Tonight I went somewhere I hope I never have to go to again: a memorial service for a 20 year old who took his life on Christmas Eve. I never met Nick, but I play tennis regularly with his mother, who is a wonderfully lovely woman. She's also the yoga instructor I go to when I manage to make it to a yoga class. She also had a small business selling tennis clothes, which she just liquidated this past summer, and she is always so amazingly generous with helping us as customers, letting us take clothes home to try on so that we aren't putting them on while we're dripping with sweat at the club. So when I heard the news about her son, my heart just about bled for her. And I'll admit, one of my first reactions was some anger that anyone would make her hurt in this way, particularly at Christmas, with a pain that will stab hard again every year at this time.

The memorial service was both heart-wrenching and inspiring in many ways. There were probably 300 people there, and at least half of them were friends of his. He had a ton of friends, friends who clearly loved him very much. The slide show playing before the service and the pictures that were everywhere through the funeral home spoke of a little boy who was deeply loved by his parents and siblings and who was surrounded by people who cared about him. I don't think there was a dry eye in the place as his "crew" of friends (just like my dh's in high school) came up one by one to tell a (clean) story about him. Clearly he was quite a character and kept his parents on his toes--full of mischief and just fun to be around. Over and over I heard person after person from all over his life, from the headmaster of the school he attended in middle and high school to his neighborhood and college friends to his own family saying that he had an incredible laugh and was kind and generous to an extreme. I kept thinking that I hoped that these would be the kinds of things that people might all say about my own children when they are his age.

Even though I didn't know him, my reaction came deeply from being a parent myself. And what struck me so deeply was that I have no idea what made him feel that he had no other way to find peace, but no matter how "mischievous" a child might be, no matter how many sleepless nights he might bring his parents, hundreds of hurting people sitting there tonight were a loud, strong testament that parents, siblings, family, friends--they are resolutely and absolutely not better off without this person here with them. And it also brought home to me that the kids who stand out, for whatever reason, whether it's because they find all kinds of mischievous trouble or have the zany ideas or are always thinking of others and perhaps not covering their own ass--they're the ones that we all remember and just love. It made me reaffirm that no matter what my kids do, no matter how "difficult" their teen years might be, no matter how much they may end up standing out in whatever way, they are still deeply, wildly loved and I hope that they will constantly know that. Judy, Tony, and the rest of their family were such manifestations of that kind of love.

My resolution after tonight is that I know it isn't entirely realistic, but I want to live with my children in a way that I would have no regrets. If, God forbid, their lives were cut short for some reason, I want to feel like I have given my best with them and have been kind and forgiving and loving. I want to always see them as the gift that they are, perhaps as an imperfect gift, as a gift that will surely give me many more sleepless nights and worries and trials, but as something entrusted to me for a limited amount of time (no matter what, they will one day not be under my primary care). I also hope to bring more patience to this job of parenting. I can't expect it to be easy, but it's so important to keep your eyes on the big prize--that you love these people more than anything, that the more "character" they have, perhaps the even more lovable they are, and I want them to know that. It was just a very sobering week processing something that was both not so close to me and yet so very close to all of our lives.

I am seeing such a change happening lately with Walter and Ollie. It's also sobering. I can easily say things like, "Oh, they are more than halfway to leaving home now," or "It's been longer since they've been born since when they will be in college," or "Only a little over 5 years until they have a learner's permit!" But really, they are becoming people we can do things with. Tonight we played real Scrabble for the first time. They needed a lot of help this time around, especially because their spelling skills aren't that great, but there they were playing. They can play Trivial Pursuit if the game is multi-leveled. We can play Risk and Stratego and highly competitive games of Monopoly. I can start thinking about Ollie reading the history books I get for myself (today I used my B&N gift certificate and got a National Book Award winner about the Dust Bowl and that Pulitzer winning _Founding Brothers_). It's exciting, but it also makes me realize that it might not be long before they are going to be far more their own people and probably less open to my agendas. They are starting to be responsible enough to look after siblings while we're home and busy. They can change diapers, put clothes on toddlers, and help make their own food. I know that the whole point of parenting is to help them become independent people, but it is hard to accept that those formative years, the primary time of influence from me is rapidly coming to its conclusion. Have I done enough? Have I harmed them for life? Have I fulfilled my obligations? Have I done the best job that I could have?

We also did most of the work making the four model rockets we bought this week tonight. The original plan was to launch at a different site from the last one we did, where we lost both of our rockets, so I let them get some more very small, high flying ones. Now it turns out that the new location is going to be locked this week, so we are back at the old spot. I'm afraid that Ollie's little "Hi Flier" and Walter's wee little "Gnome" are going to never be seen again. I made sure that Rutledge and Frances's rockets were larger and less lofty, since I'd like to bring a bit of our investment home with us for once! This also made me eschew some of the choices that had things like a helicopter propellor to bring back the nose cone separate from the rocket, which comes down by parachute (how much do you want to bet that we'd come home with a nose-less rocket?) or the one that had two space shuttles that come off the sides and 'glide' back to earth. Simple was the name of the game for me. I also decided that there were going to be no badges given out for choosing a kit with a Skill Level higher than 1 and that no one was going to banish me to the Space Loser Camp if we got ones that required no sanding, painting, or complex construction at all. Here's our progress so far: the Pencil, the Gnome, the Hi Flier, and the Chrominator.




This is what my van looks like. People are always climbing over seats, changing positions to be near someone or away from someone. And Rutledge is almost always screaming about something. The grumpy face here is one of his old standbys: "I want Toke! Give me Toke!" (That's Coke, for those who actually pronounce their /k/ sounds.) The big outing today was to B&N to use our gift certificates from Grandma. Ollie got The Hobbit on audio CD, a Monk book (from Monk the TV show), and an Elvis cookbook. I got two history books and the Percy Jackson series--yeah, I know it's a kid's book, but I want to read all of them myself. I still have quite a bit left on my card. Rutledge got a counting book featuring dogs, a Kumon cutting book and a mazes book, and a stuffed gold dragon. Walter got Marley and Me and I can't remember what else. And Frances got an American Girl kit where you design t-shirts for your doll and a hairstyling kit with a blond wig with pink and blue hair extensions. She has been saying lately that she wants long hair. I don't know...whaddya think? Given that she yanked out a whole pile of that hair with a brush when she got home, I'm not sure it's such a great idea.








I've always loved finding these kinds of photos when I download things from my camera. We get the typical pictures of people's fingers or the roof of the minivan, but then there are these fascinating little photo shoots:



Poor Bilbo in his jail.

Frances claimed she has never flown a kite, which I'm not sure is true. But at any rate, yesterday morning was beautiful and windy, so it was a perfect time to go out to the playing field across from us with a kite. Unfortunately, it was late afternoon by the time I found string, so the day wasn't quite so beautiful, and it was starting to sprinkle and I was getting a weather pressure change migraine at that point. But Frances and Rutledge had a super time.


Then there was today:

I'm Nancy, and I'm an emetophobe. I recently found an absolutely fabulous resource on the web about emetophobia, and I am so thrilled to hear that I am not alone. Check out http://emetophobia.bravepages.com/emetophobia.html. It was like reading a biography of myself!

* At the grocery store, the emetophobic may verge on obsessive-compulsive, carefully examining each of a dozen oranges going into the bag (they might actually wash those oranges before eating them too); reaching back in the cooler to get "colder" items; hounding the deli personnel for certain items to be selected or cut; and our favorite, hand-washing following a visit to the meat department.

*Dietary restrictions are universal among emetophobics. Most emetophobics have a list of foods they won't eat because they suspect them of being likely carriers of food poisoning; many avoid other foods because they associate them with a childhood episode of vomiting. Since most food poisoning is caused by unsanitary preparation rather than tainted food, phobics are roundly meticulously hygenic cooks. (Easiest way to lose an emetophobic? Lick the spoon while cooking.)
(Yeah! It gave me particular pleasure today to throw out salad dressings that were out of date and to know that at least for a while, all food in my fridge is going to be new and in tip-top condition. Let's not get into my list of requirements for seafood or my fear of deviled eggs or my terror of spaghetti or how I don't like to eat things in red sauces in winter...)

* Nearly all emetophobics report being unable to care for their children and other family members when those people fall ill. Some will sleep in another room when a family member is ill. (Well, duh. Kerry is sleeping downstairs right now with the sick child, while I'm sitting on my sheet-less bed because I'm washing my sheets for the fourth time this week. Only once was my bed actually thrown up on. I'm washing now because people who were going to become sick later or who were sick a day ago touched my bed.)

* It is not unusual for emetophobics to have a particularly stringent set of criteria for eating out. Some avoid restaurants altogether. Some will order an entree but will never eat from a buffet or salad bar. Some claim to have a 6th sense that tells them not to eat in a particular restaurant. (Would Nancy go to a Mongolian barbecue place? Do I tend to prefer chain restaurants, especially when I'm traveling and don't know about the reputation of a local place?)

* Nearly all emetophobics avoid water travel; some refuse to fly as well, and a few even stay out of land vehicles. (Ask me if I want to go on a cruise...)

* Although more common in children, emetophobics frequently have superstitions about their trigger event or subsequent times they vomited. being anxious even about the day of the week they vomited, or the month, even blocking out pleasant memories of a year in which they vomited. (But look, it's not a superstition if I really do have a house full of vomiting people in the week between Christmas and New Years! I also mark the date of October 19th, February 18th, and February 26th.)

* Emetophobia affects career choice as well, with many otherwise-qualified (and perhaps even interested), intelligent sufferers eschewing fields that they see as high-risk for vomiting, such as health care, the military, teaching, laboratory research, aviation, and space. (Since I was very young, I've always wanted to go to medical school. I still regret it! But as my mother always said, "You can't get to be a doctor if you are afraid of people throwing up." I wonder if that's true...)

With all this said, this has been a very trying week for me. My fear is that I'm going to vomit, so while I don't really appreciate seeing/hearing other people vomit, I am increasingly able to deal with it without rushing out the door and hopping a plane to another country (okay, the plane part is a little extreme because people sometimes vomit on planes, and that wouldn't be good...). There was last Monday, when Frances threw up five times. And last Sunday, when Rutledge coughed until he threw up on himself in the car in Hampton (I did insist--in the form of driving the car away from the restaurant we were pulling into--that we go directly home, but I was able to be in the vehicle without undue fear). And yesterday, when one of my greatest fears happened. I was in the shower with a head full of shampoo when I heard Kerry say, from the bedroom adjoining, "Are you going to throw up" and then a hulaballoo of running around. I screeched out, "Don't come in here!" And thankfully he didn't. It terrifies me to no end to think that I could be in a bathroom showering or brushing my teeth and someone could come rushing in and throw up. Thankfully, there were no other episodes yesterday, though he was feverish and lethargic all day. And then today, I could see the telltale signs in Ollie. We were out at Chick-Fil-A when Ollie decided that he couldn't really eat more than two fries and didn't want the Coke he had begged for. I rushed him home, and so far, so good. He's not eating, and he says he's really cold, but it's been many hours, and nothing worse yet. This was the pattern for the two others, though. The night before, they mentioned a vague stomach ache and then didn't eat, or they didn't eat, but then later said they were hungry, I fixed them something, and they only took two bites. Then 15 hours later they threw up. I'm trying not to freak out, but I'm just really ready for this to be over.

But this isn't our only drama. Oh no! I forgot to mention that on the day after Christmas, I received a call from the police saying that our totaled van had been broken into. The aftermarket stereo was stolen, and perhaps a Home Depot credit card (now cancelled). That's kicking you when you're down!

But the real drama had to do with the fridge. Kerry has had a cold, so he can't smell or taste anything, but I thought that the water from the fridge tasted terrible yesterday, and so did Ollie. I finally decided that I was, indeed, losing it and that it was just me. Then this morning, when I got up at, get this, 10:30 and went downstairs, I found that the water was not only still tasting awful, but was warm. I started to make myself some toast and when I opened the fridge to get some jelly, I discovered that the bag of yeast that I touched was warm...very warm. And that it smelled very, very bad in there. And that all kinds of substances were dripping. You have to understand that the fridge was crazy full, so there was a lot of stuff to drip, including pounds and pounds of butter. There were things whose lids had been knocked off kilter that ended up oozing and spilling around (gravy...ewww). I started filling garbage bag after bag, and then realized that I needed to dump out all of the condiments and other things that were weighing so much and I should recycle them. More than an hour later, I had about 30 bottles and jars on the counter, my garbage disposal was working overtime (gotta love 78 degree mayonnaise, pickle cubes, maraschino cherries, a one pound jar of minced garlic, and oily blueberry vinaigrette salad dressing all floating in a 6 inch high soup of water in the sink and not going down). Then I had to bleach out the entire fridge, which had such lovely problems as 78 degree gravy dripped on a light bulb. All of the crisper drawers had to come out, everything had to be bleached and cleaned. For whatever reason, the fridge saw fit to adjust its temperature to 78 degrees, even though it was set to 37. Who knows what happened, but it was $130 to get it diagnosed and will be over $300 for the part. The repair guy looked at our FUBAR dishwasher as well, and that just needs to be replaced. It no longer lets us change any settings--the control panel is completely non-responsive. What's sad is that it is only about 3.5 years old. He said that this model has had incredible troubles and we aren't alone. And Maytag is now out of business. I know why. (This is actually a Jenn-Air, but is owned by Maytag). Not a happy day for appliances in our house.

The very clean, but offending appliance in our family after the icky bailout. And the darn thing has gotten back down to 38 degrees mysteriously tonight while we await the $300 part. Sigh....

T-Plus two days after Christmas.

It started with a real bang. That's right: massive dog diarrhea! Kerry is constantly guilty, God love him, of giving the dogs things that are guaranteed to cause (1) a mess on the porch (2) diabetes (3) fat beagles (4) massive dog diarrhea and/or vomiting. But I think this time he outdid himself. He decided that because the 24 pound turkey we got was difficult to clean when dinner was over and since we often don't really eat much of the dark meat anyway that he was going to give it ALL to the dogs. ALL meant probably 7 pounds of dark meat turkey and the fat that went along with it. I suppose he thought that a morning serving of Christmas dinner would give them all day to, um, deal with it. Wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong! I was the lucky one who was still in bed when he discovered the gigantic piles of rancid, acidic, burning hot dog poop that were all around on our family room rug. It made him throw up. We still have spots because we are out of enzyme cleaner, and when he was out, he got other things that just don't work all that well. I don't want this kind of crap in my steamer, so I'm going to wait until tomorrow. Meanwhile, despite Resolve and Lysol and soap and water, it still stinks.

My sister in law and brother in law were coming today for "Christmas" with us, so there was much cleaning to do again. It is my yearly tradition to make biscotti at Christmas, usually chocolate chunk walnut biscotti, but since I lost the recipe I had saved in my bookmarks on Firefox last year, I had to find something new. I searched *everywhere* for that recipe or one that almost the same (my original biscotti recipe came from a Baker's Chocolate free recipe book from Kroger and has long since been lost, so I have a history of losing these recipes). In the end, it was baking, Nancy style. I made four or five different biscotti recipes today, searching for that perfect one. Also, Nancy style, I glanced over the first recipe I was going to try, but didn't register that it required a rather complicated type of cereal (Post Cranberry Almond Crunch) that I didn't have. Well, duh. I wouldn't have chosen the recipe if I knew it contained (1) cereal (2) a commercial brand of cereal like htat. But anyway, I got the cereal and made the biscotti, which stuck a bit to the pan and spread out a lot, especially on my bar pan, where the two logs of it 'became one' by the time the baking was over. I was able to separate them for the rebake, but they remained a little short.

My second attempt was with a chocolate biscotti that used unsweetened cocoa powder. It came out pretty well, but wasn't spectacular--I think it should have had white chocolate chunks or cranberries or something to make it a little more exciting. This was with a Master Biscotti Recipe that you could customize.

