Update January 15, 2022

Hi all! Hope you had a great week. Due to politics it was a stressful one for us. Aaron and I had a hard time concentrating on things that needed to be done. I was feeling so sick with a headache and other symptoms over the weekend, that I was almost worried I was coming down with something nasty. But in the end we survived.

I finished listening to Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching, by Mychal Denzel Smith. In this memoir about what it’s like to become a black man in the age of Obama, Smith confronts issues about gender,  sexuality, patriarchy,  and mental illness through the lens of black America. I felt his discussion was well-articulated and was a good book for people who are unfamiliar with the topic, but his arguments about race weren’t particularly new for a well-read individual.

Family Life

Well, I gave up on my first cross-stitch attempt under an onslaught of criticism.  There were two major problems that I’m aware of. D11 pointed out that she didn’t think there was enough space for the entire pattern. I was going to try anyway because it was a close call, and I HAD measured. Second problem was separating the floss. In theory, DMC floss separates into 6 strands but I could only get it to separate into 2 strands. If I separated it more, it just turned into fluff. So I used the entire piece since the pattern said to use two  strands. Apparently that was the wrong choice. So I’m going to retry with one of the strands (which is, in theory, actually 3 smaller strands. Here’s where I surrendered project attempt 1:

The kids were not impacted by the attempted coup on the 6th. I did explain what happened the next morning, and by an hour later D11 had forgotten we’d talked about it. The kids ended up starting school 18 minutes late the next day (I was out for a moment and expected their alarms to alert them of the time.) I jokingly told the kids to tell their teachers that their dad was distracted by the attempted coup, and M8 actually did that! 🤣😂

On Friday night,  we decided to destress by having a movie night. We watched Die Hard and Terminator 2. M8 loved Die Hard and D11 loved T2. M8 used an oven for the first time that night. He wanted more baked fries, and I told him he could have them if he baked them on his own. So he did (with a little assistance). I wasn’t even tempted to run up behind him and yell “DON’T BURN YOURSELF!!!” unexpectedly, as I am when D11 sticks something into the oven. (Mind you, I’ve never done this, I just feel tempted to sometimes.)

I have mixed feelings about the impeachment. I like the idea of him losing his ability to run again, but I feel that if it’s just a token impeachment, it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars. However, we celebrated the potential downfall of Trump’s aspirations at a second term with s’mores and a movie night. We watched Encino Man.

Found this on the livingroom floor the next morning:

Apparently someone was eating floor crumbs?

D11 had her very first babysitting job this week. 4 hours at $7/hour. She enjoyed herself, and was really excited. She also has two other people interested. Maybe $7 was too little of a charge? We’ll work with it until she has some references, though.