First she pretends to call Grammy and “put her on speakerphone”. She dials the pretend number (actually making a seven digit number up), and then puts the phone on the table. “Now say hello!” she pipes at me cheerfully.

“Uh, HELLO GRAMMY!” I say. “It’s rainy here, what’s it like in Ellensburg? How are you doing?”

Silence. Because it’s a plastic phone and Grammy has no idea we’re calling. Normally this is the part where I’d make up my fake end of the fake conversation, but since it’s ON SPEAKERPHONE, I’m at a loss as to the toddler etiquette, so I just look at Beth with my eyebrows up, like, uhhhhh……toss me a bone here babe?

“She’s talking to you,” Beth says reassuringly, but even while she says this she looks dubious. We both sit there for a moment. Then she picks up the phone, takes if “off speakerphone”, and says, “Yes, hello. This is Mrs. Beth, and I’m here with Mommy Hollie, and we’re looking for Grammy. She isn’t there? Thank you Madame.”

MADAME. I watched a special on the Windsors recently, and I’m pretty sure I heard a head of state address someone with exactly the same tone Beth used on her fake phone to address Grammy’s fake French secretary.

www.hollie.us

To all of you who read my earlier post about switching feeds from my previous blog to this one at hollie.us: disregard the notice. I figured out how to transfer the feed through Feedburner, so you don’t have to do anything. Wouldn’t it have been nice if I’d have known that before I posted the earlier notice? Hopefully no one read that. Er, I mean I hope this blog is wildly popular and millions read it. Right. That’s what I meant.

www.hollie.us

Listening to Pema Chodron last night while I waxed my legs. Her soothing and slightly mischievous voice commenting on the dangers of aggression, while every few minutes I RIIIIIPPPPPPEEEEDDD twenty to thirty hairs out of my leg at one time.

pluvio.us

I've been tagged by carrier !

A. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
B. Tag seven people to do the same.
C. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it."

1. Every night when I go to bed, after all other important things have been accomplished (I'll let you go wild with that), I read. I have to read about a chapter every night, or I won't sleep well. At least, I believe that I won't sleep well. Which in this case amounts to the same thing. Usually I get in much more than a chapter, which is why I am frequently not asleep until 2am, and I struggle to wake up every morning.

2. After the kids go to bed, we have almost the same routine every night. Greg gets on WoW to check his toon, and Jason and I go to the Edmonds PCC and get a couple of cookies each (vegan chocolate chip FTW!), and then we come home and make tea. The three of us drink tea, eat cookies, and watch a movie. The kids have art lessons and Taekwondo in amongst this, but in the late evenings, our tea/cookie/movie routine happens most of the time. I love this routine, and I keep track on my calendar of all the movies we watch. Sometimes I think about starting a blog just for recording what we watched and what I thought about it.

3. Every time I do yoga I feel great afterward, but I can't seem to do it regularly. I have this resistance to it, every time. This perplexes me. I feel great after eating my tea and cookies, and you don't see me resisting that, even though the long term effects of tea and cookies is more nebulous: I'm envisioning a larger waistline, or maybe British citizenship.

4. I just accidentally sent this post to everyone on my list who gets photos of the kids. I bet they appreciated it. Which brings me to: I rarely screw up email. Is that a habit, to habitually rarely do something?

5. Every Christmas, no matter what, I re-watch all of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings. This has replaced reading them, I'm afraid. However, the Narnia movies haven't removed my desire to reread the books. I'm relieved no one has attempted to make a movie of A Wrinkle In Time, even though it would be nice to have more movies with strong young women leads.

6. I've been a vegetarian for six weeks, as of today.

7. I have subscriptions to at least five magazines, and I constantly forget to read them.

8. I recently realized I love Seattle more than Portland (my hometown), and I still have severe pangs of guilt. Part of me wants to go back to Portland and stay there, until I love it all over again, so that I don't have to admit that another city has stolen my heart.

9. I hate snow.

Oh, and apparently #10 should be, "I can't read directions or count," since I was supposed to list 7 things and I have 9. GO ME. 

I tag: rubricity , linzbinz , bodhifox , megwood , gwyneira , aiela , misquoted 

It helps to be cute.

Greg's Grandpa died today. It was expected; he'd been sick for some time. Nevertheless, it hit me harder than I thought it would. Greg is doing okay, but I'm sure he'd appreciate hugs if you got 'em.

