Well, if you put it that way.... .

"and he shall be a son, and you shall name him Jesus..."

"NO, Auntie NTE: Issa girl!"

"What, honey?"

"Da baby. That mama's baby: is gonna be a girl."

"um.. no, honey, that's the baby Jesus, remember? Yeah, and baby Jesus is a boy."

"He can be a girl, too. Anybody can be a girl."

Ah, feminism: starting early and interestingly, wouldn't you say?

(This is about 3 hours after we had a discussion about waiting for the "man who is coming to repair the dryer" and I had added that it could be a woman who might come, so it's nice to know that she's paying attention. Of course, the dryer repairMAN screwed that all up, what with his being male and all, but it's the thought that counts).

I'm downloading I-tunes

because, ugh, I'm trying to upload some Christmas music to my mum's I-pod, and I'm too lazy to figure out the Media Player apps that would make it work that way. So, I-tunes it is. Problem #A is that I have literally 7 GB of space left on my hard drive. As you can imagine that means it runs vvveeeryyy slow. Problem Letter2 is that 6 hours from now when the stupid thing is finally installed, I will have to figure out how to use I-tunes (which is supposedly very user friendly).

We shall see.

Nothing, after all, is idiot-proof.

Did you ever watch True Life?

Yeah, I know: it's on MTV, which, ordinarily keeps it off my radar screen, but it's been on all day today (and NOTHING else has... even my poor Tivo is out of options for me: grr), and I caught a few episodes.

Let me just say, if these lives are true, then I'm afraid for the world.

It's even scarier than The Hills (which I have never seen, except for the clips The Soup shows of it, but just from them it's one of the saddest things ever), because these people are living their lives this way. I just want to yell at them through the tv..."If he says he wants you and his pregnant girlfriend, then the correct response is not 'I'll think about it', but rather something that involves bodily orifices and sharp pointy objects!"

But I know they wouldn't listen - people can convince themselves of some crazy shit.

In case you are not lucky enough

to have a 2 1/2 year old in your life, let me explain what it is like.

It is like having a tiny, constant narrator to your life/day. It doesn't matter what you are doing, it will need to be said:

"You are eating breakfast?"
"You will take your medicine?"
"You gonna go potty?" (and, of course, "I come in wit chu.")
"You come play wit me now?"
"We play Care Bears. You be Grumpy."
"I'm playing Playdoh!"

There's questions, statements, exclamations, and a million different attitudes and variations, but no matter what you are doing, it will need to be said.

Many, many times.

If you have just said "I'm going to get the cars," then she will feel compelled to repeat that statement in the form of a question: "You goina get da cars?"

If you ask a question, "What are we going to do with this mess?" It will need to be repeated before it can be answered: "Whats we goin to do wit dis mess? We has to clean it up, da mess we made."

There will be orders: "You don't look at me!" and inquiries "Whats dat? Whatz dis? Where's she goin? Why she's doin that?" and chit chat aplenty, and it's all developmentally normal, and wonderful for all sorts of excellent reasons (vocabulary building, skill building, curiosity factor as an element of learning and growth, blah de blah about educational philosophy and all that here), but sometimes? You'd just like to do some ordinary something (let's say... going to the bathroom), without all of the constant chatter.

Who wants to watch the director's commentary before they've had a chance to actually enjoy the movie? Who needs someone to point out to an entire store full of people that, yes, you did actually just trip over absolutely nothing and almost knock down a display?

Most days, the "yiddle" one's loquaciousness is charming, a part of her that I wouldn't change for anything. Today? I just wanted to pee in peace.

Indian Givers!

Yesterday we went to Costco to escape a smell (the theme of my week could best be summed up in the musical I am currently writing: The World Smells - and It Hates Me), and they had The Tale of Beedle Bard by J.K. Rowling, sitting amongst their stacks of books. I was pretty happy, since I was going to pick it up for SisterK for Christmas, and it was a couple of bucks cheaper than Amazon. So I scooped one up and then entertained Lil Girl while Mum stood in line (it was a short line, but Lil Girl had reached the end of her patience and Pull Up by then). When she finally gets through, they told her that she couldn't buy it.

