Emails Running Amok

Things have priorities and depending on how high something is it will either get done earlier or later, or perhaps not at all.   I have a thing about my email, liking it to be as empty as possible.  I wax and wane on the state of my inboxes, sometimes having nothing them at all, meaning everything needing to be done from an email-based standpoint has been taken care of, responded to or filed.   Sometimes, things are not so well-managed. 

The current state of my emails is full blown jungle overgrowth.   I get a bit of time here and there and do some portion of catching up, but it isn't enough to make any real progress.   At the end of the day, typically quite late, I just want to go to sleep.  Or when I do take time to not do anything and relax or take a nap, email is the furthest thing from my mind. 

The way 3D printing works is there are lots and lots of little things that need to be taken care of.  Maybe I should write a blog post about that some day, although it might bore you to death.   Even though there are long bouts of time for some models that they print on quietly and calmly without your intervention, when you have multiple printers running at the same time, something always needs to be taken care of, restarted, sliced, downloaded, uploaded, edited, filament changed, ad nauseam.  

I have let the emails slide.   I'm getting to all the important ones and perhaps it doesn't matter that everything isn't filed, deleted or marked.  Every few days I say, "I'm going to beat back my inbox(es) tomorrow!" not unlike the phrase we are known to say about starting the diet tomorrow.  Only tomorrow it gets put off for another day. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl One Minute Shower Morning:  We forgot to set our weekday alarms back on and woke up eight minutes before we needed to leave for school—and the children absolutely, positively had to have showers because they were bad news from a cleanliness perspective.   Somehow we made it to school as they were shutting the door to my son's classroom so technically he was late, but only by a minute or two.  My daughter and I missed our morning Starbucks pumpkin bread, but we somehow survived.   The car had breakfast consumed in it, I'm not sure how it fared with the crumbs though.

Keeping Up With The Jonses

I used that phrase tonight even though it's not something I say, because I've been having fun with my new Australian slang deck of cards.   Only it's caused me to realize I don't think about American slang.  So tonight when I remembered that phrase, I used it in context and found out it is also used in Australia.

I'm going to have to cave and search online and then I'll remember all the phrases that just haven't been coming to mind. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Shower Lapse:  The children haven't had a shower in several days.   And we forgot to get them to take one before they went to bed.   They would skip washing themselves for months I would bet if they weren't required to get clean from time to time.  

Everything Goes Wrong, But There Was Song

I won't detail for you all the things that went wrong today, but it was a bad 3D printing day.   We lost hours of filming, had to print models multiple times over and at this point, at the end of the day, we have no video and no completed models.   

Some days just don't go your way. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son just came down with a nightmare.  He couldn't get past it for the first ten minutes but eventually, his father got him laughing and he was fine.  I was working on a broken printer and the three of us were talking while I was repairing it.  The nightmares don't happen often, but it's scary when they do. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  This is where the song part comes in from the blog title is that while I was filming today, Ashley came over and she and my daughter started decorating.   They brought down the bin of animated stuffed animals that are all Christmas-themed.   When I came upstairs the two ladies demonstrated how each one worked.  

Presents In Action

It's hard to tell when a child will like a present they receive.   They may want it, but when it arrives they have changed their mind or they aren't as interested in it when they find out what's involved or how it works.   Today I saw two presents in action that are working well, and on both occasions, I had wondered how they would work out. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son likes magic because his grandfather has been a magician since he was eight himself.  Tonight for the first time I saw my son put in enough practice to be able to do a trick without being nervous or bumbling through it not sure what to do.  He was so pleased with my surprised reaction to the cups and balls routine he had learned the first moves to.  When I went upstairs to help his sister, he started working on another trick with his father. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is "bored bored bored" but today she got a circular loom from Uncles Bob and Brian.   This was a simple loom that would make tubes of knitted material that could be made into hats or other items.   I had fairly high confidence she could do it—but would she want to.   Tonight she is up in her bed, lying in the dark, making mistakes, because when you can't see what just went wrong, it's not always easy to recover.   But she's being successful.  I told her not to worry about it being perfect, that this first time was to learn and to get the motions down so she knew what to do and how to prevent the yarn from going in the wrong places.   She is interested and determined.   I think she would be so happy to go to school and have people compliment her on her hat this winter and then be able to tell them she made it.  

Hedgehog!

