My Monday doctor’s appointment found me a very productive painkiller prescription finally. It’s a good thing, because I always do tons of physical activity with Nefarious (gotta offset the enormous meals I cook somehow), which can be draining without them… Today we spent about two hours running up and down the sled hill — sledding until well after dark. A while back we’d gotten her a new high-speed sled and she finally got to try it while and I used our old inflatable sled. There was also the fun of the other kids at the park — sharing rides, trading and comparing sleds, and so on.
I’m dealing right now with a delicate parenting conundrum… With a child that’s being raised in two households, how does one explain the use of corporal punishment (ie. spanking, mouth washing with soap, and such) in the household one has no control over it, without speaking ill of the other household? Any well-balanced advice is most definitely appreciated.
And to finish the entry on a high note, the ‘u’ key on my keyboard has started working again after being dead for a few weeks since I poured a cup of water on it… It’s been quite a headache, since I was operating by pasting a ‘u’ into the clipboard, and just hitting “CTRL+V” every time I needed it. I kid you not. Big headache. Even with all the oxycodone.
It’s so nice having Nefarious back home. After rolled up crepes and jam for breakfast, we headed down to the Natrel rink on the waterfront again for many hours of messing around and skating… We used our blades to chop blocks of snow/ice and Nefarious build herself a throne to watch the rink from, and we had tons of races. After that, off to our “secret” pirate ship park, and then to T&T for sushi lunch. We brought most of it back to share with Caitlin, but Nefarious ate a seaweed salad and some roe on the way home. The plan had been to go sledding as well, but it was nearly four by the time we were ready, and we ended up getting into video games instead… We played Wipeout HD (which she plays at the maximum possible speed), Rampage, and Mortal Kombat II (which we downloaded and had plenty of fun with after she realized how much fun punching each other is in Rampage) — all in two player mode — and then Nefarious played Littlest Pet Shop (no interest in that one personally!!!) as I made supper, and then we finished reading one of the books she got for Christmas before bed.
Tomorrow it’s back to school for her, and I’m back at the doctor’s office… I’m going to try and change my family doctor, because my current/old doctor treats me like a junkie and it just makes the whole process of getting help much more unpleasant if I’m in effect being demeaned for it. She’s on vacation, and the doctor substituting for has been really good so I’m going to try and swap permanently.
Oh, and for fans of rare kit cars, I’ve posted some really great stuff on my kit car blog — the Warp 8, the Matula, and the Martare GT in the last few days… I still need to fix the layout though, as the site continues not to work right in Internet Explorer.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
This was my present to myself. I got a bunch of “shocking” presents from Shocking Fun for different people, and the one I self-indulged with was this memory game. It plays a pattern of lights, which you need to repeat, and the pattern gets longer on every iteration… And if you get it wrong, ZAP!, you get a mild electric shock. I love it!
Speaking of “shocking”, when we picked up Nefarious at the airport yesterday, on the way home we were chatting about the various things we did on our respective vacations, and she’s like “Oh, oh, oh!!! I have to tell you the craziest thing! You’re not going to believe this!!!”
“Did you know that Grandma believes in God?” — as if it’s the nuttiest, most hilarious thing she’s ever heard (everyone else in her life is effectively atheist) — “she thinks praying really works!”
Followed by much “can you believe it” laughing…
I suppose Nefarious is in one of the first generations where the vast majority of people she comes in contact with do not believe in a deity of some sort, so the idea of someone believing even in a Christian God is as silly as someone calling out to help from a fairy godmother… She has lots of books on mythology — creation stories from different cultures and such — so from her experience it really is just fairy tales; stories that reflect on the lyrical richness of a society, but have no bearing on the objective reality of the universe. Anyway, it was really very funny to hear her how shocked she was.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
(Slash – “Plans for 2009″)
- Get back in shape… I’ve gotten more than a little chubby in the last year and I don’t feel as good about myself on that level than I’d like to. I’m not unhealthy, but I’ve definitely eaten a few too many cakes in relation to the number of laps I’ve swum.
- Have a fun marriage… Our first idea was to have a Halloween wedding, but on second thought that might be a little silly? There are so many possibilities, but we’d like this to happen in 2009.
- Publish my first children’s book… Either as a collaboration with a writer, or on my own. It’s the illustration that I want to focus on.
- Finish two more books on body modification… The first one (on male genital mods) is 90% done, and the second one (more general interest) is 10% done. This is an easy goal.
- Launch my new company and get it on its feet… After a year of just doing “whatever”, I’m looking forward to really getting back to work on something big.
- Go back to school… I don’t know for what yet — maybe jewelry (setting stones and such as I’d love to extend my art expression into this medium), maybe welding — but I feel like learning some new technical skills that I can’t easily teach myself from a book and experimentation.
I have other things I’d like to do — get a yurt and work on the Cape Breton Island homestead, buy a catamaran — but I think that my legal situation forces me to live my life a little more conservatively that I’d like, so these may not be reasonable goals for 2009.
On a more “serious” level, we have been thinking more and more about becoming foster parents as well… I’m sure those are feelings amplified because Nefarious has been on vacation for two weeks, but I really enjoy children and feel that I could do a great job at it and it would be really rewarding.
I read over my resolutions from previous years (“get fit” seems to be recurring as I do it, and then lapse, and repeat), and I think I have about a 50% success rate on my resolutions in general. I think I’ve been much more realistic this year.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Thanks to Paolo for sending me a shot of his Zentastic shirt!
