DUOFILIA

Duofilia Has Moved!

2006-05-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

Duofilia has grown up! Please visit my new site at www.Duofilia.com. Make sure to change any links, trackbacks, etc., that you may have.

Have a Great Weekend!

2006-05-26T19:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the dearth of posts lately. Having a Lyme week and very, very tired and migrainy. Hopefully I'll snap out of it by next week. I have to work Sunday and Monday (you know when cousin Bob gets sick off of the crab salad that was left out too long and gets sunburn and steps on a nail and calls a nurse who's waiting by the phone on Memorial Day? I'm the nurse), so no hopes of a soon recovery, but I'll get there.

Had a scare today with little Syd. She had immunization yesterday and is having the hot red spot on her leg from the DTaP, that is expected. But then today the redness spread considerably. And then the thing that got me anxious was today when she started acting very irritable and then starting wailing and holding the back of her neck and complaining of neck pain. If she had just whined a little and said her neck hurt I would have just monitored her, but the wailing and irritability was very concerning so I took her to her doctor's office and got there just before they closed. By that time she was acting totally normal (so the doctor probably thinks I'm a nut!) and he said her red leg was still within the expected range of an immunization reaction, rather than cellulitis. So I'm very grateful.

We are back home now and at this very moment Sydney is playing the piano like a little mad woman, so I think she'll make it.

So to y'all, have fun, stay safe, and don't eat that salad. Hope you have a great weekend!

Happy Birthday!

2006-05-23T18:30:00.000-07:00

Sydney and Summerlyn turn five!! Whoohoo!

Here's their happy faces when they got their bikes. Yes, we took them outside and didn't let them ride in the living room. They had a birthday party the day before their birthday and had a blast with their buddies, a total of six girls and one boy. Oh the noise!

New Theme Coming!

2006-05-19T20:01:00.000-07:00

Just to warn y'all, I have a new theme on its way in the next few days. I'm so excited, it looks awesome. My favorite web boy has been working on it and has done a fabulous job despite the fact that I've been a very demanding client.

Three Link Thursday

2006-05-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

Having taken my 4 1/2 hour CPR recert today, I am reminded how valuable that everyone, not just health care providers, learn these life-saving techniques. Those of you who haven't taken the CPR class -- do it! Those of you who took one years ago -- take it again! There's been a lot of significant changes to the guidelines. Learn to save a life.

Red Cross' CPR site.

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American Heart Association's CPR site.

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A story to get you inspired.

The Best Day Spa & Salon

2006-05-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm not a high-maintenance kinda girl. I think I've made that clear in the past. But I am very picky about who cuts my hair. I have searched for a good stylist for years and when I find one they are MINE and have no right to move, retire or die.

Several years ago I found Zena at what was then Nature's Day Spa. She's brilliant. About two years ago she started her own salon called Desirant. It's a lovely space with great ambiance and special services. For instance, for a manicure your hands aren't soaked in water but hand cream. For a pedicure your feet are placed in a copper basin while someone else stands behind you massaging your shoulders.

Zena had to have neck surgery last year and now only does one or two clients once a week. I'm a bad client because I'll go without cuts for months and then want one NOW. She wasn't available for my NOW so I reluctantly agreed to have someone else at the salon cut my hair. That stylist did an acceptable job overall, but didn't trim the top layers short enough. After a couple days I called the salon and requested a fix.

So I went in today and got yet another stylist, Sarah. I liked her immediately and she did a fabulous job. She started with the aromatherapy head massage, which is standard for Desirant, Washed, cut, styled my hair perfectly and ended with a hand massage. And I was charged ZERO for all that. Zena, Sarah, Desirant, you rule.

I normally avoid glamour-type shots like the plague, but I came home and David was so infatuated with my hair that he took some pictures which actually turned out farily well, although you can't see the cut as well as I'd like. Plus my ankles are swollen. Ok, I'll shut up now.

Scorcher!

2006-05-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

It was 98 degrees today, whoohoo! Summer's a comin'!

Happy Mother's Day!

2006-05-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

Northern view from our property. Little white church with steeple far in the background.

Western view. That's my dad on the riding lawnmower. He's not waving but is examining his babies (fruit trees) for the slightest sign of pestilence. Every worm fears the wrath of Richard the Pruner.

Eastern view. I need a fancy camera, this just doesn't do justice to the golden tones from the setting sun and the vivid greens and blues. It was like God was saying Happy Mother's Day just to me.

David, the girls and I decided to go on a walk tonight. He'd shoveled manure for me all day and I worked all day fixing people's owies. It was nice just walking in the quiet of the country. Ok, there was the sound of the lawn mower, but that's acceptable. The girls were wearing my sandals and so had to make big shuffling steps. Holding their little hands and breathing the fresh air, the scent of cut grass and lilacs. A little piece of paradise.

Happy Sabbath!

2006-05-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

So we're sitting in church and Summerlyn is on my lap, facing me, looking around and wiggling. The girls are quiet in church but you can't keep a 4 y/o from wiggling. Constant nonstop movement until bedtime.

I noticed that she was focused on my chest and I looked down. She had unbuttoned the top two buttons of my blouse and pulled it wide open. I don't think Summerlyn would normally do that, she understands privacy well enough, but I think she was just not thinking, just in her own world.

I gasped and pulled my shirt closed quickly. I was fortunate for two reasons, 1) because she was on my lap the pastor wasn't able to see what had happened, and 2) I was wearing a camisole underneath, otherwise my flesh-toned bra might have caused some of the myopic little old ladies to pass out.

Afterwards we had a potluck. I'm a good cook and I like to experiment. Yesterday I was tired and so threw a casserole together off the top of my head. Since the casserole would be warmed in the church oven, I decided not to cook the diced potatoes before hand. I added mushroom soup and mushrooms and garlic. Nothing fancy.

So when we went down to the potluck I looked for my dish on the table and at first couldn't find it. Until I realized it was sitting there right in front of me. I'll call it the Black Slop of Death. Yes, the combination of not cooking the potatoes plus the grayness of the homemade mushroom soup made it black and grey. Afterwards, David said he saw it and avoided it at all costs. So did nearly everyone else. I had some, perhaps as a little self-punishment, and it actually tasted just fine, but man, it looked repulsive. Actually, looked a little like cuitlacoche, a corn fungus delicacy eaten in Mexico (check out this link only if not easily nauseated), only more dry than slimy.

After we ate (other food) we drove to Leach Botanical Gardens. The girls had a great time exploring all the paths through the gorgeous woods. I used to know a lot of plant names but sadly have lost a lot of that data. It's such a beautiful day, perfect temperature. I don't want to go to work tomorrow. Oh wait, if I stay home I'll have to help David shovel manure into the garden, so I think I'll be content to commute tomorrow.

Hope you all are enjoying the day. Get some fresh air and sunshine and spend time with your families.

Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof. Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein, then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice. Psalm 96:11-12

A Mouse Murder in America

2006-05-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

And then David screamed.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. You see we have this lovely little lady cat named Sera. She's in her 80s, although you wouldn't know by looking at her. She believes kittenhood rules and plans to stay their permanently. Several times a week she goes hunting in the middle of the night. The fact that she is an indoor-only cat is a non-issue. She and her brother Toby have a toy box and by morning every toy is scattered around the house.

Often, she select a particular juicy bit of prey, usually in the form of a glitter ball and breaks its neck. She then delivers it to our bed, meowing her "mouse meow" all the way through the house to announce her victory. If we're awake we tell her what a good and thoroughly vicious cat she is. She sits and grooms herself with pride.

Early this morning she was making a ruckus in our room. Digging in stuff, crawling under the bed, shaking things, all the while doing her mouse meow. Groggily, David told her to knock it off. Yes, ferocious animal. Whatever. Hush.

At a closer look though, we realized she was a predator on a mission. She crouched staring under shelves near our bed. David turned on the light and shone a flashlight under the shelves.

"A mouse! A real mouse! A MOUSE!"

I shut the bedroom and bathroom door so the mouse, couldn't get out. We flushed the mouse out and Sera took off after it.

That's when David screamed, "it touched my hand!"

That little thing was fast and soon it was behind the dresser. Then a box. Then the fan. Then the dresser again. David crouched on the other side of the dresser holding a wastebasket to catch it and I pulled back the dresser on the other side. Sera dashed in and the mouse skittered toward David. He slammed the wastebasket down.

"Got it!!!"

He crouched there, looking at the wastebasket, wondering what to do next. At that point I noticed Sera behind him in the corner of the room. She was having the time of her life, running in tight circles and

tossing a mouse in the air.

"Um, honey. You don't have the mouse."

He turned around, and indeed, Sera Queen of Ferocity, had the mouse. Unlike us, however, her plan was not to remove the mouse from the premises. To her, the mouse was entertainment. Oh, she'd get around to eating it, but what's the hurry? She chased the poor thing in shocked little circles, stunning it with her paw or jaws when it got too active. Sera was having the time of her life.

We felt bad for Sera and for the tortured little mouse. So David captured it with the wastebasket again (for real this time) and it was, well, disposed of. I went back to bed. David got ready for work. And Sera, serene in the fact that she had saved the universe, curled up with me.

Tonight she gets tuna.

Friends and Enemies: Update

2006-05-08T18:37:00.000-07:00

I got a call from my best friend who I believed no longer wanted to be friends due to drifting. I wasn't home at the time and she left a message telling me it was all a mistake and that she wanted very much to remain friends with me. I nearly cried when I replayed her message. I called her back and also got an answering machine and told her how happy I was. To Henry if you're listening -- I love you always!

The Academy -- Part III

2006-05-05T21:04:00.000-07:00

Part I and II

I have a rich Seventh-day Adventist heritage. Yes, we're the oddities that observe Saturday instead of Sunday. My great-grandfather was a conference president for many regions (Arizona, Nevada, Jamaica) and for many years. He’d be the main speaker at the old-fashioned camp meetings and his wife, my great-grandmother, had a lovely voice and sang solos and led the hymns. Like many preachers he neglected his home-mission to focus on his evangelistic-mission and as a result all of his children grew up to be agnostics, except for one son, my grandfather, who is atheistic.

Somehow, despite my father’s extremely unloving upbringing, or perhaps because of it, he began to search for deeper meaning. He started listening to his grandparents preach and soon after he married my mother, they were baptized into the SDA church.

Like every demonimation, the SDAs have their own peculiar set of traditions and cultures. One of them is to send one’s kids to academy for their high school years, and many of the academies are boarding schools. The conference SDA church has massive worldwide educational and health systems, second only, I believe, to the Catholic’s systems. One could send their child to the academy in your own town, or you could send him to one in India if you wanted. At some point in middle school, every SDA kid is asked, “Where do you want to go to academy?”

I went to a SDA school from 1st to 7th grade. For 8th grade I lived with my now grown sister for about six months and went to a one-room school house. That was a psychotic experience to unbelievable to write about, so I won’t. I returned to my old school for 9th grade and faced the question, “where do you want to go to academy?”

Public school was never in consideration. It pretty much didn’t exist for us. All of my friends were Adventists and the few neighbor friends I’d had that weren’t were so different from what I was used to that I couldn’t fathom going to a school with them. I wasn’t raised to feel like I was better than anyone, so I didn’t think that. But the kids outside my regular circle were vastly different than me. Often equally nice, but they tended to be much more sophisticated, meaning they knew more about the world than I did. I’m not talking about world events or cultures, but the stuff they didn’t teach in schools, like sex, for instance. We knew about sex, but they had the Cosmopolitan version, with details. They also wanted to party. Oh, so did we, but our version had adult supervision, sherbet punch and Uno. Theirs were considerably different. In my twenties I attended parties, but I’ve had to get the adolescent version explained to me by my husband David (he was one of them). While I know it is typical for most kids, it still blows my mind that his parents didn’t know, or appear to care, where he was just as long as he was back by the set curfew time. I can’t tell how foreign that was to me as a teenager. While I had my rebellious phases I never felt smothered by them.

I wanted to go to Auburn Adventist Academy in Washington. Mainly because it seemed far away, but not too far away, and I had friends who were going to go there. My parents disagreed, as parents will. AAA was too expensive, and getting too rowdy, or so they heard (I think they heard right). Some friend had told them about “self-supporting” Adventist schools. These schools were not run by the Conference so were smaller, cheaper, and supposedly more godly. I believe that some are. Ahem. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So AAA was out and “self-supporting” was in, much to my great dismay. I waited for my parents to find the one they wanted and fill me in. California? Canada? Right.

Three Link Thursday

2006-05-04T21:15:00.000-07:00

You 90-year-olds out there complaining about your age? You ain't nothing but whippersnappers.

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Ok, here's a way cool link. The best web cam I know of -- live feed of an eagle's nest. If it's dark that's because it's night in Alaska so wait to look at it during daylight hours.

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And finally, a link that only Tina will understand. Yes, you, the silent reader.

Soy / Rice Milk and Malnutrition? NOT!

2006-05-03T16:42:00.000-07:00

Normally, I don't use my blog as a forum to express controversial topics. But I have been inflamed! I am so irritated by the media. Read my whole rant before you make a judgement, please.

In the article I read today is entitled "Health: Does 'Milk' Hurt Kids?" Mary Carmichael reports that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently discovered TWO cases of children who were malnourished and an unknown number of undernourished children. These children were also consuming rice or soy milk and so Carmichael states the CDC blames the malnourishment on the rice/soy milk.

Error

1. This article does not tell us what the children's complete diets consist of. Are they eating only Nilla Wafers and soy milk? Or hot dogs, Skippy and rice milk? Well, then, DUH, the children are going to be malnourished, but not because of the rice/soy milk -- because they are not getting a varied diet of fruits, veggies, grains, and legumes. Many parents make the mistake (I've counseled them for years) of believing that their infant/child automatically a) won't like whole grains and veggies, and 2) naturally prefer "children's" foods, i.e., refined foods marketed to children. While those parents mean well, they don't realize that is a fallacy ingrained into our brains by the media. Babies will learn to love what is given to them over and over. By the time they are toddlers, bad habits are fully learned (but not irreversably).

This article implies that rice/soy milk itself is cause of malnourishment, as if a child, otherwise eating a complete balanced diet, would become malnourished simply because of the rice/soy milk. Any lay person (and many health professionals) could easily come away after reading this article, that rice/soy milk should not be given to young children of any age.

2. While not mentioned, the article makes the silent implication that the child should be drinking cow's milk instead. More on that later. (Side note: Did you know that the only studies (that I know of, and I've done a lot of research on it, that state that dairy helps people lose weight were funded by the dairy industry?)

