Scrapbooking--What's It All About and Why Do It?

Yes, I am a major league scrapbooker. This is a mom thing that I do that is fairly conventional, although of course not all scrapbookers are moms. I have been an official "scrapbooker" since my kids were about 7 or 8 months old and I bought my first Creative Memories supplies. However, I have really been a scrapbooker all my life; I just didn't know it. I don't have a lot of scrapbooks from high school or college, but I do have some things that have been gathered and stand the test of time. And I'm certainly a packrat--how many of you have your program from your high school graduation, including all the names?

Lucille Ball was actually a major league scrapbooker in the days before we had acid free paper and pvc-free page protectors and before we talked about "adhesives" instead of "glue." She saved everything, and put it into detailed scrapbooks, particularly after she married Desi Arnez and before they had children. They were Childless for the first ten years of their marriage (or Childfree, the politically correct term that we used to use in RESOLVE because you aren't "less" just because you don't have children, kind of like being "differently abled.")

I don't know why they were Childfree in those days before Birth Control and Infertility Treatment and I haven't seen her biography on A & E in a long time so I don't remember if this is explained, but it doesn't really matter. They eventually had Lucy Arnez and Desi Arnez Junior, and there is a wealth of material, photographs, programs, etc. about their early life together and the founding of their production company Desilu. Now you may not care too much about "I Love Lucy" or think it's kind of silly, but you must admit that this show is an iconic part of television history. So it's great to have all of this old material and I think it gives us a much more accurate picture of Lucille Ball.

Now I'm not famous like Lucille Ball and I don't aspire to be. In fact, my daughter Miranda told me today that she wants to be rich but not famous because if you are famous "no one will leave you alone." Even the kids in her class have realized that being a celebrity, especially in this paparazzi and Internet and instant Twittering age, is not all it was once cracked up to be. Make a few little mistakes in your personal life like Tiger Woods--one little fender bender in your driveway at 2 am--and the whole sordid story of your marital infidelity is plastered all over the grocery store. No thank you. I don't think any of us are perfect enough to live up to media scrutiny for long.

So, why scrapbook? Why do I collect all these pictures of my kids as babies and in their Halloween costumes and such? I also have scrapbooks of our vacations and scrapbooks of Scarborough Faire. If I can ever decide how to approach the project I will eventually have some SCA scrapbooks (it's hard because there are so many events and my camera is just not very good for taking pictures at them, plus I get so busy that I forget. Others take wonderful pictures but I don't necessarily know all the people in the pictures).

After all, my kids don't look at the scrapbooks very often, and my husband NEVER looks. They used to be interested when I got back from cropping but I've done it so often now that they don't even care. I think that they have come to accept that it is a mom getaway and it's more constructive than BUNCO. R also was pleased when I first started doing it because it wasn't nearly as expensive as my collecting hobbies, although of course that was before they invented $50 Cricut Cartridges. Little does he know.

And I do indeed have tons of supplies. And I am not the worst, although I probably had the most at the crop today (and was missing a bunch of stuff, which is what happens when you don't repack your stuff after a weekend retreat). There was a lady there tonight who wanted to leave early so that she could run by Hobby Lobby to get some embellishments that another lady had at the crop. I said, 'are you really going to use those by Monday, or can it wait until Monday?' She said she wasn't going to use them but she doesn't shop during the week, so she HAD to get them TONIGHT! They might be gone by next weekend.

Now an embellishment, for the non scrapbookers out there, is a sticker or three-dimentional sticker or some sort of page decoration (for example, silk flowers or heart stickers or three dimenstional cheerleading jerseys or something of that nature). It goes with some pictures that you either have in your possession or that you know you took at some time in some year. And you have to get it NOW because when you finally get ready to scrapbook those pictures and you want a three-D red cheerleading jersey to go with them, you won't be able to find one. I am really not kidding about this. I know you men out there think I am, but I am deadly serious. Get your embellishments while you can. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

Robert Herrick would have made a great scrapbooker.

Now there are men who scrapbook but not very many. It's a chick thing. Of course some of it amounts to catching up with your friends and social networking, and sometimes it gets annoying when people start bragging on their kids or their trips to Bermuda or their new pools. So that's when you put on your Ipod, only I can't find that right now either.

The real point of it is to preserve your family heritage and your family history. For example, you put pictures of your child blowing out birthday candles in a high chair on a page or a 2 page spread (I always work in 2 page spreads but that's all the yearbook and newspaper training). You color coordinate the paper and embellishments (for this spread you need baby and birthday stuff, which is usually in bright colors like gold, red and turquoise for Disney Pooh or pastels for Classic Pooh. Pooh is a popular and unisex theme for first birthdays and we actually had a Disney Pooh birthday for the girls, not knowing we were being so conventional). Anyway, you cut the pictures and mat them and put them on great looking paper and add embellishments and journaling. Crop, Mount, Journal, Embellish, although a lot of us journal later or at home since that's the hard part for most people. Of course, I can write a paragraph and carry on a conversation at the same time, but I still add my journaling last. Don't know why but I just can't get around to describing what is going on until I know what the pages are going to look like and how much room I have. When I type up a bunch of narration in advance for a project, which I do for vacations in particular, the journaling ends up all through the book like a travelogue and it doesn't go with the pictures at all.

So, back to the Baby Pages. You write some trite little copy like: "Miranda enjoys blowing out her candles at her first birthday party! The Theme was Winnie the Pooh and Grandma made the awesome cake!"

Of course, you can imagine that I don't always write it quite like that. But sometimes I do when I am in a hurry and I am feeling lazy. You can write really profound copy if you try, however. Scrapbooking magazines mostly exist to sell paper, embellishments, and other products, but I have seen spreads and narration on suicide, cancer, post-partum depression, and a whole host of things that I don't really want to scrapbook. I actually don't want to write the really introspective stuff because it would be like this blog: I would start and go and go and go like the Energizer bunny. I have difficulty stopping. And I think that the blog is a better format for writing these introspective things anyway. Also, scrapbooking is history. Real, living history that is photo-based. The journaling is mostly important for the context of the photos, and for most of us, there is not enough space on a 12 x 12 page to put photos, embellishments, and lots of intropection; not unless we are using one photo per page like in the magazines. So we scrapbookers are somewhat shallow because we love playing with all the pretty paper and embellishments, and while the journaling is important, it is actually not the central focus. Creative Memories acts like it should be the central focus and they are probably right, but it's just not. Especially since most people can't write their way out of a paper bag, but even people like me are saying "what an awesome first birthday cake!!!" (GAG). It's true that sometimes I read these books and I do just want to gag ("Oh, _____, you are the sweetest little girl when you yawn.") I am sorry, but I can only go so far into Pleasant Valley Momdom--even I am not quite that shallow or sappy, even about my kids whom I adore.

Now I'm not saying that my kids' birthdays or your kids' bar mitzvahs or the Prom of 2010 is all that interesting in particular, but it is in fact living history. If you look at the pictures, you learn a lot about furniture, clothing styles, and values of the people who took them. All the focus on kid-oriented scrapbooking since the late 1990's says something interesting about our socieity: how kid focused we have become and how that affects what is important to us.

Of course, not everyone scrapbooks kids. My friend Patty and her husband Buzz just went on a cruise, and so she is scrapbooking that (Travel and Heritage are popular topics). She and Buzz don't have children but they have a lot of friends at their church, so she also scrapbooks church events, sometimes for herself and sometimes for the church (such as a welcome book for a new minister to help him meet people, or a farewell book as a gift for a minister who is transferring to another assignment). Her books also showcase old photos from her childhood (heritage) and tell us a lot about life in the 1970s and on, as well as about different locations.

Some people even scrapbook collections or hobbies, such as taking pictures of all the quilts they make for a scrapbook. This is because sometimes quilts are sold or given away, and the same sometimes holds true with other collectibles. Some of the different types of themes you can find in a scrapbook that is family oriented are: family yearbook, vacation, seasons, holidays, baby boy, baby girl, toddler, preschool, school days (elementary), middle school, high school (graduation, driving and prom), college,special activities such as dance, soccer, or even destination imagaination. You can scrapbook birthdays and times when you went to various places. You can be introspective and scrapbook the REAL truth about what is going on in your life (I don't do this because I don't always want my kids to read it). I even did a scrapbook as part of a Bible Study one time. We took the Proverbs verses about the virtuous wife who is more precious than diamonds, and scrapbooked how we fit in with or did not fit in with a more modern understanding of the Bible verse. You can do "faithbooking"--scrapbook pictures and use your bible to illustrate the pictures with biblical quotes.

It sounds like a lot of work and it is. It is more work than Golf. I can spend days doing this. I think I could even spend a week doing it but I'm not sure. Because when I do it, I am pretty intense usually. I am one of those annoying people who goes to retreats and gets 50 pages (or a whole large book) done. Of course, this only happens if I put in a number of hours on the front end getting ready for a retreat. If I get shortchanged like last time on my prep time, then I only get about 20 or 30 pages done at Retreat. Today I spent some more time putting together little snowman paper dolls, which has nothing to do with historic preservation but it sure takes your mind off your troubles.

And of course there is the shopping. There is a lot of purchasing products, looking on the Internet, checking out ebay, blogging about scrapbooking, doing yahoo groups on how to use the Cricut, etc. I've never gotten into this much--I'd rather do it than talk about it (kind of like sex). And there is a limit to how much shopping one can do on my budget, and I still can spend money in an extremely fast fashion (because when I was an attorney there was no time to shop, so I am a ruthlessly efficient shopper).

Some people have fancy bags or ribbon holders, or boxes for embellishments. I even have a cool box for the lucite blocks that I use for stamps. And if there was a fire, and the kids and the pets and the husband were OK, I want the photos and completed books first but I want all my supplies second. You can't get into heaven if you don't finish your scrapbooks! She who dies with the most supplies wins. I Scrapbook and there's nothing my husband can do about it. Camp Crop A lot. Eat, Sleep, Scrap. These are real t shirts, folks! It's a national obsession. The economy has hurt it some, of course, but people have always tried to do it cheaply on one hand, and lavishly on the other. Here, let me get a Cricut machine for $300 and some cartridges and I won't need to buy those expensive $4 embellishments. I can make my own. And I can make cards, and cut sheet vinyl, and all kinds of other cool things too.....in my spare time.

