Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Contrary To Appearances

I have now seen "Meet the Colors" four times.  I am consoled by the knowledge that tomorrow, we will be watching "Meet the Letters".  At least there will be 26 of those rather than eight.  We also went out to the lake behind their house to feed the ducks, but the ducks kept running away so we went to the park instead.  I don't think anyone wins points for that.

Where is January going?  New Year's Day was two weeks ago already.  School will start Tuesday.  And I need more tea.

I promised you a progress assessment on my Resolutions, and I'm waiting for the base coat on my nails to dry, so here goes:

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Still Swimming

I made quite a pretty penny babysitting Little Kid last week, and I'll be making more this week by not missing a day.  On Thursday I managed to get her out of the house and to the park about a five minute walk away.  +1 to Lissa for accomplishing this amidst protests of "I don't wanna go outside!" because of course, she was quite happy once she got out there.

Thursday and Friday she wanted to "watch colors", which I found out is a preschool preparation video designed to teach toddlers their colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, and white) while simultaneously driving anyone over the age of eight out of their freaking minds.  Click here to view a two-minute segment, and then realize that this is repeated eight times (and there are other, equally mind-numbing segments following).  I've seen it three times within a two-day span.  +1 to Little Kid for making me crazy.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

You Actually Wanted To Do Stuff?

Lissa is still horizontal.

I went to bed at 9:30 last night and (except for getting up to grab the phone to inform my client that I would not be coming to her house today) did not get out of bed until 2:30 in the afternoon.  I woke up at least four times during the night (drink water, pull Octuple Rainbow over head, return to sleep), and probably could have slept a lot later into the afternoon... but the phone I'd picked up was still beside my bed, and someone called my house.  Booooo.

I've gotten nothing done today.  If I feel up to it, I'll work on the angora swatch after posting this.  Or maybe I'll just go back to sleep.  The only problem with me at this point is the headache, and I think I'm still dehydrated.

So in order to feel like I'm actually accomplishing things, I'll take a quick run through my resolutions for the month.  Ready?  Here we go.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Lissa V. Little Kid

Lissa: 0
Little Kid: 0

Note that I don't actually consider adult/kid, parent/child, or sitter/sittee relationships to be confrontational by nature.  I'm just having fun.

Right now I have a two-week babysitting job.  To get there, I drive through a bunch of farmland (singing loudly and drinking tea because the scenery is really boring and zoning out at 65 miles per hour [~104 kilometers per hour] is a bad plan) until I get to this adorable little village.  Little Kid is two years old, and I am charged with keeping her busy and happy for four to six and a half hours, depending on the day.

One of the things I'm supposed to do is put her down for a nap after lunch.  Yesterday, even though we could tell that Little Kid needed some sleep, she refused to nap because she "wasn't tired".  By the end of the afternoon she was so zonked she would just stand around because she couldn't remember what she was doing and didn't have the energy to do anything.  Adorable, yes.  But it meant that if she couldn't pull her shoes off on the first try she was bordering on tears.  Not so cute.  +1 to Little Kid for successfully avoiding naptime in a funny way.

Lissa: 0
Little Kid: 1

Today, she admitted to being tired, at about ten o'clock.  She still didn't go down for a nap though, because she wanted to "sleep with Mommy" and her mother understandably refused.  She was working, after all.  She was pretty much zonked the whole time I was there, to the point where when we were laying on the floor reading giant board books, she kept putting her head down on the book like she was just going to fall asleep there.  I didn't blame her.  I've done that myself. +1 to Little Kid for successfully avoiding naptime in a cute way.

Lissa: 0
Little Kid: 2

Monday, January 6, 2014

Please Let Me Squeak By

I can already tell that C25K is going to kill me.

It was 30°F (-1°C) outside today when I went for my first run of what is, sadly, Round Three of Lissa v. C25K (I've lost the other two, of course).  A long-sleeved shirt and a jacket kept my upper body warm, fingerless gloves on top of regular gloves kept my fingers kind of warm-ish, a fleece hat (seriously, fleece?  I need to knit myself a hat) and my hair kept parts of my head warm while my cheeks and earlobes froze, and my knee-high socks and jeans kept my calves warm.  Notice the only part of my body besides my face to not have a double layer?  My thighs went numb less than halfway through.  Please let it not be that cold on Wednesday.

And I already know I'm going to be sore tomorrow.  Why?  Because I'm sore now.  Yay, exercise.

On to the real material here:

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Resolutions, Part Two: January

While everyone is setting well-intentioned resolutions of Things To Do This Year (and you may recall that I'm one of them), some of us are quietly going about setting goals for the month of January only.  Some things don't take a year, or are too trivial to be added to Resolutions For 2014.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Be A Better Human Being This Year!

A new year means another guilt-tripped effort to become A Better Human Being, whatever that means to you.  Last year I didn't bother setting resolutions, knowing  I would simply gleefully break them all as I forgot about them.  Then Resolutions Monthly turned up in my life, and I've been accomplishing goals since May (with a break in November for Life to interfere).  For 2014, I'll be continuing on with Resolutions Monthly, but setting some bigger, year-long goals as well in the hope that I can incorporate them into my monthly lists as well.

Friday, January 3, 2014

Octuple Rainbow: Reminiscing

Disclaimer:  I've been reading Yarn Harlot the past several days, so this might sound a bit like her!

I can't believe we made it this far.

It seems like only a few short weeks ago you began as a little plan, an idea sprouting in my head while your sister was still growing in my hands.  Silly now to think that I originally wanted you to look like this, isn't it?


(While I'm thinking about it, Double Rainbow, I'm ever so sorry I've never gotten around to finishing you properly.  I promise I'll get back to you.)

You were never a patient one, and while you resided only in my head you kicked and prodded, urging me on while I swatched, compared colors, sketched out ideas, wondered what you would look like in the end.  Wasn't it only a few weeks ago that the plan was finalized, this picture completed?