Apicoectomy

I have a tooth saga.  It's long and it's expensive and it's not over.  I was going to wait until it was over, but I'm not sure when that's going to be so I'm just going to write about it up to now.

There are several teeth in need of attention in my mouth, but this was the one we started with.  The filling was old and the additional decay enough that it merited a crown, so my dentist (who is also my neighbor) put on a temporary crown.  We didn't know if it would need a root canal, so we thought we'd start with the crown first.

After a day it was obvious that the crown didn't remove the discomfort so I went back in for a root canal.  And that's when things got interesting.  During a root canal, the dentist drills down into the tooth to expose the channels in the roots that contain the nerves.  Then he proceed to use these little tiny files to remove (or obliterate) the nerve, blood supply and any other tissues in the roots themselves.  He fills in the void with a metal filler and through some neat technology melts it to fill in the root canal itself.  If all goes well, at that point you should be pain-free in the tooth because it's hard to have pain in a tooth when there are no nerves to feel the pain.

In the middle of the procedure, my dentist takes little low-level x-rays of the tooth with these mini-files inserted down the root channels.  He does so to make sure he's removed all the material and has gotten the files to the bottom of the root.  All was going well until one x-ray showed his file going out the side of one root at a very uncomfortable angle.  He said immediately that he needed to send me to an Endodontist and he knew the best one in the area.   I found out later he was worried he had done something wrong or would have an angry patient.  But honestly, teeth are the strongest parts of our entire body, he couldn't have pushed a little dinky bendable file out the side of the root unless something were wrong, so I was fine with my dentist.  My tooth, I was annoyed at.

Let's keep count here, because that's root canal one.  And I was in pain now.  The endodontist took a 3-D CT of the tooth and it showed I had a resorptive defect, meaning at some point, possibly many many years ago, the root was under stress or pressure and partially re-absorbed into the jawbone.  He likened it to being moth-ridden.  His suggestion was for one of two options:  1) remove the tooth and plant an implant screw, for future implantation in six months to a year or 2) complete the root canal and do an apicoectomy on the root with the issue, meaning cut off the bad part of the root and remove any nerve associated with it.

The cost was similar (costly) but he said I could always go to an implant in the future and to know that a percentage of implants fail and if that happens, there is no alternative.  So I went for the tooth surgery, the more conservative route and possibly, he said, all the treatment I'll ever need on the tooth.

I scheduled the root canal and he said he'd try to do the apicoectomy on the same visit but it might not happen, depending on how difficult the root canal would be.  At that point I'm in pain so he gives me pain medication for the discomfort because the first root canal stirred things up.  He was running very behind schedule due to an emergency (and I don't argue with emergencies because some day it might be my emergency) but we got started eventually.

He chased down the canals and found an additional calcified one and worked late into the evening, close to eight o'clock, before he called it for the night.  Root canal two left me with a still-incomplete root canal and a still painful tooth.  And his calendar is full, but he is great at what he does so I got on the schedule when I could and took more pain medication for my throbbing mouth and waited.

Root canal three just happened to find him with another emergency surgery, this time on another endodontist.  I overheard from my chair at the end that he absolutely refused to let the man pay because he was a colleague from another town.  What a nice guy.   Back to my root canal number three.  This time he finished and he did the apicoectomy next.

Did I mention what happens in an apicoectomy?  It doesn't sound fun.  You can skip this paragraph if you don't like medical descriptions.  They have to enter your jaw from the side of your mouth and to do so, they have to cut into and lift up a flap of your gums.  And by lift, I mean physically scrape it off your jaw because your gums are well-affixed.  Then he drills a hole in your jaw bone and removes the root with some special endodontist tricks I can only imagine via the sounds I heard while it happened.

I did get pictures to take home and scare my friends with though.  A week later and I'm back for a checkup and it's still painful.  Not the gum incision, pressure on the tooth.  Strange, it should be feeling better.  Come back in two weeks.  Okay.

Two weeks later (today) and I can't even tell I had mouth surgery.  The tooth isn't throbbing, but it's not comfortable and I can't chew on it still.  So he took another CT and we reviewed it.  There is a root that has an unusually sharp curve in it.  He couldn't get his tool down it and he can't drill in a curved line, but it appeared to be completely calcified so he hoped it was nerve-free.  His suggestion is to let it heal for another month and then we'll make a decision on the next step.

His option is to go in an remove part of that second root.  It's not ideal, because it's another point of stability for that tooth I'd lose, but it would be at the tip of the root and he thinks there's a high likelihood I'll keep the tooth unless it cracks due to other reasons in the future.   If that doesn't work, he said he'd remove the tooth.  Me?  I'm hoping it calms down in few weeks and the pain is ligament-related around the tooth.

So for now I have an un-crowned tooth that's in limbo.  The endodontist said it's completely safe to be in this state as the channels are filled with solid material and he's done a bigger than normal build-up on the base.  But it feels strange and stump-like though.

I hope the other teeth aren't this difficult.

The Big Boy Update:  Super-Bat-Tiger-Man.  To school today (it's Halloween) he wore a Superman shirt under his tiger costume and his Batman shoes.  Tonight he is wearing his Spider-man costume.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Super Reese.  She emphatically does not want to be a princess.  She has a dress-costume with the Superman 'S' on it and she calls herself, "Super Reese".  She wore it to school and will trick-or-treat in it tonight.  

Sickness Update:  Better.  Almost normal even.  I think I'm over the funk.  Just in time too as the marathon is in less than three days.

Cleopatra

We have a ground hog (we think) that really likes the nuts in our yard.  And more than our yard, he likes our neighbor's yard even better.  I don't know if it's a girl or a boy but our neighbors had a discussion one day and gave her about seven names, one of them being, "Cleopatra."

We have deer too and the like our neighbor's yard as well and the great thing about that is that their back yard is visible from our bedroom windows and bathroom.  So we watch them in the morning and our children come to see what they're foraging for and it makes everyone excited to see wild animals so close.

One morning we saw a fawn, or a very young deer more likely because there were almost no spots left, curled up at the base of a tree next door.  He (or she) was quite close to our windows.  We all looked at him and he watched us as we moved from one window to the other, but he wasn't alarmed.   In a while, he got up and walked back down the hill into the woods calmly.

The Big Boy Update:  Playroom sneaker.  Tonight, just now in fact, my husband was waiting in the children's room for them to calm down and go to sleep.  He told me that he sensed my son only waiting for him to leave so that he could get out of bed and go to the playroom.  Sure enough, when daddy got up and left, he made a break for it.  After two attempts, my husband decided if he wasn't tired, he could play quietly in the room.  Usually, when this happens, he brings in his blanket and pillow and falls asleep later on the floor.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Stool pusher.  There is a small stool my daughter pushes all around the house so she can climb up on it and see what you're doing at this counter or that counter or bookshelf.  Tonight, she helped (or tried to help) daddy and me make our adult beverages for Halloween tomorrow.  She mostly "stirred" water in a cup.  But she was happy.

Curb Appealing

I rolled my trash and recycling bins in tonight and for the first time, I didn't have to pull them up over the edge of the driveway from the street.  I stopped, looked down, and marveled.  Then I smiled.  It's nice to be home.

When we moved into our neighborhood, we were the eighth house.  When we decided to build, only three houses were occupied.  There was an undercoat on the roads, but the final coat wouldn't go in until the neighborhood was close to ninety percent complete.  The entrance to the neighborhood itself had a very bad height difference at part of the street, so much so that some of us went the long way around to exit the other side of the community. 

