Things Learned This Week

*I have discovered that Joseph Smith sort of scares me. His plaster face mask doesn't help matters.

*I am disappointed I guess that Palin is a fumbler and doesn't quite know what she is talking about. I guess I don't really care if people have enough experience to do the presidential job; I am sure Obama would do a great job (I just think he would make some horrible decisions that would change this country not for the good). I don't worry about his inexperience. I don't worry about Palin's either, although it does help that McCain seems to know what he is talking about. And it also helps that he winked at me in the Capitol Building. 

*I have been so tired in the middle of the day each day no matter what I do to change it that it worries me. Does every thirty year old mother get like this? I expected this to happen maybe when I was forty or fifty, but thirty? 

*I really like mineral make-up.

*I freeze up under pressure.

*I can tolerate college football.

*My coffee pot just biffed it today after nine years of service. Guess I am using the french press from now on! Things keep breaking down this year. I mean, seriously. It is depressing. I could name about twenty but won't bore you.

*Claritin is better than Zyrtec.

*People like to ignore me.

*It is really great when your car passes inspection.

*God loves me with a love untainted and strong. 

Ramblings of an Old Woman

It's really sad, but the past few weeks, especially this week, all I can think about during the day is going to bed at night. I have been so tired! 

And I have been walking around in public minus my wedding rings because I stained them with that stupid betadine solution (the red stuff) I have been washing myself with (doctor's orders) every day. I put the rings in some warm water with dish soap, but I don't think it helped too much. Any ideas? I guess I could buy jewelry cleaner. Nevermind, I'll call my neighbor. She knows everything. I would still welcome advice though. I am not a jewelry person. I do need to get this fixed though because the kids are afraid I am not married to the Professor anymore.

I went to the doctor for my cold intolerance issue the other day. Apparently I have Raynaud's or something like it. If any of you follow this blog at all you know that during the winter my fingers and toes go numb. Not all of them, just some random one. 

"This medicine would lower the blood pressure enough to get the blood to those extremities."

"What is my blood pressure now?"

She spouted off some number from my chart. I had no idea what it meant. 

"Is that low already?"

"Well, it is normal. " She rolled her eyes in a sort of non-committal way like a typical doctor.

"Is it on the high side, or the low side of normal?"

"The low side."

"That is what I thought. I am a runner."

"Yes, that is common for runners to have lower blood pressure."

"Um, I don't want my blood pressure so low from the medicine I will die or something."

"Yes, that is what I am afraid of. We will try low doses at first. But---I need to see a picture of a cold attack on your feet before I am comfortable prescribing you medication for this. When do you start getting really cold?"

"When it gets cold outside." Duh

"How about we schedule an appointment for the middle of winter?"

"You don't understand. This ruins my life. All I can think about is staying warm."

"When you have an attack, take a picture, and we will bump your appointment up."

There are lots of things that I think could possibly be in my mind. Crazy is one of them. But this I know is real. I used to panic when a toe went numb and I could not feel it for hours, but now I know what to do. Forget playing guitar or doing any task that requires fine motor skills. My digits are constantly cold. The second the thermostat hits seventy I am toast. There are times in the middle of the day when I am so cold I have to sit in bed fully clothed and the Professor has to come and hold me until I stop shaking from head to foot. 

I dread winter.

Infected

Somehow last week I got a staph infection. What fun. Joy of joys. 

Don't ask me how, good grief, I don't know how. All I know is that it appeared like I had a bug bite on my ankle, right next to my little patch of perpetual athlete's foot. Yes, I always have a small patch of athlete's foot. I run and sweat too much. 

So---my nurse/neighbor/friend stopped by for a little visit outside one of those days last week right after I decided to squeeze that "bug bite" to get all that poison out that was causing so much pain and stiffness underneath it. I about screamed as I did this. I poured alcohol on it and bandaged it up. My friend took a look at it. Well, my whole ankle and foot was turning beet red and blanching when touched. "Uh, I would stick that foot in a bucket of hot salt water, as hot as you can stand it," she said with a twinge of fear in her face. 

"I'd watch it with all that staph going around."

Oh great, I thought. Just great.  

She left and I called the kids in to finish up school. I sat at the table, scalding hot bucket of water at my feet, ready to put the wounded ankle in. The water was hot. She said to soak the foot for, gee whiz, I don't know, ten-fifteen minutes? I put my foot in. I almost screamed. I kept it in there though because by golly, I think I could withstand this hot of water. Yes, I can stand it. I'll live. I put my head on the school table and beat down with my fists. 

"It hurts Mom," the Girl said.

"She's in pain," Eraser Eater said.

I could hear pencils moving when I ceased pounding. The clock could not tick fast enough. 

"How long do you have to do that?" Eraser Eater asked.

"I think ten minutes, but I'm going to do fifteen!" I almost yelled. I felt like a burn victim. I could see my foot in the bucket, beet red. 

"Your foot is red."

"Yeah, I know, I know."

Eventually I did go to the doctor that day because my calf started tingling, and when that madness starts happening, I don't mess with my legs. They have to run the next morning!

So---for a good few hours I was cherry red from the ankle down. 

The doctor: "I don't know if this culture is going to come back positive or not because you did some great homeopathic care!" 

Deep Thoughts During School

My kids got deep today and realized that if other things had not happened to me (in the past) they would not be alive. At least, Eraser Eater and the Girl were talking about it. The Oldest was doing a math problem and listening in. 

"I mean, if you hadn't met Dad, we wouldn't even exist!" Eraser Eater scratched his head, "That's pretty scary!"

"Yeah," mouthed the Girl, dotting an "i". 

The Oldest looked up, "It's not too scary. I would still exist and that is what's most important."

"Oh good grief," I said.

"What?! It wouldn't be scary. Eraser Eater and the Girl would not even exist, so I would have no knowledge of them to mourn!"

We all rolled our eyes. 

"Just get back to work."

Crashes

The second time this year our iMac has biffed it. I may have lost pretty much everything, who knows. Well, I am sure the Professor has lost more, but pretty much all of my songs could be gone, so that is a great batch of loveliness. Not that your listening pleasure is lessened by this---I don't think anyone else cares too much, I just worked hard on that crap. Oh well. What I have is probably what is on my podcast, that's it. 

I got an infection over the weekend (maybe the computer caught it) so that was a fun ride. 

I also have athlete's foot. Of course.

And I am ready to bite. Anyone want to try to tackle me? You would be totally up the river. I mean, up the creek. Those blasted idioms.

Walkie Talkies

I think I got bit by something a couple of days ago. When at the apple orchard, I wanted to scratch my ankle and noticed a blushed spot on it and a zit looking thing. It really hurts, but has not really changed much. 

We went to an apple orchard in a college town about an hour away on Wednesday. I went with the friend who went with me to the pumpkin patch last year and the Girl broke her boy's arm. No arms were broken this time, thankfully. My friend has four kids (she is also the one I went to the Renwick Gallery with---Smithsonian) and does so well with them. I am always impressed. I about lose my top whenever the Oldest and I are in the same enclosed space, but it helped that we were out in the open picking apples with a huge pole with a net on it. Eraser Eater kept whining too. At one point he stomped away and whimpered something, I can't remember, and I almost took a huge apple and pelted him with it. If I could aim. If I could actually hit my target, which is never something I am so fortunate to accomplish. 

But the coolest thing EVER was that my friend just deals with the fact that I don't have a cell phone. I know. Aren't I just totally not with it? I feel like a baby boomer staring at an ipod whenever I put a cell phone in my hands. "Here," someone says to me, "just use my cell phone." 

Just use your cell phone? You are assuming I know how to use it? I don't know how to use squat. So---imagine my hearty laughter when my friend pulls out her walkie-talkies. "Here," she said without flinching, "we can use them up to five miles apart." Roger. 

During the hour drive I followed her van all the way to the orchard. I had the walkie talkie on my passenger's seat. We passed a winery. "We may need to stop there," the walkie-talkie croaked from the seat. 

I picked it up. "Why?" I said, while pushing the button I was supposed to push if I wanted to talk, feeling highly ridiculous.

"On the way back," it said back to me surrounded in distortion,"they would have to give us a lot of samples!"

The other day my friend was telling me that only white people wear New Balance shoes (which is my sneaker of choice for running) and it struck me suddenly when we drove by a New Balance store. I had never seen one before. I picked up the walkie-talkie to tell her that we just passed a white people store but the stupid contraption just kept beeping at me so I threw it away from me in horror, back on to the passenger's seat. I felt like a caveman struck by the fear of seeing fire for the first time. It is a flipping walkie-talkie. I picked it up. I threw it in the back seat. 

"Here," I shouted at the Oldest, playing his intendo, "you figure this thing out."

Phil Wickham - True Love

Here is the best male singer on the planet----listen and love it!

