I really want to make our home beautiful and I know we need some basic things (like color on the walls, and the 1/4 done flooring in the basement finished already) but a VERY basic thing I can do without the fuss and bother of previously mentioned basic things, is artwork.

My wallpaper square arrived by the way, and is hanging, not in the guest room as I originally planned, but is the first thing you see when you walk in the front door. I figured it can live there for a bit because I love it and I’ll never see it in the guest room! The reds aren’t as red as the picture (or my monitor?) showed, it was more of an orangey red, which is fine, but I would have rather had the true christmasy red that I thought it had. Still, very happy.

So today, I decided to get another piece, and popped up my favorites list on etsy. Many of the ones I had previously marked had been sold, but this beauty hadn’t already, and after a check to make sure James liked it, it is now going to be mine! (err, ok, ours.)

Some other items seller redheather has in his shop:

I especially like that middle one. Maybe because it has a hint of Hokusai’s “Great Wave of Kanagawa”, which I adore:

Now the waiting begins! And contemplating what kind of frame it should get!

-amy

Yesterday I got to work, and the network was down. Turns out, the AC unit that solely existed to cool down our server room got fried over the weekend, and the room was up over 115 degrees.

After an hour of freecell, I headed home to work, coordinating with my boss to send me a couple of items to my personal email. I got busy and was working away on my laptop when suddenly.. my computer blacked out and rebooted itself for no reason.

Not. Good.

I tried to boot up using Last Known Good Configuration, but it got to a certain point and then showed me a variation of the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) that said something about UNMOUNTABLE BOOT DRIVE and my heart started to beat a little more rapidly.

So then I booted into IBM’s (I have a thinkpad, a T42) Rescue and Recovery do-dad. I clicked on one of the choices, something about looking at files, and my hard drive started to make this noise:

CLANK. CLANK CLANK. CLANKITY CLANK. KKKKKKLLLLLAAAAAANK!

It was scary. It was NOT a noise you want your hard drive to make. I of course had been quickly trying to recall whether I’d moved the most recent batch of photos from my hard drive to my external hard drive, and if not, whether I had deleted them off teh camera as well (pretty sure i’m in teh clear with all that stuff)

There will of course, be some losses, like my quicken file, and other stuff that I’m sure I haven’t thought of yet, but overall, I’m not too upset about the loss. I AM VERY happy that I bought that external drive last year, because if not, ALL our photos were residing on my hard drive at that time and they would have been lost (except for the inferior copies on flickr).

So after chatting it up with IBM, I should be getting a new hard drive and a set of recovery disks (yay for 3 year warrantees) today at the earliest, friday at the latest. I hope I don’t have to sign for them. I hope they will be waiting for me when I get home tonight.

There will be other losses, like software, because I know some of the software I had was the downloadable kind, and others were of the “so very very old that it’s way upgraded and they’ll make me buy a new copy” kind.

Anyway. Not a good day for computers yesterday. At least, computers that I came in contact with.

How was your Monday?

There are no spoilers to any of the books in this post. Just thought you’d like to know.

This post was part of the previous post until I decided I probably shouldn’t kill the few readers I have with much too long a post, so here is episode 2!

5 minutes after midnight, someone came on the loud speaker and warned everyone that someone had put spoiler laden flyers on all the car’s windshields. That’s when I really started to feel hot-coffee-sneeze kind of nervous.

We actually eyed everyone warily as we exited the store. I’ve heard stories of drive by from the last book, with people shouting out, “Blah dies!” as people exited with their books. How horrible would that have been! I actually felt a WHOOSH of relief when we got safely to the car.

the next day I had choir practice from 2-5. I hadn’t finished reading yet, and I was actually nervous to leave the house. Later on that week, I read about all the hubbub about the NY times and Baltimore sun reviewing the book before it was supposed to be released, and how many people were disappointed by being “spoiled.” I just don’t understand this… if you don’t want to be spoiled, you should know not to read reviews! Sure, some say that the headline looking up at them from the print version on their doorstep spoiled it for them, but don’t they know that spoilers lurk everywhere? THE TRULY DEDICATED know that just staying inside the house with the doors locked and the phone off until the book is finished is the only way to ensure that the book wouldn’t be spoiled. Ignore your children, because they might reveal if Snape is good or bad!

This is all that was running through my head as I LEFT THE HOUSE without the book finished to go to choir practice. Seriously, it’s a wonder I showed up at all, I was almost just going to skip it. Not just for the time lost in reading but the DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! factor of leaving the house with the book unfinished.

