Lost And Found

Joe Cool

My eleven year old son forgets everything. His short-term memory ranges somewhere between “not great” and “abysmal.” This is mainly a symptom of his ADHD, the attention-deficit portion. The kid has returned home wearing just one shoe. No joke. One shoe. When asked where the other shoe was, he had no idea. Not one clue. He wasn’t even sure if he had left the house wearing two shoes. This makes life around our house very interesting. It’s a perpetual treasure hunt without the benefit of a map.

A couple years ago, Joe wore braces on his very wonky front teeth. When the braces finally came off his newly straightened teeth, they handed us a retainer for him to wear every night while he slept. I laughed out loud. Were they kidding me? The idea that he would remember to put the retainer in his mouth every night and then remember to take it out in the morning and store it in a small plastic case was optimistic bordering on insane. Still, we took the small piece of plastic and its silver case and left the orthodontist’s office. I shook my head all the way home.

Due to the ever-evolving state of Joe’s teeth, Joe’s retainer has had to evolve too. So, for the past two years, we have watched them whittle down his original, full upper-palate retainer until it fits just Joe’s four upper front teeth. This retainer, in addition to being completely clear and nearly invisible to begin with, is now microscopic. Consequently, we are in a continual game of hide-and-seek with it. We’ve had some fun, scavenger hunt nights in our house as we rooted around trying to find Joe’s retainer with our only clue to its whereabouts residing in Joe’s sketchy short-term memory. I’ve found his retainer on the floor under the boys’ bunk bed, on our bathroom counter, on a coffee table tray in the family room, in the couch cushions, on the dining room table, on the kitchen counter under a loaf of bread, and in a cup holder in my car. How we have managed to keep it around this long is nothing short of a Jesus-in-the-grilled-cheese-sandwich miracle.

Tonight, as bed time approached, we went through the familiar routine. We told him to brush his teeth and put his retainer in. When he bellowed downstairs that he didn’t know where it was, we told him to find it. He looked around upstairs and then came down to the main floor to rifle around. Wanting to get him to sleep sooner, we paused Breaking Bad on the DVR and joined the search party. We checked all the places we’ve previously found it. No retainer. Had he finally lost it for good? I asked him to go look upstairs one more time, and we went back to watching our show. A few minutes later, he yelled down again. We missed what he’d said.

“Did you find it?” I shouted upstairs.

“Yeah. Got it,” he replied.

“Where was it?” I shouted, always cataloging places it has traveled. Who knows? I might find it there again someday.

“It was in my mouth the whole day,” he said.

Hubby and I looked at each other. Oddly enough, we weren’t that shocked. That would, in Joe’s case, make as much sense as anything else. A few seconds later, he shouted down to us again.

“It wasn’t in my mouth. Just kidding. But, I did find it and it’s in my mouth now,” he told us, and he went back to playing video games.

Steve and I had a good laugh. It was the first time Joe had ever fooled us. He’d delivered that fallacious statement, so perfectly well-timed and with just the right amount of inflection, and we were none the wiser. Turns out the kid has a pretty dry sense of humor, sneaky and under-the-radar like a Jedi. Even as our son continues to lose everything else, we’re happy to see he’s finding his own sense of humor about it.

 

 

Posted on by Me 5

Legos: Just Like Herpes Only More Expensive

My fridge is having a Lego outbreak apparently.

Last week, I opened up the refrigerator, moved a jar of pickles, and found a Lego. A friggin’ Lego. IN MY FRIDGE. Is no place in my home immune to Legos? I questioned the males who cohabitate with me and not one of them had a clue as to how said Lego came to reside in the fridge. Apparently it grew legs and opposable thumbs, opened the door, and walked in there itself. Why not? It doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility when you consider the insidious fashion in which Legos have infiltrated our home.

It’s honestly bad enough that I’ve come to think about Legos as a disease similar to herpes. (Yes. I know. I once referred to glitter as sparkly herpes. Apparently, a lot of things remind me of herpes.) But, Legos are just like herpes, only they’re more expensive. Explore this with me, please.

