Boys = Fighting and Farting

When AB and I talked (well before we had kids) about how we would raise a boy we agreed (or at least I insisted) that my sons wouldn't have guns or shooting implements or have anything to do with fighting.

Then reality hit. For some reason "fighting" seems to be built into boys' psyche. We channeled Leif towards sword play and lightsabers, but even I have been loosening up on the toys that shoot things.

Like nearly all parents I know out there, we read to the kids regularly. When I am not sure whichever child I am reading to is paying attention, or to test their wakefulness at bedtime storytime I start changing the story. Inserting other names into the stories.

"Young Yolanda Skadi is yelling on a yellow yak."

"Now there are two Leif's on your head!"

Skadi is less receptive to this and usually tells me to "read it right mommy or don't read it at all".

Leif laughs.

Transformers are NOT my favorite toys in the world. Far from it. And when Leif starts asking for Transformer stories I try to keep my eyes from floating to the top of my head.

I have a new solution... there isn't much that ranks up there with stories about fighting... but farting gets dang close.

About a month or so ago, I started substituting some words here and adding in an occasional sentence about how stinky Earth is becoming due to all this flatulance.

And now I have to admit, those Transformer stories can be danged funny!

The only downside is that giggling little boys are usually not as prone to falling asleep during storytime.

Just my way of combating violence with "hilarious" bodily functions.

Reflections of book club and of 39 years of life

I love my book club.

We have been together for 5.5 years (I think... or is it 6.5 years?) I think it is 5.5 years because I am pretty sure my son was just shy of one year. It is a great core group of women. One of my best friends suggested starting it to my other best friend and myself way back when. We each invited 2-3 women and wa la. Here we are 5.5 years later.

Last night we noted that it was our original core group of women. We have added to the group, but it is interesting to me that none of the newer additions seem to have as strong of a commitment to the group and I am not sure why. I wonder if those of us there from the start just had a stronger investment? Or if we failed in making other people feel welcome? Or maybe some of both.

Last night I failed to even buy the book. I had excellent intentions actually, but the book I was reading, "The Girl Who Played With Fire" just kept going on and on. And I am not one of those people who can successfully read two books at once. I must finish one before starting another.

The book was The Alchemist and I did read a primer and a few spoilers and reviews on the book before going to book club so that I wasn't completely clueless. But yes, I did a lot of smiling and nodding. As the conversation went on I actually did have a lot of thoughts to add based off of the flow of conversation, though I didn't so much because it isn't my thing to jump in and yap about a book I didn't read. I was there just to enjoy the company.

Thoughts on the book were all over the place, from one woman who absolutely loved the book and would put it in her top two (or did she say five) to others who said, "eh". That's par for the course with our book club. We rarely get across the board agreement on a book, yet we all still love each other.

A few of the thoughts really resonated with me. How do you move throughout your life? How do you make the decisions you make? Why do you make the decisions you make? Are there omens? Are there signs? What if you get to the end of your life and well, it sucked? Are you the only one to blame? Is that because you were ignoring the signs? What is happiness in life?

Huge questions.

The woman who loved the book made me want to read it most when she talked about how in her life, she goes along a bit and then evaluates - "am I happy?" If yes, great. If not, "how do I make it better? How do I fix it?" Then make it happen.

I can completely identify with this.

When I was growing up and through college I let things happen. I rarely made things happen for myself. Things just happened around me. I followed the crowd, I did what others did. If it made them happy, certainly it would make me happy, right? I majored in chemistry because I did well in it, not because I loved lab class (though I fell in love with my lab partner).

I think I got this from my parents. They are/were both great people, but they were young when I was little. Things happened to them, and while they both got better at making things happen for themselves as they got older, my early formative years saw them as being thrown around by circumstances and not in charge of the circumstances.

It wasn't until I graduated from college, worked for a year, applied (unsuccessfully) to grad schools my advisor told me to apply to, that I really realized it was up to me to pick myself up, quit whining about things that have happened to me - because really, I had a great upbringing and life and a future wide open to me - and make things happen for me.

I applied to grad school again and picked myself up and moved a few states away to a mid-range school that seemed to fit. It was the single hardest thing I have ever done, but really my first jumping off point.

Many of my decisions have been gut reactions. What feels right? Then do it.

I have had to remind myself a few times to take the reigns and make things happen for myself. I can only really rely on myself to know and do what is right for me.

I have talked a few times before about making decisions to change course, to make myself happier, to move myself in a different direction. I have recently made another move in life to make things just a smidge better. I finally realized that in my career I have been doing what is expected of me as a scientist. What my mentor a few years ago wanted for me. I kept ignoring and denying a direction that was popping up for me.

In October I decided to listen to that inner voice and make the step to follow a different career path. I went and talked to a few people who have since jumped onto my team and have encouraged me to follow a new path and have even gone so far as to put me into positions to enable me to further this career path.

I look at my path since leaving Colorado for grad school and I have to say, it just keeps getting better. 39 years so far (that realization is starting to hurt my gut), 15 years of following my heart and wow.

Who knew it could be so good?

Anti-Cancer

A coworker of mine came back from reserve duty last week and took up residence in his brand new office across the hall from me. I enjoy having him there, he is a nice guy I get along well with and enjoy working with. We also see eye to eye on a lot of things in life - religion, family values, etc. It has been a different week with him back and there in his office... for example, I hear my name yelled spontaneously in our wing pretty regularly.

He spent some time in my office catching up earlier this week whereby we talked a fair amount about my mom's "Celebration of Life". He asked me the million dollar question then.

"Since your mom was diagnosed with this cancer at such a young age, do you worry about whether you will get it as well?"

Anyone who answers no, is lying.

It crosses my mind nearly daily. And since I am also a scientist with a wealth of journals at my fingertips, I will admit to staying on top of cancer studies and the current state of the art. When someone is diagnosed with cancer it is often a shock, a surprise and followed by a lot of time trying to understand 'what next'? And is what my doctor telling me the right course?

We had a lot of this with my mom because she was diagnosed with such a rare and often unrecognizable cancer. It wasn't until 6 months after we knew she had liver cancer did anyone dare label it with this rare name... cholangiocarcinoma. A cancer that only about 4000 people a year are diagnosed with in the US.

Yes, I think about it often. Will I get this cancer? Will my sister? Will my kids? My daughter's tummy ache the other day, is it cancer?

Present day medicine does not have a means to genetic test us to see if we will get this rare cancer. What medicine could tell us (if I understand it correctly) if we carry a gene that makes you more susceptible to cancers of this family. Taking this test? I haven't gotten there in my head yet.

What I can do, as I am learning in Anticancer, is to take steps to ensure that my body can fight cancer and make myself less susceptible to cancer. I like this book because as a scientist myself, it isn't telling a person with cancer to abandon all conventional treatment, it tells us to supplement your treatment. I believe there is merit to alternative medicine, but I also believe in scientific reasearch. As a Ph.D. chemist I "grew up" learning "better living through chemistry". And to a large degree I believe this, but I also understand that we don't know it all.

The book was recommended to my mom by a close friend who battled lymphoma successfully nearly two years ago. My mom downloaded it onto her Kindle and now I am reading it with rapt attention.

I am learning (after being only a third of the way into it) that we aren't terribly far off base in doing things to prevent cancer.

• We don't eat red meat more than 3 times a week.
• We only use olive oil or canola oil.
• We eat and push fresh fruit and vegies on our children (despite one of them having a weird aversion to fresh fruit that I do not understand - or accept - for the life of me)
• We drink red wine with dinner.
• We eat loads of blueberries.
• We all eat broccolli at least once a week.
• We eat fish and a lot of that is salmon.
• We shop local for local produce when possible.
• We make our own spaghetti sauce, thereby eliminating sugar in a routine dinner meal at our house.
• We have drank organic milk since my son started on milk.

Things I need to do better:

• Not drink so much coffee... (I gave up Pepsi two years ago and switched to coffee - and I am fully addicted to coffee now.)
• Pay better attention to use of plastic - I tend to look for BPA, but not always. I need to work on our use of Ziploc bags for everything - not only for health but also for environmental reasons. Example - when I buy meat in bulk and repackage and freeze, I need to wrap in parchment first... parchment isn't bad... is it?
• Watch the sugar. I like desserts on occasion, and that isn't going anywhere. But I have a new rule regarding fruit snacks (you know the ones in the cereal aisle), I am not buying them. If the kids want stuff like that they can come with me to the grocery store and ask. So it isn't that I am cutting them cold turkey, but I personally, am not going to enable it. If no one comes to the grocery store with me than I buy what I want. Simple as that. This is made easier by the fact that the kids are both head over heels and have been for some time for these fruit crisps. I buy them at Costco and this is lately Skadi's source of fruit (other than bananas and apples, which she will eat).
• Work towards cutting back on white flour. This is one we will work at, but frankly, I like to bake simply with white flour. I am open to alternatives, but pie crust just isn't the same.
• Get more exercise (no need to explain - I just need to get back to getting up every morning and working out - this would be greatly enabled by a daughter who slept through the night.)
• Check out "grass-fed" dairy products, this may be difficult in our small-ish town.

I believe in everything in moderation really. I am not necessarily looking to cut any of this out completely, and I don't think that is realistic for our family. But I will be trying to make some changes.

Things I Like Part One: Books

The first book I ever learned to read was called “Cat and Dog”. It isn’t terribly pc anymore, the dog threatened to do all sorts of things to the cat, including making a “catcoat”. But I loved that book and read – I mean memorized it and would “read” it to my parents over and over. My love for reading, like many people I know, has thrived over the decades.