And there's the rub. There just isn't any spare time, especially around a house like mine. So we ladies buy all this stuff and then we haul it places for a few hours so we can get out of the house and crop. Some people do work at home on it but it is difficult to make it a regular habit. There is laundry, cooking, homework, cleaning, and activities and jobs that always get in the way.

But I think in the long run we are performing a valuable service, we historians with acid free adhesive and pvc free page protectors. We are preserving our own family memories for our children, but we are doing more than that. Some of these scrapbook pages will end up in the Smithsonian one day to show what live was like in these times. People don't write letters any more, just email, and I don't know how much email will be permanently archived. Phone calls aren't usually recorded (unless the FBI or police is involved or something else weird is going on). The scrapbooks, especially the regular old paper scrapbooks and not the digital ones on the pc, have the potential to represent our historical period.

Looking back on the ones that are 5 to 10 to 30 years old is the most important. I did a very small scrapbook with pictures from my grandmother's life one time. It starts about 1903 with a family portrait. Some of my pictures were color copies and were not that good, and I didn't have much from some periods of my grandmother's ife. My mom and I wrote the copy for it and she added stuff in later, so there are two different handwritings in it. It's not very fancy in terms of embellishments or paper used as it was one of my earlier ones. However, my grandmother looked at it before she died and though she had dementia, it did jog her memory ("I Had a photo just like this one !" she supposedly said--of course, it was a copy of her photo all along). When she passed away at age 99 a few years ago the first thing my mom wanted was for me to bring the scrapbook homs so it could be used in Nana's memorial service.

Once people are gone the photos are all we have left. I took photos at my nephew Will's wedding back in about 1995 or 1996. I have pictures of him with his grandparents the Naglys (now both deceased). I have pictures of Robert's Aunt Ruby and Uncle Arvelle (now both deceased). I have pictures of his Aunt Maurine, who is still very much alive and kicking, and Uncle Archie (he passed away this year). If I hadn't take these pictures and put them in a scrapbook, I don't know who would have done this and we would not have any semi-recent pictures of these people from our family.

There's a Lyle Lovett song: "We're all gonna be here forever. So Mama, don't you make such a stir. Put down that camera, and come on and join us, the last of the family reserve." It's about all the people in the family who pass away over time and how we don't realize it but our families are constantly changing over the years, and sometimes people who have passed on get forgotten.

So keep that in mind next time you want to throw out photos. At least label them and add some notes on the back (use a photo labelling pencil and not a ball--point pen or marker, which can soak through and also get on the fronts of other phtoos). If you have boxes, take a box a month and put some notes on the back for future generations. I am not saying that you need to scrapbook because if you aren't doing it already, you would have to give up something else in order to do it. And I am getting farther and farther behind because the SCA is now encroaching on my cropping life--somehow I need to find a way to do both and still deal with the day to day business of life.

But I hope that my hours and hours at this task will not be in vain. I know, I should be writing a novel or something, but then I can't play with the pretty paper!!

Pleasant Valley Mom, wanting to get back to the scrapbooking table and knowning that she really can't today

Potato Sack Girls

I can't write long today because I have to go pack my scrapbooking stuff for a crop at 10 am. Somehow I have put off doing this until today, sewing on an impossible dress last night instead. I am just like my mom--I hate sewing on fabric I didn't pick out that I don't like that much. I have worked on this dress for about three nights now (it's a freebie that my friend Vivianna made for one of my girls from a remnant she had, and it's nicely made--I should be grateful). At any rate, the fabric is synthetic and it's difficult to hem, etc. so I finally pulled the whole mess out and decided that I am tired of working on the dress. I have hemmed the neckline and the sleeves and added lace trim, and cut it off because it was way too long for M and taken the shoulders up twice in different ways, then let them down again twice because it didn't hang right, tried it on A and it didn't work for her either, and finally told M to wear a shirt under it if she thinks it's too low cut. Actually she tried it on yesterday and I think it is fine even without the shoulders taken up. So I cut it off so she wouldn't trip on it because it's hard to put a big hem in it due to the fabric (it pulls and puckers so it would need more trim to cover that up, and I don't have any more of that lace). Now even putting a small hem in it is a nightmare. The pins won't stay in and it won't stay rolled and of course I am handsewing and I am not exactly great at it, although I am improving. It needs to just be serged again like Viv did it initially but I don't have a serger, so I just ironed a small hem. I may have to go and get some of that iron on tape that Fiona was recommending. After all, the dress is synthetic with modern lace trim so it's not exactly an Arts and Sciences project, but I have put so much time into fixing it up that it might as well be.

I am just too picky. Most people would have cut off the bottom and sleeves, hemmed the neckline and let the kid wear it ragged. It is, after all, a free dress. But I of course want it to look good on my daughter. Fortunately this is the potato sack daughter. She would look good in a potato sack (just cinch it!!!) And in fact that is kind of what this is, a blue/green potato sack with lace trim. Actually, if I know M, when she wears it she will look like a million bucks. It's actually a pretty good color for her. She's just one of those people. She doesn't have perfect hair because it's curly and all over the place, and it's not a great cut because she's growing out her bangs and doesn't want her hair layered. But she's pretty gorgeous nonetheless. Amelia is very cute too but she is thinner so she has a different look going on, plus she is not a potato sack girl. Clothes just don't fit her in that easy way--everything she puts on looks too big or too small. Well, not everything but it really needs to be just about perfect in order to look right on her, and that's hard when you are a size 8 in height and a size 6 in weight. What really works is size 7 clothes that were a little too big initially and have shrunk a bit, and then wear boots to keep the pants from looking too short. Not so easy to come by those.

Well, enough about fashion. I'm such an expert, anyway. I watch that "What Not To Wear" show and just cringe. I hate that Stacy witch. When they throw out everyone's favorite clothes and replace them with impractical, expensive clothes that require dry cleaning I just want to laugh. The next time I have $5,000 I won't be spending it on my wardrobe. Maybe I will go to Scotland. Isn't it interesting that I hate the female host but the male host (whose name I can't even remember--he's a bit of a milktoast)---well, he doesn't bother me. Clinton. That's his name. He even seems kind of nice, like a good person to have coffee with or something. Of course, he's probably gay, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't be a good person to have coffee with, just coffee without the "tea or me" part.

So, isn't it interesting that even I resent the strong woman and the man doesn't get on my nerves? Even on a stupid tv show? (By the way, R leaves the room if this show is on so I don't watch it often--I think he hates both of them).

Well, fashionistsas, that's all for now. Write with your comments about the fashion industry. It's certainly interesting even though it's extremely shallow. But then appearances are always shallow, aren't they? Don't we all just wear costumes every day? Think about it. Bow ties, long ties, button down collars, designer workout gear, Juicy Couture sunglasses, Prada handbags, Scarborough Faire Motorcycle t shirts with dragons on them. Whatever you wear to work or to shop in or even to hang around in the house in reflects a certain image. My hair is in the SCA mode right now, long and unruly, and it says, "I'm not really a suburban mom. I'm different." (In my town that probably means I look like I'm a Satanist instead of the Christian that I really am. I do have a cross up in my foyer but it's made of real barbed wire so it's just a little uncomfortable for people-- no hearts and flowers here on my cross. And there's a headhunters' mask from New Guinea in the family room--I see it as my own personal welcome sign).

See, if people know what they are looking at in my house I definitely send out some mixed signals. You can learn more about me from my house (artifacts in it, not the actual house) than my clothes.

I even wore my Scarby motorcycle shirt over to SCHOOL the other day although I did zip up my jacket so I wouldn't scare the other moms. I am not exactly the Harley culture anyway since I hate motorcycles (I hate the noise and the danger, not the idea of freedom). I'm not free anyway so why should anyone else be free? None of us are really free. But black with a motorcycle and a dragon? Well, why not? (actually this may be R's shirt--I don't remember).

So, if you are married just wear your husband's clothes today and confuse the hell out of people.

Pleasant Valley Mom, trying to figure out a good cropping and cookie selling outfit.

Drinking from the Last Bottle

"To die among friends. Can a man ask more? Can the world offer less? Who wants to live 'til the last bottle is empty? It's all-for-one, d'Artagnan, and one for all." Said by Van Heflin as Athos in The Three Muskateers, 1945.

This is the quotation of the month in the Elfsea Tidings, a newsletter from the Barony of Elfsea in the Kingdom of Ansteorra (for those of you not in the SCA, this is the Fort Worth chapter of the Texas/Oklahoma division of the Society for Creative Anachronism). The quotation this month is provided by Don Alaric, who is a sword collector and Rapier Don, Rapier Marshall, and most likely a big fan of the Three Muskateers in just about any form (although he probably isn't crazy about the new Barbie version, where Barbies duel with a rhythmic gymnastics ribbon. You think I'm making this up, right?)

OK, I promise to stay away--far away--from Barbie today. I really love this quotation although I'm not sure why. I am not a "light fighter" or a rapier person, although I really enjoy watching it and I think my kids are interested in learning. I broke my ankle a few years ago and refused to have surgery to put a pin in the ankle because it was "borderline" according to the doctor (and I avoid surgery at all costs). Now the ankle is weak and aches in bad weather, and I am limping. So I am not exactly light on my feet and I am the only person I know that actually tripped and fell on her butt trying to do English Country Dancing (of course I was in a long skirt that was too long for me and Birkenstocks, not exactly Barbie's Twelve Dancing Princesses shoes). So I don't know what you think, but I personally think I would be a menace on the rapier field, and not in a good way (meaning, I would just fall on my ass and embarass myself and possibly accidently bump into someone and hurt them, not that I would actually be any good). Besides, I have heard that it takes muscles that I probably don't have any more. I don't know how many people out there doing it have had three miscarriages and the equivalent of two C sections and countless other abdominal procedures but probably not most of them. Although there are a lot of women who do fight rapier, most of them are younger than I am and I doubt if any of them have my checkered reproductive history.

