December 26, 2008

• I have a picture of my kids below, but it won't stay there long.

  My sons fear that their friends will chance to read my blog, figure out that I'm their mother, and tease them mercilessly about it, thus ruining their lives.

  I have therefore been strictly enjoined to maintain complete anonymity and never show the face of a human being here. Also no recognizable landmarks that would allow a casual reader to connect the dots and figure out my secret identity.

  Therefore, I'll take their picture back down before they get out of bed, so if you've ever been curious, look quickly.

  I will leave the pictures of cupcakes. I was trying to get a pictues that showed the true beauty of the frosting, but was unsuccessful.

  Homemade from scratch cake is good stuff, you know?

  We still have quite a lot of cake and cookies here, and some pie as well. #2 daughter has agreed to take most of it with her when she leaves.

  #1 daughter and her friend have already left, and I have a bit of work to do today, but we can still celebrate till Epiphany.

  Some people will then start right in celebrating in anticipation of Mardi Gras, but I figure I'll tone it down a little.

  I hope to clean up a bit today, and #2 daughter and I are going to work on our book proposal. I may start my WebCT course design. I'm reading yet another book about the central importance of design, and have to do an actual design, whereas normally I write the words and send them to a designer, or stick them into something that has already been styled or whatever. Also, the book proposal itself is very design-centered. And I have another design job on my marker board, as well.

  My mind is therefore on design to an unusual degree.

  The scarf I've been making is in some sense my own design. Since it's basically just a rectangle, and I was inspired in the main idea by a scarf over at The Anticraft, I can't claim to have designed it, exactly.

  At least I finished it by Christmas Day. This is a slightly lacy scarf made of Knitpicks Shadow in Redwood. It is very soft and light, but probably also warm. I made it for #2 daughter, who isn't a lace kind of girl. She likes scarves, though, and lives in a place that gets cold in the winter, so she may like this.

  Today is the Feast of Stephen, so the song for the day has to be "Good King Wenceslas." John Mason Neale wrote it in the 19th century. Enjoy it on YouTube. Here's the story.

  We haven't had a whole lot of music around our house the last day or two. Usually we sing a few carols at the piano, but we've been distracted by Wii Music, an extremely fun game which #2 son received for Christmas. #1 daughter is also trying to help #2 son come up with an audition song so he can try out for a choir scholarship at the very expensive school top which he has been admitted for next fall. And #1 son got new guitar strings and a new songbook, so he has been noodling around quite a bit. So I guess we can say that we've had some music, but no caroling.

   I had quite a lot of gifts this year, myself. Slippers, a very fancy billfold, a new reed scent diffuser, a collage of family photos from my mother, an enormous cookbook, a T shirt with #1 son's clever drawings on it, a box of chocolates...

  Yep, it's pretty lavish chez fibermom. No wonder I can't think seriously about design. I'm more  in a gently ruminating frame of mind. I've eaten oatmeal. I will now get dressed. Then I'll pick up the house a bit and do some laundry. By then I should be restored to some sense that life is real, life is earnest, and then maybe I'll be ready to do some design work.

   

  • 9:02 am
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