Halloween Thirsty

Halloween used to be all about the candy to me.   When I was young. it was about acquiring the candy.   As I became an adult it turned into giving the candy.   Now that I have children, they're the ones interested in the candy.   Today, to me, Halloween is all about passing out adult drinks.

We're in a relatively new neighborhood and our community holiday traditions are only a year or two old.   Last year was the first year we had enough families to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood as before that the handful of houses and lack of children made other neighborhoods more appealing.  Last year I decided (with some fellow neighbors) that offering alcoholic drinks to the parents would be a way to enhance the evening for adults as they walked around with their children.   

We're not the first to think of this idea, but we latched on to it with a vengeance.   There wasn't a large percentage of families that handed out adult drinks last year, but those that did had a lot of fun with it.   My neighbor made a blood red drink and served it in blood bags and I had urine specimen bottles filled with something yellow and sweet. 

On September 1st this year my neighbor, Mary, and I talked about what we were planning on doing this year.   We had two months and we needed to start planning.   I wanted to come up with something that would be as big a hit as last year's urine cups.   I'll spare you the ideas and iterations I went through over those two months and get to what I ended up doing. 

I went with a medical/research theme not unlike last year.   I wore borrowed scrubs from my neighbor for my outfit.   We lit the front porch in large, black lights that pointed inwards towards the door.   On a table on the porch were Erlenmeyer flasks, beakers and test tubes filled with substances that glowed in \ black light.   My husband made signs showing "Danger Radiation", "Experiment" and the radiation symbol.    

My drink was served in a 50ML (1.5oz) specimen tube with a two-inch green glow stick floating inside.   Each tube had a green screw-off cap and words reading "Batch 42" (or some other batch number) written on it them ink only visible under UV light.   

I offered drinks to the parents and explained that the testing we'd done made us fairly confident the radioactive levels were mostly safe.  I suggested they didn't eat the radioactive slug (glow stick) as we didn't have the results back from the autopsies on those that did.   I had other patter that changed depending on if I knew the family or didn't.   I would hold up one or more of the vials into the black light so the batch numbers were visible and tut tut about that being a bad batch and that I wouldn't recommend giving that one to their husband unless he really deserved it.    

There was lots to say and it was all fun.  Parents who didn't come to the porch would find me walking out to see if they would be willing to participate in our study and how did they feel about drinking untested, radioactive substances?    I was almost never turned down and everyone had a fun asking me about it.

I had two friends helping me out on the porch: Jen and Darren.   They brought their eleven-year-old daughter and her friend to trick-or-treat with my children, chaperoned by my husband and Uncle Jonathan.    Without them I would have been in trouble.   Darren handed out the candy and Jen snapped and inserted the glow sticks into the drinks and helped me hand them out.    

The drink itself was the most boring part of it all.   I tried so many things.  I wanted the drink to glow, but the options I had for consumable, glowing substances didn't make tasty drinks.   I wanted the drink to taste good, but anything with any color in the liquor and cordial department dampened the glow stick's glow dramatically.    After a lot of testing I ended up going the straight-forward route: white wine.   People thought it was great.   Lots of people didn't know what it was when they drank it at first; white wine out of context of a wine glass must be more difficult to place—especially when it's a sweet wine like the Moscato I was serving. 

I have to also thank my husband for his help in the endeavor.   It wouldn't have been as fun or as impactful without his ideas and contributions.   You can see all the hand-painted signs he made for me in the picture below.    He helped me with ideas and so much of the preparations but ultimately he didn't get to see any of it in action because he was out with the children going house-to-house.

It was a grand night.  I'm looking forward to next year already.

My son at the front door looking up at the glowing spider webs.

Tray of radioactive samples with their glow sticks, Batch 37 ready for the next victim, er, parent.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was, "Chase" the Transformer police car from the show, Transformers: Rescue Bots for Halloween this year.   He almost changed his mind to be Ironman at the last minute but I think he was happy with his choice.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was a Wincess for Halloween.   She was a green and purple witch that was also a princess she and my son decided a few weeks ago.   Princess+Witch = Wincess. She loved her outfit and was happy wearing it all night, including the had (which would not stay on).

Fitness Update:  Halloween at the gym.   I wonder if Don was harder on us because he suspected we'd all be eating candy later tonight?

Alternate Hand Clapping

I know we have bodily preferences, but I discovered one I hadn't noticed before during the ride to school today.  If you clasp your fingers together, either your left or right thumb will be on the top and that way of clasping you hands will feel, "right" as opposed to the other way.  

Sitting cross-legged and folding your arms across your chest are two other preferential positional things we tend to do as people.    I was clapping along to the, "If You're Happy and You Know It" song with my children and it occurred to me that I far prefer to clap with one hand on top (or relatively on top) than I do the other hand.     Strange I never noticed this before.

The Big Boy Update:  Pahmer is still with us.   Remember him?   He's back with a vengeance.   He is sometimes a fictional entity or perhaps just someone not in the room.  Sometimes one of us is Pahmer and sometimes he's a definite person, such as "the worker".    Pahmer has been visiting our house a lot of late.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  There is a house with some halloween blow-up decorations on our way out of the neighborhood.   There's a huge spider over their porch and stairway, a witch with a sign reading, "Witch Way" pointing to their house and then the not-very-scary Hello Kitty blow-up in their front yard.   My daughter likes to say, "hi kitty!"  when we drive by.   Today, my son informed her, "that's Hello Kitty".

Lady Godiva, Candy and Ice Cream

When I was eight-years-old my family went to England and Scotland for eight weeks.   It was an abroad program with a busload of college students from the women's college my mother taught at and a collection of teachers.   I had an absolutely fantastic time that summer.   I don't think there was a summer that could have even gotten close to that summer in the whole of my childhood from the perspectives of adventure and excitement.

I remember being on the large plane and going international for the first time at eight-years-old.   I remember the smells of a different country and the different accents of the people.   I remember the dorm rooms we stayed in and the brass rubbings my parents made at the burned-down church in Canterbury.    And I remember the candy and ice cream.

One of the first places we went was Coventry.   I don't know where we stayed or what we did while we were there but I remember there being a very large square with a big statue of a lady on a horse.   My parents told me all about Lady Godiva and her naked jaunt on the horse.    I thought she must have been cold and how convenient it was that she had so much hair as to cover up all the secret bits.

I didn't really care that much about Lady Godiva but there was an ice cream shop in that courtyard and the ice cream there was amazing.   I'd had lots of ice cream before, but something about this ice cream was different.  It had more of a vanilla flavor perhaps or maybe it was more creamy.   I don't remember today, but I know it wasn't like the standard ice cream I got at home and I liked it more.    I don't know if we got the ice cream once or more than once or even how long we stayed there, but the memory how ice cream tasted there and in other parts of England and Scotland somehow became associated with Lady Godiva.

It was during that summer that I also expanded my love of candy varieties.   I'd never had licorice all sorts before and when I tried them, I knew I was hooked.    So many shapes and flavors and all of them licorice.   How can you go wrong with that?   I was a huge licorice fan.

I buy least one package of all sorts each year as an adult and they always make me think of that summer in England and that naked lady on the horse.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got a new little transformer toy yesterday.   He had fun with it last night and was sad to leave it at home this morning.   When he got home from school he went over to the toy, picked it up and said to me, "this toy missed me."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter is very sound-sensitive.   Toilets flushing, blender's running, balloons being blown up, dogs barking and pretty much anything else she thinks might be loud.   She puts her fingers in her ears to prepare for a loud noise (even if we explain the broom sweeping won't be loud.   When she goes in for her hearing test, I'm not concerned about the results.

Fitness Update:  Lackluster performance by me at the gym today.   Or at least it felt so.   I think I need to go more often.   I've been slacking lately.

The Krispy Kreme Calorie Question

I wanted to get my children a small treat this afternoon while we were out.   I realized we were driving by a Dunkin' Donuts store on our way to pick up the dog and I realized the donut holes (or Munchkins as the chain calls them) would be just the right amount of treat I was looking for.   We stopped in, visited the bathroom and got in line.  

I asked the lady what quantities I could buy the munchkins in and was surprised at the answer.  I could get four, twelve, twenty or any number of dozen I wanted.   She told me I could really get any amount, as long as it was a multiple of two.   I asked, "so I could get just two?"  She said that yes, I could definitely do that.   I got twelve.   Two?  C'mon, you know I'm gonna eat a good portion of those twelve myself, right?

We got back in the car and I gave one to each of my children.   My son immediately started eating his.   My daughter decided it was, "yucky" because I suppose the sugar on the outside was a bit sticky.   My son asked for another one and as I handed it back to him I started to wonder how many calories were in these little things?

I could look it up most likely fairly quickly if I was at a long stop light or when we got to the veterinarian's office.   We can find nutritional information so quickly now.   It made me think of a time back before the year 2000 when several of us had a long discussion on donuts and calories.

