Well, That Was Fast

Much faster than I expected.  It probably has to do with the fact that I publicly acknowledged I was going to make a change and so felt some accountably coupled with the fact that since I’m not wasting my time on facebook, I have a whole lot more time on my hands to do things like set up a new blog.

So yeah.  That’s what I did.

I was going to just let these 11 months of wordpress posts hang out here, disconnected from the rest of my life.  But then I stumbled across some articles that suggested there was a way to import a wordpress blog to a blogger platform.  So I researched that for a couple of hours.  Unfortunately, the app that converted the wordpress file to the appropriate xml file for blogger has apparently been discontinued.  At any rate, I’ve tried a couple of different ways and haven’t been able to get it to work.

Nevertheless, now that the idea has been planted that I should be able to have all these posts on my new blog, I want them.  So I’m just kind of going through and tediously copying and pasting and re-uploading photos.

Anyway, I hope you will come follow me over to my new digs.

Sparklesinblue.blogspot.com

Because I Deactivated My Facebook Account

I’m off facebook for a while.  I do it periodically (thought not periodically enough).  And this morning the Hubba and the boys and Pink are all off playing basketball with my son-in-law and his family.  Wink is still asleep.  It’s snowing outside and I’m using that as an excuse not to clean.

So with no other pressing tasks, I would usually veg out on facebook.  Without facebook, I often find myself at loose ends (which is just really humiliating to admit) like this.  So I figured, now that I have announced my move, I should perhaps find a URL home for my new blog.

Every single URL I come up with has been taken.  Which isn’t suprising because blogs have been around for a long time and there are a near infinite amount of people using them for their purposes and they are free.  I have been coming up with a lot of uniquely me URLs that I’m sure will be available, though.  They are not.  So I keep going to those sites to see the blog that is using my same idea.  And invariably they are defunct blogs that haven’t been written in for years–some of them have no posts whatsoever.  Just an “about me” page.

Seriously?

Which also reminds me that when I want to know something–like how to do something on amazon or facebook, I google it.  And if you aren’t careful you could be finding information for how to do that thing on facebook from 2007–16 generations of facebook ago–that won’t apply at all now.

Then I also think of all the accounts on different sites that I have opened and not used in years.  Many of those accounts are still active but the only way to access them is by using some old defunct email account that I no longer remember.

And I just can’t stand the clutter.  Is there no way to clean up the internet?  I mean, if we can’t even keep that free of cyber-debris and detritus, how on earth can we expect that anything is ever going to get better with the polution of the earth?  How much server space could be freed up if all the old, unnecessary crap on the internet could just be deleted.  Or archived, at least, somewhere else.

Moving Back to Blogger

I know I am going to make this move.  I just don’t know when.  Moving blogs is a big deal and I’ll be sad to lose the history that I made with this one.  But the rest of my whole life is organized on google and this little blog is all alone and lost out here on wordpress.  I spent a decade working with blogger and though it does not have some of the awesome features of wordpress, at least I know them all and they are all free.  I’m always being teased by wordpress.  “Sure, you can do that!  You just have to upgrade to a paid account.”  Also, I saw the first ads on my blog a couple weeks ago.  Advertisements that have nothing to do with me and that I don’t want there.  And it visually clutters up the page.    I can get rid of them.  All I need to do is upgrade to a paid account.  And even though I’ve been using this blog for a while now, it’s just been too much to figure out how to get everything the way I want it.  I still want photos of my kids on the sidebar.  Mostly because I love my kids and want to show them off, but also as a quick reference for new readers who don’t intimately know my family.  In blogger it was so simple.  I can do it in wordpress.  It’s just a more convoluted process.

So the grand experiment is over.  At some point in the future, when I get up my gumption, I’ll be posting a link to my new place back in the blogger subdevelopment of the internet.

