In which I feel like a foreigner. Or a liberal. Or something.

They had a parents' meeting at school today. Usually I find them A) Boring, because they address all the same stuff every time, and B) Encouraging, because they reinforce that the school has a positive, caring approach to education.

Today was all of that and more, where "more" is comprised largely of pretty basic psychology with which I don't disagree ("It's not your job to make your child happy, it's your job to provide your child with the tools with which to build his/her own happiness!"), but which I don't really need to sit in a very hard, too-small chair to nod along to.

There was also the requisite head-shaking at Society Today (TM) where, it seems, children think they can have it all and parents want to give children everything they, the parents, didn't have as kids. Except, of course, for those of us who had more growing up than they can currently provide to their children. Really I'm okay with it; we do have what we need and some extras, but I don't really need to be preached at about buying kids All The Latest Gadgets and watching them go un-played-with, TYVM. On a tiny, hard chair.

Plus, while I generally consider the school to be fairly progressive, we did hit a couple of snags this evening. It seems Society is in transition from a sexist society to...umm. NOT a feminist one, certainly not! But, well, something else anyway. It's very conFUsing, apparently. Do boys open doors for girls or do they don't? Do they pick up the tab on a date or will they get the evil eye for suggesting it? Apparently these are still Very Difficult Questions.

I had the unanticipated opportunity to make my own small pitch for Feminism and Fairness today, when the ballet class was discussed and I suggested that, next year, the girls be allowed to wear the same "uniform" as the boys. Currently, the girls are required to buy $25 worth of leotards and tights, plus the shoes which I don't even know how much those are because Julia's still fit. Plus a bun. The bun is very important.

Boys wear tank tops & shorts.

I suggested that girls are expected from a young age to invest time and money in their appearance, and that for the purposes of the dance class, what is really required is freedom of movement, which might be afforded by, say, tank tops & shorts.

The response was twofold: But it's ballet. So the ballet clothing Must Be Worn. However, of course we aren't going to be putting leotards on boys. Heavens no. Either the boys (in some cases) or their parents (in others) would never stand for that. The end.

There was also a question from the mother of a boy with shoulder-length hair, who has apparently been spoken to about Personal Presentation. This was answered with appropriate discussion of general personal grooming and such, but there was also a bit of "well, as long as it's not too long. I mean, it's not like we've had a boy who wanted his hair down to his waist."

I rather hope they get one. Or that Phillip becomes one.

Anyway. I still like the school very much and I think it is more progressive than most, (especially around here and within my budget). But jeez. Between the dumbed-down, feet-on-the-ground "it's okay to have your own needs" psychology (Which, again--not disagreeing, just been there and back and had other things to do this evening and softer chairs to do it on) and the not-quite-there-yet with respect to certain elements of feminism (like, for instance, being comfortable with the word "feminism"), I guess even in a parents' meeting at a Montessori school I'm The Liberal One.

Some favorites

Now that the new hard drive is running and trustworthy and everything, I finally got my massive backup file of photos off of Bob's computer and, at Lisa's suggestion, installed Picasa to help me deal with it. I had used Picasa before, but hadn't kept up with it.

Now that I'm starting fresh (and Picasa has more features), it seems to be a handy thing. I've spent a lot of these vacation days organizing the folders on my computer and eliminating duplicates, and checking Picasa's face recognition picks and adding ones it missed so that the "sort by people" feature is pretty well set up. It's very cool.

Yesterday I stuck a bunch of my favorites into the screensaver file, and I thought I'd share a few particular favorites here. There are still several CDs of photos that were backed up in a different place and haven't been restored to the new computer, but these are some of the best photos from the batch I've been working with this week:

Scintillating

We made cinnamon apple scone roll-ups, watched Underdog and I cleaned out all the long hair (and a little yarn) that had rolled up into the five wheels of the newest office chair.

The girls rode bikes (Well, bike. We only have one so far, and it's too small for either of them, but it does get a workout!) and played "chess" with the neighbor kid outside for a good part of the afternoon. It looked like the board was set up right, and the one move I saw (a knight) was correctly executed, but I'm not real sure how far beyond that it adhered to standard rules.

In other news, the parrot seems to be entering That Time of the Year, when she pines for company (it's actually quite a good time to get to know her) and, this year anyway, shreds everything she can get her beak on, presumably for nesting fodder. I can't exactly provide her with what she really wants, but I figured I could at least give her a box in which to deposit her newspaper shreds, and maybe even sit in for a while. Well, she loved that. Shredded it into tinier pieces than the newspaper. Twenty-four hours later, I can't even see where it was.

