December 2009

Oldest One -aged 12-
5′ 8.5″ tall – 149 pounds
97th percentile for weight
over 97th percentile for height

Middle One -aged 9-
4’9″ tall – 82 pounds
80th percentile for weight
84th percentile for height

Maymo -aged 6-
4′ 3.25″ tall – 64 pounds
96th percentile for weight
over 97th percentile for height

1. Solstice! Solstice! Solstice!
2. Today I’m baking cookies. I approve of this.
3. The smell of bleach in the kitchen. (Coffee will be sad to have missed it..)
4. My husband is feeling better. Yippee!! Have I mentioned that I love that guy?
5. There’s a strong possibility our final Christmas-related package will arrive today from Hong Kong. Then we can finish all our wrapping and be DONE!

I will be a-okay with this happening for, say, a week. Two at the most. Beyond that I am going to go batshit insane and start throwing things.

Funny how one’s perspective on education changes when one is paying for it and wants to be there.

Coffee has gone to work today; he claims he is feeling 9.5/10.

One kid has been banished to his room for the day (because yesterday he thought it was funny to torment his brother to the point of tears, then laugh at him and keep him in tears for a full hour, while Coffee and I were grocery shopping. And then deny there was a problem when both of his brothers narc’d on him).

Another kid is making assorted Lego stuffs, practicing his drawing, and singing at the top of his lungs.

The third child is currently sitting at the dining room table with a stack of books while listening to the Alvin & The Chipmunk’s Christmas Album on ‘repeat’. (ohgodhelpme).

I am writing this blog post and then I’m heading into the kitchen – which I have just cleaned, sanitized, scrubbed and scoured – to make some Christmas cookies. Sure, the likelihood of getting all the baking done before Christmas is totally minimal. And sure, the likelihood that I will eat most of the cookies myself is pretty high.

But, dammit, I’M MAKING CHRISTMAS COOKIES TODAY AND YOU CANNOT STOP ME.

1. Despite much late-afternoon coughing, my beloved husband claims he is feeling better. 8.5 out of 10! Yay!
2. We went out together to get groceries because he wasn’t feeling well and I’m enfeebled in my shoulder region. There were no children along for the trip. It was awesome!
3. We wrapped up all of Oldest One’s gifts tonight and tomorrow we’ll do Middle One’s. As in the past, we also individually wrapped the kids’ stocking stuffers – it makes the whole unwrapping thing last a bit longer.
4. Coffee’s glee at discovering the big swiss cake roll. He sort of half-ran, half-skipped over to grab one.
5. My husband is feeling better-ish! Yay!

1. I read three books in 2 days. And they were all fiction. And nothing school-related.. And they were library books!! *swoon*
2. The walk-in clinic was open this morning for Coffee and Maymo.
3. Napping.
4. My big, fluffy duvet and the very soft jersey sheets on our king-sized bed. Seriously, it cannot get any better than this.
5. Still lovin’ the nanaimo bars…

I want to make, or buy very, very cheaply, 15 sandwich reusable sandwich wrappers. Similar to the wrap-n-map, I guess, but in dark, neutral colours. Cheaply, because I need 15 of them. :)

While I’m dreaming, I’d also really like the same thing for snacks.

Any thoughts?

1. The plague has remained the same in me for two days – I still have a sore throat, still feel exhausted, but don’t feel like death and have not progressed to Coffee’s stage.
2. Coffee “slept” next to me last night. There wasn’t much sleeping due to the hacking, coughing, wheezing, but he was next to me and that’s the part that I liked best.
3. The squirrels in my ‘hood are apparently very pleased with my offerings..and are now bringing their friends over for brunch every day.
4. I am, very shortly, going to go and take a nap. BECAUSE I CAN.
5. Nanaimo Bars. Nom.

.. be my penpal (how old skool is that, btw?) just send me your snail-mail address to nospamthanks @ gmail. I’ll send the first letter to kick things off!

As an explanatory note, the reason I said you’d have to be okay with typed letters (and some hand-written) is because I’m only able to handwrite things for brief periods of time before my neck/shoulder pain starts up and incapacitates me for a day or two (migraines.. ew.). So while there will definitely be some handwritten stuff, I make no promises that it’ll be often. :)

I AM SO EXCITED!!

Coffee’s work Christmas party is tomorrow night. I think he should NOT go. He thinks he SHOULD go.

First, the details: the party takes place at the home of the company’s owner. It is a semi-formal event with food and drinks, but it’s not a dinner party. There would have been approximately 40 to 80 guests invited (local office, 2 slightly distant offices, and an open invite to international guests). Guests (employees and spouses) were asked to RSVP about a month ago. Coffee and I said we would be attending. Last year we said we’d be attending but had to cancel because we didn’t have a babysitter.

My argument: Coffee was off sick from work for two days – totally unheard of for him – because he was ridiculously sick. He returned to work today still significantly, and visibly, under the weather with a running nose, cough, plugged ears, and other flu-like symptoms. He’s had these symptoms since Sunday, with a few occurring as early as last Thursday. While there are other people in his office (employees) who have been, or are, sick, I maintain that it’s not fair to attend to a party where you could potentially infect not just your coworkers, but their spouses, with the flu or a nasty cold one week before Christmas. I also think that there’s a difference between going to work (where you don’t interact with many people and mostly keep to yourself) and the hand-shaking, face-to-face conversations, food-eating that goes on in a party situation. To me, the short-notice cancellation is less rude than the showing up sick (coughing and sniffling) situation. I told Coffee to ask the owner’s assistant (who arranged the party) for her thoughts and I also suggested he talk to his boss about what would be more appropriate; he did not do either of those things.

Coffee’s argument: we didn’t go last year (after saying we would – though we did provide more than a day’s notice of our changed plans, approximately 2 or 3 days’ notice) and we have already RSVP’d this year that we will attend. He does not want to look like he’s “permanently wiggling out of it” or “doesn’t live up to expectations” since his boss and the company owner will, of course, be at the party. He also says since there was RSVP required of guests, it clearly means there was ordering or preparations made that are number-dependent to some extent or another. The main issue, in his words, is that “we RSVPd twice and short cancellation wouldn’t be polite” and “there are probably going to be people there who are as sick, or more sick, than I am” and “last year, despite a huge snow storm, pretty much most people went.”

So. Go ahead, pick sides. I cancelled our babysitter, but Coffee maintains that he will go without me anyway. I think he’s insane. (I can say that, because this is my blog and he has his own if he feels like rebutting that.) Also, for the record, I wrote the above part, from Coffee’s perspective, having asked him what he’d like to present as his argument here – so what I’ve written isn’t my interpretation, it’s his words. I read it back to him. I also read him my side of things.

What are your thoughts? What would you do? What would be the more polite thing to do, in your opinion?