Family Matters, Week of 12-4-05

Every week I do a family rundown. Welcome to it.

Annie

My 3–year-old is currently jazzed over seeing Santa Claus this evening. As for myself, I’m not exactly excited as much as I am enthused to see how the kids react to the guy in a suit. I remember being terrified of the dude, not sure of what to say, and when I finally got conscious of Who Santa Really Is (or isn’t) I really didn’t want to play along. But as for Annie she can’t wait to tell him all about her love and need for a Doodle Bear or how she wants a cat to give “hugs and shoogs” to.

Of course, she balances this out by being as cruel or misbehaving as possible. For example, this morning she got into the medicine cabinet and damn near put some sort of anti-fungal cream into her eye. Then of course there’s that whole pinched-a-bit-of-flesh-from-Abby’s-neck thing, but hey, whatcha gonna do?

Abby

She’s so close to 2 I can almost taste it. Or perhaps smell it. You know things are rough at home when you get an email that includes this:

“Dude, seriously Abby has taken off her diaper twice and hand delievered POOP to me!!!” – wife

I love it when a smelly plan comes together. Or something.

Anyway, Abby wants to go see Santa but I’m expecting Mass Freakoutage when it comes time to actually sit in his lap and take that ridiculously overpriced snapshot which will be referred to for years to come as “That time you peed on Santa.” I can only expect the worst and hope for the best. It’s served me well in parenting so far.

Ericka (her blog)

Ericka has been working an extra day a week now, causing a rupture in the Tuesday night flow. Of course, there wasn’t much flow to begin with, but coming home to an empty house, picking up kids and running to her work isn’t exactly the norm. As for cake sales, still no word from the restaurant who expressed interest in purchasing her cakes. That sucks.

To balance this out, she’s getting into Body Works or something, sort of like a new age Avon where she holds parties and gets kickbacks and prizes for selling stuff. Nothing extraordinary, but it makes her happy (and the Olive stuff does smell kinda nice).

I would also like to wish her luck with any future ‘deposits’ Abby would like to bring along. Ahem.

Etc

This week’s WonderLinks(tm), brought to you in Sweet-O-Vision:

– Flipbook Printer – Print out your movies as flipbooks. Lord of the Rings is only 12 million pages.

– Cloud: The Game – This looks amazing (and fun).

– Compressing DVDs for Bittorrent or Burning – Title says it all. Step-by-step on how to rip those flicks of yours.

– 20 Things You (Probably) Don't Know About XP – I was going to skip this until I read #12 and #13, learned something, and figured I would share.

– Squidoo – Up and running now. I played around with this in beta and made a lens. Nothing too wonderful in terms of my stuff, but it looks like it has a lot of potential.

Little sister can’t you find another way
No more living life behind a shadow