Falling and Getting Back Up and Falling and...

Our family recently went ice skating.  It was the kids' third time ever, my second, and Derek's hundredth.  Or something.  The point is, he's been a lot, the children and I have not.

As such, Derek is very steady on his skates.  Adelaide and I actually skate quite well, for novices, whereas Caedmon takes a while to master his fear and let go of the wall.

Atticus, meanwhile, continually hurls himself across the rink at high speeds, inevitably falling in a flailing and sprawling of limbs. He is never seriously hurt, usually smiling as he gets back up.

Taking a break between skating/falling/skating/falling.

I, on the other hand, fell twice in the two hours we were there, and now have a bump at the base of one of my fingers, where digit meets palm, which hurts when pressed on, and which one of my friends has given a layman's diagnosis of a bone chip caused by these falls.  This is apparently the difference that 25 years makes in falling.

Just a few years ago I was pretty good at falling; I had frequent practice, tripping every few months while walking or running throughout my life, and had learned a way to not fall quite so hard.  With increased yoga practice, though, my balance has improved dramatically, to the extent that I can no longer recall the last time I fell.  Barring the time I strapped blades to my feet and went coasting along on a sheet of ice, of course.

I've been reading a lot about falling lately, in large part due to this book that we got at the library several months ago.

I don't think I'm within the intended audience age bracket for this book, but I can't help it:  I still found it helpful, and it's caused me to re-evaluate the way I do a number of things in my life.  I think my favorite part is that the author recruited a group of women, who call themselves "goldeners" and who are all over 70, all of whom went through Bowman's program and benefited greatly from it.  There are sections throughout the book written by these women, where they talk about what led them specifically to the program, or about things they found they could no longer do, and how the exercises or shifts in movement helped them, along with any number of other things that I can't think of without the book in front of me.  In short:  it is so good.

In the book Bowman states that fear of falling is just as crippling as actual falling and outlines a series of exercises addressing this, which I apparently need to incorporate into my daily routine.   Also, I want to take one of the classes featured in this New York Times article.  Do you think they'd let me in?  And who wants to pay for my flight to the Netherlands so I can fall with the elderly?  That's not a euphemism.  

For now I'll just treat every run as an opportunity to potentially practice my falling; we've been covered in snow and ice for a while now, with only a couple days above freezing to allow any melting.  I've tried running on the treadmill at our local gym, but anything more than ten minutes on those things makes me want to go full Office Space- Printer on them.

Yes, that is an imperfect analogy, as the treadmills don't enrage me by malfunctioning; I just can't abide spending copious amounts of time on them without being overcome with feelings of worthlessness and resultant, irrational anger, usually going something like this: "I'm not going anywhere.  I'm not getting any of the benefits of being outdoors.  This entire enterprise is utterly meaningless.  Life is meaningless." 

So, I run outside, even though yes, it is very cold out.

At that point I find I have exorcised what may be some underlying anger issues for yet another day.   Life once again has meaning!  Huzzah!  

Big Fat Update- Kind of- and a Winter Hike

Well!  Long time, no blog!  It's hard to force myself to spend any extra time on the laptop when I'm now working on it for hours a week at one of my new(ish) jobs.  I hesitate to even mention it, because the company I work for is super weird about confidentiality and constantly reminding its employees that THIS IS PRIVATE INFORMATION and TELL NO ONE and IF YOU TALK WE WILL COME FOR YOU IN THE NIGHT. 

I'm kidding, of course, about at least 40% of the previous sentence.  Good luck figuring out which part. 

And no, I'm not in an abusive professional relationship, and no, I was not recruited by the CIA.  Just typing that last phrase made it hard to type this one, because I'm giggling somewhat madly at the idea of working for anything like the CIA, what with my utter lack of a poker face, ability to get lost in a cardboard box, and penchant for giggling madly. 

Really, though, I've found a meme that describes at least one aspect of this work rather well.  Thanks, memes.

Still, I'm not ready to finally put this blog out of its misery and kill it off, so I'm declaring (yet again, somewhat wearily) that I will be attempting to post with some degree of consistency!  Just like I did in ye olden days when our chillins were little and nap time equaled blog time!


Um, let's see.  It's cold here.  Yay, Iowa.  Derek and I have agreed to jack our house's temperature all the way up to 70 degrees to combat this forecast:

I don't think I'm really allowed to complain about today's temp, as the high is supposed to be above zero, but tomorrow and Monday, look out:  I will say what I want.  You get to do that when the temperature isn't supposed to be above zero for days.  It's in the Iowan handbook.  I have no idea what's in the Minnesotan handbook for negative temp days.  "Congratulations, it's Tuesday, now get back to work"?

Because we knew this cold front was on its way, I took the kids on a forced march through the snowy forest preserve yesterday, although I charmingly called it a "Winter Scavenger Hunt" because they tend to balk at anything that calls to mind gulag-like conditions.  Maybe all three of them were Russians in their former lives?  Never mind that I don't believe in reincarnation.

Wow, ANYWAY. 

Seen above is the list of things we were going to be hunting for on our hike, a thumb belonging to Caedmon, and a face belonging to Atticus.  Pop quiz:  Which of our children is still young enough to be fooled by exercise disguised as fun?

Really, though, what is it about children and their inability to stay off the ground?  Even now, at any given public space that we enter, I'll turn around and at least one of them is rolling around on the ground.  I don't know what this is about.  They like getting the crap from other people's shoes in their hair?  Children have a better barometer for what's better for their bodies than adults?  I mean, who can tell?

Oh, look, they're on the ground again.  Imagine that.

Lest you think our hike was all fun and games and our lives are snow-winter-perfection, may I submit this photo for your consideration:

He had just learned we not even halfway through our hike.  That is not a happy face.

Not to worry, though, he got back on the ground- well, onto a log over a frozen creek bed- and everything was better.

We made it back to our vehicle, I mused aloud that we could make another loop through the preserve, as we'd only been out for around an hour, and Atticus climbed a tree in protest, saying we could go but he'd stay and take a nap in a tree.  We've read The Little Match Girl four times in the past month, so he knew how this would end.

In the end we did not go 'round again as I decided we had properly celebrated temperatures in the teens, so we went home, the kids got hot cocoa, and I got to be the adult and stay outside for another hour shoveling and waiting for the plow to charge by- for our more southerly friends, the snow plow drives by so fast it throws all kinds of snow from the street up onto the sidewalk that you have to shovel that mess, too, so you're not really done until it's gone by.  It did not complete our street until after I had come inside and hung up all my wet snow gear.  Naturally.

There's No Place Like Home, But Good Luck Getting There

This summer, the section of I-35 between central Iowa and southern Kansas has seen plenty of activity by our family, both immediate and extended.  My mom and Mark's most recent foray north included golf and a trip to see the movie Inside Out, which Mom and I decided must have been written by experts in child development or mental health or something, because it was the kind of movie where the kids get a kick out of it but the more boisterous laughter is really issuing from the adults.  It was sharp and smart and so entertaining.  I can't wait to see it again.

The day after the movie found the kids and I in Kansas, trying to make our way from the site of the funeral to my mom's house.  I don't have a smart phone or any kind GPS when traveling, so I broke out the handy dandy Kansas map out of the glove compartment- as in, a real, paper map.  The kind that doesn't talk to you and is impossible to properly re-fold.  It was delightful.

After consulting said delight, (and, ahem, missing a turn or two) I decided that if I just kept turning onto highways headed south interspersed with a turn on a westerly highway every so often, I would eventually get to mom's house.  I knew vaguely where I was, at least in terms of our relation to state borders, so I wasn't too fussed about knowing our exact arrival time or perhaps accidentally taking a slightly more scenic route.

At one point, Mom called, trying to find out where I was.  I told her my sort-of plan, she sighed "Kristy!" in exasperation, which I gotta say, really took me back, and we hung up.  Then I laughed because I haven't heard my name said in quite that way in some time, and I proceeded to entertain the children with impressions of my mom saying my name.  They were in stitches.

As it turns out, however, there was a reason for her frustration:  She called again shortly thereafter and told me I needed to get it in gear, as there was a huge storm headed for my hometown.  Derek had warned me that the radar showed a wide storm system sweeping across Kansas, but come on!  Trying to kill its citizens with rain and hail and lightning and twisters is what this state does in the summer.  And spring.  Aaaand sometimes the fall.  This particular storm was severe enough to have my mom worried; she and Mark were monitoring the weather from the lobby of a Kansas City hotel lobby, having been herded from their rooms by hotel staff because of tornadoes in the area.

