What Scooby's throat was thinking...

Hm. It's been awfully quiet in here lately. Sort of light pinkish and damp - everything functioning the way it should. Painless swallowing. Loud shouting - no problem. Constant obnoxious noises - no problem. Ho hum. Kind of boring like this. What? Thanksgiving is coming up? That holiday where we see two different sets of relatives in 48 hours? Small suceptible children, and single adults who have a compromised immune system due to their lack of exposure to small suceptible children? Those relatives who've already said, "Hey, ha ha, those kids of yours aren't sick are they? Ha ha? They won't be infecting the entire family with that bug that lasts until New Years will they? HA HA????"
Hm.
Maybe I should gunk things up for awhile. Turn red. Make swallowing painful. Make kid grouchy. Oh, and make sure he sleeps in his brother's bed the night before to maximize potential germ sharing.
Bwah -hah - hah!!! (Evil laugh)
Mission accomplished.

Twenty Dollars

I dragged a huge shopping bag and box full of books to Half-Price Books today, and they gave me $20 for them all. Eh. At least I cleaned off some space on my bookshelves - and I decided to consider it a $20 gift card and promptly spent it right back. Snow today, supposed to snow tomorrow. Hopefully it will clear up a little during our drive time this weekend. I'm looking forward to this trip to DC/Virginia, but I'm kind of nervous too. So many things can happen on road trips, and this is the first time that Don will be traveling back alone with the kids. I do it all the time, but it's new for him. Hopefully the DVD players will be working and it will be an uneventful drive.

Shhh

I had a horrible drive to my show last night - Friday night rush hour traffic through Pittsburgh, with the rumors of snow making everyone have to be out, in their cars, right now, going the same way I needed to go, REALLY slowly. I showed up 45 minutes past call-time, but still in time to do the pre-show mingle. Stressful.
When I got home, I learned Scooby had a bad headache and needed me to snuggle him. I did, and our pre-midnight quiet time was actually quite lovely. No rushing to finish homework, practice violin, get to the dentist, get ready for bed, finish that dinner, brush your teeth, try to listen to three urgent conversations at once. Just quiet attention, and little shared intimacies. He regressed a little in his speech patterns, as his sleepy eyes closed and his sweaty hand clutched my sleeve. This morning there were remnants of my show makeup on his PJs.
Cinderella crawled into our bed this morning and turned on the TV. A couple of minutes later she gave a little squeak, and said, "I lost my tooth!" This is the front tooth that's been hanging on by a wish and a prayer for about a week, and it was suddenly just missing! I asked her where it was and she shrugged nonchalantly and said, "I must have swallowed it." However, upon inspection of her bed, it was lying there in the middle of the sheet, like a tiny seashell washed up on shore. She and Tarzan now have matching jack-o-lantern grins.
I'm trying to motivate myself to get off the computer and get on the treadmill. And I guess I should call Starbucks today about my application. And I have another show tonight. It's an hour away, but I'll give myself two to avoid the stress.
The kids are filling their minds with junk via the computer and TV, but it's been a super-busy week (auditions at QV, dentist appointments, Awana club, Mexican fiesta at school) and they need down time. Later I'll make them practice violin and piano, and read their school assignments, and finish their dinner, and brush their teeth, and listen to their urgent conversations. But right now, I'm sipping my coffee and enjoying the quiet.

Haul out the holly...

So I went to the opening of the new L.L. Bean store at Ross Park Mall today, because the first 500 people in line were going to get a gift card "valued between $25 and $500". By the time I got there, there were about 1000 people in line - no exaggeration. It was triple deep and curved around like Disneyworld, only without the fun ride at the end and about 70 degrees colder. But did I give up? No, I did not. I waited in this line, in 20 degree temperatures and yes, snow, for 1 1/2 hours. And were there any gift cards left when I got to the front? No, there were not. There was also no room to walk around the store once it was full of 1,000 people. So, I left. But then I went to my friend Michelle's house and scored a pink fuzzy body pillow and pink bedspread for Cinderella, a box of Tinkerbell and friends fairies, half a dozen Scooby DVD's and almost brand-new bikes for Scooby and Tarzan. Tarzan's is the Bumblebee Transformer bike and weighs about 100 pounds. Miraculously I fit it all in my sleigh, (oops, I mean minivan) and got it all home. Now...where to store it until Christmas???
I have two "Rudolph the Dead-Nosed Reindeer" shows this weekend, so it truly is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

