A Yarning to Write

New Digs...

2007-02-06T13:36:00.000-08:00

Hey--guys--I've now changed the address I'm blogging at...most of you have found me already--all you have to do is check my profile... see you at the new digs!

Virginity is overrated anyway...

2007-02-04T17:59:00.000-08:00

Okay--my weekend probably has better stories and better pictures than what's sticking in my craw right now, and I'm going to skip right over them because, hey, we've already agreed that I have a hard kernel of narcissism embedded in my emotional make-up that it is impossible to pluck out.

I've recieved my first bad review.

I knew it had to happen. NO writer with anything worthwhile--or even entertaining--to say is universally loved. Nobody. Take that guy who wrote The Bridges of Madison County--Robert James Waller--I'm not a big fan--if you look at amazon, a lot of people aren't, but he's selling books and making movies and SOMEBODY loves him and his critics are sort of spitting in the wind, aren't they? What about William Faulkner? Now HIM I adore--but he had critics who would would walk on the other side of the street if they saw him coming--they thought he was obscene (well, he did have one character who was totally in love with a cow...I mean, MOOOOOOOOOOO....) and they thought he was long winded, and they really didn't appreciate the 17 pregnant printed pages that were missing one lousy period. So I get it--I threw my hard work into the world, and you know it, I know it, THE WORLD IS A MEAN MOTHER FUCKER THAT WILL CHEW US UP AND SPIT US OUT IF WE DON'T HAVE OUR TENDER BITS PROTECTED BY IRON GRANNY PANTIES.

I guess I just forgot to put them on, that's all.

She was baffled. The critic was baffled by all the good press--she couldn't understand how anybody could love a book that misused commas so badly. Honestly, I didn't realize that commas had a lobby...I sort of thought they were like rocks in the shoe--yeah, it's irritating if one leaves the driveway to make it's way into your loafer, but really--it's not personal. And the review felt really personal. I mean, I know it's not--not that someone who's lobbying for the comma wouldn't take issue with my frequently typod blog or my completely disorganized life, and then that really WOULD be personal, but to say she was 'baffled'? I mean, I've read lots of books that hadn't lived up to their press--James Patterson, for one. I mean, I get why my friend loves him, but he doesn't do it for me. No style, no pizzazz, no fire... but I can at least respect that she loves him. It doesn't 'baffle' me. But my book, with it's shifting viewpoints 'baffled' her.

I was looking forward to my first bad review--I told my husband that I was looking forward to it. It meant all the good reviews were legit. It meant that my book had moved people--either to love it or to hate it. I didn't expect my first review to focus on stylistics--and frankly, I'm 'baffled' as to how to handle it.

I wrote the reviewer a very gracious comment (if I say so myself) and immediately logged on to my one place of unconditional literary love to lick my wounds--and here I am on the blog, trying to remember that I was still right. My first bad review makes my good reviews legit. No writer, good or bad, not even Orwell, could please everybody. Shakespeare made up his own spelling, grammar, punctuation, and, hello, etymology at will. My writing is still worthwhile, even if it's just for me, and my books are still loved.

I know this.

But Goddess, do I wish someone would log onto amazon quick and cover that bad review with a good one, because right now that one star bafflement is just staring at me like an open wound, letting in the infection of every doubt I've ever had that I was good enough to be read.

Silent Poetry Day

2007-02-02T11:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, in honor of this, I'm doing two entries today and leaving you with this--obviously written some years ago:

Immortality

And I will never grow old
Because my students wear jeans and sneakers
And I will never die
Because my kids will remember MacBeth
So hush dear don’t you cry
Because Grandma’s can ride horses
And in the heart of every crone
Dwells a five year old in tears.
And I will never grow old
Because people wear jeans and sneakers
And I will never die
Because Orwell’s alive and well.
My daughter cries at night
because she doesn’t want to wrinkle
She prays to God that she
Will never grow old and die
But she will never grow old
Because I’ve seen her in jeans and sneakers
And she will never die
Because in my heart she’s always five.
My son’s heart hurt last night
Because he doesn’t want to die now
I told him to fall asleep,
When he awakes he’ll still be seven
My daughter made me cry
Because she doesn’t want to die now
I told her sleep, my child my child
To me you’ll always be five
And someday we’ll grow old
And someday we’ll wear pajamas
But we will never die
Because to God we’re always five

What I've Learned This Week

2007-02-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

* If you think a week that starts with a funeral can't get worse you're just asking for trouble.

* A husband who cleans your car when you didn't ask him to is a treasure.

* A husband who accidentally throws away the bag of fruit snack packets you were saving for the babies is still a treasure.

* A husband who accidentally throws away your paycheck when he's cleaning your car is STILL a treasure.

* A husband who feels inclined to blame you for the lost paycheck because A. You were too flaky to keep it in your purse and B. Haven't succumbed to the 21st century to get direct deposit, is probably right,only human, and still, definitely, a treasure.

I've also learned that

* Cat's barf in more than one place.

* If the cat has barfed, the baby will find it.

* Cat barf smells like cat-food.

* Babies like cat-food.

* Your stomach won't rebel if you use the word 'cat-food' to describe what you're cleaning from around the baby's mouth as opposed to the alternative.

And in addition? I've learned that:

* You NEVER regret NOT nagging someone.

* You especially don't regret it if he has to suffer through sharing the bathroom with the middle schoolers too.

* You really don't regret it if the cave troll starts bitching at your husband at 7:00 in the morning to 'Fix the bathtub, daddy--I need to play with my ducky!!!'.

* Laughing long and hard when the toddler does this completely negates the karma points of not nagging in the first place and makes you feel like crap to boot.

And finally, I've learned, once again, that:

My spouse rocks. And good times and bad times are both better with him. And my payroll department is made up of VERY forgiving people. And babies are washable. And the cave troll can always play with his ducky in the sink.

Unlikely Prophets...

2007-02-01T12:07:00.000-08:00

Isn't that cute? Needletart thinks I'm going to start a new religion... Can you imagine what a disaster that would be? I mean, if I were the next grand pubah representing the Queen of the Universe, the chaos would be unbef*&^ing believable... how, you say? Let us see...

If I was Grand Pubette of the Queen of the Universe all houses would come equipped with the following things:

**Dishwashers (because some of us aren't lucky, that's why).

**Conveyor belts from the bedrooms to the washing machines (No one's thought of this?)

**Self cleaning floors (again--if women had ruled the world, we would have figured this out a long time ago.)

**Built in winder and swift (but of course!)

**Laptops in the bathroom (and a phone and a mini-bar.)

**Cages from the ceilings (the better to hold cave trolls so you can vacuum under them.)

**Giant shelves for yarn and books (did you doubt it).

**Self cleaning cat boxes.

**Mandatory cats (to worship, of course)

**Ceiling hooks for jackets (because the hall closet's just getting filled with crap, we all know that...)

**DVD filing system (that works. One that works would be nice.)

**One of those house expansion systems perfected by Disney and Warner Brothers--the kind where you press a button and grow a second story.

But home improvement would not be the only place I'd put the stamp of the Queen of the frickin' Universe...I would also require the following things from the world at large:

**Mandatory cattle prod certification for all classroom teachers--and permission to use the tools of the trade.

**A jail sentence for any student who confuses the words 'dumb bitch' with the profession 'teacher'.

**Women in product development for ALL THINGS USED BY HUMANS. (Think about it..the clothes we put on our babies compared to the clothes our parents put on us...the difference between snapped-crotch cotton T-shirts and poplin blouses that button in the back comes down to one thing...WOMEN IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT...I'm telling you, it would solve 3/4 of the world's problems.)

**A mandatory sentence of being stripped naked and shaved on live television while the world laughs at the size and/or color of your privates if you are a politician of any stripe who gets caught telling big whoppers to the world at large.

**Add to that the addition of having a layer of skin eaten off your body by live ants if your big fat lies result in the death of ANYBODY.

**Tax breaks for using products that are environmentally sound.

**A parade day for all men who do dishes, laundry, child-rearing, and who don't desert their families (or think of deserting their families) for size 2 twinkies who could suck the enamel off their teeth through their, uhm, toes.

**Automatic retirement bennies if you can prove that your children made it to adulthood without being substantially mentally or physically FUBAR. (Yeah, I know, I'd be eating cat food...don't remind me...)

**Paid days off if you can prove that you know more than the person your boss hired to tell you how to do your job.

**A back to school day forcing all politicians to fill the seats of the poorest high school in their district. If their districts make a crapload of money, they get to go to the poorest school in the poorest district in the state.

**If that doesn't change the world, they have to spend a week teaching in that school--while the teachers whose budgets they cut sit in the back of the room and heckle.

**Yarn would be in the same 'tax-break' category as your mortgage and day care.

**And teaching a young person how to do something useful with their hands and spare time would get you a parade thrown in your honor.

And I've got to stop now, because this is sounding good...in fact, I've got a little powerbuzz going... I'm going to have to go home and do something useful with this... like vacuum.

Nothing and Everything

2007-01-30T14:18:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'll say it right now, writing makes you very strange to talk to.

Not blog writing--that sort of helps you hone up your stories and anecdotes--personally, I find that my stories are more polished and interesting when I've worked some rhythm, good word choices and zinging punchlines. Writing the blog is PRACTICE--for example, the 'I skinned the family cat' story can now be told in such a way as to excite laughter instead of disgust and funny looks denoting my imploding sanity. Blogging makes me sort of fun--not weird. No, the writing that makes me the most boring human on the planet is fiction writing.

And it's so unfair! What did I do this weekend (besides take charming pictures of my children and finish those funk-adorable hats, that is!)?

Well, I touched upon the lives of two children growing up destined to fall in love and the plan of vengeance that makes their love potentially tragic! I planned a Beltane Faire, executed it rather nicely but didn't dwell too long on the onerous details, caught a breathless moment of seeing a bright destiny, and wrote a parable in verse for a religion that doesn't really exist but that I'm starting to wish did.

I mean, really--that's some weekend. Now ask me--I dare you, ask me.

"Well, Amy Lane, what did you do this weekend?"

Answer? (Imagine my self deprecating grin, my shrug, and the exuding aura of embarrassment with the implication that my life is frittered away in daydreams and rocky road ice cream with the occasional baby nuzzle on the side.) "I wrote twenty-three pages." Pause. "And ate ice cream."

See--I really am the most boring human on the planet--I can only thank the twin gods and the wandering Goddess that you all like me enough to say 'Hi!'.

Fashion Hurts...

2007-01-27T13:15:00.000-08:00

I asked Bryar to take a picture of the little kids in their hats, and I'm writing this and listening to the "I'm a bossy big sister" fight that has ensued--high hilarity, I assure you, but maybe it will mean some pictures of the spiral rib hat in the Manos...we shall see...

It's looking good so far, so here I shall attempt to write a coherent pattern. Don't laugh.

Materials: Manos Del Uruguay--one ball (two might be needed for the adult size)
Needles: Size 8 circulars and DPNs
Gauge: 3 stitches per inch

Sizes: Infant, Child, Adult

C/O 51 (61, 71)

K5, P5 around
Continue for 3 1/2(4, 4 1/2) Inches
K4, (p2 tog, p3, k2 tog, k3) around once.
K4, P4 around
Continue for 2 1/2(2 1/2, 3) Inches
K3 (p2 tog, p2, k2 tog, k2) around once--switch to dpns
K3, P3 around
Continue for 3(3 1/2, 4) Inches
(K2, K2tog) around
Work in garter stitch for 1 1/2 (2, 3) inches
(K1, K2tog) around
Work in stockinette stitch for 1 (1, 1) inches
(K2tog) around
Work in stockineete stitch for 1 (1, 1 1/2) inches
(K2 tog) around twice.
With 3-8 stitches on dpn, work i-cord for 1 inch.
Finish off.
Make pom-pom, attach.

Now, I've only actually made the infant and the child--the adult directions are sort of ad-libbed. The spiral thing works from the working a k5, p5 rib, but casting on one extra--when you decrease around, make sure you don't go around too far or you'll just end up with a vertical rib instead of a spiral one...and if it's looking way out of proportion, then my directions are shit and you could probably do a better job figuring it out yourself--but do let me know, because I'm kind of proud of this completely accidental pattern--Kewyn's so proud of his hat it 'bout kills me.

Bound is finally on it's way to press (sqqueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) but beyond that, it's actually been a pretty crap week, all in all--I mean I've finally figured out the key to my 5th period--if I suspend 2-5 kids from class at the beginning of class, the rest of the day goes fairly smoothly. I hate being that teacher, but I owe my other kids a better day, so that's the kind of teacher I am this year. But beyond that, there have been a couple of deaths--a family friend and a colleague--not people that I was really really close to, but people that I am really really close to were really really close to them, so the losses ache in unexpected places and I'm sort of swimming through the pall of all that mostly. Which is why I'm going to do an episode of Top Sheep--because it cracks me up, and I'm totally ready for that!

Top Sheep--Episode 5 (I think)

(Susie Sockyarn) On today's episode of Top Sheep, our immunity challenge was knitting with food, and here we join our contestants for a day of knitting in the kitchen. But first, let's introduce a new contestant, Mr. Maurice O'Hare.

(Mo O'hare) My enemies call me Mo.

(Susie--taken aback) You're not abrasive or anything, are you?

(Mo O'Hare) My texture used to be fashionable.

(Willa Woolford) That's because people hadn't figured out that ripping out mohair was like ripping out chest-hair--it's painful and has a tendency to shed.

(Mo) Lady, are you making a crack about my physical person?

(Willa Woolford--bitterly) Hell no! Your chest hair is the closest thing to wool that I've seen in weeks!

(Judge Proximate Gauge) Now folks, we're here to see you knit with food. (Stops, blinks, shakes his head against the words 'knit' and 'food' in the same sentence.)Willa, I see you've gone the pasta route--can you tell us about your piece.

(Willa, shyly--she's got a little thing for Judge Gauge, but she's not as tacky as Katie Acryllic)Well, Judge Gauge, I call my piece 'Sweater Stroganoff'--I used wide egg noodles and simply overlapped them to ply them together into one long piece of noodle. Then I used my size whoopty 12s and knit it into a simple stockinette scarf...

(Proximate Gauge) Weren't you worried about the curl?

(Willa) Oh, no--the egg noodles made for a very firm hand--I cooked them al dente, and garter has too much texture for a ribbon yarn. When I was done I made pom poms out of ground beef in it's original strand form, and attatched them with corn silk.

(Proximate Gauge) Well--the whole thing looks very fashionable. (With a full mouth) And tasty. Nice job, Ms. Woolford.

(Willa preens.)

(Intarsia Strand, horrified) YOu mean it was supposed to be EDIBLE!

(Proximate) Well it IS food--why--this is a lovely, tapestried depcition of a still life fruit bowl--what did you use for fiber?

(Intarsia, depressed) Corn Silk, kiwi skins and coconut hair--dyed with food coloring. (Even more depressed) The blue looks like crap.

(Proximate, sympathetic) Well, it's not a color you usually find in food. Well, it's a solid effort, and you did use fibers found in a refrigerator, so we will simply judge your product, okay?

(Intarsia, brightening.) Thanks, Judge Gauge--somtimes you really can be forgiving, can't you?

(Proximate, wryly) A lot more forgiving than my brother, Precision, or my sister, Accura, that's for sure. Now, on to the fiber floosie herself, Ms. Katie Acryllic. Crap.

(Katie, smugly.) They're good, aren't they.

(Proximate.) Fair Isle socks using red and black licorice whips.

(Farrah Ayle) They're a joint effort--we did petition Susie to stand or fall together. Notice, we've spelled out Top on one sock and Sheep on the other along with a traditional Fair Isle pattern border and lice pattern on the feet.

(Katie, REALLY smugly.) We also made matching underwear. They're edible.

(Farrah) Did Precision like them?

(Katie,) Oh yeah... (dimpling at Proximate) Your brother ate two pairs.

(Proximate) Oh God...my inner eye...somebody scratch it out... (He turns away in a hurry, even more upset because it's the best entry yet, and walks to Al Paca who is currently sitting in a pile of pastry boxes, finishing off a donut and staring around him sleepily in what is obviously a sugar induced heightened state) Al Paca...you won the immunity challenge today in which contestants speed-knit a dog coat out of cat-hair--I was really looking forward to seeing what you did with the food challenge.

(Al) That's easy--I ate it.

(Proximate) Ate what?

(Al) I ate the food. I have immunity. I could knit my own panties in a know and I still make it to my next round. Maybe in the next round you'll have a task for a knitter of my caliber...but for now...(He hums sleepily) Food, glorious food...

(Proximate, rubbing the bridge of his nose as though in pain.) But of course...

(Susie sockyarn over the closing montage) Tune in next week when we announce the winner of this weeks challenge, and when you discover what makes our customers do this: (Willa, breaking down and weeping, Organa Cotton hugging her in sisterhood, Katie Acryllic breaking a frown and swearing and Al Paca waddling in to his seat with the gleam of creative fervor in his eyes all swirl across the screen. Finish up with Intarsia Strand and MO O'Hare facing off and Mo O'hare yelling "Oh yeah, well you can suck my coptic sock!) Fade to black.

Hey, folks--don't quit with the Top Sheep challenges--I've tried to use as many suggestions as possible so keep 'em coming

Why I'm a Weird Person

2007-01-24T09:36:00.000-08:00

Julie put out a meme--6 weird things--and I liked it. I figured that since grades were supposedly due yesterday but our spasmodic grading program (I call it Powercrap) is having some sort of electronic epilepsy, and this fucking stack papers on my desk is apparently going to stay until it becomes sentient and crawls off my desk to die on the soccer field like a pathetic deformed bug wherein it will turn into mulch and produce the toxic, white-bleached, radio-active grass that makes you stupid just to walk on it, I might as well celebrate what makes me weird.

1. Writing sentences on a regular basis like that one I just finished makes me pretty weird.

2. Using disaster movies like Twister, The Day AFter Tomorrow, Armageddon, and Independence Day as (get this!) comfort movies, makes me kind of weird.

3. After I realized I was not skinny enough nor conventionally attractive enough to be an actress (nor good enough at acting to overcome these flaws) I immediately wanted to be a teacher. It was not something I just fell into--it was a true calling. (This makes my current disillusionment with my job that much more painful.)

4. But I have been writing plays and poems since I was very small--my first long work was a 24 page epic poem (I said this already) but my first short story was a combination poetry/prose about a girl who went into battle wearing her father's armor. If you thought I was immature and devastated when I saw pictures of that dazzling sweater yesterday, you should have heard the howling whine I let out when Mulan hit the Disney screen.

5. When I learned in science class that only a few people had the genetic coding to roll their tongues, I apparently taught myself to 'cheat' at doing it so I could say I was special. I didn't realize I was cheating until my husband and I had one of those bizarre dating conversations and he pointed out that I was rolling my tongue inside my mouth and forcing it into a taco shape as I stuck it out. I was honestly surprised that this wasn't what they had meant when they brought it up in science in the first place.

6. I taught myself to crochet after having a dream about it when suddenly the whole loop thing made sense. I went out the next day and bought a book and figured it out--and figured out how to read patterns too. I taught myself to knit when I realized that some of those pattern books had both knitting AND crochet patterns in them, and I hate being left out of anything.

7. (Because I can't count.) I have a tattoo on my right arm that is a PICTOGRAPH of the children's names-- A sword and a harp for Trystan (a knight from the round table) Bard (the singer from the old days), the obvious for Bryar Rose, a hawk (standing on Trystan's sword) for Kewyn (which is a variation of Gawain, another knight from the round table) and a crown for Tor (which means prince). The baby's is coming--I want to donate blood one more time first because getting the tat takes me out of the blood pool for a year. Yes it hurt. Apparently nobody has a compete circle around and under the upper arm--that's a very tender place--and the twining rose vine I had put there was very intricate. I told my husband that and when he got his, he chickened out and just got a rose put on his harp and not around his arm. (He hasn't had Kewyn added yet.)

And that's five weird things. :-)

Why I'm a Bad Person

2007-01-23T10:44:00.000-08:00

You all know I"m deeply flawed, but here's proof that I'm a bad person:

Yesterday the Yarn Harlot posted a very very lovely picture of Anny Purl's version of the Arwen Baby sweater. What was my reaction--was it positive? Did I say "Great minds think alike?" Did I say "Oh look--we had the same idea, groovy?" Did I say "Hers is so much better than mine!" (Well, yes, I did say that--I loved that color green, and there was nary a mis-crossed cable in sight.) No. How did I respond in the comments?

THAT'S MY SWEATER!!!!!!! Now nobody will believe I thought of it by myself! (Well, except you guys...but that's not what I said.)

I'm so immature sometimes, I can't believe they let me around children. Of course, Stephanie chose that moment to respond to my total maturity blow-out by reassuring me that it was just too good an idea to pass up... (there's a reason we love our Harlot, isn't there!) but seriously, I'm worse than my kids...

And speaking of my kids, have I mentioned Kewyn-the-cave-troll's penchant for muttering heartbreaking things in his sleep at 4-6 a.m. (After he's crawled into bed next to us, of course.) There's nothing like a toddler moaning "Broken, mama...broken..." 20 minutes before your alarm goes off to just ruin your sleep for frickin' ever. Some of his other favorites have been "Gone...is gone, mama..." or, "Come baaaaaacckckkkkk...." It doesn't help that this 'Guilt wake-up call' is topical--for example...

This Sunday we took the family to the railroad museum. The Cave Troll was ecstatic-- he climbed on the trains and looked at the trains and generally enjoyed himself thoroughly. We took a break for lunch (because I'm out of practice and forgot to bring crackers, this was a little early) and told him we'd go back. My husband actually took him back--for ten minutes, because he was too tired to get out of the stroller...but not too tired to cry all the way home..."Go back mama, trains...go baaaaaacccckkkk...want see trains...go back..." (Imagine a heartbreaking inflection at the end here.) Anyway, we thought that after he got home and took his nap that would be the end...

But no. Ten to six in the frickin' morning...you know, when you're hanging on to that snooze button because that ten minutes of sleep has just become the be-all and end-all of your existence...we hear the rolling over, and the tell tale whimper and then..."Go back...see trains, mama...go back and see trains..."

Anyway, the good news this week is, BOUND is no longer Shanghai-d. Today or tomorrow I"m going to get the proofs on e-mail, then it's 4-6 weeks until the book hits my front porch and amazon.com...I'm getting excited again--I'm dying for someone to read it, because I"m at the stage where I have doubts all over again...(You go back and forth--some days you wake up and it's the best thing you've ever written. Some days you wake up and decide to buy stock in the paper bag industry because you're about to make a run to the store and buy them as masks for the rest of your life.) But, either way, my waiting time is now finite, and I could not be more relieved.

I'm bailing now--I'm blogging from work and I think my grading program is back on line...I'm working on those pix, though, and, of course, the next installment of Top Sheep. Later!

of Hot Chocolate and Bananas...

2007-01-20T19:19:00.000-08:00

Okay...I sent the oldest into the grocery store tonight--remember, he's 14. There is a communication handicap there, but we've never really let that stand in the way of expecting a little bit of common sense from the lad, so I was a bit surprised at the results.

The grocery list:
Bananas for your brother's breakfast
Ice Cream
Two gallons of milk

The results:
Ice Cream
Two gallons of milk
Hot chocolate
Mentos

"TRYYYYYYYSSSSTTTTTTAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!"
"Well, I only had twenty dollars--I had to put the bananas back!"

I didn't see the Mentos until we got home, or I might have made him walk home in the dark.

The Manos del Uruguay hat turned out AWESOME. In fact, it turned out so awesome that I had to keep it for Arwyn...I started another one for the young lad with the unexpected penis tonight...this time in royal blue instead of aqua so I wouldn't be tempted to keep it for my own child again. The camera has NO batteries, but I'm buying some tomorrow because I'm so proud of this little swirl pattern that I apparently pulled out of my ear--and I made some boo-boos on Arwyn's version that I can totally fix on the new version, so I might even try for a recognizable pattern w/the picture...one can only hope.

Now, before I launch into Top Sheep (sorry--it's been a while since my last installment:-/ I forgot to mention the stamp thing--Joanna, Kewyn's gymnastics teacher (and my daughter's dance teacher, except Bryar just quit dance after 9 years...there were tears, I'll blog about it later) anyway, Joanna gives the kids stamps on their hands and feet when they do a good job in dance or gym... they go nuts over it. So, I, like every other emotionally stunted disorganized walking personal disaster area I could mention, write stuff on the back of my hand if I want to remember it--and sometimes I shower before I take care of it and it's gone anyway. But I had just written a hugomelous reminder to buy diapers on the back of my hand in purple ink when I picked the little uns up from daycare, and Kewyn looked at my hand and said, "Mom--you got a stamp! Good job mom! Yayyyy!!!"

And now that I've made up (I hope) for yesterdays totally depressing and vituperative blog on the education system, lets move on to Top Sheep.

(Susie Sockyarn) Last week on top sheep, contestants were asked to complete school uniforms using only the red tape left over theom the unused or useless educational reforms of the last fifteen years. Now you may remember that last week our judge, Precision Gauge, disqualified himself on a rather handsome laceweight alpaca sweater, so he has been replaced by his brother, Proximate. Proxy--what can you tell us about the efforts of our contestants this week?

(Proxy Gauge) Well, Susie--I'm very disappointed in this week's efforts. I mean, we can all understand the demands of time, and no size was given for the uniforms so gauge would vary, but, really--I don't see any effort here that doesn't need to go back to the frog pond.

(Willa Woolford)I'm very proud of my knitting and I'd stand by this piece.

(Intarsia Strand) You knit at six stitches per inch--that piece can stand by itself.

(Organa Cotton) Well you were not told you could use anything BUT red tape--where did that little yellow sunburst come from?

(Farrah Ayle--in Intarsia's defense) Red tape, masking tape, what's the difference?

(Al Paca--from experience) A tax audit, and honey, that ain't pretty.

(Proxy Gauge, to Organa Cotton) Now...let me understand this right...we told you that you could use corporate and governmental red tape...

(Organa) Red Tape is also a figurative term...

(Proxy) Well yes, but we gave you over two thousand yards of literal tape to knit with...

(Organa) But who does that!!!

(Proximat) Well obviously someone does--have you seen the state of education in Californa? It's a good thing you won the immunity challenge in which you spun and knit your own hat from cotton balls and the ends of Q-tips, otherwise, this would be it...you made your own cotton yarn from the fibers in boiled documents written in eduspeak and bull#$%@ and dyed it with Expo markers and that was NOT the assignment.

(Katie Acrylic--wearing a pleated schoolgirl's skirt out of red tape that definitely DOESN'T cover her assets and a red-tape bolero held together by a pencil being used as a pin and nothing under it) Now, Mr. Gauge, you know, that was above and beyond the assignment.

(Proximate) Look, you needletart (;-) Just because you're taking spinning lessons with my brother...

(Katie, giggling--and a lot more, uhm, laid back than she had been) Is THAT what they call it now... just calm down, Proxy--I'm not angling at a job as Proxy's doxy, if that's what you're wondering... Acrylic was made to be knit to Precision, if you know what I mean.... Now calm down and score my entry. (She pirhouettes, and Proximate sighs.)

(Proximate) Yeah--it's the best.

(Al Paca) Now wait a minute!!!

(Proximate) Oh get off it, Al--no one wears short pants nowadays, Farrahs is a size six X and everybody else is disqualified. Fiber Ho here wins.

(Al Paca) I'm so mad...

(Everybody) You could spit...we know!!!

(Susie Sockyarn) Next week tune into Top Sheep where our contestants will attempt to knit with food.

(Closing montage--Willa Woolford sobbing over a pot of Top Ramen) Wool...oh Goddess, all I want is some #$%^ing wool...

(Kewyn's contribution to Top Sheep--
abcdefghijklmnoqrstuvwxyz
abcdefghijklomnopqrstuvwxz
abcdefhijkmnopqrstuvwxyz)

and stuff...

2007-01-19T20:17:00.000-08:00

Okay--I guess the Glitterspun shawl looked better than I thought--thanks guys--it's funny how your initial irritation with a project can color your perception of it. I am a little proud.

I'm in the kitchen right now, hoping that Arwyn will stop crying in a second--she's at that stage where if she's going to cry herself to sleep it's going to happen in 20 minutes--she's got 10 to go. Oh wait--we have to take a break while Kewyn types in his ABC's--

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

See--he sits on my lap and we sing while I let him type--he's all excited about it now, so you may see that little exercise a couple of times in this post!

Well, finals are over, but I still have stuff to enter into the computer, and I'm torn between ditching everybody and spending Saturday in my dismal room which the little bastards have TRASHED this year (I don't want to even think about it--I was so proud of my room, I decorate it every year, and usually the students are so appreciative of the toys on my desk and the posters that they treat it really well. This year I have trash on my floor every day and two really nice posters that I will never use again and a bunch of tchotchkes that I've had for years that have been eternally round filed. It makes me cry, every other day) and doing my duty to my students while neglecting my duty to my family. Or I can show them a movie on Monday, enter their stuff on while they trash my room some more and instead go to the yarn store for the Debbie Bliss I need to finish Arwyn's sweater. Anybody want to guess which way I'm leaning?

I'm not going to Weight Watchers tomorrow--straight out not. Finals week sucked and let's just say I really went overboard on the comfort food. And since I've blown my food diet, I may as well just not make any pretense about a yarn diet. I may not ever enter the steek-along, but I'm going to buy some yarn for it. Or maybe a sweaters worth of Manos...or just more pointless sock yarn--except the Yarn Harlot had a point today--there is no such thing as pointless yarn. Sometimes we just have pet yarn--running our fingers through it is enough. Comfort food, comfort yarn, comfort children... I may recover from finals week after all.

I guess my depression after finals week comes from the fact that I caved. This snotty little biach called me a real bitch who didn't give a shit in my room where I could hear her, but I still sacrificed my pride and gave her that percentage to pass. I did it because enduring the parent bullshit is not something I need right now, especially when our administration has a long and honorable record of puckering up and getting on their knees and doing disgusting things to the dumbshits that raised these fuckers and sometimes it's all I can do to walk in with a smile on my face and a lesson plan and do my best to teach a group of kids who are envisioning me dropping dead of a heart attack and laughing as I go.

Okay, I'm done, no more bewailing my chosen fate--tomorrow I'm taking a picture of the cable (exquisitely hard!) I'm making for Arwyn's cardigan and the hat (e-z p-z) that I'm making out of some Manos del Uruguay for the Lady In Red's little boy... (Yes, a boy...did I already mention the surprise penis on the Lady in Red's daughter? You never know how to react to a surprise penis, do you? I mean, in a baby, it's like, "Good for you! Yes, you have a weiner--well done, little man, well done!" In a grown man, reactions to a surprise penis may vary.) Anyway, after carefully looking over the outfit I made for the baby, I'm pretty sure that the only truly girlie things about it were the shoes, but still--the wool is pretty, it's warm, it's blue and green, and it's 30 degrees here in the morning and I'm sure it will be useful.

And can I just say...Catie's looking up my book and I'm so tickled. It's not a requirement of reading the blog, darling, honest and truly it's not. (But it really did cheer me up. I'm such a narcissist--forgive me:-)

Anyway, Arwyn's cardigan is going to be
this cable on the front of

this sweater instead of the ribbing...and if I got this link to work, for my next trick, I'm putting everybody's web pages on the side of my blog, because I feel so third grade with only three links there. Yes, my children have known more about computers than I have for a long, long time.

And, when I can figure out how to add little icons to things, I'm putting that knitting mouse next to my name. Because I feel like we're soul sisters, that's why:0

And presenting...the Glitter@#$%ingspun Las Vegas Hooker Shawl

2007-01-17T07:05:00.000-08:00

I was planning to post earlier than this, because I finished this puppy on Sunday, but it's finals week, and all my computer time is spent writing finals. This is both a pain in the patookus and a validation at the same time--as much as it feels like I haven't taught Jack Crap or his brother Bob this semester, it's very nice to write a final and go, "Oh, yeah--there is some shit these snot spitters should know--if they weren't paying attention that's their bad."

Anyway, I finished the abhorred Glitterspun Shawl--didn't you hear my whoop of relief from the four corners of the globe? No? I must be out of whooping-practice then, because the fact that I never have to see that Goddess-benighted piece of crap again is like a load of snot-spitting sophomores shoveled out of my classroom. (Goddess, if only...) Anyway, that being said, I've got pictures--just to prove I haven't been bitching about sunspots on my cerebral cortex left over from looking at that horrible yarn. Knotting the fringe was almost the worst part--it's a skill I've never attempted, and it was really pissing me off, but then the twin gods (right now they're named Irony and Satire) cut me a fucking break and Wendy came to help me out. It turns out she knots fringe all the time--except it's attached to her horses and it's for decking the two-ton beasties out for competition. It took me an hour and a half to do the first 1/2 of the fringe, and she finished the second half in 1/2 an hour--talk about humbling!

So, Top Sheep will be my next post, but right now I really have to get to writing that final, so I'm just going to leave you with the Glitter*&^%ing spun shawl and Wendy, my best friend, who really is that adorable--if any 40 year old can pull this thing off, it's Wendy--as well as a couple of pix of the cuter member of my family with her grandpa Bill. (Yes, that grandpa Bill. Nothing was said during this visit of Scumyuk or Crow, and I was very glad that he came.) I just previewed, and realized that the picture of Kewyn was lost in translation, and one of the pix of Wendy is sideways--and the other has her eyes closed. Trust me that Wendy is adorable, and that Kewyn really did sit on Grandpa's lap--everything else is self-explanatory.

Oh yeah--one more thing--

About BOUND...

If I told you that BOUND is experiencing a publishing delay related to the Shanghai earthquake, would you all believe me? It appears that my publishing company's art department is in, well, Shanghai, and the earthquake cut their internet lines. All I had to do was check the f@#$ing manuscript to make sure they'd made all my changes, and they can't get the final proofs to me. I hate this feeling. It's like forgetting to brush my teeth for two weeks...I want this manuscript OUT OF MY HANDS and on it's way to the press...but I'm being selfish and I know it, and it's not like Shanghai doesn't have more important things to worry about. But that doesn't mean I don't need to go brush my teeth...again.

Looks great, honey...

2007-01-14T12:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'll probably do a Top Sheep tomorrow (you all seem to like it:-) but today, I'm finishing the detestable Glitterspun thing... Mate asked me today, "How's it looking?" To which I replied, "Like a Vegas hooker." Which actually took me back to a conversation we had last night. We were walking through the Arco Arena parking lot, (because it just wouldn't be a month if we didn't get to see the Kings lose) and we started taling about all of the phrases he'd picked up since I'd picked up my yarn habit in order to stay in my good graces. (All men know this--if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.) Feel free to pitch a few in here, folks--and although I'm going to call it a top 10 list, you all know how I count...

