Thursday, December 30, 2010

Day 318- Leftovers and Ankle-Biting Houseguests

RS is married with a kid. They don't live here, which is good. They visit, though, a couple times a week. It's strange, and a long involved explanation, but that's the basics. The kid is somewhere in the mysterious "not yet talking but kinda walking" years, which are only marginally different from the "eats sleeps and screams" time. Something about the not sleeping, I suspect.

So I have one reasonably quiet extra, and one with an amazing ability to shatter eardrums.

Unfortunately, the loud one has decided she likes me.

Kids are like cats, it seems. They know who would really rather they stay away, and then then glom on them. And so I was on-glommed.

Which is fine for 20 minutes, but starts getting kinda bad after an hour. to be honest, i'm pretty tired of *most* people, even real live adults, after 2 hours. So at midnight, with no sleeping toadler in sight, I pulled out the most useful kid-skill I ever developed (beside slipping ground up benadryl in their food).

I used my most calm, most quiet freaked-out-dog voice, and I pulled a story out of thin air. A story with a castle (biiiiig and spaaarkly) a prince (braaaave and strooong), and a pony or two and another castle, and a rather short and boring quest to find a princess. And every time the kid sat up I stopped. And every time she laid down, I started up again, with the prince, and the pony, and the loooong road.

I'm afraid I got bored way before she did. If I'd been able to keep it going for maybe another five minutes, I'm pretty sure she would have fallen totally asleep. Instead she was still sometimes screaming at 1am.

There's a reason I like dogs better than children. Only half of them have to do with where they fly in planes. Kid is cute, but I think I'm at about my kidlet OD point.

In food news, I cooked up a pound of chickpeas and made channa masala again. I used the (rapidly ick-ifying) cilantro and way, way too much curry. And I've been a terrible roommate and left it out on the stove the last day. I need to finish it before the curry decides to reproduce and it becomes too hot to eat. Or, you know, grows fur and walks away.

It was good though. Ate some off leftover tortilla chips, but most of it I'm just eating straight. It lasts longer, I find, when it's less salty and more hot.

Oh, yeah, and I seem to be off caffeine again. I've been sucking down extra sugary Fireside Chai like it's going out of style, 'cause it's what my tea selection is down to, give or take an odd herbal packet or two.

Also, there's a vague possibility that photos could be returning to the blog, sometime after the New Year. I'll find out around birthday time, and you'll find out not long after that. I don't intend to wash this one, either. If, you know, it should ever happen to appear.

4 comments:

  1. I'll keep my fingers crossed for those Bear pics. You have more patience with kids than me. I'll take dogs anytime even with my allergies.

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  2. Only when I can reasonably escape. On airplanes I offer the parents part of my stash of benadryl. If they won't take me up on it, I mix jack and coke and a couple benadryl. Not healthy, but so much better than accidentally killing small children on the plane.

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  3. Good lord. You and your bagged teas. Send me your address and I'll mail you some proper teas.

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  4. proper teas are for proper writers who are getting *actual* work done. They are allowed to go to the online stores and buy real loose tea, or to the tea shop and buy it there.

    Writers who *aren't* doing enough work *don't* get real tea, they have to drink the stuff they bought at the grocery store (two years ago, as backup in case they ran out of *real* tea). And if they don't start writing soon, they'll be downgraded to liptons.

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