December is a messy month. It’s all filled up with homemade food potlucks and Secret Santas for people you don’t know and uncomfortable extended family gatherings and torturous Girl Scout Mommy and Daughter dinners that go on for hours and don’t have near enough alcohol involved. Students are wiggy and bouncing off the walls because all they can think about is sleeping in for three weeks straight and all the Xbox and Playstation games they’ll get to play. Teachers try to keep everyone focused as their own focus wanders (thinking about sleeping in for three weeks straight). Meanwhile, we try to get all the Christmas shopping and shipping done in time. It’s a psychotic time of year.
Add in to that a soccer tournament that no one planned (and that was kept a secret by the Ex until after she’d played the first game). Yes, the girlchild played 3 games on Sunday, one on Saturday. I made it to the last game, where they won 1st place. It was an evening game, so most of the pictures suck, but I have some nice blurry in-motion pictures of my daughter pushing back. She played up in an Under-13 league (she is only 11) and we finally had girls who were bigger than she is. We had been telling her to watch her brother in action, because he is the King of the Legal Body Slam (if you’ve got bulk, you might as well use it). She followed instructions for once…
She’s on the right. Notice the lean…and the foot placement. Yeah baby. She’s not playing soccer again (apparently) until mid-January. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Here are two more of her ornaments…
She started with the fishies and they were a hard way to start, but she got the beading down just fine. There are three fishies on there. We need to work on her lazy daisy stitch…
Here are my three crazy fans, still in need of finishing and beads.
I don’t get to stitch on Monday nights…wanna know why? See pile of grading below. Pile on the left is done (smaller pile). Pile on the right is not (sucks).
I was planning to get a whole bunch of grading done on Saturday and Sunday and then the soccer thing arrived.
I did draw on the soccer field…
the lights. Then I was too busy watching the game. I drew the week before Thanksgiving…
but I didn’t like where it was going. I did like the thing developing on the left, though, so over Thanksgiving I tried that one out again…
It’s not done. OK. I’m tired again.
My son used to track me down in the house with his little notebook and ask me what I wanted him to invent. I suggested robots to clean, robots to cook, a fridge that magically appeared food when you ran out. Tonight I asked him to take this…
the screen on my stationary bike…and set it up so I can surf Google Reader while I’m riding. Riding seems to be the wrong word when I’m not going anywhere. He laughed and said I should hold my laptop on my lap. It might go up and down a bit, he said, but he seemed to think it was a helpful idea. I guess I will just have to read my books instead.
