maria : Activity

Guineapig Cage

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 02:31:12 GMT

For thems that wanted to see:

Old cage layout:

With new loft addition:

Polymyxin B Sulfate-Bacitracin Zinc-Neomycin Sulfate

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:14:14 GMT

It's raining, raining, raining. I keep looking out the window at my beatiful new deep beds in my garden, and how muddy they are. I want to plant. The ground is too wet. I want to get the kid's swingset up, redig the firepit and set out the lawn furniture. I want to get my laundry out to dry, finish ripping what's left of the single siding off the addition, prune my rosebush, plant my flowerbeds, fix my fence, build my greenhouse covers... raining raining raining. What good is it to be in the 60s if it keeps bloody raining?

Assortment of 24 full-length pastels

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 20:56:00 GMT

I can't believe there are only nine days left until Christmas. What the hell happened to this year? I feel like everything is passing in a blur. I'm starting to get stressed and crazed, and I have no idea why. The people for whom I have not made gifs aren't really expecting them, the kids are totally covered, my shopping is done. The decorations are up (mostly), the house is clean (mostly). I know what I'm making food wise, even if I haven't actually bought it yet. I have enough craft stuff around to let my kids glue a wide assortment of things to each other, the walls, and the sofa, and yet I have this panic thing. Is it something that stores pump into the air in such a heavy saturation this time of year that it permeates everything? This should be cake, at this point. and yet, I have no idea what I'm stressing about. Joy...

I'm really excited about the stuff I'm getting the kids this year. Right now they're really into the Marx Brothers, so we got 11 of the 13 films they made. That should give them some stuff they can watch without driving me insane, too (If I have to watch Monster from a Prehistoric Planet one more time...). I also got them a bunch of classic toys as stocking stuffers, things like jacks, tops, and yoyos, and a bunch of musical toys and real instruments. The big gifts are a violin and a keyboard, those are for everyone, but the kids also have a recorder, penneywhistle, slide whistle, 3 harmonicas, a couple of sets of maracas, a couple of tamborines, bongos and a tin drum, a lap harp, a jaw harp, an ocarina, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember right now. My Mom got them a crystal growing kit, a cool multi-chambered terrarium for ants, bugs and a frog, and a candle making kit.

I've also ordered highway maps from about half of the states for my son who loves maps. They've been trickeling in for a few days now. My son also just got his first issue on his Spiderman subscription too, so he's suddenly obsessed with the mail. I've found a ton of free stuff you can order from differnt state and federal orgs, maps, coloring books and comics mostly, so I think he'll probably continue to get mail for a while. I want to get him writing letters to people too, although he's more interested in getting an email account. I guess that figures, in this house. He finally seems to be getting into reading. I've been worried, not so much about him, but about other people questioning my ability to teach him. If he can read, I can relax a little more, because he's already doing division and is way ahead of grade level in science and art. He just doesn't like the razy disorganised way english works. I can't blame him, I like math better too. Reading is worth it, I just have to convince him of that.

I've got to go over to my Brothers house and run some cat5 for him, so I'm going to stop rambling now.

8 Motion Settings

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 16:26:11 GMT

Ice storms suck. We lost electricity at about 7:30pm Thursday night, made it through the rapidly cooling night in sleeping bags listening to tree limbs crack and break all around us, and made the decision to evacuate at 8:30 Friday morning when we still had no electric and the power company said it would be another 5 hours optimistically before we did. It was about 54f inside when we left, when we came back to check on the house at 2:30pm it was 49, and we still had no power. There were thousands of tree limbs down, and over half a million people in the area lost power. We were lucky to get ours on Friday evening. We had betweenhalf an inch and an inch of ice coating everything outside. It was hauntingly beautiful, but the damage was amazing. My Mom only lost power for a couple of hours, but had huge branches fall on her roof, her motorhome and all three vehicles. A branch the size of a ten year old tree was tangled and hanging from the power lines leading to her house. Tree limbs ripped bricks out of houses, blocked roads and downed lines everywhere. It's so cold, too. Were in the twenties now, it was 72f Wednesday. I've seen icestorms before, but we had heavy sleet and freezing rain for 15 straight hours before it switched to light snow, and I've never seen a storm like this. Add the 30+ mph winds, and this storm was scary. I'm amazed we didn't have any damage to the house, beyond siding ripped from the side.

Close Cover Before Striking

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 22:19:24 GMT

I'm very annoyed.

Consumer Beware!

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:13:08 GMT

Gluten/sugar free thanksgiving went well. I made cornbread, cornbread dressing, gluten free pumpkin pie, and the cheddar garlic mashed potatos, and my Mom made me drumsticks in a pan not tainted with 17 loaves of white bread rammed up a turkey's ass. I didn't feel cheated, and as an added bonus, I was the only person not sitting around rubbing my stomach in the agony of bloat for the next 4 hours.

I had a couple of people tell me that my potatos are looked forward too every year, so yay for that. We didn't eat until 3:30 though. I think Mom's Girlfriend's family are a 'dinner is supper' family, because they always show up late. They eat cranberies from a can too, and that awful french onion green bean thing, so who knows. Green beans should be cooked for hours with bacon and onions. God, I blog about food a lot.

My kids were awesome, well behaved and polite. We stayed for about 6 hours, and even with a house full of people, we left because we were tired, not because the kids were melting down. We came home and watched the Marx Brother's A Night at the Opera, and now I want to go out and get Duck Soup and A Day at the Races. I had forgotten how much I love those movies. If you like comedy, check out the Marx Brothers.

I've convinced kodeman to only work half a day today, and then we'll clean house and decorate. Maybe my 6'1 husband will put the lights and stuff up on the ceiling this year instead of leaving poor lil 5'1 me to climb the ladder to our 9.5 foot ceilings again. One of these days I'm gonna fall to my death trying to hang shit up there. I'll probably throw a pic up of the livingroom once it's done, I tend to err on the side of Griswaldian (awesome word), and no one ever comes out here so I'll show the internets instead.

Distilled, blended and bottled under the supervision of the US government

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 13:20:59 GMT

It's ten am on a Saturday, I'm fully awake, have had my coffee, and am feeeling pretty good today. I have the whole day before me, and I have absolutely no obligations to fulfill. I have a day off. I could poke around the garden a bit, clean the house, maybe bake a pie. I could make up my business cards and write up the new ebay ad kodeman and I are planning. I could do an art project with my kids, watch some videos, read a book, research tax stuff, or set up a spreadsheet. I could do nothing at all. I have the whole day. That feels really good.

0% Introductory APR

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 01:41:31 GMT

I hope everyone had a good Halloween. Kodeman and I dressed up and took the kids out trick or treating, then spent the evening at home, listening to music and watching Ghostbusters, Army of Darkness and Shaun of the Dead. And eating junk food, theirs more junky than mine.

Starting last night and going through the end of the year, I think the new diet is going to be really hard. I have all these memories and rituals involving food built up around the holidays, and now most of those foods I can't eat. Thanksgiving at my Mom's is going to suck this year - everything she cooks have sucrose or gluten in it, even the turkey is stuffed with bread dressing and basted with the resulting run-off. I'll be able to have the mashed potatoes, but I bring those. Maybe I can give her a packet of bacon that isn't sugar cured for the green beans, but the pies and stuffing and broccoli caserole are right out.

I've always done a lot of baking for xmas, my traditional gifts have always been tins of homemade cookies, candies, fudge and brownies, along with a few handmade candles or jewelry pieces, and this year I don't know what to do. I don't want to foist off gluten and sugar free alternatives to people, because the typical replacement ingredients in gluten free baking suck beans (literally, it's bean flour), but I don't want to risk a reaction to sugar or flour, either. Simply touching my face after having had sugar on my hands can bring about a painful reaction that lasts for days. I can still make some things, maple glazed black walnuts made with real maple syrup for one, but people ask for my cookies. Blarg. I know my family will be understanding, but I've been doing this for 6 years now, and it's become ingrained.

Also in diet news, I think my weight has finally stabilized. I've been within a pound or two of 101 for about two weeks now, so hopefully I can stop losing weight now. Since January when I made the first dietary changes I've lost 55lbs, and it's gone from 'yay!' to 'uh-oh'. People are getting concerned about it, myself included. I kinda miss having boobs, and my ass is so bony it hurts to sit on hard chairs for longer than a few minutes. My computer chair is a hard chair. This sucks.

Seaing Red

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:28:11 GMT

Rain delayed game four of the World Series yesterday night, and screwed with the plans of thousands of tourists who have booked up all of our hotels through this evening. The plan so far is to hold game four tonight, and have fans holding tickets for game five, the game originally scheduled for today, use those tickets tonight, and for fans holding tickets for game four, originally scheduled for last night, use their tickets for game five, moved to Friday night. Confused yet? To make matters worse, there is a 90% chance of rain both for this evening's game and for Friday's game, meaning that game four might be postponed until Saturday, with game five taking place sometime early next year.

Busch Stadium is expecting crowds of 46,000 for each of the games, meaning that there is the potential that as many as 92,000 confused, wet and irritable baseball fans might take to the streets of downtown St Louis at any given time, demanding admittance to a game that may not take place, that they may or may not hold tickets to, or trying to find a hotel room that may not exist. Add into this mix the riverboat cruise that recently dumped off a load of passangers that may or may not be carrying an 'mysterious ailment', and I'm glad I live out in the sticks.

Fish Hook Wire (Short)

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:12:27 GMT

It's another cold, rainy late October day, with a week left to go before Halloween. I have the last of my herbs from the garden to finish drying, and I have to figure out something to do with the last green tomatoes, I don't think they're going to ripen up. I've a bunch of black walnuts this year too, and as much a giant pain in the ass as it is to hull, dry, roast, and shell them, they're free food, and black walnuts are really good as far as free food goes. The garden really didn't do shit this year, a combination of a late planting and a long, hot and dry summer cut my production levels to be discouragingly low. Outside of greens, I've not managed to get anything put up for winter yet. I still have brocolli and cabages growing, brussel sprouts and some swiss chard too, but my tomatoes, peppers, chiles, squash, and corn are all dead. I didn't get a single squash this year, again. I think I'll skip planting them next year. My second crop of roots hasn't done well, I got a handful of turnips and a grand total of two carrots. It figures the year I get the second planting in late would have an early frost. We're flat broke, too, so I can't go out and buy in-season veggies and fruits to put up for the winter either. I hate buying out-of-season vegetables, I know most of them have been picked unripe, chemically ripened and then shipped in a truck across the continent. And also probably aren't organic. None of this would be so bad if I didn't have the damned food intolerances, but I basically can't eat any prepared foods due to my gluten and sucrose intollerance. Looks like a winter of beans and canned tomatoes for me. Bleh.

Don't TRead

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:37:25 GMT

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Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:21:35 GMT

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