A heroic amount of clementines get eaten at the Woodings’ household
at Christmas time. Damian is carrying on the tradition.
22 December 2007

It is 4am local time (GMT), and I am wide awake.  I have been awake all night.  This is not a good thing.  My children will be getting up soon to open Christmas presents from Santa.  And then we are going to Great Grandma and Great Grandpa’s house for lunch.  Then back home to open the rest of the Christmas presents when Uncle Ben and Auntie Allison get here, followed by a large Christmas feast.

In other words, I have a very full social day ahead of me on no sleep.  I’m a shy, introverted nerd.  I need sleep to be “on form” during social events.  For extroverts, parties are food for the soul; for introverts, parties are work.  Don’t get me wrong, introverts enjoy parties, but we tend to be tense and nervous.  Lack of sleep just compounds the problem.

This is the first time I have been this badly jetlagged.  The jetlag is always a hassle, but I’ve never been awake at 4am before.

Oh well.  At least it’s Christmas.  Everyone should be in an extremely good mood and my lack of coherence or response may go unnoticed.

Merry Christmas. 🙂

I don’t usually write political blog entries, but every now and then, I get a real sense of civic duty — a strong feeling that I must attend and participate in an event in order to consider myself a responsible American.  When I read about the Hutto Residential Facility and the candlelight vigil being held to protest, I got that feeling again.

Since I’m actually slightly apathetic and lazy by nature, you’d think I would ignore these internal summonings.  But they are always too strong and persistent.  So off I go to be counted, dragging my family with me. 🙂

Here is the link to the video describing the Hutto facility.

And here is the link describing the vigil protesting the facility.

I have small children, so I don’t think I will go for the entire event.  Our family’s presence there serves two purposes: 1) to be counted, especially if any media show up; and 2) so the families inside the facility can see and hear us.  I’m trying to figure out what part we need to be there for in order for those two things to be accomplished.

When I called Matt and told him that I wanted to go on this protest, he said, “You are your mother’s daughter and your grandmother’s granddaughter.”  I said, “I know!  I thought of that too!”  I remember going with Mom in the ’70s when she would protest when were kids.  We would play around on the grass while all the adults protested.  And my grandmother, who is 79-years-old, still attends protests and is politically active.

I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. 🙂

Our whole family has had such a great weekend, and it’s not even half over yet.  Our weekend started yesterday, Friday, at 5pm.  Carla and Deb took the kids for the whole night while Matt and I went out for the annual HotSchedules Christmas party.  I love all the HotSchedules parties because they are always full of hugs, food, amazing people, and funny stories.  So we had a whole evening full of hugs, food, amazing people, and funny stories.  And we stayed the night in a hotel… without children.  It was very romantic.

And when we got home this morning at 9am, Deb and her crew were here.  It was Deb, Lins, Kels, Justin, Sean, and Sophia.  Logan had stayed the night as well.  We made a big breakfast, and Carla and Clara joined us.  And we had a fun, happy day with our family.  Some family pictures:

Justy with the magic touch putting baby Clara down for a nap.
08 December 2007

Lily and Sophia drawing together.
08 December 2007

Sean holding the top part of the fountain so Damian can’t knock it over.
08 December 2007

Sean, Carla, Justin, and Damian on the back porch.
(Baby Clara is there too, asleep in Justin’s lap.
You can see her little foot.)
08 December 2007

Kelsey with her new black-brown hair color
which I think looks really good on her.
08 December 2007

I couldn’t decide which Kelsey expression I liked better,
so I posted both of them.
08 December 2007

More of Sean, Justy, and the kids.
08 December 2007

All of the wonderful, amazing, perfect cousins.
08 December 2007

We’ve had a wonderful wonderful weekend.  Really wonderful.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that we met A.J. Vallejo last night.  I told Matt that Vallejo is a part of Austin culture, like Leslie or Magnolia Cafe.

Matt really is becoming an Austinite. 🙂

Lani in the back garden.
30 November 2007

I think I use the excuse of “lack of time” as a procrastination tool. I am a master procrastinator.  I have evolved the skill of procrastination into an art form.  I should be studied.

What if I didn’t let “lack of time” be an option?  I don’t know if that is even in my personality mix.  I’m not a “do or die” kind of person; I’m more like a “whatever” person.

But I do want to sew.  And I do want to write and podcast.  And my current personality flaws really are getting in the way of that dream.

I hate changing my habits.  It’s such a pain in the ass… I mean, it takes real effort – focused, persistent effort — to change yourself and your habits.  But, of course, the flip side of that is to just remain unhappy, and that certainly is more of a pain in the ass. 😉

Surely I can put forth a little focused, persistent effort for the sake of my dreams… surely…

Putting up the Christmas tree
02 December 2007

Shelrie came over yesterday.  I love it when she visits for several reasons:  1) She’s vegetarian, and Matt always makes a really nice vegetarian meal for her.  Yesterday he made a very delicious vegetarian stir fry and we had his yummy banana bread for dessert.  2) Shelrie’s conversation is always enjoyable for everyone.  And 3) since we’ve known each other since we were 15-years-old and we were roommates in college as well, we reminisce.  I have only two other friends, Rick and Shelly, that I’ve known as long as Shelrie.  The older I get, the more I cherish my long-time friends.

