Coming up for air

I love school! I'm so pumped just being in class. I wish the class periods lasted a little bit longer. Especially my Mon/Wed/Fri classes, which only last an hour. Tues/Thurs I'm in class for 1.5 hours, and that's better. I feel more alive than I have in a long time.

...in some respects. In other respects, I'm dead. As in "dead tired." I may have mentioned that my iron levels are low. I'm taking an iron supplement, but it takes a while for that to make a difference. I haven't been sleeping as long as I should. I stay up late studying then get up at 5:30 to start the new day. All my classes are back-to-back, so I don't have a break between them, but once I get a break I'm done for the day. 

There is an awful lot of information coming at me really fast. I have always been a thinker, so the brain work isn't too different. I just haven't had to think this big and this fast in a while. Hopefully I'll get into the swing of it and it won't seem quite so, I dunno, intense. 

All but two of my classes are freshman level courses, and sure enough there are a lot of freshmen around. 18-19 year olds are stoopid, irritating, thoughtless, clueless, and really try my patience. I smile and shut up mostly. I met a woman who is in a situation similar to mine. She's in her 40s, has 4 kids (teens in high school and a couple of 20 somethings out of the house), is getting a degree in psych and minoring in business for a mid-life career change. We were both extremely happy to see each other in the two classes we share. 

I have yet to finish the first chapters in two of my textbooks. I start them, read about halfway through, then either fall asleep or get pulled away to something else. I've glanced over the rest, and looked over the power point slides for one of them. But I have tests and stuff next week. I plan to get through the chapters this weekend, to read and understand the whole thing. 

I am exploring the campus. I wandered all over the student center building the other day and discovered a secret hallway. Well, it's really not all that secret, but it isn't obvious. Many of the student support services have offices there. This is a stretch for me. I'm great at driving down different roads to see what's there. But to walk around and chance a personal encounter with another human being is more bravado than I usually muster. The biggie was going into the cafeteria. It is big and strange and full of people. There are social expectations, those unwritten codes of behavior that if violated make you look like a dweeb. 

It's a fancy modern cafeteria, with different stations for different types of food. There are no trays and no tray runways. It works a lot like a buffet restaurant, actually. Diners get a plate and use tongs to pick up various food stuffs. There are a few places where a cafeteria lady dishes out portions. I suspect they do that to keep the boys from scarfing all the more expensive food. There's a salad bar, an area with the main entree and side dishes du jour, a pizza station, a sandwich station, a deli type area. (I think that's what it is. I haven't been to that one yet. There is also a dessert station and an array of cereal dispensers. Cheerios, frosted mini wheats, raisin bran, chocolate rice crispies, sugar coated puffed wheat, and a few others. I think there are 8 different cereals. 

There are a couple of drink stations. It's a Pepsi campus! Pepsi is my favorite, and around here there are lots of Coke-only establishments. The drink stations offer soda and juice, healthy or flavored fizzy sugar water. And milk. Coffee too.  Of the cookies I've sampled I like the oatmeal raisin the best. Those cookies are fantastic dipped in the coffee! I saw a soft serve ice cream dispenser, but haven't had any of that yet. The food is excellent, the facility is comfortable and welcoming. If you are looking for a good school based on the quality of the dining facilities, I recommend Lander. 

The thing I miss the most is visiting your blogs. I haven't had time to post or read much of anything. I barely keep up with my email. Hopefully I'll establish a routine of study and home obligations that allows me to slip in a bit more blog time as well. 

That's all my brain will reveal right now. If I could post on the go I'd have shared all sorts of little snippets of insight or interesting tidbits that crossed my mind during the week. Unfortunately I didn't write them down and now can't remember much. 

Disturbia in Javaland

I'll get to the disturbia momentarily, but first a word about school. I had a great day at school today. My other two classes met, and I think Tues/Thurs will be my favorite days. I wondered around the student center today, making more of an exploration than I have before. I ate lunch in the main dining hall. Y'all!! The food at Lander is good!!   Someone told me there is a dining plan I can buy, even as a commuter student. It's called something like the 50/50 plan, where for $50 I get 50 meals during the semester. It sounds too good to be true. I need to see the head of dining services, and she was busy when I went to check it out, and I didn't wait. I'll go back and see probably tomorrow. 