Top Ten List of Things a Good Mate Says to His Knitter

1. Looks great, honey. (In order for this to sound convincing, Mate must first LOOK UP FROM THE COMPUTER.)
2. Ohh...I like the colors. (He loses points for this if you're making it for someone else and have been bitching about the colors until the dog whines.)
3. That's a nice yarn, honey. (He loses points for this one if he follows that up with 'How much did that cost?'.)
4. Wow--looks complicated.
5. You're really kicking that one out!
6. Mmmm...interesting--how did you do that? (He gains a steak dinner and the sexual favor of his choice if his eyes don't glaze over when you explain it to him.)
7. I'm sure they'll love that. (This response is mandatory if you're making something for HIS friends or HIS family.)
8. You're so talented! (He loses points for this one if it sounds the tiniest bit sardonic. He gains points if he puts a double entendre on it and makes you put down your knitting to jump his bones.)
9. NIce job.
10. The knitting is awesome--now put it down and come kiss me. (This one only works if you're not doing a MuFOD--Must Finish On Deadline.)

And now for the down side--these are the five things that Mate can say that will guarantee the room temperature dropping until you have to chip the ice from the windows with a jackhammer.

1. Hmmm...interesting.
2. Looks good--how much did it cost me?
3. Those colors? You think?
4. Are you sure you did that right?
5. Oh great, another blanket. (Scarf, hat, sweater, etc.)
6. Why doesn't it look like the picture?
7. It looks good, honey, but you don't look like the model in the book.
8. Why would you want to wear that?
9. You woke me up to show me WHAT?
10. Holy God! What the hell is that?

Of course, since Mate is practically perfect in every way, I've really only heard # 1--but now he's got guidelines for what not to say. This is good--men are very comfortable with deadlines.

Now I've got to motor--I'm putting fringe on the Las Vegas Hooker Glitterfuckingspun monstrosity, and I need to finish writing a final today--but I'll be back with pictures and another episode of Top Sheep. Oh yeah--appropos of absolutely nothing? The Adorable Infant is doing that thing where she sits and clenches her but so she moves up and down as she sits. And she sucks her thumb. Neither of these things were big with the other three, and we are totally charmed. Oh--one more thing--I'm reading this totally kick ass series by Lilith Saint Crow that stars a character named Dante Valentine who keeps swearing to the Lord of Death, Sekhmet. (Sound familiar, Julie?) Anyway, her favorite expression is 'Sekhmet sa'es.' Does anybody know what it means? I'd like to adopt it as my temorary fad expression (I have these--for a while, it was 'frell' and 'dren' from Farscape. Ah, good swearing days.) because if I can't figure out what it means I'm going to have to go with Tierce Japhramel, the name of the demon/love interest, because, let's face it, it just sounds frickin' cool!!!!!

And this week's challenge...

2007-01-11T20:51:00.000-08:00

(Susie Sockyarn, Voice Over) You may remember last week's challenge, that contestants knit a size XXL sweater using al-paca/mohair laceweight yarn. Let us join our contestants at the judges table, with our resident judge, Gauge Precision

(Gauge) What's the matter, Organa--I thought you would have been pleased to have some natural fiber.

(Organa, looking as though she tasted something sour) Gauge, what exactly is the mo that they get the hair from. I know what the Al Paca is, but what is that sticky mo animal--I don't understand...how can a natural fiber stick like acryllic?

(Gauge, kindly) Nevertheless, Organa, you're going to have to complete a project, because right now your hope chest has nothing but TOADS. Now Christine, you knew this was a speed challenge, what seems to have happened here?

(Christine Cable, obviously distraught) It was just all...plain...an stockinette...and...no texture. No texture at all. What's the harm of a little cable, I thought, just a couple of them...six or seven...but the gauge...so tiny...soooooooooooooooooo tiiiinnnyyyyy.... (Christine collapses, moaning,over a 6" by 3' scrap of intricately worked fabric.)

(Willa Woolford, trying to revive Christine) We've had a gauge accident! Knitter down! I repeat--knitter down!!!!!!

(Gauge, moving on professionally to Al Paca who is visibly upset about something) Al, this fiber was supposed to be your strength--what happened?

(Al, fuming over a completed sweater that has obviously been pulled out of shape and stretched beyond blocking) It's not my fault, Gauge--it's all the fault of that...that...dead dinosaur's doxy! That mohair more-ho! (He shudders.) Gauge, you don't even want to know what that synthetic slyvered slut was doing to my (sniff) beautiful al-paca. (Flash to Katie Acryllic, rolling around on Al's finished product on the blocking table, certain parts of her anatomy blurred out or covered with a very handsome tawny lace-weight fabric.)

(Gauge, looking at Katie with a question in his eyes.) Ms. Acryllic?

(Katie Acryllic, her usual perky ponytail in sensual disarray.) I'm sorry, Mr. Precision (she says throatily), and Al, I'm so, so sorry--I just...I've never held real yarn before. I was unaware of the power of natural fibers...and the mohair component... (she writhes sensuously...) it's sticky...like acryllic...but the fiber length...grrrrrrr.....

(Gauge Precision blushes and pulls at his collar.) Well, maybe Mr. Paca should have protected his knitting a little more, (she rubs his leg) vigorously, but can you show me your conpleted project?

(Katie smiles and strips off her outer sweatshirt, flaunting her perky, 22 year old cleavage in a camisole, then pulls on a gigantic oversized sweater done with lace weight al-paca on whoopty 12 needles) I like an oversized gauge. (She purrs.) How oversized are you, Gauge?

(Organa Cotton, primly) If that was the craft we were going to study, children, we would be on the Discovery Channel, and not USA.

(Intarsia Strand, cocking her head sideways) But that would make a lovely study of the human form, wouldn't it?

(Willa Woolford, eyes big) That things bigger than my size 50's!

(Farah Aisle) But it's still looks like wood!

(Al Paca) hey--that's not fair...what about my sweater! My sweater was perfect, you fiber floosie, get your hands off my judge!

(Organa, snidely) If she goes that wild over mohair, imagine what she'll do with some cotton fleece...

(Willa) Forget the discovery channel, if it had been cashmerino, we'd be on the Spice Channel!

(Al Paca, in tears) I'm just so mad I could spit!

(Susie Sockyarn) Tune in next week when our contestants get their next challenge.
(Closing montage)
(Organa Cotton) Red-tape isn't a natural fiber! (Willa Woolford) I'd give an ovary for some (bleep)(bleep) (bleep) ing wool! (Intarsia Strand) But school uniforms are so detrimental to the creative process. (Katie Acryllic, giving the camera a sultry look) But little schoolgirls in red can be soooooo sexy!

Next week on TOP SHEEP!

The Holy Chocolate Grail

2007-01-11T11:02:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I've been pretty good on the New Year's Diet Resolution this week. I'll let you know how that translates into lbs. on Saturday, but right now it sucks. I just heard some crazy middle-aged woman offering money for chocolate to a class of 11th graders. Fortunately, they were looking out for me. Or just looking at me--either one. I took a crochet break from the Glitterfuckingspun shawl in order to finish up a couple of Christmas gifts, and now when I pick it up it's actually not horrible. (It's not Lorna's Laces on wooden needles, it's not a Cherry Tree Hill sock, but it's not horrible.) I can't wait until it's done.

I'm actually taking a break from writing a final right now--I know, I know, I'm blogging at work, but I'm fairly exhausted and if I had to keep working on the damned final I would have disgraced myself by falling asleep and drooling on my keyboard in front of 30 bored 11th graders who wouldn't sell me chocolate. The Cave Troll keeps crawling into bed with us, and nothing disrupts the ol' REM cycles more than Mate screaming "STOP KICKING ME, DAMMIT!" at dark-thirty in the a.m.

I'm going to do an entry tonight with TOP SHEEP, but for now, I thought I'd do another interactive poll. I read Roxie's blog, and she was talking about knitting during SCRUBS, and I read Julie's blog and she was talking about waiting to finish something during MYTHBUSTERS and I thought I'd ask everybody--what shows do you knit to? I use my TV time as an excuse to knit, so my list is long and distinguished--and the reason that my husband ends up cleaning the house a lot.

Shows I knit to: Mythbusters, 24 (lots of knitting time this weekend--wheeee!), ER, Medium, Heroes, CSI: Any-freakin-where, Law & Order (sometimes...SVU, not so much, although Christopher Meloni IS beefcake on the balding-hook), Scrubs, My Name is Earl, Numbers, Ghost Whisperer, Supernatural (okay, I drool a lot during Supernatural because this is my Dirty Old Fat Woman Crush on Cuter, Younger Beefcake show--but I still get a couple of stitches in when I can no longer slobber over Jensen Ackle's dimples in good conscience and must look down in shame)Friday Night Lights, Two and a Half Men, Grey's Anatomy, (mmm....beefcake...)and, since New Years, Top Chef.

What do you watch?

Scrapmeal Casserole

2007-01-08T20:34:00.000-08:00

No Top Sheep tonight, just a couple of quickies...(Or, as I said to Rae last night--if you don't have enough yarn skeins for a full project, just throw it together for a scrapmeal yarn-casserole.)

First off, Julie, The Samurai Knitter, this one's for you:

This is my knitting space. This is as clean as it gets.

Roxie, honey, this one's for you.

This is a rare photo of me. This is why, although I treasure you as my weight watcher's buddy (I'm five points over tonight--but the egg nog is officially out of the fridge) I'm not posting my weight.

And this one's for everyone who wants to cleanse their visual pallette and see something adorable and charming:

Now on to a couple of pieces of wierdness:

*I've got a new knitting acronym. We've got WIP's (Works In Project), TOAD's (Totally Abandoned in Disgust) and UFO's (UnFinished Objects) and now we've got MuFOT's (Must Finish, On Timeline) Yeah...having trouble with that--someone cook me up another acronym--because if I can't get toh (typing one handed) to stick, I'm certainly not going to put wings on MuFOT.

* I've hooked my daughter on Junior Vampire Fiction. (Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, Annette Curtis Klause's Blood and Chocolate) I'm going to hell. But we all know this, and I know some of you are looking forward to sharing a glass of wine with me when I get there, and everybody else is hoping that Beelzebub will be hooked on the web by then and I can post from Purgatory three days a week.

* Last night the Cave Troll crawled into bed at 11:00 last night, interupting, well, plans to have something worth interupting. Dad looked at him as he burrowed in and made himself comfortable and said, "Uhm, son, you wouldn't want to go sleep in your own bed tonight, would you?"

"No dad." Said the three year old. "Cuddle mom." Then he looked up and smiled beatifically. "Sorry, Dad." Mate and I giggled to sleep.

* And here's the kicker--Big T is looking for irony. This is a tough concept for most high school students--much less my big guy who still doesn't get puns. The following conversation with him is, I'm sure, punishment for something I did in my youth.

(T) Mom, would it be ironic if Bryar's dead guinea pig, Spike, got killed by someone shoving a spike through it?

(M) MMmm, only if the spikes were made of iron.

(T) I don't get it.

(M) *sigh*

Before the Storm...

2007-01-06T21:21:00.000-08:00

Okay, I go back to work Monday but I'm still in denial so we'll just not talk about that tonight.

What I do want to talk about (besides tonight's episode of Top Sheep, which I've been twiddling about my grey matter like a teenager playing with her hair...) is the @#@#ing @#$%ing son of a !@$#$ing Glitterspun shawl. (You may ask why I didn't just use the swear words, since we all know I'm not squeamish about that sort of thing, but the actual fact of the matter is that, although (and those who have read my fiction know this) I can actually put a string of curse words together that WILL set your hair on fire (My students have actually reported blushing when they've read that part...the sex, not so much. The swear words? Yeah--blushing.) The reason I'm not using these words NOW is that, really, there is nothing I can put in print that will fully project the absolute loathing I feel for this project.

Oh Glitterspun Shawl,
How do I loathe thee?
Let me just fucking count the fucking ways...
I loathe thee to the 19 inch length and the 38 inch depth that I'm supposed to stretch you to,in spite of the fact that everything I've read and a wealth of personal experience insists that blocking acryllic is like giving a toddler pickled beets--it's an interesting personal choice, but it's really not going to do anybody any good.
I loathe thee to the k1p1k1 stitch that is so damn awkward it has me throwing the damned yarn.
I doubly loathe thee to the p3 together cluster on the whoopty-12 needles that forces me to yank on the bottom of the three stitches to get that needle in.
I loathe the for the fact that your yarn is made of mesh and in spite of the fact that whoopty-12s are duller than a tone-deaf, color-blind, lactose-intolerant 45 year old accountant who lives with his mother, your yarn still splits if I look at it crosseyed, and the mesh refuses to nicely twist back like yarn made of real fibers, like, say, rayon.
I really fucking loathe thee for the fact that the rows that aren't pattern stitch are purl, and all that purling is chafing my damned finger because, hello, CUPRO ISN'T A FUCKING YARN!
And the cherry on top of my loathe-thee sundae is that I've bought three different buttons for thee, and because I'm a total lame-o suck-o loser, I've lost all of them in different parts of the house. That's not really your fault, oh pain-in-the-ass-piece-o'-tackyness, but you have so many other bad qualities, I don't really feel bad pinning that one on you.

Whew. So, you can see what I've been working on for the last few days instead of, say, writing the fiction I adore, blogging, or even knitting something I really love, like the baby sweater that still looks, thank Goddess, likes it's a wee bit too big for Arwyn. But she's been eating like a heifer, so who knows how long that will last.

Anyway, on to what you've all been wating for:

TOP SHEEP

(Susie Sockyarn) Now, ladies and gentlemen, when last we left our contestants, they were competing to see who could knit the best seat cover out of electrical tape and pointed dowels. Organa Cotton and Willa Woolford did not finish. Since Organa's fibers give her allergy immunity, she is safe from elimination in this round, but Willa is subject to both moths and rot, so her partially completed product needs to fall into the category of UFO or she will be out. You may recall that every contestant gets one TOAD in their keepsake box, but everyone is aware of the dangers of TOAD proliferation, so the rules stipulate that more than one TOAD is an automatic disqualification. Let us join our judge, Precision Gauge, as he evalutates our contestants' work.

(Gauge) Intarsia, lovely work as always--your Ferarri motif is perfectly proportioned to the seat cover, and your choice of the silver duct tape is inspired.

(Intarsia Strand, gushing) Thanks, Master Gauge, you can critique me any time.

(Organa, sotto voice) Who does she think she is, the Yarn Harlot?

(Willa, also sotto voice) More like the Red-Heart Ho. (Both women snicker.)

(Katie Acryllic) Now I think you two are just awful--you may notice that Intarsia does well because she's always so bright and animated!

(Intarsia, with dignity) Thank you, Katie, and I just love what you've done with your seat covers.

(Katie) Why thank you, Intarsia, I thought that the knit/purl textured hearts on the bottom would give more than just visual interest--they're also very theraputic!

(Gauge) And Katie, your acryllic bias shows here to good effect--all of your stitches are exactly even--is that because you're used to man-made fibers?

(Katie) It sure is, Gauge--if you work with acryllic long enough, you get used to that certain stickiness on wooden needles, and I didn't hardly notice it this time.

(Gauge) Well, you already have anti-microbial immunitiy, so I think your performance in this round has propelled you to the top of the list, however, there is one person who needs to be on the bottom. Christine Cable, what inspired you to do a cable/lace/bobble on a car seat cover? Weren't you aware that this combination would be damned uncomfortable? Just looking at it gives me 500 miles of drivers ass!

(Christine, distraught, but holding on to her dignity.) Well, like Katie, I was aiming for theraputic, but I underestimated the hard texture of the duct-tape.

(Precision Gauge) Yes, Christine--it was like sitting on a box of my kids' magnatic toys--although the combination itself is very attractive set in the crisp hand of the tape, this is certainly not one of our better entries. However, I'd have to say that the worst performance of the night goes to Al Paca. Al--what were you thinking--seat covers usually go on the seat.

(Al Paca, covered in duct tape with his knitting dowels strapped points down facing tender bits of his body.) Master Gauge, I'm used to the stickiness of al paca fiber, but I've got to tell you, this fiber medium has me stuck.

(Gauge) I can see that, Al, and I've got to tell you, you're falling fast in the standings. Do you have anything to say that can recover you from this debacle?

(Al Paca) Please, just give me a chance, Gauge. No one ever said Al Paca wasn't resilient--let me play to my strengths, and I can show you what I can do.

(Susie Sockyarn) While the judges deliberate on who will be eliminated this round, we'll reveal our next challenge.

Ladies and gentleman--you all know that sometimes an intricate project needs to be done on the fly--and that's where this next challenge plays to. We all tend to knit larger projects in chunkier yarn, but for this challenge, we're going to go against that nap and knit a sized xxl sweater out of...(dramatic pause that Susie milks for every bit of lanolin she can get) lace-weight al-paca/mohair blend.

(Al Paca, in horror) You can't do that al paca fur!

(Christine Cable, in tears.) But how is texture going to show in that?

(Katie Acryllic, in awe.) Wow--all natural fibers. My fiber inexperience is really going to show.

(Susie Sockyarn) tune in next week to see who is a Knitter with a capital K, on the next episode of TOP SHEEP

(Closing teaser montage) Willa Woolford: OH My goddess...I've had a Gauge Accident...Knitter Down, I repeat, Knitter Down! (Al Paca, massaging cramped hands.) This isn't what I signed on for. I'm so mad I could spit! (Katie Acryllic, in tears.) You can't make me go back to Perfect Match. I won't do it, not if I have to hock my kids for real yarn!

And don't forget--I'm always looking for more challenges--although Coach Susan has given me some doosies! (Although, I do believe that Debbie New already knit socks out of green licorice whips--do I have that designer right anybody?) I also can't decide who to eliminate...or if I shouldn't just let all my players play until I'm bored and axe them all...I'll take any suggestions for the next installment of TOP SHEEP!

Why I hate Video Games

2007-01-03T22:28:00.000-08:00

Short answer? Because my husband is playing them right now while Medium is on. Seriously--I did get to watch CSI New York, but how am I going to get my maximum serving of grisly crime drama without the sweet domestic touch of Allison DuBois and her long suffering, tasty husband?

But I guess it doesn't matter--the hard part about being on break is that, for the most part, not much to blog. I've been spending epic amounts of $$$ at my yarn stores...and this is different because? (I need to ask Julie about the environmental impact of this yarn called Tofutsies--it's made out of wool, cotton, soysilk and, get this, chiton--yes, ground crab and seashells...it feels heavenly, but it doesn't have--pardon the pun--a whole lot of body, which is important because it's a sockyarn, and that needs to be some tough shit...any yarn needs to be tough shit to live at my house, but that's another story... anyway, back to my regularly scheduled meanderings.)

The little ones were hard to get down tonight--The Adorable Infant (from here on to be known as Mama's Rotten Li'l Angel) had a screaming conniption fit for no more reason than she can get on all fours now and this will keep her awake when otherwise she would suck on her thumb in a temper and fall asleep. But before that, we were hanging out in the living room and the Cave Troll was going banonkers and she was just whining like tomorrow would come faster if she pole vaulted off my last nerve to get there and Mama snapped. "Okay, all you freaky snivelling whining children, let's get to bed!"

To my immense surprise, the two perfectly behaving adolescents got big eyes and both of them got up and started moving for their bedrooms. Mama did not know she had that much power. In the future it must only be used for good.

Okay, now to today's episode of Top Sheep, where our two judges, Susie Sockyarn and Precision Gauge are introducing the next challenge.

Susie: For today's yarn challenge, we will utilize common household goods in order to produce knitting's most coveted item--something of everyday use. Contestants are you ready?

(Katie Acryllic) Oh yes-- you guys know I'm always ready for everything!

(Organa Cotton--sotto voice) When you dally with man-made fibers, everything's what you get!

(Willa Woolford) Or everything's what you let get you.

(Katie Acryllic) Now I heard that--it was just not very nice. My items may be somewhat reasonably priced, but that doesn't make my craft any less important than yours.

(Al Paca) Oh please, ladies--if you're going to get bitchy this soon into the game there won't be anything to film when I beat you all.

(Intarsia Strand) Why can't we all just blend our personalities into one big lovely picture of harmony, people--is that so hard to achieve?

(Gauge the Judge, watching on and commenting:) Now this is where the pressure really starts getting to them--you will notice that Katie and Al are so upset that they're forgetting to premoisturize, and Willa is actually using her knitting needle to pick her ear. If she doesn't stop that habit, it's going to cost her in the final judging.

(Christing Cable) I'm sorry, Susie--go ahead and present the challenge. (She glares) We're ready.

(Susie Sockyarn, smugly) Okay, contestants, today's challenge involves something everybody needs, but nobody thinks to knit. Today, we're going to knit seat covers for cars using nothing but pointed dowels and electrical tape. Now, you each get a different vehicle to fit and to measure--we'll all draw needles to see who gets the Lincoln, the Cadillac, the Lexus, the Ferrari, the Volkswagon bus, the Ford Escort, and the Dodge Caravan crapmobile with the tacky decal on the back--are we ready?

(Organa Cotton and Willa Woolford both faint at the thought of knitting electrical tape.)

(Precision Gauge) Oh my goodness--someone go get big bags of cheap wine--we've got knitters down, here, repeat, knitters down!

(Susie Sockyarn) Tune in next week where we see if our knitters can rise to the challenge.

(Closing Montage featuring Intarsia Strand and Al Paca)
(Intarsia, sniffling as though her feelings have been hurt) I don't see anything wrong with using different colors of electrical tape to duplicate the Ferrari Logo...we were told to bring our creativity to the table.

(Al Paca, in front of the Dodge Caravan Crapmobile) I'm so mad I could spit.

Tune in for our next episod of TOP SHEEP...Good Night Everybody!

Happy Old Year...

2007-01-01T10:53:00.000-08:00

So we spent our rockin' New Year's eve watching old episodes of Top Chef. Have you seen this program? It features these people who have this really clear, spiffy vision of themselves at the top of their fantasy job--sort of like my vision of myself getting interviewed on Oprah after being put on her book club list when I'm done winning the Hugo and the Nebula awards, right? And then they're given these absurd challenges--like cooking this butt-ugly monk fish for 10 year olds. (I love the group that made it into corn-dogs and called it 'monkey-dogs'.) Anyway, as I was hacking away at the Glitterspun shawl (on the wrong sized needles--did I mention that? I don't care. I'm finishing it, stretching it to within an inch of its life and getting it done. My friend weighs like, 115 lbs anyway--the difference between a whoopty 15 and a whoopty 11 for her is like the difference between putting me in a 3x and a 4 x, really. It'll fit...but back to watching the show...) So we're watching the clock tick to this show--and I really hate cooking, and I especially hate reality programming, but for some reason I'm just eating this crap up with a gravy ladle--when I started fantasizing a show called 'Top Sheep', where these knitters who are all under the delusion that they're Nancy Bush and Pam Allen or Anne Budd (You know, like me when I'm not working with Lion Brand--everybody laugh because that's a big frickin' joke!) getting presented with these really perverse yarn challenges:

"And today's quick-knitter challenge--You are all invited today to make a baby garment--out of super-chunky acryllic yarn using only garter stitch!"

(Willa Woolford)--Oh, this is a joke--this is not what I signed on for! I have to work with acryllic--I am so far above acryllic--it's like asking Picasso to work with super-sized crayon. And super-chunky in garter stitch? Where's the subtlety, where's the grace in this project...I just don't get it!

(Katie Acryllic) --Now this is a challenge that I can get into--no frills, just solid knitting with good assembly components--I'm thinking the Caron super-brights with big fluffy pom-poms--it will be darling, and I can really show the judges my versatility.

(Al Paca)--I'm just so mad I could spit.

(Christine Cable)--Now see, what I'm going to do is formulate a brand new, garter stitch cable and that way I can educate the children on the finesse that's required in their dressing. Just because they're pre-verbal doesn't mean they don't have taste.

(Intarsia Strand)--There are no rules about colorwork, so I'm thinking 62 shades of red-heart in garter, put together to show a scene from Calvin and Hobbes. Of course I can accomplish that in three days--it's only 24 inches around.

And so on... (I think I'll riff on this next blog too, btw--if anyone has some absurd yarn challenges for my characters, let'em rip!)

But for now, Roxie listed ways she was going to make it a spankin' new year--here are my resolutions, for your consideration. Hopefully I'll still be blogging and you can all give me a ration of yarn ends for this over-optimism next year.

* I'm going to start logging my points again for weight watchers--the kids want to go to Disneyland, and right now I'll be a big, fat drag, not to mention having a hard time fitting on the rides.

* I'm going to use stash before I buy stash. (Hey, you, in the back--I saw that. Save laughing at me until you're alone with your own stash, thanks much!)

* I'm going to finish BITTERMOON. (I'm always afraid I won't finish my books. It's hard because they're burning a path out of my heart every minute I'm not working on them.)

* I'm going to continue looking for an agent/publisher.

* I'm going to love my 5th period even if they shoot me with the guns they apparently all have in their possession. It will be very Green-like of me--hopefully I've got a little of him somewhere. (If I was Cory, I could have a lot of him somewhere very special, but that's a really inappropriate seque. I'm done.)

* I'm going to make my face relax when I'm sitting down with the Cave Troll and the Adorable Infant. They are this small and this cute for such a damnably short time.

* I'm going to take the time to understand my older son. We're going through a rough patch--it's hard to teach him his social skills without feeling critical all the time.

* I'm going to continue to make my older daughter know she's special.

* I'm definitely going to come up with a b-day present for Mate.

* I'm going to spend a little less time blogging (3 day a week max) because, although I love you all, I know the perils of over-extension.

*I'm never going to not have a working sock again. I can't sit at a stoplight without fidgeting now when I don't have my socks.

* I'm going to remember how to be a fat labrador instead of a keyed up anorexic poodle on amphetamines. The lab is happier dog.

* I'm going to shut up now because the Glitterspun is calling my name!

Don't forget your absurd yarn challenges, folks...I'm thinking I could have fun with this!

Happy New Year

Withdrawals...

2006-12-29T23:28:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I promised myself no writing for the day... I was going to leave BITTERMOON alone and just chill with my Glitterspun monstrosity and let my brain veg... but BITTERMOON is calling, so, in order to keep my promise to myself, I'm back on the blog, telling the story of this year's Christmas cards, because, frankly, it was pretty frickin' funny--after they were all mailed, that is.

Every year we do the Christmas letter--it's become my thing. Usually we get professional pictures of the kids taken and stuff them in the envelopes, but this year we were tight on money, so we just did a b/w montage on the back of one of the pages, and had the kids sign the cards and, voila, Mate prints out the envelopes and we're done.

You'd think it would be that simple, wouldnt'ya?

The computer ink was NOT happy about the texture of the envelopes--blurry blurry blurry...but it was two days after Christmas, and I figured--what the hell--it's easier to read than my handwriting, isn't it? Funny I should think that because...

I took one last look at the addresses to make sure we had them all--you know, didn't forget Uncle Jay in Twain-Hart, that sort of thing? "Hey...hon...where's Jennie? And Kelly? And Roxie? And half your relatives? And all of your friends at Intel?"

Mate: "Uh..."

Me: "You, uh, wanted to send cards to your friends at work, didn't you? Right?"

Mate: "Well, uh, yeah..."

Now, ordinarily, this would have been no big thing, but we were having this converesation as we were getting ready to go visit his mom in Ophir, because we were going to send the cards on the way. So I did something I hate doing--and something the post office would rather I not--I hand addressed about 15 cards in a moving vehicle while Mate stopped at Kinkos and made 15 more copies of the Christmas letter, and suddenly our car turned into a rolling Christmas card sweatshop. I addressed, Trystan folded and stuffed, Bryar signed, and Mate apologized. "I'm sorry...I thought I had them all..." I ignored him, for the most part. It's one of those stupid little things that I know I'll forgive him for later, but while I'm trying to read and write in a moving vehicle I don't want to speak, lest I open my mouth and horrible things fly out. (no, not THAT--unlike my heroine, I don't have a hair-trigger stomach...) When we got to the post office, we made the family effort complete as Cave Troll and I walked the cards to the mail box in batches-- he really got off on that part--he got to send! About the only thing that would have made the family effort more complete would have been if we'd let Arwyn drool on them, and it was a near thing because she kept reaching as we passed them back and forth across the car.

But at last, it was done. All but Uncle Jay in Twain-Hart--but I'm getting to him today!

Oh, and hey...

A picture of the Lady-in-Red's baby gift, because, well, she praised me so wonderfully, and I sort of agree--it turned out very sweet. (It's for the baby-in-red:-) And, a picture of Arwyn. Because I can;-)

Have a very nice day!

No Longer BOUND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-12-29T10:30:00.000-08:00

I'm done! I'm done I'm done I'm done I'm done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For better or worse for typo-ridden hack or muse-inspired genius I'm freakin' done with BOUND, and I have to say, I like the book a hell of a lot more now that it's off my 'to-do'list... It should be out in about six weeks (one of the few beauties of self-publishing...if I was someone important with a publisher and an agent, you'd have to wait a good 6 months-1 year to read my crap, I mean my valuable contribution to the Urban Contemporary Fantasy Genre.) Anyway, it's going to be a short post because I'm dedicating the rest of my day to vegging, knitting, and occassionally checking my amazon.com page because, for some reason, my book has risen to a bizarrely high ranking (I'd be lying if I said this wasn't a rush) and between VULNERABLE and WOUNDED I've gotten four new reviews. Again, sort of a rush. But not as big a rush as going to tickle-tackle my toddler who doesn't expected it...

Happy Friday--baby, I'm done!

Blogging to Stay Awake...

2006-12-27T21:10:00.000-08:00

Okay, I admit it.

My own book is starting to bore me. It's not the characterization. It's not the plot. IT'S THE FUCKING TYPOS. And it's not even like there's a lot--in fact, there's just enough for me to doze off while pressing the scroll button, and then, suddenly, shazam. A dumb-assed screw-up that I could have lived years without noticing, but I'm not editing this mess for me, am I? I'm editing it for my dozens (500 at last count...but I'm not counting...501...502...oh, I'm at 12,000 on the amazon.com standings? Don't worry...it won't last...503... 504...22,000, see? I'm sinking back into oblivion where I belong, all is right with the world... but I digress...) of fans. Seriously-- people keep posting on amazon telling me that I'm their favorite author. I'm stunned and humbled and sort of puzzled. There MUST be writers out there with fewer typos who don't use the F-word nearly as often, but it doesn't matter. If even one person loved my books (Lady-in-Red, Roxie, tam-tam--I love you all!!!!) I'd still have to edit to my (admittedly limited) best ability in order to feel good about hitting send on Friday. It's stressing me out.

In fact, besides playing with the kids, the only thing that helps me de-stress from this stress is planning the next book. Go figure.

So I'm blogging to interupt the slow slide into that doze that results in the word QWERTY pressed against my left cheek, because this puppy is due Friday, and Matt even took the kids to the movies to help me. Of course I was scheduled to go with everybody but, true to our chaotic souls, Mate and I (get this, it was a laugh-freakin'-riot!) LOST OUR TICKETS IN THE CAR. There is no explanation for this--Mate and I remember the conversation where we were talking about (oh the irony!) how expensive the tickets were, and Mate had them in his hand as he was doing the math and then we were in the parking lot and they were gone. We're both at a complete loss--especially as we ransacked the crapmobile to see where they went. Honestly, it was like dropping $35 in the toilet and letting Kewyn flush. So anyway, we came home, Mate bought some tickets on Fandango because we no longer trust ourselves to actually hold the damn things in our pockets, and he took the verbal kids (Bye Mom. Bye Kewyn--be good for Dad. I'll be good, Mom.) and I stayed home with the constipated infant. She just won't sleep--it's driving us batshit.

Anyway, everybody's home, adorable constipated infant is screaming, and I've got 190 pages to go. Good night everybody--I'm telling you, when I get this puppy sent, I'm actually going to taste alcohol. Not too much--still nursing--but a glass of wine isn't going to kill either of us...and it will feel very well earned!

From me and mine...

2006-12-24T10:13:00.000-08:00

Twas the day before Christmas and nothing was neat,
The house was a pit, and the children wouldn't eat
Anything but milk chocolate and sugar so sweet...
The baby was crying after being woke from a nap
By her brother the cave troll who was rooting for crap
In the dark of her bedroom which will never be light
Since the heater men all of our circuits did fry
When installing the ductwork for the thing with the heat
Which makes our house cold and costs more than a jeep.
But the cave troll he found a suitable toy
To occupy a psychopathic three year old boy
Which turns out to be something his brother would enjoy.
Big sister is busy cleaning out her room
And clearing the place of post-guinea pig gloom
Dad's fast asleep after spending his night
Wrapping enough presents to ground santa from flight.
Mom's on the pc, indulging in chat
From folks who forgive her for skinning the cat.
Yes our house is in chaos, we can't see the floor
The front kitchen table looks like it's been in a war
And there's clothes in the clean pile that don't fit anymore
(Of course some would fit mom, if less fat she did store)
But all of that's butter, with eggs and some cream
Which means that it's cake, because happy we seem.
In spite of the the braces and the heater and cat
My kids all are joyous, and you just can't beat that.
So Santa, keep coming, please excuse the mess
We may be a disaster, but my family's the best.
Give the kids what they wanted--they're good girls and boys
And give dad some more sleep, to his immense joy.
Forgive mom her madness, both thank you and please,
And bless us with gladness, and bless you for peace.

Happy Christakwachanukafestivuramadivoli everybody! (

It's beginning to look a lot...

2006-12-22T18:03:00.000-08:00

Like I bitch too much...

Seriously--I can't let that horrible post about skinning the family cat be my last before Christmas. It's just too sad and too, well, ungrateful, and I won't do it.

Looking back on the blogs since July, I realize that A. It's been a hectic year, and B. I've dealt with it as I deal with everything--I poodle out to relieve stress (yi-yi-yi-yi-yi) and then I breathe through it and deal. So, I thought that since last post was a yi-yi-yi-yi post, today would be a 'breathe through it and deal' sort of post--let's see how I deal with the bright side of life... (always look at/the bright side of life--my Monty Python is showing...)

So here's life on the flip side, the fat labrador side of my poodle personality if you will...

I may hate my 5th period class with a passion, but at least their retention span is too short to remember me.

We may have to spring for a new heater, but at least we have a house to put it in.

My children may have to have expensive orthodontia, but at least Mate and I are in a position to give it to them.

The cave troll may have an anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive personality, but at least he'll be organized enough to take care of Mate and I in our old age.

I may have to self-publish my own books, but at (the very) least I have loyal, vocal fans who think I have something important to say.

My house may be a vortex of crap from which no item of quality or beauty ever returned unscathed, but at least it's my vortex of crap and, just like Mate loves the Sacramento Kings, I love my vortex of crap.

I may not have as much time to spend with the adorable infant as I would like, but at least she's adorable 23/7 (babies get an hour off to be pissy) and I see the adorable parts of her personality.

I may have skinned the family cat, but at least she was too old to care? (Yeah, that one's still to fresh to spin...but it's coming...)

I may be perpetually tired, but today I got a nap.

I may have too many story ideas and knitting plans to ever tackled, but at least I'll never get bored.

I may be tremendously, mind-bogglingly busy, but I'll have A LOT to remember.

I may be a frantic, chasing-my-tail, poodling out working mother of four, but at least I'm a poodling-out working mother of four with a dark, grim, sarcastic sense of humor.

The world may be too straight for my less than narrow, but at least I'm dark and twisty inside...