Children aren’t born with Legos. They catch Legos from a “friend” who shares them without full disclosure about how this one fun encounter will forever change your child’s life. This is when the primary infection starts. The next thing you know, the Legos begin to spread. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pieces of Danish plastic insinuate themselves into your home. This week, for example, in addition to the find in my refrigerator, I’ve found pieces in the living room, the family room, the dining room, the kitchen, the basement, in two of our three bathrooms, in my car, and on the front porch. The poor dog has ingested and subsequently yakked up two Lego pieces in five days. (I’m sure she’s pooped some out too, but I’m not going looking for those so my sons will just have to consider those a lost cause.) The other night, I got into bed, rolled over, and freaked out when I felt something on my leg. Turns out it was a Lego. Lego Jedi Shaak Ti was in my bed. I’m telling you, we’re in the midst of a full-on outbreak in our house.

Occasionally, the infection seems to dissipate because the virus goes dormant. The kids are outside more or become temporarily engrossed in other toys, like the Wii. I no longer find semi-permanent indentations in my bare feet from Lego pieces that have embedded themselves in my flesh. My house isn’t overflowing with Lego cities and vehicles and action characters. I start to think maybe we’re past this. Perhaps it was all simply a bad dream. Then, out of nowhere, there’s a recurrence. Crap.

In the three years since Luke contracted Legos, I’ve learned that there’s no sense denying them or pretending they don’t exist. This is a serious infection. It’s not going to go away miraculously and, quite unfortunately, there is no cure. All we can do is manage the disease. So, we try to do that. We’ve bought him two large plastic buckets to try to contain his thousands of pieces. We’ve talked to him about preventing the spread of Legos. We’ve cautioned other parents about the disease as well. We’re learning to live with it as best we can.

Yep. Legos are a lot like herpes. Perhaps the only difference I can see is that with herpes simplex the primary infection and all subsequent outbreaks come to you free of charge. These small, plastic Danish herpes are costly at the onset and for the entire future of the disease. If I could get back every dollar that has been spent on my son’s extensive Lego virus…um, I mean, collection…I’m certain I could have vacationed in Hawaii twice by now. I find it a bit ironic that if I’d only have gotten lei’d, perhaps none of this would have happened.

Posted on by Me 5

Underdog Would Have Wanted Me To Have This Sports Watch

The Bia Sports Watch I must have.  (Photo courtesy of Bia…www.bia-sport.com)

Yesterday, a triathlete friend of mine posted a link to a Kickstarter project she had decided to back. I was curious. I had only a vague knowledge about the Kickstarter program, so I decided to check it out. For the uninitiated, Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects. Entrepreneurs and artists use Kickstarter to launch their business or career, to get the word out about the thing that is their passion. The way it works is simple. The kickstarter posts information about their goal and then people can pledge money to help them reach their goal. If the project reaches its funding goal, your Amazon.com account is charged for your pledge. If not, there is no charge. I instantly loved that Kickstarter empowers people to make their dreams a reality. How awesome is that?

Anyway, Leslie posted about this incredibly awesome new multi-sport, GPS sports watch with a safety alert feature. The watch was designed by two women athletes (a triathlete and an open-water swimmer) who were not pleased with the clunky GPS sports watches currently on the market. They thought they could create something better for women. So, they did. Bia (named for the Greek Goddess of force and power) is a thin, waterproof, infinitely-sizable sports watch with time, stopwatch, intervals, heart rate, and calories burned information. If you want even more versatility, you pair it with the GPS-enabled Bia Go Stick (about the size of an old-school pack of gum). Clip the Go Stick somewhere on your clothing and instantly you add distance, speed, and pace for swim, bike, and run workouts. But, the best feature by far is the audible safety alarm, which will send your location to loved ones and emergency services when you most need help. I like to hike and bike, and I often do it alone. A watch like Bia would give me greater peace of mine about my personal safety, and you can’t put a price on that.

In trying to get their product to market Bia founders, Cheryl Kellond and Sylvia Marino, were told repeatedly by investors that the product would not sell because females do not care about their performance and would rather go to the spa. I can’t tell you how much that inane comment aggravates me. While I enjoy a nice massage and pedicure as much as the next gal, I spend most of my summer wondering how many toenails I will lose due to my athletic endeavors. I do care if I improve in my sports performance. It absolutely matters to me if I can increase my speed over the course of a summer as I climb hills on my road bike. I may only be a part-time, amateur athlete, but I am serious about it. I am proud that I am 44 years old and stronger, more flexible, and more fit than I was when I was 24.

I pledged to the Bia Kickstarter campaign. If they reach their fundraising goal by tomorrow morning, next April I will be the proud owner of a Bia Multi-Sports Sports Watch with SOS Safety Alert in turquoise with two, super cute, interchangeable wrist bands and the GPS Go Stick. As of right now, they are approximately $56,000 shy of their fundraising goal. The campaign ends in 12 hours. I am posting this in the hope that some other athletes will see the benefit of a watch like this and sponsor Cheryl and Sylvia’s Kickstarter campaign to bring this product to market at last. At the very least, wouldn’t it be worth it to see a couple female, American entrepreneurs take on Garmin and Nike and those who said it couldn’t and shouldn’t be done and win? I’m all about the underdog. I didn’t get the Polly Purebred nickname I earned in college for nothing.

Posted on by Me 2

Sometimes My Tech Support Needs Tech Support

My previous web site is now just one big fat user error.

At the end of 2010, I had this brilliant idea. At least it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time. I would create my own web site and begin writing again via a blog. How hard could it be, right? I mean, hundreds of dozens of people write blogs every day, and judging from the content, grammar, and spelling on some of those sites, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or an English major, apparently) to publish a blog. So, following hubby’s advice, I opened up iWeb on my MacBook, did a simple page layout, registered a domain name (Moms Into Adventure), and put myself out on the web in an official way. I had forgotten, though, what a headache web publishing can be.

Back in 1998, when I was a graduate student studying professional writing at Illinois State University, I took a class called Hypertext. The course objective was to gain an understanding of how writing for the Internet is different than writing for hard copy publication. Words on the Internet are mutable. With a mouse click, one word can springboard you into an entire new realm of thought or investigation. An Internet writer would be able to share multiple concepts succinctly simply by adding links within their work. One of our graded projects involved fabricating our very own web page that in some way defined our identity. It would be my first web page ever. To do this project, I purchased some 1998-simple, Adobe PageMill web software and learned (kid you not) some actual HTML. My identity project for this class is STILL on the Internet today, rife with dorky animated gifs and appallingly unfriendly web site mapping, which only proves how your current Internet activity, no matter how innocuous it seems, will haunt and embarrass you in the future. Wait and see.

At any rate, it had been a long time since I had designed information for the web. Because our web sites were created for a class and hosted by the university, we weren’t allowed to upload them directly. Instead, we saved our sites to floppy disks so our professor could review and upload our information to the web via FTP. It was all so late 1990s. So, you can imagine how I struggled trying to negotiate new Internet publishing programs after what I learned a million years ago when I was 30. The new web site I created last year came with an enormous learning curve, a lot of cursing, and much consternation and head scratching. Still, once I got the hang of it, I persevered and managed to publish nearly 100 posts last year, which was the most writing I had done in nearly a decade. I was proud of my small piece of the web.

Then, yesterday, I went to revisit something on my old site only to realize that, exactly as promised, Apple had eliminated MobileMe, the space where my blog had been peacefully residing. The entire blog was no longer on the Internet. Even though hubby had mentioned that MobileMe was going away, I don’t think it truly ever registered. Truth is that I only listen to him about half the time, so I must have missed the half where he mentioned I would have to put my information elsewhere or lose it forever. Oops.

Consequently, I have spent the better part of the afternoon creating a new site on which to house my 2011 blog articles. I’ve had to undo the previous forward so that it no longer sends users to the defunct MobileMe page. I’ve learned about Nameservers and spent more time with Go Daddy than Danica Patrick. I had to remember passwords I haven’t touched in 18 months, and you have to know the amount of effort that went into that because I can’t even remember what I had for lunch yesterday. At one point, I manually had to uncross my own eyes. It’s been a mind-numbing, excruciating process, and I’ve only managed to upload 5 of my 100 previous posts so far. Happy. Happy. Joy. Joy. I really need to look into getting my tech support some tech support because I’m about ready to fire her…I mean, me.

The Internet in all its insanity, though, is merely a metaphor for life. The things you wish you could delete will stay with you a lifetime, while the things that mean something to you can be gone in an instant. The only constant is change. If you stop to blink, you will miss something vastly important. Some associations can be easily repaired while others can be lost forever. And, no matter how much you learn, there’s always more you will never know. As hard as it is to keep up with the way of the future, when you decide to quit adapting to the technology of the present you become a fossil. So, to avoid going the way of the dinosaurs I will keep up with this crazy Internet publishing nonsense…at least until the next better thing comes along.

 

Posted on by Me 3

A Modern Housewife’s Life On The Edge

My completely amazing, homemade banana bread…or what’s left of it. (The things in the background are not my secret ingredients. They are snacks for later.)

This is my second post in two days about my husband. He is not all that happy about it, but he’s made some suggestions about ways I can fix things between us. Most of them revolve around me “owing” him. (He might have left some letters off that word when he told me that, but this is a rated PG blog so we’re going with it.) Anyway, to repay him for what I am about to disclose, I decided that what I owed him was the best, homemade banana bread in the world. So, that is my olive branch to him. I’ve already eaten half of it (because it is the best banana bread in the world), but I figure that’s about right because he only gave me half my inspiration today. The other half of the inspiration came from Aron Ralston but he’s not here so I ate his half of the bread. You snooze, you lose, Aron.

This morning I decided I needed some exercise. I decide that every morning, but today I actually committed to getting off my lazy butt and getting some exercise rather than simply deciding it would be a good idea to get some exercise if I got around to it. Subtle difference. Anyway, I pulled out our books on local hikes and began rifling though pages looking for a 3-4 mile jaunt that either we had not yet done or that we hadn’t done in a long time. I narrowed it down to three possibilities and then, being the kind and thoughtful mom I am, I allowed my boys to have some input into which one they thought we should do. Of course, they both picked different options. Luke wanted to go to Boulder and Joe chose Morrison, so I made the unilateral and unalterable decision to go to Evergreen.

As is my custom, I made sure to inform hubby of our plans because he is, after all, Safety Dad. He doesn’t like it when we go on hikes without letting him know where we will be. I suppose this is just good practice. I mean, look what happened to Aron Ralston when he went off to do some canyoneering in Utah without letting anyone know where he would be. I don’t think any of us need to lose an arm over a little hike. I texted Steve.

Me: I’m going to make the boys do Alderfer/Three Sisters with me.

Steve: Cool. Take the bear spray. It’s in my nightstand. Your rain jackets are in the yellow cube in my office.

Me: Bwahahahahahahahahaha!

Now, what Steve didn’t know at this point was that what I was laughing about was the fact that he actually thought I would take bear spray and rain jackets on a 3 mile hike with the boys in a heavily traveled hiking spot in Evergreen on a day with hardly a cloud in the sky. He clearly does not know me at all. While I am in many ways in my life quite organized and good about planning, the kids and I more often than not fly by the seat of our pants all summer long. We get a wild hair and go with it. We do not plan. We do not organize. We do not pack well. We simply go.

Steve: Are you laughing about the bear spray in my nightstand?

Me: I’m laughing about all of it. You are on crack. I even forgot the sunscreen. We’re still going. We live on the edge when you’re not around.

Steve: Love you.

I love that he thought it was necessary at this point to tell us that he loved us…as if we would not return from our journey alive. I’m sure it would be in all the news stories. He would tearfully report that he had told me to bring along the bear spray and if I would have listened to him perhaps he we wouldn’t have been ingested by that black bear. And, as I was having that thought, another thought hovered in the recesses of my mind, waiting for its chance to get some attention.

Me: Why is the bear spray in your nightstand drawer?

Steve: In case a bear breaks in, of course. 

I assumed he was joking about this, but wanted to make sure so I tested the waters.

Me: Ha.

No reply from him.

Me: The kids want to talk to you about the bear spray in the nightstand.

At this point, I think he realized that he was in trouble.

Steve: You do NOT get to blog about me tonight.

Me: Too late.

Steve: Then, you’re going to owe me.

And now we’re back to the banana bread. The sad part is that this entire story is all true. Every last word. I actually checked. The bear spray, swear to God above, is in his nightstand drawer as I type this.

The boys and I had a great hike. No one lost a limb or got attacked by a bear or even needed a rain jacket. I did get a tiny sunburn on my shoulders, which I deserve for forgetting the sunscreen. Still, I think that somewhere between Aron Ralston’s missing arm and my husband’s bear spray in the nightstand is a happy medium where most of us live. We try to be good, we do our best, and we cross our fingers. Sometimes we get a little sunburned, but it all evens out in the end.

 

Posted on by Me

The Rodent Who Must Not Be Named

Hubby registers concern about interlopers in his precious SUV.

I love it when my morning starts with a heartfelt text from my husband.

Hubby: A mouse has been visiting my car.

Me: Where has it visited so far?

Hubby: I’ll look tonight. It might be a stowaway.

Me: How do you know is my question.

Hubby: I vacuumed up some droppings and some tissues were shredded this morning.

Me: I wonder if it’s a stowaway or just a frequent visitor.

Hubby: I don’t know but I feel violated. 😉

Me: I’m sure.

My husband loves three things in this world: 1) his family, 2) his camera equipment, and 3) his Toyota FJ Cruiser. Tamper with any one of these three things, and my exceedingly mild-mannered hubby can become a bit less mild-mannered. I pity the fool mouse who messes with (or in) my hubby’s FJ. That mouse just became Public Enemy #1. Later in the morning, I received more texts about the rodent in question.

Hubby: That mouse better not be crapping in my car.

Me: Right now he is taking a huge dump. 😉

Hubby: And mocking me

Me: While dumping!

Hubby: He’s probably eating through the interior as we speak.

Me: I hope not, for his sake.

That was the last of the mouse conversation for the morning. I was hoping the whole mousecapade would blow over by dinner so we could go for the 12-mile family bike ride I had been thinking about all day. I should have known better. Hubby walked in the door after work with something other than his lunch box in his hand.

“Look at this,” he said, holding a Clif Shot Blok in his hand.

“What am I looking at, exactly?” I inquired.

“This!” he said, pointing out a corner of the wrapper that I now noticed had been gnawed open, some of the gooey, mixed-berry, energy-replacement goodness was chewed away.

“Wow,” I said, trying to appear impressed. “Is this evidence of mice malfeasance?”

“The furry creep is hyper now. No telling what he’ll be capable of after this meal,” he said with slight concern.

“He’s probably bouncing off the walls. He might have bounced right out of your vehicle after ingesting that. He probably jumped out at the light rail station,” I suggested, hoping this would end his mouse hunt.

That was wishful thinking because the next thing I knew hubby was walking back out to the driveway. He was going to root that furry little terrorist out of his cave. Hubby stormed back in with copious additional evidence, including some slightly gnawed pieces of plastic from the interior of the FJ. He was not even remotely amused.

“I’m getting out the Shop Vac,” he announced.

That poor mouse had taken his last crap in that FJ. Hubby let the security door slam as he went out to do battle with Voldemouse. A few minutes later, he excitedly re-entered the house.

“Do you want to see my mice?” he asked, giddy with personal triumph.

“Mice? As in plural mouses?” I questioned.

“Yes. Mice. Plural.”

“Are they alive?” I questioned.

“Yep. I pulled back the seat, and there they were. We just stared at each other for a minute. No one knew what to do. Then I came to get you,” he replied.

I grabbed my iPhone for photographic proof and chased hubby back out the door to his open FJ. The mice were no longer visible. I assumed they had run off after hubby left them exposed. (There was evidence of mouse urine, so I know they were scared enough to pee their little mousey selves upon discovery, despite their bravado during the ensuing staredown.) Hubby, not entirely convinced of their departure, put the hose on the blower side of the Shop Vac and prepared to root the little f***ers (his expletive, not mine) out of their hiding spots. But, it was for naught. They never showed their mouse-diaper needing hineys again, and hubby placed a trap I baited for him with peanut butter and chocolate chips (because who doesn’t love that combo?) in his car for their overnight reappearance. I’m certain he’s hoping for their untimely yet appropriate demise this evening.

I’m tempted to wake up at 5:45 to check hubby’s car in the morning before he leaves for work, just to see if there is an overnight mouse homicide. If there is, maybe tomorrow night we can go for the family bike ride I was hoping for this evening? If not, at least my brave hunter will have something to distract himself with while I immerse myself in back episodes of Breaking Bad for the rest of this week.

Posted on by Me 3

Lonesome George: The Rebel Tortoise With A Cause

A page of the itinerary for our upcoming trip to the Galapagos Islands. The page lists a stop on Santa Cruz to see Lonesome George, the tortoise that is sadly no longer on our itinerary.

I’m in a bit of a mourning period. I haven’t been wearing black or weeping uncontrollably, so perhaps you haven’t noticed my sadness. Still, it persists. Two weeks ago, on June 24th, the world lost its last remaining Pinta Island Giant Tortoise, whose moniker was Lonesome George. I came to know George (we were on a first-name, no-descriptors-needed basis) last year when I started research for our upcoming trip to the Galapagos Islands. George’s kind had been pushed to extinction by humans who hunted them as if they were an inexhaustible resource. Surprising, I know. I was looking forward to meeting him in person. But, in his typical, stubborn, I’m-the-last-of-my-kind-so-don’t-push-me way, he would not wait for me or my family.

When the report of George’s passing came across my iPhone news feed, I uttered an audible sigh of disappointment. Joe, ever observant, asked me what was wrong.

“Lonesome George died,” I told him.

“You’re joking,” he replied, assuming as we all do that any tortoise that could live to 100 would certainly live to 101 so we could meet him.

“Why would I joke about something like that?” I told him. I showed him the story and we sat and read it together, disheartened.

George was the rarest creature on Earth, which made him uncomfortable. He was removed from his native island to the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz island, where he was photographed, studied, and manually “stimulated” by humans in an attempt to get him to mate. (Leave it to humans to push something to the point of extinction and then force it to have sex while we watch so we can ease our consciences.) George would not comply. I liked that about him. I’ll admit it’s a bit anthropomorphic on my part, but I like to believe George would not produce offspring on command not because he couldn’t but because he simply chose not to. He knew we wanted to right our wrong of ostensibly exterminating his species. He preferred that we suffer for our crime.

I’ve always liked tortoises. They’re slow, they’re tough, and they just keep plodding along. There’s something incredibly profound about their way of persevering on this fast-paced, crazy planet. I mourn not because I won’t get to see the rarest creature on earth, but because he is no longer a creature on this earth. If we take anything from George’s life, I hope we stop at least briefly to consider how fragile life is. Some creatures, as exhibited through Darwin’s theory of natural selection, do become extinct. This is part of life on this planet. More creatures, however, become extinct because we humans decimate their habitats and carelessly destroy them. I know many people believe God gave us this planet for our use. I prefer to believe God entrusted us with the sacred duty to steward and protect this unique and incredible rock and all her creatures. We did not protect the Pinta Island Giant Tortoise or the Dodo or the Tasmanian Tiger and now they are gone. So, I’m sorry that I won’t get to meet George, but I’m mourning because there will never be another tortoise like him.

 

 

Posted on by Me 2

Lifestyles of the Dull and the Boring

As 6 p.m. approached, it occurred to me that I had not one single thing to write about because I didn’t do much of anything today. While days like this are necessary to maintain some sanity in my life, they make it exceedingly difficult to find the inspiration to write. I suppose this is why I went approximately 8 years of my adult life without writing a thing. I couldn’t get interested in my own life enough to write about it.  I vowed never to blog because I was certain that if I wasn’t interested in my own life then no one else would be either.

How dull could a day in my life be? Let me enlighten you. Today I woke up at 7:30 and spent about an hour unable to rouse myself from bed. So, I hung out playing Mind Feud on my iPhone. Then, I hauled my lazy butt out from under the covers, threw on some clothes, and helped Steve clean up and put away our camper. This involved (no joke) my using rags to dry off the canvas, screens, and top of our camper before the rains started again. We vacuumed, wiped, and stored the dang thing back in the garage. After that, I thought I might write, but instead found myself on http://www.reserveamerica.com looking for more camping reservations because apparently I figured that since we’d done such a lovely job cleaning the pop-up we should plan to use it again before season’s end. While I was dinking around on the Internet, hubby kept pestering me to get out of the house and go for a ride. So I changed into my hideous, excessively padded, Pearl Izumi bike shorts and rode a quick 15 miles to get him off my back. By the time I finished that and showered, it was roughly 2 p.m. so I ate some lunch. After lunch I attacked the monumental pile of ironing that has been patiently waiting for me. To make that experience palatable, I threw My Week With Marilyn into the DVD player and ironed for the entire length of the movie….1 hour and 38 minutes to be exact. Then it was dinner time before heading back to my bed with my laptop, where I am currently whiling away the minutes until it’s time for my date with a large and incredibly caloric ice cream sundae I haven’t actually earned but will ingest nonetheless.