Recently, they started marking and tearing up and replacing sections of the curb for replacement.  A neighbor said that was a good sign they were about to pave the entire street.  We had high hopes.  Then, they came and ate up about seventy percent of our street's base coat and replace it.  And I was confused.  They replaced curb pieces that were cracked, that made sense.  But the sections they repaved didn't always make sense.  Some areas that were crack-ridden were left, while other areas, like those in front of our house, were replaced.    I worried I was wrong and that this was our "final coat".

Then, they did that bit where they dig out all the utility pieces and raise them up by two inches, clearly indicating there is about to be another layer of asphalt on the way.  I relaxed again.  And today, we got our final coat.   My son watched the rollers roll back and forth on the street and we hoped we'd be able to get in and out when we need to. 

No more curb differential.  Much more curb appeal. 

The Big Boy Update:  He warmed up.  At gymnastics, he's never participated in the warm-up component of the class.  He just stood around and watched.  Today, not only did he do it all, he did it all right on time and correctly.  It appears he was mentally warming up the other times.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Social eater.  She likes to eat with people.  If we all sit down together, my son wants to eat at the little table, but she wants to put her plate at the big table and eat with the adults. 

Sickness Update:  Still sick.  Now daddy has it.  Low fever with terrible aches all over.  I think we're about through it but right now all we want to do is sleep.   Sleep is hard to do when you have two active toddlers.  And we can't call in help, this thing is very contagious. 

The Single Focus Phone Check

What did we do without our smart phones?  How did we manage without a single device in our pocket or purse that can do so many things at once?  It's a phone, it's a camera, it's even a video camera.  It has my calendar on it, it has all my contacts, I can pay for my coffee with it, it tells me the time, I can read and send emails from it and I can search the entire World Wide Web from it.   It is invaluable.

I heard a statistic recently that on average, people check their email forty times each day.  I thought that number was ridiculous at first.  Sure, those people in an office at a computer probably checked email all the time but that's because they're at their computer all day.   What about those of us who don't have a desk job?  Then, as I noticed myself pulling my phone out of my pocket again and again all day long for all sorts of varied smart-phone needs, I thought it might not be so out of line. 

Each time I pulled out the phone--to answer a call or check my calendar or see what the weather was--I would also note if new emails had arrived, and if so, I'd check them.  So I decided I'd do a count of how many times each day I checked emails.   It turns out, this is a more challenging thing to do than you might realize...

A long time ago I had a friend who had been a smoker for thirty years, but had been smoke-free for ten when I met him.  He explained to me that when you did something so often for so long, that you could have a cigarette out, lit and in your mouth before you even knew what you were doing.   I remembered that story when I was trying to count my "phone interactions" because I realized I was pulling the phone out, doing something, putting it back in my pocket without even thinking about it.

The other thing that I found interesting is how you can get sidetracked with the phone.   What time is it?  Let me pull out the phone and see.  Oh, look at that, I have two text messages.  Are there new emails?  Ah, only spam.  <puts phone away>.  Wait, what time was it?  I had looked at the phone which had the time right there on the front, but for some reason I didn't look at that piece of information.  because I got sidetracked with several other things my amazing smart phone can do.

I'm pretty sure my smart phone is smarter than me most days.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has a cough.  Earlier today daddy told him to cover his mouth when he coughed.  The next time he coughed he put his arm over his mouth and daddy said, "that's better" to which my son replied, "no, it doesn't feel better." 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "It's Frere Jacques!"  My daughter loves singing Frere Jacques.  She sings it in English and French.  The other day the song came on while she was in the tub and before it got to the part with the words she exclaimed, "It's Frere Jacques!"

Fever

My children get fevers rather regularly, considering that their immune systems aren't mature. I don't commonly though. But tonight, as our neighborhood pumpkin carving party was ending I developed one. It has been stewing all day and I didn't realize that's what it was. So now I'm in bed at seven o'clock and I'm going to try and sleep for twelve hours. 

The Big Boy Update:  no nap, to bed early. But he's been relatively fever free. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  her fever is mostly gone, but she was a little cranky still. I think she is almost over it. 

Costume Party

We've been invited to a neighborhood costume party.  Or, rather, the family hosting the party has invited the whole neighborhood.  I've never been one for costume parties, but I did want to go and see my friends in the neighborhood.  So I waffled.

On the one hand, I didn't want to go to a costume party without a costume.  On the other hand, I didn't have a great idea for a costume and I didn't want to just go get something at the store that looked cheap, just be technically in costume.  And on third hand, part of me isn't into the whole costume party thing and wants to just say forget it, I'm going in jeans and a t-shirt.

After dinner tonight, a mere two hours before the party starts, my husband said he was going to the attic to see if he had any old costumes that would work.  He came down with some good options, but he said I had some great options as well and that I should go look.  "I did," I thought?

I remembered costumes from my college days that weren't the type of message I wanted to convey these days and I remembered some costumes I didn't like that much, but was an okay option for that year, but I didn't remember any one in particular that would suit for this evening.

And then I saw the black and orange witch's costume.  I have a thing for orange and this costume has a lot of that.  It's also mature, without being too "sexy" or risque.  In short, it was perfect.  I got this great hat that I remember being more expensive than a witch's hat should be, but that fit me well and stayed on my head.

So now I'm dressed and we're waiting for Uncle Jonathan to come and hang out with the children asleep so we can go to the neighbors for a few drinks and a fun time.  Daddy is a warlock, so we'll match as a couple, how nice is that?

The Big Boy Update:  Mickey Mouse potty break.   We've had an issue with him wetting his pants when he's focused on something like watching television.  This afternoon I came into the living room to find him with his pants down, staring at the television.  I asked him if he needed me to ask Mickey to wait so he could go to the bathroom and he said no, but that he was dirty.  It turned out he had left the television to go potty and was, indeed, in need of a wipe.  It's the first time he's pulled himself away from something engrossing that I remember.  (I'm glad he decided not to sit down when he came back though.)

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She holds the crayon properly.  She seems to have an easier time drawing than he does and I just noticed today that her grip on the crayon looks like it gives her more control.  I wonder who taught her that?

Out of Time Night

I have time, but it's one of those night I'm tired and out of energy and, I suppose, lazy and just wanting to go to bed.  We had another great day at the fair with some new foods and some of the same foods.  I got to do a twelve mile run with Uncle Jonathan and my neighbor in weather that was much nicer than the other option, which was running at five-thirty with the threat of icy precipitation.

Then we went to a birthday party next door and had pizza and found out our fourteen-year-old friend has lots of friends from school.  Also, they got the largest pizza I've ever seen delivered.  Larger than a monster truck's tire.  And it was good too.

One child still has a fever and the other child has an almost fever so I'm going to put him to bed and then go to bed myself.  It's movie night here but I'm going to seep, happy in the knowledge that we have great friends who are in our house having fun.

The Big Boy Update:  Red Cross kind.  My son had an unexpected allergic reaction to something at the fair which turned into hives on his face in short order.  We took him to the red cross station and were overwhelmed by kindness and friendliness.  After some Benadryl, he was back in the fair game.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She still has a fever and is happy or cranky, depending on how her fever is faring.  Other than that, she's got no other symptoms of illness.  I hope she'll feel better tomorrow.

Fitness Update:   Twelve miles, our longest run left before the marathon on the third of November.

Fair Food

It's that time of year again, my favorite time of year, my favorite food time of year: the state fair has arrived.  I look forward to eating things every year that I don't eat any other times than that one week in October.  And this year, we're indoctrinating our children into the food fun that is the fair.

We had big pickles, maple sugar cotton candy, hush puppies, roasted corn, honey sticks, fried talipia fish.  Let me think, I know there's more.  Oh, mini donuts.  Ice cream made by the local university, freshly squeezed apple cider.  There is a honey cotton candy place too, but we only get samples of that. 