I guess I should explain that I didn't actually post the wish lists as suggestions for what people should buy my children, because that would mess up the carefully arranged divvying up of suggestions amongst different sides of the family, besides being entirely crass. I merely posted them because I got a kick out of the wording and such. I haven't posted Scooby's because all he's given me is a list of Webkinz. If they actually got all the Webkinz they asked for, we'd have to rent a storage unit. Tarzan continues to add to his diligently, and has even included a couple of illustrations for Santa's benefit. When told that some of his choices were kind of on the expensive side, he informed me that Santa's got enough money, so I shouldn't worry about it. Well thank goodness for that.
Speaking of money, I dropped off an application to Starbucks on Saturday, requesting the opening shift. Which, in case you are curious, starts at 5:00am. I haven't heard anything from them yet, which could be due to the fact that I attached a list of all the dates I can't work because I'm out of town or already working one of my other jobs. Do I want to get up at 4:00am and go to work in the dark? NO. However, I've had 5 shows cancelled in the past 3 weeks, and have shelled out about $500 in college application fees, and we're in a dark, dark place right now. It's cold out here. And there are wolves. (Little Simpsons reference there)
Anyway, on the good news side, my ex-college prof finally wrote letters of rec. to Yale and Brown, after much nagging on my part. I felt the need to nag, as she missed the deadline for the extremely complicated and hoop-jumping filled fellowship application that I was working on earlier in the fall, and blew my chances for being considered at all. After I'd supplied an official transcript, official MAT scores, 5 essays, and 3 other letters of recommendation, both online and hard copies. I could have spit, I was so mad. But I had to keep being nice, since she hadn't written the other ones yet. But now they're done. Hopefully she didn't take out any annoyance with my persistent reminders in the letters.
Today I spent about 4 hours doing crafts for the school holiday shop. I volunteered back in Sept. and they have to be in by Thursday, so of course I didn't start until today. I painted some picture frames, a couple of trinket boxes, and some refridgerator magnet clips. It's not a lot, but it's all they're getting. They turned out pretty cute, I think. If I can find the camera, I'll post some pictures. I've also been making real progress on Cinderella's stocking. There's a distict possibility that it might be finished by Christmas!
This afternoon we have call-back auditions for Quaker Valley's show. We're doing Beauty and the Beast this year, which should be fun. Hopefully the kids will behave at the auditions. Then we're supposed to go to a bible study, but I'm blowing it off again. I've decided it's just too far to drive 45 minutes each way for an hour long meeting. I've felt an obligation to try to keep going, but when I find myself dreading it days in advance, it's time to drop out.
Off to grab a quick shower before the bus gets here!

Cinderella's Christmas Wish List

Money machine that gives real money (actually, no, mommy, I'll make that myself out of paper so never mind)
My own Scooby phone, but not a real one
Barbie dollhouse
Hair Clips and Bows
Snowman Webkinz
Seal Webkinz
Charcoal cat Webkinz
Beagle Webkinz
Love Puppy Webkinz
Hairbow - pink
Tinkerbell movie
Pants that say angel on them

Tarzan's Christmas Wish List

Webknz and Lil'Kinz:
8. Cocoa Dinosaur
3. Eagle
2. Orca
4. Parakeet
1. Snowman
5. Blue Trigger Fish
6. White Mouse
9. Seal
7. Hummingbird
10. Cardinal

Random Toys or Stuffed animals
hot wheels Games (more)
Chineese Checkers
(1) World Rcord Book
my own gumball machine
IndIana Jones Set (with an Indiana Jones guy)
Junie B. Jones is a beauty shop guy
Junie B. Jones is (Almost) a flower girl
pogo stick

So just write anything...

What I should be doing: Putting dishes in the dishwasher, running on the treadmill (stupid cold weather), working on Cinderella's Christmas stocking (I'm determined to finish it this year! Baby's 1st Christmas 1999 has played its course), folding laundry, dusting. What I'm actually doing: reading blog posts. And feeling guilty about not updating mine.
Not much going on here. The kids all had really good teacher conferences and report cards. They're doing great in school (as Don says - So far...) He keeps waiting for them to hate school as much as he did. Even Cinderella's doing well - although the day after her great conference she came home with a "yellow card" for pushing somebody in line.
I had another training today at the medical school for NPEs or Normal Physical Exams. I learned how to take a blood pressure, how to use an oto/opthalmascope (not sure about that spelling), how to percuss a liver, check for chest expansion, use the reflex hammer, all sorts of fun stuff. So when I go for the exams in December, I can actually instruct the med students on their technique. Things we don't have to do are: invert the eyelids during the eye exam, check the gag reflex, and breast, pelvic and rectal exams. Thank heavens. No teeth scaling either. I'll practice on the kids this week, and next week I'll get tested for my certification. (I'm just certified to actually be examined, not examine other people)
We had another show get cancelled for this upcoming weekend. The economy sucks in all kinds of ways.
My life isn't terribly exciting right now, sorry!