SilverSpiral.net

Dear half.com,

We have had a lovely relationship. I’ve been buying and selling movies and books on you for years and years and I greatly enjoy it. We’ve had our ups and downs, with things being mismarked as “excellent” when they should have been marked as “broken as shit,” but that’s ok.

However, I have come upon a stumbling block.

See, I was searching for a specific cookbook, one I’ve borrow from the library. I didn’t have it in front of me, so I searched the terms “frugal” and “$75.”

Flurnamen Und Eigentumsverhaltnisse Im Suden Von Beuel is NOT at all what I am looking for, and really doesn’t resemble Family Feasts for $75 a Week but I thank you for the attempt. Whatever the hell it was.

Sincerely,
Still confused and still hungry.

After countless applications, very few calls, and even fewer interviews, I FINALLY HAVE A JOB.

I’m still in preK SpEd, and I think this job will be a much better fit, as one of the reasons I was bored at my last job was because I really only had 1 kid with a significant disability. Here, it will be a pretty even mix. AND Voldemort should be able to attend Kindergarten there, which is good, because the downside to this job is the fact the school day is an hour longer than normal. Yeesh.

And they start earlier, so I’ve had to cancel half of the only summer travel plans I had in order to be here on time, but hey, employment means getting to eat, and that does have to come first.

I’m still going to be traveling, and I will update when I can, but it might be a little spotty.

Mainly because sometimes I suck at updating, but hey!

I’m working part time during the summer – mainly because i am still not employed for next year – but when I’m not working, this is what we do around the house.

Step 1: Tell kid excitedly that you have an activity for him.

Step 2: Collect supplies. In this case – cornstarch, water, and food coloring.

Step 3: Drag kid away from ipad.

Step 4: Dump cornstarch, food coloring, and water into a muffin tin.

Step 5: Paint sidewalk.

Step 6: Distract kid for almost an hour.

Step 7: Wait a day, give child squirt bottle. Enjoy your hour of peace as he happily squirts all of the paint off the sidewalk.

I got frustrated with boring clothes covered in gender stereotypes, so I made my own that show stereotypes lie. Let me know what you think, if you like/dislike, or have any suggestions. Only 4 designs to start, just to see what people think.

And if you feel inclined and want to buy? Go for it.

The A/C in the house is broken. It’s been broken for over a month, and as it turns out, we need a new compressor, which would be about $1800 to replace on an 11 year old appliance that needs to be replaced, or we need a new one, which latest quote from a slimy guy I refuse to let Brandus talk to again, would be over $2800.

So, we melt.

Brandus and I do, anyway. The child doesn’t seem to care – he’s currently wearing a sweatshirt and keeps hiding under the blankets and talking about how cozy he is. I think he must be broken, because he is weird.

It’s been getting to about 87 downstairs, and that’s with all the windows open, the ceiling fan, and a box fan, and upstairs is SO MUCH WORSE, which means we aren’t sleeping and are cranky, even with all the windows open, the ceiling fan, and a box fan.

Tonight, we’re dragging out the air mattress and sleeping in the living room. Although I am reluctant to sleep naked in my living room with the blinds open, for some reason.

The kid is whining about being cold and wanting another blanket. What is wrong with this picture?

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Definitions:

A continuous state of anxiety marked by feelings of worry and dread, apprehension, difficulties in concentration, and signs of motor tension.

or

An anxiety disorder in which a person typically has vague feelings that something bad is going to happen. Excessive or unrealistic worries often are so persistent that the individual cannot make them go away and has difficulty concentrating on daily tasks

Or

What I’ve finally accepted I have

I’ve been on and off anti-anxiety/antidepressants for several years now, and up until a few months ago, when I went back on zoloft again, I had always blamed needing the meds on my job. My principal is mean, the kids are hard, I hate teaching. I’d like to say that being on meds helped me see that my principal is a normal person, that kids are kids, and that I adore teaching, but that would be a filthy lie. They have, however, helped me deal with all of those issues.

Especially in NC, when I was working for a megalomaniac who nit picked everything the entire staff did and frequently called out staff members’ mistakes/problems by name and over the intercom or in the middle of staff meetings.

But then we moved to CO, and it was lovely. I love our house and our neighborhood and being back close to my VDay ladies, and even the job was going ok. I was ok. I was happy, even.

