Where Is the Engine?

(And other reasons why our new Tesla Model S is fabulous.)

We've had our new car for less than a week and I think it's fair to say we're in love.  This car is pretty much like a rocket ship made for streets, but without flames or rocket fuel.   It has the ability to go fast, but it's so confident in it's ability to answer your every driving need, both immediately and effortlessly, that you find yourself driving calmly and more slowly than you normally would.    You can't be sad riding in this thing, it gives off happy vibes.

Where is the Engine?
People want to see your Tesla Model S.  They've heard about the car because it's won awards and is somewhat of a novelty at this point as only forty-five thousand have been made world-wide.   We've shown it to many of our neighbors and we've even been stopped by strangers who were just interested in the car.  There are many Tesla's in California, but they're fairly uncommon where we live on the East Coast.

Someone who wants to see the car can get in, sit down and look at the big monitor that represents almost every control for the car other than the steering wheel and pedals.  It's neat, but we've all seen touch screen interfaces by now, so let's move on to the more dramatic things...like the frunk.

You pull out your key (which looks like a mini-version of your car) and double click in the front area.   People are interested in seeing this cool engine that runs this electric car.  The frunk (front trunk) opens and it's completely empty.  You can put children in this nicely carpeted place (I have, my two kids loved it).  "Where is the engine" they ask?   There is no engine.  Instead, there's a motor, and it's in the back.   There are no tubes and fans and belts and pipes and coolants and oils and all sorts of other things you have with your  ICE car (Internal Combustion Engine).

I downloaded a few pictures to my phone to show at this point, because it's much easier to explain that way:

Here's the motor, which lies between the wheels in the back.  That's it.  That drives the whole car.

The bottom of the car is seven-thousand battery cells.  It provides the energy for the motor and it's also the bottom of the car, protected with some armor-grade plating.

Here's the car. sitting on top with it's comfy leather seats and touch-screen controls.

So there's nothing to go in what typically was the engine compartment, so Tesla Motors turned it into a second trunk, as well as a huge crumple zone, thus increasing the car's overall safety rating (they got an unprecedented 5.5 out of 5.0).  You can see the front grill in the picture above.  Only, it's not a grill.   Cars with engines need ventilation to keep cool and the front vent helps in that process.  On the Tesla, it's just a stylish piece of plastic.

After showing the Frunk, it's fun to show the Trunk, which is huge and also has a lower-level second trunk for added bonus, extra storage.

What if you run out of energy?

Probably the next question you'll get is "what happens if you run out of charge?"   Concerns about range are probably the most common thing we hear.  It's true, no matter where you are, you can most likely fill your car up with gas any number of locations within a two-mile radius.  In fact, its 's easy to find a gas station that we don't even make a plan for refueling until we get close to empty.  Sometimes, people see just how far they can go on tank reserve before getting gas.   

The difference with an electric car is that every morning (and sometimes twice a day), we leave our house with a completely full charge.   It's not unlike stopping at the closest gas station by your house and topping off your tank after every time you go out.   Unless I planned on driving over a hundred-fifty miles to a second location that I planned to remain at overnight, I wouldn't even worry about what to do to recharge the car, because I'm going to be home before I run out of charge.

We've gotten a quick education on the number and availability of charging stations around our area.  We had no idea there were as many as there are.  There's a web browser in the car and one of our favorites is Plugshare.com.  There are over a hundred EV stations close to us.   We've looked at what's available in locations we visit regularly, and there are plenty of options.   And worst of worst cases, you can always plug your car into a wall outlet at someone's house.   It's not a fast charge, but it will charge your car.  

I Left My Car Running

I've read about people getting in their other car after driving their Tesla for a while and accidentally walking off with the key in the car and the car running.   I laughed when I read about it, but now I understand it.   There is no key hole to put your key in in the Tesla.  It knows you're there because a key approached the car.   It woke up, popped out the door handles so you could get inside, and when it registers you sitting in the seat it knew someone might start driving it.   The air-conditioning is running, the music is playing and the web page you were last on has refreshed.   The car is doing this to welcome you, but it's not actually "on" yet.   It turns on when you put your foot on the brake.  

After you silently drive out of your driveway and drive to your location, you don't turn off the car.  You can't.  Well, actually, I think there's a way, but it's not straightforward.  You don't turn the car off, it turns itself off when you're no longer there.  You put the car in park, open the door and get out.   When the door closes, the car notes that the key is no longer inside the car, so it turns off everything.   When you get about ten paces away from the car, it pulls in the door handles and locks itself up.  

After having a car take care of itself without your help, I can completely see myself walking away from the minivan one day with the keys in it still running.  

The Creep Consideration

When you're driving in an electric car, there is no idle happening in a combustion engine that needs to keep happening at a slow pace so that the engine doesn't stall and turn off.  That idle converts to a small force forward, known as "creep".   When you get to a stop light, unless you're on a hill, the car just stays there, not moving.  

Some owners wanted that "creep" feature and asked Tesla Motors if they could put in such a feature.   In one of their software patches (which your car downloads automatically while you sleep at night) this feature was added.  Now, you can change a setting on your car so it creeps forward when you're at a full stop.  So current owners got a new feature on their cars while it was in their garage.   Very nice.  

Did I Brake Today?

You consume energy when you press the acceleration pedal.  But you regain energy when you're not pressing the acceleration pedal while moving.  The car regains energy through regenerative braking. This is a great feature, and it will take you about twelve minutes to get used to it, and then you'll probably love it.  (I did.)  

You don't have to press the breaks to stop, you just have to stop accelerating.  The car slows down at a rate that would be about what you would do if you were coming up to a stop sign.  You might need to brake a bit if you want to come to a complete stop, but that's about it.   I don't know how long brake pads last on these cars, but I'd venture to guess a long time.  I expect there to be a lot less brake dust to clean off the wheels when I take it in to be cleaned.

Something Safe About It

I can't explain it, but feels like it's the safest car I've ever ridden in.  It has a very low center of gravity.  When the NHTSA was doing a roll test on the car for it's safety rating, it broke the machine.   They determined the roof of the car (which contains the biggest sunroof/glass port you've seen) could support the weight of another four Tesla Model S cars.  I can't say what it is about the car but I'd guess that it sways less than other cars do on their suspension.   There's something about it I can't pinpoint just yet.   

Name That Car

My husband and I talked about what to call the car.   He was considering a vanity plate, but we decided to skip that.   After driving it and seeing how fast it could be, I told my husband, "I'm naming the car Blackbolt, but I'm calling it the 'Temple of Zoom'".  Knowing me, I'll never get around to using the names, but they both feel appropriate for the car.   

The Big Boy Update:  My son got a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sleeper two days ago.  He didn't know what they were, but they looked cool.  Uncle Jonathan told him their names this morning and tonight, I asked him which one he wanted to be.   He says he's Donatello.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She lost her lunch today.   She lost it by throwing it on the ground in the restaurant.  So she got no lunch.  Consequences are good lessons.   She threw a fit and I took her out of the restaurant.  She flung her body on the ground and cried out front and suddenly, with no warning, she stood up and said, "I hear a bird", followed by, "why does that cone have tape on it?"   She was intentionally throwing a tantrum and she could control it.   She came back inside with us and still got no lunch.   Tomorrow I hope she remembers the lesson.

Fitness Update:  115 burpees at the gym.  Each.  Amongst other things.   And it's only Monday. 

A Thousand Pounds of Sand...

...is heavy.

We have a play structure in our back yard with a square bottom.  We've debated filling in this area with sand for some time and yesterday I decided that's what I wanted to do for the afternoon.   I went and got thick black plastic and five-hundred pounds of sand from Lowes.

That might sound like a lot, but sand is heavy, so it fit in the back part of the minivan easily.  I got home, staked and then stapled the black plastic into the box and then we started hauling the sand around back with the children's wagon.  

The children had been excited about the stakes and black plastic, but when the sand started showing up, there was reason to celebrate they decided.   Ten bags later and I realized we weren't going to have enough to really fill the box so I sent my husband back to the store for ten more bags.

We put in nine-hundred pounds and saved out two bags for topping of later when the current sand gets dirty.   It was hard to put the sand in for the children in the way, but they helped where they could.

They love the new sand box.  My son told me as I put him to bed tonight that he wanted to go back tomorrow morning and play some more.

The Big Boy Update:  We had some peas at lunch from the salad bar before the main meal arrived.  I told my son he needed to eat some.   He told me, "foxes don't like peas".   (His middle name is Fox.)

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   We had some window art put in that was done by a childhood friend of mine.   We had one panel made specifically for my daughter and one panel that represented my son.   The next morning, my daughter looked up at the other two panels and said, "that one's mommy's and that one's daddy's.  Where is Mimi and Gramp's window?"

Fitness Update:   We ran twelve miles today.  I don't think I ate enough the night before because I was very tired at the end.

The Four Second Demo

Our new car is different than your standard car.  Sure, it's got nice seats and there are new gadgets on it.  But that's not that different than what's been happening since the beginning of car ownership.   Newer year models have new features.  New features and upgrades are fun to have.  People want to see your new car and sit in it and say, "hey that's cool".

Our car has a lot of those new features.  It's fun to get into the car, sit in the garage and go nowhere from that, "new feature" perspective.   But that's not my favorite part of the car to demo.   After the sitting and the looking; the pointing and the discussing; it's time to go for a ride.   That's where it gets interesting.   

Because it's a fully electric car, it runs silently.  For owners of other electric cars, this is no surprise.  The Prius has been doing this for some time.  Even so, many people have never ridden in an electric car.  So it's a novel experience.   Right now it's the middle of summer.  Running silent in hot, humid weather is also not fun, so we turn on the air conditioning and the car sounds mostly like a very-quiet traditional car from then on.   

The best part of the car is the unexpected four seconds I'm about to throw at the unsuspecting passengers after we exit our neighborhood.   I turn onto the road and after I straighten the car out, I bring on the acceleration.   For about four seconds I do this and it's the craziest rush you've ever been in in a car.  If you don't believe me, come to visit and I'll show you. 

Here's what happens.  In those four seconds we go from about fifteen miles-per-hour to over sixty miles-per-hour.  So the car is fast, but it's different fast.  It's an electric engine, not a combustion engine so the torque and power is right there, immediately, instantaneously, when you press the accelerator.   An internal combustion engine has a bit of a lag that we're so accustom to we don't even notice it any more.   But this is fast, immediate and it feels totally different. 

Have you ever been on one of the newer roller coaster rides that use magnetic induction to launch-start the ride?  It's unexpected and it's one of the most exhilarating parts of the ride.   That's what it feels like, but in a car with cushy leather seats.

What's happened every time I've done this (and my husband's experienced the same thing) is that people get this really interesting look on their face.  It's a look of surprise but with a smile.   

It happens fast at only four seconds and at the end, we're not traveling at a high speed, we've just changed speeds very quickly.   I followed my husband in our minivan today as he gave a demo to his parents and watched it happen.  The car was in front of me, and then it was way in front of me.  

With all that speed you can easily get in the new car, my husband and I have both agreed that we've found ourselves going more slowly on roads than we would in our other car, because you feel like you're going fast, even when you're not.   I suppose that's a good thing. 

#tesla 

The Big Boy Update:  Prepare for TMI.   I sleep in a t-shrit and only a t-shirt.  (Sorry for that mental image, but it's germane, I swear.)  This morning my son came down to wake us up and I gave him a hug.  He got under the covers with us and then he said to me, "mommy, your night night's not long enough."   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is a cry baby.  Her brother bothers her, yes, but she is working on milking it for the slightest of things.   We're working on responding appropriately.  Initially, she was much smaller and he would dominate her by sheer size and ability.  She's old enough to manage on her own now, so we're working on both our responses and her reactions.  Well, that and her brother as well, who still thinks it's okay to dominate her all the time so he can have his way.   She's started hitting, scratching and even biting him back if he's being a serious pest.   Aunt A, please let Aunt B know she doesn't put up with his crap anymore!

Shh, Don't Talk Loudly, It's the Grocery Store

I was in the grocery store in the soda aisle looking for the sale of the week so that I could message my husband and have him tell me if it was a good sale of the week.  This is because I don't pay attention to soda costs as I drink mostly tea and other non-carbonated things.  

So, anyway, while I was looking and taking pictures of sale tags, I needed to get around a Pepsi representative who was stocking the Pepsi products.  I asked him something (I don't remember what) and he answered me, in a whisper.  That part I remember.

I remembered it because I thought, "why is that man whispering to me?"  Oh, wait a minute, I think I whispered my question to him.   Interesting.

The man and I got to talking and he said he didn't know why, but people always talked to him in a whisper and he just started answering back in a whisper.

I don't know why we talk in a whisper in the grocery store when we're speaking to an unknown person, but thinking back on it, I can see it happening.  

How strange.

The Big Boy Update:  My son loves "Chocolate Nook" which means chocolate milk but he mispronounces it.  Today we were talking about going to a favorite restaurant of his and we asked him what he wanted to drink, expecting him to want chocolate milk.  He said he wanted juice.  His sister, being helpful, told him that no, he wanted chocolate milk.  He said that no, he wanted juice.  We said okay that was fine and kept driving.  A minuted later he said from the back seat, "don't forget the juice."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I got new hair clips and my daughter wanted all of them in her hair.   All sixteen of them.  After I put them everywhere, she went to look in the big mirror.  I brought the hand mirror and showed her how to look at the back of her head, which she thought was pretty neat.

Fitness Update:  We've been doing a new warmup at the gym that has been deceptively easy looking but much harder to actually do.   It's less cardiovascular but will help in other areas, building stabilizer muscles and adding flexibility.  Also, it's nice to do something new.

It's Electric!

Did you just say, "boogie woogie woogie"?  I know I did.  That song was infectious and contagious.  I've been thinking about that song for weeks now.   Let me explain...

My husband and I want to be better citizens of the planet.  We want to do, "that green thing" as I've heard it called.  But we don't want to go extreme.  It's like a diet, if you go too extreme, you're more likely to fail.   What I mean is that we want to reduce our carbon footprint and our overall consumption of fossil fuels, but we don't want to live in a house with all the blinds shut and lights out to save energy.  We don't want to live in eighty-degrees in the house in summer and sixty degrees in winter either.   What we'd like to do is consume less energy, but do so in a targeted way.

We had a three-fold plan.  First, we looked at swapping our light bulbs to LED versions.  Since up to 40% of a home's electric bill can be lights alone, we hope we can make a significant impact in our consumption there.   We're still swapping out light bulbs.  There are more bulbs in our house than we could have imagined.  We've hit the highest use ones so far and are incrementally doing the rest.

Secondly, we really wanted to add solar panels to the house.   Solar power is an excellent way to reduce your carbon footprint over time.   We had our house evaluated and from the initial evaluation we realized quickly that we weren't going to be able to get 100% efficiency due to the angle of the home, pitch of the roof and surrounding trees.   Regardless, we said, we still wanted to do it.  It was a good thing to do, even if the return on investment wasn't that great.   And then we got the numbers back.   And we were sad.  The numbers weren't great or good.  They were just bad.  Even the sales person said he wouldn't do it if it were his house.  So solar is on hold for now, but we haven't taken it off the table.

Lastly, we wanted to get an electric car.  My eight cylinder sports sedan was less than carbon-friendly, not to mention quite the consumer of expensive premium gasoline.  So we ordered an electric car some tine ago and today we got that car.  There are several fully electric cars but the one we went with had the best range and other merits that we felt made it the best choice for us.  We now have a black Tesla in the garage and a fancy outlet on the back wall for charging it.

We were hoping to have a solar solution so we could even charge our car with the sun, but that's not happening this year.   My children like the car.  They mostly like it because the center console is something like a big iPad that they can touch and do things to.  They also like it because they can sit in the front trunk, otherwise known as the "frunk".  They can do this safely in the garage, even if the car is on, because it doesn't belch toxic fumes.

We like the new car.  It's electric.  Boogie woogie woogie.

The Big Boy Update:  He has an, "I want" problem.  He gets into these situations where the only thing that comes out of his mouth are sentences that start with the two words, "I want".  When this happens, he's trying to control you, the situation, and everyone around him.   It's been a challenge to deal with him when he gets like this.   This morning (I won't give you the long story) I was counting sentences that started with those two words and he was well aware that if he hit ten, there would be consequences.  There were consequences.   He almost got to ten a second time, which would have been a "stop the car" type event.   He knew what he was doing because he stopped when he realized he wasn't going to get his I want way.  I walked him in to camp this morning and told his two very capable teachers that, "he was having some strong feelings and it had been a challenging morning."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves to go to the grocery store with me.  We went the other day and as we were walking down one aisle she looked over and said, "Ahh! It's oil."   She was right. It was a bottle of canola oil.   How did she...oh, because she cooks with daddy all the time.   Now I get it.

Keratin Time Again

It's that time again.  My hair is getting frizzy and unruly and I'm getting frustrated with having to do something to it to make it look (to me) presentable.  I'm sure it looks fine to everyone else, but it's bothersome to me.

Before Keratin Complex, I had hair I disliked.  Yes, it was curly, but it was frizzy and I never really liked it.  With Keratin Complex, my hair is easy and friendly and straight.  And I always wanted straight hair.

So today I spent time at the hair place and I now have this stuff on my hair that's been flat ironed into it at high temperatures so the new keratin will bond to the natural keratin that makes up close to 95% of each hair follicle.  This makes the cuticles nice and smooth and the hair lie down and behave like I've spent hours making it just so.  I don't like spending time on my hair, so that suits me just fine.

The "steeping time" is almost over and I'm about to go upstairs and wash all the product out and be amazed, yet again, when I wake up in the morning and it's back to being straight and manageable once again.

The Big Boy Update:  My son hears that things aren't "available" a lot.  He saw another child playing with a truck he wanted to play with.  This child was sitting on the truck and my son wanted it back.  He tried several things, eventually resorting to telling the child, "it's not sittable" in the hopes he would abandon the toy.  Although his extrapolation from available was impressive, the other child didn't care and kept sitting on the truck.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "I got a boogum" my daughter told me tonight.  She held up the finger to prove it.

Fitness Update:  New warmup at the gym today.  It's less cardio, but more balance and full-body stretching.  I've seen some of the other people doing this warmup before, but I didn't appreciate the difficulty of doing it until I did the relatively simple looking things and found out they were actually hard to do.

The Too Tiny Changing Table

When you have a baby you can purchase this little block of foam that you put on your dresser to change your baby on.  There are fuzzy covers that feel nice to you and the baby and it's a fun spot to clean up pee and poo and tickle the toes of the little infant.

Later, the little tyke learns to roll over and you're glad for the raised foam sides.   Soon enough you decide you'd better use the latching strap so that miss or mister squirmy doesn't fall off while you grab the new container of wipes three feet to the left.

It's not long after that that they can get out of the strap through sheer force and determination and it becomes more of a hazard than a help, so you cut them off.   Next, they children are able to slide off the dresser and get themselves down if they don't feel like staying.  

By now, their legs are so long that they hang well over the end of the changing pad.   So why haven't I gotten rid of it, you ask?  I'd love to, but I'm holding out in the hopes they will tolerate it for just a little longer so I don't have to get up and down from the floor to help them with their clothes.

I can run a marathon, but getting down to their level and then getting back up again is just not fun with my spine.   So for now, the changing pad stays.   It's still foamy, even though the foam wasn't designed for three-year-olds.   It's still fuzzy, but the fuzz has been matted down a good bit by now.   And it's definitely more comfortable than changing the children on the floor.

The Big Boy Update:  This past weekend we were having pancakes.  I asked my son what shape he wanted, expecting him to say, "Mickey Mouse!" but was surprised to hear that what he really wanted was a triangle-shaped pancake.   They must have tasted okay because his next request was for a rectangle-shaped pancake.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Poopy goes in the potty."  My daughter is getting better at toileting lately.  This afternoon after school she was in the kitchen playing with some of her kitchen toys when I saw her stand up and say to herself, "poopy goes in the potty".  I think she just got the, "I need to go right now" message.  I said, "quick, go to the potty" but she was already scampering off in that direction.

Pacifier Goodbye

We never wanted pacifiers.  We hoped our children would soothe themselves to sleep without a need for anything other than the quiet sound of a dark room.  Only we didn't get what we wanted.  

First off, my son did this thing called, "crying".  He did it loudly and it distressed us.   We thought it would be so nice for  him not to be crying and it turned out that a pacifier would do just that very thing.  So he developed a preference for pacifiers.

My daughter didn't cry as much.  Or wait, that may not be true.  She may have cried more, but we were somewhat hardened to the little wails of infants by then and we could ignore it for longer.   But she had another thing going on--her thumb.

She loved her thumb.  It wasn't bigger than a bean, but she could get it right into her mouth and make the loudest slurping sounds you can imagine, and that had to stop.  For we knew in later years it would be easier to remove a pacifier than a thumb.   So we insisted she develop a dependency to a pacifier.  

Once the little tykes like the pacifiers, they're a mess of trouble to get rid of.   We started long ago by removing them from any situation other than one in which the child might sleep.   Later on, we pulled them from the car seats and not too long ago they were not available for naps.    But at bedtime, they still got to have their pacifiers.

My son I wasn't so worried about.  I had discovered a while back that when he broke through the rubber on a pacifier, he could manage without it.  We were on the last two and I told him that was all there would ever be.   But he's been making those last ones last.

My daughter has a real dependency because we made her have one.  She is not happy at night without a pacifier, and I knew it wasn't going to be a fun transition, even though she could sleep easily in the car or other non-bed location without it fine.

Within the last two weeks things have changed.  My son "lost" his pacifier (which I think meant he put it somewhere so we couldn't find it and then he forgot where that was).   "Oh dear, that's too bad.  When you find it let us know."  He hasn't seemed to mind that it's not longer around overly much.

Then two days ago I noticed my daughter's pacifier had ruptured.  The silicone had finally given in to her sucking and it was no longer functioning as designed.   Ah, that's why she'd been annoyed by it for the last several nights and hadn't wanted it in her mouth.   So we left it as is and she can have it any time she wants it.  Guess what?  She doesn't want it.

So I think we're done with pacifiers.  Next stop, nighttime underpants.  Then, we'll be 100% diaper and pacifier free.

The Big Boy Update and Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Neither my son nor my daughter are using pacifiers at bedtime any more.  This is due to a failure in the pacifier to continue to suck and a completely intentional oversight by us in noticing the fact.

The Minnie Mouse Towel and the Puddle of Pee

There was an incident tonight during bath time involving the Minnie Mouse towel.  I asked, "who wants the Minnie Mouse towel tonight?"  My son said he didn't so I asked his sister if she wanted it and she said yes.  Then, as things go with children, my son decided the only towel he wanted in the whole world was that Minnie Mouse towel.

I explained that towel had been spoken for but that he could have the  the Cars towel (that he loves) to which he said no.  I asked him if he would like the Mickey Mouse towel and he declined.   His sister piped up and said she wanted the Mickey Mouse towel so I asked her if she wanted to let her brother have the Minnie Mouse towel.  "Yes", she said.

Okay good, now my son can have the Minnie Mouse towel, only guess what, he doesn't want it any more.   You saw that coming, right?  I told him he had made a choice and that next time, he could choose a different towel, but that tonight he would be using the Minnie Mouse towel.   Loud protesting commences from the tub by my son.

I let him bellow while I got his sister out, dried her off and covered her with her selected towel on the bathmat so she could "hide" (as she likes to do).   Explaining isn't helping, so I get the Minnie Mouse towel, grab my resisting son and pull him out of the now empty tub.  Not only does he not want to be dried by the Minnie Mouse towel, he doesn't even want it touching him.   He screams at me as I deliberately dry his body and hair with the towel he first insisted on having when he couldn't, and then refused to have when he could.

My son decides he's not going to take this drying off bit with the towel so tries to get back into the tub to get wet again.  I explain there will be consequences if he gets back in that tub.   He gets angry at the Minnie Mouse towel I've now put back on the rack and pulls it down, throwing it across the room.  I explain that he will be getting that towel and putting it back on the rack before he does anything else.

Then things get worse.  I lose my temper, but not my resolve.  I rarely, if ever, lose my resolve.   He is now in that, "red zone" state and isn't thinking clearly due to all the "injustice" being levied on him.  The only thing getting through at that point is rage because he's not getting his way.  The more he pushes things, the more constrained his world becomes and not surprisingly, this is frustrating the hell out of him.

Then, he did something he's never done before: he peed on the floor.  Not a little bit, a whole bladder full (and he had to go).  I think he was just so upset that he was being expected to clean up after his tantruming mess and get the underpants on of his choice so we could all go have dinner and play together, he just lost it.   He emptied his bladder in the middle of the bathroom standing stark still and looking at me a with a strange look on his face.

Things didn't get better for either of us at that point.  He now had to clean up the urine, put the soiled cloths into the clothes basket, hang up the towel he'd thrown on the floor (twice now) and finally do the only thing he was required to do from the start: select and put on underpants so that we could go get dinner and have some fun together.

