Out front I saw a fat varied thrush and a smallish looking robin.

I may have bit off more than I can chew on something at work, but I think… It’s not that I can’t do it, I’ve just never done it and it’s a fairly ginormous recommendation for someone in my position to be making. The VP and Sr. Product manager leading the project are working together to figure out the other recommendation coming out of this initiative. I wish I had a buddy too. I think I have good resources that will be able to provide me with some guidance so I’m going to see what I can do and if i can’t get where I need to go because I don’t have visibility, I’ll have to (gah!) ask for help. Learning opportunity.

Watching Man, Woman, Wild. Missing half of it, so distracted by what’s on my mind and the cabin fever setting in with the snow. Oh. And it’s over. Time for the babies to go to bed, and then me to putter about a bit longer.

With the snow the last few days, I put out bird food on the deck. No one. This afternoon as I was shoveling our walk, I noticed two tiny footprints at the edge of the front step so I put another little bowl of food and warm water on the front step. I peeked out the window a while later and had two robins. I think they’ll be back tomorrow. I hung the seed bird feeder in front of the kitchen window instead of out the back window. The food is also still on the deck, and the front step.

I think until the little hummingbird, the only bird I’d seen in our yard since we moved was a dead varied thrush that we buried out in the only small bush in the back yard. I’m glad to see some birds. There have been a few squirrels too, but not many. I think better landscaping will help. The fellow that was the landlord here before we bought the house let the ivy go kinda crazy and then round-upped the place. There is almost no underbrush. I think we might want to have someone come out and help us with what to do with the yard. It’s big and has awesome potential.

Up too late. Again. Listening to Mark Lanegan. Again. So beautiful. If I lived alone, I’d play along, but I don’t and everyone is asleep & that’s ok because I would probably more think about it and not quite get around to doing it. Maybe. But it sounds like a good idea, like so many things this time of night. Gardening, going for a bike ride, candle lit bath, playing one of my guitars, singing…

Time to suck it up and go to bed though.

Lots to do this weekend. We have an open house tomorrow & have noticed that our house is starting to look “lived in” again. I.e., not in showroom condition. It’s hard after two years to keep the house in showroom condition all the time with two kids. So on today’s agenda: clean. Clean the kitchen. Clean the bathroom. Clean the living room. Clean the girls’ bedroom. Dust our bedroom. Clean downstairs. Clean the fish tanks. Put away laundry. Sweep. Mop. All that other stuff that goes along with all that. Also need to run to my parents’ house & water their plants & pick up my sewing machine. And go exercise. Collapse in a heap at end of day…

Tomorrow we go see what’s on the market before the open house, then… something. I’m not entirely sure what we’ll do during the open house. Hopefully get some food & after a reasonable digestion time go exercise some more…

But for now, to get the whole thing started, I need to clean the kitchen, then find something to eat. Maybe do both things simultaneouslyish. A day filled with cleaning adventure & latex gloves. Why do I never get to use latex gloves for anything fun?

The service itself was nice. My parents’ longtime friend & former pastor did the service, the same fellow who married us, so of course it was nice. The veteran’s part of the service, gun salute/Taps & presenting of the flag to the family was oddly touching for such a highly ritualized ceremony. And Amazing Grace is increasingly a song that I really love. I don’t know why.

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Yesterday I got a rise & shine with, “ZOMG! WE HAVE A SHOWING IN 45 MINUTES!” That was 8:45. They showed up at 9:10 which is a short 45 minutes, if you ask me. They circled the culdesac like vultures, paused in front of the house & peered in as I yelled, ‘They’re here! WTFOMGBBQ!’ Then they drove off. We left on time & they were kind enough to leave a card unlike the other two realtors who wanted to show the house this weekend. We worked in the yard a good chunk of the day, then I went and found birthday presents for my dad.

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This morning there was supposed to be a showing between 10 & 11. They didn’t leave a card, so I don’t know if they bothered to come by even though we scrambled this morning to make sure everything was suitable for showing and managed to get everyone out of the house before 10. And in doing so, we spend a ridiculous amount of money at the local bookstore. Alarming almost, except for the 40% off all used books. Perhaps alarming anyway as we walked away with a shopping bag full of books and… our shelves are in storage. Then someone was supposed to come by with their clients during our open house. Of course, just as I was getting out of the shower around noon they called and said they were five minutes away & could they stop by NOW? Um. How about no? Come on, people! I know my house is for sale, but you’re still freaking guests. If they dropped by when they said they would, they didn’t leave their card either.