Third recipe was a walnut and chocolate chunk biscotti that used two tablespoons of milk, and I think milk is an interesting ingredient for a biscotti. The milk was supposed to make it a little softer, which is really not the point with biscotti (the recipe suggested substituting water for a harder product). I made a really big mess with this one because the dough turned out way too sticky and was all over my hands and the baking sheet and was unmoldable. I ended up adding probably a full cup of flour to it, bit by bit by bit, until I could finally get it into the flattened log shape I needed. But you know what? This one turned out to be the best one! Firm, but not brittle, attractive to look at, cut well, and tolerated the baking process without breaking.

My fourth attempt was another chocolate biscotti, and I used the Cuisinart with it because I was tired of cutting Baker's chocolate with a knife. Overall, I'm not sure how it went. At that point, I was really over baking, and I forgot that I had left them in the oven for the second bake. I guess you can't really overbake biscotti, but I just might have. They aren't burned, but they're very firm. I'd suggest dunking these in something to soften them up so they don't break your teeth!

Finally, I think my kitchen is kind of clean and all cookies are appropriately stored. Since Christmas Eve I have made chocolate cut-out cookies, reindeer noses, gumdrop cookies, sugar cookies, Moravian spice cookies, pecan praline muffins (that Pampered Chef non-stick muffin pan definitely needs to be sprayed before the batter is put in!), and dough that is now chilling for Amish sugar cookies (they had a lot of sour cream in them). I also made my second loaf of bread last night--a white bread with non-fat dry milk in it (my first was a dairy-free wheat bread) which turned out quite nice. It's still a little bit heavy, which I'm going to work on, but the loaf was much more attractive than the first one done in the machine, whose top looked like the Andes. This one I put on the dough setting and then baked it in my regular oven.

I think it's time for me to stop baking. It's time consuming, makes a big mess, and my kids are eating nothing but sugar. We still have some pork loin and turkey left from our big meal, so I'm going to concentrate on protein for tomorrow. Tonight was our traditional Chinese from the Zheng Garden when Annie and Tim were here--this is our Christmas meal together when they come.

If I wasn't baking, I'd surely be wasting time. And I have a host of new ways to waste outrageous amounts of time lately. The iPod Touch is a rather amazing device. I didn't know just how much I needed one! Of course, I haven't even begun to plumb the depths of what I can usefully do with it yet--the things like making a calendar, keeping lists of things like library books I need, or setting it up to check my email. No--I've been doing intellectual things like popping bubble wrap (you can do this for money!) and catapulting penguins and dive-bombing polar bears and laughing until I cried with a virtual Whoopie Cushion. Last night I spent close to four hours addictively playing Yahtzee, a problem I had before there was an electronic version. When I was pregnant with Rutledge, Kerry and I would play game after game of Yahtzee. Then, when he quit and went to sleep, I would sit and play by myself for several more hours every night. At 12:55, I made a pact with myself that the next time I got a score above 250, I was going to turn the thing off and go to bed. Then it was when I got three scores over 250. Then it was as soon as I finish this game here.... Next thing I knew it was after 1:30....

Frances had a friend sleeping over, and that's always a bit of an adventure. She slept over at this friend's house last Saturday night, and a day and a half later had the stomach flu. So I'm a wee tad nervous. I try not to let my severe emetophobia seep into my children's tender psyches, and I feel like I'm being especially gracious and calm this fall/winter about not limiting activities out of my own (ir?)rational fears.

Merry Christmas!

Whew! What an exciting day!

I'm pleased that our family Christmases don't begin at the ungodly hour that mine did as a child, when I woke up at 4:30 a.m. ready to open gifts. The twins were up around 7:15, and Rutledge and Frances were up a bit before 8, at which time we all headed downstairs (Walter and Ollie had already been there). I'm embarrassed at what a Not Economic Downturn Christmas we had. In fact, yesterday afternoon, when I was out and part of my job was to look for this Cabela's Dangerous Hunts game that Ollie wants, I felt like I was morally decrepit for even contemplating One More Gift. Thankfully, I didn't find it, and I wasn't going on a multi-store adventure looking. But here's what they did get:

Ollie:
Calvin and Hobbes Complete Collection
Nerf Vulcan gun
Call of Duty 4
Wintergreen lift ticket and snow pants
2 fleece jackets

Walter:
Lego Indiana Jones Temple Escape
Lego Cargo Plane
various small lego sets--street sweeper, a police car, etc.
Wintergreen lift ticket
Erector set
Lego Mindstorms books
Fleece jacket
Three stuffed mooses with a note from Santa--his favorite gift, though he was very disturbed by the ceramic "dirty shoe" that one of these mooses was in

Frances:
American Girl: Julie
Charm bracelet
Makeup set
Two Calico Critter families, 3 Little Pigs, and three small accessory sets, including a General Store
Art supplies
Two pairs of pajamas--silk and red and white striped
Fleece jacket
Teddy bear
Mancala

Rutledge:
Imaginext Dinosaur Mountain
Playmobil Police
Playmobil Knights Rock Mountain Tower
Tonka crane
Giant wooden pirate ship and boat dock
Red and white striped pajamas
Some slightly more age-appropriate XBox games (Viva Pinata, Cars)
Star Wars figures
Army transport vehicle that makes lots of sounds

Then there were some family gifts--Blokus, Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan

And a large number of things that I'm forgetting now--there were many, many presents under that tree!

Though Kerry and I weren't supposed to exchange gifts because we got a car, I got him some small things (and lost and still haven't found the wallet I got him)--some gym pants, some car care stuff, a keychain that beeps when you whistle so you can find your keys. And he cheated and got me an amazing bread machine (though I probably won't make too much of this dairy-less bread I made tonight when some allergic guests were coming; it was rather dry), two sweaters, two shirts, a skirt that is tight (for some reason I've gained about 5 pounds in the past week!), and some jeans. And the big thing: an iPod touch. I haven't even touched it yet...literally. It's still in the box because I haven't had a second to sit down today. My Dad also gave me us some money and paid for our room at our family reunion at the beach next September.

Here's my progress on yesterday's list:

* Made 5 different kinds of cookies
* Watched It's a Wonderful Life
* Finished Risk
* Went to Christmas Eve service at church
* Saw award-winning decorated houses in Woodlake and the incredible computer-controlled lights of a house in Charter Colony where the lights change with the beat of the music--they have their own radio station that broadcasts the sound for their display!
* Read to Frances

I also did some last-minute shopping, picked up our Christmas cards from Costco, and did a ton of cleaning.

Today was even busier--the opening of the gifts, then non-stop cleaning and preparation for our dinner this afternoon. I am shocked that I even got a shower. Erased most evidence of the wrapping papers and bows and shards of cardboard boxes that was everywhere from the unwrapping. Shuttled gifts into people's bedrooms so that our living room had some space in it. Set up the dinosaur mountain, only to have it be knocked over into smithereens. Made bread in the new bread machine. Made slice and bake cookies with Ollie. Folded tiny little paper magazines and books for the Calico Critters and put the stickers on their vanity tables and general stores and microscopic tubes of toothpaste. Tracked down batteries for giant guns, fake hamsters, flocked animal nursery lights, and laser tag weapons and targets and fiddled with all those dadburned screws that you have to unscrew to put in batteries these days. Untwisted outrageous numbers of twist ties holding on everything from Mary Poppins and Bert to members of a SWAT team. Served dinner to 8 adults and 10 children. Drank another glass of wine after everyone went upstairs for a few minutes. Cleaned my trashed kitchen and hand-washed about 25 pans and serving pieces so that the queue waiting for the dishwasher didn't appear so ominous.

