tiffany's spot

Two more sleeps until Blogtober. I think capitalizing it lends credibility to the event. I'm sure you want to join. Shoot, I had a blog post in mind when I logged in here and now it's completely gone. My head is an anomaly. I guess this means staying on top of cutting my fingernails in the month of October. Does anybody else find that typing is more efficient with short fingernails? I do. I have no idea how women with their wickedly long gel nails can effectively work their way around a keyboard. I type between 90 and 95 wpm and having long nails cuts that way down. I'm sorry. I'm sure my original blog post idea was way more interesting than the length of my fingernails. I'll amp up my subject matter in time for Blogtober - at least for the first week.

Blogtober is nearly upon us. Anybody with me? Are we going to blog every day in October? You have three sleeps to prepare. That link is just to my blog last October. This blog has some serious vanity issues. From there - NaNoWriMo !! The past three years I've attempted to write a story. I have not gotten very far. This is the year. Anybody out there have a novel idea (ooh punny)? Seriously - just a sentence or two will do. Just say "Write a story about . . . " I need to steal your hooks, unless you're going to use them to write a story. Steven? You in? NaNoWriMo?

I went to the Home and School meeting tonight. It wasn't anything like I thought it would be. Including the principal, a teacher, the chair, and two people who were leaving, there were eight people. Apparently it was a good turnout compared to other meetings. There was no hiding in the back row and texting my friends. Being the first meeting of the year one of the orders of business was to fill the positions in student council. Being that there were only five people there who could take positions, and there were four positions to fill, there was a certain amount of pressure for us to take a position. I felt a little bit like picking up my stuff and running for the door, leaping over tables and chairs on my way out, except that I'll likely bump into the majority of those people tomorrow morning, and each school day from now until June 2020. I'm actually debating volunteering for the treasurer job. Reasons why not? Well, not actually finishing anything on my to-do lists at

I keep telling myself I'm going to get more hard-core with this blog, and then I don't blog for days, weeks, forever. Sometimes I think that there isn't enough interesting stuff going on, or that the things that are keeping me busy aren't going to be all that exciting for the general public. I had a good idea the other day, then I forgot what it was. This morning I went biking. I had this little 9.4 mile route mapped out. I had originally wanted to run, but I woke up with a sore, thick throat and figured that biking would be easier. Maybe if I was a biker. I run over the overpass all the time - twice each run. Today? I biked over it on my way out and almost died, and then took a different route home. I also turned back early at only 6 miles. I felt a little wimpy, but I'm going to blame being a little sick. Nothing like waking up with your eyelashes glued shut with eye-snot to make a person excited to get up and exercise at 5:30am. Whatever. The world needs fat peop

But I won't. I have bought a few "teach your kids . . . " books lately. One is Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons . The method seems different than what I'd expect, but once you get into it there's so much sense to it! I started with Jordan yesterday, and she went through the first three lessons before her attention was irretrievable. Then just for kicks I did the first little exercise or two in lesson one with Tennyson. Jordan will have absolutely no trouble with it, and I'm convinced that it's something Tennyson can do too, although a little slower. I expect that Jordan (since she knows the alphabet and sounds already) will fly through it. She can actually sound out easier words already with a bit of prompting, and is so close that I know she'll have no trouble. Tennyson actually knows his alphabet (writing, the names of letters, etc. - yay Brain Quest!) and I know he can do this too. I'd probably go slower with him so we don't get

Jordan is in Grade 1 this year without any of her friends from last year. Privacy rules being what they are, we as parents get no class lists or last names of the kids or phone numbers of other parents. It's kind of annoying. Jordan has played with a couple of the kids from her class, but half the time she doesn't remember what the kids names are, never mind the last names or who their mothers are. A friend of mine suggested looking up mommy business cards online. I looked. They're cute. It's something you could give to a mom on a playground instead of looking for a pen and paper to exchange information, or tuck inside a birthday invitation or give to Jordan to send home with a new friend at school to give to the other parents. This is what I found. Not sure if I'm going to do it or not. What do you think, cute or cheesy?

On Jordan's first day of kindergarten I forgot to send her a snack. She didn't forget it all year that on the first day of school she was the one kid with no snack. Although her teacher assures me that there were lots of kids with no snack, that's not how Jordan remembers it. Tomorrow is the first day of Grade 1. I feel like such a newbie. I think I have more Grade 1 jitters than Jordan does. She's over the moon about starting grade 1 tomorrow. I worry. Will she be sad when she walks into the classroom only to remember that her closest friends aren't with her this year? Will she make new friends? Will the kids be nice to her? Will her teacher like her? Will she secretly hate school and not tell me? More importantly, right now, in this moment - how do I pack her lunch? I know it seems silly, but I'm not sure how much food to send. At home I just let them eat until they stop. So far, my plan for Jordan's lunch is this: a ham and cucumber sandwich (alas, out of

I'm seriously giving up on printing off this paper.

I'm sitting in the "office" in the basement, trying to get my stupid printer to print off one stupid thing, and it won't. Whatever. As I sit here I find myself thinking: I should clean this dumpy dump dump room up again and use it as an office. Funny how these things change. I used to sit down in this (probably equally messy) room on the desktop and think would it ever be cool to have a laptop and be able to drag it upstairs, and it is, but it would be kind of neat to have this room more functional too. I envision a nice tidy work area, papers that are actually filed, a clean desk with only my printer and scanner on so it would be easy to plunk down and plug in when I needed to use these things. You never know, it just may happen. Maybe a shelf, a cactus or a picture or two may find their way down here yet too. I'll be sure to post some before and after pictures if I decide to spring clean this dumpy room.

We love it. I actually had a number of camping trips planned this year when we thought we were going to be tenting it, and then on a whim we bought a tent trailer at the end of July. Since then we have camped six different times at four different campgrounds. It's actually a lot of work with four young kids, but they really love it and I've always liked camping so it's interesting trying to rework our camping expectations to fit around the needs and craziness of our family. We actually just came home today from Shady Oaks. Each September long weekend the Manitoba Old Time Bluegrass Society has a giant camp out at Shady Oaks campground just West of Austin. Steven's Dad and not-so-wicked Stepmom both play and sing in bluegrass groups and are heavily involved in this weekend so we like to camp and enjoy the bluegrass atmosphere, performances and of course the campground and pool. We were supposed to camp from Friday to Monday but we kind of pooped out today and c