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Sunday, October 31, 2004 ( 8:40 PM ) Girl Detective I'm taking the leap and I'm going to try and pound out 50K words of a novel by the end of November. One things that's bothering me (ah, as if there's ever just one thing), though, is that Blogger is urging bloggers to blog their nanowrimo novels. Doesn't this defeat the point? Nanowrimo is a crazy deadline so that we novelists can sit down, write like mad and turn off the inner editors. I didn't even spell check my draft when I did it in '02. So publishing the novel is automatically making it harder to turn off that editor and just let the insides out. I understand the urge to do something by the seat of one's pants and still have someone else say, "Hey, that's good." But it's about getting to 50K. And getting to 50K in a month is ugly. I want my novel to be published, but not in a butt-ugly first draft. So in November I'm going to be blogging, and writing a novel, but I will not be blogging my novel. Readers, you are welcome. | ( 8:31 PM ) Girl Detective Lucky vs. Shop Etc. Does the world really need two magazines devoted to shopping? I think not, especially when one is good and one just isn't.Do not judge if you have not read an issue of Lucky. Years ago, I was beyond skeptical when my friend Mod Girl said that she liked Lucky magazine. Shopping, I thought, I don't think so. But when I picked up an issue, I found an accessible, well-written, entertaining magazine. The personalities of the staff were highlighted, and I recognized many of them from the glory days of the late, great Sassy. I've been a regular reader of Lucky ever since. Lucky does a lot of things well. Its photos and copy are clear and inviting. It shows items at a range of prices, featuring bargains from Target right next to 4 figure items from top department stores. Best of all, it is informative and educational without talking down to the reader. Style can be learned, and Lucky is teaching it. When a new magazine on shopping launched this fall, I had to check it out. Shop Etc. had a funky, smaller shape and a nice cover with a variety of items. As I spent some time with the magazine, though, it became clear to me that it was not a worthy competitor to Lucky. Shop Etc. distinguished itself by featuring a lot more home items, and doing in-depth features on a catalog, a store and a website for fashion, home and beauty. Each of these three areas was featured, and there was a complicated explanation for the contents of the magazine, attempting to copy that of a store. Shop Etc. tries to outstrip Lucky by offering much more information on home and beauty, but ultimately it ends up being just too much information. The sheer volume of it is exhausting, not impressive. At its best, Shop Etc. tries to capture the easy vernacular of Lucky's copy, but too often they couldn't carry it off, and I found myself cringing at the forced cliches. I noticed also that they used the same model in several spreads, which is a cost-cutting move that I know about, again thanks to my friend Mod Girl. The photo quality was fuzzy, perhaps because the paper is low grade. I didn't pick up the second issue. My annoyance with Shop Etc. confirmed my high opinion of Lucky. Lucky is not just a good magazine about shopping, it's a good magazine in general. | Wednesday, October 27, 2004 ( 1:56 PM ) Girl Detective Heretical thought I'm beginning to suspect that there are a whole lot of health and beauty products whose job could be done just as well with Dove soap. One bar of Dove can be used as:Facial wash Body wash Hand soap Baby soap Baby shampoo And maybe even as a laundry spot remover and delicates wash. One bar of soap, where now there are five to seven products. Bet you won't see that in the pages of Real Simple. | Friday, October 22, 2004 ( 1:58 PM ) Girl Detective Caught with my pants down, so to speak Hey, I'm the MN blog of the day at City Pages Twin Cities Babelogue. I'm wishing very hard that I'd updated my links. Thanks for the nod, TCB, even though I'm a delinquent linker. Was it your team that took first place at pub quiz this week?| ( 1:31 PM ) Girl Detective On the NaNoWriMo fence Two years ago in November, two important things happened.1. I got knocked up. 2. I participated in National Novel Writing Month and produced a 52K-word novel. The baby's development is going quite well. The novel's is not as good, but doesn't suck. I'm trying to finish a third re-write in hopes of getting it to a point of not sucking enough so that I can send it out. It has already been rejected twice in its "in-progress" state, for a grant and for another writing competition. Also, we just bought a house and moved. In spite of everything, the novel is getting periodic attention. I haven't yet put it in a box to gather dust. For that, I'm proud. Or delusional, perhaps. For the past few weeks, a crazy dream has been swirling in my head. I'd finish the third draft by month's end, send it out, and write a new novel this November during NaNoWriMo 2004. I can clearly imagine dithering over this until well into next month, when it will be too late. I