I may not have enough time to knit, but at least I have the best e-knitting blogging buddies in all of explores cyberspace...(Did you know Roxie makes kick-ass rum balls? Roxie, darling, I'm soooooooooooo moving in with you...) I was going to give you pictures adorable infant and cave troll pictures that should crack you up and warm the cockles of your hearts...( I know mine are pretty toasty with all the rum balls at the moment, thank you all very much) but blogger is doing that meretricious mulchheifer (which is essentially a slutty moo-cow thing) for me again, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow for a visual reward for your love and your humor and your support... I couldn't blog, and possibly couldn't have made it through this semester, without all of you...

Goddess bless us, every one!

There's more than one way...

2006-12-19T12:32:00.000-08:00

But we'll get to that later in the post.

First off, I'm home with a baby who has a minor fever and a major attitude... but she can do that 'bulabulabulabulaba' thing with her tongue, so I'm not going to complain too much about missing a day of pissy high school students to veg with her.

While I was home, I went on a fly killing expedition. They all came inside because it's warm in here, but, really, I'm thinking that if they didn't bother to fly South for the winter, they don't deserve to live. The Cave Troll came with me--he was my spotter and my cheering section: "Bug! Bug mom! See the bug! Kill the bug! Kill the bug! Good! Dead Bug! Dead Bug! Kill the Bug!!" If you picture this with pointing and clapping, you'll A. be in hysterics, and B. have a fair idea of how I spent my morning.

It was a good morning, as was the 'bulabulabulabulab' thing... but even these moments of happiness haven't put out of my mind the fact that last night, I gave my children one of those horrible, bizarre memories that I think all parents give their kids and wish they didn't.

For me, it was the rat--when I was a kid we had a rat named Peaches who developed tumors. Peaches had two choices--be put down, as all people put down rats in the '70s--with a shovel and no regrets--or face my parents who were in nursing school with some ether and a scalpel. They actually did well--they're smart people, and not cruel in the tiniest bit, and she would have survived but the cotton ball with the ether was over-saturated, and, well, at least it wasn't a shovel.

Oh, if only I could have given my kids THAT memory. What I actually did was a lot worse.

See, we got Isabeau about 16 years ago. For those counting, that's longer than we've had Trystan, except Trystan was eventually potty trained and Isabeau the cat disdained anything to do with physical hygiene. She was really disgusting. For a while, her complete misanthropy made this no big deal. She haunted the garage in a cloud of crap-matted white hair and 'I'll kill you in your sleep' glowers, and we left each other alone. But in the past year or two, she's been hanging out by the washing machine, waiting for pets while we do laundry. There's six of us, there's been a lot of laundry, and she's gotten a lot of toe scratches under the chin in the last two years. Lately it's been colder than polar bear fuck (thanks Julie!) out here--yesterday it was 26 degrees when I went outside to warm up the car, and, quite frankly, nobody who lives in the Sacramento Valley hangs here for the chance to lose our pubic hair to frostbite, thank you very much, and I started feeling sorry for poop-crusted old Is. She kept wandering outside at night and in the morning was begging to come inside on the way to the garage.

I decided it was time to let her into the house. But first, we needed a bath.

I filled up the sink, my daughter broke out the brush and the scissors, and we went to work on the walking cat box that was this 16 year old cat.

Do any of you see where this is going? I wish I had

She didn't even yowl as I skinned half her stomach, thinking it was a big old hair clot, and then, horror of horrors, there it was. I had skinned the family pet in front of my four children while my husband and best friend were off watching the Kings game. I didn't take it well. I wrapped her in a towel and freaked out, while my older daughter (aged 12, mind you--younger than the fucking cat) tried to calm me down. I took several deep breaths, and, realizing that I couldn't take the baby with the 102 degree fever out into the 36 degree cold, I did what any 39 year old mother of 4 would do when she'd just maimed the family pet.

I called my mother. Are you all with me on the math? Mom's been a nurse (and so has dad) for more than 30 years--mom could help me fix this cat for less than $1000, because, remember, we just got a new heater that cost more than a new car and a LOT more than the kids' braces but not as much as day care for two little ones for a year. Mom's a good nurse, and a good person. She raced over from Loomis (made a 20 minute drive in 15), took one look at the cat and said, "I can't fix this. But it's not your fault."

Well sure it is. If I'd taken care of it earlier, her skin wouldn't have been as fragile and it wouldn't have ripped. But if she'd been a different sort of cat, it would have been easier for me to change the relationship, then wouldn't it? I had planned to clean her up, set her up in a mat by the space heater, and let her snooze her old age away. My family has sort of a country attitude towards cats--we don't spend a lot of money on the vet/grooming bills, and the cats take care of the mice and themselves. Sixteen was a record--not just for Mate and I, but for my parents--our cats, quite frankly, don't live that long. I was looking forward to watching that cross-eyed old cat who used to hate me and my children, outlive the obsequious and insane dog. It's not going to happen--my friend Wendy who is (and she admits this) insane about animals but who hates suffering of any kind--helped us out by taking her to the one all-night vets she knows, and now Isabeau is no more, and one of the few living remiders of the Mate and I who existed before children is now buried in Auntie Wendy's garden, and I'm at home, perversely glad the baby was not feeling well, because I don't know if I could have made it through the day.

There's all sorts of spiritual life lessons I can take from this--I know there is. All sorts of comforting things I can tell myself. And, because I'm one sick mother-puppy, I also know that there's a terrible, grim sort of humor in the whole thing. I mean, I'll never use that expression again, will I?

And she didn't sit on my lap--even before we had the children and she started to hate us. And she didn't really like people, or even being inside--but I'll miss that grouchy, cross-eyed claw at my ankle when I go out to do laundry for a really long time.

So last night while we were waiting for my mom and dad to get here, I joked weakly to my daughter about what she was going to do when she was 40 years old and had screwed up royally.

"Yeah," the sarcastic little shit shot back (between hugs(:-), "I'm gonna call grandma!"

It seems that she's learned the same lesson I learned with Peaches the rat--there are some things even mama can't fix.

I can't do it...

2006-12-18T10:43:00.000-08:00

I've been dealing with this freaking pattern book for a week, and I'm trying not to blog about it because it's for the Lady In Red, but she's getting her very special gift on Wednesday and I want to feel good about it before then because right now I'm about to burn the pattern book that it came from for warmth.

Okay, yarning people--correct me if I'm wrong here about a few things, because the sins of this pattern book are mounting which is a real shame because it's got some of the cutest crocheted clothes in it I've eve seen and I want to make some more of them but some of this shit is just PISSING ME OFF!!!

Sin one-- I'm making this sweater, right? And the pattern is adorable--but (and I only know this because I screwed up the construction and had to figure out what I've done wrong...) the sweater construction is REALLY a-typical--I've never seen a saddle-sleeve shoulder construction in a crocheted garment, ever. Because there is a neckband, and the pictures are the very charming, garment-on-baby type, I didn't realize that when you sewed the sleeves on, you left the top 11 stitches of the sleeve open to be a part of the neck. The directions read, and I quote, "Sew the side of the arms to the armholes" which I took to mean 1/2 the stitches to the front and 1/2 to the back--it was already enough of a mindfuck to not sew shoulder seams before I sewed the arms, and I didn't realize how small the neck was until I had completed the front bands and the neck band. It's cute and all, and I actually like the mandarin collar--it's got plenty of room, but, seriously, the book costs $20, and (I have this same beef with every book Debbie Bliss has ever produced) would it kill them to put a couple of diagrams for those us morons who were not born with garment design in our fucking veins? Please?

Sin 2--okay, so this next one is my fault... I made a logical gauge leap, and the damned book didn't open up and catch me. My gauge was spot on for the sweater--I made it 1-3 months (essentially newborn, right?) and it came out perfectly sized. I mean perfect--it matches Arwyn's 1-3 month sweaters spot on. So I didn't check my gauge when I made the booties. (Sorry Lady in Red... but you had to know that booties were coming...) And people? They are big enough to fit Arwyn NOW. And I'm like, whaddafu? How could the same gauge that produces a perfectly sized garment produce gi-freakin-normous bags for feet? I don't get it...just don't freakin' get it.

Sin 3--And this one blows my mind... okay, I'm making a hat, right? I'm not thrilled about the pattern, but I've got plans to make it a billion times cuter, and all I really need are the numbers to make the crown before I start ad-libbing the rise and the brim. Should be no problem... most crochet patterns to make a circle go sort of like the Yarn Harlot's cheater plan to make a pi shawl--increase around, (increase 1 k1) around, (increase 1 k2) around, (increase 1, k3) around, and so on. Well, like I said, I'm looking for this pattern to find my numbers--how far do I have to go to shape the crown, right? Well, it tells me to 'increase in this manner until the crown measures 16" in circumference. And I'm FLOORED. Can you believe that funky bullshit? Is there anyone out there who has had to measure the circumference of a crown before starting the rise? Anyone? WHO WROTE THIS FREAKING PATTERN?

Is it me, people? Anyone? Is it me? Part of the reason I don't put patterns on my blog is because I suck at writing them--it's HARD...I know it, you know it-- putting this very tactile, kinetic experience on paper is counter-intuitive at best. I've taught enough people how to knit to know that making the jump from the 'knitter' to the 'pattern reading knitter' is like jumping off a 20 story building onto what looks to be a very thin poly-filled pillow, but...but these peoples are professionals! Isn't it their job to make sure that little pillow is actually about five stories high and rubber and filled with bouncy-house air? Am I being stupid? I'm stressed and tired and overwhelmed, and sometimes that shorts my judgement, my temper, and my ability to spell stupid-assed words like 'judgment', but am I that bad at reading patterns...I know I'm a dilettante at best in the knitting/crocheting world, but...really is it just me? Is it that I can't do it? Or am I right to expect a little help?

57 channels...

2006-12-15T11:01:00.000-08:00

And nothin' on... Yeah, I know, I'm the last surviving Springsteen fan on the West Coast what can I say?

hmmm... how about little snippets of nothing? More randomness from the Universe while I focus on BOUND and my last projects before break and trying to retain my sanity... yes, that will do for now.

* Yesterday evening, as we were driving home, the Cave Troll pointed to my shadow on the ceiling of the car and said, "Look, mama, scary monster!" "Scary monster! I'll save you from the scary monster!" I growled and shook my rabid hair, and he laughed like it was the best joke ever. "Thanks mom." He told me when he was done--I felt like I had accomplished something huge.

*The night before last, Mate was sitting on the couch with The Adorable Infant, and terribly bright older daughter, and watching (one of our favorites) Singing in the Rain. I watched, enchanted, as Bryar busted up over the diction lesson part, and thought that maybe there's hope for America's youth after all, and then Mate said, "Watch...watch..." And he pointed to Adorable Infant. When they were talking on the screen she was wiggling and kicking and eating her hands (yum!). When they were singing? She was absolutely still, her eyes glued to the screen. It was exceptionally cool.

*And, during a trip to the store, my oldest, my taller-than-mama child, made a very charming request. "Mom...I know it's not my birthday... but...Sparkling Cider? Please?" How do you say no to a child who has tried to make every day a celebration?

*And finally, Mate--the other day, I was searching for my house key--the older kids had pulled it from the ring because they couldn't find theirs and they get home first. They gave it back to me, and me, being me, set it down in my bedroom, the famed black-hole of Nor-Cal where everything gets lost forever and ever. Determined not to lose it this time, I was searching for it the next day and Mate said, "Don't worry, I put it on your key ring." 20 years people--how does it last 20 years? Because Mate knows me and takes care of me in spite of myself.

I"m going to knit a lot this weekend. Maybe we'll check out Christmas lights. We're going to go shopping on Saturday and get pictures taken with Santa. I"m going to forget that my 5th period is stealing my oxygen and the natural resources of every other person on this planet and giving us mean, vacant stupidity in return, and the tight muscles in my face and forehead are going to relax. I mean--I live with some damn fine human beings--anything is possible.

The World is Too Much Weirdness

2006-12-12T22:05:00.000-08:00

I have so much to do...finishing the Lady In Red's secret thing, proofing BOUND, working on BITTERMOON... (Didja notice housework and correcting papers were NOWHERE TO BE SEEN on that little list?) Doesn't matter... what am I doing instead? Talking to you people...why? Because you're nice to me. At least my priorities are arrow straight!

Anyway, the last few days felt sort of random, so this post is going to be sort of random...sometimes, life just doesn't follow the reflective essay thread, does it? Here goes, in random order, the weirdness of my little corner of the world:

**So I was at Jo Anne's today to get cheap plastic crochet hooks and knitting needles to give, gratis, to the many students who come in to learn how to knit and crochet during lunch. I'm putting, literally, handfulls of the packages on the counter when the guy (? seriously--when was the last time you saw a guy at the counter of the fabric store?) looks at the basket and says, "Stocking stuffers?" I blinked, because, hello, talk about random! And said, "No--I'm a high school teacher..." And he cuts me off and says, "That would have been my second guess."
What would have been his third guess--marital aids?

**One of my favorite kids from fourth period starts looking through my roster, and her conversation goes like this. "Man, this class is lazy--I can't believe you don't yell at us more. Hey, wait--I know these kids in your second period. Man, this is a bad class. No wonder you don't yell at us. Oh, man--third period is worse...we must seem great after third...Oh my God, Ms. Mac--look at your fifth period! If I had to deal with this class I'd kill somebody." *sigh* 'Nuff said.

**And speaking of my 5th period, I have completely lost all sense of due process, propriety or even pride dealing with them. I send three kids out a day--I've gone through so many referrals that I've had to replace my stack. Twice. Some of those referrals I had in my files for ten years--I know, because the school changed sites and I used ones with the old address on them. I don't care anymore. Today, I was talking about the groundlings who attended Shakespeare's plays and how there was prostitution, sideshows, bear-baiting and rooster fights going on during the play, and the actors knew they actually were doing their job when the front was quiet. Sort of like this class, I said, into what was, miracle of miracles, a nano-second of complete silence. Then this one kid who is the poster child for crack-hos in the making (I'm going to catch flack for this, but you haven't heard her speak--there are probably interventions out there that would save her life, but I'm not trained to administer them and six teachers referring her to the office three times a week can not all be wrong that school is the wrong place for her, period) anyway, this kid who hasn't said an intelligent word in sixteen weeks suddenly starts laughing. I'm so sure she has to be laughing about something else that I refer her. *sob* She was actually the only one who got the joke.

**On the flip side? One of my kids who checked out my first book, VULNERABLE, came in to class this morning with a very hurt look on her face. "Ms. Mac, I've got a bone to pick with you." "Oh..." I said with true understanding, "You finished the book." Everybody who finishes the book has that same reaction. It is sometimes followed with, "That book was soooooooo good." I love that part. I'm such a narcissist, I can't hear that enough, ever.

**My 3rd set of eyes is very happy about BOUND so far. I'm still feeling like I have an cast iron set of twatsticles (that's a Rabbitch word, thank you darling for that) just subjecting the world to that, but, it makes me feel just a little less embarrassed about possessing a set of those things anyway.

**Have I told any of you about my first publishing attempt? When I was a sophomore in High School I wrote a 24 page epic poem on binder paper and made my entire family read it. (For the record? My handwriting is that of a manic-depressive cartoon character on meth. I can produce testimonials to this effect if you like. 24 pages, people. In that handwriting. I'm still shuddering to think.) I've read, ahem, that poem since them--my shame is as deep as my post-modernism class and twice as hard to forget. It doesn't matter how much I've grown as a writer, a person, and a woman, for the rest of my life, everything I force someone to read is going to be "The Ballad of Jarad and the Witch." *sigh* Sometimes High School really is forever.

I was going to put in a picture of the adorable infant, but blogger is being a meretricious mulchheifer, and I hates it.

But I love you all! Cheers!

Bemusement

2006-12-09T12:54:00.000-08:00

Okay--if I haven't mentioned it before, I'll say it again--I've got the best peanut gallery in all of explored space... thanks guys--for one thing, I don't feel so bad about screeching like a demented owl when I got presented with the heating bill, and for another, it's always nice to hear that your children are really as cute as you think they are.

So I'm going to ignore our impending financial ruin for a while, and the crappy kitchen as well, because I've got the proofs for BOUND and I find that today's nervous breakdown is going to be focussed in that general direction.

I do this every time--I send it out, absolutely sure that there's not a blessed thing I could do to make it better, and get it back and wonder that I had the freakin' balls to subject the world to that unmitigated pile of crap. The fact that it's the same damn manuscript doesn't mean a damn thing. This year, I managed to brainwash I mean shanghai I mean beg the editor of the yearbook to read through and do some of my editing for me. I know I should read it myself, and I plan to--but I'm going to sooooooooorushed, that I don't trust my own editing job to be as good as it should. Oh--have I mentioned that it's about 475 pages, now that it's formatted. In a way I'm a little disappointed--I mean, the manuscript was over 720 pages...I was hoping the novel would break 500... oh, well, I guess I'm not as overwritten as I thought. (Is this a good thing? Am I concise? Is it a bad thing? Am I underdetailed? Am I trying for profound and ending up the suck princess or porndom? Holy Goddess, let me not be publicly stupid any more than humanly possible!!! Oh, wait... I'm a writer... ignore that last bit...there's no way out of it...)

So, I started a special project for Lady In Red, who (sorry to out you, darlin') is due in a shockingly short time, and I'm not telling her what it is, but it's turning out wonderfully. I will tell you that it's done in the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK and bells can tell you that this stuff is like sin in a skein... the fabulosity of the finished product is enough to stomp on my 'handwashables for infants' guilt. I mean, Arwyn wore her little socks for six months and I didn't really need to do more than rinse them... unless the little feet go kicking through the used breast-milk, they really don't do a lot of dirt damage to the knitwear, right? Anyway, it's gorgeous and I promise pictures, but I will confess that it's crochet, because right now I move from one to the other depending on the project--this project was crochet, and so I joined the dark side, that's all.

But other than that? Big T's birthday is tomorrow. How big is Big T, you ask? I'll let the picture do the talking:

That's right--he's so big, he needs his own picture--he can't share with his little brother anymore. Here it is for you:

Anyway, we decorated the house yesterday--it would make Martha Stewart turn pale and run fleeing from the state, but then, my neck of Cali really isn't Martha Stewart country. But that's okay, because I have big sister to help

and the adorable baby to make it beautiful.

And, other than that, I might be a bit longer than usual (I know, you've heard that before) because in addition to the usual holiday madness, I do have my book crisis, I mean my literary nervous breakdown, I mean my editing to attend to--but never fear...Bound will eventually be submitted in the final edit, and I'll be sane (HA! I can hear you all laughing from here!!) once again:-)

At Last...

2006-12-07T22:10:00.000-08:00

(Look, pictures of my adorable children. And the baby. Just to make you smile. And laugh at my house which is, yes, always this thrashed. And, hey, a sockie...see, I haven't been having you all on--I have been making things. Sort of.)

Anyway, can I just say that the only thing worse than having to be at work right now is being at work without blogger? Of course the really funny thing is, that in true NHS fashion, the only blog that I can access unconditionally (besides Yarn Harlot, of course) is Julie's--and she's the only blogger I know who occassionally swears more than I do. (For which I worship her in a not-at-all-creepy manner.)

Anyway, to catch everybody up since it's now illegal for me to blog on my lunch hour (or simply just firewall prevented) here are some interesting conversations I've had this week:

Me: Okay--so, how much is it going to cost to fix the heater?
Mate: $1400.
Me: OUCH!
Mate: Yeah--the bad news is that it won't be fixed until NEXT Thursday.

Now, flash forward a couple of days for the "it could be worse" version on the phone:

Mate: The guy's here so I can sign the financing papers for the new heater.
Me: Wow--they do that?
Mate: Well, it costs a little more than we thought it would.
Me: Like, how much more would it cost to for them to give us financing.
(Are you all holding your breath?)
Mate: $14,000.
Me: $1400, right?
Mate: $14,000.
Me. $1900?
Mate: No, no, you're not hearing me: FOURTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.

Me: ARE YOU SHITTING ME? IF WE HAD THAT MUCH MONEY LYING AROUND, DO YOU THINK I'D STILL BE DRIVING THE MCCLELLAN FAMILY CRAPMOBILE UNTIL THE FREAKING DOORS FALL OFF?
Mate: And, hence, the financing.

Oy! And, oh wait, there's more--the hundred dollar Weenie Pig? Is now hundred dollar fertilizer. It appears Weenie Pigs don't take well to having the thermostat dip below 58 degrees at night, and he departed this earth for a great Weenie Pig field of expensive Weenie Pig food in the sky. The really sad part is that Mate had to dig a good 18" in order to place that poor, pathetic little body below Jasmine, Trixie, and Paige the rats. Yeah--our little strip of weed-en in the front of the crumbling mortgage is getting pretty haunted by little rodent ghosties... I guess Dennis Quaid the cat ought to watch out next Samhain, right?

So, hopefully blogger won't let me down again, (why not, right?) and I can put a little sunshine in this post...more specifically, my little sunshine, modeling (or eating) some of the hats and sockies I've finished. Just to prove that I really do knit and all....

Scum-yuk, eating crow.

2006-12-04T17:35:00.000-08:00

So, everybody remember that # in my post called "10 Things" where I said "Find the things you love the most about you and your family. Revel in them--they are what will get you through seeing the worst of yourself in your child" (or something like that...it's only two posts down!)

Anyway, one of the things I love the best about my oldest daughter is that she's steady. School is not easy for her--she's bright, but not quick, with none of those intuitive leaps and wildfire 'get its' that made my own school life both fun and precarious. In order to get her good grades and succeed in her High Achiever courses, Bryar has to work very hard--she's an averagely intelligent hard worker, she's going to kick ass and do great things, and I admire the hell out of her. She gets this from her father's side of the family.

Okay, now take a deep breath, no one's allowed to say anything nice to me me after that, because I have done a BAD THING.

I have taken great pains to not mention family--mine or Mate's--too much on my blog. I hate the thought of offending anybody, and unless it's something I'm pretty sure we'll all laugh at, I try to keep them out of it. That being said, imagine my complete mortification when Mate told me this morning, "Yeah--my dad saw your blog. He didn't take kindly to being called 'averagely intelligent'. I think that's why he hasn't called lately."

Oh Goddess...did I? Oh...yeah, not only did I, but it was posted in my viewer profile for six months, and, holy God, I REALLY HAVE BEEN NAKED IN PUBLIC FOR SIX MONTHS, HAVEN'T I?

I'm not sure what to say now. I mean, I thought the idea that I would fight to the death to keep that man would imply that this was a compliment--maybe you have to be the biggest nut in a mixed bowl to appreciate how truly lovely 'average' is.

'Average', to me, is equated with the following things:

**The 'average' student in my class, who is pleasant, kind, works hard, and has a thousand things to do besides obsess about their grade.

**An 'average' income does not put it's retirement in dvds, books, or yarn.

**An 'average' childhood means never being told that rice mixed with ketchup is Mexican Rice, because those were the only two things in the refrigerator. besides the left-overs of what was once a pet rabbit.

**'Average' means never knowing what powdered milk tastes like.

**It means never having to scrape the inside of your car for catfood money.

**If you're 'average' you're not planning to spend your retirement that same thing--only planning to eat the catfood yourself.

**'Average' children come home to clean homes and dinner on the table at an appropriate time.

**They eat from matching silverware and matching placemats and tablecloths.

**'Average' children don't have to help mom with the larvae on the ceiling or take turns using the one bathroom because the other one has been eviscerated for three months.

**'Average' children learn how to clean and cook from mom, and aren't farmed out to other people because mom is hopeless at both.

Mate was provided with an 'average' childhood, much of which I envy to the bottom of my toes, and I regret that I have not been able (through my bizarre temperament, mostly) been able to provide the same for my children.

So, I've insulted perfectly nice people who have shown me nothing but kindness by my below-average grasp of human nature, and I feel awful.

In fact, I feel like scumyuk.

This is me, Scum-yuk. Eating Crow.

Nothin' done...

2006-12-03T14:30:00.000-08:00

Well... in the 'eyes bigger than stomach' category, I just purchased an insane amount of Lorna's Shepherds Worsted in Watercolor for a project I may be able to get to in 2010...that's okay... I'll have some continuous sleep by then, so the elaborate cable I've got planned will be no funky-furry assed deal...

Other than that?

SOCCER SEASON IS OFFICIALLY OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just can not say that enough. OUr kids got their asses kicked, I mean had their final game today, and, voila...three days a week are suddenly freed up for sanity time. And since we're no longer on the evil prickweenie's team, we no longer have to worry about indoor ball, and, huzzah, extra brain-cells for me!!!!.

Now we have Christmas to deal with--Oy!

So--anybody out there do the fake tree? Every year I'm tempted, and every year the kids talk me out of it, and every year the actual task of going out and GETTING THE TREE turns out to be the biggest stumbling block to getting the house decorated. I don't know if I can explain that to the middle schoolers, but it might be worth a shot. So, I"m planning to whine until I get my way, I mean badger, cajole, and plead, I mean get help cleaning the house today, and then we can go get the tree tomorrow, and then, just then, we might get lights up this year. Last year, I was 7 months pregnant, Mate went on an unofficial boycott of Christmas, and I finally bought hedge lights, just so we could do something that didn't involve me on a ladder. This year, I'd like whole family involvement--including roping the kids in front of the tree--real or fake--and taking a picture of the four of them frolicking or fighting or fuming or whatever to put on my Christmas letter. I've been getting cards since Thanksgiving, and frankly, I"m not sure how y'all do it. Again? Oy! And I'm really starting to envy my friend Suzy who lives in Florida and celebrates Channukah, because to her, Dec. 25 is just another day--it's not that I want to stop celebrating my particular holiday, it's just that when she lived here, where the Jewish community is pretty small, her shopping days were cake. (She says that that's all gone bye-bye down in Florida...poor baby, has to face the crowds just like I do.)

Anyway, as soon as I find my camera cable I'll post some pictures of the adorable baby and the baby hats I've been working on... My friend liked hers yesterday--it was really sort of a funny baby shower. Run by a self-professed 'San Diego hippie', the shower had none of the shower games that I've come to treasure because, honestly, I kick ass at all of them. Instead we strung beads with wishes and bound wrists with advice and I found my inner Libra having a big-assed conflict. The soft, sweet side of Libra who tears up at night time TV was saying "oh, this is nice and spiritual, isn't it?". The cynical Libra who has pushed out four puppies and hasn't cleaned her bathroom was saying, "Oh for crap's sake, somebody serve me some cake with lard on it and let's get this party started." I managed to beat the cynical Libra down, but only because I was holding the world's most adorable infant in my arms, and I figured, hey, all those good wishes were nothing more than what I wanted for her. The cynical Libra will rear her ugly jaded head some other time. And, hey--I'll be fine with that.

10 things

2006-12-01T17:29:00.000-08:00

Or whatever--you know how I am with math.

Okay--first of all? I don't know how I wrote without blogging before--you guys are so supportive, it really keeps me going!

Second, I was going to spend this blog obsessing about appropriate ways to deal with my 5th period class, since they are unmitigated monsters and should all be tied down and epi-ladied until they scream for mercy and bleed out of their follicles, just like all of us did in the 80's. (Remember epi-lady? That vibrating coil of springs that was supposed to grab the hair on your legs and RIP IT OUT AT THE ROOTS? Yeah--I hate them.) However, I remembered that I get to go to a baby shower tomorrow, and that we're supposed to bring in advice or poetry or something, so I thought I'd concentrate on advice I'd give to a new parent.

Here it is, in no particular order, free, ignorable advice from a person who hasn't cleaned her bathroom in a week, and, hey, feels pretty good about that.

1. Kiss the following things goodbye: a clean car, peace of mind, finished laundry, potpourri, dust-bunny control, complete thought, grown-up interaction, a non-wash&wear wardrobe, germophobia, reading time, a social life, and loneliness--even in the bathroom.

2. Say hello to the following things: constant guilt, the fierce protectiveness of a mama bear mated with a tasmanian devil on mind-control drugs, and the ability to watch, listen to, and enjoy little kids programming that you thought you'd never possess.

3. About #2--Don't give up your own music in the car. The surest way to get separated from your child is to be hauled off to the loony bin singing Disney showtunes and laughing maniacally while you peruse the laundry detergent section of the grocery store.

4. About #3--But never underestimate the true cultural value of Disney showtunes, the Muppets, and Sesame Street. Even the Wiggles aren't as bad as you first thought.

5. Remember those moments in the car, when you haul ass, cut off other cars and flip off little old ladies so you can get home and pee? Yeah. YOu won't be able to do that anymore--any of it. Including being able to pee when you first run through the door.

6. All babies want to do is communicate. All adolescents want to do is communicate. Make listening your # 1 art form.

7. That being said, make "ignoring the whiny small shit" your # 2 art form.

8. Take a mental snapshot of your child when she is being her most precious and adorable. Impress it in your brain so that even when you're old and senile, you will remember that one moment. This way, you can call up that mental image when you hit your head on the kitchen wall after tripping over your child's shoes--it won't stop you from wanting to kill her, but it will keep you from imagining doing it with pain.
--
9. Think of the one thing you most dislike about yourself. Look it dead in the eye and say, "I love you even if you possess that quality." Be prepared to do this every day--that's the one character trait your child will pick up first.

10. Think of the one thing you most love about yourself and the people around you. Examine this quality carefully--revel in it. Be proud of it. These are the parts about your child that will allow you to bear with and forgive #9.

11. Don't feel bad about teaching your child sarcasm at a young age. It teaches them irony, which is very useful in highschool, when little boys are expected to enjoy Pride and Prejudice and little girls are expected to love MacBeth.

12. Dance and sing around your child. Especially as she grows older and this behavior embarrasses the hell out of her. Trust me--its a good example.

13. Adolescence is going to suck. Plan a long trip when you leave your changeling with grandma and grandpa who will be happy to commiserate with all of your shortcomings.

14. Laugh. Long, loud, and with a full heart--especially when you feel like laughing least.

15. Sylvia Plath said that motherhood is "getting on the train there's no getting off." She was a wise woman and a very good poet, but if you dwell too long on that thought, you will end up exactly where she did. Some other author (God forgive me,I don't remember who...) said that children were the preface to a 24 volume suicide note. This guy is not quite as famous, but he's a hell of a lot smarter. Parenthood is terrifying and ridiculous at once. Think, pray, and remember # 14.

And that's about all I've got. Or, that's about all I've got before the kids start eating each other and hit the place where they won't forgive me ever for snapping their heads off while I spare the random neuron to write this...peace out:-)

Incommunicado..

2006-11-30T08:54:00.000-08:00

I apologize if I've been out of touch lately...my work computer won't let me visit anyone on blogger...it's wierd...it's not a firewall or anything, but about the only place the net won't let me navigate is to your blog pages...and it's only blogger too--I can get to the Yarn Harlot just fine. Again, wierd...

We're sending BOUND in today.

Really, that's all I got. I mean, I finished a set of hat/sockies last night, and it came out frickin' adorable, and I"m thinking about buying some baby-t-shirts and doing a blanket stitch or a crochet edging around the edges to match, but really--Lorna's Laces, Shepherd's Sport. 'nuff said. But other than that, the book submission is kind of all-consuming.

My last reader was, as I have said, a paralegal who doesn't like my work. She made me a better writer--but the cost was a significant drop in confidence that it will take a decent reception for BOUND to counteract. I mean, what was I thinking? I gave a book about bi-sexual sidhe to someone who thought BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN sucked, and I was expecting constructive suggestions on content? Sugar, stress, and mental instability screwed with my judgment like a banana covered football screws with a monkey, didn't it?

Anyway, if I've seen distant, it's not on purpose--once my work net is fixed (and for the record, my grading program has died four times in the last three days, and it's been such a crap year in that department, I'm not even sure if this bad) I'll be back bothering you all again. In the meantime, think good thoughts and promise me that you won't tell me if my heroine cries too much in that one chapter even if you really think so, because I'm feeling very fragile right now:-)

The Chicken Ranch Slough

2006-11-27T15:11:00.000-08:00

OKay--I was going to write about the slough of despond, but I decided that the Chicken Ranch Slough sounded more interesting than me whining on and on and on about my Goddess-benighted sophomores and the fact that I hate them and they hate me.

Unfortunately, the only funny thing about the Chicken Ranch Slough is the name.

Honestly--I took a look at my grades--I've finally gotten some entered. We do one assignment for homework--everything else is done in class. Number of passing grades out of thirty-four, anybody? Anybody? Guesses?

Three.

No shit. No shinola. Three kids in thirty four can get their asshats off their heads and listen enough to do what I'm asking--and we go through it in class, people. If they even gave a tenth of a gnat's testicle, they could pass. And then my Seniors walk in and they're sure they've got the answers and the old, fat, and idealistic do not, and I just want to rant at them-- in my 5th period class I've got 5 kids in special ed, one parapalegic who's probably suffering from depression, foster kids who are at what the district acknowledges to be the world's shittiest placement, kids who've seen their relatives gunned down in drive-bys, and no fewer than four kids on parole. Do those five jokers in my 6th period think I give a rat's adenoid about their little Advanced Placement 'arrogance disability' that prevents them from shutting the fuck up?

AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

*whew* Forgive me--I let loose some foul language there, but I felt my facial muscles permanently freezing into the 'I must kill some dumb mother*&^%' mode, and sort of had to cut loose or blow a blood vessel. What can I say? The f-bomb is cathartic, ain't it?

Anyway, let's see, progress, progress...

Yes. I will finish one of two final edits on BOUND tonight, (God bless Mate, who managed to salvage the manuscript from my ez-baked hard drive) and, yes, I'll submit it by the end of the week. I'm to the point where I want someone else to do the final "in format" edit, but since I don't know anyone with that sort of time, I'm probably going to be stressing hard in about five weeks, and not from Christmas. I'm so excited about this one coming out that I can almost cry. I'm also terrified. I do that. Forgive me.

Also--almost done with (count 'em) the sixth hat and sockies... I'm wishing for some extra time I could pull out of my bum like the world's most unfortunate rabbit, because I want to make some for STARFISH, bless her, she finally got THE CALL and will adopting the world's most beloved little boy over the holidays, but she's got a full, extended, lovely family who will all share in the good news, so I may just sit back and watch her post a thousand pictures of joy. Other things on my "Wish I could make" list, in no particular order:

* Hats for as many of my students who ask--I make them in fair isle patterns and blow their little minds. When they ask why I do that, go above and beyond what they had imagined, I tell them, "Excellence is not a gift. It's only achieved by going above and beyond what is imagined. If you care about something the way I care about my craft, you should strive for excellence."
* A blanket for my TA--this is sort of a tradition I don't want to abandon. (Crocheted on whoopty-twelve hooks w/2 strands of bulky yarn).
* The sweater I've planned for the cave troll FOREVER that I actually have the yarn for.
* The 1/2 finished pair of socks for my aunt.
* The dress I started for ARwyn in the summer
* The sweater pending the fantastical modification that I started for Arwyn in the summer.
* A blanket for my poor little foster kid in 5th period who needs a reason to believe.
* A pair of socks for my son's size 14 (!!!!!!) feet.
* Those ruffled fingerless mitts from Not Just Socks for our babysitter, Caitlyn.
* A striped hat for the cave troll.

