Shortbread and Embroidery and Neuroses

Between Adelaide asking why I don't write on here anymore and my half-hearted claims that I still occasionally update this thing in our last Christmas newsletter, I've been feeling a push to get on here and write something, anything, even though I know that the first few times I write after not having written in so long the results are a charming cross between drivel and plain trash.  So now my intention is to get a couple garbage posts up that grease the metaphorical wheels, and see if maybe this is something I can sustain.  I will admit that my expectations are low.

Part of the problem is me.  My writing style is Full Diva; I need a big chunk of silent, uninterrupted time, and that is not something that happens to me anymore.  Someone always needs something from me.  This is not complaint; I know there are lots of lonely humans out there who would love to discuss the inner workings and motivations of professional soccer players or long-dead (or almost dead) British rockers.  When I'm on here, tappity-tap-tapping away and I'm interrupted by a kid or a text or a whatever, I feel instant rage, and that's not fair to whomever is a-knocking.

Okay, so to be perfectly honest, I do get chunks of silent, uninterrupted time.  I make this happen by getting up between 5:00 and 5:20 a.m. most days.  I could spend that hour writing rather than running.  I could.  But I will not.


When last we met, I was in paperwork/red tape/bureaucratic hell trying to get all the various forms for the various school and governmental agencies sorted.  That is more or less done, although the trash company in Iowa only just stopped sending us monthly bills a few weeks ago after we made yet another phone call asking why they were so obsessed with us (gratuitous Mean Girls quote:  five points).

The kids are all doing well in school.  My prayers that the kids would be granted kind, compassionate teachers were answered.  That, or we're living in one of the few states that is known for paying its teachers reasonably well and it turns out that actually does benefit students.  Or it's a mix of the two.  The Lord works in mysterious ways, after all.

I have a full-time job.  I started said job a few days after that last blog post back in August, and looking back I'm wondering why I only mentioned the part-time library job and not the full-time library job I was about to begin at an entirely different library.  Knowing me the way I do, I was probably worried I'd accidentally stitch all my flaws onto my work attire in my sleep (in beautiful, flowing script, because these are still my dreams), my new boss would read them the minute I walked in the door, and I'd be fired straight away.  My fears don't often make sense.  But, here I am, those same fears driving me to curse the motion sensor light mounted on our back shed/barn/thingy as I peer over the bottom of the windowsill and tell myself for the thousandth time that it's probably just one of the neighborhood cats strolling by, not the person who I'm sometimes* quite sure lives in our shed, unbeknownst to the hapless family living only a few hundred feet away.

Let's see, what else?  Kids?  Check.  My newish job?  Check.  Shed dweller?  Check.

Derek!  Derek is really enjoying his new job.  It's sports and oftentimes high pressure, two things at which he excels.  No, I don't understand those parts of his personality.

I'm sure there are many more vitally important things to report, but all I can think to say for tonight is that I made the recipe for Salted Butter Chocolate Chunk Shortbread on Smitten Kitchen's website yesterday.  The three males in the family thought it was decent.  Adelaide and I loved it.  Were I to do it again, I would lessen the amount of flour by 1/4- 1/2 cup; the dough ended up overly crumbly.  It is shortbread, so if you plan on making it, brace yourself for an indecent amount of butter used.

Also, I have taken up hand embroidery.  I've only completed one project, but I'm still allowing myself to say that it is something I now do.  It is delightful and strangely addictive, and doesn't require large chunks of silent time.  I am even now on the prowl for my next pattern so this one on my wall doesn't have to look so lonely.  This newest hobby plus the fact that I am freaking out about how it's almost 10:00 and I won't get enough sleep is enough, I think, to earn my solid placement in the Early Old Lady Club.  I've always been precocious.

This is smaller than it appears, maybe 4x4".

*anytime it's dark out and/or I actually have to go in there alone

Big Fat Update- Kind of- and a Winter Hike

Well!  Long time, no blog!  It's hard to force myself to spend any extra time on the laptop when I'm now working on it for hours a week at one of my new(ish) jobs.  I hesitate to even mention it, because the company I work for is super weird about confidentiality and constantly reminding its employees that THIS IS PRIVATE INFORMATION and TELL NO ONE and IF YOU TALK WE WILL COME FOR YOU IN THE NIGHT. 

I'm kidding, of course, about at least 40% of the previous sentence.  Good luck figuring out which part. 

And no, I'm not in an abusive professional relationship, and no, I was not recruited by the CIA.  Just typing that last phrase made it hard to type this one, because I'm giggling somewhat madly at the idea of working for anything like the CIA, what with my utter lack of a poker face, ability to get lost in a cardboard box, and penchant for giggling madly. 

Really, though, I've found a meme that describes at least one aspect of this work rather well.  Thanks, memes.

Still, I'm not ready to finally put this blog out of its misery and kill it off, so I'm declaring (yet again, somewhat wearily) that I will be attempting to post with some degree of consistency!  Just like I did in ye olden days when our chillins were little and nap time equaled blog time!


Um, let's see.  It's cold here.  Yay, Iowa.  Derek and I have agreed to jack our house's temperature all the way up to 70 degrees to combat this forecast:

I don't think I'm really allowed to complain about today's temp, as the high is supposed to be above zero, but tomorrow and Monday, look out:  I will say what I want.  You get to do that when the temperature isn't supposed to be above zero for days.  It's in the Iowan handbook.  I have no idea what's in the Minnesotan handbook for negative temp days.  "Congratulations, it's Tuesday, now get back to work"?

Because we knew this cold front was on its way, I took the kids on a forced march through the snowy forest preserve yesterday, although I charmingly called it a "Winter Scavenger Hunt" because they tend to balk at anything that calls to mind gulag-like conditions.  Maybe all three of them were Russians in their former lives?  Never mind that I don't believe in reincarnation.

Wow, ANYWAY. 

Seen above is the list of things we were going to be hunting for on our hike, a thumb belonging to Caedmon, and a face belonging to Atticus.  Pop quiz:  Which of our children is still young enough to be fooled by exercise disguised as fun?

Really, though, what is it about children and their inability to stay off the ground?  Even now, at any given public space that we enter, I'll turn around and at least one of them is rolling around on the ground.  I don't know what this is about.  They like getting the crap from other people's shoes in their hair?  Children have a better barometer for what's better for their bodies than adults?  I mean, who can tell?

Oh, look, they're on the ground again.  Imagine that.

Lest you think our hike was all fun and games and our lives are snow-winter-perfection, may I submit this photo for your consideration:

He had just learned we not even halfway through our hike.  That is not a happy face.

Not to worry, though, he got back on the ground- well, onto a log over a frozen creek bed- and everything was better.

We made it back to our vehicle, I mused aloud that we could make another loop through the preserve, as we'd only been out for around an hour, and Atticus climbed a tree in protest, saying we could go but he'd stay and take a nap in a tree.  We've read The Little Match Girl four times in the past month, so he knew how this would end.

In the end we did not go 'round again as I decided we had properly celebrated temperatures in the teens, so we went home, the kids got hot cocoa, and I got to be the adult and stay outside for another hour shoveling and waiting for the plow to charge by- for our more southerly friends, the snow plow drives by so fast it throws all kinds of snow from the street up onto the sidewalk that you have to shovel that mess, too, so you're not really done until it's gone by.  It did not complete our street until after I had come inside and hung up all my wet snow gear.  Naturally.