And all because he didn't want the towel he wanted.

The Big Boy Update:  Towel and toilet troubles (see above) was only a small part of an overall fun day.  He's a good kid, he just needs some discipline.   After he calmed down, we were really the best of friends again.  That towel he didn't want to hang up, he not only hung up, he wanted to make sure he hung it up, "like the other towel", asking for my help to straighten it.  We had a discussion about how we were both having, "strong feelings" (a Montessori phrase) and that we were glad to be feeling happy feelings again.   There was hugging and then there was pizza.  Oh, and then there was ice cream!

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son and I had one of those lengthy battles of will where ultimately he loses, parenting wins out but everyone pays the price in stress during the event.  During the entire time my daughter never said a thing.  What she did do, at two-and-a-half, was select underpants, get her clothes off the bed and put on everything herself without me even asking.

Fitness Update:  There was a long period where we were out of power from the middle of last night until mid-morning.  We escaped and ran in the woods for ten miles.  When we returned, power was back on.

When Did They Learn to Swim?

To days ago I took my children to the pool.  We had a good time splashing around.  They used their inner tubes that give them mobility across the pool.  My son wanted me to throw him around and go under water with him.  My daughter played at the edge of the pool a lot.  It was a fairly normal day at the pool.

Yesterday, we went to visit my in-laws out of town.   My mother-in-law and I went out on their pontoon boat on the lake at Pinehurst while my husband and father-in-law went to watch the women's US Open.  My children wore life vests and their inner tubes and they swam all around the boat in the middle of the lake.  They even swam under the boat, which you can easily do on a pontoon boat.   It's a little tunnel in the middle of the lake and my kids thought it was loads of fun.

Today we're back at home and after lunch I go to the pool with the children.   I'm getting things unpacked and I look over to see my daughter on the third step down, head completely under water looking like she's looking for something.   She has never done this before.   So I watched and tried to control my urge to dash across the pool to save her.

She pops her head up, looks around and then goes back to the same thing again.  So new trick, new fun and she's learned something more about being in the water.

I get into the pool and wade away from the steps.  My son launches himself towards me, puts his head underwater and furiously kicks to get to me, reaching his hands out as he gets close.   He has never done anything like this before.  Not even remotely close to swimming on his own into the middle of the pool where he can't touch.   Oh, and I'm about seven feet away when he does this.

He makes it to me smiling.  He stands on my leg and then launches back towards the steps.  He makes it without a problem.  He hasn't been swimming without an inner tube and I swear, last week he didn't have a full grasp on the kicking to forward motion relationship.   But now he's got his head under water and he's heading right for me again.

Then, his sister wanted to swim to me.  He didn't want to stop swimming back and forth long enough to give her a chance, so we had to work something out.  She wanted me to get closer so she could swim to me from the steps, so at about two feet she launched into the water, put her head down and did the same kicking thing right into my hands and then again back to the steps.

About five minutes later she was swimming more than five feet to me just like her brother was.   They were completely happy and very confident in their ability to hold their breath long enough to get to their destination.   They were kicking well and weren't struggling in the least.

Someone had to be blamed for this.   And then I remembered, one of our favorite sitters had taken them to the pool for a few hours that afternoon before we went out of town two days ago.   She is magical in that my children love her so much I think they'd prefer her over my husband or me most days.  Did she teach them to swim?

She was sitting for us again tonight and I asked her.  She said, "no, they were doing that when I took them the other day".  So no definitive answer, but I am guessing she encouraged the confidence she saw in them and they became better swimmers as a result.

I saw another mother at the pool today and she asked me about our sitter.  She said she spoke with her and was so impressed because she was so attentive to them and really seemed to enjoy being with them and was it okay if she asked for her number.    So I gave her the number and told her I knew her son would have a great time with her too.

When they're older I'll try to remember to tell them they learned to swim on Summer Solstice, one of my favorite days of the year.

The Big Boy Update:  As we were leaving to come home the other day, my mother was helping strap my son into his car seat.  He asked Mimi, "do you want to come to my house, Mimi?"  There's nothing more that says I love you from a small child than them wanting you to be with them.  I know my mom knows how much he loves her.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  At our end of year conferences, my daughter's teacher was talking about her relationship with the other children in the classroom.   She was the youngest child to ever start at the school, her first day being two days prior to her first birthday.   She didn't speak then and barely walked.  Today, she is one of the leaders in her class, with many of the younger students looking to her as ab older role model.  Her teacher told us there is something about her that intrigues the other children.  She said, "she's an enigma, a beacon...and a flexible little girl" (referring to how my daughter lies on the floor and folds in half, putting her face on her feet, when she's having a hard time or is too tired to go on.

My Head Isn't Safer, Lucy

I got to laughing in bed last night and I couldn't stop. Just about the time my husband would start snoring, I'd start laughing again.  It has to do with the weather and my dog, who is afraid of thunder.

It's not uncommon for dogs to fear thunder. My dog didn't notice it for many years, but at some point she figured out it was something to be worried about and now she's definitely sure the thunder is out to get her. 

Last night it started to rain one of those great summer storms with big, bold lightning flashes and loud booms of thunder.  I love storms.  About that time, my husband came to bed and our dog must have thought he was there to save her.   Normally, she sleeps lower down on the bed and doesn't get too close to either of us.

Last night, she wanted to be as close to us as possible, specifically, as close to my husband's head as possible. I didn't realize what was happening until I heard my husband say, "my head is not safer, Lucy".  She was trying to sit on top of his head.  

Thar's when I started to laugh.  Because, hpw is a head safer than under the covers (which we offered her and she declined) or being held by one of us (which she did not want).   My husband's head must have a high canine safety rating.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to have a "pick-mick" the other day. He wanted to have this picnic on the deck with Mimi. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She busted her toe yesterday and got a large blood pocket under the nail that was still growing in size this morning. She was unthrilled. I had to get a neele at the edge of the blood pocket to release the pressure. I had to do it again this afternoon. It's much better now, but the toenail is going to be lost sooner than later after all this, I'm sure. 

Fitness Update:  Group counting.  Our trainer is having us do these, "do this thing until you can't any more and the hand off to someone else in this group and keep track of not only this count across all of you but the counts on two other exercises as well". If that sentence was confusing, trust me, it's more confusing in person.  I got tapped as future count leader today and I'm suppose to make workout math more simple for us in future workouts.  We'll see how I do.

The Worst Thing About Your New Computer Is...

...you aren't in bed. 

That's what my husband told me last night.   And we both laughed.   Normally I go to bed as soon as I can get everything done for the day and the children to bed.   With the new computer I've had lots of things to move over and even more to learn.   So I've been downstairs after the sun is down at the computer. 

He wasn't being mean, I was just infringing on his end of day area.   We don't watch the same things on television.  I don't watch that much television and I definitely don't get around to watching a movie.  But that's exactly what my husband likes to do at the end of the day.  

I, on the other hand, like to get in the bed, turn off the lights and do things on my iPad.  The things I like to do might involve volume and definitely involve a a bright iPad display in the bed.   On the occasions when my husband decided to go to bed at the very early hour that I do, I usually complain, saying something like, "what are you doing coming to bed this early?"

I'll be glad when I get everything over and set up on the new computer (which I am loving). 

The Big Boy Update:  "I pressed the go away button!"  My son was playing some robot game with my husband.  He was turning him on and doing other things that my husband would respond to by pretending to do the robot-eqivalent behavior.   But when my husband told my son it was time for him to go to the potty, he didn't want to go so he, "pressed the 'go away' button" and was very upset when Robot Daddy didn't actually go away.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She dropped a cup on her toe today.  It was bad, causing blood to pool under the big toe.  It's gotten worse as the day's worn on and I'm not sure if it's even more uncomfortable because there is blood pooling under the nail causing undue pressure on her big toe.  She had a tough day, getting over feeling poorly for the last several days and then hurting her toe. 

The Woof Hot Spot

This isn't about a dog.  It's not about spell check either, but part of it is--the title.  I send myself reminders during the day on topics I might want to write a blog post about.  Later, I sit down at the computer at the end of the day to write, say, this post and I look to see what ideas I had earlier in the day.  Most of the time, those ideas make sense when I read them.   Sometimes, they don't.   What the heck does, "the woof hot spot" mean?