haven't made even the small commitment of signing up at the NaNoWriMo site. I've got an active 14-month old who isn't the best sleeper. Is my dream brave, or impossible? Can I finish editing by month's end, send out a submission packet, and hammer out 50K words in a month? Ooh, Helen Reddy just popped into my head. This whole inspired/insane question is getting out of hand. | Wednesday, October 20, 2004 ( 8:44 PM ) Girl Detective The next three books Since I began to buy books for myself, I have always bought more than I could ever possibly read. That was even before my stint in a used bookstore with an amazing discount. My "eyes bigger than my stomach" book habit got out of control there, and I've been trying to wean myself ever since. I suspect many readers, like myself, have the next three books they are going to read planned. The problem I encounter, though, is that I am not firm in my 3-book plan, so if I buy a book, it may get moved to the top of the list, or may sit, hovering on deck for years. Other things, like author readings, recommendations, friend lendings and library finds, can also wreak havoc with the order of the three.For example, after I finished Cryptonomicon, I wanted to start Quicksilver, The Confusion and System of the World fairly soon. Yet I also wanted to take a break and read something short and fun in the meantime. My husband recommended Get Shorty, so that moved to the #1 spot. I didn't love it, though, and was reading it while we were moving, so it took me quite some time to finish. Then I wanted to read something I'd enjoy. A moms group in my new neighborhood would be reading Zippy, so I went to the library for that, then also picked up The Devil Wears Prada and The Nanny Diaries, thinking they'd be quick, fun reads. Then I heard Karen Joy Fowler was in town, so I got her Jane Austen Book Club and moved it to the top of the list. I nearly picked up two short story collections at last weekend's book fest, or else they would also have moved to the top of the list (though likely been put aside in favor of some more urgent read). Now I'm stopping Prada in the middle and not even starting Nanny Diaries, but instead have picked up Jen Weiner's new book. After that, I swear, I'm starting Quicksilver. But the third book? It might be the Confusion, or I might feel I need a sorbet between books. After reading Fowler's book, I want to read Austen's novels, so I think #3 might be Emma. The third spot remains tantalizingly vague, which could be dangerous. Ostensibly open spots on the reading list usually precede a book binge. Readers, do you know what your next three books are? Are you more constant in your affections with your three book list than am I? | ( 3:14 PM ) Girl Detective Books, books, books One of the reasons I'm so slow to unpack/organize/clean/decorate our new house is that I've been making a concerted effort to read. I had a couple bad books during the summer that put me off, but then I got my groove back and have been pretty steady ever since. I am about to abandon yet another book midstream, and I feel no guilt whatsoever. Life's too busy for bad books. And maybe even for mediocre ones. Here's what's been on my bedside table.Shadow Baby by Allison McGhee. A sort-of sequel to Rainlight. Beautifully written with great characters. Sad, but redemptive. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. LOVED this book about cryptography and WW2. Enjoyed all 1130 pages of the mass market. Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard. My husband and I saw the movie on our first date. Our date was terrific, but the movie was just OK. So was the book. Clever and funny, but dated. It took a long time for the characters to be sympathetic. For Elmore Leonard movies, I much prefer Out of Sight. I don't care if you don't like Jennifer Lopez. It's a good film, and she's good in it. A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, IN by Haven Kimmel. A childhood memoir that's lovely without being saccharine. It's often funny, sometimes sad and skillfully underwritten. The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. She just spoke at last weekend's Twin Cities' Book Fest, so I put this on the top of the list last week. It was a fun read, with substance. Bookish and clever, it made me want to read all the Austen oeuvre. Now, for the book that I'm halfway through but putting down, unfinished: The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. It came out ages ago and was the it book for quite some time, leading a pack of bestseller tell-alls. It took me this long to pick it up because I didn't want to pay for a trendy, poorly written book. I am halfway through, and realize that I don't necessarily want to spend my time on a trendy, poorly written book, either. It's a barely fictionalized account of Weisberger's stint as Anna Wintour's assistant at Vogue. Yes, Wintour may be crazy, but Weisberger doesn't come off any better in her own tale. She's immature, unprofessional, priggish and boring. The writing is adequate. The next book I was going to read was to be The Nanny Diaries, but I think I'll skip it for the same reasons I'm putting down Prada. Yes, I have to admit to not having read it when everyone else has, but is that such a loss? Probably not. Instead, I've picked up Little Earthquakes, by Jennifer Weiner. Weiner is one of the reigning queens of the chick-lit genre. This doesn't mean that her books aren't substantive, though. Weiner's writing is good, her characters are engaging and empathically drawn, and they undergo believable development. Then, finally, maybe I'll feel ready to tackle Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion and System of the World. All 2700 + pages of them. Those should keep me busy for a while. If they're like Cryptonomicon, they'll keep me hyped on geekjoy for quite some time. | Tuesday, October 19, 2004 ( 2:38 PM ) Girl Detective What is it about secondary-character romances? I started watching Joan of Arcadia last season, after reading a review by Lisa Schmeiser on City Pages. I like the show for a lot of reasons. It has good, complex parents, a lead girl played by someone with curves, and a theology that may not be very challenging, but it's not offensive to me either, as is so much of pop culture religion--celebrity kabbalah, ack!As the second season unfolds, though, what's holding my attention is not the sweet romance between Joan and Adam, but rather the prickly, secret one between her brother Luke and her best friend Grace. These two get only a small fraction of screen time, but they're what I enjoy most about the show. I am reminded of the romance between Michael and Maria on Roswell, a show that started off uneven and got decidedly awful from there. I was sad when the rest of the show got so bad that I had to give up on these two characters; a secondary romance cannot justify watching a seriously bad show. But when the show is pretty solid, as is Joan, the secondary romance can be fantastic icing. | ( 8:01 AM ) Girl Detective Desperate Housewives, episode 3 As I suspected, Desperate Housewives is relying heavily on its "guilty pleasure" motif; most of its third episode was stock soap scenes. The adultering wife caught by the neighbor kid, whom she then bribes! The shifty husband of the dead woman, telling his kid to stop asking questions! The harried mom, who foists her hyper kids on the condescending dad! The bitter divorcee, who cuts her husband's head out of all the photos! And on, and on.These stock scenes, culled from a million and one other dramas and soaps, are awful. As is the voiceover, which tells us nothing that the acting hasn't already. There are high points, though, so I have not yet given up on the show. The acting is quite good, thus negating the need for a voiceover to hammer its points home. The writers need to figure out a way to have dead Mary Alice's comments add something, or just take them out. The scene in which Teri Hatcher's character gets locked out of the house naked is awful--there is absolutely no reason that her towel should have gotten ripped off other than writer's cliche. BUT the end of the scene, when the handsome neighbor finds her in the shrubs was terrifically done--funny, good dialogue, good chemistry. Finally, the dinner party scene in which everyone admits to something embarrasing in order to make Marcia Cross's Bree feel better about marriage counselling, was also good. Funny, real, and human. The way that it ended, with Bree cruelly slamming her husband, showed some guts to get that dark. If Housewives can get this vibe going--alternate funny, human stuff with dark, human stuff and avoid the hackneyed merry-go-round of plot points--it will live up to its hype. | Friday, October 15, 2004 ( 1:16 PM ) Girl Detective You're soaking in it After we signed a purchase agreement, we scheduled an inspection and a separate radon test for the house. Our agent didn't push the radon issue, but we thought we'd like to know what we were dealing with. The results from a 48 hour test came back high. The radon guy said that because the previous owners had installed a drain tile system (yay, dry basement!) the best fix was air replacement. Other less expensive options could create a backdraft of CO2 because of the gap from the drain tile. The fix was expensive, and the owners had to be pushed to contribute even a small fraction of it, but we went ahead. While the exact amount of safe/unsafe radon is unclear, there seems to be no dispute that radon is bad. We planned to use the basement, so spending time in radon soup wasn't appealing. Also, depending on how long we stay in the house, a basement chock full o' radon isn't going to be a selling point.The install took most of a day, and the exchange box was bigger than we'd expected. We are glad we have a large laundry room, otherwise things would've gotten really cramped, really fast. It doesn't make much noise. The initial test after the install came back still high. Had we shelled out money and fiddled with the house for nothing? A subsequent, longer test showed better results. We'll get more detail soon. It feels strange that our first fix to the house is for something so nebulous. I've got no before and after pictures for people cruising for house porn. Just a hope that the basement air is fresher, so when I collapse there at the end of the day, I'm just absorbing TV, not potentially toxic amounts of radioactive gas. | Tuesday, October 12, 2004 ( 2:16 PM ) Girl Detective Veronica Mars This teen show on UPN is one of the most intriguing of the new season. It features a tough-talking high school outcast, who helps her private detective dad solve cases. In the premier, we learned what happened to Veronica in the last year: her mother left, her father was fired in disgrace, her best friend was murdered, her boyfriend dumped her, and she was raped at a party after downing a spiked drink. This is not your average teen show. Veronica is played by Kristen Bell, who delivers the sharp dialogue believably. Both her spiky blond hair and sassy attitude remind me of Alison Mack, who played Chloe on Smallville. The flashbacks to her previous, happy life are shot in livid color, while the scenes currently unfold in muted tones. The relationship with her father is a little too "daddy's little girl", reminding me of last year's Karen Sisco, which started off with great promise but fizzled from there. I'm hoping for better things from Veronica. MTV is airing the previous week's episode on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern/6 p.m. Central. Veronica is on UPN Tuesdays at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central.| Monday, October 11, 2004 ( 1:53 PM ) Girl Detective Television updates I apologize profusely if I made Kevin Hill sound as if it is worth watching. I watched the first segment of the second episode and just didn't care enough to watch further. It was full of baby cliches, and nothing about it was surprising. In just an episode, George the gay nanny had gone from having potential to being an uninteresting stereotype. And that word sums up Kevin Hill: uninteresting. Not bad, but not good. Thus, definitely not worth watching. The end.Wife Swap, on the other hand, I really enjoyed. So did Dahlia Lithwick. She's way smarter than I am, so go read what she has to say about it here. After the second episode of Desperate Housewives, I've figured out what is bugging me: this show hasn't hit its stride yet. It's doing an uncomfortable straddle of comedy and drama, rather like real-life moms and wives do, with more than a dash of snide camp thrown in, and they haven't found the right balance. If they do, it'll be great: funny with great performances and some real substance. It threatens, though, to devolve into something merely adequate, with cheap shots and predictable plots. For now it has enough promise to keep watching. | ( 1:16 PM ) Girl Detective Color-coded bandanas A few years ago, my grad-school friend the Queen of Spleen invited me to go with her to a weekend conference. I tried to beg off until she explained that it was a sexuality conference, and a friend of hers had been nominated for (and eventually won) the International Ms. Leather competition, which would be held that evening. This all sounded way more intriguing than your usual run-of-the-mill grad-school conference, so off we went.QoS spent a lot of time explaining the culture to me, as we wandered the halls. She clued me into some of the terms like FTM and MTF (female to male and male to female transsexuals). We went into the room with stuff for sale. There were books and movies, intellectual and otherwise. There was lots of gay- and trans-pride paraphernalia. There were sex toys galore, from vanilla to things I was afraid to ask about. And one part of the culture that I noticed, and QoS spent a lot of time explaining, was the bandanas. They came in a rainbow of colors, and were mostly tucked into one of the back pockets. The color meant what you were into, like S & M, or B & D. Which back pocket it was in clarified your role--top or bottom. We didn't stay long, and I didn't remember what any of the color and placement details meant, but I was reminded of that conference when I watched Rescue Me a few weeks ago. Sean, the dumb guy, is picked to pose for the fireman's calendar. He has to dress up as a cowboy. He protests in general, then asks if he can at least take off the bandana, which is yellow. He shoves it in the back pocket. Huh, I thought, I wonder if that means something. But since the show didn't circle back to it for the next few episodes, I forgot about it. Then in the epidode "Moms", they finally re-visited the topic. Sean goes to a signing and is approached by all sorts of men, who think he's into something, like golden showers or chubby men, though they can't agree on what it is. Apparently the bandana system is not as nailed down as, say, the Dewey Decimal system. I was pleased, though, that I'd remembered the conference and the bandana system. My husband, though, was less than pleased. He was reminded again of just how annoyed he had been at both QoS and me for not inviting him to the conference, too. | Friday, October 08, 2004 ( 1:29 PM ) Girl Detective Pre-empted television Did you know, if a network show is pre-empted due to something like a local sports game, the local station has to air the show at some other time, like at midnight the following Thursday. So if you miss a show, or go to your Tivo to find an hour of baseball instead of what you actually wanted to watch, just give the station a call or email and they'll let you know when the displaced show will be aired.Unless you're the double damned local ABC affiliate here, who ran Lost and Wife Swap at the same time, just on another channel. And once they're aired an episode somewhere, they don't get to air it again. So I'm out of luck unless I can find someone who was more on top of things than I was on Wednesday. Ah, Tivo. Its rare shortcomings are unpleasantly jolting. | Thursday, October 07, 2004 ( 1:55 PM ) Girl Detective Kevin Hill; I'm not convinced I finally was able to watch the premier of Kevin Hill, the much touted new drama on UPN. Taye Diggs plays a successful lawyer and womanizer whose life is disrupted when he is left custody of his cousin's ten-month old daughter. The premise is cliche all the way (anyone else remember Baby Boom, with Diane Keaton and Sam Shepard?), but various reviews made it sound as if the execution transcended the lame conceit.Based on the pilot, I don't agree. Too much depends on two things: Diggs' smile, and the baby as a signifier of various things. Diggs has a lovely smile, but that's not a reason for me to invest an hour of my very limited time. He made a very predictable transition in a very short time, with not a lot to justify it, other than loving shots of the cute baby. I've got a cute baby, so I'm less inclined to go, "Aw, of course he's tell his boss to go to hell for you" than, "where's he gonna get the money to maintain that snazzy apartment if he quits his job?" Speaking of the snazzy apartment, I thought there seemed like a lot of ground level electronics and CDs that were in very easy baby reach. And on the baby reality front, it is likely that the baby at ten months old would be crawling. He microwaved a bottle, which is a dirty hot no no, and seemed strangely averse to just putting the baby on the floor, especially when she's not crawling yet. The character of the sassy gay nanny George was a high point, but like the smile and the baby, not enough to sustain an hour of my interest. George is played by Patrick Breen, formerly the owner of the bookstore in which Joan of Arcadia works. I will give Kevin Hill one more try and see if it manages to rise above its trite foundation. Perhaps my own cute baby makes me immune to some of its charm. | Wednesday, October 06, 2004 ( 1:56 PM ) Girl Detective A review of Wife Swap First of all, the title. It's supposed to be postmodern and clever, but somehow it doesn't ring true. It still has echoes of icky, seventies-style pseudo-sexual liberation that were just a different way of treating women as objects. Ironically, though, the sex lives of the couples are never mentioned.In the premier, aired last Wednesday on ABC, millionaire city mom Jodi switches with blue-collar country mom Lynn. Jodi's life is shopping and pedicures, while four nannies care for her three children and a maid takes care of everything else. Lynn works all day long. She gets up at 5:30 a.m. to drive a school bus, then chops wood for 3 hours, makes breakfast for the family, chops wood for three more hours, cleans the house and makes dinner. Lynn says she wants to do this because she feels her husband Brad doesn't appreciate her or help enough. It's unclear why Jodi wants to do this, though her husband Steven thinks it will be a learning experience for her. The voiceover tries to engage the viewers by emphasizing this Green Acres/Beverly Hillbillies switcheroo. The swap takes place over two weeks. The first week the visiting mom has to abide by the house rules. The second week, she makes the rules. Jodi and Brad clash, but by the end each softens, and they end their time in cooperation and mutual respect. The same is not true of Lynn. While Brad followed Jodi's rules the second week, even though he didn't like them, Steven stopped following Lynn's after just one night. On the last night, Lynn leaves the house, telling Steven she won't allow him to treat her so poorly. For a reality show, this one showed some surprising empathy. It was clear that three of the four people learned and changed from the experience. Brad not only learned to appreciate Lynn, he began to try harder to help her. Jodi and Brad both got beyond their stereotypes to the real people. Jodi resolved to spend more time with her kids. Lynn stood up for herself, though her judgment against Jodi and Steven for not spending more time with the kids never softened. The only person who did not appear to have learned from the experience was Steven, who came off as a pompous jerk more interested in spending time at the gym and dining out with friends than with interacting with his kids for more than an hour a day. As with any reality show, I wondered what went on between the scenes, and whether what was shown was mostly true or a result of skillful editing. The takeaway here--we can get beyond our prejudices and learn from each other's differences--is pretty basic. They also showed way too many clips of Lynn and Brad's three-legged dog, in case we'd forgotten we were in the country. While it's got a bit more heft than the usual reality fare, it will have to continue to explore the complex human bits and not pander to the viewers by highlighting the ugly, sensational bits. I have not yet programmed a season pass on our TIVO. | Tuesday, October 05, 2004 ( 1:48 PM ) Girl Detective I wrote a review of the pilot of Desperate Housewives on Mama Duck. | ( 1:47 PM ) Girl Detective Happy anniversary My husband G. Grod and I were married six years ago this past Sunday. Was the celebration of this fact what brought him joy on Sunday? Perhaps, but not as much as the Direct TV guy who successfully installed our satellite in time for kickoff of the Eagles/Bears game. No longer does my husband have to lurk at corner tables in smoky bars surrounded by Viking fans. Dad and son wore matching jerseys and enjoyed the game together in the comfort of our own home.Later, our friend Queenie stayed with the baby while we went out to properly celebrate the day, in spite of my bad cold. We had an array of tapas: spiced almonds, Spanish olives, octopus ceviche, shrimp in avocado vinaigrette, beef carpaccio, seared scallops, tomato stuffed with tuna, and peppers stuffed with goat cheese, all followed by lovely desserts. Things have been rough for a while, with baby sleep trouble, selling and buying, moving out and moving in. We hope things will feel settled soon. The anniversary dinner was good, and an oasis of time to savor that hope. Happy anniversary, babe. And congratulations on that satellite. | Monday, October 04, 2004 ( 1:01 PM ) Girl Detective The first days of the rest of my life I resigned my job in May to stay at home with our baby. We sold our condo and bought a house. We finally live in a neighborhood and have more than one bedroom. All the chaos of the past few months has been so we could get here, and begin to settle and live like real people, with a lawn to mow, neighbors to chat with and entire days to fill in ways that I hope will be more constructive than just chasing the baby around, or collapsing exhausted at the end of each day. Someone asked me recently how it was to be a stay at home mom. I said I'd let her know if I figured it out.| Sunday, October 03, 2004 ( 10:43 AM ) Girl Detective The Spider detente My husband and I now own an old house. It's a 1917 2-story craftsman bungalow. The previous owners left it broom clean--fine in the middle, but kinda icky in the corners. In an ideal world, we would have cleaned it thoroughly from top to bottom and edge to edge before we moved in. In reality, we had to negotiate to only have 25 days between our closings, since the previous owners wanted an additional 48 hours to move out. Extra time to clean between our closing and our move-in wasn't practical.Over the past few weeks, I've unpacked and cleaned, trying to find the right balance between not obsessive, but not putting our stuff down in filth and cobwebs. In the process, I've seen rather a lot of spiders, and webs in many of the corners. My previous rule about spiders was that if I saw them, I had to kill them. I apologized each time, told the spider it had broken the rule, and spoke the rule out loud for other spiders to hear and be warned. Now, though, I think I may have to revise my plan. I've noticed that several of the corner webs have caught other unpleasant insects. Ants downstairs and a moth upstairs. I think I would prefer a spider to ants and moths. The last spider I saw, I allowed to scurry under the bed. I did not inform it of the rule. Perhaps it's true that spiders are our friends. I'm willing to give it a shot. | Saturday, October 02, 2004 ( 8:38 PM ) Girl Detective I'm back, and I feel crummy I am so out of practice with writing that I feel like I'm stretching muscles that are groaning in complaint. I am back in front of a regular computer, after being on the lam for almost a month. We sold our condo, went into a hotel, went to the State Fair, blew town for PA to visit my sister and my in-laws for three weeks, then back in a hotel, closed on our new old house and voila, we are now truly homeowners, and not pretending with a condo. The movers forgot some of our stuff and had it delivered the next day, but everything else went well. Our sofabed won't fit in the basement so we're currently exploring other sleep/sofa possibilities. We've lived here for two weeks, and things are simultaneously going well, and never, ever going to be finished again. We have a few renegade boxes on each floor, waiting for attention. My goal is that all will be emptied, even the one that never got unpacked from our last move three and a half years ago. The baby and I both have colds, so have been cranky and out of sorts all day. I know ice cream is bad for colds, but my throat is sore and I'm going to have some anyway. I apologize for the diary-like entry. I promise to try to get my writing groove back as soon as possible, but with the house and the very active one-year-old toddler, things are definitely on the challenging side.| |
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