8/27/2008

Let There Be Love

This is for the Professor who is turning 35 tomorrow. What better than to sing and play an Oasis song?

Note to Professor: I love you.

I Am More Machine Than Man Now

I got all manner of springs and tightening tools in my mouth. It feels GREAT. To those who have criticized me for my complaints about how bad it felt to have my mouth practically sawn in half with that screw thing, you can eat this for lunch: apparently I had a bad reaction to the numbing medication they gave me and it unnaturally tore up my mouth. In addition to that, the immense pain of the screw they "screwed" in there made it all worse. For days. So I wasn't insane. The orthodontist thought I was nuts for not tearing down the house for pain medication.

But now I am fine. It hurts a little because of tightening issues, but it is nothing like the last painful bout of orthodontic care. 

I am happy to report I can play guitar now and my sliced up finger is painless too. 

I sound like an old woman!!! 

Tomorrow is the Professor's birthday. Any ideas on what to get him? Come on, I know you have some ideas!!!!

8/25/2008

ABBA Zabba

My sister in law brought ABBA into my house about a month ago after she saw Mama Mia at the theater. She made me suffer through it as I made dinner. She would totally laugh at this-- I guess it is not so bad. Well, I am trying to be nice, but I hate any type of disco-esque stuff---the Bee Gees are worse. I tend to think that if a guy sounds like a high-pitched alien when he sings, it is unnatural and should not be played. As for ABBA, I just have a slight aversion, although I can understand the attraction. Like rap. I really do not like rap at all, but I can understand how attractive it can be when I hear some decent artists mix a good beat with some fun loops. 

Well, every time I get off the treadmill ABBA is blasting in the house. The Girl puts it on nearly every day and listens to particular songs over and over. "Chiquitita?" Don't make me blow chunks.


8/22/2008

Save Me




Go listen to my song here. I know, it is just what you have been searching for all your life.

8/21/2008

Post Traumatic Stress & Kissing Serious Butt

Yesterday the kids down the street decided to all pile in my house. I almost wept openly when I saw that they were in my bedroom jumping on my bed. Someone had picked up my guitar and carelessly placed it over my night stand. I completely became unglued. 

So I went downstairs, made more sugar scrub and drank some wine. Well, first I banished all the children from my house and made my own kids read. 

The Oldest is really milking it lately. The other day he discovered that I am the reason he is not getting his gameboy back just yet. His eyes widened upon the news.

"Are you serious? Usually it is the other way around!" He was shocked.

"Yeah, well Dad was just saying to me that he thinks you could get your gameboy back but I told him I was not so sure and so he said for me to make the final decision."

He turned to me (we were in the car and he was in the passenger's seat) and said, "Mom, do you know how much I love you?"

"Nice try," I said flatly.

"No, really. And if I didn't have to come with you to the post office like you ordered I would have done the dishes without your telling me! Really! It was on my mind to do!"

"Yep, I bet."

The rest of the day he decided to help me with everything. Oh here let me get this for you, and let me handle that, kind of stuff. As he was putting cut potatoes in a bowl for me he said, "You know, if you give me my gameboy now you know I will lose it in a matter of days and I will do your bidding for it again anyway." 

"True," I said. 

He doesn't realize that I take it away because he is obsessed with it, not because I want him to do things for me. He has to do that anyway whether he likes it or not. 

The Professor and I should give it back to him soon though so that we can now quit rolling our eyes whenever he says, "I love you!!!!"








8/19/2008

Almost Severed Fingers and Some Linkage

 have not been able to post lately because I severely cut my finger like a total nimrod. I was cutting up cilantro and don't ask me how, but I sliced my index fingernail. I mean, I CUT it. If my fingernail had not been there I would have cut off my finger. So typing has been a complete joke the past few days. Until today I could only type a few sentences at a time.

And contrary to popular belief, I know how to cut up stuff. I think I got distracted or something. It is all a blur.

I went over to my neighbor's house (who is a nurse) and she took care of me pronto. She gave me salt flushes, wrapping, tape, you name it, she had it and administered her care. And it hurts like crazy. Heaven forbid I become an old woman and have aches and pains. I get sort of mean when I am in pain.

I am not geared up for school this year at all either. I am teaching a couple classes and no matter what I do I just never feel prepared. Thankfully the Professor is going to take on teaching the Oldest logic this year so I don't have to wrap my brain around that. I've already done enough voco, vocas, vocamus, vocatis, vocant but I guess I will have to do that again this year although I foresee that Latin will be only a good vocabulary help.

I ran seven miles this morning and I feel really great. I even could still focus when the Girl kept coming to the window and making silly faces. Yesterday I almost lost it and fell off the treadmill she had me laughing so hard. She is such a freak. She was taking a stick and twisting it back and forth into the glass with an evil look on her face. She makes no sense.

