The Mournful Cry of the Laundry

Just a Saturday

2012-02-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

Thanks for the input about chores. Our current plan is a chore party twice a week. I'm okay with doing a bit more than Davan as she does have more addition obligations. For now, I'll make the occasional correction if I think it's truly warranted (like dishes with food still on them after "washing") and let other things slide. Davan will have to decide for herself what her own standards will be after she moves out. I know I've gotten much pickier about my standards over the course of my life! Additionally, we'll clean up after dinner together and all that stuff we usually do. It'll work great - for a while, at least. I'll try to keep you posted.

Meanwhile, we're having just a Saturday. We're actually a little busy this weekend. We skied yesterday, which, by the way, we almost didn't do because the forecast was not looking good. Our first run, we went up Vista Express, which has Davan's favorite run to find it totally fogged in up there. It was very disorienting. We went reeeeaaaalllllyyyy slowly until we dropped below the fog level, but Davan remained freaked out for a few runs. After that, she was back to her usual zooming self. And the weather? Other than the fog? Well, not so great. It misted on us off and on. When we were loading up the van, it started pouring rain! Good timing on the leaving! Still, we were glad we'd gone and we did get in several nice runs.

When we got home, we did the usual taking care of all of our stuff, then vacuumed and dusted a bit before hitting the showers because we had company last night. I got a call on Tuesday from my aunt Candy saying that she and my grandma were coming for a visit. Oh, when? Friday. Okay, then. They live in Arizona and California respectively. And? The last time Grandma came for a visit, I was sure it would be her last. She didn't seem to have a good time and was very excited to go home at the end of the visit. Plus? She hates stairs and we live on the second floor now. But, okay. Luckily, they made plans to stay at a hotel and do have other people in the area to visit, so that's a lot less pressure than having sudden overnight company.

I threw together some plans for things to do together. Candy is really interested in all of Davan's activities, so I had Davan gather some friends to go to open workout at Do Jump last night. We had dinner with my family, then went to watch Davan and friends ~~workout~~ play. I took some pictures with Lena's camera (of which I have great envy), but I haven't gotten copies yet, so I can't share.

Today, though, Candy and Grandma are with other family in Vancouver. So, it's just a Saturday for us. I made us biscuits and almond gravy for breakfast after my run. Yummy.

Anthony went out to ~~run errands~~ play like a kid in a sandbox at bike stores, then came home to work on his bike.

Davan stayed in her pjs until 1pm, but then got ready to go perform at a neighborhood carnival with the Zig Zags.

I am delighted to say that getting ready means showering, dressing, grabbing a snack and filling a water bottle. Two of her friends came over a little early, then they walked over together. I love living close to stuff. And I love the lack of costume and make up necessary for Do Jumping (although they do have Do Jump owned unitards to wear once they get there).

Me? Well, I'm doing a lot of chillin' out, but I've also done a 30 minute run with intervals - whew, walked the dog again, made that breakfast, played a few games with Davan, caught up on some email chores, been to the library and I do still have to hit the grocery store as we have company for breakfast tomorrow and a bit of a fruit shortage for pancake topping.

Anthony is off on a bike ride with his improvements done, Davan is off flying through the air and I'm home alone with a chocolate cake that Tanner brought with him when he showed up. What a nice boy.

Dreaded Chores

2012-02-16T21:11:00.000-08:00

Right now, Davan is not pulling her weight chore-wise. There have been other times that she's done a good job of doing chores without fuss. More often, though, I have to say that we are not in harmony chore-wise.

We've tried a variety of approaches. Often a new approach works for a while. Then it stops working. Then there is the ignoring of the fact that it's not working stage. Then there is hounding to do chores on my part and resentment on Davan's part. Then, usually, we try a new approach.

How often that new approach works varies. Really I've seen results anywhere from a day to a few months.

The ignoring phase varies also. During the ignoring phase, somethings might go past my comfort level. Sometimes I might do all the cleaning. Sometimes Davan will actually do the chores.

Then we enter hounding. I get angry that she's not doing anything. She is angry that I'm insinuating that she doesn't work or she's contrite. Maybe there's an improvement, but it usually doesn't last.

Next it's time to formulate a new plan. I'd be okay with this system if the new plan were guaranteed to work for, oh, three months and then we could cooperatively decide it wasn't working anymore and come up with a new plan, but that isn't how it goes.

I'm fairly frustrated with how it does go. Right now, we're in the about to come up with a new plan phase. I think the newest plan will be to have a two-three time a week work party where we both buckle down and do chores for the duration of, say, ten songs we choose. The main problem I have with this is that, while that will take care of the regular cleaning our small abode needs, it doesn't really take care of the on-going issues.

On a daily basis, I prepare and clean up after meals and snacks, grocery shop, walk the dog, feed and water the dog and do laundry. Davan is of the age where I think she could be shouldering a much bigger portion of the work load than she currently is. However, I'm also a push over. I freely admit that this is part of the problem.

I want Davan to eat healthily and, for the most part, her food is healthier if I put it together. That said, there have been good stretches of time in the past where she's been responsible for her own breakfast and that's gone okay. It's just, if I'm making breakfast for myself, it's usually not that much more difficult to make it for her, too, and then she's eating good stuff.

Also, I hate to make her wake up early and take the dog out when she's tired from a late class the night before or when she'll have a late class that night, which means most weekdays.

Another large part of the problem with having her do half the house hold work is that she is pretty busy with classes. And I've mentioned that I'm a push over, right?

There have been time that Davan has been responsible for one dinner a week - the planning, shopping and everything involved for that one meal. However, she doesn't like to do it when we've got company or it's the weekend and can't on certain days of the week due to classes. And I'm still a push over.

Thus, I've pretty much talked myself into being okay with the two or three times a week work parties. At least she's helping some then. And when it's routine, I get a lot less of the resigned attitude, but, believe me, that rarely goes totally away when it comes to chores. With Davan, this isn't an overt thing, it's pretty subtle, but it's there and it grates on me.

Okay, one more chore complaint, and this one, I'm not sure what to do about. She doesn't do as good a job as I want her to. I try to be comfortable with a lesser job and just be glad I'm not doing it, but that ends up getting to me eventually. I try to give her some good home training, but she is, shall we say, not overly receptive and it often ends up being rather confrontational. So, then I go back to trying to just be glad she's doing something...yeah, it's a whole cycle thing again.

I know, I know, chores are one of those things that parents and kids are supposed to clash about, right? But I want it to be different for us. Is that so bad?

I do have to say that Davan is responsible for her own room and that never falters. She keeps it tidy most of the time, vacuums regularly and does her own sheets. (In fact, that's her, just above, taking care of her sheets yesterday.) Sometimes she does need a little help with deep cleaning, but this is one area that has developed well.

So, yeah. If you've got kids and read here, what do you do about chores? Is it working for you?

How Well Do You Know Your Child - Davan Version

2012-02-15T15:18:00.001-08:00

Who is your best friend?
Lena
Who is your greatest hero?
Mom and dad
What embarrasses you the most?
When mom sings in public

What is your favorite music?
Life in technicolor

What person outside the family has most influenced you?
Lena

What is your favorite school subject and least favorite?
Favorite, English. Least favorite, Math

What accomplishment are you proudest of?
Getting into Zig-Zags at age 11

What is your biggest complaint about the family?
I really like most things about my family. I guess I don't like it when we ride bikes in the rain.

If Mom could buy you anything in the world what would you choose?
I would want enough money to do anything i want next year

What really makes you angry?
Unfairness

What do you want to be when they grow up?
Aerialist in Cirque Du Soleil

What has been the biggest disappointment in your life this year?
Not getting into Circus Smirkus

What gift do you cherish most?
The gift I got a few years ago of a year of fun activities.

What non-school book have you most recently read?
Everyone see the ants

What is your favorite food?
Right now, Newmans Os. But it changes almost everyday. I like pizza and cake and strawberries too.

What nicknames are you called at school?
Davan

What is your most prized possession?
My notebooks

What is your most cherished memory?
That is really hard! I have a lot of good memories from the bike trip, and my last birthday party in particular.

How Well Do You Know Your Child? - Nicholina Version

2012-02-15T15:18:00.000-08:00

Davan and I each answered these questions independently. First, here are my answers. Next I'll post Davan's answers.

Where Davan and I didn't have the same answers, I asked her to comment if she felt like it. Her comments are here in orange. Sometimes I replied back in red.

Who is your child's best friend?

Lena, but Tanner and Emma are close behind.

Who is your child's greatest hero?

Trying to guess what Davan would say here, I'm going with me.
What embarrasses them the most?

Me singing in public.
What is their favorite music?

Glee

Ahh, yes. This is a better answer then mine, I thought I had to pick a song.
What person outside the family has most influenced your child's life?

Right now, I'd say Lena, but I know it's been my mom for a lot of her life.

Your mom is a member of the family, Mom.

Yeah, yeah. I was reading it as immediate family, but you are right - she is family.
What is their favorite school subject and least favorite?

Davan loves "English" and isn't as fond of "math." She was more fond of math for a while, but doesn't seem to be now again. I've put the subjects in quotes because we don't actually divide things up that way. However, she loves to read, write and generally play with words, so we'll call that English.

What accomplishment is your child proudest?

Probably getting into Zig Zags when she was only 11, as it's a teen troop.

What is your child's biggest complaint about the family?

After this morning, I guess that she has to ride her bike in the rain to get places.

If you could buy your child anything in the world what would they choose?

Tuition and room and board at the National Circus School in Montreal.

What really makes your child angry?

Davan gets angry when she has to repeat things and when things seem unfair to her.

What does your child want to be when they grow up?

An aerial artist in Cirque do Soleil.

What has been the biggest disappointment in your child's life this year?

In this last calendar year, I'd say not getting at least called to live auditions for Circus Smirkus' troopers. However, I think that if she doesn't get into Montreal, that will change.
What gift does your child cherish most?

I'm not sure on this one. She's not real big on material possessions. Based on use, I guess I'd say the rigging in her room so she can hang her trapeze, swing and rings.

Ahh, I wasn't specifying gift as a material thing. I thought it could be anything that I have gotten for a gift. But that is probably my favorite material gift.

I thought of the year of activities, but I was thinking "cherish" meant to still have it. I should have thought outside the box on this one!
What non-school book has your child most recently read?

I believe the one she's most recently finished is Escape, about a woman who escapes from a polygamist cult with her eight children.

I also finished Everybody Sees the Ants. I put it down when I got that one.

Because that comment wasn't totally clear to me, I'll interpret a little. She put down the Ants book when Escape came along, read Escape, then went back and finished Everyone Sees the Ants.
What is your child's favorite food?

Hmm.....I think this probably changes depending on mood, but I'm going to go with bagels.
Good one. Like I said this one changes all the time, but right now I'm into the Newman's Os.
What nicknames is your child called at school?

I'm pretty sure she's just called Davan.

Yep, mostly just Davan. But now that I think about it, Summer calls me Pat-pat sometimes, and Lena sometimes calls me Crazy Girl. But I just put Davan, too.
What is your child's most prized possession?

Again, I'm not sure because of the not so materialistic thing, but, I'm sticking with the rigging.

I said my notebooks, but that is a close runner up.

I should have thought of the notebooks! Davan writes in them all the time - lists, poems, drawings, math work, ideas. She is clear that they aren't diaries, but they are a bit like a record of her life.

What is your child's most cherished memory?

This one is tough. I think she has a lot of memories she holds dear. One stand out might be our three week, 1000 mile family bike trip of a couple years ago.

Indeed. I also said my last birthday party.

5 Questions to Ask Your Teen

2012-02-15T11:50:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, as we had fun with the other questions, but they were for younger kids, I looked up questions to ask your teen and we're going to give them a go. I think these are maybe supposed to be more open ended questions, so we'll see what happens here.

I think it's important to point out here, that I am quoting Davan from her spoken replies. If she were writing them herself, her grammar and style would be much different. Still, I'm not giving in to editing requests.

1. If you could spend this summer vacation traveling anywhere in the world, where would you go, and why?

I would go to Switzerland to visit Lena because she'd be back in Switzerland by then. Or I would go to Montreal and do camps there because I want to be a circus artist.

2. What’s the dumbest fashion trend at your school right now?

I'd just like to mention that I don't go to school and then I will say the dumbest fashion trend at Zig Zags. The dumbest fashion trend at Zig Zags is those really baggy short shirts that only come down to there (gesturing at her midriff.)

3. If you could change the way we run things around here as a family, what would you like to see be different?

Well um. I think I'm pretty happy with how things are run around here. I think I might like to drive more when it's rainy, but I also think that riding bikes is a good thing.

4. What’s the biggest challenge you are facing right now?

Getting into the National Circus School or not. And trying to decide if I got in if I'd go or not or where I'd go other than that. But, mostly, just trying to get in.

5. What’s something you feel like people don’t really understand about you?

Ummm. I don't know. I feel like people understand me pretty well, most of the time.

These questions remind me a lot of the questions you get playing The Ungame, so if you like this sort of thing, I'd check out the game. The one problem we have with the game is that the questions are limited. While there are a lot of them, if you play often enough, you'll be cycling through. We've found that we've developed answers to many of them and they're always the same, which makes it less interesting to replay after a while.

Davan and I are big talkers, so, for the most part, her replies don't surprise me at all. Every now and then, though, something will come up that is a revelation. In this set of questions, for example, I was a little surprised about the car in the rain reply. While I know she doesn't love riding in the rain, I didn't think it was a big issue for her.

At any rate, talkers or not, these can be fun and/or enlightening. If you find any good lists of questions, we're interested!

31 Questions to Ask Your Kids

2012-02-15T11:28:00.000-08:00

Davan and I enjoy reading Peas and Thank You together. However, it came to our attention today that she missed out on two posts there. One is 21 Questions to Ask Your Kids and the other is 12 More Questions to Ask Your Kids. So, even though the questions are designed for younger kids, I told her she had to answer them herself before reading the posts. By question #2, it was clear that I should be recording the answers for posterity. So, here you go.

Oh, because we combined the two lists, some questions are virtually repeats.

1. What is something Mommy always says to you?

I love you.

2. What makes Mommy happy?

When the house is clean and she didn't have to do it. Also when other people take the dog out.

3. What makes Mommy sad?

When she's sick. And tired. Or somebody else is sick and tired.

4. How does Mommy make you laugh?

By saying funny things. And chasing me about with the camera. And trying to pop my zits.

5. What was Mommy like as a child?

I don't know what to say. She liked to do gymnastics. And she loved her mom. And she moved to Colorado.

6. How old is Mommy?

40.

7. How tall is Mommy?

5 foot 4. (Thanks for the extra inch, Davan.)

8. What is Mommy’s favorite thing to do?

Read and run and do Pokelon. (mom couldn't spell it so I did) (But Mom looked it up and it's actually Poekoelan. Ha.)

9. What does Mommy do when you’re not around?

She reads and sometimes she cleans and often she does things on the internet and sometimes she's very mean. (This is in response to the above exchange about Poekoelan.)

10. If Mommy becomes famous, what will it be for?

Running. (Maniacal laughter from Mom.)

11. What is Mommy really good at?

Running and cooking. And being and awesome mom. Who is sometimes very mean. (I am not at all a good runner. 10 minute miles are fast for me. Just sayin'. It's nice that she has such faith in me, though.) (She is so a good runner. Don't listen to her. I think she's great. And anyway she's a lot better than a lot of people at running. Ha.) (Fine. Moving on.)

12. What is Mommy not very good at?

Sewing.

13. What does Mommy do for her job?

Takes care of me. Makes things to eat. And runs. She's very good at it.

14. What is Mommy’s favorite food?

Oh, well, that really depends on the day. I'm going to guess....Newman's Os.

15. What makes you proud of Mommy?

When Mom does really nice things for people and when Mom runs in races that I can't run.

16. If Mommy were a cartoon character, who would she be?

Oh my gosh. I don't really know any cartoon characters. Um. ( not the um. That doesn't really exist.) (in a whisper) What's a good cartoon character, Mom? (I think we'll just move on.)

17. What do you and Mommy do together?

We hang out a lot when we're in the house and do chores. We often watch TV together and do things on the internet. Sometimes we go for walks together. And we often play games together.

18. How are you and Mommy the same?

We both do Poekoelan and we both like to read. And we both have short hair. And be both have trouble sleeping. And we both like to play games. Yes. (Mom forgot how to spell Poekoelan again. Sigh)

19. How are you and Mommy different?

I do Do Jump and Mom doesn't. And Mom sometimes puts things like lotion on her hands and slimy stuff in her hair and I can't stand putting on lotion or slimy stuff. Well, I do put slimy stuff on sometimes, but...Oh, oh, oh! And I can spell and Mom can't!

20. How do you know Mommy loves you?

I know that Mommy loves me because she tells me and because she does nice things for me and I just know.

21. Where is Mommy’s favorite place to go?

Hmm. Interesting question. I think Mom has several favorite places to go. Like the shelter at Elk Meadows and the couch and out for runs. And the kitchen. And wherever Dad and I and Ranger are.

22. What ingredients are mothers made of?

Out of words and love and chocolate and hugs.

23. What kind of a little girl was your mother?

My mother was kind of little girls who didn't wear dresses very much. And liked dogs. And there's much more I could say, but I don't want to prattle on.

24. What did Mom need to know before she married Dad?

She needed to know that he was a nice person and that he liked the same kinds of things that she does.

25. Why did your mom marry your dad?

Because he is a very nice person and because he likes a lot of the same things that she does. And because they very good with each other.

26. Who’s the boss at our house?

Mom. Definitely Mom, followed by Dad, then me, then Ranger. And Licorice brings up the very rear. (Licorice would dispute this.) (True - Licorice does have some power over Ranger.)

27. What’s the difference between moms and dads?

Dads are boys and moms are girls. And, in our family, Mom likes to cook more than Dad. Although Dad likes to cook pancakes on weekends - but you don't have to add that, Mom! - and Dad likes to ride his bike and Mom likes to run and do Poekoelan.

28. What does your mom do in her spare time?

She reads and cuddles with the dog and plays games and she hangs out with me.

29. What would it take to make your mom perfect?

Gulp. Oh, Licorice? (pleading) I think Mom's almost perfect anyway, but she would be perfecter if she was (looking scared) more happy because sometimes she seems like she's not. (Moving in for a snuggle and requesting editing. Ha.)

30. If you could change one thing about your mom, what would it be?

I like Mom just the way she is. (clearly sucking up) (so not sucking up. I just like her the way she is! Come on. You answer then mom. HA. She is having trouble. See?) (Sadly, I can think of more than one thing to change. One thing would probably be to have less anxiety.)

Gee, and then we ended on a somber note. Perhaps we need to add one more question for a better ending. Thinking....Davan is very excited that I'm making one up.

31. When your Mom was little, what did she want to be when she grew up?

An airplane pilot? A helicopter pilot like Oma! (Note, my mom has never been a pilot, but she was medevac personnel on a helicopter for a few years.) I mean, she wanted to be whatever Oma was doing at the time. (Davan remembers the important part here - at least, at one point, I did want to be what my mom was, which was a nurse. Later, I wanted to be an airplane pilot. Thus, both answers are more or less true. Still no edits for you, sister. She was begging. It was sad.) (I was not begging. I was snuggling and asking politely. These are very different things, mind you.)

Happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T11:31:00.000-08:00

We're kind of scattered all over today. That is to say that there is no one time when all three of us are together until bedtime. So, last night we decided to celebrate a little early with vegan doughnuts. I didn't think to grab the camera for that fat and sugar fest, but, suffice it to say, we enjoyed ourselves. That's not stopping us from doing a bit of the special today, either, though.

Davan was quick to point out, though, that I get to partake in everything, where as she and Anthony each miss out. Ah well. That's what happens when you're the stay at home mom and are the one making the plans.

This morning, Davan and I made breakfast together. Please excuse the bedhead on both our parts.

We made a bit of a mess.

Davan sliced strawberries.

She wanted them to look like hearts.

We both worked on cinnamon rolls, but I did the rolling out part.

Ranger took care of the clean up. Wanna eat at our house?

We each had a pile of hearts on our plates.

Fun in the kitchen. Messy hair. Davan told me mine was fine. She obviously lied.

Our plates all ready to eat: strawberries, cinnamon rolls and "sausages."

Davan, anxious to eat.

We played a game while we ate - The Ungame. We have an old version, though. Ours is probably an original from the 70s. We got it at Goodwill. It has the regular cards plus the Christian Version cards. We play that you can choose from any pile.

Davan was obviously excited about her strawberries.

Because Davan is allergic to sitting at the table, we played on the rug, where we play most of our games.

After, Davan was trying to give me the stink eye, but she couldn't help smiling.

Then, she attempted to look above it all.

And, finally, she just tried to hide from the camera.

She loves it when I torture her this way. Don't let her tell you otherwise.

This evening, Davan is off to Do Jump, so Anthony and I are having a date night. I think we'll probably go out to dinner and...I don't know what else. Or I might make something special for at home...or...

As you can see, it's still up in the air.

We used to have a Valentine's tradition, but between evening activities, having moved and new ways of getting music, it's kind of gone by the wayside.

We used to cook dinner over a fire in the fire place - veggies, "chicken" and "steak" strips, bread for toast - and we'd each get a new CD that we'd listen to over dinner. Now, though, we have no fire place, Davan is leaving us for the evening, and we have all of our music on MP3. Time for new traditions. I think making breakfast together is a keeper. We'll see what happens with the evening.

More of What We've Been Up To

2012-02-11T11:59:00.000-08:00

I wasn't feeling great yesterday, but, mostly, I just felt tired. I woke up this morning, though, knowing that I'm sick. :( I seem to be in the process of loosing my voice. Perhaps some members of my family think that's a good thing. LOL Or not, as Davan is reading this while I write and just gave me an outraged look.

I got up this morning and came out to the living room to find this sight:

We had smoothies and toast while playing Imaginiff and then there was more pet snuggling:

I'm supposed to do a 30 minute run today, but I'm not thinking that'll happen with the whole being sick thing. I might go for a 30 minute walk instead.

On Thursday, I went with Davan to her static trapeze class at Night Flight to get some footage for an audition video in case she needs to audition for the National Circus School's summer camp, which will happen if she doesn't get into the high school. I put together this little video of some of the things she did at class that day.

I love the feel of the space at Night Flight. It's small, but bright and clean feeling. Some of the camera angles are a little odd because I was being careful not to include people who were in her class who didn't want to be filmed.

Also this week, I took Davan up to Naydenov's Gymnastics to check out the facilities and go to open gym. Davan is considering getting back into gymnastics more seriously for the training and skills progression she can get there. I don't know that Naydenov's will make a good home for her if she does choose to do so, as it's a bit of a haul to drive there, but she had fun at open gym and I threw together this video of her messing around there.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Davan finished her big cat. Here she is with the big one and a few small ones.

She said the large paper was a challenge to work with. For one, it kept trying to roll up on her, but I think it's pretty good. Of course, I might be biased. :)

Anthony is off to enjoy the lack of rain with a bike ride. Me? I think I'm bound for a book. It's one of those days.

Music

2012-02-10T15:10:00.000-08:00

The Vancouver video now has music. It's the original music. I found a whole lot of things about disputing a copyright issue and, basically, as I'm using it for personal purposes with no monetary gain involved, I can have the music. So, now's the time if you haven't seen it yet. :)

Life at Home

2012-02-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

So, we've had a whole "work week" now of time back home from Vancouver and I've said nothing about it. I'm sure that's breaking everyone's heart, so how about a quick update?

We've been doing all of our usual activities. Classes, teaching and hanging with friends for Davan. Running, meeting friends for walking for me. Davan has also gotten interested, or rather, re-interested in drawing and origami this week.

Davan has done a bit of origami in the past, but hadn't done any in a while. A couple weeks ago, we had lunch with friends and the girls folded dragons together.

Davan came home from the library this week with an origami book. She has folded several things, but is most interested in folding cats at the moment, it seems. Here are a couple:

She's currently working on a very large origami cat.

Davan also came home from the library with two books on drawing dogs. She was annoyed when one of them turned out not to have boxers, but she did draw a wolf from that book.

Davan has also decided she wants to learn Swiss German because of her friend, Lena, so she's been working on that this week, too.

She'd decided she was just going to learn German, but then she found this at the library and was so very excited. She's been working on it daily so she'll have new things to say to Lena. She also got some materials to learn straight up German to supplement.

Davan has been struggling with back pain off and on for about 6 months now and it's hampered her willingness/ability to do walkovers. She loves walkovers and does lovely ones, so this has been a real bummer. We've tried various things from PT work to a chiropractor and nothing really helped. This week, however, Davan said that she's learned that if she does some particular stretches before doing back bends, it helps a lot. So, she was doing walkovers at gymnastics this week and it was great to see.

When we got home from gymnastics, I caught a little video of Davan messing around on the pull up bar before dinner was ready.

For me, the usual has been running, walking Ranger, walking with a friend and...thinking. I have no idea what's in store for us for next year and I'm thinking again about a job or school. A lot depends on what happens with Davan, but, for most things she wants to do next year, I probably need to work to help finance it. And I'm not against a job...I just want to find one I like. I'm really ready to go ahead and put in some hours now. Davan is able to be self sufficient most of the time, although she'd prefer I was home. I wouldn't want to do more than 15-20 hours a week at most.

When I uploaded these videos, I realized that my Vancouver video is muted due to copyright issues. I'm going to see about picking different music and try again. It's too bad because I picked songs for each day that I thought were good fits. Sigh. Oh well. I can handle the challenge of picking new songs. I'll let you know when it's updated if you'd like to watch it with music.

Video Recap

2012-02-09T21:37:00.000-08:00

If you haven't heard enough about our Vancouver trip yet, here's a video for you. :) I wish I could have included even more pictures, but it's 10 minutes long as is!

The Rest of Our Trip

2012-02-07T11:23:00.000-08:00

Our trip to Vancouver totaled four days and, unlike when Davan and I went up in November for the preselection tour, we had a whole pack along. Anthony, Lena and Ranger came along this time. We had a great time! Lena was a delightful addition to our group. She and Davan had a blast together all weekend and Lena fit right in even when Davan was off auditioning. We're really glad she was able to go with us.

Lena, Davan and I were all sugar free for the month of January and, thus, were ready for a treat. We picked up a dozen Voodoo donuts on the way out of town.

We were all very excited.

We had an uneventful drive up, although we were a little nervous at the border crossing between having a dog with us and an exchange student who wasn't even our exchange student. Lena, though, had all of her necessary paper work and most of it, she didn't even need. We just handed over all the passports and Ranger's rabies paper and let them decide if they wanted to ask for anything else. They didn't. While we didn't come right out and say it, we did let the border crossing guy assume that Lena was our exchange student. We figured that would be easier. He was very friendly and it was actually a much easier crossing than when Davan and I were on our own in November.

We checked into our hotel around 2pm and, after lugging our stuff to our room, set out on a walk, as the weather was lovely.

The hotel was a little drab, but fine for our purposes.

And, the best part, was that it was one block from this:

Davan and Lena enjoyed pointing out how the different architectural structures of the various buildings would lend themselves to aerial apparatus.

If these two girls had their way, you would see a lot of silks hanging both inside and out of many a Vancouver building.

We had a nice walk up the waterfront path.

There were plenty of stops for looking around.

And for playing.

In fact, we left the girls to their own devises for a while at this playground while Anthony, Ranger and I walked on a bit.

After returning and gathering up the girls, we headed back to our hotel to regroup for dinner. The sun was setting on the way and it was really lovely.

We wanted to give Davan some good fuel to offset the donuts of the morning, considering her audition the next day, so we went to a restaurant I'd scooped out before going up called the Dharma Kitchen. It's an all vegan place focusing on nourishing foods. We were all pretty hungry while waiting for the food to come.

Davan and Lena shared a couple of meals. It was...well, some things were really good, some things were fine and one thing - the tofu on Anthony's dish - was not good at all. Still, most everyone was full enough by the end of the meal. Davan, though, was giving me her, "I'm still hungry. What are you going to do about it?" look so I offered to take everyone for smoothies. That idea was a hit. We didn't even get towed.

We went back to the room and I announced lights out no later than 10:00, as everyone was tired. Davan and I had both slept poorly the night before, but we weren't the only ones drooping a bit.

Sadly, no one slept well that night. It was way too warm in our room and the beds weren't the most comfortable ever. Still, Davan and Lena managed to sleep in a bit while Anthony and I took Ranger out for a morning walk.

We had breakfast in our room, which had been the plan. We knew we had a kitchen to work with.

Sadly, though, there were only 3 bowls. I ended up eating my cereal out of a tea cup.

The morning was given over to getting ready in a fairly leisurely manner. We all showered. We packed some lunch for everyone, but Davan's separately in case we weren't allowed to watch the audition (which we weren't). Then, there was the audition.

After the audition, we gave some options for dinner and Davan chose pizza, so we went back to the hotel and the girls and I went to pick up some pizza (veggie no cheese for Davan and I, half and half for Lena - cheese only - and Anthony - ham and black olive). While the pizza was being prepared, we went and got dessert for after - Rice Dream and some cookies. Sadly, the pizza was not very good. Mine and Davan's was burnt. Sigh.

We had a fun evening hearing about the audition, eating our food, playing black jack for cookies and laughing a lot. We had another not very late night.

Saturday was our day of fun. We went up to the snow. First we went to Grouse Mountain, where we rode the gondola

Took a sleigh ride (sadly pulled by a snowcat sort of thing rather than an animal as we'd been lead to believe by the website)

went zip lining (this was fun, but not great and we really felt it was overpriced for what you got - apparently it's much better in the summer when two of their longer lines are open)

and went ice skating.

Davan and Lena both started out using these frame things for little kids:

But they graduated to holding on to each other after a while.

Then we went back down to the car, gave Ranger a bit of a break and then made our way to Cypress Mountain. Both of these places are very close to Vancouver, so there wasn't a lot of driving.

On Cypress Mountain, we went tubing. This was lots and lots of fun! It was much cheaper than what we'd done at Grouse Mountain and a lot more fun. Well, I did like what we did on Grouse Mountain, too, but if I had to do just one activity again, it would be the tubing hands down, even if it weren't a lot cheaper.

There were attendants at the top of the runs both regulating people and pushing them off. They would give you a spin if you liked. Davan and Lena spun every time and figured out who did the best spins and would go back to that person. I'm not a spinner, myself. I had no desire to spend the rest of the day feeling poorly, so I stuck to straight down.

They had a lift you could use, riding up on your tube. We each did that a couple times, but the line was usually pretty long, so it was faster to walk up. We all got our workouts in, slogging up the hill for two hours.

As you can see, it was another great weather day. The views were spectacular up on the mountains. We could see fog all out in the straight and over part of the city, but it was sunny where we were. The top was the view from the tubing hill and the bottom is the view (and charming girls) from Grouse Mountain.

We headed back to the city in the midafternoon, feeling like we'd gotten in plenty of sun, exercise and fun. However, the dog hadn't gotten much of any of that, so we headed out for another walk when we got back. We did a repeat of our first night's walk, complete with leaving the girls at the playground for a while. It was much busier being a Saturday, than it had been on Thursday, even though it felt colder and there were patches of fog.

We ended up getting dinner fixings from Whole Foods that night and eating at "home." We even did a real vacation thing and had dessert again. This time it was vegan chocolate cupcakes from Whole Foods. They were good, too, which is not a given when one is speaking of vegan baked goods!

For our last morning, we walked again, but this time in the direction of downtown, rather than up into Stanley Park. Still, there were plenty of climbing about opportunities for the girls.

After walking and playgrounding, we caught a ferry back part of the way.

It was awesome that they didn't bat an eye about Ranger coming along.

We got back to the van, stopped to fortify ourselves for the trip with bagels and a few vegan cookies (sadly, not so great a vegan baked good) and headed for the border. At this point, I came to the realization that somewhere between crossing the border into Canada and leaving the hotel room that morning, I'd lost Ranger's rabies certification. I'm pretty sure I threw it out that morning along with some hotel paperwork that we didn't need anymore. Anthony was not pleased with me.

When I'd looked up the requirements for taking a dog across the border, it looked like we actually didn't even need that much for just between the USA and Canada, but it was the safe thing to do to take it. I said, "Let's just go for it." So we did.

And it wasn't an issue. There was a lot of talk while we waited our turn about what would happen if and the final conclusion was that the worse case scenario we'd have to leave Ranger kenneled at the boarder and I'd have to drive back up on Monday with paperwork and get her. Of course, there was also talk of her and I having to swim for it, but that was mostly Anthony being upset about my lose of the paper work. I told Anthony just not to say anything about Ranger's papers unless asked. "Oh, great. Then it looks like we're hiding something," he replied.

When it was our turn, we handed over our four passports and hoped for the best. It did, actually, go well, but the touch and go moments were many. The crossing guard asked the dog's name, which led us all to believe he'd want more info on her, but no, he just asked her name. Anthony panicked and when he asked us where home was, after I said that it was Portland for the three of us and Portland temporarily for Lena, he added that she was our exchange student, which would have been bad for us if he'd asked for some sort of proof of that, but he didn't. His wife had been an exchange student in Switzerland when she was in high school, so he felt some kinship there.

We did end up getting flagged for a routine random agricultural inspection, which was a little nerve wracking, considering all the complications we had, but that went fine, too. We did have to put Ranger in a kennel for the duration of the inspection, which took about 10 minutes total. And our cuties that had traveled with us to Vancouver and back (three were left) were confiscated. Apparently, citrus can't cross the border from Canada back to the states. I was previously unaware of that. We'd declared them, though, so we weren't in trouble or anything.

Then we were on our way with glad hearts. The rest of the drive was, again, uneventful. We split our drive time both ways between a little bit of just talking, some driving games (we like 20 Questions, the Alphabet Game, Who Am I? and the prediction game - where someone comes up with a question such as how many signs will we pass in a mile, although it can be anything, and everyone takes a guess) and listening to Beastly, which we all enjoyed pretty well, but wasn't anyone's favorite book.

It was a fun mini-vacation, complete with spending too much money and overeating. I ended up using Lena's camera a lot this weekend. Hers is much nicer than ours and I now have camera envy. I haven't gotten pictures from her yet, but expect to by tomorrow. I'm thinking of making a video of the weekend and will share here if I do!

The Audition Report

2012-02-06T11:44:00.000-08:00

I'll do another post about the trip in general later, but, for now, let me tell you all about the audition. I know some people are anxiously awaiting details.

The audition started at 11:30 on Friday. We left our hotel at 10:45 and expected to be there quite early, but traffic wasn't great and we ended up arriving in plenty of time, but not real early, at 11:20. Davan was nervous. She had had a nervous type of morning leading up to it and only got more nervous as the time drew closer. However, I'm happy to report that there were no breakdowns and her managed her nervousness pretty well, which is a huge step for her. She's had some pretty serious audition anxiety in the past.

All three of us, Anthony, Lena and myself, accompanied her into the building, found seats and hoped to be allowed to stay for the audition. I'd read that parents were supposed to leave, but I'd have felt better watching, Lena really was curious about it all and really wanted to watch, while Anthony would have done some coming and going.

Some other parents were sitting in the stands, obviously hoping to stay, as well.

We noticed a few things right off. One was that there were a lot more people than we'd expected. There were about twice as many people there than had been for the preselection tour. One reason for this would be that the preselection tour went to more cities. The auditions are held in only five world-wide - Paris, Beunos Aires, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Thus, people from several preselections would end up at the one audition.

However, we also noticed that many of the people looked older than high school age. Davan was concerned that she'd come to the wrong day and that it was actually college audition. What we ended up finding out was that the Vancouver (and, presumably all the auditions aside from Montreal) are combined college and high school auditions.

The third thing I noticed, after Davan went to sign in and start warming up, was that I recognized several people from the preselection tour. One set of parents I'd been friendly with before were back with their son, all traveling from the Bay Area in California. I went and said hello and touched base with them. Last time, they'd brought a girl who trains with their son. This time, her mom had come, as well. We all expressed hopes that we'd be able to stay.

There were parents for maybe 12 of the 28 hopefuls in the audience. Many of the hopefuls, who were applying to the college, were adults in their 20s, so I guess it makes sense that they'd have traveled on their own. Some were high school seniors, but were local and seem to have gotten their on their own.

Davan signed in and started warming up. I noticed her connect with another girl about her age. Turns out, they recognized each other from the preselection tour. That girl was the one from the Bay Area who'd traveled with her friend previously. I was happy she was not sitting in a lonely, hunched up little ball, looking like she was being tortured (like I mentioned previously - audition anxiety has been bad for her).

Then all of us parents got kicked out. We were told that they'd be breaking for lunch around 2:00 or 2:30. At that point, some of the applicants would be sent home. One of the judges mentioned that it might be even later, as late as 3:30 before they were done with the first stage.

Many of us parents gathered outside in a huddle and exchanged information. One mom had taken her two sons (20 and 21) to the open house in Montreal back in November. They'd decided to audition in Vancouver because 300 people were expected at the Montreal audition and they figured they'd have better luck in a smaller group. She had some information that was pretty discouraging. We'd known the school was small, but I'd gotten the idea they were expanding their program some. She didn't seem to think that was the case. She had a lot of statistics that pretty much boiled down to there are about 500 applicants for about 10 spots in both the high school and college. There are only 8 spots school-wide for non French Canadians.

Now, she may not have been spot on in her statistics. She did say something that I'm pretty sure isn't 100% correct, based on what I've read on the web site, but the fact remains that this really opened my eyes as to the odds of Davan getting in. I'd been thinking she was probably going to get in. After all, they'd called her back from the preselection tour.

Another thing I gleaned from talking with the parents is that pretty much everyone who came to the preselection tour of the right age got called back. I'm not saying that they weren't all amazingly talented, no, I was really impressed with them all, but I am saying that they didn't really cull the herd at that point. I'd really have preferred a more frank assessment. After all, it's getting people's hopes up and incurring travel expenses.

We parents also fairly quickly figured out that most of the hopefuls were going for college. We came up with a rough estimate that 8 of the 28 were high school applicants and that proved to be accurate.

After a while, we broke away from the huddle and went to a lake for a little dog walking. We pretty much spent the whole time talking about what we'd learned, what might be going on for Davan and adjusting all of our expectations.

We were back at 2:00. I couldn't imagine anything worse than to be sent home and have to wait around for a ride. I stuck my head in the door and saw that they were doing pull ups and the whole group seemed to still be there. Other parents were showing up and I gave them my report.

