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Katie the scrapbook lady does this round up every month & I always think to myself “Gee, you know, you ought to do that because half the time this stuff never makes it to the blog” This blog is also my journal so it makes sense to include it. Then I think “next month I am going to do it” but I never do. I’ve decided this month is THE next month and I am doing it now. What books and/or magazines did I read this month? Absinthe of Malice, Scandal on Rincon Hill, Shades of Grey, Ask Alice, Buried Bones, Nemesis, Them Bones, The Kitchen Witch, Wicked Appetite, Death Without Tenure, The Raven & the Nightingale,The Maltese Manuscript, and Quieter Than Sleep Cook’s Country & Rachel Ray magazines What movies, television shows, plays, etc. did I watch this month? I watched Castle, Big Bang Theory, Warehouse 13, Eureka, Total Drama World Tour and Futurama on tv. I rented DVD of several Brother Cadfael & Miss Marple mysteries, plus instant watched The IT Crowd and se

I’d set a goal for myself this year of reading 100 new books. I had the same goal last year and missed it by 2. Well, not this year. I finished my 100th book, Buried Bones by Carolyn Haines, on my Kindle, on Sept 21. I didn’t even notice it was my 100th new book when I entered into my Library Thing database .  It wasn’t until yesterday, when I finished Scandal on Rincon Hi ll & entered it that I checked to see where I was on the challenge and discovered I was at 103 new books read this year. That total does not include new audiobooks, but there was only one of those. I have a tendency to listen to books I have already read because the time between listens can be anywhere from 2 hours to 2 months & if I really get into a new audiobook I’m highly likely to check it out of the library and just read the thing rather than sit through having it read to me. I’m impatient that way. And Iike being able to flip back & check things. And yes, sometimes flip ahead to c

There is precious little that I have said “I will never…” about Not even when I was militantly childfree. I have plenty of friends who said things like: I will never allow my kids to watch tv I will never allow my kids to be disruptive in restuarants I will never make my kids buttered noodles when the rest of us are eating ratatouille. My kids will never be rude little screaming demons in stores My child will never wear a leash My kids will never waste hours of their lives playing video games. It’s just as well I never said any of it because apart from the butter noodles thing my kids have done all of it. And they only haven’t done the buttered noodle thing because I have never made ratatouille. Among the very few things I have stated I will never do are: Host a sleepover Have a kiddy party at Chuck E Cheese Host one of those in home parties, like Pampered Chef or PartyLite. Well… I just printed out the invitations for the backyard camping party Havoc wa

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde First let me say, Fforde is one of my very very favorite authors, right up there with Douglas Adams, my very favorite author. Usually I rush right out & buy his newest book as soon as pre-order is available, but I held off on this one. For nearly a year. I’d heard this one was rather dark & dystopian and those are two words guaranteed to keep me from picking up a book. Dark I can’t do. I have insomnia. Dark stuff only makes it worse. Dystopian is always so incredibly depressing. Happy, flying car futures rarely end up in books these days (And really if everyone is happy what would be plot be? Unhappy people planning to destroy the happiness? I suppose that works but I guess people planning to destroy the unhappiness sells better). It’s always bleakness & misery as far as the eye can see, which, again, insomnia…worse…so I avoid it. But it is Jasper Fforde so there will be wittiness and humor right? Probably? I couldn’t bring myse

We made fossil cookies. These guys got to stomp on the dough We played the dollar game at bunco    Harvest moon The book stack now includes a Kindle For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

I have a fondness for bags. Purses. Satchels. Totes. Backpacks. Briefcases. If you can put things in it and carry them around, I like it. So I naturally have a large collection of bags, satchels, totes, backpacks and even a couple briefcases and/or business attaches from back in my childfree days of monetary employment. Every one of them fulfills a specific need, or did at the time of purchase. I admit to owning more than a few backpacks, attaches, satchels and even purses that have not been used in 5 or so years. All of them were tried out as diaper bags at some point & found wanting & never looked at again, until a laptop bag was needed, when one attaché did come out of retirement. I have a decent sized collection of Vera Bradley purses (and wallets) that have seen a great deal of use over the past 7 years but I am less fond of fabric prints now than I once was. This past year I have had a brief affair with leather (and it’s imitators) in search of the perfect ca

