A few days ago, I spied the boys inventing a new game outside. One boy would ride his scooter while another was pulled by the scooter on Henry's tricycle via a bungee cable hooked between the two. The tricycle was heavy and wide enough that tip overs for the one being pulled were rare.
Yesterday, I noticed the activity being repeated and went outside with my camera to capture their creative play. Only, as soon as I got outside, Henry started throwing a conniption, refusing anyone but him to perch atop his plastic red seat.
With a shrug of their shoulders, Seth and Sam altered the plan by having the scooter pull....another scooter.
You can predict the rest...
Sam is the daredevil in our family. He's usually up for trying anything.
Still feeling good...
Seth builds up speed for the big corner.
An object in motion likes to stay in motion. Sam's scooter started to whip around the corner and he smartly jumped off. But not without consequence...
The scooter struck his foot and scraped off a chunk of skin on his big toe.
Mean mom takes a picture before going inside to clean the wound. Notice the abandoned scooters in the background.
Last weekend, my dear friend, Hannah, passed through my world. We became friends during the year I lived in Utah, which was the year all things blogging exploded for me. I was touched, deeply, that she re-routed her family to pass through my town on their way to the Lonestar state.
Her family rendezvoused with mine at a local restaurant and it was the first time for both of us that we had met each others' husbands. Proper bonding is never really possible while chewing, so the men didn't become BFFs but afterward, when it was just me and Hannah again, she said, "Jay is a lot different from what I was expecting." She further explained that on my blog, his persona comes off as mostly serious, maybe even intense. Maybe it was pictures like these that helped that idea formulate:
I get it. He is serious and intense. But he's also sensitive, funny, kind, cute and adorable. It has been my privilege for the last fourteen years, to get to know and understand this man named Jay. Therefore, it is my joy and my song to share his unique personality to the rest of the world. Here are 36 things that you may not know about this fascinating man.
1. He is one of the few, or even possibly the only one, that can claim that soda is good for him. The carbonation helps him swallow his food in a way that water, milk and juice do not.
2. He'd like to live off the grid, but can't because he married someone too normal.
3. You will never catch Jay wearing pants without a belt. It is a major fashion faux-pas, in his opinion.
4. He is very good at crossword puzzles.
5. He thinks he, Dan Patrick and Tony Kornheiser would be great real-life friends.
6. He brushes his teeth for a really long time. Seriously. I've tried to outlast him at the sink before and concede to his superior brushing skills each time because there is simply nowhere else for the toothpaste in my mouth to go.
7. He can figure out anything. I am a pay-someone-who-already-knows-how-to-do-it kind of girl, but he can just wing it, or, better yet, figure out the instructions. I was all set to call someone to clean and get the hot tub going, but he just took off a few panels here and there, drained it, and knows which chemicals to add to get the water pH right. Saved me hundreds, I bet!
8. He loves salsa and meringue music. If he hears it, it's an almost guarantee that some Jay-style dancing will follow.
9. Anyone I meet who knows who also knows Jay always tells me that he is "the nicest guy." I like that he's nice to people.
10. He gets horrible heartburn. He has to take prilosec, prevacid and zantac everyday.
11. He still cuts his own hair.
12. He also still likes NASCAR. I kind of thought it might be a passing fancy, but, sadly, it is not. Tony Stewart continues to be his favorite driver and Jay has even started buying little diecast cars with all of Tony's various paint jobs.
13. He isn't convinced that his office is also his man-cave.
14. He listens to podcasts when he runs. I don't see how listening to Dave Ramsey talk about staying out of debt motivates him to run sub six-minute miles, but who am I to question the ways of those born to run?
15. He has random allergic outbreaks. Several times, but never consistently, he'll come back from a run with eyes that can barely open, itchy, itchy skin and trouble breathing. It's freaky!
16. It embarrasses him to have a big deal made out of his needing gluten-free food. He'd much rather silently go without.
