babysitting

babysitting

It's SNOWING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (very wimpily, so it likely won't last, but it IS the first snowfall...)

Did some babysitting yesterday. Soon after Ruth and Kaarel left, Annie insisted I help her put on her tutu over her dress (a child's costume which was a gift from their Uncle Andres, I think). When she saw me getting stuff and mindset ready to change her diaper, tho, Annie shrieked and ran away, laughing. (When I change Annie's diaper these days, I often feel like Kirk must have felt when he was wrestling with the Salt Monster (or maybe it was some other episode of Star Trek?) when it kept changing into different types of creatures, all struggling madly to get away). I took an extra minute (ONE EXTRA MINUTE) to get everything laid out first, then went to find Annie. She was in the kitchen. She had clambered up onto a chair, had found a bowl of tomato soup leftover from lunch, and was eating it. Tomato soup was all over her face, down the front of her dress (which I had been told was a special present from her grandmother), her tutu. She gave me a huuuuge tomatoey grin when I came in. Sigh. I cleaned her off, changed her diaper, found her a new outfit, set her loose again.

Annie is VERY much into imitating absolutely everything Sara is doing. We were all playing Princess On The Glass Mountain Falls Into A Profoundly Deep Magical Sleep From Which The Populace Must Try To Wake Her, and Annie (who was lying on the floor, also pretending to be the Princess), really DID fall asleep. I carried her upstairs to bed, where she slept for two hours. Two conversation excerpts I had with Sara during that time:

EXCERPT #1:


SARA: I'm going to marry Uncle Jeff.

ME: Really? Where are you going to live?

SARA: Here.

ME: Where are Mommy and Daddy going to live?

SARA (grins): Here.

ME: Where am *I* going to live?

SARA: Here.

ME: Are you going to have any children?

Sara nods.

ME: How many?

Sara: Seventeen.



EXCERPT #2:


ME: If you could be anything in the whole world that you wanted to be, what would it be?

SARA (with a big grin): A princess!

ME: What about Annie? What do you think she would want to be, if SHE could be anything in the whole world?

SARA (after some thought): A horse.

Good luck to Ookla The Mok who are filk guests at Windycon this weekend! (Later note: oops, I was wrong...Rand says that Windycon is NEXT weekend)

TODAY'S JOKE

Q: What's red and invisible?

A: No tomatoes.

Officemusic: Adrian Belew.

toys'r'us

Had brunch with Jeff, Craig, and Doug yesterday. After that, we went to a mega computer store for Craig, then to Toys'R'Us to check out some high-tech Leggo robot thingys. I got some early xmas shopping done for my nieces. :-) Jeff bought a toy gun with styrofoam darts, and has been doing target practice on me since then (he got me in the stomach this morning after calling me into the living room). We also checked out the new Outfitting Centre at the Bay (store full of camping and outdoorsy equipment and clothing...fun Maritimes band performing live in the lobby!).

X-FILES SEASON PREMIERE TONIGHT, WOOHOO!

sick jeff

Jeff was sick yesterday, slept most of the day. Passed his germs onto me, the sweet thing. I woke up this morning feeling like something someone has squished on the sidewalk. Inklings is due out this week, though, so can't really slack off (being self-employed comes with pros and cons :-)).

I've started reading BAG OF BONES, the new Stephen King book (lent to me by Alisa...thanks, Alisa!!!). Scaaaary! I had a nightmare last night about being chased by something Horrible. I've always been a Stephen King fan, though more so of his older books. Some may turn their noses up at his writing, but I've found that his characters are always fascinating (esp. his older stories). The silliest SK story I've ever read is called "The Raft", about a group of kids on a raft in the middle of a lake. Something Horrible and Kid-Eating lurked in the lake, of course, and ate the kids one at a time. Pretty hilarious...

The X-Files season premiere was pretty much what we expected...answered some questions, tied up a few loose ends, created a lot more loose ends. :-) I was pleased to see Skinner make an appearance (he's my favourite character).

Officemusic: Adrian Belew.

snoring jeff

Moved to the living room couch last night at 3 am because of Jeff's snoring (the only time he ever snores is when he's sick). He slept most of the day. Anyway, I made the mistake of reading more from BAG OF BONES, and got too scared to fall asleep! What a lame-o (Mark Osier taught me this charming phrase). Shut the book and turned on the tv, watched the Home Shopping Network (or whatever it's called here). That put me to sleep in about fifteen minutes.

I'm still under the weather, but not so much that I can't work. Brings back memories of childhood...remember those days when you were sick, but not so sick you couldn't go to school?

Secret Confession Time: My mom would put a thermometer in my mouth on those days to see whether I had a fever, and a few seconds after she left, I would hold the thermometer up to the lightbulb of my bedside lamp to push up the temperature! I am so ashamed. Well, not really, but I felt compelled to say that in case there are any school-age people reading this. There was a real trick to it, too...push it up TOO high and your mom knows you're faking, after all.

Worse, though, was being so sick that you couldn't fully appreciate the joys of staying home sick.

Officemusic: The Beatles, 1962-1966.

fimo

Sent out Inklings today. Been really busy lately, have spent way too much time on the computer. :-) Did database stuff in Filemaker, have been experimenting with cgi scriptstuff. Also marketstuff, Inkspotstuff.

On impulse, I bought some Fimo to help me keep sane :-). Fimo is a polymer clay that comes in different colours, has to be baked in the oven, can be glazed, etc. There's something incredibly THERAPEUTIC about hands-on types of crafts. I've been doing a little bit in the evenings now and then, always while multitasking. Not all my experiments work, but it's fun trying. I made a manic-looking bird last night, for example, but made the legs too spindly. When I took him out of the oven, I discovered that my bird had tipped over as if someone had lasered it to death, poor thing.

Slept on the couch again last night. Jeff's much better now, tho, and went to work today for the first time since last week.

Getting a quickcam-type-thingy for my office soon! No, I'm not going to do a "Debbie LiveCam", but it'll be fun (esp. since my scanner still doesn't work).

re: Blathering pics. Yes, I am wearing the same thing in the last three photos. Mainly because they were taken within minutes of each other (Craig needed to use up the last few shots on his camera so he could take them in to a develop-film-in-an-hour place while we were having brunch at Zsa Zsa's). Why do I look so GOOFY in photos?

Officemusic: silence!!!