But I'm not going to work on any of these things any time soon, because after the hats and sockies (which at least I enjoy) I have to work on a Glitterspun ponchawl on size whoopty-12 needles for the woman who, when I thought my hard drive had cooked all my files INCLUDING the 722 page corrected manuscript to BOUND and the published manuscripts of the other two books that I'm trying to solicit to agents (not to mention several mgs of short stories and essays that are irrecoverable), sat on my couch and said "Well, at least you have them in hard copy...you can always retype them, it's no big dea...."

I leaned my head against my refrigerator and watched the black spots in front of my eyes, thinking, "Chicken Ranch Slough, Chicken Ranch Slough, Chicken Ranch Slough". Yup. Only the name is funny.

Technical Difficulties

2006-11-25T09:35:00.000-08:00

I have lurkers! I'm so excited...lurkers--lovely people who just read to read. It's like the coolest thing EVER!!! (Ego trip much, Amy? No thanks...I just went.) Anyway, yesterday my buddy and I went a.m. shopping with the other mental cases--it's sort of a tradition with us, and yesterday went sort of like clockwork--right down to the declined credit card that should have been wide open and free as a bird so I had to used the cash card instead and now, hello, we're broke. I would have been terribly embarrassed by that moment except my buddy pulled the ultimate in holiday shopping insanity about two years ago, and after that moment I've been sort of numb to the mortification that participation in Black Friday exposes you to. The incident went like this:

Barb, my shopping buddy, decided that we absolutely had to go to J.C. Penny's for a magic pair of jeans that actually fit her. Since Barb is nearly six feet tall, with an impossibly skinny waist and an oddly wide pair of hips (Zero body fat, people...Z-E-R-O!) this is a big deal, so in spite of the fact that we'd already hit Target, Toys'R'Us and Starbucks, we hauled our sleep-deprived psyches into a (gasp, shudder) department store. And as we looked, fruitlessly, for the men's sections, Barb bitched loudly and truclulently about how, if this place didn't have a men's department, then it was going straight to hell, just like Macy's, which was also in the same mall. She cornered a poor little sales girl and asked her that question, practically bringing the poor girl to tears as she wanted to know why in the hell J.C. Penny's would put their men's dept. down at the other end of the mall, like the detested Macy's. I should have stopped her--honestly, I should have, but I was too wierded out by the people shooting perfume and the fact that every department neatly matched or coordinated with the passing one to actually be coherent--we'd been shopping for nearly six hours at this point, and that alone had pretty much cauterized the functioning neurons in my cortex as it was. So after bringing the bewildered girl to tears, I grabbed Barb and said, "c'mon--if it's not here, we can't will it here...let's go find the men's department of Penny's for sweet heaven's sake, okay?"

Can you see the punchline coming? I couldn't. Until we passed a price scanning kiosk that read Macy's on it. I stopped and looked. Barb stopped and looked. Then we walked the remaining 25 feet out of the store and turned in tandem to look at the name above the arch. Yeah. This place had a separate men's department like Macy's because IT WAS MACY'S.

We've pretty much stopped after Target ever since that day. And if the sales girl is out there, I'd like to profoundly apologize on the behalf of my friend--she's really not a lunatic bitch, I swear she's a good person. Honest.

Anyway, we got back home and I took a nappy-poo, and when I woke up (with the baby, who also took a nap w/me) everybody else was out watching Happy Feet (I understand it's a very good movie. Kewyn slept through it.) so I unloaded the car. And unloaded. And unloaded. I hid the kid's stuff in closets and under cribs (like the baby knows what's under her bed anyway!) and set aside the stuff that was for other people's kids next to the couch, along with the excessive bags of chocolate that go into little tiny bags for friends, co-workers, my kids' friends, and people who give me gifts when I wasn't expecting them. Pre-K (before Kewyn!) I used to sew those bags and although I still have an entire lexan of holiday cloth, I don't think I'll get to do that again anytime soon--now, those bags are chocolate. But (and again, people without kids have probably caught on to the flaw in my plan already, while people with kids are currently laughing their asses off at me) I didn't count on the fact that what I bought for the two little boys in Pennsylvania would be equally appealing to the cave-troll in California, and now I have to go shopping again because Kewyn has a new guy. So does Trystan, because if Kewyn got to open one, heaven forbid Trystan go without the other one...Nick, Max, if your mama is reading, don't worry--magna-guys are still available at Toys'R'Us.

So, aside from those technical difficulties, I'm still having e-mail problems from when we had to completely switch hard-drives because my lap-top cooked my last one (I was mid-book edit...it took everything I had to not dissolve into a gibbering goosemonkey until my husband assured me that I wouldn't have to type all 720 pages back into the computer, cannyagimmehalelluiaamen.) Don't worry, though, if you're trying to get in touch w/me--my e-mail should be up again by tomorrow--but then, like everything else, it may still be subject to technical difficulties.

Procrastination...

2006-11-22T08:56:00.000-08:00

Well, my friend's trip to Hawaii is coming over tomorrow for Thanksgiving and I'm sitting in the rubble of my home, trying hard not to think about all the housecleaning I didn't do when I was trying to proof my novel. Since stuff keeps falling off the table because it's too crowded with crap to hold the doo-dads on the edges, you have to know my powers of self-delusion are damn near supernatural. Since we have three birthdays in the span of a month (Kewyn's, Wendy's--the one bringing her trip to Hawaii, and Trystan's) I think I'm going to leave the big HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner up in the corner of the kitchen, but I will try to clean up the old battery collection on the crap-catcher that splits the kitchen from the living room (mostly for the benefit of the trip-to-Hawaii, whose real name is Paul, and about whom I now know so many intimate and embarrassing details I will hardly be able to look at him across the dinner table without erupting into a big wollop of snarking giggles.) My husband really needs to figure out what to do with those batteries, though--thank you, baby nintendos and Playschool for making that collection almost mythic and artistic in proportion.

Holidays are traditionally a time of stress for me anyway. When thanksgiving goes well, I usually dart out of the house for a walk at about nine at night, meditating on all the stuff I'm truly thankful for. Like most of us on a computer, there is an impressive list, and these are the things that move me to tears nearly every day and keep me going. But in order to get to that point where I can take a breath, I usually have to do what I call the 'split family shuffle'.

The details are long and painful--sometime I'll jot them down for sheer cathartic value, but not today. What it amounts to is that between Matt and I, we have as many sets of parents as we have children, and that I'm generally responsible for getting my mom-mom (as opposed to my stepmom, who is terrifyingly capable) to family functions. Since it's an 1 1/2 hour round trip, and it has to be made twice, it tends to be an exhaustive footnote to the day. This year, I'm picking her up, probably taking her to my uncle's for dinner, and then (if I can't appeal to someone to take her home) I'm going to my own house and my own kids and for Wendy and her trip-to-Hawaii...then, after dinner, turning around and picking her up and taking her home. My one consolation is that this year, (as opposed to other years) I only have one family to deal with, and not two or (as it has been on occassion) three. Yes, there are sometimes I am truly thankful that Matt's dad lives in Delaware.

Which brings me to maybe the one thing I am most thankful for.

Matt and I are happy. Yes, there is a possibility that he has a whole other family in a tenement somewhere off Stockton blv., and has been shooting drugs in his eyeballs for years, but, honestly, I doubt that he has the time. I'm a pretty demanding heifer, mostly, and I'm jealous of his time spent in useless pursuits--like work and getting the car maintained. So mostly I make sure he's happy by sheer force of will, and by doing this, we're both making our children happy. God, Goddess, and anyone else who's listening, I'm grateful for my amazing (and amazingly patient) spouse, and my healthy, happy children. I'm in a unique position to let the Universe at large know that I'm absolutley sincere about this--I will never take my home or my spouse or my children or my health for granted, ever.

Thank you, oh vast and mighty universe--may you spread your good fortune on all who are listening--and on the many many more who are not. Cheers, everybody--I say when this is over, we all descend on Roxie's house like rabid locusts after Lent and raid her chocolate-rum ball collection. Who's up for a trip to Oregon?

Quick Query...

2006-11-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

Okay guys--in full bore editing mode...must ask...

"I sat in the kitchen and talked quietly and knit, rehashing the day's events."

Question: Is it 'knit' or 'knitted'? C'mon--I know I've got some English majors and a whole truckload of writers out there... give a sister some love and affectionately help her correct her grammar! Thanks a gazillion!

A trip to Target...

2006-11-20T10:14:00.000-08:00

Thanks everybody for the concern. There really was a bomb at their school, but the little goombah forgot the detonator. Small mercies--criminals really are dumb, that's not bull. But I've followed my kids' example and have conveniently forgotten any angst over the subject--I suppose our life is often a series of near misses. Dwelling on them only diminishes the time between hits, right?

So, let's move on to how totally embarrassing it is to be me. Besides the astronomical pants size, there's shopping in Target with three kids, while the oldest tries to set a world record for how long one kid can wear the same pajamas before his parents freak out on him. Let's look at yesterday, shall we, where the following conversation between me and several Target employees could be heard.

(me) "So--have any of you...heard or seen a commotion pass by?"

(them) "What sort of commotion?"

(me) "Well, it sounds like a tazmanian devil being tortured by trolls, and it looks like a red-headed twelve-year old chasing a three-foot tornado."

(them) "No...have you tried paging them?"

(me) "Yes...didn't you hear it? They said "Bryar Rose, please drag your brother to the food court.'"

(them) "That was you?" (screaming off stage)

(me) "Yeah--and that's them...excuse me...I gotta go rescue my kids."

However, Bryar and I did keep our perspective. As we were splitting a pretzel at the food court, I said, "Hey Bryar, look left."

She did. "Wow, mom--my life could be worse."

To her left was a family--two parents, four children, aged six months to four years. They were all boys. Gimme hallelujia sister. Amen.

THis is me, not blogging...

2006-11-18T14:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm at work, and my daughter is rolling around on the floor eating whatever our demon-fart janitor didn't clean up (which is considerable) and I'm supposed to be entering grades (which I've done, to my credit, for an hour) and I thought I'd tell you all about my drive home yesterday.

You see, I've got this thing... I'm a naturally melancholy person as it is, and I usually keep that under control, but when I'm stressed, or, like yesterday, coming down off a stressful week, sometimes my brain does this whacko-psycho-mutant-mental thing where I take something minor, like, say, the cave-troll's chronic constipation, and go borrowing trouble from a big fat toad frog and transform it (all in my head, mind you) into, say, colon cancer in the pediatric ward... and then I sob all the way home. (Because it's usually when I'm commuting. This is my writing time, and for some reason, accessing my writing creativity occassionally unlocks the cave of this big-assed mental monster!)

So I'm doing this yesterday, and I recognize the need for catharsis (with the itty bitty sane part of my brain) and I'm letting it go because mostly I'm just sobbing, and I sort of need to do that--it's been a rough semester at ol' NHS and a good cry helps sometimes. I get it all under control by the time I get home, and am gearing up for my evening knit/feed/bathe marathon and I'm greeted my my hyper-excited middle schoolers. They come bounding out of the house, jabbering away like they got a free carnival day at school or something, and I think (for a second) "Oh good--something to totally free myself from the cathartic darkness I drove home in" and then I hear what they're actually saying:

"Mom--you'll never believe what happened to us! Some kid brought a bomb to school and we spent the whole day in lock down watching movies! We're on the news and everything."

And my brain took on a one-word vocabulary for the rest of the night. You wanna guess the word? (Hint--four letters, rhymes with truck...)

Oh yeah... it's funny--when you borrow trouble, you often end up with generous neighbors, don't you?

Vettttttyyyyy Innnnterrresting

2006-11-17T14:53:00.000-08:00

Okay, thank you. All of you. Your suggestions gave me plenty to think about--most of all, how embarrassed I should be about the two books that are already out.

The answer? Not much. Remember, I've been reading VULNERABLE out loud to my classes--sex scenes and everything--and I've discovered something.

I don't notice this punctuation as I read out loud, except as to give my voice weight.

I read a lot of literature out loud--not just on Friday reading day, but, pretty much, anything read in my classroom is read out loud. I don't trust the readng levels of the students I have. If I'm going to be held responsible for what they know, I need to know they've understood it as it goes out. When I'm reading out loud, I look to the punctuation for cues as to how I'm supposed to sound. It's that simple.

So, yes. I'm 1/8 of the way through a revision that will go out on Nov. 30, for better or worse (more free books that way--yes, we are that strapped for cash and that venal) and yes, that faulty construction will be in part of it. But (and thanks coach susan) only on the parts I want. I will keep in mind what is still standard usage and, of course, disregard it as I please, but also I will respect it when it serves my purposes. I mean, isn't that the purpose of any law? To use it until it outlives it's usefulness? Shakespeare constantly rhymed stuff in his day that is, to us, un-rhymeable because, in his day, it worked. Perhaps this grammar construction was standardized a long time ago because it worked then. I think, (based on a survey of me, and how often I actually notice this punctuation even as I read), maybe, if the words do not SOUND right using the 'proper' punctuation, then maybe the proper punctuation needs to change. (Egomaniacal much, Amy Lane? No, why do I ask?)

So, yes. I'm going to punctuate a lot of it wrong on purpose. I dare anyone to get caught up in the fraught and awe-full language and the overwrought emotions and notice. (In short, please buy my book and laugh at me. I mean that.)

Anyway-- the break is beginning, and now that I've got a deadline, I don't know how much I'm actually going to blog...I'll do my best--it's some of the best peer interaction I've had in years. But I will be back... (Yes that's a threat!!!)

BTW? It's funny--sort of a sign from the universe, but my i-pod has been playing U2's song Acrobat for the last few days when it's on 'shuffle'. This is funny, because the chorus is "Don't let the bastards drag you down..." I sung it to my 5th period as they trudged in today--they didn't get it. But that's okay, because Right now, as the afternoon of a Friday before the break wanes and the foggy sunshine seeps under the door like a chill little mouse, I'm teaching a student how to knit. There's something sublime about this--it's hard to explain. I want to see my children--I miss my baby and the cave troll--but right now, in this moment, there's only the gossiping teenager and the clicking of needles and my stupid stories that she's never heard before, and time has stopped and I'm giving someone (finally) something I hope they will always have.

The job doesn't always suck. I hope my students have a good break--and I hope everybody else's thanksgiving is blessed.

Me me me...oh crap...not just me...

2006-11-15T12:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, I will eventually get to the meme that Rae had on her website--btw, it makes her sound like a very cool person, even the 'bitchy' for the first response, but first, I'm going to confess myself flummoxed on the one subject that I could have sworn I knew a little tiny teeny bit about: Punctuation. Okay, not a lot--it isn't my strong suit, but, hey...here's my dilemma.

"Isn't that what you've always taught me? That whatever we need to do to protect our people should be considered?"

"Not you." He said rawly. "Risking you is no longer an option."

Do you see the problem? I didn't, not even after three books, and, remember, I'm supposed to teach English. Okay, I'm a victim of the California public school system, same as my students, however, it wasn't until I got called on this punctuation by a couple of paralegals throughout my entire 3rd (3rd!) manuscript that I went back and actually looked at another book, and realized that it's wrong. It should read:

"Not you," he said rawly. "Risking you is no longer an option."

And even as I write that second one, the CORRECT one, mind you, here as an example, it just looks plain WRONG to me. "Not you." Is supposed to stand alone. It's an emphatic statement--a sentence, even though it's not really a sentence. And much of the book is written like that. (Sue me, I like grabbing those heart strings and giving them a few hearty yanks as I go...) And now I'm wondering, is it just the paralegals, or have whole hoards of people been watching me make this mistake and tearing my hair out... and the thought just KILLS me... sort of like walking around with my pants on inside out for, I don't know, THIRTY-NINE YEARS or so... so, people, help me out--is this sin huge and heinous, should I edit it out of the whole manuscript (and I am totally willing to do this--don't get me wrong--knitting errors, I will let lie, manuscript errors I'm really anal about... I know, I know, my blog is horribly edited, but my fiction is
@#$%ing sacred. ) So, everybody, chime in... is it the comma or the period, the upper or the lower, is this form of punctuation giving way with time (the way many of our older grammar constructions have) or is it still important to us. I need to know.

Now, for the meme--I stole this from Rae (who stole it from Rabbitch), and since it was only one word, decided, hell, I can git'r'done:
Use only one word to answer each item:
1. Yourself: weird
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend (spouse): integrity
3. Your hair: rabid
4. Your (step)mother: hardworking
5. Your Father: trippy
6. Your Favorite Item: yarn
7. Your dream last night: zombies (yuck!)
8. Your Favorite drink: diet soda
9. Your Dream Car: bigger
10. The room you are in: me
11. Your Ex: nonexistent
12. Your fear: inadequacy squared
13. What you want to be in 10 years? writing
14. Who you hung out with last night? family
15. What You're Not? normal
16. Muffins: no thanks
17. One of Your Wish List Items: time
18. Time: should stop
19. The Last Thing You Did: knit
20. What You Are Wearing: jeans
21. Your Favorite Weather: autumn
22. Your Favorite Book: Tigana
23. The Last Thing You Ate: chocolate
24. Your Life: frantic
25. Your Mood: dazed
26. Your best friend: desperate
27. What are you thinking about right now? going pee
28. Your car: thrashed
29. What are you doing at the moment? working
30. Your summer: packed
31. Your relationship status: sweet
32. What is on your TV? too much
33. What is the weather like? chill
34. When is the last time you laughed? this morning
35. What were you laughing about? kids

Pajama Day

2006-11-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

Sunday was the CaveTroll's 3rd--I had some adorable pictures but they wouldn't upload period the end, so you'll just have to take my word for the grave look of concentration on his face as he blew out his candles and clapped his hands over the perfectoin of the cake. The cake itself was something of a triumph...Baskin-Robbins does not own the Cars logo, so I had them make a white cake with a brown road on it (they added some rocks and a tree) and then I put two toy cars--the Lightning and the Mater cars, to be exact, and he thought the world had adjusted itself to his specifications. It was awesome. It was a small celebration-- a couple of grandparents and friends of the family...my older kids had the hugeomolous parties when they were little, but, live and learn, Kewyn's biggest joy was sitting on the floor and playing with his new toys BY HIMSELF. Of course, he loves playing w/his older brother and sister (and, touchingly enough, given the age difference, they love playing with him) but a rival for his two new toys would not have been welcome, and any more than two new toys would have been quite over the top. Anyway, it was a nice day, and the house was clean, and after the prep for the party and taking four kids to see FLUSHED AWAY http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424095/ and, of course, hating my job so badly this year that it causes an empty aching in my chest like a sore and rotting tooth, I decided...

Not to go to work on Monday.

Yup. In some professions, it's called a sick day. In my profession, it's called a mental health day, and it starts when the alarm goes off and the sobbing starts, and you decide that God made sub-recorders so that you didn't have the humiliation of telling your vice principal that you just couldn't face the little bastards one more lousy rotten stinking day without some goddamned time for yourself, thank you very much. (I once had to report all my absences to my vice principal at dark-thirty a.m.--it was when Trystan was an infant and wouldn't stop screaming...imagine, "Yeah...uhm...I can't make it in today...because my baby sitter bailed...because she couldn't stop crying...because my son screams all day...no, no, I didn't drink when I was pregnant...no, no drugs either...yeah, I COULD bring him in, but remember, he WON'T STOP CRYING!!!!" Good times... too bad I lost that job, I now live 1/2 a mile away from that high school...)

So it was me, and the babies, and we wandered around the house and watched movies (oddly enough, not CARS, I guess ater 3000 repetitions in six days, Cave Troll decided that Cinderella was a refreshing change) and I...

Wound Yarn.

I love doing that... You turn twisted fiber ingredients into cute little fiber cakes...it feels very crafty without the exertion of actually thinking for yourself or doing anything with real skill. Or at least you think it doesn't take skill until you let your 12 year old daughter do it and she somehow bolluxes it up beyond all recognition (would you call this B.U.B.A.R.? And if so, could you ever say it without laughing uproariously?) Anyway, I think I'm gonna have a coupla pairs of socks with a LOT of splices... no matter...

I finished everything but the many skeins of Knit-Picks lace, which is just as well because, hey, when am I going to have time to knit lace, and I even finished the twin hats and socks...speaking of bolluxed, I managed to screw up two absurdly simple pattern stitches--one for each hat--so badly I couldn't even see where the mistake began, and, again, this is why I'm a dilletante...I've got FOUR more of these to go, and I decided, for better or for worse, to simply let the errors stand. The people I work with love me enough to know how pressed for time I am--and to love the garment for the thought and not the accuracy, so I'm going to rely on their great hearts and take a little craft leniency for myself...you couldn't spot these errors from the back of a sleeping cat, much less a prancing pony, so, hey, let's call them character flaws and get to blocking on the bread rack, shall we? (The bread rack/w a towl on it, btw, is a great blocking flat for stuff that's not really meant to be pinned. Like ittle-bittle baby socks and hats. Really, only for ittle-bittle baby socks and hats, come to think about it...)

Anyway, all that aside, my three great moments of yesterday and today came, as usual, from my children. The first one made me wish I'd been born sterile, and the second and third ones made me glad I kept having the little goombahs.

The first one was when Trystan asked if he could turn up the thermostat because, hey, it was 67 degrees F. in the house, and heaven forbid the kid who won't wear shorts in the summer actually put on a sweater in the winter, but I said yes, because it was the baby's bath time, and a half an hour later I had ass-sweat starting underneath my sweat-pants and about the time I started to wonder how hot 69 degrees could get, Trystan said "Doesn't it feel good in here? I turned it up to 80 degrees!" Holy crap--I'm such a bad samaritan, I don't even turn it up to 80 degrees in the summer time!

The second moment was when ARwyn, the little genius said, clear as day, Dadad, Kitty, AND Momom... all in the same three days. SHE'S SEVEN MONTHS! I know, I know--I'm sure many of you have little geniuses that spoke at six or even five, but I swear to toast, this is the first of the four to ever give us a glimmer of speech before ten or eleven months. Holy shit--we're gonna be so under siege when we're fifty I don't even want to speculate.

The third moment was...(and this was so damn cute) when Kewyn, who, remember, saw ALL of the CARS dvd, including the short about Mater and the Ghostlight, greeted me from the car with his little cow-flashlight and said, "Mom--Mater's Ghostlight!" Clear as a bell!!! Damn, so cute I can't hardly top it, so I'll just sign off!

Yesterday's Post Was Hella Long...

2006-11-11T17:51:00.000-08:00

Yes it was... Anyway, I just wanted to assure everybody that I HAVE moved on from Red Heart--in fact, that's what my students have been knitting for the last two years... and I've got a few more years of student stash in my garage, so if I ever want to run my hand over the decadence of the dead dinosaur, I'm good. I prefer radioactive mutant sheep fur and silkworm shit, but the occassional dead dinosaur keeps me humble. (That Crystal Palace stuff with the bunny fur seriously turns me on.)

Other than that, it's going to be a short post today--Mate is in a 'watch tv' mode, which means mom gets to knit and hold adorable baby, and I'm not going to pass that up...for too long, anyway. I just wanted to try again to post that damn photo of the Impossible Yarn scarves w/the pattern next to it... shall we try?

Well it worked, but as I was trying to flip flop the Impossible Yarn scarves, they ended up blurry. Me and technology, like lady fingers and beef and mushrooms... (name that show!) Anyway, you can kind of get the idea, at least, and you also get to see Adorable Baby and theCave Troll, living up to their monikers... Anyway here's the pattern all over again, in case the crap picture helps:

w/yarn of your choice and hook of your choice (I use bulky weight crap and a P hook) Ch. a multiple of 5. (25-35 is good).
Row 1:Single crochet in 10th chain from hook. Ch 5, skip 4 chains, Single Crochet in 5th chain, chain 5, repeat, SC in last chain, Ch 5, Turn.
Row 2: SC in 1st Ch. 5 loop, (Ch 5, SC in each Ch 5 loop across) Ch 5, TurnRepeat Row 2 until you run out of yarn or hate yourself, finish off.

So, Rae told me in the comments that they shellacked (I like her spelling better) the floor where she works, without cleaning up the crap on the bottom...I'm wondering how my building planners moved all the way back East that quickly, because I could have sworn only one group of ass-toading foot-fungi could possibly be that stupid. But, hey, I have cousins back East, they must too!

Well, must go rest up--the Cave Troll is having his 3rd B-day party tomorrow... w/the Goddess' help and blogger's cooperation, I will have pix... bless the little boogersnot, he's asleep right now in an ill advised (but much needed) late afternoon nap. I'll wake him up in a minute and feed him... sweet kid, very intense, can't wait 'til he hits school like a Class 6 hurricane.

Oh...must add...I got this season's issue of Interweave Knits, and saw Arwen's Cardigan and decided I must change Arwyn's sweater to something like that...it'll be a combination of the cover from the Debbie Bliss book and that cool Celtic cable from the Interweave mag...they're both done in the same yarn, what can go wrong? (For the love of God, nobody answer that. Let me dream.)

WIPs, TOADs, and UFO's...

2006-11-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

I love acronyms...and I'm so in love with the title of this post that I might use it again, just for the halibut...(I'm so stupid I still think that's cute!!!)

Well, judging from the comments we all blog for pretty much the same reason...we're looking for a crowd of people who understand that what the rest of the world percieves as raving lunacy is actually rational behavior. Goddess, I love you all...

Now, let's organize our thoughts here...

First of all, FOs...

I am an idiot and only took pictures of the three Impossible Yarn scarves I finished for students and not the one done in the colors of the Portuguese flag that said PORTUGAL on it. But it doesn't matter, because the camera isn't working today, which is too bad, because, even though they are in crochet (as was the PORTUAGL scarf) I still love this pattern because it takes, like an hour, and because it's made with Impossible Yarn (Insert the bulky sized yarn that you hate the most) Muggles think you're hot shit. For those of you suffering the whole IT thing, if you know how to crochet and don't mind sullying your stash with novelty yarn, here it goes:

w/yarn of your choice and hook of your choice (I use bulky weight crap and a P hook) Ch. a multiple of 5. (25-35 is good).
Row 1:Single crochet in 10th chain from hook. Ch 5, skip 4 chains, Single Crochet in 5th chain, chain 5, repeat, SC in last chain, Ch 5, Turn.
Row 2: SC in 1st Ch. 5 loop, (Ch 5, SC in each Ch 5 loop across) Ch 5, Turn
Repeat Row 2 until you run out of yarn or hate yourself, finish off.

Yes--it's basically a fishnet, but because it's done in impossible yarn, people love you. I can't explain it, but I do use it to my advantage.

So, that's 3 Impossible Yarn scarves, one scarf that said 'Portugal', one scarf with blue diamonds in a field of yellow, and one scarf that featured a giant crocheted cable in the middle. And I'm done knitting scarves for students--sort of. I'm sure it will come up again. By the way--the 'Portugal' scarf was done in this SWEET acryllic--I know, I know, acryllic! but it's called Dark Horse, and if you have a wool allergy or whomever you're making for has a wool allergy, this shit AIN'T Red Heart.

Now, on to...

WIPs.

I am 1/2 a hat away from a set of sockies and hats for twins. If I don't take pix of these, I will shoot myself because right now they are so cute I almost can't stand it. When I'm done with that, I'm moving on to... ANOTHER hat and sockie set...I'm looking for a spiffy cable that can be done in dk on something as small as a babysock. Don't tell me it's impossible, I finally know what I want!

Also working... A pair of socks in Cherry Tree Hill yarn that I work on because I like to touch Cherry Tree Hill yarn and because my aunt Teresa didn't get a b-day present... she understands, trust me.

Also working...Honestly, I have made progress on this, I'm not just blowing code--I've made progress on Arwyn's Debbie Bliss sweater...I'm so proud I can almost weep. Wait until I get the damn thing done--you'll see some weeping then.

UFO's...

Besides the acryllic Red Heart afghan in the bottom of my trunk, (which, don't hate me, I really like...) I've got the merino dress I'm working for Arwyn. And that's it. But I really want to finish that dress--it's so pretty it makes me cry--she MUST WEAR IT!!! But first I must work on it...funny how that works.

TOADs...

My grading system at work has finally gotten back on line after two weeks of papers backlogging because it was fiddlefarting with it's own tick-eating microcircuits--it is back online minus the grades of six students that it decided didn't matter. You can see the warts oozing from my computer screen even as you turn on the lights in my room.

The student that I referred two weeks ago for laughing during a test who came back and said, "You didn't follow due process with that referral."
I said, "I'm sorry I didn't callyour parents, Markiel, but you needed to be sent out during the class."
He said "You didn't conference with me or move my seat, either."
I said, "I did conference with you--I conferenced with the five of you who won't shut up in my AP class which is supposed to be Seniors who actually want to learn. I asked you if I needed to move you or if you could behave like young adults."
He said, "But I didn't say anything then."
I said, "I took your silence as acknowledgment that you wanted to be a mature young person in charge of his own education. Believe me, THAT is a mistake I will never, EVER make again."
I won't be able to look at that kid for the rest of the year without seeing something big and slimy that eats flies.

The JANITOR (yes, JANITOR--I reserve the word Custodian for someone I respect) who, for the last six weeks has ignored the muck on my floor and just vacuumed the main strip between the board and the first row of desks. I caught him doing that, and, very politely mind you, pointed out the crap that I know for a fact has been there for two weeks at a minimum. He looked at me and said, "Tomorrow!" Yeah, tomorrow that big fat frog wannabe will be lucky to have a job... what an asstoading piece of foot-fungus! Seriously!!!!

Whew... those are plentty of TOADs for one week. Or were you expecting knitting projects?

Why I blog...

2006-11-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

Hello, gang--(Rae, glad to have you back, Needletart, it's always a treat--everybody else, you knows I luvs ya:-)--anyway, I had one of those conversations with my (step)mother that brought me right back to highschool and trying to explain why the oatmeal sweater made me look stacked and not fat...I lost that argument, by the way, not because I didn't believe in my newfound hooters, but because mom had instilled just the tiniest bit of doubt in me, and every time I put on the sweater I had visions of my copious fat rolls spilling out at the sides. (When I think about how skinny I was in high school as opposed to what I am now, I just want to weep.)

So back to yesterday's conversation:

Mom: "So...blogging, I don't get it."
Me: "You know, it's sort of like an online diary."
Mom: "But who wants to read your diary--how boring!"
Me: "But it's better than that--the good ones are like Erma Bombeck or Dave Barry or Mike Royko--those columnists who could comment on the world at large by commenting on their own interests..."
Mom: "Still don't get it...who wants to read that crap?"
Me: (changing subject with desperation) "So I might be able to publish BOUND before Christmas after all."
Mom: "Well, good, I think--did you tone down the sex."
Me: *sigh* "No. Hey--Bryar's been losing a lot in soccer:-)" (Notice how mothers don't hesitate to throw their daughters to the wolves? It's a time honored tradition--don't knock it.)

Anyway, the conversation got me thinking about why I blog... and I came up with this list, which I'm going to painfully stretch to ten items in an attempt to look like a real writer. Should I start from the bottom, like David Letterman? Too bad, I talk too much for only 10.

15. Because I talk to much period. This way I have to make sense.
14. Because I've already got 'self-aggrandizement' down to an art form.
13. Because this way I can prove I write about something besides sex.
12. Because 'cranky' is charming in print.
11. Because if you don't really like me, you don't have to visit my blog, and if y ou do visit my blog, you must really like me, and who can turn down reciprocal admiration like that?
10. Because if I put 'knitting' on the blog title, I don't have to explain that Glitterspun is crap, wool is a religion, and knitting socks is a calling of the highest order.
9. Because if I put 'children' on the blog, I don't have to apologize for all the bragging that is about to ensue.
8. Because, whether I put 'writing' on the blog or not, I don't have to apologize or explain when I'm talking about crapweasels, prickweenies, or what crawled out from under a demoted demon's ass.
7. Because my students don't get my jokes.
6. Neither do my children.
5. Neither, obviously, do my parents.
4. Because my Mate DOES get my jokes--but he's tired of hearing them.
3. Because if I write the voices down I become an 'artist' instead of a 'lunatic'.
2. Because 'too much yarn' is worse than a four letter word--and you all get that.
1. Because the only cure for rampant insecurity is to share.

So why do you all blog? Whether you have blog or just like to read other people's, I'd love to hear your reasons...

Amy Lane Out:-)

A Letter I'll Never Send

2006-11-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

Okay, so my husband and I get an Entertainment Weekly subsciption for Stephen King's essays alone--and I was just stunned with his last article and wanted to respond and got all excited about posting to the EW forum and, it turns out, I've got a ten line minimum to post there. AS IF... So I thought I'd post it here, and then you all could see that for once I actually dealt with a celebrity other than the Yarn Harlot without going all Goofy "ahuyuk" and slack about the mouth. Or fingertips, whatever the case may be.

Dear Uncle Stevie:

I just wanted to say that twenty years ago, when I was young and arrogant, I would have disagreed with your stand on audio books to the point of loud, sober rantings in public. Today, after fifteen years as a public school teacher with a clientele that, for the most part, has never had a nursery rhyme read to it, I'm moved to write my my very first celebrity e-mail in order to say "Brother, canyagimmehallelujia!" (Yes, I just borrowed your own phrase from The Talisman. Forgive me.)

I teach English at a public high school in Sacramento--our test scores are dismal, and this year, after being spoiled with Advanced Placement Seniors, I've ended up with three out of five classes that seemed to have crawled out from under the rock that's under the ass of the third demon to the south of Hell. I've had to teach them grammar, and it's been almost unbearable. Besides the fact that I feel like a f*&^ing sellout because I've always felt that grammar was, perhaps, the last thing students should have to learn in their crowded classrooms, I've discovered that the reason I need to teach them grammar is that NO ONE has taught them grammar, and the whole 'differentiate a noun from a verb' idea in order to not sound like a moron when you've picked up new vocabulary is as foreign to my students as... as writing anything longer than a phone number on the back of someone's hand.

I usually love my job, but this year, with this group and this subject matter, it's been one long flogging with the shut-the-hell-up stick, and I thought I was going to have to call it quits and become an old, fat, over-educated waitress in order to feed my children, when a combination of ego and desperation caused me to do something new.

I started to read them a book. More specifically, I started to read them my book. I've self-published a couple of (in my words) trashy vampire novels that I dearly love. I tell my students this because A. It does them good to know that books aren't written by strangers in a tower with special magic powers, B. That pathetic ego thing I've already mentioned and C. It gives me something to say to them besides 'I miss my children when I'm here' and 'Shut the *&^* up.' In the last couple of weeks my Juniors have started to ask me to read to them--I'm pretty sure it was to get out of grammar, and eventually, I broke down because, hell, I wanted to get out of grammar, and the results were...

Magic.

It was magic in the way I had always imagined teaching would be when I was going through school, because I chose this profession because I love stories--all stories. Stories to me are the heartbeat of the human condition, the poetry of our collective souls. I don't care if they are told at campfires (and you should hear the apologetic introductions to Native American literature in our modern textbooks--the politically correct scholar, at least, is ashamed of having not given entire cultures credit for literature simply because it was not scratched into tree pulp with oak-gall dye) or on the big glowing box of worship that dominates the living room, or on the shiny paper of Manga novels. Well, the majority of my students had never been exposed to stories for the hell of it--for no reason other than to hear a character speak and to love them for their voice. They have, in the last two weeks, been better behaved than I've seen them since August. If I say, "We need to get through this today so we have time to read on Friday" the world spins in order to finish work that they hate (and are, oddly enough, getting better at). At first I thought the magic was caused because they were told, point blank, by me, that the books were about 'elves, vampires, and sex', but since we've been through the first chapter, with no sex in sight, and they have also been told that the first scene is male/male (and believe me, if there is a more homophobic corner of the world, I don't want to visit) and that I'll be skipping the racier parts, I'm thinking that they simply like the story. They like hearing a practiced speaker with some inflection read something that is dear and intimate and beloved. They're starting to hear the heartbeat of humanity that we've been trying to play for them for eleven years and that they've refused to hear.

So when you say that audio books are an art-form, I believe you. When you tell me that they are storytelling at it's finest, I'm right on board. And when you say that they expose a novel's flaws, I want to weep, because believe me I wish I could go back and edit my own work just one more time so that these students get the best storytelling experience I can give them. I'm starting to truly believe in my heart that they deserve it.

Thanks for the excellent work, Mr. King--you should tell EW that my husband and I have kept up our subscription for your essays alone.

Sincerely

Shannon T.R. McClellan

Things that don't work

2006-11-02T09:07:00.000-08:00

Sothis morning as I entered my 2nd period class after holding the door, I stopped by the trash can and made the following announcement:

"Okay, everybody, as you are sitting there please witness what I am about to do. I am holding in my hand a candy wrapper. Notice how it is the beginning of class. Notice how I am standing NEXT to the trash can, and not midway across the room. Notice it is at the beginning of class and not in the middle of class when I am talking or giving directions. Notice how I don't ask for another piece of candy to reward myself for the proper disposal fo the first. Notice how I simply drop the candy wrapper into the trash can, without attempting to even pretend I am a Sacramento Monarch's player, much less a large, middle-aged, aspiring Michael Jordan. Notice how the candy wrapper is now not lying on my floor? I would like all of you to remember this moment, and use it as a model of your own behavior, so that I may, in the future, not have to lie to parents about whose room this is."

*sigh* Sophomores don't get sarcasm. At all.

And other things that don't work:

**Using my knitting (or my crocheting...I may have become a yarn snob but I'm not yet a craft snob) as a gauge as to whether or not it's time to go to bed. When the knitting hits the lap, I can usually tell myself that it's time to hit 'record' on the satellite and go to bed. So I wasn't prepared last night, when I pulled my crocheting off my lap with an effort and said to myself, "LOST isn't even over yet--not time to fall asleep.", and then immediately woke up an hour and a half later. By the by? Mate was still playing WOW when I woke up, just as he had been when I fell asleep. If 'The Nine' hadn't been almost over, I wouldn't have noticed the time lapse at all.

**Knitting scarves for students--it used to be a fun bonding experience. Now I'm starting to feel like it's a pathetic attempt to get them to like me. It's harder to be mean to someone who's provided you with a hand-made object for no reason at all.

**Giving the kids work and expecting to use the time THEY'RE working to do work MYSELF. I've taken to knitting in the front of the class during these times, because the last time I sat at my desk and turned around to take roll (I have to do this, it's on computer and the computer is set, unwisely, to the one side of the room where I can see no students.), when I turned back around the girl who'd gone to the bathroom at that time had had her backpack turned inside out and a candy eyeball smeared on the seat of her desk. Quite frankly, I can't afford to turn my back on the little bastards--it's bad for everyone else's health.

**Asking my own kids to 'spiff' the front room and expecting anything that looks anything at all like a clean living room. They are in school mode now, which means they need the same inch by freaking inch instructions as every other middle schooler in every other learning institution since modern times began.

**Making all of my children one knitted item a year. Kewyn wore a hat from two years ago today--he looked so damn cute, I didn't see the point of making him another one. He's got at least two sweaters ARwyn can wear this year so the one I'm working on that's really big can be worn next year and look just as cute. Bryar's wearing the hat she made and the adorable purple one I made her (the one with the two billion ssk decreases to make the spiral, the one my husband pulled the dpn out of, that one) is getting thrown around the house because I don't trust her to put it in her room without having it disappear--sort of like the sweater I made her last year out of similar colors. Trystan never wears my stuff anyway. Besides, unless this whole 'sitting in front of the class to keep them from eating each other and knitting to keep me from gnawing at my own wrists' think takes off, I just don't have the time anymore--I may as well knit for people whose faces light up, as opposed to people who roll their eyes and go, 'thanks mom...yeah, I'll wear it'.

** Oh yeah--dieting after Halloween isn't working at all. It should be made illegal for stress puppies like me to even attempt a diet between October 31st and January 1st...hell, let the chips (and Snickers bars and Twix and Christmas Hams) fall where they may.

Oh--and things that do work?

**Talking to Mate on the cell phone on his way home from work. For some reason, the kids actually let me get a word in edgwise when we're on the phone, and because they can't hear everything we say (on either side) we can say private things to each other and they can't invade our space to hear.

**Smiling. Even if the kids are going to desperately disappoint me with their behavior, when I smile at the beginning of class, I at least know I made a stab at civillity and understanding.

**Taking a break from the baby hats by doing something off the wall--like crocheting scarves for example, no matter who they are for. I'm looking forward to the baby socks all over again. Never forget the lessons of the Yarn Harlot--for real.

**Letting the housework rot. Who needs to walk through rooms. Clean dishes are overrated. Some day the Smithsonian WILL pay me big money for the bizarre mildew collection sprouting form my sink and shower, I just know it.

**Knitting at stop lights is definitely working for me. I'll never go back to cursing the idiot in front of me for not moving again.

Good Feeling Gone...

2006-10-31T12:27:00.000-08:00

Anybody remember that part from FINDING NEMO... Dory and Marlin are down in the bottom of the blackest sea, and they see a light, and they get all happy, and then they realize that the light is attached to a giant ugly-fish that's going to kill them and eat them with pain?

Marlin's line? "Good feeling gone..."

Yeah. That's what work has been like for the last two days.

My computer crashed yesterday during my movies, that I had played so I could finish my grades. When it came back up, it had eaten four sets of grades for four classes.

We were supposed to have an inservice yesterday. Our principal was sick, so everybody went, "Oh, Goody! We can catch up on GRADES!!!"

Someone at the DO chose yesterday to put us on another server. No time to enter grades in the computer. Any writing I would have done would have gotten eaten. I stayed here and graded essays for my AP class for two hours when I could have been playing with my kids. The AP essays weren't worth my time.

I got observed today while trying to review grammar with kids who didn't understand the concept in the first place. My god, that's humiliating--sort of like coming out of the bathroom with your skirt shoved in your panties if you know what I mean.

So here I am, in the bottom of the deepest, blackest part of the ocean, and the big fish of 'weep at your gradebook apathy' is about to eat me and kill me with pain. Good feeling gone...

But wait...

Tonight? Tonight I'm going to pop the baby into her 'pumpkin bunting' and then in the stroller, the toddler in his "Lightning" costume, and watch Kewyn try to invade the homes of all the nice people giving him candy. I'm going to get home and see what the older kids have done about decorating the porch for Halloween. They carved pumpkins last night--without my help. Trystan tried to make a Harry Potter pumpkin, and ended up with an HP over a toothy grin with cavities--he held it out to me and said, (In all innocence, I swear to God!) "Hey mom, look at my Harry Cavity!"

He wants to sit outside and hide and scare the older kids. NOt the little kids, he keeps saying, just the older ones who won't really be scared.

Good feeling back--and if that big ugly-fish of apathy don't like it, he can bite me...if he can catch me:-)

I Touched a Pig!!!

2006-10-29T18:46:00.000-08:00

Okay, first things first.

The first thing is that, thanks to blogger, which wouldn't let me edit my last post, I'm sure you all think I'm an ungrateful little shit when that couldn't be farther from the truth. I had added a paragraph that said, in no uncertain terms, THANK YOU ALL for your words of support and encouragement when I gave my inner five-year-old a voice the other day, and then, when I attempted to publish it (like, immediately after my first publishing) my blogsite shut down, and wouldn't let me publish even as I added my own comments to my own post. Talk about a confused computer...sheeesssh! Anyway--thank you--you all made me feel so much better I can't even tell you, but in an attempt to do just that, I have only mostly happy things to talk about today!

My children have said or done the following things in the last week:

**Bryar ran up to me the other day, flushed with the heady arousal of new poetry and important information, and said, in all sententiousness, "Mom, have you ever heard of a man named Edgar Allan Poe?"

**Trystan told us this morning that he wasn't eating Special K cereal anymore. Why? "Because mom...it has germs in it!"

"Germs?" Mate and I echoed blankly.

"Yeah--see--it says here on the box. Made from wheat germs. Isn't that gross?"

**(This one needs a picture--which just failed to upload. *sigh*) Anyway, we went to visit Auntie Wendy, who just got her house painted, along with various other home improvements and who has a number of horses and some pot bellied pigs. The picture featured Kewyn feeding the pigs a big dog's milkbone, but the best part (not caught on digital images) was the cave troll, jumping up and down and shouting "I touched a pig I touched a pig I touched a pig!"

**And the baby was just cute.

(Oh...soccer game? Bryar's new team lost to Bryar's old team 3 goals to 0--I don't remember any stinking soccer game.)

The Five Year Old Sleeps Tonight...

2006-10-28T19:57:00.000-07:00

And the 39 year old isn't far behind her...

Long frickin' day! I'll go into it in a second, but first, I'd like to thank ALL of you for all of your words of support during my 'life sucks' temper tantrum in the last post. For everybody who said nice things to try to make me feel better--it totally worked, and I'm a little embarrassed and very grateful. Thank you...thank you for reading my blog and thank you for being nice people and just thank you.

Now about this long frickin' day...Seriously--and it all started last night.

Last night, I was trying (fruitlessly) to clean the kitchen, cook dinner (those gourmet frozen pizzas with 'safeway' on the label) and maybe get Arwyn a bath, when my best friend called. Now this is going to sound cold, but she lives alone--very alone--and often when she talks, she's just rehashing her day the way you would with a spouse, or a child or someone who had to share space with you, and just like with a spouse or a child, sometimes your eyes glaze over. And thus it was with me, so when she said, "...and I need to knit a shawl for my sister's wedding so could you help me pick out a pattern tonight..." my alarm bells were sleeping peacefully, and didn't hardly ring. They should have.

Shopping with Wendy is a nightmare. Looking through my patterns with her was like that same nightmare, but in my own home and featuring my own sacred texts as a centerpiece. "I want this, but in a different color. But...I like this pattern. But in a different color. Can I make it in a different color? I hate working with this yarn. But I like this pattern. But in a different color. But it can't go over my hair--I don't like the tie on this one though. So what do you think? But I don't like that. Does this yarn come in silver? Because I like this pattern, but not in the bronze." For forty-five minutes this went on, and with every repetition of the theme, one thing was becoming painfully clear. This would not be me, telling her how to make the shawl (an alarming prospect in itself--remember, I teach for a living...it would be like bringing insurance home to sell to your children) this would be me, MAKING the shawl. Because this is the same Wendy that I wrote about earlier, the one who knits from the right needle to the left needle through the back loops while throwing the yarn, and while, it is all very zen to not bother her with details when she is making something like socks or a scarf with no pattern (that she knows of) and no pictures (that she knows of) where she can't see how her knitting changes the inherent look of the pattern, but, remember that above conversation? Imagine that same conversation, for three months. Except, instead of "Can I get it in a different color." It would be, "But it doesn't look like the picture. But I can't knit different. But it doesn't look like the picture. Why doesn't it look like the picture? I don't understand what you mean by 'through the back loop'--why would that change anything?" Ad Nauseum. I'd snap like lounge lizard--seriously--you'd see the headlines Insane Woman Kills Best Friend with Whoopty-12 Needles, Proceeds to Knit with Entrails. The carnage would be indescribable, and I'm just not into spending the rest of my life in a rubber room with no sharp pointy objects, so, yes, I did the passive aggressive thing wherein I took on a task I wasn't really asked to do, but passively-aggressively bullied into, and now I'm bitching about it without confronting the perpetrator of my misery. You're all welcome--I'm more sorry than I can say.

So after going to Michael's (and I've become enough of a color-slutting yarn-snob that this felt like the final insult) to discover (just as I predicted) that they didn't carry Lion Brand Glitterspun (Julie, I can hear you barfing from across the continent) and that we had to special order it, I stopped for a snack for Bryar's soccer team, came home, and fell promply asleep in front of Numbers. And I thought that this would be the end of the bad part of the weekend.

This morning, Mate and I were laying in bed, Kewyn between us, watching the weekly Scrubs marathon, and I was thinking, awesome... Bryar's got two soccer games, I've got time to go weigh in...we might be able to clean house in between...and, holy shit... "Mate--it's nine-thirty isn't it?"

"Yup."

"Kewyn's supposed to be at gymnastics right now."

"Shit."

I weighed in--turns out I'm still fat. We went to Bryar's soccer tournament. They got their asses kicked through two games. (Poor coach--middle of the second half of the second game he goes 'It's official girls--we're getting killed!') We've got one more game tomorrow, and then we have time to confront the larvae on the celing before they drop into my mouth as I snore. Like I said--the five year old ain't the only one sleepin' tonight.

Spanking My Inner Five Year Old

2006-10-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

Bad news first, reflection second.

I will be unable to publish BOUND until January, which means that it will probably not be available until February/March.

I'm sorry--I know that there are a couple of people who will be crushed, but we just can't afford it and the fact is, we're doing birthdays for two children and Christmas for four children between now and January--we should be broke, or we are not spoiling our children near enough to perfection.

Didn't I sound all grown up just then? The truth is, I am disproportionately devastated.

I had not realized until Mate told me that we just couldn't do it, how much of my time and energy and sense of self-worth I had poured into an endeavor that, truly, does nothing to contribute to my family. The idea of having to put off any sort of reward for that work hurt me in unanticipated ways.

I cried all night. I felt awful for this--Mate felt bad, and it wasn't his fault. He didn't spend too much money on yarn or books this year--I did, and I have no one to blame but my own scatterbrained fiscal management, of this I am sure.

But...but work has been horrible--I haven't been able to leave even my most well behaved class to do their work for more than three minutes without having to make them stop throwing spit wads or talking or stealing (yes stealing) something small and stupid from my classroom. I feel powerless, impotent, unqualified for a job I usually adore and wherein I usually feel accomplished and useful.

But...but the house is a pit. We have larvae crawling on the celing from an as of yet unidentified source--and although I've tracked down as many cracks and crevices in the kitchen as possible, I am sure that somehow, somewhere, I am to blame for this crawly manifestation of my own domestic inadequacy. There is not one room I can walk in, not one, where I am not tripping on a toddler's toy, an adolecent's back-pack, or my own damned shoe. I can't remember the last time I vacuumed, and my bathroom would overgrow a petrie dish like those maniacal little twelve pronged amoeba in the movie Evolution. The last place I need to be spending time is at work, in the half an hour of peace I give myself before I go home that sometimes turns into an hour, slaving over what amounts to hope and a pipe-dream, when I should be holding my children or cleaning the crumbling mortgage that houses them.

And yet, I can't make my five year old, the screaming toddler inside of me, stop bawling. I can't. It's more spoiled than the cave-troll, and twice as stubborn, and it wants it's voice to be heard and it wants BOUND on the market where people will praise me for it, because it is starving for praise in ways I cannot fathom.

When I get feedback from my books, I don't feel powerless or impotent or inadequate. My students (a select few) read the books and love them and admire me for them, and my inability to get them to actually open a book and do 6th grade level work doesn't seem to matter any more. Most of my praise comes electronically--no one can look at me and see that I've been a failure at my diet for many years now and unless I give them pictures, no one really gets a clear idea how awful my crappy house really is, and it certainly doesn't matter that I'm pushing forty and that I have yet to learned how to be a grown-up.

When people praise my books I feel giddy with my own potential, and intoxicated on my own value. It's more addicting than any drug and a more potent, sensual, throaty and tantalizing siren aria than any nasal nattering towards fiscal responsibilty--in fact it's singing now. It's begging me to find a way to work the books, when I know that I can't, it's howling my name, insisting that BOUND is good, and real, and more complex than anything I've done before, and shutting it out is like stuffing beeswax in my ears and trying to make myself work on mundane tasks while I know the music of heartbreak is vibrating through my soles even as I walk.

My inner-five old is screaming to hear the pretty music, and I've got to find a way to make that brat shut up, because my real children need me more.

One Day More...

2006-10-26T08:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, Blogger belched big time yesterday and swallowed my entire post--I've never been so grateful for a computer taking a dump in my life, because it was more self-indulgent crap about how much my job sucks, and, truth be told, I'm tired of hearing it and I'm living it, so I was glad to spare everybody else out there!

I worked some on the baby sweater last night (anybody remember that? I started it in, like, August? It's a good thing I sized it up...unfortunately, I think I sized it to fit Arwyn NEXT August, but, hey, she'll get some wear out of it this year...) and it was a welcome change. I love baby socks. I love baby hats. But I'm on my 4th set of 9 now, and it's starting to feel like the SAME baby sock and baby hat, so I'm taking out a few other projects (a pair of socks out of Cherry Tree Hill Yarn, the baby sweater, the baby dress, yeah, I've got some UFO's...) and trying to make some FO's.

Of course WIP's aren't a problem... it's been getting cold enough to wear my scarves--I've got about ten, most of them made with bright acryllic yarn--and the kids are begging for me to make them something... I kind of like doing this, although I usually charge them, just so they don't take it for granted--of course, EVERYBODY has a preference...the good news is that it's a place to use my acryllic yarn:-)

I'm liking my kids right now...I sort of had a long talk with myself about finding the joy in my work again...even if I want to do something else, I've always had a joy in my students, in teaching, and some of it came back today. Part of it was watching my 2nd period get nuts about 6th Sense-- a lot of them hadn't seen it before, and suddenly, the light went on. "Oh...foreshadowing was when they gave us hints that Bruce Willis was dead!" Lights on, concept home--it was a nice moment. The other good part came when my 3rd period watched the end of Last of the Mohicans--they were so into the end of the movie--and event though Michael Mann has completely lost his mind and cut the Clannad song out of the end of the director's cut (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) I played it for them via a complicated arrangement of i-pod, boom-box, and tape translator, and they liked it. (I played it for my 4th period DURING the part it should have been on in the first part and they REALLY liked it. What kind of drugs would you have to do to think that cutting that song was a good thing?) But they liked it--they loved it, in fact. (My gang kids especially like the bloody hand-to-hand combat. Maybe now that one kid who got expelled from summer school for weapons will only find it necessary to carry knives instead of guns too.) Anyway, they liked it. They loved it. And I suddenly feel like I didn't share something with people who delight in crapping all over me. Much better feeling, trust me.

Of course, all of this unbounded optimism might be because a cautiously positive thing happened yesterday. About a week ago, I called both the agencies I sent my manuscript to and asked for a note on my progress. I got a call yesterday apologizing for the wait and telling me that they just hadn't gotten to the manuscript, but that they were working on it. I know, I know--it's nothing, really, a courtesy call. However, for the first time I don't feel like I'm shooting T-shirts into the stratosphere out of an air-gun, with some logarithmic chance of getting them back or having anyone else getting them and appreciating them. That one phone call makes my whole endeavor that much less random, and that's a good thing.

So, for those of you familiar with Les Miserable, you've got two songs to choose from:

At the end of the day you're another day older, and that's all you can say in the life of the poor...

OR...

One more day. One day more.

The weekend's in one more day. For teaching, I've had one day more:-)

just so full of myself...

2006-10-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

I went to the Yarn Harlot's blog and fell in love with the sheep and composed this...

I'm just so full of myself I could burp me!

I like that sheep.
That sheep likes me.
We experience synergy.
It's short lived.
He's no fool.
He knows all
I want is wool.
I like that sheep.
This we know.
Because he's made of Me-ri-no.
Thank you sheep
Who eats and spits.
You make it possible to knit.

The End

During a GOOD movie...

2006-10-23T13:22:00.000-07:00

It's movie day today. I know, it probably sounds like I show lots of movies in my class, but in truth, I show maybe 6 all year. That's once a grading period plus a couple of progress reports--movies have helped me make a loooooottttt of deadlines. Hey--a girl's gotta do, right?

Anyway, the hard part about watching movies is that because we control our little universe, we usually watch movies we love. This is bad, because the little bastards shit all over the movies we love best--it's like teaching To Kill a Mockingbird all over again. Anyone who has tried to teach that book to a group of underachieving 9th graders can tell you about heartbreak--you start out with all of that sweet optimism and by the time you're done you're practically screeching "This is literature you little bastards, now shut the (*&^ up and LISTEN!!!" And notice how I didn't say the word 'read'--no, no, if you want them to be exposed to literature, you need to shore up your best Orson Wells/Casey Casum voice, suck it up and read the whole damn thing out loud. They usually tell you that you're the best English teacher they've ever had because you do that, and you smile weakly and remember back when you read your own damned novels because you could and you gave a shit and you wonder from which black hole all those teachers in those movies like Dead Poet's Society and Stand and Deliver sucked their time so you could have some too, but you're too sad and too disillusioned to use that time for the students, you'd rather write and dream about writing and making a difference except the *&^ers that have the power to distribute your books to the masses give less of a shit about your books than your students give about their last literature assignment. You'd have to see my grade report to see how truly depressing this is.

So I'm showing The 6th Sense, which is one of my all time favorite movies--I'm showing it because they totally don't get foreshadowing. I can barely hear the movie among all of the whispering, the clanking of empty gatorade bottles and the 'I'm not talking but I'm communicating wiht someone else in the room' noises.

And I'd probably quit and become the world's fattest waitress (but not most over-educated--you'd be surprised at how many waitresses and bar tenders there are with masters degrees) except...except...

Except a kid gave me a cd that probably saved my life in truth and in metaphor on Friday, and another kid gave me a Tristan & Isolde poster and James Franco is smoldering at me and he's HOT and a kid walked in with a Sacramento King's Poster because he saw me wearing a sweatshirt last week and...

And...

And deep down they're children, most of them, (the ones who aren't complete psychopaths and gang warriors and on drugs or just mean because they can be...) and sometime this year I will read a story or show a skill (even if it's yarnwork) or say something (Goddess help me, not always the stuff I want them to hear) that will stick with them and seem important.

I hope so. God, Goddess and other I hope so. I hope my only contribution to this profession isn't what I put in print when I'm wishing I'm not here.

During a bad movie...

2006-10-21T11:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the whole family is watching Kicking and Screaming and I'm blogging. Should tell you something about the movie...

Anyway, still recovering from yesterday's complete exhaustion, and I'd like to give a huge shout out and hanks to Tam-Tam who literally saved my life yesterday... I was sooooooooooooooooooooo dragging my fat white ass around the classroom yesterday--truly so tired I couldn't focus, and Tam-Tam had made me a cd--I know she was disappointed I wouldn't listen to it in class...the truth was, I was too tired to focus on the music, the kids, and breathing all at the same time. I put it in the car player, on my way out of the parking lot.

That goofy, loopy little song at the beginning of the cd (kiss me kiss me happy happy sweetest kisses just like candy...) is probably the only reason I remembered to pick up the kids and stayed awake to get them home--seriously, thanks Tam-Tam--I couldn't have made it through the day without you.

And speaking of yesterday, it turns out that two of the six kids who got arrested and (maybe) expelled for the gang fight in the vp's office (again, not exaggerating) were my students. Since that one kid that the rest of the staff (with my help) has dubbed 'the f***ing psychopath' has gotten transferred into someone else's room (fortunately a very assertive male--that kid tried to intimidate me, I think he thought it would be easy because I'm female) I almost feel safe.

Anyway--my daughter's team lost badly this morning--I'm thinking that any soccer game before 10:30 am needs caffeine--I don't care if they're 11, we're hitting Starbucks on the way to next week's game.

I've finished my 4th pair of socks and am working on the hat in order to greet the flood of impending babies. We've added another baby to the list. Only 5 more pairs of socks and hats to go. (Every now and then the irony of this endeavor hits me--my own department didn't get me a baby gift for this last pregnancy. $%^$ing men.) The socks are hella cute--they're done in this dk/sport weight merino...so color saturated, they're gorgeous.

And now, to my final thought--if it can be called a thought--you know how we have to type those goofy letters in order to comment on other people's blogs, right? Aren't those letters randomly chosen by logarithm? (I learned that term from the TV show, by the way.) Anyway, shouldn't, if we're choosing stuff at random, shouldn't we eventually randomly end up with a real word? Just sayin'...

I'm gonna write a lot this weekend--BITTERMOON has totally captivated me. And maybe this one can be read by 7th graders...maybe not...still haven't written those scenes. (Imagine wolfish grin...) I'm looking forward to it.

**&^ing Sadists...

2006-10-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, we've already established that sadistic prickweenies abound--especially in my profession. Today, they've officially gotten to me--I think they're giving me cramps. (Of course, that could be my menstrual cycle, but I'm unreasonble and cranky today, and I'm going to blame the sadistic prickweenies. Go ahead. Challenge me on this.) Today, because it's my blog and I'm feeling like a big, water-retaining, sleep-deprived, over-taxed, pissed off witchipoo with bad hair, I'm going to make a list of the sadists who've made my life a nit-bitchy well of absurd crapism. (But first I'm going to truly, sunnily, and sincerely thank Roxie, whose review on my book yesterday was pretty much the brightest ray of sunshine of my day. You're awesome, sweetie--I'm sending you chocolate by telekinesis, as soon as I develop that ability... okay, okay...now back to my rant...)

And the top 10 sadists that are giving Amy Lane crap in this lifetime are...

** My adorable baby daughter who is so cute and so grateful for her bottle during the day that I"m finding it impossible to stop expressing milk in the mornings and during lunch. That's 2 hours of sleep a week I'm giving up, not to mention knitting time during lunch, just to give her one bottle of real stuff during the day instead of powdered formula. Considering how much chow she eats besides formula, I'm convinced there's some sort of endorphin in her smile to make me keep doing this.

**The laundry monster, that eats up ten minutes of every timed-out morning because it refuses to vomit out one lousy stinking pair of jeans for the cave troll. I don't care what you say, that thing has been next to the bed so long, it's sentient.

**My oldest daughter, who gave the Cave Troll the new copy of Over the Hedge at 8:00 last night, giving us the unhappy choice of A. Letting him stay up and watch it or B. Wrench him away kicking and screaming at the injustice of it all. We chose option A. We're bad parents. He went to bed at 9:30 last night and was a zombie this morning--but at least we didn't have to play the bedtime game for an hour. Did I mention we're bad parents?

**The group of self-rightous pricks who sat in my staff-room today and bitched about the horrible things that went into fast-food and how evil it was to need caffeine. If I wanted to know what was in my food, I would learn how to frickin' cook, and if I was a spineless, ball-less, self-serving, self-satisfied, arrogant alcoholic too self-involved to commit to a person, puppy, or profession then I'd be a dumb-shit man too goddamned stupid to figure out that it's out and out dangerous to tell a menstruating woman that caffeine is BAD FUCKING THING!!!!

**The ugly hand of fate that decreed that there would be a gang-war on my campus today, mandating that even the most irritating little bastard can not be sent to the office because they are trying to file police reports and clean the blood off the nurse's office walls. (Sadly, I am not exaggerating.)

**The Time Bitch, who has chosen this moment to suck the red out of my hair and replace it with gray, and now, with four kids and a full time job, I have to make the decision if I'm going to suck it up and start dying my hair for real now, or if I should just go gray. (If anyone's waiting in suspense for the answer to this question, you need to know that I have no fewer than four different shades of permanent hair dye in my closet. I'm just waiting for the resolve.)

**Mate--because he has King's tickets and he really wants me to go, and I'd give an entire mammary right now for just two hours more sleep spread out over the next three days.

**The agents listed in the writer's market, who don't return your packets, don't return your calls, and essentially live to taunt those of us who don't live in New York with their coolness and the fact that fat teachers from California will never know the secret handshakes that will let them in.

**Knitting magazines. There's always a cooler pattern and a cooler yarn that I will never have time/money to use. Damn them all, may they proliferate and grow.

**The mucking fuppet who stocked the vending machines in the staff lounge because why, in the name of the four unholy she-demons of PMS would you, in workplace that's over 70% female, choose NOT TO STOCK ANY GODDAMNED CHOCOLATE!

*whew* I'm going to McDonalds for now for a chocolate cookies, a giant soda, and a quarter pounder with cheese.

I'm a PSYCHOPATH!!!

2006-10-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the cave troll was up at 4:30 this morning, crawling into bed with us and then poking at our faces to see how long he could do that before we snapped and beat him. We never did beat him (although the less sleep we get the more likely the event of that actually happening...) but my usually twisty personality kinked another turn around the old normalcy pole today... and I'm not the only one...

Cave troll's insomnia was apparently caused by a reluctant bm (don't let the doctor spock parenting books fool you--50% of a child's moods can be discerned by whether or not they've had a good poop or if the whole tanker is wedged in the channel so to speak) so the little goombah got up manically and was jumping up on the bed chanting "jump jump jump jump" like some sort of demented exercise video, occassionally landing on his father, who was stoically pretending that he wasn't going to have to wake up and help me wade through the morass an early waking toddler automatically makes of my morning. "God, Kewyn, you're such a little maniac!" Mate grumbled. ("jump jump jump jump jump...") "Could you try not to be such a psychopath?"

Imagine a sudden pause, and a bright eyed, manic-dimpled grin. "I am a PSYCHOPATH!" crowed my toddler triumphantly. Remember--this is the same kid who only speaks when he really feels he has something to say. Well that word apparently resonated because he was shrieking it with glee on the way out the door this morning. "I'm a little PSYCHOPATH!!!" And Mate and I followed blearily in his wake, along with precious adorable sister who was very upsot at being slung in the baby basket to leave because she fell asleep at 6:30 last night and slept in 'til 6:30 this morning and was wondering who in the hell had deprived her of her "I'm the most important person in the world" time.

So I get to school this morning, and I manage to keep a semi-professional face for my 2nd period, but by my 3rd period, I'd completely lost all sense of perspective, and these kids got a 20 minute raving lunatic monologue about the wierdness of family life that dated back to potty training Trystan with cheerios and rebounded to how it freaked Kewyn out to put perfectly good breakfast cereal in the icky place.

It was the quietest that class has been since school started and they thought they'd have the same teacher for more than five minutes at a stretch. (We just changed around 20% of our schedules. 9 weeks into the semester. For the 5th time. We're lucky the kids don't catch on to the fact that the administration is just running the computers like hamsters running a wheel and that all purpose has been lost for most of the staff... oh, wait...I think they know...) But I was mid rant to my 3rd period, and then to my 4th period, and caught them watching with bemused eyes and realized that this was it. Sleep deprivation had done it's worst--I was no longer a teacher, I was a stand-up comedienne...and a slightly off-kilter one at that.

In short people, "I am a PSYCHOPATH!" God bless the little goombah anyway...he may be the only one who thinks I make sense by the end of the day...

Pure Rhyme and Sweet Reason...take a vacation.

2006-10-15T20:41:00.000-07:00

My kids are watching Jaws right now. Isn't there some sort of moratorium on how long that damn movie can go on scaring the hell out of complete adults? Apparently not, since my first book featured a girl getting grabbed by an underwater ookie thing and I thought that scene would help me work out my 'swimming where I can't see my feet' fears, and now I'm prone to completely freak out for no apparent reason in the middle of a lake. I"m also known for claiming to feel fish where there are (supposedly) no fish to feel. They're probably eels.

I finished a super thick scarf on whoopty-twelves today. Whoopee. Another FO--funny how, when you lost your infatuation with your materials, your pattern, and your whoopty-twelve needles about two weeks ago, FO doesne't seem to stand for Finished Object anymore...just saying.

My husband bought me a ball winder--to replace the one my daughter dropped and broke, and I'm torn between awaiting it's arrival with breathless anticipation and dreading having to sort my stash into meaningful piles as opposed to just running my fingers through it blissfully which is what I'm doing now. (Everyone picture a female Homer Simpson going "Merino Wool...errglllgllllllllllllll"

Speaking of Mate--his B-day present to himself with my blessing, permission, and wistful yearning to have known enough about to have ordered by myself is on its way. I feel marginally better about that i-pod/ball-winder thing. NOt much. Marginally. Christmas is going to have to be hella good. (Of course, his after-Christmas gift last year was an X-Box 360--I do admit he's been paying back a little X-Box karma...)

I had a logical converesation with Kewyn about the shower today--he stopped cringing against the wall like a concentration camp victim (an image that hit even closer to the nerve by his short-cropped hair) and just started whining about "no wash hair" which he did even in the bathtub, so my guilt has receded just a little bit. Not much. Just a little.

I have a new Agent listing on it's way to the house... (Writer's Market, whatever) and next week, come rejection package or no rejection package, I'm going to send out another rejection package! (Most of you understand what I mean, right?) Anyway, the web-designer for another author offered to set me up with a forum on that author's site--I think I'll take him up on it. I write kind of a specialized fiction...I don't want sweet grandmotherly knitting types looking up my books because they think I'm such a sweet, family oriented young teacher and getting all flushed and upsot when they hit that first sex scene because they didn't realize I was that kind of dark and twisty girl. (Stephanie, Roxie, Rae, bells, Julie, I'm kidding. Pleeeeeeeeze don't convoy down here and beat me to death with your whooptie-twelves, IT WAS A JOKE, I swear!) But I do need to find another forum to get the word out, since the agent hunt seems to have come to a brick-wall halt.

So now for the interactive portion of my pictureless, linkless blog...

First question--speaking of eels, does anybody out there listen to the rock group the Eels? They've done a couple of tracks for the Shrek Movies and for the movie Holes but the Nor Cal radio stations don't do anything actually 'alternative' unless they can make money for it, which sort of makes their music, uhm, mainstream so besides Novocaine For the Soul (which, again, I really liked) I haven't heard anything else. But I have an i-pod and I'm dying to fill it, so someone let me know if they like their stuff or not.

Second question--is the name 'Ajahn' (soft 'j' sound, like in Jean-Paul) too close to the name Adrian? I only ask because Adrian was a major player in my first series, and I have a character that I really like who is developing in BITTERMOON that I want to call 'Ajahn', but if it sounds too close, I'll call him 'Jahnny'.

Third question--we bought Kewyn a Lightning McQueen car costume today, and let him run around Target as we shopped shouting "I am Lightning". Did that bother anybody? Tough. He was so damned cute I couldn't stand it.

And to conclude this terrible bout of brain ping-pong, everybody remember the immortal words of Dory the Fish. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming swimming swimming... Unless you're an ookie thing like an eel in a lake that DOESN'T play alt rock, in which case you can make like a Finished Object, and leave me alone...

Musings...

2006-10-14T12:56:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm sitting in my classroom, listening to my best friend the breast pump as I do every lunch, and the group of boys who routinely trash I mean use my front ramp for lunch was talking the way boys do. They're not a bad bunch--9th & 10th grade, mostly, and if they're not the Valedictorian set, they're not the "I'm just here to make a drug deal so back off" set either--in fact, they're my favorite kind of kid--good hearted, slightly goofy, and more interested in an interesting class than in making perfect grades. I can hear their chatter through the open window, letting the perfect October breeze come in (but with a curtain and a dark room, so they can't see inside) and I hear one of them say, "Man--you wanna go skydiving? Now that's a waste of a perfectly good airplane!"

