Lordy, Lordy

I'm 40!!

I need so much to post and tell you everything, EVERYTHING, about the past weekend, which was gloriously filled with excess and joy, with such incredible friends...old and new, from near and far. But I am honestly not recovered yet, here, four full days later, and I'm totally crashing.

However, even if I can't do the recap tonight, I figured you should know...the fait is all accompli. My thirties, my best decade thus far, are over.

What's next?

Happy Halloween!

Enjoy my disturbing video!

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Daylight

We are finally out of the Sick House.

Both girls got the swine flu this past week, to the surprise of none of the parents of small children that I know. Compared to the other stories I've heard, it seems we got a moderate wallop.

The OG was out of school for four consecutive days. The YG was out for four days total, although not consecutive due to my apparent lack of parenting ability. She seriously looked fine after she missed the first two days, and had the requisite 24-hour fever-free period (well, OK, 22 1/2, but she had a LOT of energy). Plus, honestly, I've not experienced any illness with my children that has necessitated more than a day or two out of school - as we are VERY healthy midwestern stock, we are - so I wasn't expecting this level of commitment to being sick, you know.

So, she got sick last Monday, and stayed home Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday with her sister. By Friday both girls were looking healthy enough to go to school, so I sent them on. We even made it out to Malcontent Mama's for a party out west at Casa Avocado last Saturday, and the girls had a total blast running around in the Hill Country.

Everything looked pretty good, until Sunday morning, the YG wakes up, boom, vomits, fever starts spiking, and we are going to the Children's Hospital because I am a NERVOUS WOMAN and because a healthy five-year-old girl who lives in the next neighborhood over died last week from this crap.

They tested her, and it is indeed the piggy flu, or at least they assume it is, because that's 95% of the flu that is going around down here. Not much they could do at that point, though; it's a bit late for the vaccine, and also for Tamiflu. So, she stayed home Monday and today as well.

(I'd just like to state, after staying with them for a good portion of last week, that I have a renewed appreciation for stay-at-home mothers. Oh, my GOD, how do you do it? Granted, I usually only see my kids at home when they are sick and necessarily crabby, but I swear, if I had to break up one more whining session between those two, I was going to Pack Up And Leave.)

As of this evening, YG seems more-or-less refreshed and ready to head back to school, and the OG hasn't shown any sign of regressing, so presumably we are past this. Of course, I'm immensely grateful for the fact that we're not permanently scathed by this, but I do have to say, THIS FLU SUCKS. We didn't get the vaccine - and I'm sure it wouldn't have mattered much if we had, as I think we got exposed several weeks ago, right when the vaccine was arriving. But, I'd damn sure recommend it to everyone now.

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Planning 40th birthday party. Freaking out a little. In that spot where I'm sure nobody likes me, and the ones that do will show up and the party won't be any fun. Can't think about it without worrying, so am not really thinking that much about it. Glad The Man is stepping in here to help out.

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Oh, and if you were wondering whether three 10-month-old Thin Mints, found in the remnants of their sleeve in the bottom of one's freezer, still taste good?

Yes. Yes, in fact, they do.

Sickish

No H1N1, just some garden-variety blech.

In fact, it could literally be a garden-variety illness, in that it is entirely possible that it's allergy-related. If I indeed had a garden anymore, which I don't. I have a yard, which we'll charitably say is being xeriscaped. (Translation: eaten by volunteer lantanas, which The Man, native Texan that he is, cannot bring himself to cut down.)

Where was I? Oh, yes, sick. Sort of sick. Throat sore, energy drained, crabby as fuck...but not so bad as to get to stay home. That is a luxury one must save for the true deal, or when one's children have the true deal.

The girls are about in the same boat. The YG is coughing and a bit hoarse, but not spiking a fever. The OG is going through her usual fall-winter behavioral reaction to what is presumably an exposure to strep. She's agitated, stressed, itchy, doing all sorts of ticcing, and will burst into screechy tears, in school and at home, at the drop of a hat. Plus, she's got that tell-tale rash around her mouth. All this tells me that she could REALLY REALLY use a healthy dose of antibiotics right now, but I feel like a complete dope heading to her doctor asking for antibiotics when she doesn't have a fever, or any real external signs of infection.

