1. Today I dropped my son off at a new drop-in preschool, because he outgrew the old one. Then I took a bus away from my two kids, rather than a car, and it makes me feel miles away and nauseous with anxiety. I am hanging on to my cell phone as a lifeline.

2. On Sunday Rojonoir's car overheated. Smoke and steam and all that. We are biting our fingernails because the car is nineteen years old but we are deeply in love with it, since it's been there for the entire time we've known each other. We were in Montlake Terrace and the tow truck only had room for two, whereas we were four. Some of us took the bus.

3. I have been reading Stacy Levine's The Girl With Brown Fur. Her stories, lovely and surreal, require you to use a unique sort of logic, and are the wrong sort of thing to read when anxious.

Torchwood's five-part series "Children of Earth." One episode per day, quite exciting. And then, in the last episode . . . they blew it. Crossed a line.

That's all. Unless you like spoilers.

Quick highlights -

Lunch with an old friend, good to see her.

Oliver went to a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. I survived. One great thing about it is that the redemption games always give out tickets, so the kids can feel good about them no matter what.

Same day, bought booster seat for Megan and installed in the hot sun, then hung out with neighbor and her kid.

Same day, birthday party in a backyard with good folks. Best way to keep the kids out of trouble, except for the Exacto knife and permanent marker in the kids' art supply box. Luckily Eagle Eyes me was on the job. Oliver had a co-conspirator decorating the yard with streamers, string, tape, boards, tin cans, etc. Megan dressed as Wonder Woman and got rave reviews.

The day after the birthday party extravaganza, complete exhaustion.

Read Ariel Gore's How to Be a Famous Author Before You're Dead. Even better than I hoped.

This week Trettin drop-in preschool is closed. OMG, what am I going to do?!!

Wish me luck getting to the YMCA this morning for my first yoga class in f-ing months.

The kids are in a sports camp this week . . . today when I went to pick them up, Oliver slapped me in the face with his hat.

Current Mood: sad

We've had some dreadful bedtimes, which seem to be about Oliver entering a new developmental stage and testing, testing, testing. When he's mad, it seems like boy-mad instead of preschooler-mad -- if that makes any sense. I don't know if I really need to go into details . . . there was the half hour of hell that I think I posted about before. Yesterday was three hours of hell and Megan got involved as well, banging on doors, spreading toothpaste on the bathroom mirror, and tearing the vinyl off a kid chair.

Today I Laid Down the Law.

It worked.

Earlier this year, we took out the huge trees that blocked most of the front of our house and took up more than half of our front yard, leaving only a narrow strip of grass. Now I've planted some grass seed, and it's REALLY taken off. Almost ready to walk on, sit on, and use. I can barely wait.

Also in the last few weeks, I hacked a small tree / large bush to bits in the raised beds by the garage, and Greg uprooted the sorry remains on Sunday. Now that spot will be a garden area, and the kids are going to plant peas, broccoli, and something else, I forget what. Possibly potatoes as well, if they haven't rotted yet. I'm dying to work the soil and put the compost in, but I overdid a couple days ago and my arm hurts, so I have to wait.

I'll finally be able to really use the yard with the kids, and it is an incredibly wonderful feeling. I took my coffee outside this morning and just looked at my new grass - aahhh.

Tags: gardening

So in my subscription organics box, I got some rhubarb. Now, I really hate to throw out produce (or compost it, as the case may be), but I don't know what the hell to do with rhubarb.

So I made "rhubarb compote" with apples, raisins, OJ, brown sugar, and blackstrap molasses. (The blackstrap molasses was a total impulse ingredient.) The result was delicious but the flavor was so strong that a half cup did me for the year.

Now I hate to throw out produce, but I REALLY hate to throw out something I cooked. So I had some the next morning on my oatmeal. Delicious, but again too strong. I realized this couldn't go on.

It occurred to me that the compote was a lot like the mixture I got when I made bara brith (Welsh fruit loaf), so I thought, what the hell, I'll do that. So I looked at a recipe and made a rough approximation of how much water, flour, and butter to add to the compote. I let it sit overnight, and then I put it in the oven.

The recipe says 250 degrees for two hours. Now my "rhubarb loaf" has been in there at 275 degrees for almost four hours now.

Now, how much energy have I used?

Just so I didn't have to throw out the rhubarb?

Tags: sustainability

Yesterday was a six-timeout day. After I sent Oliver off to one of his timeouts, I racked my brain for ways I could switch gears although I was completely exhausted, and hit on Dial-a-Book.

So I called dial-a-book, and got The Princess and the Pea. We all know the story, yes? This version is much like the others . . . prince wants to marry princess, but how can he tell the real ones from the fakes? Then on a stormy night, a princess comes knocking on the door of the castle and the king has a plan. He piles up seven soft mattresses, then puts a pea under the bottom one. The princess has a terribly uncomfortable night, which proves she's a princess. Happily ever after.

First I asked Megan about what she had heard.

Me: What was the story about?
Megan: Well, there were princes and princesses. And then there was a scary bit, with a stormy night.
Me: And then what happened?
Megan: I don't know.
Me: Was there a bed?
Megan: I don't think so.
Me: Were there mattresses?
Megan: Well, maybe . . .
Me: Was there a pea?
Megan: I don't think so.

By then Oliver was out of his timeout, rarin' and ready to earn another one, when I distracted him by saying offhandedly, "Oh, yeah, Megan listened to dial-a-book." So he listened to it and I asked what he had heard.

Me: What happened in the story?
Oliver: Well, first there was an exciting part, with a storm!
Me: And what happened next?
Oliver: Well, there was a fake princess, but at the end of the story she turned into a real princess.
Me: And was there a bed in the story?
Oliver: No.
Me: Were there mattresses?
Oliver: No.
Me: Was there a pea?
Oliver: No.

Tags: literacy, megan, oliver

Okay, last post. Here are the books I've liked enough to mention in previous LJ posts, from October 2006 to now. Again, only a subset. Apologies for lack of italics.


Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (etc)
China Mieville, Un Lun Dun
Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
Cornelia Funke, Inkheart (etc)
Amy Thompson, Virtual Girl (etc)
Harry Potter
Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
Betty MacDonald, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle
Virginia Woolf, "The Angel in the House," from the essay "Professions For Women" in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays.
Positive Discipline
Sal Severe, How to Behave So Your Preschoolers Will, Too
Daniel Siegal, Parenting From the Inside Out
Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn
Dawn Prince-Hughes, Songs of a Gorilla Nation

Tags: books i've read

Just finished the YA anthology Firebirds Rising. A book full of wonderful stories. It strikes me now that they all have happy endings, all well earned. A few stories stood out to me more than the others, not because they're better stories, but because they spoke to me. Here they are:

"Huntress" by Tamora Pierce
"I'll Give You My Word" by Diana Wynne Jones
"In the House of Seven Librarians" by Ellen Klages
"The Wizards of Perfil" by Kelly Link
"Quill" by Carol Emshwiller
"Hives" by Kara Dalkey
"What Used to Be Good Still Is" by Emma Bull

Tags: books i've read