Turns out they were not supposed to put it out until today, and would get fined $10,000 if they sold it to us that extra day early.

I have to say that I only sort of wanted it until they told us we couldn't have it, and then I really, really wanted it. I also might have muttered something under my breath about how they would have to pay the $10,000 not me, and how maybe I didn't think that looked like such a bad deal to me. But I just let it go. But for those 10 seconds there, I was like "MINE!"

(Also: I don't like the term Indian Givers - unless it applies to the people who gave things to the Indians, and it doesn't - but I couldn't think of what else to call it... any suggestions?)

A little book love <3

I never knew that gifting books was soControversial. There seem to be a lot of people who fall into the "it's too personal a choice" category and would rather give/get gift cards. I am not one of those people.

I do always get the "But you read so much - and so fast - we don't know if you've already read it" type complaints from my family about buying me books. It's just that... I don't care: Even if I've already read it, that just means you know me really well, because you picked something that I picked for myself. And with Paperback Swap, no book goes to waste... if it's a double, I trade it for something I haven't read yet. So I think they worry needlessly. Because some of my all-time best presents were books: It was Nana who introduced me to Laura Ingalls Wilder and all the adventures in the big woods; one of my aunts that showed me the joys of Ramona Quimby, Age 8; and Grandmother who introduced me to the fabulous queen of romance, Nora Roberts; a friend who suggested I try Julia Quinn's Bridgertons.

But I can understand why some people would choose to shy away from giving books as gifts: Reading is intensly intimate.

I, however constantly find myself thinking of the people in my life as I am reading a book... Sister J is going to love Twilight, I thought as I was reading it, AND SHE SOO DOES: she now claims to be "obsessed to a scary point" with the characters and read more than 2000 pages in less than a week; Because it was the best book on writing I'd ever read, I gave 15 year old Sister K Escaping Out Into The Open for Christmas one year, and she was as enthralled as I was and - like me - she continues to look to it for inspiration.
I tell people that the reason Olivia is so popular is because way back when it first came out, I bought it for Best Friend/College Roommate for Christmas and the other girls in my dorm (a dorm full of education majors, mostly) borrowed it all the next semester & eventually bought their own copies because the kids in their classes loved it so much. I give grown up books to children (appropriate grown up books, watch your dirty minds) because when I was 11 my mother lent me her copy of It and it changed the way I looked at the world and I give children's books to adults because I want them to look at the world differently too.

The point is not what YOU like, exactly, but about what you think THEY'D like. You have to be considerate of their likes/dislikes.

For example, NEVER get anything that's preachy (if you're religious and they're not steer clear of the Christian based romances; if you're a liberal and they're a conservative staying away from I am America & So Can You is probably a good idea), but initiating people into something new is not completely out of line (like graphic novels? Try to find one that works for your recipient's likes, something new but not frightening so).

I don't understand people who don't like reading... it seems impossible to me. Usually, I tell them they just haven't met the right book yet, like a yenta who's sure she's got the right man up her sleeve, just waiting to be introduced.

Sometimes it doesn't work out (like the time I absolutely loved The Secret History of the Pink Carnation and passed it on to Mum, who thought it was just 'eh' or the time Grandmother sent over a book about a deaf priest and the miracles he's performing which.. not so much for me), but that's ok.

You just keep trying till you get the right match.


A perfect book: there's really nothing like it.


Which is all just really to say, please pop on over to Buy Books For the Holidays to check out my recommendations for Books to Buy for Romance Readers this holiday season

Today I gave myself a time out

After a week filled with people coming and going, food that needed baking, children that needed minding (and reminding), nights that needed filling (as sleep was largely absent) and a whole lot of stuff that still needs to get done - and with an upcoming week that looks scheduled to the extreme as well, I came home from my grandmother's house today to find that Dad - who is on vacation this week and can't seem to stay on my good side when it comes to smells - had washed the kitchen floor (with barcolene), put up a new plastic (and odoriferous) shower curtain, and washed all the windows (with Windex!) That's three horrific smells all bundled together, and I nearly threw up - and then I nearly threw a fit.

