Bookworms Sometimes Take to the Air

I'm tempted to save my books with grim titles to read on the plane. Sometimes I'm chipper and chatty, depending on how long my flights are, how many legs left to go, etc, and sometimes I just want to be left alone in my little boredom/misery coma. It is those latter times when a fellow traveller is most likely to try and talk to me.

So, if I have my big volume of Evil Beyond Belief: An Archive of Heinous Crimes in History* out and am peering thoughtfully at the crime scene photos, perhaps it would discourage the idly gabby. Then again, it might encourage the truly freaky, so maybe I'll just stick my director's cut of JTHM. Oh... Wait. Ok. World of Darkness sourcebooks are also usually good for starting or stopping conversations.

And then I remember that my best Christmas present of all was a Kindle and that hauling my books, no matter how inexpensive, is no longer necesary. I wonder if Watchmen is available on Kindle yet? Must investigate.



*Priced at $4.99 and throw in another 30% off and the only reason I can bear all the book stores closing is that I can spend like $40 and impulse-buy more books than I can carry. I'm serious. I had to make a trip to the car to drop them off before I went on.

timing is everything

I was sure it had to be 10 or 11 at night. It was only 6:30. I only got like three hours of sleep on the place from Seattle to Washington, what with the nosebleeds and roaring engines and packed in like sardines in coach.

I'm all groggy, but I'm home! I snuck in after the first blizzard and before the second one hit. We have decorated the tree, activated the singing Christmas duck (it sings Duck the Halls) and made sandwiches. There is talk of digging out the hot tub to soak in it while the snow falls. Perhaps not tonight.

Some Cute to Get Us Through Monday

Baby Otter Sidney Playing @ Yahoo! Video

and

Surprised Kitty @ Yahoo! Video

IF ONLY...

If ONLY I had someone to buy this for,,,



It has a lightsaber zipper pull and the insides look like guts! I am both impressed and appalled and a little jealous that this kind of mad attention to detail and fan-wackiness isn't at work in a fandom of my own. Think how thrilled I would be if I was actually really into Star Wars! I would so buy a sleeping with a Watchmen or Beetlejuice or something like that theme.

Found at ThinkGeek.com

Books. Good.

I am done! Done, done, DONE!

All that's left is evaluation. It is out of my hands! To celebrate I added come gadgets, including my 2009 reading list. These are just the books I finished. I began many more of them, but they don't get to the list until they are finished. There was also a debate over whether a graphic novel counts as a book. I say they do, especially since I tend to read them over and over and over. So far I haven't included the fanfiction I read, even the epic ones. Maybe that should have its own list.

I'm not malicious, just clumsy!

I knocked a child down Friday. Not on purpose!

He had left the toy cars to go play at another center, but when a classmate tried to play with the cars, he just wigged out and flew into a screaming, hitting rage. I pulled him off and told him How We Do Not Behave. It didn't go over well.

The first thing he did was storm off to sulk and cry in the floor across the room, which is fine. But then he built up to another rage and took off his shoe and charged back to club the other kid like a baby seal with it

I intervened, or tried to.

It was my intention to simply get in the way, all secret service style, but I misjudged the distance or the oncoming speed of a selfishness-powered three year old and ended up bowling the poor kid right over. He looked up at me like I was an ogre and I just knew there was no way I could explain that I hadn't meant to knock him flat mid-berserker charge. Then he started to cry, so I tried to help him up.

He was having none of it and he crammed his shoe into his mouth and started screaming at me around it. I recognized this as Too Crazy To Reason With and went straight into authority mode. I said something about if that shoe wasn't out of his mouth and back on his foot and he didn't stop acting that way Right Now, he would be sitting with me for the rest of play time and wouldn't get to play with anything else.

He made an angry face at me and whined and sniveled awhile longer, but he did it. Then I asked if he was ok and said sorry for knocking him over. He made me check his head for owies and I didn't find any so he went back to play, all happy again. Hunh,

A Squeedly-spooch, it ain't...

I witnessed a collision today. Two three year old boys, running utterly amuck towards each other, with all the world in which to manuever in, yet they smack straight into each other.

One cried exactly as long as it took me to say "Oh, poor baby! Are you ok??" Then he was fine. The other clutched his stomach and said weakly, "That hurt my tapeworm!"

I wasn't sure I had heard right. But that's what he said. So I want to know what big brother/uncle/cousin told that child he had a tapeworm and charged him to take care of it?? Cuz that's just crazy. Even for here.