So Much Art

I am not an artist.  I do not have the eye or patience for art.  I would love to be able to create but just find the whole thing so frustrating.  However, every person in my family has some artistic talent.  Some of them are all-around amazing.  Others have a particular talent in art–for instance, maybe they aren’t great at drawing real life things, but they are  awesome at cartooning.  Even some of them have a talent for drawing stick figures.  And you may not think stick figures are very interesting as an art form.  But MY stick figures are terrible.  But some of my boys can draw stick figures that have personality.  I didn’t even know that was possible.  So I am in awe that the Hubba and all of our kids have this talent that was not heritable through me.  At all.

Pink drew this picture.  I love the “3-D” view to explain what that is above the shoulders.  So awesome.

This is Wink’s.  Look at the perfection of that nose and mouth.  And the coloring!  And look at the lines and angles of those legs and the head and neck.  So awesome.  I was sad, though, because previously this white board had a drawing of Wink in her basketball clothes.  And there were notes written all over like “more hair” or “not so fat ankles”.  And I kept meaning to ask which girl had drawn it and who had made the comments.  Was it the artist critiquing her own work?  Or was it her sister?  Every day I meant to take a photo of it because it was a great picture AND the comments were hilarious.  But apparently I was too slow!  😦

This one is Mack’s.  He was just using Paint on the computer.  I’m totally mesmerized by this and think it looks like a still shot of some action-packed animated adventure.  I don’t know how to explain it but he has totally captured the fact that although you can only see from the shoulders up, this guy has a whole body and you know exactly how he is holding his weapon–even though you can’t see the rest of the picture.  He has been drawing these dudes since he was little.  I have kept a lot of his drawings from when he was younger and some day it’s going to be awesome to make a visual timeline of how he has improved.  I think this is just visually stunning.  And though this piece doesn’t have a lot of it, one of the things I love about his drawings is his use of blank spaces.  You can see it a little bit here at the tip of the weapon.  The very tip is white.  Then it’s blank.  Then the rest of the weapon is black.  He draws like that all the time, using those blank spaces as part of the art.  It’s really cool.

Hopefully soon I will get some photos of all the pieces he has been making in his ceramics class this year.

Having Done All We Could Do

We are nearing the end of all the requirements for the Foreign Service.  This past ten days or so have been filled with medical, medical, medical.  Lots of different doctor appointments.  Lots of labwork.  The kids doctor’s office has a lab inside so everything could be done there.  But the labs on my insurance plan are half the valley away.  I finally made it to one last week only to find out that these labs don’t do the test for tuberculosis.  So I had to go to a second lab (not on my insurance plan) on another day.  And then go back again three days later to have the test read.  Meanwhile, the day I chose to do all the kids labs at their doctor’s office was a Thursday.  And TB tests have to be read between 48 and 72 hours later.  Which puts that firmly in the weekend when the doctor’s office was closed.  So we had to go back another day to do the test and then come back again 2 days later to read the test.

Here we are in the waiting room at the doctor’s office.  In the middle of the night, the night before, I had woken up with the feeling of somethig in my eye.  My eye was watering like crazy.  How anything got in there while I was SLEEPING, I will never know.  It was super irritating.  My eye was fiercely red, but the Hubba couldn’t see anything.  By morning I could feel the inside of my eyelid swollen.  Every time I blinked it felt like a little pebble scraping across my eye.  This happened to be once before on the fourth of July a few years aback when a bit of firework ash landed in my eye as I was looking up.  So I knew that the only thing that can be done is to give you numbing eye drops so you don’t feel that swelling/pebble feeling.  So I was just powering through the annoyance that day.  I asked Wink if my eye was red.  She said, “No, but you have eye boogers right there.”  So I took a picture to see.  I don’t see any.

We were waiting there to take the TB test for a long time.  The kids were tired and bored (and some of them were worried).  Pink entertained herself with my phone.

Finally, it was our turn.  For the TB test, they just inject a little bubble of fluid underneath your skin.  It looks pretty freaky but the needle barely goes in.  It hurts a lot less than a shot and is a lot quicker than drawing blood.  I ordered the children to get their testd done like this:  X, Mack, Kelvinator, Wink Pink.  X and Mack were the least worried and would be fine.  Kelvinator is pretty nervous about needles, but he’s also a big boy and shouldn’t freak out about it.  Pink would ultimately be ok, but she wouldn’t set a good example for Wink.  So I wanted Wink to go before Pink.