Injuries today:

* Sliced a big chunk out of my fingertip while trying to knock wax off a candlestick with a knife
* Submarined my index finger and its cuticle in a battery holder of a Nerf weapon
* Stood up and banged my head with the full force of standing up into the underside of a rock countertop
* Burned my finger through an oven mitt that was not properly stuff in some spots while trying to pop some recalcitrant bread out of a pan

Where I am now: waiting for the last cookies to bake and watching Home Alone. Wishing that I lived in Kevin's lovely house in Chicago, where it is no doubt snowing just like it is in the movie. Wondering how I'm going to stay awake for Christmas with the Cranks, which I'm in the mood to see.

Plan for tomorrow: RELAX!!!

I finally got the elusive Christmas card picture on Sunday. They're wearing all those elf hats I knitted since the summer.

It's been a goofy few days.

Sunday we decided to make our Christmas trip down to Norfolk, unannounced. My Dad wants us to visit him, and Kerry's parents and grandmother wanted us to come there, and since these trips are in two different directions, we thought it would be wise to space them out. The pictures were taken at his parents' house in their yard. They live on a mud pit within visual distance of the Lafayette River, so the kids were, of course, in the mud, taking apart the brick retaining rip rap whatever to make stepping stones.


Looking for the raccoons' house with Grandma.

Rutledge is always full of sticks and dirt.



I never have enough pictures of Ollie. We were loading up the digital picture frames we got for our parents and realized that Ollie is way under-represented. Probably because he always looks serious or sullen, if we get a picture of the front of him at all. I was practically chasing him with the camera trying to get a shot of him, but all I saw was the back of his head. I wonder if there's any deeper meaning to that....


Walter's always there, though. I don't have as many pictures of him as I do of Frances and Rutledge, who still spend a lot of time hamming for the camera, but he does stop for a minute to show me things or to make sure that his interests are recorded for all time.


Walter found snails that were just like the ones at Marty and Peter's river house. What's gross is that I think he brought them home in a cup, but I haven't seen them in the house yet, which means they're still in my van. Eww....

We ate at Cracker Barrel on the way home. I have to say, there's something that restaurant is doing right. My kids all love to go there and it has become our tradition whenever we are on a car trip anywhere. The store is what makes the experience. They used their Christmas money from Grandma to get some very exciting things: a kind of scary looking monkey with a flocked face; a light-up sword that makes clinking noises; an Elvis CD; a bell like you find to 'ring for service.' They have the best ornaments there, too--you always know you can find that perfect Elvis ornament there!

The bad news this week is that the next day, Frances woke up and threw up on my bed. And then numerous more times on a towel in front of her because she was too sick to move. Words can't really describe how much fear this strikes into my heart, especially at Christmas. We are supposed to have three other families over for dinner on Christmas day, and I don't want us to have to cancel. Nor do I want to have one of "those" Christmases that we've all heard about--the ones where Santa can't come because everyone is too sick to move from the bed or the children are too delirious with fevers and nausea to even care what day it is. Thankfully, Frances recovered very quickly and was back riding her bike and eating doughnuts today. And my house is very disinfected!

I'm so excited about Christmas, and for once, I'm feeling relatively prepared. I think Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year. I love it even more than Christmas. Here is my list of what I'd like to do tomorrow:

* Watch "It's a Wonderful Life."
* Watch "Scrooged"
* Watch "Miracle on 34th Street"
* Finish our Risk game
* Go bowling with friends
* Bake biscotti
* Bake cookies
* Repair our gingerbread houses
* Play a game that I think my kids are going to open as their Christmas Eve gift
* See some of the lights in our neighborhood, especially the award winners
* Go to the Christmas Eve service at church
* Finish the beaded snowman ornament Frances started three weeks ago
* Make the photo ornaments we didn't get to at our co-op
* Read to Frances

I had all of these great plans for what we could do today with all of this time to relax. So what did we do? Well, I slept late, which was good. Then I took Frances to her gymnastics party, where the vexing question of whether I should just cough up the rest of that $250 that I didn't fundraise (like many others didn't, it seems...) loomed very large. It all has me wondering whether we should be moving toward sending her back to her previous gym, which was further away.

And just as when you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk to go with it, when you ask about going back to Olympiad, you're probably going to start thinking that you need to move. So after the party, we all piled into the car for our family's favorite activity: looking at houses. Year after year, every year since we've lived here, we've been looking for somewhere else to go. We've never quite made it out of our house, but if we thought it was at all possible to sell our house, we'd probably have been gone long ago. Now there's the whole economic bust thing going, two houses already for sale in our little neighborhood and another one going on in about two weeks. We have no possibility of competing with the state of our house and the craziness of our schedule and family! Nor do we really have any business buying something new, given that we're as prone to the economic disasters that are happening all around us as anyone else is. So I'm hoping that this time the urge to move on will pass as quickly as it came.

We've decided that perhaps Salisbury is our desired location. The areas we looked at today included Queensmill (perhaps too locked in and not quite on main roads; slightly more difficult for getting to work); some areas in Bon Air (most houses too small); other areas off Robious (absolutely no houses for sale at all--a good sign, but not when you want to buy something). I don't want to be house poor, especially if one of the primary reasons we would be moving would be to be closer to children's activities. With as much attending open houses as we've done and as much driving around as we've done in the past, the activity now ceases to thrill me with the possibilities and just makes me feel very, very tense.

I picked up a few more very small things for Kerry (no surround-sound speaker systems!) and a few other little gifts after everyone else was dropped at home. I bought crickets for the frog. But then we did a decent job of just enjoying a day with no obligations. Frances is sleeping over at a friend's house. The boys and I played Monopoly and Ollie won the first game. He is not very much fun to play with because he cheats so often and so subtly that it is hard to trust anything he does or any situation on the board where something good happens to him. But I strongly believe that one key to improving his character and making him into a future friend-worthy person is to teach him through games how his behavior affects people and how to lose gracefully and still enjoy the time with others. Kerry played in the second Monopoly game, and I kept the bank far from Ollie and we had two adults scrutinizing his moves and rolls. He came extremely close to winning. Kerry went out earlier, but Ollie and I battled on with lots of hotels and large amounts of money going back and forth and back and forth for probably 45 minutes longer. I am proud to say that I finally have won a game! And I won it fairly and squarely!

We are hosting our now annual Waywards, Waifs, and Wastrels holiday dinner. I'm not sure how many are coming, and I blush to say that I hope that it is a manageable number because we have not yet begun to prepare. As of now, we have two families from across the street coming, each with two children. They came over last year, and it was tons of fun. I'm just really excited that we are going to be able to spend some time with other people so that Christmas day feels special. I miss the holidays we had when I was little, when my grandparents were staying with us and there was just a warm, enclosed feeling about our house. My kids haven't had that same extended family holiday experience, so finding other people who are also without extended families during Christmas has been a great way to get some of that warm, fuzzy holiday spirit back.

I think we're going to try to go to Norfolk tomorrow. I should be happy and energized about it, but right now, I just want to sit down and hole up at home! I want to finish cleaning up the boxes that are lying around after decorating the house. I want to do some last-minute shopping for some friends. I want to watch Christmas movies and play board games. I want to go out and look at other people's Christmas lights. I want to wrap presents. Maybe we would be better to wait until after Christmas for this. I guess we'll see where the day takes us tomorrow.

Today was our annual homeschool group Christmas party, and it was a very fun time. Like most of these parties, it went by way too fast, and then there was the crazy cleanup. We made the most adorable angel ornaments out of oyster shells, some of the kids made snowflakes from coffee filters, the older kids had a gingerbread house decorating contest, and many kids were engaged in the dreidel game. There's nothing quite like gambling to keep everyone interested, and it was nice that the game can accommodate any number of people and being who slip in and out.

I think we're kind of on a break now, though what that means when you're always reading and making things and coming up with projects isn't really clear. I'm excited about hopefully being able to play some games, read some good books, and spend some time at home. We'll see how that works out!

One week

One week until Christmas. This fact and the number 7 were blowing my kids' minds all day long. I have everything pretty much done--just a few small things for people other than my children to do now. Now I have to bake some serious biscotti this weekend, take Frances to her gymnastics party (my kind of party--nothing to bring, no gifts to buy, etc.).

