Blur

The last two weeks of work have been an entire blur. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and I can't keep up with the ever-changing wants and desires of each member of the clients' team. I have developed a tick in my right eye and I'm hoping that my four-day weekend will cure me of it.

On the bright side, there WAS Mother's Day a couple of weeks ago. My husband asked them what they wanted to do for me and Fellan decided they should get me a gift card. "To Target! - Her favorite store!!" (he knows me quite well)

Marxo said that she wanted to make me muffins. (she had been hearing about "Muffins for Moms" for the previous two weeks)

So, for Mother's Day, I got a gift card to Target and Marxo made me some muffins - with some help from my husband. :) And then to top it off, Fellan said, "Hey, I know what would make mommy really happy - we should go for a family bike ride!"

He was correct once again. We rode our bikes - Fellan on his two-wheeled bike - about 6 miles, stopped off for lunch at a non-busy restaurant, came home, and went to Target, where I used my gift card to buy myself a cute skirt and some other stuff.

It was a good day! Now, if I could just get rid of this eye-tick thing...

UPDATED:
Yesterday afternoon, I was stuck in the meeting we were told we wouldn't be having yesterday and one of the guys leading the meeting came back to the bathroom and informed the entire room, "Somewhere between my breakfast burrito and my gourmet sandwich there was an material incompatibility."

My tick is getting worse.

Muffins for Moms

Fellan's school does this thing every year: "Muffins for Moms" It's a get-together at the beginning of the day where they have muffins for all the moms (of course) and then everyone gets together in a big circle and the teacher reads this book called Love You Forever by Robert Munsch and all the moms cry. It's usually held on the Thursday before Mother's Day, but because of some field trips and other scheduling conflicts, they had Muffins for Moms last Monday (a week ago today).

This was both good and bad. It was good because then for the rest of the week, Fellan and Marxo kept asking if it was Mother's Day yet - they were really looking forward to it! It was bad, however, because it poured on me as I was leaving the school.

So, I sent my husband a text message saying, "Raining - I'm soaked." A couple minutes later, I received this Haiku from him:
Raining I am soaked
Wet are the clothes on my back
My heart full of joy

Clever, eh? :)

Great Bike Ride

We tested out the girl on the trailer bike this past Sunday, taking her for a 12.5-mile ride. She did great! When we got home, she was still happy, she never complained and she seemed to be ready for more.

So, we told both the kids how they had done a great job on the bike ride. High-fives with "Great bike ride!" were exchanged all around. Then I turned to my husband and said, "High-five! We make great kids!"

Fellan gave us a funny look and said, "No, you make great parents!"

Aw, shucks... :)

Two Trailer-bike Family

As of last week, we are now a two trailer-bike family!

We've been riding with Fellan on a trailer-bike for about a year now. Lately, however, Marxo has been begging to ride the trailer-bike, too, so we've done some short rides around the neighborhood with Fellan on his own (on two wheels) and Marxo on the trailer-bike.

Now, our original plan was that by this time, we would be fabulously wealthy (cough, cough) and would be able to get a Comotion Periscope Tandem for Fellan to move up to and then Marxo would be able to use the trailer-bike.

Since that plan has fallen woefully short, we opted to get another trailer-bike. And it showed up last week! Yay!

We tried it out a couple of times last week, and then went on a little bit longer ride last night with it. We have to kind of ramp up our mileage to test Marxo out and see how long she can stand riding it.

So, far it hasn't been a problem. We did seven miles last night and she sang for most of the way. :)

Kindergarten Round-up

Last night we attended Kindergarten Round-up for our neighborhood school and registered Fellan for school this coming Fall. I can't believe it! He's getting to be so big. :)

I expected the experience to be somewhat painful. We had been told beforehand what we were supposed to bring, but I was sure that whatever we brought would somehow be wrong. I expected that we would be there for hours trying to work through the process and just trying not to make the registrar-people mad. (too many bad experiences from college, perhaps?)

