What if

What If by Shel Silverstein

Last night as I lay thinking here,
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear.
And pranced and partied all night long.
And sang their same old Whatif song:
Whatif I'm dumb in school?
Whatif they've closed the swimming pool?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there's poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don't grow tall?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won't bite?
Whatif the wind tears up my kite?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?
Whatif my teeth don't grow in straight?
Whatif I tear my pants?
Whatif I never learn to dance?
Everything seems swell, and then . . .
The nighttime Whatifs strike again!

Tonight, the whatifs are gnawing at my brain.

What if all the signs pointing towards fascism are right?
What if we don't get out of the country in time?
What if work won't let me transfer?
What if we don't have enough money saved?
What if once we leave, we can't come back?
What if we don't make friends?
What if we have to watch our loved ones suffer through the downfall of America?
What if global climate change causes us to revert to much more primitive means, and I can't hack it?

Basically, what if I am faced with the kind of suffering that so many people on this planet are already faced with? Intellectually and emotionally, I don't feel ready. I'm sure no one feels ready, you just do what you have to do each day to keep surviving. Just, some days, the not-knowing really gets to me...

A PSA from John to any geek guys out there...

You may think you want a geek wife, or a geek girlfriend.

However.

When you end up spending an hour explaining computer intricacies to her, starting out with basic drive structure and file systems for both Linux and Windows, and winding up at D-Flip Flops, with a lot (um, a LOT) of detours on the way...

You just might wish her love were for the pink, sparkly kind of flip-flops. :P




Um, I'm just sayin', an all.

Things I meant to write.

So, um. Many things, that I've been meaning to write about, the last two weeks. Obviously, none of that writing happened. So, to play if-I-remember-it catch-up, in no particular order:

1.) How shitty the media coverage of Edwards has been. How the fact that the day after the Iowa caucuses, when he'd come in a surprise second place after being outspent 6 to 1, he was mentioned LESS in the news. Because, you know, Hillary vs. Obama. The End.

It's bullshit.

2.) How there's a video up on YouTube showing how Fox News used the same (presumably paid?) actor in two different "focus groups" 4 months apart, in two different states. That's bullshit, too. How many times do we have to show Fox News making shit up before people will start to believe that it's NOT REALLY NEWS, PEOPLE. Damn.

3.) Warning, graphic. Things that you don't want your 5-year-old to accidentally see. Especially when said 5-year old is very empathetic and you're not fond of lying to her. So we got to talk about how yes, that really was a real boy, and his blood was coming out because he got hit by a bullet, which is a thing that comes out of a gun when you pull the trigger. And they are hard and go very fast and can hurt and kill you. And what a war is, and why there are people dying. And what a government is. Oy.

4.) There are a million pics I want to post that I haven't resized or uploaded yet. Mainly, this is owing to the fact that I haven't had a day off from work since the 2nd, and I've put 97 hours into this 88-hour payperiod, three days before the payperiod ends. Eek. I've pretty much been working, doing dishes, eating or sleeping. Oh, and I went to clogging class with Aubrey Atwater, which is fun, but ow. My shins and knees do not thank me. Still, it had the effect of preventing me from thinking or stressing about work for 90 minutes, so that is excellent.

5.) Lately, I both love and hate Anja's imagination. It's so fascinating to me to see what's going on in her head, but sometimes the lack of discernment between reality and what's going on in her head is... a little frustrating. Still, it is what it is. In the last week, we've had 4 imaginary sisters, one imaginary brother, and Puff the Magic Dragon. Who showed up when we played his song, and now has an imaginary bed with imaginary blanket in the corner of our kitchen. Today I served snack to Anja and the Prince, and tonight I laid with Anja while she went to sleep, and told me all about Puff's dream where he blew fire on the bad guy who was trying to kill her, and the bad guy died. Wow.

6.) It's fascinating to see all the things she's learning at school and the ways she applies her brain. Two nights ago in the bath, she was showing me her bruise on her knee and telling me about all the "many many little guys who live in there and then are hurt and dead and that makes the bruise." Cellular biology? And then later, how she and Dylan were in the car and then one her-and-Dylan went one way, and one her-and-Dylan went the other way. Quantum physics? And later about how they used to make coats out of saber-tooth cats... history. And at one point she was in the car and wanted to compare the song they were listening to (classical) to the Pines of Rome (the whale song from the newer Fantasia) but she couldn't remember the word for melody. So she told him about it, but described them as being similar the way that the ABC song is like Twinkle Star. So they got to talk about the concept of melody. So fascinating.

