lunch et cetera

Today's lunch: lamb summer sausage from the sheep's milk cheese lady, cucumber from the hothouse farm south of town, strawberries from some of the tidewater farms, sourdough (!) with butter. All local all the time. Except then I went a ruined it by scrounging some ranch dressing from Kraft or something like that.

Day's of school left: 11. That's eleven, in case you're counting, which I am.

Still no word from the sperm washing guy. Hmmmm. May be another DIY insem.

news from the RE plus lunch and numbers

Ok, so the cat is really sick (the black one, which makes me want to cry) and I have to run her to the vet and Sophie to soccer in a minute, but I know y'all want to hear the news from the RE as much as you wanted to see my ass.

My prog numbers from last cycle came back really off - from 11.3 down to 1.something. This is so off that the RE wonders if there was some sort of lab error. Anyway, the thought, as you know, is that femara doesn't do shit to boost my prog. He's up for adding prometrium to the mix with the 2.5 mg of femara and calling it a day. And my ovaries are "quiet" and my uterine lining is nice and thin so off we go - wheeeeee! CD 4, y'all. It's CD 4.

Sperm update shortly - so far so good, as the kids say.

Lunch: yesterday there was not really any lunch, I scrounged from the dregs of the snack cabinet and ended up with cheese with the mold cut off and triscuits plus some almost ready for the compost melon. But today! Today was left over chicken (breast this time, but don't read anything into that) with psuedo-fancy sauce (mayo mixed with roast garlic) and asparagus with Bragg's and lime (no lemons in the house). That link's just for you, Clemency.

Count down: 14.

late lunch with bonus picture

Last night's roast chicken (thigh, because I'm that kind of girl), cucumber pieces and "white catsup" as one of my kids calls ranch dressing. Ranch is a good dip for anything, I tell you.

Log your lunch, y'all. I have to somewhat frantically pull together mother's day gifts for 13.

Sixteen days of school left.

ETA - this is the kid who removed the bird from it's cage. I know you wanted to see him. And my butt. I know you wanted to see my butt.

count down

Let's count down to the end of school, shall we?
As of today we are at...... 3 weeks and 2 days. Or 17 days. 5 of those days will be spent trying to pull together Mother's Day gifts. Hahahahahahahahaha.

Lunch: leftover white beans and spinach over pasta (the highlight of this dish is the bacon), also leftover blanched asparagus dressed with - you guessed it - olive oil and Bragg's and leftover from snack cantaloupe. Really a far better lunch than yesterday in all ways.

the good, the bad, and the not-so-ugly

So there was the great post, all written in my head, about how today ran the gamut from bottom-of-the-barrel to woo-and-hoo! but I just finished figuring out how to post pictures over at wordpress for the CLAW blog and I am wore out, y'all. So, haha! I'll give you a list and you can sort things into the good, the bad, and the SOOOOO-not-ugly your own selves.

1. had very bad cold yesterday, as in very bad, causing me to miss brunch with some Crazytown extendo-family types and a memorial service that I really wanted to attend. Said very bad cold still present this am, but still I have to go to work because that is The Way It Is.
   
2. scramble to find tylenol at the only store open between my house and school, because that is the only pain killer I can take in the ttw, and a pain killer will keep me from killing the children at school, where I should not be because of above-mentioned very bad cold but too bad because that is The Way It Is.
   
3. cho-girl subs in my class and as a bonus to her greatness, brings me tylenol, because above-mentioned store only had the sinus kind or the allergy kind and those kinds will probably make my Baby the Possible have 3 heads and so I did not buy them, but drove to school near tears instead (crying in the privacy of one's truck - or one's dad's truck - is far different from crying in front of Teh Public, plus, I said "near tears" not "in tears" see? I was sick! Cut me some slack.).
   
4. half the staff of my school is out today - ok, not half, but 4 out of 14. No lie. But I get to teach with above-mentioned cho-girl, who is occasionally sympathetic but mostly just large and in charge of the children, which is just what the non-existent doctor ordered (things starting to look up here). Too much sympathy makes me woozy.
   