I pinpointed our location on the (paper, manual, figure-it-out-yourself, man-I-love-those-things) map, and sped up the teeniest bit.  It helped that no one was out, although that also contributed to the eerie sensation, especially as a giant wall cloud began to creep over the landscape.  The tiny towns we did briefly slow down for sported people standing on their front porches, staring at the sky- NEVER a good sign in Kansas.  When you see Kansans in this stance, you'd best keep a wary eye out for funnel clouds.  

We drove about half an hour through spooky premature darkness before the wind suddenly picked up and the sky tried to drown us.  Long, long story short, we finally made it to the house, but not before the kids freaked out and I told them that there were NO MORE QUESTIONS UNTIL WE GOT TO GRANDMA'S LORRI'S, because if you ask me, "Are we about to die?" one more time, I'm going to tell you the truth, Adelaide, and you're not going to like it.  All that child-silence gave me plenty of time to reflect on how you forget what severe weather actually looks like if you've lived away from it for long enough- don't get me wrong, we get storms here, but Iowa severe weather : Kansas severe weather :  : any Scooby-Doo villain : any villain played by this guy:

A million bucks says his mom took one look at him at birth and shuddered.  Thanks for the nightmares, Cillian Murphy.

Five Things Friday

Here's this week's five wonderful things, from me to you:

• About a year ago I came across a superb idea on Pinterest for a better way to fold t-shirts.  This sounds drab and dreary and boring, I know, but just hang on, now, because this may not transform your entire life, but it will transform a couple of your dresser drawers, which sounds trivial, but I swear to you I feel happy every time I open my t-shirt drawer.

We live in an old house that's short on storage space, most notably closets, but thankfully soon after we moved in Derek's grandpa built us a pair of built-in dressers for our bedroom.  Now I had a place for my clothes, but for some reason folding them the traditional way (why does this make me laugh?  like, "ah, yes, the folding methods of yore") created a slop pile of shirts within the drawer.  Enter this new, rolling way of folding!  (Click on the link above for specific instructions.)  It keeps wrinkles to a minimum, I can fit more clothing in each drawer, and I can see each item of clothing with no digging.  Perfect.

• This post on Ann Voskamp's blog about procrastination.  Listen, I'm a seasoned procrastinator.  Why do today what you can put off 'til tomorrow, and all that.  If there's something specific I'm putting off, my house will be clean, my books get read, I'll find all manner of things to do to put that loathsome activity off for as long as humanly possible.  I have gotten loads better in recent years (growing up and maturing and all that necessary junk), but still- I'm a procrastinator at heart.  This post helped me to fold a formidable mountain of laundry and shampoo the carpets and do a couple other things I'd been meaning to do for a day or two (WEEKS, OKAY?  I'd been putting off shampooing the carpets for weeks.).  My brain has already supplied some perfectly acceptable reasons not to wash the sheets and clean out the fridge this afternoon, so it looks like I'll be re-reading this post every other day until it sticks.  Hey, change takes time, right?

• Thunderstorms.  This is one of the things I missed most while living in Connecticut, although Derek and I did share some gleeful chortling on the rare occasion a smallish clap of thunder would boom in the Connecticut skies, causing the natives to flinch while casting fearful looks toward the heavens.  Oh, New England.  We've had tons of rain over the past week (and by "tons" I obviously mean 3 and 5/8 inches), but I've decided not to complain about it, because that rain has been accompanied by thunder and a smidgen of lightning- nothing really severe, just fun.  

• This book:

The woman describes what it's like to grow up lovingly ensconced in a small midwestern town with total accuracy, and does it with such humor that I had to lay my head down on the table a few times, I was laughing so hard.  This book made a rough day better.  I loved it so much I may have to get my own copy (gasp!).

• The eggs hatched!  Last Sunday evening I went to check the robins' nest, and behold:

See it?  Sweet little Ugly there, on the left?  

Based on my highly exact method of zooming in as much as possible and stretching my arm way up to snap a picture, I think there are three hideous baby robins in there.  Perhaps four.  Their mama's gone most of the time, no doubt hunting up tasty morsels for which they'll no doubt be completely ungrateful.  I should note that even when taking photos, I try not to get too close to the nest; I don't want to scare the mother off or leave my objectionable human scent all over the place.  Babies!

A List

• Isn't it strange how little things can evoke sudden and unexpected pangs of nostalgia?  There's a pastor at our church that occasionally preaches in the regular service, and more than once I've heard him pronounce the word "wolf" the same way my dad does: "woof," with no detectable 'L' sound.  I remember for a while Dad worked with a man named "Wolfgang" who went by the nickname "Wolf," or "Woof" in the case of my dad.  This was endlessly amusing to me, no doubt because word pronunciation was something I could understand, as opposed to talk of thermodynamics and the ever-present injection molding machines, which might just be the most boring topic of conversation in the entire world, unless of course you're a plastics engineer, in which case they're apparently fascinating.

• Derek and I got to go on a date the other day.  We went out for lunch, then did some last minute Christmas shopping, along with the rest of the population of central Iowa.  I was distracted half the time by the blaring music (why do so many places insist on blasting your eardrums with their poor choice of music?    I thought music played in restaurants and stores was supposed to be subtle, something to set a certain tone to your eating or shopping experience.  Am I just getting old and cranky?) of horrible- horrible- popular renditions of traditional Christmas music.  After listening to some talent-less pop star breathe her way through Let It Snow and some other current music flunky growl an almost incomprehensible, electric guitar studded version of Oh, Christmas Tree, I decided that unless your first name is Nat, Bing, Judy, Dean, Ella, Frank, or Harry, you should not be allowed to record Christmas music of any kind.  I can think of a few rare exceptions, and perhaps you can, too, but in the future any playing of those is going to need to be approved by me in advance, because my opinion is always the right one.  Obviously.

• It snowed last night.  And this morning.  In fact, it's still lightly snowing now.  Not a lot, we've accumulated somewhere in the four- to five-inch range, but enough to give us a white Christmas.  Oh!  And here's the forecast for tomorrow:

This is just fine with me, as I don't have to leave the house.  Derek does.  Poor Derek.  He also had to get up at 5:30 this morning before church to clear all that snow on our sidewalk and driveway.  He also took care of our neighbor's sidewalk.  Poor Derek.  Nice Derek.  

Another reason I don't mind that forecast is that I've finally learned how to layer!  In the past I thought "layering" meant wearing a long-sleeved shirt with maybe a short-sleeved shirt underneath.  Then I moved north.  Right now I'm wearing lined pants with long johns underneath, a sweater, a heavy cable-knit cardigan, thick socks with slippers, a scarf, and a knit hat.  I may look homeless, but I'm warm.  

• And finally, something that made me laugh and laugh and laugh.  It's very name is pure adorableness.  And yes, that's a word now, if only because of this video.  Be sure to turn your audio up before pressing play so you can force everyone around you to share in your joy.

          Adorable Talking Porcupine Loves Pumpkin

 

The Best List Ever

That was a lie.  This is going to be perfectly average list.  Perhaps even lower than average, as Atticus is sitting next to me in our rocking chair, peppering me with questions while I type ("How do your fingers know where the letters are without even looking?  How can you read so fast?  I know what S-T-O-P spells, do you?  When are you going to be done so I'm allowed to talk again?").

• It is 28 degrees outside right now, and the "Real Feel" (factoring in windchill and what not) is 20 degrees.  This is as warm as it's going to get today.  I know that in a couple months I'll look back and berate my pansy-November self ("That's almost above freezing- how can you complain about that?"), but at this point it feels pretty freaking cold.  This happens every year; I'm somehow shocked that cold is just so cold, I insist on running from the house to the car and back again (which perhaps helps explain the inverse relationship that exists between the number of injuries I sustain on a regular basis and the temperature outside- I also don't actually run; it's more of a mincing kind of jog that I'm sure is a beauty to behold), and I do things like shove the kids out of the van when dropping them off so I can shut the door and sustain the tropical environment I have created inside.  

• I found an article today that made me all kinds of crazy:  Childproofing Harry Potter

In it, a mother of a five-year-old explains that as she's been reading the first Harry Potter book aloud to her son, she's been childproofing it: making sure the characters are receiving proper punishment for wrong-doings, editing the scary parts, deciding that for her son, Voldemort wasn't going to try to kill Harry; he was just going to try and hurt him a little bit. 

I hear about this every day: parents trying to cushion and soften every tiny piece of their children's lives, making it as rosy and dishonest and just plain boring as a Christian romance novel.  It's a very short-sighted parenting strategy, because one day those little darlings- the ones who have had every twist and bump in the road straightened and smoothed over by their well-meaning parents- are going to be unleashed onto society, and you know what they're going to find?  The Real World.  The one where people die and senseless acts of cruelty abound and VOLDEMORT TRIES TO MURDER HARRY POTTER WHAT IS EVEN WRONG WITH YOU.

