Thursday, September 30, 2004

Mike was home at 6PM tonight. It was positively miraculous. This is the man that is typically gone from 8AM til 1130PM for the past month.

I was stuffing turkey enchiladas in the kitchen and he walked in and said,"Hey, baby."

I kind of stood there sputtering. "What happened?"

He shrugged,"I think I'm done."

Then he grabbed my butt and kissed my neck. The things that you miss. I swear.

We've already necked all over the kitchen, snuggled on the bed, and fondled each other a few times. Cute enough to make even the most strong-stomached person a bit nauseous, huh?

I can't believe the night that I make enchiladas, is the night he managed to come home. What's up with that? Last night, we had spaghetti - slightly tampered with from the can over left over noodles. The night before was Taco bell.

He claims he could smell it from work. He might just get sex for comments like that.

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

At the university yesterday, my adviser exclaimed,"You shrunk!" Of all the things a fat woman wants to hear, that is definitely among the top three. Everyone I saw commented on my longer hair, my smaller body, and my generally relaxed demeanor.

Relaxed?

Yeah, I know. I am guessing they were smoking something or that in their exhaustion-inspired graduate school delirium that they thought I might look relaxed. I told Mike though, it's kind of like going to your high school reunion sveltely slender, fabulously wealthy, and happily married to a studmuffin. Everyone claimed to miss me and that was nice. I was told I should be glad I'm not there, due to the usual whining and politics.

However, to be honest, I wish I was there. I loved school, I just wasn't healthy enough to be there. If I were at school, it would mean I was healthy. Health would be cool.

Instead, I'm relegated to house marm, which while entertaining at times is also intensely lonely. As soon as things cool down with Mike, I'm going back to work for the temp agencies. We need the money, and I need to get the hell out of Dodge for sanity's sake.

I was thinking it would be cool to homeschool Genny because she loves that and she's already far ahead of her peers, but she really likes hanging out with the other kids and she misses that intensely when she's not there. I think once things chill, if I'm not working, I'm picking her up in the afternoons and taking her home, so we can play.

She's the cutest little girl on the planet and she still thinks I'm cool, so I need to use it or lose it. :)
Okay, I'm 20 pints into plum pear jam which, by the way, is unfreakingbelievably good. I'm only about 10 pints into plum nectarine jam, which is okay, but pales in comparison to the other.

And I'm tired to my bones.

I went to the uni today, caught up with a few folks and hung out. I got all the stuff together for both classes squared away. I am now armed with a plan for completing everything, which should be fully executed by mid-November.

I spent the whole day in the car, driving back and forth between the two big cities here. I literally drove from 845AM to 7PM tonight when I drove up into the driveway.

Now, I sleep.

Monday, September 27, 2004

I made plum pear jam last night and it is to die for. I made a triple batch and only used a small portion of my plums and it only came to a lousy 9 pints. Mind you that's a lot of jam, but I had to peel pears and depit small (but tasty) plums for it, i.e., not much end product for the effort.

I bought 20lbs of sugar today and 3 boxes of pint jars and I'll be busy skinning pears and plums slicing up plums until the wee hours this evening, I'm sure. I also found a plum peach jam recipe, so I'll probably be doing some combo of those tonight. My hope is that next year that I won't have to buy any more freaking canning jars. I'm also fairly certain that somewhere in the depths of my garage, I have a whole box filled with perfectly useable jars, but I'll be darned if I know where it is.

Mostly, I'm tired. Mike is working 12-14 hours per day and this single parenting gig really blows. I accidentally slept in today and honestly, I felt like I could stand a few more hours, but I got up and worked on laundry, shopping,etc. I brought Mike a sandwich, because otherwise he doesn't eat lunch. I have groceries that I still need to put away.

One thing at a time, I swear.

So much to do, so little time to accomplish it.

I also felt like a queen yesterday because I managed to get rid of three boxes of crap out of the garage. Some of it was boxes I hadn't unpacked since we moved out of California three years ago.

Oh, shaddup.

I found scrapbooks, Russell's baby books, and some favorite tapes.

I think what was neatest is that I got to go through Russell's baby book with him and he got to understand how much I planned for, protected, and loved him. I think when Russell understood that despite my obvious failings that I have spent his whole life adoring the blue bejesus out of him, he found it comforting that I have always thought he was special. Heck, I think I got one month's worth of stuff into Genny's book and abandoned the whole thing.

I have a lot more pictures of her, though, and for that, I'm happy, too.

I also found Genny stuff in the boxes -- including a small Beatrix Potter pail with her tiny baby newborn socks in it. I tried putting it in her room, but she started to go through it, so I hid it in mine until she's older.

Memory lane is a pretty place.



Thursday, September 23, 2004

I made about 3 gallons of homemade fruit cocktail, using white nectarines, pears, maraschino cherries, and my plums. For dessert, I gave the kids the juice I made to store them in -- hot, but over ice. They both were thrilled and deemed said juice worthy of their palates. ( A mix of maraschino cherry juice, pineapple juice, and white grape juice.)

I still have half a box of pears and nectarines to go and a whole lot more plums, but I'm thinking I should be making fruit crisps or something because they'd be tasty fresh and might fine. Well, and I'm getting sick and tired of canning stuff.

I still have to make a small batch of green tomato jam. No, I don't know if it is good, I'm just going to try making it for Donna's husband because he says it's good and I have all these stupid green tomatoes that I saved from the frost.

Mike hasn't been home before 10 all week, really, and I miss him. I'd like to actually have sex with him some day, if we can remember how. Although sleeping is something I don't seem to have a handle on either.

I haven't been sleeping at all and tomorrow, I told LaDawn that I'd take over the daycare for her in the afternoon, so she can drive 3 hours away to her see her Mom. Her mom had surgery and went septic, so she's been in ICU for weeks and it's been pretty scary. At any rate, I'm going to need the sleep, I'm pretty sure.

I'm dropping children in bed and then I think I'm going to drop in bed and sleep for a few years.

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Zucchini relish simmers on the stove while the canning jars bubble away in their sterile hot water environment. A box of pears calls to me -- peel us, slice us, drop us in jars. The peaches join the chorus, as do the plums, and the frozen cherries in the garage.

I'm tired though. 6 hours of sleep and one hour of worrying and slap me and call me wiped.

I untoweled, desheeted, and untarped the garden. The frost got most of the plants anyhow. I only really saved half a squash plant, 2 peppers, and several halves of tomato plants. I collected what green tomatoes I could find for jam and relish. They too call on me. I watered my patch, and the next week is supposed to be warm, so I'm hoping I get some survival out of these damned plants. I've got tons of tomatoes in the fridge, cilantro and hot peppers that I should can up salsa out of.

The snow has all but melted off the mountains, now. You can see a few patches hiding on the north side of trees. I hope we get a lot more because the drought here is getting rugged and I don't want to come up with a fortune to redig my well.

Today, however, I dig through laundry and fruit. I'm sure there's some kind of moral or pithy saying in there about fruit of the loom, but I'm too exhausted to think what it might be.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Well, I picked about 2 bushels of plums in 50 degree weather on Sunday. I still have scratches on my hands and forearems and windburn on my face from it. Tomorrow, I can those up, probably with white grape juice, peaches, and pears, actually, because I can't bring myself to just turn them all into jam. I still haven't pickled the zuke, but it's sitting in the fridge covered and waiting.

Today, it seems like I didn't do a damned thing, but I ran around a lot. I ran to two different music stores in town to find the necessary book for Russell's trumpet playing. I stopped at joann's fabrics and found some cute bug fabric with coordinating fabric sets, so I'm going to make 2 receiving blankets for the friend of a friend. Drove 30 miles south to get to my eye doctor appt.

What I want to know is: On what fucking planet does a fucking EYE exam take nearly 2 FUCKING HOURS?!!! I will never go back to that doctor again. The staff is really nice, but there's no excuse for making someone wait forever and then shuffling them around constantly and taking 2 hours for it all.

After that, I went to the PTA meeting where I felt enormously out of place. I finally had to leave early to give Russ his meds. Unfortunately, that feeling of vague uneasiness didn't end.



Saturday, September 18, 2004

I baked three loaves of zuke bread today and another pan of jumbo muffins. Yeah, that's a whole lotta squash, dude. Cuz there's more in the fridge fermenting for more relish.

I'm sick, I tell ya. I've still got to go finish picking and canning all the damned plums. I bought peaches and pears to go in that jam.

Tonight is threatening to be first frost, which would suck because the tomatoes are JUST starting to ripen. We tossed tarps, sheets, and beach towels to protect the squash, some peppers, and the biggest and healthiest tomatoes.