X was fine.  Mack was fine.  It was actually kind of cute because he was looking away but was surprised by how much it hurt.  So he said “ow” like three times–each more emphatically as his eyes got bigger.  Wink was freaking out and I was actually holding her in my arms trying to calm her down when it was Kelvinator’s turn.  He wanted me to be in there with him for support and comfort but I was wrestling a very distraught 8 year old and couldn’t get to him (the room was crowded with all of us in it) in time.  I was, however, able to snap this sweet brotherly love photo of X holding his hand and getting him through it.

Kelvinator was so hilariously grumpy about having to do this again.  Also, as a side note, one of the neat things that has been happening with JJ out of the house is this awesome brotherly bond between Kelvinator and X.  Growing up, it was always JJ and X.  Kelvinator was forever trying to do things with his big bros and they were just so mean to him.  Excluding him from everything.  So the past year and four months has given them the chance to really get to know and enjoy each other.  And they do.  I have loved seeing that relationship develop.  And I hope there is enough time when JJ comes home (and X is on his mission) before he leaves for school for the same magic to happen between JJ and K.

Pink had been doing ok but when it was her turn she was pretty freaking out.  I set Wink down to go be with her.  Last time when she had to have her blood drawn she was really nervous and kind of fighting it.  Then she said, “I need something to bite on.”  So the tech gave her a wad of gauze to put in her mouth.  And it sounds silly, but I was really proud of her for knowing what would help her and speaking up to get it.  After that, she was just fine.  So this time, she got to a point where she said, “I need to bite something.”  I said ok.  And the (new) tech looked at me like, “What kind of thing can she bite on?”  But we got her a wad of gauze and she settled right down.  In fact, she actually stopped squirming and completely relaxed WHEN they inserted the needle.  It was kind of hilarious.  It was clearly a case of her worrying it was going to be awful but then when it happened it was no big deal.

Unfortuantely for all of us, Wink had had enough.  She had left the room and was running from me down the hall when I tried to retrieve her.  She let me pick her up but was fighting going back in the room.  I finally got her settled on my lap but she was refusing to allow us access to her arm.  I was patient and tried to convince her to let us.  I tried to coax her reminding her that this was necessary so she could come with us if Dad got the job and how she had been so brave all the other times.  She would say ok but then when I tried to take her jacket off or pull up her sleeve, she would go rigid and wouldn’t let us get at her arms.  It was exhausting.  And it was taking a LOT of time.  So I tried again.  This will only take 5 seconds and then we can leave.  Let’s go home and do something fun.  The staff brought out the stickers and the otter pops AND the treasure box, too.  So we let her rummage through the treasure box to see what she wanted.

Still, she said no.  They brought in other staff members who were suggesting that we just pin her down and get this done.  I have had to do that once before.  We were taking her to an opthalmologist to figure out why she was having eye pain (she still has it intermittently, no one knows why).  They had done everything they needed to do except one test where she needed eye drops that were going to sting just a bit.  I coaxed and encouraged but she still refused.  So finally they brought in a big guy and we all held her down while they forced eye drops in her eyes.  It was truly awful and afterwards I felt like I had allowed and participated in the violation of my daughter.  And you can say “it was necessary” all you want, but that felt absolutely yucky and I never wanted to do that again.

So here we were.  So I said to Wink, “Do you understand what their talking about?  Because you won’t let us do this important test on your arm, they are getting ready to just have you lie down and make you be still so we can do it.  Would you rather just sit here on my lap and let them have your arm or do you want us all to hold you down so they can get to your arm?”  She chose sitting on my lap, but when the time came, she wouldn’t let us get at her arm.  So I said, “Ok.  Since you won’t let us have your arm, we will have to try the other way.  And I set her on the examination table.  She was not having any of that and said she would sit on my lap.  But the same thing happened.  She got too frightened and wouldn’t give us her arm.    So I explained what was happening and set her down on the examination table.   She said she would sit on my lap and do it.  I told her that this was last her chance, if she didn’t do it now, we were going to have to do it the other way.

