Lucky Number Seven
January 5, 2009
I was tagged a while ago by the ever-so-awesome Nathan of PhilosYphia to do a meme and, uhm, I’m a slacker and never got around to it. Until now! Because better late than never, yeah?
So, without further ado, seven things about yours truly that maybe perhaps you didn’t already know.
(1) I’m really really vain. If I leave the house and I feel like I look anything less than okay, I’m constantly picking and rearranging and hiding myself. In fact, whenever I sit down, I instinctively grab and hold a pillow against my stomach so my fat isn’t visible.
(2) I am a completely miserable sick person. I catch a cold and I whine whine whine. Really, I’m miserable. I’ve been sick for the last two days and I’m lucky that my husband hasn’t killed me dead.
(3) I am very sentimental and I hang onto just about everything. The intention is to scrapbook it later, but I haven’t actually completed a scrapbook in years. Which means I just have boxes of ticket stubs, flyers, photos, and other miscellaneous junk that I can’t bear to throw away.
(4) I am constantly waging war with my hair. It’s too frizzy, too dry, too coarse, too anything but perfect. So I cut it all off. New year, new cut, yeah? Now it’s too short. Sigh. I’ll never win.
(5) I have over a dozen books on writing. Hasn’t gotten a finished manuscript out of me yet…
(6) I would really like to take up knitting. I, however, lack the space for yarn. Plus, I have a bad habit of picking up hobbies (like scrapbooking), getting all the supplies for said hobby and then… abandoning hobby. I always come back to it, but there’s sometimes years in between.
(7) I have always wished that I didn’t have quite such a.. hmm… wholesome appearance. I said once that I wanted to try to look more punk. The reception was such, “Courtney? Punk? She could have spikes on a collar and she’d still look CUTE.”
I’m not tagging anyone ’cause that’s how I roll, but let me know in the comments if you decided to play along.
A Book Review Of Sorts: Blood Noir
January 3, 2009
Dear Laurell K. Hamilton,
Please return to the original Anita Blake stories that you started the series with. The plots were fantastic, the character development was awesome and the books were amazing. Now, it’s sex sex sex orgy sex with a little tiny bit of plot thrown in.
Find some more plot. Please. You have the Merry Gentry series to write your erotica.
Thank you very much.
A reader who is thisclose to abandoning the series completely.
The Interview
December 29, 2008
My interview. Questions by Miss Erin of La Caotica fame.
What is one aspect of your personality that you would change if you could?
I hate how unbearably shy I am. The fear of new people and things and places makes me incredibly anxious and I just freeze up. Then I kick myself for it later.
What is one of the things your parents did that you would never do to your child?
I won’t be as strict. My parents have lightened up soooo much, but when I was younger I was on a really tight leash. It made me act out as soon as I was able. I want my daughter to have a healthy amount of freedom.
What makes the holidays special for you?
My daughter. Easy answer this year! She may not have understood anything that we showed her or did with her this year, but it was so awesome just having her to share the experiences with.
What is one thing that instantly makes you happy, no matter what?
Well, I was going to say Ana, but since I used her as my answer on the previous question, I’ll go with something else. Back rubs. Seriously. I cannot stay mad or upset if someone is massaging my back. It makes me melt.
If you were stranded on an island, how long do you think it would take you to build a functioning boat?
Heh. At least a month. I’d whimper and act sad and pathetic before I pulled my shit together enough to begin constructing anything useful!
Bored and looking for ways to pass your day? Care to play along?
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Shave The Date
December 28, 2008
Because we all can’t wait to be free of Bush.
Wait, What? Christmas?
December 27, 2008
What the hell happened? I feel like I just got home from my parents house and then suddenly it was Christmas. It was so bad that Derek and I found ourselves running to the drugstore at 11:00 PM on Christmas Eve to pick up a last minute gift that we’d very nearly forgotten completely.
These last few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind of activity. Add to that the fact that Ana is very nearly mobile and no longer stays exactly where I lay her down and that leaves me with very little time to post. So be it.
At any rate, I hope that everybody had a fantastic holiday, whatever they celebrate, and that not everybody is sitting in the three feet of snow that we’re currently sitting in over here. Beautiful to look at, not so much fun to try to get around in. I would certainly imagine that the young girl who rear-ended us on Christmas Eve is wishing there wasn’t so much snow on the ground. Yes, we’re all fine. Ana included.
So now I’m scrambling to make sure that I can wrap up my end of year stuff and get settled in and ready for 2009. We took down our Christmas tree today, yup, the day after Christmas, just so we could make room for all of our regular stuff. 2009 will be a year of purging. I simply don’t have the room for all the stuff that we own and it’s time to eliminate.
That said, it’s going to be hard to eliminate when Ana pulls in the kind of loot that she did this year at her first Hanukkah and Christmas.
She looks awfully happy, doesn’t she? Now I’m off to find room for all of that… and yes, that was ALL for her. None of our stuff is in that pile. INSANITY.
Someone Discovered Their Toes Today
December 5, 2008
I Can’t Sleep, So This Is What You Get
November 21, 2008
Ah, it’s a damn good thing I didn’t try to do NaBloPoMo because dude, seriously, I’d have failed on day one. Kinda like I’m brutally failing NaNoWriMo. I’m supposed to have 50,000 words by midnight on November 30th. I currently have 2,000. That means that I’d have to write more than 7,000 words a day between now and the 30th and that includes an entire day in plane travel (I leave on Sunday to go visit my parents in Idaho), Thanksgiving, and two days spent driving from Boise to Eugene to pick up my stepsister from college. Somehow, I don’t see me hitting 50K.
There’s a police helicopter circling my neighborhood with its spotlight on. Oh, how I love living in the ghetto. Seriously. THE GHETTO.
