Crowded

Last year, we Valentines had a string of five straight weekends of visitors, bookended by visits to see our families, for a total of seven straight weekends of being in the company of other people. This year, it won't be quite as bad (only four straight weekends of visiting/being visited), but we are in the midst of some pretty heavy use of the guest room.

I'm feeling a little burned out by having guests or being someone's guest, and we are only halfway through my mother-in-law's stay. Next weekend, a couple of Basil's friends are coming to town for the Scottish Christmas Walk Weekend and staying with us. On Friday night, after the Taste of Scotland when out-of-town guests and local friends have been sipping scotch for three hours, I will insist that no one drive, which means we'll have about five people sleeping over.

Since my MIL is staying so long (nine days), I am not attempting to spend every minute doing family things as a group. I need to have some time, space, privacy and routine so I skipped Saturday's shopping outing and will be relishing my piano lesson tomorrow.

Usually, though, visitors (and visits) are only weekend things, which makes it hard to say, 'Hey, I'm going to do my own thing for awhile; have fun.' A weekend of being on group time is sort of fun, but a bunch of weekends strung together is like running a B&B. I know someone who runs a B&B. It's exhausting, grueling, unending work.

Our visitors are almost always family, usually my mom or Basil's mom. My sister and brother-in-law visit about once a year, and my dad shows up every twelve or eighteen months. My (technically ex-)stepmother usually comes every year or so, and then there are friends that come visit, too. We love seeing all those people, but when they all want to be here in the same six- or eight-week span, it makes me resent my mostly functional relationships.

Do we get so many visitors because we live so far away from so many people? Or would we get more visitors if we lived, say, two or three hours away from our parents? If we lived closer, would our visitors stay for longer or shorter visits?

I hate walking around feeling like my nerves are grated, but that's what happens when there's too many people in our house for too long. I'm starting to feel a little grated these days, though it's not any person or any visit's fault. I'm really glad that December is going to be largely houseguest-free, because I want to spend a lot of time watching movies on my couch in sweatpants. And I don't want to have to worry about whether or not someone wants to do touristy stuff around Washington, needs to know 'what are we doing' at any given time, has a burning desire to sit and chat for great lengths of time or crams noticeable quantities of food or drink that we don't like in the fridge or pantry.

Damn, I sound like a grouch, don't I? I suppose I am a bit grouchy right now. I've been going to bed way too late, haven't been running lately and am at the point in my quest to get pregnant where I have to bite my nails for two weeks. And did I mention eating total crap for five days straight? Plus, I'm staring down a really busy week at work, and that always puts me in a bad mood.

I can see the light of the tunnel for our current string of visitors, and it's next Sunday night (or maybe next Monday morning?). I know that come December 1 or 2, I'm doing to be able to do what I want when I want, and that knowledge - that I could do something even if I didn't plan to - will be very comforting for my grumbly brain. We'll do things as a family of three, and I'll begin to look forward to my mom coming for Christmas. Here's hoping I can get through the next seven or eight days without any scars.

The Magnificent Seven

Well, we made it to Kentucky, but just barely. I highly recommend NOT trying to drive down an interstate that is closed for a four-mile stretch because a tanker rolled on its side and is blocking all three lanes and both shoulders. You only go three miles in an hour and a half!

Anyway, we are back and Paige tagged me for a meme. I did this particular meme earlier this year, though I only told you six weird things about myself. Since seven more weird things seems excessive and since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I'll tell you seven things I'm going to do this weekend to kick off the holiday season.