I Will Post Something Later

If your computers allow it, give my music site a try again---I have "finished" "You Watch Me" and "Come by Hasting". I think they sound decent. I added more stuff. I wish I had real strings and cellos, which are what plays in my head, but I can't have everything when I am just a piddly musician. If you enjoy the songs for what they are, great, but in my mind they are bigger than what they sound like, more that I could do and am capable of, but have no means to do. 

---Anyone rich and want to donate money so that I can hire studio musicians? Or just lots of studio time so that I could get friends and friends of friends to do it? :)

Thank you ahead of time.

Enough is Enough

I have a new recorded song to share. This song is like a raw wound. A dear friend has been badgering me to put this one together for months and I have been avoiding it. Strangely, it has helped me heal. Or cope, I am not sure what. So, here's to you, Laura.

We are Eccentric Now

Last night for Family Fun Night we had a poetry reading. The Professor got so sick of watching movies every time, so I suggested I have the kids write poems and read them instead. The prospect was presented during school yesterday morning, but no one was enthused. 

"That's stupid," said the Oldest. 

So finally when the time came, I sat us all down and had the kids pick out poems instead. The boys chose Shel Silverstein poems (of course), and the Girl chose a few poems from her little primer for school. I chose Sonnet 56 by Michael Drayton, and the Professor bored us all with "Kublah Khan." Then he pulled out some other story/poem thing that had to do with a warrior who lost his king. The kids were interested, but didn't understand the story. 

The Professor and I watched a movie from Netflix last night; Mountains of the Moon, or something like that. It was about Sir Richard Burton and John Speke (who originally discovered Lake Victoria, the Nile's source). The Professor just finished a biography about Burton and was unsatisfied at the many liberties in the plot of the movie, as is the usual dilemma with films. 

Since school started I have been feeling better about life. During the summer I typically lament not having a reason for living, but then once fall hits I realize my reason. Come winter I am freezing so badly (you know my condition) that it ruins my life and keeping warm is all I can think about. 

So, on a lighter note, when you die, do you want to be in a pine box or a coffin? I think it would make the miracle of resurrection greater if the worm eats me and I have truly merged into the dust. What do you all think about that?

Halloween Costumes

Halloween, in a way, is just around the corner. The Girl has been thinking about her costume already. Sadly, I will refrain from putting photos on my blog (I deleted some already) because a creep from the northwest has decided to take that liberty from me. Yes, it is either delete my blog or just simply stop putting pictures up. I don't really want to delete my blog, but we will see what happens.

Anyway, Halloween. Oh yes. As I was saying. The Girl. She said, "I want to be a unicorn!"

"How are you going to be a unicorn?" I asked her.

"You will make the costume, like you made Eraser Eater's last year!" {Remember the mummy made out of masking tape?}

"Oh, I know," piped in Eraser Eater, "you could just use a party hat and cover it up with paper for the horn!"

"I already just thought of that," I said in a mumble.

I can't make costumes. I can't sew. 

"You'd need hooves," I said to the Girl, "think of something else."

"How about a tree? You could cut a tree down, hollow it out, and wrap it around me!" 

For goodness' sake, who does she think I am? She has seen me cut wood, check, she has seen me kill a mole brutally, check, she has seen me make Eraser Eater into a mummy out of masking tape, check. 

"There's no way," I said.

"She could be an egg," Eraser Eater said.

"That doesn't help much," I said.

"I know what I could be!" yelped the Oldest in his high-pitched Mickey Mouse voice.

Oh here it comes, I thought.

"I could be a jack-o-lantern guy. What you would do, mom, is you would hollow out a pumpkin, cut out the jack-o-lantern eyes and mouth, and put it on my head!"

"That would be heavier than sin!" I spat.

"I'd be fine. I'd bear it well---I would be the envy of all the people who never thought of it. No plastic for me! I would have the real thing! And I would wear a black cape and say, 'ah-ha-ha-ha!' No one would stop me! I would never buy a costume ever again!"

I swallowed hard. 

"I can't even hollow out pumpkins anymore," I said, "they make me break out."

"You could totally do it," said the Oldest. 

No more minimum requirement of a plastic toy gun to be an army man third year in a row. No more princess or Batgirl or whatever it is she used to aspire to. Now it is this idea of impossible things to wow everyone like the mummy costume. That was the greatest, grandest thing I could think of, and the only thing I could think of. 

"How about a couple of white sheets so you can be ghosts?" I asked.

"Someone on Charlie Brown thought of that already," they all said in defense. 

I'm doomed.

I Didn't Get a Ticket

Somehow I got out of it. 

My Girl is Seven

So I walked out the front door to take the Girl and her friend to the library. They had been playing outside like usual. As I was holding a gargantuan stack of books, the Girl bounds over to me and says, "I just ate DIRT!" 