Facts

1. Rice/soy milk should NOT be used as formula. Infants, particularly under 12 months of age require breast milk or formula which is specifically formulated for the nutritional needs of infants. Most rice/soy milk packaging states that on its label, but perhaps it does need to be more prominently displayed. (BTW, cow's milk should never be given to infants under 12 months, either, as it causes gastrointestinal bleeding and is specifically formulated to make an 80 pound calf grow to 1000 pounds in one year, not for the highly complex brains of humans).

2. If human babies required the lactated secretions of another species (cows, goats) to live, then why do other cultures that don't consume dairy have healthy babies, children, and adults, such as Japan? Nor do those cultures develop osteoporosis at the rate Americans do, either. Dozens of studies show that cows milk leads to obesity in children and is linked to Type I diabetes. I could really go on a rant about cow's milk here, but I better hush.

Bottom Line: Infants and toddlers are becoming malnourished because of the lack of nutrition in their overall diet, NOT because of rice/soy milk. Secondly, parents who give their infants anything other than breast milk or formula as their primary source of nutrition need to be educated.

I'm done now. I'd like to take this moment to say that I have lots of friends and family who give milk to their kids and I've never made an issue out of it, as I think it's inappropriate and a self-righteous attitude certainly won't get anyone to do their own research. Eat/drink what you want, just educate yourselves, that's all I ask.

The Academy -- Part II

2006-04-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

(Part I)

After living in various places in California and Oregon we finally settled in Beaverton, Oregon, which was at that time a smallish suburb with rural areas of mostly hazelnut and apple orchards. It is ironic that although I now live an hour away, I work in Beaverton, which is now an overpopulated city (home of Nike!) with clotted freeways and photo-radar intersections. I drive by my old house occasionally to make sure they haven’t cut down the grape vine in the backyard. So far so good. Although they did cut down the apple tree upon which my dad grafted pears. Fascists.

The old house was pea-green and had two small bedrooms and one bathroom with a deep tub but no shower. The area under the kitchen sink was covered with curtains and it was where we kept the bucket for kitchen scraps which would eventually be put in the compost pile outside for our perennial vegetable garden. I shared my room with my obnoxious sister (I like you much better now, Mia, but at the time you were a huge pain, unlike me who was nearly angelic. Stop choking.) who is six years older than me. There were built in drawers in the room and if you opened them you couldn’t open the bedroom door. Which was how my sister locked me out of out room on a regular basis while she chatted with friends about Leif Garrett and Scott Baio. I retaliated by following her and her friends around as much as I could and asking obnoxious questions and steal her Bonne Bell lip gloss.

Our neighbor and landlord lived next door on a corner lot. He had a huge Queen Anne cherry tree and we’d climb high into its branches, eat cherries, and drop the pits onto cars passing below. On the other side of our house was the neighbor where I practiced piano before I had my own. She was old and her house smelled like old things but was extremely fascinating to me and I liked to explore it since it was much bigger than ours. Like my mom, our neighbor had a pantry with rows and rows of sparkling Kerr jars of tomatoes, peaches, applesauce. We made grape juice every year from our grape vines, dried fruit from our fig tree in the dehydrator and canned tomatoes from the garden. Every house I’ve owned as an adult I’ve had a vegetable garden and we plant trees. Currently we have apples, plums, figs, peaches, nectarines, pawpaws and olives. Trees are a very important part of my life. Must have trees!

I played by myself most of the time. I was mostly a Hot Wheels car girl and made roads in the dirt. I had a few dolls, but had the most fun with homemade paper dolls and the Dandelion Ladies (see instructions in my previous post) that Mia taught me how to make. Childhood seemed to last a lifetime, which was sometimes good and sometimes not. But elementary and junior high ended, as did life at the old house.

How to Make Dandelion Ladies

2006-04-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

1) Pick a dandelion, making sure it has at least a 3-4” stem.

2) With your fingernails, carefully peel the stem back into halves lengthwise, leaving about a 1” section of stem by the blossom intact.

3) Peel the halves into halves and halves again, careful not to break them, until you have several “streamers.”

4) Place the split stem into cold or tap water. Watch the streamers curl before your eyes!

5) Stand the finished dandelion doll on its blossom, which is the skirt. Now you have a curly topped, yellow skirted little lady. Make a dozen of them and watch how each of them curls differently.

Three Link Thursday

2006-04-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

For this Three Link Thursday I'm going to list links that I visit regularly.

Kids -- Two educational and fun links for kids and great for homeschooling: Funschool and Starfall.

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Food -- I visit VegWeb nearly everyday for great recipe ideas and some of the recipes are my own. Epicurious is another site that gives me great ideas for great eats.

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Health -- The superb and scientifically based PCRM and the odd but also scientifically based Not Milk. Enter either at your own risk and be prepared to change your nutrition paradigm, if you dare!

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Ok, that was more like six links. Three, six, whatever. I was never good at math. Get over it.

Joy

2006-04-24T20:47:00.000-07:00

Burns, germs, aches, pains. Happiness.

My aunt and uncle are vacationing for a week in Welches, Oregon, in the mountains near grand Mt. Hood, renting a two bedroom condo. They invited us up and so we drove up there Saturday evening. It’s only a 40-45 min drive from our home and we’ve been there before, and while its very beautiful I don’t remember it being quite so gorgeous as it was this weekend.

Sunday morning we woke up and drove 15 minutes up the mountain to a snow park. We bundled the girls and took them inner-tubing for the first time in their lives. Fortunately, the park has a tow-rope otherwise I would have died after the first hike to the top, a permanent snow angel. After my multiple back surgeries I’ve never quite gotten back into shape and knew the day would likely kill me off, but nothing could have kept me away from enjoying my daughters’ play.

After sliding down several times, Sydney informed me she had to go potty. So she and I stomped into the lodge at the top of the hill while her sister and daddy stayed behind. Anyone who has gone skiing, snowboarding, sledding, or any other snow activity knows what a pain it is to use the bathroom. Double that with children. They ought to make a suit with a built-in urinal system, or maybe diapers like the Chinese do when waiting in line at the subway.

We were alone in the 12 stall restroom. I carefully peeled the layers off Sydney. I had both girls’ and my own hats and gloves stuffed in the front of my ski jacket. As I bent over to do the post-pee dabbing, I dropped my black knit hat into the toilet. I snatched it out, hoping to have been so fast that the fluid molecules hadn’t touched the hat molecules. Right.

I lifted Sydney off and rushed to a sink, filling it with hot water and soap. Sydney watched me with great interest. The old faucet didn’t have hot and cold marked and I blasted the cold water to rinse my hat. Instead, the water went from Hot to Blister and I burned my knuckles.

By the time we got back outside David and Summerlyn were at the bottom of the hill, so Sydney and I tubed our way back down and I handed David all the gloves and hats, handing him my own last. He looked down in surprise at the soggy hat in his hand, but not so surprised as when I told him I fished it out of the toilet. That was amusing for a few moments until I told him it was washed. But still.

That night David, who apparently still loves me, and I left the twinlets with my aunt and uncle and we went to Don Guido's, a good Italian restaurant in Rhododendron. The food was excellent, save for the garlic bread. We sat in a half-circle vinyl booth, surrounded by several others, so we felt like we were on the teacup ride at Disneyland, the Italian version, expecting to start spinning any moment. Soft rock from the seventies played overhead and David and I looked deeply into each other’s eyes and spoke the lyrics in time with the music, in very droll tones.

“Every sha la la la, every whoa uh oh, still shines. Every shing a ling ling…”

The other patrons probably thought we were on leave from the state hospital, as we snickered our way through our pasta. But that’s our way of bonding. The most romantic thing was later when we crawled into bed, smiling. Not because anything was going to be any action that night but because our tiny girls were sleeping in their sleeping bags at the foot of our bed and we were comforted by their presence and our hearts were in love with the togetherness of our family.

Health Alertment!

2006-04-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

Alertment! (As the girls would say) as of last night:

"If you pinch your nose shut for years and years until Jesus comes, you will die." -- Surgeon General Summerlyn (age 4 years 11 months)

The Great Debate

2006-04-21T15:03:00.000-07:00

The following is from Cartago Delenda Est via radaractive.

How many Darwinists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Charles Darwin: None. But if it could be shown that the bulb entered the socket without a series of clockwise turns, my theory would absolutely break down.

ACLU: None! We have separation of church and state in this country.

Eugenie Scott: None. To say a Darwinist did it is not a scientific explanation.

Panda’s Thumb: None. To say that light bulbs don’t screw themselves in is not a testable proposition. You can’t prove they don’t. That would be an argument from incredulity. You are committing a ‘Darwinist Of The Gaps’ fallacy.

Generic 1: None. Time and chance are sufficient. Eventually it is inevitable that the bulb will be in the socket. Say, in a billion years.

Generic 2: None. The quintessentially non-random process of natural selection is sufficient. Those objects capable of giving off light when screwed into sockets will be in sockets. Those that aren’t will be in the trash.

Richard Dawkins: None. A light bulb that gives off 1% light intensity is very much worth having. A bulb sitting on the shelf at the supermarket gives off a certain amount of light. One in the cupboard at home gives off more. One five feet from the socket gives off more, and one two feet away even more. One in the socket gives off the most of all. It is therefore inevitable that the bulb will reach the socket.

Stephen J. Gould: None. The bulb jumped into the socket when no one was looking. Gradually.

Kenneth Miller: None. The bulb was already serving a function: providing rigidity to its corrugated packaging on the supermarket shelf. Co-option did the rest.

Theistic Evolutionist: All of the above explanations are substantially correct. But the more important question is the meaning of the light.

Philip Johnson: One.

Michael Behe: One.

Stephen Meyer: One.

William Dembski: One.

Guillermo Gonzalez: One. But isn’t it interesting that other light bulbs allowed the Darwinist to see what he was doing as he screwed in this light bulb.

Darwin Chorus: Oh, yeah? Which Darwinist? What is his name? If you won’t tell us that, you’re being disingenuous, and therefore no one screwed in the light bulb!

Flying Spaghetti Monster: Two. But don’t ask me how they got in there. Oh. 'Darwinists'? I thought you said 'fruit flies'.

Michael Ruse: Are you trying to create a theocracy? The light bulbs in the reeducation camps will be depressingly dim. Unless they use candles. Do Christians know how to make fire?

Internet Infidels: First answer this: How many priests did it take to burn Galileo at the stake? Huh?!?

Panda’s Thumb: If a Darwinist had screwed it in, it would be an efficient fluorescent, not a wasteful incandescent. Therefore no one screwed it in.

Talk.Origins: We’ve observed all kinds of light bulbs in all kinds of sockets: flashlights, automobile headlights, Christmas tree lights, Las Vegas marquees. There is nothing special about this light bulb and this socket.

Richard Dawkins: None. Darwin made it possible to feel fulfilled sitting in the dark.

Update: Richard Dawkins has accused me of leaving out one of his best arguments, so I add it below:

Richard Dawkins: To say that it took a Darwinist to do the screwing in of the lightbulb is to explain precisely nothing. The obvious question becomes: Who did the screwing to create the Darwinist screwer? And who did the screwing to create that screwer? There would have to be an infinite regress of screwers. And if you invoke some invisible, mystical Unscrewed Screwer (for which we have no credible evidence) to start the whole thing off, why not just say that the lightbulb screwed itself in and be done with it?

Three Link Thursday

2006-04-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

Now we know what "food" item we can send with our astronauts on their long trip to Mars.

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Say that five times fast.

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Ever have a song stuck in your head and say "What is the name of that song???" Well I do. And this site has given me relief. Don't say I never add anything useful.

Bugs

2006-04-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

I came home from work yesterday and my mom sent the girls home (my parents live across the driveway from me). David calls me out to the deck and says, "Come look at this now!"

I found him and Mom examining Summerlyn's scalp in the sunlight. I moved aside her hair and saw that her head was covered in welts, some raw. She was periodically scratching but not severely, and there were was no rash anywhere else except her head, so I doubted hives was the cause. Sydney also had a couple but they were smaller and less angry looking.

I am a triage nurse, a telephone advice nurse, and have almost ten years experience in that particular field. I can correctly identify probably at least 80% of rashes without setting my eyes on them. This one stumped me. The lesions looked like bug bites, but not mosquitoes or bees. They looked most like spider bites, but what from? The girls play outside but not in bushes or trees or tall grass. It certainly wouldn't explain why they have them only on their heads.

Their bedroom is a likely source. Not fleas, because those insects would be all over the house, not just their bedroom. Besides fleas love me and I have no bites. The lesions don't follow the pattern of scabies, either. The girls don't go to day care or school (except homeschool), so lice is unlikely, but can't initially be ruled out since they do play with other children and could possibly have shared a personal item such as a hat (although unlikely). I checked their hair carefully -- no lice. Adult bed bugs are about 1/4" long, and I didn't see any in their bedding.

I called the oncall doctor, but she didn't know either and when she found out I was a triage nurse said "if you can't figure it out I'm probably not going to either." She recommend I bring them in for examination today which I did. Another doctor saw them and she was stumped, too, although agreed it looked most like spider bites and gave her an antihistamine to at least reduce the reaction.

It is still a mystery. I spent the day bagging their stuffed animals and soft toys, washing bedding in hot water and bleach, and vacuuming. Sigh.

Are you scratching yet?

Friends and Enemies

2006-04-17T15:29:00.000-07:00

Friends

I've had a lot of friends in my life and many who I've called my Best Friend. "Best friend" is, for me, a special category with levels. I've had many BFs over the years, for widely differently ranges of time. When I was 14 I had a glorious BFriendship that lasted one day. I had flown to visit my grandparents and other family in California and they took me to Six Flags Magic Mountain. My second cousin's boyfriend brought his daughter Tory, who was also 14, and I think from Alaska. We had never met before and have never seen each other again. But that day was glorious and I will never forget it. We were like soul mates and loved each other dearly that day. We went on dozens of rides and talked and talked. We both loved Normandy Rose jeans. We met up with my family WAY past our curfew to go home and got in deep doodoo. It was fantastic. I miss you Tory, wherever you are.

On the other end of the BF scale is a short list of individuals who have been my BF for many years, or perhaps not many years, but the closeness warrants an honored position. My sister Mia is almost six year older than I and she and I used to be enemies when I was a bratty eight and she was a mean 14. Now that we're both obnoxious pre-menopausal women, we are best friends.

My all-time top of the list best friend has been in that position for over twenty years. We went to academy together. We were roommates, five girls in one small room. I occupied the middle position (earth) of a three-tiered bunkbed, my friend I'll call Henry (because that was my nickname for her years ago) was in the bottom (hell) and another girl on the top (heaven). We shared so much during those years, and it was a truly major and pivotal time for both of us. After graduation we stayed close despite her moving to Southern California (I in Oregon). She went to my college graduation and my wedding. I went to her college graduation and wedding. But as we both started families, and life got busy, our communication diminished.

While our drifting has been both our faults, I take the blame for not trying harder. I didn't call enough. I forgot to send thankyou's to every gift she sent. I am very sorry for that. I wish I could take it back.

I had hoped that one day, when our young 'uns were grown, that we would renew our friendship and I've dreamed of traveling to exotic places with her, we talked in the past of doing medical volunteership together.

But it's not to be. She has chosen to cut off the relationship and I went for two or three miserable weeks trying to stay in denial. It can't be true, I thought, 20 years, it's like sistership, you can't just not be sisters! Once I came to, I wept hard.

I have written her a letter I will send tomorrow. I apologized from my heart. I requested an appeal, but without desperation. I also gave her the choice (not that it's mine to give) to either cut if off completely, as she appears to wish, or that we just separate for now with hope for the future.

When Nikki died last week it made me think -- what is all this stupidity about? Why would we give up a friend? People die and you can't get them back. I don't want to give up my friends. You all are too precious.

Enemies

When I was in elementary, I had an enemy I'll call Connie. The weird thing was that she was sometimes my friend. Our houses were a few blocks apart and sometimes we'd play together. But in my memory she was a bully and said terribly mean things to me. I hated life in elementary. She left when I entered seventh grade and while school life wasn't peachy (adolescence was a generally horrible experience), it improved.

All my life she went in and out of my thoughts. I wondered where she was and what she was doing. Did she have a family? Most of all, I wondered if she was still mean.

Today, something truly bizarre occurred. Image you had some kid you went to school with, and you hadn't seen them since you were 12. Never heard from them again and had no idea what happened to them. Suddenly, one day, their name and phone number appeared out of virtually nowhere. This is what happened to me.

Last week I drove by Connie's house since I was in that area. I hadn't seen it for years. Then this weekend, my mom and I talked about her and her family for the first time in years. Then today a totally incredible and seemingly random series of events occurred and suddenly I saw her father's name in my computer (I hadn't looked him or her up). I was astounded and thought maybe it was same name/different guy. But then I saw her name and her phone number. I can't tell you how shocking it was. The odds are unbelievable.

I wavered as to what to do. Do I call? Do I let it alone? What if she's mean and the call is a huge mistake? What if she's not mean? I prayed about it. I decided to call, although I was very nervous. I decided if she didn't answer, then it wasn't meant to be. She answered.

"Um, is this Connie? Used to be Connie Smith?"

"Yes." Suspiciously.

"Um, this is Sheryle." And I added my maiden name.

Silence. I about had a cow. It was a mistake. She hates me. Why did I call? I remembered the times we were friends and decided to keep going.

I explained the incredulous way I'd gotten her number. I asked about her father. She finally said that she'd thought about me all her life. She told me that her elementary years were absolute hell and that I had been the main reason for it, because of the terrible things I'd said to her. I took this amazingly calmly. Then I realized something astounding. She had always thought I was the bully!!! What a twist of something I had considered truth and reality all my life.

I told her that I was sorry, truly deeply sorry, for anything I said or did to her as a child, and I'd hoped she would forgive me. She did forgive me and she asked forgiveness herself, which I readily gave. She's nice! She grew up to be a nice woman! We talked each other's families and exchanged email addresses before hanging up. An enemy now a friend.

Is there someone you knew as a child or even up to young adulthood with whom you've lost touch? I'm not going to add anything sappy here like to try to get people to contact old acquaintances. Sometimes it doesn't turn out nice. But those kids you have horrible memories of may have grown up to be totally different people. Maybe even decent and kind.

I believe that phone number didn't land in my universe coincidentally. God made it happen. I now have a peace that I didn't have before and I think Connie does, too. My hope is that all my life events, whether good or bad, losing friends or gaining them, will not embitter me but ennoble me. I hope to make a difference of kindness and compassion in my life and be known for that when I die, like Nikki is, not for any thoughtlessness or cruelty I have done. God help me.

Kidlets

2006-04-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

My 4 y/o daughter, Summerlyn, comes into our room at about two AM. She whispers to her daddy:

"I didn't flush the toilet because I didn't want to make noise and wake you up."

"Um, thank you sweetie. Now go back to bed."

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My friend's 3 y/o grandson sat in the barber's chair and declared, "I want to have a haircut just like my grandpa's -- with a hole in the middle, please."

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At about 2 y/o, the twins were sitting in our van while we drove home one night. In the dark we hear Sydney's tiny voice: "I need a bath."

David asks, "Why do you say that?"

"Because I'm tinky and have leprosy pots." She always dropped her s's back then.

"Good reason." Silently laughing.

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And this one today: the twins were playing "buyer" which means playing shopping. After a while they informed me that one of their customers didn't obey them.

"We told him to do something and he wouldn't."

"So we have to sacrifice him."

Spring and sacrifices. Hmmm. Sounds like Easter to me.

Three Link Thursday

2006-04-13T17:30:00.000-07:00

So don't complain about your phone bill anymore. I think I made a similar bill for my parents when I was 15.

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You mean all one has to do is pose holding up a bunch of onesies?? From a mom of real multiples, I hope they spend a long time behind bars. (Thanks to Ginny B. for the link.)

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Ewwww!! See, working is hazardous.

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Bonus Link (you'll be sorry I added it) -- reason #257 why I'm glad I'm a vegetarian: my recipe titles don't give my guests the dry heaves.

Redundant All Over Again

2006-04-07T17:15:00.000-07:00

I am amused by two grammatical errors: 1) the redundant phrase, also called a pleonasm, and 2) the misused quotation marks. Sometime I’ll discuss the later, but this about the pleonasm.

My husband and his mother are the world’s redundancy king and queen. They get irritated with me when I catch them at it, which only encourages me. I wished I had written them all down, but I’ll share my favorites:

Blue Jeans -- David argues that not all jeans are blue, therefore it is not a redundancy. I counter that when most people visualize “jeans” they see the blue variety, not the pink or orange. Can he not just say “jeans”? Of course not, that would be too efficient.

Spaghetti Noodles -- Um. Ok. As opposed to the Spaghetti Pancakes, I guess, or perhaps the Spaghetti Milkshake. Just in case you were confused.

Tuna Fish -- Hello!! Good thing you cleared that one up for me, honey. If you’d just said “tuna” I would have been so confused, “Tuna what?? Tuna dog? Tuna broccoli??”

And my all time favorite:

Color Crayons -- As opposed to the box of whites.

Lots of folks throughout history have provided us with lovely examples of this pleonastic problem:

“And that’s a self-portrait of himself, by himself.” – Richard Madeley

“It looks like being a busy weekend on the ferries, particularly Saturday and Sunday.” – Peter Powell

“It was a sudden and unexpected surprise.” Old Bailey Correspondent for BBC

“It’s déjà vu all over again.” – Yogi Berra

“Sometimes you can observe a lot just by watching.” -- Yogi Berra

“If we do not succeed, we run the risk of failure.” Dan Quayle

“When large numbers of men are unable to find work, unemployment results.” Calvin Coolidge

“Smoking can kill you, and if you’ve been killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.” – Brooke Shields

Good thing those folks cleared that up for us. So, the moral of the story is that with just a little bit of advanced planning you can avoid the awkward predicament of the pleonasm. For some, but not others, it will be difficult, but practice will make the end result worth it, and others will be green in color with envy. Reward yourself with a free gift of tuna fish. Over spaghetti noodles.

Got it?

Three Link Thursday

2006-04-06T22:46:00.000-07:00

My dear friend, who shall go unnamed, except that the first letter of her name is J and there's an "Anne" in it, suggested that I should change to doing a "One Link Wednesday." I, in my vast maturity, have only one thing to say to you. Get your own blog. Ok, two things.

Don't hurt me.

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Amazing. I've seen some of Julian Beever's artwork on an email once. The most fascinating thing is the photos that are not at the right perspective. (His site was down at this posting, so I'll check later to make sure the link works.) UPDATE: this link appears to be down at least semi-permanently, so I'll direct you to another link, once Blogger lets me!

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The next two links were given me by David. Thank you for keeping your eyes peeled, sweetness.

Ok, this one begs the question: WHY?

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This is origami. A single sheet of paper for each object. Amazing.

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Oh, and J*Anne? Consider yourself mooned.

The Academy -- Part I

2006-04-05T13:42:00.000-07:00

There were worms on the tips of every cob of corn. Ten minutes after my parents drove away, I was assigned the task of husking corn. I stood outside where tables had been set up in a row so that workers could prepare the corn for freezing. There was a large bin of fresh corn on my right and I grabbed a cob and peeled back the husks to expose the plump yellow kernels. But the very tips were underdeveloped and the home of plump green worms. I had the choice of chopping off the tips with a large knife, machete-style, or thwacking the tips on the corner of the table. I then passed the peeled, de-tipped and de-wormed cob to the girl on my left whose job was to slice the kernels off the cob. She looked at me, friendly, smiling with crooked teeth, hands slimy with corn. She wore a blouse, a long denim skirt, and her sneakers were brown with dirt. I didn't know her and couldn't quite smile back.

Peel, thwack, peel, thwack. My wussy girl hands, used of scholarly pursuits such as reading and writing, became red and sore. I knew no one around me. Even the geography was foreign – dust, alfalfa, sage brush, and tumble weeds – it was if I had fallen off a plane over an alien planet. How did this happen?

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I was born in Medford, Oregon, home of the llama tours, joining my family that consisted of Mom, Dad and sister Mia who is almost six years older and viewed me with suspicion. About a year later we moved to Costa Rica, my mother’s homeland. Dad attended the university for a degree in theology, Mom was working hard taking care of us girls, and I was busy eating anything I could get my fat little hands on. I started walking at seven months and was into toddler exploration, the extreme version. There wasn’t a crib from which I couldn’t escape. There wasn’t a closed door that resisted my advances, nor a kitchen cabinet I couldn't scale.

One day, my grandfather walked in from a day working on the tropical ranch and removed his muddy shoes by the door. Intrigued by the caked mud, I hurried over. Apparently one brown morsel looked promising and so I did what any one year old would do (if they were me). I ate it. My mother rushed over to try to stop me, but she was dealing with Sherry the Extreme Baby. She couldn’t have pried the dirt out of my mouth with the Jaws of Life.

Tropical dirt is, naturally, chock full of microscopic life, most totally unknown in North America. Within 24 hours I developed a very high fever. I was taken to the hospital and many tests were run over the next few weeks, finally deciding I had a parasite. After a couple weeks my kidneys started shutting down, so my parents decided to take me back to the States where I finally recovered.

To be continued...

Sweet Elusive Sleep

2006-04-02T19:58:00.000-07:00

My babies spent four days in the hospital nursery before we took them home. I distinctly remember putting on their tiny little preemie outfits, which were too big for them (they were five weeks premature, but very healthy). David and I tucked them in their car seats and looked at each other, knowing what the other was thinking. The hospital is letting us take them home. Just like that. What do we know about parenthood. I remember crying at home later, because I was sure that I would do something wrong and these little beauties, smaller than our cats, would not live.

What I didn't realize was that God gave babies an alarm system. Every three hours, 24/7, they cried. David and I would wake up and he'd get Summerlyn this time and I'd get Sydney. I breastfed one and he didn't breastfeed the other. I didn't make enough milk to feed both girls all day, so I pumped every day for a year (watching my cracked and bleeding nipples sucked 1 1/2 inches into the tube...oh, sorry, too much information).

Then we'd change their diapers (or maybe we did that first, it's all such a psychotic blur) and wrap them into tiny bundles like pupae and layed them side by side in their bassinet. They shut their tiny eyes and fall into baby slumber, pacifiers periodically quivering. We crashed into bed, trying to squeeze all the sleep possible out of the next three hours. Then the baby alarms would go off "Waaaaaaa!!!!" and we repeated the cycle. Every three hours. For SEVEN MONTHS.

You see, we never had children before, and the parents we knew never had twins and so didn't know what was "normal." It wasn't until the babies seventh month check up that their pediatrician told us they could have been sleeping through the night by five months. When she said that David and I looked right at the girls, blearily, "why you little...." The doctor just chuckled. Oh. Very. Funny.

Who knew how long this would have lasted had the doctor not told us? They are nearly five now -- would they still be waking up at 0200, "Mama! Daddy! I'm hungry! Peanut butter and jelly sandwich!" Sounds absurd, but you may not grasp the full psychoses of the sleep-deprived mind. At least by 13 years we could have just scheduled an ongoing, rotating delivery from the nearest 24 hour pizza shop.

That night we put them in their crib and turned the light off. Three hours later the alarm went off, "waaaaaa!!!" David and I just rolled over and sighed happily. (Yes, we checked them and comforted them, of course.) It wasn't easy, but within three nights they slept. 12. Blessed. Hours.

The Science of Domestic Mysteries

2006-03-27T15:10:00.000-08:00

In my local paper this morning was a feature on how much Mt. Hood’s glaciers have shrunk in the past century. Where have these glaciers gone? They can’t be hiding. Glaciers are massive and unwieldy, so it’s not like you’d catch them on the video cameras at the local Food-o-Mart wearing trench coats and baseball caps. Nor have they been stolen, since that brings up obvious problems for the thief, such as transportation and storage. Scientists have ruled these possibilities out, which leaves the obvious cause: Global Warming.

Global Warming affects all of us. Yes, yes, anyone who has watched television or movies in the past few years knows that the global warming will suddenly hit a critical point one day and gigantic tidal waves will knock down the Statue of Liberty and wash it down Broadway. But I want to draw your attention to the situations that are caused by global warming but are not reported upon by the media. We are affected in our very homes, people.

The other day I went into the kitchen to meditate on lunch. Many of you are familiar with this routine which can vary from standing in the middle of the room, deep breathing and hoping a Lunch Idea will strike you, to ransacking the cupboards in hopes that the food you find can be mixed together into something edible, maybe even palatable.

That day, however, there was nothing. Have you experienced this? Oh, sure, there’s food, but nothing that can actually be combined. Peanut butter, artichoke hearts, black beans, and celery. (I don’t want to get comments from anyone telling me that they actually have a recipe using those very ingredients, because if you do I’ll know you’ve got issues.) Do you think it’s a coincidence that all of your kitchen staples have gone missing at the very same moment?

I have two 4 ¾ year-olds who are, meanwhile, getting hungry. Homeland Security status has gone Code Yellow. I found a bag of brown rice in the fridge. Ok. I can do something with this. I got the rice going on the stove, turned the timer on and left the kitchen. I have cooked rice a lot in my life. I know how much water to use and how much rice without measuring. But that day was different. Global Warming was occurring at a high rate in my house.

I heard the timer go off, so I went to the kitchen and witnessing smoke thickly blowing out of the rice pot. I grabbed it and put it outside and then opened all my windows. The girls were fascinated by my sudden movements, but now they just stood there. Hungrier. I voiced my concerns. “Um. I’m not sure what we’ll have for lunch today.” Little Sydney suggested peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Of course! I grabbed the bread, the peanut butter. Then I looked at the jam jar. There was only about a tablespoon left. Arrgghh!

I called my mother. She lives next door and we frequently bail each other out in food emergencies. “Can I borrow some jam?” She told me she only had about a tablespoon left. How can this be? She always has exactly what I need. Obviously Global Warming has spread everywhere. Must be why they call it “global.”

Then I realized I had bananas and honey. Peanut butter, banana and honey sandwiches! The day was saved after all. As I slathered the fifth out of six slices with peanut butter, I realized the bread was moldy.

Normally I will throw away the whole loaf if I see one slice with mold. But desperate times call for desperate measures. The mold was only a white dusting on the top crust, so I tore those parts out and finished the sandwiches and fed my girls and myself before they ate me.

So, readers, the moral of the story is that even though we like to make fun of scientists (they get excited about slime mold, for goodness’ sake), they might actually be on to something here. It’s all part of the big picture. You want to know where socks go when they disappear? Find those glaciers and you’ll find your socks.

Three Link Thursday

2006-03-23T16:14:00.000-08:00

Thought I forgot about Three Link Thursday, didn't you? (Or perhaps you hoped.)

Just when you thought fashion wasn't practical anymore.

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Despite my dreams of early retirement, this will be me someday.

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Don't ask me how I came across this. I'm sorry I did, but now all of you must share in my agony. This is a genuine album cover. I apologize, preemptively, for the nightmares.

Speed Feeding

2006-03-22T20:23:00.000-08:00

This is how my daughter feeds her baby. Thought I'd share it with all the new parents out there who are looking for time saving techniques.

Poetry Sunday

2006-03-20T21:22:00.000-08:00

Toby the Cat's Midnight Howling

Wait until they sleep,
Stand close to their heads, hear snores;
Top of lungs: MEEEOOOOWWWW!!

The Nose Tampon

2006-03-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

Good news is that I'm finally getting over the bronchitis. Still wheezing and coughing, but not so violently. I also have a new doctor whom I really like; my last one was a jerk and a waste of my time. I still have a runny nose and I'm annoyed by my dependence upon the tissue box. Thus, I have come up with an invention:

The Nose Tampon!

They don't call me brilliant for nothing. Not that anyone does. But if they did....

Think of it, you can buy a package of say, 40 Nose Tampons, each individually wrapped in paper or plastic. I haven't decided about the applicator part. Anyway, so you'd insert the tampon in the nostril, using two unless you've got unilateral drippage. The tampon swells to fit the shape of the chamber and absorbs mucus. You can get the regular, super absorbant, or slim (for Michael Jackson sized nostrils). Unlike conventional tampons, there will not be deoderant options. But, one can select different colors so the dangling strings will match your outfit.

I thought about emailing my idea to Kleenex, but David tells me I should wait until the ambien wears off.

Snow? No.

2006-03-14T19:56:00.000-08:00

Pictures from my deck. The snowy picture was taken in the morning and the un-snowy one was taken that afternoon. Weird huh. I live in Western Oregon where it doesn't usually snow at all, especially not in March. Girls had fun though, got to put on their snow suits normally reserved for trips to Mt. Hood.

For Deb.

Triplets again

2006-03-10T17:37:00.000-08:00

The "triplets" last night and at 5 months.

Triplets

2006-03-09T14:55:00.000-08:00

Today I have triplets.

We have close friends of the family who had a daughter six weeks after our twins were born, and so we call her the triplet. Her mama and big sister traveled to Kansas today, so little Anneka came to stay with us for two days.

Having twins is much different than having two non-twin children, unless they are less than a year apart. When children are a different age, they usually have the older child-younger child dynamic. Twins and other multiples is more like having a kindergarten class where everyone is the same age and interact accordingly.

Twins are easier than singletons because they have a built-in playmate. Twins are harder than singletons because...well, I don't know why, except that you have double the expense at the exact same time, but that can happen with multiple kids in any household.

On one level, having triplets is not a huge stretch from twins. One more mouth to feed, dress, bathe, etc., adds up to added increments of time and money, but is not huge. I'm not sure how we'd hold hands when we walked through a parking lot, though. I tend to hold my girls' hands in a vice grip, especially since they are little and like puppies: they see something bright and shiny and go dashing after it, no looking to the right or left. They are getting better at that, but my paranoid mama brain still keeps them clamped tight. Come to think of it, my husband drives like a puppy, always looking at the bright and shiny things while I squeeze my eyes shut and internally scream.

Oh, yeah, he reads this blog, too. Nevermind that part about the driving.

Anyway, today triplets are harder than usual since I am sick (productive cough, low grade fever) and the girls are recuperating. David is sick, too, so not able to totally bail me out when he gets home. Blah.

PS. I'm thinking about writing a series of posts on my years at boarding school. I'm not sure how willing I am to air the weirdness of those years, but I'm thinking about it.

Under Where?

2006-03-08T18:39:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid there was a couple that was friends of our family. They were quiet, but kind folks who I'll call the Millers. I'll never forget the day I was at the Miller's house watching her cut fabric out to make a dress, just exactly the kind of quiet activity I always thought of her doing. That day she told me that every April Fool's Day she played a prank on her husband. Once she made him a sack lunch for work and didn't peel the avocados that were sliced on his sandwich. She said he never did say anything about that, maybe he thought she was beginning to dodder, so best to keep quiet. Another year she sewed the flap of his underwear shut. As she told me how that one really flustered him, she laughed nearly silently, shoulders shaking. I really loved the Millers even more after that.

Today I thought of that while I was folding laundry. The girls were helping me and Sydney held up a pair of her father's underwear. She said, "Look, there's a pocket." She slipped her hand in and looked momentarily confused when her hand came out the other side. But then she solved the problem, "Oh, I think it's just worn out there. Mama, you'd better sew it shut."

Hmmm.

April is just around the corner....

Then my musings were interrupted by:

"Mommy, why is your underwear bigger than the house?"

Poetry Sunday

2006-03-05T21:20:00.000-08:00

Trying out a new poetry style tonight -- acrostic.

Retirement

Really terribly tired
Eternally working
Told to pad my 403(b)
It grows so slowly
Receding?
Eternally working (did I say that?)
Mentally fried (or challenged)
Egads
Not time?
Torture, I'm not even 40 yet.

(It was a long day at work today. Cranky patients, cranky nurses.)

Don't read while drinking milk (unless you pinch your nose)

2006-03-03T14:52:00.000-08:00

I was blog surfing today and came across this ROFL-worthy post on Susie's site. It's one of the funniest stories I've read in a long time and cheered me right up. (I see Lawbrat already read it...) :)

Must read!

Three Link Thursday

2006-03-02T22:10:00.000-08:00

Next time you whine about how hard it is to learn computers....
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Oooh, this one fits into two of my categories, 1) dieting support, and 2) why I'm going to stay a vegetarian. I warn you. Don't open this link.

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And finally, a note of encouragement to those folks in Massachusetts. Isn't it heartening to know legislators are hard at work on crucial issues?

Real Genius

2006-03-01T22:45:00.000-08:00

Every night before David and I go to bed, we slip into our girls' room and tuck them in. We adjust the covers and tuck their hair behind their ears. Then we whisper into their ears the things we want them to know in their hearts and dream about, such as "I love you darling" and "Jesus loves you" and "may God bless you, sweetie."

Tonight I happened to hear part of David's whisperings into our daughter's ear:

"The square root of nine is three."

Nepeta cataria, Baby.

2006-02-27T18:11:00.000-08:00

While I’m no newbie to alternative remedies, having been labeled a health nut all my life – with varying levels of derision or affection – Lyme Disease has opened up a heretofore unknown dimension of reality. There’s an herb called prima una de gato, that I’m on, for instance. That’s Latin or something, for “cat’s claw.” Hopefully the clawing is something it does to the disease, not to me. The herb is not to be confused with Nepeta cataria which is, of course, catnip. I take the correct herb in a supplement called Samento. My cats ignore me as much as ever, so I know I'm taking the right one.

Driving home from one of my treatments, I thought how all these names would fit so well in many scenarios:

Vacation in South America

Scene: El hospital e carnicero. On vacation, awakening in old hospital bed, surrounded by stained mosquito netting. I can make out three figures standing nearby. It’s a doctor, nurse and my husband. David is nervous, expecting an answer.

Doctor, crushing out cigarette on the floor, looks up at David wearily: “Prima una de gato.” He whispers gruffly.

Nurse, shaking her head sadly, adds: “Samento.”

David: “Nooooo!!”

Mafia Film

Scene: me sitting, tied to a chair in a dank space, one bare light bulb dimly lights the room. The mafia don and his men are shadows, sitting on the other side of the room.

Man leans toward the don, both looking at me: “Prima una de gato.” He whispers gruffly.

The don narrows his eyes, and speaks, his voice sounding like his jaw and nose had once been broken: “Samento.”

Me: “Nooooo!!!”

Zorro Film

Scene: Don Pedro’s villa, Great Hall. Zorro (who looks uncannily like my husband David) has just taken down six bad guys with a whip and his sword. I have just eliminated six others simply by loosening my corset in a deadly thwang. I shouldn’t have eaten all that brisket (whatever that is). Zorro rushes over to my aid, but realizes I need none.

Zorro grabs me about the waist and looks deeply into my eyes: “Prima una de gato.” He whispers gruffly.

Me: “Samento!” Lip-lock.

Don Pedro: “Nooooo!!”

She's Aliiiive!!!

2006-02-25T20:36:00.000-08:00

I got sick, but now I'm swell. Sort of. I'm better anyway, although still really tired. Here's a recent photograph of me, with my renewed vim, vigor and vitality.

More tomorrow.

Three Link Thursday

2006-02-16T20:47:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the dearth of posts lately. My sister is visiting for two weeks and I haven't seen her in two years, so that's where I've been. In the meantime:

Need a late valentine idea? Send them to this site. I admit that I spent way to much time on this site, swinging our little friend around until the whole song was over. Several times. Click on the anti-gravity button and you can get him to do some very graceful ballet moves. What can I say, I've got a sickness (thanks to JoAnne who gave this link to me in the first place.)

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Truth is stranger than The National Enquirer.

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This next one falls into the category of Mia & Sheryle's Diet Aids: if you aren't interested in losing your appetite - don't click this link.

I warned you.

Poetry Sunday

2006-02-13T08:56:00.000-08:00

Mia's Doo-dah Day
(sung to "Camptown Races" tune)

Me sister Mia sat one day,
In traffic, traffic;
She got hit by a delivery truck
And broke her vertebre.

Broke her vertebre,
Broke her vertebre.
Some bones have shifted to the right,
Some slid the other way.

Me sister Mia sat one day,
In the surgeon's, office,
He said, "I hope you've lots of dough,"
And patted his toupee.

Patted his toupee,
Patted his toupee.
"I have to pay my yachting fee,
And dine at the club's buffet."

Me sister Mia sat one day,
Talking, to her lawyer.
He says it's good she has great pain,
And spine has been pureed.

Spine has been pureed,
Spine has been pureed.
He will get to take his wife,
On an extended holiday.

Me sister Mia sat one day,
In traction, traction.
Lost ten pounds on her new diet
of Vicodin and Perrier.

Vicodin and Perrier,
Vicodin and Perrier.
I hope she gets a brand new spine,
Before she fades away.

Bach Flash

2006-02-11T16:55:00.000-08:00

Don't ask me why I'm blogging this, but I just am. I was playing Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, bombastically with joy, and caused a hot flash. If Johann only knew.

Three Link Thursday

2006-02-09T21:38:00.000-08:00

Nurses from Arkansas say stuff like "dad-gum" and perform heroic measures on chickens to see if they "still got it." We Oregon nurses have a lot to live up to. We still practice on spotted owls.

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These cells make up a large portion of my brain, too.

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Key quote: "elegant, sophisticated, rebellious, alternative and eternally fashionable." I have nothing more to say.

Childlike Quotations

2006-02-06T22:09:00.000-08:00

I've heard a lot of excuses from children not wanting to do what they are told, but this was a doozy.

Daddy: "Summerlyn, come here right now!"

Yelling from the other side of her bedroom door: "But Daddy! I'm in the grave!"

I plan on using it next time my boss asks me to do something. Or when David gets that glint in his eye and I'm not in the mood. Or when I get a telemarketer on the line.

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The girls call flatulence "tooting." As I was dressing them for bed, I commented on Summerlyn's round tummy.

"Wow, look at that big round tummy! It must be full of food!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," she agreed and then twisted around, "And my bottom must be full of toots, see how big it is?!"

I'm just glad she stopped there and didn't tell me to turn around.

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I just remembered this the other day. When the girls were about 2 1/2, we were driving home at night. All was quiet in the car. Then we heard Sydney's tiny voice (she dropped her S's back then).

"Daddy, I need to take a bath."

"How come?"

"Because I'm tinky and have leprosy pots."

"Good reason."

Poetry Sunday

2006-02-05T20:13:00.000-08:00

Toby's Haiku

I am so hungry.
Gobble food too fast and gag --
Ack, ack, ack, ack, ack.

Three Link Thursday

2006-02-02T20:24:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting article. The hub and I always wanted to be very careful about TV with our children. When we moved to our current property nearly two years ago, we never hooked up the cable or dish because we didn't have the time and every dime went to fixing up the place. We have one fairly clear channel and 1-2 others that come in and out, but that's it. Like the couple in the article we had the painful withdrawal period. We still watch TV but it's only forkful of the pie in comparison. Then, after a few months, we had filled our time with other things, and we never eat with the TV on. We communicate instead. Weird, huh?

We mention the idea of cutting back on TV to some peopl and their implanted defibrillators kick in. David's parents were over around Christmas we watched Wife Swap together after the girls went to bed (because otherwise we'd be forced to communicate, but that's another story). In the show, one wife took the TV out of the house. That's when my father in law said, "if she did that to me...." The unspoken end of the sentence was "the jury would understand that I had to kill her."

When you think about it, isn't it bizarre that we schedule our lives around the stupid box and don't know what to do with ourselves if it's missing. Now that's real Twilight Zone fodder.

-----------

Alright, enough deep thoughts. Here's something else: my boss tells us that she is always open to new ideas to improve our work. I have an idea.

On the other hand, do you really want to be sleeping in a bunch of spheres upon which others have been drooling? How about one Napmosphere per person. I'm a genius.

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I've known lawyers like this.

Our Turn to Be Smug

2006-01-31T19:12:00.000-08:00

To David:

Smugly stuffing your face you lost weight;
Burning every last morsel you found;
Now limiting the calories on your plate,
This week you gained back a pound!

Hahahahahahah!!!!!!

Welcome to the rest of us, honey pie.

Don't call her bluff. She's not bluffing.

2006-01-30T19:53:00.000-08:00

Portland's public transportation system is called Tri-Met. And my buddy Ginny B. knows what it's good for. She's a Love and Logic mama if I ever saw one. I love this story she told me:

A few days ago my darling little baby boy borrowed my car so he could drive to night school. So, imagine my surprise when his teacher called and wondered where Andy was.

"Why, he is in school. I know because he borrowed by car to go to school!" Uh huh.

In strolls Andy just when he should, as school was out. When I asked him how school was, I got the usual response.

"Fine."

I like to think I am a rational person, but I had had two hours to stew over this situation. Imagining all of the places he was and all the trouble he was getting into. How he was running out all of my gas and would bring my car back empty.

I said loudly (but, not yelling), "Your teacher called twice! You have NOT been in school. You are NEVER going to drive my car again!"

His response: " What are you going to do, take me off the insurance?" He knows I would never do that.

"No," I said, "I will take you to school and bring you home, and you will still NEVER drive my car."

Today is Andy's 19th birthday. As I left my bedroom this morning there was a piece of paper dangling by a string from my doorframe. It read "Please, please let me borrow your car today! I need to go to the bank to get money for my birthday. Consider it my birthday present. Please, please!"

I quietly went into his bedroom and started singing "Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you" and handed him $2 for Tri-Met.

A Padded Room Sounds Nice

2006-01-27T17:30:00.000-08:00

I am still alive. I know this because I'm typing, which is a positive sign that my vital signs are stable and synapses are firing. It's been a long day.

Handed the girls over to Mom after making them waffles, and drove to the clinic in Vancouver. Got two treatments today; the usual knock-me-over IV treatment, plus the one where Dr. M removes a unit of my blood, treats it and then returns it to my body. We usually chat during my treatment, and today we started talking about politics and religion. Wrong. While he and I share common ground in many areas, politics and religion are not included. It was still a friendly, although heated discussion but it distracted him while he was hanging my blood to be drained back in and the next thing I knew he swore and there was blood everywhere. It was on the tubing and on his gloved hands and on his pants. I don't even know what happened to cause the accident. He cleaned it all up but that wasn't the end of it.

While that was going on, my IV site occluded and a large clot developed in the end of the tubing. So he removed the tubing and attempted to reopen the IV with heperin without success. He had to insert a new canula. Then, he had to get the clot out of the end of the tube, trying not to lose the whole tube and more of my blood with it. Carefully regulating the stopcock, he opened the tube over a pile of gauze and tissue and the clot came out in a stringy glob. Naturally, the next thing that happened was that the entire tube decided to let lose and started pouring out before he could get the stopcock closed.

This time my blood was on the gauze, the table, my chart, and his lap top. Blood is such a beautiful color, one of the richest reds known in nature. I almost made that comment to him, but wisely chose not to as he wiped everything down with disinfectant again, with what sounded like an low growl.

Finally, everything was clean again and I got the remainder of my blood back. He then started the second IV treatment, with no discussion of politics and I went and sat in the treatment room without further incident. The treatment room consists of three recliners and one rocking chair and there is usually one or two other patients in there. Today a friend I haven't seen for a couple months was there and we had a nice visit, so it ended well.

Now I'm home and starting to crash from the treatment, physically and mentally, but it's the start of my real day off and I'm grateful. No matter what your religion is or beliefs are, you should set a side a day as a sanctuary in time. Don't give me excuses, I'm as busy as all of you. Just do it.

Three Link Thursday

2006-01-26T19:27:00.000-08:00

If you have time to read it, this is a fascinating (and bittersweet) article, with great writing.

Notice this forecast. If, when in Portland, you are seen using an umbrella you will be marked as a tourist. Oregonians don't do umbrellas. If there is a downpour you just walk faster. About two weeks ago we had some very heavy rains (which is saying a lot) and many Oregonians realized that an umbrella might come in handy. The problem was we couldn't find them, buried forever among life's detritus of things used once and then forgotten; rollerblades, Flowbees, urns, umbrellas.

If you are easily queased, do not open this next link. I dedicate it to my sister, Mia. For the rest of you who are wondering why I would do something like that, let me attempt an explanation. She and I have very interesting conversations in which we solve most of the world's problems. In this case, we have discussed opening the world's most effective diet website and product line. (Anyone want to name this website?) The point is to keep the dieter nauseated at all times. Specially selected clips from Fear Factor would be included. This article would be included. It's genius. Stupid, yet genius (just like me and my sis).

The Thrill is Gone

2006-01-23T19:44:00.000-08:00

Dear Spouse,

I'm not sure I like you. I admit that this past week I haven't tried to lose weight or get in shape, but I have been careful, suspiciously eyeing each morsel of food, and imagining each muscle fiber re-flabbing itself while I've been sick this week. I was anxious as I stepped on the scale this morning for our weekly weigh-in. I neither lost nor gained.

You on the other hand. One night you ate two plates of nachos before you went to bed. You drink large, undiluted glasses of juice. You've emptied our secret stash of truffles. All the cashews have disappeared. You had thirds of taco salad.

You lost two pounds.

I don't like you.

Sunday Poem -- "I Am a Shape" Part II

2006-01-22T19:54:00.000-08:00

My spouse, so trim, has been gloating,
So slender he feels he is floating;
But don't ever impugn --
He gets moody each moon,
While my crotchety comes with more bloating.

When Parental Efforts Backfire

2006-01-20T20:22:00.000-08:00

In this household, we BAM the grumpy bug. This has come in very useful over the years with tired and fussy girls.

"I think that naughty grumpy bug has been biting you. You need to BAM it!"

This is followed by little fists banging on the floor, wall, couch, wherever we happen to be. Sometimes, after a successful bamming, one of the girls will gingerly pick up the grumpy bug's carcass, pinched between her thumb and forefinger. They take it to the bathroom and triumphantly flush it.

"And DON'T COME BACK!"

Tonight the girls were in the tub. Summerlyn had definitely been bitten by the grumpy bug and was wailing away after some minor offense (such as "Sydney looked at me!!!" or "My toes are wet!!"). Daddy told her to BAM the grumpy bug.

"I don't want to!" Wail....

He tries again,"Oh, you really should BAM it!"

Sydney joins in, "Here it is!" and starts hitting the sides of the tub with her fist as hard as she can. "BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!"

Summerlyn, wails, "No! That's not the grumpy bug. I am the grumpy bug!"

Most of you readers, being quite bright, have already figured the inevitable next scene. Yes, Sydney, cheerfully and with great gusto, BAMs the Grumpy Bug.

WAIL!!!!!!!

Lesson Learned by Summerlyn: Never claim to be the grumpy bug.
Lesson Learned by Parents: We'll let you know when we figure it out.

Three Link Thursday

2006-01-19T19:26:00.000-08:00

I know of one dad who's getting nothing on Father's Day this year.

Health Duh moment of the week.

Crunchy on the outside, chewy in the center.

Life is More Neato with Spell Check

2006-01-19T15:27:00.000-08:00

When I wrote that last post Spell Check gave me some very interesting alternatives to some of the words I used. My sister Mia called while I was writing it and we had a good laughing session with lots of chortles and snorts. Using words from my previous post I've written the following paragraph followed by a paragraph using the changes Spell Check suggests for my first paragraph. Follow?

My Paragraph
I'm so glad I enjoyed lounging around in the jacuzzi last weekend. The lodge has a nice selection of four hot steaming jacuzzi's that are so relaxing. I wish I had jacuzzi's at home. It would be nice to dangle my toes in the jacuzzi while eating a plate of deep-fried jalepenos.

My Paragraph as Paraphrased by Spell Check
I'm so glad I enjoyed lounging around in the jackass last weekend. The lodge has a nice selection of four hot steaming sausage's that are so relaxing. I wish I had a jockeys at home. It would be nice to dangle my toes in the jackass while eating a plate of deep-fried Calvinists.

My conversation with my sister got much worse than that -- the possibilities were endless -- but I try to keep this blog tasteful (I heard that snort, JoAnne).

Ahhhhhh

2006-01-16T18:16:00.000-08:00

Friday night we dropped off the girls. We said "we're leaving now..." They just said, "ok," gave us the briefest of hugs and ran away to play. I wanted to cry out, "Don't you know that I issued you forth from my loins and I love you more than life itself??" But they would have just said, "ok," and ran away to play.

We drove up the beautiful Columbia Gorge until we got to Stevenson. Looming out of the misty dark was the great Lodge. Our bellman was dressed like a forest ranger and gave us helpful information as we wound through the vast halls to our room. Very tastefully appointed. Lots of wood, but not so much Western decor that we felt like we were trapped in an episode of Gunsmoke. The honor basket contained many tasty Northwestern-y treats, like chocolate covered hazelnuts, for outrageous prices. The Hotel Staff asks if you Please put your children on collateral for the potato chips -- enjoy your stay.

Oh the short-lived joy of charging everything to one's room. We went down to the more informal of the two restaurants and had a lovely meal. Then we wandered the halls, exploring the first floor with its vast Hearth room and the piano that David pestered me to play (I didn't).

Then the jacuzzi. The Lodge has four jacuzzi's and we chose the one outside which is irregularly shaped like a natural pool. It was lightly raining and misty that night. The near-full moon glowed in the clouds. Steam rising from the water. No interruptions of "Mommy, I've got to go potty!!" Ahhhh.

Deleted scene.

The next morning I woke up and had an epiphany. I had nothing to do when I got up. Is there much else as glorious as that? Of course there many days in my pre-child life that I had nothing to do when I got up, but it never felt as fantastic as it did after four and a half years of 24/7 responsibility.

Dear David made me breakfast in bed. Yes, it consisted of handing me a bowl of cereal with sliced bananas, but it was lovely. Then I got up when I felt like it. Ha! Take that, Responsibility, you unrepentant slave-master of maturity and other icky things. Ha HA!

We hiked (hike=walk at medium pace on moderately uneven ground with frequent panting breaks) along the Creek Trail which was muddy but beautiful with its swollen streams and gleaming ponds. Occasionally the trees would open up and we could see the forest clear across the Columbia River. I thanked God for this beauty.

Later we had virgin daiquiris (WAY to sweet for me, couldn't finish) and then found the library which was stocked with books and games. We started playing Scrabble and another couple sat at a table behind us playing their own Scrabble. I overheard the woman say, in quiet, dreamy tones:

"No baths to give."

"No Cheerios to dole out."

"No peanut butter in the hair."

David and I beamed at each other, in silent yet complete agreement with this stranger.

We sort of dressed for dinner and ate in the Very Nice Dining Room. The bad news is that the diet/fitness contest was totally ruined during the weekend. The good news is that my competitor joined me.

Outdoor jacuzzi in the moonlight again.

Deleted scene.

In the morning I got up leisurely, stretched. Pulled on my sweats and leisurely spun the elliptical in the gym for twenty minutes while freaks around me actually appeared to be chased by something, gathering actual sweat, and misunderstanding the whole spirit of rest and relaxation. I slid into the jacuzzi again and simmered until it was time to pad down the hall and get my....

First 80 minute massage. Oh mama. I'm too emotional for words right now. **dramatic sniffing**

Floated to my room, packed up and waved the gentle giant lodge goodbye. Stopped in Stevenson for lunch. Great Mexican food (El Rio Cafe), by the way. If I had ignored my higher powers of reasoning I could have eaten the whole plate of deep fried jalapeno's by myself, and even if I would have had my cardiologist and the Stevenson Fire Department by my side I still would have died.

Finally, we pulled into our friend's driveway. We saw little figures in the window peering out at us. We went in. You know how when a child is being brave and doing a great job in not crying but as soon as they seen their mommy they lose it? That's a good illustration on what happened next. The overwhelming joy, excitement and lack of sleep over the weekend hit them like a hammer as soon as we walked in the door.

Deleted scene.

The girls, weeping hysterically, asked our friend if they could stay for a week next time. We quickly moved in and extracted our progeny before our friend could hurt us. We wondered if the weekend had been worth it.

Oh yes.

Escape

2006-01-13T12:26:00.000-08:00

David and I are going to Skamania Lodge for the weekend. This is the first time we've been away from our kids together as a couple. Feels good. Feels weird. The girls are spending the weekend at a friends house. There will be screaming, crying, and gnashing of teeth. But that's just the parents. The girls are so exciting about spending the weekend at their buddy's house they won't even notice we gone.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Three Link Thursday

2006-01-12T19:26:00.000-08:00

I'm introducing Three Link Thursday, which will contain links that caught my eye for some reason and condensed into this blog for your viewing pleasure. The "three link" part will be rather loose, but it rhymes with Thursday, so works for me.

Green eggs and ham anyone?

And you thought cat calls were a bad thing.

No Really? You don't say. Detect a hint of sarcasm there? It's a nurse thing. OTC cough meds don't cure and aren't effective. Notice how some ads appear designed to make parents feel guilty if they don't give them to their child? But the drugs pad some corporation's golf fund, so hey!

The Neverending Bedtime Challenge

2006-01-11T15:28:00.000-08:00

This my extended response to Lawbrat's comment on The Bedtime Challenge.

The Neverending Bedtime Challenge:

Birth to 2 years:
Child: "Waaaaaaa!!!!"
Parent: "I'm sure it's your turn, dear."

2-7 years:
Child: "I'm thirsty!"
Parent: "For the eighteenth time, get BACK in bed!!"

7-13 years:
Child: "I'm not tired."
Parent: "For the eighteenth time, get BACK in bed!!"

13 years to adulthood:
Child: silence
Parent: "For the eighteenth time, get OUT of bed!!"

Empty Nest:
Parent: "I have to get up and pee AGAIN??"

I don't know about you, but I think I've just depressed myself.

To Ginny B.

2006-01-10T21:34:00.000-08:00

To my dear friend Ginny B. whom all the world must know is one of the loveliest angels to walk the earth. You have told me you don't think you are pretty but I tell you that beauty is not skin deep for your beauty radiates from the kindness and dignity in your heart and changes the world around you. I wish you a happy birthday and am honored to dedicate this poem to you.

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade more, one ray less,

Had half impair'd the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o'er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

Lord Byron (1788-1824)

The Bedtime Challenge

2006-01-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

At this very moment the girls are doing their nightly routine called The Bedtime Challenge, also known as Who Can Drive Her Parents Insane the Fastest.

