Urg.

So today is one of the every-other-Fridays that Liam doesn't have school in his pre-k program. Usually I'm having to drag him out of bed at 7:45 to get dressed and fed before I drag D out of bed at 8am to change his diaper and let him get his favorite "stick cheese" (aka string cheese) out of the fridge on the way out to the van to get Liam to school at 8:30. Today? No school, Liam was up past bedtime yesterday with no nap, and still the little bugger wakes up at 7:10 AND proceeds to wake his little brother up for a rousing game of tickle-wrestling on the bed around Mama trying to figure out where the kids' snooze buttons are (why doesn't that Vulcan trick work in real life, dammit!?!). I had just been contemplating sneakily getting up and trying to get some writing done when Liam head-butted his brother awake. And they're both in a very rough-and-tumble mood today, which isn't doing good things to my Fibromyalgia trigger points that they keep bumping into (because, you see, they're also both in a very SNUGGLY mood, so they're squirm snuggling which is driving me insane, I keep yelping when they knee/elbow/head-butt one of my trigger points).

In other news, my in-laws made it home safely from their month in China yesterday evening. I skipped my last Migun visit (I'd paid for a month of unlimited visits) to go pick them up at the airport (which is also why I'm not so well physically today, that thing really does improve my physical function pretty drastically - we're planning on purchasing one shortly, hopefully in the next week. G and I need to set up the space where it will "live" first and make sure that spot actually has an electric outlet). Hopefully the whole family will use it as my MIL is developing a bit of a hump-back from bending over a sewing machine daily for 30+ years, my FIL has bad knees from standing at a garment press for a decade (and being nearly 70), Garvin's been complaining of upper back complaints, and then there's me. Visitors will also be welcome to use the bed if they'd like. Reminds me, I need to search for one of their centers in the DC area to visit while I'm down there so that my mobility stays as good as possible while traveling.

OH! and while my in-laws were in China they got me something that I've been wanting from there for AGES. Harry Potter in Chinese. Entire series in a very nice box. I didn't ask if it's traditional Chinese instead of simplified (I had specifically asked for Traditional, Simplified I could actually have gotten myself from Amazon for a reasonable price, but they sent a cousin to get it so I'm not positive). Much joy there. I'm going to try to set my FIL up with a voice recorder (likely one of our Sandisk Sansas that has been seeing much less use since the BlackBerries got here and I found media player software that's audiobook friendly for mine), and ask him to read the books in Cantonese for us. Yes, he knows it's primarily for me (I'm hoping to use it as a language learning tool - I still have less than 50 words in Cantonese after nearly 13 years of knowing Garvin), but they also want the boys to learn Cantonese, not just Mandarin (which is all that is taught locally - there are a couple Chinese School - weekend class things - around, but they're Mandarin and while my in-laws speak it, they are primarily Cantonese speakers and Garvin speaks almost no Mandarin, his Chinglish is Cantonese-English). I'm going to try hard not to press the point that by the time the boys are actually old enough to enjoy the story and it's nuances, he may no longer be around to read it to them. I think the helping out with his own mother-in-law's declining health (which is what they were in China for - she had surgery and isn't doing too well) likely has his own mortality on his mind enough that I don't need to say anything. Certainly has his mortality on MY mind enough, at least. His sibling group has been fairly long-lived, but I also get the sense that the others lived less hard lives than he has. He still has several older siblings living (he's 9th youngest out of 10, numbers 6-10 are all still alive, 2 died a few years ago and I think 1 died last year, 5 died I think when I was pregnant with Liam - at least I think I'm keeping the time straight. I know one of them died when we were still living in the first place in Cleveland when Liam was tiny, maybe that was 5? All three of these were brothers, for what it's worth - I met 5 who lived in California and I can't remember his English name, I called him the Cantonese version of "Father's Older Brother #5" which is what Garvin calls him, uncle 2 was Uncle Joseph who lived in Toronto and reminded everyone strongly of my own paternal grandfather in appearance when we watched our wedding video with them - and my own grandfather is named Joseph too so it was rather erie. Uncle 1 I never met, he lived in China or Hong Kong still). I just realized I think he only has one older brother living now tho - Uncle Peter (Uncle #7), who is in New York and was a doctor until retiring about a decade ago. Very social and vivacious man, which adds to his life expectancy. He actually comes across as younger than my FIL by several years, at least to my impressions. My FIL has at least two older sisters still living (6 and 8, both in Toronto), I can't remember if there's another older sibling I'm forgetting about, and Uncle 10 (Uncle Kevin) is still in very good health in California (retired school teacher, also very outgoing and seems much more than 2-3 years younger than my FIL) My FIL is very much an introvert - to the point if it wasn't for the language/culture barrier I suspect he'd be diagnosed with some variant of social anxiety disorder, he tends to go into his shell and hide from new people/situations for a while. It's bad enough that sometimes I think that his marriage may have been semi-arranged or at least very heavily nudged by other family members - my in-laws are distant cousins, she's told me something about going to live with his mother to help out with things when she was a teenager, might have been when she attended seamstress school I'm not sure - she's rather vauge with the details, I think she thinks I'd not understand as a westerner but I really do want to know and understand so I can share that part of the family history with the kids.

Woah, what I have time to reread of that is REALLY rambling and probably hard for anyone else to follow but the kids have been climbing all over me and bumping keyboard buttons that have almost resulted in losing this post a couple times, so I can't reread/reorganize it to make it more sensible at this moment. Welcome to the way my brain works.