Random Thoughts...

1. Eating healthy is a heck of a lot of work. Just thought I'd pass that on...

2. I am seriously getting my butt kicked by a shawl. I knit and knit and knit, and it never gets any bigger. I am beginning to feel like it will never end.

3. How hard is it to stay on track with an English project that involves multiple checkpoints, a mother who is constantly reminding you of your deadlines, and a word processor? ("...when I was a kid we didn't have word processors. We had to scratch our reports in the dirt with sticks, and hope it didn't rain before the teacher looked it over...") The Barrister blew off pretty much everything for the third checkpoint until the night before it was due...

4. I do not care how important it is for you to exercise your independence (or how late you are for the bus, for that matter). If you have forgotten your glasses and your boots are muddy, ASK ME TO GET THEM FOR YOU! I will be scaling Mt. Laundry today, and the last thing I need is to have to clean up a trail of muddy bootprints from the front door up to your room and then the bathroom and then back down again.

5. I should not have decided to get serious about losing weight the same week I am planning to make chocolate-chip-cherry-oatmeal cookies.

6. I need a bonus points program. And they need to be redeemable for yarn. Seriously.

In Which I Win an Award and Attempt to Warp the Space-Time Continuum

A big thank-you to Matt at It's Quite an Experience for bestowing the brand new A Hoy Award upon my humble little blog (which I haven't been paying nearly enough attention to lately, and it's amazing that it hasn't wandered off to find someone else who will love it and nurture it a bit more than I have lately).

I am to pass this award on, and I fully intend to do so, but at the moment...

Xmas is less than a week away and I feel like it is rolling inexorably towards me...the gift shopping is mostly done, the food shopping is not. The tree is up but the baking hasn't even begun (it was attempted, but after two disasters in a row of which we shall not speak, I am living in fear of trying again lest the Wrath of the Universe be vented upon my white chocolate cheesecake which the whole family waits for in hushed anticipation. No pressure here, dudes). One hand-knitted scarf is finished, but three are still on the needles. The wrapping is not done, though that should probably happen today because as of 2:57 this afternoon, the children will be home on break (we will not discuss for whom this is a "break") and it will be relegated to a Clandestine Late Night Operation, which I'd really rather not have to perform...And all of this is on top of the usual cleaning, scaling Mt. Laundry, polishing the dogs, and trying to remove questionable sticky substances from floor and table. (Any advice on warping the space-time continuum to allow myself a whole lot more temporal leeway here would be appreciated right about now...)

So a big thank-you to Matt, and I will be passing this award on...just not right away...patience, my friends. And sweet holidays to you all!

Does This Mean I'm a Grownup?

Sad, but true...the first thought I had last week when the kids started wondering when we were going to put the tree up and decorate the house was, Didn't I just take all this stuff down?

A Holiday Meme

Most memes are kind of annoying, but I found this one on one of the knitting blogs I read, and I thought it was kind of neat, so I thought I'd do it. Anyone else who wants to can consider themselves tagged. Go for it, dudes!

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper.

2. Real tree or Artificial? Artificial. And way too big. But we're not going to go there.

3. When do you put up the tree? Soon...probably this weekend.

4. When do you take the tree down? As soon as I can without my kids calling me "Scrooge" and "horrible mother"...which generally means once they have gone back to school.

5. Do you like eggnog? *gag* Bailey's Irish Cream is my alcoholic beverage of choice. That or a nice, cold Guiness.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Mastermind (the game...when it first came out it was only available in England, and one of my English friends had gotten it from his Nana for his birthday, and I wanted one desperately, and my Nana sent me one for xmas that year.)

7. Hardest person to buy for? My dad.

8. Easiest person to buy for? My mum.

9. Do you have a nativity scene? No--we're not religious.
(ETA--although after RamblingMad's comment about having a Lego Star Wars Stormtrooper in the manger, I may have to rethink that one...)

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Neither.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? The Dreaded Clown Cookie Jar that my sister-in-law gave us the first year we were married...even if clowns never ever gave you nightmares before, this thing would have!

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? Hogfather...and we also have a fairly new tradition of trying to watch the entire Lord of the Rings extended cut over the xmas holiday.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Summer...I give a lot of homemade gifts like wall quilts, beaded ornaments, and now, knitting, so I generally have to start pretty early if I'm going to meet my own expectations.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? No. (Given the number of friends and relatives who read this blog, I dare not say otherwise, do I?)

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Wine gums (English candy, which I've just started finding in the international foods sections of some of the grocery stores over here) and anything drenched in chocolate...decent chocolate, I mean...

16. Lights on the tree? As many tiny fairy lights as we can get on the thing...
(ETA: 1050 lights this year...the most ever...the kids were ecstatic!)

17. Favorite Christmas song? Anything on any of the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums...and I also like George Winston's December CD.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Home.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? Yes, and I even know about Rudolph and Olive...

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? A teddy bear, actually...

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas morning.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Rampant consumerism and loud xmas music in the stores.

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? Homemade beaded ornaments (made with all those sparkly little glass seed beads...I haven't done any yet this year, I've been too busy with the knitting...)

