Happy Thanksgiving

My Native American and I have plans this afternoon to

make 6 pies (pumpkin and apple),

and laugh our heads off watching Elf.

And then my other darlings will be home

and we're going to eat chicken noodle soup

and 1 pumpkin pie

and laugh our heads off watching Elf again.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Word of the Week: Sanguinely

sanguinely /adv./  cheerfully optimistically.  assuredly.  buoyantly.  confidently and enthusiastically. expectantly.  lively.  hopefully.  also with reddish or ruddy color, floridly.

sanguinely  /adj./  1.  I think perhaps I had a hard time with this word this week, because the word itself doesn't sound sanguine to me at all.  The middle syllable in particular sounds like you opened a box of something distasteful and reminds me of dissecting frogs in 7th grade.  And so the week did not go sanguinely, at least for me.  There were moments spent in the exact opposite way in fact.  But we woke to rain this morning, sanguinely pattering on the roof and skylights, dark clouds covering everything, and so I am sanguinely publishing this post and hoping for days and days of rain and turkey and games around our kitchen table.

sanguinely  /adj./  2.  Olivia was delighted at her viola lesson this week to be invited to play at the big Christmas recital.  Her teacher has been astounded at her progress and believes she's ready to perform.  Olivia, of course, sanguinely accepted the invitation, beamed all the way home, and has been madly practicing the can-can ever since.

sanguinely  /adj./  3.  Savannah had her second grade "Johnny Appleseed" play this last week.  She wanted to memorize her part and spent a good part of the week pacing the house reciting lines about John Chapman's life.  She narrated beautifully and did her own share of sanguinely beaming.  The highlight of the play, though, came when David cancelled a meeting and surprised her by showing up.  He said when he walked up he had never seen such a grin on her face.  I am including a video of her part for her grandparents whom, I'm sure, will sanguinely applaud me for doing so.  Please notice the scenery that I helped create.  David was duly impressed of course. 

sanguinely  /adj./  4. Caleb and I spent more hours than I care to think about working on his aerospace project this week.  He and his team are sanguinely predicting a big win at the competition next week, but I am nervously worrying about all the "black holes" in our research and plans.  But there is little we can do now.  We have built and rebuilt and typed and retyped and thought and rethought, plus glued and sawed, and drilled, and mod-podged, and watercolored, and scale drawinged, and made a gazillion trips to Home Depot.  All that's left is the bibliography (which is substantial) and securing the solar panels (which are sadly skewampus).  Truth be told, I would find an "honorable mention" downright miraculous.  I keep telling the boys that this is just a learning experience, but their enthusiasm will not be dampened.

This was the state of my feet on Monday night after a day of helping 11-year-old boys spray paint.  They came clean, but my garage floor will never be the same.

sanguinely  /adj./  5.  On Saturday we drove down to Tucson to visit Daniel (my cousin) and Carol (his wife) and their lovely girls.  We went to watch the BYU vs. Utah game (we don't have any kind of cable) on their large theatre screen and have dinner.  The girls disappeared shortly after our arrival, emerged for dinner, and shed a few tears at our leaving.  When I announced that it was time to go, they said, "What?!" with utter shock and consternation.  BYU lost horribly to their big rivals, but David took it okay.  In fact, when we left to drive down he rather un-sanguinely said, "I have a bad feeling about this." (Meaning the game, not the car ride.)  They live in near some gorgeous mountains covered in saguaros, and this gorgeous specimen is right in front of their house.

sanguinely  /adj./  6.  On Sunday night, David and I attended "Priesthood Preview" with Caleb who will turn 12 this year and receive the Aaronic priesthood.  This was, of course, one of those moments that kind of stops in your tracks and you wonder "What just happened here?"  In the middle of the meeting they asked the boys to stand together and sing "Called to Serve."  Caleb sanguinely belted out his part, regardless of the other quiet, tentative, 11-year-old voices around him.  When the other boys looked at the floor or blushed shamefully at each other, Caleb stood up tall, looked straight at us and sang out his testimony.  I was busting.  I love that he knows who he is.   

"Cross Your Fingers for Rain"

That's what Olivia hollered as she went out the door this morning.

It's cloudy this morning, which I don't think has happened since like last February or so. 

And in honor of that and in case of rain, Olivia wore an extra scarf today in addition to the one she usually wears.  You can't be too careful.

In other news, I'm still half-dressed.  (You're never fully dressed without at smile, you know.) And the word of the week has failed me, as I have not done anything sanguinely the past week or so.  (Just ask David: yesterday he brought me a jamba juice and I growled at him.  In my defense though, I asked for 2 inch 6/32" screws., and he brought jamba juice.  Jamba juice, though fruity and delicious, cannot hold a leaning space station upright.

