Dog spelled backward

I woke up yesterday morning with an extra person in my bed - my daughter. She's twelve now, and hasn't climbed into my bed in years, so I asked her what was going on. She explained that she had thrown up in her bed a few hours before. (*She also told me that afterward, she slept the rest of the night in her bathtub.)

The night before, we had a strange bit of behavior from "her" dog, Biscuit.

For background, our dogs stay downstairs in our house. We used to have a baby gate on the stairs to keep them from venturing upstairs (because they had occasional accidents up there), but have removed the gate and they stay down.

**For more background, Biscuit, now seven, is a sensitive dog, especially to weather. She gets very nervous when it rains, and generally hides in my closet during storms or even hard rain. Sometimes, however, she sneaks upstairs and hides under my son's bed during bad weather.

So, Sunday night, Biscuit kept going upstairs. Instead of hiding, however, she kept going upstairs, then halfway down the stairs, then back up, then down, and so on. She finally laid down in my daughter's room, still agitated.

My daughter has a day bed with a trundle, and she uses the trundle as an auxiliary night table, piling books, purse, and other items on it.

When I went upstairs to check out the situation, and to tuck in the kids, the girl and I decided that Biscuit was up there to stay, so we removed the books and other items from the trundle so that Biscuit could sleep there.

The dog stayed up there a few minutes, then came downstairs.

A few hours later, my daughter had thrown up all over both beds. As she correctly noted later in the day, if Biscuit hadn't been acting so strange, she would have thrown up on her homework, her school books, her beloved Harry Potter books, her purse, and more.

She concluded that it was a great stroke of luck. I, however, remembered that dog spelled backward is God. And I thanked Biscuit for taking such good care of her girl.


*Yes, in her amazingly rational adolescent, fever-addled brain, my daughter figured that, even with an extra bed upstairs and a perfectly comfortable sofa downstairs, the best place for her to sleep was the bathtub. Because it was near a toilet. She went to the spare bedroom and got pillows and bedding and removed all the shampoo, soap, and other containers from the tub, and made a little bed there. The best I can figure is that she was running a high fever and was completely out of it. Because that's one of the most bizarre things she's ever done.

**We got a surprise snow event later that night, waking up to 3+ inches of snow that were not predicted, but I don't think this was why Biscuit was so agitated.

Initiation

I think this makes me a real football mom.










Thank you, OxiClean, for getting his practice uniform clean. No, I wasn't paid to say it.

I suspect I'll get more opportunities to practice my mad laundry skillz, since this is the weather forecast for the week:

Doggone weeds!

That adorable dog you see above this post came to us with a hidden talent. I don't know if he was trained to do this or not, but he's an uncanny gardener's assistant. I awoke early today and discovered that it was cooler than usual, so I decided to spend some quality time outside, first watering and weeding in our Uptown Community Garden (and only was divebombed twice by the aggressive birds), then weeding my fallow garden.

Despite every dog training authority's advice, I let our dachshund, Klaus, join me in the garden. He's an energetic guy, and he loves to be in the sunshine. I'd also seen his gardening streak once or twice before, so I thought he might be helpful.

Understatement of the year. We had an old cabbage plant that was well past its prime, so I was breaking it down and deciding whether to remove the roots or let it regrow. Klaus found the thick stem I was working on and set about destroying it, systematically, then chewing up the six-inch stem and spitting it out. Compost, anyone?

He's most effective, however, in clearing sections of the garden. If I start pulling out grass or clover, he essentially pushes me out of the way and gets to work. He digs and digs, and, as he finds roots or vines, pulls those with his teeth. It's really remarkable to watch, because he's very focused on the task and does not generalize it to digging the entire yard.

Poor guy, though, he got plenty of dust in his nose, and now he's sitting next to me, sneezing. And falling asleep. Gardening is hard work, after all.

The Experiment, Day One

The kids are out of town again, for their second week (of six) this summer. They've had an alternating-weeks schedule up to this point: two weeks out of school, one week with my parents, one week home, now one week with Craig's family, to be followed by another week at home, then just about four weeks with my parents.

We've been enjoying this (or a similar) arrangement for the past few summers. Our childless state allows us to do things we don't usually do, like eating dinner at 10 p.m. or playing strip poker.

This year, however, we've decided to try something different. Sure, we could have chosen to get into the new show "Swingtown", but that's not really our style. Instead, we're remaining STD-free and going green! That's right; we're not driving all week. The car will remain in the driveway and we'll explore other forms of transportation to meet our needs this week.

We do have a few advantages. I live two blocks from my job, roughly a seven-minute commute on foot. And Craig is working there (temporarily) these days, too. So there's no driving to work anyway. We also live almost in downtown Memphis, and our gym is an easy bike ride away. Along that bike ride, we pass a small grocery store and a drug store, so we could pick up any necessities there.

Today was day one, and we did use our bikes to run an urgent errand. (There was no wine in the house!) Eight-tenths of a mile each way took no time at all - not even far enough to work up a sweat, even in Memphis's summer heat.

So today, success. Tomorrow? We'll see. There's a plan to visit the gym and then pick up food for dinner. I think we can do it.

Thank you

I suppose that you already know that my fair city got hit pretty hard by strong storms last night. Warehouses were destroyed, homes were destroyed, even a mall sustained major damage. My family spent hours glued to the radar pictures on the television, seeing ourselves in the direct path of a tornado for a few minutes (fortunately for us, it veered east, and we were out of its path). Friends of mine saw tornadoes. Friends of mine lost neighbors.

In my house, we had a panicking dog and a panicking boy. My sweet son has a rather irrational fear of weather, particularly hurricanes and tornadoes. Fortunately, we've been able to talk him down from his hurricane fear (it helps that we live very, very far from saltwater), but any serious threat of tornadoes is a guarantee that he'll be at best, fearful, at worst, a complete wreck.

Last night he veered closer to the "complete wreck" side of the scale. There were tears. There was a ten-minute-long episode of such fear that I could barely be near him. He planted himself in the laundry room (the safest room in the house for such events) and assumed the "duck and cover" position. Keep in mind that there was no tornado heading even remotely toward our house at that point. I finally convinced him to watch Hannah Montana in my bedroom, demonstrating that the trek from my bed to my closet (the other, more comfortable "safe room" in the house) took only seconds.

Because a second line of storms was forecast to come through the area around 10 p.m., we dragged the futon mattress downstairs so the kids could sleep in our room. I think it gave him peace of mind, and he slept well (except when the second front came through, with astonishing force).

But the title of this post is "Thank you" and there's a reason.

Some people may think I'm a bit odd, in that my usual online routine includes checking weather.com. I almost always know what the day's weather is predicted to be. And this storm system? Was no surprise. As early as Sunday afternoon, I knew that Tuesday was going to be an interesting day. There was a "Special Weather Statement" posted, warning that conditions would be ripe for such storms. By Monday, the forecast had been narrowed down to the point that the predicted storms were projected to arrive between 1 and 9 p.m.

The first raindrop hit my neighborhood at 4 p.m. Just as predicted. The worst was over before 11 p.m.

Even though I whined (and wined) about missing American Idol and House, our local weather forecasters kept us informed, alerting folks when the funnel clouds began forming, figuring out the path these storms would follow, and telling people to take cover.

They were exactly on target. And for that, I'd like to buy all the weather forecasters a Coke. They all deserve a nice day off.

Back to reality

And, we're back. Back to school, back to work. To a fairly ordinary life in which the biggest question we face this week is: "Should we turn on the heat?"

We arrived home at dinnertime last night, and the house was cold. Not freezing, not pipes-bursting or anything dramatic. 61 degrees downstairs, 57 upstairs.

A few of my neighbors and I have been playing "freeze out," a simple game with one rule: don't turn on your heat. So far, we've had an easy time of it. It's been a warm November, with only a few days that made heat a little tempting. Heck, the day before Thanksgiving it was 75, and the house was, well, toasty. Even after a dramatic temperature drop that night, all the cooking on Thanksgiving kept the house cozy.

But now we're facing the decision. My goal was to make it, heatless, until December 1. Last night, however, my children were not amused by our game and begged me to turn on the heat. I gave them another blanket.

If the house is below 60 when I get home from work, I'll be throwing in the towel. Because I'm not able to tolerate the whining noises that freezing children make. And because the next few days aren't going to be warm.

Whiny

I'm feeling a little whiny this morning. My kids and husband were sleeping when I left the house. Because they don't have school today. And I'm conserving my vacation days, so I didn't take the day off.

And it's raining. Seriously raining. With thunder and lightning. And I walk to work. I considered taking the car, but that would leave my family without a vehicle, and that's probably not a good idea.

But walking to work in a flash flood warning might not be a good idea either. Because my pants? Are soaked to my knees.

I do need to publicly thank my mom for a gift from two years ago. The cherry-red patent leather Doc Martin boots? Are waterproof. So at least my feet are dry.

Hair update: my hairdresser didn't cut my bangs. But she did change where my part is, to maximize one particular curl which she proclaimed her favorite. Even though I slept on it, my hair still looks great. I hope I can recreate it after washing it.

Not really better

But not any worse. I gave up and did consult Dr. Google, and he assures me that I have the flu. Until I told him I was sneezing, though, I was on thin ice, with a possible granuloma, leukemia, or Lyme Disease diagnosis. The sneezing, though, pushed me over into flu territory. So that's a relief. Because I really didn't like the thought of a tick having bitten me and not being found, ever.

Laptop Watch 2007 update: The Big Box has proven its incompetence. We got a call last night from the Nerd Herd at the Big Box retailer. When they shipped out our laptop to the Uber-Nerds in another state, they failed to enclose the power cord. Since the problem with said laptop is that the power cord and the laptop aren't speaking to each other, one would imagine that such an omission would be problematic. One would be correct. (And points to my husband who even questioned the local nerd's decision to not ship the cord with the laptop.) So I did what I should have done before. I called around to the I.T. people at the Corporation, and three of them recommended the same place. And our laptop will be fixed there. Please pray for a speedy recovery. Again. This time let's all try Vishnu AND Shiva. Just to cover our bases, okay?

I'm tired of school projects that involve timelines. My kids' teachers? You're on notice. No more timelines. And no more projects that require me to take apart our painstakingly-organized photo albums. Pretty please. With sugar on top.

Living with a beginning cello student is not easy or fun, especially when you have the flu and are putting together a photo timeline of your son's life so far. You've been warned.

I really don't have anything else to tell you except that it's less than a week until our neighborhood's annual chili smackdown, which means my family is eating chili every day. Because I've got to find the winning recipe. Yesterday's French cassoulet-inspired chicken chili may be a winner, but tonight I'm going to try a Cincinnati-inspired batch. (And no, I'm not sharing recipes until I know which one is a winner. Because it's a secret.)



At least the weather is cooperating with my culinary plans.

Looking forward

I love the fall. The weather change, the changes in the garden, the changes in our schedule. All of that. Before I met Craig, I watched college football on Saturdays, sometimes missing dinner in our college's cafeteria if a game went into overtime. (Craig doesn't hate football but never has made a habit of watching it, and it wasn't a deeply ingrained habit for me, so it fell by the wayside.) And I love getting out the fall clothes and the warmer blankets. And the food? Fall gets me back into the kitchen with soups, casseroles, breads, and desserts like baked apples and poached pears. (I might even write another entry on Another Working Mom Cooks!) Once the temperatures drop into the 70's (or even 60's) my family loves to head a few miles north to hike some fairly easy trails, and we've enjoyed getting lost in corn mazes for the last few years.

The problem is, here in Memphis, the calendar says fall LONG before the weather agrees. A glance at the ten day forecast tells me that sweaters will not be necessary any time soon. And memory tells me that Halloween is more often a day to wear a tank top and shorts than a day to wear a coat. (However, I can still hold onto the memories of 1993 and 2002, when it was c-o-l-d on Halloween.) (It even snowed in 1993.) (Record low temperature.) (We still handed out all our candy.) (And had to buy more.) (Seven bags.) (Of good candy.)

I'm looking forward to THIS October for several reasons. My parents are coming the first weekend, with new furniture for my living room and bedroom. Even if they weren't bringing awesome presents, I'd be excited about their visit. We have a good time together (and football might even be watched).

The neighborhood book club is starting in October, too, along with the event of the season, the second annual Chili Smackdown. Our church's fundraising auction, too, is in October. Add Halloween to the mix, as well as this blog's first birthday (anniversary?) (blogiversary?) (Isn't paper the traditional gift for the first anniversary?) (Does that mean I should print out my blog?) (Don't answer that.)


So yeah, I guess the point of this post is to tell you that I really like October and am going to have a lot of fun this month. But this forecast? Can it please scale down about ten degrees? Then I'd be very happy.

What I don't like about summer

This year marks a drastic break in tradition. Because Susie's birthday, the 11th, has almost always been cooler than normal, ever since she was born. The weekend of her first birthday brought record lows. Two, three, and four were all lovely days. Her fifth birthday was one of the prettiest days I've ever seen, and we were lucky to be spending it outside, as we had an outdoor birthday party. Six was a rainy day. Seven was nice, eight was another quite cool day, and nine was unremarkable but not hot.

Looks like ten might be the hottest yet. The ten-day forecast has those high temperatures going on and on and on and on.

I'm so glad we live in our house, with its modern central air conditioning (our old house just had window units) and energy-efficiency. I'm so glad to have a job inside, with air conditioning.

But please remind me to be grateful when I'm walking home from work at the hottest time of the day. Please remind me to be grateful when I'm watering the yard because we're about 11 inches behind our average rainfall for the year. Please remind me to be grateful when I open my light, gas, and water bill.

/whining

Sick days and field trips

Susie ran fever all weekend. By Sunday night, I had accepted the fact that she was going to be staying home on Monday. At bedtime she was still running fever over 101. So I made arrangements to go to work early for a few hours, then to come home to stay with her since Craig doesn't get to take days off from teaching.


I did check her temperature before I left, and she was better. But I decided to keep her home anyway. She's got a big, busy week in front of her, and a day of rest wouldn't hurt her any.


Plus, I had a busy weekend and didn't mind the prospect of a quiet day off with my favorite girl.


And it was a good day. I could tell she wasn't quite recovered that morning because she had no appetite, and normally that girl can eat. She didn't want anything until around 1 p.m. We watched television and played on the computer, and I went outside and did some work in the yard while she played on the computer some more.


By the time her brother returned from school, she was feeling like herself, and they scampered off upstairs to play on the computer (more!), and then played outside after dinner.


But here's why I let her rest. This afternoon, her school's choir (she's in the choir) is singing the National Anthem at the local minor league baseball team's game. And tomorrow her CLUE class is going on a field trip to some caves in Arkansas. They'll leave at 6 a.m. and return close to 8 p.m. It's a big, exciting week, and I didn't want her to miss any of it.


So everyone keep your fingers crossed that the game doesn't get rained out, okay? Because the weather is making me nervous.

::Edited to add, the rain stayed away and all was fine. Apparently a couple of kids in the choir hogged the microphones and screamed into them, so there wasn't much to hear. Oh well. She had a good time anyway. Raining today, but the cave is underground, right? So that should be fun no matter what.

Spring?

I'm looking forward to spring because....(CHBM Carnival post)

A couple of weeks ago I was certain that winter was gone and spring, maybe even summer, had come to Memphis to stay. The temperatures climbed near 90, the tulips had bloomed, and all was green and lovely. (And my son was sneezing and losing his voice, another sign of spring in my house.)

Then last week, it all changed. Freeze warnings were posted. The heat was turned back on. Another cold Easter.

For years I've counted fall as my favorite season. Having moved to Memphis from Michigan, the summers overwhelmed me for several years. It didn't help that our old house didn't have central air, which meant cooking dinner in the summer was hot, taking a shower in the summer was hot, and sleeping was hot in some of the bedrooms. Fall spelled R-E-L-I-E-F. My feelings about summer weren't improved by the constant fight against our yard, which had been neglected for years and daunted me, the inexperienced gardener.

But that changed a couple of years ago. We moved to a new house. With all the amenities, like central heat and air. And a brand-new yard. Virgin flower beds. No significant weeds to beat back. Just potential.

And I became a better gardener. I researched plants that would do well in different exposures and planted them. We built a patio, adding more flower beds. We dedicated the back flower bed for vegetables, and the narrow bed along the back walkway to herbs. And everything I planted? Is doing great (or did great, if it was an annual). I can't wait to get into that vegetable bed and dig and lay out and select the perfect tomato plants and try some new varieties.



Last spring, we downtowners also got a new Saturday morning treat: the Farmer's Market. There's been a farmer's market in the suburbs for ages, but the drive kept me away most of the time. But when we became downtowners, we also became bicycle riders, and the Farmer's Market is an easy bike ride from the house (as long as we bring backpacks to carry our purchases home). Spring marks the return of this weekly adventure. (Note to self: repair flat tire on bike, stat!)

Uptown Memphis shines in the spring and summer. Neighbors, hidden inside their houses during the winter, reemerge to the alley, the porches, the park, the backyards. We'll congregate in each other's yards, enjoying the pretty weather, sipping our beverages, and talking about whatever is going on. I like the camaraderie our neighborhood has fostered.

So hurry up, Spring! It's time to play!

Growing

Last week, while the kids were out of school and I was staying home, pretending to be a SAHM, we mostly did nothing noteworthy. Intent that we not entirely "waste" the week, I came up with a few projects for us to do. Needless to say, almost none of my planned projects were even begun.

But we did plant seeds. We started sunflowers, zinnias, lavender, morning glories, and sweet peas inside. While lavender makes us exercise our patience by taking at least two weeks to germinate, the zinnias and sunflowers and morning glories and sweet peas have already done this:




And I'm delighted. Just like I always am when I see a plant just beginning, or in first bloom.

I took a lot of pictures with my digital camera a couple of weekends ago, but they came out fuzzy because I needed new batteries. Due to extreme laziness, I didn't do anything about that all week, and well into this week, too. So, two weeks later, and now officially, spring in my yard.






You may notice white feathers in some of the pictures. I have not been able to wrap my head around what Craig and I witnessed about a month ago, late one Friday night. We presume we were witnessing some type of college art project, as there was flash photography going on (we saw flash and tripod and deduced there was a camera on the tripod). But when perpetrator/artist/whatever #2 sliced open a feather pillow and scattered feathers all around the park across the street, we were baffled. Add to that a windy night and you get a yard covered in feathers. I attempt to pick up at least fifty per day, but even a hundred a day doesn't make much of a dent. So we have feathers in the yard, as do our neighbors. It's weird.

But spring is pretty!

Don't forget

To change your clocks before bed tomorrow. I'm a bit flummoxed by the earlier date for "spring forward", but I will enjoy more daylight in the evenings.

Must post or keyboard will ice

I woke up this morning and noticed it was raining. "Strange," I thought, "It's not supposed to rain today." As I was looking out the window, I noticed that the car and van both seemed to have the windows fogged up. "Strange," I thought, "The van usually doesn't fog up just because it's raining."

Because the windows weren't fogged up. They were covered in a sheet of ice.

Lovely.

As I got ready to walk the dogs, I told Craig to turn on the TV to see if school was canceled. Because in Memphis? If there's a snowflake on the ground, there's probably no school. (Weirdly enough, they closed both bridges that connect Arkansas and Tennessee over the Mississippi River, but they did NOT close schools.)

Thirteen years ago this week, Memphis (and the surrounding area) was hit with a whopper of an ice storm. It hit on a Thursday afternoon, and by Friday morning, life was a mess.

Craig bolted out of bed Friday morning, exclaiming something to the effect of, "What the f### was that?" That was the sound trees make when their limbs are breaking off due to the weight of ice. That was the sound of said trees falling to the ground, landing on cars, houses, power lines, and, sadly, people.

I bolted out of bed, exclaiming something to the effect of, "Holy $hit, it's cold in here!" Cold because the power lines were down. Cold because the electricity was off. Cold because it was freezing outside and our 60-year-old bungalow was not particularly well-insulated.

Little did we know that morning that the next week would be, um, challenging at best.

Long story short, our power was out from Friday morning to Friday morning a week later. In that house, we were fortunate to have a gas log fireplace, which was our only source of heat. We blocked off the doorway to the dining room with heavy curtains and closed all the doors in the house and used a lot of blankets at night.

It was easy to figure out who, at work, had electricity and who did not. By hair. Because it was the '90's. Blow drying was pretty much a necessity for most hairstyles.

We were lucky to have as little damage as we did. Our trees were badly damaged, but the tree trimmer gave us a great deal at $385 to trim them afterward. Our electrical box came off the house, but a friend was an electrician so he did right by us. The contents of our refrigerator and freezer were pretty much ruined (including the top layer of our wedding cake, sad...), but it could have been worse. There could have been a tree in our attic or through the front of the house. We could have lived in a more rural area, where power was not restored for three or four weeks.

Today's ice is nothing like that storm other than the date and the fact it was not predicted.

I just hope Susie's concert isn't canceled.

Second Interview

It went well. So well that I had to tell my boss about it because she's going to get a phone call tomorrow. I'm tied up in knots waiting to find out what's going to happen. I really really really don't want to reprise my first loser performance of Saturday. This job is way better than prom queen.

Not much else to say. My arm hurts 'cause I got a flu shot today. Bought cute PJs for the family (early early early Christmas presents for all of us). Sock monkeys. Oh yes. Because we love monkeys almost irrationally.

And boy did it rain hard this morning. Woke up the kids, which is saying something.

Tired.