My Ignorance Relieves Me

On some things I pride myself on being informed.  On other things, I would much prefer to be ignorant.  There is only so much brain bandwidth and time in the day and there are just things I intentionally don't want to know about.

Let me start with the weather as this is something my opinion has changed in the past year.  In general, I don't worry too much what the weather is.  I don't stand outside in the rain if it's raining and I'm usually going from a car to a building so dressing in season-appropriate clothing is something I would do without checking the weather first.

But now I have children.  It is my responsibility to send them to school in something that is warm enough for the weather of the day.  They play outside every day (baring bad weather) so dressing them in appropriate clothing and outer wear is one of those parent responsibilities.  And that means you need to know what the temperature will be when you leave for school and what it's going to get to by the time they go outside several hours later.   Right now during the change of seasons that means I look at the hourly temperature forecast and make a decision just before dressing them.

At some point I hear they learn to dress themselves.  Won't that be a joy?

The other thing I intentionally avoid is the news.  I grew up with my parents always watching the nightly news after dinner.  They read the newspaper and they are well-informed about local and national news events.  But it always seemed like robberies, stabbings, wars, explosions and people who died.  Sure, there were special interest stories but they didn't pertain to me and I wasn't particularly interested.

I read a parenting book for our parents book club this past month that gave a statistic on news broadcasts.  A typical news broadcast is thirty-one percent commercials and fifty-eight percent violence/war/crime stories.  With figures like that (and my personal dislike for commercials) I don't mind that I'm missing the news.

Sometimes it catches me off guard though.   For example, I didn't know about the Oklahoma City bombing for six hours after it happened because I was working quietly at my home office.  Just recently with the Boston Marathon explosions, I found out via a voice mail my running buddy left me because I didn't have the television on.  I commonly find out notable people have died when I overhear other people's conversations.

But all in all, I don't particularly mind being out of touch with things like this.  There is a lot of cruelty and suffering in the world.  I think focusing on it would, for me, take it's toll.  So in that case, I think my ignorance does relieve me.  I believe I'm happier not knowing some things.

And make note, this is not a recommendation on how others should spend their time.  My husband is an avid news reader.  In general, I find out more news from him than anyone else.  He makes sure to keep me updated when something happens that he knows I should be aware of.   Thanks, Daddy.

The Big Boy Update:  Busy times.  He went to see Mimi the other day to spend the morning and when I arrived to pick him up he proudly showed me his, "Salad" he had made from weeds, grasses and ferns in the yard.  I have such fun memories of making a pretend salad from my childhood.  And about that visit.  Apparently he got tired and told Mimi, "I want to go home."  She called me and asked him to say it again and sure enough, he told me, "Mommy, I want to go home."  So off I went to get him.   This one makes us laugh a lot.  I have a specific bottle of coconut soda water I frequently drink.  He wanted to try it one day and Daddy labeled it, "Tickley Water."  Now, whenever he sees me with one of those bottles he says, "I want ticklewee water."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Outgoing with a touch of shy.  She's usually very friendly.  For the most part she'll say hello to people and they can even pick her up and hold her.  But on occasion I see her have a little shy streak.  Last night when there were lots of new people in the street after dinner in our neighborhood she did the "hide behind mommy's legs and peek out" thing that's so cute.  But she came around shortly and played with all the new children.

Fitness Update:  Back to the gym this morning and Don had us running some circuit work.  At the end he had us do an exercise my husband had done yesterday that he had told me was very tough to get through.  Don said, "Yeah, it's a finisher."  I felt finished afterwards.

Someone Once Said:  Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

Fundraising

I don't like fundraising because I don't like asking people for money.  I just don't.  I don't want you to ask me for my money and I don't want  your money.  I suppose it's that I never wanted anyone to take care of me.  I had a need to make it on my own.  My parents made sure I had what I needed, but they encouraged me to take care of myself.  In large part, I hope I've succeeded.

I was thinking about fundraising today as I saw a presentation by a parent at our school in which she explained the history of our school, it's success, the careful and deliberate process they went through to determine what and how we could move forward to building our own, new facility and, of course, how it is something we're going to need assistance from in order to fund.

She was impressive in her knowledge and I learned a lot at the meeting.  I think I've learned something myself about donations and asking for them because I saw how I was changed personally by this entire school build project.

Sure, I was excited about a new school.  I was thinking about donating to the project, but I wasn't thinking the way I am now, which is to donate more than I would have if I'd just gotten a phone call asking for a check, because I'm excited about the project and I'm invested.

So, while I don't want to ask people for money; it appears I'm on the Fundraising committee, the Capital Campaign committee and I am personally prepared to do what I can to get people as excited about our future school as I am.  Or at least that's my plan...

The Big Boy Update:  Sent to his room.  He was roughhousing yesterday and I didn't understand why.  He was very aggressive and I couldn't get him to calm down so I decided he needed to spend some time in his room.  He was unhappy about it and knocked on his door asking to be let out.  I let him out a bit later saying he could stay out if he played calmly.  He calmly spent time on the bridge playing with a make believe truck until dinner so I suppose sending him to his room to calm down worked.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Fever?  I got texts from her teacher at school today that she had a rising fever.  It never got to 100.5 so she stayed all morning.  I don't know what happened though because she seems fine now, played long and hard before her nap this afternoon and is eating well. 

Fitness Update:  Gym workout today.  I noticed while doing high knee runs with a mirror in front of me that my right foot swings outward more than my left one does when I run.  Is it connected to the IT band pain I had on that side that caused me to get that MRI and find out about the meniscus tear that I'd never noticed?

Someone Once Said: On being a doctor: But about forty years ago I found out I wasn’t God, and ten years later I discovered I wasn’t even Aesculapius.

The Vacuum Cleaner Squirrel Phenomenon

I emptied out the vacuum cleaner yesterday.  We have one of those whole house systems that has a big bin in the garage that I empty out every quarter.  I do this regularly because I forgot once and it got over full and it sounded like it was going to explode.  So now there's a quarterly reminder on my calendar and for that, I'm grateful.

There's a lot of junk in the bottom of the bin that I dump into a trash bag.  There's also a filter that usually has lots of fluff stuck all around it that I have to pull off while holding my breath.  Once I can get to the filter I take it out and carefully, without jostling it, take it outside and bang all the collected dust and dirt in the wooded areas around us.

Only wait, there aren't any wooded areas around us any more.  We have neighbors finally.  And for that, I'm thankful too.  So I trudge down the hill in our back yard and commence banging the filter on the hard ground while fluff and dust flies in all directions.  And yes, this is what you're suppose to do.  You don't have to replace the filter at every cleaning.  You do have to take a shower afterwards though to remove the dust from you.

So I'm looking at all the fluff and dust and how it's interleaved together into these nice mats and pillows and it's all the same color I'd label as, "Squirrel Gray."  How did it get gray?

We don't have gray carpet.  Dirt, is black or brown or more commonly from around here, orange red.  I do have some gray hairs, but not enough to fill a bin and besides, we all know I highlight it.

When you mix a collection of colors together you usually get a result that's something like an ugly brown, not light, squirrel gray.   And it was like this in my last house and the one before.   Is there some sort of vacuum dirt color magic I don't know about?

The Big Boy Update:  He heard me say to daddy that he needed a haircut and he offered up, "I need a haircut!"  So we went this morning and he was excited to get it cut.  He sat so calmly and quietly that I wondered if he was going to go to sleep but when the stylist, Anan, asked him questions he would answer her with enthusiasm.  He looks handsome now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Two.   They work on numbers at school but I haven't expected much from yet on the counting front yet, but she's asked for "two" of something (usually grapes or pretzels or crackers) several times now.  Or maybe she's just saying "food." 

Someone Once Said:  The purpose of any government is never to do any good, but simply to refrain from doing evil.

The Pads and The Rip

I sent myself a reminder to write about this gymnastics topic sometime last night and with some strange level of synchronicity my neighbor brought up her daughter and how she was doing in gymnastics as we ran this morning.  She talked about the uneven bars and how her daughter was doing all these moves she didn't know the names for, but was impressed with nonetheless.

Only last night I'd been thinking about my long gone days of gymnastics.  I loved the bars.  They might have been my favorite, but I liked all the events for the most part.  As my neighbor and I talked I gave her the names for the different skills her daughter had mastered and tried to explain how some were more difficult to learn and why.

And because it had been on my mind last, I asked her if her daughter wore the hand grips when she worked on the uneven bars.  She had seen what I was talking about but they didn't need them at her seven-year-old's level yet.  I told her about what a "rip" was and how they were no fun.

I explained that even with powder on your hands, you put a lot of pressure on the pads of your fingers and over time calluses built up.  The hand grips helped alleviate and lessen the problem, but it doesn't solve it.  Eventually, when your hands are responsible for holding your whole body as you spin around on the bars something gives under the skin and the whole callus will tear off, right down to the very sensitive skin.

Odd that I'd think about that last night.  It took years for my palms to not overgrow calluses after I stopped gymnastics.

The Big Boy Update:  "What's that hook?"  On the way into a store yesterday he stopped at the back of a truck and asked what the trailer hitch was.  It didn't look like a hook to me, but he has a strong sense about how vehicles might connect.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I think we've entered the "I'll wait until you put me in training pants to poop" stage.  Daddy is currently annoyed. 

Fitness Update:  Fourteen miles today.  I took the advice of an experienced runner at one of the stores I frequent for running gear and took two Gu pouches and used them earlier than I normally would have.  It definitely made a difference adding that calorie boost before I started to fade as opposed to when I really needed it. 

Someone Once Said:  Supreme happiness lies in wanting to keep another person safe and warm and happy, and being privileged to try.

Woah:  I Just realized today's is my 500th blog post.  Have I been doing this that long?  Hard to believe...

You couldn't pay me to do that job...

But I'll do it for free instead.

I was having coffee with a friend and fellow parent from school the other morning.  She and I seem to have the same problems.  First, we each had a job that included high-stress, long-hours and intimidating responsibilities.  Both she and I now are officially, intentionally and happily unemployed. 

We both seem to have that problem I mentioned before about jumping, no, diving in, getting involved, volunteering and helping out where needed.  We laughed as we talked because for the amount of work we do some days, we're right back where we started with overall workload.

But would we be as willing to do what we do if we were being paid for it?  I've thought about this on and off for much of the school year.  Our school is, in part, such an excellent school because of the dedicated families that give of their time for events and other school needs.  We had one parent that dedicated so much of her time that she was given the job of office manager the following school year.

And yet I don't want a job doing what I do.  I don't want to have a connection to some amount of money that I tie to why I'm doing the job.  Because I'm not doing it for money.  If the amount was low (and since it's in the field of education, you know it's not going to be high) then would I feel I was underpaid?   If it was high, would I feel more obligated to nights and weekends and time I might have willingly given for free, but begrudge because as an employee I feel obligated?

It's an interesting perspective and I'm in a fortunate position that I can give of my time while being a mother to two small children at home.  But bottom line, I would rather have the satisfaction of giving to the school through my actions than I would a check at the end of the day.

The Big Boy Update:  "I want him out."  This is relatively new.  We know little boys are interested in their penises.  That's just the way it is.  Of late, he wants to pull it back out of his underpants after he's gone to the potty and wander around with it sticking out.  And I'm not even going to mention the "thrusting" that goes on.  Today we needed to get pants and shoes on for a trip to the store when he pulled it back out and said, "I want him out."  Apparently it's a boy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Houdini.  She is suppose to sit on the bench and wait with the other toddlers until she's escorted to our car at pickup from school.  Apparently she will agree that, yes, she's ready to sit and wait on the bench.  But then she dashes off.  The school administrator today told me she's nicknamed her, Houdini, because she can disappear so quickly.

Fitness Update:  Back to sore.  We're doing the more aggressive exercises lately.  Initially, there were some people in the gym that were clearly doing harder exercises/sets/circuits from our trainer than we were able to do.  But lately he's been putting us on the same track.  It's encouraging that we're making some progress.

Someone Once Said:  I learned centuries back that there is no privacy in any society crowded enough to need ID’s.

Some Things are Never The Same

This is about a forward roll.  You remember those?  You did them all the time when you were young and you learned that it wasn't scary at all to flip your body over on the floor.  Then, you fairly drove your mother nuts because you wouldn't stop doing forward rolls.  Dinner time?  I'll be right there, let me roll from the bedroom to the dining room.  Not you, you say?  That was me.  That was so me.

My mother got me into a gymnastics class eventually because there was just no stopping the forward rolls and the cartwheels and anything else I could come up with from a flips and turns perspective.  But now I'm old.  Well, older.  Much older than that little girl in gymnastics class doing aerials and vaults and floor routines.

So last night I was leaving my children's room and I was happy because they'd finally gone to sleep (which is always cause for celebration as far as I'm concerned.)  There was a nice long hallway in front of me.  It was carpeted.  It looked friendly.  So I thought I'd try a forward roll to see if I still had it.

Ugh.  Well, maybe ugh with a little bit of ow.  I felt hugely ungainly.  I remember forward rolls being effortless and even comfortable.  Not so as an adult.  Maybe my arms and legs are just longer now.  Maybe my nerves are more apt to get jangled.   And then there's that spinal fusion that gives me less mobility in my neck.  It felt more like I had done a forward pentagon instead.

Whatever it was, that forward roll wasn't as fun as I remembered them being.  Interestingly, this morning our trainer had my partner and me do the old leap frog like you did as a child.  Yes, we did leap frog from one end of the basketball court to the other.  Did you know that's a darned tiring exercise?  And talk about uncoordinated.  The amount of laughter we shared as we each felt equally awkward made it fun.

The Big Boy Update:  "The clouds covered up the rain."  Just before we got to school I saw him in the back seat looking up at the cloudy sky and this is the deduction he made.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Hair puller.  Oh no, why does my daughter have a hand full of hair in her hand?  I am thinking it was an accident; I hope it was an accident that she pulled out some hair yesterday morning.  It's getting long and in her eyes so it looks like we'll have to be bow-diligent until it gets long enough to put into a pony tail or pig tails more regularly because I'd like her to not rip out any more.

Fitness Update:  Our trainer told us this morning we are doing well.  He told us this after we both collapsed from some new partner-based pushup/squat/shoulder breaking exercise he had us try.  We couldn't even manage thirty seconds each.  So are we doing well or is he bolstering our confidence? 

Someone Once Said:  Do not carry weapons to give you Dutch courage. If a gun makes you three meters tall and invulnerable, you had better go unarmed and let your sister do the shooting.

Too Many Folders

It is not a great secret that I've gotten well-involved with my children's school.  Some days, I think I've gotten too involved.  Involved to the point that I don't have time to get anything else done during the hours the children are at school, other than work on school things.  And then suddenly another opportunity presents itself; it's an opportunity that really needs someone who can dedicate the time to it, oh, and it's important.  So I find myself stepping up to even more responsibility.

It started simply enough, at the New Parents Welcome meeting prior to the start of school I was targeted (yes, I think that phrase is appropriate) by two of the existing volunteers to step up to a position titled the "New Parent Liaison."   They were looking for someone new who was outgoing who would be willing to be the speaker for and to new parents at the school.  I accepted the job and I have learned far more than I would have expected from the role.

As an aside, I had to pass on my position to another new parent for the coming school year.  Did I target someone to be my successor?  You bet I did.  She is going to do a fantastic job and I am relieved because I have picked up more additional jobs than I expected.

So there's the Fundraising committee.  I got pulled into that when I was at Starbucks one morning and there was a committee meeting and I looked either capable, available or just vulnerable.  I attend the Parent Teacher Association meetings because as the New Parent Liaison you're suppose to go to those meetings (something I didn't know when I accepted the position) and at those meetings I tend to offer to help here and there and wherever.

Shortly into the school year one of the students in my son's class graduated to the next class level.  Would I be willing to take over the Room Parent role from that child's mother even though I was new and wasn't sure what that job entailed?  Okay, sure, why not.  And then later on, would I be up for being room parent for two classes since I had children in both Toddler Houses?  Okay, I'll take on that too.

The staff noticed I was willing to help out with odds and ends here and there.  I now run Costco runs for the school and come in to the office to help when they have someone out with a sick child.  I've even been asked to help with creating invoices for parents from a fundraising event.

Then, unexpectedly, I was approached by our head of school to join the board of trustees.  Honored? Yes.  Anxious because of the amount of work it might entail?  Double yes.  So I joined the board the day a six year new site project came to final presentation and vote.  It is one of the most pivotal decisions the board has ever made for the school...and it was my first day on the job.

Board members serve on two committees.  What will my second committee be, I wondered as I was already on Fundraising as an at-large member.  On Monday I was asked to be on the Finance committee.  At the meeting the following morning, I was asked to be the chair of the committee (which seemed crazy to me initially until I realized it was more of a secretarial position needed to be filled by a board member who could later report to the full board.)  So I took that job.

And today, only one day later, I had a morning-long meeting and I'm now on the Capital Campaign committee, which is rather like the Fundraising committee only with different people raising money for a specific project, in this case our new school building project.

Today I looked at the number of sub-folders I have under my school main email folder.  I found eight separate folders in addition to the ones specific to my children's classrooms.  I think I forgot to mention Welcome Host.  I'm not sure what that is, but I've been given that role for next school year too.

I inherited this problem, that of over-committing and over-volunteering.  My mother and my cousin know it well.  I hope I can keep up with it all.  I'm not sure there's much more I can volunteer for.  At least I hope there isn't...

The Big Boy Update:  The other night he was not asleep.  He was not asleep in the playroom lying on the floor with his blanket over him and two teapots in his hands.  One teapot would pour imaginary tea into the other and then that teapot would pour it back.  This went on for a while, right over his head, without an imaginary drop of tea being spilled.  Also, there were sound effects he added to make it more "realistic."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Yesterday morning she was on the potty and I left her to go to check on my son.  I came back to her at the toilet trying to dump some solids she had deposited into the potty.  Solids that were sticking to the sides of the insert.  She was banging the insert on the rim of the toilet.  I ran in to save the paint on the walls.  But she had done just what she was suppose to do in the potty and was following through with the next step.

