Late night yoga

Someone is determined to stay up as late as possible tonight.



(He made it until 11:53 p.m., which was half an hour longer than Arthur.)

A boy and his ocean

Merry Christmas!

On the Road Again

We were very lucky this year to have neighbors who were also driving east for the holidays, so we got a lift all the way to Amherst. Where, in addition to being greeted by ADORABLE YOUNG CHILDREN, we were picking up the bestest Christmas present - a new-to-us car.

The timing couldn't be better. (Okay, it could have by about 6 weeks - the latest round of repairs - but realistically speaking, the timing couldn't be better.) The much-loved Civic is showing its age. But we can't afford to buy a car. However, my mom can't really drive anymore, so they no longer need two cars and offered hers to us. The only challenge was getting to Amherst to pick up the car, so again - having a lift all the way to Massachusetts was such a boon.

The one downside to this travel arrangement is that since our generous drivers wanted to do the drive all in one day (we generally stop in Rochester and spend the night at my brother's), by the time we hit the Mass. border, it was dark. Couldn't see my hills!

OTOH, they like showtunes and scifi so we managed to remain entertained for the 13 hours in the car (stopping only for gas and bathrooms and customs).

But! We still managed to arrive before the children were in bed, so I got my squeezy hugs :) Lots and lots of squeezy hugs. (Until Kyp arrived, that is. At which point I was promptly discarded in favor of doggie chasing.)

'Tis the Season to Bake Cookies

After Christmas Observed₁ with my family in Amherst (plus a brief stop for the irresistible popovers), we drove to the north shore to spend a couple of days with the niecephews. On Monday, Arthur's parents came over and rolled out/cut/decorated sugar cookies with the kids. Neecy looooooved dumping colored sugar on everything :) Neffie is already better than I am at using cookie cutters.



We also took Neffie for a quick shopping trip to buy a gift from him and his sister to their parents. According to him, these are the items Mommy and Daddy wanted for Christmas:

• Cheezits
• Oreos
• Spiderman toy
• Stuffed Disney monster

He is the very model of a modern four-year-old, that's for sure.

And then on Christmas Eve day, we made some chocolate chip cookies for Santa. Neffie is now at the age where when he wants to help, he's actually being helpful - no eggshells in the dough ;^) I also pinched off a sample of each of the individual ingredients (except for the raw eggs) so that he could taste them. Flour on its own doesn't taste like much. Baking soda is just salty. But put it all together? And you get magic!

Stalking Santa

This year, Neffie was really into Elf on a Shelf. He loved looking for Freddie every morning. And he's hyper-aware of Santa and loot and Getting All The Toys Ever.

We'd gotten them an inflatable globe. A) Because it's useful to have one, and B) because this year when we were stalking Santa via NORAD, we had a 3D representation to learn about the world as we checked in with Santa's latest known coordinates. There is a looooot of ocean. And he doesn't want to go to Arizona. (I was confused at first; I mean sure, he has the Latin surname, but he's too pale to get pulled over and asked for citizenship papers, so what is he worrying about? But it turns out he remembers a conversation we had over a year ago when I reassured him that the scorpion and tarantula in his icky bug alphabet book weren't in Massachusetts, so he was safe. They were very far away in Arizona. So he wanted to find Arizona on the globe to make sure he didn't go there, because it's scary. Kid has quite a memory, I tells ya'.)

Anyway, we spent some time looking up different places on the globe as Santa made his stops. Watched the NORAD videos. He did wander off to watch television after a while, so while it was a good distraction for quite a while, it wasn't the same obsession as last year.



After helping to quality assure the cookies (wouldn't want to give Santa bad product, because it might result in bad presents!), Arthur and I had enough sugar to dance along to Mary Poppins. Sadly, the cutenesses wouldn't dance with us :( Maybe next year! (However, both children spent the week wandering around singing showtunes - Neecy was singing Tomorrow and Neffie was alternating between Jolly Holiday and  A Spoonful of Sugar. In fact, he was often filking as he went. "It's a jolly holiday with you, Dad." I am so proud!)

I once again abused my special Auntie powers and motivated the kids to help clean up some. We have to pick stuff up off the floor; we don't want Santa to fall down! If Santa trips over toys, he might drop the presents he's carrying and they could break.

Always appeal to a small child's base greed. It works every time.

My, what mighty big teeth you have!

I swear that Neffie had me read Little Red Riding Hood at least once a day. I was the wolf and he was LRRH. (Ob: knitting photo - LRRH cloak I knit for Neecy) We had conversations about what favorite treats should go into the basket for granny.

We also got some puzzles for the kids. Neffie is really good at them, but he gets frustrated easily if it takes longer than he's used to. So a lot of the adult supervision consists of reminding him that this is actually a very hard puzzle and he's gotten a lot of it done already all by himself because he's done such a great job. Just coaching him along to continue, while acknowledging this is a very hard puzzle. It worked - he eventually finished the 100-piece puzzle of Fenway Park. (Although he didn't want advice on organizing the pieces by border vs. interior, etc. He fits pieces together by instinct, but doesn't have a formal process - which is why the larger puzzles are so challenging for him. He needs to learn to translate his instinct into a concerted plan of attack. Which he doesn't want to do, because he hasn't done it before and doesn't see the value in it. *sigh*)

Anyway, thank you to my brother for another fabulous Christmas Eve dinner (mmmm, roast beast...). I hope Santa enjoyed his cookies :) And oh! It was fun going along with Santa to pick up stocking stuffers. I got to play the role of enabler, which is the best.


