Birthdays Birthdays Birthdays

Yesterday was my Little Boy's birthday. He is seven years old. Practically grown! DH and I both had to work, but he had a wonderful day at the sitters (three movies!). We had a nice dinner together, then he took a bath, then he opened his presents and we had cake.

Little Boy is crazy about Bionicle's. He creates some interesting creatures, invents names for them, gives them powers and tells stories about them. When he gets a new Bionicle, though, he likes to put it together just as the instructions say. For his birthday, we gave him Thok, the blue and white Pirakha, and Toa Iruini, who later became Rahaga. Pirakha are bad guys, and Toa are good guys, but these two are in totally different time lines. It's amazingly complicated.

Today is my older son's birthday. He was born twelve years, three hundred sixty-four days before his little brother. He's twenty. He's starting his junior year next year at Big State University. He's spending the evening in New Orleans with his buddies, seeing the movie "Strangers with Candy." It's only showing at one theatre in the whole state.

Tomorrow, we are having a birthday party for the Little Boy. I don't know how many people are coming, but it probably won't be many. We'll have a cookout and play some games and eat cake. Then they'll probably want to play video games or something. Older Son is going to help out. What a guy.

Tomorrow is also my father's birthday. He is 68 years old - very young for a man with a daughter as old as me! He's part of the ultimate sandwich generation: he's taking care of his mother and his spouse, and while his kids are mostly independent, he's helping support his granddaughter (my daughter) through college. He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. He's an amazing person.

July is a busy month. So many Leos!

Funny Husband Stories

The other night, I commented that I would probably be starting my period in the next three or four days, but probably more rather than less, because I hadn't hit my irritable phase yet. My husband replied, "Would you like me to provoke you?"

Pause.

"Go Blue."

Pause again.

"That dress makes you look kind of fat."

---

We played "who has memorized the longest religious writing" last night. I recited the entire Nicene Creed. He recited the entire first concept of the first LDS missionary discussion.

He won.

Clay therapy and barbecue

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and the Art Village staff at DH’s employer had a really fun gathering on Saturday. The faculty and their families were all invited to a cookout over at the art village, and then we made things from clay. We could make coil things, wedge things, free-form things, or work on a potter’s wheel.

I made a bowl on the potter’s wheel. It was wonderful. It was messy and interesting and it even turned out OK. After adding the scallops on the edge, it would have made a dandy ashtray. It will be fired sometime in the next few days, if it hasn’t been already. I guess DH will pick it up at the end of the week.

The barbecue was nice. Nothing to write home about, and they were out of beverages, which was kind of lame on a hot Louisiana July day. But overall it was a really good time. The faculty member in charge said that the art faculty was considering doing something once each semester, with a different focus each time: painting, textiles, masks, etc. I hope they follow through with it.

Speaking of earlier...

I am not a morning person. However, I've signed Little Boy up for swimming lessons at 5:00 daily, which means I need to be done working by 4:30 so I can pick him up and get there on time. Also, I am an hourly employee, which means I need to clock 40 hours in a week. This is actually a good thing, being a home based worker; it keeps my personal life from creeping in on my work life and co-opting it.

This morning, I got up at 6:30 and was working by 7:15. I was able to get off at 4:30 with a full 8 hours in, get Little Boy to swim lessons, walk on the treadmill for 20 minutes while I waited for him, and get home and start dinner by 6:00. Dinner is a two-step affair, so it's taking longer than usual. However, when my schedule shifts later, I often don't have dinner until later than 7:30 (which is when we're having it tonight) plus I haven't got exercise done already.

On the other hand, I'm beat. I have the whole evening ahead of me, but all I want to do is go to bed.

Earlier...

I had spent a great deal of time on the phone with a customer trying to resolve a problem, and ended up tweaking the program so that she could do what she wanted to do. But I tweaked it all wrong and it worked like crap and then I found out that she could ALREADY DO what she wanted to do, she just needed to do it a different way. I couldn't figure out how to tell her that I had taken up hours of her time and messed up her program for no reason at all except that I didn't know what I was doing.

Then I woke up. Whew.

I re-read my entry below and I realized how dumb it seems: "Maybe if I eat less, I'll lose weight." Doh! I was trying to put the emphasis on how out of touch I am with my body's signals to my brain where food is concerned. That didn't come out so much in the post.

Body Language

I'm not in touch with some signals my body sends me.

We went out for dinner to an all-you-can-eat pizza place that also has a side with "real" food. After the salad and homemade antipasto on crackers (amazing antipasto), I thought I was feeling full. This surprised me, as I had been very hungry, so I figured I was mistaken. I went back for some pizza (just a piece) and some steamed vegetables and some etouffee (creamy and spicy-hot with lots of crawfish tails, over rice). The etouffee was sooooo good, but toward the end it was hard to eat. Then, I had to eat some chocolate pudding, because I had a stressful day, and it was chocolate.

I no sooner stood up after DH paid the bill, but I knew I had made a serious mistake. It took about 45 minutes after dinner before I didn't feel like the best possible thing that could happen would be to barf.

What's interesting to me about this is that I am so unfamiliar with how "full" feels, that when I felt full, I didn't believe that's what it was. Of course, it might have been denial because I hadn't had etouffee or pudding yet. If I can learn to recognize and act upon these signals, over meals I have cooked vs. meals out we are paying for, this could really help in my development of a plan for losing weight.

The weather here has been dreadful ever since I got back. The mornings are OK, but by mid-afternoon the clouds roll in, followed by buckets of rain and lightning and thunder. The pool where I do water aerobics is outdoors, so no swimming in the lightning storms. Between that and the Ohio trip hiatus, I'm WAY behind on my exercise plan. This might be a good reason to join the other club (with the INDOOR pool and water aerobics) when my membership at this one is up in August. Plus, it will be better for the winter. It may be southeast Louisiana, but swimming outside in forty-degree weather is cold, I don't care where you are.

Tis the Season

...for violent weather in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet day after day the National Hurricane Center web site says the same thing:

There are no tropical cyclones at this time.

It's a beautiful thing.

Back in the saddle again

The day after my last blog post, I left for nine days in Ohio. I worked, attended a company summer shindig, worked, hung out with my daughter and grandkids, worked, and stayed with my parents. It was a nice trip, but one that left very little time for blogging.

By the end of the work day, I was always pretty strung out. I have a lot on my plate at work, and it's requiring a lot of balancing to keep stuff from slopping off the edges. I am probably more "high strung" about work things than is reasonable, but I was out of work for so long, and this is SUCH a good gig, that I am (understandably) pretty intense about it.

I found that I wasn't even interested in READING much on the internet - at least, not the stuff I usually did. Before I left on the trip, I had whiled away a couple of hours on a couple of Saturday nights reading the plot summaries to every episode of Dark Shadows. A fun internet diversion for me during my trip was reading up on Jonathan Frid, the actor who played the vampire Barnabas and propelled the show to cult hit status.

Mostly, though, I read magazines and hung out with the family.

My mom is doing very well physically. She is still not able to speak. I had thought her problem was aphasia, but she has been diagnosed with apraxia of speech. She is able to say things spontaneously, that don't require thought. She can count, sing, and swear when she's annoyed. Phrases will sometimes come out really clearly when she isn't thinking about what to say. However, she is not able to express ideas or thoughts.

My daughter says that Mom is really lonely. It's like trying to live life in one long surreal game of charades.

While some recovery is possible, she is going to have to work really hard at it. I hope she has it in her.