So I haven't conquered the world yet; I know my three readers are surprised to hear this.
I did clean out my linen closet, which is actually almost as exciting as world domination. I think that right there sums up what being thirtysomething is all about. That, and somebody I know texted my husband a picture of herself naked, and it made me giggle.

Today, a successful homemade cheese. Tomorrow...THE WORLD!!!!

still catching up

Well, the raw food cleanse is over, and the Girl Scout Cookie Whatever-the-Opposite-of-a-Cleanse is has begun. Crime and Punishment is over, and my mentor was so impressed with my analytical reading that I have Great Expectations and Jude the Obscure on my plate this month. Sigh.
My kids haven't mooned anyone lately (slow week), though Isaac got in trouble at daycare for throwing the legos in the fishtank. Birthday was awesome (and can I emphasize how much better 36 is than 26? Wow. Yay.), and I now have a cheese-making kit, which should lead to further entertaining blog posts soon. Right after I finish Great Expectations.

catching up

It has been brought to my attention by various relatives (the three of them that read this blog, and one who just discovered I have it) that I have been neglecting my blogging responsibilities. It's true, I have been falling short of even my very low twice-a-month standard. So, here's what's up with me. I am one day into a two-day raw food cleanse, which totally sucks and is making me cranky. For lunch, I had a smoothie with the texture of banana-flavored snot. I am about 300 pages into Crime and Punishment (actually similar in many ways to a raw food cleanse - plenty of fiber and unpleasantness in the name of virtuous sustenance), and I won't go so far as to say it totally sucks, but it is also making me cranky. The fact that I have two remaining days of winter break will be making me cranky as soon as I emerge from my back-to-school denial.

(so I started that two weeks ago, and am only just managing to get it posted. Maybe I should take up knitting. Or drinking.)

11-10

A sad anniversary today. Sad, and still hard to believe.

I considered feeding everyone braunschweiger for lunch, which would have been appropriately character-building, but instead I went for a really fun day with my kids. Because it goes too fast.

beary good

     In my thirteen (!) years in Colorado, I had seen a real-live bear only twice. Once from afar in a car (me, not the bear), and once last year, when one practically joined us around the campfire - it walked into our campsite as we watched awestruck, ripped the top off of the beer cooler, and then left. But really, twice in thirteen years - it's a rare event.
     Until this year. The drought, the recession, blah blah, and there have been bears, at least three, hanging out in our neighborhood all summer. We have pictures of the bears in our neighbors' driveways, moseying down Eagle St, chillin' in yards. One enterprising one smashed down our chain-link fence and dragged the trash dumpster all around our yard. Every so often some municipal folks run one up a tree, shoot it with darts, tag its ear, and haul it off. (Side note - now whenever anything at our house breaks, Isaac tells me it was the bear)
     The other day our neighbor alerted us that there was a bear sleeping up the tree of the people across the alley, so walked over to see it.  My mom is reading this and taking a deep breath about now. I get that it wasn't the smartest choice of evening recreation, but really, there's a bear snoozing in your neighbor's tree - what are you going to do? Especially if you have Blaser genes in there anywhere, you are going to go see the bear, and you are going to take your kids so they don't miss out  (Afterward, you might spin donuts in your pickup on a frozen pond, but that's a post for another day).
     It was a little bear, and it was huddled about as far up the tree as it could get, curled around the trunk, trying to look like it wasn't there. We were all very quiet, and we kept our distance, and we got a look at the bear, and we went home to dinner. But I'm still thinking about this bear. It was maybe a year old. It had been tagged twice already, which meant the next time it got picked up would be the last time. Obviously I know that bears can't be hanging around neighborhoods. My kids live here, and plenty of other people's kids, and that is that. But part of me is still hoping, even though I know it doesn't work this way, that maybe the bear has a chance, that maybe there is room in the world for my kids and the bears too.

sporadic

Man, an entire month went by somewhere in there. Somewhere between the dog's spinal blood clot and the cat's hysterectomy and a mouse taking up residence in our pantry (in my lunch cooler, to be precise), and the almost-daily dismembered songbird stashed behind the TV (pretty sure it's the cat and not Isaac...) and my second grad-school mailing, after which my mentor, incredibly, has not yet decided I suck, and Halloween, and Alec having strep, and Owen barfing for 24 hours, and Ryan making lunch for Bill Gates, and then continuing to hunt elk, and getting ready to present at the national GT conference (a lot of geeks are about to converge on Denver), and a couple of minor car breakdowns and some missed bills, sometimes forgetting to send Alec to school with a morning snack, feeding the kids too much candy and trying to make sense of Faulkner, I have failed to post anything at all.