This whole house thing is incredibly, stupifyingly, exhaustingly depressing. All the feedback we get is, “oh gosh, that cute little house hasn’t sold yet? < expressions of amazement >” Frustrating. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that one yet. It’s probably obvious though. It’s really sapping my energy. Meh. Stupid house.

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During the open house today P and The Girls went with my parents & aunt & uncle & my cousin’s daughter to the Museum of Flight. M2 was transfixed & fascinated. She even went in the flight simulator & thought that was pretty much The Best Thing Ever. P stayed out with M1 who has occasional bouts of motion sickness. Apparently my mom said something to the effect that M2 has no fear. I frequently think that might be true, except that as mommy, I’m privy to such conversations as her deep & abiding fear of smoker’s lung, dying, and the occasional statement when I say we should go bike riding that ‘what if I fall?’ Like that’s ever stopped her from doing anything else. Anyway — they all had a grand time.

*I* went and did my ladies’ thing. We sat around and ate cookies and strawberries and strawberries mostly. It was a very laid back, low key thing today. It was lovely to get away from the house & listen to people talk about things that were mostly not work & mostly not home. Very, very lovely. There was some talk about kids & birth as there was a pregnant lady there, but I’m finally well enough socialized to know that I should just not talk about my experience of having two very non-eventive (except for the length of the first) home births. It just gets everyone’s judgmental panties in a twist and I’m too tired right now to feel like explaining & it’s just so easy to say nothing at all. So I didn’t say anything at all. And it made me kind of sad because diversity of experience is what makes us all interesting, but… apparently I wasn’t interested in being interesting in that way today. I was having a lovely afternoon & I just didn’t want to go there. The very nice pregnant lady’s first pregnancy was, as I understand it, supposed to be a home birth, but she ended up transported, rightly, to the hospital. I tend to think the midwifery model worked as perfectly in her situation as it did in mine — the midwife recognized a situation that required transporting & did so, everyone came out alive & stuff. Ok. Good. It all worked out — right? Right! And anymore than that & I have to start qualifying & justifying & explaining & beating back strawmen & meh.

There seems to be no tack I can take that doesn’t make me come off like some kind of defensive wacko unless the people I’m talking with are already predisposed to accept home birth as within the norm of acceptable birthing situations. So, slowly, I’m learning to hold what’s precious to me a little closer to my heart (shush that part about wearing my heart not on my sleeve as a parent, but two unshielded bundles of girl running about frequently outside of my protection). I had my births, they were what they were & they were lovely & I wouldn’t trade them in for the world. I can’t condense the discussion into a nice tidy sound bite that comes across nicely in a casual social situation. Not yet anyway.

I think that might be a personality defect on my part. I spend so much time so very deep in the gory details of things, making very fine distinctions, and when I miss a fine distinction here or a qualification there, sometimes it doesn’t matter, but sometimes it does, very much so, so I’m sensitive to making sure I cover all those qualifications, and the fine distinctions and it makes it very hard to speak from a… overview point of view? Um… what is it when people pull back and look at the forest? Whatever it is, I don’t do it very well & it’s not that I can’t see the forest for the trees, but that I note that not only is there this forest, but there are also these trees, and these plants, and these animals, which break out into mammals, birds, and insects, and insects aren’t really part of the animal kingdom but part of the insect kingdom and that’s different from the animal kingdom in these ways, and then the interaction between these plants & animals & stuff & the local weather & geographical topology… uh. Yeah. So… It’s a huge asset for what I actually do, not so much in the explaining it all to people…

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I have to give a presentation at work about what it is I do. I hope to have it ready by this Thursday, but… see, there’s this forest? And it has these trees? And some plants? And these animals, and… I know the people I’m presenting to are only really interested in the mammals (user experience) and not so much the birds (standards-based controlled vocab/authority lists), but the birds are really a very, very important part of what I do in conjunction with all these other things & I have to figure out how to make this all relevant to them, help them understand when it would be advantageous to use the corporate taxonomy for this particular company (and sometimes it isn’t). Urgh. My dream next week would involve me, a long list of terms to research, rationalize, a big huge complex import spreadsheet to create, & an unlimited budget.

There. Multiple plates of beans: terribly, terribly over-thought. I go from not saying anything at all about what’s going on in my life to the forest, trees, plants, animals, stuff, local weather, geographical topology, and in general probably TMI. And not even the *interesting* TMI! Yeh, no, there isn’t really any interesting TMI to speak of, no sin of omission.

