What There's Time For

Figured It Out

With Shmoogie's slowly lengthening wispy hair has come a collection of barrettes and headbands and elastics, each of which seemed to offer some greater hope of staying put than the ones before.

This morning, Shmoogie picked a barrette, "I wah dis one!" and Mr. Pants grabbed a fuchsia headband, "You can wear this one, too!"

"No."

"Yes, Shmoogie, you can wear both of them! Here..." Mr. Pants tried to put the head band in her. She squealed and backed away.

"Mr. Pants," I said, "I don't think Shmoogie wants to wear that, thank you."

He continued pursuing her and I offered what I figured was an excellent solution, "Why don't you wear it yourself, Mr. Pants?"

"Because boys don't wear these," he said.

"Really?"

"Yeah, boys don't wear this color." (This from the boy who not so long ago cried endlessly because his feet were too big for his baby sister's fuchsia socks.)

"Oh," I tried to sound unsurprised, "Who told you that?"

He looked at me.

"Or did you just figure it out yourself?"

"I figured it out myself. Boys don't wear this color."

Luckily, he shows no signs of refusing to sit in the pink princess booster seat that lives in the babysitter's car. Will that last the school year???

Synopsis

Yesterday afternoon, Mr. Pants wanted to go on a bike ride with Daddy. Never mind that his sneakers were sodden from an earlier adventure with the garden hose, Mr. Pants pulled on his snow boots and helmet and bounded out the door.

How it went, as Daddy tells it, "Look at me!!! Look how fast I'm going! I'm going so fast! Look how FAST I can go!!!!! Daddy, I'm getting a little tired. I'm tired. My legs are really tired. Daddy, go slower! Daddy, go as slow as you POSSIBLY CAN. As SLOW as you POSSibly CAN. Daddy, my legs are SO TIRED..."

Daddy was skeptical that the intended destination would be reached, but it was. :)

Summer in February

"Mommy, you look beautiful! Why are you looking beautiful?"

Because it's 80 degrees in this house with all the windows open and I won't turn on the air conditioning in FEBRUARY. But I also prefer not to sweat while sitting still, so... skirt. Beautiful.

Crockpot Comfort

I've been trying really hard, on the days I'm gone all day at school, to put something in the crockpot in the morning. That way, no matter what kind of idiot I feel like in class, I feel mostly on top of things when we all burst through the door and there's something hot to eat and it smells like someone cares. It's a nice boost if it can be managed. :)

This soup is something my mom used to make, I think it's "Portuguese Boiled Dinner" and I think it's from "Women's Everyday Cooking from Around the World" and I might have even mentioned it here before...

Anyway, put a can of garbanzo beans, a pound(?) of chicken thighs (boneless, skinless), a pound(?) of sweet Italian sausages, and a chopped onion (I've taken to buying them pre-chopped) in a crockpot and cover with water. Add some salt and pepper and 2 Tbs or more of ground cumin. Cook all day. Right before serving, stir in a generous amount of frozen spinach. Taste and adjust salt/pepper/cumin. I think I've always had this with rice, but making rice seemed too hard tonight (!) and it was fine.

A Slightly Slower Day

In my backpack

I knit a swatch this weekend that I kind of love. Carrying it around like a lovey through a long day...

Properly

Putting Mr. Pants to bed last night, I mentioned today being a holiday and some places I thought we could go.

"No!" he exclaimed in horror, "It's Presidents' Day! You can't go anywhere on Presidents' Day!"

My face asked for further clarification.

He earnestly supplied, "You just have to stay home and think about the lovely presidents!"

He did later soften his stance. Apparently, "thinking about the lovely presidents" is compatible with going to the playground and going to a friend's house.

Blasphemous Fractal

"Look, Mommy! I made a human!"

Here We Go Random

The world is beautiful early in the morning.  I have a picture to prove it but Typepad doesn't want to let me post it today.  Doh!

In the past week of variously sick children and both parents with inflexible schedules, I've been thinking about how deep a bench a family ought to have.  It used to be that we had... hmm... no bench?  I mean, there was me.  But I was on the field.  On the other hand, it was ok because there was pretty much nothing short of hospitalization or death that would have taken me off the field and that would have been an extraordinary crisis and odds are Mr. Right would have been able to step in until things settled out.

Now, we actually have a bench.  There's preschool and the regular babysitter and a few ad hoc babysitters.  I'm off the field a chunk of the time and they're covering for me and that's fine.  Except because they're not Mom, plenty of things way short of hospitalization or death can take them off the field.  Planned holidays, unplanned sickness of my children (no preschool), abnormal hours (possibly no regular babysitter for odd hours, no back-up babysitter available during school hours, no preschool during early-morning random required meeting hours)... and BAM! no bench.  And if there's no one on the field and there's no bench...

I wonder if it's a bad idea for someone who never ever watches sports to try to explain her life with a sports analogy?

So, um... I'm working on making peace with the idea that I will probably get through grad school OK but only by always trying to be ahead of the game and never actually being ahead of the game for more than an instant.

Whiny?  Actually, I'm really enjoying grad school.  And even though I feel a little guilty leaving my sick baby with someone else while I go and listen to a lecture about simulating queue systems, mostly I'm pretty happy to have someone I trust to take care of my sick baby while I listen to a lecture about simulating queue systems.

Another analogy!  Did you know that if you have a server and the queue is being added to exactly as fast as the server is able to process a thing in the queue, you have an unstable system?  You'd kind of think that things would only be disasterous if the queue was being added to a bit faster than the server could work, but there's math that says equal rates is just as bad.  The server needs some non-busy time or... foobar.  See?  Analogy.

Next time I get some non-busy time, I'm going to try to remember to watch the rest of this speech Inventing on Principle by Bret Victor (Typepad's link thingy seems as broken as the pictures and I don't want to bother with the html today, so... http://vimeo.com/36579366).  Just one of the cool things I've found in my few weeks of twitter-watching.  (That particular one thanks to Daniel Jalkut -> http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/.)

The orange hearts on Tuesday were, in fact, cheese.  :)

That's it.  What I've got.  Now to go see if re-learning Perl to solve my what-I-think-is-probably-Perl-appropriate problem would be more time-efficient than banging said probably-Perl-appropriate problem into C...

Compensating

If I wasn't in class ALL DAY today, I probably would have kept both kids home (mildly sick).

But I was, so I didn't... And the expected guilt manifested itself in their lunches.

Happy Valentine's Day!