Someone Once Said: I don’t hold with the idea that to understand all is to forgive all; you follow that and the first thing you know you’re sentimental over murderers and rapists and kidnappers and forgetting their victims. That’s wrong.

The Silly String Spectacular

When I was a young child I had the pleasure of visiting my aunt, uncle and cousin fairly regularly as they were less than two hours drive from where we lived.  My cousin and I had lots of fun doing all sorts of things.  I remember when she got Simon the electronic toy that you repeated patterns from and how we tried to "beat" the machine that was clearly unbeatable.

We did lots of things when I visited.  She had an organ in her living room.  She was a master at Monopoly and we played a lot in her back yard.  Because here's the cool thing, she lived on a lake.  I didn't know anyone who lived on a lake aside from my cousin, and living on a lake is just about as exciting as it gets to a pre-teen girl.  There were fishing poles and bicycles and trout-catching stories and a swing set and a whole yard we could play in to have fun.  And we did.

But there was one time we both remember specifically.  You know how all the memories of fun experiences in one location can blur together as one big bunch of, "I really like going there because of all the great time's I've had" type thing.  Was it that trip or this trip that we did such-and-such?  Was it summer or winter and was it when I was six or eleven when that happened?  I don't know for most of it because it's melded together in my mind at this point.   But there was this one time...

For a long time I thought it was a Christmas visit, but the more I think about it it couldn't have been.  Perhaps it was for my cousin's birthday because she has a birthday in May and I know the weather was very nice because we went outside to play.  We went outside, specifically, because there had been a present of Silly String.  Silly String is messy.  Very messy.  So none of that in the house.  Not on your life.  Outdoors right now you two!

So out we went and we made the whole back yard look silly with brightly colored string.  I've bought Silly String since that time and I don't remember it having that much in a bottle.  Were the bottles bigger back then or did it just seem like so much more magnificent mess to a child?

There's another memory blur that may or may not have been this trip, but it's going in this blog post regardless.  I know we were swinging on the swing set.  My cousin and I were excellent swingers.  We must have gotten in phase and stuck there for a while because the next thing you know, the swing set fell completely over.

We were excited.  I have no recollection of fear or injury at all.  We felt sort of powerful I suppose.  We ran into the house to exclaim to our parents what a great thing we'd done.  I'm fairly certain they weren't as thrilled about the prospect of righting the swing set as we were of knocking it over.

The Big Boy Update:  Last night I heard something happening in the children's bathroom upstairs.  Up I ran because they had been supposedly asleep for a while.  Nope, he wasn't asleep.  Somehow in the dark he'd gone to the playroom and gotten all the little cars and placed them into the bigger dump truck.  Then he drove the dump truck into the bathroom in the dark, took off his pants and pulled down his diaper and was sitting on the potty when I found him. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Up above the world so high... Again and again she sings this one line to the Twinkle Twinkle song.  My mother figured out what she was doing first and I sent an email to confirm to her teacher.  Yes, they are singing this song at school.  Angie, her teacher, says it's one of the few songs she can play on the ukelele.

Fitness Update:  Gym.  Sore.  He brought the pain.  But fun too...

Someone Once Said:  Correction: Are no homely women. Some more beautiful than others.

The Purple Check Writing Pen

I'm not crazy about purple as a color, and by that I mean I think purple is a lovely color, but it's not my number one color.  I like purple clothes on my daughter and purple candy looks delicious to me, and I like grape juice and many other things purple, but it's not "my color."

My color is orange, but how that came about and how long I spent loathing the color orange and then deciding that I loved it unconditionally when I was older is the topic of another blog post.  This post is about an unlikely little purple pen and how it's been with me for probably twenty years now, maybe more.

Do you remember the gel pen craze that happened way back?  Someone figured out you could suspend colored ink in something not unlike Dippity Do Hair Gel and it would flow out both beautifully and effortlessly from a ball point pen.  This little invention started an ink pen revolution.  First, the constant fights with your pen to start writing again by running it in a circle and adding pressure was rarely seen any more unless the pen was just out of ink.  And second, there were colors!  Something in this new process enabled a much wider variety of colors, much to the delight of children all over the world.

I think it was about that time that I got a purple gel pen.  It wrote very nicely so I attached it to my current check book that sat in my top desk drawer.  There was a very short period of time in my life that I a) carried a purse and b) needed a check book with me.  I grew up just as credit and debit cards were becoming more mainstream, so for most of my life, my checkbook has sat at home, waiting to be used.

And that waiting has become longer and longer between periods of use as time goes on.  What with online ordering, bill pay, auto-draft and point of sale credit card terminals, my checkbook gets more neglected with each passing year.

But this is about that purple pen.  I can see through its clear chamber and I know how much ink is left.  Surprisingly, there's about a third of the pen's ink remaining so ready and willing to write checks for a long time to come.  At the rate I write checks these days, how much longer will this little purple pen and I be together in the future?

The Big Boy Update:  "Daddy's toe is out of gas."  It is?  Maybe you should fill it up.  Where is the tank?  "The tank is in Daddy's foot."  Oh, okay. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She must have a need to read.  That, or she just wasn't tired the other night.  When we go up to bed and enter her room she says, "books...books" so we read some books.  Not uncommonly, she will get up in the middle of a book to go crawl into bed.  This is a sign,—so mommy divines—that she is ready for bed at which point I turn out the light and give her a pacifier and leave. Two nights ago I came back upstairs to find her sitting in the big chair, in the twilight, "reading" a book she had to climb up onto the dresser to get.  I know she climbed up via the chair arm, but I don't know how she got down without falling and landing badly but somehow she managed it.

Someone Once Said:  Better to be tempted and resist, than disappointed.

The Death of the Wooden Playgrounds

There's a playground near where we live that was put up when I was in my twenties.  I remember my next-door neighbor had three children and they were telling me about this, "All Children's Playground" and how fun it was.  One day I got around to going with them and then I saw what they were talking about.  It was not only a fun playground, it was a fantastic playground.

It was made of almost all wood and whoever designed it was a master at stacking play spaces on top of each other.  The whole structure looks like a castle of sorts.  There are so many ways to get up to the various high points and the number of lower-level dungeon-type areas or corridors is exciting in and of itself.  I don't believe I could imagine a more challenging hide-and-go-seek location.

There are slides and poles and big tires and tunnels and zip lines and rubber walkways and rocking bridges and over twenty years later, I'm still having fun at that playground.  We went to play there with our neighbor's daughter yesterday and I discovered they were doing a fundraising motorcycle motorcade event today to help raise money for a special needs addition to the park.

I brought the flyer over and my husband and mother looked at it with me.  My husband said he'd be interested in participating and that's just what we did today.  Mom and I took the children over to the park and we waited for daddy to arrive, with some new motorcycle-riding friends he had just met via a police escort and big fanfare to the park to help raise awareness and money for the playground.

It was great fun, most notably because my son was so excited by all the nice motorcycle riding people (who are about the nicest people you could meet.)  We had some food and played on the playground and it was then that I looked again at the plan for the park's expansion.

They weren't raising money to add to the existing All Children's Playground in the empty area off to the side.  This was a plan to tear down the old wooden structure and put in place a new plastic and metal pre-fabricated play area.  It was at this point that I got a little sad.  Sure, I love these new, colorful, exciting looking, feature-full playgrounds that seem to be appearing in parks all across the nation, but they're so much the same.

There's nothing wrong with them, but they lack character.  They feel new and shiny, but they don't have the feel you get from natural materials like wood.  I'm not sure why the existing playground needs to be replaced, it looks like it's got lots of life left in it but that's the plan.  I'll miss the old playground.  I wonder how long it will be before there aren't any wooden playgrounds left?

The Big Boy Update:  Motorcycle Rally.  He had the best time today watching close to fifty motorcycles ride into a nearby park and pull up all around him.  I videoed the whole arrival in the hopes he would go crazy yelling and pointing at all the motorcycles.  Instead, he was struck silent as he tried to take in both the number and volume of the motorcycles around him.  When he saw daddy on his motorcycle, the grinning and finger pointing started and then the jumping up and down.  It was fun to watch as a parent.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Hauling the ice.  Today she got the large plastic dump truck that gets pushed around the house regularly and backed it up to the ice machine.  This is the ice machine she likes to spend time standing in front of eating ice.  This time, she decided to load up the dump truck with some ice and take it on a tour of the house.

Fitness Update:  Eighteen miles this morning.  I ran long.  I ran slow.  But I ran my furthest distance yet.  Eighteen miles sounds like a lot, and believe me, it is.   But it's still eight point two miles shy of a marathon.  My legs were shaking when I got home and I'm far more tired than I would normally be after a run.  I am nowhere near ready to run a marathon as of today, but I'm getting closer. 

Someone Once Said:  All normal human beings have soi-distant mixed-up glands. The race is divided into two parts; those who know this and those who do not.

