Looking Up Left

I watched the show, Lie To Me when it was on several years ago.   Through that show I learned a lot about how there is a lot more being conveyed than the words a person is saying if you know how to read the nuances of communication.

On one of the episodes they mentioned that the person was making up a memory instead of recalling a real memory because when we stop to recollect, we look up and to the left.  I don't know if this is true for everyone or for every time, but I think it's true for me a lot of the time.   I was driving in the car the other day, thinking about something and whatever that something was I was trying to remember details about it.   I noticed I was looking slightly up and to the left every time I tried to recall specifics.

Interesting, I thought.   Let me see if I can do the same thing but to the right.   It was mentally uncomfortable, I can tell you that.   I would look up and to the right and try to think of something but I would be distracted by things in my visual frame of view.   I think I'd best mention at this point that I wasn't driving down the road and looking aimlessly off in various directions, collecting data for this blog post and not paying attention to passersby or other vehicles.

It was unproductive.   I couldn't drop out of the visual input from my eyes to engage in memory recall.  It may not be a "tell that someone is lying" but it could be something like crossing your arms with one arm on top or interlacing your fingers with your hands and having the same thumb on top every time.    It might just be that that's how I learned the skill when I was young and now I use it whenever I'm trying to remember the number of cups of cheerios in the cookie recipe I've been making for twenty years.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is working on putting both Legos and Duplo blocks together still.   He's been making some strides in both following instructions and creating his own models.  This is what he came up with today, color pattern and design:

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted a frozen drink for lunch.   She really liked it and spent a lot of time drinking it in the back seat while we went to the next stop on our schedule.  When we got there, she was shivering in her car seat, trying to tell me she was cold.   I told her cold drinks could do that when you drink a lot of them at once.

Fitness Update:  25.2 miles or 26.4 miles.   I'm not sure if I ran a marathon distance today or not.  I am sure it was very cold when I started and the fountains in the park were still frozen hours later when we stopped in to get water.   Eventually they thawed out and we got some much-needed hydration.   When I got home the distance tracking app I use was at 25.2 but Apple's Health app said 26.4 and both were tracking from the same starting point.   Either way, I'm tired.

Cram It All In

I'm sitting at my computer trying to type quickly.   I'm doing so because my fingers are cold.   I don't know why, but my fingers are always cold in the winter.   My neighbor runs with her hands in her sweat shirt, Uncle Jonathan doesn't run with any gloves and I run with one pair of gloves inside a pair of ski mittens.    But that has absolutely nothing to do with my starting point which was I'm trying to cram a lot of things in before dinner and before our movie night guests get here and interrupt any chance I have of writing this blog post with chatter, questions and banter in my general direction.    Nothing like interruptions to cramp the style of a writer.

Oh, and I wanted to write a lot tonight here.  So I'm cramming in several little things into one post.  Only I've wasted time talking about my fingers being cold.   Now that I think of it, that's how a lot of my blog posts go: me planning on writing one thing and an entire other thing ends up on the screen when I'm done.    Okay, enough of this.  Seriously this time.  I'm on to topic one...

Finally Shoulder-length
I've been growing my hair out for what seems like an eternity.   It seems long because my hair grows infernally slow.  I've watched it get longer over time and for months and months it's been what I would call, "shoulder-length,"  I'm not really sure what the definition is for that term so I used the broadest possible range of what I thought people would have in their mind when they said, "she has shoulder-length hair."   It could mean almost touching the tops of your shoulders just as your neck ends.   It could also mean the much longer length of where your shoulder turns down and becomes your arm.  That's several inches on my body.  But finally, my hair is what I would now term, "long hair" as it is definitely below my shoulders.   I don't know what other hair-length terms come into play now other than the, "down to her waist" which is a length I won't be making it to.

My Car Just Got Faster
Our car just got faster over night.   I don't know if this has ever happened in the history of car-don...and it's pretty freaking cool.  Elon Musk tweeted today that the, "Tesla P85D 0 to 60mph acceleration will improve by ~0.1 sec soon via over-the-air software update to inverter algorithm."   He further said that the vehicle we have, the P85 will also improve, but not by quite as much.    Last night, we got that software upgrade and this morning, our car had a new inverter algorithm to go just that little bit faster.   Can I say again how much I love my Tesla Model S?

The Four Hour Display Case
You know how some things just hit you as silly?   Legos have done this to me lately.    You get a cool model.   It's got eleven-thousand pieces or something and it takes you four hours to put the thing together.   When you're done you have a stunning (even if blocky) model that looks like a pixelated rendition of the actual object.    What do you think of doing next?   "Where can I show this thing off?"  If it was a particularly expensive model you might think, "I'm getting a display case for this baby."   Why do we do this?   We don't put books that took us twenty-three hours to read into a display case.   We don't frame pictures of our turkey dinners because they were a masterpiece to behold.    And yet we want to put something that someone else designed, a company manufactured and then we followed instructions to put it together onto a pedestal.   And even if we don't show it off, good grief, you can't take it apart because...well I don't know, wouldn't we want to take it apart so we could put it together again and re-enjoy the whole process?  Isn't they why we got the Lego model in the first place?    I'm guilty of all of these thoughts, and I can't adequately explain why.

The Dinner Crown
My dentist (and next-door neighbor) has two crowns on order for me.   Wait, no, four crowns.   two for the left upper for the implants.   I haven't been chewing on the left side for over a year.   Then, he put two temporaries in the right upper and is going to deliver all four on the same day.  There is a problem we didn't expect though:  The back upper-most tooth on the right is very shallow.   The temporary is barely holding on.   Two days after he put it on I was at dinner, eating some very crunchy potatoes and five minutes later realized I'd swallowed (and chewed up) the temporary crown.    He made me a new one, this time of acrylic for strength, and we've been working a fine line of me chewing as much as I can on the left and re-gluing the crown when it comes off.   It needs to stay in place so that the gums don't move inward.    At this point, I have borrowed dentals and temporary glue at home and I know how to cement it back in.   It's just become laughable at this point, but we're getting close to the delivery of the permanents on the 2nd of February.   The permanent glue will solve all the problems.   That cement doesn't come off without breaking the crown and pulling it off in pieces.

The Big Boy Update:  I told my son to try a bite of my escalloped apples at lunch.  I told him he used to love them (he did, he'd eat a whole bowl of the sweet things.)   He told me, "yeah, but when I'm four I don't like them.   When I'm five I'll like them again."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had a wand this morning in the car.   She would wave it and say, "Pocus Pocus, the window rolls down!"   My husband would roll it down from the driver's seat and my daughter thought she had magic powers.   This went on for a while until we told her the wand was, "out of magic powers for now and needed to recharge."

The Hand Mirror

I have a hand mirror in my top drawer at my vanity.  I'm not sure how many years I've had it, but it was made well before I was born.   I've had many hand mirrors in my life, but this one is one my mother gave me for nothing very special or eventful, and yet I've kept it.

It's no secret I like new things more than old things.   I don't want to live in an old house and revel in days gone by.   I don't want an old iPhone, I want the latest one and I don't care for antiques, I like shopping for new, modern furniture.   But then there's my hand mirror.

I don't know when or why, but I believe it was in the 1990's at some point that I mentioned to my mother I needed a hand mirror.   At that time she was still going to garage sales with my father every so often.   She never had much interest in material things, so she didn't go with him too much but one weekend she went with him and found an old, antique hand mirror for me.

She bought it and I've used it ever since.   I don't know that I was initially too excited about it as the mirror surface was irregular in a few areas, the mirror was heavy and it was old.  But I stuck it in my drawer and it's been with me since that day, traveling from house to house with me for likely twenty years now.

A few years ago we had something clogged in a gutter our gutter cleaners couldn't get out.   I remember my husband asking me to bring my hand mirror to him so the worker could use it.   As I brought it I was explaining how it was old and I wanted him to be careful.   About forty seconds later he handed the mirror back down and I was confused.    I thought he was going to use the mirror's handle to push down the leaves—which made no sense—instead of using it at an angle to look down the gutter down spout.    I felt foolish, but was glad to have my mirror back

I use the mirror every day now and I have a special twist and flip motion I use to put it back into the drawer.   My daughter discovered it two days ago and decided to kiss her reflection in it.   I really like my old mirror.   I think of my mother often when I use it.

The Big Boy Update:  My son likes to make up stories in the bed at the end of the night.  One night he was telling me a story which featured him as some sort of transformer super hero.   I asked him a question about his super powers and he told me, "my arms aren't made out of hoses, they're made out of carrots."   Well then, I'm glad we cleared that up.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been into tutus lately.   Every time they get clean, she pulls them out of the basket and puts one on.   She looks very cute in a tutu.

How Did You Not Know It Did That?

I had a lot of toys over my childhood.  Some of them did things like the remote controlled fire truck I got for Christmas one year or the baby doll that you could feed this pretend baby food and after a short while, it would fall out of the bottom where you had a diaper.    I remember both of those vividly.     But there were more toys and contraptions and creations and all sorts of things I worked with and played with as a child.

I remember my mother would come in sometimes while I was playing with something and I'd make it do a particular thing and she'd say, "I didn't know it did that."    I remember thinking, "boy, my mom sure is dumb.  How could she not know it did that, she bought it for me."

