Weekly Balance Sheet

Pros:

1) Successfully performed a skyfall for the first time.  (Essentially a midair flip from a standing position, landing on your back in a breakfall position on the floor.  Not a technique for the timid or unskilled...I'd never mustered the courage to try it before.)

2) Learned the last of my self-defenses for this belt level.  All of them are defenses against knife attacks, which is enough to get your blood going even knowing that the practice knives are plastic!

3) Learned half a dozen more moves of my form--the end is finally in sight.

4) Found six geocaches.  (I think I have a new hobby/obsession...)

5) Spent a solid week with three small children who neither nap nor have 'quiet time' anymore without completely losing my gourd at any of them.

Cons:

1) Aggravated my 'good' knee practicing &%$& tornado kicks on Tuesday, causing me to skip class today out of a sense of self-preservation.  I need at least one functional knee.

2) Had something of a tiff with my primary TKD instructor.  It happens every so often: not sure if the issue is cultural or if it's because we're both female (maybe some of both.)  I can say without hesitation that one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life was to choose a male PI for my graduate mentor--and NO, there was nothing inappropriate going on!!

3) Currently desperate for peace and quiet: two of my three kids never stop talking and all three never stop bickering.  Would rather weed my entire garden in 100 degree heat than referee for one more second!

On balance, I'd say the Pros have it.  But tomorrow morning, after Himself gets back from his long run, I am leaving all three kids and the dog with him for several hours and going out BY MYSELF!!

The Eyes Are the Prize

Himself has absolutely beautiful green eyes.  It is one of the deep regrets of my life (although entirely in keeping with the rules of genetics) that all three of our children got my brown ones instead.  Petunia's are hazel, Thing One's a warm rich cocoa, and Thing Two's so dark that you can't distinguish the pupil from the iris except in bright light.

The one thing that I will say for my brown eyes, however, is that they work.  I knock on wood as I type this, but I'm a few days away from 40 and doing fine so far.  Himself, on the other hand, started to wear glasses as a small child and his eyesight progressively got worse, to the point where he would have to hold an alarm clock right next to his face to see it in the morning.  This was eventually corrected through the wonders of LASIK, but with that background, I wasn't too surprised when the school nurse called me two years ago and suggested that I get Thing Two's eyes professionally checked.  I was, however, seriously pissed off with Fate: for crying out loud, how many whammies was one kid going to get out of this genepool??  Neither Thing One nor Petunia have vision issues so far (again, knocking on wood.)

Thing Two did indeed need glasses, as it turned out.  Fortunately, once he figured out that he really did see better with the glasses on--the doc told me that with his prescription, the other end of a basketball court or soccer field would be blurry sans glasses, as would a blackboard from the back of the classroom--he stopped fussing about having to wear them.  

His scrip changed only a little last year when he went in for his first annual checkup.  He had another annual checkup yesterday, and the scrip didn't change at all!  No new lenses needed, which is a good thing since he has three pairs of glasses to keep current...his regular and backup pairs, plus a special set for sports.

And the factoid of the day: it's the preservative in the eyedrops they give you to dilate your eyes that make the drops sting.  I'd asked Himself (rhetorically, in an irritated text) why the hell a pediatric ophthalmologist would use eyedrops that hurt on kids.  Apparently there is no such thing as a nonstinging eyedrop, courtesy of the preservative issue: I'd forgotten that he deals with his company's ophthalmic drug franchise.  At least it cut my rant short!

      

  

Update

Found cache #1 of the series (the last one I needed) this afternoon.  I am nothing if not persistent...had to go back to the site twice to do it!  This one was right on a main road, and there's only so long you can look around at a time there without being completely obvious.  Was impressed by the ingenuity of the person who hid it, actually: I was poking around in the dirt under the sign that marked the correct spot, wandering through the weeds, overturning rocks, all to no avail.  Then I sat back and thought a minute, looked up at the sign, pulled off the reflector that was attached to the signpost and lo and behold, the cache was inside the reflector!  Got all the clues, figured out where to start looking for the mystery cache--so far, so good.  I am constitutionally unable to ignore a puzzle.

In other news, Thing Two had his second piano lesson today and is kicking butt.  Not only did he quickly grasp abstract concepts like what a note is and how to tell how long to hold it, he also practices like a mofo.  He may not have been quite as lucky in the genetic lottery as his brother, but he's going to be one hell of a pianist if he keeps this up!   Glad I let Himself talk me into getting the kid trial lessons for the summer...I underestimated him again.

It's Amazing That More People Aren't Arrested Doing This

Once, years ago, I was doing a Google search for something else entirely and stumbled across a mention that there was a geocache hidden in a local park.  Of course, I couldn't resist bringing the kids over to look for it.  I didn't own a GPS device at the time, but knowing the geography of the park well, I had a pretty good idea where it would be.  We found it readily, a plastic box half-buried in the dirt in the middle of a clump of trees encircled by the park's walking trail, and opened it to add our names to the list of finders inside. Petunia might not even have been born yet; my recollection is that Thing One (who actually found the box) was three or four at the time.

That was my one and only experience with geocaching until yesterday.  I have no idea where the thought came from, but on a whim I opened up the official geocaching website and did a quick search to see if there were any caches hidden near our house.  To my great surprise, there are dozens, including a group of five in the very small town nearest to our house.  Once I realized that you have to collect a clue at each of the first four of those in order to find the mystery fifth cache and complete the series, there was no turning back (who could resist??)  I immediately downloaded the app onto my iPhone and told the kids that we were going on a "treasure hunt" that day.  The GPS coordinates bring you to within a certain number of feet of a cache, but then you actually have to look around (sometimes quite a bit; they can be very well hidden) to find it.

We had a few other things to do first, and then Thing One had an afternoon playdate that went later than expected.  As it happened, the first attempts at finding caches were undertaken by just me and the two younger kids before we picked Thing One up from his playdate.  And these unfortunately turned into an exercise in "How many things can Mom possibly do wrong because she is clueless about geocaching?"

The first cache we tried to find had an icon that looked like a ghost next to it on the listing.  Subsequently, I discovered that this indicates a "virtual" cache, meaning that there is something significant at that location (in this case, a historical sign) but no actual cache.  The kids and I looked for a box there for some time before giving up and moving on to the first cache in the mystery clue series.  This was supposed to be in the parking lot of a local restaurant.  It being dinnertime, the lot was full, and it didn't seem like a very safe place to be wandering around with two small kids at the time.  After a cursory and unsuccessful search for a box there, we picked up Thing One and went and looked for clue cache #2, failing to find a box anywhere in the vicinity of that site after an extensive search either.  The younger kids were getting frustrated, and it was clearly time to regroup.  We went home for dinner.

While the kids ate, I figured out my "virtual cache" error.  I also figured out that not all caches are in boxes (you know what they say about assuming...I'd only ever seen the one box, so I thought they were all like that!)  Turned out that for clue cache #2 we were supposed to be looking for a film canister hanging in a tree.  It is possible to find that info on the geocaching site; I just hadn't known where to look.  Armed with that info, Thing One and I went back by ourselves on a sneak recon mission after dinner, with the idea that we'd find cache #2 and then "help" the other two find it again later.  

The first entertaining part was trying to explain to Thing One what a film canister looks like!  (Yes, I feel old.)  Took us a long time to find it, too, even knowing what we were looking for.  And I'm sure we didn't look suspicious or anything, either...loitering in the back of the firehouse parking lot, wandering repeatedly in and out of the treeline.  Yikes.  I'm amazed that nobody called the cops on us or at least came over to see what we were doing.

Emboldened by our eventual success in finding #2, we decided to try for a couple of the other clue caches.  We headed back to the restaurant parking lot, which was slightly less full by then.  I was arm-deep in trees again (this was another hanging cache) when the owner of the restaurant came out to his car, which was of course right by where I was standing.  Lovely.  At least I know him...he just shook his head, said "hi" and kept going.  Maybe he's used to random people poking around the trees in his parking lot by now, but I was glad not to be a stranger when he came out and 'caught' us!

Clues 2 and 3 found, we went for #4 next.  It had become clear that the younger kids weren't going to be able to find these particular caches anyway--too small and too high up--so it was a better activity for just me and Thing One anyway.   Putting the nail in the "box" assumptions, this one was in an Eppendorf tube under a rock in a wall, for Pete's sake.  We used these things in lab all the time; they are about an inch long, max.

But we did find it, at least, and are now in possession of clues 2, 3 and 4.  We have one more to find, and then we can figure out where the final cache is.  Thing One seemed to enjoy the hunt, but even if he hadn't, I'm now hooked!  I am finding this blessed thing, come hell or high water.

As long as I don't get arrested while looking for it, anyway.

