Word of the Week: Passel

passel  /n./  an indeterminately great amount or number. a lot. multiplicity. a great deal. abundance. profusion. jillion. ream. heap. peck.

passel  /n./  1.  I have a passel of posts in my head.  I told David that I might as well just give up.  He told me it's only been four days since my last post, that I can't be that far behind.  He has (luckily) never been inside my mind.  He'd be shocked at how much my brain can produce in four days time.  And most of it crazy.

passel  /n./  2.  This week I had my one year blogiversary.  (I meant to do a whole post on it, but I had a peck of things to catch-up on after returning from Houston and Halloween stole the rest of the week.)  There are so many things I love about this milestone, not the least of which is the passel of daily, seemingly ordinary moments that make up my life, now real and recorded, forever.  Because of this blog I have more photos, I am more introspective, I am more kind (even to myself), I am more aware of my present, and I have fewer regrets.  That's a passel of reasons to keep going.

passel  /n./  3.  I had a great time at Quilt Market with my aunt and my mom and felt (above all) extremely useful, which is, occasionally, a really nice feeling to have.  I came home with a passel of new projects and ideas and handmade Christmas gift ideas.  Now I just need a passel of free hours to get to them.    

passel  /n./  4.  My favorite moment of the Halloween festivities this week came on Wednesday when Ethan and I went hunting for four perfect pumpkins among the passels of them at our local farmer's market.  We had a little carving party on Thursday night.  My parents came for dinner, and as payment we required them help one of the kids clean out and carve their pumpkin.  Divide and conquer, as it were.  My mom wondered out loud how she did it with nine of us.  I always wonder that.  No matter the subject.  We had pumpkin pie for dessert (Ethan's idea) which turned out to be the perfect ending.

passel /n./  5.  My children celebrated Halloween this week (a separate post altogether), and I celebrated it being over.  Now I just have a passel of candy that I need to discretely get rid of.  Usually I just let my kids eat themselves sick for two days and have done with it, but this year they got so much, we've still got a giant bowl full.  I'm already tired of the wrappers, the smashed-in goo, and the chocolate fingerprints around my house.  Really, I just don't get the point of it at all.  Boo.

passel  /n./  6.  David and I have been sick for the last couple of days.  Nothing serious.  Just complete fatigue, sore throats, headaches.  But feeling bad enough to require a passel of naps.  I was in and out of consciousness all afternoon yesterday.  During these naps I had a passel of disconcertingly bad dreams, one yesterday that is still haunting me and may have been the worst I've ever had, and one today which was all about the word "ascribed."  (Yes, really.)  I'm finally feeling a bit better, (David thinks this is all due to the medicine he force fed me) but I'm now filled with dread and that slightly panicky feeling that I've lost more hours than I'll ever be able to make up. 

I'm Coming

It may be a bit  disconcerting  for some of you checking my blog to see that I still haven't posted the word-of-the-week, or anything else for that matter.

I have been sick. 

And then subsequently overwhelmed.  There is no one to do my job when I am out sick.

(Except my mom who brought dinner on Tuesday.  Bless her.)

So, I'm coming.

I'm coming.

Slowly.

I've got a box of peaches that are on the edge of rot.  They're first.

Behind Again

My word-of-the-week post should already be up, but there are a couple of other posts I need to do first.  My brain insists upon it...they're filed in order, see?

I tried to write a couple of them last week, but alack and alas, it did not happen.

So they're coming, but first I have to fold the laundry, get the kids a snack, help Caleb and his friends with their aerospace challenge project (ha!), and by then it will be time to take him to swimming, get dinner on the table, and have family home evening. 

But after all that, I intend to write those posts.  Well.  At least one of them.  Let's be realistic.

SPT: Because of a Blogger, Tabletops

I almost forgot it was actually Tuesday, but I remembered just in time.

Lots of bloggers have changed my life in lots of beautiful ways...this week Lelly's challenge focuses on home decor and tabletop ideas we've been inspired by as we've traipsed through the homes and backyards of other bloggers.  As I vacuumed through my house today, I remembered this post that Barb wrote last fall.  When I read it, I thought it was so *brilliant* I immediately went out and bought these two candles and we joyfully copied her candlelight dinner tradition throughout our winter.  I hope to add a couple more candles this year (it was a bit dark last year) and can't wait for those dark evenings to creep up on us.

By the by, I find it quite appropriate that my tabletop is brighter per Barb, since reading about Barb's life has brought nothing but more *light* into my life.

Word of the Week: Deprecate

deprecate  /vt./  to express earnest disapproval of; to urge reasons against. to depreciate or belittle. denigrate.  underrate.  pooh pooh. 

deprecate  /vt./  1.  I've always loved this word, especially the "self deprecating" combination, the way it defers and shrugs before it even really gets going, but I'm happy to see its week end.  With "deprecate" on my mind, my inside voices have been too negative and whiny to stand for much longer.   

deprecate  /vt./  2.  I spent much of the week deprecating Squarespace's new V5 version and the difficulties it created in my life.  But by Friday, I had worked out most of the bugs, created a new banner, and figured out the best way to upload pictures.  Whew.  Now if I could only figure out the other issues my computer is having...is it the memory, the modem, or the 10 million megabytes being taken up by Caleb's computer games?  I know just enough about blogging and computers to be dangerous. 

