I am on day 3, post-tooth surgery and tonight I ate me some SHRIMP! It wasn’t easy but dude, I had had enough with the “soft diet”. I needed protein. And hot food. I am still not in pain which is just….weird. I mean they forcibly removed a tooth that was firmly lodged in place, in pieces. And I believe there was slicing involved. And also stitches. Certainly there should  be a LITTLE pain, right? Granted there is discomfort and it is definitely what I’d call “icky” and I am being very VERY careful with it to avoid the dreaded dry socket. But it’s nice to not be living on pain pills like I did for the MONTH after my wisdom teeth were taken out. And since I did this to get OUT of pain, well, it’s a relief that I’m out of pain.

Today it was over 100 here in Houston, the ‘cool’ part of the state. In Austin, I hear, it was closer to 110. I’m getting used to the 100s even though it is WAY unseasonable. That is, until our power went out. How is this proof of my luck turning? Well immediately I thought of our options which included getting in our car – which also lacks a/c - and heading somewhere cool. What would be hotter than our house? That car. Just when I was seriously sweating (HAHA) this decision, the power restored. I think it was only out for 20 minutes or so. Oh sweet, sweet a/c. I love you so much. Last time we lost power like that it was down for about six hours so this truly seems miraculous.

So now that I’m feeling more human than not, I started making lists of stuff I fell behind on and OUCH. Tomorrow is my big catch-up day. The kids will be gone all morning at the dentist (no kidding) and I will need something to keep my mind off that anxiety.

Part of my to-do list is getting my studio shop finished. It’s 99% done, it just needs inventory added. I have had such a sloooow etsy story in the last month (which honestly was probably a blessing) but I miss the work. I have all kinds of new styles to offer.

Another part of my to-do list is that I’m branching out the area of this blog devoted to homeschool curriculum reviews. I have so much curriculum to review and really want to offer that to those who are interested in such things. I have to figure out the best way to do it but I think I already have an idea.

Finally I’ve become sort of obsessed with the idea of creating a wiki site to review kids lit for questionable content (think kids-in-mind.com for books). I’ve looked before and there is nothing good out there like this. I do not have the time or desire (if I did, I wouldn’t be looking for such a thing to begin with) to preview all the books in the world for my kids. Mrs. Broccoli Guy recently blogged about this very issue. I know this is something useful to LOTs of parents would find helpful. After bringing up the idea to Dalton, he had the brilliant suggestion to just start a Wiki so parents can input their own reviews in a collaborative way. SO in all my spare time, I hope to work on that.

OK! Now I’ve sufficiently overwhelmed myself. I’m going to find some trash tv and enjoy my last full day of “recovery”. But first, please go over to Mrs. Broccoli Guy’s blog and tell her how happy you are that she is not dead, ok? Because me?  I’m still a little freaked about it.

I totally failed to post yesterday. I got into this routine of posting after the kids are in bed, you know, when I actually have something from the day to recount? So it was going swimmingly. Until yesterday when somehow, some way, I passed out at 8pm (and wake up sometime, ahem, after 8am).

I wish I could say, for my failure, I got a good night sleep in exchange. Not so. I actually woke up a million and one times (I counted) for a wide variety of reasons. Unlike many people, I don’t suffer from insomnia. Instead I suffer from perpetual light-sleep. If there is something on my mind, I will sleep! But I will wake constantly, think about it for approximately 30 seconds and pass out again. Sometimes I will dream about it. Both of those lead to just awful nights of sleep, waking up feeling hung over. It feels like sleep torture. I’d almost rather have insomnia – at least I’d get stuff done in the meantime! And I wouldn’t be a 30 day FAIL!!!

