Executive Summary

[mizarchivist]

It looks like there's a lovely up-tick in LJ, so for those who've not necessarily been around much lately- what's up? Let's see...

House

Last year was primarily me & mine engrossed in another goddamn house move. We'd only been in our last house 2 years, but it was time. Crime Fighter sharing our room for another year was going to be more than I could bear, and so on and so forth. Starting in about Feb/March, we started the process and it didn't properly end until early August. I cannot recommend. Feel free to catch up on that in the House Stuff tag. We still haven't found a new name for the house.

The summary is: We finally have a great house that I hope we can stay in for a long time and it includes asciikitty living there, too, which is entirely lovely.

Kid

School- In the middle of all that, Crime Fighter started to go to pre-school, which has been the single best thing ever. That kid needs to have structure, routine, constant challenges, and socialization. After the extended vacation time over the last few weeks, it has been reinforcement that I cannot be a stay at home parent and retain what's left of my sanity. Granted, 2 is not an easy age, but ...yeah. I was thrilled to come back to work today and I've been dreading getting a call saying he's sick and needs to get picked up, because NO!
I've not been writing a ton about him here, but the Kid! tag will give you the updates there.
Update since Nov.- What I've not talked about much since my last chat-about-kid post (in November?! God- what the hell, me?) is the shift into 2-year-old mode like woah. He's Mr. No and Mr. Mine lately. But he's also stunningly more wordy and doing his impression of a knowledge sponge. He declares at times he's [s]'cared, pretty much on a daily basis. Which may well be that he finally has a way to express he is unsure and afraid after months of not getting what that feeling is. But also I figure it's a lot to do with his expanded awareness of...everything.
We've been watching more and more varied television/movies lately. I've been experimenting with supposedly kid-friendly movies. Turns out Ice Age is not really one of them. Any further exposure to that fiction will be squirrel-centric, only. We did watch most of Ratatouille, followed by some pretend soup-making. Sponge.
I was watching my videos of Crime Fighter from 6 months ago or so, and seriously, what a word explosion. The days of "Guh" describing all birds and bird noises? Thing of the past. The other day he pulled me out of bed saying "I need help, mommy." Last night, he pretended to call Grandma and asked her "What you doing?" He points to things with the query "Yis?" which I take to mean "What is this?" Like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer shirt with everyone's cartoon picture self, we went through all the names several times.
He's been asking for specific books for a while, but he'll help "read" his favorites now, by finishing the lines when prompted.
And then there's the spontaneous and joyful things: the chase games that have him barrel into me to be caught and snuggled and the super squeezy hugs that I get after bath time while I'm drying him off. He's even figuring out kisses beyond the noise of them and will plant them on me from time to time in a haphazard way.
Oh... and then there was the finicky eating stage that lasted several months, which has been eclipsed with Eat All The Food EVER, disconcerting, but also gratifying when he's willing to eat stuff besides hot dogs.

Art

I started to learn how to spin with a drop spindle in March. I spent just about all summer mastering that for fun and as my outlet for anxiety and frustration. Then asciikitty brought home a wheel home for me to use, and I've kind of not looked back since. We are a two wheel house.
The new house meant that I had more room to do clay stuff. Clay requires having a flat surface and time. Or at least enough time to put stuff away before toddlers are up and about. We have flat surfaces now, especially since fubar got me a great Ikea table: the kind that when the 2 leaves are down is less than a foot long and 2ish feet deep. With the leaves up, I think it's about 5 feet long, and has 6 very narrow drawers. Lately my clay occupies one half and his new jigsaw puzzle the other. Since I signed up for Arisia art show, I've spent the last month+ making new tins. In other clay news, I was asked and have made buttons for Minds Eye Yarn. I hear they're selling relatively well. I get paid up front for them, so once they're gone, I tend not to think about it too hard. It's exciting, though- my first successful relationship with a retail outlet.
Oh, I also participated in this year's Project For Awesome and created 20 watercolors for give-money participants to get. That's another do-and-forget-about situations, as I don't get feedback on who gets my art.

Work

It was a really challenging and rewarding year, my 13th at this venerable institution. With a proper department of 3 people, we spent a great deal of time formalizing what we do and how we do it. I had to step up and learn a lot of things I probably should have known a long time ago, but as a one person shop, I was more focused on just getting basic stuff done without going around the bend bored. Because of this surge of new information, I feel like I'm a much more confident archivist and I ardently hope this year bears some fruit of that ground-work. Hel-lo, EAD!

OK. I thought this was going to be a short summary and then I started rambling, so content cuts, I thank you for containing the ramble. I may hit a few more topics later.

EDIT: Actual executive summary since I fail at short-
House- I haz one and don't want to move again for a long time. It actually has room for its 4 adults and 1 kid.
Kid- I haz one. He remains stunning and challenging
Art- Yes, have some. I learned to spin yarn and I'm back to my obsession with polymer clay + tins
Work- going quite well, actually.

Comments

I was going to say

[drwex]

If that's your idea of "summary" then... that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Also, super-squeezy hugs are the BEST THING EVAR!!