I’m tired. It’s all my fault. My daughter is ahead of my in Portal 2 and I stayed up late trying to get caught up. She’s only ahead of me ’cause she’s had more time to play. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. Really, I don’t know if I should be spectacularly proud or kind of embarrassed. I’m probably going to go with proud. I AM totally proud of her and not just ’cause she’s doing such a great job with potato batteries.
Busy weekend and we didn’t even have a cookie booth
06 Mar 2011 Leave a comment
in Getting Organized, Mom Stuff, Uncategorized Tags: Mom stuff, school, weekend
It’s another one of those jam-packed weekends. It started with some fun, was tempered with sadness and finished off with a flurry of busy activity.
We started with a fun Pizza Bingo night at my daughter’s school on Friday night. As one might expect we ate pizza and played Bingo. Being a fundraiser for the school we also purchased four tickets for the cake raffle and entered a couple of bids in the silent auction. Luck would have it that we won the cake raffle–twice. Which meant we brought home a lovely box of cupcakes with green frosting and a tasty peach pie. The latter of which I’ve eaten way too much of already. My daughter won a Bingo towards the end of the night and selected a “Fear Factor” Mad Libs book as her prize. When I won later yet (as the powers that be made it nearly impossible not to win), my daughter selected a pen as a prize. She was so happy as she could start the new Mad Libs right then and there! Upon reflection we’re thinking maybe the pen wasn’t meant to be a prize–that somebody just left it there on the prize table. And, really, I have pens and pencils in my purse. So she could have chosen any number of toys from the table and been just fine. But I’m plenty happy to have the pen. It doesn’t take up much space and it’s useful. So it’s all good.
Saturday morning was tricky. Dave and I dropped our daughter off at my Mom’s. From Grandma’s house my daughter would head off to ballet followed by karate lessons as Dave and I would drive to Alexandria for a friend’s funeral. We’re still in a bit of shock over the death of our friend’s wife. It was quite sudden and we’re very sad, especially for him. We liked her very much–she was a special lady. And it will take time for me to get it through my head that we won’t be getting together with them or seeing them at a gathering again ever. Some things are hard.
Later we ate some yummy food and did a lot of talking as major events always make me think of major life issues and I generally like to talk about these things with my best friend Dave.
Then I did some cleaning. Followed by starting too many at-home projects at one time without fully finishing what I’d already started. But I did accomplish a few things like removing an old shelf that had wiggled its way loose. Filled the holes. Drilled new holes and put up new corner shelves. Rinsed and prepped our new aquarium. Got it filled and running. Did some more cleaning and ate several more slices of peach pie. YUM!
Dear Super Scribblenauts
16 Feb 2011 Leave a comment
in Mom Stuff
My daughter asked, “What does lycanthropic mean?” She is eight years old. When she posed the question, there was a brief, “What!? Where did THAT come from?” Until we remembered. Our daughter was playing Super Scribblenauts. A lycanthropic man came up during game play. Super Scribblenauts you rock!
My daughter loves you. I love you. We all love you. Thank you Super Scribblenauts.
(But just a side note. Your redwood trees are WAY too small. Even your gargantuan redwood trees are too small. Please make a note of it for future reference.)
And Now for Something Completely Different
07 Feb 2011 Leave a comment
in Foodie, Mom Stuff, Tea, Uncategorized
For my Birthday I’ll share a bit of my inner dialogue.
Darth: Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your Birthday.
Deb: He told me enough! He told me I’m 19!
Darth: No. Today is your Birthday and you are not 19.
Deb: No… that’s not true! That’s impossible!
Darth: Search your feelings, you know it to be true!
Deb: NOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOO!!!
So. I am officially no longer the answer to life the universe and everything. What I mean is. Well. Perhaps, I could say my age is now the answer +1. That works, right?
And in celebration of the day, I did a little research into my Chinese Astrological Astrology sign stuff. I am a monkey. (Well, I knew that.) I apparently have a lot of fire element which should be balanced by adding more water element. I’m going to take this to mean my life would benefit from more long baths and tea. I will keep you posted on how this goes.
http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/NewYearDays.htm
And my awesome honey and daughter spoiled me. SPOILED me! Dave and I had a wonderful dinner at one of our recent favorite restaurants while Binks was in her Karate lesson and she later joined us to help finish a Tiramisu dessert. Dave had a fillet and I had a rack of lamb. (Yes, the “Lisa, don’t eat me,” bleating went through my head, but I got over it.)
When we got home the dynamic duo finished their mischievous ways before calling me into the other room where Binks had made me a huge “Happy Birthday Surprise” banner which she decorated with hand drawn images of some of my favorite things—tea, Harry Potter, Angry Birds, Carcassonne, stars, more Harry Potter and cats. My daughter made the most awesome Birthday card on the planet! It had a pop-up surprise sign inside along with a fold-out scroll with signatures from everybody in her class. She made me an origami jumping frog, some throwing stars, a mini frog, and a flop-eared origami bunny which she designed herself. Dave gave me a gold chain, another chain, a great birthday card, book gift card and the Hogwarts Castle in Lego form which is so COOL! I can’t wait to crack it out. There’s a little Snape and owls and flames and a sorting hat. An invisibility cloak! A Dumbledore. Two Dementors. A Hermione and a Harry! Gotta go!
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good day!
25 Dec 2010 Leave a comment
I seriously don’t know how the first 3/4 of December whizzed by so fast, but as it’s been increasing in speed each year, I shouldn’t be surprised.
I know. I know. It’s probably an age thing. When I was eight years old like my daughter is now, it took FOREVER for Christmas to arrive. Now I feel like I have about 30 seconds to get everything done between Thanksgiving and today. (Or for that matter two weeks between last Christmas and today.)
But. That said. Today was a rather nice Christmas morning. My little family is together. We got a cute picture with our favorite Santa. The tree is up. It looks lovely, and is in no danger of hitting anything too important if one of the cats should try to climb it again. My daughter loved all her gifts. Which makes me happy! I like one of her gifts, Club Penguin Air Hockey, more than I thought I would. I thought it was going to be another something that doesn’t work very well and takes up lots of space, but my daughter wanted it soooo much that Santa brought it. It’s actually somewhat functional and MUCH smaller than a standard-size air hockey table. So aside from bonking our knuckles into one another, we had a lot of fun! Adding to the plusses for today, I am surprised and thrilled with my goodies!
Now I just have to hope that the rest of the family likes their gifts and that our friends and family have a wonderful Christmas and happy 2011. That would be pretty much perfect. Happy Holidays!
Managed to get done since Saturday AM Friday Night
10 Nov 2010 Leave a comment
in Getting Organized, Mom Stuff, School, Uncategorized and beyond. Tags: busy day
Sometimes daily life comes at us fast and furiously and I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above the torrent of tasks which I need to complete. The past week has been one of those times.
Friday night I managed to successfully take my daughter to her school’s Sock Hop. (I didn’t know anybody still had those.) Kids dressed 50s style and danced to modern tunes while the cafeteria served ice cream floats in plastic cups and the school’s library held the last day of the book fair. My daughter picked up, among other things, a copy of Mad Libs: Pirates which she played in the hall with some of her fellow, slightly dance shy classmates. So book fair, check. Mad Libs, check. Sock Hop, check. Ice Cream Float, check.
Saturday saw ballet lessons and karate lessons which were immediately followed by a trip to the vet with our slightly odd, old cat (he’s been sneezing). There we got him medicine and have, hopefully, put him on the road to recovery after a diagnosis of sinus congestion and infection likely brought on by seasonal allergies. Then we managed to head out to Ida Lee park where we were finally able to launch my daughter’s rocket, The Puffle Express! It was a crisp autumn day and the rockets’ red flare stood out nicely against the gray sky. We also got to see several other cool rocket launches! Great that we got to do it since I totally messed up managing to find the folks doing rocket launches the last time around. It was a cool day in more ways than one.
Sunday we got a little cleaning done (need to do more of that, but…) and then headed out to Cox Farms for the last day of their Fall Festival and Pumpkin Madness. Fun time! Multiple hayrides, apple cider, The Corn-undrum, farm animals and giant slides filled our time.
Both the Sock Hop and the the very last Hayride at Cox Farms finished up with the song, “Don’t Stop Believin’,” which made a pretty rockin’ set of auditory bookends for the weekend in general.
Tons more to do this week, though. Monday we managed to get our daughter to karate while also starting preliminary shopping on a new TV and Tuesday made it to a book release party at Borders for Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, but we didn’t get to the cable company to exchange the cable box that spontaneously stopped working after a short power outage this weekend. Still need to do that and I need to get tons more work done of both the official and the unofficial kinds. Sigh. Back to work for me.
Just when I start to feel human again…
05 Oct 2010 Leave a comment
in Mom Stuff
I feel totally human. Human. As in, totally flawed. This particular feeling is based on the Epic Mom Fail I committed on Sunday by not managing to find the Birthday party to which my daughter was invited. To make matters worse it was the first Birthday party she’s been invited to at her new school and the party was a rocket party where all the kids were given a small model rocket kit ahead of time. They were all to bring their completed and decorated rockets to the party where they’d be fitted with engines and launched. So completed, decorated rocket in hand, we wandered the large park looking for the party and never did find it. I even asked at the information desk of the rec center and we still didn’t manage to find it. We walked the park for an hour and still saw no birthday parties. Sigh. I finally relented defeat and we went to a nearby restaurant where we enjoyed a fairly yummy brunch.
aLightningbug 