I met a woman who was also from Portland and who's daughter is over at Pendulum. We've looked at them, but there is a rivalry between them and Do Jump for some reason. Davan would do both, but that isn't allowed at Pendulum and Davan hasn't wanted to leave Do Jump. The conversation I had with this mom was very frank and interesting. We may check Pendulum out again.

Pretty soon we were all in a group huddle again, discussing our kids and ENC (which is shorthand for the National Circus School and one of the things I learned). The mom with the 20 and 21 year old shared that her boys are primarily dancers and they both danced in High School Musical and some commercials. Another mom had a 14 year old gymnast who had gone to the preselection tour on a whim because her friends were and then she was the only one to come to the audition. Her friends had been invited back, but all decided they didn't really want to go. She only came because her mom thought it would be a good idea for her to at least explore the possibility of going. It was an interesting mix.

Time dragged on and on. Anthony spent some time listening to the conversations and some time walking the dog. Lena and I mostly stayed in the group, taking breaks from time to time to have a side discussion or to just be away from all the "my kid" talk, as Lena put it. We all spent some time in the van reading and having a snack. We put off lunch because, if Davan were sent home at lunch time, we wanted to take her out to lunch.

"Lunch time" finally came at 3:30. Some parents got calls or texts that their student was ready to be picked up. Some got no word at all. I finally poked my head in again and found that many of them were sitting and having a bite to eat, including Davan, so I went in and said a quick hi. She was fine and had not been sent home. However, none of the high school applicants were sent home. Were they all good enough to stay? Were there so few of them that they just kept them? I don't really know.

We ended up with more time to wait. The other Portland mom left with her daughter and her daughter's friend, along with about half of the college applicants. We waited, mostly reading. I'd been reassured by seeing Davan and seeing that she was pretty well aware of what she was up against, but also looking pretty comfortable.

The audition was supposed to be over at 4:30, but it was 5:30 before they were done. We got the report.

Davan said they'd done most of the same things as at the preselection tour prior to the break. She said that this group of instructors were very difficult to understand and that she'd done a couple of things wrong because she hadn't understood what they'd wanted. Their French accents were very strong and their English very oddly phrased. This had been a problem for most of the applicants. One of the high school hopefuls had flown up from Mexico for the audition and he, with English as his second language already, had a particularly hard time with it. All of this became a running joke for the younger kids, who all hung out together.

Davan said she loved that part of the audition - getting to hang out with kids her age who were all so excited about circus. She enjoyed them all, but made particular friends with the girl from the Bay Area, who, it turns out, has a French Canadian mom and speaks fluent French, the gymnast who's mom I mentioned above and the boy from Mexico.

During the first part, groups were formed for testing purposes, but not by age. It seemed to just be random, so there were high schoolers and college kids all together. Davan said that she made friends with the person she least expected to during that part. One of the college applicants had a large pointy mohac, which kind of unnerved her, but she said he turned out to be really nice.

What they didn't go, which was a shame because Davan would have been really good at this part, was create a piece to show. We'd expected that because it was on the sheet of what to expect at the audition we found online. However, it never happened. Did they run out of time? Again, we don't know.

The college applicants had all been required to prepare an audition piece and they showed them in the second part. Davan said that was really great. They all got to watch and she said they were the best performers outside of Cirque du Soliel she'd ever seen.

The one thing the high schoolers did differently than at the preselection tour was had an interview with the judges. Davan said that was one of the difficult parts for her because she didn't always understand what they were asking.

When asked how she felt she did overall, in comparison to the other high schoolers, Davan said she couldn't really say. She said that they'd been in different groups, so she didn't get to see how everyone did. She felt like she'd done pretty well, though, and was happy with her performance. She wants to audition again next year if she doesn't get in this year.

So, what now? Now we wait. We don't really know when we'll next hear from them, but the next step will be to take an academic test, if they are interested in her. The auditions in Montreal aren't for a couple of weeks and I'm sure it'll be after that before we hear anything more.

What will next year bring? I don't know. But, I'm less sure Davan will be living in Montreal than I was a week ago. I'm also very proud of her for putting herself out there and doing the audition. I'm proud of the work she's done in the last couple of months, preparing for the audition. We'll just have to wait and see what the future holds!

We're Home!

2012-02-05T21:12:00.000-08:00

We're home, unpacked (I haven't always been this way, but these days I'm a little OCD about unpacking as soon as we get home), the dog is walked and we're looking at jumping back into everyday life tomorrow. That is making me think about Lovely. I didn't really miss her last week, as it was such a busy week with getting ready for the trip and all. I have to say that I'm glad I don't have to get up at 6:15 tomorrow, but I'm also a little sad about Lovely not being here. I hope all is going well for her and her family.

The trip was great, the audition was...interesting...and I will tell you more about it all tomorrow. Tonight there is a bit of a run on the computer. Everyone wants to catch up. :)

Preparing

2012-02-01T20:45:00.000-08:00

I have to say that I've been feeling very uneasy today. The drama that unfolded here is sticking with me. However, I need to put it behind me. We're preparing to go up to Vancouver tomorrow morning. We're nearly all packed and prepared.

We're traveling with quite the little pack, as Anthony is going with us this time, so we decided to take Ranger, too. Then we added Davan's friend, Lena, to the mix. We haven't taken a friend of Davan's along on a long road trip before, so that will be interesting. We usually listen to audio books. I know Lena enjoys them, but I could see the girls wanting to interact and such, rather than sit and listen. I guess we'll just see what the mood of the car is.

Davan is starting to get a little wiggy on me, which is standard nervous behavior on her part, but I don't love it. She and Lena were, apparently, quite silly at gymnastics tonight, as well. Yay for us for getting to ride with them for 6 hours tomorrow.

Now I need to be focusing on us, on Davan, on the reason for the trip. There is enough stress with that to be getting on with. The border crossing alone makes me nervous - have I mentioned that we're taking a dog and a foreign exchange student? I'm pretty sure we've got all our ducks in a row to make that work, but let not actually add any ducks to the mix.

I'm off to go get our ski goggles from the basement, as the last thing we need to pack tonight. We're probably going to play in the snow on Saturday - not ski, though, as that's way too expensive to do just for the day, particularly a lovely weather Saturday, which means big crowds and a lot of waiting in line.

And I'm off to try to help Davan to stay calm. Already. Friday is a long way away, my friends.

Wake Up!

2012-02-01T08:50:00.000-08:00

I got one of those reminders last night that the internet is a small place. A reminder to be very careful with what one puts out there. A blog is a great place to get one person's side of a story. By definition, a single author blog offers just that. When you read here, you're getting my side and it's important to note that there are always at least two sides, maybe more. Often, there is one person's view, the other person's view and then what really happened. Hearing the other person's view when they were not taking yours into account at all can feel slanderous.

I hurt someone's feelings and I'm sorry about that.

Lovely's parents came across my blog and were upset by my In Flux post. I can certainly see how it would hurt their feelings and that was never my intention.

In this whole mess, other than just wanting to say that I'm sorry for causing someone hurt, I have three specific things I'd like to publicly apologize for.

1) Putting Lovely's pictures up without clearing it with her parents first. Even without using her real name, I should not have done that. I have taken them down, as requested.

2) Deleting her parents reply to In Flux, which I did in my cleaning out. If they wanted to share, I should have let that stand. Suffice it to say, unless they choose to reply more, which I promise to leave up if they do, they had their own pressing issues and reasons for their choices.

3) And this one most of all - Not an hour after I posted A Little Whine, which I also cleaned out last night, I got a very nice thank you from Lovely's mom for the video. I'd meant every since to set the record straight and never did get to it, which I feel very badly about.

I wish nothing but the best for Lovely's whole family and that has been true throughout.

One More

2012-01-31T15:26:00.000-08:00

And then I'll be done with posting today. :)

This is Davan's main project for the day. She told me when we were watching two interesting things.

1) "That part sort of looks like cells splitting, but I didn't mean it to."

2) "That looks like it's the heart - with the veins and arteries flowing into it."

Can you tell that she's been doing anatomy and physiology? See if you can see which parts she's talking about. For a hint, #2 actually happens chronologically before #1 in the video.

Yet Another For You Today

2012-01-31T14:27:00.000-08:00

Davan did the production on this one on her own. She's now an independent movie maker start to finish. LOL

This is one from this spring, also. She and her friend, Emma, made it together.

Another Movie

2012-01-31T11:48:00.000-08:00

Here's another video from the Davan files. This one was from this spring when Davan and her friend, Emma, had a brief fling with stop action animation. This is a fun one, I think.

Cleaning Out Surprises

2012-01-31T09:24:00.000-08:00

I've been doing so many videos that I'm starting to feel like my computer's memory isn't unlimited. So, I've been spending a little time cleaning out. I've deleted audio books that have been listened to and were just hanging out, "raw" video footage that I've culled the interesting parts out of and turned into videos and some pictures, as well, as I've been taking tons of pictures lately, too.

While I was working on this cleaning out project, I came across a set of pictures that I didn't recognize at first. It turns out that Davan had taken all the pictures for a stop action animation sometime this summer just before we moved and it'd never gotten further than the pictures. So, we made it into a video last night and I'm going to share it with you.

What surprised me isn't that I found pictures for stop action animation, as Davan used to do a lot of it. In fact, after seeing one of Kei's projects over on HomeSchool Girls, I'd been thinking about digging out one or two of her old movies and checking them out again.

What surprised me was how recent it was. The last time I remember her being doing much in the way of stop action animation was after a trip to OMSI when she was maybe 7 or 8 where they had a station set up to play with stop action animation and she got so into it that I set up the camera for her at home. She made a whole bunch of movies then - one of them ended up being something like 8 minutes long, which is a whole lot of pictures, let me tell you.

After finding this set of pictures, though, and making the movie last night, her interest is piqued again. In fact, she just came out to steal my light so she could have a steady light source for her current project. She informed with with glee that she is "off to make a stop action animation movie and listen to A Short History of Nearly Everything." Okay, then.

Panic!

2012-01-30T15:27:00.000-08:00

So, I was going merrily along thinking that I had the whole Circus Smirkus application there by tomorrow thing under control, when Davan came home from teaching and didn't have her references with her. This was inconvenient, but not a huge deal, as we had told her references 2pm. Still, I'd hoped they'd come home with her so I could stop at the post office when I went for a walk with a friend and get it all off.

Instead, Davan asked me if she could mail it while I was gone if the second reference got done in time to give us more time for other things in the afternoon. I said sure, gave her directions to the nearest post office and got online to show her the type of envelope to use.

Now, when I looked at the post office site on Saturday, I'd been searching for overnight mail and this envelope came up:

This time, however, I came at it a different way, through their "calculate postage" tab. Guess what? When I put in the two zips (on different sides of the country), the result was that it wouldn't get there until Wednesday. That's a day too late.

My first reaction was, "Okay. I've done all I can do. It's just not going to make it."

My second reaction was, "Fine. Fed Ex can have $60 to get it there overnight. That sucks, but what will it really mean in the grand scheme of things?"

When I told Anthony what was going on, though, he told me he needed to check something out and to hold on for a bit. So I did. And I called Davan (by now I was on my way to meet my friend) and told her not to worry that we'd get it there. She was very thankful.

By the time I was done walking, I had a message from Anthony that, provided we got everything to his office by 3:30, he could send it through the corporate account (although still charged to us) with the office discount. The whole thing cost us under $16 after all and it'll be there tomorrow. Whew.

And it's over, out there and one less thing for us to figure out. I'm happy to have it done, but Davan and I were already talking about what was missing from the video. It's too bad that we didn't have a bit more of trapeze, including some a different style trapeze and some of her on straps. Still, though, oh well. Done is done.

And it's a good reminder to keep better track of our deadlines. Yikes.

Just a Quick Update

2012-01-29T15:26:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a couple days, so I thought I'd do a quick catch up here.

We went skiing on Friday.

The weather and snow were the best we've had all season. I felt pretty good and wanted to ski a lot. Davan, though, had a cold and spent some of her time in the lodge. Still, we stayed for a bit over 5 hours and mostly had a good time.

Davan feel asleep when we got home for about an hour and I debated between letting her sleep and waking her up because she'd said she was going to meet Lena at open workout at Do Jump. I ended up deciding to wake her up and give her the choice, but she woke up on her own and decided to go.

Saturday Davan was still sick. I also started not feeling well. Sigh. Still, I got in my run and strength training in the morning and it wasn't really until afternoon that I started feeling under the weather.

We had a nice peaceful day until 4:00pm when I casually checked the due date for the advanced summer camp at Circus Smirkus. Some of you may remember that Davan applied for their summer trooper program which is 10 weeks of camp and touring. However, she didn't make it. She decided to apply for their advanced summer camp, thinking that might help her make troopers next year. We decided that she needed a different audition video, based on those that we'd seen online. I did a preliminary one, but have been collecting footage here and there for a better one. I've been going along merrily thinking that the deadline for the advanced camp audition materials was in February and, while I have been collecting footage here and there, Davan had several things she wanted to put on there that I haven't gotten yet. I figured we'd concentrate on that after the Vancouver trip to audition for the National Circus School.

Because, yeah, in between auditioning for the troopers at Circus Smirkus and now, Davan has also decided to apply, with a recommendation from the preselection tour, for the high school at the National Circus School in Montreal. Keeping up here?

Davan is thinking that if she gets into Montreal, she won't go to Circus Smirkus. She wants to have more time at home and we want to have more available money for tuition and room and board. However, it's not, by any means, a done deal for getting in, so we're finishing the application process as a back up.

So, back to yesterday afternoon, when I casually checked the application deadline. It's January 31st. That's Tuesday. And that's not postmarked. No. It's there. Cripes. So, I've made her video, which is fine, if not as spectacular as we'd been hoping. Here is it, but if you've been watching videos here, it's a lot of stuff you've already seen.

I called and emailed her two teachers that she'd like to get references from and tried to figure out how to get them quickly. At first, I had a little hope we'd get everything together and out yesterday. It became clear quickly that wasn't going to happen. So, now we're aiming for Monday and getting it there overnight. Yay. An extra expense. Oh well. We've got all our parts done and one reference scheduled for Monday morning. I haven't made contact with the other yet, but I have a back up and I'm guessing she'll be able to do it Monday morning, as well.

Okay, this isn't turning out to be quick at all, is it?

This morning, I took Davan and Lena back to SkyHigh again, where they bought 10 hour passes that can be used over up to 10 visits. It makes it much more affordable, particularly as they each got an hour free today for buying them. It was busy right away today, which was too bad, but they still had fun and did something new - synchronized tumbling.

More Gymnastics

2012-01-26T17:15:00.000-08:00

I took the camera with me to gymnastics last night, but I told Davan and Lena that I wasn't planning on using it unless one of them got something new because we had a lot of gymnastics footage. Then they both went and did new stuff.

Lena would prefer to polish what she did prior to me sharing, but Davan started working on a bars sequence that is sort of a mix between the level 4 and level 5 competitive routine and is doing it really well. At the beginning of the bars rotation, she didn't even look close to her high bar kip, but, as you can see here, she was doing it by the end. I didn't get her first efforts, but I did get one miss that I'll share. When she did this recovery move, her coach, who is also an ex professional Do Jumper, said, "And that right there is why I'd hire you. Even when it went wrong, you made it look cool." LOL In fact, speaking of LOL, you can hear Tera doing a lot of that through the music when Davan does her switcharoo.

Saying Goodbye

2012-01-25T13:36:00.000-08:00

It's confirmed that today is our last day with Lovely. I will miss her. And I'm okay with moving on.

We decided to celebrate today by spending a good chunk of today's pay on going to the Portland Children's Museum.

We used to go there all the time when Davan was younger. In fact, she didn't really grow out of it until she was about 10, which is a little older than most of the kids you see there. Today, she felt like she needed to stay close to Lovely to give her a reason for being there.

With some "encouragement" from me, she did do a little exploring herself, which I could tell she really wanted to.

Davan has been thinking this week about how to volunteer to work with young kids again (she volunteered at a preschool prior to our move and loved it, but Lovely has been filling that need for her recently) and had been looking into the volunteer program at the Children's Museum. When we came home, she went ahead and filled out the form. We'll see what happens there!

Lovely had a lovely time.

She crawled all over the place and explored everything.

We finally left when she became too exhausted to enjoy herself further. She's currently taking one of the longest naps she's ever taken at our house, even though she also feel asleep in the car on the way home, which is usually a deal breaker for naps for her.

Goodbye, Lovely. We'll miss you.

Demanding Pets

2012-01-24T20:58:00.000-08:00

The other evening, the pets requested that we play a game all together.

Or, at least you'd think it was their idea with the way they flock around whenever we settle on the floor for a game. They don't like it as much when we sit at the table to play, which we don't do very often, but every now and again Anthony, who isn't very flexible, asks to. He has trouble sitting on the floor.

Licorice had to think about her moves for a long time. But, for Ranger, she thought so long that she needed a little rest.

We were playing Tri-Ominoes, which I have a soft spot for because we played for the first time on this trip. Later, when I saw it at Goodwill, I snatched it up.

It's not, however, Davan's favorite, so we don't play all that often.

You'd think I forced her to be the score keeper or something. I don't, although it wouldn't hurt the math skills.

Tonight, though, is just Anthony and I, as is the usual on Tuesday nights. Davan goes to Do Jump from 5:30-9:00 on both Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Tuesdays, she usually goes early to hang out, leaving the house around 4:00. On Thursdays, she does yet another class at a different location before and misses out on the hanging out part.

Today, she left at 1:00 to meet a friend who doesn't have school this week. Emma goes to a private school and is on a different schedule than most of the kids around here. Her school had semester finals last week.

Anyway, what all that means is that I haven't seen Davan in 8 hours! If that feels like kind of a long time (not that she hasn't been away longer, but still, I'm used to her being around a lot), imagine what next year might bring with her gone for months. If this whole Montreal thing happens, I'm in for a rough patch. Sigh.

Video Mania

2012-01-23T18:47:00.000-08:00

I've been all about making videos. Davan and Lena have been asking me to film them at gymnastics and I've done so for three sessions. Last night, I put together a video from those three sessions. I left out all the trampoline stuff because the trampoline action from SkyHigh was better.

The girls are also working on a video. I'll see if they'll let me post it when they're done. For now, though, here's my go.

In Flux

2012-01-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

We are in flux this week and it's all because of this cute little critter:

Lovely started coming to us in October. She came on Mondays from 8:30-4:30 and I charged $5/hour. While the extra money is a plus, it was partially for Davan, seeing as how she doesn't have any siblings and how she loves little kids. It was a good hands child development course.

We came to look forward to Mondays. Lovely is an easy baby and the 8:30 start time was easy. There was plenty of time for me to get in my run still and for Davan to get up at her leisure. We are tied up on Mondays anyway because Davan teaches at Do Jump. All-in-all, things were going along swimmingly.

We took a break over the holidays due to us going out of town and to Lovely's grandmother being in town to watch her.

Prior to the break, Lovely's mom had asked if we would be able to take Lovely two days a week - Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 6:30-4:00. We thought about it for a while, but decided we'd miss her too much if she didn't come. We said yes.

And we did miss her over the holidays. We were glad to have her come back, aside from my 6:15 wake up call two days in a row every week...

Lovely's mom needed the schedule change because of a new job. She told me the money was much better. Lovely started showing up at 6:20 and not leaving until 4:05. I figured this was okay and we'd just round up to 10 hours, rather than 9.5. That didn't happen, though, which left me a little resentful.

