xmas vacation. K comes midweek after Christmas and I expect to have a terrific time.

As long as I can stay warm. It is freezing here these days!

Monday, December 04, 2006

Another quiz, this one rather interesting

I enjoyed reading the results on this one.


My Personality
Neuroticism
42
Extraversion
99
Openness To Experience
71
Agreeableness
71
Conscientiousness
35
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