17. Still, I know he's touched when someone makes the effort to prepare something he can eat too.
18. He loves getting the newspaper. Loves it.
19. He also likes to be the one to get the mail. Since most of the mail these days consists of junk radiology conference invites, I say, "go for it."
20. Commercials about feminine products make him blush. He thinks all such advertisements should be relegated to channels like Oxygen or Lifetime.
21. What am I talking about? He has no idea those channels exist.
22. He's a talented woodturner and can make beautiful pens.
23. He laughs without inhibition. If he thinks it is funny, he will laugh out loud.
24. He has no travel bug. I can't convince him that going to Europe with me is worth the time and expense. I think I need to find a race for him to run in to get him over there.
25. His ringtone on his phone is the monologue from the Old Spice Commercial. This is exactly why we get along.
26. He sings in the ward choir, even though he doesn't want to.
27. He calls a man in town his nemesis because this man once bad-mouthed Jay's high school cross-country coach after a race, not knowing Jay ran for him and his subsequent great admiration for this particular coach. Now, Jay takes great pleasure in beating "Jerry" every time.
28. He'll shock me now and then by being really short with people on the phone when he's on call. I've even heard him almost yell. The people on the receiving end are usually radiology techs that mess something up or don't do their job right, but sometimes it's even another doctor and I find it really out of character. That's what a stressful job mixed with what he considers incompetence can create, I suppose.
29. He has two kinds of "Arghs!" One is higher pitched and makes me smile, even though I feel bad that something has frustrated him. The other is lower, from the back of the throat with a rasp, and it makes me tense.
30. He is frugal when it comes to spending money on things like clothes, toys or fixing the dent in his car because these things are "not necessary" but has no problem paying $4 or $5 for soda at movies and games.
31. He has a loud natural speaking voice.
32. He hates tomatoes and feels a little betrayed that I don't anymore.
33. He loves to pick up the tab at restaurants.
34. His generosity is balanced by his inability to eat out at most restaurants and the rare desire to be social.
35. He likes to make me and the boys happy. As proof of my point, remember this series of self-portraits he let me take of the two of us at the opera?
A novice at holding the camera, I explained the need to resist the temptation to tilt the head back. Always remember....chin down.
After this pictures, I added the helpful hint that it also helps to jut your neck out...just a bit.
See? He makes me happy because he knows how to make me laugh.
36. He is wonderful at 36.
If that's not enough information for you, refer to past birthday posts. Apparently, I feel the need to numerate on birthdays:)
We enjoyed a lovely steak and salmon dinner followed by a highly amusing showing of The A-Team (which deserves better reviews than it is getting. It's totally cheesy, but it's supposed to be. I loved the balance between humor and overdone action. Best of all, Jay enjoyed it too.)
I didn't like this book until the very end. It seemed filled with many of the tricks and techniques that can drive me crazy in a novel: constantly shifting perspectives from different narrators and a lack of chronology in its plot development that seems artsy but, at times, just feels like lazy writing to me. I wonder if authors that do this actually write two, three, four or more different stories, shuffles the pages together like a deck of cards, and then depend upon the patience of their readers to wait until they choose to tie the stories together, declaring the end result to be a novel instead of a collaboration of short stories. It is also loaded with fragmented sentences. I'm a casual writer myself and champion the effect leaving a subject or verb or both from the beginning of a sentence can have. Keeps things from being redundant and words from being overused. Simply illustrating my point:) So many incomplete sentences, concentrated together paragraph after paragraph, however, made the flow of the page very noticeably choppy. For a time, I let these things irritate me. As I read about the unconventional monk, Corrigan from Ireland, who spends his seemingly futile ministry giving hookers a place to use the bathroom and taking old people out for joyrides in his beat up van, I wondered if McCann was only interested in the underbelly of society. I assumed from the title that his book was going to be about the world spinning, or, in other words, day to day life. Surely, there are lives whose everyday isn't filled with drugs, or pimps or acts of manslaughter or grief from the death of a beloved child. Surely, somewhere, someone is doing laundry, exercising, cooking a spaghetti dinner and speaking with less profanity. Eventually, McCann's spinning world came into focus and it was exactly the beautiful thing I believe day to day life actually is: a friend helping a friend, a stranger doing something heroic, beauty and light forcing its way through the cracks of the chaotic and mundane. With the real life event of a man walking across a wire between the two World Trade Center towers in 1974 as a stunning backdrop, McCann shows how the much more ordinary things, even ones labeled as hopeless, weighted as weary and burdened with ugly, supply the meaning to what we all must endure: life.