Struggling to breathe - and not to cry - I decided I had had enough, and went in my room and shut the door. It was a little after 3, which is twilight around here this time of year, so I put some Christmas music on shuffle, the heating pads on high, and my head on the pillow.

I just laid here, in the dark: rotating every few minutes to relieve pressure on the sorest points and get heat onto a few different points, hitting the next key on my remote, during the volume up and down as I willed it. And I thought. I thought about all the things that have gone wrong since this time last year, and all the things that have gone right. I thought about how I don't know where we'll all be next month, let alone next Christmas. I thought about all of the issues that need to be dealt with within my family, and how I just don't want to be the person who has to deal with them any more. I thought about all the excuses, all the explanations; all the avoidances & all the annoyances. I thought about all the things we'd hoped for this year, and all the ways we've failed: all the ways I wanted my life to be different at this point, and all the ways I haven't managed to change it.

Basically, I laid around in a lot of pain, feeling sorry for myself, and figuring I deserved it.

And I did. I deserve to feel badly for all the things that haven't gone right - to mourn all of the losses we've accumulated. It's not out of line to have myself a little pity party when I've just come back from writing thank you notes to all the people who showed up at my uncle's funeral, to a house that's uninhabitable to me and people who get pissed off because they think they are helping when they are so obviously doing the opposite.

It's been a bad year, in a lot of ways. And the bad times? They don't look like they're especially ready to let up. So, ok: lay in the dark and feel sad for a little bit. Roll over and over with tears running down the sides of your face as you listen to songs that are supposed to be cheery. That's OK, that's alright, you're only human.

But then you have to look at all you've got, too: you have to get to the point where you're ready to say "Yeah, that really sucked. And it'll probably still suck tomorrow, too, but you can do it anyways."

And that's OK too. Because I know I can do it. Because as much as the people I love drive me crazy (and They Do. The End.), we're in this together. Because as much as it sucks that I feel this bad, I've felt worse. Because there is, at this very moment, some person in a lab coat looking at my blood and thinking 'WTF?', and a few years ago they weren't even doing that. Because as much as it's true that I'm nowhere near where I wanted to be at this point in my life, I've still got the chance, I've still got time & hope & opportunities.

So I'm going to remember to give myself some time outs in the next few weeks, as the always overwhelming holiday season interacts with grief and chaos to produce an even more stressful time for all of us. And if laying in the dark for a while with my brain shut off *as much as is possible for me* is what it takes to get through it, then that's what I'm going to do.

Some days the merits of hermit-dom seem really, really great.

The cheese in this video on sort-of makes me reconsider.

Sort of.

It's the last day of NaBloPoMo,

and the temptation not to post is almost overwhelming. Nothing like sabotaging yourself at the very last minute, right? I'm getting some rest and cleaning out the TiVo (and probably the pumpkin pie pan) on this drizzly, dank Sunday here in Massachusetts. I had the house to myself for a part of the day, and that was a treat. A nice, quiet treat. I also bought some Christmas presents online, wrote a post (that I haven't published yet) for the Books for the Holidays blog, and backed up my computer to my hard drive. Now for this week's episode of House (What the heck was I doing on Tuesday this week?)

NaBloPoMo: completed.

:big sigh:

A quiz to pass the time.

You Are Chess

You are brilliant and shrewd. You can often predict what people will do in the future. You thrive in complex situations. You deal with contradictions well. You can have many streams of though going on at your mind at once. You keep track of things well. You are very patient. You have lots of endurance, even when your energy dwindles

What Board Game Are You?

Alright, I'll take that... I like the description, even though I never really liked chess. I like Wizard's Chess, though: much more exciting.

You couldn't get me into a brick and mortar store today

for all the money in the world.


But I'm willing to let you try.


Hope you are having a calm, relaxing post-Thanksgiving day. We're doing leftovers and game night tonight, and Youngest Nephew is going to sleep over. I am trying to take it easy, as I am sore as hell today. I fell last night, banged my back up a bit. I think it had to do with coming off of the medicine that's been making me dizzy & just being plain worn out.

