Attentively Attentive to all Things

So tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, a pretty busy holiday at my house.  I’ve been hosting a party since around 1997 or so, give or take a year.  They started out as booze-soaked shindigs that ended with kisses at midnight and champagne showers.  Over the years we’ve done many things: played games, standing in a circle on the eve of 2000 naming off things we remembered about the 1900’s, written down what we wanted to forget about the previous year and burned it over a fire-pit, etc, etc.  Slowly, it’s evolved from being full of alcohol to slowing down and being about getting together for food, games, and a few drinks.  Then the group started having kids, and it became a little less rollicking, and more sedate, but still fun.  This year is no exception.  By my count there will be at least nine kids there, five or so under the age of five.  It should be interesting.  I wonder if there will be anyone here besides us at midnight? Does this mean we’ve ...

I stayed up late last night, engrossed in a e-galley about seducing a governess (The Sound of Music, anyone?) and didn't realize just how late it was until Caris began to cry.  Seeing that it was almost 11pm, I turned off all the lights and went to calm my screaming toddler.  When I realized that laying her back down with her precious blanket wasn't going to do the trick, I scooped her up and plunked her into bed with us.  (Please, spare me the lectures about having a toddler in bed, and how they'll never sleep in their own bed.  We have to sleep at some point, and can't while she screams for an hour.)  Usually this is a sure-fire way to get her back to sleep, and it seemed to work...at first.  Then she began to toss and turn, whimpering and breathing like she was in pain.  The first-time mom brain in my head began to imagine all sorts of things wrong inside her little body, so I sat up and watched her.  And then she sat up and watched me.  R...

You all knew it was coming...the much 'anticipated' school rant.  I call it a rant because despite the semester being over December 13th, I still do not have all my grades, which were due in the 20th, and because I don't have all my assignments back from two professors.  So far, I have two A's and one A- out of six classes. The group internship was ridiculously unorganized, despite any attempt on my part to get it situated.  I finally conceded leadership to another student, mostly because none of them responded well to my tries to get us going.  This girl, who was very nice, had an annoying habit of waiting until a day before something needs done to let us know which parts we need to do.  They were all campus students, of course, with part time jobs and ample time to do homework.  Add to this a non-profit that also dumped content on us at the last minute...imagine my frustration.  The work--meaning building an entire website--was completed, and a man...

...for this year at least.  We still have snow, and I'm sure at some point before it's gone there will be sledding in our front yard.  My living room is now full of toddler toys, and yet the associated toddler is absent at this very moment, being quiet in her room, which usually means she's into something she shouldn't be. These past fews days I have had my picture taken with a Fischer-Price camera that giggles, put together a kitchen, flushed a toilet in a Little People house, fried a pizza in before-mentioned kitchen, drank imaginary coffee, did imaginary dishes, listened to blogposts from a dog named Violet, played with a bug, built the Weebles a treehouse, got the crap scared out of me by a rumbling dump truck, pulled a pink plastic wagon full of Megablocks, and have been forked by a plastic play fork.  That is by no means a complete list, of course.  At this very moment I am being made a hamburger with plastic lettuce. But other than that, I'd say it went w...

So I had the good intentions of moving all my blogposts over here, and after realizing just how much of a pain in the you-know-where it would be, I opted to not move them.  So, here is the link to the previous blog:   http://attentivelyattentivetoallthings.wordpress.com/ And welcome to my new one!

Testing

This blog will be moving as soon as I can find the time to move it!  It will be over at Blogspot, mostly because I'm not a fan of the themes here at Wordpress.  No offense, Wordpress....just not my style! Will update soon!