So, I am hardly one of the Three Muskateers but I do like their spirit. I like those campy Three Muskateers movies from the 1970s, remember? I don't know the particulars but I seem to recall that Michael York (man, he was a hunk) was D'Artanan. I am sorry to say that I don't even know much about The Three Muskateers, other than that there are numerous movies and I believe that one of our SCA members owns ALL of them (EVEN Barbie, which he received as a joke). I don't even remember if there is a book, so let me know because my ignorance is showing and I am not in the mood to research it right now.

I got my temporary crown on today, finally, and let me say this, it was worse than the root canal. I just can't breathe very well during these procedures, and since I'm a mouth breather with asthma who is trying desperately to inhale gas through my nose so that I will be high enough to forget where I am, and it just doesn't work that well...well, I am glad that's over. I never put on the new patient forms that I'm an attorney because it makes people nervous, but I did mention "JCPenney Legal Department" to the dentist (as in, "the dentist I had when I was working for the JCPenney Legal Department"--this makes it sound like I was a secretary or something--. The hygenist actually said she thought I could do this procedure without anesthesia and I said, "well, we will leave that to the dentist--but you are using gas, right?" She seemed surprised but wheeled the tank in. After the dentist spoke with me he not only numbed me but in the middle of the procedure he had to use a bunch of topical anesthesia. She blew a little air on me early on and I jumped about five feet out of my chair, and this was after I was already on the gas and only had one cup of coffee. I think if they could have knocked me out completely they would have.

So I'm not brave like D'Artanan, at least not in the dental chair. And don't put me underground in corridors either very often. Once my husband and I went to the Scarborough Ren Faire's SAPA event (a dinner for Friends of the Faire and the Scarborough Academy of Performing Arts cast) that we do every year. Since we didn't have the kids we went through the Tower of Terror, which is basically a medieval and renaissance execution museum. Now the exhibits don't bother me--they are a little cheesy anyway, and I know most of the methods used because I've seen those History Channel specials and read all that Elizabethan history and everything. I saw The Tudors. I know about the boiling of poisoners in oil and all that stuff, and while I wouldn't want to witness it personally, it really doesn't bother me to talk about it or even see a dramatization on TV. But the Tower of Terror runs underground and we were in these little corridors all by ourselves. I think if lots of people had been in there with us screaming or something I would have been fine, but all I could think about were all the bugs and worms and stuff in the soil, and all the cobwebs since no one had been in there since the previous Halloween, and it just totally creeped me out. I saw the replica of the crown jewels at the bottom (like the Tower of London has only I have seen the real thing before), and I was OUT OF THERE. Yuck. Will not be going back in there any time soon.

So cremate me, please, when I'm gone. The idea of those bugs and things and being in the ground with them is just too much to bear. I think it's a holdover from that song we used to sing in elementary school, you know: "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinnocle in your snout." OK, even in elementary school it made me want to vomit.

And the Three Muskateers quote above is another, earlier version of the Klingon: "It's a Good Day to Die." This is also lifted by Little John in the BBC Robin Hood series (do those Brits think we don't know that they too have watched Worf and Next Generation???)

Of course, this is clearly a sentiment that is more likely to be expressed by men. I don't happen to think dying among friends is all that great. Maybe because I don't want to die any time soon. I guess dying among friends is better than dying among enemies, and you can hear this same sentiment echoed when Gimli and Legolas talk in the movie version of The Return of the King, as they are all about to get blown away in Mordor, when he says to Legolas that while he never planned to die along side an Elf, dying along side a friend is something that he can do. So men highly value this concept of dying among friends. Which is interesting because a lot of men, like my husband, have very few male friends and their relationships are very different than friendships between women. I'm not saying that male friends never talk about anything serious but a lot of times they do talk about things like sports, etc. and not very often about feelings. Maybe this is a stereotype but I don't think so.

For one thing, if you die in battle, you may die among friends, but isn't the last thing you see your enemy? (Unless you get shot in the back or something, of course).

Also, "Can the world offer less?" Well, yes in fact, it can. How about dying of cancer? Dying in a car wreck? Dying in a stupid accident (like jumping off a cruise ship because you are drunk). Dying unloved or unremembered? Dying estranged from your loved ones, or some of them? Not having your body found for a week because you were an unemployed recluse with very few friends? Yes, the world can definitely offer less in terms of the manner of your death, you had better believe it. Dying in battle is beginning to sound pretty damn good.

My husband and I discussed this quote and whether or not we agreed with it. (OK, I have already said it, we are pointy headed geeks. While other people would be having sex we are having discussions like this). The part that really intrigued us was "Who wants to live 'til the last bottle is empty?" My husband said, "I do. That means I drank it."

I think he has a point. Of course, if it's Geritol or Milk of Magnesia, maybe not so much. But give me a good bottle of Crown or Shiner Bock (and spare me the hangover or the gas from the beer) and I think I agree with him. I think I want to drink the last drops from the last bottle. For me, it's never a Good Day to Die. It just means my time is up and I haven't accomplished everything I meant to accomplish. This doesn't mean that I'm afraid of death, far from it. I'm more afraid, I think, of those bugs underground than I am of death. Presumably, as Christians, we will be taken to a better place and so on, and be with God, so there is nothing to be afraid of (assuming that we aren't going to Hell, of course).

And I just don't believe I'm going to Hell, sorry. I guess my concept of Hell is still very much like that in The Divine Comedy and I just don't believe that I am going there. I'm not a great person and I'm not a great Christian but overall I don't think I'm that bad.

My favorite joke about hell: a guy is getting the tour of Hell and he is asked if he wants to be in the room where everyone is head down in excrement or the one where everyone is at a cocktail party and merely standing around in excrement. He choses door number 2 (sorry for the joke there). Anyway, after he's there about five minutes having a nice cold brewski, one of the devil's messenger boys comes in and says, "Cocktail hour is over, everyone back on your heads!"

Hell is probably just a really cold place where you are not only alone but also remorseful for your lack of kindness to others on earth when you had a chance. Kind of like a cross between Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Dickens, only without Marley's chain.

Well, that's enough about the afterlife. I think it's time for one more bottle.

Pleasant Valley Mom, going back to the Gulf War Sewing and trying to Catch Up on LOST, which I managed to sleep through last night.

A Cabin in the Woods For Your Teen

I am actually sleeping through the night now (well, 1 am til 6:30, two nights in a row no less!) so I am very late today on doing the blog update. Sorry about that to all six of my faithful subscribers.

But lately I have been comtemplating how nice it would be to go live in a Cabin in the Woods for a Week. Or to send an unruly teenager there. Not that I have one--yet--but the day is definitely coming.

I was watching the Olympics the other night and Apolo Onton Ohno, the famous speedskater and Dancing With The Stars Champion for those who don't follow pop culture much, was skating for yet another medal. He is now the MOST decorated US Winter Olympian and he is at his third and probably final Olympics. I remember when he was a raw kid 8 years ago in this very aggressive and sometimes brutal sport (short track skating, where anything can happen and people will deliberately knock you down on camera). He doesn't have as many golds as speed skaters Eric Heiden or Bonnie Blair but he has more MEDALS. At any rate, when he was 15 apparently he went through a rough time and did not want to speed skate any more. He was raised by a single dad, a Japanese immigrant who can't have had a lot of money. His dad drove him all over hell's half acre so this kid could compete at quality events. Well, at one event Apolo didn't try very hard and came in dead last. His dad was upset, not at his son's ranking but because he gave up and didn't do as well as he could have. He didn't do his personal best.

So his dad took Apolo to a cabin in the woods and left him there for a week, so Apolo could decide what to do with his life. Now as far as I know he left him food, shelter (heat or the ability to make a fire in a woodstove), water, and he had a phone so he could call his dad after a week. I don't think he had Internet or Cable or the I phone or the Wii or the many modern distractions that we now have. And I don't think he even had a television. I have no idea what Apolo did during the week alone--what would you do? Did he read? What books did he take? Did he fish? Did he masturbate? Who really knows? But at the end of the week Apolo had decided that he did indeed want to continue speed skating, he rededicated himself to his sport, and the rest is history.

My husband's response was, "when can I go?" In other words, when do I get to slow down for a week and think about what to do with the rest of my life? This is a thought that one has as one nears 50 in my case, or passes it as my husband has (and I guess the big 53rd or 54th birthday is coming up in April--I forget which). As you start to see your physical abilities dwindle you realize that there are things that you will never do (and maybe like me you don't care. As a friend once said, "I have no real desire to jump out of a perfectly good airplane!") But obviously as one ages, some doors open but many close. I am watching the figure skaters and I always wanted to get my kids involved in that sport, and I am finding out that it is certainly too late to make them into little Olympians now. Besides, Amelia hates the cold of the ice rink even though she likes skating. But I don't even take them skating very often. I can't do it any more because of my ankle and I get bored sitting there, and the last time they needed a lot of help and I couldn't really help them. Robert had to do it and his knees can't take it very well either. In other words, maybe we are really too old to be good parents! We can't do some of the stuff that the cool, fit younger parents can do.

A friend and her family were at the ice rink that day (I am sorry to say that this was LAST Christmas 2008, not this year, and that is actually the last time I went to an ice rink). She has a son who is in high school and is on an elite hockey team. He is very talented and has even been drafted into the minor leagues. I think the plan was for him to play for a few years and then go to college on scholarship (apparently most hockey players these days do this and are a little older when they hit college, which is not really a bad thing because they are a little more mature). Now this kid has always lived and breathed hockey. I've rarely seen him when he wasn't in uniform, or watching hockey, or even on in-line roller skates. I have supported a few of his fundraisers over the years and I have watched him grow up. His team just won the state championship and he is on his way to regionals.

