Holy Days Off
posted by bitchphd
Dudes, I know I have become the shittiest blogger on these here internets. I'm only slightly better at correspondence, by the way. IOW, I kind of suck; ever since my laptop died in February, I've been primarily relying on ye old iphone as my primary computer, with occasional use of Mr. B.'s laptop or PK's desktop.
However! This MASSIVE SELF-DENIAL does mean that (1) my cobloggers have taken over the blog, which doubtless improves it greatly; (2) I have paid off our primary credit card, which was carrying quite a load, especially after we bought the house. So yay me. Now Mr. B's laptop is starting to act wonky, and having learned that it Is Possible to Live Without One's Own Laptop, I'm sort of advocating for him to replace it with a mutual desktop computer. I think he's on board, which means soon I should have my Own Actual Software and Enough Memory, which will be Really Nice.
Re. blogging, though, I gotta admit my heart isn't in it these days. The housewife thing seems to have totally taken me over, she says, like a hypocrite who is hogging all the credit for the fact that there is NO MORE CARPET in any of the main rooms. Actually that's all Mr. B's doing; he's been yanking the godawful off-white (?!?) carpet up for weeks now, a section at a time. He wants to tackle our bedroom next--probably tomorrow--and then, I guess, the study. I'm not sure if we're going to do something about the disgusting gray industrial carpet under the kitchen table yet; I doubt it's wood under there, and actually I want to replace both that and the kitchen vinyl with cork or rubber or something practical and hopefully semi-green. So that may be a project for later. But in the meantime it is SO NICE not to have carpet, even if we *did* discover a fairly large section in the tv/family room that doesn't have hard wood but is instead plywood, next to another section that someone in days of yore GLUED stuff to and that needs mineral spirits to pull up the yuck. That, too, is a project for later.
IOW, I am discovering, as generations have before me, that the American Dream of Home Ownership is really a Hobby for Life. If you don't want to take on an entirely new set of hobbies including do-it-yourself and gardening and organizing and surfing Craigslist and going to hardware stores and sewing and crafts and crap, KEEP RENTING.
That said, I am finding, to my great surprise, that I kind of like the organizing and cooking and planning parts of the American Middle-Class Nuclear Family (TM) gig. Not the yanking carpet parts, or the no-longer-going-out-on-the-weekend parts so much, or the cranky-neighbor-who-resents-my-kid-playing-in-our-shared-driveway-because-our-yard-is-a-pile-of-mulch-and-will-be-for-months part. But the parts that involve puttering and playing house, absolutely. I have actual plans to make curtains, y'all. And rugs. If I don't watch it I'm going to end up subscribing to some stupid-ass Martha Stewart magazine. (If that happens, please stage an intervention.)
Luckily Pseudonymous Kid, due, perhaps, to having spent some of his formative years in Canadia, is not nearly as materialistic as one imagines kids his age are supposed to be. Check out this adorable Christmas list of his:
For the sake of clarity, the boy wants:
1. a two-pound box of pick-it-yourself See's candy (picked by me) (none shared)
2. a new feather-on-a-stick [ed--this is a cat toy]
3. a chance at the wishbone (assuming there is one)
4. an iphone* (optional) (I don't suspect to get one)
5. a new gift certificate booklet (you know "go to the playground" "go to the candy store" that stuff.).
6. Josh, gagged and tied with his tough sliced out
7. A good christmas dinner
For the record, the kid is NOT getting an iphone, or an ipod touch--I've told him that's a present for when he turns 13, maybe. He is also not going to get his classmate Josh gagged and tied, nor will Josh's tongue be sliced out. The See's gift certificate is taken care of, and I suppose Santa will tuck a feather-on-a-stick in his stocking, and everything else he wants is HOME MADE. I love this kid so much.
On which note, by the way, let me suggest the "gift certificate booklet" as a gift for kids. It was a HUGE hit last year (sadly, it got misplaced during the move and has yet to resurface). I went out and got some printable business cards and used the business card template on my laptop's word processer to make a bunch of little coupons for him: "good for one trip to the park," "good for one trip to the library," "good for one playdate with a friend," "good for one trip to the beach," "good for one night sleeping with mama and papa in the big bed"--all the kinds of things that he asks for and I often say "no, not right now, we have to go to the grocery store instead" or "honey, I have to get dinner on" to. He LOVED it--the idea that here would be these things that he really wants, much more than he wants stuff, and he could control when he got them. I made it clear to him that it was up to him how he "spent" them--he could use them all up right away, or spread them out over the year, and on one or two things the card specifically said that it would require advance notice, but basically I told him these were promises that he could cash in any time as long as it was physically possible. (i.e., no trips to the beach at bedtime.) He's been talking about them all year as the bestest present ever. And that, I think--free certificates for time with his parents, doing the things he enjoys--is going to be his main Xmas present this year.
