The special-ed guy

This picture is actually from yesterday night- Ari playing with her buddy Jaime! :) On game nights, she assumes that all these people are here to play with her... or do something with those enticing bits of plastic that no one will let her touch. One or the other.

Today, we mostly stayed home and cleaned up. I had planned for us to go out in the afternoon, but Ari actually napped- which, as it is really sporadic, I never plan for. She even napped for nearly three hours- I got to do some art projects and have a nice long chat with the Darren. I should, of course, have been doing schoolwork (for which I shall pay in sleep tonight) but it was very nice.
Thad came home after subbing, and just crashed out. He's in the middle of his three-shift stretch now, but at least he got a solid four hours' sleep- which is not nothing.

This is Ari in the dining room before I cleaned it... not that it looks all that different now. These days, I strive for "not a health violation" rather than "clean". There's just always going to be a certain amount of clutter. Like, today: I cleaned the bedroom. I pitched old newpapers, folded (and stowed) clean diapers, gathered dirty clothes for laundry (three loads today, baby!) and put some of my clothes away.

I did not, however, attempt to deal with the big pile of books Ari pulled off of her shelf... she can pull books off much faster than I can get them on. *sigh*

And here she is, playing next to the tupperware. She spent an inordinate amount of time doing this today. Funny thing- we've had a glue trap right where she's sitting for weeks. We finally managed to catch two (!) mice on it last night, and today is the day she wants to sit ovr there, now that the trap's gone. It's very convenient.

I finished some stuff for Halloween (although, not everything) and I made a dinner. Now, to finish school stuff and do some dishes.

PS: I had a really hard time picking which shot to put here... I usually take two or three shots of the same picture, babies being how they are. Anyway, and I take the best one- but they were all so cute! You can see the other two (I picked this one at random) here and here.

Snoring like my grandpa

Well, I worked today. I was half an hour late to class, which is always mortifying... Every time that happens (too often) I have to make myself go to class; part of me wants to just skip it rather than have to walk into class late again, and march all the way to the front of the room in front of everybody. I know probably nobody else cares (or halfway notices), but I hate being late. :(

I had delicious meatloaf leftovers in sandwich format for my lunch. I thought that meatloaf dish would make good cold slices on bread, and boy howdy, was I right!

Biggest thing for today, though, is that we finished the Pendragon campaign that we've been playing for a year. It was awesome. All the loose ends got tied up... and I do mean all- the knights had bit players from old stories (some going back to squiring) show up and demand satisfaction.

My character's sister was finally avenged (the plot of the story for 6 game years, a full real year), her son was returned to her, and she finally- after being twice widowed- found a decent husband who didn't die right off the bat. Sweet!

The knights all got dubbed Knights of the Round Table, by King Arthur himself (so awesome! *sniff*), and Broderick and Courtney were married at the same time. Broderick hied himself North to his lands above the wall (won in the Pictish wars), where he and his lady lived happily ever after with the grove of the Golden Rose. Axel (after doing a penance for some minor matters) settled happily into life with his lady. Ronan wandered the land for 6 more years mourning for Melangalia before finally settling down.

And we all lived happily ever after. :D

Sorry to go on about my character (so to speak), but it was really cool. I love it when a game ends well like that; particularly a game that we had so much time and great past gaming invested in.

Insinkerator of knightly doom

Check out my little huge giant (size 85, according to Pendragon)! She was helping us storm the castle.

She hung out with her papa today. She fell asleep in the car on the way home from the bank, and Thad was hanging out in the car reading when I got home from work, letting her sleep. ("'Cause I'm a good papa," he says.)

She was the belle of the roleplaying game... she had a grand time being underfoot while we faced our dire enemy, and rescued a baby.