So she sat on my lap and took off her jacket and rolled up her sleeve.  (I was so relieved!!)  She was still rigid and tense and freaking out and we did use another staff member to hold her arm to make sure it stayed there, but she allowed it all.  X had been becoming so distraught as he watched both girls’ distress.  He had the sweetest look of love and compassion and his face while all of this was going on.  And he had made his way next to me as I was holding Wink through everything.  So when we were finally able to do this, he was right next to her and we were having her look at him rather than look at her arm and he was just saying sweet and encouraging things to her and helping me hold her.

When it was (finally) all over, I was holding Wink on my hip so she could see inside the treasure box that was on top of a counter.  But X scooped her up and doted on her.  He seemed like he was just waiting for his chance to hold her and comfort her. I was so grateful because I was physically exhausted from wrestling a wiry 8 year old for the past 40 minutes!

Anyway, the hard parts were done.  We went back yesterday to have them read the kids’ tests.  It was the easiest time we had had.  Just run your thumb over the arm looking for bumps.  We are tuberculosis-free!  In case you were wondering.  It’s pretty much going to be awful the next time I decide to take K, Pink, or Wink in for a vaccination, though.

Meanwhile, the Hubba has to be fasting for his labwork.  Even though we all have the same forms, the four different doctors we have seen have ordered different labs–I’m kind of worried about whether they’ve done it right!!  Some of us had to do urinalysis-es (urinalyses?).   Some didn’t.  Some only had two vials of blood drawn, some four.  The Hubba had to do an EKG, too.  Anyway, he has to be fasting for his bloodwork.  So he will go in on Monday morning after taking the kids to school and do all his stuff.  Then he’ll have to go back on Wednesday or Thursday to have his TB test read.  But then we’re done!

It’s the home stretch.

 

I Just Got a Raise

Lately I have been looking around to see if there were any jobs that caught my fancy.  Turns out my fancy is pretty slippery and hard to pin down.  Anyway, on Tuesday I had my first interview in about 7.5 years.  I was offered the job and declined.

That evening, after I returned home from the interview, Wink asked me to come downstairs into Baboo and Wiyah’s empty room where she and Pink have been playing lately.  She was all dressed up with make up on and had made a desk out of some odds and ends in our basement.  She invited me to sit down and proceeded to interview me for the job of Stay Home Mom.

She outlined my job duties as breakfast, lunch, dinner, and cleaning.  I had to sign off on each task that I agreed to.  I agreed to all of it.  Then there was another form that stated if there was an extra mess, the children had to help.  It wasn’t my sole responsibility.  I signed off on that, too.

She offered to pay me $30–the entire contents of her savings account if I would accept the job.  How could I say no to the best job ever?

So yesterday and today as I’m sitting down to eat dinner with the family, Wink has come to me with money.  Yesterday it was $1 bill and some change.  Today it was the $1 that the tooth fairy brought her last night.  It’s my daily paycheck.

Lunch of the Gods

This is still not a food blog.

But this lunch is so good!

When  Baboo got back from her mission to Canada she spoke about Canadian ramen noodles that were so much better than American ramen noodles.  She looked for them, but couldn’t find them here.  Then one day we were in an international store and she saw some and bought them.  She served them to the family for a meal soon thereafter and they were really good!

She continued to purchase them here and there and I always wanted some but rarely partook because she was buying them.  And then suddenly they were stocking them at Smith’s!  And I started buying them, too.  In fact, when we took our trip to D.C., we wanted to save money but weren’t sure about shopping in the area so we took a bunch of packets of these with us.  I LOVED eating them for lunch every day!

I call this photo, “Why These are Better Than Ramen Noodles.”  And can I just say, I actually like ramen noodles to begin with.  I love the texture and despite how unhealthy ramen noodles are, I throw in a handful of mixed veggies and feel like I just ate a good meal.  But in the IndoMie noodles, you get so much more than a package of chicken flavored MSG!  You get sweet soy sauce, chili sauce, seasoning oil, seasoning powder and fried onions.

Also, you completely drain the noodles.  With regular ramen noodles, they are served like a soup where eventually the noodles will absorb whatever water you included (I always halve the water because I hate that) and become gummy and disgusting.  But Indo mie noodles keep their awesome texture.  So if you ever had any leftovers, which I would find difficult to believe, they will be just as great later as now.

The flavor is so outrageously yummy.  I like a moderate amount of spice.  This is at the limits of my spice tolerance.  But the spice really enhances the flavors, not masks it.  And sometimes I think I’d like to drink a sip of milk after a bite, but I usually don’t because I really enjoy the flavors just hanging out on my tongue having their own little party.

I’ve been eating this meal every lunch for the past couple of weeks.  It’s easy, fast and to-die-for delicious.  And it’s probably not, but it just *feels* so much healthier than regular ramen.  (Please don’t tell me otherwise, just let me keep living in my little bubble.)  I usually make two eggs to go with it.  Whatever’s fastest.  Leftover scrambled from breakfast?  Sure!  Hard boiled eggs you made for kids’ lunches?  Yep.  Fried eggs just because?  You betcha!

But I always ate my other ramen with mixed veggies.  I knew that this dish would not let me down.  So today for the first time, I threw some vegetables in.  It was perfection.  I never need another lunch in my life.

I could eat these noodles all day every day, and it’s an effort to only eat one package per day at lunch time.  They cost .47 cents.  Which is three times what regular ramen noodles cost.  And worth every penny.

Looks almost like the picture on the package, no?

Also, apparently there are lots of different flavors.  I have only seen the original and the “hot & spicy”.  We couldn’t tell the difference in taste between the two.  But that’s ok, because this is all I need.

Stress Baking

I think the little girls have been a little stressed out lately.  So I wanted to do something fun with them tonight.  So first of all, after dinner, I started reading Robinson Crusoe to all the kids.  I just summarized the first few chapters and jumped in when the book starts getting good.  I don’t even know if I summarized correctly because I haven’t read the book in so long.  Mostly I was just making stuff up.  But I’m somebody who sleeps through the beginning parts of movies.  It’s never important stuff.  You can always pick up the plot halfway through, no problem!  Also I don’t read prologues or anything italicized at the beginning of chapters or any type of long poems (LOTR, I’m looking at you!).  That stuff is almost always fluff that is not necessary to the progression of the story.

Anyway, I got to start that book with my kids.  Then the boys had activities.  And as soon as they left it was girl time!

So Wink got this cool cake mix for Christmas.  In case you are interested, it’s called Purple Rain.  So baking this cake was our girls’ night activity.

Wink held the box and read us all the instructions.  She preheated the oven and told us what to do when.  And she generously allowed Pink to help with the manual labor.

I didn’t think I had ever made a layer cake before (I was surprised to find we even had two pans.  I’m still not entirely sure one of those wasn’t a wedding  gift for Baboo.).  But Wink tells me she and I made one together for Pink’s birthday a while back.

Once we got the cakes in the oven and baking, I sat down to rest.  Because today was a big day of going and going and going and this was my first time to relax.  That’s when the girls started talking about “the frosting”.  Ugh.  I told them that I would look up a recipe later and maybe make something.  Then without my body telling my brain what it was doing, there I was in the kitchen making buttercream frosting from scratch.

They thought the cake looked plain without candles or something.  But I wasn’t about to put candles on it.  So they decided that strawberries would look pretty.  I could do strawberries.

The cake itself was actually really good.  I was surprised.  The frosting, unfortunately, was just not that great.  And too sweet.  I actually really enjoyed the unsweetened strawberries in it, though.  And that’s how I ate my leftover glob of frosting on my plate–just grabbed a couple extra strawberries to wipe it up with.

But for me at least, the point wasn’t about the cake at all.  It was just getting to spend some stress-free time with my girls and smile and laugh with them.  Check and check.

More Books, I Say!

A year or so ago (I think it was about a year ago), the kids and I really got into reading books together.  Specifically books in a certain genre.  I don’t know what that genre is called but they featured people who were stranded and alone and had to survive on their own outside of civilization.

