And to All a Good Night

Busy busy Christmas.

In the past - on those years when the other parents have had out eldest two for Christmas morning, we've done our gifts (except stockings) Christmas Eve day. Santa only brings stocking gifts to our house. Given today's busy schedule I think I prefer it that way; today was nuts. Although a good time was had by all (for the most part; there were the usual kerfluffles involved with five personalities and a long day and lots of food in short spurts and more family than we usually have time with in a month or more).

Oh, nothing major, but Leanna is at that age (11) where every incident of teasing is grounds for major offense being taken (especially when it involves "inappropriate cow parts", as Leanna persisted in calling them - see below). Abby (9) is in the counting gifts stage, and Lizzy (4) - although happy with what she got is so excited she can barely function. Both of the older two are at the stage where nothing is quite enough. If I allow them two pieces of Christmas candy, they are sad they can't have three. And Lizzy has hurt herself three or four times in the past 24 hours.

We got Leanna as usual on Friday evening, and then on Saturday afternoon we went to Auntie's for dinner, grossed out the older two in the car on the way to Leanna's mom's house afterward (the chat went from the Christmas Star through stars and galaxies and whether there is life on other planets and whether we could eat food on other planets and how there's gross food right here on Earth, which led to Rocky Mountain Oysters and Abby needing to exit the car at Leanna's mom's in order to avoid carsickness). Then we met Abby's dad here at our place and left carrots and a cookie and milk out for the Fat Man and his friends and wrapped the last few gifts and went to bed.

Christmas morning we (Hubs, Lizzy and I) went to Grandma's house for breakfast, came home and waited for Leanna's mom to bring her to us after church, ran up to Abby's dad's (about an hour drive on a normal day, about 40 minutes on a holiday, but during a sudden windstorm and rain hard enough to make Laston-the-Texan pay attention), hung out there for about half an hour, went to my cousin's house for Christmas Day Dinner as usual, ran to my mom's to do gifts with her and my sister's family, and then home to do our own gifts including stockings.

Whew!

And even though we are poor this year, our kids made out like bandits. This was in large part due to grandparents sending us money and saying, "buy them something from us," and also because we found a really great deal on the bead style of charm bracelets on amazon.com (the bracelets themselves were like $10 apiece, and the beads we got in bulk - 100 of different styles and colors for $20). They got each other stuff, and got us stuff and really, some of this is actually beautiful. Abby made me a snowflake ornament out of beads at girl scouts and Leanna got her dad and me a game, and Lizzy made us a snowflake ornament at preschool. Abby got Lizzy that package of ranch dip mix, which - when explained to her - caused Lizzy to shriek with glee and leap up and hug Abby because it was "PUH-fect!" Abby got Leanna some ZhuZhu Babies and got Lizzy some Lollypop Dolls (her dad gave her money to shop for us in addition to the stuff she created at Brownie scouts. Leanna got both her sisters baby dolls. Aunt Laura - as always - got the girls inspired gifts (off their wish lists for Leanna & Lizzy, and a Powerpuff Girls journal for Abby). Grandma Cheryl too. Aunt Steph got lovely earrings for Leanna and little outfits for the other two. Their biggest gift is locked in our apartment office until Tuesday but they'll get a chance to play with their toys before that comes in!

And me? I got a game and a voucher for a massage and a box of fancy cookies, and a book I recall from adolescence, and some pretty earrings, and quite a lot of chocolate, and Hubs & I got a gift card to Bone Fish Grill (and I presume an offer of babysitting so we can go to BFG without the children as decreed by my mom, the gift giver).

A good holiday, in spite of the rush. Next year we have the older two for Christmas morning. I think the following one, we'll go back to celebrating the gift-giving part of things on Christmas Eve morning. Since Santa only brings us stocking gifts there's no reason not to.

You Can Lead a Child to Bed...