So I stopped the meds. I went off of them.

And finally, 2 months ago, I finally had to admit that it’s not all because of work. Work is a heavy contributor, I think, but it’s not all of it.

Sure, when the guy who is sort of in charge of the new teachers comes in to a staff meeting, it’s a perfectly logical response to immediately think that he is there to tell the principal that you’ve fucked up and aren’t fulfilling your new teacher requirements.

It makes perfect sense to occasionally dwell over a single embarrassing incident that happened to SOMEBODY ELSE over 15 years ago.

Going to bed and replaying the possibilities of what horrible thing might happen to an imaginary character when he walks into the room in the next chapter of a story I’m reading is a valid thing to do.

Except where it isn’t. Because that’s actually a little crazy. So, i have pills! That make it easier for me to deal with this weird shit and has reduced my dwelling time by at least half. Would I need meds if I wasn’t working? Maybe not, if I didn’t have to deal with extended exposure to the same people. But, I have to work to eat. And I have to have meds to work.

So, all hail Zoloft and it’s ability to keep me from replaying the embarrassment of being named “Most Improved Swimmer” for my high school swim team.

Places I want to go:
-The Unclaimed Baggage Center in Alabama, to buy back to 800 books I’ve left behind on planes.

Things I Need to Deal With:
-The bird behind the dryer before the cats manage to actually catch it
Bird successfully dealt with. Although now we need new tubing for the dryer vent. Unsure whether torn by cats or bird.

Things That Are Awesome:
-Baby Max being born to Rachel and L of Yestertime. He’s gorgeous!

-A complete list of what Pinky is pondering from Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain.

Personal favorite: “Me and Pippi Longstocking? What would the children look like?”

-Mini Warblers from Japan! I AM DEAD FROM CUTE.

-BARAK FUCKING OBAMA*

-Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold being announced. WE’RE GETTING AN IVAN BOOK! Bad news: It doesn’t come out until NOVEMBER. I shall weep.

-Felicia Day looks really hot and confuses my heterosexuality. And is a total geek, which is why I love her.

-Double stuff Oreos.

*Incidentally, when my parents were out visiting, politics unfortunately came up. We disagree, let’s leave it at that. My mother proceeded to inform me that a friend of a friend of a friend lived in DC and hung around the higher ups for some reason, and friend-of-friend-of-friend says no one likes the Obamas. They have no friends. And Michelle and Barack don’t spend any time together. 1) I doubt it. 2)Did she really think this non relevant information would trump all of the awesome? I don’t understand my parents.**

**They have THREE CHILDREN. All three children support Obama. And yet they still try to tell me why I’m wrong. Most of these reasons involve the fact they don’t like him.

Y’all, seriously, my kid is FIVE. How the heck did that happen? Yesterday, he was a toddler with a pancake on his head, and today he is FIVE.

My parents came up and a party was had. A grand total of 3 out of 12 kids showed up, but we expected very few, because people out here don’t seem to GO to kid’s birthday parties or even bother to RSVP. Not that I’m bitter. But he had a blast with the kids who did come, and had a great time suckering his grandparents into doing stuff for him that Brandus and I refuse to do – like read 8 books in a row or walk up and down the stairs forty-eleven times.

And he did get a present. We got him a fish tank. Which he ADORES, and he loves his fish, and it is so much of a better gift than yet another giant piece of plastic crap toy to take over his room.

At least, I thought so. But then yesterday, when I was teaching him how to feed the fish and going over the rules (1. Dont touch the fish. 2) Hands out of the tank. 3) Just a pinch of food), we had to add a new rule.

4. After the fish die, we do NOT cook them and eat them.

I’ve gone to two movies this weekend, and frankly, I barely remember enough about them to share. Even though I really wanted to do a Heroine Content review of Lockout – which is a movie about explosions, jail breaks, and snarky heroes – all in space. There were some goods and some bads and a whoooole heck of a lot of bad science. Hint: YOU CANNOT JUMP “DOWN” INTO A SPACE STATION WHILE IN ZERO G. THERE IS NO DOWN. And also, it was ALMOST a complete Bechdel fail, regardless of how much I liked Maggie Smith’s character, Emilie.