Every other day

I'm feeling all weepy and what's the word? Verklempt. Because I just watched this documentary about these guys who fostered SIX kids that no one wanted, mostly HIV positive kids, and couldn't adopt them because Florida won't allow gays to adopt. In fact, one of their kids wasn't HIV-positive after all, and when they found out (he was like, 3 at the time) the state of Florida immediately said, "Oh, really? Well, then, now we want him! Since he's healthy, he clearly needs a mother and a father both (unlike before), and you homos won't do."

One of their kids died, and back in the day, the expert opinion was that all those kids were going to die in only a few years. I can't imagine what kind of people would have the strength to keep taking in those kids, knowing (mostly wrongly, thankfully) that they'd just lose them, but not wanting those kids to die just having lived in hospitals. The whole thing just makes me want to kick Jeb! Bush in the everlovin' teeth. With some of Rebecca's steel-toed boots.

Anyway, sorry. That's not the point of this blog, right? But this wouldn't have meant as much to me before I had a child. I wouldn't have really understood in the same way...

Whoo. Um. Yesterday was uneventful. Jaime came over, and played games with us. Thad worked last night.

Today was cool because I got to go work out! Brooke met me at the RPAC in between her classes, and watched Ari for me for a 1/2 hour while I went and weight trained. It felt good to be working out, and it meant alot to me to have Brooke take her for that small amount of time. We're to meet again on Wednesday for that purpose as well. :D

Tomorrow I teach, and tomorrow is more Pendragon!

Rest in peace, Melangalia

Well, you can't really see Ari's face here, but rest assured, she's really cute. :)

We did our big shopping trip for the month today; it was a big pain in that way that only three-hour shopping trips to big-box stores can achieve. Ari fell asleep in the car, and so I ended up doing all the shopping while Thad stayed in the car with Ari- particularly fun in the Sam's Club, what with 25-lb bags of flour and whtanot. She did get in about a two hour nap that way, which was good.

We got (among many other things) a new vacuum cleaner, so now we can clean our floors! Yay! Our old vacuum has been slowly dying for ages, so it's been a while since they were properly swept up- and we have an eater baby. Eeeew....

This is a shot from tonight's Pendragon game- we had a big fight. We pretty much lost. Ari spent most of the evening eating grapes and cheese and bread, and untying Andy's shoes over and over again.

Hmm... by, "we pretty much lost", just so this is clear, I mean "we all came within an inch of dying, and woke up in prison cells on our way to being handed over to our direst and most hated enemy."

Joss Whedon in the credits

Happy harvest, y'all. :D

Not much to say. Thad slept until the afternoon. Then, we went over to talk to someone who talked to us about baby carriers. Then, we went shopping in order to get foods for our harvest feast. We got a very nice loaf of bread from the french (style) bakery down the road from us, and I made a biscuit-top chicken potpie. And we had corn on the cob. Mmmm.

Then, I came home and cooked like a maniac! Food was delicious- Jaime commented that my potpie tasted "healthy". I was like, it has mass quantities of butter- how can it be healthy? He pointed out that his only prior experience with potpie was store and frozen ones... By those standards, it really was the friggin' Mona Lisa of potpies! Well, maybe not the Mona Lisa, but I'm a bit giddy, so I hope you'll excuse the hyperbole.

We had Pendragon tonight. We managed to retrieve the Golden Rose (at long last!), and we found Broderick's rival wandering around, nekked and crazy, in the woods. Anyway, we (and by we, I mean the knights) finally got the Golden Rose from the forest, and who should we find just outside the border, but a legion of Sir Garrowin's knights? This would be, gentle readers, the knights of our most hated foe.

And then Thad ended the game. AAAAARRRGGGGGH!!!!

How does he expect me to sleep for the next two weeks, with that cliffhanger?

NOTE: apologies for, like, all y'all who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. Trust me. It was awesome.

