Ants

The ants for my son's Ant Farm arrived this week. The Ant Farm was a birthday gift, received seven months ago — the form to fill out to send away for the ants has been sitting on my desk during most of that time, waiting to be filled out. (And even after it was filled out, I think it took me another month to finally get around to sending it in.) What can I say? I've been distracted.

This is a Space Age Ant Farm, the Ant Farm of Tomorrow — filled with a bright blue gel that the ants live in (it's also a source of food and water), with an illuminated base that shines a bright blue light from the bottom.

They're already starting to build tunnels, too. Apparently, I was supposed to have made small holes in the top of the gel to get them started, but I neglected to do this, so they've been digging around the edges for most of the past two days.

It seems the ants will only last an average of one to three months, though. I had been thinking of getting an Ant Farm for the office, but I'm not sure how keen I'd be on having to replace them a half-dozen times a year. I think I'll stick to cactus plants, instead.

Index

I'm trying to remember just where I got this idea that preparing an Index in InDesign was a relatively quick and easy process. I'd done it once before, many months ago, and I somehow came away from that experience with the idea that most of the work could be automated.

It took most of Thursday for me to work out how to import the list of topics (which had been prepared by the author of the book I've been working on), and that's when I realized that I'd have to search for at least one occurrence of each and every entry, and only then would I be able to rely on InDesign to automatically generate the index.

It's a good bet I had to do all of this the last time I had to compile an index — I've no idea why it completely escaped my memory!

I probably could have sent the task back to the author, but I promised I would do it. I should be finished with it tomorrow, and quite ready to move on to another project.

Cactus

My son and I crafted a small cactus garden, which now sits on my desk, in front of a window. I'd been thinking of buying carniverous plants (they're sold in a kit, with everything that's needed and a plastic planter), but I didn't know if they'd work well in the container I wanted to use. (It's a multi-faceted glass container, bought at a tag sale years ago, waiting all this time to be put to some use. The open end is facing the camera.) I'm hoping cactus plants might be a bit more tolerant of the conditions in the office.

It turned out rather well, don't you think?

I ended up with a few too many plants for the container I'd chosen, so I have to buy another, and another large plant for a focal point, and I'll plant the rest today. I think it might be nice to have more plants, when I have my own space.

Antibiotics

I tend to avoid medication, even when I'm sick. It's not out of any particular concern or superstition, just a certain amount of confidence that's whatever is wrong, if it isn't serious, will correct itself, given time. (It usually works that way — the cold that lingered during November and got progressively worse during December was a notable exception.) I might take something to relieve cold symptoms, to help me sleep — but that's only because I know that a good night's rest will do as much for me as any medicine.

That having been said, my five-year-old son and I are both on a ten-day course of antibiotics, for a strep infection. (You can probably guess who I caught it from.) It hasn't left me feeling tired, as I might have expected, but I feel as though I cannot get enough sleep — if you can imagine the difference. (Even my son has been sleeping unusually late over the past several days.) I'm not feeling a physical need for sleep — not a craving, like, say, hunger — it's more an of intellectual sensation, as if my mind knows that I need the rest, even if my body doesn't feel the exhaustion.

As soon as I get my son on the bus to school, I'm going back to bed.

Report Card

My five-year-old son brought home his first report card today. (At least, it was in his backpack. I wonder is he was even aware of it.) I can't remember bringing home a report card from Kindergarten — but then, I can't remember bringing home homework, either, and he's already had quite a bit of that.

It's difficult for me to understand what this all means — for all of the time I've spent around kids, I still don't have a strong sense of what a five-year-old in a mainstream Kindergarten class mght be capable of, much less my son's peers in his smaller class. But I can see that he's making progress, and his teacher agrees. And he enjoys going to school. I don't think he'll make the transition to a mainstream class this year — but I feel comfortable with this decision, certainly more so than I did before the beginning of the school year. (His teacher has spoken of introducing him to a mainstream art class in the coming months.)

And so it begins — the first of many report cards to come.

Procrastination

I've been sitting here at my desk for an hour now. I came home from dropping my son off at school (the bus was early and we were late, or some combination thereof), and without even taking off my coat, I sat down at my desk to check my e-mail. One thing has led to another, one link had led to another, and I'm still here.

Mostly, I think I'm putting off the onerous task of housecleaning that comes around every Monday, where the house has been left in a shambles. There are days where I really don't know where to begin, and this is one of them. So I'm putting off the decision making process for as long as I possibly can.

I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to having a smaller, self-contained home of my own — where everything is my responsibility.

Brain

I made my son lemon jello in a brain-shaped mold, which he is now devouring like a zombie. This seems appropriate for a snow day, somehow.