I took myself to see Mirror, Mirror too, which was cute and left me grinning in several places. In the beginning, Julia Roberts’ evil queen is introducing the characters, and when she talks about the parents naming the princess “Snow White,” she says something about it being the most pretentious name they could think of, and I had to snort into my popcorn. It did turn the Snow White fairy tale on its head a little bit, but I wanted it to go farther. I wanted her to like the prince but fall for one of the dwarves, for example. Chuck had an amazing smile, Half Pint had a total crush on Snow, and even Butcher showed her a soft spot or two. But it’s been pointed out to me that I’m weird, so. In good news, Bechdal PASS in multiple ways!

I will try and type up some of what I enjoyed and what I found problematic about Lockout. And why so little of it made any sense, but I didn’t care because explosions! in! space!

Dear charities,

I appreciate the sudden influx of things entreating my money now that we own a house. I like the fact I will never have to buy address stickers, for one thing. And the dimes from March of Dimes are really cool, too. Voldemort thinks getting money in the mail is the COOLEST THING EVER.

And no, we won’t return the dimes. But thanks for asking. We also won’t send you any of our very limited money.

I figure, there are how many people in the US? 5 million or so? And even if you only send dimes and address stickers to 5000 of them, that’s at least 5 hundred bucks you’ve just sent out.

And if you have 5 hundred bucks to burn sending people dimes, YOU DONT NEED MY DAMN MONEY.

We’re keeping the dimes. And i’m giving kiddo a whole stack of the address stickers for his penpal kit. And we’re donating to Smile Train, which just sends us a thank you note.

Sincerely,
Stop burning your money

“You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.”

Hazel Grace is a 16 year old girl with terminal cases of both cancer and irreverence, and I’m fairly sure I lost my heart to her while reading John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars. It’s witty and smart and draws you in even while you know there is no way a novel about a kid with terminal cancer can end in anything other than tears for one reason or another.

Hazel is hilarious, with subtle humor and unexpected insights, with a healthy dose of dark humor over the fact that she and most of the people she knows at the cancer support group are dying. Augustus is a boy she meets at group, and he is, of course, witty and charming and gorgeous and very interested.

At heart, it’s a love story – because what story isn’t, really? But it’s a love story with an uncertain ending both because of the terminal diagnosis, and because Hazel’s own favorite book ends in the middle of a sentence, which leaves the reader nervously wondering if John Green would be cruel enough to do the same. It’s funny and quotable and heartbreaking, and will leave you wiping your eyes and looking at the world differently. And that’s pretty much the highest recommendation I can give any book.

“You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”

Disclaimer: BlogHer sent me this book and paid me to read it and overshare my opinion. Dream job, y’all. Book club discussion about The Fault In Our Stars is here, and you should check it out.

Voldemort will be starting his 4th month of swim lessons in a few hours. So far, he has learned how to put his face under water (which generally is ok, provided he has on his goggles), float on his belly for a few seconds, and learned how to throw himself off the side of the pool.

What he hasn’t learned is that he is still in the “never been exposed to water” class.

For three months.

He is, and has been, and possibly will forever be, a Pollywog. The class for kids who have never experienced water outside of their bathtub.

I don’t really care (look, my kid carried a purse to preschool this morning. trust me, I DONT CARE), but at the same time, I would really like to move on and see what the Guppies do. There is only so many times I can clap and cheer and say, “Great job!” at the fact he didn’t totally panic when the teacher let go of him to float on his own. His teacher just shrugs and says he just needs practice and some courage and he will be able to float on his back, which is the ONLY SKILL HE NEEDS TO DO TO MOVE ON.

Fourth time lucky, maybe? Here’s hoping!

I am still exhausted, and I’m convinced that Daylight Savings is the tool of Wolfram and Hart, or some other evil, soul sucking corporation.

Things I still cannot find:
-the posts I had previously written and queued

Things I can find:
-random links! Now, i’m not going to link you to MY tumblr, as tumblr is generally a bad dangerous place of either kitten pictures or gay* porn (but generally both), but there are some things that don’t feature naked people, how everyone on every television show is very not-straight, and weird invented spelling, so I’m going to link you to those, because they are cool.

Don’t stray beyond the links, though. I’m not kidding about the porn. I generally don’t post any, but due to being in a personal funk, I’ve done nothing but post pictures of the 2001 show, Roswell, which is when I fell in love with fandom and fanfiction. Regardless!

Cool Chicks from History posts pictures and texts and information on some awesome women – most of whom I have never heard of before, and are badass in the shit they did.

The Kids Should See This – dedicated to extremely cool and informative videos. Things like Rube Goldberg machines (Voldemort has watched this one half a dozen times since yesterday), glaciers calving, actual video of a working heart, and all kinds of cool shit that you AND your kids should totally see. What’s awesome about these is none of these were specifically “made for kids,” so you don’t get any talking down or anything other than really cool shit and the explanations of some of it.

Fuck Yeah Space – Space and NASA nerdery, because it’s AWESOME.

-thebloggess has a stick puppet of Beyonce, the giant metal chicken. Needless to say, I printed this out today and have been entertaining myself for hours.

*Actually, most people on my follow list post all kinds of sex. Gay, het, lesbians, trans…I generally don’t check my dash on Porn Spam Fridays until after Voldemort is in bed, just to be safe.

It’s been insanely busy, so me being smart and thinking ahead said, “I know! I can prewrite posts and set them up to post in the future! HOW COOL IS THAT?”

So, I did, and went about my merry way, only to get an email from blogher saying I haven’t updated and to get on that. And i’m sitting here going, “BWAH? But..but..I was smart!”

Where did those two posts go? Were they eaten? Did I just imagine hitting “save” and “post on…” dates? There was a post about our new cats, so it’s not like the most important literature since Shakespeare was lost or anything, I just don’t understand..

And it’s daylight savings, which is a vicious mean joke on everybody. It’s supposed to help the farmers or something? Can’t the farmers just ignore the clocks and get up when they need to? I DONT UNDERSTAND, I’m exhausted, and my kid decided to look out his window by looking UNDER his bed last night..and his bed, by the way, is lofted..so he falls off the entire thing, scraping his face down the wood and thankfully not breaking his neck.

CANNOT DEAL. SLEEPING FOREVER.

Gender is a funny concept. Boys do these things, and girls do these things, right?

NO. NOT RIGHT. FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

Sure, boys and girls are different, but it makes me INSANE when toys and activities and dress is brought into boys and girls stuff.

A Facebook friend posted a picture of her little boy, who is in PreK, wearing a dress, high heels, and a tiara. Multiple comments remarked, jokingly, that she need to call and make him an appointment with a psych.

But maybe I’m being over sensitive. After all, as a preK teacher, I’ve been educated to know that all kids play dress up, in all kinds of clothes, and that a boy playing dress up in a dress and jewelry is perfectly normal behavior developmentally.

But then I keep seeing stuff on Pinterest, with pictures of pink cookies with the Eiffel tower on them tagged as “perfect for a girl!,” or a construction birthday cake tagged as “what a great party for a boy!” And I’m fighting the urge to comment “or for a boy who loves Paris!” and “Girls love trucks, too!” with several smiley faces and exclamation points to hide the fact I want to smash my face into my keyboard with every gendered thing I see.

Maybe it’s from raising a kid. A boy. Who marches happily around the house “doing karate” in his pink Dora pajamas.

Maybe from seeing how gendered the world is, where it’s ok for a girl to like trucks or wear pants or wear a shirt that brags, “Daddy’s girl,” but it’s side-eyed and talked about if a boy likes High School Musical or wears skirts or you can’t even find a shirt that says, “Mama’s boy,” because that’s emasculating and insulting.

Maybe it’s from realizing that little boys and girls are shaped the exact same way, and there should be no such thing as a “boy’s shirt” or “girl’s shoes.”

Maybe it’s just from feeling like I’m fighting a losing fight, trying to provide my little boy with stuff he likes, in a variety of colors, regardless of what gender it’s marketed to. Maybe it’s because some days I think it’s useless, with Lego coming out with new sets “for girls,” and shirts being made “for girls” that say, “I’m too pretty to do homework.”

Maybe I think I should start commenting on all of those pins on pinterest, just to see if it makes anybody THINK. Maybe I should comment on that Facebook post, saying how cute he is, and how refreshing it is to see a parent who understands that little boys can wear dresses.

As a kid, I remember getting a new Scholastic book order form every month and spending hours pouring over it. First, I’d make a list of every single thing in it that I might possibly like, with the cost in its own column, laboriously adding up every single penny to see how much it came to. Then I had to cross out books I didn’t HAVE to have and subtract and refine, until I was under the budget the parents had given me for books that month – and I had to have a budget, as I swallowed books whole.

My point is, even as a kid, I was a planner. I was frugal and careful with money, but more importantly, I PLANNED.

Then I grew up and met a guy who wouldn’t know what a calender was if it bit him on the ass. A man who didn’t plan, who thought the highlight of fun was randomly taking off to places unknown at a moment’s notice.

I married him. And my planning went down the drain. We moved to Alaska because he thought it sounded fun and North Carolina because we threw a dart at a map and back to Colorado for no readily apparent reason, all in a ten year time span.

And now I’m buying a house with him. And while waiting and waiting for our final approval and our closing date, we distracted ourselves and ignored the deadlines and made no plans.

With the final result that we are closing on our new house tomorrow and haven’t put a single thing in a box. We haven’t thrown away the Happy Meal toys that have accumulated, donated the weird decorations my mother insists on sending, or even packed up the summer clothes that are thrown in the top of Voldemort’s closet that might or might not fit when it gets warmer.

We haven’t planned or prepared at all, and strangely, I’m ok with that.

For now.

I’m sure my mind will change when I’m unpacking our dishes and find hamster food in the same box, Brandus can’t find more than one pair of pants for work, and our newly bought laundry detergent goes missing until next fall, when we’ll find it in the bottom of a box of books and sewing supplies.

But for now, I’m content to sit in my pajamas on a day off, and make a list of things that need to get done. And maybe tomorrow I’ll call on them. Or maybe I’ll take a nap, and ignore for a little bit more.

I have a hot $2 in amazon mp3 credit burning in my pocket, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out what to get.

Lately, all I’ve been listening to is Glee songs, Moves Like Jagger, and assorted Kpop boy bands, but I need something new.

I’ve listened to this about four thousand times over the past two weeks, and I LOVE IT OMG.

Help. Anybody grooving on anything awesome?

Brandus requested those peanut butter cookies with hershey’s kisses in them for Thanksgiving, and seeing as a) I am a giving, loving wife, and b) COOOKIIIIIES, I agreed.

I look on the back of the package of Hershey’s kisses after we get them home from the store, and it has a recipe on it! …that calls for a package of peanut butter cookie mix. Which we don’t have, and those mixes never taste right anyway.

So, I begin the search. There is always the easy ones, the ones that dont need anything but peanut butter, sugar, and an egg, but frankly, I think they taste nasty.

So I went to Paula Deen, because COME ON, Paula Deen! Only she left me with this recipe. A peanut butter recipe from PAULA DEEN that calls for FAKE SUGAR.

I am mortally offended.

And then I got all distracted by a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipe from Smitten Kitten, and now I may never get the actual recipe baked that I wanted to, because OMG I NEED THESE.

And then I realized we’re out of butter, and I can’t bake anything anyway. Dammit. Maybe I have some Crisco. Are there peanut butter cookie recipes that call for shortening?

The other day at Michael’s Arts and Crafts, I snagged a gingerbread scary house kit for 2 bucks. Nifty, right?

Today, Voldemort and I tackled it.

It did not go well.

For starters, it was a long thin tall house design. For seconds, the icing tip didn’t fit correctly on the icing tube. For thirds, we don’t have much patience.

I got the walls together and the roof on, and then I walked out of the room to check on the muffins in the oven, sternly reminding the child to let the icing dry and not to touch it.

Five seconds later, he pokes his head in the kitchen and tells me, “Can I eat the icing off the tube? Oh, and the roof fell off.”

Five seconds after that, my spidey sense tingled and I walked back in to see the entire house strewn across the table and a child covered in a suspicious amount of icing.

So I did what any normal lazy person would do. I slapped a piece of house down flat on the table, covered the whole damn thing in icing, handed my kid a whole heck of a lot of candy and told him to decorate it.

The first time I heard “Feliz Navidad” this year: 11/20/11 at 2:03pm.

The first time this year “Feliz Navidad” made me shove a pen in my ear to drive it out of my head: 11/20/11 at 2:03 and 7 seconds.