We're a bit annoyed by her gym right now. Part of our yearly contract (signed, notarized with a raised seal, etc.) is that we must work bingo every 7 weeks. Bingo is up in Mechanicsville and involves an entire evening--leaving at 4 and getting home around 10:30 p.m. The bingo-goers can be a very cantankerous bunch. A game with a name like "Everybody Wins!" is more than enough to set off some tempers. The trouble is that bingo receipts are down. So the booster club sent out a letter to everyone saying that now we absolutely must all sell one full page of advertisements for our meet programs at $250-300 a page, depending on whether it is color or black and white. That's a pretty big chunk of change, especially in this economy, especially when we don't know but so many people with their own businesses and we aren't great at cold calling or soliciting. This command came out of the blue, and we weren't the only people who didn't get a full page (we bought a half page for Kerry's consulting business). So the punishment now is going to be the club not paying for the meet fees or coache's fees, as it usually does. Entry fees range from $55-105 per meet, and there can easily be 6-8 meets per season, so this is a significant burden now being shifted to the parents. Given that we're already paying $50 a month more here than we were at her previous gym, this is really pushing the cost up way beyond what we had expected when we signed the contract. I suspect there will be a lot of people raising hell, but I haven't been around to hear the scuttlebutt lately. So now we're seriously having to consider whether we should move her back where she was. The trouble is that Frances doesn't want to go back--she's much happier here. But you have to wonder, why are we out working bingo every month if we're getting nothing in return? I think it would be much more effective to give people options: some straight talk that funds are short, rather than arm-twisting about selling ads, choices about fundraising so that people can do what works best for them, whether that's selling items, soliciting businesses to place ads, or just buying out our fundraising obligations.

My class at the homeschool enrichment center is done now. It was a lot of fun, and I wish that I had more students in my class, since today was another example of how when one person is gone in a 4 person class, everyone feels the loss. Four weeks in a row we've been down a person, and today that person was Frances, who was in Mt. Airy performing in Legend of the Poinsettia, whcih seems to have been a huge success. Today we read _The Snowy Day_ several times, watched a puppet version on Youtube, ate snow-day inspired snacks: gingerbread, cupcakes, and clementines, and I brought out the ever-popular Insta-Snow. This time, instead of getting the big expensive can, I picked up the small test tube. I thought it was going to make more than it did--it claims to expand to 100 times its original size, and this didn't seem 100 times bigger. But it is always a huge hit. I spread a tablecloth on the floor to catch the worst of the mess (this stuff loves to smear into carpeting, and kids are constitutionally unable to keep from getting the snow all over their clothes, on the bottoms of their shoes, and in their hair). Then we put the snow in a bowl and played with animals, Santa, Mrs. Claus, a plastic Fisher-Price chimney, and the always fun test tubes. It was heavenly! As a parting finale, we did our best and loudest rendition of "Going On A Bear Hunt." I had so much fun, but I'm glad that it's done, too. It takes a fair amount of preparation and energy, especially on the day of the class, and I have a lot going on right now. The other issue is that the boys are begging to not take Latin next session. I'm inclined to oblige them. I need to find some other Latin solution--perhaps look for a class or a cooperative situation elsewhere--because I don't intend to drop it. The weekly class goes some distance in "keeping me honest" about keeping some pace going, but we really need to be moving at our own pace. If I'm teaching, then I probably need to keep the boys in their class, and since I didn't have huge turnout for my class and winter is going to be going full force with all its illnesses in the coming months, I'd prefer not to have to worry about substitutes and extra lesson plans. It feels a bit funny to be taking a break, though; we've been taking something or I've been teaching something continuously since the place opened.

Tonight was Walter's trumpet concert, and he was so sweet and cute! He has come such a long way in the past year and a half. His biggest challenge will continue to be keeping steady timing, but he has made enormous strides in that area. He has moved up to the Intermediate Band now, and they'd like him to practice with them on Wednesdays. I think he really needs to be moving that direction and needs to be spending time playing with other people, but the timing is not good for me. It would mean leaving park day early each week, which I'm not sure I'm willing to do. And it would probably mean driving out to Powhatan, then driving back in to drop Frances off at gymnastics, then back out to Powhatan to pick him up. That's a lot of driving. I can't count on Kerry to be able to cover things in the mid afternoon. So I'm not sure what the plan is now. He might be able to go with the group half time--every other week or so, so that the rest of us aren't always missing park day, but I just don't know. Sounds complicated.

Ollie now says he wants to start playing the flute. And Frances wants to do piano. In my perfect scheme of things, they would each be doing a sport, playing an instrument, and doing one other enrichment thing, like art or dance. But the budget doesn't let all that stuff happen with this many kids. I'm going to make it a priority in the new year, though, to somehow work in an instrument for Frances and Ollie. I can sort of teach piano, but honestly, I have no business doing that. I can't play all that well myself any more, I never played superbly in the first place, and I don't know the first thing about teaching music to other people. There is a very inexpensive piano teacher in our neighborhood, so I need to revisit people's reviews of her to determine whether it is worth our while to do this (because the alternative is probably nothing if it's going to cost $25-30 a week).

Tomorrow is our last day of "school" before the holiday. I say that really loosely because we aren't going to stop learning or reading fascinating things over the holidays. But it's the last day we're going to do math and Wordly Wise and grammar for a while. I didn't realize that Ollie's edition of Saxon 5/4 has 22 fewer lessons than Walter had, so he is going to be done in about 14 days. I need to make my final decision about whether he is going to continue with 6/5 or spend some time with fractions and decimals in Math-U-See. He claims that he's like to go back to Singapore, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. That program skips around a lot and doesn't have continued practice on concepts, and repetition has been good for everyone. I'm in the groove of Saxon now, and for once, I feel very confident that they can do well on their standardized test without me needing to cram with them or without me holding their breath wondering if they will know what to do with a question they have never seen before. So decisions loom in the future with that.

I feel like I should get another something for Kerry for Christmas. I got him one (previously 2, but I gave one away in a White Elephant exchange) small gift, but I should be doing more, but without spending money that now needs to go to the car, which is the unexpected big gift. I'm just out of ideas. We always are not sure we're going to give gifts to adults, so things often get down to the wire, like this feels.

Today's reads: _The Stories Julian Tells_, which is a delightful short novel. The writing is halfway decent, and it is right on the level of what Frances can relate to and process. Ann Cameron has just the right balance of serious and fun in a very satisfying length. Ollie and I started a book called, _Someone Called Eva_, which is about a Czech girl who is captured by the Nazis and taken to a prison camp where blond haired, blue eyed girls are trained to be good Aryan wives and mothers. It is intense. I'm glad we're reading it aloud so that we can talk about what is going on. Walter read _The Shoemaker_, part of a series recommended by Hilary. He really liked it, since it talked about a craft from the past, and the length was again rather satisfying--just enough detail, plenty of pictures, and doable in an hour or less. Ollie is about halfway through _The Wigmaker_, also from that series.

Where's the Snow?

Didn't the Farmer's Almanac kind of promise me a real winter this year? I'm seeing right now that it snowed several inches in Vegas, but here I'm sitting in a dreary 40ish land without any flakes in sight. We've had a few little flurries here and there, which is often more than we can say here in central Virginia in December, but I'm geared up, both literally and figuratively, for some real accumulation. Bring it on!

It was a lovely, lovely morning. I got to sleep until 9:30 without any small people kicking me, having a fight about TV show choice, or urging me to listen to their stomach growl. Schoolwork was done rather promptly, and in Walter's case, before I even woke up. He's one motivated guy these days. Ollie, not so much.

It was a provocative reading day. We finished _The Higher Power of Lucky_, and talk about a conversation-provoking read for a book club. Beyond the infamous use of the word "scrotum" beginning in paragraph 2, here's a book for 9-12 year olds about, surprise surprise, a girl whose mother has died (have we read any books this year where the mother wasn't dead? It's not just for fairy tales anymore...) in a rather horrific way, whose father has abandoned her, and who is left to be reared by a quirky Guardian. We get to hear all about her mother's remains--pieces of bone--and AA and Gambler's Anonymous and Smoker's Anonymous. There is a 5 year old who discovers his mother is in jail on drug charges. Hey, what's not to talk about with this middle grade novel?!