I love that kind of survival stuff and apparently the kids did, too.  Everyone from X to Wink would gather around in the family room after school while I read a few more chapters.  I wanted to keep it up, but as I found out, there just aren’t that many books written in that particular genre.  Especially for kids!

So after I had tapped out our local library, I kind of gave up.  But as I was decluttering our bookshelves before Christmas, I came across “Island of the Blue Dolphins”.  I had read it years ago and forgotten all about it!  I couldn’t wait to read it to the kids.  I actually couldn’t remember what it was about so I was re-reading the back cover and something about the story reminded me of Robinson Crusoe.  Duh.

I had read an abridged version of Robinson Crusoe several years ago as well and really liked it.  While I don’t remember the whole story very well, there is still vivid imagery of certain scenes etched in my brain.  I know that my kids would love the descriptions of those scenes.

So last night at dinner we were talking about these books I wanted to read them and it was all I could do not to describe things from Robinson Crusoe to them.  I wanted to tell them so badly.  But I also did not want to spoil the story!  It was torture.  We continued to talk about things and the Hubba mentioned how much he loved Swiss Family Robinson.  All of us had seen and loved the movie but only the Hubba had read the book.  Because I felt like the book was kind of dense reading and since everyone had already watched the movie, I wasn’t really interested in reading that book.

So this morning I decided to go downstairs and grab “Island of the Blue Dolphins” to read after school today.  And it was right next to “Swiss Family Robinson” on the shelf.  I didn’t even know we owned a copy.   So I took that as a sign.  Then I got online and found a free abridged version of Robinson Crusoe, too.

I don’t even know where to start!  But I’m excited to do this again!

I Don’t Do New Year’s Resolutions

However, about two weeks ago, I did set a goal that I would love to accomplish before the end of the year.  As you may or may not know, I have still been decluttering.  It’s been going much more slowly these past few months, but with Baboo moving all of her things out of the house and Wiyah finally going through all the things we stored from before her mission and consolidating that down to three boxes (I think we had been storing eight!), I feel a renewed sense of determination.

For instance, after the kids took down the little Christmas tree that they hang all their handmade ornaments on, I decided to throw it away.  Part of the base is missing and every year just gets sadder and sadder as we try to prop it up on one side.  It never really works and the tree ends up slouching over at about a 60 degree angle.  I’m ready to let it go.  I’m also ready to let our other big, Christmas tree go.  It’s a pre-lit tree that only lights on the top half.  Which means we still have to string lights on and what’s the point in that?  Then we have two sets of ugly cords all through the tree and it just sucks the Christmas spirit right out of my soul like a dementor every time I look at it in daylight.

But I digress.

We also have an entire cupboard filled with vitamins and herbs.  My mother-in-law owns her own business selling supplements.  And any time we mention an ache or pain or problem, she sends us a hefty supply of what we need to cure what ails us.  We are not that good at taking them.  So they have piled up.  In the past I have considered them part of our year’s supply of food storage and anytime you have a bulky food storage, it makes you feel good and accomplished!  If the zombie apocalypse happened and we had to live off of nutrient-free canned food, we could totally supplement and be healthy for a long time.

But lately, I just want that cupboard back.   There’s a lazy susan in that big corner cupboard that you can’t eve rotate because of all the bottles stacked on and around it.  And when you do want to find something in there, it’s almost impossible.

So this year is the year that I take my vitamins daily and “all wholesome herbs”.  I will find it personally satisfying to empty and throw away those bottles as fast as possible.  I have started with trying to empty some bottles of Vitamin D (because it’s winter and I hate winter), a multi-vitamin, and alfalfa.  I’m doing a pretty good job.  The bottles are emptying out.  But I just really want the good feeling of getting rid of a bottle soon!  So today I opened a small, partially full bottle of ginseng and partook.

Every day, that vitamin cupboard is emptying out, 17 tablets at a time.

I’m hoping to reap some health benefits, too.  But I’ll be happy with an empty cupboard.