...because everyone is talking about fitness.
When we were in our teens and twenties, no one bothered to care. Or, at least that's the way it was in the circle of friends I had. When we entered our thirties, we pretended like our metabolisms hadn't slowed down and our pants were just shrinking.
Now, in our forties, we're all figuring out we have to do something about this slow, eventual body degradation, and we're taking action.
At a dinner with some friends and acquaintances over Memorial Day weekend, I was surprised to hear everyone was involved in some fitness endeavor or another. In my twenties, I would have scoffed at these folks. Now, I'm chiming in like the rest of them with what I'm doing to stay in shape.
The Big Boy Update: "I ate daddy up." This is a common theme with my son. I ask, "what did you eat today?" and he answers (sometimes) a food item. Other times, the answer is daddy. The answer is the most common answer he gives to any question about food consumption. This afternoon he went to the grocery store with daddy. He likes trying the samples. I asked him if he had some cheese (he did) and if he tried the ham (he said yes) and what else he ate, "I ate daddy." "You did? Are you sure you ate daddy?" "Yes, I ate him all up."
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "Where's daddy's gone?" She's been saying something quite a lot lately that's either, "where's daddy gone?" or "where's daddy's home?" I heard her ask the same thing about me when she didn't know where I was yesterday. She can also say her brother's name (in a fashion) now and will ask, "where's Greyson?"
Someone Once Said: When only one hypothesis covers the facts, you’ve got to accept it.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Inbox
I really hate a full inbox. On the flip side, I love nothing more than an empty inbox. I use my mail inbox as my funnel and storehouse for all things I must get done or attend to. So, the larger the inbox, the more mess I'm behind on.
There are handy to do lists and task minder tools out there. But no matter what tool I use, there's still the steady influx of email--email that must be taken care of. So, if I'm already dealing with the email. I might as well use my inbox as a to do list.
I can see how old things are that I haven't gotten done because I sort by date received. There's nothing more annoying than emails sitting in the "from one month ago" category at the bottom.
It is a strong motivator (for me) to get things done. It's not for other people. I know people who have thousands of emails in their inbox. They don't file them or delete them; they just read them. That works for them. I would be crushed by the electronic weight of their inboxes if it were me.
The Big Boy Update: So loud. He is having volume problems. I hear this isn't uncommon. He is just loud all the time. We're working on helping him find his "inside voice" and it's neighbor, his "quiet voice".
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Click! She has entered the phase in when she must click things together. Seat belts, the little restraining strap in the shopping cart or high chair. If you need fifteen minutes to get something done, just put her in front of a lap belt and she won't move from the spot.
Someone Once Said: You never had to endure that overpowering fatigue that comes with unending pain.
There are handy to do lists and task minder tools out there. But no matter what tool I use, there's still the steady influx of email--email that must be taken care of. So, if I'm already dealing with the email. I might as well use my inbox as a to do list.
I can see how old things are that I haven't gotten done because I sort by date received. There's nothing more annoying than emails sitting in the "from one month ago" category at the bottom.
It is a strong motivator (for me) to get things done. It's not for other people. I know people who have thousands of emails in their inbox. They don't file them or delete them; they just read them. That works for them. I would be crushed by the electronic weight of their inboxes if it were me.
The Big Boy Update: So loud. He is having volume problems. I hear this isn't uncommon. He is just loud all the time. We're working on helping him find his "inside voice" and it's neighbor, his "quiet voice".
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Click! She has entered the phase in when she must click things together. Seat belts, the little restraining strap in the shopping cart or high chair. If you need fifteen minutes to get something done, just put her in front of a lap belt and she won't move from the spot.
Someone Once Said: You never had to endure that overpowering fatigue that comes with unending pain.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
The Twenty Questions Stumper
I loved the game Twenty Questions from when I was a child. I played it up through college even when we were on long car rides. It's the typical, "I'll think of something and you have twenty yes/no questions you can ask me to try and determine what I'm thinking of."
For our rules, the thing you selected must be either a Person, a Place or a Thing. Over the years I got very good at narrowing things down quickly. Two of my personal favorite questions are: "is it bigger than a breadbox?" and "can you buy it at Wal*Mart?"
In general, we never counted questions. You were in it until you figured out the item or gave up. I thought of the game Twenty Questions today for a very specific reason: a smell. If you've ever played the game, you're sure to remember that one thing that was so clever you couldn't figure it out. You were probably assured you knew exactly what this thing was, but you didn't believe them. I have several things that happened to me like that, but I remember this one in particular.