And now we have a Mystery Leak in -- well, under -- the toilet.

See? Scintillating.

Daily highlights

Bob was at work and I wanted to finish the quilting I was doing last night, so I talked Robin through making dinner - pasta with sauce from a packet, and some boiled corn. That went over very well, and needless to say, I've Created A Monster. She immediately wanted us to commit to having pasta for dinner the following night.

So today I let her mix up the pancake batter for lunch and she had a bit of a lesson in Roundness and Gravity and the Combined Effects Thereof. And the kitty had a snack.

This afternoon the girls and I drove into San Jose to pick up the bus tickets for our trip to Nicaragua next week. The actual ticket buying went very well, although it turned out they don't take debit cards, so we did have to walk a few blocks through not the greatest part of downtown, over to an ATM. This in turn afforded us a several-block conversation about alcohol and drugs and why people might try them initially, and what it can lead to in their lives.

Then there was a car accident outside when we were back at the counter buying the tickets. Everyone in the bus station except the guy behind the counter ran en masse to the door and out it, to spectate. I started after them, since my car was parked just out of sight, but they all got to the door and started ogling to the north, and happily we were parked to the south, so I returned to my transaction.

Random aside: If kitty comes to me with the big-ass spiders she kills, does that mean she's accepted me as one of her own? I'm guessing since I trade her for a treat (that she not consume it outright), she's prolly not going to be stopping any time soon.

Well, that was anticlimactic

I have posted at least once every single day since ... well, I'll go back and look it up eventually, but it was sometime before November 2007, and it was officially so as of January 4, 2008.

But, no more.

We had a really really stay-in day yesteryday; I made grandma's apple crisp for a mid-morning snack, and oven fries for part of our dinner, we watched two movies and played lots and LOTS of computer games (the girls have discovered The Sims), and I finished Julia's bag. Well, almost finished (photos forthcoming).

Since the girls are on vacation, their bedtime is more flexible, and I didn't get Julia settled till after 9:00 pm, and then it was 9:30, and then it was just too late to run out to the Internet café. So I didn't.

Oh well, lots of changes going on in life, I guess this is one of them. I'll probably still keep blogging daily, but the angst over missing one no longer seems to be an issue.

For the record, there is a pay-as-you-go dialup option and I made a couple of attempts to figure that out, but it was a little too elusive for my 10:00 pm brain to deal with. Plus, well, you know. Dialup.

Crafty. Like tricksy, only not.

Thought I'd take a few minutes to post before leaving work today, in case I don't feel like going back out to the café in the evening.

These are the photos I took of Julia's bag under construction. It's not completely done yet, so there's no actual "After" picture.

These are the pants with the inseam removed, basically converting them into (slightly funky) yardage (but with a waistband in the middle, even though it's not real obvious in this photo):

The flared legs on the pants seemed like a nice shape for the bag itself, so I used one whole leg and the bottom of the other, trimming the upper leg part to match the flare.

Julia picked a green print with pink flowers for the lining, and a matching pink for the pockets. The colors are way off in this photo, but you can see the inside pockets sewn onto the lining fabric, before making the lining itself.

This is the complicated step - the one where you refer back to the pattern, even if you get how to put the rest of it together. The bag and lining are each made by taking a long strip of fabric and basically folding it in thirds. The top third is the flap, and doesn't get sewn down. The other two thirds get sewn up the sides to make the bag part.

Then you put it all together by turning the outer bag inside out and putting it inside the lining which is rightside out (meaning that the right side of the fabric is on the inside - where it will be once the whole thing is finished...got that?) and sew around the flap and rim. This is what it looks like at that stage:

And then you turn it all rightside out and topstitch everything you can reach, and make a strap. I'll post another picture once it's completely finished.

One to go

I took Julia to the thrift store this morning to see if we could find some pants or lightweight jeans that she would like for her bag, but which would be simpler to sew than the pair of regular denim jeans I had planned on using.

Well, that didn't go as planned.


On the bright side, it's reportedly going to be the coolest bag in the WORLD. So there's that.

One down

I spent all day making Robin's Christmas messenger bag from a pair of pants we got (for that purpose) at the thrift store, and some lining fabric she picked out of my stash. We're all pleased with the results.


Why, yes. I did go cross-eyed sewing those striped pockets to that checked lining. Thanks for asking.








Julia's is going to be made out of a pair of jeans which, I realized while I was working today, is considerably heavier fabric than the khaki-type pants in Robin's. Wish us well.