Believe it or not, this is my majorly scaled back reaction to this little article; when I first read it, I may or may not have dug my fingernails into my cheeks in abject frustration.  And lost it.  And died a little inside.  Keep in mind I was raised on classics like The Little Match Girl (still one of my favorites) and at no point did any of the adults in my life try to tell me that "No, see, she's just sleeping, there aren't really things like cruel fathers and dead mothers and little girls freezing to death in this world!"  To do so would have minimized that story's powerful message: one of compassion and charity and eternity and the significance of every human life.  

I also realize this woman has a five-year-old son.  I was a bit more protective when Adelaide was five, but then she got older and the children kept piling on and I learned to let things go, like making every meal perfectly balanced and bathing them every day and Doing Everything Just Right. 

And now I'm going to let this go.  (On the blog.  Don't kid yourself- I'm going to torture myself with this for weeks.  Milquetoast Children of America, BEGONE!)

• This has been kind of a whiney, ranty post, hasn't it?  I'll finish on a positive note:  Almost daily Atticus has been cutting out little squares of paper and coloring them purple, then giving them to me so that "you'll always have your favorite color right in your pocket."

Currently Loving Vs Not So Much

We haven't had a list on here in at least a week or five days or something, right?  Let's correct that.


My Current Favorite Things:

• Kale.  There's a local restaurant that has a salad on its menu right now that consists of kale, feta cheese, apple slivers, dried cranberries, candied pecan bits, and grilled chicken, and it is so. freaking. good.  I've managed to re-create it at home, but because I'm lazy and don't want to spend time doing things like actually cooking chicken or candying nuts or slicing granny smith apples into matchsticks I've discovered that if you just get a little bit of kale, a little feta cheese, and a cranberry on each forkful you have the perfect combination of sweet, salty, and fresh.  I'm not always so great at eating my veggies, so this is a good thing for me.  Anyone know anything about growing kale?  I'd like to put it in our garden this year if at all possible.  

• Adelaide's eyes.  She's had sporadic headaches recently and has been complaining of some blurry vision; I was all set to ignore her anyway until she pointedly asked me to make her an appointment with the eye doctor.  We went this morning, and her vision is fine (Hallelujah!).  I asked the doc if, given Derek's astigmatism and having to get glasses in kindergarten and my extreme myopia and having to get glasses in third grade, we should really be on the lookout for vision problems in the near future, and he said that you just never really know- some kids have parents with perfect sight but have terrible vision themselves, and vice versa.  Here's hoping for some super-strong recessive genes from our kids' glasses-free grandparents and a mini-miracle (I'm looking at you, God)!

• I get to see my sisters and their families in three weeks.  This is a good thing.

• I found a cache of winter clothing that I bought for Adelaide at a garage sale over the summer hiding in the back of the closet.  They still have their $1 and $.50 stickers on them- I don't know who was more excited, Adelaide or me.  She randomly has a whole new wardrobe.  I'm still waiting for this to happen to me.  

• Our boys.  Specifically, our boys and food.  Yesterday I opened a drawer to get a pen and piece of paper and instead found a three-day-old, half-eaten slice of pizza resting atop the paper clips.  I took it out and was getting ready to throw it away when an indignant Caedmon spotted me and cried, "HEY!  Dat's my snack!  Don't frow away my snack!"  This morning, the boys and I were upstairs playing (because it's much warmer upstairs than down), when Atticus disappeared for five minutes.  When he came back up, he was chewing something.  We don't really snack much and I like to monitor what the boys eat between meals, so I was a little surprised and asked him what he was eating and why.  His response:  "I just had to go downstairs and get a spoon and eat some peanut butter because my stomach was so hungry it was about to eat the rest of my body." 

• You guys.  Adelaide had been begging to write a blog post for a couple weeks, and when I finally caved, she did nearly all of it herself:  She took the photos, I uploaded them and showed her how to put them on the blog, then showed her where to type and which buttons to click to publish, then held myself back from correcting every little thing.  Then you guys came along and commented and commented on her post, and she was absolutely thrilled.  You all are the nicest people ever.  Ever.  

• Books.  Because, well, they're books, but also because it's so unbearably cold outside, and is there anything better than curling up with a book and rejoicing in the fact that we live in the age of central heating?  

Tomorrow:  My Not-So-Favorite Things Right Now.  Good luck getting to sleep tonight with that on your mind.

Full of Hot Air

We first moved to our little town in central Iowa the first of June, almost three years ago.  It wasn't a particularly tumultuous summer, weather-wise, but for some reason, the tornado sirens were going off at least once a week- and I'm talking about outside of the weekly drills, before any smart alecks pounce on that.

It usually occurred during a storm, prompting us to check the radar for twisters, and once even scooping our two sleeping children out of their beds to carry them down to the glorified root cellar we refer to as our basement.

It wasn't always stormy when we heard the familiar wail of the sirens, however, and we were befuddled.  It got to the point where we started ignoring the sirens, a dangerous practice.

One day that summer the kids and I were playing in the front yard when our neighbor drove by.  She slowed and rolled her window down, yelling, "Hey guys!" over the sirens that were once again blaring.

I yelled back, "Is there a tornado headed our way?  I wasn't aware we were in for any severe weather today."

Right about then the sirens wound down, and our kind neighbor was able to explain that those aren't tornado sirens; they're high-wind sirens.  They go off any time we have high winds in our area.

Then she asked, "Do you get a lot of wind down in Kansas?"

To my credit, I checked the belly laughs about to come rumbling up out of my mouth, and merely smiled and said, "Yes.  Yes, we do."  In her defense, I'm pretty positive she's never been to my home state.  This may come as a shock to you, but Kansas is long on wheat and cows but short on tourism.

Here's the thing:  Kansas is indeed windy.

I remember watching two-year-old Adelaide try to stand up in the driveway at Derek's parents' house, who live out in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas.  She kept getting knocked down by the wind, over and over again, before finally giving up and just crawling over to me.

It's the kind of place that sells little wooden dolls with wild, knotted hair and kitschy sayings on their bellies like, "Just Another Windy Day in Kansas."

It's the third-windiest state in the union, behind North Dakota and Texas.  The windiest city in the nation is not Chicago, but Dodge City, Kansas.


I can't imagine having a high-wind siren in my hometown; I doubt a day would go by that it wasn't blaring.

Now, to be fair, Iowa also gets its share of wind; it rounds out the top ten windiest states in America, a list comprised exclusively of states that make up a strip down the middle of the continental U.S.


Having grown up in a place where you get blown around a lot, I enjoy a good windy day.  I also enjoy wind maps, and I recently stumbled upon a really cool one that shows real-time wind patterns across our country.  You'll notice that Kansas is right in the morass of white lines that make up tornado alley.  This map also allows you to zoom in and see wind speeds in different areas. Click here to check it out.

A quick disclaimer with that map:  I don't know how accurate it is, but it does have a link on there that will take you to a more traditional wind map, which is also pretty neat to check out.  Also, it works best if you view it when using Google Chrome as your browser.  FYI.

Looking at this map also drives home the reasoning for Derek's preference for golfing anywhere other than Kansas; apparently it becomes to difficult to direct a small ball towards a hole when the wind keeps blowing it off course.


Note:  I wrote this post yesterday, before a bunch of tornadoes- some reports state as many as 13-  ripped their way through Texas.  Our prayers are with everyone effected by this newest rash of twisters.

Updated Miscellany/ A Miscellaneous Update

Any number of times over the past few weeks, I have been asked about the status of a few specific topics we've discussed on this blog.

So, as per your request, here is an update on Atticus's nighttime crying, my youngest sister and her husband (you know, the ones who went through that tornado), and, most importantly, my tulips.



Why don't we go ahead and talk about the tulips- that way you're not distracted while reading the rest of this post.

Ta-daaaaa!

They made it!  Even though those rabbits ate them right down to the ground, they persevered and grew tall enough to bloom.  This right here is proof that good can triumph over evil.

Well, that and Jesus triumphing over the Devil.  But I think my tulips vs rabbits is a pretty apt illustration, too.



Moving on to Atticus.  He's still not sleeping through the night.  He went three nights in a row sleeping all night long last week, which would have lulled me into complacency were I not the type of person that keeps their expectations nice and low.  I find that life has fewer nasty surprises that way.

Rest assured (pun intended), he's now waking up at least once a night, leaving me in a fog of fatigue during the day.  I'm going to go ahead and use that as an excuse for any unusual behavior you've ever noticed in me.  I'm sure that's what it is.



As for Steph and Clinton, it's official (at least according to the folks at the insurance company):  It was a tornado that peeled the roof off their house, picked it up and shifted it on its foundation, sucked out a part of a barn, and twisted the tree trunks in their yard.