Nip this, Jack.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

I had a good birthday. I got some awesome stuff from Betty and other fun things from friends and hubbins. I got this awesome star lamp from Betty that is now in the livingroom. I also got these wonderful sarongs that were so beautiful. (more on this in a paragraph or two)

I've been canning my fool head off. I was supposed to actually can the zuke relish today, but ended up running around. Russell needed an instrument for band and I managed to talk him into the trumpet because it's something I know how to play and I figured I could help him out at home, if needed. Russ also left his word processor thingy on the bus, so we had to run to the bus depot to get it.

Genny's going into a different room of the daycare and they'll make sure that the recesses are staggered so that the psycho child doesn't get near enough to attack her again. The girl bit her again last week so hard that she broke the skin through Genny's clothes. This time it was on the shoulder, so it was pretty obvious that Genny didn't do anything to provoke the kid. I'm trying hard to balance unsheathing the Mommy claws to protect my child and being reasonable. Part of me just wants to rip Genny from there and put her back at LaDawn's. There are girls now at LaDawn's daycare, so it'd be nice for Genny, but I know she really likes her school and the things she gets to do there, including a cute little dance class thing she gets to do. I also think that the preschool set up there is more conducive to a smooth transition to kindergarten in terms of the number of kids and the structured nature of it. I think if Genny hadn't spent the entire weekend showing me her dance moves, I might have just said fuck it and put her at LaDawn's, and I know I can put her in dance classes elsewhere and all that, but she really wanted this. Mike said it best, too, "I think if we asked Genny, she'd tell us that she wants to stay at Child ____."

Sunday, we took Bear and four friends to the local waterpark and they played and had a wonderful time. I took the sarongs for me and Genny as coverups for there, which was big fun. Genny really liked that she got to wear Momma's sarong and I really liked how the one I was wearing felt so pretty with my suit. After we got home and did an ice cream cake and dropped off kids, I felt completely thwacked exhausted, so Monday I kind of hung close to home and did butt-tons of laundry, napped in the chair for half an hour, and baked 2 loaves of zuke bread and 6 jumbo muffins after collecting stuff from the garden and deciding after cutting up three gi-normous zukes for relish that the food processor would make the zuke smaller and thus, would make it eligible for bread, but not more freakin' relish.

I swear tomorrow, I'll can. And I'll harvest the plums. Oh, and the kitchen floor might even get cleaned afterwards.

Okay, fat chance on the floor, but pigs might just fly out of my butt. Ya never know.

Thursday, September 09, 2004

Today, I became a bazonga booster.



You should, too.

I don't have it in my famiily, but a friend has it and you probably know someone who has fought the breast cancer battle.

Adrienne Rich, one of my favorite modern poets, writes about it in a poem entitled,"A woman dead in her forties."

Donate a boobie prize, if you're short of cash. (I stole that from Marn.)

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Sometimes, I amaze myself.

I don't know how it is that I do these things, but I'm really good at hooking people up with appropriate resources.

So, the girl that bit Genny...that started it. I didn't want to just gripe, so I suggested a resource at UNR. Last night, that person wrote me an email that she'd hooked up with my daughter's daycare person.

I just called to follow up with the daycare and the resource person is observing kids in Genny's classroom and planning on helping the daycare meet and work with parents. Color me psyched up, baby!

I have done the same thing a lot of times for a lot of people and that's just the most rewarding thing to me. It's a virgo thing to be of service, I realize, but more than that, serving children and their families sets my soul free. It makes me want to write poetry, dance around the room, and sing joyful songs.

I really need to get myself together to go back to school. I've got to finish up my incompletes and go back in the fall. In the interim, I think I'm going to get in as a volunteer in either the disability advocacy office or the parents empowering parents office. I'm interviewing for a state position as some kind of basic clerical schlub, but I'm not sure I want to take it because then I'd be lassoed into something I might not want to do.

Things to put before God and ask for wisdom on, I think.

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Well, Mike looked at me yesterday and said,"You know, I think you're feeling better." I asked,"What makes you say that?"

He smirked and said,"Because we had a marathon sex session this morning and the house is spotless. You're a good widdle wifey-poo."

"Widdle wifey-poo? Do you have a death wish?"

He smirked and smacked my butt.

Dork!

But the truth will out. I am feeling better. I worked last week and this and I'm remembering what I am supposed to do and I am keeping track of stuff, and generally, I'm doing a whole whale of a lot better.

