Lately

We're almost done with our Maine vacation. Here are more pictures...

Ho ho ho!

I'm not dead! I've been on an internet diet. I'm continuing the diet through the rest of my vacation, after this short break. We're having a lovely vacation. Here are the pictures, with captions. See you in January!

The Big Cooks borrowed some dress-up clothes from friends.
The weather has been cold and a little snowy.There has been lots of napping.Dutch got some used ice skates.
Dutch lost another tooth.Dutch wrote a note to Santa.
Skipper woke up at 5 AM on Christmas Day.
Dutch woke up at 5:45 AM. I read Santa's note to both of them.

Dutch got some MORE awesome dress-up clothes for Christmas.

That's the news so far.

Also funny.

Anyway, after all my whining about school, I got all As. Shouldn't somebody give me a job for that?

I think it's a really good idea to spend lots more money in Afghanistan.

Hey, did you know it costs $800 a month to send your kid to kindergarten IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL?

Neither did I. I thought something like "Hey, public school is free, right? Because we value public education in this country, right?"

That was silly of me. I've finally begun researching kindergarten options. If we want Dutch to be educated/cared for longer than three (3) hours a day, we have to pay. It's at least $300 a month for her to be educated/cared for for six (6) hours a day, and at least $500 a month for her to be cared for long enough for her parents to work a regular workweek. We would pay about the same amount if she stayed in her current daycare, which has a kindergarten class, and we paid the "community" rate.

I'm not even going to talk about how much it would cost for Skipper to attend full time daycare. That makes me feel sick to my stomach. I'm sorry to beat a dead horse, but doesn't anybody out there in the Policy World think that childcare and education are KIND OF IMPORTANT?!?!?!

Of course, if neither Cook nor I have jobs, we won't NEED daycare. The whole family can escort Dutch to kindergarten every day, pick her up 3 hours later, and spend the rest of the day foraging for food before setting up our cardboard boxes in the evening. Ha, and then we wouldn't have to pay taxes either! HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

We're in Maine!

And it's lovely.

quick breath and...

I'm done! (With the quarter.) I did not produce any final projects of any academic merit whatsoever, but I probably didn't fail. And I'm sort of proud of the speed and confidence with which I produced some of it. The bullshit piled up pretty thick last week.

Things are kind of in shambles around here. I'm so sleep-deprived I'm unable to put together full sentences. The house was a mess until Cook put some serious cleaning time into it today. Dutch has been so angry and sad and whiny lately that we've started looking for help. (The internet,* I mean, but I'm thinking we may look into some kind of therapy, should the internet not actually magically solve our problems.) Skipper has eczema and still refuses to consider solid foods as anything but mildly attractive entertainment.

But we're going on vacation in a few short days, and that will be lovely. Dutch still believes in Santa, though only just barely. I'm looking forward to a leisurely holiday, with lots of cookies.



*This was kind of helpful, but I began to feel after reading about half of it that the author hates her son. SO my next research will be this book.

Review

The show was a raging success. Dutch took her MC duties very seriously.


She also participated in the grand finale number.

Hey, what do you call cheese that doesn't belong to you?
Nacho cheese!

Only one assignment left!

I'll be done with fall quarter on Friday at noon. Tonight I'm going to see a variety show; I've heard it's fantastic. I'll give you a review.

days of our lives

More videos, showing nothing particularly interesting except the extremely messy living room/Dutch's bedroom.

This morning, Skipper ate some pear for breakfast, then crept all around the kitchen, pausing only to pull things off shelves, fondle electrical outlets, and occasionally lick the floor. She's officially entered the Get Into Everything And Drive Your Sister Nuts stage.

Bangs

Dutch has bangs now, too. She LOOOOOVES them, even though they don't quite look like the bangs in the Barbie coloring book. You can't tell in the video, but I actually did a pretty decent job on them, in my opinion.

This is Sleepy Dutch, five minutes later.



Also, I want you all to know that I signed Dutch up for acting classes, starting in January. If the kid's going to wring every drop of drama out of every situation, she might as well do it officially.

Haircut time

I did it AGAIN! I cut my hair. It gets worse; I cut BANGS!!! I haven't had bangs* since I was maybe nine, I think. The reason I haven't had bangs since I was maybe nine is because they don't look very good on me. Fat round-faced people with very strong chins generally avoid bangs. There is a reason for this.

But, see, everybody has bangs. Bangs are hip! All the cool (white) kids have bangs! I've been harassing Dutch for weeks, trying to convince her that it'd be okay to get bangs, since it's driving me crazy that her hair hangs limply in her face all the time, dragging in her food and generally just looking awful,** and somewhere along the way I decided I should get bangs, too.***

I'm home sick today. Actually, I'm home feeling crappy and doing data entry and statistical analysis (two things I don't like to do and am not very good at), for work. And I have too much to do, and am exhausted and cranky and out of control, so... now I have bangs. I bet you wish our camera's memory card hadn't died.


*that were shorter than the rest of my hair, if you see what I've mean - I've given myself terrible short haircuts in the past, but this is different, since it's bangs with longer hair.
** "I just want to be able to see your pretty face!" - a refrain uttered by mothers of daughters for as long as humans have had the leisure to think about things beyond the next meal.
*** Dutch, in case you're wondering, is on board for the bangs now, since she found a character in the Barbie coloring book who has bangs. They're so pretty! I'm planning to cut her bangs this weekend - mine were just for practice.

The jury is still out.

Facebook has been feeding me all sorts of links I've liked. Yesterday I watched a video of a guy pretending to be lost at a basketball game.* Watching that made me feel like hey, people are kind of adorable!

Tonight my housemate came home from an evening of phonebanking to convince people to vote to raise taxes on rich people, and she was bummed. She had talked to many people who agree corporations should pay higher taxes... but who just couldn't bear the thought of raising taxes, because that's just not right. And who helpfully also told her that they don't like immigrants. Hearing that made me feel like hey, people are kind of idiots! Racist idiots! So I'm just not sure.

But then Facebook gave me this link. I'll let you know my verdict after I watch that movie. I'm guessing that my conclusion will probably be: both.

*You pretty much just have to watch it.

Scootching, up close

Skipper wants to eat the video camera. It makes her crazy - the little red light, the oh-so chewable-looking little box... that's why she's panting and hooting and flapping like a rabid owlet in these videos.