I’m doing some work on the blog. I’ve got posts from a different blog and from two other sites that I am integrating into this blog because they are all about Havoc & Mayhem, plus some craft stuff and I feel it should all be in one place. But of course formats are different & importing changes the look of the text and occasionally appears to break the whole blog, so I have to go through each post, one by one and fix things. There are about 250 posts and about half of them require individual loving care to appear correctly. They are from 2006 & 2007 so no one but me will probably ever view them, but I want them to look nice in case someone drops by unexpectedly. Unlike say, my living room, which is always in need of reformatting & yet never seems to get it. Oh I sweep up a few unnecessary broken code tags and put the unused emphasis in boxes out of sight but really the whole living room could do with a new template and a fresh start. Anyway, after making the po

I’ve mentioned before about Havoc wasting spending his allowance on Pokemon cards and this weekend was no different in that respect. What was different was the amount of money he had available. He only gets $2 a week as an allowance. $2. He’s 7. He doesn’t need more money, opportunities to spend it are limited and the whole purpose of an allowance at this point is to learn money management. He can buy ice cream at 50 cents a serving in the school cafeteria or he can save up 2 weeks for a $3.99 pack of cards. And almost from the beginning Havoc has been an ‘eyes on the prize’ saver, working out just how long it will take him to buy whatever he wants and how much longer he is willing to wait in exchange for the occasional ice cream or candy bar. Havoc was able to spend $20 replacing a scratched up Lego Batman Wii game for his brother last Xmas. He not only saves for himself, he buys for others. A few weeks ago with about $12 in his wallet we went to target and he bought the $10.

Learned a new crochet technique Frog in the yard Morning Commute Waiting for cookies For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

No photos and no layouts for these…yet. I feel a couple may be calling for layouts ~Sleep – sometimes more necessary than exercise I try to keep a rein on my desire to crawl back into bed after the males leave for the day. Usually I accomplish this by talking myself into going to the gym with that old adage, you’ll feel better after exercising. And really, 95% of the time I do. But DH has been gone this week and my insomnia has been worse than usual. I think I slept 2 non-consecutive hours Wed night and while I did put on my work out clothes and walked the kids to the bus stop, I came home removed those clothes & put my pjs back on. I was worn out tired. The sort of tired that might just cause me an injury at the gym. Probably I would feel good after working out. But not rested and I really really needed to feel rested. I was back in bed at 7:30. I woke up at 9:30 and thought “get up now, things to do”  then I thought “what? what do I need to do this morning? nothing. there is

by Havoc   It’s a deer, in the woods, by the river, seen from an angle. And apparently the teeth are over represented. While they were camping out by the river on Labor Day weekend Havoc saw a deer in the woods and DH suggested he draw it. I’m glad it was explained to me because I thought it was a drawing of the (fictional) manbearpig who haunts our woods on holiday evenings. Last sighted on July 4th.

Yesterday I was helping out in Havoc’s class. The project? Paper Mache Earths.  Yep, slapping flour & water paste dripping strips of newspapers onto large balloons. And for some reason I thought I should PUT ON my wedding ring before going to the school. That’d be the open weave ring, with all the nooks & crannies that I have had off most of the summer because I got sick of cleaning dirt & sunscreen out of the nooks & crannies. Most of  my conversation with the children involved these phrases: You want to run your fingers down the strip to get off the excess paste Yes I am Havoc’s mom Run them down like this, to get off the excess, so it doesn’t drip too much Mmmhmm, I’m Havoc’s mom. See, it’s sliding because there is too much paste on the paper, use your fingers to push off the extra before putting it on the balloon Yes, Havoc is my son Later in the week the kids will paint them blue & then glue continents to them. I will still be trying t

Laundry day The shadows are lengthening A new scarf Getting ready to go skiing For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom Thanks for stopping by!