Now to the disturbia-

Diva (the daughter who just had her 11th birthday three weeks before Christmas) was home for an hour or so before I got home. I went from school to the high school to pick up Twitch and we didn't get home until just after 4. Diva usually gets home between 2:45 and 3:00. When Twitch and I got home Diva came around from the back yard with her book bag on her back, saying she was waiting for us to get home so she could get in. Well, the door wasn't locked, and she said she saw it closed and assumed it was locked. Whatever. No red flag, but duly noted. 

The mail was on the kitchen table, so I assumed Superman had come home for lunch or something. Duly noted. 

Came back to my room and saw my laptop on the desk/tray that I use when I'm using the computer in bed. The laptop was closed, but the power indicator light was on. I know I turned it off before I left home. So I opened the computer and saw Superman was logged on. Hmmm, he must have been online when he was home for lunch. Duly noted. I opened his user page (or whatever it's called) to see if I could close things down before opening mine. Well, there was a web page opened, an order page with an error message saying the credit card information is incorrect. I also notice that it's Internet Explorer. He always uses Firefox. I always use Google Chrome. Hmmm. Red flag. I looked carefully at this order page. What do you know! It has Diva's full name as the person ordering whatever it was. Big red flag! And all the other "duly noted" items are becoming red flags. So I check the URL, what exactly was she trying to order? Pornhub.com!

Shit! Then I checked the history. She doesn't know how to erase history yet. Please don't tell her. Here's the history of today's activity:

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Shit! This is not good. I need to address this, but how? I doubt a spanking will do much good. She won't listen to a reasoned argument. I could talk until I'm blue in the face, she'd stare at me with glazed eyes and absorb nothing. There are many issues here as well. In addition to her looking up porn she also used my laptop without permission, lied, went into my bedroom when she's not allowed to, subjected the computer to infection by viruses and worms and stuff. I'm not sure how to proceed, but I think I need to calm down, cool off, and gather my wits about me before I confront her. 

Suggestions are welcome. 

The college adventure begins: First Impressions

• Course text books are expensive. And heavy!
  
• Next week is my 47th birthday. 47 year old ladies are much older than most college freshmen.
• There are a lot of college freshmen in these classes.
• I'm really out of shape. Even though the parking lot isn't very far from the classroom building I still need to go slow, and am a bit short of breath when I get there.
• It feels great to be back in the classroom again! I love school.
• It does not, however, feel so great to try to squeeze my ample circumference into those one-piece torture devices known as desks. 
• There appear to be a lot of female psychology majors. 
• I'm glad I am not trolling for boyfriend or husband material at this college.
• This school has a large education department, and a lot of women go into the field of education. There are a lot of girls here. 
• Young adults can be very irritating, especially when they congregate.
• The internet has brought a lot of changes to the college experience.
• This school's web feature for students and teachers is probably very helpful for instruction and communication between students and professors. Its operation , however, is not intuitively obvious to me.
• Even my name seems old. It is an old name (Doris), but in a class with Revis, Jalessa, Akea, Prestasia, Rashunda, and a slew of Brittanys it just seems really old. 
• I am not physically strong enough to attend college. That won't stop me, but it's going to be tough.

Four of my classes met today, the other two meet tomorrow. My major is psychology with an emphasis on counseling. I am seeking a second degree, my first is a BA in sociology which I earned in 1986. A lot has changed in 22 years. Most of my general education credits have transferred, but I need to take this basic English class which Lander calls Writing and Inquiry II, writing for the disciplines. I may have discussed this previously. Anyway, this English 102 course is a prerequisite for almost every other course in the whole university. The only thing I'm able to take now is lower level beginning classes. This is where all these freshmen show up. 

I have two classes that are at the 200 level. One met today, the other meets tomorrow. There are fewer freshmen in those classes. The Developmental Psychology class I had today was good. It's going to be meaty. I have a lot to remember.

