Fairly lengthy update! woo woo
Long time no post, again - oy!
OK, well, we had Ruthie's birthday party a couple weekends ago. It was...well...I guess from Ruthie's point of view it was a success, because she had fun and ate cake and got presents. From my point of view it was kind of a disaster though because none of the people we had invited (other than family) showed up. :(
I guess I learned a valuable lesson, namely, don't invite people you don't know...or at least, get their names and contact info...and at least invite one or two people whom you know better so that you can be sure they'll show up.
We invited five kids from Ruthie's preschool, but the thing is that I don't know any of the parents, not even their names, let alone their phone numbers or any of that. I just made invitations and stuck them in the kids' cubbies one morning. I should have made more of an effort. :( I did see one of the moms on Thurs or Fri morning at dropoff time, and I mentioned it to her, and she said oh, well, her kid always brings home all kinds of cards from JumpStart (which is this program where they bring in college kids to spend one-on-one time with the preschoolers). So I said, "well the party is on Sunday and Ruthie would really love it if [your daughter] came," and she said "oh, yes, we definitely will!" But I didn't take that "definitely" too seriously because, I mean, if she had just dismissed the invitation as another JumpStart thing, she might already have thrown it out, or she might have plans for that day, etc. ... and sure enough they didn't show up.
Some of the parents don't even speak English as their first language so who knows, they didn't look at the invitation at all, they didn't understand what it was, they figured we were just inviting the whole class, who knows?
Anyway, fortunately Ruthie is still too young to have noticed/realized that no one came. She did help me choose which kids to invite, but clearly the link between our discussion, and making the invitations, and the kids actually showing up at her party, is very tenuous in her mind. From her perspective, like I said, she had a fun day with her brother and cousin, and then there was cake and presents, so it's all good. ;) By next year, though, she'll be much more aware of this stuff, so I'm going to have to do better about it. I sure hope that by next year I'll know some of the parents better!
Oh well. Lessons learned.
On the mom front, my mom has finished 5 out of 6 rounds of chemo, and is doing very well. After the first four were done, she started to have some side effects -- ringing in her ears, tingling/numbness in feet -- and so, after much discussion with the various medical people, they eventually decided to switch to a different drug for the last two treatments. This new drug is supposed to be much milder in terms of side effects. I went with mom to the chemo treatment this past Monday; her fifth treatment but the first with the new drug. It seems to have gone well. She is feeling fine so far, *knock wood*. She has been feeling very tired -- the cumulative effect of all the chemo -- so I guess we can hope that from here on out she will slowly regain her energy. The final treatment will be 4 weeks away (well, 3.5 now I guess) and then it'll be time to celebrate!
Baseball season has started up, and Isaac is immediately obsessed. ;) It sucks that so many of the games start at 7pm, which means he only gets to watch a little bit before he has to get to bed. We can TiVo the games for him to watch the next day though. And on nights when there's no Red Sox game, he can watch other games, since I upgraded our cable service and we now get the MLB Channel. Last night he ended up watching the Braves vs. Cubs.
I did sign Isaac up for Little League which begins at the end of this month. He's starting to get excited about it. Several of his friends are also signed up, so I hope that some of them will end up on his team. It should be fun.
Ruthie is still resisting my attempts to finish potty-training *Sigh*. After months of saying that she would start pooping in the potty "when I'm four," she turned 4 and now is saying "when I'm five." Um, no. So I won't go into gory detail on this one ;) but suffice to say it is driving me slightly crazy. ;)
Other than that (and the occasional tantrum ;) ) Ruthie is doing great. She loves to play pretend with any kind of pretend people she can get her hands on. For her birthday, grandma gave her a few Lego people, including one set that has a mini-spaceship/hovercar, a policeman, and an alien. The premise is supposed to be that the alien robbed a bank and the cop chases him on the hovercar -- it even comes with a teeny $100 bill that fits in the alien's hand -- but the first thing Ruthie did after we put it all together was make the cop and alien hold hands, and then insisted on figuring out how to get them both onto the hovercar to ride it together. all together now, "awwwww!" ;)
I just got my tax refund direct-deposited yesterday. I got a whopping $3700!! Wow! I deliberately set my withholdings high when I started this job, because I had spent so much time on unemployment last year and didn't have any taxes withheld from that. I guess I overestimated how much I needed to compensate. ;) woo woo! So I am thinking of using part of the refund to buy a new refrigerator. There's this rebate program starting on Earth Day, April 22nd, where you can get $200 back if you buy an Energy-Star fridge. (There are also rebates for dishwashers and other appliances. But I think this program is only active in MA.) I have to find time to go fridge-shopping in the near future. I may also be using some of that tax refund to travel, but that's a post for another time.
