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Scott had to work 3:00 to 7:00 this morning. He did the grocery shopping on the way home. He even remembered the soap I forgot to put on the grocery list. He's in bed now, hopefully asleep. He'd better be asleep; otherwise I'm out here in the living room, freezing in just my nightgown for nothing. (I can't get my clothes without waking him because of where the dresser is. To open it, I have to sit on the bed, right where Scott is currently lying. I should remember this on weekends when he does the 3:00 to 7:00 shift and pull together some clothes for Saturday morning in advance.)

I talked to my step-father yesterday. Usually, I just talk to my mother, but she was asleep because she's getting over a cold. My step-father suggested that the reason my lemon bars didn't come out well was that our lemon juice is old. That possibility had never occurred to me. We've had that bottle of lemon juice for about a year; we don't go through the stuff very fast, so it's almost full. Next time, I'll try a new bottle of lemon juice. I'm not quite ambitious enough to juice my own lemons, however much it might improve the results. My step-father did offer, next year, to send us a box of lemons from the neighbor's tree. He said everybody who has a citrus tree always has more than they know what to do with, so they're glad to give some away.

Cordelia is now complaining that she has nothing to read. She's afraid to start The Giver for fear it will be a let down after the Divergent series (she does have to read The Giver as she's committed to doing it for school. She just doesn't have to do it until March). She says all the other books she owns are boring (but she won't get rid of them because she might want to read them some day), and the two or three thousand books Scott and I own between us have been summarily rejected as 'too old.' She won't even browse the shelves. She did ask me to put a hold on The Hunger Games at the library. That may or may not come in before we go to the library tomorrow (the library website shows two copies in, one at the branch we use. If it hasn't been pulled by then, I'm going to drag Cordelia up to the third floor to get it off the shelf). She tried The Hunger Games once before but only got maybe a chapter in. She's more motivated now, and I think she might also be more ready for the kind of book it is. She also mentioned the possibility of rereading the Harry Potter books because she hasn't read those in several years.

Cordelia watched the movie of Divergent, yesterday, and liked it enough that she intends to rewatch it today or tomorrow. She banished me from the room while she watched on the grounds (probably correct) that I wouldn't like it. I'm not enthusiastic about being ousted from the living room again-- It's colder in the dining room than in the living room. I'd go in the bedroom which is warmer than the living room, but there's nowhere to plug in my laptop, and the battery won't last long enough to get me through a movie.

I think Scott has discovered that the computer he bought (at a bargain price) is too primitive to be our web server. He said something to that effect, anyway. I don't know if it can be upgraded easily, either. Scott doesn't seem as put out about it as I'd expect, so I'm hoping he has a workable plan in mind.

For some reason, the coach Cordelia had last year for indoor soccer is using last year's mailing list to send out notices about upcoming games. Cordelia's not playing this year because the sport is only available through fifth grade. I spotted at least one other set of sixth grade parents on the list, and someone emailed the whole list to tell the coach to please remove them from the list as their family had moved out of the area.

Our family has two birthdays this month-- one of our nieces in Seattle and our nephew in Atlanta. I've got a present for our nephew. I just need to wrap it and ship it. His birthday isn't until the 25th, so I'm in no great hurry. I got him some books at the Scholastic book fair, a couple of Goosebumps books, two I Survived books (Pompeii and WWII Poland), and the first Origami Yoda book.

Our niece's birthday is the 15th, so we really need to get moving on figuring out what to send her. The Christmas list her parents sent out has pretty much been exhausted, so I have no idea what we'll get her. We sent her a Michael's gift card for Christmas, and I don't think a second one of those would work. I wish we knew if there was a bookstore near enough to where they live to make sense giving her a card for that. We know she loves to read.

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Is there some sort of reasonable expiration date for having kids' pictures up on the fridge? I'm not talking about the art Cordelia made. That stays up until she's embarrassed enough by it to take it down herself. What I'm talking about is school pictures and family portraits from other families, the sort of stuff that comes in a lot of Christmas cards. We don't tend to get a vast number of such pictures, so the fridge isn't overflowing (most of the messy stuff there is things like Scott's record of his vacations for last year and next year and Cordelia's sports schedules). I don't need to cull for space though I might for tidiness.

I just happened to notice today that we've got three pictures of one niece, at different ages, and a birth announcement that's five years old for the son of someone in our Wednesday gaming group. I'm pretty sure we have a later picture of that child, not from this year but from the year before or the year before that. We've also got pictures of kids who were Cordelia's friends in second grade (she's in sixth now) who have since moved away and fallen out of touch. We don't have very many recent pictures of anybody. We have one of the more or less local niece and, I think, one of the nephew in Atlanta. We also have a birth announcement that's less than a year old that I'd like to keep, pending more recent pictures of the child.

Of course, I'm terrible at sharing pictures of Cordelia. This year marks the first time I've sent either of my parents copies of Cordelia's school pictures. We've bought copies meant for them every single year, but we never quite got around to mailing them. Scott's photo calendars have made sure that people have current pictures of Cordelia anyway, so I guess that's something.