Life is what happens while you're making other plans, for sure

7.30 Get Up
7.45 Eat cereal standing at kitchen counter
8.00 Do computer work at home
9.30 Surf web for Christmas ideas for child
10.30 Play with child
11.00 Get child ready for school
11.15 Walk child to school
11.3o Go to place of volunteer computer work
2.30 Realize quick hour or two of network silliness isn't so quick
4.00 Drive home
4.15 Snarf roasted red pepper dip and pretzels, realizing there was no lunch
4.30 Drop child off at karate class
4.45 Stop by mother's house with gifts bought for her to give husband.
5.15 Back to karate
6.00 Bring child home
6.15 Make dinner for child, snarf food again
6.30 Check email to find out 8:00 nature group meeting is cancelled.
7.00 Read new work email requiring work on unexpected project that is due Monday. Rant about boss.

8.00 Post this. Surf for more Christmas gift ideas. Debate whether to start on work project or open wine. One guess as to the winner....

So, the child learned to read

Last week she could barely recognize the work 'in' twice in one sentence, and last night she read all of Hop on Pop by herself with a few hints on a handful of words. Pretty wild. Like the bike-riding thing, it seemed like it'd never happen, then just kicked in one day. Potty training was agonizingly like that, too. Have to get some more beginner Dr. Suess books for Christmas I think. She wants to work up to The Cat in the Hat ASAP...

The unexpected bunny tragedy totally threw off my NaBloPoMo attempt, but I've still been posting more than I used to. Nothing new on the Houseblog since we haven't done anything more exciting than strip bathroom wallpaper and paint garage trim. Perhaps we'll work up to some good holiday housepix...

So many books, so little time...

We actually all spent some time in a bookstore this evening. Two, in fact, a nice
independent mystery-themed one and a larger brand-name one. I got Ray Bradbury's sequel to Dandelion Wine at the former; I didn't even know it existed, I am so out of touch. And we found some great Chicago-themed books with lots of old p;hotos for family Christmas gifts.

I have always loved bookshops. I worked in one for two years in college and even then, as a teenager, knew the stock better than people bother to now, with all the computers to help them.

There is one in Frankfort, Kentucky, that has an upstairs filled with thousands of old books, many falling to pieces, and has rocking chairs over looking the front windows, where i could easily spend days...Elijah Craig 18 year old bourbon smells just like that place and I like that too.

I have always been filled by an endless sense of wonder at all the intriguing things that can be put on paper between covers and also filled with a little bit of longing and pre-pregret, over all the books I don't have time to read on a daily basis...I think it is part of the midlife crisis thing, too, that the longer I live, the more I know I won't have time to do before I die and that makes me kind of sad, but also inspired at times....at least hang-gliding is still on the list....


Sure, I can try to write eloquent reader-based prose but these days, I am lucky I write at all. The NaBloPoMo went out the window when our younger rabbit died this week after a hellish vet experience. We are looking into that; don't want to talk about it now.

The end is near I fear...

She seemed a bit better this morning, eating some hay and being more active. Tonight, though, they noticed the start of potentially serious adhesions near the incision site. It might be due to the type of sutures the first vet used. Or maybe not, as some rabbits just make such scar tissue far more than others. They might be able to operate again and remove it and replace the sutures. She might survive or might not and it might help or might make things worse. And we have to decide when we don't know which might help her live, or make her die. Even if it didn't cost many many many hundreds of dollars to attempt, I am not sure we could put her through that, when her digestive system is still not back to normal and the added recovery time alone might do her in. The adhesions could get so bad that they screw up her internal organs and kill her in a few days. Or they might be limited and she might still recover. Or not.

Why do things have to be soooo hard and hurt so much?

Freaking over bunny health

Ok, so we got the rabbit spayed Wednesday, so she'd be less nuts, stop mounting our (neutered and confused) male rabbit, not get cancer and so on. Fine. I found a nearby vet with rabbit experience and went through with it and then she would not eat or poop. So not a good thing for bunnies as their delicate digestive systems can shut down and do them in in short order. Took her back in for a fluids/painkiller/gut motility injection yesterday. No help. She's not at all a happy bunny.

Today called the way expensive exotics-specific vet in the area and now she is hospitalized there and they aren't sure how she'll do. Plus it has so far cost about 20 times what we paid for her and may be much more. I bounce between telling myself we have to do everything we can and not upset the child, versus it's a Rabbit. People EAT rabbits. We can't spend more on her than the upcoming property taxes...Why can't anything just go smoothly?

More typical rants

I swear, I had no idea I could be this cynical and thoroughly disgusted with so much in the world by the time I was 40. I thought only really old folks had the 'In MY day...' thing going, about how everything is just useless overpriced crap and no one cares about anything except money. I am ashamed to have to try to explain to my child why so many of the toys people give her break soon after she gets them and can't be easily fixed. I'm sure there will be one of the many held-back Made in China rants unleashed soon...

My daily post is elsewhere

On my HouseBlog that at least a few people read since I have gotten comments. This one, who knows...

At it again for Bananame.com

There is this creative and slightly silly site out there, BananaName.com

For a small fee (currently $24.95), you give them the name of a company, person, etc., and they will write it on a banana and post the picture of it, plus associated text, on their website.

So far it seems to be used by websites wanting promotion, but I can see my child liking something like that as a birthday surprise. Once she learns to read that is. :)

Check it out...

Will blog for money...

Ok, I have a few random comments on child-rearing and then suddenly I am hawking some websites you never heard of, right? Assuming anyone is actually reading this....Well, I am a victim of Mechanical Turk, a nifty relatively new feature run by the folks at Amazon whereby you do on-line tasks that can't be easily done by computers, for small amounts of Amazon credit.
Yes, we humans are still better at some things, like identifying features in aerial photos. They had a huge effort recently whereby people scanned air photos in the search for Steve Fossett's plane for example.

Some tasks pay only a few cents but sometimes they'll pay $1 or more. Why do people bother with such menial things? I don't know, why do I? The amusement or interest, and quick easy Amazon credit perhaps? Some other typical tasks are transcribing podcasts, locating obscure information on the web, writing reviews of websites and so on.

Otherwise, back to our regularly scheduled ranting.

NoBloPoMo Come Lately...

Ok, so this is the second year I have been aware of National Blog Posting Month
. I am deciding to try it this year, but I know I missed the first couple days and I won't be eligible for any prizes, etc, but I think it will be a good motivation to try to write and offload the random floatsom in my brain. My friend at pywacket.org inspired me.

It's so hard to find time to write in between the child things and work and the spouse and house and what not....
The inlaws are downstairs looking at 1.5 years worth of pictures that the spouse-dude just got developed (hasn't entered the digital age. I have but never back 'em up enough and fear the hard drive will crash again....Gotta go, child calls......