I know better. I know I know better because I did this post about it only a month ago. CHECK THE TAKE OUT ORDER BEFORE LEAVING THE RESTUARANT! In my defense, it was my favorite sushi place* and they have NEVER, ever, in 4 years, made a mistake on my order, even when the person on the phone spoke as little English as I speak Japanese (I can count to 5 and say hello, which does not qualify me for a job in Japan taking calls at a hamburger place, but Miko was wonderful on the phone despite it). And this time? It was a native English speaker. I ordered a Spicy Girl roll and got a Spicy Tuna roll. Sure, not as heinous as giving me a green pepper and pineapple pizza when I ordered pepperoni & chicken, and that order was taken by a computer! (I at least like spicy tuna rolls & did not have to make a 45 minute round trip to exchange food) but still. Not what I ordered. Spicy girl rolls have 3 kinds of fish and are wrapped in soybean sheets. Spicy tuna rolls have just tu

As often happens when I make sweeping statements on the internet like “the kids are sleeping through the night”, suddenly the opposite happens and the kids are up at all hours. Last week I said I was not going to try & scrap my lessons learned. Nor was I going to take photos. Yeah, well, sorta I suppose. I did two layouts, with photos last night,   So just in case that is how it works: I’m going to try to put on 20 pounds in the next two months! I’m going to attempt recklessly spending $1000 before Xmas I want to stay up all night, every night! So there!

WWII tanks, courtesy of several DVDs of The Century of Warfare which Havoc rented the last time he was at the library. Note the people inside the tanks are happier than the people sitting on top of them.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a heavy or meaningful post. This weekend the demons and I went to Target so Havoc could blow spent his allowance on stupid Pokemon cards. (They are allowed to spend their money as they please. I am allowed to have my opinions on it). Mayhem wanted a Pokemon t-shirt so we went over to the boys section where they have a large display of ‘licensed tees’. You know, Star Wars, Lego Batman, Bakugan, Ben 10, Mario Brothers, etc. Havoc & Mayhem between them own nearly all the Star Wars & Lego themed shirts on display (because Target frequently has them on sale for $5) but Mayhem did find a couple new Batman ones he did not have but that kids in his class had. I said ‘If you all were girls you would call one another up and organize a day where you all wore them to school together.” (Showing my age here because probably girls today text, actually speaking to one another is so old fashioned) Mayhem said “Why would we do that?” Me: “To be coordinated

I am once again taking shimelle’s Learn Something New Everyday class this month. This is my 3rd year doing it and my first lesson learned was “Lowered Expectations are not Necessarily a Bad Thing” I’m not going to do a layout of a lesson every day. It’s never happened and probably it never will. My priorities and lifestyle do not allow for a layout a day, even if I give myself all of October to complete those layouts. I can just about pull it off for Journal Your Christmas but that is more focused than LSNED. I’m not going to do a photo a day of the lessons I learned. Should the lessons coincide with a photo, great, bonus for me, but I am already 249 days into my 365 Photo project and after 3 years of 365 projects I am perilously close to burnt out on photos (see next lesson) so I am going to be low key on taking even more photos. I am going to journal every lesson. In a notebook. I know. How low tech can you be? It’s not even decorated or doodled in. It’s just the $1 no

Only a few today, I’m behind on editing my photos Old shoes Sunset Time to mow the lawn again For more weekly winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom Thanks for stopping by   PS please leave a link to your website when commenting so I can visit you. Thanks!

Consider this a PSA that doesn’t come with a tragic tale of photos & data lost. Though, considering it has actually been since November since I did a back up, it could easily have been a tragic tale. In my mind I back up my photos to Smug Mug on a near monthly basis. In my mind I burn my digi supplies to DVD as soon as the ‘download’ folder reaches 4GB. In my mind I copy the contents of my My Personal folder to both my EHDs every 3 months. Lots of happy thoughts in my mind. Many of them involving Nathan Fillion, sushi and a deserted beach. But, unfortunately, like Nathan & beach, none of the backing up, copying & burning ever happen in real life quite the way I imagine they do. See, I have a rather selective & idiosyncratic memory due to a combination of motherhood and insomnia. Mostly I remember things that happened years ago and things that happened hours ago. Anything in between is a mystery. So if I actually remember doing a thing I assume it must have b

Brought to you by Havoc. This came home drawn on the back of a math homework worksheet. Havoc said they had some free time & were allowed to draw if they wanted. These are fire trucks trying to put out a burning airplane while people escape down the emergency shutes. They watched Destroyed in Seconds on the Discovery Channel over the weekend & one of the things shown was an airplane in Japan that caught fire after it had landed. It’s interesting the things that stick in his mind.