Embrace the Porcupine

We've moved across the country and settled in a new home.  This home has lots of lovely things about it.

It's on a quiet culdesac.
It has a nice fenced yard.
It has a cute breakfast nook and front window and brick fireplace.
It has a covered pergola in the back yard for the kids to play under in the rain.  (Yes, we moved to Oregon. Some of you may not know this, but it seems to rain a bit here.  Just gentle little sprinkles of rain on and off.  So far I find it lovely.)

But there's two things that our different from our last house

1) way less square footage
2) no carpeting.

This makes for cozing living.  Both physically and auditorily.


A little back story:
Dalton has noise issues.  When he was little he had Noise Issues.  Parades with fire trucks?  Torturous.  Indoor swimming pools with kids yelling and splashing? Tears and covered ears.

I wondered, "Why does this child have noise issues?  Is it because his brain is so highly developed that he hears even more than the normal person? Are his eardrums unnaturally large?"

Since having a whole gaggle of children in the house I've come up with the real reason he has noise issues.  Both his parents have noise issues. 

I didn't even know I did, but I do.

Fun fact:  Carpet absorbs sound.  I had no idea how much. Until we moved into this lair of hard floors.

It's been an adjustment since moving in here.  And by adjustment I mean I haven't adjusted at all.

I believe there has been more than one occurrence of an adult female in the house yelling, "FOR THE LOVE OF CHRISTMAS WILL ALL OF YOU PEOPLE STOP HAVING FUN AND SHUT YOUR MOUTHS FOR JUST FIVE MINUTES?"  

You see, loud noises sometimes feel like porcupine quills jabbing into my brain.


Soooooo anyway, yesterday I decided that since there was absolutely no way I was going to end up with a quiet house, maybe the house and I could compromise.  I will send the children outside for nice chunks of time, and when they are inside I will embrace the noise.  Perhaps even contribute to it.

So we had this race/parade/free-for-all time yesterday which involved Dalton running some sort of Jedi  race, Belle running after him with an empty milk jug full of clothespins (noisiest toddler-friendly toy EVER) and Liam running after everyone just yelping and screeching to his hearts content.  I stood on the sideline and coached.  Loudly.

I was embracing the porcupine.

And as you can imagine, while embracing the porcupine I was jabbed often by sharp quills, but I did it.

I did forget that during this time Medman was upstairs trying to study.  He wasn't quite as happy about the proximity of the porcupine.  Oops.  I'm not even sure he's on board with embracing it.  I haven't asked yet.

But anyway, there's my goal.  Embrace the porcupine.

Today while Medman was at work we did cotton ball games (why, oh why, did I tell them we'd do this?)  It wasn't bad noise-wise until this game:

Yup, blow cotton balls across the floor (and around a hyper, cotton-ball-grabbing Liam) with straws.  Pure genius, right?  Do you know how much energy they expend in almost silent activity since they suck at blowing?

HOLY MOSES I FORGOT THOSE STRAWS MAKE AN EARSPLITTING WHISTLE WHEN YOU BLOW THROUGH THEM!

I video taped it.  But the noise is just too dreadful to post.  You're welcome.


So I'm choosing to think of this as good for me.   I'm going to have to tell myself that about 20 times a day, but I think it will be good for me.  Good for me to let others have fun even if I'm not perfectly comfortable.

Or maybe I'll just gather up those cotton balls and stuff them in my ears.

Embrace the porcupine.  Embrace it.

NaNoWriMo '12

Hello, all.

So I've set a little challenge for myself and I thought I'd share.  That way I'll feel some sense of social responsibility or something to follow through with it.

Like the title?  Say it outloud.  NaNoWriMo.  Fun to say, huh?  It stands for National Novel Writing Month.

NaNoWriMo.org  is a website that encourages people to write a novel in the month of November every year.  Or more specifically 50,000 words.  I saw this last year and thought it would be fun, but wussed out.  So I decided this year to give it a shot.

I'm not completely following the rules because you're supposed to start from scratch, but I already had 20,000 words of a story written that's been sitting around neglected for a couple years now.  So I'll be adding 50,000 words to that beginning. Since Medman started his new job today I figured this was a good time to build some new habits and start writing more often.

See that little light blue square up in the corner?  You can track my word count there.  And either be impressed or shake your head sadly at my little word count and make comments about those people who bite off more than they can chew.

Here's what you can and can't expect:

Can Expect: me to share with you how I'm doing. Probably.

Can Expect: Me to hopefully do some real blog posts in the process since I'll hopefully be in writing mode.  (Yes, I realize that's a lot of hopefully's)

Can't Expect: Me to share the manuscript with you.  Primarily because this will be completing a ROUGH DRAFT.  Rough like the edge of a saw.  And I wouldn't want to cut any of you with it.

Can Expect: A little plot summary of the story.  In fact I intended to do that here but I'm out of time.  This morning (in a moment of weakness) I promised the kids "games with cotton balls" and the time for those games has come.

Now I just have to think of some games involving cotton balls.  That doesn't seem too hard, does it?

And I'll leave you with pics of the kids' costumes.  Oh, except D made a quick change at the last minute and went trick or treating as an Adventure Guy (complete with multipocketed adventure vest).  But he looks cute here anyway...