Then, Lovely's mom's schedule started fluctuating all over the place. The first week this happened, I was super understanding. She was, obviously, stressed about it and it was okay for us to do Monday and Wednesday that week.

However, the next time it happened, it was just assumed that I would accommodate. It is a bit of an imposition. We do have activities and plans. I was feeling resentful again.

In addition to that, we've been thinking about what next year will be bringing. Tuition, room and board is potentially looming. With all of that added up, I decided to ask for a raise. This weekend, I asked for $6/hour.

Last night, we got the answer. As things stand right now, this is Lovely's last week. They say they can't afford the price increase. I'm sad. A little relieved. A little bummed about the lack of supplementary income. After thinking about it a while, though, and talking with Anthony and Davan, I've offered to keep her until the end of the school year at $5/hour. I know I won't get an answer until at least this evening because her parents don't check email at work.

I wonder, though, what other situation would people be in that they are offering child care so cheaply? I wonder where she'll be going. If she'll get as much attention. If she goes, though, I'm sure it'll work out. I'm sure they'll be careful and find a good place for her to be. And if she does, I'll be a little relieved. And a little sad.

Jumping Beans

2012-01-22T15:27:00.000-08:00

I took Davan and Lena to SkyHigh today. It was a great rainy day activity. I'll let the video speak for itself about how it went.

More Skiing, Much More Snow

2012-01-21T09:07:00.000-08:00

This whole last week, the snow has just been dumping up on Mt Hood. This is a really good thing because the snow cover was awful. So, not only is it good for skiing, but it's good for the water table come summer.

Still, last weekend, the forecast suddenly called for rain on Friday, our usual ski day. It changed by Monday, saying snow - 4 to 8 inches. Seeing as how Thursday's snow was some 28 inches, that seemed reasonable to us.

Davan's friend, Lena, has been wanting to go up with us when the snow was good, so we invited her along. Actually, first we offered to take her up on Sunday because she's an exchange student and goes to school. However, I asked her if she felt she could take a Friday off because it's so much less crowded and that's when we usually go. She said that wasn't a problem at all.

Lena, at 16, has finished mandatory school for Switzerland. She's planning on doing higher education when she gets back, but hasn't started yet. So, this year doesn't really count for her. She's doing a lot of classes that are kind of fluff. Thus, a day or two off here and there doesn't matter too much to her and she's wanting to experience many things while she's here.

As even more of an aside from skiing, I have to say that Davan is going to miss Lena like crazy next year. Sure, Davan may be winging off herself, which would ease that pain, but she does so much with Lena every week and they've really gotten to be best friends. They do all their Do Jump classes together, which is unusual. Davan has several good friends at Do Jump, but they're only in Zig Zags with her. Lena is also doing the same two adult classes after Zig Zags that Davan does, which gives them lots of time without other friends as distraction, as they're the only non-adults in those classes. The two of them also do a two hour gymnastics class together on Wednesdays in which their the only two students currently. When we told Davan she should invite a friend over to keep her company when we went to Anthony's office party, she invited Lena. I'm telling you, it'll be a big, ragged hole in her life when Lena leaves if she ends up staying home.

Any-who, back to the skiing. Lena joined us and it was delightful to have her along. We did get off to a delayed start when we were about 20 minutes down the road and Lena realized she only had one of her two gloves. We went back for it. One gloved snowboarding (which is what Lena likes to do) is not a fun thing. So, after a false start, we really got going.

We stopped to rent equipment for Lena, who would have liked to rent a helmet, too. Not everyone wears helmets, but we all so and Lena is used to it, as well. The place we stopped didn't rent them, but they did sell them and Davan has been needing a new one, as the one she's been skiing in we got her when she was 7 and it doesn't fit very well anymore. We bought Davan one and then told the girls to figure out which one fit whom the best and just make it work for today. It turns out that Davan's old one fit Lena fine, so they were all set. Lena also bought herself a pair of goggles that were on sale for $15, as she didn't have a pair and we had no extra.

So, we finally are going up the mountain. It's raining. We started placing bets on when the rain would turn to snow. We passed all the bet points and it was still raining. We got nervous. We pulled into the slushy parking lot to the fall of a wintery mix, feeling like this might not be the best day of skiing ever. Still, we'd already rented for Lena (actually, she rented for herself - she seems to have a decent spending budget for her stay) and we'd driven up there, so...we dressed and headed to the lodge for Lena to get her ticket.

And the conditions were...less than ideal. It was a little like skiing through concrete. A very wet snow was falling. There was a lot of fog, making visibility very poor. At times during the day, visibility was so poor between the fog and the snow on our goggles that we could see trees and people, but otherwise, everything just kind of looked white. That made skiing pretty darn challenging. It was a skill building day. If Lena weren't with us, having invested in rental gear and a ticket, we'd have gone home early.

If we had gone home early, though, we'd have missed the afternoon skiing when the precipitation turned to true snow and we were suddenly skiing on powder. Viability was still crap, but the snow was fun.

Davan, who would usually be saying, "I'm ready to go whenever you guys are," after about an hour of a skill building day, was happily still skiing until 3:30, when we all called it a day. She giggled and laughed her way though the day along with Lena. There really is something to taking a friend.

We gave Lena Davan's old helmet to use for the duration of her stay and told her to join us any time she feels like playing hooky on a Friday.

Not So Lovely Today

2012-01-19T12:16:00.000-08:00

While we don't have Lovely today, I guess drenching rain could be still be considered a lovely day so long as one is cozy inside, as I am at this moment and have been, aside from that 30 minute easy run dragging Ranger, who is a fair weather dog, through the rain. Ranger usually resents us drying her feet when we come in from walks, which we do habitually, but today was actually glad to see the drying towel. Her tail started wagging and everything.

As for me, I wrung out my clothes and hopped in the shower. It's been warm and cozy there after.

Davan and I broke out Cranium this morning. It's a group game, but we play it by just doing it cooperatively. We work together to get one, two or more of the pawns through to the end, taking turns reading the card.

In our version, whoever reads the card has to do the acting out or whatever, except for spelling, which the other person has to do because the card reader sees the word. Here Davan is sculpting a turtle.

Group things - data heads and other word worms - we do together. Here she is being a famous person with amnesia. She was Mae West, but didn't know who that was. For famous people, you can speak. You're supposed to act like that person (think "I am not a crook!" or "Yabba-dabba-do!"), but in this case, she used her speaking ability to verbally describe her name. Call it cheating if you will, but we got this one.

Whereas, we did not fair so well with me humming "I Shot the Sheriff, but I Did Not Shoot the Deputy." In spite of my exceedingly excellent (not) humming skills, Davan did not guess this song. In fact, just about the only thing she even suggested was the theme song to Scooby Doo. Sigh. Of course, it's important to point out here that she never has watched Scooby Doo, so this was pretty much a shot in the dark. Humdingers are not our friends.

At the start of one's turn, one chooses which pawn one is taking the turn for.

We used to play the Family Fun version, but we let that go when we moved because Davan usually wanted to play the adult version.

When I first got the camera out, Davan was a little camera shy today.

But, then she came out of her shell and showed why.

Bedhead!

Davan would like it if I posted more pictures of her post shower and less pre shower, but I take pictures as the mood strikes. Poor Davan.

Yesterday, we did have Lovely over. She was the grumpiest I've ever seen her, at least in the morning. I was not feeling like calling her Lovely then. However, she came around in the afternoon, as did the weather. She and Ranger were waiting for me to be ready for a walk.

I love this suit of hers and plan to ask her parents to send it every time she comes. I'm often having to make due when I take her outside with wool socks for footed leggings for her and such. Yesterday, though, there was snow in the morning so they sent this. Anytime the weather is below 45 or so, though, I think she needs more than a light jacket if I'm taking her out for a walk.

Lovely is coming to us twice a week now - Tuesdays and Thursdays. Prior to the holidays, it was once a week on Mondays from 8:30-4:30 and it was truly lovely. I'm a lot less enamored of the 6:30-4:00 Tuesday and Wednesday schedule, but I'm attached and would have a hard time letting her go elsewhere for care.

As for today, I'm off to fill in some holes in Davan's education that came up during Cranium today. When I acted out "evolution" with not a hopeful bone in my body, she got it pretty fast, so we're doing fine there. However, when I, with much confidence, acted out "nun," I was sorely disappointed. Well, I guess that does show some where our priorities lie. But, still, nun? Come on. We've got to get educating here. We've got Cranium to win.

(To be fair, Davan did guess nun just after the time ran out and she was convinced it was priest for a while, so she's not totally ignorant in this realm.)

We Had a Lovely Day Today

2012-01-17T21:11:00.000-08:00

That is to say that Lovely (this is not her real name) was here today, not that it was necessarily a lovely day. Don't get me wrong, I adore this baby

not to mention the teenager who's holding her, but any day that starts at 6:15am is at a disadvantage in my book. I'm not an early riser.

When Lovely showed up in her footie pjs today, Davan decided to join in the lounge wear look. They two of them were snugly all day. Well, up until Davan showed before going out to meet her Zig Zag friends and then go to Do Jump for class and Lovely went home. Still, until 4pm was most of the day.

Ranger, who didn't make it out much today due to the not so great weather (cold and rainy, mostly, with a little mix of very wet snow this morning), was less enamored of the debris that accompanies Lovely days.

So, she retreated to her bed.

Davan also claims this bed, but Ranger uses it more by my reckoning. Plus, Davan is, you know, planning to abandon us, so then it'll really be Ranger's bed.

I'm not sure why Davan chose to do math in the living room today with Lovely about. It does add an extra challenge, what with the trying to keep the book, notebook and pencil out of Lovely's reach.

Still, the day was fine. I am tired, but mostly in a I got up before I wanted to way. Lovely had a pretty good day. I got stuff done, even with the pj party going on. All that said, I could live without the 6:15 alarm tomorrow morning. Sigh.

Snow, Sort Of

2012-01-16T16:52:00.000-08:00

We've been having snow fall from the sky off and on the last couple of days. However, I say it's only sort of snow because it's been just as likely to be rain or, briefly yesterday afternoon, hail. Thus, it hasn't stuck at all.

Davan and her friend Lena were pleased by the snow yesterday morning. They rushed to the window to look out at the rain/snow mix. They were playing Journey Through Europe when I went in to tell them it was snowing.

Then, they rushed back again when it turned to big fluffy snow, which actually drew them outside for a while.

Lena, who is an exchange student from Switzerland, was funny, though. She kept saying, sarcastically, but in a fun way, "I've never seen this before."

After Davan went with Lena to the library and walked her home, we spent a quiet afternoon at home. We spent some of our time corrupting Davan by teaching her the finer points (as we know them - we're no great shakes) of Blackjack.

Nothing like a little Sunday afternoon gambling. We didn't let Ranger have a hand, but Anthony and Davan took turns sharing with her. She's only 3.5, after all.

Today has been an interesting mix of holiday and not here. Anthony is off, but Davan has all of her activities. So, this morning she left to go teach at Do Jump for a while and this afternoon she's off at her straps class. (The link shows her teacher, Shersten, doing straps, if you don't know what it is. I don't have a video of Davan doing it yet.)

In between, though, we went to Forest Park for a hike for some of us and a run for me. I needed to do a 60 minute run today. I'm feeling much better, by they way, still tired, but not exhausted. Again, I don't know why, but I'm sticking with the healthy food and feeling very pleased about feeling better.

Anyway, off we went, mostly because I wanted to do a run on a trail. Leif Erickson is a wide, gravely path, so the wet weather didn't make it too muddy to run on. Anthony and Davan came for a walk in the woods, but neither wanted to run. While I feel a little guilty about it, I didn't take Ranger, even though she'd have liked the running part, she also likes the stopping to sniff and pee parts, so I left her with the others to do that.

Briefly during the run, it snowed a bit, which was nice, but then it really stared to snow at the end, which was very pretty, but it still didn't stick.

It was snowing in this picture, but you can't really see it.

It was a good run, but I ended up going longer than my 60 minutes because it's uphill going, so I went 40 minutes out, thinking I'd be faster coming back. I wasn't. It had leveled out enough after the first mile that it didn't make a big difference. I did slow down after 65 minutes and just jogged in the rest.

By the time I got to my family, they were all cold. The poor dog was shivering. But, she recovered quickly in the warm car, probably because she was so pleased with putting her muddy paws on the seat. Or maybe that was just incidental. Sigh.

I made Davan ride her bike to her class this evening, as usual, which I feel a little bad about, considering the cold, wet weather, but class should have just gotten out and it's not raining at the moment, so hopefully it'll hold out for her until she gets home. Then she can put on her footies and warm up if she likes.

Playing Dress Up

2012-01-15T08:52:00.000-08:00

Davan had a friend spend the night last night, but it wasn't the two of them who dressed up.

Anthony and I were the ones dressing up because we had a party to go to. Anthony's office does their party in January to avoid the holiday rush.

Usually, I more or less enjoy these events, but I have to say that I had a little trepidation last night, seeing as how the party went from 6-10pm and I've been in bed with the light out at 9pm all week, but I was willing to give it a go and, as I mentioned, I did feel a bit better yesterday.

Look - at least a part of Licorice made the blog. See? She gets her screen time.

I'm wearing all clothes that belong to Davan from the dress to the shrug to the "tan tights" which she has from dance. I've got my own undies on, you'll be happy to know. I don't actually own anything that seemed appropriate to going to a mascaraed.

Anthony? Well, he wore pretty much his usual work attire, but added the tie. Still, quite handsome, no?

The party was fun. I lasted until 9:30, after which I faded fast, but we stayed until 10 when they did the raffle drawing, from which we, thankfully, won nothing. The item Anthony was interested in was a coffee maker that would have taken up way too much counter space. The rest of the items? Well, we really didn't need a basked of candy, thank you very much.

There were hor'dourves and drinks, a buffet dinner (I'd eaten before we went, so I just had veggies from the buffet), a chocolate fountain (and fruit without using the fountain) and gambling. Yup. Gambling. They've done this style of party before and it's fun. We each get a certain amount of play money to start. There's blackjack, poker, and roulette to choose from. Money that is left at the end is exchanged for raffle tickets, so you can just hold onto your money or grow it or loose it as you and the fates choose.

I played blackjack all night and was hot for a long time, but started loosing at the end when I started gambling big, knowing I had no interest in the prizes.

We came home to find the girls watching a Jackie Chan movie (odd because Davan has never been interested before) and drinking smoothies they'd made. I hit the hay, totally whooped. Actually, though, this morning, I just feel like I had a late night for the most part. Granted, it feels like it was a really late night, not in bed by 10:30, but that's still not bad, considering.

I heard the girls go to bed around midnight and they're still sleeping now (nearly 9am), which is good as an indicator of what Davan's future mood will be. Davan has asked for nothing too weird for breakfast, so I'm still not totally sure what we'll be eating. LOL

The only sad thing about the sleeping in is that they've missed the snow. We don't often get snow in town here and this wasn't a big deal, as there was no sticking at all, but we did have some pretty flakes falling this morning. What is really great about that is that it's dumping up on the mountain! Yay! We're looking forward to our Friday ski this week after a forecast of snow all week!!!

I've Not Been Well

2012-01-14T14:21:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to pretend that all is well, but the reality is that I've had a rough couple of weeks health-wise. It started early last week with feeling like I had a bit of a virus of some sort. I had a sore throat and an upset stomach (these things do not often go together for me) and I was really tired. The sore throat pretty much went away after a couple days, but I never felt totally better.

Then, at the end of the week, I had four nights in a row of sleeping really poorly. I was super tired, but couldn't fall asleep for a long time, couldn't stay asleep and, when I was sleeping, had really vivid dreams which didn't help me to feel rested at all.

I started sleeping again Sunday night, which was a big relief, but, even with sleeping plenty (some nights 10+ hours), I've just continued to be very, very tired. I wake up feeling not well rested and it gets worse throughout the day. I feel and look like I haven't slept much in a couple of days. It sucks.

My stomach continues to hurt. My throat actually hurts off and on, but I realized years ago that my throat gets sore when I'm really tired and I've realized that's what's going on now. I have really bad headaches in the afternoon and evening, which I'm pretty sure have to do with being tired, too. I also feel sort of like I have a sunburn - my skin is itchy and uncomfortable frequently, often shortly after eating.

I'm not really sure what's going on. I've promised Anthony that I will go to the doctor if it goes on one more week, but I don't have a lot of confidence in the medical profession to figure stuff like this out. The fact is that I've felt tired in spite of plenty of sleep for a long time, this is just worse than "normal" and no one has been able to tell me what's wrong, This is unpleasant, as it leaves me thinking it's all in my mind.

However, in the spring, I had some blood work done and what I found is that I'm anemic and at the extremely low but normal range on several key nutrients including sodium, potassium and calcium. What's the kicker here is that I eat well. I consume a lot of these nutrients. I thought maybe the issue was Celiac Disease, as I talked about here. After our three month gluten free trial, I didn't feel appreciably better. Davan didn't feel different at all. We both went back to eating gluten on the 16th of December.

I didn't start feeling really bad until last week - around the 3rd. Does that mean that the gluten free eating actually did help, but it took a while of eating it for the symptoms to come back? Does it mean something else entirely? I don't really know.

What I do know, though, is that I really don't like how I feel. I also feel strongly in the healing powers of high nutrient foods. The stomach issues have me thinking that it might be diet related. I've decided that I need to try something. I'm putting myself on a detox diet. For two weeks, I'm going to be eating strictly, then slowly adding in foods. I'll be keeping a food journal so I can see if I find any patterns to my symptoms.

I have, both, high hopes and low expectations. I know that's dichotomous, but it's still accurate. I couldn't do it without high hopes, but I also don't feel like I can expect perfect results. My body sort of seems to just work this way.

While a little weight loss wouldn't be repugnant to me at all, it's really much more about feeling well. My plan isn't to starve myself at all, just to eat very well. Today, I have to say, that I'm feeling a little better already. Is this because whatever this is has mostly run it's course? Is it hope? Is it that I've only eaten very clean foods? I don't really know. And I'm not totally better, just a little less tired this afternoon, my stomach is churning a bit less and, so far, only a very slight headache.

Meanwhile, life goes on. Anthony and Ranger went for a walk this morning while I stayed in bed and read a little. After my morning post, I went for a 20 minute easy run with Ranger, followed by some strength work. (Although, I have to say that nothing feels easy right now, so the run was difficult even though I tried to keep my pace down.) We had a visitor who brought Davan a gift that she's so, so excited about.

Rosetta Stone for French! A cousin of Anthony's whom we see something like twice a year, but who is a very nice person who is very interested in Davan, had the program and offered to loan it out to Davan. Davan was over the moon. She got it all set up and is through Lesson 1 already.

We also got in a game of Munchkin. I tried on an outfit for Anthony's office party this evening. I'm mostly borrowing from Davan. LOL. Anthony did a kick-ass bike/weight workout. We've all done some reading. It's raining out here and feels nice to be inside with the lights on, warm and dry.

Friday Skiing Video

2012-01-14T09:43:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind, we are none of us great skiers and, on top of that, this video doesn't necessarily catch our finest moments, but we think it's cute.

Friday Skiing

2012-01-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

We went skiing yesterday, as per normal on Fridays this winter. We have annual passes to Mt Hood Meadows Ski Resort this year and have set Fridays aside as our skiing day to get the most out of them. Anthony, who usually has every other Friday off due to 9 hour work days, takes the opposite Friday off with vacation time so that we can ski on weekdays. Once you get used to skiing on weekdays, weekends pretty much suck, I must day. We're so spoiled that having to wait for 10 groups to get on the chairlift in front of us seems like an imposition.

Anyway, yesterday, we took the camera. Here I am, just hanging.

It was a beautiful day weather-wise, but we haven't been getting enough snow and there were a lot of bare patches, which was a bummer. Supposedly, we're due to go back to regularly scheduled winter as of this afternoon and snow should fall off and on all week. That would make next Friday very different!

Davan, spraying snow. She likes to work on her turns by trying to spray us in snow when she stops.

Our usual plan is get up whenever (usually between 7 and 7:30), have one adult take Ranger out while the other loads the car (usually I've prepared food the night before), then we wake Davan up if she's not away and are on our way by 8:00.

Yesterday, I didn't get around to food prep until that morning, so Anthony took Ranger out, then loaded the car while I put food together.

We ate apple slices and PB&J's in the car on the way up for breakfast. Ranger was wishing someone had thought to pack her a PB&J, too. She comes up with us and spends a bit of time in the dog park they have up there when we first get there, then gets, sadly, stuffed back in the car. So far, the weather has been quite nice and we've had to crack a window for her. If it'll be really cold, we'll leave her home, like we did on New Year's Eve, but this time, we'll make sure there's not chocolate soy milk boxes on top of the fridge or anywhere else for that matter.

Davan, heading into the shade.

We ski for 3.5 hours, give or take, depending on such factors as mood, weather, health, the itchiness of Davan's head, then go back to the car to spring Ranger back to the dog park and load up.

We eat lunch in the car on the way home. Yesterday, that was veggies sandwiches made with veggies of choice and hummus with baby carrots and sugar snap peas with more hummus to dip them in. It hasn't always been so healthy, but I'm wanting to be better about my eating. In fact, there may be another post about that today.

Riding the lift.

We all have fun, expect, we suspect for Ranger, who, while she enjoys the brief dog park frolics, wonders why the heck we spend all that time driving up to the mountain and then don't even take her for a hike.

More Gaming

2012-01-12T13:09:00.000-08:00

Davan and I are limiting ourselves to no more than one episode (45 minutes roughly) of show watching a day during the day. Between that and evening watching with Anthony, it's still probably too much most days, but we're not having any more days that are spent vegging out all day and that's an improvement right now.

It's odd, but again, I feel the need to justify. We do a lot of other things, as well - walking/running the dog, reading, shopping, math for Davan, chores and Davan does a lot of classes. Even with all that, it's amazing how much time we can find for TV. But, as I said, we're trying to limit it.

Right now, we're working our way through the second season of Dollhouse. Some episodes are a little much for Davan, but she's interested enough that she just hides her face when things get too hairy.

Anyway, we're having a lay low sort of day today, as we're both feeling a little blah, we've had a couple of busy days this week and Davan has 5 hours worth of physically taxing classes this evening, so this morning, we played a game over breakfast again.

This morning, we got out Careers. We went through a big time Careers phase last winter, starting one day when we played in front of a lovely fire on a cold day pretty much all day. After a couple months of fairly intense play, it started loosing it's shine a bit. However, we still enjoy it from time to time and today was one of those days.

Although, after I snatched the win out from under Davan in our first game, she both wanted a chance at revenge and was a little sulky. She'd been so, so close.

We went for another round. Sadly, I won by the skin of my teeth again.

Davan didn't sulk at all this time. She'd like you all to know that. It doesn't mean it's not true. She was a good sport.

We play a variation that we enjoy quite a bit more than the original. We each run two pawns, whom we name. We used to play that they were partners from the beginning, but we've lately come up with a new rule in which they play their own separate games until they meet (land on the same spot), after which time they combine money and resources (opportunities and experience). Pretty much they get married. They each still have to fulfill their own success formula, have their own careers and make their own salaries. We choose each time which person we're taking the turn for before we roll (rather than just going back and forth).

We long ago ran out of the formula sheets that come with the game, so we create our own on scrap each time we play.

We also like to vary the total for the success formula, depending on how long a game we want to play. Lately, we've only done the rule-stated 60, but in the past, we've gone up to 120 for each of our characters.

Our characters, of course, have personalities and such, which adds to the fun of it. It makes it a combination of game playing and imaginative play of the sort that Davan doesn't really do anymore, but did constantly up until a couple of years ago (maybe less). Now her creativity comes out more in writing and creating shows. And, it turns out, playing Careers.

Running

2012-01-12T09:12:00.000-08:00

Ranger and I went for a run this morning.

This wouldn't be unusual, except that I took a little over a week off of running and am now starting a new training program. This program, sort of cobbled together from a couple of different sources, but mostly following, on my own schedule, the plan from this book.

When I was doing some research into a plan, I realized that everything I was reading was telling me I was running too much. I have an easier time feeling like I'm making progress when I'm pushing myself, but I'm going to try giving one of these plans a try.

That meant that, today, at least, I did an easy 20 minute run.

Ranger is a little worried about this.

Worry not, Ranger, we'll start increasing again. Meanwhile, I did walk a little extra with her this morning, but it's cold and windy and running wear is not meant for casual strolling is this sort of weather, so it wasn't too long. Still, Ranger, I promise we'll get you some exercise. Even if it means you have to run with Dad.

(Okay, that last bit is an inside joke in our family. Anthony doesn't take Ranger running usually because Ranger doesn't keep up with him well. It's a sad, sad thing. Ranger is always running ahead of me, except when it's time to pee or sniff or bark at a dog, but she can't seem to keep up with Anthony. What does that tell you about our respective running speeds? Sigh.)

Anthony's New Toy

2012-01-11T20:43:00.000-08:00

Remember my new toy? It was an early Christmas gift, as you may recall.

Well, this weekend, Anthony went out and bought his own new toy.

His new toy? The water bottle cages were more than my new toy. Does this seem fair? I think not. I am lobbying for better toys. Okay, not really. I don't want more stuff. I would like more vacations, though, maybe. Or, you know, maybe being able to afford boarding school for the kid.

To be fair, Anthony used money he got when he sold his motorcycle when we moved. It was his earmarked money to spend. And he seems really happy.

And. Well. I did get to go to China this past spring, so what can I say, really?

I'm glad he has his heart's desire. I sure hope his heart doesn't start desiring again too soon, though.

Just for kicks, I'll share another photo that landed in the "new bike" folder somehow.

Journey Through Europe

2012-01-10T10:08:00.000-08:00

No, sadly, we aren't planning our next big vacation. In fact, with the possibility of boarding school tuition/room and board/fees/ect, I don't know that we'll ever take a vacation again. Okay, we probably will. It just feels overwhelming right now. It'll all work out. Right?

Anyway, back to Journey Through Europe. It's a game. We got it a while back at Goodwill, but it somehow just sat for a fairly long time. I got it out for the three of us to play once and it, while I enjoyed it, I thought that Davan really didn't, so I didn't suggest it again for a while. Still, when we moved, we brought it. After all, I'd liked it and we'd only played it once.

Recently, I asked Davan if we should just move the game on, as we hadn't been playing it. No, she said, she'd liked it. So, we took it out and started playing it again recently (maybe a couple months ago). We've been playing it fairly regularly ever since. We even took it to Colorado with us and introduced Oma to the game.

Here's the thing about this game - most of it is setting up. You have a board with a map of Europe on it. You get a home city plus eight more city cards. You plan a route that passes through all those cities and then goes back to your home city. Some cities are special and there are instructions for those. You definitely want to plan for those bumps or pushes along the way.

Once your route it planned, a lot of it is luck - how well you role, mostly.

We played this morning over breakfast. This is Davan doing actual route planning, not posing, even though it looks like I set this up.

We enjoy the game because of it's armchair travel aspect. Davan really wants to travel and enjoys dreaming about it. It's also fun to talk about where we've actually been. In the rule book, there are short blurbs about some of the cities, as well, and sometimes Davan likes to play where she reads about each city that she passes through, if there is an available blurb. So, one could say that there is a lot of educational value here.

I enjoy the strategy of route planning combined with the luck of the role and the luck of the draw (sometimes the cities are seriously difficult to get to, other times, not so much). I'm all about the combination of luck and strategy when it comes to games. All one or all the other is usually not very interesting to me.

Licorice enjoyed the box lid, but couldn't be bothered to actually look at us or anything.

Anyway, if you come across the game at Goodwill or a garage sale or what-have-you, it's well worth picking up. That said, even though we enjoy it, I'm not sure I'd pay full price. Of course, it's rare that I think full price is worth paying on games, so you could take that with a grain of salt.

Anthony's Project

2012-01-09T12:19:00.000-08:00

There's still a bit left do do on the project that Anthony's been working on and that's been cluttering up our house for a couple weeks, but it's near completion, it's not causing clutter anymore (much) and it's usable, so I'll show you what it is.

It's a pull up bar! But, wait! There's more!

Anthony created a system where the bar can be set at different heights so it can be used for more than just pull ups.

To show you some of it's versatility, here's a short video.

I'm sure that Davan will explore all of it's levels in great detail eventually and we'll have more to share. Right now, though, she's dedicated herself to doing a pull up and a pike up every time she passes underneath. (With the exception of when she's carrying Lovely who is here with us today after a break for the holidays. We sure missed her.)

Not Your Ordinary Dinner

2012-01-07T19:14:00.000-08:00

Davan made dinner tonight. She's been asking to do so all week, but it hasn't worked out until tonight between classes of hers and skiing (after which we ate out) until tonight. It wasn't an every day sort of dinner, though. We did not sit at the table and eat. Nor did we eat in front of the TV (which we, of course, never, ever do). No, we ate in nearly every room of the house in a nearly three hour event that Davan called

The Amazing ~~Race~~ Dinner!

We started with a clue box.

This clue box contained 5 clues to be done in order.

We (Anthony and I) took turns opening the clue box, finding the clue and reading the clue, which lead us along a trail of clues to a particular destination and course of the meal.

We first ate apples in the closet while telling about our best and worst parts of today.

Next, our clues lead us to the kitchen, were we ate broccoli.

Or maybe sucked a little blood. We played the game where we each add to a monster, without knowing what the others have drawn.

As we hunted around for clues, Ranger tried to help.

Really, though, she just wanted in on the food action.

We ended up in the master bedroom, playing Sleeping Queens and eating polenta fries, but I seem to have missed a picture of that course.

Next up was the couch, where we ate chips and salsa while watching a video Davan made.

We really enjoyed it, so we watched it twice.

Lastly, we wound up in Davan's room for dessert and a couple of rounds of Munchkin, both of which Davan won. Sigh.

We ate pretzels dipped in a chocolate peanut butter sauce while Ranger watched mournfully from the bed.

After a while, though, she got tired of maintaining constant vigilance.

Remember Anthony's Munchkin partner?

Oh, and I was thrilled to pull on the Knee pads of Allure...until that treacherous Davan stole them from me. Grrr.

New Game Fun

2012-01-06T19:58:00.000-08:00

We got a new game for Christmas from my SIL. In the past, not all of her gifts have been hits, I have to say. Last year's present of a large make up kit for Davan was actually an improvement over the (I kid you not) Winnie the Pooh outfit of the year before (yeah, Davan was a 12 year old tom boy at the time).

This year, though, all is forgiven (well, mostly) with this gift.

The game is called Munchkin and we've played it several times an evening most evenings this week.

And most of the times we've played, Licorice has been laying with Anthony just like here.

Ranger has wanted to be in the middle of things, but we've managed to keep her mostly over by Davan and I to keep her and Licorice separated for peace.

I finally won for the first time tonight. And, apparently, got things flowing because I won twice!

If you're a Dungeons and Dragons gamer, you'll probably enjoy Munchkin. We were in a D&D group years ago, but kind of drifted apart with that group. When we moved, we decided to sell off our D&D stuff. This is a fun little way to sort of kind of play again.

Even though we've played a good dozen times already, we're still running into cards and situations we haven't seen before. Tonight, for example, Davan drew the "Kneepads of Allure," which we'd never before seen, but then I got them in the next game and Anthony in the third. By the way, they are a good thing to have. I suggest you put them on.

That's It - I Draw the Line - It's Just Too Hard

2012-01-05T16:34:00.000-08:00

I've decided Davan can't move away to Montreal. Sure, the fact that my heart breaks every time I really think about it is a good reason for this, but that's not why. No, indeed.

The reason? It took me a good 5 hours of research and leg work plus a grand total of $85 to figure out a way to pay the $50 CND application fee.

They insisted that it be in Canadian dollars, so I couldn't do a money order from the post office. They will make money orders for some other countries and Canada is one of them, but only in American dollars, so that was a no go.

I did a bunch of research on line, discovering that most banks won't do checks for Canadian dollars, but when I went to our local branch, I found out that Bank of America will do Canadian registered checks. For a paltry $35 and a few days wait. Okay, that was an option, but not my top choice.

The school said they'd accept wires, so I did some looking into that. I almost went with Western Union, but then discovered that my credit union, On Point, does them. So, I went in to a branch. And waited for someone to help me. For a while. Waiting. I eventually got called to a desk. Yay - progress. (And, really, it wasn't that long, but there was no one in front of me or being helped, making the wait seem long.)

Then, things went awry. There was a certain number I needed that wasn't provided to me. I had no way to produce said number. The On Point employee was actually very helpful. We went online and found the bank we were transferring money to. We couldn't find the number on their web site. We called them. They gave us the number for the wrong branch. We figured that out. Turns out, I did have the number, but it was called something else. This whole process? Took about an hour. It was crazy.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I discovered that this adventure was going to cost me a $25 fee. Okay, then. I was already paying an extra $10 for the "convenience" of doing a wire transfer rather than a registered check or money order. Great.

When I asked for proof of the transaction, there was another scramble. This was required by the school, but there isn't really such a piece of paper. I ended up with a copy of the wire transfer authorization (gee, I sure hope they don't submit it again and again and again) and a phone call giving me a conformation number, which I've written across the bottom of my wire transfer authorization.

I'm now left with the sincerer hope that the National Circus School is satisfied with all of that.

Oh, and the kicker? I was further exploring my credit union's web site while waiting to see if the money posted (there was some doubt still about our numbers), when I came across their fee page. For a $15 fee, I could have gotten a check in Canadian dollars. Now, I guess I'm not totally clear if that would have qualified as a "registered check, money order or bank draft", but I'm thinking it would have been a bank draft. That would have been cheaper and actually what they were looking for. Sigh.

So, that's it. She can't go. I can't handle the pressure of paying. Not the money part (although that will be ugly), but the actual mechanics of it. It's all too much.

That's a good reason for dashing all her dreams, right?

Excitement

2012-01-05T10:19:00.000-08:00

Davan was very excited with a particular lucky find at the library yesterday. She is an avid Peas and Thank You blog follower and couldn't have been more pleased when she found the recipe book sitting right there at lucky find.

And, it turns out, it was my lucky day, too, because I came home from walking the dog this morning to find her in the kitchen, rummaging around. Now, Davan does cook here and there. She sometimes gets quite into it. Other times not so much. Almost never does she make breakfast. Today, though, it was a different story.

We had Chocolate Almond Cherry Smoothies. Davan gripped good naturedly at me for taking her picture with bed head, but this is keeping it real, folks.

The smoothies were tasty and I was pleased not to make breakfast this morning when I'm both feeling a little under the weather and have a lot on my to do list. (Anyone know how to get a money order, registered cheque or bank draft in Canadian dollars?)

Bummer

2012-01-03T20:45:00.000-08:00

I just discovered that, somehow, the version of the 2011 in review video I uploaded to You Tube was not the version I'd meant to. I made some improvements over that one and thought I'd used the improved one when I split it, but no such luck. It's mostly the same video, so I debated if I'd bother to split and upload the improved version, but I will be doing so.

The post where I embedded the videos is now updated. If you really want to sit through it again, feel free. :) If you didn't see that post until after the 3rd of January, then you never saw the inferior product to begin with. :)

Just for Mom

2012-01-03T14:52:00.000-08:00

Okay, Mom, I've changed the picture for you. Enjoy the mustache free Anthony.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

Our New Year weekend was filled with celebrations for the New Year, working on my video project, working on Anthony's current project and cleaning the condo. It's been a good few days. We'll be sad to see Anthony go back to work tomorrow. We've gotten used to him being home with us.

On New Year's Eve, we went skiing. We arrived around 6:30 pm, having needed to chain up, bringing back memories of four years ago when we went up to ski on New Year's Eve and ended up with two flat tires. That was an adventure.

This New Year's was much smoother.

We enjoyed some fresh snow...at least until it turned to fresh falling ice.

Davan got her ski legs back. She'd had some challenging ski days with ice and other unpleasant conditions, but the lovely snow on Saturday helped her to make a leap back to close to where she was before our long ski break.

We skied about 3 1/2 hours, then, at 10:15, there were fireworks.

It was a pleasant display and a very nice way to ring in the New Year. Then, though, we faced the drive home. It took a while as we had to leave the chains on for a good 15 miles. We ended up driving through Sandy, about a half hour from home as midnight struck.

We were so tired when we got home and, thus, is was a particular disappointment to find that Ranger had decided to help herself to two bricks of peppermint chocolate soy milk, spraying the floor and rug in the process and causing herself to need to pee so badly that she went ahead and did so inside. Sigh. I should have gotten a picture, but we were so whipped, we just did a basic cleaning job and went to bed. And now we have one more container that we know isn't safe to leave on top of the fridge.

We needed to get our beauty sleep, as we had to be up and at 'em by 8:30 to go to our next New Year's event - the Resolution Run.

We ran the 5K distance all together. Davan decided she wants to train more before our next run, as she was pushing it some to make our 31:30 time. I thought that was pretty good, considering she's not a big runner and when I raced a 5K (in other words, ran as fast as I could) back in October, I was only two minutes faster.

Then it was home for showers, more work on my video and food prep for our third New Year's activity. I'd wanted to get the video done before we went so I could take a disk to my MIL, but that didn't happen. I had to just leave it for later and off we went.

We had dinner at my MIL's with my SIL and her family and an aunt of Anthony's. It's part of the group we usually do Christmas Eve dinner with, but which we missed this year due to being in Colorado. We had dinner, visited and opened presents.

Davan and her cousins had an impromptu dance party while dinner was being cleaned up.

I've been overwhelmed by the mess that has been our condo pretty much since we came home from Colorado. Between bringing new stuff into the house, a project of Anthony's

and the general feeling of being on vacation, causing us to not do much housework, things were getting pretty dire. So, this morning, I had everyone pick four songs (plus a bonus one which was meant a dance break when it came on) and put everyone to work.

We had to each pick two more songs (plus another dance break song) before we were done. Now, though, I feel so, so much better and it took less than an hour and a half.

Happy New Year to you all!

A Little Something

2012-01-02T12:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's actually a lot of something. I've been working on this project this weekend. I made a video of the highlights of our 2011. It's long. Some of it you've seen before, if you are a regular here. It's definitely amateur. We enjoyed it, but it is all about us. :) So, if you've got a spare 25 minutes, pop yourself some popcorn and enjoy parts 1 and 2.

New Stuff

2011-12-30T22:06:00.000-08:00

In events that had little to nothing to do with Christmas, a couple of people (if you consider Ranger people), had new things come into their life today.