"Country lane" defined

I keep calling our street a "country lane." Here's what I mean by that:


We're really not out in the country in any sense of the word, but the seven houses on our cul-de-sac (three adjoining across the end of the road, and four adjoining off to one side) are at the end of a single short block with a corn & coffee & squash field on one side and a grassy field with citrus trees on the other side. The only cars that ever drive down it are the five or six that live at the end of it, so the kids (I've seen at least 10, aged from two to eleven) have the run of it most of the time.

That's Julia, honing her newfound bicycle prowess.

Quick update

Just a quickie, cause it's already past dinner time and there's nothing here for the kids to do while I skim my Facebook feed and toss a quick post up.

Julia had hesitated to go out and play with the neighborhood kids (I estimate 10 or 12 in our seven-house cul de sac), because she has a bike but never learned to ride it without training wheels. So today we took them off and taught her. I knew it would come quickly, because she's good at sports and physical things, so once she had a flat street and some time, it took about half an hour.

Then she made friends with the 9 year old next door, and spent the rest of the day with her.

We made our first batch of cookies this morning - just chocolate chip, nothing complicated - but there were enough to eat a bunch and share a bunch and freeze a bunch, and tomorrow or Monday we'll make another kind.

Kay, time to get going; more tomorrow!

FINally, she posts some PICtures...

Posting a few photos at last. Christmas, after all the hectic and tiring and overwhelming that led up to it, was lovely. The tree was...well, okay. The girls liked their presents, we sat around and watched A Muppet Christmas Carol and napped and played with the new toys and the cat (and made new toys for the cat) all day. Just like it's supposed to be.

Then we even found a grocery store open in the evening, so there are cookie ingredients for tomorrow and everything we need for dinner & breakfast.

Now we're here to check email and post (and say hi to the new neighbors starting to move in downstairs), and then back home.

Look! Space! Yes, the shelves in the bedroom and the space under the bed are packed solid, but the living space is totally livable. We actually have a table. At which to eat and do puzzles, even if other people are home and wanting to do other things. At the very same time.

Well, I got what I wanted for Christmas

...which is have all our stuff (except this here computer, plus a chair and small table) in the new house.

An added benefit to that is that I now know the new place won't get any more crowded with boxes and stuff. It can only improve from here.

We hung some quilts on the wall (provisionally, where there were already hooks) and it made a big difference in the bedroom especially, which had been starkly functional until now, and I don't mean that in a good way.

I'm not feeling very Christmasy, what with all the work we've done and still need to do, but knowing the move itself is behind us is, truly, what I wanted and I got it.

Now I'm back here at the online computer to do my Christmas shopping for the girls. It's not as bad as it sounds, though. I have their stocking gifts all bought and wrapped, but the other gifts I want to give them have online components.

One is a membership to an online computer game they love playing, so I need to find out the terms they offer so I can decide how many months they get, and also find something to print out and wrap up to actually physically give them.

The other is that they'll be home with me most of the next week, so I thought a good gift that I wouldn't have to deal with before Christmas would be to find simple sewing patterns for a purse (for Robin) and a tote bag (for Julia) and let them pick the fabrics from my stash and help me make them.

So I need to find some patterns for them to choose from and, again, something to print out and wrap.

And the final thing is to bake cookies together over the coming week, but I can look up recipes for that in my cookbooks (which finally got moved today), or online when the time comes. I have cookie cutters and some of the specialty ingredients (chocolate chips and sprinkles) so there's something for them to open in connection with that.

Bob's giving the whole Christmas Tree In A Land Without Tree Stands thing some thought, and we'll cobble together whatever he figures out when I get home. I bought some ornaments (Costa Rican grocery stores gather all their Christmas stuff in a 1/4 aisle and mark it 70% off several days before Christmas, it turns out), and we made some, and they can do popcorn strings if we all feel up to it.

So.

Gotta go gooping. (That's googling/shopping, you see.)

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Stopping by apartments on a chilly morning

Had to come by here on the way to the office this morning to pick up the hand truck that I borrowed from work.

Well, okay, and because it turns out that all of my pants are still here, except for the paint-stained jeans I'd been wearing the entire weekend.

There's still just as much to do here as there was yesterday (except for one [1] carload of sixty gazillion [60Gz] books, that I moved yesterday), but now the kids are away till Christmas Eve (or Day) and work should be very low-key, and the roads are very clear (except for that one ambulance-worthy accident we passed this morning) and hopefully the next few days will be productive without being crazy-making.

I went ahead and got a Christmas tree with the girls last night, which I envisioned as being an extra-special, unexpected Making Christmas Happen thing for them, but in fact we couldn't see the tree in the dark, Robin cried because we were killing it, and Julia fretted that it would fall off the roof of the car and damage things.

Oh well.