5. manage to not kill any children at school, nor do I give them my very bad cold, because they must all be immune at this point, having already given it to me. Thanks, children.
6. it rains. All day. We do not go outside, which means that I don't have to wake up my nappers. More sleep = yay.
7. Sandy, Sophie's mama, is on the radio when I get in the truck after school (this is where things really begin to look up) and to sweeten the deal, Sophie is not too surly! That's 3 days in a row! And is worth both of those exclamation points and this bonus one!
8. my roommate makes enchiladas for dinner. Enchiladas which will also be my lunch tomorrow. It is nice to be hungry again.
9. (the best for last) I got these in the mail today:

Thanks Mrs. B. Art saves lives, y'all.

friday it is

So my full snow day did not materialize today, but it was a good day none the less. We started late and there were only 6 children and, although the post-nap period sucked, I did get a new hat from one of my kids, which he was very, very excited about. Pictures and lengthy prose about my lost hats to come.

Anyway - how about a list? You know you want it.
Teh Nice, in no particular order:

• new hat, see above
• at least half an hour in the card aisle at CVS with Sophie, buying cards for her mama, who does not want gifts for her birthday this year. The child's sense of humor is coming along nicely, thank you.
  
• guess who I just had drinks with? The currently most famous blogger near Starr Hill and my very, very dear old friend. Yes, you wish you'd been there. Yes, there was Maker's Mark.
  
• roasted chicken. Fuck me. I get chickens from my neighbor, who runs a restaurant and gets his meat from Polyface. The meat was falling off the bone, despite the over cooking and lack of brining. I rinsed it, salted and peppered it, stuck half an onion in it, stuck it in the oven and called it done. Amazing. All local all the time, y'all. Come over for chicken pot pie on Sunday.
  
• good news, or, rather, no news, about my lower GI challenged cat. All her blood work came back normal - no thyroid, kidney or liver issues. Whew. Now I get to dose her with anti-diarrheals and home made yogurt.
• sadly short but delightful phone chat with Hard Girl
• going to bed with a good but kind of scary book
• possible coffee with cho-girl tomorrow
  

finally!

It snowed! We are still ourselves, not Richmond!

None of the area schools had it together to close this morning, so we all trecked to work just as it was starting to come down and then closed by 9 am. Ok, actually, it was much more dramatic than that and involved me leaving my car at school and my assistant leaving her car at my house and my boss driving them both home, but the real point is: SNOW DAY! Hooray!

I will: nap, read, look at the snow, eat lunch (maybe at the diner if I can find a date), nap, look at the snow, watch the second disk of Gangs of New York (which I just read the book of), nap, look at the snow, and blog. I swear. There will be blogging.

all the kids are doing it

Just a minute ago, Sophie, my pretend child, walked out the door. By herself, heading home. Now, I'm sure some of you are saying, "Hell, the girl's almost 12 - why is this blog-worthy?" (And I am quite sure some of you are also asking "why is this blog worthy?" And I say, "worthy of what?") But she's not ever walked quite that far alone (and really, she's not going all the way home, her mama is meeting her part way). It's not really so far - 5 long blocks - but the train tracks run diagonally between our neighborhoods and there's a construction site for a big, stupidly overpriced set of condos she has to walk around. The child has been blessed (I'm sure it feels like cursed to her sometimes) with a bounty of adults to parent her. Even though her mama works full time, she's never really had to do much by the way of spending time without an adult she trusts within shouting distance. There's her mom, and her step dad (who would do pretty much anything she wanted) and her dad and her step mom and me. So there's a lot of us. And she gets scared of things pretty easily. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit I secretly followed her part way. Not far! Really! I just walked around the corner, so I could see her when she got to the top of the hill where the construction is. She looked so tiny from that far away, with her giant backpack and her fiddle in one hand. Apparently, she made. I just called to be sure. Quit laughing.

In other news, I finally got it together to remember not only to take my camera to school, but to *use* it.