So, given that I know her signs, you'd think I would be kind, or sympathetic to her, in her time of distress. But you would be WRONG. I am about to string her up. I can't imagine what sort of horrible Munchausen-By-Proxy mother would wish for her darling daughter to have a fever, but I do. I just CANNOT WAIT for it to spike so that I have an excuse to beg for three weeks worth of Zithromax.

The YG is charming her way through kindergarten, as is her wont. My worries for her are altogether different from the OG. Whereas the OG has always excelled academically and struggled socially, I fear that the reverse may be true for the YG. She is so incredibly verbal, and bright, and SO freakin' observant that it stuns me; however, she really, really can't read. And she - get this, ex-reading teacher here - writes BACKWARDS a lot of the time, even her own name! I fear that we may be having to investigate some sort of external teaching, which is not typical to my family. (My side is all just like the OG. Smart, nervous, socially awkward victims, that's us.)

My back-to-workness is chugging along as per usual. No major stressors yet; my status is pretty much quo. Still love my boss, still dubious about at least one of my worksites. The job is still fun, though I daydream sometimes about something else. What, exactly, I'm unclear about. I think I've officially reached the point, in this, the twilight of my 39th year, that I really and truly just can no longer face the notion of going back to school. (More to the point, it's really that I can't face the notion of taking the GRE again. But as the first is predicated by the second, it's all pretty much the same thing.)

40 is approaching rapidly. Plans are falling into place for what I hope will be a good shindig. Send me an e-mail if you're going to be in Austin in mid-November, and I'll hook you up.

What up with all of you? Anyone flu-bound yet?

I Strain

I am currently in the throes of a several-hour-per-night session of entering registration data for our local Girl Scout service unit. (Because they ASKED me to and I didn't have a quick excuse handy; that's why.)

It is mindless, time-consuming, and nastily eye-straining; but most of all, it has made me hate typing on my computer THOROUGHLY.

So, sorry for lack of updating lately. I have about two more weeks of at least an hour per night on this horrific task, and then it should be mostly over.

But, right now? I wish I had one of Badger's sidecars, and that I did not have this huge stack of forms in front of me. Sadly, this is not the case.

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Oh, but I do have to share this anecdote from the YG's first day of kindergarten.

See, she is extremely into "pretty." For several years now, she's been wearing what essentially amounts to "ball gowns" to school, nearly on a daily basis. So, it has always been common for her to ask me "Do I look pretty?" before heading somewhere.

Well, on the first day of school, she had been planning to wear a big flouncy dress of hers. But, when she came out of her room that morning, she had on a cute pair of "blingy" jeans that I had bought her at JC Penney, and a shirt with rhinestone buttons.

And, do you know what she asked me?

"Mama, do I look rockin' ? I want to look ROCKIN'."

I had to assure her that, as her mother, that I might not be the best judge of what "rockin'" looks like anymore, but as far as I was concerned, she was the rockinist girl in the kindergarten.

Sigh

I would LOVE to tell you about things like MY NEW CAR and how I HAVE TO GO BACK TO WORK next week.

However, that would also involve telling you about how the OG knocked a full beer (mine) onto my laptop, and about how the prognosis for said laptop is iffy at best, and that due to this incredibly expensive mishap, I am sans computer for the time being, and have to share the desktop with The Man, who is most inconveniently "working" when I want to be blogging.

Anyway, it's over at Happy Mac for some CPR. I'm hoping there is life in it yet.

In the meantime, ponder the fact that my clunker has officially been cashed, and that I am now the proud owner of this:


Yes, it's a HYBRID. I am so frackin' thrilled, and promise not to be smug.

What is upsettingly to me, personally, it's also my first non-American car. I feel very bad about this - I was UAW born and bred, and pretty much figured I'd be UAW dead. But, crap, this is a hybrid car that costs well under $20,000...and the dealership is within walking distance of my house!

The Man and I talked about it, and bared our bleeding hearts to each other, and decided to go for it in a moment of quick decision-making. (Well, actually, he had no idea I was doing it, until I called him from the dealership saying "I've got my pen poised above my checkbook; should I buy a car?")

In the end, I figure that this may be our only foreign car we buy. By the time we're in the market for another car, American hybrids will probably have caught up in price and mileage. I bet a Chevy Volt will be in our driveway in five years.

But, I'd be lying if I said I did not l-o-o-o-ve it.

Summer Obsession List

Hey! It's time for the annual Summer Obsession List! I'd have gotten to it sooner, except for the first item on the list:

• Watching Battlestar Galactica from Netflix. We're almost through Season One. LOVE. I'm actually kind of glad to be watching it this way, as it is so much more gratifying to sit and watch two episodes a night than to have to wait weeks - or whole seasons - in between. (Or, at least it is until some frakkin' geekboy ruins the whole series for me by telling me the ending. Geekboys: Be Warned.)

• Hayao Miyazaki. In the past three days, the girls and I have watched Spirited Away twice, and My Neighbor Totoro once, and Howl's Moving Castle is on hold for me at the library. I am amazed that I've lived this long without seeing these movies, because they are quite incredible, Spirited Away most particularly. It manages to be both highly realistic - with an eye for detail that clearly inspired The Iron Giant, another favorite of mine - and also completely WACK. The story line just takes off, five minutes into the movie, and almost immediately goes absolutely NUTS, and stays there for two, mesmerizing hours. I can only dream of having that kind of creativity. (The kids LOVED it, too, and are begging me to purchase it. I think it may have to happen.)

• William Shatner reading the Palin speeches and Twitters from Conan. Damn, I will always love that man. Ever since I bought Golden Throats back in college - with his versions of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" - I have thought he was the funniest person alive. He's completely able to be both seriously pompous AND making fun of himself at the same time! He was meta when meta wasn't cool.

• Going to the gym. Five times a week, bitches; 45 minutes of cardio, and 20 minutes of resistance. I can now run a full 10 minutes on the treadmill without having to slow down, and I swam laps for 35 minutes straight - and really only stopped because I realized that I hadn't put on sunscreen (having figured I'd make it 10 minutes tops). I've lost 10 pounds - but, before you get all congratulatory, I'd put on 20, so this is only a market correction. For all this work, I really wish the scale were dipping much lower than this, but, hey, it's a start.

• On the same note, dieting. This is further down on the obsession list, but I'm definitely giving it the old college try. I'm buying soysage and sawdust - erm, I mean "high fiber" - tortillas and bread, and I've pretty much cut out dairy and such. I only wish that the exercising didn't make me so incredibly HUNGRY, because it really makes this part so much harder.

• Stiff by Mary Roach, which is on my bedside table. I am completely fascinated about what happens to our bodies after we die. Oddly enough, it manages to be informative AND hilarious. I highly recommend it, if you have a stomach for such things - although, honestly, she couches things pretty palatably, if you can use a word for such a subject. (For example, she decides at one point that the word "maggot" is too nasty, so she substitutes the word "hacienda" for it.) I love it, although I read with horrible teeming jealousy, because I SO wish I could write that well.

• Improving my poker game. Sadly, I haven't made much progress on this end, because I can't win a game to save my life, but I'd really like to get better. Like SOON, because our annual full-day tournament is coming up in two weeks, and I'm afraid I'm going to SUCK DONKEY.

• The new library branch that just opened up in our hood. Music! Videos! Books on CD! Harry Potter books on CD, which the OG loves, and which cost bajillions of dollars to actually purchase! Reading a book review, and then, on a whim, getting online to reserve it! I'm very happy, and saving considerable jack in the process.

• Organizing my photographs. I have two large boxes of loose photos that date back to when the YG was one, which was - um, FOUR years ago. So far, I've made at least two years of progress, but it is slow going. And, I don't have prints of anything from the past year, so I guess I need to - um, order some? (Actually, answer me this: Do people even ORDER prints anymore, or do we all just look at them online, or on our respective digital devices?)

• Planning for my big 4-0, which is fast approaching. Finances have prevented me from heading to Cancun or Cozumel, so it'll be a party in the A-Tex for me. I really hope we can swing a big, fun one, at the very least.

• Plotting for my iPhone. Oh, I don't have it yet, but I will. Someday, I will. And then...and ONLY then...will I be complete.