Our birthday present to Davan was a new bed. Here was her old one:

It would appear that there is nothing particularly wrong with it. Davan wasn't interested in a larger bed. Although we did offer her a double bed, she declined, not wanting to take up that much space in her room with something as boring as a bed. Davan likes the drawers under the bed. Due to them, she doesn't actually have a dresser in her room, which would also take up valuable space better suited to swinging and the like. She had the most comfortable mattress in the house. That was due to, years ago, us shopping around for a mattress for her first single bed, which we spent a good couple of weeks doing, but then, sadly, when we were looking at a top of the line mattress, we just shrugged, said, "What the heck," and bought it.

So, why get her a new bed?

This bed, which you obviously don't pick up in the picture, stinks. We're talking some serious funk here.

At some point, either Davan, who occupied this bed years ago, then moved to her loft bed for a while, or an exchange student, a couple of whom occupied this bed during the time that Davan was in her loft bed, dropped food down the side of the bed that was up against the wall and then did nothing clean up said food.

When we were in our previous house, we'd noticed that the back room, where this bed resided, was pretty musty smelling and we worked on fixing that situation. We aired, Febrezed, used pre-vacuuming powder on the carpet, pulled the bed out to see if there was anything lingering under it...and some things seemed to help, but the musty smell would always come back.

Well, when we were getting ready to move, we took the bed apart and discovered the large patch of mold. I scrubbed it, bleached it, put it out in the sun for days...and we hoped that would take care of it. It was the perfect bed for Davan here with the drawers and all.

However, it was not long after moving that we realized that the problem was not solved. At first, we thought it was just the condo that had been closed up so long that smelled a little off. When the weather changed and Davan didn't have her window open very often, it seemed to get worse. Eventually, I had to face the fact that her bed still had issues.

I put an air freshener under her bed. That just layered a chemically cinnamon smell over the top of the musty-nes. I aired out when she was out of the house. The smell lingered.

Recently, I realized that the smell was the worst up by the head of her bed, even though the part of the frame that had taken the brunt of the rotting food was at the foot of her bed.

I'd been worrying for a while that this wasn't healthy for her. We'd been going to go small on her birthday this year, considering the trips up to Vancouver we're doing this winter not to mention the negative flow of money that tuition for boarding school next year may bring. But, I decided that a new bed was in order.

Davan was excited, even though it's a fairly practical gift. She had a bit of a hard time deciding. We'd gone to look at options prior to the Colorado trip, but she still wasn't sure. Yesterday, though, we went up to IKEA and she chose. She chose such a simple (and inexpensive bed) that we threw in new bedding and a bedside table (also quite inexpensive) as part of the deal. I posted the old bed on Freecycle (we didn't feel right selling it, even if we could have gotten away with it).

This morning, the old bed was picked up, we threw open all of the windows during a break in the rain, and Davan and Anthony got to work assembling her new bed. (I did other housework and left them to it.)

We were all pleased with the results.

Ranger, who was more than a little concerned about her bed leaving, was happy to be invited up on the new one.

We're all happy with the lack of unpleasant odor.

That wasn't the only new thing for Ranger today, though!

Isn't she sweet in her new collar? (Thanks, Mom.)

And, while Licorice has had nothing new today, here's a picture of her just 'cause she's been complaining that she gets no play on the blog.

She was dozing on the arm of the chair, but had her paw out on the side table to keep herself in balance, I guess.

Sleep tight tonight, Davan. Enjoy the mold-free environment. (Aren't we just great parents?)

So Many Roadblocks

2011-12-30T15:02:00.000-08:00

As nice as our visit in Colorado was, we nearly didn't make it out the door to get there. We left on Davan's actual birthday - Friday the 16th, which was because she actually wanted to be traveling on her birthday. She likes road trips. Turns out, she didn't like road tripping so much that day...but we'll get to that.

Things were going fine up until midday on Thursday. I wasn't packed yet, but we'd bought all of our travel food as well as gifts I was giving and laundry was done. I still needed to make copies of keys for pet sitters, pack, wrap my gifts and finish up ripping CDs to load up the MP3 player.

Davan and went out to get the keys made at the kiosk in our nearby Fred Meyer's. We came home to find that a) the keys didn't work and b) Ranger had gone through the stocking Davan had put together, eating all the food therein, which included a large dark chocolate bar.

At first, Davan was mightily angry at Ranger, but, after I asked her about any chocolate that might she might have eaten, called the vet and was told to take her in right away, Davan got really upset about having endangered her. I think she'll be a lot more careful about it in the future.

I took Ranger right over to the vet where she was scheduled to stay for a few hours. They gave her an injection to make her throw up and then gave her some very expensive charcoal to sop up any chocolate she didn't throw up. They also have her IV meds to make her pee a lot, as the caffeine, which is, apparently, what's dangerous to dogs in chocolate, will be reabsorbed if it sits too long in the bladder. She was supposed to come home at 2pm.

I got on with my to-do list. Davan went out to replace her eaten treats and then got on with her to-do list. I was out working on the key issue again at 1:30, when I got the call that Ranger was still getting sick to her stomach and they wanted to keep her until 7pm. Bummer.

We kept going, with the strong hope we'd still make it out the next day. At 4pm, the vet called again, saying that Ranger was still not keeping fluids down, even though she was very thirsty and wanted very much to drink, but she was also pretty upset unless someone was sitting with her petting her, so they wanted to send her home. Davan and I went to get her.

Saying she was thirsty was an understatement. Ranger wasn't even very excited about seeing us, she wanted out the door and to find puddles to drink. I paid the bill to the tune of $325 (yikes!) and we headed home, nearly constantly pulling Ranger away from standing water.

Thus began a long and difficult evening. Ranger, indeed, wasn't keeping anything down. Even tiny amounts of water was too much. And, when she did throw up, it was black from the charcoal. She mostly did her throwing up on the wood floor, but we'll have a spot in our room to remind us of that lovely evening for all time. It's pretty faded, as I scrubbed at it, but it's still there.

Anthony and Davan went to see the Zoo Lights, as they'd planned for months, so I was left home alone with the dog, which was mostly rounds of taking her out to pee (once I didn't take her out for 40 minutes, but she peed on the floor, so 30 minutes was pretty much the max time inside), which consisted of walking her until she dropped her load while pulling upward on the leash to prevent her from licking the ground, even when it was just wet without a puddle, in her extreme thirst and cleaning up her puke. And, the one time, pee. Fun, fun, fun.

We were supposed to walk over to Peacock Lane after Anthony and Davan got home from Zoo Lights, but I was just not up for it - not so much the walk, as it's close, but dealing with crowds. And I still needed to pack.

Ranger finally started laying down for periods of time around 8pm. She'd been pacing and whining up until then. We all finished out packing. Anthony decided to camp out in the living room with Ranger, rather than having her sleep on Davan's bed or in our room with the carpet.

We all went to bed around 10, still planning on leaving in the morning, but also knowing we might have to put it off if Ranger were still puking and/or if we didn't get enough sleep to drive on.

I woke up around midnight to the sound of someone tossing their cookies in the bathroom. It was Anthony. He'd been awake with stomach pain and nausea since we'd settled down and it culminated in him puking. Who knew Ranger was contagious? (Just kidding, of course.) Ranger, meanwhile, had settled right down and was still sleeping.

I offered to switch with Anthony, but he said I should go ahead and sleep. I did. Mostly. I woke up at 6am and came out to the living room to find out what was what. Was Anthony up to traveling? I was pretty sure Ranger had slept all night, being a seriously light sleeper and not having heard her go out.

Anthony had thrown up that once and then gotten some sleep. He was okay with going ahead and driving. I gave Ranger a little food and water, then took her out to walk and to pick up bagels for our driving breakfast. Luckily, she seemed totally recovered.

Back at home, Anthony and Davan loaded up the van, including a drop cloth on the floor by Ranger's seat just in case.

We loaded up and off we went.

Davan was clutching the box of bagels. She was very excited about the bagels, as they were to be our first in three months. The gluten free trial was a bust. We had no improvement in the areas we'd hoped it would help with. This was our first day of eating gluten once again.

Ranger was pouting. Not really - just looking out the window. As you can see, it was still dark at 7:40 when we pulled out.

But we didn't get far. The fully loaded MP3 player, with a playlist of Christmas books and Christmas songs personally designed by Davan and I to last all the way to Colorado plus several alternative books in case the Christmas books didn't pan out and for the trip back home and some general music...didn't work. The player said there were no playable songs. No playable playlists. We were less than a mile from home. We turned back.

Turns out that I'd overloaded it and it had no free memory to actually play anything. It took awhile with the computer having been totally shut down and Windows Media Player not able to handle the situation (I had to just use Explorer to remove a couple of orphan folders and then all was well - but it wasn't the first thing I tried). Then we left again.

By then - 8:15, it was light and we were really on our way.

I did most of the driving, as Anthony was in pretty bad shape. He wasn't able to eat much all day and was pretty much looking like he'd been run over with a truck by afternoon, but he was a trooper and we did our usual long first day.

Davan also ended up being sick, but not to her stomach. She sat in the back, blowing her nose all day and feeling fairly miserable. At least she was able to partake in the birthday bagels and Newman's O's.

Ranger? Ranger was just fine.

We stopped at a Motel 6 just inside Wyoming, where we'd stayed once before and had found it to be adequate, if not, you know, nice. But that night? Well, that night was pretty miserable. They were pretty full and we discovered that not only did our upstairs neighbors sound like a herd of elephants every time they so much as shifted, but our next door neighbors, who checked in at 11pm and spent about 45 minutes getting settled in, sounded like they were standing by our bedsides having their conversation, rather than being in the next room. We didn't get much sleep - particularly Davan and I. Anthony got more, but mostly because he was so tired from being sick and being up puking the night before, I believe.

Even with all that, Anthony felt much better the next day. This was good, because I was wiped out by sleep deprivation. Davan was, too. I drove some, but Anthony drove most of that day.

We were even more glad than usual to arrive in Colorado Springs at my parents' house in the mid afternoon. It was not our best road trip ever. Nor was it Davan's best actual birthday by any stretch of the imagination.

Oh and, our Christmas books? They ranged from mediocre to terrible (in which case, we did do some skipping of books), so they didn't help to pass the time as well as one might have hoped. We might have been better off just switching to a non-Christmas book, but we kept trying and, besides, we did want to hear our Christmas songs, interspersed with the books. If I had it to do over, I'd have probably set the playlists up differently...At any rate, I really don't recommend anything by Mary Higgins Clark. Sorry to the fans out there.

However, we had made the trip. Things looked up a lot after that. :)

Home Again, Home Again

2011-12-29T09:21:00.000-08:00

We are home from our Colorado trip. A good time was had by all. I'll talk more about the trip later, but for now, I'll share with you a video Davan made. She made it on her own as a Christmas gift for the rest of us.

My New Toy

2011-12-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

Call it an early Christmas present, if you will.

In my family this year, we're each filling a stocking for one other person. This will the the main event present-wise. We're going to Colorado to spend Christmas with my parents, so the five of us drew names. That's quite a feat as we're a fair distance apart, no? Even further apart if you consider that they've been in Cayman Brac for the last couple of weeks. I cleverly did a search for an online name drawing program and, voila: DrawNames.com.

So, we each have one other person and it's all a secret. Davan got a budget to spend, plus any personal money she wants to add. Everyone has to figure out the actual stocking for their person, too. We're having fun with it. I know I'm enjoying just focusing on one person. It makes me feel more generous toward that one person, rather than figuring out things for everyone.

The rule also, though, is that if you find something for a person other than the person you've drawn and just need to get it for them, you may. So, we'll probably have a few non stocking presents to open, as well.

Anyway, the point of this is that, on Saturday, the three of us went shopping. We were going out to my MIL's house for afternoon coffee for her birthday and headed out to Gresham early to hit a strip mall. (Yeah, I know - horrors and all that.) We split up and each did the shopping we needed to do.

Anthony came back to the group saying that he came across something that interested him for me, but he didn't want to just get it for a present because he wasn't sure of sizing. After a little hemming and hawing, he told me what it was. I was interested. In fact, I've been interested in this item for a few years now.

So, we went back to that store and walked away with a purchase.

Vibram Five Finger shoes! I've been wanting to try them for years, but, well, had a hard time justifying the cost. However, now I'm running a lot and these were on clearance for about 40% off. It was a bit of a risk because maybe I wouldn't like them, but if I did, well, then they'd save some wear on my main pair of shoes, which is a good thing. And they're supposed to be good for you.

So, this morning, I slipped my toes into these bad babies and went for a run. I did this in spite of the fact that I was pretty much down for the day with a bit of the stomach flu yesterday and in spite of the fact that it was a whopping 31 degrees out. Why? Mostly because I was so excited to try them!

Also, though, I was doing a short run this morning. I let myself sleep in due to the whole sick yesterday thing and woke up feeling better, but not great. And Lovely was due to come in a little over a half an hour. So, I knew I was only going out for a half an hour or so and one should start slow with the whole minimalist running shoe thing.

I was expecting that I'd be slower. I was expecting that my feet would be cold - after all, they're minimal and I don't have five finger socks. Other than that, I wasn't sure what to expect.

I liked them! I wouldn't run every run in them or so super far yet, but I liked them for two miles. I wasn't slower at all and my feet weren't cold.

I did find that I really didn't want to run on the sidewalk. I'm more of a street runner anyway, but I can run on the sidewalk fine usually. Not today, though - today I really didn't like the sidewalk at all.

I also found I noticed some sensitive areas - a spot on my right ankle that bothers me sometimes, for example. I felt it today, but more in a working it way than in a hurt way. It was odd, but not bad.

After the run, I'm feeling my calves a lot! It was a good workout for them.

All-in-all, I do like them. I'll probably only do one or two runs a week in them at first, at least, though. I think they're good for strengthening and stride work. I'll want to do more distance than would be prudent due to the muscle work.

Okay, off to see how this stomach of mine reacts to breakfast.

Running

2011-12-10T08:41:00.001-08:00

I've been running regularly and (mostly) with a plan for improvement for about three months now, I believe. Prior to that, I ran about, oh, maybe 6 - 8 miles a week. Now, after doing my 10K, I'm taking a break from my training plan, but still running and averaging about 20 miles a week or so. The plan from here is to just run as I can/want to through December, then start a half marathon training program in January. I'll be doing a half marathon in early May.

This is all fine and good. I'm slow still. In fact, after watching Hood to Coast last night, I was poking around, looking at their web site and discovered that I'm really too slow to run the Hood to Coast unless I have much stronger people on my team. You, as a team, have to be able to average 9:45 miles. Now, I could probably do that for 2, possibly 3, miles, but not for three legs of 4-7 miles each. Not that I was really thinking I could do the Hood to Coast anyway. I have this little fantasy that someone would ask me to join their team because I know it's about 50/50 to get your own team in on the lottery system and I'm not all that excited about captaining a team anyway. However, now that I know how fast people are supposed to be, who'd want me on their team even if they were desperate?

Any-who, that was a little digression here.

The point is that I'm still slow, but I'm relatively happy with my running (Hood to Coast dreams aside). My mileage is certainly improving. I actually have two running speeds now - working hard and working really hard. Okay, maybe three, actually, I also have killing myself, which is an all out sprint. However, it used to be that I only had one speed and that was working really hard while barely moving faster than a walk. So, this is an improvement.

Anthony took up running right about that same 3 months ago, maybe a later. He spent a whole month or so walking half the time. He's never gone out for longer than a half an hour.

This morning, we each went for a run. I did 3.88 miles according to my GPS. I was out (minus a bathroom break at Freddie's) for 43 minutes. Anthony did about 3.8 (he doesn't have a running GPS, so that's from Map my Run) and he was out for 34 minutes.

The plan is for both of us to do the Portland Marathon in October 2012. Guess who will log more running hours with more intensive and specific training. Guess who will finish first by a long shot. If you picked different names, then we're on the same page. It's kind of depressing.

Of course, it's only fair to mention that Anthony has a huge aerobic base compared to me. He's been doing centuries on his bike for something like 6 years now. Even on the days he doesn't work out, he rides into and home from work for about 40 minutes total riding. So, it's not like he's not doing anything and getting results.

Still, from past experience, even if that were the case - him doing much less than me period - he'd still be faster. Sigh.

Getting in the Spirit

2011-12-09T20:47:00.001-08:00

We decorated last night. There was a little bit of debate about if we were even going to, as we're not going to be here on Christmas. Oddly, it was Davan who said that she thought maybe we shouldn't decorate. As she has since pointed out, she was in a strange mood that day (DAP - Day After Party).

Last night, though, the time was right. We got out the decorations and went through them as we decorated.

We ended up with a pile of decorations that we opted not to keep. This was a little surprising to me, as we'd gone through them when we moved and narrowed down quite a bit - combining everything into one box, down from two.

Anthony hung lights.

We don't get Christmas trees anymore. A few years back, we didn't get one because we were going away for Christmas, but Davan still really wanted to decorate, so we came up with the solution of hanging lights and stringing the ornaments off of them. Davan said, "It's like being inside the tree!" and that's how we've done it ever since.

We kept more than enough to make things festive.

I won't bore you with close ups of every little thing.

Davan read by the light of the strands.

She's reading A Dog Named Christmas. Like I said, we're really getting in the spirit here.

It was decided that we should have peppermint hot chocolate (soy variety) while watching the Christmas Glee episode. At the last minute, I decided cookies were a necessary part of that festivity and whipped up some raw chocolate cookies.

It came to our attention during Glee that Davan, while we know she has watched The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, didn't actually remember it. So, I found it on You Tube and we watched that, too.

Yup. All Christmas-y around these parts. Guess I better get going on my secret Santa stocking.

Things Could Get Pretty Strange

2011-12-07T16:12:00.001-08:00

In the last couple of weeks, Davan has made a decision that could change our lives pretty drastically.

As you probably remember, she and I took a little trip up to Vancouver so she could attend the pre-selection tour for the National Circus School in Montreal. This was so she could try to attend their camp this summer, which is a two week program for 13-17 year olds. They also have a one week program for 9-13 year olds.

Any-who, as you probably also remember, she put together an audition packet for Circus Smirkus, which would have been a 10 week performance tour deal. She got the news that she was not invited to in person auditions on Thanksgiving. She is still applying to their advanced camp, which is a two week camp.

So, as of a couple of weeks ago, this is where we stood - waiting to hear about camp from the National Circus School, knowing she wouldn't be doing the 10 week troopers program at Circus Smirkus and thinking about a new audition video for the 2 week advanced camp at Circus Smirkus.

Then, she watched this video and this video. She burst into tears, hugged me and said, "Mom, I don't want to leave you, but that's where I really want to be!"

Davan had considered the high school a couple of years ago, but had recently decided that she didn't want to leave home. That was that. She just wasn't ready to move away. Those two short videos blew that all away. Mostly. Actually, she still doesn't want to leave, but she really does want to do this program.

So, we've started working on pulling together what she needs for her application. We decided that we'd:

A) Take things one step at a time. Right now that step is just getting her application stuff in. Next, it'll be the audition.

and

B) She'd apply even if she didn't get a recommendation from the pre-selection tour. One can, but one does not have overly good prospects of making it. However, seeing as how it's a $50 application fee (plus, of course, another trip to Vancouver), we decided the experience would be good and it would be worth a shot.