The discussion was between my boyfriend back then, one of his office mates and his roommate.   This discussion wasn't about Dunkin' Donuts, but the Krispie Kreme glazed donut.   Someone (I don't remember who) said they had hear each donut was four-hundred calories.   "It can't be" some of us said.

There was internet galore back then, but the informational depth wasn't there.   We looked on their web site and there was no, "Nutritional Information" page there like there is on most restaurant's sites today.   We couldn't find much information by searching through search engines either (this was back when there were multiple, competing search engines—before Google dominated the market.

My boyfriend said, "I'll find out.  I'll email the company."   And so he did.  It took about a day, but he got back a very nice response from someone saying, "four-hundred calories?  Oh my, that is quite a lot.   You'll be glad to know our glazed donuts are two-hundred calories each.  I hope this helps answer your question."  

For years later at business events when someone would bring Krispy Kreme donuts in the morning, I would look at them and see two-hundred calories stamped across each one.  I still ate them.  Sometimes I would eat a lot of them.   One day in Chicago I specifically remember eating only Krispy Kreme glazed donuts for the entire day.    It was my fault...I was the one who brought them.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got out of bed at 6:57AM today.   I know this because he leapt out of his bed and landed on the floor in the room above us.   Three minutes later my alarm went off.   He came out on the bridge above and said, "mommy, what's that beeping?"   It appears my son doesn't need an alarm clock to get up on time.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  People are noticing my daughter's hair cut.   We've had lots of positive comments on it.   As much as I didn't want to cut it, I'm glad I did.

Fitness Update:  Four miles wedged in this afternoon.  Unexpected request from my neighbor in the quick hour she had from getting out of the office before having to pick up the girls.

Smunday

Today was Smunday.   It was technically Monday, but the day behaved like it was Sunday.   The children were out of school and we didn't have much to do, save hanging around the house in our pajamas for a large portion of the morning.  

My children got to eat their favorite weekend breakfast foods and there was a good bit of television that was on.   My son got cranky because the television was on too long, requesting it be turned off, but then when it was off, he wanted to watch more of the rescue pups show that was on.  

I didn't know what the rescue pups show was, but from the bit he saw of it he had absorbed the characters names and talked about them for the rest of the day.   I now know why advertising targeted at children is so successful.

Tomorrow will be Muesday.  It will be Tuesday, but it's going to feel like Monday as we all go back to our regularly-scheduled weekday routine.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has some allergies and he knows it from just the few interactions he's had.   It only took one time putting a cat bed on his head and he will tell you straight up he's allergic to cats.   He must be also allergic to mold spores like I am too because after playing with various things at the Scrap Exchange and touching his face, his eyes got terribly puffy and itchy.   Sorry for passing on my allergies to you, little guy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  At a follow-up visit to the plastic surgeon about my daughter's chin wound, we talked about maybe needing a surgical correction after the wound has healed for six months.  It was hard to tell at first because there was a lot of abrasion around the cut, but it's easy to see the jaggedness of the scar line now.   It's not under her chin, it's right on the front as well.   We won't know what needs to be done until it's fully healed and that's fine for now.   We're scar reducing cream with SPF on it for now as it heals and fades out.

Flossie

When I was very young my mother had someone take care of me and do the cleaning around the house while she was at work.   The term back then wasn't, "nanny" or "au pair".  I don't even remember what my mother used to refer to her by, but I remember her name was Flossie.  She was with me for many years.

She was an African American woman who lived in the downtown area of our city.  She didn't have a car, so each and every week day she would take the bus (or possibly multiple busses) to get to our house.   I remember her being larger in size and very kindly.   She mostly stopped sitting for me when I got to school-age but she continued to clean for us for some number of years.

At some point she was having a harder time cleaning due to age.   My mother was trying to stick it out with her but she wasn't able to clean well, missing lots of areas because of her failing sight.   My mother had decided she was going to have to say something and coincidence would have it that Flossie came to her and told her she didn't thing she could continue to clean any more.

That ended the business relationship between my family and Flossie, but my mother never forgot her.  For years afterwards, my mother would take a trip out to Flossie's small home and visit with her, talking about her grandchildren and what was happening in her life.  My mother would collect nice  pieces of large, costume jewelry from yard sales and bring it to Flossie as a gift.   Mom said Flossie loved to wear extravagant jewelry.

My mother took me to visit her once when she was quite old.   She looked different I remembered, sitting very still and looking rather crumpled on her sofa.  But she was happy to see me and we had a nice chat that day.   My mother told me she died some time later.   I have happy memories of her from my childhood.   She was one of the people in my life that helped to raise me—and yet, I don't even know her last name.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and his two friends, Ryan and Keira, want to climb into our Chinese Fringe tree quite badly.   They spent forty-five minutes the other day working on strategies, trying and failing at several alternatives and ultimately not making it to the first (and really only climbable) branches.  It's not a big tree, but for some reason they want to climb it.   They tied two graduation tassels to the lower branches, moving the dog's stool out into the back yard and tying one end of a string onto the leaves of a nearby bush.   But the teamwork and problem-solving they did to get there was a victory as far as I'm concerned.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   There was wind the other day...lots of wind.  I was moving things around in the kitchen and out to the refrigerator in the garage and my daughter was playing with their outdoor things around the two cars.   Every time the wind would blow the garage doors would do a huge creaking sound.   My daughter wanted to know what in the world that sound was, looking at me with surprised and possibly frightened eyes.   I told her that was the wind on the garage doors and that it sounded like some fun weather was coming.   She wasn't completely sure about my assessment but after that every time the doors creaked she'd inform me the wind was blowing again.

Raggedy Ann and Andy

My sister-in-law wrote about her memories of Raggedy Ann and Andy from when she was a child recently.  As a coincidence, I had put down on my blog topics list to write about one of my memories of the two characters from my childhood only days before.   I've been meaning to get to that post for some time, but other topics have somehow taken precedence.  

When I was little I had a Raggedy Ann doll.  I'm not sure if I had a Raggedy Andy doll—I don't think I did—but he doesn't factor into my memories nearly as much.   I have vague recollections of the doll moving around my house and sitting in chairs and corners, but not much else.   What I do remember though is a book about them.

This book had several things in it that made it a magical book to me.  First, the book talked about food and candy items.  As a child I would picture the candy so much I could almost taste it.   The other thing that made it memorable was that the book had scratch-and-sniff pages.

Imagine reading and thinking about candy and then being able to smell that candy on the very page of the book.   It was truly a magnificent book.   I don't know what happened to the book, but a year or two ago I looked up the key words, "raggedy ann andy book scratch sniff" and got one hit: Raggedy Ann's Sweet and Dandy, Sugar Candy Scratch and Sniff book.

I either found it on Amazon or eBay and bought it.   The scratch and sniff stickers are long since sniffed out, but the story is still there.   I didn't remember the story completely, but it seemed strangely familiar when I read it for the first time.

For a long time, my children didn't care much about the book but of late, they've brought it to me to read to them at night.   If I could find replacement scratch-and-sniff stickers I'd put them on the book. Maybe I should look into that.

As I was reading the book to my daughter the other night I looked up at the paintings of Raggedy Ann and Andy that my mother-in-law's grandmother painted for her.   We have them hanging over the children's bed.   They are beautiful paintings of Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy hanging up on the drying line after being washed, held up by clothes pins.   They hung in my mother-in-law's room as a child, my husband's and now my children's.   They're special to all of us and hopefully, some day, they'll be special to my children too.

The Big Boy Update:  We were on the way to lunch yesterday when I heard my son say from the back seat, "hey, fire and water car."  I looked around to see what he was talking about.   There was a car to our left that had pictures of flames and drops of water in their logo.   Their business was home disaster repair.    If their window was down, I would have told them my son had named their car.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  When my daughter went to get her hair cut the other day I had a hard time explaining to her that we weren't going to a doctor.   At almost three and having never had her hair cut, she didn't really understand the difference.   After she got her hair cut by Sue, she looked over to the other stylist across the room and said to me, "that's the other haircut doctor."

The Love Post

I was driving home from a meeting at my children's school today and I started thinking about all the things I love.   I don't know why I did, but that's where my mind wandered.   It's like a, "Things I'm Thankful For" list only it's about the things I love instead.  

- I love my husband.   He's great.  He's the best.
- I love my children.   I've got two, well, "normal" kids, and that's perfect as far as I'm concerned.
- I love my parents.   They've always been there for me, not matter what.
- I love my in-laws.   I could't have asked for a better mother- and father-in-law.
- I love my extended family.  My brother's family and my own are each and every one special to me.
- I love my home.   We built a beautiful home and I love living here every day.
- I love my dog.   She's getting old and cranky, but she's sweet and loves us.
- I love our friends.   We have some of the kindest and best friends we could ever ask for.
- I love my cleaning lady, Edna.   We've been together for eighteen years.
- I love our school.  The children are getting an exceptional educational and the community is great.
- I love my neighborhood.   We're fortunate to live in a friendly and happy neighborhood.
- I love my city.  I've lived here all my life.  It's a nice place.  It's home.
- I love my bank.  I opened an account there when I was eight.  I still go to the same branch.
- I love my shopping mall.  I've shopped there since I was a child—so many good memories.
- I love my iPhone.  I'm getting kooky now, aren't I?  I love my phone, but that's no surprise

I could go on, honestly, it wouldn't be hard at all.   I'm sure I forgot something truly important like, "I love candy"—oh wait, I do love candy!   This post might never end at that rate.

The thing is, I'm surrounded by wonderful people, places and things in my life.   And on drives home like today when I'm smiling for no reason, I think, "why am I smiling?"   It's then that I realize how fortunate I am.    And then...I start to dance and sing (way off key) to some happy song on the radio in the car where no one can hear me...grinning all the way home.

The Big Boy Update:  On the way home today my daughter said, "mom, you're upside-down."  My son responded, "no she's not, she's upside-right."   As I thought about it, I realized the inconsistency in our two phrases, "upside-down" and "right side up" and how my son's version made a lot of sense.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  This morning my daughter was finished eating breakfast.  As she put her plate and cup on the counter she said, "mom, I'm awesome done."   I said, "I think you must mean your 'all' done."  

Fitness Update:   First time in the gym in almost two weeks.  It showed.   I wasn't able to keep up nearly as well as everyone else.   I may have to retire and eat bon bons if I keep this up.

She Eats Like a Bird

I was told that many, many times when I was younger.  I didn't think I ate too little, I just ate until I was full and then I stopped eating.    There would usually be lots of food left on my plate when I was done, but that was mostly because portions were always so large.   For the most part, I wasn't offended by the comments.   Sometimes people would say things hinting that I had a problem (like bulimia I supposed) but that seemed more some kind of comment made because of how they felt about food as opposed to my eating until I was full and then stopping.

I don't get the comments that I eat like a bird anymore.   I didn't think about this until the other day and I realized that food at some point became higher value, more important, more of a thing to look forward to, enjoy and even overeat than it was when I was younger.   That's why today I have to be mindful of how much I eat because I have the capacity to eat more than my body really needs if I don't pay attention to how much I'm eating.

I watch my children eat their food and no matter what it is, be it yogurt, juice, water, ice cream or even candy, they always stop when they've had enough.    What makes us move from that carefree state of enjoying food to the extent we need it, into people who fixate and focus on food on a daily basis?

Tonight some friends and I went to the state fair.   Did we go for rides?  No.   Did we go to look at the exhibits?  Not really.   Did we go to see the sights and listen to the music?   Not even close.   We went for the food.  Pretty much only for the food.

The Big Boy Update:   My daughter and son were in the back seat talking this morning.  They were having some sort of discussion about something grown-up that neither of them really knew anything about.   My son decided his sister didn't know what she was talking about so he told her, "I'm an expert" and then proceeded to tell her his own completely innocent, mis-guided ideas.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Hair cut.   I said I wasn't going to do it.  I didn't want to do it.  I was adamant I wasn't going to cut her hair but today I had just had enough.  It has never been cut and she's almost three-years-old.   It is very fine and very brittle and it breaks easily or is pulled out if she or anyone else isn't careful with it when they're putting it up.   There was this bit in the back that looked a rat tail because the other parts around it had broken off.   I asked my husband if he thought we should just cut it and he said he supported my decision.    So she had her first hair cut.   I took her to my hairdresser and as she cut her hair we collected the clippings into a little plastic bag I brought.   My daughter sat very still and looked in the mirror the whole time.    The total amount of hair cut off wasn't that much, but you can brush through it now and it looks less crazy.   My daughter likes her shorter hair.   She looks terribly cute too.

Ultraviolet

I wrote recently about the discovery that my Crystalens lenses in my eyes apprently let me see more visual light spectrum—specifically ultraviolet light—than most people's natural lenses.   There's an interesting web page I spent some time reading, written by someone who had discovered this additional spectral vision after Crystalens implants.   He had done research into what he could see that most other people couldn't.   I wanted to try out some of the tests on my own.  Today I had the first chance to do so.

Natural white light can be broken up into a spectrum of color using a prism.   Looking at a lovely rainbow of color is pretty, but the question was could I see further into the purple range than other people.  This is easy enough to do if you have a prism.  (I didn't have a prism.)

I'm sure my father has a panoply of prisms at his house but he was out of town and Amazon is just so blasted close (on my phone in my pocket) so I ordered a prism which arrived yesterday after dark.   That made today test day.  My husband and I did some preliminary tests and then ran out of time about the same point as the sun went behind a tree.

At dinner time tonight my husband was out doing some work with a customer.  I suddenly noticed the long rays of sun coming in from the dining room and quickly grabbed the prism.   The test I was trying to recreate was fairly easy: cast a rainbow on a wall or surface and mark with tape the leftmost (red) area I could see and the rightmost (purple) area I could see and then take a picture to see what the camera (and most other people) can see.

The camera and I saw about the same location of start/stop for the red-side of the spectrum.   The purple side was quite a bit different though.

I tried, tried, tried to get these pictures as accurate as I could but the sun was setting quickly and by the time I got the tape up and my camera out (a span of twenty to thirty seconds) there was a slight right-shift to the entire spectrum.   But it's fairly close.   The purple was just a lot more purple.   It was the longest color in the entire spectrum to me.   It was pretty neat to see such a difference.  Tomorrow, my husband and I hope to do some additional tests since he wasn't around today.

If you're interested in the web page I read, here's the link.   He has a lot of other sites referenced and he's done a far more thorough job of testing out the additional range of spectrum he can discern than I have with my little prism and tape test:  Ultraviolet Superpower with Crystalens.

The Big Boy Update:  My son sent his first text message today.  He told me that he loved his teacher Kica and it was so sweet and out of the blue that I sent Kica a text telling her what he said.   She responded back with a single heart emoji.   I showed it to my son because you don't have to read to know what a heart is.   Then it occurred to me: with the new emoji keyboard on my phone, he could send her a text message in pictures.   I asked him if he wanted to respond and he said yes.  He selected an American flag, a train, a plane, a tractor, several colored hearts, two people and a caution sign.   I'm not sure what the message was, be he was very pleased about sending it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter likes to help with the dishes.   While I was putting up plates and cups and other things in the higher cabinets, she was sorting and putting up the utensils.   She put the big forks in the big fork area and the little forks in the little fork area and then she got completely and utterly distracted by the spoons.   There were big spoons and little spoons but wait, there was a third spoon and it was even bigger than the first two!  Ah, that's a serving spoon I told her and showed her where to put it.   But she wasn't done.   She wanted to know about that other drawer of utensils she didn't know about before (the second set we use for bigger gatherings).   I showed her those and then went back to putting up the dishes.   Not two minutes later she was ecstatically showing me the, "two biggest spoons!"   She had found the large serving spoon for the other set, taken it out and retrieved the serving spoon from the first set and proudly had them on the counter to show me.   We celebrated her discovery together.

The Hair Repair

I've got a new (and strange) obsession.   I've been trying to fix my hair.   It wasn't broken initially but then I did something silly and caused it to be damaged and now I'm trying to correct the situation.

I've been growing my hair out and as it's gotten longer I've needed to do something to it to make it look a little better, a little less ragged, a little more tidy.   So I got a curling iron and a flat iron and from time to time I'd make it look a little better with those tools.

One day (or maybe on more than one day) I decided to roll bits of my hair up with the curling iron and hold the heat there for longer so more curl would set in.   Now mind you, I'm an inexperienced hair curler or straightener and what I know now is that that very hot heat is really only "curling" the lower part of your hair that's in direct contact with the big barrel of the iron.   Holding the heat on it for longer is a fine thing to do...if your goal is to fry and frazzle your hair.

I've learned several things since that time a few months ago.   Now I always use a heat protecting product on your hair if you plan on curling or straightening.  I don't use the hottest setting and I don't hold the heat on any area of the hair for very long.   I got a new hair dryer that helps seal the cuticle of the hair and, oh yeah, this was the neatest one: I learned how to curl my hair with a flat iron.

But not of that fixed the damage I'd done to several spots in my hair.   The damage went fairly high up and even with careful flat ironing, it looked bad.   The ends were split, broken and torn and there wasn't much to do about it until the hair grew out and I had months and months to go on that front.    Or did I?

I didn't want to cut six inches off my hair, but could I cut only those individual hairs that were damaged and cut them clean just above the damaged spot?   Yes I could, but it would involve a lot of investment in time.    We have about ten-thousand hairs on our head I read one time.   Not all of mine are damaged, but I was going to have to do a lot of looking to find the ones that were.  

Each night now I sit on the counter in my bathroom with my 3X magnification glasses on and a pair of very sharp scissors.   I put on an audio book I'm listening to—it has twenty-six hours of audio so I've got time—and I meticulously cut strands of hair just above the damaged area.  

