tiffany's spot

Read Christopher Moore yet? I read this one yesterday and today. Do it.

"Mommy," asked Jordan. "What happens if somebody sees Santa?" "If someone sees him?" "Yeah." "Well, if you see him, then KABOOM! He explodes. Right in your living room." They're not the least bit fazed. Best mother ever.

Tennyson : I'm going to do grade 1, grade 2 . . . grade 11, grade 12. Jordan : Then you can congradulate. Tennyson : What does congradulate mean? Jordan : It means you're a grownup and you can get out of school. Get a job. Get your baby. They make me laugh.

I bet you'd think you had to go to a world class buffet to be able to eat, all in one meal; chili, mashed potatoes, chicken fettuccine alfredo, a head of cauliflower and a bowl of cabbage soup. You'd be wrong. It's leftover night at Chez Verwey.

If I was one of those people who wrote blog posts more like an essay, and less like a stream of consciousness poured onto a computer screen, the entire thing could have made more sense. But this is what you get.

If you didn't read my earlier post you should probably go back. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/news/2000/dec08.html Here is a website that explains why Christmas is on December 25th. I've read this before. Basically, it was a pagan holiday. Early Christians chose this day so it would be easier to convert the pagans to Christianity. The pagan origins of the Christmas date, as well as pagan origins for many Christmas customs (gift-giving and merrymaking from Roman Saturnalia; greenery, lights, and charity from the Roman New Year; Yule logs and various foods from Teutonic feasts), have always fueled arguments against the holiday. "It's just paganism wrapped with a Christian bow," naysayers argue. But while kowtowing to worldliness must always be a concern for Christians, the church has generally viewed efforts to reshape culture—including holidays—positively. As a theologian asserted in 320, "We hold this day holy, not like the pagans becaus...

And Happy Hannukuh And Happy Holidays And Seasons Greetings! I just have to throw this out there. I've been increasingly irritated as I scroll through facebook these days, at E-Card after E-Card proclaiming that we're putting "Christ Back in Christmas." This is how I see it. Nobody who says Happy Holidays hates Jesus. I know, that's extremely profound. Do you know why we say Happy Holidays? It's not because people want to forcibly rip the savior from the Christmas season. It's because there are loads of other people who celebrate their cultural and religious holidays at around the same time as Christmas. It's not because they hate Jesus, it's because in the spirit of love and friendship and all that jazz, there are people out there who want to give a shout out to other people who might be celebrating. It's so that our friends who maybe don't celebrate in the exact same way we do will feel like you thought of them too. I bet if y...

I think I may have to start working out again. I'm planning on doing the Half Manitoba Marathon again in the spring, and losing a few pounds would be nice. Nothing says "Go Me!" like running 13 miles with the super fun extra 20 pounds I happily and deliciously gained back. It would have been more, but cabbage soup has helped to chase away a little of it. Update on the 8 pounds in November - I hit 7. I'm good with that. Where was I? Right, half marathon in June. Two years ago I signed up for my first one. I ran my ass off for months getting ready. I was pretty anxious about being able to finish it, and do well, and not have to walk the last 11 miles so I trained like a crazy person. Last year? Well, I may have been a little cockier, or lazier, or both. I ran a little in the spring. Year 1: I ran 13 miles. It was good. Carried on with my day. Year 2: I ran 13 miles 7 minutes slower. Wanted to lay down in a ditch around mile five. Was sore for a while. I wan...

Tennyson : Mommy, when I grow up I'm going to be a cowboy. Me : Oh honey, you're probably not. Tennyson : No really, I'm gonna be a cowboy and I'm gonna get a lunchbox and every day I'm going to pack two sandwiches and two apples. Me : Oh are you! Tennyson : Yeah, and if someone tries to get you I'll catch them with my lasso and I'll tie them up in knots. Me : Okay honey, thanks. This kid has so many ideas, and no matter what his plans are he's always thinking about his meals. I overheard him telling Mitchell a few minutes later that the two sandwiches and two apples were so that he could have a sandwich and an apple for breakfast and lunch. Of course he'd come home for supper. I always say Tennyson is going to marry the first woman who makes him a sandwich.