But he may have played his last hockey game as soon as regionals are concluded. His parents aren't going due to other obligations and expenses. I know that they have put their hearts and souls into supporting him, driving him places, and paying for hockey. The dad was out of work for a while last year and is on a contract assignment now, and they almost had to move to Houston last spring. So it has not been an easy road for them. The two younger kids play hockey. I mean, hockey is really a very important force in their lives.

But the kid is not sure he wants to continue with hockey. I am not sure of his reasoning because I haven't talked with him and I really don't know him well. But I expect he is getting bored with it, or tired of it, or burned out on it. It's hard. You can get hurt. It can be dangerous. There are probably a lot of good things and bad things about it. It may be that being up there with a farm team or whatever they are called subjects you to certain temptations. Maybe he has a girlfriend he wants to follow to college. Maybe his friends are going to college and he doesn't want to wait and play hockey for a few years. I don't know what his reasons are and some of them may be good and legitimate. But nevertheless this has to be devastating to his parents. This kid has a real gift that he has developed and now he's about to throw that out the window. How will he feel in 15 or 20 years when he is one of us living in the burbs who could have been a great hockey player? Or maybe he won't be a great hockey player, but he will never know unless he tries, right? Or maybe there is something else he is supposed to do with his life. Maybe hockey has got him sidetracked and God has a plan for him that he has not been following. There's apparently a minor league baseball player who was getting ready to be moved up to the majors recently and decided to quit and become a priest. I'm not saying that this hockey player kid is supposed to be in the ministry, but who knows?

You know, we all have missed opportunities. Jobs that maybe we should have taken (or quit sooner). Boyfriends or girlfriends we maybe should have stayed with, or given a second chance. Or Dumped sooner. Or Not Married in the First Place. Maybe we should have tried harder to have children. Maybe we shouldn't have had children. Maybe we shouldn't have gotten drunk on that occasion and said those awful things to those people who never speak to us now because of our appalling behavior. Maybe we should have visited our families more often or tried to understand them better. Maybe we should have sent out more birthday cards on time (a big personal failing of mine--I like to make cards but I rarely get around to mailing them). Maybe we should have remembered those birth control pills and that we were on antibiotics (that's the lament of a friend of mine who has TWO sets of identical twin boys and guess how the second set was conceived???) Life throws us curveballs sometimes, and we don't always respond well. Maybe we should have spent more time with that person but we didn't know she/he was sick, dying, or that it was our last time on earth with them. Or we didn't want to believe it. We all have regrets. We say we don't. Maybe we should have joined that church or organization or activity sooner. Maybe we should have exercised more and eaten better food. Maybe we should have managed our healthcare better or taken better care of ourselves. Maybe we should have stood up for ourselves. Maybe we should have said "no" when asked to volunteer for something we knew we didn't possibly have time to do. Maybe we should have said "yes" and worked it into our already overloaded schedules. Maybe we should have seen the dentist before the teeth fell, literally, out of our heads (OK, this is definitely my lament this week, although I know WHY I didn't see the dentist earlier--combination of fear and insurance woes).

(Rob, if you are reading this and see any subject/verb agreement problems in the above paragraph, please email me. I tried but I'm kind of tired this morning). :)

So I don't want my friend's son to have regrets about giving up his burgeoning hockey career even though he may have good reasons for it. So I told her about the Cabin in the Woods. She thought it was a great idea. But she said the same thing as my husband, "When do I get to go???"

I moved to Dallas in 1986 after graduating from the University of Virginia School of Law. I had a very prestigious job lined up with Jones Day Reavis & Pogue, and they had given me a signing bonus to live off of for the summer so that I could study for and pass the bar exam. Now the wealthier kids took their bonuses and travelled but I used mine, and my graduation gift of money (three months' car payment), to live off of. (Boy, one of my big regrets is not blowing it all on a nice trip!!!) I had purchased a new Buick Electra in January 1986 on the strength of an offer letter and no payments were due until June, but I wasn't working until September. I had credit cards, I had a little money (but not much), I had a new color tv and a new microwave. I moved into an apartment. I didn't really know anyone out here or who to call, and I was scared to death for a while to drive in the city. But I had to go to Bar Review so I figured out how to get there, and I got there and took the class. I networked with other young lawyers in the same position. I studied. I went to the apartment swimming pool, which was filled with working class single people who liked to drink lots of beer on the weekend and play beach volleyball (not really my scene, in other words). In fact, one of the gals took me out to a nightclub once and looked through my closet and said with a Texas accent, "You really don't have no clubbin' clothes!!" I think she had to lend me something. Guess what, I still don't. Met a pipe fitter from Plano at a bar. He didn't call. Big loss. OK, he had muscles, but that's about all.

I went shopping for some work clothes and a new purse (not very much shopping--credit cards were already in a sad state from law school). I didn't go to any parties that I recall except those held at the apartment complex. I didn't go to bars except for the one incident above--didn't want to be out there alone and put myself in a potentially dangerous situation, like I had done the summer of 85 in Atlanta (went to parties by myself, drank too much, drove, hung out with lawyer-types who were doing drugs even though I didn't, things of that nature. Fortunately did not get arrested, in an accident, robbed, stoned, or date raped.)

So it was a mild summer, just me and my cat Buttercup, and my little apartment, and my bar review books and classes. I studied a lot. Three days before the bar exam I turned to Buttercup and remarked that she knew just about as much about Secured Transactions as I did by that date. (I spent a lot of my UCC/Secured Transactions class in law school in my new boyfriend's bed and got a C minus--in the class, not in bed, but it didn't matter because I already had my fancy new job). Of course the joke was on me because what class did I have to teach the Buyers at least four or five times while I worked in the JCPenney Legal Department? UCC (Uniform Commercial Code for those of you who did not go to law school, and the other part of the UCC class was, as I mentioned above, Secured Transactions. Article 9. Checks and secured transactions and stuff. Black Gold, Texas Tea. Oops, that was another class that I didn't have in law school and needed for the Texas bar, called Oil and Gas Law.) So yes, I taught UCC at JCPenney's, which meant that I actually had to LEARN the UCC law since I didn't bother for law school and only learned enough to get through the Bar Exam. I had the UCC Nutshell (sort of like Cliff's Notes for lawyers) in my office for YEARS and it probably is still in a box around here somewhere. What a joke--me teaching UCC. Professor Bergin would get a kick out of that, except that he wouldn't remember who the hell I was, since I was never there. Of course, he's retired or deceased by now, as are most of my college and a lot of my law school profs.

So my point is, when do I get to go to the Cabin in the Woods? Like Henry David Thoreau, whose name I hope I am spelling correctly, I want to go to the cabin so that I can learn to live Deliberately. I want some interior focus time. And I'm not going to spend it doing my finances like he did. I don't just want to blog, or meditate, or pray once a day. I want to discover who the hell I am and what am I doing with my life? What are my God-given talents? Am I using them? Am I being the best I can be? I try to get the Destination Imagination kids to focus on doing their personal best, not just winning. Destination Imagination competitions are largely subjective, like ice dancing. We can't always be first place. I am nortorious myself for always being third or fourth, not even second. If I were in the Olympics I would finish just out of the medals. I'm not a winner. I'm an also ran. And so are many of you out there because even though our culture worships and reveres the winners, many of us are damn good but we just aren't the valedictorian or the gold medalist. The margin for error is small and it takes a lot of time, patience, skill and luck to get on that podium. And some of us screw up or just don't quite make the grade.

One of my friends remarked that he doesn't watch a lot of tv because time is running out. There is not time left in his lifetime to do all that he wants to do. He's not that old (at least compared to me) but he's right. We don't know how much time we have. All we can do is make the most of the time that is left to us. I am attempting to quote Gandalf here in the LOTR movie, although knowing the script writers, someone else probably said this in the books. Please email me, all you Lord of the Rings fans, and let me know.

Professor Tolkien spent his whole life trying to write down his version of Middle Earth and never did finish the Simarillion. In fact, fortunately his son Christopher has devoted most of HIS life to preserving his father's legacy and publishing every scrap of Professor Tolkien's papers that can be used. He did finally publish the Simarrillion in the late 90's. I don't know Christopher Tolkien or his family and I have heard that some do not care for him but I admire him for devoting his life to the Tolkien legacy. It's almost like giving his father a second lifetime. My understanding is that Christopher has a son who is lined up to also help with the work, and that is one of the reasons why we continue to get new Tolkien material such as Children of Hurin even though I believe that Christopher himself is in his 80's. So, thank God for the Tolkien family, and if they don't like the movie, well, they weren't really consulted and didn't get all the money from it either, so who can blame them? Although I suspect they are rich enough by now from just the books--there's a whole shelf at Barnes & Noble, and you can even buy the translation of Sir Orfeo there.

My kids read the Father Christmas letters from Professor Tolkien (and I always cry at the end when he writes the last letter to his little girl Priscilla, because she's grown up and too old to be hanging up her stocking any more--oh dear, crying now!!!) Miranda wanted to know what happened to the kids, so I looked them up on the Internet. I believe that John and Michael are now deceased--John was a priest, and I don't remember about Michael although he was badly injured in the war, and Priscilla was a social worker. I think she is still alive but also retired. So it was really sad--the kids are not only grown up but two of them are gone and two of them are elderly. But there are other relatives to carry on the legacy. And I reminded Miranda that we all get too old one day to hang up our stockings, but we can carry on the legacy of Santa Claus by doing it for our children, our neices and nephews, our community. Still it makes me cry. They are just humoring me now with Santa Claus. I mean, they pretend like they believe and they think they should get wonderful letters like Professor Tolkien wrote, and they even asked a few years ago why they didn't get the wonderful drawings, and I just said that there were so many children now that Santa didn't have the time to do those great personal and lengthy letters and drawings. Some years Professor Tolkien didn't have time to do it either, but I don't have his writing talent and I certainly don't have his artistic talent. Plus Santa uses the PC these days to write those letters anyway. No one will ever want to publish mine--they aren't that good, and they certainly don't rise to the level of Professor Tolkien's letters. Even off the cuff he was ten times better than just about any other writer I know. Most of the latter chapters of LOTR were not even revised very much but simply sprang from his pen like Athena from Zeus' head, full grown.