I had narrowed it down to a flower. It was a flower that had small flowers and it was a flower I definitely knew the name of. What color were the flowers? They were yellow. And they were also white. No, it wasn't a bulb. It was a bush. I was lost. I had no idea of any bush that had both yellow and white small flowers at the same time that also had a smell.
The answer (for those that don't know what it could be) was honeysuckle. When I heard the answer I did the proverbial head slap. I love the smell and spent lots of time eating that one tiny drop of dew from each flower as a child. So to this day when I smell the delightful smell of spring honeysuckle, it makes me want to play twenty questions again.
The Big Boy Update: 12346679. That's the numbers up to ten I found out today. He was very clear on there being two sixes in a row.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba." Imagine that to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and then repeat forty-odd times. Now you have an idea of what I heard on the way to school as my daughter rode on the back of my bicycle in her child seat for the six miles to school. From time to time I would sing the words with her and it turns out she knows many of them and will sing along with you. But left to her solo singing, she always reverted back to the ba ba's.
Fitness Update: Today turned into an unexpectedly long workout day. First, I ran with my neighbor. We haven't run in several weeks as I've been concerned about shin splints. Good news on that front is there is zero pain and I think I'm back and ready to run. After breakfast daddy and I biked the children to school. It's a little less than six miles there and it was a fun time. It was less fun when I blew my tire more than a mile before I got home. Then, this afternoon Uncle Jonathan wanted to try out the new fitness room at our clubhouse. Before we knew it we'd been trying out machines and over an hour had gone by. I'm tired. So is daddy. He biked a total of seventeen miles today and went to the gym.
Someone Once Said: If you grab a bull by the horns, you at least confuse him.
For our rules, the thing you selected must be either a Person, a Place or a Thing. Over the years I got very good at narrowing things down quickly. Two of my personal favorite questions are: "is it bigger than a breadbox?" and "can you buy it at Wal*Mart?"
In general, we never counted questions. You were in it until you figured out the item or gave up. I thought of the game Twenty Questions today for a very specific reason: a smell. If you've ever played the game, you're sure to remember that one thing that was so clever you couldn't figure it out. You were probably assured you knew exactly what this thing was, but you didn't believe them. I have several things that happened to me like that, but I remember this one in particular.
I had narrowed it down to a flower. It was a flower that had small flowers and it was a flower I definitely knew the name of. What color were the flowers? They were yellow. And they were also white. No, it wasn't a bulb. It was a bush. I was lost. I had no idea of any bush that had both yellow and white small flowers at the same time that also had a smell.
The answer (for those that don't know what it could be) was honeysuckle. When I heard the answer I did the proverbial head slap. I love the smell and spent lots of time eating that one tiny drop of dew from each flower as a child. So to this day when I smell the delightful smell of spring honeysuckle, it makes me want to play twenty questions again.
The Big Boy Update: 12346679. That's the numbers up to ten I found out today. He was very clear on there being two sixes in a row.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba." Imagine that to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and then repeat forty-odd times. Now you have an idea of what I heard on the way to school as my daughter rode on the back of my bicycle in her child seat for the six miles to school. From time to time I would sing the words with her and it turns out she knows many of them and will sing along with you. But left to her solo singing, she always reverted back to the ba ba's.
Fitness Update: Today turned into an unexpectedly long workout day. First, I ran with my neighbor. We haven't run in several weeks as I've been concerned about shin splints. Good news on that front is there is zero pain and I think I'm back and ready to run. After breakfast daddy and I biked the children to school. It's a little less than six miles there and it was a fun time. It was less fun when I blew my tire more than a mile before I got home. Then, this afternoon Uncle Jonathan wanted to try out the new fitness room at our clubhouse. Before we knew it we'd been trying out machines and over an hour had gone by. I'm tired. So is daddy. He biked a total of seventeen miles today and went to the gym.
Someone Once Said: If you grab a bull by the horns, you at least confuse him.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Driving The Children
I was in college when I first moved into my own place. I don't count the dorm room a place of my own, I mean my first apartment, or in my case, townhouse. I was almost twenty and this fifteen-hundred square foot, three bedroom town home was the "House Mahal" to me. I lived in that house for over seven years, eventually buying it from the owner.
