Step Away From the Mouse September 17, 2009

I won again.

This time it’s a good thing.  The Baby has learned to climb out of his crib and the resultant lack of sleep is doing bad things to all of us (not to mention that that kid has to be watched every second and now I can’t even relax at nights and naptimes) so I bid on, and won, a tent for the crib that should keep him in.  So that’s a positive.

But while I was on eBay’s site I figured I might as well look at belay devices.  You know, not that I’m going to buy one or anything, just to look right?

Will you look at that that some guy is selling two of them and the bidding’s only to $10.50.  $10.50! FOR TWO?!?  That’s a sensational price!  They’re $20 easy on their own.  How can I pass that up?

Apparently I can’t.  I bid on that one too (the auction closes at 11:00 tonight so here’s hoping).

And then maybe I’ll look at ropes.  I didn’t buy any but… well, it’s pretty tempting.  And then there’s the shoes (I have an email in to a girl selling on craig’s list) and carabiners and the quickdraws and SERIOUSLY WILL SOMEONE PLEASE GET ME AWAY FROM THE FREAKING COMPUTER!!!!!

On a related note I did send a note to the harness seller asking if she would could down on the price.  She said that she couldn’t, that it really would cost her about that much and she’d only make $1 or $2 on the deal.  (She also said something about the postmaster at her post office having made her husband open a package once to prove that it was media so that he could send it media mail.  Is that even legal?)  Anyway, the thing about postage is that the receiver always knows what the sender spent.  And in this case, with the $15 that I paid her to send my harness she spent $6.45.  So she really only made $1 or $2 or $8.50 on the shipping (and that’s considerable when you take into account the fact that I only paid $24.99 for the thing).  Whatever.  Maybe it’ll teach me to pay closer attention in the future.

Speaking of, I wonder what the belay devices are going to cost to ship???

And the Winner is…. September 14, 2009

Crap!  It’s me.  I won.  Dangit!

I won something on eBay and I really wish I hadn’t.  I bid on the item, that really had quite a good price, but I made the fatal, well, ok not fatal but certainly costly mistake of not checking the price for shipping first.   Upon checking the shipping cost I realized why the item was still so reasonably priced, why I was the first and ultimately only bidder.  The seller was trying to make their money not from the item itself but from charging at least five times what it will actually cost them to send it.

See, the item is a rock climbing harness (something that I probably shouldn’t be buying anyway.  I have been climbing quite a bit lately anything to get me out of the house and away from the kids and I intend to continue to do so, it’s a great full body workout and well, really fun, but you can’t climb alone and the gal I go with has a spare harness so I don’t really need my own what I really need are climbing shoes but they’re considerably more expensive.)  and the weight, or lack thereof, of a harness is an important feature, a feature that is easy to ascertain for the most part and even if one can’t find the exact specs for the harness that they were looking at on, say eBay, they could certainly find comparable harness and see that they weighed under a pound and it doesn’t take a postal employee to tell you that it doesn’t cost $15 to mail a small 15 oz item from Washington state to Utah.  Hypothetically speaking of course.

I hate it when people do this!  I think it’s immoral, they list an item for a low low price just counting on some idiot (in this case that would be me) coming along and bidding without reading the fine print.  I understand that it’s a great way to get your stuff sold and to make a little cash but at what expense really?  It’s not theft technically, but it is slight of hand (which I like as well as the next girl when it comes to magic tricks) it’s sneaky and underhanded and … wrong.  (Yes, I get that it’s my responsibility to read all the fine print before I bid, I get my responsibility in all this but … well, if you cna’t see it then there’s no explaining it to you.)

As soon as I realized that the shipping cost was what it was I began hoping that I would be outbid, I thought that the chances of that were pretty good, I only bid 1 cent over the asking price afterall, and people don’t win $90+ climbing harnesses for $25 right?  You already know the answer to that so we’ll move on. (The answer is no they don’t, they win $90+ climbing harnesses for $40.)  Obviously I was not outbid.

Upon winning I did send an email to the seller asking if they’d be willing to come down on the shipping but I’m not holding out a lot of hope and as I told them, if they won’t come down I’ll go ahead and pay in full since I did bid and not paying what I promised to pay is also not exactly right (I might have mentioned this before here or here or… anyway) but either way I am the owner of two new climbing harnesses.

