Dude, where's my egg?

I wrote an updatey type entry two days ago and then bloggerhead ate it. That happens so often now that I had barely begun to savor my anger when it all dissipated and I just closed the window and shrugged. But then, fifteen minutes later, I got blognesia and thought that it had gone through and when I went to see if it had shown up and it hadn't, I was pissed off all over again.

Hold on there. Um.... I just happened to look down and the missing entry is there! It's not on the actual blog, but it's on my edit page. Hopefully it will show up when I post this and then you'll have two entries for the price of one! Excellent. Blogger, I still don't like you very much, but I would buy you a Pepsi if I had any money. Hold the presses! I do have money!! Therefore, I take back what I said about the Pepsi.

Yesterday I decided to sew a bag out of some scraps of material that I bought for cheap at JoAnn Fabrics. I didn't have a pattern, I just skimmed over some instructions for a bag in the Stitch-n-Bitch book and then I just kind of winged it. Wung it? Anyway, it turned out pretty cute for my first real sewing project. (I'm not counting the skirt I made with my mom's help when I was fifteen.) I may take a picture later and post it. Now I want to go on to my next project. I'm thinking that I want to make a peasant type shirt for Saren or Harper. I'm having trouble finding just the right pattern though and I don't think I can safely wing it on this. I also happened upon a Brown Paper Pattern package that is just a package of simple skirt patterns that I think I may get, but it is seventeen dollars and I don't know if I will go that route. It seems like it would be a good value, but jesus, patterns are expensive nowadays.

Cruisin' the net, nursin' a Pepsi...

Soooooooo..... I can't remember anything that happens from one day to the next.

I have decided on a shampoo once every third day. It's working out pretty well and my hair isn't nearly so spastic. Woohoo, non-spastic hair!

Monday Saren, Harper, and I went to a fellow homeschooler's house for a letterboxing club. We made stamps out of erasers. Saren made a design with two hearts. (Actually, I did much of the carving, but she made the design and worked on it until the lure of the trampoline in the backyard was irresistable.) I made a sun for Harper. It was pretty cool and I took home a bunch of extra erasers, and once I purchase some carve-y out-y things, I think we'll experiment with it some more.

Harper had a terrible whiny time becuase, as we all know, she's antisocial. That's not fair though. When she's comfortable with people, she's totally charming and open. It just takes a while to get to that comfort zone. Much like me!

I'm not sure Saren likes the other kids that are in the club. There are three families in it (including us) with 9 children and 1 baby (okay the baby isn't really a part of it), and Saren is one of only two girls (not including Harper). Most of the boys are brothers and apparantly while they were out on the trampoline the boys kept calling her "little missy" and telling her to sit down while they jumped. I'm not sure of what the whole story was, I just know she was upset about it once we got home. At least next time we meet up, we'll be out and about and I'll be around her all of the time. Anyway, we are to meet again in two weeks to look for a letterbox that is supposedly hidden near a park.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the P@ and I getting married. We've been married 6 years. We went out and spent money we didn't have in celebration. Excellent. We bought two CDs and dinner and a game that was 40% off. We played it today and it was fun despite requiring batteries. It's one of those trendy games that has clay in it.

Because you haven't yet gotten enough of Harperspeak...

How Harper Says...
...eyeball ~ eyebob
...belong ~ be-bong
...stinky ~ hinky

This is mostlly for me anyway. One of these days she'll stop talking like this (I curse that day!) and it'll all leave my memory. There's so much about Saren when she was a babe that I can't bring to mind now.

On that note, I finally decided to go through the pics that we have stored on our computer and cull out the ones we don't need. I got my digital camera in April of 2002 and I have never gotten any of the pictures printed (tried it once on our printer and it sucked) or moved them to a disk so they wouldn't take up so much space on the hard drive. So, I went through almost two years worth of pictures yesterday and today. The original plan was to come up with 100 pictures to keep, and get rid of the rest. Uh... yeah. I ended up with way more than 100. I'm not sure how many "keepers" there ended up being, but when I was done, we watched them as a slide show and it took 35 minutes for it to cycle back to the beginning. Oh, I said "on that note" because there were all these pictures of Saren and Harper looking so small! So teensy! I didn't realize there was such a difference between Saren at 4 and Saren at 6, but there really is. And Harper, good god! That girl used to be a baby, did you realize that???