Well, I hope I don't regret too many things I did or didn't do with my children. I certainly tried. That's part of what this staying at home is all about. But now that they are 10 and I am trying to get them prepared for the next 50 or so years of their lives, I am wondering when I get to go to the cabin in the woods. When I was there (in that little apartment in Dallas with nothing to do but study) I focused on becoming a lawyer, and I did it. I guess that is an achievement of sorts. Well, I was a good lawyer but I was not "partnership material"--not good enough at the client development (i.e. bringing in the business). I had the brains and the writing ability but I wasn't athletic or good looking like a cheerleader so I was definitely a B list lawyer. Went in house and gave up on law firm life (liked in house much better, by the way). Not the whole package. Not John Litchenstein, a successful lawyer from my high school graduating class (I had better grades in law school than he did though). John is a fine Criminal Defense lawyer in Roanoke, Virginia and I would highly recommend him to anyone needing his services, but he is a Total Package lawyer. Smart. Good looking. Well Connected. Athletic. And a Genuinely Nice Guy. Seriously. I really can't tell you anything that is wrong with him because I don't really know him well and haven't seen him for 30 years. But he is a Total Package person and some of us are just NOT. It's very difficult to be smart, good looking, athletic, well-connected and nice all at the same time. I don't know how he, or anyone else who is like this, does it. In fact, some of those Total Package Lawyers that I used to work with in the firms were real shits, but I don't believe that John L. is like that at all. Or at least I hope not, although I know he has to be tough sometimes in his position. Criminal Defense is not for the faint at heart. I have met very few people who are really all of those things that some of the Total Package People are-- deep down, maybe none of us are Total Package People but some of us are just better at Marketing.

And I no longer aspire to be a Total Package Person. I have enough on my plate. I am smart, my husband thinks I'm cute, and I think my kids like me (at least today). Sometimes I can get crabby and be a real bitch, but you know, that's a loaded term. Women who are strong and opinionated and get things done (and mow people over sometimes in doing them) are called bitches. Men who do this sort of thing are just called Aggressive, and it's usually considered a GOOD Thing. But for women, it can hold you back if you are a bitch, and it can hold you back if you are "too nice." So it's a no win situation, especially if you are a strong, smart, opinionated woman. Just keep your mouth shut. "Just Smile and Wave, Boys!" as the Penguins say in Madagascar. Hey, even the Penguins are male!!!! And the female hippo in Madagascar, well, she's just such a "lady" and she's all about flaunting herself sexually. She's one of those tough, hot black women (played by Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith's wife). Honestly, the Penguins, who are a tad bit psycotic (or at least they are called so in the script) are so much more interesting!

Just don't get me started on female vs. male characters in literature and the movies. Now that's a Tolkien discussion worth having!!! The truth is that the role models for girls are very conflicted and conflicting, and it's hard to know as a young girl where you fit in. Are you supposed to be strong, successful and intellectual or beautiful and manipulative of men? Hillary Clinton or Anna Nicole Smith? Well, even though I am not exactly her biggest fan I think I would definitely prefer being Hillary, even though her husband cheats on her. At least she's still alive and at least she has a clue. And my wonderful husband didn't even think Anna Nicole was that pretty, just pathetic. He certainly wouldn't have married her, but then he wasn't an old guy with lots of money, was he?

Pleasant Valley Mom, Thinking It's Time to Go Take Craft Supplies Back to Hobby Lobby and Try Not To Spend Any More Money There

The Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Morning

Well, this was indeed the Morning from Hell.

This is probably because it was the night from hell. R had to work on something from the time he got home until, basically, 3 am. So when he got home he was plugged into a conference call (his phone fits on his ear like a Borg implant). I had to leave at 5:15 to go pick up consignment and I sent one of the girls to tell him to cook dinner since I would not be able to cook until 6:30 (and we don't do fast food most of the time--very rarely). We do Dinner Station instead.

So the good news is that he had cooked the Dinner Station by about the time I got back, but by the time I hung up the leftover consignment clothes and picked up all the clean clothes off the floor of Miranda's closet and laid out some "Let It Snow" shirts for her to wear that she can't possibly wear after March 1 in Texas, and found her "money box" since she has bookfair tomorrow and and and--well, they had already finished dinner and he was going back upstairs on the conference call(I doubt if he ever got off it while cooking--it's a good thing he's one of those rare males who can multitask--the advantages of ADD!!)

Well, we don't know that he's ADD but we just suspect. Our whole house is ADD house. I think that Miranda and I are ADD too but we are better at hiding it. Our pefectionist tendencies come out instead. I managed to get through school pretty well and didn't realize I was ADD until recently, after reading some books on it and self-diagnosing. But when you have two ADD parents and identical biological twins--well, maybe we should have adopted after all.

We are seriously considering designing our SCA devices now that we both have our Awards of Arms and can have our own devices. Since R was born in the year of the Rooster according to the Chinese calendar and since he's the only male in the house (even the Westies are girls), we are thinking that he needs a Rooster on his device. Kind of like the Rooster in the henhouse, although it's not meant in a sexual way of course. But let's face it, men like to be the only Cock around. The girls and I could have hens on our devices in some form or fashion. And it plays into our favorite ADD joke, "Look, a chicken!" Also our church was founded on an old chicken farm and there is a section of the building that was all hand painted by the members, beautiful murals and rock climbing wall and what not, actually to save money on the construction (which was occurring about the time of the 9-11 recession). Anyway, because it was a chicken farm there is a chicken somewhere in the painting or decoration of every room (I think there's a rubber chicken in the kitchen for example). So the chickens tie in for us in a lot of ways.

Now that people have had roosters and such in their kitchens for a decade and it is becoming a less popular decorating motif that has filtered down to Wally-World and such, I am collecting Rooster and Chicken decorations. Bought a few in Canton at a Mexican restaurant when I was last there on retreat, and so on. Bought one on clearance at Hancock Fabrics (yet another Cock in my life!) And so on. I used to collect Architectural Digests and Decorator books and I even looked into becoming an Interior Designer in my spare time although I'm hardly flakey or artistic enough, but then we moved to the House on the Hill. And my husband got laid off four months after we moved here when his company closed their Dallas office, and had to work contract jobs for a year, and then he got laid off again afater 9-11 and had to take a pay cut after 7 months of trying to get back to a management job in Information Technologies, so anyway, the last room I actually decorated was the downstairs bathroom. From Kohl's clearance. In 2000. You think I'm kidding. Fortunately I have really nice stuff from the Days With Money, such as mahoghany furniture purchased in Canton and antiques from King Street in Charleston (that was our honeymoon, $300 candlesticks and such--ah, well, those were the days! What I couldn't do around here with about $20,000!!!)

So I have sold and given away the decorator books, which are out of date anyway. In fact, Half Price even told me they were composting them and I said, "Just pay me a pittance and don't tell me. I don't want to know." They even composted some of the old Martha Stewarts that I was getting rid of. I used to have all of her magazines from the very beginning but I got rid of them when we moved because with twins and no money, what was the point? But I recently picked up the back issues (most of them) for 2009 at Half Price and I am thinking it may be time to subscribe again. Especially since I am really contemplating buying that $23 set of Martha Stewart glitter (about 16 vials!) that is prominently featured in the magazine and on the scrapbooking aisle at Wally-World. Boy, I bet she is glad that her Kmart deal finally expired--she backed the wrong horse on that one.

So, what is the theme today again? Oh yes, the Terrible, Horrible No Good Very Bad Morning. Well, they said there was a 75% chance of snow. Now I knew the school district would probably not CANCEL school because they've already used up their two snow days (you folks up north and in Virginia have a good chuckle over that). So, I thought we would be going in late. I watched the ice dancing with my kids until at 10:30 they finally decided they were too bored to watch any more (Amelia was doing her homework until 9). She also had an endocrine appointment this morning in Dallas and R takes her, but we had a big argument about 2 am because I didn't want him to take her if it was icy, and these appointments are made 3 months in advance. They are impossible to get and she really needs to go in, but I did not want them in a ten car pile up on 35 this am.

So, I watched the ice dancing until I fell asleep (saw Canada and the US team that medaled but still have not seen the other US team or the Russians--tried again at 3am, hope it's on the DVR). And R tried to sleep for a while from about 1 to 2 am and then got paged and went back upstairs. That's the last thing I remember until about 7 am when he is waking me shouting, "It didn't snow! Get up, get up! The Alarm didn't go off!"

I don't set my alarm because it doesn't work well and I get up naturally between 4 and 5 am anyway, just like my mom used to. His alarm and his cell phone go off and if he doesn't get up (which he usually does) I go wake him and the kids around 6:30. I already have the coffee on and I've usually already done my blog post although I am a bit off schedule this week. But it's really hard to get up at 5 am when you went to sleep about 3 am (I was sewing for Gulf Wars until about 2 am). And now I SO NEED A NAP! And I have DI again today, maybe. If it doesn't snow and the kids don't get out of school early and if I can figure out how to have it when the kids are all sugared up from their delayed Valentine's Day party which is today.

So, Amelia and Miranda are getting up late. Miranda is freaking out and wanting to ride her bike (the tires are flat right now), even though it is snowing and I don't even know if she fits on the damn thing. She doesn't want to be tardy. Amelia is sitting wrapped up in a blanket staring into space. She doesn't wake up very quickly because she's a night owl and she doesn't sleep terribly well, like her dad, so she's a bit of a zombie in the morning. He can be too but because he's a grownup he has learned to overcome it most of the time.

M gets dressed, down the stairs in her Valentines' day shirt, eating breakfast, packing up her Valentines and her teacher gift (thank God these things are finally leaving my kitchen!!!) She has Bookfair today so she is checking to see that she has her bookfair money and I am fixing her instant grits and milk.