Writing is like that.

I'm writing a book for my kids. Or it was going to be, but it turns out my brain is just frickin' incapable of writing for anybody but itself. So now I'm writing a book that my kids could read that won't embarrass me or get me arrested for foisting pornography on my children. And it's freaking me out.

Where do I draw that line, people?

My first book, VULNERABLE, had, well, lots of swearing and lots of sex. I told my Advanced Placement students I had written it--some of them, ordered it, which was fine, as long as, I told them, their parents would be fine with it. In an AP class that's not a problem. They read it. They TRULY loved it. (I know this, because I didn't let them use this book for anything having to do with a grade. If a kid reads a book they're not graded on and THEN praises it, that must be a pretty good book to them.) A few kids a year since have read the book--and have loved it. One of them who read it got it from another teacher who read it, much to my flattered embarrassment,

Two weeks ago, that student's little brother came up to me and asked for the name of the second book, WOUNDED. He told me who his sister was and told me she wanted me to sign the second one for her, and I was, again, flattered. Then he told me that he read the book two years ago in 8th grade, and suddenly, I wasn't so flattered.

I was flabbergasted.

I wouldn't let MY eighth grader read that book. Of course, Trystan takes things literally, and the book is too old for him, and the vocabulary is too advanced, and the idea of discussing the stuff that happens--not just the sex-- makes me nauseous with the whole 'teaching as parenting' thing, so that's probably not a good example. How's this. I wouldn't let my SEVENTH GRADER read this book until she got to be an 11th grader at least--and she's in the advanced classes. And I'm a pretty liberal parent, basing much of my judgement on the trickier questions of parenting on the "shame is bad, information is good" rule of thumb.

So what do I do with this new book?

I mean, a lot of it is NOT sex. In fact, most of it is not sex. Most of it is action, adventure, a little thematic preaching (forgive me--my oldest son just got to the point where the F-word is a big deal--no, not the one I like, the one that rhymes with truck, the other one. The ugly one that rhymes with maggot, and I can't stand it that he thinks that this is okay. If I can write a book that makes him not use that word and all of the prejudice that goes with it, it will be worth the time and effort) and a sweet, "wait for me" kind of romance at it's heart. But what about that other part? I mean, it's there--I can't deny it's not. I can play the "lights go down and we all know what happens" game for much of it, but if I don't write the whole scene, at least in my head, I don't know the nuances of how the characters behave afterward, and that makes for shallow writing. But I don't want to dump that on my kids, either.

So where do I do the big 'dump edit' where I cut out the scene and put it on my 'director's cut' document that I will publish on my blog for the lucky ones who really want the dirty stuff?

I'm just borrowing trouble, I know--although the book is almost entirely plotted out in my head, I'm only on manuscript page 85 of what promises to be another monster sized manuscript (at least in the self-publishing world) so I have lots of time to make that choice. I'm just musing here, playing the 'when will I' or 'am I a bad parent because' or 'what makes gratuitous and what makes necessary' kind of game...and the kids never really have to read it, although I did promise, and it was an important promise, and I don't want to break it...I mean, it's a hobby at this point, right? It's only important to me? So it's not worth this angst, this musing, this fretting like a sore tooth, is it?

Who knew writing sex scenes could be so much like skydiving? The trick is knowing how not to waste a perfectly good airplane.

On an exceptional peanut gallery, and why I shouldn't do math...

2006-10-12T09:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, first off, hats off to Roxie!!!! I need to do links, I know, and I'm typing from work so I don't have the web address, but Roxie got out and rustled up some interviews and some publicity for her FANTASTIC book--http://www.amazon.com/Sanna-Sorceress-Apprentice-Roxanna-Matthews/dp/1425938388/ref=sr_11_1/102-5899518-5354526?ie=UTF8--Sanna, Sorceress Apprentice, and she got an article written about her, and I am soooooo proud and happy for my internet friend that I almost danced a jig in the kitchen for her last night when I got the e-mail. She gives me hope as an independently published author--and makes me feel just the teensiest bit guilty about being dark and twisty because my books are full of dark and twisty things and she has such a sunshiny, wonderful soul that her book glows without them.

Secondly, I'd like to give a shout out to Juliehttp://samuraiknitter.blogspot.com/ for doing a knit-along--it looks really interesting and she's very talented and anyone who hasn't seen the jacket she'll be walking you through will be left breathless.

Of course Lady in Red and Rae get kudos just for being teachers--power to the sisterhood, y'all... we all share in the pain... and to tam-tam for passing my class and laughing at my jokes...

And now moving on to address bells and Stephanie--both of whom I love to death in a strictly electronic way, and who had a little disagreement yesterday about math... I thought I'd clarify my stance on this controversial subject... because I think math is great--I really do.

For knitting and people way smarter than I am.

Would you like some examples of Amy Lane math? (Or Shanny Mac math, depending on who I am today?)

I once yelled at my son because he had seven pairs of pants at the beginning of the year, ripped holes in the knees of two of the pairs, out grew two more and, dammit, should have had five pairs left to choose from.

My husband frequently tells me we have a hundred dollars left in the bank at the end of the pay period, and I think that's enough to buy milk, gas, fast food for three days, an outfit for the baby, diapers and yarn.

I have yet to figure out that buying books from amazon.com actually decreases my income.

I still believe that I only spend 2% of my yearly budget on craft supplies.

I have yet to add my daughter's request for yarn into her allowance because it makes me all headachy.

Although at last count there were only six people living in my house (and two of them don't eat much) I keep buying groceries for ten. And running out of food.

I have no fewer than 4 calendars in my classroom. I NEVER know what day it is.

I passed college physics by writing word problems to explain how I WOULD get the answer if I knew how to do the frickin' math.

I keep telling people I'm thirty-four. And believing it.

I once started the flared portions of my daughter's sweater sleeves three inches late because I added 3 and 2 and got seven. It's okay though, I made the same mistake twice.

However, as bad as I am at math, I can't beat the California education system in sheer ineptitude, because only a smog-vomited brain-shot prickweenie would think that thirty-six kids in a classroom is not too damn crowded to teach.

Things of little note...

2006-10-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

I'm not feeling too articulate today--I'm sort of pouring a lot of myself into BITTERMOON...but I did have some bizarre and tiny things I thought I'd share:

* The baby is singing. No kidding--she chews on her hands, smiles winningly (is there any other way?) and goes La la la la la la...la la la la la... I know every kid does this, but she does it better than any kid I have at this moment. (The older kids are too self concious to just belt out their la-las...alas.)

* Kewyn talks. Not a lot--he's like his father that way. But he does talk--he says "my stick" and "my pig" and "my dinosaur". I know he's three, and I've heard him make totally complete sentences and he loves to read, but really, since Trystan, Bryar, Mate and myself all interpret every grunt, including the one that says 'look, I'm leaving something disgusting in my diaper and you know that's your job to deal with', I don't think he really sees the need.

* Bryar has friends. This is a big furry deal--last year she was the kid that the bullies decided to hate from the moment she got off the bus. We told her to keep hold of her smile, have a good attitude, and things would change. She got two phone calls last night from kids we've never met--we were so happy for her. Now we have to go meet the kids and their parents...that sort of joy is short lived.

* Trystan has learned that nakedness is not to share with the family. (For those of you who've read the archives, you know this is a big step.) I know this because when I walk in on him in our ONE BATHROOM (still a problem, people, don't doubt it), he covers his wee-ness with one hand. I'm grateful--although his pediatrician just asked me if he'd hit puberty yet and I had to tell her "I'm so glad I don't know the answer to that question...I hope he can continue to hide that thing under only one hand.!"

* Mate is...well, hecka cute. You've seen the pictures... a lot changes over twenty years, but hecka cute is not it.

* I've started Yarn Club here at school. *sigh* I told them they have unlimited access to my yarn stash (the stuff I've moved from home to school--all acrylic, it makes me feel better about getting rid of it somehow) as long as they make something for charity. But now I have to teach them how, and I've got to tell you, my patience is mighty thin these days.

Sometimes I think I should have taught math--I hate math, but at least I wouldn't have taken things I loved and made them onerous to think upon... then again, occassionally, the students see the light and that thing I love is magnified about a bajillion, with chocolate sauce. Maybe I'm just not destined to know math.

Cinnamon & Roses

2006-10-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

(toh) Okay...I'm superstitious, so I'm sticking with three pictures of my beautiful children on a spectacular fall day... The fair was fantabulous... the day was clear and bright and the sky was that color of blue that cracks your heart clear open and lets dreams in. The picture of Kewyn from the night before was also classic--Bryar dressed him up as she was trying on her dress and said "Mom--look at my Prince Charming!" And Kewyn, who only talks when he needs to, looked at me and grinned and said "I'm Prince Charming." When I'm old and senile and keep thinking I'm living forty years in the past, I hope that's one of the tape loops that keeps playing back in my decaying brain ferment.

The older kids were wonderful--Trystan is wearing a Knight in Shining Armor costume I made him about three years ago, two days before Holloween using the last yard of shiny stuff I could find at the fabric store--he kept getting waylaid by Faire people who wanted to talk--and he was shy and charming when he spoke as only Trystan can be. (He can also be a 6' , 250 lb. walking advertisement for my ineptitude as a parent, which is why those charming moments are so especially treasured.) Bryar's only dark moment was when she chose the matching red three headed dragon puppet to complement her little brother's blue one (he spent a giddy hour wielding that thing and shouting 'rrrrooooarrrrr', which totally justified the price of admission AND the dragon) and then she decided she should have bought something to wear instead. She and Kewyn played dragons this morning, and that buyer's remorse completely disappeared.

Princess Arwyn Star did what she always does--attract admirers. One such, a Faire employee, actually vaulted her stand to come and coo at our little bit of royalty. Twice--the second time she called for her friend to come see the perfect baby she had told her about. I was sort of in awe--I mean, I'm pretty sure all of my children were this beautiful as babies, but Arwyn seems to be attracting more than her fair share of attention.

Mate put to use his pewter beer mug (and bought a belt and a matching loop to hold it) and was genial and forgiving, especially as I dug into the wallet to spoil the children. I should have thought about alcohol years ago. My friend Wendy was...well she is spectacularly beautiful and doesn't look close to her age, but she...she dreams. She dreams as we all do when we're single, about meeting Prince Charming (not the 3 foot version) and seems to think he lives to haunt Ren Faire's, and was most disappointed when he didn't show. The day was so lovely, I was hoping he would, just for her sake.

Besides these moments, there were two moments of twisted surreality that made the day what it was, though.

The first was at the beginning, when one of the costumed roughs slung his arm over his wench and entered the fair... he was wearing a cloak and trousers and leather armbands and a hat with a plume and leather bootsw with pewter accoutrement and...well, not much else, and his chest and his arms and the band of muscles leading down to the band of his trousers...let's just say my heart beat a little (a lot) faster when I saw him, not so much for the physical presence of beauty but for the sheer insouciant sensuality and daring of such an outfit, and my brain, already greased by the clothes and the breeze and the lack of sleep (our little princess didn't sleep much in the hotel) slid into BITTERMOON so quickly I almost couldn't see the reality in front of me, and just like breathing I was watching Ajahn (whose name might change--it's a little close to Adrian for my peace of mind) sit out on the steps of the library, wearing just such an outfit, and watching Torrent approach with a hooded longing in his eyes. And suddenly, the faire became an odd time of duality for me...much of me, my heart and humor, was their, with my children, enjoying the day, but a part of me, the part that kicks in when I'm in traffic or staff meetings or knitting without the tv on, was writing, and BITTERMOON, the book I was working on for my children, became mine at last...of course its a little more sensual now... but it won't be out for a year and a half... and I can always edit.

The other thing that happened involved perfume and my own dogged detrmination to lay claim to who I am... let's just say that when I asked for a scent that said "I may be a chubby mother of four on the outside but I am also exotic and dark and interesting on the inside" these nice people did a little bit of mixing and came up with cinnamon and roses. I was deeply wounded. Cinnamon and roses? I write trashy vampire novels, for sweet wool's sake! I hold the staff record for dropping the F-bomb at innappropriate times! I hold my own (most years) at a very challenging teaching environment, and have gone toe to toe with administrators I thought did not take my job seriously! All of that, and I smell like my grandmother's bridge club? And then, to make matters worse, my husband liked it. And so did my kids. And so did Wendy. And I was aghast--where was the darkness? Where was the little bit of twist that makes my inner life such a surprise? Because, I'm telling you-cinnamon ain't it. (I've never been a big fan of perfume that smells like food anyway.) But everybody loved this smell--everybody. And I've always been a big believer that people's perception of you is your fault--if they think I'm a foul mouthed ass, well, maybe I have been. If they think I'm smart (and you'd be surprised the number of times in my life when I've tried to hide that I'm not stupid) well, maybe that's such a soul-bone part of you that God just didn't mean for it to go and cower in a corner of your personality...and here I was, being gifted with the scent of cookies and roses, without a vampire or a pan-sexual sidhe lover in sight. It was mortifying. I almost didn't buy the perfume, in spite of the fact that it was turning Mate on in a big way. But then, I remembered--I am in charge of who I am. I had the people cut the scent with amber--which, by the by, suggested all that dark twisty stuff and still didn't kill the essential me-ness in the rest of it. I am amber. I am also cinnamon and roses--we have to live with what the good Lord gave us, after all... (And thank you Goddess for the good sense to see that:-)

Nuggets of Goodness

2006-10-05T21:58:00.000-07:00

Okay... looking over at my last post, I realized a few things:

A. I should be shot for typos alone.
B. People who don't know me probably think that I have no middle ground. It looks like I'm either up up up, or homicidally (never suicidally) depressed. I was searching for an explanation to this and it occurred to me--we write about not only what we know, but also what is interesting. If I produced acres of blog about Sacramento Traffic Patterns, not only would you people fall asleep, but someone might come and stalk and kill me for being criminally boring. I do assure you that I go for whole seconds at a time without a trapeze swing from manic to depressed--I even have conversations with my husband that would need the phonebook to spice them up, but instead of trying to bore you into believing me, I'll focus on some good stuff--or at least marginally funny stuff, or at least the stuff that keeps me from dropping trou, mooning NHS and telling everyone therein to kiss my fat white ... nevermind.

Following are some nuggets of gallows humor from the chicken in Chicken Run who would have to knit herself a noose in order to accomplish any act of true desperation. For the record? I don't have that kind of time.

* I caught a parent who had been one of Satan's victims during back to school night last night. (Lady in Red, forgive me, you've heard this story already.) Anyway, the poor woman wanted to know if I was going to be like Satan, and make her son re-write his papers six thousand times without offering any clear direction sas to what, exactly, was the problem. (Again, forgive the typos--I'm not toh today, but my keyboard keeps freezing, making it near impossible to fix the errors I do see.) Anyway, I thought about the sheer immensity of making my students re-write that much, and the thought almost dizzied me. "No, ma'am, to be honest, I don'thave that kind of spare time." I said, trying for tact. "Excellent." The woman said, "I'm so happy to hear that." I guess I'm happy to oblige.

* A darling misunderstood creature left a note on his desk (literally on--but nothing a bottle of Fantastic couldn't handle) alluding to the size of my (admittedly) sizeable ass. This initially depressed me, but then I realized something. (Insert evil giggle here.) The little bastard didn't count on being the only kid in that desk for three periods. I've got him dead to rights, and I hope he has to tell his mother.

* I totally nuked a lesson about Ben Franklin by mentioning the fact that Franklin was bi-sexual--and that he liked his female mistresses older. When we got to the part about his precepts, and the one on chastity, they couldn't understand how he could even be a great statesman if, in their words, "He did the nasty with men." Now the reason I mentioned it was A. to get their attention--not much does. B. Because our GSA is now defunct, and our school is so redneck homophobic, that anything I can do to further the cause for gay-rights and against prejudice of anysort, I try and do--the fact that Franklin was bi, is, I think, sort ofcool. Anyway, I was terribly depressed because their minds all closed like a fucking steel trap, and suddenly the kids were (literally--you have to know this damned class) screaming at me about how awful he was and how they wouldn't listen to anything he said. There was two minutes left in class and I said "I totally pity you guys. YOur worlds are so small--there's such a big exciting universe out there, and your little minds will never see it." I don't know if this is good or not, but I actually felt the pity (as opposed to the simmering anger) that I was espousing. I must have grownup a little when I wasn't looking.

* (For the record, my blogger froze up on me last night, and I'm trying to get back into that 'little nuggets of goodness' mode...hard to do when you're running 15 minutes late and have a truckload of paperwork on your desk, but, hey, I am a pessimistic optimist, I can do anything...) Anyway, back to Franklin and let's move up a period, because I love my fourth period intensely, and they were totally cool with the Franklin thing... and when we got to the bit about chastity, I suddenly, in the face of their open-minded bemusement, found the perfect 21st century words to define Franklin's attitudes towards sex-- "All he's saying people, is don't let the little head do all the talking!" They laughed (but not uncontrollably) and then one girl piped up, "But that doesn't mean he doesn't get to have his say!"

Bingo. It was awesome. Now I just need the ghost of Ben Franklin to come back and scare the crap out of my 3rd period and my day will be complete. (He must have, because today I'm having my 3rd period translate three of his precepts, using the above anecdote as an example, and they're working in *relative* quiet. Go Ben, go!)

* And on the cave troll front? I am thrilled to announce that one of his parents taught him a swear word--the big one, rhymes with truck--and, hold on to your drawers, IT WASN'T ME!!!!!! Mate was doing the bathroom (still gutted, btw) and he cracked a piece of drywall and shouted said word, (for clarification, I think I used it somewhere earlier, but I'm not in that kind of mood right now...) and he's got this fabulous, deep, carrying voice, and from four rooms down Kewyn came chanting... well, you know the word. He forgot it the next morning, but this incident has had a salutory effect on our language use, because Kewyn is the consummate parrot, and unless we want him to go around repeating this word for the grandparents (one of whom, we must remember, actually taught this word to me, for sweet irony's sake!) we can never repeat the word in his hearing again. Let's see how that works out, shall we?

And it's a new day, and my kids are walking in, and the whole fam damily is going to the Ren faire this weekend in Gilroy and (hold on to your knickers...) we got two hotel rooms, and the kids auntie Wendy (not really my sister) is going to stay in their room. I'm almost faint with joy.

Have a good weekend everybody!
*

Nagging little questions...

2006-10-03T15:32:00.000-07:00

I'm home today while the baby gets her shots etc., and trying to not be totally exhausted and get some housework done...ha ha ha ha ha...that's a good one...me, get some housework done... anyway, my brain is sort of doing the jumping-bean in a ping-pong thing and I can't settle down to my original rant on why the California education system is butt-f--ing stupid and so are all the people shouting 'test scores test scores test scores' like those zombies in the mummy going 'Imotep, Imotep' and anyone who has any real personality starts mumbling 'Imotep, Imotep...' just to not get pulverized. I think I may get back to the rant later--it's always on the backburner...

But back to my nagging little questions:

Why is there always an hour wait to get shots for children? I don't understand why they would push more well baby appointments through the doors than they pointy needles and poor nurses to give the shots.

Why are we testing kids on more grammar than their teachers know? Put six English teachers in a room and run them through the 11th grade state standards on grammar and they will look at you funny and say "why in the hell does anybody need to know that shit?" And these are people who have masters degrees and write novels and articles and crap--for criminies sake who needs to know the slippery difference between a 'that' used as an adjective, a pronoun or an adverb, as long as there's a few other words in the sentence to clarify things.

What kind of flavor-crack do they put in hummus? Seriously--so addictive, should be illegal--garbanzo beans alone could not do that.

How does a two year old get in-freaking-somnia? Seriously--I'm pulverized. Last night I just gave up, made him snuggle with his father (because I can not sleep when someone's touching me) and hogged my side of the king-sized bed. He needs to work it out and go to sleep. For serious. For real. I dosed him with motrin this afternoon just to get him to take a nap (well, he appearsw to be sick too...I'm not that bad of a mother...)

Why does a toddler's snot run in perfect even white-green rivers right into their mouths? Don't answer that. Erase it from your heads.

How do I overcome my addiction to sock yarn? (Like anyone tuning into a blog called 'a-yarning-to-write' would want to figure out an answer to that question--I might as well ask about overcoming and addiction to that pesky oxygen drug!)

Why can't we seem to take more pictures? My precious little one is growing up before my eyes...it hurts me to think about how big she's grown between bad snapshots.

Who do I have to drug, sleep with, or kill to get a freakin' agent to return my damned submission packets? Seriously? And since I put my blog address on my query letter, if any of you are out there, you're welcome to answer...and although the unflattering photos of me are totally accurrate, I will point out that I'm perfectly capable of sucking a golf ball through fifty feet of garden hose. All right, forget I said that. That was crass. Forgive me. But seriously--can you smell the desperation here? (And I swear by my Mate that I was only kidding...)

What kind of disaster is my classroom in right now? Last time I left it to a sub, the damned sub responded to my warning about my awful classes with a sweet little note about how "an organized environment tends to minimize the chaos" (i.e., my classroom was messy.) In the wake of that note was a classroom that was trashed, new text books face down on the floor, and a candy box that was, HELLO, short forty dollars short in candy... my first written sub complaint in 14 years, people...no one pisses on me in my own damned house.

Why test scores, people? Why in the name of all that is holy and some things that aren't, do we have to stake the futures of our children on tiny lead dots on a scantron? Of all the crimes our leaders are guilty of, turning education into a game of connect the dots is possibly the worst and most costly crime of all.

And, the last question of them all... can I stuff a nap in here between the blog and taking the daughter to soccer practice? I'd sure like to try!

Bryar Blogs...

2006-10-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

Well, it was a terribly long day--our birthdays usually are. Mate, Bryar and I have the both good and exhausting fortune to share our birthdays with Alexa, my mother, and her sister Teresa. Alexa does not drive, and my grandparents are getting much older, and for my mother's birthday, I took her to lunch with grandpa and Teresa, and then we all drove to see grandma in the hospital as she recovers from a series of surgeries. It's a lot of driving--and a lot of trying to cram months of living full lives into a few moments of visiting--and by the time we were done I was in the 'near tears' stage of exhaustion. I did manage a true smile once, towards the end of the drive, though. Trystan gave me a (very gentle) sock in the arm and said 'out of state'. I looked and saw that the car ahead of us had Minnesota plates and a Papa John's Pizza marquee on the top, and said "Wow...think that pizza's gotten cold already?" I got a chuckle from Trystan, and felt not quite so bad about dragging my children hither and yon in pursuit of family.

Anyway, my amazing daughter Bryar has written a play--I was so impressed by the play and by the fact that it is very funny, that I told her that for my birthday, I would post the play for my blog. I'm extremely proud to do so. Everybody give it up for Bryar Rose, and her very 21st century take on the faery tale that spawned her name:

Sleeping Beauty
: Remix
Narrator: Once upon in a place far, far away there ….

Sleeping Beauty: Ya’ll I do not live far, far away You’re in highland avenue caaaalliiifoornia. Man, and I am right next to you, say get it right!!!!!!!!!

Narrator:(A little annoyed) OK! That was where a royal babe was born, and on this day she was cursed by an Evil witch….

Evil witch: Mr. N, I’m not going to be called Evil witch. I’d rather be the Beauty devil. OK!!!!

Cinderella: Which story is this?

Narrator and Witch: IT’S Sleeping beauty!!!

Cinderella: Ok, OK I just wanted to know.

Narrator: (rolling eyes) Let get on with the story. The Beauty Devil cursed the child with a monstrous curse that one woeful day she will touch a rose and go into a deep, deep sleep for a hundred a year. But then a good fairy set an enchantment.

Good fairy: I doooo noooot waaaaant to be called the good fairy. I’d RATHER BE CALLED THE SWEET SISTA….

SHAKESPEAR: Is this the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet?

Good fairy: are ya’ll from the sixth-teenth century?

SHAKESPEAR: Of course I am.

Good fairy: you’re in the wrong century--It’s 2006!

SHAKESPEAR: Thank you kind ma’am.

Good Fairy: now back to you narrator-- the sweet sista is ok right?

Narrator: (losing his mind) That said, she would have to sleep until a kind prince came and kissed her upon the lips. So when the young princess turned twelve she pricked her finger and fell into a deep sleep. There was a prince that was noble…..

Prince charming: I don’t want to be prince charming I want to be …..

Pinocchio: I’m prince charming. * His nose grows*

Narrator: (irritated) Pinocchio get out of the story. Prince Charming what were you saying?

Pinocchio: *sighs* Ok.

Prince charming: I’d like to be prince perfect.

Narrator: *sigh* Okay. Fine. There was the noble Prince Perfect who wondered what was scaring the people in the neighboring kingdom. When he entered the kingdom he saw a gigantic dragon.

Dragon: I am so tired of being called gigantic drrraaaagggon I’d…….

Hansel and Gretel: *very swedish accent* YA what a story is this.

Narrator: *nearly ready to blow flames * It is sleeping beauty!!!!!!!

Dragon: I’d rather be beauty dragon.

Sleeping beauty: * half asleep and oddly outside the castle* beauty is in my name too.

Evil witch: beauty is in my name Double too.

Prince perfect: So sleeping beauty do you want to kiss. *smacks his Lips*

Sleeping Beauty: *sleep Talking* and they lived Happily Ever After.

Good Fairy: What are you doing here?

Evil witch: I don’t care what I’m doing here. What are you doing here?

(Evil witch And Good fairy get into a magic Fight.)

(Prince Perfect starts trying to kiss sleeping Beauty.)

(The dragon Starts trying to beat up Hansel and Gretel.)

Narrator:(obviously angry) LET ME FINISH!!!!

Every one: (stops talking completely silent) Ok

Narrator:* scans the room sighs and opens book* The Prince saw a gigantic dragon. So he did what was right, he fought the dragon. He won but he was about to drop. The good fairy saw this Prince and helped him to the top. When there he kissed the young princess and they lived happily ever after.

Every one: How did sleeping beauty get in the castle so fast?

Narrator: Why do you ask?

Every one: because she was a sleep.

Narrator: * Puts face in hands* I have no idea.

THE End

Happy Birthday, Mate

2006-09-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

This is Mate. I'd like to tell you all that he's not as good looking in real life just to scare off all the sweet young things I fear will besiege him, but I can't--he's just this cute.

It's our birthday--mine is today (and to that end, Bryar will be blogging for me tomorrow--she's written a very funny play about Sleeping Beauty--you'll laugh, I promise!) and Mate's is tomorrow. We are thirty-nine.

Twenty years ago, I was actively flirting with three guys--two of them born on Sept. 30, and one of them born on Oct. 1st. The other two didn't pan out, and the one on Oct. 1st had a terrible crush on another girl--I stalked I mean talked him out of that nonsense--Mate was it. I don't much like shopping around, and here I'd found a perfectly good Mate and I refused to let him off the hook--and all in all, he's worked out better than my best dreams.

He doesn't give me shit about my weight--although he does encourage me to eat healthy. He lets me buy yarn, as long as there is money in the bank. He plays with our children--in fact, the goofy goombah seems to think they're almost as interesting as I do--how can you beat that. He gives me super fancy toys, like my i-pod, that I think I don't need and then discover that I can't live without. Of course, he doesn't fall into that category--I'm pretty sure that the sun and moon would wither in my sky and blow away should there come a day when Mate is not by my side. (Of course, if I ever catch him with a sweet young thing, I'll be responsible for his departure. He knows this--we've been very clear on this matter.)

So, all this crunchy, chewy, sweet and meaty goodness in one tried and true Mate--and what did I get him for his birthday?

Not a blessed thing. He didn't want anything. Well, he did want something--a World of Warcraft addition, but they don't have it out yet, so we decided to wait. I figured I'd give him a card, letting him know he could have the toy of his choice, without guilt or looking back, when it became available, but I feel empty inside. I want something wonderful to give to my Mate--he's my one and only Mate, my stars and moon...shouldn't Mate have the best birthday wishes available on planet Earth?

Absolutely--so, unless I can sneak out tomorrow and have the perfect brainflash for the perfect gift for my perfect Mate, all I have to offer him is wishes. So here are my best wishes for Mate:

I wish a huge-ass plasma television bigger than our living room wall, and a house to put it in.

I wish him a skinnier wife. (Of course, this birthday wish would serve us both well.)

I wish him children who have inherited his housecleaning gene.

I wish him children who have passed my slobosaurus gene right up.

I wish him a next life with a supermodel who adores cleaning house wearing a French-maid's outfit and a smile.

I wish him me, in my next life, inside that supermodel.

I wish him a Mustang, hot and red, with a V-8 and a 389 engine and all the trimmings.

I wish to be next to him, skinny and with my hair blowing back, as he drives it.

I wish him enough magic powers to restore our bathroom to usability without too much work--Mate works too hard already.

I wish him cats that never crap on the floor, dogs that don't go through the trash, and weenie pigs that don't cost a hundred dollars.

And when some big publishing company buys my books and I turn into a corporation, I wish him a happy job as my houseboy...with all the 'duties' that implies.

But most of all (since it's my birthday too, and many of these wishes have aimed a mild benefit in my direction) I wish that he never in his life hears the following words from any of our adored children:

* Can the baby and I come and stay while Zaphod tours with the band?
* But a GED is almost as good as a diploma.
* But you know marijuana SHOULD be legal.
* Am I supposed to know who the father is?
* I know my old room's been converted--that's okay, we can sleep under the sewing machine.
* You didn't like that car anyway.
* Hey--we got the pets, the pictures and the laptops out.
* It's not my fault cops don't know how to drive!
* But my teacher is HOT!
* But college grading systems are really just prejudiced relics of a corrupt educational institution anyway.
* I'll pay back that bail money, I promise!

Seriously--Happy Birthday, Mate. I wish I knew what to get you--you've given me the best life I could have dreamed of, if I'd been smart enough to have that kind of dream.

toh

2006-09-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

Let's see if I can start a new computer acronym... what do you all think? Help me out with it--it could catch on... toh. That's it. toh--no--not tangent=opposite/hypotenuse-- instead, it stands for Typing One Handed... I mean, 'lol' took off and stuck--what about toh? It could help with so many things...typing while nursing the baby, typing while holding the baby, typing while petting the cat, signing the kids' homework, drinking the giant alcoholic beverage that I always talk about and never have...(still breastfeeding most of the time...) typing while eating ice cream, crocheting (I can crochet one and wrong handed...knitting needs two...), talking to the guy in Bangladesh who's trying to sell me credit card insurance right now--you know, whatever butters your biscuit. (Not that--I can't believe you thought of that... shame on you all...)

Anyway, the best part of this is that it's a forgiveness phrase--like (sic) which basically says 'I'm too damned lazy to look up the word and I'm pretty sure it's been mispelled but I've been reading high school papers for so damned long I can't even fathom what the original spelling might possibly be.' Except 'toh' would be, 'forgive the crappy stupid ass little freakin' typos and please just look at that really brilliant thing I was trying to say but the baby grabbed the gas bill and I thought that was more important than perfect typing'. And then it could spread--become indicative of any foul up we perpetrate while under the influence of too much to do and too little time. For example, if we crash the car because we were exhausted from being up with kittlins all night, we could write 'toh' on the insurance report, or if we slipped up and dropped the F-bomb in class because our big asses knocked over a stack of quizzes we'd been looking for all week we could apologize to the complaining parents and say 'so sorry--I was so toh!' or if we said totally the wrong thing and offended someone we worked with because our eyes glazed over as they were talking (poor Satan--I really didn't intend to be rude but I was standing right next to a conversation about breastfeeding and that was a lot more interesting than the fact that my sophomores have no room for humor in their itty-bitty brains) we could shrug and say 'toh' and all would be forgiven.

I think it's an awesome idea--but I'm not really a leader. Remember that scene when Keira Knightly says to the pirates 'Come on--who's with me!' and the next shot is her, in the rowboat, all alone? Yeah--that's me. So I can only come up with the idea--I need leaders, people, limelight specialists, professional trendsetters to take this shaft of light and run with it until my humble little phrase, generated during the first 10 sentences of this blog, becomes so well known it becomes immortalized in that big honkin' dictionary whose only purpose is to drop on the heads of bad men who are chasing college coeds through dark and scary libraries. So what do you say--toh--toh--toh--toh... can ya help a totally toh'd sister out here?

(Unless, of course, it's already someone else's idea...well done, whoever you are...GO TOH!!! )

A Thtucked Foose

2006-09-28T15:11:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I always forget about when working on a new book is that sometimes, the revision process can delight the crap out of you. Seriously-- I was totally giggling over a new phrase I'd spat out in a fit of irritation (I do that, you know...) and when I ran it by Mate, he giggled too. This is big for him--he's not really a giggler. It's hard to charm Mate, or even to impress him with my rapier wit... of course, after eighteen years of cohabitation, it could be that even the sweetest dragon grows wit-proofed scales to fend off unwanted incursions of jagged intelligence, but we'll just leave it at the thought that he's hard to impress. And he liked it. He liked it so much, I thought I would share, but how to share? It would work good on the blog, but then, it was a small bit--sort of a one-trick pony bit...so, how to share? how to share how to share how to...oh, wait.

It sounded like something Cory would say.

Now Cory is the main character of my books--she's painfully young, terribly honest, and, at times, excruciatingly profane (as are even the best young people, at times--the awful weight of the spoken profanity has not yet descended upon their backs. Sort of like me.) Cory would spit this out in a second...but, where in the book would it fit? It dealt with blood, and she gets beat up a lot so...so...

And what followed was magic. I've put the bit here to work as a teaser--for those of you who follow the books, it has no spoilers and no plot points--you all know Cory gets the crap beat out of her, but that she always bounces back. For those of you who don't follow the books, remember that this totally (to you) pointless conversation was brought to you by the first day of my period, when I got tired of telling my husband that I was bleeding like a stuck pig, and decided, instead, to bleed like a moose:

From BOUND,
by Amy Lane

“Oh gees…” I swore, feeling my nose starting to swell enough to bother my speech. “Is dere anyding we can do to top this goddabbed bweeding?”

Between Bracken’s red-capped proximity and my broken nose (it must have been broken—with the hurt and the breathing and the goddamned blood there wasn’t another option) it turned out that there really wasn’t anything we could do about the bleeding. By the time we pulled up to Green’s hill, I had soaked through what was left of Bracken’s T-shirt as well as one of the sweatshirts Nicky had left in the SUV, and since those were the only extra clothes in the car, I was freezing my ass off as well. Somewhere between where we’d met by the stadium and the parking lot, my shoulder had good and well frozen up with agony, and the entire trip up the hill was one long misery of pain, blood, and cold.

Green was waiting for us as we pulled up, his yellow hair dark with rain and his lovely face clouded with worry. I had a sudden, horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach—I had done this to him, I thought miserably. I was the reason he was standing in the rain, pacing and afraid. Wonderful.

