The Queen's Rambles

*I get an e-mail from Costco every once in a while. I usually don’t read it, but this time I couldn’t stop myself. They have a diamond for sale. One, single, big diamond ring. One million dollars.

I have to wonder, if you can afford a million dollar diamond ring, are you really going to be shopping for it at Costco, of all places?

Though I suppose there are those secret millionaires who like to live frugally. But would they blow a million on a diamond ring?

*I got to hold a sweet newborn baby today. He let me hold him a long time, but I finally had to put him down after Elsa got jealous. I’ve been friends with the mom for close to six years, so it was really fun to see that he looked almost exactly like her little girl. I love that I’ve had a friend long enough to establish that sort of history. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense to people who have a lot of long term friends, but I’ve never been the long term friend sort of person because I was painfully shy as a child and then I moved around a lot as an adult.

*My friend wanted her sewing machine back. I loved that machine. I over-extended my borrowing of it because it was so delightful to sew on. I was dumb and didn’t get my cranky machine into a repair shop while I had her machine, so now I’ve got a dead machine. Bah. I need to get it fixed, pronto. I have two blocks left in The Project of Doom so I was thinking I would be able to get my top complete in time to enter it into the final challenge. The final challenge: complete your top by Sept. 26. Everyone who finishes will be entered into a raffle and the winner will have a professional machine quilt their top. Whoo-hoo! That’s a prize well worth fighting for!

So.

Gotta make a few calls tomorrow and get my machine repaired, pronto.

*Elsa is such a funny baby. Remember how Erik used to scream and scream and SCREAM and scream and then scream some more when it was bedtime? Or maybe you don’t remember since you weren’t here to experience the trauma.

Elsa likes sleep. When she’s ready to go to sleep, she’ll drag you over to a chair and climb up on your lap in sleeping position. Mike’s been putting her to sleep in his computer chair while listening to ’80s music, so tonight she took Mike to his chair and pointed at the computer until he started up the music. It’s nice to have a kid who will sleep. If only she would sleep in her crib, we’d be on to something.

*I need to learn about kosher cooking, stat. I think I may have invited a kosher keeping couple to dine with us. I know the no pork rule, of course. I also have heard that they can’t have dairy and meat together. This rule baffles me and I don’t think I would be able to execute it. Does it mean that they can’t have dairy and meat together in the same meal? Like you couldn’t even have ranch dressing on your salad if you had some sort of meat as a main dish? Or you just can’t have it in the same dish? Or the same day? Like, what if you had a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and then a big steak for dinner? But I guess a steak would have to come from a cow that was blessed by a rabbi? So vegetarian is just easier? But I don’t know how to cook a vegetarian meal. We likes our meat, we do. Also, what about all the kosher stuff at the grocery store? I don’t even know what any of it is.

Obviously I am completely clueless. What did I get myself into?

*Erik went to an impromptu birthday party tonight. Around 6 he came in with a boy, Jay, and said he was going to a birthday party for Jay’s little sister. I quizzed Jay about the party and was told it started at 5. So had it already started? No. Ooooookay.

We didn’t have an invitation or a present or anything, but we let Erik go anyway. I thought they were making it up because they kept coming back to the house and asking about going to the party. I kept asking “So is the party happening now?”

Finally the cake arrived around 7:30 pm. I went to drag Erik home at 8:30 and they still hadn’t cut the cake. I told the mom he had to be home by 9 pm, and he walked in the door at 9:02 so I guess that’s something.

What a disaster. Sounds like something my sister would do, doesn’t it? No surprise it was all happening at the low-income house. It’s basically like having my sister down the street, only less emotional involvement from me and no one ever asks me for money.

I’ll buy the little girl a present tomorrow. Jay and the girl are really sweet kids and they try so hard to be good. They have no direction and no clue, but I like them anyway. She deserves a birthday gift.

Their behavior improved 110% once they started school, though they still have issues with boundaries. My heart breaks when I think about what the future holds for them. I’m glad that their mom seems to be able to hold it together enough to keep living in our neighborhood. Even though I don’t exactly like the family living there because of the adults’ behavior, I think it is great that the kids are able to live here and have a neighborhood full of mostly responsible parents to watch out for them and try to teach them that there is more out there than what their mom has settled for. Maybe they’ll have a shot at a good life after all.

*I’m all caught up on “Torchwood: Miracle Day.” I don’t understand it at all. I hate when a series has promise, but then it just totally falls apart. It has some fun parts, but the plot just makes my brain hurt. I need a Television Without Pity forum to entertain me. The TWOP forum was the only thing that made “Falling Skies” worth watching.