violetismycolor

and we're off...

Everything is finally settled around here and we are leaving in the morning for France.

We have someone looking after the house, the cat, the dog...Ross is getting a ride back to school.  Adam and Bonnie are set to meet us at the airport in Paris.  We are set to have a great week with them.

Adam is still trying to make his grad school decision...it's between UC-San Diego and Northwestern.  He has to decide by April 15.  I know that which ever school he decides on, he will have a wonderful experience.  San Diego has the number one neuroscience program in the country and are the school with the most NIH funding in the country.  But La Jolla is a suburb and he's more an urban kid...and he really doesn't care about having an endless summer and a beach to live near.  Northwestern has a great program, too, and the Neuroscience Institute is part of the Northwestern Med School, so he will be downtown (Chicago) and will be around alot of med students, which could be very interesting.  Decisions, decisions.

I'll try to update from France and Switzerland, but I won't have my laptop with me, so will have to either use Bonnie's computer or go to an internet cafe...so, we'll see...

Anyway...happy Easter, etc...

what in the world?

The word of the moment seems to be "kerfuffle"...love the sound of it...sort of wacky and foreign and smart all at the same time.  But just why does it seem to be popping up all over the newspapers and tv all the time?  Or is it just me? 

I saw it again in the NY Times opinion section this morning...it seems to be a favorite of Frank Rich's. 

And I 'got' what it meant, just by inference.  But I decided to go to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online and look it up:

From the Scots 'caer', meaning awkward or wrong. 
And fuffle:  to become disheveled
It's British and means:  disturbance or fuss

Frank Rick refers to the Bush Administration's 'latest kerfuffle' in his column.

Yah, the Bush Administration...just pick the kerfuffle of the moment.

Yet I think what is going on in Washington deserves a stronger word.  Like scandal.

A kerfuffle is when my puppy drags my shoes around and hides them from me.  Or when my son Ross decides to spend the day at the card store, but then needs a ride home in middle of my dinner preparations. 

It seems to me a lying Attorney General/Vice President/President (take your pick) is NOT a kerfuffle.

What do YOU think?

home sweet home...

Ross is HOME! 

It was a lovely drive down to Corvallis yesterday.  The sun was shining and the iTunes were playing and the lambs were frolicking in the fields bordering I-5. 

Ross seems to feel pretty confident about how his finals went and was cheerily recounting the end of the semester on the way home.  We picked up my friend Sandy's stepson, too, and he must have gotten bored with our conversation and he fell asleep.  But that was okay.  History and Geography are not exciting for everyone, can you believe that?

Well, for the next 10 days, it's a Ross-a-thon...

Cookie has already decided that he's delicious!  She couldn't stop licking his hands last night (and she hasn't done that to anyone else...).  She even barked at him when he got tired of it and made her stop.  This should be a fun week-and-a-half!

fencing...

Aaaack...I am in the process of getting bids for a fence in my back yard.  The lovely Cookie needs to be contained.  I cannot believe how expensive fences are!  It's a fence, guys, not a new room being added to my house!

In good news...tomorrow, Ross comes home for 10 whole days of Spring Break.  Now, THAT will be fun!

Pluto power...

As a dedicated Planet-Pluto-phile, I was thrilled to hear that the State House of New Mexico has voted to declare Pluto a planet whenever it passes over New Mexico!  I should get John's Dem friends here in Oregon to recognize the planet-ness of Pluto, too.  Don't let New Mexico show us up, Oregon!

boring, boring, boring...

My life has been so boring that I haven't been able to put together a proper blog entry.  Now that a week has gone by, enough has transpired that I can say something other than I spent time with my dog.  Which I did...which I do, constantly.  Good thing I have a good library, which has supplied me with books to train me how NOT to be held hostage by a 22-lb. puppy. 

Ross was home for the weekend. We got the good news that he could get his braces off over Spring Break...in about 10 days!  Hurrah for straight teeth.  I can't wait to see how cute he looks!

Adam flew to Chicago today, to begin his 3-state-tour of colleges.  He has already been accepted by U. Minnesota and Northwestern, and is thinking he will probably get accepted to UCSD (San Diego).  He is doing the Northwestern thing tomorrow, then flying to San Diego on Thursday morning, back to Chicago on Saturday (in order to celebrate St. Patrick's Day where they dye the river green and have a gigantic parade and he can stay with friends).  Back to spend a second day at Northwestern, and then getting on a Monday night flight to Minneapolis to check out U of Minn...Tuesday night he flies back to the UK.  Wow.  What a week. 

Bonnie spent last week in London.  It was her term break, and her best friend, Erin, is spending the term in London, so she crashed at her flat.  She had a wonderful time exploring the city, and taking side trips to Oxford and Windsor (where she saw Prince Charles, himself).  She is now safely back in Dijon.

We went to a movie over the weekend.  The Lives of Others was about the Secret Police in East Germany in the 1970's. It was a wonderful film, but left you feeling very uncomfortable given the emotional violence those folks lived with. Incredible.  Go see it.

My neice, Maria, was in town with her basketball team from Gonzaga.  They won the Western Conference Championships and I was there to cheer her on.  It was a fun way to spend an afternoon. 

Notice that all the exciting activities actually happened to someone else.  Maybe I will have a better week this week.

clean and purge...

Oh, how I love to clean and clear out cupboards.  Being trapped for days on end in the kitchen/family room with my velcro puppy (as in...she sticks to me like velcro), I have taken it upon myself to go through all my cupboards and sort them out.  It is enormously satisfying.

And I find cool stuff that I forgot that I had.

Like some old family videos of the kids when they were 5, 3, and 1.  Absolutely awesome.  I sat and watched them today and laughed and laughed at how darned cute they were.  How precious and young and wonderful.  It almost made me cry to see them. 

In one scene, there is a birthday party being given (at my sis, Ann's, house) for Adam (turned 5), Bonnie (turning 3), and their cousin Maria (turning 2).  Adam received a "spelling tutor" game...a sort of electronic thing that required batteries.  And he says, "Put it together, Mommy.  I want to learn to spell!"  As if he could learn immediately.  It was so CUTE!  I wanted to call him up and Scotland and tell him how awesome he was! 

And he is, of course...

What a gift it was to find this. All thanks to my velcro-dog, Cookie!

doggie rides are NOT happy rides...

My puppy is not a fan of the car.  Meaning...she is so nervous that she has piddled herself, or she has thrown up.  Today, she had to go back to the vet to get her stitches out.  I have devised a whole system to protect my car from her nervous reactions.  I have waterproof sheeting put down on the seat and the floor in front of the seat.  I take her sheepskin bed and lay it on top of that.  I figure having a bed she feels comfortable in will make things less scary.  (And it is machine washable, so I just toss it in the washer when we get home...).

But still.

Doesn't make me want to take her places, ya know?

People like to tell me it will get better with practice, but I'm not so sure I want to go through this on a regular basis in order to acclimatize her.  I think I'll just keep her around home.