Overall I had a good day. I'm excited about being in school again. It has been a very busy day and I went to bed later than I should have last night. I'm very tired. 

Goodnight

Meanwhile, back in Javaland...

I couldn't resist the LOLcats. 

(the cat is the most interesting part of this whole post. the rest is rambling drivel with much boring detail about my activities of the last couple of days. I recommend you skip it.)

I have been doing stuff since my last post. I've been thinking of you, thinking about telling you stuff. Interesting things come to me as I'm going about my day, things I want to tell you, things I think you'll appreciate. Occasionally I can remember them once I sit here to write. 

Let's start with yesterday. Friday. No, let's start with Thursday evening because that gives the background info for Friday. We'll do Thursday evening, then Friday, then go back to Thursday morning, 'cause that's the way I want to tell it. My blog, my rules. ;)

Thursday evening I went to college town to bring Light home for the weekend. Right now our vehicles are in a sad state of disrepair. Have I mentioned that the van (Big Bertha) has transmission issues? Ugh. We need to do a cost analysis to decide whether to fix her, trade her in as-is, drive her into the river, or begin living in her. Manny, my beloved F150 pick-up truck, has some issues. He always has issues. He's a very butch queen, really. Very high  maintenance. His battery has reached a state of exhaustion rendering him unable to get it up, so to speak. So there he sits, decorating our driveway. 

(Seems my ADD is running rampant today. You know, the ADD that my psychiatrist says I don't have. My brain is telling rambling stories worse than usual.) So, we are not comfortable taking either vehicle out of town. We rented a little Toyota something-or-other from our neighborhood Enterprise franchise. I picked it up around 4:00 Thursday afternoon and headed up to college town to get Light. I was so sleepy! It was tough to stay awake to make that drive. But I did, and rested a while in her dorm until she was ready to go. We got home safely, though I was still very tired. 

Light came home for the weekend to get her wisdom teeth removed. The closest oral surgeon who participates with our insurance is in Augusta, GA, an hour and a half south of here. That's the other reason we rented the little car, to drive down there and back again. We shot out of town Friday morning at 9:30-ish for her 11:15 appointment with the oral surgeon. Making good time, we got there with 15 minutes to spare. This is significant because the interstate that runs through Augusta is currently undergoing extensive renovation. Some days some exits are open, other days they are blocked. It's a crap shoot even for the folks who live around there. Augusta has never made much sense to me, navigationally. I'm usually pretty good with directions, can get around fairly well in new places. Augusta, GA, Athens, GA, and Charlotte NC are cities within a few hours driving distance that befuddle me. So I was quite proud of myself for getting to the surgeon's office in time. 

The waiting room was HOT. I survived anyway. Light is cold natured, while I am hot natured. The poor child's hands and feet are perpetually cold. I don't know how she does it. I sat in the waiting room for however long. Didn't really pay attention to the time. Eventually Light was finished, so we got in the car and came home. Poor kid was in a fog. She had her top two wisdom teeth removed. Thanksgiving of '07 she had the bottom wisdom teeth removed. Hopefully she's now finished having wisdom teeth removed. Rumor has it that she only had 4. I hope that is the case. 

And I was so sleepy on the way back to Greenwood! Did OK. Got back to town and had to take Light's prescriptions to the pharmacy. Also swung by (way out of the way) the family practice office to pick up Sproing's Ritalin prescription. He didn't have any Ritalin at school yesterday. His teacher is a saint. So I got the scripts to the pharmacy, topped off the gas tank (a Toyota Whatever-that-was has a MUCH smaller gas tank than our '00 Chevy 3500 passenger van.). Then I met Superman at the rental car place. I returned the car less than 24 hours after I picked it up, so incurred the one day rental charge instead of the two day. We planned it out carefully, and I'm so glad it went as planned. That's a good day. 

Came back home, crawled into my bed beside Light who was sleeping under a pile of quilts on her Daddy's side of the bed, and we both napped. I was so tired! She was so sore and sick! Poor kid had the upset stomach reaction to the knock-out juice they gave her. She also swallowed a lot of blood from the incisions in her gums. Blood typically doesn't sit well on the stomach. She had a fit of vomiting late last night. I felt so bad for her, but unfortunately there wasn't really anything I could do but sympathize. She went to bed around 1:00 and I think she slept through til morning. She feels much better today, though is taking her Percocet. Perhaps that's why she feels better.

Now, back to Thursday morning. That's when Lander scheduled the New and Transfer Student Orientation. I got the flyer, which said something about talking to your advisor (did that already), registering for classes (did that already), taking a tour of campus (did that already), and getting your parking pass and ID. I hadn't done the latter, but figured I'd do that while everyone else was in the orientation meeting so I would miss the long lines. I'm smart. I think I made a good choice skipping orientation. Indeed I was finally able to get my ID and parking pass. The bureaucratic requirements holding things up were fulfilled somehow. I think it was magic, or perhaps a fairy godmother. I did something, followed some vague directions sent to me in an email from some lady in financial aid. I didn't understand it exactly, though I think it had to do with officially accepting my financial aid package, which I know I already did. Perhaps something changed with the package. Seems they've given me even more money to work with. Not necessarily a good thing, as it's all student loan and I have to pay it back. Really I'd much rather have free money that I don't have to give back. Wouldn't you?

I mentioned that I've been tired. Did I tell you I saw the doctor a couple of weeks ago? I asked him to check my hemoglobin. I suspect low iron. The doctor jumped on that suggestion and ordered a complete blood work up. Well this week I received the results of the blood tests. No, I'm not pregnant. (did I frighten you?) But my iron levels are indeed low. He has prescribed an iron supplement, once a day every day, and he wants to check my iron level again in 8 weeks. My cholesterol numbers are beautiful despite my diet and lifestyle. Good genes, you know. My blood sugar, however, is slightly elevated. He prescribes a weight loss diet and moderate exercise, of course. He prescribes that nearly every time I see him. I am taking the iron tablets, and I only had candy bars for a meal twice this week. *sigh*

Classes begin Monday. I have an 8:00 class on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That was the only unit of that course still open when I registered. My first class on Tuesdays and Thursdays begins at 9:30. I wish I had bought my books this week, but I didn't have the chance. I can get a book voucher from financial aid to pay for my books. That will charge the books to my loan. The loan details didn't get cleared up until Thursday, and I had all the other business with Light and her teeth of wisdom to handle Thursday afternoon and Friday. I will investigate the matter of procuring my textbooks Monday afternoon when my classes are over.  

The college adventure begins: Prequel

I registered for classes Monday. I hoped to avoid the basic general education classes, but we determined that I really need English 102.  

Writing and Inquiry II: Students write in response to diverse texts, refining their abilities to analyze, interpret, synthesize, and evaluate ideas with an emphasis on research, and MLA style documentation.

I last took a composition/research writing course a quarter of a century ago. Things have changed a bit since then. I was never taught how to cite information from the internet, as it didn't exist for the general public way back then. (I think Al Gore was still beta testing it with the military)

On the advice of my therapist I am retaking Psychology 101. She suggested I should start with a refresher, and I'll see if they've come up with anything new since last time I was in college. I suspect they have.  I also registered for a couple of upper level psych courses. 

After registering for all that junque I still needed another 3 credit hour course. I was tired by then, so I chose Sociology 101. My first degree is in Sociology, and I'm still very much interested in the field. I'm going to see what they're teaching young sociologists these days. 

The other stuff I really want to take either has English 102 as a prerequisite or the classes are already full. Coming in as a new student, I got last priority in registration. Eh. 

I will need to take two semesters of a foreign language. That was recommended but not required when I got my first degree, and I passed on that opportunity. Now, however, it is required. Lander U offers French and Spanish. I can also take Spanish at the local tech college, the credits transfer beautifully. Or I can take one semester of Spanish and one semester of French, that way I can be confused in two more languages and still not know what the hell I'm doing. At any rate, my schedule is full for this term, so I don't have to make that decision quite yet. 

There is some red tape to cut through in order for my financial aid to apply. Something about a transcript review form. I filled one out and turned it in before Christmas, but alas, they have lost it. It goes from admissions to financial aid. Financial aid doesn't have it, and admissions doesn't know where it is, though they have done the review of my transcript. Financial aid can't process my loan money until they have that paper. I just filled out another one. Five simple lines of info, two of which were my name (signed and printed). Sheesh. But admissions must put their scribble on it and send it to financial aid before they'll admit that I can pay my tuition. For some odd reason the school won't give me my official identification badge until they know they'll get my tuition money. Go figure. 

Classes begin Monday. Tomorrow morning is the official transfer student orientation, though I've done almost everything that the orientation is designed to accomplish. I'll probably go. After all I do need to get my ID made and buy my parking pass. Tried to do that today, but [see previous paragraph]. I'm interested to see if there are any other non-traditional students such as myself coming into the school this semester. 

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures [sic] as Java returns to college to gain a little knowledge.

More randomosity, as my brain seems incapable of focusing on any one task for a significant amount of time

• I am disillusioned with my old brand of dish washing liquid, so I got a couple of different brands. The first bottle advertises a light citrus scent. To me it smells like fresh fish guts. Fresh fish guts smell better than old fish guts, nevertheless it isn't an odor I want to endure as I wash my dishes. The second bottle says something about "free and clear." I promise you it wasn't free, but it is clear. I haven't used it yet, as I want to finish the first bottle before opening the second. I'll let you know my impressions of that one when I get to it. 
• I registered for classes at Lander yesterday. I will post a separate entry detailing that excitement.
• The kitten acts much like a kitten. She is very playful when she isn't sleeping. It has been a very long time since I had a kitten (or since a kitten owned me). I'm more of a dog person. I didn't remember how much like puppies these cats are in their desire to chew stuff. Stuff like my fingers, for instance. And my toes. While I'm trying to sleep. I was sitting peacefully at my computer on Sunday with my ear-bud headphones on, listening to pretty music while trying to ignore the annoying screech from my children. Scher was on my lap underneath the desk. All of a sudden my music went from stereo to mono, then to barely an echo. The little sneak chewed into my headphone wire severing the connections. It wasn't a little cheap $5 set, either. Perhaps that's what I need to get, though, until her need to chew abates. 
• Our weather has been decidedly spring-like. We're getting a lot of rain, and temperatures this week are in the mid to upper 60s F (18-20 C). My Bradford Pear tree is once more threatening to bloom. We had some freezing temps last week for a couple of nights, but nothing extremely cold. The buds are still small and tight enough that I think they survived last week. But the forecast this week is for this warmer wet weather, our lowest low for the foreseeable future being 30F (-1). It will be interesting to see what the pear tree does. 
• 'Tis time to take down our Christmas decorations. Since we didn't put up the not-a-tree until Christmas Eve, I am not finished enjoying it. I don't really want to take it down yet. But it is time. 
• I went to bed at 6:00 last night. It started as a post coital nap, but extended until 4:30 this morning. I felt great when I woke up! I got up, took Scher with me into the kitchen. (She was being very playful and bite-ish, and I wanted to let Superman sleep. She didn't.) I used the 5 over-ripe bananas we had on the table to make two small loaves of banana bread. Twitch, the silly boy, doesn't like pecans. I made one loaf without pecans and used the full recipe allotment of pecans in the second loaf. That's some good banana bread!! I sliced the fresh hot banana nut loaf, buttered a couple of pieces, and took those and a pot of fresh coffee to Superman who was still in bed. By this time it was 6:45, way past time for him to be awake. He makes breakfast and coffee for me almost every day, and it was fun to return the favor.
• Scher had a wonderful time in the kitchen this morning. I had to shoo her off the table a couple of times, but there is so much junk on the floor she was plenty entertained down there. She found a small paper sack. OMG cute!! She kept running from one side of the kitchen near the refrigerator all the way across the room and into the utility room at the other end. She was pouncing at everything from paper towels that had been dropped and not picked up, to the bags of garbage waiting by the back door, to my feet. Totally adorable.
• I walked and stood a lot yesterday morning. It took all morning to get all the loose ends tied up so I could register for classes. I had to go from the psychology department to the registrar's office, to admissions, to financial aid, to the English department, back to psychology, back to admissions, back to the registrar. It's a small school, and all these offices are in the same building. I made use of the elevator. Nevertheless that's a lot more activity than I am used to. (Sedentary describes my normal activity level) All I carried was my purse and a clipboard. Plus the extra weight I'm wearing, which is considerable. I am 100-150 lbs heavier than I want to/should be. The sedentary lifestyle isn't helping. Yesterday afternoon and this morning I notice that my hips and pelvic area are sore. Most of my weight is around the abdomen (the most dangerous for heart attack risk, they tell me). My pelvic girdle holds a lot of weight, and that's where it hurts today. I hope I can build up strength and stamina, and perhaps lose some weight before I injure myself walking around campus carrying heavy books. Oy. 
• Light and Superman have pretty much finished preparing the other bedroom for her occupancy. It needs a bit of touch up painting in a couple of places where she did a sloppy masking job. I can do that pretty easily. I need to move all of her stuff and my sewing stuff out of her former bedroom that Sproing is now sleeping in. That, and taking down the Christmas decorations are my tasks for today. Right now I'm sitting here playing on my blog instead of moving things around. Hmmm. Time to get off my ample ass and get to work! 
• Happy Tuesday everyone!