Wins by attrition

Well, we just finished our Pendragon game. It was very eventful. ;) My character got betrothed to a land owning Frenchman, Andy's character had a baby boy, and Jaime's character proposed to his lady love. Oh, and Jeff's character discovered that he needs to stop playing the field (he's a notorious womanizer) and find somebody permanent, or we'll never find what we need to finish our quest. Exciting stuff. Thad is chuckling to himself about how easily pleased we all are. :)

In real-world exciting news, Ari ate her first real food today! The last few days, she's started to actually notice food and eating, and I've been trying stuff with her as she seemed to care. Today, I put some hummus on my finger and put it in front of her, and she totally went and sampled the hummus! She didn't like it, mind, and spat it right out, but she still tried it. I think we'll let her taste other stuff now and again now.

Things went just fine with the new sitter today; Ari seemed to be having fun with those little boys (the mom who is watching her has twins!) but it was a lot of walking around and taking busses. At least the weather was gorgeous for it!

An imp named Tad

Today's been kinda disjointed. I hate these Tuesdays and Thursdays. I woke up late and just had to run around. This is a picture of Uncle Theo holding Ari while I ran around like a crazy woman this morning.

Theo and me had a good time playing games together in the afternoon, and in the evening we had a chaotic Pendragon session that I mostly didn't get to play in.

I didn't get to play in it partly because Ari was a fussy britches, and partly because a bunch of problems with my students' online quiz cropped up. My university has just switched to a new system for online course materials, and it's really frustrating. I can't figure out how to do anything. Plus, I had one of the trained tech support people here, at my house (my friend Rick) and he didn't know what to do either.

Well, I'm off to bed. I have a really, really long day ahead of me tomorrow. Class till 5:30 and then I have a meeting with a professor. He has a reputation for rambling on, and I shall be quite testy if he keeps me too late...

Elderflowers and roses

I had a much better day today than yesterday... :)

Yesterday's medieval feast went off pretty well. My cheesecake came out nicely, but we discovered that we don't really like the taste of elderflowers. The cheesecake was abandoned thereby.

I got Ari to sleep on her own for one hour today, which was her only nap. I took the opportunity to paint this shirt. This is the crest I made up for my Pendragon character. It's complicated as to why. Anyways, I think it looks nice.

The girl was pretty sweet to me even before her nap. She spent a bunch of time happily playing by herself. I find it amazing how much she likes to play with blankets. Also, I can set her on my bedroom floor and the clothes and old newspapers entertain her for ages!

What does "sambocade" mean?

Ari is asleep on me. Not much to report, really. Today's big excitement is that we're playing Pendragon tonight. It's going to be the winter phase, and one of the characters is getting married. We're using this as an excuse to throw ye olde medieval party, and I need to get out to the store to get some material components for my cheesecake. Also, there needs to be bread.

I did paint a banner with the character's coat of arms on it, and I bet he'll think it's cool. I also have a hideous plot to paint said coat of arms on the cheesecake with food coloring. It would be very medieval; they were all about brightly colored foodstuffs.

I had a really rough time getting the girl to nap today. It seems like I'm just SOL for getting her to nap not on me. It's super frustrating.

Rrrrr.... brains....

Today has been very weird. I didn't really sleep last night (Ari kept waking up over and over again), and didn't take a nap either. I was really hoping that she'd take one so I could get just a little sleep, but it just didn't happen. I did get to talk to my friend in the afternoon, at least. He called just as I was at the very end of my rope- I'd just realized that it was still over an hour until Thad got home to relieve me, and the girl wouldn't stop crying, and I couldn't keep myself awake. Anyway, he kept me company until Thad got home.

We had our Pendragon RPG group tonight, and it was pretty fun. Ari was really fussy though, and finally passed out around 10 o'clock. She's not night diapered, though, and I'm hoping we can get her changed without waking her. It's the mama-nurses-her-while-daddy-speed-changes-her trick. Whee!

Okay, I can't actually think right now; I'm so hazy and zombie-like on no sleep. At least tonight is Thad on night duty; I have to be able to think tomorrow!