It was during that time that I made many friends that weren't my typical same-age peers from school. In the community I lived in there were people of all ages; some were retired, some were parents of multiple children and a few were young like I was. My neighbor became one of my good friends, and I eventually followed her when I moved to the new neighborhood she went to.
Marla had three children and they were all cute and sweet and fun to be around. I played with those children all the time. I did lots of fun things with them, including going to their birthday parties and lighting sparklers and I even got to wipe my first baby butt on a potty (which is a whole other story) during that time.
One day Marla asked me if I wanted to go to a show at the big amphitheater with the children. I was glad to go with them. They had great seats and the children were well-behaved. I remember Marla gave me twenty dollars for food for the children, which I thought was a crazy amount of money at the time. When the day arrived, we all got ready to go and we all loaded into my car.
I think they were all under ten and I'm fairly sure the youngest was about four. I remember driving very very carefully because I had three little lives in my hands and I wanted to be sure I did my best job. The show was fun, we spent that twenty dollars on food and then we came back home tired and happy.
What I don't remember is a single car seat. Don't we have to have children in car seats until they're eight or a certain "almost a tween" weight now? The rules were different back in 1991 I suppose, because I don't remember there being car seats in Marla's car either. Then again, I remember going to preschool in my parents car and not being in a car seat.
I don't see Marla much any more. Every now and then we run into each other and catch up. Her children are grown, her son can even say, "gloves" now instead of the little toddler version of, "glubs." He also doesn't need help from his neighbor because he'll fall in the potty if he tries to wipe his own bottom. But I miss those days back in my first town house with the fun children next door.
The Big Boy Update: He "NEEDS" to do a lot of things. Be it ice cream or getting down from the chair or having that thing over there that his sister has that he most definitely didn't want two seconds before until she decided it was interesting. Bottom line, we're spending a lot of time asking him to use his "polite words" because he sounds like a very demanding little boy of late.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Falling asleep in the swing. She didn't nap for the longest time today. When Madison, our neighbor, went out to play on her swing set we went to join her. But unfortunately the swinging motion was too much for her and my little girl fell straight asleep with the swaying motion.
Someone Once Said: A diplomat must always act with confidence; it is often his only weapon
It was during that time that I made many friends that weren't my typical same-age peers from school. In the community I lived in there were people of all ages; some were retired, some were parents of multiple children and a few were young like I was. My neighbor became one of my good friends, and I eventually followed her when I moved to the new neighborhood she went to.
Marla had three children and they were all cute and sweet and fun to be around. I played with those children all the time. I did lots of fun things with them, including going to their birthday parties and lighting sparklers and I even got to wipe my first baby butt on a potty (which is a whole other story) during that time.
One day Marla asked me if I wanted to go to a show at the big amphitheater with the children. I was glad to go with them. They had great seats and the children were well-behaved. I remember Marla gave me twenty dollars for food for the children, which I thought was a crazy amount of money at the time. When the day arrived, we all got ready to go and we all loaded into my car.
I think they were all under ten and I'm fairly sure the youngest was about four. I remember driving very very carefully because I had three little lives in my hands and I wanted to be sure I did my best job. The show was fun, we spent that twenty dollars on food and then we came back home tired and happy.
What I don't remember is a single car seat. Don't we have to have children in car seats until they're eight or a certain "almost a tween" weight now? The rules were different back in 1991 I suppose, because I don't remember there being car seats in Marla's car either. Then again, I remember going to preschool in my parents car and not being in a car seat.
I don't see Marla much any more. Every now and then we run into each other and catch up. Her children are grown, her son can even say, "gloves" now instead of the little toddler version of, "glubs." He also doesn't need help from his neighbor because he'll fall in the potty if he tries to wipe his own bottom. But I miss those days back in my first town house with the fun children next door.
The Big Boy Update: He "NEEDS" to do a lot of things. Be it ice cream or getting down from the chair or having that thing over there that his sister has that he most definitely didn't want two seconds before until she decided it was interesting. Bottom line, we're spending a lot of time asking him to use his "polite words" because he sounds like a very demanding little boy of late.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Falling asleep in the swing. She didn't nap for the longest time today. When Madison, our neighbor, went out to play on her swing set we went to join her. But unfortunately the swinging motion was too much for her and my little girl fell straight asleep with the swaying motion.
Someone Once Said: A diplomat must always act with confidence; it is often his only weapon
Monday, May 27, 2013
(.) or (). Help
I need to get back on my grammar study. I've been doing a lot of writing with parenthesis. It's become apparent to me I don't know when to put the period of a sentence inside the parenthesis and when to put it outside. I just don't know.
I don't know if it's correct (to end inside.) Or should I finish thusly (with the period outside). Also, that last sentence was a question, so the punctuation was completely off, but you get the point and that is that I don't know.
I think it has something to do with where the thought ends, but I'm going to have to figure that part out. More when I know more.
The Big Boy Update: Rock head. His hat was wet. It was drenched, and I didn't know why. Why should his hat be completely wet the other day? I asked Papa about it. Apparently my son had found a large, exciting, can't possibly live without rock and while they were on walkabout and he needed to bring it home. It was heavy. It was too heavy to easily carry so my son decided to carry it on his head. On his head was a hat. The hat protected his head from the mud on the rock. So that's why the hat was wet--because it was washed after the rock made it home.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Reesegression. That's what I'm calling this potty training regression Reese is going through. It fits. Today, she had on underpants. I brought in a dress to put her in. I put it on the floor. She got up, walked over to the dress, squatted over it and peed through her underwear directly onto it. Was that a message?
Someone Once Said: There are situations in which courage is useless. One finds such a situation only once.
I don't know if it's correct (to end inside.) Or should I finish thusly (with the period outside). Also, that last sentence was a question, so the punctuation was completely off, but you get the point and that is that I don't know.
I think it has something to do with where the thought ends, but I'm going to have to figure that part out. More when I know more.
The Big Boy Update: Rock head. His hat was wet. It was drenched, and I didn't know why. Why should his hat be completely wet the other day? I asked Papa about it. Apparently my son had found a large, exciting, can't possibly live without rock and while they were on walkabout and he needed to bring it home. It was heavy. It was too heavy to easily carry so my son decided to carry it on his head. On his head was a hat. The hat protected his head from the mud on the rock. So that's why the hat was wet--because it was washed after the rock made it home.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Reesegression. That's what I'm calling this potty training regression Reese is going through. It fits. Today, she had on underpants. I brought in a dress to put her in. I put it on the floor. She got up, walked over to the dress, squatted over it and peed through her underwear directly onto it. Was that a message?
Someone Once Said: There are situations in which courage is useless. One finds such a situation only once.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
The Requesters and The Accepters
I am not a shy person. If you know me or have even met me once, you would know this to be so. Except in one situation: anything online.
I don't have an explanation. I haven't had any bad online experiences. But I'm just not outgoing electronically. I don't crave an expansive online presence. I don't post on forums ad nauseum with extended reasons why my opinion is right and everyone else is wrong. I don't tweet on Twitter multiple times each day about the nuances of my life. And I don't fill up people's Facebook timeline with my thoughts, ideas, or re-postings about things I find "cute", "important", or "horrifyingly unjust". I guess I just don't expect people to care about the details of what's going on to in my life.
I don't even seek out friends online. Long ago I spent lots of time in IRC (Internet Relay Chat, one of the predecessors to the instant messaging craze). I didn't speak online much then and when I did, it was to people I usually already knew. Today, I do have a Facebook page, but so far, I have only invited one person to be my friend and I was helping him set up his account at the time.
Do you know people who seem to measure their social self-worth by the number of friends they have on Facebook? I'm frequently shocked to see someone I know on Facebook with over a thousand friends. I don't want to share my life's activities with a thousand people. Sure, some people have a large Facebook presence for business purposes, but that doesn't apply to everyone. I now have just over eighty friends on Facebook. That seems like a lot to me.
Recently, I've gotten a slew of friend requests on Facebook due to a single connection at my child's school. That one person commented on a picture of me as a child and their friends, all related to the school and all people I knew, saw the comment and sent me a friend invite. I accepted their invitations and then I realized what a total Facebook bore I am as I haven't put up a single post since Halloween when I shared a picture of my daughter in her elephant costume. That silent online pressure was getting to me with these new friends. So I put up a cute picture of my daughter in a mound of bath bubbles.
I class myself as an Accepter. I don't invite people online to be friends. It's that shy thing again. There are friends of friends I see out there sometimes through comments and connections. I've even looked up several people I've known from my past with relatively uncommon names and I've found them. But I've never sent a friend invitation. And I'm not sure why. I just can't be one of those Requester types.
So I'll have to suffice in being outgoing in real life (IRL) and have a more boring existence here, online.
The Big Boy Update: McDonald's Fries. We drove by McDonald's yesterday and he said, "McDonald's Fries" instead of "chickenfries." He may well grow out of the name before the adults around him do of saying his cute alternate name for all things McDonald's, chicken nuggets and french fries.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "Where's Papa?" Before the children got up, Papa came downstairs and was cutting up fruit. He asked if they were awake and I turned on the monitor to see if they were making noise. Very shortly after that we heard my daughter say, "Where's Papa?" So, Papa stopped cutting up the fruit to go and see her.
Fitness Update: I went to the fitness room today at the clubhouse that's just opened in our neighborhood. I had a fun time on the machines, but the most fun was the elliptical machine. I didn't like the motion of it, it seemed awkward. But then I pressed the Mix Three button (or something like that) and it started going through all sorts of neat exercises that were more fun than just running forward. You used your arms to push or pull. Sometimes you'd walk backwards. You might crouch down or stand up on your toes. I intended to try it for five minutes and before I knew it it was fifteen minutes later and the machine was still giving me new exercises to try. It was fun.
Someone Once Said: If you can't define a word, you don't know what it means.
I don't have an explanation. I haven't had any bad online experiences. But I'm just not outgoing electronically. I don't crave an expansive online presence. I don't post on forums ad nauseum with extended reasons why my opinion is right and everyone else is wrong. I don't tweet on Twitter multiple times each day about the nuances of my life. And I don't fill up people's Facebook timeline with my thoughts, ideas, or re-postings about things I find "cute", "important", or "horrifyingly unjust". I guess I just don't expect people to care about the details of what's going on to in my life.
I don't even seek out friends online. Long ago I spent lots of time in IRC (Internet Relay Chat, one of the predecessors to the instant messaging craze). I didn't speak online much then and when I did, it was to people I usually already knew. Today, I do have a Facebook page, but so far, I have only invited one person to be my friend and I was helping him set up his account at the time.
Do you know people who seem to measure their social self-worth by the number of friends they have on Facebook? I'm frequently shocked to see someone I know on Facebook with over a thousand friends. I don't want to share my life's activities with a thousand people. Sure, some people have a large Facebook presence for business purposes, but that doesn't apply to everyone. I now have just over eighty friends on Facebook. That seems like a lot to me.
Recently, I've gotten a slew of friend requests on Facebook due to a single connection at my child's school. That one person commented on a picture of me as a child and their friends, all related to the school and all people I knew, saw the comment and sent me a friend invite. I accepted their invitations and then I realized what a total Facebook bore I am as I haven't put up a single post since Halloween when I shared a picture of my daughter in her elephant costume. That silent online pressure was getting to me with these new friends. So I put up a cute picture of my daughter in a mound of bath bubbles.
I class myself as an Accepter. I don't invite people online to be friends. It's that shy thing again. There are friends of friends I see out there sometimes through comments and connections. I've even looked up several people I've known from my past with relatively uncommon names and I've found them. But I've never sent a friend invitation. And I'm not sure why. I just can't be one of those Requester types.
So I'll have to suffice in being outgoing in real life (IRL) and have a more boring existence here, online.
The Big Boy Update: McDonald's Fries. We drove by McDonald's yesterday and he said, "McDonald's Fries" instead of "chickenfries." He may well grow out of the name before the adults around him do of saying his cute alternate name for all things McDonald's, chicken nuggets and french fries.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "Where's Papa?" Before the children got up, Papa came downstairs and was cutting up fruit. He asked if they were awake and I turned on the monitor to see if they were making noise. Very shortly after that we heard my daughter say, "Where's Papa?" So, Papa stopped cutting up the fruit to go and see her.
Fitness Update: I went to the fitness room today at the clubhouse that's just opened in our neighborhood. I had a fun time on the machines, but the most fun was the elliptical machine. I didn't like the motion of it, it seemed awkward. But then I pressed the Mix Three button (or something like that) and it started going through all sorts of neat exercises that were more fun than just running forward. You used your arms to push or pull. Sometimes you'd walk backwards. You might crouch down or stand up on your toes. I intended to try it for five minutes and before I knew it it was fifteen minutes later and the machine was still giving me new exercises to try. It was fun.
Someone Once Said: If you can't define a word, you don't know what it means.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
PFE
Drat. Not again. So I have an issue with my washing machine. It's not an issue of something broken, it's an issue that comes up from time to time that is a hassle. I get told about the issue by the error letters PFE displayed on the washer front when I go to move the clothes over to the dryer.
The clothes, it turns out, aren't ready to be moved to the dryer. They are drenched and the door is locked to the washing machine and nothing, including turning off the power or unplugging it will let you get your clothes out, short of a sledge hammer. I discovered this because I used to fight the PFE. Now, I just accept the PFE, get down to correcting the PFE situation and am back up and running (or rather rinsing and spinning) the laundry.
I don't know what PFE stands for, but what it means is some small item, say for instance a small child's sock, has gotten sucked in through the edge of the washing bin and been trapped in the drain catch. This is fine. It's appropriate. It's working as designed, because it's better to get something stuck in the trap, versus further down the line at an unknown and possibly unreachable point. But getting to the trap takes time.
First, you have to open the hatch on the front of the dryer. Then you have to drain all the water that's backed up and can't drain out of the machine. This is the reason the PFE message comes up. The machine can't dump more water into the system when it can't drain what's already in cycle. So you open and drain lots of water out of a small tube. This part took me a while to get efficient.
That tube is near the ground so you can't drain it with a large bucket. You need a second, smaller receptacle to catch the water, but you need that large bucket because you're going to be filling the smaller container again and again. Once several gallons of water have been emptied and the drain tube stops leaking, you can open the trap itself and remove the very dark blue black sock that used to be white before it got stuck in the system.
Back out by closing the trap and putting the access door back on and all you have to do is press start on the machine and it picks up right where it left off. I used to hate this message, but now it's about a ten minute job. It's also interesting to find out what got stuck in the trap this time.
The Big Boy Update: Daddy overheard my son tell Papa he needed to go potty. They went into the bathroom and Papa waited for him to go. When Papa asked him if he needed to go, since he had said he did only moments before, my son said, "It's your turn to go potty. You take down your pants."
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: The Very Best Ball. My daughter still loves balls. She sees balls in anything and everything, but there is one ball above all others she is infatuated with. She loves the red white and blue Pepsi logo. It's gotten so regular an occurrence that now when she randomly says, "ball!" I look around for the Pepsi symbol.
Someone Once Said: Butterflies are not insects. They are self-propelled flowers.
The clothes, it turns out, aren't ready to be moved to the dryer. They are drenched and the door is locked to the washing machine and nothing, including turning off the power or unplugging it will let you get your clothes out, short of a sledge hammer. I discovered this because I used to fight the PFE. Now, I just accept the PFE, get down to correcting the PFE situation and am back up and running (or rather rinsing and spinning) the laundry.
I don't know what PFE stands for, but what it means is some small item, say for instance a small child's sock, has gotten sucked in through the edge of the washing bin and been trapped in the drain catch. This is fine. It's appropriate. It's working as designed, because it's better to get something stuck in the trap, versus further down the line at an unknown and possibly unreachable point. But getting to the trap takes time.
First, you have to open the hatch on the front of the dryer. Then you have to drain all the water that's backed up and can't drain out of the machine. This is the reason the PFE message comes up. The machine can't dump more water into the system when it can't drain what's already in cycle. So you open and drain lots of water out of a small tube. This part took me a while to get efficient.
That tube is near the ground so you can't drain it with a large bucket. You need a second, smaller receptacle to catch the water, but you need that large bucket because you're going to be filling the smaller container again and again. Once several gallons of water have been emptied and the drain tube stops leaking, you can open the trap itself and remove the very dark blue black sock that used to be white before it got stuck in the system.
Back out by closing the trap and putting the access door back on and all you have to do is press start on the machine and it picks up right where it left off. I used to hate this message, but now it's about a ten minute job. It's also interesting to find out what got stuck in the trap this time.
The Big Boy Update: Daddy overheard my son tell Papa he needed to go potty. They went into the bathroom and Papa waited for him to go. When Papa asked him if he needed to go, since he had said he did only moments before, my son said, "It's your turn to go potty. You take down your pants."
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: The Very Best Ball. My daughter still loves balls. She sees balls in anything and everything, but there is one ball above all others she is infatuated with. She loves the red white and blue Pepsi logo. It's gotten so regular an occurrence that now when she randomly says, "ball!" I look around for the Pepsi symbol.
Someone Once Said: Butterflies are not insects. They are self-propelled flowers.
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