The S is for Suck.

Usually, it's sometime in the afternoon before I want to kill everyone. But not today. Today, I'm just having an admittedly late breakfast and just seething. Let's see how therapeutic typing can be, shall we?

Why do my kids think trashing the living room while we're good enough to let them watch a movie is acceptable? Why is their first reaction, after hours of grueling drudgery picking up somewhere, "let's make a mess of it again." After ten mornings of reminding two of them that "peed night cloth diapers go in the bucket in the laundry room," the eleventh morning if I don't remind them, they are mashed onto the floor in their bedroom with lots of dirty now-pee-smellin' laundry. Which I have also reminded them daily to pick up. My all-time fave, though: why do they crave spankings and punishment and taking two hours to do a job that would take 20 minutes if they would just cooperate? I know we have smart kids, now if they'd just act like it. I swear, their only memories of me will either be fury or the withdrawal necessary to keep from commiting a crime against them.

And on what seems slightly a lesser note: why do people not update their address in Paypal when they move? Cause we can't ship to an unconfirmed addy without giving up any (slight) protection Paypal offers sellers. And then when the package is returned, we get to pay for shipping it TWICE. And wait for the half-wit to get irritated with US for taking so long to get it to her. Screaming on the inside noises here.

One of my favorite blogs to read, Mamalogues, has a sometime feature where she lists the "things I'd like to throw with a trebuchet" Mine today: my kids' constant messes and stupid customers. Also the ******** flies that are trying to rape my open mouth, because my nose is stuffed so I can't breathe through it. The trebuchet for the cold, too.

Iced in.

The kids are out of school today, since it has been sleeting and freezing rain since about two yesterday afternoon. They even got out of school early yesterday. I'm trying to figure out how many chores I can get out of them in return for screen time (tv, gameboy or computer).

I've been feeling the baby kick for a few weeks now, but it's finally to the point where I KNOW that's what it is. I've spent a lot of time lying quietly, so I could feel movement, but it usually resulted in a nap instead. Movement reminds me what's really happening in there, besides just me losing what waist I had. I am eager to meet whoever this is.

We had a decent month with the business, and made money to both cover our household expenses and pay for materials to keep making corsets. Even a little extra. And now we think the printer's broken, so there goes that. But we won't have to bite into our Emergency Fund for it, so I'm pretty happy about that. I might make Toby fiddle with it a bit today since he's had a pretty good track record of fixing things. Actually, that's why it's been working the last few months. I don't know how many times to expect resurrection.

In other news, Toby's mom gave us our wedding quilt last week. She knows we like circus-crazy colors in odd combinations, and all these fabrics said "Toby and Jill." I'd love to get some nice outdoor pictures of it hanging artfully on the clothesline, but not today. It's hard to take a nice picture of a quilt on your bed while not getting the rest of the chaotic room in the shot. I think this quilt will go nicely in any color room.

Thrift Store Fun

We went to Crosslines yesterday in hopes of finding a used blender with a jar that would fit ours. Toby broke ours last week while washing it, and I've been craving smoothies ever since.

No luck with the blender, but I did find two little dresses for two little girls. The pictures I took to document my thrifty goodness turned out really cute. I love Ivy's look of amazement, and how Maggie's apple cheeks glow.

I also got two remnants of lace fabric (peach and teal), two skirts to refashion or wait for post baby times, and a spectacular culotte jumper-thing made of fabric with pink and orange mushrooms scattered over it. It is swanky. I think it would fit me, but I don't want to inflict that on anyone, even in the name of comedy. I will try to take suitable pictures today, though.

Ivy Shopping

I thought you'd all enjoy hearing about shopping with Ivy today. She decided while we were in the middle of Food 4 Less that she was a puppy. That means she crawled around on all fours, yipping and whimpering intermittently. She even panted, tongue out. She howled in agony when we tried to put her in the cart. Occasionally she licked store fixtures or merchandise before we could stop her. My apologies to the macaroni boxes, glass doors protecting the milk, and the mirrors next to the floor at checkout.

To top it all off, she refused to come with us when we said "Come on, Ivy." She only responded to "Here, puppy!" Now, those of you who ever shopped there know that Food 4 Less caters to a slightly, um, Ozarkier class of people (let's just say that about one in ten of our fellow shoppers was sporting some kind of unique bodily funk). Today, I think we won the prize.

I realized that I often check my blog to see how far along I am, because, hey, counting to forty is hard when you only add one per week. Some weeks seem to be at least a few days extra.

My Interests

I've realized that I mostly talk about just a few things: my kids, food, the business...I guess that's it. There is more to my life, actually. I've been immersed in a shiny new pile of library books this week, since we promised to take the kids while they were on break.

One interesting book I'm reading now is "Reading Lolita in Tehran," written by a woman who led a small group of women in reading and discussing banned books in Iran. I love how the subtitle is "a memoir in books." I'm still working in it, but the book is divided into sections by which book they were working on and how it relates to life under the brutal totalitarian rule in Iran. I've read enough to know that Lolita sounds like one messed up book. I'm really looking forward to the last section, in which they read and discuss Jane Austen.

I'm not one for resolutions, much, but I'd like to read more good, classic books and less fluff this year. Not that fluff is bad, mind you! There are some books that it seems everyone else has read that I haven't, despite years of voracious reading. Sometimes, I think that's a good thing. I didn't read the Lord of the Rings until just before the movies came out, because I wanted to have read the books first. And I'm glad I did. Most of my other favorite comfort reads came to me when I was in junior high or high school, so I've read some of them (ahem, Robin McKinley) at least every year for a long time. It was nice to come to it fresh and as an adult.

So here's a list of some things I'd like to read this year:

Thomas Hardy
Charles Dickens
The Little Prince
Marcel Proust (He's always being referenced as a very sensory food writer, plus they make fun of him on Monty Python a lot)

I need to figure out some lady writers. I'm always open to suggestion.