It's strange, but it's rather soothing to do.   I don't remove much overall hair, but what remains is nice and neat and lays flat and brushes like a dream.  I feel like I'm tidying up a big mess and every day that mess gets a little smaller.    If only my back will hold out until I'm finished...

The Big Boy Update:  Lost his lunch.   We went to a restaurant for lunch today that served pancakes.  My son was thrilled to get a "Pancake Bear" lunch (pancakes in the shape of a bear).   He ate for a while but got frustrated when we told him he had to use a fork to eat and then angry with me when I helped cut up the larger of the pancakes.   He decided he wanted to play under the table and bother his sister on the other side of the booth.   My husband took him outside to discuss his behavior, saying that he must be done eating since he wasn't at his place anymore.   I had the waitress take his food away.   He was basically full, but the behavior was unacceptable.   When my husband brought him back my son was outraged that his food had been taken away.  I told him I was sure he'd finish eating next time before playing around at the table.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Staple remover.  My daughter had her two staples removed today.  I have to thank my good running buddy and neighbor for doing it for us.   She is so nice that she got a staple remover from her office and came by to do the removal.   It was quick and my daughter didn't cry too much.   And I kept the staple remover.   We live in such a disposable society.  It was a metal tool in a sealed package that would be good for untold uses, but it's marked as disposable.   If we have a need in the future, I'm set.

Run the Numbers

Have you ever gotten stuck in a spreadsheet, working variations on numbers, hoping one of ways you change the values around will magically give you the solution you're hoping for?   I felt like I was doing just that tonight.

There is a piece of property some friends of ours would like to purchase.  We've been involved in helping try to work out a way in which these friends can make it happen.    They're banding together as a group of investors in the hopes that together they'll be able to come up with a way to creatively work out a solution.

My husband, who is a real estate broker, built a very nice spreadsheet that helps us look at options.   There are options for numbers and types of investors, percentage of down payment, interest rate, years in the term and other variables that show basically how much money you need when.

And that's the trick, isn't it?  If these investors had lots of cash they could just go and buy the property.   But they don't.   They're hoping to purchase the property for a good cause, but to do so they'll have to hold on to the property for five to ten years and hope that property values don't go down.

It's a lot to ask of someone to commit to spending money now and (depending on how the numbers are run) continue to invest in a piece of property so that in the future it can be put to good use.    Hopefully we can find a solution.   Until that time, we'll keep working on numbers in spreadsheets.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband got my son's favorite baby blanket out yesterday.   My son just loves this little blanket so we put it away from time to time so he doesn't form an unbreakable bond with it.   My son was so happy to have it yesterday he stayed in his room while we were doing things downstairs.   He knew we were talking because he participated in the conversation several times from upstairs.   And then he got quiet.   He had gotten down on the floor, perfectly covered himself up with his little blanket and gone straight to sleep with his head almost under the rocking chair.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Reese, if you're older and reading this, please forgive me for not getting started on planning your birthday party yet.   I know it's coming up and it's been on my list to do, but I haven't sent out the invitation yet.   It's going to be a "Green" birthday party for you.  You are totally obsessed with the color green right now.   It's terribly cute.   I'm going to go set a reminder for myself to start working on your party tomorrow right now...

Clothing Swap Hosting

We had a clothing swap at my house today.  Thanks to dad and Uncle Bob for taking the children elsewhere so we could share in some food, wine, conversation and clothes.  

It's always amazing to see how many clothes we have that we don't need.  We had fourteen people today and everyone had at least one bag of clothes to share.   It's fun to select clothes, try them on and then say, "hey, who's is this?  I love it."  

We had some new friends that joined us and took some new finds home too.  I didn't have much to share this time, but I made out with some great finds.

The price is always right at the clothing swap...free.

The Big Boy Update:  "Hey look, I'm tickling my penis."    He was.   He made sure we saw.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Clothing swapper.   I held a clothing swap at the house today for some girlfriends.   My daughter got interested in all the people arriving and laying their clothes out on the various beds in the house (shirts here, pants there, dresses over there).   She went up to her room, got some clothes from her dresser and took them down to put on the master bed to "swap" with the ladies.

School Zone

I live in a particular zone of schools.   I'm sure there are designations done by the city for which school(s) I could go to if I was of school-age.   I haven't paid any attention to them other than what my neighbors have told me as it relates to their children.   There are a lot of choices now for things such as year-round, magnet, charter, etc.   When I was young, there was just one choice.

I still live in the same area, not because I'm boring I hope, but because I like it here.  I travelled all over for ten years and I think of this place as home and I like to come home here.   It's nice here.  I live five or six miles away from where I was raised.  I visit that house often because my parents still live there in the winters or when they come to visit from their mountains home.

I take my children to school and in so doing I get about a mile away from my childhood home.   I take them to a school that's in the same buildings that I went to school at forty-two years ago when I was a child.  It's a different school now, but it was a school all the way back then.

On the way there, we pass by my elementary school.   The school is on the same grounds, but the building is entirely new.   They built a new school on top of the field areas and then tore down the old school.   Just before we get to my elementary school we pass by a church that I went to for after school care after elementary classes were over.   There is still a playground in the same area, although it's been updated many times since I went there.

At my elementary school intersection we turn right and head towards my middle school.   It's much bigger now than it was when I was a child.   I'm not sure if any of the building remains from when I went there, but I know the athletic field is in the same spot.   The rest of the school, including the very nice school sign, is mostly nothing I recognize or remember.

As we head towards my children's school on the same street, we're heading in the direction of my college.   Right before we turn right into the school parking lot for drop-off I can see the college campus straight ahead.  

I drop my children off and prepare to head home, but if I were to turn left instead of right and head in the direction of downtown, three miles later I would be one turn away from my high school.

I live in the capital city of my state with over four-hundred-thousand residents, but in some ways the city seems very small to me.

The Big Boy Update:  At "Bring your parents to school" day yesterday I saw lots of interesting work my son has been doing.   He showed me multiple things, proud of how he could do each of them by himself.   He had lots of energy and sort of hop-skipped to the door of the classroom (which was open).  He looked at me and said, "this work is called 'going outside and running laps'".   I told him he could go ahead and he dashed off.   There were two staff outside and when I explained what he was doing they both laughed, understanding.    When he got back I told one of his teachers and she explained, "we let them run laps in the rain the other day because they had so much energy to burn."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was tired out from our school parade to the new building site today.   After a bath I was drying her hair on the counter and she fell asleep right there as I did so.   We relocated her to the bed, naked, and let her sleep until dinnertime.

The Seven O'clock Alarm Clock

I have an alarm clock.  It has two settings.  The first is to wake up at 5:15 am to go to the gym.  I seem to use that a decent bit (possibly more than my sleepy body wants me to use it).   There is a second setting I use to use that goes off at seven o'clock.   I used that setting on mornings when I needed to get the children to school on time.  

I haven't needed the second setting in a while though.   There may have been some sort of alarm clock virus that is only contagious to young children, because my two now have that setting in their personal bodily alarm clocks.

Something recently triggers them to get up almost right at seven o'clock.  Ten minutes before seven?  All is quiet in the house.   Ten minutes after seven and there's a good chance we have one or two toddlers in our bedroom asking us if it's morning time and if they can have breakfast now.

What age is it that they start sleeping in again?

The Big Boy Update:  This morning my son said to me very excitedly, "I remembered!"  I looked over and he had remembered—he had put his plate and cup on the counter after eating breakfast.   Yesterday ended in tears when I lost my temper because both children forgot to put their plates up and the dog got about four days worth of calories off the table.    It was a C- parenting moment for me.   I was so happy when my son remembered this morning that I whisked him off the floor and gave him a great big hug and kiss and told him how proud I was of him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is confused by the birthday song lyrics they sing in her classroom.   The song talks about how the Earth goes around the sun and how, "it takes twelve months to go around".  My daughter thinks it's saying, "it takes enough to go around" which makes me laugh because I always get a mental image of a very tired Earth trying to make it around the sun.

Fitness Update:  We went to the state fair for the last two days.   Because my iPhone Health app tracks steps, I know that I walked six miles yesterday and seven miles today.   Interesting statistics for doing nothing more than having your phone in your pocket all day.

Bionic Eyes

I had something called a "clear lens exchange" done last year on my eyes.   I wasn't a good candidate for LASIK or other surface eye treatments but this option was not only a good choice, it had long-term benefits.

It's the same surgery you would have if you had a cataracts and your cloudy lens was replaced with a non-cloudy (or clear) one.   I had hardening of the lenses so replacing them with artificial ones helped regain my vision.  

There were some adjustments that needed to be made and it took some months before I was really in a position where I wasn't in need of distance or near glasses.   By the time I was finished, I had experienced about every kind of vision you can think of, aside from being blind.    I now know what it's like not be able to recognize who's standing across the room and I have lived through not being able to tell how many fingers I was holding up on my own hand.   

