Last night Wallace learned the unfortunate lesson that when you buy someone a birthday present you are not allowed to open it and play with it before giving it to said friend. 

“But!,” He said indignantly with his eyes falling out of his head in shock, “I could share!”

Sorry, little man, that’s not the way it works.

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Tertia at So Close linked an MB test online.  I love MB testing and usually find it very accurate.  Take the test by clicking here:  http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

My results are:

Your Type is
ENFJ

You are:

• very expressed extravert
• moderately expressed intuitive personality
• moderately expressed feeling personality
• very expressed judging personality

Outgoing and judgy.  Sounds pretty right to me.

I’m a Teacher:

The Teachers are found in no more than 2 or 3 percent of the population. They like to have things settled and arranged. They prefer to plan both work and social engagements ahead of time and tend to be absolutely reliable in honoring these commitments. At the same time, Teachers are very much at home in complex situations which require the juggling of much data with little pre-planning. An experienced Teacher group leader can dream up, effortlessly, and almost endlessly, activities for groups to engage in, and stimulating roles for members of the group to play. In some Teachers, inspired by the responsiveness of their students or followers, this can amount to genius which other types find hard to emulate. Such ability to preside without planning reminds us somewhat of an Provider, but the latter acts more as a master of ceremonies than as a leader of groups. Providers are natural hosts and hostesses, making sure that each guest is well looked after at social gatherings, or that the right things are expressed on traditional occasions, such as weddings, funerals, graduations, and the like. In much the same way, Teachers value harmonious human relations about all else, can handle people with charm and concern, and are usually popular wherever they are. But Teachers are not so much social as educational leaders, interested primarily in the personal growth and development of others, and less in attending to their social needs.

Another take on ENFJs

I dunno.  Maybe I’m more of a Provider.  I certainly don’t think of myself as a leader type.  Anyhow, then Tertia says to put this URL in your address bar, but change the letters to match your M/B lettering.  For example, I put in:  http://www.personalitypage.com/ENFJ_rel.html

And wound up with:

ENFJs put a lot of effort and enthusiasm into their relationships. To some extent, the ENFJ defines themself by the closeness and authenticity of their personal relationships, and are therefore highly invested in the business of relationships. They have very good people skills, and are affectionate and considerate. They are warmly affirming and nurturing. The excel at bringing out the best in others, and warmly supporting them. They want responding affirmation from their relationships, although they have a problem asking for it. When a situation calls for it, the ENFJ will become very sharp and critical. After having made their point, they will return to their natural, warm selves. They may have a tendency to “smother” their loved ones, but are generally highly valued for their genuine warmth and caring natures.

 HAH!  How many of you who know me got to this:  They may have a tendency to “smother” their loved ones,  and laughed and laughed?

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TT sent this to me ages ago and I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to use it. With the Holidays and their occasional blues creeping up on us all, this seems the perfect time.

Do you qualify to sing the blues?

1. Most Blues begin, “Woke up this morning…”

2. “I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the Blues, ‘less you stick something nasty in the next line like, I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.”

3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes…sort of:

“Got a good woman with the meanest face in town.
Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town.
Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound.”

4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch, ain’t no way out.

5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don’t travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft an’ state-sponsored motor pools ain’t even in the runnin’. Walkin’ plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin’ to die.

6. Teenagers can’t sing the Blues. They ain’t fixin’ to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, “adulthood” means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis or Fort Worth, Texas.

7. Blues can take place in New York City , but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place that don’t get rain.

8. A man with male pattern baldness ain’t the blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg cause you skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg ’cause a alligator be chompin’ on it is.

9. You can’t have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster.

10. Good places for the Blues:

a. highway
b. jailhouse
c. empty bed
d. bottom of a whiskey glass

Bad places:

a. Dillard’s or Lord &Taylor
b. gallery openings
c. Ivy League institutions
d. golf courses

11. No one will believe it’s the Blues if you wear a suit, ‘less you happen to be a old ethnic person, and you sleep in it.