I wanted to get a candy apple but I have this ongoing tooth thing and there are stitches in my mouth and that just sounded like a bad idea.  (I need to put a tooth update here, but I keep hoping the saga will be over soon.)

I had fried frog legs, crawfish tails and cajun fries.  There was a Cheerwine slushy that my son wouldn't let go of because he loved it so much.  I liked the muscadine wine slushy more.  Uncle Jonathan had a Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joe sandwich which he said wasn't bad, but no one else seemed to want a bite.

I do like the terrible stuff too.  I had a deep fried Twinkie the other night.  I don't like Twinkies normally because I'm not much of a sponge cake person, but when it gets deep fried, it changes the consistency and it's a whole other taste sensation. 

We go back again tomorrow for our last trip of the year.   It's always sad when fair week is over.

The Big Boy Update:  Screaming.  He was tired today after the fair and he was mad.  He got so upset and his feelings were so strong that he screamed at me and was visibly shaking.  I felt bad for him because he wasn't feeling well.  He didn't like not getting his way and it made him more angry but eventually he calmed down when we left him alone in a room with the understanding that if he didn't go to bed, he had to play calmly and quietly by himself.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  First fever of the season.  It's going around school and I'm sure he'll have it soon.  She's bouncing around one-hundred-two degrees without fever-reducing medication right now.  It will pass shortly and there aren't any other symptoms to this particular "plague" other than the bonus of being cranky.

Fitness Update:  Five miles in suddenly cold weather of thirty-eight degrees this morning.  Tomorrow we're running again in what appears to be equally cold weather to come.

The Pink Ribbon

This isn't about the very prevalent pink ribbon representing breast cancer awareness.  This is about a little pink ribbon I got as a gift many years ago that's still with me today.  I've written about the wife of the president of my college before.  She was one of those people who makes an impression on your life in so many ways.  If I had to sum her up in a single word, it would be "charismatic".  But the word charismatic doesn't even begin to do her justice.

There is this little rabbit she gave me for Christmas one year.  It was unremarkable in and of itself and it was not really my thing at that age.  I was too young for nick knacks; I still lived at home and I didn't have a need to display things.  But it was a nice gift and I stuck it on a shelf and didn't think much of it.

It was wrapped up with a little pink ribbon that had a hint of green in it.  But, this was no boring holiday ribbon, it was fancy stuff for that time.  This ribbon that decorated my little bunny would have been right at home as an accent on a fancy skirt.  But it's sole purpose was to convey that bunny as a holiday present. 

I saved that ribbon.  I planned on using it at some point on a present worthy enough.  But nothing ever met the standards of that ribbon.  I would forget about the ribbon for periods of time but it would surface again in my ribbon box and I'd ponder what I'd eventually use it for.

Then, my friend became ill.  She had leukemia and after what seemed like far too short a time, she died.  Later that year when I was wrapping holiday gifts I came across the pink ribbon.  But now, I had no interest in sharing my special pink ribbon.  It was mine and it was my memory.  I folded it up carefully and put it away as I thought of my friend, Frankie.

That was many years ago and I had mostly forgotten about the little folded packet of pink ribbon.  But not too long ago, I went to look for it because I wanted to bring it to her husband and tell him how I thought of her often.  But I couldn't find it.  What had I done with it?  I know I didn't throw it away and no one would have used it because I moved it out of the general purpose ribbon box.  Strange, I thought, I'm usually good at keeping up with things.  I hoped it would turn up.

I think that was two years ago and yesterday, when I was rearranging some dried flowers from a wedding I had saved on a bookshelf, I found it.  I found my pink ribbon, safe as houses, in a small brass bowl.

It made me smile, that small ribbon that probably was nothing more than a simple decoration for my friend, but has become to me, a reminder of her life and the person I remember from when I was younger.

The Big Boy Update:  The biggest one is still the best one.  He wants, "the biggest one" or "the very big one" or any other variation of large, huge, the most, or giant of anything he is interested in.  He even wanted, "the biggest one in the world" of one thing not long ago.  I'm not saying greedy or anything, but he does seem to have high expectations.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Old MacDonald had a chicken.  Apparently, this is a new version of the traditional song.  My daughter was hungry this morning and had several things she told me she wanted to eat that Old MacDonald had on the way to school.

Does Pale Look Like Old?

At this point there's enough evidence to show that sun exposure can cause long-term damage to our skin.  And yet people still like to get a tan.  I like being out in the sun during the warmer months and I also like the resulting tan.  I don't like to burn, but I like "a little color."

There still seems to be an association with "healthy" that you get from sun exposure.  My father will be glad to share the sun screen lecture with my multiple times in the summer, but he will also tell me I look good when I've got a bit of a tan.  I don't think he realizes he's making that connection consciously, but it's happened enough times now that it's not a coincidence.

It hasn't been summer weather for a while now and I've retired my swim suits for the winter.  I was looking in the mirror today and I decided I was looking old.  And yet not much has changed between now and last year that should make me think that.  In contrast, in the early months of summer when I'm back outside in shorts getting sun on my arms and face, I seem to fee like I look better, younger, more healthy. 

Do I have a sub-conscious connection with sun-tanned skin to youth and health?  When did I get this connection and was it related to the media or the social situation of my youth when sun screen and sun damage weren't thought of as much?

The Big Boy Update:  Thirty-six inches tall.  Or almost.  That's how tall you need to be to ride the kiddy rides at the fair.  My son practiced being "very tall" and was able to ride several rides without an adult.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Angry to be excluded.  We were at the fair this weekend and my son was just tall enough to ride the rides.  My daughter was several inches too short.  This made her angry.  She tried to climb the gate on one of the rides to get on with her brother.

Fitness Update:  Half marathon run with Uncle Jonathan and my neighbor.  She had to join us after we'd started and leave us early due to her schedule and I almost made us late because I wanted to run more than the target twelve miles we'd set out to run.  After showering, we went to the state fair and ate until we couldn't eat any more. 

Fall Wardrobe

Children grow so quickly that every season they get a new wardrobe.  I found out from a good friend of mine last year that new wardrobes could be purchased at a significant discount, at used children's clothing stores.  Not only is the price highly attractive, the variety and selection of items is far better than what you'd find at retail stores.

My daughter, thanks to Mimi and Gramps, now has a full fall and winter wardrobe.  My son, however, didn't need new clothes.  He had clothes waiting in queue from his friend, Gavin.  Gavin was close to five when my son was born and his mother had been handing down his clothes to another source for the first few years.  But the T3 and up clothing she's been sharing with us.  So I went "shopping" in the children's closet for my son's new clothes.

Then, the labeling process had to start all over.  Out the sharpie came and initials were put on all their clothes before they could be folded and put back in the drawers.  It's a nice looking pile of new (to us) clothes.  I'm looking forward to seeing them all their new things over the next few weeks.

The Big Boy Update:  Big energy today and this evening as our friends came over and had dinner and some pumpkin carving with us.  He was driving around on the motorcycle in the garage and being loud and boisterous.   He even got to go to sleep late because of all the fun.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Very cranky at school.  I came and helped out for a short while before school was let out.  She was upset, tired, and inconsolable.  Rarely, if ever, had she had to be held to remain calm.  She said, "I want applesauce" so I texted daddy and asked him to bring several.  When I got her to the car she ate three, the most she's ever eaten, and then was happy again.  Then, she had a very long nap.  There are lots of sick children in their classes so I'm guessing we may be seeing something coming home in the way of germs soon.

I Swear, They Don't Care

I'm back on the potty training again.  And by that, I mean I'm back to complaining about it.  I've heard all sorts of stories from other parents about how their little darling up and decided in a single day to potty train and never needed a diaper again, including overnight.  I've heard stories about how their little man was so set against it, the parents were worried they'd be buying adult-sized diapers and still be training.

My children are somewhere in the middle.  My son has no problem going to the bathroom.  He doesn't always want to go when you ask him to, because he's busy doing something.  When he's focused, things happen.  Today, things happened several times and I got so annoyed that I told him he didn't get any more pants because he had peed on too many.

If he's not engrossed in something, he knows he has to go and he'll go without anyone asking--including in the morning before we get up to the room to get ready for the day.  He's good during naps...sometimes.  Overall, he likes being dry, but he doesn't particularly mind being wet.  He doesn't mind nearly so much as we do because he doesn't have to do the laundry.

My daughter loves going on the potty and is successful almost every time.  But she's not particularly motivated to go if she's not asked.  She's not trustworthy in underwear when we go out, so she's getting a mixed message of underpants and pull-ups.  She's trying, but she's not there yet.

If they didn't like being wet, it would be one thing, but I don't think they care.  They rarely let us know they need new pants.  So, the potty training battle continues in our house.

The Big Boy Update:  "I'm going to the fair."  The state fair is happening this week and my son was excited to go today.  He ate lots of food, rode a few rides that he was just barely tall enough for at thirty-six inches, and ran around looking at all the colors and lights and exciting fair things.  He had a good time.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "WALK........A.......WAY!"  My son started the "walk away" thing months ago.  It was an appropriate way to tell another student that this work was his and that he didn't want to share it.  However, it's turned into a much bigger thing in our house and we've been working on how to handle inappropriate usage of the phrase.  My daughter, when very mad, will yell it to whoever has upset her (usually her brother) with very long pauses in between each syllable.

Twenty-five Versus Twenty

Tonight was my high school twenty-fifth class reunion.  I went and saw some friends I hadn't seen in a long time.  I saw some people I vaguely recognized but couldn't place and I saw some people who looked like strangers, but were people I knew fairly well in my teens.

I went to the class twentieth reunion.  I didn't go to all the events--it was a busy weekend with many activities planned--but I went to enough to get a chance to catch up with a good number of people.

For some reason, the twenty-fifth reunion tonight seemed different.  It was the same people and they were just as friendly and nice as they were at the twentieth, but it felt more relaxed.  It seemed okay that we had to look at name tags to figure out who was who.  There wasn't a lot of discussion about what people were doing job-wise.  It's almost like we've gotten beyond proving ourselves and can focus on memories or family or friends.

Enough time had passed that no one cared who was in what crowd.  I stayed out later than usual and was sad to leave.  I'll be looking forward to our thirtieth in five years.

The Big Boy Update:  Glow stick bath.  We had some old glow sticks that needed to be discarded because they didn't glow well when broken like new glow stick do.  Before throwing them away, I broke a big stack open and dumped them in the bath tub with the kids.  Then, we turned out the lights.  He loved it.  I think  he'd still be in the tub now if he had his way.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Yes.  She says yes a lot.  Her brother was Mister No for a long time and he's still prone to answering no, just because who knows.  But she likes to say yes.  She will answer yes to questions on the television or to anything you might ask her, except, "do you need to go potty?"  That question, still firmly remains a no.

The Death of a Close Friend

Before you read any further, know that no one died.  But it sure felt like it.  My neighbor, the one that I run with that has four children and a very busy schedule as both she and her husband are obstetricians, was on a business trip in California.  Something happened and she died in her hotel room.  

I'm not sure how she died, because as you can imagine things were in an uproar, we were all in shock and grieving and doing that thing where you walk around in a daze and don't know what to do because your world has just been shaken up badly.  I remember our cleaning lady came over and she didn't know.  She cleans my friend's parent's house and when she heard she had to sit down she was so upset.

Sometime after that I woke up.  But it stuck with me for a while, that terrible sadness and grief.  The type of emotions that you know exist, but you can't really feel them until they actually happen.  Dreams are like that, they can shake you up and make you feel something is completely real in a way you can't do when you're awake.

It was scary.  I'm glad it was just a dream.

The Big Boy Update:  Last year at every teacher birthday we tried to prep him to say, "happy birthday <insert teacher name>" but had little luck.  Today, the class is celebrating one of the teacher birthdays and boy does he get it now.  He was so excited about telling Kica happy birthday and that we got her a present and that he made a noodle to put on her class necklace.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Clearly muddled.  She speaks very clearly and is easily understandable...unless she isn't.  I'm not sure why sometimes she mumbles every word.  It's not often, but when she's in that kind of mood, there's no telling what she's saying.  Then, five minutes later, she's back to speaking regularly.

Not On A Diet

I realized the other day that I don't feel like I'm on a diet any more.  I think my body has adjusted to eating what it needs, and not eating any more.  I do weigh myself, but I do so for information and more of a status update than I do anything else.  If it's higher than my target weight, I do my normal routine; if it's lower than my target weight, I have a nice breakfast.  Some days I don't weigh myself.  It's a nice change.

I do weigh myself for statistics though and that's been interesting.  Before a long run I'll see how much I weigh and then when I return, I'll see what my new weight is.  I always drink water on longer runs, but it doesn't make up for the amount of sweat your body produces.  The day I had the breathing problem related to the antibiotics and low blood-pressure, I lost six pounds.   And I felt terrible.  The day I ran the marathon-length run, I lost only four.  The weather was cooler and less-humid and I was able to breath normally. 

So back to the non-diet.  If I want to eat some candy or chocolate, I do.  I don't seem to want to eat it as much as I did some time ago.  If I want to eat Taco Bell--which I love, but rarely get around to eating--I do.  If I want to have several drinks during a social evening with friends, I do, and I don't look at the calories on the bottle of beer any more.

Something has changed and I am self-regulating finally.  Or so I hope...I don't know what things will be like after the marathon.  At that point my plan is to cut back on the running and do other fitness things including going back to the gym and seeing our trainer I've been missing for two months.  I suspect the reduction in appetite is due to the exercising in part.  I suppose we'll see.

The Big Boy Update:  He needed to go to the bathroom yesterday morning but he wasn't done eating.  He didn't want his sister to get eat his food.  I told him I would make sure his piece of bread was safe.  He told me, "maybe you could tape it down so my sister can't get it."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Calm eater.  Her brother has difficulty eating when he's tired or hungry or, well, any number of other reasons.  She, on the other hand, calmly sits down and eats through each and every meal. 

The Cassette Tape Confusion

I substituted again at school this afternoon.  I got to experience more of the children's day, including nap time and some of the intricacies of the various dismissals by age group and family need.  It's nice to see some of the same children again too; they remember me and they come to me and ask for help or talk to me and ask me questions.  I learned more of the routine, something I'll need to know soon because I'm substituting for one of the teachers when her granddaughter is born in a few weeks.

I had a technology flash-back this afternoon.  One of the students remembered there were books that had an audio recording of the book being read to accompany it.  This student isn't at the age he can read, but he can follow along to someone reading the story.  He got out a small cassette player, headphones and selected a book.

The other teacher helped him get the recording started and asked me if I could help him to put up the work when the book was over.  When the book was done, I helped him eject the audio cassette and then he tried to put it back into the cassette holder, only he had no idea how it worked.  He didn't know how to open it.  Once he got it open, he didn't know which half the cassette went into and then when I showed him that, he put it in upside down. 

It was then that I realized how old the books and tapes must be.   We've been using CDs for so long now, I can't remember when I last used an audio cassette.  But it still worked and he liked the story.  We don't need the latest technology to be a good teaching tool.

The Big Boy Update:  He isn't very friendly in some situations.  He's that kid that adults say, "hi" to that gives the frowny face back and doesn't respond, or responds in the negative if he does.  I'm not sure how to work on this; it seems to be a genuine reaction of how he feels, but socially, it's not considered polite to respond, "I don't want to play with you" when your neighbor says, "let's play together tomorrow." 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Close it."  When she wants to be alone on the potty, she will either get off it and shut the door herself or she'll tell you to close it so she can have some private time.