I know I have blogged many times about books and reading. I thought I would start a post series on things I like. Here is post number one – books.

The last few months my need to read has accelerated. I believe it to be pure escapism. When I am laying in bed in the evening, it is easier to escape into a book than lie there thinking about “stuff”. I think about work, which isn’t a bad thing. But it isn’t like I need to think about work at that time of night. I think about my kids. Are they sleeping well? What are they dreaming about? Will Skadi wake up tonight? How many times will I have to put her back to bed? Are the kids breathing? Did they get wrapped up in their blankets too tightly? I better go check on them.

Then my main reason for escapism lately, I miss my mom. Please God be taking care of her. Is she watching over us? Were there things left unsaid? How is Rick doing? What is the life celebration going to be like? Am I going to be able to hold it together in church this week? Why? Why her?

And then the inevitable… Will I get the same cancer? What can I do to make sure I don’t? Do I need to go to the doctor? What if it is genetic? Can they do genetic testing? What if my kids get cancer? What is up with that funny two toned mole on Leif’s finger?

The thought process above? That is why I have been inhaling books lately. Check out my GoodReads.com list if you don’t believe me.

In September 2009 I finished “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck after 3 months of reading. Loved it. I moved on easily to “Shanghai Girls”, similar genre and era, but told from the opposite perspective of Buck’s book. Loved it as well.

After I finished “Shanghai Girls” in January, I hit a stride that is still going strong.

“Look Me in the Eye: My Life With Asperger’s” (blogged about previously.)
“Embroideries” by Satrapi
“Twilight”
“New Moon”
“Stones into Schools”
“Eclipse”
“Breaking Dawn”
“The Help”
“Garlic and Sapphires”

I read them all between February and now. This is a lot for me. I know people who are fast readers. I am not ashamed to admit that I am a slow reader. Very slow.

I have three books started right now:

“American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America’s Back Roads” – I picked it up off my mom’s bookshelf while I was in Colorado shortly after her passing.

“The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters” – a book recommended to me by an online friend and it fit straight in with my favorite genre, historical fiction, particularly of the North American west.

Then my sister sent me my mom’s Kindle. Before I register it in my own name (and lose her downloads) I decided to read the books on there that I am interested in. My mom raved repeatedly about “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet” shortly after she read it. It was on my Amazon wish list. I am 14% complete with that (Kindle fulfills my analytical analytical nature for quantitation) and certain that it must be spectacular for my mom to rave about it since it opens up talking about a widower who lost his wife to cancer at a young age. Bitter, not seeing the sweet yet, though I know if my mom did, I will too.

I am loving the Kindle so far. I have the Kindle ap on my iPhone, but I rarely use it. Only when I am stuck somewhere, by myself (i.e., no kids in tow begging for games on the phone), and bored of Fruit Ninja or Skeeball or Cribbage. Kindle for the iPhone is fine, but I am not wow’d.

I am wow’d by the real Kindle.

AB and I have opposite bedtime rituals. He showers and crawls into bed in complete darkness, with no distractions (yes, I like to talk, but I curb this) and falls asleep (hopefully). He struggles with falling asleep. I get into bed and read. I grew up reading myself to sleep. We have gone around about this a few times, I don’t like to get up and sit downstairs and read. I like to read in bed. And the reading lights are all too bright for him to sleep.

So like my preteen self, I hide under the blankets with my book and reading light until AB starts to snore. Kindle is a serious enabler here. At 8 ounces and with no pages to flip against the sheets I can read and read and read. Once AB is snoring I can carefully come out of hiding and resume being 38 and not 10.

I have a stack of books in waiting – my next book club book: “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” which I am really looking forward to. I am envisioning a book something like Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony”, which I read in college and loved. I also have “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner” sitting on my bedside table.

On the floor, waiting to move on deck is “My Life in France” by Julia Child followed by a good 10 other books I have picked up in the last few years, but not yet cracked.

Things I like? Books are up around number one.

Aunt Annie's Alligator

I have lucked out - both my kids went through a "Dr Seuss's ABC's" phase. This was one of my favorite books as a child. I can recite it by heart.

But what I really love about this book is hearing Skadi's running commentary on every page.

Me: "Barber, Baby, Bubbles and a Bumble Bee"

Skadi: "Yeah, but bees sting."

Me: "Camel on the ceiling"

Skadi: "I want a camel on MY ceiling!"

Me: "Goat, girl, goo goo goggles"

Skadi: "I am a girl!"

Me: "Jerry Jordan's jelly jar - "

Skadi: "He made a big mess, look it's on the floor!"

Me: "Many mumbling mice - "

Skadi: "I don't like mice, turn the page." (This used to be one of my favorite pages!)