12. Do you have the right to sing the Blues? Yes, if:

a. you older than dirt
b. you blind
c. you done shot a man in Memphis
d. you cain’t be satisfied

No, if:

a. you have all your teeth
b. you were once blind but now can see
c. the man in Memphis lived
d. you have a 401K or trust fund

13. Blues is not a matter of color. It’s a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues.

14. If you ask for water and your darlin’ give you gasoline, it’s the Blues.

Other acceptable Blues beverages are:

a. cheap wine
b. whiskey or bourbon
c. muddy water
d. nasty black coffee

15. The following are NOT Blues beverages:

a. Perrier
b. Chardonnay
c. Snapple
d. Slim Fast

16. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse, and dying lonely on a broken-down cot. You can’t have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or getting liposuction.

17. Some Blues names for women:

a. Sadie
b. Big Mama
c. Bessie
d. Fat River Dumpling

18. Some Blues names for men:

a. Joe
b. Willie
c. Little Willie
d. Big Willie

19. Persons with names like Todd, Andrew, Heather or Debbie can not sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

20. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit:

a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.)
b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Kiwi, etc.)
c. last name of a President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.) For example, Blind Lime jefferson, Jakeleg Lemon Johnson or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not “Kiwi.”)

21. I don’t care how tragic your life: if you own a computer, you cannot sing
the blues.

So, I repeat. You don’t qualify! Get back to work.

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I was just emailing with MoVo about a decision that I made earlier this year.  It’s giving me a lot of stress and tension.  There are signs that it’s a good decision, and signs that it’s a bad one.  I was dithering, as I do, about what I was thinking inviting this kind of craziness into my life, but then illuminating some of the good things and going over why maybe it was the right decision after all.

Then it occurred to me; it wasn’t a good or bad decision, or a right or wrong decision, it was just a decision.  And, in fact, it will be both good and bad and right and wrong and there it is.  Making collumns and placing facts will not get rid of either reality.

I’m not programmed to cope well with that kind of ambiguity, but that kind of ambiguity is life, isn’t it?

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In keeping with the tree theme. 

At the The Perfect World today they were discussing the most environmentally responsible method for getting a tree, as well as the best kind of tree.  rtb posted this link, which is a must-have when deciding what kind of tree to get. 

I’ll be getting a balsam fir, which appears to rate as pretty much classic, full and (most importantly with a small child around) sturdy.

Click here to pick your perfect tree

And thanks, artiebee!

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I don’t know that the attic bedroom doesn’t have insulation so much as it isn’t getting heat.  I took our small space heater up there last night and turned it on full (because I never do anything halfway) and woke up this morning absolutely BOILING.  It was an oven up there!

I would happily sleep in an oven, but unfortunately my better half does better in a more icebox-like setting.  I’m going to turn the heater on its lowest setting tonight and see how we go.

But I can now happily sleep in my adored new bedroom!  Hurrah!

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This is what you’d be doing if you were married to me.

When my mom remarried we moved into my stepdad’s house in East BumFuck Maryland.  My stepdad is one of these kinds of people that, if you are lucky, you get to know in your lifetime. 

He was a rock for both of us during a very difficult time and he gave me two stepsisters who were pretty much the best thing I’ve ever gotten in my life (other than TT and Wallace).  He taught me to spit and to fish and to drive; he took pictures of me on my first day at my first ever real job.  He dressed up with us for Halloween and made up stupid songs and laughed easily.  He stuck up for me when people were horrible and always wanted to know about my life.  On the honeymoon (we all went) I flipped him off behind his back, and when the kids tattled on me he could hardly chide me for laughing and just asked that I not do it in front of the little ones. 

He was, and is, a lifelong blessing.  People like my stepdad are rare and wonderful.  Moving in with him was probably the best thing that could have happened to me,  as screwed up as I was.

Unfortunately, his house was still in EBF.  I remember still the sinking feeling in my gut as we drove past the high school for the first time and there was a banner hanging outside saying, loud and proud, WE HAVE A LARGE WORKING CHAPTER OF FUTURE FARMERS OF AMERICA.  I am not a FFA girl.

Interestingly, I went from a High School where it was just fine to be out of the closet but if you were pregnant you went into hiding, to a high school that was just the opposite.  Pregnant?  See you in class.  Gay? I’m going to have to make your life a living hell now.  Very strange.  I still think it’s a very strange little place and a shockingly large number of my fellow high-school graduates still work locally and live in houses not far from their parents.  Many, many people there never leave.

But my parent’s house is marvelous.  It’s stupid huge and fairly open-plan and dresses up beautifully for the holidays.  Every year I remember getting into the miniminivan and driving down the road to the Christmas Tree farm.  We’d get out of the car in the muck and the snow and tromp around, getting cold and shouting.  Usually there was free cider or hot chocolate on offer and there was always a constant argument about which tree would come home with us.

