State of Obvious

I was looking through "my documents" on my desktop and I decided to read through some of my start and stop fiction I have filed away there. It's funny to me, but most of the time after I write something I don't much remember how it goes. The first story I posted here is one of the few I've ever gone anywhere with. More are closer to the following: Realization came suddenly to Sam. One moment he was drifting on a silvery, placid lake with only a puddle of stars above him to keep him company. The next moment he realized that he was cold, wet, and alone and he didn’t remember the reason why. He became aware of a rythmic pounding and found that it was the waves slapping up against the sides of the boat and sloshing over the sides. The water was frothing angrily at Sam’s feet, hitting his legs with icy daggers. In the darkness he stared at the churning water, both in the boat and out, and started to panic. Rowing furiously he made for the shore, though it seemed imp...

There have only been a few times in my life when I have been impressed that RIGHT NOW is the right time for something: when I got pregnant with Josh, when we began adoption paperwork, when we were looking to move from our last home, and now. Right now, I feel, is the time to move. I wish it was as simple as that. Poof! Here is your new home! (Visualize Vanna White revealing our new perfect abode.) It's more like "Where is your money? Oh, you don't have any. Well...here is a house you will like but can't afford. Here is another house you can rent, but it's falling down. Here is an apartment that costs twice as much and has about the same amount of space...but there's access to a gym! And here is the house Eric WANTS ." Really really wants. We haven't actually gone inside yet, that's this Saturday. He sent me the link for this house from work one day last week. Funny thing is, I almost showed him this house about 3 weeks ago but then...

So, once again linking through blogs in the never ending circle of "This is who I read" I came across this little gem of a blog , truly funny stuff. It's always good to come across clean blogs to share, and if they are as funny as this one its even better. My only wince came when I started to feel defensive over the jab at World of Warcraft...ok, its just a game...I could be watching TV or sewing or baking or reading or 1000 other things but I play WoW mostly in my free time. I like it. I have met some amazingly great people and learned a lot of things about myself (some good some bad). Why do I have to defend my dorkiness? I'm Tamyrn, and proud dangit! I tried to get my brother Ben to play but he didn't really get into it. He only really tried it 1 time and we later figured out that he spent a whole lot of time running in circles since he didn't understand how to read the map...true story. It didn't help he has dialup and playing ties up his phone line. I...

This might be kind of random, but it's what is on my mind today. I went shopping at the grocery store...always a depressing trip. Food prices are really taking a bite out of our pocket, especially it seems like we spend 2x as much just having Poppa living with us. Probably because he wants all kinds of special stuff that we never bought before. I grit my teeth every time the total pops up. I even clipped some coupons today in a feeble attempt to save some money. I saved about $10 on our $200 bill. Ouch. When I was loading my groceries up onto the belt that leads to the cash register, it got a chuckle out of the person in front of me. Have you ever noticed that at the grocery store, if one of the dividers is not available to put between the orders people create a huge artificial barrier? It's like we're afraid our groceries might touch each other. The person ahead of me put a nice 6 inch barrier between our orders and even after we got one of the plastic doohickeys...

Christmas was a little different this year. For Christmas Eve we started a new holiday tradition, dinner at Red Lobster! You'd be shocked by how packed the place actually was. The rest of the evening was spent at home waiting for the children to get to bed so that Santa could come and visit. I had the brilliant idea of hiding all the presents in the back of Eric's car. This worked very well even though a couple of times Eric's dad came close to spilling the beans (Poppa, kids in hearing range: Are you sure you want the kids to ride in the Escape, they might see things . Eric: They can't see any of the stuff back there . Me: SIGH ). Carly went to bed pretty early, for her anyhow, and we sent Josh up to his room for sleeping at about midnight. And waited. 1 am, Josh is still awake. 2 am, he comes downstairs for a "drink" and to tell us he can't sleep. I send him back to bed with videos and strict instructions not to come out of his room because I am going to...

I picked up a book at the store about ADD. Joshua has been officially diagnosed as ADD for about a year and a half. I feel a large quantity of guilt because I took this whole thing rather casually. We tend to think of ADD / ADHD kids as being problem kids, and Joshua is definitely not a problem child. He has always been sweet and mostly obedient, easy to please and able to entertain himself. The more I learn about ADD, though, the more I realize how much of a big deal it actually is, how many signs we missed, how many mistakes we made. For example, something I learned recently is that ADD often has ticks as a side affect or symptom. When Joshua was a baby he used to pull on his hair, just on a little patch near his temple. When he stopped the pulling, he started popping his eyelids (that started a couple years ago or so), and when he stopped popping his eyelids all the time he started snapping his fingers. All these little things seemed weird and the snapping in particular was ...

Some of you may remember that about 5 years ago Joshua cut his own hair. He took a big chunk out of the front of his hair, which I did not notice until Jenn pointed out that the front of his hair looked like a section was missing. Joshua decided to repeat his foray into the realm of hair stylist, except this time he didn't experiment on himself. That's right, he cut Carly's hair. 2 big chunks of hair from her curly black head. When I noticed that her hair seemed a bit...wrong, I asked Josh if he cut he hair. He answered no but with that tiny shake of the head that indicates, ever so clearly, his guilt. He tried to convince us that Carly must have done it. I, however, knew this wasn't true because she hasn't quite mastered holding the scissors and cutting at the same time. I cooked Thanksgiving dinner, the whole shabang , for the first time ever (with some help from Eric). Normally I just make a side and take it somewhere. The food was much better than I expected. I ...