I went with Steph to look at the house during our trip south a few weeks ago.  It was pretty freaky.  I meant to take pictures, but forgot my camera.  At least I got photos of my flowers, right?  I obviously have my priorities straight. 


Steph is now six weeks from her due date.  Steph and Clinton are staying with members of his generous family- and by generous I mean a willingness to give to others without expecting reciprocation, not generous as in big in numbers- although that's true, too.  Glad we cleared that up.

They're still trying to figure out exactly where to go and, you know, live.  Tornadoes are really good at messing things up, aren't they?

Yet another reason you read this blog:  Painful statements of the obvious.



So, there you go:  Atticus is still crying and depriving his parents of sleep, my sister and her husband are homeless, but my tulips conquered their foe Rabbit and kept me from resorting to tactics that would scare the neighbors.

Perspective

Yesterday, it rained on and off most of the day, and last night, we had strong winds in our area.  This resulted in the leak in the ceiling of our laundry room to drip-drip-drip throughout the day (that's right- the majority of our 112 year old house is sturdy and leak-free, but we've had all kinds of problems with the much newer addition otherwise known as our laundry room), and the crashing of the rocking chairs being blown around and knocked over on our front porch throughout the night.  I was able to hear this crashing because Derek and I were up all night with a screaming Atticus.

Just as I was getting ready to sing a really special rendition of "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me," I got a call from my mom.  The roof had been blown off of the home of my youngest sister.  She was at home last night when the windows started shuddering in their frames, and as she ran into the living room toward her husband, the windows in the house blew out and the power went out.  They both hit the floor, and thankfully they were okay as the roof was subsequently peeled off the house.  It's also a good thing they didn't make it to the basement- the ceiling to the stairwell collapsed.  After all that, they couldn't get out of the house right away because of the live power lines down around the house.  They're not sure if all this was due to a tornado or the 80 mile-per-hour straight line winds.  Oh, and did I mention she's 29 weeks pregnant?

Shortly thereafter, my other sister and her husband headed over to help out- you know, the one that's due with their baby any day now and has been put on bed rest?  Yeah, them.

After hearing all this, my mom asked, "So how are you doing?"

I thought about our leaky ceiling, sleepless night, and all the other little bothers that build up in every day life.  Then I thought about our intact house, my intact sisters, and how thankful I am I'm not pregnant right now.

I gave her the only answer I could.

"We're fine."

Update:  It official: it was a tornado.  Twisted tree trunks don't lie.

Last Night

Atticus and Adelaide.  Our backyard.  Around 10 this morning.

"Awww," you're saying.  "There's Adelaide and Atticus, playing in the summer sunshine.  But wait- what's that over their heads?"

Oh, that? 



That is a tree.  Well, half of a tree.

We had some severe storms around here last night.  Right around 3 am, heavy winds, loud thunder, continuous lightning, and rain blew into town.  Shortly thereafter, we lost power.  The cessation of fans in our un-air-conditioned house, coupled with all the noise from the skies made Caedmon conclude that he was done sleeping.  Which meant I was done sleeping.  To escape the sticky humidity inside the house, Caedmon and I went out onto the front porch, which was actually cooler than inside, and reasonably well protected from the rain.  Thanks to all the lightning we were able to see that several trees in our neighborhood had already sustained damage, and multiple neighbors were shining flashlights around their yards from the safety of  porches and garages.  We were actually quite fortunate;  two houses down from us, a large part of a mature tree splintered off onto the roof of a house, creating a hole and all kinds of damage.  Reports from people walking around trickled in all day:  Most of the town was without power, one family had damage to both their roof and their van due to falling limbs, and tree damage, tree damage, tree damage. 

The power finally came back on at 3 pm.  We rejoiced, turned the fans back on, and made smoothies to help cool off. 

At 6:30 pm, just as I was writing the above sentence, 'Shortly thereafter, we lost power,' we lost our power again.  Oh, the irony.  It was restored at around 9 pm. 

Derek came home from work with a borrowed chainsaw and got right to work, dismantling the tree and doing other heavy duty stuff that make me say I'm glad I'm the woman in this relationship and I don't care if that makes me a walking affront to feminism.  After awhile one of his coworkers came over and joined in on the fun, for which we were thankful. 

After several hours outside, Derek had conquered the tree, throwing the smaller branches over the fence by the side of the road for the city to chip, and cutting the trunk up for firewood.  Again, glad I'm the female.

Let's all pray for a less eventful night.