December in Review – Adventures in a Messy Life

Mwa ha ha ha, it is December 15 and I am starting to write. This is so much better than November when I started writing the post on December 4.

Sigh, that month was insane.

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Week 1

Looking at this, these pictures are totally out of order, but here goes.

I finished painting The Artist’s room, and now I’m painting the trim of her room. Funny story which has no picture to go with it. I was painting and decided that I wanted to remove the hinges of the door and the little plate in the doorjamb so I could more easily paint there, so I went downstairs and asked Jeff for a Phillips screwdriver.

Wait, I recorded the entire conversation:

Me: Jeff, do you have a phillips head screwdriver?

Jeff: Sure, [rumbles around in a few drawers and hands it to me]

Me: Thanks! {disappears upstairs to work on taping and getting the room ready to paint]

I reappear a few hours later with the trim all painted.

Me: I got the trim all painted and even all around the doors. I took the doors off so I could get it done very well.

Jeff: How did you take the doors off?

Me: That was what the screwdriver was for.

Jeff: [blinks in confusion] But you usually just pop out the pins.

Me: [blinks in confusion] But then I wouldn’t have been able to paint it all.

Jeff: [blinks in more confusion] But that will make it harder to put it back on, and there is a possibility it will rehang wrong, and that is why people don’t take off the hinges, they just pop out the pins.

Me: [smiling happily] Don’t worry, I didn’t paint where the hinges were. I just painted around it. It’s just the hinges were in the way for me to paint that little bit behind. So I did it ALL BY MYSELF.

Jeff: [there is more blinking and some stammering as he tries to figure out how to not get himself in trouble, but at the same time is worried] Okay… Thank you for painting when I hate painting.

Me: [very excited and smiling] You’re welcome. [we both know I will learn nothing from this]

The small picture up in the left is my brilliant discovery of adding ravioli to tomato basil soup. This is a genius idea.

And then, Jeff and I after watching one too many sci-fi shows with an over the top candle budget on a space ship where someone who is “spiritual” or the random guide character will have someone walk in and they are meditating with over 100 candles lit in their room, we decided to eat dinner by candlelight. I got 12 votice candles and it was highly amusing if rather dark. Candles do not provide a lot of light.

The top right picture is the forsenic labs for my Academy 4 club, the kids enjoyed working to figure out who might have killed Felix in the mystery.

The LEGO flowers are my Advent calendar this year from my friend Amy, and I’m having fun putting them together, it is a nice slow process.

And the final picture of silverware is Jeff and I decided to give each of the kids a couple of sets of silverware to have either in their dorm rooms or barracks just to have.

Books read:

Shadowcast– I enjoyed this book and I need to pick up the rest of the trilogy since it’s finished. It took me a bit to get into this, and it’s interesting to have a very morally gray mal protagonist (he’s essentially a villain who needs to be redeemed)

Games played:

I forget, I didn’t write them down

Week 2

This week was both really busy and not busy, mainly it was lots of random things that were bits and pieces. Superman got home significantly earlier that The Artist, he only had one final, and it was on Tuesday. She had several and the last was on Friday, and her room checkout was at 4:00, so she got home late Friday night, so lots of pictures of him, and none of her.

The big events happening this week was lots of unloading books, boxing them up, giving away some books, and then moving bookshelves so I can paint that room.

Then, we did the next round of painting presents, this time with Superman. We had lots of fun joking about how we painted them and what we got.

Since it was just Superman, we played lots of games together.

Books read:

A Color to Dye For– In theory, I should love this book. It’s a cozy fantasy about a seamstress, but it was just rather bland for me. It’s part of a series, and so the problem of this book is solved. She successfully opens her store, it leaves most of the rest unresolved. Rather meh for me.
Not Another Christmas– I found like three different sets of authors who were giving away books as part of an Advent calendar, and I think this was one of those books. This was like a cute Hallmark movie, but at the same time also not that great. I think I read it in a day while sick. The characters weren’t super deep, I’m not likely to reread this book, but it was an okay read.
Christmas on the Goblin Express– After a couple of books that I was much less excited by, this was an enjoyable read. I won’t call it fun because it has a bit of melancholy to it. If you’ve ever read Because of Winn-Dixie and the candy in that book where it has a mixture of good and bad memories, that’s what this book is. And that’s what makes the book work, becuase it recognizes Christmas isn’t always happy, and not everyone has great things going on, and sometimes you just need to escape from Christmas onto a train run by goblins.

Games played:

Several rounds of Shadows of Brimstone
Catastrophe or something
Conquest of Planet Earth– try to take over earth, lots of fun as each alien type is unique and fun to play

Week 3

The week of pictures starts off with me making Leezard her food. One of the side effects of that is my giving her many bowls to pre-wash and lick out. She, of course, loves this. This always greatly amuses me, and so I frequently get pictures of it.

Then, Superman was having a bunch of friends over to watch Fenre, Journey’s End (which may be totally spelled wrong), and he was setting up the table for them to able to paint figures as they watched it and Leezard insisted on not moving as we tried to set it up around her.

I have this very silly game I kickstarted several years ago, and have only played a few times, and one of the goals for this break was to play through games to see if we wanted to keep them, and so we played Fidget Factory, which did not help us figure out if we wanted to keep it.

I still find it funny to play.

The big picture at the bottom is our final round of painting presents. We have many amusing paintings from this.

And then the big middle image is a Christmas present I made my Mom, which is a fun idea (my whole family was joking, where’s our version of it, so I’ll be making more of those).

Books read:

End of the Magi– This was our book quest this month, which I led, and I super it. Basically, it followed one of the magi who came over to see Jesus as he followed the star, but took the idea and said what if didn’t happen how you thought. Jeff and I are currently listening to it together and talking about it.
A Soul as Cold as Frost– I’m rereading this book series I read a few years ago, and decided to read again.

Games played:

I forgot to write down any of the games we played, which is sad because it is less than 2 weeks ago.

Week 4

I’m going to write most of this before I put together the collage.

We headed up to Dallas to meet Batman and have Christmas with Jeff’s parents, where I think I got no pictures. The kids had fun being obnoxious and generally enjoyed being together again.

I almost forgot to put this in, while we were driving up Batman kept texting me saying, “Nana wants darts, the pointy kind so she can practice target practice.” When I said no, he decided to start texting Superman to get him to buy the pointy darts for target practice.

Okay, there is a whole other thing going on with my family, but that is not my story to tell, but that added a lot of chaos to Christmas as we were trying to find out what was going on with a few family members.

We had our annual family fight. This year, everyone had potato guns, and that went crazy. Unfortunately, my brother wasn’t feeling well, so he wasn’t able to participate.

I had very carefully negotiated with my kids they were not allowed to wake us up until after 7 am in Round Rock, TX. Very specifically in Round Rock, and the sun had to be up here in Round Rock. So they came in with a picture of the sun taped to Superman’s face. They also made a point to recreate the breakfast from several years ago I was made for Mother’s Day, when they said, “Mom doesn’t like eggs, but we only know how to cook scrambled eggs, so we’ll cook salami.” So I was given a plate of warmed-up salami in the puddlge of grease. They very carefully cooked a single slice of salami for me and a cup of tea. Jeff also got a slice of salami and a cup of coffee.

Our movie marathon for New Year’s Eve this year was mysteries, we had a great lineup: Death by Potato, Radioland Murders, A Haunting in Venice, and the new Knives Out movie.

Books read (feeling lazy, not going to link any of these):

A Crown as Sharp as Pines- I finished this series and it was lots of fun to reread
A Heart as Red as Paint
A Beast as Dark as Night
Escaping with a Supervillain- I beta-read this before it’s out, and really enjoyed it

Games played: