Miscellany

1.  I just attempted to summarize the major characters and plot points of seasons 1-3 of Downton Abbey for my coworkers in preparation for a trivia night at a local bar.  Not an easy feat, but then somebody said, “This sort of sounds like Game of Thrones, but early 20th-century England.”  Yes.

 

2.  I never realize how much my kids are growing until I pull out seasonal wear and it doesn’t fit.  Charles started swim lessons last week and his trunks from this summer don’t fit at all.  Where am I going to find a new swimsuit in January? 

 

We do swim lessons for Charles every January through May.  We could do them year-round, but Charles seems to plateau after a few months and then benefit from the time off.  He starts January lessons with renewed enthusiasm and attention, and we see improvement right away.  So if your kids don’t seem to be getting anywhere with a lesson of some sort, consider taking some time off every year.  I don’t know if this would work so well with piano lessons, but maybe.

 

3.  I have been cooking the past few days.  Well, sort of.  I have been utilizing my crock-pot the past few days, which is almost like cooking, but I can do the prep in the morning when I don’t feel like barfing.  My go-to recipes are almost all from A Year of Slow Cooking.  Here is the cream cheese chicken, here the salsa chicken black bean soup, here the taco soup.

 

4.  I just finished the book What Alice Forgot and I liked it.  I didn’t think I would.  In fact, about ten pages into it, I though, oh shit, what am I getting myself into?  Was it going to be all introspective drama and musings on marital relationships and how they evolve over ten years?  Was it going to be gut-wrenchingly sad?  Was there going to be little plot and far too much character development?  I was pleasantly surprised and glad that I kept reading.  There was plot, there was action, and the story was told in such a way that I wanted to know what happened next as well as what happened “back then.”  There were enough twists to keep it interesting, is what I’m saying, and if you think you’d like a story about a woman who bumps her head (hard) and wakes up to find that she’s lost the last ten years of memories, including the birth of three children, the dissolution of her marriage, and significant relationship changes with her sister and mother, as well as a bunch of really batty and weird minor characters to liven things up, well, this book is for you.

 

5.  At the risk of repeating myself: I AM SO SICK.  And I’m sick of being sick.  And all I have to do to recognize that this is EXACTLY how I felt last time is read this really depressing post from when I was pregnant with Jamie.  Oh, look!  It was written EXACTLY three years ago today.  If ever I needed evidence that life doesn’t really change, there it is, I guess.

 

But it does change, because here is a post from when I was 14 weeks pregnant with Jamie (I am 14 weeks pregnant right now), wearing the same shirt I am wearing today (though I can tell you that the jeans in that old photo were NOT maternity and today’s most definitely are), and I am so much bigger now:

 

 

 

6.  Charles visited the neighbors yesterday after work/preschool, so I Jamie and I baked cookies.  I let him do all the mixing so I wouldn’t gag over the open bowl.  He greatly enjoyed licking the spatula when we were done, and I only slightly resented him for being able to savor uncooked cookie dough while I cannot.

 

 

And then, he washed the dishes!  If you do not do this activity with your toddlers, I highly recommend it.  Jamie was occupied for almost 45 minutes, happily splashing in the suds, and the dishes mostly got clean (I had to do a bit more scrubbing and rinsing).

 

 

Tell me he’s not the most adorable child on the planet.  You can’t.  Because he is.