In book-reading news, I have read fifteen books so far in 2010, which I think is great. My total could be higher, but it took me ridiculously long to get through Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear. I hated that book kind of a lot, and not just because it was such a slog. :P But never mind that. Right now I'm super-mega-majorly excited because I got an advance copy of the not-yet-published God of the Hive by Laurie King, the latest in the Holmes/Russell series. I got it through the LibraryThing.com Early Reviewers program, about which I'm sure I have raved here before. ;) I just finished reading the one that came before it, The Language of Bees, so I'm crazy excited, especially since the book arrived so fast -- I got the email notifying me that I'd won it, and then the book itself arrived just a few days later. I started it immediately last night! Did I mention that I'm excited? LOL. I love this series.
I'm also greatly enjoying the Company series by Kage Baker, who sadly passed away a couple of months ago. I understand that she did finish the series before she died, though, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm only through the first four and I think there are at least four more, so that ought to keep me for at least a little while longer. ;)
I also recently finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is apparently a big sensation lately. I had heard from multiple sources that you have to sort of slog through the first 100 pages before it starts to get interesting, and that was definitely my experience. The beginning REALLY drags; the author's style is fairly boring and the story takes a while to get going. But once it did get moving, I was hooked. I'm definitely looking forward to the other two books in that series. That author also passed away, apparently, just after delivering the three novels to his publisher.
Another book I finished recently was Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell. Scifi fans may recall her as the author of the fantastic The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God, but Thread of Grace is not scifi. It's a novel set in Italy during WWII. I don't know about you, but I didn't really know much about how Italy factored in to the war, so it was interesting from that point of view. Most of the plot centers around a group of people (Italian Jews, non-Italian Jews, and a few Italian gentiles) who try to mount a resistance movement against the Nazis. It was definitely the kind of book that affects you deeply, that you find yourself thinking about days later, remembering the characters and feeling for them. From the very beginning it pulls at you, right from the opening moments where you meet a Jewish man and his teenage daughter who have fled to Italy from Belgium. They talk about the man's wife / the girl's mother, and the two little sons/brothers, who "were put on a train headed west," and throughout the first half of the book the man and daughter keep talking about how they're going to get back and find their mom and brothers -- and it's gut-wrenching because you, the reader, know that those family members probably wound up at a concentration camp and are already dead; but the other characters don't know it yet and you have to suffer with their optimism. Of course, since it's a WWII book, most of the characters -- the ones you come to love, and the ones you can't stand, equally -- end up dead. I thought the author did a great job of making it realistic. I couldn't help thinking about what the "movie-style" endings would have been like vs. how she actually did it. For example, in a movie, the bit where the main Nazi character finally gets his comeuppance would have been played for maximum viewer satisfaction, so you could really feel vindicated about it. But in the book, it just falls in with all the rest of the brutality that's going on; and she doesn't linger on it, the way a movie would, so you can't savor it. It just goes by. Similarly, there's a subplot about a little girl who gets separated from her family, and if it were a movie, the Catholic nuns who are secretly hiding Jewish children in their orphanage would find a way to reunite the family -- but it's not a movie, so that doesn't happen either.
Anyway, I guess I make it sound pretty depressing, and parts of it are, but it's beautifully written and very moving. I would recommend it.
I could go on and on (ha ha...state the obvious much?) but that's enough of an update for now....