But go I did, and sit I did and read I did every moment that wasn’t spent with mouth open and sound coming out. At one point, I was immersed in the book and I heard some of the younger high school girls talking. One of them stated, “I always thought Snape was good.” and I just about THREW the book at them as I hollered, “DON’T SAY ANOTHER WORD!” It turns out that they hadn’t past the first chapter, and were just tossing out their thoughts, but damn that hot-coffee-sneeze nervousness just about put me over the edge!

James was ahead of me in reading his copy this time around. Last time, I was ahead of him, and I must say, it’s much nicer having him ahead of me. I am very vocal. I can’t help it. I ooohhhh and ahhhh and gasp and hold my breath and make “eek!” noises, it’s just the way I am! So the fact that I was reading what he already knew about made it easier on him. Not like last time when he swore at me and stalked out of the room to another part of the house.

He finished … I think Saturday night. I finished early Sunday afternoon. I didn’t rush it at all, in fact, I would often pause and put the book down and contemplate what I’d read. I even started to take notes, because i wanted so badly to have someone next to me that was on the same page I was on to say, “Oooh, did you get THAT part?” Of course, there wasn’t anyone, so I wrote it down instead.

I laughed and wept and wept and wept some more, and while there are a few little details I think could have been improved, I enjoyed the last book immensely. I love how she had so many things planned out since book 1, and little details all through the series come to play an important part in the end.

And now, there’s just this feeling of calmness.. the hot coffee is gone, the urge to sneeze has passed. After I had finished, I had this sense of invincibility. I felt strong and muscley and “No one can hurt me NOW, I HAVE FINISHED!” I hopped on the internet with brazen recklessness. I unlocked all the doors and threw open the windows. Anyone driving by tossing out spoilers is POWERLESS AGAINST ME AND MY FINISHED-NESS!

I feel good. The book was very satisfying.

Now that I think about it, kind of like how you feel after a good sneeze.

I also feel sad at the loss that coming to the end of the series means. Kind of like you feel after a good sneeze.

But most of all, when I finally finished, I felt INVINCIBLE!

Just like you do after a good sneeze.

This post doesn’t have any spoilers of the last book. Just photos and me blathering. Just FYI.

This is quite a bit after, but I suck at getting pictures off the camera, so there you go.

We had a great time. It was a time filled with nervous energy. I’m watching a movie as I write this, and a great line from it describes how we were feeling. “You know how you feel when you’re holding a cup of hot coffee and you feel a sneeze coming on.. It’s a bit like that.”

It was a LOT like that.. In the beginning, it was just kind of fun, and boring. Lots of people. Some kids, running around having fun at all the things the bookstore had set up.

the picture taking/frame making station.

hat making station

cute-slash-dumb signs posted all over the store

lots of people dressed up. Some were lame. There was more than one teenage girl that just fell under “slutty schoolgirl” rather than anything harry potter. But there were some good ones.

Moaning Myrtle (bookstore employee)

Delores Umbridge (bookstore employee)

and my absolute favorite – Rita Skeeter. She was DEAD ON. This picture doesn’t do her justice.

and then random sort of dressing up

Everything was fine… kind of boring, even, for a while. We got there at around 10:30pm, and by 10:45 we were bored and picked out magazines and settled in a corner to wait. Like many others.

I couldn’t really focus on my magazine though. I made James play some Harry Potter related games, like naming spells back and forth to see who knew the most (I did, yay for petrificus totalus!) and also Hogwarts students (he did, damn that little colin creevey).

Probably around 11:30 they started lining us up. Then the realization that it was all happening kicked in and we started getting excited.

Then they started carting out the books and the whole store cheered and whooped and freaked out and then it was really exciting.

Then we had to wait.

this is the book that was on the on the bookshelf right next to me.

When we finally got to the register at 12:21…

.. and bought our books from this nice lady (it’s blurry, but that’s the girl who sold us our books! hurrah!)

I was so excited and nervous that I forgot to also purchase the magazines I had been clutching for the past hour (but don’t worry, I went back 2 days later and paid for them.)

You know, we’ve never gone to a midnight party before. We were quite content to let amazon deliver, or just go pick up the books the next day ourselves with little fuss and bother.

But this was the last book. There won’t be anymore. I kind of wanted to go because.. and this is really cheesy, so just cringe and go with it.. because I wanted to be part of history. Now, I know we’re not talking about Shakespeare or anything, but this was the LAST BOOK! And I think they’re going to be around for a good long time. Never again will we be in that moment of not knowing how it all turns out. Never again will we roll our eyes at all the hype surrounding the latest harry potter book. This was IT.

Why not go? Why not go and get excited and jump up and down and just get all pruney with the cheesiness and the HISTORY (ha ha) of it all? We won’t have another chance, so if we want to get goofy and all over excited like a 3 year old who didn’t nap, well, THIS IS IT!

So we did!

I’m glad we went. It was FUN.

And I’ll be able to (gag, barf) show my grandchildren the pictures.

episode 2 tomorrow – me blathering

Made this real quick for Ethan’s costume for tomorrow. It’s “dress up like a story-book character” day!

I bet no one can guess what he’s going as!

It was very easy to make, took about 20 minutes, most of it just getting the size of the template right.

I used these directions.

Edit: I had linked the wrong website for the hat pattern – corrected now.

Jocelyn has some weird notions about boy vs. girl. I don’t know if that’s because we took so much time explaining everything to Ethan (who is always wy? why? why?! all the time) that we wave and say “sure” to Jocelyn. But according to her, some things are boy and some things are girl.

Let me explain a bit better.

When she is in the bathroom and has finally finished doing her business, she will pull off a length of toilet paper and then carefully wrap it around her hand before pulling it off all nice and neat and wipe.

“This is the girl way.” she informs me on occasion.

Maybe this is because she has seen her brother yank off a chunk, wad it up in a ball, stick his rear end out and wipe vigorously. Obviously, that is the boy way.

I can’t think of any other examples, but she has a couple of these boy vs. girl things that make little to no sense.

The one that took the cake though came today on our way home. We’d gone out to dinner as a family, me and the kids meeting James there, and then divided into girls in one car and boys in the other for the ride home, as Jocelyn and I stopped at Target to get her some new shoes.

“Mommy, I’m huuuuungry.”

We’d just bought some snack type stuff that I keep in the car for after school snacks. I knew she wasn’t hungry, she just wanted one of the granola bars I’d let her pick out.

“We just ate dinner honey.”
“I want a snack.”
“No, we just ate dinner, when we get home, you can have a drink. Soy milk or water.”
“SOY MILK!”

She drinks soy milk because she still has an intolerance to cow’s milk protein. If she has something with un-tampered with cow milk*, she will get really congested. Ethan had the same thing but outgrew it by the time he was about 18 months old. We’re still waiting for Jocelyn to outgrow it (cross fingers!).

So back to our conversation. she expresses her desire for a drink filled with soy milk, and then lets out this astute observation:

“When I turn into a boy, then I will drink COW MILK!”

She has let some real stunners out lately. Like how I ate her and then she was in my tumm when she was a baby. (She said that AGAIN recently, I had better buy her a simple reproductive book I think..) but damn, this one really threw me for a loop!

I tried a few tactics. Correction never works, because she will just adamantly insist that she’s right and I’m wrong. I tried to explain that it was because her body doesn’t like cow milk. and maybe someday her body will decide it DOES like cow milk, and then she can drink it, but she will still be, and ALWAYS be.. a girl.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see if that one sticks.

*By untampered with, I mean, uncooked, or changed in any way. Yogurt = OK. Cheese = OK. It’s because those milk proteins have been changed from their original state. But milk, or a milk based sauce (like macaroni and cheese) is no good.

… when I heard this story involving Jocelyn.

Go on over to James’ often neglected site to hear it for yourself.

I like it.

Nay, I LOVE it.

Today, the cleaning ladies come.

So yesterday, we had to clean up the house.

After we finished putting the gazillion toys away and straightening up for the cleaning ladies, I decided to rearrange the family room. After we moved the chair and couch, all the lost lego wheels and baby doll bottles were discovered underneath their depths and were returned to their rightful homes, we broke out the vacuum and vacuumed up all the accumulated grime before moving the furniture to their final homes.

So the furniture got moved, and everything was settled, and we were sitting on the couch resting from our labors, when Ethan, in his poking around of the vacuum cleaner, unlatched the barrel that holds the dirt, and emptied it all over the family room floor. Mine and James’ let out an indignant, “ETHAN!!!” which was followed up in our heads with, “What the &$%* are you doing?!”

Sometimes Ethan will instantly say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” before we can even get any exclamation out, as if he’s trying to pre-empt anything we might say. But this time, he pulled the Turn-Around. Out come the grumpy face, the hands went straight to the hips, and he turned to us and said, “WELL! You guys shouldn’t keep so much DIRT IN THERE!”