Did I forget to mention that just after I bid on the harness on eBay I found a brand new harness at REI.com for $30 with free shipping and (either thinking that I would surely be outbid or forgetting altogether about the harness I was in the process of buying on eBay (it was 2 in the morning, my thought processes were not exactly linear) or some kind of combination of the two) I bought it?  Whoops.

Hey, anyone want to go climbing with me?  I’ll supply the harness.

Waxing Rhapsodic September 2, 2009

I have that feeling again.  That fragile, scrubbed clean, wistful feeling you get when you reach the end of another life, the conclusion, or is it just the beginning? of another story.  I’m restless and tired and the edges of my vision seem to have shifted slightly as if the color has suddenly taken on another texture, the air a slightly different and unfamiliar shape.

I get this every time I finish reading another book but at some times it’s more pronounced than others.  Mostly the spectrum is controlled by the depth of the book, the deeper the book the deeper the shift in my reality.  Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos has produced a slight ache somewhere in the vicinity of my creativity.  I long to write.  To write something, anything but preferably something beautiful and moving and pregnant with meaning and possibility where a pause in conversation or the shifting of one’s weight, the most innocuous movement that in real life, at least in my life, would go completely unnoticed is heavy with import and opens vistas of insight.

I wonder when I read books like this if people really see the world this way?  Are there people who really read the body language of the people around them this closely? Never mind baking a chicken “filling (the)… house with it’s gold tinged aroma”?  Am I somehow the only one who doesn’t see these things?

But I do when I read books like this and maybe with practice I can, at least occasionally, when I’m looking at my life rather than at a book.   I really need to work on that.

It’s Like Way, Exestential* July 23, 2009

Tuesday morning I dyed my hair.  There’s nothing particularly new in this.  It’s something I’ve done several times, thousands? hundreds?  Probably not. Dozens?  A dozen maybe.  It’s been probably four years though.

I even did a color that I’ve done multiple times.  I didn’t think looked very good. Too brassy, not natural, just… bleh. (And it’s not that I had a problem with the fact that it didn’t look natural, as you’ll see in a minute, it’s just that it didn’t look unnatural enough, you know?  I mean if you dye your hair pink or green or blue then it doesn’t look natural but that’s the point but if you dye it sort of a brassy red then it doesn’t look natural but it looks close enough that you could just be one of those women who don’t know that their hair doesn’t look natural and that my friends, is not a good look.)

I used to love this color, it used to look good.  (Well, I used to think that it looked good.  Those of you who were around four+ years ago and saw it and disagree can go ahead and keep your mouths shut and your opinions to yourselves.)

Anyway, between the not looking very good (despite the assurances that “no, it looks really good” and “it’s cute, I like it”  that I got from my coworkers) and the just general boredom, I thought about just shaving it all off, something I’ve thought about for years, I’ve just never had the guts to do it.  And I even had one person agree with me that I should. (Actually he told me that I should keep it long because I’m married and men like long hair so I should keep it long for my husband.  I told him that Sean didn’t really get a vote.  He thought that was pretty cold until I mentioned that I preferred Sean’s hair short and then showed him a picture of my loving husband, at which point he said “bic it”.)

But I didn’t.

Instead I just bleached half of it.

I’m wondering if I’m hitting some kind of existential midlife crisis (actually, I don’t really know what existential means but sometimes I just like to throw it out there) (and there’s the possibility that it’s not my midlife but well, bother me not with details ok?)  The point is that I’ve always gone with more or less natural hair colors, styles, whatever.  And now, not so much.

Now I’m like some kind of blond, redhead, funky, punk, goth chick.  Well, ok, no, not really.  But the hair’s a little crazy.

For a mormon mother of 4 anyway.

*50 points to the first person to get the movie quote.

The Company I Keep July 15, 2009

I’m currently the only person in my home.   It’s heavenly.  I’m sitting here, at the computer with pandora playing a fantastic mix of music (country, punk, big band, rock, whiny chick music…) and checking my facebook.  I’d be happy enough to go see what’s on TV, even to call a friend (except for that whole dialing allergy that I have).  What I don’t really likie, what I’m not good at, is being alone.