The Thinkers

I was a young child when I got a gift I didn't understand. You know the kind of gift I mean, at first, it's something you're not sure even what it is.  Then, when you do figure it out, the only thing you can think of is, "but why?"  I got one of those gifts when I was probably eight-years-old.  It was from my grandmother and I remember so clearly my confusion and dismay that Christmas morning.

First of all, it being Christmas morning meant there were lots of presents: presents for me that might contain exciting, fun, thrilling, messy, noisy or tasty things and I got to open them one by one.  I'm sure I got lots of good things, I don't remember a one from that year though, but I remember when I pulled over a heavy box from my grandmother how my excitement began to build.

Grandmothers and grandfathers are notorious for, nay expected, to get those gifts that mom and dad would never, ever have bought for you.  It might be too messy or expensive or extravagant or large or just too loud, say like a set of drums.  So whatever was in this heavy box had to be good because it was so heavy.  My grandmother always got me good things in years past so I had no reason to expect any less this holiday season.

I opened the box, reached in and pulled out a brass figure of a man.  This man looked sort of naked.  And what's this other thing in the box?  Why, it's another brass, naked-ish man.  What in the world are these two mini-sculptures and why are they in the box for me from Grandma?  My mother happily said, "Oh, they're Thinkers."  This statement explained nothing.  I didn't know about Rodin's  famous Thinker sculpture and I certainly didn't expect naked brass men in my Christmas box.

My father spoke up and further explained, "they're bookends, and they're very nice."   Now see, I had a bookshelf.  I put my books on that bookshelf and as far as I could remember, all my books already had ends.  I didn't have the faintest idea what a bookend was or more importantly, why I would need not one, but two of them instead of some cool toy made out of plastic that I'd destroy in short order and not remember years later just like all the other presents that Christmas.

But those bookends sat on my brightly-colored bookshelf as I grew up though.  They moved to college with me and into my first house and they're with me today, displayed proudly in our house on our bookshelves, doing what they were designed to do.  And sometimes, when I look at them, I think of my grandmother who is now deceased and I remember that Christmas morning so long ago.

The Big Boy Update:  At last night's bath I was getting my daughter undressed when I turned around to see my son already in the tub.  He had managed to get his pants and underpants off but had completely forgotten to take off his shirt (or more likely he wasn't able to manage it.)  The bottom of his shirt was wet in the tub so I asked him, "Can I help you take your shirt off?" To which he replied, "No, I'm very comfortable."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Books for Balls.  My daughter likes books.  She likes to sit in your lap and have you read books to her.  But she has an ulterior motive.  She doesn't really want to hear the book read, she wants to find all the balls in each book and tell you about them.  That page doesn't have a ball on it?  Not a problem, she will go back to the page with the ball so she can tell you about it again.

Someone Once Said:  A paradox can only exist in words, never in the facts behind the words.

Exponentially

It seems today the word "awesome" is way overused.  It's used for nearly everything, for example you need to find a word that means something beyond great or to express how grateful you might be.  Hey, let's just use the word awesome, because it's so awesome.   It wasn't always that way.  I remember when I was a freshman in college.  It seemed excessive use of "awesome" was just up and coming, new and cool.  Now, it's so not awesome any more.

But what about the word, "exponentially"?  If taking care of your child is a lot of work (because babies just are a lot of work) and then you have a second child, you might hear someone tell you that it will be exponentially harder to take care of two babies.  No.  It won't.  It will be linearly harder.  It will become twice as difficult as it would changing diapers on two babies as it would be changing babies on one diaper.  Hm, strike that, reverse it.  Strange typo day.  But back to the point...if it were exponentially harder, it would be harder a whole order of magnitude more than it would be for one baby.  That would mean it would be ten times harder to take care of two babies than it would be one baby.

And I can't subscribe to that.  It's part of our language of late it seems to over emphasize as though no one will really believe how delightful you found your children's school play unless you describe it as awesome.  Or that you had a co-worker leave the company and their duties are being divided between the remaining staff and now you have exponentially more work to do.

The Big Boy Update:  Sound sleeper.  He naps or he doesn't nap in the afternoon, but when he does nap, he naps well.  He will tell you, "I'm sleepy" or, "I'm tired" of late and he knows what he's talking about because at those times, he will go straight to sleep.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Where's Reese?"  My son and daughter were looking at my lock screen on my phone yesterday that has a picture of my son at Disney with Mickey mouse and daddy.  My son immediately pointed out Mickey Mouse, then he pointed out daddy and then he said that that he saw he was in the picture too.  My daughter wanted to see the picture next.  She knew who Mickey was, so I asked her if she saw daddy and then if she saw her brother.  She kept looking at the picture and then she said, "Where's Reese?"

Someone Once Said:  Paranoia is a disorder contracted only by those of fundamentally bad character

The Stereo Stack

When I was a freshman in high school one of my friends down the street got a stereo.  It wasn't just any old stereo, it was a whole stereo stack.  There were so many components that it needed it's own stereo rack just to hold all the pieces.   It was cool.  I wanted one.

That was the thing back then.  You got a stereo system that included things like a record player, tape deck (or double tape deck if you were cool), radio receiver, amplifier and, of course, the most exciting component, the equalizer.

All of these pieces would stack on top of each other and you would put them inside a nice vertical rack with the record player being on the top so that you could place and remove records.  There would be extra space at the bottom for your records and tapes and the whole thing would be proudly displayed with a nice glass door that popped open and closed via a magnetic closure button.  It was the thing to have.  It was posh.  I couldn't live without one.  Pleeeeeeeeeeese mom and dad?

I got a stereo stack the following Christmas and I loved it.  I loved it through college.  I loved lugging those large, heavy speakers that were just as big and tall as the stereo rack itself, up and down the stairs of my college dorm room as I moved in and then later, out of my dorm room.  

That stereo served me well.  Today, I have amazing sound, a full library of music and all the audio features I could possibly want...in my pocket...as part of my cell phone. 

The Big Boy Update:  "Hi, Mimi's Truck."  Mimi has lots of things as far as my son is concerned.  This morning, unbeknownst to Mimi, she had a Time Warner service truck that arrived at our house.  My son was ready to see Mimi emerge from this imposing truck and come to visit him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Pretty in pink.  My daughter's cousin, Olivia, graciously shared some of her baby clothes this past weekend.  There are some very fetching dresses.  This morning, we put on a pink dress, complete with little britches and sent her off to school.  Without a doubt, my daughter will be the cutest child at school.  You're with me on this, right?

Someone Once Said:   On reflection I realized that I was in exactly the same predicament as every other human being alive: We don’t know who we are, or where we came from, or why we are here. One thing I’ve learned is to face calmly the ancient mystery of life, untroubled by my inability to solve it.

About Those Water Diapers...

When my son was very young, a friend mentioned she had some extra water diapers we could have because her grandchildren had grown out of them.  I had no idea what water diapers were.  As it turns out, they are an expected and useful item for any pool or water environment in which you would like to keep any potential baby mess out of the water.  But I was, and still am, skeptical.

There are fines for having your child in a public pool without a water diaper on if your child were to make a mess while in the pool.  But what does that mean?  To the uninitiated, the "water diaper" sounds like an iron-clad baby bottom coverage device that keeps any and all baby action inside the diaper.  To the parent who has used them only a single time, you know that the water diaper job is to keep solids in place while the liquids co-mingle with everything else, just like might happen with an older child who pees in the pool.

Do these water diapers do their job?  I don't really know.  Usually, when a child is in the pool playing, they don't have as much of a need to go.  I haven't had much experience with dirty water diapers until the last two days.  But since yesterday, I've had plenty of experience.

First, my son was naked three days ago and went in the pool.  Lovely.  I told him he wasn't suppose to go in the pool (this pool being one of those little blue things you fill up on your deck.)  So, the following day, naked again, he got out of the pool and this time went directly on the deck.  Super lovely.  Today he was in a water diaper and there were no incidents from him.

My daughter, on the other hand, has had on water diapers both days.  She has managed to make a mess in those water diapers both days as well and that mess was not, I repeat not. contained within the water diaper.  The first time it looked like there were some strange fall-like debris floating around in the pool and I didn't make the connection immediately.  Then, the pool water began looking cloudy.  Oh dear.  Oh yuck.  Quick, everyone out of the pool, we have to dump it and refill it. (My son loves that part.)

It happened again today.  I am renaming my daughter, "Little Miss Messy Pants."  But back to the water diapers and their dubious protective capabilities.  My theory is that the medium water diaper is just a little too big for my daughter.  Those tight elastic leg bindings aren't tight enough.  Also, I'm getting tired of refilling the pool.  So tomorrow I'm getting small water diapers for her small butt.

The Big Boy Update:  His skin is having one of those times where it's awful.  He's itchy all over and he looks a fright.  I sincerely hope it's related to the egg white allergy and he'll grow out of it as his immune system matures.  I have heard my aunt had a similar situation when she was a child and she grew out of it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Fuzzy Buzzy.  She has a winter jacket she loves.  It's fuzzy, pink and white and it's named "Fuzzy Buzzy."  She pulled it out today in the close to eighty-degree weather and wanted to wear it this afternoon.  She is going to be sad when she outgrows it.