Thanks for the buckle frame, cho-girl.

stealing time from work

Heeheeeee! I am blogging at work! Crazy. Of course, there is no wireless reception, so I won't be able to publish until I get home. I heart conferences. Such a easy day.

Dean Spade, and his friend Colby Lenz, have some interesting things to say about cell phones (there was also a good piece on makezine). I am particularly interested in the idea of luxury goods that become needs. He points out, correctly I think, that we lived our lives without cellphone not so very long ago and now they are as common as flies on shit. While the subject of the article reads as phones, the main point seems to be thinking. That is, think before you do things, buy things, believe things. I am a fan of thinking.

124 sounds fucking great to me

It has been a red letter day, y'all.

Conferences were a breeze, and it was kind of nice to have a morning without children. I kind of missed them when I got back to the classroom. There are no real "issues" with any of the kids, so it's fun to sit around with their parents and talk about how great they are.

My most recent long-term old roommate stopped by to get some mail that had come for him. He hung out for popcorms and comics. When he left, I was richer by one mixed cd, 1 aisan pear and 2 persimmons. A bunch of my favorite fruits.....mmm....

Sophie's mama showed up and announced that it was a night for Teh Diner. And all the Meads were there. Yes, Hard Girl, all the Meads. You'd be amazed at the size of those girls. Amazed. And my cheeseburger? Kicked some cheeseburger ass. It is amazing how much more I can eat when I'm not drinking a beer with dinner. Go figure.

Also, Sophie ate three ice cream cones and popcorn and cheese sticks after ArtQuest today. Lord.

I'm a boring blogger these days. But aren't you excited about my asian pear?

pass me the torch, please

Pro.cras.ti.na'tion
Did you think I was done with those reports for my parent teacher conferences? Haha! Fooled you. I'm working on them right now. I swear.

Meanwhile, I'm cruising craigslist, because you know, the right temporary roommate could be out there right now, waiting for my house.

6:55 pm - three done, three to go. Oh, come on. Did you think I was going to do the ones for Tuesday tonight? Please. Time for dinner.

Here I am! Why does blogger use the time one started a post as the time it was posted? You'd think it would make sense to time-stamp it with the time it was published. Ok, 3 more reports.

9:30, reports written, dishes washed, laundry hung to dry by the stove. Check, check and check. I am turning into my mother. There are worse things.

Today, I went to Richmond with my long-suffering parents, to help my great-aunt move from one apartment to another, smaller apartment. I now want to be sure to set fire to my house just before I die, so that no one will ever have to look through my highly unorganized desk and deside if the random scribbled note from Sophie about going outside to play is worth saving or should be given away or thrown away. Oh, and how about the broken rice cooker? Nobody but me needs to deal with that. Why do we hang on to so much crap? Fear of death? I'm here to tell you that fear of death is going to make me clean out all the useless shit from my house. Someday.

(Except for the couple few things I brought from my great-aunt's house today, like the cool knife that straps to one's belt. And the 2-part cast iron pan. And the wire-mesh sieve.)

fooled you

Who are we kidding? I'm not going work on conference reports tonight. I'm going to read and go to bed.

weekend randomness and a mess of capitals

After year - years, I tell you, oh internets - of encouragement by me, Sophie is reading the comics. And reading the Mini Pages and doing all the puzzles therein. Out loud. It's about damn time. All that printed entertainment had been going to waste all those years.

Lord. Now she is telling me all the jokes from it. Maybe this is not such a great development. And she says she loves Family Circus. *sigh* How do I go about improving her taste in comics?

As this is my last weekend of freedom/slackerdom, I have filled it with lots of naps, visiting, and some small amount of travel. I go back to work tomorrow and we set up and have meetings for a week, and the the children come after Labor Day.