But now we have it, and it looks pretty nice in the light of day, and smells good, and that's one more thing partially dealt with. Next up, figuring out how to stand it up and get it water in the Land Without Tree Stands.

Okay, off to work. I did take a few pictures of the wreckage of the old place and the Lovable Insanity that is the new one, so those'll be appearing eventually.

Happy Monday, y'all.

Walls: White

I stopped by the place on the way to work this morning and there was a little old man with a big long roller who had already painted half the walls by 8:00 a.m.

Bob stopped by on his way home from work just now, and he said all the walls are painted, so the guy will be doing the edging tomorrow.

He was really nice this morning, and I'm sure we can take the girls over to see it, and maybe run a few carloads over in the afternoon, once he's finished a room or two.

I carried a dozen boxes down to the garage while Bob was at work, but I can't really tell yet how it's going to go. There are empty shelves and things, but there's still a lot more to do.

The girls were all excited when I brought them home this afternoon, so I gave them each a suitcase and let them put things into them; that lasted about 15 minutes, but at least they have their part, and can do more of it if they get the urge.

I may not sound like this in a few days, but...

For a family that's fixing to move less than a week before Christmas, we're ticking along pretty calmly here.

I took my commute on ... I think it was Monday ... to get myself from "How on EARTH am I ever going to get the girls presents they'll like and care about for Christmas?" to a simple, realistic and pleasing plan for how to do exactly that.

I shopped for stocking stuffers on my way home from work for the last couple of days, and I'm wrapping them this evening. I've also picked up a couple of immediate essentials for the new house, like an on-demand heater for the shower (most Costa Rican homes, including the one we're moving to, have no centralized hot water) and a pack of compact fluorescent bulbs. For the most part, the things we're going to have to acquire will come afterwards: curtains by me and some extra table/shelf action by Bob are the main ones.

We can't get a tree till after we move, so there's no dealing with that till next week. We've made a bunch of Moravian stars to decorate it with, we can string some popcorn, and I'll buy some lights and red balls. Voila, pretty, homemade tree.

The neighbor who sold us Bob's fridge when he moved here actually wants it back, so we don't have to figure out how to sell that or whether to move it.

I don't see doing a whole lot of packing until this weekend, since it's such a nearby thing and we can take the small stuff over ourselves either before or before and after the furniture goes on Sunday. Not like everything has to be boxed on a deadline for someone else to deal with.

The things I most want to have taken care of, aren't really in my hands. I was worried about scheduling with the girls while I'm off work, so I wrote the email that needed to be written, and now I just need to wait for a response. I'm a little concerned about the painting in the house, but it all sounded really good on Tuesday. Hopefully there's no problem there.

So...I guess I'll just get back to wrapping the stocking stuff and maybe make sure the wine from the other night hasn't gone off.

Came back to add:

I realized after I hit Publish, got the wine, and went back to the wrapping that the reason having a glass of wine while wrapping the gifts felt so right was that, nine years ago about this time, I was wrapping Christmas presents with Mom in my apartment in High Point, and she offered to pour us some wine. I only had a little because the big present we had for everyone that year (which Mom of course didn't yet know) was the news that I was expecting Julia, who was born the following August.

In which "cream" is a difficult concept

The children and their local grandparents have now seen and approved the house, and apparently the landlady got our letter giving notice on the second apartment last night, because there's a For Rent sign on our gate now. My neighbor down the street knows a community group that might want to buy our soon-to-be-spare refrigerator, and the phone company work order has been posted at the new place. I've spoken with the next door neighbor a few times now, and she seems very nice. There are seven houses on the cul-de-sac and at least three of them have very young children. Pamela, next door, is five and an only child. Michael, across the way, didn't want to eat his hot dog the day we were seeing the house for the first time, and was threatened with having his kiddie slide taken apart - apparently for the second time that day. Two children of maybe four and six were at the next house after Pamela's when we stopped by today. No sign yet of older kids.

The owner was ... he seems nice enough, but I think communicating with him is going to be a learned skill. When we first saw the house, I asked if it would be okay with him if we painted, and his response was, "What do you mean?"

...How do you clarify "is it okay if we paint the walls?"

When I went back to pay the deposit, he asked again, "What were you trying to say about painting it?" So I said we meant that we would buy the paint, and we would do the work, and then he wanted to know what color. I said white or cream, and he wanted to know what I meant by "cream". After a while I think he accepted that by "cream," I didn't in fact mean "vermilion with chartreuse tiger stripes" and, as I say, he seemed to indicate that he would do the painting. There was (needless to say) some conversation about which walls we might be talking about (Umm. The ones with all the fingerprints on them from the previous tenants? IOW, all of them?) I can only assume that whatever he does will be this weekend, since we start renting as of the 15th.