Just so you know, if you pull a muscle in your ass, participating in a Zumba class will not, in fact, help to "work it out." Seriously. I wish someone had told me this earlier today. On Sunday I went to Carberry for a kids Christmas party at the rink/bowling alley. It was great fun. The kids bowled, skated, sat on Santa's knee, helped themselves to multiple helpings of delicious snacks, and spent the afternoon with Grandma. I had fun too. I totally kicked Mitchell's butt bowling. But I pulled a muscle in my ass. I first realized it when I slipped around the ice helping my kids "skate." I figured that it must have happened bowling. Of course with my perfect bowling form, and refusal to hop in all the wrong places during my delivery, it's seriously surprising that I did some strange thing to a weird, deeply buried muscle, but I did. Go figure. Today I thought to myself, "Self, you hardly feel that tender muscle unless you move around. I'...

51,530 words

     “I hope not. So what’s the plan? And how can I help? I guess. But if that thing hops up and tries to eat me I’m out of here. And if we roll him over and I find one of your kitchen knives buried in the abdomen of someone who was alive and happy yesterday I might just have to call the police.”       “That’s ridiculous. I don’t even own any kitchen knives.”

Izzy Jones doesn't listen when the meddlesome townspeople try to talk her out of buying a run-down house in the countryside. She knows she can fix it up and bring it back to its former glory. But when the roof falls in and odd creatures start coming out of the overgrown, bushy half of her property, Izzy still stubbornly refuses to admit that maybe buying the house was a bad idea. Instead, with paintbrush in hand, she tackles the work that needs to be done. Little does she know that her estranged mother is on her way back to town, and that there is more waiting in the bushes than a ghost dog and a tiny blue fairy. I wrote this synopsis at 12:40 am, so I admit, it's badder than bad. I would also like to point out that there really are no zombies in my story.

I am standing at the island, making Jordan's lunch. I can hear the kids down the hall getting more and more worked up. Jordan is yelling "Get off! Elliot, get off!" Elliot is screaming and yelling "No!" at her. "Stop it!" yells Tennyson. "Stop it Jordan, I am tellling Mommy!" " She's going to start on fire!" Jordan yells. This is exactly the thing a mother wants to hear. I wonder if  the kids have found the lighter that I keep buried in my sock drawer. Maybe they're not in the boys' room at all. Tennyson comes charging down the hallway. "Jordan is choking Elliot!" "What?" "She's choking Elliot! Come!" I highly doubted that Jordan was choking Elliot. It's so not her style. She kind of loves the "baby", even when she doesn't really like her. I follow him down the hall to the boys' room. Jordan is dragging Elliot across the room by her arm. This is both p...

I have more than a few words left to write on my novel. Here are my stats: 13000 words left, two evenings to do it in. Friday is the last day of November, but I'm going to be gone all day so it's kind of a bust. I had two goals this month: lose 8 pounds, and write a novel. I am 1 pound and 13,267 words away. Three sleeps until December.

We took the kids tobogganing at the dump hill this morning. I've decided that this winter I'm going to be more proactive in getting the kids active and outside in the winter. It helps that my "baby" is now two. Elliot goes up and down that hill like a champ, riding in the red plastic death sled with the boys and tromping back up the hill on her own. That being said, I may have hid in the van and listened to music out of the wind while my family had fun. It wasn't too long until Elliot decided she didn't need a scarf, mitts or toque, so Steven tossed her into the van to keep me company. At least at that point I could pretend that someone needed to watch over her. The windchill was brutal. The kids lasted 40 minutes. I was pretty impressed. Now I'm writing a novel when I'm not hitting refresh on facebook or checking whether anyone has blogged lately (and no, you haven't. boo!). I've gone from 25000 words to 26000 words already. My goal to...

Alright, so I did this really stupid thing. I told myself that I'd give up chocolate until I lost a predetermined amount of weight. It was 11 pounds, to be exact. I have seven to go, and guess what? I REALLY WANT CHOCOLATE. Like really really. I decided this on Halloween night, after eating two small chocolate peanut butter eyeball things (wow, it sounds really yummy when described like that). I haven't had chocolate since. It's been three weeks. Anyway, you know what that rules out? Wagon wheels and 'smore granola bars, as well as the raiding I normally do of the kids Halloween bags after they go to sleep every night for a week after Halloween. Whatever. I've been working on my novel. I actually took a ten day break, which given the fact that the novel is supposed to be written in 30 days is kind of poor planning. Now I have to write something like 3600 words a day to get it done by the 30th. I pulled it off yesterday. I still have 2000 to go today and al...

