lizneely's Friends

The 2009 Christmas Tree
I promised pictures of our tree this year and I've finally gotten around to posting them. Normally, we'd like to still have the tree up for Twelfth Night, but the city recycling wanted it on Monday, so we took it down on Sunday night. *sigh*

But it was a good tree as you'll see.
( Tree and little girls inside... )

Bam seems so tired today. Don't know if it's stress or something else going on. He was sweating tremendously last night, despite it being so cold and not even being very bundled up. That's fairly common for him, though.

I thought that playing games too much was making him so high strung, but maybe it's the other way around?

Current Mood: concerned

sigh
We are homeschoolers today. Bam got sent home.

And I made him such a lovely schedule, too.

He is so sad.

Bam and I have been disgustingly lovey-dovey all day. I talked with him this afternoon about us both trying to trust each other more... not sure he understood what I meant, but I appreciate his willingness to forgive and move on.

I also talked with him about wanting him to take a break from his DS when it's making him hostile and interfering with his being with people and explained that it's not arbitrary. (I always use big words with him somehow, perhaps because he's such a classic Little Professor.) I think he understood. Which doesn't mean I won't have to explain it again a gazillion times.

Tomorrow I'll make him a new schedule with DS rules included. I'm having to learn a new word processing program and that slowed me down, plus I was depressed all day, but I think I can cope now.

Yay!
I have luggage! And it only sat in the snow for a little while.

*doing the happy dance*

Bam's dad had a long talk with him last night and what he got from it is that Bam feels like everything loving he says or does to me gets erased when he does something wrong. Which is, of course, exactly the way I feel, too.

How perfectly our similarities clash. Though of course I know which one of us has the least excuse for acting like a socially maladjusted child.

Stairway to Heaven
Yes, this is Stairway to Heaven. More or less. And my musically inclined friends really need to see it. Especially

min0taur...

This is the problem I keep having with parenting: it requires you to love, unconditionally, someone who much of the time treats you like shit. To give and give and give and get almost nothing in return. In any other kind of relationship, every single one of your friends would be saying DTMFA.

I don't know how to detach, how to keep him from getting to me. My instinct when I'm hurt is to strike back. I'm not particularly good at being healthy in a normal relationship, much less this one. I don't know what to do with how hurt I am.

Back to Work
After a much-needed week of vacation (where I didn't get done nearly all of the things that I wanted to -- which should not be a surprise!), it was back to work today. I have one more round of eradicating compile errors from the latest merge.

This will take a while.

Fingers crossed
FedEx has my suitcase! I'm supposed to have it tomorrow morning! *crosses fingers and hopes lots*

Bam got back at me for the DSi thing with a vengeance today. First he announced that he prefers going to the therapy center with dad, because dad gives him his favorite snack. I wisely ignored this, despite the fact that I always give him the exact same snack. Then he informs the air, in the most gleefully malicious way imaginable, that now he's mentioned wanting that snack, I am certainly planning not to give it to him. At which point I exploded.

I am just so done. There is nothing good I do for him that makes up for the fact that I insist on being his fucking mother instead of letting him do whatever the hell he wants. On my deathbed he will still be telling his therapist about what a shit mother I am for insisting he take a break from the video game when he starts screaming and crying at the machine.

Bah
I went home for the holidays - which were fabulous - but unfortunately my suitcase didn't make it back to Ohio with me. Southwest thought it would come in on one of the flights last night, but I haven't heard from them. I really hope they find it soon. (They will FedEx it to me, which means I'm looking at another couple of days before I get it - I hate living 90 miles from an airport.) I really hope I don't have to replace everything in it; it had most of my warm clothes and a bunch of my christmas presents in it. *sighs*

My mom was sick for my birthday this year, which means I didn't get a card from Bam. Or maybe even she wouldn't have been able to pull him away from his DS to make one.

I've been worrying more and more about his obsessive playing and tonight I just hit a wall and took it away from him. Shouldn't have acted without thinking the entire scenario all out and talking it over with his father first, but his unbelievable hostility today just could not continue. Of course it turned out he was running a fever and that's probably why today was particularly bad, but it's been pretty damn bad before today, too. That game has been eating his life for 3 months. He resents anything that takes him away from it. It's hard enough to get him to participate in anything to do with social life, without having to compete with that.

It was a big, big mistake to give it to him without setting limits first. His computer use has been pretty reasonable, so I guess it didn't seem necessary.

Current Mood: sad

Itch Scratched
I finished recording the scratch tracks for Crosstime Bus today, resorting to a punch in to get "Dance By Starlight" to finish correctly. The first transition I was able to manage just fine. :)

Mind you, I have four tracks on ADAT tapes and 12 tracks on Cubase. All of the tracks need to be in the other format, so I've got a bit of transfer work to do, but I should be able to produce rough CDs at the same time, so it's only another couple of hours of work.

And it's a couple of hours of work where it doesn't matter if Katie and Julie decide to dance in the breakfast nook above the studio... :)

NAS Update
It turns out that one of the two new 2 TB Hitachi drives that I picked up at Fry's was dead-in-box. It would power up, but when you listened carefully to the drive, you'd just hear the heads clicking fruitlessly. So the drive had to be returned, which was accomplished, but not as simply as it would have been had the receipt not been lost somewhere.