In other news, I decided to not shampoo my hair today and instead I just rinsed with hot water. My hair feels perfectly soft and clean and there was no frizzing whatsoever even though I didn't use any defrizzulator. It makes me wonder what the hell I have been shampooing my hair every single day of my life for. I'm going to see how many days I can manage going without shampooing and then I will cut back accordingly. I related other news, I haven't shaved my legs all winter. Okay, I did once because I was going to have to wear a skirt, but that was it. I started shaving my legs when I was 12, I think, and my leg hairs haven't been to their full length since then. But since I always wear pants in the winter and no one in my family cares if I have hairy legs I decided to do this little experiment. The most interesting part was the huge increase in the sensations that I could feel around my legs. I liked not bothering with shaving too, but once I start wearing shorts again, I will definitely shave. If it was less thick, maybe I wouldn't, but I really don't like the look of it at all.

And there you go. Grooming (or lack of it), photography, and eyebobs. I think it's a good mix.

Another Excellent Pooh Quote

Since we have to take back The World of Pooh to the library tomorrow, I thought it best that we actually finish it up. Saren loved it all the way through, but Harper got a little tired of it.

"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.

"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."

"And he has Brain."

"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."

There was a long silence.

"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."

I also finished Sword of the Rightful King, which was a decent twist on the King Arthur legend. I thought I might not be able to read the whole thing, and that I might have Arthured myself out already, but I really enjoyed it. I do think Jane Yolen is an excellent writer of young adult and children's fiction.

Harper calls Saren "Henna." Sometimes I call my kids "googlebot." Or "Lady Potato." I feel that they are excellent nicknames, but I suppose they might seem strange.

Tomorrow is the new moon. I feel it is auspicious.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Hooray! The park day was a success! In that I talked to people. Of course it was a success for Saren in that she made a new friend, but really, that's a given, isn't it? Yes, because Saren makes friends with ease. Harper didn't make any friends, but then Harper doesn't want any friends so that's okay.

As for me, I want some friends. So talking with people is a good thing. Here's the thing with friends. I seemed to have a good little group of them before I got pregnant with Saren. Then, they just disappeared into the wind one by one until by the time Saren was In The World, they were all gone.

Since then, I haven't really made any new friends, except for the friends that I have made online (whom I love, but obviously the dynamics of an online relationship are different than irl relationships). I have been relatively content with this. The little cocoon of our family has been pretty much enough for me. But now that Saren is of an age that she needs more social interaction (and that's really more of an assessment of her personality than of some arbitrary developmental need), I've started to feel like it would be nice to have some people in my life whom I enjoy spending time with and whom I see on a semi-regular basis.

I really like this group of women because they have a lot of the same views about parenting (and birth) that I do and it's difficult to find people that do. I did have moments of feeling uncomfortable and out of place, but I always do because I'm so quiet and I don't often initiate conversations. But I did talk one on one to a couple of the mamas and I really liked them. One of them just had an unassisted birth and she told me all about it. And then the mom of Saren's newfound friend was really nice too. Pat went with us and he felt totally out of place because it was all moms. Poor, poor Patrick. He says he won't go with us next week, but that he might come another time.

Oh, and I have been meaning to say that I finished reading Ina May's Guide to Childbirth and that I really enjoyed it. She also wrote a book called Spiritual Midwifery, which I haven't read, but I have seen at the bookstore and at Wild Oats and it is so totally hippie. I want it.

Tonight, tonight!

So, what was I going to write about? I can't remember.

Oh yeah...Lists, Part II

How Harper Says...
...ice cream ~ up keem
...yeah ~ jeah
...actually ~ aggy
...T.V. ~ T.T.

Okay, so that was just a list. Here's some exciting news! I joined a yahoo group for Las Vegas moms that are more alternative in their parenting styles (co-sleeping, extended breastfeeding, cloth diapering, homebirthing, etc.) and one of the moms emailed me because she has a 6 and 3 year old too and they unschool! The six year old is a girl and we will probably meet up with them tomorrow when we go to a park day. Yay! Another unschooling family with a little girl Saren's age! I hope all goes well.

So, I think I'll give the kiddos a bath and maybe I'll be able to get them to sleep early tonight since I'm planning on waking us all up at 8:30. A.M.!!!

They got a pepper bar!

