Day 1...

...of the 31-Day Blog Challenge - A photo of yourself and a description of how your day was. This is a pic of me and the Benner - we took it yesterday:

My day. Um, as Ben's dad would say, "Same crap, different day." Micah spilled his cereal this morning, not once, but twice. Dylan was a jerk until he left - it takes about an hour for his ADHD medicine to take effect, so he just runs around screeching all morning long. He does anything he can to piss me off in the mornings. I open up a Coke and keep swigging it to help me get through that hour with him. He runs around naked, which totally offends Sadie. He finally left, and I heaved a sigh of relief. Micah and Gage both pooped like five times today, I kid you not. It was special for me. Yesssss, I'm going to potty-train Micah. But not until he turns three. That's another thing Judgmental OT keeps hinting at in a totally passive-aggressive way: "Micah, when are you going to poop in the potty like a big boy? When is your mommy going to make you learn to go potty??" Dude. I'm totally calling my service coordinator tomorrow and asking her for a different OT. I'm sick of it. Ben was sick all night (I think it's because he ate like four artichokes last night - I don't think his body is used to that much fiber in one blow), so he called in sick and slept until eleven or so, then felt better. He made eggs and toast for his breakfast/my lunch. He's really good at making eggs overeasy. He can flip them up in the air, like professional chefs do. The eggs were yummy. Then he headed in to work. I managed to do a load of dishes this morning, which was a miracle. Micah's developmental therapist had to cancel her session with him today, so I tweaked my grocery list, sent Sadie off to school, and took Mikey and Gage with me grocery shopping. Micah dawdled the whole time. He is a Slow Walker. Gage did his yelling thing because he was bored: "Bahhhhh! BAHHHHHHHHH!!!" I got so many cute, cute things! I'm totally excited. I'm making green food/Irish food for all three meals on St. Patrick's Day. My kids and hubby are just going to DIE. My good friend, Pats, came over to hang out this afternoon. Her little man is so mobile. It's fun to watch him roll around, army crawl, etc. I bought some Mexican soda today - I needed the green glass bottle for another St. Patty's Day thing (I'll post about it soon) - so I dared her to try it. She said it was gross. I tried it, too - it tasted like raisins, but in soda form. Really gross. I dumped the rest down the drain. The kiddos came home from school, and Dylan told me that this stupid Jesus kid (that just looks wrong - think "hey zeus") keeps making fun of him, and that he keeps telling his teacher, but that she's not doing anything about it. I'm still fuming about it. I'm totally calling the principal tomorrow. Mama Bear has awoken. It's time to kick butt and take names. Made turkey rolls and spinach salad for dinner, but didn't have time to eat before I had to take off for spinning class. I really should have jogged today, but I couldn't resist. I burned 465 calories today, baby. Now I'm totally sweaty. I'm sitting in my office at work, scanning files, with my heater turned way up and my door closed to keep the heat in. I'm ffffffreezing from the sweat that has cooled off on my body. I need to head upstairs in a few minutes to clean bathrooms. Then I'll head home, eat a late dinner, go to bed, and probably fall asleep in about five seconds. Life is busy, but good.

Spinning

Ben had this deal at work where they would pay for part of a gym membership, if he kept a log of when he worked out. So he got a membership maybe a year ago. And he went....oh...roughly... twice. In like nine months. What can I say? The man loves to veg on the couch.

I was really jealous of his membership, and I was busting my butt on my rapidly deteriorating treadmill at home every day. So I finally asked him if I could have his membership. He readily agreed, so I went in and switched it from him to me. This was in November or so, I think.

Anyways, normal treadmills are so EASY compared to my crappy one. (I hauled the crappy one to the dumpster. Much to the chagrin of my kids' Judgmental OT. She used to have Micah walk backwards on it. But I can't stand having stuff in my house that I don't use. I have to get it out, ASAP. It's a bit of an obsession with me.) I feel like I'm jogging on a cloud when I'm on a nice treadmill.

