I have all these posts of things from photos I took with my phone. Who knows if they’ll ever get posted.

Who?!?! Who?!?!, I ask. (Not me.)

Maybe I should move to tumblr? (Isn’t that sort of thing more easy/parsimonious with tumblr?)

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So. There is this update. Knew it was coming, but that doesn’t make it any more fair or made of sense.

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My newest hobby is stalking music. It is really much more fun that I’ve given it credit in the past. I think this is because it has never been so easy to stalk new music as it is in these new days.

Just today, I found at least two or three things that I really, REALLY like. And Brad and I are going to see two shows in the next 6ish weeks. Considering our average has been something like one show per three years in the past, this is some serious business. And we even have a babysitter! Woot!

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Also, we are moving (Again). More on that later.

When blankie bear was new, Griffon was sweet, and I had not yet barfed in that beaded bag.

I meant to post this earlier, but I didn’t, and now it’s UPON US.

Cole Dieckman is turning five years old today (he’s just four months older than Griffon). He was diagnosed with leukemia in October 2010, and by October 2011, nothing more could be done to help him. He wasn’t supposed to live to see Christmas last month, but he did. And TODAY IS HIS BIRTHDAY.

A gmail account was set up to accept wishes by email and e-card at wishesforcole(at)gmail(dot)com. Send him a birthday wish, yo!

It’s not like there aren’t way too many other kids dealing with the same thing, but this is ONE KID (and his family), right now, whose (likely last) birthday can be made more special by taking just a second to say hello.

I don’t usually post these kinds of things, but this sweet pea’s story really got to me.

I want to start this post with the sentence, “Sorry to be a giant downer.” Because yep.

A friend invited me and Brad to a New Year’s party thing at a bar close to campus. I thought to myself, “There is no way we can get a babysitter on New Year’s Eve,” and didn’t give it another thought.

Well, my friend met a friend there, who (the friend of the friend) later walked two blocks home to her house and was murdered by a stranger waiting inside. Austin’s first homicide of the year. Two other women were assaulted nearby the same night. The details are so, so bizarre.

I didn’t know this person, but by all accounts, she was a complete gift to the world. She was 29, and she loved music. She worked as a special ed teacher’s assistant in an elementary school, and for a local organization that gets girls interested in music. A friend of hers started a tumblr to compile pictures, stories, and music from her friends. I keep looking, and it’s just Too Sad. (I don’t want to link to it because I have gross feelings about linking to a memorial for someone I didn’t know.)

I just don’t understand this, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

It is New Year’s Eve.

I am hard at work on a grocery list template. Brad has just provided me two of the largest, best margaritas I have ever had. Oh, so very nice. My kids are watching “PeeWee’s Playhouse,” an all-time favorite of mine that they now enjoy thanks to DVD. The last episode they watched was copyrighted 1989. I was 13 in 1989. I so love(d) that show.

Griffon is entirely too excited about staying up late tonight. Archie doesn’t get to. The big kids are also (but less) excited.

It is a good eve. Maybe not as good as when we saw Prince at Texas Stadium that one time (wooooooooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo), but good. Happy Holidays, friends. 2012 is not the last year of Earth. You heard it here first.

I did not eat breakfast or lunch today. That is a terrible thing, and I am not proud. And it means that I am hungry now, at 10:30 p.m., even though I ate dinner. I have a mind to go in the kitchen and find some beans and Tabasco, oh yes I do, and eat as if there is no tomorrow.

What a bad idea. This is where these cliches break down. “Live every day as if it were your last.” Do you know what I’d do if this were my last day? EAT A WHOLE BUNCH OF CRAP.

Hello, friends. How have your holidays been so far?

It’s after midnight, and I have not even started watching the forensics show I’ve been watching before sleep these days.

This is what happens. Left to my own devices – with no obligations, like work – my circadian rhythm goes all haywire, and I stay up later and later until I’m regularly staying up through the following morning. I went to sleep at 1 a.m. last night. Thought I was on the mend, but no.