The twinlets are tucked into their tiny beds. We pull the covers up, kiss them, offer them potty break or water. Lights out, door closes. The Bedtime Challenge begins. The following phrases have been heard during this activity, but they experiment with new versions daily:

Door squeaks open:

"I have to go potty!"

"I'm thirsty."

"I love you a million and one!"

"I'm too hot!"

"I'm too cold!"

"Summerlyn fell asleep and won't talk to me!"

"My covers fell down. I need you to pull them up."

"There are small animals in my room."

"A snake bit me."

One time we saw the light on in their room and we opened the door. They whipped around and stared at us like deer in the headlights. They were kneeling on one of the beds, heads together, wearing hula skirts and fire helmets with the visors pulled down. Haven't a clue what they were doing. These are children who says things like "No Sydney, it's diurnal not nocturnal!" so for all we know they were planning the strategic overthrow of North Korea using only bendy straws and Play Doh. Keep an eye out for them in the news.

Round is a Shape

2006-01-07T20:54:00.000-08:00

David and I are going to start a weight loss contest soon. For those who know us we expect to get the usual rolling of eyes and the "oh, please." Technically both of us are within the weight range for our heights, so really it's more of a fitness thing than a weight thing. We are totally out of shape. Today we were talking to people about wanting to go skiing again and David went on about the fact I've had three spinal surgeries and have a plate in my neck. Whatever. So I countered with:

"Are you in shape?"

He paused, then said brightly, "I'm a shape."

"Pear-shaped," offered a friend, whom he ignored.

The fact is, my back has less pain when I'm about 15 pounds lighter than I am. Plus I'm sure it would help me combat the (stupid, horrible, your-mama-is-a-slime-mold) Lyme Disease if I was in shape. I think I'm already all-muscle. It's just the jiggly, squishy, flabby kind.

I've already run into a potential problem in the contest. Not David; all I have to say is "chocolate" and he loses all sense of time and dimension. Tonight I told him he would have to walk for an hour to burn the calories from a chocolate bar. He said "Ooh! I could walk while eating the chocolate bar and be neutral! Whoohoo!" I also recall his comment, "I don't want to use the exercise bike: it makes my legs sore."

No, he won't be the hard part. It's the girls. They had two colds back-to-back and when they are sick they don't eat. They are slim girls, just like I was at that age, but they've lost a little weight and when you are growing but not eating you start to look like a stick bug. So here's the problem. I've got to plump them up while simultaneously not plumping me up.

The other day I made rice and beans for lunch. They also had tempura vegetables with dip, fresh guacamole, Mediterranean almonds, and coconut sorbet for dessert. I ate rice and beans. I tried to keep face in the rice while ignoring the forkfuls of lusciousness being stuck in mouths not my own. I've got to come up with a better plan.

My name is Lolita and I'll be your server tonight

2006-01-04T20:52:00.000-08:00

The spousal unit and I haven't gone out on a date for almost two years. I have grown very accustomed to not dressing up, although I used to love it. It's so much easier to dress like you're going to muck out a barn than go to a ball. I am pretty low maintenance and quite comfortable that way. I'd wear sweats to work every day if I could get away with it. And I mean old cruddy sweats, not anything in which J.Lo would be caught dead.

My work had a holiday party at a coworker's house. I decided this was my opportunity to dress up for once and I might as well go all out. The preparation nearly killed me. The initial shower took forever. I scrubbed every square inch with one of those scratchy gloves designed to exfoliate. I scrubbed off those dead cells with a vengence and wasn't satisfied until I saw gleaming bone.

Then there came the hair removal. If you took a Sasquatch to a spa, what tools would you use to defoliate him/her? Machete? Chain saw? I decided my three blade razor for women (because pastels remove female hair better than plain old black) would be sufficient, but how many boxes of them would I go through? I admit I get kind of lax about shaving in the winter when I'm covered from head to toe and no one but my husband sees the offensive fur unless of course I get in a car accident and brought to the emergency room which would, of course, only occur when I'm at my most furry and was wearing old and dirty underwear anyway. The ED staff would cut my clothes off and immediately decide that resuscitation wasn't that crucial after all.

I decided to start with the pruning shears then move to a hack saw for the more delicate work. Hours later I emerged from the shower bruised, weary, but fabulously smooth. Of course, my skin was now dry and flaking off like sawdust. Out came the creams. One for the face, another for the body, and another for the trouble spots. Spackled on the trouble-spot cream with a small trowel but didn't quite go through the entire five gallon bucket.

I looked in the mirror and found that I still had hair where it wasn't supposed to be. Says who, anyway? Why can't it be fashionable to look like you have a large black caterpillar crawling across your forehead? Or to look like you are wearing Ugg boots but you're not. Or to look like you've tucked chinchillas in your armpits but you haven't?

Nevertheless I plucked out each offending eyebrow hair until I stopped looking like a Frida Khalo impersonator. In third grade my archenemy told me I had a mustache. I spent a lot of time after that trying to find and remove it. Then I decided that if it wasn't visible to me, than it wasn't visible to anyone else. This logic is akin to believing if you have a bag over your head you're invisible, but it works for me.

On to the hair on the scalp. My stylist told me to blow dry until my hair feels too dry. So I did this until my hair crackled and started dusting my shoulders with ash. That ought to be good enough. I hadn't used a curling iron in a long time, so I bought one just for this occasion and cooked the remaining hair into pommes frites.

Then came the makeup. If you think this blog entry is endless, you should have sat watching me make an attempt at grooming. Or not. The concealer, the foundation, and again the trowel. My eyelash curler came from a Nazi physician's instruments kit. Mascara. Eye shadow! I last wore eyeshadow when I trying to woo my husband. Wooing now comes much easier ("honey, you feel like it tonight?" "honey, are you still breathing?") and so the eye makeup gathered dust. It was probably the dust that got smoothed over my lids oh-so-expertly. Lipliner. Lipstick.

Then the piece de resistance: false eyelashes. Since you have to squint to see if I have eyelashes, it seemed wise to make it look like they existed. Having never put them on before I think I did a good job and was able to finally get them on my lash line after removing them from my forehead and left nare where they first stuck.

I stuffed myself into a pair of control top nylons, a feat impossible had I not slicked myself down with the trouble-spot cream. Then the dress. It the gold damask dress my husband's mother wore to her engagement party in the 1960's. And gold heels, which I thought were rather tacky but since I was going for it I might as well go for it.

We went to the party and my husband looked good, but I explained to my coworkers that I felt like Hispanic Barbie. My boss accused me of missing the diversity classes. I didn't remind her that I was Hispanic and therefore deserved the right call myself Hispanic Barbie. Half the other people there were in jeans. But I gleamed like a sequin on a velvet Elvis painting.

I should have taken a picture. The hair has grown back in now, but I'll have witnesses that at least once in my life I looked like a real girl. Somehow that's twisted.

Gallo Pinto of Love

2006-01-03T21:03:00.000-08:00

The recent dearth of postings has been caused by 1) the phenomenon of the holidays sucking time and resources into a black hole where normally only socks go; and 2) bone tired despite having one of the "good" IV treatments last week instead of the "bad" ones.

Friends of ours traveled to Costa Rica yesterday. Just before they left I sent them an email listing all the foods they need to try while they are down there. That led me to review Costa Rica's official website, which led me to their recipe page, which caused my salivary glands to produce at an astounding rate. Do you have any idea how much I love gallo pinto with Lizano sauce?? Or how unfair life is that I haven't had pejibayes or guanabanas for a decade??

My mother is Costa Rican. Her mother, my Abuelita, owned a boarding house in the little town of Puerto Jimenez. My American father traveled to Costa Rica with his parents in the early 1960's. His father bought property and had a farm in the country for a time and needed a place to stay while in Puerto Jimenez and thus found Abuelita's boarding house. To this day my dad believes that Costa Rican women are the most beautiful in the world and it didn't take long for him to notice that the boarding house woman's middle daughter very lovely.

Three months later they married in a local church. They moved to the States where my sister was born 11 months later and I nearly six years after that. Then, when I was still a baby, we moved back to Costa Rica and stayed there while I became plump with gallo pinto and platanos maduros. I must have felt that all of Costa Rica deserved tasting when I plucked a piece of dried mud off of my grandfather's shoe and ate it before my parents could stop me. Like all tropical countries, CR is full of naughty parasites and I had introduced my tummy to them. I soon became very sick and was hospitalized. The treatment that finally killed the parasite started destroying my kidneys and so I was brought back to the States where I underwent more treatment and recuperated, not to return to CR for more than twenty years.

In my early twenties my mother went to CR to visit her family for the first time since we'd rushed away. She came back with a jar of pejibayes. I didn't recognize those little palm fruits but I was eager to try them. When the first forkful hit my tongue I immediately recalled the flavor from my babyhood. Amazing! I was tickled and comforted at the same time. I loved pejibayes when I was a baby and my taste buds had a greater memory than any sight or sound. I went back to CR when I was 24 and couldn't get enough of the food. Dad and I sat in a local cafe and drank guanabana milkshakes. I stuffed myself with mamon (fresh lychee fruit), papayas and pineapple. I tasted cacao, the fresh fruit that becomes chocolate. I ate steamed pejibayes in paper cups from the street vendors. I devoured gallo pinto topped with salsa Lizano and a side of fried farmer's cheese for breakfast, mopping it up with bread fresh from the bakery. I brought home vanilla beans and made my own vanilla extract and vanilla sugar.

Excuse me while I'm mop the drool.

Why have I not made gallo pinto myself? This is a genuine mystery. But it is my resolution (it being a New Year, no?) to make a genuine Costa Rican meal. I've found that I can order a jar of pejibayes on the Internet, along with Salsa Lizano. It will be a while before I can take my own family to meet my Costa Rican family for the first time, but in the meantime my girls will become familiar with those wonderful flavors.

Deluge

2006-01-01T20:09:00.000-08:00

So when we moved to the area we live in we had no concern of flooding. After all, we are in an upper elevation and on a hill, no less. No streams or rivers nearby. The weather people have been warning all of North California up to Washington State that a massive wet front will cause flooding. But we felt safe and cozy, up on our hill. Right.

Most of the driveways out in this country are gravel. We have a nice asphalt circle drive the previous owner decided to put in. For the most part it is very nice, a place where the girls can ride their bikes, no gravel to migrate into the lawn, etc.

The other thing the driveway does well is channel water from the hill above us. The uphill neighbor's gravel driveway has turned into a ditch. The water runs into it and turns the corner at the end of the street and goes through our gate. Then it runs down in a sheet down the length of the driveway until it is absorbed in the pasture at one end. It rained so much that the stream widened until it started going into my parent's garage. We got out pieces of wood and sandbags and diverted it back to the middle of the driveway.

Then we found the herb and strawberry garden was under water. Then we found that our large shop was also full of water on the floor. Dozens of boxes and their contents completely soaked. So guess what we've been doing. I've decided to be complacent about the whole thing, but I don't think my husband has gotten to that point yet, especially after he found his box of childhood items soaked and ruined. Well. When you look at all the property and animals lost on the coast (not even to mention Katrina), our problem can be put into perspective. And we have a nice dry warm house to live in. Life really is good.

Future Cardmakers of America

2005-12-29T18:25:00.000-08:00

4-year-olds are interested in bodily functions. Very interested. That fact should have been foremost in our minds when we asked them to hand-make Christmas cards for the family. On Christmas Day I opened my card, which consisted of artwork by both of them.

"What's this?" I asked, pointing to one of two figures on the paper, the one with yellow spiral coming from the vaguely middle portion of the person.

"Potty." Sydney proclaimed cheerfully.

"Ok. Interesting," I said, trying to remain diplomatic while wondering what the cards that went to other family looked like. I pointed to the second figure, which has a rather large block of red that seemed to be coming from the legs, "What's this?"

"Blood." Summerlyn stated blithely.

"Oh? Why is there blood?" I'm trying to remain as nonchalant as they are.

She answers, "because he was attacked by a lion."

"Wow. I've never...EVER...had a Christmas card like this before, girls."

Hallmark is never going to hire my daughters. Unless the company comes up with an entirely new, bold, line of cards.

Giving

2005-12-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

First of all, the whole insects in the Christmas tree didn't go off as spectacularly as I'd hoped. My mother-in-law found the plastic bugs herself and thought they were cute, but she didn't see the tarantula. We had to practically point it out to her and then all she did was jump back startled. No screaming or fainting. Christmas is just not as fun as it used to be.

Thursday before Christmas I took the girls on our annual trip to the Dollar Store where they selected presents for everyone on our list. They wrapped the gifts themselves, using more tape than an elderly chorus girl.

Christmas Eve day we delivered the loot to our the needy Christmas family. That was better than last year where the family acted like it was their right to receive gifts. This year's family was humble and expressed their desire to pay it forward once they got back on their own feet. The husband, who is artistic, gave me a t-shirt he had airbrushed for me. Summerlyn fell in love with their two-month-old baby and wanted to take it home.

Here's something amazing: not only did the girls not ask us even once, what we got them for Christmas, but on Christmas Day we didn't get around to opening the presents until about noon and the girls never once asked to open them. The presents had been under the tree for three days.

The girl's loved their dollhouse, David his tool chest, and me my mixer I've wanted for twenty years. It was a lovely Christmas made extra speical by seeing the girls get wrapped up in the spirit of giving instead of receiving.

We won't talk about the in-law problems that gave me an ulcer all weekend.

Look Close...Closer...

2005-12-23T19:21:00.000-08:00

This is our monster Christmas tree. My piano is a full sized upright grand, five feet tall and the tree makes it look wimpy. When I play piano the branches attack the left side of my body (notice the bench is in the tree).

Other than sitting in our living room like a manatee at a salamander tea party, it's quite lovely, trimmed in red, gold and sage green.

However, what you can't see in the picture is something far more interesting. Yesterday the girls added a dozen of their beanie-baby-sized stuffed animals. But more fascinating than that are the insects they added today. They have about 25 or more very realistic plastic bugs, including flies, worms, beetles, ladybugs, and spiders. They blend into the greenery quite well. In fact, you can't even tell they are there until you lean in while perhaps trying to look closely at an ornament.

My parents-in-law are coming tonight to spend the weekend. I wonder what will happen when they admire the tree. This weekend has turned out to be quite promising.

What Was it I Was Going to Type?

2005-12-22T19:40:00.000-08:00

Lyme disease has caused me a problem. What was it again? Oh, right...memory problems. Really drives me nuts. I never know when it's going to hit. And sometimes the ol' brain seems to work just fine, but I never know when a hole is going to open up and the contents fall out.

Here's an example of lying in advertising. I bought a TempurPedic memory foam pillow. I've used it for about five years now. Nothin'.

Where'd My Christmas Spirit Go?

