heart-throbs of the past

I was talking with some women last night about the men on our "list", and how they tend to be the same ones who were on our list from our youth. Here are a few of mine then:

Christian Slater - from "Heathers". "Our love is God; let's go get a Slushy."
John Cusack - "Say Anything". Is there a women seeing that movie for the first time who didn't melt when he lifted that boombox?
Patrick Swayze - "North and South" and then "Dirty Dancing". Nothing like a sweet Southern boy or a dangerous man who can dance!
Pierce Brosnan - "Noble House". He was just the epitome of class and elegance, with a dash of arrogant maverick - a sexy combo.
Josh Charles - "Dead Poets Society". Knox's single-minded pursuit of the girl he loved - isn't that what every teenage girl dreams about?

I'll grant that Swayze and Slater don't quite look like they did in the '80s anymore ... but the extra splash of nostalgia definitely adds to their image in my mind.

hot water

What is it about hot water that has such rejuvenating qualities? The other night, feeling weary, frustrated, and "grody" (my husband's word - occasionally a latent '80sism pops up in his vocabulary), I popped into a hot shower. Well ... a shower that started out hot. I continue to have issues with our new shower not being able to get up a full head of steam. At any rate, I felt so much better afterward, like a whole new day.

Once upon a time, in a bathroom in which the water regulator AND the water heater worked, I enjoyed soaking in long, hot baths at the end of the night ... definitely went a long way toward releasing the tensions of the day.

I think that's one reason that I drink coffee and tea almost exclusively. At least when I first pour them, the heat rising from them, the hot scent of the liquid, is a moment of that relief, when your brain is taken over by pure animal sensation and when it comes back is a little bit more relaxed.

It makes sense to me that water should be so rejuvenating, especially for someone like me who has trouble getting a decent amount of liquid in every day and so is pretty liable to be dehyrated. And the heat is a good relaxer ... maybe the simple act of adding a hot liquid to your system, inside or outside, helps to relieve tension.

At any rate, this is one reason why I don't go camping!

children's television

So we watch a lot of TV. I'm sure I've seen at least one episode of every major TV show that's hot right now ... and several that aren't. There's some good stuff out there, and there are some real wastes of time. These are my least favorite shows:

The Wonder Pets: These three furry little school pets save baby animals. The dialogue is difficult to understand (of the three animals, I only am sure of the name of one), the little duck has an accent that is at best condescending and at worst actually insulting, and they use the same two or three musical themes throughout every show.

Caillou: As far as I can tell, the idea behind this show (following a 4-year-old boy and his family in their adventures) is to display for small children all the behavior they shouldn't display. But, of course, when it's the hero of the show who's throwing tantrums in every episode, the kids want to do just what he does ... and the show does not do a good job showing the consequences of Caillou's poor behavior.

These are the best of the bunch, at least as far as our house is concerned:

The Backyardigans: The Backyardigans are a bunch of kids who share a back yard, and they use their vivid imaginations to invent all sorts of adventures. The adventures are truly interesting, cover a wide range of topics and time frames, and the music is really good. (Yes, I could conceive of putting some Backyardigans songs on my iPod.) Learning AND entertainment.

Cyberchase: This serial follows the adventures of three humans who are drawn into cyberspace to stop the machinations of an evil droid named Hacker and save "Motherboard", the ruler of cyberspace. The show focuses on math, in simple and higher levels, and the kids use math to defeat the villain in a number of different ways. My kids have learned quite a bit of math, and more importantly a lot about critical thinking, from this show.

Zoboomafoo: This was Greyson's first favorite show, and is starting to move back up the list again. Not many shows can appeal to both a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old equally, and this one has taught me a few things as well! It holds up over time, and it's simple premise, two guys in an animal sanctuary with their lemur friend, talking about and playing with actual animals, doesn't get as tired as many more complex shows.

In addition to these, a number of old favorites get a lot of play around here: Scooby-Doo, DuckTales, Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Baby Looney Tunes are all big hits and have the added benefit of being nostalgic fun for Mom and Dad as well!

activities - how to decide?

Recently, I've begun running into one of the problems that face modern parents of multiple offspring: the huge number of activity opportunities and how to decide on which ones to do.

Offspring #1 is interested in art, so I'd like to put him in art class. But we also believe it's important to have a good basic working knowledge of music, so we'd like to have him take piano lessons. He likes tae kwon do, so we'd like him to do that. But his father believes it's important to play a team sport, so he'd like him to do that. In addition, there are things like swimming and skating that are good skills to know, so we'd like him to take classes in those.

And that's just one! Offspring #2 loves to swim, but he also loves to run fast, and might be good at some of the team sports. But those require practices during the week AND games on weekends. He's the dramatic sort, so a beginner acting class might be fun.

Etc., etc., etc. Now, they're only 4 and 5, but the breadth of opportunities gets wider as they get older, and their sister will be coming up behind them with her own set of interests. And while I don't mind if they do some of the basics together (swimming, piano, etc.), I want them each to have their own interests so they're not always competing with each other.

When you come down to it, even if they each only do one activity at a time, that's three items a week (or more, if there are practices/games). And only one person to get them to all these things, so there has to be a limit to what they can each do. (We won't even mention the money this all costs.)

So while I feel that activities outside school are important, I have neither the time or money to go overboard. Which leaves me feeling the need for some kind of a metric scale to determine how, exactly, to narrow it all down so that I feel like they're getting a broad range of experiences without driving myself crazy.

Perhaps in practice, as they get older, they'll make these decisions on their own and it won't be as hard as I anticipate. I can always hope.

book report

First one of the new year! First one in the new house! Surprisingly small number of books to repor on, although I've been doing quite a bit of rereading, so that explains a lot of it.

New books:

James Ellroy, Destination: Morgue. Surprisingly, given my liking for most of Ellroy's work, this one is not a keeper. Too stylized, in a lot of cases too choppy. So many of the entries echoed each other that I had a hard time keeping track of what I had already read.

Helene Hanff, 84 Charing Cross Lane. I believe I reported favorably on Letter from New York, by the same author, last year. This one wasn't in the same category - for one thing, it was very short, being made up of mostly short notes exchanged between the author and the staff of an English bookstore. But it was a nice, charming little book, and well worth reading. (Despite the hurdle I had to overcome of having already seen the movie and having to try not to picture Anne Bancroft as the author.)

Marla Cilley, Sink Reflections. Marla Cilley - also known as the Flylady - is a person with a lot of good ideas about organization and how to get your house and lifestyle cleaned up of all the stuff that clutters them. Her methods don't all speak to me, but enough of them do to make reading (and rereading) her book inspiring.

Judith Flanders, Inside the Victorian Home. Loved this one. Really loved it. Flanders has a conversational but informative writing style, covered a huge amount of ground in a very organized fashion, and overall painted a detailed picture of life for the Victorians - and not just for the upper class. It's a huge topic area, and she really did it justice.

I just started a reading list to track books that I've finished. I think 52 books is a good goal to read for the year, don't you? So far, I'm at 4 completed since January 1, which is pretty good!

5 things that make me happy today

1. The two days a week that both boys are in school at the same time and I have some time to spend with just Veronica.

2. Coffee. Coffee. And more coffee.

3. The sounds of the dishwasher, the washing machine, and the dryer - having those in the background makes the house feel cleaner and more organized.

4. Reading books and watching movies - especially for the second or more time.

5. My new living room - it feels so much more spacious and uncluttered than the old one did, even though it actually has quite a bit more stuff in it.

concrete changes

(Ironic, insofar as concrete doesn't really change!)

But seriously ... time to spell out a few things I can actively do to get me back on track. Mainly in the diet and exercise arena, as those seem to need the most motivation.

1. Get up earlier and run in the morning. The kids have been sleeping in, so if I got up a little earlier I could get my running in before they wake up; have a chance to have a shower after becoming gross and sweaty; and have running/stretching off my to-do list before my day "starts". Of course, I'm terrible at getting up early ... but I'm pretty miserable when I get up already, so it can't be much worse!

2. Relabel all my mugs and cups with their fluid ounces, so I can keep track of how much liquid I'm drinking, and up my intake.

3. Stop snacking between meals. (The afternoon is the worst! And the kids do it, too, so I need to set a good example.) Lunch, then a post-nap snack with the kids, and otherwise, have something to drink instead.

Also, time to restart a strict budget. Enough is enough! Discretionary spending must be cut. (Not buying any new books in 2008 should help. As long as I can stick to that vow ... and good luck to me, too.)

I think those are enough for now. We'll see how they go!

the kind of weekend that makes you say "Aha!"

This is what we had kids for.

It was a quiet weekend, just us and Mark, and nobody went anywhere much. (I went and got my hair cut, and that was nice - finally a haircutting experience that was better than going to the dentist!) But mostly we just hung around the house and played games. There was a lot of World of Warcraft, granted, but there were also a lot of board games.

Lou and I played Ubongo with the real rules, and Settlers of the Stone Age. Mark and Lou played some space card game (Race for the Galaxy?). The kids and various adults played a simplified version of Ubongo, a game called Khet that's like a simplified chess game with lasers and mirrors, and Diego 123. Plus a really long game of hide-and-seek at bedtime! We watched a lot of football, ate homemade fried chicken and storemade pizza. (It's really thin-crust style, which I don't like, so I had a hamburger. Good burger [still pink!], nice salad, fries that would have been tasty if they were still crispy.)

The kids mostly kept themselves together - no major meltdowns and not a terrible amount of whining. And it was just a nice couple of days. Looking forward to many more weekends of the same kind!

"how was school today?"

"Good." That's pretty much the answer I get to that question every day. Granted, "Good" is better than the alternative, but it's not very descriptive and leaves me feeling that I don't have a full enough picture of the part of their day that my kids spend away from me. I try to get specific—I ask about friends, activities, even snacks, and get one-word answers.

Possibly part of the problem is that I ask just as I'm picking them up, while their brains are focused on getting home and probably while they're too hungry to think! Maybe if I try asking at dinner-time, or at some other point during the day, I'll get a better response. Of course, at this point, I have a fairly good sense of how their days go, but as they get older and a larger portion of their time is spent at school, it will only get more important to have the tools to get them to open up about their experiences, and there will be less and less time to do it in.

Also, as with many things, I need to remember to stop what I'm doing and listen when they're ready to talk. It's too easy to get caught up with the current activity—laundry, dishes, even work—and forget that "in 5 minutes" when I'm ready, the child probably won't be so interested in talking.

the passage of the 'tookie'

Alas, our boy is growing up. Charles used to say adorable things like "tookie" for "cookie" and "tiss" for "kiss" and it was endearing and heart-melting. He continues to be all those things, but his vocabulary and speech have improved and he now says "cookie" like any normal person. And Veronica, when tested, also insists on saying it correctly, so now we have no more 'tookies' in our house. As a passage, I suppose it isn't so bad, really ... but it's the last vestige of toddler in our ever-growing young boy. The boy is enchanting, charming, and has some endearing traits of his own, but I still miss the toddler. Sic transit gloria mundi.