For a really long time, I just went in and jogged six days a week, and it was all good. Then I went to a spinning class with my dad, and I was HOOKED. I've gone to spinning before, and I liked it, but I wasn't in love with it. For some reason, this time, it stuck. Actually, I think I know the reason, now that I think of it. I think, when my dad showed me the part of the monitor that shows how many calories you burn, that's when it hit me how much I love spinning. I burn between 450 and 500 calories in just an hour. I only burn 150 calories when I jog for half an hour. If I jogged for an hour (which would be SO HARD), I would still not burn as many calories as I do in an hour of sitting on my butt and pedaling. Sitting on my butt? Yes, please. Mind you, it's not easy butt-sitting, but like I said, way easier than jogging for an hour.

I'm so obsessed. My heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest, as Train would say. I get sooooo excited when it's Spinning Day. I go Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. I actually WAKE UP EARLY on Saturdays so that I can get to spinning class. That's saying something. Because I REALLY love sleeping in. And then I jog on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Just because I don't want to lose where I've come in my jogging, you know? It's taken me so long to feel comfortable jogging, that I don't want to lose it. It's like if someone asked me to change from skiing to snowboarding. No thanks - I spent way too many years perfecting my skiing technique. I'm not throwing that away. You know what I mean? I was worried that cutting into my jogging by half would make jogging more difficult for me, but the strengthening of my legs through spinning has actually improved my jogging, which is nice.

Spinning is a blast. They turn on black lights in the spinning room, so you don't have to see peoples' nasty sweat flowing off of them (spinning is a sweaty business). I look really tan, and my teeth look really white. So I like those black lights. :) And there's such a sense of camraderie within the class. People yell and whistle and bellow smart-aleck remarks to the teacher. When we complete a particularly hard hill (heck, all hills are hard; let's face the truth here), you hear everyone yelping in relief and see everyone sitting up in their "saddle," wiping the sweat off their face with their towels, gulping gallons of water, and "jogging" (standing up and pedaling) to give their legs a break.

I've never drunk so much water in my life. You just can't get enough of it in spinning class. I usually go through two bottles of water in one class. When I come out of the room, you can see where my fat rolls are on my stomach, because my sweat has made lines above and below each roll. Sad. :) But that's why I'm there, right? To hopefully make those rolls get smaller. But if they don't, oh well. One of our instructors isn't a perfect size 3, but she's strong. And she's really funny. Which is all that matters, right?

Each teacher has a different taste in music. I often sit there and make a list of what I would play if I was a spinning teacher. It would be so awesome. Well, I might be the only one who thinks it's awesome. Not many people like Prince. Whose real, given first name is Prince. I just found that out today.

Hiccups

I took Sades and Mikey with me to Albertson's last week - I had to pick up a prescription. Sadie has been saving up her allowance money for awhile, and she really wanted to get a toy while we were there. I told her that the toys in Alby's aren't fabulous or anything, but she insisted.

After I got my medicine, we headed down to the teeny-tiny toy section. She immediately saw the object of her desire - a little Disney princess purse that comes with two kinds of lip gloss and a hand mirror. It was well within her price range, so I said okay and started ushering the kids down the aisle.

And then I saw Micah's little eyes. He was staring at Sadie's new purse soooo longingly. He wasn't begging for it, but dang. He just melted my heart. So I went ahead, and for the first time, bought him something girly - his own identical purse to Sadie's.

It's just that... he doesn't play with any of his boy toys. He spends his whole day, every day, stealing Sadie's toys. I thought it might be nice, for once, for him to have a toy that he likes and doesn't try to steal from anyone else. So there you have it.

He LOVES his purse. He applies and re-applies his lip gloss, to the point where it's almost gone. And he sneaks over to Gage and puts lip gloss all over him, too - his cheeks, his hair, etc. Gage has been greasy for a few days, thanks to his big bro.

He calls his lip gloss, his makeup. But he doesn't remember that it's called "makeup." He calls it his "hiccups." "Mommy, where my hiccups?" He's funny.

I'm-a Gonna Do It!

So. My friend Melissa is doing this on her blog, and I think it sounds really fun. You can do it, too, if you want! I'm going to kind of do it sporadically. I'm not doing each one in a row, because I'll have other things I'll want to blog about in between. So I may do Day 10 in, like, 20 days or whatever, not necessarily in ten days. If that makes sense. But I'm excited.