OK, well, we had Ruthie's birthday party a couple weekends ago. It was...well...I guess from Ruthie's point of view it was a success, because she had fun and ate cake and got presents. From my point of view it was kind of a disaster though because none of the people we had invited (other than family) showed up. :(
I guess I learned a valuable lesson, namely, don't invite people you don't know...or at least, get their names and contact info...and at least invite one or two people whom you know better so that you can be sure they'll show up.
We invited five kids from Ruthie's preschool, but the thing is that I don't know any of the parents, not even their names, let alone their phone numbers or any of that. I just made invitations and stuck them in the kids' cubbies one morning. I should have made more of an effort. :( I did see one of the moms on Thurs or Fri morning at dropoff time, and I mentioned it to her, and she said oh, well, her kid always brings home all kinds of cards from JumpStart (which is this program where they bring in college kids to spend one-on-one time with the preschoolers). So I said, "well the party is on Sunday and Ruthie would really love it if [your daughter] came," and she said "oh, yes, we definitely will!" But I didn't take that "definitely" too seriously because, I mean, if she had just dismissed the invitation as another JumpStart thing, she might already have thrown it out, or she might have plans for that day, etc. ... and sure enough they didn't show up.
Some of the parents don't even speak English as their first language so who knows, they didn't look at the invitation at all, they didn't understand what it was, they figured we were just inviting the whole class, who knows?
Anyway, fortunately Ruthie is still too young to have noticed/realized that no one came. She did help me choose which kids to invite, but clearly the link between our discussion, and making the invitations, and the kids actually showing up at her party, is very tenuous in her mind. From her perspective, like I said, she had a fun day with her brother and cousin, and then there was cake and presents, so it's all good. ;) By next year, though, she'll be much more aware of this stuff, so I'm going to have to do better about it. I sure hope that by next year I'll know some of the parents better!
Oh well. Lessons learned.
On the mom front, my mom has finished 5 out of 6 rounds of chemo, and is doing very well. After the first four were done, she started to have some side effects -- ringing in her ears, tingling/numbness in feet -- and so, after much discussion with the various medical people, they eventually decided to switch to a different drug for the last two treatments. This new drug is supposed to be much milder in terms of side effects. I went with mom to the chemo treatment this past Monday; her fifth treatment but the first with the new drug. It seems to have gone well. She is feeling fine so far, *knock wood*. She has been feeling very tired -- the cumulative effect of all the chemo -- so I guess we can hope that from here on out she will slowly regain her energy. The final treatment will be 4 weeks away (well, 3.5 now I guess) and then it'll be time to celebrate!
Baseball season has started up, and Isaac is immediately obsessed. ;) It sucks that so many of the games start at 7pm, which means he only gets to watch a little bit before he has to get to bed. We can TiVo the games for him to watch the next day though. And on nights when there's no Red Sox game, he can watch other games, since I upgraded our cable service and we now get the MLB Channel. Last night he ended up watching the Braves vs. Cubs.
I did sign Isaac up for Little League which begins at the end of this month. He's starting to get excited about it. Several of his friends are also signed up, so I hope that some of them will end up on his team. It should be fun.
Ruthie is still resisting my attempts to finish potty-training *Sigh*. After months of saying that she would start pooping in the potty "when I'm four," she turned 4 and now is saying "when I'm five." Um, no. So I won't go into gory detail on this one ;) but suffice to say it is driving me slightly crazy. ;)
Other than that (and the occasional tantrum ;) ) Ruthie is doing great. She loves to play pretend with any kind of pretend people she can get her hands on. For her birthday, grandma gave her a few Lego people, including one set that has a mini-spaceship/hovercar, a policeman, and an alien. The premise is supposed to be that the alien robbed a bank and the cop chases him on the hovercar -- it even comes with a teeny $100 bill that fits in the alien's hand -- but the first thing Ruthie did after we put it all together was make the cop and alien hold hands, and then insisted on figuring out how to get them both onto the hovercar to ride it together. all together now, "awwwww!" ;)
I just got my tax refund direct-deposited yesterday. I got a whopping $3700!! Wow! I deliberately set my withholdings high when I started this job, because I had spent so much time on unemployment last year and didn't have any taxes withheld from that. I guess I overestimated how much I needed to compensate. ;) woo woo! So I am thinking of using part of the refund to buy a new refrigerator. There's this rebate program starting on Earth Day, April 22nd, where you can get $200 back if you buy an Energy-Star fridge. (There are also rebates for dishwashers and other appliances. But I think this program is only active in MA.) I have to find time to go fridge-shopping in the near future. I may also be using some of that tax refund to travel, but that's a post for another time.