So, the question of the hour is, when do we move? We can either do it over next weekend and early Christmas week, and have Christmas there, or we can hold out and have Christmas here (which would mean putting up a tree, like, NOW), and move the week between Christmas and New Year's.

The girls are in complete agreement that WE SHOULD MOVE NOW. TODAY. WHEN CAN WE GO SEE IT AGAIN??? And Bob and I are shuffling through the factors to decide what'll actually happen.

Well, THAT'S never happened before.

So we spent most of the day playing the Harry Potter game (it took the three of us most of the day to get Julia's Harry past the Flipendo level) and drawing temporary tattoos on each other. (Well, okay. Mostly it was me drawing them on everyone. Robin got a butterfly and Julia got a parrot and I got a purple gecko.)

And then while I was cooking dinner they started calling from the living room, but I was all cooking eggs and not about to leave them to go look at the computer, and when I finally did, it turned out something had...happened.

The entire display was rotated 90º clockwise. And the children were still playing the game.

I put an end to that, took them in the kitchen and fed them dinner, then came back out to see what there was to see. I posted a jokey little complaint on Facebook, then restarted the computer to fix the problem.

Except.

It didn't fix. Windows came up and said, "Hey, your resolution and color depth are pretty low, how's 'bout I fix that for ya?" And I said sure, and it did. But apparently Windows had no issue with the whole having-to-crane-your-neck-90º-to-the-right-in-order-to-get-your-hand-eye-coordination-to-work-enough-to-put-the-mouse-where-you-want-it thing.

I tried a few things, complained on Facebook again, and eventually went for help. Bob came up and tried a few things, then helped me turn the monitor on its side (which looked weirder than you'd think - I took a picture but I don't feel like downloading it right now) and then he went downstairs to Google it for me.

Then he came back upstairs and fixed it, yay, the end.

Nice day

The Grinch wouldn't play, so we watched The Gods Must Be Crazy II instead. Julia and I fell asleep, but we'd already seen it. I like the badger part.

I made Robin's cake today; mocha cake with extra dark cocoa powder. Very rich and very yummy. I'm surprised it didn't keep us all awake for the movie, but then we only had small pieces.

Robin got some really nice presents from my family; Lisa faked us out with a Harry Potter computer game that we all started enthusing about, then she opened the box and there was a shirt and some Mad Libs inside. And then under the shirt, there was the game after all. So now we all know what we'll be doing tomorrow.

You know what's an addictive little game?

Pac-xon is an addictive little game. Way better than traditional Pacman.

It's all the girls' fault, naturally. I said it looked like fun, and they invited me to play, and there's this "Try Again" button that works in a non-standard game restarting way (it restarts the game, but keeps you at whatever level you were on), so they convinced me that I kept getting additional lives.

The one with all the reminiscing

Eleven years ago today, I had lunch with my Mom, and we bought a hairbrush.

We were waiting around to see if I was in labor, you see, and it turns out I was. I'd just had a prenatal appointment and the doctor, knowing I lived an hour and a half away by bus, suggested we not go home just yet.

So we had a (light) lunch at the Hotel Don Carlos, and bought a baby hairbrush at Mas X Menos (I can't recall that we ever once used it, but I'm sure the girls appropriated it for their stuffed animals eventually) and then went back to the clinic and were admitted. Well, I was. And Mom got to stay right up until I went into the delivery room. She brushed my hair for me.

Alex and I picked out the name "Robin" while waiting for the second checkup, if I recall correctly. I was wearing an enormous shirt with a very large paisley pattern. It was nicer than it sounds.

She was born in the late afternoon, and we stayed the night. I remember trying to get her out of the plastic bassinet beside the bed in the middle of the night. I couldn't reach it that well. I'm glad I didn't drop her.

We took her home the next morning, about an hour or so before Dad showed up at the hospital, having moved heaven, earth and office schedules to get an earlier flight.

We scandalized the neighbors (who told my mother in law on me) by taking the baby out of the house when she was just a couple of days old. Broke the quarantine, don't you know. "Quarantine" being derived from the same root as "cuarenta", meaning 40. That's the number of days you're traditionally supposed to be paranoid about the baby and avoid exposing it to...well, pretty much anything if I recall correctly. But I needed nursing bras and wasn't about to leave the baby behind when she didn't have any sort of eating schedule worked out yet.

She turned out okay, though. I don't think we ruined her.

The post on the day she's actually here to celebrate with us will probably be less about me and more about her, but she's with her dad today so I get to reminisce instead.