I'm really bad at the whole walking-away-before-you're-completely-exhausted aspect of things, even 14 years into this whole chronic illness thing. Special occasions are especially difficult: walking away when things are just getting rolling, when everybody just starts laughing, when the game boards come out - yeah, that's really tough for me. But I know there are a lot of things between ALL IN and FALLING DOWN, and I just have to pay more attention to the other options; kick people out of my big chair, take the medicine before things get really bad... I know all of this, but I need to do it.

Sometimes I feel like a dope, wishing things could be different instead of doing things differently.

People...

they Rick Rolled the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. How awesome is that?

Of course: infinitely more awesome if someone in your house knows what the hell you are talking about, but that's what I have you for, right?

Happy Turkey Day, Friends.

Pie baking day

AKA Thanksgiving Eve.

It's been a hard year here in the world of NTE, and I'm feeling it quite a bit as the holidays get closer and closer. But, that doesn't mean that I'm not aware that there are many things that I have to be thankful for. Tonight, I'm going to remember that I have a lot of people in my life that are vital & important. That they make the hard times bearable, the normal times valuable, and the special times extraordinary.

For those of you who take the time to read this please know that I'm grateful to have you, too.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

My idea of fancy lately

Lil Girl put this on my finger first thing this morning, and then refused to let me take it off all day long. It's probably a sign of how sad my life is that it sort of made me feel weird. I don't even own rings that fit anymore. (And wouldn't wear them if I did), but having something on my finger just made me move my hand differently. Cuz I'm special like that.

Hello Peoples

... would you like to guess what I am? If you guessed 'sick' (and if you've been here more than once, why wouldn't you guess that?), then you are correct. It's the tonsils again. I do believe I would rip them out of my own throat at this point. It's feeling like a reasonable option today, where one tonsil - who apparently felt lonely - decided to triple in size in order to meet the other one on his side of my throat. Again. Me and my tonsils, we are fighting.
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In other news, the new med continues to make me dizzy (but definitely less than the first day), and I have to call Zack tomorrow because there has been no improvement in pain and he only gave me a week's worth of this stuff, so I don't know what I'm supposed to do next: keep taking it and wait or just knock it off? I think you know what my vote is.

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Yesterday I went to the mall. Because I AM AN IDIOT thought it would be good to spend time with my sisters. Unfortunately, the sister whose plan it was didn't actually have a plan. So there was a lot of random wandering of the mall, and texting tag ("In Hallmark: Meet at Sears?"), and although there were some nice/funny moments (like when SisterCh tried to shove me in the car that I was falling out of and said "But your BUTT can't hurt!" really loudly; or how SisterK put the wheelchair in the backseat and left herself no room for, you know, sitting; or how SisterJ was totally with me on the whole "this store is loud and annoying and we're just going to walk right back out" deal) I shouldn't have gone because, honestly, I was already getting pretty sick. And I knew it. But I felt bad about having to cancel so often, so I went. And... it was too long of a day for me and now I am paying for it. But, oh well, because still: I made the decision, I left the house, I got to hang with 3/5 sisters... we'll call it even.

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I meant to have a picture up for MBSM today, but that just ain't happening. I'm going to have to try for tomorrow, at which point, it will just be a random picture, but you're not going to complain, I don't think.

So... that's my update for today, I'll try to check out what you are up to soon!

If by 'lively' you mean 'batshit crazy and homicidal', then you're right on target.

Thanksgiving Horoscope for Gemini

You're the sign most likely to bring up interesting and controversial topics at Thanksgiving dinner. Your signature dish: Sweet potatoes with marshmallows Your signature dessert: Pumpkin cheesecake This holiday: Play bartender. You're family is much more lively with a few drinks in them.

What's Your Thanksgiving Horoscope?

A few yeses, a few nos

No, just... no.

And on the other hand a big fat yes.

Also no; and awesomely yes.

See how I almost forgot about you?

But I didn't.