Autocorrected gets minus one point for that one.   On the whole though, autocorrect is one of my favorite inventions of late.   The amount of typos it saves me from could fill a big fat eBook.   Now I remember, it was, "the wi-fi hot spot".   I have this new computer, on which I'm currently writing this post.  I'm writing it at my desk in front of a large monitor and I feel like I'm at a desktop computer, which is where I feel most at home.  But I'm working on a laptop that can move with me when I go places.

What about places where I might not be able to connect to the internet?  Have you checked lately to see what you can and can not do without the internet?  It's heavily weighted on the internet side for me.  Even this blog post, which I'm typing in a single window, is doing HTTP requests to the blogger.com server to do incremental saves while I type, even though I'm not paying attention to the window at all.

But never fear, phones now days have the ability to become their own, "wi-fi hot spots".   So I'm in the car this weekend and I turn on the hot spot on my phone.  I have the computer look for the phone, connect and then disco, I'm online.  

I got a lot of things done on the way to and from the mountains this past weekend.   I had, dare I say, fun working?

The Big Boy Update: "This is my tutu."  My children found two tutus in the closet yesterday.  They decided they should both put one on and when we found them a bit later, they were happily playing with trains, wearing their tutus.  Today was another tutu day after naps apparently, because they both came down for snack wearing their tutus again.  I told my son I liked his skirt.  He stopped eating his snack, looked at me and said, "this is my tutu."  He was too dang cute in that tutu.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Banana peeler.  My children are getting more independent with self-care, including feeding themselves.  Yesterday my husband came downstairs to find her sitting at the table, banana peeled and happily eating a healthy snack.

End of Year Update

We had our Parent/Teacher conferences today to go over the progress our children made this year in school.   For posterity, here are a few of the comments from each of their teachers:

The Big Boy End of Year Update:  Greyson has become a leader of the group who is willing to assist his peers, especially the younger ones.  He is now more social, respectful, independent and more confident while interacting with his friends and teachers.  He prefers to work independently, or with friends like Silas or Josie.  He enjoys materials related to tools and construction.  He always says, "I can do it" if teachers offer help.  He communicates with confidence and full sentences.  His words are coherent and articulate.

The Tiny Girl End of Year Chronicles:  Reese is a very expressive and charismatic person who has developed a considerable amount of self-control for her young age as she experiences both joyful and difficult emotions.  She has developed an ability to regulate these emotions much more quickly.  She has become very socially engaged over the course of the school year.  She is respectful of other children's work and gentle with her hands.

Three Times as Many as Men Every Day

This blog post will probably prove a fact my husband told me about the other morning.   Apparently women use almost three times as many of something than men do, and they do this almost every day.  It's not toilet tissue squares and it's not gallons of water in the shower.   To give you a hint, women on average use 20,000 and men use around 7,000.

Words.  And I believe it.  So with that in mind, I'm going to do my rambling best to make sure I use my quota of words for the day here (not that any of us were worried about my word count).

Social Focus versus Self-focus:  My daughter is very socially focused.  She likes to engage other children or adults and likes to work together to get something done.  My son is more self-focused.  He's three, so that's not an insult--he's just busy doing his own thing and he doesn't want to get another person involved, even if it would be helpful, because he's workin' it out on his own.

Never Say Goodbye:   This is something my husband and I started doing way back when our children were too young to even roll over.  With all the things we got wrong or just didn't get right, I think this is one we did well on.  We've never made a thing of saying goodbye.   We just walk out the door and we're gone, and we do it whenever it suits us schedule-wise.  As a result, my children don't seem to care or sometimes even notice when we leave, even if they're left with a sitter they've never met before.   This weekend as we left for my parent's surprise party we got on the elevator to leave and asked the children to shut the door for us, leaving them with a sitter they'd met for all of five minutes.   As the door shut I heard my son say, "oh no, where did they go?"  I had to laugh because he wasn't upset that we'd left, he just wanted to know how we'd disappeared.

Backyard Containment:   We can let the children play outside without direct supervision now.  We can't leave them for long, but we can leave them for bits of time, checking on them by looking out the window to see what they're up to.  This only works in the backyard though because they don't wander off.  In the front yard they realize they have friends only houses away and they head off into the street and down the road.

We walked around the block:  We did, and we made it without having to pick up my son's balance bike or plastic motorcycle because he got tired of pushing it along.   It's about a half-mile, so not too bad for him, especially in temperatures over ninety degrees.

The Airplane Safety Knot:  We went to Tweetsie Railroad this weekend.  My children are just old enough to enjoy some of the activities.   They rode Thomas the Train (the Tweetsie train that had Thomas visiting on the front).  They also road by themselves on these airplane and helicoptor rides.  The parents walked in and put the children in the ride, securing the child in by tying a rope into a knot.   Then, the ride went up and down, around and around, secured only by that rope and the knotting skills of the parent.   My daughter was barely in her helicopter.  Fortunately, she didn't know how to pull the lever and make it rise to the ten-foot maximum height.

Planting the Buzzy seeds:  Aunt A and Aunt B sent my children some fun summer activities recently.  There were two tiny flower pots with tomato and carrot seeds and my children wanted to plant them every day.  They would ask about them and I would tell them that as soon as school was out, we were going to plant their seeds.   Today with scissors, a glue stick and some tape we decorated the outsides of their pots and they planted the seeds with the included "growing medium".   We put the little pots in daddy's herb garden and plan to water them every day.   On the humorous side, both children wanted to "plant" carrots into the carrot one.  They got carrots out of the refrigerator and brought them outside to our work area.   Unfortunately, the carrots never made it into the pots because my children got hungry and ate them.

The Big Boy Update:  In addition to the fun written above, my son has been having fun with clothing lately.  He's wanted to wear his Halloween Spiderman costume a lot lately.   Last week he put it on and immediately announced, "my name is Peter Pan".  Yesterday he wanted to go outside wearing his winter jacket, rain boots one mitten and one glove...in eighty-five degree weather.   Today, in ninety-degree weather he wore that same mitten and glove around the block.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   As well as the antics written about in the main post above, she was thinking about her visit with Thomas the Train this weekend on the ride home.   She said in the car,  "Thomas is gone … he says, 'chugga chugga chugga chugga.(and on and on)'"

Fitness Update:  It's one of those weigh-in Monday's again.  They keep happening.  I went to the gym this morning but I suspect I need to get back on the running again too to stay in the shape I'd like to be in.

Blind Mental Mapping

I don't want to be blind.  I'm grateful for being able to see.   Sometimes we don't realize what our brains are doing to make a mental map of our world, even when we can't see a thing.

Last night I needed to get something after I'd gone to bed.  I was in a room at my parent's home and it was dark.  It was so dark that I couldn't see much of anything, but I needed to get to one of my possessions, regardless.  

I got up and walked along the side of the bed.  I reached out about where I thought the chair would be and found my purse, right where I expected it to be.  I knew where the zipper was on the outside and once I had the compartment opened I found two little bottles of eye drops.   One of those bottles contained allergy drops, which I didn't need, while the other contained moisture drops, which was what I had been going for from the start.  That bottle was slightly larger and my hands could tell which dropper bottle was larger.  

I put the drops in my eyes, returned the bottles, zipped the pocket closed, put the purse back down, got back in bed and pulled the covers over me.   That's when I realized I'd, "seen" the entire process as I'd done it.   I hadn't actually seen anything, but because I knew what everything looked like, I'd mentally followed along in the dark just like I'd been getting those eye drops in a well-lit room.

The Big Boy Update:  On the way to the mountains my son wanted very badly to get to Mimi and Gramp's house.  He asked not once, not twice, but five times, "are we there yet?"  I couldn't help but laugh at the classic child's question.   We don't know where he heard that specific long-car ride question, but he sure knew how to use it at just the right time.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She had a fever last night and today and we're not sure why.  It could be a tooth thing again.  No one else is sick and my son is overly-energetic after a long ride home from the mountains.   Her fever was mostly gone this afternoon.  Hopefully she'll be better tomorrow.

The Fiftieth Party

This post has been six months coming.  I've been waiting and I've not been able to say anything here. Not one damn thing.   It's been hard.  It's been tough and that's because it was a secret.  A secret specifically from my parents, who both read this blog.

It has been a fun six months starting with my calendar reminder on January 2nd saying, "Plan mom and dad's 50th wedding anniversary party."  I had some great people who each helped me in different ways.  There was Mary Louise who was my cover story from the beginning which gave us a reason to visit my parents on the weekend of their anniversary.  There was Loretta, one of my parent's closest friends, who knew all my parents friends and helped me plan everything with the country club.   I had the pleasure of getting to know Eric, with their club, who was absolutely a delight to work with.

