To Do List

I love Geoff's Little Feet.

To do list:

1. today, work like crazy on professor 1 and 2's respective websites, professor 1 being of more importance.
2. read the Netscape Composer book and refresh memory; read the Powerpoint design book and refresh memory (for teaching next week)
3. work on Dart Store site. Yes, they're still in picture, although they were out of town forever and I was convinced they hated me.
4. start website for a new client
5. update cateringman's site. slight changes.
6. update Mass. heart coalition website, slight changes there too.
7. figure out what I'm going to wear every day next week for teaching.
8. contact the webcam host to find out WTF is going on with hosting for professor 1's class.
9. call Vet/Dan to solidify dog care arrangements while in Chicago.
10. call unemployment and reopen claim.

So you see, I have a little list of things to do. I got Doug to take Geoff out geocaching (they left without the camera, which bums me out... no pictures to post on the geocache site). And Jessie is reading and Grandma is napping, so I need to bust ass and rock the party for the next couple hours.

Over the next couple of weeks you won't hear much from me, which isn't a bad thing. Next week I'm teaching and have to be to the college at 8am daily. How I'm going to manage that when I normally don't get out of bed until 9:30 on a daily basis is beyond me, but I shall make my best effort. It is, after all, only five days.

I may or may not have a moment to journal over the next week very much. I'm sure I'll get an entry in... but then the week after we're outta here and off to Chicago. I'll have no journal access because I don't use a blogging tool. Everything is on my PC and unless I get somewhere and hook up and download a few pages... nah. Not worth it. So my silence doesn't mean I'm dead. Or injured. I'll just be busy. And that is not an invitation to rob my house. My tenant will so kick your ass if you show up here with nefarious designs of thievery. He's a tough bastard, so don't even think about it.

I am applying for a job at my alma mater as an educational technologist/designer. I so won't get it. Every job I've ever applied for there I've been perfect for, and have been passed over. My guess is that I don't have a great reputation as a super duper evangelical from my days there... heaven forfend they hire someone with an open mind. Oh, did I say that out loud? So my efforts may be not worth it... but what the heck. I promised myself I would start looking for something in August. And it is August, after all.

Okay. 'nuff said. To work! More later, perhaps.

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1:50pm addendum

Never listen to the Counting Crows when they make you cry when you're usually in a good mood... if you find yourself stressed or upset.

I am fully stressed out right now, and I just listened to Live Across A Wire, CD #1, Anna Begins.

That is by far my favorite Counting Crows song, I'm covered in goose bumps, and I just sat here harmonizing with my eyes closed while listening to this thing at top volume in what used to be Clayton's Kitchen (that's where our office is) and the acoustics are priceless.

She can't stop shaking, and I can't stop touching her
and this time
Her kindness falls like rain, it's washing her away.
and Anna begins to change her mind.
"These seconds when I'm shaking leave me suddering for days,"
she says,
"and i'm not ready for this sort of thing."

And I'm crying.

It is a gorgeous GORGEOUS fucking Saturday, and I'm trapped in this kitchen with no windows in the center of my house working on a website that I swear to God himself is fruitless because this is NEVER going to get off the ground. We have four weeks until class starts and we are screwed.

God. Why do I do this to myself? I just sent Tess a huge email going on and on and on about how fucked I am with this web course that I'm trying to finish, and what do I do? Set myself back a step even farther by listening to Anna Begins. Sigh. I've gotta take a walk. Play with the puppy for a little while, and come back to this later.

Thing is, I haven't gotten much done in the last hour. Taking a break --- a break from what? You haven't DONE anything, jackass. Buckle down. Get in there. Work the web. Edit. Edit. Edit.

Man Alive. I'm so switching to the Ramones. or Green Day.

The To-Do List for 'ZonaFest 2001, 8pm

1. Buy more shorts. I have only 2 pair (Done)
2. Obtain reading material for trip for myself and Geoff (Done, with exceptions)
3. Confirm with Dan M drop off time for dog (Done, date/time set)
4. Pack for me and Geoff (not done)
5. Color hair (done)
6. Pick up prescription from CVS (will be done on way to drop off dog, see number 3)
7. Drop off video rentals (see #6)
8. Dishes (do before leaving/Thursday night)
9. Get directions to airport
10. Buy Gift for Emily Yag's birthday (after all, she is the hostess when we visit!)
11. Leave note for Pete with contact info, how to turn on water for hose (to be done tomorrow)
12. Give megan the plants in the pot to babysit (to be done tomorrow)
13. Feed that fish
14. Locate and secure tickets where you won't misplace them

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Right then. Steady on. I hate getting organized for a trip, but this one seems to be under control thusfar. I am struggling with whether or not to "drug" the Boy with some benadryl before the flight, people have suggested it to me. I think I will bring some just in case he's a total wired basket case and won't be calm/quiet through the trip... it will be very obvious immediately whether or not this will be necessary. Kind of funny that I'm even thinking of 'dosing' my kid as it were, but friends have recommended it to me, they've done it with their children... I'm not sure it's a great idea, so I will just keep it as a consideration.

Doug and Jessica have called me from St. Louis, MO and Salinas, KS. I have no idea where they are today... they could have gone from Kansas south to Oklahoma and Texas, into New Mexico, or, from Kansas westward to Colorado. I wonder which they chose. Doug's put a lot of miles between us since Saturday, and I'm looking forward to hooking the fandamily up in Phoenix.