And it wasn't so much a case of forgetting as it was a case of thinking I'd already written this, and then realizing I had written an e-mail to my friend instead. Since my blog is (mostly) anonymous, my IRL friends don't check up on me here, so I have to like... actually talk to them or send them e-mails or something in order to catch up with them. I know! It's prehistoric. Anyways, let me just recap what I was telling Best Friend/College Roommate:

It is very, very cold here ("Mid January temperatures" the weathermen proclaim gleefully as I wonder at their sanity. And also at the accuracy of our calendar - perhaps it is, in fact, Mid-January, but we just didn't notice. With the type of life I've been living lately, I would not be at all surprised.) Also, I don't really know why I told her it was cold here, as she lives 40 minutes away. Northern minutes, so, if anything, it's probably a few degrees colder than it is here. But I told her anyways.

I am on day two of a new medicine that makes me very woozy. So woozy that I am now appalled that I considered myself dizzy before this. But the doctor says that generally only lasts for a week or so. If you - or he - has a free week in which to feel like you are on a rocket ship even though you are not moving any part of your body - and especially not your head - please feel free to volunteer. I may not have much of a life, particularly, but the one I do have requires that I am somewhat able to converse with people without feeling like my head is filled with helium and is rising to the ceiling and I am barely holding on to the attached string.

The best thing about my new medication is that it makes No. Sense. Whatsoever. Not that this is new to me: It makes no sense for me to be on half the things I am on, but I take them anyways on the off chance that they might help me. But this new drug? Is stretching it even for me - It is a blood pressure medication for people with high blood pressure. To lower their blood pressure. I? Have very low blood pressure (and/or a very low pulse: it varies). I am taking this medication - a very, very, very low dose - because it has been shown to help blah de blah blood vessels, and they think that might help the blood flow around some of my more painful areas and... honestly? Zach lost me pretty quickly with this one. I thought I understood it yesterday... Wednesday, I mean, at the appt., but the woozy part is not helping me to remember it clearly. All I know is this - I am taking a medication that's originally designed to help lower people's blood pressures, and when I started taking it yesterday, mine immediately went up. And then down. And did the same again today. I do not understand it, and I do not like it. And I may give it the week, but if it doesn't start changing something - for the good - soon, I don't know how much longer I'm willing to take it.

The people who came to see the house on Wednesday are very interested. Extremely interested. This is good and bad - we, of course, have no other place to live, so should they go from 'extremely interested' to 'actively buying' in the near future, we will go from 'temporarily stuck in a bad living situation' to 'having no living situation', which I'm not sure is an improvement. But we'll just have to wait and see there: Mum continues to house hunt, I'm considering all my options. We'll see.

Other than that - Family members currently driving me insane = (I was totally going to count them up and everything, but what's the point) All; Craft projects started and as yet incomplete = 9; Local radio stations currently playing "all Christmas/all the time" and thereby making me want to boycott them for life = 2 (Dear Oldies 103.3 & WROR 105.7 - Midnight on Halloween is not the opening bell for the Christmas season - you are skipping over Thanksgiving, at the very least. Stop it. Seriously); Number of mice still taunting me somewhere in my room late at night = at least 1; Pies to bake next week = at least 3 (must hunt up new recipe for blueberry pie... do not like the way last years leaked); E-mails that still need to be written (off the top of my head) = 4; things that could keep this list going = infinite.

So there, that's my update. Anybody out there?

Ugh

Yeah today was a lot worse than yesterday: Post Doc PAIN & fatigue, a new med that's making me dizzy and faint-y, Lil Girl in an... emotional mood, and a sister demanding that I read 757 pages before she left for the midnight showing of Twilight. Other than that, quiet and peaceful.

Sure, quiet and peaceful.

I do not like this new medicine, but I'm remembering that my first week on Lyrica was sucky and a half, but it did wind up helping a tiny bit. I'll take another tiny bit and keep on building on it until I feel halfway human. Since today is not that day, this is the best post I'm capable of writing right now.

House Showing

and an appointment with Zack have made today a "must rest now" day. I'll check back tomorrow, and tell you all about the lady who saw our house today.