deprecate  /vt./  3.  One of things that David finds most aggravating about being married to me, is the way I deprecate big birthday celebrations.  (I ascribe this to nature and nurture, by the way.)  I find regular life taxing enough, and so I always quail a little bit at the monumental effort required for birthdays.  Especially the parties.  Despite all this, I encouraged Savannah to invite her friends over for a swim party (at my parents' house) on Friday afternoon.  I picked up a pizza and grapes and ice cream bars at Costco and we had an impromptu party with three of her best friends...no invitations, no presents, very little expense, just fun.  I'm expecting my Olympic medal any day now.

deprecate  /vt./  4.  Yesterday I taught my first gospel doctrine class.  And I'm not being the least bit self-deprecating to say that it could have gone better.  For the most part, people just stared at me, like, "Okay lady, go ahead and teach me the gospel.  I'm just going to sit here and watch you make a fool of yourself."  And we had really good material yesterday too...tons to talk about, but apparently I don't inspire that kind of really good classroom discussion.  The highlight of the lesson was when I used colored chalk to diagram the wars and epistles that went back and forth between the four main characters (Moroni, Helaman, Ammoron and Pahoran [my personal favorite]), but that was over in the first ten minutes.  David ran to Walmart for me at 9 o'clock on Saturday night for colored chalk.  Bless his heart.  He wanted to help, but there was just no help for it.

deprecate  /vt./  5.  My sister, Rachel, and I taught another body image class on Tuesday night and had another round of serious technical difficulties.  You'd think by now we'd have it down, but no.  This time we showed up without a cord to connect the proxima to the computer (an fairly important part it turns out) and so I had to call David to come to our rescue.  Even after he brought the cord we still couldn't get it to work and so he came in and tried to help us while I started the presentation.  I told Rachel later that it's either the devil or the Lord trying to stop this presentation and I'm not sure which one it is.  I was immensely grateful for David's expertise and IT support, and felt I ought to take back all the deprecating remarks I've made over the years about not having a "handy husband."

deprecate  /vt./  6.  One of the highlights of my week, again, was watching the Olympics.  I intended to go to bed early last night (I mean really intended), but I thought the closing ceremony was just so incredible that I stayed up and watched.  And then I couldn't leave without hearing Mr. Costas sign off one last time.  We have quite a relationship now and I just couldn't help myself.  (Did you hear the comment about laying the egg in the bird's nest?  Classic.  Be still my beating heart.)  And no matter your feelings about the Olympics in general, you just can't deprecate the efforts of Beijing and the Chinese people in their hosting of these most spectacular games.  I am quite at a loss as to what to do now.

Is That Better?

Pain in the neck:

Well, it seemed like quite a few people were having to scroll over to see my whole blog, so I spent another day in front of my computer cursing squarespace for messing with my life, and tried a new format.  David was so personally happy about the banner change he actually called me from work (a rare occurrence under any circumstance) to express his glee.  I told him I did it just to make him happy.  No, not really.

Pain in my head:

I have had a standing headache for a good three or four weeks.  But it has gotten ridiculous since the Olympics started.  I think this means I need more sleep, but here we are at 10:55 watching men's beach volleyball, and they still have to play one more set.  I think the whole country is going to be in bed by 8 on Sunday night.

Pain as a part of childhood:

Ethan had to get his five-year shots today, and was shocked and hurt that I put him through that.  He ended up with seven bandaids by the time he got all five shots, his finger prick, and a TB test.  Cruel and unusual by anyone's standards, and just brutal for both of us.  He was heartbroken that I "would let them do that to him" (his words) and no matter how "good" it is for him, it is still hard to hold your child tight in your arms and watch the tears roll.  His smile returned after we stopped at Jamba Juice on the way home.  Thankfully, it was not so bad that an "orange dream machine" couldn't make everything better.

V is for Viola and V5

Yesterday I went downtown with Olivia to rent a viola.  I know.  (Rest assured that RIM has already given me the lecture about good money after bad and all that.) But the girl would not be deterred.  We got her a viola and signed her up with a teacher for lessons, because as long as I'm throwing away money renting the instrument, I might as well throw away some more helping her actually learn how to play it. 

She was over the moon...hugging and polishing it the rest of the night.  And then this morning as Caleb was practicing the violin, she pulled out her viola and started "fiddling" away on random strings.  And we could hear her asking Caleb and Savannah, "Does that sound good?"  and then "How about this?  Doesn't that sound good at all?"  (I think the viola actually does have a very lovely, dark, chocolatey sound.)  She can't wait to get started.  Of course it's the "boring middle" and the "excruciating end" that I'm worried about.

And then this morning, a friend from our ward called and said they would sell us their daughter's viola for $35.  Sold!  They got it off Ebay.  I was complete astonishment.  I would never be brave enough to buy an instrument off Ebay...that is a world I neither understand nor trust, but there you go.

In other "V" news, squarespace recently changed their website version from V4 to V5, and while I appreciate their efforts to make my life easier, this has not actually resulted in making my life easier.   I had to reformat my blog (which you may have noticed) and David told me that it no longer all appears on his computer screen at once, that he has to scroll over to see it all...is this universal? In addition, my personal computer is having memory issues and is running slower than usual and so my pages are loading slowly...again, I'm wondering if this is universal.  I'd love some feedback...is my blog loading slower for you and can you see it all on one screen?  And I think I've finally re-figured out how to load pictures, but David also said that they sometimes load excruciatingly slow on his computer as well...and, as an aside, he said he also misses the pink typewriter.  I reminded him (in my sweetest voice) that it is my blog.  He said he was just saying.  Anyway, I'm wondering how V5 is for the rest of you.

Well, I've now used "excruciating" two times in a post written on normal, uneventful Wednesday morning.  I think my work here is done.