Today we went to the Valentine's Day party put together by our homeschooling group. The girls (especially Saren) had fun, but damn! it was cold. Now, granted, I may just be a big baby because I live in normally warm climes, but... yeah, I'm a big baby. However, may I just say that if this were a place where it was expected to be colder than the 50's (plus wind chill!) in February that we probably would have had much warmer clothing on hand and the whole thing probably would have been held inside instead of at a park anyway. But still, the point is it was cold.

Saren and Harper made boxes yesterday for collecting valentines in and they were pretty thrilled with the whole deal. That said, I'm not sure that I even like the whole giving of token pieces of paper with cutesy sayings on it tradition. I think it's a school thing that unfortunately the homeschoolers have latched onto as one of the "good" things about school that should be kept in some form for our kids. But, really, I would rather that the girls just spent some time making special valentines for the people in their lives that they really care about rather than obligatorily (is that a word?) making or purchasing large amounts for a bunch of kids that they may not even know all that well. Granted, my kids are rather new to the scene so they don't know the other kids really at all, but I'm pretty sure that every kid there was not best friends with every other kid there. So, what I'm really trying to say is that I don't like obligatory valentines, I like heartfelt valentines for people that matter to you, and I think the whole obligatory thing comes directly from in-school Valentine's Day parties where each kid had to bring a valentine for every kid in his or her class. But!! Saren and Harper still liked it. They're all about the quantity at this point.

Also, I talked to a few of the other moms because after I posted on the email loop about letterboxing, someone did look at the website and decided that it was cool and that she wanted to start a letterboxing club. That person happened to be there and happened to inroduce herself to Pat and I so I mentioned it and told her that Saren and I would like to do it, but that we wouldn't be able to make it for the first meeting which she wanted to do next Monday. Hopefully we'll be able to do it the Monday after that and then we can get to know some people better on a more one-on-one basis. Plus Saren is very excited about the idea of a letterboxing club.

That is the boring minutiae of my life.

Other than that I wanted to write about my thoughts on sex and teenagers as inspired by Everwood and insomnia. You know that speech that people give to kids about how your first time should be special and there's of course nothing wrong with sex, but that the first time has the potential to be a beautiful thing and that you should be sure that you are with someone who is "right" and blah, blah, blah? I've realized that I hate that speech. I've realized that I really hate that sentiment. Why put so much pressure on the event to live up to a standard that might be pretty difficult to reach? Personally, I think it was this sentiment that caused me a lot of guilt and shame over my own first time. It wasn't beautiful and it wasn't special and it certainly wasn't with the "right" person. But neither was it horrible. If I hadn't been holding onto this high ideal, maybe I would've just been able to let it go and let my first time just be my first time instead of some huge mistake. Now I'm not saying that a person's first time having sex can't be nice and I'm not saying that teenagers should just go about having sex willy-nilly. But I do think that this whole special, beautiful first time hoopla is just a rather manipulative way for adults to try to keep their kids (and girls particularly) from having sex until they are much older.

I think when I am talking to my girls about sex I am going to tell them that experimenting with sex is normal for people who are in their teens. Physically that's what their bodies are preparing them for. I'm going to tell them that they shouldn't do anything they aren't comfortable doing and that it's much more fun and enjoyable if you are with someone you are comfortable with. But I really don't think that I'm going to use the words "beautiful" or "special." Sex can be that, but it certainly doesn't have to be.

Bun in the Oven Status: Currently Empty

It's fifteen minutes into Everwood and I'm not liking the way they're dealing with the whole sex issue. Things could change. We will see.

Today my mom sent Saren some gameboy games in the mail. One of them is a Zelda game! Yahoo! I started playing it today and it's reminiscent of the old Super Nintendo Zelda. I'm already stuck! Yay! Truthfully, though, I stalled out on Majora's Mask at the end and never finished it up. I think I may have been/am too sad to see it come to an end.

Also today in the mail Saren and Harper got some big foam blocks in the mail from Ben Stiller. Ben Stiller rocks! Foam robots rock!

And! I finished the taxes! And it's February! Though I haven't sent it yet. Saren has a song that she sings whenever we mention the taxes. It goes like this:

Pay the taxes!
Pay the taxes!
They're overdue!
They're overdue!

It's even better if you know the tune. I tried to tell her that the taxes need to pay us, but she hasn't come up with a song for that yet.

Pregnancy Status: Nope, not yet!

