Lately, my arthritis about kills me. My hands feel like they're burning up. You'd think that would feel comforting, but it so limits my range of motion in my fingers that it's rather debilitating instead. I find grabbing a needle for quilting requires several tries and a lot of concentration.

Today was a good day overall. I had Genny all day today and it was pretty good. She's so self-contained. She plays with her dollies and we talk while she does that. She tells me stuff and asks for help with things, but I kind of do my stuff in parallel with her play. I periodically pull the bathroom addict out of her favorite room to play in, where she jubilantly yells down the hall to me things that instill fear like,"Soap!" and "Towel!" I scurry down the hall to find her and remove her from her beloved bathroom and put the soap where it's harder to reach and use the towel to dry her off from her latest foray into wet play.

I took her shopping today and she was smacking bags of chips as we went down the aisle, yelling,"CHIPS!" I would move her an extra inch or so away and tried to pick my tortillas out quickly and bolt. That only made her try harder to smack the chips. Nonetheless, if you find broken chips in your bag and you pulled your bag from the front of the rack, it was probably because my daughter or another little kid smacked them and broke them for the satisfying sound it made.

I made a list of crap I should get done. It's formidable, and I don't know that I'll get it all done, but having the list was rather satisfying because as I worked on things around the house today, I realized that I was getting to some of the junk on my list. I actually got all the Christmas stuff done, but then realize that there's still a substantial string of lights on the sagebrush out front and then I found a half dozen little things I missed. I hate it when that happens.

I did weird things today like trim all the box tops coupon things for the school. It was kind of anal retentive and I hesitate to mention it, but it seems like an infernal waste of money if it give someone else money to take a chunk of cardboard off something you already buy NOT to cut the damned things out and trim them. It also seems like a ridiculous thing to have to do. I'm almost tempted to start sending in $10 a semester as donation because it'd probably amount to more than the stupid box tops. I remember saving box tops for things like a square record. Hell, if I could find that stupid square record, I'd probably be a freakin' millionaire.

I had my friend and long-time editor today tell me I should write about my travels and adventures and life adventures in memoir format. I kind of cringed at the thought because it seems so self-indulgent that someone so ordinary should write memoirs. I was thinking of Ruby fun facts though and thought, maybe I could start with that because those seem less ordinary.

Fun fact #1: I traveled all over the west and slept with a lot of strangers out of boredom/loneliness, while camping out of my truck. I carried nice clothes and an iron for working, so I could work in an office. I used to wash my hair and clean up in gas station restrooms.

Fun fact #2: I have worked for ski resorts on both coasts as a lift operator, soley for the purpose of being a ski bum with income.

Fun fact #3: I worked on a Wilderness Crew one year in Oregon, where I restored lakeside trails and habitat. We had to get special permission to use a wheelbarrow.

Fun fact #4: I learned Microsoft Word when it was a DOS program and no one had heard of it.

Fun fact #5: I had a horse when I was kid named Bay Mar. She slipped the saddle the first time I rode her and then gingerly stepped over my prone body.

Fun fact #6: When I was 19 and cute, I tried out for amature night at a stripper club because the winning purse was $100 and I needed the money. I got $10 stuck in my underwear and thought I'd done okay. (Side note: Band-aids suck for pasties.)

I think I need to start reading Tom Robbins again -- Still Life with Woodpecker, etc. And I think I might need a road trip.