    “No,” Nate snapped. “No arguing. Not now. You move in with me until you figure out what you want to do. I don’t care. But you can’t stay here, and you can’t sell it. So we just flatten everything off and build one hell of a fence around it and keep people out of it forever and just pretend none of this bullshit exists.”     Izzy raised an eyebrow. “That’s your plan? Build a big fence and walk away?”     “No! Don’t forget I’m still a half a mile away from this place.”     “That’s right Nate, you’re only a half mile away from this place. What happens if the magic grows and one day you’re sitting on your front steps and the next thing you know something comes out of the darkness at you?”     Nate paled.     “That’s what I thought.”

    He softened his voice. “I know you don’t like hearing it over and over, but the reason people keep offering you a place to stay is because this house is hopeless. You’ll never have the money to fix it up. It’s falling apart. It’s old, and it turns out it’s haunted, or possessed or something. Izzy, you are insane to stay here when you have other options.”     “Where is that haunted dog anyway?” asked Emma.     “I don’t know,” said Izzy. “He wanders.”     Nate turned slightly greyer. “Izzy, I never saw that dog before you moved here. I honestly thought he came here with you. If he came out of the bush to greet you then he must have come from somewhere. I don’t like any of this. Where is he now? Where is he coming and going from?”     “I don’t know!” Izzy yelled. She tried to focus less on the ever-increasing creepiness of the situation and more on the irritation she was feeling at being lectured like a child. “...

And Amy and I watched Twilight: Eclipse - at least I think that's which one we watched. Again, Bella needed lots of rescuing and hand holding, Edward and Jacob read each others minds and commented on how much the other reeked, and Amy and I made fun of the whole thing. Although I think that Amy really really loves it and is just trying to save face. Bella is definitely going to win an Emmy (oscar? academy? participation?) award for this movie. Look at her emoting up a storm in this picture. She's obviously really intensely happy, or sad, or horny, or devastated or high in this picture. Whichever it is, she's totally pulling it off.

Today our toilet overflowed. Elliot went to the washroom, I cleaned her up, there was very little in there and the dang toilet overflowed - all over the bathroom. I didn't even realize it at first. I went back to the living room and a moment later I could hear the splash of pouring water. The toilet does this. A lot. Steven insists it's just because it's a shitty toilet. I raced back to the washroom and started draping towels over the water that ran end to end of the bathroom. I picked up the phone and dialed my husband. "Steven. If you insist that the toilet overflows because of the toilet itself then bring home a new toilet ." "Ok." He must have been able to tell by the tone of my voice that not showing up with a new toilet would equal someone's death. Then I began thinking; we've never painted the bathroom. If we were going to pull the toilet then it would really be a perfect chance to paint the bathroom. I am not one of those people ...

I'm going in to Winnipeg on Saturday to choose two of the following six geckos for my kids for Christmas:

I could start tickers for just about everything, but I probably won't. Not just yet anyway. Christmas is coming, New Year's is coming, and the Manitoba Marathon is a mere eight months away. I should probably start training for that. I'm going to go Christmas shopping on Saturday. I'd let you in on some of what I'll be looking for, but Jordan is sitting next to me, and she can read now. There is no more spelling things out to other adults in the room to keep secrets from kids, no more blogging in front of kids about things the kids aren't supposed to know. Anyway, kind of excited about what I'm going to look at! Jordan is cuddled up next to me. She's ten shades of white and complaining about her stomach. Is it awful to hope that it's food poisoning from the last round of bucket meat and not stomach flu? Yes, I suppose it is.

We've been eating bucket meat lately. I bet you're wondering what bucket meat is too. See that smoking burning barrel in my back yard? Bucket meat is meat that's cooked in there. I have fun telling people we're eating meat out of a bucket in the back yard. Steven spent the last couple of months slowly building (building? putting together?) a smoker. Last week one night we ate a pork roast out of the bucket. I insisted that the pork tasted like whatever was cooking off the inside of the bucket. I like to call it rust roast or burning barrel roast or chemical roast. Steven is adequately irritated at all these descriptions. It's a good thing he's got a sense of humor. I won't pretend to know what was involved in putting together the bucket, and Steven insists that the odd taste (which was really just limited to the very outside of the meat) came from not letting the charcoal get cooking really well before tossing the meat into the barrel. He made ham...

