Weekly Winners - week 12

This week’s photos are all Project 365 photos. It’s been grey, rainy and cold and we’ve all mostly been hibernating, so I haven’t had the camera out much.

I’ve been purging my bookshelves. Guess what my area of study was in grad school?

It was time for a new bra. But what size?

A misty morning

99 cent kid meal night at Buffalo Wild Wings is a family favorite

Our not so stray cat, Tux, had a litter of kittens (free! to a good home! in about 6 weeks)

1000 yards of a cotton/silk/wool blend. Someday it will be a shawl. Right now I am still trying to roll it into a ball.

Havoc made Grandma a monkey for her birthday next month.

For even more weekly winners check out Lotus at Sarcastic Mom every Sunday

Book Purge 09 – non fiction, the esoteric

I am still working on the non fiction part of my bookcases. I have moved on to the esoteric case – books on spirituality, the goddess, Wicca, druids, philosophy, tarot, Arthuriana and child rearing.

Some of my goddess spirituality books

Some of my tarot books

Does a woman who had not really read the cards in 7 years actually *need* 36 books about tarot? That’s not counting the books that come with the decks. I have 77 tarot decks (I was a collector in my child free days), at least 30 came with substantial sized books. Do I really need 77 tarot decks? No. No I don’t, but that is a purge for another day. 

I also don’t need quite so many goddess books. I’ve been walking this path for almost 16 years now. I am beyond the ‘gather every book you can find on the broadly defined topic’ stage and my interest has drifted from the Celtic focus. Working with ruthless determination & speed I kept maybe 10 of those books and about that many tarot ones.

I wish I could show you my shelves of child rearing and Arthuriana books. But there is only about 18 inches between them & the back of the sofa and it is impossible to get a shot of them.

Most of the child rearing books were passed on to me. I am passing those on too. I am beyond the Happiest Toddler stage and my kids are finally sleeping  so the half a dozen ‘get you child to sleep’ books Havoc led me to find, can at last leave my home. I’m keeping the 3 ‘raising boys’ books and Protecting the Gift, Spiritual Parenting and Buddhism for Mothers. But the rest will be going.

I’m torn on the Arthuriana books. I loved Arthurian legends and read everything – fact & fiction about that era and those people.  The fiction ones are for the most part well done & entertaining, the scholarly ones are mostly really dry reading.  But what if the boys take an interest?

*sigh*

I can’t go there. I just can’t. If I accept that as a valid reason to keep books, then I will only be able to purge the romance section of fiction. I’ll keep the Stephen Lawhead series and Mists of Avalon but the rest need to go.

The first of many trips to Goodwill, the library and other donation places *sob*

Fiction will have to wait until next week. Havoc and Mayhem have today and tomorrow off from school for Parent-Teacher conferences. Havoc has been getting notes home lately about him making poor choices in his behavior, so it’s probably not going to be the happiest of conferences this evening.

Book purge 09 – Non fiction, part 1

I decided to start with the non-fiction books reasoning that:

A. I am more of a fiction fan so they might be marginally easier for me to purge in a calm & rational manner

B. They are what is the first two bookcases of the office and are more likely to be grouped together in other bookshelves.

Mostly B was the driving force because I am attached to all these books & can rationalize keeping every last one of them.

I approached the first bookshelf and tried to be detached about it’s contents – history.

Oh but I *love* history. Especially Tudor era history which is the bulk of the books, and the history of women from ancient to Tudor times, which is most of the rest of the books, and London, which is the rest of the rest of the books. So I can’t get rid of ANY of them.

….stares at the shelves for a bit, fingering the titles fondly…

Ok, maybe I do not need 5 autobiographies of Elizabeth I, maybe just my 2 favorites and I never really liked Mary, Queen of Scots so we can get rid of those books too. There are rather a lot of books on the role of women in various ages…perhaps it is time to admit that thesis will never be written & if it was would probably want more recent sources than 1989… Yes, it is my ‘field’, but honestly, what in the past 15 years have I done in that field except engage in online arguments about the history of midwifery? And when was the last time I did that?