I wanted a huge one, Leah wanted a thin one, Elizabeth always picked the teensy trees because she was a teensy four, five, six-year-old.

My stepdad would debate over what was reasonable to pay for a tree and what kind of needles we should have. 

Nana Poopyhands stood keeping the peace and suggesting trees that we all roundly rejected because, you know, MMMOooooooooooooooom.

Then we’d settle on one and poor Bob would get down on the ground with the saw and attack the tree with gusto while Mom and I held it in place.  The littler kids would dance around or try and help hold the tree and the whole family would just beam. 

Then strapping young high school boys would run the tree through the circular thing that puts the green webbing around the tree and we’d haul it home.  There would be the usual setting-up hijinks of “is it straight enough” and “that side to the wall no that side” and in short order we’d realize that, lo and behold, Bob was right and we hadn’t needed to buy one size up.

We’d put on some Christmas music, or Home Alone, or Disney’s Fantasia.  I was in charge of lights and my little sisters and I all put up ornaments.  At the bottom we’d put the baby Jesus in a shoe box that my little sister had made in Sunday School when she was just too teensy to even see.  We’d make up stupid songs and argue about whose decorations were whose and what to name the tree.

Each year we’d leave the Christmas tree farm with a tree that seemed small to medium sized, and by the time we got it up and hung everything from it, the tree was always a super-duper cholesterol Christmas wonder.  It was like joy took a natural form and plopped itself in the middle of the livingroom.  That tree said, “Sometimes things suck and don’t make sense, but I’m proof of family and good times and I will remind you of it every day.”

Freshly cut trees last forever, and they smell wonderful.

As you may know we are hosting Christmas this year.  The trees that make it to the Chicagoland area have generally been cut weeks before.  They usually look okay, but stop drinking water in fairly short order. 

The last tree we had in 2005 was gorgeous, but it was leper tree.  DO NOT TOUCH LEPER TREE.

This year I really wanted to cut our own.  I wanted to get into the car on Saturday and drive to a tree farm; to let Wallace race through the rows and rows of Christmas trees and introduce him to hot cider and let him choose which tree he wanted to take home.  And if he picked a little baby one, like Elizabeth, maybe we’d get it for him for his room. 

I wanted to get our totally fresh tree on the car and drive it home, the whole time vaguely concerned that it was going to fall off, pointing out the other folks who’d been out getting one also driving too slowly and with rediculous care down the road.  I wanted to put it up and let Wallace hang a ton of ornaments the way that three year olds do, all clumped up in one corner.

I wanted to go somewhere and find that tree that said home and family and Christmas and that lived forever and who’s trunk and needles were not spray painted green to make it look fresher.

Unfortunately I’ve been looking and the only tree farm is a place nearby that doesn’t provide anything.  There’s no cider or hot chocolate on offer.  They don’t wrap the tree for you or tie it to the top of the car.  Basically you tromp out to the woods, alone, and steal a tree. That’s not really the experience I was thinking of.

There are proper farms with the whole shebang; the hay rides and the carolling and the masses of people finding their personal holiday emblem, but those places are very far away from where we are.  I have realized that to find the perfect tree to cut yourself, you need to go to EBF and to places where they have large, working chapters of FFA.  We are city folk, and as it stands from now until a long time in the future we’re going to be going to parking lots to find our Christmas tree. 

But that doesn’t mean that I can’t keep dreaming, and that one of these Christmases I might not insist that we get into the car and drive for two hours just to go to a proper Christmas tree farm.  Someday.

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Having a rough morning, Peeps.  Here’s why:

1. Work has gone haywire.  I’m supposed to be filling in for someone and the new person I’m working with is a living nightmare. My blood pressure is through the roof by 8:05 every morning dealing with this bint.  I hate her on a level that I have not hated anyone in a long time.  She’s a passive-agressive satan.  I hate her. 
2. Our gorgeous new room, that is all painted and has the comfy bed in and is wonderful, happens to be in the attic where there is no insultion.  How we didn’t know this before do NOT ask me, but last night I thought I would fairly die of the cold.  Seeing as we were moving out of the basement so it would be “warmer”, this is very bad. I love the room, it’s gorgeous and quiet and wonderful, but it’s like sleeping in the freezer.  Getting up in the middle of the night to comfort Wallace after a nightmare last night was absolute torture.  I’m going to look into getting someone in to insulate today and I hope it’s not too expensive.
3. Money.  Not enough.  Not near enough for this Christmas.  Not nearly even sort of enough.  I hate money.
4. My instructor will not stick to the syllabus, so just when we think we know what’s coming in school, it gets all turned around.  I’m officially burnt out and have no interest in finishing the final project.  None. 
5. A baby.  Want one.  Badly.  A baby girl, which makes me feel terrible because I know I would love a baby boy just as much.  And really, healthy is better than anything else.  So many people have problems and difficulties and I could be one of them and any healthy baby of either gender whenever we can have one is a blessing.  But right now I am four years old and I want a baby girl.  Now.
6. Sleep.  I could use a lot more of it.
7. Pills.  I’m sick of being on the pills.  Still weeping and storming internally but dead outside my skin.  I hate it.
8. Cleaning.  Christmas is coming along with masses of guests.  I cannot keep up with the typical day-to-day upkeep of the house, so I’m not sure where I thought that I’d get the time or energy to do the kind of massive deep-clean and decorating job that is necessary to host the holidays.  I’d hire someone to deep clean but - See: Money
9. Acne.  All the up and down on pills and off has wrecked absolute havoc with my skin.  Also I’m fat, but that’s nothing new.   A fat pizza-face.  MMMmmmmmmm.
10. Son.  He spent the night last night screaming crying whenever he was awake.  I have no idea why.  I spent a few hours sleeping on the top bunk with him.  He was inconsolable and incoherant, but he didn’t have a fever and wasn’t wet, so I just slept in bed with him and patted him back down whenever he woke up.

I’m feeling ineffectual in every area again.  I know that this will pass and in a day or so the dark will go and I’ll be fine again, but right now I just want to go home and be alone and do nothing.  I’m no good for company.

Very, very sad.

***********

EDIT:  Just got bad news that my step-grandfather is very ill with cancer.   If you can spare a thought for my family, that would be wonderful.

KP

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Oh my lands, Peeps.

I remember when I was in the third grade I had a math worksheet of, I believe, massively long division sitting in front of me or somesuch and my parents bustled about after dinner while I stared at the twenty or thirty questions of homework and wept bitter tears about my jailatude and the unfairness of All! The! Homework!

I also remember my parents telling me that I had gradutated, and now instead of kicking and screaming, I would just sob quietly into my beer about the unfairness of life rather than do what needed to be done.  That it was the same tantrum as the kicking-and-screaming one, just one a little more grown-up.

Oh, did I throw a grown-up tantrum today, Peeps.  Despite Turkey day I still had to do all my work for this week and read and take notes for class and I had a paper due.  The prof was kind enough to move the due date to tomorrow (although it was originally today) and yet I know me and I knew that in my head the due date was TODAY.  So it had to be done TODAY.  And yet, there is nothing I was looking forward to less than sitting down and pounding out yet another stupid mothafucking paper. 

I put it off forever and wandered around all day doing work and then got home and mooned about whining and being pissy and all “I don’t WANNNA”.

But then TT put Wallace to bed and basically gave me oodles of time to do it, and it would be unfair not to take advantage when he’s being so stalwart and all.   I sat down at the computer, and I have to say that I’m starting to find me impressed with myself.  Two hours from blank page to six completed pages of compelling text with correct APA formatting and four reliable cited sources.  It looks like three continuous years of schoolwork actually has me trained to do it even when my very mitochondria are crying out for a good glass of wine, a cookie, and a stupid novel.

So it’s done.  There is one more group project that is already well underway and then this fucking class is fucking done and I’ve met my fucking statistics fucking obligations.  TT was kind enough to get me a celebratory beer.  I am drinking it now, sans bitter tears, and I may have another.

Daaaaamn.

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Proof in Pictures

Click ‘em to see ‘em bigger -

Little Miss Ivy Angel Face

Uncle Troublemaker and His Ivy

Wallace, TT and his Ivy:

Cousin M, Also Partying:

Cousins! (Embiggen this one, it rocks)

Cousins and Uncle Dave!

The Whole Extended Poopyhands Clan Love Huskies:

Who loves bunkbeds?

Nobody around here!

We went with a SpongeBob/ Thomas theme in the end.  V. cheap, v. cheerful:

A new haircut, a new bed… life is good.

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