31- Day Blog Challenge:
Day 1 - A photo of yourself and a description of how your day was.
Day 2 - Tell us about your job.
Day 3 - Your idea of the perfect date.
Day 4 - Your favorite photograph of your best friend.
Day 5 - A photo of yourself two years ago.
Day 6 - Create a list of your top 5 previous blog posts.
Day 7 - Your Favorite Photo from your Wedding.
Day 8 - A song to match your mood.
Day 9 - A photo of the item you last purchased.
Day 10 - A photo of your favorite place to eat.
Day 11 - What's in your makeup bag?
Day 12 - A photograph of the town you live in.
Day 13 - Your favorite musician and why?
Day 14 - A TV show you're currently addicted to.
Day 15 - Something you don't leave the house without.
Day 16 - A fond childhood memory.
Day 17 - A photo of you and your family.
Day 18 - Share a quote that you love, and why.
Day 19 - Your favorite place to travel.
Day 20 - The meaning behind your blog name.
Day 21 - A photo of something that makes you happy.
Day 22 - Your favorite flavor of ice cream.
Day 23 - 15 facts about you.
Day 24 - A photo of something that means a lot to you.
Day 25 - Your 5 favorite shops.
Day 26 - Top 5 items in your closet.
Day 27 - A picture of you last year and now and how you have changed since then?
Day 28 - Tell us about your spouse.
Day 29 - Ten books on your book shelf.
Day 30 - Something you could never get tired of doing.
Day 31 - A photograph of yourself today plus three good things that happened to you today.

The Aluminum Show

My sweet mom bought tickets for us to go to The Aluminum Show this last Monday. I guess the traveling troupe got caught in Donner Pass in a snowstorm, so the show was moved to Tuesday. Nat is in charge of her roadshow, so she couldn't come on Tuesday night (it was roadshow practice), so we invited my Aunt Marilyn to come along. When I told Ben about the whole Donner Pass thing, he asked if the troupe had to eat each other to survive. Hardee-har-har. :)

I'd never heard of The Aluminum Show before, but when I heard that there was a lot of dancing, I was, of course, game. I love me some dancin'.

Kay. So, I thought maybe there would be a lot of drumming, like on aluminum trash cans or something? That's what I imagined. But the aluminum show has no drumming. Almost the whole show is done with those vent thingeys, like that go from your dryer to the outside of your house. The ones that are expandable and bendy, like a covered slinky.

There was a bit of a storyline - there are these two big slinky animal thingeys, and they have a little baby animal slinky, and the baby gets seperated from his parents. He makes friends with a human, and together, they try to find the parents. Honestly, I didn't think that a storyline was necessary. I think the show would have been better with just several different, cool, aluminum-inspired dance numbers. But I know the story tugged at the heartstrings of the kiddies in the audience.

And it was extremely kid-friendly. I kept thinking about how much Dylan would have loved it. There's a part where the dancers release hundreds of these filled-up aluminum pillow thingeys into the audience, and the audience hits them up into the air, and the music is loud and pumping, and there are strobe lights...it feels like a big party:

And then there's a part where they have one end of the slinkey tube thingeys sealed, and at the other end, they're blowing really powerful air into them, and they're super duper long, so they start to expand, like worms, out into the audience. And the audience is kind of passing the worms over their heads. That was cool:

They also had these gun thingeys that shot huge and small pieces of aluminum into the audience. And lots of puppetry. So yeah, kids loved it. If it comes back next year, I'll really have to take Dylan and Sadie. They would have been enthralled.

My favorite part was these giant slinky creatures that did a hip-hop dance:

These dancers were AMAZING. There was this one girl in particular off of whom I couldn't keep my eyes. She just had a certain way of moving - very intense, very strong. All of the dancers were really awesome, but she was really unique. It made me wonder if I was a boring dancer, or if people looked at me when I danced. I probably was boring - I had a hard time smiling when I danced, because I was always concentrating so hard on the moves. :) I had to really push myself to smile and project.

They did one number with the slinky thingeys and no music, just kind of hitting them and opening them and closing them. It reminded me of what I've heard of that Stomp show:

They danced like snails at one point:

There was one part that reminded me of Carnivale down in Brazil, with crazy headdresses and capes and things:

Anyways. The show was phenomenal. It was so fun to do something different. The music was so wonderful - I would love to own it. It's all fast, with a heavy beat. Perfect music for working out. Or scrubbing my floor. I had to constantly fight the urge to jump up and do some Jersey Shore-inspired fist-pumping.

Thanks so much, Mom!!!

Bodies ARE art!!!

Another funny London story. From what I remember, when we were all traveling throughout England, we all went to the same cathedrals, museums, ruins, etc. together as a group. But when we were in London, we each went to what we wanted to go to. There were soooo many museums, shows, churches, etc. just within London alone to see. Four months was almost not long enough to see all that I wanted to see.

Anyways, though the professors mainly gave us free reign over our extracurricular activities there in the city, they would sometimes suggest things to go to. Dr. C, the main professor of our group, is a humanities professor. Obviously, VERY into art. He arranged a time for whoever wanted to, to go to a furniture exhibition. I really didn't care that much about spending my time to see furniture, plus I had to read and write a paper on Heart of Darkness, a novella by Joseph Conrad. Our studies over there were EXTREMELY rigorous. I swear we were all trapped in the center for a month during midterms. It made me resentful. Here I was, in this amazing city to which I might never get a chance to return, and I was sitting in the library, studying my brains out. Oh well.

Anywho, I was with a couple of friends when I went down to breakfast the day of the furniture exhibition trip. We saw Dr. C there in the foyer.

"So, Karlenn, are you going to this furniture exhibition with us today?" he said, with a huge anticipatory grin on his face.

"Um, well, no...."

"What? Why not?"

"Well, I still have to read House of Darkness. And you know, it's just... furniture. It's not like it's art or anything."

He stomped his little foot. He is a very little man. "Karlenn," he yelled, "Furniture IS art!!! And it's HEART of Darkness, not HOUSE of Darkness! It would be a lot more of a convincing excuse if you at least got the NAME right!"

My friends and I laughed and laughed. We quoted him for weeks after that - "Furniture IS art!!!"

Last weekend, my sis, Lex, invited the fam to go with her to the Bodies exhibit that's being displayed at our city's museum. She's gone to it before and just adored it. She's all sciencey. Always has been. I was a little trepidatious. I remember when I took Anat and Phys in high school - we took a field trip up to Ricks, as it used to be called, to watch the pre-med students there dissect human bodies. I'll never forget how awful that was for me. I could see the peoples' hair sticking up out of the cloths that were covering their faces. It was the hair and the fingernails that really got to me. I kept thinking, "A few weeks ago or whatever, those fingernails were moving. They were writing and gesturing and helping, and now they're not." It was traumatic for me. I'm a sensitive flower. :) Plus, the formaldehyde was a killer for me. Oh, the smelllllllll..... As Joseph Conrad would say, "The horror! The horror!!!"

When Lex initially told me all about the exhibit when she saw it in Vegas a few years ago, I was like, ugh. Dissection flashback. Nooooo thanks. But, when she invited us last weekend, I went along in the interest of not getting left out. That's always a huge motivator for me.

I am sooooooooo glad that I went!!! I know that this exhibit has always been very controversial - these are real human bodies that have had all of these things done to them. For example, the skeleton was taken out of one guy, and he is displayed with his skeleton holding hands with his musculature. One entire body was cut into cross sections. There is one that wasn't on display here (our museum is so very teeny), but I've seen pictures of it before, of one guy, in muscle/bone/tendon form, carrying his skin around. When you hear snippets of peoples' conversation about it, or when you see pictures of it, you think, "How glib, to treat these people, who lived real lives, in such a flippant way." It seems very irreverant.

But that was not the case at ALL. The feeling in the exhibit was absolute reverence. The man who came up with these things was not trying to be funny or bombastic. He wanted to show us how amazing the human body is. People spoke in respectful whispers. Yes, there were peoples' testicles and breasts, just out there for everyone to see, but there were no snickers or snide remarks. It was just a feeling of awe. It honestly, seriously, reminded me of the reverence and respect that I feel when I'm in the temple. I kept thinking, over and over, "God is amazing. Our bodies are amazing. They are a true miracle."

