• 16:18 Lovely time at our first corn maze with MamaJenn, Preston, Grayson! Thanks!

The corn was SO tall! And the sky lovely blue above, with occasional glimpses of gorgeous foliage where the hillside rose enough behind them.

After meandering slowly (me) and racing up and back (kids and Jenn), we found the treat tokens and the 5 clues, but no painted ears. We did learn that the paths made (from above) the shapes of a barn, a silo, and a tractor. How is this done? Can a corn-planting machine be made to lay seed in patterns like a sewing machine can be programmed?

We lounged on the grass near rows of for-sale pumpkins for a picnic, and then bought some brownies from a local school fundraiser, a few tiny gourds, and petted a young Bernese Mountain Dog. I got (unsurpisingly) that much more sore* but it was pretty well worth it.

Mo and I came home, chilled out, my on the couch resting my pelvis joints and working on our Hallowe'en ears and him playing some PBS kids games online** until he talked me into getting up to feed him and make some paper airplane thing...

* The front bone in your pelvis is actually a joint, bound strongly with ligaments. When (if) your body is preparing to deliver a baby, this starts (ideally) to stretch, in part because the baby's head is pressing the hell down on it most of the goddamn time --ahem--at least near the end of the pregnancy. It can hurt. Mine hurts like hell for about half of my waking hours (the other half it's either rested from the night or I'm doing something else and not paying attention to it).

** I try to limit him: One hour of banal repetitive DVD I hide from v. one hour of online somewhat educational games that I can observe while working. Only sometimes it's both. I feel vaguely guilty the whole damn time (why are we not helping each other with chores, doing crafts, building castles, playing music, ...?) even though I know my own grandmother, who I respected deeply, allowed me a similar hour. Ah well! Parenting. Silly thing.

• 12:11 FASCINATING The Telltale Wombs Of Lewiston, Maine Data show getting paid per procedure is factor in health care.
• 16:47 Mo and I are making ears for our Hallowe'en costumes. I love making things. He's learning to sew too!

Kind of unrelated posts, there. The skewing of medical procedure frequencies amazes me without surprising me. I really love data-driven stories like this, when we take "Well what's actually happening? Let's find out!" approach. I want to know why the county I grew up in has the highest breast cancer rate in the state (Does it really? Were our docs more likely to diagnose it? What's the recovery rate? What's going on here?).

• 09:19 Joyful thanks to awa55 for fixing our car stereo (and dome lights, clicker, etc.) yesterday!!

( the rest of the story... ) For thanks, I bought DAW some coffee and doughnuts; he told us of the other things he's removed from car stereos: small plastic rabbits, coins, legos, keys... I felt (feel!) lucky.

Mo and I sang along to the radio all the way home.

In which a title is almost as long as a post...

• 11:36 *http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/09/verizon-faces-boycott-threat-for-sponsoring-west-virginia-rally-against-climate-action.html
  There are ways to write to Verizon W also. It just boggles my mind that people are insistent climate change is a hoax and the evidence has been slowly, steadily, accumulating for decades. I'm not saying any one particular model/set of predictions is right. I'm just saying that there's significant existing evidence of change in the past century(based on my reading of the journals, mostly in the 1990s and intermittently in the '00s; I tend to not rely on the news media/press release versions), and definite increasing understanding of interconnections and synergistic feedback, and what we seem to understand at the moment leads to some pretty serious outcomes (even the "mild" ones), even when we change our choices and lighten our individual, corporate, and aggregate effects.
• 20:52 I made curryish stir fry (butter, onion, celery, chicken, peanut oil, garlic, cashews) & M said (unprompted), "Mmm, delicious!" **pleased!**
  I'm not a very confident cook. I don't enjoy cooking meat (one of the reasons is the ecological costs I'm causing without necessarily bearing). However, that aside, apparently I am occasionally competent at both. Yay!

LoudTweeter's server is still kaput. Sympathies to him! Manual repost...maybe with edits.

Mojo grew overnight! I mean, yeah, they do that, but this was a lot!
6:13 AM Jul 1st

Great swim this morning; makes up for missing some of last week due to sick kid and for some of the short swims in the week before.
12:24 PM Jul 1st

Podcast from On Point on Memorial Day, asking (among other things) what is our American freedom FOR? http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/05/memorial-day-2009
2:49 PM Jul 1st

KKS & Mo: cookies & spinach; R: steak & potato salad; me: dishes. Perfect balance!
7:20 PM Jul 1st

Mojo gets to go to his bud Preston's house today after pre-school! They are both totally psyched! Yay! Thanks, MamaJen!
7:03 AM Jul 2nd

• 07:41 Sore throat, slightly achy sort of tired, stuffy feeling in the back of my neck. Bah!
• 10:19 Mo does calm stuff: build with Lincoln logs, look at squid pics on WWW, listen to music, play violin. I drink tea & more tea. Thanks, kid!

I am so blessed with this kid. This is so undeserved, and I am so grateful.

• 09:16 Waiting on client feedback to send final newsletter. I sure do like MailChimp ( www.mailchimp.com ).
• 10:06 Mojo + I Are dancing 'round the house to random-play songs from "Dog Train", Re-Bops, Gaelic Storm, and "Little White Duck". Whee!
• 14:19 Kids with auntie, so I got the newsletter finalized and scheduled to go. Will link to it when it's archived.

from ping to twitter to LJ with LoudTwitter
This newsletter is for ReVisions, a small company that does leadership coaching, strategic planning, and suchlike. The principal, Marryn Rutledge, is one of the nicest people I have ever met, and is a joy to work with.

• 10:06 Mojo has a buddy over today. This is so cool. They are going to completely exhaust themselves with fun. Yay!
• 14:17 Kris Andrews has retail outlets for her baskets. Cool. www.naturallyinspiredbaskets.com/shops.php
• 14:44 It's disconcerting when you find somehow you or your filtering email rules accidentally deleted *useful* emails. Yikes.

from ping to twitter to LJ with LoudTwitter
17ish: A series of small things done. Still need larger chunks of time (say, 4 hours+no other people) for the bigger tasks. When? (Ping.fm didn't get this one to twitter, or twitter failed, so LT didn't scoop it up for LJ. LinkedIn got it though. InterWeb Bugs!)

MonkeyBoy & I can make *anything* out of cardboard! Today we made a weeder and a seeder for his tractor... so far. Barn roof next?

From ellenmillion: The first ten people to comment in this post AND repost this meme in their own journal (please tell me where/when you post in case I miss it) get to request a sketch on the topic of their choosing from me!

If you are not a sketcher, I'm sure you have an art form you can use to "sketch" for others. This totally counts. :)

(me-specific bit: feel free to specify pencil or ink; it does NOT have to be something I usually produce! Also, I can't promise they'll be to you before the Holidays. )

---

By the way, although my dear husband has taking to asserting (validly) that I am chaos creature, I am not a patch on our son. He is truly an agent of entropy. I look upon the floors ... couches ... tables ... laundry ... and despair.

Or nearly. (Actually, I procrastinate like crazy.)

To get my son moving someplace, I've been saying to him: "I'm going to win!" and we race there. He thinks he's won; I think I have. Heh.

"Mama, Orca's footyprints look liek wolves'."

and after a moment's thought,

"Mama, I see a clue! I need my handy-dandy notebook to write it down." So we go and find it, and draw two of Orca's tracks in the snow.

(see also: http://smallmeasures.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-snow.html for a photo of today's STUFF and http://littlebirder.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/first-snow/ for a different approach... )