He greeted me with grim, flashing eyes, and a general pat down to check
my injuries. I yelped as he touched my arm and he practically had to fight my hand away from my nose, soaked through T-shirt and all.

"I'm thorry." I garbled, trying not to cringe away from his touch in guilt and shoving that pathetic wad of bandage back up against my face. "I'm bweeding like a thucking thtuck boose."

Mario sputtered as he got out of the car. "Are you sure that's not a stucking mucked foose?" He asked, putting a gentle hand on my shoulder and shooting Green a wary look.

"With Cory's mouth I think she meant a mucking fucked stoose." La Mark
shot back, aligning himself next to me and giving my 'gentle' beloved one of those super bright smiles that usually melts knees.

"I think," Green said deliberately, "That she is bleeding like a fucking stuck moose. And I also think that you two need to get out of the rain."

"We tried." Mario murmured, and then they deserted me like cucking fowards, leaving me face to face with one very unhappy beloved, while the other one parked the car.

It's hard to look sheepish when you can’t wrinkle your nose or show your mouth, and after a minute I found I was squinting uncomfortably against the rain as it fell. "Uhb...bewoved..." I said hesitantly, and he swore savagely and hauled me against him, mindful of the shoulder, but with the suppressed violence of a pulled bow-string.

"It would serve you right if I let you bleed." He said, and his voice was as close to sounding petulant as a two-millennium old being possibly could.

"I'b thorry." I said again, and all of my misery must have oozed through the rag in front of my face, because he heaved a giant sigh, and kissed my temple reluctantly, but the sweet weirdness that was his healing felt just as wonderful when the tingle of knit tissues and re-aligned bones had faded. Then he ushered me to the shower, and a half an hour later I was no longer bleeding, my nose and shoulder no longer hurt, and I was warm and dry on his couch. But that awful feeling in my stomach was still there. It wasn't helped by the fact that both he and Bracken insisted I eat as soon as I got out of the shower, and the stew that Grace left simmering on the stove sat like a rock.

Hee hee hee...

2006-09-26T21:53:00.000-07:00

(hee hee hee hee...) A monkey tamer...thanks Lady In Red--I'll be giggling over that during my first two periods tomorrow...

Other things that make me go hee hee right now?

That commercial where the Yahoo--recommended fertilizer brings the dog to life from under the garden. (hee hee hee hee...)

The new review for Vulnerable that has the audacity to suggest I'm better than Laurell K. Hamilton. Not true, but before I can tell my ego 'down sweetie...', it still has a psychotically giddy giggle... (hee hee hee hee)

Precious little sister had a poopzilla today and just giggled at me and ate her feet. (hee hee hee hee hee)

The idea of a scrap baby sweater made out of self-striping sock yarn. (hee hee hee hee)

The fact that my ob/gyn greeted me today with the words "So, you're husbands shooting clear now, right?" I mean, I'm the Queen of Bluntness, but I'd forgotten that just being an ob/gyn gives your doc an insta-pass into your personal life...she also commented on the fact that after nearly twenty years we still seem to be doing it like bunnies--I'm a year from forty with four children, but suddenly I was releasing my inner seventeen year old... it was all I could do not to giggle right there in the office. (hee hee hee hee hee)

And then she introduced the speculum teleported expressly from Antartica. (Hoh?)

A plan to call the parents of every kid who has pissed me off in the last two weeks and make their small lives miserable. (Buuuuwha ha ha ha ha ha)

A plan to write a nasty letter to the Roc publishing company for mangling the latest Harry Dresden book and rendering it FUBAR for reading purposes--I got the book in May and have been putting off reading it until I was at sort of a low point and needed a bit of a lift...imagin my dismay to get to page 121, discover that the next page was 59, and that pages 59 to 121 were totally repeated in the text. And that pages 121-189 were completely eliminated. And now I'm dying to read the rest, and very broke... ohhh the nasty letter I am planning for these people...(ha ha ha ha ha ha)

But mostly what makes me go hee hee right now is the thought of the cold medication I'm going to take before I go to bed. A cold, allergies, whatever, something is kicking my ass and I'm gonna get buzzed on sudafed and make it all go bye bye. (Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee...)

Goodnighe everybody!

Finishing the gamut...

2006-09-25T19:32:00.000-07:00

I don't want to talk about work today. I had to write sub plans (they're fishing around my uterus with a pair of sharp tweezers tomorrow to find the IUD they conveniently lost and that has been giving me the world's longest freaking menstrual cycle...I have the feeling I'll go back next year and read all my blogs and wonder why Mate didn't shoot me for being on the rag for six freaking weeks...) but anyway, about my sub plans-- at the beginning of my sub-plans I put the the following note:

Warning--your first two classes are slit-your-wrists, slough-of-despond, put-your-head-in-the-oven awful. If you do not get them to shut the heck up before you speak they will drive you nuts-to-the-walls bonkers. Refer at will.

I hate them, they hate me, and if the administration didn't want this sort of adversarial relationship between me and my students they SHOULDN'T HAVE TRACKED ALL OF THE BELOW BASIC KIDS INTO MY TWO SOPHOMORE CLASSES AND THEN TOLD ME THAT REMEDIAL TEACHING WAS FOR PUSSIES. I can't remember a group of kids I was less thrilled about seeing every day, and I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual. It doesn't help that our grammar book is as interesting as Ben Stein reading the phone book in a dead language--crap, that puppy confuses me and I'm the freaking teacher.

Anyway, while I'm on a piss-on-the-flat-iron-and-bitch-about-the-steam kind of roll, I may as well summon all of the reasons my children are less than precious today. It kind of finishes off the gamut, doesn't it? First there was the 'my children are so fragile and I'm not worthy' post, then there was the 'we're all a happy family don't we make you want to puke' post, and now you'll get 'all the reasons crazy people shouldn't procreate' post. It will be fun, really.

* The cave troll has this bizarre habit of saving his food for later. You will give him a bite of something--it can even be something he likes, like chocolate cake, which makes it especially disgusting--and he will save it in his mouth until you chase him down with a napkin and make him spit it out. Sometimes it's been in there for an hour--everybody say BLEAHCHH!

* During hide and seek in the dark on Saturday, Big T came running by the foot of our bed to hide in the bathroom. Bryar came by looking for him and I pointed her to the bathroom when Mate said 'Yeah, but don't go in there. He's using the toilet.'

* That same kid just hit me up for the 'Adopt a Soldier' campaign at school. For the 213thbillionth time. Now, even though I think it's a fine cause (regardless of what you think about the war, I keep thinking about these 19 year old kids so far from home and it breaks my heart) I opted out of this one because I'm at the stage where I can't hardly remember to buy diapers and toilet paper for my own family and I didn't want to let some stranger down halfway around the world. I lost it so hard he started to cry, then tried to give me his favorite teddy bear so I could hug it when I was frustrated. I hugged him instead, but the pressure they keep putting on kids to do this shit is starting to bug the crap out of me--only about 1/4-1/2 of the mothers at my kids' school work-- lucky them (and you all know I'm not being facetious about that--seriously, lucky them, I'm jealous as hell) but cut the rest of us a break, wouldja?

* Can my oldest daughter spare me one moment of minute and excruciating detail about her school-life? Seriously--I got a blow-by-blow of her thought process for why she opted to do one homework assignment over the other during her free period at school and then looked hurt when my eyes glazed over, and I know the minute I totally tune her out is the moment she says 'yeah, mom, I was doing X when this cute guy started looking totally hot and he ripped my clothes off and guess what, you're gonna be a grandma' so I have to force my eyes to focus and recycle those brain cells that have already been turned to mush in order that I may listen to one more justification on why this wierd little piece of plastic is better than another one.

* Even the baby is having her less than precious moment--her favorite thing to coo and chew on, people? (Or chew and coo, or coo coo ca chew...whatever butters your biscuit) Her favorite thing to chew and coo is her brother's plastic animals which totally busts his nut. Of course, that's probably only karma because since the moment he could walk he's been grabbing the older kids' stuff and haring off with it screaming MINE MINE MINE MINE like some sort of psychopathic bluejay, but, still--it would figure that her favorite toys aren't hers at all.

But then, that whole karma thing is probably in operation here--I'm just sure that everything from my students to my children is just some sort of whopping 'so there' from the Universe at large...so, in that spirit, all I have to say is:

I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY, IF I TAKE IT ALL BACK AND MAKE IT ALL BETTER CAN WE AT LEAST GET MY 2ND PERIOD TO SHUT UP FOR ONE GODDESS BLESSED MOMENT? PLEASE? PLEASE? *sob*-- please?

Brought to you by...

2006-09-24T12:34:00.000-07:00

And Friday's freaked-out-mama post was brought to you by...

WEEK FIVE!!!

This fits into my general theory, right, that it takes a good six weeks to acclimatize yourself to any change--having a new baby in the house, being on vacation, starting a new job... one of the exhausting parts about the new school year is spending six weeks breaking in a new batch of goobers, I mean stuberts, I mean students into a semi-civilized state--I think that's one of the reasons teachers burn out so badly. We have to do this every year. But I know week six is coming--I plan for it. This year I've scheduled a doctor's appointment during it, most years I just take a mental health day (can you tell I need one?) and show movies. But this year, being a little more intense than most years--remember, I just came off of a 5 1/2 month maternity leave preceded by part of a year working part time--I hit that six week crash on the Friday before the sixth week... sorry--if I'd seen it coming, I would have warned all of you.

So thanks for putting up with the blog-hysteria (blogstyria?) and let me tell you about my daughter's birthday, which kept us so busy I wasn't able to come any where near my computer yesterday.

It was fun--she turned twelve (isn't that insane? twelve...no more children growing up in my house. I forbid it. Twelve is almost thirteen--gods, who needs another thirteen year old to deal with?) and she hangs out with kids who don't do make up or gossip about boys and who still like dolls and wearing clothes that don't show navels or cleavage (butt-cleavage included) and Bryar and her friends and my sons stayed up until ten o-clock playing hide and seek in the dark. They had a blast--and Kewyn fell asleep in the living room, happy and exhausted, and trust me, this never happens. (Usually it takes three bottles of milk, four stories and a song to get him to fall asleep, and that's if he's so tired he's falling down as he stands.) Mate grumbled about how much pizza we'd have leftover this morning, but I never underestimate how much the growing adolescent eats and for good reason--we barely have enough pizza to make the dog fart this morning and I think T is going to take care of it for lunch. We went to the Teddy Bear factory where they made matching stuffed elephants with ducky bathrobes and slippers and the cave troll got a tiger with the same outfit and Arwyn got a cheetah because mama liked it and we dressed it in pink because mama liked it, but it's still Arwyn's cheetah, don't let anyone tell you differently and the kids rode the carousel and shopped in the Disney store and ate rainbow sherbet and pizza on a dare. (And didn't puke up on the carpet on a prayer!)

All in all it was a good, if exhausting day, and the cherry topper was that I finished the second set of sockies/hat for the impending babies, and it came out so damn cute I can't hardly stand it.

My daughter is twelve today, Mate and I will be thirty-nine next week, our kids are spoiled beyond belief, and all in all it's a good life. If it would stop hurtling by at warp speed, I might be able to keep the panic-blogs to a minimum...

Oh...some other updates:

BOUND is still cooking and spicing quite nicely...I'll forget it's on simmer and then have a sudden scent of 'revise'--like, 'oh, yeah--fifty-years ago you had to drive down the canyons to cross from Forresthill to Auburn--I'll need to remember to change that part' and 'I don't think Nicky gets to still be whiny at the end--I think he's grown beyond that' or 'Yeah--Cory's mom really does need to completely lose it in that chapter--a few more lines of freaking out dialog and it will all be good...' (people who follow the books I'm totally teasing you--you have my permission to give me crap later:-)

The agent hunt and the drive to get my books on national distribution is still going on--I send out my packet (twice now to a sales clerk named Cory--I'm hoping that's a good sign) and spend my days in agonized apprehension--I'm literally hoping agents will send me back my packet to reject me so I can continue the hope of the hunt. I'm hoping to get rejected--how sick is that?

BITTER MOON--my young adult novel which will be romantic and adult but not, well, embarrassingly adult like my last three books and therefore suitable for my middle-schoolers--is starting to take over my brain when I'm in the shower or driving. That's good--when my characters are interacting with wit and passion outside the confines of the computer screen, their depth improves in the writing and the joy in my craft breeds prolifically. I'm starting to like BITTER MOON--it's all good.

And that's about it--I've got to bail to go sleep in the rubble (a time honored birthday tradition) or to continue the knit on sockies and hats so I can finish Arwyn's sweater in time for her to wear it a little bit large...

The Spongebob Backpack

2006-09-22T13:07:00.000-07:00

Kewyn wandered into my room last night at 3 a.m., and Arwyn woke up at 4:30 for a feed (rendering my subsequent 5:30 am pumping smucking fuseless) and I was pretty trashed from last night anyway. Mate was late from work which meant that between soccer, karate, and picking Auntie Wendy up and dropping her off from getting her brakes done, I loaded and unloaded the car twice after getting home from work and between feeding the baby, and hauled people around to their established activities. Mate (and Mate is a good guy--he's living proof that if you get'em young and train 'em right, they can reach their full potential in all five of the Mate's Real Purposes For Being) didn't catch on to my full exhaustion last night until I'd bathed and changed and fed the two little ones and was into my full on bitch-extension of "I'm mad at you just because you have to ask why I'm mad at you" mode. He finally did catch on, gave me a good cuddle and spanked the children appropriately because I was just too rats-ass tired to give a crap if the cave troll was up AGAIN at 9:30 at night and if I didn't knit uninterupted for at least 1/2 an hour I was going to be wearing someone's ass for a hat.

I knit, showered, watched ER (excellent...I know I'm showing my age, but I still think that show rocks the troll cave) and got to bed at 11:30, with the subsequent interuptions, and was pretty happy at how well I was handling my morning after that. I may have counted how many pieces of luggage I had to bring out to the car more than twice and I couldn't figure out why the answer five kept coming from, but, hell, I could knit at the stoplights to stay awake, and the baby was babbling adorably the whole commute, so I must have been doing okay.

Except the correct answer for the question "How many pieces of luggage BESIDES the baby does a working mother have to haul into the car before work" is not five. It's six. You doubt me?

1. Purse
2. Knitting bag.
3. Small lunch bag with the baby's expressed milk in it.
4. Large lunch bag with my lunch in it.
5. Breast pump.
6. The Spongebob backpack.

This last is particularly important--it carries diapers, changes of clothes, and the occassional spare toy for both the cave troll and the adorable ladybug and is possibly (may the knitting goddess not strike me down dead for this) more important than the knitting bag. Just maybe.

I forgot the freaking Spongebob backpack. I did--it's big, it's yellow, and it's sitting in my hallway, even as I speak, where it cannot provide diapers and clean clothes for the adorable children who are ALL THE WAY CROSS TOWN FROM WHERE WE LIVE.

In case anybody's wondering, this scares the hell out of me. Not because they can't live without the backpack--I may be hauling Arwyn home wearing nothing but a diaper (Lucia has spares) and her blankie, but babies love that so I think she'll live. What scares me is the lack of coherence I must have had to forget that big, butt-ugly, bright yellow bag. What will I forget next? Will I forget the baby on the curb next to the car? Will I back over the cave troll as he runs out to me because I forgot him? Will I leave the car-seat on the top of the car and take off? We hear these stories all the time--the parents who left the kids in the car overnight when it was cold, or when it was too hot, and just forgot about them. The parents who left their kids to play in the plastic bags when they ran out to talk to a neighbor. All of these tiny things you have to worry about--target bags, pennies, jump-ropes, stroller straps, angry pets, toilet cleaner, hot-dogs, carcinogens, bites that are too big, food that is too salty, brushing the toddler's teeth with the adolescent's orthodontist toothpaste, leaving vitamins on the counter, child-molesters in the neighborhood, bullies at school, bumpandgrind dances, birth control, draftboards,std's, smartbombs, stupid presidents and guns at friends houses and

AAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And how am I supposed to remember all these things, all these dangerous, stupid, dumb, tiny and deadly things when I can't even remember one lousy loud and yellow necessary item like the goddamned Spongebob Backpack?

Parenting is the fucking end on the terror scale, people. Don't let anyone tell you differently.

STealing Time

2006-09-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

My grading program has taken a craptastacular dump, so my kids are watching a movie so I can enter grades and, weehoo! I've got time to write. (Well, I'm sure I could do something more professional, but I don't wanna...) Anyway, what to write about...

I could write about the fact that, although we have been a dancing/gymnastics/soccer/karate family to date, and that we were hoping the cave troll would be keen in one of those already established areas, the little goombah has been able to hit a wiffle ball in mid-air since last Christmas when he was barely two, and this screams the T-ball/baseball route. I might try to fight this a little harder, but since he's the only one of the four kids who has shown any talent at physical activity whatsoever, I'm thinking we're sort of hosed by extra-curricular eclecticity...we might as well start looking into it now and ride the frantic wave...

I could write about the finished pair of sport-weight baby socks in my bag, soon to be followed by a matching hat...it's funny--I used to adore super thick novelty yarn, but after working on socks and fingering weight sock yarn for the last six months, sport weight baby socks almost feel like cheating. I chuckle evilly as I look at them, and plan to make more for the other six impending babies in my sphere.

I could write about my crazy friend Wendy...Wendy is 5'2--she used to be 5'3" before the back surgery--and lives alone on 10 acres of horseranch with too many two ton animals to count. Recently, Wendy has been doing home repairs, and the process has sucked like a portajohn vacuum--every small job she's planned has turned into a code-violating nightmare of sweaty amoral wage earners flogging her crumbling triple-mortgage with nail-guns and beer cans--the list of ways this process has been mangled is longer than my longest blog. The incompetence is inde-freaking-scribable, and Wendy's hair was starting to fall out. I took a page from the yarn-harlot's book and gave her socks to knit.

Now Wendy claimed to know basic knitting and purling, so I thought this would be okay--and it has been--she's been going around and around in k2-p2 rib very methodically, and I can tell that doing something productive that she can control is doing her some good. The problem isn't Wendy. The problem is me. I've always been a devout believer of the idea that there is no wrong way to knit. If you produce a stitch and a product, it can't be wrong. I believed this right until I saw my friend, my sister, my children's beloved Auntie Wendy, knit.

Wendy knits backwards. No, not continental backwards, not yarn throwing backwards, (although she does throw her yarn)--backwards backwards. Wendy throws her yarn to knit from right to left through the back loop. Yes. You heard me... the rest of the civilized world takes their loops from the left needle to the right needle, and Wendy goes the other way. Through the back loop. She throws her yarn to do it. My eyeballs hurt just thinking about it. And while my first instinct is to sit on her and show her how everybody else knits not because it's better but because it's EASIER--I crochet left handed, and believe me my first sweaters and mittens made my perspective run out my ears until I figured out to just reverse which sleeve/hand whatever I thought I was doing and I'd like to spare her that, at least--but I know that, of all things, that is the one thing I CAN NOT DO.

She's accomplishing something. She's having success. The whole reason I gave her the yarn and the pointy sticks in the first place was so she could have success at something, and it's working. I can not, for the love of wool, tell her that her success is wrong.

Yes. CSI is on tonight--that's our night. She comes over and watches it and we chat and she's going to bring her sock(s). And I'm going to have to watch her knit. And not. say. a. word. The best part of this is that we're going to spend the hour picking apart every nano-second Grissom and Sarah spend together to see if they drop any hints about how long they've been sleeping together. Good. Good...I can do that...I can work on the baby-hat to go with the socks...I can not watch Wendy knit.

My eyeballs hurt already.

Randomosity

2006-09-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

hmmm... in no particular order...

* My 2nd period class is so dumb that if I were to holler 'Everybody duck, it's a giant moron eating meteor!' When I emerged from my huddle under my desk, I would be the only one left alive. I LONG for that meteor to appear.

* After the meteor sweeps my room, I will happily lend it to Sweet Young Thing four doors down and the Lady In Red across campus... and maybe Satan will disappear in the backlash.

* Knitting little teeny baby socks out of that knit-picks sport weight parade sock yarn is worse than potato chips...you can't make just one pair...I'm suddenly so glad I'm up to my eyeballs in babies!!

* I'm so in love with those little baby socks, I'm going to make some for my baby... God her fat little feet are so cute...and in the words of the yarn harlot, they will eventually be good for 'a rollicking game of fetch!'

* I've invented rules for the trickster hero archetype that I've never found in a book. Damn... where's a freakin' masters class in English when you would look really good in one?

* I hate my grammar text so bad and am so disgusted with some of my classes that I'm two centimeters shy of embarking on the famous F-word sentence diagram, which entails putting the sentence "He f-ing f-ed the f-ing f-er that f-ed him." on the board and then identifying how the F-word is actually used as the four main parts of speech. (1. adverb 2. verb 3. adj. 4.noun 5. verb) Of course, I would be fired shortly thereafter, and you all would be hearing a lot about the unemployment line which is probably even less pleasant than my job, so I"ll be putting that idea on hold until the absolute last resort.

* The Yarn-Harlot is having pirate day-- fun patterns. However, the beanie with the skull and crossbones on it is the ult. I'd make it for my oldest son (age 13), but he just requested a pair of socks for his SIZE 13 EE WIDTH FEET. It's a good thing that I'm liking socks right now, because unless I double the yarn, I could be working on those puppies when he's in college.

* I get to watch the 13th Warrior with my 6th period today. If the back row stops talking, I may keep my will to live.

* The baby woke up this morning for a double-sided feed before I pumped...that's like making a picnic lunch at night to take the next morning, and having your kids wake up and eat it at 2 a.m. I could be wrong people, but I think she's ready for solid food...

* My friend who is reading my draft got to a scene I'm particularly proud of today while we were eating lunch. She flushed, shouted 'No' into a whole other conversation and wailed 'no, no no... oh, okay...it'll be all right.' I'm carrying the glow from that moment in my pocket for the whole week. Maybe books don't need to match like socks after all.

See you next time, when we answer the age old question: Is there a right answer or a wrong answer when you're discussing literature?

Let's talk about sox...

2006-09-17T18:48:00.000-07:00

See this? The shot on the right? It looks like a heartwarming picture of Bryar and the Cave troll winding yarn in our typically demolished living room. Isn't it cute? Isn't it sweet? Aren't they intent? How very wooly and productive of them--somewhere in that shot are two completed skeins, wound exactly the same way.

Thirty seconds after this picture was taken, my daughter dropped the winder and broke it. No more winder. A box of knit-picks, some Shaeffer and some Koigu, and no winder.

Now see the shot on the left? The very talented baby, contemplating the mystery of why we would cover such tasty feet with cotton footies? Notice those other socks? Aren't they pretty-- Meillenweit sportweight--so pretty in the sun. Did you notice the difference in sizes? Sadly, no, I did not make them for some oddly deformed person with two hugely different feet, I made them for Alexa, my mother (not Janis, whose picture is in a previous blog) and although Alexa will probably not notice the fact that one of those socks was apparently made for a different person (it was a gauge accident, I swear-- until I got them wet for blocking, both those socks appeared to be exactly the same size down to the last freakin' stitch) and although I lucked out because Janis (my stepmom, who asked if she could put rubber bottoms on some offline socks I made her this summer because she just didn't feet the gauge (7 1/2 stitches per inch!) was fine enough for her to wear them as anything besides slippers) would definitely have noticed the difference in sizes, I am still totally freaked out by this.

723 pages, people. I just ran off and bound a 723 page book. I've gone back and read the reviews of the other two books--13 reviews for the first book. (11 if you count the fact that one was written by me ant the other was written by the king-dick-prickweenie of all prickweenies whose name I used for the bad-guy in the new book and who wrote the review to be smug and prickweenie-ish) Four and five stars for each review. Some of the nicest things I've seen in print about any book on amazon.com, much less mine, with the crapload of typos and the independent publishing and the car that changed shape in the middle of the book when I wasn't noticing... but good reviews. The second book's reviews are even better.

What if I screw up? 723 pages. That's a lot of pages to disappoint people in. One of the things people liked about the first book was it's simplicity. What if I made it too complex? What if I introduced too many people? What if there's too much sex?

Oh, Goddess... what am I going to do if there's too much sex?

I'm a big fan of sexless sex scenes...you know...guy kiss girl, tenderness, sweetness...fade camera out? The scene from Dirty Dancing? Love it. That part where John Cusack is shaking in Say Anything? Makes me tremble, just thinking about it. My favorite sex scene in print, bar none, is a scene from a book that is classified high fantasy/action romance called EXILE'S GATE. It was a nothing scene, really--two warriors who had had each other's back for 3 1/2 other books... and then he offered her a flower, and her face got soft, and about three paragraphs later, she's brushing his hair in the dawn. I love that scene--it's awesome, tender, understated, thunderous in importance.

Uhm...that's not really the kind of scene I write.

Maybe because I devoured dimestore paperback romances by the dozens at a really dark time in my life, but I write explicit sex scenes and I'm not bad at them.

There's a lot of them in this next book. Every damned one of them is important--I know, I've thought long and hard (eww...was that a bad pun?) about which ones to cut. The ones that didn't further plot or character development were the first ones on the cutting board. You can tell those scenes--they've been shortened to 'we made love' or 'afterwards' or something like that. I'm proud of those scenes--restraint is the mark of a good writer just like gauge (or measuring rows or whatever the hell went wrong) is the mark of a good knitter.

One of those socks is definitely bigger than the other. And I don't know how.

I've got a friend giving the first draft a reading for content right now. She doesn't know this (because I prefer not to make my friends nucking futs over my own rampant insecurities) but she is holding my vast and fragile ego in her hands. People loved the first two books--they really did--those are complete strangers on that site reviewing my books and there was something real, something naked and appealing in the prose besides the man-gods in the text that massaged the heart muscles in all the right places. Please, God, let my literary socks match...please please please please please...

Not a day for real poetry...

2006-09-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

I barely blogged
I kind of knit
But mostly what I did
Was sit.

Took one to soccer
One to gym
Hauled the other
Around on whim.
(The first sat at home w/games & grins)

The wind blew
We sat in sun
And wished my daughter's
team had won.
(But I know she had some fun)

The postman brought a box of yarn
And I went out and bought some more,
Right now I think it's safe to say
We don't need to buy any more.
(Of course that's all been said before.)

We came back home
Let the housework rot
Ate the take-out
I had got...
(For dinner too...I got a lot...)

I held the baby.
She ate her feet.
I blew bubbles
On her cheeks...
We laughed away the frantic week.

We watched some shows
The toddler laughed
When eyeballs drooped
We took a nap...
(That part was way too short by half...)

We all woke up
The baby played
We frittered the rest
Of the day away...
Our week is so much better that way...

My friend came by
I've taught her socks
(I gave her acryllic
In case she balks
At finishing a thing that walks...
It's something to do while we two talk.)

Mate bought ice cream
And it was good.
We all ate more
Than we probably should...
(One more scoop, if you just could?)

So here's my blog...
I'm off to knit...
My family's gathered
Some more to sit...
The more to rest my sleepy wit...

Friday Night Blindness

2006-09-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

I've sworn to myself that I'm not going to pass out tonight...I will stay awake to knit, blog, and walk... I am not a x-hundred lb. fluffy spud, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not...

But I am tired... in fact, I'm so tired that I must be seeing things because I could swear that while I was watching AVATAR (good show, that!) with my middle-schoolers, I saw the following things:

A toy that talks...a middle-school looking girl with blonde hair (Do kids still have long blonde hair that itsn't dark hair with bright highlights? Not where I work and live...) that talks and says things like "Do you want to hang out?" It scared me spitless. And then when I thought I'd recovered, I saw four plastic Burger King puppets, doing water ballet as their counterparts did some headbanging in a crappy burgundy chevelle. I was drifting in an almost nap at the time and the sight was so disturbing that it segued me into a dream/fugue that featured a group of suit-wearing ad-execs snorting powdered sugar and drinking bong water while using money to line the cage of a crack addicted parrot who wrote their ad copy for them. That was when the baby giggled from the crook of my arm and woke me up. She was so proud--she has just learned to eat her feet.

Yeah... probably a good day for a short blog...I'll brag about my baby hat and socks tomorrow.

Weasel hits...

2006-09-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

Okay. A brief whine about work, then a story of triumph, maybe. It depends...right now all is well in sibling land, and we've cut after-school stuff short because, well, the air is hovering somewhere between crunchy and chewy and our lungs are so full of crap that driving sounds like a sin against nature--I love it when your morning news tells you not to breathe, don't you?

So...some more weasel hits:

A person who runs a program that is geared specifically for underperforming students looked at me at lunch today and said, "Oh, hey--did you know that two of your sophomore classes are more than 50% below basic or far below basic in skills? It looks like you've been tracked..." I looked at her in horror. "I only have two sophomore classes." I said stupidly. Then I burst into tears. After teaching part time last year, with two AP classes and one regular Senior class, I thought the simple fact of the matter was, I had forgotten how to teach. I mean--I've never taught the sophomore curriculum...for all I know, they speak another language or something. I couldn't figure out why instructions such as "copy down what's on the board" were responsible for ten minutes worth of angst and 'I don't understand what we're doing in this class..." So I was sort of laughing, because it means I'm not stupid, crazy, or incompetent, and sort of laughing because WHO IN GOD'S NAME IS RESPONSIBLE FOR LOADING A CLASS THAT BADLY AND NOT TELLING ME. Just asking. Score another one for the weasels.

An Advanced PLacement student asked me today if she could do a report on the same book that she was doing for her 10th grade class. "What are you doing in 10th grade English?" I asked stupidly--it was my day for feeling stupid! "I'm making up credits--I didn't pass it the first time." She replied. I didn't ask her what she was doing in my class-- I already knew. The head prickweenie himself has this idea that any student who wants to participate in the Advanced Placement courses should be able to, regardless of past grades in English. He seems to feel that they harm no one but themselves if they take a class above their heads. Considering the trouble I've been having getting this class to shut the #$% up, I think we've busted that myth--every day I finish that class (admittedly, my 6th period, after one of my sophomore classes after lunch) I cram sweets into my mouth with shaking hands and tell my diet to go to hell, if I don't chew some chocolate I'm going to effing kill someone. Score yet another one for the weasels, however, I just know that eventually one of them is going to bite that prickweenie clean off.

Oh... now for the heartwarming story of triumph.

It's actually about 9/11, but since I live so far away from Ground Zero and lost nothing but my peace of mind about the future of my children (like the rest of us) I thought it was a little self centered to put it out on the day itself, but it goes something like this.

As I walked up the ramp to my classroom on the morning of 9/11/01, I saw my usually cocky senior AP students huddling, hollow eyed, under the eve of the portable. Like all of us, they were terribly shaken, and terribly afraid, and in particular, they were terribly certain that studying Beowulf (always Beowulf) on this day of all days was a complete and total waste of their time. This is what I told them:

Grendel starts attacking people in the meadhall--why do they take exception to that? I mean, these are petty kings, they kill each other all the time on the battlefield. Why is having this big guy stomping in and chewing on a couple-a soldiers a month such a bad thing? Well, let's go back a minute--what pissed Grendel off in the first place? Yeah--exactly. He was kicked off the island in the first place, wasn't he? He had the mark of Caine on him--he was born to be a monster, so Hrothgar's people weren't going to be his friends in the first place, and then, to rub salt in the hair wound, they go and sing songs praising a God that exiled him to his dank smelly cave. The comfort of the meadhall was not his to be had, right? So, what's so big about a meadhall? A big place where we gather to celebrate? Well, think about it--there's like less people on the planet back then than there probably are in the state of California (don't quote me on this) so if you put out your fire and quench your candle and stand outside, the starlight is bright enough to hurt your eyes it's so dark out there. There you are, standing under the great big dark, and your only comfort is your fire and your people--and when you gather these things together in the meadhall, you think you're safe. We treasure our meadhalls. Our meadhalls are holy places to us--they are places where we gather against the great big dark and the stars that cut like diamonds and huddle against the Universe and thank our God for the tiny fire and the breath of our companions. When someone crashes that meadhall--that's a desecration. That's an act of terrorism. You woke up this morning, and found out that someone we as a country has exiled from the meadhall just crashed the meadhall in fury, and you are stunned. We are all stunned. We are terrifed, because this was a big honkin meadhall and we thought, of any meadhall this one would keep us safe. No meadhall can keep us safe--we know that now. Hrothgar and the people of Heorot learned that twelve hundred eyars ago. Now we know the precoiusness of the meadhall and the wrath of the exiled. We've been welcomed, thunderously, into the reality of the human race.

I hope that doesn't offend anybody--the kids seem to think it helped.

All Bow to the Baby-god...

2006-09-11T17:14:00.000-07:00

Okay... the weasels are still winning, and this year, of all things, the AP weasels hate my guts...I'm not used to having my guts hated...it's excessively discombobulating, but, I swear, if the 1/4 of the class that wouldn't shut up actually DID shut up and listen, I know I'd grown on them. Oh well, I got a TA today (after 3 weeks of begging for one over e-mail...) so there's a score for our side... later I will discuss the difference between a 'right answer' and a 'wrong answer' and a 'strong argument' versus a 'weak argument' (I'm a right and wrong kind of person, last years honors teacher was a 'strength of argument' person--it's kind of at the root of the incipient hatred being nursed in the bosoms of the chronically loquacious in my 6th period) but today, I'd like to focus on the most important thing in all worlds, right, wrong, free, opressed, one moon, three moons and twelve.

Yes, people, you guessed right--today I'd like to give the ALL HAIL to our resident deity--the baby-god.

In order to honor her royal cuteness, I'd like to spend a couple of minutes trying to get inside the head of our local baby-god...that way, when fellow worshippers get their time up at bat, they understand their humble place in the world. Are we ready? Let's intuit, shall we?

I'm awake and I'm smiling...why is no one smiling back at me? Anyone? Anyone? By boob, bath and the holy poop, you people KNOW that when I'm smiling at you it is your job to smile back. Let me remind you of your place in the world. (fuss, whimper, grizzle, guilt) Ah, yes, smiles. I'm so pleased. Smiles, smiles, smiles ENOUGH! Now feed me. NOW woman, did I mention your JOB is at stake? I haven't seen your lunch bar in at least fifteen minutes...now! now! now!now!now!now!now!n...mn.m.mmmmmmmm...mmmmmmmmm.....mmmmmmm. Very good. And now I shall fart. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh....excellent. They're laughing, and now I have new raiment--all is well; I am a good baby-god. Ooohhh..look, a thumb! Now honor me, for I have found the sacred thumb. Mmmmnnnnn....tasty thumb...also tasty fingers, tasty fist, tasty arm (look, arm hickies!) but that thumb...truly divine. Is everybody watching me chew on my thumb? WHY AREN'T YOU WATCHING ME CHEW ON MY THUMB!!! It's hard to find good supplicant these days...and now I shall chew on toys. These are fun...crinkly, brightly colored...I don't care if you were reading that--give it back! GIVE IT BACK I SAY OR I SHALL UNLEASH MY WRATH ON...oh, look, a rattle... what was I saying again? Ooooohhhh...I love these things...look...shake shake shake...shake shake shake...shake your booger thing...shake that booger thing... shake that booger thing...what is this? Hair. Ahh...I pull the hair, and the supplicant dances. What an amazing discovery...DANCE for me, DANCE for me! Whheeeeeehoooooo...who's your mama...wait...wait...woman, where is that boob!!! Now! I said NOOOOWWWWW...MMM.MMMmmmm...mmmm..mmmmmm...mmmmmm...what do you mean nap? Deities don't take naps. I SAID DEITIES DON'T TAKE...mmm...is that my thumb? Have I mentioned that it is tasty? Tasty thumb...Tast---eeee thuuuuuuuu---mmmmmbmmmbmmmmmmbmmmmmm.....zzzzzzzzzzz

Wow...I'd sleep a lot too, if I had that kind of a day.