Anyway, it was not painful in the slightest. In fact, they had snacks for everyone, they were friendly, and they even made copies of things that I didn't know I had to have copies of (SS card and driver's license). I was shocked and pleasantly surprised.

One of the reasons we are sending our children to the neighborhood school and not a private school is because we've heard great things about it and we like the idea of sending our kids to a "neighborhood school". All of the kids' friends are going to be within walking distance and he will have a great variety of friends.

So, it seems that people are not lying about the fact that the school is worthwhile. Our first experience with it was definitely pleasant. I'm looking forward to next year.

Kids on Skis

So, we got back from our skiing trip a little more than a week ago and since that time, I've been consumed with getting caught up with work and trying to get back in the swing of things.

The trip, however, was great! We put the kids in ski school on Monday morning, not knowing if they would like it or not.

It turned out that they LOVED it! (much to our delight!) So, they did a half-day of ski school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. By the end of the day on Wednesday, Fellan was skiing on his own and shut down the lift. (magic carpet) Marxo was well on her way to being able to ski on her own, but she was really worn out from three days of skiing.

We took the day off on Thursday - went sledding instead - and then went skiing together as a family on Friday. We found a great little lift that was basically isolated from the rest of the mountain and spent most of the day there working with Fellan on turning and "slow skiing" (he only wanted to GO FAST!). We decided to finish the day with a couple of trips down a long green run, which turned out OK, but we pushed Marxo a little too far and I ended up skiing with her between my legs for the last half of the last run.

But, the week was definitely a success - both the kids were able to ski on their own by the end of the trip, which far surpassed our expectations. We can't wait for next year now. :)

My morning yesterday...

My morning yesterday started off by waking up at 7am and racing to work (I'm supposed to be to work by 6am!). Then, I get to work, and my supervisor takes one look at me and says, "What happened to your face?!!!" Nice. (Male engineers - you gotta love 'em...)

Well, you see, this past weekend, I ended up with a very sore throat. It was a little sore on Thursday, more sore on Friday, and by Saturday morning, I had trouble swallowing and talking. I finally decided to look in my throat on Saturday and it was very swollen with white spots on my tonsils.

Great. I immediately assumed that it must be strep throat and started trying to figure out where I could go to a doctor. My regular doctor's office is only open M-F, so I decided to try out one of these RediClinic things for which I've seen commercials. I was in and out of there in about 30 minutes. It was amazing.

The doctor did a strep test and it came back negative. But, she thought it looked like some sort of infection and since I didn't have any congestion or cough (like a virus would cause), she gave me a prescription for antibiotics.

I haven't taken antibiotics in at least 10 years (except for back in December), so when she asked if I was allergic to any drugs, I said no. Well, I don't think I'm allergic to amoxicillin, but it has definitely caused my face to break out! Hence the comment, "What happened to your face?!!!"

Next time, I think I'll try to steer any doctor away from prescribing me amoxicillin. But, I still have 5 more days of taking this stuff. I started using my "heavy-duty" moisturizing stuff with retinol and it's definitely better today. And my husband says that I don't look hideous today, so that's a step in the right direction. :)

Home Sweet Home

It's great to be home! I was so happy to get home on Thursday night and get to hug my kids. And they seemed to be genuinely happy to see me, too, so that made it even better.

We spent the weekend doing all kinds of family things. I took the kids to their swimming lessons on Friday and then we went for a bike ride both Saturday and Sunday. We all got our first sunburns of the year after spending the entire day outside yesterday. It was just a very nice weekend.

Now, having been back at work for an entire day, I almost wish I could go back to Pascagoula where nobody bothered me all day long and I didn't have to put up with all the project stupidity that goes on here.

But, I get to go home and spend the evening with my family and that far outweighs any of the negatives they seem to continuously throw at me here at work. Time to go! :)

Dungeness Crab

Ok, I'll admit it, not everything is horrible about traveling to the thriving metropolis of Pascagoula, Mississippi. On this trip, I learned how to eat crab!