Last night, we pulled out the old photo albums and thumbed through some pictures of us in high school and college.  It was really fun, saying “Oh my gosh, do you remember when we did that?” and “Oh my gosh, do you remember her?”

When my babies were born, I received several presents — books and calendars — that were for recording your child’s achievements: first word, first step, weight, height.  The women that gave them to me told me how much they really liked their baby books, and how they love to look back at them and see how the children have grown.

When I received the gifts, I was very grateful because the thought was so kind, but I knew I wouldn’t use them.  By the age of 36 (that’s how old I was when Lily was born), I already knew that this was not how I recorded my life.  That’s also when I realized that everyone has a different way to record their life.  Some people scrapbook; some people journal; some people use memory books.  I take pictures.  I also blog, but I think that is a secondary method.  I blog mostly to communicate.  But I take pictures to record my life — to remember and cherish.

My photo collection is a mess.  Truly a mess.  It’s in four or five boxes out in the garage, getting ruined.  I need to take the time to organize it.

Also, after going through some of the older photos with Shelrie last night, I realized that many of the photos are crap.  They are terrible photos of scenery.  When I go through the photo collection, I need to pick out the gems and leave the rest.  Otherwise, the gems get lost in the noise.

After Shelrie left, I took out the camera to take pictures of the kids and Matt putting up the Christmas tree, and I realized that I haven’t taken any pictures of Shelrie.  The last picture I have of Shelrie is from ten years ago.  I need to take pictures the next time she visits.

I like recording my life.  It’s fun to look back over the record with old friends. 🙂

…. I can’t even find the words….
I love this photo.
25 November 2007

I wasn’t going to post this evening because I have nothing in particular to post about, but then I took this picture.  I had to post it immediately.  It is one of the funniest and cutest pictures I’ve ever taken of Lily.

So no text really, just a joyful picture.

I love this picture of Clara.
She looks so tiny and delicate in Steve’s hands.
13 November 2007

I feel overwhelmed by my own life.  But how can you feel overwhelmed by your own life?  Aren’t you the one in charge?  Don’t you dictate the schedule?

Apparently not.

The baby continues to be hard work.  Lily, however, is just a dream right now.  She is being so sweet and adorable.  But anyways, back to the challenges:  we also have Thanksgiving at our house coming up.  And then we have the trip to England for Christmas.

Wait a minute.  It’s the holidays!  Of course I’m feeling stressed and overwhelmed!  Okay, I understand now.  It’s just the holidays. 😉

The kids at the park
13 November 2007

I f**kin’ hate MySpace.  I can’t wait until that little pit of hell implodes on itself.  Or until a better social networking site comes along that doesn’t generate busy, annoying, counter-intuitive, ugly webpages.  Oh, and this dream social networking site of mine would not allow loud, irritating songs to play instantly when you open the user’s page.  I have never seen such bad web design ever as I see on every MySpace page I visit.

I don’t blame the users; I blame the evil of MySpace that is its crappy engine.  It generates those blinding, useless, confusing, and, once again, ugly and annoying pages.

Okay, I’m done ranting.  I have to use MySpace because it is so ubiquitous.  So, of course, several of my family members have MySpace pages.  Just recently Ben created a MySpace page, and I was forced to navigate the bog waters of that site again.

Bleh.

Daddy and Damian
Surfside Beach, Texas
03 November 2007

I have a small blog…. a very small blog.  If you look at the Google PageRank bar, there is not one pixel of color in it.  I have maybe 10 family and friends who visit to read what’s going on in my life, and this number includes my husband.  And yet, my insignificant blog gets spam.  In fact, it gets so much spam, I had to install that little word-test thing (or, for the more technically savvy, a “captcha” test).  I was getting hundreds of spam comments before I installed this.  Hundreds.  To my insignificant nothing blog.

Now, as if that was not interesting enough, the story doesn’t end there.  I still get about 25 spam comments each week.  That means that somewhere out there in the world, it is somebody’s job to add spam comments to blogs.  The captcha test is created so a spambot can’t pass it; a human is required.  Does spam generate that much money that underlings can be hired?

And here’s the last interesting bit to the story: the blog entry that is always — every time — hit for comment spam is “Zen and the art of underwear shopping.”  Maybe if I hadn’t used the word “underwear” in any of my blog titles, I wouldn’t be getting any spam.

Papa, the master babysitter, watching
Transformers with the kids.
10 November 2007

My most recent discovery:  if you write a blog entry in the middle of the night during “that time of the month,” it tends to be melancholy and dramatic.