Christmas is starting to annoy me. I think a lot of the fun has come out of it. I’m asked every year to give out Christmas lists and I get what’s on the list, but… there’s no surprise. My MIL this year has asked for a crock-pot and has even given us the brand name that she wants. That’s great, I don’t have any other ideas for what to get her, but what’s the fun in unwrapping a gift if you already know what it is? Meh.
I have a post in my drafts, an idea stolen from another blog, of 27 things to do before I turn 28. I’m kinda thinking that maybe just writing out 27 things will be a success at this point. I have NOTHING on the list. I also have a draft full of links, half of which are now irrelevant because I’ve taken so long to add to it and haven’t published it yet.
I posted a long long time ago about Wii Fit. I never posted that I finally got it about two months ago. Love it. Love love love it. My only gripe is that the exercises are so short. I’m hoping that they put out some aerobic games to use with the board. I’d so buy an entire game of step-aerobics or rhythmic boxing or hula hooping. Because seriously? I look like a jackass when I hula hoop, but I’m a jackass that is having a blast.
I should be reading right now. I’m still reading the same books that I was reading last time I posted about books and that was, erm, a long time ago. I’m a slacker.
I’ve had a lot of random thoughts through my head lately. Like, how long can a helicopter stay up in the air before they have to come down to gas up? What is the life span of a cow? I know. Random.
Do you watch Survivor? Did you see tonight’s episode? I’m not going to put any spoilers here, but no guaranteeing that there won’t be any in the comments. Holy awesome! I haven’t laughed that hard at a TV show in a long time. Best Survivor episode EVER.
I think maybe I shall try to go back to sleep now. Just because I’m up past midnight doesn’t mean that The Ana will sleep in later. Speaking of The Ana, she rolled over for the first time on Monday! Yahoo! I’ve copied Dooce and am writing her letters for each month, but I’m not posting them here. If you’re interested, you can check them out over here.
Th-th-that’s all folks.
Thus Far, My Scariest Moment As A Parent
November 14, 2008
I’ve been down at a friend’s house for the better part of the week, hence the no posting, and this evening went to go make my way home. Home from her house involves crossing the border from the US back into Canada.
I’ve crossed the border with the baby before and there’s been no problems. She gets cranky because she has a thing against being at a standstill while being strapped into her carseat. She absolutely hates it and just starts hollering.
This time was no different. I pull up to the border, the car is stopped in a twenty minute-ish lineup and she wakes up from her nap. The crying commences.
The crying escalates. Really badly. Then suddenly she’s opening her mouth wide and nothing is coming out and she’s gasping. She is crying SO hard and so bad that she was choking. I rolled down my window and was seconds away from screaming for help (at this point I was one car away from the booth with the guard) and she starts to catch her breath. And scream again. And choke again. And catch her breath again.
I pull forward when the car ahead of me clears and I’m sobbing. I tell the border guard to please hurry because my baby is crying so hard that she’s choking and I have to get driving again so she’ll calm down. He keeps asking me questions and I’m sobbing too hard to do anything except tell him that I just have to pull over so I can pick her up and hold her. I just have to pull over. Please let me pull over.
Another border guard knocks on my window and asks me what’s wrong. I repeat, I have to pull over. NOW. She is FREAKING out. The first guard asks me if I need medical to come out. I say that I don’t know, I don’t think so, I don’t know. He finally lets me go so I can pull over and I pull over right past the booth.
I hopped out of the car and flew around to get her out and I just held her so tightly. It took her a good five minutes, but she finally settled down. The whole time another guard is standing with me asking me if I’m okay and if I need medical and if she’s okay. GAH.
Once she was calm for a solid five minutes, I belted her back in and the guard gave me the all-clear to go. She cried all the way home (another fifteen minutes), but at least she didn’t start choking again.
I’m still really shaken up by this. Is this normal? I usually never let her cry like that, but I can’t get out of the car in a border lineup to get her out of her carseat. There’s nowhere to pull over. Obviously if I had thought her life was peril I would have been out in a heartbeat, screaming for help the whole time, but that’s the thing- I was not far from that point. Not far at all and I was so fucking scared.
I was so fucking scared.
Contradictory
November 8, 2008
I know I said that I wanted her to sleep in her crib. And I do. I think.
Except that she’s been asleep in there for the last four hours and I cannot sleep a wink. I keep getting up to check on her and sitting up to listen for her and damnit, I can’t sleep without her next to me.
Sigh.
I’m not going to go get her. I’m not going to go get her. I’m not going to go get her.
You’d think she was in another room from me, people, but NO. She’s a mere three feet from my bed. And I can’t sleep.
I’m not going to go get her.
Bittersweet
November 6, 2008
Yes, I am absolutely giddy that Obama won. It was such a surreal feeling. I was sitting in my living room in Canada, watching CNN with my husband, my sister-in-law and her fiance. The west coast closed up and whammo, Obama was President Elect.
All I could do was clasp my hands to my chest and say thank you. Finally we can see some change. Finally we have someone in office who seems to genuinely care about the future of this country and not just how to better himself. Will he screw up? Absolutely. Will he be better than the administration of the last eight years? Hell. Yes.
What saddens me is that America can take such huge strides forward in electing a black president, while at the same time taking such huge strides backwards in allowing discrimination and hate to continue. Prop 8 passed in California, effectively banning gay marriage. Same-sex marriage was also banned in Florida. Other states managed to pass laws against gay couples adopting children. Because no parent is better than two loving same-sex parents? Riiiight.
We have a long ways to go, but at least we made SOME progress in electing Barack Obama.
Here’s to the next four years, USA. Do me proud.