I'm here to say that bodies ARE art.

Some things that stuck out for me -

They had a little thyroid display, which is interesting to me for obvious reasons. I got to see a real thyroid gland. And I got to see a thyroid gland that has a goiter on it, from untreated thyroid disease. I thought to myself, "I had one of those in my neck! And there it is!!!"

The bodies, and the body parts, looked...plastic. They are preserved in such a way that makes them just seem like plastic displays. I had to keep reminding myself that these were real bodies and real organs. They also injected certain things with colors, making them very bright. Which made the plastickeyness even more defined. Yes, I just made up a word - plastickeyness.

The alveoli that function within the lungs are BEAUTIFUL. They look like baby's breath. So pretty. True art. And the liver is really pretty. So smooth. It looked like clay.

I have a friend with a pituitary tumor, and there was a brain that was cut in half, showing the pituitary nestled right there in the middle of it. It's so tiny. It's amazing that something so tiny controls so many really important things.

Speaking of tiny, the brain is smaller than I thought. And the ovaries are smaller than I thought.

And the kidneys are ENORMOUS! I always thought they were little, like, I don't know... kidney beans, honestly. But they're the size of my fist!

They had a room of just the circulatory system. This scientist dude figured out a way to inject something into the veins that hardened them and turned them bright red. Then he put some kind of chemical onto the skin that melted the skin, muscles, everything else away, leaving an entire, intact circulatory system, just by itself. It was suspended in some kind of liquid. That was amazing. I thought that we had, like, a few veins in each arm and leg, and a bunch of big ones in our thoracic area. But there are billions of littler veins and arteries that branch out of the big ones. The poster next to it said that there are 10,000 miles of just veins and arteries in one body! AMAZING!

There were lots of displays showing a normal organ, vs. a diseased organ, side-by-side. I got to see all kinds of organs with cancer in them. There was a whole woman body who had died of undetected breast cancer. And you could see the cancer, right there in her breast. Which made me panic. Should I start to get mammograms? I need to look that up. I feel like people say you start getting them when you're forty, if you don't have a family history of breast cancer, which I don't. Other cancers, yes. But not breast. So far.

The most interesting thing for me was the smoker's lungs, vs. normal lungs. OH MY GOSH. What a difference. A normal set of lungs is pinkey-peach. Beautiful. Smooth. The smoker's lungs were dark grey, with big black spots all over them. It was such a stark contrast. There is a big, clear, plastic box in between both lungs, with a slit in the top for people who want to stop smoking to throw their boxes of cigarettes in. There were a few packs, plus a big cigar in there. I've heard that, in different cities, as the exhibit goes on, that box fills up and up and up to the very top by the end of the exhibit. This is the very beginning, so there wasn't much there. It made me wonder if those packs were put there by a museum curator, or by real people. One little girl led her grandmother over to the lungs and said, "Look, Gramma. Look at what you're doing to yourself." The grandma just chuckled and walked away. That's probably what most people do. :)

There was a cross section of a person's head, a person who had suffered from a stroke. It showed a dark area where the hemorrhaging had occurred. I thought that was really interesting.

The Fetus Room. Ah, the Fetus Room. They have a sign outside of it, warning you that, if you're sensitive to things like this, don't go in. I worried at first, but then decided to go in and see. I'm so glad I did. All of the fetuses in there died of natural causes during pregnancy. And again, they all looked plastic. They had fetuses clear from one week old to about 25 weeks old, all lined up from youngest to oldest. It was so amazing. Again, I kept thinking, "Heavenly Father is amazing. It's a miracle!" How quickly they grow and develop. I was just blown away. It was kind of hard for me to see the little fetus that was 8 weeks old. I had a miscarriage three years ago, and I just... couldn't take my eyes off that little guy. I shed a few tears. But it really was okay. It didn't traumatize me. It just made me think, Wow. I'm glad I got a D&C instead of passing the baby at home. They really are quite big by then, and they definitely look like little babies. I don't think I could have handled that. It's amazing that they already look like babies at only 8 weeks.