1. Make an effing derby pie with real Kentucky bourbon to appease Prurient. It's just a pecan pie with chocolate chips and bourbon, but the masses seem to love it. Did I mention it has crack in it? Okay, it is really good. I was going to make a different kind of nut dessert for Thanksgiving, but I like to be popular. So derby pie it is.
2. Watch the National Dog Show! Basil hates my dog show obsession, and in his defense, it does seem to be a fairly recent development. I started wanting to see who won the sporting category around the time we got Lilah, and I was very fixated on different breeds of dogs. If only Fred Willard would be a commentator.
3. Play beer pong. After a very civilized Thanksgiving dinner with my MIL and Mozo, we're heading over to J.Pro's house for Drinksgiving, where desserts and excessive amounts of alcohol will be consumed. I hope I don't puke. And I hope my MIL isn't offended.
4. See a grownup movie with my husband in a theater. My MIL in town for the next week = free babysitting. Basil wants to see The Mist. I might want to stare at Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. But either way, this will be our third or fourth movie in a theater all year, so it's very exciting. I hope I don't puke. And I hope my MIL isn't offended.
5. Bake some Christmas cookies. I went through my recipes last night and pulled out everything that I was interested in. There were more than fifteen different types of cookies. Not this year, people. No mountain of cookies for the kids to climb and stake. We're not doing any holiday entertaining so the cookies will only be for gifts and munching. I think we'll be able to get by with fewer than 750 cookies this year, but I do want to start baking.
6. Beat the WannaBEagles in fantasy football. It's going to be a deathmatch, sure, as we're the two top scoring teams in our league, me with Tom Brady, Randy Moss and Willis McGahee, him with Adrian Peterson, Terrell Owens and LaDanian Tomlinson. But I made an ace move yesterday. I picked up the Seattle defense. So far this season, they've had 31 sacks and nine interceptions, and they're playing the Rams on Sunday. Marc Bulger has been sacked 17 times in the past four games. He's thrown more interceptions than touchdowns this season. And the Seahawks want to make sure they stay in 1st place in the NFC West, so they're going to be loaded for bear. Seattle beat St. Louis 33-6 a few weeks ago. They should score me solid double digits in a week when I need it badly.
7. Write a cohesive, thoughtful, well-edited blog post. I feel guilty for cheating and just barfing up a bunch of random stuff for Elevated Umbrella. It flies in the face of this space being a place for me to improve my writing. No more lists, bullets or asterisks in the next post!

I hope you all have a fantabulous Turkey Day. Pinot Noir or hard cider is a good bet.

My Life Flashing Before My Eyes

Tomorrow morning I am driving Petunia and Lilah to northern Kentucky. By myself. Which is crazy, but Basil had a business trip to Wisconsin come up. So he is meeting us there tomorrow afternoon. I think it will be an interesting trip to say the least. An interesting, nine-hour trip.

***

I watched Babel over the past two nights. It is good and incredibly depressing, on par with Leaving Las Vegas for me. I am glad that I watched it, but it made me feel almost sick to my stomach with sadness and terror sometimes. I don't think I need to watch it again. I felt a little weird that the white people ended up with the happy ending.

***

I had every intention of posting something interesting this week. Instead, my house is incredibly clean, Thanksgiving is shopped for, my office at work is clean, my to-do list is scratched off, my hair is done, my piano playing skills have improved and my daughter and I are in a great place right now.

***

It is really, truly cold out now. I can't sit in my basement without an afghan on, and yet my dog still wants to prowl around out back every night looking for possums to chew. It must be nice to have incredibly thick, double-coated fur.

***

I think that it's more important to get a solid seven hours of sleep tonight than to check in on blogs. I hope my fantasy team will forgive me.

Finding a Golden Ticket

Part herding cats, part playing the sideshow barker, putting Petunia to bed wears me out mentally. She gets giggly and overexcited and goes tearing through the upstairs in various stages of nakedness, 'hiding' under piles of pillows until she is found again and then streaks away in a fit of laughter. This goes on for several minutes before I can actually get her into the bathtub.

Then there is the actual bathing, which shouldn't be too hard since she is physically contained in small space. But trying to pour enough water on Petunia's head to remove the shampoo I've lathered up is like playing whack-a-mole as she continually bobs and weaves amidst a flotilla of toys.

After wrestling her into pajamas, we have to go through the tedious process of choosing a book, during which I try to negotiate for something that doesn't make my brain slowly leak out of my ears. And there are often negotiations and protestations about whether or not I will make up a Superfriends story for Petunia.

But lately, it has been better. Bath time is going faster and more smoothly, and there is no gnashing of teeth or beating of breast over story- or book-selection. A magical reward is looming over Petunia from the time we come upstairs: reading a little more of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

This is my third attempt to get Petunia to follow a chapter book, and it's the first success. Charlotte's Web piqued her interest in theory but not in practice, and A Little Princess was not exciting enough from the beginning. (Too bad; this is one of my favorite books of all time.) But Charlie Bucket has done the trick.

Petunia is fascinated by the concept of Willy Wonka's candy factory and the hiding of the golden tickets in candy bars. She has been intensely interested in the four other ticket finders and of the fates that befall the naughty children. (So far, we have read through the demises of Augustus Gloop, Violet Beauregarde and Veruca Salt.) She doesn't have any idea what to expect at the end, but she always wants to know what happens next.

I haven't re-read any Roald Dahl since I was a kid, and I'd forgotten how truly masterful he is at storytelling. He arcs the plot in such a way that each chapter ends on the verge of something new and exciting happening, making you want to read just one more chapter. Sort of like The Da Vinci Code for kids.