Moron

Had to pick up a couple of things at the drugstore today with Thing Two and Petunia.  The checkout clerk told Thing Two that she liked his glasses.  Then she pointed to her own and said something like "Wearing glasses really sucks" to me.  RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM.

What kind of clueless idiot says that out loud within earshot of a little kid who wears glasses???

A big, clueless idiot, that's what kind.

Delicious Fringe Benefits Of Nonfiction

Thing One loves anything to do with science.  I took him to a very cool kid-friendly physics demonstration at our library last week, which he thought was the coolest thing in the world except for a few unexpectedly loud bangs.  (Really, setting a match to balloons filled with hydrogen INDOORS??  It was certainly a good illustration of why we fill balloons with helium now, anyway...think the Hindenburg disaster on a smaller scale.)

He made a beeline from that presentation directly downstairs to the nonfiction section of the library, where he proceeded to pick out--no exaggeration--22 science books.  My only rule is that he has to carry whatever books he picks out, and he managed that stack although we did have to take the elevator back up.

Not my son; I couldn't see his head!

While he was digging around in the Rocks and Minerals area, the other two kids started looking at the cookbooks on the adjoining wall, and soon I was fielding checkout requests from them too:  Thing Two wanted a bread machine cookbook and Petunia a children's dessert cookbook.  OK, sure.  I told each of them that they could pick any recipe out of their books and we'd make it together.

Sunday was cooking day.  Thing Two wanted cinnamon raisin bread, so we hauled out the breadmaker and tossed all the required ingredients into it.  Petunia decided that she wanted to make meringues.  I whipped the egg whites and sugar together for her, then handed her the bowl of marshmallowy goo, a spoon and two smaller bowls of raisins and Craisins for decorating and let her have at it.

This was the result:

 Not entirely sure what some of these shapes were supposed to be, but they were delicious!  As was the cinnamon raisin toast we all had for breakfast this morning.  Let's hear it for edible nonfiction...

Ten Years Ago

Ten years ago yesterday, a Monday.  You were already over a week late.  It was hot outside, I wasn't sleeping well, and I was really, really crabby and more than ready for you to be born!  The doctor was going to induce you if you held out too much longer, and I wanted no part of that.  You'd just turned yourself from breech position in the nick of time, too...the C section had already been scheduled and cancelled.

Finally, reluctantly, you decided on your own that it was go time.  I'd been feeling a bit odd the day before, the Sunday, and had asked your father to work from home on Monday.  So at least he was with me that evening when the real contractions began, not an hour-plus away at the office.  And bless the orderly-minded engineer that he is, he wrote down how far apart those contractions were and how long they lasted.  Every one.  I still have that piece of spiral notebook paper.

I didn't want to go to the hospital and be sent home again, but it happened anyway.  (Fortunately, the hospital was close by, just down the road a few blocks.)  You still weren't quite ready to be born yet.  They told us to come back in a few hours, so your dad and I walked lap after lap on the circular road surrounding our apartment complex, trying to get you moving.  We went back to the hospital about 1AM, and this time, they let us stay.

Even in the hospital, things went slowly: the pain meds they gave me stopped labor, and they had to give me Pitocin to get it started again.  Finally, I was far enough along for an epidural.  They gave it to me, the nurse left the room for a minute, and suddenly all hell broke loose.  I felt really strange, the contractions were off the charts on the monitor, and your dad ran out into the hall frantically yelling for the nurse at the top of his lungs.  We found out later than I'd gone from 5 to 10 cm dilation in less than three minutes.

Four pushes later, you were born, my precious boy.  At 9:17AM on Tuesday, July 8, 2003, I officially became a mother for the first time.  Ten years ago today.

Your beloved Nana got you that size 0-3 month pair of PJs: it's covered with shamrocks, each one surrounded with the words "Kiss me, I'm Irish."  You came home from the hospital wearing it, as did both your brother and sister after you.  Even a few weeks after coming home, you were still swimming in it, just a tiny little bit of a thing.  (I love that air guitar photo!)

You know I saved those PJs.  Every so often, I take them out and look at them.  Yesterday, I asked you to hold them up against yourself for me.  With the footies on the floor, the neckline of those PJs barely clears your knees now.  Looks like you've done some growing in the last ten years.  And look at those feet of yours!  You ever grow into those, you'll be the full 6'4"-6'6" the doc said you'd be as an adult.  Just like your Grandpa, the one you resemble so much.  My dad, and his dad before him too.

Happy 10th birthday, Thing One.  I love you more than you'll ever know.

Mama