Beth has been throwing up the last few hours.

In 8 minutes it will be a new day.

I just sent out to family and friends in email the following:

And I hear the kids, who are sleeping in the same bed, whispering to each other. Miles sounds plaintive, like he's begging for something. I listen for a moment, standing there, pretending to fold hand towels.

"Please Bethie?"

"Hmmm."

"If you give me the biggest piece of cake, I'll love it so much."

"Well, okay. You can have the biggest piece of cake. But not TOO big."

"Okay, I promise it won't be too big."

Only then did I realize they were negotiating the size of the piece of Beth's birthday cake that Miles will get in a month!

----

After I sent that, I sat down in my room. They started talking again. I can hear Beth:

(written word for word as she was talking and I typed)

I wish I had more brothers that were brothers like you. I love you more than ponies. I love you more than pictures, more than toys, more than toys that are REAL! I love you more than dinosaurs. I love you more than skeletons. I love you more than my own heart! I love you more than love. I love you more than anything.

----

A few seconds later, after I've sat here in shock a how wonderful they are:

Miles: Stop kicking my butt, Beth.

Beth: *giggles*

Miles: I said stop it, Beth.

Beth: *laugh*

Miles: I SAID STOP IT BETH.

Me: OKAY GUYS THAT'S ENOUGH.

*silence*

Miles and Beth are pretending to be named differently.

"So Beth! I'm going to be Tommy, and you're going to be Ellie. And then we'll pretend we're in school."

"Okay! I'll be Ellie, and you'll be Tommy."

"Right, I'm Tommy. Wait. No, I'm not Tommy. I'm Big Smasher. Yeah. I'm Big Smasher, and you're Ellie."

"Uh, okay. I'm Ellie, and you're.....Big Smasher. Uhhhh, okay."

...while Beth takes a "Little Picassos" art class. She's the only student(!!), but she's having a blast. The teacher is a total sweetheart.



Jason is at home winding down from work, and Greg is playing on his computer next to me. I'm futzing with our budget. I recently downloaded YNAB a.k.a. You Need A Budget, and it's the most fun I've had with a money-managing application in years. It really does teach you how to "give every dollar a job".

Miles is in the kid's activity area, having denied the opportunity to join the art class about four times. I finally stopped asking, after I realized I didn't want his only memory of art to be "that time Mom pressured me into going to the art class at the YMCA". How have you guys gotten your kids exposed to subjects they don't show interest in? I'm going to set out my art books for awhile and see if he picks them up to look.

I'm reading a novel by Harlan Coben called Gone for Good, and in two places his male hero makes plans with a much younger female character (i.e. not someone he's planning on sleeping with) to "hook up" in a few hours.

This is the first time I think I've seen this phrase used where it pretty clearly is not a euphemism for sex. In movies and on TV shows, when I hear someone saying, "They hooked up after the party," or "I'm hoping to hook up with Jane later," it's always a reference to boinking.

Is the reference I'm used to an evolution of the phrase? Or is Coben misapplying it? What do you guys think? If someone nonchalantly mentioned that two of your friends had hooked up the other night, would you assume they'd gotten together to chat, or count ceiling tiles?

A few friends have gone on an internet fast, or an email fast. I haven't talked to them at much length about how it went. I'm curious who here has tried that, and what you thought about your experience. I'm interested in adjusting the amount of time I spend online (less time with more productivity) but I'm not sure what I want my parameters to be yet. Have you tried this? Did it work to help you become more productive in other areas (assuming that's why you did it)?

I realized with some surprise today how hard it would be to go off completely. My son's school has announcements that go out weekly only by email. Our banking is online, and I check every night or so to adjust our budget. I get news - local and international - via online sources. Not to mention, friends! I have four friends I talk to every single day, usually several times, and I while I guess I could technically live without it, emotionally I'd feel pretty strained not to have that connection.

So going off completely seems oddly and scarily impossible, but maybe lessening to some degree? My biggest problem seems to be surfing; I go from one article to the next in this giant wave, and when I stand up to go do something, I come back to where I left off with remarkable ease. Suddenly an hour has gone by, and my ass is sore. Anyone else do this? Sorry: anyone NOT do this? I think it's more the norm than the exception these days.