I don't know what's worse, blogging every day, or knowing that as soon as Blogtober ends NaNoWriMo begins. What to write about today? I could talk about the box of zucchini I want to get rid of, the dozens of guppies I'm going to need to get rid of, or . . . there was a third point, but I can't remember it. Oh, right! I could talk about the crested gecko that Steven is trying to forbid, but that I'm totally planning on getting my kids for Christmas. Not only am I getting them one, but I'm pretty sure there will be a second one in there too. I'll let you know how that goes. So far it's: "I want to get the kids a gecko for Christmas." "No. Just don't." I don't know about you but I hear, "I'm not playing with it, but go ahead, you're going to anyway."

Things I did today (October 25, of course): I brought one of Tennyson's friends home from school and the boys played all day. Of course I had to remind Tennyson a number of times that following Mommy around while his friend played on his own isn't the nicest thing to do, otherwise it was a success! The little boy we brought home had never been here before and Tennyson was so very excited to have a friend over. I made a pizza. It was delicious. I used my whopper chopper to cut up the mushrooms, and there were clouds of diced mushrooms over all the pepperoni. I love pizza. Steven loves pizza. I love when Steven eats it and comments on just how good it is. Score! I took four kids to the walk-in to deal with Jordan's aching ear. I was there for an hour and 40 minutes. In that time Elliot pushed a little sad boy and freaked out his mom, resulting in me trying to hold her on my lap for the next fifteen minutes while she screamed and kicked and sweated and turned red. Eventu...

I know this is highly out of character, but I'm going to rant about something that's probably unimportant in the big picture. I watched Beauty and the Beast tonight. This show is about a young woman who watches her mother get murdered and only escapes death herself when some mysterious beastly man appears out of nowhere to kill her mother's killers who chase her through the bush. Eight years later she meets the beastly man again while she is investigating a homicide. Again he saves her life. She realizes it's the same guy, and as their stories intertwine it becomes evident that her mother was killed because of some giant government cover up that centers upon what made the beastly man so, well, beastly . Interesting enough right? Right. You're probably wondering what my beef is. It's this; the woman and her woman partner are crime scene detectives. A victim is pushed off a building in the middle of the night and plummets to her death. The detectives show up ...

I googled "novel ideas" today and I found a good one: Step #1. Get a bunch of plot summaries for existing stories. You can find these on book jackets, TV listings, or movie guides. For example, the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) can be a great resource for generating writing ideas. It provides a brief plot summary for almost every movie ever made. The site has a list of the top 250 films (according to user votes), and the bottom 100, and also lets you browse alphabetically through all the films that have plot summaries. Choose summaries that are brief, perhaps one or two sentences at most. Step #2: Create original writing ideas by changing one thing at a time. Choose one plot summary. For the purpose of illustration, I’ll pick one plot summary from IMDb’s top 250 list. I choose The Third Man , because I have never seen the film, so I have no preconceived ideas about it. (This actually makes it easier.) There are several plot summa...

I was sitting here coming up with awesome story ideas when Steven popped in a How I Met Your Mother DVD. Now I'm back at square one.

Listen people, I know many of you failed to comment with your enthusiastic responses last time I mentioned that in November you should join me for a month of literary abandon and write a novel, but I shall remind you again - NaNoWriMo starts in ten days. Just ten! In the next ten days I highly encourage you to: spend some time with your children, they're really going to miss you in November wash call your mother put together 30 meals that can be frozen ahead of time and just dumped in frozen block form into the slow-cooker get an oil change, maybe fill your vehicle with gas look at baby name websites for awesome character names do laundry buy extra clothes, preferably with elastic waistbands catch up on your PVR. I prefer to call this "purging" and liken it to housework walk the dog come up with a rolodex of believable excuses and set aside the first couple of days of November to convince friends and family that you are not dead eat cake, simply because it...

In the North End we can totally get away with having romantic nights that look like this: And we can eat meat out of a bucket in the backyard, that after ravaging looks like this:   And marry sexy meat eaters that look like this:     And eat our after-the-kids-go-to-bed dinners watching this:  And drink Kool Aid that looks like this: Grownup Kool Aid is WAY better than kid Kool Aid. Way. Better. Steven wants me to delete that Uber-Sexy picture of him. Ha. Neva. Turns out Steven doesn't like his Kool Aid. More for me! Yay!