Fitness Update:   Bonus eight mile run with Uncle Jonathan yesterday afternoon.  I'm tired today.   

Someone Once Said:  A man does not insist on physical beauty in a woman who builds up his morale. After a while he realizes that she is beautiful—he just hadn’t noticed it at first.

Velvet the Midnight Oreo Eater

My first year in college I had a suite mate that was very short.  She was also thin and tiny.  We found out later that she had had a rare cancer in her spine when she was young and had to have a vertebra removed.  So while she wouldn't have been a tall lady to start, losing that height in her spine made her even shorter.

Velvet (did I mention her name was Velvet?) was one of the nicest people you could meet.  She was from a more rural area, but she was most definitely not a "hick."  She had a kind family and we all liked rooming with her.  But she had a problem.  Velvet could not gain weight.

Velvet desperately wanted to be less-skinny and more "normal shaped."   At our college there was a cafeteria and they had great food.  I know, most people complain about cafeteria food, but I loved going to ours.  They had a nice variety and not a single bit of it was slop.  There was also an ice cream machine.  And that was our plan for Velvet.

"Eat lots of ice cream," we told her.  We were sure this was the key to weight gain.  She could go any time of day and get that ice cream and I suppose she tried, but unfortunately her metabolism adjusted and she stayed the same weight.

Later on, someone had heard that eating Oreos just before bed was a guaranteed way to gain weight because your body does something different as it processes food while you sleep.  We didn't know what that, "does something different" was, but it was suppose to suck up more calories than daytime food processing.  Of that we had faith.

I don't remember if Velvet ever gained weight our freshman year.  I do remember not having to worry about what I ate back then, because I always maintained the same no matter what I ate at that age.   I bring this up because as it turns out, it's not that hard to gain weight when you're in your forties.

Remember a few weeks ago that I decided to gain a few pounds because I needed to allow my body to compensate for the muscle I'd been adding from all the exercise?  Remember how I said how hard it was looking at the scale and not being disappointed at a higher weight because that was, in fact, my goal?

For a while I had to stop looking at the scale and I think that was good.  I gained five pounds without having to work really hard at it because at my age, my body is glad to store extra fat for future use when I overeat.  What I discovered though is that I think I look better with that five pounds added now that it's there.

So I have a new weight baseline.  But now I have to get off the "buns and brownies"diet and get back to eating appropriately.   And if you're worried, it wasn't all brownies and cookies.  Although the week of Easter in Florida with all the Easter candy wasn't a highlight of healthy eating for me.   It's a good thing for me there's not another candy-focused holiday until Halloween.

The Big Boy Update:  Doubling the swings.  My son decided the blue swing seat needed to be on top of the red swing seat.  I looked out in the yard and didn't understand how it got that way until my husband told me what my son had done.  He didn't forget about his swing stacking either because the next day he re-stacked them after they had come apart.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Going to school in underpants.  My daughter's teacher said she's "staying dry" most of the morning and we can send her to school in underpants from now on.  I'm not worried about the sending her there, it's the going home or out to lunch after school and forgetting we have a baby that needs to be taken to the potty all the time that concerns me.

Fitness Update:  Gym this morning and then some additional "minute drills" here at the house while I work at the computer.  It's a nice break for my fingers.

Someone Once Said:  A confidence man knows he’s lying; that limits his scope. But a successful shaman believes what he says—and belief is contagious; there is no limit to his scope.

The Shrimpy Milk

I was concerned for a few days that I'd been serving bad milk to my children.  I fill a sippy cup for each with some milk before they go to bed.  Not uncommonly, they don't finish all of the milk so I save it for the morning or the next night.  If it's not consumed by then, it gets thrown out.

To make sure the milk hasn't gone bad, I usually take a sip from their cups.  Last week I got a strange milk and shrimp peelings flavor when I sipped my son's milk.  Strange.  And most definitely not a good flavor.  I thought possibly it was some milk in the nozzle itself that had gone sour so I made him a new cup.

We started alternating Silk last week too, so I didn't think much of that one incident, but I came back to the milk a day or two later and it happened again.  How odd.  Do we have some sort of bacterial thing floating around in our refrigerator?  The milk was weeks from being out of date.  So I made a new cup again.

Two days later I made a fresh cup for my daughter and for some reason tasted it.   Hello shrimp milk.  What in the world?  I even made my husband try it from a sample directly out of the milk carton because now I had figured out it was the milk itself that had the taste in it. 

Did the cow get into a patch of onions that tainted the flavor of her milk production?  I don't know but that milk is gone.  The new carton tastes just as delicious as it always has.  I predict shrimp-flavored milk will not be a future fad.

The Big Boy Update:  Shh!  The other morning when I came upstairs my son was awake, but my daughter was still sleeping.  Instead of using his normal, boy, too loud voice, he spoke in a whisper and even put his finger over his lips to tell me to be quiet. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Angry at Angie.  After we went to the park yesterday and had some dinner, we stopped by the bake sale the upper elementary class was having to help fund their trip to the Montessori Model United Nations later this month.  My daughter's teacher, Angie, pulled her out of her car seat while we selected delicious desserts.  And then we found out we had a cranky and crying child, not our normal happy girl.  And to her teacher too.  Her favorite teacher whom she loves spending time with every school day.  When we got back in the car I handed her some of my dessert and that's when we realized it was hunger making her so angry.

Fitness Update:  Gym today, not much else to report other than to say our trainer has an bottomless pool of new and difficult exercises he unleashes on us each week.

Someone Once Said:  Reflex can empty the stomach; it can’t choose a course for feet, recover chattels, take you through doors and cause you to jump down a hole. Panic, does that.

The Trees are in Rut

There are tree genitals hanging out all over the place these days.  You see them dangling from their branches and it is not a pretty sight.  They spread their yellow, pollen seed without regard for anything not-yellow and they do it with a vengance.

It is pollen season again.  It seemed to be fine the other day and then, whammo, I live in a yellow city.  We ate on the covered porch the other night and before the food was brought out I cleaned off the chairs and the table.  When my husband brought out the plates he asked me if I had wiped off the table because in just a few minutes, it had gained another visible coating.

I'm not sure how much pollen I'm eating, breathing and living in, but it's got to be a significant amount.  I wonder if there is any nutritional value in large amounts of pollen consumption?  Is it classed as roughage?

What weather conditions cause this terrible pollen to drop and be over with sooner than later?  Large wind storms to loosen the pollen from the trees and then torrential downpours to flush it all into the sewers?  Whatever it is, bring it on.

The Big Boy Update:  He brought me flowers.  We had a toddler house play date today with families from both of the children's classes meeting at a park.  My son ran off and daddy chased him.  A while later he came back with a handful of wild flowers he had picked in the field for me with daddy's help (and I'm betting suggestion).

The Tiny Girl Update:  She cries a lot a home due to various insults she receives from her brother, or perceives she gets from him or from things she bumps into from falling down, which she does a lot.  But put her in a park with lots of other children and she's happy and doesn't shed a single tear.  Hell, she even pushed one smaller kid out of the way for no apparent reason.  It must just be more fun with friends from school to play with than it is with boring old mommy, daddy and her brother at home.

Fitness Update:  Fifteen biking miles, with children.  We did the fifteen mile loop I ran a few weeks ago this morning on our bikes with the children in their bike seats behind us.  Both of them slept through part of the ride but I think they each had a good time overall in the nice spring outdoor weather.

Someone Once Said:  Your enemy is never a villain his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate—and quickly.

No Longer Next Door Neighbors

We have had "next door neighbors" for almost two-and-a-half years now.  They haven't been literally next door, because they were about fifteen lots and two roads away, but they were the closest thing we had to real next-door-neighbors for a long time.

When we started building our house in our neighborhood, we were the eighth house of close to one hundred lots, so there was a lot of empty space between houses.  Today, every lot on our street, which is frightfully misnamed a "trail" as it's a stubby road with only eleven lots, is either under construction or has new owners.  And this is a good thing, because it's nice to have neighbors.

But so far, as you look out on our house to the left, there isn't a single inhabited home until you get to our original, "next-door-neighbors" until today.  Yesterday I was taking a break for a few minutes out on the swing set when I saw their son on their porch.  He said, "Hi, new neighbor."  And I replied, "Are you moving in now?  Congratulations!"  Last night they slept on the floors and today four moving trucks brought in load after load of their things. 

We stopped in to say hello and their mother, Brina, had lollipops for our children.  Imagine being in the middle of a move-in and having the organization to have candy for the neighbors children!

As happy as I am to have new neighbors, I'm sad to be less-next-door to our original neighbors, even though we were never technically next-door and there have been houses under construction for some time between our two lots.  Times change. 

The Big Boy Update:  ChickenFries with Mickey.  I saw my son's teachers at school today.  One of his teachers and I got to talking and I mentioned that "ChickenFries" meant "McDonalds" and she said, "Oh, did he have McDonalds in Florida?"  I told her he had.  She said that made more sense now because he had told her he had had, "ChickenFries with Mickey Mouse."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Talk all day.  It's been confirmed by her teachers, she talks all day at school.  I suspected as much, but it's nice to get confirmation.  The only mystery is, what is she saying?