Petunia is so excited about reading this book that it's the first thing she tells the other parent (the one who didn't do the previous night's reading) in the morning. And today, as I was getting dressed for work, she came into my room from hers, where she was playing, and said, 'I know what happens in the Television Chocolate Room! I looked at the pitsher and there's this flashlight pointed at a big chocolate bar!' She was so excited to hear what happens next that she went trolling through the upcoming pages for a hint in an illustration.

This is a significant milestone for us. It means we can check out The BFG, James and the Giant Peach and Matilda from the library. Maybe Petunia will go for Stuart Little. Am I dreaming to think of Beverly Cleary books? Heck, Gus is reading Carl the first Harry Potter book (though Carl is a little genius) so Ramona Quimby and Ralph S. Mouse shouldn't be that far off for Petunia. Hopefully we'll work our way up to little Sarah Crewe in no time.

Time for a New Fantasy Team

This is my second year playing fantasy football, and I am getting royally screwed. I have the most number of points of any of the eight teams in our league, and I am in SIXTH place with a record of 3-5. Four of my five losses have been by nine points or less. The game I lost last week was three points and it's only because Brett Favre threw that 82-yard pass in overtime on Monday night. If the Broncos had won the coin toss and scored first, I would have won. If Favre had thrown a TD pass for 24 yards or less, I would have won. If Favre had thrown a pass for 49 yards or less, I would have tied.

But, I lost on Monday. I am bitter. And I am pissed at my luck in fantasy football this year.

Thankfully, it's time to choose my fantasy team for NaBloPoMo. I did this last year, in response to all the hoo-ha surrounding National Blog Posting Month. Eden Kennedy of Fussy founded NaBloPoMo as a blogging-world compliment to NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month project. I knew that I didn't have the stamina to post every day, and really, I wasn't sure that the Internet needed one more screaming voice. I decided I could contribute best by reading and rooting, that is, cheering on the people who stuck their necks out and said they would come up with something to say everyday for a month.

Jody and Heather tipped me off to NaBloPoMo last year, and I decided to put together a fantasy team of five new blogs to follow for the month. I chose the cheeseblog, Her Able Hands, Less of Paige, Peach and Pearl and Vindauga for my fantasy team. I liked them all so much that I kept them in my Bloglines and still read them regularly. In the year since I got to know all of them, some good things have happened and some bad things have happened. I'm glad I've been there for all of it.

So, since NaBloPoMo is doing an encore, so am I. For the next month, I'll be reading and rooting (aka, leaving comments) for five blogs that I've never read before and know nothing about. I clicked through a bunch of links on the NaBloPoMo blogroll and settled on five that attracted me in some way. Here they are, in alpha order:

• Berlin's Whimsy - Berlin Smith is a newly separated mom who maintains a list of cookbooks from which she's 'now cooking,' providing plenty of recipes along the way. There's also beautiful photography and photos of sewing and quilting projects that remind me of my grandmother's work.


• More Kisses Please - Jill is a great writer and photographer, and she lives IN Vancouver, one of the greatest places on earth! I can't say enough about Jill's beautiful photos, including those of her boyfriend who does NOT live a long distance away. (edited, see comments. whoops)


• Tenth Muse - It's Joelle! From Put Down the Donut! I used to love Put Down the Donut. Really, what a pleasant surprise to stumble across her personal blog. She sings and loves karaoke and has written a book. I'm in awe of all she's accomplished.


• You are the music while the music lasts - Jyllian M got married on Halloween, which is so cool. She has a daughter (maybe close to Petunia's age?), and she had a miscarriage at the beginning of this year. Needless to say, that part of her experience really speaks to me.


• Now What? - I can't do the upside-down question mark at the beginning of this title, which is too bad because I think it's important to the blog. Now What? has one son who is adopted from Guatemala and is working on adding another member to her family, though things are not going well for anyone trying to adopt from Guatemala right now.

So that's my team. I'm going to be reading and rooting for all five of them to make it through NaBloPoMo.

If you're not participating in NaBloPoMo, get off your arse and put together a fantasy team already! Just browse through the list of participants, check out the blogs whose names or mouseovers appeal to you and add four or five URLs to your feedreader or bookmarks folder. Then check in with those blogs and leave comments. It's like standing on the side of the road and cheering for people who run marathons. It's good karma, and you just might be inspired by what you see.

Good luck, NaBloPoMo'ers!