So what was I thinking about all night long?
1) blogging! I knew I needed to get up and do it but always fell asleep in those 30 seconds between waking and convincing myself to get up. I swear I must have thought about getting up at least a dozen times over the course of the night. See? I really did not WANT to fail!
2) the Madonna verdict which was set to be released at 3am. Even though I knew how it would go, I was still anticipating it enough to lose sleep apparently. Good thing I didn’t realize just what a sh!tstorm my day would be as a result or I’d have lost even more sleep.
3) the Iranian elections, which I’ve been excited about. I don’t know what it is – 2008 Election hangover?!? The drama has not disappointed. If you are interested in following along, log into tweetchat.com with your Twitter user and pass and enter the room #iranelection or #iranelections for news. I’m in favor of Mousavi because he tweets. Do you need a better reason?!!
4) My big kids had a movie sponsored by their orthodontist to attend this morning. It required that we (read: Tony) take them long before they (or I) wake up and for whatever reason I was concerned about them making it in time. Tony must have been concerned too because he got up on his own at least an hour before he usually does which is already an hour or more before he needed to.
5) Right before I unexpectedly passed out, Teegan came in my room to tell me about the plot of the book he’s currently reading. I tried to follow along until he took a right turn onto Nerd Boulevard and started complaining about the evolutionary inaccuracies of the book. My kids do this all.the.time. It makes me nuts. I argue that its FICTION and therefore not required to be accurate. The counter is, I suppose, that it is SCIENCE fiction and, as such, SCIENCE NERDS expect at least the SCIENCE to be accurate so they can enjoy the fiction. Whatever. I humored him for a second before he lost me completely. Something about butterflies wings changing the terrain of the world and chaos theory somethingsomething and I tried to be smart. I said “Oh are you talking about that Butterfly Effect thingy?” trying to sound, you know, at least as knowledgeable as my 11 year old. He sort of sighed, rolled his eyes and explained that he supposed I could apply the butterfly effect indirectly (which I think he went on to explain but by then I stopped even pretending to follow along) but this is a little different. Honestly maybe the conversation went nothing like this at all. I really couldn’t follow any of it. Except when I heard about butterflies and thought I’d feign intelligence. And failed. It was approximately 2.2 seconds after he gave up on me that I completely passed out, hard. I blame him, completely.

So here I am. Still feeling hung over and warn out from my 12 hours of restless pseudosleep. I’ll do SIX things tonight to make up for it but I don’t promise they will be high quality :

1) I’m grateful that Noah has shown great interest in world religions and has, especially, been practicing meditation very hard (much harder than me). If there is a child in this world that could benefit from meditation, it is Noah.
2) I’m grateful that our orthodontist rents out the theater and takes all the patients (and their friends) to the movies complete with popcorn, drinks and candy (I wonder what the fall out is from this for the office? Do they have to spend the entire day fixing snapped wires from all the inappropriate treats?!?!) and freebies. Dalton took Teegan and they got to see Up.
3) I’m grateful for the compliment my husband gave me last night on my parenting particularly because I was not even aware of my response to the event in question that he noticed and it was really nice (and rare) of him to notice at all and take the time to compliment me.
4) I’m grateful for the 2 minutes in the pool today that I felt happiness and joy the likes of which I have not felt in years.
5) I’m grateful that I got to talk to Laurie yesterday! Call me more often, woman!!!
6) I’m grateful for my nerdy 11 year old and 14 year old. Even if they exhaust me with their theorems (no shit, I just totally spelled theorems wrong which just shows how much of a dolt I am, thank you spell check!), critical judgments of inaccuracies everywhere and endless diatribes containing too many Latin names, I am still proud of them. Clearly I can not take credit

…where you look back and wonder what in the world you actually DID all day? That’s my day today. I sat down to blog and realized I could not really think of how I spent my day.

I guess I did little bits of this and that…some work/calls, I worked on my studio site a little, I swam. Where did my day go?

