Sorry for the disappearing act, but it's been one long sniffle after another around here. Wednesday the baby was dripping snot and cranky. I took him in to the doctor and found out he had a double ear infection.

Thursday morning around 1 a.m. the oldest popped into our room to tell us he felt dizzy and couldn't sleep. He had a fever and he kept coming in to tell us about it ever hour or so. By 7 a.m. he felt fine and perky, but I was more exhausted than ever.

Thanksgiving was fine. I made maple-bourbon pumpkin pie with a praline crust (the pie with the longest name in the world, but it is so worth making) and apple-cranberry cobbler, which turned out to be a necessity, since the people we are living with only own one pie plate. I'd love to say both were huge hits and I certainly did my share of eating them, but most people were so stuffed from dinner and in a hurry to be elsewhere that dessert was, sadly, largely forgotten.

Friday I woke up to a cold that has quickly devolved into a sinus infection. I feel miserable and can't taste anything. I finally called the doctor yesterday. They never called me back, so I suppose I need to try again.

In good news, the walls inside the purple house are being painted and we even have someone scheduled to come and clean the place in a few weeks. There seems to be a theoretical possibility that if a few more big things get done, we could be living there in some less than comfortable, but still manageable state.

Should I make an apple pie or apple cranberry cobbler? I can't decide.

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

From Rachel

My husband, who was once a writing tutor and in one of his proudest moments made a girl cry when he used big words that she didn't understand (words like pejorative), called me up yesterday to suggest that I should change the glaring mixed metaphor at the end of the last post. It's true. It is a pretty dreadful one, but I'm feeling far too lazy to change it. I told him I didn't want to and called him a pedant.

My seven year old's ears perked up. He, too, often gets called a pedant by his parents. In mock annoyance he declared, "I'm Mr. Pedant! No fair stealing my title and giving it to Dad!"

I've always said that boy was just like his father.

The littlest ballerinas were gathered in the hall waiting for their class to start. A few of the more rambunctious ones were giggling loudly and spinning in circles, falling to the ground now and then with loud thumps. Other classes were in session, so one of the waiting parents, a father, called the girls to order, "Ladies! Settle down!" The girls calmed themselves to a dull roar and waited with quieter wiggles until their teacher called them into the studio.

My five year old wasn't one of the rowdies that time, but I was sitting close by and the thought crossed through my mind as he spoke, "How lovely. Call them ladies and they respond -- actually beginning to act like little ladies." That was my impression.

As the girls trailed in to their classroom, cute as buttons in their little pink leotards and ballet slippers, one mom came over to the father who had settled the loud group and said, "No offense..." One must pause here to note that the words "No offense" like that Southern phrase "Bless your heart" mean "I'm about to tear into you and say something nasty." So to continue, the mom said, "No offense, but don't ever call my daughter a lady again! I hate that word."

She turned around in a huff and I said under my breath that I'd rather appreciated his phrasing and it was much better than calling them wild hyenas, although they had at first more resembled those.

To hate the word lady? To insist your daughter not be called one? It seems another death knell in the coffin of civilized culture. I'm hardly a model of refinement and I hated every minute of the torture my parents called "Junior Cotillion," but I still hope to teach my children from a young age to be ladies and gentlemen. I don't want just men and women some day. I want them to be polite, kind, thoughtful, generous, quiet when its called for and all those things that separate one who is merely grown from one who has grown up.

I'm sniffly and whiny and the children have been watching a lot more TV than usual.

When Mama is sick, homeschooling gets put on the back burner.

From the marvelous, not blogging Terry, who draws readers from Kindergarten on up.

Boy shorts underwear -- interesting alternative to wedgie-giving thongs or weird cross between granny panties and wearing your husband's boxers?

Discuss.

Last week, Meredith (who is always chalk full of good ideas) hosted a lovely coffee morning for local bloggers. Now she's taken the idea further and is carrying on the conversations with those who couldn't make the journey to her house.

First question: does your family read your blog?

My husband does. Other people maybe, but they haven't admitted it to me.

I don't have the time or brain power for a large site redesign, so we'll go with this for now.

Does it look okay to you?

Update:
The clipart came from here.

Some of you might be sitting around wondering, so how is the purple house these days?

We had set ourselves a deadline of moving in by November 1. That didn't work, but things are progressing. All downstairs walls that needed a new covering have been drywalled and the taping and mudding is almost finished.

The carpenters have been building the counters (we're going to have wooden ones -- maple, if you are wondering) and are working on getting all the remaining trim put on the cabinets. We've talked to a painter about getting them painted.

In the living room, a fireplace had been walled over and it not only looked funny, but left us without a place to burn things. We opened up the wall and are having the fireplace put back in. We'll be doing a Rumford fireplace which fits the small space best and also supposedly will lose less heat than a regular fireplace. They'll start work next week.

The upstairs, which we gutted, is reframed, rough plumbed and the electrification is almost completed. We need to have the plumbing and electrical systems inspected and then we'll be ready for insulation.

When I set the ridiculous goal of getting in there by Christmas, I thought it was ridiculous, because it couldn't possibly take that long. Ha! Maybe we'll be living there by then, at least in the downstairs.