My goodness, just how many “history of London” themed books does one woman need? And wow, that is a lot of books on the kings & queens of England. Really, I think I have more than the local library does. Possibly the boys might find some of them helpful over the next decade should they need to write a report on an English monarch. But do kids these days even look in books? Don’t they find everything on the internet? Even if they do look in books, do I really need 11 books on the subject?  Probably not.

What about these travel essays tucked up here behind these knick knacks? Obviously they are not being re-read or the knick knacks would be behind them. Are collections of essays worth keeping when you only really enjoyed 3 out of 16 of the essays, though probably 7 others were good reads, maybe just not worth rereading? What if you can’t recall any of the essays? Do you keep it and reread it & then decide or do you toss it on the theory that since you can’t remember the book it must not be that good?

…stare at the bookshelves awhile longer…

That would require a lot of rereading if I am going to go down that path. Not that that is a bad thing but it is going against the goal here of removing books. These travel essay collections are likely to end up on the library shelves rather than their sale room. So theoretically I can still reread them at my leisure.

Why do I have a bunch of Day in the Life photography coffee table books? A Day in the Life Australian from 1982, A Day in the Life Soviet Union from 1987 (possibly of some historic significance), a Day in the Life Italy from 1990, etc…some of these really should go, stunning photography or not. I haven’t looked at them in years.

That removed about 40+ books from my collection. A bit more than a shelf’s worth but by reorganzing them I gained almost 2 shelves and filled a whole box, plus have a small stack for listing online.

tune in tomorrow for Non-fiction part 2 – the esoteric

Monday menu planning

I haven’t done much advanced menu planning lately because I have 30lbs of boneless skinless chicken breast, 22lbs of ground beef and I am not sure how many cheap cuts of beef in my freezer (lots! they had London Broil on sale for $1.99 a pound back in January). So I have more or less known what was for dinner – chicken or beef & have been falling back on tacos, meatloaf, broiled beef, rolled stuffed chicken and chicken nuggets with random breading, and the occasional frittata (18 egg set, BOGO!).  But it’s gotten a tad boring. So yesterday I dug out my recipe cards and we will be having

Thai inspired noodles with beef & veggies

Cider vinegar braised chicken & potatoes

Chipoltle chicken rolls with avocado dipping sauce

BBQ chicken pizza

and the usual suspects

Tacos

Mini meat loaves

(which later become) spaghetti with meat balls

Goldfish breaded chicken strips

Scotch eggs & salad

Soup and sandwiches

Plus we have a parent teacher conference during dinner one night so that will be mac & cheese and I have bunco one night so that will be fish sticks and broccoli noodles.

DH will also make dinner one night, either pork chops & applesauce or pancakes and bacon.

Weekly Winners - week 11

This week is mostly nature shots but first we once again started the week off with baking.

Daddy made cookies, with help

Please note that cookies do not attract dinos. They attract crocodiles & race cars (I’m not sure what the horseradish sauce is doing out. They were chocolate chip cookies)

It was beautiful for a couple of days so I decided to get some photos of spring.

Budding trees.

A lone flower blooming

Tiny pinecones growing

Havoc took some photos as well.

One of his weekly winners

We also took photos of the local wildlife. This is Nefertiti.

This is Tux.

This is Ghost.

And of course, these guys. (Havoc’s photo)

Then it snowed

Please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom to see some more Weekly Winners!

update on the hair thing

Not too long ago I mention putting purple streaks in my hair. I did eventually go buy a highlight cap and proceeded to dye my hair.

Twice.

The second time I made a point of pulling big clumps of hair through those holes.

You can kinda see the purple. If you are outside, in daylight and know what too look for, or if I am standing up close to a mirror in my bathroom under the lamp I can see a few purple hairs. But it is not photographable.

Problem is, my hair is medium brown. Noticeable color will require bleaching first and nothing on this earth will persuade me to bleach even a few dozen hairs.  I think if I went with the foil and bigger chunks of hair I might get a more noticeable result without bleaching. But that requires DH’s help, which means after 8:30pm and the stuff has to stay on 40 minutes so it’ll be after 9:30 before I can rinse it out and I go to bed at 10. I don’t like washing my hair in the evening.  Especially right before bed.  even if I blow it dry it still feels all damp on the pillow. We’ll see how the weekend plays out.  Maybe I’ll find some time Sunday.