I am sure Eraser Eater (9) would not mind if you all looked at this for him. He is very enthusiastic about it. His idea of fun is going on that site and pretty much taking notes.The Oldest also wants you all to listen to his song on my podcast (for a time) that he created. It sounds like Neo is going to bust through the wall and whip some agent butt.

8/15/2008

Have Mercy





I have a new song on my site, so go take a listen. I worked on it for a long time so I expect that if you have the capability you will do me a favor! :) I got the Oldest to tweak with a few things for me (he refused to play the piano, but I have a song coming up that he is going to play on, so I am excited----he is actually an excellent player, believe it or not). Ok, enough begging.

Groundhog Day

The Professor kept me up last night watching Groundhog Day on "demand" (you guys know what that is, right, because I don't) and I suppose when you press any other button on the channel changer you can biff the whole thing up. Well, the man changed the channel instead of the volume at the very end, right when Bill Murray (Phil) finishes up his piano solo at that party, and we lost the whole movie. I was up well past midnight to watch most of a movie that I can't remember the ending to. "Oh well," smiled the man.
"Yeah, 'oh well.'"
Well, I had a little "oh well" this morning when I woke up at 9:16. Eraser Eater, I suppose, tired of waiting for me to get up, opened my bedroom door and it creaked really loud. That needs W-D40, I thought.

"I've been waiting all morning to tell you how excited I am!" He jumped on my bed, hugged me, and smiled directly in my face.

"Clone Wars?" I stretched.

"Yes! Last night when you left for the teacher meeting it was a few hours until Friday but now it IS Friday! And we were all really hungry so {the Oldest} made his own eggs, but they burned a little on the edges, and he made toast, and {the Girl}..."

Holy Crap.

Eraser Eater exited when I started to get up. I collapsed back onto my pillow. The Oldest soon boomed up the stairs and entered my room, paper in hand. He placed it on the Professors empty pillow. "Just though you would need that," he said. The smell of tart Sharpie entered my nose.

His note said, "Dear Mom, I would very much wish to have my game boy back and I made my own breakfast. Love, {the Oldest}"

It was a trick. He wanted to do the dishes without my telling him because he wants gameboy back! Gamecube has been kicked and banished to the closet (and still has not resurrected), then gameboy ended up in my drawer because the boy decided to hit his sister and play without following the rules (again). He is supposed to read five chapters of the Bible before he can play per day. That boy knows the Bible. He has read it four or five times cover to cover.

And what happened to me? Anesthesia? Groundhog Day?

8/14/2008

Not Fair

I am sad no one really read my prior brilliance, but no matter.

The ONE day the Oldest marches downstairs and declares, "Mom, I am here to let you know," (we were in the kitchen)" that I will now do the dishes without you telling me!"

I thought it was a trick of some sort. I was waiting for a hammer to come down on my head, a bucket of slime to dump on me, a Nerf bullet to dart me in the eye----but no. I looked at him blankly.

He stood there with a smile on his face. You know, he smiles in a way that makes him look like he is holding his breath or forcing it a little.

I had just looked at the dishes in the dishwasher before he came down and what do you know, they were dirty.

"The day you decide to do something when you are not told and there is nothing for you to do."

"What?! Oh well." He jumped upstairs.

I found a jellied orange slice and called him downstairs. "Here is a reward for your nice gesture," I said.

"Wow! Thanks!" he yelped as he turned around, popped the entirety of the slice in his mouth and bounded up the stairs. I could hear him from the corner of the house yelling out demands to his imaginary army, orange on his breath.

8/13/2008

Anesthesia

Yesterday the Professor had to get a medical procedure done. He had to get put out, so he doesn't remember squat. All he knew was that he was being wheeled into a room and some nurses were talking---then he woke up. This is the first time he has ever had anesthesia.
"It's sort of nice, isn't it?" I said to him, having had anesthesia several times for a few minor procedures myself.

"Yeah, it's like a miracle. One minute you are awake and you want to partake in a conversation, the next you wake up."

"And it had been two hours or something like that."

"That's just nuts," he said, shaking his head, "besides enduring starvation the day before in order to get this done, I rather enjoyed myself. I think I am looking forward to the next time I have to get that done. It's incredible. It's great. The best sleep I ever had..."

He already gets good sleep, the scoundrel.

And he discovered this while he was lying around in bed all day because the doctor said he needed bed rest, his favorite prescription.

"Isn't this incredible!!!????" he yelped from the sheets, laptop on his immobile legs.

I looked over his shoulder, music blaring. John Coltrane. Oasis. They kept playing his stuff. Over and over. He shook his head in unbelief. "How is this legal?!" he said wondrously.