It took a while and aside from a few little things, I don't think about my vision that much.   Yesterday though, I discovered an interesting advantage to my artificial eyes.    

We set up the front porch in preparation for Halloween.   I have this plan to hand out adult beverages on the 31st (as well as candy for the children).   I've been spending lots of time on this beverage plan and it's been evolving steadily.   At this point it involves glow sticks, blood collection vials and black lights.  

We set up the black lights in the interior areas of the porch, aiming them in at the door.   This way when I come out to deliver a black-light reactive beverage to thirsty adults, it will have a luminous glow as I step out onto the porch.   

These two black lights are cool.   They're purple cool.   They light up the entire interior of our porch with a beautiful purple glow.   My husband and I were testing the glowing vials to see which mix of liquids glowed the most and I started talking about the purple.   "What purple", my husband said?  "The purple aura from the lights.  The cool purple glow all around us."   He  didn't see it. 

We did some tests.  I could definitely see something he couldn't.   There was a band of purple on the wall in the entryway that was strikingly obvious to me that he couldn't discern at all.   When I put my hand over the purple area my clear nail polish glowed green...and he could see that, but it couldn't see the purple light.    

He said, "it's your bionic eyes!"  I remember when I had the first eye done (they do one at a time) and how it was striking how some colors were the same in both eyes and other colors were significantly different across the natural lens and the artificial one.   The chair in our living room had much different shades of brown and rust for a few weeks until the second eye was done.   I wanted desperately to take a picture of the difference, but I couldn't manage to get a camera into my brain to do so, so I was stuck trying to describe it to people. 

I wondered if it was the artificial lenses, or if it was the natural change of a human lens over time.   Were older people more likely to not be able to see the color difference because their lenses had changed or stopped letting in certain light waves?   Uncle Jonathan (who is in his early thirties) said he could see a little purple tonight when we asked him but it wasn't really bright it didn't sound like.   My sitter (who is seventeen) said she could see the purple, including the purple band on the wall in the entry way.  

Is it my bionic eyes or is it age?   I don't know, but it's pretty cool to see that bright purple light and know I can see something invisible to other people.  

The Big Boy Update:  We were at a birthday party this past weekend at a roller skating rink.   My son was excited to get some roller skates and try skating.   We headed over to get fitted for skates but when I got to the counter, my son wasn't there.   I looked back and he was all the way at the other side of the rink, stuck in the same place, never having moved a step...because he got sucked into something on the television.   He's hit that age.   He can get glued to the spot when something grabs his attention on the television.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got to ride in, "The Awesome Car" (the Tesla) yesterday with daddy.  He drove normally and calmly until one point when he needed to get out into traffic.   The Tesla moves when you ask it to, and it moves fast.   When he did that my daughter said, "woah!"  Then she said, "I wanna do that again."   She said that after every time my husband hit the acceleration for her.   You don't have to go fast to get the feeling of acceleration that my daughter clearly thought was fun.  

Fitness Update:  Yoga again at the clubhouse today.  Yoga is humbling.   You don't even break a sweat, but boy is it hard.  

Autism Study

My son participated in a study today to help researchers try to determine the cause of autism.   He will be one of 3600 participants across six states.   My son shows no signs of autism or anything in the autism spectrum, but his (and my) data will be part of the study.

I've been involved in several steps of the study prior to today, including lots of paperwork and multiple long phone conversations answering question after question on medical and family history for both my son, my daughter and me.  After the first phone interview the information I gave was entered into their matrix and they determined we could participate in the study.   Today was the final step: the clinic visit.

My son and I drove to the research lab after school.  He answered lots of questions and played "games" while I filled out more consent forms, took bodily measurements and gave blood and saliva samples.  Then I went into a room with one-way glass and was able to watch the last half of the interview with my son.    He made me laugh at some of the answers he gave.  I was surprised at what he knew and the answers he readily gave.  I was also interested in what he didn't know or didn't want to do.

The next and final step was to get saliva and blood from my son.  He laughed and talked to the research staff while they swabbed his mouth and wrung out the saliva into a collection tube.  Next, we needed to get six vials of blood.   He's never had blood drawn before so they told me how to hold him in my lap, isolating his legs so he couldn't kick, his arm so he couldn't grab and his shoulder so he couldn't twist.    He did none of these things.

He did wail pitifully when she missed the vein on the first arm and spent thirty seconds trying to find it in his arm, probing deeper and deeper.   He didn't want to do the second arm and they would have stopped, but we came here to get blood and be a member of the study and by golly we were getting that blood sample.   He wasn't happy, but he was fairly stoic and honestly pretty brave about the whole thing.

When we were done he didn't want to go home.  The only thing he wanted to do was go back out into their waiting room and play in their play room for a while.  He saw all the toys in there when we arrived and didn't get a chance to play with them before he was called back.   I let him play for a half-hour before we headed home.    I told him I was proud of him for helping in the study to learn more about autism.

The Big Boy Update:   The researcher asked my son a lot of things today to learn about his development.  Most of the questions and tests he had fun answering.  Some of the answers made me laugh.   One in particular made me realize we haven't talked to him about money very much.   She put down some coins and asked first what the quarter was called.   He said, "American".  He told her the dime was also called, "American", and so was the penny.   The nickel however, was called "money".  Later she came back to currency, asking him what a dime was.   He answered, "boring" to which she laughed.   He does have good taste in cars it seems though.   She asked what a car was for.   He told her we had a family car and an awesome car and the awesome car was a Tesla and that he liked the family car but sometimes he got to ride in the awesome car.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  What does she want?   My daughter's birthday is rapidly approaching and we don't know what she wants.  She will, I'm sure, have many ideas and opinions as she grows older, but for this birthday, she just doesn't have any specific passions.   Today my husband took her to the toy store to see if she would latch onto any one thing.    She liked a lot of things, but not one thing over all the rest.   There was a large green bear she liked, but it may have been the huge amount of green.   Now that I think of it, green is pretty much her passion.   Now that I think about it, I think she's going to have a "Green" birthday party.  Green as in the color.

It's About Process, Not Results

My children bring home "work" from time to time that they made during the school day.   Usually it's nothing to celebrate about from an artistic standpoint.  So far we've gotten lots of pages with scribbles on them, some little cards with a stitch or two of thread sewn through them, pieces of paper or foam glued randomly onto something or little pieces of cut paper.   In short, not things you'd want to keep in the scrapbook because it doesn't show much artistic skill.

My daughter's painting yesterday was somewhat of an anomaly and it got me thinking about what developmental goals my children are working towards in their Montessori classroom and how those goals are somewhat different than what I've seen elsewhere.

Montessori isn't about finished product, it's about process and the steps within that process.   My neighbor's daughter has a wall on which they have the most adorable little artwork and craft things she's done at her school.   It's the classic handprint turkey you've seen I'm sure, but all sorts of neat variations on projects a three-year-old can do and be successful doing.

Montessori doesn't do anything like that.   The focus is on a specific skill like pinscher grasping and sewing.   I've prepared the "sewing cards" for the classes in the past.  You cut up little four-inch squares and then poke five or six holes into the paper in a straight line or curve.   The child then takes a special needle threader, threads the needle and then sews the needle back and forth across the holes.    My two-year-old would come home with little pieces of paper with cross-stitch string sewn into them.  She threaded that needle herself (I found out how when I saw the threader they were using and immediately ordered one for myself.)

What's the end product?  Not much to celebrate, but the process she's learned and the fine motor skills she's learned and the patience it took for her to carefully thread the needle is the point.  We don't have a lot of cool arts and crafts to display around the house that our children have brought home from school, but after seeing what's being done from a learning perspective, I don't mind.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was having issues this morning.  Before school there were large brown streaks in his pants and when he came home from school he told me he'd pooped in his pants a little, saying, "it was squishy for a while but now it's dry."   I think he was a bit backed up because at the end of lunch he tried and tried to go but couldn't.    We got home and changed him (washing his lower-half in the tub to get the now crusty matter off him).   About twenty minutes later I found him in the bathroom again, saying he'd gone a little in his pants.  This time, he was trying to take off the partially-soiled underpants and was unhappy he'd gotten some on his hands...so he wiped them on the wall.   I yelled.   He cried.  I apologized and explained why it wasn't a good idea to wipe poop on the wall.   He had another lower-half bath in the tub and then asked me what I'd done to clean the wall so I explained how an adult had to do the cleaning and disinfecting steps and next time, could he just wash his hands in the sink please?   About an hour later I came upstairs, wondering where he'd gone to, hear him calling out that he needed a wipe.   I think he'd been sitting on the potty for quite some time waiting for me.   The good news is, if there was blockage it's gone now.  Trust me on this one.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son has never cared about writing his name, but my daughter seems to want to know how her name is written and spelled.   She will frequently get a piece of paper, draw on it, maybe fold it and then come to you and ask you to spell her name.   She watches very carefully as you spell her name and then carries the paper around, showing anyone else that her name is on the page.

