A.W.O.L.

The elves

Oh, where to begin. Every day I wake up thinking about everything that needs to be done, and then I make a mental list of what absolutely positively must get done, and let it trickle down from there. All the while aware that each time one task gets attention, another one falls by the wayside. Like, for instance, my blog. And the actual folding of the laundry. There is plenty of clean laundry in my house--I wash it all the time. But sorting, folding, and putting it away, well, that's not happening. And I think my family is still under the delusion that a gnome shows up every so often to do this chore, because the fact that they have to navigate around these heaps and dig to the bottom for matching socks on a regular basis is a fact they seem all too ready to accept. It's as if they think the gnome is buried under the mountainous piles of clean laundry and they assume he will eventually find his way out again...

But I digress. I've made blogging my priority this morning, so let's get to it, shall we?

Christmas 2008: Ever spent the holiday season with an 8 year old and an almost 6 year old? Every single solitary thing that comes out of their mouths has something to do with Christmas. Eric has been walking around the house for weeks with a little notebook, constantly updating his list. And he reminds me frequently that he needs to bring this notebook to the mall when we visit Santa. Which we haven't done yet. Which Eric reminds me of regularly.

Cards, not ordered. Gifts, half purchased. Tree, picked out by husband while The Queen was at work. Decorations, done in stages. At the rate I'm going I should be putting the finishing touches on right around the time my family shows up on Christmas morning. Baking, ha ha ha hee hee HA HA WHOOOO WHOOO WHOOO HEE HEE HEE Oh, excuse me while I wipe the tears from my eyes. Ok, where was I? Oh yes. I'm not ready for Christmas. Unlike say, Todd and Margo...

The second it gets dark, their Christmas Bizarro Land springs to life. They have 5 blow up monstrosities this year, and, as usual, everything--the fence, the shed, the deck, the house, the weird island of plants they have in the middle of their yard--it's all covered in lights, each coming from a completely unrelated set and each one blinking to its own beat. Rapidly. And the trees play Christmas carols while spinning and blinking so fast it looks like they're about to shoot straight up in the air like rocket ships. Nothing celebrates the birth of Christ like Santa on a musical teeter-totter.

One down, one to go

The Knitting: Harry Potter sweater #1 is finished. Ryan loves it and is actually wearing it to school today. Which makes me feel good basically because the child removes his coat once he gets to school and doesn't put it on until he goes to school the next day. No coat at recess and no coat on the bus. And since they are actually truly talking about snow later on this week, I like the fact that the kid is wearing something that may keep him alive. Since he has no body fat to speak of.

Eric's sweater is in a heap in some bag somewhere. Because the last thing I want to do is knit the exact same sweater twice. I'm not fooled by the fact that it's in a different color. It's the same sweater and I don't want to knit it. That and the fact that I have been knitting 38908093402984 baby hats. That is all I do these days. Knit baby cupcake hats. I just gave Willow & Bloom the last of an order for a big show she is doing today, which is the only reason I have time to do anything else. I have half of Heidi's sock, half a Nutkin sock, 1/4 of a Druid mitten, and no time to finish any of them up. Now mind you, I'm not complaining. Business is booming and it's great. But I would really like to knit something fun right now. Something different. Something new. Something that reminds me why I love knitting.

The Lever Shocks: Suddenly I've never been so popular. I've received enough good feedback from the evil-spawn-of-Satan Ebay that people are now taking me seriously. Let's just say this--I've completely funded our Christmas with last week's take. And I have another round of auctions ending later on today. Organizing all of these car parts, posting them, and looking up strange numbers in my dad's big binder full of random car things is actually very time consuming. But it's paying off, so who am I to complain?!

2 Reward Winning Books

Life with Eric: living with a kindergartner is never dull. I remember this from Ryan's kindergarten year as well--the amount of learning and growing they do is amazing. Eric has become amazingly independent these last couple of months and we can see the gears of his complex little mind working all the time.

Eric has asked me to start reading Charlotte's Web to him. Partly because he loves animals, and partly because this book has a shiny sparkly "reward" on the cover. And then we had to go through the house and find all of our books that have received rewards. And because that wasn't enough, Eric taped a quarter to his new journal, to give it a reward as well. This is Eric's secret journal that he purchased with his allowance. And I'm not allowed to look inside of it. But because I'm nosy, I did it anyway. It contains about 45 drawings of Spiderman and he has written several words that he recently learned to spell.

There. That's my life these days. I'm going to wrap this up now because it's a lot longer than I intended and I'm sure you stopped reading about 3 paragraphs ago. I need to spend this morning cleaning up the rest of the Christmas boxes. And then, because it's evil-1/2 day-Wednesday, I'm taking the boys to get haircuts. And then I have to bathe them. It's been awhile. And then Ryan has to do his homework. And then I have to feed them a dinner they won't eat. And then I have to take them to Ryan's dress rehearsal for his Christmas play. And then I have to bring them home and explain that they can't have anything to eat because it's 8:30 and past their bedtime and they wouldn't be so hungry if they had eaten the dinner I placed before them at dinner time.

Ah, the magic never ends.