Fitness Update:  Eleven miles, which may be my longest run before the marathon.  I had a twelve-mile maximum run scheduled for this week but we ran out of time and eleven was still a good workout.

Was High School Easier For You Because You Were Pretty?

Someone asked me that a while back and it has perplexed me ever since then.  First off, it had to take it as a compliment, because the person who asked must think I'm at least the remnants of pretty now, if they were assuming I was pretty in high school.  Still, it was an unexpected question.

In high school we're all hormones and growth spurts and angular and awkward.  No one thinks they're pretty in high school, do they?  I didn't think I was ugly, perhaps not repugnant and maybe even passable, but my hair was frizzy and I had acne and there were the braces and I had a large birthmark on my knee and the fifty-seven other things that made me less than appealing than I thought all the other girls were.   That's just high school, I thought.

I found out as we continued to talk that my friend had had a difficult time in high school.  I wasn't prom queen and I didn't get straight A's, but I didn't have a particularly terrible high school either.  It was a time of growth as we transformed from children into adult bodies--and that in and of itself, is awkward. 

So was I pretty in high school?  I've seen the pictures and the blue eye shadow is cringe-worthy enough, but now that I'm in my forties, what I wouldn't do to get back the not-so-old and not-so-busted body I had back then, crooked teeth, ungainly limbs and frizzy hair and all.

The Big Boy Update:  Mixing colors.  He had a lesson at school today on mixing colors.  He learned that red and yellow paint make orange paint.  He learned you can add more yellow to make the orange brighter and that you can add white to make the orange lighter.  He loved it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Potty helper.  My daughter didn't want to go to the potty at school yesterday.  She said, and I am quoting her teacher here, "no no no no no no no."  So the teacher asked if she could go show one of the younger, new students how to use the potty.  To that, she went straight over, sat down, peed a little bit and told the other student all about it.  She was very proud to be able to help.

Fitness Update:  Eight miles.  Piece of cake in comparison to twenty-six. 

The 10MB Hard Drive and the Scanner Software

I live in a technology area versus an industrial or rural one.  I was surrounded by parents who worked in the technology field and I got to see some things in their infancy, just because I was around, that was pretty remarkable.

I had a friend named Marsh, who's father worked at home developing software when I was young.  People didn't commonly work at home back then, but what he was doing was something he could do alone, for long stretches of the day. 

I remember seeing my first CD ever at their house.  It was an audio CD and my friend said it didn't scratch like a record did.  He had fun playing with it like it was a Frisbee and doing all sorts of crazy things with it until he finally did enough damage that it wouldn't play anymore.

His father had something none of us had ever seen before: he had a hard drive.  We had different types of floppy drives, the 5.25" and the 3.5" disk-types, but this was a drive that was permanent in your computer and could store vastly more information than a floppy disk.   It was huge back then, it was ten megabytes.   And by huge, I mean physically huge as well.  It rivaled a brick in weight and dimensions.  But it was the coolest of the cool too.

There were papers all over the floor in his father's office.  They were printed out on a dot matrix printer and they looked like large splashes of random characters.  I asked him one day what they were.  He told me they were representations of a single letter or number as a camera viewed it on a piece of paper. 

What my friend's father was trying to do was write one of the first scanner software programs.  Think about the complexity of it.  There is a tiny little "1" on the page that a camera captures.  It's fiber-stained ink that our brains immediately know represent a one.  We know that across fonts and sizes and even handwriting.  But how do you determine if it's a one versus a seven?  And even worse, how do you know it's a "1" and not a lower-case letter L?  Tricky.

It was high-tech back then and it's still a challenge today to scan in something and be able to intelligently convert into editable text.  It was exciting to think about the future of this thing he was calling a "scanner" back then.

The Big Boy Update:  Obsessed with red.  He liked red, now he insists on red.  Do NOT give his sister the red cup or there will be problems.  (And yes, we're working on that.)   But he does love his red.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "My hands!"  She hates to have her hands dirty.  Well, that might not be true, I think she just likes to clean her hands and wipe her hands.  If you let her wash her hands and give her the foam soap, she will happily stand at the sink and wash and wash and wash for, well, we've never seen her be done before one of us steps in and tries to have the, "water is a precious resource we need to conserve," speech.  Even then, she's not sure she's properly done.

I Can't Sit Down (and other physical anomalies)

Running is a fun sport, a good way to exercise and a nice way to get away from things for a while.  But when you run for a long long time, you get into a state where your muscles know what to do, and only know how to do that thing.  Changing it up can be challenging.

For example, different people hold their arms at a different angle when they run.  Some people run with their arms bent at approximately a ninety degree angle, while others run at a much more acute angle.  I've noticed that I run with my arms higher up than my neighbor and Uncle Jonathan do.  To do a little bit of stretching out during a run I'll drop my arms to a different position to give them a break for a bit.  But a bit is all I can do because it doesn't feel "right" at a different angle.

It's not unlike how we cross our arms across our chests.  Most people cross their arms with one arm over the other.  Try doing it with the opposite arm on top.  It feels strange and even may take some thought in how to maneuver your limbs to get to that position.   Which index finger do you have on top when you clasp your hands together?  Try that the other way and that's strange as well.

So we have things we do that are "comfortable" positions.  But do something physical, say running, for a long long time, and then try and stop.  A few weeks back I had to sit on a park bench to get a rock out of my shoe.  I immediately said out loud, "oh, that was a bad idea," because my legs didn't want to sit down; they knew how to run and they weren't ready to do anything else yet.

The most humorous thing that's happened in a while was yesterday, after finishing the marathon-length run, when my neighbor and I tried to drink some Gatorade outside before going in.  It had been muddy in the park and we didn't want to go inside.  I wasn't sure I could get my shoes off standing up, so I decided to sit down on the pavement--only I couldn't.  My legs and arms didn't want to move in those directions.  The message I was getting from my brain was that not only did my legs not want to move that way, they had no memory of what I needed to do to move from a standing position to a sitting position.  I looked fairly silly as I tried to figure out how to sit down.

The both of us were laughing at me trying to do something so simple.  The body is pretty amazing though.  After cooling down for ten minutes, I was much better--I was tired, I was sore, but I could figure out how to sit down again.

The Big Boy Update:  Conversation with the sitter today:  "I got to poke my ear.  Not with my penis.  My finger."  I told her daddy must have taught him that one because I sure didn't.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Picking up leaves.  My daughter, like all toddlers, is at an age where there are no time constraints.  She lives in the now and is never in a hurry.  We got to the grocery store this morning and instead of wanting to go into the store, she wanted to go around the parking lot, picking up leaves.  When she got enough, I asked her how many she had and she counted each one, dropping it on the ground as she did so. 

Fitness Update:  Nothing doing.  I'm not doing a thing today.  Heck, I even watched a movie.  It's nice to have reached your goal.  It's a good feeling to accomplish something.  

Mental Accomplishment

The marathon is approaching quickly: in three weeks we'll participate in a twenty-six-point-two mile run with eight-thousand other runners.  It's been a lot mentally to know that we need to train to prepare for this long and grueling run. 

We've talked about how much we need to run in distance before the marathon; we've talked about how often we should run and how long those short and medium runs should be.  We've hoped we were running enough and that we'd be able to make it on the day of the marathon (and that that day isn't one of cold, heavy rain).

The most popular training plan has runners train to twenty miles and then back down for the two weeks prior to the marathon.  But we had also gotten advice that while you can make the additional six-point-two miles in distance for the marathon, it's not going to be fun.  We got advice to train up to and even possibly run the marathon distance before the day.   So we considered that.

