Vignettes

One word description of the last week: cold! And I do mean, cold. Maybe not by Arctic standards. Or Maine standards. Or by Himalayan standards. But by Seattle, Washington standards, the temperatures that dropped into the teens this last week and froze our world solid definitely qualify as "cold!" With an exclamation mark.

Peter innagurated the cold snap early in the week by setting out a couple of buckets with varying levels of water. He was hoping they would freeze solid. Only the shallow one did, but he is still hoping. The cold isn't quite over yet.

He is also chipping off chunks of ice and saving them...just to have them, I'm not sure why. He calls it his ice collection and he is rather proud of it. Today was the first time Mom had heard about the ice collection.

"Ice collection? Where?" she wanted to know.

Dead silence reigned for a moment, then all the kids said in unison, "In the freezer."

****

I was asking Abigail last night what she was going to wear to church today.

"Oh," she replied, vaguely, "a bunch of your stuff."

When I first saw her this morning, I found a "bunch" of my "stuff" rather an understatement. She was even wearing my jewlery.

She grinned, "I decided this is 'Wear Katie's Stuff Day.'"

I love having a sister.

****
One of my bad bad habits is bringing my stuff in the door, dumping it on a nearby chair, and forgetting to ever put it away. The other night, as I was heading down to bed I happened to notice my stuff on the chair.

"Oh," I said, "I'd better grab that. I want to be a good example, after all."

Paul and John laughed.

"Good luck with that," Paul said, dubiously.

"I was just about to say that doesn't sound possible," John said, politely.

They gave each other a high five. I rolled my eyes, but I love having brothers too.

Life. Is. Hard.

One thing about our office building at work, we share a "lunch room" with several other companies. The thing about the lunch room is that it requires any of us who may want to go there to maneuver through six doors (three of them locked--it's a secure environment) and walk outside the building to get to it. Most of us drink water (some of us a lot of water) and most of us like the ice and filtered water obtainable in the lunch room. So a lot of trips to the lunch room end up happening at our place.

Because of the trouble involved in fetching anything from the lunch room, several of us usually take turns getting each other something to drink. When it is my turn, I do my best to fulfill orders accurately, and I usually manage it well. It helps having long fingers when it comes to balancing several full cups while unlocking, opening, and closing multiple doors.

But I do run into problems with any orders for a "half glass." I want to fulfill the request "just right" and there are so many difficulties with measuring "half a glass."

Should I measure a half from the top of the glass? Or is it half of what is usually a full glass which really isn't all the way to the top of the glass? What if the cup is narrower at the bottom than the top--if I measured a half visually that wouldn't be a real cubic half, would it? What if ice is required--do I allow for the displacement created by the ice? What if it is soda--how much extra should I pour out because of what will gradually be lost in volume as the fizz dies down? And if I am measuring from the top of the glass, not allowing for a narrow base, allowing for ice, and not allowing for soda, how will that half glass look different from a half glass where, say, I measure from what is normally a full glass (which really isn't to the top of the glass), allow for a narrow base, allow for ice, and allow for fizz?

I have yet to solve all of these problems satisfactorily in my own mind, but no one has complained yet.

Made For Walkin'

Ok, so life is not as boring as my last post (maybe) maybe it sound.

Nor is life depressing.

Except in the shoe department.

I have been looking for replacements for my very plain pair of dress shoes for about a month and a half. I spent about ten dollars on my newly retired pair almost a year ago. They served me well, but you really can't ask for more than a year out of any $10.00 pair of shoes. If you actually wear them, that is.

So, I started looking. Shoe stores, department stores, speciality stores. I feel like I've been everywhere. It seems that nowhere is there an ordinary pair of inexpensively priced, conservatively colored, 8 1/2 narrow sized, pretty business-like styled shoe to be found.

In desperation, I settled for a decent pair of shoes on sale for $30.00. I was reasonably pleased with them until I wore them to work for the first time. Perhaps a squeak in your shoe might be acceptable if you worked in a factory, but in a quiet office it sounds something like gunfire.

I am currently deciding which of my shoe-shopping criterium to compromise on. Since price and size are somewhat non-negotiable, I'm thinking the break will have to come in style. Maybe I wouldn't look so bad in neon orange spike heels after all?

Meanwhile, I'm making do with an old pair of shoes my sister outgrew. They are half a size too large and a shade too blue. But they don't squeak and they aren't a year old pair of ten dollar shoes.

So, if I run into you on the street one of these days, kindly overlook my shoes? I'm just saying.

Plain Speaking

There is very little worthy of general interest to report in my little universe-let.

I get up every day and go to work, except on Saturday when I sleep in if I am lucky. And Sunday when I sorta kinda sleep in then get up and go to church where I spend the majority of the day. Work has been increasingly challenging and therefore increasingly enjoyable to me. When I am not at work or church, I spend most of my time reading, writing, cooking, talking, playing games, and putting off various projects. Sometimes there is a social event thrown in the mix. On Tuesday evenings, I volunteer at a local ministry whose mission is to be a help and support to women who are faced with unplanned pregnancies, and babies of same. My family, with whom I spend the majority of any spare time I happen to have, are all well with nothing especially reportable going on. If you were to hang out at our house, you would hear random snips of information about jobs, school, things we have learned, people we know, things we need to accomplish, and enthusiastic discussions about controversial issues especially those pertaining to politics or religion. When everyone else is quiet (which is rare with Peter and I in the house), John talks and tells us about his passion--computer programming. I cannot elaborate, because that is a language I neither speak nor understand.

Resolved?

Some years I make "New Year's Resolutions," some years I don't. Usually I don't. I've heard various logical arguments for and against the practice, but the main reason I don't is because by the time I've narrowed the possibilities down to what I might resolve if I was going to resolve it is really too late to resolve because the time in which I could have resolved if I was going to resolve has already passed. So then it's not technically a "New Year's Resolution" any more. It is reduced to merely "an-area-in-my-life-that-needs-to-change-so-I-am-going-to-start-working-on-that-now." I'd like to point out that this does not make New Year's Resolutions a good topic for everyday, ordinary small talk with me.

"No, I didn't make a New Year's Resolution. Instead, I isolated an-area-in-my-life-that-needs-to-change-so-I-am-going-to-start-working-on-that-now. Do you have an-area-in-your-life-that-needs-to-change-that-you-are-going-to-start-working-on-now?"

One area-of-my-life-that-needs-to-change these days is that of exercise. I'm starting-to-work-on-that by getting up forty-five minutes early and walking.

There are a few other things I need to work on too. In fact, I seem to have an endless supply. Wanna have some of mine?