I got R to move the car inside the garage last night after moving the backdrop props from DI out of the garage and into my front hall, which you can barely walk through right now what with the Viking clay jewelry and fabric and DI backdrops and scrapbooking and the good dishes are still out on the dining room table from New year's/Valentine's Day, mostly to keep me and anyone else from putting other crap on the table. Maybe if I dust them I can keep them out until his birthday on April 6 and 7. I will explain that one some other time.

So now of course he decides to drive the Van to the doctor because it has better tires and traction control, which makes sense of course but I wish he had considered this last night--oh wait, we were cleaning up the garage and moving the car in while he was on his conference call and it was unlikely that the van would have fit back in the garage anyway--- so of course NOW he has to scrape the van. Fortunately we own a scraper that is from my law school days, because you can't buy them out here in Texas. No one stocks them. Or chains. Sometimes rock salt but usually you use sand or kitty litter out here. No snow shovels. No sleds. My kids have never been on a sled and when I got them Crissa the AG doll and her winter fun outfit with the little round coaster (I don't even remember myself what they are called but I had one, and I saw a picture recently on FB of Bryan Stephenson on one!) Well, anyway, when I got them this doll, they didn't even know what the coaster was for. Sad, sad, sad!!! But at least it's easier on my eczema.

Then he comes in and I am trying to email the teachers about Amelia's appointment and what she wants for lunch so they can order it. I hear R yelling at A upstairs--why are you just sitting there! Your appointment is this morning! I go back to the email of the teachers, get interrupted again. A finally comes downstairs in leggings and a shirt that is above her rear (in other words, not appropriate for school--this kid has the cutest clothes in the world but absolutely no fashion boundaries). I tell her to put her Valentine's gift for her teacher in her backpack but too late, she has dropped it on the floor. Since it's three Valentine's Day candleholders from Wally-World one is now broken. Fortunately I bought myself a set so I can sub out the one broken one after they leave and take it over to school later. I already have to go to the Valentine's Day parties to take pictures and to the bookfair, ,which ends tomorrow, to return the book light A got that doesn't work (the batteries, included, are dead). Don't know what to do about this little thing but I really just want my $8 back. Now I need to repack the gift after they leave and give up one of my little tchotkey candle holders.

So they go to school, probably on time. Then R is back with Amelia--she forgot her glasses. She didn't take her medication. She didn't use her steroid inhaler. She probably didn't brush her teeth, her hair or use deoderant either so God knows what they will think down at the endocrine office because she didn't take a bath last night either--maybe they will think he is a single parent. I am afraid I have been very neglectful of her in the last 24 hours but she is 10--she ought to be able to at least remember her glasses, which she has worn since 2nd grade.

I get her a pair of pants to put over her leggings in the car (two choices because of course I know she won't like one). She did take a coat. I make sure she has her valentines. I agree to bring the gift to the party (OK, now I really do have to go). I make sure she has her M & M's for the party and remind her that they are peanut so to tell the moms not to serve them if there are any peanut allergies (they were out of regular when I bought them two weeks ago at the last minute because I hadn't actually volunteered to bring anything. They were supposed to be for M's party but I saw on Friday that they already had their m & m's and we already ate one of the bags anyway so I will send them to A's party--I have found that if I just lay back and don't volunteer right away like all the other perky moms I can usually get away with not sending anything for the parties but I do feel a little guilty--I was a room mom in kindergarten and was really gung ho. What happened???) Well, more about that later, but let's just say I'm not room mom material.

They finally head out to the appointment after 8 and I remind my husband to take it slow and not rush, and call to say that they are on their way but will be late because of the weather. I hope he takes my advice and slows down to 70 or so--he's a notorious speeder. He will probably be careful today. Then I send them on their way. A has her glasses, her meds, her breakfast to eat in the car because she didn't have time to eat her grits, even her milk (I think she took it--I guess I will go drink it in a minute if not). She has her backpack. She has her Valentines. She has her assignment for later. I have her gift and the item that goes back to the Bookfair. Geez, I'm going to be doing this stuff for this kid until she's about 25, I guess. Maybe even though they are twins I can send them to college at different times--I would probably have a better result. R didn't go to college until later and it was probably the best thing for him too. In fact, he is five years older than I am and he didn't graduate from college until 1986, the same year I graduated from law school. He was WORKING in the 70's!!! We joke about this a lot because he LIVED the disco era--I was just in high school. He was out in the bars listening to a lot of really bad music. He doesn't dance much (bad knees, you know) but if he does, it ain't to disco!

Pleasant Valley Mom YAWNING>>>>>OK, just heard from R. They are there on time. Now I can go back to bed with the doggies.



And people wonder why I don't work full time?????????

And the Rain Rain Rain Came Down Down Down

I don't remember what song that line is from so if one of my faithful readers does, please remind me, "and the rain rain rain came down down down..." but it sure as hell is raining out here in North Texas. I hear that we are having more snow by Tuesday. I really need to get over to Dallas to see a friend and deliver some Girl Scout cookies and get some tips on what to do for Gulf Wars so I really hope that it is not doing this on Monday.

I don't like to drive in the rain. I did a 180 degree spin on Central Expressway the first year I lived here in my new 1985 Buick Electra, and I wasn't doing ANYTHING wrong. There was just a slick spot. Someone else had already spun out on the other side, and two more people also spun out and went to the other side as I was standing there like an idiot trying to protect my new car (I later found out that this is a good way, but not necessarily a good day, to die). Well, we are all young once and we all have that new car once in our lives. But to die over a Buick Electra? It didn't even have leather upholstery.

OK, I am going back to making hambone soup with lots of veggies (for Gulf War), and because the chicken in the soup I made for my root canal is too old, tough and freezer burned--the soup is fine but the chicken in it tastes like sawdust. I ought to strain it all out and give it to the dogs, really. But in my quest to empty my freezer of all stray meats and sauces to make room for Gulf War provisions, well, I just thought I'd give it a try. The freezer burned ground pork that had been in there for...i don't know, YEARS...did great in soup, but freezer-burned chicken? At some point I coooked this chicken and cubed it up and froze it so I would have something to throw in a dish somewhere along the line, but the dish never materialized and now it is garbage in my soup. Well, I should have some nice hambone soup later today if I can ever get the bone to fit in the pot. This is from the really huge ham that R bought on clearance, .99 cents a pound, the third weekend in January when I was on retreat. It's a 20 lb ham. Most of it got cooked and put in the Seal a Meal for Gulf Wars, but like a masochist I bought yet another of these hams at Wally-World the other day for about $2.99 a pound. I had one in my hands for $2.29 but it said "use or freeze by Feb 12." Should have bought the damn thing. It was probably fine especially if I cooked it this weekend. However, I like an idiot pointed it out to the meat guy (hoping to get it for less than $2.29 a pound since it was past the date) and he CONFISCATED it at wouldn't sell it to me. And for less than $1 a pound I decided to get the one that WAS NOT past the expiration date--it was Wally-World, after all. When they say it's not good enough to sell, they probably really mean it.

Must go and catch up on ice dancing now. I sent the kids upstairs with breakfast and a hole punch so my husband could sleep in since his 6 am work project got cancelled this morning. We ought to go to church but in this rain, I think not, and of course archery practice will be cancelled. I don't think there has been an archery practice all year--the weather has been just horrible for it: windy, cold, rainy and of course even some snow. I think at this point we will be doing our archery practice on the field at Gulf War. Well, I suck anyway and Amelia is much more interested in youth rapier so maybe we need to go in a new direction.

Pleasant Valley Mom, signing off and going back to bed


(Oh, the song is from one of the Winnie the Pooh Disney movies, probably the original! The one where it rains and they are floating around in the umbrella, like in the books. It just came to me.)

Exhausted by Thinking Day and Ready to Drink

How much can you drink if you are already on codeine anyway? (1) Nothing; (2) One or Two drinks; (3) Three or four drinks; (4) Don't pull a Judy Garland! You have Destination Imagination tomorrow!

Somebody email me or FB me quick, before about 8 pm so I don't get it wrong.

Overdosing is so not cool when you are a mom, a Scout leader, and a Destination Imagination coach.

OMG, I am SOOOOOO EXHAUSTED! After completing my to do list yesterday with no codeine in my system after 3 am, we went out to eat and absolutely gorged ourselves, even though we knew there would be food at Populace. (There's always food at Populace. It's the SCA, for God's Sake! There may be people on diets and people who are overweight and people who have really strange eating habits or likes and dislikes, but there is ALWAYS food).

We went to Fish City because we didn't want to go over to Snuffer's (the girls had just come from there because they went on a field trip to see The Lightning Thief--they loved it but they complained because it wasn't like the book). Snuffers has THE BEST Cheddar fries in Dallas. They are even better than that racist Eskimo Joe's place in Stillwater, Oklahoma (have been there, too). They are AWESOME. They are gooey and rich and loaded with fat and grease, and you eat them with ranch dressing and bacon bits and chives and jalapenos on the side (if you have my digestion, anyway), and if you eat Cheddar fries once a day you don't need any other meals or calories at all, all day long. This is what I lost half a tooth on a week and a half ago but you know, Cheddar fries are even worth a root canal every once in a while. But we wanted to eat next to the road we were getting on to go to Populace so we went and spent $60 at Fish City.

Miranda no longer likes the kids' menu. I don't really blame her. How many chicken nuggets, hamburgers, mac n cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches can you eat in 10 years? They have fried shrimp but she prefers her shrimp steamed. She's actually a pretty healthy eater. Well, Amelia got a burger of course but then we got the FOUR Person Crab leg and shrimp steamed platter. I couldn't really eat the corn, sausage and potatos because of the temporary crown so some of that went to waste (couldn't really take it home because we were going to Populace and I didn't want it sitting in the car for three hours and giving us food poisoning--probably should have chanced it). Anyway, we ate and ate the Alaskan King Crab legs and shrimp and more shrimp, and I did eat a little corn, and we dipped it in butter and got slathered with it all over, and...sounds almost sexual. I had butter stains all over my shirt even though I put a napkin on fairly soon after starting. Even Amelia got into the spirit of it. She's grossed out by crustaceans but if you take the meat out she will eat the crab legs, so we did. I didn't absolutely eat every single bite (it was enough for four adults and we had 2 1/2 really), but I sure enjoyed it. $39 and I think we will be doing that again soon. If they are going to eat off the adult menu anyway most of the entrees are about $8 to $15 each so $10 each is not that bad. They also had happy hour and I was on codeine, and the mixer in the margaritas made me nauseated, so I switched to bourbon and coke. So I know you can have 1 codeine pill and one bourbon and coke and one maragarita without being (1) hung over or (2) overdosing. Not sure about how much more though.

When we finally got to Populace at Lady Elec's, they asked me how I was doing since the root canal (I had to miss Calligraphy and Illumination unfortunately because I was too doped up to drive, much less paint charters). So I said, "well, the drugs and the alcohol helped!" I think they were a little shocked since I am the MOC but I reminded them that I am off duty. I was having a GOOD time. We took some thin mints and some Samoas and I gave Fiona her cookies and had the girls thank her since she ordered a bunch (some for the freezer). I am telling you folks, if you buy a bunch and freeze those girl scout cookies you can have them all year long. Fiona bought 18 boxes and I think we are buying about 3-4 cases ourselves, and doing the same thing she is. This year we ran out of thin mints two weeks before we got our new cookies. It's a bit of an outlay this month with Gulf War and everything but I am telling you, we will be fixed for cookies all year long if I just hide a few around here so they don't get eaten so fast.

So for a mere $168 a year (only $8 more than the 15 x 9 mundane tent I want at Wally-World) you too can have a year's supply of cookies for FOUR people (at $42 a case or $3.50 a box) and help the Girl Scouts too. Call your local council today!!!!

Wow, I really do love Girl Scout cookies. I think I will keep my girls in Scouts through high school just so I can get cookies from them every year. Even if I have to sell them to myself, well, myself.

And no, I really don't need to eat all those cookies but they have no Trans Fats, remember? I didn't say they had no calories though and I wouldn't exactly describe Tagalongs as a health food. But they are high in protein.

So, on to bigger and better things. We did Thinking Day today and it was AWESOME as usual! This year I assigned topics to the girls and they went home and did research and returned with the research (typed in 24 point type for the presentation board) and photos. We arranged the board and they stapled the research on the board on Wednesday. Our country this year, selected by them, was Colombia. I think they picked it because one of the girls had parents who graduated from Columbia University. They were shocked to hear about the drug traffic. Well, this is what we did: we had coffee beans for the kids to touch and smell and a big bag of 100% Colombian coffee (yes, with Juan Valdez on it) from Wally-World. It was in a basket from Morocco but no one asked me about that. I decorated the table with a .50 cent Valentine's Day plastic tablecloth (got to Wally-World yesterday just as the V-Day stuff went to 75% off!!!) and with some yellow fleece left over from Amelia's cloak (I am washing and repurposing this for DI or other things tonight because some little urchin got some kind of sticky food on it at Thinking Day, oh joy). We had our presentation board (the same one I've used for four years) draped with black fabric stapled on (from Perth, only about $4.50 for some nice black cotton poplin). Guess what--the kids decided during DI to make a backdrop out of this same fabric, which I had just removed from said presentation board and put back in my fabric bin. It has a few staple holes but who cares? Then we had a number of rainforest type animals and turtles (since they are on the ocean in Colombia, or at least I think they are). We had photos printed out of the Colombian bird (Andean condor, ugliest bird you ever saw), Colombian orchid, and other rainforest animals. On our board we covered the flag, crest, schools, people and how they dress, houses, countryside, food (did you know they eat roasted ants and guinea pigs? They also eat plenty of normal food, soups, meats, vegetables and breads of course).

Fun facts about Colombia: They have a lovely archaeological park filled with hundreds of Pre-Columbian sculptures (a picture of one was with our SWAP of coffee beans in a bag). They have five kinds of bananas (we served banana chips on gold plastic trays for our food). They love soccer (our stamp was a soccer ball and some of our kids dressed as soccer players). They wear Western clothes and some traditional peasant skirts and head scarves (Amelia, myself and one other girl dressed this way and many of the girls wore old soccer outfits). They also love bike riding (Miranda dressed as a bike rider but took off her helmet and gloves and went as a tourist for part of the day, with water bottle and camera). So went spent Zero on costumes this year. We didn't match, but who cares? We had a peace sweatahirt on the table because many people in Colombia are disgusted with the drug traffiking and violence and wear the peace sign to symbolize "Peace in Colombia" and to show that they do not support the drug lords or their activities. We had two kids who were presenters and one to do the swaps, one do to the soccer ball stamps on the passports, and one to hand out the food. The girls switched half way so that they could go visit some other countries, and the ones working didn't really want to give up their jobs!! They loved presenting. It was hard to hear and it was hard to do all the presenting in only three minutes per country (the organizer of this event is rather non-intellectual so she doesn't want it to be too much work for her and her troop, so she keeps cutting our minutes--we used to have FIVE minutes but no longer). Anyway, we also had the Trefoils Around the World book from the 1950's that I had gotten for $5 from Amazon used books. It had old pictures of the old Colombian uniforms and the promise in Spanish and English, and information about the Girl Guide levels (which we were required to have this year). So it was REALLY cool. I would love to have taken my megaphone, earned for supurlative cookie sales, but that would have been really annoying and they would have shut me down.

It was AWESOME! Our kids went out to breakfast with the two main leaders and I went and set up. Then they got there, we practiced our roles, and we were ready to go. I told the two main leaders, who were going around with them, when to switch everyone out and insured everyone went to the restroom because we weren't getting ANY break until near the end (and group 1 did NOT get any break). They showed up about 9:45 and we were ready to go! They were very appreciative of all my hard work but the main thing I did was assign topics and gather stuff for the table, plus set it up while they were at breakfast.

The people in my service unit who run it really don't like me. They can't figure me out. I am an overachiever and I am not terribly fond of them either (I call them the Service Unit Nazi's, actually). It's not that they don't mean well or that they are bad leaders, far from it. It's just that (1) they always take the easy way out of everything; (2) they throw money at everything instead of thinking about the most economical solution sometimes (3) they are extremely rigid and never think of the out of the box solution. It's not that I am really smarter than they are (well, maybe so but I don't want to sound conceited--many of these ladies are highly educated and have responsible jobs, and they really aren't bad gals--they just treat me like dirt, most of them). In fact, when I got there at 8:45 several of them were already setting up and I asked if I could come in. The SU president said, well I don't know--you need to check with the organizer. I saw one of the TWO organizers (the other one, who I used to be in a troop with, doesn't speak to me, long story). Anyway, Leah said I could come in because I said, You know, my husband is helping me drop things off and he has other things he needs to be doing. So they let me in and R could unload the stuff with me and go on his way to the Saturday errands. So I set up by myself, not a big deal (with not a word from ANYONE except one gal that I do really like, whose daughter is on the DI team). Anyway, a few ladies who don't know my history with this group came by and talked to me, and I went around and discretely took pictures of others' booths while no one was there (because otherwise the kids are there and you can't see what's on the table and I am the Thinking Day Queen--always looking to improve our table or our presentation).

Sometimes I hate this kind of stuff in Scouts. They are all so snobby. You know, I am a really nice person and I am just devoted to my girls, and to making sure that OTHER girls enjoy the Scouting experience and learn something (even the daughters of the particularly bitchy ladies). But I just absolutely despise the way some of the adults behave. It's like being in high school or a sorority or something. I literally told the president of the service unit that I was getting out of the Scouting leadership role and the service unit this year, because the meetings conflict with the Steppes business meeting. You know, those folks in the SCA, they don't always agree with me or love everything I do either, but they are extremely appreciative of my efforts in the MOC area, even the ones who absolutely despise children (in fact, some of those folks are my biggest fans!) I have to say that I would do ANYTHING for those SCA people because they know how to treat someone who is working hard and trying to do a good job. They don't criticize; they don't always let me do what I want or put me where I want, but we work it out and it's fine. And the main thing is that I feel like my efforts are noticed and appreciated, and at the end of the day, isn't that all a person wants? A feeling of validation? A feeling that one's efforts are not in vain, and that if you dropped dead tomorrow, someone might actually miss you?

Someone told me I needed to be careful about what I said about the SCA on this site and I said, "WHY?" Because seriously, while no organization is perfect, I can't say enough about how wonderful, in general, the SCA people are. Of course there are conflicts from time to time and not everything is hunky dory for everyone, and sometimes people fight or are extremely eccentric about some issue or another, but that's OK. It's really a family. My friend who died, Rise Sheridan Peters (known in the SCA as Caitlyn Cheanledir in Atlantia, probably not spelling the last name correctly), anyway, she said it was like her family and I understand why. I haven't been in very long, less than three years, and I don't universally love or understand everyone but I DO understand that it does become a family, especially for a Virginia transplant like me who has very little family even in the state, much less in town (and anyone in state is my husband's family, not mine, and distant aunts and cousins at that).

So God Bless the SCA (or whatever deity you pray to), and God Bless Thinking Day, my absolutely favorite girl scout event. I can ignore the one-upmanship by the moms and I can ignore the snubs and just do it for the girls. They all had a blast, and that's the most important thing.

Of course, you all probably know the REAL reason I can't deal in the Scouts universe: no or very few MEN. I do much better in situations with MEN involved. I like men. No bullshit, or a different kind anyway. I even liked DI better when there were boys on the team. It's not that I'm man hungry or sexually overcharged or lookin for love in all the wrong places--I just get along better in organizations when there are men, and very smart women, involved. That's why I liked law school; that's why I like the SCA; that's why I liked my friends in high school; that's why I really like (not just love) my own husband. Men are cool. Men don't play the same games as women, and I can usually see through their games a lot sooner. Women are bitchy, and groups of all women are bitchier still. I'm sorry, but female
attorneys--the worst!!! Smart AND bitchy. But put them in a room with some men and they are OK. They tone it down for the men and they behave themselves.