Saturday night, while we were camping, we did our usual nightly rituals in the tent.  We read scriptures, we sang songs, we prayed.  That’s all there is to do for the three oldest kids.  The baby, when we don’t have a playpen (Yes, he sleeps in a play pen.  Go ahead call DCFS, I dare you.) to put him in and room to shut him into, needs someone to lie with him until he falls asleep.  Sean was doing that.  So I was sitting all alone by the fire.  It wasn’t that great.

While we camp I really try to eschew most modern technology.  We don’t drive for hours (or in our case tens of minutes) to nature so that we can do the same things that we do when we’re home.  But as I sat there watching the fire my Ipod was really calling to me.  And I realized that I’m just not really very comfortable with only my own company.  I’m fine if I’ve got distractions, if I’ve got the Friends gang cracking jokes in syndication, but all alone I’ve got nothing to do and I’m bored.  Really bored.

And I was thinking that that wasn’t a good thing.

But then another thought struck me.  I think we as a society have a tendency to romanticize the past.  We figure that those who came before us had it all figured out (whatever “it” is) and we’re somehow missing the boat.  We assume that if books and walks were enough entertainment for Jane Austen then they should be for us too. It’s this thinking that automatically makes books superior to television, it makes staged plays better than movies, it makes board games better than video games.

I have a brother-in-law who rejects this idea.  And I think he’s got a point.  Sure books are great, I love books, I’m a writer for goodness sake, but there’s a lot of written crap out there.  I don’t see how you can even make the argument that some bodice-ripping harlequin novel is “better” than Firefly.  Sure, there’s a richness in books that you don’t get out of TV or movies no matter how well done, but there’s a whole spectrum in books and in TV and in movies and in plays and in art, in everything.  Some of all of it is great and good and uplifting, some of it is just fun and some of it is quite frankly crap.  The fact that it’s written crap doesn’t elevate its quality.

I think that quiet is something that comes in pretty short supply to most of us these days and I think that’s too bad, I do wish that I was more comfortable just sitting in silence, that it wasn’t something that made me edgy and nervous (and frustrated).  But I also doubt that many of the women 200 years ago were very good at keeping track of 4 people’s schedules, keeping them clean, working out how to pay the power bill without bouncing the mortgage payment and figuring out what your son means when he asks you what humping is, all while making dinner.  And that’s something I have to do.  Sure, I think women have always been good multi-taskers but these days we really do take it to a whole new level and I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with that.

Does this mean that next weekend, when we go camping again, I’m going to make sure that my Ipod’s fully charged so that I can spend the weekend with it crooning in my ear?  Nope.  But when I’m sitting at the fireside trying to be more comfortable with the silence and the lack of entertainment, I’m going to give myself a break.  Or maybe I’ll bring along a pack of cards, even Jane Austen played cards.

And the Gold Medal Goes To… June 22, 2009

I noticed the other day that I’m way too competitive.   I don’t play sports, I’m not a gamer, I don’t really do anything that could be called competition, except live.  But in the course of living I meet people, make friends, form acquaintances, hear the news of others and suddenly I’m Suzie competitive.

What’s that? Cheryl’s pregnant with her 5th kid?  I only have four, I could be just as good of a mother as Cheryl, maybe I should have another kid, you know, just to prove it.  Because somehow child bearing and raising is a competition.

Kate homeschools her kids.  Sure she doesn’t have to work full time outside of her home in order to feed her kids but I should be able to homeschool too, I mean if Kate does it… Maybe if I was willing to be flexible and not sleep all day after I work  a night shift, maybe I could work in homeschooling.

What’s that?  ByTheLbs is vacationing in Hawaii?  Maybe I should take the money I have in savings and hit the beach, I meant that’s not what I saved it for but, well, I’ve never been to Hawaii and vacationing, surely vacationing is a competition.

Look how well behaved Catherine’s kids are.  Her three year old would never yell “I hate you” at her as she walked up to the pulpit to say the closing prayer in sacrament meeting. (No, I’m not kidding, you haven’t been here long have you?)  Maybe I should… well, I don’t have any idea what I should do to compete in this arena (aside from recognizing that her children and my children are, you know, different children.)

And look at all these girls having their babies without medication.  I mean I did it once but surely I could have done it more than once.  (How’s that for a STUPID thought?)