In book-reading news, I have read fifteen books so far in 2010, which I think is great. My total could be higher, but it took me ridiculously long to get through Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear. I hated that book kind of a lot, and not just because it was such a slog. :P But never mind that. Right now I'm super-mega-majorly excited because I got an advance copy of the not-yet-published God of the Hive by Laurie King, the latest in the Holmes/Russell series. I got it through the LibraryThing.com Early Reviewers program, about which I'm sure I have raved here before. ;) I just finished reading the one that came before it, The Language of Bees, so I'm crazy excited, especially since the book arrived so fast -- I got the email notifying me that I'd won it, and then the book itself arrived just a few days later. I started it immediately last night! Did I mention that I'm excited? LOL. I love this series.
I'm also greatly enjoying the Company series by Kage Baker, who sadly passed away a couple of months ago. I understand that she did finish the series before she died, though, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm only through the first four and I think there are at least four more, so that ought to keep me for at least a little while longer. ;)
I also recently finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is apparently a big sensation lately. I had heard from multiple sources that you have to sort of slog through the first 100 pages before it starts to get interesting, and that was definitely my experience. The beginning REALLY drags; the author's style is fairly boring and the story takes a while to get going. But once it did get moving, I was hooked. I'm definitely looking forward to the other two books in that series. That author also passed away, apparently, just after delivering the three novels to his publisher.
Another book I finished recently was Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell. Scifi fans may recall her as the author of the fantastic The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God, but Thread of Grace is not scifi. It's a novel set in Italy during WWII. I don't know about you, but I didn't really know much about how Italy factored in to the war, so it was interesting from that point of view. Most of the plot centers around a group of people (Italian Jews, non-Italian Jews, and a few Italian gentiles) who try to mount a resistance movement against the Nazis. It was definitely the kind of book that affects you deeply, that you find yourself thinking about days later, remembering the characters and feeling for them. From the very beginning it pulls at you, right from the opening moments where you meet a Jewish man and his teenage daughter who have fled to Italy from Belgium. They talk about the man's wife / the girl's mother, and the two little sons/brothers, who "were put on a train headed west," and throughout the first half of the book the man and daughter keep talking about how they're going to get back and find their mom and brothers -- and it's gut-wrenching because you, the reader, know that those family members probably wound up at a concentration camp and are already dead; but the other characters don't know it yet and you have to suffer with their optimism. Of course, since it's a WWII book, most of the characters -- the ones you come to love, and the ones you can't stand, equally -- end up dead. I thought the author did a great job of making it realistic. I couldn't help thinking about what the "movie-style" endings would have been like vs. how she actually did it. For example, in a movie, the bit where the main Nazi character finally gets his comeuppance would have been played for maximum viewer satisfaction, so you could really feel vindicated about it. But in the book, it just falls in with all the rest of the brutality that's going on; and she doesn't linger on it, the way a movie would, so you can't savor it. It just goes by. Similarly, there's a subplot about a little girl who gets separated from her family, and if it were a movie, the Catholic nuns who are secretly hiding Jewish children in their orphanage would find a way to reunite the family -- but it's not a movie, so that doesn't happen either.
Anyway, I guess I make it sound pretty depressing, and parts of it are, but it's beautifully written and very moving. I would recommend it.
I could go on and on (ha ha...state the obvious much?) but that's enough of an update for now....