I decided I'd feel better if I had run a twenty-four mile run before the marathon.  It was relatively easy to add two miles each week, so I thought that would be a good plan.  Then, today, after last week's failure due to my antibiotics-based blood pressure situation, we decided to try for the full twenty-six-point-two miles to just get it over with.

Like Uncle Jonathan, who had completed the marathon distance just a few weeks ago, it would be nice to know we'd at least made it.  And it would be a nice mental relief from the pressure of training.  Honestly, I'm over the training at this point.  I'd just like the marathon to happen so I can cheer and scream and dance and say, "woo, okay that was fun" and be done with it.   I suppose it's been a long time coming and I'd like it to hurry on up and arrive.

So today, I ran twenty-six-point-three miles.  Uncle Jonathan had the idea to run just a bit over a marathon because, hey, it's not much but it's cool to have run more than a marathon.  And I liked that idea.

Mentally, I feel like I accomplished something.  I accomplished it slowly, because I just run slowly, but I made it.  The pressure is off, the training is done.  No more long runs excepting the race itself.  It's a nice feeling.

The Big Boy Update:  I asked him how old he was and he said, "I'm three."  I told him he wasn't quite three yet that he was still two.  He said, "Yesterday you said I was three" and so I did, I was rounding up making casual conversation with someone in a store. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She likes my son's teacher.  Today at our all-school park event she took her plate over to this teacher, sat down, tried to share her food and even borrowed the teacher's napkin to wipe her face.  My son's teacher, Elim, said this always happens to her.  I told her it was her burden to bear that her children loved her so.

Fitness Update:  26.3 -- First marathon distance.  Very proud.  Very tired.  Very happy.

Those Blasted Black Walnuts

I didn't realize it had been a year since I wrote about the black walnuts and my stained fingers, but time has a way of ticking on by.  No, on second thought, it seems like much longer than a year ago when I found the black walnuts in the street and on the grass in an undeveloped lot in our neighborhood.  My son and I collected them and after a lot of mess I had some black walnuts that needed drying and then cracking.

A year later, I have dried black walnuts in a bag that still need to be cracked.  Black walnuts are hard to crack.  I've watch videos online and I've got the tips on how to do it, but no one says it's easy.  Every now and then I get annoyed at the big bag of un-shelled walnuts in the pantry and decided that this time, I'm going to get them all done.

Twenty minutes later, my neck and back killing me from sitting in a position that's uncomfortable for me, but necessary for hitting walnuts on the concrete with a hammer, I give up.  But each time, I get a few more cracked.

Is it worth it?  I suppose so.  I love the flavor of the black walnuts; it's like no other nut.  By now, the empty lot has a house on it with neighbors living there.  The pile of nuts keeps dwindling and soon, maybe in another six months, I'll have them all shelled.

The Big Boy Update:  I told him, "it's time to put the trains away," to which he replied, "never!"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She's been doing this thing where she wants to close the door on the toilet room and hang out on the potty with the light on or even off.  She gets on and off the potty several times and I thought she was just messing around.  Today, I had time and I let her spend time in the bathroom and guess what, she pooped in the potty.  Could it be that she'd just wanted some private time all along?

Fitness Update:  6.75 miles this afternoon.  Unexpected run that happened at the last minute.  Yesterday, I went to the fitness room and found out I could still do the arm exercises, which means my shoulder is better.  The elbow though is another story for another day and I'm not worrying about that until after the marathon.  Less than a month away!

The Unifier

Do you know a person who seems to serve the function of making something that was easy, difficult?  Maybe they take a situation in which most people were happy with things and cause unrest, frustration and aggravation?   Your PTA runs smoothly, for example, until Sally So-and-so comes to the meetings and then everything gets complicated.  Or maybe it's your book club and the rest of the members are happy with the selected book but that one person goes on and on about it until finally you pick a book no one really wants to read, but you've gotten that person to let it go?

I know one of those people.  I'm not going to say who it is or in what aspect of my life it is because that's not important; what's important is what role this person has for the rest of us I realized today.  She's the unifier. 

What she did, weather her motives were malicious, concerned, justified or just plain batty, caused a great big stir.  And it's not the first time.  Everyone is happily doing what they do, nice things are being said and done, things are happening and everyone is so pleased to be involved with such a nice bunch of folks and then, boom, you feel like you're attacked.

One person responds in email, disagreeing and that only makes matters worse.  More people get incensed because the reaction just doesn't seem reasonable or appropriate and it's done in such a way that now people who weren't even that interested have gotten miffed.  

The next thing I know, I'm getting texts and emails from people about what's going on.  I'm getting calls from people I rarely talk to who want to discuss how the situation got so out of hand so quickly and how could something so small and not-important be such a huge issue to this one person.  Also, does that person even realize how rude and accusatory they sound?

Did it get worked out?  I think it did.  The emails have died down and people have now started to joke about the silliness of the whole thing.  So what did that person who instigated all the negativity do overall?   To me, she did two things.  First, she solidified her reputation for over-reacting and being rude.  But second, she unified the rest of us.   There's nothing like a little drama to pull people together.  

As much as people may dislike an instigator or someone who seems to like to argue just for the sake of arguing, these folks help to unify everyone else together.

The Big Boy Update:  This morning he wasn't ready to go to school so he went downstairs.  When I found him he was sitting at the computer (which he doesn't know how to use) and said, "I working on the pooter."  This afternoon he got out his doctor's kit and asked me if I had any boo boos.  I lay down on the couch and he helped check me out, knowing how many of the instruments were used.  I got up after he checked me out and patched me up and he went over to see if daddy needed help.  As I went into the next room I heard him sad, "I need to check your bottom daddy."  I grabbed something and as I came back into the room I heard him say, "I need to glue it on."  I am glad my boo boos weren't as bad as daddy's.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She needed new shoes so we went to get some after dinner while daddy and her brother stayed at home.  After getting her shoes, we went to get her brother a pair of Crocs because he misses his current pair and they live at school for inside work.  I let my daughter pick out the pair she thought he'd like and she picked out camo-colored Crocs.  I asked her about several other options, but no, she was firm on the camo pair.  When we got home, she gave them to him as a, "present".  He was very pleased, said thank you twice and loves his new shoes.  I'm glad she knew which pair he'd like.

Ballooning

I remember going hot air ballooning with neighbors when I was young.  Did you have neighbors in your neighborhood that were both quirky and really cool at the same time?  These neighbors were that type.  I don't have any idea what their names were, I think there were some children that were older than I was but other than that I only really remember two things.

First, they had a DeLorean.  That's right, like the one in the Back to the Future movies. And they went to McDonald's to get breakfast in it some mornings.  I'd be waiting at the bus stop and they'd drive by in their car with the brushed metal exterior and angular lines.  Man, that car was cool.

The other thing they had was a hot air balloon.  One time they asked my parents if we'd be their "chase crew" for their flight.  I found out that meant you drove around, following the direction the balloon flew on the currents of air.  It was a beautiful sight.

They touched down in a field and unexpectedly, asked me to get in when we ran up to them.  Riding in a hot air balloon is unlike anything else.  It's utterly silent, punctuated by loud flame sounds as the burner heats the air in the balloon.  There is almost no sensation of movement as you gently float around.  It was a short trip, but it was very memorable.

So last night, I saw a hot air balloon on television and I thought to myself, "that might be something great to aspire to have one day."  You know, some people want to have a fast car, others want to have a beach house or villa in the Swiss Alps.  For a minute, I thought about how fun it would be to have your own hot air balloon.   So I sent myself an email to look into it some day to see if it would be as fun and as exciting as it looked to be.

