15 posts tagged “jinx”

Jinx: Funny, I don't really think of Japan or China as being Asian countries.

I will not tell you what I am feeling. I will only tell you what is going on outside myself.

Beside me, Jinx is sleeping. It is my bed but he sleeps in it almost every night. He is lying on the white sheet that is forever coming off the mattress. Often I ask one of the kids to fix it so I won't have to climb around on the bed. I try not to pick the same kid every time. The bed is in a corner, and therefore sits against the wall on two sides, which makes it more difficult to fix the sheet. No one likes to fix the sheet. We all complain about it. I know there is a gadget I could buy, made of tension clips and elastic, that attaches to the corners of the sheets and pulls them together underneath the mattress. Unfortunately, I never think of this gadget except when I am fixing the sheet.

Jinx has no top sheet over him, much less a blanket. He isn't wearing a shirt, either, so his shoulders are pulling together and his arms are hugging his chest, to conserve heat. Since I am his mother, I will put a blanket over him now.

I would probably do it even if he were not my child. I don't like to be cold myself. Not even a little, especially when I'm sleeping. But it is July in California in the first decade of the twenty-first century, common era, and he is inside, which means he is not truly cold. He will be fine. He will have no trouble sleeping tonight.

I put a soft blanket over him. I like this blanket because it is soft, not too heavy, and because the color of it is also soft; a pale blue-green.

Jinx's hair looks dirty. He was at the county fair for several hours with my niece, Bambi, and her boys. Also Diane, Damien, and his family. I couldn't take the girls because I couldn't afford it. Duff couldn't afford it, either, though he spent some time going through his wallet, pulling out old gift cards and the like. He even found a one-hundred dollar Visa debit card. He said he got it from a vendor at a convention in Las Vegas. It sounded unethical to me, and also expensive for the vendor, passing out hundred-dollar gift cards.

Bambi paid for Jinx to go (I plan to pay her back later, and I will pay her back, assuming I don't forget entirely, which is always a strong possibility) but she couldn't afford to pay for the girls. She felt guilty about it. She asked me to remind them that they will be going on a girls' night out soon. She said, "Tell them I never take Jinx anywhere."

(Is it just me, or is this pure description stuff boring? Maybe I'm just boring. Whatever, keep going. Just keep it up.)

While Jinx was at the fair, the girls and I watched several episodes from the first season of Ugly Betty. We don't have cable television, and even when we do, we don't watch a lot of TV, so we have missed all the shows other people have been watching for years. But sometimes I pick up a secondhand DVD set at the book sale for a few dollars, which is how I got this one. I think I paid $3.50 for it. I also got Joan of Arcadia for $3.

Trying to keep the ants at bay, I sprayed the baseboards in the bathroom this afternoon. Did the kitchen yesterday; a very fussy operation but so far, so good. When the helpful hardware guy recommended this particular "barrier" spray, I was skeptical. But also desperate. None of us mind spiders much, but ants we cannot abide. Felony especially, because once, when she was six or seven or eight years old, she climbed the oak tree in our back yard while a colony of ants happened to be climbing it, too. Within minutes she was covered in ants. If I remember right, she started to scream. She was terrified and irrational and so far up the tree that it was difficult to get her down. To get the ants off, I did the only thing I could think of, which was to put her in the shower.

My throat is a little sore. Felony has been complaining of a sore throat the last couple of days. Before that, it was Jinx. Criminy never seems to get these things.

Criminy asked me to make an Etsy account so she can sell the things she makes. There is always yarn everywhere. On the front porch, there is yarn knotted around the arms of the chairs because the girls tied sheets to them last weekend (was it only last weekend?) to make a tent. They slept under it. My two girls and their friend Astrid.

I have to stop. I'm tired. But first I will make sure the front door is locked. Earlier today, someone opened the front door and quickly shut it again. We have no idea who it was. I didn't investigate because at the time I was only wearing a tank top and underwear. But it was definitely creepy. It's actually the second time this has happened. I'm not sure what people think is up here, but whatever it is, it's not here.

The Story of Science, Newton at the Center

Joy Hakim

So I ordered this book from a Half.com vendor. I homeschool my son and we are about halfway through the first volume in this series, which I really like. On Friday, I received not one but two copies of this book. Weird, eh? Wasn't sure what to do. I knew the proper thing to do would be to inform the vendor and offer to return the extra copy, but I am not exactly reliable when it comes to mailing packages at the post office, as anyone on my Christmas list can attest. So I didn't do anything.