I've put together some homeschool transcripts (she's supposed to have official transcripts, but I'm winging it a bit) and she's taken a standardized test for 7th grade (she's in 8th now, but 7th is the last year completed) to back up my claims on her abilities.

Meanwhile, we got this email:

Dear Candidate,

We are pleased to inform you that your application caught our attention during the recent Pre-Selection tour. Following our preliminary assessment, the National Circus School would like to invite you to apply for acceptance to the Circus and High School Studies (CES) program. You could register to the official Entrance Exam, in Montreal, February 18, in Toronto, February 2 or in Vancouver, February 3, 2012. The candidate who has succeeded the first part of the test will be invited to continue with the Academic test that will be conducted in collaboration with your actual academic institution in March 2012.

There is more, but you don't need to read the whole thing. Davan was so excited to get this that she walked on air for days. The letter did go on to say that if she didn't want to go to the high school at this point, or her parents said no, that she was welcome to come to camp. As camp was all she was hoping for originally, this was pretty cool for her.

I was so pleased for her after the rejection from Circus Smirkus. Whew.

While we're taking this whole thing one step at a time; first application, then audition, then hearing if she's accepted, then deciding for sure if she'll go, we can't help but have lots of conversations that start with, "If you go away next year..."

It makes my heart hurt when I think of it too much. I don't want to hold her back and we'd make it work, but...it's such a huge change for us to go from homeschooling to boarding school - maybe.

What a ride.

Happy Birthday Davan (Sort Of)

2011-12-05T14:38:00.001-08:00

Davan had her birthday party this weekend. So, "Happy Birthday, Davan!" However, it was this weekend because we were being very flexible about her party date. Her actual birthday isn't until the 16th, but, considering how the last two birthday parties went, we wanted to stack the successful birthday party odds in her favor.

(Warning! This turned into a super long post, which wasn't what I had in mind when I started out, but there you go - a trip down memory lane, followed by a birthday party report. At least there are a lot of pictures.)

Some of Davan's past birthdays have been pretty darn good ones.

The first, or zero birthday, while maybe not good per say, was certainly memorable.

For her second and third birthdays, we had pancake breakfasts so as to avoid nap time. There were plenty of attendees.

At the third, all the young party goers got to decorate their own cupcakes.

Davan chose a kitty cat birthday for her 4th.

We'd moved by her 5th birthday and she wanted a fancy princess tea party.

For her 6th, she just wanted a day with all her special adult people. Anthony and my mom took the day off so that they, my step dad and I could all spend the day with Davan, doing pretty much whatever she wanted all day. That meant a lot of playing dolls with her.

The 7th birthday was celebrated at Chuck E Cheese with her two best friends of the time.

Yeah, they were both a lot older. But still amazingly young looking, no Ami?

For number 8, she had a big bash with nearly every local person we know in attendance, kids and parents alike. It was quite fun and we did it open house style. Sadly, I can't seem to find a single picture, although I know we took some. I do know that her present was a room remodel:

For 9th, she did a two party event. One was with her friends from Girl Scouts, involving lunch, presents and playing.

And the other was an afternoon at Safari Sam's with her best friend that year.

10 was Disneyland!

For her 11th, it was another 2 party sort of deal. One was with several of her homeschool friends. We went to see a school Do Jump show, then went back to our house for lunch and games. We didn't officially call this one a birthday party, but...it kind of was.

The main event that year, though, was a day with Anthony and I. We were supposed to take her to Safari Sams and actually play with her there, but it was a heavy snow day. We spent the day at home, instead. This involved an obstacle course.

Later, there was also a living room jungle gym sort of set up.

And, in between, several contests of various sorts.

Fun was had, even thought it was different fun from what had been planned.

Her 12th birthday ended up being quite fun, but it was a bitter disappointment at first. She invited her two best friends to go sledding for the day and then to come spend the night. One couldn't make it due to family plans. Then the snow was very poor that year and the sledding part got canceled. The other friend then had to cancel at the last minute due to illness. It ended up being another day with her dad and I and didn't involve sledding.

However, I guess I felt so badly for her, that we kind of went all out. We started off with another obstacle course.

It ended with her presents.

This was the one from her dad and I.

Then there was a picnic breakfast. As you can see, Davan adapted well to the new circumstances, even though she was pretty disappointed.

Then we left the house without the camera. We went swimming, out to lunch at Noodles and Co, to Safari Sam's for the afternoon and finished with dinner at the Paradox, which was her favorite restaurant at the time. We came back home for snow related crafts (because of the original plan) and dessert.

The next year, for 13, she went back and forth, but settled on just inviting her current best friend to have a private lesson at Do Jump, go out to dinner, to the Do Jump professional show, then home for a sleepover. It started off well.

But, sadly, Emma sustained a (turns out mild) shoulder injury during the Do Jump play part of the festivities. The more pressing issue turned out to be that Emma was sick. She went home, where she went to bed and slept the rest of the day. Davan was bummed. Emma did do a sleepover later and we did finish out the planned events with Davan that night.

So, this year, after two years of disappointing birthday parties, we were really wanting this one to happen. Davan decided on having four friends go to Safari Sams (yeah, she and her active friends still love the place), then come back for dinner and a sleepover. We sent out options for dates for scheduling purposes (December can be a challenging month for a birthday) and found the one that worked. One person still wasn't able to join in until evening. One person ended up leaving mid party for a soccer game, then returned. All-in-all, though, it went well. Everyone came for at least part and fun was had by all.

The festivities started out at 11am with the first person to be picked up, then, once all were in the car, they went off to Safari Sams. Anthony did the chauffeuring, as I stayed home to finish the cake and to be here for dinner prep. I sent the camera with him, but he came home empty handed in terms of pictures. Luckily, he wasn't empty handed in terms of kids, 'cause I'd have a lot of 'splaining to do if that were the case.

They settled in for a little game playing until our soccer player returned.

Then it was dinner time. We had veggie fajitas and Mexi nuggets (tator tots with seasoning).

Davan had a lot of plans for the evening, but not many of them happened, it seems. Each guest had brought, at Davan's request, a playlist of their 14 favorite songs and there was some listening, while also doing other things. There was a book exchange (rather than gifts for Davan). Mostly, though, they romped.

Our condo being on the second floor, they did a lot of romping in the basement, where they played flashlight sardines both Saturday night and Sunday morning.

After some sardines to work off dinner, we had cake. Davan had requested (and helped me make) a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting.

Even though it was dark and about 38 degrees out, they all tromped to our nearest park (about four blocks away) to play for an hour or so. I went over with the camera to see if I could get some pictures and found them doing this:

I couldn't believe they were warm enough in their hoodies (all except one) to just stand around, but was assured they'd been running around plenty.

They all did cartwheels across the field while I was there, but it was hard to get a picture of in the dark. I left them to it after only a brief visit.

Back home, they retreated to Davan's room for the book exchange and I don't know what else. Music listening, game playing, hanging from the ceiling? Probably all of the above.

Around 11pm, they trooped out to the living room to commander the TV. Anthony and I retreated to our room to read a little and try to sleep.

Once they popped themselves some popcorn and warmed up hot (soy) chocolate, they were relatively quiet and we did fall asleep while they watched a couple of episodes of Glee. One party goer might have been a little young for Glee, but I hope that anything she shouldn't get went over her head.

When they were laying out sleeping bags and taking turns in the bathroom, it was, sadly, a little loud again. From 1am - 1:45am, I lay there and listened to them. I told Anthony that for the first time since moving in, I wished we'd gotten a large place with a master suite at one end of the house and the kids' rooms at the other. I had a rough time falling back asleep and, then, sleeping soundly with the guests, even though they were all sleeping, so it was a pretty darn tired day for me on Sunday.

Anthony and I got up at 7:30 with Ranger. The kids didn't get up until 9.

After some morning trapeze swinging, with help from friends,

it was time to feed them all again.

Hashbrowns, pancakes, cuties and juice were on the menu. Anthony was our pancake man.

Ranger spent most meals doing this to various people:

Licorice wanted to just hide away. She's asking to get into our closet here.

When our last guest left around 1pm, I was glad the party was over, although it had been fun having all the kids around and seeing Davan have such a good time. I was tired, though, and really glad I didn't have to figure out feeding them all again. We did three meals in all - plus snacks. If they were all my kids, they'd just have to get used to what we eat, but we tried to make it special for Davan and food the others would like. It did go well, but I was glad not to need to do another meal.

Davan had a blast and was sorry to see everyone go. She was pretty tired, though, and it showed (although not really in a bad way) the rest of the day. We took it easy and she hit the hay early (as did we all!) and is recovered today.

I'm glad I don't have to worry about her birthday again for another year. :) Except, of course, that the actual day is still coming up and I'm sure we'll at least have to have some special foods...

More About Ranger

2011-12-03T19:46:00.001-08:00

As my mom pointed out, I never did follow up with what's been going on with Ranger lately.

Our adorable dog is a real sweetheart. In most ways. She does have her challenges. She had a year or so long struggle with separation anxiety after moving in with us, for example. The trim in our old house was much worse for the wear thanks to her. We had to replace several doorways when we put the house up for sale. At that point, we never left her home alone anymore, but the damage had been done.

While the house was on the market, we started to feel like Ranger was ready to stay home alone. Sometimes she would even seem to express her desire to just stay home, particularly when it was raining, for example.

After we moved, we started leaving her for a few minutes at a time pretty immediately upon moving in. This went well, and we continued, with her seemingly able to stay home alone for fairly long stretches, considering the separation anxiety - up to about three hours. Longer might have been possible, but we didn't want to push it too much. Of course, one school of thought is that the length of time probably doesn't make that much difference to her once we were gone, so perhaps it was for our own peace of mind.

And we still took her places when we could.

This has all been working out pretty well for us...until lately.

I'd been giving her treats to find when we left off and on. Lately, I guess it had turned into every time. At any rate, Ranger seemed triggered to go looking for food when we'd leave. We had a number of incidents of her eating food not meant for her, even if we just left for a few minutes, say to answer the door (we've still not been added to our remote entry system, so we have to go downstairs any time we need to let anyone in - sigh).

Coleslaw and poletna fries were early casualties. We figured she was getting up on the counter to get to these things, as they weren't pulled down to eat or anything. Then she got even more gutsy and got into the snack baskets on top of the fridge twice before I rearranged.

I was worried that when she couldn't get to these things anymore, she'd start opening cupboards or pull the trim down from the pantry door in an effort to get in there. Luckily for her (okay, us, really, we wouldn't really do anything to her), she hasn't done that. I'm toning down leaving snacks out for her every time we leave and this issue seems to be solved (other than not being able to leave anything eatable beyond fruit out in the open even if we're just leaving her for a minute).

What happened when we skied on my birthday, though, well, we're not really sure yet what that means. Our downstairs neighbors emailed us at 10am to say that Ranger had been crying and barking for the last couple of hours and they wanted to let us know in case something was wrong. I didn't see the email until after we left again for our run.

What's odd about this is that it was the first two hours we were gone. I'd have expected her to have issues after we were gone for a long time if she was going to have any issues. After all, she's been staying home alone for quite a while.

When we got home from skiing, there was a chair knocked down, making us suspect she'd been chasing the cat, and the couch had obviously been slept on, although she not normally allowed up there.

So, what happened that day? Is it usual for her to freak out, but our neighbors usually aren't home? They said they'd never heard her act like that before. Was it some sort of unusual activity between her and the cat? Licorice usually has power over her. Ranger is usually scared of her, but without us home to ensure she doesn't fight back, did she chase Licorice after a swat? Sometimes she does seem to just get interested in Licorice and whine at her. Was that what happened?

Licorice, just to point it out, weighs all of 4 pounds to Ranger's 60+, but still, she has the upper hand in the relationship usually. Ranger is quite cowed by her.

So, all of this has us wondering about leaving her home alone. We have left her in the last week and things seem to have been fine, but now we wonder. Is she home crying and we just don't know? It's a bit of a mystery. We're hoping it was just an anomaly and she's usually doing this:

'Cause we sure do love our little brown four footed family member.

More TV Confessions

2011-12-01T15:19:00.001-08:00

This is hard for me to admit to, being nearly TV free in the not too distant past, but we're still watching a lot of TV. I posted not too long ago that we'd been watching a lot, but that I felt our over watching days were drawing to an end. They didn't. TV still has it's grip on us.

Okay, let me rephrase. We don't watch any broadcast TV and we don't have cable. There are still a lot of ways to veg out in front of the tube, though, and we seem to be exploring many of those ways. DVDs from the library, DVDs from Netflix, streaming from Netflix (although we haven't actually done any streaming recently, we did seem to run out of things that were interesting to us there), watching TV shows online. Yup. We're doing lots of that.

Sadly, we don't even seem to be limiting it to our evening hours. Davan and I watched three episodes of Amazing Race yesterday and that was only because we'd caught up on this season of Survivor. (I must add in here that this isn't every single day - it was a particularly high viewing day.) These used to be must watch shows for us, but we'd let them go and didn't miss them too much...until we started watching again.

In the evenings, we're watching stuff together as a family. Wednesday nights are Glee nights. We're working on the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Last night, after Glee, of course, we watched The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. That got me thinking.

I'd been feeling like we'd been watching too much. We've all talked about it. Davan and I talked about it specifically yesterday afternoon. We'd felt that a lot of our previous interests were going by the wayside and that we needed to make room for them again by not watching so much TV. Davan actually asked a few weeks ago about having a TV free week. We didn't shoot her down - we all think we should be watching less - but it didn't happen, either.

Last night after watching the movie, I started feeling even more like we really need to free ourselves of this addiction. That is was it is - an addiction. I remember going through withdrawls for a long time when we gave up going to the movies when Davan was a baby. I know I'm now having a hard time even really thinking of other things to be doing and it's certainly not that I don't have other things to do. It may be partially bad luck or it may be that I'm getting used to the pace of TV again, but I'm having a hard time finding a good book at the moment.

So, okay, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold isn't about addition, though, so why did it make me think we need to get this whole boob-tub watching under control? It did remind me (I wasn't naive about advertising before) that every time we watch a show or most any movie, even if we are managing to stay away from commercials as such, we're being subjected to advertising.

The commercials that go along with Survivor are, for the most part, horribly annoying and repetitive. Davan has a particular loathing for the Jack in the Box commercial where Jack is talking to two really stupid people in a parking garage. I'm with her about it being annoying, but, you know what? I could kind of go for some fries.

I've gone from seeing a commercial about phones' Siri and saying, "Oh my god, now people are going to be really stupid," to, yesterday, after seeing a passing reference in a blog, looking it up and saying, "Hey, that looks like of cool." It took Anthony to remind me of my previous comment.

I don't actually think that TV watching is bad in and of itself. If you're watching together as a family and discussing what happens, it can be fun, interactive and help to create bonds. However, watching too much is, I think detrimental.

It's so much easier to watch TV than it is to read a book, go for a walk, play a game together - particularly when one is feeling stressed. It's sort of like a soothing drug. Davan and I have both felt a little (or maybe more than a little) stressed this week, thus our particularly intensive day of watching yesterday. (Although, again, I feel a need for a disclaimer here. Davan also worked on an art project - not in front of the TV, and did a two hour gymnastics class as well as an extra morning workout - which she says she will not do on the same day again, and read her book for a while. I went for a 5.5 mile run in the morning with Ranger and later took her for a walk, as well as going grocery shopping. We made dinner together.)

It's very conducive to eating, particularly snacking.

It gives you a false sense of community. We played Imagine If over the weekend, where you have to come up with 10 names of people you know, including the players to use as part of the game. We've always kind of struggled with people that all three of us know equally well - we know enough people, it's just that Davan knows her friends best and so on. Anthony doesn't feel he has a real good feel for her friend Emma's personality, for example, even though he's, of course, met her and even shared a few meals. Anyway, we filled out the board with our three names, my parents' names and Ranger and then hemmed and hawed. Then we had a stroke of genius. We cleared the board and filled them in with characters from Glee. It was fun, sure, but should we have a circle of real friends to draw from?

TV does introduce you to products that you wouldn't otherwise want or even think of. Really, without seeing it on TV, who'd go out searching for a certain brand of perfume or clothing or sunglasses? The statistic is that for every hour you spend watching TV, you'd spend $4 that you wouldn't otherwise spend. Sure, that's maybe not pocket breaking, but think of the three people in my family. If we all sit and watch a TV episode without the commercials and then an hour and 20 minute documentary, that's about two hours each of TV watching. That means a total of 6 hours for my household, or $24. Hmmm. Now we could have gone bowling. :)

TV lends itself to being sedentary. Now, in my family, we do combat that. Often, one or more of us is up, stretching, doing strength work or maybe riding the stationary bike. (In fact, I think that spending time on the internet is even more of a sedentary activity for me and has many of the same pitfalls as TV, but that's not my post for today.)

Also, what it comes down to for me, is that the more I watch, the more I seem to want to watch. And it's not how I want to spend my life. So, the question is, limit my time or cut it out all together for a while and then see where I am? I'm not sure yet, to tell the truth. And, besides, we've got Big Trouble in Little China to watch this evening.

A Current Favorite Recipe

2011-11-30T19:42:00.001-08:00

This recipe is one I've adapted from one I received in a recipe tree about a decade ago. For many years, it sat, unused in my recipe folder. A few months ago, I came across it and decided it looked good. And it is.

The original name is greens over cornmeal mush, but I might go with something like African Greens over Polenta. Sounds fancier, no?

Here is the recipe as I've been making it.

Polenta

6 cups water

dash of Braggs

2 TBS nutritional yeast

2 cups polenta

Bring the water and Braggs to a boil in a large pot. Add the nutritional yeast, then the polenta in a stream as you stir. Turn the temp down to low and stir nearly constantly for about 10 minutes.

We usually end up with some leftover polenta, which we then put in a square tupperware and store in the fridge until we're ready for some polenta fries (cut it up unto slabs, season and bake).

African Greens

2 bunches kale or other green of your choice, destemed and ripped into pieces

1 onion, diced

5 cloves garlic, smashed

1 TBS curry powder
1 TBS Braggs
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
2-3 cups cooked garbanzo beans
1/4 cup peanut butter
2 tsp crushed red pepper

Saute the onion and garlic in a little water until the onion is limp - 4-5 mins. Add the curry powder and saute for another minute. Add the Braggs and tomatoes and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add the greens and cook, stirring frequently for about 10 minutes or until the greens have reached you desired level of done-ness. Add in the garbanzo beans and peanut butter, stir until integrated. Add crushed red pepper and mix well. You can taste and adjust seasonings at the point if you like.

We each dish up our own to get our own desired ratio of polenta to greens.

This is seriously yummy. In fact, I made it twice the week because we had a craving.

Last week, Davan and I made it for lunch and left out the garbanzo beans, but added diced mushrooms in the beginning. Anthony is not a mushroom fan, so we don't do that for dinner, but that was good, too.

What changed between when I first got this recipe and now? A lot, actually. We weren't vegans then and didn't actually eat much green beyond broccoli. So, mostly I'd say our tastes changed, changing the way I look at recipes. I don't know why it didn't jump out at me earlier, but I'm glad it did now.

(Mom - this might be a good one to do while we're there. We'll probably have to double it, though, as we eat most of this ourselves, usually!)

Happy Birthday to Me!

2011-11-26T19:51:00.001-08:00

Today is my 40th birthday and it was a very good day, overall. There was one exception that requires some thinking about, but, overall, a great day.