Someone Once Said:   I had thought—I had been told—that a ‘funny’ thing is a thing of goodness. It isn’t. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. The goodness is in the laughing, I grok it is a bravery…and a sharing…against pain and sorrow and defeat.

The Silly Saga

Some mornings when I've had a good workout or have been doing a good job at maintaining my weight or when I'm just really hungry, I like to go to Whole Foods and get breakfast after dropping my children off at school.

Their school is across the street from the Whole Foods and I consider going there and having a nice breakfast buffet far more days than I actually go.  Yesterday was one of those days when I decided what I really needed (needed, yeah, right) was some eggs, bacon and some creme brulee french toast.

And syrup.  Don't forget the butter and you might as well have a latte once you've gotten all that other deliciousness to consume.  So I get my meal, pay for it and head over to the seating area.  There are four person tables, two-person booths and a row of bar seating.  I sometimes sit at the bar, but I like the little two-person booths so I sat in one of those.  And then I wished I hadn't.

Because on the other side of the partition that is only useful as a partition when keeping a spilled beverage from overflowing onto the other people's table, there were two ladies talking.  And they were talking about some situation with some guy and there was this other guy and how it made sense but it still was frustrating and yes, he's good to work with but you should be aware that he can have these moments.  That kind of thing.

It sounded like a some sort of saga, and a silly one at best.  Then I scolded myself because I realized most of the situations in my life would be boring "silly sagas" to anyone else.  It's just that they're my silly sagas so they're somewhat less-silly to me.

The thing was, I didn't want to hear about Mister Manager and Captain Co-worker.  I wanted to eat my delicious breakfast.  But I didn't want to be rude and give a message that I was changing places because of them.  When they got into one of those, "Yeah!  I hate it when that happens too," mutual commiseration things about a minute later I moved my plate and coffee, hoping they either wouldn't notice or would think I didn't find the salt and pepper to my liking at the current location.

You can close your eyes, but you can't turn off your ears.

The Big Boy Update:  "Where's Nana?"  "Nana is in Florida."  "Where's Papa?"  "Papa is in Florida with Nana."  "I'm going to Florida."  Nana and Papa, has he arrived yet?  Let me know because he doesn't have enough money for ChickenFries when he gets there.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Diaper rash.  She doesn't get diaper rashes that often, but yesterday we missed that she had dirtied her diaper twice and had been stewing in it for a while.  Also, it must have been acidic because wow, rash.  Today she doesn't even want to let you know she's gone in her pants because she doesn't want you near her with cold wipes. 

Fitness Update:  I'm sore today.  I ran six miles in the morning yesterday and then Uncle Jonathan and I ran the "full loop" in the park for another eight yesterday afternoon.  Fourteen miles and I was sore this morning at the gym.  When I got warmed up and I was able to do well enough though.  Or at least well enough that I didn't get teased too much by my trainer or exercise partner.

Someone Once Said:  Some problems are best let be, not chewed over with words. This modern compulsion to "talk it out" is a mistake at least as often as it is a solution.

Riva Palatsio

Can I just say I have no idea how to spell the person's last name from the title of this post?  That's mostly because as a child, I just didn't need to spell her name, she was my piano teacher so I only needed to know how to say her name.  Riva Palatsio (pronounced: Ree-va,  Puh laht see ohh) is just about the most perfect name for a piano teacher in my opinion.  Doesn't is just sound like a person who knows how to effortlessly play beautiful music on a grand piano?

I started piano lessons when I was very young.  My mother's mother, whom I never had the pleasure of meeting, was a piano teacher.  My mother also plays the piano with great skill.  So it was natural that I should take piano lessons.  However, I did not play so beautifully.  But I take lessons for a number of years, and I had the same piano teacher throughout that time.  Riva was a very graceful and elegant lady and she was full of patience (which I'm sure she needed when teaching me.)  I remember hating to practice and learning only what I could through memorization when she showed me how to play a new section of a piece I was working on.  I did not like to read music.

I remember her house and her living room with lots of windows that was taken up by a beautiful grand piano.  I got to play on that sometimes, but other times I would play on the pianos she had in her lower level that you could get to from an entrance in the back of her more modern house.

On those days, I would wait for my lesson to start outside in her side yard.  There was a grove of bamboo trees that I was fascinated with.  It was like a little bamboo forest you could walk into and it felt like you were somewhere tropical.  The reeds were so straight and I could imagine all sorts of fun things you could do with them.  I was, however, not allowed to bring in my tree treasures to the house during my lessons.

I wasn't ever a great pianist, but I hope I learned some things about music during those years.  These days I drive by her house from time to time and I think fondly of Riva Palatsio and I wonder what she's doing now.

The Big Boy Update: The angry twos.  Good grief is he an angry kid at times.  It's usually around meal times when he has the capability to make a complete mess of the wall, the floor, the carpet and himself (not to mention his parents as they try and stop the rage.)  He is usually hungry or tired but I can definitely say it is challenging my ability to be a happy, non-yelling, non-screaming, calm, reasonable mother.   His sister, on the other hand, quietly eats her meal without a fuss.  But I have a feeling she's taking notes for what to do eleven months from now...

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "The other bows."  She likes her bows.   She only likes them so-so in her hair, but she likes to hold the little container they stay in on the changing table.  There are two containers, one with bows and one with pigtail/ponytail holders.  When she gets on the changing table the first thing she does is ask for "the bows, the bows."  If you give her the wrong container from the one she wants, she'll tell you, "the other bows."  Her little voice is so tiny and high it's almost a squeaky whisper but she's said it enough times now that I have high confidence that's what she's saying.

Fitness Update:  Six miles this morning.  And running with Uncle Jonathan in plan for this afternoon.  I'm currently working on some fun one minute core exercises to take a break from time to time as I work at the computer all morning.  Our trainer is always saying, "engage your core" when we're struggling.  We're always struggling.  Of that he makes sure.

Someone Once Said:   No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and, in the long run, no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons: "Come back with your shield, or on it." Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome.

The Dead Food Realization

I went to Florida many years ago on a trip to visit my now husband.  That weekend, he took me to his favorite pizza parlor.  He's from New York, so his tastes in pizza are fairly specific.  Or to put it the way he describes his tastes in pizza, he's picky.

We were sitting in that restaurant that day waiting for our pizza to arrive.  There were framed posters on the wall depicting various Italian dishes, making me want that pizza to arrive sooner than later as I was fairly hungry.  That's when I had a strange thought come over me.  I realized that delicious plate of food pictured in the frame was long gone.  It was in a landfill or processed and down the sewage system.  In short, it was "dead."  And that thought was strange.

Because here's how it works: any picture you see of a particular food item is of food that is no longer edible.  It's been eaten or thrown away, but if there's one thing it's not, it's not sitting in a corner somewhere just waiting for the right person to come and enjoy it for dinner.  So this mental sensation I was feeling about the demise of the food in the picture should have been a given, not something so unexpected.

For years I went to Breuggers' Bagels and I remember always looking at the posters on the walls of the pristine vegetables and perfect bagels and the "dead food" thought never struck me then. All I thought about was how perfect those vegetables were and how I might want to get a more healthy bagel the next time as a result.

This past week we were back in Florida and we went back to the same restaurant.  They had moved to a new location and they had updated their decorations and this time, there were no pictures of food on the wall.  But I remembered that day sitting in the booth looking at the plate of pasta in that picture while we waited for our pizza and I remembered the strange thoughts I had about the impermanence of life.

The Big Boy Update:  "I see the cream!"  This means he's spotted a crane.  Some sort of tall thing that goes up in the air, usually from a vehicle.  It might be a utility vehicle working on power lines or a concrete pouring crane or generally anything tall coming out of a truck.  Yesterday afternoon he asked for  "two peanups."  We we having peanuts for snack on the deck playing with some outdoor toys.  He would sweep by and ask for another "peanup."  Sometimes he would let me know he needed "two peanups" between rounds of driving cars into the water area of the water table.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Ho kaay"  This is what it sounds like when she says "okay."  She can also say please and thank you if you ask her.  Sometimes, if she wants something quite badly and you're not giving it to her, she'll even offer please on her own.

Fitness Update:  Back to the gym.  New exercises that were both fun and brutal at the same time.  With the good weather, we're doing some things outside too which has been nice, although it's still dark that early right now.

Someone Once Said:   Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy—in fact they’re almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.

The Neighborly Gnomes and the Pop-up Yard Decorations

There is a strange house down the road from our neighborhood.  It's on a side road from the main road we use to get to and from our sub-division, but their back yard is along that main road.  It's a large yard.  It must be more than an acre, going down a hill, with a creek that goes under the road we drive on daily and then back up another slope with woods and a clearing.  But it's a strange place.

I never see the people who live there out working in their back yard.  I don't see them building new bridges over the creek, but then there it is one day.  I don't see them erect the Nativity scene early in the holiday season and I never see them pull it down, even after it's been there some time into January.