And yes. Holy schmoley, Batman, my house is clean. The only room that isn't is the back bedroom and that's because we're halfway through reorganizing everything. I also realized last night, as I was going through my closet that I have a lot of crap that should be boxed up and marked as a size I can't wear right now. I know, I should bite the bullet and just donate everything, but I've got suits I have never worn that I am reticent to give up as I am losing weight like mad. I've lost a full size and am continuing to lose.

I put on a pair of skorts this weekend that used to barely fit, which now require that I use the drawstring on them in order for them to remain around my waist. Before, pure lard kept them up. No longer, however.

Next week, I'm hoping I won't be working and I'll be able to get my canning done. If not, this weekend appears to be a blowout between my birthday on Saturday and Russell's party on Sunday at the company picnic. I supposed I could just prep the canning Friday night and try to get it done on Saturday.



Friday, September 03, 2004

Well, I survived my first day at work. It was actually kind of nice, all in all to actually be AT work.

I don't have near enough to do and I desperately need my glasses, but can't find the damned things. I think I'd like to clean my room thoroughly and see if I can't find the darned things. I have my old pair, but they don't fit so hot, and I know my vision is worse now, what with my advancing years and general decrepidness.

Today, is shaping up to be about as boring as before, but it'll be nice to get that paycheck, I tell ya. They've promised that they'll train me and give me more to do next week. I sure hope they're not lying, or at least, that they'll pay be for doing more nothing next week.

Last night, got long because we had to leave abruptly from back-to-school night when Mike (like the man he is) refused to ask anyone where to find a restroom and Genny peed herself. We took her home, bathed her and put her in jammies and drove back up to Mike's work to get his car, while Russell was at home finishing homework hurriedly. It ended up being an unbearably long day.

I think it was doubly long because a kid at Genny's daycare bit her so hard, that you could still see the mark on her this morning. This is the same kid, who hauled off and decked another girl, then tossed herself on the floor in a tantrum, when she was told to go to the office.

I called and griped to the daycare, but I didn't just blindly gripe. I did give them the name of a woman I know from my classes who works with difficult preschoolers and helps the preschool and parents work with them and sometimes even places them into more appropriate environments. I figure, you don't want this kid messed up more than she is, so if I can help her now, I've done my job.



Thursday, September 02, 2004

I feel bad because they don't have much for me to do at this job. I think some of it, is that they are going to have one person go to part-time and they need someone to fill in with stuff like filing, answering phones, etc., until they figure out what they'll be doing.

They said I could web surf between things, so I am, but then their corporate whatever limits it so that you can't access web email. I've found a work around, which probably speaks to my long-term computer knowledge more than anything. (telnet windows)

I miss being home, in some ways. On the other hand, it's rather nice to be in a place working. I did no brainer type work -- filing and answering phones, but upon arrival, had to reorganize their file cabinets, which were rather in a shambles from previous temp employees, apparently.

I told them I am looking for part-time work, but I don't know if they're interested. Ok, I'm not sure I'm interested. I'll see how I feel at day's end. :)

The only thing I found difficult this morning was how to take my thyroid and give it an hour and be able to eat breakfast. I had a cafe latte and I bought cheese crackers and had a pack, but that's not a good diabetic breakfast. I'll need to figure that out, so I can eat more appropriately and keep my sugars normal.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

I start a temp job tomorrow as a receptionist at $10/hour.

I'm all jazzed. 1-2 weeks of that and I'll be ~$500 richer. Whee!

However, tonight, I spent about $85 buying business attire (read things I can wear comfortable shoes and socks with) because I have one skirt and sweater set and no pantyhose. If you know anything about me, nothing squicks me out more than pantyhose. Give me cotton hose or tights, but kill me rather than make me wear pantyhose.

I decided in lieu of the idea of wearing pantyhose in 80-90 weather, I'd go for pants and trouser socks. Thank god for trouser socks, pants, and damned long skirts.

Perverts. You thought I meant something else. Sock, not snake, okay?

The registering people to vote job hasn't come through, yet, so I'm going to take the sure thing and go work. They're waiting on a call, but I'm not. My hope is that they decide they need someone to register voters in 1-2 weeks after this job is over. :)

If not, I'll tell them that there will be some overlap and they can be grumpy about it, or not.

All's fair in love and temp work.