This is no bother, except that (a) Brad usually ends up dealing with the children solo in mornings, and (b) it is a terrible, awful thing to have to slam yourself back into a routine (we go back to work and school next week).

So. Christmas. As usual, my kids got way too much stuff. The three bigs went home with my mom Monday and stayed through yesterday, which gave me an opportunity to clean out their ridiculous toybox. I am a regular purger – of the material goods, not bile, variety – so it never gets TERRIBLE, but Christmas is just about my limit. Candy, chocolate, toys, new clothes, art projects and materials, Christmas ornaments and tree bits, food, strings of lights, special dishes and towels, new things you have absolutely no idea where to store, … It is almost too much.

This year was a little better, as we’ve stopped the comprehensive gifting process with my extended family, and we did my family’s stockings and Brad’s family’s gifts a week before Christmas. This gave me some time to get all that stuff – toiletries, toys, candies – put away before comprehensively gifting the least extended part of my extended family last weekend.

Comprehensive gifting was good, but again: Too Much. I love Christmas, and I love the tree and the lights and the warmth of it all, but I also love so much when it’s over.

Today, Brad put away all the Christmas stuff while I took a nap on the couch (see above: screwy circadian rhythm). Pretty sweet… I fell asleep in a Christmas house and woke up to NO CHRISTMAS TREE. I am amazed every year at how much brighter and cleaner the house looks when we take the tree down.

And now I’m thinking about New Year’s.

I only really started to appreciate New Year’s recently. Before a couple years ago, I didn’t understand why people made resolutions or what the big deal was about a new… Year, I guess.

I don’t know why I get it now, or what’s changed. It’s exciting to me, though, January 1st. It’s a new (arbitrary) beginning, like you can make whatever changes you want to make… and you don’t know what big events will forever be labeled as having occurred in 2012. I think back to past New Year’s Eves, what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. It’s a good marker for thinking about big things, life direction/priority type things.

(Whoa. I just looked back to what I (thought I) blogged at last year’s end, and it was 200NINE, not 2010, when I did that. I completely failed to address the new year last year. (Cool. This is why I win at blogging.))

So, how have you been? And what changes – IF you want to make any – are you planning for 2012?

One day last week, we took the kids out to eat, and all the stars aligned. Do you know what I mean? All the kids were occupied and interested and talking and listening to each other. The big kids helped the little kids with their drinks and silverware and crayons. They were telling us about school and the things they were drawing on their placemats, and we were just engaged enough to really listen and ask questions.

This never happens, but here we were.

When the older couple across from us got up to leave, they stopped at our table and told us that they travel all over the United States and had never seen a better behaved group of kids. They called us “such a cute family.” (This likely was partly due to Archie’s being dressed in a skunk costume at the time; he likes to wear it home from school.)

After they left, we talked to the kids about what the couple had said and about how nice it is when everyone gets along and nobody’s whining and we’re all having fun and being kind to each other. It felt very sweet. I wondered at the kindness of strangers and felt hope for the world.

And then they went insane. Griffon started putting his nasty Crocs on the table and touching the bottoms of his shoes and spilling his milk (twice) and cleaning it up by slurping it off the table. Anneke and Kieran started fighting. Kieran went back to policing every one of his sister’s actions and telling on her, and Anneke became weepy and whiny and just generally on the verge of a meldown. Archie wanted to leave. He started climbing down from his chair and walking around. If we tried to detain him, he arched his back and wailed. At one point, he bit his tongue and did one of those cries where they hold their breath and you’re afraid they’re going to suck a bunch of half-chewed fries down their throat before screaming bloody murder.

Our waiter was slow, and all I wanted to do was leave (which, of course, is the normal scenario when we lose our minds and take all of the kids out to eat because we think it will be fun). Unbeknownst to us, though, the older couple had bought us two sundaes. Such a great gesture, for sure, but holy crap, that involved another 20 minutes of ordering, waiting, and smashing food into faces.

