Lip Injury and other stuff

I finally found the perfect soap dish. I've always been annoyed by the kind that drain sticky soap water onto the counter, and the kind that let the soap slide off, and the kind that collect it into a marshy mess that I have to look at and clean up, and the kind the soap sticks to. And leaving the soap on the counter coats everything with soap scum. The solution? A dry sponge. Set the soap on it, and everything stays clean and tidy, the soap doesn't slide off or stick, and no scum on anything. If the soap does stick, get it wet and it comes right off. If it gets gross--wash it with the next load of laundry and let it air dry. My bathroom counters look so much better!

As for the lip injury....You know how you can sometimes use your teeth to break that 2" wide clear packing tape? I was doing that for the kids, and had been for 20 minutes or so as they "wrapped presents" by stuffing random toys in boxes and closing them up. Out of the blue, one of the pieces of tape didn't just break and tear across. It outright exploded in my mouth, cutting my lower lip open in 5 places that are just now, several days later, healing. I've never had a bloody lip from biting tape before! We switched to using a broken popsicle stick to break the tape (since scissors are never around when you need them, right?).

2/3 done with my novel--yes, the same one--yet again. This time around it's about 91,000 words long, with a clear plot, clear character development arc, and (gasp!) romance element. I personally miss the epic-style "telling everyone's stories and showing how they intertwine in the long run", but everyone who read it said it was too confusing that way, and that the audience who really would love the book is not the audience who loves, say, The Gunslinger series, where both the length and the complexity are the joy of the series. So we have the pared-down, straightforward, more beautifully written version with more foreshadowing and other literary elements, fewer characters, more descriptive passages, and an easy storyline, focusing on just Kate's story and not all the others'.

I don't know if it's better, but it certainly keeps me distracted!

Pure cane sugar was cheaper than regular white sugar at the store so I bought some. It's less processed than white sugar (or even brown sugar anymore), and it's not quite as sweet, ounce for ounce, but it also hits the kids less when they eat it. Interesting find--more natural seems like it's always better. I think the processing that's going on in the food industry might be actually causing a lot of the health problems in the nation.

Babies are all crying.....more later.