But later, if I can get my kitchen floor mopped, and the laundry off the floor and out of the doorway and possibly even folded, and get organized for our space station work meeting this afternoon, then I will publish a sanguine post.  Even if it's only about all the darlings in my life who continue to be sanguine even in the face of my frustrated grumpiness.  Pray for peace, people everywhere.  I had big plans to be ready to do my Thanksgiving grocery run today as well, but I'm not sure I'm quite up to that, emotionally or otherwise.  Perhaps that will leave groceries and pie making all for tomorrow, an unprecedented occurrence, but that's about the state of things. 

And now for your enjoyment, a diagram of my life:

 

 1.  my neglected sewing machine...I see you over there and I miss you.

2.  the quilt that used to hang on that bare yellow wall...it was the victim of a sad watercolor incident and so had to be taken down for cleaning and drying.  It still has not been rehung.

3.  the leaning tower of space stations...it rotates, but it lists to the left.  I spent four hours yesterday trying to reinforce and shore it up, to no avail.  I'm just going with it now.

4.  the worst drill in the entire history of drills...what I wouldn't give for a seriously powerful drill that you could PLUG IN. 

5.  my missing drill bit...I spent a good thirty minutes looking for it yesterday.

6.  the jamba juice David bought me instead of 6/32" screws...I was so ticked off I just let it melt without drinking a bit of it.  I'm crazy like that.

7.  the dreaded floam...this stuff was supposed to be the regolith in the bottom of the space station but it was just a disaster.  Curse the makers of floam and while I'm at it, I also curse Martha's double sided tape.  Heaven help me.

8.  mod podge...can't have a project without it.  David went to the store on Saturday to procure this bottle.  He was like, "Mod Podge?  What's mod podge?"  I said, "Just ask someone."  It is a testament to his graciousness that he ran the errand at all.

9.  the detritus of the space station project...the inside of my brain looks about the same.

10.  a pile of dowels...they are the witnesses and victims of several failed attempts.  Someday perhaps they will have a chance to tell their story.

Half-Dressed

Editor's Note:  I wrote this last week (Friday morning) but never published it because I thought it was too ridiculous to share.  However, given my current state of distress and emotional instability (who me?), this post sounds downright sensible.  Now that's just plain scary.

_________________________________________

Okay, I should just be moving on.

That's what David says.  But I'm a fusser.  And I fuss the most with myself.  And I just can't seem to let things be.

Last night went okay.  I'm sure you're all dying to know. 

I had several dreams about the talk before the actual talk and in some of them it went okay and in some of them it was not so good and in some of them I was naked.

Last night I did manage to remember my dress.

Although I did forget my slip and perhaps that was the problem right there.  It was a half-dressed talk.  It could have been worse.  Naked definitely would have been worse.  But it could have been better. 

Yesterday Caleb said, "So are you ready for your talk?"

I said, "Sort of."

He said, "So that means you're done writing it, but you don't like it?"

I looked out the car window and nodded.

He said, "I thought so."

And so I want to know how can a person like me be allowed to raise human beings.  I'm only half-dressed myself.

Last night when I came home and tearily explained how it went to David he asked me how long it had been since I had eaten.  Seriously, it must by trying to be married to a half-crazy, half-dressed girl with blood sugar issues. 

Add all that to a few half-baked ideas about humanure and space station trusses made of buckypaper, and you've really got yourself a mess.

My Life by the (Metric) Numbers. So There.

Note:  Please be advised that CIM wrote this all by herself.  RIM is already telling me that I will regret it in the morning.

Tonight I read that the "representative habitation module" for the space station needs to be "to scale (metric)."  I told David, "I have no idea what that means." 

So there.

But here's my life by the numbers, metric and otherwise:

In the last 3 weeks

I've been to Home Depot at least 10 times,

and Target only once.

Which is just plain weird.

(Today I thought, "I'll just walk around Home Depot and see if there is anything that might be helpful."  Which is also just plain weird.  Weirder still, I found what I was looking for.  So there.)

I have 1

30-40 minute talk to give tomorrow night

and 0 idea of what to say.

I do know that Caleb's space station designed for 100 people

is 5,090 meters squared

and will need about 2 billion liters of air

and 8,030 kilograms of potatoes,

but still 0 idea of what information might be useful to a roomful of faithful women. 

So there.

(Those last two lines just took the wind out of my sails.  I've lost my belligerence.  When I started this post I had a good head of steam going.  But now I'm just feeling small and scared.)

But I'm going to rally.  Here goes:

The good news is that the 83 cm-in-diameter space station

is actually now rotating at 2 rpms all by itself,

and I have 36 hours before I have to think about it again.

And also (in regards to the talk and not the space station),

that the Lord has never, not once,

left me alone.

So there.