Actual Unretouched Photo

I never did answer all those questions from a few posts back. I answered the easy ones and then put off answering the rest. I will take a look at them this week, though, and give it a shot.

Thanksgiving dinner is a fuzzy memory and Christmas approaches with alarming speed. I joined the throngs of shoppers Friday (and Saturday, though there were no throngs on Saturday) and have managed to buy each of my children his or her requested item. Now, all I have to do is “fill in the blanks” with gifts I know they want, even though they don’t realize they want them. (Like the year I presented my preschool-aged twins with solid wooden blocks, which the children in our family still play with. At the time, they boys responded, “We already have blocks.” True, but they didn’t have awesome, cool, expensive blocks.)

We have Christmas lights on the house, two inflatable snowmen in the yard and nettings of lights on the boxwood hedge. The interior of my house still looks like Thanksgiving, though. The Christmas tree I ordered from Amazon.com hasn’t yet arrived and I haven’t had the gumption to haul out the Christmas decorations, even though I know it will be fun to see them. I always forget what I have from year to year.

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I’m reading a book that I’m going to review here. It’s called Two Weeks Under and has a unique premise. Last week, I read Mark Driscoll’s book, Confessions of a Reformission Rev

. I read a bunch of it out loud to my husband because it made me laugh. It was written by my pastor–it’s so weird that my husband is no longer my pastor–and I liked the insight I gained about our church.

Oh, and I want to tell you about Phil Done’s book, 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny. I absolutely loved this book and I’m not just saying that because Phil himself sent me a book to review on this blog. I LOVED THIS BOOK! If you have a third-grader, if you were a third-grader, if you are a teacher or if you’ve ever had a teacher you will also LOVE this book. It would also make an awesome “teacher gift” for your child’s teacher, as a matter of fact. Tuck a gift card into the front cover and it would be a Perfect Gift, if you ask me. I laughed. I cried. I thought a lot about third grade and my favorite teacher, Miss Brittingham.

You can order Phil Done’s book from his website as well as from Amazon.com.

The Mr. Clean Magic Eraser quickly and easily removed the Sharpie-marker marks from my laptop computer screen.

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Between work shifts tonight, I made three pies, peeled a bunch of potatoes and sweet potatoes, chopped onions, celery and green olives. I have made enough Thanksgiving dinners that I regard the preparation without any alarm. I even manage gravy with great nonchalance.

Sometimes I remember myself as a newish bride asking a friend, “So, how do you mash potatoes anyway?” that long ago Thanksgiving in my kitchen in Marysville. It seems impossible that I haven’t always been mashing potatoes without a second thought.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! (Someday, I will find and scan the picture of myself as a fourth grader performing in the starring role of the turkey in the Thanksgiving play. I am trying to figure out why I was so desperate to BE the turkey in the Thanksgiving play. Maybe I should find a therapist to unlock this mystery.)

The Tracey Fragments trailer

Now, go eat pie!

This morning, I was chatting with a computer repair-guy on the telephone when he did not reply. So I uttered another sentence and when he remained silent, I realized he was no longer on the line. I clicked the phone off, figuring he’d call back. But he did not.

Narc full After I took the kids to school and showered, I checked the phone to see if anyone had left a message. The only message was the digital display saying, “No line.” No line? The last time that happened, the boys had unplugged the phone modem while playing video games. But the plug was still stuck into the wall. The modem, however, did not flash its happy green lights.

Something was wrong. I checked my computer and discovered that I had no Internet connection, either. So I unplugged and reset and unplugged again. Then I had the bright idea of calling Comcast on my cell phone.

My “area” was experiencing an outage. And no, they didn’t know how long it would be out, though it had started at 8:24 a.m. At this point, it was after 10:00 a.m. and I was scheduled to work at 11 a.m.

I just could not believe that the Internet and telephones would not spontaneously recover in another minute or two and that’s why I lingered at home until 10:45 a.m. At that point, I drove to the library to use their free wi-fi.

I had no idea the library had become so popular. The parking lot was full and every single computer terminal occupied. I found a desk for my laptop and got to work. (It was really strange to be surrounded by people, real live people. Perhaps I should get out more.) After two hours, my home Internet was still down–but I went home anyway because my daughter was home from kindergarten and I worried that she’d be upset to find me gone. (She was home alone with her brothers for an hour.) Plus, I realized (duh!) that they had no phone at home.