My dog will be babysat by a very good friend who has watched him before. The last time Kinger was there he was with Missy. Kinger chewed the arm off their leather couch, and ate a duck off of the kitchen counter, which made him sick to death the following day (here at our house, luckily... I would have felt horrible if it had been at Dan's...) Dan has 2 dogs, both are retrievers... they are fun. We'll babysit them in August in exchange for this. We babysat them last summer when Dan and his fiance Honey went to Thailand (that's where she hails from) for 2 weeks. Dan neglected to tell me one of his dogs has a "thing" for hair scrunchies. I was sitting in the grass after a rousing game of tennis ball with all four dogs, and Buddy came up behind me and bit my hair... and started dragging my by my ponytail across the yard, yanking and pulling and scaring the living crap out of me. Finally the hair scrunchie came out of my hair and she danced away tossing it in the air victoriously, and rolling around with it like a kitten with a ball of yarn.

What a fucked up dog.

Anyway, I love them, I love Dan... he's great. I need to get that list at the top of the page completed to the Nth degree so as to enjoy my visit down at his house with him when I drop off the dog. I don't want to ditch and run, nor do I want to stay there, be friendly, hang out, and then come home to a complete catastrophy of life.

Off to pack.

Naptime

4pm on a hot and somewhat sunny afternoon, and my recently bathed and scrubbed-clean son is out cold on the couch in his Charizard Pokemon underpants, after a few hours of out of control fun in the sun with the hose, and some (understatement) mud. I sat on the deck in my bathing suit and a pair of shorts, sure to wear sunscreen after what happened to me a week ago today (worst... sunburn... ever... never... felt such... pain, as James T. Kirk might overact and say).

Without the boy climbing on me or nefariously into anything, I hardly know what to do with myself, so I figure, hey! Journal Entry Time!

Doug and Jessica left this morning for their massive road trip. I did about a gazillion loads of laundry last night, washing everything, not just what was needed for them to pack. I organized all of Jessica's things and let Doug pack his own. Getting ready for vacation is usually such an incredible pain for me... I end up packing for everyone, and invariably I farg up and forget something for someone. When Doug's sister got married I neglected to pack Doug's suit jacket or his pants or something, and he was reading in the wedding... so I vowed I would never pack for him again, seeing as I simply suck at it. That was five years ago this past April. So, I organized everything I felt I was supposed to, and left it at that. And it all went smoothly. They got going later than I thought they would, around 11am, and I anticipate they'll be at their first overnight in Western PA at Doug's parent's house by 9 pm tonight... even if they stop to eat.

I am slightly jealous, as hanging around here makes me feel as if i should be DOING something productive with my time. I'm a very poor (lousy, crappy, insert negative adjective here) housecleaner, and we have half the house in a kind of remodeling state, and this room... the study, fuggedaboudit. It's an atrotious mess of old papers, files from Doug's graduate school years, boxes from my last job which I left over 15 months ago, more papers, magazines, all kinds of stuff, intermingled with rolling tumbleweeds of black dog hair... oh I'm nauseous just typing about it.

Thing is, I feel like with them "freshly gone," as it were, I deserve a moment of doing nothing. Yeah, I deserve that. Some down time. Time to myself. I wish I had a beer or something!

On the other hand, I tell myself I spend most of my time here doing nothing in the first place, so while I have no boy up my back, or in the cabinets, or messing with lotion in the bathroom (he loves lotion. Go figure)... I ought to make use of these precious alone seconds and start cleaning. I could clean Jessica's absolute pig sty of a room, reorganize all the stuff I pulled out of the closets to go through to give to Doug's sister's new baby (our niece, Elyse... it rhymes), clean the kitchen, clean my messy room... clean Geoff's black hole of a messy room... oh the possibilities are endless...

But there's a 3 hour Powerpuff Girls Marathon on, and then Dexter's Lab is on...the only good stuff on TV on a Saturday afternoon, and that's just so fun... it couldn't hurt to just relax and watch a few episodes, could it?

I'll be sleeping in about 15 minutes. Out cold... Right on the other end of the couch from my half naked four year old. That's Saturday afternoon fun family entertainment. It would be justified, a big nap that is... we did lots of yard stuff, watered plants, had the biggest mud puddle under the swingset in history... it was a good day for science in my backyard! And who could ask for anything more when you are a four year old (and you need to be distracted from the fact that your dad and sister just split and you won't see them for about a week, plus, you have to fly on a plane! Oh, it's too much to think about). More mud please.

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On another note, I discovered wild strawberries growing underneath the swing set last week. There are about six or seven plants beneath the platform going to the slide. The plants cropped up right along the wooden bottom, where if you wanted to you could fill it with sand for a sand box. I "harvested" six of the berries this afternoon. They are lush, huge, very red, perfect in ripeness, but they don't taste as good as they look. Why is that? How disappointing, to bite into what looks like will be an amazing piece of fruit only to find out it's an "okay" piece of fruit.

Still, the fact that they are there amazes me. I had tried to replant all the wild strawberries I had found in the yard when we moved in, and they didn't take to the new spot in the garden. I'd given up, thinking I'd rounded them all up and killed them all. But here I find a flourishing colony. I'll leave them be, they seem to be doing quite amazingly well on their own. And the Boy hasn't discovered them yet, which is extra great. There are a good 20 more berries on the remaining plants, I am going to keep a close eye on them, harvest them as they come due. There is a huge black raspberry bush in our yard that is out of control this year, so I am looking forward to fighting the birds for that bounty. There usually are so many, that the we get all we want and the birds still get well fed. That's lots o'berries. I hope they don't come to ripeness while I'm away and we don't get ANY. That would be the first time since we moved in here.

That's about it... I do think that nap sounds good. And I'll get Geoff to at least HELP me clean his room. Later.