We got up this morning and, after I reminded Anthony that today was the day to make a birthday wish, he sung to me with a little help from Ranger. LOL

I took Ranger out for a skate to get her a lot of exercise in a short period of time because, after that, we had breakfast and then went up to Meadows for our first day of skiing this season. Actually, our first day of skiing in more than two years!

In some ways it was close to a dry run, as we needed to be back home by 3:30 at the latest to take Ranger out before our next function. We needed to get our snow park permit and our passes made.

The drive up was uneventful with no need for chains, which is always nice. The line for annual passes went much faster than I'd thought it would when we first saw it. And then we hit the slopes!

Anthony and I were confident that we'd be fine skiing, even with the extended break, but Davan was worried she wouldn't remember how. We started off on the bunny slope. Davan surprised herself by knowing just what to do. We moved onto one of the high speed quads. Who-hoo!

We did a lot of greens, but a couple of blues today. Davan is definitively an intermediate. She's a little tentative and her form isn't the greatest, but she did awesome for her first day back.

Just when it was nearly time to leave, friends of ours showed up and we managed to get in a couple of runs with them. That was perfect because Davan really wanted to ski with Emma and this gave them a chance to see if they'd be compatible without being stuck together all day. Emma is definitely more advanced, but now that they've gotten a chance to check each other out, I'm fine with either Emma coming up with us or Davan going up with them sometime.

The weather was great. My only complaint is a minor one and that was that it was really, really windy at the top of the lift we pretty much used exclusivity today.

Sadly, I have no pictures from skiing, as the camera got left in the car.

We headed back home around 1:30 and got home just in time for me to take Ranger for a walk before coming back home to change into my running clothes and head out the door.

Anthony, Davan and I did the Winter Wonderland Run this evening. The choices were 2, 4 or 6 miles and we opted for 2. We wanted to run it, rather than walk it and not to push anyone past what they could do. It was a good length for a family run.

The picture is from when we first got there. By the time we ran, a little over an half an hour later, it was getting pretty dark,

which was the point, as the run is done around the Portland International Raceway where there is a Christmas light display this time of year. Most people drive through. It was a lot more fun to run it. Walking it would have been fun, too.

The lights were fine - not spectacular, but nice. It was a good and festive venue for a family run.

Afterward, I decided I'd like to go out to eat and we headed to the Vita Cafe, which has both gluten free and vegan options and some of them are even the same.

Davan and I changed into our race shirts because, well, for two different reasons, really. I was feeling pretty stinky and Davan wanted to match.

Dinner was fine. It was nice to have a break from cooking or figuring out what to cook. But, I wasn't overwhelmed with the amazingness of the food or anything.

Now were chilling out at home, after showers. Upon checking my email, I got the not so great bit of news. Our downstairs neighbor emailed at 10:00 this morning to say that Ranger had been whining and barking for the last couple of hours and she wanted to let me know as this was unusual, in case anything was wrong.

More about Ranger later, though. For now, I'm off to watch a little Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the family to finish out my birthday.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-25T10:36:00.001-08:00

Aside from my 10K, we did celebrate Thanksgiving yesterday, as well.

We also nearly celebrated my birthday. When we first got up yesterday, Anthony said to me, "Happy Birthday, Honey!"

My reply? "Okay, thanks, but it's on Saturday, you know."

We've been a couple for 20 years now. In fact, this time of year marks our couple anniversary almost exactly. We started dating about a week before my 20th birthday. All he really remembers, though, is that my birthday is near Thanksgiving. Whereas not only do I know his birthday, but his social security number as well. In fact, there are probably accounts of his that he'd have no idea how to access because I'm the one who's done all the setting up and managing of said accounts. Ah well. I don't really bear any ill will about the issue.

When we got home from the run, we were all really hungry. But, first, I was in serious need of a shower, which Davan wanted as well. And Anthony checked mail because no one had the day before. Sadly, this brought a letter from Circus Smirkus saying that Davan was not invited to in person auditions. She was really disappointed, but handled it well. My heart just breaks for her every time I think about it. I really hope she gets into their advanced camp.

After showers, we decided to just go ahead and do our big meal, even though it was only about 11:30. Cooking, of course, took a while, even with all three of us in the kitchen.

By the time we ate, people were pretty excited.

Our menu included BBQ sweet potatoes and tempeh, ginger carrots, polenta stuffing, garlicy mushroom and kale and Bob's Red Mill vegan, gluten free rolls. This was Anthony's plate:

There was a lot of picture taking at the table and Davan was getting pretty desperate to eat by the time we all sat down.

It was just the three of us for Thanksgiving, obviously. BD (before dog), we'd developed a tradition of going camping in some form or another for Thanksgiving. We've gone to yurts and to a fire lookout. That was all fun, but dogs aren't allowed (although we know that people have tended to ignore that at the lookout and some yurts are changing, so we may go back to that). At any rate, that's gotten people out of the habit of inviting us, which is fine, really, as we'd have had to make our food, then pack it up to take elsewhere as no local family does the whole vegan thing, much less gluten free.

After dinner, I called my mom to tell her about my run while Anthony and Davan started on clean up. Then I helped with that, too, while Davan kind of wandered off.

I posted about my run, then we went for a walk before getting down to the business of pie.

Both the blueberry pie and the pumpkin pie turned out well. We'd made them the day before all together. Anthony has had some extra time off this week, which has been quite nice. We had a cinnamon cashew whip to top them with. Ranger just wanted to know when she'd get hers.

I did give the poor, long suffering dog my crusts. She was pleased.

For the rest of the afternoon and evening, we just kind of hung out. We played some games, watched a little Glee, chilled.

It was a nice Thanksgiving, but I can't help but think of some of my favorites from the past. I really liked the fire lookout Thanksgiving. The year that Davan was nearly 2 and we went to Colorado where we had Thanksgiving at Chris' with my mom was a good one. One of the best was before Davan was born and Anthony, Chris and I went to my sister Shelly's house where we had a large family gathering plus friends of Shelly's family. Many of us stayed overnight and it was a really fun event. That said, this one was good. I really enjoyed doing my run in the morning. I'd just have also enjoyed having had a bigger celebration for the rest of the day - although I'm pretty picky about with whom, so just the three of us is good, too.

I hope you all had a good holiday, too.

PS

2011-11-24T16:33:00.000-08:00

Guess what Davan was doing in her downtime today?

If you guessed math, you'd be right.

And, by the by, she does have a desk. Search me why she doesn't actually use it, particularly as it was a special request when we moved.

Race Report

2011-11-24T14:07:00.001-08:00

After a night where none of us, with the exception of Ranger, slept well for a variety of reasons (race thoughts for me, I'm pretty sure; listening to the rain pour and thinking about me running in it for Anthony; and I have no real idea for Davan who blames, at least in part, Ranger's snoring), we got up to a chilly sub 40 degree morning and got ready to go to the Give 'n Gobble.

While it was cold, we all (mostly me, but it was good for the rest of the family, too) got lucky in that it wasn't raining. It's been raining here all week nearly without stop and is, again, now raining. In fact, not only was it not raining, but the sun was even out when we set out.

We got to Sherwood High School, the start and end of the race, just before 8:00 in plenty of time to pick up my race number and then go sit in the car again so as not to freeze while we waited for the 9:00 start time.

Poor Ranger looks like one of those abused dog pictures here, but she's probably just bummed that she only got a 10 minute walk this morning, followed by a car ride that didn't end in a hike. Life was seriously unfair at this point.

Dogs were not allowed in the stadium, so she had to sit in the car while Anthony and Davan came to watch the start.

I did a short warm up jog and then was holding onto Davan to do a little stretching before divesting myself of extra clothing. People were saying things like, "I've never been this cold before" (which seems like that person must have led a very sheltered life, but does show that it was cold) and "If we don't freeze to death, then we'll..."

I was feeling okay until I took off my outer layers to leave with my support crew. At that point, I needed to cuddle up to Davan for warmth.

Davan, who inherited my turkey hat.

That was totally fine with me. I couldn't see running in it and she actually brought it home for some reason. She obviously wants it more than me.

Then 9:00 came and it was time to be off. Now, walkers were supposed to line up in the back of the pack. That didn't happen. It was a bit chaotic and, according to Anthony and Davan, I was near the front, even though I felt like I had to weave my way through hoards of walkers once I crossed the starting line.

At this point, though we were still just walking to the start. I'm in the pack with the blue and grey top on.

This is when the dodging of walkers started.

Anthony and Davan tell me that the start went on for a good 10+ minutes, which explains why I had people passing me who I'd never seen before right up to about half way (3 miles). I guess they were working their way from the way back of the pack.

Even after breaking free of the majority of the walkers, things stayed pretty crowded for about the first mile where the 5Kers separated of from us hard core 10Kers. Then we settled in.

I spent the first mile or two worrying about pace a bit. Mostly I was enjoying it, but it did feel like I had a long way to go at that point.

By the time I passed mile 3, I was feeling pretty good. I even passed a few people in the second half. Others I settled in to play leap frog with. One lady in particular was all about walking until I passed her then running to pass me. We played that game for the last 2 miles, which was particularly interesting after mile 5 or so when we merged back with the 5Kers.

At the point, the 5Kers who were still out there were the walkers, many of whom were walking in large family groups. For the last miles or so, we were on a paved trail that wasn't overly wide. They did, most of the time, leave enough room for one person to pass, but that occasionally broke down, too, particularly with the kids.

Leap Frog Lady got pretty impatient a couple times, wanting to pass me, but there being no space to do so.

I was feeling pretty darn good on that last mile and was kind of surprised when my Garmin beeped at me that we'd gotten to mile six. I picked up the pace a little for my last just over a tenth mile and even had enough left to sprint to the finish.

And when I did finish? My time? Remember my projected 1:15? Blew that away. I did it in 1:05!!! I was pretty pleased. I'd had hope I'd beat the 1:15 by a few minutes, but 10 minutes was beyond my hopes.

I don't have any idea where in the pack I finished because we didn't hang around for results. We did start walking a little for a cool down:

But then it started raining. What timing. We got in the car and came on home to cook our Thanksgiving dinner, which is deserving of a whole separate post.

While I was running, Anthony, Davan and Ranger walked in a near-by park, which was, apparently, quite nice and Ranger was pretty excited about the outing. So, it was a success for all. We're all looking forward to our 2 mile Winter Wonderland Run on Saturday evening. All, that is, except for Ranger, who really will have to sit that one out. At home, even. If we had a nanny cam, we'd probably find a picture similar to this one about that situation:

Poor abused puppy.

Davan's Latest Hobby

2011-11-23T16:24:00.001-08:00

What's Davan been up to lately? Well, aside from the usual activities of messing with the dog, climbing on things, doing aerial activities, hanging out with friends, reading, playing games and the like, she's been doing a lot of this:

Math. She does it late at night, on weekends, in the car. She's already planning on taking both her current math book and the next one to Colorado with us. The next one is just in case she gets a lot done.

This is good. New interests and hobbies are usually good things. It's also a little unexpected in some ways. She used to really like math. She learned very young to do some pretty impressive math in her head. However, she didn't progress beyond this early surge for a long time.

It got to the point that she thought she was bad at math. I thought this was odd as she's really quick to pick up on math concepts and she has always had a good handle on the word problem genre. However, she did struggle with some pretty basic math on her standardized 5th grade test, taken a little over two years ago.

Davan decided at the time that she wasn't happy with her math results and wanted to do better next time - this in spite of the fact that she was right in the middle of grade level on math and was 99th percent overall. We did some going over of options and looking at different math systems and decided to give Life of Fred a try.

Why Life of Fred? Well, it's a narrative approach to math and Davan is a word lover. At the time, Fractions was the most basic book they had and it seemed like that would be about where Davan should be.

The book came and...didn't much get used.

About two months ago, Davan made it a goal again to work on her math. She got some books from the library and worked diligently each day...for a while. Then it slipped....and the book was due back...

I asked if she didn't like the Life of Fred book or what. Turns out, she'd forgotten all about it. She broke it out and started working and liked it a lot better than what she'd gotten from the library. However, it was still a chore for her. She was kind of off and on about it.

One day, she was having big trouble with a problem. She'd been doing better, but still struggling some. I asked if I could help. She said yes. What resulted was a revelation. Davan had been doing math in her head. Period. She didn't know any paper and pencil methods (in spite of the fact that we had gone over these concepts before). She'd developed some pretty good workarounds to this issue, but they were time consuming, slow and susceptible to small mistakes along the way.

We spent about a week going over how to do things as simple as large number addition and subtraction as well as multiplication and division. She got it very quickly and is a pro. And, guess what? Now she loves math. It's fun. Like a logic puzzle, which is something she loves to do and part of the reason I was always surprised that she didn't like math.

I guess little holes like this might be something that comes from unschooling, but what is impressive to me is how quickly, now that she's ready, she picked up on it and how quickly she's now flying through Life of Fred. She whipped through the second half of Fractions in about two weeks and is now a solid quarter of the way through Decimals and Percents, which she says she likes a lot better than Fractions. Pre-Algebra with Biology is up next and she's chomping at the bit to get to it.

The above picture was taken at 9:50 last night. Yup. It's certainly a hobby.

11:15

2011-11-18T23:15:00.001-08:00

It's 11:15pm here in Portland. I know that's not super late for most, but it's past my bedtime. I'd like very much to be asleep. I got into bed at 9:30 this evening and barely read before turning out the light because I'm pretty tired. However, about five minutes ago, I gave up the attempt at sleep and came out to the living room. So, journey with me on a little trip around what's on my mind this evening, if you like.

I've been thinking a lot this evening about my upcoming 10K run. It's less than a week away now. I'm totally able to shuffle along in something that could be at least called jogging for the entire 10K - that is, I'll be able to "run" it all - but I'll be slow.

I did some looking this evening and, for the first time, actually looked closely at the results from the 5K I did last month. I did really well! At least, for me I did. I know I posted about this before, but I didn't know quite as many details.

So, my run time was 29:15, beating the 30 minute goal I had by 45 seconds. Overall, I finished 251st out of 1104. In my age group, I finished 9th!!!! That's out of 121 people. Wow. Okay, so a lot of people just walked the thing, but still. I feel quite good about it.

Mostly, I should feel good because I met my personal goal. I shouldn't compare myself to others, but I'm a competitive sort and I like looking at those things.

I was looking in good part because I was wondering what the times were like for the 10K. Turns out it's good I can feel good about my 5K results, because what I'll be doing in the 10K? Not so great. Chances are really good that I'll be quite near the tail of the pack.

This sort of makes sense because many more people do 5Ks then 10Ks. If you're doing a 10K, you're probably a more serious runner, so the field is tougher. Still, I'm not real happy with my projected finish time. And, I wasn't before I looked up 10K finish times, so it's still a personal goal thing. I'd just sort of hoped that it would turn out that my projected time would be more competitive than I thought and I'd be able to say, "Oh, well, then an hour and 15 minutes isn't anything to feel badly about."

And yes, I know, the longer you go, the more that just finishing is a good thing. Yeah, yeah. But, I was hoping for middle of the pack. Sigh. Maybe someday. I've been rather putting myself through the ringer on miles and still...oh well. Truthfully, I haven't felt that strong in the last couple weeks (there was a cold in there) and I don't think my 5K time would be any better now, either. Well, again, at least I'm doing it. And it'll be fun.

We've got plans this weekend. Tomorrow evening we're going to see this Cirque du Soleil show. To be honest, even with the Cirque hopeful living in my house, I didn't realize that they were even in town until a couple days ago. Do Jump got lucky and scored some free tickets for the performance troop members and their families. Who-hoo! I'm looking forward to it, but it'll end up being a second late night in a row after not sleeping tonight.

On Sunday, I think we're going to go to this show. It's reasonably priced and we know some of the people in it. We have to go to the 2:00 show if we go because in the evening, we've got a Zig Zag families potluck to go to. I've gone and committed to bringing some sort of main dish. I only have vague ideas of what that'll be. I'm thinking of a Mexican casserole that I make, but I'm kind of worried it's not enough, so that is bouncing around in my skull - what to make and take?

Thanksgiving is coming up. We're not doing anything with family or friends. It'll just be the three of us. Of course, I'll have my run in the morning. I've gotten us some gluten free vegan rolls that are currently inhabiting our freezer, but other than that, I'm not totally sure what we'll make. We briefly considered eating out for Thanksgiving at Portobello, which has a vegan menu with gluten free options, but aren't super excited about dropping $100 for the three of us, even if that means I don't have to cook after my race (which would, admittedly, be cool). Actually, I do know that we'll be making a polienta stuffing and either blueberry or pumpkin pie, but other than that? Still up in the air.

We bought season ski passes this year for Mt Hood Meadows and are all very excited about going. They are opening tomorrow! They do say that the base isn't great yet, but we're really glad for the early opening. One year when we bought passes, nobody opened until mid December and we didn't really get our value out of them. We're talking about going up on Tuesday. Wednesdays are going to be our usual ski days this winter, but I don't want to go the day before my race. In fact, both Tuesday and Wednesday are supposed to be rest days, but I don't want to pass life up, either. Anthony is going to be off both days, as he has some comp days coming for extra hours he's worked the last couple weeks. It'll be nice to have him home for nearly a week.

I've signed up for a half marathon in the spring - the Hippie Chick half marathon to be precise. It's supposed to be a fun one. I'm looking forward to it already, but I want to do a couple in between these November ones and then to keep my motivation up. Davan is also saying she'd like to do a 5K, so I'm thinking of signing us up for the Resolution Run, which is a 5K on New Year's day. The same outfit puts on a First Run, which is a 5K at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, but that's a little late for us. And I'm thinking we might ski on New Year's Eve. It's fun to do - the resorts all stay open late and do fireworks.

It's even crossed my mind to see if there's a 5K in Colorado Springs when we're there, but a quick search just now says no. We're there for just a week right at Christmas, so that's not too surprising, but it would have been fun, maybe, to do a Christmas Eve run if there were one.

Back to food, Davan and I have been thinking that this whole gluten free thing isn't doing much for us. Neither of us really feels any different. This is disappointing because I wanted to feel better! We've been doing it for nearly two months now and are pretty much ready to give it up. I think we're both planning on giving it through mid December and then, if we haven't had some indication that it's doing us good by then, we'll be giving it up. This will make our Christmas trip to Colorado easier, not to mention Davan's camp experience in the summer more do-able. I just didn't know how she'd manage being vegan and gluten-free at a camp across the country, which would make it hard to send supplemental food. Not that we think it's really going to happen, but if she did become a Circus Smirkus Trooper, 10 weeks would be a long time to live on Lara Bars, but even 2 weeks for the alternative camp would be pushing it.

Davan and I have already had a discussion about camp and food. We're thinking that she'll probably flex some to make it doable. She draws the line at cheese and she won't drink a glass a milk, but she's willing to eat things that contain some eggs and/or dairy (minus cheese), which should make them able to feed her. We talked about how sometimes we have to make these compromises for other goals and adventures - like when I went to China and ate my veggies by picking around the meat in various dishes. She's not thrilled, but willing.

Okay, it's now midnight and I'm more tired than ever. Having gotten my thoughts out on paper (so to speak), maybe I'll be able to sleep. I've been hearing Davan moving around in her room, so I guess she can't sleep tonight, either. Bummer.

Good night all. I hope you are all getting a better night's sleep than I!