I rolled my eyes. "I told you about this MONTHS ago."

"What? You did?"

"Yep. I told you about it and you didn't care then!"

"Are you sure?!"

"Yeah, I'm real sure." I remembered how I entered Eisley in my account and they starting playing endless tunes similar to them. Pretty soon I got sick of it and turned it all off. I am not that impressed with it.

Then, he got the notion to look on Google Maps. Oh man, he started showing me real live road pictures of the school he went to as a kid, the church, the gym, the dorms people lived in. The list goes on and on. The dude remembered EVERYTHING. No anesthesia there. He decided to be "fair" I think in his mind, although I know he has absolutely no interest, and look at the house I grew up in in Chino Hills. Perfect roads emerged with palm trees on either side. The house I once knew looked nothing like the house I lived in. In fact, it looked like an impostor house. It even had a palm tree in the yard.

"This isn't the house," I said, slightly annoyed.

"You mean you don't remember any of this?!" the Professor said, shocked and disappointed by my failure of a memory.

"No, none of it. It doesn't even look like the same house."

"Are you sure you have the address right?"

"Yeah. That's it. Gotta make dinner. Why don't you come down with me?"

"Doctor's orders. He said I should get plenty of rest, remember?" he shot me a smile. He was LOVING this.

"You already got plenty of rest. You have been in bed all day. You even got a nap---"

"Yeah, and it was a great nap. I don't remember anything. I was lying there staring at the ceiling wondering if I would fall asleep and then the next thing I remember I woke up and was in the same exact position, two hours later. Was it two hours? How long exactly was it?"

I lovingly rolled my eyes again. In some ways he was like King Peter, fresh from Narnia and all his adventures, back in England again to tell me, his wife, about it. The scoundrel. I want some anesthesia.

8/11/2008

This Is Music

I can't believe it is the afternoon already! I have a lot to do---I need to clean my house. I find that as a mother who is home a lot of the time, I am cleaning every time I turn around.

For Bee, I will list all the bands on my ipod (currently) that I run to (in alphabetical order):

The Beatles
Blur
Caedmon's Call
Coldplay
Eisley
Fields
The Good, the Bad and the Queen (some stupid band the Blur guy threw together for the Herculean and who knows what else)
Gorillaz (I have the song Dare)
Grant Lee Phillips
Jars of Clay
Jeff Buckley
Led Zeppelin
Morrissey
Oasis
Paul McCartney
The Perishers
Phil Wickham
Radiohead (only the Body Snatchers)
Richard Ashcroft
Sarah Masen
Sarah McLachlan
Starsailor
Tears for Fears
Travis
The Verve

No, I don't only listen to Zep when running, I just tend not to skip any Zep song when it pops up on shuffle. I also feel the same way toward Oasis, except not as much lately.

And I am not really impressed with Coldplay's new album. I think it is what the Professor would say, "underwhelming". I really don't like the Viva La Vida song at all---I think it is sort of blah. I HATE the Death and All His Friends song.

Man, I hope the Verve's new album is good. I have my doubts because once people get older, they just don't have it anymore. Like, U2 should just quit. Most of the stuff they do now sucks. I don't even bother buying it. I think Beautiful Day is ordinary. That All That You Can't Leave Behind album and the Bomb one after it is so bland that I never play them and couldn't tell you the tune of hardly a song on either of them. The only reason why I own them is because the Professor bought them for me. Surprisingly enough I have enjoyed Oasis' recent stuff so I am hoping their upcoming album is a good one. I wouldn't mind seeing them again if only to see Noel Gallagher.

I want Grant Lee to put out another Virginia Creeper (when are you going to come to Alexandria, man?) and Travis just never puts anything out EVER that is bad. Every time I hear a new album I wonder when the terrible song is going to play.

And I am really, really impressed with that Fields album.

And we all know if we have a brain in our head, that when Phil Wickham comes out with his new album that it is going to be beyond stellar. He is just incredibly amazing.

You all have no idea who I am talking about do you?

8/07/2008

Home

I am home, yes, it is so nice. In a way vacations are so great but then I miss home so much I find that I wake up in the wee hours of the morning on some foreign pillow pining away for it. Home is that special place where you leave all your stuff, sleep, and feel at ease.

I ran only one time while there. I think once was enough. I ran my usual seven plus mile route, but it was hot and grueling when I decided to take it. Well, it was morning, so it wasn't incredibly hot. I think the main blunder of the trip was that in my haste I forgot my ipod. Even over forgetting the kids' toothbrushes. Those were easily replaced, but the ipod? No way. That was rough, running all those miles with no audible help. I forget how much I depend on it. So far this week I have only run seven miles when normally I would have already had, oh, maybe 27 or so. I feel like a failure and I feel unhealthy (especially because I had a steady diet of ice cream every stinking day), but that is no matter. My reward smack in the middle of the run was the view of the ocean, and then I turned directly around and went back to the hotel. During my run I saw: huge dragonflies, a deer, a turtle, a dead snake, and some ponies, the usual.