2005-12-21T21:49:00.000-08:00

Tonight as I was driving home from work, or more like parking home from work -- I was listening to Christmas music on the radio. Traffic on my commute home is always bad but with the Happy Holiday Season, it was frightful. After getting groceries I should have hauled them home in the cart on the shoulders of the highways. I would have gotten home sooner.

I have two channels of Christmas music that I flip back and forth when a song annoys me. Like Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus is Coming to Town. No offense to anyone who likes it, but me, I can only hear it once a season and then I must flip the channel immediately upon hearing the first jingle bell bars, lest I go irreversibly insane.

Tonight they had segments of callers chatting with the DJ about happy Christmas memories. One woman told a touching story about her wonderful grandparents who gave her so many happy memories while they were alive. Then she asked the DJ to pick a song in their honor.

Immediately what came to my mind was Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. I need help.

Ballerina Plumber Nurse Aerospace Engineer

2005-12-19T22:03:00.000-08:00

Tonight Summerlyn decided what she's going to be when she grows up.

"A queen. Or a violin player."

When you're four, there are no barriers. It's a wide open sea of opportunity with nothing stopping you. You can choose to rule a country or fiddle on stage at the county fair. I love childhood.

Your Expiration Date

2005-12-19T21:49:00.000-08:00

At work today I was reading the hospitals' discharge list and saw the words "expired" by one patient's name. Now if the scientists can stop researching cow flatulence and work on finding the location of our expiration dates, that'd be good.

Actually, nevermind. I don't want to know.

Snow? No!

2005-12-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

Today was the last day that my family could go Christmas shopping as a family (and the first day, too, actually). I thought we'd averted a weekend fiasco last night when we were finishing the Christmas tree. I was trying to put the cap back on a glass bulb when my finger slipped and hit the razor edge of the bulb lip. I looked at my finger and thought it was fine until about 10 seconds later when I realized that blood was dripping down my finger. I couldn't see the actual wound very well because it was so finely sliced and thought of sitting in the ER for hours on a Saturday night, waiting for stitches before my finger either became gangrenous or I exsanguinated, whatever came first. After I cleaned it and triaged myself I decided that I wasn't going to have to go in for it, thankfully.

But was the fiasco averted? Oh no, silly! This AM we had a one-minute power outage and my mom called to tell me that Portland was having a wind storm and an ice storm was going to hit around 6pm. I told David "Let's go now!" figuring that we could get back an hour or two before six and be safe. The forecasters around here tell us something's going to happen but it usually doesn't hit until several hours later, if at all.

So we had hit two stores and were sitting at a Spaghetti Factory when it began to snow. It was 1:30. By the time we got out to our car, there was about 1/4" on the ground and then it began to rain and snow together which is a horrible mix that freezes into sheets of ice immediately upon contact with any surface. Since it was at least one hour back home, we decided to go to two more stores that were about 3/4 mile away. It took an hour to get there. Then we hit the highway back home, speeding along at 3 mph, watching the cars in front of us making forward and sideways movements simultaneously.

Perhaps you, dear reader, live in Montana, and you reasonably snort in derision at an inch of ice and snow on the ground. However, we have two things against us in Portland: 1) it doesn't snow (or ice) here very often. Winter in Western Oregon usually means rain and moderate temperatures. And, 2) a large portion of our population is made up of Californians who, bless their hearts, scream at the sight of white powder falling from the sky and landing under their tires.

We got home safely and are snug in a warm house and grateful. Next year I'm buying everything online. Right.

Children Can Make Time Stand Still

2005-12-17T20:17:00.000-08:00

Today we had a friend over for dinner. While we have been friends with him for a long time, today was the first time we've had him over for dinner. As the meal was winding down and I began serving the dessert, one of my daughters -- who had exhibited near perfect manners until this point -- turned to him and said. "Sometimes my bottom gets sore, if I wipe too hard."

I know it'll be a memorable meal for us. Him too, I'd guess.

Dreadlocks

2005-12-17T19:59:00.000-08:00

I try to keep the girls neat and clean in public. This is an inheritance from my mother, who, no matter how little money we had, would sooner lie down on a train track than let my sister or I out of the house with a single smudge or tear on our clothes.

So at church today, as usual, I had groomed my girls carefully. Today they got side parts with little barrettes. Very sweet. They actually made it an hour looking pretty good. Our service has children's story before the sermon, and just as the pianist played the tune to signal time for children to come up front, I looked at the girls. In the space of 15 seconds they had gone from little groomed lovelies to street urchins with squirrels nesting in their hair. There was no time to do anything about it, and so they ran up front, happy and blissfully oblivious. I sighed.

But I have a solution. Dreadlocks.

Sanctuary

2005-12-16T19:08:00.000-08:00

Tiiiirrrrred. Big IV treatment today. Feel like a jello mold, emphasis on the mold. Thank God it's Sabbath. Yes, I'm one of those oddities that keeps Saturday. But man, what a wonder, just to come to a grinding halt and STOP. Twenty-four lovely hours of no shopping, no cooking, no bills, no laundry, no work. Just hanging out with the family. A sanctuary from the world. Peace.

As soon as the short ones are put to bed I'm going to have a bath. Bubbles, candles, sparkling cider. Float. Sigh. Bed. Sleep.

IQ

2005-12-14T23:07:00.000-08:00

About a decade ago, David and I both took an informal IQ test that had been presented by my psych teacher in nursing school. We both scored high and my darling spousal unit reminds me frequently that his score was one point higher than mine. Like the other night when I stretched languidly and fell out of bed. Hey, even I know that physical dexterity has nothing to do with intellect. Look at Stephen Hawking. And me. The other day I turned to leave my bedroom and ran into the door frame, an incident that is not indicative of my mental acumen or lack thereof.

Nearing the end of nursing school, I took another IQ test just for kicks. It was one of those you can buy at a bookstore. About to graduate, my IQ was eight points lower than two years before. I like to stick with the higher score, knowing that it was likely not accurate.

The other day I came across an online IQ test while surfing and took it on a whim. The score was the same as the graduation score. I was delighted that it hadn't gone down again, since I'd gotten another degree. So I accepted the lower number as truth. It's still good, but I hesitated in telling Turgid Brain Boy. When I did, he boasted that if he took the test again, he would hit 145. I snorted in derision. He raised his eyebrows and said, "Oh yes I could. I will take it twice and add the scores together."

I don't know who's smarter, but the boy can make me laugh, and that's good for something.

The Tree

2005-12-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

We went tree hunting on Sunday. We live in the Christmas Tree capital; there are more Christmas tree farms around here than any other place on earth. With over six million trees harvested in Oregon each year, it's a title we well earned. Every day, each acre of Christmas trees produces enough oxygen for 18 people!

So, surrounded by miles of these farms, we don't need to go to no steenkin' tree stand where trees sell for up to $100, only 30 miles from here. Instead we bundled up the girls in layers, hats and gloves, I put on my tacky Christmas socks, long johns and jeans, and we piled into the van. Signs are everywhere for the farms, but about four miles down the road we found what we were looking for: u-cut for $10. Whoohoo!

The sign was for a property that used to be a tree farm but the current owners weren't interested in keeping it up. So they let people wander into their planted forest and take whatever they wanted for $10. The girls had a great time. There was no snow, but the mud had frozen and each step crunched under their boots. They played hide and seek and leader of the safari. Finally we found it, an 8 1/2 foot douglas fir that looked just right. David chopped it down and dragged it back to the van. I went back and cut down a two-footer for the girls.

Meanwhile, David attempted to wrestle the tree on to the top of the van. The tree, afraid for its future, did not want to be taken away and so it attacked him. Fortunately the girls and I were far enough away that we couldn't make out what he was yelling at the tree. By the time we got back he had finally subdued the tree and it was sitting meekly, if resentfully, atop the van.

I won't go into how the tree attacked again when we got home, nor how it lost the struggle when David got out the hack saw. The girls didn't care and just did a dance of happiness when they saw the evergreen boughs standly nobly in our living room. It was a happy day.

Ginny and Sons

2005-12-12T18:01:00.000-08:00

My friend Ginny asks me today, "Have you made any new posts since Saturday?"

"No."

"Well, get with it!"

Ginny, I will try to mend my wicked ways and post daily. I might as well, since I know that you will continue to request my posts no matter who dies first. That's only one of the many endearing traits I love about you.

Oh, and speaking of Ginny. (Get worried, get very worried.)

One evening she is changing her clothes for bed. Somehow she manages to fall (a nightcap is something you wear on your head, Ginny). Her young adult sons hear her and come to her bedroom door, concerned.

"Mom, are you ok?"

"Yes, I'm all right."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'm lying here naked, but I'll be ok."

Sudden scrambling heard as boys retreat rapidly, panicky "Ok, Mom.." heard in distance.

Children. So helpful.

Christmas Traditions

2005-12-10T20:11:00.000-08:00

At 4 1/2, the twins are getting more into Christmas. I like to get a tree about a week before Christmas (I have a thing about the fire hazard) but they got a phone call from their buddy Alanna who excitedly told them her family just got a tree. The girls looked at me, lips quivering, and said "Why don't we have a tree, Mama?" I can just see the future, when I get the bills in the mail for their psychiatric counseling.

So tomorrow we'll go tree hunting. Tonight David pulled out the Christmas boxes and while we listened (and danced) to Christmas music by Johnny Mathis and me on the piano (he didn't rise from the dead so I could accompany him, he was on the CD, in case you had creepy thoughts just then. Although that would make a more interesting story), David pulled out some decorations and the Christmas village that he and I had painted years before the girls were born. They ooh'd and ah'd like they'd never seen it before. The girls danced until they fell giggling on a pile on the floor while their father faked hysterical crying to Johnny's Blue Christmas. Hey, everybody's got their own traditions.

This morning we put up the Giving Tree board at church. We are sponsoring a family of five this year and I'm heading the project, so yesterday the girls and I made the ornament tags for the tree. They drew crazy happy faces on the gingerbread and snowmen and made them sparkly with glitter. It's our family tradition to deliver all the presents and packages to our Christmas family on Christmas Eve. I hope the girls will always feel that giving is what Christmas is all about.

The Separation of Socks

2005-12-10T20:09:00.000-08:00

One of the girls came up to David and I in the kitchen with a sad blue sock. Its elastic fibers broke with little popping sounds when you stretched it. David said he'd have to throw it away, but where was its mate? She said it didn't have one and left the room.

He sighed, "There seems to be a high rate of sock divorce these days."

"Perhaps," I smiled slyly, "it is because one sock doesn't listen to the other sock."

"Mmm. Or because the other sock does always have dinner ready when he comes home," he suggested.

"Or it could be that one sock leaves the toilet seat up."

"Or maybe the other sock makes messes in the kitchen she doesn't clean up," he countered.

"Possibly. Another reason could be that one sock doesn't know what a washing machine is."

Ah hah! The washing machine is usually where things goes down hill. Please use this device carefully. And a note to the others -- you know who you are -- make yourself acquainted with the machine. The more you use it, the less frightened you will be.

The Perpetual Student

2005-12-08T19:49:00.000-08:00

I've had an epiphany. Well, not really because I've thought of this over a few months now, but whatever. Semantics.

I'm not going to naturopathic medical school. At least not now. Maybe when I'm 50 because then the girls will be 18. But don't think that that will stop me. Oh no.

Here's the history. I got my Associates in Applied Science in Nursing in 1994. Then I got my certification in teletriage nursing in 2001. The BS degree (nursing) in 2004 (see pic above). I thought about continuing to get my Masters in nursing, but I really don't want to be a hospital administrator, nursing prof, or nurse practitioner. So scrap that. Since I've writing health articles and giving health lectures for several years now, I decided that's my niche. Plus I want to write books. The RN helps but need more.

Here's the plan. I'm going to get my Masters in Holistic Nutrition. Then my PhD in Naturopathic Health. Once I figured that out, I had profound moment of peace. I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up. Whoohooo!!

But as eager as I am to move forward, I must pause and rest. It's only been a year since I got my last degree and I'm still exhausted all the time from the stupid Lyme Disease (DIE bug DIE!). Plus I don't want to miss my girls' precious and fleeting teensy-girlhood. So I will wait. Antsy.

Christmas Shopping II

2005-12-07T21:31:00.000-08:00

Having this cold, feeling like my head is a pumpkin (the size that wins prizes) stuffed with goo, I haven't been out of the house for a few days, but I did go to work today. Which means that I had to go shopping afterwards, since I refuse to leave my house for the next couple days.

It was a shopping miracle. I got excellent parking spaces wherever I went. I got in, got out, and I didn't even have to tackle anybody to do it. There were no cashier holdups ("Price check for super maxi pads, please!"), no customer holdups ("You rang up the price as $9.99 but I know there's a 2% discount and I'm not leaving until I get it!"), no long lines, no salespersons shoving perfume in my face, no crowds. I don't know how it happened, but it was a miracle.

I came home and Summerlyn had fallen asleep on my mom's couch, so I wrapped her up in a blanket and carried her home, her sister clomping behind me in her rubber boots. They are now all tucked in bed and I am about to do the same.

But Wait! There's More!

2005-12-06T08:41:00.000-08:00

I'm working from home, sick, today. Don't you just love the Wonderful Season of Mucus? There should be a CD to celebrate the season, complete with these hits:

Deck the Halls with Balls of Mucus
Fa la la la la, la la la la!

Grandma Got Run Over By Pneumonia

I'll Be Home for Sinusitis

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Sickness

Jingle Bells, I can't Smell, I've got the grippe;
Oh what fun it is to feel that post-nasal drip.

Do You Hear What I Hear?
(So You've Got Tinnitus, too?)

It's the Most Productive Time of the Year

Santa Baby, slip a Nyquil under the tree, for me
I've been an awful good girl
Santa Baby, my lips have changed in color too, light blue...

And much, much more!!!!!

Pets vs Children

2005-12-05T12:05:00.000-08:00

Before the girls joined our family, our children were Sera and Toby, the cats. We were one of those couples who nauseate their friends with our cat devotion. Having no children at the time, all our parental feelings went to our little fuzzy babies and we spoiled them with abandon.

When I was pregnant, my husband was concerned that his love for Sera would change. He really doted on our white cat and I got disgusted and jealous of her preference of him. They would stare into each others eyes lovingly and she'd press her forehead to his lips for kisses. Ugh. Of course, I enjoyed her attention whenever he wasn't home.

But when I was pregnant, I had already fallen in love with the tiny ones in my tummy, and so when he voiced his concern about changing feelings for our pets, I just smiled. Turned out that I was right. When the girls were born, it wasn't that we stopped loving our pets, it was just that our love for our daughters was light years beyond. The cats were in no danger of being abandoned or unloved, they were just no longer the center of our universe.