7.) Last but not least, Ventriloquism can still be funny, if you don't mind a little crass humor. :)

The Great Couch Demolition.

First, apologies that all the pics in this post are not behind a cut. I was working on how to do that in Blogger - apparently, it's nowhere near as easy as it is on LJ or similar. I need to modify the template for the page, putting one of two blocks of HTML into a place I can't identify (no "style" tags in the template I'm using - any help out there?) and then add something to the posting template, and remember to remove it if I don't want a "read more" link, etc., etc. Too much work for tonight. Ah well, maybe I'll work on it tomorrow. For today, you get stuck with a giant, slow-loading page. Sorry :(

On the upside, I made myself a new PhotoBucket account just for blog pics, so everything won't just be gone the minute we no longer use Charter... so yay.

Anyway, the couch demolition adventure, with before, during, and after pics. And of course, commentary. Wa-hoo!!

Before pictures

View from the front entryway


Another view from our room


From the kitchen


Demolition

John has a stab at it. Crowbar, handsaw and box cutter, while good tools, are not the right tools for the job...




Sawzall works better (man, my hair looks like crap... I was wearing a hat until about 30 seconds before John started taking these pics, lol)








Man, we're gonna need to vaccuum...






After pics

Couple pics from our Winter Party... not great, but you get a feel for it a little...




General pics from a few days before Christmas...




This frog looks awfully lonely up there by himself, now. Not sure what to do about that...




All in all, I'm really happy with it. I still need to make the cushion covers, a nice brown fabric with a paisley texture, and we have a bunch of junk in there right now from Christmas and my mom's house, which means it's not as cleaned-up and nice, but that will change. I love not having to walk around that chair every time I leave or enter our bedroom. Never realized that, but it's really nice. It's going to be so spacious once our tree isn't up anymore... (though it's a Frasier Fir, so that could easily be February... LOL)

Holy lack of posting, Batman!

Yeah, not so much motivation, lately...

Found this comic which embodies much of my mood over the last few weeks:


The whole "frugal living" thing is relatively new to me, but we're becoming progressively more savings-reusing-recycling-oriented over the last couple of years. Some of this is owing to environmental concerns, some to financial, particularly now that we're planning this huge move, where we need lots of money and not a lot of stuff...

This year, we made candles and cookies, and only bought a few secondhand books, and a couple of new things for our Anja, pretty much. I bought John some custom-made pajama pants (long enough, even!) and he bought me a pair of fingerless, fair-trade alpaca gloves :)

Somehow, I didn't feel very Christmassy this year. I'm hoping that it's not directly tied to not going out and spending money and buying for people, but am afraid that it just might be. I'm also feeling awfully cynical and mean about the amount of stuff that people give to each other (and I'll admit that part of it is jealousy.) But part of it is also, who needs so much stuff? What kid needs so many toys that they are overwhelmed opening them all, and don't have space to store them? What is WRONG with our society?! /sigh

Other than that, not much going on. Dealing with the usual winter depression/anxiety, trying to work on coping with that in non-pharma ways. Some days are better than others, for that.

Work is... meh. They're not sure they'll be able to make me a programming spot at the Munich office. If that's the case, they're likely to lose me out of programming entirely, because at this point, I think I'd rather do a job I'm 'eh' about (data mgmt) in Munich than a job I find more interesting here, but resenting it, because we're still here. Guess we'll see...

Anybody else hear the radio interview with Dahr Jamail today?

In case you don't know, Dahr Jamail is a non-embedded reporter, who's extensively covered Iraq for the past 4 years.

I can't remember the name of the show the interview was on today, sorry...

I'm so sick, so, so sick about what we are doing to the citizens of Iraq. That feeling started back in 2003, when I saw the photo of a soldier handing a headless child back to its father... that photo made me sob, almost made me vomit, and the feeling has not left. But listening to Dahr speak today, listening to just HOW bad it is and HOW MUCH is kept from us, twisted, how lied to our citizens are, how deluded about what we are doing there, I just feel so hopeless. Hopeless and cynical. I wonder how Dahr sleeps at night, having seen what he's seen.

