Duh

I had a blood donation appointment over the lunch hour yesterday, and I went to it, and filled out the questionnaire with the mildly intrusive personal questions, but I left the one at the top blank. The one at the top was something along the lines of "Are you feeling well and healthy today?" Yes or No? Seems like an easy question, right?

But I was not sure. Because I am not feeling 100% well and healthy. I woke up the day before yesterday with a bit of a sore throat, and I've had a little groggy haze on me since then. On the other hand, I was feeling better yesterday than I was the day before, and at no point did I feel like I was truly sick, or consider staying home from work, or anything like that.

And, maybe I'm flattering myself here, but these people really, really want my blood. They call me ALL the time. So in some part of my head, as I was studiously filling out little circles about tattoos and anticoagulants and partners, and dreaming up a little teeny version of those bingo parlor markers to speed up form completion, I was thinking that there might be a pretty low bar for feeling well and healthy.

Which is, of course, ridiculous. As soon as I started to explain that I wasn't sure about the VERY FIRST QUESTION on the form, I realized that I should have stopped right at the first little circle and approached the counter. Better yet, I should have called them and asked, before I drove down there. Geez. To the credit of the lovely people at the blood center, they did not openly mock me. They even went so far as to say it was up to me whether I thought I was too sick to donate.

So, no blood donation for me yesterday. No grape juice box, no Keebler cookies. And to the person who does not get a low-grade cold with their blood transfusion, you're welcome. I will bring my healthy self back next week and hook you up.

Slow Down!

The other day I was complaining to a coworker that I was never able to make this particular monthly work meeting because it starts at eight o'clock and I am on the hook to deliver a Kindergartener to her classroom between 8:25 and 8:40 every day. I can't remember if I was expressing frustration about missing the meeting (doesn't sound like me), or frustration about the inflexibility of Kindergarten start times, but whatever I complained about, my coworker came back with some wise, soothing words about how the important thing was to focus on enjoying dropping my kid off at school.

At the time, it felt like an Aha! moment, a gift from this wiser parent to me. Of course it should be a delight to drop my child off at school. Why focus on it as one more thing that I have to do that gets in the way of the other seventy-five things I have to do? And I thought about it that way for a few days. In fact, I put my whole morning focus off the constant hectoring to move and get socks on and brush hair and onto just hanging around and having pleasant conversation (which Naomi and I do, after Jim leaves with Muriel, quite often, and with sometimes funny results). The outcome, that week, was that we were very nearly late to school four out of five days.

The takeaway, I guess, is that simply being more mellow and less frantic doesn't make things run more smoothly, it just makes them less frantic. Which I KNOW is better for the kids. I know it stresses them out when I herd them from breakfast to clothes to socks to grooming to lunch bags, and so forth. They talk about it all the time. And just because I feel better being eight minutes early to school instead of 30 seconds early, it doesn't make it actually better. But how do I get those seven and a half minutes back while still leaving behind the frantic? And, to go back to the sage advice from my coworker, how do I make something like the daily drop-off into a meaningful thing that we do together instead of a to-do item we tick off every day?

Another Saturday Night

Jim is out fetching me a frozen treat, so this will be a quick one. Which reminds me that I have a little tense agreement issue on the last post that I would like to remember to fix. Will I? We'll see.

No doubt I have already written about how having children illuminates the extent to which personality traits might actually be written right into your genetic material. Today it occurred to me that my stubborn belief that it is only my inability to adequately explain my position that prevents people from going along with it, and my tendency to therefore continue to explain and counter-explain in an effort to get it right, might actually be genetic. Because I see Naomi do it every single day, when I say no to her, and she argues tirelessly. Because she is so absolutely committed to the idea that if I only just understood her objection, I would have to change my mind. Sigh.

Tonight at bedtime the girls told me what sports they were going to excel in later in life. Basketball, field hockey, Foosball, Carrom, and Flaptacular. The last one is a Disney-branded Tinkerbell version of a card game I think we used to call "Spit," a deck for which we received in a birthday party goodie bag today. Flaptacular! I find Disney branding evil as a rule, but I have to give them some credit for that awesomely ridiculous name.

Here's a picture of us sledding in Arizona last month. More soon!

First Day of Spring

Ahh, nice weekend! Sunbreaks! Supermoon! Leisure! We had a little break from the pouring, inexorable rain, and the kids actually got to play outside.


Plus, they had one of those days when their play is so very together, so harmonious and delighted, that it strikes an almost unbearably pleasant chord in me I wouldn't even have been able to hear before the two of them came along.

So, yeah, welcome, spring! Please to muscle through the rainclouds again sometime soon. Next weekend would be good.

Anecdotally Adults

Where I work there are web pages that we make, with, you know, information on them, and people who are in search of this information have the option to provide feedback on the information. Occasionally they do, and when they do, the web page sends an email to someone with the feedback. Because I was one of the saps who learned how to make these web pages back when we first started doing it, often these emails get sent to me. Every single one is a complaint. It is my job to log some response to the complaint in the system that tracks this feedback, although the submitter never sees my response. I usually say, "We're working on this." or "I fixed the broken link." Helpful!

The longer my setups get, the more I lose faith in the payoff. Oh well. So a few weeks ago I got... a positive feedback form. "The material is clear and easy to understand." Sweet Mother Mary, positive feedback! The headline of the email even included the unusual phrase "(no action required)". I forwarded it to my team lead, with the incredulous note, "Not sure this has ever happened before." Then I forgot about it. Until the team lead, a few weeks later, forwarded it to ALL the writers in our group. With my super-encouraging note included. Excellent. Good work, everyone!

So that's the work side. At home, also known as "Where I Do Laundry," I was...wait for it...getting ready to start a load of laundry. I asked Mr. Khooler if he wanted me to wash the jeans and the gray pajamas that were on top of the hamper, which is kind of the demilitarized zone between obviously clean and obviously dirty. He says, The what?

Me: The gray pajamas.
Him: The gray pajamas?
Me: The gray pajamas.
Him: Wait, the gray pajamas?
Me: ????
Him: The gray pajamas?
Me: Are you trying to get me to gouge out my own eyes?

So I bring out the pajamas, which were a Christmas present from me, actually, and are flannel, dark gray (I might have invented this since, but I would swear that the price tag actually had the word "Charcoal" on it) with a white grid pattern. I say, THE GRAY PAJAMAS.

He says, Those are green.

So, the good news is that he is not trying to gaslight me. The bad news is that one of us might be colorblind. Hmm.

The kids are alright. More on them another time.

Un-Habituated

I am so out of the habit of posting that it doesn't even occur to me, even when there is plenty going on. Apologies, ye last two loyal checkers of this blog.

The other evening, just after I picked up Muriel, we saw one of those wacky little single occupant cars that look like something from the Jetsons. I don't know what they are called so I can't even link to information about them. When Muriel saw it, she said, "But how can they pick up their dears?" A valid question!

Last weekend we capped off a trip to see my parents with a stay at a giant house in north eastern Arizona with my whole family. This trip was to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. 50 years! I remember around 37 of them. It was a good time- we went sledding one day and skiing another. There was copious snack food and uncomfortable rental home beds. Overall a very nice chance to spend time with the family.

This weekend we held Naomi's birthday party. 14 kids total, milling around our not quite large enough house, dressed in costumes and just generally, well, screaming. There seemed to be a lot of screaming, and also a lot of chanting. It was a long two hours.

Oops, now the computer battery is looking wan and red. Time to call it a night. I will not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Which means, hopefully, more boring pointless posts on the way!