And both Melanie and Kate had twins, maybe I could have twins naturally that would really show ‘em.  And look how long Becky’s hair is (because hair length, absolutely a competition) and look at Angela’s cute clothes, oh and the Joneses got a new boat, and you know I have to keep up with the Joneses…

I mean, um, well…

Welcome to My Home, Licking or Non? June 9, 2009

Remember back before we shot our kids up with all kinds of immunizations for diseases that aren’t really all that dangerous and people used to have chickenpox parties. You know, little Timmy down the block would come down with the pox and all the other mothers would bring their kidlets over to play with Timmy because chicken pox are so much easier to deal with and so much less dangerous in little kids than in adults. So all these mothers would intentionally infect their kids with this disease so that they could get it over with.

Well, we went camping this weekend, something that my sister thought that I should have posted about because nobody even died or fell in the river or died or anything. And I’m happy to report that that was true, no one did die or fall in the river (which was especially amazing because we camped right by the river). But see, while it’s amazing that no one died or fell in the river there’s not really much to tell there. In fact, that’s about all there is to tell you, no one died or fell in the river. Someone dying or falling in the river actually makes a much better story. So it’s unlucky for the blog, but lucky for me and mine, that it didn’t happen.

Apparently I got distracted, where was I? Oh yes.

So we went camping and we came home a day early because it was cold up there. Really freaking cold up there. And the kids were coughing, the Infantile Delinquent especially. So we came home and he was just lying on me. And coughing.  And crying. And lying on me. And coughing. And I started to get a little worried.

So I gave him a little ibuprofen and then I took him to the instacare.

When will I learn not to do that?!!! Here’s this kid who’s been lying around, hardly able to lift his head, all day and a teaspoon of the magical elixir later he’s bouncing off the walls.  So I look like the freak mother who’s worried because her child is “sick” only he doesn’t look sick and he doesn’t act sick.

At least he was still coughing.

The doctor was very nice, she said his lungs sounded fine and that there was a good chance that what he had was the “new” flu which is what we’re calling the swine flu now because calling it swine flu is injurious to the swine and calling it H1N1 just sounds stupid.  So we have the “new” flu now but what were’ going to do when there’s a newer flu I just don’t know.  Because calling something the “newer” flu sounds even stupider than calling something H1N1.  In fact, I think there ought to be someone in charge of naming diseases.  Wouldn’t that be a great job? I would like that job.  Just think of the revenge you could exact on old boyfriends, the high school government teacher who almost failed you, that guy who cut you off on the freeway (except that I don’t really have his name.  Maybe I could cultivate a friendship with someone at the DMV…)

And now to get back to the point.

Apparently, they’re seeing a lot of people with the flu. “Flu season-like numbers” in fact. And 85% of the flu patients they’re seeing have the “new” flu. (Although how they’re getting those numbers I’m not sure since they’re not testing for it anymore, and my understanding is that they stopped testing for it because the numbers were so high. Which doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to me but there it is.) My brother’s even (probably) got it and he didn’t even get it from my kids (although he’s got 8 of his own so he doesn’t really need mine to infect him with anything.) But the doctor told me that it’s mostly staying upper-respiratory and lingering for a while and then going away.  And the best way to deal with it is just to get lots of rest and drink lots of fluids.

But then she made a good point, she said that she’d rather get the flu now when it’s relatively mild and then when it goes around this winter and it’s killing people off she’ll be immune.

So I say come on over and I’ll have the InfaDel give you a lick (as if I could stop him). Let’s have a good old fashioned flu party.

Becoming a Twit April 22, 2009

I don’t twit. Or tweet.  Or whatever it is one does on Twitter. And in truth, I’ve never even been to twitter.com.  (I tried to go in anticipation of this post, doing my research you know, but the computer I’m on has some serious parental controls and I can’t get there.)  But my understanding is that it’s a lot like the status updates on Facebook (and heaven knows, I Facebook) only you’re supposed to update then several times a day  (and when people do that on Facebook it’s just annoying).

But I love the status updates on Facebook (do you think I could use the word Facebook a few more times in this post?  I’ll try.)  I especially love coming up with interesting, obscure, but not too obscure status updates.  Unfortunately, I now find myself unable to think in more than 140 characters.

Seriously, I spent all day Monday thinking in status updates.  Am I the only one who does this?