However, the new drive is now installed in the NAS next to the other drive from last week's purchase and the synchronization is proceeding nicely. A note for anyone picking up one of these units (Netgear ReadyNAS NV+) and adding drives -- you'll need flat-headed drive screws to mount the drives. The round-headed screws that came with the Hitachi drives stick out too far for the trays to slide in.

Solidarity
In a complete failure of sibling rivalry, Katie has now taught Julie how to climb out of her crib.

Thanks so much, Katie...

Maker Faire
After having decided to pass on doing Maker Faire this year, I woke up yesterday with an exciting idea. I love to spin yarn. I need to get more regular exercise. Combine the two into a bicycle powered spinning wheel. I've got ideas of several ways it can be done, depending on what parts are easiest to come by.

Does anyone out there have old bicycle or spinning wheel parts you don't need? I'm really kicking myself for not buying the broken spinning wheel I saw in a rummage store in SF over the summer - it was broken in just the perfect ways! I doubt it's still there, but I'll have to run up there soon and see. I just *knew* being sensible was the wrong thing to do :)

Current Mood: inventive

I think this article is very creepy: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/fashion/19love.html?pagewanted=1&fta=y

In much the same way Ayelet Waldman's piece on pre-emptively hating her future daughter-in-law was creepy.

I will get down on my hand and knees and thank God if Bam finds someone to love, who loves him, when he's an adult.

My Mother Had A Saying...
"As Your life is on New Years Day, so it will be for the coming year." I think she just used it as a justification for her cleaning frenzy the week between Christmas and New Years.
But if it holds, then in 2010:

My house will still be a pit.
I will have a rash.
My daughters will be rowdy but cute.
I will have a mountain laundry to do.
We will get unexpected visitors.
Katie will take the occasional nap.
I will get some chances to sit down and read.
There will be more sun than clouds.

We will have lots of good homemade treats to eat.

All in all, not bad. : )

GHR

Current Mood: content

The Musical Scratch Off Ticket
Aunt Carol and Aunt Cathy came by today to visit and exchange Christmas presents. After running out to the Jewel to pick up additional components for dinner, I retreated to the basement studio and have now recorded scratch tracks for Behind the Mask, Illusions, We Can Change the World, and Out to the Stars. This leaves Wings and Dance By Starlight as the two remaining scratch tracks to record for this album.

The latter track is going to be a major PITB, as I switch from finger picking to strummed to finger picking in the course of the song and I'm trying to record scratch tracks for all of these songs using a pick when appropriate. While it's easy enough to drop the pick for the second transition, that first transition is going to be entertaining.

Yeah, entertaining. That's a good word for it. :)

So far so good...
Pick one:

A) The year so far.

B) That's what he said as he fell past the 90th floor of the Empire State building.

Zab said that she'd be happy going to the dance party last night, so long as she could find a place to curl up and take a nap. Her plane was about half an hour late, and her foot was bothering her, so I dropped her off in front of Jane's at about 11:40, then went to park the car. I walked in the door about 11:50 and could not find her. She had gone upstairs and immediately covered herself so completely with blankets she was invisible, so I pretty much spent the toasting and kissing part of New Year's looking for her, so that she wouldn't feel neglected.

One cool thing about last night, I finally met

gregbo. Though technically we probably met 27 years ago today at the wedding of two of my best friends, one of whom was his cousin.

I don't believe in "New Year's resolutions", though I've found that the end of the chaos that is the holiday season is a good time to get things back in order.

I did not make it to the traditional Misogi on the beach today. I promised Mihai that I'd replace the battery in his car this evening before FNB, and getting up for aikido two hours after going to bed didn't seem like a good plan if I was going to be driving back from SF at 2AM.

Happy New Year To All...
Had good pastrami for dinner. Spent the evening with friends. Drank good whiskey. Saw lots of police and FD activity on the way home. Little girls are very asleep and we will soon follow.

May the coming year be all you hope and nothing of what you expect!

GHR

Current Mood: peaceful

I'm Strong to the Finish
We all went out to Sweet Tomatoes last night. After thorough consideration of the state of

daisy_knotwise's digestion this morning, I think she really needs to give up raw spinach.

"But I like raw spinach!"

"Yes, but the last several times you've eaten it, it hasn't liked you."

*sigh*

Scratching Away At It
After getting all of the other things that I needed to do today finished, I went down to the studio and recorded four scratch tracks for Crosstime Bus. When

daisy_knotwise took the girls upstairs for a bath before bedtime, I went back down and recorded another two or three scratch tracks. (I think the last one is going to need to be done again, as I suspect the turnarounds were inconsistent.)

So the count is now: ten down, six to go.

Would anyone's kid like a baby bjorn-type carrier for a small baby doll? (Doll and clothes could also be included.) My mom made it and I can't bear to just throw it away.

I had to clean out Bam's drawers, since he got new flannel sheets for Christmas; 3 of his 6 dresser drawers are now devoted just to his bedding. The boy loves his sheets.

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