I got in bed later and pulled up information on hot air ballooning online.  And I was stunned.  Firstly, I didn't expect them to be cheap (nothing ever is) but they're far more expensive than I had expected.  Secondly, the pilot's certification is extensive and you need a crew.  You also need that ground crew too and they need training.  I didn't think it would be both cheap and easy, but I was humbled by how much more was required to have a quaint little hobby of being a balloonist really took.

The one statistic I saw straight off was that there are only about four-thousand balloonists in the United States.  I didn't appreciate how special that little experience I had as a child in my neighbor's balloon was until I got to reading about it last night.

The Big Boy Update:  He is starting to have an understanding of how he likes things over time.  Several times now he's said things like, "yesterday. I didn't like bread.  Today, I like bread."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Could it be?  Yes!  She came home in the same pants and underpants she went to school in.  There were zero wet underpants in her bag when she got home. 

The Big Room and The Little Boy

My son has a "need to move" we've been told by his teachers.  This means that he has a lot of energy and it seems to have an underlying message of "and he's a bit aggressive or rough too," but that could be my worrying about what I've seen and wanting him to be a kind and gentle child. 

And yes, I know boys will be boys and toddlers aren't the most gentle creatures, but he is more physical than some children and he doesn't stop sometimes when he has an overabundance of energy that may involve shoving other children or pushing them or any other number of things that most people don't find charming toddler behavior.

It is completely fine to have extra energy and be an active child.  What we'd like to do is find an outlet for him to use that energy for instead.  So, we signed him up for gymnastics classes.

Yesterday, we stopped in and there was a class just starting at the time.  He was happy to take his shoes off and run in to join the mostly four-year-olds.  It was a busy gym at that time in the afternoon and about five minutes later he came running out, crying, saying he didn't want to go back in there.  What happened?

Nothing happened.  But do you remember being a child and being in some impossibly big location and realizing your parent was impossibly far away and feeling utterly lost in space?  There are too many stories of children getting lost in grocery stores and department stores that I've heard over the years to not know this is a common feeling for young children.

Do you remember the panic when you were little when you realized your mother wasn't on the isle of the grocery store you were on any more?  Do you remember the panic you felt when you had no idea what to do to go and find her?  Those aisles are so big when you're that small and the feeling can be overwhelming.  I have vivid memories of several such incidences from my childhood.

So, we took him home and at the suggestion of the owner, brought him back today for the one o'clock class, in which there were only three other students and the rest of the gym would be empty. 

I talked to him about his experience and he wasn't completely sure he wanted to go, but he did agree to go back and try.  It took a tour of the gym from the owner and a few minutes of me sitting on the sidelines (something parents aren't normally allowed to do) to get him focused on the class.  What did it I think was when the teacher had them pretend they were dragons and do their best roar.  After that, there was no stopping him.  The big room wasn't so big any more.

The Big Boy Update:  After he got over the big room at the gymnastics school (see above), he had a great time doing forward rolls, beginner cartwheels, hanging upside down like a monkey and even jumping into the "cheese pit" made of foam blocks.  We signed up for weekly classes starting immediately.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Cheeseburger!  She likes cheeseburgers.  She likes them more than chicken nuggets.  Her brother still has no interest in cheeseburgers though.

Fitness Update:  Five miles and the workout got deleted in my pocket somehow.  I added it back in manually and I forgot to change one setting so it looks like I ran five miles in twenty minutes.  Speedy!

Only Eight Months?

We were in the backyard with our neighbors the other day and she mentioned that they were working with their builder to address something from their original construction.  She mentioned that it had been eight months that they'd been in their house and how time has gone by quickly.  My reaction was somewhat of the opposite though; I thought, "eight months?  Can it possibly be that these friends of ours have only been our neighbors for eight months?"

These neighbors were the second house occupied on our street of eleven lots.  We have only one house left that's not finished, although we've known that family for a while as they're taking a deliberate and careful path with their construction.  So our street is full, complete and finished as far as neighbors go, which is a long step forward from the empty streets and sparsely occupied neighborhood we moved into at the start during the economic drop.

So back to the eight months...that means that the neighbors on the other side of us moved in even less than eight months ago.  And yet I feel a strong kinship with these nice friends we've made.  We have a fun time together as neighbors and honestly, I'm not looking forward to the cold months, because the spontaneous gatherings out on the street aren't going to happen very often until spring arrives again. 

Perhaps we'll get snow and all meet outside with sleds and mittens?

The Big Boy Update:  Ham-ma-ker.  He doesn't like hamburgers like his father, but he likes to talk about them.  Today he made a "hammaker"out of thin slices of apple.  Oh, and the head of school's name to him is "Dom-ma-keek," not Dominique.  He was fairly certain this afternoon that he was pronouncing her name correctly when I asked him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "I want more kale."  Yes, she said this and she said it more than once.  We try so hard to feed them well, but we fall prey to the easy and tasty meals that aren't as healthy.   So I was happy to hear that she liked my Kale Yeah dried kale treat.  She ate more of it today.  I'm going to have to look up how to season and dry it.  My cousin says it's pretty easy.

Fitness Update:  Ahhh...better.  Four miles today without a problem breathing.  I am utterly relieved it was the antibiotic and nothing more.

Hypotensive

Flash back to Friday and the run that was the worst run I've ever done in an unusual way...

We started the run in the afternoon, expecting to make twenty-four miles without a problem as we didn't have difficulty with the twenty-two the week before.  Shortly after I started out I was tired though, and tired in a way I didn't expect to be tired.  Sure, when you first start running your body isn't warmed up and your heart isn't pumping at a rate you'll get to when you reach a sustained cardiovascular workout, but I didn't expect to be tired like this.

I had to walk for a bit and this was before we had even hit two miles.  Strange.  I had to walk several more times and I was starting to get concerned.  Fortunately, I had a physician with me so we started talking about it and by the time we got to twelve miles (with interspersed walking) we had it figured out.

I was taking an antibiotic as a prophylactic measure for the root canal.  Since I'd been on the medication, I hadn't been running so I didn't realize it was affecting me.  It turns out the medication was reducing my blood pressure, which would be fine normally, but in this case, was causing me to be out of breath unexpectedly.

Fortunately, I was wearing my heart rate monitor and I'd been checking on my heart rate regularly so I knew my heart wasn't racing.  But I was out of breath.  Low blood pressure was causing my lungs to get less oxygenation accomplished and as a result, I couldn't keep running for long periods. 

The good news was, I wasn't in danger of stroke, heart attack or any other things I might have been concerned about without an on-the-spot diagnosis.  I texted my dentist (who you might remember is my next-door-neighbor) and he told me I was fine to stop the antibiotic. 

It was still a very long way home in both time and exertion.  My neighbor was having her own discomfort as well.  She was having tightness of her legs because they wanted to run and weren't used to this walking nonsense.  Imagine the two of us, she needed to run and I needed to walk.  We did the best we could and made it home doing a run/walk alternation and making twenty-one miles.

The Big Boy Update:  "We are the workers."  This morning the children wanted to eat breakfast on the porch.  After breakfast they decided they wanted to go and swing in the back yard.  Because there was fog and mist, I brought down cloths and spray bottles.  They were most pleased to be cleaning up the swing set and completely forgot about the swinging for a good while.  My son happily announced, "we are the workers" as he began to spray the underside of the picnic table.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The Doo Doo Duck.  We have a plush duck with a pouch in it's tummy for an ice pack.  When someone is hurt, they can ask for the "Boo Boo Duck" and hopefully it will make them feel better.  (For toddlers, an ice pack heals eighty-three percent of all ills.)  My daughter thinks it's the "Doo Doo Duck" however. 