Today, I realized I've become the dumb mom.   We've gotten toys for our children and hoped it they would occupy them for long periods of time while educating them in a clean and quiet way so that upon our return, our children would be smart, sophisticated, well-mannered little human beings.  That, or we just hoped they'd be happy and give us time to get some things done or relax for a bit.

I carried a toy to my son today that went with the group of toys he was playing with that I'd found in another room.   He picked it up, moved it around in a way I didn't know it moved and then did something that made it talk to him.    I said, "I didn't know it did that," and suddenly understood my mother from so many years ago.

The Big Boy Update:  My son asked me, "what does 14 and 15 and 18 and 100 make?"  When I told him one-hundred-forty-seven he said, "that is the biggest number I've ever seen."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We have a step stool that has the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on it.   My daughter has learned their names.   Or, at least she thinks she has.   She told me they were called, Ahmet, Crockett, Nina and Frank.  Maybe Donatello, Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo have some new nicknames.

Break In!

My parents took us to dinner tonight.   We went to a new "mega buffet" of primarily Asian food.    When we got home the children were getting into the bath when the phone rang.   It was my father saying when they got home, someone had been in-progress of robbing their house.   They think the garage door opening had alerted the burglar (or there was a lookout) and the culprit escaped through the broken sliding glass door.

My parents were surprisingly calm.   They had called the police and were assessing the situation.   The burglar had gone straight to the bedroom, looking for jewelry and valuables and had taken some of my mother's things including her watch from college and her wedding ring.   Some of my father's things were taken, but most of his items were missed or hadn't been gotten to when they got home.

My mother's wallet was out on the desk, opened, but all money and credit cards were still there, suggesting this was where the burglar was when interrupted.   I called back a short while later to see how things were going to hear that the police were there, dusting for finger prints.   My mother had had her car entered earlier in the week in their driveway (she hadn't locked it) and had the change stolen.   The officer said they should report things like that because it indicates activity in the area.

It will be freezing this evening and a large, door-sized hole in your house lets out a lot of heat, so my father was preparing to cover it with plastic sheeting until he could get it replaced in the morning.  

My parents have taken this very well, saying it could have been far worse, and I agree, but I must admit I'm angry.   I think the thing that makes me the most sad is the loss of my mother's wedding band.  It was a plain gold band, but it was a band she's work for over fifty years.      On the whole though, she's okay, and that's the important thing.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is my little Style Captain.  He knows exactly what he wants to wear to school.   He picks out his own clothes and puts them on himself, but if you ask if you can help with the clothes as he's still eating breakfast he will tell you, "yes, can you get the blue pants with the red stripes and the black shirt with the red spider?"   And if one of those items is dirty, he can tell you what other option he wants as he mentally goes through his wardrobe.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Mirror kisser.   My daughter got the hand mirror this morning and looked at herself.  I'm not sure I've had the hand mirror out when she's been around in a while so I gave it to her so she could see.   The next thing I know, she's kissing herself in the mirror.   I told my husband to look and we watched her look at herself, smile and then kiss herself.   I told her I'd let her have the hand mirror again when she got home from school.

Fitness Update:  Five miles at Five.   We ran from five o'clock to six o'clock this morning.   Our pace was faster than it is on long runs, but we'd like it to be faster.

Hyper Braking

I'm like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future tonight: I'm "outta time" so this blog post will be brief.

I hadn't heard of the term, "hyper braking" until we were having a discussion during the break between movies at Friday Night Movie Night here.  I had mentioned seeing a recent commercial espousing the cost-savings you can achieve by responsible driving.   The commercial claimed up to one dollar of the cost of a gallon of gas could be saved, just by good driving habits.

I've been working on good driving habits myself in the Tesla, working on my Wh/mi average per trip.   I hadn't bothered trying to drive particularly economically in prior cars.   We discussed the plausibility of the claim, given the recent drop in gas prices.  

My friend said the only way it was possible was by doing something called, "hyper braking" and people who did that mostly annoyed everyone else.   He didn't have to explain what he meant by the term because I could imagine it: coasting to the extreme and slowing other cars behind you in a way contrary to most people's driving habits.

I can easily see how someone could go to that extreme, although it seems rude.   I coast to a stop gradually when there are no cars behind me and go speeds that benefit my energy consumption to the extent that my driving is in line with the expectations of other's on the road.    

I would have never thought there was a problem out there with people doing too much coasting though.

The Big Boy Update:  My son threw up this morning.  We don't know why.   Sometimes he does it when he coughs and this morning he had a lot of congestion, needed to blow his nose badly and possibly gagged himself.    Then, the stomach acids got to him and all he wanted to do was wipe his tongue on a cloth for a while.   He was so distressed he threw up again (the little bit of orange juice he'd had,) so we decided to keep him home from school.   He watched a little television and then I gave him saltines and ginger ale.   He loved them.   I was worried he was sick and I didn't want to give him too much, but not only did he eat a lot of those, he ate a full lunch as well.   I'm not sure if he was sick or not, especially since he had no fever, but he seems fine now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  There is a character in the show, Mickey Mouse Club House named Toodles.   Toodles is sort of a circular thing that flies around and delivers handy helper tools just when you need them.   My daughter had the following conversation with my husband tonight:
   Reese: "Does toodles have a penis?
   Daddy: "No."
   Reese:  "What?  Yes, toodles has a penis like me!"
   Daddy: "Uh, no you have a vagina."
   Reese: "What?!"

Eat and Run

Sometimes people can get a little crazy when it comes to exercise.   I've been there in small bursts before, but overall I am far too lazy an individual to get addicted to too much exercise.  But sometimes you have to do strange (or some might say crazy) things to get in that run or workout you planned on doing.

This weekend I had planned to run twenty-three miles with my neighbor.   We planned to do an early departure on Saturday morning so I could get back and showered in time for a birthday party at our neighbor's house.   That was the plan.

Twenty-three miles is a long way and if you don't eat a lot the day before, the run is much more difficult.   It's not fun.   You do this thing called, "bonking" in which all sorts of strange visual or mental things can happen to you.   I'm not kidding about this, look it up.  

So to prepare, I did the thing called, "pigging out" on Friday.   And then the rain started.   The cold and the rain.  The rain that rained all afternoon, night and was going to still be raining in the cold during our running time.   During the only time we had on Saturday we could run.    So we cancelled.   We thought about running, but we decided we weren't that crazy.  I think Uncle Jonathan knows what I'm talking about here.

We moved the run to Sunday, only there was a problem because my neighbor had to go out of town for a gymnastics meet her daughter had.    I thought she had to leave later but I said we could do just sixteen or eighteen miles as we were ahead on our training.  That sounded like a good idea so I did more eating in preparation for the long run in the crisp, morning cold air.

Then, when I was out last night, eating everything in sight at this party one of my husband's customers was giving, I got a text.   My neighbor had realized she needed to leave much earlier in the morning to go to the meet and would I be interested in—and she would totally understand if I wasn't—starting to run at 4:45AM because she had to be back at eight o'clock.     That's right, 4:45AM.

It was so crazy I said, "what the hell, sure."  Then I did the thing I'm now going to call, "eat and run" and ate more food because I was going to be working hard in the cold in the morning on that  run.    I got home, went to sleep as quickly as I could manage and got out on the street at four-forty-five.

We made our sixteen miles.   I was glad I ate a lot.

The Big Boy Update:  Remember my son's pocket knife cut?   We looked at it today to see how it was healing.   The pressure we put on it helped the flap to re-adhere and it's looking very good so far.   My son was happy about how things were going.   He told me as he was looking at his finger, "part of my boo boo looks like ham."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  After getting dressed for bed in her pajamas, my daughter saw the laundry pile on the bed.   She climbed up, selected the big pastel multi-colored tutu, and put it over her pajama pants.   She is sleeping with it on as I write this.   She's not normally into tutus, but this one is a new fad.  That, or she just re-discovered it in the back of her drawer.

Fitness Update:  16.2 miles today, ten miles shy of the marathon distance.   It's strange to be out in the dark and know there's no reason to even pull out your phone to look at what time it is because the sun isn't even close to being up and you have an hour of running to go after it does come up.

Laying Out the Legos

Or maybe, on second thought, the title of this post should read, "Resetting the Set."   Either way, I've gotten myself into a minor organizational obsession revolving around our Legos.   It's okay, you shake your head and mutter, "she has serious issues with organizing."  I know.  It's true.

But let's talk about my fabulous plan, because you're going to love it.  Only let's go back in time first. In the beginning I had Lego sets in boxes.   My husband had Lego sets in boxes.   My husband didn't know me and I didn't know him.   Fast forward and we now know each other and our Lego boxes are in the same house, taking up a lot of space because we both had a lot of sets.

We had a master plan that involved dumping everything together, tossing the boxes, keeping the instruction sets and organizing the Legos into very specific cubbies within containers.   It looked impressive when we were done but was useless for actually doing anything.   I think I wrote about the whole Lego Organizational Debacle at some point, but if not, that's the general gist.  

