Monday, November 09, 2009

Peaceful building

My word count has been completely blown. I am not sad about it at all though. Finally, after way too long, I am on my way to roofing the bedroom I have been working on. We set all of the beams in on Sunday and cobbed up to them. Hopefully by the end of this week the roof will be finished. It is going to be a living roof and I can already see it. Lee worked on the finishing touches of a long built-in shelf when he had breaks from roofing. The shelf is simple and beautiful. I had forgotten how peaceful building with cob can be. It was a lovely weekend.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

More rambling

Well I have been keeping up on my daily word count, so I am still just the same 1300 words behind. So far I am loving my story, that is the biggest trick to finishing by 11/30, loving what you are working on. I spend my days at work trying to schedule my after work chores so that I will have at least two hours to write in the evening. Today I just remembered that I have The Reader checked out from the library. It is due tomorrow. I am trying to fit watching it in to the schedule, but I am not sure if it will fit.

Monday, November 02, 2009

Nanowrimo is here!

I started my Nano novel yesterday. I am already around 1300 words behind. This is typically my month for whining about Nano. December is the month I recover from Nano. Every other month I eagerly anticipate November. This may be the definitive sign of my craziness.

If you haven't ever tried a nano novel check out nanowrimo.org then you can be crazy too.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

logic clouded by hate

Again this morning I was working quietly when my boss found me. We had been talking about the flu earlier in the morning. She was convinced, by that infamous "news" channel, that H1N1 was just a government hoax. Now whenever somebody we know falls ill with it, and several people have, I make sure to tell her. Entertainment is hard to come by at work; I take it where I find it. This time she turned the corner and showed me a look of complete hurt. "Did you know fourteen soldiers died in Afghanistan last night?" No I hadn't heard that I responded. "Of course he is acting like nothing happened. He was on Letterman again. I think he is running for entertainer of the year." How do I respond to that? I went with my go to move of turning back to my work. Fortunately she wasn't waiting for a response. "I think we could solve this whole problem by loading up a missle with swine flu and blowing it up in the middle of Afghaninstan. We could just kill off the whole country that way." Apparently she doesn't think genocide is a goal to be shied away from. These type of comments always deserve a response. So I said. I just heard on the radio this morning that Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of death during childbirth in the world. No response from her. They have an undeveloped medical care system. I added. She turned and went back to work. How do you respond to a statement like that.

Monday, October 12, 2009

2008

Books I read in 2008

There may have been a few more. I quit updating my blog often around the end of '08.

# Clouds of Witness
# *Winston and Clementine
# *The Widow Of The South
# *The Last Summer of You and Me
# *The Perfect Storm
# *Goodbye again the Definitive Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
# *The Time Traveler's Wife
# *Kabul
# *My Booky Wook
# *Circle of Freinds
# *Dexter in the Dark
# *When Will Jesus Bring The Porkchops
# *Sweetwater Creek
# *The Amber Spyglass
# *Light On Snow
# *The Dante Club
# *The Subtle Knife
# *The Golden Compass*
# *The Tale Of Despereaux
# *In The Gloaming
# *Good Omens
# *When Madeline Was Young
# *Smoking, Drinking, and Screwing
# *The Secret River
# *The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette
# *Three Cups Of Tea
# *P.S. I Love You
# *Wide Sargasso Sea
# *Black and Blue
# *My Sister's Keeper
# *The Slaughter House Five
# *The Night of Rain and Stars
# *The Reluctant Tuscan
# *Hissyfit
# *Eats, Shoots, & Leaves
# *Middlesex
# *Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself
# *Best Friends
# *Africa in my Blood

Friday, October 09, 2009

Conservatives

I am not the only [I pause here because I don't know what to call myself, non-conservative is the best I can come up with] non-conservative in my area, but some days it feels like I am. Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. I am not sure how I feel about that because I am not sure who else was up for it or if there was a more deserving person out there. As President he should be working towards peace simply as part of his job. The specifics are not what has struck me today anyway;they are not what I want to talk about.
I was working quietly, as I do most days, when my boss came to tell me about the prize. I could tell she was shocked, and I knew how she would feel without her saying a word. She went ahead and told me anyway. I tried to change the conversation so I asked what he had won it for? She didn't know. "Surely not for his great speeches." She said in an angry, sarcastic tone. "Or just for being king of the world." She added. She was getting worked up now. "I heard the new dog made a mess in Air Force One that will cost us $500.00 to clean." I knew I couldn't take much more of this so I started laughing and said I could imagine that conversation at home. I mimicked my own childrens' 'please moms' and 'I promises' to show how it could have happened in any family. This parent just happened to be the President, and the vehicle was Air Force One. Not to be derailed she wondered how he could possible control (her word) the nation if he couldn't control his family. I started talking about having kids in the White house. I casually brought up Kessler's book. I mentioned, as if I were heading nowhere with the conversation, how he said Chelsea Clinton was supposed to have caused very little trouble. Then I brought up how much trouble the Bush children were said to have caused. She believes, at this point in the conversation, that it is hard to live in the White House when every little thing you do is going to be picked on by the press. She then started talking about how hard it would have to be to have the secret service always following you while you were growing up. How it would be hard to not rebel against it. She ended the conversation by saying she guessed how the child reacted would depend on the age of the child at the time. I let the conversation end, because that is what I really wanted anyway. I could have pointed out that Chelsea was also a teenager when her father was in the White House, or that her measure of 'controlling children' would make Bush a worse President than Obama or Clinton. Sometimes though I think that it is better to let people see their own hypocrisy slowly as they replay conversations in their head.

