Tuesday, February 23, 2010

A catchup post

A begrudging (because THE FIRST BRILLIANT VERSION WAS LOST) bullety kind of wrapup of those weekendy days....
  • There was an attempt at cross country skiing, which resulted in a whole new sport of ... cross country hiking. Oh yes! Wherein one sets out optimistically with one's skis on one's shoulders, because there is no white stuff on the ground, and then walks along ski paths until -- aha! White stuff is spied, skis are donned, skiing begins. Yay! And then, a brief bit later, muddy ground emerges, not so much with snow. So, one takes skis off, places upon shoulders ... [repeat repeat]. It'll probably be in the Olympics in a few years, just wait.
  • The good way to wrap up a tough week: pizza + beer + conversation covering Tiger Woods, inner gods, lace underwear, dangerous crushes on bosses, the color purple, other crushes, ended possibilities, graveyards ... you know, the usual stuff.
  • Some mildly entertaining, mildly alarming observing of my inner five-year-old who pitched a few fits because she doesn't WANT to let go of what she isn't YET DONE with, and because she doesn't WANT to do things she doesn't WANT to, and, well, you get the drift. Glad to see the inner child is alive and well. I suggest a check-in of your own (just be a little careful, unexpected tantrums can ensure).
  • The gatos, they've been, well, a leetle bit hanging out together (as in, in the same room) through this past week or so. It's really a little bit freaking adorable. Melts my heart completely. Makes me tell them ad nauseam how adorable they are (they roll their eyes and ignore me). There was me, forcing Willa to share the afternoon living-room sunlight. And Suce taking the couch, sleeping contentedly on paperwork he decided against eating -- decision subject to revision.
  • Oh, speaking of gatos, then there was Willa barfing probably 10 times in every room of the house, save two. Now, THAT's weekend fun!
Let's see, other recent activities of note included my recording-for-blind-and-dyslexic volunteering last night. Last night was, hands down, the HARDEST thing I've had to read! To make matters worse, it was a textbook for teachers on teaching reading and reading aloud. So I was hyper-aware of every stumble ... and had to work on not dropping into a gigglefest.

So, when I say hard? I read 7 pages in an hour and a half. Note: textbooks pages, so bigger than regular ones, but SEVEN. The addendum is that there was a table, a complicated-ass bar-graph figure thing and THREE textboxes, one with lotsa web sites I kept debating whether to spell or just say. Challenges, I tell you. Everything has to be read in a particular order and way and of course I'm new to it, so there was MUCH read one line, hit STOP, sigh, moan, swear, go back to instructions, figure out, read another piece and repeat. It was brain taxing, for real! Anyway.

Today's novel activity was going to this free lunchtime writing-prompt thing put on by Grub Street, a cool local writing org. You know, I forgot that we writers can be really annoying people. Entertaining, but equal parts (or more) annoying. There were 18 of us there, all female, and the leader, male. So, you have that dynamic of the more outspoken (or needy) ones dominating, with that undercurrent of "make the 'real writer' teacher notice me" and under that, under that, some female/male-dynamics stuff. But, it was good for a change of scenery, good to sit and purely write in a different way. Mostly, I really wanted to talk to the cool-seeming woman next to me who was a grantwriter, but there really wasn't an opportunity. I suppose I could reproduce what I wrote, but that presumes you want to read it and that I want to type it. Two big presumptions.

OK, it's bedtime. Sweet dreams!

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