It's been awhile since I've downloaded pictures onto my computer. Tonight, I gathered my cell phone, my small Nikon CoolPix and my large Nikon d5000 to see what blog posts I am missing. Turns out, too many so I'm going to jumble them all together and call it a stew.
About a week before school finished, I surprised Seth by volunteering to go on one of his fourth grade field trips. I was very disappointed to discover on my way there that I had forgotten my good camera. Thankfully, I had my cell phone camera, despite its crummy image quality.
It was a very cold day for late May. We were happy to get out of the mountain air and into the deep of the mine where it was about 15 degrees warmer.
Seth and his peers about to board the cars to take us into the mine.
The opening to the mine shaft.
I found the entire tour to be fascinating. As I listened to the demonstrations about different mining techniques and working conditions, I wondered what motivated miners to do this day after day. The hope of a big pay-off? It doesn't seem like many workers became rich. Perhaps it was the love of back-breaking, life shortening, wet, cold, and dark work. This is a ladder that a miner would have used to follow a vein, which normally ran upwards diagonally.
How the miners relieved themselves. It's on the rails, so they had to lay a chain along the tracks to keep the car from moving with them on it. Of course, the tour guide said it was a good practical joke to send someone on their way in their compromised position.
Us in our fetching slick and hard hat.
Seth had an end of the year choir concert. Cell phone quality. sorry.
I also volunteered for the school bike rodeo.
Cute old picture of Henry in early May before I started packing up the old house.
Seth and Sam participated in piano achievement days. They both did very well and received commendations in technique and artistry.
Sam with his judge
Seth being adjudicated.
The last week of school involved lots of extra parent participation. Sam's class put on a slide show and program that I snuck into late and left early due to a sick Henry at home.
Last day of fourth grade for Seth. The put on a barbecue. Jay and I both came but Seth ignored us to play soccer with his friends. I'm glad he did.
Sigh. Leaving more friends.
Good-bye Riverview!
The day after school was out, we left to spend Memorial Day weekend in Denver. One of our favorite things to do is to watch a Rockies game in Coors Field. We had a popular section and I was hoping to get on camera, but it was not to be.
Our view. Pretty good except for my fear of getting hit with a foul ball.
On Monday, we continued our annual tradition of running the Bolder Boulder. This year, I convinced my parents to meet us in Boulder to watch Henry while the rest of us ran. My sister, Sarah, decided to come a long and it was fun to do the race with her. We finished in a little over an hour and a half. Jay got a PR with a time of 35:45.
Then my parents followed us home to help us settle into the new abode and watch the kiddos while we went to some trek training.
Jay and I are a Pa and Ma for a four-stake trek this summer. We had an overnight training, which involved learning how to cook for our families of 10-12 with the tools provided, assembling our handcarts and a mini-hike.
Jay totally knows how to do this so I could just sit back and take pictures:)
Going up the hill. It is going to be hard. We are at elevation (I think around 9,000 ft, and it is dusty and hot. Just going the mile that we did, I was covered in dirt and dust. I can't even imagine what I'm going to look like after four days of it.
Come back. Jay and I were one of the few couples who wore our pioneer garb. We always seem to be out of the information loop and thought wearing the clothing was requested. I was glad I did, however, because those bloomers and skirt are a lot more breezy than jeans and it was hot! The bonnet is very functional too.
Then it was time to say good-bye to my parents. They helped out so much during their week's stay.