Maybe writer’s block is a real phenomenon. Or, maybe writer’s block is what happens when writers realize they’re not miserable enough to be creative. All I know is that on days like this one, when it’s necessary for me to spend a day trapped within the confines of my quiet house taking care of chores that must be done, I should not be forced to publish anything. It’s bad enough when my dull life bores me to tears. There’s really no need to torture anyone else with my soporific tales. I don’t think my ice cream sundaes give me enough of an edge. Maybe I should find a more impressive vice?

 

 

Posted on by Me 3

I’m Not An Addict…Well, Not Really

What it looks like when I get my way

We’re one week from the start of Season 5 of Breaking Bad. Steve and I started watching this show on the recommendation of some friends back in February. We watched through Season 1 together. We watched the first couple episodes of Season 2 together. But, we were watching late at night, and Steve (somewhat understandably) decided that staying up late on work nights watching a show that is as dark and disturbing was not something he needed to be doing. So, I continued watching the series by myself while riding my bike trainer during the days. I got through all four seasons by myself. I loved it. I’ve been anxiously awaiting the start of Season 5 and now it’s almost here, which is awesome.

For the past few months, I have been bugging Steve to catch up on the episodes so that when Season 5 starts we can share it like we shared LOST and Battlestar Galactica. He has been non-compliant. But, time is ticking away until the season premiere on July 15th. So, today I decided to turn up the heat. Knowing I could not possibly get him through three seasons in a week, I simply began telling him about the episodes, hoping to arouse his interest. He did not bite. I was getting impatient. I pulled up the seasons on my MacBook, trying both to refresh my memory (I finished the shows mid-March) and to prove to him I was serious about watching it again. He barely blinked an eye. I pleaded. I wheedled. I appealed to his kinder, sweeter nature by telling him that I really wanted him to watch it with me. He did not care.

While I was regrouping and working on a strategy, Joe came to me asking me to rent a movie for him tonight on iTunes. He was dying to watch some Fantastic Four film. The light bulb dawned. I told Joe that I would love to rent him a movie tonight, but he’d have to get his father to agree. He asked me how. I gave him a hint. I told him that Daddy and I had something we could watch tonight, so I would love to rent his movie if his father would agree to watch tv with me. A few minutes later, Steve walked into the kitchen and stood behind me.

“That was a new low for you. I can’t believe you used your son against me like that,” he said in a hushed voice.

I smiled out of the corner of my mouth. I got him.

So, tonight as I write this, I am sitting on my bed. The kids are asleep. Steve is sitting next to me, and we are watching our fourth episode of Breaking Bad Season 4. Yeah. I got my way. Not unlike a meth addict, I will do whatever it takes to get my fix.

Posted on by Me 4

To Bean Or Not To Bean

We made our camping plans knowing full well that the weather forecast was calling for 90 degree days and 65 degree nights. We brought rafts, tubes, water toys, and swimsuits to cool off in the Crystal River, which runs through camp. We packed lightweight pajamas along with shorts and t-shirts. It was going to be hot, but even 90 degrees would be a relief from the city heat and we were excited to have it cool off at night.

Instead of suffering through a hot camp, though, each and every afternoon we’ve had heavy thundershowers. We’ve cooked each dinner in the rain and eaten them in the camper. The nights have been far cooler than we had planned for. Even the dog has been hunkered down for warmth. It’s mostly been a nice change. Mostly.

When we planned our trip, we expected it to be hot. We knew we would not be able to have campfires, so we cooked meals to be reheated with our propane stoves. We expected to be sleeping with tent camper windows open. We did not plan for this rainy weather that would confine us to a small, hardly vented space. We made chili, tacos, and refried beans. We just didn’t know what a mistake that would be.

Lesson learned.

20120706-203135.jpg

Posted on by Me 2