It's 11:31pm. I bet you thought I was going to cheat and just write a post tomorrow and backdate it, didn't you? Well, I'm not. That would be cheating. Instead, I am posting now. Happy Saturday Night!

Today I woke up at seven and vacuumed the house mopped the floors served breakfast cleaned up breakfast gave the bathroom a ten second tidy babysat Mitchie's good friend Riley welcomed Angela and her kids over for the day whipped up a delicious gourmet hot dog lunch for Amy, Angela and their assorted children let Catherine in ate cupcakes ate tim bits visited with friends around my dining room table all afternoon while our ten children ran amok  kicked everyone out had soup and pie with my husband and children took the oldest child to Awana watched the first ten minutes of a movie before deleting it off the PVR cuddled up with the hubby and watched a few other shows before crashing for the night at 10:30 Have a good weekend everybody!

Steven and I took the kids for flu shots today. As much as that sounds like a super fun family outing I knew it would be trouble. I've been pestering Steven for a week and a half to let his boss know that he had to leave work today so that he could be at the clinic by 3:30. There's no way I could take four kids for needles without help. Three of the four might have been okay, but it was the fourth one that would be trouble. By fourth I don't mean fourth born. If the fourth born had freaked out I'd probably be able to manage it. We didn't tell the kids they were getting needles today. I didn't want to ruin their days with worry and anxiety. I thought it would be best to just surprise them with it after picking up Jordan from school. It really was a surprise. I told them yesterday that we'd go to the library after school today to swap out some books. When Jordan hopped into the van in the pickup loop she pointedly reminded me that today was library day. ...

We're making hamburger helper for the kids. After they go to bed we're going to go get takeout and have it here without them. We're naughty. Happy Blogtober 17th!

I really must go back and tell you about . . . duhn duhn duh . . . the snowsuit . I've most certainly kept you in suspense far too long. Remember last winter when there was no snow, but it was still cold enough to freeze puddles and require kids to wear winter clothing? Good, we're caught up. Jordan is really hard on outerwear. Last year she destroyed a pair of skates, lost various mitts and tuques, shredded her first pair of winter boots and left her snowsuit looking like swiss cheese. The boots and snowsuit were done before Christmas. I made her wear the snowsuit for the rest of winter anyway and the boots I replaced after Christmas. It's amazing that a six year old child can ruin a rather expensive snowsuit in a few short months. I blame mother nature. Mother nature thought it would be funny to make it cold and icy out without actually giving us snow. Of course children want to run and drop to their knees or tummy on frozen puddles and slide to the other side. Of ...

I'm sure that most of you are aware that I am a most perfect woman. Therefore, I did most certainly not do any of these things this week/weekend: I did not run and hide in a bookstore after our sons went wild on the escalator, forcing their father to chase them, and a manager to appear. Nope, not me. I would certainly not do anything of the sort. I'm the type of mother who stands up to challenges and rights the wrongs of my children. I did not happily jump at the chance to leave one son with one friend and the other son with another friend for the entire afternoon today. There's no way I could be without my darling boys, even for a moment. Kindergarten is almost too much to bear, I definitely soak up every other second of each day and never let them leave the bosom of my heart. I did not get all teary when going through an old wall calendar when I noticed that it said "Mitchie took his first steps!" on one of the days. No, not me. Not sentimental at all. Ch...

Oh Sunday, glorious lazy Sunday. I spent a lot of time reading today, and wearing pajamas. At four o'clock I figured I should probably get dressed for supper, so I traded nightie for lounging pants. I admit it. I have no shame. I could go on about doing nothing all day, but really, nothing isn't very exciting. Instead I'll talk about yesterday! Yesterday we got up with the roosters so we could head into the city to have our pictures taken by my friend Heather. She's awesome, and kindly gave up her Saturday morning to spend 1.5 hours to drive from her area of the city to St. Boniface. Yes, Winnipeg is that big. We chased the kids around for just over an hour, snapping pictures of them when we managed to get them together, and grabbing a few individual pictures when we'd managed to separate a child from the herd. It was fun. The kids loved running around the St. Boniface ruins and then stompling through the adjoining graveyard.   From there we went to Montan...

