I Don’t.

You know how you hear stories about women becoming unnaturally upset with their husbands while in labor?

I wasn’t.

He was reading aloud Peter Capstick’s accounts of water buffalo attacks, what’s to be upset about?

It seems more natural to be upset that John got to move and play and go places in the first week or so after Jane was born while I took care of her.

I wasn’t.

The desire to leave the house wasn’t even close to stronger than the desire to take naps with my new baby.

Perhaps a screaming fit could have occurred when faced with poopy diaper #5,689 with two year old helping and husband at company Christmas party.

I didn’t.

He deserved a night off after a few weeks of nonstop caring for all his girls.

When I’m  awake late at night with Jane while John sleeps…

I don’t.

So long as I don’t dwell on how I’ll feel the next day it’s often nice and peaceful up at night with Jane.

But when I’m awake late at night with Jane while John snores…

…I seriously consider grabbing his lower lip and pulling it over his head while screaming all sorts of irrational things and blaming him for the entire experience.

I don’t.

But perhaps I see what those women in labor are all about now.

Diana Gabaldon

Start with Outlander and then keep going.

I’ve been re-reading them in between other books since Jane has been born and I’m on my 6th book of hers in a month.

I haven’t yet had the words “dinna fash” or “you’ll ken” come out of my mouth yet but it’s a good thing I’ve only got one book left or I’d be yelling “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ” next time I burn dinner.

Would I recommend them? Having just stared blankly at the computer screen for a many minitues I have no tidy way to sum up the books nor why exactly I’d recommend them.

I think I’m in a Jamie and Claire induced stuper… and now I have to go read what happens next – even though I’ve read this one twice before.

Good News… Bad news…

It’s the second day of being home alone with the kids while John is at work.

The good news is everyone is still alive.

The bad news is that two of the three kids seem to have the flu and the third is now complaining too.

The good news is that they are all currently sleeping.

The bad news is it’s not going to last much longer.

The good news is I have a Diet Coke and a Milky Way bar.

The bad news is it doesn’t have caffeine in it… or whiskey.

Through the keyhole.

In The Woods: Who’s Been Here? by Lindsay Barrett George

I like this book for many reasons but I’ll admit the reason it really stands out is because it doesn’t shy away from the fact that goshawks eat blue-jays and fox eat woodchucks.  Perhaps it makes me overly bloodthirsty and morbid but I think that’s awesome and rare find in recent children’s books.  When you read an older book, things get eaten up all the time,  Peter Rabbit’s father was made into a pie after all.  Nowadays it’d be more likely that he’d get sold to a pet shop and spend the rest of his life in as a classroom pet.

Come to think of it, Mr Rabbit may have preferred the pie.

In any case, in this book children are walking through the woods finding animal sign.

For instance they find blue feathers on the ground, and ask the question:

“Who’s been here?”

The answer is provided on the next page – a goshawk and a blue jay.

In addition to the bloodthirsty aspect and the excellent pictures I like that there is not a lot of text. Not  much text has two benefits, either we can whip through the book at mock 10 because we’ve read it six times that day already and I really need to be getting dinner ready, or we can talk about what’s happening in the pictures, what time of year it is and try for the 7,000 time to convince Clara that it is a MUD dauber not a wood dauber.

But she is two and so I’m afraid it’s going to be a wood dauber for the foreseeable future.

Would I recommend it? Yes, there happens to be a whole series of these, I think we are going to have to find more at the library but I’m glad to own at least this one!

To Whom It May Concern:

We wash. we dry, we fold… …and still the laundry pile keeps growing.

It’s starting to concern me, if (knock on wood) any of our laundry appliances should break down I fear it would only be a matter of hours before the dirty laundry would swell to proportions large enough to smother us in stale milk and pee smelling fabric.

So, please, if you don’t hear from us for a few days, if John misses work, if I miss a previously scheduled appointment, if our girls don’t show up for story time…

…send reinforcements armed with detergent because John and I will have lost the laundry war.

