Whee! Ride!

The helmet that we ordered for me came in yesterday - it's *really* pretty, and more importantly, fits really well. So this morning fordprfct took me on a short motorcycle ride, while selenite took care of Alanna. Had to be short, since < lj user=selenite> had to head out to work.

I'd never ridden as a passenger on a motorcycle before. I used to ride a moped in college, but that's smaller, and driver is different from passenger. So I'd been wondering how it'd go. It was fun. We only were out briefly, and stayed in the neighborhood. He did a good bit of curving and swerves to see how I'd do with those - pretty good, although I can definitely use more practice before we go long distances or high speeds. And the straight forward takeoff is just FUN! Wheeeee.

Then we went off to breakfast. Yum. Happy morning.

Decompression day

Today is so far proving to be a very satisfactory decompression day.

Which I *needed*. Monday was driving all over doing errands. Tuesday was various disasters including Jamie flooding the bathroom. Wednesday was Jamie's ARD meeting, then an hour of dealing with Walmart and clothes shopping for kids, then taking the kids to Kids' Club in the evening. Thursday was too damn much driving all over town - across town, back again, halfway out, back again, all the way out, back and more to dance, back home again - I started at 8:30 in the morning, and had a couple breaks at home, but didn't get to stay here until about 9 pm. Whew.

This morning's motorcycle ride was great fun, and look!
( a picture of the shiny pretty helmet )

A lot of today has been occupied by the game Portal totally eating my brain. I was watching fordprfct play it some yesterday and being totally floored and not thinking I could do it, but today I could. I think it's because he'd instantly see the layout and then just start moving, so I never got to get oriented on it. Once I could look around at my own pace and get it, I was solving the puzzles just fine. Which makes me feel good, since it's all spatial problem stuff. Well, and timing. Some of the video-game moving stuff is hard, but I don't have much experience with that.

The bike we got through Freecycle is getting fixed up for Maggie, and we'll start teaching her to ride it. Mine needs to get fixed up, but that will have to wait.

Halloween outfit for Alanna

[Vicomte de Valmont]SUCCESS!!!![/valmont]

I found it! The costume for Alanna's first halloween.

My mom did up a fantastic costume for Maggie's first one - a rose outfit, for Maggie Rose. Sadly, Alanna won't get to wear that one. She may be Maggie's age for the first halloween, but size, no.

Mom also made one back for Brendan's first halloween. He was then twice Alanna's age. So it fits fine. Jamie wore it, too. It's a green dragon costume, and it's adorable. And I finally found it. I need to call and ask her if it could go through the wash, maybe on delicate cycle.

Now if I could just find my palomino-colored cowgirl boots...

They say the memory is the second thing to go

It's that time of night again.

The time of night when I've finally gotten the kids off to bed, and I vaguely know there was some stuff I wanted to look up online, or some link someone had up in their LJ that wasn't safe to click on around the kids, and now would be a good time for it - except it's late enough that I can't remember what or where they were.