Venue reserved in February, guest list finalized in March, "Save the Date" cards mailed in April and invitations sent in May and the calls and emails started coming in about how excited my parent's friends were that there was going to be a party to celebrate their anniversary.

We didn't think my parents knew but we weren't sure.   There was the problem of my mother calling to make a reservation for dinner on their anniversary evening with my husband and me.  A reservation that couldn't be made, because the entire club was booked for other events.   Not to worry though, she was skillfully lied to by Eric, who called me afterwards to tell me, "she totally bought it.  I've made her a reservation in the private room you're having the party in."

So we had my parent's going to dinner in the room of their surprise party...and we thought they still didn't know.   Flowers were ordered, menus were finalized.  I made a slide show from pictures I got by going through my parent's photos and adding in many great pictures their friends had mailed to me in preparation for the event.

Thursday night my parents were going to a celebration dinner with three other couples.   They were going to dinner at the club and I hoped they still didn't know.   I was a bit concerned though because my mother had called earlier in the day to confirm their reservation...that didn't exist...for a-la-carte dining on an evening where there was no such service.   Was our cover blown?

I get an email from Eric at 7:15PM saying, "call me" with his number.   Oh dear!  I called him and he said, "there here tonight with friends.  I wanted to tell you...they have no idea!"   He said they had mom's phone call intercepted and she had been told that yes, they had her reservation for Friday night.   I told him he gave me a fright and that I simply could not wait to meet him tomorrow because he had made the evening not only possible, but fun.

Friday arrives and we make it through the last day of school.  My father's sister drives two hours to get to our house and then we all head to the mountains together.   Family members were coming in from multiple locations and the time of the party was only hours away.   We get to my parent's house and in short order the sitter (whom my mother had scheduled but I had alerted to the evening's plans) arrived and we chatted quietly about the upcoming big surprise.   She wished us luck and we drove off.

Eric met my parents at the entrance to the club and directed us to the private room, not the main dining, explaining that the murder mystery was delayed because two actors were late to show up, but not to worry, we would be in the Laurel Room with two other tables and he hoped we enjoyed our meal.

My parents looked a little confused at the redirection of their seating but just then two people opened the doors to and Eric said, "enjoy your party!"   Everyone was there, smiling, taking pictures, shouting "Surprise!" and  "Congratulations!"   The looks of confusion and surprise on my parent's faces were simply wonderful.

The evening was truly one to remember.  My parents had many toasts from friends and family members.   They cut another wedding cake together and we all laughed at the pictures in the slide show of outdated haircuts, glasses and clothing styles.

I'd like to thank all of our family and friends who made a special trip to share in the party last night.  Mom and dad have been talking about the party all day and I'm not sure any of us are done smiling as we remember the evening's fun.

I love you mom and dad.   Happy 50th anniversary!

The Big Boy Update:  "Nack-um"  That's how my son pronounces, "napkin".  I've been over-enunciating it correctly lately, hoping he'd catch on, but he seems confident in his pronunciation.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Cricket eater.   At a fudge store check-out line today I saw a package of crickets you could buy and eat.  There was bacon cheddar and salt and vinegar.   The crickets weren't battered, although they were cooked and flavored.  I got the salt and vinegar ones.  My son didn't want to try them, but my daughter ate one.   She seemed to like it just fine.   It tasted a lot like a potato chip to me.

Last Day of School

Today was the last day of school for my two little toddlers.   They are not nearly so little or as toddle-some as they were when they started two years ago, and for that, I'm proud.   They both started in a, "Toddler House" classroom at their Montessori school.

Toddler-aged children start as young as fourteen months (although for some reason they started my daughter at twelve months) and go up to about three-and-a-half years old.   The age range is intentional in Montessori schools, facilitating younger children to learn from older, more mature children and encouraging older children to model good behavior and practices in addition to helping their younger classmates.   The phrase, "you don't really know something until you can teach it" is implemented at the youngest of children and is done so to great success for everyone involved.

Today was their last day in their Toddler House classrooms.  It will be the last time they will have the teachers they've been with for two years and some of their friends will go to different classrooms next year.   They will also go to, "Childrens House" classrooms and meet new friends, up to six-years-old. They will remain in these classrooms for two or three years, at first being the youngest class members and then eventually being leaders in the classroom environment.

I feel like I should be sad.  It's an ending.  We love our four teachers (two per classroom).  But for some reason I'm not sad.   I'm looking forward to seeing them grow and mature and next year is going to be an exciting time for them both as they make this new transition.

We're on the way to my parent's house in the mountains currently.  We left just after noon dismissal and we're all excited to go see Mimi and Gramps.

The Big Boy Update:  He did not want to get out of the car at lunch.  He tried to hold on to the car seat and bitterly complained, "I don't want to go to lunch, I want to go see Mimi and Gramps."  He was well-aware that we had a long drive ahead of us, he just didn't want to take time to eat when we could have been getting closer to their house had we kept driving.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Better with bows.   She is getting better with those bows, specifically leaving them in her hair better.   Sometimes she still likes to rip them out, hair and all.  I am not sure we'll ever achieve long, little girl hair; but I'm stubborn and I'm not ready to cut it yet.

You're Cured!

There was a tooth that went bad.  There was a temporary crown and then not one, but three root canals and the removal of a tooth root.  Then, the tooth was lost.   Time passed and the jaw bone grew in and there were plans for an implant.   But the CT scan showed fluid in the sinus and there was another round of, "we can't fix it yet" type-stuff.

The ENT did another scan and prescribed antibiotics.  There were no symptoms, but the sinus was definitely blocked so small surgery was preformed to open up the blocked sinus, resulting in still no symptoms of any kind in the sinus region.   More time passed, waiting occurred and then this week I went back to the ENT to see how that sinus was doing, hoping that all was well because I really wanted to get screws put in my head so I could get crowns put on the screws so I could ultimately chew again on the left side of my mouth.

The scan was done, and it was easy to see the sinus was clear on the monitor, even before the doctor came back.   He's a friendly sort and I enjoy going to his office.  He walked in, looked at the scan and said, "You're cured!  Tell Tony I said, 'hi' when you get your implants done."

I like that kind of office visit.

The Big Boy Update:  We were riding to school and my son was looking at the cars in front of us.  He said to me, "what vehicle starts with 'air'?"  I was stumped, honest, I was.  What car model starts with, "air"?  Then he said, "airplane!"  And yes, that is a vehicle and no, he wasn't trying to trick me.  Then he said, "airplane starts with the sound, "guh, guh, guh".  His sister started chanting that with him and just before I corrected him he realized the sound was, "auh" (or some sort of phonetic version of 'A' that I don't rightly know how to spell).  I was very impressed.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to go to the pool this afternoon.  She wanted to go so badly that she got her water diaper pull-ups on all by herself and then got her bathing suit on too.  When her brother came into the room I couldn't find the other pair of pull-ups and got distracted helping get my daughter's suit on right-side out.   She had had it on correctly when I went to go find her brother, but had switched it around in my absence.  That's when I looked over and saw her taking off the second pair of pull-ups so that her brother could wear one.   How she got two pair on top of another, I don't know.  Then, as we were driving over to the pool she explained to me, "you don't have pull-ups because you don't need pull-ups" to me after seeing me put on my swim suit.

Egads, What Have I Done?

Have I gone off the deep end of the pool without having my water wings on?  Did I order the ghost pepper fire hot wings and make a bet I could eat them all without tearing up?  Did I commit to endless weeks of training to run a marathon, like only the crazy people do?   Well, okay, I did do the last one, and it was fun, other than the pain.

What I did today was something I didn't think I'd ever do, I bought a Mac.   I've been PC all my life.  I even worked for IBM for many years.   I never had any issue with Mac versus PC, I just knew PC better and it suited me for the uses I needed.

Of late several things have aligned that made me decide to switch.  It was hardware facilitated mostly, with the monitor and connectivity that was seamless and effortless to connect along with the needs for a laptop for some of the work I've been doing.  I was growing tired of borrowing my husband's laptop and then having to move things back and forth before and after I used it.

Now I have one machine and if you didn't know it, it would look like I'm at a desktop writing this tonight.  Friday, when we leave to go visit my parents, I'll pull the laptop out from under the monitor stand and everything will be just the same as it was at the desk here, only with a smaller monitor and attached keyboard.

So all of that is great.   The only problem is the learning curve.  The Mac learning curve.   I know how to do just what I want to do on a Windows-based machine.   I know what I want to do on a Mac, but I don't know how to do it or even find the equivalent of how to do it.   So there will be swearing.   Lots of swearing.

Uncle Jonathan is on call to help me through the worst of it.  But by golly, I'm going to figure it all out.   So far today, with only a few hours in, there is a lot more, "hey honey, look at this!" going on than swearing.   Let's hope the trend continues.

The Big Boy Update:  Last night daddy was reading my son a book and the dog decided to bark.  My son looked at her and said, "shh, Lucy, we're reading a book."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Today my son wanted to put on his sister's Snow White costume that she absolutely hated last Halloween.  It hasn't been worn much since.   She was immediately upset because she wanted to wear it.   Three minutes later when he decided he didn't want to wear it, I put it on her and she wore it until bedtime.

The Melting Peppermint Problem

As a child my family would make peppermint ice cream from time to time.  We'd get all the ingredients together to make vanilla ice cream and then we'd get a bag of peppermints.   I'd take the peppermints out on the deck and bang on them with a hammer in a bag, that being the way my mother taught me, not to mention tremendous fun for a small child.  

Then we'd make the ice cream in one of those old salt and ice-type machines.   It made lots of noise, caused lots of ice to melt and depended on lots of rock salt to make the whole process work.   At some point along the way, the tone would change in the motor, telling you the mixture was almost ready.   We'd stop it, take the lid off while trying not to let the salty water into the canister and add the crushed up peppermints.   Then we'd turn it back on and let it go for a few more minutes until it was done.

That peppermint ice cream was so delicious.  It had that nice crunch of candy in it if we did it right.   What happened if we didn't pay close attention was that we put the candy in too early and it would either melt before it was done, leaving no crunch, or melt in the ice cream overnight.  Most of the time we had pink, pepperminty ice cream but not much crunch.

Recently, my mother-in-law and I became enthusiastic about peppermint ice cream making.   She and I gave each other crushed peppermint for Christmas.  And this was funny, because neither of us had any idea it was on the other's mind.  Then we both stuck the peppermint in our pantry's and did nothing about it until it turned warm weather.  

During our spring vacation to Florida, we made peppermint ice cream using her ice cream maker and used the peppermint I gave her for Christmas.   It was great, it had crunch, and it stayed having crunch through the next day.  We don't know what would have happened beyond that because it was all gone.   Was it the new-fangled ice cream machine that used a pre-frozen container that made making ice cream a no-fuss business?   Was it the pre-crushed peppermints?   Or was it our amazing timing in adding the peppermint to the batch?   We didn't know.

Several weeks ago I made some ice cream back here, using the peppermint she gave me (a different kind).  I also have one of those new-fangled ice cream makers because after seeing how easily and neatly hers made ice cream, well, yeah, I went out and got one straight away.   Then, magic of all magic, my ice cream was crunchy and stayed crunchy too.   Had we beaten the melting peppermint problem?

I didn't like the recipe from the ice cream maker manual though.  It was mostly heavy cream with a touch of whole milk added.   Heavy cream plus loads of sugar plus crunchy candy is a heck of a lot of calories per spoonful.   Could I make it a little less caloric-intensive and still be delicious?  

I remembered making ice cream at home as a child and we used half-and-half, not heavy cream.   I decided to try again.   I used the new-fangled ice cream maker.  I used the crushed peppermint that didn't melt in the last batch, but I changed the butterfat level from, "heavy as hell cream" to "half-as-heavy half".  I added the peppermint right at the end, just like before and the resulting ice cream was both delicious and crunchy...

...until the next morning.  At that point there were little red areas in the ice cream that indicated the spots the peppermint had melted, but no crunch.   And that's when it made sense, it's butterfat related.   The more fat in the ice cream, the more difficult it is for the peppermint to dissolve.  The less fat (and more water) and the peppermint comfortably melts into the ice cream.

Mystery solved (or so I think).   I'm going to have to do some more research to determine for sure.   Note to self:  add cream and half-and-half to the grocery list.

The Big Boy Update:  At lunch today my son was romping around and not sitting still.  I told him to sit down several times.  He turned to me after the third time and said, "I need to supervise."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The last baby shower gift.   I received many wonderful baby shower gifts for both my children.  Today, I used the very last gift for the first time, sending my daughter to school in a T2 sundress.  She looked adorable. 

Fear of the Unknown Caller

I like phones.  I like phone technology.  I just don't like answering the phone.  I like calling people and I like it when they answer (because I'm calling them, of course), but I don't like answering the phone when someone's calling me. 

I know why this is the case, it's work-related.   I worked in a high-stress job that put me in complicated and difficult positions as a manager, consultant and employee regularly.  I never knew who was calling and I didn't know what complicated or difficult situation I might find out and have to handle as a result of answering that unknown call.   So, I developed an aversion to answering the phone.

This doesn't apply to friends and family.   You folks, with your friendly caller IDs, were never the kind I wanted to avoid.  Those calls were the easy, even fun calls.   It was the unknown caller, unrecognized caller ID, or the known caller from the sales guy who always sold something we didn't have but the customer had to have it in three weeks and surely we could pull it together at night, right?  Those are the calls I hated.

I would change my ring tone to something friendly, something happy, some snippit of a song I loved in the hopes I wouldn't hate to hear it ring so much.   That helped for a while, but never for long. 

In recent years I've watched my husband answer the phone and be amazed because answering an unknown number never bothered him.   But lately I think I'm finally getting over the fear of the unknown caller.   If I was waiting for an important call, say the cable repair person to call and say he's on the way, I'd answer an unknown number and almost visibly cringe as I said hello. 

Lately, I've had a lot of things going on that have caused me to answer the phone having no idea who it could even possibly be...and things have turned out all right.    I haven't looked at the phone and waited for the voice mail bing to happen.   I've answered right away and taken care of the situation and nothing terrible has happened to me.   It's almost freeing to be able to answer the phone without fear.

The Big Boy Update:   "When it's night night time I close it up."   <graphic description follows>  My son sits on the potty and drags the foreskin of his penis over the top of his penis and makes it go "night night".  Then, he pulls the skin back and there is a, "mouth", or so he tells us.   The other day even Nana and I had a hard time keeping a straight face as he told us all about it. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Aunt Rebecca came to visit today and my daughter was very cute describing to her where everyone was, or was not.   There were people who were "here" (daddy) and people who were "not here" (mommy).  There was also her brother, who was "on the couch over there".  Many kisses were blown when Aunt Rebecca left.

Fitness Update:  Today I didn't run to Starbucks to have a coffee and chat with Uncle Jonathan.   This was due largely in part to a misunderstanding.   I thought, "let's run to Starbucks" was a literal thing.   I got my running clothes on, got ready to head out the front door when Uncle Jonathan said, "we're not running there, we're driving."  Oh. 

Body Sitter

I'm listening to an audio book in which a brain transplant has happened (due to advances in technology).   The brain portion of the union now finds himself in the position of adjusting to a new life in a younger, and unexpectedly female body.   Summarizing the book in two sentences doesn't do it justice, as it is a very intriguing story, but it's enough for this post here.

There are television shows and movies in which someone has to pretend to be or assume the life of another person.  It might be for a period of time (princess swapping) or as a body double for the president or in the case where you're one of many clones (Orphan Black).   It's a theme that's had many spins put on it.   

So I'm putting up laundry and I got to thinking, "how much information would someone need to know to take over another person's life, even for a short period?"   The amount of individual-specific things that we do as habits, say and speak, daily routine, etc., is tremendous.   I can't imagine trying to pretend to be another person, knowing that one hundred little things could give you away each day.   Talk about stress. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was at the pool, floating around on a borrowed inner tube.  He looked up and said, "ah, this is the life."  We're pretty sure his Nana taught him that phrase.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We went to a superhero birthday party today for twins.  One of the twins is in each of my children's classes and they all four know each other.  My daughter put on her skirted version of the Superman outfit and ran around happily for two hours as "Super Reese".

In The Club

We're in the club now, it's official.   Well, a club, I suppose.  My husband has been a family member of a country club or golf club since he was a child.  I've never been a member until today. 

We have multiple neighbors who are members and they seem to like the club a lot.  It gives my husband a location to play golf, and me a great place for delicious brunch food (or so I've heard).

It's not a fancy or highly exclusive club and the people I know that are members are great folks.   Hopefully we'll make some good friends there.  Oh, and I hear they have a great pool for kids. 

The Big Boy Update:  Spanking.  I got mad at him today.  He had cornered his sister and was trying to tear the bow out of her hair.  She was cowering on the sofa and crying.  I snatched him up and, well, yelled at him.  I shouldn't have, but I did.  He ran under the dining room table and I followed him and spanked him.   He cried.  I asked him if he was crying because he wanted me to stop and he said, "yes".   So I spanked him twice more and told him his sister had just been crying and wanted him to stop but he hadn't.    Not my finest parenting moment, but apparently he was very well-behaved later that afternoon.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She made a mess of some cards today and then she wanted snack.   When she was told she could have snack after she cleaned up the cards she said, "I can't do it.  I want you to do it."  She put up quite a fuss, including crying.   Then, she calmly put all the cards away and I served her snack. 

Fitness Update:  It's been a while since I've been running.  We ran eight miles today going, "the hateful route" which is more hilly and steep than the regular route we take. 

Brain Dead

I want to be brain dead right now.   I don't mean in the traditional sense, I mean in a, "I don't want to have to think or work or do anything for anyone else.  I just want to relax and do something mindless."   "Veg out" works too and has the same underlying meaning as brain dead.

I got up at 5:15am and I'm still going at almost nine o'clock.  I still have things on my list to get done before I can go to sleep and then get up early to go running.   I'm almost done though, so it's going to be silly iPad games while lying in bed in only a short while.    It's truly one of the best times of the day I think.

The Big Boy Update:  Snaps.   Remember those little snaps you got in a cardboard box in wood shavings that you threw on the ground and they made a little combustion-based snap sound with sparks?  We got some tonight and my son loved them.   They were gone far too quickly.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She loves to have a towel at the pool.  She likes to lie on the pool lounger on her back or in a folded over pile and have the towel cover her.   I'm not sure if she likes the pool or spending time with the towel more.

Fitness Update:  I returned to the gym.   It was a nice break, going on vacation and then having to let my crazy shoulder get better, but I was glad to be back.  

The New Resume Landscape

I went to dinner with some girlfriends tonight.  Job searching and resumes came up and I was surprised to hear what they were telling me.   It appears the entire landscape of resumes has changed quite dramatically since I last spent actively looking for a job.

In part, that's because it's been a long, long time since I've looked for a job.  One job was followed by another job that I got from a casual inquiry.  My resume at that point was more of a formality as they were already familiar with my experience through other work.   The job after that was another easy step via connections and people in the same product area that knew exactly what I could do and how well I could do it. 

Come to think of it, I'm not sure when I've really had to rely on a resume in my life to get a job, other than when I looked for a co-op position while in college.  That co-op with IBM turned into employment with IBM and then the other jobs followed as a result.   All that is rather moot right now as I'm not employed, busily being a mother of two toddlers and volunteering much of my time with endeavors related to the school.

I do have my resume on LinkedIn though.  I was told years ago that I'd better get my resume out there because that was, "the new thing and you simply have to be on LinkedIn".  Now, it appears that LinkedIn, while a nice place to network from a business standpoint, isn't the reference point for submitting a resume for a position.

Here are things I heard in conversations at our dinner table tonight:
- "You have to tailor your resume to each position you're applying for."
- "People put too much in their resume."
- "They don't trim out historical work or work that's not applicable to the position they're applying for."
- "Some people leave in unrelated things, making their resume longer than necessary.  It seems like they do this because they're mostly proud of what they've done, not that it's relevant."

I stopped them and asked them, "so what do you put in a resume these days?"  I was told that the best resume was one that only addressed experience and qualifications for that particular position.   They talked about how you want to look qualified but not over-qualified."   One of my friends is a project manager.  She explained, "if I was looking for a job at a drug store, my resume would list the grocery clerk work I did in my teens and the Hallmark job I had in college, and that's all."

The job search landscape has changed a lot since I last looked for employment.

The Big Boy Update:  We were going to a Mexican restaurant for lunch that happened to be in the same shopping strip as a pizza restaurant we had gone to the day before.   When we drove in, my son said something that made me laugh because it's phraseology he's never used before that made him sound much older: "pizza place, here we come!"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter doesn't really like things in her hair, but she needs them to keep her hair out of her eyes.  She's getting better at not pulling them out.  What she does feel strongly about is what goes in her hair each day.  Some days bows are in, other days she wants the rubber bandy things.   And most of all, she wants to pick the color and hold the item (bow, clip, etc.) and play with it in her hands while you brush her hair, until you tell her you're ready for it.

Condensate Pump Pains

We have an HVAC system that has a small problem--the Condensate Pump.   The unit is in the basement and all water it produces in both the winter and summer drain to a little pump on the floor.   Any condensation or the runoff from the humidifier component in the winter drops into this little red box.   When the box gets full, the pump kicks on and pumps the water ten feet upwards and out the side of the house to drain.   That is, it does when it's working properly.

Last year we discovered water in the mechanical room.  The condensate pump wasn't pumping and it overflowed.  A water shutoff sensor was relocated, a pool noodle was mutilated to create a new bobber and we hoped the problem was solved.   We "hoped" because the machine itself wasn't acting consistently.  It wasn't electrical inconsistency, it was mechanical, and it was a gravity-based issue that worked 100% of the time unless we weren't watching it.   It made no sense.

At any rate, we got it working again.   Some time later it stopped working for no apparent reason.  I futzed with it and it resumed normal function for a second time.   This Saturday it stopped for a third time.   We discover it wasn't working because the air conditioning had stopped working and the house was getting hot.  Swearing ensued.  We didn't know what was wrong and it was going to be a hot day.  We go check the circuit breaker, look to see if a large limb is blocking the fan outdoors and then remember the condensate pump.  Then more swearing ensued.

That's when I got fed up with the condensate pump.  Luckily, our builder was coming over to do something dangerous on our roof and I got to talking with him about the pump (which he didn't install personally but has been ever so kind to help us with multiple times).   I was telling him I didn't understand why the one in the crawl space worked flawlessly, but the one in the mechanical room was so irritable.   And then I thought, "how much can these little red plastic boxes be?"

So off to Amazon we go and for the low low price of $45, I could have a new pump that won't leave us with a basement full of water or a house that creeps up to "near 'bout sweltering" before we figure out the problem.

Tonight the new pump came in.   It was a fifteen minute job to change the new pump out.   I was so happy I nearly hugged the new pump when it did it's first successful pump.

The Big Boy Update:   My son didn't go to school today.  He told me his stomach hurt when we were on the drive there.  Two blocks before we arrived, he threw up all over himself.   I dropped his sister off at school and brought him home. He had a bath and the car seat got pulled out of the car and into to the driveway to be hosed down.   After the bath my son was hungry.  He ate and ate and ate and then had a completely normal day.   This morning he ate the same cereal, milk and juice as his sister did for breakfast.   We have no idea what bothered his stomach so.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We had pizza for lunch today.  My daughter was busy playing super hero with her brother.  She stood up on her chair, held her hands up high and said, "I got my pizza powers!"

Must...Clean...Up...

I got in tonight and I needed to get to the basement to get some work done at the computer (including this blog post).  I needed to get downstairs fairly quickly because I had some phone calls to make that should ideally happen before it gets too late.   But I ran into a snag...

There was messy.  Well, maybe messy isn't the right word; you could say, "things weren't in their proper places."   I like things in their proper places.    That's not always true.  For example, things have to be out of their place in order to use them.   It's hard to cook dinner if you can't get a pot out and put it on the stove.   Eating salad is far more challenging without a plate, fork and even salad that must respectively stay in the cabinet, drawer and refrigerator.

But when something is done being used, it should go back to it's spot so the next time you need to use it, you know just where to go to get it.   Also, this plan to put stuff where it's suppose to go makes things much more visually tidy--and I like tidy.

So tonight when I got in, almost everything was put up, but there were little things--little things that called to me in an obsessive compulsive-type of way.   So I put everything back just so, in all the spots those things were suppose to be in.   Do I sound crazy to you, or is it just me?

The Big Boy Update:  I asked my son and daughter what that noise was.  His teacher said, "I think it's a helicopter."  My son said, "It's a choo choo train, you whore", which caused Kick and me to snap our heads up and look at each other because we both thought he'd said the same thing.   Then we realized he was saying, "and horn".   We laughed at our mis-hearing adult minds.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  When our sitter, Ezra, came over tonight, my daughter showed her her gymnastics moves.   She did jumping jacks and forward rolls.   Today was the last day of gymnastics in the main school season.   We're debating signing them up over the summer.  She does love gymnastics.