Yes. I think I’m done now. I mean, I’m not, but enough has probably been said for now. It was a surprisingly pleasant long weekend, only the last few hours have been so angst-y. I’m blaming ALL of it on the fact that I’m tired of having the house for sale & I’m fretting about my work presentation. I will now resist the urge to play tetris & sudoku until I fall asleep on the couch in an effort to escape my own brain. Wheeeeee!

Other things: We took the house down *another* $15K today. We’ll drop no further & anyone wanting fixes or things paid for or whatever can go… you know. Hopefully this does the trick. I’m sore tired of the selling routine & am ready to move. on.

That is all.

It’s been interesting watching the remaining kitties adjust to the lack of Siobhan. She was definitely our alpha female who ran the place. ‘Spew is stepping up in her absence & claiming most of the lap space, and TimTheCat seems to be just the tiniest bit less feraldude, occasionally.

I think I’m within $200-$300 of getting my classical guitar. I can hardly wait. I’m entertained by the half-size, but it’s… it’s driving me crazy. The strings & frets are tiny & close together, which is fine to some degree because my hands are pretty tiny & some of the four, five, & six fret stretches & jumps are really hard, but it also means that I don’t have free right hand movement & I frequently bump other strings or accidentally mute them. In addition, that half-sizeness of it means the strings bend a lot more easily & are more sensitive to inexact placement, which is ok, usually. What’s not ok is that above about the third fret, the fret placement is not quite correct & so it takes some bending or prayer hoping that the string will not be flat or sharp due to bad frets or accidental bending. I guess it builds character — because y’all know I need more of that.

I have a strong temptation to have a third piece of bread, but it is, after all, well after 11 so I’m going to try to be strong. Save at least one piece for my lunch tomorrow to go with ‘s tasty sooooup.

I’m tired of having the house for sale. Someone needs to buy it in the Very Near Future. I want my books back. I want… uh… my other stuff that’s been so long since I’ve seen it I’ve forgotten what it all is back. So, people, I need your help. Can y’all visualize a big ass SOLD FOR A WHOLE LOT MORE MONEY THAN ANYONE WAS EXPECTING REALLY REALLY SOON sign on this for sale sign?

Thanks.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts. It all happened so quickly & Siobhan truly was a companion critter. I think evenings for the foreseeable future are going to be difficult. And people coming to the door. My aunt dropped off M2 yesterday & I involuntarily looked at where she would normally be standing and miaooowing. This morning I caught ‘Spew sitting for in the shadows in the hall & for a moment I thought I saw Siobhan sitting there, then she morphed into ‘Spew. The brain plays tricks… In thinking about it, I’ve had lots of fish, I have a tortoise I’ve had since, uh, er, ah, late ’91? So around 17 years or something? But this may be the first real companion companion critter that I’ve lost. And holy fuck, is it hard. So, I might be doing a little rambling on about Siobhan as I try to process, but I’ll try not to go overboard. Suffice to say, the tears still come easily right now.

20 minutes ’til seeing a new house. Or multiple new houses. So tired. Such a long week. I want to crawl back into bed & pull the covers back over my head, but we’re even leaving early to look at houses because someone is coming to look at ours so I can’t.

We’re watching some stupid cartoon. WHY does the boy cow have udders? That’s just… really fuxxored.

Tomorrow during the open house, we’re going to go to my parents house.  Poor Siobhan will be locked up for a long time, but the last thing we want is her taking a flying leap at someone who’s looking at our house.  That would be bad.  But she has her little safe happy place tent that’s loaded with happy cat pheromones & soft comfy pillows & her own water dish on one side & a nice clean litter box on the other.  Every report that comes back about her has been that she just sits there placidly (probably stoned out of her gourd on the happy cat pheromones) while every one tromps through.  Of course, when all this started she also nibbled all the fur off her belly, but… she’s not attacking anyone or otherwise freaking out.

Right.  Food then, with luck, a nap.  Oh, sweet naps!

We finished the chapter with the man with red eyes tonight. She didn’t want me to stop reading & pitched a major fit. I think she’s getting really into the book & it’s at a little bit of a scary spot right now, so I think the tantruming was all less about me stopping reading, than me stopping reading and not relieving the scary tension by bringing us to a point of, at least less, if not neutral, tension. It’s fascinating watching a piece of literature affect a child — you can almost see the different parts of their brains lighting up as they’re reacting and processing.

This book is definitely beyond M2, but she has other books that affect her developmentally appropriately. She’s at that point where she has more or less memorized certain books & now she’ll say, “Stop Mommy, I want to read this line.” And then she’ll recite the line while moving her fingers across what line of text that corresponds with her recitation. Sometimes I have her say it again while I hold her hand so her finger is on the words she’s saying a little more accurately. Brains are really amazing.