The Baby

My children have been talking about, "the baby" for a day or two now.   I wasn't sure what they meant until this afternoon when I figured it out.  Now I'm taking part in the game with them.

My children play well together some of the time.  Some of the time they seem to want to inflict harm on each other and a portion of the time they just do their own thing, ignoring each other.   Over the past few days they've been saying things like, "I'm a baby" and making funny noises.  Sometimes they've told me I was the baby and there have been times when they've referred to the baby as though it's in another part of the house.

They have several dolls, but I didn't remember if any of the baby versions were out in their room right now (their toys aren't all out at once).   When I went upstairs to get their clothes this morning—amongst baby-related comments at breakfast—I saw a naked baby doll on one of their beds and realized this was what they must have been talking about.

This afternoon during snack, I noticed my children were suddenly missing.   I also noticed they didn't put their snack bowls on the counter after leaving the table.   That's not good because the dog will jump up on the table and eat food that's not put away—and my children know this.   But when I looked at the table, not only were their bowls not there, their cups were gone too.

I yelled out to them that they had to come back downstairs because we eat our food at the table, not other areas of the house (this being true for the smaller members of our household who are also the most messy).

They immediately came back downstairs, popcorn bowl and juice cup in hand.  My son said, "but we wanted to go feed the baby."  It struck me that they've never tried to take their snack away from the table before, and that this was a real gesture of sharing so I told them to sit back down at the table and I'd be right back.

I got the baby from the bed, brought it downstairs and sat it on one of the chairs at the table with them.   They were both very happy to see the baby there with them.   Then they finished their snacks and went outside, telling the baby goodbye.

I wonder where I'm going to find the baby next and what mischief its going to have gotten into?

The Big Boy Update:   My son was excited when Ryan and Kiera came over this afternoon and rang the doorbell.   They ran out into the back yard ready to play together.   About ten minutes later my son was back at the door, looking dejected.   I asked him what happened and he told me he told Ryan and Kiera to go home (they did).   From what I gathered, he wasn't getting his way so he told them to leave.   He told me, "I'm going to be the ruler when I grow up until I'm five!"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Pink and blue painting.   My daughter must have gotten a lesson in painting in school this week.   I've substituted before and I know this isn't just slapping paint on a piece of paper.  There is an entire series of steps the child must learn to do the "painting work" at school.  They have to put on the smock, put the paper on the easel, paint the paper, remove the paper and lay it to dry on a rack, wash the easel, clean the brush and return the smock so that the next child can have a turn.   knowing all of that, I was impressed to see her come home with a painting today, knowing she'd been given a lesson in painting.   My husband and I liked her painting—we thought it had good composition:

Downs Syndrome Buddy Walk

One of our neighbors has a young sister with Downs Syndrome.   Her husband is on the board of the local group and has helped to coordinate the buddy walk for the past two years.   We were invited to join them last year for the walk but had another commitment.   This year we made sure to make it.

The weather wasn't great, drizzling a portion of the time, but there was a lot to do there and we spent the time with many of our other neighbors who cane together to help walk with the now six-year-old Cassie.   Cassie came from out of state to participate and spend some days with her older sister, our neighbor, who is also a local news caster, doubling as the announcer for the event.

There were hot dogs and ice cream and juice boxes and bounce houses and a clown doing magic and balloons and it was all free.   Everyone was so friendly and happy.    I'd been to these types of "races" before, where the cost of registration goes in part to the t-shirt you get as well as covering running the event.   The remainder goes to the fundraising group.

But when we got there I realized I hadn't been to something like this before.   This wasn't a race and it wasn't a run—it was a walk around a big field at the park, and it was the last part of the entire day.    The "walk" component was secondary and not the main focus of the event.   There were no runners, there were no timing chips and no one wore numbers on their chests to make their traversal of the hals-mile loop seem more official.

I found out also that a significant portion of the costs of the event were donated so that more of the money could go to the charity—including the tips the clown was getting.

It was a fun, albeit cold, afternoon.   I didn't get a chance to meet Cassie last year but when I met her this year she gave me a big hug and a huge grin just because that's the kind of girl she is.

The Big Boy Update:  Carving knife.  Of late, my son has been using unkind words with quite some strong emotions behind them when he gets upset.   This is something we've been working on for a few months.   The word, 'kill' is used less-often when he gets angry or frustrated now, but he's replacing it with other things.   Recently, he's been saying he'll cut you up with a carving knife or some other unpleasant variant of how he thinks a carving knife should be used.   I realized today where he got it from: the song, Three Blind Mice.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is obsessed with the birthday song they sing at school.   She's been repeating it a lot lately.   When they celebrate a birthday in her class, they put a candle in the center of the group circle to represent the sun.   The birthday child carries a small globe of the Earth around the group while the class sings, "The Earth goes 'round the sun, the Earth goes 'round the sun, it takes twelve months to go around and then <child's name> was one."   They repeat the song until they reach the child's age.   The children love this.   My daughter is looking forward to her birthday in a month.

Fitness Update:  I didn't realize my iPhone 6 had been tracking every step and flight of stairs I'd been taking since I got it on launch day.  My neighbor's daughter told me I could add it to my Health dashboard and I was surprised to see I'd already racked up eight-thousand steps by mid-afternoon.    At this rate I'll be over twelve-thousand by bedtime.   Maybe I get to eat a bonus donut or something for that many steps?

The Roller Skating Rink

We had a birthday party to go to this morning.  It was for the son of one of my good friends at the school.   Her son and my son are in the same class this year and my son talks about George a lot.    The party was in a skate rink.

My husband got them dressed in shorts and t-shirts for the warm day and exercise they'd likely get skating and on the way to the location—we'd never been before—he casually says to me, "this is a roller skating place, right?"   Oh no, is it?   I panicked, thinking we'd be dressed for trouble if this was an ice-skating rink.   But no, it was roller skating.

We all tried to skate and most of the family (aside from my husband) did a lot of not-skating.  We shuffled, fell, looked silly and then decided to take the skates off.    There was a bounce house and some game machines that handed out tickets that kept my children busy for a good while.   How they got tickets out of the machines with no coins is still a question; but they had fun.

I did do a bit of skating.  I was quite good in the days of my youth, but apparently roller skating is not a skill you retain.   My husband, not surprisingly, was a wonder out on the rink.   Several of us were chatting when he whizzed by one time and we all cheered and clapped at him.

We didn't do the roller skating version of the Hokey Pokey.   Gosh, I remember that.   Those were the days...

The Big Boy Update:  We had an all-school event today at a park.   Rain was predicted part-way through the event, but as it was going to be sunny and warm at the start, we took the chance.  The first  hour was glorious and then the thunderstorm clouds came in quickly.   When it started to pour, most children and adults gathered under the large shelter where the food was.   A few children, my son included, had a blast playing on the playground and splashing in the quickly-forming puddles.    He was excited when he finally came up to the shelter and saw me, exclaiming, "I'm wet!"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was fine with her head wound yesterday, but today she does not want you or anything else to get near it.  She went to a birthday party and an all-school event with dirty, un-brushed hair.    Tonight we gave her a bath (we were advised not to yesterday) and she is looking much cleaner and less like a ragamuffin now.

Fitness Update:  Seven miles today.  My SI joint was out of alignment, or not moving well or whatever technical term my chiropractor would use to describe the situation where I can't get up or down from a chair/bed without being in a lot of pain.   I decided to run to see if it would help work it out.   The first two miles my right SI joint and inside of my left knee hurt.  The knee was dealing with undue pressure from compensating for the SI joint's lack of full motion.    At about two miles it let up and the rest of the run was fairly normal.  It's a bit sore now, but I can get up and down from chairs without bracing myself again, so overall I call that a win.

Staples

My husband went to get the children today while I was at the house with the carpet cleaning gentlemen.   When they got home, we all went outside and started to eat on the porch (as all the tables   and chairs were up or pushed out of the way of the carpeted areas.

I looked at my daughter's head and said, "I think she painted with red today."   I picked up her hair and realized it wasn't paint, it was blood and she had an inch-long gash in her head.  I picked up the phone and called the school, because any time there is any injury to the head (not matter how small) they have to write up an incident report.

The administrator went to ask the class lead teacher, who didn't know anything about it—and she was the one who put my daughter in the car.   The wound was on the side of her head that her teacher was looking at when she fastened the car seat, so it must not have been bleeding much at when she put her in.   It was bleeding, but it was doing so very slowly, so that made sense to my husband and me.

I told the administrator to give me a call if they thought of anything and thanked them.    We took a picture of the cut and I texted it to my friend who is a doctor.   She called me immediately and told me she'd sent it on to her husband who was in the ER with a pediatrician (he's a doctor too) and the pediatrician said to take my daughter in to get some staples, because he thought the cut was deep enough to merit them.