The Professor dug the world's hugest hole and recruited me into helping him for a spell so I have a really sore back, just like an old woman. The Girl and I took our beach chairs and chilled down there for awhile. People thought we were nuts. I will post pictures perhaps if I get less lazy.

During every visit to the beach the man and I could hear our child, the Oldest, yelping and yelling (in usual Mickey Mouse fashion) over the many crashing waves and the usual din of a well-crowded beach.

I tried to read a lot but got very little accomplished because I was convinced that at least one of my children would get sucked into the abyss and never come back. I suppose that if game cube were around while they were in the waves and perhaps if they were playing it at the same time and say, fighting, I would welcome the whole idea of abyss sinking. But I was petrified every two minutes, actually, and kept putting that bookmark back into the book. So I read during the two hour traffic jam (we were at a complete stop right before the Wilson Bridge) and read more then than I did the two solid days at the beach combined.

The Oldest was just recently reading a Garfield comic. "What's impressionable?" he asked.
The Professor replied, "a person who is easily influenced by something---a person who believes anything another person says to them, something like that."

"You!" I said.
He looked at me and folded his arms in fake anger. "I am not impressionable!"
"You believed the tooth fairy," chimed the Professor.
"I never believed it!"he roared.
"Oh, come on!" we practically said in unison.
I walked over to the cupboard to get a few things to set up for dinner. I could hear the Professor telling him about how he overheard a conversation with the Girl and him about proving the tooth fairy was real or not.
"You both have lied to me. You were the culprits. You and Mom. And I never believed it."
I rolled my eyes as I pulled the potatoes out of the oven.
"What about the note?" asked the Professor.
"I knew that wasn't real!" shrieked Mickey Mouse.
"Then why did you look up the Elvish characters in the Lord of the Rings book?"
"I was trying to prove it!"
"But you believed it for a second didn't you?"
"Maybe I believed it when I was three..." he muttered, sort of defeated.

8/06/2008

Still Here, Just Putting Up Some Pics














My neck is presently burned, I have eaten too much beach food, and the kids are all semi-whiny. I can not WAIT to get home tomorrow. I don't know how people do week long vacations. I don't think I could ever do it, seriously. I am a homebody.

See you all perhaps tomorrow!

8/03/2008

Leaving, Will Be Back in a Few

We are leaving for the beach in the morning and I am not sure if the Professor will bring his macbook or not. We will see. Sometimes he surprises me. He will, however, bring a New Yorker and I will bring Return of the King. Blogger is sort of wigging out so I better get off here. Maybe I will have some photos to post from the trip.

Be back on Thursday.

The Girl and I were listening to "Ramble On" by Led Zep on the way home from grocery shopping and since the lyric said "Mordor" and "Gollum" she said, "You need to play this song for your literature class, Mom!"

I had a huge laugh. I told her that I didn't think the Moms would appreciate that very much. Jimmy Paige was a Satanist, you know. He may be sort of ugly but he sure can play guitar.

And I have Robert Plant hair, don't you think?

8/01/2008

This and That (2)

The Professor told me that I was the model wife yesterday because I ironed (gasp!) and vacuumed in the same day. Those are the two chores I hate the most. I would rather clean toilets, wipe up excrement, you name it. I would even rather go down in the crawl space where there are spiders aplenty.

Which reminds me. Remember this post? On Wednesday morning when waiting for the exterminator (we have had issues with carpenter ants---I guess that is normal for living in the forest) I realized that I would have to ask the guy to go into the crawl space to see if they are emerging from there. He was a little afraid! He said crawl spaces were not his thing and asked me how it looked down there. I told him that I have gone down there several times to get things out and to turn water on and off during the season changes and it is pretty clean. Some spider eggs and whatnot, but clean. He told me spiders are what he fears. And exterminator? What?!

When entering my crawl space, you have to open up a little latched door on the side of my house by the patio. Once the wooden door is swung open it kicks on a light switch above. In order to turn off the light you have to reach over and switch the light off once out of the crawl space and you have to manually shut the door and lock it in place again. It is a nice little operation, but not so nice if you are deathly afraid of the crawl space, I would imagine.

What did I find once I was outside again cooking dinner later that evening? The crawl space door swung wide open (still) and the light on. I suppose the guy was so afraid that he just ran out of there and did not dare to reach his arm in again to flip the switch and grab at the door to lock it. What a wimp.

I am heading to the pool. I am losing my tan, so I have to get out there again. I have so much to read and so little time.