...but you cannot make her sleep. Especially when she's excited about the holiday coming up. And when she they use logic such as "we have to stay up late tonight so we can go to bed early tomorrow and not get waked up by Santa Claus when he comes". I gather this means that if they're completely exhausted by staying up late the night of the 23rd, by the 24th they'll be so tired that even reindeer and fat men won't be enough to wake them.

That doesn't really help us today, however, since Abby (9) and Leanna (11) got about five and a half hours of sleep last night. I was willing to let them stay up until 11 or so, which is when I put Lizzy to bed (she had been asleep since eight-thirty). Then I told them to quiet down and sleep - tomorrow's a big day. Not so much. They did keep it to a dull roar, though and that was more or less sufficient. I dozed off in front of the TV and when they started getting loud they woke me (and Lizzy) up.

At 2:55 AM.

Abby made this at Brownie Scouts

Guys, that's too late for me, and I'm an adult. At 11 and nine (and four) there is no possible way that's enough sleep for you. So we're all kind of cranky this morning (except the Hubs, whose "gift for the whole family" is in his hot little hands), although that should be mitigated somewhat by the lack of stuff that must be done today, aside from packing Abby's bag and wrapping her present to her dad). It's pretty much just getting cleaned up for Christmas Eve dinner for everyone, and toasting almonds (to be added to the salad after Abby is served) for me. And maybe we can get them to nap in the car on the way to Auntie's house for Christmas Eve dinner.

So right now the dishwasher is running, Hubs is playing with his our new toy, the older girls are watching Into The Woods, and Lizzy - being Lizzy - is bouncing from lap to lap.Good times.

Holiday Prequel

All three kids are shrieking with glee in their bedroom, playing with the Zoobles Abby received for her birthday two weeks ago. They're broken two of the accessories, but well... that's why Momma bought the super glue, isn't it? When Abby says, "Mom, we got another toy for the microwave!" fear not; on top of the microwave is where repaired toys are kept until the glue dries. Nobody is baking them.

The house is (finally) mostly clean. Oh, I need to do some more laundry and run a vacuum over the carpets but otherwise this is the cleanest it's been in awhile. And we aren't even hosting Christmas (although we will have a very toned-down version of our usual New Years' Day potluck. But even I'm not optimistic enough to think this will last until then!)

Lizzy just came out and told me the big girls need "panic paper". I wonder what that means?

We're all full of hamburgers and salad and chips (crisps for my overseas readers) and Grandma's Sherry Spice Cupcakes (yum!).

Ah... they wanted "a pen and paper", not "a panic paper". Light dawns.

So at eight we'll do our usual weekend-with-Leanna routine, which means Lizzy comes out here to watch "baby shows" with me until she falls asleep, while the older two clean their room enough to pull Leanna's trundle bed out from under Lizzy's bed, and move it far enough to let me put Lizzy in her bed after she crashes.

And tomorrow I'll make them bacon and waffles for breakfast - I cheat with Eggo - and then the day will be a matter of cleaning their room, cleaning them, and making things ready for Auntie's house for our Christmas Eve dinner.


Life is good.

WANT

I had a job interview today. I want this job. I really really want it. It has everything I want in a job - interesting work (customer service and online research and a little training), similar corporate values to my own, a compatible schedule... it's exactly what I want and I hope they liked me as much as I did them. Any company that means it when they say "customer focus" (which they certainly seem to) is okay by me! They couldn't do as in-depth an interview as they wanted to today because several people were unavailable due to holidays, but I think I may have made it to the next round. I should know sometimes next week whether when I go in for another round of interviews. Wish me luck.

In the meantime, I doubt if anyone else will schedule interviews for me; this time of year is just (as shown above) too complicated for that. And I don't have school until January 2nd. So aside from housecleaning and spending time with the kids (and the daily grind of looking for a job), I'm kind of at loose ends, especially after everyone is in bed at night. I'm up to date on Doctor Who, working on The Sarah Jane Adventures with Abby, and as up to date as I'm going to get on Torchwood for now. I'm going to list some stuff I'm interested in here (and that is available on Netflix Instant Play or other freebies on my roku box like Amazon Prime Streaming) in the hopes that some of my readers can give me recommendations.