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Lasagne (The Chief is Italian, so there's not a whole lot of room for negotiation on this one, and since I am a vegetarian, I have to make two trays--one meat, one veg).

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? Yarn. Although I've been thinking it might be interesting to learn how to spin, so maybe I should just ask for a sheep?

26. Will you bake any cookies? Oh, yes...Death by Chocolate Deep Dark Chocolate Cookies, which are used for the crust for my white chocolate cheesecake, gingerbread men (and women)(which are so yummy they are death to any diet plans I may have), chocolate covered digestive biscuits (an English thing), cranberry-white-chocolate chip cookies, and crunchy bar...which is more candy than cookie, but since it is made in a 9x13 pan, I consider it baking anyway...

The Universe is Watching

School conferences last week went amazingly well. I am starting to think that Hell's Barrister may finally be starting to get it together as far as the whole Organization and Time Management business is concerned.

*slaps self up side of head*

Oh, dear. I've gone and said it. Well...typed it, at least. And thought it, which is generally more than enough.

Now I picture the Universe cackling with glee to hear my delusional thought that my son may actually be starting to "get it". It's probably rubbing its hands together and busily thinking up ways to trip me up right now. I imagine it kicking back in an easy chair, a beer at its elbow and a stubby #2 pencil tucked behind its left ear as it thinks up new and thrilling ways to complicate my life.

And I'm not being paranoid!

A Silver Lining

I just heard from the director of the community education program here, and not a single soul has signed up for my journal workshop, so they are having to cancel the class. I'm not too terribly disappointed...while it would have been a good experience and probably fun to meet other journal writers, I am by nature a shy, quiet sort of person, and so I am just as happy not to have to do any sort of public speaking. Besides, now I can devote my mornings to knitting instead of organizing my notes!

Still, I have to wonder why there would be so little interest...is it just our community? I live in a fairly affluent suburb of Minneapolis...maybe everyone is too busy playing tennis and going out on their boats and impressing the neighbors to worry about taking a class that might make them realize how shallow and meaningless their lives are? Or perhaps they found out who was teaching it and decided that since I don't really fit in with this neighborhood anyway, there's no way I could possibly have anything of value to say? Or perhaps I'm just being paranoid...

At any rate, my mornings have now opened up, I no longer have to nervously rehearse my lecture to the dogs (who are getting rather tired of listening to it, truth be told), and I can knit to my heart's content.

Still, the money would have been nice...think of all that yarn I could have bought...

A Serious Lack of Inspiration

I haven't been very good about posting, have I? To be perfectly honest, there's just not that much going on right now.

Mother-in-law is back home and doing fine, although I'm not sure if this latest episode was enough to get her on track to becoming more healthy.

The kids are getting along with each other better than ever this summer, so it's been a lot less stressful for me.

I'm off the trazodone, sleeping well, and my moods are as stable as ever, so there's really nothing to report on the so-called bipolar front.

I'm still working on my notes for the journal class, so I don't feel inclined to write more about that here for the moment...feeling a bit saturated, as it were...

I haven't even been writing much in my own journal at the moment, because I just don't feel like I have anything much to say.

Not that this blog is only about bitching and whining...I guess I'm just suffering from a serious lack of inspiration.

I wonder if there's a drug out for that...

Writing Prompt: What do you write about in your journal when you don't feel like there's anything going on in your life worth writing about? How do you handle it when you just don't feel like writing? Do you excuse yourself? Or do you beat yourself up about it for being lazy? (I think I'm bored. I need a new diversion...whaddya think? Any ideas for cheap, interesting hobbies?)

Some Snippets

Two weeks after my last 25 mg of trazodone, and I finally feel like I am sleeping normally again without it. I am falling asleep quickly, and staying asleep, and I feel much more rested and alert. I'm still taking Benadryl...but that's normal for me this time of year. I have allergies, and as August and ragweed season approach, there is no way I can leave off the Benadryl right now. Once we have a killing frost I will stop taking it.

It sounds like the Journal Workshop class will be happening this fall. Now I just have to keep my momentum going until October...I've almost finished my notes for the first of the four sessions. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Gianna at Beyond Meds posted the abstract for a very intriguing looking paper the other day, all about how iatrogenic illnesses may be caused by mitochondrial damage, and how the psych meds many of us take may be the greatest culprits. My initial response to reading it was that I'm not at all surprised, and it would be arrogant in the extreme for medical science to assume it knows everything about the ways in which our bodies function. And if it's true, well, no wonder psych meds have so many horrible side effects and can do so many awful things to people. Case in point right here...

Also of note, Philip Dawdy over at Furious Seasons is celebrating his one-year anniversary off meds. Congratulations, Philip!

Writing Prompt: What is one thing that you are thankful that you learned to do? For me, it would be sewing. My mother taught me how to sew when I was about five. By the time I was twelve, I was making some of my own clothing, and when I moved into my first apartment, I made all the drapes and home dec. stuff for it. Now I work on art quilts, things which have very little in common with the little pin cushions and doll clothes I first learned to sew. But I will never forget that it was my mother who first opened this door for me.