The really nice days

Yesterday was one of those really nice days with my family.

We got up and got ready for the day, then headed to the Mall of America so the kids and J could go on the Ghostly Gangplank. Ghostly Gangplank is a ropes course attraction — it’s four stories of wires, ropes, and wobbly bridges. One wears a safety harness attached to beams overhead, so one can’t fall, really. But it’s still really tall and fairly difficult.

Both kids made it all the way to the top. I was extremely proud of them.

We went to lunch at the mall, picked up a present for a kid whose party M is going to today, and came home for school.

School was interesting. We reached the section in the world history book I read from titled “Age of Discovery.” We talked about this phrase. See, the thing is, many MANY people already knew about all the continents. It’s not like Columbus discovered them. But, in a very important sense, Europe kind of won world history. (So far.) So to ignore the age of discovery is problematic as well. I try to take a balanced approach. After the Age of Discovery we talked about pulleys and arches. Then looked at some famous painting from the Reformation. And then we watched the second episode of America: The Story of Us.

Now, I like this series. It is stirring, and patriotic, and I am a patriot and I am stirred by the history of my country. I want the kids to be excited by the great things the nation has accomplished, and I want them to be excited about the ideas that form the basis for the country and our government. But I do keep pausing the video to mention things like “and that land they were being evicted off of, it wasn’t theirs, and they were there illegally.” Or, “that network of American spies, they were an insurgency against the British, just like the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting the Americans.” You know. Because what it is doesn’t change just because you’re on the other side.

After school J took the kids out of the house for an hour. And I determined that, yes, I really do write 1000 words an hour when no-one is talking to me. I’m not doing NaNoWriMo, you understand, though. I’m just using this month when everyone I know seems to be writing to FOCUS on existing projects I have.

When the family got back J and I did some yard winterizing. Emptied the rain barrel, wound up and stored the hose, and cleaned the gutters. I have a nice sense of accomplishment about this. J and I tend to do such disgusting tasks well together.

Then is was time for dinner, and then it was time to cuddle with the kids on the couch and read to them, and after their bedtime it was time to watch Top Gear with N and J.

A really nice day, overall. I like these days.

Housework, I can has some

Some days, I get stuff done.

Things I have done in the last two days:

Helped the kids clean — really clean — the basement play room.  Which they have started calling the rec room, for reasons passing understanding.  But we got it clean enough to vacuum, which happens about twice a year.

Shelved all of my books.  Y’all, you have no idea what this means.  I have . . .   I have a shelving problem.  My problem is, I live in a house with four other; readers, and we all have a crapton of books.  I actually have one of the largest stretches of household shelving real estate, probably twice what anyone else has.  I simply cannot, in any kind of conscience, get more shelf space.  I have to …  re-allocate.  So I re-allocated some shelves in the the bedroom into dvd-wallet shelves, and I moved three linear feet of books on movies and television onto the dvd shelf, the one awkwardly behind a large chair, a music stand, and three bins of Legos in the living room, which meant I could finally get all my other non-fiction (including the new stuff) onto the shelf behind the front door, which meant I could sort out the fiction in my bedroom and get it all onto the shelves, AND I alphabetized the paperbacks, AND I got the trade paperbacks all shelved in order;.  Please don’t ask me what I’;m going to do when I run out of room for trade paperbacks.

Swept and mopped the kitchen

Scrubbed the kids’; chairs and table in the sink

Scrubbed the microwave

Untold loads of dishes

Vacuumed

Cleaned off the dining room table, mostly.  Sort of.  Better than it was!

I also went to one circus class, went trap shooting, worked out at the Y, taught two hours of school, rushed a dog to the emergency vet at nine o’clock last night, hosted company this evening, and got comics.

There are days when all I manage is to keep myself and my kids fed, bathed, and with clean dishes.  Then, there are days like this, when the world teems with energy and ALL THINGS are possible.