Yep, even after living in Houston for almost 15 years, I have never attempted to eat crab or lobster or anything else that swims and is served whole on a plate.

So, even though I knew I would have to endure endless taunts from the guys with whom I'm traveling (all Texas natives), I admitted to them that I have no idea how to eat large shellfish. You know - not a lot of seafood in Nebraska besides frozen fish sticks. (not that there's anything wrong with that!)

That secured the decision on where to eat dinner last night. We went to one of the many seafood restaurants around here and everyone ordered the Dungeness Crab.

Since one of the guys used to Crab for a living when he lived in Louisiana, he took great pleasure in showing me how to rip apart and crack the shell of the poor thing that had been alive only a few minutes before being served. It was delicious.

Of course, the expert crab-eater was finished with his before I was even half-way done with mine. He even had time to order a pound of crawfish and eat it before I finished. But, at least I wasn't the last one done. I hurried up enough to beat at least one of the other guys. :)

Tomorrow, we head home and I should be in time to tuck the kids into bed. I can't wait!

Church politics

Well, we found out two weeks ago that the Unitarian Universalist church is not without it's own politics. We've been going to the church on and off for about three years now, but two weeks ago, we were really surprised by the service.

Both of the pastors were somehow run out of the church! They both gave a "Homily" sermon and that was the end of that. This past Sunday, there was an interim minister there. Strange. We still haven't heard the rest of the story.

But, I wanted to relay one of the stories that was told during their "homily" service. It's a story about an ancient "Truth" that fell from the sky. I can't remember the exact story, but it went something like this:

There once was the truth and it was kept by an ancient tortoise who lived in the sky. One day, it fell from the sky and broke into two pieces. One piece, fell in plain view while the other rolled into deep grass. The piece in plain view caught the attention of many different animals. Each, in turn, picked it up and held on to it for a little while, but quickly realized that it was incomplete and not the whole truth. It lost its luster.

One day a human found the half-piece of rock and read it. It made him feel special and he put it into his pocket. It made him feel good to know that it was there and every once in awhile, he would take it out and look at it.

Finally, he decided to share the message of his rock with some other people. It said,"You are loved". The people really liked that message. They liked it so much, in fact, that they began to call it THE truth and they made a special place to keep the stone and come see it once a week.

Then they began to believe that they were the only ones chosen to hear this truth and felt that everyone else who did not believe this truth were not as good. Before long, a war broke out.

But one child who was watching the fight thought she might be able to do something about it. So, she went to a far away place during her vision quest and she met the ancient tortoise. He told her where she could find the other half of the truth. She searched and searched and finally, she found it. She hurried home to share the other half of the rock's truth with the villagers.

When she arrived, they were still fighting, so she walked out in the middle of the battle and said, "STOP! I have the other half of the broken truth."

The people on both sides of the battle stopped and their leaders came out to the little girl. One village leader carried the first half of the rock, "You are loved" He placed it in the little girl's hand, and the girl put the pieces together. The rock, now complete, read: "You are loved ... and so are they."

------------------

About halfway through the story when the humans started turning against each other, I started remembering a song that we used to sing in our church youth choir and I couldn't get it out of my head for the rest of the day:

ONE TIN SOLDIER
(a 1960's era anti-war song written by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter)

Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
'Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below.

On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone,
And the valley-people swore
They'd have it for their very own.

Chorus:
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of heaven,
justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowin'
come the judgment day
on the bloody morning after,
one tin soldier rides away.

So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they'd kill.

Came an answer from the kingdom,
"With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain,
All the riches buried there."

(Chorus)

Now the valley cried with anger,
"Mount your horses! Draw your sword!"
And they killed the mountain-people,
So they won their just reward.

Now they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain, dark and red.
Turned the stone and looked beneath it...
"Peace on Earth" was all it said.

(Chorus)

------------------

Funny how we used to sing this anti-war song in my church and now I feel like the Christian religion has been totally hijacked by a war-mongering "Christian Right".

A bumper sticker I recently saw says, "The Christian Right is Neither."

Discuss...