A Sickly, Juicy, Kaleidoscope-y List

Last time I posted I finished with "Next time I'm going to write about this picture here," but I swear to you, the best way for me to guarantee a specific topic will NEVER be written about is for me to tell you that it will, because when I do that I think about it and I think about it and then I think about it some more, to the extent that by the time I have a chance to sit down and actually write about the promised topic, I'm so bored with it that I can't force myself to dedicate another minute to the now-dreaded post.

All that to say, here is instead a list of what's going on around here.

• I need to give a big fat prayer of thanksgiving to the Head Honcho, because we are a healthy family.  So healthy, in fact, that when one of our children gets sick, it's such a novelty to me that I almost get excited about it.

Before you turn away in abject disgust, let me clarify by saying that he wasn't super awful sick.  He wasn't vomiting or writhing in pain; he just had a fever and was a little clingy and cuddly and the whole thing lasted less than 24 hours over the weekend.  It was Sick Lite, just enough for me to let go of my weird tv thing and introduce our children to the first Harry Potter movie, after which Adelaide proved that she is sometimes my exact twin:  "I liked it.  I think I liked it.  But they left out so much that was in the book!  And they changed some things!  Maybe I didn't like it.  No, I did.  The book was just SO MUCH BETTER.  I need to go back and read the first one so I can review all the things they did wrong in the movie."  I'm not saying that's a perfect opinion, but I am saying it's identical to mine.  (IT'S PERFECT.)

• Now that I've alienated everyone with my "I love it when our children are ill and miserable!" (WHICH I DON'T, OKAY?), let me remind everyone that one of our kids suffers from severe night terrors, meaning Derek and I have been chronically short on sleep for years.  (That's right, Judgey McJudgers, you just let that guilt soak in.  Wear it like a blanket- no, like a Snuggie!  A Guilt blanket with sleeves:  How dare you judge us?)  Anyhoo, we've tried anything and everything, dah dee dah, but that doesn't stop my ears from perking up anytime I hear magical words like, "Such and such absolutely 100% helps me sleep."  So when Lauren Fleshman, a pro runner, said that tart cherry juice has become a sleep aid for her pro triathlete husband, I sat up a little straighter in my chair and click, click, clicked my way to the available research.

NOW:  Is most of the research being trumpeted by cherry producers?  Yes.  I'm well aware of that and going into this eyes wide open.  I'm also not thinking that tart cherry juice is a magic elixir and our son will now stop his nocturnal screaming forevermore; what I am thinking is that a little juice every evening isn't going to hurt him, it's healthy anyway, and it's worth a shot.  Plus it was at the grocery store, which means it was meant to be.  (Or that grocery stores stock things that they believe will make them money.  Whatever.)

• One of our children's- as well as my own- favorite things about our local public garden is this:

Really, why is it that the simplest ideas are so often the best?  The plantings are changed out regularly, and we never fail to delight in looking into those microscope/kaleidoscope things, twisting them to change the view of design and color.