Tomorrow, I pack for Wiscon.  \o/

Hello, Monday!

1. Over at Fantastic Fangirls, Caroline has a great post about Matt Fraction’s writing on Iron Man. I can only second her praise for this book.

2. Thanksgiving was lovely — not the actual driving to Chicago and back parts, though those were not terrible, but the seeing family parts. My nieces keep growing!

3. Thanks to Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s comic, Phonogram, I’ve been listening to The Long Blondes. The singer sounds vaguely reminiscent of Siouxsie Sioux, and the lyrics are, I think, all about people making poor relationship choices. Songs about moments of decision — I’m a sucker for that sort of thing.

4. I’m going to Emerald City ComicCon in 2010. I have put in for the time off of work, I am staying with friends, and I have (gulp) sent in the money for a table in Artist’s Alley. I’ll be sharing with one of the artists I work with. Ideally that project will be done by ECCC. If not done, it will at least be pitchable. I also hope to have a, a book of scripts? Something like that, if not a physical book, to show to prospective artists. And, of course, I will have wares to sell. Which means I will either have to check luggage (ugh) or ship a box to my friends ($$$). We’ll see.

5. But, this raises the point — If you live in Seattle, and/or will be at Emerald City ComicCon, and I know you, get in touch and we can discuss some sort of dinner/get-together type event.

6. I’ve watched two and a half episodes of “V”, and I think I’m dumping it. Nothing about the characters is grabbing me yet. And, honestly, with a re-imagining like this, that’s what I need. Good characters.

7. I successfully made a graphic novel through Lulu – or, I think I did. I’ve ordered a copy for myself to proof it. Availability information as soon as I know the thing looks okay.

8. We think we’ve blocked all the mouse holes into the house. Wish us luck.

File cabinet of doom.

One of the things I love about my partner, J., is how we move furniture together.

This is not cutesy or trivial. We move furniture together really well. By which I mean we spend a lot of time laughing at the absurdity and difficulty of the tasks we are attempting to perform. Witness today’s effort: the file cabinet.

N.’s wardrobe and dresser are in the office now, you understand. So the file cabinet had to go . . . somewhere. J and I had determined that if it was going anywhere, it was going to the basement. So step one was to stand in the basement and stare despairingly at the overwhelming stacks of furniture and stuff. Hmm. Perhaps if we moved the bin of roaches over next to the worm bins, the file cabinet could go in front of the utility sink? Next to the bin of blankets? No, no, that won’t work — J needs to be able to reach the shelf behind the utility sink. Well, how about we move the exercise bike over by the tool shelves and the treadmill over where the dirty laundry pile is? No, the floor under the exercise bike is horribly uneven. The cabinet will tip over. How about we move garden hose bin over by the furnace, move the bins of games to the place where the garden hose bin was, move the shelf of games out to the aisle, and slide the file cabinet into the space the shelf was?

…

Perfect!!

This merely meant we had to get the file cabinet out of the office and down the stairs. I began removing all the files out of the cabinet. This caused a brief flurry of angst in J. as she noticed my carefully labelled files of loan and banking records for the past three years, plus all my labelled tax returns, plus my insurance records. I tried to comfort her by mentioning that I’m not certain one needs to keep all these things anymore.

I wanted to move the cabinet without taping the drawers in place. J. insisted on some tape. We put a strip of tape across each drawer, and I casually asserted that I was sure that was good enough. The drawers surely wouldn’t fall open. Two minutes later my yelping could be heard upstairs, “I was wrong! I was wrong! Where’s the tape? Tape!” J. soon thereafter won genius points for suggesting we slide the whole thing on a towel and shove it across the house to the stairs that way. Genius. Pure genius.

After much muffled profanity the cabinet was relocated to its slot in the basement. J. hauled files and folders down for me to refile, and the deed was done. I was just pondering, though, how tedious and irritating and difficult jobs like that can be, with the wrong person. Pondering how pleased I am to have the right person with whom to own a house.