I like weird settings but people stories, I'm content with Monster of the Week as long as there's character development, and I'm not a fan of gratuitous violence (although violence itself is not a problem; I just can't take - say - Tarantino levels). Knowing that I enjoy (and have seen) the Whoniverse, Star Trek in all its incarnations, Red Dwarf in small doses, Farscape, anything by Joss Whedon, The Dresden Files and Blood Ties (both books and shows), and anything in the Stargate universe, (among others, natch) what do you recommend of the following list?

• Sherlock
• Merlin
• Camelot
• Robin Hood
• Seaquest DSV
• Lexx
• Jekyll

Now, if you mention something you loved and I shriek, "seen it!" please do not take offense; none is meant. But if I listed everything I've every watched and enjoyed on TV, we could be here all day.

Ideas?

Deep Cleaning

That's today's task. We're taking a break at the moment, having cleaned out behind the kids' bookshelves and done their beds and started on the rest of their room (since we pulled a bunch of junk out from behind that bookshelf, there's more to clean now than there was before). The plan was thusly: I work on laundry and the master bedroom and the kitchen/dining/living areas, the kids do their bedroom and the guest bathroom, and it's going pretty well, although it's in the breaking-eggs stage of this omelet.

Abby is disappointed that her friends aren't available to help (Kiki is out of town for the holidays and Ash & Tris have family in town for the holidays. The other regular is at day camp). Abby is fretting that she won't have time to finish it all so I told her it does not all have to be done today. I have Thursday morning to work on stuff (most likely gift-wrapping and general tidying), and we have all day Friday as well. So I think she's freaking out over very little. She is her mother's daughter after all. She went off to see if one of the less-frequent visitors wants to "earn Treasure Box and Christmas cookies" by helping clean up. This kid is a boy who's great one-on-one but kind of mean in a jerky-elder-brother way when in a group. He's the one who "threw rocks near me" in the creek last year, encouraged other kids to "poke the baby Jesus with a stick" at the school-bus stop (where there is a Christmas tree lot and a Nativity scene), and is inclined to sing "K-I-S-S-I-N-G" at other children. But when he's not filling the jerky-elder-brother role (a.k.a. when there's not a mob of kids, especially younger boys to show off to), he's a good kid and a hard worker for his Treasure Box goodies. He can come over to help once he's back from the store.

This is pretty much how non-school-days work here.

Do Cows Freak?

Nine-year-old Abby wants to know. Because I got my grades back from my second session at the University of Phoenix, and they were good enough for me to exclaim holy freakin' cow (because holy sh**berries, Batman is inappropriate with the kids in the room).

I got an A-. In both my classes. With a one-point spread - there are1000 points available in each class for the whole nine-week session, and I got 937 points in Critical Thinking and 938 in Introduction to Communications. Go me!

I was pleasantly surprised that I aced the final project in Critical Thinking - that was the class wherein I was having trouble at midterm time - because while I recognize a rhetorical device or a fallacy when I see/hear one, I have real trouble identifying the different types of them. Go me!

As for Intro to Communications - anyone who has ever met me or who reads my blog or my Google Plus posts will probably not be surprised that I was dinged points for being too wordy. Me? Perish the thought. Never happens. Not this chick. Uh-uh. Can't be. Not me. So that, plus a whoops on the font spacing (yeah, yeah, I keep forgetting to use the University's style guide rather than the AP's) brought me down enough points to give me an A- instead of a straight A. But I'll take it! Go me!

And now I am officially done with school until January 2nd, when I begin the next set of classes. If I get the job I'm interviewing for on Thursday (please send Good Stuff!) then I'll have that to learn instead (this one looks totally like my thing and I want it. Badly.). Sounds pretty good all around.