Wouldn’t you know it? Just as I packed up, my son called my cell phone to tell me that the Internet and phones were back. I ended up missing forty-five minutes of my shift.

Oh my goodness, what a boring story I just told!

Anyway, I was stressed out by the absence of something that I take for granted and something I could not have imagined twenty years ago. All told, we had no Internet for almost five hours. Five hours!

Oh, and I still have marks on my laptop screen. They’re far to the right, so I’m not overly distracted by them and I don’t want to start scrubbing with Ajax or something and ruin the screen completely. I’m inclined to try the rubbing alcohol first, but I’m not sure if I have any. And she didn’t intend to make the marks–she was on my desk chair, reaching behind the laptop to get some paper out of the printer–and just happened to be holding a Sharpie-marker in her hand. She’s all about writing, all the time.

And now I will stop talking and thus, stop boring you!

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(CHRISTMAS IS A MONTH FROM NOW! ACK!)

I still have a child young enough to buckle into a carseat. This new product, SeatSnug, is a solution to the potential safety issues a three-point booster seat presents. The problem is that a three-point seatbelt allows slack to develop in the seatbelt which allows the child in the booster seat to bounce, rock, tip, wiggle, slide and even fall. You can see a video demonstrating this on the SeatSnug website

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. The video also shows what a difference the SeatSnug device makes.

The SeatSnug is easily installed (but not so easy to remove). It has an “on/off” feature, so once it’s on the seat belt, you can leave it there, even if someone other than the child in a booster seat will be sitting in that spot. (Convenient, huh?) I didn’t have any difficulty installing this device.

So what does the SeatSnug do exactly? It makes the seat snug by preventing slack or looseness in the seat belt. The shoulder portion of the belt still allows movement, but the lap portion stays put, not moving with the motion of the child or the car. This improves stability of the carseat, improving both comfort and safety. (Your extremely wiggly child who is used to turning around in his or her booster seat might not be so thrilled about confinement, however!)

Check out the website (SeatSnug.com) and read all about it. You can see testimonials, product information, a video and more.

* * *

This blog review was written in conjunction with MomCentral.com. (They rock!)

Bachelor Party Vegas release I came downstairs to do a last email check (see: addiction) and discovered two Sharpie-marker scrawls on my laptop screen. My daughter is obviously to blame since there are several pieces of paper with math problems written in Sharpie-marker on my desk. (1 + 1 = 2 and so on).

But how do I get the Sharpie-marker off my screen?

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Help!

Infestation divx

(My weekend? I rearranged my teenage boys’ room which took most of Saturday. But before that, I took the younger kids to see “Bolt” which was an excellent movie. Highly recommend it for kids of all ages. And today? We went to church, then I shopped at the home improvement store for stuff to improve my home and at the bookstore for stuff to improve my mind. Then I ordered a Christmas tree from Amazon.com. The end.)

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This morning while it was still dark, a high school girl was hit by a car near the local high school. Apparently, a helicopter was flown in, but she did not have to be “life-flighted.” Good news, right?

I know this because today, while I was at the grocery store in a gigantic hurry–I am always in a gigantic hurry–the checker (clerk? the grocery-scanner-lady?) chit-chatted with the mom and daughter ahead of me and they related this story to her in a very unhurried manner while I was tapping my fingers on the conveyor belt and reading magazine covers and wondering just how slow exactly she could go–she stopped scanning so she could more fully engage in conversation.

And then when it was my turn, she wanted to recap the conversation with me, asking if “we” were that careless when we were that age. I was just thinking, HURRY HURRY HURRY I HAVE A MEETING IN THIRTEEN MINUTES. (And the drive home would take ten minutes if I disregarded the 25 m.p.h. speed limit, which I did, sorry Public Safety Officers.)

The problem is that no one is as quick as me. I wash dishes faster than anyone you know. I cannot walk slowly, no matter what, no matter where. I am constantly five feet ahead of my family when we go somewhere and if I slow down, they slow down even more, so I can’t win. (Well, I could win if there were a finish-line, but alas, there is no finish-line.)