It is sometimes really nice to go home, even when home is nasty (always).

I don’t get this phenomenon of things coalescing and either being really lovely/sweet or terrible/fisticuffs. (Mostly I don’t understand the lovely/sweet version; the other version happens all the time.)

I am sure it’s mostly to do with my own state of mind, so why can’t I make it happen all the time?

This is Griffon’s painting up for auction at his school.

We bought it for ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS. That seemed high to me – you know, as a starting bid on a four-year-old’s painting – but what were we going to do? Not bid on it?

Whatever. It’s all good. I actually like the painting, and all the proceeds went toward professional development for the teachers.

After we bought it, we got this explanation in his weekly folder of how it went down:

“Griffon works on a large splatter painting project with a few other children. They use spoons to flick blue paint all over a large canvas. He explains to me,

I’m an artist. I split a big splat… One day there was Spider-Man, and a monster ate Spider-Man, and the teachers and the police guys and the firemans and the ambulance got him and put him in jail, and a big fat baby giant came and fart and then suck his blood, and then he fart, and then they said, ‘Ugh. Gross.’ And then the Spider-Man said, ‘Ugh. Gross.’ And then, the end. That’s all. Actually… I got some more. And then the big fat baby showed his diaper, and poop falled out, and the fireman came and sprayed fire, and the Spider-Man said, ‘AHHH,’ and then he fart. That’s all! I’m done! One more thing. Then the teacher said, ‘Eww. Ugh,’ and then they farted. The end.”

Oh yes. This one is destined for greatness.

I am in need of counsel. Let me try to start at the beginning, as if that is even possible.

Brad is an only child. His mom and dad divorced when he was 9ish. He saw his dad on weekends but didn’t have a great relationship with him because he was an alcoholic (his dad, obviously). He still saw him on major holidays, and they sent birthday cards and stuff, but they weren’t close.

When we got married, Brad’s dad took me aside and teared up and said, “Take care of him for me.” It was kindof a strange thing to say – strange enough that I remember it verbatim – but I always saw it as his way of almost trying to make amends or something.

When our kids were born, we started to have a little closer relationship with him. He lived in a pawn shop (I’m not being figurative), and Brad would take Kieran and Anneke over there to see him. He came to the kids’ birthday parties and Christmas at our house once, I think.

When Kieran was a year or so old, Bob was in a bad car accident (those circumstances are interesting in their own right, but not related to this story). His neck was broken, and it seemed like he had a little brain damage. (This was probably partly related to years and years of drinking too.)

We visited him in the hospital. He was lucky to be alive. He had screws installed in his skull and a halo (you know what I mean, right? the appliance-like thing they put on people with spinal (I guess?) damage). That was when he started repeating things, kinda like he had Alzheimer’s.

A little after that, Bob’s half-brother (who he’d thought was his uncle until shortly before) died. (The circumstances of that are interesting in their own right too – hoarding, alcoholism, reclusion, literal wads of cash – but also aren’t particularly related to the story at hand.)

(I never met the half-brother, Brad’s uncle. We tried to catch up with him one summer when we were on vacation near his house, but he didn’t called us back. We didn’t know it at the time, but he’d lost his job and become an alcoholic, reclusive hoarder. We realized after he died a few months later that this was why. Given what I’ve heard about him before all this – great guy, life of the party, intensely loyal to family – he was probably ashamed.)

Bob’s half-brother was very wealthy and had no family. He left everything to Bob (you know, the alcoholic who lived in the pawn shop).

** I am now realizing there’s no way I can explain all this – because this story’s about to go down a rabbit hole – in one post. This will have to be a series. I want to document everything, because it’s important, even though it makes my blood pressure rise to the point that my head feels fuzzy and I feel sick to my stomach. **