We also read a picture book about a Catholic schoolgirl who is harrassed on her way to school in Belfast. This is precisely the kind of book up Ollie's alley.

Played Johnny Money again and ended with $40 million in business value at the end.

Went to Inflation Nation for a few hours. What an amazing concept--adults can sit down for pretty much the whole time and the kids make themselves scarce. At one point, I looked into the giant inflatable 18 wheeler and Ollie and a friend were saying something about taking hostages. I just love boys.

Walter practiced with the rest of the band for his concert tomorrow night. I think they had to axe one song from their lineup, which is unfortunate.

Wrapped 14 gifts tonight. I'm in love with the Scotch pop-up tape thingy that you put on the back of your hand. Alas, I ran out of little tape strips, so my wrapping party came to a quick halt (yeah, I could have used normal tape, but where's the fun in that?).

The van was officially pronounced totaled today. We're only getting $1750 for it, but I guess that's better than nothing. And think of all the good we got out of this--thousands upon thousands in debt! Seriously, I do love driving the Prius and appreciate its current cleanliness. Kerry reached his goal of 50 mpg yesterday. I prefer to actually look at the road.

I'm wondering what Wintergreen is like right now. Ollie's annual predictable gift is a lift ticket, and we usually go sometime in February, but this year it might be nicer to go sooner rather than later. I think Kerry is going to go this time, and I'm a bit jealous. I haven't seen the 2-packs of tickets from Costco this year yet, and I haven't been organized enough to check into whether there are any special offers from Wintergreen itself, especially ones that might permit us all to go together and sleep there. Unfortunately, my strongest memories now of these ski trips are of the throbbing headache I inevitably get every time I go. There's so very much something wrong with me!

The outrageous time on my clock right now reminds me that I need to go and prepare for my class tomorrow morning. Ooops.

Okay, here's something where I don't totally look like someone who never does anything!

The RULES

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Put an asterisk next to those you intend to read (as in the book is bought and sitting on my shelf).
3) Italicize or underline (I am too lazy to un-underline the books already underlined here, and I can't figure out how to underline on my blog) the books you LOVE.

There are 98 books on the list.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings--J.R.R. Tolkein
   
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter Series--J.K. Rowling
   
5. To Kill a Mockingbird--Harper Lee
   
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four--George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials--Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
    
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare -Not every play, but many if not most of them
    
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
    
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
    
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
    
22. The Great Gatsby--F. Scott Fitzgerald
    
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
    
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
    
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh-A.A. Milne
    
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
    
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
    
47. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
    
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
    
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
    
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
    
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
    
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
    
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
    
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
    
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal--Emile Zola
    
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
    
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers--Dumas
    
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
    
98. Les Miserables--Victor Hugo

It's probably pretty obvious that I like 18th and 19th century novels, that I don't particularly care for science fiction, am stronger on "classics" than on popular novels of the past 30 years, and I love a lot of things that I read. I'm not sure who came up with this list--some interesting choices there, and some even more interesting omissions. It's rather unfortunate that at this point in my life, I can't read nearly as much as I used to. Most of what I'm reading now is, obviously, aimed at children, and that's just fine with me. Or it's non-fiction of a more utilitarian nature.

I also was on a funny little website that tells how many people in the U.S. share your name: www.howmanyofme.com. There are 3 Nancy Clendenons (I'm not sure if they have the other Nancy Clendenon that I know still listed, but she is now deceased) and 10 Nancy Renwicks (I knew one of them).

I am the most confused person out there. I think I'm maybe just sleep deprived in general, maybe dealing with a multi-month sleep deficit without a really intelligent reason for it. It's getting harder and harder for me to pay attention when there's more than one thing going on, where I used to be able to do multiple things at once. I went to our co-op today without half of what I was supposed to bring, including the main element for a craft project we were doing. It's not from sitting down, that's for sure--I felt like I was rushing from one responsibility to another--putting together something quickly for lunch, trying to finish cleaning up the disgusting counters, trying to find ornaments in the attic packed full of bags of presents and discarded boxes for all things Christmas, trying to get clothes for Rutledge, who was still in pajamas. It would probably be obvious to people on the outside that I need to make lists or concentrate on one thing at a time, or something practical like that. But for me, I know that this is a chance and a very palpable one indeed. It's one thing to lock yourself out of the car every now and then or to sometimes forget the trumpet, but for me it's become nearly predictable and a vivid contrast to how things used to be for me. I know that if I see a doctor, I'll just be prescribed more Xanax, and I know how well that works! One day they'll do an autopsy and find lesions on my brain or something like that....

My mission right now is to be more hardline about the unacceptable behavior. It would probably be best if I started with my own, but hey, I'm the Mom, so I'm going to focus on the wee ones first. This morning, Rutledge threw an XBox controller at the TV. I'm pretty sure stuff like that isn't covered by the warranty ;) Frances's whining and crying in the morning also has to end if I'm to maintain any shred of control. This morning she was threatening to throw up if we didn't watch whatever show she wanted to watch after Curious George went off. We have a reasonble, though not perfect arrangement in the mornings right now. Rutledge wakes up between 7:30 and 8, but I get to sleep for another hour or hour and a half most days while he squirms around next to me and watches PBS kids. For a while, Sid the Science Kid seemed like an exciting new find, but now everyone just groans when the doofy theme song starts up. So we had moved on to less educational channels and were on Spongebob for a while (anything for a little extra sleep!). But this morning, Rutledge was insistent about Power Rangers, a show I have serious reservations about, and Frances was even more insistent that we not watch that. There was no compromise, and to be honest, nothing really on in the first place that would have worked. We found some really bizarre show called "Handy Manny," which is about animated, talking Hispanic tools. What will they come up with next? Most of my worst injuries as a parent have happened while I was lying in bed and got stepped on in the stomach (or the gap between the muscles covering my stomach...), hit in the face, poked in the eye, or where someone has used their elbow for leverage to stand up by pushing them into my chest or side or leg. So I was ready to just say that the day had begun when all hell broke loose over what we'd watch so I could avoid the day for a few more minutes. Ugh!

Here is a true confession: I have to take a checkbook every time I go to the libary. Just in case. And I take a deep breath and brace myself for the news when I get to the circulation desk. You never know what the fines might be--it's always a bit of a surprise even when I've checked my account online before heading out on my library trip. Today it was less than $10. Yay!

Tonight I read _The Green Ghost_, by the same author who wrote _On My Honor_, to all of the kids. I was pleasantly surprised that it was a Christmas ghost story, a genre that I love. And it was just the right level of complexity and length for a satisfying one-night read. It is also a good and manageable book for introducing the idea of flashbacks and stories within a story and intertwining stories. It took a while for the kids to pick up on the fact that this was happening, and there was special pleasure, I think, for them to come to the realization that the girl in the 1938 portions of the book was the sister of the old woman in the part that turned out to be current. After Frances went to bed, the rest of us started _The Higher Power of Lucky_, one of those Newbery winning books that I think is more appealing to adult literary critics and book award givers than to actual children. So far, I think it is really one of the finest examples of how an opening paragraph can just grab you and have elements that shake up your ideas about children's books (it's the word "scrotum" that sets this one apart). But the actual topics of the book, though it fits my protagonist-the-same-age-as-the-reader-or-younger requirement, are just not within the experience of most kids, and if they are going to continue to develop over the course of the book, it's happening more slowly than what my kids want to feel that they have a handle on what the book is all about. The girl in the book lives in a trailer in the high desert in California and eavesdrops on 12-step "Anonymous" meetings, and an ongoing theme of the book is her own desire to be in touch with her "Higher Power." Amusing and thought-provoking to 37 year olds, but perhaps less so for middle graders, for whom the book was sort of written. So every time this term comes up, I try to kind of explain again. Plus it's just a weird book in general--characters that are a little hard to relate to, lots of little stories, kind of like Because of Winn-Dixie. In fact, this feels so far to me (35 pages in), a lot like a rather more extreme riff on _Because of Winn-Dixie. Girl in a trailer with a not-quite-parent and a dead or gone mother. Quirky misfits around her, including 5 year olds who also are poor and have experienced some loss. A dog with a weird name who helps the protagonist on her quest for self-understanding. Librarian characters. Poverty and brand-specific realism (Fig Newtons, etc.). But this one is a little harder to follow, more experimental in feel. I'm not sure my kids are as titillated by experimentalism as the authors are.