So anyways. It was wonderful. I'm so glad I went! I'm a very sensitive girl, but it was not hard for me to see these things at all. Heavenly Father is amazing. Our bodies are amazing. And we need to take better care of them. That stuck out to me, as well.

Judgie Wudgie was a Bear

Dude, I've had it up to here with Gage and Micah's O.T. I was just going to kind of wait it out until Micah graduates from the Infant/Toddler program in May, but now that Gage has qualified because of his torticollis, I'm stuck with her for like another two and a half years. I don't think I can do it anymore.

She is sooooo judgmental of me. And she gives me the third degree every single week:

OT: So how has Gage been eating this week?

Me: You know, not that great. I find that he's too full after cereal and veggies to drink his bottle. So I wait an hour and then give him the bottle.

OT: Does he like his veggies?

Me: Yeah; I put a little sugar in them. I've done that with all four kids.

OT: You are NOT supposed to put sugar in their veggies. Then they all taste the same, and they won't acquire the taste needed to enjoy veggies in later life. Do your other kids like veggies?

Me: Um, Micah doesn't, but Dylan and Sadie do.

OT: Are you sure?

Me: Uh, yeah... And doesn't squash with sugar just taste like...squash with sugar? And doesn't green beans taste like green beans with sugar? I don't think they necessarily all taste the same.

OT: Trust me on this one. How do you feed Gage his veggies and cereal?

Me: Um, veggies first, then cereal.

OT: Do you ever mix them?

Me: Nah, but my husband does.

OT: That is a BAD idea. Then Gage will get confused about differentiating tastes. Tell your husband not to do that anymore.

And on and on. As the Black-Eyed Peas would say, "On and on and on and on and..... onandonandonandonand..."

And she tells me roughly ten zillion things I'm supposed to do with all of my kids every single day. Not only for Gage and Micah, but also things that I'm supposed to do with Dylan and Sadie. Based on her meeting each of them, like, once. If I did everything she said to do, then I would never cook dinner. Or go pee. Or take a shower. Seriously. And some of the things she tells me to do contradict one another. I'm supposed to give him two hours of tummy time. And two hours of side-lying time. And two hours of practicing-sitting time. But if we did that, he would never take a nap, you know? Yet I'm supposed to give him three to four naps per day.

I'm trying to do as much as possible, but I'm kind of stretched thin here. I'm taking care of four kids, plus a neighbor girl 24/7, I swear (the drug dealer's daughter. I actually took her with us when we got haircuts, and paid for her to get her hair cut, too. It was gross). I work roughly 20 hours a week at my job. I'm up at 7 and to bed at midnight. My husband doesn't do much cleaning or cooking, so it all falls to me. There's only so much that one girl can do, you know?

And here's the thing - my OT doesn't have any kids. So I don't think she understands my time constraints. Or my stress level.

I just miss the good old days, when Micah liked his OT, Lisa. She would come, work with him, give me a couple of ideas, and leave. And the next week, she didn't put me in the hot seat about it.

I think I told you that Micah and the OT fought for an entire hour over him eating one grape, right?? The other day, they fought the entire hour over him unzipping a zipper on a purse. She wanted him to unzip the zipper. He didn't want to. He tried to get away. She held her legs around him to keep him there. He screamed for an entire hour. She spent the entire hour saying, "Wow, you must really let him get away with murder. It's like he's not used to hearing the word 'no.'" And me saying, "No, trust me, I don't let him get away with murder. He's just stubborn." Tired of the judging, dude.

I know that I need to call and arrange a different OT for us, but I've been putting it off. I just don't want to be one of THOSE parents, who are like, "Wahhh, this is hard, I'm quitting." Like the parents of the students I used to teach, who, when their kid messed around in my class and got a bad grade as a result, transferred their kid to a different teacher. You know what I mean? I don't want Micah growing up to think that it's okay to give something up just because it's hard, or that if you don't like a person with whom you're working, that you can immediately get someone new. So for now, I'm just... thinking. And complaining. :)