I told my neighbor thanks for the advice and I would do so.   I called our pediatrician's office and the nurse told me they didn't do it so I should take her to the emergency room.  Another quick talk with my neighbor and she suggested Urgent Care as an alternative.  I didn't think a slow-bleeding one-inch wound really merited an emergency room visit, so I put my happy daughter into the car and she and I and her pink tutu went off to Urgent Care.

Just as we arrived, the assistant teacher in my daughter's class called and was quite worried.  She told me a story of something that happened just before my daughter got into the car at pickup that she thought must have been when she cut her head:  she had been sitting on the bench for after-school children because she wanted to be beside Malcom and there had been something that happened where they bumped into each other and she fell down.   She cried for a short time and Susan (the teacher) talked to her and Malcom about how bumps happen when we're not careful.   And that was it.  She stopped crying and sat on the other bench and shortly was put into the car.

Her teacher was very apologetic and concerned.  I told her to please not worry about it because she wasn't upset when she got home and had there not been blood, we wouldn't have noticed it.    I hung up and we went into the Urgent Care to check my daughter in.

Forty minutes later we left the office with two staples in my daughter's head.   She was happy throughout the entire procedure, singing the school birthday song and chatting with me about the number of staples she was going to get among other things.   She cried for about twenty seconds after the staples went in, but other than that, it was a non-event in her mind.

She is, just as Papa said, his "Rough and Tumble Girl".

The Big Boy Update:   My neighbor's twenty-month-old is running now and has had lots of tumbles and face scrapes.   My son, in trying to help, kept stopping Whitaker yesterday from pushing the toy shopping cart at full speed down the street.   He was trying to help, but his way of stopping Whitaker was to try and grab him and make him stop.   When we realized what he was doing we told him it was very nice for him to try and protect Whitaker.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Two staples and hardly any tears (see above).   We're still not sure how it happened.   I hope no one turned us in as negligent parents.

Yoga, Round Two

I took a yoga class about a year ago with my next-door neighbor.   It was my first yoga class ever and for almost a year it was my only yoga class.

I have a thing going on in my right elbow.   I think it happened when I was in my early days of running and fell on it.   I think I snapped or messed up something.   It does this weird thunk thing if I do just the right (or wrong) motions.   It doesn't fare well if I have to lift straight up something heavier than twenty-five pounds and it seems weaker than the other elbow.  

I had an MRI on it and the evaluation was that nothing looked wrong.   But I notice something and it doesn't seem stable and after that one hour of yoga, it was a complete mess for about a month.   The thing that surprised me was that I was doing things I did normally at the gym, but I was doing them to a more extreme level and for longer.   I mean hell, some days at the gym I'm sure I do over a hundred pushups with no problems, but holding myself in the pushup position and lifting a leg up and staying there through three yoga positions and I'm in elbow-trouble.

The person teaching the yoga class today is a neighbor who's offering yoga in our clubhouse.   I missed the first week so I go there early today and talked to her about alternate positions I could get into if I thought the elbow was going to be strained.   She said it sounded like the other class I'd gone to was a different type of yoga (she said some yoga-knowledgeable things at this point, but I don't remember the details.)

As of this evening, my elbow seems totally fine.  It was a tough class, but it was interesting and fun.   My neighbor is both a great teacher as well as a fun neighbor.  I hope I'll be able to make more of the classes.

The Big Boy Update:  Daddy told me my son had decided what he wanted for his birthday on the ride to school this morning.   He told me what it was and I started to laugh, because I thought he was joking.   Then he asked my son (who was in the back seat) to tell me what he wanted and I'll be darned if he didn't know—in detail—the exact thing he had in mind.    He said he wanted a, "Lego transformer rescue helicopter with a hook that goes on the bottom that's an orange hook that's very long to hook the shark."   He then followed up with, "and then the people say, 'hip hip hooray.'"   We're not sure this item truly exists, but we're going to get him the closest thing we can find for his birthday.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's ideas on birthday presents are much more simple as well as non-specific.   We asked her several times and each time she told us the same thing, "I want a panda bear."  

Fitness Update:  Yoga and then a surprise, quick three mile run this afternoon.  Yoga was fun and I don't think I hurt my elbow, which is a great relief.

Cinnamon Dental Floss

When I was a child you could't have candy, food or gum with you at school.  I'm guessing the rules are largely the same now, but as I haven't been in school for quite a long number of years, I don't really know.   Maybe when my children are older they'll let me know what terribly unfair rules about food they have at their school and I'll try and be sympathetic, remembering my youth.

Gum was an outright no and if you were found with it, there were varying punishments the teachers would choose to employ.   I liked gum well enough, but I didn't break that rule from what I can remember.   It was candy that was my thing.   I loved candy.  I don't think I ever got enough candy and because candy made me "hyperactive" as they called it then, I rarely got any.    When other children had candy it was usually a precious commodity and they mostly didn't want to share it with me.

Then one day my good friend down the road pulled out some dental floss during lunch.   I got a whiff of cinnamon and asked who had gum?  He said it was his cinnamon dental floss and did I want some?   I did.  I definitely wanted some.   I remember having that piece of dental floss in my mouth for I think the next two periods, nursing the last bit of flavor out of it.   I vowed to beg my parents mercilessly until they got me some.

I don't remember when or how I got some, but eventually I did.  It was the best thing in school.   You had the cinnamon flavor, but you couldn't get in trouble for taking care of your teeth.   I think I wanted to be caught, but I never was.    

I'm fairly certain I used up the roll of floss too quickly and my parents caught on and didn't buy me any more after that.

The Big Boy Update:  We were talking about Mimi and Gramps on the way to school and I told them they were in the mountains but that they would come to see us soon.   My son cried out from the back seat, "they're not in the mountains, they're in the forest!"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I was typing my blog post yesterday when my daughter climbed up onto the desk and exclaimed to me, "there's an O!"   I looked at where she was pointing (at the bottom of the screen) and realized she was pointing to the Microsoft Outlook icon, which is a large 'O'.   I didn't even know she knew that letter.  Go school!

Fitness Update:  We went to the gym today but I was distracted.   There was a lunar eclipse during the time we were there.   The moon was mostly covered by the earth when we arrived and I ran out after one of the sets to see a thin crescent, just before the full eclipse.   I wasn't able to see the full eclipse due to the trees when it happened though.   It was still occurring when we were on the way home, even though we were in civil twilight and a much-lightened sky from the east.   I tried from several spots but I didn't get to see the red moon before it set.

Indoor-Outdoor Weather

It is so nice outside right now.   It's not too hot or too humid or too cold.   It hasn't rained in a while and the air is just friendly and nice.   Mornings are cooler, in the sixties, fifties or even forties, but it warms up to over seventy by mid-day mostly.    It's what I like to call indoor-outdoor weather.

I'm taking this time to work on the deck, porch and two patios under them.  I've put a treatment on the deck and power-washed it twice to get the grey and stains off the wood.   After it dries I'll put on some water sealant.

For the brick patios below, I'm power-washing those and then adding filler sand between the bricks.   The neighbor's children, Ryan and Kira, helped me with that tonight and my children had fun shoving sand around into the areas between the bricks.    When that's all done, I'll water-seal those areas too.  

And during all of this work, moving around furniture, applying product, cleaning, sealing, I'm leaving the doors to the house wide open.   We're all running in and out as a family and having a great time.  It's a nice time of year weather-wise.

The Big Boy Update:  Esterday.   My son doesn't pronounce "yesterday" correctly.  I told him how it was pronounced tonight and he still got it wrong.   Then I said, "you start it with 'yes', can you say 'yes-terday'?"   He got it right without hesitating and immediately smiled.   Daddy and I cheered for him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Suckystrips.  My neighbor (who is also a doctor) recommended we use steri-strips on my daughter's chin wound.   We had been having trouble getting them to adhere and today my husband told her he'd renamed them, "suckystrips" because they won't stay on for longer than an hour.   Suddenly she looked ashen and said, "oh no, I forgot to tell you to get Benzoin to adhere them!"   So tomorrow, we plan on having steri-strips that actually stick.

Fitness Update:   I was going to go to the gym this morning but my neck and back said no.   This afternoon it felt better so I got in a six mile run instead.   It's nice weather this time of year for a run.

I Am That Mother

When I was nineteen I lived in a townhouse with my best friend.   We were still in college, but we were excited to be living on our own.   The community of townhouses wasn't in a college area; it was all sorts of ages and families intermixed.

My next-door-neighbor became one of my best friends for many years and I have fond memories of her three children.  There was the tall, strange woman down the row that had a construction business with a very deep voice and overall stature of a man.   She was the nicest person you'd ever meet, but some people I heard had referred to her as, "Thang" because they didn't know what to make of her.   I heard from someone years later that she had had gender reassignment surgery.  I don't know if that was true, but I always liked her as a person, regardless.