Here’s a short list of the updates I thought of but didn’t post because I was building, and who can be on the computer all day anyway?

*Alison Wonderland is well aware of what her underwear says about her.

*Alison Wonderland is delighted with the beautiful weather.

*Alison Wonderland is spending some quality time with her saw, don’t tell the nail gun.

*Alison Wonderland is still singing the theme song to Phineas and Ferb.

*Alison Wonderland wonders if she is the only person in the neighborhood not celebrating the “holiday”.

*Alison Wonderland is less than delighted by the fact that her one year old shares her love of power tools.

*Alison Wonderland is really glad her children are washable.

*Alison Wonderland thinks that maybe she should take the metal saw blade out of the saw for cutting through wood.

*Alison Wonderland needs a new wood cutting blade for her saw.

*Alison Wonderland is cutting wood with the metal cutting blade, screw the recommendations.

*Alison Wonderland wishes her children would stop messing with her tools.

*Alison Wonderland needs a good long screw.

And at that point I thought it’s a darn good thing I don’t tweet.

A Post About YOU! Oh, No sorry, That’s U. April 19, 2009

My very dear bloggy friend bythelbs did a letter post.  And then she asked if we all wanted to do letter posts too and being the sheep that I am I said I did.  So she assigned me a letter.  The letter U to be exact.  And while coming up with ten things I like that start with the letter U may not be the easiest thing I’ve ever done it is, well… Oh enough with the intro already.

Underwear.  Or unders as we call them here in the Wonderland.  Because once one of the Wonderkids is in unders that means that they’re not in diapers anymore.  And that makes us all happy.  (I’ll also include here Underoos.  if I had a scanner I’d insert a great picture that I have of myself Christmas morning of probably, 1982ish, in my Wonder Woman Underoos that I wore daily everywhere I went.  Sadly, I don’t have a scanner so we’re going to move on ok?)

Ukulele.  Actually, I really am a legitimate fan of the ukulele, my dad has one, has had my whole life, and some of my fondest memories of my childhood are of nights that he would get it down and play it.

Oh and here’s a youtube video of a guy playing “while my ukulele gently weeps”.  Because who can resist that? 

Umbrella.  I love the rain.  I grew up in a land of frequent, amazing, violent storms and I always loved them.   Which makes the fact that I live in this rain forsaken desert (except for last week) all the sadder.  I miss my entire summers of “hazy hot and humid with a chance of thundershowers later in the afternoon.”

Urgent.  It may be a little bloodthirsty of me but I love a good emergency at work.  I like the adrenaline rush, I like the feeling that what I’m doing actually makes a difference, I like knowing that I’m doing what I do better than I did even six months ago; and I don’t really get any of that taking out tonsils.

Upside-down.  I like to see things from a different perspective.  Some of you may have seen pictures of me at the top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas (heck, some of you saw me there in person) and while I was there, this is what I did. I know the two pictures look almost identical but if you look closely (at anything other than me) you’ll see that they’re not.  It’s just that I spent most of my time there in that position and I could have stayed there all day.  It was the whole city from a new angle.  I love that.  (And yes, the little sign next to me does say “Do Not Lean On Glass”  I wasn’t leaning on the glass I was leaning on the frame.  Give me a break will ya?)

Ubiquitous.  Because who doesn’t love Angela Lansbury?

Uniform.  Because who doesn’t love a guy in uniform?

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Oh wait…

Underdogs.  I know it’s not PC but I can’t help it,  I grew up in DC, I’ll always be a Redskins fan.

Urban.  I’m a city girl.  I”ve never ridden a horse or touched a cow and I’m not that sad about that.  The smallest town I’ve ever lived in was Provo and I’m gonna be honest, it kinda freaked me out (that may have been more about the fact that it was Provo than the size of the town but be that as it may…) My in-laws, a lot of them, are small town people and I think that’s great.  But I just can’t function properly in a town where the only pizza place is closed at 8:05 on a Saturday night. It’s not that I’m going to order the pizza,  I just like to have the option.

Uh.  I give up.

Oh the Irony! (Wait is that irony? I’m not sure.) March 21, 2009

I’ve been waiting for a week for this:It finally came today.

It showed up about an hour after I decided that I’d really rather have this :Grrr!