<----------------  This is what happens when Auntie helps Santa pick up stocking stuffers :)

Merry Christmas!

Now we're in the city proper with Arthur's folks. We're introducing them to our new copy of Power Grid before we disappear to the annual Staxmas and see a bunch of you all at once.

The new car had its own stocking hanging above the woodstove this morning! (The outlaws recently retired their Taurus, so were passing on a bunch of Taurus supplies to us since that's the car we had just picked up. A stocking full of surprises!)

We went for a walk in the Arboretum. It felt VERY good to be back in JP, to be out on a sunny day, and to see hills around. 

healthcare.gov

Arthur hasn't had a single nice word to say about the site. Bad language (even a basic pass by an editor would fix so much - some of the questions state the opposite of what they actually mean), terrible UX, and just a lot that downright doesn't work.

He's been trying to apply for weeks. Kept getting into a cycle where it told him he needed to fill out x before submitting, but every time he clicked on x, it skipped him to the end of the application and asked him to click submit.

So now after deleting and reapplying 3 times (because when something didn't work, that's what the people on the phone told him to do), we finally got to the stage where we received our eligibility statement and a list of options. Rather expensive options that aren't any better than what we have now.

He finally went and saw a human, and it turns out that the latest problem is that we make too little money to qualify for the subsidy - instead, we qualify for the Medicaid expansion. (Which we assumed we wouldn't, since students aren't eligible, but that's one of the things the expansion changes.) Except many states have been rejecting the expansion, so the site can't tell you that you qualify because maybe it's not actually an option for you. At the same time, despite making $60K less than the maximum for subsidies, it won't quote us any options with the subsidy.

Turns out Michigan has agreed to the expansion, but it won't be available until April.While annoying, it's better than it could be because my current plan decided to be nice and drop the pre-existing condition clause on January 1 even though they didn't have to (because the plan was grandfathered in).  That doesn't help me too much, since I have such a high deductible and haven't spent a cent against it yet since everything I have has been a pre-existing condition. And it's highly unlikely that I'll reach my deductible before April.

But it's decent emergency coverage in the interim and knowing that I will have affordable health care again in a few months makes it easier to plan. Although I was definitely hoping to have the coverage kick in January 1 :(

Driving in a Winter Wonderland

We had to drive a lot this weekend. And the roads weren't adequately plowed (even though there were several plows on the road, they weren't plowing as they went - they only plowed when they got to their destination), and it took me over an hour to go somewhere that should only take 20 minutes. Plus the roads were bad enough that the person supposed to relieve me at the Community Center was late getting there - multiple accidents on the campus shuttle route - and just all around yuck.


I learned to drive  in this weather (winter birthday = winter learner's permit and driver's ed). But it's been years since I've had to drive in it regularly (I left Perkins in 2007, so that would be the last time I had a driving commute). Boston has a subway system. I walked down the block to the train station, and - like magic! - it brought me to where I wanted to go. (Not always efficiently or warmly, but I wasn't the one driving in the snow, so I still came out ahead. Except for that time the Red Line was down and we had to walk from Kendall to Harvard on ice. That sucked. And the Watertown bus that went up Arsenal doesn't even show up half the time in winter, which is why I wound up driving to Perkins most days.)


So today I am missing public transit even more than usual. Although I did get to explain "fishtailing" to a non-native English speaker. Idioms r us!

November Highlights

• We made 5 pies for a local shelter for Thanksgiving. That's a lot of pie. Yummy, yummy pie. Chaos in the kitchen. (Later on we experimented with the leftover mashed sweet potatoes and some of the remaining hot peppers from our garden and made some fritters which are definitely worth trying again sometime.)
• Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special - we finally have enough of a local "crowd" to be able to invite people over! Couldn't find any jelly babies, however :(
• Lots of knitting. Trying to finish up projects before Christmas, as well as before the Lady Gaga/Muppets holiday special. Wrists are unhappy - will take a break from knitting while home for the holidays.
• Got some locals hooked on Dominion. Muahahahaha! At last!
• Started working at the Northwood Community Center. This is a great way to get out of the house and meet neighbors and plan activities, which complements the contract work from home. Also, great commute. And a manager who hums the original BSG theme.
• Guest minister performing bilingual rendition of Blowin' in the Wind. English and Bulgarian. Very cool :)
• Thanksgiving potluck that included sushi and tostones - score another one for Northwood multiculturalism! (Sadly, we didn't bring pie because everyone signed up for desserts and they needed sides instead, but then turns out almost no one actually brought desserts so oops, there was no apple pie and Arthur was very pouty to have spent the day baking pies and not have any applie pie for himself.)
• Josh's annual post-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner. For which we made two more pies (we were originally going to bring one, but see above re: Arthur upset not to have apple pie). And I discovered that running out of  corn syrup (which I never use except for pecan pie) and using half corn syrup/half agave syrup makes the pecan pie even better. Also, I accidentally watched college football for the first time.
• Discovery of Frita Batidos. We're now part of a monthly burger crawl to help us find the best burger in Ann Arbor+ before we leave. This month was Frita Batidos, which Arthur had been refusing to go to and whining that it was all beef (it's not). But then we get there and he's changed his tune completely. He's absolutely in love with the loaded plantains - nachos, but with maduros instead of tortilla chips. If he had to choose between me and the loaded plantains, I'm not sure I'd win.