Lists, Part I

How Harper Says...
...potato ~ bee-toh-toh
...tomato ~ tuh-moh-toh
...burrito ~ bee-yo-toh

People from the Food Network that I do not like...
Rachael Ray (too perky)
Emeril LaGasse (too bam)
Martha Stewart (too evil)

People from the Food Network that I like...
Alton Brown (cute as a button!)
Ina Garten (I wish she was my mom!)
Rachael Ray (what? I like perky.)

In other news... I have a theory that Matt has some kind of new-fangled technology that allows him to know when anyone anywhere on the internet is talking about his penis. I think it is our duty as upstanding citizens of the internet to try to screw around with his new Matty's Penis Radar. I think that everyone should mention Matty's penis as much as possible in the near future. In your blogs, in your blurtys, on random message boards. If you can't think of enough important things to say about Matty's penis to fill up a whole entry (and who could, really?) at least put "Matty's Penis" in the title or subject field. It's for a good cause! Do it for your country![/idon'tknow]

Stuff and Other Things!

I can't seem to remember what we did on Sunday. Yesterday, though, we ran a few errands and then we irresponsibly ate lunch at Applebee's, where our waiter looked exactly like Loki (Lucas is very popular in my blog lately!). Which probably isn't saying much, considering that the real Loki lives across the world from us and I've only seen a few photos of him. But really. I wish I had taken a picture of our waiter so that we could all make comparisons. And the kicker was that our waiter (who for some reason was named "Stephen") said the word Pepsi, like, ALL the time. It probably had something to do with the fact that we ordered Pepsi, but still.

We also went to the library, where I picked up a knitting book and Our Lady of the Forest, by David Guterson. He also wrote Snow Falling on Cedars and the only homeschooling book that Pat ever read all the way through, Family Matters. For that reason I always recommend it as a good homeschooling book for men. I finished reading the Alice Hoffman book from the last time we went to the library and the Sheila Kitzinger book about birth. I enjoyed them both. I like the way Alice Hoffman writes, but there seems to be a lot of sameness in her books. Considering how poorly I remember the things that I have read, it's actually a wonder that I noticed it at all. But she has a tendency towards magic realism, which I like.

Oh, and also! Yesterday we got a couple of boxes from the Children's Book of the Month Club, which I decided to join a couple of weeks ago. It's one of those things where you start out buying like 8 books for a dollar or something and then you have to buy so many in the course of a couple of years. They screwed me on the shipping and handling, but the amount that I owe is still less than the amount of just one of the books that I ordered (I'm thinking of a particular one here, it was more than the price of some of the other books individually). One of the things I got was The Bones Book, which was for Saren because she is so interested in bones lately. It came with a little set of plastic bones that Saren and I put together to make a little skeleton that she could keep in her room. That was pretty cool.

Warning: The rest of this entry may delve a little bit too much into TMI territory. You may want to skip ahead to the very last line if you are a boy (or even if you're not) and you get all squeamish about girl-part talk. I won't be offended.

I've been debating whether or not to put this in my blog or not. I actually did have it in at the beginning of January, but I took it out again because I felt it was too personal. But it's pretty central to my life right now, so I figure I may as well talk about it. I mean, if Matt can tell the world about his penis, I figure I can tell people that we are hoping to have another baby this year.

I've been charting my fertility signs for the first time in my life this past month even though we haven't officially started trying to conceive yet. It's actually pretty interesting and I was all amazed and surprised to see my body doing what it's supposed to do. I mean, not amazed and surprised, just... I don't know. It's kind of funny to watch my body do what the book said it would do.

I'm wondering what it will be like to actively try to get pregnant and not just have it happen. I mean I wonder what it will be like emotionally. I'm hoping I don't get too wrapped up in it, but that may not be a possibility considering how much reading about birth and pregnancy and fertility I have been doing lately. For a person who has been through it twice you'd think it would be old hat, but I'm coming at it from a different angle this time and there's a lot to learn. For one thing, this time I won't go anywhere near a hospital unless there is a true emergency and I don't have any reason to believe there will be one. I'm also doing a lot of reading about how birth can be something other than pain and fear and chaos, which is what we are all conditioned to believe. I'm looking forward to being pregnant and I hope there won't be any problems getting that way. I don't expect that there will be, but you never know.

So that's about it and I guess I didn't get into the girl-part talk very much at all, but for the benefit of anyone who decided to skip to the last line, we're going to try to have another baby!