Things I have not yet done on this 13th of Blogtober: breathed slept showered blogged eaten had pictures taken had lunch at some entirely unhealthy food venue in the Peggers coined any new cool words watched any nasty movies scared any child tickled anyone until pee came out (nothing spells fun like a laughing child yelling "i'm peeing"!) tucked the monsters angels into bed I'm sitting here yesterday listening to the obvious sounds of thumping and destruction in the boys room. But since this happened yesterday and not now (oh no, not now) I won't go into it. Probably because I haven't actually checked it out yet. You'd think I'd have noticed it last night when I put the kids to bed. You'd think. This was not nearly as clever as I thought it would be. Whatevs. And really, who makes a list with 11 things on it? That's just weird. If I was one of those obsessive compulsive number people I'd go back and change that.

Is it really only the 12th? I have a bazillion more days of this? I mean . . . yay Blogtober. Today I grocery shopped, diaper gymed, made lunch, prepared supper, eventually remembered I had groceries in the van to bring in, and chatted with some friends on the phone. Tonight the kids have Awana and I'm probably going to sit around and wait until I'm annoyed with the dishes before finally doing them. Then maybe I'll go to bed early. Maybe not, but maybe. I always say I will, but then we get watching TV and it's just so hard to get up once I'm sitting. Even if I know that getting up means laying down (another favorite pastime). Tomorrow we're going to run into the city to have family pictures taken, buy whatever snow suits we need (maybe I should get out the old ones and try them on the kids) and be back in time for dinner and a proper bedtime. I really love when the kids go to bed. I mean, I miss them so much when they're sleeping . . . Tomorrow nig...

Today's haul isn't quite as impressive as yesterday's, but here it is: The box is full of pasta sauce jars that I've been saving for years. I'm not sure why really, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, because who knows when you'll need a jar for something? Right. Gone. The mattress is a crib mattress that's in pretty good shape that I'm giving to a friend. I've had a productive morning, despite the lack of a giant pile of stuff to send out the front door. I washed and dried four loads of laundry (haven't folded yet), I took the rest of the meat off the turkey that we had for Thanksgiving dinner (to be made into a casserole tomorrow), I prepared a meatloaf and peeled potatoes for supper tonight and I baked the rest of a batch of cookies that Steven started the other day. The batter was still sitting in a bowl in the fridge and I've noticed that the amount of batter in the bowl seemed to be decreasing despite making any cookies. ...

My goal this week was to get five bags (or the equivalent of five bags!) of junk out of my house. I think I did pretty well today! This is the stuff that is leaving our house right shortly: A bag of garbage, a box of recycling, a box for MCC, a Halloween costume for a friend (if she wants it!), some leftover Epicure supplies to give to my consultant friend, and some photo albums that aren't mine. Also out of the same computer room: an old Nintendo that doesn't work anymore, an old computer that will cost more to fix than it's worth and an old laptop. My thanks to the nice guy at the recycling depot for taking this stuff off my hands even though I brought it over after regular drop-off hours!      The jury is out on this chair. I pulled it out of the computer room too, being that we don't really ever use it, but Steven thinks we shouldn't get rid of it. He's practically a hoarder. Tomorrow I'm going to tackle the gam...

Remember yesterday how I said I wanted to take the equivalent of five garbage bags of stuff out of my house this week? Remember how I start projects and then never ever finish them, and most of the time don't really get started to begin with? Well ha! Today I decided to get cutthroat with the computer room. The pile of crap is growing exponentially. I am excited to downsize the amount of useless stuff in this house. Pictures to follow. Wait. Maybe I'll give you some before pictures . . . I'm a little embarrassed even posting these pictures because I normally avoid letting people into this room at all, but being that I am pretty darn close to posting a few after pictures I think I'll be redeemed.

I'm cleaning dining room windows today. See that giant pile of windows on the table? Those are my inner windows in the dining room. See the windows still in the wall? Those are the outer windows. Don't even ask. My "dining room" was salvaged from a tornado-destroyed trailer park. I've actually cleaned that stack of windows on the table (there are 14 in all, and most of them had dried food smeared all over) and now I need to work on the windows still in the wall. See the rivers of condensation running down them? Me too. I'd probably be done already if I would stop petering out to check email, phone messages and blogs, but I am really not looking forward to cleaning windows that aren't going to look nice anyway. That's my pout about that. Jordan came home early from school today. She's not feeling well and says her stomach hurts. She actually does look pale and is now camped out on the couch. I am not looking forward to the first round of the ...