Is This Thing Still On?

I haven't written a real post since carrier pigeons were forced to haul my messages to your door, because the internet hadn't been invented yet, and for that I'm sorry.

I just can't keep up. Do you ever feel like there is so much media and not enough time, and you can't keep on top of everything you want to consume, much less everything you should consume? I have podcasts that I love languishing on my iPod for wont of time to listen to them. I have blogs that I've had to "mark all read" or simply unsubscribe from, even though they're good, because they're too wordy. I often read the first paragraph, and if it doesn't grab me, I hit "N." Not to mention the books! I have an embarrassing number of books in my Kindle that I have to read (including Audrey Niffenegger's new book Her Fearful Symmetry She wrote The Time Traveler's Wife, which I loved). I also want to read What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, which Dad gave me in hardcover form. Oh, and SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. I read the first one, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, and it was extremely good.

Oh look! Convenient graphics which you can click and then purchase and be overwhelmed just like me! Yay!



In a perfect world, those would've lined up single file. Oh well.

Not to mention the projects. I still need to make a new vat of bran muffins, because the holidays seriously derailed the diet. In spite of being so very, very good, I gained back 10 pounds. I think most of that is water - ham and nuts and crackers and popcorn are all very salty. Hopefully if I drink lots of water today, I'll be back to good in a couple days. It couldn't hurt, anyway, because my skin is extremely dry. Stupid winter. It wasn't terribly hard to behave. The one food I really missed was the chocolate orange that you "whack and unwrap." I love those. But my mom doesn't make cookies anymore because she's gluten intolerant, so I don't have to face great heaping plates of beloved cookies. I had exactly one scoop of ice cream with fudge and caramel and nuts (and the cleverest presentation - she soaked a sugar cube in lemon extract and then set it on fire!) on 12/23 at The Program, one small piece of pumpkin pie at home on 12/24, I had a cinnamon roll at home, then I had a thin (1/2") piece of apple something on 12/25 at BJ's mom's. I didn't have a single cookie until I got to Jen's on 12/26, she had made some chocolate chip cookies, but they were small and I only had two over the course of two days. At meals I tried to stick with veg and fruit, and to limit the amount of meat and carbs. I really thought that I was good!

How does six sweets spread out over 5 days make 10 pounds? That is some ridiculous math.

So, anyway, I have to spend all day making muffins, drinking water, and doing what will inevitably be the consequence of adding lots of bran and water to the diet. Yay. When I'm not doing that, I need to clean out and reorganize just about everything in the house. The day after Christmas Jen and I went to Ikea. Then we went back to her new house and organized everything, and now I want to be organized too. I have nearly 7 years of accumulated detritus in the backs of all my closets and cabinets, and it's either get it gone or burn down the house.

With the influx of new toys, we need to go through the toyroom and find homes for them. Hopefully we can lose some old stuff along the way. I got a few shoebox sized bins at the grocery store yesterday. I would love to find a better organization system for the toyroom. I dream of things like this system from Ikea, but I don't think we can really afford as much as we'd need, and they don't allow online purchases for the stuff I'd need/want, which is ANNOYING. Hey Ikea, my whole house would look like your showroom if you allowed online shopping, but I'm not driving to Schaumburg again until spring. I'd rather pay for shipping. You are losing my money by not allowing online shopping, dumbasses, because I'm going to get annoyed before spring and I'm going to go buy something else.

As if Ikea reads my blog.

Anyway... Christmas was nice. I've enjoyed having BJ home. He bought both of the girls gifts that you wouldn't expect girls to want - none of them were pink. He got LEGO Mindstorms
for Mary Grace (yes, she's only four - they're doing them together), and Claire got the Fisher Price Manny's Repair Shop. I love that he doesn't buy for them based on gender. Either that or he's given up on having a boy, and he wants to mold each of them into someone more fun (for him) to play with. He also bought Claire a jewelry box and filled it up with..... rocks. Claire loves rocks, and will pick them up wherever we go, so we bought pretty ones (like rose quartz and peacock ore) for her. She really likes them! According to Amanda and Matt, who came up yesterday, the geologists they know make six figure salaries, so this is a passion we're willing to encourage!

BJ and I kept it simple with each other - we're planning to get new carpet in January, so that will be our big gift to ourselves. I got him a couple of camping items, and a "rock paper scissors lizard spock" t-shirt, which is only funny if you like the show The Big Bang Theory (which he got from my mom). He got me a popcorn popper and some Pyrex storage stuff for the kitchen.

My favorite part of the holidays has been spending time with my friends. I got to spend time with best friends from middle school, high school, and college. (Barbara Dahling is the only one missing - hopefully I can convince her to come down here and see us soon). I could digress into a whole thing about my friends from different eras of my life, and how they're all kind of similar to each other, but BJ wants to go out for lunch so I need to stop babbling and get in the shower.



(FTC Disclosure Statement - some of the links above are Amazon affiliate links because the percentage of a penny that I might get if someone chooses to buy one of those items might as well go to me instead of Google.)