Query

Are some people selfish bastards by nature? Are they born that way, and no matter what kind of teaching, training, or positive example is set before them they will always be selfish bastards? 

Holidaze

We should do away with most if not all of the current holidays. There is just too much emotional baggage and expectation surrounding our current holidays. Too much commercialism, too.

Celebration days are important to the emotional health of individuals and communities, so we still need some. Traditions are important, too, which messes with my proposition that we discontinue the current crop of holidays. 

When I was a kid in school I despised those breaks in routine that were intended to boost school spirit or whatever the excuse was. Pep Rallies. OMG. Hate them! Spirit week, when the students and teachers were encouraged to dress in the school colors, wear funny hats, wear their clothes inside out, etc. So tedious. These were opportunities  for bullies to be more obnoxious than usual, and the A-list crowd to outshine the dullards like me. 

So is that my problem with holidays? Or do I just not like the disruption of my routine? I suspect one of the problems is my high expectations for myself. I have a mental list of things I didn't do that I wanted to do over the Christmas break. Wanted to make a gingerbread house, quilt a Christmas stocking for Diva. (The rest of us each have a hand quilted stocking that I made. Diva was the last member to join the family, and has been with us for almost 10 years. I still haven't made her stocking.) I wanted to sew a couple of aprons for Light. I had some ideas about making some ornaments with the children. I also wanted to give Sproing a couple of long division problems to work on each day, just to keep his mind fresh. He had just about gotten the concept before the break. We shall see when he gets back to school whether he can still do long division.  

This pile of junk in front of my closet is still here. That was another project on my mental list of things to do during the holiday break. I want to clean out my room, get rid of a lot of the stuff in here, rearrange and re-purpose what's left. Our bed needs a bit of repair, and has to be partially disassembled to do that. In order for that to happen the area all around and under the bed must be cleaned out. We need to move the bed slightly, too. It isn't close enough to the wall on two sides. It needs to be moved about 6 or 8 inches (15-20 cm) closer to the north and east walls of the room. I have wanted to do that for probably about as long as I have needed to cover the living room walls. We need to rip up the carpet in here and replace it with laminate flooring. It smells like dying dog now. Ick. 

