At this moment
It is 2:18pm.
It’s 65 degrees outside, and sunny, but cold in my house. I’m wearing long sleeves, tall socks, jeans, and a sweater.
The girls are playing upstairs. Â They still have colds but are feeling a bit better today.
I’m listening to a class about book cover design taught Chip Kidd as I type this. Yes, I’m multi-tasking. He’s covering some really interesting things so far; I’m excited for the rest of the class. I absolutely love his book design, his work is really innovative and interesting.
This is one of his. My copy has a different cover. 🙁
Also his. These just happen to be Japanese, but trust me, you’ve seen his work all over the place.
See? I knew you had.
So far today I: woke up around 7 but didn’t get up until 7:40ish when the girls got up. I was awake for about an hour and a half in the middle of the night last night, laying on the girls’ floor while Tiny coughed, so I was tired. I made the girls breakfast, took a shower, put in 3 loads of laundry and hung them out to dry, cleaned up my room, the computer room, and the bathrooms, and the kitchen. The girls did their “jobs” – they’ve been wanting to earn money, so I came up with some extra jobs that they can do each week. They have 2 jobs to do a day that correlate with the room I’m cleaning that day (we’re off schedule this week because of people being sick). So they caught up on their jobs for the week so far. (For anyone wondering, they have 11 possible jobs and they get 10 yen per job. If they do all their jobs for the week, they get a bonus, so they have to potential to earn 150 yen a week – or $1.50.) Â Then we did school- the regular math/spelling, etc, and then we’ve reached Japan in history, so we talked about the interplay of Korea, Japan, and China at the beginning of the Yamato Dynasty. It’s a period that I actually took a class on in college- well, it was part of the class- but the scope of the class was so huge that I ended up focusing on the literature of the countries rather than the history. Â So it’s nice to revisit it now, albeit in a simpler way. This week in science we’re concentrating on learning the continents and oceans, but since the girls have been on sick days, we’re really only working on continents at the moment. Z pretty much has them down, Tiny’s still working on them. We had lunch and I took down laundry, and got some things ordered for Christmas, and started watching the videos for the class.
I’ve since taken a break from writing this to start working on my project for the class- I think you can see what I’m working on if you go here. Let me know if that link gets you to something you can see. Â We’re supposed to design a cover for our favorite book.
I just remembered, I also managed today to knock a pretty new bird Christmas ornament off of the counter and break it. That made me sad. (Our Christmas tree is covered in birds. Or, you know, it will be, when we put it up. So I was excited to find a “Japanese” bird to add to it.)
It looked absolutely nothing like this, but I have a little owl ornament that kind of looks like this and it’s eyes make me laugh.
I also sewed up some handkerchiefs for the girls out of some super soft cotton that I got for a different project but that ended up being punky to work with, but that ended up being perfect for this. Their poor noses are so red and hurty that I thought fabric would be nicer than tissues. The whole endeavor did leave me questioning the person I have become, however. Apparently I am a person who sews fabric handkerchiefs for her children. Who knew? Â (If this information is in any way making you feel guilty that you don’t sew fabric handkerchiefs for small children, know that every single one of them came out a wonkus square. The handkerchiefs, not the children.)
Speaking of being a “person who”, one of my wonderful friends shared a link to a new book with me and some of our friends, with the comment, “I have a feeling this would be a great book club “read” and might be Maryanne’s new favorite thing.” It was this, and I was in by the end of the  first paragraph, and by the end of the second paragraph I’d ordered it. The rest is just cake.  It should be here tomorrow, and I’m dropping everything to start reading it. The thing that makes me the happiest about all of it though, is that my friend read about it and thought, “You know who this is perfect for? Maryanne!”. I don’t know specifically why she thought that, which elements in particular screamed my name, but I absolutely love recognizing the perfect thing for someone else, and I love it when someone recognizes me in something that I end up being crazy about. Especially because I feel like I have rather random, esoteric tastes sometimes. Its the feeling of being truly known, don’t you think?  Anyway, I’ll let you know how it is.
The girls are now playing in the bathtub. They were playing outside and wanted to play in the water, but – no. So I said they could play in the tub. They are having a grand ol’ time.
Someone next door is practicing “It’s a Small World” on the piano. It’s only the melody, but they’re playing it well, so it’s not painful to listen to. Oh, I typed too soon. They just tried to add a second hand to it. That’s not going so well.
I feel like I’m just rambling at this point, so perhaps I’ll stop and add some pictures in to give you something to look at. What’s going on at your house at this moment?
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