We will likely be trapped under a growing pile of laundry at the bottom of the stairs, but don’t worry about the children I’m sure they will be fine. Once you dig us out if you can make it through the laundry you’ll be able to find them at the top, happily changing outfits, wetting the bed and blowing out diapers.

Transformation

Jane undergoes a drastic transformation when you give her a bath.

She goes from a sleepy, stinky, cutie…

…into a sweet smelling, wide eyed, curly haired, cutie!If it weren’t for the prevailing cuteness I’d wonder if it was the same girl.

Terrier by Tamora Pierce

I had just finished this book and was trying to explain to John a why I liked it and this is what came out:

“It’s a book that had it been a movie I would have loved it but because I liked the book I’d never see the movie, but do you know what I mean?”

Fortunately he did know what I meant.

Here is a translation for the rest of you. The book involved a lot of beating the bad guys up with big sticks, funny quippy sort of comments from the good guys, who weren’t all guys and weren’t an angelic type of good. The main character is a girl who’s quite adept at beating people up herself, and she has an interesting purple eyed cat.

As it turns out my favorite movies are the ones where good guys aren’t really that great and they make lots of quippy comments while they are running around blowing things up, which is always good because there is significantly less gore and guts.

I’m not a fan of gore and guts.

-Or I like romantic comedies.-

What I really don’t like, and have just stopped watching altogether are movies based on books that I liked. My reasons are as follows:

1)They are never as good as the books.

2)My mind is then poisoned with movie images that I can never shake, which is extra lame because of the first reason.

3)I don’t actually read a ton of books where stuff gets blown up, so I don’t really have to worry about overlap there.

4)I do read books full of suspense. Suspense in books is fine, I just read faster, I like it. Suspense in movies irritates me and I ALWAYS jump. I hate jumping.

5) I also hate nightmares. It takes a bit in books to give me nightmares, Steven King gives me nightmares. When it comes to movies I could probably manage a nightmare after watching the Sandlot. Therefore half the books I read are movies I would never see for fear of nightmares.

6)If I want to have deep thoughts about something I’ll read a book. Movies are, in my opinion, for open mouthed, drooling, mindless, entertainment. Therefore if I’ve read a book that requires any sort of brain power I’m not interested in seeing it on the screen.

When in comes to movies I didn’t love Seven Pounds (way too much thinking) I won’t be watching the Time Travelers Wife, or Inkheart (because making a movie about a book like that is just wrong) and don’t even get me started on Harry Potter…

But I did really like this book. So much so that if it becomes a movie I’ll never – ever – watch it.

Would I recommend it? Yes!

The Loss of Power and Ambition

This morning we lost power just as John was getting ready to go to work. There I was thinking that the older girls are grandparent visiting today, Jane is sleeping and John is leaving, I could do something!  I ran through a list of things I wanted to do in my head, take a shower, give Jane a bath, wash laundry, write a blog, make lunch… and they all required power. Then I thought about the possibility that my desire to do something was perhaps linked to my overly contrary nature and it was just the fact that I couldn’t do any of those things that filled me with ambition. Then I thought that ambition to take a shower probably only counts as ambition when you have a newborn… But I’ve got one of those so ambition it is! Then I dismissed that whole line of thinking as too much soul searching before lunch.

I let John run down the water pressure with a quick shower, used the last of the water to fill Storms water bowl and sat in the kitchen feeling annoyed that I only wanted to do currently impossible things and I was hungry! Deciding that the best thing to do would be to find a bit of food for lunch I took one final survey of the kitchen and saw lots of food. Lots of food that required water or heat or both and settled on a trip to McDonald’s.

I had changed and fed and burped the baby, started a fire, the truck was running the gate was opened and I was just setting Jane into her car seat when the power came back on.

Dilemma:

Do I turn off the truck, close the gate, un-pack Jane and make lunch?

Or do I carry on and find french fries?

It was a dilemma, but not a very hard one.