Technology

I am embarrassed. January, I haven't posted since January. That is about the time my part time job morphed into a 50 hour a week job. I obviously can't do it all. I am not one of those people who just manage to get everything done. I have the utmost respect for those people, but I am not one of them. My sister, Drama Queen, talked me into signing up for a facebook account two days ago. That seems to be a big time suck. I also am not geared towards that type of communication. Something inside of me is very old fashioned when it comes to communicating. Understand, I love technology. I love gadgets and science and wondering where we will go next. That is the part of dying that most scares me. I want to see flying cars and moon colonies. When we are skipping from planet to planet engaging with the aliens I want to be here. When I communicate though I want long conversations. Texting is great for a quick question, but it is not a conversation. Every time I visit one of the networking sites I am hit with how little substance there is. I may find out what type of drunk a person is, or which smurf they would be, but still know nothing of there personality. That is why I prefer blogs. Reading a few short paragraphs can give quite a bit of insight about a person. Not that I am against them. Let everyone use what bit of technology they like and leave the rest.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Not much sense or sensibility

I had to question my sanity today. I was scrolling through our dvr list today when I noticed the first half of the BBC production of Sense and Sensibility had been deleted. Since it would be ridiculous to watch just the second half of a movie I deleted the conclusion. I recorded these months ago when PBS ran them on Masterpiece. Fria chica and I have been planning on watching it together one of these days so I have been saving them. The part of this story that made me question my sanity is how despondent I was about the loss. I was angry and sad with small revenge-filled thoughts running through my head. It is not like my family actually broke the last copy and wiped this movie from the human realm. They just, accidentally I'm sure, deleted my only copy. I had to force myself to see reason;it took quite awhile.

Speaking of Fria chica the drama of her current boyfriend continues. On his way to rehab he stopped in Wichita to visit her for a day or two. She is spending the week with Drama Queen, who had agreed to this visit. During this time he seemed to be binging on the drugs he was going to rehab to quit. I would have more sympathy with his whole plan to quit if it was sincere and not just another ploy to stay out of jail for his latest dui arrest. Due to family money and influence he has spent very little time in jail for his last three offenses. Shortly into his stay Drama queen had to explain to him that she would prefer he not do drugs at her house, but if he could not comply with that request would he at least not leave his pop-can bong, complete with ashes, right outside the front door. Later in the night he punched a hole through her apartment wall, broke Fria chica's phone and managed to frighted all of the children. She kicked him out of her house, twice, before she was finally able to get him to leave town. He is now safely in rehab, but he has been calling us several times a day trying to get Drama queen's number. Once when I was out Lane answered the call and the guy tried to convince him it was a matter of life and death. Somehow he thought Lane would buy some line about it being an emergency because he was near cardiac arrest. I am not sure if he thinks my kids are younger or stupider than they actually are.

Friday, January 09, 2009

Where have I been?

This is more difficult than I imagined it would be. I have been sitting here reading over my blog for the last ten minutes trying to work up the nerve to click the new post button. I feel like I have just ran into an ex-lover who I have not seen in years. How do you start getting to know each other again?
I'll start with what happened to me. November was a month in which so much happened that blogging just kept getting pushed back. Fria Chica did end up moving back home;just not with a definite break like I expected. The boyfriend is still a part of her life and therefore a peripheral in mine. He is a nice guy, he just needs to work through his issues. He came up for Christmas and we had a really great time. He was coming up for Halloween, but got stopped halfway here and spent the weekend in jail. Having Fria Chica back is great, I just spend most of my precious free time with her and Pookie instead of updating this thing. In November I was also temporarily transferred back to the local office. They are going to eventually hire a permanent replacement for my last boss, I hope it is me, until then I am running the office. Then at the end of November, just as I was finishing my Nanowrimo novel, my computer crashed. Luckily it had made an odd sound a couple of days before its unfortunate demise so I quickly backed up what I had so far. I walked to DH's office the last two nights and finished up the novel there. That is right, I finished this year and am extremely proud of myself.
Then December hit. With the new job,Christmas,school board (extra meetings because of a teacher who overstepped his bounds with a student or five,depending on how many of the rumors are true),and school fundraisers, I did not even get around to buying a new computer until January.

Now here is January. The kids are back in school. I have not yet taken down my tree. That is going straight on my to do list. I took today off of work so that I could have a day at home all alone. It is great. Earlier I watched About a Boy. I had forgotten how funny that movie is. While I was watching it Lee came home from school on his lunch break to add more hairspray to the sculpture that is his hair. We had fixed it that morning and it was starting to fall. He is not truly dressed up unless his hair is reaching the same heights as Russel Brand's. Lane sat on my bed and watched us while making jokes about how many heroin filled balloons Lee had about his person.
Jason has been sick for the last few days so he spends every morning trying to decide if he can make it through school. Honestly if it were just school he would stay home, but it is homecoming tonight and he does not want to miss his game or the dance.
This morning Lane took off a pair of jeans because they have a rip in the knee. The worn spot they already had when I bought them, at the start of the school year, has finally gave way. I offered to patch them and he declined my offer. I threatened to quit buying jeans that are already halfway ruined if he was not going to try and make them last. He insisted he will still wear them with black leggings underneath. The thing is I just bought Jason a pair for Christmas that have patches that look like he sewed them on himself. So I made it clear I would do a crappy job and make sure they looked just like Jason's new pair. How illogical are we, as consumers, when we will wear worn and patched jeans, but only if we spent a lot of money on them. We've gone mad.