Watch out....public milk duds pending,,,,

2006-09-09T17:03:00.000-07:00

Ye gods, I'm tired of whining about school... I'll whine about something else today, and next week can go back to my regular scheduled whining, deal?

Let's see... can we sum up this hellific week in bullet points? We can but try...

* I fell asleep at six o'clock Friday night and, with the exception of nursing Arwyn, didn't wake up until seven thirty, Saturday, and I'm ready for another nap--this should tell you how badly the week went.

* I got into an unfortunate disagreement with Mate--and those who know us will tell you that this never happens. I won't give gory details, because it crushes him when I vent (for those of you who read my books, think Bracken--Mate was my inspiration for all of the men, but that thing that Bracken does with self-anger is a dead straight imitation of my beloved Mate) but we shall simply say it is nearly impossible for me to be angry at him when HE'S HOME!!!

* Back-to-school night was this week--Mate and I both have to go because our two older children attend the same school. Nothing like nursing your infant in front of your children's teachers to insure them a stellar year at school. (Yes. My milk-duds have had exposure or near misses in pretty much every learning institution in Nor-Cal. I sincerely apologize to the entire freaking world.)

* I finished a teeny-tiny pair of socks for a colleague and went to work on the matching hat. It is some measure of my hysteria that I greeted 4/5 classes on Friday wielding itty-bitty socks and singing 'Happy feet...I've got those happy feet...'

* My agent packet has still not returned, and I still haven't gotten my ass off the ground to print out a new one. Somebody kick my ass please--it would be lovely to sell a freakin' book and be read by more than six people on the planet.

* Okay, six people was sort of an understatement--two reviews have appeared in the last week and a half on Wounded's amazon.com site--to L.A. Jennings and Holly from Australia, I love you both dearly even though we've never met. Bound will be out by February, Goddess willing, and I can only hope you enjoy it as much as you seem to have loved the other two!

* On a good note, many of my felons seem to have transferred out of my 3rd period just as effortlessly as they moved in.

* On another (good?) note, my special ed son's class schedule has changed three times, which means that my school is not the only one to completely shaft those who need stability and consistency the most. Okay, it's not a good note. It's a crappy note. But Trystan's such an awesome kid he's going to do fine, and I thought it interesting to note that this is a statewide problem. Could it have anything to do with the fact that we're like the only fricken state to start school two weeks before labor day? Maybe if we didn't equate exhausting students and teachers alike with better education, we could get our numbers stable... just a thought people, it's not like I don't have fourteen years of professional experience or anything... just saying... (will not whine about school...will not will not will not will not...)

* I'm missing the Yarn Harlot, even as I type. I was going to see her--Goddess, I'd planned on it for over four months, but that thirteen hour sleep was sort of a wake-up call (I love the smell of irony in the morning after a good nap...)... manic energy and a soda in the morning will only get you so far--my family needs a quiet weekend, and if that includes me doing the dishes while Mate works stoically on the bathroom when my beloved Harlotty Yarn Goddess spreads her magic three hours away, then so-be-it...the drive to Los Altos and back hauling protesting infants was not in the cards. Stephanie, I'm so sorry... meeting you would have put a glow in my year.

* The blogger keeps freezing on me, otherwise I'd go and take a picture of tiny sister, just to show you how much she's grown...and, true to family tradition, the little tyke just won't shut up...aren't their little talking sounds so cute? Anyway, she's also showing herself to be pretty damn smart--every day when I pick her up at day care, I hug Kewyn first, (Mama... big Guy!) and then I take tiny sister from Lucia (one of the best day care ladies EVER) and give her lots of bubble kisses before plopping her in the basket and securing her for take-off...one day, and one day only, Lucia tried to secure her for take-off before those bubble kisses, and you can bet the whole neighborhood heard the 5 month version of "whoa, lady, back the truck up...no one steals my bubble kisses!!!" I was very impressed... Kewyn has also learned to hold tiny sister's bottle while mama is driving... ah...baby geniuses...so fun until they grow up and hack the school computer to alter grades...(yes, people, that was my high school that happened at... along with the world-wide footage of the graduate streaking with '00 painted on her ass...lots of fun things happen at NHS...you can tell just by watching the evening news...)

* The kids have rediscovered the game cube--and the game that features the control box that's actually a set of bongo drums wired for sound...the CAVE TROLL IS GOING APESHIT AS WE SPEAK!!! Seriously people-- I'm so impressed with the Brave New World-esque drive to replace simple things like, say, bongo drums that cost ten bucks to manufacture with new and improved electronic bongo drums that cost a hundred dollars to manufacture and can break when you sneeze on them that I'm going to start checking my local movie theatres to see when the feelies are showing. (For those not familiar with Huxley's masterpiece, go ahead and read it, and then marvel that it was written in the 1920's...)

* My daughter's soccer team won, 3-0... go Lightning Bugs... the vainglorious prickweenies who cut her from her last team better watch out...wouldn't it be humiliating to lose to a team of kids that you rejected and humiliated because you weighed heart in pounds? Ah...if only life were a Bruckheimer movie....

Well....the blogger keeps threatening to freeze on me, so I should probably take a cosmic hint and bail.... I will be back, and may the Goddess smile upon you and the moths never discover your stash!!!!!!

Recycling is good...

2006-09-08T14:55:00.000-07:00

It's been an eventful week, and I swear I will do a real post tomorrow, but I was scouring my archives and I discovered this... only about 3 people have read it, but I think it's better than that, and, hey, the internet is to share...

Enjoy!

Think of your teacher as a manager....

It just occurred to me…

That I supervise over 150 students in the course of a day. That’s the size of a small company. Wow—that should be easy enough, right?

After all, I have a degree in management… wait, no, that’s a degree in English.
Oh. Well…

I can fire them for being late, like a regular boss, right?
No—I can fill out scads of paperwork that will be ignored, and my employees will continue to be late. Oh. Well…

I can evaluate my employees on their performance, and that will affect their lives, right? No—I can evaluate my employees on their performance, and they can go to an easier, shorter job in the summer or somewhere else, where their performance will remain the same, but they will get better evaluations. Oh. Well…

I can fire them for insubordination, defiance, and cruelty to managers, right? No—I can send them out of my room, where they will be slapped on the wrist, commiserated with by their parents, and sent back to my room with their attitudes intact. Oh. Well…

If my employees perform well, I get some sort of bonus, reward, stipend, pat on the back, attagirl, right? No—but if they perform badly, I get the same, so I guess that’s okay…

If my management skills are superb, I get to increase my revenue, update my resume, and improve the status of my company, right? No—if my management skills are superb, that means I can manage without textbooks, materials, feedback from my own boss, or training to do the job I was paid for that has nothing to do with management and everything to do with that degree I almost forgot I had, and yet my employees are still unappreciative. If I do my job really well, my bosses will assume I don’t need any of these necessities to do my job, and I will never get them again. If I let my lack of support affect my performance, my “incompetence” is broadcast in every major newspaper in the state, along with headlines asking why people in my position can’t get our collective shit together.

Well (*sob*)… at least I get paid on a management scale, right? Ha ha hee hee ho ho ho ho ho ho ho… (*hiccup*) That’s a good one… oh, well..

So, why do I do this again?

I do this because employees who have moved on to other corporations have come to me and said “I wouldn’t be here if not for you. Thank you.”

Wow. Does my corporation suck. But my employees pay me very well, so I might just stick around...

Score: Acid-Dropping-Weasels: 6 Teachers in Trenches: 1

2006-09-05T19:55:00.000-07:00

It was the quote that was probably responsible for all the writing to follow. It was the beginning of school, probably seven or so years ago, and our roll books had switched over in batches of 2 to 5 students a day, every day, for six weeks. This is not an understatement--papers collected in the first week might as well have been thrown in the trash--it's not like a student's grades go with them, according to our computer system, and it took us a while to figure out how to retrieve them... it was chaos. In the middle of this chaos, we were being told during a staff meeting that our grades were not legitimate--many teachers had only entered one or two items by the time progress reports were being printed, and, although my gradebook was covered, I still couldn't help bursting out, "Well, if the damned kids would stop ping-ponging through our roll books like acid-dropping-weasels through a maze, we might get some goddamned work done."

The administration was floored, stopped dead, and the staff applauded. That quote has followed me--for better or worse, for creative or flaky, for fat and funny or big and dumb, for my entire professional career. That phrase alone has made me want to write, because frankly I have enjoyed the infamy of being the person to say it, and I have wanted more--but even more, that phrase has become indicative of all the chaos that can evolve in a high school like mine from wierdness in the admin levels to downright absurdities for the teachers in the trenches.

Now, the best thing to happen is that my esteemed colleague who is now the vice principal has developed a very fun delivery dvd for our rules and regulations--an example of creative pedagogy at it's finest, this puppy has saved me from an extremely boring and exhausting day of blah-blah-blahing the repetetive and the inane into the ears of the indifferent, and instead, has been a rather refreshing moment of kids at play. That's the one good thing.

Would you like a play by play of some of the the worst things to happen in the last two weeks?

1. I broke up what was going to be a fight on Friday between one unwilling and one willing participant--the willing participant threatened me. He was back in my classroom this morning.

2. I've had no fewer than 8 kids transfer in and out of every class but one.

3. I have 36 kids in my AP class (the one nobody's transferred out of)--this class is usually around 25 kids because they generate about twice as much paperwork as any other class.

4. I've had two kids going blind in two different classes without large print materials or any sort of game plan as to how their disability is going to be addressed in the long term. We're starting the game plan for one of them. The other got transferred out of my class for no apparent reason.

5. A, well, sort of colleague that I unapologetically refer to as Satan because no one could be both that clueless and that sycophantically manipulative at the same time has been reported by several of her classes as saying "How many of you have green cards?" For the uninitiated, this is the equivalent of walking into a bar and saying "How many of you are having sex with real people, and how many of you are going home to appliances?"

6. The teacher across the way who taught Freshman last year watched the six new sophomores streaming into my classroom this morning and told me later "There goes your combined GPA--those are the kids who need mugshots and PO numbers next to their names in the gradebook. Yeah--all six of them... who did you piss off?"

For the record people? The Acid-Dropping Weasels are winning.

The Sadistic Muse

2006-09-03T19:28:00.000-07:00

For the record, here's another post at least started one-handed while nursung the baby...oops! TMI?

Anyway... Mate is engaged in a manly house-fixing ritual....we're down to one bathroom, with the other reduced to house-bones...I've been largely useless in the whole process--partly extended exhaustion from the 2 weeks finishing the book/starting school, partly from being the one to wake with the cave troll after staying awake with the house-ogre, and partly because
I don't care if the order of the day is total destruction, I'm one of those pansy-assed females who is terrified of dirt, wet particle board and breaking stuff that's supposedly already broken. (For the record, when we first discussed this undertaking, I was all for hiring someone who knew what they were doing.) So Mate is engaged in house fixing, and I am working on house cleaning--I can see wide acreage on my kitchen table--for the record, I changed the tablecloth. yippee!!! The only problem is, I'll be done in...well, as much as the kitchen ever IS clean, I am done, and Mate? Mate will be wandering around the house for two weeks, minimum, (I'd put money on this but all our money is in the pile of new bathroom fixtures out in the garage) cursing the work he didn't get done, angry about the quality of work he did get done and pissy because I make him stop banging on the house at 8:30 when the small children go to bed. All of our conversation will be about whether or not he should call my dad to help him drywall or call a plumber or try to do that arc weld himself (No. The answer to that last one is a resounding NO!) and what the time frame is for me to go in and paint. (Painting is the one thing I do. It's colors and decorating--we pansy-assed wimins do good at colors and decorating.) For two weeks he will be a driven man--and when this bathroom is done, we'll wait a year to do the next one.

The muse of the manly house-fixing ritual is as cruel as sandpaper on a burn-blister from an arc-welder.

We all know what cruelty feels like. There are twatsticular prickweenies out there who will make our life miserable for the joy of cruelty, and the fates are just waiting for our lives to take the wrong quickstep into the sinkhole of despair. There are a thousand people, things, and animals that are willing to be cruel, but those are not the things that an artist (of any stamp) fears the most. It is, perhaps, the biggest irony of the arts that the element we love most about our world wields the biggest, highest amped, pointiest most sadistic mental cattle-prod on our tender-bits of any other force in the cosmos.

Take my husband's house-fixing ritual. The only reason the family simply ducks when he stamps through the house ripping the floorboards a new one for daring to squeak under his sneakers when he's fixing the house is that we all know that he's got two speeds on this matter: Full bore, balls out, I'm gonna tear that mother down, turn'er inside out and nail 'er back up and getter done mode, or fetal on the bed watching re-runs of bad '80's movies and pretending our floor isn't rotting mode. When he launches into the project, it becomes as all consuming as the bags under his eyes and his four-letter word vocabulary. I recognize the signs of the muse-monkey on his back--I'm pretty sure I've had them myself for the last month.

When we undertake anything creative, it is not the doing that haunts us--the doing is the joy, the fiery soother that courses our veins, the opiate that puts to rest the demons of tentativeness in our project launch. We love what we do. It rocks. We could do it forever.

But the finishing? Oooooohhh... (Is everybody reading this--all four people--making that face? I know I am...)

The knitting world even has an acronym for it... TOAD. It stands for 'TOtally Abandoned in Disgust'. And most artists fears TOADs.

The fear of TOADs is what keeps the knitter up to dark-thirty a.m. when there is no IT deadline to pursue. The fear of TOADs is what keeps the guy working on his car out drinking beer and tinkering until his wife storms out in her housecoat and screeches at him to get his ass inside. The fear of TOADs is what keeps the (real) housewife up past everyone else's bedtime, folding that last load of laundry. It is this fear that keeps the teacher at school for just 'ten more minutes' correcting papers, and it is this fear that kept me awake, drifting through my life for two weeks, only coherent, only engaged, only truly alert when my creation was looking me in the eyes and speaking our private language that I have taken it upon myself to translate for the world. It is this fear, in fact, that not two minutes ago had me shrieking at my eleven year old daughter who just served as my 6th interuption from the time I resumed this post.

God and Goddess, our vision is so perfect, so pure, and so important to the sinews of our hearts--we must finish it. It must be complete.

And this terrifies me. Because I become completely disengaged during the writing process. I feed the children, bathe the cave-troll, nurse the adorable tiny-sister all in a daze, a disconnected fuzz in which my creation is speaking to me and all other real people are only static noise. This terrifies me. It does not make me a good human being. I know too many people who have not married (not that not marrying is a bad thing--but this is a totally different point) and who spend too many moments of the day listening to nothing but the whispering of their own muse-monkey, screaming obscenities and riding rough and ready from behind (and all that that implies.) They do not recognize that the voices of other people are often as real and as true as their own muse-monkeys, and the don't understand why they are not a part of the human race.

I love the human race--that's why I'm a breeder, a lover, a teacher. It scares me to be disconnected from my heart's blood in order to feed my muse.

Stephen King once wisely said that art is a support system for life, not the other way around. I remember that quote every time I finish a book and swim slowly to the surface of the thick broth that is my inner life to engage in my real life. I'm so glad my real life waited for me. I'm glad that, until my muse-monkey takes his viagra and jumps back on for the wild ride, I'm back in the human saddle again.

The brain-chemical buzz of sleep deprivation

2006-09-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

Okay...I'm tired. I'm more than tired, I'm EXHAUSTED. Could it be because we're two weeks into school? Maybe. Could it be because my husband left me alone to tend the kids for three nights running while he went off and lost 15 lbs. (because it only takes a man three softball games to do that, while it takes women three years of therapy, special food, and a giant lock on the refrigerator to have the same effect). Might be that. Could it be because the cave troll woke up several times last night until he finally had the poopzilla that took over Citrus Heights and was done with it and fell asleep? There's a good reason right there. Could it be because I've finished (sort of--kind of--2 months of editing at the very least w/some proofreading and some begging some friends w/a case of beer and a free ticket to our dvd library to read the 730 pg. manuscript and proofread & critique kind of) BOUND? That could be a big reason--I mean, I WAS dreaming the end of the story, and back looping it in my brain even as I dreamt it so that the last 15 pages played back and forth on Tuesday and then the last 10 on Wednesday until I had to finally FINISH THE DAMN MANUSCRIPT in order to just stop my characters from having the same conversation in my head until it was molecule perfect.

Yeah--it could be all of those things, but, added to the fact that The Fifth Element was at our local movie theatre for a 10 pm showing, I think it's safe to say I'm stoned off of lack of sleep. I'm incoherent with lack of sleep. I'm nusty cukoo with sleep deprivation, and still, I'm haunted by the following things:

A. I sent out an agent packet two months ago and the frickin' packet hasn't returned--I don't mind that they don't want to rep my books, but, gees, people, have pity on the little guy and give us back our 50 printed pages of crap because we're frickin broke paying for school supplies and need a bleepin' break here!

B. I'm posting from school and I can't show you my little knitted sock--the second one is in progress. They are yakably cute--and since Bound is in the tinkering stage now, I can spend some time knitting more of them and hats to match--this is important, since I am now surrounded by mommies and it's my pledge to make as many of the teaching mommies I know either sockies and hats (which was the consensus among three of the four mommies polled) or blankets (of which I've made over fifty for school employees and students alone). It's a good and honorable, if a wierd calling, but I'm pretty committed to it. You get no breaks in this profession as a mommy--none. They can't lessen your workload. Your maternity leave is fraught with guilt for abandoning your students. Your return is just as fraught with guilt for leaving your babies because you know what happens to children who don't get enough attention in their childhood--you see it firsthand every day. We don't do this job for enough money to make us feel like 'I'm doing it for my family, man!' and the toll it takes on us is, often, agonizing. I want the other teacher mommies to know that they are not alone.

C. My 2nd book lost it's Amazon.com standing-- this means no one's bought it in a week, and I'm depressed because, hey, I just finished the 3rd book, and it would be swell if someone, like, read it...

D. How am I going to face my parents after they read the (ahem) climactic sex scene in BOUND. It sort of makes the others pale in comparison, but it's the, uhm, most crowded? scene in the series, and, (my watermark for writing these scenes) it's ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL TO PLOT DEVELOPMENT AND CHARACTER. If it wasn't for this element, I'd cut it in a heartbeat.

E. It's a staff development day, and the only thing I'm developing at this moment is my unadulterated contempt for the standardized test processes in California schools. If I go get lunch now, I can come back, correct some papers, and pick up the babies and then my daughter. I'll get my daughter early (without the 1 hour wait she usually has) and WE CAN GO TO BABETTA'S my lys!)--it could, very well, be our last trip for a couple of months and we have to make it count!!!

Yeah-- E's a deal breaker...I'm off for food, back to palliate my fractured professional conscience and then it's out to get me some yarn...

I got a nap!

2006-08-29T18:11:00.000-07:00

Not that a nap has anything to do with today's post, but, hey, it's a big furry deal these days and I thought I'd share the excitement.

so the older kids have their braces--and we're out a down-payment on a new car--and now their pain is my pain... can you hear it now? "Do you have your headgear on? Did you brush? Did you floss? Do you need me to yank those puppies out with a pair of rusty pliers or are you going to take care of your grillwork?"

And to add to the pictures of domestic wierdness, I thought I'd share a few vignettes that will make everyone stop wondering why big mama needs a nap (and a shot of tequila, but she's breastfeeding):

Episode 1--in which our heroine returns home from exercising dripping sweat only to find Mate with a suspiciously bright orange rag in his hand. "The cave troll got into the hand lotion!" he grumbles grimly, wiping down the footboard of the bed, the dresser, and the television and the other dresser and the doorframe and the..."Why are you looking at me like that?" He says, puzzled. "What is it? What did I do? What didn't I do? What did I forget...oh!" Can you hear the dawning comprehension? "Is this your new blouse?"

*whimper* *wail* "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!"

Episode 2--in which our heroine is sitting in the bathroom. doing what you do in the morning--it's an odorific ritual that sometimes demands a newspaper--when her 11 year old daghter bursts in, wearing a soccer uniform that saw two games yesterday and has one to go on this day, saying "Mom...does my uniform stink?"

Episode 3--In which our heroine is holding her adorable baby daughter while taking the cave troll on the carousel, and the adorable baby daughter gives a happy little grunt and takes out her diaper and her outfit and mom is stuck, holding a cheery, stinky baby while the carousel goes around and around and around and around and around and around.

Episode 4-- (Actually this happened last year but it was too funny to just die after I told my all male, body-phobic lunch crew who tend to hold me in general contempt because I use words like 'crapweasel' 'f*&^head' and 'breastpump'.) In which our heroine (very pregnant at the time) is sitting on the couch with her daughter and her husband on a Wednesday evening, watching one of those 'Funniest Moments on Live Television' shows. We had just gotten to the segment when people doing news stories on animals are looking straight at the camera while the animals are doing their business (in this case, it was a kangaroo doing himself a big favor) behind them. So we're watching the show, and in OUR background, strides my large, dripping wet, and VERY NAKED oldest son. He is heading for the garage--which is the only place in the house where you can see people from the house. My husband and I looked at each other and then looked at the door to the garage, waiting to see what would happen next. In a few moments, the door opens and my son emerges--still naked. He waves a pair of underwear that he has gleaned from the drier and smiles at us, then ambles back to his bedroom to put them on. Have I mentioned that we're across the street from a church that holds Wednesday services? *sigh* Yeah.

So, these are just a few examples of why big mama needs her nap... the other is BOUND, which I'm going back to work on even as I sign off... Goddess, I'm so close to done that I can taste it--but it's going to be over 720 manuscript pages, which means that the self-publishing company will charge a fortune for it, which means no one will read it... too bad... it could be the best thing I've ever written...

Ours is not to reason why...

2006-08-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

I've thought of some other reasons to work besides the fulfillment of smacking grammar into cast-iron minds with a balsa-wood 2x4.

* Food--I'm a fan!

*Air conditioning--don't stay home without it!

*Eating out--with the way I cook, this is a definite necessity.

*Braces for the kids--so they can eat my world class "makes leather look like butter" steak.

*Movies--no self-respecting media junkie would deny herself this staple.

*The Internet--so my husband doesn't run screaming out of the chaos with his hair on fire.

*Girl clothes--for the little girls.

*Boy clothes--for the ginormous boys.

*Me clothes--because finding big mama clothes to fit mama's big butt don't come cheap.

*Mate's clothes--because if I don't buy him clothes he will wear them UNTIL THEY ROT OFF HIS BODY. I tested this once--wasn't pretty.

*The laundry monster--I can manage to wash the clothes but I can't manage to fold them. They sit on one side of the bed until the we can roll off on that side without actually changing altitude...the mattress gets a little lumpy, but, hell, nothing gets broken. Although I can't fold the clothes because, no matter where he is in the house when the cave troll hears the fibers being pressed he comes charging in to jump on my folded piles like Charlie Brown jumping into a pile of leaves, nobody every bothers Mate when he sits in our bedroom and watches the Kings lose...ever--so he can get lots of laundry folded and nobody's the wiser. However, for reasons known only to himself, he doesn't fold laundry during the summer when I don't work. If I don't go back to work, that puppy's gonna take over the block.

*My self-worth--If I could manage to clean the house, this would not be a problem, but I'm hopeless. I'm sitting right now at a table filled with an ungodly pile of crap, and it's like it doesn't even register until someone comes by and I suddenly see it through the eyes of a sane person and then I'm like "Wow--who gave this woman her license to procreate?" If I didn't work, write, or knit, I'd have nothing tangible to prove that I earn my oxygen and the cubic footage of flesh storage it takes to sustain me on the planet.

*My conversational reserves--If I didn't work all I'd have to talk about would be my kids--who are mostly only cute to me--and the characters in my books--who (hello) DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST!!!! I need to go to school and teach so I have something to talk about that happens somewhere besides my over-stimulated gray matter--otherwise, I AM the world's most boring human.

* Self-betterment--If I'm not teaching literature, all I'm reading is crap. (With the exception of Roxie and the Yarn Harlot--that's good stuff:-)

* Getting the check--I don't do direct deposit because Mate and I were so poor for so long, it still tickles me to drop that puppy in the deposit envelope and watch it make my bank account fatter. (The fact that our living expenses have multiplied geometrically since our salad days does not diminish this satisfaction in the least.)

* Teaching my children by example--if nothing else, by negative example. For instance, I've told them both that they need to take a home ec class in high school, because they need to learn that real food has names.

* Sleep is overrated--that's what I've been told, anyway.

* Running water--two thumbs WAYYY up!

* Yarn--still the best excuse ever for shaving a sheep.

So I've got reasons to go on...but that didn't stop me from jumping up and down with my arm in the air going "me me me me me me...I'LL do it" when Mate and I were discussing who gets to take all of Tuesday off to take the kids to the big kahuna of orthodontist appointments. I mean, you have to stay sane to stay circumspect, right?

The world's best lightbulb joke

2006-08-26T23:42:00.000-07:00

Okay...I just heard an ESPN sportscaster refer to the 'teachable moment'--which one of my colleagues broke out the eduspeak lexicon, because I thought that crap was supposed to be a secret...

That being said--my daughter has a soccer tournament this weekend, which means our house is going to be a black-matter vortex of accretion for another week...oh, well, I may have time to go grocery shopping, which means the claw machine and I'm happy. Babetta's is also having a sale on Labor Day--there may be light at the end of that tunnel--I haven't bought yarn in almost two weeks! *sob*.

And now, the entire reason for this absurdly short post. For those of us who follow the Yarn Harlot, she had a giddy post this last July when she told her favorite lightbulb joke and what followed was a deluge of every bad lightbulb/knock-knock/whaddyaget joke known to man...I was telling bad jokes for WEEKS! And now, my oldest daughter just told my all time favorite lightbulb joke--she made it up herself tonight:

How many babies does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

None--because when they smile the world lights up around them.

I'm gonna post that on my whiteboard this week--it'll keep the blues away!

Multi-tasking

2006-08-25T17:41:00.000-07:00

When I started writing this post, my husband called...we had a rather meandering conversation for a few moments while he tried to work and I tried to blog and we both tried to maintain a relationship that's lasted for 19 years without letting all of the responsibilities that come with it drop like glass boulders. While we were talking, our best friend called, and so I picked up her line decided to check my e-mail-- while I was doing that, Arwyn, who is in the other room being held by her sister, started to flirt with me... so I was checking my e-mail, talking to my friend, and flirting with my baby AND mediating a dispute between siblings.

My friend hung up, and now I'm typing this post, and flirting with my baby.

We have just returned from work and picking up my daughter--during my commute I write. Not physically but mentally--while I'm driving, my mind returns to my book and I plan and phrase and question and remember and catch plot-holes (and potholes) and have conversations and cry and laugh and do everything I do in front of my computer without having to type so that when I do type I can type like the wind. At the stoplights, if I'm not eating breakfast or getting the toddler's toy which got dropped, I knit.

Before the commute, I was at work--usually, at work, while the kids are doing quiet work, I enter their grades into the computer, but today, the grading program was down so I was writing. When I wasn't writing, I was stalking them up and down the aisles keeping them quiet while writing a key for the quiz I gave at the end of class.

During lunch, I was expressing milk for the baby, reading my e-mail, and looking for the Yarn-Harlot's blog in the internet but the internet was down so I was... wait. I wasn't expressing the milk for the baby. It wasn't coming out. So I had to stop and pull up a picture of Arwyn (I used the picture down on the blog) to try to make my milk come down, and she was so cute, and I had abandoned her with the (admittedly wonderful) daycare worker while she was grinning in my face. And then I cried. Just cried. No other task at hand. And then my milk dropped, and instead of checking my e-mail or doing something else while being the human cow, I thought.

Many of my students are from Muslim countries--they wear the headgear and the lovely kaftans and everything (I feel very foolish that I don't know the proper names for these things.) A couple of years ago I was talking to one of them about her arranged marriage. I've learned long ago not to get upset about things like this, even though the idea is alien to how I grew up: just because it's different, doesn't mean it's worse. I asked her if she was looking forward to going back and getting married, and leaving much of the independence she had here in the States behind.

She told me that it was wonderful being a woman in her country. She had seen me come into class upset and frazzled at leaving my children and that where she grew up, the woman spent the days in community, raising their children, keeping their homes beautiful, cooking good meals, and talking to each other the way American families don't seem to anymore.

I think of this student on days like today, and I especially thought of her at this moment, sobbing in my darkened classroom while trying to do one good thing for my child this day.

Did she and her family members multi-task?

Did they sweep and mind children or order groceries and do the dishes? Did any of them write while they were sweeping, or did they dream while they were plying needlework? Or was there simply a quiet blanket of peace, of heartbeats between tasks, of blessed meditation on the wonders of watching children grow and having something important to offer the world as they grew older and learned from their mistakes? But what if they did dream? Did those dreams come true? Were they composed of limitless options and 'sky is the limit' success? Or did those dreams have limits, boundaries, the littleness of lives circumsribed by tightly built, high walls?

I know that when I didn't work, I felt trapped, as though the limit to my life was the four walls I lived in and the yard beyond it, and the two small hearts that beat inside it with me were tethers to this tiny domain and helpless boredom of inactivity. But I was alone then, my husband was only home once a week, and there was no one to share my wonder in the children, or to ease my frusration at being the only parent for six days out of the week.

If I had been inside a peaceful high wall, with my mothers and friends and sisters, would I have learned the noble and honest multi-tasking of the homemaker? Would the freedom of the workforce have seemed quite so enticing?

Multi-tasking: Women have been doing it for centuries. You'd think eventually we'd get it right.

Can I do Short?

2006-08-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

Probably not-- I've been talking to kids nonstop for two days and I've decided that I'm the most concision handicapped individual in the whole world--a nightmare for a teacher. If only once I could shut up I'm convinced my students would be able to listen to the silence of the world and figure things out for themselves...a Table-of-Contents in a notebook, people--how hard can it be? Pretest--can they really be in 11th grade and not understand the pretest? Really? Oh, well, then I have to explain it and that just blows that whole thing about shutting the hell up to the northwinds...

On other fronts, my kids go and get the first installments to their braces today... does anyone want to know how much it costs to get braces from spacers to headgear installed in two adolescent children? You lie. NOBODY wants that number...I swear to the Goddess of finances that my first 5 cars didn't cost that much. (1970 Datsun, 1976 Pacer--you heard me-- 1975 Volvo, 1980 Toyota Corolla, 1986 Ford Escort--a fine family vehicle if you're frelling broke, really--combined total? $5,250. Less than half as much as my children's teeth. Who wants out of that parenthood gig NOW?) Un-be-frelling-believeable.

And as for the babies? The cave troll has insomnia from mama-go-bye-bye stress...it's heartbreaking. Last night it was nine-o'clock and he should have been in bed for an hour, and he comes padding out, clutching t'binkit, and just puts his hand on my arm and looks at me. He knows he can get in trouble for this, but what he really wants is a hug. I was so tired I couldn't focus on my computer screen, and the good cry I had earlier hadn't helped, and hugging him was the last useful thing I did all day. I now have to run my laundry again because I didn't get to it and now it's probably stinky.

As I was having that good cry, though, my husband put things in perspective--"We could probably live on my salary you know...we'd have to give up some things...books, movies, braces for the kids, yarn..." Wait a minute, buddy...back the truck up...you're talking crazy now...

Happy Birthday, Pete

2006-08-20T20:37:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, my Dad turns 60. This would really blow my mind, except my dad has not yet acknowledged that he's aging, and as a consequence, looks in my mind like he did when I was a little girl and he was a god.

This is a picture of my dad, wearing the woefully oversized camouflage colored Jughead hat from the NOT JUST MORE SOCKS book--I offered him a way out of wearing it--it fits my son perfectly (think of every Mike Meyer's quote about enormous noggins and that's my son.) But he was so tickled that I made it for him (and that I picked the colors he loves best), that I don't think he's going to take me up on it. To celebrate my dad's birthday I figured I'd give you some details that make up the general dadscape that I grew up with.

* When I was seven and my dad and mom got divorced, my dad asked me who I wanted to stay with. I chose him. This was 1974, and a dad who kept his kid was unheard of. I can't imagine a world in which I didn't grow up with my dad.

* Shortly after that every good thing my dad ever did in all his past lives caught up with him, and he met my stepmom. She was the best thing to ever happen to him, and one of the best things to ever happen to me. (I must also count my grown-up family--she was his grown-up family.)

* My dad used to put me on the back of his motorcycle because that was the only transportation we had. He said that when I was falling asleep he'd shake my clasped hands to wake mme up.

* When my dad was working and going to school, he used to sleep under the car, while pretending to fix it because he knew I'd leave him alone. (I wish I worked on cars. Hiding in the bathroom isn't working.)

* The first time I saw my dad cry was when our dog Sparky died. He's always claimed that if he's really good in this life, when he comes back he'll be a labrador retriever. I think he'll be the best one ever.

* My dad still rides a motorcycle--he looks like he rides a motorcycle, and although he's nursed his handlebar mustache and his soul patch for the last 30 years, the truth is, other than knowing he's the world's nicest guy who looks really tough, he has absolutely no vanity. He has always brushed his hair in the car on the way to work.

* My dad taught me how to drive. I'm including this tidbit so that those who know me can include his name in the class action suit after I demolish their automobile in some way, shape, or form.

* My dad went for about a ten or fifteen year span when he got a ticket every year. He was extremely proud of that. My stepmom, who paid the insurance bill was not so proud.

* My dad saw all my plays in high school, and many of my band performances. He also watched my stepbrother play football.

* After my dad and stepmom first met, my stepsister (who was three at the time) kept asking her mom "Which is bigger. A giraffe or Pete? An elephant or Pete? A giant or Pete?" In recent years, my stepsister has made my dad carrot cake on his birthdays more often than not--he looks forward to it.

* My dad plays frisbee golf--he actually entered a tournament at Shasta as a Senior about five years ago. He finished in the top ten Senior division, but he says that's only because he was the only one his age who didn't party with the young-uns without wrecking himself.

* My dad can fix anything except computer. My husband can fix computers and not everything else. After the initial friction of "who are you and what are your intentions towards my daughter" they have always gotten along very well.

* My dad is a tremendous graphic artist. If he'd been born in this day and age, he'd be working for Pixar, I know that in my bones.

* My dad and stepmom took us cross country in an RV when I was 14. This should be a requirement for every young person in every country across the world.

* My dad is six-foot five, and when he was younger he had curly hair the color of cherry coke, eyes the colors of a Hershey bar, and more freckles than a spotted trout. My son Trystan is his spitting image which makes me prouder than I can say.

* Trystan gets his desire to tell terrible jokes from my dad.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PETE--YOU'RE VERY, VERY LOVED.