There are strange retaining walls that turn in towards themselves and then turn back out again with a mirroring retaining wall ten feet away that seems to make a sort of maze-like channel through part of the clearing.  But it's a maze with two turns and it doesn't come from anything or go to anywhere.

Other interesting yard-developments happen from time to time, but it's always just something that appears.  These are yard things that should take hours or days to complete and yet suddenly their just done and there's no sign of anyone.

I never see anyone on the back of the expansive porches visible on the back of the house from the road.  It's as if the house were an entry way into the side of a mountain where odd garden gnomes like to live.  From time to time, these gnomes venture into to the world around them and do some sort of strange "beautification project" and then disappear into the night.

Maybe someday with all my driving back and forth on the road with the view of their odd yard, I'll catch a glimpse of these unconventional garden gnomes.

The Big Boy Update:  "On the top."  "The big one."  These are two of my son's most popular sentences of late.  He likes to tell you something is on the top of something else.  It's usually some sort of vehicular thing.  He also likes to ask for the big one of things.  He doesn't want the small slice, he wants "the big one" of whatever it is you have.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Pigtails!  Her hair is long enough to put into pigtails now, and boy is she cute.  I sent her to school in pigtails today but I think her little head was hurting from the tightness because she was unhappy about them when she got home so I took them out.  Did I mention cute though?

Someone Once Said:   It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person’s behavior. The most any leader can do is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself.

The Calling Card and the Death of the Payphone

The other day something reminded me of my days in high school and the lack of communication we had back then.  We didn't have cell phones, but we weren't so out of touch.  The less-important things just didn't get communicated until you got home.  Do we communicate too much garbage these days just because we can?  I fear that's a topic for another blog post though.

When I was young, I did have a way to call home: I could use a pay phone.  I usually had some change on me.  Initially, I believe pay phones were based on dimes and even took nickles, but by the time I was in high school, it was only quarters.

I didn't have to call home much, but if I did, and if I found myself without any change, all I had to do was use the calling card associated with our home phone line.  It was fairly easy if I'm remembering correctly, you just needed to know your home phone number and then some additional digits on the end that represented the PIN.

I believe when I started using this card I would have to talk to an operator and get her to put the call through, but later on I found out the AT&T number you could call to place calling card calls directly.   Then I could do the whole transaction myself from any payphone, without any money whatsoever.

As I got older and went to college and then got a job, I found myself in hotel rooms at night on business trips.  This was still in the pre-cell phone era so you had to make your safe arrival call from that very expensive-to-use hotel phone.  That is unless you had an eight-hundred number to call and you could bypass the per-minute, sky-high rates simply by calling a toll-free number and routing the charges to your much more reasonable calling card.

It was during this time that I had my own home phone number and my own calling card associated with that number.  I used that calling card all around the world as I traveled for work.  As long as I looked up in advance how to call AT&T from whatever location I would be visiting, I could use the trusty calling card number and the charges would show up on my home line phone bill the next month.  Back then, before I carried around a smart phone in my pocket and could communicate any time via text, email, phone, social media, pictures, videos, etc., it was the epitome of convenience. 

The pay phone is where it all started for me.  When I was young they were here and there but not everywhere.  I believe the peak of pay phone usage was right in the middle of some of my most busy years of business travel.  I remember every year I would see more and more banks of phones being added to the various airport terminals I frequented.   But then, just as they had grown in banks and rows, the cell phone took over and those heavy metal, sleekly styled phones started being used as locations for people to sit at to work on their laptops, or find a quiet place to talk on their personal cell phone while playing with the pay phone's handset cord.

Eventually, I saw the banks being dismantled and seats of dubious comfort being installed in their place, where older, less comfortable seats had resided in years before.

It's rare now that I see a pay phone, although I'm sure they still exist.  At minimum, they still exist in the movies because people always need a pay phone for some reason or other.  I haven't thought about my credit card calling card in so long, I don't even know if it's something the phone companies offer any more.  Did pre-paid phone cards replace those too?

The Big Boy Update:  Mad about mangoes.  He's talked about mangoes for a good while.  I wasn't sure he'd ever had any because they don't show up on the list of snack foods to bring in to school, but he knew what one was and he wanted one.  I got a few at the store a while back and yes, he likes mangoes.  Last night I asked him if he would help me cut up a mango (he loves cutting work with his special safety knife), but when I got the pieces prepared, all he wanted to do was put as much of the mango into his mouth as he could.  He kept both hands full with backup pieces of mango for when he finished the current bite.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Mango cutter.  While my son was busily stuffing mango slices into his mouth, my daughter took a turn with the two-handed waffle cutter.  This is a specific tool they learn to use in school.  That's right, they learn how to cut up things.  The waffle blade makes it much safer and they're taught how to hold it properly, with two hands, and press down.  She was having so much fun I think she would have cut up three mangoes if we had had enough time before bed.

Fitness Update:  It's been a while, did you notice?  Easter week vacation in Florida and I had a cough and was not enthusiastic about exercising, so I ate chocolate bunnies and jelly beans instead.  Back home and I went to the gym this morning for the first time in ten days.  I miss vacation but it's good to be back.

Someone Once Said:   Beware of the "Black Swan" fallacy. Deductive logic is tautological; there is no way to get a new truth out of it, and it manipulates false statements as readily as true ones. If you fail to remember this, it can trip you-with perfect logic. The designers of the earliest computers called this the "Gigo Law," i.e., "Garbage in, garbage out."

AM and PM and the Time of Day Dilemma

There are words we use we don't think about, simply because we instinctually know what they mean.  For example, when you look at the newest tablet that was just released and your friend says, "that's really cool," you know he mean it's very exciting or intriguing, not that it's physically cold to the touch.  This is all due to something called connotation.

Connotation is the mental image you have about a word or a phrase that tells you what it means to you, regardless of what the actual denotation, or definition indicates.  Another example would be when my mother says, "He's was out like a light."  What she means, and the immediate picture I get in my head, is that of my child falling asleep immediately when he got into his bed.

It can happen though that you only know the connotation for something.  You might have an idea what the word or phrase means by definition but you're not completely sure.  What you do know is what it means to you.  You never had to rely on a definition because the meaning is so basic or so ingrained.  That happened to me yesterday.

We left Florida to drive the long drive home at 10:41 AM.  We drove for days, months, what felt like eons and eventually I looked at the clock and it was 10:41 P.M.  I said to my husband, "we've been on the road for exactly twelve hours."  Then I said to him, "Hey, do you know what a.m and p.m. stand for?"

I'm sure I knew at some point.  I'm sure I learned their meanings in school and then promptly forgot them.  My connotation of the terms were that AM meant in the morning; it meant starting at 12:00 midnight and it went right up until 12:00 noon and then you moved over into PM and that meant afternoon into evening.

I wrestled with myself internally because PM just meant exactly what it meant.  It defied defining because it was so obvious, so clear, so unnecessary to define because it was a term I had been reinforcing in my brain for my entire life.  But surely it meant something.  And my money was on it meaning something in Latin, because those pesky abbreviations always mean something in Latin.

My husband was in the same position I was.  We thought we knew what the terms stood for but when we searched our memories, all we came up with were humorous guesses.  So I looked it up.  A.M. refers to Ante Meridiem, meaning "Before Noon" and P.M. stands for Post Meridiem, meaning "after Noon."

And then I learned something I didn't remember knowing from my youth.  12:00 a.m. or 12:00 p.m is incorrect.  Since the terms PM means before or after the mark of noon, so 12:00 Noon itself has no PM designation.  The same is true for 12:00 Midnight. It is equally incorrect to refer to that time as 12:00 AM.  So to be correct and more to the point, "cool," use 12:00 Noon and 12:00 Midnight.

Then there's one extra little thing I learned that was interesting.  There are four ways to correctly write AM and PM:  AM/PM or A.M./P.M. or am/pm or a.m./p.m.  I've sprinkled all four types throughout this post and the inconsistency is killing me, but I thought I'd try and figure out which version I like the most.  I think I'm picking AM/PM or am/pm.  Those periods just seem excessive.

The Big Boy Update:  Mister Itchy Scratchy.  He's had a rough few days with his eczema on vacation.  Was it the sun or the chlorine in the pool?  Was it the new clothes and materials?  Was it the change in bedding or what the bedding was washed in from the rental company?  Were eggs intermixed into his food more than we thought in minor ingredients?  We don't know and it's not that important, it's just something that happens.  He was itchy the whole ride home and he looks a sight.  We look forward to him outgrowing some of his sensitivities as he gets older.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  He or she?  I was asked more than once this past week if my daughter was a boy or a girl.  It seems putting a little girl in red shoes and red clothing without a hair bow makes the determination more difficult to some people.  She looks all girl to me, but then again, I know her.

Someone Once Said:  I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth—then shut up.

That Looks Like Pain

Last year when I was on vacation in Florida at my in-law's house I started writing a poem titled, "That Looks Like Pain".  It's been sitting in my blog folder ever since.  I revisit it from time to time but have yet to be inspired to finish it and here I am back in Florida at the end of another year's vacation and that poem's still unfinished.  But I think about the title from time to time because it's part of how I live my life, avoiding those things that look like pain.