There was a family that had two small children that played outside all the time.   They mostly played in a diaper or underwear.   Sometimes they'd run around carrying the cordless phone, leaving it in various places where the parents wouldn't be able to easily find it.    I remember at that time my roommate and I said, "when we have kids, we won't let them run around in a diaper."

But as it would turn out, I'm that parent in our neighborhood that lets her kids run around in underpants, a diaper or even nothing.  Today I was power-washing the deck and my children were playing in the back yard.   They decided to go under the deck to get, "rained on" and then decided being wet wasn't all that fun, so they took all their clothes off, leaving them under the deck to get filthy with the dirty water from above.

I noticed they were out in the yard yelling and screaming happily so I sprayed the water up in the air to land in their general direction.   More screams.   I aimed the water at the slide and they liked that even better.   For the next half-hour there was nudity in the back yard while I made progress on the deck.

When I got done, I brought them sandwiches and underpants to the play structure.   I knew our neighbors children were going to come out soon and I felt a modicum of modesty might be in order (not that their mother would mind).  

So yes, I'm the nudist or the lazy or even the crazy mom in the neighborhood now.   But I'm totally cool with that.

The Big Boy Update:  Loud Laughter.   In the last week my son has started to laugh out loud and even guffaw at things on the television.   He pitched a fit tonight because he wanted Mickey Mouse before bedtime and we told him he was watching Winnie the Pooh so he'd better get over it.   Two minutes later and there is crazy, happy laughter coming from him as he looked raptly at the television.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   "Is Cheese a nickname?"   We don't even realize we call my daughter "cheese" still until someone points it out.   Uncle Jonathan and I were picking the children up at school on Thursday and I asked him, "which one do you want?"   He said, "I'll take Cheese."   Her teacher overheard and asked me, "Is Cheese a nickname?"  I told her, "When her brother was little he couldn't say 'Reese', so he called her 'Cheese'".

Fitness Update:  I went to the gym this morning after cantilevering myself out of bed, avoiding a position that caused me a lot of distress in my lower, right back.   I went into the gym, warmed up on the elliptical for ten minutes and then went one block over in the car to the Chiropractor's office to be the first patient when they opened up at 6:00AM.   I was back not fifteen minutes later and was able to make the last thirty minutes of the workout.   It was, however, a fairly feeble workout as I needed to have a lot of substitution exercises.   At least I made it.

Captain's Wafers and Frozen Golf Balls

We played mini-golf today at Myrtle Beach with my in-laws.  I won.   I won, playing with people who play golf regularly—and who are good at playing golf.   They must have all been coming down with something.   That, or they were letting me win.   Or, and I think this might have been the real culprit, the course was just easy.    It certainly had nothing to do with skill, I can tell you that.

We went to lunch and we were opening crackers for my children while we waited for the meal to arrive.   My mother-in-law mentioned how they were Lance's Captain's Wafers and that she liked them.   I had a sudden flash back of my first introduction to Captain's Wafers and how it also related to golf from when I was a child.

My mother was a math professor at a college when I was young.   At some point when I was in elementary school, she moved up into Financial Aid and then later became the Assistant to the President of the college.   As the president's assistant, her office was in the President's suite, which was half a floor of the main administration building.   That area housed more than just his office, including a large board room for trustee meetings and several other offices for staff.

I spent a lot of time up there on off-hours when my mother was working late or on weekends.   I remember playing on the board room tables that were shiny and black.   I could slide all over them and climb under them.   It was a fun room for a young child.    There was also a small kitchenette that was mostly empty of food, but sometimes had things left over from a recent meeting.

One day after school I was waiting for my mother to be finished working and I was hungry.  She looked around and found some Lance's Captain's Wafers and told me I could eat as many as I wanted.    They didn't look that appealing as little rectangular crackers in two-packs, but when I tasted the first I suddenly changed my mind.   They were buttery crackers and they tasted good.

My mother left and in a few minutes I went back into the kitchenette to look for something to drink.   I opened the refrigerator and didn't see much so I opened the freezer and was met with a strange sight—a stack of three golf balls directly on top of one another.

I stood there with the door open for a while, just looking at those golf balls and wondering how they were standing on top of one another like that.   I also wondered what they were doing in the freezer.   It was odd.

My mother came back later and I showed her the golf balls.   She laughed and said that Dr. Weems had found out it was possible to stack golf balls if you were very steady-handed and accurate and he'd been working on doing a stack of three.   There may have been something about adding a little water to the top of the ball in the hopes they would freeze together, making the bond stronger temporarily, but I don't really remember.   She told me it was okay if I wanted to take the stack down, so I did.

Let me tell you, stacking three golf balls is delicate work.   I spent lots of time trying to recreate the stack of three, but I never got past two.   I think I ate a lot of Captain's Wafers while I worked on the problem.   I gave up on the golf balls, but I still love Captain's Wafers to this day.

The Big Boy Update:  We played mini-golf today with my in-laws.   My son didn't really care about the ball or even the large stick, otherwise known as a club.   What he wanted to do was climb on the big rocks (cement boulders), lean over and dip his hands into the unnaturally blue-colored water and play on the railings and ropes.   He scored zero for his round, but had lots of fun in the process.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter played mini-golf with us today.   She was interested in putting her ball at the start of each hole and trying to hit it.   Mostly, she missed.   This didn't bother her at all, as she just pick up the ball and took it to the green right by the hole to hit it in.  Or, alternately, she would just drop it into the hole itself.   Then she would cheer loudly.    Her score was riddled with errors and penalty shots she never took, but she had a fantastic time none-the-less

Beach in October

We're at Myrtle Beach this weekend with my in-laws.  They have a time share here and they've invited us to visit them during their week's stay about this time of year for the past several years, but this is the first year we've been able to join them.  

This isn't the time of year I think of as ideal beach visiting time.   School has started, the temperature has dropped by ten or more degrees and the water is likely much chillier to swim in.   And while that may be true some years (I don't know from experience) it's not so this year.   The water is I think the warmest it's been all summer.   Both this weekend and last weekend the ocean was very warm.  

The temperature hasn't been that hot, but it's been nicely warm and sunny.  The pools at the resort here are a nice temperature so we got in and out without noticing it was October and we should be cold.

My children are adjusting to a new situation here at the condo: they are sleeping in the same bed.   They've never done this before and they're not one bit upset by it, but it is an adjustment—especially when it comes to calming down and going to sleep.   Nana brought her bed rails and that's been helpful.   As I write this, my husband is in the room with them, making sure they aren't having fun giggling and kicking each other and going to sleep.   He may be in there a while...

We went out for lunch today and decided to try the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch.   We hoped to get there a bit early to beat the crowds.   When we arrived, following directions on the map, we encountered two things: first, there was a huge Mustang car show in the surrounding parking lot and second, the Hard Rock Cafe was for some reason in a pyramid.  

I don't know about you, but I have this thing for all things ancient Egyptian.  I always assume everyone else does too.   So piles of people hot from looking at Mustangs and a pyramid in which you can eat and I figured we'd be in a line for forty-five minutes to get seated.    But off season and we walked in to an almost empty restaurant shortly before noon.   I'm not sure why the building was a pyramid or why the theme was Egyptian throughout the building with splashes of Rock and Roll memorabilia here and there, but we had a good lunch.

For dinner tonight we went to a "mega buffet".   I'm not sure what you'd call one of these places, but that name seems to fit.   I've been to buffets in Las Vegas casinos and this one not only rivaled it, it surpassed it.   The building was massive, the decorations were nautical in nature and there were an astounding number of miniature ships and boats.   We could have stayed there for hours looking at the displays alone.  There was a children's play area that I would have gladly paid to have my kids come and spend time in on a rainy day.   Getting them to the table was a trick in and of itself.  When I asked, I was told the restaurant had seating for 1004 diners at the same time.   It was a delicious dinner experience all around.

After dinner we drove to downtown Myrtle Beach so my husband could see some of the more prominent sights as he'd never been here before.  As we drove past hotel after hotel on the beach-front road, my husband said, "that one has a sign that says, 'Color Television', do they even make black-and-white televisions any more?"   I'm not sure he was as impressed with Myrtle Beach as we'd hoped he'd be after that.

The Big Boy Update:  My son started talking about ghosts tonight in the car on the way home from dinner.   He told us about how ghosts were bad and that they killed people and they have spooky eyes.  When we asked him where he heard this (because, we told him, we didn't think ghosts were bad or did those things), he told us his teacher from last year had told him.   We're pretty darned sure Elim didn't tell him frightening things about ghosts.  My bet is some of the older children in his class that are four or five-years-old passed on their thoughts on ghosts.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is getting interested in letters.   She wants you to draw her name or her brother's name.   Today at the beach she spent a long time drawing squiggles and lines in the sand.   Some of her squiggles looked like writing while some of her lines were as long as a grocery store aisle, although not nearly so straight.