1. Jim and Eliza and I are going to visit her cousints for Christmas. That is not a typo, at least it isn’t if you live in our house.

2. I hope they are prepared to learn about dinosaurs, because that is pretty much all we talk about around here these days. Eliza’s awesome former babysitter sent her a kit of paint-your-own dinosaurs, and as I told said personage in an email, she paints a little every day, and then she finds unsuspecting adults and barrages them with facts about velociraptors and triceratopses. The whole thing is made of win, especially the now-black and -red velociraptor, who is, like, so totally goth.

3. I am going to make Jim open his gift on Christmas Eve. I am SO BAD at buying gifts that I suspect it reveals some sort of fatal character trait on my part. I cannot figure out what other people would like. (Then again, I often cannot figure out what I would like either). But I think maybe this time I have gotten a good one and I am psyched to see if I have nailed it as I think I have. Certainly, it will be completely unexpected because I am previously on record as being strenuously opposed to us owning anything in the general category of said gift. (Not the item, per se, just us owning it.)

4. One of my friends is not responding to my emails/facebook comments. I can’t tell if she is just not getting them, is busy, or has broken up with me as a friend. This is feeding directly into a little mind-game I like to call, “Am I profound, batshit, or sending to the wrong email?” It started last week. We senior instructors had been discussing a couple of items r.e. the karate dojo via email and I group-replied a couple of times and had no one picked up on my responses. I figure I either wrote something so profoundly wise that there is nothing more to say on the subject, or I am so wrong-headed that everyone is struck dumb by my idiocy. Or, you know, I forgot to hit send.

5. Battlestar Galactica Season One finale: OMGOMGOMG! Yes, we are just now getting started on this show. We’ve been busy with all those other shows the hepcats like.

6. My new I-have-to-accommodate-the-fact-that-my-husband-works-regular-hours-now-so-my-schedule-is-crazy schedule is so confusing that I have to look at my time sheet every day to figure out when I am supposed to be here and when I can leave. Being here by myself at 10 p.m.? Crrrrrrreeeeeeeeepy.

7. Husband dressing to impress the people at his new job = totally cute win!

8. I’m thinking about doing a marathon. See, Sarah and I started talking about doing the Ragnar Relay thinger in May, and training for that is kinda nuts, and then I figured, if I am going to go to the trouble of gearing up to run 18 miles of relay over 24 hours, without sleep, I might as well try to run 26 miles in 5 hours, with sleep. Right?

9. See, if I got 45-seconds-per-mile faster after the half, by the same logic, after these two races I should be running 7-minute miles. Hey! I just realized that I am lazy. Getting faster would usually involve speed training. I cannot abide speed training — all that panting and puffing and moving fast. But if I can just run slowish for a really long time and get the same result, I won’t have to DO any speed training. I think this is a special category of lazy. Possibly the category where you replace the “L” with a “CR”.

10. In spite of the fact that my fellow instructors may or may not think I am loopy (oooh, wait, this post has a THEME!) let the record reflect that I still love karate. Deeply. Abidingly.

11. I also love celery root- and apple-mash. Recipe: Cut up celery root. Cut up 4 apples. Put in casserole dish. Add half stick of butter. Nuke for 15 minutes. Blend. Add some salt. Eat.

12. We offered to bring a side dish to the cousints, but I promised Jim I would not bring anything weird like the aforementioned.

13. We got a new area rug for Eliza’s bedroom and put the old one in the basement. The cats sleep in the basement at night and we figured it would make things cozier down there for them, but they seem to be using the rug as a vomit target instead. I mean, why yack on the tile if these is carpet pile to get those little chunks of catfood stuck in, right?

14. During the latest parental-abuse bout hair-washing session, I, as per usual because of the squirming and flailing, got shampoo in Eliza’s eyes. ” Now look what you did!” she screamed at me angrily, stamping her feet.

15. Today is pajama day at Eliza’s school. Guess what we have been talking about at home when we haven’t been talking about dinosaurs.

16. Yesterday, in the schedule-o-rama-lama-ding-dong, I forgot to leave the sitter a carseat to bring Eliza to school. This will be the OTHER thing that we will be discussing for the next 4 weeks, to my eternal pride and joy. (The school is 3/4 mile from our house so the sitter stuck her in the back with just the lapbelt. The apocalypse did not happen.)

17. Sometimes, I think about getting a different job. But then I realize that in a different job, I would most likely not be able to wear my current uniform of pants and long-sleeve-T-under-short-sleeve-T, and my ambitions go out the window. It is, too, dressy! My T-shirt today has sequins on it!

18. Mah hair. The current cut is a new low. At first glance, it resembles the inverted-bob look of months past. But then you look more closely and realize that the hair-cutter-person actually managed to create an interesting flat-sided thatched-roof effect that is only remedied through the application of a curling iron. A curling iron, people. I haven’t used one of those since before I was pregnant with the not-at-all-Small-anymore Person.

19. Kings of Leon.

20. If you are cooking, and you pour some salt into the pot and then you notice you put in too much and you scoop it out? Don’t just dump the piping hot crystals in your bare, cupped hand, where they will fuse with your skin as you hop around trying not to drop f-bombs in front of your child who is totally blocking your path to the sink.

21. Anyone else’s Christmas tree have about 75 percent of the ornaments on the bottom 25 percent of the tree? What’s amazing is that the cats haven’t had a total field day with this. Perhaps they fear the wrath of our tiny decorator. Wise animals, those two.

22. What should we get the cousint who gave us the fridge-snowman who sings a song every time we open the fridge?

23. I really hope someone gets the kid a board game for Christmas. I suspect the sitters are both going to quit if they have to play too many more games of Chutes and Ladders.

24. Why is Suzanne Collins taking so long to write the final book in the Hunger Games trilogy? Dammit, the last one came out 4 whole months ago and I have to wait ANOTHER 8 months for the next one! JESUS, people, how much can a person take?

25. Cheetos as an underrated food group: Discuss.