Today we had four grandparents, two uncles, two parents, two children, and a dog for Thanksgiving dinner.  We had taken my parents and the children's uncles over to visit the rental property we bought during COVID-19 that hopefully will someday have our retirement home built on it.  For now, it's a very eclectic rental property.

My husband was working on the turkey, Uncle Bob was making a pie.  Mimi and Gramps had brought ham and green bean casserole.  Nana was making a completely from scratch starting with a pumpkin pie. Dinner was on the way to being ready.

Uncle Bob managed to get ten chairs around the one table in our dining room and we had a very nice dinner with no bickering at all from the children.  They were having fun doing something that could be initiated by either child by calling out, "hedgehog!"

The two children would then duck under the table and grab our legs or play with the dog, who was waiting to have any food at all sent her way.  

The food was so good tonight.   I ate some of everything except the roll and then finished up with a slice of both pies.  

I got to sit beside my father and talk to him some.   It was nice to spend a little time talking with him.   He's become more quiet as he's grown older but he does talk a good bit when it's just him and you.  

It was a lovely Thanksgiving.  I'm so grateful for the family we have and that we were able to get together this week and today.

The Big Boy Update:  My son opened his birthday present from my parents early tonight.  I haven't seen him so excited.  He got a mouse for the computer that apparently is the best mouse for drag clicking—ever.   He hugged them and thanked them and then ran downstairs to install it.  He is playing on the computer now, presumably drag clicking away.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is currently wearing the Cookie Monster pajamas I got myself for Christmas two years ago.   It's a bit scratchy, what with it costing only five dollars and most of the cost being eaten up with fluff materials of questionable quality.   The ankles are elastic so it doesn't really show how loose the pajamas are on her.   She is so happy.   I can't believe she's wearing my pajamas. 

Long or Short? Detailed or High-Leveled?

I spent several hours today filming a review I'm going to be putting out on the Mosaic Palette 3.   After finishing it my husband pointed out that the monitor (a small screen that lets me see what's being recorded) had dropped over the corner of the lens, blocking part of the shot.  That meant a significant portion of what I'd recorded was unusable.  

Or was it?  I asked my husband if he could do some editing magic and paste the unblocked corner from another video earlier on, before I knocked the monitor (not like a computer monitor, this is a small thing like a small-sized tablet that I use only at the beginning to make sure the videos look okay.)  My husband had saved the day and the video I'd been working on so long to script, or to outline more accurately, didn't have to be recorded again. 

It took me a number of takes to get what was in my mind to work well when I recorded it.   But I'm not sure I want to publish it after my husband said something: is it interesting, fast-paced, full of neat things, shot changes, basically anything to make a longer video something people will want to take twenty to thirty minutes to watch?

And this got me thinking.   We talked about it and I explained what I thought the typical audience would be like that would watch the video, and I think I may want to do it over.   Is that bad after all the work I did today?''  Possibly not.  It will be much easier to redo and if I can make it snappier, plus do a quick overview video for people who don't want an in-depth view of the product, it might be better than what I recorded.  

I need to look at the current video and make a decision.  And I need to get this video out because I'd like to have it behind me. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Uncles Arrive:  Children are interesting things.  They love their uncles Bob and Brian, but when they're occupied on something else it is quite possible they won't jump out of their chairs to say hello and greet them upon their arrival.   My son stopped watching television and did his version of hello and my daughter was definitely happy to see them.   My son went back to his television show as soon as he'd said his greetings and my daughter headed off to Madison's house (a special concession letting the girls come into each other's houses).  They've been talking about when they'd get here so I know they're excited to see them.   So am I.  I can't believe it's been two years since we've seen them because of COVID-19.

Review To Do

I have a product review I need to be working on.  I've needed to be working on it all day, but a hundred little things stopped me every time I tried to get started.   At this point the camera is up, the lights are on, everything I need is in frame.   My outline is prepared.  

All I need to do is press record and start filming.   But at 9:12 at night I can't keep my eyes open.   I'm trying to even write this post and I'm falling asleep as I do.   I might have a nap and get up later to record.  

I even had a shower and did my hair.   I wash it every four or five days, it just takes too long.   I always love when it's clean and freshly styled—even if I'm about to go to sleep on it.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Out of School Status:  My children are out of school for the entire Thanksgiving week now.   Only two days of school this week and now they're done: