I digress...

¡Híjole! I have too much going on of unImportance. There's a bunch of things to do, that don't need doing and a bunch of things to do that I'm avoiding doing. Avoidance issues can be avoided in this post as well, but suffice it to say I should be getting things done like cleaning, cooking, kid stuff, bills, sundry work and even perhaps showering - instead here I am.

What's taking up my precious time? Well, besides this blog - nothing Big.

I have been reading books - not literary works of art, but good books nonetheless. I only state this because I used to be a voracious reader, but not so much anymore... Specifically, I've been reading Reginald Hill's Dalziel & Pascoe mysteries. Finishing a book with my kids around takes a long time, so it's kind of a miracle that I've read two and have two more sitting waiting in about 5 days. (Before that it was 3 Vonnegut books.) Normally, when I pick up a book, my 5 yr old screams "No READING!" My 18 yr old actually whined when I picked up a book the other day, too. As in, "Pay attention to ME, not that dumb BOOK!" Basically, I'm supposed to be available to all my children, all the time. Mother's Duty. Lately, I just glare at 'em and continue reading.

Then there are my audiobooks, which I can only listen to in my bed before sleeping - otherwise I can't concentrate on the story. (Although when you fall asleep to an 8 hr long installment of a book, chances are you'll wake up with your mp3 player dead, your neck perilously wrapped in headphone cords, and no idea where you left off in the book.) I just finished listening to The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard, which is not the type of book I have ever been interested in, but this one grabbed my interest, and kept it, for some reason. Perhaps I'd like to take a journey myself. Hmmm. I have just gotten The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. (Yes, I'm a member at Audible.com - and I LOVE it.) But I've also been completely flummoxed over the difficulty of both picking a good book AND a good narrator, after having been "ruined" by Neil Gaiman's reading of his own The Graveyard Book, which - along with Shaun Dooley's narration of only 3 of Reginald Hill's Dalziel & Pascoe audiobooks - makes everyone else sound wheedly and pedestrian. Something about that British accent (Yorkshire?) that I can't get enough of...

Add fridayflash - which takes up a lot of thinking time, not much writing time, but the pressure to try and meet my own goals concerning this weekly "hobby" is pretty high for me. I have been pretty spotty on my participation but am still not shelving it yet! Yay for good hobbies.

To add to that, I just found one of my favorite old games in it's new, spiffy 20 yr anniversary edition - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Adventure Game. **insert long break here while I went on a 2+ hour shopping adventure and dropped off a kid, just so you don't think all I do is avoid things** It's a text game where you try to figure your way out of certain pickles along the lines of HHGG by the late, great Douglas Adams. Long ago, along with banana throwing giant apes on skyscrapers, it was my favorite computer game. My cousins had Atari growing up but our mom never allowed one in the house, so when I got my own place and first computer - I played games!
   Before I had any or uncribbed children, I played video/computer games infrequently with friends or my first husband (such as the two just mentioned). When my kids were still in their single-digits, we got an N64 and had family fun doing multiplayer of James Bond or Perfect Dark, in which we would all kill each other with lots of malice and yelling about fairness. I slaughtered my children repetitively with no guilt - often more than a little glee. Don't feel bad for them - they thought nothing of putting a game bullet in my skull any time they could. It was ... family therapy. heh
  I've played all sorts of games and do pretty good with even the more involved ones (Medal of Honor), but none are as fun to me as those simple, early ones. Well, maybe Zelda is...

So, that's what I've been up to - reading, listening, playing, writing, thinking - in between the few other things that eventually I can't avoid. Such as cleaning up for impending company and making potato soup with leeks, hot Italian sausage & bacon. Oh, and maybe a coupla loaves of banana bread. I should get busy.. but, maybe I can fit in a few minutes of playing with Ford Prefect. (No, not the car.)