Oh I know — it probably was spent fighting my husband on his new plot to move us to Santa Clara (yes, California, where it costs a bajillion dollars to breathe). It isn’t going to happen but I give him kuddos for effort. Every few hours I’ll get an email with a new house he’s scoped out or a breakdown of the annual temps or some other thing he’s designed to sway me. But I’m unswayable. I know where I want to move: Washington DC. I know if I had to move but could not move to DC that there are a few other places (NC, Denver) that I’d consider. California isn’t on my short list. Or my long list.

So quite the productive use of time, right?

On another note, to answer a few repeated questions I’ve had in the comments:

Camera: my point & shoot is a Canon S3 IS – it is old and falling apart and sometimes stops working entirely. It eats through batteries like crazy and I can’t afford to replace them. BUT! It is a great camera and I’d recommend it to anyone who wanted a nice nice P&S close to a dSLR but without the down sides (expensive lenses, heavy weight, etc). I love it because it has crazy zoom (won’t get that with a dSLR), a built-in video camera, crazy macro (again, won’t get that with a dSLR without the very expensive macro lens) and it also has a few lenses that can be purchased to extend its use. The newer version is the S1 and it rocks with it’s 20x optical zoom. That is just insane to me. If you get the telephoto lens (and the P&S lenses are crazy cheap – all under $150 each) you increase that to 30x! I can’t even imagine. And if you get the macro lens, you can sit 16″ away from an object and zoom in 20x to shoot. Can you imagine?!?!? There is a reason that learning to love my dSLR was a gradual thing. I really truly do love this P&S. But not like my other camera. sniff.

Noah trick: A few of you asked what the trick was that helped Noah learn to hold his pencil. It isn’t a big secret or anything. I am just not sure how to translate it into an explanation. As it is, it took me 7 years to visually figure it out. I will tell you, though, that all I have to tell him is “bend your thumb” and it completely changes his grip. And today? Significantly better than yesterday in reading, writing, and drawing. And yesterday was pretty awesome. Today he even read the direction on one of the pages of homeschooling work, of his own volition. This is a pretty big deal as until then, he viewed reading as something he HAD to do, with no practical application at all. No amount of reminding him to read when it was practical had ever successfully inspired him to do it on his own. But today I told him to hold on a second so I could finish something up and by the time I was ready he had read the directions and gone on to do the work because, he said, he didn’t feel like waiting for me. This is super big for him! I’m so proud of my boy!

Today’s 3 things:

1) Noah’s continued major progress, of course. Leaps and bounds from yesterday.

2) Addy’s silly age. I know I say this all the time and eventually it has to change but I just love this age. I love how cerebral it is. Addy is just desperate to be a big kid. She has to copy every.single.thing Noah does and says, with her own little spin. We had this conversation the other day:

Noah: Hey Mom, guess what?
Addy: Hey mom, guess what?
Me: Yes Noah?
Noah: Sea Turtles can get just a little bit larger than our van! Isn’t that amazing?
Me: Yes! What did you want to say Addy?
Addy: Um…Sea Turtles jump into the water just like people!

Everything is competitive. A few days ago I caught Addy doing this and thought it was so hysterical. She totally thinks this is the coolest, most scary thing EVER but hasn’t a clue what to do after the first two lines:

Translation: it was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and scary night….

3) NO BIRDS! First there was Arrow the wayward fledgling blue jay. Then there was the not-so-wayward but equally annoying fledgling cardinal. Then there was the incessant alarm clock on the side of my house known as a woodpecker that sounded like a machine gun going off right outside my bedroom window every morning. But today I beat ‘em all! I woke up approximately 20 seconds BEFORE the woodpecker scared the heck out of me! Yessss!

Lest you think I exaggerate about the annoyance that are these birds, here’s a little video clip I took one day during Arrow’s visits. Let me warn you before you watch that if you have cats or dogs, you might want to take them out of the room. My cats were SURE they had finally managed to corner the bird on my desk while I played this clip. My dog just looked dumbly (or not?) between my computer screen and the back door trying to figure out where the bird was hiding. You’ve been warned…