Me: "Nine new neckties, a nightshirt and a nose!"

Skadi: "I have a big nose!" (At this point I argue with her about the size of her nose. It is small.)

Me: "Painting pink pajamas, policeman in a pail, Peter Pepper's puppy, now papa's in the pail"

Skadi: "That's so silly, why are they in pails?!"

Me: "Rosy's going riding -"

Skadi: "NO! Say Skadi's going riding!"

Same thing with Young Yolanda... but by then I have remembered...

Me: "A yawning yellow yak, young Skadi is riding on his back!"

Skadi: (giggles)

Me: "A Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz as you can plainly see."

(This is where there are problems...)

Skadi: "What is a Zizzer? Does he bite? Why does she have long hair? Is she going to eat those childrens next to her? Why is she bigger? Does he bite? Why does he have teeth?"

It's a miracle I made it out of there!

It wasn't supposed to happen!

When my good friend Melissa, loaned me a book, I wasn't going to like it. She had to push it on me. I don't have time for a 500 page book, I whined.

My goal in reading it was to check it off my list, be able to whine about it at book club in May and move on my way.

Because I am not a huge fan of uber-popular fiction.

I like biographies, and historical fiction, survivor stories, and exploration stories.

Not stories targeting teenage girls.

I usually read the "big" books well after the fact and then wander around going - "I don't know what the big deal about that book was..." (Thinking specifically of The DaVinci Code, but log Harry Potter here too - I am on book 2 of reading it to Leif and while it's alright, I don't find it to be all that.)

I don't read horror books or stories of the supernatural. The closest I have come to horror would be the Red Dragon series by Thomas Harris. And I certainly don't read Vampire novels.

Sigh.

Until now.

I am plowing through "Stones Into Schools" (which I find truly inspirational and amazing, I loved Three Cups of Tea) so that I can read "Critical Chain" for work and THEN and only then, can I resume my guilty teenaged girl pleasure and pick up...

New Moon.

Dismal I tell you!

Most of the kids' books are pretty good. Love the Boynton books. Skadi loves them too. She is particularly fond of the Dora books, Goodnight Moon (which has to be read every night before bed) and also Yertle the Turtle. She LOVES Yertle.

Leif is now into having chapter books read to him. I started off with Little House on the Prairie - which he loved. And then we moved and apparently I packed the rest of the set. Must find them. We got a few Cynthia Rylant books, a Patrick Carman book about a park in Walla Walla and then AB started reading Harry Potter. I wasn't terribly thrilled about this, but let him go with it. At first Leif kind of balked. Hearing about Harry and his cousin and the room under the staircase, wasn't terribly interesting.

So AB skipped that section and jumped straight to Hagrid and his world has since been changed. They are nearly finished with book one.

So these are the good books.

There are other really, really bad books out there.

Let's start with "A Party in the Jungle". This one is so bad that whoever wrote it left their name off. It has no author. It's just a "glitter book" and available for a penny from many sellers on Amazon. Not only does the story drive me insane - an elephant named Toby is shy, but he is invited to a party and asked to dance and miraculously overcomes his shyness. This is not how shyness is overcome, I can tell you firsthand.

Add to that neither of my kids are showing signs of shyness. I think the book should hit the trash. Don't waste your penny.

The main reason for this is one sentence in this book. I can get past the simple concept of the book. But the sentence "Everyone came including a mouse to eat, sing and dance." What exactly is the mouse's purpose? To be eaten? So so very bad.

And Skadi loves this book. Of course.

It's the glitter.

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Moving on...

Tonight Leif picked out a book handed down to him from our prior neighbor boy. The Little Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Anderson. I was thrilled he picked this out. It was aimed at his age group with lots of pop up action and this is a classic author! My son was reading a classic with me!

Ok, has anyone read this story? Classics should probably just go away. I tried reading Robinson Crusoe to Leif a few months ago after remembering how much *I* loved that book. I was appalled. I put it away. Far away.

Back to the Little Tin Soldier. Great concept. A tin soldier made for a boy, gets lost, eaten by a fish, mom buys a fish at the market and cuts it open to find the lost tin soldier.

If it ended there I would have been fine. I would have remained a touch grossed out by the fact that they bought fish with guts inside, but fine.

But no, the story doesn't end there. It ends with the soldier being thrust into the fire because it was defective and the little balerina that fell in love with him jumping in after him and all that remains in the fire the next day is his head and her heart.

GULP!!

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Enter Captain Underpants. Another book passed on by the boy down the street.

Need I say more?

Actually even Leif isn't terribly interested anymore. He thought the concept was hilarious to start, but Underpants is currently lying under a huge stack of books awaiting the repair of the cheap book shelf in Leif's room.

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There is one last book of Skadi's that slays me. It is another one of those grammar violation books. Stay tuned...

(Because I am tired now and need to go to bed.)