1.1-1.2 MILLION dead Iraqi citizens. Many dead from gunfire shot into houses and cars, in return for IEDs, whose source is not found, and the soldiers lash out.... I cannot imagine, cannot begin to start to fathom, what it's like to live in Iraq right now. To watch your family, your children, parents, friends, killed and maimed, and FOR WHAT!?

End the occupation of Iraq. Bring the troops home. The Iraqis don't want us there, and I don't blame them.

Doing something a little crazy with our living room...

Ok, probably not that crazy, if you guys our penchant for the un-mainstream :lol

We need to take the big chair/ottoman out of the living room, to make space for the Christmas tree. Last year we put them in our bedroom, but this year, no room in there (since I now have a small desk where they went last year.) We've been reading some alternative housing stuff (Little House on a Small Planet - a great book!) and thinking about what we really want from our space. I realized that John and I very rarely use our living room space. We don't watch TV, rarely watch movies, often wind up sitting either in our kitchen or bedroom with guests, since the LR setup is not too conducive to hanging out and good conversation. I want the LR to be a space that is people-centered, and not TV-centered, since we don't use it that way!

So, we're going to get rid of the chair, ottoman, and couch. Keep the 4 cushions, and I'll re-cover them. We plan to bring over my dad's old footlocker (trunk) that has a flat top, to use as a coffee table, and just have a floor-sitting space. Ideally, I'd love nicer lounge cushions (or Japanese Zaisu chairs) and a Japanese-style table, but those aren't in the budget right now. Fabric to cover 4 cushions is, though :) I can *see* what I want to do with the space, here's hoping I can get to something close to it, on the cheap. We won't miss the couch and chair, I hope Anja won't (she climbs on them a lot).

These are the closest pics I can find to the "feel" I want...








Looking at those pics makes me think that maybe I need to start scoping Craig's list for an appropriate table...

Stuff goes out sometime this week... my friend Lauren and her husband have a Sawz-all and a truck, and can help us cut them up and cart them out (they came in through the bedroom window, no way I'm spending the effort to move everything and get them back OUT that way, lol)

I also want to take our super-tall IKEA bookcase and cut it in half, so that we have two short bookcases, which I *think* should make it feel cozier (not so towered-over). Not sure if I'm willing to tackle this on Wednesday/Thursday night, before our party on Saturday.

I guess the great thing about having free/cheap furniture is you can do crazy things...

Birthday Party-ness

Happy 5th to Anja!

Anja, her best friend Louise, and friend Chandre - this was a unicorn-pegasus party, hence the angle of the hats, lol


Dylan is a nut :)


Hangin' out and playing during the party, in Anja's room




It was a full house :) I think we ended up with 19 adults and 10 kids, wow! And man, is my hair short in the back, just got it cut a few hours before the party!


Anja's friend Anatole has the most striking eyes


Opening gifts - I think she's a little excited about Memory!




Playing with horses and unicorns, before they started playing dress-up:


A bunch of kiddos wound up hiding out in the laundry room, a good nook for a pile of kids, and banging on the washer with your feet sure sounds like a monster coming! LOL


Getting ready to light the candle... our friend Jason decorated the cake - thanks, dude!!


Ok, everybody get in line!!


This was after dress-up had gone on, Anja in her "princess dress" and Chandre in one of Anja's dresses. There was a point I was having to set the kitchen timer to keep track of who got how long with which dress, and with the princess hat!


All in all, it went really well! The cake all got eaten, there was almost no crying, kiddos were mostly reluctant to leave :) Dylan's parents got a tour of our basement, and I think every square inch of our house was, at some point, occupied. I feel like I missed a lot of good pics, didn't get behind my camera much. I handed it off to my dad, but I know he was taking his own pics, too, so maybe he has some shots of some of the fun that I missed...

Anja says she "Loved it and can we do it again tomorrow?" Bwahahahaha!

Best excuse for 'research':

Harvard Scientists Build a Device to Smoke Weed During Brain Scan
Since that project was completed, Lindsey has used the same equipment to study the neurological effects of tobacco. Last Friday, Scott Lukas, the ringmaster for these studies and director of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory was informed that he and Frederick will receive a grant to conduct further studies with marijuana.

Take a look at the pic - John says "You know he totally modelled that off the one he has at home..." LMAO :)

Preach it, brother.

Credit to the amazing XKCD :)