I suppose I'm a glass-half-empty person. Or I'm in that mood today anyway. OK, to make my therapist(s) happy, I'm going to now list some things I did accomplish over the last 2 weeks.

a) survived Christmas without committing murder or having a nervous break down (Except that tiny one earlier this week. It only lasted about 4 hours so we're not going to count it.)

b) cooked a festive holiday meal nearly all by myself

c) hardly stressed out at all that the holiday meal was 2 days after the holiday

d) cooked quite a few family meals while Indigo was here this week

e) hosted Indigo for a week, gave him lots of hugs, helped him feel safe here

f) painted some of the trim in Light's new room (the one recently vacated by C and S)

g) designed and decorated our not-a-tree

h) got almost all the gifts I needed to provide a more or less merry Christmas for the kiddies

I don't feel much better, though, having listed my accomplishments. I also broke the damned washing machine again last week. It's fixed now, thanks to Superman and the part he ordered. I feel really guilty about breaking it, though. He fixed it this afternoon, and finished washing the load I had put in. He asked me if I had paid attention to what all I was putting in the machine. He said it was extremely overloaded. I remember loading it up, but for some reason it didn't strike me at the time that I was putting too much into the thing. Obviously I was wrong. 

Tomorrow is another day. I don't know if that's good or bad. 

Random bits of this and that

Either my keyboard is wimpy or I spend too much time typing.

I may have blogged this one before. I love it. Twitch wrote this on our kitchen whiteboard. I think he got it from Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.
Scheherazade helped me start up my computer yesterday. I didn't get the camera out in time to capture her licking the touch pad. She was, indeed, moving the cursor around. Usually she does her computing by walking on the keyboard. 

Diva gets the words "ketchup" and "syrup" confused. She knows what each one is, but often gets the words mixed up. Last night we had blueberry pancakes for supper. She said something about putting ketchup on them while reaching for the syrup jugs. Silly girl.

Indigo left early this morning. I miss him. We had a very pleasant visit. He thinks Superman is terrific for, among other things, his accepting attitude about my friendship with Indigo and my other blog buddies. Indigo and Superman get along famously.

My washing machine is currently washing a load of sheets. The replacement part came and Superman just installed it. He is my hero!

On the first day of the new year

We had a birthday party! Well, it was very mild by party standards. It consisted of a birthday cake and some ice cream. But it was fun.

I get a big kick out of these squigly candles

And here's our birthday boy! Indigo has been here this week, as I may have mentioned. We have had a great time just hanging out together. He's a great friend. We took the kids to the park earlier this week, and today Indigo took the kids to the larger park and sports center operated by the county. The one they went to today is quite large, with football, baseball, and soccer fields, tennis courts, a bunch of small playground areas and one really big fancy playground. There's also a walking path that goes around the park. I think it's a 1 mile track, but I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, today was sunny and cool, a beautiful day to cavort in the park. They boys played catch with the baseball, Indigo walked the exercise track, and Diva ... did what divas do? She may have been in on the game of catch, I'm not sure. I wasn't there. I stayed here and enjoyed some peace and quiet! 

Superman and I got some more done in Light's new room (the one C and S recently vacated). I say "we" worked on it, though mostly it was Superman. I painted the trim around the doors. He installed and painted the crown moulding and painted the window trim. The wood of the window itself needs to be painted, since S did a crap job painting the frame when they moved into that room. He smeared brown paint on the window frames when he painted the trim. Impatient, irresponsible, yada yada... But the sun shone all day, there was lots of natural light coming in through the window, the progress is obvious. I think we had a successful day. Oh, I also helped by going to the home improvement store (can I just call it a hardware store? But it is one of those big box monstrosities they call  a home improvement center) to get another quart of trim paint for the crown moulding and baseboards. 

I was going to make a quiche for supper, and probably another pie or two. We need more pumpkin pie. Seriously.  But I ran out of umph after baking the cake. The day got away from me. One minute it's 2:15, I do a couple of things, then turn around and it's 5:30. Whoa. Where did my afternoon go? There are a few things I'd like to do Friday, but it's already after 3am, so I'm already pushing my luck. 

Speaking of 3am, luck, and stuff to do, I believe I'll go to bed. It seems fitting. 

Hope everyone had a pleasant New Year's celebration, and I wish you all a very happy and successful 2009.