What looks like pain?  Sitting on the floor.  Yes, I can run fifteen miles relatively free of pain, go to the gym and do all sorts of exercises and go up and down stairs all day and not have a problem.  But sitting on the floor for ten minutes, interacting with my children as they play with whatever it is they're having fun with, and I'll still be in pain hours later.   I don't understand what it is about that position.  Sitting cross-legged doesn't help sitting with my legs out in front of me will make it worse more quickly.  The only solution I've ever been able to come up with is to just not sit on the floor.

I've had surgery for cervical spinal fusion.  That means I have two less movement points in my neck than most people do.  I know that the vertebral junctions directly above and below the fusion are working harder than they otherwise would and are on their way to being fused by natural means as time goes on.

What that means is that my body is growing bone spurs and the movement I'm getting out of each of those joints becomes less over time.  This is a known and expected progression with situations like mine.  I can tell things are changing and becoming more constrained because the movement I'm getting is less, and chiropractic adjustments, a non-medication treatment that has given me much relief over the years, are becoming more challenging for achieving the same results.

The Chiropractor suggested they take more X-rays to determine the level of degeneration.  I told them I would be glad to pay for an X-ray if it would help them in their adjustments, but that I don't want to know the findings.  I don't want to know how bad it is or how bad it's going to be in the future.  Or, to be extremely specific, I don't want to know how much more pain I will likely be in. 

Everyone has their own worst fears.  I don't know if chronic pain is a worst fear or just a known fear I have because I've spent more time than I care to recount in pain I couldn't escape or avoid.  I forget sometimes that I avoid certain things, like looking up at the sky or sitting on the floor with my children, because doing so puts me in a pain cycle that can take time to recuperate from.  I have a precarious balance I seem to be able to maintain a good portion of the time and I try to stay in "balance" as much as I can.

The good news is as long as I avoid all those things that my brain warns me are bad, I'm usually doing okay.   Here's hoping that list of things to be avoided doesn't increase by too much too quickly since I hope to be around for a good while yet.

The Big Boy Update:  Out of one bed and into another.  On vacation, my son has a rental crib.  He can climb out of it in about five seconds.  The other thing he learned is when he wakes up, he can climb out, pull his blankets and pillows out and then go into Nana and Papa's bedroom and get into bed with them to have a fun time before breakfast.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Water fearless.  She is fearless of the water.  Jumping in, going completely under, staying under, and generally splashing about having a very wet and fun time.  She has complete faith that an adult will keep her safe.  Looks like we have our work cut out for us.

Someone Once Said:  A fool cannot be protected from his folly.

The Third Person Post

Momma is writing her post in the third person tonight.  She doesn't normally do so, but since this post is all about the silly things people do when they talk to children, that's what she's going to do.  She's been thinking about this for some time, longer in fact than her children have been alive because it's something she's noticed and doesn't understand at all.  And yet she's caught herself doing it so many times by now that she realizes it must be more complicated or ingrained behavior in adults than she initially expected.

Okay, I can only do one paragraph in the third person because it's just weird referring to myself that way.  When I'm talking to you, my imaginary readers, I know you're adults or at least have the reading comprehension to understand what I'm saying.  You know who I am, I don't have to refer to myself by name.  I trust you'll remember who's talking to you in the middle of a paragraph.

So why is it we revert to this unnecessarily informative communication when we talk to children?  Initially, as tiny babies, we want them to know who we are.  We tell them, "Mommy is going to get you more milk.  Mommy will be right back."  We refer to other caregivers in the same way, "Papa is going to read you books tonight!"  But why, when our children are old enough to call us by name and exclaim that no, they don't want you to take them to the potty, they want Nana to go with them, why do we still refer to ourselves in the third person?

My mother does it, she tells my son, "Mimi hates to have to go, but she'll be back tomorrow."  My husband does it, "Do you want some more of Daddy's pasta?"  My mother-in-law does it.  "Your mother got you your favorite ice cream for dessert."  And of course I catch myself doing it too, "Momma is getting your socks, can you find your shoes?"

My mother and I have talked about this strange phenomenon and she and I catch ourselves talking to the children in the third person.  My husband and I know it happens and we don't understand it either. 

Last fall, one of the teachers at the children's school talked about language development and she mentioned, "We don't naturally refer to ourselves in the third person, that would be kind of strange, right?  So don't worry, your son will be able to say his name soon enough.  He doesn't do so already because he doesn't need to refer to himself by a proper noun."  And sure enough, she was right.  Our concerns that my son wasn't saying his name were unfounded.  He'll say his name all day now.

But that teacher's comment stuck with me.  She said it would be strange to hear people going around referring to themselves in the third person all the time.  So why do we do it to our children long after they clearly know who we are?

The Big Boy Update:  Bad blue car!  Have you ever done something clumsy or weren't paying attention and stubbed your toe or missed sitting down on the chair seat?  Did you take it out on the innocent object by kicking it or exclaiming, "stupid chair"?  Yesterday, my son fell off  his blue car and hit his head on the wall.  I've never seen him get angry at anything other than the completely unfair adults that make him do totally unreasonable things like take naps or go to the potty.  But he got mad at that car.  He shoved it and glared at it and then stormed off.  I have no idea where he got that behavior from.  Nope, none at all. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Wet dog smell.  I thought it was a fluke but it's happened more than once now.  When my daughter's hair is wet, it smells like wet dog.  You know that smell, right?  A wet dog comes into the house or gets out of the bath and, phew.   It's a fairly specific smell.  My daughter's hair is very blonde, could it be that?  It's not a strong smell on her, especially as she doesn't have that much hair yet, but it's there.  I checked her brother's hair and his just smells like wet people hair.  Strange.  If you have a clue why, let me know.

Someone Once Said:  Never take anyone’s word about weather a gun is loaded.

And Now I Understand

I'm sure it's happened to you hundreds of times in your life; you don't understand something until you experience it personally or find yourself in a similar situation.  It's not that we didn't believe the other person when they said how exciting or scary or tiring something was, but until we're there ourselves, we can only sympathize.  It takes personal experience to be able to empathize. 

What I understand now is why writers need quiet.  No interruptions, no questions, food can wait, stay away and don't you dare knock on that door, even if there's a ooey gooey sticky bun hot out of the oven, because I'm trying to think.

I normally write these blog posts at my desktop computer with a full keyboard, a large monitor sitting in the comfort of my office chair.  My desk is right beside my husband's at home.  For many months of writing this blog, I'd be sitting writing and my husband would have a question to ask me.  Perhaps it was about a bill or something about our schedule for the weekend or it could have been a funny video, "you just have to see."  Sometimes he would have twelve things he needed to tell me or ask me while I tried to write.  Every time he would interrupt me I would rotate my chair around, try not to look too annoyed at the interruption, and see what it was he needed.

Eventually, I got frustrated because it was taking longer to write what should have been a quick blog post than it should have.  After each interruption, I would have to get mentally back into what I was saying.   This was not all my husband's fault.  Phone calls, a ringing doorbell, children falling down and bonking their heads and all manner of other interruptions lay smack in the way of my ability to write an uninterrupted, chain-of-thought blog post.

One day I said to my husband, "Can you help me?  When I'm writing a blog post, can you give me some time without interruptions so I can get done more quickly and ideally get some better-written content hammered out at the same time?"  He said sure, and he has lived up to his word.  Not only will he not interrupt me when I'm writing, he will jump in and take care of other interruptions as well.  He is my number one blog supporter, and for that, I thank him.

This week I've been reminded how lucky I am when I'm at home writing a blog post.  The computer on vacation here is right in the middle of the house at the dining room table.  Everyone walks by and everyone has something to say.  It's not always to me, but when kids are throwing toys right beside you and there are conversations going on around you that are interesting, it's so hard to focus. 

I don't style myself a writer.  A few paragraphs each day about what's going on in my mind and what's been happening with my children hardly qualifies me for the designation of "writer."  But I feel like I can understand why mental seculsion is a requirement for writing.

The Big Boy Update:  Unafraid of Mickey Mouse.  My son has met Mickey Mouse twice now.  The first time was at twenty-two months and while he was excited about seeing Mickey initially, when the time came and he was faced with the actual meeting of Mickey in person, he lost his nerve and ended up laying down on the ground.  This time, at two years and four months, he ran straight in and gave Mickey a big hug.  The smile on his face in the pictures is outrageously big.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Pink sandals.  She needed some non-sneaker shoes that were waterproof and pool, beach, park, sunny day outside suitable.  Nana and I went to the Crocs store yesterday to see what we could find.  She is now prancing about happily in some rubbery, bright pink sandals with a sunflower on the side.  Can she still remove them in twelve seconds flat while sitting in her car seat?  Yes, she mastered Velcro straps some time ago.  But sandals with no socks are faster to put back on when we've arrived at our destination.

Someone Once Said:  I’m as grateful as my nature permits—a giant amount even though you consider me a shallow person.  But one can’t show deepest gratitude every instant, just as one cannot remain in orgasm continuously; some emotions are too strong to stay always at peak.