We gave up and dumped everything into two large bins.    It turned out that also didn't work because there was zero organization and we couldn't find anything.    Or—and this is occurring to me just now—my husband and I have no Lego model-making creativity so we were doomed no matter what organizational strategy we employed.

But with either strategy, our Legos took up lots less space.    Recently, I spent time dividing everything up again into color.   My next plan was to get all the recent Legos we'd bought that had pieces lost or combined with other sets, and get them back into the box (or ziplock bag) with all the pieces needed to complete the model.   I was surprised how many sets we'd acquired over the past two years when I brought them all into the craft room to start work on the sorting.

Initially, I did a collection of small "junior" sets my son had been given.   There weren't many pieces, and the ones that were missing I happily found by going through my now-completed color-sorted Lego stash.  I marked them as completed and put them away in a large bin.   Then my son implored me to move onto one of our biggest sets.   It was of trains, no surprise there.   This large set was two large sets in one that we'd combined into a single box for storage.  The trains are electrically powered and each set came with a good amount of tracks.  

My son remembered these sets and very much wanted to play with them.   We brought the box down from the attic and dumped it out on the floor.    Let me tell you, this set was destroyed.   I don't mean the pieces were broken (you have to try hard to do that with Lego blocks), but there wasn't much left that was recognizable as trains.    But my son remembered.

He sat beside me, playing with the parts that were left, sitting on some of the pieces as he did so.   He was very happy.   I sat beside him and broke things apart, sorting them by color.  We ran out of time to finish the job today.  When I get done, I'll use the last two pages in the instruction books to identify which pieces go with which set and which, if any, pieces are missing.   I'll look from our main supply for replacements.    When I'm done, I'll have two large sets ready to be put together again at some point in the future.   (Tomorrow if my son has his way.)

If you're wondering why not leave the set as is in their partially deconstructed form because some of the model is already put together, I can tell you from experience  It's a mess doing it that way because of how things are layered or done in a particular order in the instructions.   It almost takes longer to put a model together from a partially completed state than it does to break it down, start over and do the model from the beginning.

This Lego organization thing may sound crazy, but sitting there, sorting little pieces into colors, listening to an audio book is calming and makes me look forward to putting the sets together with our children again when they're older and can follow the instructions with some help from us.

The Big Boy Update:  Our neighbor's son was having his second birthday party today.   I told my children at eight-thirty this morning that we would be going to Whittaker's party in a little while.   Shortly after that I heard the door chime.  I asked my husband if he knew where our son was.   We looked and I said, I think he may have gone next door to Whittaker's house.   As I was typing a text message to the father, I got a picture of our son in their house, grinning with their two children.    They sent him home and we talked about being polite and waiting for the party to start before arriving.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We went to a party tonight after it had gotten dark.   My daughter suddenly said from the back seat, "wait, why is the moon following us?"

Potty Farewell?

Today I put the second of our two toddler-sized potties away.   These potties are the little things that sit on the floor of your bathroom at small-child height so babies and children can sit with ease.  This is where they learn they should be going, "poo and pee" instead of in their diapers.

These little potties are useful and helpful for a long time, even after your small child can climb up onto the adult toilet, squat naked on hands and feet and make monkey noises while making a deposit in the bowl.   (Yes, this happens in our house.)  Potties are helpful for small boys who need practice aiming and they're much easier to balance small bottoms on than the larger, full-sized porcelain versions the rest of the family uses.

But they have to be emptied after each use.  And they need to be cleaned.   Putting the little potty away was mostly a balance of when there would be less mess surrounding (and I literally mean "surrounding") the big toilet as opposed to the little potty.    For instance, my son has decided that standing up to pee is now the only way to go.   For a long time he had no interest and since there wasn't any mess when he say down, I liked his plan.   But now he likes to stand up and he has to lean over and stand on his toes to make sure things go in instead of out of the toilet.    Oh, and sometimes he doesn't make it in time.    If you're thinking floor, be sure to add wall to that list of things to be cleaned with sanitizer after one of those visits.  That is, if he tells you he missed...

At some point we had to make a decision that this was the day to move forward and be toddler-toilet free.    Something told me today was the day.   Something also told me to not put that potty too far away, because I could be wrong and it might need to come out again.  We shall see.

The Big Boy Update:  My son didn't want to get dressed one day over the holidays.   There was an ultimatum delivered on my part and my son reluctantly went upstairs to change.  He came downstairs and looked pleased with himself.   We were glad he got dressed without any additional fuss.   And then we looked closer; he had put his clothes on over his footy pajamas and was planning on putting on shoes over the feet before we caught him.    Clever.  Sneaky.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got her hair cut for the second time today.  It was frazzled and I hoped a small bit off the ends would help.   My hairdresser told me it was largely her fine hair and that the leave-in conditioner I was using on her was the best thing to do.  

Fitness Update:   I went to the gym today and it is obvious I'm falling behind fitness-wise from my two friends I go with.   I don't go with the frequency they do and I don't have the drive or need or maybe I'm soft core and they're hard core, but whatever the cause, I'm not able to keep up.   I'm okay with it though.   I went back to the gym after school drop off and talked to the trainer about it so he understood I would continue to do my best (with my spine-based limitations) but that I understood I would be on a different level than my friends.  He is always a supportive person.   I was glad I went to talk to him.

The Pocket Knife

The Big Boy Update:  Tonight is mostly a story about my son, so he gets top billing for the whole post.

My son and daughter were playing in our closet, getting into things they shouldn't be getting into when my son discovered my husband's pocket knife.  He really, really, really wanted to play with it because it was filled with tools and he loves tools.  

My husband and I sent the children outside in the nice weather and my husband decided to let my son use the pocket knife.   As a small child with little fingers, he didn't have the strength needed to pull out any of the tools so daddy had selected two for him: the magnifier glass and the phillips screw driver.  

My son was thrilled.   He was looking at all sorts of things with the magnifier glass and discovering what the screwdriver would jab into.   And yeah, I wasn't thrilled about the jabbing part so there was a lot of counseling him on what was appropriate (not on the play ground equipment or the house and certainly not at people.)  He was brandishing the knife like a weapon over his shoulder.   I don't know why, but I didn't like the associations I had with that position and a knife.

Then my husband came outside.  He had drilled some holes in a piece of wood and had brought out some screws that would work well in the holes.   Great, I thought my son would be interested in screwing the screws in.   And he was...for about three minutes.    Then he was back to other things.

Soon my daughter needed to go to the bathroom and needed help getting in the basement doors.   When I returned—after reminding my son to be careful—he was holding his hand, standing very still and crying.    

He had gotten a pointy and sharp knife out after all and had sliced a c-shaped cut on his finger.    We went inside—I exclaimed that we had an "emergency" that needed to be taken care of—to take care of his finger.

He whimpered, but was good throughout the whole process.   At first he was unhappy about losing access to the pocketknife but later he wanted it to be thrown in the trash forever.    We talked about how our body heals and kept pressure on the cut so that it would heal faster with the tissues connected.  

He got a band aid and his sister got two (while I wasn't looking) and is completely fine.  Hopefully he's a little wiser too.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   "I have tappy toes."  I needed to fix my daughter's hair so I put her on the counter in my bathroom.   I wasn't paying attention when she told me she had tappy toes but I looked down when I heard little sounds.  We have a dixie cup dispenser on the counter.   I only keep three plastic cups in it because any more than that or any paper cups get used up in one toddler sink experience.    These three little cups we wash out and put back in the dispenser for the next day.   She had taken two of the cups and put them over her feet and was tapping her toes on the counter, making a little, "tink tink" sound as she did so.

The Fortune

The visit to the neurosurgeon yesterday has had me thinking.   Am I glad I don't need surgery or am I upset that I don't need surgery?   It would be nice to think something was wrong and with a surgery, things could be fixed straight away.   Say, like appendicitis.   Take it out and all is fine.   Or torn meniscus: trim off the torn bit and you're back in business.   Or even a baby: remove the offending kicking, crying entity and all will be better...that is at least with the innards of your body.   You've got do deal with that one for the rest of your life.

But there was not real fix.   There wasn't anything that would have absolutely, positively guaranteed improvement (or less discomfort) without the risk that things would get worse in other areas.  I did some summary in my post yesterday, but the overall evaluation the surgeon gave me was that it wasn't the best course to do anything now.   That dealing with what I had was possibly better than doing something and potentially making things less-tolerable or worse in other areas.

And that's frustrating.   It's frustrating because I'm sitting here with my neck hurting from the single act of holding my head in a certain position for forty-five seconds so my dentist could glue a temporary crown in.    That was some time ago and it's still hurting.   It's annoying because my arm is tingling most of the time now and the itching is, well, annoying.   It's worrisome because I know there is pressure on nerves and there may be permanent damage.    And I have degeneration in one of the vertebra that makes things painful or uncomfortable.  

Yeah, I know, that was some good whining there, wasn't it  I want to be happy I don't need surgery.   I've been trying to avoid surgery for eight years now and when I finally had mentally worked myself into what I thought was the inevitable, based on the evaluation by one doctor and another radiologist, hearing it was better to do nothing than something has spun me around.

Or at least it did until dinner tonight.   We went to a new restaurant tonight and at the end we all got fortune cookies.   I am far more interested in the cookie than I am the fortune, but tonight I thought the fortune was just what I needed to hear:  "it could be better, but it's good enough."

The Big Boy Update:  My son was telling me one of his stories.   He likes to make up stories.   He told me there was this one "guy" (who was clearly a super hero) named Chainer.   He told me, "Chainer has chains that come out of him and he wears dragon boots."    "Sounds fierce," I told him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We were having a puppet show tonight.   We'd take turns getting hand puppets, going behind the sofa and holding them up over the back to do a show.   My son and daughter were going to do a show together and were working on who was going to be which puppet.   My son was suggesting my daughter be the elephant, even though she already had selected her puppets.   She said to him, "I don't have any more hands.   I only have three hands."

No Restrictions

Today I went to see a surgeon about my neck issues.   Hold on, let me back up and start at the recent beginning of all of this so you have some framework of why I went.

Way back, I had neck problems.  I had two spinal fusions, a neurostimularor implant and subsequent removal when it caused damage to my spinal cord.    It took a long time for me to heal, get better, feel better, get off all the medications and get back to being the person I had once been before all the pain.

I spent a number of years after that having children and getting into shape.   Children will make you do that, the getting into shape thing.  I was woefully out of shape.  I started running and going to the gym and I got muscles and didn't look chunky and flabby.   It was nice.

Then, last January, I started having this niggling problem in my left arm.   I was having nerve tingles (paresthesia) down shoulder and arm.  Later in the year phantom itching was added to the ever more frequent tingling in my left arm.     Oh, and I had lots of nerve pain all over my body that was un-specific in origin.  It made everything feel in some way painful.   It was sort of like what I imagined when people said, "I feel old in my bones."

I didn't want to exercise or do things.  Eventually I gave in and went to my general practitioner.   I had been avoiding any and all medication, but the neuralgia was getting to be too much as it was affecting my life.  The doctor and I agreed on Lyrica for a few months trial.   That was November.   He also called an MRI because the reflex reactions in my left arm were significantly diminished in comparison to the right.

I was concerned about irreversible nerve damage.   I was worried about the pain I was having on a regular basis.  I didn't know what the situation was and it looked like it was getting worse over time.

Two MRI's later and I was scheduled to see one of the top orthopedic neurosurgeons in the area as recommendation by many of the medical professionals in the area that I worked with or knew socially.  The radiology reports sounded grim.    I was, truthfully, scared of what the surgeon would tell me I needed to do (surgery) or not do (ever run again.)

I saw the surgeon this afternoon.  He asked about my history, the fusions, the neurostimulator, my current symptoms, activity level and limitations.  He performed reflex tests and strength tests.  He discussed with me the results of the MRI.  He pointed out the damage in my spinal cord from the neurostimulator implant.    He pointed out the locations of the fusion hardware and said the fusion areas looked good.   He said there was degeneration in the C4-C5 area and showed me a large bone spur and some stenosis.   He told me the strength in both my arms and hands was the same, and that the reduced reflex reaction in the left arm was most likely a result of the spinal cord damage from the neurostimulator and didn't factor into any recent changes.

But here's the interesting thing.   He said that yes, there were problems, but that he wouldn't recommend surgery at all right now.   The left arm isn't in pain and the neuralgia I have is being addressed by the Lyrica.   The degeneration in C4-C5 will take a course, but the final direction isn't yet determined and today, the situation isn't emergent.

I asked what restrictions, if any, I had and he said, "you have no restrictions.   Go run that marathon; In fact, keep exercising."

I left with mixed emotions.  I mean, hell, I'm elated I don't have to have surgery.  I really, didn't want to need surgery.    Spine surgery will take you out of action for a good long while.  I'm also pleased he doesn't think my current situation is causing damage irreversible damage.   But I'm not happy about possibly needing to be on Lyrica for a long time, even if it's well-tolerated and one of the better medication to be on.

So...I'm okay.   Well, my spine's not okay but we all knew that.   But as of today, I'm not in need of imminent surgery.   I'm got degeneration that's progressing, but I don't have to do anything about it right now.   I have nerve pain that's really annoying, but it's controllable with medication and I may be able to get off the medication in a few months.

And I ran twenty-one miles last weekend.   Marathons, here I come.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was at a park with Uncle Jonathan.   He was playing near the lake.   Uncle Jonathan warned him (apparently twenty-seven times) if he went into the water and mud he was going to be gross and sad.    Guess which one of my children ended up gross and sad?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Come play with me.   My daughter wants people to come play with her of late.  Her brother is engrossed in Legos or some other toy scenario and she wants to do interactive, social-based things with someone.   Today she asked Uncle Jonathan if he would come to the bonus room and play with her.   Uncle Jonathan told her he couldn't now, but he would later.   She fell onto the floor in a heap and cried.

Boy Crafts

I like to do lots of things that I would not categorize as "art."  I like to do things that are more along the lines of crafts.   I am creating something new, such as the jewelry I make.   But I'm buying pre-made parts such as earring chandler and other components, pre-made beads and crystals and I'm combining them in a way to make a pair of earrings.    I do a lot of things like that that I feel are more crafts-oriented than true art.   That, and I feel utterly unartistic.

We have this room in our house that we tried really hard to call, "second storage" (because we stored stuff in there and it was on the second floor.)   What we stored in there was all my craft stuff though, so it ended up being called "the craft room" instead.    I felt badly about it because I didn't want to make it seem like it was my room with all my girly craft stuff in it like doilies and beads and balloons and wrapping paper and my meat gun.

You don't have a meat gun?  I'm off subject, but it's true, I have a drawer that has a label on it that says, "meat gun".  I went a little haywire with the label maker at one point.  But it does make it easier to find things in a room with lots of containers full of all sorts of different things.   One day when we were working in the craft room, my husband asked me what the heck a meat gun was.  I told him I didn't know.   He said, "well it says you have one right here on this drawer.    Are you not telling me something I should know?"

"Oh," I said, "that's my heat gun, not meat gun."   I've never gotten around to fixing that label.   But back to the craft room and my husband.    So that room is mostly filled with my things.    That's not to say my husband doesn't want to do crafts of his own.   Only his crafts are more of what I'd call, "boy crafts."

Of late, he's working on building a mini-foundry with things you can get at a home improvement store and recycled items.    There is a distinct chance we're going to have a nice burned spot in the grass in our back yard in the coming weeks, but then again, I'm the pessimistic one.   Or wait, let's all hope for burned grass and completely safe and sound body parts.  Are you with me on this wish?

For now, we're putting any aluminum cans to the side so that my husband can make an aluminum ingot.    Then, he's going to make something.   I'm not sure what he's going to make.    Hold tight for now.  I'll let you know when I know.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been re-interested in Duplo Lego blocks of late.   He's been able to build more complex models with them easier than he can do the regular Legos.   Tonight as he was building something he told me, "this is a tricky part for grown-ups."   Then he showed me how he put the next several pieces together in the tricky fashion by putting one on top of the other.    I told him that was some impressive tricky stuff and I was glad he was able to do it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Zingo.   My neighbor that I run with got this game called Zingo for my daughter for her birthday.  It is a very easy version of Bingo and my daughter just loves it.    She is so socially-focused though that she has no interest in winning.   If a card comes up that you have, she will make sure it goes on your zingo card, even if she has a need for that same picture on her card.

The Compost Consideration

We've been trying to compost for some time now.  We have a little compost bin beside the sink and we put lots of things in it.  My daughter likes to walk down the hill in the back yard and help me dump out the contents since before she could walk well.   Our ability to compost has gotten more and more constrained as time goes on however.

We have a dog and a non-fenced in yard.   We have deer, beavers, ground hogs and some sort of coyotes that roam around in the area that's behind our house.  The problem isn't the wild animals though, it's our dog.  

From the start, we've only put things into the compost bin that wouldn't appeal to the dog.   But from time to time, something slips in when someone's visiting that the dog goes nuts over.   Sometimes it's been us, thinking that particular thing wouldn't be appealing to her, but it is.  Those mistakes, over time, have caused a lot of trouble.

Whenever we dump the compost now, the dog spends long periods of time outside, checking to see if any of it is worth eating.  Sometimes, the food has already began to mold and decay in our compost bin so having her go through it over several days, stepping in decomposing matter and eating things that are most likely not healthy for her, became a concern.   That and we're not keen on the idea of it getting brought back into the house on paws and under-fur.

Even if we put nothing but potato skins, banana peels and orange rinds in the bin, she's still all over it for days.    We don't have a location to easily put one of those big compost bins because we're on a steep hill just beyond the grassy area.    We don't have a real use for composted material either as it's rather futile to garden on a hill with wild animals that like to eat garden fare.

The last several days the dog hasn't been feeling well.   She was down at the dump site after a recent dump of decaying food matter and now isn't interested in eating much.   We'll have her checked out. but even if it's unrelated, we both agreed it's time to put the compost bin away for a while until we have another solution.

I don't like throwing food matter away, so some of it will go down the disposal, which is acceptable in our city.   I'm going to miss the compost bin for now though.

The Big Boy Update:  My son hid the iPads that they only get to use on weekends.   I thought I'd hid them in a super secret spot I'd forgotten until my husband decided to ask my son if he knew where they were.   He said, "I hid them so sneaky Reese couldn't get them."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son upset my daughter at bedtime last night when Uncle Jonathan was watching them.   She told him, "Greyson is a bad guy, and a boodee butt, and...a sandwich."

Not That Tired

I ran a long way today: twenty-one miles.   It's three miles longer than last week's run and I didn't get a chance to do any short runs during the week.   I'm okay, which either means nothing has hit tired-wise yet or I didn't lose that much of my distance ability from not running that much over the past several months.

I'm tired, don't get me wrong.   But I'm not that tired.   I helped a friend and her daughter with a craft project, worked with the children and did some things to clean up the house and now we're going out to dinner with friends.   Last week when we ran eighteen miles I wasn't that tired either.     I suppose I'll see tomorrow.  

I can say I'm looking forward to going to sleep tonight though.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has wanted to punch people and be rough all day long.   He has been sent to his room and is now playing by himself.   I'm not sure why he has such a high need to be physical right now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Mostly dry.   Today she was mostly dry.   She seems to be getting the message she needs to go a little too late.   She's starting to get the hang of things I hope though.

Fitness Update:   21.2 miles today.   Five miles shy of a marathon.   Training is progressing.

Lego Therapy

Legos have been busy things at our house of late.   There was the Lego movie, my son's love of Legos and my husband's even greater love of and possible obsession with Legos.  

For Christmas my daughter got a new set of Duplo blocks and while she wasn't that interested in them, my son was.  He could follow the instructions.   He desperately wanted to follow the instructions of the Junior Legos and the adult models, but the pictures and pieces made it challenging for him.    Never fear though, my husband would do the model with nominal help from my son.

My son would then happily play with the model until it was in pieces.  My husband—this is where the obsession part comes in—would feign frustration at having to put the model together again.    I think he secretly enjoyed it.

We got Legos for my son's birthday.   They were all over his and my husband's Christmas wish lists and they got their wishes, because they both got lots of Lego pieces, in the form of model sets, for Christmas.

So now we have pieces everywhere.   There are pieces from sets that got intermixed, sets that were put together a while back and then there were sets that were new.   My husband even got a huge, mega, super set that has more pieces in it than I've ever seen in a model (my son is not allowed to go near the completed model.)   In short, we have pieces everywhere.

Oh, and I can't forget the impetus for the title of this post.  One night, my husband and I got into an argument.   He left the house because he could see it wasn't going to get better until we both had a chance to think about how stupid the argument was and calm down.   His tactic worked.   When he came home I looked at the new Lego set he'd bought and said, "Lego therapy?"   He smiled, said yes and we moved on.

Speaking of Lego therapy.   I need the Legos organized so we can find things and build models again.   I've been organizing the pieces by color for the past several days now.   It is quite possible my Lego therapy will take longer to complete than my husband's, but it will be cheaper than his.

The Big Boy Update:  My son will call out, "I need a wipe!"   He will call this out until you come to help him, even if you're nowhere near and he has to wait for you.   At least he was until recently.  Now he's wiping himself.   I hope he's doing a good job because sometimes I don't' even know he's gone.   I hope he's washing his hands afterwords <she says thinking she already knows the answer to that one.>

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter ate almost an entire piece of New York Style pizza yesterday.    That's a lot of food for her little stomach.   She just kept putting it into her mouth.   After two-thirds of the slice, my husband and I just sat back to see how much more would go in.

Fitness Update:  My butt is already sore from the workout this morning.   That doesn't bode well for how I'll feel when I wake up tomorrow.

They Just Stopped Trying

My children had a child lock on their bedroom door for a long time.   We could keep them in and safe so they didn't wander around the house in the middle of the night when they were only marginally skilled at walking down stairs.   Eventually they figured out out to defeat the door locks by unhinging them.   I added duct tape.   Then they figured out how to open them with a quick twist and pressure action.   So I took them off.

They were old enough at that point to not really need to be locked in anymore.    There were other areas that I didn't want them wandering around in, including the back closet with toy storage, the second storage/craft/ area and the attic.  I kept the door knob locks on those doors.

For some reason, they've never tried to defeat those door locks.   It's the same mechanism (a plastic ball over the knob that requires pressure on two specific spots to open the door.)   They could do it if they really wanted to.   I wonder when they'll figure out they can?

The Big Boy Update:  First trip to the bathroom alone.   For the first time, my son went to the bathroom all by himself at a restaurant by himself.   My mother and I took the children to Sushi Thai for dinner and when they needed to go to the bathroom, I walked them both there.  My son protested and said, "I don't need to go to the ladies room.  I can go to the mens room all by myself."   He was right, he did.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We've bought a piece of rental property.  Our good friend, Uncle Jonathan is going to rent it from us.  He hasn't moved in yet, but we've been over several times to get things done prior to the first of the month.   We drove up in the dark tonight to see if something had been delivered and my daughter said from the back seat, "it's Uncle Jon's house!"

Fitness Update:  I went to the gym for the first time this week.   Our trainer went from wearing only black and gray to suddenly wearing all sorts of colorful shirts.   My friend's husband had named him, "fifty shades of grey" a while back.   Today I told him his new nickname was, "box of chocolates" because you never knew what color you were going to get when you walked in the door.   Let me tell you, when your trainer wears black and grey every day for two years and then suddenly starts going color-crazy, walking in the door to check out the new shirt color is one of the best parts of the workout.

Everything Is *Not* Awesome

We were having a "family dinner" tonight.   That's when we all sit down together and try to stay seated, at least for a little while and enjoy dinner together.  During this time we try to keep our feet off the table (my daughter), not curl up in a ball on the chair (my son) and not yell for no apparent reason because saying, "mommy, mommy, mommy. mommy, Mommy, MOMMY" isn't getting an immediate response as mommy is currently speaking to someone else.

Let us not forget to mention not whining because you don't want to eat whatever food or food item is in front of you.   Or the complaining because something tastes, "yucky" even though you've never had it and you haven't tasted a single bite yet.  Oh, and staying in the chairs.   That seems to be a monumental effort.  My son likes to curl up into the fetal position on his chair for unknown reasons during meals.

Tonight specifically, my son was not having any of the pot roast my husband made.   This pot roast they've had before and loved.  My daughter didn't really want it either, but once she tried it she was fine with it.  A long and protracted discussion with my son ensued about how much he had to eat (all of it) to have dessert.   He wanted to negotiate the number of bites.    Let me explain, no, there is too much.  Let me summarize: he lost his food and his option for any other food for the rest of the day.

My husband and I had had it.   We are both supportive of the other one, but I think we were equally frustrated at him at that point.  My son was losing it and starting to have a screaming tantrum (something new, the screams haven't happened before) because he saw the food being put into the sink.

Right at that point my daughter, who was calmly sitting at the table still eating, started singing, "everything is awesome!" from the Lego movie.

My husband and I both couldn't help but laugh.   Everything was most definitely not awesome at that point, but her song did lighten the mood.    My son needed to stand outside for a minute or two in the thirty-three degree weather because he was still screaming and we told him we would be glad for him to scream outside for as long as he liked.    He didn't like it for very long.

The Big Boy Update:  We were driving to lunch and had stopped at a stop light.   My son said from the back seat, "I see a porcupine and a dog up there."   My mother and I were confused for a minute until he said, "with that lady" and then we realized there was a lady walking a large dog and another small, brown dog that apparently looked like a porcupine to my son.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   In the car before leaving for school this morning my son was scratching his leg.   He said, "my leg is bleeding."  (It wasn't really.)   My daughter said, "I want to see it."  My son replied, "you can't.  It will fill up the car with blood."  My daughter, wearing her new cat mittens from Uncles Bob and Brian said, "I can catch it.  I have special gloves."

Wh/mi

Just by knowing how much energy we're using, my husband and I have become more interested in how we can be better consumers of energy.    Our Tesla Model S has the standard miles per hour dial on the dash, but the remainder of the information is different than what you find on most other cars.    Here's a picture of our dash, taken today as I was coasting safely down a hill with no traffic, on a straightaway, going a safe thirteen miles-per-hour.

The speed is shown in traditional fashion, on the left half of the dial.  It's also in easy to read numerical digits in the middle of the dial, so I look at that usually, checking to see if I've forgotten to go the speed limit again.   It's the right side the dial that I look at the most though, because that shows energy consumption.   If it's above the center line, I'm consuming energy (or kW) but if I'm coasting down a hill or slowing down via regenerative braking, its below the center line, showing how much kWs it's recharging the batteries.

The graph on the right shows the amount of Wh/mi used.   I live in a hilly area.   The graph shows the last thirty miles and it's mostly climbing up to drive on one of the roads around us with the word "ridge" in the name for good reason.   Then it's downhill to the main intersection with the mall that happens to have "valley" in it's name for equally good reason.  

Over on the left top are numbers that reset every time we leave the garage after unplugging the car (or unplugging from any charging location for that matter.)  It shows that today I went 21.2 miles, mostly to the dentist where he did loud and grindy things to my teeth for several hours.

The right-most number at the top is the one my husband and I talk about the most.  It's the average watts per mile (Wh/mi) for that particular trip.    We're comparing it with the numbers below, which show two trip distances.   the first is our lifetime Wh/mi which is 318.    The one below is reset from time to time to give us a more weather-specific sampling.

For example, in the heat of summer it is uncomfortable to go without air-conditioning, which eats up lots of lots of energy.   Then, you get into fall and you don't need any sort of temperature control for the car at all.  Suddenly, your Wh/mi numbers are coming in lower than ever.  You think you're some sort of amazing driver, but you're not...it's just nice outside.

Right now we're dealing with another issue: cold.   Using the heat for the car is a fairly heavy consumer of energy.   However, using the seat warmer uses less energy if you're in a heated (or un-heated) battle with your spouse over who drives more efficiently.    Something you can't control though is battery warmth and cold weather.   When it's very cold, even if you're willing to suffer through it with gloves and a hat, your car's batteries need to be warmed.    The car uses additional energy during colder times and even limits the amount of energy the brakes can place back into the batteries until they're sufficiently warm.

It's a fun competition my husband and I have going on though.  One of us will walk in saying, "I just got 272!"   The other one usually says, "what?" because having an electric car is still new, even after six months.   Then, after realizing the conversation is about Wh/mi numbers the other one will say, "how in the world did you get it that low?   Impressive."

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I were talking about how when I was pregnant with him, he was in my tummy.   He told me, "I saw all the food in your tummy when you were pregnant with me but some of it was yucky so I didn't eat it."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Orange juice wasn't popular, or even liked in our household for a long time.   Then sometime back in the summer, Mimi gave some to my son.   Since that time it has increased in popularity so much that it's one of the top requests by my daughter for her beverage for most meals.

The Hand Scan

I was sitting in the tub meditating the other day.   Well, that's not entirely accurate, I was reflecting on things, pondering in my own way and mulling about in my thoughts.  In particular, I was looking at the "Russian Navy" dark blue nail polish I had on my fingernails and wondering what the optimal length was for minimal chipping to maximize the amount of time between visits to the nail parlor.

I can do my nails, but I don't do them well.  If I don't do anything to them I revert back to chewing on them.   My nails are very weak, so putting the shellac/soak-off gel nails works well for me.    That is, unless I let the nails get too long.   Then they chip and I start to pick at things and, well, it's less than "manicured" in appearance to say the least.

While I was doing all of this I looked at my hands overall.  They're my hands.  I would recognize them in a blizzard.  I've been looking at them all my life.  I know what shape my nails are and the size of my knuckles and how wrinkled everything is here and there and many other small things that overall, when I look at them, tell me I'm looking at my hands.

But what did my hands look like when I was a teen?   What was the best my hands probably ever looked as mature appendages?   They're getting older, more veiny and more wrinkly as I get older, but I can't tell the difference as I look at them from day to day.

I wondered if I had any pictures from my childhood in which I could see my hands, close up.   Wouldn't it have been neat to know how my body has changed over time?   Speaking of time, it was time to cease my contemplation, get out of the tub and get on with the rest of my day.

Then, only a few hours later, something singular happened: my daughter came upstairs with a piece of paper in her hand.   It was a piece of paper...of her hand.    She had been pestering my husband while he worked and he, in his infinite patience, had come up with something fun for her to do: they photocopied her hand on our printer.

I looked at that little black and white version of my daughter's small hand and remembered my musings about my younger hands only hours ago.  I told my daughter we were going to put her hand on the refrigerator as I taped it up, just about toddler-height on the door.

The hand picture has been there for several days.  I keep looking at it.   It's simple and gives a strange little message that a small child is trying to get at food inside the refrigerator (which they're always doing.)  I like it.  

Maybe I'll keep the hand scan for her for when she's older and has wrinkled hands like mine are becoming.

The Big Boy Update:  Sometimes children will come out with a phrase and you don't know where they heard it before because you haven't had opportunity to use it around them.   Today, my son dropped his toast.   I said to him, "did you catch it?"  I was hoping the dod didn't just make off with a whole slice of bread with sticky topping to drag under the table.   He said,  "it landed right-side up" as he saved it from his lap.   I don't ever remember saying that.  Then, while my husband and daughter got lunch for us, my son and I counted to forty in the car.   He hadn't made the connection with numbers beyond twenty and how all you had to do was add one, two, three, etc. to increment until the next tens digit.    He was pretty excited when he got to forty.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter likes shapes.   Last night she made a rectangle and a triangle out of her napkin.   Then she said she was going to fold an octagon.    We were keen to see how she did it.   After a bit, I asked if I could give her a lesson.   I showed her how folding in the four corners a little bit made an octagon.    Tonight, part-way through dinner she pushed her plate, salad bowl and cup out of the way, put her napkin on the table and said, "I'm going to fold an octagon" and then she did.

The Chapped Lips Complication

I've had chapped lips for a while.   It's not really a problem, I just put some lip moisturizer on them a few times each day.    Then, last Tuesday, I was at the endodontist's office and it came up that my lips were chapped and that I needed some vaseline because they needed to take pictures.   They use these  lip-spreading metal tools to make sure they can get their mirror way the heck into the back of your mouth in the most uncomfortable position and then, wait, hold it right there with the mirror pressing on the bone for us to take lots of pictures.

For some reason on the way home I got to thinking about my chapped lips.   I remember having the top lip split when we went to New Jersey in early August.   That meant I'd been regularly using lip moisturizer for five months.    That's not chapped lips, that's dependency.     I've had it happen before and I knew what I was in for.   Just like going through detox is harder before it gets better, getting off lip moisturizers is no fun.  

I'm on day five without any added moisture to my lips and they're just starting to get better.   They burn and sting and the skin is dry and even peeling in some places.   It's not pretty.    But it's getting better.   My lips were under the impression they no longer needed to provide moisture themselves, what with me adding lots of Burt's Bees lip balm all the time.     But I figured it out (albeit long after I should have) and I should be fine in another few days.

Lips naturally don't need added moisture, but putting something on them that's slippery and smooth just feels good.   Over time it creeps up on you that you need to apply moisturizer more regularly.   Oh, it's just chapped lips...in the middle of the summer.    That's okay.   And then you're stuck.     Hopefully I'll be unstuck soon.   My lower lip is already mostly recovered.   The upper lip is going to hold out for another few days.

The Big Boy Update:  The Stapler and the Remover.  My father gave my son a staple remover some time ago.   My son called it the chomper.   It would get put away but he'd find it again.  Today I gave him a lesson in using the stapler on some scrap paper.   He was thrilled at how the stapler worked (the grin was great) and even more happy when I showed him how to use the chomper to remove the staples.   He was occupied in the basement for quite some time working with these two tools.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Bootee Butt.   My children are saying that word a lot.  It's a combination of two other things they heard that, taken individually, were harmless.   Together, my children use this phrase to call people names.   My daughter thinks it's funny to say it and likes to say it far too much.   We're working on finding another word that doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Why is That Over There?

I'm in the middle of my, "question everything" house organizational evaluation.   Today I started in the pantry, which was fairly straightforward since it's not that large of a pantry and was mostly organized already.   The pantry led to the laundry room which got mixed up with the bar area and that's when I got confused with myself.

Why did I have plates, napkins, utensils and cups (overage) in the laundry room when there was room in the bar area?   I was trying to wedge cleaning supplies into the cabinet space when this thought occurred to me.

So, I'm currently late taking a shower to get ready for our neighborhood post-holiday party because I couldn't stop in the middle of this revelatious rearrangement.   Therefore, I'm making this quick tonight.

The Big Boy Update:  He likes to stand on his head with he feet in the air on the couch.   He balances against the back of the sofa.   He's really good at this.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I got a hair band and a clip this morning to get her hair out of her way while she was working on something and looking down.   I didn't want to interrupt her so I quietly came up and pulled her hair back without saying anything.  When I got done she said, "thank you momma for fixing my hair."

It's Hard To Speed in the Tesla

Well, that's not entirely true.  If you wanted to speed while driving the Tesla, it would be so very, very easy.   It accelerates so quickly, so effortlessly, so quietly; all you have to do is press the accelerator pedal, relax as you're slammed into the back of your seat and in literally a few seconds you'd be speeding.

But that brings in another type of force that I'm not really talking about here: acceleration.   The car can accelerate like no car I've ever ridden in before.   But it's not getting to fast speeds quickly that I'm talking about.   This post is more about driving at speed versus getting to that speed.

You're on the highway in the left-most lane because you passed someone on the right.   You're in a car that can go fast and fast cars may as well inhabit the fast lanes, right?   Then, in a few minutes, you notice people passing you on the right.   You look down only to realize you're going at or possibly even a bit below the speed limit.  

That scenario has happened to me many times.   It may be on a highway or a multi-laned road with a speed limit of forty-five miles per hour.   I don't know the exact reason for this phenomenon, but I have some ideas.  

First, the car doesn't have the whine of an engine.  With an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) car, different speeds have an associated engine speed sound with them.   Do we make a sub-consioius association with speed and sound as we get to know a particular car?    The Tesla lacks that "feature" if so.

Second, you have to keep your foot on the accelerator pedal all the time, even if you're going down a hill due to the regenerative braking.   The car will gladly try and recharge the battery if you let it drop off in speed by not paying attention.

Third, it's just so darned comfortable driving it.   It is the most pleasant car to drive that I've ever had the pleasure of spending time with.   You're at ease, you're relaxed.  Even if you're in a hurry to get somewhere, it's like it's just not that pressing a thing when you're driving the Tesla.  

I've spent many years in other cars discovering I was accidentally going well over the speed limit.   It's a nice change to find out now that I'm going at the speed limit instead.

The Big Boy Update:  Uncle Jonathan may be moving into a house close to us next month.  I was telling my son about it and how maybe he could go and spend the night with Uncle Jonathan sometime.  He asked about sleeping bags and then said, "yeah, we can have a camp over!"   I hope you're ready for this, Uncle Jonathan.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was mad this morning.   She was inconsolable.   She needed food.   My husband gave her juice but she said that NOOOO, she wanted water added to it.   He added a little water to the pineapple juice and handed it back to her.   She looked in the cup and then broke down saying, "now it has bubbles in it!"    We left the room.   She started to drink the terrible, bubbled drink.   Calories hit and she became normal child again.

Fitness Update:  We had a lot of people at the gym today.   We were doing things with partners and in threes and then in a big group again.   When Uncle Brian was here he said there wasn't a lot of interest at his gym for group training but that he always signed up in case they had enough to hold sessions.   I really like group work.   We can commiserate and encourage each other equally.   The motivation to do as well as your peers is a powerful thing too.

The Smell of Fresh Paint

I love the smell of fresh paint.   I don't know that I always have, but as an adult, the smell of fresh paint is like new plus clean plus uncluttered all combined into one.   It's like walking into an apartment you've just signed a lease on with your first box in your hand.   It smells like it's ready to be your home.  It smells like it's new and it's all yours and you can do anything with the space around you.

Admittedly, the smell of paint isn't that delightful.   But associations can be powerful things.   Today, our house smells like fresh paint.   I called the painter that did the drywall, interior and exterior paint for our house.   I liked him very much and four years ago I had told him I was pleased with the work his crews had been doing.   He said thank you and mentioned that one day, should I ever have a need for anything to be painted, he hoped I would remember his company and call them.   And so I did.

He came to look at what we needed done, which was mostly toddler-height down painting repairs (imagine that.)  We looked at the paint supplies we had remaining and he said he would send over two of his painters the next day.  When I asked who, I was happy to hear that Robert would be coming.   I remembered Robert and had enjoyed talking with him during the build phase of our house.

Today Robert and Samuel worked for half the day repainting things the children and adults had damaged or marked up since we moved in four years ago.   We were fortunate in that the paint we had stored in the attic was still in good shape.  But, would it color match?   We have a well-lit house that faces east to west and there was a chance the colors on the walls today had changed subtly since the paint was originally done.  So they did some test coats.   After they dried, we couldn't tell where the new paint ended and the old paint began, which means the whole wall didn't have to be painted just to fix marks lower down.

Robert and Samuel got a lot done before they left.   I still have blue tape on a third of the house though, so they'll be back on Monday or Tuesday to finish the remainder of the work.    But for now, I am so loving the fresh paint smell.  That, and the un-dinged, un-marred, un-smeared walls.

Things that are no longer noticeable include:
- The high chair marks in the breakfast nook;
- The toddler table corner that was more food-colored than wall colored;
- The dent in the wall where the toy truck hit when it fell down the stairs;
- The changing table area that would  show up bright blue with one of those biological lights;
- The crib bed back lines from when they learned to shake the bed and then climb out;
- And of course, the shoe marks from when I fell down the basement stairs head over feet.

But...we kept the little pencil marks measuring how tall my children are each year on their birthday in their bedroom closet.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband said to my son, "you can have dessert if you eat your mushroom."  My son said, "yeah, but it has a terrible smell."   My husband and I literally burst out laughing at him because he was so sincere in his dislike for the sautéed flavor.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   She peed in her pants.   More than once.  More than twice.   Hell, thrice.   I lost my temper.   She cried.   I felt terrible.   She is going to get this some day, right parents out there?

The Peanut Evaluation

My son has allergies.  It took us a while to figure out he had them and then when we got him tested he was positive on about everything food-wise you can throw a stick at.   Over time, his immune system became more mature and many of those allergies faded or went away altogether.

One of the pediatricians seemed concerned about the allergies some time back.   Then, the next wellness check when we saw our favorite doctor, she said, "the levels he tested at just weren't that high.  I'm not that concerned."  I decided I liked the, "let's not be too worried about this" attitude.   I wanted to do the reasonably safe thing, but I didn't want to exclude all sorts of foods he had a mild, non-breathing related reaction to only some of the time.  

And that's how we proceeded.   Over time his food sensitivities (which may be a better way to describe them than "allergies") got better and better.   He only had one real nemesis: peanuts.   They would make his mouth an itchy mess and two days later his skin would show up with a bad case of eczema.  We were told his type of allergies was not such that he would be at risk for an anaphylaxis reaction so we didn't have to worry about life-threatening breathing problems.

My son preferred to avoid nuts.  I didn't blame him.  He mostly did this by asking us if a thing had nuts in it.  We could have used this to our advantage, telling him something we didn't really want him to have (candy) was nut-laden.   But we refrained from the easy out of parenting though and tried to put nuts in a positive light, saying he wouldn't be allergic to them always and that some people liked nuts very much.

In the meantime, we had Biscoff spread and Sun butter instead of peanut butter.   We avoided all the other things that come with nuts such as, breads, brownies, cookies, pies, cakes, salads, almond milk, etc.   On occasion, I would do a little test to see how his reaction was faring.   About eight months ago I gave him a piece of peanut brittle that didn't have a peanut in that part.   He liked it.  He didn't, however, like the next part that had a part of a nut in it and then wanted to make his mouth stop itching.

Of late my son has been asking me if he can have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  He's been asking about peanuts and he's been interested in trying them when I talked to him about doing another test.   Today we decided to do that test.   I got him a large glass of water and explained that in this case, it was absolutely okay to spit his food out, especially if it made his mouth itchy.

I showed him a container of peanuts (something we don't normally have, but happened to get over the holidays.)  His sister tried two and thought they were okay.    He took one, took a bite, chewed it, put the rest in his mouth and then swallowed it...all while I was holding my breath.

He said he liked it.   He said it didn't make his mouth itchy.  He was happy.   I was elated.   We hugged and I told him how excited I was.    Then he started making this funny mouth noise and I started to panic.

"Are you okay?  Does it itch?  Do you want some water," I said?   He took the water and swallowed some and then told me, "the peanut is stuck in my teeth."   Oh.  Okay.  I gave him a lesson on how to swish water around in your mouth to try and dislodge food from your teeth, which was amusing to watch him do.

I'm not done with the peanut tests, but I'm pretty excited about the results of our test today.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told me, after eating the peanut today and having no allergic reaction that, "when I'm five-years-old I won't be allergic to cats anymore."   I told him that sounded like a good plan to me.  On New Year's Eve, we were at a party at a friends house where my son had had a bad cat reaction before.  To prepare, we gave him a small dose of Benadryl.   That night, not only did he spend time in the room the cats stayed in, he was jumping up and down and playing on the cat tower and was fine.   So, his prediction may turn out to be true, who knows.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has had this little scooter she rides around in the house all the time.  It's never been outside so the wheels are nice and clean.   My son isn't as good as she is, but she makes up for it in enthusiasm and total time spent on the scooter.  What she hasn't mastered is how to press the brake and stop.   Since we have only so far she can go before a wall or door or furniture gets in the way, she's never really needed the brake.  Today though she became interested in the brake and spent a lot of time braking.   She said to me, "I did the brakes, mommy!"

Into The Woods

This post is not about the movie that's out right now with the same name as this post title.   This post is about what happened this afternoon.   I am going to warn you right now that you may well want to stop reading.   Come back tomorrow when I'll be writing about cute, funny things my little horrors got up to while I was on the phone.

This afternoon started well.  We had planned a long run at about two o'clock.  My husband had a home inspection to go to so we had a sitter come to watch the children while my neighbor, Uncle Jonathan and I went off on an eighteen-mile run.

We left almost on time and hoped to be back before it got dark.   You remember how I run slowly, right?   I do.   My neighbor does as well (although I suspect she is faster when I'm not around.)  Uncle Jonathan, well, he's sort of like a dashing lightning bolt when he runs but he said he'd join us for the conversation.

That's where this starts to go downhill.   Let me say first though that my neighbor has this problem that happens when she runs.    She used to apologize for it, but now she understand we don't mind at all.    Her problem involves tissue paper and a hidden spot in the woods.   And let me tell you, she comes prepared with the tissue paper.     For our eighteen-mile run she had not one but two ziplock bags full of tissue paper.

Having this problem when running is apparently not as uncommon as you might think.   Some people have a problem with their stomachs and have to be very careful what they eat or they'll get sick when they run.   I'm fortunate in that I can eat about anything before a run without issue.   So for me, I don't have a problem with things coming up or down while I run.    I'm lucky.

My neighbor has this whole thing down by now.    She had dashed off twice already while Uncle Jonathan and I ran ahead some and then back after a bit to reunite.   I really don't know how she does it, clambering over the logs, limbs, decaying leaves and other woodsy things to find a somewhat secluded spot.    We run on a fairly busy trail, so sometimes it takes a bit to find a break in the passersby to make your dash for the woods.

Today, something was rumbling on my end though.  (I told you it was going to be one of those posts, why are you still reading?)  I tried to ignore it, but we were seven miles in and we had eleven miles to go and I realized, for the first time, I was in trouble.    There are no bathrooms on this trail or anywhere close to our running path.

I told my running partners I was going to have to, for the first time, make my own trip into the woods.  I needed advice.   How did she pick a spot?  How far did she go in?   What should I avoid?   There were other questions but I truly don't think I can write them here.    What gets talked about on the run,  stays on the run.   And those questions needed to stay deep, deep in the woods.

Her advice was interesting though:  she said she went for higher ground rather than lower ground because she noticed people looked down at the trail when they ran or biked by and didn't look up often.   She told me what type of cover to look for and how far to go back.   I asked about a particular location and she said that would be ideal.  Then she handed me the bag of tissues and said, "use them sparingly."

I am going to skip the next bit of the story but suffice it to say I came back with less tissue than I went into the woods with.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and daughter went to the bathroom with me at lunch today and we went into the large, family bathroom available.  My son went first and stood up.   My daughter wanted to stand up but couldn't, she said, because she didn't have a penis.   My son told me, "hey, I want girls to have a penis."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is good at reading a book to herself.   She makes up a story that goes with the pictures and is quite satisfied with how she decides the story ends.

Fitness Update:  Eighteen miles and a special visit into the woods today.

The Tiny Corner

We have this chair in our bedroom that's angled against a corner.  It's a sofa-chair type chair with a solid rectangular back that makes a nice connection with the wall.   The chair itself is two big cushions that come off easily to make forts and other things children imagine they might be useful for.

For a while, my children couldn't get behind the chair.   Then, when they managed to get back there, they couldn't get out.   That was fun for a while.   Now, they climb back and forth, in and out, up and over the chair on a regular basis.   The pillows are in regular demand for all kinds of fun adventuresome-things, but the best part of all is that triangular space behind the chair.

I have two fairly small children at three- and four-years-old but I'm continually impressed how they can both get back into that little triangle play land.   In addition to their bodies, they bring a large back roller they use for a, "cast" that's beside my nightstand.   They commonly bring the dog's leash and collar and sometimes they throw in a backpack full or items.  

The thing that I didn't believe though was how they were both huddled in the little space, hidden behind the chair completely, watching a show on the iPad they had snuck from the drawer when they didn't have permission.

The Big Boy Update:  On the way to school my son suddenly started counting in Spanish.   He got up to six and said, "that's all I know."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  This is the first year my children really "got" Christmas.   Yesterday morning my daughter asked me, "is it Christmastime yet?"  I think they may have enjoyed Christmas too much.

Fitness Update:  First gym visit this year.   It was good to see my friends, including our trainer, after the holidays.

Question Everything

Spring has sprung.   It must be time to start that spring cleaning.   Wait, it's not spring there?   It was sixty-three degrees here today.   Perhaps the temperature is to blame for my spring cleaning fever then.   I've caught something at any rate and I'm in fever of organization.

My brother-in-law, Eric, texted me yesterday saying his wife, Kelly, was going through the entire kitchen, organizing every cabinet, saying visiting our house the prior week had inspired her to do some organizing when she got home.  I texted back that I was doing the same thing here.

For some reason I'm in what I like to call, "question everything" mode.  I look at a drawer, cabinet, closet, shelf, room and everything in it and ask myself questions like:  why are these things stored here?   Is this the best place for these items?  Do I even need this thing?   If I don't need it now, do I want to keep it for later?  If we don't need it any more, is there someone who does need it?

When I'm done asking these questions in my mind, things start to move around.   Things change.  Today I went through my desk drawers and found most of the items didn't need to even be there.   The things I need most at my desk (paper for the printer and envelopes) somehow seemed to be in the next room and things I never used (empty iPad and iPhone boxes) were for some reason taking up an entire drawer.

With the desk drawers done, I moved on to the bar in the basement.   We had three fly swatters in one of the drawers there.   Was there a fly invasion sometime in the past that could only be combatted by three fly swatters?   There were about thirty other "things" that got re-assigned to other, more appropriate or useful areas of the house.

I informed my husband I was in one of my "let's organize the whole house, yay!" moods again.   He was super excited (I could tell.)  I explained I'd be doing a push of things to the basement mechanical room and the attic for the next several weeks.   Things like those empty iDevice boxes would go there for re-evaluation once the rest of the house had been gone through.  As long as I don't mess too much with my husband's mechanical room (and associated storage space) he lets me organize in peace.

My husband's been doing a bit of organizing lately as well, although his has been all digital.   His email of many years is tied to an ISP we're moving away from.  That same email is also associated with many, many online accounts.    He's been diligently changing a few each day and I think he's almost through his large list.   I'm going to buy him a beer to celebrate when he's done.

Tomorrow the children go back to school and I'll go back to organizing.   Who knows what I'll find in all of our stuff?

The Big Boy Update:  My son asked me today, "mom, what does love mean?"  I did my best to explain.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I asked my daughter if she had wiped her mouth after she'd finished eating something messy.   She said to me, "when I get my tongue out, I can clean my lips."  She then demonstrated and very nearly got a tenth of the icing off her smeared face.

Happy Meal Toys

I loved to go to McDonald's when I was a child.   I have very fond memories of going there for a special treat after the school play when I was in elementary school.   When I was older, our McDonald's got a drive through and you could get your happy meal and if your mom or dad wanted to pay extra, you could get the collectable glass with your order.

There were toys in those happy meals.   My mother always joked that I could put whatever little piece of plastic contraption/puzzle/toy was included before she had gotten to the instructions to read how to assemble it.  I don't really remember what the toys were that came in the happy meals, but I remember mostly playing with them from time to time and then throwing them away.   Years later, I heard some people had kept their entire collections and could sell them for something like twelve dollars (or perhaps it was more) on eBay.

Then there was that time when you could get Beanie Babies with your happy meal.   Or maybe you had to buy them as extras.   Either way, that was a craze I was thankfully too old to care about so I missed it completely.

What I do remember was that those happy meal toys were always something little, but nothing really special.   Today, the happy meal toys at McDonald's are serious business.   They do interesting things.   Some have batteries and now, they even have their own video games with them.

That's right, you go and get that three-dollar-ish happy meal for your child and you get a cool toy that will last a long time because it's built not to break like those dollar store toys.   And the battery-based toys are good too: we still  have one that still sings when the button is pressed a year-and-a-half after getting it.

But let's get to this free video game bit.  There are series of toys that are happening at any given time.  Usually they're movie-based because hey, it's all about merchandising and advertising, right?   There are boy toys and girl toys (you'll get asked which you want when you place an order for a happy meal.)  And no offense to the girls out there, but don't bother with the girl toys.   They're usually cute, but a lot of times don't do anything.   In my household, we like things that do stuff.

So you get your toy from the Lego movie or the item from the Spy Gear series and your child opens it and runs about with it for a while.   While they're doing that, download the McPlay app on your phone or tablet and open it up.    Then have your child bring that toy back over to you for a minute.   Tell the app that you have a happy meal and it will turn on the camera on your device.   You hold up the toy and angle it to match the overlaid picture on the screen.   When you get it just right, their recognition software confirms you have the toy, the app makes some happy sounds and disco, you have a new video game your little happy kid can play on your device.

You know what's coming, right?   This is one of those, "when I was young..." posts.  And yeah, wow. Some of the toys that come for free with a meal these days are ones I would have saved up cereal tops for and mailed off only to wait eight weeks for arrival.    And video games?   Don't even get me started.   When video games were around when I was older, they were a precious and much coveted commodity.

A lot has changed since I was a child, including the food in those happy meals.   Today my children do eat fries and nuggets, but they also eat apple slices, yogurt and drink milk.  So I'm a fan of the McDonald's Happy Meal.

The Big Boy Update:  Volcanos and Lava.   My son did not want to watch a cartoon this evening or a kids movie.  Instead, he asked my husband to put back on the show with the volcanos and lava.   My husband searched Netflix and found that the show Nova had an episode titled, "The World's Deadliest Volcanos."   When he asked if that's what my son wanted, my son said that it was.  He watched the show until he fell asleep on the couch after bedtime.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was shopping with me at Bed Bath and Beyond yesterday.   As we approached the register I got out the slew of discount coupons that have been stacking up in our coupon holder.   She said to me, "can I help you with the poocons?"   I explained to her she could call them, "coupons" but no matter what I (or the two very nice ladies behind me) said, she was sure they were called, "poocons."

Fitness Update:  Seven miles.   I got a twenty-four hour something or other and twisted my ankle so it's been a bit since I did anything other than eat holiday food and celebrate the new year.    My pace was poor, but I was out there.