Bethanie's Brain

Poor Ms. Six is still sick, still puking, and still hasn't eaten anything since Tuesday. Ms. Baby, not surprising given her general take on life, has picked TODAY to rekindle her interest in potty training. So my morning has gone something like this: "Mama?!" calls a querelous voice from the couch. "My tummy doesn't feel good." This is the signal. I abandon the work-work I'm trying to do and dash over, grab the bowl and assume the position (holding the bowl before a crouching Ms. Six whilst attempting to keep her hair out if it). Ms. Six starts dry heaving (nothing in there to come up really). Ms. Baby, who in the meantime has hauled her potty out into the living room, decides this would be the perfect time to come show everybody that she has managed to remove her shorts and diaper all by herself so she can practice potty-sitting. As a bonus, she pulls up her shirt to show off her belly button. So there I am, torn - do I congratulate and encourage t...

Last Saturday, according to my receipt, I purchased a book of 'Forever' stamps at my local post office. I mailed two things that had been sitting around waiting for me to find the time to get to the post office and buy some stamps. Then I put the stamps in 'a safe place'. And now I can't find them. Which is driving me mad, because I have something else I need to mail. ...waaaaait a second... Yep. Just found 'em. Right where I had looked at least SIX TIMES. Frickin' stamp fairies. I tell ya... .

Well, it's about time for a post, non? OK, it's past time - kids are sick, work is nutso, etc. And coincidences are coming out of the woodwork. Event 1: Best college girl friend sent me a birthday card last week and we started emailing (after an embarassingly long hiatus). Turns out she's ended up doing much the same thing as I am -- editing for non-native English speakers (although she's in economics whoo-haa, rather than biomedical whoo-haa). Event 2: Not so much an event as the general atmosphere of disorganized bureaucratic clutter at FPU lately has been approaching the itchy side of intolerable. I'm getting fairly burnt out on it. Event 3: One task set out for the Impending Vacation is to write up the content for my freelance website. I did some of that today, since I was stuck at home mopping up vomit (again) and therefore found it difficult to concentrate on actual work stuff and decided: what the hell, I'll just take an effing sick day. Event 4:...

So we - well, I - don't get to escape The South this year. Again. The Husband has no appreciation for what I will suffer for this. At all. Never having been made to live someplace he despises, he can't seem to get his mind around it. Plus, he grew up here, so he can't see that the place has any faults. I, naturally, can see pretty much only the faults. Which sounds like I'm being overly negative, I suppose, but other than my job at FPU and the fact that I can justify a swimming pool, there just isn't much to recommend the place in my book. And I don't even want to think about all the things I'll have to wait another year before I can see/taste/feel again. *wails, dies* .

So, it's July, which means we're 6 months into this year's Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge . It's time to check in and see how Bethanie is progressing. Or isn't progressing. As the case may be. Here's the list. And how I'm doing with it. Complete and submit one short story. This was on the list? Er... really? Heh-heh... Well, I do have a couple stories in the works. One I actually looked at last week. But it's not finished. And the other one is finished, but doesn't resemble a short story so much as it does a sumo wrestler in a string bikini... *sigh* I have such trouble writing short... So yeah, bit of work yet to do on this front. Learn to speak rudimentary but passable Chinese (Mandarin, I guess, even though everyone I work with is from Shanghai). Here I have actual progress to report! I've got a couple of co-workers teaching me words here and there, and Chik-fil-A was handing out language CDs a couple months ago. We (OK, Ms. Six) ...