……

I was checking my Woopra feed today, just out of curiosity, for things people searched to find me.  My favorite is “preserved fruit packaging” which I am fairly certain I have never mentioned or even used all three words together in a single post.

My other favorite is ‘middle manager’ which appears on a number of posts about Mayhem, who is a born middle manager.

The last is ‘stacey havoc’ which I assume is people who know me in real life trying to find my blog after forgetting the full name of it. Hi! 

Now I am going to go edit some photos for my weekly winner post Sunday. Be sure to check back. It’s a natur-iffic set this week

Misunderestimated

I ordered 11 books off of half.com last week. I got them for a total of about $60 including shipping. That is probably the most I have spent in a single time on books in over a year. It is certainly the most books I have purchased at once in well over two years. They are either books I have heard on audio & want to read again or books I have checked out of the library often enough I decided to just buy them.

So they have started arriving the past few days and I went to put a few of them on my bookshelves. This proved more of a challenge that I expected.

A couple or so years ago I got rid of ALOT of books. HUNDREDS of books actually. Boxes and boxes of books went out of this house. About a hundred or so were listed on half.com or bookmooch.com.  So many books left my house that, despite the evidence of my own eyes, I firmly believed I had gotten rid of most of my books and all I needed to do was reorganize what was left & there would be all this space on my bookshelves.

I am not exaggerating either, several hundred books have left my house. When you lug boxes and boxes of books out of your house it is natural to think “Gosh I have given away nearly all my books”

Unless you started with 1800 books and are in denial about that.

This is what is left. Books in the office

more books n the office

books in the living room

books in the bedroom

books in the kitchen

Rough estimate is that there are 1000-1200 books still in the house (and those are just *my* books. I haven’t added DH or the boys’ books to that total)

So, um, yeah, I haven’t really gotten rid, proportionally, of that many books and it is clearly obvious there is little to no room on those shelves.  But for the past year or more I have thought of myself as book deprived because I got rid of so many & have bought so few.

Even now I look at those shelves and think “but there can’t be *that* many books. this isn’t *that* many books” Probably because I am used to the shelves being double stacked & double packed. I mean really, just WHERE was I keeping all those books anyway?

So now I face the unpleasant task of once again purging the books and this time it will suck. Last time wasn’t too bad. I was able to go through them fairly easily & get rid of the ones I didn’t enjoy that much or was fairly sure I no longer needed, ones who’s thesis have since been disproven, the information outdated, ones on topics I am no longer interested in. 500-700 books fell into those categories.

Which means the ones left are the ones I like. I have read every book in my library at least twice, many I have read many times. Nothing on those shelves is superfluous or unnecessary. All of them are books I am likely to read again or want for information.  Maybe 20 of them can go… some of the travel essay books & some of the romances. But 20 books doesn’t even make a dent.  That’s not even a whole shelf.

I’m going to have to make some hard choices. There is no space for more bookshelves, every possible open bit of wall has a bookshelf on it, even the bathrooms, except the hallway and in the interest of letting people get to their bedrooms I can’t in good conscious put bookshelves there.  Unless….Dh could make the inset kind in the wall cavity in the hallway. That would be really neat actually. But meantime, I have 2 little up and coming readers & I have to make some space for them. Their shelves are filling up and soon they will need more room.

I guess Sunday I will start the doleful task of deciding what stays & what goes.  ::sniff::

Feeling vaguely guilty

We live in a poor rural county. Studies show that your poor rural areas, or maybe just poor areas in general, are less likely to have books in the home and less likely to encourage reading in children. Schools obviously want to combat this, especially at the preschool & kindergarten level. The kids bring a book home from the school library every day, this month is 2 at a time for a special reading program, and are often given books by the local Literacy Council, the PTO and Scholastic Books(the schools earn points to get books to give away or keep in their library).

Mayhem has been given 5 since the beginning of the year. He’s being given another one today (Goldilocks)

This is where the guilt comes in.

Mayhem doesn’t need those books. In that same space of time the boys have checked out 17 books from the county library, in addition to the 4-5 a week from the school library and I have bought/traded for 8 more. The boys have 6 shelves stuffed with their books in the house, plus the library basket. Books are the one thing I buy without much question. They have their own line item in the budget. My children have always had access to books & always will. I love to read. I spend part of every day reading to them or encouraging them to read on their own.

I feel like those 5 books ought to go to the kids who need them, the ones who don’t have shelves of books in their rooms and regular library trips. At the rate they are handing out books, between them Havoc & Mayhem will have been given enough books to account for an entire class. 18-21 more kids could have gotten a book or a second book if mine didn’t get one.

Several times we already owned the book they were given, giving us 2 or 3 copies, if Havoc was also given one.

I know they can’t sort out who to give books to because people who don’t like to read would opt out & that would defeat the purpose and then you have the problem with kids wondering why some people got books & they didn’t, so this is probably the best way of reaching the most kids.

But I still feel vaguely guilty that I am being given a resource that other people need more than I do. I’m going to find out at the parent teacher conferences where I can donate some of these books, at least the duplicates & the ones the boys read once & never looked at again.

Trying to step up my kitchen

I tried to do some grocery shopping yesterday at Target but failed when the bulk of my available time was sucked up in a search for tablecloths, placemats & napkins. We swapped out the smaller trestle table that came with our breakfast nook, for the kitchen table we inherited from DH’s mom. The kids are now using full sized plates & silverware & that is taking up the space where we used to put food & condiments. The kitchen table is a 35 year old low budget,extendable table with 2 drop leaves. If I had the space, I could seat 14 at that table, but some of them would have to be outside because the kitchen just isn’t that big. In fact, with just one leaf up it is impossible to get to the seats against the wall without climbing over the side bench & once you are there you are trapped for the duration of the meal.

So we put Mayhem on that side.

Anyway, because it is a low budget 35 year old table it is full of scrapes & burn marks that can’t be sanded off, because it’s laminate & not that thick, so my ILs covered it with contact paper – several times. Fake wood contact paper, that has been peeling off in spots for at least the 6 years it has been in our possession (I’ve been using it as a craft table & have added my own nicks to it). I have no idea how to peel it off or a what to do with the table once I do because I am sure the adhesive itself will have done some damage or I will taking it off. So I figured I’d just toss a tablecloth over it and call it done.

I just wanted a wipe off plastic tablecloth with a fabric backing. Not the really cheap ones you use on picnic tables & perhaps some color other than white. Then after about 30 minutes of wandering I just wanted a tablecloth, any tablecloth. I could not find tablecloths in Target. My first thought was too look in the kitchen area because they have plates & glasses & dishtowels so tablecloths & napkins seemed a natural fit. But no. So I wandered around towels & bedding, reasoning that perhaps all the fabrics were kept together (though why dishtowels were not was beyond me).  Up and down the aisles I went. Looking at the posted signs. Rugs, curtains, towels, sheets, comforters, aprons, more dishtowels (on sale this time) but no tablecloths. I finally found them, hanging on a facing wall, disguised as hand towels and single pack bed sheets, which they were packaged like and hanging next to.

$20 for 4 napkins? Really? The tablecloths were reasonably priced but they were almost all cloth and mostly round. Target has gone back to the 70’s in their kitchen color scheme.  Had I wanted burnt orange or olive green or umber or goldenrod I’d have been in luck (though I am sure the color names are updated these days) My kitchen is white with some purple and dark green touches, medium wood and blue grey slate. Burnt orange only works in October, if it has pumpkins & black cats with it.

After a full 10 minutes of looking at every.single.package.there. I did find a plastic topped cream/green patterned tablecloth of appropriate size & shape and quite out of the blue discovered a 12 pack of white cloth napkins for 8.99 in the clock aisle while headed toward groceries.

The DH called & said “I’m 10 minutes from Arbys." (which is where we were meeting for dinner. He’d been at a gun show). So I had to go check out with the 6 things I did find and now i have to go back and get the actual food today.