P is for Pink Pig PuPPet.

His name is Josh D'Pigmalion and he was saved from a weird fate to become the most sought after puppet in the D Wing.



When he was fought over hard enough to threaten his stitches, he got a time out zipped into my jacket. Even that was adorable to the children.

"Aww!" they cooed. "Just like a baby." The letter of the week is P, so why not?

Can't spell sympathetic without pathetic.

A box of wood scraps and a hot glue gun can keep 18 four year olds busy for 20 minutes and 13 three year olds busy for a full half an hour. The four year olds built little structures and I hot-glued them together. Only burned myself twice.



With the three year olds, i had to get them started, but pretty soon, they got into it. "Glue this here!" and "It needs a door here." Good thing I enjoy hot-gluing or I would've felt bossed around.



Cute though, right? Like little pixie houses. Only one kid got burned and I'm declaring it a learning experience. When I say "Don't touch that bubble of glue. It's reallllly hot." and the kid immediately jabs a finger into it, yelps, sticks it into her mouth, burns her lip, yelps again, then looks at me like its my fault? I'm not as sympathetic as I might be. Cuz it's pathetic enough without me.

Next week, we paint them.

Because Hand Turkeys Have Been Done

We made foot turkeys!



How cute is that?



And eye placement means everything. Eyes placed in the toe part of the footprint give it a more startled, 'Dear Turkey-God NOOOO' kind of expression, while ones in the heel look more uncomprehending than horrified, and the when the eyes are placed right in the arch, i makes them look like Igor turkeys which adds a whole level of its own to the festivities. Imagine a turkey pieced together from leftovers and re-animated to stalk the remaining shopping days until Christmas. A Frankenturkey!

Little Stinkers

And a bit of Ick for you. The two cats? They filled up the litterbox. In a NIGHT. I cleaned the box out and went to bed and next day, the cats were sprawled out in their usual lazy puddles.

“Ah,” they seemed to say. “Excellent. You’re awake. We have a little job for you, when you have a moment.”

My nose was way ahead of them.

“Phew!” I said. “Y’all sure are stinky today. I’ll just-WHAAAH!”

There wasn’t any loose litter in the box and two little happenings outside the box. No way just two cats could produce that much in just one night. I think they threw a party and didn’t tell me.

Five Reasons to Sleep with the Lights On

1. The Headless Horseman

Ok, I was more afraid of him when I was out alone in the woods and trying to get home before dark, but he still reigns as my chief childhood boogieman.

2. Facehuggers

Gah. Little and quick is way scarier than big and menacing. And they attach to your face and lay EGGS down your throat. I used to have nightmares and wake up to find my cat laying on me.

3. The Troll from Cat's Eye.

Again with the crawling up and getting in your face. Between this guy and the facehugger was it any wonder I slept with the covers up over my mouth for years? I was glad to have my cat on my head after watching this one.

4. Kathy Bates in Misery.

I don't care. I had dreams of waking up and seeing her in the doorway.

5. The Nazi werewolves from American Werewolf in London.

I know! It was a dream. But they scared me!

caught on film

On second thought, I should've made them vampires instead of ghosts... sucker suckers as it were. But spook pops are fine.

Take one of those big gum-centered suckers, drape a tissue over them and fasten with a rubber band, little bit of marker work and Boo! A spook pop.



For the K4 Halloween party tomorrow.

both definitions of batty...

The K4s made Rorschach bats the other day. Some looked more bat-like than others, but both definitions of batty were on display.

no bone to pick with graveyards

I once dreamed I had a black dog named Gomez who followed me around like a shadow. Today it occurred to me that if I did have a black dog who would submit to such foolishness, I would love to paint him like a skeleton. How creepy/cool would it be to walk around Halloween night with what seemed to be a dog of bones tagging after. I think it would be something like this:


(subject quote is from Samuel Beckett)

Keeping Away From Sharp Objects

Halloween fast approaches, but not fast enough when you're three and four. To pass the time, we're making tear critters. Last week, we made the spiders. Today it's ghosts. No scissors required, just paper to tear and a glue stick. No fuss, muss, or bloodshed.

It's Funny Because It's True

The icy wasteland part anyway.Since three other various journals just weren't enough, here is one more. The things I do to avoid what I should be doing. But, with all I have to do, distractions may keep me sane. Er.