Another pointless entry

Well. I'm tired. I always am the morning after I have to work. The concert last night was in a good spot--a gallery downtown--and the musicians were very nice, even if it was the kind of free improv stuff that my ear has trouble following. We had maybe a dozen people turn up, and we all blamed the rain though the fact of the matter is you just don't get lots of people turning out for that kind of thing. And then I get home late, and the kids are up just as early as always the next morning.

So we're lounging around in pj's right now. I'm trying to get some caffeine into my bloodstream. Paidhi Girl is doing the laundry--a couple of months ago she demanded to know how the washing machine worked. I showed her, and then she said, "No more laundry for you, Mom!" Yep--she intended to take over the whole household's laundry. I've held her to her word, at least for one load a day--which is barely enough to keep up with the family's laundry needs, especially since she tends to put in really small loads, and then she tends to only put in stuff from the top of the pile so that she can do four or five loads without washing any of her brother's underpants, or my t-shirts, or whatever. There's an ankle-deep layer of soap powder on the basement floor, and it takes her twenty minutes to bring stuff up out of the dryer because even though I got her a Paidhi Girl sized laundry basket, she brings the stuff up three socks at a time. Oh, well. Everybody's got to start somewhere. Paidhi Boy is watching his screensaver rain M&Ms and occasionally commenting on it. Another three or four years and it'll be him spilling laundry powder on the floor, but for now he's too little. His jobs involve picking up toys and setting the table, so he's off the hook until lunchtime.

Yesterday afternoon, after running around getting things ready for that night, I came home to find a piece of mail sitting on my keyboard--a completely blank postcard addressed to me. Woohoo! Well, so it's not really a big deal, but what it means is that the kind, wonderful, intelligent, and beautiful folks at DAW have, as they promised in their guidelines, returned my self addressed stamped postcard indicating that they have, indeed received my ms. So now, of course, instead of worrying that the post office lost the results of nearly two years of work somewhere between here and New York I'm worrying about what will happen when someone actually reads it (or some portion thereof). I know that the worst I can get is the polite "doesn't suit our needs" form letter, but a completely irrational part of me is producing imaginary rejection letters that say, "never submit again or we'll be forced to take out a restraining order. Yes, it's that bad," or "we can't buy it, but we're passing it around the office and laughing at it."

Mr. Cameron says I'm being silly. He's right, of course, but there it is.

If all goes right, I get to have a girls night out tonight with a friend of mine. We'd been planning to catch ROTK one more time before it leaves the big screen, but never had gotten around to it. Mr. Cameron will stay home and be the kid-wrangler. They were very good for him last night. Of course, they all went on an exciting trip to the hardware store to buy a new toilet (the tank on our current one just cracked one day, and it's been held together with duct tape for a couple of months now). They also bought a really big package of AA batteries, which delighted Paidhi Boy no end. And then they went to Steak & Shake for supper. So they'd had a big adventure and a treat to tire them out.

Another pointless entry

Well. I'm tired. I always am the morning after I have to work. The concert last night was in a good spot--a gallery downtown--and the musicians were very nice, even if it was the kind of free improv stuff that my ear has trouble following. We had maybe a dozen people turn up, and we all blamed the rain though the fact of the matter is you just don't get lots of people turning out for that kind of thing. And then I get home late, and the kids are up just as early as always the next morning.

So we're lounging around in pj's right now. I'm trying to get some caffeine into my bloodstream. Paidhi Girl is doing the laundry--a couple of months ago she demanded to know how the washing machine worked. I showed her, and then she said, "No more laundry for you, Mom!" Yep--she intended to take over the whole household's laundry. I've held her to her word, at least for one load a day--which is barely enough to keep up with the family's laundry needs, especially since she tends to put in really small loads, and then she tends to only put in stuff from the top of the pile so that she can do four or five loads without washing any of her brother's underpants, or my t-shirts, or whatever. There's an ankle-deep layer of soap powder on the basement floor, and it takes her twenty minutes to bring stuff up out of the dryer because even though I got her a Paidhi Girl sized laundry basket, she brings the stuff up three socks at a time. Oh, well. Everybody's got to start somewhere. Paidhi Boy is watching his screensaver rain M&Ms and occasionally commenting on it. Another three or four years and it'll be him spilling laundry powder on the floor, but for now he's too little. His jobs involve picking up toys and setting the table, so he's off the hook until lunchtime.

Yesterday afternoon, after running around getting things ready for that night, I came home to find a piece of mail sitting on my keyboard--a completely blank postcard addressed to me. Woohoo! Well, so it's not really a big deal, but what it means is that the kind, wonderful, intelligent, and beautiful folks at DAW have, as they promised in their guidelines, returned my self addressed stamped postcard indicating that they have, indeed received my ms. So now, of course, instead of worrying that the post office lost the results of nearly two years of work somewhere between here and New York I'm worrying about what will happen when someone actually reads it (or some portion thereof). I know that the worst I can get is the polite "doesn't suit our needs" form letter, but a completely irrational part of me is producing imaginary rejection letters that say, "never submit again or we'll be forced to take out a restraining order. Yes, it's that bad," or "we can't buy it, but we're passing it around the office and laughing at it."

Mr. Cameron says I'm being silly. He's right, of course, but there it is.

If all goes right, I get to have a girls night out tonight with a friend of mine. We'd been planning to catch ROTK one more time before it leaves the big screen, but never had gotten around to it. Mr. Cameron will stay home and be the kid-wrangler. They were very good for him last night. Of course, they all went on an exciting trip to the hardware store to buy a new toilet (the tank on our current one just cracked one day, and it's been held together with duct tape for a couple of months now). They also bought a really big package of AA batteries, which delighted Paidhi Boy no end. And then they went to Steak & Shake for supper. So they'd had a big adventure and a treat to tire them out.