The Fiftieth Party

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last Day of School

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You're Cured!

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

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

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

I like that kind of office visit.

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

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

Egads, What Have I Done?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Melting Peppermint Problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fear of the Unknown Caller

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Body Sitter

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

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

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

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

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