"What?!"

This was too much bad information for me to process while holding a large stack of books. I forgot about it soon after but she approached the subject again:

"I ate dirt and it was bitter."

"Why would you eat dirt? You know, there's something wrong there," I said. Thinking pica. 

"Why would something be wrong, Mom?"

"No one just goes out and eats dirt. Do you need minerals or something? More vitamins? You even wet yourself a little today. Are you ok?"

"What Mom, do you think I am retarded or something? Do you think I am crazy?"

I looked at her with one eye (I was driving) and one eyebrow raised. "Well..."

"Well what? You just called me a retarded child! "

"I didn't."

"Yes, you did!"

"I didn't."

"Mom!"

"Really, she didn't," said the friend.

"What?!" my daughter yelped.

"I tried dirt too," said the friend, "but I spit it out. It was icky. But {Girl}, didn't you actually eat it?"

The Girl lamented and went prostrate on the instant. 

On the way home she remained this way. I played "Bridge Over Troubled Water" as loud as I could, sang as loud as I could with Mr. Garfunkel, and reached my hand behind my seat to grasp my Girl's leg. A cop pulled me over.

After I handed him my license and registration and he walked off, the Girl said, "Do you think he will give you a ticket?"

"I don't know," I said, annoyed that I just blew $150. 

"You know," the Girl said knowingly to her friend, "last time Mom got out of it because she cri--"

"Hey, enough!" 

Incarnation

Here is my new song. I have labored greatly on this so don't make me labor for naught. My guilt trips always sound like a chain letter! I crack myself up. No---this song is a lot of multi-layered fun in minor keys. Go for it. 

Fear of Man

In my greatly adventurous life, I find that going to the grocery store with all three kids can be the most trying to my patience (even over schooling). About a year ago I used to sort of scoff at the poor mothers who had to deal with whining, crying kids clutching a Dorito bag or a box of Trix cereal, but now I dare not. Things have changed for me. God has His little (or big) ways of teaching me a lesson. 

They don't run down the aisles. They don't beg for stuff continually. They don't jump in one place or two places and make tons of noise. They argue. No longer is the strain physical like when they were two, but the strain is mental. "No, I wanna push the cart!" "No, Mom said that I can get the romaine lettuce!" "He won't stop antagonizing me!" "She keeps poking me to get me in trouble! See! Now I AM in trouble!" "He ate the last sample!" "Here! He can have the last sample, I saved it for him! See, he doesn't even want it! He is seeking some sort of revenge on me! I can see it in his eyes!" 

The quotes go on and on. 

And I will admit there is a sort of begging that happens with Eraser Eater at times. Every time we pass a sugar cane or a coconut, he wants me to buy it. When I just ignore his request, he wanders behind the oranges and sort of sulks, but he tries not to look like he is sulking because he is petrified at what people think of him. 

I remember during the summer months he was under water when the lifeguard blew the whistle for "adult swim." When this happens, all the kids have to file out of the pool. Eraser Eater did not hear the whistle so he kept swimming once his head popped up to the surface. Once he saw that I was calling him and asking him what in 'tarnation' he was doing disobeying "adult swim" he looked at me wide-eyed, about to cry. He suppresses it well, I must say. Once in the car he wept silently at how mortified he was. Whenever it was mentioned he cried openly. 

When at the beach and digging that huge sand hole a mentally challenged boy (who could use a few meals missed) jumped right on in and his fist landed in Eraser Eaters side. Eraser Eater barely made a sound but his face looked like he was about to poop his pants. He crawled out of the hole the best he could and scrambled behind the Professor's beach chair. And you know the rest. He wept silently. That kid rammed into him good. The big kid in the hole had no idea any of this happened.

So here's to my second day of school, successfully done, and another coming tomorrow and the next day. Ok, I will not think that far ahead, I am getting depressed.

Whatnots

I successfully completed the first day of school with the kids. It was pulling teeth when the Oldest pulled out the math book, but other than that, it went well. 

All night I dreamed of hobbits and Mordor. I remember some time in the night the Professor said to me, "Are you ok?" 

In addition to reading the Letters of Tolkien and The Hobbit, I read a chapter in a book on Lincoln I bought the Professor. It was about why Lincoln didn't join a church. It was relatively uninteresting. I think Lincoln's reasons for not liking the Church as a whole were immature, but that is just me. I am just not a big fan of Lincoln. But I could stand to learn more about him.

And, by the way, I forgot "F x of = is" today and made a complete fool of myself.