I think I’ll go to Wal-Mart. I know where things are there

Weekly Winners - week 10

The week started off with muffins being made

Naturally this attracted our local wildlife

I’ve often wondered about the dinos affinity for muffins. Apparently they insist on being given them

“I can’t turn them down Mom”

We went to Buffalo Wild Wings for kids’ night

They seated us under a TV

Mayhem had show & tell at preschool

This guy insisted on coming along as well

and I made a camera strap & snuggie for my D40 yesterday

For more Weekly Winners visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom

Pardon me while I ramble

Havoc has an ear infection. Safeway is doing some sort of promotional thing where new prescriptions are free. (not all prescriptions unfortunately, not the 3rd tier $50 on my insurance stuff, the maintenance type drugs, but the antibiotics are) So we got free amoxicillin for the kid. My cousin tells me her DD (age 11 I think) has become resistant to the cillins and the meds they give her for ear infections cost $120! (Somehow I don’t think Safeway includes that in the promo). Ye gods!

Havoc spend the day laying around watching Return of Jedi, playing Lego Star Wars and pretending he was a Jedi. Don’t get me wrong, I love Star Wars, but it’s been non-stop Star Wars in this house since early January & I’m ready to go back to the Thomas or dino obsessions of last year. Mayhem is so into that Lego Star Wars game. He’ll sit in front of it for hours if we let him. There was much wailing & gnashing of teeth when he first went through the levels but after 6 weeks of playing an hour or so a day every day he’s very good at it and fixed on unlocking all the characters and gathering all the items.  He is also obsessed with the Lego catalog we received a couple months ago.  The back half of it is devoted to Lego Star Wars items – they have the coolest Death Star & Millenium Falcon (Both over $300), plus all the regular items.  He sits in the backseat whenever we go anywhere and just pours over the catalog. He looks at all the items, discusses the various parts & the people included and just how old he has to be to have them.

I have my kids convinced that age limits on games, moves, toys & TV shows are set in stone. That lego firetruck says ages 7-14, so while they comment on it, they also say “When we are 7 we can have that”. They want the Clone Wars Wii game but it is rated T “and we aren’t 13 yet mama”. I have no idea how the idea stuck in their mind originally. They were the ones to say “it says age 5 kids and I am only a 3 kid” and since I didn’t really want to buy whatever it was I agreed “That’s right, you have to be 5”. It was a handy way to control the regular toy requests. Now that they are in school they are meeting kids who’s families ignore those age ranges. “Garrett has this game and it’s plus 10. Can we get this game too?” Not sure how to handle that without saying “Well, Garrett’s family is WRONG” which I don’t truly believe anyway.  They never argued with the age range reason. “We’re not buying toys today.” though got me endless “Pweese? Pweese? I be good. pweese?”

Ah well, it was nice to have the power while it lasted.

Not quite Wordless Wednesday

When you are tired of saying “Back away from the TV” to little Wii players

so much for that plan

I woke up to this

It’s about 4-5 inches and school, naturally, has been cancelled.

There go my plans for today. I had a full day planned too.

Get Havoc on the bus

Go to the gym

Take a shower

Get Mayhem on the bus

Photo document putting purple streaks in my hair for a Tuesday Tribute tomorrow (I’m sure I am not the only one who arranges the blog fodder opportunities in her life to coincide with appropriate memes)

Sweep & mop the house

Sew a padded cover for my camera strap & work out a pattern for a camera cozy (I love my Crumpler bucket but it’s just too big for about half my purses. I need something snug but not bulky, more to protect from scratching than impact)

Get caught up on blog reading

Now the only thing I am likely to manage is ‘take a shower’. The roads are probably fine at this point but body pump was cancelled & I don’t feel like making the effort just to run on the treadmill.  Hair coloring is impossible (boys wanting to touch the dye), sewing is more of a challenge than I am up for (constant interruptions), there is no point in sweeping & mopping when there are 2 people walking behind you scattering crumbs and juice splatters. Blog reading might happen in spurts though.

Havoc wants to shovel a path for the cats to get to their food bowl.  Mayhem is entirely uninterested in playing in the snow, but we might get a bit of sledding in after lunch, depending on how things go. 

Mostly though I expect there will be a great many 5 minute trips outside to justify endless requests for hot chocolate

Weekly Winners - week 9

It was nice most of this week. So we were outside playing for a change.

I’m not sure if the bus is under attack or picking up riders

I am told this is a dino climbing race.

These guys don’t climb as well so they stayed on the ground

Storytime.

Friday it got cold and there was some painting

and I went to the gym

Havoc’s Weekly winner

For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom