random ramblings

I cannot believe that the pixie is already turning two.  Her birthday is Tuesday. 

She's been chirping "I help!" recently, carrying toys into her room and putting them on the floor in there (instead of the living room).  She puts the blocks back in the 18 gal. storage tub when she's prompted, usually without a tantrum.  She picks her babies up off of her floor before bedtime, and puts them in their doll cradle:  "Night-night.  Blanket ghost babies.  Go sleep.  Shh.  Go sleep."

She's getting to be such a big girl.

The imp has spent the past couple of nights with Grandma and Grandpa.  They'll be taking him to see the Christmas parade in the town where they live this morning, then bringing him to meet Odysseus at the half-way point. 

He's been insisting on being a very helpful boy, lately.  He doesn't want to ride in the carts at Wal-Mart or Sam's Club--he wants to "Help Mama push cart.  Push Pixie.  Pixie, don't kick me."  He also takes (lightweight) things I hand him to put in the cart, and helps me load stuff from the cart into the trunk. 

He also loads his own dishes into the dishwasher. 

We're going to be going and purchasing a new Christmas Tree on Sunday.  The one we have is a five foot tall, pre-lit one, and it's never going to fit anywhere that's out of the kids' reach.  We're going to go find a good, three foot tall pre-lit tree, and some unbreakable ornaments.  Garland is right out--the kittens would never leave it alone.  Damn it. 

We're going to put the tree behind the fence that blocks off the television and DVD player, back behind the television, on top of a book case.  That'll keep it out of reach of the puppy and the children, but not the kittens.  Nothing short of enclosing it in a cube could do that, so I'll take what I can get. 

The pup is turning out to be a superb watch dog.  Anyone walks down the sidewalk past our property gets barked at; anyone turning up the walk up to our porch gets her going completely bat-shit.  There is a totally different tone to her barking, at that point.  And she doesn't bark at cats.  She seems to quite like our two (but ours play with her, and seem to like her right back).

If you'll notice over at the right, The Godshead is up on Amazon, in paperback.  Kindle is working through the publishing process.  I'd like to ask my readers who want a copy of the Kindle edition to wait on purchasing it, though.  I'd like to have all of you buy it on the same day, on Monday, and drive it up the rankings.  I'll be begging all weekend.

Semester is almost over--thank God.  I've got last week's blogs to grade today, revisions that will be (hopefully) turned in all week next week, and next week's blogs to grade next Saturday.  I'll be turning in grades a week from this coming Wednesday. 

Then, I'm free until the third week of January (but won't get paid between December 23 and the last working day of February).