So please, no more organizations for me that are all women. I learned this lesson in college in my sorority, and I am staying out of Scouts unless they need me to do something or I need to do something to keep my girls in it and earning their awards and so forth for their college applications. Give me a co-ed team, organization, or whatever every time. I'm not intimidated by those men and they won't condescend to me. And if they do I have a few little tricks for shutting them down, or at least ignoring them the way they ignore their own wives sometimes. Passive aggressive-just ignore them and do whatever the hell you want! It's actually not a bad trick and I learned it from--you guessed it, men.

Pleasant Valley Mom, exhausted, and ready to go watch the ice skating now

Darth Vader Has More Fun Than a Root Canal!

The root canal is over, and now I am tripping along on codeine (trying to figure out in the middle of the night if I will be able to go off of these drugs tomorrow to do all the things I have to do in the next three days). Here is my list:

Miranda's PawPrint book presentation 8:15 am

Amelia's Pawprint book presentation 8:30 am (this is a recipe book that I also worked on a lot so I am eager to see this)

Go to school bookfair and get Percy Jackson book for Amelia, $12, and equivalent book or thing for Miranda

Go to ARD meeting at school 9:15 am (husband to do these meetings with me)

It's Dreaded Payday. Get money, gas, go to Wally-World for some groceries, get yellow t shirts for DI at Hobby Lobby (and some fabric paint). Need stage makeup that doesn't itch as well. Eat lunch (must be soup or something easily chewed). We are out of rum again so working in the liquor store might be nice too.

1 pm go with husband to Consignment dropoff in Grapevine. Note pickup time for stuff which I think is Tues night. Kids are going to Percy Jackson movie with LEAP class at the end of the school day, and are to be picked up by friend Phyllis for playdate. Try to get cookies delivered to friend and two other neighbors.

Bookfair tonight at 5 pm at school if not able to go earlier (try to avoid and do earlier in the day--it will be a zoo with 1000 kids at this elementary school). DI wine and cheese party from 7-9 (try to avoid--don't want to stand around feeling stupid and talking to other, better and more technically-inclined coaches and getting drunk, and need to be back on pain drugs by now). Steppes Populace meeting 7 -10 in Carrollton--try to go and deliver Girl Scout cookies and collect money.

Saturday morning: Thinking Day at 9 am--go over and set up Troop's presentation on Colombia (oops, still need to write the 3 minute oral presentation part. I have a 5-7 minute one already written but now I need to cut it down). Thinking Day goes until about 12:30 pm. Feed kids something--mac and cheese (I hate it but they love it). Destination Imagination work session at house from 2 pm to 5 pm.

Sunday morning: get garage arranged so kids can practice skit out there. Destination Imagination work session from 2-5 pm. Need to do makeup and costumes and skit bigtime.

Monday: taking Girl Scout cookies to Dallas during the day to deliver to people who couldn't come to Populace or don't want to wait until March Business meeting to get their cookies.

My life is such a joy. So I earned a law degree for THIS????

Anyway, the root canal wasn't too bad once they changed the radio station (I said in the lobby that I hated country music which is not entirely true, but I think they overheard me). I liked this guy. The fancy endodontist in MY neighborhood wouldn't take our insurance so we drove all the way to Carrollton. This guy was nice and very funny, and had a no frills not fancy at all office (bathroom down the hall and everything which was inconvenient for throwing up after root canal but one can't have everything). He had the gas, which is the important thing.

I like doctors and dentists who don't have really fancy offices. When they have really fancy offices I know they are making a lot of money that they don't know what else to do with, and guess who is paying for that fancy Mayan decoration (I am not kidding--my downtown dentist referred me to a specialist who was redoing his office to look like Machu Pichu or something. I ran out of there so fast it would make your head swim). This is one of the reasons I never got braces as an adult even though I really needed them.

This guy gave me some topical anesthetic that smelled like cloves (oil of cloves, like Mike Kavannaugh mentioned the other day, is still very useful thousands of years later). I barely felt the novocaine shot. Of course, I have a dreadful time breathing during these procedures because I'm a mouth breather. It's really hard to breathe around a rubber dam. Also, I just don't get stoned enough on the gas usually because when I breathe through my nose I sound like Darth Vader. Or in this case, the guy's wife's new English bulldog (OK, I didn't say he was poor, just frugal). He was indeed making fun of my breathing but I didn't care. I guess enough of the gas was getting through anyway.

No tvs or headphones or any frills here though, and the walls were painted mustard (and probably from back in the 1970's, not because he was going for a cool retro look). Also, my ipod was dead this morning so I had to tough it out and listen to him talk to the hygenist like I wasn't there (because of course I was more sober than they realized). I must admit when he finally killed the root of the tooth I felt a relaxation like I hadn't felt in YEARS. It was AWESOME (although of course now the sucker really hurts!) He said he didn't understand why no one could see anything wrong with this tooth the last time I had it looked at, since there was so much decay, and I reluctantly admitted how long it had really been since I had been to the dentist (blaming it on the various financial reversals of IT professionals since things started getting outsourced to India, and our sporadic dental insurance)--and he (and the hygenist) both said, "sounds like my world." I didn't want to admit that part of the reason no one has looked at my teeth in years
is primarily that I have become dental phobic and I just hate the f****** dentist! But I'm sure he knew.

So, Darth Vader signing off now--I really really want another pain pill!!!!

Pleasant Valley Mom, wanting sleep

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The Joys of Neanderthal Teeth, or Trying to Make It Until Root Canal Time

Well folks, this will be short today because I am doped up. I finally went to the dentist yesterday about my teeth since I broke a filling and lost part of a tooth a week ago Friday!!! I have been so busy and with the snow and everything, I just could not seem to get in to the dentist. Well, now I need a root canal in addition to a crown, and I am scheduled to see a specialist (endodontist) on Thursday at 9:30 am. So I am going to be doped up a bit this week and taking antibiotics until I can get this tooth fixed. I was fine while I was writing my email but all of a sudden that hydrocodone haze has descended and I know that I am getting loopy!!! It's almost time to get the girls up and I feel like I am stoned.

I am afraid that I have developed a dreadful dental phobia in the last few years. I am a mouth breather so going to the dentist has always been miserable for me. I have had 3-4 root canals (one had to be redone so I don't know if that counts as a fourth root canal or not). The one that had to be redone took FOUR visits to fix and the dentist who did it (not the one who did it the first time) told me to never get another root canal done by an ordinary dentist but to use an endodontist. She claimed that I have extra roots in my teeth or something and that they are very weird. My teeth are not as evolved as most people's. Does this mean I have neanderthal teeth? Well, probably not but let's call it that. Neanderthal teeth.

I really really really hate the dentist. No matter how nice they are. When I had my wisdom teeth out in high school, three of the four were impacted. I'm the only person I know who stayed in bed for four days after her wisdom teeth came out. I was so swollen that I had black eyes. It was a lovely sight. No one saw me for a week. I believe I got to do this over spring break Senior Year. I remember that the dentist's name was Bruce and he was really cute. I remember that it cost $350 (my mom complained about it of course). I also remember that it was HELL.

I am a mouth breather and an asthmatic, so being at the dentist is always absolutely horrible for me, no matter how much gas they give me. I want to be gassed, even for a cleaning, and I want to listen to really loud music and try to pretend I am not there. I think I will take my ipod this time and try to zone out as much as possible, plus take the codeine to the office and see if they want me to take it before the procedure (although the gas would be nice too and I should probably just hold out for the gas; I'd just rather be stoned). I am hoping to get R to drive me and wait and drive me home, and take his computer to work there if necessary. I have to go all the way to Carrollton because the endodontist in our town isn't on our insurance, so I don't really want to be driving home all the way from Carrollton after the root canal experience, or sitting around in the office waiting for him. For me in terms of stress it's like having surgery; actually worse because I'm awake for it.

The weird thing is that most of the pain is in my lower jaw but those teeth actually look fine, including the ones that have had root canals in the past. This is not the first time someone has told me this. Could it all be in my head? I can't imagine that I am imagining this tooth pain though--that doesn't sound like me. So the pain feels like it is lower but is may actually all be related to this upper tooth that fell apart ten days ago. Because it has been bothering me for some time but I have been trying to ignore it, I haven't had a cleaning in some time either, so now they want to do scaling. Yuk. Even having the hygenist talk about it was making my skin crawl. I know I probably really need to do this and it looks like it is covered by insurance now (which it wasn't before), but I am really dreading dreading dreading it!!!!

Does anyone else out there hate the dentist? What in the world is wrong with me, putting this off for ten days? The dentist did give me the codeine of course, so I guess he believes that I am really in a lot of pain. Maybe I just supress some of it. Anyway, I feel a lot better with the codeine but of course, like usual when I am on medication of different types, it makes it hard to function. Today we have to do the Scouts presentation board for Thinking Day on the country of Colombia. How appropriate. Note to self: No codeine after Noon. Must sober up in time to do presentation board etc. Defrost something easy and early and crash about 5 pm. There's always chicken soup, and if I'm not too out of it today I could make some noodles for it.

It didn't help that last night I had to go to DI training until almost 10 pm over in Carrollton. I got a ride since I have no business driving, and then I couldn't leave because she was giving another lady a ride home. I mostly went to find out some key DI information; there wasn't anything else much that was new about the training, and my drugs wore off. Then when I got home R and I had to print out consignment tags (yes, still doing that), print out pictures from Colombia, staple fabric to the presentation board and set up a spreadsheet for DI. Well, R did most of this for me because I was too loopy to do it, of course. I tried to watch Lost but I fell asleep, so no exciting blog about that today. Maybe in a few days after the root canal is done. A friend said recently that you should never put off procedures involving your feet or your teeth, and I am guilty of doing both.

Man, I really really really hate the dentist. And my Neanderthal Teeth. Somebody wake me up when it is over!!!

Pleasant Valley Mom, more like Valley of the Dolls today