It was comical really. I mean, hello! Of course! We shouldn’t KEEP DIRT IN THE VACUUM how silly of us! Obviously, this is our fault, and we should apologize for the outburst. HA!

This, unfortunately isn’t an uncommon occurence.. The Turn-Around, I mean, not the emptying out of the vacuum all over the floor. He will often try to turn things around to get out of something he has done, and this is probably because James and I both are more than willing to admit that something could have been our fault.

The little smarty pants obviously is on to something with this Turn-Around thing. It was just the ridiculousness of his claim that made me realize this defense mechanism he had been honing all this time.

So, the anger of the mess was quickly overcome at the comedy of the fact that Ethan thinking the dirt all over the floor was OUR fault, that I decided we needed to turn this sort of thing around. We need to turn around the Turn-Around, if you will!

He was about 80% in Grump Defensive Mode, which made it more difficult, but I started to tell him that when you do something wrong, or have an accident, the better thing to do is to apologize, and then see what you can do to make it right. He stalked off in the middle of it, and then came back just to stick his face RIGHT in mine, which is what he does when he’s mad at you. I pointed out that I wasn’t angry, and I just wanted to talk, and then continued. I told him that the right thing to do when you’ve made a mistake, the manly thing to do, is to admit it, and then try to make it right.

He was resistant, initially, but after I prodded him a bit, and said, “How can you make this mistake right? What happened? [I made a mess on the floor] How can you get rid of the mess? [VACUUM IT UP!]” Then, he got pretty excited, because the thing that got him into this mess in the first place, was screwing around in the vacuum, which he LOVES to do, will now get him out of it. He pulled out the handle attachment and started vacuuming up all the mess, and then when most of it was sucked up, he vacuumed the actual floor. It was very cute.

We’ll have to see if the lesson behind it stuck at all, or he will just remember the fun vacuuming part. I’m definitely going to be on the lookout for the Turn-Around and try to follow through on the “Be a Man” initiative.

I like the word “bits.”

I always associate it with the private bits of your body, though. Good word. Bits.

Where was I?

I swear I had things to talk about before I started this post, but now they’ve all gone.

OH I REMEMBER! Crafty stuff. Since I’m going to be baking in the next few days I decided I should probably up and finish the scalloped baby blanket for a neighborhood bunco friend already. James had a movie I was kind of uneasy about watching so he watched it, and I finished sewing the blanket.

I didn’t pre-wash the fabric, like you’re supposed to do, because I’m hoping that it will shrink up and get that lovely vintage puckered look.

So last night, I finished the quilting and the edge stitching on the blanket, and squealed with glee! I tossed it into the wash before going to bed, setting the water to hot, which I hardly EVER do (I hope that was OK, but I wanted it to really shrink up!)

This morning, I tossed it in the dryer (also on the highest setting, but there’s only 3 settings, so it’s not that unusual) and now I can’t wait to get home, run up the stairs and pull it out of the dryer and see how it came out.

It’s like christmas morning! Except it’ll be afternoon! Squweeeee!

Next.

My kids are so completely opposite when it comes to body temperature. Ethan has alwasy loved the long sleeves, long pants, and lately, his big fluffy flannel quilt that my mom made for my sister to give him when he was born. It’s very simple, nice thick batting, tied off with yarn instead of quilting, and it’s his FAVORITE. It’s his “warm blankey.”

Jocelyn has always kicked off all her covers. Even in the dead of winter, we go in to check on her, and her bottom will be sticking up with nothing on it but her jammies. I am not so sure that it is body temperature related though. She could just hate getting tangled up in the blankies, as little kids are wont to do. She does allow you to put a sheet over her, but rarely more than that.

Next.

I don’t know why were were on the subject, but somehow, we got to talking about bunk beds. I think we were all in the car going somewhere, including james, and Jocelyn said, “What’s a bunk bed?” I know she knew what one was, but Ethan started in on describing a bunk bed to her in such an amusing convoluted way I didn’t say a word. Just kept grinning at James and listening. And wishing I had a video camera for such events. As far as I can remember, it went something like this:

“First, there’s a bed, and it’s made out of wood, and then there’s sticks. very long sticks, and they go on the corners of the bed. and then there’s another bed and it goes on the top of the sticks so it’s a bed too, only on top! and then there are more sticks and those make the ladder. See, Jocelyn?”

Jocelyn had no freaking idea what he was talking about, so I told her that it’s like the bed Grandma has in her basement and she got it.