Apologies to those of you seeing this on Facebook too:

I just got a book, mailed to me by someone on a book-swapping site I'm on (paperbackswap.com, tell 'em cheesepuppet sent ya). The book REEKS of cigarette smoke. Any ideas how I can get that smell out of a book? It's actually making me lightheaded, the smell is so bad (I'm sensitive to this stuff).

“Happy New Year Bethie! It’s 2010 now,” I tell her, when she comes in to wake me up.

“It’s a new year?”

“Yup! It was 2009 yesterday, and now it’s 2010.”

“And then summer will come and it will be a new year?”

“Nope, it won’t be a new year again until Winter comes again. It will go Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, and then when the next Winter comes, it will be time for 2011. The earth needs to make one full turn around the sun.”

“Oh yeah! And we’re spinning too, really fast, right? But we can’t feel it.”

“Right! The earth is always spinning but we can’t feel it.”

She stands there, looking out the window, up at the sky for a moment. Then she says soberly, “I can feel it.”

pluvio.us

I know I haven't been posting hardly at all, but I wanted to drop in and say HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone! :)

This last year has been really hard in so many ways, but the thing that stands out, that beaming shining wonderfulness smack dab in the middle of my life: we're in Seattle, and we're all together, and we're all loving it. Everything else is just gravy.

Tonight we're going to watch the fireworks on TV and cuddle up with the kids on the couch. I'm hoping I can get someone to play a game with me, and I'm thinking of making some yummy snack later - maybe my famous mesquite popcorn? I hope everyone has an awesome night!

“So then a long time ago, when NOBODY WAS BORN, that’s when Jesus brought the dinosaurs. And then the dinosaurs, well, they died.”

“Oh yeah? And then what?”

“And then people came to life!”

pluvio.us

....I can say with great accuracy that right this second our refrigerator sounds like an annoyed jaguar.

Also, witness the cuteness:



We went with Sean and Olivia, which was especially great for Beth because she and Olivia are like BFFs. Although Olivia also includes Miles in practically all things, which is something I especially adore about her, and several times I looked over to see her grabbing both of them in a tight embrace. "We are friends, we are FRIENDS!", she yells with joy. My kids get these huge grins and hug her back, and they all three nearly fall over.

Just one of the many, many gems at www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com, a blog that I actually have to pace myself reading because I laugh so hard I’m in danger of peeing my pants. Other favorites include this one, this one, this one, this one, and after seeing this one I’m pretty sure I did pee my pants a little, which was apropos.

pluvio.us

 I like to read blogs via RSS feeds that I subscribe to using Mail. I recently added a few LJ folks to that list, people whose posts I seem to miss on a regular basis if I only go by looking at my Flist. One person posted today, and her post showed up on my RSS feedreader - but it was Friends locked. I noticed the little lock icon when I went to read the post at LJ. 

Obviously I am on her Friends list, but how does Mail know that? Is it publishing all the posts via the RSS feed, even the ones that are locked? 

I was reading the New York Times Sunday Book Review this morning, and saw this:

Paulo Coelho’s novel “The Alchemist” is already a record-holder: with editions in 67 languages, it has cemented Coelho’s position as the world’s most translated living author, according to the 2009 Guinness Book.

I rolled my eyes. I’d wanted to love that book. I’d loved Veronika Decides to Die a decade ago (which is now being turned into a movie with Sarah Michelle Gellar!). I just couldn’t get into it. Slow, slogging, boring, and so full of New Age pap that I could barely keep myself from quitting it altogether. The one thing I liked about the story was the idea that we choose who we are, but that wasn’t enough to make it interesting. The first thing I did when I finished was stick it on my Paperbackswap.com account. I felt guilty about it, unable to muster confidence that my experience of the book had been valid, when “everyone else” thought it was so wonderful and life-changing.

So you’ll understand why I had to laugh when Will Smith was quoted as saying it was his favorite book, and yet:

“It’s real metaphysical, esoteric nonsense,” he said. “But I feel very strongly that we are who we choose to be.”

I’ve been validated by the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, yo! What more do I need?!

www.hollie.us

My setup: I have a desktop Mac, and a laptop Mac. I use Mail, which is synched between them using Mobile Me.
 
My problem: My RSS feeds don't sync between the computers, even though everything else about Mail does. Wassup with that?