There was music in Lynchburg yesterday afternoon and I rode down with some friends and had a throughly enjoyable trip. We only saw the last bit of music, missing several other great people but to make up for that I scored (I hope) a fertility monitor. The whole reason for the trip was to attend the official opening of the coffee shop some friends just bought. So. The wife of the man they bought it from was there with her (4th?) tiny, tiny baby. And one of the owners of the coffee shop (who happens to be an ex from long, long ago) was holding said tiny baby, and knows all about my continued attempts at conception, and passed me the baby. Realizing the mother didn't know who the hell I was I felt some explanation was in order and I told her how I'd been ttc for a while now and she warmed right up to the subject and wanted to know if I had tried using a fertility monitor. Then she offered me hers, plus the 50 sticks she's still got to go with it. Then, after I'm done with it, I am to pass it on to my ex, who is thinking of having another baby shortly. Now I just need to coordinate picking it up. And thank her profusely.

In other productive news, I also cleaned out the gutters at school, after being put in pseudo-charge of playground workday after my boss left. This meant I was up on a ladder, with lots of parents asking me what to do while we all melted in the million degree heat.

I made a new friend out of an old acquaintance, and through her met a very nice femme-y gay girl who lives not 5 blocks from me. This is great because yay! New friends! Especially those who will sit on the porch and drink whiskey into the night. While I'd rather be knocked up and avoiding Teh Whiskey, it was nice to have my Last Weekend of Summer include whiskey on the porch, which is The Summer Activity To End All Summer Activities.

friday

Sophie fell asleep upside down in the chair after reading this afternoon. It was like relay napping - first me, then her. It is so fucking hot here that there is nothing else to do but lay around under the fan and nap and read. The humidity has made her hair very curly, which she hates, but I (secretly) love.

This morning was The Morning Of The Home Visit Marathon - 5 visits in 3 and 1/2 hours. Greenbriar to Belmont to Ivy to Ruckersville to Barboursville. And then back to Starr Hill in time for lunch with Jen at the Diner before picking Sophie up. Whew. It was like a whirlwind tour of the county. It's pretty here - it really, really is. The sun came out after a week of hiding and so it was suddenly again true Virginia in August - hot like you don't want to move and so hazy and humid you can hardly see the sky, let alone the mountains. But, lord, it is pretty.

Last night, in the midst of the sangria (oh god, so good...), I was talking with the girl I had dinner with about the land here. See, she just moved back to Virginia and she said something about wanting to write more and thinking that would be easier, somehow, at home. Even the sky looks different here, she said. (She was far more eloquent in the way she put it, but I was not taking notes - sadly.) I started running on about something I'd read in one of Montessori's books about how physicians in her day - say, 100 years ago - would send really sick folks back to the land where they were born. It was supposed to be healing, or something, because a person would have a connection with that land, having been exposed to it in infancy. Now, old Maria used this to help justify her ideas about oh-so-carefully constructing an infant's environment, because that's one of the first and best tools that babies use to create themselves, but it hit me like a ton of bricks that summer I was doing my Montessori training. I was away from home, from my bed and my house and my world, for the longest I'd ever been and I realized, I missed the land - flat out missed it. I do appreciate how pretty or breathtaking it might be somewhere else, but there is something else entirely about how it looks here, where I'm from (although, I wasn't born here, just raised here). There's a palpable sense of relief for me, flying home from somewhere, when I see that first bit of the mountains out by the airport, an almost painful feeling like falling in love when I cross the Blue Ridge at Afton and see the valley spread out, looking like it will never end, like it goes on and on until it gets to the Pacific a whole continent away.

So, even though I drove to hell and back, even though it was hot and humid in the car like a motherfucking sponge, it sure was pretty. Pretty like the end of summer, which it is, and stuck in my mind, helping me to create myself, still, like Maria said.

not

Hmmm..... no more ambiguity. My period started this morning. Interestingly, I seem to have cycled through all the more intense emotions about this failed attempt already, and so I am surprisingly ok.

So let's move on. On to the fact that Sophie is done with her homework and hogging the phone - her looming adolescence is..... looming.

I've been home-visiting all this week, to get my new children ready for the start of school, and that is always a treat. Home visits are such a nice way to introduce myself to the children - even my grandmother is impressed by them.

And now, I am off to a dinner involving lots of sangria with a new friend, courtesy of Evren. The new friend, I mean - Evren bears no responsibility for the sangria.