Yellow Wallpaper

After nearly three days of Halloween fun I must say that I am ready to move on to a new month and a new holiday. It's a good thing we have a few weeks to decide what to cook for Thanksgiving. Turkey or no turkey? Or maybe we'll just skip the big dinner this year. Anyways, I am actually impressed with how well this year's Halloween went. The kids' costumes were simple and yet impressive. S-Boogie wanted to be a black cat, so she wore a black turtleneck and black tights (with black bike shorts over them to hide the panties). We got her some cat ears and a tail, and all we needed was a bit of face paint for whiskers. It was a hit and she loved her costume. Little Dude was a bat, in black sweat pants and black shirt. His wings are actually a large black napkin that Mr. Fob found at the store the other day. He cut a hole in it for Little Dude's head, cut the bottom edge in a bat-like scallop, and then we pinned the corners to the ends of Little Dude's sleeves. He lo

S hh ...don't tell anyone, but I'm writing a blog post instead of writing my five-page paper that's due next week. This last month or so has seen a serious break in the blogging rhythm for me, and it's frustrating because I really have had a lot of good thoughts. Unfortunately they fly away from me and are lost in the ether due to the general craziness of life. School really is taking up a lot of my time. If I put as much effort into doing homework as I do into avoiding it I'd probably get more done, but I also don't have a lot of uninterrupted time to do it in. S- Boogie's new school schedule also means that I have no more time without children during the day. Little Dude is with me all morning while Mr. Fob works, and then when he goes down for a nap S-Boogie is home from school and wanting attention. And now Little Dude has decided he no longer needs naps, so many afternoons are quite crazy. Thankfully, this morning I actually had three hours of uninter

I've been meaning to write a post about how difficult the transition to graduate school has been and about how I mostly feel swamped, but I don't have time. S-Boogie lost her first tooth the other day. It was earlier than I had expected, but thankfully it was quick and painless. I put pictures on the kids' blog. S-Boogie is also adjusting well to her new morning kindergarten class at the Spanish Immersion school. It's been a little hard getting her out the door in the morning, but we're all doing OK. Despite the fact that October is nearly over, Mr. Fob's paycheck is still in limbo (yes it's been a few weeks). We have determined that we did nothing wrong, but no one has yet been able to figure out why the bank cannot cash the check. Thankfully we actually put most of our expenses on our credit card and pay it off every month, but unfortunately most of our large, credit-ruining expenses like our rent and car payment need to come out of the bank account. We ar

Wednesday morning Mr. Fob got up, went in our dining room, turned on the light, and watched a mouse scurry into the kitchen and hide under the refrigerator. Not only was this particularly gross, but Wednesday afternoon Mr. Fob's sister was coming in to visit us for a few day. She is deathly afraid of mice. I was at the gym when the mouse incident occurred, so when I got home Mr. Fob informed me in code that an "animal" had been seen in our kitchen. We were trying to avoid having the kids talk about it all weekend while our guests were here, but they figured it out anyway. As soon as Auntie M showed up, S-Boogie announced "I have a secret! There's an animal in our house under our fridge. I think it's a mouse!" Sigh. The managers gave us some glue traps and we set them up in a few places. We decided to put some animal crackers and peanut butter in them in hopes of luring the creature out. After a few days nothing happened and I assumed the mouse had gone

(I hope you thought of Dr. Nick when you read that title.) I just realized that it's been a week since I posted, and even more time since I said anything substantive. It's just been a yucky week here; I got sick on Tuesday and things went downhill from there. I've been hoping for an upswing so I could post about how lovely everything managed to turn out, but I'm still sick and Mr. Fob's paycheck is still lost in limbo. And I'm still drowning in homework, plus the weather has turned cold and extremely windy. At least tomorrow is Saturday and we can have some fun time together as a family (in theory). At some point things have to get better, right? PS--I did attend a nice meeting this afternoon where I got free cake, a free pen, and a nice pat on the back for being one of 5 students (out of 60 candidates) chosen for my special fellowship. I do have to help plan a symposium, but at least once a month I get free cake!

Books Children of the Promise by Dean Hughes I've read this series (5 books) a few times now, but it's one I like to pull out every now and then for some "comfort reading". Even though I consider it "light" reading, it really isn't all that "light" in content or quality. I love historical fiction and I really like these books because they deal with the past just as easily as they deal with our normal human emotions and impulses. The characters and their conflicts manage to seem relevant to today even though they are placed in the past. Hearts of the Children by Dean Hughes The follow-up to the first series, this one follows some of the second generation through the issues of the 1960s. In this series I really admire Hughes' ability to tackle tough issues like Vietnam and the civil rights movement and still get published by Deseret Book. These books are surprisingly intense and complicated. My only complaint with this series is that sometim