Speaking of good stories, I just checked out _Big Red_, a book that I loved as a child. I am wondering if I'll find it as engaging now, and whether the boys will, too. It's come to my attention lately that I didn't read as much as a child as I thought I did. I missed lots and lots of some basic kids' books and didn't read them until I was much older (never read any Little House books, never read the Anne of Green Gables series or The Secret Garden and read very, very few of the kinds of award-winning books that I can see now would have been very special and exciting to me if someone had just pointed me in that direction). I suppose it's never too late, but I wouldn't be far off if I said that my kids have probably read or heard more books this year than I read through my entire 1st-9th grade years.

Like everyone, I'm kind of in shock that Christmas is next week. My wish right now is just that my house would be really clean so that I would feel relaxed and energized in it instead of overwhelmed by stuff in every corner and on every surface and along the edges of the floor in every room and hallway. The good thing is that there's no pressure, really. Any pressure comes purely from myself. We will be just ourselves this Christmas, with no plans for guests or parties or family visits until the afternoon that Kerry's sister comes by for a few hours, so because we're really set with presents and decorations and all that kind of thing, we're pretty much as ready as anyone can really be. I need to wrap gifts, something I'm not looking forward to (I would much prefer to just sit back and do nothing and listen to Christmas music than to deal with tape and losing the scissors and irregular shaped packaging), but I still feel like there are stretches of time ahead of me to do that. If I was smart, I'd start doing a little bit each day. But I'm not that smart :)

Super neat thing of the day: Frances came home from gymnastics tonight with the roundoff back handspring totally down! She was flipping right across the yard in a perfectly continuous motion. She's awesome! Just a week ago this seemed so far away. The open gym nights have really paid off, and it's so cool to see her boost in confidence. I guess ability and focus totally do turn on a time--one minute there's the slump, and the next minute, they're at the top of their game again. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone just accepted that this is how children learn and had patience to know that things usually work out if you give them time!

Can you resist this little winter face?

It's funny how life seems to go in these waves of everything seeming to work out just peachy and you're all cruising along, and suddenly it hits a trough of disequalibrium. I think we're in that disequalibrious phase right now. Ollie is back in a socially awkward place, and I'm realizing that there are probably things I could be doing to help him out, only my own low social skills are retarding me from really having a cogent plan. Walter is struggling in his electronics class and having meltdowns every time he has to do any work for it. He is supposed to do one lesson a day 5 days a week, but right now his class officially ended yesterday and he is two weeks behind. There is absolutely no way I could ask him to do that much work at once, and it's just plain too late anyway. Frances's ballet teacher pulled me aside on Friday to say that she is not keeping up in the class and doesn't know basic ballet technique (of course, there is this part of me that says that this is her 5th year of taking dance classes, so even though right now she isn't in a ballet class, whose fault is it if she doesn't know basic skills?). She also is behind her class in gymnastics for some reason. I'm seeing a general lack of focus from her, and I'm not sure if it is bad eating, not giving her enough attention in general, my own lax discipline in all areas of life, and not pushing her to work hard or behave appropriately or stay focused. And her attitude in general has just been extremely difficult--demanding, rude, whining. I feel like all of it has a root somewhere not very far from myself. I have allowed this all to flourish, and now it's going to take some hard work to prune it back.

My schooling and parenting dilemma of the week is whether I am being a responsible homeschooler by noting areas where they are not yet ready for the work or where the presentation method is not compatible with the way they learn and saying hey, this is a poor fit right now and I didn't choose to homeschool so that they would feel incompetant or have to persist in something that clearly wasn't working at the expense of everyone involved. On the other hand, I also don't want to send the message that we'll just drop out of everything or not show up any time the going gets rough. The boys are really struggling, as is most of the class, in Latin. It's moving too fast. My own personal opinion is that they are covering too much too fast at this level, and it would be better to slow down and get mastery, rather than forging ahead with 30 adjectives at this point. They can't remember all of the 1st and 2nd declension noun endings, they have a lot of vocabulary, they're confused at what some of the grammatical terms mean, and the participants are only 10 and 12. To me, there's no rush. They don't even need to study Latin at all at this age, and maybe there are other 5th graders moving through at a faster clip, but mine don't happen to be among them. They're covering at about the same rate in Latin what I covered in my own 1st Latin class in 8th grade, but I was older and was there 5 days a week for 45 minutes. I knew that they would fail the test this week because they simply do not recall 3 declensions of endings and reliably distinguish those from the personal endings on 1st conjugation verbs. And they're crying during homework and before and after class. That is not the recipe for successful learning in any sense of the term to me.

So I said I would let them skip class this week, and it turns out that almost no one was there anyway. Ollie took me up on the offer, but Walter wanted to see how he'd do on the test, so he stayed. Result? The test has been postponed until this week, when hopefully more the whole group of five will be there. Ugh.

Then there's the matter of electronics class. A 5th grader doesn't *need* to learn electronics. This is purely an enrichment class on a topic that I thought he'd enjoy. He's not having a great time. He's having meltdowns. When he melts down, we all do, and it's just not worth it to me to suffer or have him suffer for something that was supposed to be fun. There was something else that happened this week that also fell into that category, though I'm forgetting what it was. At any rate, I feel bad that I'm not teaching them persistence or that I'm demonstrating that I'll let them take an easy way out if they just complain enough, but I also want them to follow their own interests and to not associate learning and education with agony, especially when the classes were imposed by me and are totally non-standard curricula. Still, I feel like the biggest slacker mom.

Here's what also makes me feel like a slacker. I just seriously lost two Monopoly Jr. games in a row to people who are also too old to be "financially ruining," as Ollie put it, each other in a game like this. And speaking of games, I'm a bit bummed because I ordered Settlers of Catan from Amazon on Wednesday for $27, and today I looked and it's only $19.99. Bummer. And another gift I paid $34 on amazon for last week is now $23. Sigh.... He who hesitates wins. Meanwhile, the American Girl doll claims that I shouldn't count on her to arrive before Christmas, since I ordered her yesterday. It's hippie Julie, the girl whose parents are divorced, who lives in the Bay Area, and wears a necklace like Carrie on Sex in the City. Alas, her accessories, including her Carrie/Julie necklace are backordered until sometime in January. I'm learning that it's kind of lose-lose to have a vexed relationship with shopping late. Remember how high and mighty I was back on Buy Nothing Day??!! And I can rest comfortably in the fact that the reason my games and Eyeclops cost more less than a week ago are that I was contributing to their meteoric rise up the Amazon charts, which caused their current rock-bottom prices.

Guess what I'm getting for Christmas??? A bread machine! The bread machine of my dreams! I'm absolutely convinced that we should all be gluten free for a wide variety of reasons for each of us. But gluten free stuff tastes really yucky much of the time, and I'm the laziest cook out there, so I don't do well with it in that regard. So I think I'm going to contaminate the ol' Zojirushi when I get it with regular wheat flour. All I need to do not is get that Wondermill and I'll truly be worthy of that Prius. But seriously, my aspiration is to give the GF thing a serious go. Will I be able to embrace the resolution in the New Year?

Have I mentioned I'm in love with how the Prius just kind of knows me even when I can't find my key? It doesn't even ask for me to be responsible; it loves me just the way I am. I show up, it forgives me for all of my trespasses of the day, and it open its doors wide. To show my appreciation, I went to the Wally World tonight and bought it some spiffy new rubber floor mats.

