Category Archives: General

Aug19

A Good Day, Overall

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A Good Day, Overall

Got up and did an hour long walk. I’ve been exploring different routes in our little warren of developments, trying to find different ways of walking for an hour so I don’t get bored. So far, I haven’t gotten bored, although I did get lost once. (It’s a hazard of living somewhere where the roads stop for a few blocks, then pick up later with the same name. Sometimes more than once.)

The girls and I then hit the K-Mart, because there were a couple of everyday items we needed, and it’s in the same place as our nail place. I reasoned that it would be better to paw through plastic-wrapped merchandise and dig through the wallet to pay for it >before< the nails were painted and pristine. Good idea, since the kids, despite moaning about not having supply lists yet, were thrilled to find such cool back to school stuff, and we ended up needing a cart. I still like Target better, but you can’t beat $10 backpacks. Well, maybe you can, but not when you didn’t have to spend extra gas money to get to them. Then we all got manicures and pedicures. A couple of the manicurists are new (one is the daughter of the owners – they decided it was time she stopped sleeping in all day and did something useful. Heh.) so it was a little less expensive, and Carolyn got some art on her ring fingers for free.

I was feeling very, very motivated to take a nap. However, I’m still getting the stupid heart palpitations, and no way am I wasting a sleeping pill on a nap, so I started sewing instead. I did the three shirts, since those are super easy, offering about as close as you can get to instant gratification when it comes to sewing. Hubby, seeing I was really, really focused, and getting stuff done for a change, ordered and picked up Chinese food for dinner. Probably too many points, if it weren’t for the fact that I’d eaten only three points before that all day. Scarfed down some mu shu veggies, then back to work. After I place the straps on Carolyn’s vest, it’ll be no time at all to get it sewn, Audrey’s will be the same thing, pretty quick. Mine requires some hand sewing, and then I think I’ll make it a group project to place and set the grommets. Unfortunately, the grommet tools they sell in the craft stores are pretty cruddy, so we’ll actually have to very carefully mark and hand-cut the holes first. The good tools, however, run about $150, and unless I decide to make a complete wardrobe of corsets for myself, the kids, and everyone I know, I don’t think they’re in the budget.

Aug17

I Need to Learn to Make Movies.

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I Need to Learn to Make Movies.

I have this idea. One of the threads on an ADD forum I visit asked if non-ADD people could really, truly understand what it’s like. Most of us who know we have it are pretty certain they don’t, partly because of our difficulty dealing with people who have no tolerance, and sometimes because of the comments we hear all the time. (“I lose my keys all the time! Maybe I have ADD!” “There’s no such thing as ADD, that’s just an excuse for being lazy!” “If the drug companies didn’t make so much money off Ritalin, there’d be no such thing as ADD!”) So anyway, I made a joke about how we have those glasses to simulate drunkenness for driver ed classes, and those “pregnancy bellies” they put on expectant fathers in Lamaze class, wouldn’t it be great to have a film of the things that are going through our heads as we go through what are routine tasks to everyone else, showing all the things we’re trying to process at once? Of course, being ADD, I have the entire thing all planned out – had it planned out before I even finished typing the post. But. . .making the film would involve learning how to take the film from the video camera and put it on the computer, edit in scrolling text, and learn some editing techniques to put in the associated images that flash in and out, add narration, figure out how to put it up on youtube. . .but first I have to buy the shelf for the laundry room and organize all the stuff that’s in the piles next to the computer so I’d have room, and I have only a week to finish the Renaissance Faire costumes, and if the weather cools down, I should take advantage of that and move the wood chips into the garden beds. And that has to be done a day or two before I get my nails done, because it would ruin the manicure, and I don’t want to get that done too far ahead of our trips next week, and I’ll have to get the girls up early because they want to go, too. And if we’re all going out, we’ll be near the K-Mart, and we should pick up school supplies – I hope we get the list soon – and if the shelves are organized, then I can put some of the school supplies there. When they start at school, before I start getting calls for substitute work, maybe I can learn then. But I’d be filming in my house, so I’d want to finish painting the hallway, but before I do that, I’ll have to move all the china out of the china cabinet so I can move it away from the wall and nail in the baseboards and caulk.

But. . .but. . .I know exactly what I would do, the text that would be in the scrolling text, how it would end. . .everything! What I really need to do is find someone else who already knows how to make movies, and convince him or her to make it for me. *sigh*

Aug15

Poor Carolina Wren!

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Poor Carolina Wren!

My friend Gayle, whose brother is a birder, got me the information a while back about the bird whose song I found so entertaining. I thought it was multiple birds, but it turns out that it was a Carolina Wren with a very full tummy. These are tiny, adorable little brown feathered birds with a repertoire of song, and what I read said that they will sing continuously for up to 30 minutes after a good meal. My kind of bird!

Unfortunately, Dave’s kind of bird, too. I went out to get the mail today, and there inside one of the sandals I’d left outside the door to dry off from the beach, was a little feathered body. Audrey said she would give the cat a stern talking-to, which I told her would have little or no effect. Hubby tried to console us with the thought that the bird was probably too sick or injured to escape Dave. I assured him that the cat had amazing predatory skills. Audrey agreed. . .”Dave has mad skills” she told us. We’ll start calling him Napoleon, I guess.