Everyone else is getting homemade curtains.*
*Not really.
However! This MASSIVE SELF-DENIAL does mean that (1) my cobloggers have taken over the blog, which doubtless improves it greatly; (2) I have paid off our primary credit card, which was carrying quite a load, especially after we bought the house. So yay me. Now Mr. B's laptop is starting to act wonky, and having learned that it Is Possible to Live Without One's Own Laptop, I'm sort of advocating for him to replace it with a mutual desktop computer. I think he's on board, which means soon I should have my Own Actual Software and Enough Memory, which will be Really Nice.
Re. blogging, though, I gotta admit my heart isn't in it these days. The housewife thing seems to have totally taken me over, she says, like a hypocrite who is hogging all the credit for the fact that there is NO MORE CARPET in any of the main rooms. Actually that's all Mr. B's doing; he's been yanking the godawful off-white (?!?) carpet up for weeks now, a section at a time. He wants to tackle our bedroom next--probably tomorrow--and then, I guess, the study. I'm not sure if we're going to do something about the disgusting gray industrial carpet under the kitchen table yet; I doubt it's wood under there, and actually I want to replace both that and the kitchen vinyl with cork or rubber or something practical and hopefully semi-green. So that may be a project for later. But in the meantime it is SO NICE not to have carpet, even if we *did* discover a fairly large section in the tv/family room that doesn't have hard wood but is instead plywood, next to another section that someone in days of yore GLUED stuff to and that needs mineral spirits to pull up the yuck. That, too, is a project for later.
IOW, I am discovering, as generations have before me, that the American Dream of Home Ownership is really a Hobby for Life. If you don't want to take on an entirely new set of hobbies including do-it-yourself and gardening and organizing and surfing Craigslist and going to hardware stores and sewing and crafts and crap, KEEP RENTING.
That said, I am finding, to my great surprise, that I kind of like the organizing and cooking and planning parts of the American Middle-Class Nuclear Family (TM) gig. Not the yanking carpet parts, or the no-longer-going-out-on-the-weekend parts so much, or the cranky-neighbor-who-resents-my-kid-playing-in-our-shared-driveway-because-our-yard-is-a-pile-of-mulch-and-will-be-for-months part. But the parts that involve puttering and playing house, absolutely. I have actual plans to make curtains, y'all. And rugs. If I don't watch it I'm going to end up subscribing to some stupid-ass Martha Stewart magazine. (If that happens, please stage an intervention.)
Luckily Pseudonymous Kid, due, perhaps, to having spent some of his formative years in Canadia, is not nearly as materialistic as one imagines kids his age are supposed to be. Check out this adorable Christmas list of his:
For the sake of clarity, the boy wants:
1. a two-pound box of pick-it-yourself See's candy (picked by me) (none shared)
2. a new feather-on-a-stick [ed--this is a cat toy]
3. a chance at the wishbone (assuming there is one)
4. an iphone* (optional) (I don't suspect to get one)
5. a new gift certificate booklet (you know "go to the playground" "go to the candy store" that stuff.).
6. Josh, gagged and tied with his tough sliced out
7. A good christmas dinner
For the record, the kid is NOT getting an iphone, or an ipod touch--I've told him that's a present for when he turns 13, maybe. He is also not going to get his classmate Josh gagged and tied, nor will Josh's tongue be sliced out. The See's gift certificate is taken care of, and I suppose Santa will tuck a feather-on-a-stick in his stocking, and everything else he wants is HOME MADE. I love this kid so much.
On which note, by the way, let me suggest the "gift certificate booklet" as a gift for kids. It was a HUGE hit last year (sadly, it got misplaced during the move and has yet to resurface). I went out and got some printable business cards and used the business card template on my laptop's word processer to make a bunch of little coupons for him: "good for one trip to the park," "good for one trip to the library," "good for one playdate with a friend," "good for one trip to the beach," "good for one night sleeping with mama and papa in the big bed"--all the kinds of things that he asks for and I often say "no, not right now, we have to go to the grocery store instead" or "honey, I have to get dinner on" to. He LOVED it--the idea that here would be these things that he really wants, much more than he wants stuff, and he could control when he got them. I made it clear to him that it was up to him how he "spent" them--he could use them all up right away, or spread them out over the year, and on one or two things the card specifically said that it would require advance notice, but basically I told him these were promises that he could cash in any time as long as it was physically possible. (i.e., no trips to the beach at bedtime.) He's been talking about them all year as the bestest present ever. And that, I think--free certificates for time with his parents, doing the things he enjoys--is going to be his main Xmas present this year.
Everyone else is getting homemade curtains.*
*Not really.
Labels: mememe, Pseudonymous Kid
Posted at 4:03 PM
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