I fold clothes fast. I type fast, really, really fast. I read fast. I drive fast. I am in a big hurry all the time. And no one else in my world shares that perspective. They are all lollygagging around, taking their sweet time doing whatever it is that people do when they are not in frantic pursuit of quickness.

The only thing I do positively slowly is wake up. I am the slowest-waker-upper in the entire hemisphere. But I make up for that by emptying and filling the dishwasher in the time it takes my oatmeal to cook in the microwave.

I am saving time. . . I hope I’ll have enough saved up to slow down at some point. But I doubt it. (Now, move aside so I don’t have to run you over. HURRY.)

For one hour today, I was alone in my house.

My 10-year old was at school.

My 6-year old was at school.

My homeschooled teenagers were at the barber shop.  I told them to walk home.

And what did i do with my glorious time alone, at home?

I folded laundry and cleaned off a shelf.

It was glorious.

Today, the image of tooth marks on pencils popped into my mind. I have never understood gnawing on pencils. You know that kid in school who chewed up his pencils, nibbled off the erasers and pinched closed the metal part on the end with his teeth? What is that about?

I also do not understand shoes without socks. Am I the only one whose feet rub and blister if I am sockless?

Speaking of socks, why do my children pad around outside in the damp weather in their stocking-feet? Do they enjoy clammy wet socks?

I would never walk around outside in my socks. However, I am weird in my own way. For instance, I still have magazines from 2002, the year my daughter was born. Some dim lobe inside my brain is convinced that I am going to read them. They are neatly stacked upstairs on a shelf. Clearly, I need professional help.

Finally, I spent the last twenty-four hours speed-reading a Harlan Coben book (Tell No One). Why have I only recently heard of this writer? I literally did not want to do anything at all but read this book. (That, after putting down Songbird by Lisa Samson because it did not grab me after reading halfway through. I always feel like a traitor when I do not finish a book.) I have two more Harlan Coben books on my shelf and will read them . . . as soon as I read two other books I started (a diet book and a book of essays that I will tell you about soon).

Wow. That was random.

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My husband possesses many talents and skills, but he cannot fix a car, do household repairs or build anything.

He makes up for this deficiency by his amazing ability to persuade other people to do things for him. Thus, a man stopped by today to diagnose the problem with our kitchen faucet and sprayer. (Diagnosis: Need all new components.) And he has a guy scheduled to come and figure out why my computer keeps disconnecting from the Internet. He rounded up some man willing to climb onto our roof and clean the gutters and replace some missing shingles.

So, you understand my husband, right? He’s a great guy, but he is not mechanically inclined.

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Saturday morning, he discovered that our 1995 Chevy cargo van would not start. We were a little puzzled, but thought maybe a child left an interior light on. No problem. He got someone to jump start it and then drove it around awhile and all seemed well.

Saturday night, he drove it to a friend’s house. When it was time to drive home, the van would not start. He’d turn the key and it would simply click. Our friend mentioned this to his friend and that friend came over fiddle with the dead van. He explained that sometimes when a starter is going out, all you need to do is tap it with a hammer and sometimes it will catch and then start.

My husband rolled his eyes when the guy instructed him to click the key in the ignition while the guy crawled under the car with a hammer. Tap, tap, tap, tap and the engine roared to life to my husband’s great shock.

Grandma’s Boy on dvd He drove the van home and parked it backwards in the driveway so a tow-truck could more easily tow it to a repair shop. Now we knew for sure that it needed a new starter.

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At noon today, he came home to deal with the broken van. He thought maybe it would start, but no. Just click, click, click. We would have called AAA to arrange a tow, but neither of us could quickly find our cards. He said let me try tapping it with a hammer.

I rolled my eyes. “Do you even know what a starter looks like?” I do not. I’m pretty sure he does not. But I retrieved a hammer, handed it to him and climbed into the driver’s seat. My husband crawled under the van, hammer clutched in his uncalloused hand and told me to turn the key.

At three second intervals, I clicked the ignition. Click, click, click. I heard bang, bang, bang, tap, tap, tap, clang, clang, clang under the van. At this point, I am cracking up, laughing at how silly this is, how impossible this is. Click, bang, bang, bang, click, tap, tap, tap–wait a minute, he says, let me listen. I hear him move over some, then, okay, go. And I resume clicking while he resumes banging away at the innards of the van with his hammer.