Yesterday, I received yet another copy of this book. Needless to say, I checked my bank account to make sure I haven't been charged for all of these books. Everything looked okay. Finally, I broke down and dug around Half.com for a way to contact the vendor. I wrote him/them a note saying, Hey, you sent me three copies of the book I ordered. Something is wrong with your order fulfillment process. I didn't supply all the details, because I'm still not enthusiastic about returning the extra copies, but at least I felt a little less despicable.

So far, I've had no response from the vendor. But in today's mail, I received three more copies of the book. Three! Can you believe this? I feel like I'm trapped in some Internet shopping twilight zone. What's next? Will owls start dropping copies of this book down my chimney? 

A couple of weeks ago, we watched a movie called Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. In the movie, there is a girl around ten or eleven who is sick with leukemia. A few days later, when Jinx and I were alone in the car, he asked me, "do people with zucchinia always die?"

Today we start school. The girls are off to the middle school while Jinx and I will attempt to get back on track here at home. I've also got lots of writing and editing work to finish this week in my spare time. True to form, here I sit posting to Vox while he is downstairs inexplicably polishing his soccer trophies. But don't worry; we'll make our way to the books in a few minutes.

Rojo, my nephew (OK, grand-nephew) had a soccer tournament this weekend and we went to watch him play. Duff actually line-ref'ed all four of his games. And on Saturday, my actual nephew Damien--Rojo's uncle--and his family were at the park, too, for his wife's company picnic. So I had the opportunity (super-rare) to get a picture containing almost everyone in my immediate family (including my Mom, whom to everyone's surprise my sister carted out to the park). My Mom came home from the care center last Wednesday and she is doing much better, by the way.

What sites show up if you type "S" into your browser's address bar?

http://shrekthethrid.com/  <-- Jinx typed this

http://www.shrek.com/  <-- and this

https://signin.ebay.com/...

http://salebooks.com/

https://secure.logmein.com/...

http://shrekthethird.com/  <--- and this

Jinx: Mom, do you have any scissors that will cut through heavy plastic?

Me: Yes.

Jinx: OK, great. Cause I was thinking I would like to get some bottles of different sizes, and cut them up, and make ice cubes in different shapes.

Me: All right. Now go to sleep.

Jinx: Mom, what is the temperature of a campfire, usually?

Me: I don't know.

Jinx: Could you check real quick?

Me: No. Go to sleep.

Jinx: But I really want to know...

Me: You can ask me in the morning.

Jinx: OK. But could you send me an e-mail about it, in case I forget?

The last thing I expected to see when I went to the hospital today was my mother, but that is what I saw. I took three steps into the ICU and I saw her, sitting up in a chair, and most remarkable of all, her eyes were open. All the way from the nurse's station I could see my mother's dark brown eyes.

Viv and Lorraine were there, having driven in from Reno for the second time in two weeks. Viv is my mother's best friend of more than fifty years; Lorraine is her daughter. My sister was there, too, and she told me to come in, even though I had Felony with me and there is a rule against more than two visitors at a time.

"They don't care," Diane said. "They're glad we're here, they told us, because we can watch her and make sure she doesn't pull any of her tubes out."

When I stepped into the room, she saw me, but I couldn't tell if she really recognized me. I try not to get my hopes up. Expect the worst, I always say, and you're never disappointed. Some part of me wanted to blurt out, "Is it really you?" but I managed to say something less accusatory. Then Felony stepped up to the chair and said shyly, "Hi, Nana," and my mother, forced to wear wrist restraints that were tied to the chair, leaned forward and rested her head against Felony's belly and closed her eyes.

"She's giving you a hug," Viv said in her soft voice.

Felony bent down and slowly, gingerly, so as not to disturb any of the tubes or wires, put her arms around her Nana and rested her cheek on my mother's head. It was the sweetest thing I've seen in a long time.

I excused myself and hurried to the waiting room to hustle the other two kids back to the ICU. The other night I saw a nurse giving a big boy of eleven and three-quarters a hard time. But now all the nurses seemed to have their backs discreetly turned as I smuggled in Jinx, who is not even close to twelve. So all three of the kids got to give Nana a hug and a kiss and to know that she knew they were giving it.

Going through old phone messages just now (a task I loathe and dread). On my cell phone's voicemail, there was one I hadn't heard before from Jinx. Even though we homeschool, we follow the same schedule that the girls are on (they attend a public middle school), including holidays, and I try to be firm about things like "school nights." But apparently I let him spend the night at my Mom's on Thursday, February 1st because on my cell phone, he left a message in a very tired-sounding voice that says:

Hey Mom? I was just wondering, 'cause Nana said tomorrow is Groundhog Day, maybe I don't have to do school tomorrow?

Now I hear his voice outside, he's home, gotta go!