That of course led to resentment by the cats -- "Who do these squeeling pink things think they are?" -- but they got over it and actually hang out with the girls now and we no longer find plans on how to get rid of them, hidden around the house.

But now that I have experience with both, let's compare pets versus children.

The cats are easier to care for. Put food and water on the floor and clean the litter box and they are set. Of course, the girls would also like the privilege of eating off the floor. In fact, I did put bowls of water on the floor for them the other day, but they said they were puppies at the time, so it seemed appropriate. The litter box is unpleasant work, but on the other hand I've never heard the cats shout from the box when we had guests, "MOMMY! I went POOOOPY and POTTTTY!!"

Children can talk, which comes in handy. While it's not comfortable to hear "Mommy, you have a booger" in a restaurant, at least you know they are honest and sincere. Cats are not honest and sincere, and although they cannot talk they seem to be able to communicate without difficulty. A cat owner knows clearly that they are accepted or despised at any given moment. It's a blessing that they cannot talk, actually. Toby, who's not the brightest bulb, would only say, "tuna tuna tuna tuna tuna tuna" until we were forced to feed him to a tuna. Children can say, "I love you" and ask "Do angels come from eggs?" and that far outweighs anything our cats could tell us.

Cats can be amusing. They have these episodes which Darby Conley of Get Fuzzy calls the midnight crazies. For no reason known to humankind, cats will start dashing around the house, looking psychotic. I mean more than usual. Children also do this but it can happen at any given time. I've been sitting in my home office when suddenly two tiny girls dash by, one wearing a swimsuit, hula skirt and fire helmet and the other in my full slip and her daddy's wingtips (that one can dash wearing shoes large enough in which one could sit kayak-style is a wonder all by itself).

So far, the obvious is obvious. Children are superior to cats. I only dare type that because the cats don't read my blog. That I'm aware. Sera and Toby will be a beloved part of our family until the mothership takes them home, but here's the tie-breaker: My children and cats both occasionally climb into our bed with us at night and both are snuggly warm. However, when I get uncomfortable I feel no guilt in making a cat go thunk on the floor in the middle of the night. The girls get to stay, charley-horse or no.

Warm Fuzzies

2005-12-05T11:43:00.000-08:00

Last night as we put the twinlets to bed and turned off the light, little Sydney couldn't stop hugging me. Then she kissed me over and over, put her arms around my neck, looked into my eyes and said, "You are my sweety Mommy. You are my parent angel."

**sniff, sniff** I love them!

I Can Still Be Happy

2005-12-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

Gotta love this immunosuppressed state. Everyone is now getting well in this house, and I am now sick. At first I thought is was just herxing since I had my IV treatments on Wednesday, but now I know it's a cold. Arrrgghh!!

But today, as Sydney says, I can still be happy. I sat on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, Summerlyn at my side wrapping my arm in a cast (one of her all-purpose treatments). Sydney was sitting nearby, reading a book about King David, but said "it's really about me, when I was young." How can I not be happy in the midst of this?

Tonight, David -- he really is a nice boy, despite getting endlessly harrassed by me -- was kind and took over the care of the babes while I sat at the piano and got in the zone for over an hour. I got a major dose of endorphins. I played Christmas music, and after a particularly grandiose version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing (Mendelssohn, arranged by Mark Looney) there was silence, and then a tiny voice from the bathroom said "that was beautiful!"

I am happy and hope you are too.

Note: It's difficult to do housework in the dress I'm wearing above, but it keeps the floors shiny when I walk.

Love you, Honey!

2005-12-01T22:22:00.000-08:00

Men are babies. Ok, this is not the beginning of an anti-men rant, but really, most wives out there know that when their man is sick, he's a baby. David's feeling better today but the past couple days he was pretty miserable. Like most women, when I'm sick I keep right on going, like a warped Energizer bunny. Must do laundry **sniff, sniff** must make food for progeny **cough, cough** must make herb tea for sick husband **near-faint episode**.

But men, when they are sick, it's (placing back of hand on forehead) "Ohhhh, dyyyinnnggg. Need massage." I used to be resentful but now I just roll my eyes. But if men don't get sympathy from you, they'll get it from somewhere else, which is exactly what happened yesterday. I could tell that he'd already had a conversation with his mother earlier when the phone rang and I answered:

"This is Mom. How are you doing?"

"Tired, but ok. Do you want to talk to your son?"

Pause. In a hushed tone normally heard standing over a hospital bed post brain surgery, "Is he able to speak?"

Rolling my eyes, I hand the phone to he who moments ago was giggling over something he saw on the Internet. He hears his mother's voice on the phone and his voice is suddenly hoarse, worn, near death, "Mom...."

Men. Gotta love 'em. Because it's not right to kick them.

Tossing the Apple

2005-11-30T23:15:00.000-08:00

You cannot make up stuff like my day today.

First some background. Mom watches the girls as I go to my doc's every other Friday for IV treatments. This week Winnie the receptionist and Doc Conway's all-around handy woman calls me Monday and asks if I can come in Thursday instead because he has to go to a funeral. I say yes and check with Mom to watch the girls.

There may be a snow/ice storm tomorrow. So this morning, Winnie calls again and offers to let me come in today instead, in case of the storm. I really need the treatment. They can fit me in at noon. It's 10:30 am, Doc Conway's is one hour away, I've got twin girls still in their jammies (don't ask). I'm still in my jammies.

The girl's didn't know what hit them. A whirlwind of clothes, shoes, spray bottle of water, combing, hoods yanked up. The same whirlwind hits me. We're out the door. I then remember that we drove a friend somewhere last week and had to remove one of the car seats. I've never had to install a car seat since our van has integrated car seats. So I tell the girls to stand back and I heave the seat out of the trunk. The girls look concerned. I tried to get it back in the middle slot, where it was before. I yanked and pulled and cut my thumb. The girls took a step back. I started over in the next to the window and finally got it in. First time in their lives they haven't sat right next to each other in a vehicle. I was sad; they didn't seem to notice.

Twice on the hour trip North I start having abdominal cramping. Oh no. I imagine myself having to find a gas station or store, unstrap the twinlets (which takes minutes), herding them in, finding an employee, waiting for the bathroom to clear up, all while bend over and moaning. I drove faster. I did get on an off ramp the second time it happened, but I prayed hard and it cleared up and so I got back on the freeway. I made it to the clinic in time. Used the facilities, felt much better.

Today was the first day the girls witnessed an IV started on their mama. Doc Conway wheeled my IV pole to the back room where everyone else sits with their IV poles. My Dad was there with his. No really, this is not a dream. My Dad, who also has Lyme disease (and other big bad things) was actually there, with Mom. The girls thought it was great fun and passed the time on various laps. Another patient there found out I am an RN and started asking me how to get rid of her husband's hiccups. Sydney ate a banana and Summerlyn ate an apple.

On the way home I decided to stop at the mall because JCPenney's is having a big sale and it's before the crowds. You know how I feel about crowds. I am super tired and so I get one of those rent-a-strollers and the girls take turns. Summerlyn, my very active, inquisitive little girl is acting like a limp noodle. She says she doesn't feel good and wants to keep her coat on even though it's very warm in the mall. Oh no.

I finish shopping and thinking that the girls didn't have much for lunch, maybe they will perk up if I feed them. So we go up to the food court and sit down with a plate of chow mein noodles and vegetable spring rolls, which the girls love. Sydney ate a small portion and said she was full. Summerlyn, on the other hand, refused to even have a sip of juice to drink and laid her head on my lap. Oh no.

We finished and I put her back in the stroller. The next thing I did was a gift from God, a pure moment of inspiration. I gave her an empty styrofoam cup.

On the way out of the mall I stopped and returned the stroller. Still standing by the stroller kiosk, Summerlyn gets THAT look on her face. I say "IN THE CUP! IN THE CUP!" Up comes the apple remains in amazing quantities. Such a wonderful little girl, she spills not a single drop. All in the cup.

She immediately felt better and we went home. The girls fell asleep in the car. The nutty day is still not quite over. Not quite. As I'm driving my right eye starts burning for some unknown reason. I close it, driving with my good left eye and my nose starts itching so I scratch it. I then think of all the disgusting surfaces I've just touched in the mall and so I reach into my purse in the dark and find my little bottle of hand sanitizer. I squeeze and nothing comes out. I shake it and squeeze again and get a huge glob in my hand. I rub in on both hands, and the steering wheel and my jeans. That stuff is like pure alcohol and now my good eye is burning, tears streaming out of both eyes.

I am home now. Girl's sweetly unconscious in their beds, safe. I'm going to bed now before anything else happens.

Teeth

2005-11-29T20:59:00.000-08:00

I came home late and the girls were already in the tub. I came in just as David said, "Summerlyn, smile real big." She did and her father and I nearly had dual cardiac events. Her teeth were dark grey. We made Sydney smile. The same thing.

My mind raced back in time. We had brushed their teeth ever since the first two appeared. I remember their darling little smiles with two tiny teeth on top and two on bottom. I remember getting bit during breastfeeding. They had strong little teeth. I know.

They've gone to the dentist for a cleaning every six months; they are due for one now. They don't eat candy. I have dozens of photos with them smiling, beautiful pearly whites gleaming.

But I also remember forgetting to brush their teeth. They've gone to bed after drinking juice at suppertime. And suddenly, in the space of a day, they have rampant tooth decay. I thought of the dentist, shaking his head sadly, looking at me angrily. How could you do this, you terrible mother. Why I oughtta.... Now they will have to be fitted with teeny dentures. We'll have to look for Polident coupons in the Sunday paper. They'll have little cups beside their beds for their little choppers.

Then David asks, "what did you eat today?"

With two words, the agony and dispair are whisked away. "Blueberry smoothies."

It was then we noticed their tongues were also blue-grey. The decay magically disappeared with a brushing just before bed. Tomorrow I'm going to make that appointment with the dentist anyway.

Out of the Mouth of Babes

2005-11-29T20:52:00.000-08:00

Tonight the four of us -- David, the girls, and I -- were sitting on the floor of their bedroom just before bedtime. It was time for prayer and we were discussing prayer requests. David said, I'm feeling pretty sick." Sydney looked up at him with a gentle smile on her face and her arms around his neck and said, "But you can still be happy."

David smiled, all his complaints suddenly drained away, and said, "Yes. I can still be happy."

Why Don't YOU exercise?

2005-11-28T22:19:00.000-08:00

My husband is sick again. He usually doesn't get sick this much or have it last this long but it's been a bad season, and it's only just begun. I think he's unhealthy because he never exercises. Trust me, I'm not comparing his level of potato-hood to mine, because we are co-spuds. But tonight I suggested he should exercise more to get healthier. He says, as usual, that he would like to walk. But it's raining. Note that this is Oregon. It does that here. Is that not a brilliant excuse if you ever heard one? He could be in Antartica and say he'll start exercising as soon as the snow melts.

I suggested that he could use the clothes hanger in our bedroom. It used to be a recumbent bike, but it's had a more efficient use for several years now. He answers, "I can't. It makes my legs sore."

After I was done laughing I agreed to that I wouldn't post that comment on the blog. He changed his mind and so here I am. Still laughing, but awed. I couldn't come up with such genius excuses not to exercise if I tried. And I have.

Holiday Shopping

2005-11-27T19:22:00.000-08:00

Anyone else recovering from the holidays? Oh wait, it isn't over yet. I went to the mall tonight after work to look for Christmas gifts and was reminded why, every year, I wished I'd done this sooner. I am not a crowd person. Like my husband on Black Friday I hoped to get in and get out. But instead I felt like a Nascar in a parking lot. You can have the best intentions of getting from points A to B and get the checkered flag, but there are too many obstacles. There's grandma and grandpa moving in their own time zone. Then you come across a group of adolescents, low-rise jeans and i-pods five kids wide in a no passing zone. Oh, and the double stroller -- but the kids are walking next to it and mom's carrying a bag of something huge, a jacuzzi I think, on the other side.

The key is to not make eye contact. Walk like you're the only one in the mall. Which only works when you are walking opposite the flow of traffic. I'm small, so no one sees me coming up behind them. I take a split second to zip around them on the shoulder and nearly get nailed by a huge guy who sees a cell phone kiosk out of the corner of his eye and makes an unscheduled right turn. I was stuck in his shoe for hours before he scraped me off on the curb. Ok, that part isn't true, but it could have happened.

I ended up getting one measly gift after darting in and out 234 stores. I couldn't take it anymore and left, knowing full well that it will only get worse. Next time the halls will be filled with barking sea lions masquerading as Christmas shoppers and I hear they've scheduled cattle drives for the remainder of the season.

Thanksgiving Part II

2005-11-24T23:09:00.000-08:00

My husband left me. To go shopping, that is. Yes, it is 11:00 pm. I myself have never gone shopping, purposely, on Black Friday, but this year David was hit by the killer-deals bug. He should have ducked. Unlike many shoppers, however, he has a plan. He only wants to buy a printer. Get in, get out. Riiiiggghhtt. I know him. He has such good intentions: bee-line to printer, bee-line to printer....ooooooh, squishy mousepad......

I can only hope and pray that he gets back home in time for Thanksgiving Dinner tomorrow afternoon. That's right, the day after T-day is going to be our big day. If you recall I worked today and my family was kind enough to arrange their schedules around mine.

The patients I talked to today did make me thankful. There's a lot of unexpected things that can happen on T-day, as today's cases in point show. The dog bite, the squirrel bite, the kid who accidentally stabbed his hand with an EpiPen (bad, just take my word for it), the symptoms after a cancer biopsy, the suicidal alcoholic reaching out. Besides getting together with family and enjoying a meal, a lot of other things happen to people out there on Thanksgiving Day.

Mostly it was nice because many people were grateful for help and said thank-you and "hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving." The other nurses were in a good mood and brought lots of food to share. Then there was one really crabby patient who made me wonder why she called since everything I said made her mad. "Can I help you?" She says, "What do you MEAN can you help me? What kind of stupid question is that?" Deep breath. I'll let that one go and keep the nice thoughts instead. I hope you do to.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Bicycles

2005-11-23T20:57:00.000-08:00

We've been looking for bikes for the girls, now that they have outgrown their tricycles. How is it that teeny little bicycles are so expensive? It's a scam, I swear. We're not getting them bikes for Christmas, since we've already purchased a doll house for them and few other, smaller toys. I don't like piling up the toys and making it a me-me-me event. But we keep an eye out for the bikes.

Today, David was on a pre-Thanksgiving shopping mission and drove by a Salvation Army where a row of bikes stood before the store. On a whim he decided to stop and thank the Lord he did. He bought two, very nice condition, perfect-sized bicycles for $14. Total. Whoohoo!!