Tonight I took Frances to Open Gym, and she was awesome! She actually looked like a gymnast (rather than like a spaz, which is what she has been looking like). Of course, the point of Open Gym is to be able to boing out of control on the trampoline and wallow in a pit of foam without anyone yelling at you or trying to eke some grace out of you. She has the back handspring just about down now on any kind of mat--definitely on the Tumble Trak, on the thicker foam, and now on the resilient floor as well. And she almost has it continuous with the roundoff. Whew!

And a note on timing: just when we were ready to pull her from dance as soon as we fulfill all our current obligations to the company because she's a currently sucky ballerina, Ana has her usual impeccable timing. Our lousy ballerina was invited to go to North Carolina with the professional company on Thursday to dance in Legend of the Poinsettia. She'll be leaving at 6:30 a.m. and hopefully will be back at dinnertime. This meant a scramble for appropriate underlayers for costumes: the new black adjustable camisole strap leotard from the dance store with the fancy bags. Because she was whining and I am a pushover, she also got a red faux fuzzy bun for her hair with light-up fiber-optic stuff shooting out the top. I have to admit it's a nice touch and matches her flamenco skirt, but I doubt it will fly for she show. They're more into a corona of loud colored artificial flowers....

Milestone of the weekend: we went to see Santa yesterday, and Walter and Ollie opted to go to a friend's house instead.

Santa couldn't understand a word that Rutledge said, but he was great at responding with a lot of "Uh-huhs." I think Rutty was saying something about a battleship, but even I'm not sure.

We all know what Frances wants: An American Hippie. A charm bracelet. A make-up set. She did admit to not being such a good girl this year. Maybe her blunt honesty will sway the old red guy in her favor and he'll be generous after all. I know where there's some coal...


Hot chocolate on a cold day.

The barrel train. Obviously, in this family we find all of the barrel trains that we can ;) This one wasn't really barrels, but little wooden cars by John Deere. I think that's kind of cheating.


What I'm proud of myself for: getting to level 55 on Strawberry Shortcake Popping Fruit game, earning Frances 929 "tickets" to spend designing ice cream sundaes. Your Money or Your Life would be totally after me, since I spent about two hours of my Life Energy on this particular accomplishment. Laugh if you will, but I call it worthwhile. Go ahead...try to beat me!

We just finished _Anne Hutchinson's Way_ and in about 30 minutes we'll be done with _Willow Run_, which we haven't liked as much as _Lily's Crossing_ but still has been a great treatment of the emotions of the home front during World War II. Far, far better than any textbook! This book rocks. Highly recommended! Woo hoo for Patricia Riley Giff!

I dream of the day when we have enough time to sit around playing board games. I don't know where our time goes.

We've been hitting it hard trying to get through Eragon. I lost Walter about 5 CDs ago, and Ollie says he likes the book much more than he expected, but I don't see him in any hurry to finish, and I don't think it's because he is trying to savor each moment. It is by force he that he seems to listen. They both made it pretty clear they have no intention to read it on their own. I'll be really happy when book club is over tomorrow. It's always a source of a fair amount of stress. Why we don't drop out is just beyond me. The kids want to stay in, even though they are over critical of the books chosen, aren't tactful, hurt people's feelings, refuse to read the books most of the time, and have behavior problems that disrupt the class. My fantasy book club would be more like an adult book club--cozy and relaxed surroundings (RES is a great venue, but totally uncomfortable for a book club), focus on having fun and being together, rather than academics or competitive reading ability, and participant focused: when they stop talking about the book, they kind of stop talking as much about the book, just like our book club. I suppose it's just hard to have a club for kids who really aren't in a position to run it themselves and who don't have the necessary social and organizational skills to determine what would be the best way to keep everyone sane and respectful. At any rate, I always hold my breath through book club and am always a tad sorry we went when it's over because my boys have always done something offensive, disruptive, or otherwise unsociable.

Tomorrow is another nonstop day, and I am so not open to a sleepover. This is a topic we visit every weekend. Tomorrow morning they are going to the Poe Museum for both a tour and a CSI type program about the Mystery of Poe's Death. Then they have chess club, which seems to have been an overwhelmingly positive event for everyone except my kids, for whom it seemed to stress relationships. Then there's book club, which is always a shot in the dark. Since we lost a couple of days of schoolwork this week and didn't have a lot of time for reading because we were trying to make our way through Eragon, I just really am looking forward to a little time to connect over the weekend, which is, I'm realizing, a huge joke as the kids get older. Weekends in general are times when they are absolutely consumed with video games from morning until night and are with their friends from sunup until long after sundown, so there's never any time for the relaxed family time I always imagine. And there's the ever-present three year old, ready to overturn a board game at any moment or climbing all over me, droning in my ear so I can't concentrate or creating some major disaster that requires immediate and distracting attention. Ollie and I are pretty far into the book _Willow Run_, which we both want to find out what happens in. Walter wants my undivided attention helping him do some of his Webelos badge requirements. I feel like I've never played a board game with Frances that is all about her and her needs. And they still haven't visited Santa at all this year.

Speaking of Santa...oh my goodness am I glad that I'm not one of those self-congratulating people who has their Christmas shopping done months early. As sure as I get things in September or October (or worse, back in the previous spring or after last Christmas...), the kids are going to change their minds and become fanatical about something in the second week of December. I'm not kidding. It happens year after year. Frances has been saying that she wants an aquarium and an American Girl (actually she wants several, but I've assured her that this is not even something that is up for discussion). We had talked with her about her priorities and about what we think is best, and she was all excited about the aquarium. Last night, Kerry and I went out and did our final look and chose the one that we think will work best. At exactly the same time, Frances seems to have decided that "fish are boring and don't do anything" and doesn't want anything to do with them and she has decided that she will likely die if she doesn't get an American Girl doll. Now she's not one of those budding little intellectuals who is fascinated by American history. No--she wants the 70s girl who has the long braids and the crocheted cap and hip purse. She doesn't need no stinkin' books about these characters. She just wants a roomful of expensive scale-model accessories. I'm so tired of whining that right now I don't even care. I'm going to order that doll tomorrow and be done with this whole Christmas shopping thing! I'll miss the aquarium myself--I was totally looking forward to it and how it would transform our family room.

Perhaps while three of my children are gone tomorrow I will get some of the cleaning done that is hanging over me like a big black cloud. I just cannot relax in a house that is messy from one to end to the other. I think given my brainlessness lately that I really need simplicity around me if I'm going to have a ghost of a chance of not losing track of everything in life. Today when I dropped Frances off at gymnastics I lost my keys within 5 minutes. For once, they truly were in the trash can--and we're talking a huge, deep, public trash can here. I had briefly checked in there and so had Kerry, but it wasn't until I started taking out each piece of trash in this full can one by one that I saw that oh my gosh, I really am that absent-minded! It is actually starting to scare me more than I want to admit. It wouldn't be hard to see how I could make all kinds of mistakes and lose things, given how much we do and how little I use a calendar or other physical reminders, but up until now, I've managed to magically juggle a lot of things without these props, even if no one knows how I do. That seems to be coming to a total halt lately, and I have to wonder what has changed in me--and why--that has made this happen. I find myself worrying about dementia or something pressing on my brain or something like that. I don't feel like I have undue stress on me right now, and schedules and what I need to pack for this or that is at about the same complexity it has always been. I'm just way off my game. And I've never thrown my kids (or a fork or whatever else) into the trash can!

I also need to find a sitter for Saturday night. I confess, I don't know where to begin! I haven't had a sitter in probably 8 months, and the sitter we used then lives fairly far away and so adds about 45 minutes onto the evening in pickup and drop-off. We're still running at a grand total of maybe 7 or 8 instances with a sitter in our entire 10 years with kids, and only 4 since we've lived here. I also know that people are very protective of their sitter information, so I hate to ask for recommendations or suggestions from anyone who has kids of their own. I guess I will see what works out as tomorrow unfolds; I'd hate to miss the party because I couldn't figure out what to do with the kids.