Auction Kickoff

I'm still tired from yesterday, but it's been a busy day and I'm just getting to this blog post so I'm going to make it quick and go to bed.  We went to a corn maze, played in a bounce house, played in a sand box that wasn't sand but was dried corn kernels.  We rode on a hay ride without hay to a pumpkin patch and picked our own pumpkins.  We shot corn out of a cannon at collegiate signs and missed entirely and we got nearly lost in a corn maze.

And it was all fun.

Then, my parents came over and watched the children while my husband and I hosted an auction kick-off event for our school's annual fund.  We had a very productive meeting with a group of parents who are passionate about raising funds for the school.  We came up with many exciting ideas that I hope will ultimately turn into money raised.

The Big Boy Update:  He is non-agressive and a complete gentleman when he's been given an outlet for his "need to move" as his teacher called it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She is very independent.  At the farm today she wasn't attached to us, her family.  She would happily go and explore the various play areas, including large slides that required help from people to get her down.  Also, she ate dirt.

The Most Tiring...

We had a very rough run today for an unexpected reason.  If I wasn't so tired I would explain more because it's an interesting situation.  For now, I'm going to try to go to bed as soon as the children are asleep to give my body time to recover from four-and-a-half hour run in which I lost six pounds of water weight.

The Big Boy Update:  He saw realtor balloons at our neighborhood entrance and told me it was someone's birthday.  When I asked him who's birthday it was, he told me it was our street's birthday.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We have some necklace beads from New Orleans that our neighbor's got as a gift on their recent trip.  My daughter is very fond of wearing one, two, or even six of them at the same time.

Fitness Update:  21.1 miles, which isn't our longest distance, but was definitely our most lengthy and tiring run.  Going to bed to recuperate.

Ellipse

Ellipse.   See, you can't tell, but I didn't even know how to spell that word correctly.  It got the little red squiggles underneath it, meaning I had added one too many L's or not enough I's.  And was it one P or two?  I think I had one of the vowels wrong as well.  At any rate, thanks to the technology of the spell checker, I look like I knew how to spell ellipse all along.

Yesterday I had a "lesson" from one of the students in the class I was substituting in.  She asked me if I wanted to see her do this particular "work" so I sat beside her while she showed me what she was doing.  Ultimately, she was doing some tracing and then filling in the area with colored pencils.  But the process and what she was learning from that was more important than just the act of tracing.

She went through a set of steps I, myself, would have had difficulty doing with accuracy, but she did the job both carefully and thoroughly.  I was looking at what she was doing and decided to ask her a question about the work.  "What shape is that?" I asked, expecting the answer of "an oval."  But no, she said, "it's an ellipse."  "Oh dear, these three-year-olds might be smarter than I am.  I could be in trouble", I started thinking.

Shortly after that there were two children who wanted to work with some blue shapes.  The teacher said to them, "if you know the name of the shape, you can take it out of the box."  So the two students talked to each other and worked together to remember the names of each shape.  They got them all.

Today, I had to look up online, "names of geometric solids" to remember what they were myself and the first link I got was to a picture of the items they were working with, color and all, from another classroom:

I'm definitely going to have to go back to school to keep up with my children it appears.

The Big Boy Update:  In the car this morning the Happy Birthday song was playing.  I asked my son how old he was and he immediately answered, "I'm twenty-five."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She no longer is bothered by bows in her hair.  She's fairly active and they tend to work themselves out on their own, but at least she's not tearing them (as well as hair) out anymore.

Substitute Teaching

I took the substitute teacher training course offered at our school earlier this year.  I wasn't sure if I would be called on or not to serve, but I wanted to be available in case help was needed.  This morning I got a call from our head of school asking if I could substitute in one of the Children's House classrooms.  I quickly made a call and cancelled my morning plans and prepared to go in and be the best substitute teacher I could be with the two hours of training I had been given earlier this school year.

On the one hand, I was nervous because I was helping out the most senior teacher on the campus.  On the other hand, I was very pleased to be working with someone who could most likely handle twenty-five three to five-year-old children by herself if she had to.

I arrived on campus and went to her classroom and was given a quick five minutes overview of my responsibilities for the day.  She had two pages with the children's names and their pictures so that I could keep them straight.  I was relieved to note that I already knew about half the students from the prior year and other interactions at school-related functions.  And then, students began to file in quietly and the morning was starting.

Montessori children are very impressive.  They know what is expected of them and even the three-year-olds only needed small reminders to put something away or a suggestion of some new work if they weren't sure what they wanted to do.  But the best part was the older children.  The five-year-olds had been in the classroom for over two years now and they knew how all the "work" was supposed to be done, what should go where, if a child had not been given a "lesson" in that particular work and was therefore not ready to do that work yet. 

And they were my big helpers too.  If one child needed help with something I didn't know how to do, I asked that child if they had a friend that could show us how and every time, the older child was glad to help both me and the younger student out.  We had one child help a newer student on with his socks (a job that took fifteen minutes because neither was very skilled at putting on tight socks). 

When it was time to go out to the playground, I was told I'd go in when the bell rang to help the children with lunch.  What did I do?  I asked these older children and they told me everything that needed to happen.  I asked them what they did first and they told me they changed into their inside shoes, washed their hands and then prepared their lunches.  If it needed microwaving, they put their food on a plate and handed it to me to heat up.  They could have milk or water and they helped me with the picture and pouring the milk into the pitcher.  Then, they served each other milk. 

They waited for everyone at their table to be ready to eat and then began eating together.  They were using ceramic plates, real cutlery, cloth napkins and glasses and they were having the most civilized meal you can imagine, including polite conversation.

Then, my time as morning substitute was over.  I had an enlightening morning, met some new friends and got a lesson or two myself in how a well-run classroom with children who are given both freedom and responsibility can be a happy and calm place at the same time.

The Big Boy Update:  He can be bribed with gummy bears. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The "peepotty" thing she is getting much better at.  The "poopotty" thing she is resisting...mightily. 

Halloween in September?

Our neighbors brought out Halloween decorations more than two weeks ago.  I know what you're thinking, because we were thinking it too, "really?"  But it caught on.  Their neighbors put out some bigger decorations and then two more houses put out other things.  Soon, more than half of our street had out decorations and October hadn't even arrived.  What did we have planned, you ask?  We had no idea.

My husband said he wasn't going to directly compete with the large inflatables some of the houses had put out and it was far too early to get a real pumpkin, but that he was thinking about it and to give him some time. 

Shortly after that he had an idea, and a great one at that.  We ordered some theater light gels in different colors.  When they arrived, we cut them into shapes that matched the low-voltage up-lighting we had all over our yard and last night, just hours before the start of October, we enacted his plan.

We put an orange glow on lights that targeted the house and a green glow on lights that highlighted the plants.  I added a green downward glow on the path lights heading to the front door.  It looks very nice when it's dark and the best part it, it's invisible during the day.  

I'm sure we'll add a pumpkin or two and there's the cool psychedelic laser light display we got last month we'll add to a bush or the entryway, but for now, we're at least in the game. 

If Halloween is this much of a to-do on our street, I'm a little afraid to see what type of competition Christmas will bring...

The Big Boy Update:  He loves trains.  We've been given on loan a wooden train set that my neighbor's children grew up with.  He can play pretend with the Thomas the Train set for a very long time.  Today he was angry at me because I told him he had to go outside to play with our neighbor--whom he loves to play with--because it was interrupting his train games.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We were deciding if we should order guacamole at lunch the other day and my daughter heard us discussing it.  "I want mack-a-mole-ee" she said and that decided that.  She easily ate half of the order in-between our requests for her to pronounce guacamole again and again because it was so cute.

Fitness Update:  Six miles, easy run in the light as my neighbor is working night float at the hospital this week so we ran after I woke up but before she had a chance to go to bed.