Click, click, click and then, to my shock, the van roars to life. I burst into laughter and climbed out. My husband appeared, Douglas fir needles clinging to his hair, hands covered in black grease.

And that’s the story of how my husband forced our dead van to start with nothing but a hammer and pure optimism. He totally rocks.

I really ought to write immediately following anything blog-worthy to make up for the dull blogs (Today I worked. The end.). But let me go back a few days.

Friday morning, I waited for a computer guy to stop by to fix an annoying problem I’m having. (I get a message–A network cable is unplugged–even though it is not.) However, he telephoned instead to tell me that he couldn’t make it. Some lame excuse about having to take someone to the hospital instead. (I kid. I totally understand that.)

So that meant I was awake and dressed and in my right mind. I did my boys a big favor, went to the video game store to buy a game. While there, I had the most brilliant idea. I rented “Kung Fu Panda.”

My brilliant plan was this: Convince my 6-year old daughter that instead of going to the PTA-sponsored viewing of “Kung Fu Panda,” we could buy a television (to replace the dead one. . . we’ve been watching t.v. in the living room on a 19-inch portable t.v. for a few months now), snuggle up and watch it at home. With popcorn! And candy! On the couch!

When I picked her up from school, I unveiled my brilliant plan. Without pause, she rejected it. “But I will sit on the couch the whole time with you and watch it!” I said. “But I want to watch it with my friends,” she argued. And so my brilliant plan was kaput.

However, we still drove to Wal-Mart to get a television set. I decided the time was right. Also, I had $250.

Have you had to shop for television sets lately? Oh. My. They are gigantic and expensive and fancy-schmancy. Wal-Mart was practically the only place to sell a (relatively) cheap, old-fashioned set.

Luckily for me, the enormous box holding the very heavy television set was right at cart level, stacked on another television box, sitting in the middle of an aisle. It was a fairly simple matter to slide it from the stack onto my cart. I steered it to the check-stand, refused help and loaded it into the back of my van by myself. ROAR! I am Woman.

The boys helped me bring it inside and I hooked it up. I cannot tell you how much joy my old-fashioned 27-inch television gives me. Modern technology, who needs it?

All the same, when I finished working at 6 p.m., my daughter and I drove to the school for a viewing of “Kung Fu Panda.” She found a spot for her mat on the floor next to her friend. I tucked a chair into a little cubby-hole on the side of the multi-purpose room.

You might have heard me complain about theater-going movie-viewers before. (Oh, time and time again, if only I weren’t so lazy I’d find examples and link them.)

Oh, what fun. Kids prancing around. Mothers yelling. Kids squealing. Popcorn everywhere. Adults chatting out loud. Kids walking back and forth, around and around. “Mom, can I get a drink?” “Mom, can i go to the bathroom?” “Mom, can I have more popcorn?” “Mom, can I get a sucker?” “Mom, I need to go to the bathroom again.” The kid in front of me popped three paper bags. His parents were too busy talking to shush any of their hoodlums.

And I thought to myself (I AM A GRINCH), I’d better win something to make this worth my while. I’D BETTER IF THE UNIVERSE KNOWS WHAT’S GOOD FOR IT!

The third number that was called was mine! We won a $20 gift card to a DVD site, something about the PTA, I can’t remember. BUT WE WON.

We were home at 8:30 p.m., I had to work at 9 p.m., but hey, I earned Good Mom brownie points (which may be negated by my pre-event whining) and then I won a prize.

* * *

Saturday morning our big old van wouldn’t start. (Diagnosis: bad starter.)

I went to a movie (“Rachel Gets Married,” have you seen it?) and thrift stores.

Today, I went to church alone (husband had to work) and then to a meeting afterward.

We planted daffodils and tulips when I got home. I discovered the hyacinth (that I bought as a flowering plant at Easter last spring and plopped into a pot) is starting to grow. Our seasons are so mixed up here in the Pacific Northwest. (What do you think would happen if I brought it inside now? Would it continue to grow and bloom sooner rather than later?)

And now. . . another week begins. Before I know it, the daffodils will bloom!